Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adherence to and Invasion of Host Cells by Spotted Fever Group Rickettsia Species

The pathogenic lifecycle of obligate intracellular bacteria presents a superb opportunity to develop understanding of the interaction between the bacteria and host under the pretext that disruption of these processes will likely lead to death of the pathogen and prevention of associated disease. Species of the genus Rickettsia contain some of the most hazardous of the obligate intracellular bacteria, including Rickettsia rickettsii and R. conorii the causative agents of Rocky Mountain and Mediterranean spotted fevers, respectively. Spotted fever group Rickettsia species commonly invade and thrive within cells of the host circulatory system whereby the endothelial cells are severely perturbed. The subsequent disruption of circulatory continuity results in much of the severe morbidity and mortality associated with these diseases, including macropapular dermal rash, interstitial pneumonia, acute renal failure, pulmonary edema, and other multisystem manifestations. This review describes current knowledge of the essential pathogenic processes of adherence to and invasion of host cells, efforts to disrupt these processes, and potential for disease prevention through vaccination with recently identified bacterial adherence and invasion proteins. A more complete understanding of these bacterial proteins will provide an opportunity for prevention and treatment of spotted fever group Rickettsia infections.
Preanesthetic medication in children: A comparison of intranasal dexmedetomidine versus oral midazolam

Background: Relieving preoperative anxiety is an important concern for the pediatric anesthesiologist. Midazolam has become the most frequently used premedication in children. However, new drugs such as the α2 -agonists have emerged as alternatives for premedication in pediatric anesthesia. Methods: One hundred and twenty children scheduled for adenotonsillectomy were enrolled in this prospective, double-blind, randomized study. The children were divided into two equal groups to receive either intranasal dexmedetomidine 1 μg/kg (group D), or oral midazolam 0.5 mg/kg (group M) at approximately 60 and 30 mins, respectively, before induction of anesthesia. Preoperative sedative effects, anxiety level changes, and the ease of child-parent separation were assessed. Also, the recovery profile and postoperative analgesic properties were assessed. Results: Children premedicated with intranasal dexmedetomidine achieved significantly lower sedation levels (P=0.042), lower anxiety levels (P=0.036), and easier child-parent separation (P=0.029) than children who received oral midazolam at the time of transferring the patients to the operating room. Postoperatively, the time to achieve an Aldrete score of 10 was similar in both the groups (P=0.067). Also, the number of children who required fentanyl as rescue analgesia medication was significantly less (P=0.027) in the dexmedetomidine group. Conclusion: Intranasal dexmedetomidine appears to be a better choice for preanesthetic medication than oral midazolam in our study. Dexmedetomidine was associated with lower sedation levels, lower anxiety levels, and easier child-parent separation at the time of transferring patients to the operating room than children who received oral midazolam. Moreover, intranasal dexmedetomidine has better analgesic property than oral midazolam with discharge time from postanesthetic care unit similar to oral midazolam.
Dimension analysis of the perception of instrumental timbre.

Wedin L. & Goude G. Dimension analysis of the perception of instrumental timbre. Scand. J. Psychol. , 1972, 13, 228–240. —The dimensionality of the perception of instrumental timbre for single tones was investigated through multidimensional scaling according to Ekman's vector model of similarity. Three factors were extracted and they were identified with certain characteristics of the spectrum envelopes. It was found that initial transients were important for the identifiability of instrumental tones but their presence or absence did not influence the dimensional structure. The “perceptual structure” was found to be different from the “cognitive structure” (= knowledge about the classification of the instruments), and the results are general for both trained and naive listeners.
Beyond the Jamming Avoidance Response: weakly electric fish respond to the envelope of social electrosensory signals

SUMMARY Recent studies have shown that central nervous system neurons in weakly electric fish respond to artificially constructed electrosensory envelopes, but the behavioral relevance of such stimuli is unclear. Here we investigate the possibility that social context creates envelopes that drive behavior. When Eigenmannia virescens are in groups of three or more, the interactions between their pseudo-sinusoidal electric fields can generate ‘social envelopes’. We developed a simple mathematical prediction for how fish might respond to such social envelopes. To test this prediction, we measured the responses of E. virescens to stimuli consisting of two sinusoids, each outside the range of the Jamming Avoidance Response (JAR), that when added to the fish's own electric field produced low-frequency (below 10 Hz) social envelopes. Fish changed their electric organ discharge (EOD) frequency in response to these envelopes, which we have termed the Social Envelope Response (SER). In 99% of trials, the direction of the SER was consistent with the mathematical prediction. The SER was strongest in response to the lowest initial envelope frequency tested (2 Hz) and depended on stimulus amplitude. The SER generally resulted in an increase of the envelope frequency during the course of a trial, suggesting that this behavior may be a mechanism for avoiding low-frequency social envelopes. Importantly, the direction of the SER was not predicted by the superposition of two JAR responses: the SER was insensitive to the amplitude ratio between the sinusoids used to generate the envelope, but was instead predicted by the sign of the difference of difference frequencies.
A Wavelet based Method for Text Segmentation in Color Images

