Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning by developing a satellite navigation simulator

This article describes a methodology to explain and understand Satellite Navigation concepts by developing simulators in the Marmara University, Technical Education Faculty, Electronics and Computer Education Department (MUTEFEC) Istanbul. At present, senior students of MUTEFEC take graduation projects interested in their professional skills. In addition some students have got developing projects related with Global Positioning System (GPS)/Galileo (EU Satellite Navigation System). In this study; to help students and accelerate their perceptions while building their project, a teaching concept for simulator‐based project developing issues in computerized environment supports the possibility of distance learning as well as a computer‐aided teaching is presented. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 19: 501–507, 2011
Monoplistic efficiency: A performance analysis on the market structure of the e-commerce industry

This paper aims to answer a question in terms of the e-commerce industry: is it efficient to have a high market concentration, even monopoly? First literature review is conducted to find appropriate theories and research directions in the field of industrial organization to analyze the e-commerce industry. Second, analytical models are built up to investigate the reasons, formation and rationality of monopolistic efficiency in the e-commerce industry, both theoretically and quantitatively. Third, data from Chinese e-commerce industry are imported, processed and regressed as an empirical evidence to the theoretical prediction. Last, the conclusion is established that it is natural and efficient to be highly market concentrated in the e-commerce industry.
Response to Comment on "Slip-Rate Measurements on the Karakorum Fault May Imply Secular Variations in Fault Motion"

Brown et al . ([ 1 ][1]) argue that the dispersion in the exposure ages we obtained from the Manikala glacier moraines ([ 2 ][2]) is influenced by postdepositional processes and that only the oldest boulder age on each moraine group can be used to assess its abandonment age. Determining the
Propeller Wash Scour near Quay Walls

The disturbance of bed sediments by the wash of ship's propellers, and the resulting structural and environmental impact, is an increasing problem. Consequently, there is a need for an accurate method of scour prediction. The scouring action of the wash generated by a number of propellers in the confines of quay structures was investigated in the laboratory. Empirical equations have been developed for the prediction of the maximum depth of scour, for any given exposure period, for both free expanding jets and those in close proximity to harbor structures.
The Antihypertensive Response to Lisinopril: The Effect of Age in a Predominantly Black Population

After a 2–4 week no‐treatment period, 24 patients (12 young, age 29–45 yr.; 12 elderly, age 65–81 yr.; 20 black, 4 white) with an untreated sitting diastolic blood pressure between 91–120 mm Hg received the nonsulfhydryl angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor, lisinopril for three weeks in a singleblind, parallel group comparison. Patients who did not achieve goal blood pressure with the initial low‐dose (10 mg/day) were treated with a high‐dose regimen (40 mg/day) for three weeks. In those who remained incompletely responsive, hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg/day was added for four weeks in an attempt to normalize blood pressure (≤90 mm Hg). Low‐dose lisinopril monotherapy produced comparable reductions in the mean systolic and diastolic blood pressures (approximately −15/−8 mm Hg in both younger and older patients). Increasing the dose produced a slightly greater fall in mean blood pressures which normalized the blood pressure in five of six elderly patients unresponsive to the lower dose; addition of hydrochlorothiazide normalized three of the five remaining subjects from both groups who were unresponsive to high dose lisinopril. Lisinopril administration resulted in a rise in plasma renin activity and a fall in plasma aldosterone concentrations which were similar in both groups and which returned over time toward the baseline. The drug was well tolerated, producing one episode of symptomatic hypotension following the addition of hydrochlorothiazide to lisinopril monotherapy. Lisinopril alone or in combination with hydrochlorothiazide produces favorable antihypertensive effects in both younger and older predominantly black, low‐renin patients with essential hypertension.
Behavior-Relevant Changes in Nucleus Accumbens Dopamine Transmission Elicited by Food Reinforcement: An Electrochemical Study in Rat

