Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microstructure and Engineering Properties of Alkali Activated Fly Ash -as an environment friendly alternative to Portland cement

Alkali activated fly ash (AAFA), also named “geopolymer”, has emerged as a novel engineering material in the construction industry. This material is normally formed by the reaction between fly ash and aqueous hydroxide or alkali silicate solution. With proper mix design, AAFA can present comparable or superior engineering properties to Portland cement. Moreover, this material shows great potential for sustainable development since its production has a significantly lower CO2 emission than the production of Portland cement. This study aims at a better understanding of the microstructure and engineering properties (including mechanical properties, permeability and shrinkage) of AAFA with different activator content, i.e. SiO2 and Na2O. The evaluation of the mix proportion of the activator is not only based on the early age properties of AAFA, e.g. setting time, workability, heat release, mechanical properties , but also taking into account the durability related issues, such as permeability and shrinkage. The measurements results of AAFA were compared with those of Portland cement. These comparisons and further discussions reveal how the differences in microstructure affect the macro-properties of these two systems. In addition, the different performance of AAFA and Portland cement should be carefully evaluated when AAFA is used as an alternative to Portland cement.
Experiments with Tree-Structured MMI Encoders on the RM Task

This paper describes the tree-structured maximum mutual information (MMI) encoders used in SSI's Phonetic Engine® to perform large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognition. The MMI encoders are arranged into a two-stage cascade. At each stage, the encoder is trained to maximize the mutual information between a set of phonetic targets and corresponding codes. After each stage, the codes are compressed into segments. This step expands acoustic-phonetic context and reduces subsequent computation. We evaluated these MMI encoders by comparing them against a standard minimum distortion (MD) vector quantizer (encoder). Both encoders produced code streams, which were used to train speaker-independent discrete hidden Markov models in a simplified version of the Sphinx system [3]. We used data from the DARPA Resource Management (RM) task. The two-stage cascade of MMI encoders significantly outperforms the standard MD encoder in both speed and accuracy.
Transmitted human immunodeficiency virus-1 drug resistance in a cohort of men who have sex with men in Belo Horizonte, Brazil - 1996-2012

The presence of transmitted human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 drug-resistance (TDR) at the time of antiretroviral therapy initiation is associated with failure to achieve viral load (VL) suppression. Here, we report TDR surveillance in a specific population of men who have sex with men (MSM) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In this study, the rate of TDR was evaluated in 64 HIV-infected individuals from a cohort of MSM between 1996-June 2012. Fifty-four percent had a documented recent HIV infection, with a seroconversion time of less than 12 months. The median CD4+T lymphocyte count and VL were 531 cells/mm3and 17,746 copies/mL, respectively. Considering the surveillance drug resistance mutation criteria, nine (14.1%) patients presented TDR, of which three (4.7%), five (7.8%) and four (6.2%) had protease inhibitors, resistant against nucleos(t)ide transcriptase inhibitors and against non-nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors mutations, respectively. Two of the patients had multi-drug-resistant HIV-1. The most prevalent viral subtype was B (44, 68.8%), followed by subtype F (11, 17.2%). This study shows that TDR may vary according to the population studied and it may be higher in clusters of MSM.
Population genetics of ecological communities with DNA barcodes: An example from New Guinea Lepidoptera