This is a digital era, in which imaging has become simple and easy with so many handheld compact devices. Extraction of the text from captured images also becomes necessary for efficient indexing and retrieval purpose. But real time images have issues such as sensor noise, blur, viewing angle, different font size, low contrast etc. Though so many efficient methods exist, they faultier when it comes to complex background images. A wavelet based method is used here. This method preprocesses the image before it is given to an OCR filter. A color quantizer is used to minimize the number of distinct colors in the input image. A discrete wavelet transform is performed on the color quantized image which classifies the image into text and nontext pixels based on their color and the standard deviation of the wavelet. This step is followed by fuzzy C means clustering which partitions the image into the background and text regions. This preprocessed image is then passed through an OCR filter to check the quality of text being segmented. KeywordsDiscrete Wavelet Transform, Fuzzy C-Means Clustering, OCR, Segmentation.
Robust fault detection filter design for linear uncertain systems with unknown inputs

In this paper, a robust fault detection filter design method for uncertain systems in linear fractional transformation (LFT) formulation with unknown inputs is proposed. The basic idea is to convert the complicated ℋ_/ℋ∞ problem to an easier ℋ∞ model following problem. Moreover, two major improvements have been made in this research. First, the uncertain systems in LFT formulation are studied. This class of uncertain models is capable of approximating complex nonlinear dynamics. Second, a more general form of filter is employed to achieve a better fault detection and disturbance rejection performance. It involves the widely used observer-based filter as a special case. With structured uncertainties, it has been shown the robust fault detection filter design can be solved by a convex optimization condition in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). An illustrative design example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness and better performance of the proposed approach.
Structural indexing for accelerated join-processing in relational databases

An increasing amount of data is generated and stored every day. This phenomenon called ‘Big Data’ requires innovative solutions for data storage and query processing. In contrast with the large amount of data being stored in databases, the retrieved information is often small and may be derived from a fraction of the data. Retrieving valuable information from a large collection of data can be like ‘finding the needle in a haystack’. Indexing techniques enable fast random access to the desired information. Data can directly be located by ordering or hashing records on their attributes. However, sometimes we want to retrieve records based on their relational structure. Structural indexing has been used in the past for accelerating graph databases and RDF-databases to solve this problem and it may also be suitable for relational databases. To our knowledge, this report provides the first known empirical evaluation of structural indexing in relational databases. We show how structural similarity can be used in relational databases to accelerate query processing. By using k-bisimilarity partitioning, we group together bisimilar records to obtain a compact representation of the data structure that serves as a structural index. We accelerate semijoin and antijoin queries by several orders of magnitude by pruning information from the index to select or eliminate tuples that do participate in the join.
Content Differences for Abstract and Concrete Concept

Concept properties are an integral part of theories of conceptual representation and processing. To date, little is known about conceptual properties of abstract concepts, such as idea. This experiment systematically compared the content of 18 abstract and 18 concrete concepts, using a feature generation task. Thirty-one participants listed characteristics of the concepts (i.e., item properties) or their relevant context (i.e., context properties). Abstract concepts had significantly fewer intrinsic item properties and more properties expressing subjective experiences than concrete concepts. Situation components generated for abstract and concrete concepts differed in kind, but not in number. Abstract concepts were predominantly related to social aspects of situations. Properties were significantly less specific for abstract than for concrete concepts. Thus, abstractness emerged as a function of several, both qualitative and quantitative, factors.
Low power commutator for pipelined FFT processors

This paper proposes a low power commutator architecture for the implementation of radix-4 based pipelined fast Fourier transform processor. The architecture is based on dual port RAM blocks and exploits the interconnection topology among these blocks for low power implementation. The paper presents the commutator architecture, describes the design methodology and evaluation environment, and provides implementation results showing that the new commutator achieves up to 58% power saving for 256-point and 128-point FFTs as compared to previous commutator architectures.
The Liberalization of Natural Gas Markets: Regulatory Reform and Competition Failures in Italy

