Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection and Visualization of Inflammatory Breast Lesions Using Dynamic Contrast Enhanced MRI Volumes

Dynamic Contrast Enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) is the acquisition of serial MRI images before, during, and after the administration of an MR contrast agent. [1] DCE-MRI has gained considerable attention for certain high risk cases such as dense breasts with smaller multi-focal lesions, sparsely distributed lesions, scarring after lumpectomy, evaluation following reconstructive surgery with implants, and/or discordant clinical and imaging data. DCE-MRI is used to characterize masses, stage tumors, monitor therapy non-invasively, and aid in the management of invasive disease [2]. DCE-MRI has a number of limitations, including overlap between malignant and benign inflammatory tissue, failure to resolve microscopic disease, and the inconsistent predictive value of enhancement patterns with regard to clinical outcome. In our study, we determined a confidence measure for each voxel in a DCE-MRI volume that represented the probability that the voxel was tumor or not, using a rough goodness-of-fit for the shape of the intensity-time curves. We used 3D texture mapping hardware to produce both 2D and 3D visualizations of the segmented MRI volumes in near real-time, enabling accurate spatial tumor information including location, shape, size, volume and distribution. To aid in staging and possible treatment courses, we produced statistical boundaries of the signal-time curves, for different tumor types and morphology and here we report the specifics of three cases of inflammatory breast disease using this system. We present preliminary results of our interactive computerized visualization system that aided in identifying, visualizing, and quantifying breast lesions from DCE-MRI volumes for inflammatory breast carcinoma. For one of these cases we imaged and analyzed the entire volume of breast preand postchemotherapy. Using a “one-click” quantified approach to volume estimations of inflammatory malignancy, we demonstrated changes in apparent malignancy within breast parenchyma, both visually and quantitatively, using DCE-MRI, supporting the conclusion that DCE-MRI is useful in inflammatory breast cancer management.
Engagement of CD83 on B Cells Modulates B Cell Function In Vivo1

The transmembrane glycoprotein CD83 is an important regulator of both thymic T cell maturation and peripheral T cell response. Recent studies suggested that CD83 is also involved in the regulation of B cell maturation, activation, and homeostasis. In this study, we show that in vivo overexpression of CD83 dose dependently interfered with the Ig response to thymus-dependent and thymus-independent model Ag immunization. CD83 deficiency, in contrast, which was restricted to B cells in mixed bone marrow chimeras, led to unchanged or even slightly increased Ig responses. Strikingly, the engagement of CD83 that is naturally up-regulated on wild-type B cells by injection of anti-CD83 mAb in vivo induced a 100-fold increase in the IgG1 response to immunization. Kinetic analysis revealed that CD83 had to be engaged simultaneously or shortly after the B cell activation through injection of Ag, to modulate the IgG1 secretion. Furthermore, using mixed bone marrow chimeras in which either selectively the B cells or the dendritic cells were CD83 deficient, we demonstrate that anti-CD83 mAb mediated its biologic effect by engaging CD83 on B cells and not on CD11c+ dendritic cells. Taken together, we provide strong evidence that CD83 transduces regulatory signals into the very B cell on which it is expressed.
Online Urdu Character Recognition System.

Handheld devices generally provide the facility of text input through keys that are an inconvenient and slow way of input. Digitizing tablets and light pens, on the other hand provide a natural and convenient way of input. There are many online character recognizers for languages based on Roman and Chinese characters but there is no such commercial product for Urdu/Arabic text input. We present the design of an online Urdu handwriting recognition system that can recognize about 850 single character, 2 character and 3 character ligatures, enabling input of about 18000 common words from the Urdu Dictionary.
Microstructure, Mechanical, and Biological Properties of Porous Poly(vinylidene fluoride) Scaffolds Fabricated by Selective Laser Sintering