Voltammetry was used to monitor dopamine (DA) transmission in nucleus accumbens (NAcc) of rats lever-pressing for food. Under standard conditions, animals responded on a fixed ratio 1 (FR1) schedule for 0.2 ml of milk delivered over 30 sec; milk delivery was paired with a 30 sec cue light. Consumption of the initial few milk rewards of the session caused DA signal increases. These initial signal increases were typical of the first and, at times, the second test days. On subsequent days, the most pronounced initial signal increases coincided with presentation of conditioned stimuli that marked the start of the session. Biphasic changes in DA signal that were time-locked to each reinforced lever-press were also observed; responses were preceded by increases and were followed, during milk consumption, by decreases in DA signal. At the end of milk delivery, the signal increased again in apparent anticipation of the next lever-press. Delaying milk delivery caused a corresponding delay in DA signal decreases, and the amount of time signals remained depressed was bound by the duration of milk consumption. Greater decreases in DA signal were observed when the rate of milk delivery was doubled or tripled, and such increases in reward value were associated with more pronounced signal increases during the period that preceded each lever-press. In contrast, DA signal increases were seen when milk was delivered at half the usual rate or was withheld altogether or when animals were denied access to the lever. Under partial reinforcement conditions, reinforced lever-presses were preceded by more pronounced signal increases and decreases of comparable magnitude accompanied milk consumption. These results suggest that meso-NAcc DA neurons are activated primarily in response to the incentive rather than to the reinforcing properties of rewards.
Phenotypic Resistance to Antibiotics

The development of antibiotic resistance is usually associated with genetic changes, either to the acquisition of resistance genes, or to mutations in elements relevant for the activity of the antibiotic. However, in some situations resistance can be achieved without any genetic alteration; this is called phenotypic resistance. Non-inherited resistance is associated to specific processes such as growth in biofilms, a stationary growth phase or persistence. These situations might occur during infection but they are not usually considered in classical susceptibility tests at the clinical microbiology laboratories. Recent work has also shown that the susceptibility to antibiotics is highly dependent on the bacterial metabolism and that global metabolic regulators can modulate this phenotype. This modulation includes situations in which bacteria can be more resistant or more susceptible to antibiotics. Understanding these processes will thus help in establishing novel therapeutic approaches based on the actual susceptibility shown by bacteria during infection, which might differ from that determined in the laboratory. In this review, we discuss different examples of phenotypic resistance and the mechanisms that regulate the crosstalk between bacterial metabolism and the susceptibility to antibiotics. Finally, information on strategies currently under development for diminishing the phenotypic resistance to antibiotics of bacterial pathogens is presented.
Interaction of the Equine Herpesvirus 1 EICP0 Protein with the Immediate-Early (IE) Protein, TFIIB, and TBP May Mediate the Antagonism between the IE and EICP0 Proteins

ABSTRACT The equine herpesvirus 1 (EHV-1) immediate-early (IE) and EICP0 proteins are potent trans-activators of EHV-1 promoters; however, in transient-transfection assays, the IE protein inhibits the trans-activation function of the EICP0 protein. Assays with IE mutant proteins revealed that its DNA-binding domain, TFIIB-binding domain, and nuclear localization signal may be important for the antagonism between the IE and EICP0 proteins. In vitro interaction assays with the purified IE and EICP0 proteins indicated that these proteins interact directly. At late times postinfection, the IE and EICP0 proteins colocalized in the nuclei of infected equine cells. Transient-transfection assays showed that the EICP0 protein trans-activated EHV-1 promoters harboring only a minimal promoter region (TATA box and cap site), suggesting that the EICP0 protein trans-activates EHV-1 promoters by interactions with general transcription factor(s). In vitro interaction assays revealed that the EICP0 protein interacted directly with the basal transcription factors TFIIB and TBP and that the EICP0 protein (amino acids [aa] 143 to 278) mediated the interaction with aa 125 to 174 of TFIIB. Our unpublished data showed that the IE protein interacts with the same domain (aa 125 to 174) of TFIIB and with TBP. Taken together, these results suggested that interaction of the EICP0 protein with the IE protein, TFIIB, and TBP may mediate the antagonism between the IE and EICP0 proteins.
Abrupt changes in meteorological conditions observed at an inland Antarctic Station in association with wintertime blocking

