Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dislocation Interactions in Olivine Revealed by HR‐EBSD

Interactions between dislocations potentially provide a control on strain rates produced by dislocation motion during creep of rocks at high temperatures. However, it has been difficult to establish the dominant types of interactions and their influence on the rheological properties of creeping rocks due to a lack of suitable observational techniques. We apply high‐angular resolution electron backscatter diffraction to map geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) density, elastic strain, and residual stress in experimentally deformed single crystals of olivine. Short‐range interactions are revealed by cross correlation of GND density maps. Spatial correlations between dislocation types indicate that noncollinear interactions may impede motion of proximal dislocations at temperatures of 1000°C and 1200°C. Long‐range interactions are revealed by autocorrelation of GND density maps. These analyses reveal periodic variations in GND density and sign, with characteristic length scales on the order of 1–10 μm. These structures are spatially associated with variations in elastic strain and residual stress on the order of 10−3 and 100 MPa, respectively. Therefore, short‐range interactions generate local accumulations of dislocations, leading to heterogeneous internal stress fields that influence dislocation motion over longer length scales. The impacts of these short‐ and/or long‐range interactions on dislocation velocities may therefore influence the strain rate of the bulk material and are an important consideration for future models of dislocation‐mediated deformation mechanisms in olivine. Establishing the types and impacts of dislocation interactions that occur across a range of laboratory and natural deformation conditions will help to establish the reliability of extrapolating laboratory‐derived flow laws to real Earth conditions.
Kinins contribute to the improvement of insulin sensitivity during treatment with angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor.

Although angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and alpha 1-blockers have been reported to improve insulin sensitivity, their mechanisms of action have not been elucidated. To investigate the role of kinins in insulin sensitivity, we treated 4-week-old spontaneously hypertensive rats with either an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (enalapril), an alpha 1-blocker (doxazosin), or an angiotensin II antagonist (losartan) for 3 weeks. A control group received no drugs. In addition, 18 rats treated with enalapril or doxazosin received a simultaneous administration of a kinin antagonist (Hoe 140). Glucose clamp testing was performed in each group. Enalapril (128 +/- 1 mmHg) and doxazosin (132 +/- 2 mmHg) decreased mean blood pressure compared with control levels (148 +/- 1 mmHg) (P < .01). The glucose requirement for the clamp test during the administration of enalapril (25.8 +/- 0.5 mg/kg per minute) or doxazosin (28.6 +/- 0.7 mg/kg per minute) was higher than that of the control group (19.8 +/- 0.5 mg/kg per minute) (P < .05). Although Hoe 140 did not alter the glucose requirement of doxazosin (27.8 +/- 0.5 mg/kg per minute), it decreased that of enalapril (22.6 +/- 0.9 mg/kg per minute) (P < .05) without affecting the changes in mean blood pressure induced by enalapril. In addition, losartan decreased mean blood pressure but did not affect the glucose requirement. Thus, the improvement in insulin sensitivity produced by an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor is mostly dependent on kinins but not on angiotensin II antagonism, and an alpha 1-blocker improves insulin sensitivity irrespective of kinins.
Structural mechanisms of DNA binding and unwinding in bacterial RecQ helicases

Significance RecQ DNA helicases catalyze critical genome maintenance reactions in nearly all organisms. This study describes the crystal structure of a bacterial RecQ helicase bound in a productive complex with DNA. Together with biochemical experiments, the structure reveals a conserved coupling mechanism that links DNA binding to ATP hydrolysis in RecQ enzymes. These findings also help explain how structural dynamics could facilitate RecQ’s noted ability to process diverse DNA substrates. A model explaining the physical basis for RecQ substrate binding and unwinding is proposed. RecQ helicases unwind remarkably diverse DNA structures as key components of many cellular processes. How RecQ enzymes accommodate different substrates in a unified mechanism that couples ATP hydrolysis to DNA unwinding is unknown. Here, the X-ray crystal structure of the Cronobacter sakazakii RecQ catalytic core domain bound to duplex DNA with a 3′ single-stranded extension identifies two DNA-dependent conformational rearrangements: a winged-helix domain pivots ∼90° to close onto duplex DNA, and a conserved aromatic-rich loop is remodeled to bind ssDNA. These changes coincide with a restructuring of the RecQ ATPase active site that positions catalytic residues for ATP hydrolysis. Complex formation also induces a tight bend in the DNA and melts a portion of the duplex. This bending, coupled with translocation, could provide RecQ with a mechanism for unwinding duplex and other DNA structures.
The Effects Of Recommendation Conflict On User'S Adoption Intention Toward Virtual Salespersons: A Principal-Agent Perspective

