Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integration of geomagnetic disturbance modeling into the power flow: A methodology for large-scale system studies

This paper presents a methodology for integrated power flow modeling of the impact of geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) on power system voltage stability. GMDs cause quasi-dc, geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) in the transformers and transmission lines, which in turn cause saturation of the high voltage transformers, greatly increasing their reactive power consumption. GICs can be calculated using standard power flow modeling parameters such as line resistance, augmented with several GIC specific fields including substation geographic coordinates and grounding resistance, transformer configuration, and transformer coil winding resistances. When exact values are not available, estimated quantities can be used. By then integrating GIC into power flow analysis, the changes in reactive power losses and bus voltages can be quantified to assess the risk of voltage instability and large-scale voltage collapse. An example calculation is provided for a North American Eastern Interconnect model.
Locomotion pattern and trunk musculoskeletal architecture among Urodela

We comparatively examined the trunk musculature and prezygapophyseal angle of mid-trunk vertebra in eight urodele species with different locomotive modes (aquatic Siren intermedia, Amphiuma tridactylum, Necturus maculosus and Andrias japonicus; semi-aquatic Cynops pyrrhogaster, Cynops ensicauda; and terrestrial Hynobius nigrescens, Hynobius lichenatus and Ambystoma tigrinum). We found that the more terrestrial species were characterized by larger dorsal and abdominal muscle weight ratios compared with those of the more aquatic species, whereas muscle ratios of the lateral hypaxial musculature were larger in the more aquatic species. The lateral hypaxial muscles were thicker in the more aquatic species, whereas the M. rectus abdominis was more differentiated in the more terrestrial species. Our results suggest that larger lateral hypaxial muscles function for lateral bending during underwater locomotion in aquatic species. Larger dorsalis and abdominal muscles facilitate resistance against sagittal extension of the trunk, stabilization and support of the ventral contour line against gravity in terrestrial species. The more aquatic species possessed a more horizontal prezygapophyseal angle for more flexible lateral locomotion. In contrast, the more terrestrial species have an increasingly vertical prezygapophyseal angle to provide stronger column support against gravity. Thus, we conclude trunk structure in urodeles differs clearly according to their locomotive modes.
ANALISIS FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANGMEMPENGARUHI MINAT PENGGUNAANSISTEM INFORMASI BERBASIS KOMPUTERDENGAN MENGGUNAKAN MODEL UTAUT(Studi Empiris pada Pengguna Sistem InformasiAkuntansi di Bank Mandiri)

This study aim to analyze factors that affect behavioral intention of information system on computer based using partial models of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) proposed by Venkatesh et. al (2003). This model uses five factors on which the measure of information system’s success, those are perfomance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition, and behavioral intention of information system. This research used a sample of Bank Mandiri CBC Jakarta Sudirman employees with survey method through questionnaires. A total of 40 questionnaires were distributed with the usable response rate is 98%. Data that have been obtained was analyzed by using PLS (Partial Least Square). The result showed that only two of five hypothesis accepted. Perfomance expectancy affect behavioral intention of information system, so does behavioral intention of information system that affect the use of information system positively. Meanwhile, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating condition doesn’t have an influence of behavioral intention of information system.
Instructions for use Title Aberrant splicing of the hRasGRP 4 transcript and decreased levels of this signaling protein in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells in a subset of patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Introduction: An unidentified population of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) express Ras guanine nucleotide releasing protein 4 (RasGRP4). The aim of our study was to identify the cells in human blood that express hRasGRP4, and then to determine if hRasGRP4 was altered in any patient with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: Monocytes and T cells were purified from PBMCs of normal individuals, and were evaluated for their expression of RasGRP4 mRNA/protein. The levels of RasGRP4 transcripts were evaluated in the PBMCs from healthy volunteers and RA patients by real-time quantitative PCR. The nucleotide sequences of RasGRP4 cDNAs were also determined. RasGRP4 protein expression in PBMCs/monocytes was evaluated. Recombinant hRasGRP4 was expressed in mammalian cells. Results: Circulating CD14 cells in normal individuals were found to express hRasGRP4. The levels of the hRasGRP4 transcript were significantly higher in the PBMCs of our RA patients relative to healthy individuals. Sequence analysis of hRasGRP4 cDNAs from these PBMCs revealed 10 novel splice variants. Aberrantly spliced hRasGRP4 transcripts were more frequent in the RA patients than in normal individuals. The presence of one of these abnormal splice variants was linked to RA. The levels of hRasGRP4 protein in PBMCs tended to be lower. As expected, the defective transcripts led to altered and/or nonfunctional protein in terms of P44/42 mitogenactivated protein (MAP) kinase activation. Conclusions: The identification of defective isoforms of hRasGRP4 transcripts in the PBMCs of RA patients raises the possibility that dysregulated expression of hRasGRP4 in developing monocytes plays a pathogenic role in a subset of RA patients.
Simultaneous Analysis of Proteome, Phospho- and Glycoproteome of Rat Kidney Tissue with Electrostatic Repulsion Hydrophilic Interaction Chromatography

