Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
2D photonic crystal TM polarizer fabricated by one-step combined nanoimprint and photolithography

Photonic crystal has been widely investigated since it has a great potential to manipulate the flow of light in ultra compact scale. 2D slab photonic crystals for telecommunication wavelengths (e.g., ∼1550 nm) have multi-scale structures which are typically micron scale waveguides and deep sub-micron scale air-hole array. Several steps of nanolithography and photolithography are usually used for the fabrication of multi-scale photonic crystals. Such a multi-step lithography process increases fabrication complexity. In this work, we report one-step lithography process to pattern both micron and deep sub-micron features simultaneously using combined-nanoimprint-and-photolithography. As a demonstrator, a 2D silicon photonic crystal transverse magnetic (TM) polarizer was fabricated and characterized.
On fully reconfigurable optical torus-based networks-on-chip architecture

We propose a fully reconfigurable torus-based Optical NoC architecture: Ouroboros network. It has two reconfiguration modes: 1) arbitrarily change the nodes connection order, 2) split the network into any set of subnetworks and reorder each of them. The reconfiguration is achieved by tuning Micro-Ring Resonators.
LETRAMENTO DIGITAL COMO REQUISTO PARA A INCLUSÃO DIGITAL E O EXERCÍCIO DA CIDADANIA

No âmbito da LDB o exercicio do direito a educacao garantido constitucionalmente se da, principalmente, como processo de formacao abrangente, inclusive o de formacao para a cidadania. E neste contexto que se apresentam as questoes relacionadas a inclusao digital e aos multiletramentos, requisitos sem os quais nao ha como promover a Educacao. Com o advento das Novas Tecnologias da Informacao e Comunicacao - NTIC -, aqueles que sao de alguma forma excluidos socialmente, acabaram se tornando tambem excluidos digitalmente, nao possuem capacidade de responder as demandas sociais que envolvem a utilizacao dos recursos tecnologicos e da escrita no meio digital porque nao possuem habilidades para construir sentido a partir de textos multimodais e multissemioticos que mesclam palavras, elementos pictoricos, sonoros, numa mesma superficie. Diante de uma tematica permeada por oposicoes internas optou-se pela abordagem do objeto pelo metodo dialetico, por entender ser o mais adequado ao enfrentamento de uma tematica de pontos e contrapontos.
Transfer of glucagon receptor from liver membranes to a foreign adenylate cyclase by a membrane fusion procedure.

Previous work had demonstrated the coupling of a beta-adrenergic receptor on an erythrocyte with the adenylate cyclase [ATP pyrophosphate-lyase (cyclizing), EC 4.6. 1.1] of a tissue culture cell when the two cells were fused by Sendai virus. The validity of this finding for animal tissues in general, for membrane preparations, and for peptide hormone receptors could hitherto not be assessed. Available fusion procedures worked efficiently only with certain intact cells from tissue culture and with erythrocytes. In the present work a membrane fusion method was developed that causes the transfer of the glucagon receptor from purified rat liver membranes to Friend erythroleukemia cells; even direct transfer to a membrane fraction prepared from Friend cells became feasible. It can therefore be concluded that a peptide hormone receptor in a normal tissue membrane has properties similar to those demonstrated for a beta-adrenergic receptor in an erythrocyte: it exists in the membrane as a dissociable independent unit that can readily couple with the adenylate cyclase of a foreign cell. The efficiency of the membrane fusion procedure is due to the combined action of polyethylene glycol, phospholipids, stearylamine, and ATP in a salt medium. The method promises to be applicable to membranes of various cells and tissues, and it can probably be used to analyze hormone receptors and adenylate cyclase systems in states of malfunction by transfer to their respective counterpart in a normal cell membrane. Studies in biochemical hybridization of membrane components need not be limited to hormone activation of adenylate cyclase. With the aid of the membrane fusion method, this approach could be applied to any dissociable multicomponent system in biological membranes.
Relationship between magnetic resonance arterial patency and perfusion-diffusion mismatch in acute ischemic stroke and its potential clinical use.

