Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunological Hypoglycemia Associated with Insulin Antibodies Induced by Exogenous Insulin in 11 Chinese Patients with Diabetes

Aims. To investigate the characteristics of immunological hypoglycemia associated with insulin antibodies (IAbs) induced by exogenous insulin in Chinese patients with diabetes. Methods. The clinical data of patients with immunological hypoglycemia due to IAbs were retrospectively analyzed by screening patients with diabetes discharged from West China Hospital from 2007 to 2013. Results. A total of 11 patients (eight men and three women) were identified. Insulin-C-peptide separation was found in all patients via insulin and C-peptide release test. Previous insulin use was ceased after admission and was switched to oral hypoglycemic agents (OHAs) (8/11), lifestyle modification only (2/11), or regular human insulin (1/11). Hypoglycemia was ameliorated after a median of 20 days (interquartile range [IQR], 11–40), while IAbs turned negative after a median of 17 months (IQR, 4–19), and serum immunoreactive insulin (IRI) levels dropped substantially after a median of 22 months (IQR, 9–32) in these cases. Conclusions. In insulin-treated patients with unexpected and refractory hypoglycemia even after insulin therapy was gradually reduced or even withdrawn, IAbs induced by exogenous insulin should be considered, and insulin withdrawal might be promptly needed. The course of immunological hypoglycemia was benign and self-limited.
Study on Effect of MRI Scanner on Brain Tumour Detection

a day the technology took the paradigm shift in the area of medical field. It is now easy to diagnose the biological problems through different medical devices like CT scan, MRI, and X-rays etc. Tumor is an uncontrolled development of tissues in any piece of the body. Mind tumor is naturally genuine and life-debilitating due to its character in the constrained space of the intracranial hole. By and large, CT output or MRI that is coordinated into intracranial depression delivers a complete picture of cerebrum and this picture is outwardly analyzed by the doctor for identification and determination of mind tumor. In India 1.5 to 3 Tesla scanners are mostly used. But both have different Magnetic field effect. Because of the the different strength of Magnetic field there is a possibility of noise present in the image. This can create problem in detection of the accurate determination of location and size of tumor. Hiding patient information for further analysis is also very crucial for the confidentiality. security algorithm takes care for the hidden system and analysis of the patient. The survey identifies the efficient algorithm for finding the accurate tumor and also identifies its normality.
Website Morphing 2 . 0 : Technical and Implementation Advances Combined with the First Field Experiment of Website Morphing

We develop and test an improved algorithm for website morphing that, in some situations, can double the improvement of the current algorithm. The technical improvements, which nest the current algorithm, allow all morphs (not just the last morph) to affect customers’ purchases, allow for a cognitive penalty for switching, allow for more than one morph per customer, and choose when to morph endogeneously. Judicious modeling makes an otherwise intractable path-dependent optimization feasible in real time. Implementation improvements include a Gen2 website designed from the ground up to enhance Bayesian updating with sufficient variation among click alternatives, an attempt to define customer segments based on cultural as well as cognitive styles, and implementation in Japanese. The revised algorithm is tested with synthetic data to examine whether it is robust with respect to required tuning parameters. It is then implemented in the first test-vs.-control field experiment for website morphing. Prior proof-of-concept tests used synthetic data based on a priming study. The field implementation improved consideration, preference, and purchase likelihood for Suruga Bank’s card loans relative to a static website.
Long-Term Potentiation in Isolated Dendritic Spines

