Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting long-term metabolic shifts using isotopomers: CO2-driven suppression of photorespiration in C3 plants over the 20th century

Significance Decadal-scale metabolic responses of plants to environmental changes, including the magnitude of the “CO2 fertilization” effect, are a major knowledge gap in Earth system models, in agricultural models, and for societal adaptation. We introduce intramolecular isotope distributions (isotopomers) as a methodology for detecting shifts in plant carbon metabolism over long times. Trends in a deuterium isotopomer ratio allow quantification of a biogeochemically relevant shift in the metabolism of C3 plants toward photosynthesis, driven by increasing atmospheric CO2 since industrialization. Isotopomers strongly increase the information content of isotope archives, and may therefore reveal long-term acclimation or adaptations to environmental changes in general. The metabolic information encoded in isotopomers of plant archives bridges a fundamental gap between experimental plant science and paleoenvironmental studies. Terrestrial vegetation currently absorbs approximately a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, mitigating the rise of atmospheric CO2. However, terrestrial net primary production is highly sensitive to atmospheric CO2 levels and associated climatic changes. In C3 plants, which dominate terrestrial vegetation, net photosynthesis depends on the ratio between photorespiration and gross photosynthesis. This metabolic flux ratio depends strongly on CO2 levels, but changes in this ratio over the past CO2 rise have not been analyzed experimentally. Combining CO2 manipulation experiments and deuterium NMR, we first establish that the intramolecular deuterium distribution (deuterium isotopomers) of photosynthetic C3 glucose contains a signal of the photorespiration/photosynthesis ratio. By tracing this isotopomer signal in herbarium samples of natural C3 vascular plant species, crops, and a Sphagnum moss species, we detect a consistent reduction in the photorespiration/photosynthesis ratio in response to the ∼100-ppm CO2 increase between ∼1900 and 2013. No difference was detected in the isotopomer trends between beet sugar samples covering the 20th century and CO2 manipulation experiments, suggesting that photosynthetic metabolism in sugar beet has not acclimated to increasing CO2 over >100 y. This provides observational evidence that the reduction of the photorespiration/photosynthesis ratio was ca. 25%. The Sphagnum results are consistent with the observed positive correlations between peat accumulation rates and photosynthetic rates over the Northern Hemisphere. Our results establish that isotopomers of plant archives contain metabolic information covering centuries. Our data provide direct quantitative information on the “CO2 fertilization” effect over decades, thus addressing a major uncertainty in Earth system models.
Content-based image retrieval using color moment and Gabor texture feature

Aim to currently content-based image retrieval method having high computational complexity and low retrieval accuracy problem, this paper proposes a content-based image retrieval method based on color and texture features. As its color features, color moments of the Hue, Saturation and Value (HSV) component images in HSV color space are used. As its texture features, Gabor texture descriptors are adopted. Users assign the weights to each feature respectively and calculate the similarity with combined features of color and texture according to normalized Euclidean distance. Experiment results show that the proposed method has higher retrieval accuracy than conventional methods using color and texture features even though its feature vector dimension results in a lower rate than the conventional method.
Skin chromaticity gamuts for illumination recovery

Colour constancy algorithms range from image statisticsbased pixel intensity manipulation to gamut-mapping methods, and are generally independent of specific image contents. In previous work, we have demonstrated that natural polychromatic surfaces possess distinct chromatic signatures in conecontrast space that may be exploited for colour constancy, and that in human vision, colour constancy is improved for such objects. Here we set out to use the specific, recognisable, and ubiquitous content of human skin in colour images to drive a gamut mapping method for colour constancy. We characterise variations in the chromaticity gamut of varying types of, pre recognised, human skin (male, female; Caucasian, African, Asian) under varying illumination. We use a custom-built LED illuminator to produce daylight metamers, and a spectroradiometrically calibrated hyperspectral camera (Specim V10E) to acquire images and create a novel hyperspectral skin image database. We demonstrate that human skin gamuts in conecontrast space are characterised by a set of features that can be used to differentiate between similar illuminations, whose estimate can then be used to colour correct an image.
Nitric oxide is involved in the regulation of angiogenesis

The in vivo model of the chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) was used to study the involvement of nitric oxide (NO) in angiogenesis. The nitrovasodilator sodium nitroprusside (NaNP) and the amino acid, l‐arginine, inhibited angiogenesis, assessed as both collagenous protein biosynthesis and vascular density. NG‐monomethyl‐l‐arginine (l‐NMMA), an NO synthase inhibitor, increased both collagenous protein biosynthesis and vascular density, indicating that this agent promotes angiogenesis. These results suggest that NO may participate in the regulation of angiogenesis. Manipulation of NO synthesis therefore, may prove to be another approach for controlling angioproliferative diseases.
The scenario approach to robust control design