BACKGROUND In patients with acute ischemic stroke the magnetic resonance (MR) perfusion-diffusion mismatch pattern (perfusion lesion at least 20% larger than the lesion on diffusion-weighted imaging) may indicate ischemically threatened but viable tissue. To our knowledge, the relationship of this MR pattern to serial changes in MR angiography (MRA) has not been reported. OBJECTIVES To investigate the relationship between MRA changes and patterns of diffusion-weighted imaging and perfusion abnormalities and to determine if the information obtained could be used in clinical management. METHODS The MR studies of 35 patients who had undergone sequential multimodality MR imaging studies within the first 4 days of stroke were reviewed. All lesions were in the internal carotid artery territory distribution. Magnetic resonance angiographies were read by 2 observers blinded to the clinical data. RESULTS During the first 24 hours a perfusion-diffusion mismatch was present in 22 (92%) of the 24 patients with an MRA arterial occlusive lesion. (At this time 5 [46%] of the 11 patients with a normal MRA [P =.006] also had a mismatch.) Two to 4 days after stroke, of these 22 patients resolution of the mismatch occurred in 8 (87%) of 9 patients with recanalization on MRA compared with 5 (39%) of 13 patients without arterial recanalization (P =.03). Resolution of mismatch occurred in 3 (60%) of 5 patients with a normal MRA and a mismatch at the first time point. CONCLUSIONS Concordance between MRA and the MR perfusion-diffusion mismatch pattern provides supportive evidence for an arterial vascular basis for this MR signature in acute stroke. Discordance between MRA lesions and mismatch may result from arterial branch occlusions undetected by MRA or from an alternate mechanism for the mismatch. The MR imaging patterns identified extend our understanding of the pathophysiology of stroke and may contribute to the improvement of stroke management in the future.
Measurement of post‐absorptive glucose kinetics in non‐insulin‐dependent diabetic patients: methodological aspects

Post‐absorptive glucose metabolism was studied in non‐insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) patients and normal subjects using dideuterated glucose as tracer. From the progressive fall in blood glucose levels and the increase in isotopic enrichment, the post‐absorptive situation could not be regarded as a steady state for glucose metabolism, and non‐steady‐state approximations had therefore to be applied. However, this did not alter significantly the results in the 10 NIDDM patients studied. Significantly higher values of endogenous glucose production (EGP) were obtained (178.1 ± 24.0 mg m−2 min−1 vs. 80.2 ± 14.4; P < 0.01) if the tracer priming dose was not adapted to the degree of hyperglycaemia. Valid measurements could be made after only 1 h isotopic equilibration time if an appropriately matched priming dose was employed. Methodologically acceptable values for EGP in the 10 NIDDM patients did not differ significantly from those of 10 normal control subjects (80.2 ± 14.4 mg m−2 min−1 vs. 85.6 ± 3.9; not significant). The post‐absorptive hyperglycaemia in these patients was assumed to stem essentially from a defect in peripheral glucose uptake.
Phase III study comparing cisplatin plus gemcitabine with cisplatin plus pemetrexed in chemotherapy-naive patients with advanced-stage non-small-cell lung cancer.

PURPOSE Cisplatin plus gemcitabine is a standard regimen for first-line treatment of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Phase II studies of pemetrexed plus platinum compounds have also shown activity in this setting. PATIENTS AND METHODS This noninferiority, phase III, randomized study compared the overall survival between treatment arms using a fixed margin method (hazard ratio [HR] < 1.176) in 1,725 chemotherapy-naive patients with stage IIIB or IV NSCLC and an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 0 to 1. Patients received cisplatin 75 mg/m(2) on day 1 and gemcitabine 1,250 mg/m(2) on days 1 and 8 (n = 863) or cisplatin 75 mg/m(2) and pemetrexed 500 mg/m(2) on day 1 (n = 862) every 3 weeks for up to six cycles. RESULTS Overall survival for cisplatin/pemetrexed was noninferior to cisplatin/gemcitabine (median survival, 10.3 v 10.3 months, respectively; HR = 0.94; 95% CI, 0.84 to 1.05). Overall survival was statistically superior for cisplatin/pemetrexed versus cisplatin/gemcitabine in patients with adenocarcinoma (n = 847; 12.6 v 10.9 months, respectively) and large-cell carcinoma histology (n = 153; 10.4 v 6.7 months, respectively). In contrast, in patients with squamous cell histology, there was a significant improvement in survival with cisplatin/gemcitabine versus cisplatin/pemetrexed (n = 473; 10.8 v 9.4 months, respectively). For cisplatin/pemetrexed, rates of grade 3 or 4 neutropenia, anemia, and thrombocytopenia (P <or= .001); febrile neutropenia (P = .002); and alopecia (P < .001) were significantly lower, whereas grade 3 or 4 nausea (P = .004) was more common. CONCLUSION In advanced NSCLC, cisplatin/pemetrexed provides similar efficacy with better tolerability and more convenient administration than cisplatin/gemcitabine. This is the first prospective phase III study in NSCLC to show survival differences based on histologic type.
Purified human hematopoietic stem cells contribute to the generation of cardiomyocytes through cell fusion

