Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elevated C-reactive protein levels and ARMS2/HTRA1 gene variants in subjects without age-related macular degeneration

Purpose To investigate the association between the serum high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels and variants in age-related maculopathy susceptibility 2 (ARMS2)/HtrA serine peptidase 1 (HTRA1) genes in normal subjects with no evidence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Methods After clinical evaluation, information related to medical and social history was collected from 476 Japanese individuals (age range 17–89 years) along with blood samples. These subjects were medical checkup participants recruited at Nagoya University Hospital with no macular disease, as confirmed by fundus photographs. Serum hs-CRP levels were measured using a highly sensitive latex aggregation immunoassay. The genotypes of three polymorphisms in the ARMS2/HTRA1 locus, i.e., *372_815del443ins54 (del/ins), rs10490924, and rs11200638 were determined using direct sequencing and/or PCR-based assays. After the haplotype was constructed and analyzed, the associations between hs-CRP levels and representative del/ins genotypes were studied with and without adjustment for potential confounding factors. Results All three polymorphisms in the ARMS2/HTRA1 region were in almost complete linkage disequilibrium. Haplotype analyses showed the existence of only two common haplotypes, together comprising 98.9%. Regression analyses showed that the level of hs-CRP was positively correlated with increasing age. This age-dependent increase of hs-CRP levels was greatest in those with homozygous del/ins alleles and lowest in those with homozygous wild-type alleles, which was significant assuming an additive model for gene-dosage association (univariate analyses: p=0.016, multivariate analyses including smoking status, past medical history, and BMI: p=0.043). Consequently, the level of hs-CRP was greatest in those with homozygous del/ins alleles and lowest in those with homozygous wild-type alleles when subjects older than 60 were analyzed. This was significant assuming an additive model for gene-dosage association (univariate analyses: p=0.032). Conclusions An age-dependent elevation of serum hs-CRP levels may be accelerated in normal subjects with one or two risk alleles in the ARMS2/HTRA1 locus compared to those with homozygous wild-type alleles. The results of the current study show that the as-yet undetermined function of variants in the ARMS2/HTRA1 locus might be linked to inflammation, possibly contributing to the development of neovascular AMD.
X-ray scaling properties of early-type galaxies

We present an analysis of 39 X-ray luminous early-type galaxies observed with the ROSAT PSPC. Using multicomponent spectral and spatial fits to these data, we have measured halo abundance, temperature, luminosity and surface brightness profile. We compare these measurements to similar results from galaxy groups and clusters, fitting a number of relations commonly used in the study of these larger objects. In particular, we find that the σ ‐T X relation for our sample is similar to that reported for clusters, consistent with βspec = 1, and that the L X‐T X relation has a steep slope (gradient 4.8 ± 0.7) comparable with that found for galaxy groups. Assuming isothermality, we construct three-dimensional models of our galaxies, allowing us to measure gas entropy. We find no correlation between gas entropy and system mass, but do find a trend for low-temperature systems to have reduced gas fractions. We conclude that the galaxies in our sample are likely to have developed their haloes through galaxy winds, influenced by their surrounding environment.
Innovations in national nutrition surveys

The aim of this paper is to describe innovations taking place in national nutrition surveys in the UK and the challenges of undertaking innovations in such settings. National nutrition surveys must be representative of the overall population in characteristics such as socio-economic circumstances, age, sex and region. High response rates are critical. Dietary assessment innovations must therefore be suitable for all types of individuals, from the very young to the very old, for variable literacy and/or technical skills, different ethnic backgrounds and life circumstances, such as multiple carers and frequent travel. At the same time, national surveys need details on foods consumed. Current advances in dietary assessment use either technological innovations or simplified methods; neither lend themselves to national surveys. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) rolling programme, and the Diet and Nutrition Survey of Infants and Young Children (DNSIYC), currently use the 4-d estimated diary, a compromise for detail and respondent burden. Collection of food packaging enables identification of specific products. Providing space for location of eating, others eating, the television being on and eating at a table, adds to eating context information. Disaggregation of mixed dishes enables determination of true intakes of meat and fruit and vegetables. Measurement of nutritional status requires blood sampling and processing in DNSIYC clinics throughout the country and mobile units were used to optimise response. Hence, innovations in national surveys can and are being made but must take into account the paramount concerns of detail and response rate.
Bi-partite entanglement entropy in integrable models with backscattering

