Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An application of uncertain variables to the implementation of an interacting multi-model based filter for the navigation system of a road vehicle

This paper presents the conclusions obtained from the parametric study of the application of the uncertain variable (UV) theory to the problem of the interactive multi-model method (IMM) in the navigation system of a road vehicle. The proposed navigation system implements an interactive multi-model method based on a loosely coupled extended Kalman filter architecture (EKF). The descriptions of the navigation system and the representation of the problem based on uncertain variables are presented in this paper. Selected simulations and their conclusions are commented. Finally, this parametric study is presented as a helpful tool for the optimization of an IMM based data fusion algorithm for navigation systems in road vehicles
Language choices and practices of migrants in Germany

The language uses of twenty migrants in Germany who have English in their language repertoires are investigated through semi-structured interviews and qualitative content analysis. The findings suggest that in occupation-related situations and daily life, these migrants resort to English in situations that are too difficult to handle in German. For most of them this is only temporary, before they have a sufficient command of German. Whether and how well migrants learn German depends on factors such as the planned length of stay, the demand for the language in their professional field, previous migration experiences, and personality. Most of the interviewees had taken language classes and were highly motivated to learn German, as English is not always a viable option for communication in Germany and because they considered proficiency in German a sign of respect. The use of German and English as a lingua franca were the two major mediation strategies, along with language technologies like Google Translate, while some interviewees reported successful use of intercomprehension.
Multiple Upstream Signals Converge on the Adaptor Protein Mst50 in Magnaporthe grisea[W]

Rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe grisea) forms a highly specialized infection structure for plant penetration, the appressorium, the formation and growth of which are regulated by the Mst11-Mst7-Pmk1 mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade. We characterized the MST50 gene that directly interacts with both MST11 and MST7. Similar to the mst11 mutant, the mst50 mutant was defective in appressorium formation, sensitive to osmotic stresses, and nonpathogenic. Expressing a dominant active MST7 allele in mst50 complemented its defects in appressorium but not lesion formation. The sterile α-motif (SAM) domain of Mst50 was essential for its interaction with Mst11 and for appressorium formation. Although the SAM and Ras-association domain (RAD) of Mst50 were dispensable for its interaction with Mst7, deletion of RAD reduced appressorium formation and virulence on rice (Oryza sativa) seedlings. The interaction between Mst50 and Mst7 or Mst11 was detected by coimmunoprecipitation assays in developing appressoria. Mst50 also interacts with Ras1, Ras2, Cdc42, and Mgb1 in yeast two-hybrid assays. Expressing a dominant active RAS2 allele in the wild-type strain but not in mst50 stimulated abnormal appressorium formation. These results indicate that MST50 functions as an adaptor protein interacting with multiple upstream components and plays critical roles in activating the Pmk1 cascade for appressorium formation and plant infection in M. grisea.
Spatio-Temporal Saliency Perception via Hypercomplex Frequency Spectral Contrast

Salient object perception is the process of sensing the salient information from the spatio-temporal visual scenes, which is a rapid pre-attention mechanism for the target location in a visual smart sensor. In recent decades, many successful models of visual saliency perception have been proposed to simulate the pre-attention behavior. Since most of the methods usually need some ad hoc parameters or high-cost preprocessing, they are difficult to rapidly detect salient object or be implemented by computing parallelism in a smart sensor. In this paper, we propose a novel spatio-temporal saliency perception method based on spatio-temporal hypercomplex spectral contrast (HSC). Firstly, the proposed HSC algorithm represent the features in the HSV (hue, saturation and value) color space and features of motion by a hypercomplex number. Secondly, the spatio-temporal salient objects are efficiently detected by hypercomplex Fourier spectral contrast in parallel. Finally, our saliency perception model also incorporates with the non-uniform sampling, which is a common phenomenon of human vision that directs visual attention to the logarithmic center of the image/video in natural scenes. The experimental results on the public saliency perception datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared to eleven state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, we extend the proposed model to moving object extraction in dynamic scenes, and the proposed algorithm is superior to the traditional algorithms.
PKC/ROS-Mediated NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation Is Attenuated by Leishmania Zinc-Metalloprotease during Infection

