Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Malignant Catarrhal Fever: Polymerase Chain Reaction Survey for Ovine Herpesvirus 2 and Other Persistent Herpesvirus and Retrovirus Infections of Dairy Cattle and Bison

Using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for sequences of ovine herpesvirus 2 (OHV2), this virus was shown to be significantly associated with sheep-associated malignant catarrhal fever (SA-MCF) in terminal cases of disease in 34 cattle and 53 bison. Ovine herpesvirus 2 was not detected in cattle (38) and bison (10) that succumbed to other diseases. Other persistent herpesviruses, retroviruses, and pestivirus, some of which have been previously isolated from cases of SA-MCF, were not associated with the disease. These included bovine herpesvirus 4 (BHV4), bovine lymphotrophic herpesvirus (BLHV), bovine syncytial virus (BSV, also known as bovine spumavirus), bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV), and bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV). A PCR survey for OHV2 in DNA from individual cow's peripheral blood lymphocytes in 4 dairies showed that the 1 dairy that was in close contact to sheep had a prevalence of OHV2 of 21.3%, whereas the 3 other dairies had no OHV2. Prevalence of the other herpesviruses and retroviruses in the dairy cows was variable, ranging from 2% to 51% for BHV4, 52% to 78.7% for BLHV, and 10% to 34% for BSV Bovine lymphotrophic herpesvirus and BSV were also found in a few (1–4 of 21 tested) cases of terminal SA-MCF, but BIV and BVDV were not found in either the dairy cows sampled, or in the cases of SA-MCF. No significant correlation was found between the presence of any 2 viruses (OHV2, BHV4, BLHV, BSV) in the dairy cows or terminal cases of SA-MCF.
Overnight Orthokeratology: Refractive and Corneal Recovery After Discontinuation of Reverse-Geometry Lenses

Purpose. To determine the refractive and corneal topographic recovery after the use of reverse-geometry contact lenses for overnight orthokeratology. Methods. Both eyes of 15 subjects were fitted with reverse-geometry contact lenses that were worn by the subjects for 1 month. Uncorrected visual acuity, refractive correction (sphere and spherical equivalent), corneal curvature, and corneal thickness were measured during this time and for 2 weeks after discontinuation of lens wear. Results. Ten subjects completed the investigation. Uncorrected visual acuity, refractive correction, and corneal curvature had changed significantly (P= 0.01) after 1 month of lens wear. By the end of 1 month, central corneal thickness was significantly thinner than the baseline value (P= 0.01), but it recovered fully after one night of no lens wear. Recovery of corneal curvature was complete 1 week after lens wear was discontinued. Refractive correction and binocular uncorrected visual acuity recovered fully after 2 weeks. Monocular uncorrected visual acuity remained significantly (P= 0.01) different from baseline acuity 2 weeks after lens discontinuation. Conclusions. Full effect of overnight orthokeratology in low myopes is achieved within 1 week of initiating use of reverse-geometry lenses. Recovery after short-term use of reverse-geometry lenses is rapid for corneal thickness and corneal curvature. Refractive correction and binocular uncorrected visual acuity recovered fully after 2 weeks. Monocular uncorrected visual acuity was the slowest to recover and had not achieved full recovery after 2 weeks.
Visual Sentiment Analysis with Network in Network

In modern society, visual content like images and videos is increasingly becoming a new form of media to express users’ opinions on the Internet. As a complement to textual sentiment analysis, visual sentiment analysis intends to provide more robust information for data analytics by extracting emotion and sentiment toward topics and events from images and videos. Inspired by recent works that applied deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) to this challenging problem, we proposed a framework for image sentiment analysis with a novel deep neural network called Network in Network (NIN) which intends to improve the discriminability for local patches within receptive fields. We trained our network on a dataset consisting of nearly half a million Flickr images and minimized the effect of noisy training data by fine-tuning the network in a progressive manner. Extensive experiments conducted on manually labeled Twitter images show that the proposed architecture performs better in visual sentiment analysis than conventional CNN and other traditional algorithms.
A study of social graph analysis for preschool education using face authentication: Pruning for centrality optimization in graph analysis

