Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demonstration of the effect of epidermal growth factor on ram sperm parameters using two fluorescent assays.

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of epidermal growth factor (EGF) on sperm viability using two fluorescent techniques and to analyze the obtained results in relation to sperm motility, determined by subjective estimation. Fresh ram semen diluted in a Biladyl commercial extender was cooling stored (at 4 °C in a fridge) for four days in the presence of EGF at doses of 0, 10, 100, 200 or 400 ng/ml. Thereafter, sperm samples were analyzed for progressive motility (Motility test) and membrane integrity using two fluorescent techniques: SYBR-14/PI (Method 1) or PI/DAPI (Method 2). Application of Method 1 did not detect an effect of EGF at any concentration on sperm membrane integrity. A positive effect of EGF (200 ng/ml) on sperm membrane integrity was found using Method 2 of staining, and this result was confirmed by the sperm motility test, which demonstrated an EGF-stimulating effect (200 or 400 ng/ml) on a percentage of progressively moving spermatozoa. Strong posi- tive correlations between Methods 1 and 2 (r = 0.785), Method 1 and Motility (r = 0.803), Method 2 and Motility (r = 0.699), as well as between both techniques taken together and the Motility test (r = 0.853) were found. Regres - sion analysis confirmed that Method 2 was more exact than Method 1, and the results obtained with Method 2 are comparable with those of the Motility test. Dependence of the viability or motility on EGF concentrations (linear regression function) was significant only for Method 2 or the Motility test. The obtained results suggest a stimulating effect of EGF (at higher concentrations) on ram sperm functions (viability/membrane integrity and motility). Furthermore, they indicate substantial differences between two fluorescent techniques in the determina- tion of sperm membrane integrity. Only the data obtained using PI/DAPI were confirmed by a functional Motility test. These findings suggest that the technique chosen for analysis of sperm viability can influence the conclusion concerning the effects of the treatment on sperm function.
Clutch‐size variation in Western Palaearctic secondary hole‐nesting passerine birds in relation to nest box design

Secondary hole‐nesting birds that do not construct nest holes themselves and hence regularly breed in nest boxes constitute important model systems for field studies in many biological disciplines with hundreds of scientists and amateurs involved. Those research groups are spread over wide geographic areas that experience considerable variation in environmental conditions, and researchers provide nest boxes of varying designs that may inadvertently introduce spatial and temporal variation in reproductive parameters. We quantified the relationship between mean clutch size and nest box size and material after controlling for a range of environmental variables in four of the most widely used model species in the Western Palaearctic: great tit Parus major, blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus, pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca and collared flycatcher F. albicollis from 365 populations and 79 610 clutches. Nest floor area and nest box material varied non‐randomly across latitudes and longitudes, showing that scientists did not adopt a random box design. Clutch size increased with nest floor area in great tits, but not in blue tits and flycatchers. Clutch size of blue tits was larger in wooden than in concrete nest boxes. These findings demonstrate that the size of nest boxes and material used to construct nest boxes can differentially affect clutch size in different species. The findings also suggest that the nest box design may affect not only focal species, but also indirectly other species through the effects of nest box design on productivity and therefore potentially population density and hence interspecific competition.
Stochastic inverse problem with noisy simulator - Application to aeronautical model

Inverse problem is a current practice in engineering where the goal is to identify parameters from observed data through numerical models. These numerical models, also called Simulators, are built to represent the phenomenon making possible the inference. However, such representation can include some part of variability or commonly called uncertainty (see [4]), arising from some variables of the model. The phenomenon we study is the fuel mass needed to link two given countries with a commercial aircraft, where we only consider the Cruise phase . From a data base of fuel mass consumptions during the cruise phase, we aim at identifying the Speci c Fuel Consumption (SFC) in a robust way, given the uncertainty of the cruise speed V and the lift-to-drag ratio F. In this paper, we present an estimation procedure based on Maximum-Likelihood estimation, taking into account this uncertainty.
Toward a Dataset-Agnostic Word Segmentation Method

Word segmentation in documents is a critical stage towards word and character recognition, as well as word spotting. Despite recent advancements in word segmentation and object detection, detecting instances of words in a cluttered handwritten document remains a non-trivial task that requires a large amount of labeled documents for training. We present a flexible and general framework for word segmentation in handwritten documents, which incorporates techniques from the recent object detection literature as well as document analysis tools. Our method utilizes information that is relevant for word segmentation and ignores other highly variable information contained in a handwritten text, thus allowing for efficient transfer learning between datasets and alleviating the need for labeled training data. Our approach efficiently detects words in a variety of scanned document images, including historical handwritten documents and modern day handwritten documents, presenting excellent results on existing benchmarks. In addition, we demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by achieving state-of-the-art results for segmentation-free word spotting tasks.
Towards an Empathic Chess Companion

