Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of CPI‐17 and myosin phosphatase correlates with Ca2+ sensitivity of protein kinase C‐induced contraction in rabbit smooth muscle

1 Various smooth muscles have unique contractile characteristics, such as the degree of Ca2+ sensitivity induced by physiological and pharmacological agents. Here we evaluated six different rabbit smooth muscle tissues for protein kinase C (PKC)‐induced Ca2+ sensitization. We also examined the expression levels of myosin light chain phosphatase (MLCP), the MLCP inhibitor phosphoprotein CPI‐17, and the thin filament regulator h‐calponin. 2 Immunohistochemical and Western blot analyses indicated that CPI‐17 was found primarily in smooth muscle, although expression varied among different tissues. Vascular muscles contained more CPI‐17 than visceral muscles, with further distinction existing between tonic and phasic subtypes. For example, the tonic femoral artery possessed approximately 8 times the cellular CPI‐17 concentration of the phasic vas deferens. 3 In contrast to CPI‐17 expression patterns, phasic muscles contained more MLCP myosin‐targeting subunit than tonic tissues. Calponin expression was not statistically different. 4 Addition of phorbol ester to α‐toxin‐permeabilized smooth muscle caused an increase in contraction and phosphorylation of both CPI‐17 and myosin light chain (MLC) at submaximal [Ca2+]i. These responses were several‐fold greater in femoral artery as compared to vas deferens. 5 We conclude that the expression ratio of CPI‐17 to MLCP correlates with the Ca2+ sensitivities of contraction induced by a PKC activator. PKC stimulation of arterial smooth muscle with a high CPI‐17 and low MLCP expression generated greater force and MLC phosphorylation than stimulation of visceral muscle with a relatively low CPI‐17 and high MLCP content. This implicates CPI‐17 inhibition of MLCP as an important component in modulating vascular muscle tone.
Efficient Generation of Compact Execution Traces for Multicore Architectural Simulations

Requiring no functional simulation, trace-driven simulation has the potential of achieving faster simulation speeds than execution-driven simulation of multicore architectures. An efficient, on-the-fly, high-fidelity trace generation method for multithreaded applications is reported. The generated trace is encoded in an instruction-like binary format that can be directly “interpreted” by a timing simulator to simulate a general load/store or x8-like architecture. A complete tool suite that has been developed and used for evaluation of the proposed method showed that it produces smaller traces over existing trace compression methods while retaining good fidelity including all threading- and synchronization-related events.
Batch Normalization is a Cause of Adversarial Vulnerability

Batch normalization (batch norm) is often used in an attempt to stabilize and accelerate training in deep neural networks. In many cases it indeed decreases the number of parameter updates required to achieve low training error. However, it also reduces robustness to small adversarial input perturbations and noise by double-digit percentages, as we show on five standard datasets. Furthermore, substituting weight decay for batch norm is sufficient to nullify the relationship between adversarial vulnerability and the input dimension. Our work is consistent with a mean-field analysis that found that batch norm causes exploding gradients.
Analyzing Code Comments to Boost Program Comprehension

We are trying to find source code comments that help programmers understand a nontrivial part of source code. One of such examples would be explaining to assign a zero as a way to "clear" a buffer. Such comments are invaluable to programmers and identifying them correctly would be of great help. Toward this goal, we developed a method to discover explanatory code comments in a source code. We first propose 12 distinct categories of code comments. We then developed a decision-tree based classifier that can identify explanatory comments with 60% precision and 80% recall. We analyzed 2,000 GitHub projects that are written in two languages: Java and Python. This task is novel in that it focuses on a microscopic comment ("local comment") within a method or function, in contrast to the prior efforts that focused on API-or method-level comments. We also investigated how different category of comments is used in different projects. Our key finding is that there are two dominant types of comments: preconditional and postconditional. Our findings also suggest that many English code comments have a certain grammatical structure that are consistent across different projects.
Fast and reliable architecture selection for convolutional neural networks

The performance of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) depends on its hyperparameters, like the number of layers, kernel sizes, or the learning rate for example. Especially in smaller networks and applications with limited computational resources, optimisation is key. We present a fast and efficient approach for CNN architecture selection. Taking into account time consumption, precision and robustness, we develop a heuristic to quickly and reliably assess a network's performance. In combination with Bayesian optimisation (BO), to effectively cover the vast parameter space, our contribution offers a plain and powerful architecture search for this machine learning technique.
Self-similar Solutions for Finite Size Advection-dominated Accretion Flows