Background In brain, N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor (NMDAR) activation can induce long-lasting changes in synaptic α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionate (AMPA) receptor (AMPAR) levels. These changes are believed to underlie the expression of several forms of synaptic plasticity, including long-term potentiation (LTP). Such plasticity is generally believed to reflect the regulated trafficking of AMPARs within dendritic spines. However, recent work suggests that the movement of molecules and organelles between the spine and the adjacent dendritic shaft can critically influence synaptic plasticity. To determine whether such movement is strictly required for plasticity, we have developed a novel system to examine AMPAR trafficking in brain synaptosomes, consisting of isolated and apposed pre- and postsynaptic elements. Methodology/Principal Findings We report here that synaptosomes can undergo LTP-like plasticity in response to stimuli that mimic synaptic NMDAR activation. Indeed, KCl-evoked release of endogenous glutamate from presynaptic terminals, in the presence of the NMDAR co-agonist glycine, leads to a long-lasting increase in surface AMPAR levels, as measured by [3H]-AMPA binding; the increase is prevented by an NMDAR antagonist 2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (AP5). Importantly, we observe an increase in the levels of GluR1 and GluR2 AMPAR subunits in the postsynaptic density (PSD) fraction, without changes in total AMPAR levels, consistent with the trafficking of AMPARs from internal synaptosomal compartments into synaptic sites. This plasticity is reversible, as the application of AMPA after LTP depotentiates synaptosomes. Moreover, depotentiation requires proteasome-dependent protein degradation. Conclusions/Significance Together, the results indicate that the minimal machinery required for LTP is present and functions locally within isolated dendritic spines.
Slime layer formation and the prevalence of mecA and aap genes in Staphylococcus epidermidis isolates.

INTRODUCTION Staphylococcus epidermidis strains are frequently associated with catheter-related infection, acute bacteremia, and hospital-acquired infection. Some isolates produce an extracellular matrix called slime that may make them more resistant to antibiotics. The aim of this study was to determine antimicrobial resistance patterns, the prevalence of slime production, and the distribution of genes (mecA and aap, respectively) associated with these phenotypes in S. epidermidis nasal isolates from health-care personnel. METHODOLOGY A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 163 nasal swabs from health-care staff (one swab per subject). S. epidermidis isolates were tested for slime production on congo red agar and antibiotic resistance. PCR-based screening for mecA and aap genes was performed upon the extracted DNA of S. epidermidis isolates. RESULTS A total of 99 S. epidermidis strains were cultured from 58.9% of the study participants (n = 96). Of these strains, 34 (34.3%) isolates produced slime. A significant relation between slime production and resistance to penicillin 32(94%) , oxacillin 30(88%), tetracycline 20(59%), erythromycin 27(79%), and clindamycin 26(77%) was found. Respectively, 95.8% and 94.8% of all isolates were PCR-positive for mecA and aap, but only 59.8% of mecA+ strains were oxacillin-resistant and 37.3% of aap+ strains were slime producers. CONCLUSIONS The surveillance of nasal colonization with slime-forming oxacillin-resistant S. epidermidis in health-care workers might be helpful in breaking the epidemiological chain of hospital-acquired infections.
Multicomponent model of deformation and detachment of a biofilm under fluid flow

A novel biofilm model is described which systemically couples bacteria, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and solvent phases in biofilm. This enables the study of contributions of rheology of individual phases to deformation of biofilm in response to fluid flow as well as interactions between different phases. The model, which is based on first and second laws of thermodynamics, is derived using an energetic variational approach and phase-field method. Phase-field coupling is used to model structural changes of a biofilm. A newly developed unconditionally energy-stable numerical splitting scheme is implemented for computing the numerical solution of the model efficiently. Model simulations predict biofilm cohesive failure for the flow velocity between and m s−1 which is consistent with experiments. Simulations predict biofilm deformation resulting in the formation of streamers for EPS exhibiting a viscous-dominated mechanical response and the viscosity of EPS being less than . Higher EPS viscosity provides biofilm with greater resistance to deformation and to removal by the flow. Moreover, simulations show that higher EPS elasticity yields the formation of streamers with complex geometries that are more prone to detachment. These model predictions are shown to be in qualitative agreement with experimental observations.
Ricci Flow and Nonnegativity of Curvature