To obtain insights into the cardiomyogenic potential of hematopoietic tissue, we intravenously (i.v.) injected purified hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells into newborn recipients that may fully potentiate the developmental plasticity of stem cells. Transplantation of mouse bone marrow (BM) lineage antigen‐negative (Lin−) cells resulted in the generation of the cells that displayed cardiomyocyte‐specific antigenic profiles and contractile function when transplanted into syngeneic newborn recipients. To clarify the mechanism underlying the cardiomyogenic potential, green fluorescent protein (GFP)‐labeled BM Lin−ScaI+ hematopoietic progenitors were transplanted into neonatal mice constitutively expressing cyan fluorescence protein (CFP). Lambda image acquisition and linear unmixing analysis using confocal microscopy successfully separated GFP and CFP, and revealed that donor GFP+ cardiomyocytes coexpressed host‐derived CFP. We further reconstituted human hemopoietic‐ and immune systems in mice by injecting human cord blood (CB)‐derived Lin−CD34+CD38− hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) into neonatal T cell−B cell−NK cell− immune‐deficient NOD/SCID/IL2rγnull mice. Fluoroescence in situ hybridization analysis of recipient cardiac tissues demonstrated that human and murine chromosomes were colocalized in the same cardiomyocytes, indicating that cell fusion occurred between human hematopoietic progeny and mouse cardiomyocytes. These syngeneic‐ and xenogeneic neonatal transplantations provide compelling evidence that hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells contribute to the postnatal generation of cardiomyocytes through cell fusion, not through transdifferentiation. — Ishikawa, F. , Shimazu, H. , Shultz, L. D. , Fukata, M. , Nakamura, R. , Lyons, B. , Shimoda, K. , Shimoda, S. , Kanemaru, T. , Nakamura, K‐i. , Ito, H. , Kaji, Y. , Perry, A. C. F. , Harada, M. Purified human hematopoietic stem cells contribute to the generation of cardiomyocytes through cell fusion. FASEB J. 20, E11–E17 (2006)
Critical thinking: Conceptual clarification and its importance in science education

In different countries efforts have been made to integrate critical thinking into science curricula, recognizing that it is necessary to live in a plural society with citizenship competence. However, this objective has not been appropriately implemented in classrooms. One of the obstacles is the fact that teachers do not have a clear idea about critical thinking because the meaning ascribed to critical thinking in different contexts is rarely explicit. This paper attempts to clarify this concept, evincing its relationship with other concepts such as scientific literacy and to present and discuss a framework for promoting students’ critical thinking in science classrooms.
Long-Term Propranolol Use in Severely Burned Pediatric Patients: A Randomized Controlled Study

Objective:To determine the safety and efficacy of propranolol given for 1 year on cardiac function, resting energy expenditure, and body composition in a prospective, randomized, single-center, controlled study in pediatric patients with large burns. Background:Severe burns trigger a hypermetabolic response that persists for up to 2 years postburn. Propranolol given for 1 month postburn blunts this response. Whether propranolol administration for 1 year after injury provides a continued benefit is currently unclear. Methods:One-hundred seventy-nine pediatric patients with more than 30% total body surface area burns were randomized to control (n = 89) or 4 mg/kg/d propranolol (n = 90) for 12 months postburn. Changes in resting energy expenditure, cardiac function, and body composition were measured acutely at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months postburn. Statistical analyses included techniques that adjusted for non-normality, repeated-measures, and regression analyses. P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results:Long-term propranolol treatment significantly reduced the percentage of the predicted heart rate and percentage of the predicted resting energy expenditure, decreased accumulation of central mass and central fat, prevented bone loss, and improved lean body mass accretion. There were very few adverse effects from the dose of propranolol used. Conclusions:Propranolol treatment for 12 months after thermal injury, ameliorates the hyperdynamic, hypermetabolic, hypercatabolic, and osteopenic responses in pediatric patients. This study is registered at clinicaltrials.gov: NCT00675714.
Configuração Espacial e Desenvolvimento Urbano-Regional

