Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validation of a bench-top culturing and electrophysiogical recording chamber for neurophysiological trials

Multi Electrode Array (MEA) technology allows to non-invasively record neural culture activity, overcoming several limits of traditional neuropharmacological and neurophysiological studies. To obtain reliable results and to ensure experiments reproducibility, it is necessary to maintain the cells in a controlled environment, which allows the proper growth of the culture. For this reason, MEAs recording setups need to be coupled with an environmental parameters control system, keeping CO2 and O2 concentration, temperature, humidity and pH within physiological ranges. In this work, we have validated a bench-top chamber prototype for long-term continuous and parallel recordings from multiple MEAs. We first validated the MEA acquisition chain through the comparison with a commercial gold-standard MEA recording system. Then, we tested a control unit based on environmental parameters sensors. To test the maintenance of optimal environmental conditions for cell cultures, long-term measurements of parameters were performed, alongside with measurements of culture medium evaporation rate and osmolarity. After demonstrating the capability of the setup to support cultures growth, neurophysiological trials were conducted on neuronal cell cultures inside the chamber. Through the comparison with the Benchmark system, we demonstrated that the custom bench-top system can monitor the cell electrical activity producing similar range of values for most of the features computed.
T1–T2 molecular magnetic resonance imaging of renal carcinoma cells based on nano-contrast agents

Background The development of T1–T2 dual contrast agent (CA) favors the visualization of the lesion in a more accurate and reliable manner by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The relaxivity and the interference between T1 and T2 CA are the main concerns for their design. Methods In this work, we constructed an Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3 nanocomplex where BSA-Gd2O3 NPs and Fe3O4 NPs were chosen as T1 and T2 MRI CAs and a 20 nm mesoporous silica (mSiO2) nanoshell was introduced to reduce the interference between them. We performed transmis sion electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, UV-vis absorption spectra, and Fourier transform infrared absorption (FTIR) spectra to characterize the prepared nanocom-plex and MRI scanning to evaluate their MRI behaviors. Furthermore, 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and hematologic and biochemical analyses were introduced to evaluate their in vitro and in vivo toxicity. Finally, the specific MRI of 786-0 cells with Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3-AS1411 nanoprobe in vitro was realized. In vivo biodistribution of Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3 nanocomplex in the mouse was determined by the quantification of the Gd element by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Results The prepared Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3 nanocomplex possessed high longitudinal (r1=11.47 mM s−1 Gd) and transverse (r2=195.1 mM s−1 Fe) relaxivities, enabling its use as a T1–T2 dual contrast agent for MRI. MTT testing and hematologic and biochemical analysis indicated the good biocompatibility of Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3 nanocomplex in vitro and in vivo. After further conjugation with AS1411 aptamer, they could target tumor cells successfully by T1 and T2 MRI in vitro. The possible metabolic pathway of the tail vein-injected Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3 nanocomplex in mouse was mainly via kidney. Conclusion A T1–T2 dual-mode contrast agent, Fe3O4@mSiO2/PDDA/BSA-Gd2O3 nano-complex, was developed and its good performance for tumor cell targeting in vitro and kidney contrast-enhanced MRI in mice indicated its promising potential as an effective T1–T2 dual-mode contrast agent for in vivo MRI with self-confirmation.
Cardiovascular safety of oncologic agents: a double-edged sword even in the era of targeted therapies – Part 2

ABSTRACT Introduction: Patients with cancer are subject to the cardiotoxic effects of cancer therapy. Improved cancer treatments lead to more cancer-survivors, who though are exposed to various forms of cardiovascular (CV) disease (CVD) as they age. Aging patients are at increased risk of developing both malignancy and CVD or they may have survived some form of CVD as a result of effective CV treatments. Furthermore, patients with CVD may develop cancer and require treatment (and vice versa), all contributing to increased morbidity and mortality. The prevalence of both malignancy and CVD will increase due to the trend toward a longer lifespan. Areas covered: In part 2 of this review, the discussion of the CV effects of specific oncology drugs is completed with inclusion of additional immunological agents, current hormonal and other agents. Early detection and monitoring of cardiotoxicity, use of biomarkers and other imaging and diagnostic methods and prevention and treatment options are also discussed. Expert opinion: As outlined in part 1 of this review, oncologists need to be aware of the CV adverse-effects of their treatments and make careful and expectant clinical decisions, especially in patients with preexisting CVD or CV risk factors. Similarly, cardiologists should consider a detailed previous history of treatment for malignant disease, including prior chemotherapy exposure, dose(s) received, and/or combined modality therapy with chest radiotherapy. Both specialists should collaborate in order to minimize the impact of these two ubiquitous diseases (cancer and CVD) and mitigate the adverse effects of treatment modalities.
Wnt2 contributes to the progression of gastric cancer by promoting cell migration and invasion