In this paper, we prove a general maximum principle for the time dependent Lichnerowicz heat equation on symmetric tensors coupled with the Ricci flow on complete Riemannian manifolds. As an application we construct complete manifolds with bounded nonnegative sectional curvature of dimension greater than or equal to four such that the Ricci flow does not preserve the nonnegativity of the sectional curvature, even though the nonnegativity of the sectional curvature was proved to be preserved by Hamilton in dimension three. The example is the first of this type. This fact is proved through a general splitting theorem on the complete family of metrics with nonnegative sectional curvature, deformed by the Ricci flow. §0 Introduction. The Ricci flow has been proved to be an effective tool in the study of the geometry and topology of manifolds. One of the good properties of the Ricci flow is that it preserves the ‘nonnegativity’ of the curvature. In dimension three, Hamilton [ H1] proves that on compact manifolds the Ricc flow preserves the nonnegativity of the Ricci curvature and the sectional curvature. Using this property and the quantified version, curvature pinching estimate, it was proved in [H1] that the normalized Ricci flow converges to a Einstein metric if the initial metric admits positive Ricci curvature. In particular, it implies that a simply-connected compact three-manifold is diffeomorphic to the three sphere if it admits a metric with positive Ricci curvature. One can refer [Ch] for an updated survey and [P2] for some recent developement on the Ricci flow on three manifolds. Later in [H2] it was proved that the Ricci flow also preserves the nonnegativity of the curvature operator in high dimension on compact manifolds. In the Kähler case, Bando and Mok [B, M] proved that the flow also preserves the nonnegativity of the holomorphic bisectional curvature. The Ricci flow on complete manifold was initiated in [Sh2]. In [Sh3] Shi generalized the above mentioned result of Bando and Mok to the complete Kähler manifolds with bounded curvature. Interesting applications were also obtained therein. Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0203023, USA.
A comparison model for the Wireless Local Area Network technologies: 802.11n and HeNB in LTE networks

Most of connections in indoor environments can be with high data rate due to local area characteristics, so the technologies for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) will become increasingly important in the future in terms of frequency reuse. Home evolved Node B (HeNB), known as Femtocell Access Point (FAP) and 802.11n WLAN belonging to WLAN are promising technologies to tackle these issues. Femtocells, however, use the IP Network as backhaul architecture instead of the conventional cellular network infrastructure. Thus, femtocell and Wi-Fi infrastructure networks have a lot in common. This raises a curiosity whether femtocell technology would replace existing Wi-Fi technology. This can be answered only by carefully analyzing the similarities and differences between the two technologies. In this article, the comparison and analysis between these two technologies based on PHY data rate and MAC layer throughput is essential to answer this question. The contributions of this article mainly fall on establishing throughput estimation and comparison for HeNB and 802.11n not much addressed in other works. Our main contribution falls on that the maximal throughput of 802.11n in MAC occurs when the number of active UEs is 4 instead of one. The model developed in this article can also be used to estimate the performance of HeNB for LTE-Advanced and the future 802.11ac and 802.11ad.
The ELBA Force Field for Coarse-Grain Modeling of Lipid Membranes

A new coarse-grain model for molecular dynamics simulation of lipid membranes is presented. Following a simple and conventional approach, lipid molecules are modeled by spherical sites, each representing a group of several atoms. In contrast to common coarse-grain methods, two original (interdependent) features are here adopted. First, the main electrostatics are modeled explicitly by charges and dipoles, which interact realistically through a relative dielectric constant of unity (). Second, water molecules are represented individually through a new parametrization of the simple Stockmayer potential for polar fluids; each water molecule is therefore described by a single spherical site embedded with a point dipole. The force field is shown to accurately reproduce the main physical properties of single-species phospholipid bilayers comprising dioleoylphosphatidylcholine (DOPC) and dioleoylphosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) in the liquid crystal phase, as well as distearoylphosphatidylcholine (DSPC) in the liquid crystal and gel phases. Insights are presented into fundamental properties and phenomena that can be difficult or impossible to study with alternative computational or experimental methods. For example, we investigate the internal pressure distribution, dipole potential, lipid diffusion, and spontaneous self-assembly. Simulations lasting up to 1.5 microseconds were conducted for systems of different sizes (128, 512 and 1058 lipids); this also allowed us to identify size-dependent artifacts that are expected to affect membrane simulations in general. Future extensions and applications are discussed, particularly in relation to the methodology's inherent multiscale capabilities.
An Exploratory Study of Information Retrieval Techniques in Domain Analysis