We investigated effects on flow variables of transonic advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) for different outer boundary locations (BLs) with a changing energy constant (E) of the flow. We used the ADAF solutions and investigated a general power index rule of a radial bulk velocity with different BLs, but the power index with a radius for a rotation velocity and sound speed is unchanged. Here, p ≥ 0.5 is a power index. This power rule gives two types of self-similar solutions; first, when p = 0.5 gives a self-similar solution of a first kind and exists for infinite length, which has already been discovered for the ADAFs by Narayan & Yi, and second, when p > 0.5 gives a self-similar solution of a second kind and exists for finite length, which corresponds to our new solutions for the ADAFs. By using this index rule in fluid equations, we found that the Mach number (M) and advection factor ( ) vary with the radius when p > 0.5. The local energies of the ADAFs and the Keplerian disk are matched very well at the BLs. So, this theoretical study is supporting a two-zone configuration theory of the accretion disk, and we also discussed other possible hybrid disk geometries. The present study can have two main implications with a variation of the p; first, one that can help with the understanding of outflows and nonthermal spectrum variations in black hole candidates, and second, one that can help with solving partial differential equations for any sized advective disk.
Effect of Oral L-Carnitine Administration on Insulin Sensitivity and Lipid Profile in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients

Aim: It was the aim of this study to evaluate the effect of oral L-carnitine administration on insulin sensitivity and lipid profile in subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Subjects and Methods: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was carried out in 12 subjects with type 2 diabetes. Six subjects received L-carnitine 1 g orally 3 times a day before meals for a period of 4 weeks. Six other individuals took a placebo for the same period of time, as the control group. Before and after the intervention, insulin sensitivity and the lipid profile were estimated. To assess insulin sensitivity, the euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp technique was performed. Wilcoxon’s signed rank and the Mann-Whitney U test were used for the statistical analyses. Results: There were no significant differences in basal clinical characteristics between the 2 groups. Insulin sensitivity and the basal lipid profile were similar. There were no significant changes in either group after the intervention in insulin sensitivity (3.2 ± 1.2 vs. 4.5 ± 1.7 mg/kg/min, p = 0.115, and 3.5 ± 0.6 vs. 3.5 ± 0.4 mg/kg/min, p = 0.917, for the placebo and L-carnitine groups, respectively) and in lipid profile. Conclusion:L-Carnitine orally administered for a period of 4 weeks did not modify insulin sensitivity or the lipid profile.
Local Density Encoding for Robust Stereo Matching

Stereo correspondence is challenging under realistic conditions due to uncontrolled factors that affect input images, including illumination inconsistencies and radiometric variations. Many local and global models have been suggested to address these problems; however, their performance is often degraded due to the assumption of color consistency between the left and right images. Therefore, we present a new local pattern, local density encoding, for stereo matching measurements to improve the performance of existing stereo methods. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed method is less sensitive to illumination changes and radiometric variations. Moreover, in the cases with normal and severe illumination changes, the proposed method is more robust than state-of-the-art data costs.
Pyramidal Person Re-IDentification via Multi-Loss Dynamic Training

Most existing Re-IDentification (Re-ID) methods are highly dependent on precise bounding boxes that enable images to be aligned with each other. However, due to the challenging practical scenarios, current detection models often produce inaccurate bounding boxes, which inevitably degenerate the performance of existing Re-ID algorithms. In this paper, we propose a novel coarse-to-fine pyramid model to relax the need of bounding boxes, which not only incorporates local and global information, but also integrates the gradual cues between them. The pyramid model is able to match at different scales and then search for the correct image of the same identity, even when the image pairs are not aligned. In addition, in order to learn discriminative identity representation, we explore a dynamic training scheme to seamlessly unify two losses and extract appropriate shared information between them. Experimental results clearly demonstrate that the proposed method achieves the state-of-the-art results on three datasets. Especially, our approach exceeds the current best method by 9.5% on the most challenging CUHK03 dataset.
The Lanthanide Fraction Distribution in Metal-poor Stars: A Test of Neutron Star Mergers as the Dominant r-process Site

Multimessenger observations of the neutron star merger GW170817 and its kilonova proved that neutron star mergers can synthesize large quantities of r-process elements. If neutron star mergers in fact dominate all r-process element production, then the distribution of kilonova ejecta compositions should match the distribution of r-process abundance patterns observed in stars. The lanthanide fraction (XLa) is a measurable quantity in both kilonovae and metal-poor stars, but it has not previously been explicitly calculated for stars. Here we compute the lanthanide fraction distribution of metal-poor stars ([Fe/H] < − 2.5) to enable comparison to current and future kilonovae. The full distribution peaks at log XLa ∼ −1.8, but r-process-enhanced stars ([Eu/Fe] > 0.7) have distinctly higher lanthanide fractions: . We review observations of GW170817 and find general consensus that the total , somewhat lower than the typical metal-poor star and inconsistent with the most highly r-enhanced stars. For neutron star mergers to remain viable as the dominant r-process site, future kilonova observations should be preferentially lanthanide-rich (including a population of ∼10% with ). These high-XLa kilonovae may be fainter and more rapidly evolving than GW170817, posing a challenge for discovery and follow-up observations. Both optical and (mid-)infrared observations will be required to robustly constrain kilonova lanthanide fractions. If such high-XLa kilonovae are not found in the next few years, that likely implies that the stars with the highest r-process enhancements have a different origin for their r-process elements.
Experimenting with Symplectic Hypergeometric Monodromy Groups