Time evolution of a prominent wintertime blocking event over East Antarctica and the associated drastic changes in weather conditions observed at an inland station are documented. A strong blocking ridge was formed at the leading edge of a quasi‐stationary Rossby wavetrain where a wave activity flux emanating from the subtropics was convergent. The ridge pumped up heat and moisture from lower latitudes into inland Antarctica with a strong poleward flow along its upstream flank. The station was situated under this flow just for two days, during which the normal condition with cold and clear weather was markedly disturbed. The flow climbing up the continental slope led to cloud formation above the inland station. Enhanced downward longwave radiation from the clouds and enhanced vertical mixing associated with the record‐setting wind speeds resulted in a sudden, drastic increase in surface air temperature and the breakdown of the developed surface inversion layer.
Distributions of TOP, TON and TOC in the North Pacific subtropical gyre : Implications for nutrient supply in the surface ocean and remineralization in the upper thermocline

We report measurements of total organic phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon (TOP, TON, and TOC) along a meridional transect in the eastern subtropical North Pacific. In the surface waters, TOP and TON comprise 83% and 98% of the total dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen pools, respectively. Between the equatorial region and the subtropical gyre, there is a distinct gradient in surface TOP of about 0.25 μM, but very little gradient in TON. TOC increases by nearly 30 μM across the same region. Meridional advection of TOP along its gradient via Ekman transport can provide 40-80% of the phosphorus necessary to supply present estimates of particulate phosphorus export from the subtropical gyre. Mass balance requires an additional input of nitrogen to the surface waters to fuel particulate nitrogen export. This input is likely supported by nitrogen fixation. As dissolved organic matter (DOM) is degraded along isopycnals that outcrop within the subtropical gyre, TOP and TOC are consumed more rapidly than TON. TOC and TON contribute 70% and 20% to organic matter remineralization along these isopycnals, respectively, and the C:N ratio for remineralization is 30 ± 10. In contrast, along isopycnals that outcrop to the north of the gyre, both TOC and TON contribute 30% to organic matter remineralization and the C:N ratio is 8 ± 1. Our results suggest that excess TOC, produced within the surface waters of the subtropical gyre during nitrogen fixation, is highly labile and dominates respiration along shallow isopycnals. Preferential remineralization of TOC relative to TON within the gyre results in a negative preformed nitrate signal in the upper thermocline, and may establish a feedback between upper thermocline DOM remineralization and surface ocean DOM production that maintains nitrogen fixation in the surface waters.
DLAU: A Scalable Deep Learning Accelerator Unit on FPGA

As the emerging field of machine learning, deep learning shows excellent ability in solving complex learning problems. However, the size of the networks becomes increasingly large scale due to the demands of the practical applications, which poses significant challenge to construct a high performance implementations of deep learning neural networks. In order to improve the performance as well as to maintain the low power cost, in this paper we design deep learning accelerator unit (DLAU), which is a scalable accelerator architecture for large-scale deep learning networks using field-programmable gate array (FPGA) as the hardware prototype. The DLAU accelerator employs three pipelined processing units to improve the throughput and utilizes tile techniques to explore locality for deep learning applications. Experimental results on the state-of-the-art Xilinx FPGA board demonstrate that the DLAU accelerator is able to achieve up to $36.1 {\times }$ speedup comparing to the Intel Core2 processors, with the power consumption at 234 mW.
NEW RESULTS ON THE ASYMPTOTIC BEHAVIOR OF A THIRD-ORDER NONLINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION

Sufficient conditions are established for the asymptotic behavior of a third-order non- linear differential equation. Our results improve on Qian's (C. Qian, Asymptotic behavior of a third-order nonlinear differential equation, J. Math. Anal. Appl., 284 (2003), 191-205)
The global contribution of forage fish to marine fisheries and ecosystems

