Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neutral Mounting of Ultrahigh $Q$ Whispering Gallery Mode disc-Resonators for Metrological Applications

Whispering gallery mode resonators find key applications in microwave photonic oscillators for aerospace engineering, frequency synthesis, and time-frequency metrology. However, their elastic mechanical deformations induce undesirable shifts for their optical eigenfrequencies, which should ideally be immune to vibrations. We propose a mounting configuration that provides strong immunity against external vibrations and mechanical fluctuations. Numerical simulations confirm the analytical study.
An efficient method for estimating soft tissue deformation based on intraoperative stereo image features and point‐based registration

Estimation of soft tissue deformation occurring during image‐guided surgery using an easily implemented and accurate method is necessary. Using a stereo camera, this study focuses on two efficient methods for estimating soft tissue deformation. Two methods were proposed to overcome limitations associated with the typical methods used for estimating soft tissue deformation, such as dependence on accuracy of the operator and indentation of skin. The first method is based on Triclops SDK, and the second method is based on projecting a pattern to acquire P‐Lands (Projected Landmarks). Based on the proposed methods, surface information is acquired in the form of point clouds of surface point coordinates to the submillimeter accuracy. The reconstructed predeformation three‐dimensional (3D) point cloud obtained for each method is registered with a modified iterative closest point algorithm to a postdeformation 3D point cloud obtained from the same region of interest. Results were compared with an MRI–MRI registration method as a control. Results are provided as RMS differences between the initial and final coordinates of corresponding points. The average RMS difference for the typical method is 3.53 mm, that for the Triclops SDK method is 2.32 mm, and that for the P‐Lands projection method is 2.06 mm. The MRI‐MRI registration had an average RMS difference of 1.12 mm. Using MRI‐MRI registration as the gold standard, the average error obtained for the typical method was 2.41 mm, that for the first method was 1.2 mm, and that for the second method was 0.94 mm. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 23, 294–303, 2013
Cultured Astrocytes and Neurons Synthesize and Secrete Carboxypeptidase E, a Neuropeptide‐Processing Enzyme

Abstract: Carboxypeptidase E (EC 3.4.17.10) is a carboxy‐peptidase B‐like enzyme associated with the biosynthesis of many peptide hormones and neurotransmitters. Media collected from cultured astrocytes contain a carboxypeptidase E‐like activity. Cultured astrocytes secrete ∼73% of their cellular level of carboxypeptidase E per hour, and secretion is not substantially influenced by 35 mM KCI. In contrast, neurons secrete only 29% of their cellular carboxypeptidase E per hour, but secretion increases to 86% on stimulation with 35 mM KCI. Secretion of carboxypeptidase E activity from both neuronal and astrocyte cultures is relatively selective; neither acid phosphatase or acetylglucosaminidase is secreted in appreciable amounts. Cultured neurons and astrocytes express a carboxypeptidase E mRNA of a similar size. The levels of this mRNA differ in astrocytes cultured from different brain regions, with high levels in striatal, cortical, hippocampal, and hypothalamic astrocytes and low levels in cerebellar astrocytes. The level of carboxypeptidase E mRNA in hypothalamic astrocyte cultures is four‐ to fivefold higher than the level in hypothalamic neuronal cultures. These results indicate that cultured astrocytes express carboxypeptidase E mRNA and enzymatic activity and thus contain one of the enzymes required in the biosynthesis of many peptide hormones and neurotransmitters.
Predicting Driving Anger from Trait Aggression and Self-Control

Undergraduates (N=115) completed the Propensity for Angry Driving Scale, Driving Anger Scale, and measures of trait aggression and self-control. Aggression and self-control correlated significantly with scores on the two scales, and Aggression subscale scores explained significant unique variance in both, but the predicated interaction of aggression and self-control was not significant. The Propensity for Angry Driving Scale is recommended to measure self-reported aggressive driving, and the Driving Anger Scale for assessment of driving-related anger.
Gender difference of slow wave sleep in middle aged and elderly subjects

