Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiplicity among Widely Separated Brown Dwarf Companions to Nearby Stars: Gliese 337CD

We present Lick Natural Guide Star Adaptive Optics observations of the L8 brown dwarf Gl 337C, which is resolved for the first time into two closely separated (0.″53 ± 0.″03), nearly equal magnitude components with a Ks flux ratio of 0.93 ± 0.10. Companionship is inferred from the absence of a 3. ″6 offset source in Two Micron All Sky Survey or photographic plate images, implying that the observed secondary component is a comoving late-type dwarf. With a projected separation of 11 AU and nearly equal magnitude components, Gl 337CD has properties similar to those of other known companion and field substellar binaries. Its long orbital period (estimated to be ∼140–180 yr) inhibits short-term astrometric mass measurements, but the Gl 337CD system is ideal for studying the L-T transition at a fixed age and metallicity. From a compilation of all known widely separated (≳100 AU) stellar–brown dwarf multiple systems, we find evidence that the binary fraction of brown dwarfs in these systems is notably higher than that of field brown dwarfs, 45% versus 18% for analogous samples. We speculate on possible reasons for this difference, including the possibility that dynamic (ejection) interactions that may form such wide pairs preferentially retain binary secondaries because of their greater combined mass and/or ability to absorb angular momentum.
Changes of brainwaves in Thai smokers indexed by the lightweight electroencephalography

Objective of this study was therefore to investigate the changes of human brainwaves using the available lightweight EEG devices, NeuroSky's Mindwave Mobile. Fifteen volunteers aged between 20–50 years participated in this study. The finding showed that delta and theta brainwaves gradually declined while alpha, beta and gamma brainwaves increased. Delta brainwave decreased after smoking with statistically significant at the 0.05 level. Similar to the delta brainwave, theta brainwave decreased with no statistical significant. On the other hand, alpha, beta and gamma brainwaves were found to be increased with statistically significant at the 0.05 level after smoking. In all of all of these brainwaves, Gamma brainwave increased highly after smoking compared to alpha and beta brainwaves. Similar to alpha brainwave, beta brainwave also increased. The results presented in this report clearly suggest that after smoking, it was found that delta and theta brainwaves were declined while alpha, beta and gamma brainwaves were increased. To our knowledge this is the first study to apply the effectiveness of commercially available lightweight EEG devices, NeuroSky's Mindwave Mobile, to investigate the human brainwaves of smokers. The data presented in this article indicate that it is important to apply this device to study the smoking habits.
Activation of Phosphatidylinositol-Linked D1-Like Receptor Modulates FGF-2 Expression in Astrocytes via IP3-Dependent Ca2+ Signaling

Fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) is predominantly synthesized and secreted by astrocytes in adult brain. Our previous study showed that activation of classical dopamine receptor D1 or D2 elicits FGF-2 biosynthesis and secretion in astrocytes. Here, we report that astrocytic FGF-2 expression is also regulated by phosphatidylinositol (PI)-linked D1-like receptor. SKF83959, a selective PI-linked D1-like receptor agonist, upregulates the levels of FGF-2 protein in striatal astrocyte cultures in classical dopamine D1 and D2 receptor-independent manner. The conditional medium derived from SKF83959-activated astrocytes promoted the number of TH+ neurons in vitro. Treatment of astrocytes with SKF83959 increased intracellular calcium in two phases. Inhibition of intracellular calcium oscillation by inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate (IP3) inhibitors blocked the SKF83959-induced increase in FGF-2 expression. Moreover, intraperitoneal administration of SKF83959 reversed l-methyl-4-phenyl-l,2,3,6-tetrahydropypridine (MPTP)-induced reduction in FGF-2 expression in both the striatum and ventral midbrain and resulted in marked protection of dopaminergic neurons from MPTP-induced neurotoxicity. These results indicate that IP3/Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase is an uncharted intracellular signaling pathway that is crucial for the regulation of FGF-2 synthesis in astrocytes. PI-linked D1-like receptor plays an important role in the regulation of astrocytic FGF-2 expression and neuroprotection which may provide a potential target for the drug discovery in Parkinson's disease.
Mechanical ventilation and lung-kidney interactions.

