Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Numerical Study of Thin Liquid Film Flow over a Topographically Patterned Rotating Cylinder

The discoveries in the field of thin liquid film flows over flat and non-flat objects have been thriving over the years. The designing and optimization of such process is quite difficult, owing to it being a complex phenomena. In the present work we are be focusing on understanding the fundamentals. We consider a thin-liquid film is flowing over a rotating cylinder with a sinusoidal pattern over the surface. To account for the intermolecular forces a body force term describing the van der Waals attraction is added to the Navier-Stokes equation. The film behaviour is studied by the application of lubrication approximation. The evolution equation for film thickness as a function of angular position $ \theta $ and time is derived. This evolution equation studies the film behaviour under the influence of gravity, surface tension, intermolecular forces, viscous forces, surface topography and rotating rate is derived. A semi-implicit technique is used to numerically solve the evolution equation. For a thin-liquid film over the stationary cylinder at low Bond number($ Bo $) strong surface tension preserves the shape of the liquid film. And as the Bond number increases liquid flows towards $ \theta=\frac{3 \pi}{2} $ location and a drop-like shape appears at steady state. On inclusion of intermolecular forces we are able to capture the film rupture at the thinnest region of the liquid film. The thin-liquid film over the patterned cylinder also evolves in the same manner. However, the film rupture time decreases with the increase in the frequency ($ \omega $) of the sinusoidal pattern over the surface. In case of rotating cylinder, most of the liquid mass gets accumulated on the rotating side. Also, the liquid film over the patterned cylinder never reaches a steady state. However, the film interface attains a steady state after revolutions in the absence of pattern over the surface. The time to reach zero thickness decreases with increase in $ Bo $, $ \omega $, and Hamaker constant $ A $ in van der Waals force. For rapidly spinning cylinders, continuous film over the patterned cylinder converts into drops (number equal to $ \omega $) over the troughs or crests depending on the magnitude of Weber number($ S $). The results clearly establish that the flow of thin-liquid films on rotating surfaces is affected by the presence of surface topography.
Dual-source radiofrequency transmission with patient-adaptive local radiofrequency shimming for 3.0-T cardiac MR imaging: initial experience.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of dual-source parallel radiofrequency (RF) transmission with patient-adaptive local RF shimming on image quality, image contrast, and diagnostic confidence at routine clinical cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) imaging with use of a 3.0-T dual-channel transmit whole-body MR system. MATERIALS AND METHODS Written informed consent was obtained from all patients, and the study protocol was approved by the local institutional review board. Cardiac MR imaging was performed in 28 patients by using a 3.0-T MR unit equipped with a dual-source RF transmission system. The effect of conventional versus dual-source RF transmission on steady-state free precession (SSFP) cine sequences and turbo spin-echo (TSE) black-blood (BB) sequences was evaluated. The homogeneity of the B1 field and contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs) were measured and tested for statistical significance with the paired t test. Images were analyzed qualitatively for homogeneity, the presence of off-resonance artifacts, and diagnostic confidence independently by two readers. Statistical significance was assessed with the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Inter- and intraobserver agreement was assessed with κ statistics. RESULTS Quantitative image analysis revealed that B1 homogeneity and CNR were significantly improved for images acquired with dual-source RF transmission compared with conventional RF transmission (P = .005). The quality of SSFP and TSE BB images of the left and the right ventricles showed a significant improvement with respect to image homogeneity and diagnostic confidence as evaluated by the readers (P = .0001, κ > 0.74). As a side effect, off-resonance artifacts were significantly reduced on SSFP images (P = .0001, κ > 0.76). CONCLUSION Dual-source parallel RF transmission significantly improves image homogeneity, image contrast, and diagnostic confidence compared with conventional RF transmission of cardiac SSFP and TSE BB sequences.
A Novel Recombinant Multisubunit Vaccine against Chlamydia1

