Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CLASH–VLT: CONSTRAINTS ON THE DARK MATTER EQUATION OF STATE FROM ACCURATE MEASUREMENTS OF GALAXY CLUSTER MASS PROFILES

A pressureless scenario for the dark matter (DM) fluid is a widely adopted hypothesis, despite the absence of direct observational evidence. According to general relativity, the total mass–energy content of a system shapes the gravitational potential well, but different test particles perceive this potential in different ways depending on their properties. Cluster galaxy velocities, being ≪c, depend solely on the gravitational potential, whereas photon trajectories reflect the contributions from the gravitational potential plus a relativistic-pressure term that depends on the cluster mass. We exploit this phenomenon to constrain the equation of state (EoS) parameter of the fluid, primarily DM, contained in galaxy clusters. We use complementary information provided by the kinematic and lensing mass profiles of the galaxy cluster MACS 1206.2−0847 at z = 0.44, as obtained in an extensive imaging and spectroscopic campaign within the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble. The unprecedented high quality of our data set and the properties of this cluster are well suited to determine the EoS parameter of the cluster fluid. Since baryons contribute at most 15% to the total mass in clusters and their pressure is negligible, the EoS parameter we derive describes the behavior of the DM fluid. We obtain the most stringent constraint on the DM EoS parameter to date, w = (pr + 2 pt)/(3 c2ρ) = 0.00 ± 0.15 (stat) ± 0.08 (syst), averaged over the radial range 0.5 Mpc ⩽ r ⩽ r200, where pr and pt are the radial and tangential pressure, and ρ is the density. We plan to further improve our constraint by applying the same procedure to all clusters from the ongoing Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble–Very Large Telescope program.
Logical effort of carry propagate adders

A wide assortment of carry propagate adders offer varying area-delay tradeoffs. Wiring and choice of circuit family also affect the size and performance. This paper uses the method of logical effort to characterize the effects of architecture, circuit family, and wire capacitance on adder delay. Domino logic offers about a 30% speedup on most valency-2 adders. Although Kogge-Stone adders are fastest in the absence of wire, other architectures such as variants on the Sklansky adder offer regular layouts and better delay in the presence of wiring capacitance.
Reproductive Defects in γ-Glutamyl Transpeptidase-Deficient Mice* * This work was supported by NIEHS Grant ES-07827 (to M.W.L.) and HD-33438 (to M.M.M.).

Mice deficient in g-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) are growth retarded as a result of cysteine deficiency secondary to excessive glutathione excretion in urine and display coat color defects and cataracts. Although GGT is widely expressed throughout the mouse reproductive axis, little is known about its role in reproduction. Here, we present an analysis of the reproductive phenotypes of GGT-deficient mice. Mutant male mice have reduced testis and seminal vesicle size and suppressed serum insulin-like growth factor I and FSH levels and are infertile. Although these mice are severely oligospermic, histological analysis of testes reveals grossly normal stages of spermatogenesis, including late stage spermatids, but the tubule diameter is reduced. GGT-deficient female mice are also hypogonadal and infertile. At 6 weeks of age, the ovaries of mutant mice are histologically indistinguishable from those of its wild-type counterpart. However, the absence of antral follicles and corpora lutea and follicular degeneration are apparent by 11‐13 weeks. In addition, immature female mutant mice (at 21‐23 days) are insensitive to exogenous gonadotropin administration and fail to superovulate, suggesting an intraovarian defect. Consistent with these mutant phenotypes, HPLC analysis of adult mutant testes and ovaries showed a reduction in intracellular cysteine levels. Administration of N-acetylcysteine in the drinking water beginning on day 21 to mutant mice for 2 weeks restored testis, seminal vesicle, and ovary sizes to values comparable to those in wild-type mice. Furthermore, N-acetylcysteine-fed (continuously) mutant male and female mice were fertile and produced normal numbers of offspring when mated to wild-type control mice. These results demonstrate that GGT itself is not necessary for reproductive function. However, GGT plays an important role in cysteine homeostasis within the mouse reproductive axis. (Endocrinology 141: 4270 ‐ 4277, 2000)
Controller tuning via minimization of time weighted absolute error

