Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Centroid based 3D localization technique using RSSI with a mobile robot

Knowledge of sensor node 3D location in a sensor network is more important, because many practical applications needs to know the location of sensor data source. This paper presents a new technique for finding indoor 3D location of a sensor node by using Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI). Proposed localization algorithm is derived from centroid algorithm with composition of empirical path loss model. It gives less error in estimating 3D location of sensor node in a sensor network when compared to its actual location. Algorithm has been implemented and analysed by using IITH motes and a Mobile Robot.
Torque Coordination Control During Mode Transition for a Series–Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicle

Mode transitions are significant events in the operation of series-parallel hybrid electric vehicles (SPHEVs) with a clutch serving as the key enabling actuator element. Due to the friction-induced discontinuity of the clutch torque, seamless transition is difficult to achieve. In this paper, a model reference control (MRC) law is proposed to coordinate the motor torque, engine torque, and clutch torque to manage transitions. The control system is overactuated in the sense that three inputs (i.e., three torques) can be manipulated to control the two outputs (angular speeds of the two sides of the clutch). The effects of using different input combinations are analyzed to exploit the overactuation feature of the system, and performance sensitivities to various design factors are studied. The simulation and experimental results from an SPHEV bus demonstrate that the MRC achieves reduced torque interruption, less vehicle jerk, and smaller frictional losses, compared to the conventional operation method.
Genetic Alterations and Oncogenic Pathways Associated with Breast Cancer Subtypes

Breast cancers can be divided into subtypes with important implications for prognosis and treatment. We set out to characterize the genetic alterations observed in different breast cancer subtypes and to identify specific candidate genes and pathways associated with subtype biology. mRNA expression levels of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2 were shown to predict marker status determined by immunohistochemistry and to be effective at assigning samples to subtypes. HER2+ cancers were shown to have the greatest frequency of high-level amplification (independent of the ERBB2 amplicon itself), but triple-negative cancers had the highest overall frequencies of copy gain. Triple-negative cancers also were shown to have more frequent loss of phosphatase and tensin homologue and mutation of RB1, which may contribute to genomic instability. We identified and validated seven regions of copy number alteration associated with different subtypes, and used integrative bioinformatics analysis to identify candidate oncogenes and tumor suppressors, including ERBB2, GRB7, MYST2, PPM1D, CCND1, HDAC2, FOXA1, and RASA1. We tested the candidate oncogene MYST2 and showed that it enhances the anchorage-independent growth of breast cancer cells. The genome-wide and region-specific differences between subtypes suggest the differential activation of oncogenic pathways. (Mol Cancer Res 2009;7(4):511–22)
Metacognitive Development

Traditional developmental research in memory and reasoning, as well as current investigations in such disparate areas as theory of mind, episte-mological understanding, knowledge acquisition, and problem solving, share the need to invoke a meta-level of cognition in explaining their respective phenomena. The increasingly influential construct of metacognition can be conceptualized in a developmental framework. Young children's dawning awareness of mental functions lies at one end of a developmental progression that eventuates in complex metaknowing capabilities that many adults do not master. During its extended developmental course, metacognition becomes more explicit, powerful, and effective, as it comes to operate increasingly under the individual's conscious control. Enhancing (a) metacognitive awareness of what one believes and how one knows and (b) metastrategic control in application of the strategies that process new information is an important developmental and educational goal.
A review of the effects of trace concentrations of anaesthetics of performance.

The professional performance of the anaesthetist is a subject of enormous importance which has been subjected to very little scientific scrutiny. From a questionnaire sent to junior hospital doctors of all specialties, Wilkinson, Tyler and Varey (1975) elicited that more than one-third of medical staff below the grade of registrar believed they suffered an impairment of working efficiency as a result of fatigue. Symptoms which were reported included irritability, inability to speak, tiredness and slowing of thought processes. Junior anaesthetists also believed that breathing anaesthetic waste gases contributed to fatigue and impaired working efficiency. affect performance. Performance following recovery from clinical doses of anaesthetic agents has been discussed recently in an excellent, comprehensive review by Drummond (1975) and this aspect will not be considered here. It is now generally accepted that working in the operating theatre environment is associated with an increase in health hazards. Although the direct cause of this problem has not been established, complaints of headaches by anaesthetists working with unscavenged anaesthetic circuits, data demonstrating illeffects in laboratory animals induced by low concentrations of anaesthetic agents, and laboratory studies
Monte Carlo localization in outdoor terrains using multilevel surface maps