Protein post-translational modifications (PTMs) are regulated separately from protein expression levels. Thus, simultaneous characterization of the proteome and its PTMs is pivotal to an understanding of protein regulation, function and activity. However, concurrent analysis of the proteome and its PTMs by mass spectrometry is a challenging task because the peptides bearing PTMs are present in sub-stoichiometric amounts and their ionization is often suppressed by unmodified peptides of high abundance. We describe here a method for concurrent analysis of phosphopeptides, glycopeptides and unmodified peptides in a tryptic digest of rat kidney tissue with a sequence of ERLIC and RP-LC-MS/MS in a single experimental run, thereby avoiding inter-experimental variation. Optimization of loading solvents and elution gradients permitted ERLIC to be performed with totally volatile solvents. Two SCX and four ERLIC gradients were compared in details, and one ERLIC gradient was found to perform the best, which identified 2929 proteins, 583 phosphorylation sites in 338 phosphoproteins and 722 N-glycosylation sites in 387 glycoproteins from rat kidney tissue. Two hundred low-abundance proteins with important functions were identified only from the glyco- or phospho-subproteomes, reflecting the importance of the enrichment and separation of modified peptides by ERLIC. In addition, this strategy enables identification of unmodified and corresponding modified peptides (partial phosphorylation and N-glycosylation) from the same protein. Interestingly, partially modified proteins tend to occur on proteins involved in transport. Moreover, some membrane or extracellular proteins, such as versican core protein and fibronectin, were found to have both phosphorylation and N-glycosylation, which may permit an assessment of the potential for cross talk between these two vital PTMs and their roles in regulation.
Effect of Voxel Size on Detection of External Root Resorption Defects Using Cone Beam Computed Tomography

Background Selecting a voxel size that yields minimal radiation dose with no significant compromise of the diagnostic accuracy of cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) is particularly important. Objectives This study aimed to assess the effect of voxel size on detection accuracy of simulated external root resorption defects using NewTom CBCT system. Materials and Methods In this diagnostic study, the roots of 90 extracted human central incisors were hypothetically divided into cervical, middle, and apical thirds. Variable-size defects were prepared in the buccal and lingual surfaces of the roots and CBCT scans were obtained with four different voxel sizes (150, 200, 250, and 300). Presence or absence of defects on CBCT scans was determined by three radiologists and the results were compared with the gold standard (actual size and depth of defects). Sensitivity and specificity values were calculated and reported for different groups. Results In the lingual surfaces, the highest specificity and sensitivity belonged to 300µm voxel size (92.9%), and 200 and 250µm voxel sizes (both 97.4%) in the cervical third, respectively. In the middle third, the highest specificity and sensitivity belonged to 250 and 200µm voxel sizes (84.6% and 100%, respectively). In the apical third, the highest specificity and sensitivity belonged to 300 µm voxel size (100% and 97.9%, respectively). In the buccal surfaces, the highest specificity and sensitivity belonged to 150 (75.0%), 300 and 250 µm voxel sizes (100%) and the minimum values belonged to 200 µm voxel size (60% and 97.3%) in the cervical third. In the apical third, the highest specificity and sensitivity were noted in 300 µm voxel size (100% and 97.6%, respectively) and the minimum values were seen in 200 and 150 µm voxel sizes (93.8%, 90.5%, respectively). In the middle third, 300, 250 and 200 µm voxel sizes yielded the highest specificity (88.9%), while 150 µm voxel size yielded the highest sensitivity (98.8%). Conclusion Considering the similar diagnostic efficacy of all voxel sizes, 300 µm voxel size can be used with adequate efficacy for detection of external root resorption defects with minimal patient radiation dose and the shortest scanning time.
Affinity-aware Virtual Cluster Optimization for MapReduce Applications

Infrastructure-as-a-Service clouds are becoming ubiquitous for provisioning virtual machines on demand. Cloud service providers expect to use least resources to deliver best services. As users frequently request virtual machines to build virtual clusters and run MapReduce-like jobs for big data processing, cloud service providers intend to place virtual machines closely to minimize network latency and subsequently reduce data movement cost. In this paper we focus on the virtual machine placement issue for provisioning virtual clusters with minimum network latency in clouds. We define distance as the latency between virtual machines and use it to measure the affinity of virtual clusters. Such metric of distance indicates the considerations of virtual machine placement and topology of physical nodes in clouds. Then we formulate our problem as the classical shortest distance problem and solve it by modeling to integer programming problem. A greedy virtual machine placement algorithm is designed to get a compact virtual cluster. Furthermore, an improved heuristic algorithm is also presented for achieving a global resource optimization. The simulation results verify our algorithms and the experiment results validate the improvement achieved by our approaches.
Limits on jump inversion for strong reducibilities

