Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Progress on developing wavefront sensorless adaptive optics optical coherence tomography for in vivo retinal imaging in mice

We present a new design for a wavefront sensorless adaptive optics (WS-AO) Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) system for small animal retinal imaging in vivo. Without the optical complications necessary for inclusion of a wavefront sensor in the optical system, this version of WS-AO FD-OCT system has a simplified optical design, including elimination of long focal length scanning optics and optical conjugation of vertical and horizontal scanners. This modification provides a modular large Field of View for retinal screening (25 degree visual angle), while also allowing a “zoom” capability for allocating all the scanning resources to a smaller region of interest, allowing high resolution aberration-corrected imaging. In the present system we used a 0 Dpt contact lens to stabilize the mouse eye position and to allow long duration imaging. Defocus (axial focus position) in our system is controlled by the collimation of the OCT sample arm entrance beam.
Benefits of a Combined Approach to Sampling of Renal Neoplasms as Demonstrated in a Series of 351 Cases

Percutaneous radiofrequency ablation is increasingly used for curative treatment of primary cancers of the kidney. We reviewed our experience of percutaneous sampling performed under computed tomographic guidance with fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and core biopsy (CB), and we report on the complementary roles of these 2 techniques in a series of 351 consecutive patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation for renal neoplasms. Both FNAB and CB were obtained in 290 cases, of which 156 patients (54%) were positive for neoplasm in both specimens, and 27 (9%) were negative for tumor in both specimens. In 58 (20%) patients, the FNABs were positive, but the CBs were negative, and the reverse occurred in 11 patients (4%). When suspicious interpretations by FNAB and CB are included as positives in the calculations, both their complementary nature and the relative higher diagnostic yield of FNAB persisted. In 25 cases with FNABs positive for neoplasm, the CB allowed a more specific tumor classification. The 19 cases of FNAB which were read as negative/benign had corresponding CBs that were also negative/benign in 13 cases; yet, 6 were diagnostic of renal cell carcinoma not otherwise specified (1 case), renal cell carcinoma clear cell/conventional (4 cases), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (1 case). These and additional findings illustrate the complementary value of the combination of the 2 biopsy methods for a reliable pretherapy morphologic confirmation of specific renal neoplasms. FNAB has relatively greater sensitivity and utility for onsite evaluation, whereas CB provides an additional sample for more specific subclassification and additional studies.
Geometric graphs: matching, similarity, and indexing

For many applications, such as drug discovery, road network analysis, and image processing, it is critical to study spatial properties of objects in addition to object relationships. Geometric graphs provide a suitable modeling framework for such applications, where vertices are located in some 2D space. As a result, searching for similar objects is tackled by estimating the similarity of the structure of different graphs. In this case, inexact graph matching approaches are typically employed. However, computing the optimal solution to the graph matching problem is proved to be a very complex task. In addition to this, approximate approaches face many problems such as poor scalability with respect to graph size and less tolerance to changes in graph structure or labels. In this thesis, we propose a framework to tackle the inexact graph matching problem for geometric graphs in 2D space. It consists of a pipeline of three components that we design to cope with the requirements of several application domains. The first component of our framework is an approach to estimate the similarity of vertices. It is based on the string edit distance and handles any labeling information assigned to the vertices and edges. Based on this, we build the second component of our framework. It consists of two algorithms to tackle the inexact graph matching problem. The first algorithm adopts a probabilistic scheme, where we propose a density function that estimates the probability of the correspondences between vertices of different graphs. Then, a match between the two graphs is computed utilizing the expectation maximization technique. The second graph matching algorithm follows a continuous optimization scheme to iteratively improve the match between two graphs. For this, we propose a vertex embedding approach so that the similarity of different vertices can be easily estimated by the Euclidean distance. The third component of our framework is a graph indexing structure, which helps to efficiently search a graph database for similar graphs. We propose several lower bound graph distances that are used to prune non-similar graphs and reduce the response time. Using representative geometric graphs extracted from a variety of applications domains, such as chemoinformatics, character recognition, road network analysis, and image processing, we show that our approach outperforms existing graph matching approaches in terms of matching quality, classification accuracy, and runtime.
Distributed parallel processing for multidimensional maximum entropy reconstruction.

