Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The mechanical waveform of the basilar membrane. II. From data to models--and back.

Mechanical responses in the basal turn of the guinea-pig cochlea are measured with low-level broad-band noise as the acoustical stimulus [for details see de Boer and Nuttall, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 3583-3592 (1997)]. Results are interpreted within the framework of a classical three-dimensional model of the cochlea that belongs to a very wide class of nonlinear models. The use of linear-systems analysis for this class of nonlinear models has been justified earlier [de Boer, Audit. Neurosci. 3, 377-388 (1997)]. The data are subjected to inverse analysis with the aim to recover the "effective basilar-membrane impedance. " This is a parameter function that, when inserted into the model, produces a model response, the "resynthesized" response, that is similar to the measured response. With present-day solution methods, resynthesis leads back to an almost perfect replica of the original response in the spatial domain. It is demonstrated in this paper that this also applies to the response in the frequency domain and in the time domain. This paper further reports details with regard to geometrical properties of the model employed. Two three-dimensional models are studied; one has its dimensions close to that of the real cochlea, the other is a stylized model which has homogeneous geometry over its length. In spite of the geometric differences the recovered impedance functions are very similar. An impedance function computed for one model can be used in resynthesis of the response in the other one, and this leads to global amplitude deviations between original and resynthesized response functions not exceeding 8 dB. Discrepancies are much larger (particularly in the phase) when a two-dimensional model is compared with a three-dimensional model. It is concluded that a stylized three-dimensional model with homogeneous geometric parameters will give sufficient information in further work on unraveling cochlear function via inverse analysis. In all cases of a sensitive cochlea stimulated by a signal with a stimulus level of 50 dB SPL per octave or less, the resulting basilar-membrane impedance is found to be locally active, that is, the impedance function shows a region where the basilar membrane is able to amplify acoustic power or to reduce dissipation of power by the organ of Corti. Finally, the influence of deliberate errors added to the data is discussed in order to judge the accuracy of the results.
Study of the genetic diversity of the aflatoxin biosynthesis cluster in Aspergillus section Flavi using insertion/deletion markers in peanut seeds from Georgia, USA

ABSTRACT Aflatoxins are among the most powerful carcinogens in nature. The major aflatoxin-producing fungi are Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus. Numerous crops, including peanut, are susceptible to aflatoxin contamination by these fungi. There has been an increased use of RNA interference (RNAi) technology to control phytopathogenic fungi in recent years. In order to develop molecular tools targeting specific genes of these fungi for the control of aflatoxins, it is necessary to obtain their genome sequences. Although high-throughput sequencing is readily available, it is still impractical to sequence the genome of every isolate. Thus, in this work, the authors proposed a workflow that allowed prescreening of 238 Aspergillus section Flavi isolates from peanut seeds from Georgia, USA. The aflatoxin biosynthesis cluster (ABC) of the isolates was fingerprinted at 25 InDel (insertion/deletion) loci using capillary electrophoresis. All isolates were tested for aflatoxins using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography. The neighbor-joining, three-dimension (3D) principal coordinate, and Structure analyses revealed that the Aspergillus isolates sampled consisted of three main groups determined by their capability to produce aflatoxins. Group I comprised 10 non-aflatoxigenic A. flavus; Group II included A. parasiticus; and Group III included mostly aflatoxigenic A. flavus and the three non-aflatoxigenic A. caelatus. Whole genomes of 10 representative isolates from different groups were sequenced. Although InDels in Aspergillus have been used by other research groups, this is the first time that the cluster analysis resulting from fingerprinting was followed by whole-genome sequencing of representative isolates. In our study, cluster analysis of ABC sequences validated the results obtained with fingerprinting. This shows that InDels used here can predict similarities at the genome level. Our results also revealed a relationship between groups and their capability to produce aflatoxins. The database generated of Aspergillus spp. can be used to select target genes and assess the effectiveness of RNAi technology to reduce aflatoxin contamination in peanut.
Market-Based Multi-Agent Coordination to Manage Energy Balance in Smart Grids

Widespread adoption of sustainable energy sources is driving electricity grid operators to supplement hierarchical control regimes with market-based control that better motivates stakeholder involvement. However, to prevent market failures, such controls require testing before real-world implementation. The Power Trading Agent Competition is a competitive simulation of distribution grids that mirrors real-world scenarios and tests alternative policy and business scenarios. In Power TAC, broker agents acquire energy through bidding in a forward wholesale market to satisfy their customers’ overall demand on an hourly basis. In addition, a balancing market is intended to resolve real-time energy imbalances caused by broker prediction errors using demand response resources. As part of the annual alignment process, we discovered that brokers in the 2015 competition were persistently buying insufficient energy on the wholesale market to satisfy their customer demand. Instead, the balancing market made up the deficit, charging brokers a premium over the wholesale price. Also, demand response resources were heavily underused. We studied the economic impact of this systematic imbalance on brokers and discovered that they were behaving rationally, given the prices they faced in the two markets. We present the process and results of this analysis, and show how the balancing market’s pricing mechanism can be adjusted for the 2016 competition to make it rational for brokers to achieve an overall neutral imbalance.
Assessment of Intrinsic Bioremediation of a Coal‐Tar‐Affected Aquifer Using Two‐Dimensional Reactive Transport and Biogeochemical Mass Balance Approaches

