Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Natural History of Pediatric Tympanic Membrane Perforation

Objective: To investigate the natural history of pediatric tympanic membrane perforation using an existing clinical database, with the aim of defining the time beyond which a perforation is unlikely to close naturally. Study Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Tertiary center. Patients and Interventions: A database of pediatric ear, nose, throat, and audiology consultations containing 20 years of data was analyzed. A total of 2865 episodes of perforation were followed, with all cases of surgical reconstruction excluded. Cases of perforation after ventilation tube extrusion were tagged. Statistical techniques including survival analysis were used. Main Outcome Measures: Time from diagnosis of perforation to diagnosis of closure, in years. Results: There was a predominance of perforations in boys (59.1% versus 40.9%). Time to closure increased by 7% for each 1-year increase in age at diagnosis. Time-to-closure curves for children older than 12 years diverged considerably from those for younger children after approximately 18 months. Centiles of time to closure were calculated for each 1-year age band. After 2.5 years of follow-up, rates of closure were 90% in children diagnosed younger than 7 years and 75% in children diagnosed between the age of 7 and 12 years. No significant difference was found in time to closure between boys and girls, left-sided and right-sided perforations, or in ventilation tube-related perforations and others. Comparison of membranes suffering a first perforation with those suffering a second perforation suggested a borderline significant time-to-closure disadvantage for first perforations. Conclusion: When faced with the clinical question of what period of watchful waiting would be appropriate in monitoring a perforated tympanic membrane, before intervention may reasonably be recommended; there seems to be little advantage in waiting longer than 2.5 years.
A Vibration Technique for Non-Destructive Testing of Fibre Composite Structures

A vibration technique for non-destructively evaluating the integrity of structures is described and applied to components fabricated from fibre reinforced plastics. The method uses measurements of changes in the lower structural natural frequencies, which can be made at a single point in the structure, in conjunction with a dynamic analysis of the system to detect, locate and roughly to quantify damage. The mathematical model of the structure need not be sophisticated and only one analysis is required for each type of structure to be tested. It is shown to be possible to detect and locate a variety of types of damage in structures which are representative of the use of fibre reinforced materials in the aerospace industry. An indication of the severity of damage is also obtained.
Gene expression Non-linear PCA : a missing data approach

Motivation:Visualizingandanalysing thepotential non-linear structure of a dataset is becoming an important task in molecular biology. This is even more challenging when the data have missing values. Results: Here, we propose an inverse model that performs non-linear principal component analysis (NLPCA) from incomplete datasets. Missing values are ignored while optimizing the model, but can be estimated afterwards. Results are shown for both artificial and experimentaldatasets. Incontrast to linearmethods,non-linearmethodswere able to give better missing value estimations for non-linear structured
The Riesz energy of the Nth roots of unity: an asymptotic expansion for large N

We derive the complete asymptotic expansion in terms of powers of N for the Riesz s‐energy of N equally spaced points on the unit circle as N → ∞. For s ⩾ − 2, such points form optimal energy N‐point configurations with respect to the Riesz potential 1/rs, s ≠ 0, where r is the Euclidean distance between points. By analytic continuation we deduce the expansion for all complex values of s. The Riemann zeta function plays an essential role in this asymptotic expansion.
Actions on gamma‐motoneurones elicited by electrical stimulation of cutaneous afferent fibres in the hind limb of the cat.

The reflex actions elicited by graded electrical stimulation of hind‐limb cutaneous (sural, superficial peroneal and tibial) nerves were investigated with intra‐ and extracellular micro‐electrode recordings in gamma‐motoneurones projecting to hind‐limb muscles in twenty‐four cats anaesthetized with alpha‐chloralose. In total, reflex responses of 100 gamma‐motoneurones were analysed. 82 of the gamma‐cells were classified as dynamic (43) or static (39) using the method of mesencephalic stimulation (Appelberg, Hulliger, Johansson & Sojka, 1982). The general responsiveness (i.e. number of input nerves with effect/number of input nerves tested) of the whole sample of gamma‐cells to stimulation of skin nerves was extremely high (94.8%). All negative observations were encountered among static and non‐classified gamma‐cells. Generally, the stimulation strengths needed for evoking effects in the gamma‐cells were very low. A majority of the excitatory effects in the dynamic cells appeared with stimulation intensities below 1.5 threshold (T), while most static cells were excited with stimulation strengths between 1.5 and 2 T. Also a statistical comparison of the populations of stimulation strength thresholds for the excitatory effects revealed a significant difference (P less than 0.0009) between dynamic and static gamma‐cells. By contrast, the thresholds for inhibitory effects in dynamic cells were slightly higher than for excitatory effects (P less than 0.0009). As regards excitation of static cells, inhibition of dynamic cells and inhibition of static cells, no statistically significant threshold differences were found. A strong dominance of excitation over inhibition was found in both dynamic and static flexor (posterior biceps and semitendinosus) gamma‐motoneurones from all input nerves. In comparison to flexor gamma‐motoneurones, there was a much higher incidence of inhibitory and mixed (excitatory and inhibitory) responses in extensor (triceps) gamma‐motoneurones, from all nerves tested. For dynamic cells there was an about even balance between excitation and inhibition, while for static cells inhibition seemed to prevail. The latencies for excitatory effects in dynamic gamma‐cells differed from those in static gamma‐cells (P less than 0.027). The shortest latencies of excitatory effects found for dynamic gamma‐cells indicate a disynaptic coupling, while for static cells the shortest route seemed to involve at least three synapses. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Measuring Quantitative Dependability Attributes in Digital Publishing Using Petri Net Workflow Modeling