We have developed a two-dimensional maximum entropy spectrum reconstruction program designed to run in parallel on workstation clusters. Test reconstructions of planes extracted from a three-dimensional NMR data set indicate that the parallel speedup is nearly equal to the number of processors provided that the individual processors have comparable performance and that there are at least as many planes as processors. The program also works well in a typical laboratory setting consisting of heterogeneous workstations.
DC breakdown strength of polypropylene films: area dependence and statistical behavior

The DC breakdown strengths of 4-15 mum thick capacitor grade polypropylene (PP) films were determined. The measurements were performed with an automatic measurement system using five electrodes with areas between 0.045 and 9.3 cm2. Some samples were studied with larger electrodes. Samples were not aged but were measured as received. The measurements were performed in air at room temperature and typically 40-80 breakdowns per sample per electrode area were collected. The Weibull distribution parameters alpha and beta were fitted to the data. Depending on the electrode area and the film grade, the alpha-parameter values obtained were between 450 and 850 V/mum. The breakdown strength values showed decreasing area dependence with decreasing electrode area and the Weibull scaling law was not valid for the smallest electrode areas. The alpha-values for the large sample areas were extrapolated from the small area data by area and Weibull extrapolation. The area extrapolation overestimated the breakdown strength at 4 m2 by 40-50% whereas the Weibull extrapolation gave an accuracy of plusmn15%. The extrapolated breakdown strengths for the full-scale power capacitors deviated from the capacitor manufacturers test data. This indicated that different defect distributions were responsible for the breakdown strengths in the oil impregnated power capacitors than in the small dry film samples
Proteomic Analysis of SRm160-containing Complexes Reveals a Conserved Association with Cohesin*

In this study, we describe a rapid immunoaffinity purification procedure for gel-free tandem mass spectrometry-based analysis of endogenous protein complexes and apply it to the characterization of complexes containing the SRm160 (serine/arginine repeat-related nuclear matrix protein of 160 kDa) splicing coactivator. In addition to promoting splicing, SRm160 stimulates 3′-end processing via its N-terminal PWI nucleic acid-binding domain and is found in a post-splicing exon junction complex that has been implicated in coupling splicing with mRNA turnover, export, and translation. Consistent with these known functional associations, we found that the majority of proteins identified in SRm160-containing complexes are associated with pre-mRNA processing. Interestingly, SRm160 is also associated with factors involved in chromatin regulation and sister chromatid cohesion, specifically the cohesin subunits SMC1α, SMC3, RAD21, and SA2. Gradient fractionation suggested that there are two predominant SRm160-containing complexes, one enriched in splicing components and the other enriched in cohesin subunits. Co-immunoprecipitation and co-localization experiments, as well as combinatorial RNA interference in Caenorhabditis elegans, support the existence of conserved and functional interactions between SRm160 and cohesin.
Comparison of Markers of Coagulation Activation in Patients Under Oral Anticoagulation at Different Levels

Three groups of patients receiving oral anticoagulation treatment were evaluated. The groups consisted of patients with mechanical heart valve prosthesis (n = 60), patients after coronary bypass graft surgery (n = 60) and patients using oral anticoagulation after deep venous thrombosis or pulmonary embolism (n = 60). The patient groups were subdivided into three groups of 20 patients, each group receiving different levels of oral anticoagulation as indicated by the international normalized ratio (INR). Prothrombin fragment 1 + 2, thrombin-antithrombin III complexes and fibrin monomers were determined as coagulation activation makers. The prothrombin fragments 1 + 2 were INR dependent in all groups whereas the thrombin-antithrombin III values were only INR dependent in the group of patients with mechanical heart valve prosthesis. For fibrin monomers no correlation with the INR levels could be found. These results indicate that prothrombin fragment 1 + 2 is the only laboratory quantity of the three, which provides a suitable index of low thrombin activity during anticoagulation therapy.
Improvements in Early Behavior of Rat Kidney Allografts After Treatment of the Brain-Dead Donor

ObjectiveTo improve the quality of organs from brain-dead donors by assessing the influence of alternative strategies on the early behavior of kidneys after transplantation into unmodified hosts. Summary Background DataKidneys transplanted from living donors perform consistently better than those from cadaver sources. The authors have recently shown that donor brain death produces inflammatory changes in peripheral organs within hours, amplifies coincident ischemia–reperfusion injury, and accelerates acute and chronic rejection. Normalization of the graft by donor hormone treatment has hitherto been unsuccessful. MethodsA standardized rat model of brain death was used. Experimental groups included recipients of allogeneic grafts from living and brain-dead donors (F344→LEW). Donors were treated immediately after induction of brain death either with intravenous steroids, which block inflammatory cytokine release, or a soluble P-selectin glycoprotein ligand (sPSGL), which blocks initial selectin-mediated cellular adhesion. Kidney grafts were examined serially up to 10 days by morphology, immmunohistology, and reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction. ResultsOverall survival of ummodified recipients of kidneys from brain-dead donors was significantly reduced versus living donors. Animals with organs from brain-dead donors that had received steroids or sPSGL survived significantly longer than those from untreated brain-dead donors. The intensity of ischemia–reperfusion injury and of acute rejection was reduced. Cellular infiltration and transcription of mRNA of representative proinflammatory mediators were diminished. ConclusionsTreatment of organ donors at the time of brain death markedly improves organ quality after kidney transplantation, upgrading it to that from a living donor.
The trouble with negative emissions