Wnt2 plays a pivotal role in human cancer. However, it is not yet known whether Wnt2 contributes to promoting migration and invasion of gastric cancer. The present study aimed to investigate the expression of Wnt2 in gastric cancer tissues and cell lines, and to analyze the effect of Wnt2 on gastric cancer cells. Wnt2 expression level was evaluated in gastric cancer samples and adjacent normal gastric tissues by immunohistochemical and western blot analysis. To investigate the effect of Wnt2 on gastric cancer cells, an in vitro Wnt2 secreting system was established using CHO cells. The results indicated that Wnt2 is overexpressed in gastric cancer and is implicated in metastasis and TNM stage. Additionally, the results of in vitro experiments demonstrated that Wnt2 contributes to enhancing the migration and invasion abilities of gastric cancer cells. These results suggested that Wnt2 may be an effective target of treatment for patients with advanced gastric cancer.
Gaussian Broadcast Channels With Intermittent Connectivity and Hybrid State Information at the Transmitter

In wireless networks, the link connectivity may be intermittent due to shadowing, burstiness of data arrival, or uncoordinated resource allocation. In this paper, we model the intermittence of links as Bernoulli distributed random channel states, termed intermittence channel states, and study the impact of the corresponding channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) in a two-user Gaussian broadcast channel (BC). Moreover, due to the heterogeneous timeliness of intermittence channel states, the CSIT considered in this paper is hybrid. More specifically, the CSIT of each link can be perfectly (causally or non-causally) available, delayed, or not available. When the links are connected, we adopt a general setting that the received signal-to-noise ratios can be different. Our contribution is the characterization of the capacity regions of intermittent Gaussian BC to within bounded gaps for all combinations of hybrid CSIT, except for scenario DN (delayed CSIT of receiver 1, no CSIT of receiver 2). For scenario DN, we propose an opportunistic physical layer network coding scheme that achieves a strictly larger degree-of-freedom (DoF) region than the no-CSIT DoF region. As a corollary, single-user CSIT is able to increase the sum DoF for intermittent Gaussian BC (also the capacity region for the erasure BC, as a by-product). This result is in sharp contrast to the recent negative result by Davoodi and Jafar, where it is shown that for fast-fading multiple-input single-output BC with continuous channel states, single-user CSIT does not help at all in terms of sum DoF.
Optimal Deployment of FiWi Networks Using Heuristic Method for Integration Microgrids with Smart Metering

The unpredictable increase in electrical demand affects the quality of the energy throughout the network. A solution to the problem is the increase of distributed generation units, which burn fossil fuels. While this is an immediate solution to the problem, the ecosystem is affected by the emission of CO2. A promising solution is the integration of Distributed Renewable Energy Sources (DRES) with the conventional electrical system, thus introducing the concept of Smart Microgrids (SMG). These SMGs require a safe, reliable and technically planned two-way communication system. This paper presents a heuristic based on planning capable of providing a bidirectional communication that is near optimal. The model follows the structure of a hybrid Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) network with the purpose of obtaining information of electrical parameters that help us to manage the use of energy by integrating conventional electrical system with SMG. The optimization model is based on clustering techniques, through the construction of balanced conglomerates. The method is used for the development of the clusters along with the Nearest-Neighbor Spanning Tree algorithm (N-NST). Additionally, the Optimal Delay Balancing (ODB) model will be used to minimize the end to end delay of each grouping. In addition, the heuristic observes real design parameters such as: capacity and coverage. Using the Dijkstra algorithm, the routes are built following the shortest path. Therefore, this paper presents a heuristic able to plan the deployment of Smart Meters (SMs) through a tree-like hierarchical topology for the integration of SMG at the lowest cost.
Adaptive motion-artifact reduction in capacitive ECG measurements by using the power-line interference

