Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Dual-Band Multi-Way Power Divider Using Coupled Lines

In this paper, coupled lines are used in the design of a dual band planar multi-way Bagley polygon power divider to reduce the size is proposed. For the input port matching and transmission characters are afiected by the even mode impedance only, analysis of the multi-way Bagley polygon power divider and equivalent circuit based on coupled lines, closed form design equations are presented with even mode impedance, and odd mode impedance is obtained arbitrarily. To validate the design procedure, two dual band three- way Bagley polygon power dividers are designed, simulated, and fabricated using coupled lines with areas of 3.17cm 2 and 2.53cm 2 , and the corresponding conventional divider with areas of 17.86cm 2 and 11.74cm 2 , respectively. When coupled lines are used, the layout is more compact with a reduction in size of more than nearly 80% compared to the conventional design.
The development of a counterflow‐assisted preconcentration technique in capillary electrophoresis electrospray‐ionization mass spectrometry

A preconcentration approach for CE‐MS using counterflow‐assisted electrokinetic injection was proposed. The proposed preconcentration method was based on a counterflow‐compatible sheathless interface. The interface was fabricated using a capillary‐assembled PDMS microdevice that allowed the application of a counterflow and provided liquid‐film electrical conduction. During electrokinetic injection, a hydrodynamic counterflow was introduced into the separation capillary to retard the movement of the stacking boundary to the CE outlet. Accordingly, a long injection time was achieved without a loss of CE separation. With the use of reverse polarity mode and a dynamic polybrene‐coated separation capillary (filled with a 1% formic acid solution), a counterflow‐assisted electrokinetic injection of peptide samples (in a aqueous solution containing 1% ammonia and 50% methanol) for 10 min provided a sensitivity enhancement of 750–1480 and a detection limit of 20 pM for the five peptide standards. The proposed technique was applied to the analysis of low nanomolar concentrations myoglobin tryptic peptides.
Sortases and pilin elements involved in pilus assembly of Corynebacterium diphtheriae

Corynebacterium diphtheriae SpaA pili are composed of three pilin subunits, SpaA, SpaB and SpaC. SpaA, the major pilin protein, is distributed uniformly along the pilus shaft, whereas SpaB is observed at regular intervals, and SpaC seems to be positioned at the pilus tip. Pilus assembly in C. diphtheriae requires the pilin motif and the C‐terminal sorting signal of SpaA, and is proposed to occur by a mechanism of ordered cross‐linking, whereby pilin‐specific sortase enzymes cleave precursor proteins at sorting signals and involve the side‐chain amino groups of pilin motif sequences to generate covalent linkages between pilin subunits. We show here that two elements of SpaA pilin precursor, the pilin motif and the sorting signal, are together sufficient to promote the polymerization of an otherwise secreted protein by a process requiring the function of the sortase A gene (srtA). Five other sortase genes are dispensable for SpaA pilus assembly. Further, the incorporation of SpaB into SpaA pili requires a glutamic acid residue within the E box motif of SpaA, a feature that is found to be conserved in other Gram‐positive pathogens that encode sortase and pilin subunit genes with sorting signals and pilin motifs. When the main fimbrial subunit of Actinomyces naeslundii type I fimbriae, FimA, is expressed in corynebacteria, C. diphtheriae strain NCTC13129 polymerized FimA to form short fibres. Although C. diphtheriae does not depend on other actinomycetal genes for FimA polymerization, this process involves the pilin motif and the sorting signal of FimA as well as corynebacterial sortase D (SrtD). Thus, pilus assembly in Gram‐positive bacteria seems to occur by a universal mechanism of ordered cross‐linking of precursor proteins, the multiple conserved features of which are recognized by designated sortase enzymes.
[Safety and feasibility of dobutamine-atropine stress echocardiography].