The parameters of a fixed controller structure are tuned so that the output signal of an unknown system responds as quickly as possible to a set point change. The criterion that is minimized with respect to the controller parameters is a function of the absolute value of the output error, where zero weight is put on the transient part. Estimations of the gradient of the loss function are provided by the iterative feedback tuning method and these are used in a trust-region method in the minimization. A thorough discussion on how to choose the length of the zero time weight interval is given and the advantages of the proposed method are illustrated.
[Retracted] FAM172A induces S phase arrest of HepG2 cells via Notch 3

Our previous results revealed that FAM172A was significantly downregulated in liver tissue from hepatocellular carcinoma or cirrhotic patients. The present study was designed to elucidate the regulatory role of FAM172A in HepG2 cells. In order to determine the expression of the FAM172A protein, western blot analysis was performed. Confocal laser scanning technique was used to observe the localization of FAM172A in HepG2 cells. Surface plasmon resonance experiments were used to determine the binding activity of FAM172A and active single sugar and Ca2+. The cell cycle progression of HepG2 cells was assessed by flow cytometry. The FAM172A protein was localized in the endoplasmic reticulum of HepG2 cells. This protein was moderately expressed in normal liver tissue, but was significantly decreased in liver tissue of patients with chronic hepatitis B When co-cultured with the FAM172A recombinant protein, HepG2 cells exhibited complete cell cycle arrest in the S phase at a high concentration (100 ng/ml). Proliferation of HepG2 cells treated with the FAM172A recombinant protein was prominently inhibited compared with that of the control cells. Western blot analysis showed that upregulation of Notch 3 and cyclin E may be related with the cell cycle control. Our results indicate that FAM172A may be a novel tumor-suppressor gene, which plays an important role in cell cycle control and tumor cell proliferation. G1/S phase arrest may be mediated, at least partially, by the Notch 3 signaling pathway.
New Ways To Express Old Hatred The Transformation of Comic Racism in British Popular Culture

New Ways To Express Old Hatred is a sociological account of the consistencies and changes comic racist discourse has experienced over the past forty years in British popular culture, accounting for both content and communicative form in relation to the ethics and aesthetics of humour. The main focal point of the study concerns a case study representative of the communicative changes installed by the digitalisation of media in the cultural public sphere. Sickipedia.org which demonstrates a contemporary, participatory comic community that is simultaneously representative of popular culture. Sickipedia.org circulates explicit comic racist material on a large scale across several formats including its main website, several smart phone applications and a range of social media including Facebook and Twitter. This contemporary emergence of comic racism is discussed in relation to the historical context of wider comic racism in British popular culture, comparatively evaluating the form and content of material from the 'clubland' humour of the 1970s, the anti-racist tradition of 1980s Alternative comedy, the thematically fragmented popular comedy of the 1990s through to prejudicial liquidity evident in more recent comedy. The central argument being asserted is that comic racist discourse has been consistently reproduced for the last forty years. However its communicative form, aesthetic presentation and in some cases its content has undertaken a process of transformation in order for it to be circulated in contemporary popular cultural products unchallenged by both social critics and institutional authorities. Critical humour studies stresses that ridicule-based humorous discourse must be treated critically, especially if that ridicule is directed at groups who are socially marginalised. Comic racism represents the discursive stability of traditional racist discourses that have circulated in society since the Enlightenment, reproducing the ideological perspectives of white supremacy, social exclusion of 'Others' and the perceived, amalgamated biological and cultural inferiority of non-white 'races'. Drawing from content analysis and critical discourse analysis of Sickipedia.org, this study, on a textual level, with reference to theory and history, critically discusses the persistent reproduction of comic racism in the cultural public sphere of the UK, deconstructing the hateful messages embedded in racist jokes and providing an original contribution to critical humour studies.
Adult Attachment Styles in Panic Disorder with and Without Comorbid Adult Separation Anxiety Disorder

