Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On rotation and vibration motions of molecules

In the second stage of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, a moving molecule is considered as a set of points of the euclidian space which represent the kernels of the atoms constituting the molecule; in books on Molecular Spectroscopy, under the title «separation of rotation and vibration motions», one actually defines the rotational and vibrational energies, but not the vibration motion. In the present paper we propose a mathematical definition of these last ones, and we prove that they cannot be separated from the rotation motions, in that sense that performing a purely vibrational motion, a molecule can, at the end of a finite time, come to a final configuration which is deduced from the initial one by an arbitrary pure rotation Definition mathematique des mouvements de vibration, qui ne peuvent etre separes des mouvements de rotation, en ce sens qu'en effectuant un mouvement purement vibratoire, une molecule peut, au bout d'un temps fini, parvenir a une configuration finale qui se deduit de la configuration initiale par une rotation pure arbitraire
A Speciation Study on the Perturbing Effects of Iron Chelators on the Homeostasis of Essential Metal Ions

A number of reports have appeared in literature calling attention to the depletion of essential metal ions during chelation therapy on β-thalassaemia patients. We present a speciation study to determine how the iron chelators used in therapy interfere with the homeostatic equilibria of essential metal ions. This work includes a thorough analysis of the pharmacokinetic properties of the chelating agents currently in clinical use, of the amounts of iron, copper and zinc available in plasma for chelation, and of all the implied complex formation constants. The results of the study show that a significant amount of essential metal ions is complexed whenever the chelating agent concentration exceeds the amount necessary to coordinate all disposable iron —a frequently occurring situation during chelation therapy. On the contrary, copper and zinc do not interfere with iron chelation, except for a possible influence of copper on iron speciation during deferiprone treatment.
Role of external counterpulsation in the treatment of ischemic stroke

Reduced blood flow is the principle pathophysiologic event in acute ischemic stroke. Hence, flow augmentation is the most important goal in stroke management. Improvement of cerebral blood flow can be accomplished by proximal arterial recanalization or by other systemic approaches. Diastolic counterpulsation is a non-invasive method to improve the perfusion of heart, kidneys and brain. This review summarizes the history, possible mechanism and the role of external counterpulsation in ischemic stroke (J Geriatr Cardiol 2010; 7:88-92).
Duration-deadline jointly differentiated energy services

The demand/supply balance in a power grid faces great challenges as more and more renewables are integrated into the system. Fluctuations in the power supply increases spectacularly owing to the uncertain nature of renewables. In this case, it has been widely recognized that the conventional scheme of supply following load is neither economically efficient nor environmentally friendly. On the contrary, an alternative paradigm has been attracting more and more attention over the recent years which attempts to utilize the flexibilities in the demand side to compensate the uncertainties in the supply side. Following this direction, we propose a duration-deadline jointly differentiated energy service in this paper. Specifically, we consider a group of flexible loads with each load requiring a constant power level for a specified duration before a specified deadline. A load is indifferent of the actual time of delivery as long as the duration and deadline requirements are satisfied. We first address the adequacy problem of a given supply profile which boils down to solving a (0, 1)-matrix feasibility problem. It turns out that the adequacy condition is given explicitly by the nonnegativity of a structure matrix. We also develop a market implementation of the proposed energy service and show the existence of an efficient competitive equilibrium.
Prediction of Aptamer-Target Interacting Pairs with Pseudo-Amino Acid Composition