Social graph analysis for preschool education is discussed in this paper. Our social graph describes relations between preschool children and preschool teachers. The preschool teachers wear eyeglasses equipped with a video camera, and they take a video in their childcare. The social graph is created by a face recognition and authentication systems that perform identification for children and preschool teachers from the video. Some centralities of our graph are computed, and analyze the preschool education. When we take a long video, our social graph may become a complete graph, so that values of the centralities for all children are equal; it is our technical issues. In this paper, we discuss graph pruning and optimize our centralities for the graph analysis. Our performances of graph pruning are shown in our experiments.
Direct Growth of Large-Area Graphene by Cross-Linked Parylene Graphitization Toward Photodetection

Large area uniform graphene was directly grown on insulating substrate by cross-linked Parylene graphitization. The as-grown graphene was used for the fabrication of graphene-Si Schottky junction photodetector with a responsivity of 275.9 mA/W. c 2019 The Author(s)
Genetic Inferences and Breeding Implications from Analysis of Cranberry Germplasm Anthocyanin Profiles

ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS. Vaccinium macrocarpon, fruit, methoxylation, glycosylation, cyanidin, peonidin ABSTRACT. A diversity of anthocyanins exists among angiosperm species. Studies indicate that various anthocyanins differ in antioxidant potential, their bioavailability, and stability during processing. The fruit of the American cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon Ait. , is recognized as having six anthocyanins, composed largely of 3-O-galactosides and 3-O-arabinosides, and to lesser amount (≈6%), 3-O-glucosides of the aglycones cyanidin and peonidin. This study analyzed proportions of these six anthocyanins from >250 accessions of a germplasm collection over harvest dates. Fruit samples from 78 selected accessions, based on the fi rst year analysis, were also analyzed a second year. Principal component analysis identifi ed general negative relationships between the proportions of cyanidin versus peonidin, arabinosides versus glucosides, and galactosides versus arabinosides and glucosides. These relationships were consistent across the 2 years. Most variation in germplasm anthocyanin profi les refl ected variation of cyanidin versus peonidin proportions, with cyanidin to peonidin ratios ranging from 3.6:1 to 0.5:1. Variation for glycosylation profi les was also evident, with galactoside proportions ranging from 64% to 75%, arabinoside proportions ranging from 20% to 33%, and glucoside proportions ranging from 3% to 9%. Evidence for both signifi cant qualitative and quantitative genetic variation exists for the methoxylation of cyanidin to peonidin. Signifi cant quantitative genetic variation is also apparent for glycosylation.
A Precision Amplitude-Distribution Amplifier

A new electronic slicer circuit produces output pulses whenever a random input voltage x(t) is between two slicing levels X - ? x/2 and X+? x/2. The slicer pulses gate a counter to produce a direct digital readout count equal to the estimated first-order probability density of the input signal. The system was designed for random process studies with conventional electronic analog computers and has compatible accuracy.
Cancer Prognostic Evaluation via Support Vector Machines

: In this paper we considered a very challenging medical decision making problem: the short-term prognosis evaluation of breast cancer patients. In particular, the oncologist has to predict the more likely outcome of the disease in terms of survival or recurrence after a given follow-up period: “good” prognosis if the patient is still alive and has not recurrence after the follow-up period, “poor” prognosis if the patient has recurrence or dies within the follow-up period. This prediction can be realized on the basis of the execution of specific clinical tests and patient examinations. The relevant medical decision making problem has been formulated as a supervised binary classification problem. By the framework of generalized Support Vector Machine models, we tested and validate the behavior of four kernel based classifiers: Linear, Polynomial, Gaussian and Laplacian. The overall results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approaches for solving the relevant medical decision making problem .
Effects of Temperature and Pressure on Acute Stroke Incidence Assessed Using a Korean Nationwide Insurance Database