PURPOSE To study the safety and feasibility of dobutamine-atropine stress echocardiography (DASE) in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease. METHODS There were 3,000 DASE that were studied in a prospective fashion. All symptoms and side effects were stored in a data base format. RESULTS Major test-related complications observed included one case of myocardial infarction, four cases of sustained ventricular tachycardia and five cases of atropine intoxication. There was no death or ventricular fibrillation as a direct or indirect consequence of the test. The infusion protocol allowed to us to examine patients using beta blockers, and led to 95% feasibility. CONCLUSION DASE is a safe and feasible method for the study of patients with suspected or known coronary artery disease.
Adverse conditions and techniques for cross-lingual text recognition

Now a days it has become a trend to write movie name, company name, name plate, vehicle number plate, brands name in mixed languages. Because of lack of language knowledge, it becomes difficult for people to identify bi-lingual words. The text written in the image contains different fonts and background image. This paper presents a work of Text identification from an image consisting of two languages and translating it into a single language. OCR is implemented in order to convert electronic form of image into machine editable text. SVM classifier is used for differentiating scripts based on characters density features and map new examples to the predicted category. Bi-lingual or cross language words recognition from an image solves the problem of reading a text from an image which contains Hindi and English language.
Splenic cysts: Analysis of 16 cases

Background: Splenic cysts are known as rare clinical encounter. Classifying into primary (true) and secondary cysts (pseudocysts), true cysts contain cellular epithelial lining and subdivided into parasitic and non-parasitic cysts. This study aimed to determine the outcome of treatment in patients with splenic cyst. Methods: All patients with splenic cyst who had been treated in Department of General Surgery of Ghaem and Omid teaching hospitals over a 24-year period were identified. The medical records of these 16 patients were reviewed. Results: The study patients included 11 females (68.75%) and 5 males (31.25%) with average age of 39.8 years. Fifteen cases had true cyst including 11 parasitic cysts (hydatid) and only one pseudocyst. 37.5% of the splenic cysts had coexistent cysts in liver, pelvis, omentum and paracolic regions. Nine patients underwent total splenectomy and 5 cases partial splenectomy and 2 remaining cases received conservative medical treatment. The size of the cysts varied from 6 to 25 centimeter with average size of 14.3 centimeter. All patients with hydatid cysts received albendazole postoperative medical treatment with albendazole for 6 months. All patients recovered after treatment. Conclusion: Open splenectomy whether total or partial is effective and safe in patients with splenec cysts with or without hydatidosis. The outcome of treatment is good without recurrences.
B4-Flash Memory with one million cycling endurance - Suitable for extremely high end SSD applications -

This paper describes million cycling capability of B4-Flash (Back Bias assisted Band-to-Band tunneling induced Hot Electron injection Flash) memory with sufficient data retention characteristics, evaluated by mega bit level statistics using actual 512Mb chips. 512Mb B4-Flash chips fabricated by 90nm process have been confirmed its excellent million cycling endurance without fatal degradation of program/erase performances. Retention capability after one million-cycling has been also evaluated and confirmed that B4-Flash has achieved sufficient retention characteristics for high cycling SSD with long term data retention applications, much superior to JEDEC standard criterion. These results show its suitability and applicability of B4-Flash to high end Tier0 class SSDs (Solid State Drives).
Cardiovascular Authentication : Fusion of Electrocardiogram and Ejection Fraction

The most advanced scientific development of biometrics will be to uniquely identify an individual based on their clinically used cardiac physiological and anatomical attributes. Research studies have demonstrated in particular the potential of cardiovascular activity as a biometric marker. Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and left ventricular Ejection Fraction (EF) measured via echocardiography are relatively unique to an individual. But, the viability of left ventricular ejection fraction hasn’t yet been demonstrated as a biometric marker. This paper proposed a novel method to authenticate a human identity based on the analysis of data received from these two modalities of cardiovascular activities. In this method, the fusion of ECG and EF as a biomedical marker has been used to authenticate an individual. The performance of this method has been tested based on the Equal Error Rate (EER). Experimentation demonstrated the superiority of this fusion method in comparison to the monomodal EGC system.
Txt lang: Texting, textism use and literacy abilities in adolescents with and without specific language impairment