Parasites of the Leishmania genus infect and survive within macrophages by inhibiting several microbicidal molecules, such as nitric oxide and pro-inflammatory cytokines. In this context, various species of Leishmania have been reported to inhibit or reduce the production of IL-1β both in vitro and in vivo. However, the mechanism whereby Leishmania parasites are able to affect IL-1β production and secretion by macrophages is still not fully understood. Dependent on the stimulus at hand, the maturation of IL-1β is facilitated by different inflammasome complexes. The NLRP3 inflammasome has been shown to be of pivotal importance in the detection of danger molecules such as inorganic crystals like asbestos, silica and malarial hemozoin, (HZ) as well as infectious agents. In the present work, we investigated whether Leishmania parasites modulate NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Using PMA-differentiated THP-1 cells, we demonstrate that Leishmania infection effectively inhibits macrophage IL-1β production upon stimulation. In this context, the expression and activity of the metalloprotease GP63 - a critical virulence factor expressed by all infectious Leishmania species - is a prerequisite for a Leishmania-mediated reduction of IL-1β secretion. Accordingly, L. mexicana, purified GP63 and GP63-containing exosomes, caused the inhibition of macrophage IL-1β production. Leishmania-dependent suppression of IL-1β secretion is accompanied by an inhibition of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production that has previously been shown to be associated with NLRP3 inflammasome activation. The observed loss of ROS production was due to an impaired PKC-mediated protein phosphorylation. Furthermore, ROS-independent inflammasome activation was inhibited, possibly due to an observed GP63-dependent cleavage of inflammasome and inflammasome-related proteins. Collectively for the first time, we herein provide evidence that the protozoan parasite Leishmania, through its surface metalloprotease GP63, can significantly inhibit NLRP3 inflammasome function and IL-1β production.
ANALYTICAL MODELING OF THE MECHANICS OF RE-TORQUE

A secondary torque, i.e., re-torque, is generally applied in order to confer long term bolt tightness of certain gasketed-flange configurations that have undergone a primary torque with some relaxation. In some sense, the initial torque conditions the viscoelastic gasket material for long term performance under service loading. While prior research has been carried out to analytically model the mechanical response of gasket materials under either creep, stress relaxation, or creep relaxation, the mechanics of gasket re-torque has received much less attention. In the current study, a candidate fiber-glass reinforced gasket material is subjected to creep relaxation after a series of primary and secondary torques. Test variables considered here include values of either torque, dwell period, or gasket thickness. The over-arching goal addressed in this study is the identification of the conditions that confer the minimal initial dwell period without loss of long term load retention. In all cases, specimen-sized samples were used on a raised-face, serrated flange assembly. Based on the experimental test data and observations from scanning electron microscopy, an viscoelasticity model is developed to analytically predict the response of the time-dependent solid.Copyright © 2011 by ASME
THE IMPACT OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES ON EFL LEARNERS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION

The present study investigated the extent to which four pre-listening activities, “pre-teaching vocabulary”, “content discussion”, “pre-reading questions” and “topic discussion,” assisted EFL learners with their performance on listening comprehension tests across two different proficiency groups (elementary and advanced). Both proficiency groups were divided into four experimental groups, and each was assigned one of the pre-listening activities. The findings revealed that in elementary level, vocabulary preparation and pre-reading questions groups respectively outperformed the two other groups, while in advanced level, vocabulary preparation and content discussion groups respectively outperformed the two other groups. Therefore, vocabulary knowledge should be emphasized more strongly in pre-listening activities.
Evaluation of teaching methodologies in pharmacology for undergraduates: a cross-sectional analysis in a medical college of South India