Aptamers are oligonucleic acid or peptide molecules that bind to specific target molecules. As a novel and powerful class of ligands, aptamers are thought to have excellent potential for applications in the fields of biosensing, diagnostics and therapeutics. In this study, a new method for predicting aptamer-target interacting pairs was proposed by integrating features derived from both aptamers and their targets. Features of nucleotide composition and traditional amino acid composition as well as pseudo amino acid were utilized to represent aptamers and targets, respectively. The predictor was constructed based on Random Forest and the optimal features were selected by using the maximum relevance minimum redundancy (mRMR) method and the incremental feature selection (IFS) method. As a result, 81.34% accuracy and 0.4612 MCC were obtained for the training dataset, and 77.41% accuracy and 0.3717 MCC were achieved for the testing dataset. An optimal feature set of 220 features were selected, which were considered as the ones that contributed significantly to the interacting aptamer-target pair predictions. Analysis of the optimal feature set indicated several important factors in determining aptamer-target interactions. It is anticipated that our prediction method may become a useful tool for identifying aptamer-target pairs and the features selected and analyzed in this study may provide useful insights into the mechanism of interactions between aptamers and targets.
Feminist praxis, citizenship and informal politics: Reflections on South Africa's anti-eviction campaign

Abstract This article focuses on the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) in Cape Town, South Africa, which is part of the larger anti-privatization movement, mobilized by disadvantaged township residents to assert their constitutional rights and resist evictions and service disconnections. It introduces the mutually constituted concepts of invited and invented spaces of citizenship and stresses the range of grassroots actions spanning those. The article also sheds light on the gender dynamics of the Campaign and how its patriarchal order is being destabilized. The AEC case study engages the pioneering feminist scholarship on citizenship that has embraced both formal and informal arenas of politics. The study points out the risk in constructing yet another binary relation between grassroots coping strategies (in invited spaces) and resistance strategies (in invented spaces). The article calls for a refinement of feminists' extended notion of politics, recognizing the oppositional practices of the poor in order to construct an inclusive citizenship. It argues that doing so better reflects the practices of the grassroots and furthers a progressive feminist praxis.
The fallacy of the fat iron-deficient child.

The charts of 156 children with nutritional iron-deficiency anemia were reviewed to re-examine the popular impression that such children are usually fat. Instead, a marked preponderance of underweight children was found. Treatment with iron resulted in accelerated weight gain in these children, producing a normal distribution curve. Growth curves prior to the diagnosis of iron-deficiency anemia showed a common pattern of early rapid weight gain with subsequent slowing as the anemia developed.
EDiP: the Epitope Dilution Phenomenon. Lessons learnt from a malaria vaccine antigen and its applicability to polymorphic antigens

ABSTRACT Introduction: Polymorphism in vaccine antigens poses major challenges to vaccinologists. The Plasmodium falciparum Apical Membrane Antigen 1 (AMA1) poses such a challenge. We found that immunization with a mixture of three variants yielded functional antibody levels to all variants comparable to levels induced by monovalent immunization. The mechanism behind the observed broadening was shown to be an increase in the fraction of cross-reactive antibodies, most likely because strain-specific epitopes are present at lower frequency relative to conserved epitopes. Areas covered: We hereby introduce the Epitope Dilution Phenomenon (EDiP) as a practical strategy for the induction of broad, cross-variant antibody responses against polymorphic antigens and discuss the utility and applicability of this phenomenon for the development of vaccines against polymorphic antigens of pathogens like Influenza, HIV, Dengue and Plasmodium. Expert commentary: EDiP can be used to broaden antibody responses by immunizing with a mixture of at least 3 antigenic variants, where the variants included can differ, yet yield broadened responses.
Investigation of protein folding by mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry is emerging as one of the most exciting new techniques being applied to studies of protein folding. Recent developments in soft ionization techniques enable intact proteins to be generated in the gas phase from aqueous solution, and fragmentation methods are providing a means of obtaining sequence‐specific information. These techniques, particularly in combination with established methods such as NMR spectroscopy, allow the investigation of both covalent and noncovalent events that occur during refolding processes. One important type of application involves mass spectrometry in an analytical role, for example, in characterizing the products of oxidative refolding experiments. Mass spectrometry can also be used to reveal fundamentally new information about the conformational properties of folding intermediates, both in isolation and in complexes with molecular chaperones, through the exploitation of hydrogen‐deuterium exchange phenomena. Of particular interest is the insight this approach can provide into the coopera‐ tivity of structure formation and the distribution of intermediates at different steps along folding pathways. In this paper we describe recent insights into protein folding resulting from the application of mass spectrometry and discuss the future potential of the method for studies in this area. —Miranker, A. , Robinson, C. V. , Radford, S. E. , Dobson, C. M. Investigation of protein folding by mass spectrometry. FASEB J. 10, 93‐101 (1996)
Horses, guns and governments: A comparative study of the military transition in the Manchu, Mughal, Ottoman and Safavid empires, circa 1400 to circa 1750

