bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Quantitative muscle ultrasound and quadriceps strength in patients with post‐polio syndrome
Authors: Bickerstaffe Alice , Beelen Anita , Zwarts Machiel J. , Nollet Frans , van Dijk Johannes P. 
Published: April 2014

ABSTRACTIntroduction: We investigated whether muscle ultrasound can distinguish muscles affected by post‐polio syndrome (PPS) from healthy muscles and whether severity of ultrasound abnormalities is associated with muscle strength. Methods: Echo intensity, muscle thickness, and isometric strength of the quadriceps muscles were measured in 48 patients with PPS and 12 healthy controls. Results: Patients with PPS had significantly higher echo intensity and lower muscle thickness than healthy controls. In patients, both echo intensity and muscle thickness were associated independently with muscle strength. A combined measure of echo intensity and muscle thickness was more strongly related to muscle strength than either parameter alone. Conclusions: Quantitative ultrasound distinguishes healthy muscles from those affected by PPS, and measures of muscle quality and quantity are associated with muscle strength. Hence, ultrasound could be a useful tool for assessing disease severity and monitoring changes resulting from disease progression or clinical intervention in patients with PPS. Muscle Nerve 51: 24–29, 2015
Folding of Aquaporin 1: Multiple evidence that helix 3 can shift out of the membrane core
Authors: Virkki Minttu T. , Agrawal Nitin , Edsbäcker Elin , Cristobal Susana , Elofsson Arne , Kauko Anni 
Published: April 2014

AbstractThe folding of most integral membrane proteins follows a two‐step process: initially, individual transmembrane helices are inserted into the membrane by the Sec translocon. Thereafter, these helices fold to shape the final conformation of the protein. However, for some proteins, including Aquaporin 1 (AQP1), the folding appears to follow a more complicated path. AQP1 has been reported to first insert as a four‐helical intermediate, where helix 2 and 4 are not inserted into the membrane. In a second step, this intermediate is folded into a six‐helical topology. During this process, the orientation of the third helix is inverted. Here, we propose a mechanism for how this reorientation could be initiated: first, helix 3 slides out from the membrane core resulting in that the preceding loop enters the membrane. The final conformation could then be formed as helix 2, 3, and 4 are inserted into the membrane and the reentrant regions come together. We find support for the first step in this process by showing that the loop preceding helix 3 can insert into the membrane. Further, hydrophobicity curves, experimentally measured insertion efficiencies and MD‐simulations suggest that the barrier between these two hydrophobic regions is relatively low, supporting the idea that helix 3 can slide out of the membrane core, initiating the rearrangement process.
Using next‐generation sequencing to detect mutations endowing resistance to pesticides: application to acetolactate‐synthase (ALS)‐based resistance in barnyard grass, a polyploid grass weed
Authors: Délye Christophe , Causse Romain , Gautier Véronique , Poncet Charles , Michel Séverine 
Published: April 2014

AbstractBACKGROUNDNext‐generation sequencing (NGS) technologies offer tremendous possibilities for accurate detection of mutations endowing pesticide resistance, yet their use for this purpose has not emerged in crop protection. This study aims at promoting NGS use for pesticide resistance diagnosis. It describes a simple procedure accessible to virtually any scientist and implementing freely accessible programs for the analysis of NGS data.RESULTSThree PCR amplicons encompassing seven codons of the acetolactate‐synthase gene crucial for herbicide resistance were sequenced using non‐quantified pools of crude DNA extracts from 40 plants in each of 28 field populations of barnyard grass, a polyploid weed. A total of 63 959 quality NGS sequence runs were obtained using the 454 technology. Three herbicide‐resistance‐endowing mutations (Pro‐197‐Ser, Pro‐197‐Leu and/or Trp‐574‐Leu) were identified in seven populations. The NGS results were confirmed by individual plant Sanger sequencing.CONCLUSIONThis work demonstrated the feasibility of NGS‐based detection of pesticide resistance, and the advantages of NGS compared with other molecular biology techniques for analysing large numbers of individuals. NGS‐based resistance diagnosis has the potential to play a substantial role in monitoring resistance, maintaining pesticide efficacy and optimising pesticide applications. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry
Internal Migration and Early Life Mortality in Kenya and Nigeria
Authors: Mberu Blessing Uchenna , Mutua Michael 
Published: April 2014

