Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tisp40, a spermatid specific bZip transcription factor, functions by binding to the unfolded protein response element via the Rip pathway

TISP40, a mouse spermatid‐specific gene, encodes a CREB/CREM family transcription factor that is predominantly expressed during spermiogenesis. We report here that TISP40 generates two types of proteins, Tisp40α and Tisp40β, both of which contain a transmembrane domain and localize to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In contrast, mutant proteins lacking the transmembrane domain (Tisp40α/βΔTM) primarily localize to the nucleus. Endoglycosidase H treatment shows that the C‐terminus of Tisp40α/β is glycosylated. Protease experiments demonstrate that Tisp40α/β are Type II transmembrane proteins that are released into the nucleus by a two‐step cleavage mechanism called ‘regulated intramembrane proteolysis’ (Rip). Unlike previously published observations, Tisp40α does not bind to the NF‐κB site; instead, it specifically binds to the unfolded protein response element (UPRE). Luciferase assays reveal that Tisp40βΔTM activates transcription through UPRE. Northern blot analysis shows that Tisp40α/βΔTM proteins up‐regulate EDEM (ER degradation of enhancing α‐manosidase‐like protein) mRNA. These observations unveil a novel event in mouse spermiogenesis and show that the final stage of trans‐criptional regulation is controlled by the Rip pathway.
Analysis of Gag-specific Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes in Simian Immunodeficiency Virus–infected Rhesus Monkeys by Cell Staining with a Tetrameric Major Histocompatibility Complex Class I–Peptide Complex

A tetrameric recombinant major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I–peptide complex was used as a staining reagent in flow cytometric analyses to quantitate and define the phenotype of Gag-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in the peripheral blood of simian immunodeficiency virus macaque (SIVmac)-infected rhesus monkeys. The heavy chain of the rhesus monkey MHC class I molecule Mamu-A*01 and β2-microglobulin were refolded in the presence of an SIVmac Gag synthetic peptide (p11C, C–M) representing the optimal nine–amino acid peptide of Mamu-A*01–restricted predominant CTL epitope to create a tetrameric Mamu-A*01/p11C, C–M complex. Tetrameric Mamu-A*01/p11C, C–M complex bound to T cells of SIVmac-infected, Mamu-A*01+, but not uninfected, Mamu-A*01+, or infected, Mamu-A*01− rhesus monkeys. Specific staining of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from SIVmac-infected, Mamu-A*01+ rhesus monkeys was only found in the cluster of differentiation (CD)8α/β+ T lymphocyte subset and the percentage of CD8α/β+ T cells in the peripheral blood of four SIVmac-infected, Mamu-A*01+ rhesus monkeys staining with this complex ranged from 0.7 to 10.3%. Importantly, functional SIVmac Gag p11C-specific CTL activity was seen in sorted and expanded tetrameric Mamu-A*01/p11C, C–M complex–binding, but not nonbinding, CD8α/β+ T cells. Furthermore, the percentage of CD8α/β+ T cells binding this tetrameric Mamu-A*01/p11C, C–M complex correlated well with p11C-specific cytotoxic activity as measured in both bulk and limiting dilution effector frequency assays. Finally, phenotypic characterization of the cells binding this tetrameric complex indicated that this lymphocyte population is heterogeneous. These studies indicate the power of this approach for examining virus-specific CTLs in in vivo settings.
Evaluating Quality Control of Radiotracer 18F-FDG: Experience in the United Hospital, Bangladesh

In the present research the quality of 18F-FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose) is maintained to reduce hazards of the patients and produce good quality of image that helps interpret the image with proper diagnosis. The quality of produced 18F-FDG in the United Hospital, Bangladesh is checked in the quality control laboratory and compared with the guideline criteria of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This 18F-FDG has been injected into 2500 patients and found no immediate or afterward hazards to any patients till now. Radionuclide purity, radiochemical purity, chemical purity, pH are assessed to have the quality assurance of 18F-FDG studied. Radionuclide purity is validated by half-life measurement and gamma ray detection. The calculated average half-life (110.26 min) and halflife 18F (109.7 min) are found in good agreement. The peak from TLC result sheet gives only the peak of unhydrolyzed FDG which implies more than 99% 18F-FDG is evident in this experiment. Chromatographic spectrum of residual solvents like Acetonitrile and Ethanol are analyzed to access the chemical purity with respect to permissible concentration. The pH of 18F-FDG is found within 4.5 to 6.5.
A Case for Dynamic Sets in Operating Systems.

