Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vivo bactericidal activities of Japanese rice-fluid against H. pylori in a Mongolian gerbil model

Purpose: The antibiotic effect of rice-fluid on Helicobacter pylori infection was investigated using a Mongolian gerbil model. Methods: Gerbils were divided into four groups: H. pylori -infected, rice-fluid-treated animals (group A); H. pylori -infected, untreated animals (group B); uninfected, rice-fluid-treated animals (group C); and uninfected, untreated animals (group D). Group A and B animals were killed 14 weeks after H. pylori infection and group C and D animals were killed at the same age. The stomachs were examined for histology, 5'-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) labeling, and the bacterial burden. Serum anti-H. pylori antibody titers were also tested. Results: The positive incidence of H. pylori -culture was 25 and 84 % in groups A and B, respectively (p<0.01). Both the degree of inflammation and the BrdU labeling index in group A were significantly lower than those in group B. Conclusions: Rice-fluid showed an antibiotic effect on H. pylori and an anti-inflammatory effect on the H. pylori -associated gastritis.
New Bone Formation in Tuberculous-Infected Vertebral Body Defect after Administration of Bone Marrow Stromal Cells in Rabbit Model

Study Design Preliminary experimental study using a rabbit spondylitis model. Purpose To observe the ossification in a micro-environment containing live Mycobacterium tuberculosis transplanted with bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) in rabbits. Overview of Literature BMSCs differentiate to osteoblasts and then osteocytes during ossification. Mycobacterium tuberculosis does not affect BMSC growth in vitro. Methods Six rabbits were divided into two groups of three rabbits. One group was positive for spondylitis tuberculosis by culture, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and histopathologically. The other group was positive by PCR and histopathologically. Both groups were treated using BMSC transplantation and anti-tuberculosis drugs. After 6 weeks, ossification was evaluated by enumerating the number of osteoblasts, osteocytes, and lesion level of calcium. Results Mean number of osteoblasts was 207.00±31.00 in the first group and 220.33±73.46 in the second group. Mean number of intra-lesions osteocytes was in the first and second group was 18.33±30.04 and 31.00±26.87, respectively. Mean calcium level in the first group and second group was 2.94%±0.89% and 2.51%±0.13%, respectively. Total ossification score in the first and second group was 31.00 and 25.67, respectively. Conclusions Mycobacterium tuberculosis provides support for new bone formation by stimulating intra-lesion calcium metabolism. The microscopic environment containing live Mycobacterium tuberculosis enhances ossification.
Reforms and initiatives in Scotland in recent years to encourage the prescribing of generic drugs, their influence and implications for other countries

Scotland has introduced a number of initiatives to enhance the prescribing of low-cost generic drugs versus originators and patent products in a class where these are seen as similar. The objective of this review is to appraise the influence of the various measures on subsequent utilization patterns and expenditure in high-volume classes to provide guidance. This review is principally a narrative review of published studies. The authors’ found supply-side measures resulted in generic prices as low as 3% of pre-patent loss prices. Multiple demand-side measures resulted in high international non-proprietary name prescribing, and a considerable increase in prescribing efficiency for the proton pump inhibitors, statins, renin–angiotensin inhibitor drugs and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. There were no specific activities encouraging the prescription of losartan versus other angiotensin receptor blockers or risperidone versus other atypical antipsychotic drugs following generics and no change in their utilization patterns post generics. The authors can conclude multiple measures are needed to change physician prescribing habits. Authorities cannot rely on any ‘spillover’ effects to affect future prescribing, even in closely related classes.
Registration of segmented histological images using thin plate splines and belief propagation

We register images based on their multiclass segmentations, for cases when correspondence of local features cannot be established. A discrete mutual information is used as a similarity criterion. It is evaluated at a sparse set of location on the interfaces between classes. A thin-plate spline regularization is approximated by pairwise interactions. The problem is cast into a discrete setting and solved efficiently by belief propagation. Further speedup and robustness is provided by a multiresolution framework. Preliminary experiments suggest that our method can provide similar registration quality to standard methods at a fraction of the computational cost.
Automatic Acquisition of a Large Sub Categorization Dictionary From Corpora

This paper presents a new method for producing a dictionary of subcategorization frames from unlabelled text corpora. It is shown that statistical filtering of the results of a finite state parser running on the output of a stochastic tagger produces high quality results, despite the error rates of the tagger and the parser. Further, it is argued that this method can be used to learn all subcategorization frames, whereas previous methods are not extensible to a general solution to the problem.
A new semantics for ACL based on commitments and penalties