Abstract We present new computational results for symplectic monodromy groups of hypergeometric differential equations. In particular, we compute the arithmetic closure of each group, sometimes justifying arithmeticity. The results are obtained by extending our earlier algorithms for Zariski dense groups, based on the strong approximation and congruence subgroup properties.
Performance analysis of new fault-tolerant flux-mnemonic doubly-salient permanent-magnet motor drive

Due to the flux-mnemonic nature of AlNiCo permanent magnets (PMs), the flux-mnemonic motor can offer efficient online air-gap flux control. By incorporating the flux-mnemonic concept into the hybrid-field doubly salient PM (DSPM) motor structure, the resulting flux-mnemonic DSPM motor can flexibly operate at the magnetizing mode when PMs are fully magnetized or the demagnetizing mode when PMs are fully demagnetized. The key of this paper is to artfully utilize these modes for fault-tolerant operation of the proposed flux-mnemonic DSPM motor drive. Namely, the motor drive works in a remedial magnetizing mode during open-circuit fault, and a remedial demagnetizing mode during short-circuit fault. Comprehensive performance analysis is carried out to verify the validity of the proposed fault-tolerant flux-mnemonic DSPM motor drive.
Structure of small-scale magnetic fields in the kinematic dynamo theory.

A weak fluctuating magnetic field embedded into a a turbulent conducting medium grows exponentially while its characteristic scale decays. In the interstellar medium and protogalactic plasmas, the magnetic Prandtl number is very large, so a broad spectrum of growing magnetic fluctuations is excited at small (subviscous) scales. The condition for the onset of nonlinear back reaction depends on the structure of the field lines. We study the statistical correlations that are set up in the field pattern and show that the magnetic-field lines possess a folding structure, where most of the scale decrease is due to the field variation across itself (rapid transverse direction reversals), while the scale of the field variation along itself stays approximately constant. Specifically, we find that, though both the magnetic energy and the mean-square curvature of the field lines grow exponentially, the field strength and the field-line curvature are anticorrelated, i.e., the curved field is relatively weak, while the growing field is relatively flat. The detailed analysis of the statistics of the curvature shows that it possesses a stationary limiting distribution with the bulk located at the values of curvature comparable to the characteristic wave number of the velocity field and a power tail extending to large values of curvature where it is eventually cut off by the resistive regularization. The regions of large curvature, therefore, occupy only a small fraction of the total volume of the system. Our theoretical results are corroborated by direct numerical simulations. The implication of the folding effect is that the advent of the Lorentz back reaction occurs when the magnetic energy approaches that of the smallest turbulent eddies. Our results also directly apply to the problem of statistical geometry of the material lines in a random flow.
False-positive HIV DNA PCR testing of infants: implications in a changing epidemic.

AIM To examine false-positive HIV DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results in children, and the potential implications for the paediatric HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS A review was done of records over a 6-year period of children less than 18 months old at an HIV treatment site in South Africa, to evaluate those with an initial 'false'-positive HIV DNA PCR result, but later proven to be HIV-uninfected with HIV DNA PCR and/or quantitative HIV RNA PCR tests. We calculated the influence of changing HIV transmission rates on predictive values (PV) of HIV DNA PCR tests in a hypothetical population of all HIV-exposed infants over a 1-year period. (Positive PV: proportion of individuals with a positive test with disease; negative PV: proportion of individuals with negative test and no disease). RESULTS Of 718 children, 40 with an initial positive HIV DNA PCR test were subsequently proven to be HIV-uninfected, resulting in a positive PV of 94.4%. Most (75%) uninfected children had PMTCT interventions and were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic (77.5%). Calculations using a test specificity of 99.4%, as reported previously, show a decrease in positive PV using a single-test strategy from 98.6% at 30% HIV transmission rate, to 94.8% at 10% transmission, to 62.5% at 1% transmission. Reduction in test specificity further decreases positive PV at low transmission rates. CONCLUSION Decreasing mother-to-child HIV transmission rates reduce the positive predictive value of a single HIV DNA PCR test result, necessitating adaptations to diagnostic algorithms to avoid misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment, especially with early initiation of antiretroviral therapy in asymptomatic infants.
Patterns of hippocampal–neocortical interactions in the retrieval of episodic autobiographical memories across the entire life‐span of aged adults