Background: Pharmacology is an important part of medical education. A competent doctor should be able to prescribe rational treatment to the patients to minimise the adverse effects and contribute to the improvement of overall healthcare system. There is a dire need to reform the undergraduate pharmacology curriculum to match up to the rapidly evolving medical field. Feedback system is one of the most successful instruments in improving any system. We have undertaken a similar feedback system to study the advantages and disadvantages of various study methods for teaching theory and practical exercises to the medical undergraduates.Methods: This is a cross sectional questionnaire based study conducted in the department of pharmacology. Students of MBBS 2nd year were enrolled into the study. The purpose of the study was explained to them and clarifications were made if any. The questionnaire included questions on various aspects of teaching methodology and graded by students on internationally accepted ‘Likert’ scale.Results: In our study students favoured teaching by blackboard method (96%) and many preferred a combination of blackboard and power point presentation. Discussing on issues of clinical significance of the topic was favoured by 96% of the students and 67% students responded that stressing on the facts concerned with Post graduate entrance exams is more important. Sixty nine percent and 85% students preferred short essays and MCQs respectively as method of evaluation and 68% of them favoured evaluation by both the methods. Regarding pharmacology practical exercises most of the students preferred clinical problems, dosage calculation, ADR reporting and other problem based learning techniques. Studying pharmacology as an integrated subject with other clinical subjects was preferred by 68% of the students.Conclusions: It is well known that students learn better when they are involved actively in learning process than when they are passive recipients. In our study we realised that undergraduate pharmacology teaching pattern should be modified mostly towards pharmacotherapeutics and clinical pharmacology.
Effects of Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Intervention on Comprehension-Related Outcomes for Ninth Graders With Low Reading Comprehension

Abstract This experimental study examined the efficacy of a multicomponent reading intervention compared to a business-as-usual comparison condition on the reading comprehension and content area vocabulary outcomes of adolescent students with low reading comprehension. We randomly assigned 9th-grade students with low reading comprehension to a researcher-provided intervention (n = 51) or a business-as-usual comparison (n = 49) group. Reading interventionists provided weekly instruction for 2 semesters (M = 114 hr) to small groups of students (M = 5). We estimated intervention effects for each outcome measure using repeated measures analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) for measures of reading and vocabulary. Results indicated statistically significant differences between students in the intervention and comparison conditions on measures of vocabulary and on the Test of Sentence Reading Efficiency and Comprehension (TOSREC) and no differences on the Woodcock–Johnson III Passage Comprehension subtest. Repeated measures ANCOVAs indicated large effect sizes on vocabulary measures between intervention and comparison students on multiple-choice and free response items (ηp2 = .16 and .19, respectively) and small effect sizes on the TOSREC (ηp2 = .02).
Detection of Magnetic Fields toward M17 through the H I Zeeman Effect

We have carried out VLA Zeeman observations of H I absorption lines toward the H II region in the M17 giant molecular cloud complex. The resulting maps have 60″ × 45″ spatial resolution and 0.64 km s-1 velocity separation. The H I absorption lines toward M17 show between 5 and 8 distinct velocity components, which vary spatially in a complex manner across the source. We explore possible physical connections between these components and the M17 region based on calculations of H I column densities, line-of-sight magnetic field strengths, as well as comparisons with a wide array of previous optical, infrared, and radio observations. In particular, an H I component at the same velocity as the southwestern molecular cloud (M17 SW; ~20 km s-1) seems to originate from the edge-on interface between the H II region and M17 SW in unshocked photodissociation region (PDR) gas. We have detected a steep enhancement in the 20 km s-1 H I column density and line-of-sight magnetic field strengths (Blos) toward this boundary. A lower limit for the peak 20 km s-1 H I column density is NHI/Ts≥5.6 × 1019 cm-2 K-1, whereas the peak Blos is ~-450 μG. In addition, blended components at velocities of 11-17 km s-1 appear to originate from shocked gas in the PDR between the H II region and an extension of M17 SW, which partially obscures the southern bar of the H II region. The peak NHI/Ts and Blos for this component are ≥4.4 × 1019 cm−2 K-1 and ~+550 μG, respectively. Comparison of the peak magnetic fields detected toward M17 with virial equilibrium calculations suggest that ≈½ of M17 SW's total support comes from its static magnetic energy, while the other half of its support is supplied by the turbulent kinetic energy (including MHD waves).
SIMD- and Cache-Friendly Algorithm for Sorting an Array of Structures

