Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms for DNA charge transport.

DNA charge transport (CT) chemistry has received considerable attention by scientific researchers over the past 15 years since our first provocative publication on long range CT in a DNA assembly.1,2 This interest, shared by physicists, chemists and biologists, reflects the potential of DNA CT to provide a sensitive route for signaling, whether in the construction of nanoscale biosensors or as an enzymatic tool to detect damage in the genome. Research into DNA CT chemistry began as a quest to determine whether the DNA double helix, a macromolecular assembly in solution with π-stacked base pairs, might share conductive characteristics with π-stacked solids. Physicists carried out sophisticated experiments to measure the conductivity of DNA samples, but the means to connect discrete DNA assemblies into the devices to gauge conductivity varied, as did the conditions under which conductivities were determined. Chemists constructed DNA assemblies to measure hole and electron transport in solution using a variety of hole and electron donors. Here, too, DNA CT was seen to depend upon the connections, or coupling, between donors and the DNA base pair stack. Importantly, these experiments have resolved the debate over whether DNA CT is possible. Moreover these studies have shown that DNA CT, irrespective of the oxidant or reductant used to initiate the chemistry, can occur over long molecular distances but can be exquisitely sensitive to perturbations in the base pair stack. Here we review some of the critical characteristics of DNA charge transport chemistry, taking examples from a range of systems, and consider these characteristics in the context of their mechanistic implications. This review is not intended to be exhaustive but instead to be illustrative. For instance, we describe studies involving measurements in solution using pendant photooxidants to inject holes, conductivity studies with covalently modified assemblies, and electrochemical studies on DNA-modified electrodes. We do not focus in detail on the differences amongst these constructs but instead on their similarities. It is the similarity among these various systems that allows us to consider different mechanisms to describe DNA CT. Thus we review also the various mechanisms for DNA CT that have been put forth and attempt to reconcile these mechanistic proposals with the many disparate measurements of DNA CT. Certainly the debate among researchers has shifted from "is DNA CT possible? " to "how does it work? ". This review intends to explore this latter question in detail.
Court of Public Opinion in and for the State of Uncertainty

Our session has two goals. First, we aim to stimulate debate over a ubiquitous, yet largely unchallenged, instrument that purports to operationalize Jungian personality theory (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). Second, we suggest a platform for teaching management theories, the mocktrial, which manifests active learning as well as critical thinking and has been successfully utilized in other disciplines. With contributors playing key roles in the trial and volunteers from the audience serving as potential prosecution and defense witnesses as well as the jury, we hope the discourse on substantive theory and teaching process will provide the jolt OBTC 2008
Platooning in the Presence of a Speed Drop: A Generalized Control Model

The positive impacts of platooning on travel time reliability, congestion, emissions, and energy consumption have been shown for homogeneous roadway segments. However, speed limit changes frequently throughout the transportation network, due to either safety-related considerations (e.g., workzone operations) or congestion management schemes (e.g., speed harmonization systems). These abrupt changes in speed limit can result in shock- wave formation and cause travel time unreliability. Therefore, designing a platooning strategy for tracking a reference velocity profile is critical to enabling end-to-end platooning. Accordingly, this study introduces a generalized control model to track a desired velocity profile, while ensuring safety in the platoon of autonomous vehicles. We define appropriate natural error terms and the target curve in the state space of the control system, which is the set of points where all error terms vanish and corresponds to the case when all vehicles move with the desired velocities and in the minimum safe distance between them. In this way, we change the tracking velocity profile problem into a state- feedback stabilization problem with respect to the target curve. Under certain mild assumptions on the Lipschitz constant of the speed drop profile, we show that the stabilizing feedback can be obtained via introducing a natural dynamics for the maximum of the error terms for each vehicle. Moreover, we show that with this stabilizing feedback collisions will not occur if the initial state of the system of vehicles is sufficiently close to the target curve. We also show that the error terms remain bounded throughout the time and space. Two scenarios were simulated, with and without initial perturbations, and results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed control model in tracking the speed drop while ensuring safety and string stability.
Computational simulations of second language construction learning

There are few computational models of second language acquisition (SLA). At the same time, many questions in the field of SLA remain unanswered. In particular, SLA patterns are difficult to study due to the large amount of variation between human learners. We present a computational model of second language construction learning that allows manipulating specific parameters such as age of onset and amount of exposure. We use the model to study general developmental patterns of SLA and two specific effects sometimes found in empirical studies: construction priming and a facilitatory effect of skewed frequencies in the input. Our simulations replicate the expected SLA patterns as well as the two effects. Our model can be used in further studies of various SLA phenomena.
C-MAC: An Energy-Efficient MAC Scheme Using Chinese-Remainder-Theorem for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper investigates a new TDMA-based MAC, called C-MAC (MAC using Chinese remainder theorem), protocol with low power consumption while maintaining low packet latency for large-scale cluster-based WSNs. To offer low power consumption, each node and coordinator to be active and sleep states based on the time-slot schedule of Chinese remainder theorem. To provide low packet latency, our C-MAC protocol provides an adaptive time-slot scheme to distributively and dynamically wake up time slots for the burst data transmission in a duty cycle. Finally, simulation results illustrate our performance achievements to verify that C-MAC performs better than existing TDMA-based MAC protocols, BMA and EMAC, in terms of power consumption and average packet latency.
A new model for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis in the rat utilizing total enteral nutrition to overfeed a high-polyunsaturated fat diet.