Virtual salesperson (VS) has been increasingly implemented on many Websites to provide online users with valuable shopping advice, because it has been proved to alleviate users’ cognitive overload and increase their decision quality. Thus, it has widely caught researchers’ attention to investigate what factors can increase user’s intention to adopt. However, there is little research examining the impact of another information resource on VS adoption intention when recommendation information conflict occurs. This study draws on principle-agent perspective to investigate whether online customer reviews have potential to arouse users’ concern about information asymmetry and the fear of VS opportunism. The research result should be of interest to academic researchers, developers of VSs, providers of VSs, and Webstores.
A Flexible Programmable Memory BIST for Embedded Single‐Port Memory and Dual‐Port Memory

Programmable memory built‐in self‐test (PMBIST) is an attractive approach for testing embedded memory. However, the main difficulties of the previous works are the large area overhead and low flexibility. To overcome these problems, a new flexible PMBIST (FPMBIST) architecture that can test both single‐port memory and dual‐port memory using various test algorithms is proposed. In the FPMBIST, a new instruction set is developed to minimize the FPMBIST area overhead and to maximize the flexibility. In addition, FPMBIST includes a diagnostic scheme that can improve the yield by supporting three types of diagnostic methods for repair and diagnosis. The experiment results show that the proposed FPMBIST has small area overhead despite the fact that it supports various test algorithms, thus having high flexibility.
Beating Approximation Factor Two for Weighted Tree Augmentation with Bounded Costs

The Weighted Tree Augmentation Problem (WTAP) is a fundamental well-studied problem in the field of network design. Given an undirected tree G=(V,E), an additional set of edges L ⊑ V× V disjoint from E called links and a cost vector c∈ R≥ 0L, WTAP asks to find a minimum-cost set F⊑ L with the property that (V,E∪ F) is 2-edge connected. The special case where cℓ = 1 for all ℓ ∈ L is called the Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP). For the class of bounded cost vectors, we present the first improved approximation algorithm for WTAP in more than three decades. Concretely, for any M∈ R≥ 1 and ε > 0, we present an LP based (μ +ε)-approximation for WTAP restricted to cost vectors c in [1,M]L for μ ≈ 1.96417. More generally, our result is a (μ +ε)-approximation algorithm with running time nrO(1), where r = cmax/cmin is the ratio between the largest and the smallest cost of any link. For the special case of TAP, we improve this factor to 5/3+ε. Our results rely on several new ideas, including a new LP relaxation of WTAP and a two-phase rounding algorithm. In the first phase, the algorithm uses the fractional LP solution to guide a simple decomposition method that breaks the tree into well-structured trees and equips each with a part of the fraction LP solution. In the second phase, the fractional solution in each part of the decomposition is rounded to an integral solution with two rounding procedures and the best outcome is included in the solution. One rounding procedure exploits the constraints in the new LP, while the other one exploits a connection to the Edge Cover Problem. We show that both procedures cannot have a bad approximation guarantee simultaneously to obtain the claimed approximation factor.
European Journal of Operational Research Maintenance Scheduling of Geographically Distributed Assets with Prognostics Information

