Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extra-Irradiation Hardening of Reduced Activation Ferritic/Martensitic Steel by Multi-Ion Irradiation

Micro-hardness was measured for irradiated F82H steels by single (10.5 MeV Fe3+) , dual (10.5 MeV Fe3+ and 1.05 MeV He+) and triple (10.5 MeV Fe3+, 1.05 MeV He+ and 380 keV H+) beams at the TIARA facility in JAEA. The extra component of radiation hardening due to helium and hydrogen was hardly detected in dual/triple beams irradiation at 543 K and 633 K with comparatively low doses, while that due to helium was slightly occurred in dual beams (10 appmHe/dpa) irradiation at 633 K with higher doses up to 90 dpa. As increased the ratio of He/dpa (from 10 to 100 appmHe/dpa), the extra-hardening due to helium was increased. The microstructures in single/dual (10 appmHe/dpa) ion beam irradiated F82H steels consisted of interstitial loops and defect clusters at 50 dpa. However, at a higher ratio of He/dpa (100 appmHe/dpa), nano-voids were also observed in dual ion irradiated F82H.
QbDJ: A Novel Framework for Handling Skew in Parallel Join Processing on Distributed Memory

The performance of parallel distributed data management systems becomes increasingly important with the rise of Big Data. Parallel joins have been widely studied both in the parallel processing and the database communities. Nevertheless, most of the algorithms so far developed do not consider the data skew, which naturally exists in various applications. State of the art methods designed to handle this problem are based on extensions to either of the two prevalent conventional approaches to parallel joins - the hash-based and duplication-based frameworks. In this paper, we introduce a novel parallel join framework, query-based distributed join (QbDJ), for handling data skew on distributed architectures. Further, we present an efficient implementation of the method based on the asynchronous partitioned global address space (APGAS) parallel programming model. We evaluate the performance of our approach on a cluster of 192 cores (16 nodes) and datasets of 1 billion tuples with different skews. The results show that the method is scalable, and also runs faster with less network communication compared to state-of-art PRPD approach in [1] under high data skew.
Antimicrobial Compounds from Eukaryotic Microalgae against Human Pathogens and Diseases in Aquaculture

The search for novel compounds of marine origin has increased in the last decades for their application in various areas such as pharmaceutical, human or animal nutrition, cosmetics or bioenergy. In this context of blue technology development, microalgae are of particular interest due to their immense biodiversity and their relatively simple growth needs. In this review, we discuss about the promising use of microalgae and microalgal compounds as sources of natural antibiotics against human pathogens but also about their potential to limit microbial infections in aquaculture. An alternative to conventional antibiotics is needed as the microbial resistance to these drugs is increasing in humans and animals. Furthermore, using natural antibiotics for livestock could meet the consumer demand to avoid chemicals in food, would support a sustainable aquaculture and present the advantage of being environmentally friendly. Using natural and renewable microalgal compounds is still in its early days, but considering the important research development and rapid improvement in culture, extraction and purification processes, the valorization of microalgae will surely extend in the future.
An In Vitro Comparison of Cyclic Fatigue of Profile® Vortex™ and Endosequence™ Rotary Nickel-Titanium Files

