Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sociomaterial configurations of human and non-human actors: Re-inventing family trip planning through imbrication of services

The present work explores theoretical threads which may be used to inform the design of interactive systems that exhibit digital materiality. The research is motivated by current thinking on sociomateriality and distributed organizing as populated in different scholarships. From the range of conceptual foundations, the paper picks on the concept of imbrication and advances a conceptual scaffold for imbricating services. A design showcase is used to briefly illustrate how imbrications of services combined with digital `tells' and online remains can improve upon the digital materiality of certain family practices such as vacation planning.
Skin ulcers in estuarine fishes: a comparative pathological evaluation of wild and laboratory-exposed fish.

The toxic dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida Steidinger & Burkholder has recently been implicated as the etiologic agent of acute mass mortalities and skin ulcers in menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, and other fishes from mid-Atlantic U.S. estuaries. However, evidence for this association is largely circumstantial and controversial. We exposed tilapia (Oreochromis spp.) to Pfiesteria shumwayae Glasgow & Burkholder (identification based on scanning electron microscopy and molecular analyses) and compared the resulting pathology to the so-called Pfiesteria-specific lesions occurring in wild menhaden. The tilapia challenged by high concentrations (2,000-12,000 cells/mL) of P. shumwayaeexhibited loss of mucus coat and scales plus mild petecchial hemorrhage, but no deeply penetrating chronic ulcers like those in wild menhaden. Histologically, fish exhibited epidermal erosion with bacterial colonization but minimal associated inflammation. In moribund fish, loss of epidermis was widespread over large portions of the body. Similar erosion occurred in the mucosa lining the oral and branchial cavities. Gills exhibited epithelial lifting, loss of secondary lamellar structure, and infiltration by lymphoid cells. Epithelial lining of the lateral line canal (LLC) and olfactory organs exhibited severe necrosis. Visceral organs, kidney, and neural tissues (brain, spinal cord, ganglia, peripheral nerves) were histologically normal. An unexpected finding was the numerous P. shumwayae cells adhering to damaged skin, skin folds, scale pockets, LLC, and olfactory tissues. In contrast, histologic evaluation of skin ulcers in over 200 wild menhaden from Virginia and Maryland portions of the Chesapeake Bay and the Pamlico Estuary, North Carolina, revealed that all ulcers harbored a deeply invasive, highly pathogenic fungus now known to be Aphanomyces invadans. In menhaden the infection always elicited severe myonecrosis and intense granulomatous myositis. The consistent occurrence of this fungus and the nature and severity of the resulting inflammatory response indicate that these ulcers are chronic (age >1 week) and of an infectious etiology, not the direct result of an acute toxicosis initiated by Pfiesteria toxin(s) as recently hypothesized. The disease therefore is best called ulcerative mycosis (UM). This study indicates that the pathology of Pfiesteria laboratory exposure is fundamentally different from that of UM in menhaden; however, we cannot rule out Pfiesteria as one of many possible early initiators predisposing wild fishes to fungal infection in some circumstances.
High-speed grid connected induction generator supported by magnetic bearings

This paper proposes an implementation of a high-speed induction generator supported by magnetic bearings and connected to the grid. An indirect field oriented control (IFOC) is used for high performance of the generator side. On the grid side the voltage oriented control (VOC) is applied to guarantee the high quality of the current injected into the grid. The magnetic bearings improve the system performance because the absence of any kind of friction. The maintenance of the system is also reduced. The high speed and the absence of mechanical coupling between the turbine and the generator also improve the system performance as well as reduce the total length of the system. Simulation results were carried out with the Matlab/Simulink software. An experimental test bench was constructed to prove the system performance and experimental results are in progress.
Approximating dense cases of covering problems

We study dense cases of several covering problems. An instance of the set cover problem with $m$ sets is dense if there is $\epsilon<0$ such that any element belongs to at least $\epsilon m$ sets. We show that the dense set cover problem can be approximated with the performance ratio $c\log n$ for any $c<0$ and it is unlikely to be NP-hard. We construct a polynomial-time approximation scheme for the dense Steiner tree problem in $n$-vertex graphs, i.e. for the case when each terminal is adjacent to at least $\epsilon n$ vertices. We also study the vertex cover problem in $\epsilon$-dense graphs. Though thisproblem is shown to be still MAX-SNP-hard as in general graphs, we find a better approximation algorithm with the performance ratio $2\over{1+\epsilon}$. The {\em superdense} cases of all these problems are shown to be solvable in polynomial time.
Signal transducing molecules and glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol-linked proteins form a caveolin-rich insoluble complex in MDCK cells