Sleep EEG of eight healthy males and eight females aged 54–72 years were recorded at their homes. The electroencephalograms were visually scored and analyzed by spectral analysis using the FFT method. There were no significant differences in sleep parameters except for a higher percentage of stage 3 + 4 in females. The spectral power of the delta band EEG was classified into two frequencies: 0.5–2 Hz and 2–4 Hz. The total amount of the delta band spectral power through the night was significantly larger in females. Periodic fluctuation of delta band power was observed in females along with non‐rapid eye movement–rapid eye movement cycles.
A miniaturized bandpass filter using double folded dual-mode cavity resonators in LTCC

This paper proposes a miniaturized bandpass filter using dual-mode double-folded laminated waveguide cavity resonators on a multilayer low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) substrate. The double-folded cavity is constructed by inserting a metal plate with an L-shape slot at the vertical center of the cavity. By changing the extra metal plate size along the folded side, the frequency ratio of resonant modes TE201 and TE301 can be flexibly adjusted as a dual mode cavity. Two dual-mode cavities are then stacked vertically and fed with two microstrip lines to form a 4th order Chebyshev Alter, where the coupling and feeding slots are designed according to the field distribution to achieve the desired coupling coefficients and external quality factors for different resonant modes. Designed at center frequency 73.5 GHz with 5.8% fractional bandwidth, the proposed filter has compact size and good frequency responses.
Hand dermatitis: current treatment options.

Avoidance advice: This forms a very important component of treatment once a diagnosis of contact dermatitis has been made on the basis of a detailed history, examination and patch testing. Possible sources of exposure to the causative allergens should be identified and advice has to be tailored to an individual. The patient should be informed about the identification of the offending agent and the possible sources along with a list of cross reacting substances.
Melatonin potentiates chemotherapy‐induced cytotoxicity and apoptosis in rat pancreatic tumor cells

Abstract: Melatonin has antitumor activity via several mechanisms including its antiproliferative and proapoptotic effects in addition to its potent antioxidant action. Thus, melatonin has proven useful in the treatment of tumors in association with chemotherapeutic drugs. This study was performed to evaluate the effect of melatonin on the cytotoxicity and apoptosis induced by three different chemotherapeutic agents, namely 5‐fluorouracil (5‐FU), cisplatin, and doxorubicin in the rat pancreatic tumor cell line AR42J. We found that both melatonin and the three chemotherapeutic drugs induce a time‐dependent decrease in AR42J cell viability, reaching the highest cytotoxic effect after 48 hr of incubation. Furthermore, melatonin significantly augmented the cytotoxicity of the chemotherapeutic agents. Consistently, cotreatment of AR42J cells with each of the chemotherapeutic agents in the presence of melatonin increased the population of apoptotic cells, elevated mitochondrial membrane depolarization, and augmented intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production compared to treatment with each chemotherapeutic agent alone. These results provide evidence that in vitro melatonin enhances chemotherapy‐induced cytotoxicity and apoptosis in rat pancreatic tumor AR42J cells and, therefore, melatonin may be potentially applied to pancreatic tumor treatment as a powerful synergistic agent in combination with chemotherapeutic drugs.
Cortical evoked potential criteria in the objective assessment of auditory threshold: a comparison of noise induced hearing loss with Ménière's disease