We propose a novel combination of techniques for robustly estimating the position of a mobile robot in outdoor environments using range data. Our approach applies a particle filter to estimate the full six‐dimensional state of the robot and utilizes multilevel surface maps, which, in contrast to standard elevation maps, allow the robot to represent vertical structures and multiple levels in the environment. We describe probabilistic motion and sensor models to calculate the proposal distribution and to evaluate the likelihood of observations. We furthermore describe an active localization approach that actively selects the sensor orientation of the two‐dimensional laser range scanner to improve the localization results. To efficiently calculate the appropriate orientation, we apply a clustering operation on the particles and evaluate potential orientations on the basis of these clusters. Experimental results obtained with a mobile robot in large‐scale outdoor environments indicate that our approach yields robust and accurate position estimates. The experiments also demonstrate that multilevel surface maps lead to a significantly better localization performance than standard elevation maps. They additionally show that further accuracy is obtained from the active sensing approach. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Seasonal-based analysis of vegetation response to environmental variables in the mountainous forests of Western Himalaya using Landsat 8 data

ABSTRACT The health (or greenness) of the mountainous vegetation varies with seasons depending on its type and local topographic and climatic conditions. The forests in the Western Himalayas are influenced by variables such as precipitation and temperatures through seasons with considerable inter-annual variability. This study presents the phenological behaviour of the moist deciduous forests (MDFs) in Doon Valley of Uttarakhand, India, during 2013–2015 using medium spatial resolution data set. We proposed a new index called the temporal normalized phenology index (TNPI) to quantify the change in trajectories of Landsat 8 OLI-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) during two time steps of the vegetation growth cycle. To establish the associations amongst a set of environmental factors and vegetation greenness during different seasons, multiple regression analysis was carried out with sample-based TNPI values as response variable and elevation, slope, aspect, and Landsat 8-derived land surface temperature (LST) as explanatory variables. Our results indicated that major changes in NDVI values occur between April (transitional month of leafing phenophase and starting of leaf flush activity) and September (end of leaf flush activity). Furthermore, interactions amongst environmental variables (elevation, LST, and precipitation) are strongly correlated with changes in vegetation greenness between April and September, whereas they show lesser correlations as stand-alone factors. The pronounced effect of the change in LST (LST) was observed in lower elevation areas (400–600 m), which resulted in the change in vegetation greenness between leaf fall and leaf flush activity. In conclusion, cross-validated statistics confirmed that TNPI may be used as a better alternative for the analysis of temporal phenology cycle between two time steps of maximum and minimum vegetation growth periods. This may reduce the requirement of large time-series remote-sensing data sets for long-term vegetation phenology analysis.
Down‐regulation of CD44 expression in human prostatic carcinoma cell lines is correlated with DNA hypermethylation

Down‐regulation of the cell‐surface adhesion molecule CD44 has been suggested to play an important role in tumor progression and metastasis of prostate cancer. CD44 is encoded by a gene that contains a CpG‐rich region (CpG island) in its 5′ regulatory sequence. We tried to assess whether hypermethylation of this region is the mechanism responsible for CD44 transcriptional inactivation. A panel of prostatic‐carcinoma cell lines, Du145, LNCaP, PC3, PC346C and TSU, was analyzed for CD44 mRNA and protein expression. Du145, PC3 and TSU were positive for CD44, whereas in LNCaP and PC346C both CD44 mRNA and protein expression was suppressed. Methylation‐sensitive restriction‐enzyme analysis of genomic DNA showed that, in contrast to the CD44‐positive cell lines, the CD44‐negative lines were hypermethylated in the CD44 promoter CpG island. Furthermore, treatment of a PC346C culture with the demethylating agent 5‐azacytidine resulted in re‐expression of CD44 mRNA. It is concluded that hypermethylation of the CD44 5′ promoter region is one of the mechanisms by which CD44 expression is down‐regulated in prostatic‐carcinoma cell lines. Int. J. Cancer 80:439–443, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Boomerang: Demand-Driven Flow- and Context-Sensitive Pointer Analysis for Java

Many current program analyses require highly precise pointer information about small, tar- geted parts of a given program. This motivates the need for demand-driven pointer analyses that compute information only where required. Pointer analyses generally compute points-to sets of program variables or answer boolean alias queries. However, many client analyses require richer pointer information. For example, taint and typestate analyses often need to know the set of all aliases of a given variable under a certain calling context. With most current pointer analyses, clients must compute such information through repeated points-to or alias queries, increasing complexity and computation time for them. This paper presents Boomerang, a demand-driven, flow-, field-, and context-sensitive pointer analysis for Java programs. Boomerang computes rich results that include both the possible allocation sites of a given pointer (points-to information) and all pointers that can point to those allocation sites (alias information). For increased precision and scalability, clients can query Boomerang with respect to particular calling contexts of interest. Our experiments show that Boomerang is more precise than existing demand-driven pointer analyses. Additionally, using Boomerang, the taint analysis FlowDroid issues up to 29.4x fewer pointer queries compared to using other pointer analyses that return simpler pointer infor- mation. Furthermore, the search space of Boomerang can be significantly reduced by requesting calling contexts from the client analysis.
Degrons in protein substrates program the speed and operating efficiency of the AAA+ Lon proteolytic machine