Background and Purpose Many studies have evaluated the association between weather and stroke, with variable conclusions. Herein we determined the relationships between daily meteorological parameters and acute stroke incidence in South Korea. Methods Patients with acute stroke (2,894) were identified by standard sampling of a nationwide insurance claims database from January to December 2011. We used multiple Poisson regression analyses of stroke incidence and meteorological parameters (mean temperature, diurnal temperature change, temperature differences over the preceding 24 hours, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed, and physiologically equivalent temperature) to calculate the relative risk of stroke incidence associated with meteorological parameters. Results There were no seasonal variations in the incidences of ischemic (2,176) or hemorrhagic (718) stroke. Temperature change during the day was positively correlated with ischemic stroke in men (relative risk [RR] 1.027; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.006–1.05) and older patients (≥65 years) (RR 1.031, 95% CI 1.011–1.052). Temperature differences over the preceding 24 hours had a negative correlation with all strokes (RR 0.968, 95% CI 0.941–0.996), especially among older women. Diurnal variation of atmospheric pressure was also significantly associated with the incidence of ischemic stroke (age<65 years, RR 1.051, 95% CI 1.011–1.092; age≥65 years, RR 0.966, 95% CI 0.936–0.997). Conclusions Diurnal temperature change, temperature differences over the preceding 24 hours, and diurnal variation of atmospheric pressure were associated with daily stroke incidence. These findings may enhance our understanding of the relationship between stroke and weather.
On unbounded optimal controls in coefficients for ill-posed elliptic Dirichlet boundary value problems

We consider an optimal control problem associated to Dirichlet boundary value problem for linear elliptic equations on a bounded domain Ω . We take the matrix-valued coe(cid:30)cients A ( x ) of such system as a control in L 1 (Ω; R N (cid:2) R N ) . One of the important features of the admissible controls is the fact that the coe(cid:30)cient matrices A ( x ) are non-symmetric, unbounded on Ω , and eigenvalues of the symmetric part A sym = ( A + A t ) = 2 may vanish in Ω
Gene expression Automated Inference of Symbolic Models for Gene Regulatory Networks

Motivation: Multiple models exist to describe the topology and the dynamical behavior of gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Among them, symbolic models (such as systems of ordinary differential equations) have the advantage of providing intuitive insights into the inner workings of a network so that general laws can be derived. Obtaining such models from time series data has proven to be a difficult task because biologists must rely on existing first principles. In this project, I propose to enhance the use of grammatical evolution as an alternative to existing work on automatic extraction of symbolic models for GRNs from temporal data. Results: I present GERNI (Grammatical Evolution Regulatory Network Inferrer). This tool uses grammatical evolution to infer a system of differential equations that describes a given time series. My results indicate that GERNI is able to infer the structure of certain classes of systems and that it does so within a small number of generations. Nonetheless, further work is necessary to ensure that the program is able to deal with more complex types of data. Availability: All computer code will be hosted at http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~andrescj Contact: andrescj@cs.colostate.edu Supplementary information: N/A.
Stent-assisted coiling of paraclinoid aneurysms: risks and effectiveness

Background Stent assistance for treatment of wide-based aneurysms is becoming rapidly accepted. Methods Cases of aneurysms arising in the paraclinoid location of the internal carotid artery treated with intracranial stents and/or bare platinum coils were analyzed retrospectively from our prospectively collected database. We identified 70 aneurysms treated with stent assistance (including one stenting-alone case) and 24 aneurysms treated with coiling alone. Stenting-assisted coiling was achieved either as a one-time treatment or as a two-step maneuver with the stent placed several weeks before coiling, or stent-assisted coiling was used as a second maneuver in aneurysms that recanalized after previous coiling. Results In aneurysms treated with stent assistance, 60% had ≥95% occlusion at treatment completion, a result comparing favorably with the 54.2% rate of ≥95% occlusion associated with coiling alone. At last follow-up, 60 aneurysms treated with stent assistance had a 66.7% incidence of ≥95% occlusion, with no in-stent stenosis; 75% of patients treated with coiling alone had ≥95% aneurysm occlusion. Thrombus occurred during stent deployment in two patients, one with and one without neurologic sequelae; stent displacement occurred in one patient without neurologic sequelae. At last follow-up, 57 of 62 patients (91.9%) treated with stent-assisted coiling experienced excellent/good outcomes (modified Rankin scale score ≤2). These results compared favorably with those for the coiling-alone group in which 23 of 24 (95.8%) had good outcomes. Conclusion Stent-assisted coiling of paraclinoid aneurysms did not add significantly to morbidity; overall effectiveness was comparable to that of bare coiling of paraclinoid aneurysms. These results require confirmation by a prospective controlled trial.
Capillary electrophoresis method for determination of D‐serine and its application for monitoring of serine racemase activity

