Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stereoacuity Following LASIK

Purpose To evaluate the effect of laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) on stereoacuity (SA). Methods This prospective study includes 200 patients scheduled for LASIK. SA was evaluated preoperatively and one week, one month and three months postoperatively using the Random Dot test. Patients with preoperative SA worse than 480 sec/arc were excluded from the study. Results The study included 138 female (69%) and 62 male (31%) subjects. Spherical equivalent was −0.5 to −12.0 D. Mean preoperative SA was 124.80±124.64 (range 480-15) sec/arc which deteriorated to 138.30±126.48 sec/arc one week after surgery (P=0.158) but improved to 111.30±112.15 sec/arc (P=0.002) one month and 103.65+112.20 sec/arc (P=0.001) three months postoperatively. Overall, stereoacuity decreased in 9.5%, increased in 32.5% and remained unchanged in 58% of patients (P=0.007). Patients with anisometropia had worse SA; eventually, SA increased in 5 non-amblyopic anisometropic patients. Conclusion Despite the overall improvement in mean SA after LASIK, a minority of patients experienced decreased SA. Anisometropic patients without amblyopia seem to have a chance for improved SA after LASIK.
Investigation of smart grid topologies using pilot installations experimental results

In order to make smart grid feasible, the respective (a) topology and (b) control infrastructure should be determined first for the low level of the grid, i.e. microgrids or even smaller grids like a residential in-house grid, and be expandable in a larger scale. Additionally, the experimental investigation of properly designed interconnected microgrids could simulate the behavior of the whole distribution grid and thus facilitate in the transition from the traditional to the smart electric grid. Two smart grid topologies are presented in this paper. The respective infrastructure for two small-scale microgrids, one for each topology, is presented. A first comparison between the two topologies is outlined and verified by the experimental investigation of the respective microgrids.
Analysis of the Association Between Motor and Anthropometric Variables with Change of Direction Speed and Reactive Agility Performance

Abstract There is an evident lack of studies examining the factors associated with reactive agility performances. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between anthropometrics, body composition, jumping capacity, reactive strength, and balance with a stop-and-go change of direction speed (CODS) and reactive agility. The total sample comprised 39 male (body height: 182.95 ± 5.19 cm; body mass: 80.66 ± 7.69 kg) and 34 female (body height: 171.45 ± 6.81 cm; body mass: 61.95 ± 6.70 kg) college-level athletes (21.9 ± 1.9 years of age). The variables included body height, body mass, the percentage of body fat (BF%), balance as measured by an overall-stability index, the countermovement jump (CMJ), a reactive-strength index (RSI), stop-and-go reactive agility, and stop-and-go CODS. To define the associations between motor and anthropometric variables with CODS and reactive agility, the participants were clustered into three achievement groups based on their CODS and reactive agility performances. The ANOVA showed a significant difference between the CODS-based achievement groups for the CMJ (F test = 3.45 and 3.60 for males and females, respectively; p < 0.05), the RSI (F test = 6.94 and 5.29 for males and females, respectively; p < 0.05), and balance (F test = 3.47; p < 0.05 for males). In females, the reactive agility achievement groups differed significantly in the RSI (F test = 6.46; p < 0.05), the CMJ (F test = 4.35; p < 0.05) and BF% (F test = 4.07; p < 0.05), which is further confirmed by discriminant canonical analysis (Can R = 0.74; p < 0.05). The results confirm the need for independent evaluation and training for both CODS and reactive agility performance in sports.
Fabrication of solid dispersion based patches using hot melt injection moulding and fused deposition modelling 3D printing

