Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rescue of Salivary Gland Function after Stem Cell Transplantation in Irradiated Glands

Head and neck cancer is the fifth most common malignancy and accounts for 3% of all new cancer cases each year. Despite relatively high survival rates, the quality of life of these patients is severely compromised because of radiation-induced impairment of salivary gland function and consequential xerostomia (dry mouth syndrome). In this study, a clinically applicable method for the restoration of radiation-impaired salivary gland function using salivary gland stem cell transplantation was developed. Salivary gland cells were isolated from murine submandibular glands and cultured in vitro as salispheres, which contained cells expressing the stem cell markers Sca-1, c-Kit and Musashi-1. In vitro, the cells differentiated into salivary gland duct cells and mucin and amylase producing acinar cells. Stem cell enrichment was performed by flow cytrometric selection using c-Kit as a marker. In vitro, the cells differentiated into amylase producing acinar cells. In vivo, intra-glandular transplantation of a small number of c-Kit+ cells resulted in long-term restoration of salivary gland morphology and function. Moreover, donor-derived stem cells could be isolated from primary recipients, cultured as secondary spheres and after re-transplantation ameliorate radiation damage. Our approach is the first proof for the potential use of stem cell transplantation to functionally rescue salivary gland deficiency.
MathPlayer: web-based math accessibility

MathPlayer is a plug-in to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) that renders MathML[11] visually. It also contains a number of features that make mathematical expressions accessible to people with print-disabilities. MathPlayer integrates with many screen readers including JAWS and Window-Eyes. MathPlayer also works with a number of TextHELP! 's learning disabilities products.
Is System Quality Irrelevant to System Use? - A Literature Review of the Relationship Between System Quality and System Use

Organizations invest in information technology with the expectation that it will contribute to organizational performance. Information systems researchers have spent much effort in creating models and examining the factors influential to information system success, one measure of success being system use. While the DeLone and McLean (2003) model shows the causal relationship between system quality and system use, several empirical studies surprisingly found this relationship to not be significant. That system quality may not be significantly related to system use or intention to use seems to be counterintuitive and confusing, and provides the motivation for this paper. In this study, we report on a literature review of research on the relationship between system quality and system use, in an effort to unravel this confusion.
QoS of timeout-based self-tuned failure detectors: the effects of the communication delay predictor and the safety margin

Unreliable failure detectors have been an important abstraction to build dependable distributed applications over asynchronous distributed systems subject to faults. Their implementations are commonly based on timeouts to ensure algorithm termination. However, for systems built on the Internet, it is hard to estimate this time value due to traffic variations. Thus, different types of predictors have been used to model this behavior and make predictions of delays. In order to increase the quality of service (QoS), self-tuned failure detectors dynamically adapt their timeouts to the communication delay behavior added of a safety margin. In this paper, we evaluate the QoS of a failure detector for different combinations of communication delay predictors and safety margins. As the results show, to improve the QoS, one must consider the relation between the pair predictor/margin, instead of each one separately. Furthermore, performance and accuracy requirements should be considered for a suitable relationship.
Sedimentary architecture of Upper Ordovician tunnel valleys, Gargaf Arch, Libya: Implications for the genesis of a hydrocarbon reservoir

In the Murzuq Basin, southwest Libya, as elsewhere in North Africa, Upper Ordovician glaciogenic rocks represent an important hydrocarbon reservoir. In this basin, anastomosing, potentially sand-filled palaeovalley networks within the Upper Ordovician succession have been described from seismic data that provide promising prospects for exploration. However, little is known about the origin and architecture of the palaeovalley-fills. On the Gargaf Arch, an outcrop analogue for these structures occurs and is comparable in scale to the valley networks described in the subsurface. This palaeovalley system is 30 km long with two 4 km-wide tributaries, cut into ice-distal glaciomarine mudrocks and diamictites and filled with ice-proximal sandstones and subordinate shales. It was created by subglacial meltwater erosion and glacial loading of a soft substrate during ice sheet advance. The initial stage of valley-fill involved the deposition of coarse-grained sands and conglomeratic ice-proximal, submarine outwash, as localised mass flows. The main stage of fill was characterised by axially (northerly) prograding, underflow-dominated fan lobes deposited in water depths of up to 80 m. A comparison with coeval valley systems in Mauritania, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan is provided that highlights the variable regional character of palaeovalley-fills and the influence that water-depth had on architecture.
Nanosecond laser pulse stimulation of the inner ear—a wavelength study

