Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
E50K-OPTN-Induced Retinal Cell Death Involves the Rab GTPase-Activating Protein, TBC1D17 Mediated Block in Autophagy

The protein optineurin coded by OPTN gene is involved in several functions including regulation of endocytic trafficking, autophagy and signal transduction. Certain missense mutations in the gene OPTN cause normal tension glaucoma. A glaucoma-causing mutant of optineurin, E50K, induces death selectively in retinal cells. This mutant induces defective endocytic recycling of transferrin receptor by causing inactivation of Rab8 mediated by the GTPase-activating protein, TBC1D17. Here, we have explored the mechanism of E50K-induced cell death. E50K-OPTN-induced cell death was inhibited by co-expression of a catalytically inactive mutant of TBC1D17 and also by shRNA mediated knockdown of TBC1D17. Endogenous TBC1D17 colocalized with E50K-OPTN in vesicular structures. Co-expression of transferrin receptor partially protected against E50K-induced cell death. Overexpression of the E50K-OPTN but not WT-OPTN inhibited autophagy flux. Treatment of cells with rapamycin, an inducer of autophagy, reduced E50K-OPTN-induced cell death. An LC3-binding-defective mutant of E50K-OPTN showed reduced cell death, further suggesting the involvement of autophagy. TBC1D17 localized to autophagosomes and inhibited autophagy flux dependent on its catalytic activity. Knockdown of TBC1D17 rescued cells from E50K-mediated inhibition of autophagy flux. Overall, our results suggest that E50K mutant induced death of retinal cells involves impaired autophagy as well as impaired transferrin receptor function. TBC1D17, a GTPase-activating protein for Rab GTPases, plays a crucial role in E50K-induced impaired autophagy and cell death.
Chaotic Balanced State in a Model of Cortical Circuits

The nature and origin of the temporal irregularity in the electrical activity of cortical neurons in vivo are not well understood. We consider the hypothesis that this irregularity is due to a balance of excitatory and inhibitory currents into the cortical cells. We study a network model with excitatory and inhibitory populations of simple binary units. The internal feedback is mediated by relatively large synaptic strengths, so that the magnitude of the total excitatory and inhibitory feedback is much larger than the neuronal threshold. The connectivity is random and sparse. The mean number of connections per unit is large, though small compared to the total number of cells in the network. The network also receives a large, temporally regular input from external sources. We present an analytical solution of the mean-field theory of this model, which is exact in the limit of large network size. This theory reveals a new cooperative stationary state of large networks, which we term a balanced state. In this state, a balance between the excitatory and inhibitory inputs emerges dynamically for a wide range of parameters, resulting in a net input whose temporal fluctuations are of the same order as its mean. The internal synaptic inputs act as a strong negative feedback, which linearizes the population responses to the external drive despite the strong nonlinearity of the individual cells. This feedback also greatly stabilizes the system's state and enables it to track a time-dependent input on time scales much shorter than the time constant of a single cell. The spatiotemporal statistics of the balanced state are calculated. It is shown that the autocorrelations decay on a short time scale, yielding an approximate Poissonian temporal statistics. The activity levels of single cells are broadly distributed, and their distribution exhibits a skewed shape with a long power-law tail. The chaotic nature of the balanced state is revealed by showing that the evolution of the microscopic state of the network is extremely sensitive to small deviations in its initial conditions. The balanced state generated by the sparse, strong connections is an asynchronous chaotic state. It is accompanied by weak spatial cross-correlations, the strength of which vanishes in the limit of large network size. This is in contrast to the synchronized chaotic states exhibited by more conventional network models with high connectivity of weak synapses.
Physical separation and functional interaction of Kluyveromyces lactis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae ARS elements derived from killer plasmid DNA

