Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Human Lung Xenograft Mouse Model of Nipah Virus Infection

Nipah virus (NiV) is a member of the genus Henipavirus (family Paramyxoviridae) that causes severe and often lethal respiratory illness and encephalitis in humans with high mortality rates (up to 92%). NiV can cause Acute Lung Injury (ALI) in humans, and human-to-human transmission has been observed in recent outbreaks of NiV. While the exact route of transmission to humans is not known, we have previously shown that NiV can efficiently infect human respiratory epithelial cells. The molecular mechanisms of NiV-associated ALI in the human respiratory tract are unknown. Thus, there is an urgent need for models of henipavirus infection of the human respiratory tract to study the pathogenesis and understand the host responses. Here, we describe a novel human lung xenograft model in mice to study the pathogenesis of NiV. Following transplantation, human fetal lung xenografts rapidly graft and develop mature structures of adult lungs including cartilage, vascular vessels, ciliated pseudostratified columnar epithelium, and primitive “air” spaces filled with mucus and lined by cuboidal to flat epithelium. Following infection, NiV grows to high titers (107 TCID50/gram lung tissue) as early as 3 days post infection (pi). NiV targets both the endothelium as well as respiratory epithelium in the human lung tissues, and results in syncytia formation. NiV infection in the human lung results in the production of several cytokines and chemokines including IL-6, IP-10, eotaxin, G-CSF and GM-CSF on days 5 and 7 pi. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that NiV can replicate to high titers in a novel in vivo model of the human respiratory tract, resulting in a robust inflammatory response, which is known to be associated with ALI. This model will facilitate progress in the fundamental understanding of henipavirus pathogenesis and virus-host interactions; it will also provide biologically relevant models for other respiratory viruses.
Twitter’s influence on news judgment: An experiment among journalists

The literature suggests that journalists give a substantial amount of attention to Twitter and use the platform widely, but the impact of that use on news judgment has not been assessed. We hypothesize that Twitter affects journalists’ news judgment, impacting coverage decisions. To test this, we conducted an online survey experiment on working US journalists (N = 212). We find that journalists who use Twitter less in their work discount news they see on the platform, potentially causing them to dismiss information that many of their colleagues identify as newsworthy. Our results also indicate that the routinization of Twitter into news production affects news judgment – for journalists who incorporate Twitter into their reporting routines, and those with fewer years of experience, Twitter has become so normalized that tweets were deemed equally newsworthy as headlines appearing to be from the AP wire. This may have negative implications, such as pack journalism, but we also see positives, as Twitter may conduit a wider array of voices into the mainstream news agenda. Twitter plays a key role in journalistic practices including, as we demonstrate here, influencing journalists’ news judgment. Twitter’s growing centrality in the news process warrants greater scrutiny from journalists and scholars.
Genetic Elimination of GABAergic Neurotransmission Reveals Two Distinct Pacemakers for Spontaneous Waves of Activity in the Developing Mouse Cortex

Many structures of the mammalian CNS generate propagating waves of electrical activity early in development. These waves are essential to CNS development, mediating a variety of developmental processes, such as axonal outgrowth and pathfinding, synaptogenesis, and the maturation of ion channel and receptor properties. In the mouse cerebral cortex, waves of activity occur between embryonic day 18 and postnatal day 8 and originate in pacemaker circuits in the septal nucleus and the piriform cortex. Here we show that genetic knock-out of the major synthetic enzyme for GABA, GAD67, selectively eliminates the picrotoxin-sensitive fraction of these waves. The waves that remain in the GAD67 knock-out have a much higher probability of propagating into the dorsal neocortex, as do the picrotoxin-resistant fraction of waves in controls. Field potential recordings at the point of wave initiation reveal different electrical signatures for GABAergic and glutamatergic waves. These data indicate that: (1) there are separate GABAergic and glutamatergic pacemaker circuits within the piriform cortex, each of which can initiate waves of activity; (2) the glutamatergic pacemaker initiates waves that preferentially propagate into the neocortex; and (3) the initial appearance of the glutamatergic pacemaker does not require preceding GABAergic waves. In the absence of GAD67, the electrical activity underlying glutamatergic waves shows greatly increased tendency to burst, indicating that GABAergic inputs inhibit the glutamatergic pacemaker, even at stages when GABAergic pacemaker circuitry can itself initiate waves.
Vector-Field Consistency for Collaborative Software Development

