Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emergence of plasmid-mediated quinolone-resistant determinants in Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from Tehran and Qazvin provinces, Iran

Summary Background. Plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance is an increasing clinical concern, globally. The major objective of the present study was to identify the qnr-encoding genes among the quinolone non-susceptible K. pneumoniae isolates obtained from two provinces in Iran. Methods. A total of 200 K. pneumoniae isolates were obtained from hospitals of Qazvin and Tehran, Iran. The identification of bacterial isolates was carried out by standard laboratory methods and API 20E strips. Susceptibility to quinolone compounds were examined by standard Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method according to the CLSI guideline. PCR and sequencing were employed to detect qnrA, qnrB and qnrS-encoding genes. Results. Of 200 K. pneumoniae isolates, 124 (62%) were nonsusceptible to quinolone compounds among those 66 (53.2%) and 58 (46.8%) isolates showed high and low-level quinolone resistance rates, respectively. Out of 124 quinolone non-susceptible isolates, qnr-encoding genes were present in 49 (39.5%) isolates with qnrB1 (30.6%) as the most dominant gene followed by qnrB4 (9.7%), and qnrS1 (1.6%) either alone or in combination. Conclusions. This study, for the first time, revealed the high appearance of qnrB1, qnrS1 and qnrB4 genes among the clinical isolates of K. pneumoniae in Iran. Therefore, the application of proper infection control measures and well-established antibiotic administration guideline should be strictly considered within our medical centers.
Schema evolution in database systems: an annotated bibliography

Schema Evolution is the ability of a database system to respond to changes in the real world by allowing the schema to evolve. In many systems this property also implies a retaining of past states of the schema. This latter property is necessary if data recorded during the lifetime of one version of the schema is not to be made obsolete as the schema changes. This annotated bibliography investigates current published research with respect to the handling of changing schemas in database systems.
Experiments in Discriminating Phrase-Based Translations on the Basis of Syntactic Coupling Features

We describe experiments on discriminating English to French phrase-based translations through the use of syntactic "coupling" features. Using a robust rule-based dependency parser, we parse both the English source and the French translation candidates from the nbest list returned by our phrase-based system; we compute for each candidate a number of coupling features, that is, values that depend on the amount of alignment between edges in the source and target structures, and discriminatively train the weights of these coupling features. We compare different feature combinations. Although the improvements in terms of automatic measures such as Bleu and Nist are inconclusive, an initial human assessment of the results appears to show certain qualitative improvements.
Next in line, please!: exploiting the indirect benefits of inlining by accurately predicting further inlining

Inlining is an important optimization that can lead to significant runtime improvements. When deciding whether or not to inline a method call, a virtual machine has to weigh an increase in compile time against the expected decrease in program time. To estimate the latter, however, state-of-the-art heuristics only use information local to the call-site in question. But inlining is a powerful enabling optimization; by eliminating the actual call it not only offers an obvious direct benefit but also indirect benefits, as information about the method's arguments is propagated from caller to callee. One such indirect benefit is the elimination of guards in case the callee inlines a method called on one of its arguments. In this paper, we show how to enhance an inlining heuristic by accurately predicting where this further inlining occurs--and where not. To do so, we only use information readily available to many virtual machines: the program's dynamic call graph. An implementation based on Jikes RVM demonstrates that this information can be used to successfully exploit inlining's indirect benefits while at the same time reducing compilation effort.
Composite Piezoelectric Rubber Band for Energy Harvesting from Breathing and Limb Motion