This paper describes our new algorithm for sorting an array of structures by efficiently exploiting the SIMD instructions and cache memory of today's processors. Recently, multiway mergesort implemented with SIMD instructions has been used as a high-performance in-memory sorting algorithm for sorting integer values. For sorting an array of structures with SIMD instructions, a frequently used approach is to first pack the key and index for each record into an integer value, sort the key-index pairs using SIMD instructions, then rearrange the records based on the sorted key-index pairs. This approach can efficiently exploit SIMD instructions because it sorts the key-index pairs while packed into integer values; hence, it can use existing high-performance sorting implementations of the SIMD-based multiway mergesort for integers. However, this approach has frequent cache misses in the final rearranging phase due to its random and scattered memory accesses so that this phase limits both single-thread performance and scalability with multiple cores. Our approach is also based on multiway mergesort, but it can avoid costly random accesses for rearranging the records while still efficiently exploiting the SIMD instructions. Our results showed that our approach exhibited up to 2.1x better single-thread performance than the key-index approach implemented with SIMD instructions when sorting 512M 16-byte records on one core. Our approach also yielded better performance when we used multiple cores. Compared to an optimized radix sort, our vectorized multiway mergesort achieved better performance when the each record is large. Our vectorized multiway mergesort also yielded higher scalability with multiple cores than the radix sort.
Examining general attitudes towards illegal drug use & addiction

Using a true experimental design, the study aimed to examine general attitudes towards illegal drug use and addiction in a general population. A sample of 257 male (115) and female (140) participants with a mean age of 26.26 (SD = 11.48) completed an online questionnaire which measured drug-related knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, general attitudes towards drug use and community support. Statistical analysis found the following results; general attitudes towards recreational drug use and addiction were significantly less positive than attitudes towards drug abstinence. Community support was significantly lower for recreational drug users and drug addicts than drug abstinent individuals. Younger participants reported more positive attitudes towards recreational use and less positive attitudes towards abstinence, higher knowledge of someone with a drug problem and greater support for policy change than older participants. There were significant relationships found between support for policy change, attitudes towards drug use and attitudes towards drug users.
TFET-based cellular neural network architectures

It is well known that CMOS scaling trends are now accompanied by less desirable byproducts such as increased energy dissipation. To combat the aforementioned challenges, solutions are sought at both the device and architectural levels. With this context, this work focuses on embedding a low voltage device, a Tunneling Field Effect Transistor (TFET) within a Cellular Neural Network (CNN) - a low power analog computing architecture. Our study shows that TFET-based CNN systems, aside from being fully functional, also provide significant power savings when compared to the conventional resistor-based CNN. Our initial studies suggest that power savings are possible by carefully engineering lower voltage, lower current TFET devices without sacrificing performance. Moreover, TFET-based CNN reduces implementation footprints by eliminating the hardware required to realize output transfer functions. Application dynamics are verified through simulations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of desired device characteristics for CNN architectures with enhanced functionality.
Health Care Cost Analysis in a Population-based Inception Cohort of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients in the First Year of Diagnosis.