Teo DNA fragments which have autonomously replicating sequence (ARS) activity in both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Kluyveromyces lactis have been isolated from the K. lactis kl killer plasmid. One fragment (Kla1) is 700 base pairs (bp) in length plasmids carrying it are mitotically unstable in both hosts. In K. lactis, this instability leads to colonies having a ‘nibbled’ phenotype when grown on selective media and appears to be the results of inefficient plasmid segregation. The other fragment of 1100 bp which was produced during the cloning procedure. Kla2 has been divided into the sub‐fragments Kla2A and Kla2B which have, respectively, ARS activity in K. lactis and S. Cerevisiar but not the other species. This indicates that these two closely elated yeasts have different sequence requrements for ARS activity. Kla2B contains a perfect match to the S. cerevisiae ARS consensus but Kla2A does not. Both Kla2A and Kla1 share a 10 bp sequence as the sole region of homology between them. This sequence, 5‘TCATAATATA3’, is tentatively offered as defining the ARS consensus sequence for K. lactis.
Austral Summer Sea Ice Melt Revealed in Antarctic ERS-1/2 and NSCAT Scatterometer Data

The first in-situ field observations of Antarcic austral summer sea-ice melt were made in the Bellingshausen Sea by Arctowski (1908) on Belgica in 1899, and later by Wordie (1921) during the ill-fated drift of Endurance in the Weddell Sea from 1914-1916.
Central Infusion of Angiotensin II Type 2 Receptor Agonist Compound 21 Attenuates DOCA/NaCl-Induced Hypertension in Female Rats

The present study investigated whether central activation of angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2-R) attenuates deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA)/NaCl-induced hypertension in intact and ovariectomized (OVX) female rats and whether female sex hormone status has influence on the effects of AT2-R activation. DOCA/NaCl elicited a greater increase in blood pressure in OVX females than that in intact females. Central infusion of compound 21, a specific AT2-R agonist, abolished DOCA/NaCl pressor effect in intact females, whereas same treatment in OVX females produced an inhibitory effect. Real-time RT-PCR analysis revealed that DOCA/NaCl enhanced the mRNA expression of hypertensive components including AT1-R, ACE-1, and TNF-α in the paraventricular nucleus of hypothalamus in both intact and OVX females. However, the mRNA expressions of antihypertensive components such as AT2-R, ACE-2, and IL-10 were increased only in intact females. Central AT2-R agonist reversed the changes in the hypertensive components in all females, while this agonist further upregulated the expression of ACE2 and IL-10 in intact females, but only IL-10 in OVX females. These results indicate that brain AT2-R activation plays an inhibitory role in the development of DOCA/NaCl-induced hypertension in females. This beneficial effect of AT2-R activation involves regulation of renin-angiotensin system and proinflammatory cytokines.
Eurographics/ Acm Siggraph Symposium on Computer Animation (2006) Motion Templates for Automatic Classification and Retrieval of Motion Capture Data

This paper presents new methods for automatic classification and retrieval of motion capture data facilitating the identification of logically related motions scattered in some database. As the main ingredient, we introduce the concept of motion templates (MTs), by which the essence of an entire class of logically related motions can be captured in an explicit and semantically interpretable matrix representation. The key property of MTs is that the variable aspects of a motion class can be automatically masked out in the comparison with unknown motion data. This facilitates robust and efficient motion retrieval even in the presence of large spatio-temporal variations. Furthermore, we describe how to learn an MT for a specific motion class from a given set of training motions. In our extensive experiments, which are based on several hours of motion data, MTs proved to be a powerful concept for motion annotation and retrieval, yielding accurate results even for highly variable motion classes such as cartwheels, lying down, or throwing motions.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Time complexity of a parallel conjugate gradient solver for light scattering simulations : theory and SPMD implementation