The present study examined text messaging in adolescence, in particular relationships among textism use, language and literacy skills. Forty-seven typically developing (TD) 17-year-olds and 47 adolescents of the same age with specific language impairment (SLI) participated. Participants completed standardised assessments of cognitive, language and literacy abilities, an interview about frequency of text messaging, and were asked to send a text message in reply to one sent by the experimenter. Adolescents with SLI were less likely than their TD peers to reply to the text message. Non-senders with SLI (32%) had significantly lower reading abilities than senders with SLI. Senders with SLI composed shorter texts and used less text language than did TD peers. Correlational analyses revealed significant positive relationships among textism density, number of types of textism used and measures of literacy in adolescence. Implications of these findings for educational technology instruction in how to text are discussed.
Socioeconomic Status and Chronic Stress: Does Stress Account for SES Effects on Health?

Abstract: Socioeconomic status (SES) is an important predictor of a range of health and illness outcomes. Research seeking to identify the extent to which this often‐reported effect is due to protective benefits of higher SES or to toxic elements of lower social status has not yielded consistent or conclusive findings. A relatively novel hypothesis is that these effects are due to chronic stress that is associated with SES; lower SES is reliably associated with a number of important social and environmental conditions that contribute to chronic stress burden, including crowding, crime, noise pollution, discrimination, and other hazards or stressors. In other words, chronic stress may capture much of the variance in health and social outcomes associated with harmful aspects of lower social status. Low SES is generally associated with distress, prevalence of mental health problems, and with health‐impairing behaviors that are also related to stress. Research targeting this hypothesis is needed to determine the extent to which stress is a pathway linking SES and health.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clarity of the Bryan®, Prodisc-C®, Prestige LP®, and PCM® Cervical Arthroplasty Devices

Study Design. Prospective, randomized, controlled and double-blinded study on imaging of artificial discs. Objective. The purpose of this study is to compare postoperative imaging characteristics of the 4 currently available cervical arthroplasty devices at the level of implantation and at adjacent levels. Summary of Background Data. Cervical arthroplasty is being performed increasingly frequently for degenerative disc disease and, in most cases, with frank neural compression. Unlike lumbar arthroplasty, performed mainly for axial back pain, decompression of neural elements may need to be confirmed with postoperative imaging after cervical arthroplasty. Methods. Preoperative and postoperative magnetic resonance imaging scans of 20 patients who had undergone cervical arthroplasty were assessed for imaging quality. Five cases each of the Bryan® (Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Memphis, TN), Prodisc-C® (Synthes Spine, Paoli, PA), Prestige LP® (Medtronic Sofamor Danek), and PCM® devices (Cervitech, Rockaway, NJ) were analyzed. Six blinded spinal surgeons scored twice sagittal and axial T2-weighted images using the Jarvik 4-point scale. Statistical analysis was performed comparing quality before surgery and after disc implantation at the operated and adjacent levels and between implant types. Results. Moderate intraobserver and interobserver reliability was noted. Preoperative images of patients in all implant groups had high-quality images at operative and adjacent levels. The Bryan® and Prestige LP® devices allowed satisfactory visualization of the canal, exit foramina, cord, and adjacent levels after arthroplasty. Visualization was significantly impaired in all PCM® and Prodisc-C® cases at the operated level in both the spinal canal and neural foramina. At the adjacent levels, image quality was statistically poorer in the PCM® and Prodisc-C® than those of Prestige LP® or Bryan®. Conclusions. Postoperative visualization of neural structures and adjacent levels after cervical arthroplasty is variable among current available devices. Devices containing nontitanium metals (cobalt-chrome-molybdenum alloys in the PCM® and Prodisc-C®) prevent accurate postoperative assessment with magnetic resonance imaging at the surgical and adjacent levels. Titanium devices, with or without polyethylene (Bryan® disc or Prestige LP®), allow for satisfactory monitoring of the adjacent and operated levels. This information is crucial for any surgeon who wishes to assess adequacy of neural decompression and where monitoring of adjacent levels is desired.
Functional Encryption: Decentralised and Delegatable