The administration of an efficacious vaccine is the most effective long-term measure to control the oculogenital infections caused by Chlamydia trachomatis in humans. Chlamydia genome sequencing has identified a number of potential vaccine candidates, and the current challenge is to develop an effective delivery vehicle for induction of a high level of mucosal T and complementary B cell responses. Vibrio cholerae ghosts (VCG) are nontoxic, effective delivery vehicles with potent adjuvant properties, and are capable of inducing both T cell and Ab responses in mucosal tissues. We investigated the hypothesis that rVCG could serve as effective delivery vehicles for single or multiple subunit chlamydial vaccines to induce a high level of protective immunity. rVCG-expressing chlamydial outer membrane proteins were produced by a two-step genetic process, involving cloning of Omp genes in V. cholerae, followed by gene E-mediated lysis of the cells. The immunogenicity and vaccine efficacy of rVCG-expressing single and multiple subunits were compared. Immunologic analysis indicated that i.m. immunization of mice with either vaccine construct induced a strong mucosal and systemic specific Th1 response against the whole chlamydial organism. However, there was an immunogenic advantage associated with the multiple subunit vaccine that induced a higher frequency of Th1 cells and a relatively greater ability to confer protective immunity, compared with the single subunit construct. These results support the operational theory that the ability of a vaccine to confer protective immunity against Chlamydia is a function of the level of Th1 response elicited.
An analysis of the effect of different image preprocessing techniques on the performance of SURF: Speeded Up Robust Features

In this paper, we analyze the effect of different image preprocessing techniques on the performance of Speeded Up Robust Features, SURF. We investigate the effects of the techniques like Histogram Equalization, Multiscale Retinex, and Image Adaptive Contrast Enhancement (IACE) scheme that we propose, on the SURF in terms of its feature points detection, and computational time for extracting the descriptors. We then test the effect of these image preprocessing techniques on the repeatability of the state-of-the-art detectors like Harris-Affine, Hessian-Affine, MSER, Edge Based Regions, Intensity Based Regions, and SURF. We carry out the repeatability test on the standard images which have been used as a benchmark for the evaluation of the performance of other schemes for the detection of feature points. Finally, we propose a method for scaling large resolution images that can be used in conjunction with the IACE method to enhance the matching speed of SURF, along with maintaining the accuracy and the standard of its performance.
Voting, Punishment, and Public Goods

"Researchers have found that voting can help increase voluntary contributions to a public good-provided enforcement through a third party. Not all collective agreements, however, guarantee third-party enforcement. We design an experiment to explore whether a voting rule with and without endogenous punishment increases contributions to a public good. Our results suggest that voting by itself does not increase cooperation, but if voters can punish violators, contributions increase significantly. While costly punishment increases contributions at the price of lower efficiency, overall efficiency for a voting-with-punishment rule still exceeds the level observed for a voting-without-punishment rule. " ("JEL" C92, D72, H41) Copyright 2007 Western Economic Association International.
The Effectiveness of Silica Sand in Semi-Aerobic Stabilized Landfill Leachate Treatment

Abstract: This study examines the suitability of natural silica sand as a low-cost adsorbent for the removal of ammoniacal nitrogen and heavy metals, particularly iron and zinc, from semi-aerobic stabilized landfill leachate. Leachate samples were collected from the Pulau Burung landfill site (PBLS) in Penang, Malaysia. The above-mentioned contaminants are highlighted in this study because of their unsafe concentrations at PBLS. The effects of shaking time, settling time, and silica sand dosage on the study parameter removal efficiencies were investigated to predict the performance of the process. The adsorptions of ammoniacal nitrogen, iron, and zinc were judiciously described by Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. The optimum removal efficiencies of ammoniacal nitrogen, iron, and zinc obtained were 51%, 44.4%, and 39.2%, respectively, with a shaking time of 90 min, a settling time of 60 min, and with a dosage of 60 g (0.5 kg/L) of silica sand. Based on the coefficient of determination (
An Infobutton For Web 2.0 Clinical Discussions: The Knowledge Linkage Framework

This paper aims to develop an infobutton to automatically retrieve published papers corresponding to a topic-specific online clinical discussion. The knowledge linkages infobutton is designed to supplement online clinical conversations with pertinent medical literature from Pubmed. The project involves three distinct steps: 1) Clinical messages around a specific problem are grouped together into a thread. 2) These threads are processed using Metamap to link the conversations to keywords from the MeSH lexicon. 3) These keywords are used in a novel search strategy to retrieve a set of papers from Pubmed, which are then returned to the user. A pilot study using the messages from 2007 and 2008, was conducted to compare the knowledge linkage search strategy to a vector space model and extended Boolean model. The knowledge linkage model proved to be significantly better in terms of precision (p = 0.013 and 0.003, respectively) and recall (p = 0.351 and 0.013). Pertinent papers were returned to over 55% of the threads. This approach has demonstrated how clinicians can supplement their peer communications with evidence based research. Future work should focus on how to improve the threading and keyword-mapping strategies.
Efficacy of dental pulp stem cells from deciduous teeth in treating diabetic wounds / Pukana Jayaraman