The experts of Western European warfare agree that Western Europe during the early modern era (i.e. the period roughly from 1500 to 1750) experienced substantial military changes. One of the crucial components of the early modern Western European military transition was the spread and development of gunpowder weapons in both land and sea warfare. Scholars disagree on the impact of the Western European military transition on the extra-European world. A comparative study of the military systems of the big Asian empires’ military system would throw light on this thorny issue, and this is the objective of the present work. This essay attempts a comparative analysis of the armies and navies of the large agrarian bureaucratic empires of Asia (Ottoman, Safavid, Manchus/Qing and the Mughals), which were major powers in terms of political, military and economic strength before the onset of industrialization around 1800. This study will focus on the question of how far the Asian polities were able to integrate gunpowder weapons into their military systems.
Referring and accessibility

The analysis of referring expressions can be divided into two branches for our purposes. The first includes theories of definite descriptions and proper names. The key to the riddle of the appropriate use of such expressions, it was thought, is the notion of presupposition: existence and/or uniqueness. Indeed, this was the question that dominated the literature for many years, starting with the early philosophical analyses of Frege (1982), Russell (1919) and Strawson (1956, 1964), and ending with the much later pragmatically oriented linguistic analyses, such as Liberman (1973), Kempson (1975), Prince (1978, 1981b), Gazdar (1979), McCawley (1979), Hawkins (1974, 1984) and even Loftus (1972, 1974, 1975), although this last approach is more psychological. The second branch of research totally neglected the question of presupposition. Non-syntactic/semantic theories of anaphoric expressions, pronouns especially, were psychologically oriented, and hence saw the issue to be accounted for quite differently. In fact, the objective of these theories has been to elucidate processing procedures by examining anaphoric expressions, rather than to make claims about anaphoric expressions as such.
Nucleotide sequence analysis and serologic characterization of the Mycobacterium intracellulare homologue of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis 19 kDa antigen

Disseminated Mycobacterium avium/Mycobacterium intracellulare complex (MAC) disease is a frequent complication in patients with the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). In this report, we present the nucleotide sequence of the M. intracellulare MI22 gene. Computer sequence comparisons reveal that the MI22 gene, which encodes a serologically active protein, has 78% DNA sequence identity and 77% protein sequence identity with the seroreactive 19 kDa Mycobacterium tuberculosis lipoprotein antigen. Southern blot hybridizations indicate that an MI22 gene probe binds similar—‐sized restriction fragments in M. tuberculosis and M. intracellulare genomic DNA. In addition, immunoblot analyses demonstrate that MI22 is recognized by sera from tuberculosis patients. These data further support the existence of 19 kDa MAC and M. tuberculosis protein homologues. Phase partitioning experiments and the presence of a consensus lipid modification site in the deduced MI22 protein sequence strongly suggest that MI22 is also a lipoprotein. Comparative analyses of these mycobacterial antigenic homologues may provide the basis for the design of species‐specific diagnostic reagents.
Short-term ANG II produces renal vasoconstriction independent of TP receptor activation and TxA2/isoprostane production.