We have successfully demonstrated the design and microfabrication of piezoelectric rubber bands and their application in energy harvesting from human motions. Composite polymeric and metallic microstructures with embedded bipolar charges are employed to realize the desired stretchability and electromechanical sensitivity. In the prototype demonstration, multilayer PDMS cellular structures coated with PTFE films and stretchable gold electrodes are fabricated and implanted with bipolar charges. The composite structures show elasticity of 300~600 kPa and extreme piezoelectricity of d33 >2000 pC/N and d31 >200 pC/N. For a working volume of 2.5cm×2.5cm×0.3mm, 10% (or 2.5mm) stretch results in effective d31 of >17000 pC/N. It is estimated that electric charge of >0.2 μC can be collected and stored per breath (or 2.5cm deformation). As such, the composite piezoelectric rubber bands (with spring constants of ~200 N/m) can be mounted on elastic waistbands to harvest the circumferential stretch during breathing, or on pads around joints to harvest the elongation during limb motion. Furthermore, the wearable piezoelectric structures can be spread, stacked and connected to charge energy storages and power micro devices.
SLA-Aware Fine-Grained QoS Provisioning for Multi-Tenant Software-Defined Networks

Multi-tenant software-defined networks have emerged as a promising service platform to manage and share virtual network services between tenants and end-users. However, when using a service level agreement (SLA) in a multi-tenant circumstance, the resource competition among tenants incurred in many challenges on the quality of services (QoS) provisioning. First, as the existing QoS provisioning was to translate the high-level SLA contact into a group of corresponding low-level QoS rules, this traditional top-down translation mechanism was too ossified to support the dynamic SLA negotiation. Second, since an end-user usually requested multiple services and different services had different QoS requirements, the QoS provisioning required tenants to monitor and control the network status though OpenFlow protocol in a fine-grained way. To address these issues, we propose an SLA-aware fine-grained QoS provisioning (SFQP) scheme for MTSDN. The SFQP scheme extracts the eigen characteristics of each packet by application-aware technology automatically. Considering tenants are more willing to serve for users which have popular SLA contact to earn more revenues, we predict the SLA popularity by K-nearest neighbor. Moreover, we present an SLA-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm to implement the proposed SFQP scheme. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is verified by simulations of the SLA taxonomy, bandwidth utilization, and bandwidth fluctuation.
Separate Ion Pathways in a Cl−/H+ Exchanger

CLC-ec1 is a prokaryotic CLC-type Cl−/H+ exchange transporter. Little is known about the mechanism of H+ coupling to Cl−. A critical glutamate residue, E148, was previously shown to be required for Cl−/H+ exchange by mediating proton transfer between the protein and the extracellular solution. To test whether an analogous H+ acceptor exists near the intracellular side of the protein, we performed a mutagenesis scan of inward-facing carboxyl-bearing residues and identified E203 as the unique residue whose neutralization abolishes H+ coupling to Cl− transport. Glutamate at this position is strictly conserved in all known CLCs of the transporter subclass, while valine is always found here in CLC channels. The x-ray crystal structure of the E203Q mutant is similar to that of the wild-type protein. Cl− transport rate in E203Q is inhibited at neutral pH, and the double mutant, E148A/E203Q, shows maximal Cl− transport, independent of pH, as does the single mutant E148A. The results argue that substrate exchange by CLC-ec1 involves two separate but partially overlapping permeation pathways, one for Cl− and one for H+. These pathways are congruent from the protein's extracellular surface to E148, and they diverge beyond this point toward the intracellular side. This picture demands a transport mechanism fundamentally different from familiar alternating-access schemes.
The structure of HIV‐1 reverse transcriptase complexed with an RNA pseudoknot inhibitor

Small RNA pseudoknots, selected to bind human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV‐1) reverse transcriptase tightly, are potent inhibitors of reverse transcriptase. The co‐crystal structure of reverse transcriptase complexed with a 33 nucleotide RNA pseudoknot has been determined by fitting the ligand into a high quality, 4‐fold averaged 4.8 Å resolution electron density map. The RNA is kinked between stems S1 and S2, thereby optimizing its contacts with subunits of the heterodimer. Its binding site extends along the cleft that lies between the polymerase and RNase H active sites, partially overlaps with that observed for duplex DNA and presumably overlaps some portion of the tRNA site. Stem S2 and loop L1 stabilize the ‘closed’ conformation of the polymerase through extensive electrostatic interactions with several basic residues in helix I of the p66 thumb and in the p66 fingers domain. Presumably, this RNA ligand inhibits reverse transcriptase by binding to a site that partly overlaps the primer‐template binding site.
"Mesodiencephalic" modulation in the treatment of diabetic neuropathy.