Software development is, mostly, a collaborative process where teams of developers work together in order to produce quality code. Collaboration is, generally, not an issue, as teams work together in the same office or building. However, larger projects may require more people, who might be spread through-out different floors, buildings and different companies. Several systems have been developed in order to provide better means of communication and awareness over the actions of others. Still, most of them rely on an all-or-nothing approach: where the user is either immediately notified of all modifications occurring in a shared project, or is completely oblivious to all external changes. We propose a new solution based on the adaptation of the Vector-Field Consistency algorithm which relies on two distinct concepts: locality-awareness and continuous consistency model. Where the former represents the ability of system to make choices based on the proximity of remote changes in relation to a particular user’s position. While the later corresponds to a consistency model between strong and weak consistency, which is able to control and impose a limit over how much two replicas can diverge. With the correct parametrization this model can establish a great balance between consistency and availability. In this work we explain how the VFC algorithm, originally planned for distributed ad-hoc gaming, was adapted into the context collaborative software development; thus allowing programmers to have a higher degree of awareness over remote changes which might directly affect their work, and as the impact of changes decreases, so will the level awareness. And later we describe in detail how our architecture was applied to the Eclipse IDE, under the form of a plug-in, to provide a new level of distributed collaboration to software developers, and how it was evaluated.
Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Image Classification Based on Rotation Forest

In this letter, an ensemble learning approach, Rotation Forest, has been applied to hyperspectral remote sensing image classification for the first time. The framework of Rotation Forest is to project the original data into a new feature space using transformation methods for each base classifier (decision tree), then the base classifier can train in different new spaces for the purpose of encouraging both individual accuracy and diversity within the ensemble simultaneously. Principal component analysis (PCA), maximum noise fraction, independent component analysis, and local Fisher discriminant analysis are introduced as feature transformation algorithms in the original Rotation Forest. The performance of Rotation Forest was evaluated based on several criteria: different data sets, sensitivity to the number of training samples, ensemble size and the number of features in a subset. Experimental results revealed that Rotation Forest, especially with PCA transformation, could produce more accurate results than bagging, AdaBoost, and Random Forest. They indicate that Rotation Forests are promising approaches for generating classifier ensemble of hyperspectral remote sensing.
Mobile 3D Mapping for Surveying Earthwork Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as a data acquisition platform and as a measurement instrument have become attractive for many surveying applications in civil engineering. However, their performance is not well understood for these particular applications. The specific scope of the presented work is the performance evaluation of a UAV system that was built to rapidly acquire mobile 3D mapping data for large earthmoving construction sites. Details to the components of the developed system (hardware and control software) are explained. A novel program for photogrammetric flight planning and its execution for the generation of 3D point clouds from digital mobile images is explained. A performance model for estimating the position error was developed and tested in several realistic construction environments. Results to these tests are presented as they relate in particular to large excavation and earth moving construction sites. Results and experiences with the developed UAV system are in particular useful for researchers or practitioners in need for successfully adapting UAV technology for their application(s).
Reduced Satellite Cell Numbers and Myogenic Capacity in Aging Can Be Alleviated by Endurance Exercise

Background Muscle regeneration depends on satellite cells, myogenic stem cells that reside on the myofiber surface. Reduced numbers and/or decreased myogenic aptitude of these cells may impede proper maintenance and contribute to the age-associated decline in muscle mass and repair capacity. Endurance exercise was shown to improve muscle performance; however, the direct impact on satellite cells in aging was not yet thoroughly determined. Here, we focused on characterizing the effect of moderate-intensity endurance exercise on satellite cell, as possible means to attenuate adverse effects of aging. Young and old rats of both genders underwent 13 weeks of treadmill-running or remained sedentary. Methodology Gastrocnemius muscles were assessed for the effect of age, gender and exercise on satellite-cell numbers and myogenic capacity. Satellite cells were identified in freshly isolated myofibers based on Pax7 immunostaining (i.e., ex-vivo). The capacity of individual myofiber-associated cells to produce myogenic progeny was determined in clonal assays (in-vitro). We show an age-associated decrease in satellite-cell numbers and in the percent of myogenic clones in old sedentary rats. Upon exercise, there was an increase in myofibers that contain higher numbers of satellite cells in both young and old rats, and an increase in the percent of myogenic clones derived from old rats. Changes at the satellite cell level in old rats were accompanied with positive effects on the lean-to-fat Gast muscle composition and on spontaneous locomotion levels. The significance of these data is that they suggest that the endurance exercise-mediated boost in both satellite numbers and myogenic properties may improve myofiber maintenance in aging.
Current Sensorless Equalization Strategy for a Single-Switch Voltage Equalizer Using Multistacked Buck–Boost Converters for Photovoltaic Modules Under Partial Shading

