Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Abnormal Pregnancy Outcomes in Mice Using an Induced Periodontitis Model and the Haematogenous Migration of Fusobacterium nucleatum Sub-Species to the Murine Placenta

Objectives To investigate if there is subspecies specific migration to the placenta by Fusobacterium nucleatum (Fn) and to determine whether experimentally induced periodontitis results in adverse pregnancy outcomes (APO) in mice. Methods Periodontitis was induced in pregnant mice using an inoculum of Fn and Porphyromonas gingivalis. In parallel, four sub-species of Fn were individually injected into the circulatory system. At day 18 of gestation, the placenta, liver, spleen and blood were harvested and litter size, number of viable fetuses and resorptions, maternal, fetal and placenta weights were recorded. For the direct inoculation group, some mice were allowed to deliver for assessment of length of gestation, litter size, maternal, placental and pup weight. The presence of Fn was assessed by PCR and inflammatory mediators were measured by ELISA or multiplex analysis. Results Mice with alveolar bone loss, a marker of periodontitis, demonstrated significantly higher fetal weights (p = 0.015) and fetal/placental weight ratios (p = 0.030). PCR analysis of maternal organs did not identify Fn in any extracted tissues. In mice that received direct injection of Fn subspecies, varying degrees of APO were observed including preterm birth, intrauterine growth restriction, and fetal loss. Haematogenous spread of only Fn subsp. nucleatum to the placenta was confirmed. Litter size was significantly smaller (p = 0.023) and the number of resorptions was higher in inoculated versus control groups. Mice injected with subsp. nucleatum had significantly increased circulating CRP levels (p = 0.020) compared to controls while the mice with induced periodontitis had increased levels of IL-6 (p = 0.047) and IL-8 (p = 0.105). Conclusions Periodontitis in mice elevated fetal weight and the fetal weight/placental weight ratio. This study found that subsp. nucleatum migrated haematogenously to the placenta, leading to APO in mice. The study supports the potential role of Fn in the association between periodontitis and APO.
Cache size selection for performance, energy and reliability of time-constrained systems

Improving performance, reducing energy consumption and enhancing reliability are three important objectives for embedded computing systems design. In this paper, we study the joint impact of cache size selection on these three objectives. For this purpose, we conduct extensive fault injection experiments on five benchmark examples using a cycle-accurate processor simulator. Performance and reliability are analyzed using the performability metric. Overall, our experiments demonstrate the importance of a careful cache size selection when designing energy-efficient and reliable systems. Furthermore, the experimental results show the existence of optimal or Pareto-optimal cache size selection to optimize the three design objectives
Frequency, Size, and Localization of Bacterial Aggregates on Bean Leaf Surfaces

ABSTRACT Using epifluorescence microscopy and image analysis, we have quantitatively described the frequency, size, and spatial distribution of bacterial aggregates on leaf surfaces of greenhouse-grown bean plants inoculated with the plant-pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae strain B728a. Bacterial cells were not randomly distributed on the leaf surface but occurred in a wide range of cluster sizes, ranging from single cells to over 104 cells per aggregate. The average cluster size increased through time, and aggregates were more numerous and larger when plants were maintained under conditions of high relative humidity levels than under dry conditions. The large majority of aggregates observed were small (less than 100 cells), and aggregate sizes exhibited a strong right-hand-skewed frequency distribution. While large aggregates are not frequent on a given leaf, they often accounted for the majority of cells present. We observed that up to 50% of cells present on a leaf were located in aggregates containing 103 cells or more. Aggregates were associated with several different anatomical features of the leaf surface but not with stomates. Aggregates were preferentially associated with glandular trichomes and veins. The biological and ecological significance of aggregate formation by epiphytic bacteria is discussed.
A Reconfigurable Heterogeneous Multimedia Processor for IC-Stacking on Si-Interposer

