Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 104-week pulmonary toxicity assessment of long and short single-wall carbon nanotubes after a single intratracheal instillation in rats

Abstract We compared long-term pulmonary toxicities after a single intratracheal instillation of two types of dispersed single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), namely, those with relatively long or short linear shapes with average lengths of 8.6 and 0.55 µm, respectively. Both types of SWCNTs were instilled intratracheally in male F344 rats at 0.2 or 1.0 mg/kg (long SWCNTs) or 1.0 mg/kg (short SWCNTs). Pulmonary responses were characterized at 26, 52 and 104 weeks after a single instillation. Inflammatory changes, test substance deposition, test substance engulfment by macrophages, and alveolar wall fibrosis were observed in the lungs of almost all test rats at 52 and 104 weeks after short nanotube instillation. The incidences of these changes were much lower in the long nanotube-treated groups. In almost all rats of the long nanotube-treated groups, fibrosis and epithelium loss in the terminal bronchiole with test substance deposition were observed. These bronchiolar changes were not observed after administering short nanotubes. Both bronchiolo-alveolar adenoma and carcinoma were found in the negative-control group, the high-dose long-nanotube group, and the short-nanotube group at 104 weeks post-instillation, although the incidences were not statistically different. The genotoxicity of the SWCNTs was also evaluated by performing in vivo comet assays with lung cells obtained 26 weeks post-instillation. No significant changes in the percent tail deoxyribonucleic acid were found in any group. These findings suggested that most long SWCNTs were deposited at the terminal bronchioles and that a considerable amount of short SWCNTs reached the alveolus, resulting in chronic inflammatory responses, but no genotoxicity in the lungs.
Management of proxy objects providing multimedia applications in the mobile environment

Due to increasing computational power, long-life batteries and wireless links with improving bandwidth, distributed multimedia applications have become more and more attractive for mobile users. However, the varying quality of service (QoS) on the wireless link is still a major problem. One generally accepted solution to this problem utilises "proxies" which act on behalf of the mobile user and modify the communication data stream in order to match the current QoS conditions. These proxies are generally dependent on protocol layers, applications or application data. Therefore, in order to enable proxy objects to be flexibly inserted for a given multimedia stream, an architecture is required for managing supplied and installed proxy objects.
SUMMARIZATION OF SPOKEN LECTURES BASED ON LINGUISTIC SURFACE AND PROSODIC INFORMATION

We aim to extract automatically the summarization of spoken lectures for conferences and classes. For this purpose, at first we compared results of summarization extracted by human subjects. We found large differences with every subject. Then we investigated the relations between linguistic surface information and human results, and we obtained useful linguistic surface information. Next, we summarized spoken lectures on conferences and classes using the linguistic information. Additionally, we also focused on prosodic features; F0 and power. We conducted the same experiments on them. Lastly, we combined linguistic surface information and prosodic information. As a result, the proposed automatic summarization produced a better F- measure (0.599), k-value (0.420) and Rouge metric (0.758) comparable with human results.
Polyelectrolyte determination in drinking water

Chemical contaminants that occur in drinking water are not usually associated with acute health effects when compared to microbial contaminants and are usually given a lower priority. Those that are of concern have cumulative toxic properties such as metals and substances that are carcinogenic. Some of these potentially hazardous chemical contaminants are a consequence of the treatment chemicals themselves e.g. organic polyelectrolytes used as coagulant aids in water treatment. The presence of residues of the un-reacted monomer in these polyelectrolyte products is a cause for concern. Historically, inorganic coagulants such as aluminium sulphate and ferric chloride have been used as coagulants/flocculants in the treatment of drinking water. The residual amounts of these chemicals were easy to detect and to control using readily available standard methods. The increasing use of polyelectrolytes has created a problem for the potable water industry as there are no readily available methods for the determination of residual polyelectrolyte concentration. This study aims at extending existing analytical techniques and comparing them to determine results that are most accurate and reliable to the quantification of residual polyelectrolytes.
FeelCraft: crafting tactile experiences for media using a feel effect library