It was not so long ago that the term “pulmonary-renal syndrome” was synonymous with the combination of immune alveolar hemorrhage and rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis caused by rare conditions such as Goodpasture's disease and Wegener's granulomatosis. Recent elucidation of the pathobiology of critical illness has led to a more basic mechanistic understanding of the complex interplay between injured organs in patients with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome; this has been aptly called the “slippery slope of critical illness” (1). Distant organ effects of apparently isolated injuries to the lungs, gut, and kidneys have all been discovered in recent years. In this article, we review the harmful bidirectional interaction between acute lung injury (ALI) and acute kidney injury (AKI), which appears to be a common clinical syndrome with routine clinical implications, rather than a rare autoimmune catastrophe. We will review the current understanding of lung–kidney interactions from both perspectives, including the renal effects of ALI and mechanical ventilation, the pulmonary sequelae of AKI, and the emerging evidence of deleterious bidirectional organ cross-talk between lung and kidney. AKI is an independent predictor of mortality in intensive care unit (ICU) patients (2). Unfortunately, AKI often develops as a component of multiorgan system dysfunction in critically ill patients and may lead to mortality rates in excess of 60%, depending on the setting (2–5). Severe AKI in critically ill patients is typically part of a triad with shock and respiratory failure requiring positive pressure mechanical ventilation (6). The physiologic impact of positive pressure ventilation (PPV) and its effects on renal perfusion and function are well documented (7). Recent advances in critical care, including the implementation of lung-protective ventilatory strategies, have disclosed the role of inflammatory mediators of ALI and specifically ventilator-induced lung injury in the pathogenesis of AKI. ### Hemodynamic Effects of PPV In 1947, PPV was first shown to …
How Much Can Data Compressibility Help to Improve NAND Flash Memory Lifetime?

Although data compression can benefit flash memory lifetime, little work has been done to rigorously study the full potential of exploiting data compressibility to improve memory lifetime. This work attempts to fill this missing link. Motivated by the fact that memory cell damage strongly depends on the data content being stored, we first propose an implicit data compression approach (i.e., compress each data sector but do not increase the number of sectors per flash memory page) as a complement to conventional explicit data compression that aims to increase the number of sectors per flash memory page. Due to the runtime variation of data compressibility, each flash memory page almost always contains some unused storage space left by compressed data sectors. We develop a set of design strategies for exploiting such unused storage space to reduce the overall memory physical damage. We derive a set of mathematical formulations that can quantitatively estimate flash memory physical damage reduction gained by the proposed design strategies for both explicit and implicit data compression. Using 20nm MLC NAND flash memory chips, we carry out extensive experiments to quantify the content dependency of memory cell damage, based upon which we empirically evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the proposed design strategies under a wide spectrum of data compressibility characteristics.
Cardiovascular and Cortisol Reactions to Acute Psychological Stress and Adiposity: Cross-Sectional and Prospective Associations in the Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study

Objective In recent analyses of data from a large community sample, negative cross-sectional and prospective associations between cardiac stress reactivity and obesity were observed. The present study reexamined the association between cardiovascular reactivity and adiposity in the Dutch Famine Birth Cohort, with the additional aim of examining the association between cortisol reactivity and adiposity. Methods Blood pressure, heart rate, and salivary cortisol were measured at rest and in response to standard laboratory stress tasks in 725 adults. Height, weight, waist-and-hip circumference, and skinfold thickness were measured. Between 4 to 7 years later, 460 participants reported current height and weight. Obesity was defined as a body mass index of 30 kg/m2 or higher. Results Those with a greater body mass index (&bgr; = −0.39 beats per minute (bpm)), waist-to-hip ratio (&bgr; = −0.15 bpm), and triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses (&bgr; = −1.0 and −1.8 bpm) or who were categorized as obese (−3.9 bpm) displayed smaller cardiac reactions to acute stress (all p < .001). With the exception of waist-to-hip ratio, the same negative associations emerged for cortisol reactivity (all p ⩽ .01). In prospective analyses, low cardiac reactivity was associated with an increased likelihood of becoming or remaining obese in the subsequent 4 to 7 years (odds ratio = 1.03, p = .01). All associations withstood adjustment for a range of possible confounders. Conclusions The present analyses provide additional support for the hypothesis that it is low not high cardiac and cortisol stress reactivity that is related to adiposity.
Congestion management for urban EV charging systems