GPI-linked protein molecules become Triton-insoluble during polarized sorting to the apical cell surface of epithelial cells. These insoluble complexes, enriched in cholesterol, glycolipids, and GPI-linked proteins, have been isolated by flotation on sucrose density gradients and are thought to contain the putative GPI-sorting machinery. As the cellular origin and molecular protein components of this complex remain unknown, we have begun to characterize these low-density insoluble complexes isolated from MDCK cells. We find that these complexes, which represent 0.4-0.8% of the plasma membrane, ultrastructurally resemble caveolae and are over 150-fold enriched in a model GPI-anchored protein and caveolin, a caveolar marker protein. However, they exclude many other plasma membrane associated molecules and organelle-specific marker enzymes, suggesting that they represent microdomains of the plasma membrane. In addition to caveolin, these insoluble complexes contain a subset of hydrophobic plasma membrane proteins and cytoplasmically-oriented signaling molecules, including: (a) GTP- binding proteins--both small and heterotrimeric; (b) annex II--an apical calcium-regulated phospholipid binding protein with a demonstrated role in exocytic fusion events; (c) c-Yes--an apically localized member of the Src family of non-receptor type protein- tyrosine kinases; and (d) an unidentified serine-kinase activity. As we demonstrate that caveolin is both a transmembrane molecule and a major phospho-acceptor component of these complexes, we propose that caveolin could function as a transmembrane adaptor molecule that couples luminal GPI-linked proteins with cytoplasmically oriented signaling molecules during GPI-membrane trafficking or GPI-mediated signal transduction events. In addition, our results have implications for understanding v- Src transformation and the actions of cholera and pertussis toxins on hetero-trimeric G proteins.
A meta-analysis of leaf nitrogen distribution within plant canopies.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Leaf nitrogen distribution in the plant canopy is an important determinant for canopy photosynthesis. Although the gradient of leaf nitrogen is formed along light gradients in the canopy, its quantitative variations among species and environmental responses remain unknown. Here, we conducted a global meta-analysis of leaf nitrogen distribution in plant canopies. METHODS We collected data on the nitrogen distribution and environmental variables from 393 plant canopies (100, 241 and 52 canopies for wheat, other herbaceous and woody species, respectively). KEY RESULTS The trends were clearly different between wheat and other species; the photosynthetic nitrogen distribution coefficient (Kb) was mainly determined by leaf area index (LAI) in wheat, whereas it was correlated with the light extinction coefficient (KL) and LAI in other species. Some other variables were also found to influence Kb We present the best equations for Kb as a function of environmental variables and canopy characteristics. As a more simple function, Kb = 0·5KL can be used for canopies of species other than wheat. Sensitivity analyses using a terrestrial carbon flux model showed that gross primary production tended to be more sensitive to the Kb value especially when nitrogen content of the uppermost leaf was fixed. CONCLUSION Our results reveal that nitrogen distribution is mainly driven by the vertical light gradient but other factors such as LAI also have significant effects. Our equations contribute to an improvement in the projection of plant productivity and cycling of carbon and nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems.
The Interferon Consensus Sequence Binding Protein (Icsbp/Irf8) Is Required for Termination of Emergency Granulopoiesis*

Emergency granulopoiesis occurs in response to infectious or inflammatory challenge and is a component of the innate immune response. Some molecular events involved in initiating emergency granulopoiesis are known, but termination of this process is less well defined. In this study, we found that the interferon consensus sequence binding protein (Icsbp/Irf8) was required to terminate emergency granulopoiesis. Icsbp is an interferon regulatory transcription factor with leukemia suppressor activity. Expression of Icsbp is decreased in chronic myeloid leukemia, and Icsbp−/− mice exhibit progressive granulocytosis with evolution to blast crisis, similar to the course of human chronic myeloid leukemia. In this study, we found aberrantly sustained granulocyte production in Icsbp−/− mice after stimulation of an emergency granulopoiesis response. Icsbp represses transcription of the genes encoding Fas-associated phosphatase 1 (Fap1) and growth arrest-specific 2 (Gas2) and activates genes encoding Fanconi C and F. After stimulation of emergency granulopoiesis, we found increased and sustained expression of Fap1 and Gas2 in bone marrow myeloid progenitor cells from Icsbp−/− mice in comparison with the wild type. This was associated with resistance to Fas-induced apoptosis and increased β-catenin activity in these cells. We also found that repeated episodes of emergency granulopoiesis accelerated progression to acute myeloid leukemia in Icsbp−/− mice. This was associated with impaired Fanconi C and F expression and increased sensitivity to DNA damage in bone marrow myeloid progenitors. Our results suggest that impaired Icsbp expression enhances leukemogenesis by deregulating processes that normally limit granulocyte expansion during the innate immune response.
A new hybrid decoding algorithm based on multi-dimensional searching for regular LDPC codes in finite geometries