Abstract : Recent trends have exposed three key problems in today's operating systems. The first is the emergence of I/O latency as the dominant factor in the performance of many applications. The second is the need to cope with mobile communication environments where bandwidth and latency may be highly variable. The third is the importance of search activity to locating files of interest in a distributed system. In this paper we describe a single unifying abstraction called dynamic sets which can offer substantial benefits in the solution of these problems. These benefits include greater opportunity in the I/O subsystem to aggressively exploit prefetching and parallelism. as well as support for associative naming to complement the hierarchical naming in typical file systems. This paper motivates dynamic sets, presents the design of a system that embodies this abstraction, and evaluates a prototype implementation of the system via measurements and an analytical model.
VASP is a CXCR2-interacting protein that regulates CXCR2-mediated polarization and chemotaxis

Chemotaxis regulates the recruitment of leukocytes, which is integral for a number of biological processes and is mediated through the interaction of chemokines with seven transmembrane G-protein-coupled receptors. Several studies have indicated that chemotactic signaling pathways might be activated via G-protein-independent mechanisms, perhaps through novel receptor-interacting proteins. CXCR2 is a major chemokine receptor expressed on neutrophils. We used a proteomics approach to identify unique ligand-dependent CXCR2-interacting proteins in differentiated neutrophil-like HL-60 cells. Using this approach, vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP) was identified as a CXCR2-interacting protein. The interaction between CXCR2 and VASP is direct and enhanced by CXCL8 stimulation, which triggers VASP phosphorylation via PKA- and PKCδ-mediated pathways. The interaction between CXCR2 and VASP requires free F-actin barbed ends to recruit VASP to the leading edge. Finally, knockdown of VASP in HL-60 cells results in severely impaired CXCR2-mediated chemotaxis and polarization. These data provide the first demonstration that direct interaction of VASP with CXCR2 is essential for proper CXCR2 function and demonstrate a crucial role for VASP in mediating chemotaxis in leukocytes.
GAIN: GPU-Based Constraint Checking for Context Consistency

Applications in pervasive computing are often context-aware. However, due to uncontrollable environmental noises, contexts collected by applications can be distorted or even conflicting with each other. This is known as the context inconsistency problem. To provide reliable services, applications need to validate contexts before using them. One promising approach is to check contexts against consistency constraints at the runtime of applications. However, this can bring heavy computations due to tremendous amounts of contexts, thus leading to deteriorated performance to applications. Previous work has proposed incremental or concurrent checking techniques to improve the checking performance, but they heavily rely on CPU computing. In this paper, we propose a novel technique GAIN to exploit GPU computing to improve the checking performance. GAIN can automatically recognize parallel units in a constraint and schedule their checking in parallel on GPU cores. We evaluated GAIN with various constraints under different workloads. Our evaluation results show that, compared to CPU-based computing, GAIN saves CPU computing resources for pervasive applications while checks constraints much more efficiently.
A randomized, controlled trial of varying radiation doses in the treatment of choroidal melanoma.

Results: Proportions of patients retaining visual acuity of at least 20/200 were similar in the 2 dose groups at 5 years after radiation (approximately 55%). Similar numbers of patients in each group experienced tumor regrowth (2 patients at 50 CGE vs 3 patients at 70 CGE; P.99) and metastasis (7 patients at 50 CGE vs 8 patients at 70 CGE; P=.79). Five-year rates of radiation maculopathy also were similar (for both groups, approximately 75% for tumors within 1 disc diameter and 40% for tumors .1 disc diameter from the macula). Rates of radiation papillopathy were nonsignificantly decreased in the 50-CGE treatment group when tumors were located 1 disc diameter or less from the optic disc (P=.20). Patients treated with the lower dose also experienced significantly less visual field loss.
The Relationship between PON1 Phenotype and PON1-192 Genotype in Detoxification of Three Oxons by Human Liver