In this paper, we propose an empathic model for a social robot that acts as a chess companion for children. The model will attempt to recognize some of the user’s affective states (interest, boredom and frustration), by combining information retrieved from facial and body expression recognition systems with contextual features of the game (e.g., who is winning, for how long.). We further present a set of possible empathic behaviours that the agent can perform when the user is experiencing such
Effects of cypermethrin on rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of cypermethrin ( (R,S)-α-cyano-3-phenoxybenzyl (1RS)- -cis,tra-3-(2,2-dichlorovinyl)-2,2-dimethyl cyclopropane carboxylate) on rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). The effect was assessed on the basis of the results of acute toxicity tests and on the comparison of results of hae - matological, biochemical and histopathological tissue examinations of a control and experimental group exposed to Alimetrine 10 EM pesticide preparation (active substance 100 g /l of cypermethrin). The acute semistatical toxicity test lasting 96 h was performed on rainbow trout juveniles. The 96hLC50 value of Alimethrine 10 EM was 31.4 µg/l. Examination of erythrocyte, leukocyte and biochemical profile and histopathological tissue examination was performed on 15 control and 15 experimental specimens of one-to-two-year-old rainbow trout after 96 h of exposure to Alimetrine 10 EM in the concentration of 31.4 µg/l. The experimental group showed significantly higher values (P < 0.01) of plasma ammonia (NH 3 ), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), creatine kinase (CK), lactate (LACT) and significantly lower ( P < 0.01) values of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) compared to the control group. Also, a significant decrease in count of developmental forms of myeloid sequence, and segmented neutrophile granulocytes in the experimental group were found. Teleangioectasiae of secondary gill lamellae and degeneration of hepatocytes were observed with histopathological examination. No histopathological changes were demonstrated in tissues (skin, spleen, cranial and caudal kidney) of rainbow trout following exposure to cypermethrine. The cypermethrine-based Alimethrinee 10 EM pesticide preparation was classified among substances strongly toxic for fish.
Aerosol Evolution from a Busy Road in North-West England B

Motor vehicle emissions are the most significant source of particulate matter (PM) in urban environments. This study was undertaken to observe the evolution of aerosols downwind from a busy road, concentrating specifically on the aerosol total number maximum and number size distribution. A Grimm Aerosol Technik (5.400) CPC and DMA 5.5-900 classifier were used to measure ultra-fine particles from 9.8 nm to 1.1 μm at varying distances up to 100 m from the road side. Contrary to current accepted aerosol theory particle number concentration was seen to rise with increasing horizontal distance from the road side up to a maximum distance of about 100 m. As this occurred the number of fine particles was seen to increase as numbers of larger particles declined. These findings are discussed in light of existing aerosol literature on aerosol formation and dispersion.
Microbial-Physical Synthesis of Fe and Fe3O4 Magnetic Nanoparticles Using Aspergillus niger YESM1 and Supercritical Condition of Ethanol

Magnetic Fe and Fe3O4 magnetite nanoparticles are successfully synthesized using Aspergillus niger YESM 1 and supercritical condition of liquids. Aspergillus niger is used for decomposition of FeSO4 and FeCl3 to FeS and Fe2O3, respectively. The produced particles are exposed to supercritical condition of ethanol for 1 hour at 300°C and pressure of 850 psi. The phase structure and the morphology measurements yield pure iron and major Fe3O4 spherical nanoparticles with average size of 18 and 50 nm, respectively. The crystal size amounts to 9 nm for Fe and 8 nm for Fe3O4. The magnetic properties are measured to exhibit superparamagnetic- and ferromagnetic-like behaviors for Fe and Fe3O4 nanoparticles, respectively. The saturation magnetization amounts to 112 and 68 emu/g for Fe and Fe3O4, respectively. The obtained results open new route for using the biophysical method for large-scale production of highly magnetic nanoparticles to be used for biomedical applications.
Immediately Loaded Overdentures

(EH) and Morse Taper (MT) implants in patients wearing immediately loaded mandibular overdentures during a 1-year follow-up. This is a non-randomized controlled clinical trial including 18 MT and 22 EH implants. Periapical radiographs were taken after overdentures insertion and following 1 year. The peri-implant bone loss was assessed through digitalization and analysis of the radiographs in the software Corel DRAW X7. For this, measurement from implant platform to residual ridge at mesial and distal surfaces of each implant was conducted. The results showed high success rate in the groups EH (100%) and MT (94.4%). For peri-implant bone levels, it was found significant difference between the groups (p=0.032) and greater bone loss was observed in the group EH. In general, bone loss was 0.85mm (±0.82) for EH and 0.10mm (±1.0) for MT. It was concluded that greater bone loss occurred in the group EH in comparison to the group MT after a 1-year follow-up. Pe r i I m p l a n t B o n e L o s s o f Externa l Hexagon and Morse Ta p e r i n Pa t i e n t s We a r i n g Immediately Loaded Overdentures
Simulating the Use of Ancient Technology Works Using Advanced Virtual Reality Technologies

