Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunogenetics, Gender, and Longevity

Abstract: In this article we discuss relevant data on aging, longevity, and gender with particular focus on inflammation gene polymorphisms which could affect an individual's chance to reach the extreme limit of human life. The present review is not an extensive revision of the literature, but rather an expert opinion based on selected data from the authors' laboratories. In 2000–2005 in the more developed regions, the life expectancy at birth is 71.9 years for men (78.3 in Japan) and 79.3 years for women (86.3 in Japan). Indeed, gender accounts for important differences in the prevalence of a variety of age‐related diseases. Considering people of far‐advanced age, demographic data document a clear‐cut prevalence of females compared to males, suggesting that sex‐specific mortality rates follow different trajectories during aging. In Italy this female/male ratio is relatively lower (about 5/1; F/M ratios are usually 5–6:1 in other developed countries), but significant differences have been observed between Italian regions in the distribution of centenarians by gender—from two women per man in the South to more than eight in certain regions in the North. Thus, a complex interaction of environmental, historical, and genetic factors, differently characterizing the various parts of Italy, likely plays an important role in determining the gender‐specific probability of achieving longevity. This can be due to gender‐specific cultural and anthropological characteristics of Italian society in the last 100 years. Age‐related immunoinflammatory factors increase during proinflammatory status, and the frequency of pro/anti‐inflammatory gene variants also show gender differences. There is some suggestion that people genetically predisposed to weak inflammatory activity may be at reduced chance of developing coronary heart disease (CHD) and, therefore, may achieve longer lifespan if they avoid serious life‐threatening infectious disease thoroughout life. Thus, the pathogen burden, by interacting with host genotype, could determine the type and intensity of the immune‐inflammatory response responsible for both proinflammatory status and CHD. These findings point to a strong relationship between the genetics of inflammation, successful aging, and the control of cardiovascular disease, but seem to suggest that the evidence for men is much stronger. The importance of these studies lies in the fact that half of the population (males) lives approximately 10% shorter lives than the other half (females). Understanding the different strategies that men and women seem to follow to achieve longevity may help us to comprehend better the basic phenomenon of aging and allow us to search for safe ways to increase male lifespan.
Three-phase four-wire grid-connected PV power supply with accurate MPPT for unbalanced nonlinear load compensation

This paper presents a three-phase four-wire grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system to play as a power generator and active filter (AF) compensator. This system is flexible enough to efficiently remove current harmonic components and balance the line currents drawn from grid by an unbalanced nonlinear load. Simultaneously power conversion system injects the maximum power available from the PV array to the grid by using a fast and precise control strategy. The controller enjoys both modified PQ0 transformation and Fuzzy Logic Incremental Conductance (FL-IC) method to accomplish the Maximum Power Point operation Tracking (MPPT) of PV array. The control strategy is described and the whole system is built and simulated by PSCAD/EMTDC software with reference to different operation conditions. The results from simulations confirm the theoretical aspects of the proposed PV power supply and effectiveness of the control techniques to compensate non-linear unbalanced loads as well as utilization of the maximum PV power production.
Approaching bandwidth reliability of a CMOS highly dense physical unclonable function

A Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is a random cryptographic function which could be implemented using a complex process-based physical system. PUF is a good inexpensive candidate for producing signature keys for cloud-based reliable communication within Internet of Things (IoT) devices in future. PUF made from on-chip Ring Oscillator (RO) is popular due to random physically induced frequency behavior and known as RO-PUF. Frequency bandwidth of applied ROs are subject to change due to environmental or aging variation, this results in bit flip and consequently non-reliable behavior of the RO-PUF. A frequency spectrum analysis and correction for the RO-PUF based on an industrially implementable and inexpensive hardware technology is required. Most of previous works are either software level works which do not offer a silicon-level reliability view, or are based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which are not suitable for fabrication of the low to middle price range PUF. In this paper, we have presented a statistical method for improving reliability of PUF designs. We have introduced RO-PUF Bandwidth Reliability Measure “BRM”. BRM is improved by a 31.2 times scaling factor via applying a hardware level tuning on a highly dense RO-PUF.
A RHBD LC-Tank Oscillator Design Tolerant to Single-Event Transients

A single-event transients (SETs) tolerant LC-tank oscillator was designed, simulated, and fabricated using CMOS 90 nm technology. The simulation and experimental results indicate that the bias current of the oscillator greatly affects the SET-tolerance of an LC-tank oscillator. Adding a decoupling resistor to the bias circuit is an effective way to mitigate the effect of SETs to the oscillator. Laser testing and simulation results show significant reduction in the SET-induced amplitude and phase shifts of the VCO output.
ToTal polyphenol , proanThocyanidin and flavonoid conTenT , carbohydraTe composiTion and anTioxidanT acTiviTy of persimmon ( Diospyros kaki l . ) fruiT in relaTion To culTivar and maTuriTy sTage