The relative contributions of vasoconstrictor and of dilator systems are balanced in health. The balance is reset in disease, often favoring a predominant role of vasoconstrictors, perhaps due to positive interactions between constrictor systems. For example, in hypertension, chronic high levels of angiotensin II (ANG II) stimulate the production of thromboxane (TxA2/PGH2) and/or isoprostane that activate constrictor thromboxane prostanoid (TP) receptors in the vasculature. The present study evaluated a modest concentration of ANG II administered acutely into the renal artery on urinary excretion of TxB2 and isoprostane and possible renal TP receptor activation that might amplify ANG II-induced renal vasoconstriction. TP receptors were blocked with SQ29548 coinfused with ANG II. Results were compared with a time control group of continuous ANG II infusion (40 ng.min(-1). kg body wt(-1)) over 90 min. TP receptor antagonism during 30-60 min had no effect on the reduction in renal blood flow (RBF) produced by ANG II (15.8 +/- 2.8 vs. 13.2 +/- 4.9%) (P > 0.6). Likewise, there was no difference between groups during ANG II-induced renal vasoconstriction between 60-90 min in presence or absence of TP receptor antagonist (RBF -8.6 +/- 4.0 vs. -9.6 +/- 4.5%) (P > 0.8). Systemic arterial pressure was stable throughout, so RBF changes reflected localized changes in renal vascular resistance. Urinary excretion of TxB2 and isoprostane were nearly doubled by ANG II. The present data indicate that short-term intrarenal infusion of ANG II rapidly increases renal production of TxA2 but that the ANG II-induced renal vasoconstriction is independent of TP receptor activation during the initial 90 min of local challenge with ANG II.
Study on MCP-1 related to inflammation induced by biomaterials

The study of inflammation is important for understanding the reaction between biomaterials and the human body, in particular, the interaction between biomaterials and immune system. In the current study, rat macrophages were induced by multiple biomaterials with different biocompatibilities, including polyvinyl chloride (PVC) containing 8% of organic tin, a positive control material with cellular toxicity. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (ECV-304), cultured with PRMI-1640, were detached from cells cultured with the supernatant of macrophages containing TNF-α and IL-1β because of stimulation by biomaterials. The cells were then treated with different biomaterials. Then both TNF-α and IL-1β in macrophages were detected by ELISA. Levels of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) were measured by RT-PCR. The results suggested that the expression of TNF-α and IL-1β was elevated by polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) and American NPG alloy (p < 0.001). The level of MCP-1 cultured in supernatant of macrophages was higher than in PRMI-1640 with the same biomaterials. And the exposure to PTFE, PLGA and NPG resulted in the high expression of MCP-1 (p < 0.001) following cytokine stimulation. MCP-1 was also significantly expressed in β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) and calcium phosphate cement samples (CPC) (p < 0.01). Thus, TNF-α, IL-1β and MCP-1 had played an important role in the immune reaction induced by biomaterials and there was a close relationship between the expression of cytokines and biomcompatibility of biomaterials. Furthermore, these data suggested that MCP-1 was regulated by TNF-α and IL-1β, and activated by both cytokines and biomaterials. The data further suggested that the expression of MCP-1 could be used as a marker to indicate the degree of immune reaction induced by biomaterials.
Nanoscale Imaging of Buried Structures via Scanning Near-Field Ultrasound Holography

A nondestructive imaging method, scanning near-field ultrasound holography (SNFUH), has been developed that provides depth information as well as spatial resolution at the 10- to 100-nanometer scale. In SNFUH, the phase and amplitude of the scattered specimen ultrasound wave, reflected in perturbation to the surface acoustic standing wave, are mapped with a scanning probe microscopy platform to provide nanoscale-resolution images of the internal substructure of diverse materials. We have used SNFUH to image buried nanostructures, to perform subsurface metrology in microelectronic structures, and to image malaria parasites in red blood cells.
A comparison of two metaheuristic algorithms for scheduling problem on a heterogeneous CPU/FPGA architecture with communication delays