The poor aqueous solubility of many APIs, such as felodipine, are significant dissolution rate limiting factors that often lead to poor oral systemic bioavailability. Solid dispersions have been used as a formulation approach to improve drugs dissolution properties. Most of the reported solid dispersion formulations in the literature are binary mixtures with limited functionalities (with enhancing dissolution being the primary function). The aim of this study is to design, characterise and evaluate complex solid dispersions with intentionally designed microstructures (in the form of phase separations). The potential functionalities of these microstructures were explored by this project. In our view, the complex formulations are more representative of real pharmaceutical products in their final forms. HME-IM is a single processing technique for fabricating formulations with high geometric precision in a rapid, efficient and environmentally friendly way. It was used as the main processing method to produce the solid dispersion based buccal patches in this project. The patches were thoroughly characterised using conventional techniques including DSC, MTDSC, TGA, DVS, ATR-FTIR, PXRD, SEM, EDS, IR imaging, mucoadhesion and in vitro dissolution testing. In order to address the spatial distribution of the phase separations, two non-conventional characterisation methods, thermal analysis by structural characterisation and X-ray microcomputed tomography, were introduced to provide novel insights into the heterogeneity and phase distribution of these formulations. The results revealed that HME-IM patches with 10% drug loading were unsaturated while those with 20-30% w/w drug concentration were saturated or even supersaturated. HME-IM patches containing TPGS were more solubilising to felodipine and more stable compared to Tween 80 containing systems. Thermal analysis by structural characterisation provided rapid detection of heterogeneity and the thermal dissolution of crystalline drug fraction while XμCT provided microscale spatial distribution of different phases. Having shown the advantages of using polymeric blends to formulate solid dispersions that were demonstrated by the felodipine buccal patches, we further explored the use of polymer blends for improving the FDM 3D printability of pharmaceutical solid dosage forms with the potential applications in personalised medicine. This project demonstrated the potential and formulation principles of using HME-IM and FDM 3D printing as formulation methods for production of polymer blend based complex solid dispersions for the purposes of enhanced bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs and providing personalised medicines.
Echinoderm Phosphorylated Matrix Proteins UTMP16 and UTMP19 Have Different Functions in Sea Urchin Tooth Mineralization*

Studies of mineralization of embryonic spicules and of the sea urchin genome have identified several putative mineralization-related proteins. These predicted proteins have not been isolated or confirmed in mature mineralized tissues. Mature Lytechinus variegatus teeth were demineralized with 0.6 n HCl after prior removal of non-mineralized constituents with 4.0 m guanidinium HCl. The HCl-extracted proteins were fractionated on ceramic hydroxyapatite and separated into bound and unbound pools. Gel electrophoresis compared the protein distributions. The differentially present bands were purified and digested with trypsin, and the tryptic peptides were separated by high pressure liquid chromatography. NH2-terminal sequences were determined by Edman degradation and compared with the genomic sequence bank data. Two of the putative mineralization-related proteins were found. Their complete amino acid sequences were cloned from our L. variegatus cDNA library. Apatite-binding UTMP16 was found to be present in two isoforms; both isoforms had a signal sequence, a Ser-Asp-rich extracellular matrix domain, and a transmembrane and cytosolic insertion sequence. UTMP19, although rich in Glu and Thr did not bind to apatite. It had neither signal peptide nor transmembrane domain but did have typical nuclear localization and nuclear exit signal sequences. Both proteins were phosphorylated and good substrates for phosphatase. Immunolocalization studies with anti-UTMP16 show it to concentrate at the syncytial membranes in contact with the mineral. On the basis of our TOF-SIMS analyses of magnesium ion and Asp mapping of the mineral phase composition, we speculate that UTMP16 may be important in establishing the high magnesium columns that fuse the calcite plates together to enhance the mechanical strength of the mineralized tooth.
Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and the Offspring—Jack and Jill Are Different Still