OBJECTIVE Aim of the study was to verify the efficacy of "mesodiencephalic" modulation (MDM), as named by the commercial promoters, in reducing symptoms accompanying painful diabetic neuropathy and in improving mental health. METHODS 32 patients with type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus, with painful neuropathy, were enrolled in the prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study. The modulation was performed using MDM electrotherapeutic device (ZAT a.s), sham modulation was used as a placebo. Pain relief (visual analogue scale-VAS; total symptom score-TSS) and changes in mental state (Beck Depression Inventory-BDI-II; OSWESTRY and SF-36 questionnaires) were evaluated. RESULTS The study was completed by 30 patients. Pain evaluation: VAS: pain relief was statistically insignificantly higher after real (R) compared to sham (S) modulation (-0.7 vs. -0.3; p=0.06), effect of both modulations was equal after 1 month (-0.4 vs. 0.0; p=0.46). TSS: the effect of R and S modulation did not differ immediately after the procedure (-1.3 vs. -1.0; p=0.27), nor after 1 month (-1.5 vs. -0.34; p=0.9). Psychological tests: according to SF-36, the physical health improved considerably after R compared to S (2.5 vs. -2.0; p<0.01), however, changes in the mental health were equal (-1.5 vs. 0.0; p=0.78). Oswestry (0 vs. 0; p=0.95) and BDI-II (-0.5 vs. -1.0; p=0.42) were comparable after R and S modulation. Order of the procedures (R vs. S) did not affect results. CONCLUSION The study did not demonstrate any positive effect of MDM on painful diabetic neuropathy compared to placebo, relative to pain or mental state evaluations. The study emphasizes the need of using placebo-controlled studies, especially when testing a new analgesic drug or a method for pain modulation.
A rational approach to the treatment of ascites

A rational approach to the diuretic therapy of ascites is proposed. Fifty-five patients were classified according to their ability to excrete sodium and free water. Patients with a high urinary sodium excretion can be treated by low sodium intake alone. In most patients with a low sodium excretion but high free water clearance, distal diuretics (spironolactone or triamterene) with a low sodium diet will relieve ascites. Patients with low values for sodium excretion and free water clearance also have poor glomerular filtration rate and only a few of these will respond to diuretic therapy.
Study of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber infiltrated with carbon disulfide using super-mode theory

The supercontinuum (SC) generation has found numerous applications in spectroscopy, pulse compression and design of tunable ultrafast femtosecond laser sources, some improvement has been done in many fields. Since carbon disulfide (CS2) has highly nonlinear characteristics, this makes it a good candidate for achieving an infrared broadband source. In this work, we implemented numerical simulations of propagating ultra-fast optical pulses through a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with two infiltrated holes using CS2. Based on supermodes theory, we calculate dispersion and nonlinear parameters in order to study the SC generation characteristic of the infiltrated PCF.
Asymptotic and numerical methods for fluid-structure interaction problems and applications to the materials science and engineering

The goal of this multi-disciplinary thesis is to study the fluid-structure interaction problem from mathematical and physical viewpoints. Viscous fluid-structure interaction problems describe, for example, interactions between the Earth mantle and the Earth crust, the blood and the vascular wall in a blood vessels, etc. In engineering viscous fluid-structure interaction appears during colloidal solution formation when a laser pierce through the fluid influencing the substrate (laser ablation in a liquid). Selective laser melting (SLM) is used to study the behavior of residual stresses depending on the thermoelastic and mechanical properties of the material and on various forms of reloaded beads. From mathematical point of view the coupled system “viscous fluid flow-thin elastic plate” in 3D when the thickness of the plate, E, tends to zero, while the density and the Young’s modulus of the plate material are of order 1 and E-3, respectively, is considered. The plate lies on the fluid which occupies a thick domain. The multi-scale modeling is performed for the elastic part. The complete asymptotic expansion is constructed when E tends to zero. The existence, the regularity and the uniqueness of the solution for the original problem are studied by means of variational techniques. The method of asymptotic partial domain decomposition is applied for the coupled system. The error of the method is evaluated
Action Representation Using Classifier Decision Boundaries

