Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cosmic queuing: galaxy satellites, building blocks and the hierarchical clustering paradigm

We study the properties of building blocks (BBs; i.e. accreted satellites) and surviving satellites of present-day galaxies using the semi-analytic model of galaxy formation SAG ('semi-analytic galaxies') in the context of a concordancecold dark matter (�CDM) cosmology. We consider large number of dark matter (DM) halo merger trees spanning a wide range of masses (∼1 × 10 10 -2.14 × 10 15 M � ). We find higher metallicities for BBs with respect to surviving satellites, an effect produced by the same processes behind the build up of the mass-metallicity relation. We prove that these metallicity differences arise from the higher peak height in the density fluctuation field occupied by BBs and central galaxies which have collapsed into a single object earlier than surviving satellites. BBs start to form stars earlier, during the peak of the merger activity inCDM, and build up half of their final stellar mass (measured at the moment of disruption) up to four times faster than surviving satellites. Surviving satellites keep increasing their stellar masses rather quiescently down to z � 1. The difference between the metallicities of satellites, BBs and central galaxies depends on the host DM halo mass, in a way that can be used as a further test for the concordance cosmology.
Role of Cellular Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycans in Infection of Human Adenovirus Serotype 3 and 35

Species B human adenoviruses (Ads) are increasingly associated with outbreaks of acute respiratory disease in U.S. military personnel and civil population. The initial interaction of Ads with cellular attachment receptors on host cells is via Ad fiber knob protein. Our previous studies showed that one species B Ad receptor is the complement receptor CD46 that is used by serotypes 11, 16, 21, 35, and 50 but not by serotypes 3, 7, and 14. In this study, we attempted to identify yet-unknown species B cellular receptors. For this purpose we used recombinant Ad3 and Ad35 fiber knobs in high-throughput receptor screening methods including mass spectrometry analysis and glycan arrays. Surprisingly, we found that the main interacting surface molecules of Ad3 fiber knob are cellular heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs). We subsequently found that HSPGs acted as low-affinity co-receptors for Ad3 but did not represent the main receptor of this serotype. Our study also revealed a new CD46-independent infection pathway of Ad35. This Ad35 infection mechanism is mediated by cellular HSPGs. The interaction of Ad35 with HSPGs is not via fiber knob, whereas Ad3 interacts with HSPGs via fiber knob. Both Ad3 and Ad35 interacted specifically with the sulfated regions within HSPGs that have also been implicated in binding physiologic ligands. In conclusion, our findings show that Ad3 and Ad35 directly utilize HSPGs as co-receptors for infection. Our data suggest that adenoviruses evolved to simulate the presence of physiologic HSPG ligands in order to increase infection.
Employees’ Need for Independence, Organizational Commitment, and Turnover Intentions: The Moderating Role of Justice Perceptions About Performance Appraisals

This empirical research attempts to find out whether it is possible to retain employees who possess strong need for independence and to make them committed by using fair performance appraisal systems. One hundred five white-collar employees working in three high-tech companies were participated in this study. Results showed that both perceived procedural justice and perceived distributive justice of the performance appraisals moderated the relationship between need for independence and affective commitment, as well as the relationship between need for independence and turnover intentions. As a result, the high levels of justice perceptions will lessen the strength of negative relationship between need for independence and organizational commitment and the high levels of justice perceptions will lessen the strength of positive relationship between need for independence and turnover intentions. These findings underlined the importance of justice perceptions, since they not only lead to positive attitudes and behaviors, but also mitigate the effects of the individual attitudes such as need for independence.
Fuzzy Time Series Forecasting Using Percentage Change as the Universe of Discourse