Maintenance scheduling for high value assets has been studied for decades and is still a crucial area of research with new technological advancements. The main dilemma of maintenance scheduling is to avoid failures while preventing unnecessary maintenance. The technological advancements in real time monitoring and computational science make tracking asset health and forecasting asset failures possible. The usage and maintenance of assets can be planned more efficiently with the forecasted failure probability and remaining useful life (i.e., prognostic information). The prognostic information is time sensitive. Geographically distributed assets such as offshore wind farms and railway switches add another complexity to the maintenance scheduling problem with the required time of travel to reach these assets. Thus, the travel time between geographically distributed assets should be incorporated in the maintenance scheduling when one technician (or team) is responsible for the maintenance of multiple assets. This paper presents a methodology to schedule the maintenance of geographically distributed assets using their prognostic information. Genetic Algorithm based solution incorporating the daily work duration of the maintenance team is also presented in the paper.
The prevalence and treatment gap in epilepsy in China

The authors carried out a door-to-door survey to determine the prevalence of epilepsy among 55,000 people in China. The lifetime prevalence was 7.0/1000, and 41% of all persons had never received appropriate treatment. The prevalence of active epilepsy was 4.6/1000, and 63% of people with active epilepsy had not received antiepileptic treatment in the week before the survey. Figures for the prevalence and the treatment gap were significantly higher than previous estimates.
Childhood immunization registries: gaps between knowledge and action among family practice physicians and pediatricians in Washington state, 1998.

OBJECTIVES To assess the availability and use of Washington State's CHILD (Children's Health, Immunization, Linkages, and Development) Profile and other computerized immunization tracking systems, to determine physicians' attitudes about these systems, and to identify factors associated with using them. DESIGN Randomized, population-based, cross-sectional survey. PARTICIPANTS Washington family physician and pediatrician specialty organization members providing childhood immunizations in 1998 (N = 2472). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Reported CHILD Profile and other computerized systems use. RESULTS The adjusted response rate was 75% (n = 1331). Overall, 37.7% of respondents had heard of CHILD Profile, 6.3% used it, and 24.9% used other systems. Groups significantly more likely not to use computerized systems than referent pediatricians in areas fully implementing CHILD Profile were family physicians (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4-4.0), private physicians (aOR, 8.0; 95% CI, 3.2-20.1), physicians taking fewest opportunities to immunize (aOR, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.4-3.7), and physicians practicing in local health jurisdiction areas with CHILD Profile marketing activity (aOR, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.2-3.9) or in those areas with little or no registry activity (aOR, 2.6; 95% CI, 1.6-4.4). Those with systems agreed that they save time (71.0%), make status checks easier (87.1%), and increase immunization coverage (88.6%). Those without systems agreed that they help practices (90.3%) and increase efficiency (76.5%), but fewer agreed that they reduce costs (30.2%). CONCLUSIONS Although most physicians agreed that computerized systems are useful, few had them or used them. Provider-based systems can improve immunization coverage, but the feasibility and effectiveness of communitywide and statewide systems remain unexplored. Because these systems depend on participation, more understanding is needed to help organizations implement them. Interventions to increase availability and use should address provider and health organization needs.
Does the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol play a key role in predicting metabolic syndrome in the Iranian adult population?

Background: The low density lipoprotein cholestrol (LDL-C) has an important role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease but its association and predictive accuracy with metabolic syndrome (MetS) remains controversial. The objective of this study was to investigate the association and predictive ability of LDL-C with MetS. Methods: We analyzed the data from a population-based cross-sectional study conducted on representative samples of an Iranian adult population. The demographic data, anthropometric measures and the lipid profiles were measured with standard methods, and MetS was diagnosed by ATP III criteria. Logistic regression model and ROC analysis were used to estimate the predictive accuracy of LDL-C and its association with MetS. Results: The mean age (±SD) of participants with and without MetS was 47.6±12.5 years and 39.1±12.9 years, respectively (p=0.001). All anthropometric measures (body mass index, waist circumference, waist to hip ratio, waist to height ratio), systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, triglycerides and fasting blood glucose were significantly higher in MetS, but a significantly higher difference in LDL-C was observed only in women. Accuracy of LDL-C in predicting MetS for men and women was 0.48 (95% CI: 0.43-0.54) and 0.55 (95% CI: 0.51-0.60), respectively. The unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios of different quartiles of LDL-C compared with 1st quartile did not reach to a significant level. Conclusion: Serum LDL-C level is not significantly associated with MetS but exhibits a weak ability in predicting MetS in women.
Formal Detection of Attentional Tunneling in Human Operator–Automation Interactions