Abstract We show that Sacks' and Shoenfield's analogs of jump inversion fail for both tt- and wtt-reducibilities in a strong way. In particular we show that there is a δ20 set B >tt ∅′ such that there is no c.e. set A with A′ ≡wttB. We also show that there is a Σ20 set C >tt ∅′ such that there is no δ20 set D with D′ ≡wttC.
Autophagy activation in COL6 myopathic patients by a low-protein-diet pilot trial

ABSTRACT A pilot clinical trial based on nutritional modulation was designed to assess the efficacy of a one-year low-protein diet in activating autophagy in skeletal muscle of patients affected by COL6/collagen VI-related myopathies. Ullrich congenital muscular dystrophy and Bethlem myopathy are rare inherited muscle disorders caused by mutations of COL6 genes and for which no cure is yet available. Studies in col6 null mice revealed that myofiber degeneration involves autophagy defects and that forced activation of autophagy results in the amelioration of muscle pathology. Seven adult patients affected by COL6 myopathies underwent a controlled low-protein diet for 12 mo and we evaluated the presence of autophagosomes and the mRNA and protein levels for BECN1/Beclin 1 and MAP1LC3B/LC3B in muscle biopsies and blood leukocytes. Safety measures were assessed, including muscle strength, motor and respiratory function, and metabolic parameters. After one y of low-protein diet, autophagic markers were increased in skeletal muscle and blood leukocytes of patients. The treatment was safe as shown by preservation of lean:fat percentage of body composition, muscle strength and function. Moreover, the decreased incidence of myofiber apoptosis indicated benefits in muscle homeostasis, and the metabolic changes pointed at improved mitochondrial function. These data provide evidence that a low-protein diet is able to activate autophagy and is safe and tolerable in patients with COL6 myopathies, pointing at autophagy activation as a potential target for therapeutic applications. In addition, our findings indicate that blood leukocytes are a promising noninvasive tool for monitoring autophagy activation in patients.
A modified neural network model for Lobula Giant Movement Detector with additional depth movement feature

The Lobula Giant Movement Detector (LGMD) is a wide-field visual neuron that is located in the Lobula layer of the Locust nervous system. The LGMD increases its firing rate in response to both the velocity of the approaching object and its proximity. It has been found that it can respond to looming stimuli very quickly and can trigger avoidance reactions whenever a rapidly approaching object is detected. It has been successfully applied in visual collision avoidance systems for vehicles and robots. This paper proposes a modified LGMD model that provides additional movement depth direction information. The proposed model retains the simplicity of the previous neural network model, adding only a few new cells. It has been tested on both simulated and recorded video data sets. The experimental results shows that the modified model can very efficiently provide stable information on the depth direction of movement.
Reliability Aware Task Scheduling In Wireless Hetrogeneous Systems

A distributed operating system is one that looks to its user like an ordinary centralized operating system, but runs on multiple, independent nodes. A distributed operating system should:  control resource allocation to allow their use in the most effective way;  provide the user with a convenient virtual computer that serves as a high-level programming environment;  hide the distribution of the resources;  provide mechanisms for protecting system resources against access by unauthorized users. The main purpose of this research is to explore and use the idle resources and to share the wireless distributed system fairly among the processes. Reliability is taken into account to achieve the goal of scheduling. The comparison study, based on both randomly generated graphs and the graphs of some real applications, shows that proposed scheduling algorithm can achieve reliable task scheduling and improves system reliability significantly. For experimental performance study, a real world application as well as synthetic workloads have been considered. It can be stated that shortening scheduling times improves performance of the system. Hence if scheduling algorithms are applied in parallel to reduce scheduling times, the performance of the heterogeneous clusters will be further enhanced. General Terms Distributed Computing, reliable task scheduling.
Recommendations for the Nonclinical Development of Topical Microbicides for Prevention of HIV Transmission: An Update

Abstract:The development of methods to prevent HIV infection is critical to curbing the rising epidemic. Topical microbicides represent a potential new strategy for reduction of HIV transmission. The purpose of this article is to update and expand upon the nonclinical recommendations of a previously published document on the development of microbicides prepared by the International Working Group on Microbicides. The nonclinical studies discussed here represent general concepts and regulatory considerations that are pertinent to the development of topical microbicides for prevention or reduction of HIV transmission. Essential early steps in product development include the determination of antiviral activity, cytotoxicity, mechanism of action, pathways to resistance, and cross-resistance to approved drugs. Other parameters to consider include activity against vaginal microflora and pathogens that cause sexually transmitted diseases. Before and during clinical trials, nonclinical data on toxicology and pharmacokinetics should be obtained. Finally, product quality issues, including microbicide formulation characteristics, interaction with other products, and stability, should be addressed.
Rayleigh-Rice Mixture Parameter Estimation via EM Algorithm for Change Detection in Multispectral Images