FeelCraft is a media plugin that monitors events and states in the media and associates them with expressive tactile content using a library of feel effects (FEs). A feel effect (FE) is a user-defined haptic pattern that, by virtue of its connection to a meaningful event, generates dynamic and expressive effects on the user's body. We compiled a library of more than fifty FEs associated with common events in games, movies, storybooks, etc., and used them in a sandbox-type gaming platform. The FeelCraft plugin allows a game designer to quickly generate haptic effects, associate them to events in the game, play them back for testing, save them and/or broadcast them to other users to feel the same haptic experience. Our demonstration shows an interactive procedure for authoring haptic media content using the FE library, playing it back during interactions in the game, and broadcasting it to a group of guests.
Interest Point Based Tracking

This paper deals with a novel method for object tracking. In the first step interest points are detected and feature descriptors around them are calculated. Sets of known points are created, allowing tracking based on point matching. The set representation is updated online at every tracking step. Our method uses one-shot learning with the first frame, so no offline and no supervised learning is required. Following an object recognition based approach there is no need for a background model or motion model, allowing tracking of abrupt motion and with non-stationary cameras. We compare our method to Mean Shift and Tracking via Online Boosting, showing the benefits of our approach.
Ages and magnetic structures of the South China Sea constrained by deep tow magnetic surveys and IODP Expedition 349

Combined analyses of deep tow magnetic anomalies and International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 349 cores show that initial seafloor spreading started around 33 Ma in the northeastern South China Sea (SCS), but varied slightly by 1–2 Myr along the northern continent‐ocean boundary (COB). A southward ridge jump of ∼20 km occurred around 23.6 Ma in the East Subbasin; this timing also slightly varied along the ridge and was coeval to the onset of seafloor spreading in the Southwest Subbasin, which propagated for about 400 km southwestward from ∼23.6 to ∼21.5 Ma. The terminal age of seafloor spreading is ∼15 Ma in the East Subbasin and ∼16 Ma in the Southwest Subbasin. The full spreading rate in the East Subbasin varied largely from ∼20 to ∼80 km/Myr, but mostly decreased with time except for the period between ∼26.0 Ma and the ridge jump (∼23.6 Ma), within which the rate was the fastest at ∼70 km/Myr on average. The spreading rates are not correlated, in most cases, to magnetic anomaly amplitudes that reflect basement magnetization contrasts. Shipboard magnetic measurements reveal at least one magnetic reversal in the top 100 m of basaltic layers, in addition to large vertical intensity variations. These complexities are caused by late‐stage lava flows that are magnetized in a different polarity from the primary basaltic layer emplaced during the main phase of crustal accretion. Deep tow magnetic modeling also reveals this smearing in basement magnetizations by incorporating a contamination coefficient of 0.5, which partly alleviates the problem of assuming a magnetic blocking model of constant thickness and uniform magnetization. The primary contribution to magnetic anomalies of the SCS is not in the top 100 m of the igneous basement.
Impact of Variances on the QoE in Video Streaming

In the current Internet video streaming is dominating fixed and mobile consumer traffic. However, wireless and mobile networks may lack bandwidth or suffer from severe bandwidth fluctuations. The question arises: What is the impact of bandwidth fluctuations on the Quality of Service (QoS) and the user perceived quality? The key contribution of this paper is the analysis of QoS in terms of application-level parameters (stalling duration and frequency) for reliable video-on-demand streaming. The QoS is mapped to Quality of Experience (QoE) based on an existing QoS-QoE model for HTTP streaming. Different network conditions, in particular average and variances of network bandwidths, and video bit rates are taken into account in the analysis. We approach this problem by modeling the video player as a queueing system and evaluate the transient phase of the non-stationary system by means of discrete-event simulations. The results of our study show that the characteristics of the network have a high impact on the QoS and a surprisingly low impact on the QoE under certain conditions.
Affective Computing

Although central to human development and functioning, emotions have, until recently, had a somewhat marginal status in scientific disciplines in general, and have been largely ignored in the more applied settings such as human factors. Over the past 10 years, however, research in emotion in both psychology and neuroscience has established that emotion is intricately linked with what has been traditionally thought of as purely cognitive functions; that is, attention, perception, memory, planning, learning, etc. These realizations, together with increasing demands in the areas of human-machine interaction, and advances in human-computer interactions technologies, have fueled the recent burgeoning interest in a broad area termed 'affective computing'. The objective of this panel is three fold: 1) provide a broad overview of affective computing; 2) highlight specific areas in affective computing relevant to human factors; and 3) provide alternative perspectives regarding the feasibility of selected affective computing efforts.
Lien entre la diversité microbienne, la stabilité des communautés microbiennes et le turnover des matières organiques du sol