Hyperglycemia is the most common metabolic disorder complicating pregnancies across the globe. With rising maternal age, obesity, physical inactivity (1), and increasingly stringent diagnostic criteria, about one in seven women now has a pregnancy complicated by hyperglycemia (2). The Australian Carbohydrate Intolerance Study in Pregnant Women (ACHOIS) confirmed that treating women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) reduces serious perinatal complications (infant death, shoulder dystocia, fracture and nerve palsy) (3). Likewise, a trial by Landon et al. (4) showed that treating women with hyperglycemia reduces maternal weight gain, gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, cesarean delivery, infant adiposity, and birth weight. Of note, the degree of glycemia in the Landon et al. trial was comparatively less than that in ACHOIS, as suggested by only 8% of women in the intervention arm requiring insulin therapy compared with 20% in ACHOIS. A secondary analysis in a subgroup of offspring in the original Landon et al. trial showed that male offspring had a lower birth weight percentile and fat mass and gained greater benefit from the maternal GDM intervention compared with female offspring (5). These landmark trials have changed the clinical practice of GDM, placing greater emphasis on glucose-lowering interventions to reduce obstetric and perinatal complications. Emerging evidence suggests that the intrauterine and early postnatal environment can influence cardiovascular and metabolic health in later life. Maternal hyperglycemia in GDM is thought to confer a greater risk of diabetes and obesity in exposed offspring via fetal programming. Animal models suggest similar associations but are hampered by …
Effects on in vitro and in vivo angiogenesis induced by small peptides carrying adhesion sequences

It is well known that tumor growth is strictly dependent on neo‐vessel formation inside the tumor mass and that cell adhesion is required to allow EC proliferation and migration inside the tumor. In this work, we have evaluated the in vitro and in vivo effects on angiogenesis of some peptides, originally designed to promote cell adhesion on biomaterials, containing RGD motif mediating cell adhesion via integrin receptors [RGD, GRGDSPK, and (GRGDSP)4K] or the heparin‐binding sequence of human vitronectin that interacts with HSPGs [HVP(351–359)]. Cell adhesion, proliferation, migration, and capillary‐like tube formation in Matrigel were determined on HUVECs, whereas the effects on in vivo angiogenesis were evaluated using the CAM assay. (GRGDSP)4K linear sequence inhibited cell adhesion, decreased cell proliferation, migration and morphogenesis in Matrigel, and induced anti‐angiogenic responses on CAM at higher degree than that determined after incubation with RGD or GRGDSPK. Moreover, it counteracted both in vitro and in vivo the pro‐angiogenic effects induced by the Fibroblast growth factor (FGF‐2). On the other hand, HVP was not able to affect cell adhesion and appeared less effective than (GRGDSP)4K. Our data indicate that the activity of RGD‐containing peptides is related to their adhesive properties, and their effects are modulated by the number of cell adhesion motifs and the aminoacidic residues next to these sequences. The anti‐angiogenic properties of (GRGDSP)4K seem to depend on its interaction with integrins, whereas the effects of HVP may be partially due to an impairment of HSPGs/FGF‐2. Copyright © 2010 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
OGIR: an ontology-based grid information retrieval framework

Purpose – A grid information retrieval model has benefits for sharing resources and processing mass information, but cannot handle conceptual heterogeneity without integration of semantic information. The purpose of this research is to propose a concept‐based retrieval mechanism to catch the user's query intentions in a grid environment. This research re‐ranks documents over distributed data sources and evaluates performance based on the user judgment and processing time.Design/methodology/approach – This research uses the ontology lookup service to build the concept set in the ontology and captures the user's query intentions as a means of query expansion for searching. The Globus toolkit is used to implement the grid service. The modification of the collection retrieval inference (CORI) algorithm is used for re‐ranking documents over distributed data sources.Findings – The experiments demonstrate that this proposed approach successfully describes the user's query intentions evaluated by user judgment. F.
A Design of Apparent-Age Estimation System by the Empirical Mode Decomposition

Recently, the automation of the age estimation technique is hoped for in various fields. Therefore, we propose an apparent-age estimation system using empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Conventional study reported that the time-frequency features are important for age estimation. However, these cannot necessarily extract the time-frequency feature in detail, because the classical technique that have a relationship of trade-off between the time resolution and the frequency resolution are used. On the other hand, the EMD is the novel time-frequency analysis technique that do not have the relationship of trade-off between the time resolution and the frequency resolution. The EMD gives a time-frequency analysis decomposing a signal into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). The IMF together with their Hilbert transforms are called the Hilbert–Huang spectrum, which leads to instantaneous frequency and amplitude. We use these features effectively for extracting human's age perception. We estimate the age by a neural network that learns pairs of face image and the Hilbert–Huang spectrum. Furthermore, we compress the data for neural network by using the simple principal component analysis (SPCA). In order to show the effectiveness of the proposed method, computer simulations are done by the actual human data.
An Analysis of Hard Drive Energy Consumption