BACKGROUND There are limited prospective population-based data on the health care cost of IBD in the post-biologicals era. A prospective registry that included all incident cases of inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] was established to study disease progress and health cost. AIM To prospectively assess health care costs in the first year of diagnosis among a well-characterised cohort of newly diagnosed IBD patients. METHOD Incident cases of IBD were prospectively identified in 2007-2008 and 2010-2013 from multiple health care providers, and enrolled into the population-based registry. Health care resource utilisation for each patient was collected through active surveillance of case notes and investigations including specialist visits, diagnostic tests, medications, medical hospitalisation, and surgery. RESULTS Off 276 incident cases of IBD, 252 [91%] were recruited to the registry, and health care cost was calculated for 242 (146 Crohn's disease [CD] and 96 ulcerative colitis [UC] patients). The median cost in CD was higher at A$5905 per patient (interquartile range [IQR]: A$1571-$91,324) than in UC at A$4752 [IQR: A$1488-A$58,072]. In CD, outpatient resources made up 55% of all cost, with medications accounting for 32% of total cost [15% aminosalicylates, 15% biological therapy], followed by surgery [31%], and diagnostic testing [21%]. In UC, medications accounted for 39% of total cost [of which 37% was due to 5-aminosalicylates, and diagnostics 29%; outpatient cost contributed 71% to total cost. CONCLUSION In the first year of diagnosis, outpatient resources account for the majority of cost in both CD and UC. Medications are the main cost driver in IBD.
Cav2.1 in Cerebellar Purkinje Cells Regulates Competitive Excitatory Synaptic Wiring, Cell Survival, and Cerebellar Biochemical Compartmentalization

In the adult cerebellum, each Purkinje cell (PC) is innervated by a single climbing fiber (CF) in proximal dendrites and 105-106 parallel fibers (PFs) in distal dendrites. This organized wiring is established postnatally through heterosynaptic competition between PFs and CFs and homosynaptic competition among multiple CFs. Using PC-specific Cav2.1 knock-out mice (PC-Cav2.1 KO mice), we have demonstrated recently that postsynaptic Cav2.1 plays a key role in the homosynaptic competition by promoting functional strengthening and dendritic translocation of single “winner” CFs. Here, we report that Cav2.1 in PCs, but not in granule cells, is also essential for the heterosynaptic competition. In PC-Cav2.1 KO mice, the extent of CF territory was limited to the soma and basal dendrites, whereas PF territory was expanded reciprocally. Consequently, the proximal somatodendritic domain of PCs displayed hyperspiny transformation and fell into chaotic innervation by multiple CFs and numerous PFs. PC-Cav2.1 KO mice also displayed patterned degeneration of PCs, which occurred preferentially in aldolase C/zebrin II-negative cerebellar compartments. Furthermore, the mutually complementary expression of phospholipase Cβ3 (PLCβ3) and PLCβ4 was altered such that their normally sharp boundary was blurred in the PCs of PC-Cav2.1 KO mice. This blurring was caused by an impaired posttranscriptional downregulation of PLCβ3 in PLCβ4-dominant PCs during the early postnatal period. A similar alteration was noted in the banded expression of the glutamate transporter EAAT4 in PC-Cav2.1 KO mice. Therefore, Cav2.1 in PCs is essential for competitive synaptic wiring, cell survival, and the establishment of precise boundaries and reciprocity of biochemical compartments in PCs.
Effect of Fluid Shear Stress on Endocytosis of Heparan Sulfate and Low-density Lipoproteins

Hemodynamic stress is a critical factor in the onset of atherosclerosis such that reduced rates of shear stress occurring at regions of high curvature are more prone to disease. The level of shear stress has direct influence on the thickness and integrity of the glycocalyx layer. Here we show that heparan sulfate, the main component of the glycocalyx layer, forms an intact layer only on cell surfaces subjected to shear, and not under static conditions. Furthermore, receptor-mediated endocytosis of heparan sulfate and low-density liporoteins is not detectable in cells exposed to shear stress. The internalized heparan sulfate and low-density lipoproteins are colocalized as shown by confocal imaging.