In complex multiagent systems, the agents may be heterogeneous and possibly designed by different programmers. Thus, the importance of defining a standard framework for agent communication languages (ACL) with a clear semantics has been widely recognized. The semantics should be verifiable, clear, and practical. Most classical proposals (for instance, mentalistic semantics) fail to meet these objectives.
Cartilage macromolecules in knee joint synovial fluid. Markers of the disease course in patients with acute oligoarthritis

OBJECTIVE To investigate the development of chronic joint symptoms in patients presenting with acute oligoarthritis including knee joint synovitis with effusion and explore whether prognostic information can be derived from initial synovial fluid concentrations of aggrecan and cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) for development of chronic joint symptoms. METHODS Retrospective follow up of 25 patients identified in a bank of knee joint synovial fluids collected consecutively from patients presenting with knee joint synovitis and symptoms from at most three additional joints and in whom no diagnosis could be established at presentation. RESULTS The 10 patients who developed chronic joint symptoms were characterised by lower knee joint synovial fluid concentrations of aggrecan as well as lower aggrecan/COMP ratios (p<0.001) than the 15 patients who had a transient arthritis. No other clinical or laboratory differences between the groups were apparent at the time of presentation. CONCLUSIONS The synovial fluid content of aggrecan is a potential tool in acute arthritis for distinguishing patients with a benign disease course from those who will develop a chronic joint disorder.
Reactive fields above an artificial PMC

In this paper, an effective numerical method to carry out a modal analysis in infinite-array approach is presented. Strong reactive fields, with a non-negligible vertical component, at the resonant frequency are evidenced. The same effects are observed for a finite array, in which evanescent waves are reflected by the edges, resulting in strong array truncation effects at the resonance. This work may lead to the establishment of new design criteria for artificial ground planes devoted to low-profile antennas
Humanoid teleoperation for whole body manipulation

We present results of successful telemanipulation of large, heavy objects by a humanoid robot. Using a single joystick the operator controls walking and whole body manipulation along arbitrary paths for up to ten minutes of continuous execution. The robot grasps, walks, pushes, pulls, turns and re-grasps a 55 kg range of loads on casters. Our telemanipulation framework changes reference frames online to let the operator steer the robot in free walking, its hands in grasping and the object during mobile manipulation. In the case of manipulation, our system computes a robot motion that satisfies the commanded object path as well as the kinematic and dynamic constraints of the robot. Furthermore, we achieve increased robot stability by learning dynamic friction models of manipulated objects.
Maximally fault tolerant neural networks

An application of neural network modeling is described for generating hypotheses about the relationships between response properties of neurons and information processing in the auditory system. The goal is to study response properties that are useful for extracting sound localization information from directionally selective spectral filtering provided by the pinna. For studying sound localization based on spectral cues provided by the pinna, a feedforward neural network model with a guaranteed level of fault tolerance is introduced. Fault tolerance and uniform fault tolerance in a neural network are formally defined and a method is described to ensure that the estimated network exhibits fault tolerance. The problem of estimating weights for such a network is formulated as a large-scale nonlinear optimization problem. Numerical experiments indicate that solutions with uniform fault tolerance exist for the pattern recognition problem considered. Solutions derived by introducing fault tolerance constraints have better generalization properties than solutions obtained via unconstrained back-propagation.
Analytical modeling of IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA/CA protocol under different access periods

The IEEE 802.15. 6 standard for wireless body area network (WBAN) defines two contention-based channel access schemes: slotted ALOHA and carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) using an alternative binary exponential backoff procedure. The standard supports quality of service (QoS) differentiation through user priorities and access phases. In this study, we develop an analytical model for the estimation of normalized throughput and mean frame service time performance of the CSMA/CA protocol as described in the IEEE 802.15. 6 standard, employing a Markov chain model under non-saturated heterogeneous traffic scenarios. We also consider a portion of the access phases of the superframe and analyze its impact on the performance of the IEEE 802.15. 6 CSMA/CA. Our analysis is validated by accurate computer simulations. Our results show that the IEEE 802.15. 6 CSMA/CA employing different access phases degrades the overall system throughput performance and results in higher delay for low priority users.
Scale-up of single screw extruders

Scale-up from small laboratory size extruders to large production size extruders is a procedure of great practical importance. Many scale-up rules and theories have been proposed in the past, however it is not always clear how the different scale-up methods will affect extruder performance. A basic analysis of scale-up in plasticating single screw extruders is developed from which the effect of a certain scale-up strategy on extrusion performance can be evaluated in terms of solids conveying, melting, melt conveying, mixing, residence time, heat transfer, power consumption, and specific energy consumption. Various existing scale-up theories are evaluated and compared using the basic analysis. A number of existing scale-up theories have some significant drawbacks, in particular with non-constant specific energy consumption and imbalance between melting rate and pumping rate. Conditions that are desirable to achieve in scale-up are enumerated and ranked in terms of importance. This leads to two new scale-up methods that result in constant mechanical specific energy consumption and high throughput rates. The first scale-up method keeps the specific surface area constant. This scale-up should work well for high values of the Brinkman number. However, at low values of the Brinkman number, the melting rate may be insufficient. The second scale-up method keeps the melting rate at low Brinkman number equal to the pumping rate and, thus, should be useful in cases where the first scale-up method cannot be used.
Decision making under severe uncertainties for flood risk management: a case study of info-gap robustness analysis