This paper introduces a novel framework for the modeling and interactive simulation of ancient Greek technology works with the use of advanced virtual reality technologies. A novel algorithm is introduced for the realistic and efficient resolution of collisions that is based on an advanced collision detection approach that can also calculate in real-time the force that should be fed back to the user using a haptic device. Thus, the user is capable of manipulating the scene objects in the environment using haptic devices to simulate the sense of touch and stereoscopic imaging so as to be immersed in the virtual environment. Moreover, the virtual hand that simulates the user's hand is modeled using superquadrics so as to further increase the speed of the simulation and the fidelity of the force feedback. Extended evaluation of the system has been performed with visitors of the Science Center and Technology Museum of Thessaloniki.
Adalimumab: a review of the reference product and biosimilars

© 2016 Azevedo et al. This work is published by Dove Medical Press Limited, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 2016 Azevedo et al. This work is published and lic nsed by Dove ical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress. com/terms. p p and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial (unp rted, v3.0) Licen e (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms (https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php). Biosimilars 2016:6 29–44 Biosimilars Dovepress
Locomotory activity and depth distribution of adult great barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) in Bahamian coastal habitats determined using acceleration and pressure biotelemetry transmitters

Documenting free-swimming fish in their natural environment using acoustic transmitters equipped with acceleration and pressure sensors may contribute to knowledge of locomotory behaviour for a variety of aquatic species. Previously, collection of acceleration data has been limited to archival loggers, necessitating retrieval of the devices; however, recent advances in biotelemetry have allowed for acceleration data to be transmitted to a remote receiver. To illustrate the application of this technology, relative locomotory activity and depth utilisation of adult great barracuda (Sphyraenabarracuda)weremonitoredacrosshabitattypesanddielperiodsusingacoustictransmittersequippedwithtri- axial acceleration and pressure sensors within an acoustic telemetry array (n ¼53 receivers) deployed in The Bahamas. Although there were no differences in acceleration or depth use across habitats or diel periods, there was evidence of movement into shelf habitat during mid-day where they occupied depths410m. Given both the method of calculating the accelerometer output, and that the transmitters were unable to store and transmit large quantities of data, we suggest choosing transmitter settings with a short average delay and high transmission frequency to optimise data quality and resolution. This paper represents one of the first reports of the use of telemetered acceleration values from free-swimming fish.
SynNet: Structure-Preserving Fully Convolutional Networks for Medical Image Synthesis

Cross modal image syntheses is gaining significant interests for its ability to estimate target images of a different modality from a given set of source images,like estimating MR to MR, MR to CT, CT to PET etc, without the need for an actual acquisition.Though they show potential for applications in radiation therapy planning,image super resolution, atlas construction, image segmentation etc.The synthesis results are not as accurate as the actual this http URL this paper,we address the problem of multi modal image synthesis by proposing a fully convolutional deep learning architecture called the SynNet.We extend the proposed architecture for various input output configurations. And finally, we propose a structure preserving custom loss function for cross-modal image synthesis.We validate the proposed SynNet and its extended framework on BRATS dataset with comparisons against three state-of-the art methods.And the results of the proposed custom loss function is validated against the traditional loss function used by the state-of-the-art methods for cross modal image synthesis.
Comparison of Evaluating The Ratio of Cariogenic Bacteria in Plaque and Saliva Samples

Background: This study aimed to conduct a comparative analysis for evaluating the ratio of cariogenic bacteria in plaque and saliva samples as a preliminary study for developing a simple culture kit for caries-risk assessment. Materials and Methods: Stimulated saliva and plaque samples using sterile toothbrushes were obtained from adult volunteers. The ratio of Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans, Sm) to total streptococci (TS) (Sm/TS ratio) was determined by counting the number of colonies by the culture method. Results: The number of S. mutans, Sm/TS ratio (%), and plaque Sm%/saliva Sm% were significantly higher in plaque than in saliva. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between the number of S. mutans in plaque and saliva as well as between the Sm/TS ratios (%) in plaque and saliva. Conclusion: Although distinct positive correlations were observed between S. mutans levels in plaque and saliva, some subjects showed dissimilarities. The use of plaque samples, in which bacteria are detected at higher levels, is preferred because S. mutans levels were higher in plaque than in saliva, both in terms of the number of S. mutans and Sm/TS ratio. Moreover, the plaque to saliva ratios (plaque/saliva) in all subjects demonstrated better outcomes for the Sm/TS ratio than for the number of S. mutans, suggesting that plaque samples are more suitable than saliva samples for caries-risk assessment.
Cloud implementation of logistic regression for hyperspectral image classification