In this paper, a new fast convergence hybrid decoding algorithm based on multi-dimensional searhing is proposed for decoding LDPC codes. The main idea of this algorithm is flipping variable multi bits in each iteration, change in which leads to the syndrome vector with least hamming weight. To this end, the algorithm does multidimensional searching between all possible bit positions that could flip in each iteration to select the best choices. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithm converge significantly faster and have reduction in iteration number and also have excellent performance but with little performance difference than the robust Sum-Product algorithm.
Contributions of epsinR and gadkin to clathrin-mediated intracellular trafficking

EpsinR and gadkin are two components of intracellular clathrin-coated vesicles whose precise functions are unclear. Rapid depletion of each protein from the available pool using the knocksideways method strongly inhibited the production of intracellular clathrin-coated vesicles, providing new insights into the functions of both proteins.
Projecting the End of a Speaker's Turn: A Cognitive Cornerstone of Conversation

A key mechanism in the organization of turns at talk in conversation is the ability to anticipate or PROJECT the moment of completion of a current speaker's turn. Some authors suggest that this is achieved via lexicosyntactic cues, while others argue that projection is based on intonational contours. We tested these hypotheses in an on-line experiment, manipulating the presence of symbolic (lexicosyntactic) content and intonational contour of utterances recorded in natural conversations. When hearing the original recordings, subjects can anticipate turn endings with the same degree of accuracy attested in real conversation. With intonational contour entirely removed (leaving intact words and syntax, with a completely flat pitch), there is no change in subjects' accuracy of end-of-turn projection. But in the opposite case (with original intonational contour intact, but with no recognizable words), subjects' performance deteriorates significantly. These results establish that the symbolic (i.e. lexicosyntactic) content of an utterance is necessary (and possibly sufficient) for projecting the moment of its completion, and thus for regulating conversational turn-taking. By contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, intonational contour is neither necessary nor sufficient for end-of-turn projection.
EdWordle: Consistency-Preserving Word Cloud Editing

We present EdWordle, a method for consistently editing word clouds. At its heart, EdWordle allows users to move and edit words while preserving the neighborhoods of other words. To do so, we combine a constrained rigid body simulation with a neighborhood-aware local Wordle algorithm to update the cloud and to create very compact layouts. The consistent and stable behavior of EdWordle enables users to create new forms of word clouds such as storytelling clouds in which the position of words is carefully edited. We compare our approach with state-of-the-art methods and show that we can improve user performance, user satisfaction, as well as the layout itself.
Criticality stacks: identifying critical threads in parallel programs using synchronization behavior

Analyzing multi-threaded programs is quite challenging, but is necessary to obtain good multicore performance while saving energy. Due to synchronization, certain threads make others wait, because they hold a lock or have yet to reach a barrier. We call these critical threads, i.e., threads whose performance is determinative of program performance as a whole. Identifying these threads can reveal numerous optimization opportunities, for the software developer and for hardware. In this paper, we propose a new metric for assessing thread criticality, which combines both how much time a thread is performing useful work and how many co-running threads are waiting. We show how thread criticality can be calculated online with modest hardware additions and with low overhead. We use our metric to create criticality stacks that break total execution time into each thread's criticality component, allowing for easy visual analysis of parallel imbalance. To validate our criticality metric, and demonstrate it is better than previous metrics, we scale the frequency of the most critical thread and show it achieves the largest performance improvement. We then demonstrate the broad applicability of criticality stacks by using them to perform three types of optimizations: (1) program analysis to remove parallel bottlenecks, (2) dynamically identifying the most critical thread and accelerating it using frequency scaling to improve performance, and (3) showing that accelerating only the most critical thread allows for targeted energy reduction.
Statistical Sign Language Machine Translation: from English written text to American Sign Language Gloss

This works aims to design a statistical machine translation from English text to American Sign Language (ASL). The system is based on Moses tool with some modifications and the results are synthesized through a 3D avatar for interpretation. First, we translate the input text to gloss, a written form of ASL. Second, we pass the output to the WebSign Plug-in to play the sign. Contributions of this work are the use of a new couple of language English/ASL and an improvement of statistical machine translation based on string matching thanks to Jaro-distance.
Empty-ellipse graphs

We define and study a geometric graph over points in the plane that captures the local behavior of Delaunay triangulations of points on smooth surfaces in IR<sup>3</sup>. Two points in a planar point set <i>P</i> are neighbors in the <i>empty-ellipse graph</i> if they lie on an axis-aligned ellipse with no point of <i>P</i> in its interior. The empty-ellipse graph can be a clique in the worst case, but it is usually much less dense. Specifically, the empty-ellipse graph of <i>n</i> points has complexity Θ(Δ<i>n</i>) in the worst case, where Δ is the ratio between the largest and smallest pairwise distances. For points generated uniformly at random in a rectangle, the empty-ellipse graph has expected complexity Θ(<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>). As an application of our proof techniques, we show that the Delaunay triangulation of <i>n</i> random points on a circular cylinder has expected complexity Θ(<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>).
Gatifloxacin Efficacy in Treatment of Experimental Methicillin-Sensitive Staphylococcus aureus-Induced Osteomyelitis in Rabbits