Optical stimulation of the inner ear, the cochlea, is discussed as a possible alternative to conventional cochlear implants with the hypothetical improvement of dynamic range and frequency resolution. In this study nanosecond-pulsed optical stimulation of the hearing and non-hearing inner ear is investigated in vivo over a wide range of optical wavelengths and at different beam delivery locations. Seven anaesthetized guinea pigs were optically stimulated before and after neomycin induced destruction of hair cells. An optical parametric oscillator was tuned to different wavelengths (420 nm–2150 nm, ultraviolet to near-infrared) and delivered 3–5 ns long pulses with 6 µJ pulse energy via a multimode optical fiber located either extracochlearly in front of the intact round window membrane or intracochlearly within the scala tympani. Cochlear responses were measured using registration of compound action potentials (CAPs). With intact hair cells CAP similar to acoustic stimulation were measured at both locations, while the neomycin treated cochleae did not show any response in any case. The CAP amplitudes of the functional cochleae showed a positive correlation to the absorption coefficient of hemoglobin and also to moderate water absorption. A negative correlation of CAP amplitude with a water absorption coefficient greater than 5.5 cm−1 indicates additional phenomena. We conclude that in our stimulation paradigm with ns-pulses the most dominant stimulation effect is of optoacoustic nature and relates to functional hair cells.
Protein content and enzymatic assays of interstitial fluid from some normal tissues and transplanted mouse tumors.

SUMMARY Microscale assaysarereportedoninterstitial fluidsamplestakenfromsolidunicentrictumortransplants. Comparison wasmadeoftheproteincontentandenzymaticactivity ofnormalmouseplasmaandperitoneal fluidinthesamestrainofmice.Thecell-freetumorfluidhadahigherproteincontent,about5percent,thantheperitonealfluid. Thetotalâ€œover-allâ€sdipeptidase activitypervolumewasincreasedabout40â€”100times;thearginaseandglutathion@reductaseactivitieswerelikewiseincreasedfrom5upto@0times,andthecatheptic activity atpH4.5showedonanaverageathreetofourfoldincreaseinactivityoverthecorrespondingnormalplasmaactivities. Theobservedincreasesinenzymaticactivitycannotbeduetoageneralproteinretentioninthetumorcompartment. Itissuggestedthatthelocalenzymaticincreaseintumorfluidsisbroughtaboutmainlybyleakageofproteinsfromthetumorcells;thisviewissupportedbyotherindependentinvitrodata.Someimplicationsarementionedwithreferencetotheutilization ofinterstitial proteinsforcellnutrition. Theincreasedcathepticactivityseemsfurthertohaveabearingontheextracellularproteolysis postulated topartake inthedestructive activityoftumorcells.Theobservationsprovideadditionalevidencethatneoplasticcellsarecharacterizedbyincreasedpermeabilityalsounderinvivoconditions. Information isscantastothechemicalcompositionoftheinterstitial fluid.Inthecaseofthenormaltissuefluid,currentpostulations (8,@6)arebasedmainlyondataobtainedfrominducededemafluids(i),intracavitary effusionsofvariouskinds,includingthoseduetothepresenceoftumors,andforemostondataobtainedfromlymph
Increased Frequency of Surface IgA-Positive Plasma Cells in the Intestinal Lamina Propria and Decreased IgA Excretion in Hyper IgA (HIGA) Mice, a Murine Model of IgA Nephropathy with Hyperserum IgA1

