Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of calcium and other cations on surface adhesion of bacteria and diatoms: A review

Association with a surface is an important aspect of survival for microorganisms in natural and manmade environments/Both bacteria and diatoms are involved in such associations. In many cases, this leads to surface fouling, which often results in surface deterioration and mechanical failure in industrial systems. We now know that microorganisms exploit many strategies to establish associations with surfaces. As in the case of other cellular processes, calcium ions seem to play an important role in adhesion of cells to surfaces. Calcium is involved in non‐specific interactions such as neutralization of the electrical double layer between cell and substratum surface as well as specific adhesive interactions that cannot be replaced by other cations. The unique properties of calcium ions promote both specific and non‐specific interactions with protein and polysaccha‐ride adhesin molecules at the cell surface. As important, but less well understood, calcium ions also influence the way microbial cells interact with different substrata.
Epistemic Reasoning in OWL 2 DL

The standard semantics employed for description logics (DLs) adheres to the open world assumption (OWA). On one hand, such an assumption facilitates a modeler to formally represent problem domains with out explicitly expressing full information, which sometimes is even not possible. This is probably one of the main reasons of founding the Web Ontology Language (OWL) based on DLs. On the other hand, OWA proves to be the main cause of the impotence of DLs of capturing non-monotonic reasoning: where new information invalidates the previously concluded information. Non-monotonic reasoning has several applications in real life scenarios. For example, logic programming community, parallel to the OWL community, in general focuses on non-monotonic reasoning. These short-comes of DLs lead to the quest for a formalism as suitable as DLs meanwhile capable of capturing some “kind” of non-monotonic reasoning. Several work has been done on extending DLs with some non-monotonic feature. Epistemic extensions of DLs (called epistemic DLs sometimes) is probably one of the earliest work in this direction. Such extensions enhance expressivity and querying capabilities of these DLs by knowledge base introspection. The existing approaches in this respect are limited to less expressive DLs like ALC: the least expressive DL which is boolean complete whereas in real life applications, modeling problems require expressivity beyond ALC. The aim of this work is to extend epistemically the most expressive DL SROIQ which is the foundation of OWL 2 DL. We argue that unintended effects occur when imposing the semantics traditionally employed on very expressive DLs like SROIQ. Consequently, we identify the most expressive DL for which the current approach can still be adapted. For the epistemic extension of SROIQ and alike expressive DLs, we suggest a revised semantics that behaves more intuitively in these cases and coincides with the traditional semantics on less expressive DLs.
Motion Parallax as an Independent Cue for Depth Perception

The perspective transformations of the retinal image, produced by either the movement of an observer or the movement of objects in the visual world, were found to produce a reliable, consistent, and unambiguous impression of relative depth in the absence of all other cues to depth and distance. The stimulus displays consisted of computer-generated random-dot patterns that could be transformed by each movement of the observer or the display oscilloscope to simulate the relative movement information produced by a three-dimensional surface. Using a stereoscopic matching task, the second experiment showed that the perceived depth from parallax transformations is in close agreement with the degree of relative image displacement, as well as producing a compelling impression of three-dimensionality not unlike that found with random-dot stereograms.
Targeting hypoxia to overcome radiation resistance in head & neck cancers: real challenge or clinical fairytale?

ABSTRACT Introduction: Tumor hypoxia is a major cause for failure of therapy in patients with inoperable head and neck cancers. Areas covered: Various anti-hypoxic treatment strategies (e.g. hyperbaric oxygenation, hypoxic cell sensitizers) have been tested in clinical trials in head and neck cancer over the past 30 years and have shown modest improvements in combination with radiotherapy in meta-analyses. Anemia worsens tumor hypoxia, but anemia correction had no significant effect. New approaches (e.g. anti-HIF-directed molecular therapies) have just entered early clinical studies and data are lacking. Expert commentary: A new attractive and promising approach derives from recent advances in imaging and radiotherapy delivery. Progress in imaging of hypoxia (e.g. by positron emission tomography) can select patients for specific therapies and may, in particular, facilitate anti-hypoxia-directed radiotherapy which has become feasible with advanced radiotherapy techniques (IMRT with ‘dose-painting’). The combination of both methods may offer a powerful tool for effective targeting of hypoxia in the near future.
AWE-CM Vectors: Augmenting Word Embeddings with a Clinical Metathesaurus

In recent years, word embeddings have been surprisingly effective at capturing intuitive characteristics of the words they represent. These vectors achieve the best results when training corpora are extremely large, sometimes billions of words. Clinical natural language processing datasets, however, tend to be much smaller. Even the largest publicly-available dataset of medical notes is three orders of magnitude smaller than the dataset of the oft-used "Google News" word vectors. In order to make up for limited training data sizes, we encode expert domain knowledge into our embeddings. Building on a previous extension of word2vec, we show that generalizing the notion of a word's "context" to include arbitrary features creates an avenue for encoding domain knowledge into word embeddings. We show that the word vectors produced by this method outperform their text-only counterparts across the board in correlation with clinical experts.
Resilience and Vulnerability to Trauma: Early Life Interventions Modulate Aversive Memory Reconsolidation in the Dorsal Hippocampus