AN IN VITRO COMPARISON OF CYCLIC FATIGUE OF PROFILE® VORTEXTM AND ENDOSEQUENCETM ROTARY NICKEL-TITANIUM FILES By Fawaz T. Al-Foraih, DDS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Dentistry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2011. Program Director: Karan J. Replogle DDS, MS, Chair and Postgraduate Program Director, Endodontics The purpose of this study was to determine the number of rotations to fracture (cyclic fatigue) of the Profile Vortex files (Dentsply Tulsa Dental Specialties, Tulsa, OK) compared to the EndoSequence files (Brasseler USA, Savannah, GA) using an in-vitro apparatus simulating a curved canal. Two hundred Profile Vortex files of 25mm length were divided equally into ten groups, one for each of the Profile Vortex files 20/0.04, 20/0.06, 25/0.04, 25/0.06, 30/0.04, 30/0.06, 35/0.04, 35/0.06, 40/0.04, and 40/0.06. Two hundred EndoSequence files of 25mm length were divided equally into ten groups of the same tip and taper sizes analogous to the Profile Vortex file groups. Files were rotated at 500 rpm in a fixed groove in the metal block of the apparatus. The angle of deflection for all files was fixed at 33 degrees, determined using the Schneider method. The time from initiation of rotation to fracture was recorded and rotations to fracture were calculated. The data collected was analyzed using a multi-way ANOVA, followed by specific posthoc contrasts comparing the two brands for each tip and taper combination. The results demonstrated that the Profile Vortex files required significantly greater rotations to fracture than the EndoSequence (p < 0.001) in all tip sizes in both 0.04 and 0.06 tapers. Profile Vortex files exhibited a greater resistance to cyclic fatigue than the EndoSequence files.
Evaluating haptic feedback in virtual environments using ISO 9241–9

The ISO 9241 Part 9 standard [2] pointing task is used to evaluate passive haptic feedback in target selection in a virtual environment (VE). Participants performed a tapping task using a tracked stylus in a CAVE both with, and without passive haptic feedback provided by a plastic panel co-located with the targets. Pointing throughput (but not speed nor accuracy alone) was significantly higher with haptic feedback than without it, confirming previous results using an alternative experimental paradigm.
Measuring performance of ad hoc networks using timescales for information flow

This paper defines the metrics to characterize the performance of ad hoc networks based on timescales for information flow, power consumption and interference. The statistical distribution of timescales has not been previously considered. Yet, it is important for understanding the feasibility of communicating over such networks, for comparing different algorithms for building up network topology and for distinguishing regimes of routing. We quantify the longest timescale for information flow and estimate its distribution. We also introduce a decentralized adaptive power algorithm, that uses only information local to each device, for building ad hoc networks. This algorithm is shown to perform significantly better by all our metrics when compared with a standard, constant power, algorithm.
Music and Memory in Advertising: Music as a Device of Implicit Learning and Recall

Music may play several roles and have many effects in advertising; it may attract attention, carry the product message, act as a mnemonic device, and create excitement or a state of relaxation. In this paper, the role of music within advertising is evaluated during low-attention conditions. The current experiment was carried out whereby participants were exposed to an advert that was embedded into a sequence of three other adverts, presented in the middle of an engaging TV programme, thus replicating natural conditions. There were four audio conditions examined in an example advertisement: jingle, instrumental music, instrumental music with voiceover and environmental sounds with voiceover, all four containing identical verbal information. The duration of the target advert was approximately 45 secs.Results indicate that music is effective in facilitating both implicit learning and recall of the advertised product, showing that, under non-attentive conditions, there appears to be a certain mechanism of unconscious elaboration of the musical signal. The role of previous musical training of the participants was shown to have little significance.
Scheduler Vulnerabilities and Coordinated Attacks in Cloud Computing

Recently, cloud computing services such as Amazon EC2 have used virtualization to provide customers with virtual machines running on the provider's hardware, typically charging by wall clock time rather than resources consumed. Under this business model, manipulation of the scheduler may allow theft-of-service at the expense of other customers. We have discovered and implemented an attack scenario which when implemented on Amazon EC2 allowed virtual machines to consume more CPU time regardless of fair share. We provide a novel analysis of the necessary conditions for such attacks, and describe scheduler modifications to eliminate the vulnerability. We present experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of these defenses while imposing negligible overhead. Cloud providers such as Amazon's EC2 do not explicitly provide the mapping of VMs to physical hosts. Our attack itself provides a mechanism for detecting the co-placement of VMs, which in conjunction with appropriate algorithms can be utilized to reveal this mapping. We abstract mapping discovery as a problem of finding an unknown partition (i.e. of VMs among physical hosts) using a minimum number of co-location queries. We present an algorithm that is provably optimal when the maximum partition size is bounded. In the unbounded case we show upper and lower bounds using the probabilistic method in conjunction with a sieving technique. Our work has implications beyond this attack, for other cases of system and network topology inference from limited data.
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 and renal disease