Serine racemase (SR) is an enzyme responsible for the biosynthesis of D‐serine, the coagonist of the N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate receptor, in the brain. Therefore, it has been suggested as a possible therapeutic target for the treatment of various neurodegenerative diseases. To develop a potent inhibitor of SR, a simple, sensitive, fast, and robust assay is needed. In this paper, a new CE method for the determination of D‐serine is described. Serine enantiomers are resolved in the form of o‐phthaldialdehyde (OPA)/2‐mercaptoethanol (2‐ME) derivatives in an alkaline BGE composed of 50 mM sodium tetraborate, pH 9.7, and containing 40 mM 2‐hydroxypropyl‐γ‐CD as a chiral selector. The problem of time‐limited stability of OPA/2‐ME derivatives has been overcome by employing in‐capillary derivatization of the sample, i.e., the derivatization reaction was carried out directly in the separation capillary in the first phase of the CE run. UV‐absorption detection at 230 nm allowed concentration detection limit of 3 μM. Baseline resolution of D‐ and L‐serine derivatives was achieved in less than 10 min. This fact, together with the simple sample pretreatment, allowed application of the method to medium‐throughput monitoring of SR activity, such as the screening of potential SR inhibitors. A good agreement was achieved between the developed CE method and the previously established HPLC method for determination of the inhibition constant, Ki, of a new SR inhibitor, L‐erythro‐3‐hydroxyaspartate.
Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen Ligands for Imaging and Therapy

The prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is highly expressed on most prostate cancer (PC) cells. Therefore, the targeting of PSMA has become increasingly important over the last decade. Glu-urea–based PSMA ligands used for both imaging and radioligand therapy are the mainstays of the current success. For PET imaging, both 68Ga- and 18F-labeled agents have been successfully translated to clinical applications. Mainly retrospective cohort studies have shown a high value in the setting of biochemical recurrence, with high detection rates even in the presence of low prostate-specific antigen levels. Preliminary data indicated that radioguided surgery with PSMA ligands may help to further improve patient outcomes because it facilitates the removal of small tumor deposits that are otherwise difficult to detect. For primary PC, PSMA ligand PET imaging has been shown to be superior to cross-sectional imaging for the detection of metastatic lymph nodes. In addition, it promises to also provide intraprostatic tumor localization, especially when used in combination with multiparametric MRI. Increasing numbers of studies have reported considerable changes in management resulting from PSMA ligand PET imaging for both biochemical recurrence and primary disease. The use of 177Lu-PSMA–based radioligand therapy has demonstrated a reasonable response, mainly as defined by a prostate-specific antigen response of more than 50%, comparable to other recently introduced agents. Especially given the high level of safety of 177Lu-PSMA radioligand therapy, with only minimal grade 3 and 4 toxicities reported so far, it has the potential to expand options for metastatic castration-resistant PC. This review is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the current literature on low-molecular-weight PSMA ligands for both PET imaging and therapeutic approaches, with a focus on agents that have been clinically adopted.
Confronting the Past: Corruption in Post-Communist Hungary and Romania

Why are some states more corrupt than others? More specifically, why is post-communist Romania significantly more corrupt than post-communist Hungary even though both transitioned to democracy from USSR satellite states in 1989 and both went on to enter the European Union? This paper argues that though the implementation of communism in political institutions at the time of transition cannot serve as an explanatory factor, Romania’s patrimonial pre-communist history developed a foundation of corruption and the lack of turnover in political leadership during the transition from communism to democracy played a critical role in continuing this corrupt pre-communist foundation. Conversely, Hungary featured a theme of political turnover throughout its pre-communist past, communist past and also in its leadership into democracy, which allowed it to avoid a cultural foundation of corruption. Moreover, international institutions such as the European Union had the opportunity to promote an anti-corruption platform in Romania, yet the EU had is own problematic institutions.
Homomorphic Analysis and Modeling of ECG Signals