Objective: Attachment theory suggests that anxious attachment styles are associated with risk to psychiatric disorder, especially anxiety disorders. Separation anxiety would appear to be a core form of anxiety that is associated with anxious attachment. Nevertheless, as yet no research has examined the relationship of attachment styles to adult separation anxiety disorder, a condition that has only recently been fully recognized. Method: The Attachment Style Questionnaire was used to examine attachment styles among 83 consecutive anxiety clinic patients diagnosed with panic disorder with agoraphobia and those re-assigned from that category to adult separation anxiety disorder. Results: Dimensional associations showed strong correlations with scales measuring anxious attachment and separation anxiety. Patients assigned to the separation anxiety group scored significantly higher than those in the panic disorder group on the scales of Need for Approval and Preoccupation with Relationships. Conclusions: The findings finally dispel the notion that separation anxiety and anxious attachment are relevant to panic disorder with agoraphobia, suggesting instead that that constellation is confined to a separate group, namely that of adult separation anxiety disorder. Possible implications for treatment are considered.
Alignment and Prediction of cis-Regulatory Modules Based on a Probabilistic Model of Evolution

Cross-species comparison has emerged as a powerful paradigm for predicting cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) and understanding their evolution. The comparison requires reliable sequence alignment, which remains a challenging task for less conserved noncoding sequences. Furthermore, the existing models of DNA sequence evolution generally do not explicitly treat the special properties of CRM sequences. To address these limitations, we propose a model of CRM evolution that captures different modes of evolution of functional transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) and the background sequences. A particularly novel aspect of our work is a probabilistic model of gains and losses of TFBSs, a process being recognized as an important part of regulatory sequence evolution. We present a computational framework that uses this model to solve the problems of CRM alignment and prediction. Our alignment method is similar to existing methods of statistical alignment but uses the conserved binding sites to improve alignment. Our CRM prediction method deals with the inherent uncertainties of binding site annotations and sequence alignment in a probabilistic framework. In simulated as well as real data, we demonstrate that our program is able to improve both alignment and prediction of CRM sequences over several state-of-the-art methods. Finally, we used alignments produced by our program to study binding site conservation in genome-wide binding data of key transcription factors in the Drosophila blastoderm, with two intriguing results: (i) the factor-bound sequences are under strong evolutionary constraints even if their neighboring genes are not expressed in the blastoderm and (ii) binding sites in distal bound sequences (relative to transcription start sites) tend to be more conserved than those in proximal regions. Our approach is implemented as software, EMMA (Evolutionary Model-based cis-regulatory Module Analysis), ready to be applied in a broad biological context.
D-Glucosamine Promotes Transfection Efficiency during Electroporation

D-Glucosamine is a useful medicament in various fields of medicine and dentistry. With respect to stability of the cell membrane, it has been reported that bradykinin-induced nociceptive responses are significantly suppressed by the direct application of D-glucosamine. Electroporation is usually used to effectively introduce foreign genes into tissue culture cells. Buffers for electroporation with or without D-glucosamine are used in experiments of transfection vectors. This is the first study to indirectly observe the stability and protection of the osteoblast membrane against both electric stress and gene uptake (the proton sponge hypothesis: osmotic rupture during endosomes prior to fusion with lysosomes) in electroporation with D-glucosamine application. The transfection efficiency was evaluated as the fluorescence intensity of the transfected green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the cultured cells (osteoblasts; NOS-1 cells). The transfection efficiency increased over 30% in the electroporation samples treated with D-glucosamine-supplemented buffer after one day. The membrane absorption of D-glucosamine is the primary mechanism of membrane stress induced by electric stress. This new function of D-glucosamine is useful and meaningful for developing more effective transformation procedures.
Speech Coding Strategies and Revised Cochlear Implant Candidacy: An Analysis of Post-Implant Performance