AbstractBuilding on evidence of the vulnerability of migrants to disadvantages in morbidity and mortality, we examine the relationships between internal migration and early life mortality. We apply the Cox‐proportional hazards model on the nationally representative data from the 2008 Demographic and Health Surveys in Kenya and Nigeria to predict the hazard of dying between birth and age 14.We find more deaths in Nigeria than Kenya, with the highest mortality burdens among rural and urban non‐migrants in both countries. We also find urban–rural and rural–urban migrants in Kenya and rural–urban migrants in Nigeria showing elevated mortality burdens than other migrant categories. Consistent with evidence that social and biological disadvantages trail individuals through the life course, we find that distinct mortality patterns displayed after 2 years of life gradually enlarge till age 14 in both countries.Beyond migration, we find commonalities in more deaths among children with shorter birth intervals, multiple than singleton births, children whose mothers have no/preschool education, with shortest duration of stay in current place of residence, divorced/separated, and from the poorest households.On differentials, we find in Kenya higher mortality burdens among ethnic Somali children, in Northeastern and Western regions. In Nigeria, we find more deaths among boys, children of mothers under 20 years old, unemployed, Muslim, and from North‐west and North‐east regions.Our study is a critical step in providing credible evidence that can guide discourse and actions in addressing the health challenges of migrants and non‐migrants in two major African countries. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nanotube film metallicity and its effect on the performance of carbon nanotube–silicon solar cells
Authors: Tune Daniel D. , Blanch Adam J. , Krupke Ralph , Flavel Benjamin S. , Shapter Joseph G. 
Published: April 2014

Research into silicon solar cells that use a thin film of single walled carbon nanotubes as the front electrode is an important area of increasing research activity. This paper provides the first ever direct performance comparison between devices fabricated with either semiconducting, metallic or mixed nanotubes to probe the effect of the semiconducting/metallic nature, or ‘metallicity’, of the nanotube film on solar cell performance and properties. HiPCO nanotube material sorted using the gel chromatography technique is highly purified in either metallic or semiconducting nanotube species. The solar cells fabricated with the metallic nanotubes greatly outperform their semiconducting or mixed counterparts. The operating mechanisms underlying this observation and its implications in regards to current understanding are discussed in light of recent literature. Dramatic increases in performance as well as substantial changes in the effect of metallicity due to subsequent hole doping of the sorted nanotube films are also demonstrated. Using highly pure semiconducting and metallic carbon nanotubes, film metallicity is shown to be a vital factor in the performance of carbon nanotube–silicon solar cells.
The BOSCO solar cell – a both sides collecting and contacted structure
Authors: Fertig Fabian , Krauß Karin , Greulich Johannes , Clement Florian , Biro Daniel , Preu Ralf , Rein Stefan 
Published: April 2014

AbstractThe BOSCO solar cell represents a bifacial structure with double‐sided collection. The structure allows the use of standard module interconnection technology and favours the use of material with low to medium diffusion length and low resistivity for maximum benefit towards other structures, such as Al‐BSF and PERC. Within this work, we present first results on different multicrystalline silicon materials yielding a monofacial efficiency of 17.4% on large‐area wafers from block‐cast mc‐Si. This value represents a gain of ∼0.7%abs compared to Al‐BSF cells processed in parallel. The applicability for bifacial operation is demonstrated by a significantly increased quantum efficiency for rear side illumination. These results make the BOSCO solar cell concept a promising candidate to further boost the output of utility‐scale PV plants even when using low‐cost wafers of low to medium diffusion length material.magnified imageSketch and photographs of the BOSCO solar cell concept.(© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Multi‐transfer: Transfer learning with multiple views and multiple sources
Authors: Tan Ben , Zhong Erheng , Xiang Evan Wei , Yang Qiang 
Published: April 2014