We describe parallelization for distributed memory computers of a preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method, applied to solve systems of equations emerging from Elastic Light Scattering simulations. The execution time of the Conjugate Gradient method is analyzed theoretically. First expressions for the execution time for three different data decompositions are derived. Next two processor network topologies are taken into account and the theoretical execution times are further specified as a function of these topologies. The Conjugate Gradient method was implemented with a rowblock data decomposition on a ring of transputers. The measured and theoretically calculated execution times agree within 5 %. Finally convergence properties of the algorithm are investigated and the suitability of a polynomial preconditioner is examined.
Nursing Work Stress: The Impacts of Social Network Structure and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Background: The nursing workplace imposes significantly more stress on its employees than other workplace settings. Organizational resources, both physical and psychological, have been recognized in prior studies as important alleviators of nursing workplace stress. Whereas physical resources are less difficult to manipulate because of their tangibility, psychological resources, particularly psychological support from colleagues, are typically not deployed to greatest effect. Purpose: This article investigated the alleviation of nursing work stress using resources already extant in coworker social networks. Methods: Researchers conducted a survey in a dialysis department at a medical center located in Taipei City, Taiwan. This survey measured nurse work stress, satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and social network structures. Researchers employed UCINET to analyze the network structure data, which were in dyadic matrix format to estimate nurse network centralities and used partial least squares analysis to estimate research construct path coefficients and test extrapolated hypotheses. Result: The level of OCB induced by nurse social ties was satisfactory and did not only directly increased work satisfaction but also alleviated work stress, which indirectly boosted work satisfaction. Conclusions: Findings suggest that managers may be able to use social network analysis to identify persons appropriate to conduct the distribution of organizational resources. Choosing those with multiple social connections can help distribute resources effectively and induce higher OCB levels within the organization. In addition, staff with strong friendship network connections may provide appropriate psychological resources (support) to coworkers. If those with high friendship network centrality receive proper counseling training, they should be in a good position to provide assistance when needed.
Concurrent access to B-trees

The authors give a detailed view of Y. Sagiv's (1985) approach to controlling concurrent access to B/sup link/-trees. It is argued that Sagiv's compression process does not guarantee the 50% load factor as he claimed. This is due to the fact that his compression process treats nodes with a common father pairwise. Furthermore, his compression process sometimes moves information to the left. It is shown here how, as a result of this, readers and updaters may end up too far to the right. This means that processors sometimes have to break off their locate or restructure phase to start again or continue at the root, and that it is necessary to have a low key in each node. In the approach proposed here, the maintenance process does not treat nodes pairwise and, if it moves information, it does so to the right only. Therefore, the present approach does not exhibit the problems associated with Sagiv's approach. Furthermore, it is shown that it has some additional advantages, such as being able to guarantee any desired load factor, offering higher dynamics with respect to deletions and not needing locks in the index set. <<ETX>>
Instrumental variables (IV) and prediction error (PE) like second order recursive algorithms

The second order recursive algorithm for identification of autoregressive exogenous (ARX) systems given by Broman and Andersson (see SYSID'94, 10th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, vol.3, p.447-52, 1994) is extended to an instrumental variables (IV) like second order recursive algorithm and a prediction error (PE) like second order recursive algorithm for identification of processes disturbed by colored noise. The proposed algorithms are demonstrated to have superior tracking capabilities of time varying processes than do the corresponding first order algorithms. The proposed algorithms have the same computational complexity as their first order counterparts, but some extra computer memory is required.
Simultaneous Observations of Polar Mesosphere Winter Echoes and Cosmic Noise Absorptions in a Common Volume by the PANSY Radar (69.0°S, 39.6°E)

This study focuses on the one‐to‐one relationship between the morphology of polar mesosphere winter echo (PMWE) and cosmic noise absorption (CNA) as determined by measurements made with a single atmospheric radar, the Program of the Antarctic Syowa mesosphere‐stratosphere‐troposphere/incoherent scatter (PANSY) radar. CNA was calculated using the noise level in radar signal data collected during May 2013, including data of a solar proton event on 23 May. Using PMWE and CNA data in a common volume, their temporal variations and relation were examined in detail. PMWE altitude was clearly anticorrelated with CNA magnitude in a statistical sense: When a large CNA exceeding 0.50 dB took place, PMWE seemed to concentrate around 65 km and disappear above 70 km. The electron density behind the PMWE was estimated by using the ionospheric model for the auroral zone for the solar proton event. PMWE occurrence roughly coincided with a high electron density in the model, except that no PMWE was observed above 70 km at 0730 UT despite the electron density being higher than 108 m−3. Additionally, the estimated radar volume reflectivity with the Schmidt number Sc less than or equal to 1 is qualitatively consistent with the observed PMWE. Although weak turbulent energy dissipation rate can also play a dominant role in the observed PMWE decay, a plausible mechanism was small Sc or reduction of Sc that is equal to an increase in electron diffusivity resulting from an unusually high electron density, which significantly reduced radar volume reflectivity above 70 km.
Sibling Relation, Ethnic Prejudice, Direct and Indirect Contact: There is a Connection?