Expedited site characterization and groundwater monitoring using direct‐push technology and conventional monitoring wells were conducted at a former manufactured gas plant site. Biogeochemical data and heterotrophic plate counts support the presence of microbially mediated remediation. By superimposing solutions of a two‐dimensional reactive transport analytical model, first‐order degradation rate coefficients (day −1) of various compounds for the dissolved‐phase plume were estimated (i.e., benzene [0.0084], naphthalene [0.0058], and acenaphthene [0.0011]). The total mass transformed by aerobic respiration, nitrate reduction, and sulfate reduction around the free‐phase coal‐tar dense‐nonaqueous‐phase‐liquid region and in the plume was estimated to be approximately 4.5 kg/y using a biogeochemical mass‐balance approach. The total mass transformed using the degradation rate coefficients was estimated to be approximately 3.6 kg/y. Results showed that a simple two‐dimensional analytical model and a biochemical mass balance with geochemical data from expedited site characterization can be useful for rapid estimation of mass‐transformation rates.
The Development of Regional Economy and the Choice of Fiscal Policy

Fiscal policy influences the development of regional economy by investment,flowing person with ability and technique innovation.Aiming at the absence of the fiscal policy in the regional economy,an appropriate fiscal policy should be selected to promote the harmonious development of regional economy.For example:adjusting the territorial tax policy;eliminating the unfavorable factors of the harmonious development of regional economy caused by the difference of the tax policies;adjusting the structure of the fiscal payout and establishing the benefit evaluating system of the fiscal payout;perfecting the transfer payment system and achieving the equalization of the public service in various area;adjusting the fiscal investing policy and perfecting the investing environment,strengthening the ability of attracting capital investment in Midwest area.
Cost analysis of adding pregabalin or gabapentin to the management of community-treated patients with peripheral neuropathic pain.

OBJECTIVE To compare the cost of adding either pregabalin or gabapentin to the management of community-treated patients with peripheral neuropathic pain (PNP). METHODS A retrospective observational study was conducted using medical records from a Spanish health care provider claims database. Patients receiving health care for PNP, above 18 years and for which either pregabalin or gabapentin was initiated between 2006 and 2008 were included. Economic evaluation included health care resource utilization costs and costs due to sick leave. RESULTS A total of 1163 patients with PNP were eligible for analysis: 764 were prescribed pregabalin and 399 gabapentin in addition to current pain therapy. Mean age was 59.2 years and 62.2% were female. Concomitant use of analgesics was higher in the gabapentin cohort (3.2 vs. 2.7; P = 0.003), mainly due to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (74.9% vs. 69.5%; P = 0.018) and opioids (27.7% vs. 17.9%; P = 0.031). Adjusted total costs per patient was lower in pregabalin-treated patients (€2514 vs. €3241; P = 0.003), due to less sick leave (€1067 vs. €1633; P = 0.018) and lower health care costs (€1447 vs. €1609; P = 0.004). The higher acquisition cost of pregabalin (€351 vs. €191; P < 0.001) was largely compensated with lower costs in medical visits, physiotherapy, hospital stays and concomitant analgesics. CONCLUSIONS In community-treated patients with PNP, total costs were considerably less for those patients initiated with pregabalin therapy than for those patients starting gabapentin add-on therapy. The relatively higher treatment acquisition cost of pregabalin was largely compensated by the overall lower costs for the other components of health care resources and sick leave, thus reducing the economic impact on the health care provider's budget and society.
Adaptive Fuzzy Tracking Control of Nonlinear Time-Delay Systems With Dead-Zone Output Mechanism Based on a Novel Smooth Model

This paper presents a novel fuzzy adaptive controller for controlling a class of dead-zone output nonlinear systems with time delays. A new approximate model is first designed to describe a special dead-zone phenomenon encountered by the output mechanism of nonlinear systems, and the proposed smooth model can be conveniently fused with available adaptive fuzzy control techniques. In addition, the coupling effect that the dead-zone output and the time-delayed states coexist in a common coupling function makes the tracking control design more complicated. To further address this difficulty, a compensation method using mean-value theorem with Lyapunov-Krasovskii function is presented in this paper. By using the proposed output dead-zone model, and based on Lyapunov synthesis, a new optimized algorithm is developed to guarantee the prescribed convergence of tracking error and the boundedness of all the signals in the closed-loop systems. Simulations have been implemented to verify the performance of the proposed fuzzy adaptive controller.
A Generative Probabilistic Model and Discriminative Extensions for Brain Lesion Segmentation— With Application to Tumor and Stroke