AbstractTransfer learning, which aims to help learning tasks in a target domain by leveraging knowledge from auxiliary domains, has been demonstrated to be effective in different applications such as text mining, sentiment analysis, and so on. In addition, in many real‐world applications, auxiliary data are described from multiple perspectives and usually carried by multiple sources. For example, to help classify videos on Youtube, which include three perspectives: image, voice and subtitles, one may borrow data from Flickr, Last.FM and Google News. Although any single instance in these domains can only cover a part of the views available on Youtube, the piece of information carried by them may compensate one another. If we can exploit these auxiliary domains in a collective manner, and transfer the knowledge to the target domain, we can improve the target model building from multiple perspectives. In this article, we consider this transfer learning problem as Transfer Learning with Multiple Views and Multiple Sources. As different sources may have different probability distributions and different views may compensate or be inconsistent with each other, merging all data in a simplistic manner will not give an optimal result. Thus, we propose a novel algorithm to leverage knowledge from different views and sources collaboratively, by letting different views from different sources complement each other through a co‐training style framework, at the same time, it revises the distribution differences in different domains. We conduct empirical studies on several real‐world datasets to show that the proposed approach can improve the classification accuracy by up to 8% against different kinds of state‐of‐the‐art baselines.
A tool to improve code‐first Web services discoverability through text mining techniques
Authors: Mateos Cristian , Rodriguez Juan Manuel , Zunino Alejandro 
Published: April 2014

SummaryService‐oriented development is challenging mainly because Web service developers tend to disregard the importance of the exposed service APIs, which are specified using Web Service Description Language (WSDL) documents. Methodologically, WSDL documents can be either manually generated or inferred from service implementations using WSDL generation tools. The latter option, called code first, is the most used approach in the industry. However, it is known that there are some bad practices in service implementations or defects in WSDL generation tools that may cause WSDL documents to present WSDL anti‐patterns, which in turn compromise the chances of documents of being discovered and understood. In this paper, we present a software tool that assists developers in obtaining WSDL documents with as few WSDL anti‐patterns as possible. The tool combines text mining and meta‐programming techniques to process service implementations and is developed as an Eclipse plug‐in. An evaluation of the tool by using a data‐set of real service implementations in terms of anti‐pattern avoidance accuracy and discovery performance by using classical Information Retrieval metrics—Precision‐at‐n, Recall and Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain—is also reported.Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Characterization of the effect of Cr(VI) on humoral innate immunity using Drosophila melanogaster
Authors: Pragya P. , Shukla A. K. , Murthy R. C. , Abdin M. Z. , Kar Chowdhuri D. 
Published: April 2014

ABSTRACTWith the advancement of human race, different anthropogenic activities have heaped the environment with chemicals that can cause alteration in the immune system of exposed organism. As a first line of barrier, the evolutionary conserved innate immunity is crucial for the health of an organism. However, there is paucity of information regarding in vivo assessment of the effect of environmental chemicals on innate immunity. Therefore, we examined the effect of a widely used environmental chemical, Cr(VI), on humoral innate immune response using Drosophila melanogaster. The adverse effect of Cr(VI) on host humoral response was characterized by decreased gene expression of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in the exposed organism. Concurrently, a significantly decreased transcription of humoral pathway receptors (Toll and PGRP) and triglyceride level along with inhibition of antioxidant enzyme activities were observed in exposed organism. This in turn weakened the immune response of exposed organism that was manifested by their reduced resistance against bacterial infection. In addition, overexpression of the components of humoral immunity particularly Diptericin benefits Drosophila from Cr(VI)‐induced humoral immune‐suppressive effect. To our knowledge, this is the first report regarding negative impact of an environmental chemical on humoral innate immune response of Drosophila along with subsequent protection by AMPs, which may provide novel insight into host–chemical interactions. Also, our data validate the utility and sensitivity of Drosophila as a model that could be used for screening the possible risk of environmental chemicals on innate immunity with minimum ethical concern that can be further extrapolated to higher organisms. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 30: 1285–1296, 2015.
Performance analysis of switch‐based multiuser scheduling schemes with adaptive modulation in spectrum sharing systems
Authors: Qaraqe Marwa , Abdallah Mohamed , Serpedin Erchin , Alouini Mohamed‐Slim 
Published: April 2014