Reliance on negative-emission concepts locks in humankind's carbon addiction In December 2015, member states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, which aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. The Paris Agreement requires that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission sources and sinks are balanced by the second half of this century. Because some nonzero sources are unavoidable, this leads to the abstract concept of “negative emissions,” the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through technical means. The Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) informing policy-makers assume the large-scale use of negative-emission technologies. If we rely on these and they are not deployed or are unsuccessful at removing CO2 from the atmosphere at the levels assumed, society will be locked into a high-temperature pathway.
Subsídios para uma caracterização da problemática da segurança no trabalho, no sector da construção civil e obras públicas

The aim of this article is to contribute to an up-to-date caracterization of the Safety in Work problematic in the Sector of the Civil Construction and Public Works (S.CC&PW.). So, we started with the diagnosis of the importance of this problem taking into consideration the EC position and the institutional-juridic system (I-JS), and respective official statistics about casualties and deaths in S.CC&PW. Such a diagnosis takes us to appeal to the multidisciplinary and coordinated intervention of the severa1 intervinient levels in order to fight the multicausality of the work accidents. Such an intervention should pass mainly by: the Cientific Community; I-JS; the EC; the adoption, in the organizational context, of a management philosophy which finds its reason of being in Total Quality (TQ)/Quality of Work Life (QWL); and also by the integration of work safety in the might be possible to build a Culture of Safety.
A Round Table&#160;Discussion on$rm MgB_2$Toward a Wide Market or a Niche Production?&#8212;A Summary

This paper summarizes a round table discussion on MgB2 held in the evening of September 20, 2005, during the 19th International Conference on Magnet Technology. The discussion, by the panelists and the audience, includes both material features and applications of MgB 2 as well as views on the commercial prospects for MgB2 magnets
A two-stage robust optimization for coordinated planning of generation and energy storage systems

This study presents the coordinated planning of generation and energy storage systems to fill in the literature gap, and formulates the planning as a robust optimization that has proved its capability in handling uncertainty associated with the optimization model. The robust planning framework builds the planning task upon the security-constrained economic dispatch, and naturally adopts the min-max-min fashion that is then approached with the column and constraint generation decomposition method. Such a robust coordinated planning framework is demonstrated on an IEEE 30-bus network to justify its efficiency. The numeric study illustrates the advantage of the coordinated generation and storage planning in its comparison with the sole generation planning, while the robustness of the plan is evaluated through a post-planning simulation of different uncertainty scenarios.
A New Design of in-Memory File System based on File Virtual Address Framework

Rapid growth in technology is increasing day by day that demands computer systems to work better, should be reliable and have faster performance with fair cost and best functionalities. In the modern era of technology, memory files are used to shorten the performance gap between memory and storage. Sustainable in-memory file system (SIMFS) was the first that introduces the concept of open file address space into the address space of the process and exploits the memory mapping hardware while accessing files. The purpose of designing and implementing the SIMFS architecture is to achieve performance improvement of in-memory file system. SCMFS are designed for the storage class system that uses the presented memory management component in the operating system to assist in managing block, and it manages the space for each and every file adjacent to the virtual address space. A recent study has proposed that non-volatile memories are powerful enough to minimize the performance gap, as compared to previous generation non-volatile memories. This is because the performance gap between non-volatile and volatile memories has been reduced and there are possibilities of using a non-volatile memory as a computer’s main memory in near future. Lately, high-speed non-volatile storage media, such as Phase Change Memory (PCM) has come into view and it is expected that for storage device PCM will be used by replacing the hard disk in upcoming years. Moreover, the PCM is byte-addressable, it means that it can access individual byte of data rather than word and data access time is expected to be almost indistinguishable of DRAM, a volatile memory. These features and innovations in computer architecture are making the computer system more reliable and faster.
Advanced (quasi) Monte Carlo methods for image synthesis

Monte Carlo ray tracing has become ubiquitous in most commercial renderers and in custom shaders used for visual effects and feature animation. But many advanced Monte Carlo algorithms are not widely used and are often misunderstood. In this course, attendees learn about the practical aspects of variance-reduction methods with a focus on all variants of importance sampling. The course also covers quasi-Monte Carlo methods at the industry level, as well as the practical aspects of bidirectional path tracing combined with multiple importance sampling and Metropolis Light Transport. Practical advice is provided throughout the course.
The Core Symptoms of Depression in Medical and Psychiatric Patients

The internal consistency of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is assessed in 335 randomly selected medical inpatients, and in another sample of 101 depressed psychiatric inpatients with 104 interviewed normals. The data for the two samples were analyzed separately using a latent trait model. The analysis confirms that the BDI measures a single underlying dimension of depressive severity for both patient samples. Fourteen symptoms discriminate well for severity of depression in the psychiatric-normal sample, seven symptoms in the medical sample, and six symptoms in both samples. The latter six symptoms (suicidal ideation, sense of failure, sense of punishment, loss of social interest, indecision, and dissatisfaction) may represent criteria for depressive severity that are not confounded by the presence of physical illness or the attendant distress.
Notice of RetractionSpatial Discrepancy of Nitrate and Nitrite Pollution in the Jiantan River in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area