We have used total enteral nutrition (TEN) to moderately overfeed rats high-polyunsaturated fat diets to develop a model for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed by TEN a 187 kcal.kg(-3/4). day(-1) diet containing 5% (total calories) corn oil or a 220 kcal.kg(-3/4). day(-1) diet in which corn oil constituted 5, 10, 25, 35, 40, or 70% of total calories for 21 or 65 days. Rats fed the 5% corn oil, 220 kcal.kg(-3/4). day(-1)diet had greater body weight gain (P < or = 0.05), fat mass (P < or = 0.05), and serum leptin and glucose levels (P < or = 0.05), but no liver pathology. A dose-dependent increase in hepatic triglyceride deposition occurred with increase in percent corn oil in the 220 kcal.kg(-3/4). day(-1) groups (P < or = 0.05). Steatosis, macrophage infiltration, apoptosis, and focal necrosis were present in the 70% corn oil group, accompanied by elevated serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels (P < or = 0.05). An increase in oxidative stress (thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances) and TNF-alpha expression (P < or = 0.05) was observed in the 70% corn oil group, as well as an increase in hepatic CYP2E1 and CYP4A1 expression (P < or = 0.05). Significant positive correlations were observed between the level of dietary corn oil and the degree of pathology, ALTs, oxidative stress, and inflammation. Liver pathology was progressive with increased necrosis, accompanied by fibrosis, observed after 65 days of TEN. Increased expression of CD36 and l-fabp mRNA suggested development of steatosis was associated with increased fatty acid transport. These data suggest that intragastric infusion of a high-polyunsaturated fat diet at a caloric level of 17% excess total calories results in pathology similar to clinical NASH.
The Protestant Work Ethic: A Lay Theory with Dual Intergroup Implications

The authors propose that, in the US, the Protestant work ethic (PWE) relates both to social tolerance and intolerance. PWE is proposed to have a surface meaning that relates to social tolerance, and also an associated meaning that relates to intolerance, which is acquired in part through social and cultural experience (e.g. PWE being used as a justifier of inequality). In correlational and experimental studies, PWE was related to greater egalitarianism and desired social closeness to African Americans among younger participants (9 to 12 and 14 to 16-year-olds) relative to older participants (college students). Subsequent experiments directly manipulated college students’ interpretations of PWE, showing that those experimentally led to focus on others' use of PWE in support of their arguments (associated meaning condition) endorsed egalitarianism to a lesser extent (Study 3) and donated less money to a homeless shelter (Study 4) than did those simply focusing on the definition of PWE (definition condition). In contrast to these findings, the authors showed that social dominance orientation has a unitary relation to social intolerance across the three age groups studied (Study 1). The implications of these findings and future work on the duality of lay theories are discussed.
Stellar Disk in the Galactic Center: A Remnant of a Dense Accretion Disk?

Observations of the Galactic center revealed a population of young massive stars within 0.4 pc from Sgr A*—the presumed location of a supermassive black hole. The origin of these stars is a puzzle as their formation in situ should be suppressed by the black hole's tidal field. We find that out of 13 stars whose three-dimensional velocities have been measured by Genzel et al., 10 lie in a thin disk. The half-opening angle of the disk is consistent with zero within the measurement errors and does not exceed 10°. We propose that a recent burst of star formation has occurred in a dense gaseous disk around Sgr A*. Such a disk is no longer present because, most likely, it has been accreted by the central black hole. The three-dimensional orbit of S2, the young star closest to Sgr A*, has been recently mapped out with high precision. It is inclined to the stellar disk by 75°. We find that the orbit should undergo Lense-Thirring precession with the period of ~(6/a) × 106 yr, where a < 1 is the dimensionless spin of the black hole. Therefore, it is possible that originally the S2 orbit lay in the disk plane. The Lense-Thirring precession can turn the S2 orbit by 75° if a > 0.2(tS2/6 × 106 yr)-1, where tS2 is the age of S2.
Effect of the volume of fluids administered on intraoperative oliguria in laparoscopic bariatric surgery: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether intraoperative fluid management affects urine output in patients undergoing laparoscopic bariatric operations. DESIGN Randomized controlled trial. SETTING Academic tertiary referral center. PATIENTS Morbidly obese patients scheduled to undergo laparoscopic bariatric procedures. INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomly assigned to receive intraoperatively high (10 mL/kg/h, n = 55) or low (4 mL/kg/h, n = 52) amounts of Ringer lactate solution. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The primary end point was urine output. Secondary end points were postoperative creatinine serum concentration and complication rate. RESULTS Significantly more fluids were administered intraoperatively to patients in the high-volume group compared with the low-volume group (P < .001). Regardless of the amount of fluids administered intraoperatively, low urine outputs (median [range], 100 [15-1050] mL in the high-volume group vs 107 [25-500] mL in the low-volume group; P = .34) were documented and were not significantly different. The mean creatinine serum concentration was within normal range at all times and was not significantly different between the groups (P = .68). The number of patients with complications was nonsignificantly lower in the low-volume group compared with the high-volume group (7 vs 10 patients, respectively; P = .60). CONCLUSIONS In patients undergoing laparoscopic bariatric surgery, intraoperative urine output is low regardless of the use of relatively high-volume fluid therapy. The results suggest that we should reconsider the common practice to administer intraoperative fluids in response to low urine output. Further studies are required to evaluate these data in other surgical patient populations. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00753402.
Training restricted Boltzmann machines using approximations to the likelihood gradient