AbstractThis paper focuses on the development of multiuser access schemes for spectrum sharing systems whereby secondary users are allowed to share the spectrum with primary users under the condition that the interference observed at the primary receiver is below a predetermined threshold. In particular, two scheduling schemes are proposed for selecting a user among those that satisfy the interference constraint and achieve an acceptable signal‐to‐noise ratio level. The first scheme focuses on optimizing the average spectral efficiency by selecting the user that reports the best channel quality. In order to alleviate the relatively high feedback required by the first scheme, a second scheme based on the concept of switched diversity is proposed, where the base station (BS) scans the secondary users in a sequential manner until a user whose channel quality is above an acceptable predetermined threshold is found. We develop expressions for the statistics of the signal‐to‐interference and noise ratio as well as the average spectral efficiency, average feedback load, and the delay at the secondary BS. We then present numerical results for the effect of the number of users and the interference constraint on the optimal switching threshold and the system performance and show that our analysis results are in perfect agreement with the numerical results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Aeroservoelastic state‐space vortex lattice modeling and load alleviation of wind turbine blades
Authors: Ng Bing Feng , Hesse Henrik , Palacios Rafael , Graham J.Michael R. , Kerrigan Eric C. 
Published: April 2014

AbstractAn aeroservoelastic model, capturing the structural response and the unsteady aerodynamics of turbine rotors, will be used to demonstrate the potential of active load alleviation using aerodynamic control surfaces. The structural model is a geometrically non‐linear composite beam, which is linearized around equilibrium rotating conditions and coupled with time‐domain aerodynamics given by a linearized 3D unsteady vortex lattice method. With much of the existing work relying on blade element momentum theory with various corrections, the use of the unsteady vortex lattice method in this paper seeks to complement and provide a direct higher fidelity solution for the unsteady rotor dynamics in attached flow conditions. The resulting aeroelastic model is in a state‐space formulation suitable for control synthesis. Flaps are modeled directly in the vortex lattice description and using a reduced‐order model of the coupled aeroelastic formulation, a linear‐quadratic‐Gaussian controller is synthesized and shown to reduce root mean square values of the root‐bending moment and tip deflection in the presence of continuous turbulence. Similar trend is obtained when the controller is applied to the original non‐linear model of the turbine. Trade‐offs between reducing root‐bending moment and suppressing the negative impacts on torsion due to flap deployment will also be investigated. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DEM of triaxial tests on crushable sand
Authors: de Bono J. P. , McDowell G. R. 
Published: April 2014

Abstract
This paper presents simulations of high-pressure triaxial shear tests on a crushable sand. The discrete element method is used, featuring a large number of particles and avoiding the use of agglomerates. The triaxial model features a flexible membrane, therefore allowing realistic deformation, and a simple breakage mechanism is implemented using the octahedral shear stress induced in the particles. The simulations show that particle crushing is essential to replicate the realistic behaviour of sand (in particular the volumetric contraction) in high-pressure shear tests. The general effects of crushing during shear are explored, including its effects on critical states, and the influence of particle strength and confining pressure on the degree of crushing are discussed.
The Utilization and Choices of Aneuploidy Screening in a Midwestern Population
Authors: Dicke Jeffrey M. , Van Duyne Lindsey , Bradshaw Rachael 
Published: April 2014