Purpose of review The renin–angiotensin system (RAS) is a pivotal player in the physiology and pathophysiology of cardiovascular and renal systems. Discovery of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), capable of cleaving RAS effector peptide angiotensin (Ang) II into biologically active Ang-(1–7), has increased the complexity of our knowledge of the RAS. ACE2 expression is abundant in the kidney and is thought to provide protection against injury. This review emphasizes current experimental and clinical findings that examine ACE2 in the context of kidney injury and its potential therapeutic impact for treatment of kidney disease. Recent findings Clinical studies have reported upregulation of ACE2 in urine from diabetic patients, which may be reflective of pathological shedding of renal ACE2 as suggested by mechanistic experiments. Studies in experimental models have investigated the feasibility of pharmacological induction of ACE2 for improvement of renal function, inflammation, and fibrosis. Summary Emerging concepts about the RAS indicate that ACE2 is a critical regulator of angiotensin peptide metabolism and the pathogenesis of renal disease. Human recombinant ACE2 is available and may be a practical clinical approach to enzyme replacement. Elucidating precise roles of ACE2 throughout disease progression will enrich our view of the RAS and help identify novel targets and appropriate strategies for intervention.
Glucosephosphate isomerase distribution during oocyte maturation and early embryologic stages of the mouse.

The enzyme glucosephosphate isomerase (GPI) is of interest because of its role in glycolysis and its use as a cell marker in studies of embryogenesis utilizing chimeras. The distribution of GPI was determined in histologic sections of ovarian follicles and the tissues of early embryonic stages of the mouse. Antibodies of GPI were combined in an immunocytochemical procedure utilizing peroxidase-antiperoxidase to localize GPI in tissue sections. During follicular maturation, GPI is first detected in oocytes of small follicles and then in the granulosa cells of slightly larger follicles. The relative concentrations of GPI remain high in the granulosa cells adjacent to the oocyte as the follicles mature. GPI in the granulosa cells may play a role in providing the growing oocyte with low molecular weight energy sources. Within the conceptus, differences in GPI concentrations among tissues become apparent during the formation of the egg cylinder. The highest concentrations of GPI are in the embryonic ectoderm, the amniotic folds, the extraembryonic ectoderm, and the ectoplacental cone. These are areas of intense mitotic activity. The energy required for cell divisions during embryogenesis is derived from glycolysis, thus the high concentrations of GPI in these tissues correlates well with the cellular function.
Section Ii-exercise Physiology & Sports Medicine Insights into Supplements with Tribulus Terrestris Used by Athletes

Authors submitted their contribution of the article to the editorial board. Herbal and nutritional supplements are more and more popular in the western population. One of them is an extract of an exotic plant, named Tribulus terrestris (TT). TT is a component of several supplements that are available over-the-counter and widely recommended, generally as enhancers of human vitality. TT is touted as a testosterone booster and remedy for impaired erectile function; therefore, it is targeted at physically active men, including male athletes. Based on the scientific literature describing the results of clinical trials, this review attempted to verify information on marketing TT with particular reference to the needs of athletes. It was found that there are few reliable data on the usefulness of TT in competitive sport. In humans, a TT extract used alone without additional components does not improve androgenic status or physical performance among athletes. The results of a few studies have showed that the combination of TT with other pharmacological components increases testosterone levels, but it was not discovered which components of the mixture contributed to that effect. TT contains several organic compounds including alkaloids and steroidal glycosides, of which pharmacological action in humans is not completely explained. One anti-doping study reported an incident with a TT supplement contaminated by a banned steroid. Toxicological studies regarding TT have been carried out on animals only, however, one accidental poisoning of a man was described. The Australian Institute of Sport does not recommend athletes' usage of TT. So far, the published data concerning TT do not provide strong evidence for either usefulness or safe usage in sport.
Solving the Rectangular Packing Problem of the Discrete Particle Swarm Algorithm