Since the pioneering work of Zadeh, fuzzy set theory has been applied to a myriad of areas. Song and Chissom introduced the concept of fuzzy time series and applied some methods to the enrollments of the University of Alabama. In recent years, a number of techniques have been proposed for forecasting based on fuzzy set theory methods. These methods have either used enrollment numbers or differences of enrollments as the universe of discourse. We propose using the year to year percentage change as the universe of discourse. In this communication, the approach of Jilani, Burney, and Ardil is modified by using the year to year percentage change as the universe of discourse. We use enrollment figures for the University of Alabama to illustrate our proposed method. The proposed method results in better forecasting accuracy than existing models. Keywords—Fuzzy forecasting, fuzzy time series, fuzzified enrollments, time-invariant model
Differential effects and interactions of endogenous and horizontally acquired H-NS-like proteins in pathogenic Escherichia coli

The nucleoid‐associated protein H‐NS is important for gene regulation in Escherichia coli. We have studied H‐NS interaction with StpA and an uncharacterized H‐NS‐like protein, Hfp, in the uropathogenic E. coli isolate 536 that expresses all three nucleoid‐associated proteins. We found distinct interactions of the three proteins at the protein level, resulting in the formation of heteromers, as well as differences in their gene expression at the transcriptional level. Mutants lacking either StpA or Hfp alone did not exhibit a phenotype at 37°C, which is consistent with a low level of expression at that temperature. Expression of the hfp and stpA genes was found to be induced by apparently diametrical conditions, and StpA and Hfp levels could be correlated to modulatory effects on the expression of different H‐NS targets, the bgl operon and operons for virulence factors such as fimbriae and capsular polysaccharide. The hns/hfp and hns/stpA double mutants displayed severe growth defects at low and high temperatures respectively. Our findings demonstrated different requirements for the alternative H‐NS/Hfp/StpA combinations under these growth conditions. We propose that Hfp and StpA have distinct functions and roles in a dynamic pool of nucleoid‐associated proteins that is adapting to requirements in a particular environment.
Perceived Quality for Transported Video Nele

Wireless networks typically suffer from packet loss and variable bit-rates due to bandwidth variations when, for example, video is transported between different devices in the home. Users who are watching video sent over wireless networks will therefore often experience jerkiness and blocking in the image. To intercept the effects caused by those problems, adaptation methods such as I-Frame Delay and Signal-to-Noise Ratio scalability were devised. To assess the perceived quality of MPEG-2 video optimized by these adaptation methods, subjective tests were carried out. These tests demonstrate, amongst others, that scene content and duration of the quality loss affects the perceived quality. Furthermore, we observed a saturation effect.
Novel Risk Factors for Allergic Rhinitis in Korean Elementary School Children: ARCO-kids Phase II in a Community

Purpose Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a multifactorial disease whose genetic and environmental risk factors have been studied for decades. Many pediatric studies have pointed out the familial history of allergy, hygiene hypothesis, breast-feeding, pet ownership, and diets as risk factors of AR. However, most of factors are still up for debate. This preliminary report aimed to confirm the known risk factors and find the novel risk factors for AR in the Korean pediatric population. Methods A bi-seasonal, winter and summer, study in 2 elementary schools included all students whose parents completed the questionnaire of medical and social histories, quality of life, infant and early-childhood history, and the living styles. Skin prick tests and endoscopic examinations were conducted on all participants. Results Among total 1,020 children, 338 participants had AR. The multivariate logistic regression analysis highlighted 6 factors: male gender (OR, 2.10; 95% CI, 1.32-3.33), older age (1.65; 1.03-2.65), previous history of allergic conjunctivitis (14.25; 4.99-40.74), asthma (2.73; 0.96-7.76) and pneumonia (0.39; 0.19-0.82), and an hour increase in daily playing time (0.90; 0.80-1.00). Conclusions Lack of pneumonia in early childhood and short playing time are newly found risk factors for Korean pediatric AR in this study confirming male gender, older age and previous history of allergic conjunctivitis and asthma as the risk factors.
Cultural differences in sensitivity to social context: Detecting affective incongruity using the N400