ABSTRACT The effectiveness of oral gatifloxacin was compared to that of standard parenteral antibiotic therapy (nafcillin) for the treatment of experimental methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus-induced osteomyelitis in a rabbit model. Gatifloxacin was as effective as nafcillin in clearing the infection. Therefore, oral gatifloxacin treatment of osteomyelitis may be an effective alternative to intravenous nafcillin treatment.
Background-foreground information based bit allocation algorithm for surveillance video on high efficiency video coding (HEVC)

Bit allocation plays an important role in rate control for it determines the calculation of other parameters of the rate control model. For surveillance videos, however, the bit distribution analysis shows that the foreground parts should get more bits and be encoded in higher quality than background parts. By utilizing the background and foreground information (BFI) provided by surveillance videos, this paper proposes a background-foreground information based bit allocation algorithm (BFIBA). The main idea of BFIBA is to classify a largest coding unit (LCU) into a foreground LCU or a background LCU according to BFI and then allocate bits in both frame level and LCU level and adjust the quantization parameter by using the information provided by the classification. Experimental results show that BFIBA maintains rate control performance, obtaining a rate control error of 0.1% and the foreground coding quality increases by 0.36dB, 0.76dB and 0.82dB in PSNR compared with the three existing bit allocation algorithms in HEVC rate control.
Multiscale Color-Texture Image Segmentation with Adaptive Region Merging

A novel multiscale image segmentation algorithm is presented, which is based on the dominant color and homogeneous texture features (HTF) that are adopted in the MPEG-7 standard. These features are efficiently combined to perform the automatic segmentation. First, the image is roughly segmented into textured and nontextured regions using Gabor decomposition. A multiscale segmentation is then applied to the resulting regions, according to the local texture feature. Finally, a precise boundary refinement procedure is employed to accurately determine the boundaries between textured and nontextured regions. A novel region merging algorithm is introduced with a simple and effective segment classification by using HTF to deal with the over-segmentation problem. Experiments show that our algorithm provides an improved performance compared with JSEG and a watershed algorithm.
Pairwise Constraint Propagation: A Survey

As one of the most important types of (weaker) supervised information in machine learning and pattern recognition, pairwise constraint, which specifies whether a pair of data points occur together, has recently received significant attention, especially the problem of pairwise constraint propagation. At least two reasons account for this trend: the first is that compared to the data label, pairwise constraints are more general and easily to collect, and the second is that since the available pairwise constraints are usually limited, the constraint propagation problem is thus important. This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of pairwise constraint propagation research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of pairwise constraint propagation. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing propagation techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category.
Contrasting Inflammation Resolution during Atherosclerosis and Post Myocardial Infarction at the Level of Monocyte/Macrophage Phagocytic Clearance

In cardiovascular disorders including advanced atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction (MI), increased cell death and tissue destabilization is associated with recruitment of inflammatory monocyte subsets that give rise to differentiated macrophages. These phagocytic cells clear necrotic and apoptotic bodies and promote inflammation resolution and tissue remodeling. The capacity of macrophages for phagocytosis of apoptotic cells (efferocytosis), clearance of necrotic cell debris, and repair of damaged tissue are challenged and modulated by local cell stressors that include increased protease activity, oxidative stress, and hypoxia. The effectiveness, or lack thereof, of phagocyte-mediated clearance, in turn is linked to active inflammation resolution signaling pathways, susceptibility to atherothrombosis and potentially, adverse post MI cardiac remodeling leading to heart failure. Previous reports indicate that in advanced atherosclerosis, defective efferocytosis is associated with atherosclerotic plaque destabilization. Post MI, the role of phagocytes and clearance in the heart is less appreciated. Herein we contrast the roles of efferocytosis in atherosclerosis and post MI and focus on how targeted modulation of clearance and accompanying resolution and reparative signaling may be a strategy to prevent heart failure post MI.
Registration of 'Willow Creek' Forage Wheat

Willow Creek' forage winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) (Reg. No. CV-1032, PI 655073) was released by the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station. Awnletted cereal forages are widely used for hay production on integrated crop- livestock operations in the Northern Great Plains. Five awnletted winter wheat accessions were evaluated for forage characteristics in 1996 and 1997, and Willow Creek was selected directly from PI 306505. Willow Creek was evaluated in replicated trials for forage yield and quality, grain yield, and agronomic characteristics from 1998 through 2008. Willow Creek is an awnletted winter wheat cultivar with good performance as an annual hay crop under irrigated or rainfed conditions in Montana and Wyoming. This cultivar has excellent winterhardiness and is tall and late-maturing. Willow Creek has good forage quality characteristics suitable for use by livestock in winter maintenance diets.