The problem of rectangular packing in the two-dimensional cutting issues is studied in this paper. Because packing problem can be provided through the nesting rules (the remainder rectangular packing rule) into combinatorial optimization problem, a Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm (DPSO) is proposed according to the characteristics of optimize the combination of discrete issues. In this DPSO algorithm, the location, speed and computing rules of the particle are redefined in order to find the optimize result in the search of the discrete solution space. The obtained results are better than the results published in the literature.
OPTIMAL NEAR-END AND FAR-END MULTI-MICROPHONE SPE ECH INTELLIGIBILITY ENHANCEMENT BASED ON MUTUAL INFORMATION

The processing required for the global maximization of the i nt lligibility of speech acquired by multiple microphones and r endered by a single loudspeaker, is considered in this paper. The int elligibility is quantized, based on the mutual information rate be twe n the message spoken by the talker and the message as interpret ed by the listener. We prove that then, in each of a set of narrow-ba nd channels, the processing can be decomposed into a minimum va riance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming operatio n that reduces the noise in the talker environment, followed by a ga in operation that, given the far-end noise and beamforming opera tion, accounts for the noise at the listener end. Our experiments con firm that both processing steps are necessary for the effective conve ya c of a message and, importantly, that the second step must be aware of the first step.
Overlap Syndromes: An Emerging Diagnostic and Therapeutic Challenge

Overlap syndrome in hepatology is emerging as a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge, which is further complicated by the present gaps in the information regarding the immunopathogenesis of these diseases. The present review represents a concise review of literature on overlap syndromes with emphasis on prevalence, etiopathogenesis, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and management of true overlap syndromes.
Type invariants for Haskell

Multi-parameter type classes, functional dependencies, and recently GADTs and open type families open up opportunities to use complex type-level programming to let GHC's type checker verify various properties of your programs. But type-level code is special in that its correctness is crucial to the safety of the program; so except in those cases simple enough for the type checker to see trivially that the code is correct (or harmless), type-level programs need to come with a specification of their properties together with their proof. In this article, we propose an extension to Haskell that allows the specification of invariants for type classes and open type families, together with accompanying evidence that those invariants hold. To accommodate the open nature of type classes and type families, the evidence itself needs to be open and every subcase of the proof can be provided independently from the others.
A Central Role for Carbon-Overflow Pathways in the Modulation of Bacterial Cell Death

Similar to developmental programs in eukaryotes, the death of a subpopulation of cells is thought to benefit bacterial biofilm development. However mechanisms that mediate a tight control over cell death are not clearly understood at the population level. Here we reveal that CidR dependent pyruvate oxidase (CidC) and α-acetolactate synthase/decarboxylase (AlsSD) overflow metabolic pathways, which are active during staphylococcal biofilm development, modulate cell death to achieve optimal biofilm biomass. Whereas acetate derived from CidC activity potentiates cell death in cells by a mechanism dependent on intracellular acidification and respiratory inhibition, AlsSD activity effectively counters CidC action by diverting carbon flux towards neutral rather than acidic byproducts and consuming intracellular protons in the process. Furthermore, the physiological features that accompany metabolic activation of cell death bears remarkable similarities to hallmarks of eukaryotic programmed cell death, including the generation of reactive oxygen species and DNA damage. Finally, we demonstrate that the metabolic modulation of cell death not only affects biofilm development but also biofilm-dependent disease outcomes. Given the ubiquity of such carbon overflow pathways in diverse bacterial species, we propose that the metabolic control of cell death may be a fundamental feature of prokaryotic development.
Na+/H+ exchange subtype 1 inhibition during extracellular acidification and hypoxia in glioma cells