In this paper, we generalize the main result of a recent work by J L Cardy and the present authors concerning the bi-partite entanglement entropy between a connected region and its complement. There the expression of the leading-order correction to saturation in the large distance regime was obtained for integrable quantum field theories possessing diagonal scattering matrices. It was observed to depend only on the mass spectrum of the model and not on the specific structure of the diagonal scattering matrix. Here we extend that result to integrable models with backscattering (i.e. with non-diagonal scattering matrices). We use again the replica method, which connects the entanglement entropy to partition functions on Riemann surfaces with two branch points. Our main conclusion is that the mentioned infrared correction takes exactly the same form for theories with and without backscattering. In order to give further support to this result, we provide a detailed analysis in the sine-Gordon model in the coupling regime in which no bound states (breathers) occur. As a consequence, we obtain the leading correction to the sine-Gordon partition function on a Riemann surface in the large distance regime. Observations are made concerning the limit of large number of sheets.
Control of Vocal and Respiratory Patterns in Birdsong: Dissection of Forebrain and Brainstem Mechanisms Using Temperature

Learned motor behaviors require descending forebrain control to be coordinated with midbrain and brainstem motor systems. In songbirds, such as the zebra finch, regular breathing is controlled by brainstem centers, but when the adult songbird begins to sing, its breathing becomes tightly coordinated with forebrain-controlled vocalizations. The periods of silence (gaps) between song syllables are typically filled with brief breaths, allowing the bird to sing uninterrupted for many seconds. While substantial progress has been made in identifying the brain areas and pathways involved in vocal and respiratory control, it is not understood how respiratory and vocal control is coordinated by forebrain motor circuits. Here we combine a recently developed technique for localized brain cooling, together with recordings of thoracic air sac pressure, to examine the role of cortical premotor nucleus HVC (proper name) in respiratory-vocal coordination. We found that HVC cooling, in addition to slowing all song timescales as previously reported, also increased the duration of expiratory pulses (EPs) and inspiratory pulses (IPs). Expiratory pulses, like song syllables, were stretched uniformly by HVC cooling, but most inspiratory pulses exhibited non-uniform stretch of pressure waveform such that the majority of stretch occurred late in the IP. Indeed, some IPs appeared to change duration by the earlier or later truncation of an underlying inspiratory event. These findings are consistent with the idea that during singing the temporal structure of EPs is under the direct control of forebrain circuits, whereas that of IPs can be strongly influenced by circuits downstream of HVC, likely in the brainstem. An analysis of the temporal jitter of respiratory and vocal structure suggests that IPs may be initiated by HVC at the end of each syllable and terminated by HVC immediately before the onset of the next syllable.
Efficient identification of uncongested internet links for topology downscaling

It has been recently suggested that uncongested links could be completely ignored when evaluating Internet's performance. In particular, based on the observation that only the congested links along the path of each flow introduce sizable queueing delays and dependencies among flows, it has been shown that one can infer the performance of the larger Internet by creating and observing a suitably scaled-down replica, consisting of the congested links only. Given that the majority of Internet links are uncongested, it has been demonstrated that this approach can be used to greatly simplify and expedite performance prediction. However, an important open problem, directly related to the practicability of such an approach, is whether there exist efficient and scalable ways for identifying uncongested links, in large and complex Internet-like networks. Of course, such a question is not only very important for scaling down Internet's topology, but also in many other contexts, e.g. such as in traffic engineering and capacity planning. In this paper we present simple rules that can be used to efficiently identify uncongested Internet links. In particular, we first identify scenarios under which one can easily deduce whether a link is uncongested by inspecting the network topology. Then, we identify scenarios in which this is not possible, and propose an efficient methodology, based on the large deviations theory and flow-level statistics, to approximate the queue length distribution,and in turn, to deduce the congestion level of a link. We also demonstrate how simple commonly used metrics, such as the link utilization, can be quite misleading in classifying an Internet link.
PIEJoin: Towards Parallel Set Containment Joins