Comparative population genetics of ecological guilds can reveal generalities in patterns of differentiation bearing on hypotheses regarding the origin and maintenance of community diversity. Contradictory estimates of host specificity and beta diversity in tropical Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) from New Guinea and the Americas have sparked debate on the role of host-associated divergence and geographic isolation in explaining latitudinal diversity gradients. We sampled haplotypes of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I from 28 Lepidoptera species and 1,359 individuals across four host plant genera and eight sites in New Guinea to estimate population divergence in relation to host specificity and geography. Analyses of molecular variance and haplotype networks indicate varying patterns of genetic structure among ecologically similar sympatric species. One-quarter lacked evidence of isolation by distance or host-associated differentiation, whereas 21% exhibited both. Fourteen percent of the species exhibited host-associated differentiation without geographic isolation, 18% showed the opposite, and 21% were equivocal, insofar as analyses of molecular variance and haplotype networks yielded incongruent patterns. Variation in dietary breadth among community members suggests that speciation by specialization is an important, but not universal, mechanism for diversification of tropical Lepidoptera. Geographically widespread haplotypes challenge predictions of vicariance biogeography. Dispersal is important, and Lepidoptera communities appear to be highly dynamic according to the various phylogeographic histories of component species. Population genetic comparisons among herbivores of major tropical and temperate regions are needed to test predictions of ecological theory and evaluate global patterns of biodiversity.
Molecular Adaptations to Exercise , Heat Acclimation , and Thermotolerance Cytosolic calcium transients are a determinant of contraction-induced HSP 72 transcription in single skeletal muscle fibers

Stary CM, Hogan MC. Cytosolic calcium transients are a determinant of contraction-induced HSP72 transcription in single skeletal muscle fibers. J Appl Physiol 120: 1260–1266, 2016. First published February 11, 2016; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01060. 2015. —The intrinsic activating factors that induce transcription of heat shock protein 72 (HSP72) in skeletal muscle following exercise remain unclear. We hypothesized that the cytosolic Ca transient that occurs with depolarization is a determinant. We utilized intact, single skeletal muscle fibers from Xenopus laevis to test the role of the cytosolic Ca transient and several other exercise-related factors (fatigue, hypoxia, AMP kinase, and cross-bridge cycling) on the activation of HSP72 transcription. HSP72 and HSP60 mRNA levels were assessed with real-time quantitative PCR; cytosolic Ca concentration ([Ca ]cyt) was assessed with fura-2. Both fatiguing and nonfatiguing contractions resulted in a significant increase in HSP72 mRNA. As expected, peak [Ca ]cyt remained tightly coupled with peak developed tension in contracting fibers. Pretreatment with N-benzyl-ptoluene sulfonamide (BTS) resulted in depressed peak developed tension with stimulation, while peak [Ca ]cyt remained largely unchanged from control values. Despite excitation-contraction uncoupling, BTS-treated fibers displayed a significant increase in HSP72 mRNA. Treatment of fibers with hypoxia (PO2: 3 mmHg) or AMP kinase activation had no effect on HSP72 mRNA levels. These results suggest that the intermittent cytosolic Ca transient that occurs with skeletal muscle depolarization provides a sufficient activating stimulus for HSP72 transcription. Metabolic or mechanical factors associated with fatigue development and cross-bridge cycling likely play a more limited role.
Evidence of Abnormal Epidermal Nerve Fiber Density in Fibromyalgia: Clinical and Immunologic Implications

A subset of patients with fibromyalgia (FM) exhibit a large fiber demyelinating peripheral polyneuropathy akin to that seen in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP). It has been suggested that this demyelinating process is likely to be immune mediated. Because it is known that similar large fiber neuropathic lesions may be associated with a cutaneous small fiber neuropathy, we sought to determine the prevalence of small fiber neuropathy, as measured by epidermal nerve fiber density (ENFD), in a series of patients with FM and clinically healthy control subjects.
Regional specialization of the hair cell plasmalemma in the organ of corti