This paper proposes a new probabilistic solution framework for robust control analysis and synthesis problems that can be expressed in the form of minimization of a linear objective subject to convex constraints parameterized by uncertainty terms. This includes the wide class of NP-hard control problems representable by means of parameter-dependent linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). It is shown in this paper that by appropriate sampling of the constraints one obtains a standard convex optimization problem (the scenario problem) whose solution is approximately feasible for the original (usually infinite) set of constraints, i.e., the measure of the set of original constraints that are violated by the scenario solution rapidly decreases to zero as the number of samples is increased. We provide an explicit and efficient bound on the number of samples required to attain a-priori specified levels of probabilistic guarantee of robustness. A rich family of control problems which are in general hard to solve in a deterministically robust sense is therefore amenable to polynomial-time solution, if robustness is intended in the proposed risk-adjusted sense.
Detection of Cosmic Magnification with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We present an 8 σ detection of cosmic magnification measured by the variation of quasar density due to gravitational lensing by foreground large-scale structure. To make this measurement we used 3800 deg2 of photometric observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) containing ~200,000 quasars and 13 million galaxies. Our measurement of the galaxy-quasar cross-correlation function exhibits the amplitude, angular dependence, and change in sign as a function of the slope of the observed quasar number counts that is expected from magnification bias due to weak gravitational lensing. We show that observational uncertainties (stellar contamination, Galactic dust extinction, seeing variations, and errors in the photometric redshifts) are well controlled and do not significantly affect the lensing signal. By weighting the quasars with the number count slope, we combine the cross-correlation of quasars for our full magnitude range and detect the lensing signal at >4 σ in all five SDSS filters. Our measurements of cosmic magnification probe scales ranging from 60 h-1 kpc to 10 h-1 Mpc and are in good agreement with theoretical predictions based on the WMAP concordance cosmology. As with galaxy-galaxy lensing, future measurements of cosmic magnification will provide useful constraints on the galaxy-mass power spectrum.
A Dendritic Cell–Specific Intercellular Adhesion Molecule 3–Grabbing Nonintegrin (Dc-Sign)–Related Protein Is Highly Expressed on Human Liver Sinusoidal Endothelial Cells and Promotes HIV-1 Infection

The discovery of dendritic cell (DC)-specific intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-3–grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN) as a DC-specific ICAM-3 binding receptor that enhances HIV-1 infection of T cells in trans has indicated a potentially important role for adhesion molecules in AIDS pathogenesis. A related molecule called DC-SIGNR exhibits 77% amino acid sequence identity with DC-SIGN. The DC-SIGN and DC-SIGNR genes map within a 30-kb region on chromosome 19p13.2-3. Their strong homology and close physical location indicate a recent duplication of the original gene. Messenger RNA and protein expression patterns demonstrate that the DC-SIGN–related molecule is highly expressed on liver sinusoidal cells and in the lymph node but not on DCs, in contrast to DC-SIGN. Therefore, we suggest that a more appropriate name for the DC-SIGN–related molecule is L-SIGN, liver/lymph node–specific ICAM-3–grabbing nonintegrin. We show that in the liver, L-SIGN is expressed by sinusoidal endothelial cells. Functional studies indicate that L-SIGN behaves similarly to DC-SIGN in that it has a high affinity for ICAM-3, captures HIV-1 through gp120 binding, and enhances HIV-1 infection of T cells in trans. We propose that L-SIGN may play an important role in the interaction between liver sinusoidal endothelium and trafficking lymphocytes, as well as function in the pathogenesis of HIV-1.
Space-Valued Diagrams, Type-Theoretically (Extended Abstract)

Topologists are sometimes interested in space-valued diagrams over a given index category, but it is tricky to say what such a diagram even is if we look for a notion that is stable under equivalence. The same happens in (homotopy) type theory, where it is known only for special cases how one can define a type of type-valued diagrams over a given index category. We offer several constructions. We first show how to define homotopy coherent diagrams which come with all higher coherence laws explicitly, with two variants that come with assumption on the index category or on the type theory. Further, we present a construction of diagrams over certain Reedy categories. As an application, we add the degeneracies to the well-known construction of semisimplicial types, yielding a construction of simplicial types up to any given finite level. The current paper is only an extended abstract, and a full version is to follow. In the full paper, we will show that the different notions of diagrams are equivalent to each other and to the known notion of Reedy fibrant diagrams whenever the statement makes sense. In the current paper, we only sketch some core ideas of the proofs.
Summary of 2016 Northern Long-eared Bat Research in Minnesota

