Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Antimicrobial Photodynamic Therapy Using Indocyanine Green Doped with Chitosan Nanoparticles on Biofilm Formation-Related Gene Expression of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans

Objectives: Eradication of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans (A. actionmycetemcomitans), as an opportunistic periodontopathogen, and inhibition of its virulence factor expression require a new adjunctive therapeutic method. In this study, we accessed the expression level of rcpA gene, as a virulence factor associated with A. actinomycetemcomitans biofilm formation, following treatment by antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) using indocyanine green (ICG) doped with chitosan nanoparticles (CS-NPs@ICG). Materials and Methods: CS-NPs@ICG was synthesized and examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A. actinomycetemcomitans ATCC 33384 strain was treated with CS-NPs@ICG, as a photosensitizer, which was excited with a diode laser at the wavelength of 810 nm with the energy density of 31.2 J/cm2. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was performed to determine the changes in rcpA gene expression level. Results: Synthetized CS-NPs@ICG was confirmed via SEM. The results revealed that CS-NPs@ICG-mediated aPDT could significantly decrease rcpA gene expression to 13.2-fold (P<0.05). There was a remarkable difference between aPDT using CS-NPs@ICG and ICG (P<0.05). The diode laser, ICG, and CS-NPs@ICG were unable to significantly downregulate rcpA gene expression (P>0.05). Conclusion: aPDT with CS-NPs@ICG leads to a decrease of the virulence factor of A. actinomycetemcomitans and can be used as an adjunct to routine treatments for successful periodontal therapy in vivo.
Isolation and selection of indigenous 2 bacterial strains with suppression properties 3 from the rhizospheres of potato and wheat 4 5

Soil-borne fungal and bacterial root pathogens can cause serious losses to agricultural crops. The enhancement of disease suppressive properties of soils will limit disease development, thus, being of great importance for sustainable agriculture as well as organic farming systems. The aim of the present study is to isolate, identify and to select indigenous bacterial strains with antifungal activity from the potato and wheat rhizospheres. 111 bacterial strains were obtained in the preliminary screening, from the antagonism test plates, 50 from potato and 61 from wheat. About 55% were Gram + and about 46% were Gram . Fourteen bacterial strains from potato revealed an antagonistic activity in vitro against the phytopathogenic fungi, Phytophthora infestans, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis and Fusarium solani var. coeruleum with a percentage of inhibition varying from 0 to 92.30%. Twenty four bacterial strains from wheat had an antagonistic activity in vitro against the studied fungi with a range from 0 to 87%. This shows a promising beginning for detecting suppressive soils in Sétif aria. 15
FPGA BASED SELF-HEALING STRATEGY FOR SYNCHRONOUS SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS

The paper develops an efficient mechanism with a view to healing bridging faults in synchronous sequential circuits. The scheme inserts faults randomly into the system at the signal levels, encompasses ways to intrigue the state of the signals and carries it with steps to rig out the true values at the primary output lines. The attempts espouse the ability of the methodology to explore the occurrence of a variety of single and multiple bridging faults and arrive at the true output. The approach enables to detect the occurrence of wired-OR and wired AND bridging faults in the combinational part of the serial binary adder as the CUT and heal both the inter and intra-gate faults through the use of the proposed methodology. It allows claiming a lower area overhead and computationally a sharp increase in the fault coverage area over the existing Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) technique. The Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) based Spartan architecture operates through Very High-Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) to synthesize the Modelsim code for validating the simulation exercises. The claim incites to increase the reliability of the synchronous sequential circuits and espouse a place for the use of the strategy in the digital world.
Empathic Accuracy

People are motivated to understand each other's psychological states as well as each other's personality traits. As a consequence, the more traditional study of accuracy in trait inference can be complemented by, and potentially benefit from, the insights provided by the more recent study of empathic accuracy. Findings in this area suggest that future research should devote more attention to (a) the history of the perceiver-target relationship; {b) the perceiver's desired future relationship with the target; (c) the possibility that perceivers have little or no "metaknowledge" regarding their own empathic ability; and {d) the possibility that, under certain conditions, perceivers might be motivated to be inaccurate, rather than accurate, in their inferences about other people's dispositions.
ESC Cardiac Differentiation and Applications