Forage fish play a pivotal role in marine ecosystems and economies worldwide by sustaining many predators and fisheries directly and indirectly. We estimate global forage fish contributions to marine ecosystems through a synthesis of 72 published Ecopath models from around the world. Three distinct contributions of forage fish were examined: (i) the ecological support service of forage fish to predators in marine ecosystems, (ii) the total catch and value of forage fisheries and (iii) the support service of forage fish to the catch and value of other commercially targeted predators. Forage fish use and value varied and exhibited patterns across latitudes and ecosystem types. Forage fish supported many kinds of predators, including fish, seabirds, marine mammals and squid. Overall, forage fish contribute a total of about $16.9 billion USD to global fisheries values annually, i.e. 20% of the global ex-vessel catch values of all marine fisheries combined. While the global catch value of forage fisheries was $5.6 billion, fisheries supported by forage fish were more than twice as valuable ($11.3 billion). These estimates provide important information for evaluating the trade-offs of various uses of forage fish across ecosystem types, latitudes and globally. We did not estimate a monetary value for supportive contributions of forage fish to recreational fisheries or to uses unrelated to fisheries, and thus the estimates of economic value reported herein understate the global value of forage fishes.
The Impact of Environmental Conditions on Internal Waves and Mixing in Two Distinct Ocean Basins

Internal waves are ubiquitous in the ocean, and play a key role in the global overturning circulation. This thesis analyzes the life cycle of internal waves in two distinct ocean basins: the Arctic and Indian Oceans. Hydrographic and velocity data are used to study the generation, propagation, and dissipation of internal waves in these two ocean basins. In the Indian Ocean, an area of mixing-driven upwelling, mooring data reveal the presence of a strong internal tide propagating as tidal beams above the Southwest Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean basin. These tidal beams show a strong vertical structure, and their path of propagation is highly dependent on the mesoscale activity in the region. Despite this strong internal tide signal, however, mixing in the region is dominated by inertial internal waves. On the other side of the globe, in a region of deep water formation, shipboard data from four short time series from three consecutive springs in Storfjorden, an Arctic fjord in the Svalbard Archipelago, reveal a link between the vertical structure of the stratification profile and mixing in the Arctic. These environmental conditions, the changing mesoscale in the Indian Ocean, and the changing stratification in the Arctic Ocean, greatly impact the generation, propagation, and dissipation of internal waves, and subsequent turbulent mixing in theses two ocean basins.
Necroptosis, necrostatins and tissue injury

• Introduction ‐ Cell death and pathophysiology ‐ Apoptosis ‐ Autophagy ‐ Necrosis ‐ Necroptosis ‐ Necrostatin and inhibition of cell death ‐ Necroptosis, necrostatin and RIP‐1 kinase ‐ Necrostatin and tissue injury ‐ Necrostatin and cerebrocortical injury ‐ Necrostatin and myocardial injury ‐ Necrostatin and retinal injury • Concluding remarks
RESEARCH FOCUS ON COMPULSIVE BEHAVIOUR IN ANIMALS: Compulsive alcohol drinking in rodents

Upon prolonged alcohol exposure, the behaviour of an individual can gradually switch from controlled to compulsive. Our review is focused on the neurobiological mechanisms that might underlie this transition as well as the factors that are influencing it. Animal studies suggest that temporally increased alcohol consumption during post‐abstinence drinking is accompanied by a loss of flexibility of the behaviour and therefore, could serve as a model for compulsive alcohol drinking. However, studies using different alcohol‐preferring rat lines in the post‐abstinence drinking model suggest that high alcohol consumption does not necessarily lead to the development of compulsive drinking. This indicates the significance of genetic predisposition to compulsive behaviour. Neuroimaging data show that chronic alcohol consumption affects the activity of several brain regions such as the extrapyramidal motor system and several areas of the prefrontal cortex including the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex. Similar changes in brain activity is seen in patients suffering from obsessive–compulsive disorder at baseline conditions and during provocation of obsessive thoughts and urge to perform compulsive‐like rituals. This indicates that dysfunction of these regions may be responsible for the expression of compulsive components of alcohol drinking behaviour. Several brain neurotransmitter systems seem to be responsible for the switch from controlled to compulsive behaviour. In particular, hypofunctioning of monoaminergic systems and hyperfunctioning of glutamatergic systems may play a role in compulsive alcohol drinking.
Optimized formulation of multivesicular liposomes loaded with oleanolic acid enhanced anticancer effect in vitro