The efficient computation of set containment joins (SCJ) over set-valued attributes is a well-studied problem with many applications in commercial and scientific fields. Nevertheless, there still exists a number of open questions: An extensive comparative evaluation is still missing, the two most recent algorithms have not yet been compared to each other, and the exact impact of item sort order and properties of the data on algorithms performance still is largely unknown. Furthermore, all previous works only considered sequential join algorithms, although modern servers offer ample opportunities for parallelization. We present PIEJoin, a novel algorithm for computing SCJ based on intersecting prefix trees built at runtime over the to-be-joined attributes. We also present a highly optimized implementation of PIEJoin which uses tree signatures for saving space and interval labeling for improving runtime of the basic method. Most importantly, PIEJoin can be parallelized easily by partitioning the tree intersection. A comprehensive evaluation on eight data sets shows that PIEJoin already in its sequential form clearly outperforms two of the three most important competitors (PRETTI and PRETTI+). It is mostly yet not always slower than the third, LIMIT+(opj) but requires significantly less space. The parallel version of PIEJoin we present here achieves significant further speed-ups, yet our evaluation also shows that further research is needed as finding the best way of partitioning the join turns out to be non-trivial.
Skilled and Unaware: The Interactive Effects of Team Cognition, Team Metacognition, and Task Confidence on Team Performance

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the independent and joint effects of objective and subjective measures of situation awareness on team performance. We propose that objective and subjective measures are types of metacognitive experiences, with objective measures capturing actual situation knowledge and subjective measures capturing perceived situation knowledge. These metacognitive experiences are theorized to work in tandem with task confidence to predict performance. Data were collected from 72 three-person teams working in a simulated task environment of emergency management teams. Objective situation awareness, subjective situation awareness, and task confidence were each measured through the Situation Awareness Global Awareness Technique, the Mission Awareness Rating Scale, and collective efficacy, respectively. Results showed that all three metacognitive experiences interacted in predicting team performance, such that task confidence strengthened the relationship between actual situation knowledge and performance when the team’s perceived situation awareness was low and weakened the relationship when the team’s perceived situation awareness was high. These results suggest that it is always important to have the necessary actual situation knowledge to complete a task, but there are times in which aspects of awareness in relation to judgments or feelings should be low in order to create the necessary drive to regulate one’s behavior.
The Natively Disordered Loop of Bcl-2 Undergoes Phosphorylation-Dependent Conformational Change and Interacts with Pin1

Bcl-2 plays a central role in the regulation of apoptosis. Structural studies of Bcl-2 revealed the presence of a flexible and natively disordered loop that bridges the Bcl-2 homology motifs, BH3 and BH4. This loop is phosphorylated on multiple sites in response to a variety of external stimuli, including the microtubule-targeting drugs, paclitaxel and colchicine. Currently, the underlying molecular mechanism of Bcl-2 phosphorylation and its biological significance remain elusive. In this study, we investigated the molecular characteristics of this anti-apoptotic protein. To this end, we generated synthetic peptides derived from the Bcl-2 loop, and multiple Bcl-2 loop truncation mutants that include the phosphorylation sites. Our results demonstrate that S87 in the flexible loop of Bcl-2 is the primary phosphorylation site for JNK and ERK2, suggesting some sequence or structural specificity for the phosphorylation by these kinases. Our NMR studies and molecular dynamics simulation studies support indicate that phosphorylation of S87 induces a conformational change in the peptide. Finally, we show that the phosphorylated peptides of the Bcl-2 loop can bind Pin1, further substantiating the phosphorylation-mediated conformation change of Bcl-2.
Improving Performance of Cloud Key-Value Storage Using Flushing Optimization