Abstract Amplitude of the Nl component of the cortical response was used to objectively determine threshold of hearing at 1 kHz and 4 kHz in a series of consecutively referred medicolegal cases with alleged occupational noise induced hearing loss and a control group of patients with Ménière's disease who were not seeking compensation for their hearing loss. The cortical response thresholds were compared with the subjective pure tone audiometric (PTA) thresholds at the same frequencies. The cortical and PTA thresholds were ‘;within 10 dB’; for 84 and 92 per cent of the cases of noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) and Ménière's disease respectively, confirming the validity of CERA as a means of denning accurately the frequency specific thresholds and the audiometric configuration. Of the remaining 16 per cent of NIHL, 13 per cent exaggerated their PTA thresholds at 1 kHz and 10 per cent at 4 kHz whilst the error in cortical threshold estimation was beyond the 10 dB level for three and six per cent of cases at those frequencies respectively. The median exaggeration of threshold was 25 dB. For eight per cent of the Ménière's patients, thresholds exceeded 10 dB at both 1 and 4 kHz, four per cent of whom exaggerated their PTA thresholds and four per cent had a test error greater than 10 dB. A similar percentage (four per cent) of both groups revealed a cortical test error greater than 10 dB whereas three times as many cases of noise induced hearing loss (13 per cent) revealed exaggeration of their subjective audiometric thresholds compared with the Ménière's group (four per cent). The value of latency criteria in the assessment of cortical threshold was established. The latency of Nl close to threshold was invariably greater than 150 ms and at 30 dB above threshold, irrespective of absolute levels, it was within 10 ms of 100 ms, thereby providing another criterion for the improved measurement of threshold.
Activins and Inhibins and Their Signaling

Abstract: Activins and inhibins, which were discovered by virtue of their abilities to stimulate or inhibit, respectively, the secretion of FSH, are members of the transforming growth factor‐β (TGFβ) superfamily and exert a broad range of effects on the diffentiation, proliferation and functions of numerous cell types. Activins interact with two structurally related classes of serine/threonine kinase receptors (type I and type II). Inhibin antagonizes activin by binding to the proteoglycan, betaglycan, and forming a stable complex with and, thereby, sequestering type II activin receptors while excluding type I receptors. If betaglycan is present, inhibin can also antagonize those bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) whose signaling is dependent upon access to type II activin receptors. Recent insights regarding the structures of ligands, receptors and their signaling complexes are providing the basis for the development of therapeutics capable of modulating fertility and numerous pathophysiologic processes.
Stress-Induced Eddy Currents in Magnetostrictive Energy Harvesting Devices

The paper aims to provide a more accurate analysis of a magnetostrictive energy harvesting device by proposing a FEM model which, assuming a realistic nonlinear characteristic of the material, is able to describe the harvesting phenomena in presence of the eddy currents induced by the Villari effect. The study is focused on the investigation of the influence of those parameters, such as pre-stress and bias, on the field dynamics and, consequently, on the eddy currents loss phenomena which cannot be disregarded if a reliable prediction of the global performances of these devices is required. The numerical results are computed by considering a compressive stress-driven vibration source and show spatial profiles of the fields, losses, and recovered powers in different operating conditions. Comparisons with the linear model are also provided.
The vascular endothelium in diabetes: a practical target fordrug treatment?

Vascular disease remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in diabetes mellitus, in spite of recent improvements in outcome, some of which may be modulated by improved endothelial function. Therapeutic strategies aimed directly at preventing, or minimising the extent of, these sequelae are required as an adjunct to treatments directed at normalising the metabolic milieu. The microvasculature, and the endothelium in particular, are early contributors to vascular dysfunction, thus raising the question as to how best to specifically target the endothelium. However, the expansive nature of the microvasculature, the varying demands that tissues have in terms of blood flow, and the heterogeneity that exists amongst cell types in different sites raises potential problems as to the practicality of such an approach. Further-more, temporal and genetic factors in the genesis of diabetic microv-ascular dysfunction may impact on therapeutic strategies. It is suggested that a systematic approach is required to understand the heterogeneity of the microvasculature, with particular emphasis on relating differences in gene and protein expression with functional properties. Such an approach may then provide the necessary information to allow exploitation of endothelial cell heterogeneity for unique targeted interventions, as well as providing the necessary rationale for pharmacological interventions (both prophylactic and corrective) aimed at the endothelium as a whole.
Gener / January 2010 ACCOUNTING CONSERVATISM AND FIRM INVESTMENT EFFICIENCY