Nonjunctional and nonsynaptic membranes of hair cells in the chinchilla organ of Corti were examined using the freeze‐fracture technique. Cy‐toplasmic leaflets of the apical membranes of hair cells have particles, 6–12 nm in diameter, but many more particles are found on apical membranes of outer hair cells than on inner hair cells. Cytoplasmic leaflets of the lateral membranes of outer hair cells are covered with large particles, but the corresponding regions of the inner hair cell membrane have fewer particles and these are small or medium‐sized. Two types of particle aggregate also distinguish this region of the inner hair cell. The first consists of patches of particles closely spaced in rec tilinear arrays. The second consists of parallel strands of widely spaced large particles similar in size, but not in distribution, to the large particles on the lateral membranes of the outer hair cells. The basal membrane of outer hair cells is distinguished from that of inner hair cells by plaques consisting of cross‐hatched in‐cisures in the external membrane leaflet. While the significance of these anatomical features is not yet apparent, they give the hair cell plasmalemma a richness of regional specialization found in few other cells and suggest that there are important functional differences between inner and outer hair cells.
Photosynthesis, Productivity, and Yield of Maize Are Not Affected by Open-Air Elevation of CO2 Concentration in the Absence of Drought1[OA]

While increasing temperatures and altered soil moisture arising from climate change in the next 50 years are projected to decrease yield of food crops, elevated CO2 concentration ([CO2]) is predicted to enhance yield and offset these detrimental factors. However, C4 photosynthesis is usually saturated at current [CO2] and theoretically should not be stimulated under elevated [CO2]. Nevertheless, some controlled environment studies have reported direct stimulation of C4 photosynthesis and productivity, as well as physiological acclimation, under elevated [CO2]. To test if these effects occur in the open air and within the Corn Belt, maize (Zea mays) was grown in ambient [CO2] (376 μmol mol−1) and elevated [CO2] (550 μmol mol−1) using Free-Air Concentration Enrichment technology. The 2004 season had ideal growing conditions in which the crop did not experience water stress. In the absence of water stress, growth at elevated [CO2] did not stimulate photosynthesis, biomass, or yield. Nor was there any CO2 effect on the activity of key photosynthetic enzymes, or metabolic markers of carbon and nitrogen status. Stomatal conductance was lower (−34%) and soil moisture was higher (up to 31%), consistent with reduced crop water use. The results provide unique field evidence that photosynthesis and production of maize may be unaffected by rising [CO2] in the absence of drought. This suggests that rising [CO2] may not provide the full dividend to North American maize production anticipated in projections of future global food supply.
An introduction to workplace-based assessments

Recent trends in medical education are moving rapidly away from gaining a certain number of marks in high-stakes examinations and towards gathering evidence of clinical competence and professional behavior observed in clinical environments (workplace-based learning). In the Miller's framework for assessing clinical competence, workplace-based methods of assessment target the highest level of the pyramid and collect information about doctors’ performance in their everyday practice. Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS), Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (mini-CEX) and Case-based discussion (CbD) are some of the most commonly used methods of workplace-based assessments. I explain these three methods of assessment and their advantages and discuss that if incorporated in a structured program of teaching for doctors in training, they can promote active, learner-centered learning and facilitate provision of developmental verbal feedback to the trainee immediately afterwards.
Impact du roseau commun (Phragmites australis) sur les assemblages et le comportement des oiseaux dans des marais d'eau douce du sud du Québec

The Common Reed (Phragmites australis) is one of the most invasive exotic plants of wetlands in North America. I evaluated the impact of reed invasion in Quebec freshwater marshes on i) the diversity and composition of bird assemblages as well as their abundance and ii) the spatial distribution of waterbirds during feeding activity and the abundance of aquatic invertebrates upon which they fed. Globally, I did not find a significant impact of reed on songbirds and waterbirds total abundance, richness and diversity at an invasion level up to 40%. For some marsh specialist and generalist passerine species, I found some differences in site occupancy and abundance between vegetation types. Nevertheless, presence of water and water depth had more influence on them than presence of reed. Invertebrate biomass was similar between reed beds and other vegetation types, but waterbirds avoided reed beds and preferred to feed in other types of vegetation or near them.
Composition of Juvenile Corals on Different Morphotypes of Substrate at Karimunjawa Archipelago, Indonesia