Capacitive electrodes can be employed for noninvasive electrocardiography (ECG) measurements; they are especially suitable for long-term ambulatory monitoring. However, capacitive electrodes are very sensitive to motion artifacts (MAs) due to variable coupling distance. Adaptive filtering has been widely used for optimal MA reduction in biopotential measurements. Unfortunately, the existing adaptive-filtering methods require a reference signal recorded by additional sensors, limiting their applicability in ambulatory settings. In the present study, a novel adaptive MA removal method is proposed where the reference signal is extracted from the power-line interference (PLI). PLI usually appears in ECG measurements due to unbalanced electrode impedance. Movement of the electrodes causes not only MAs but also variations in the PLI. Demodulation of the PLI may, therefore, represent a reference signal reflecting the sensor movement for adaptive MA removal by signal decorrelation. Preliminary validation on both simulation and real data showed effective MA removal by the proposed adaptive filter, possibly leading to improved analysis of capacitive ECG signals in ambulatory settings.
Convergence and divergence in tagging systems: An examination of tagging practices over a four year period

This paper analyses the tagging patterns on delicious.com for a set of documents (URLs) over a 4 year period using informetrics methods to assess how collaborative tagging supports and enhances traditional document indexing. Results of the study show that there is still a mix of consensus and divergence in tagging term use and tagging patterns. While some of the chosen URLs maintained or even increased their popularity, others experienced a severe drop in popularity. Tag usage showed some measures of influence between taggers, but users continued to use their own tags and the proportions of unique and untagged items has increased. Proportions of tags used showed fluctuations with islands of stability over a 4 year period. Patterns in the usage of tags assigned to these documents also highlighted practices related to personal and collective information organisation which conventional systems are unable to facilitate.
Prognostic Impact of Fasting Plasma Glucose on Mortality and Re-Hospitalization in Patients with Acute Heart Failure

Background: The impact of fasting plasma glucose (FPG) on survival outcomes in patients with acute heart failure (HF) is unclear, and the relationship between intensity of glycemic control of FPG in diabetes mellitus (DM) patients and HF prognosis remains uncertain. This retrospective study aimed to evaluate the prognostic impact of FPG in patients with acute HF. Methods: A total of 624 patients hospitalized with acute HF from October 2000 to April 2014 were enrolled in this study. All patients were stratified by three groups according to their admission FPG levels (i.e., DM, impaired fasting glucose [IFG], and non-DM). All-cause and cardiovascular mortality was the primary end point, and HF re-hospitalization was the secondary end point during follow-up period. Results: A total of 587 patients were included in final asnalysis. The all-cause mortality rates of patients with DM, IFG, and non-DM were 55.5%, 40.3%, and 39.2%, with significant difference (P = 0.001). Moreover, compared with those with IFG (34.3%) and non-DM (32.6%), patients with DM had significantly higher rate of cardiovascular mortality (45.1%). Multiple Cox regression analysis showed that DM as well as IFG was related to all-cause mortality (DM: hazard ratio [HR] = 1.936, P < 0.001; IFG: HR = 1.672, P = 0.019) and cardiovascular mortality (DM: HR = 1.739, P < 0.001; IFG: HR = 1.817, P = 0.013). However, they were both unrelated to HF re-hospitalization. DM patients with strictly controlled blood glucose (FPG <3.9 mmol/L) had higher all-cause mortality than patients with non-DM, IFG, and DM patients with moderately controlled glucose (3.9 mmol/L⩽ FPG <7.0 mmol/L). Likewise, both the primary end point and secondary end point were found to be worse in DM patients with poorly controlled blood glucose (FPG ≥7.0 mmol/L). Conclusions: IFG and DM were associated with higher all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality in patients with acute HF. The association between mortality and admission FPG in DM patients with acute HF appeared U-shaped.
Battery-Aware Optimization of Green Small Cells: Sizing and Energy Management