Early life experiences program lifelong responses to stress. In agreement, resilience and vulnerability to psychopathologies, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have been suggested to depend on the early background. New therapies have targeted memory reconsolidation as a strategy to modify the emotional valence of traumatic memories. Here, we used animal models to study the molecular mechanism through which early experiences may later affect aversive memory reconsolidation. Handling (H)—separation of pups from dams for 10 min—or maternal separation (MS) — 3-h separation—were performed from PDN1–10, using non-handled (NH) litters as controls. Adult males were trained in a contextual fear conditioning (CFC) task; 24 h later, a short reactivation session was conducted in the conditioned or in a novel context, followed by administration of midazolam 3 mg/kg i.p. (mdz), known to disturb reconsolidation, or vehicle; a test session was performed 24 h after. The immunocontent of relevant proteins was studied 15 and 60 min after memory reactivation in the dorsal hippocampus (dHc) and basolateral amygdala complex (BLA). Mdz-treated controls (NH) showed decreased freezing to the conditioned context, consistent with reconsolidation impairment, but H and MS were resistant to labilization. Additionally, MS males showed increased freezing to the novel context, suggesting fear generalization; H rats showed lower freezing than the other groups, in accordance with previous suggestions of reduced emotionality facing adversities. Increased levels of Zif268, GluN2B, β-actin and polyubiquitination found in the BLA of all groups suggest that memory reconsolidation was triggered. In the dHc, only NH showed increased Zif268 levels after memory retrieval; also, a delay in ERK1/2 activation was found in H and MS animals. We showed here that reconsolidation of a contextual fear memory is insensitive to interference by a GABAergic drug in adult male rats exposed to different neonatal experiences; surprisingly, we found no differences in the reconsolidation process in the BLA, but the dHc appears to suffer temporal desynchronization in the engagement of reconsolidation. Our results support a hippocampal-dependent mechanism for reconsolidation resistance in models of early experiences, which aligns with current hypotheses for the etiology of PTSD.
An ECG Analysis on Sensor Node for Reducing Traffic Overload in u-Healthcare with Wireless Sensor Network

A new approach for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal monitoring and analysis for the homecare of elderly person or patients is designed and implemented. Developed platform for real-time analysis of ECG signals on sensor node can be used as an advanced diagnosis and alarming system. Sensor node does not need to transmit ECG data all time in wireless sensor network and to server. Firstly sensor node can detect abnormality in ECG then transfer abnormal ECG data in the network to server for further analysis. This system can be used to reduce data packet overload and to save power consumption in wireless sensor network. It can also increase the server performance by reducing load. The ECG features are used to detect life-threatening arrhythmias with an emphasis of analyzing QRS complex in ECG signals at a sensor node. Based on abnormal ECG activity due to R-R interval and QRS width, the sensor node can transfer ECG data to the server for extended and cautious ECG analysis and disease classification. Needed information of abnormal ECG of a patient the server can then be transferred to the doctor's personal digital assistant (PDA) for further diagnostics.
The debate on the use of linear no threshold for assessing the effects of low doses

From December 2004 to July 2005, three reports on the effects of low doses of ionising radiation were released: ICRP (2004), the joint report of the French Academies of Science and Medicine (Tubiana et al 2005), and a report from the American Academy of Sciences (BEIR VII 2005). These reports quote the same recent articles on the biological effects of low doses, yet their conclusions diverge. The French report concludes that recent biological data show that the efficacy of defense mechanisms is modulated by dose and dose rate and that linear no threshold (LNT) is no longer plausible. The ICRP and the BEIR VII reports recognise that there are biologic arguments against LNT but feel that there are not sufficient biological proofs against it to change risk assessment methodology and subsequent regulatory policy based on LNT. They point out the remaining uncertainties and the lack of mechanistic explanations of phenomena such as low dose hyperlethality or the adaptive response. In this context, a critical analysis of the available data is necessary. The epidemiological data and the experimental data challenge the validity of the LNT hypothesis for assessing the carcinogenic effect of low doses, but do not allow its exclusion. Therefore, the main criteria for selecting the most reliable dose–effect relationship from a scientific point of view should be based on biological data. Their analysis should help one to understand the current controversy.
Immunization of mice with the antigen A60 oi Mycobacterium bovis BCG