Denev, P. and A. YorDAnov, 2013. Total polyphenol, proanthocyanidin and flavonoid content, carbohydrate composition and antioxidant activity of persimmon (Diospyros kaki L.) fruit in relation to cultivar and maturity stage. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 19: 981-988 The current study investigates the total polyphenol, proanthocyanidin and flavonoid content, the carbohydrate composition, and antioxidant activity of persimmon fruit (Diospyros kaki L) from five cultivars (Hyakume, Moro, Hiratanenashi, Jiro C 24276 and Mandarino). Fruits were analyzed at two maturity stages commercial harvest stage and physiological ripening stage. The HPLC analysis showed that glucose and fructose were the predominant sugars in the fruit. At commercial harvest stage total sugar content varied in the range 9.6 – 14.4 g/100g FW and increased slightly to 11.5-16.5 g/100g FW after maturation, being the highest in Hiratanenashi cultivar. Generally, the polyphenol content and particularly the proanthocyanidin content were strongly affected by the cultivar and maturity stage. The highest polyphenol and proanthocyanidin content at commercial harvest stage showed Hiratanenashi persimmon (916.8 mg GAE/100g FW and 540.2 CE/100g FW, respectively. The content of both polyphenols and proanthocyanins decreased proportionally during the maturation. At physiological ripening stage, again Hiratanenashi was the richest source of polyphenols and proanthocyanidins 400.2 mg GAE/100g FW and 90.2 CE/100g FW, respectively. Persimmons showed different antioxidant activity depending on cultivars measured by Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) and Hydroxyl Radical Averting Capacity (HORAC) methods. At commercial harvest stage the pollination variant astringent cultivar Hiratanenashi has the highest ORAC and HORAC values – 49.2 μmolTE/g FW and 30.2 μmolGAE/g FW, respectively. After the maturation of the fruit of all cultivars, a more or less decrease in both ORAC and HORAC values was observed, proportionally to the decrease of the total polyphenol content.
Fair and Collision-Aware Multi-Channel Assignment Based on Game Theory for Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Equipping wireless routers with multiple radios further improves the capacity by transmitting over multiple radios simultaneously using orthogonal channels. Efficient channel assignment schemes can greatly alleviate the interference effect of nearby transmissions. One of the distinctive features in wireless multi-hop networks is the lack of any central controller, in which each node makes its own decisions. Therefore, fully cooperative behaviors, such as cooperation for increasing link capacity, alleviating interferences for one another, might not be directly applied. In this paper, we aim to present some applications to show how such a framework can be invoked to design efficient channel assignment algorithms in a non-cooperative, topology-blind environment as well as in environments where the competing players share perfect information about channel usage and topology environment and so on. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithms.
Traumatic brain injury shows better functional recovery than brain tumor: a rehabilitative perspective.

BACKGROUND The similar symptoms seen in the brain tumor (BT) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) population. However, functional comparisons between these two diagnostic groups have been limited. AIM To compare functional outcomes in patients with supratentorial BT and TBI after early rehabilitation. DESIGN This was a retrospective database analysis. Setting. Patients admitted to an Acute Care Unit as inpatient (Hacettepe Hospital, Ankara-Turkey). Population. The population included patients with BT and TBI. METHODS Thirty-four patients with BT and TBI were matched one-to-one by lesion side and sex. The Barthel Index was used to assess functional status at the pre- and postrehabilitation. The change rate and efficiency in BI were also calculated. The time between injury onset and admission to rehabilitation (the onset to admission interval, OAI) and length of stay in rehabilitation (LOS rehab) were recorded. In addition, the influence of lesion side (left and right) and age on functional outcome were analyzed. RESULTS The functional level was significantly lower in TBI patients than in patients BT before rehabilitation (P<0.05). The post-rehabilitation BI score was similar in patients with BT and TBI (P>0.05). Patients with TBI had greater the change rate and efficiency in BI (P<0.05). The OAI and LOS rehab was longer in patients with TBI (P<0.05). In terms of lesion side comparisons, no differences were found (P>0.05). The age had no effect on functional outcome in patients with TBI and BT (P>0.05), expect the age group 45-59 (P<0.05). CONCLUSION The early rehabilitation program improved functional ability of patients with brain tumors, as well as patients with traumatic brain injury. Despite the lower functional status, patients with TBI displayed better functional recovery than patients with BT. Lesion side had no effect on functional outcome in patients with TBI and BT. Differences in functional status begin to appear even in patients with TBI between 45 and 59 years. Further investigations with more detailed outcome instruments are required to better understand the qualitative limitations of a patient's recovery. CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT Patients with TBI will make functional gains comparable with patients with brain tumors in a similar rehabilitation setting.
Chemoradiation followed by surgery compared with chemoradiation alone in squamous cancer of the esophagus: FFCD 9102.