Because abnormalities of mucosal immunity have been suggested in human IgA nephropathy, we examined the involvement of mucosal immunity in IgA deposition to the kidney in hyper IgA (HIGA) mice, which was established as a mouse model for human IgA nephropathy with hyperserum IgA. The number of surface IgA+B220− lymphocytes in the intestinal lamina propria (LP) of HIGA mice increased 2.7-fold at 30 wk of age as compared with those at 10 wk of age, whereas normal mice did not show such increase. The surface IgA+B220− LP lymphocytes spontaneously secreted IgA in culture. Morphological studies showed that the surface IgA+B220− lymphocytes of murine intestinal LP are identical with plasma cells (PCs). About 20% of IgA+B220− PC in LP expressed both Mac-1 and CD19, suggesting that they may derive from peritoneal B-1 cells. Cell cycle study on intestinal IgA-PCs using bromodeoxyuridine revealed no difference between HIGA mice and normal mice, suggesting that the high frequency of IgA-producing PCs in HIGA mice is not due to enhanced proliferation or prolonged survival of IgA-producing PCs in LP. In addition, IgA secretion into the gut lumen of HIGA mice decreased drastically (to one forth) with aging. These data suggest that the increased number of intestinal IgA-producing PCs and the down-regulation of IgA excretion into the intestinal lumen might synergistically contribute to the hyperserum IgA in HIGA mice and resultant IgA deposition to the kidney.
Curve reconstruction from noisy samples

We present an algorithm to reconstruct a collection of disjoint smooth closed curves from n noisy samples. Our noise model assumes that the samples are obtained by first drawing points on the curves according to a locally uniform distribution followed by a uniform perturbation of each point in the normal direction with a magnitude smaller than the minimum local feature size. The reconstruction is faithful with a probability that approaches 1 as n increases.We expect that our approach can lead to provable algorithms under less restrictive noise models and for handling non-smooth features.
Decriminalization and Marijuana Smoking Prevalence: Evidence From Australia

This article uses the 2001 National Drug Strategy Household Survey to assess the impact of marijuana decriminalization policy on marijuana smoking prevalence in Australia. Both parametric and nonparametric methods are used. The parametric approach includes endogenous probit switching, two-part, sample selection, and standard dummy variable models, while the nonparametric approach uses propensity score stratification matching. Specification analyses are also conducted. A nonparametric kernel-based test is constructed to select between parametric and nonparametric models, and the likelihood ratio test is used to choose among parametric models. Our analyses favor the endogenous switching model where decriminalization increases the probability of smoking by 16.2%.
OPTIMIZATION OF NUTRITIONALLY RICH INSTANT PORRIDGE WITH SPROUTED LEGUMES, MALTED MILLETS AND PAPAYA AND ITS COMPARISON WITH CONVENTIONAL PORRIDGE IN TERMS OF TEXTURAL, RHEOLOGICAL AND PARTICLE SIZE PROPERTIES

Nutrient dense instant porridge was prepared with flours from corn, whole wheat, malted finger millet, sprouted whole green gram, soy protein isolates, unsalted roasted peanuts, dairy whitener and dried papaya in different ratios to make the multi-nutrient mix. Processing parameters viz. Flour Concentration (FC):10-20%, Sugar Concentration (SC): 50-75% and Cooking Time (CT): 1-5 min were optimized for development of porridge from multi-nutrient mix. Significant (p<0.05) second order model predicted the optimized condition for the porridge as FC: 17.9%, SC: 69% and CT: 1.8min. The water absorption index (2.5 g/unit g sample) and water solubility index (20.8%) was higher for multi-nutrient flour mix as compared to wheat flour (2.3 g/unit g sample and 8.3%) indicating better porridge forming ability.Response surface methodology showed that FC, SC and CT significantly affected the organoleptic quality, textural and rheological properties of porridge. Among the three process parameters, FC and CT had the most significant effect on evaluated porridge quality parameters. Fat and protein content of optimized porridge (OP) was significantly higher and particle size significantly lower than the control wheat porridge (CWP) indicating an improved capacity of the nutrients to be absorbed by the body. Porridges showed shear-thinning behavior and apparent viscosity values at all shear rates were higher for OP than CWP. From rheological studies it was observed that mean apparent viscosity and yield stress was lower for OP due to significant difference in the particle size and particle size distribution of the two samples. Both the porridge samples were comparable on account of storage modulus, loss modulus and complex viscosity.
UC Merced Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society Title Towards a Law of Invariance Human Conceptual Behavior