Phosphorothioate pesticides (OP) such as diazinon, chlorpyrifos, and parathion are activated to highly toxic oxon metabolites by the cytochromes P450 (P450s), mainly in the liver. Simultaneously, the P450s catalyze detoxification of OP to nontoxic dearylated metabolites. The oxon is then detoxified to the dearylated metabolite by PON1, an A-esterase present in the liver and blood serum. The aims of this study were to define the influence of PON1-192 genotype and phenotype on the capacity of human liver microsomes (n = 27) to detoxify the oxons diazoxon, chlorpyrifos-oxon, and paraoxon. Near physiological assay conditions were used to reflect as closely as possible metabolism in vivo and because the hydrolytic activity of the allelic variants of PON1-192 are differentially affected by a number of conditions. The rates of hydrolysis of diazoxon, chlorpyrifos-oxon, and paraoxon varied 5.7-, 16-, and 56-fold, respectively, regardless of PON1-192 genotype. Individuals with the PON1-192RR genotype preferentially hydrolyzed paraoxon (p < 0.01), and the R allele was associated with higher hydrolytic activity toward chlorpyrifos-oxon, but not diazoxon. There were strongly significant relationships between phenylacetate and paraoxon hydrolysis (p < 0.001) and phenylacetate and chlorpyrifos-oxon hydrolysis (p < 0.001), but not between phenylacetate and diazoxon hydrolysis. These data highlight the importance of PON1 phenotype for efficient hydrolysis of paraoxon and chlorpyrifos-oxon, but environmental and yet unknown genetic factors are more important than PON1-192 genotype in determining capacity to hydrolyze diazoxon.
Introducing the Monash vision group's cortical prosthesis

Monash Vision Group is developing a bionic eye based on implanting 7-11 small tiles into the visual cortex. Each tile has 43 active electrodes on its base, and a wirelessly powered electronic system to decode control signals and drive the electrodes with biphasic pulses. The tiles are fed with power and data using a common transmitting coil at the back of the patient's head. Sophisticated image processing, described in a companion paper, ensures that the user experiences maximum benefit from the small number of electrodes. This paper describes the progress in the first three years (2010-2012) of this four-year project.
Managing Integrity for Data Exchanged on the Web

The World Wide Web is a medium for publishing data used by collaborating groups and communities of shared interest. This paper proposes mechanisms to support the accuracy and authenticity of published data. In our framework, publishers annotate data with virtually unforgeable evidence of authorship. Intermediaries may query, restructure, and integrate this data while propagating the annotations. Final recipients of the data may then derive useful conclusions about the authenticity of the data they receive.
Structural membrane alterations in Alzheimer brains found to be associated with regional disease development; increased density of gangliosides GM1 and GM2 and loss of cholesterol in detergent‐resistant membrane domains

The formation of neurotoxic beta‐amyloid fibrils in Alzheimer's disease (AD) is suggested to involve membrane rafts and to be promoted, in vitro, by enriched concentrations of gangliosides, particularly GM1, and the cholesterol therein. In our study, the presence of rafts and their content of the major membrane lipids and gangliosides in the temporal cortex, reflecting late stages of AD pathology, and the frontal cortex, presenting earlier stages, has been investigated. Whole tissue and isolated detergent‐resistant membrane fractions (DRMs) were analysed from 10 AD and 10 age‐matched control autopsy brains. DRMs from the frontal cortex of AD brains contained a significantly higher concentration (µmol/µmol glycerophospholipids), of ganglioside GM1 (22.3 ± 4.6 compared to 10.3 ± 6.4, p < 0.001) and GM2 (2.5 ± 1.0 compared to 0.55 ± 0.3, p < 0.001). Similar increases of these gangliosides were also seen in DRMs from the temporal cortex of AD brains, which, in addition, comprised significantly lower proportions of DRMs. Moreover, these remaining rafts were depleted in cholesterol (from 1.5 ± 0.2 to 0.6 ± 0.3 µmol/µmol glycerophospholipids, p < 0.001). In summary, we found an increased proportion of GM1 and GM2 in DRMs, and accelerating plaque formation at an early stage, which may gradually lead to membrane raft disruptions and thereby affect cellular functions associated with the presence of such membrane domains.
Hand and eyes: how eye contact is linked to gestures in video conferencing