This paper presents a heterogeneous multimedia processor for embedded media applications such as image processing, vision, 3-D graphics and augmented reality (AR), assuming integrated circuit (IC)-stacking on Si-interposer. This processor embeds reconfigurable output drivers for external memory interface to increase memory bandwidth even in a mobile environment. The implemented output driver reconfigures its driving strength according to channel loss between the implemented processor and the memory, so it enables highspeed data communication while achieving 8× higher memory bandwidth compared to previous embedded media processors. The implemented processor includes three main programmable intellectual properties, mode-configurable vector processing units (MCVPUs), a unified filtering unit (UFU), and a unified shader. MCVPUs have 32 integer (16 bit) cores in order to support dual-mode operations between image-level processing and graphics processing. This mode-configuration enables a frame-level pipelining in AR application, so the proposed processor achieves 1.7× higher frame rate compared to the sequential AR processing. UFU supports 16 types of filtering operations only with a single instruction. Most image-level processing consists of various types of filtering operations, so UFU can improve media processing performance and energy-efficiency. UFU also supports texture filtering which is performance bottleneck of common graphics pipeline. A memory-access-efficient (off-chip memory) texturing algorithm named as an adaptive block selection is proposed to enhance texturing performance in 3-D graphics pipeline. UFU has two-level on-chip memory hierarchies, a 512B level-0 (L0) data buffer, and an 8kB level-1 (L1) static random-access memory (SRAM) cache. The small-sized L0 data buffer limits direct references to the large-sized L1 SRAM cache to reduce energy consumed in on-chip memories. Unified shader consists of four homogeneous scalar processing elements (SPEs) for geometry operations in 3-D graphics. Each SPE has single-precision floating-point data-paths, since precision of geometry operations in 3-D graphics is important in today's handheld devices (high resolution). The proposed media processor is fabricated in 0.13 μm CMOS technology with 4 mm × 4 mm chip size, and dissipates 275 mW for full AR operation.
Tool for generating access patterns to replicate Web sites in mobile agents

A common problem facing mobile computing is disconnected operation, or computing in the absence of a network. Hoarding eases disconnected operation by selecting a subset of files for local storage. The purpose of this work focuses on the extraction of Web site access patterns. These patterns permit to establish access probabilities to Web sites, aiming at preselecting and replicating HTML files in a mobile computer. This approach of resource preloading in mobile computer permits the continuity of clients work without caring for the state of their connection to the network. Our system utilizes association rules that are extracted by data mining techniques for determining the set of items that should be hoarded to a mobile computer prior disconnection.
Microcystin‐LR induces protein phosphatase 2A alteration in a human liver cell line

Microcystin‐LR (MC‐LR) is a potent inhibitor of protein phosphatases 1 and 2A, and has potent hepatotoxicity and tumor promotion activity. Numerous studies on MC‐LR toxicity have been conducted in rat hepatocytes, but few studies of the effects of microcystins on human hepatocytes have been done. In this study, HL7702 cells (a human normal liver cell line) were incubated in MC‐LR for 24 h. The existence of MC‐LR in HL7702 cells was confirmed. Furthermore, PP2A activity and the alteration of PP2A subunits were assessed. The results show that PP2A activity decreased from the concentration of 1 μM MC‐LR, showing a concentration‐dependent decline, to about 34% at 10 μM MC‐LR. This activity undergone opposite change with alternations of phosphorylated Y307‐PP2A/C and PP2A/C subunit but showed same change with the alteration of the ratio of methylated L309‐PP2A/C to PP2A/C. B55α, a regulatory subunit of PP2A, was slightly increases in cells treated with the highest concentration of MC‐LR (10 μM), and colocalized increasedly with rearranged‐microtubules after 1 μM MC‐LR exposure. However, the proportion of early apoptotic cells did not show any change at various concentration of MC‐LR for 24 h. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing MC‐LR‐induced alteration of PP2A phosphatase in human cultured hepatocytes, and the mechanism of action seems to be similar as described before in vitro. The alteration of PP2A and microtubule seems to be the early event induced by MC‐LR exposure. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 29: 1236–1244, 2014.
A novel approach for prediction of multi-labeled protein subcellular localization for prokaryotic bacteria