The literature on the socialisation of prejudice has concentrated on “vertical” processes (from parents to children), ignoring siblings’ contribution. This work aims to investigate the effect of contact (direct or indirect) with the outgroup that young people experience a) directly or b) indirectly through older or younger siblings’ friendships. Our hypotheses are a) that young people with friends in the outgroup will report lower prejudice levels (direct contact), as will young people who have older or younger siblings with friends in the outgroup (indirect contact); b) that other forms of contact such as having classmates/coworkers, neighbours, or employees are not effective in reducing either direct or indirect prejudice. 88 sibling dyads were administered the blatant and subtle prejudice questionnaire (Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995) and some ad hoc items aimed at investigating the typology of the contact experienced. The analysis of mixed ANOVA reveals that the first hypothesis was partially confirmed in that prejudice (subtle for the younger sibling and blatant for the older one) decreases in a statistically significant way only when there is the co-presence of direct and indirect contact. The second hypothesis is fully confirmed as no statistically significant differences emerged between the groups.
Reconstruction from Fourier transform phase with applications to speech analysis

This paper addresses the problem of signal reconstruction from Fourier transform phase. In particular, we examine two aspects of this problem. First, we discuss signal reconstruction from the phase spectrum of the short-time Fourier transform(STFT). Next, we examine the problem of signal recovery from partial phase information. We present the results of our studies on reconstruction from partial phase and discuss the application of these results in speech analysis and coding.
Visual tracking based on multiple cameras with MHS cooperation strategy

In this paper, multiple cameras are used to implement a multi-purpose real-time visual tracking system. A modified adaptive background subtraction method is used to detect moving objects, and a multi-cue matching approach is employed to track a moving target. The epipolar constraint and color histogram matching are used to deal with the correspondence problem that occurs when multiple cameras are used without camera calibration being performed. An effective and robust Master-Helper-Slave (MHS) cooperation strategy is proposed to further improve the tracking performance. An active PTZ camera is integrated to perform dynamic tracking. The proposed visual tracking system can continuously track a moving target and estimate its corresponding position in the field of view (FOV) of each camera, even if the target is occluded in some of the cameras' FOVs. Experimental results show that the proposed approach exhibits satisfactory performance.
Genome Sequence of Rheinheimera sp. Strain A13L, Isolated from Pangong Lake, India

ABSTRACT Rheinheimera sp. strain A13L, which has antimicrobial activity, was isolated from alkaline brackish water of the high-altitude Pangong Lake of Ladakh, India. Here we report the draft genome sequence of Rhienheimera sp. strain A13L (4,523,491 bp with a G+C content of 46.23%). The genome is predicted to contain genes for marinocine and colicin V production, which may be responsible for the antimicrobial activity of the strain.
THE k TH NEAREST NETWORK VORONOI DIAGRAM AND ITS APPLICATION TO DISTRICTING PROBLEM OF AMBULANCE SYSTEMS

The main goal of this paper is to propose two algorithms of the kth nearest network Vornonoi diagram(kth N-NVD). The kth N-NVD is based on the kth nearest-point Voronoi diagram in a plane and network Voronoi diagram. Given a network N(V, E) and a set of Voronoi generators Xn on N , the kth N-NVD assigns a vertex v ∈ V to the Voronoi generator xi ∈ Xn if xi is the kth nearest generator for v. We introduce the algorithms for computing the kth N-NVD and the examples of the kth N-NVD for the ambulance system in Seto city. Using the kth N-NVD algorithms, we can easily obtain the algorithms of the other higher-order network Voronoi diagram.
Television and DVD/video viewing in children younger than 2 years.