This paper considers the problem of scheduling on a heterogeneous CPU/FPGA architecture with communication delays, with the aim of minimizing the makespan (or the schedule length). For this strongly NP-hard problem, we present two iterative algorithms based on simulated annealing (SA) and genetic algorithms (GAs), which are used to run in the MPSoC an application described in a data flow graph. The performance of the proposed algorithms are evaluated and compared on a set of instances with up to 50 tasks. Computational experiments indicate that the innovative proposed algorithms provide competitive results for the studied problem and that the objective function values obtained are optimal or very close to a lower bound in a reasonable computation time.
Mobile robot rbpf-slam with lms sensor in indoor environments application on robuTER robot

Recently, Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) problem becomes an active research field in mobile robotics. In addition, Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter (RBPF) has been introduced as an effective means to solve this problem. This paper describes the implementation of a RBPF-SLAM to estimate the mobile robot pose while building the map of its surrounding indoor environment. In this approach, each particle in RBPF represents an individual map of the environment and a possible trajectory of the robot. This method is implemented and tested on the RobuTER mobile robot while exploiting the data delivered by the LMS sensor equipping it. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed RBPF-SLAM in terms of (i) accuracy of the generated maps and (ii) the calculation of the actual robot pose.
Identification of temporal envelope cues in Chinese tone recognition

Abstract For tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, tone recognition is important for understanding the meaning of words, phrases or sentences. While fundamental frequency carries the most distinctive information for tone recognition, waveform temporal envelope cues can also produce a high level of tone recognition. This study attempts to identify what types of temporal envelope cues contribute to tone recognition and whether these temporal envelope cues are dependent on speakers and vowel contexts. Several signal-correlated-noise stimuli were generated to separate the contribution of three major temporal envelope cues – duration, amplitude contour, and periodicity – to tone recognition. Perceptual results show that the duration cue contributed mostly to discrimination of Tone-3, the amplitude cue contributed mostly to Tone-3 and Tone-4 discrimination, and the periodicity cue contributed to recognition of all tones. However, tone recognition based on temporal envelope cues was highly variable across speakers and vowel contexts. Acoustic analysis of these temporal envelope cues revealed that this variability in tone recognition is directly related to the acoustic variability between the amplitude contour and fundamental frequency contour.
The Challenge of Acute-Stroke Management: Does Telemedicine Offer a Solution?

Background Several studies have described successful experiences with the use of telemedicine in acute stroke. The objective of this study was to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and treatment delivery reliability, of telemedicine systems for the clinical and radiological assessment, and management of acute-stroke patients. Summary of Review A systematic review of the literature was carried out. Studies were included if they met the following criteria: (1) study population included participants with a diagnosis of suspected acute stroke, (2) intervention included the use of telemedicine systems to aid assessment, diagnosis, or treatment in acute stroke, and (3) outcomes measured related to feasibility in clinical practice, acceptability to patients, carers, and staff, reliability of telemedicine systems, and effectiveness in delivering treatment, especially tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). Overall, 17 relevant non-randomised studies reported that telemedicine systems were feasible and acceptable. Interrater reliability was excellent for global clinical assessments and decisions on radiological exclusion criteria although agreement for individual assessment items was more variable. Telemedicine systems were associated with increased use of tPA. Conclusion Although there is limited reliable evidence, observational studies have indicated that telemedicine systems can be feasible, acceptable, and reliable in acute-stroke management. In addition, telemedicine consultations were associated with improved delivery of tPA.
Restore and protect motivations following shame

Shame has been found to promote both approach and withdrawal behaviours. Shame theories have not been able to explain how shame can promote such contrasting behaviours. In the present article, the authors provide an explanation for this. Shame was hypothesised to activate approach behaviours to restore the threatened self, and in situations when this is not possible or too risky, to activate withdrawal behaviours to protect the self from further damage. Five studies with different shame inductions and different dependent measures confirmed our predictions. We therefore showed that different behavioural responses to shame can be understood in terms of restore and protect motives. Implications for theory and behavioural research on shame are discussed.