East Asians and Asian-Americans tend to allocate relatively greater attention to background context compared to European Americans across a variety of cognitive and neural measures. We sought to extend these findings of cultural differences to affective stimuli using the N400, which has been shown to be sensitive to deep processing of affective information. The degree to which Asian-Americans and European Americans responded to semantic incongruity between emotionally expressive faces (i.e., smiling or frowning) and background affective scenes was measured. As predicted, Asian-Americans showed a greater N400 to incongruent trials than to congruent trials. In contrast, European Americans showed no difference in amplitude across the two conditions. Furthermore, greater affective N400 incongruity was associated with higher interdependent self-construals. These data suggest that Asian-Americans and those with interdependent self-construals process the relationship between perceived facial emotion and affective background context to a greater degree than European Americans and those with independent self-construals. Implications for neural and cognitive differences in everyday social interactions, and cultural differences in analytic and holistic thinking are discussed.
Communication overhead for space science applications on the Beowulf parallel workstation

The Beowulf parallel workstation combines 16 PC-compatible processing subsystems and disk drives using dual Ethernet networks to provide a single-user environment with 1 Gops peak performance, half a Gbyte of disk storage, and up to 8 times the disk I/O bandwidth of conventional workstations. The Beowulf architecture establishes a new operating point in price-performance for single-user environments requiring high disk capacity and bandwidth. The Beowulf research project is investigating the feasibility of exploiting mass market commodity computing elements in support of Earth and space science requirements for large data-set browsing and visualization, simulation of natural physical processes, and assimilation of remote sensing data. This paper reports the findings from a series of experiments for characterizing the Beowulf dual channel communication over-head. It is shown that dual networks can sustain 70% greater throughput than a single network alone but that bandwidth achieved is more highly sensitive to message size than to the number of messages at peak demand. While overhead is shown to be high for global synchronization, its overall impact on scalability of real world applications for computational fluid dynamics and N-body gravitational simulation is shown to be modest.
Philippine Frogs of the Genus Leptobrachium (Anura; Megophryidae): Phylogeny-based Species Delimitation, Taxonomic Review, and Descriptions of Three New Species

Abstract We review the Philippine frogs of the genus Leptobrachuim. All previous treatments have referred Philippine populations to L. hasseltii, a species we restrict to Java and Bali, Indonesia. We use external morphology, body proportions, color pattern, advertisement calls, and phylogenetic analysis of molecular sequence data to show that Philippine populations of Leptobrachium represent three distinct and formerly unrecognized evolutionary lineages, and we describe each (populations on Mindoro, Palawan, and Mindanao Island groups) as new species. Our findings accentuate the degree to which the biodiversity of Philippine amphibians is currently underestimated and in need of comprehensive review with new and varied types of data. Lagom: Pinagbalik aralan namin ang mga palaka sa Pilipinas mula sa genus Leptobrachium. Ang nakaraang mga palathala ay tumutukoy sa populasyon ng L. hasseltii, ang uri ng palaka na aming tinakda lamang sa Java at Bali, Indonesia. Ginamit namin ang panglabas na morpolohiya, proporsiyon ng pangangatawan, kulay disenyo, pantawag pansin, at phylogenetic na pagsusuri ng molekular na pagkakasunod-sunod ng datos upang maipakita na ang populasyon sa Pilipinas ng Leptobrachium ay kumakatawan sa tatlong natatangi at dating hindi pa nakilalang ebolusyonaryong lipi. Inilalarawan din naming ang bawat isa (populasyon sa Mindoro, Palawan, at mga grupo ng isla sa Mindanao) na bagong uri ng palaka. Ang aming natuklasan ay nagpapatingkad sa antas kung saan ang biodibersidad ng amphibians sa Pilipinas sa kasalukuyan ay may mababang pagtatantya at nangangailangan ng malawakang pagbabalik-aral ng mga bago at iba't ibang uri ng datos.
Adoptive Transfer of siRNA Cblb-Silenced CD8+ T Lymphocytes Augments Tumor Vaccine Efficacy in a B16 Melanoma Model