Conservatism, through the timelier recognition of losses in the income statement, is expected to increase firm investment efficiency through three main channels: (1) by decreasing the adverse effect of information asymmetries between outside equity holders and managers, facilitating the monitoring of managerial investment decisions; (2) by increasing managerial incentives to abandon poorly performing projects earlier and to undertake fewer negative net present-value investments; and (3) by facilitating the access to external financing at lower cost. Using a large US sample for the period 1990-2007 we find a negative association between conservatism and measures of overand underinvestment, and a positive association between conservatism and future profitability. This is consistent with firms reporting more conservative numbers investing more efficiently and in more profitable projects. Our results add to a growing stream of literature suggesting that eliminating conservatism from accounting regulatory frameworks may lead to undesirable economic consequences.
Designing Neural Network Hardware Accelerators Using Deep Gaussian Processes

Neural networks have become the mainstream tool for classification tasks in the past decade. However, their spread to consumer devices, such as IoT devices, smartphones and laptops, has been hindered by their high requirements for processing power. A solution to the problem is to use hardware accelerators specifically designed for deep neural networks in order to increase their efficiency. This project aimed to tackle the problem of optimizing aforementioned designs. The goal was to find configurations that struck a balance between power consumption and error rate. Since testing a configuration can be expensive, we treated the design process as a black-box multiobjective optimization problem with the objectives being low prediction error rate and low power consumption. The underlying predictive model for the optimization process was a Deep Gaussian Process (DGP). DGPs were ideal candidates for the task at hand, because they give reasonable uncertainty estimates even in the presence of limited training data. In terms of flexibility, a DGP is equivalent to an infinitely wide, multi-layer neural network. Moreover, our novel extension to DGPs were Joint DGP models. In Joint DGP models, the same network is used to model both objective functions. There are two advantages to this setup. Firstly, the number of models that need to be trained is reduced to one. Secondly, this configuration allows the deep model to capture the underlying correlation between the objective functions which can potentially lead to an increase in performance. We found that DGPs performed similarly to the baseline Gaussian Process (GP) model, both of which significantly outperformed the naïve data collection strategy. Furthermore, we found evidence of improved uncertainty estimates in the case of DGP and Joint DGP models.
ALDH1A Isozymes are Markers of Human Melanoma Stem Cells and Potential Therapeutic Targets

Although the concept of cancer stem cells (CSCs) is well‐accepted for many tumors, the existence of such cells in human melanoma has been the subject of debate. In this study, we demonstrate the existence of human melanoma cells that fulfill the criteria for CSCs (self‐renewal and differentiation) by serially xenotransplanting cells into nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficiency (NOD/SCID) mice. These cells possess high aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity with ALDH1A1 and ALDH1A3 being the predominant ALDH isozymes. ALDH‐positive melanoma cells are more tumorigenic than ALDH‐negative cells in both NOD/SCID mice and NSG mice. Biological analyses of the ALDH‐positive melanoma cells reveal the ALDH isozymes to be key molecules regulating the function of these cells. Silencing ALDH1A by siRNA or shRNA leads to cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, decreased cell viability in vitro, and reduced tumorigenesis in vivo. ALDH‐positive melanoma cells are more resistant to chemotherapeutic agents and silencing ALDH1A by siRNA sensitizes melanoma cells to drug‐induced cell death. Furthermore, we, for the first time, examined the molecular signatures of ALDH‐positive CSCs from patient‐derived tumor specimens. The signatures of melanoma CSCs include retinoic acid (RA)‐driven target genes with RA response elements and genes associated with stem cell function. These findings implicate that ALDH isozymes are not only biomarkers of CSCs but also attractive therapeutic targets for human melanoma. Further investigation of these isozymes and genes will enhance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms governing CSCs and reveal new molecular targets for therapeutic intervention of cancer. STEM Cells2012;30:2100–2113
Transmission intensity and the patterns of Onchocerca volvulus infection in human communities.