The increasing storage capacity and necessary redundancy of data centers and other large-scale IT facilities has drawn attention to the issue of reducing the power consumption of hard drives. This work comprehensively investigates the power consumption of hard drives to determine typical runtime power profiles. We have instrumented at a fine-grained level and present our findings which show that (i) the energy consumed by the electronics of a drive is just as important as the mechanical energy consumption; (ii) the energy required to access data is affected by physical location on a drive; and (iii) the size of data transfers has measurable effect on power consumption.
Trapping of low-refractive-index nanoparticles in a hollow dark spherical spot

Optical trapping techniques have been of great interest and have advantages that enable the direct handling of nanoparticles. However, stable trapping of low-refractive-index nanoparticle remains challenging because the conventional two-dimensional hollow beams are only capable of trapping nanoparticle in the transverse plane. In this work, we propose a novel strategy to optically trap low-refractive-index nanoparticle in three-dimensional space with a hollow dark spherical focal spot, which is generated by 4Pi focusing of radially polarized first-order Laguerre–Gaussian beam. With the assumption that the laser power is 100 mW, the nanoparticles can be stably trapped with the maximal optical force of 0.3 pN, potential depth of 10 KBT and stiffness of 80 pN/μm. Moreover, both the number and the position of the focal spot can be controlled by modulating the focusing condition and the gradient phase of the illumination respectively, enabling the simultaneously trapping of multiple nanoparticles with complex motion trajectory. The technique demonstrated in this work may open up new avenues for optical manipulation and their applications in various scientific fields.
The local spiral structure of the Milky Way

Researchers have only recently begun to trace the spiral structure of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, and already find surprising results. The nature of the spiral structure of the Milky Way has long been debated. Only in the last decade have astronomers been able to accurately measure distances to a substantial number of high-mass star-forming regions, the classic tracers of spiral structure in galaxies. We report distance measurements at radio wavelengths using the Very Long Baseline Array for eight regions of massive star formation near the Local spiral arm of the Milky Way. Combined with previous measurements, these observations reveal that the Local Arm is larger than previously thought, and both its pitch angle and star formation rate are comparable to those of the Galaxy’s major spiral arms, such as Sagittarius and Perseus. Toward the constellation Cygnus, sources in the Local Arm extend for a great distance along our line of sight and roughly along the solar orbit. Because of this orientation, these sources cluster both on the sky and in velocity to form the complex and long enigmatic Cygnus X region. We also identify a spur that branches between the Local and Sagittarius spiral arms.
Review: On the analysis and interpretation of correlations in metabolomic data

A remarkable inherent feature of cellular metabolism is that the concentrations of a small but significant number of metabolites are strongly correlated when measurements of biological replicates are performed. This review seeks to summarize the recent efforts to elucidate the origin of these observed correlations and points out several aspects concerning their interpretation. It is argued that correlations between metabolites differ profoundly from their transcriptomic and proteomic counterparts, and a straightforward interpretation in terms of the underlying biochemical pathways will unavoidably fail. It is demonstrated that the comparative correlations analysis offers a way to exploit the observed correlations to obtain additional information about the physiological state of the system.
Pattern Recognition and Machine Vision : Simple Shape and Appearance Models