AAA+ proteases are ATP-fueled machines that bind protein substrates via a degradation tag, unfold the molecule if necessary, and then translocate the polypeptide into a chamber for proteolysis. Tag recognition is normally viewed as a passive reaction. By contrast, for the AAA+ Lon protease, we show that degron tags are also regulatory elements that determine protease activity levels. Indeed, different tags fused to the same protein change degradation speeds and energetic efficiencies by 10-fold or more. Degron binding to multiple sites in the Lon hexamer appears to differentially stabilize specific enzyme conformations, including one with high protease and low ATPase activity, and results in positively cooperative degradation. These allosteric mechanisms allow Lon to operate in either a fast or slow proteolysis mode, according to specific physiological needs, and may help maximize degradation of misfolded proteins following stress-induced denaturation.
Prevention of Propofol Injection Pain in Children: A Comparison of Pretreatment with Tramadol and Propofol-Lidocaine Mixture

Background: The pain on propofol injection is considered to be a common and difficult to eliminate problem in children. In this study, we aimed to compare the efficacy of pretreatment with tramadol 1 mg.kg-1and propofol-lidocaine 20 mg mixture for prevention of propofol induced pain in children. Methods: One hundred and twenty ASA I-II patients undergoing orthopedic and otolaryngological surgery were included in this study and were divided into three groups with random table numbers. Group C (n=39) received normal saline placebo and Group T (n=40) received 1 mg.kg-1 tramadol 60 sec before propofol (180 mg 1% propofol with 2 ml normal saline) whereas Group L (n=40) received normal saline placebo before propofol-lidocaine mixture (180 mg 1% propofol with 2 ml %1 lidocaine). One patient in Group C was dropped out from the study because of difficulty in inserting an iv cannula. Thus, one hundred and nineteen patients were analyzed for the study. After given the calculated dose of propofol, a blinded observer assessed the pain with a four-point behavioral scale. Results: There were no significant differences in patient characteristics and intraoperative variables (p>0.05) except intraoperative fentanyl consumption and analgesic requirement one hr after surgery among the groups (p<0.05). Both tramadol 1 mg.kg-1 and lidocaine 20 mg mixture significantly reduced propofol pain when compared with control group. Moderate and severe pain were found higher in control group (p<0.05). The incidence of overall pain was 79.4% in the control group, 35% in tramadol group, 25% in lidocaine group respectively (p<0.001). Conclusions: Pretreatment with tramadol 60 sec before propofol injection and propofol-lidocaine mixture were significantly reduced propofol injection pain when compared to placebo in children.
Integrating spatial sensing to an interactive mobile 3D map

We present an interaction technique that integrates spatial sensing to an interactive 3D city model in order to support efficient localization of objects (esp. buildings) known or remembered in the real world. The technique offers a unified 3D interaction scheme for both visible and remote objects. In the egocentric view, sensor data from the mobile device (accelometer, gyroscope, GPS) is utilized to couple the viewport to user's movement similarly as in mobile AR. The technique offers easy shifting from the viewport-coupled mode to a top-down view where movement is POI-based. A field experiment compared it to an exocentric technique resembling the traditional pan-and-zoom in 2D mobile maps. The two techniques showed differential benefits for target acquisition performance.
Non-parametric modified histogram equalisation for contrast enhancement

Histogram equalisation has been a much sought-after technique for improving the contrast of an image, which however leads to an over enhancement of the image, giving it an unnatural and degraded appearance. In this framework, a generalised contrast enhancement algorithm is proposed which is independent of parameter setting for a given dynamic range of the input image. The algorithm uses the modified histogram for spatial transformation on grey scale to render a better quality image irrespective of the image type. Added to this, two variants of the proposed methodology are presented, one of which preserves the brightness of original image while the other variant increases the image brightness adaptively, giving it a better look. Qualitative and quantitative assessments like degree of entropy un-preservation, edge-based contrast measure and structure similarity index measures are then applied to the 500 image data set for comparing the proposed algorithm with several existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produces better or comparable enhanced images than several algorithms.
The Parkinson's disease-associated protein DJ-1 plays a positive nonmitochondrial role in endocytosis in Dictyostelium cells

