Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Water transport in maize roots : measurement of hydraulic conductivity, solute permeability, and of reflection coefficients of excised roots using the root pressure probe.

A root pressure probe has been used to measure the root pressure (P(r)) exerted by excised main roots of young maize plants (Zea Mays L.). Defined gradients of hydrostatic and osmotic pressure could be set up between root xylem and medium to induce radial water flows across the root cylinder in both directions. The hydraulic conductivity of the root (Lp(r)) was evaluated from root pressure relaxations. When permeating solutes were added to the medium, biphasic root pressure relaxations were observed with water and solute phases and root pressure minima (maxima) which allowed the estimation of permeability (P(Sr)) and reflection coefficients (sigma(sr)) of roots. Reflection coefficients were: ethanol, 0.27; mannitol, 0.74; sucrose, 0.54; PEG 1000, 0.82; NaCl, 0.64; KNO(3), 0.67, and permeability coefficients (in 10(-8) meters per second): ethanol, 4.7; sucrose, 1.6; and NaCl, 5.7. Lp(r) was very different for osmotic and hydrostatic gradients. For hydrostatic gradients Lp(r) was 1.10(-7) meters per second per megapascal, whereas in osmotic experiments the hydraulic conductivity was found to be an order of magnitude lower. For hydrostatic gradients, the exosmotic Lp(r) was about 15% larger than the endosmotic, whereas in osmotic experiments the polarity in the water movement was reversed. These results either suggest effects of unstirred layers at the osmotic barrier in the root, an asymmetrical barrier, and/or mechanical effects. Measurements of the hydraulic conductivity of individual root cortex cells revealed an Lp similar to Lp(r) (hydrostatic). It is concluded that, in the presence of external hydrostatic gradients, water moves primarily in the apoplast, whereas in the presence of osmotic gradients this component is much smaller in relation to the cell-to-cell component (symplasmic plus transcellular transport).
Maximum likelihood, least squares, and penalized least squares for PET

The EM algorithm is the basic approach used to maximize the log likelihood objective function for the reconstruction problem in positron emission tomography (PET). The EM algorithm is a scaled steepest ascent algorithm that elegantly handles the nonnegativity constraints of the problem. It is shown that the same scaled steepest descent algorithm can be applied to the least squares merit function, and that it can be accelerated using the conjugate gradient approach. The experiments suggest that one can cut the computation by about a factor of 3 by using this technique. The results are applied to various penalized least squares functions which might be used to produce a smoother image.
Lipid Transfer Proteins As Components of the Plant Innate Immune System: Structure, Functions, and Applications

Among a variety of molecular factors of the plant innate immune system, small proteins that transfer lipids and exhibit a broad spectrum of biological activities are of particular interest. These are lipid transfer proteins (LTPs). LTPs are interesting to researchers for three main features. The first feature is the ability of plant LTPs to bind and transfer lipids, whereby these proteins got their name and were combined into one class. The second feature is that LTPs are defense proteins that are components of plant innate immunity. The third feature is that LTPs constitute one of the most clinically important classes of plant allergens. In this review, we summarize the available data on the plant LTP structure, biological properties, diversity of functions, mechanisms of action, and practical applications, emphasizing their role in plant physiology and their significance in human life.
The impact of IS-marketing alignment on marketing performance and business performance

The importance of the alignment between information systems (IS) and the business has been emphasized for over a decade. To date, no empirical study has explored the impact of the alignment of IS and marketing, despite initial indications that such an alignment could impact favorably upon business performance. This study reports on a new conceptualization of alignment, together with the development and testing of a parsimonious model which addresses this issue. Data from a survey of 415 respondents from medium-large New Zealand companies were used to test the model. It was found that IS-marketing alignment had a positive impact on both business performance and marketing performance, and that marketing performance in turn had a modest but positive impact on business performance.
BEA BRIEFING Toward a Health Care Satellite Account