The ubiquitin ligase Cbl-b is an established regulator of T cell immune response thresholds. We recently showed that adoptive cell transfer (ACT) of cblb −/− CD8+ T cells enhances dendritic cell (DC) immunization-mediated anti-tumor effects in immune-competent recipients. However, translation of cblb targeting to clinically applicable concepts requires that inhibition of cblb activity be transient and reversible. Here we provide experimental evidence that inhibition of cblb using chemically synthesized siRNA has such potential. Silencing cblb expression by ex vivo siRNA transfection of polyclonal CD8+ T cells prior to ACT increased T cell tumor infiltration, significantly delayed tumor outgrowth, and increased survival rates of tumor-bearing mice. As shown by ex vivo recall assays, cblb silencing resulted in significant augmentation of intratumoral T cell cytokine response. ACT of cblb-silenced polyclonal CD8+ T cells combined with DC-based tumor vaccines predominantly mediated anti-tumor immune responses, whereas no signs of autoimmunity could be detected. Importantly, CBLB silencing in human CD8+ T cells mirrored the effects observed for cblb-silenced and cblb-deficient murine T cells. Our data validate the concept of enhanced anti-tumor immunity by repetitive ACT of ex vivo cblb siRNA-silenced hyper-reactive CD8+ T cells as add-on adjuvant therapy to augment the efficacy of existing cancer immunotherapy regimens in clinical practice.
Nerve growth factor promotes functional recovery of retinal ganglion cells after ischemia.

PURPOSE To investigate the effect of a transient complete ischemia on the function of cat retina and to determine whether nerve growth factor (NGF), which was previously shown to enhance retinal ganglion cell (RGC) survival after optic nerve section in the adult rat, can promote recovery of retinal neurons after the ischemic insult. METHODS Function of distal and proximal retina was assessed by recording the electroretinogram in response to both homogeneous flickering light (FERG) and contrast reversing gratings (PERG), respectively, 30 days after the induction of a 60-minute episode of ischemia. Visual evoked potentials in response to contrast reversing gratings were also recorded to evaluate visual acuity and contrast thresholds. Cell survival after ischemia was assessed in retinal whole-mounts stained with cresyl violet. Cats were intraocularly treated with NGF every other day, 3 times a week, for 30 days. Controls were treated with either phosphate buffered saline or cytochrome c. RESULTS After ischemia, the FERG was not significantly affected. On the contrary, the PERG, visual acuity, and contrast thresholds were severely impaired. After NGF treatment, PERG response amplitudes were much less reduced compared to controls, and visual acuity and contrast thresholds were virtually normal. In addition, a larger number of presumed RGCs was present in the NGF-treated retinas compared to the cyt c-treated ones. CONCLUSIONS The more proximally located retinal neurons, in particular RGCs, are highly vulnerable to ischemia. Intraocular NGF treatment was effective in enhancing the survival and functional recovery of these neurons. This suggests that NGF may represent a novel therapeutic agent for the treatment of ischemic ocular pathologies.
Monitoring Youth: The Collision of Rights and Rehabilitation

A monumental shift in juvenile justice is underway, inspired by the wide recognition that incarceration is not the solution to youth crime. In its place, “electronic monitoring” has gained widespread support as a new form of judicial control over youth offenders. Supporters herald it as “jail-to-go”: a cost-efficient alternative to incarceration that allows youth to be home while furthering rehabilitative and deterrent goals. But despite electronic monitoring’s intuitive appeal, virtually no empirical evidence suggests its effectiveness. Instead, given the realities of adolescent development, electronic monitoring may lead to more harm than good. This Article is the first to examine the routine, and troubling, use of electronic monitoring in juvenile courts. After describing the realities of the practice and its proffered justifications, this Article refutes three key misperceptions about the practice: (1) that it lowers incarceration rates because it is used only on youth who would otherwise be detained; (2) that it effectively rehabilitates youth; and (3) that it is cost-effective. Yet because of the deference afforded to judges in crafting terms of probation and pretrial release, the rehabilitative rhetoric of juvenile court, and the perception of electronic monitoring as non-punitive, electronic monitoring is subject to virtually no judicial oversight or scrutiny. The result is that the practice exists in a legal and policy netherworld: wielded and expanded with almost no limits. This Article concludes by arguing that electronic monitoring should be categorized as a form of punishment, warranting a new doctrinal framework that more rigorously evaluates, and circumscribes, monitoring and other forms of non-carceral control. Until that happens, electronic monitoring risks making worse the exact problem it seeks to address, namely, to rehabilitate youth.
Network Coding with Two-Way Relaying: Achievable Rate Regions and Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoffs

This paper addresses the fundamental characteristics of information exchange via multihop network coding over two-way relaying in a wireless ad hoc network. The end-to-end rate regions achieved by time-division multihop (TDMH), MAC-layer network coding (MLNC) and PHY-layer network coding (PLNC) are first characterized. It is shown that MLNC does not always achieve better rates than TDMH, time sharing between TDMH and MLNC is able to achieve a larger rate region, and PLNC dominates the rate regions achieved by TDMH and MLNC. An opportunistic scheduling algorithm for MLNC and PLNC is then proposed to stabilize the two-way relaying system for Poisson arrivals whenever the rate pair is within the Shannon rate regions of MLNC and PLNC. To understand the two-way transmission limits of multihop network coding, the sum-rate optimization with or without certain traffic pattern and the end-to-end diversity-multiplexing tradeoffs (DMTs) of two-way transmission over multiple relay nodes are also analyzed.
A Guide to Modeling Counterparty Credit Risk

Michael Pykhtin and Steven Zhu offer a blueprint for modelling credit exposure and pricing counter-party risk. They focus on two main issues: modelling credit exposure and pricing counter-party risk. In the part devoted to credit exposure, we will define credit exposure at contract and counter-party levels, introduce netting and margin agreements as risk management tools for reducing counter-party-level exposure and present a framework for modelling credit exposure. In the part devoted to pricing, we will define credit value adjustment (CVA) as the price of counter-party credit risk and discuss approaches to its calculation.
Mechanical performance and metrolocigal characterization of mems accelerometers and application in modal analysis

MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System) technology is providing inertial sensors to industry, with a low cost manufacturing technology and miniature dimensions capabilities (few millimeters). Nowadays MEMS sensors are widely used in low-accuracy level applications (typically in the automotive field), where cost and dimensions are priority advantages. Starting from these considerations chip producers do not focus on the sensors metrological characterization and on a packaging useful for mechanical measurements. Moreover testing costs, much higher than the cost of sensor itself, make a full mechanical testing not so common. Producers mainly focus on the electrical characterization, and anyway not so much care is devoted to the mechanical facts end users have to fight against. The aim of this paper is to give a contribution, investigating the possibility of using MEMS transducers in applications that require higher performances, such as modal testing or structural health monitoring. This paper contains a complete mechanical characterization of some MEMS sensors in comparison with other traditional accelerometers, piezoelectric and servo ones. The purpose of these tests is therefore to determine their performances in different ambient conditions, aimed to their use during experimental and operational modal analysis or in monitoring applications on big civil structures.
A Timing Model for Fast French

Models of speech timing are of both fundamental and applied interest. At the fundamental level, the prediction of time periods occupied by syllables and segments is required for general models of speech prosody and segmental structure. At the applied level, complete models of timing are an essential component of any speech synthesis system. Previous research has established that a large number of factors influence various levels of speech timing. Statistical analysis and modelling can identify order of importance and mutual influences between such factors. In the present study, a three-tiered model was created by a modified step-wise statistical procedure. It predicts the temporal structure of French, as produced by a single, highly fluent speaker at a fast speech rate (100 phonologically balanced sentences, hand-scored in the acoustic signal). The first tier models segmental influences due to phoneme type and contextual interactions between phoneme types. The second tier models syllable-level influences of lexical vs. grammatical status of the containing word, presence of schwa and the position within the word. The third tier models utterance-final lengthening. The complete segmental-syllabic model correlated with the original corpus of 1204 syllables at an overall r = 0.846. Residuals were normally distributed. An examination of subsets of the data set revealed some variation in the closeness of fit of the model. The results are considered to be useful for an initial timing model, particularly in a speech synthesis context. However, further research is required to extend the model to other speech rates and to examine inter-speaker variability in greater detail.