Invariance principles underlie many key theories in modern science. They provide the explanatory and predictive framework necessary for the rigorous study of natural phenomena ranging from the structure of crystals, to magnetism, to relativistic mechanics. Vigo (2008, 2009) introduced a new general notion and principle of invariance from which two parameter-free (ratio and exponential) models were derived to account for human conceptual behavior. Here we introduce a new parameterized exponential “law” based on the same invariance principle. The law accurately predicts the subjective degree of difficulty that humans experience when learning different types of concepts. In addition, it precisely fits the data from a large-scale experiment which examined a total of 84 category structures across 10 category families ( , ; r=.98, ). Moreover, it overcomes seven key challenges that had, hitherto, been grave obstacles for theories of concept learning.
Microtubule assembly and turnover in growing axons

We have shown previously that axonal microtubules (MTs) are composite, consisting of two distinct domains that differ in their content of tyrosinated alpha-tubulin (tyr-tub). One domain is poor in tyr-tub and is situated at the minus end of the MT. The other domain is rich in tyr-tub and extends from the plus end of the tyr-tub-poor domain to the end of the MT. We have proposed that the spatial variation in the relative content of tyr-tub along individual MTs reflects corresponding variations in their dynamic properties. The present experiments have tested this hypothesis directly by microinjecting biotin-labeled tubulin (Bt-tub) into cultured sympathetic neurons and then quantifying the appearance of Bt-tub in the tyr-tub-rich and tyr-tub-poor polymer of the axon. Bt-tub appeared in axonal MTs with a half-life (t1/2) of approximately 2.2 hr. This time course reflected an average of two distinct components corresponding to the tyr-tub-rich and tyr-tub-poor polymer that had apparent t1/2 values of approximately 1.3 and 3.3 hr, respectively. In individual MTs, Bt-tub first appeared in the tyr-tub-rich domain and then only later appeared in the tyr-tub-poor domain. Also, the appearance of Bt-tub in the tyr-tub-rich polymer typically began precisely at its origin from the tyr-tub-poor domain, indicating that the tyr-tub-poor polymer is assembly-competent and nucleates the assembly of tyr-tub-rich polymer locally within the axon. The stability properties of axonal MTs are discussed in terms of organizing MT assembly locally in the axon and generating long MTs for growing long axons.
The Nature of the Stochastic Wind Forcing of ENSO

El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is commonly viewed as a low-frequency tropical mode of coupled atmosphere–ocean variability energized by stochastic wind forcing. Despite many studies, however, the nature of this broadband stochastic forcing and the relative roles of its high- and low-frequency components in ENSO development remain unclear. In one view, the high-frequency forcing associated with the subseasonal Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) and westerly wind events (WWEs) excites oceanic Kelvin waves leading to ENSO. An alternative view emphasizes the role of the low-frequency stochastic wind components in directly forcing the low-frequency ENSO modes. These apparently distinct roles of the wind forcing are clarified here using a recently released high-resolution wind dataset for 1990–2015. A spectral analysis shows that although the high-frequency winds do excite high-frequency Kelvin waves, they are much weaker than their interannual counterparts and are a minor contributor to ENSO development. The analysis also suggests that WWEs should be viewed more as short-correlation events with a flat spectrum at low frequencies that can efficiently excite ENSO modes than as strictly high-frequency events that would be highly inefficient in this regard. Interestingly, the low-frequency power of the rapid wind forcing is found to be higher during El Niño than La Niña events, suggesting a role also for state-dependent (i.e., multiplicative) noise forcing in ENSO dynamics.
Scalable distributed speech recognition using multi-frame GMM-based block quantization

In this paper, we propose the use of the multi-frame Gaussian mixture model-based block quantizer for the coding of Mel frequency-warped cepstral coefficient (MFCC) features in distributed speech recognition (DSR) applications. This coding scheme exploits intraframe correlation via the Karhunen-Loeve transform (KLT) and interframe correlation via the joint processing of adjacent frames together with the computational simplicity of scalar quantization. The proposed coder is bit-rate scalable, which means that the bitrate can be adjusted without the need for re-training of the quantizers. Static parameters such as the probability density function (PDF) model and KLT orthogonal matrices are stored at the encoder and decoder and bit allocations are calculated 'on-the-fly' without intensive processing. This coding scheme is evaluated in this paper on the Aurora-2 database in a DSR framework. It is shown that this coding scheme achieves high recognition performance at lower bitrates, with a word error rate (WER) of 2.5% at 800 bps, which is less than 1% degradation from the baseline word recognition accuracy, and graceful degradation down to a WER of 7% at 300 bps.
The Shape of Utility Functions and Organizational Behavior

