Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SPIS Open-Source Code: Methods, Capabilities, Achievements, and Prospects

In this paper, recent improvements in the modeling capabilities of the Spacecraft Plasma Interaction Software (SPIS) code are presented. New developments still in progress are also reported. They should in particular allow modeling of fast dynamical phenomena, including processes as challenging as the second part of ESDs, i.e., the vacuum arc and its related flashover plasma expansion. The first, electronic, part of ESDs is already modeled. The range of SPIS application domains and studies is reviewed. An interesting study case, the assessment of charging at multiple-scale levels, is presented here in more detail. Charging in geostationary-Earth-orbit conditions is simulated from the spacecraft scale down to a solar-cell-gap (hence, decameters to millimeter) scale. This self-consistent computation shows that macroscopic inverted-voltage-gradient (IVG) cases may differ at microscopic scales close to a solar-cell gap, due to the local blocking of secondary emission by the small-scale electric-field configuration. We consider this effect as the likely origin of the different ESD triggering thresholds, depending whether IVG is obtained by electrons or plasma.
Genistein attenuates monocrotaline-induced pulmonary arterial hypertension in rats by activating PI3K/Akt/eNOS signaling.

INTRODUCTION Phytoestrogen genistein may be useful to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). However, its mechanism is still not clear. The aim of the present study was to confirm the therapeutic effects of phytoestrogen genistein on PAH in monocrotaline-induced rat model and to explore its mechanism. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sprague-Dawley male rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: control group (n=8), PAH group (n=8), genistein treament group with three different doses (n=8 in each dose group) and group of PI3K inhibitor LY294002. The rat model of PAH was induced by monocrotaline (MCT). The situation of survival of rats was observed. Pathological studies of lung and heart tissues were performed. Western-blot detection of P-Akt and P-eNOS expression levels in lung tissue was carried out. Nitrate reductase analysis was used to measure nitric oxide (NO) in lung tissue. RESULTS Genistein treatment resulted in significant improvement in the speed of tricuspid regurgitation, diameter of pulmonary artery, mean pulmonary artery pressure and right ventricular hypertrophy index. Genistein treatment also resulted in significant improvement in the stenosis of pulmonary artery, proliferation of smooth muscle, right ventricular hypertrophy and myocardial hypertrophy. These therapeutic effects were more obvious with increasing dose of genistein. After genistein treatment, amelioration in survival rates of PAH rats was observed. PI3K inhibitor LY294002 could block these therapeutic effects. In rat lung tissue, P-Akt, P-eNOS and NO expressions were increased significantly in genistein treatment group when compared with PAH group (p<0.05, respectively). The increase in expression level of P-Akt, P-eNOS and NO was correlated with genistein dose. P-Akt, P-eNOS and NO expressions in lung tissue increased slightly in the PI3K inhibitor LY294002 group when compared with PAH group, but the difference was not statistically significant (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS We confirmed that genistein could relax pulmonary vascular resistance, reduce pulmonary artery pressure, improve right heart function and ameliorate survival rate in the rat model of PAH. Our study suggested that its mechanism was related with PI3K/Akt/eNOS signal pathway. Phytoestrogen genistein may become a new and effective drug for patients with PAH.
Host Identity Protocol (HIP) Rendezvous Extension

This document defines a rendezvous extension for the Host Identity Protocol (HIP). The rendezvous extension extends HIP and the HIP registration extension for initiating communication between HIP nodes via HIP rendezvous servers. Rendezvous servers improve reachability and operation when HIP nodes are multi-homed or mobile. This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.
Systemic Immunotherapy of Non-Muscle Invasive Mouse Bladder Cancer with Avelumab, an Anti–PD-L1 Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor

In an orthotopic model of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, in which BCG had minimal activity, systemic administration of the anti–PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor avelumab demonstrated durable antitumor responses and long-term survival mediated by CD4 and CD8 T cells. Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) is the standard of care for intravesical therapy for carcinoma in situ and non-muscle invasive, nonmetastatic human urothelial carcinoma. Although the responsiveness to this immunotherapeutic is believed to be linked with (i) a high number of somatic mutations and (ii) a large number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, recent findings of the roles that inhibitory immune receptors and their ligands play in tumor evasion may provide insights into the limitations of the effectiveness of BCG and offer new targets for immune-based therapy. In this study, an aggressive, bioluminescent orthotopic bladder cancer model, MB49 tumor cells transfected with luciferase (MB49luc), was used to study the antitumor effects of avelumab, an antibody to PD-L1. MB49luc murine tumor cells form multifocal tumors on the mucosal wall of the bladder reminiscent of non-muscle invasive, nonmetastatic urothelial carcinomas. MB49luc bladder tumors are highly positive for the expression of PD-L1, and avelumab administration induced significant (P < 0.05) antitumor effects. These antitumor effects were more dependent on the presence of CD4 than CD8 T cells, as determined by in vivo immune cell depletions. The findings suggest that in this bladder tumor model, interruption of the immune-suppressive PD-1/PD-L1 complex releases a local adaptive immune response that, in turn, reduces tumor growth. This bladder tumor model can be used to further identify host antitumor immune mechanisms and evaluate combinations of immune-based therapies for carcinoma in situ and non-muscle invasive, nonmetastatic urothelial carcinoma, to provide the rationale for subsequent clinical studies. Cancer Immunol Res; 4(5); 452–62. ©2016 AACR.
Glucose metabolism in pregnancy at high altitude.