Recent advances in encryption schemes have allowed us to go far beyond point to point encryption, the scenario typically envisioned in public key encryption. In particular, Functional Encryption (FE) allows an authority to provide users with keys corresponding to various functions, such that a user with a secret key corresponding to a function f , can compute f(m) (and only that) from a cipher-text that encrypts m. While FE is a very powerful primitive, a key downside is the requirement of a central point of trust. FE requires the assumption of a central trusted authority which performs the system setup as well as manages the credentials of every party in the system on an ongoing basis. This is in contrast to public key infrastructure which may have multiple certificate authorities and allows a party to have different (and varying) level of trust in them. In this work, we address this issue of trust in two ways: ◦ First, we ask how realistic it is to have a central authority that manages all credentials and is trusted by everyone? For example, one may need to either obtain the permission of an income tax official or the permission of the police department and a court judge in order to be able to obtain specific financial information of a user from encrypted financial data. Towards that end, we introduce a new primitive that we call Multi-Authority Functional Encryption (MAFE) as a generalization of both Functional Encryption and Multi-Authority Attribute-Based Encryption (MABE). We show how to obtain MAFE for arbitrary polynomial-time computations based on subexponentially secure indistinguishability obfuscation and injective one-way functions. ◦ Second, we consider the notion of delegatable functional encryption where any user in the system may independently act as a key generation authority. In delegatable FE, any user may derive a decryption key for a policy which is “more restrictive” than its own. Thus, in delegatable functional encryption, keys can be generated in a hierarchical way, instead of directly by a central authority. In contrast to MAFE, however, in a delegatable FE scheme, the trust still “flows” outward from the central authority. Finally, we remark that our techniques are of independent interest: we construct FE in arguably a more natural way where a decryption key for a function f is simply a signature on f . Such a direct approach allows us to obtain a construction with interesting properties enabling multiple authorities as well as delegation. ∗Microsoft Research, India. Email: nichandr@microsoft.com. †Microsoft Research, India. Email: vipul@microsoft.com. ‡UCLA, USA. Email: aayushjainiitd@gmail.com. Work done in part while at Microsoft Research, India. §UCLA, USA. Email: sahai@cs.ucla. edu.
Enhancement of Dissolution Rate of Valdecoxib Using Solid Dispersions with Polyethylene Glycol 4000

The aim of the present study was to enhance the dissolution rate of valdecoxib using its solid dispersions (SDs) with polyethylene glycol (PEG) 4000. The phase solubility behavior of valdecoxib in the presence of various concentrations of PEG 4000 in water was obtained at 37°C. The solubility of valdecoxib increased with increasing amount of PEG 4000 in water. Gibbs free energy (ΔG°tr) values were all negative, indicating the spontaneous nature of valdecoxib solubilization, and they decreased with increase in the PEG 4000 concentration, demonstrating that the reaction conditions became more favorable as the concentration of PEG 4000 increased. The SDs of valdecoxib with PEG 4000 were prepared at 1:1, 1:2, 1:5, and 1:10 (valdecoxib: PEG 4000) ratio by melting method. Evaluation of the properties of the SDs was performed by using dissolution, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies. The SDs of valdecoxib with PEG 4000 exhibited enhanced dissolution rate of valdecoxib, and the rate increased with increasing concentration of PEG 4000 in SDs. Mean dissolution time (MDT) of valdecoxib decreased significantly after preparation of SDs and physical mixture with PEG 4000. The FTIR spectroscopic studies showed the stability of valdecoxib and absence of well-defined valdecoxib-PEG 4000 interaction. The DSC and XRD studies indicated the amorphous state of valdecoxib in SDs of valdecoxib with PEG 4000. The SEM pictures showed the formation of effective SDs of valdecoxib with PEG 4000, since well-defined changes in the surface nature of valdecoxib, SDs, and physical mixture were observed.
The Essence of STRATEGY Is Choosing What Not to Do.