Domain analysis involves not only looking at standard requirements documents (e.g., use case specifications) but also at customer information packs, market analyses, etc. Looking across all these documents and deriving, in a practical and scalable way, a feature model that is comprised of coherent abstractions is a fundamental and non-trivial challenge. We conduct an exploratory study to investigate the suitability of information retrieval (IR) techniques for scalable identification of commonalities and variabilities in requirement specifications for software product lines. Accordingly, based on observations derived from industrial experience and on state-of-the-art research and practice, we also propose an initial framework, leveraging IR to systematically abstract requirements from existing specifications of a given domain into a feature model. We evaluate this framework, present a roadmap for its further extension, and formulate hypotheses to guide future work in exploring IR techniques for domain analysis.
Using Educational Tools for Teaching Object Oriented Design and Programming

The development of software systems is a complex process which requires a diverse set of skills and expertise. The Object Oriented programming paradigm has been proven to better organize the inherent complexity of software systems, than the traditional procedural paradigm. Hence, Object Oriented (OO) is becoming the dominant paradigm in the recent years. The software industry is placing increasing emphasis on newer, object-oriented programming languages and tools, such as Java. It is highly interested for software engineers capable to analyze and develop systems using the OO programming paradigm. The early exposure of students to object oriented programming has become increasingly important in both academia and industry. As an effect, after IEEE and ACM recommendations, the object oriented programming approach has established its place in the Computing Science (CS) Curricula of the Universities. Furthermore, a lot of research is being conducted with regards to the effective instructional methods for the Object Oriented design and programming. Such methods propose the utilization of educational tools for helping students overcome learning difficulties. The scope of this paper is to present some of the well known educational tools which can support the instructional process of Object Oriented design and programming. It also aims to show how one of the most widely known educational tool, called BlueJ, has been utilised and evaluated by students within an educational setting. Finally it discusses trends in the development of this tool (and other related ones) which could influence the teaching of Object Oriented design and programming .
Simulating closed- and open-loop voluntary movement: a nonlinear control-systems approach

In many recent human motor control models, including feedback-error learning and adaptive model theory (AMT), feedback control is used to correct errors while an inverse model is simultaneously tuned to provide accurate feedforward control. This popular and appealing hypothesis, based on a combination of psychophysical observations and engineering considerations, predicts that once the tuning of the inverse model is complete the role of feedback control is limited to the correction of disturbances. This hypothesis was tested by looking at the open-loop behavior of the human motor system during adaptation. An experiment was carried out involving 20 normal adult subjects who learned a novel visuomotor relationship on a pursuit tracking task with a steering wheel for input. During learning, the response cursor was periodically blanked, removing all feedback about the external system (i.e., about the relationship between hand motion and response cursor motion). Open-loop behavior was not consistent with a progressive transfer from closed to open-loop control. Our recently developed computational model of the brain-a novel nonlinear implementation of AMT-was able to reproduce the observed closed- and open-loop results. In contrast, other control-systems models exhibited only minimal feedback control following adaptation, leading to incorrect open-loop behavior. This is because our model continues to use feedback to control slow movements after adaptation is complete. This behavior enhances the internal stability of the inverse model. In summary, our computational model is currently the only motor control model able to accurately simulate the closed- and open-loop characteristics of the experimental response trajectories.
Parallel simulation of systemC TLM 2.0 compliant MPSoC on SMP workstations