The problem of estimating the parameters of a Rayleigh-Rice mixture density is often encountered in image analysis (e.g., remote sensing and medical image processing). In this paper, we address this general problem in the framework of change detection (CD) in multitemporal and multispectral images. One widely used approach to CD in multispectral images is based on the change vector analysis. Here, the distribution of the magnitude of the difference image can be theoretically modeled by a Rayleigh-Rice mixture density. However, given the complexity of this model, in applications, a Gaussian-mixture approximation is often considered, which may affect the CD results. In this paper, we present a novel technique for parameter estimation of the Rayleigh-Rice density that is based on a specific definition of the expectation-maximization algorithm. The proposed technique, which is characterized by good theoretical properties, iteratively updates the parameters and does not depend on specific optimization routines. Several numerical experiments on synthetic data demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, which is general and can be applied to any image processing problem involving the Rayleigh-Rice mixture density. In the CD context, the Rayleigh-Rice model (which is theoretically derived) outperforms other empirical models. Experiments on real multitemporal and multispectral remote sensing images confirm the validity of the model by returning significantly higher CD accuracies than those obtained by using the state-of-the-art approaches.
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF CLOUD COMPUTING CENTERS BY BREAKING-DOWN RESPONSE TIME

Cloud computing is the emerging field of the computer science and it is occupying the most of the areas in computers. It delivers on the emerging business essentials for agile, flexible and time-to-value performance. The performance and availability of cloud applications has a noticeable impact on user adoption and revenue of the cloud. The work on the performance analysis of the cloud using M/G/m/m+r queuing system till date gives the novel and approximate analytical model. It gives the relationship between the input buffer size and number of servers available. It also gives the performance indicators like mean number of tasks in the system, task blocking probability and immediate service probability. In existing model, the performance can be improved by breaking down the response time in the setup, execution, return and clean up time. In this paper we are proposing a solution for this constraint. This approach also will give the all performance indicators like above model.
Effects of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis on Kinematics and Kinetics of the Lower Extremities Call for Consequences in Physical Activities Recommendations

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) patients (n = 36) with symmetrical polyarticular joint involvement of the lower extremities and healthy controls (n = 20) were compared concerning differences in kinematic, kinetic, and spatio-temporal parameters with 3D gait analysis. The aims of this study were to quantify the differences in gait between JIA patients and healthy controls and to provide data for more detailed sport activities recommendations. JIA-patients showed reduced walking speed and step length, strongly anterior tilted pelvis, reduced maximum hip extension, reduced knee extension during single support phase and reduced plantar flexion in push off. Additionally the roll-off procedure of the foot was slightly decelerated. The reduced push off motion in the ankle was confirmed by lower peaks in ankle moment and power. The gait of JIA-patients can be explained as a crouch-like gait with hyperflexion in hip and knee joints and less plantar flexion in the ankle. A preventive mobility workout would be recommendable to reduce these restrictions in the future. Advisable are sports with emphasis on extension in hip, knee, and ankle plantar flexion.
The Potential Usefulness of Free Fetal DNA in Maternal Blood for Prenatal Fetal Gender Determination in Multiple Pregnancies

We applied a noninvasive prenatal test for the determination of fetal gender in multiple pregnancies by using free fetal DNA circulating in maternal blood in order to evaluate whether the quantification of male DNA could distinguish the fetal gender and the number of male and female fetuses in multiple pregnancies. We enrolled consecutively 44 women with twin pregnancies between 11–14 weeks of gestation. Peripheral maternal blood was collected, and genomic DNA was extracted from maternal plasma and analyzed for the multicopy DYS 14 sequence by using real-time PCR to quantify male DNA. Results showed that male DNA concentration was significantly higher in twin pregnancies with at least one male fetus, compared to twin pregnancies with only female fetuses. Comparing male DNA concentration in pregnancies with two male fetuses versus pregnancies with one female fetus and one male fetus, we did not obtain a significant difference between the two groups due to a slight overlapping of the range values. Therefore, our test correctly predicted fetal gender, distinguishing twin pregnancies with at least one male fetus from twin pregnancies with only female fetuses, with a diagnostic accuracy of 100%. For distinguishing pregnancies with two male fetuses from pregnancies with both female and male fetuses, a diagnostic accuracy of 76.1% was achieved.