> The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. > > —Michael Porter, Harvard Economist Clinicians must evaluate on a daily basis patients with symptoms of possible coronary artery disease (CAD). Decades of progress in various technologies used for cardiovascular imaging have produced a wide array of choices, and consequently selecting the best test for a given patient has become increasingly complex. Anatomic techniques to evaluate for CAD include invasive coronary angiography (ICA) or coronary computed tomographic angiography (CTA). However, functional approaches evaluate the myocardial response to exercise or pharmacological stress, often together with imaging. When considering the available functional imaging tests, stress echocardiography and nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging are commonly available and well-established techniques. However, there are now emerging data that stress cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) may offer comparable, or in some cases superior, diagnostic accuracy.1 More recently, the CE-MARC 2 trial (Clinical Evaluation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Coronary Heart Disease 2) suggested that CMR and nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging may decrease the rate of unnecessary ICA (defined as invasive angiography that results in nonobstructive or nonflow limiting disease) when compared with clinical evaluation using the NICE guideline (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). 2 Importantly, among patients randomized to the NICE guideline group, ≈35% underwent immediate ICA as directed by the guidelines. CE-MARC 2 also demonstrated a strategy of CMR was safe, as the event rate observed in this trial was extremely low and did not differ between the groups compared. These findings, together with others,3,4 suggest that in stable patients who do not have prior known CAD, noninvasive testing should be performed before invasive angiography. See Article by Pontone et al Aside from increasing the yield of detecting obstructive CAD on invasive angiography, there are many other important ways in which …
Mealybug as a Model for Studying Responses to High Doses of Ionizing Radiation

Biological effects of exposure to different doses of ionizing radiation (IR) range from death within two days in case of high doses (>30 Gy) to various types of diseases such as cancers (due to gene mutations) in case of long-term exposure to sub-lethal doses (8-30 Gy). Further, IR-induced mutations when transmitted to the progeny can cause various types of cancer. At molecular level, IR results in double-strand breaks in DNA leading to loss of genetic material and cell death. To address the damaging consequences of exposure to radiation, recent research in radiation biology is focused on biological responses to IR in organisms showing resistance to high doses of ionizing radiation. For example, Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacterium that can survive radiation doses as high as 5,000 Gray can be potentially used for remediation of waste sites mixed with radioactive materials. However, investigation of radiation response in a higher eukaryotic organism that is resistant to high doses of ionizing radiation is desirable to offer treatment regimens to individuals exposed to IR in events of nuclear accidents. We propose here that mealybug (Planococcus lilacinus, Insecta; Coccoidea; Hemiptera) is an ideal model organism for studying responses to high doses of ionizing radiation. Among different organisms whose sensitivity to IR investigated so far, mealybug has been shown to tolerate radiation doses as high as 1100 Gy. Following exposure to such high doses, this insect has an extraordinary ability to survive and produce fertile offspring. Cytogenetic analysis of the embryos produced by irradiated parents showed that a number of tiny fragments of irradiated chromosomes are capable of metaphase alignment and anaphase segregation, suggesting that the centromere property is distributed throughout each chromosome. Taken together, mealybug has very efficient DNA repair machinery that ensures proper healing of double strand breaks induced by ionizing radiation. Because of the central role of telomeres in chromosome end-healing, the nature, distribution and maintenance of telomeric repeats in the mealybug were recently studied. Telomeric repeat has been shown to occur interstitially as well as at the ends of the mealybug chromosomes and telomerase which maintains these repeats is constitutively active. At radiation doses higher than 100 Gy, telomerase activity decreases, suggesting that telomerase-independent mechanisms may play a role in maintenance of telomeres. Based on these studies we