We focus on possible constraints upon Onchocerca volvulus establishment in humans in relation to exposure rates to infective larvae (L3) as measured by the annual transmission potential (ATP). We use mathematical and statistical modeling of pre-control west African (savanna), Mexican, and Guatemalan data to explore two hypotheses relating human infection to transmission intensity: microfilarial (mf) loads either saturate with increasing ATP or become (asymptotically) proportional to the ATP. The estimated proportion of L3 developing into adult worms ranged from 7% to 0.3% (low and high intensity areas, respectively). Relationships between mf prevalence and both mf and transmission intensity were nonlinear and statistically similar between west Africa (Simulium damnosum s.l.) and Meso America (S. ochraceum s.l.). This similarity extended to the relationship between mf intensity and ATP. The critical biting rates for onchocerciasis introduction and persistence (which depended on vector competence and host preference), were approximately 10-fold higher in settings where onchocerciasis is transmitted by S. ochraceum than in those where the vector is S. damnosum. A role for focal vector control in Mexico and Guatemala, in addition to nodulectomy and ivermectin, is suggested.
Do Scientific Publications Predict the Supply of New Mobile Technologies?

Can we predict the supply and consequently the diffusion of new mobile technology based innovations by studying the number of publications discussing that technology? The bibliometric method is used to analyze the research effort put into certain enabling technologies for mobile computing and then their diffusion is estimated by looking at the new products that incorporate these technologies. The technologies in question are GPS which supports location-based services, camera, as well as Bluetooth, WiFi and NFC, which support local connectivity. The results indicate that the first papers about emerging technologies are typically published about three years before commercial deployment, and an increasing number of papers precede the widespread adoption of a technology. However, it should be noted that even significant number of publications on certain technology based innovation does not warrant its diffusion.
Notice of RetractionFTA and agricultural products trade

This paper empirically estimates the changes of Agricultural Products trade structure effects under FTA shock based on endogenous treatment and differences-in-differences methods, take China-ASEAN Free Trade agreement as an instance. The results prove that the likelihood of an new RTA membership is enhanced by similarity of endowment structure and compensation of expenditure pattern, and also RTA accelerates the inter-industry trade of Agricultural departments between partners. Overall, this indicates the potential advantage of integration in East Asia is huge, and higher risk of asymmetry demand shocks will come along with the process of integration in agricultural departments, which means regional public goods are important.
Human capacity for explosive force production: Neural and contractile determinants

This study assessed the integrative neural and contractile determinants of human knee extension explosive force production. Forty untrained participants performed voluntary and involuntary (supramaximally evoked twitches and octets – eight pulses at 300 Hz that elicit the maximum possible rate of force development) explosive isometric contractions of the knee extensors. Explosive force (F0–150 ms) and sequential rate of force development (RFD, 50‐ms epochs) were measured. Surface electromyography (EMG) amplitude was recorded (superficial quadriceps and hamstrings, 50‐ms epochs) and normalized (quadriceps to Mmax, hamstrings to EMGmax). Maximum voluntary force (MVF) was also assessed. Multiple linear regressions assessed the significant neural and contractile determinants of absolute and relative (%MVF) explosive force and sequential RFD. Explosive force production exhibited substantial interindividual variability, particularly during the early phase of contraction [F50, 13‐fold (absolute); 7.5‐fold (relative)]. Multiple regression explained 59–93% (absolute) and 35–60% (relative) of the variance in explosive force production. The primary determinants of explosive force changed during the contraction (F0–50, quadriceps EMG and Twitch F; RFD50–100, Octet RFD0–50; F100–150, MVF). In conclusion, explosive force production was largely explained by predictor neural and contractile variables, but the specific determinants changed during the phase of contraction.