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) are one of the common complications in diabetes mellitus (DM). The underlying problems of DFU are delayed wound healing due to hyperglycemia, poor blood circulation, and nerve damage. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from various sources including dental-derived stem cells have been used in studies in wound healing. The aim of this study is to assess the wound healing ability of human extracted deciduous teeth in both in vitro and in vivo model in different culture conditions and dosages. The immune gene expression of dental pulp stem cells from three different dental sources, namely human extracted deciduous teeth (SHED), periodontal ligament (PDLSCs), and dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) were assessed in early and late passage. All three sources exhibited indistinguishable mesenchymal stem cell characteristics. Although SHED has increased immune gene expressions compared to DPSCs and PDLSCs, it is more suitable for clinical usage in its early passages than prolonged passages. This has led to investigations on biological molecules secreted by SHED cultured in low serum culture conditions in two different passages which are passage 2 (P2) and passage 4 (P4). Our findings show that at low serum concentrations, the expression of growth factors and cytokines were higher and had significant differences. The overall expression of genes, namely IL1B, IL2, IL4, IFNG, CXCL5, CD40LG, and CCL7, show increased expression in P2 low serum conditions. The percentage of wound closure in in vitro study of wound healing showed enhanced wound closure rate for SHED P2 2% FBS. The further study on enzymatic and nonenymatic antioxidants reported higher Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) and Total Glutathione (GSH) and decreased Malondialdehyde (MDA) and Advanced Oxidation Protein Products (AOPP) level in SHED treated group. The safe dosage for SHED was studied and it showed that there is no damage to liver and kidney in Sprague Dawley rats after the transplantation of SHED in two different dosages. After that, the wound healing rates on diabetic Sprague Dawley rats’ skin were studied on day 5 and 10. The histology of granulation tissue indicates that SHED has high collagen content and a thinner epidermal layer. Immunohistostaining presented an over-expression of Heatshock protein (Hsp70) marker which indicates higher wound healing rate in SHED treated group. The SOD activity and GSH level was amplified in the SHED-treated group with declining levels of MDA and AOPP. The hydroxyproline accumulation was augmented in the SHED-treated diabetic wound. The diabetic animal wound model was a pre-clinical study and is important in conveying SHED for therapeutic usage. The parameters induced by SHED in treating diabetic wounds are an increase in antioxidants level, reduction of lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation, accumulation of hydroxyproline, augmented expressions of the Hsp70 marker, promotion of the angiogenesis process through expression of wound repair genes, greater collagen deposition, and fewer inflammatory cells.
Activation of Orbital and Medial Prefrontal Cortex by Methylphenidate in Cocaine-Addicted Subjects But Not in Controls: Relevance to Addiction

Drugs of abuse are rewarding to addicted and nonaddicted subjects, but they trigger craving and compulsive intake only in addicted subjects. Here, we used positron emission tomography (PET) and [18F]deoxyglucose to compare the brain metabolic responses (marker of brain function) of cocaine-addicted subjects (n = 21) and controls (n = 15) to identify brain regions that are uniquely activated in addicted subjects by intravenous methylphenidate (a drug that cocaine-addicted subjects report to be similar to cocaine). In parallel, we also measured the changes in dopamine (DA) induced by intravenous methylphenidate (using PET and [11C]raclopride) in the striatum and in the thalamus. Metabolic responses between groups differed significantly only in the right medial orbital prefrontal cortex [Brodmann's area (BA) 25 and medial BA 11], where methylphenidate increased metabolism in addicted subjects but decreased metabolism in controls. These changes were associated in all subjects with increased “desire for methylphenidate” and in the addicted subjects with “cocaine craving. ” In addicted subjects, increases in BA 25 were also associated with mood elevation. Methylphenidate-induced increases in metabolism in the medial orbital prefrontal cortex were associated with its increase of DA in the thalamus but not in the striatum. These findings provide evidence that enhanced sensitivity of BA 25 (region involved with emotional reactivity) and BA 11 (region involved with salience attribution and motivation) in cocaine-addicted subjects may underlie the strong emotional response to the drug and the intense desire to procure it that results in craving and compulsive drug intake. It also suggests that the mesothalamic DA pathway may contribute to these processes.
NeuroD/beta2 gene G-->A polymorphism may affect onset pattern of type 1 diabetes in Japanese.