Porous poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) scaffolds were prepared by selective laser sintering. The effects of laser energy density, ranging from 0.66 to 2.16 J/mm2, on microstructure and mechanical properties were investigated. At low energy density levels, PVDF particles could fuse well and the structure becomes dense with the increase of the energy density. Smoke and defects (such as holes) were observed when the energy density increased above 1.56 J/mm2 which indicated decomposition of the PVDF powder. The scaffolds appeared to be light yellow and there was a reduction in tensile strength. The fabricated scaffolds were immersed into simulated body fluid for different time to evaluate biostability. In addition, MG63 cells were seeded and cultured for different days on the scaffolds. The testing results showed that the cells grew and spread well, indicating that PVDF scaffolds had good biocompatibility.
T-S Fuzzy-Model-Based Impulsive Control of Autonomous Nonlinear Systems

Based on their Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model, a new impulsive control method to control smooth nonlinear systems is proposed. The author gives a strict mathematical foundation containing some assumptions on which a nonlinear systems can be expressed as T-S fuzzy model and the followed analysis can proceed, and then proposes some methods and procedure for designing impulsive control laws, which can stabilize the original nonlinear system.
Salmonella Typhimurium PagP- and UgtL-dependent resistance to antimicrobial peptides contributes to the gut colonization

Mucosal barrier formed by cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAMPs) is believed to be crucial for host protection from pathogenic gut infection. However, some pathogens can develop resistance to the CAMPs to survive in hosts. Salmonella enterica is a common cause of acute diarrhea. During the course of this disease, the pathogen must continuously colonize the gut lumen, which contains CAMPs. However, it is incompletely understood whether the resistance of Salmonella strains to CAMPs contributes to the development of gut infections. PhoPQ two-component system-dependent lipid A modifications confer resistance to CAMPs in S. enterica serovar Typhimurium. Therefore, we introduced mutations into the PhoPQ-regulated genes in an S. Typhimurium strain, obtaining pagP ugtL and pmrA mutant strains. Each mutant strain demonstrated a distinct spectrum of the resistance to CAMPs. Using streptomycin mouse model for Salmonella diarrhea, we show that the pagP ugtL, but not pmrA, mutant strain had a gut colonization defect. Furthermore, the pagP ugtL, but not pmrA, mutant strain had decreased outer membrane integrity and susceptibility to magainin 2, an alpha-helical CAMP. Taken together, the PagP- and UgtL-dependent resistance to CAMPs was demonstrated to contribute to sustained colonization in the gut. This may be due to the robust outer membrane of S. Typhimurium, inducing the resistance to alpha-helical CAMPs such as α-defensins. Our findings indicate that the development of resistance to CAMPs is required for the S. Typhimurium gut infection.
Song2Quartet: A System for Generating String Quartet Cover Songs from Polyphonic Audio of Popular Music

We present Song2Quartet, a system for generating string quartet versions of popular songs by combining probabilistic models estimated from a corpus of symbolic classical music with the target audio ﬁle of any song. Song2Quartet allows users to add novelty to listening experience of their favorite songs and gain familiarity with string quartets. Previous work in automatic arrangement of music only used symbolic scores to achieve a particular musical style; our challenge is to also consider audio features of the target popular song. In addition to typical audio music content analysis such as beat and chord estimation, we also use time-frequency spectral analysis in order to better reﬂect partial phrases of the song in its cover version. Song2Quartet produces a probabilistic network of possible musical notes at every sixteenth note for each accompanying instrument of the quartet by combining beats, chords, and spectrogram from the target song with Markov chains estimated from our corpora of quartet music. As a result, the musical score of the cover version can be generated by ﬁnding the optimal paths through these networks. We show that the generated results follow the conventions of classical string quartet music while retaining some partial phrases and chord voicings from the target audio.
TLR-Induced Murine Dendritic Cell (DC) Activation Requires DC-Intrinsic Complement