Les communautes microbiennes sont des acteurs majeurs du fonctionnement biologique du sol a travers notamment leur implication dans les transformations des cycles biogeochimiques (C, N, P…). Dans les agro-ecosystemes, la diversite de ces communautes est regulierement modifiee par des perturbations liees aux pratiques agricoles et la question des consequences de ces modifications pour le maintien du fonctionnement biologique et des fonctionnalites des systemes agricoles est aujourd’hui centrale. Si le role de la diversite biologique pour le fonctionnement des ecosystemes a ete bien etudie chez les macro-organismes, et notamment les plantes ; la relation biodiversite/activite est encore tres mal connue pour les microorganismes du sol. Pourtant, dans la mouvance agroecologique actuelle, cette connaissance est necessaire pour definir de nouvelles pratiques culturales integrant une gestion de la diversite microbienne pour une utilisation durable des agrosystemes. Dans ce travail, l’objectif general etait de tester l’importance de la diversite pour la stabilite (resistance/resilience) et l’activite des communautes microbiennes (bacteries et champignons) impliquees dans les transformations de la matiere organique dans le sol, une fonction determinante pour la fertilite des sols, la qualite de l’environnement et les changements globaux. D’un point de vue experimental, nos questions ont ete abordees par le couplage d’experimentations au laboratoire avec des echantillonnages realises au terrain. Dans un premier travail base sur une manipulation de la diversite au laboratoire, nous avons montre que la stabilite de la structure et de l’activite des communautes en reponse a differentes perturbations est positivement liee a la diversite microbienne (i.e. nombre d’especes). Ce lien a ensuite ete valide par une experimentation basee sur un echantillonnage de terrain qui nous a permis de demontrer (i) que la diversite microbiennes peut etre modulee (augmentee ou diminuee) en fonction de l’intensite d’usage des sols, et (ii) que la mineralisation de la matiere organique est plus intense dans les sols presentant les plus hauts niveaux de diversite. Enfin, dans le cadre d’une experimentation realisee au terrain (SOERE-ACBB, Lusignan), nous avons montre que la reponse des communautes de bacteries et de champignons a un apport de residus de ble, en termes de successions de populations et d’activite de mineralisation de la matiere organique, depend de l’historique cultural du sol. Ces travaux apportent de nouvelles connaissances sur l’importance de la diversite microbienne (richesse, composition) pour la stabilite et l’activite des communautes impliquees dans les transformations de la matiere organique dans le sol. Ils montrent egalement que la modulation de la diversite des communautes microbiennes du sol par les pratiques agricoles, presentes ou passees, peut affecter significativement le turnover de la MOS.
Oral stimulation accelerates the transition from tube to oral feeding in preterm infants.

OBJECTIVE To assess whether an oral stimulation program, before the introduction of oral feeding, enhances the oral feeding performance of preterm infants born between 26 and 29 weeks' gestational age. STUDY DESIGN Preterm infants (n = 32) were randomized into an experimental and control group. Infants in the experimental group received an oral stimulation program consisting of stimulation of the oral structures for 15 minutes. Infants in the control group received a sham stimulation program. Both were administered once per day for 10 consecutive days, 48 hours after discontinuation of nasal continuous positive air pressure. RESULTS Independent oral feeding was attained significantly earlier in the experimental group than the control group, 11 +/- 4 days (mean +/- SD) versus 18 +/- 7 days, respectively (P =.005). Overall intake and rate of milk transfer were significantly greater over time in the experimental group than the control group (P =.0002 and.046, respectively). There was no difference in length of hospital stay between the 2 groups. CONCLUSION An early oral stimulation program accelerates the transition to full oral feedings in preterm infants. This was associated with greater overall intake and rate of milk transfer observed in the experimental group when compared with the control group.
Compensation by pulsatile GnRH infusions for incompetence for oestradiol-induced LH surges in long-term ovariectomized gilts and castrated male pigs.