We present a novel method to address multi-labeled protein subcellular localization prediction in gram-negative bacteria using support vector machines (SVM) as classifiers. For a given protein sequence that may have more than one label, features are extracted from amino acid composition and molecular function related terms in gene ontology (GO) as input to SVM. We apply one-against-others SVM to proteins of gram-negative bacteria in a 5-fold cross-validation. The results of the multi-labeled predictions are evaluated based on two criteria: class number and class category. For the first criterion, our method predicts the number of classes (class number) for each protein at an accuracy rate of 94.1%. For the second criterion, we compare the categories of the actual classes with the predicted classes proportionate to ranks, and obtain an accuracy of 83.2%. Our method is the first approach to predict and evaluate multi-labeled protein subcellular localization for prokaryotic bacteria and we demonstrate that it has a good predictive power.
Left and right ventricular diastolic functions in patients with rheumatoid arthritis without clinically evident cardiovascular disease

The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of diastolic dysfunction of the left ventricle (LV) and of the right ventricle in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) without clinically evident cardiovascular manifestations and to estimate whether there is a correlation between the duration of RA and the degree of LV diastolic dysfunction.
Reinvestigation of Phase Transitions in Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3 by TEM. Part I: First Order Rhombohedral to Orthorhombic Phase Transition

This study shows for the first time that the rhombohedral to tetragonal phase transition in Na0.5Bi0. 5TiO3 (NBT) is a two step phase transition. The transformation begins by a first order phase transition involving the reconstructive transformation of the rhombohedral phase into an orthorhombic one, through the formation of an intermediate modulated phase. This phase transition begins slightly over 200 °C by the disappearance of the ferroelectric−ferroelastic domains. The intermediate modulated phase is then formed from 230 to 300 °C, the temperature at which it disappears. The modulated phase corresponds to an intergrowth of rhombohedral perovskite blocks in which Pnma orthorhombic sheets are formed by a microtwinning process of the rhombohedral phase. The intermediate orthorhombic phase is then formed at 300 °C and immediately turns to the tetragonal one. A model is presented explaining the formation of the modulated phase and the origin of the antiferroelectric and relaxor behaviors of NBT.
Time-resolved small-angle X-ray scattering study of void fraction evolution in high-density polyethylene during stress unloading and strain recovery

By means of time-resolved small-angle X-ray scattering, we developed an analysis methodology to assess the void volume fraction ϕv in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) during tensile testing. The specimens were first drawn up to different imposed strains, and subsequently were subjected to stress unloading and strain recovery stages. During the loading stage, ϕv progressively increased with the strain level, starting from a well-defined onset strain prior to the yield point. In particular, ϕv reached a maximum of 8.75 vol% for a strain of 12.5% in the case of a HDPE grade with a molecular weight of 105 000 g mol−1. Stress unloading and strain recovery caused a decrease in ϕv attained at the end of the loading stage. For a HDPE grade with a molecular weight of 55 000 g mol−1, ϕv was more important during the loading stage and the decrease in ϕv was less marked during the stress unloading stage when compared to the HDPE with molecular weight of 105 000 g mol−1. The residual and reversible components of void volume fraction were revealed. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry
Predicting the expected accuracy for fingerprinting based WiFi localisation systems

WiFi localisation has become very popular in recent years. Most widely used are fingerprinting based techniques where a map of received signal strengths is used to infer the position based on comparing the current signal strength measurement to this map. Most research focuses on this inference itself and on the creation of accurate fingerprinting maps. In this paper we will not address those issues in depth but focus on analysing the fingerprint maps themselves in more detail. By looking closely into the maximum likelihood estimation for the position we will derive its expected uncertainty and show that it can be calculated for every possible position in advance from the fingerprint maps alone. This allows to derive an expected localisation accuracy map of the environment that can be used to assess and optimise the WiFi design based on localisation accuracy needs rather than relying on given access point placements solely based on coverage or signal-to-noise criteria.
Joint Closed-Loop Power Control and Adaptive Beamforming for Wireless Networks with Antenna Arrays in a 2D Urban Environment