O presente trabalho objetiva contribuir para a discussao a respeito das relacoes entre aconfiguracao espacial e segregacao socio-economica, frente aos novos conceitos dedesenvolvimento. O estudo de caso sobre a Regiao Metropolitana de Porto Alegre resgata seuprocesso de estruturacao e, apoiado na Teoria e Metodologia da Sintaxe Espacial, indica osmodos de distribuicao espacial da acessibilidade medida pela morfologia urbana. Desta forma, epossivel examinar como as diversas atividades urbanas sao implantadas e como a acessibilidade eapropriada pelas diferentes categorias e classes sociais dentro do conjunto metropolitanoconsiderado. E referida no estudo, a problematica do parcelamento do solo no contextometropolitano, como resultado de falhas na atuacao do Poder Publico na analise e aprovacao deempreendimentos.
Useful tests of usefulness of new risk factors: Tools for assessing reclassification and discrimination

New risk factors for various diseases are suggested at an increasing pace, with promise of clinical usefulness for risk prediction, but almost unvaryingly without formal testing of that property. We propose that a risk factor clinically relevant for risk prediction can be defined as one that correctly alters predicted risk to a clinically relevant extent in persons with a relevant absolute risk, such that it affects clinical decision making. We recommend that investigators who suggest a new risk factor for clinical use investigate if the new risk factor adds capacity to discriminate between persons who will subsequently experience the outcome from those who will not. For that purpose, we provide tools for calculating the net reclassification improvement, NRI, and the integrated discrimination improvement, IDI, using major statistical packages.
Dietary fat intake from fish and dairy products in adolescents assessed by the web-based dietary assessment method

Background Milk and dairy products are common compounds of the Swedish diet. Fish, in particular oily fish, is recommended for health effects. Accurate dietary information on individuals diet is of great importance when studying the associations between diet and health. The National Food Agency in Sweden has developed a new web-based method, Riksmaten Flex (RF), for assessing food intake in adolescents. Objective To investigate how well the web-based method Riksmaten Flex (RF) captures intake of fish and dairy products compared to 24-hour recalls. Serum concentrations of fatty acids, biomarkers for fish and dairy products, were used to investigate the reported intake of fish and dairy products from each respective method. Method Participants in the age of 11-12, 14-15 and 17-18 years old were recruited from different schools in Sweden. The adolescents completed two days of dietary recordings in RF and two 24-hour recalls. Blood samples were taken and analyzed. Results More girls than boys completed the study and the reported median energy intake was higher in RF compared to 24-hour recalls (p=0,005). Intake of dairy products correlated with the reported RF and 24-hour recalls. Intake of dairy products correlated significantly with pentadecanoic acid (15:0) in serum cholesterol esters and phospholipids and with heptadecaoic acid (17:0) in serum phospholipids. There was no significant correlation between fatty acids and the reported fish intake from 24-hour recalls but however for fish intake from RF and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and total n-3 fatty acids. Conclusion It is concluded that weak correlations were found between the reported intake in RF, 24-hour recalls and biomarkers for fatty acids in blood. Significance of the correlations cannot be concluded due to the lack of a sample size calculation. Small number of participants, few days of registration and a large drop-out rate are some of the limitations.
Incidence rates of fatal and nonfatal myocardial infarction in relation to the lipoprotein profile: first prospective results from the Göttingen Risk, Incidence, and Prevalence Study (GRIPS).