The allocation of visual attention is a key factor for the humans when operating complex systems under time pressure with multiple information sources. In some situations, attentional tunneling is likely to appear and leads to excessive focus and poor decision making. In this study, we propose a formal approach to detect the occurrence of such an attentional impairment that is based on machine learning techniques. An experiment was conducted to provoke attentional tunneling during which psycho-physiological and oculomotor data from 23 participants were collected. Data from 18 participants were used to train an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). From a machine learning point of view, the classification performance of the trained ANFIS proved the validity of this approach. Furthermore, the resulting classification rules were consistent with the attentional tunneling literature. Finally, the classifier was robust to detect attentional tunneling when performing over test data from four participants.
Cdc42 and Rac Stimulate Exocytosis of Secretory Granules by Activating the Ip3/Calcium Pathway in Rbl-2h3 Mast Cells

We have expressed dominant-active and dominant-negative forms of the Rho GTPases, Cdc42 and Rac, using vaccinia virus to evaluate the effects of these mutants on the signaling pathway leading to the degranulation of secretory granules in RBL-2H3 cells. Dominant-active Cdc42 and Rac enhance antigen-stimulated secretion by about twofold, whereas the dominant-negative mutants significantly inhibit secretion. Interestingly, treatment with the calcium ionophore, A23187, and the PKC activator, PMA, rescues the inhibited levels of secretion in cells expressing the dominant-negative mutants, implying that Cdc42 and Rac act upstream of the calcium influx pathway. Furthermore, cells expressing the dominant-active mutants exhibit elevated levels of antigen-stimulated IP3 production, an amplified antigen-stimulated calcium response consisting of both calcium release from internal stores and influx from the extracellular medium, and an increase in aggregate formation of the IP3 receptor. In contrast, cells expressing the dominant-negative mutants display the opposite phenotypes. Finally, we are able to detect an in vitro interaction between Cdc42 and PLCγ1, the enzyme immediately upstream of IP3 formation. Taken together, these findings implicate Cdc42 and Rac in regulating the exocytosis of secretory granules by stimulation of IP3 formation and calcium mobilization upon antigen stimulation.
Ribonucleotide Reductase Inhibitors: A New Look at an Old Target for Radiosensitization

Ribonucleotide reductase (RR), the rate limiting enzyme in the synthesis and repair of DNA, has been studied as a target for inhibition in the treatment of cancer for many years. While some researchers have focused on RR inhibitors as chemotherapeutic agents, particularly in hematologic malignancies, some of the most promising data has been generated in the field of radiosensitization. Early pre-clinical studies demonstrated that the addition of the first of these drugs, hydroxyurea, to ionizing radiation (IR) produced a synergistic effect in vitro, leading to a large number of clinical studies in the 1970–1980s. These studies, mainly in cervical cancer, initially produced a great deal of interest, leading to the incorporation of hydroxyurea in the treatment protocols of many institutions. However, over time, the conclusions from these studies have been called into question and hydroxyurea has been replaced in the standard of care of cervical cancer. Over the last 10 years, a number of well-done pre-clinical studies have greatly advanced our understanding of RR as a target. Those advances include the elucidation of the role of p53R2 and our understanding of the temporal relationship between the delivery of IR and the response of RR. At the same time, new inhibitors with increased potency and improved binding characteristics have been discovered, and pre-clinical and early clinical data look promising. Here we present a comprehensive review of the pre-clinical and clinical data in the field to date and provide some discussion of future areas of research.
Spatially-Varying Image Warps for Scene Alignment