The simulation speed is a key issue in virtual prototyping of Multi-Processors System on Chip (MPSoCs). The SystemC TLM2.0 (Transaction Level Modeling) approach accelerates the simulation by using Interface Method Calls (IMC) to implement the communications between hardware components. Another source of speedup can be exploited by parallel simulation. Multi-core workstations are becoming the mainstream, and SMP workstations will soon contain several tens of cores. The standard SystemC simulation engine uses a centralized scheduler, that is clearly the bottleneck for a parallel simulation. This paper has two main contributions. The first is a general modeling strategy for shared memory MPSoCs, called TLM-DT (Transaction Level Modeling with Distributed Time). The second is a truly parallel simulation engine, called SystemC-SMP. First experimental results on a 40 processor MPSoC virtual prototype running on a dual-core workstation demonstrate a 1.8 speedup, versus a sequential simulation.
From Where does our Health Come? : The Sociology of Antonovsky's Salutogenesis

In this paper, the authors examine critically the salutogenic theory/hypothesis addressed by Aaron Antonovsky (1923-1994). To remark our conclusion, the potential of salutogenic theory, which we value, should be highlighted in terms that it pointed out that health of human-beings is a dynamic and multi-dimensional status, and it has relative and more pragmatic aspects. We rather deem that the success in the measurement of Sense Of Coherence (SOC) using psychometric scales is less important, despite the fact that Antonovsky himself had high opinion on it as well as his peer scientists and the followers do. The authors discuss how we can develop the legacy of the research done by Antonovsky, focusing on the potential of qualitative research method.
Adaptive intelligent control of flexible link robot arm

In this study, adaptive control of flexible link model which is non-minimum phase and single-input, multiple-output (SIMO) is presented. The controllers designed aim to control the hub position in a way that attenuates the tip deflections with less energy consumption. Methods used to design the under actuated controller are WRBF network and neuro-fuzzy network and are compared to LQR and non-adaptive fuzzy controller. Learning method performed for adaptive schemes is emotional. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the designed controllers and reduction of energy demand in intelligent adaptive controllers.
Strategy Retold: Toward a Narrative View of Strategic Discourse

Using narrative theory, this article explores strategic management as a form of fiction. After introducing several key narrative concepts, we discuss the challenges strategists have faced in making strategic discourse both credible and novel and consider how strategic narratives may change within the "virtual" organization of the future. We also provide a number of narrativist-oriented research questions and methodological suggestions.
MCMC particle filter-based vehicle tracking method using multiple hypotheses and appearance model

In this study, we propose a multiple vehicle tracking method using multiple hypotheses and the appearance model. The multiple hypotheses are associated with multiple tracks using track-to-multiple hypotheses association method. A target state is estimated using the maximum a posteriori probability estimation method. The posterior probability is proportional to the product of a priori probability and the likelihood that is calculated using similarities of multiple hypotheses and the appearance model. The posterior probability density function is estimated using the Markov chain Monte Carlo particle filter. An optimal posterior target state is determined using a sample with the maximum a posteriori probability. Our experimental results show that the proposed method can improve multiple objects tracking precision as well as multiple object tracking accuracy.
The Effect of 2,4,6-Trinitro-m-Cresol on Cation and Anion Transport in Sheep Red Blood Cells

2,4,6-Trinitro-3-methyl-phenol (trinitrocresol, H+TNC-) was found to inhibit anion and stimulate cation movements across the membranes of both high potassium (HK) and low potassium (LK) sheep red blood cells. The concentration of TNC- required to inhibit SO4 - and Cl- efflux (10-5-10-3 M) was less than that required to increase Na+ and K+ leakage (10-3-10-2 M). Both the inhibition of anion and stimulation of cation permeation were reversed if TNC- was washed from the red cells. The cation leak caused by TNC- was much greater at 0° and 37°C than at room temperature (23°C). In sheep red cells, TNC- was found to be about 20 times more effective than salicylate and about 40 times more effective than thiocyanate in increasing cation leak. TNC- also inhibited the ouabain-sensitive potassium influx.