Motivated by the concerns about climate change, energy-harvesting technologies have recently gained particular interest to support the growing power demand of cellular networks. The environment-friendly power sources coupled with batteries enable to significantly reduce carbon emissions as well as the electricity bill of mobile network operators (MNOs). However, incautious battery usages can heavily damage the storage capabilities and require large expenses for the battery replacement. To investigate this tradeoff, we propose an energy management framework for a small cell powered by renewable energy, a battery, and the smart grid. First, we develop an approach that accounts for the battery aging to determine the optimal system sizing. Then, we design an energy controller, based on reinforcement-learning, which supervises the battery state in order to minimize the electricity expenditures of the MNO while enhancing the battery life span. Simulations show that the proposed solution achieves considerable cost reduction compared to a classical Kalman filter-based method proposed in the literature and performs very closely to the ideal strategy able to perfectly predict the state of the stochastic variables. Moreover, simulation results indicate that 30% of the battery life span can be saved each year by implementing the proposed solution.
Improved multi-scale line detection method for retinal blood vessel segmentation

Changes of retinal blood vessel are precursors of many serious diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. Automatic segmentation of retinal blood vessels in the fundus image can better assist in the diagnosis of these diseases and has been studied by many researchers. However, the segmentation of pale vessel pixels remains a problem because of their low contrasts with surrounding pixels. This study proposes an improved multi-scale line detector to segment retinal vessels. It computes the line responses of vessels in multi-scale windows and takes the maximum as the response value, which can enhance the responses of pale vessel pixels near strong vessels or dark background pixels. Experimental results on the publicly available database DRIVE demonstrate that the proposed method can detect pale vessel pixels better. It achieves 75.28% in sensitivity and 94.47% in accuracy, which outperforms the state-of-the-art unsupervised methods. Compared with the supervised methods it also gets better sensitivity and comparable accuracy.
Tunable stacking fault energies by tailoring local chemical order in CrCoNi medium-entropy alloys

Significance Our work has revealed the nature of local chemical order and has established its significant relationship to the intrinsic and extrinsic stacking fault energy in CrCoNi medium-entropy solid-solution alloys, whose combination of strength, ductility, and toughness properties approaches the best on record. These findings highlight the general need to discern how critical the role of local chemical ordering is in dictating the mechanical of properties of medium- and high-entropy alloys. Our results highlight the possibility of tuning order in disorder to ultimately achieve the science-based design and optimization of new high-entropy alloy systems with specifically desired combinations of macroscale mechanical properties. High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are an intriguing new class of metallic materials due to their unique mechanical behavior. Achieving a detailed understanding of structure–property relationships in these materials has been challenged by the compositional disorder that underlies their unique mechanical behavior. Accordingly, in this work, we employ first-principles calculations to investigate the nature of local chemical order and establish its relationship to the intrinsic and extrinsic stacking fault energy (SFE) in CrCoNi medium-entropy solid-solution alloys, whose combination of strength, ductility, and toughness properties approaches the best on record. We find that the average intrinsic and extrinsic SFE are both highly tunable, with values ranging from −43 to 30 mJ⋅m−2 and from −28 to 66 mJ⋅m−2, respectively, as the degree of local chemical order increases. The state of local ordering also strongly correlates with the energy difference between the face-centered cubic (fcc) and hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phases, which affects the occurrence of transformation-induced plasticity. This theoretical study demonstrates that chemical short-range order is thermodynamically favored in HEAs and can be tuned to affect the mechanical behavior of these alloys. It thus addresses the pressing need to establish robust processing–structure–property relationships to guide the science-based design of new HEAs with targeted mechanical behavior.
Performance Analysis of Sparse Data Structure Implementations