The Normal (or Gaussian) distribution is the most commonly used statistical distribution and has a number of remarkable properties. We will use the notation: G x (µ, Σ) = 1 (2π) n/2 |Σ| 1/2 exp −0.5(x − µ) T Σ −1 (x − µ) (1) to denote a normal distribution in the (possibly multidimensional) variable x with mean µ and symmetrical, positive definite covariance matrix Σ. In order to elucidate some of the properties of the multi-variate Gaussian, we will consider a mean-zero bivariate axis-aligned Gaussian. This is a Gaussian in two-dimensions, with a diagonal co-variance matrix. G x (µ, Σ) = 1 (2π) 2 |Σ| exp − 1 2 x 1 x 2 σ 2 1 0 0 σ 2 2 −1 x 1 x 2 G x (µ, Σ) = 1 (2π) 2 |Σ| exp − 1 2 x 1 x 2 1/σ 2 1 0 0 1/σ 2 2 x 1 x 2 When the covariance matrix is diagonal and the Gaussian is axis aligned, the variables, x 1 and x 2 are independent, since the joint PDF can be written as a product: G x (µ, Σ) = 1 (2π) 2 |Σ| exp − 1 2 x 1 x 2 1/σ 2 1 0 0 1/σ 2 2 x 1 x 2 = 1 (2π) 2 σ 2 1 σ 2 2 exp − 1 2 x 2 1 σ 2 1 + x 2 2 σ 2 2 = 1 (2π)σ 2 1 exp − x 2 1 2σ 2 1 1 (2π)σ 2 2 exp − x 2 2 2σ 2 2 1
An extension of Kane's method for deriving equations of motion of flexible manipulators

Kane's method, a powerful tool for deriving equations of motion of complex rigid-body systems, is extended to continuous flexible systems. Kane's equations are derived using energy concepts and without introducing the Passerello-Huston equations. The result is an energy method for deriving equations of motion of complex nonholonomic systems. Since the derivation does not require the introduction of coordinate transformations, equations are in a simple form. The powerful technique in Kane's method whereby generalized speeds are defined can also be applied. <<ETX>>
A Survey of Trust and Reputation Management Systems in Wireless Communications

Trust is an important concept in human interactions which facilitates the formation and continued existence of functional human societies. In the first decade of the 21st century, computational trust models have been applied to solve many problems in wireless communication systems. This cross-disciplinary research has yielded many innovative solutions. In this paper, we examine the latest methods which have been proposed by researchers to manage trust and reputation in wireless communication systems. Specifically, we survey the state of the art in the application of trust models in the fields of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and cognitive radio networks (CRNs). We classify the mainstream methods into natural categories and illustrate how they complement each other in achieving design goals. Major research directions are also outlined.
Distribution of Hepatitis C Virus Genotypes in Bahrain

Background: Approximately 170 million people are infected with Hepatitis C virus (HCV) worldwide, making it one of the world’s major infectious diseases. There are no published population based studies about the prevalence of HCV genotypes in Bahrain. Objectives: Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and distribution of HCV genotypes and subtypes among a large sample of patients with chronic HCV infection in Bahrain. Patients and Methods: Serum samples were collected from 202 HCV positive patients; of them 128 had a viral load (> 500 IU/mL) suitable for the type-specific genotyping assay. Gender-wise and age-wise differences in the distribution of HCV genotypes were determined by Chi Square and Fisher’s Exact tests. Results: The predominant genotype among Bahraini patients was type 1 (36.71%), followed by genotypes 3 and 4 (15.6% each) and the lowest frequency was found for genotype 2 (3.9%). Among genotype 1, subtype 1b had the highest frequency (21.09%), followed by subtype 1a (14.06%). Among genotype 3, subtype 3a had the highest frequency (11.72%), while among genotype 4, most of subtypes were undetermined. The frequency of all different HCV genotypes was higher in male patients compared to female patients. Genotype 1 was most common in the age group of 51 - 60 years (38.3%), genotype 2 in 21 - 30 years (60%) and genotype 3 in 51 - 60 years (30%), while genotype 4 was most frequent among the age group > 61 (40%). Conclusions: The most common HCV genotype in Bahrain was subtype 1b followed by 1a and 3a. Further studies involving sources of transmission in Bahrain are required to enhance control measures for HCV infection.