Induction of proinflammatory T cell immunity is augmented by innate dendritic cell (DC) maturation commonly initiated by TLR signaling. We demonstrate that ligation of TLR3, TLR4, and TLR9 induces murine DC production of complement components and local production of the anaphylatoxin C5a. In vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo analyses show that TLR-induced DC maturation, as assessed by surface phenotype, expression profiling by gene array, and functional ability to stimulate T cell responses, requires autocrine C3a receptor and C5a receptor (C3ar1/C5ar1) signaling. Studies using bone marrow chimeric animals and Foxp3-GFP/ERT2-Cre/dTomato fate-mapping mice show that TLR-initiated DC autocrine C3ar1/C5ar1 signaling causes expansion of effector T cells and instability of regulatory T cells and contributes to T cell–dependent transplant rejection. Together, our data position immune cell–derived complement production and autocrine/paracrine C3ar1/C5ar1 signaling as crucial intermediary processes that link TLR stimulation to DC maturation and the subsequent development of effector T cell responses.
Prerandomization Surgical Training for the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) B-32 Trial: A Randomized Phase III Clinical Trial to Compare Sentinel Node Resection to Conventional Axillary Dissection in Clinically Node-Negative Breast Cancer

Objective:To train surgeons in a standardized technique of sentinel lymph node biopsy and to prepare them for the requirements of a prospective randomized surgical trial. Summary Background Data:The NSABP B32 trial opened to accrual in May 1999. A significant component of this trial was a prerandomization training phase of surgeons performed by a group of core surgical trainers. The goals of this training phase were to expeditiously instruct surgeons in a standardized technique of sentinel lymph node biopsy and to educate those same surgeons in complete and accurate data collection and source documentation for the trial. Methods:This study is a description of the training data collected in a prospective fashion for the training component for surgeon entry into the B32 trial, evaluating the effectiveness of the training program in regards to surgical outcomes and protocol compliance. Results:Two hundred twenty-six registered surgeons underwent site visit training by a core surgical trainer and 187 completed training and were approved to randomize patients on the trial. The results of 815 training (nontrial) cases demonstrated a technical success rate for identifying sentinel nodes at 96.2% with a false negative rate of 6.7%. A protocol compliance analysis, which included the evaluation of 94 separate fields, showed mean protocol compliance of 98.6% for procedural fields, 95.5% for source documentation fields and 95.0% for data entry fields. Conclusions:This training and quality control program has resulted in a large number of surgeons capable of performing sentinel lymph node biopsy in a standardized fashion with a high degree of protocol compliance and pathologic accuracy. This will ensure optimal results for procedures performed on the randomized phase of the trial.
The Gap Junction-independent Tumor-suppressing Effect of Connexin 43*

The gap junction gene connexin 43 (Cx43) showed tumor-suppressing effects on various tumor cell lines. We have previously demonstrated that Cx43 inhibited expression of S phase kinase-associated protein 2 (Skp2), the human F-box protein that regulates the ubiquitination of p27. Cx43 did not alter the mRNA level of SKP2, but it promoted the degradation of the Skp2 proteins (Zhang, Y. W., Nakayama, K., Nakayama K. I., and Morita, I. (2003) Cancer Res. 63, 1623-1630). In this study, we showed that the specific gap junction inhibitor 18 β-glycyrrhetinic acid did not influence the inhibitory effect of Cx43 on Skp2 expression. Further, the deletion mutation analyses demonstrated that the C-terminal domain of Cx43 that did not form gap junctions was sufficient to inhibit expression of Skp2, whereas the N-terminal domain that formed the gap junctions did not show such an effect. Like the full-length Cx43, the C-terminal domain also increased the protein instability of Skp2, whereas the N terminus did not. Moreover, the C-terminal domain was as effective as the full-length Cx43 in inhibiting cell proliferation; however, the N-terminal domain did not show any inhibitory effect on cell proliferation. Therefore, these data revealed a gap junction-independent pathway for Cx43 to inhibit tumor growth by suppressing the Skp2 expression.
LaFiDa - A Laserscanner Multi-Fisheye Camera Dataset