In a screening investigation in 1982, which included medical history, clinical examination, general laboratory investigation, and quantification of lipids, lipoproteins, and apoproteins A1 and B, 5020 male subjects aged 40 to 59 years took part. All subjects were free of any heart or vascular disease at the basic examination. Of them 40 suffered fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) during the first 3-year observation period between January 1982 and December 1984 (incidence cases), the others remained free of heart or vascular diseases (reference group). Comparison with the reference group revealed a strong relationship between MI-incidence rate and LDL cholesterol (correlation coefficient according to univariate regression analysis r = +0.248; P value according to Chi-square test P less than 0.001). The relationship was less strong but significant for age (r = +0.189; P less than 0.001), total serum cholesterol (r = +0.197; P less than 0.001), and apoprotein B (r = +0.195; P less than 0.001). Although statistically significant, the relationships to the MI-incidence rate were comparatively weak for HDL cholesterol (r = -0.09; P less than 0.01), apo-A1 (r = -0.09; P less than 0.01), systolic blood pressure (r = +0.067; P less than 0.05), and blood glucose level (r = +0.066; P less than 0.05). Body mass index, diastolic blood pressure, and plasma levels of uric acid, triglycerides, and VLDL did not exert relevant influences on the MI-incidence rate in our study population. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
In vitro differential neutrophil phagocytosis activity on Staphylococcus aureus when obtained from blood and milk of dairy cows in early lactation period

The ability of bovine blood and milk neutrophils (PMN) to phagocytize fluorescein conjugated Staphylococcus aureus was assessed in 14 clinically healthy dairy cows in early lactation period during 4-6 weeks. Hypotonic erythrocyte lysis (HEL) was used for granulocyte cell isolation from blood and increased leukocyte concentration from milk was induced by intramammary perfusion of Escherichia coli 0:26:B6 lypopolysaccharide B (LPS). A greater in vitro mean phagocytosis index 7.34 ± 1.55 was observed in blood PMN in comparison to milk cells 4.71 ± 1.31 (p < 0.001). PMN phagocytosis ability in blood was 86.5 ± 9.6%, compared to reduced milk cell ability (P < 0.01). The linear relationship between blood and milk cell phagocytosis was y = 0.84 x+ 3.37 (R2 = 0.3783) with association of cell phagocytosis activity (r = 0.615). It is concluded that PMN concentration cells obtained by erythrocyte lysis and LPS udder stimulation are useful for in vitro reproducible phagocytosis assays. These findings are consistent with mammary gland response which induced rapid migration of blood cells. The procedure may facilitate the evaluation of early innate immune response against intramammary bacterial infections in dairy cows.
Learning to recognise : a study on one-class classification and active learning

The thesis treats classification problems which are undersampled or where there exist an unbalance between classes in the sampling. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first two parts treat the problem of one-class classification. In the one-class classification problem, it is assumed that only examples of one of the classes, the target class, are available. The fact that no (or almost no) examples of other classes are available makes the one-class classification an example of an extremely unbalance problem. Therefore, such problem can not be described accurately by existing multi-class classifiers. However, a need to solve such classification rises from many theoretical and practical problems, e.g. the concept learning, machine fault detection and face recognition. In the third part of the thesis, we treat classification problems which are undersampled but not necessary unbalanced. In such problems, additional examples or additional knowledge about data available during training significantly improves classification performance. We investigate two types of enhancement of a small training set with additional knowledge from a large unlabelled data set: active learning and semi-supervised sampling.
Sentiment analysis of patient feedback

The application of sentiment analysis as a method for the automatic categorisation of opinions in text has grown increasingly popular across a number of domains over the past few years. In particular, health services have started to consider sentiment analysis as a solution for the task of processing the ever-growing amount of feedback that is received in regards to patient care. However, the domain is relatively under-studied in regards to the application of the technology, and the effectiveness and performance of methods have not been substantially demonstrated. Beginning with a survey of sentiment analysis and an examination of the work undertaken so far in the clinical domain, this thesis examines the application of supervised machine learning models to the classification of sentiment in patient feedback. As a starting point, this requires a suitably annotated patient feedback dataset, for both analysis and experimentation. Following the construction and detailed analysis of such a resource, a series of machine learning experiments study the impact of different models, features and review types to the problem. These experiments examine the applicability of the selected methods and demonstrate that model and feature choice may not be a significant issue in sentiment classification, whereas the type of review that the models train and test across does affect the outcome of classification. Finally, by examining the role that responses play in the patient feedback process and developing the idea of incorporating the inter-document context provided by the response into the feedback classification process, a recalibration framework for [continued…]