Flood risk analysis is subject to uncertainties, often severe, which have the potential to undermine engineering decisions. This is particularly true in strategic planning, which requires appraisal over long periods of time. Traditional economic appraisal techniques largely ignore this uncertainty, preferring to use a precise measure of performance, which affords the possibility of unambiguously ranking options in order of preference. In this paper we describe an experimental application of information-gap theory, or info-gap for short to a flood risk management decision. Info-gap is a quantified non-probabilistic theory of robustness. It provides a means of examining the sensitivity of a decision to uncertainty. Rather than simply presenting a range of possible values of performance, info-gap explores how this range grows as uncertainty increases. This allows considerably greater opportunity for insight into the behaviour of our model of option performance. The information generated may be of use in improving the model, refining the options, or justifying the selection of one option over the others in the absence of an unambiguous rank order. Secondly, we demonstrate the possibility of exploring the value of waiting until improved knowledge becomes available by constructing options that explicitly model this possibility.
Tuberculin Skin Tests in Hospital Employees

TO THE EDITOR: Bailey and colleagues [1] studied risk factors for tuberculin positivity in hospital employees and found that the employees' postal zones of residence had the strongest statistical association with tuberculin skin test conversion. Several years ago, in an effort to define the baseline levels of tuberculosis in a large urban population and to quantitate the risk factors for a positive tuberculin test result, we studied skin test results of more than 50 000 New York City Board of Education employees [2]. Along with reaction size and history of a positive reaction, we determined age, race or ethnic group, sex, and socioeconomic status using a specific index for demographic characteristics (ZIP code of residence) as a surrogate for socioeconomic status. (Rezide ZQ rating, Claritas, Inc., Washington, DC) [3]. Before examining our data, we had expected to find that socioeconomic status had a stronger relation to a positive tuberculin test result than did race or ethnic group; however, a multivariate analysis showed a stronger correlation between race and a positive test result. Tuberculous infection is thought to reflect conditions of past decades because most persons with a positive reaction have been previously infected. Infected persons who currently live in areas of higher socioeconomic status may have previously lived in areas that have lower status and greater rates of tuberculosis, where they presumably acquired the disease. We speculated that this factor explained the strong correlation between race and a positive skin test result; that is, some racial or ethnic groups may have lived in areas of lower socioeconomic status when they became infected. In other words, our study's ascertainment reflected current socioeconomic status, not the status at the time of infection. We adopted this theory to explain the findings of our investigation. It is interesting that Bailey and colleagues [1] found that only the proportion of persons living below the poverty level within their postal zone of residence showed a statistically significant association to tuberculin conversions. This finding tends to substantiate the theory we used to explain our earlier findings. Lee B. Reichman, MD, MPH New Jersey Medical School National Tuberculosis Center Newark, NJ 07107
ONTOLOGY BASED DATA MINING METHODOLOGY FOR DISCRIMINATION PREVENTION

Data Mining is being increasingly used in the field of automation of decision making processes, which involve extraction and discovery of information hidden in large volumes of collected data. Nonetheless, there are negative perceptions like privacy invasion and potential discrimination which contribute as hindrances to the use of data mining methodologies in software systems employing automated decision making. Loan granting, Employment, Insurance Premium calculation, Admissions in Educational Institutions etc., can make use of data mining to effectively prevent human biases pertaining to certain attributes like gender, nationality, race etc. in critical decision making. The proposed methodology prevents discriminatory rules ensuing due to the presence of certain information regarding sensitive discriminatory attributes in the data itself. Two aspects of novelty in the proposal are, first, the rule mining technique based on ontologies and the second, concerning generalization and transformation of the mined rules that are quantized as discriminatory, into non-discriminatory ones.
Gene Cloning and Expression and Secretion ofListeria monocytogenes Bacteriophage-Lytic Enzymes inLactococcus lactis