In the last decade the EU has started to liberalise national gas markets and regulatory reform has followed in member countries. We analyse the basic issues concerning network and storage regulation and the implementation of regulatory reforms in Italy. Then we try to explain why in gas importing countries such reforms were not sufficient to foster competition. Even regulation ex-post by the Competition Commission has proved to be a formidable task, to the extent that entry barriers in the market for imports depend on congestion of transit pipelines still controlled by the incumbent. Moreover when gas supply is characterised by long run importing contracts with take or pay clauses, liberalisation policies lead to entry and market segmentation without benefits for consumers. In order to foster gas to gas competition the development of wholesale exchanges at market hubs is then necessary. However new investments in essential facilities are required to reach this aim. At present new investments are both subsidised and exempted from third party access regulation for financial reasons but we claim that the incentive to invest is negatively affected lack of ownership unbundling. E-mail address: alberto.cavaliere@unipv.it. The author is grateful to the Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity and Gas (AEEG) which gave him the opportunity to participate to the gas market liberalisation experiment. However the responsibility for the opinions expressed belongs solely to the author and does not involve this Institution. The author is also grateful to HERMES for financial support and to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies for its warm hospitality during the summer of 2006. Thanks to Nadine Haase and Federico Dessì for their comments on previous drafts.
[Comparison between clinical and surgical-pathological TNM staging in patients with lung cancer].

BACKGROUND The accuracy of clinical TNM staging correlates with appropriate treatment in patients with lung cancer. The aim of this study is to evaluate the agreement between clinical and surgical-pathological staging in patients with lung cancer and analyze its cause in detail. METHODS One hundred and fifty patients with lung cancer treated surgically from 2000 were enrolled randomly. Clinical and surgical-pathological staging of them were made respectively according to the International System for Staging Lung Cancer newly revised by UICC. Then concordance was determined between the two staging results with Kappa value, and difference in coincident rate was analyzed among subgroups of T staging. RESULTS For T staging, the agreement was excellent (Kappa value=0.729), however, the coincident rate of T3 or T4 was significantly lower than that in T1 or T2 group (P < 0.01). The agreement of N staging was poor (Kappa value=0.108), followed by a disappointed conformity of TNM staging (Kappa value=0.287). CONCLUSIONS Clinical T staging based on CT can indicate the location and size of primary tumor precisely. But the borderline may be difficult to estimate when tumor site is near chest wall or mediastinum, so some patients with clinical T4 still have chances to receive complete resection. The conformity of N staging is rather poor. The key point to improve the accuracy of clinical TNM staging should be to seek more reliable techniques for evaluating N status.
Temporal Abductive Reasoning based Intelligent Alarm for Power System

Abductive Reasoning is known as using domain theory to infer about reasons or explanations of observations and results. It is one basic inference mechanism for diagnosis problems. Abductive Reasoning based inference can find out causes and evolution processes, which are encouraging results for diagnosis. This paper develops the temporal relationship of faults and alarms in power grid, and raises a suit of abductive temporal reasoning algorithms to diagnose fault evolution process using observed alarms. The algorithms developed in this paper can recognize break alarms, exception alarms and missing alarms. The result of this paper can be taken as a function of intelligent alarm method for power system, and used with other methods for further fault diagnosis. The numerical test is given in the last part of paper.
Contributions of Ice Thickness to the Atmospheric Response From Projected Arctic Sea Ice Loss

A large ensemble of simulations from a high‐top atmospheric general circulation model are conducted to compare the atmospheric responses from loss of Arctic sea ice thickness and sea ice concentration. The response to projected sea ice thickness loss indicates substantial surface warming over the Arctic Ocean and up to 1°C of cooling in Eurasia. While the dynamic circulation response from sea ice thickness loss is smaller in magnitude, it has a similar spatial anomaly pattern as that due to sea ice concentration loss. This pattern resembles the negative phase of the Northern Annular Mode. The simulations reveal that sea ice thickness loss enhances the thermodynamic and large‐scale circulation response from sea ice anomalies. These results stress the importance of considering a realistic sea ice thickness distribution in future atmospheric general circulation model sea ice perturbation experiments.
Assessment and improvement of the Cloud Emission and Scattering Index (CESI) – an algorithm for cirrus detection