Rapid developments of industry and population growth have lead to ecological pressures on coastal areas. Semarang as capital of Central Java and port city, has an environment sensitivity which is important to be investigated. Sediment is an important part in aquatic environment because acts as sink or source of pollutant and could be used to assess coastal environment health. Three locations had been studied, i.e. Tanjung Mas Port, estuaries of Banjirkanal Barat and Banjirkanal Timur. These locations were compared to assess their health of sediment through elutriate sediment toxicity test. Eighteen grams of sediment from each locations were weighed and placed in 1 L Beaker glass. Eggs and sperm are taken from spawning of adult green mussel in laboratory. Thirty mL of sperm was added to the eggs and fertilized eggs were observed microscopically. Fertilized eggs were exposure to elutriate water-sediment from each location for 48 hour. Statistical analysis showed that there are significantly different abnormalities larvae percentage of sites 5, 8 and 13. The highest percentage of abnormality larvae occurred in Port Tanjung Mas, followed by Banjirkanal Timur and Banjirkanal Barat. Lead concentrations in sediments of coastal Semarang was ranged from 10.9 to 15.62 mg.kg -1 , with an average of 13.69 mg.kg -1 . Lead concentration was decreased form Port, Banjirkanal Timur and Banjirkanal, respectively. The abnormalities of green mussel larva may related to lead contamination. It could be concluded that sediment quality in Port area was very poor compare than other site. Keywords: bioassay , green mussel larvae, sediment, Semarang coastal area
A Lightweight Continuous Jobs Mechanism for MapReduce Frameworks

MapReduce is a programming model which allows the processing of vast amounts of data in parallel, on a large number of machines. It is particularly well suited to static or slow changing set of data since the execution time of a job is usually high. However, in practice data-centers collect data at fast rates which makes it very difficult to maintain up-to-date results. To address this challenge, we propose in this paper a generic mechanism for dealing with dynamic data in MapReduce frameworks. Long-standing MapReduce jobs, called continuous Jobs, are automatically re-executed to process new incoming data at a minimum cost. We present a simple and clean API which integrates nicely with the standard MapReduce model. Furthermore, we describe cHadoop, an implementation of our approach based on Hadoop which does not require modifications to the source code of the original framework. Thus, cHadoop can quickly be ported to any new version of Hadoop. We evaluate our proposal with two standard MapReduce applications (Word Count and Word Count-N-Count), and one real world application (RDF Query) on real datasets. Our evaluations on clusters ranging from 5 to 40 nodes demonstrate the benefit of our approach in terms of execution time and ease of use.
Phospholipase A2 inhibition and atherosclerotic vascular disease: prospects for targeting secretory and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 enzymes

Purpose of review Selective inhibitors of secretory phospholipase A2 and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 are potential candidates for reducing recurrent cardiovascular events in patients with established coronary heart disease (CHD). With the active enrollment of CHD patients into phase III clinical trials with both classes of inhibitors, this article reviews the available experimental animal and human trial evidence that provides the rationale for the development of the phospholipase A2 inhibitors varespladib methyl and darapladib as preventive therapy. Recent findings Recently completed experimental animal studies, human biomarker data, and vascular imaging studies provide support for proceeding with clinical outcome trials secretory phospholipase A2 and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 inhibition. Summary Both secretory phospholipase A2 and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 inhibitors hold promise for the reduction of recurrent cardiovascular events in patients treated with current standards of care. The completion of the ongoing clinical event trials has the potential to provide a new dimension to secondary preventive therapy.
Synbiotic Microcapsules That Enhance Microbial Viability during Nonrefrigerated Storage and Gastrointestinal Transit

ABSTRACT A Bifidobacterium infantis strain was microencapsulated within a film-forming protein-carbohydrate-oil emulsion. This novel encapsulant incorporated prebiotics and substantially protected the bacterium during nonrefrigerated storage and gastrointestinal transit. The dried microcapsules were small (15 to 20 μm), had low water activity (0.2 to 0.3), and rapidly released the bacteria in simulated intestinal fluid.
On the robust tracking control of kinematically constrained robot manipulators