We introduce a generative probabilistic model for segmentation of brain lesions in multi-dimensional images that generalizes the EM segmenter, a common approach for modelling brain images using Gaussian mixtures and a probabilistic tissue atlas that employs expectation-maximization (EM), to estimate the label map for a new image. Our model augments the probabilistic atlas of the healthy tissues with a latent atlas of the lesion. We derive an estimation algorithm with closed-form EM update equations. The method extracts a latent atlas prior distribution and the lesion posterior distributions jointly from the image data. It delineates lesion areas individually in each channel, allowing for differences in lesion appearance across modalities, an important feature of many brain tumor imaging sequences. We also propose discriminative model extensions to map the output of the generative model to arbitrary labels with semantic and biological meaning, such as “tumor core” or “fluid-filled structure”, but without a one-to-one correspondence to the hypo- or hyper-intense lesion areas identified by the generative model. We test the approach in two image sets: the publicly available BRATS set of glioma patient scans, and multimodal brain images of patients with acute and subacute ischemic stroke. We find the generative model that has been designed for tumor lesions to generalize well to stroke images, and the extended discriminative -discriminative model to be one of the top ranking methods in the BRATS evaluation.
Experimental glutamatergic excitotoxicity in rabbit retinal ganglion cells: block by memantine.

PURPOSE Excessive activity of NMDA-type (N-methyl-d-aspartate) glutamatergic channels has been implicated as a mechanism for neuronal injury in neurologic disorders, including glaucoma, and retinal disease. This study was designed to characterize the retinal response to experimental manipulations that mimic features of glutamatergic excitotoxic insult and also to determine whether memantine, an NMDA-type glutamatergic channel blocker, is effective in reversing experimental excitotoxicity. METHODS Recordings of the electroretinogram (ERG) and spiking activity of single retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) were made from rabbit retinas. Excitotoxic insult was induced by either (1) application of NMDA, a selective NMDA receptor agonist; (2) application of TBOA (dl-threo-beta-benzyloxyaspartic acid), a selective inhibitor of glutamate transporters, or (3) perfusion with magnesium-free medium. For each condition, memantine was coapplied to determine its efficacy for reversal of experimental excitotoxicity. Memantine was also applied in isolation to characterize any effect on retinal responses to light stimuli. RESULTS All three experimental manipulations were associated with an increase in the tonic level of RGC spiking activity, a reduction in RGC spike amplitude, and, in some cells, block of spike generation. Experimental excitotoxicity had little or no effect on ERG responses. Coapplication of memantine was associated with recovery of RGC tonic spiking activity and spike amplitude toward control levels. Application of memantine in isolation was associated with a dose-dependent effect on the timing of ERG and RGC-OFF responses. CONCLUSIONS Memantine was effective in reversing acute experimental excitotoxicity at concentrations that have little effect on retinal light signaling.
ELROB and EURATHLON: Improving search & rescue robotics through real-world robot competitions

It is a difficult task to compare methods in the field of outdoor robotics. Robotic competitions have become a common means of evaluating the performance of robotic techniques. EURATHLON and ELROB are examples for such outdoor robotics competitions aiming to assess the capabilities of robotic systems in realistic disaster response scenarios. Obviously, this requires special efforts in the metrics and benchmarking domain. Additionally, a major aim of ELROB and EURATHLON is standardization, for example regarding technical interfaces, protocols, data formats; or even complex structures like payload specifications and exchangeable datasets. This paper describes the EURATHLON and ELROB projects, the conducted competitions and, especially, the efforts made in the fields of standardization and benchmarking.
Trends in Outcomes, Financial Burden, and Mortality for Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in the United States from 2002 to 2010