Homomorphic analysis and pole-zero modeling of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are presented in this paper. Four typical ECG signals are considered and deconvolved into their minimum and maximum phase components through cepstral filtering, with a view to study the possibility of more efficient feature selection from the component signals for diagnostic purposes. The complex cepstra of the signals are linearly filtered to extract the basic wavelet and the excitation function. The ECG signals are, in general, mixed phase and hence, exponential weighting is done to aid deconvolution of the signals. The basic wavelet for normal ECG approximates the action potential of the muscle fiber of the heart and the excitation function corresponds to the excitation pattern of the heart muscles during a cardiac cycle. The ECG signals and their components are pole-zero modeled and the pole-zero pattern of the models can give a clue to classify the normal and abnormal signals. Besides, storing only the parameters of the model can result in a data reduction of more than 3:1 for normal signals sampled at a moderate 128 samples/s.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Tuberculosis Among Children at an HIV Care Program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis is challenging in children with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. We describe the clinical features, diagnostic testing results, tuberculosis and HIV treatment and clinical outcomes of 57 HIV-infected children diagnosed with tuberculosis at the DarDar Pediatric Program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In this cohort, tuberculosis was common, microbiologic studies were frequently negative and mortality was high.
Starvation- and antibiotics-induced formation of persister cells in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

BACKGROUND Planktonic stationary and exponential cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa are highly resistant to killing by bactericidal antimicrobials because of the presence of persisters, cells that are multidrug tolerant and play a key role in the recalcitrance of biofilm infections. AIM The aim of this study was to investigate the formation of persister cells in P. aeruginosa stationary vs. exponential cultures using different class antimicrobials. METHODS The susceptibilities of P. aeruginosa PAO1 wild-type and mutant strains to antimicrobials were determined by standard microtiter broth dilution method. In order to determine persister formation, dose- and time-dependent killing experiments were performed with antibiotics. RESULTS Ceftazidime (Cephalosporin) showed little efficacy against either culture. Stationary-phase cells were more tolerant to imipenem (Carbapenem) than exponential cells, leaving a small fraction of persisters at high imipenem concentration in both populations. Polymyxin B (Polymyxin) appeared to be ineffective at low concentrations against both cell populations. Very high polymyxin B concentration completely eradicated exponential cells and regrowth was seen in a stationary population. Stationary cells were more tolerant to tobramycin (Aminoglycoside) than exponential cells but a higher concentration of tobramycin completely eliminated survivors. Ciprofloxacin (Fluoroquinolone) at a low concentration resulted in killing of both cultures of P. aeruginosa, producing persisters that were invulnerable to killing. CONCLUSIONS Stationary cells appear to be somewhat more tolerant than exponential cells in all of these assays. We also showed that nutrient deprivation (serine starvation) regulated by stringent and general stress response, contribute to the increased tolerance of P. aeruginosa exponential and stationary planktonic cells via production of persisters.
Effect of voiced speech parameters on the intelligibility of PB words.

The voiced/unvoiced regions of PB words are segmented on the basis of the energy in time segments. It is shown that the energy parameter works quite well and better than zero crossings rate (ZCR) for this segmentation. The real poles and formants of the voiced speech production model are obtained by solving a polynomial whose coefficients are determined by Prony’s or covariance formulation of linear prediction. The effect of these poles and formants on the intelligibility is investigated by using zero filters to suppress them adaptively. With this approach, one or more formants or real poles are removed from the natural speech without affecting anything else. The processed words were presented to listeners using an on−line speech intelligibility measurement system. The results indicated that the suppression of real poles and third and fourth formants did not degrade intelligibility, while the suppression of first and second formants lowered the average intelligibility scores by 7.6% and 27.6%, respectivel.