Classification of remotely sensed hyperspectral images is a challenging task due the enormous amount of information comprised in these images, that contain hundreds of continuous spectral bands. This creates a need to develop new techniques for hyperspectral classification using high performance computing architectures. Despite the availability of multiple algorithms adapted to parallel environments (such as multicore computers or accelerators like field programmable gate arrays or graphics processing units, the application of cloud computing techniques has not been as widespread, although there are many potential advantages in exploiting cloud computing architectures for distributed hyperspectral image analysis. In this paper, we present a cloud implementation (developed using Apache Spark) of a successful technique for hyperspectral image classification: the multinomial logistic regression probabilistic classifier. Our experimental results suggest that cloud computing architectures allow for the efficient classification of large hyperspectral image data sets.
Status of aboriginal, commercial and recreational inland fisheries in North America: past, present and future

The inland fisheries of North America (i.e. Canada and the United States of America) are diverse in terms of the sectors that harvest fish, the waters fished and the species targeted. Aboriginal fisheries have a long tradition of harvesting fish for food and ceremonial purposes using gears such as dip nets and spears, and targeting species such as suckers (Catostomidae) and upriver migrating salmon (Salmonidae). The commercial sector includes large-scale industrial operations on the Great Lakes and Mississippi River as well as smaller-scale fisheries throughout North America that harvest fish for food or the bait industry. The recreational fishery is the largest sector (millions of participants) and includes everything from specialised catch-and-release fisheries for muskellunge, Esox masquinongy Mitchill and black bass (Micropterus spp.) to put-and-take fisheries for rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum). All sectors provide substantial socio-economic benefit and regionally can have significant cultural value and yield an important amount of food protein. Using the best available information and a number of assumptions, total harvest for all three sectors in the inland waters of North America was estimated to be >480 000 t yr 1 . Nonetheless, there are a number of internal threats that face these fisheries including over-exploitation, bycatch/release mortality as well as external threats such as inter-sectoral conflict, environmental change, water availability, invasive species and habitat alteration. Given that most inland fisheries are managed at the state/provincial level, there is a need to adopt management strategies that are holistic, coordinated and trans-jurisdictional if inland fisheries in North America are to be sustainable in the future. There is also a critical need for information management systems that enable regional data to be scaled up to the national or continental level, which would facilitate the generation of inland fisheries status reports and the monitoring of trends through time. All stakeholders must recognise that while inland fisheries tend to not receive the same attention from the media, public or politicians as marine fisheries, the potential for local and broad-scale irreversible changes exist and need to be identified and addressed if the many ecosystem services that inland fisheries provide are to be maintained.
Stem Cells to Pancreatic (cid:1) -Cells: New Sources for Diabetes Cell Therapy

The number of patients worldwide suffering from the chronic disease diabetes mellitus is growing at an alarming rate. Insulin-secreting (cid:1) -cells in the islet of Langerhans are dam- aged to different extents in diabetic patients, either through an autoimmune reaction present in type 1 diabetic patients or through inherent changes within (cid:1) -cells that affect their function in patients suffering from type 2 diabetes. Cell replacement strategies via islet transplantation offer potential therapeutic options for diabetic patients. However, the discrepancy between the limited number of donor islets and the high number of patients who could benefit from such a treatment reflects the dire need for renewable sources of high-quality (cid:1) -cells. Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are capable of self-renewal and can differentiate into components of all three germ layers, including all pancreatic lineages. The ability to differentiate hESCs into (cid:1) -cells highlights a promising strategy to meet the shortage of (cid:1) -cells. Here, we review the different approaches that have been used to direct differentiation of hESCs into pancreatic and (cid:1) -cells. We will focus on recent progress in the understanding of signaling pathways and transcription factors during embryonic pancreas development and how this knowledge has helped to improve the methodology for high-efficiency (cid:1) -cell differentiation in vitro . ( Endocrine Reviews 30: 214–227, 2009) have been to play critical roles during distinct Based on this knowledge, et al. and Kroon et al. developed a step-wise differentiation protocol for generating
Significant locations in auxiliary data as seeds for typical use cases of point clustering

Abstract. Random greedy clustering and grid-based clustering are highly susceptible by their initial parameters. When used for point data clustering in maps they often change the apparent distribution of the underlying data. We propose a process that uses precomputed weighted seed points for the initialization of clusters, for example from local maxima in population density data. Exemplary results from the clustering of a dataset of petrol stations are presented.