The aim of this study was to investigate incompetence for oestradiol-induced LH surges in long-term ovariectomized gilts and male pigs. Gilts (250 days old; n = 36), which had been ovariectomized 30 (OVX 30) or 100 days (OVX 100) before the start of treatment, were challenged i.m. with oestradiol benzoate and were either given no further treatment, fed methallibure to inhibit endogenous GnRH release or fed methallibure and given i.v. pulses of 100 or 200 ng GnRH agonist at 1 h intervals during the LH surge (48-96 h after oestradiol benzoate). The same treatments were applied to long-term orchidectomized male pigs (ORC, n = 23). In addition, one ORC group was not injected with oestradiol benzoate but was fed methallibure and given pulses of 200 ng GnRH agonist. Oestradiol benzoate alone induced an LH surge in the OVX 30 group only (5/6 gilts), methallibure suppressed (P < 0.05) oestradiol benzoate-induced LH secretion, while pulses of 100 ng GnRH agonist in animals fed methallibure produced LH surges in four of six OVX 30 and four of six OVX 100 gilts. The induced LH surges were similar to those produced by oestradiol benzoate alone in OVX 30 gilts. Pulses of 200 ng GnRH agonist produced LH surges in OVX 30 (6/6) and OVX 100 (6/6) gilts and increased the magnitude of the induced LH surge in OVX 100 gilts (P < 0.05 compared with 100 ng GnRH agonist or OVX 30 control). Pulses of 200 ng GnRH agonist also induced LH surge release in ORC male pigs (5/6), but were unable to increase LH concentrations in a surge-like manner in ORC animals that had not been given oestradiol benzoate, indicating that oestradiol increases pituitary responsiveness to GnRH. These results support the hypothesis that oestradiol must inhibit secretion of LH before an LH surge can occur. It is concluded that incompetence for oestradiol-induced LH surges in long-term ovarian secretion-deprived gilts and in male pigs is due to the failure of oestradiol to promote a sufficient increase in the release of GnRH.
Deep learning with spatiotemporal consistency for nerve segmentation in ultrasound images

Ultrasound-Guided Regional Anesthesia (UGRA) has been gaining importance in the last few years, offering numerous advantages over alternative methods of nerve localization (neurostimulation or paraesthesia). However, nerve detection is one of the most tasks that anaesthetists can encounter in the UGRA procedure. Computer aided system that can detect automatically region of nerve, would help practitioner to concentrate more in anaesthetic delivery. In this paper we propose a new method based on deep learning combined with spatiotemporal information to robustly segment the nerve region. The proposed method is based on two phases, localisation and segmentation. The first phase, consists in using convolutional neural network combined with spatial and temporal consistency to detect the nerve zone. The second phase utilises active contour model to delineate the region of interest. Obtained results show the validity of the proposed approach and its robustness.
The Role of Insulin and Insulin-like Peptides in Ischemic Stroke and Cognitive Impairment

Background and aims: Insulin, insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), and the six high-affinity IGF-binding proteins (IGFBPs) play an important role in growth, metabolism and regeneration throughout the entire life span. In contrast, the role of IGF-II in adult life has been unclear. Animal studies have demonstrated that altered brain activity of the insulin/IGF-system is associated with reduced cognitive function and worse outcome after experimentally induced stroke and this is reversed by IGF-I-treatment. The overall aim of this thesis was to determine whether the insulin/IGF-I system is of importance for outcome of ischemic stroke (IS) also in humans and whether insulin and insulin-like peptides are dysregulated in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Patients and methods: Two well-characterized clinical cohorts were studied. In SAHLSIS (Sahlgrenska Academy Study on Ischemic Stroke; originally 600 IS patients and 600 population-based controls), characterization of patients after IS included serum samples and stroke scales. Furthermore, serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of insulin, IGF-I, and IGF-II were determined in a cross-sectional study of patients (n=60) with AD and other forms of cognitive impairment, and healthy controls (n=20). Results: In Paper I, high serum IGF-I concentrations were associated with better improvement of functional independence in SAHLSIS. In Paper II, analyses of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the IGF1 gene showed that the major allele of rs7136446 was associated with favorable post-stroke outcome after 2 years. In Paper III, insulin resistance was associated with functional outcome, especially in patients with cryptogenic stroke. In Paper IV, serum but not CSF levels of IGF-I were increased in patients with AD whereas insulin levels were unchanged both in serum and CSF. In Paper V, CSF IGF-II level was increased in male but not in female patients with AD. Conclusions: The IGF-I/insulin system is associated with functional outcome after ischemic stroke. Furthermore, levels of IGF-I and IGF-II are dysregulated in Alzheimer’s disease.
[Clinical observation of mesenchymal stem cell as salvage treatment for refractory acute graft-versus-host disease].