Author Affiliations: 1Land, Water and Environment, Natural Resources Research Institute, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN 2Division of Ecological and Water Resources, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, St. Paul, MN 3Superior National Forest, USDA – Forest Service, Duluth, MN 4Chippewa National Forest, USDA – Forest Service, Cass Lake, MN 5 Minnesota Biological Survey, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, St. Paul, MN 6 Camp Ripley Environmental Office, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Little Falls, MN 7Biology Department, Swenson College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN
Anthrax Toxin Receptor 2 Determinants that Dictate the pH Threshold of Toxin Pore Formation

The anthrax toxin receptors, ANTXR1 and ANTXR2, act as molecular clamps to prevent the protective antigen (PA) toxin subunit from forming pores until exposure to low pH. PA forms pores at pH ∼6.0 or below when it is bound to ANTXR1, but only at pH ∼5.0 or below when it is bound to ANTXR2. Here, structure-based mutagenesis was used to identify non-conserved ANTXR2 residues responsible for this striking 1.0 pH unit difference in pH threshold. Residues conserved between ANTXR2 and ANTXR1 that influence the ANTXR2-associated pH threshold of pore formation were also identified. All of these residues contact either PA domain 2 or the neighboring edge of PA domain 4. These results provide genetic evidence for receptor release of these regions of PA as being necessary for the protein rearrangements that accompany anthrax toxin pore formation.
A Connector Model Suitable for Automatic Generation of Connectors

The notion of connector can be found in many of the contemporary component-based systems. A connector is an architectural element, which embodies communication among components in a system. In this paper we propose a flexible connector model that is easy to use in practice and expressive enough to capture the semantics of component interconnections. Our model follows the top-down approach to software design and allows to define different types of connections (procedure call, messaging, pipe, etc.) and their specialization (adding security, protocol checks, etc.) For this model we propose an abstract connector generator, a framework allowing to create complex component interconnections almost automatically. The paper presents basic ideas of connector generation and specifies the framework data structures and interfaces needed for generation in platform independent language (CORBA IDL [22]). The paper is concluded with discussion on our prototype implementation for SOFA/DCUP component system [30] and describes the cases used for testing of overall functionality of our concept.
Percutaneous Treatment of Peripheral Artery Disease: Novel Techniques

Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty is a minimally invasive therapy for the treatment of patients with peripheral artery disease who suffer from intermittent claudication or critical limb ischemia. The main advantages of the endovascular approach are a low complication rate ranging between 0.5% and 4%, a high technical success rate approaching 90% even in long occlusions, and an acceptable clinical outcome.1,2 Traditionally, percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) has been the standard for revascularization in aortoiliac, femoropopliteal, and below-the-knee arteries,1 and in many interventional centers, PTA still is the first and most frequently used methodology. However, high rates of failure resulting from an unacceptable incidence of restenosis, particularly in long and complex disease, are the main limitations of PTA.3 Modern bare metal stents (BMS), nitinol self-expanding stents, and cobalt-chromium balloon-expanding stents improved the durability of endovascular interventions, particularly in certain lower-limb indications. Advantages of self-expanding nitinol stents include acceptable radial strength combined with shape-memory characteristics, crush recoverability, and reduced foreshortening, which allows precise placement. Self-expanding nitinol stents are used mainly for external iliac and femoropopliteal indications but have its limitation in ostial common iliac artery lesions. Advantages of cobalt-chromium balloon-expanding stents are high radial strength, specifically for ostial iliac lesions with reduced strut thickness, allowing smaller introducer sizes. These properties of both stents types were expected to improve patency rates compared with PTA and earlier types of stents.4,5 However, the main obstacle of these BMS remains exaggerated neointimal hyperplasia, leading to in-stent restenosis in 25% to 50% within 12 to 24 months, depending on the location of implantation.6,7 New developments over the last several years include drug-eluting balloons (DEBs), new types of stents such as drug-eluting stents (DES) and covered stent grafts, and novel atherectomy systems. These are designed to reduce restenosis and …
Large Scale Data Mining: Challenges and Responses