Objective Technological advances in cochlear implant systems on which a sequence of speech coding strategies have been implemented seem to have resulted in improved speech perception. However, changing selection criteria for implantation have coincided with evolving technology and may confound post-implantation speech perception performance. This study compares speech coding strategy with speech perception performance in severe and profound postlingually deafened adults using one of three successive generations of Nucleus Cochlear Implant speech processors (i.e., Mini Speech Processor, Spectra 22, and SPrint) implementing three speech coding strategies (i.e., MPEAK, SPEAK, and Advanced Combination Encoders; Cochlear Corporation, Englewood, CO, U.S.A.). Study Design Four cohorts of patients were retrospectively reviewed. Setting Multicenter, tertiary referral cochlear implant programs in Ontario, Canada. Methods Four cohorts of patients (n = 139) were identified based on preimplant audiological measures, duration of deafness, device type, and speech coding strategy. Word and sentence recognition scores at 12 months after implantation were compared using MPEAK with SPEAK22 implemented on the Nucleus 22 speech processors (Mini Speech Processor and Spectra22, respectively) and SPEAK24 as well as Advanced Combination Encoders implemented on the Nucleus 24 SPrint processor. Results Open-set speech recognition batteries revealed significant improvements in word and sentence scores as advancing technology implemented new speech coding strategies. Subgroup analysis of profoundly deafened patients supported this. Analysis of covariance confirmed that the measured differences could not be accounted for by changing selection criteria for implantation. Conclusion Improvements in performance can be attributed to evolving speech coding strategies and speech processors rather than to differences in preimplant candidacy.
Cortical change in Alzheimer's disease detected with a disease-specific population-based brain atlas.

We report the first detailed population-based maps of cortical gray matter loss in Alzheimer's disease (AD), revealing prominent features of early structural change. New computational approaches were used to: (i) distinguish variations in gray matter distribution from variations in gyral patterns; (ii) encode these variations in a brain atlas (n = 46); (iii) create detailed maps localizing gray matter differences across groups. High resolution 3D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes were acquired from 26 subjects with mild to moderate AD (age 75.8+/-1.7 years, MMSE score 20.0+/-0.9) and 20 normal elderly controls (72.4+/-1.3 years) matched for age, sex, handedness and educational level. Image data were aligned into a standardized coordinate space specifically developed for an elderly population. Eighty-four anatomical models per brain, based on parametric surface meshes, were created for all 46 subjects. Structures modeled included: cortical surfaces, all major superficial and deep cortical sulci, callosal and hippocampal surfaces, 14 ventricular regions and 36 gyral boundaries. An elastic warping approach, driven by anatomical features, was then used to measure gyral pattern variations. Measures of gray matter distribution were made in corresponding regions of cortex across all 46 subjects. Statistical variations in cortical patterning, asymmetry, gray matter distribution and average gray matter loss were then encoded locally across the cortex. Maps of group differences were generated. Average maps revealed complex profiles of gray matter loss in disease. Greatest deficits (20-30% loss, P<0.001-0.0001) were mapped in the temporo-parietal cortices. The sensorimotor and occipital cortices were comparatively spared (0-5% loss, P>0.05). Gray matter loss was greater in the left hemisphere, with different patterns in the heteromodal and idiotypic cortex. Gyral pattern variability also differed in cortical regions appearing at different embryonic phases. 3D mapping revealed profiles of structural deficits consistent with the cognitive, metabolic and histological changes in early AD. These deficits can therefore be (i) charted in a living population and (ii) compared across individuals and groups, facilitating longitudinal, genetic and interventional studies of dementia.
CSCW at play: 'there' as a collaborative virtual environment