ABSTRACT This study evaluates and improves the cirrus detection of the middle and low peak Weighting Function (WF) Cloud Emission and Scattering Index (CESI) by using the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) cloud mask product. Results show that CESI-3 (peak WF about 890 hPa) accurately detect cirrus with the Probability of detection (POD) value reaching 0.69 during both at day and nighttimes. The CESI-1 (peak WF about 550 hPa) falsely detects cirrus in the Sahara Desert, south of the Saudi Arabia, north of Tibetan Plateau and in Australia during the ascending process. More false alarm rates (FARs) are detected in the northern mid-latitude around 60° N because of the surface type and seasonal effects. Furthermore, the thresholds of middle and low peak WF CESIs for cirrus detection are determined and the performance is satisfactory. In addition, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is employed to train four combination types (combining CESI-1 and CESI-2, combining CESI-1 and CESI-3, combining CESI-2 and CESI-3, and combining CESI-1, CESI-2, and CESI-3). Accordingly, results elucidate that Comb-1-3 (combining CESI-1 and CESI-3) is appropriate to detect cirrus for the ascending process, increasing the POD by 11.2% as compared to CESI-3. However, Comb-1-2-3 (combining CESI-1, CESI-2 with peak WF around 790 hPa, and CESI-3) is most suitable for cirrus detection in the descending process, increasing the PODs by 8.5%. We also find that the POD of cirrus detection over the land increases relatively higher than over the sea. The most significant improvement of cirrus detection occurs over the land in the summer in the daytime with a 35% POD increase from 0.57 to 0.76.
Addition of microencapsulated iron to iodized salt improves the efficacy of iodine in goitrous, iron-deficient children: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE In many developing countries, children are at high risk for both goiter and anemia. Iron (Fe) deficiency adversely effects thyroid metabolism and reduces efficacy of iodine prophylaxis in areas of endemic goiter. The study aim was to determine if co-fortification of iodized salt with Fe would improve efficacy of the iodine in goitrous children with a high prevalence of anemia. DESIGN AND METHODS In a 9-month, randomized, double-blind trial, 6-15 year-old children (n=377) were given iodized salt (25 microg iodine/g salt) or dual-fortified salt with iodine (25 microg iodine/g salt) and Fe (1 mg Fe/g salt, as ferrous sulfate microencapsulated with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil). RESULTS In the dual-fortified salt group, hemoglobin and Fe status improved significantly compared with the iodized salt group (P<0.05). At 40 weeks, the mean decrease in thyroid volume measured by ultrasound in the dual-fortified salt group (-38%) was twice that of the iodized salt group (-18%) (P<0.01). Compared with the iodized salt group, serum thyroxine was significantly increased (P<0.05) and the prevalence of hypothyroidism and goiter decreased (P<0.01) in the dual-fortified salt group. CONCLUSION Addition of encapsulated Fe to iodized salt improves the efficacy of iodine in goitrous children with a high prevalence of anemia.
Swedish District Nurses’ Attitudes to Implement Information and Communication Technology in Home Nursing

The use of information and communication technology has increased in the society, and can be useful in nursing care. The aim of this study was to describe district nurses’ attitudes regarding the implementation of information and communication technology in home nursing. The first and third authors performed five focus group discussions with 19 district nurses’ from five primary healthcare centres in northern Sweden. During the focus group discussions, the following topics were discussed: the current and future use of information and communication technology in home nursing; expectations, advantages, disadvantages and hindrances in the use of information and communication technology in home nursing; and the use of information and communication technology from an ethical perspective. The transcribed focus group discussions were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results showed that district nurses’ attitudes were positive regarding the use of information and communication technology in their work. They also asked for possibilities to influence the design and its introduction. However, the use of information and communication technology in home nursing can be described as a complement to communication that could not replace human physical encounters. Improvements and risks, as well as the importance of physical presence in home nursing were considered vital. The results revealed that the use of information and communication technology requires changes in the district nurses’ work situation.
Mechanism of acute ascites formation after trauma resuscitation.

BACKGROUND Severely injured patients have been observed to acutely develop ascites; however, the pathogenesis of this rare phenomenon is poorly understood. OBJECTIVES To report the factors common among severely injured patients developing ascites and to formulate a hypothesis regarding its origin. METHODS Retrospective review of case series. RESULTS We identified 9 injured patients between January 1, 1993, and December 31, 1998, who acutely developed significant amounts of ascites. The mean +/- SD estimated ascites volume was 2.0 +/- 0.8 L. All 9 patients had severe shock and were mechanically ventilated before abdominal decompression for the abdominal compartment syndrome. The mean +/- SD peak inspiratory pressure was 39.0 +/- 5.8 cm H2O. The mean +/- SD volumes of crystalloid and blood product infusion before decompression were 16.1 +/- 10.2 L and 5.2 +/- 4.8 L, respectively, in a mean +/- SD of 17 +/- 15 hours. In comparison, the mean +/- SD volumes of crystalloid and blood product transfusion among 100 contemporary, randomly selected patients undergoing trauma laparotomy were 5.1 +/- 5.5 L and 1.1 +/- 2.5 L, respectively (P<.001). Eight patients had only extra-abdominal injuries, while 1 patient had a combination of extra- and intra-abdominal injuries. Two patients were found to be cirrhotic by liver biopsy, but the other 7 patients had no known preexisting hepatic disease. Eight patients had absorbable mesh temporary abdominal closure, and 1 patient had primary fascial closure. There was persistent ascitic drainage in 5 patients; however, in all but 1 patient with cirrhosis, the drainage did not persist beyond 3 days. Two patients died, 1 of sepsis and the other of a closed head injury. CONCLUSIONS Common denominators of posttraumatic ascites include shock, massive fluid resuscitation, and elevated intrathoracic pressure. The rapid onset of ascites in the setting of elevated intrathoracic pressure suggests that the patient's ability to clear ascitic fluid is overwhelmed.