Most popular deep learning based models for action recognition are designed to generate separate predictions within their short temporal windows, which are often aggregated by heuristic means to assign an action label to the full video segment. Given that not all frames from a video characterize the underlying action, pooling schemes that impose equal importance to all frames might be unfavorable. In an attempt towards tackling this challenge, we propose a novel pooling scheme, dubbed SVM pooling, based on the notion that among the bag of features generated by a CNN on all temporal windows, there is at least one feature that characterizes the action. To this end, we learn a decision hyperplane that separates this unknown yet useful feature from the rest. Applying multiple instance learning in an SVM setup, we use the parameters of this separating hyperplane as a descriptor for the video. Since these parameters are directly related to the support vectors in a max-margin framework, they serve as robust representations for pooling of the CNN features. We devise a joint optimization objective and an efficient solver that learns these hyperplanes per video and the corresponding action classifiers over the hyperplanes. Showcased experiments on the standard HMDB and UCF101 datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance.
Extending the bandwidth of Piezo-Electric energy harvesting through the use of Bias Flip

In this paper, we report three new results. 1) We show simulations of max output power from a Piezo-Electric (PZ) Energy Harvesting Device (EHD) as a function of frequency and Bias Flip (BF) efficiency. These simulations show that BF with 95% efficiency improves the 3dB BW by 4x. They also show that, at frequencies 30% above resonance (150 Hz) or below resonance (80 Hz), 95% BF efficiency improves output power by >15x (13.6 dB) compared to the case of no BF. 2) We experimentally demonstrate that 95% BF can be achieved on non-Piezo-Electric (non-PZ) capacitors. 3) We show that BF efficiency on PZ capacitors is lower than for non-PZ capacitors, and we relate this to the series resistance of the EHD at the BF frequency.
Measuring visual abilities and visual knowledge of aviation security screeners

A central aspect of airport security is reliable detection of forbidden objects in passenger bags using X-ray screening equipment. Human recognition involves visual processing of the X-ray image and matching items with object representations stored in visual memory. Thus, without knowing which objects are forbidden and what they look like, prohibited items are difficult to recognize (aspect of visual knowledge). In order to measure whether a screener has acquired the necessary visual knowledge, we have applied the prohibited items test (PIT). This test contains different forbidden items according to international prohibited items lists. The items are placed in X-ray images of passenger bags so that the object shapes can be seen relatively well. Since all images can be inspected for 10 seconds, failing to recognize a threat item can be mainly attributed to a lack of visual knowledge. The object recognition test (ORT) is more related to visual processing and encoding. Three image-based factors can be distinguished that challenge different visual processing abilities. First, depending on the rotation within a bag, an object can be more or less difficult to recognize (effect of viewpoint). Second, prohibited items can be more or less superimposed by other objects, which can impair detection performance (effect of superposition). Third, the number and type of other objects in a bag can challenge visual search and processing capacity (effect of bag complexity). The ORT has been developed to measure how well screeners can cope with these image-based factors. This test contains only guns and knives, placed into bags in different views with different superposition and complexity levels. Detection performance is determined by the ability of a screener to detect threat items despite rotation, superposition and bag complexity. Since the shapes of guns and knives are usually known well even by novices, the aspect of visual threat object knowledge is of minor importance in this test.
Relaying strategies for the interference relay channel

In this paper, the two-user interference relay channel (IRC) is studied. Transmission schemes for this network are compared. Namely, compress-and-forward (CF) and functional decode-and-forward (FDF) are presented. In CF, the relay establishes cooperation with the users by compressing its observation and forwarding it to the receivers. In FDF, the relay decodes a linear combination of the transmitted signals, and forwards this linear combination. We compare these schemes with decode-and-forward (DF) and with a upper bound on the rates in the IRC. It turns out that these schemes outperform DF, and approach the upper bound for some cases.
Ductal lavage for detection of cellular atypia in women at high risk for breast cancer.