Antigen 60 (A60) is a thermostable component of the cytoplasm of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and BCG which can be fractionated into at least 15 protein bands when analysed by Western blot. Normal B6D2 mice were immunized subcutaneously with 20 μg of the A60 protein suspended in Freund's incomplete adjuvant (FIA) or in saline. Three weeks later the mice received a second dose of vaccine followed 2 weeks later by an aerogenic challenge with approximately 103 CFU of M. tuberculosis Erdman. The mice receiving the adjuvanled A60 showed a significant reduction (P < 0·05) in the number of viable organisms recovered from the lungs and the spleen 3 weeks after challenge. However, this response was less than that seen in BCG vaccinated controls.
On Link Prediction in Knowledge Bases: Max-K Criterion and Prediction Protocols

Building knowledge base embedding models for link prediction has achieved great success. We however argue that the conventional top-k criterion used for evaluating the model performance is inappropriate. This paper introduces a new criterion, referred to as max-k. Through theoretical analysis and experimental study, we show that the top-k criterion is fundamentally inferior to max-k. We also introduce two prediction protocols for the max-k criterion. These protocols are strongly justified theoretically. Various insights concerning the max-k criterion and the two protocols are obtained through extensive experiments.
Cross Domain Recommender Systems

Cross domain recommender systems (CDRS) can assist recommendations in a target domain based on knowledge learned from a source domain. CDRS consists of three building blocks: domain, user-item overlap scenarios, and recommendation tasks. The objective of this research is to identify the most widely used CDRS building-block definitions, identify common features between them, classify current research in the frame of identified definitions, group together research with respect to algorithm types, present existing problems, and recommend future directions for CDRS research. To achieve this objective, we have conducted a systematic literature review of 94 shortlisted studies. We classified the selected studies using the tag-based approach and designed classification grids. Using classification grids, it was found that the category-domain contributed a maximum of 62%, whereas the time domain contributed at least 3%. User-item overlaps were found to have equal contribution. Single target domain recommendation task was found at a maximum of 78%, whereas cross-domain recommendation task had a minor influence at only 10%. MovieLens contributed the most at 22%, whereas Yahoo-music provided 1% between 29 datasets. Factorization-based algorithms contributed a total of 37%, whereas semantics-based algorithms contributed 6% among seven types of identified algorithm groups. Finally, future directions were grouped into five categories.
Single-stage AC/DC dual inductor BCM current-fed push-pull for HB-LED lighting applications

A single-stage, AC/DC driver for High Brightness Light-Emitting Diodes (HB-LED) with galvanic isolation is presented in this paper. The driver is based on a Dual Inductor Current-fed Push-Pull (DICPP) converter with each inductor operating in Boundary Conduction Mode (BCM). The interleaving between the two inductors makes possible for the converter to reduce the high input current ripple of a BCM. Moreover, it is fully compliant with IEC 1000-3-2 Class C, and it is also able to achieve high Power Factor (PF). Moreover, the low component count, simplicity and overall outstanding characteristics make this topology suitable for medium power range HB-LED drivers in low cost applications. Finally, the proposed topology has been tested on a 90W prototype for the full range of the US single-phase line voltage, feeding several strings of HB-LED, with an output voltage of 48V at full load. The prototype achieves a maximum efficiency of 92% with 0.99 power factor, 8% THD at full load and guarantees good quality light.
Targeting platelets for prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease

Platelets play an important role in the development of thrombosis, atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart attack and stroke. As a result, pharmacologic interventions that influence platelet functions, such as adhesion, aggregation and the release of different factors, are considered useful for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Although classical anti-platelet agents have proven beneficial effects for the treatment of some specific cardiovascular diseases, there are limitations for their use as these drugs target platelet function directly. In contrast, newly developed anti-platelet agents have broad applications for the treatment of cardiovascular disease as they not only influence platelet function but are also considered to affect cardiac and vascular smooth muscle cell functions. Natural food products and nutraceutical agents also appear to modify cardiovascular abnormalities by affecting various platelet functions; however, the mechanisms of their actions remain to be investigated. Accordingly, this article is focused to discuss emerging pharmacologic, nutritional and nutraceutical interventions that may influence the prevention or progression of a broad range of cardiovascular diseases.
Natural history of gastroesophageal reflux disease and functional abdominal disorders: a population-based study

OBJECTIVE:Symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), dyspepsia, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are generally considered to be chronic conditions, but community-based studies are sparse, and long-term natural history data are unavailable. We aimed to determine the natural history of these conditions.METHODS:A representative Swedish sample (20–79 yr) completed a validated questionnaire over the preceding 3 months. The survey was repeated after 1 and 7 yr in the same target group (n = 1290, 1260, and 1065; response rates 90%, 87%, and 82%, respectively; 79% responded to all three mailings). RESULTS:The prevalence of GERD symptoms remained stable, whereas the prevalence of IBS increased over time, independent of aging. Dyspepsia decreased with advancing age. Although more than half of those with IBS reported the same symptom profile after 1 and 7 yr, there was a substantial symptom fluctuation and symptom profile flux between those reporting dyspepsia, IBS, or minor symptoms. Only a minority with GERD (<10%) changed to dyspepsia and/or IBS, or vice versa. The symptom-free patients remained symptom-free or reported only minor symptoms in ≥90% of cases.CONCLUSION:There seem to be two distinct populations of symptom reporters, those with dyspepsia or IBS, and those with GERD.
A Study of the Interference in Selective Attention on the Stroop Test