Video games are of increasing importance, both as a cultural phenomenon and as an application of collaborative technology. In particular, many recent online games feature persistent collaborative virtual environments (CVEs), with complex social organisation and strong social bonds between players. This paper presents a study of 'There', one such game, focusing on how There has been appropriated by its players. In particular we describe how its flexibility has allowed players to develop their own forms of play within the game. Three aspects of There are discussed: first, how the environment supports a range of social activities around objects. Second, how the chat environment is used to produce overlapping chat and how the game itself provides topics for conversation. Lastly, how the 'place' of There is a fluid interaction space that supports safe interactions between strangers. The paper concludes by drawing design lessons concerning the importance of supporting shared online activity, interaction between strangers, and the difficulties of designing for play.
Genetic and pathogenic diversity in Pyrenophora teres f. maculata in barley crops of Victoria, Australia

Forty-four Pyrenophora teres f. maculata isolates collected from barley crops in Victoria, Australia, were used in an analysis of genetic and pathogenic diversity. Genetic analysis with molecular markers revealed high levels of diversity. Fifteen sequence-tagged microsatellite primers revealed polymorphism among the 44 isolates, with two to five alleles (average 2.87 ± 0.42) amplified at each locus. Each isolate exhibited a unique genotype, which was likely to be the result of sexual recombination by random mating in the Victorian pathogen population. The two mating types of P. teres f. maculata were found at almost a 1: 1 ratio in the 44 isolate set indicating that sexual recombination is possible. Consistent with international studies of this pathogen, the high genetic diversity detected did not correlate with pathogenic variation. Adifferential set developed in Australia that consisted of 21 barley varieties was evaluated for reaction response towards the 44 P. teres f. maculata isolates as seedlings. None of the isolates tested were virulent on barley varieties known to possess the Rpt4 gene for seedling resistance, or the Ha4 allele associated with adult plant resistance. This indicates that use of the Rpt4 gene, Ha4 allele and other sources of resistance will provide effective control of spot form of net blotch (caused by P. teres f. maculata) in Victoria. However, the high level of genetic diversity indicates significant potential for the pathogen population to evolve rapidly to adapt to changes in selective pressures such as the deployment of host resistance.
Remembered parenting styles and adjustment in middle and late adulthood.

BACKGROUND Authoritative parenting is the parenting style often associated with positive outcomes for children and adolescents. This study considers whether remembered parenting styles in childhood predict multiple dimensions of functioning in adulthood. METHODS We used the 1995 National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States data set (N = 2,232) to assess the association between parenting behaviors remembered from childhood-classified as authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and uninvolved-and psychological well-being, depressive symptoms, and substance abuse, in a subsample of mid- and later-life adults. Differences in outcomes by sex, race, and childhood socioeconomic status were also examined across parenting styles. RESULTS Adults who remembered authoritative compared with authoritarian and uninvolved parents reported greater psychological well-being and fewer depressive symptoms, and those with uninvolved parents noted greater substance abuse. No outcome differences were found between remembered authoritative and indulgent parenting styles. A few sex and race interactions were identified: Authoritative parenting (compared with uninvolved) was more strongly associated with men's psychological well-being than women's, and authoritative parenting (compared with authoritarian) predicted reduced depressive symptoms for Whites more than non-Whites. CONCLUSIONS There is some support that remembered parenting styles continue to be related to functioning across the lifespan. There is also evidence of resiliency, flexibility, and malleability in human development.
GSHADE: faster privacy-preserving distance computation and biometric identification

At WAHC'13, Bringer et al. introduced a protocol called SHADE for secure and efficient Hamming distance computation using oblivious transfer only. In this paper, we introduce a generalization of the SHADE protocol, called GSHADE, that enables privacy-preserving computation of several distance metrics, including (normalized) Hamming distance, Euclidean distance, Mahalanobis distance, and scalar product. GSHADE can be used to efficiently compute one-to-many biometric identification for several traits (iris, face, fingerprint) and benefits from recent optimizations of oblivious transfer extensions. GSHADE allows identification against a database of 1000 Eigenfaces in 1.28 seconds and against a database of 10000 IrisCodes in 17.2 seconds which is more than 10 times faster than previous works.