Data mining over large data-sets is important due to its obvious commercial potential. However, it is also a major challenge due to its computational complexity. Exploiting the inherent parallelism of data mining algorithms provides a direct solution by utilising the large data retrieval and processing power of parallel architectures. In this paper, we present some results of our intensive research on parallelising data mining algorithms. In particular, we also present a methodology for determining the proper parallelisatlon strategy based on the idea of algorithmic skeletons and performance modelling. This research aims to provide a systematic way to develop parallel data mining algorithms and applications.
Source Characteristics of the 2016 Meinong (ML 6.6) Taiwan Earthquake Revealed from Dense Seismic Arrays: Double Sources and Pulse-like Velocity Ground Motion

The 5 February 2016, Meinong, Taiwan, earthquake brought extensive damage to nearby cities with significant pulse‐like velocity ground motions. In addition to the spatial slip distribution determination using filtered strong‐motion data, we show that, with the advantage of the densely distributed seismic network as a seismic array, we can project the earthquake sources (asperities) directly using nearly unfiltered data, which is crucial to the understanding of the generation of the pulse‐like velocity ground motions. We recognize that the moderate but damaging M_L 6.6 Meinong earthquake was a composite of an M_w 5.5 foreshock and an M_w 6.18 mainshock with a 1.8–5.0 s time delay. The foreshock occurred at the hypocenter reported by the official agency, followed by the mainshock with a centroid located at 12.3 km to the north‐northwest of the hypocenter and at a depth of 15 km. This foreshock–mainshock composition is not distinguishable in the finite‐fault inversion because it filtered the seismic data to low frequencies. Our results show that the pulse‐like velocity ground motions are mainly attributed to the source of mainshock with its directivity and site effects, resulting in the disastrous damages in the city of Tainan. Although finite‐fault inversion using filtered seismic data for spatial slip distribution on the fault has been a classic procedure in understanding earthquake rupture processes, using a dense seismic network as a seismic array for unfiltered records helps us delineate the earthquake sources directly and provide more delicate information for future understanding of earthquake source complexity.
Autonomously sensing loneliness and its interactions with personality traits using smartphones

One in five Americans is lonely and loneliness disproportionately affects senior citizens and international students. In this paper, we propose Socialoscope, a smartphone app that passively senses user loneliness from their communication and interaction patterns (e.g. calls, SMS, browsing patterns and social media usage), while factoring in different personality types. Data was gathered from 9 international students over 2 weeks to train machine learning classifiers for loneliness. Using smartphone-sensed data, we show that of the big 5 personality traits, extraversion and emotional stability features were strongly correlated with smartphone-sensed loneliness. We synthesized machine learning classifiers that classified user smartphone interaction and communication features into ranges of loneliness with an accuracy of 98%, while factoring in user personality types.
Does a semantic desktop facilitate your daily tasks

Semantic desktop environments aim at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of users carrying out daily tasks within their personal information management infrastructure (PIM). They support the user by transferring and exploiting the explicit semantics of data items across different PIM applications. Whether such an approach does indeed reach its aim of facilitating users" life andâ€”if soâ€”to which extent, however, remains an open question that we address in this paper with the first summative evaluation of a semantic desktop approach. We approach the research question exploiting our own semantic desktop infrastructure, X-COSIM. As data corpus, we have used over 100 emails and 50 documents extracted from the organizers of a conference-like event at our university. The evaluation has been carried out with 18 subjects. We have developed a test environment to evaluate COSIMail and COSIFile, two semantic PIM applications based on X-COSIM. As result, we have found a significant improvement for typical PIM tasks compared to a standard desktop environment.
On Turbulent Reconnection

We examine the dynamics of turbulent reconnection in two-dimensional and three-dimensional reduced MHD by calculating the effective dissipation due to coupling between small-scale fluctuations and large-scale magnetic fields. Sweet-Parker type balance relations are then used to calculate the global reconnection rate. Two approaches are employed—quasi-linear closure and an eddy-damped fluid model. Results indicate that despite the presence of turbulence, the reconnection rate remains inversely proportional to , as in the Sweet-Parker analysis. In two-dimensions, the global reconnection rate is shown to be enhanced over the Sweet-Parker result by a factor of magnetic Mach number. These results are the consequences of the constraint imposed on the global reconnection rate by the requirement of mean-square magnetic potential balance. The incompatibility of turbulent fluid-magnetic energy equipartition and stationarity of mean-square magnetic potential is demonstrated.