Based on measurements among 332 owner-managers, we investigate how theglobal shape of the utility function (i.e., S-shaped versus concave or convex over the total range of outcomes) relates to choice behavior. We find that the global shape of the utility function differs across decision makers (about one-third of the owner-managers exhibit an S-shaped utility function) and that the global shape is linked to organizational behavior (i.e., the production system employed), a result that does not change when using different methods to identify the decision maker's global shape of the utility function. The decision maker's risk attitude (risk averse or risk seeking) does not affect the choice of the production system. Whereas the degree of risk aversion, based on thelocal shape of the utility function, may be important in explaining owner-managers' trading behavior (Pennings and Smidts 2000), more structural organizational behavior appears to be linked to theglobal shape of the utility function.
AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF BUOYANCY ON TURBULENT NONPREMIXED ETHYLENE JET FLAMES IN CROSSFLOW

A new study has been initiated to examine the effect of buoyancy on the structure of turbulent non-premixed jet flames in crossflow (JFICF). In the work presented here, ethylene JFICF were investigated under normal and lowgravity conditions, where the low-gravity was achieved by using the 1.25-second droptower facility at UT-Austin. Eight cases were studied, at momentum flux ratios of 6, 8.5 and 10, and at jet exit Reynolds numbers ranging from 3000 to 4930. The principal diagnostic employed was time-resolved imaging of the visible soot luminosity. An analysis of JFICF trajectories based on mean soot luminosity images, suggests both normal and low gravity JFICF exhibit a power law scaling, but all of the normal gravity cases deviate from such a scaling at some point downstream. This deviation from power law scaling is likely a result of buoyancy effects. Three-dimensional volume rendering of sequential images is used to study the characteristics of large-scale structures in the flame and the influence of these structures on flame tip oscillation. Low-gravity JFICF were observed to have a more regular and coherent far-field than their normal-gravity counterparts. Strong coupling between the large-scale structures and the flame tip oscillations is observed.
The color of touch: A case of tactile–visual synaesthesia

We report a single-case study, EB, who experiences synaesthetic sensations of color from tactile stimulation. Developmental synaesthesia is typically characterized by the consistency of synaesthetic pairings over time, in that stimuli tend to generate the same synaesthetic responses on different occasions. Here we demonstrate that EB's touch–color associations are significantly more consistent over time compared to a group of non-synaesthete controls, but that this comes in the face of surprisingly high consistency among non-synaesthetes themselves, for certain tactile stimuli. We show, too, that EB's touch–color correspondences are guided by an implicit rule system, and that this system is shared by non-synaesthetes. Both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes are sensitive to tactile qualities such as smoothness and softness, and these qualities are systematically related to the luminance and chroma of associated colors.
A Simulator of Human Emergency Mobility Following Disasters: Knowledge Transfer from Big Disaster Data

The frequency and intensity of natural disasters has significantly increased over the past decades and this trend is predicted to continue. Facing these possible and unexpected disasters, understanding and simulating of human emergency mobility following disasters will becomethe critical issue for planning effective humanitarian relief, disaster management, and long-term societal reconstruction. However, due to the uniquenessof various disasters and the unavailability of reliable and large scale human mobility data, such kind of research is very difficult to be performed. Hence, in this paper,we collect big and heterogeneous data (e.g. 1.6 million users' GPS records in three years, 17520 times of Japan earthquake data in four years, news reporting data, transportation network data and etc.) to capture and analyze human emergency mobility following different disasters. By mining these big data, we aim to understand what basic laws govern human mobility following disasters, and develop a general model of human emergency mobility for generating and simulating large amount of human emergency movements. The experimental results and validations demonstrate the efficiency of our simulation model, and suggest that human mobility following disasters may be significantly morepredictable and can be easier simulated than previously thought.