OBJECTIVE To determine the television-, DVD-, and video-viewing habits of children younger than 2 years. DESIGN A telephone survey of 1009 parents of children aged 2 to 24 months. SETTING Parents in Minnesota and Washington state were surveyed. PARTICIPANTS A random sample of parents of children born in the previous 2 years was drawn from birth certificate records. Households in which English was not spoken were excluded, as were children with major disabilities. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE The amount of regular television and DVD/video viewing by content, reasons for viewing, and frequency of parent-child coviewing. RESULTS By 3 months of age, about 40% of children regularly watched television, DVDs, or videos. By 24 months, this proportion rose to 90%. The median age at which regular media exposure was introduced was 9 months. Among those who watched, the average viewing time per day rose from 1 hour per day for children younger than 12 months to more than 1.5 hours per day by 24 months. Parents watched with their children more than half of the time. Parents gave education, entertainment, and babysitting as major reasons for media exposure in their children younger than 2 years. CONCLUSIONS Parents should be urged to make educated choices about their children's media exposure. Parental hopes for the educational potential of television can be supported by encouraging those parents who are already allowing screen time to watch with their children.
Workload and stress in consultant medical microbiologists and virologists: a questionnaire survey.

AIMS To document demography, changing workload patterns, job satisfaction, morale, and prevalence of stress and psychological morbidity among UK consultant medical microbiologists and virologists. METHOD A questionnaire survey of all identified UK practising consultant medical microbiologists and virologists (n= 464). RESULTS Among 367 respondents (79%), there were 33 virologists and at least 89 single handed consultants. Over half the respondents (58%) were working a 1 : 1 or 1 : 2 on call rota during the week and a similar proportion (51%) at weekends. Of all consultants (including those working part time), 56% were working more than 48 hours weekly. Working more than 48 hours weekly, and being on call 1 : 1 or 1 : 2 at weekends, were both independently associated with increased psychological morbidity. Those on call 1 : 1 or 1 : 2 at weekends were also more likely to have low or very low morale. Female consultants were more likely to have higher stress scores. More than half of the respondents (208 of 363; 57%) were making active financial provision to retire early, and 198 of 363 (55%) did not intend to work beyond the age of 60. CONCLUSIONS The long hours worked by many consultant microbiologists and virologists are in breach of the European Working Time Directive and are associated with a higher degree of psychological morbidity. For most consultants, the frequency of on call commitments is demanding and job satisfaction and morale have deteriorated. Urgent action is needed, particularly to support those working more than 48 hours each week and those on call at weekends 1 : 1 or 1 : 2. However, a major expansion of the consultant establishment cannot be achieved rapidly, and will be slowed further if early retirements become more frequent.
Image Retrieval using 2D Dual-Tree Discrete Wavelet Transform

large amount of image collections available from a variety of sources has posed increasing technical challenges to computer systems to store/transmit and index/manage the image data to make such collections easily accessible. Here to search and retrieve the expected images from the database we need Content Based Image Retrieval system. This paper proposes a new feature vector based on 2D Dual-tree Discrete Wavelet Transform. One of the advantages of the dual-tree complex wavelet transform is that it can be used to implement 2D wavelet transforms that are more selective with respect to orientation than is the separable 2D DWT. Most of the natural images have short span high frequencies and low frequencies extending for larger span. Hence, the design of our feature vector is such that it provides higher spatial localization and lower frequency resolution at higher frequencies and the reverse for lower frequencies. The energy and mean of the frequency content of the image at various sub bands and different spatial resolution (higher for higher frequency bands) is stored as feature vector. Thus, the given feature vector encodes high frequency information as well.