Differential power processing converters and voltage equalizers have been proposed and used for photovoltaic strings comprising multiple modules/substrings connected in series in order to preclude negative influences of partial shading. The single-switch voltage equalizer using multistacked buck–boost converters can significantly reduce the necessary switch count compared to that of conventional topologies, achieving simplified circuitry. However, multiple current sensors are necessary for this single-switch equalizer to effectively perform equalization. In this paper, a current sensorless equalization technique (ΔV-controlled equalization) is presented. The equalization strategy using the ΔV-controlled equalization is explained and discussed on the basis of comparison with current-controlled equalization strategies. Experimental equalization tests emulating partial-shading conditions were performed using the single-switch equalizer employing the ΔV -controlled equalization. Negative impacts of partial shading were successfully precluded, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed ΔV-controlled equalization strategy.
Implementation of fast Turbo Decoder for 3 GPP-LTE / LTE-Advanced Standards

The LTE includes improving communication standards of new spectrum and reformed spectrum over the telecommunications. In this paper presents the VLSI implementation of high speed maximum a posteriori (MAP) probability decoders which are intrinsic building-blocks of parallel combined maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoders. For the Logarithmic Bahl Cocke Jelinek Raviv (LBCJR) algorithm used in sliding window technique. This sliding window is applied in trellis graph with N number of states in MAP decoders. State metric normalization technique employed in the design of an addcompare-select-unit (ACSU) has reduced critical path delay. Multi banked memory structure and routing network among memories and MAP decoders are designed to operate at full speed with parallel inter leavers. Turbo decoders are consists with 8 and 64 parallel MAP decoders in 90 nm CMOS technology. VLSI implementation of an 8 parallel turbo-decoder has achieved a high throughput. Also, 64 parallel turbo decoder has achieved a high throughput These Turbo decoders meet peak datarates of 3GPP-LTE and LTE-Advanced standards. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed area efficient parallel decoding schemes do not cause performance degradation.
Content-Based Text Retrieval An Experiment in Variable-Depth NLP

Most text retrieval systems in use today apply keyword-based retrieval methods. The performance of these methods is unsatisfactory. One reason may be that they ignore almost all the linguistically relevant information contained in documents and queries. A number of systems have been suggested that use some of the linguistic information, but in most cases merely syntactic information, and the retrieval performance of such systems remains fairly disappointing. Some systems use instead some meaning representation language to index and retrieve documents. In this paper, a document retrieval system is presented that uses a mixed-level logic as meaning representation language and variabledepth evaluation procedures to locate relevant (passages of) documents . 1. The Importance of Content-Based Text Retrieval A very large part of the information used in science, commerce, and administration is transmitted and stored in the form of texts written in natural language. An increasing proportion of this material is available in machine readable form. While in the past this held mainly for scientific and commercial text, public organisations have recently become major producers of machine readable documents. For this reason, the Swiss Federal Archives, Switzerland’s central repository of all administrative documents produced by Federal offices, will in the future get an increasing proportion of documents in machine-readable form, and the need for an electronic retrieval system for machine-readable text is getting increasingly urgent. Standard Information Retrieval (IR) methods have well-known deficiencies, and they are particularly unsuitable for the specific problems of archives. This is why the Swiss Federal Archives initiated, four years ago, a project to explore what methods are available today to cope with the anticipated flood of machine readable textual data. The project resulted in a small prototype system that shows how, in principle, some types of documents (administrative letters) in one of the official languages of Switzerland (French) can be stored and retrieved by means of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques that seem to perform considerably better than standard IR techniques. A successor to this system, ‘‘LogDoc’’, applied basically the same techniques to a different language (English) and to a different type of documents (titles and abstracts of scientific papers). The use of longer texts from a wider domain, creating a much larger and more heterogeneous data base, called for more sophisticated search procedures for the retrieval part of the system. Variable-depth evaluation seemed a promising approach to this last problem, ________________ 1. This work has been funded in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation, National Research Programme 23, Project 4023-026996
Improved Unnesting Algorithms for Join Aggregate SQL Queries