This paper proposes a method to align a set of images captured from multiple view points. Traditional methods using image warps parameterized by global transformations suffer from the problem of misalignment due to parallax effects induced by camera motions between images and depth variations of the scene. Our method parameterizes warps using mesh deformation and achieves spatially-varying transformations to alleviate the misalignment problem. The proposed method has two stages: a hybrid image alignment stage which combines direct-based methods and feature-based methods, followed by a shape-preserving aggregation stage which further refines the result. Experiments show that our method achieves better alignment and provides visually pleasing image summaries for scenes.
Evaluation of Radio-Protective Effect of Melatonin on Whole Body Irradiation Induced Liver Tissue Damage

Objective: Ionizing radiation interacts with biological systems to induce excessive fluxes of free radicals that attack various cellular components. Melatonin has been shown to be a direct free radical scavenger and indirect antioxidant via its stimulatory actions on the antioxidant system.The aim of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant role of melatonin against radiation-induced oxidative injury to the rat liver after whole body irradiation. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study,thirty-two rats were divided into four groups. Group 1 was the control group, group 2 only received melatonin (30 mg/kg on the first day and 30 mg/kg on the following days), group 3 only received whole body gamma irradiation of 10 Gy, and group 4 received 30 mg/kg melatonin 30 minutes prior to radiation plus whole body irradiation of 10 Gy plus 30 mg/kg melatonin daily through intraperitoneal (IP) injection for three days after irradiation. Three days after irradiation, all rats were sacrificed and their livers were excised to measure the biochemical parameters malondialdehyde (MDA) and glutathione (GSH). Each data point represents mean ± standard error on the mean (SEM) of at least eight animals per group. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to compare different groups, followed by Tukey’s multiple comparison tests (p<0.05). Results: The results demonstrated that whole body irradiation induced liver tissue damage by increasing MDA levels and decreasing GSH levels. Hepatic MDA levels in irradiated rats that were treated with melatonin (30 mg/kg) were significantly decreased, while GSH levels were significantly increased, when compared to either of the control groups or the melatonin only group. Conclusion: The data suggest that administration of melatonin before and after irradiation may reduce liver damage caused by gamma irradiation.
Robustness in Experiment Design

This paper focuses on the problem of robust experiment design, i.e., how to design an input signal which gives relatively good estimation performance over a large number of systems and model structures. Specifically, we formulate the robust experiment design problem utilizing fundamental limitations on the variance of estimated parametric models as constraints. Using this formulation we design an input signal for situations where only diffuse a priori information is known about the system. Furthermore, we present a robust version of the unprejudiced optimal input design problem. To achieve this, we first develop a closed form solution for the input spectrum which minimizes the maximum weighted integral of the variance of the frequency response estimate over all model structures.
Sarcomere Formation Occurs by the Assembly of Multiple Latent Protein Complexes

The stereotyped striation of myofibrils is a conserved feature of muscle organization that is critical to its function. Although most components that constitute the basic myofibrils are well-characterized biochemically and are conserved across the animal kingdom, the mechanisms leading to the precise assembly of sarcomeres, the basic units of myofibrils, are poorly understood. To gain insights into this process, we investigated the functional relationships of sarcomeric protein complexes. Specifically, we systematically analyzed, using either RNAi in primary muscle cells or available genetic mutations, the organization of myofibrils in Drosophila muscles that lack one or more sarcomeric proteins. Our study reveals that the thin and thick filaments are mutually dependent on each other for striation. Further, the tension sensor complex comprised of zipper/Zasp/α-actinin is involved in stabilizing the sarcomere but not in its initial formation. Finally, integrins appear essential for the interdigitation of thin and thick filaments that occurs prior to striation. Thus, sarcomere formation occurs by the coordinated assembly of multiple latent protein complexes, as opposed to sequential assembly.