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality worldwide. In the United States, there are more than three millions patients with a predicted increase to over six million by the year 2030. Unfortunately, current therapeutic methods are not effective and two-thirds of the patients die within five years of diagnosis (Kessler & Byrne, 1999). Thus it is important to discover new drugs which are effective. Application of high-throughput screening in the pharmaceutical industry can enhance procedures for new drug production, from target identification to preclinical compound evaluation. Reducing the lag phase between identification of a new component and production of new drugs requires cell-based methods for testing the efficacy and safety of new compounds. Application of stem cells in drug discovery has afforded new opportunities to better understand the action mechanisms of new targets, increase the safety to control their activity, reduce the amount of in vivo testing and evaluate components for different human genetic backgrounds. On the other hand, recently a biomedical approach called regenerative medicine have been developed. In this method a new pool of functional cells will be used in order to enhance the performance of damaged tissue. The ideal cell source for regenerative medicine should have the capacity to restore the organ’s function, induce native repair and eliminate the risk of rejection by the host. In recent years, human embryonic stem cells (hES cells) with the ability of self-renewal and differentiation have been considered as ideal therapeutic cell candidates. Although tremendous developments in this field have been achieved, there are still large gaps between recent investigations and successful, safe application of these cells in humans. In this chapter, a brief definition of ESCs followed by methods for directing their differentiation into a cardiac lineage will be presented followed by a discussion on the best strategies to purify cardiomyocytes. We will also provide a future glimpse into applications of hES cells in drug discovery and regenerative medicine.
CoCoTPM: Trusted Platform Modules for Virtual Machines in Confidential Computing Environments

Cloud computing has gained popularity and is increasingly used to process sensitive and valuable data. This development necessitates the protection of data from the cloud provider and results in a trend towards confidential computing. Hardware-based technologies by AMD, Intel and Arm address this and allow the protection of virtual machines and the data processed in them. Unfortunately, these hardware-based technologies do not offer a unified interface for necessary tasks like secure key generation and usage or secure storage of integrity measurements. Moreover, these technologies are oftentimes limited in functionality especially regarding remote attestation. On the other hand, a unified interface is widely used in the area of bare-metal systems to provide these functionalities: the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). In this paper, we present a concept for an architecture providing TPM functionalities for virtual machines in confidential computing environments. We name it Confidential Computing Trusted Platform Module, short CoCoTPM. Different from common approaches for virtual machines, host and hypervisor are not trusted and excluded from the trusted computing base. Our solution is compatible with existing mechanisms and tools utilizing TPMs and thus allows the protection of virtual machines in confidential computing environments without further adaptations of these mechanisms and tools. This includes storage of integrity measurements during a measured boot and for the integrity measurement architecture, full disk encryption bound to these measurements, usage of an openssl provider for TLS connections and remote attestation. We show how our concept can be applied to different hardware-specific technologies and implemented our concept for AMD SEV and SEV-SNP.
Scientific Opinion on a request from the European Commission related to the emergency measure notified by France on genetically modified maize

Following a request of the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority’s Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms (EFSA GMO Panel) evaluated the documentation submitted by France in support of its request for the prohibition of the placing on the market of the genetically modified maize MON 810 according to Article 34 of Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003. The EFSA GMO Panel notes that some publications referred to by France were already part of the submission package by France for its safeguard clause and emergency measure on maize MON 810 in 2008. Those publications were addressed previously by the EFSA GMO Panel in its 2008 Scientific Opinion on the safeguard clause and emergency measure notified by France on maize MON 810. In the remaining documentation provided by France in support of the current emergency measure on maize MON 810, the EFSA GMO Panel could not identify any new science-based evidence indicating that maize MON 810 cultivation in the EU poses a significant and imminent risk to the human and animal health or the environment. With regard to issues related to management and monitoring of maize MON 810, the EFSA GMO Panel refers to its recent recommendations for management and monitoring measures of maize MON 810. In conclusion, the EFSA GMO Panel considers that, based on the documentation submitted by France, there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment, that would support the notification of an emergency measure under Article 34 of Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 and that would invalidate its previous risk assessments of maize MON 810. © European Food Safety Authority, 2012
IDENTIFICATION OF MicroRNAS ENCODED BY DROSOPHILA TRASPOSABLE ELEMENTS

Motivation: microRNAs are small 21–24 nt. single stranded RNA molecules that capable to silence gene expression on a posttranscriptional level. MicroRNAs are involved in a regulation of a significant part of eukaryotic genes. Several bioinformatics approaches were explored to identify microRNAs encoded genes in genomes of various eukaryotes (including Drosophila melanogaster) and viruses (Bartel, 2003; Kong, Han, 2005). However, analysis of heterochromatin and interspersed repetitive elements has not been performed. Here we attempted to fill this gap and succeeded to find in silico microRNAs encoded by transposable elements (TEs) of Drosophila. Results: Canonical sequences of D. melanogaster (Dm) TEs were tested using previously developed methods for microRNAs identification. As a result several microRNAs and their precursors were predicted. Now we are trying to detect them in vivo.
Emergency (2013); 1 (1): ***-***