We previously demonstrated that episodic autobiographical memories (EAMs) rely on a network of brain regions comprising the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and distributed neocortical regions regardless of their remoteness. The findings supported the model of memory consolidation, which proposes a permanent role of MTL during EAM retrieval (multiple‐trace theory or MTT) rather than a temporary role (standard model). Our present aim was to expand the results by examining the interactions between the MTL and neocortical regions (or MTL–neocortical links) during EAM retrieval with varying retention intervals. We used an experimental paradigm specially designed to engage aged participants in the recollection of EAMs, extracted from five different time‐periods, covering their whole life‐span, in order to examine correlations between activation in the MTL and neocortical regions. The nature of the memories was checked at debriefing by means of behavioral measures to control the degree of episodicity and properties of memories. Targeted correlational analyses carried out on the MTL, frontal, lateral temporal, and posterior regions revealed strong links between the MTL and neocortex during the retrieval of both recent and remote EAMs, challenging the standard model of memory consolidation and supporting MTT instead. Further confirmation was given by results showing that activation in the left and right hippocampi significantly correlated during the retrieval of both recent and remote memories. Correlations among extra‐MTL neocortical regions also emerged for all time‐periods, confirming the critical role of the prefrontal, temporal (lateral temporal cortex and temporal pole), precuneus, and posterior cingulate regions in EAM retrieval. Overall, this paper emphasizes the role of a bilateral network of MTL and neocortical areas whose activation correlate during the recollection of rich phenomenological recent and remote EAMs. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Current Epidemiology and Growing Resistance of Gram-Negative Pathogens

In the 1980s, Gram-negative pathogens appeared to have been beaten by oxyimino-cephalosporins, carbapenems, and fluoroquinolones. Yet these pathogens have fought back, aided by their membrane organization, which promotes the exclusion and efflux of antibiotics, and by a remarkable propensity to recruit, transfer, and modify the expression of resistance genes, including those for extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs), carbapenemases, aminoglycoside-blocking 16S rRNA methylases, and even a quinolone-modifying variant of an aminoglycoside-modifying enzyme. Gram-negative isolates -both fermenters and non-fermenters-susceptible only to colistin and, more variably, fosfomycin and tigecycline, are encountered with increasing frequency, including in Korea. Some ESBLs and carbapenemases have become associated with strains that have great epidemic potential, spreading across countries and continents; examples include Escherichia coli sequence type (ST)131 with CTX-M-15 ESBL and Klebsiella pneumoniae ST258 with KPC carbapenemases. Both of these high-risk lineages have reached Korea. In other cases, notably New Delhi Metallo carbapenemase, the relevant gene is carried by promiscuous plasmids that readily transfer among strains and species. Unless antibiotic stewardship is reinforced, microbiological diagnosis accelerated, and antibiotic development reinvigorated, there is a real prospect that the antibiotic revolution of the 20th century will crumble.
Novel biphasic effect of pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate on neuronal cell viability is mediated by the differential regulation of intracellular zinc and copper ion levels, NF‐κb, and MAP kinases

Nuclear factor κB (NF‐κB) is a transcription factor involved in the expression of a wide range of genes, most of which code for proteins that play a role in immunity and inflammation. Pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) is a well‐known inhibitor of NF‐κB. Although its mechanism of action is conferred by its antioxidant property, other mechanisms by which PDTC can act as a prooxidant, metal chelator, and free thiol group modulator have recently been suggested. Here we report that PDTC caused a dual effect on cell viability in neuronal rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells, depending on its concentration. Increase of intracellular zinc and copper ion levels selectively potentiated the cytotoxic PDTC effect in a dose‐dependent manner, and thiol reagents, such as glutathione and N‐acetylcysteine, as well as divalent metal‐chelating reagents, such as EDTA and bathocuproline disulfonic acid, blocked its cell death effect. The differential effect of PDTC on cell viability correlates well with the inhibition of NF‐κB activities. In addition, PDTC differentially activated microtubule‐associated protein (MAP) kinases, such as extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK), c‐Jun N‐terminal kinase (JNK), but not p38, depending on its dose, and the coaddition of glutathione (GSH), other antioxidants, and metal ions also modulated their activities. Furthermore, stable Bcl‐2 expression blocked the PDTC‐induced cell death. These results suggest that the thiol groups and free zinc and copper ion levels are important for the novel biphasic PDTC effect on cell viability, which is associated with the differential activation of NF‐κB and MAP kinases. J. Neurosci. Res. 59:117–125, 2000 © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.