Abstract Sparse linear algebraic data structures are widely used during the solution of large scale linear optimization problems. The efficiency of the solver is significantly influenced by the used data structures. The implementations of such data structures are not trivial. A performance analysis of the available data structures can provide valuable information to improve efficiency. In the talk we present our software that supports this task as well as our new, special vector representation. We also report results covering the solution for numerical issues affecting the performance of sparse linear algebraic operations.
Doppler Power Spectra for 3D Vehicle-to-Vehicle Channels With Moving Scatterers

A 3-D vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) channel model composed by the line-of-sight, single-bounced and double-bounced rays with local scatterers moving in random velocities and directions is proposed in this paper. Based on the 3-D model, the complex channel gain and the autocorrelation function (ACF) are derived. The Doppler power spectral density (PSD) can be obtained by taking the Fourier transform to the ACF. As special cases, the proposed model can be applied to the 3-D fixed-to-vehicle (F2V) and fixed-to-fixed (F2F) scenarios at different carrier frequencies. The 2-D V2V, F2V, and F2F ACFs and Doppler PSDs can be obtained from the proposed 3-D model. Good agreements are shown between the theoretical and available measured Doppler PSDs in different scenarios in this paper.
A 10 GHz Up-conversion Mixer with 13.6 dBm OIP3 Using Regulator-based Linearized Gm Stage and Harmonic Nulling

This paper presents a highly linear up-conversion mixer operating at 10 GHz. A regulator-based linearized transconductance (gm) stage is adopted for linear voltage-to-current conversion. A harmonic nulling technique is used to suppress the even harmonics of the switching pairs, thus improve their linearity performance. As the proof-of-concept, two mixers, one with the harmonic nulling technique and the other one without the harmonic nulling technique, were manufactured in IBM 32nm SOI CMOS process. The one with the harmonic nulling technique demonstrates 9.1 dB improvement in OIP3. Overall, the mixer chip achieves a state-of-the-art OIP3 of 13.6 dBm, a conversion gain (CG) of 1 dB and the difference between OIP3 and OP1dBof 19.8 dB (OP1dBis −6.2 dBm). The mixer core occupies 0.32×0.27 mm2chip area while consuming 15.4 mW DC power including the LO driver amplifiers.
A Wide-range 130-nm CMOS Statistic-based Frequency Ratio Calculator

This paper presents the first frequency ratio calculator (FRC), which calculates the frequency ratio of an input signal and a reference signal with an accuracy better than 0.01. The circuit implementation is based on the proposed statistic algorithm such that its performance is resistant to PVT variation. Developed in 130-nm CMOS technology, the input signal frequency range of the FRC is from 135 to 850 MHz. The ratio calculation time takes only two reference cycles. The FRC consumes 4.3 −15.9 mW from a 1.2V supply voltage for different input frequency.
Overexpression of SMARCA2 or CAMK2D is associated with cisplatin resistance in human epithelial ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal types of gynecological cancer. Drug resistance is a major underlying cause of treatment failure, which has lead to continued poor mortality and morbidity rates in patients. In the present study, highly sensitive transcriptome sequencing was performed to systematically identify differentially expressed mRNAs in cisplatin-sensitive (A2780) and -resistant (A2780-DR) cells. Calcium/calmodulin dependent protein kinase IIδ (CAMK2D) and SWI/SNF related matrix associated actin dependent regulator of chromatin subfamily A member 2 (SMARCA2) were identified as exhibiting increased expression in cisplatin-resistant cells. Overexpression of either SMARCA2 or CAMK2D led to a significant increase in the survival rates of A2780 and SKVO3 cells following cisplatin treatment. To further verify the contribution of these two genes in the development of drug resistance, the RNA levels in tissues with different recurrence-free survival (RFS) rates were compared. An increased mRNA level of CAMK2D was detected in samples with shorter RFS rates. An apoptosis assay revealed that overexpression of SMARCA2 or CAMK2D increased the resistance of ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin, as indicated by the decreased apoptotic cell populations. The levels of these two genes also affected the cell cycle and apoptosis-associated protein expression. Quantitative proteomic analyses revealed that overexpression of SMARCA2 or CAMK2D influences multiple metabolism and cancer-associated signaling pathways, which are critical for responses to cisplatin treatment and drug resistance development.