PURPOSE Uncontrolled studies suggest that chemoradiation has similar efficacy as surgery for esophageal cancer. Therefore, a randomized trial was carried out to compare, in responders only, chemoradiation alone with chemoradiation followed by surgery in patients with locally advanced tumors. PATIENTS AND METHODS Eligible patients had operable T3N0-1M0 thoracic esophageal cancer. Patients received two cycles of fluorouracil (FU) and cisplatin (days 1 to 5 and 22 to 26) and either conventional (46 Gy in 4.5 weeks) or split-course (15 Gy, days 1 to 5 and 22 to 26) concomitant radiotherapy. Patients with response and no contraindication to either treatment were randomly assigned to surgery (arm A) or continuation of chemoradiation (arm B; three cycles of FU/cisplatin and either conventional [20 Gy] or split-course [15 Gy] radiotherapy). Chemoradiation was considered equivalent to surgery if the difference in 2-year survival rate was less than 10%. RESULTS Of 444 eligible patients, 259 were randomly assigned; 230 patients (88.8%) had epidermoid cancer, and 29 (11.2%) had glandular carcinoma. Two-year survival rate was 34% in arm A versus 40% in arm B (hazard ratio for arm B v arm A = 0.90; adjusted P = .44). Median survival time was 17.7 months in arm A compared with 19.3 months in arm B. Two-year local control rate was 66.4% in arm A compared with 57.0% in arm B, and stents were less required in the surgery arm (5% in arm A v 32% in arm B; P < .001). The 3-month mortality rate was 9.3% in arm A compared with 0.8% in arm B (P = .002). Cumulative hospital stay was 68 days in arm A compared with 52 days in arm B (P = .02). CONCLUSION Our data suggest that, in patients with locally advanced thoracic esophageal cancers, especially epidermoid, who respond to chemoradiation, there is no benefit for the addition of surgery after chemoradiation compared with the continuation of additional chemoradiation.
A Hierarchy of Language Families Learnable by Regular Language Learning

Abstract We shall establish the existence of a hierarchy of language families in which the learning problem for each family is reduced to the learning problem for regular languages. The hierarchy is defined inductively by controlling certain type of even linear grammars with languages in one family to yield languages in the next larger family. Each family contains the family of regular languages and has a nontrivial language such as {an1an2 ··· an2i| n ≥ 0}, where i is a nonnegative integer and each aj is a symbol. Thus this boosts the learnability of learning algorithms for regular languages.
Characterization and manipulation of T cell immunity to skin grafts expressing a transgenic minor antigen.

BACKGROUND Minor histocompatibility antigens play a significant role in allograft rejection when donor and recipient are matched at MHC loci. An improved understanding of T cell immunity directed toward a model minor antigen may provide new approaches for preventing graft rejection. METHODS C57BL/6 (B6) recipient mice were engrafted with skin from B6 beta-galactosidase transgenic (beta-gal tg) donors and the induced T cell immune responses were characterized by cytokine ELISA spot assay. beta-gal-specific immunity was manipulated prior to transplant through preinjection with beta-gal in complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) or through preinjection with soluble beta-gal i.v. RESULTS B6 mice rejected beta-gal tg skin by day 25. Rejection was associated with a low frequency of predominantly CD8+, interferon-gamma-producing T cells capable of directly recognizing both beta-gal tg cells and an immunodominant major histocompatibility complex I-restricted peptide derived from the beta-gal protein. Rejection of multiple minor antigen disparate skin and major histocompatibility complex-disparate skin occurred significantly faster, and was associated with a 10- to 30-fold higher frequency of alloreactive T cells, than rejection of beta-gal tg skin. Prepriming of recipients with beta-gal in complete Freund's adjuvant resulted in an increased frequency of beta-gal-specific T cells and accelerated rejection of beta-gal tg skin. Intravenous injection of soluble beta-gal-induced graft tolerance and a lack of detectable beta-gal-specific immunity. CONCLUSIONS The findings reveal that transgenically expressed beta-gal behaves as a minor transplantation antigen and that manipulation of the beta-gal-specific T cell repertoire can dramatically affect rejection of beta-gal tg skin grafts. The work provides the foundation for mechanistic studies of tolerogenesis to minor antigenic determinants.
Contribution of Mesenchymal Proliferation in Tooth Root Morphogenesis