ABSTRACT Bacteriophage lysins (Ply), or endolysins, are phage-encoded cell wall lytic enzymes which are synthesized late during virus multiplication and mediate the release of progeny virions. Bacteriophages of the pathogen Listeria monocytogenesencode endolysin enzymes which specifically hydrolyze the cross-linking peptide bridges in Listeria peptidoglycan. Ply118 is a 30.8-kDa l-alanoyl-d-glutamate peptidase and Ply511 (36.5 kDa) acts asN-acetylmuramoyl-l-alanine amidase. In order to establish dairy starter cultures with biopreservation properties against L. monocytogenes contaminations, we have introducedply118 and ply511 into Lactococcus lactis MG1363 by using a pTRKH2 backbone. The genes were expressed under control of the lactococcal promoter P32, which proved superior to other promoters (P21 and P59) tested in this study. High levels of active enzymes were produced and accumulated in the cytoplasmic cell fractions but were not released from the cells at significant levels. Therefore, ply511 was genetically fused with the SPslpA nucleotide sequence encoding the Lactobacillus brevis S-layer protein signal peptide. Expression of SPslpA–ply511 from pSL-PL511 resulted in secretion of functional Ply511 enzyme from L. lactis cells. One clone expressed an unusually strong lytic activity, which was found to be due to a 115-bp deletion that occurred within the 3′-end coding sequence ofSPslpA–ply511, which caused a frameshift mutation and generated a stop codon. Surprisingly, the resulting carboxy-terminal deletion of 80 amino acids in the truncated Ply511Δ(S262–K341) mutant polypeptide strongly increased its lytic activity. Proteolytic processing of the secretion competentSPSlpA-Ply511 propeptide following membrane translocation had no influence on enzyme activity. Immunoblotting experiments using both cytoplasmic and supernatant fractions indicated that the enzyme was quantitatively exported from the cells and secreted into the surrounding medium, where it caused rapid lysis of L. monocytogenes cells. Moreover, transformation of pSL-PL511ΔC into L. lactis Bu2-129, a lactose-utilizing strain that can be employed for fermentation of milk, also resulted in secretion of functional enzyme and showed that the vector is compatible with the native lactococcal plasmids.
Price Adjustment in Long-Term Contracts: The Case of Coal

IN two recent papers I examined the effects of relationship-specific investment on the duration of contracts negotiated between electric utilities and coal suppliers. ' That work demonstrated that when relationshipspecific investment is important for a cost-minimizing supply relationship, contracts are frequently utilized that specify ex ante the terms and conditions of trade over many future years. In this article I examine the characteristics of the price-adjustment provisions specified in these long-term coal contracts. I utilize a sample of about 250 coal contracts to analyze the structure of formal price-adjustment provisions in coal contracts in order to determine the factors that affect initial negotiated contract prices and to examine actual transaction-price behavior over time. There has been much recent theoretical work, as well as some related empirical work, that has focused on the benefits of long-term contracts when relationship-specific investments are important.2 There has also been some theoretical work that focuses on the contractual arrangements that may be chosen to mitigate opportunism problems and guard against
Genetic Characterization of the Soybean Nested Association Mapping Population

40 NAM families were developed and 5600 RILs in the families were characterized. The linkage maps for each family and a composite linkage map were constructed. More than a half million high‐confidence SNPs were identified and annotated. Segregation distortion in most families favored alleles from the female parent. The REs in the soybean genome is low.
Safe Autonomous Reinforcement Learning

In the thesis we propose, we focus on equipping existing Reinforcement Learning algorithms with different kinds of safety constraints imposed on the exploration scheme. Common Reinforcement Learning algorithms are (sometimes implicitly) assumed to work in an ergodic1, or even “restartable” environment. However, these conditions are not achievable in field robotics, where the expensive robots can’t simply be replaced by a new functioning unit when they perform a “deadly” action. Even so, Reinforcement Learning offers many advantages over supervised learning that are useful in the robotics domain. It may reduce the amount of annotated training data needed to train a task, or, for example, eliminate the need of acquiring a model of the whole system. Thus we note there is a need for something that would allow for using Reinforcement Learning safely in non-ergodic and dangerous environments. Defining and recognizing safe and unsafe states/actions is a difficult task itself. Even when there is a safety classifier, it still remains to incorporate the safety measures into the Reinforcement Learning process so that efficiency and convergence of the algorithm is not lost. The proposed thesis deals both with safety-classifier creation and the usage of Reinforcement Learning and safety measures together. The available safe exploration methods range from simple algorithms for simple environments to sophisticated methods based on previous experience, state prediction or machine learning. Pitifully, the methods suitable for our field robotics case usually require a precise model of the system, which is however very difficult (or even impossible) to obtain from sensory input in unknown environment. In our previous work, for the safety classifier we proposed a machine learning approach utilizing a cautious simulator. For the connection of Reinforcement Learning and safety we further examine a There is no “black hole” state from which the agent could not escape by performing any action.