A new algorithm for training Restricted Boltzmann Machines is introduced. The algorithm, named Persistent Contrastive Divergence, is different from the standard Contrastive Divergence algorithms in that it aims to draw samples from almost exactly the model distribution. It is compared to some standard Contrastive Divergence and Pseudo-Likelihood algorithms on the tasks of modeling and classifying various types of data. The Persistent Contrastive Divergence algorithm outperforms the other algorithms, and is equally fast and simple.
Sea-air CO 2 fluxes in the Indian Ocean between 1990 and 2009

The Indian Ocean (44° S–30° N) plays an important role in the global carbon cycle, yet it remains one of the most poorly sampled ocean regions. Several approaches have been used to estimate net sea–air CO 2 fluxes in this region: interpolated observations, ocean biogeochemical models, atmospheric and ocean inversions. As part of the RECCAP (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) project, we combine these different approaches to quantify and assess the magnitude and variability in Indian Ocean sea–air CO 2 fluxes between 1990 and 2009. Using all of the models and inversions, the median annual mean sea–air CO 2 uptake of −0.37 ± 0.06 PgC yr −1 is consistent with the −0.24 ± 0.12 PgC yr−1 calculated from observations. The fluxes from the southern Indian Ocean (18–44° S; −0.43 ± 0.07 PgC yr−1 are similar in magnitude to the annual uptake for the entire Indian Ocean. All models capture the observed pattern of fluxes in the Indian Ocean with the following exceptions: underestimation of upwelling fluxes in the northwestern region (off Oman and Somalia), overestimation in the northeastern region (Bay of Bengal) and underestimation of the CO 2 sink in the subtropical convergence zone. These differences were mainly driven by lack of atmospheric CO 2 data in atmospheric inversions, and poor simulation of monsoonal currents and freshwater discharge in ocean biogeochemical models. Overall, the models and inversions do capture the phase of the observed seasonality for the entire Indian Ocean but overestimate the magnitude. The predicted sea–air CO 2 fluxes by ocean biogeochemical models (OBGMs) respond to seasonal variability with strong phase lags with reference to climatological CO 2 flux, whereas the atmospheric inversions predicted an order of magnitude higher seasonal flux than OBGMs. The simulated interannual variability by the OBGMs is weaker than that found by atmospheric inversions. Prediction of such weak interannual variability in CO 2 fluxes by atmospheric inversions was mainly caused by a lack of atmospheric data in the Indian Ocean. The OBGM models suggest a small strengthening of the sink over the period 1990–2009 of −0.01 PgC decade −1 . This is inconsistent with the observations in the southwestern Indian Ocean that shows the growth rate of oceanic pCO 2 was faster than the observed atmospheric CO 2 growth, a finding attributed to the trend of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) during the 1990s.
Why Do You Regulate What You Eat ? Relationships Between Forms of Regulation , Eating Behaviors , Sustained Dietary Behavior Change , and Psychological Adjustment 1

In 3 studies, the authors examined how autonomous and controlled forms of motivation for the regulation of eating behaviors were related to self-reported eating behaviors, and sustained dietary behavior change. Studies 1 and 2 supported the factorial structure and the psychometric properties of a scale designed to measure different forms of regulation as defined by Self-Determination Theory. A motivational model of the regulation of eating behaviors suggested that an autonomous regulation was positively associated with healthy eating behaviors whereas a controlled regulation was positively associated with dysfunctional eating behaviors and negatively associated with healthy eating behaviors. In Study 3, long-term adherence to healthier dietary behaviors in a population at risk for coronary artery disease was examined over a 26-week period. A general measure of self-determined motivation assessed at week 1 was found to be a reliable predictor of the level of self-determination for eating behaviors 13 weeks later. In turn, self-determination for eating behaviors was a significant predictor of dietary behavior changes at 26 weeks. Finally, the dietary behavior measures were related to improvements in weight and blood lipid parameters (LDL-cholesterol,
Interaction-driven Markov games for decentralized multiagent planning under uncertainty