Nitrate nitrogen and nitrite nitrogen concentration of surface water and groundwater samples in the Jiantan River in the Three Gorges Reservoir area were measured and analyzed to depict the spatial discrepancy of nitrate and nitrite pollution in the study basin. This study analyzed the correlativity of nitrate nitrogen, nitrite nitrogen, and the ratio of nitrate nitrogen and nitrite nitrogen with the altitude of surface water and groundwater sample sites, then revealed the spatial evolvement characteristics, resources and influence factors of nitrate nitrogen and nitrite nitrogen of the surface water and groundwater bodies in the study basin. The results show the transfer times of the surface water bodies and land use styles influence the correlativity of nitrate and nitrite nitrogen in the surface water bodies with the altitude of the sample sites. While the storage conditions of the groundwater bodies and the sources of the nitrogen influence the correlativity of nitrate and nitrite nitrogen in the groundwater bodies with the altitude of the sample sites. In the surface water bodies, nitrite is the intermediate product from ammonia to nitrate under the nitrification process, thus the nitrite nitrogen concentration offer quite a large quantity to the surface water bodies with the ongoing reaction. While the nitrogen pollution in the groundwater bodies is mainly nitrate nitrogen because of the more complete nitrification of nitrogen pollution in the groundwater conditions, leading to higher nitrate nitrogen level than the nitrite nitrogen.
Susceptibility to invasive Haemophilus influenzae type b disease and the immunoglobulin G2m(n) allotype.

There has been considerable controversy about the role of the immunoglobulin G2m(n) allotype and risk of invasive Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease. This allotype was studied in a large cohort of Finnish children (178) with invasive Hib disease. The G2m(n) allotype distribution was similar to that in the normal white Finnish population. No increased risk of Hib disease could be associated with the n-/n- genotype [i.e., lack of G2m(n) allotype]. Thus, the G2m(n) allotype does not seem to be a major determinant of susceptibility to Hib infection among white populations in industrialized countries.
Development and distribution of noradrenergic and cholinergic neurons and their trophic phenotypes in the avian ceruleus complex and midbrain tegmentum

We investigated the development of noradrenergic and cholinergic neurons in the ceruleus complex and mesencephalic tegmentum in embryonic and posthatch chickens and compared the distribution of transmitter phenotypes with the expression of nerve growth factor receptor (NGFR) mRNA and fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) mRNA. Noradrenergic and cholinergic neurons were visualized by using antibodies against dopamine‐beta‐hydroxylase (DBH) and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), respectively. Expression of receptors for trophic factors was determined by using in situ hybridization techniques.
Defects in porous p-type Si: An electron-paramagnetic-resonance study.

The defects in ${\mathit{p}}^{+}$ porous silicon of low and high porosity have been studied by using electron-paramagnetic-resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and compared with an impurity analysis obtained from nuclear reaction analysis (NRA). The EPR measurements show, in both high- and low-porosity samples, the same dominant paramagnetic defect which we have identified from its g tensor and hyperfine tensor as the trigonal (111) ${\mathit{P}}_{\mathit{b}}$ center; the neutral dangling bond at the Si/${\mathrm{SiO}}_{2}$ interface. The symmetry of the central Si hyperfine-interaction tensor has been determined. From the defect concentration it is estimated that about 50% of the surface of p-type porous Si exposed to air is oxidized. The symmetry of the EPR spectrum of the ${\mathit{P}}_{\mathit{b}}$ center relative to the substrate proves the monocrystalline character of the oxidized surface with a preferential (111) orientation. In as-grown and aged samples a high fraction (g0.95) of the ${\mathit{P}}_{\mathit{b}}$ centers are passivated by H. They are depassivated by a thermal anneal at 400 \ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}C under ultrahigh vacuum, revealing total ${\mathit{P}}_{\mathit{b}}$-center concentrations of some ${10}^{11}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}2}$. Independent of porosity both types of sample were found, by using NRA, to be heavily contaminated by H, C, and O with impurity-atom to Si-surface-atom ratios of 0.3 to 0.6, 0.1, and 0.01, respectively. The 80%-porosity samples, the only ones showing room-temperature visible photoluminescence, contain, in addition, amorphous Si inclusions; their presence is deduced from the observation of the g=2.0055 dangling-bond centers in thermally annealed samples. As ${\mathit{P}}_{\mathit{b}}$ centers are recombination centers, efficient photoluminescence in 80%-porosity samples, in which surface properties are predominant, requires a minimization and stabilization of these defects.