OBJECTIVE The majority of type 1 diabetes is considered to be autoimmune with, for the most part, abrupt development. However, type 1 diabetes with slow onset, or the so-called slowly progressive type 1 diabetes or latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, has been recently recognized and is considered to be autoimmune-related. Although some investigators tried to explain the difference in onset pattern by the genetic background, including HLA type, it has not been established thus far. We hypothesized that the difference in onset pattern may relate to regeneration or differentiation of pancreatic beta-cells, and we therefore focused on the NeuroD/BETA2 gene, which encodes a transcription factor for the insulin gene and beta-cell differentiation. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We examined the NeuroD/BETA2 gene polymorphism in 105 Japanese type 1 diabetic patients and in 122 nondiabetic Japanese subjects in a case-control study, and we stratified the patients according to their onset pattern and islet-associated autoantibody positivity. RESULTS Regardless of the existence of islet-associated autoantibody, we found a significant difference in A allele frequency between type 1 diabetic patients with acute-onset type and control subjects. However, no difference was found between type 1 slow-onset diabetic patients and control subjects. CONCLUSIONS These results support our hypothesis that NeuroD/BETA2 may affect the ability of regeneration of beta-cells, leading to a difference in the onset pattern and clinical course of type 1 diabetes.
Genotypic Comparison of Invasive Neisseria meningitidis Serogroup Y Isolates from the United States, South Africa, and Israel, Isolated from 1999 through 2002

ABSTRACT The proportion of meningococcal disease in the United States, South Africa, and Israel caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup Y (NmY) was greater than the worldwide average during the period 1999-2002. Genotypic characterization of 300 NmY isolates by multilocus sequence typing, 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and PorA variable region typing was conducted to determine the relationships of the isolates from these three countries. Seventy different genotypes were found. Two groups of ST-23 clonal complex isolates accounted for 88% of the U.S. isolates, 12% of the South African isolates, and 96% of the isolates from Israel. The single common clone (ST-23/16S-19/P1.5-2,10-1) represented 57, 5, and 35% of the NmY isolates from the United States, South Africa, and Israel. The predominant clone in South Africa (ST-175/16S-21/P1.5-1,2-2), and 11 other closely related clones made up 77% of the South African study isolates and were not found among the isolates from the United States or Israel. ST-175 was the predicted founder of the ST-175 clonal complex, and isolates of ST-175 and related sequence types have been described previously in other African countries. Continued active surveillance and genetic characterization of NmY isolates causing disease in the United States, South Africa, and Israel will provide valuable data for local and global epidemiology and allow monitoring for any expansion of existing clonal complexes and detection of the emergence of new virulent clones in the population.
Improving Generalization Ability through Active Learning

In this paper, we discuss the problem of active training data selection for improving the generalization capability of a neural network. We look at the learning problem from a function approximation perspective and formalize it as an inverse problem. Based on this framework, we analytically derive a method of choosing a training data set optimized with respect to the Wiener optimization criterion. The final result uses the apriori correlation information on the original function ensemble to devise an efficient sampling scheme which, when used in conjunction with the learning scheme described here, is shown to result in optimal generalization. This result is substantiated through a simulated example and a learning problem in high dimensional function space. key words: active learning, wiener optimization criterion, generalization, inverse problem, training data selection
DTS: Using Dynamic Time-Slice Scaling to Address the OS Problem Incurred by DVFS

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) has been the most useful technology to reduce power consumption, but it causes unpredictable program performance decreasing and unfair performance sharing among threads, which may render performance analysis, optimization, and isolation extremely difficult and lead to thread starvation and priority inversion. This paper firstly proposes an OS scheduler based on dynamic time-slice scaling (DTS) to address the OS problem incurred by DVFS. The DTS scheduler dynamically allocates each thread with a time-slice according to threads' behavior characteristic and processor's frequency. There are two main contributions: 1) this paper is the first work to analyze and address the OS problems incurred by DVFS, 2) we firstly allocate threads' time-slice according to threads' behavior characteristic and processor's frequency. Experimental results demonstrate our DTS scheduler can well solve most OS problems incurred by DVFS with little cost, and at the same time DTS improves system performance.
Bilingual Segmenter for Statistical Machine Translation

We propose a bilingually-motivated segmenting framework for Chinese which has no clear delimiter for word boundaries. It involves producing Chinese tokens in line with word-based languages¿ words using a bilingual segmenting algorithm, provided with bitexts, and deriving a probabilistic tokenizing model based on previously annotated Chinese sentences. In the bilingual segmenting algorithm, we first convert the search for segmentation into a sequential tagging problem, allowing for a polynomial-time dynamic programming solution, and incorporate a control to balance mono- and bi-lingual information in tailoring Chinese sentences. Experiments show that our framework, applied as a pre-tokenization component, significantly outperforms existing segmenters in translation quality, suggesting our methodology supports better segmentation for bilingual NLP applications involving isolated languages such as Chinese.