In this paper we propose interaction-driven Markov games (IDMGs), a new model for multiagent decision making under uncertainty. IDMGs aim at describing multiagent decision problems in which interaction among agents is a local phenomenon. To this purpose, we explicitly distinguish between situations in which agents should interact and situations in which they can afford to act independently. The agents are coupled through the joint rewards and joint transitions in the states in which they interact. The model combines several fundamental properties from transition-independent Dec-MDPs and weakly coupled MDPs while allowing to address, in several aspects, more general problems. We introduce a fast approximate solution method for planning in IDMGs, exploiting their particular structure, and we illustrate its successful application on several large multiagent tasks.
Interference of Metamizol (Dipyrone) on the Determination of Creatinine with the Kodak Dry Chemistry Slide Comparison with the Enzymatic Method from Boehringer

In order to eliminate positive interferences that take place with the Jaffé technique, the Kodak Ektachem and Boehringer Mannheim Companies have chosen an enzymatic method for the determination of creatinine in serum and urine. Pathological and clinical samples often contain metabolites in elevated concentrations or exogenous compounds such as drugs or toxic compounds. We noticed that patients receiving metamizol-containing drugs showed unusually low values of creatinine when determined with an Ektachem analyser. We investigated the effect of the main metabolites of this prodrug on the creatinine enzymatic methods of Kodak and Boehringer. We concluded that methyl-amino-antipyrine, the active substance after administration of metamizol (prop. INN) was responsible for the interference, and that no reliable determination of creatinine could be performed with these methods in the serum of patients receiving this drug.
Black-hole-wave duality in string theory.

Extreme four-dimensional dilaton black holes embedded into ten-dimensional geometry are shown to be dual to the gravitational waves in string theory. The corresponding gravitational waves are the generalization of pp-fronted waves, called supersymmetric string waves. They are given by the Brinkmann metric and the two-form field, without a dilaton. The nondiagonal part of the metric of the dual partner of the wave together with the two-form field correspond to the vector field in the four-dimensional geometry of the charged extreme black holes.
Diverse Brains.

29 Con nued on next page. What a great era it is to be involved in brain research, because the public loves brains. From just the books that are sold on Amazon.com, you can learn how to Use Your Brain (Amen, 2013), Use Both Sides Of Your Brain (Buzan, 1991), and Challenge Your Brain (Tuller & Rios, 2005). You can also ind out how to Boost Your Brain’s Power (Pasinski, & Neporent, 2012), Feed Your Brain (McCleary, 2011), Power Up Your Brain (Perimutter, 2012), even Beef Up Your Brain (Noir, 2009). But just remember: You Are Not Your Brain (Schwartz, & Gladding, 2012).
Therapy to reduce free radicals during early reperfusion does not limit the size of myocardial infarcts caused by 90 minutes of ischemia in dogs.

It has been postulated that oxygen-centered free radicals are produced in significant quantities upon reperfusion of ischemic myocardium and could cause the death of myocytes that are still reversibly injured at the end of ischemia ("reperfusion injury"). However, we have shown previously that anti-free radical therapies including superoxide dismutase (SOD) and inhibitors of xanthine oxidase did not limit infarct size after 40 minutes of ischemia and 4 days of reperfusion in dogs. To test whether 40 minutes of ischemia is too brief a period to produce the prerequisite conditions for free radical-mediated necrosis upon reperfusion, we studied infarcts produced by 90 minutes of ischemia followed by reperfusion. Dogs in an SOD-catalase group received a 60-minute infusion of SOD (15,000 units/kg) and catalase (55,000 units/kg) beginning 25 minutes before and ending 35 minutes after reperfusion. A second group of dogs received a single injection of the xanthine oxidase inhibitor oxypurinol (20 mg/kg) 25 minutes before reperfusion. Infarct size was assessed histologically relative to the size of the area at risk and to collateral blood flow to the ischemic region. Infarct size as a percentage of the area at risk was similar in the control group (40.7 +/- 5.5%, n = 11), the SOD-catalase group (38.0 +/- 6.4%; n = 8), and the oxypurinol-treated group (41.4 +/- 6.1%; n = 7) [p = not significant (NS) by analysis of variance]. In controls, there was an inverse relation between infarct size and collateral blood flow; neither of the treatments altered this relation (p = NS by analysis of covariance). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)