In this article, the Laserscanner Multi-Fisheye Camera Dataset (LaFiDa) for applying benchmarks is presented. A head-mounted multi-fisheye camera system combined with a mobile laserscanner was utilized to capture the benchmark datasets. Besides this, accurate six degrees of freedom (6 DoF) ground truth poses were obtained from a motion capture system with a sampling rate of 360 Hz. Multiple sequences were recorded in an indoor and outdoor environment, comprising different motion characteristics, lighting conditions, and scene dynamics. The provided sequences consist of images from three—by hardware trigger—fully synchronized fisheye cameras combined with a mobile laserscanner on the same platform. In total, six trajectories are provided. Each trajectory also comprises intrinsic and extrinsic calibration parameters and related measurements for all sensors. Furthermore, we generalize the most common toolbox for an extrinsic laserscanner to camera calibration to work with arbitrary central cameras, such as omnidirectional or fisheye projections. The benchmark dataset is available online released under the Creative Commons Attributions Licence (CC-BY 4.0), and it contains raw sensor data and specifications like timestamps, calibration, and evaluation scripts. The provided dataset can be used for multi-fisheye camera and/or laserscanner simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).
Energy efficient security protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks consist of many inexpensive wireless nodes, each having sensing capability with some computational and communication power. Asymmetric cryptographic algorithms are not suitable for providing security on wireless sensor networks due to limited computation, power, and storage resources available on sensor nodes. Therefore, the energy-efficient security protocol proposed in this paper uses symmetric cryptographic algorithms to support security. To mitigate the drawbacks of symmetric cryptographic algorithms, the session key is changed dynamically, in addition to employing code-hopping technique in non-blocking OVSF codes.
Microscopic examination of deteriorated concrete

Concrete petrography is the integrated microscopic and mesoscale (hand specimen size) investigation of hardened concrete, that can provide information on the composition of concrete, the original relationships between the concrete's various constituents, and any changes therein, whether as a result of ageing or damage processes. Concrete petrography itself may serve different purposes, such as product evaluation and control, determination of the type of aggregate or binder used, and damage diagnosis. This chapter aims to introduce engineers and material scientists to concrete petrography as a useful investigative tool or technique to assess concrete in structures. ɠ2010 Woodhead Publishing Limited All rights reserved.
DECoupled Application Data Enroute (DECADE) Problem Statement

Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have become widely used on the Internet today and make up a large portion of the traffic in many networks. In P2P applications, one technique for reducing the transit and uplink P2P traffic is to introduce storage capabilities within the network. Traditional caches (e.g., P2P and Web caches) provide such storage, but they can be complex (e.g., P2P caches need to explicitly support individual P2P application protocols), and do not allow users to manage resource usage policies for content in the cache. This document discusses the introduction of in-network storage for P2P applications and shows the need for a standard protocol for accessing this storage. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.
The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Improving search personalisation with dynamic group formation

Recent research has shown that the performance of search engines can be improved by enriching a user’s personal profile with information about other users with shared interests. In the existing approaches, groups of similar users are often statically determined, e.g., based on the common documents that users clicked. However, these static grouping methods are query-independent and neglect the fact that users in a group may have different interests with respect to different topics. In this paper, we argue that common interest groups should be dynamically constructed in response to the user’s input query. We propose a personalisation framework in which a user profile is enriched using information from other users dynamically grouped with respect to an input query. The experimental results on query logs from a major commercial web search engine demonstrate that our framework improves the performance of the web search engine and also achieves better performance than the static grouping method.
Influence of the diet on the morphology of ruminal and intestinal mucosa and on intestinal carbohydrase levels in ca�le