ABSTRACT The loss of function of DJ-1 caused by mutations in DJ1 causes a form of familial Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the role of DJ-1 in healthy and in PD cells is poorly understood. Even its subcellular localization in mammalian cells is uncertain, with both cytosolic and mitochondrial locations having been reported. We show here that DJ-1 is normally located in the cytoplasm in healthy Dictyostelium discoideum cells. With its unique life cycle, straightforward genotype-phenotype relationships, experimental accessibility and genetic tractability, D. discoideum offers an attractive model to investigate the roles of PD-associated genes. Furthermore, the study of mitochondrial biology, mitochondrial genome transcription and AMP-activated protein kinase-mediated cytopathologies in mitochondrial dysfunction have been well developed in this organism. Unlike mammalian systems, Dictyostelium mitochondrial dysfunction causes a reproducible and readily assayed array of aberrant phenotypes: defective phototaxis, impaired growth, normal rates of endocytosis and characteristic defects in multicellular morphogenesis. This makes it possible to study whether the underlying cytopathological mechanisms of familial PD involve mitochondrial dysfunction. DJ-1 has a single homologue in the Dictyostelium genome. By regulating the expression level of DJ-1 in D. discoideum, we show here that in unstressed cells, DJ-1 is required for normal rates of endocytic nutrient uptake (phagocytosis and, to a lesser extent, pinocytosis) and thus growth. Reduced expression of DJ-1 had no effect on phototaxis in the multicellular migratory ‘slug’ stage of the life cycle, but resulted in thickened stalks in the final fruiting bodies. This pattern of phenotypes is distinct from that observed in Dictyostelium to result from mitochondrial dyfunction. Direct measurement of mitochondrial respiratory function in intact cells revealed that DJ-1 knockdown stimulates whereas DJ-1 overexpression inhibits mitochondrial activity. Together, our results suggest positive roles for DJ-1 in endocytic pathways and loss-of-function cytopathologies that are not associated with impaired mitochondrial function. Editor's choice: The Dictyostelium homologue of the Parkinson's disease-associated protein DJ-1 is located in the cytosol, and its loss causes cytopathological defects in endocytic and autophagic cell death pathways, but stimulates respiration by functionally normal mitochondrial respiratory complexes.
Host-Based Peripheral Blood Gene Expression Analysis for Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases

ABSTRACT Emerging pandemic infectious threats, inappropriate antibacterial use contributing to multidrug resistance, and increased morbidity and mortality from diagnostic delays all contribute to a need for improved diagnostics in the field of infectious diseases. Historically, diagnosis of infectious diseases has relied on pathogen detection; however, a novel concept to improve diagnostics in infectious diseases relies instead on the detection of changes in patterns of gene expression in circulating white blood cells in response to infection. Alterations in peripheral blood gene expression in the infected state are robust and reproducible, yielding diagnostic and prognostic information to help facilitate patient treatment decisions.
Power-efficient Server-class Performance from Arrays of Laptop Disks

The disk array of a server-class system can account for a significant portion of the server’s total power budget. Similar observations for mobile (e.g. laptop) systems have led to the development of power management policies that spin down the hard disk when it is idle, but these policies do not transfer well to server-class disks. On the other hand, state-of-the-art laptop disks have response times and bandwidths within a factor of 2.5 of their server class cousins, and consume less than one sixth the energy. These ratios suggest the possibility of replacing a server-class disk array with a larger array of mirrored laptop disks. By spinning up a subset of the disks proportional to the current workload, we can exploit the latency tolerance and parallelism of typical server workloads to achieve significant energy savings, with equal or better peak bandwidth. Potential savings range from 50% to 80% of the total disk energy consumption. This work was supported in part by NSF grants numbers EIA-0080124, CCR-9988361, and CCR-0204344, by DARPA/AFRL contract number F29601-00-K-0182, and by Sun Microsystems Laboratories.
Serum antioxidant vitamins and risk of cataract.

OBJECTIVE--To investigate serum concentrations of alpha tocopherol, beta carotene, retinol, and selenium for their prediction of end stage cataract. DESIGN--A case-control study, nested within a cohort study, based on the linkage of records of subjects aged 40-83 from a health survey with those from the national Finnish hospital discharge register. SUBJECTS--47 patients admitted to ophthalmological wards for senile cataract over 15 years and two controls per patient individually matched for sex, age, and municipality. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE--Concentration of serum micronutrients, development of cataract according to whether operation was performed. RESULTS--Low serum concentrations of antioxidant vitamins predicted the development of senile cataract, the odds ratio between the lowest third and the two higher thirds of the distribution of serum concentrations of alpha tocopherol and beta carotene being 1.9 (95% confidence interval 0.9 to 4.1) and 1.7 (0.8 to 3.8), respectively. Patients with both alpha tocopherol and beta carotene concentrations in the lowest third had an odds ratio of 2.6 (1.0 to 6.8) of cataract compared with subjects in the top two thirds. The associations were strengthened by adjustment for potential confounding factors such as occupation, smoking, blood pressure, serum cholesterol concentration, body mass index, and diabetes. No association was found between the serum concentrations of selenium, retinol, and retinol binding protein and the risk of cataract. CONCLUSIONS--Low serum concentrations of the antioxidant vitamins alpha tocopherol and beta carotene are risk factors for end stage senile cataract. Controlled trials of the role of antioxidant vitamins in cataract prevention are therefore warranted.