We consider the problem of managing Electric Vehicle (EV) charging at charging points in a city to ensure that the load on the charging points remains within the desired limits while minimizing the inconvenience to EV owners.We develop solutions that treat charging points and EV users as self-interested agents that aim to maximize their profit and minimize the impact on their schedule. In particular, we propose variants of a decentralised and dynamic approach as well as an optimal centralised static approach. We evaluated these solutions in a real setting based on the road network and the location of parking garages of a UK city and show that the optimal centralised (nondynamic) solution manages the congestion the best but does not scale well, while the decentralised solutions scale to thousands of agents.
Extension of the Sliced Gaussian Mixture Filter with application to cooperative passive target tracking

This paper copes with the problem of nonlinear Bayesian state estimation. A nonlinear filter, the Sliced Gaussian Mixture Filter (SGMF), employs linear substructures in the nonlinear measurement and prediction model in order to simplify the estimation process. Here, a special density representation, the sliced Gaussian mixture density, is used to derive an exact solution of the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation. The sliced Gaussian mixture density is obtained by a systematic and deterministic approximation of a continuous density minimizing a certain distance measure. In contrast to previous work, improvements of the SGMF presented here include an extended system model and the processing of multi-dimensional nonlinear subspaces. As an application for the SGMF, cooperative passive target tracking, where sensors take angular measurements from a target, is considered in this paper. Finally, the performance of the proposed estimator is compared to the marginalized particle filter (MPF) in simulations.
Fast and Accurate Prediction of Sentence Specificity

Recent studies have demonstrated that specificity is an important characterization of texts potentially beneficial for a range of applications such as multi-document news summarization and analysis of science journalism. The feasibility of automatically predicting sentence specificity from a rich set of features has also been confirmed in prior work. In this paper we present a practical system for predicting sentence specificity which exploits only features that require minimum processing and is trained in a semi-supervised manner. Our system outperforms the state-of-the-art method for predicting sentence specificity and does not require part of speech tagging or syntactic parsing as the prior methods did. With the tool that we developed --- Speciteller --- we study the role of specificity in sentence simplification. We show that specificity is a useful indicator for finding sentences that need to be simplified and a useful objective for simplification, descriptive of the differences between original and simplified sentences.
A simplified minimum enclosing ball based fast incremental support vector machine (SVM) algorithm for person detection and tracking

In order to meet the requirements of stable person detection and tracking techniques in dynamic visual system, we propose a simplified minimum enclosing ball based fast incremental support vector machine (SVM) algorithm for person detection and tracking. Based on the simplified minimum enclosing ball (MEB) method, we propose a simplified and fast incremental algorithm to compute the MEB. By utilizing the equivalence between MEB and the dual problem in SVM, we achieve the online and incremental adjustment of the SVM classifier coefficients. The proposed method do not need to solve the quadratic programming problem. It is fast for training. Moreover, it can achieve the online update of classifiers for object tracking with small sample size. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed incremental SVM is validated by detection experiments on dynamic pedestrians tracking system.
KLF4 is a key determinant in the development and progression of cerebral cavernous malformations

Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) are vascular malformations located within the central nervous system often resulting in cerebral hemorrhage. Pharmacological treatment is needed, since current therapy is limited to neurosurgery. Familial CCM is caused by loss‐of‐function mutations in any of Ccm1, Ccm2, and Ccm3 genes. CCM cavernomas are lined by endothelial cells (ECs) undergoing endothelial‐to‐mesenchymal transition (EndMT). This switch in phenotype is due to the activation of the transforming growth factor beta/bone morphogenetic protein (TGFβ/BMP) signaling. However, the mechanism linking Ccm gene inactivation and TGFβ/BMP‐dependent EndMT remains undefined. Here, we report that Ccm1 ablation leads to the activation of a MEKK3‐MEK5‐ERK5‐MEF2 signaling axis that induces a strong increase in Kruppel‐like factor 4 (KLF4) in ECs in vivo. KLF4 transcriptional activity is responsible for the EndMT occurring in CCM1‐null ECs. KLF4 promotes TGFβ/BMP signaling through the production of BMP6. Importantly, in endothelial‐specific Ccm1 and Klf4 double knockout mice, we observe a strong reduction in the development of CCM and mouse mortality. Our data unveil KLF4 as a therapeutic target for CCM.
Mycoplasma genitalium Lipoproteins Induce Human Monocytic Cell Expression of Proinflammatory Cytokines and Apoptosis by Activating Nuclear Factor κB

This study was designed to investigate the molecular mechanisms responsible for the induction of proinflammatory cytokines gene expression and apoptosis in human monocytic cell line THP-1 stimulated by lipoproteins (LPs) prepared from Mycoplasma genitalium. Cultured cells were stimulated with M. genitalium LP to analyze the production of proinflammatory cytokines and expression of their mRNA by ELISA and RT-PCR, respectively. Cell apoptosis was also detected by Annexin V-FITC-propidium iodide (PI) staining and acridine orange (AO)-ethidium bromide (EB) staining. The DNA-binding activity of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) was assessed by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). Results showed that LP stimulated THP-1 cells to produce tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), and IL-6 in a dose-dependent manner. The mRNA levels were also upregulated in response to LP stimulation. LPs were also found to increase the DNA-binding activity of NF-κB, a possible mechanism for the induction of cytokine mRNA expression and the cell apoptosis. These effects were abrogated by PDTC, an inhibitor of NF-κB. Our results indicate that M. genitalium-derived LP may be an important etiological factor of certain diseases due to the ability of LP to produce proinflammatory cytokines and induction of apoptosis, which is probably mediated through the activation of NF-κB.
Road pricing mechanisms: A game theoretic and multi-level approach

By 2050, it is expected that more than 9 billion people will be living on Earth. Development will reach to many places on Earth, demand for a better life will rise, car/vehicle ownership will increase, leading to high demand for road capacities and infrastructures, yet supply for these road capacities and infrastructures is not going to increase in the same rate as their demand. Further, this increase in vehicle ownership will escalate the traffic externalities such as congestion, emission, noise and so on. Due to financial, geographical, and political limitations, and the fact that even the expansion of the existing infrastructure may not lead to efficient use of transportation networks, it is envisaged that road pricing seems a viable option for achieving a more efficient use of the existing infrastructure. With all its potentials, road pricing has not gained all the supports it needed, mainly due to how the pricing schemes are developed and perceived by stakeholders and road users. We developed models for road pricing schemes taking into account the (usually) conflicting interests of various stakeholders and the road users, and all traffic externalities. For a just and acceptable road pricing scheme, we developed a novel idea from the concept of Nash equilibrium from game theory in the form of multi-stakeholder and multi-objective problems. We found that even in simple practical cases, that Nash equilibrium may not exist among the actors. This means that point of consensus might not be reached among stakeholders, an indication why talks on the adoption of road pricing have failed in many countries. To tackle this problem once and for all, we developed a mechanism that ensures that the point of consensus is reached among the stakeholders. The mechanism further ensures that the scheme adopted by these stakeholders is optimal for the society. To further address the issues of fairness and equity, and complications resulting from a link or kilometre-based charges, we developed a zone-based pricing scheme called an origin-destination based road pricing scheme. The scheme ensures efficient use of the road infrastructure by charging road users based on their origin and destination.
Energy-efficient resource allocation with 3D beamforming in 3D MIMO-OFDMA systems