ABSTRACT Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the cause of substantial economic and social burden. We evaluated the temporal trends of hospitalizations from acute exacerbation of COPD and determined its outcome and financial impact using the National (Nationwide) Inpatient Sample (NIS) databases (2002–2010). Individuals aged ≥ 18 years were included. Subjects who were hospitalized with primary diagnosis of COPD exacerbation and those who were admitted for other causes but had underlying acute exacerbation of COPD (secondary diagnosis) were captured by International Classification of Diseases-Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes. The hospital outcomes and length of stay were determined. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify the independent predictors of inpatient mortality. Overall acute exacerbation of COPD-related hospitalizations accounted for nearly 3.31% of all hospitalizations in the year 2002. This did not change significantly to year 2010 (3.43%, p = 0.608). However, there was an increase in hospitalization with secondary diagnosis of COPD. Elderly white patients accounted for most of the hospitalizations. Medicare was the primary payer source for most of the hospitalizations (73–75%). There was a significant decrease in inpatient mortality from 4.8% in 2002 to 3.9% in 2010 (slope –0.096, p < 0.001). Similarly, there was a significant decrease in average length of stay from 6.4 days in 2002 to 6.0 days in 2010 (slope –0.042, p < 0.001). Despite this, the hospitalization cost was increased substantially from $22,187 in 2002 to $38,455 in 2010. However, financial burden has increased over the years.
Low-dose quetiapine for patients with dysregulation of hyperthymic and cyclothymic temperaments

Patients with hyperthymic and cyclothymic temperaments often develop symptoms that fail to meet diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorders. These patients can be conceived as having bipolar disorder NOS (not otherwise specified), a bipolar spectrum disorder, cyclothymic disorder or cluster B personality traits. Here, we describe four of these patients with mild to moderate symptoms affecting mood, behaviour, emotional reactivity and sleep. Treatment with low-dose quetiapine (25—75 mg/day at night) lead to sustained symptom remission. Two of them were on quetiapine monotherapy. Such low doses occupy a minority of D2 and 5-HT2 receptors, which may nevertheless be of therapeutic value in mild cases. Alternatively, other mechanisms more likely to occur at low doses, such as antagonism of H1, α(1B)-adrenergic and other serotonin receptors, as well as reduction cortisol secretion, may be involved in the therapeutic efficacy of quetiapine.
Early Cleft Lip Repair in Children With Unilateral Complete Cleft Lip and Palate: A Case Against Primary Alveolar Repair

All children with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate will develop some degree of malocclusion regardless whether the alveolar cleft is repaired primarily or bone grafting is deferred. To evaluate the impact of early gingivoperiosteoplasty on occlusal relationships, dental models were obtained in 5-year-old patients who underwent early cleft lip and palate repair with primary boneless bone grafting (Skoog's method) (56 children) and without alveolar intervention (51 children). The Goslon's occlusion grading system was applied to evaluate occlusal relationships in both groups. Patients with early surgical intervention to repair alveolar cleft demonstrated poor occlusal relationship with the Goslon score 4 and 5, which will likely need an orthognathic corrective procedure (50% vs. 19.6% in patients without early primary dissection of the alveolar process). Results reaffirm that an inclusion of the alveolar process into the early primary lip repair adds to the severity of occlusal maldevelopment.
Bioavailable Concentrations of Delphinidin and Its Metabolite, Gallic Acid, Induce Antioxidant Protection Associated with Increased Intracellular Glutathione in Cultured Endothelial Cells

Despite limited bioavailability and rapid degradation, dietary anthocyanins are antioxidants with cardiovascular benefits. This study tested the hypothesis that the antioxidant protection conferred by the anthocyanin, delphinidin, is mediated by modulation of endogenous antioxidant defences, driven by its degradation product, gallic acid. Delphinidin was found to degrade rapidly (t1/2 ~ 30 min), generating gallic acid as a major degradation product. Both delphinidin and gallic acid generated oxygen-centred radicals at high (100 μM) concentrations in vitro. In a cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cell model of oxidative stress, the antioxidant protective effects of both delphinidin and gallic acid displayed a hormesic profile; 100 μM concentrations of both were cytotoxic, but relatively low concentrations (100 nM–1 μM) protected the cells and were associated with increased intracellular glutathione. We conclude that delphinidin is intrinsically unstable and unlikely to confer any direct antioxidant activity in vivo yet it offered antioxidant protection to cells at low concentrations. This paradox might be explained by the ability of the degradation product, gallic acid, to confer benefit. The findings are important in understanding the mode of protection conferred by anthocyanins and reinforce the necessity to conduct in vitro experiments at biologically relevant concentrations.
Central Banking in the XXI Century: Never Say Never

At first glance, today’s global economic outlook gives plenty of ammunition to the critics of central banks. Take the euro area – though its problems are by no means unique – where notwithstanding a strongly expansionary monetary stance, inflation is persistently low, growth is weak, and the recovery far more fragile than one would hope. It is unsurprising that in this environment we have got caught in a crossfire of questions on the nature of monetary policy. Is the ECB pursuing the right objectives? Is it doing so effectively? Zero or negative rates and intrusive asset purchase programmes could cause all sorts of distortions, including financial bubbles or inequalities? Is the ECB fully aware of this? And if so, does it care?