Key-value store is an essential component with an increasing demand in many scale-out environments, including social networks, online retail, and cloud services. Hence, modern key-value storage engines provide many features, including transaction, versioning, replication, etc. In storage engines, transaction processing provides atomicity and durability by using write-ahead logging (WAL), which flushes log data before the data page is written to persistent storage in synchronous commit. However, according to our observation, WAL is a performance bottleneck on key-value storage engine since the flushing of log data to persistent storage incurs significant overhead of lock contention and fsync() calls even with various optimizations in the existing scheme. In this paper, we propose an approach for improving performance of key-value storage by optimizing the existing flushing scheme combined with group commit and consolidate array. Our scheme aggregates multiple flushing of log data into a large request on the fly and completes the request early. This scheme is an efficient group commit that reduces the number of frequent lock acquisition and fsync() calls in the synchronous commit while supporting same transaction level that the existing scheme provides. We implemented our scheme on WiredTiger storage engine and evaluated that our scheme improves the performance by 1.3-5.5x on the key-value workload compared to the existing scheme.
PENGARUH DISCOVERY LEARNING TERHADAP KEMAMPUAN BERPIKIR KRITIS DAN ANALITIS DALAM MENEMUKAN KONSEP KEANEKARAGAMAN TUMBUHAN

Penelitian bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh discovery l earning terhadap kemampuan berpikir kritis dan analitis mahasiswa dalam menemukan konsep pada materi keanekaragaman tumbuhan. Adapun yang menjadi sub tujuan penelitian adalah untuk mengetahui: (1) kemampuan berpikir kritis mahasiswa setelah diberikan discovery learning ; (2) kemampuan berpikir analitis mahasiswa setelah diberikan discovery learning ; (3) pengaruh discovery learning terhadap kemampuan berpikir kritis mahasiswa ; (4) pengaruh discovery learning terhadap kemampuan berpikir analitis mahasiswa ; (5) besar pengaruh discovery learning terhadap kemampuan berpikir kritis mahasiswa; dan (6) besar pengaruh discovery learning terhadap kemampuan berpikir analitis mahasiswa. Penelitian menggunakan metode eksperimen semu dengan pendekatan kuantitatif. Populasi penelitian adalah seluruh mahasiswa semester III Prodi Pendidikan Matematika IKIP PGRI Pontianak yang mengambil mata kuliah Biologi Umum. Sampel penelitian menggunakan sampel jenuh dimana sampel yang digunakan adalah seluruh mahasiswa semester III yang merupakan anggota populasi. Hasil penelitian adalah: (1) nilai rata-rata kemampuan berpikir kritis mahasiswa setelah diberikan discovery learning adalah 61,74; (2) nilai rata-rata kemampuan berpikir analitis mahasiswa setelah diberikan discovery learning adalah 60,39; (3) terdapat pengaruh discovery learning terhadap kemampuan berpikir kritis mahasiswa; (4) terdapat pengaruh discovery learning terhadap kemampuan berpikir analitis mahasiswa; (5) discovery learning memberikan pengaruh besar terhadap kemampuan berpikir kritis mahasiswa, yaitu 83%; dan (6) discovery learning memberikan pengaruh besar terhadap kemampuan berpikir analitis mahasiswa, yaitu 92%. Kata Kunci: discovery learning, berpikir kritis, berpikir analitis.
Spectrum Sensing Prototype for Sensing ATSC and Wireless Microphone Signals