Video-mediated communication (VMC) technologies enable communication and interaction over distance and try to provide the user the experience of real face-to-face interaction and social presence. Although those systems allow a variety of nonverbal cues, most of them lack eye contact due to the vertical displacement between the camera (e.g., at the top edge of the screen) and the image of the communication partner's eyes. In an initial study we explored the interdependency of eye contact, gaze behavior and gestures with respect to social presence. Our results indicate that allowing for eye contact fosters the perception of gestures.
BI 6727, A Polo-like Kinase Inhibitor with Improved Pharmacokinetic Profile and Broad Antitumor Activity

Purpose: Antimitotic chemotherapy remains a cornerstone of multimodality treatment for locally advanced and metastatic cancers. To identify novel mitosis-specific agents with higher selectivity than approved tubulin-binding agents (taxanes, Vinca alkaloids), we have generated inhibitors of Polo-like kinase 1, a target that functions predominantly in mitosis. Experimental Design: The first compound in this series, suitable for i.v. administration, has entered clinical development. To fully explore the potential of Polo-like kinase 1 inhibition in oncology, we have profiled additional compounds and now describe a novel clinical candidate. Results: BI 6727 is a highly potent (enzyme IC50 = 0.87 nmol/L, EC50 = 11-37 nmol/L on a panel of cancer cell lines) and selective dihydropteridinone with distinct properties. First, BI 6727 has a pharmacokinetic profile favoring sustained exposure of tumor tissues with a high volume of distribution and a long terminal half-life in mice (Vss = 7.6 L/kg, t1/2 = 46 h) and rats (Vss = 22 L/kg, t1/2 = 54 h). Second, BI 6727 has physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties that allow in vivo testing of i.v. as well as oral formulations, adding flexibility to dosing schedules. Finally, BI 6727 shows marked antitumor activity in multiple cancer models, including a model of taxane-resistant colorectal cancer. With oral and i.v. routes of administration, the total weekly dose of BI 6727 is most relevant for efficacy, supporting the use of a variety of well-tolerated dosing schedules. Conclusion: These findings warrant further investigation of BI 6727 as a tailored antimitotic agent; clinical studies have been initiated.
Non-negative matrix factorization based compensation of music for automatic speech recognition

This paper proposes to use non-negative matrix factorization based speech enhancement in robust automatic recognition of mixtures of speech and music. We represent magnitude spectra of noisy speech signals as the non-negative weighted linear combination of speech and noise spectral basis vectors, that are obtained from training corpora of speech and music. We use overcomplete dictionaries consisting of random exemplars of the training data. The method is tested on theWall Street Journal large vocabulary speech corpus which is artificially corrupted with polyphonic music from the RWC music database. Various music styles and speech-tomusic ratios are evaluated. The proposed methods are shown to produce a consistent, significant improvement on the recognition performance in the comparison with the baseline method. Audio demonstrations of the enhanced signals are available at http://www.cs. tut.fi/ tuomasv.
A Hierarchical Pose-Based Approach to Complex Action Understanding Using Dictionaries of Actionlets and Motion Poselets

In this paper, we introduce a new hierarchical model for human action recognition using body joint locations. Our model can categorize complex actions in videos, and perform spatio-temporal annotations of the atomic actions that compose the complex action being performed. That is, for each atomic action, the model generates temporal action annotations by estimating its starting and ending times, as well as, spatial annotations by inferring the human body parts that are involved in executing the action. Our model includes three key novel properties: (i) it can be trained with no spatial supervision, as it can automatically discover active body parts from temporal action annotations only, (ii) it jointly learns flexible representations for motion poselets and actionlets that encode the visual variability of body parts and atomic actions, (iii) a mechanism to discard idle or non-informative body parts which increases its robustness to common pose estimation errors. We evaluate the performance of our method using multiple action recognition benchmarks. Our model consistently outperforms baselines and state-of-the-art action recognition methods.
Android App Security Analysis