T HE Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates that health care expenditures as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) reached 16 percent in 2006 (chart 1). That share will continue to grow signifi­ cantly, according to a study by the Congressional Bud­ get Office.1 Given this trend, it is critical to develop an understanding of what those increased expenditures represent. Are the increases attributable to rising costs of providing the same service? Or are people purchas­ ing higher quality health care services? And if people are consuming more health services today, what are the future benefits? Economists need answers to these questions in order to formulate policies that allow for society’s efficient consumption of health care as well as for the improvement of the nation’s overall health sta­ tus. Health economists have long advocated the con­ struction of national health accounts that would mea­ sure the effects of the output of the medical care industry on improvements in health and use medically informed decision models to determine the productiv­ ity of different health inputs (such as medical care or the quality of the environment). For example, Rosen and Cutler (2007) describe an ongoing effort to create a health account that will provide direct measures of health, disease prevalence, and medical spending by disease for that purpose. This article describes an initiative to construct a sat­ ellite account for medical care spending that would al­ low analysts to better assess the returns to treatments of disease and the sources of changes in health care costs. The information in satellite accounts can include the following: ● A more detailed characterization of the economy ● Measures based on new methods or source data ● A restructured or expanded GDP accounts frame­ work A health account of the type consistent with the view of many health economists would be quite broad and would include elements of all three. In this view, which we share, “health” is a type of human capital that, as with other capital goods, depreciates over time and requires investment. Using standard national ac­ counting conventions, an account that would accom­ modate this view of health would require capital stock measures for health as well as measures of the rate of depreciation, financial investment into health, and the flow of returns to that investment. Moreover, measur­ ing the latter returns would require one to place a value on the improvements to health, which is typically done by combining indicators such as quality-adjusted life years with estimates for the value of a human life. Because various types of nonmarket activity are also important inputs into health, such an account would also expand the scope of the existing accounts (which include only market activity) to include the value of the time that members of households invest in their health and in the health of others (the value of those nonmarket activities).
Learning Software Maintenance Tasks in Offshoring Projects: A Cognitive-Load Perspective

Individual learning is central to the success of the transition phase in software mainte-nance offshoring projects. However, little is known on how learning activities, such as on-the-job training and formal presentations, are effectively combined during the tran-sition phase. In this study, we present and test propositions derived from cognitive load theory. The results of a multiple-case study suggest that learning effectiveness was highest when learning tasks such as authentic maintenance requests were used. Con-sistent with cognitive load theory, learning tasks were most effective when they imposed moderate cognitive load. Our data indicate that cognitive load was influenced by the expertise of the onsite coordinator, by intrinsic task complexity, by the degree of specifi-cation of tasks, and by supportive information. Cultural and semantic distances may in-fluence learning by inhibiting supportive information, specification, and the assignment of learning tasks.
Convergence Analysis of Meshfree Approximation Schemes

This work is concerned with the formulation of a general framework for the analysis of meshfree approximation schemes and with the convergence analysis of the local maximum-entropy (LME) scheme as a particular example. We provide conditions for the convergence in Sobolev spaces of schemes that are n-consistent in the sense of exactly reproducing polynomials of degree less than or equal to n ≥ 1 and whose basis functions are of rapid decay. The convergence of the LME in W 1,p loc (Ω) follows as a direct application of the general theory. The analysis shows that the convergence order is linear in h, a measure of the density of the point set. The analysis also shows how to parameterize the LME scheme for optimal convergence. Because of the convex approximation property of LME, its behavior near the boundary is singular and requires additional analysis. For the particular case of polyhedral domains we show that, away from a small singular part of the boundary, any Sobolev function can be approximated by means of the LME scheme. With the aid of a capacity argument, we further obtain approximation results with truncated LME basis functions in H1(Ω) and for spatial dimension d> 2.
Tumor and Stem Cell Biology FGFR1–WNT–TGF-b Signaling in Prostate Cancer Mouse Models Recapitulates Human Reactive Stroma

The reactive stroma surrounding tumor lesions performs critical roles ranging from supporting tumor cell proliferation to inducing tumorigenesis and metastasis. Therefore, it is critical to understand the cellular components and signaling control mechanisms that underlie the etiology of reactive stroma. Previous studies have individually implicated fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 (FGFR1) and canonicalWNT/b-catenin signaling in prostate cancer progression and the initiation and maintenance of a reactive stroma; however, both pathways are frequently found to be coactivated in cancer tissue. Using autochthonous transgenic mouse models for inducible FGFR1 (JOCK1) and prostate-specific and ubiquitously expressed inducible b-catenin (Pro-Cat and Ubi-Cat, respectively) and bigenic crosses between these lines (Pro-Cat JOCK1 and Ubi-Cat JOCK1), we describeWNT-induced synergistic acceleration of FGFR1-driven adenocarcinoma, associated with a pronounced fibroblastic reactive stroma activation surrounding prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (mPIN) lesions found both in in situ and reconstitution assays. Both mouse and human reactive stroma exhibited increased transforming growth factor-b (TGF-b) signaling adjacent to pathologic lesions likely contributing to invasion. Furthermore, elevated stromal TGF-b signaling was associated with higher Gleason scores in archived human biopsies, mirroring murine patterns. Our findings establish the importance of the FGFR1–WNT–TGF-b signaling axes as driving forces behind reactive stroma in aggressive prostate adenocarcinomas, deepening their relevance as therapeutic targets. Cancer Res; 74(2); 609–20. 2013 AACR.
High-speed satellite mobile communications: technologies and challenges