Introduction: Emergency department performance index (EPI) greatly influences the function of other hospital’s units and also patient satisfaction. Recently, the Iranian Ministry of Health has defined specific national EPI containing five indexes. In the present study, the performance indexes of emergency department (ED) in one educational hospital has been assessed before and after establishment of emergency medicine. Methods: In the present cross-sectional study the ED of Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Tehran, Iran has been assessed during one-year period from March 2012 to February 2013. The study was divided into two six-month periods, before and after establishment of emergency medicine. Five performance indexes including: the percentage of patients were disposed during 6-hour, leaved the ED in a 12-hour, had unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitations (CPR), discharged against medical advice, and the mean time of triage were calculated using data of department of medical records on daily patients’ files. Then, Mann-Whitney U test was used to make comparisons at P<0.05. Results: The average triage time decreased from 6.04 minutes in the first six months to 1.5 minutes in the second six months (P=0.06). The percentage of patients leaving the ED in a 12-hour decreased from 97.3% to 90.4% (P=0.004). However, the percentage of disposed patients during 6-hour (P=0.2), unsuccessful CPR (P=0.34) and discharged against medical advice (P=0.42) did not differ between the two periods. Conclusion: It seems that establishment of emergency medicine could be able to improve ED performance indexes such as time to triage and leave in a 12hour period.
StateDiver: Testing Deep Packet Inspection Systems with State-Discrepancy Guidance

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) systems are essential for securing modern networks (e.g., blocking or logging abnormal network connections). However, DPI systems are known to be vulnerable in their implementations, which could be exploited for evasion attacks. Due to the critical role DPI systems play, many efforts have been made to detect vulnerabilities in the DPI systems through manual inspection, symbolic execution, and fuzzing, which suffer from either poor scalability, path explosion, or inappropriate feedback. In this paper, based on our observation that a DPI system usually reaches an abnormal internal state before a forbidden packet passes through it, we propose a fuzzing framework that prioritizes inputs/mutations which could trigger the DPI system’s abnormal internal states. Further, to avoid deep understanding of the DPI systems under inspection (e.g., to identify the abnormal states), we feed one pair of inputs to multiple DPI systems and check whether the state changes of these DPI systems are consistent — an inconsistent internal state change/transference in one of the DPI systems indicates a new abnormal state is reached in the corresponding DPI system. Naturally, inputs that trigger new abnormal states are preferentially selected for mutations to generate new inputs. Following this idea, we develop StateDiver, the first fuzzing framework that uses the state discrepancy between different DPI systems as feedback to find more bypassing strategies. We make StateDiver publicly available online. With the help of StateDiver, we tested 3 famous open-source DPI systems (Snort, Snort++, and Suricata) and discovered 16 bypass strategies (8 new and 8 previously known). We have reported all the vulnerabilities to the vendors and received one CVE by the time of paper writing. We also compared StateDiver with Geneva, the state-of-the-art fuzzing tool for detecting DPI bugs. Results showed that StateDiver outperformed Geneva at the number and speed of finding vulnerabilities, indicating the ability of StateDiver to detect strategies bypassing DPI systems effectively.
Traditional Health Boosters: Onion, Ginger and Garlic

Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) originated in South East Asia and belongs to the family Zingiberaceae. It is used as a spice, condiment (add flavor to food) and traditional herbal medicine in many countries [1]. Anciently incorporated in traditional ayurvedic medicines in India but recently, it is used as a common herbal treatment for nausea in both Asian and western countries [2, 3] Ginger has high potential for treating a number of ailments such as digestive problems like constipation, indigestion and ulcer, vomiting, cardiovascular disorders like atherosclerosis and hypertension, degenerative disorders like arthritis and rheumatism, diabetes mellitus and cancer. Its anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties help to control the ageing process as well as treat some infectious diseases due to its antimicrobial potential [4]. The principal bioactive compound present in garlic is Allicin and main constituent is sulphur which gives its characteristic odour due to activation of alliinase enzyme after crushing or chopping of raw garlic. Temperature beyond 60°C inactivates Allinase. Garlic bulb comprises about 0.9 and 1.8 per cent of g-glutamylcysteines and alliin (Table 1) [5]. Garlic and its products have been found beneficial for metabolic diseases such as atherosclerosis, cardiovascular, diabetes hyperlipidemia, hypertension and thrombosis conditions. During the earliest Olympics in Greece, garlic was served to athletes for improving stamina. The ancient greek military diet contained garlic supposedly to provide strength for battle. Garlic was recommended for the treatment of respiration and digestion related problems, diarrhea and worm infestation in ancient Chinese medicine [6].
Genetic Structure of Grass Carp Populations in the Missouri and Mississippi River Basins, USA