BACKGROUND Breast cancer originates in breast epithelium and is associated with progressive molecular and morphologic changes. Women with atypical breast ductal epithelial cells have an increased relative risk of breast cancer. In this study, ductal lavage, a new procedure for collecting ductal cells with a microcatheter, was compared with nipple aspiration with regard to safety, tolerability, and the ability to detect abnormal breast epithelial cells. METHODS Women at high risk for breast cancer who had nonsuspicious mammograms and clinical breast examinations underwent nipple aspiration followed by lavage of fluid-yielding ducts. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS The 507 women enrolled included 291 (57%) with a history of breast cancer and 199 (39%) with a 5-year Gail risk for breast cancer of 1.7% or more. Nipple aspirate fluid (NAF) samples were evaluated cytologically for 417 women, and ductal lavage samples were evaluated for 383 women. Adequate samples for diagnosis were collected from 111 (27%) and 299 (78%) women, respectively. A median of 13,500 epithelial cells per duct (range, 43-492,000 cells) was collected by ductal lavage compared with a median of 120 epithelial cells per breast (range, 10-74,300) collected by nipple aspiration. For ductal lavage, 92 (24%) subjects had abnormal cells that were mildly (17%) or markedly (6%) atypical or malignant (<1%). For NAF, corresponding percentages were 6%, 3%, and fewer than 1%. Ductal lavage detected abnormal intraductal breast cells 3.2 times more often than nipple aspiration (79 versus 25 breasts; McNemar's test, P<.001). No serious procedure-related adverse events were reported. CONCLUSIONS Large numbers of ductal cells can be collected by ductal lavage to detect atypical cellular changes within the breast. Ductal lavage is a safe and well-tolerated procedure and is a more sensitive method of detecting cellular atypia than nipple aspiration.
A non-Standard shear resonator for the matrix characterization of piezoceramics and its validation study by finite element analysis

Standard shear samples used for piezoceramic characterization lead to underestimation of the piezoelectric shear coefficients due to its dynamical clamping at resonance. This work presents the application of Alemany et al's automatic iterative method to the resonance of a non-Standard shear sample, in order to determine the related complex parameters of piezoceramics, thus including losses, from impedance measurements. The matrix of dielectric, elastic and piezoelectric complex parameters that fully characterize a piezoceramic, a 6 mm symmetry material, can be obtained from such shear data combined with the application of the method to three other electromechanical resonances, namely: the length extensional mode of long rods or rectangular bars, length poled; the thickness extensional mode of a thin plate or disc, thickness poled; and the radial mode of a thin disc, thickness poled. The shear results obtained here are those of non-Standard samples of a commercial Navy type II piezoceramic, thus solving the underestimation of the coefficients in the Standard shear sample and allowing the improvement of the previously reported characteristic matrix from Standard samples. Three-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) modelling of the resonances of the three material samples used in the matrix characterization was here accomplished using the improved matrix of dielectric elastic and piezoelectric material coefficients including all losses. The comparison of the experimental resonance spectra of these piezoceramic samples and the FEA results obtained for the elastically, dielectrically and piezoelectrically homogeneous items modelled is presented and discussed here.
Generalization and Learnability: a Study of Constrained Atoms

This paper studies the generalization of atomic formulas, or atoms, that are augmented with constraints on or among their terms. The atoms may also be viewed as deenite clauses whose antecedents express the constraints. Atoms are generalized relative to a body of background information about the constraints. The paper develops an algorithm for the generalization task and discusses algorithm complexity. It also presents semantic properties of the generalizations computed by the algorithm, making the algorithm applicable to such problems as abduction, induction, analogical reasoning, and knowledge base viviication. The paper emphasizes the application to induction and presents a pac-learning result for constrained atoms.