Central features of future 4G mobile communication systems are high-speed data transmission (up to 1 Gb/s) and interactive multimedia services. For effective delivery of these services, the network must satisfy some stringent QoS metrics, defined typically in terms of maximum delay and/or minimum throughput. Mobile satellite systems will be fully integrated with the terrestrial cellular systems to provide ubiquitous global coverage to diverse users. The challenges for future broadband satellite systems, therefore, lie in the proper deployment of state-of-the-art satellite technologies to ensure seamless integration of the satellite networks into the cellular systems and its QoS frameworks, while achieving, as far as possible, efficient use of satellite link resources. The paper presents an overview of future high-speed satellite mobile communication systems, the technologies deployed or planned for deployment, and the challenges. Focusing in particular on nonlinear downlink channel behavior, shadowing and multipath fading, various physical channel models for characterizing the mobile satellite systems are presented. The most prominent technologies used in the physical layer, such as coding and modulation schemes, multiple-access techniques, diversity combining, etc., are then discussed in the context of satellite systems. High-speed and QoS-specific technologies, such as onboard processing and switching, mobility and resource management, IP routing and cross-layer designs, employed in the satellite systems are also discussed.
Myosin V Walks Hand-Over-Hand: Single Fluorophore Imaging with 1.5-nm Localization

Myosin V is a dimeric molecular motor that moves processively on actin, with the center of mass moving ∼37 nanometers for each adenosine triphosphate hydrolyzed. We have labeled myosin V with a single fluorophore at different positions in the light-chain domain and measured the step size with a standard deviation of <1.5 nanometers, with 0.5-second temporal resolution, and observation times of minutes. The step size alternates between 37 + 2x nm and 37 – 2x, where x is the distance along the direction of motion between the dye and the midpoint between the two heads. These results strongly support a hand-over-hand model of motility, not an inchworm model.
Evaluating the potential of graphics processors for high performance embedded computing

Today's high performance embedded computing applications are posing significant challenges for processing throughout. Traditionally, such applications have been realized on application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and/or digital signal processors (DSP). However, ASICs' advantage in performance and power often could not justify the fast increasing fabrication cost, while current DSP offers a limited processing throughput that is usually lower than 100GFLOPS. On the other hand, current multi-core processors, especially graphics processing units (GPUs), deliver very high computing throughput, and at the same time maintain high flexibility and programmability. It is thus appealing to study the potential of GPUs for high performance embedded computing. In this work, we perform a comprehensive performance evaluation on GPUs with the high performance embedded computing (HPEC) benchmark suite, which consist a broad range of signal processing benchmarks with an emphasis on radar processing applications. We develop efficient GPU implementations that could outperform previous results for all the benchmarks. In addition, a systematic instruction level analysis for the GPU implementations is conducted with a GPU micro-architecture simulator. The results provide key insights on optimizing GPU hardware and software. Meanwhile, we also compared the performance and power efficiency between GPU and DSP with the HPEC benchmarks. The comparison reveals that the major hurdle for GPU's applications in embedded computing is its relatively low power efficiency.
Effective utilization of data in inductive conformal prediction using ensembles of neural networks

Conformal prediction is a new framework producing region predictions with a guaranteed error rate. Inductive conformal prediction (ICP) was designed to significantly reduce the computational cost associated with the original transductive online approach. The drawback of inductive conformal prediction is that it is not possible to use all data for training, since it sets aside some data as a separate calibration set. Recently, cross-conformal prediction (CCP) and bootstrap conformal prediction (BCP) were proposed to overcome that drawback of inductive conformal prediction. Unfortunately, CCP and BCP both need to build several models for the calibration, making them less attractive. In this study, focusing on bagged neural network ensembles as conformal predictors, ICP, CCP and BCP are compared to the very straightforward and cost-effective method of using the out-of-bag estimates for the necessary calibration. Experiments on 34 publicly available data sets conclusively show that the use of out-of-bag estimates produced the most efficient conformal predictors, making it the obvious preferred choice for ensembles in the conformal prediction framework.
nalysis of heart rate variability during exercise stress testing using espiratory information