The paper investigates the energy efficiency of the 3D MIMO systems with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple-Access (OFDMA). In 3D MIMO-OFDMA communication systems, cellular users' specific downtilt angles are exploited through dynamic vertical beamforming. The objective of our proposed optimization problem is jointly concerning resource block assignment, power allocation and downtilt angles adjustment to maximize the energy efficiency measured by the metric of “bits-per-Joule”. We prove that the energy-efficient optimization problem can be transformed into an equivalent form which can be solved by an iterative algorithm. With the Lagrange dual method utilized in each iteration, we can obtain the closed-form solution. Simulation results validate that our proposed energy-efficient resource allocation algorithm outperforms the traditional algorithm in two-dimensional (2D) MIMO systems without considering the user's specific downtilt angle.
On the distribution of user persistence for rank-biased precision

Rank-biased precision (RBP) is a new method of information retrieval system evaluation that takes into account any uncertainty due to incomplete relevance judgements for a given document and query set. To do so, RBP uses a model of user persistence. In this article, we will present a statistical analysis of the RBP user persistence model to observe how the user persistence value affects the user persistence distribution. We also provide a method of fitting data from existing users to the persistence model, in order to compute their persistence value. Using the Microsoft MSN query log, we were able to demonstrate a typical distribution of the user persistence value and show that it closely resembles a reverse lognormal distribution, with a mean of p = 0.78.
Crown radius and diameter at breast height relationships for six bottomland hardwood species

The relationship between a tree's crown radius and diameter at breast height (DBH) has a variety of uses including forest competition studies, tree crown densities, spacing and stoclung relationships, wildlife habitat suitability models, and tree volume estimations. Estimating DBH from mean crown radius (MCR) is of interest to natural resource managers because MCR can be estimated from high resolution digital imagery using remote sensing techniques. DBH is a common tree dimensional characteristic that is used to quantify tree and stand structure. This research presents MCR/DBH and DBH/MCR relationships for boxelder (Acer negundo L.), sweet pecan (Carya illinoensis (Wang) K. Koch), sugarberry (Celtis laevigata Willd.), green ash (Frasinus pennsylvanica Marsh.), Nuttall oak (Quercus nuttallii Palmer), and American elm (Ulmus americana L.). The linear model, y=a + b * x, provided the best model fit with adjusted r2 values of 0.567 to 0.855 for the 6 species. Crown radius can be determined from digital imagery and then used to predict DBH.
Magnetoelectric properties of magnetite thin films

Resistivity, DC Hall effect and transverse magnetoresistance measurements were made on polycrystalline thin films of magnetite (Fe3O4) from 104K to room temperature. The Verwey transition is observed at TV=123K, about 4K higher than reported for bulk magnetite. The ordinary and extraordinary Hall coefficients are negative over the entire temperature range, consistent with negatively charged carriers. The extraordinary Hall coefficient exhibits a rho 1/3 dependence on the resistivity above TV and a rho 2/3 dependence below TV. The magnetoresistance is negative at all temperatures and for all magnetic field strengths. The planar Hall effect signal was below the sensitivity of the present experiment.
Policy Variation, Labor Supply Elasticities, and a Structural Model of Retirement

This paper exploits a combination of policy variation from multiple pension reforms in Austria and administrative data from the Austrian Social Security Database. Using the policy changes for identification, we estimate social security wealth and accrual elasticities in individuals' retirement decisions. Next, we use these elasticities to estimate a dynamic programming model of retirement decisions. Finally, we use the estimated model to examine the labor supply and welfare consequences of potential social security reforms.