This work describes workflow modeling using workflow-nets and generalized stochastic Petri nets (GSPN) for the digital publishing business process and how the dependability attributes are measured in a quantitative form. In our novel approach, these are measured from the workflow model itself improving its analysis. Applying these measure concepts to the digital publishing pre-press process provides a workflow management based on its trustworthiness. The methodology for workflow modeling is introduced and the results for a case study on the preflight stage of the digital publishing workflow are presented
Effects of hydroxyapatite/collagen composite on osteogenic differentiation of rat bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells

Combination of cells and materials opens a new option for tissue repair and regeneration. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of hydroxyapatite/collagen composite on the osteogenic differentiation of rat bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells. The hydroxyapatite/collagen composites are synthesized by bioinspired mineralization and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, thermogravimetric analysis and laser particle size analyzer. Different concentrations of hydroxyapatite/collagen are co-cultured with the rat bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells in passages 2–4 on a culture plate. Osteogenic differentiation is evaluated using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, alkaline phosphatase spectrophotometry as well as western blotting. The results demonstrate that the developed hydroxyapatite/collagen composite has microstructure and composition that are similar to the natural bone matrix. Hydroxyapatite/collagen treatment can induce osteogenic differentiation of rat bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells, as confirmed by the expression of osteoblast-related markers at both messenger RNA and protein levels. The concentration of 75 µg/ml may be the optimal inducer. In addition, combining biochemical reagents and hydroxyapatite/collagen has a synergistic interaction on the osteogenic differentiation of rat bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells. This provides a new avenue for mechanistic studies of stem cell differentiation and a novel approach to obtain more committed differentiated cells.
Multiquality Data Replication in Multimedia Databases

In contrast to other database applications, multimedia data can have a wide range of quality parameters, such as spatial and temporal resolution and compression format. Users can request data with specific quality requirements due to the needs of their application or the limitations of their resources. The database can support multiple qualities by converting data from the original (high) quality to another (lower) quality to support a user's query or precompute and store multiple quality replicas of data items. On-the-fly conversion of multimedia data (such as video transcoding) is very CPU intensive and can limit the level of concurrent access supported by the database. Storing all possible replicas, on the other hand, requires unacceptable increases in storage requirements. In this paper, we address the problem of multiple-quality replica selection subject to an overall storage constraint. We establish that the problem is NP-hard and provide heuristic solutions under two different system models: hard-quality and soft-quality. Under the soft-quality model, users are willing to negotiate their quality needs, as opposed to the hard-quality system wherein users can only accept the exact quality requested. Extensive simulations show that our algorithm performs significantly better than other heuristics. Our algorithms are flexible in that they can be extended to deal with changes in query pattern
Object Capabilities and Lightweight Affinity in Scala: Implementation, Formalization, and Soundness

Aliasing is a known source of challenges in the context of imperative object-oriented languages, which have led to important advances in type systems for aliasing control. However, their large-scale adoption has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult challenge. While new language designs show promise, they do not address the need of aliasing control in existing languages. This paper presents a new approach to isolation and uniqueness in an existing, widely-used language, Scala. The approach is unique in the way it addresses some of the most important obstacles to the adoption of type system extensions for aliasing control. First, adaptation of existing code requires only a minimal set of annotations. Only a single bit of information is required per class. Surprisingly, the paper shows that this information can be provided by the object-capability discipline, widely-used in program security. We formalize our approach as a type system and prove key soundness theorems. The type system is implemented for the full Scala language, providing, for the first time, a sound integration with Scala's local type inference. Finally, we empirically evaluate the conformity of existing Scala open-source code on a corpus of over 75,000 LOC.
Noun Phrase Reference in Japanese to English Machine Translation