The interference reduction capability of antenna arrays and the power control algorithms have been considered separately as means to decrease the interference in wireless communication networks. In this paper, we propose smart step closed-loop power control (SSPC) algorithm in wireless networks in a 2D urban environment with constrained least mean squared (CLMS) algorithm. This algorithm is capable of efficiently adapting according to the environment and able to permanently maintain the chosen frequency response in the look direction while minimizing the output power of the array. Also, we present switched-beam (SB) technique for enhancing signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) in wireless networks. Also, we study an analytical approach for the evaluation of the impact of power control error (PCE) on wireless networks in a 2D urban environment. The simulation results indicate that the convergence speed of the SSPC algorithm is faster than other algorithms. Also, we observe that significant saving in total transmit power (TTP) are possible with our proposed algorithm. Finally, we discuss three parameters of the PCE, number of antenna elements, and path-loss exponent and their effects on capacity of the system via some computer simulations.
Effect of Prepregnancy Maternal Overweight and Obesity on Pregnancy Outcome

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the association between maternal overweight and obesity on complications during pregnancy and delivery in Denmark. METHODS: A population-based study on a cohort consisting of all Danish women giving birth to a singleton from 2004 through June 30, 2010 (N=403,092) was undertaken. Women were identified from the Danish Medical Birth Registry, which contains data on 99.8% of all deliveries in Denmark. Maternal complications during pregnancy and delivery and fetal complications were classified according to the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision. RESULTS: The final study population consisted of 369,347 women, 20.9% being overweight (body mass index [BMI] 25–29.9), 7.7% obese (BMI 30–35), and 4% severely obese (BMI higher than 35). Overweight, obese, and severely obese women had more complications than did normal weight women. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) were significantly increased as follows: for gestational diabetes mellitus, 3.5, 7.7, and 11.0 for each BMI category; for preeclampsia 1.9, 3, and 4.4. Planned and especially emergency cesarean delivery was significantly increased with increasing BMI (OR ranging from 1.2 to 2.1). The risk of giving birth to a macrosomic neonate (greater than 4,500 g) increased significantly with increasing BMI (1.6, 2.2, and 2.7), as did the risks of having a neonate with a low Apgar score (1.3, 1.4, and 1.9) and having a stillborn fetus (1.4, 1.6, and 1.9). For shoulder dystocia the risk was significantly increased in the unadjusted analysis, but the significance disappeared in the adjusted analysis. No statistically significance was seen for hemorrhage and thrombosis. CONCLUSION: This study shows a significant increased risk of a wide variety of pregnancy, birth, and neonatal complications in overweight, obese, and severely obese women. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
A region of human BRCA2 containing multiple BRC repeats promotes RAD51-mediated strand exchange

Human BRCA2, a breast and ovarian cancer suppressor, binds to the DNA recombinase RAD51 through eight conserved BRC repeats, motifs of ∼30 residues, dispersed across a large region of the protein. BRCA2 is essential for homologous recombination in vivo, but isolated BRC repeat peptides can prevent the assembly of RAD51 into active nucleoprotein filaments in vitro, suggesting a model in which BRCA2 sequesters RAD51 in undamaged cells, and promotes recombinase function after DNA damage. How BRCA2 might fulfill these dual functions is unclear. We have purified a fragment of human BRCA2 (BRCA2BRC1–8) with 1127 residues spanning all 8 BRC repeats but excluding the C-terminal DNA-binding domain (BRCA2CTD). BRCA2BRC1–8 binds RAD51 nucleoprotein filaments in a ternary complex, indicating it may organize RAD51 on DNA. Human RAD51 is relatively ineffective in vitro at strand exchange between homologous DNA molecules unless non-physiological ions like NH4+ are present. In an ionic milieu more typical of the mammalian nucleus, BRCA2BRCI–8 stimulates RAD51-mediated strand exchange, suggesting it may be an essential co-factor in vivo. Thus, the human BRC repeats, embedded within their surronding sequences as an eight-repeat unit, mediate homologous recombination independent of the BRCA2CTD through a previously unrecognized role in control of RAD51 activity.
Evaluation of Spoken Document Retrieval for Historic Speech Collections