In mouse tooth development, the roots of the first lower molar develop after crown formation to form 2 cylindrical roots by post-natal day 5. This study compared the morphogenesis and cellular events of the mesial-root-forming (MRF) and bifurcation-forming (BF) regions, located in the mesial and center of the first lower molar, to better define the developmental mechanisms involved in multi-rooted tooth formation. We found that the mesenchyme in the MRF showed relatively higher proliferation than the bifurcation region. This suggested that spatially regulated mesenchymal proliferation is required for creating cylindrical root structure. The mechanism may involve the mesenchyme forming a physical barrier to epithelial invagination of Hertwig’s epithelial root sheath. To test these ideas, we cultured roots in the presence of pharmacological inhibitors of microtubule and actin polymerization, nocodazole and cytochalasin-D. Cytochalasin D also inhibits proliferation in epithelium and mesenchyme. Both drugs resulted in altered morphological changes in the tooth root structures. In particular, the nocodazole- and cytochalasin-D-treated specimens showed a loss of root diameter and formation of a single-root, respectively. Immunolocalization and three-dimensional reconstruction results confirmed these mesenchymal cellular events, with higher proliferation in MRF in multi-rooted tooth formation.
Reduction of caveolin 1 gene expression in lung carcinoma cell lines.

Caveolae are plasma membrane microdomains that have been implicated in organizing and concentrating certain signaling molecules. Caveolins, constitute the main structural proteins of caveolae. Caveolae are abundant in terminally differentiated cell types. However, caveolin-1 is down-regulated in transformed cells and may have a potential tumor suppressor activity. In the lung, caveolae are present in the endothelium, smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts as well as in type I pneumocytes. The presence of caveolae and caveolin expression in the bronchial epithelium, although probable, has not been investigated in human. We were interested to see if the bronchial epithelia express caveolins and if this expression was modified in cancer cells. We thus tested for caveolin-1 and -2 expression several bronchial epithelial primary cell lines as well as eight lung cancer cell lines and one larynx tumor cell line. Both caveolin-1 and -2 are expressed in all normal bronchial cell lines. With the exception of Calu-1 cell line, all cancer cell lines showed very low or no expression of caveolin-1 while caveolin-2 expression was similar to the one observed in normal bronchial epithelial cells.
Channel Estimation Based on Neural Network With Feedback for Mimo Ofdm Mobile Communication Systems

Abstract multiple input multiple output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has received a great deal of attention of recently in achieving high data rate in wireless communication systems such as WIMAX. Channel estimation is, however, a critical issue for coherent demodulation. In this paper, a new channel estimator based on neural network with feedback for MIMO-OFDM mobile system is designed and its performance is compared to the least square error (LS), least mean square error (LMS), minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithms and neural network without feedback by using computer simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed system is an effective solution to channel estimation in time varying fast fading channels without any knowledge of channel statistics and noise information.
An automatic tube inspection system that finds cylinders in range data

A system that automatically inspects pieces of formed tubing is described. To locate the part, the system automatically identifies cylindrical tube sections from sparse range samples taken with an active scanning device, and uses this to roughly locate the part under sensor. This localization is used to determine a detailed scanning strategy, which is executed to acquire more precise and detailed information. These data are than used to verify specifications on components. <<ETX>>
Heterogeneous parallel 3 D image deconvolution on a cluster of GPUs and CPUs

This paper presents a heterogeneous computing algorithm for 3D Richardson-Lucy image deconvolution applicable for use on single heterogeneous workstations, all the way up to large distributed memory clusters consisting of many heterogeneous nodes. We demonstrate our solution on a cluster of nodes containing multiple CPU cores and GPUs. The algorithm uses a combination of message passing and massively-multicore programming technologies to achieve nested levels of parallelism, ranging from course grained domain decomposition across worker processes to more fine grain parallelism within worker processes utilising GPUs. The work distribution and worker framework is abstracted from the type of processor architecture used for core algorithm calculation by different worker processes. Allocation of computational resources (different processors or cores) to workers is handled collaboratively by the worker processes on each cluster node using efficient Operating System level counting semaphores, avoiding the need to manage computational resources centrally on the cluster. The tested implementation utilises MPI (Message Passing Interface) for parallelisation across the cluster, CUFFT and custom written kernels for parallelisation of algorithm components on the GPU, and the highly tuned MKL math library for computations on the CPU. Result show that utilising a collection of different processor types on available nodes can provided performance benefits over the use of a single type alone. It is common to find heterogeneous workstations with a smaller number of high performance accelerator processors than general purpose processor cores. In these cases, when considering the number of cluster nodes utilised versus performance, using all available processors on a node generally provides a performance gain whilst using the same number of nodes, or allows us to achieve similar performance using fewer nodes. We discuss situations where using multiple processor types at once can inhibit performance, and make recommendations on when such an approach would or would not be advantageous.