This paper shows the necessity of distinguishing different referential uses of noun phrases in machine translation. We argue that differentiating between the generic, referential and ascriptive uses of noun phrases is the minimum necessary to generate articles and number correctly when translating from Japanese to English. Heuristics for determining these differences are proposed for a Japanese-to-English machine translation system. Finally the results of using the proposed heuristics are shown to have raised the percentage of noun phrases generated with correct use of articles and number in the Japanese-to-English machine translation system ALT-J/E from 65% to 77%.
Music education meets computer science and engineering education

This paper presents a novel interdisciplinary approach to aid with the growing concern about how to showcase computer science and engineering degrees to pre-university level students. This novel approach is based on empowering students to create their own music-related game using real music instruments. In order to allow the students to program their games we have used the Greenfoot Introductory Learning Environment to teach object-oriented programming skills with the java programming language. We have also taught the students music theory and practice. All these skills were required to allow the students to successfully develop their musical games that interact with the music instruments.
Field weighting for automatic bug triaging systems

Every organization strives to provide online support for their customers in an attempt to rapidly provide solutions to customer bug reports. In the automation software industry, wherein software bugs can have significant repercussions for the client, rapid response to reported bugs is a very critical function. Current approaches to such response focuses on a 911 type of dispatch mechanism, wherein a dispatcher coordinates the assignment process with the help of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). In this exploratory paper, we propose a mechanism to automate this process. As a case study, we present comparative work on bug data from Firefox and Eclipse bug reports. We have proposed and demonstrated a field-based weighting scheme. Comparing well with other such reported efforts, our approach has achieved 96.25% accuracy on Firefox (out of 1764 bug reports) and 97.83% accuracy on Eclipse bug data (out of 1986 bug reports).
Multimode light microscopy and the dynamics of molecules, cells, and tissues.

There is a renaissance and revolution in light microscopy and its use in biological research, biotechnology, and clinical diagnostics (139, 163). This renaissance has been driven primarily by the need to define the interplay of ions, metabolites, and macromolecules in time and space in living cells and tissues. The goal is to understand fundamental biological functions by temporal-spatial mapping of chemical and molecular events in vivo. The revolution has been fueled by the integration of advances in the heretofore distinct fields of biology, chemistry, physical optics, robotics, and computer science. Powerful new reagents are being used in conjunction with automated light microscope imaging workstations to investigate the contents, activity, and dynamics of living cells and tissues. There are also great challenges. Some challenges involve instrumental
Improved prediction of tacrolimus concentrations early after kidney transplantation using theory-based pharmacokinetic modelling

Aims The aim was to develop a theory-based population pharmacokinetic model of tacrolimus in adult kidney transplant recipients and to externally evaluate this model and two previous empirical models. Methods Data were obtained from 242 patients with 3100 tacrolimus whole blood concentrations. External evaluation was performed by examining model predictive performance using Bayesian forecasting. Results Pharmacokinetic disposition parameters were estimated based on tacrolimus plasma concentrations, predicted from whole blood concentrations, haematocrit and literature values for tacrolimus binding to red blood cells. Disposition parameters were allometrically scaled to fat free mass. Tacrolimus whole blood clearance/bioavailability standardized to haematocrit of 45% and fat free mass of 60 kg was estimated to be 16.1 l h−1 [95% CI 12.6, 18.0 l h−1]. Tacrolimus clearance was 30% higher (95% CI 13, 46%) and bioavailability 18% lower (95% CI 2, 29%) in CYP3A5 expressers compared with non-expressers. An Emax model described decreasing tacrolimus bioavailability with increasing prednisolone dose. The theory-based model was superior to the empirical models during external evaluation displaying a median prediction error of −1.2% (95% CI −3.0, 0.1%). Based on simulation, Bayesian forecasting led to 65% (95% CI 62, 68%) of patients achieving a tacrolimus average steady-state concentration within a suggested acceptable range. Conclusion A theory-based population pharmacokinetic model was superior to two empirical models for prediction of tacrolimus concentrations and seemed suitable for Bayesian prediction of tacrolimus doses early after kidney transplantation.
Protein Glycoengineering Enabled by the Versatile Synthesis of Aminooxy Glycans and the Genetically Encoded Aldehyde Tag

Homogeneously glycosylated proteins are important targets for fundamental research and for biopharmaceutical development. The use of unnatural protein–glycan linkages bearing structural similarity to their native counterparts can accelerate the synthesis of glycoengineered proteins. Here we report an approach toward generating homogeneously glycosylated proteins that involves chemical attachment of aminooxy glycans to recombinantly produced proteins via oxime linkages. We employed the recently introduced aldehyde tag method to obtain a recombinant protein with the aldehyde-bearing formylglycine residue at a specific site. Complex aminooxy glycans were synthesized using a new route that features N-pentenoyl hydroxamates as key intermediates that can be readily elaborated chemically and enzymatically. We demonstrated the method by constructing site-specifically glycosylated variants of the human growth hormone.
Novel Strategy to Improve the Performance of Localization in WSN