The SQL language allows users to express queries that have nested subqueries in them. Optimization of nested queries has received considerable attention over the last few years [Kim82, Ganski87, Daya187, Murali891. As pointed out in [Ganski87], the solution presented in [Kim821 for JA type queries has the COUNT bug. In order to avoid the COUNT bug, the more general strategy described in [Ganski871 and [Dayal87] is used. In this paper, we modify Kim’s algorithm so that it avoids the COUNT bug. The modified algorithm may be used when it is more efficient than the general strategy. In addition, we present a couple of enhancements that precompute aggregates and evaluate joins and outer joins in a topdown order. These enhancements eliminate Cartesian products when certain correlation predicates are absent and enable us to employ Kim’s method for more blocks. Finally, we incorporate the above improvemerits into a new unnesting algorithm.
Resource Wealth is an Amplifier , not a Curse : Evidence from Country-Level Effects of Exogenous Variation in Resources

Is there a resource curse? We apply a new tool, the method of synthetic controls, to test old claims, that large oil endowments retard democratization and economic growth. To directly estimate the impact of resource wealth, we take advantage of the 1973 opec oil embargo, which caused a massive price spike that transformed previously marginal oil-producing countries into resource-reliant states. By estimating the counterfactual experiences of those countries, we find that there is little evidence of either a political or an economic resource curse. Nevertheless, resource wealth does affect policy outcomes. Leaders use resource wealth to pursue their policy preferences with greater vigor, a finding consistent with a theory of policy substitution that predicts greater variance in the choices of resourcerich regimes. Because resource wealth affords leaders greater policy autonomy, we conclude that resource wealth is not a curse but an amplifier. Word Count: 8,471 words
Assessing climate change impacts on global hydropower.

Currently, hydropower accounts for close to 16% of the world’s total power supply and is the world’s most dominant (86%) source of renewable electrical energy. The key resource for hydropower generation is runoff, which is dependent on precipitation. The future global climate is uncertain and thus poses some risk for the hydropower generation sector. The crucial question and challenge then is what will be the impact of climate change on global hydropower generation and what are the resulting regional variations in hydropower generation potential? This paper is a study that aims to evaluate the changes in global hydropower generation resulting from predicted changes in climate. The study uses an ensemble of simulations of regional patterns of changes in runoff, computed from global circulation models (GCM) simulations with 12 different models. Based on these runoff changes, hydropower generation is estimated by relating the runoff changes to hydropower generation potential through geographical information system (GIS), based on 2005 hydropower generation. Hydropower data obtained from EIA (energy generation), national sites, FAO (water resources) and UNEP were used in the analysis. The countries/states were used as computational units to reduce the complexities of the analysis. The results indicate that there are large variations of changes (increases/decreases) in hydropower generation across regions and even within regions. Globally, hydropower generation is predicted to change very little by the year 2050 for the hydropower system in operation today. This change amounts to an increase of less than 1% of the current (2005) generation level although it is necessary to carry out basin level detailed assessment for local impacts which may differ from the country based values. There are many regions where runoff and hydropower generation will increase due to increasing precipitation, but also many regions where there will be a decrease. Based on this evaluation, it has been concluded that even if individual countries and regions may experience significant impacts, climate change will not lead to significant changes in the global hydropower generation, at least for the existing hydropower system.
Is homeschool cool? Current trends in American homeschooling

ABSTRACT Homeschooling in America enjoyed significant and dependable growth for decades. However, federal estimates of homeschool participation failed to show statistically significant growth for the first time in 2012. Many dismissed this as measurement error and awaited the next round of federal estimates. In the fall of 2017 those estimates were released, and homeschooling once again not only failed to grow; rather it declined, significantly. This was an historic and important first for the pioneer of American school choice. What caused homeschooling to cool? Or is it just as hot as ever? This article uses data from 22 state departments of education to examine official reports of homeschool participation instead of using more readily available and commonly referenced survey estimates, and these numbers tell a very different story. Based on the available data, homeschooling actually appears to continue its growth.
„Wspólnota parkingowania”. Praktyki parkowania na osiedlach wielkomiejskich i ich strukturalne konsekwencje

The main aim of the article is the analysis of the consequences of car parking practices in the urban housing estates for wider processes of social structuration. The authors examine socio-spatial processes from the perspective of the theory of social practices and Fredrick Barth’s relational theory of social differences and boundaries. The analysis is based on the material gathered during fi eldwork in four housing estates in two Polish cities. The conducted case studies have revealed that a social practice of parking is one of the major spheres of neighbourhoods’ social life. The practice consists of arrays of doings and sayings which compose relatively stable patterns of relations. These, in turn, have organizational, normative and class consequences, which constitute “communities of parking” in the estates that can be called parkinghoods.