OBJECTIVE To assess insulin sensitivity and beta-cell function associated with lower maternal fasting plasma glucose levels at high altitude compared with sea level. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We studied 215 pregnant women at 8-42 weeks of gestation in Peru. The women were recruited from Cerro de Pasco, which is situated 4,370 m (14,340 feet) above sea level, and Lima, which is at sea level. We also examined 53 nonpregnant control subjects (22 in Cerro de Pasco and 31 in Lima). Fasting plasma glucose, insulin, C-peptide, and proinsulin concentrations were measured in samples obtained from the antecubital vein between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. after an overnight period of fasting for 10-14 h Insulin resistance and beta-cell function were calculated using homeostasis model assessment. RESULTS Fasting C-peptide levels and beta-cell function were similar, fasting concentrations of insulin and proinsulin were lower, and insulin sensitivity was higher at high altitude compared with sea level. CONCLUSIONS Maternal fasting plasma glucose that is lower at high altitude than at sea level in the presence of similar insulin secretion is associated with higher peripheral insulin sensitivity. This may partly explain the lower birth weights at high altitudes.
Golden Proportion for Maxillofacial Surgery in Orientals

The facial position and balance of eyes, nose, and mouth in typical Japanese individuals were investigated, based on the golden proportion for each of these relationships. We found that Japanese tend to have a longer upper lip and shorter chin length compared with Caucasians. We believe that this tendency represents a general facial characteristic of the Oriental population. Each ratio obtained from determinations by our method was used for preoperative and postoperative aesthetic analysis in maxillofacial surgery. This method is considered useful because it permitted us to understand quantitatively the positional relationship and the balance of eyes, nose, and mouth in the face and to make comparisons with typical subjects.
Towards an autonomous self-tuning vibration energy harvesting device for wireless sensor network applications

Future deployment of wireless sensor networks will ultimately require a self-sustainable local power source for each sensor, and vibration energy harvesting is a promising approach for such applications. A requirement for efficient vibration energy harvesting is to match the device and source frequencies. While techniques to tune the resonance frequency of an energy harvesting device have recently been described, in many applications optimization of such systems will require the energy harvesting device to be able to autonomously tune its resonance frequency. In this work a vibration energy harvesting device with autonomous resonance frequency tunability utilizing a magnetic stiffness technique is presented. Here a piezoelectric cantilever beam array is employed with magnets attached to the free ends of cantilever beams to enable magnetic force resonance frequency tuning. The device is successfully tuned from − 27% to + 22% of its untuned resonance frequency while outputting a peak power of approximately 1 mW. Since the magnetic force tuning technique is semi-active, energy is only consumed during the tuning process. The developed prototype consumed maximum energies of 3.3 and 3.9 J to tune to the farthest source frequencies with respect to the untuned resonance frequency of the device. The time necessary for this prototype device to harvest the energy expended during its most energy-intensive (largest resonant frequency adjustment) tuning operation is 88 min in a low amplitude 0.1g vibration environment, which could be further optimized using higher efficiency piezoelectric materials and system components.
Prevalence and molecular analysis of Anaplasma platys in dogs in Lara, Venezuela

Blood specimens from clinically normal military dogs and their trainers, in Lara, Venezuela were screened for Anaplasma platys, A. phagocytophilum, or Ehrlichia ewingii using 16S rRNA PCR tests. Sixteen percent (7/43) of dog specimens were positive by A. platys PCR test followed by sequencing of the PCR products, and all human blood specimens [25] were negative. All specimens from these dogs and humans were PCR negative for E. ewingii or A. phagocytophilum. Twelve Rhipicephalus sanguineus ticks removed from these dogs were negative for A. platys by reverse transcription PCR test. Almost the entire 16S rRNA gene (1,364 bp) and groESL operon (1,646 bp) sequences of A. platys isolated from a dog were determined, revealing that both sequences were closely related to the sequences of an A. platys strain detected in R. sanguineus ticks from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Business Graduates' Competencies in the Eyes of Employers: An Exploratory Study in Malaysia