Spectrum sensing is the key enabler for dynamic spectrum access in the television (TV) bands as it can allow secondary networks to reuse spectrum without causing harmful interference to primary users. In this paper we describe a sensing prototype that has been developed to demonstrate robust sensing of TV signals as well as wireless microphone signals in the laboratory and field. We will present the algorithms as well as simulation, lab and field test results that validate the prototype's capability to identify these signals down to a level of -116 dBm.
Compensating for the Eye-Hand Span Improves Gaze Control in Human-Computer Interfaces

Advances in the measurement of eye movements make it possible to construct gaze-controlled interfaces for physically challenged people and for enhanced human-computer interaction. The use of hybrid interfaces that combine manual and gaze control has the advantage of being effortless, quick, and intuitive: The user selects an item by looking at it and confirms this selection by pressing a button. Earlier studies have shown task completion times to be slightly longer for gaze-controlled interfaces compared to mouse-controlled interfaces. From these results we derived the hypothesis that the efficiency of conventional hybrid interfaces is limited by the fact that the users are already looking for the next object when pressing the button, causing an unintended selection. In the first experiment we investigated if such an eye-hand span really exists and which factors affect its size. In the second experiment we modified the gaze-controlled interface and showed that compensating for the eye-hand span substantially improves the subjects’ performance.
A Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal crystal protein with a high activity against members of the family Noctuidae

The full characterization of a novel insecticidal crystal protein, named Cry9Ca1 according to the revised nomenclature for Cry proteins, from Bacillus thuringiensis serovar tolworthi is reported. The crystal protein has 1,157 amino acids and a molecular mass of 129.8 kDa. It has the typical features of the Lepidoptera-active crystal proteins such as five conserved sequence blocks. Also, it is truncated upon trypsin digestion to a toxic fragment of 68.7 kDa by removal of 43 amino acids at the N terminus and the complete C-terminal half after conserved sequence block 5. The 68.7-kDa fragment is further degraded to a nontoxic 55-kDa fragment. The crystal protein has a fairly broad spectrum of activity against lepidopteran insects, including members of the families Pyralidae, Plutellidae, Sphingidae, and Noctuidae. A 50% lethal concentration of less than 100 ng/cm2 of diet agar was found for diamondback moth, European corn borer, cotton bollworm, and beet armyworm. It is the first insecticidal crystal protein with activity against cutworms. No activity was observed against some beetles, such as Colorado potato beetle. The protein recognizes a receptor different from that recognized by Cry1Ab5 in Ostrinia nubilalis and Plutella xylostella. In Spodoptera exigua and P. xylostella, it binds to a receptor which is also recognized by Cry1Cax but with a lower affinity. In these insects, Cry1Cax probably binds with a higher affinity to an additional receptor which is not recognized by Cry9Ca1. Elimination of a trypsin cleavage site which is responsible for the degradation to a nontoxic fragment did result in protease resistance but not in increased toxicity against O. nubilalis.
Tactile-Visual Links in Exogenous Spatial Attention under Different Postures: Convergent Evidence from Psychophysics and ERPs

Tactile-visual links in spatial attention were examined by presenting spatially nonpredictive tactile cues to the left or right hand, shortly prior to visual targets in the left or right hemifield. To examine the spatial coordinates of any cross-modal links, different postures were examined. The hands were either uncrossed, or crossed so that the left hand lay in the right visual field and vice versa. Visual judgments were better on the side where the stimulated hand lay, though this effect was somewhat smaller with longer intervals between cue and target, and with crossed hands. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) showed a similar pattern. Larger amplitude occipital N1 components were obtained for visual events on the same side as the preceding tactile cue, at ipsilateral electrode sites. Negativities in the Nd2 interval at midline and lateral central sites, and in the Nd1 interval at electrode Pz, were also enhanced for the cued side. As in the psychophysical results, ERP cueing effects during the crossed posture were determined by the side of space in which the stimulated hand lay, not by the anatomical side of the initial hemispheric projection for the tactile cue. These results demonstrate that crossmodal links in spatial attention can influence sensory brain responses as early as the N1, and that these links operate in a spatial frame-of-reference that can remap between the modalities across changes in posture.