Invasion and metastasis are the main causes leading to the death of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Multivesicular liposomes loaded with oleanolic acid (OA-MVLs) have been well demonstrated to suppress survival, growth and angiogenesis of HCC cells. Emerging evidence demonstrates that OA was able to suppress the invasion of HCC cells by down-regulating myocyte enhancer factor-2. We hypothesized that the optimized OA-MVLs could inhibit the migration and invasion of HCC cells. In this study, we utilized central composite design and response surface methodology to assess the influence of some parameters on particle size and encapsulation efficiency and obtain the optimized formulation of OA-MVLs. Subsequently, the human HCC cell lines SMMC-7721 and HepG2 were treated with different doses of OA-MVLs and OA, respectively. Cellular survival, adhesion, migration and invasion in vitro were evaluated. We found that the optimized OA-MVLs significantly decreased the ability of HCC cells to adhere, migrate and invade in vitro. Furthermore, OA-MVLs significantly inhibited the survival of HCC cells at 160 µmol/L but showed no obvious inhibition effect on the cell vitality of normal liver cells. Our findings indicate that OA-MVLs did inhibit the cell survival, adhesion, invasion and metastasis of HCC cells in vitro. Although the involved mechanisms are still unclear, our findings can contribute to a better development of a preventive and therapeutic strategy for human HCC.
Robust quasistatic finite elements and flesh simulation

Quasistatic and implicit time integration schemes are typically employed to alleviate the stringent time step restrictions imposed by their explicit counterparts. However, both quasistatic and implicit methods are subject to hidden time step restrictions associated with both the prevention of element inversion and the effects of discontinuous contact forces. Furthermore, although fast iterative solvers typically require a symmetric positive definite global stiffness matrix, a number of factors can lead to indefiniteness such as large jumps in boundary conditions, heavy compression, etc. We present a novel quasistatic algorithm that alleviates geometric and material indefiniteness allowing one to use fast conjugate gradient solvers during Newton-Raphson iteration. Additionally, we robustly compute smooth elastic forces in the presence of highly deformed, inverted elements alleviating artificial time step restrictions typically required to prevent such states. Finally, we propose a novel strategy for treating both collision and self-collision in this context.
Serum le vels of placental growth factor and retinol-binding protein-4 in pregnancy-induced hypertensive women

To investigate the relationship between clinical parameters of pre-eclampsia (PE) and serum levels of Retinol binding protein4 (RBP4) and Placental growth factor (PlGF). Patients and Methods: The study included 90 pregnant women categorized as Group I: Control group (n= 20), included pregnant women who continued their pregnancy without development of PE manifestations, Group II: included patients had Mild PE (n=56) and group III included patients had Severe PE (n=14). After clinical evaluation and ultrasonographic examination, samples of maternal peripheral blood were obtained either at time of diagnosis of PE in groups II and III or at time of delivery in control group for ELISA estimation of serum RBP4 and PlGF. Results: PE patients had significantly lower serum PlGF, but significantly higher serum RBP4 levels when compared to the corresponding levels of the control group. Serum levels of PlGF showed negative correlation with systolic and diastolic blood pressures (SBP and DBP) and extent of proteinuria, but showed positive significant correlation with birth weight, while serum levels of RBP4 showed positive significant correlation with DBP, extent of proteinuria and patients' body weight measures. Conclusions: RBP4 and PlGF were associated with the development and severity of PE. (Adel F. Al-Kholy, Mamdouh Z. Abadier, Ebrahem M. Rageh, Hany El-Kallaf. Serum levels of placental growth factor and retinol-binding protein-4 in pregnancy-induced hypertensive women. Journal of