Lactacidosis is a common feature of ischaemic brain tissue, but its role in ischaemic neuropathology is still not fully understood. Na+/H+ exchange, a mechanism involved in the regulation of intracellular pH (pHi), is activated by low pHi. The role of Na+/H+ exchange subtype 1 was investigated during extracellular acidification and subsequent pH recovery in the absence and presence of (4‐isopropyl‐3‐methylsulphonyl‐benzoyl)‐guanidine methanesulfonate (HOE642, Cariporid), a new selective and powerful inhibitor of the Na+/H+ exchanger subtype 1 (NHE‐1). It was compared for normoxia and hypoxia in two glioma cell lines (C6 and F98). pHi was monitored by fluorescence spectroscopy using the intracellularly␣trapped␣pH‐sensitive dye 2′,7′‐bis(carboxyethyl)‐5(6)‐carboxyfluorescein (BCECF). Alterations in glial cell metabolism were characterized using high‐resolution 1H, 13C and 31P NMR spectroscopy of perchloric acid extracts. NHE‐1 contributed to glial pH regulation, especially at pathologically low pHi values. NHE‐1 inhibition with HOE642 during acidification caused exacerbated metabolic disorders which were prolonged during extracellular pH recovery. However, NHE‐1 inhibition during hypoxia protected the energy state of glial cells.
CabC, an EF-Hand Calcium-Binding Protein, Is Involved in Ca2+-Mediated Regulation of Spore Germination and Aerial Hypha Formation in Streptomyces coelicolor

ABSTRACT Ca2+ was reported to regulate spore germination and aerial hypha formation in streptomycetes; the underlying mechanism of this regulation is not known. cabC, a gene encoding an EF-hand calcium-binding protein, was disrupted or overexpressed in Streptomyces coelicolor M145. On R5− agar, the disruption of cabC resulted in denser aerial hyphae with more short branches, swollen hyphal tips, and early-germinating spores on the spore chain, while cabC overexpression significantly delayed development. Manipulation of the Ca2+ concentration in R5− agar could reverse the phenotypes of cabC disruption or overexpression mutants and mimic mutant phenotypes with M145, suggesting that the mutant phenotypes were due to changes in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration. CabC expression was strongly activated in aerial hyphae, as determined by Western blotting against CabC and confocal laser scanning microscopy detection of CabC::enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP). CabC::EGFP fusion proteins were evenly distributed in substrate mycelia, aerial mycelia, and spores. Taken together, these results demonstrate that CabC is involved in Ca2+-mediated regulation of spore germination and aerial hypha formation in S. coelicolor. CabC most likely acts as a Ca2+ buffer and exerts its regulatory effects by controlling the intracellular Ca2+ concentration.
Positional Mapping and Candidate Gene Analysis of the Mouse Ccs3 Locus That Regulates Differential Susceptibility to Carcinogen-Induced Colorectal Cancer

The Ccs3 locus on mouse chromosome 3 regulates differential susceptibility of A/J (A, susceptible) and C57BL/6J (B6, resistant) mouse strains to chemically-induced colorectal cancer (CRC). Here, we report the high-resolution positional mapping of the gene underlying the Ccs3 effect. Using phenotype/genotype correlation in a series of 33 AcB/BcA recombinant congenic mouse strains, as well as in groups of backcross populations bearing unique recombinant chromosomes for the interval, and in subcongenic strains, we have delineated the maximum size of the Ccs3 physical interval to a ∼2.15 Mb segment. This interval contains 12 annotated transcripts. Sequencing of positional candidates in A and B6 identified many either low-priority coding changes or non-protein coding variants. We found a unique copy number variant (CNV) in intron 15 of the Nfkb1 gene. The CNV consists of two copies of a 54 bp sequence immediately adjacent to the exon 15 splice site, while only one copy is found in CRC-susceptible A. The Nfkb1 protein (p105/p50) expression is much reduced in A tumors compared to normal A colonic epithelium as analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Studies in primary macrophages from A and B6 mice demonstrate a marked differential activation of the NfκB pathway by lipopolysaccharide (kinetics of stimulation and maximum levels of phosphorylated IκBα), with a more robust activation being associated with resistance to CRC. NfκB has been previously implicated in regulating homeostasis and inflammatory response in the intestinal mucosa. The interval contains another positional candidate Slc39a8 that is differentially expressed in A vs B6 colons, and that has recently been associated in CRC tumor aggressiveness in humans.