The re-use of spoken word audio collections maintained by audiovisual archives is severely hindered by their generally limited access. The CHoral project, which is part of the CATCH program funded by the Dutch Research Council, aims to provide users of speech archives with online, instead of on-location, access to relevant fragments, instead of full documents. To meet this goal, a spoken document retrieval framework is being developed. In this paper the evaluation efforts undertaken so far to assess and improve various aspects of the framework are presented. These efforts include (i) evaluation of the automatically generated textual representations of the spoken word documents that enable word-based search, (ii) the development of measures to estimate the quality of the textual representations for use in information retrieval, and (iii) studies to establish the potential user groups of the to-be-developed technology, and the first versions of the user interface supporting online access to spoken word collections.
Pattern diversity for single RF user terminals in multiuser environments

Although the utilization of multiple antennas enhances significantly the performance of multiuser systems, it is prohibitive for mobile devices due to size and power restrictions. In order to alleviate this problem we propose an alternative mobile architecture, built on compact antenna structures with fast beamforming capabilities. It is shown that the proposed architecture combined with a simple training procedure, enhances the average throughput of a multiuser system. The performance is compared with that of user devices with one or three antenna elements employing maximal ratio combining.
Prettier concurrency: purely functional concurrent revisions

This article presents an extension to the work of Launchbury and Peyton-Jones on the ST monad. Using a novel model for concurrency, called concurrent revisions [3,5], we show how we can use concurrency together with imperative mutable variables, while still being able to safely convert such computations (in the Rev monad) into pure values again. In contrast to many other transaction models, like software transactional memory (STM), concurrent revisions never use rollback and always deterministically resolve conflicts. As a consequence, concurrent revisions integrate well with side-effecting I/O operations. Using deterministic conflict resolution, concurrent revisions can deal well with situations where there are many conflicts between different threads that modify a shared data structure. We demonstrate this by describing a concurrent game with conflicting concurrent tasks.
Studying Fitting Effect by ANFIS in the Electrodialysis Process

Fuzzy system is known to predict model in the electrodialysis process. This paper aimed to study fitting effect by ANFIS in a laboratory scale ED cell. Separation percent of NaCl solution is mainly as a function of concentration, temperature, flow rate and voltage. Besides, ANFIS(Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System) based on Sugeno fuzzy model, its structure was similar to neural network and could generate fuzzy rules automatically, using the error back propagation algorithm and least square method to adjust the parameters of fuzzy inference system. We obtained fitted values of separation percent by ANFIS. Separation percent from experiments compared with the fitted values of separation percent. The result is shown that the correlation coefficient is 0.988. Therefore, it is verified as a good performance in the electrodialysis process.
STIMTAC: a tactile input device with programmable friction

We present the STIMTAC, a touchpad device that supports friction reduction. Contrary to traditional vibrotactile approaches, the STIMTAC provides information passively, acting as a texture display. It does not transfer energy to the user but modifies how energy is dissipated within the contact area by a user-initiated friction process. We report on the iterative process that led to the current hardware design and briefly describe the software framework that we are developing to illustrate its potential.
The Chromatic Number of Graph Powers

It is shown that the maximum possible chromatic number of the square of a graph with maximum degree d and girth g is (1 +o(1))d2 if g = 3, 4, 5 or 6, and is Θ(d2 / log d) if g [ges ] 7. Extensions to higher powers are considered as well.