OBJECTIVE To explore the effect of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on refractory acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) failed to second-line immunosuppressive therapy. METHODS Twenty-two patients with refractory aGVHD received the treatment of first- and/or second-line immunosuppressive agents in combination with MSCs. The MSCs from bone marrow (BM) of HLA-unrelated third-party donors, were used at the median time of 19 (11 - 49) days after aGVHD onset, at a dose of 1×10(6)/kg once with an interval of 14 days. If the symptoms of aGVHD did not improve after continuous infusion four times, MSCs would be discontinued. Meanwhile the proportion of CD3(+)CD4(+), CD3(+)CD8(+) and CD4(+)CD25(+) was detected by flow cytometry (FCM) before and 4 weeks after the MSCs infusion. RESULTS The median dose of MSC was 4.8 (2.5 - 6.3)×10(6) cell×kg(-1) with a median infusion of 2.5 (1 - 7) times per case. Twelve patients achieved complete response (CR), four partial response (PR) after treatment. The total effective rate was 72.7% (16/22). With a median follow-up of 246.5 (36 - 1116) days post-transplantation, 11 patients survived and 11 died. The causes of death included GVHD(n = 6), infections (n = 3), leukemia relapse (n = 1) and post-transplant lymphoproliferative diseases (n = 1), respectively. The proportion of CD3(+)CD4(+)/CD3(+)CD8(+) was significantly higher at 4th week after MSCs infusion compared to before infusion (1.58 ± 0.54 vs 0.49 ± 0.19, \%t\% = 0.628, P = 0.04). The number of CD4(+)CD25(+) Treg cells had not changed much compared to before infusion (P = 0.606). CONCLUSION MSCs derived from the BM of a third-party donor are effective to treat aGVHD failed to second-line immunosuppressive therapy after allo-HSCT. MSCs might play a role in aGVHD by regulating the rate of CD3(+)CD4(+)/CD3(+)CD8(+).
Multi-walled carbon nanotube arrays for gas sensing applications

Vertically aligned multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) arrays fabricated by xylene pyrolysis in anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) templates without the use of a catalyst were integrated into a resistive sensor design. Steady state sensitivities as high as 5% and 10% for 100 ppm of NH3 and NO2, respectively, at a flow rate of 750 sccm were observed. A thin layer of amorphous carbon (5–50 nm), formed on both sides of the template during xylene pyrolysis, was part of the sensor design. The thickness of the conducting amorphous carbon layers was found to play a crucial role in determining the sensitivity of the resistive sensor. A study was undertaken to elucidate (i) the dependence of sensitivity on the thickness of amorphous carbon layers, (ii) the effect of UV light on gas desorption characteristics and (iii) the dependence of room temperature sensitivity on different NH3 flow rates. Variations in sensor resistance with exposure to oxidizing and reducing gases are explained on the basis of charge transfer between the analytes and the CNTs which were modeled as p-type semiconductors.
Anatomy-based 3D skeleton extraction from femur model

Abstract Using 3D models of bones can highly improve accuracy and reliability of orthopaedic evaluation. However, it may impose excessive computational load. This article proposes a fully automatic method for extracting a compact model of the femur from its 3D model. The proposed method works by extracting a 3D skeleton based on the clinical parameters of the femur. Therefore, in addition to summarizing a 3D model of the bone, the extracted skeleton would preserve important clinical and anatomical information. The proposed method has been applied on 3D models of 10 femurs and the results have been evaluated for different resolutions of data.