There is always a gap between employers’ needs and business graduate competencies. Hence, the task to bridge the gap is very necessary in order to equipped business graduates with a more competent set of skills. This study aims to empirically explore on employers’ perception on important competencies in Malaysia banking industry. This second objective is to identify the actual performance of Malaysia business graduates by comparing their generic competencies according to which type of universities. A survey questionnaire was designed and administered to determine the perceptions of employers about the perceived important competencies and hiring preferences. A total of 45 questionnaires were distributed to managers of nine main local commercial banks in Malaysia in the period of six months. Response rate for this study is 71%. The gap between employer needs and graduate competencies were able identified. The actual performances of business graduates from different type of universities were also able to obtain. The findings from this study can be a significant help to the universities in producing competitive business graduates and industries at improving human capital capabilities.
Entropy-Complexity Characterization of Brain Development in Chickens

Abstract: Electroencephalography (EEG) reﬂects the electrical activity of the brain, whichcan be considered chaotic and ruled by a nonlinear dynamics. Chickens exhibit a protractedperiod of maturation, and this temporal separation of the synapse formation and maturationphases is analogous to human neural development, though the changes in chickens occur inweeks compared to years in humans. The development of synaptic networks in the chickenbrain can be regarded as occurring in two broadly deﬁned phases. We speciﬁcally describethe chicken brain development phases in the causality entropy-complexity plane H C ,showing that the complexity of the electrical activity can be characterized by estimating theintrinsic correlational structure of the EEG signal. This allows us to identify the dynamicsof the developing chicken brain within the zone of a chaotic dissipative behavior in the plane H C . Keywords: EEG signals; statistical complexity measure; chicken brain; neural maturationPACS classiﬁcations: 02.50. -r; 05.45. Tp;87.19. La
Clustering is Efficient for Approximate Maximum Inner Product Search

Efficient Maximum Inner Product Search (MIPS) is an important task that has a wide applicability in recommendation systems and classification with a large number of classes. Solutions based on locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) as well as tree-based solutions have been investigated in the recent literature, to perform approximate MIPS in sublinear time. In this paper, we compare these to another extremely simple approach for solving approximate MIPS, based on variants of the k-means clustering algorithm. Specifically, we propose to train a spherical k-means, after having reduced the MIPS problem to a Maximum Cosine Similarity Search (MCSS). Experiments on two standard recommendation system benchmarks as well as on large vocabulary word embeddings, show that this simple approach yields much higher speedups, for the same retrieval precision, than current state-of-the-art hashing-based and tree-based methods. This simple method also yields more robust retrievals when the query is corrupted by noise.
Fractal Video Compression using Block Matching Motion Estimation - A Study

The large usage of multimedia applications on internet and mobiles has increased the demand of compressed data, as to reduce the bandwidth requirement and transmission time. So block based method for video compression is getting more importance due to its effectiveness and easy implementation. Fractal video compression follows the property of self-similarity. The weighted finite automata exploits the property of selfsimilarity in a single image or sequence of images. In block matching motion estimation various algorithm has been proposed having different search pattern and strategies. The paper presents the review on different methods for fractal video compression.
Ocular surface injury induces inflammation in the brain: in vivo and ex vivo evidence of a corneal-trigeminal axis.

PURPOSE To test whether a corneal injury can stimulate inflammation in the trigeminal ganglion (TG), a structure located in the brain. METHODS At 4 and 8 days after alkali burn induced in the right eyes of mice, in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain was done before and after ultrasmall superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticle (USPIO) contrast to track macrophages. Trigeminal ganglia were stained for Prussian Blue and inflammatory cell markers. Interleukin-1β, TNF-α, and VEGF-A transcripts were quantified on days 1, 4, and 8, and 4 days after corneal topical anti-inflammatory treatment with 0.2% dexamethasone. The expression of Substance P and its receptor NK-1R was also measured in the TG on day 4. RESULTS Corneal alkali burn induced leukocyte infiltration, including T cells, in the right TG at 4 and 8 days. In vivo MRI showed an increased contrast uptake in the right TG, which peaked at day 8. Prussian Blue(+) USPIO(+) macrophages were observed in the right TG and exhibited an M2 phenotype. The M2-macrophage infiltration was preponderant in the TG after damage. The proinflammatory cytokines Substance P and NK-1R were significantly increased in both the TGs. The expression of IL-1β and VEGF-A was significantly reduced in the right TG with dexamethasone treatment. CONCLUSIONS We suggest, for the first time, inflammatory involvement of brain structures following ocular surface damage. Our findings support the hypothesis that the neuropeptide Substance P may be involved in the propagation of inflammation from the cornea to the TG through corneal nerves.
Forcing of Ocean and Sea Ice Variability by the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode

Zonally-symmetric fluctuations of the mid-latitude westerly winds characterize the primary mode of atmospheric variability in the southern hemisphere during all seasons. This is true not only in observations, but also in an unforced 15,000 yr integration of a coarse resolution (R15) coupled ocean-atmosphere model. Here we document how this mode of atmospheric variability, known as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), generates ocean circulation and sea ice variations in the model integration on interannual to centennial time scales that are tightly in phase with the SAM. The positive phase of the SAM is associated with an intensification of the surface westerlies over the circumpolar ocean (around 60S), and a weakening of the surface westerlies further north. This induces Ekman drift to the north at all longitudes of the circumpolar ocean, and Ekman drift to the south at around 30S. Through mass continuity, the Ekman drift generates anomalous upwelling along the margins of the Antarctic continent, and downwelling around 45S. The anomalous flow diverging from the Antarctic continent also increases the vertical tilt of the isopycnals in the Southern Ocean, so that a more intense circumpolar current is also closely associated with positive SAM. In addition, the anomalous divergent flow advects sea ice further north, resulting in an increase in sea ice coverage. Finally, positive SAM drives increases in poleward heat transport at about 30S, while decreases occur in the circumpolar region. Ocean and sea ice anomalies of the opposite sign occur when the SAM is negative. The ocean and sea ice fluctuations associated with the SAM constitute a significant fraction of simulated ocean variability poleward of 30S all year round. The robustness of the mechanisms relating the SAM to oceanic variability suggests that the SAM is likely an important source of large-scale variability in the real southern hemisphere ocean.
Four-Dimensional Usability Investigation of Image CAPTCHA

Image CAPTCHA, aiming at effectively distinguishing human users from malicious script attacks, has been an important mechanism to protect online systems from spams and abuses. Despite the increasing interests in developing and deploying image CAPTCHAs, the usability aspect of those CAPTCHAs has hardly been explored systematically. In this paper, the universal design factors of image CAPTCHAs, such as image layouts, quantities, sizes, tilting angles and colors were experimentally evaluated through the following four dimensions: eye-tracking, efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction. The cognitive processes revealed by eye-tracking indicate that the distribution of eye gaze is equally assigned to each candidate image and irrelevant to the variation of image contents. In addition, the gazing plot suggests that more than 70% of the participants inspected CAPTCHA images row-by-row, which is more efficient than scanning randomly. Those four-dimensional evaluations essentially suggest that square and horizontal rectangle are the preferred layout; image quantities may not exceed 16 while the image color is insignificant. Meanwhile, the image size and tilting angle are suggested to be larger than 55 pixels x 55 pixels and within -45~45 degrees, respectively. Basing on those usability experiment results, we proposed a design guideline that is expected to be useful for developing more usable image CAPTCHAs.
Elimination of Dendritic Spines with Long-Term Memory Is Specific to Active Circuits

Structural changes in brain circuits active during learning are thought to be important for long-term memory storage. If these changes support long-term information storage, they might be expected to be present at distant time points after learning, as well as to be specific to the circuit activated with learning, and sensitive to the contingencies of the behavioral paradigm. Here, we show such changes in the hippocampus as a result of contextual fear conditioning. There were significantly fewer spines specifically on active neurons of fear-conditioned mice. This spine loss did not occur in homecage mice or in mice exposed to the training context alone. Mice exposed to unpaired shocks showed a generalized reduction in spines. These learning-related changes in spine density could reflect a direct mechanism of encoding or alternately could reflect a compensatory adaptation to previously described enhancement in transmission due to glutamate receptor insertion.
Fruit and vegetable intakes of children and adolescents in the United States.

OBJECTIVES To identify the ways in which fruits and vegetables are consumed by children, to provide estimates of their intakes compared with recommendations, and to estimate the percentage of children meeting those recommendations. DESIGN We examined 3 days of dietary data from respondents in the US Department of Agriculture's 1989-1991 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. All foods reported in the survey were disaggregated into their component ingredients; all fruit and vegetable ingredients were assigned specific weights to correspond with a serving as defined by current dietary guidance materials; and the number of servings of each fruit and vegetable was tallied. PARTICIPANTS A total of 3148 children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 years in the 48 conterminous United States. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Percentages of fruit and vegetable servings consumed in various forms, mean number of servings consumed per day, and percentage of persons meeting various recommendations by sex/age, race/ethnicity, and household income. RESULTS Nearly one quarter of all vegetables consumed by children and adolescents were french fries. Their intakes of all fruits and of dark green and/or deep yellow vegetables were very low compared with recommendations. Only one in five children consumed five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day. CONCLUSION Pediatricians should encourage the consumption of fruits and vegetables, especially dark green and deep yellow vegetables, by children.