This paper addresses the problem of robust controller design for holonomic constrained robotic systems which guarantees global asymptotic and exponential like stability of joints' position and velocity tracking error. It is well known that the presence of the constraints makes the controller design more complex as compared to the unconstrained robots such as serial manipulators. Control algorithms should be developed to satisfy both the system dynamics as well as kinematic constraints without explicit computation of the inverse kinematics. The paper develops a new robust control algorithm which can be applied in trajectory tracking control for both parallel and constrained serial manipulators. The method considers the constraint forces in the system dynamics to improve the system stability and tracking performance. The controller is designed through the direct Lyapunov approach and ensures asymptotic and exponential like stability in the position and velocity tracking errors. In order to verify the validity of the proposed control algorithm the algorithm is applied on two different illustrative examples.
Calibration Analyses and Efficiency Studies for the Anti Coincidence Detector on the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope

The Anti Coincidence Detector (ACD) on the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope provides charged particle rejection for the Large Area Telescope (LAT). We use two calibrations used by the ACD to conduct three studies on the performance of the ACD. We examine the trending of the calibrations to search for damage and find a timescale over which the calibrations can be considered reliable. We also calculated the number of photoelectrons counted by a PMT on the ACD from a normal proton. Third, we calculated the veto efficiencies of the ACD for two different veto settings. The trends of the calibrations exhibited no signs of damage, and indicated timescales of reliability for the calibrations of one to two years. The number of photoelectrons calculated ranged from 5 to 25. Large errors in the effect of the energy spectrum of the charged particles caused these values to have very large errors of around 60 percent. Finally, the veto efficiencies were found to be very high at both veto values, both for charged particles and for the lower energy backsplash spectrum. The Anti Coincidence Detector (ACD) on the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is a detector system built around the silicon strip trackermore » on the Large Area Telescope (LAT). The purpose of the ACD is to provide charged particle rejection for the LAT. To do this, the ACD must be calibrated correctly in flight, and must be able to efficiently veto charged particle events while minimizing false vetoes due to 'backsplash' from photons in the calorimeter. There are eleven calibrations used by the ACD. In this paper, we discuss the use of two of these calibrations to preform three studies on the performance of the ACD. The first study examines trending of the calibrations to check for possible hardware degradation. The second study uses the calibrations to explore the efficiency of an on-board hardware veto. The third study uses the calibrations to calculate the number of photoelectrons seen by each PMT when a minimum ionizing particle is detected, which is a useful value for performing simulations. « less
Retreatment of a Mandibular Molar with Chronic Apical Abscess and Internal Root Resorption with the GentleWaveÃ‚Â® Procedure: A 16-Month Clinical Case Report

Introduction: Internal root resorption is a progressive loss of dentin in teeth with inflamed and possibly partially necrotic pulp tissue. If diagnosed at early stages, the process is halted by endodontic treatment. While endodontic treatment is the preferred treatment modality for internal root resorption, current standard endodontic techniques pose a challenge for cleaning, disinfection and obturation of these irregular and inaccessible areas, especially within the apical third. Background: In the present clinical case report, a 57-year-old female patient presented on emergency basis with pain and swelling of the lower left side of her jaw. Extensive internal root resorption and a large periradicular lesion of the mesial root were identified during radiographic assessment of the mandibular left first molar which had in part undergone endodontic therapy but without apparent treatment of the mesial root. Methods: Endodontic access was performed and purulent drainage was evident. After removal of the previous obturation material, the subject tooth underwent cleaning and disinfection of the root canal system using the GentleWave® Procedure. Obturation was completed with the absence of any clinically significant voids. Results: At the 16-month reevaluation the patient was asymptomatic, radiographic analysis showed complete healing of the periradicular lesion and extensive healing of the alveolar bone. The case reported provides evidence for the use of the GentleWave Procedure in internal apical root resorption cases, even when inaccessible and irregular areas provide a challenge for standard techniques.