This study examined the effects of extensive and intensive feeding on the morphology of the gastrointestinal tract as well as on the level of carbohydrase activity in the small intestine of growing ca�le. Fourteen growing male bulls aged 5 months were divided into two feeding groups. The extensively fed animals were kept on pasture in the summer and in a stall in the winter whereas the intensively fed group was housed all the year long. The bulls were slaughtered 16 h a�er the last feeding at the age of 18 months. Rumen fluid samples and mucosa samples from the ventral ruminal sac and the intestinal tract (duodenum, jejunum, ileum) were subjected to analyses. Evaluation of rumen fermentation did not reveal significant differences between the groups, however, the molar proportions of propionic acid were increased in the intensively reared bulls. As to the activity of the individual carbohydrase enzymes (maltase, cellobiase, lactase) no significant differences could be stated between the groups. Comparison to the extensively reared group revealed that the length and width of papillae of the ventral ruminal sac was significantly increased in the intensively reared animals (P < 0.001) and so was the papillar surface per cm2 of mucosa (P < 0.001). The length of duodenal villi in the intensive group was singnificantly increased (P = 0.026) whereas that of the jejuenal villi approached the limits of significance (P = 0.052) when compared to the extensive group. There were no significant differences in the depth of crypts, however, the crypts of the intensively reared animals were somewhat deeper. The length of jejunal villi positively correlated both with the length (r = 0.658; P = 0.011; n = 14) and with the absorption surface of the rumen papillae (r = 0.636; P = 0.015; n = 14). Our results confirm that high concentrate rations increase both the absorption surface of the rumen papillae and the height of villi in the small intestine of intensively fed ca�le.
Per-tone pilot-trained chip equalizers for space-time coded MC-DS-CDMA downlink

In this paper, we extend space-time block coding techniques, originally proposed for point-to-point communication links, to point-to-multipoint communication links, thereby taking into account the multiple access technique in the design of the transmission scheme. In specific, we propose two per-tone linear space-time chip equalizers for a space-time coded MC-DS-CDMA downlink with linear precoding. Both the training-based and the semi-blind chip equalizer exploit the presence of a continuous code-multiplexed pilot in the transmitted signal but differ in the amount of a-priori information they assume to estimate their coefficients. With Mt transmit antennas at the base-station, Mr receive antennas at the mobile station and L the order of the multipath channel, they come close to extracting the full diversity of order Mt · Mr · (L + 1) in reduced as well as full load settings.
A Model for Spheroid versus Monolayer Response of SK-N-SH Neuroblastoma Cells to Treatment with 15-Deoxy-PGJ 2

Researchers have observed that response of tumor cells to treatment varies depending on whether the cells are grown in monolayer, as in vitro spheroids or in vivo. This study uses data from the literature on monolayer treatment of SK-N-SH neuroblastoma cells with 15-deoxy-PGJ 2 and couples it with data on growth rates for untreated SK-N-SH neuroblastoma cells grown as multicellular spheroids. A linear model is constructed for untreated and treated monolayer data sets, which is tuned to growth, death, and cell cycle data for the monolayer case for both control and treatment with 15-deoxy-PGJ 2. The monolayer model is extended to a five-dimensional nonlinear model of in vitro tumor spheroid growth and treatment that includes compartments of the cell cycle (G 1, S, G 2/M) as well as quiescent (Q) and necrotic (N) cells. Monolayer treatment data for 15-deoxy-PGJ 2 is used to derive a prediction of spheroid response under similar treatments. For short periods of treatment, spheroid response is less pronounced than monolayer response. The simulations suggest that the difference in response to treatment of monolayer versus spheroid cultures observed in laboratory studies is a natural consequence of tumor spheroid physiology rather than any special resistance to treatment.
Processor efficient parallel solution of linear systems over an abstract field

Parallel randomized algorithms are presented that solve n-dimensional systems of linear equations and compute inverses of n × n non-singular matrices over a field in O((log n)) time, where each time unit represents an arithmetic operation in the field generated by the matrix entries. The algorithms utilize within a O(log n) factor as many processors as are needed to multiply two n × n matrices. The algorithms avoid zero divisions with controllably high probability provided the O(n) random elements used are selected uniformly from a sufficiently large set. For fields of small positive characteristic, the processor count measures of our solutions are somewhat higher.