1. Abstract As with most other mobile operating systems, security is a great concern for Google’s Android. It runs on an open source platform, which allows anyone to create and upload an app onto the market. In this study, Android applications and permissions were examined from a variety of sources. Inconsistencies between the permissions in the Manifest File and the source code were analyzed to find security issues. 30% of the apps examined were overprivileged, meaning they contained more permissions in their Manifest Files than were referenced in their source code. This discrepancy could provide vulnerability for malicious software to exploit. Furthermore, some applications exploited the access to user's private data and leaked it to outside sources. It is, therefore, important that Android users read and understand the permissions requested before installing an app.
Evaluation of Oxidant/Antioxidant Status and Cytokine Levels in Patients with Cannabis Use Disorder

Objective Cannabis is the most commonly used illegal drug in the world and it has several adverse effects such as anxiety, panic reactions and psychotic symptoms. In this study, we aimed to evaluate oxidant, anti-oxidant status and cytokine levels in individuals with cannabis use disorder. Methods Thirty-four patients with cannabis use disorder and 34 healthy controls were enrolled to the study. Serum total antioxidant status, total oxidant status and cytokine levels were investigated in patients with cannabis use disorder and healthy controls. Results We found increased levels of total oxidant status, oxidative stress index and interleukin (IL) 1β, IL-6, IL-8, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) α in individuals with cannabis dependency compared to healthy people. When we compared total antioxidant status, IL-12, and interferon (IFN) γ levels, there were no differences in both groups. There was positive correlation between IL-6 and total oxidant status, oxidative stress index levels. Conclusion The oxidative balance of individuals with cannabis use disorder was impaired and they had higher levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α, which is a pro-inflammatory cytokine and indicates increased inflammation compared to healthy controls. Thus, these findings suggest that cannabis increased inflammation and impaired the oxidative balance.
Online experts for admission control in SDN

SDN unleashes the potential to perform computational intensive machine learning algorithms to solve complex routing problems. This demo presents an architecture for the SDN controller that integrates several online routing algorithms for the real-time admission control of new connection requests. The demonstrator permits to compare the evolution of the network according to the admission decisions taken by different online algorithms and to simulate future scenarios to support strategic decisions aimed at improving the infrastructure.
Low-level fusion of color, texture and depth for robust road scene understanding

We propose a novel approach to pixel-level semantic labeling, which aims to rapidly infer the coarse layout of street scenes from color, texture and depth information in a joint fashion using a randomized decision forest. The recovered pixel-level class probability maps provide a general purpose basis to guide more elaborate vision algorithms. To demonstrate the richness of our labeling, we extend the well-known Stixel model to use the semantic labels as input cues. In addition, we employ our generated low-level information as an attention mechanism for a vehicle detector. In both cases, recognition performance and accuracy are significantly improved. In our experimental evaluation on the public KITTI benchmark, we thoroughly study the characteristics of different feature channels as well as their contribution to the overall pixel-level labeling result. Our results underline that the combination of several orthogonal feature channels in a joint model is key to superior performance. This performance improvement comes at little additional cost, given that our approach is able to operate at 100 Hz using a GPU implementation.
Could electric motor in HEV assist vehicle launch and relief dry clutch from thermal damage?

The Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HVEs) are reaching a wide diffusion both because the energy density and life of batteries increased in the last years with a decrease of their costs and because the reduction of air pollution is a very important issue, especially in big cities. This latter is one, or probably the main, reason that pushes the development of HEVs and electric vehicles (EVs).
Symbol Acquisition for Task-Level Planning

We consider the problem of how to plan efficiently in low-level, continuous state spaces with temporally abstract actions (or skills), by constructing abstract representations of the problem suitable for task-level planning. The central question this effort poses is which abstract representations are required to express and evaluate plans composed of sequences of skills. We show that classifiers can be used as a symbolic representation system, and that the ability to represent the preconditions and effects of an agent's skills is both necessary and sufficient for task-level planning. The resulting representations allow a reinforcement learning agent to acquire a symbolic representation appropriate for planning from experience.