AbstractThe types, interpretation, and use of first‐ and second‐trimester aneuploidy screening are often unclear for many women. This impairs appropriate decision making and understanding of the implications of prenatal genetic testing options. The purpose of this study was to examine the utilization of Stepwise Sequential screening in our Midwestern population, demographic factors associated with choice of screening and method of risk reporting and it's potential impact on women's choices. First trimester screening was performed for 2,634 women during the study period. Results were not reported or “framed” as “positive” or “negative”. Rather, the specific age‐risk and screen‐risk for T21 were relayed, along with options for follow‐up Stepwise Sequential screening and invasive testing. Nearly 80 % of women declined Stepwise Sequential screening. Minorities and women of lower education were least likely to pursue further screening. Less than 4 % of the study population elected invasive testing. First trimester screening was associated with a 53 % reduction in amniocenteses and 20 % fewer CVS's compared to pre‐first trimester screening availability. Reporting age‐and screen‐risks for T21, rather than classifying results as “positive” or “negative” based on a pre‐determined threshold, was associated with a low uptake of further testing.
Maternal Uniparental Isodisomy Causing Autosomal Recessive GM1 Gangliosidosis: A Clinical Report
Authors: King Jessica E. , Dexter Amy , Gadi Inder , Zvereff Val , Martin Meaghan , Bloom Miriam , Vanderver Adeline , Pizzino Amy , Schmidt Johanna L. 
Published: April 2014

AbstractUniparental disomy is a genetic cause of disease that may result in the inheritance of an autosomal recessive condition. A child with developmental delay and hypotonia was seen and found to have severely abnormal myelination. Lysosomal enzyme testing identified an isolated deficiency of beta‐galactosidase. Subsequently, homozygous missense mutations in the galactosidase, beta 1 (GLB1) gene on chromosome 3 were found. Parental testing confirmed inheritance of two copies of the same mutated maternal GLB1 gene, and no paternal copy. SNP analysis was also done to confirm paternity. The patient was ultimately diagnosed with autosomal recessive GM1 gangliosidosis caused by maternal uniparental isodisomy. We provide a review of this patient and others in which uniparental disomy (UPD) of a non‐imprinted chromosome unexpectedly caused an autosomal recessive condition. This is the first case of GM1 gangliosidosis reported in the literature to have been caused by UPD. It is important for genetic counselors and other health care providers to be aware of the possibility of autosomal recessive disease caused by UPD. UPD as a cause of autosomal recessive disease drastically changes the recurrence risk for families, and discussions surrounding UPD can be complex. Working with families to understand UPD when it occurs requires a secure and trusting counselor‐family relationship.
Effects of the burrowing mud shrimp, Upogebia yokoyai, on carbon flow and microbial activity on a tidal flat
Authors: Sasaki Akiko , Nakao Hiroki , Yoshitake Shinpei , Nakatsubo Takayuki 
Published: April 2014

AbstractMud shrimps, Upogebia spp., are major constituents of macrobenthic communities in tidal flats in Japan. The impact of Upogebia yokoyai on carbon flow on tidal flats was examined by comparing CO2 emission rates from plots with and without burrows in the Kurose River estuary, Japan. In situ CO2 emission rates from plots with burrows were significantly higher than from those without. Laboratory measurements using sediment core samples that excluded respiration of macrobenthic organisms showed similar trends. Although there were no significant differences in grain size distribution, water content, or ignition loss between the sediment cores with and without burrows, oxidation–reduction potential was significantly higher in sediment cores with burrows. Analysis of phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) indicated that microbial biomass and community structure did not differ significantly between cores with and without burrows. However, microbial respiration activity, as indicated by CO2 emission rates per total PLFA content, was significantly higher in sediment cores with burrows than in those without. Our results indicate that burrows of U. yokoyai change the physicochemical conditions and increase microbial activity in the sediment, significantly affecting carbon flow in the tidal flat.