We provided an early characterization of the genetic structure of the grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) population as it expands its distribution in both the Missouri and Mississippi River basins. Further, we provided initial comparisons of allelic richness at 17 polymorphic microsatellite markers between 56 grass carp from the USA, and six from the Yangtze River in China. The number of alleles per locus ranged from two to eight and size ranges of alleles for fish collected from the invaded and native ranges were similar (P ≤ 0.001; 107–226 bp) to those previously reported in the literature. Distancebased clustering methods did not suggest significant groupings by river reaches. Using allele frequencies, we identified a possible population bottleneck (heterozygosity excess in the Missouri River upstream sample group) between the uppermost Missouri River reach and all other samples which may indicate a difference in the level of diversity between the locations. Within population allelic diversity (AS) was 1.56, 2.27, and 1.39 for samples from the Missouri River in South Dakota and Nebraska, samples from the Missouri River in Missouri, and samples from the Mississippi River respectively. Despite isolation from the native population and exposure to a novel environment, in the nearly 50 years since their first introduction from China, the genome at these 17 microsatellite loci has diverged little from fish collected in their native range. We found only weak evidence to suggest that grass carp throughout the Missouri and upper Mississippi River basins are reproductively isolated from one another at this time. Range expansion can result in divergent genetic structure of subpopulations, which may provide clues about the mechanism of invasion success and inform fisheries scientists how to focus management efforts most effectively. These results provided a unique glimpse at a species early in the process of range expansion in the USA and provide a benchmark for future assessments of grass carp genetic structure in the Great Plains.
Microwave assisted disinfection method in dentistry

Control of cross-infection has been a subject of interest to the dentistry area over the last few decades, due to the concern about the transmission of infectious-contagious diseases, such as AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and herpes, between the dental patients and dental personnel and the dental office and dental prosthesis laboratory (Codino & Marshall, 1976; Infection control in the dental office, Council on Dental Materials and Devices, 1978; Sande et al., 1975). This concern began in the 1970s, when the microorganism Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated in patients’ molds (Ray & Fuller, 1963) and it was found that Mycoplasma pneumoniae was transmitted to laboratory technicians when they performed wear on contaminated dentures (Sande et al., 1975). Several items, such as instruments (Tarantino et al., 1997), dental burs (Rizzo, 1993), impressions (Abdelaziz et al., 2004), gypsum casts (Berg et al., 2005; Davis et al., 1989), dental appliances (Rohrer & Bulard, 1985), and others are often heavily contaminated with microorganisms from saliva and blood. Powell et al. (1990) also observed that 67% of all the materials received in the laboratories, among them crowns, molds wax records, and dentures, were contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms. The constant exposure of dental personnel and instruments to saliva and blood in virtually every procedure is an ever present hazard and potential contributor to the transmission of infection. Therefore, the use of an inadequate disinfection procedure in the handling of dental materials not only places the unwary staff at risk, but also results in a high level of avoidable cross-contamination. Dental practitioner has a legal and ethical responsibility to prevent infections in patients and staff members and an interest in protecting her-himself from contracting a disease from a patient. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States (Kohn et al., 2004) have recommended sterilization and disinfection procedures to guarantee the safety of dental treatment in the dental health care settings. Typical methods of sterilization and disinfection include dry heat at 160 to 180°C for two hours, wet steam under pressure at 121°C for at least 15 minutes (autoclaving), immersion in chemical solutions, gamma radiation, and ethylene dioxide gas. However, these methods can be time-consuming and some of them require special and costly equipment, knowledgeable operative personnel, and constant surveillance. In order to overcome these limitations, microwave irradiation has
Deep Single-Image Portrait Relighting

Conventional physically-based methods for relighting portrait images need to solve an inverse rendering problem, estimating face geometry, reflectance and lighting. However, the inaccurate estimation of face components can cause strong artifacts in relighting, leading to unsatisfactory results. In this work, we apply a physically-based portrait relighting method to generate a large scale, high quality, “in the wild” portrait relighting dataset (DPR). A deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is then trained using this dataset to generate a relit portrait image by using a source image and a target lighting as input. The training procedure regularizes the generated results, removing the artifacts caused by physically-based relighting methods. A GAN loss is further applied to improve the quality of the relit portrait image. Our trained network can relight portrait images with resolutions as high as 1024 × 1024. We evaluate the proposed method on the proposed DPR datset, Flickr portrait dataset and Multi-PIE dataset both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art results. Please refer to https://zhhoper.github. io/dpr.html for dataset and code.