This paper presents a novel method for the analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) during exercise stress testing enhanced with respiratory information. The instantaneous frequency and power of the low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) bands of the HRV are estimated by parametric decomposition of the instantaneous autocorrelation function (ACF) as a sum of damped sinusoids. The instantaneous ACF is first windowed and filtered to reduce the cross terms. The inclusion of respiratory information is proposed at different stages of the analysis, namely, the design of the filter applied to the instantaneous ACF, the parametric decomposition, and the definition of a dynamic HF band. The performance of the method is evaluated on simulated data as well as on a stress testing database. The simulation results espiratory frequency ime–frequency analysis arametric decomposition show that the inclusion of respiratory information reduces the estimation error of the amplitude of the HF component from 3.5% to 2.4% in mean and related SD from 3.0% to 1.7% when a tuned time smoothing window is used at an SNR of 15 dB. Results from the stress testing database show that information on respiratory frequency produces HF power estimates which closely resemble those from the simulations which exhibited lower SD. The mean SD of these estimates with respect to their mean trends is reduced by 84% (from 0.74 × 10−3 s−2 to 0.12 × 10−3 s−2). The analysis of HRV in the stress testing database reveals he po a significant decrease in t
Beyond the Richter-Thomassen Conjecture

If two closed Jordan curves in the plane have precisely one point in common, then it is called a touching point. All other intersection points are called crossing points. The main result of this paper is a Crossing Lemma for closed curves: In any family of n pairwise intersecting simple closed curves in the plane, no three of which pass through the same point, the number of crossing points exceeds the number of touching points by a factor of Ω((log log n)1/8). As a corollary, we prove the following long-standing conjecture of Richter and Thomassen: The total number of intersection points between any n pairwise intersecting simple closed curves in the plane, no three of which pass through the same point, is at least (1 -- o(1))n2.
Comparison of Three-Phase DC-DC Converters vs. Single-Phase DC-DC Converters

In this paper a comparison of common single-phase and three-phase DC-DC resonant and non- resonant converter bridges on application level is carried out. Device stresses and efficiencies are qualified at constant transferred power and constant terminal voltages. As a result, this paper presents the predominance of three-phase topologies when talking about switching losses in silicon devices of non-resonant solutions. Subsequently transformer efficiency is discussed in detail for specific core geometries. Finally the stress on the input capacitors is qualified. Concerning losses and charge to be buffered the predominance of the three-phase topology is shown.
Time-dependent ROC analysis for censored biomarker data due to limit of detection

ABSTRACT Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is a well-established analysis method to evaluate biomarker’s discrimination accuracy for binary outcomes. When the endpoint of interest is time to event outcome such as time to cancer recurrence, a biomarker’s time-varying discriminatory performance is often assessed by time-dependent ROC analysis. In practice, biomarkers are often imprecisely measured due to the limitation of assay sensitivity. The values below the limit of detection are not detectable. Ignorance of such data characteristic may lead to inaccurate estimation of marker’s potential discriminatory power. The objective of this article is to extend time-dependent ROC method to censored biomarker data by using parameter estimates from the Cox regression model that accommodates censored biomarker measurements. In the simulation study, the proposed methods are shown to outperform the simple substitution method that has been conventionally adopted for handling censored data. Application data are also given to illustrate our methods.
MORPHOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL STUDIES OF COLLAGEN FORMATION

This paper describes electron microscopic studies of developing connective tissue in granulomata induced by the subcutaneous injection of carrageenin into guinea pigs. Seven days after injection the granulomata contained many fibroblasts and exhibited rapid production of collagen. The fibroblasts were characterised by an extensively developed endoplasmic reticulum and showed numbers of fine, unstriated filaments in the outer regions of the cytoplasm. The filaments, about 50 A in diameter, tended to lie parallel to and closely adjacent to the cell boundary. The cytoplasmic membrane was frequently ill defined or disrupted, particularly bordering regions in which filaments occurred. In longitudinal sections of extended cell processes, filaments were abundant and, in some instances, the cytoplasmic membrane was barely detectable. In the extracellular space striated collagen fibrils were usually accompanied by filaments, 50 to 100 A in diameter, and these often exhibited the characteristic periodicity of collagen, particularly after intense electron bombardment. Much cellular debris was present in the extracellular space. These observations have led to the suggestion that connective tissue precursors are released from fibroblasts by the disintegration or dissolution of the cytoplasmic membrane and the shedding of cytoplasmic material, as in the apocrine gland cells. In some instances this release may take the form of the elongation from the cell of extended processes; disintegration of the cytoplasmic membrane surrounding these processes then leaves the contents in the extracellular phase.
Magnetic Properties of Crystalline and Amorphous Phase‐Change Materials Doped with 3d Impurities

First-principles study of the structural and magnetic properties of cubic and amorphous phase-change materials doped with 3d impurities. We find that Co- and Ni-doped Ge(2) Sb(2) Te(5) is non-magnetic, whereas Cr- and Mn-doped Ge(2) Sb(2) Te(5) is magnetic and exhibits a significant magnetic contrast between the two phases in the ferromagnetic configuration. These results are explained in terms of differences in local structure and hybridization of the impurity d-orbitals with the host states.