A novel strategy of discrete energy consumption model for WSN based on quasi Monte Carlo and crude Monte Carlo method is developed. In our model the discrete hidden Markov process plays a major role in analyzing the node location in heterogeneous media. In this energy consumption model we use both static and dynamic sensor nodes to monitor the optimized energy of all sensor nodes in which every sensor state can be considered as the dynamic Bayesian network. By using this method the power is assigned in terms of dynamic manner to each sensor over discrete time steps to control the graphical structure of our network. The simulation and experiment result shows that our proposed methods are better in terms of localization accuracy and possess minimum computational time over existing localization method.
Nutrient Signaling in Protein Homeostasis: An Increase in Quantity at the Expense of Quality

Inhibition of mTORC1 by rapamycin may promote longevity by increasing the quality of protein synthesis. When More Is Not Better The mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) links nutrient availability to the activity of signaling pathways necessary for cell growth and proliferation, such as protein synthesis. The drug rapamycin, which inhibits mTORC1, increases the life span of various organisms through incompletely understood mechanisms. Conn and Qian showed that enhancing mTORC1 signaling increased the rate of protein synthesis at the expense of the quality of the synthesized proteins, an effect that was reversed by rapamycin. Because improperly synthesized proteins can induce cellular stress, these results suggest that rapamycin may exert its effects on longevity in part by enhancing the quality of protein synthesis. The discovery that rapamycin extends the life span of diverse organisms has triggered many studies aimed at identifying the underlying molecular mechanisms. Mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) regulates cell growth and may regulate organismal aging by controlling mRNA translation. However, how inhibiting mTORC1 and decreasing protein synthesis can extend life span remains an unresolved issue. We showed that constitutively active mTORC1 signaling increased general protein synthesis but unexpectedly reduced the quality of newly synthesized polypeptides. We demonstrated that constitutively active mTORC1 decreased translation fidelity by increasing the speed of ribosomal elongation. Conversely, rapamycin treatment restored the quality of newly synthesized polypeptides mainly by slowing the rate of ribosomal elongation. We also found distinct roles for mTORC1 downstream targets in maintaining protein homeostasis. Loss of S6 kinases, but not 4E-BP family proteins, which are both involved in regulation of translation, attenuated the effects of rapamycin on the quality of newly translated proteins. Our results reveal a mechanistic connection between mTORC1 and protein quality, highlighting the central role of nutrient signaling in growth and aging.
Organisational Knowledge Management Systems in the Era of Enterprise 2.0: The case of OrganiK

The increasing need of small knowledge-intensive companies for loosely-coupled collaboration and ad-hoc knowledge sharing has led to a strong requirement for an alternative approach to developing knowledge management systems. This paper proposes a framework for managing organisational knowledge that builds on a socio-technical perspective that considers people and technology as two highly interconnected components. We introduce a knowledge management system architecture that merges enterprise social software characteristics from the realm of Enterprise 2.0, and information processing techniques from the domain of Semantic Web technologies, in order to deliver a KM approach that could assist in reducing the socio-technical gap.
The Nature of Device Models: The Yoked State Space Hypothesis and Some Experiments With Text Editors

To construct a conceptual model of a device, the user must conceptualize the device's representation of the task domain. This knowledge can be represented by three components: a device-based problem space, which specifies the ontology of the device in terms of the objects that can be manipulated and their interrelations, plus the operators that perform the manipulations; a goal space, which represents the objects in terms of which user's goals are expressed; and a semantic mapping, which determines how goal space objects are represented in the device space. The yoked state space (YSS) model allows an important distinction concerning the mental representation of procedures. If a step in a procedure specifies a transformation of the user's device space, then it has an autonomous meaning for the user, independent of its role in the sequence or method. The device space provides a figurative account of the operator. However, some operators do not affect the minimal device space, and their only meaning for the user derives from their role in a method: The method affords an operational account of the operator. Figurative accounts can be constructed from operational accounts only by elaborating the device space with new concepts. The YSS is illustrated through a simple description of a device model for a cut-and-paste text editor. Three experiments addressed the claims of this model. The first experiment used a sorting paradigm to show that users do acquire the novel device space concept of a string of adjacent characters (including space and return). The second and third experiments asked novices to make inferences about text editor behavior on the basis of simple demonstrations. They showed that (a) the availability of the string concept is critically dependent on the details of interface design, (b) figurative accounts of the copy operation afford more efficient methods and may be promoted by appropriate names for procedure steps, and (c) a conceptual model may transfer from one device to another. Together, the three experiments supported the YSS hypothsis.