One approach to the problem of selective attention is to examine instances where selective attention malfunctions, for instance, the Stroop Color-Word Test. When Ss are asked to name the color of ink in which a conflicting color-word is printed, it is found that this is signi­ ficantly more difficult than naming the colors of dots. The reason for color-word interference is not known. Since the two dimensions of the stimuli, ink color and color name, conflict it can be hypothesized that S has difficulty in selecting the relevant aspect of the stimulus. This hypothesis predicts that a simpler cognitive operation, such as scanning an array of Stroop items and counting the number printed in a certain color, would show color-word interference. A frequent explanation of color-word interference has been that response competition is elicited because word reading has greater response strength than color naming. This hypothesis predicts that the time taken to count a color plus the time taken to say a color-word would be less than the time taken to name a color in the color-word condition. The Ss were 20 students from introductory psychology classes. All Ss served under all conditions. Trials under each condition were given in each experimental session, the order of these trials being randomized. Neither prediction was confirmed. Color-word interference did not occur when items were scanned and counted, indicating that Ss can attend to the relevant stimulus dimension when recognition only is demanded. Inasmuch as the direction of the observed differences in the test of the response competition hypothesis were opposite to that predicted this hypothesis was not confirmed. The over-all results were interpreted in terms of the difference between recognitive and categorizing processes. A STUDY OF THE INTERFERENCE IN SELECTIVE ATTENTION ON THE STROOP TEST
NSF PROGRAM NAME : Dynamical Systems Exploiting Parametric Effects in Resonant Nanosystems

This work examines the nonlinear dynamics of suspended, electrostatically-actuated single-walled carbon nanotube resonators. Specifically, the work considers the near-resonant response of these systems under combined parametric and direct excitation, and explores the relative importance of each excitation mechanism in a prototypical device. Given the preliminary nature of this work, AUTO simulations are used to capture the salient features of the nanoresonator’s nonlinear response. Ongoing fabrication and characterization efforts, aimed at validating predicted dynamic behaviors, are also described.
Statistics Predict Kinematics of Hand Movements During Everyday Activity

Bayesian decision theory suggests that the statistics of an individual's actions (prior experience) play an important role in motor control and execution. To elucidate this relation, we recorded 7 million mouse movements made by a group of 20 computer users across a 50-day work period, allowing us to estimate the prior distribution of spontaneous hand movements. We found that the most frequent movements were in cardinal directions. The shape of this distribution was participant-specific but constant over time and independent of the computer that the participant used. This nonuniform directional distribution allowed us to predict systematic errors in initial movement directions, which matched well with the actual data. This shows how movement statistics can influence hand kinematics.
Transformer Electromagnetic and Thermal Models

Due to the widespread and easily use of computer calculations, numerical models are fundamental tools for a great number of subjects under study. In order to study transformers thermal loss of life, complex models taking into account electrical and thermal characteristics are required. Moreover, the precision of thermal models is dependent upon the exactitude of the parameters. The work presented in this article shows that, through electromagnetic similitude laws, for a homogeneous series of transformers with different rated powers, the main parameters required for the thermal model can be obtained Key-Words: Electromagnetic similitude laws, Electromagnetic and thermal parameters, Oil-filled transformers
Transcription Factor CBF4 Is a Regulator of Drought Adaptation in Arabidopsis1

In plants, low temperature and dehydration activate a set of genes containing C-repeat/dehydration-responsive elements in their promoter. It has been shown previously that the Arabidopsis CBF/DREB1 transcription activators are critical regulators of gene expression in the signal transduction of cold acclimation. Here, we report the isolation of an apparent homolog of the CBF/DREB1 proteins (CBF4) that plays the equivalent role during drought adaptation. In contrast to the three already identified CBF/DREB1 homologs, which are induced under cold stress, CBF4 gene expression is up-regulated by drought stress, but not by low temperature. Overexpression of CBF4 in transgenic Arabidopsis plants results in the activation of C-repeat/dehydration-responsive element containing downstream genes that are involved in cold acclimation and drought adaptation. As a result, the transgenic plants are more tolerant to freezing and drought stress. Because of the physiological similarity between freezing and drought stress, and the sequence and structural similarity of the CBF/DREB1 and the CBF4 proteins, we propose that the plant's response to cold and drought evolved from a common CBF-like transcription factor, first through gene duplication and then through promoter evolution.