Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The cis-acting regulatory element of the mvaAB operon of Pseudomonas mevalonii

DNA upstream of the transcription start site of the mvaAB operon of Pseudomonas mevalonii, which encodes 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase (EC 1.1.1.88) and HMG-CoA lyase (EC 4.1.3.4), contains a cis-acting regulatory element which functions in the response to mevalonate. The regulatory element resides within a 36-bp region located from 48 to 84 bp upstream of the transcription start site of mvaA. This location was inferred from the beta-galactosidase activities of P. mevalonii harboring plasmid-encoded mvaA-lacZ fusions induced by mevalonate and by DNA gel retardation and competition assays. While protein from P. mevalonii grown on mevalonate produced a band shift, protein from cells grown on succinate gave no band shift, even when mevalonate was added. The operator contains three 10-bp direct repeats with the consensus sequence TGGGTACAGT, which may be important for regulation of the mvaAB operon.
Congestion control in wireless environments: experimental assessments and simulation

This work investigates the TCP-friendliness of a particular congestion control mechanism, the TCP friendly rate control protocol (TFRC), when it is employed to regulate the transmission rate of nonTCP sources competing for bandwidth with different TCP flows (Reno, Sack and Westwood) in an IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN. Throughput of simultaneously active TFRC and TCP flows have been both experimentally measured and investigated through simulation, revealing that the wireless indoor radio channel plays a significant role on such parameter. Moreover, some useful insights have been derived on the behavior of TFRC and its degree of friendliness in an environment featuring a low degree of statistical multiplexing, such as the wireless context examined.
Cognitive behaviour therapy for adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome: randomised controlled trial

Abstract Objective To evaluate the efficacy of cognitive behaviour therapy for adolescents aged 10-17 years with chronic fatigue syndrome. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting Department of child psychology. Participants 71 consecutively referred patients with chronic fatigue syndrome; 36 were randomly assigned to immediate cognitive behaviour therapy and 35 to the waiting list for therapy. Intervention 10 sessions of therapy over five months. Treatment protocols depended on the type of activity pattern (relatively active or passive). All participants were assessed again after five months. Main outcome measures Fatigue severity (checklist individual strength), functional impairment (SF-36 physical functioning), and school attendance. Results 62 patients had complete data at five months (29 in the immediate therapy group and 33 on the waiting list). Patients in the therapy group reported significantly greater decrease in fatigue severity (difference in decrease on checklist individual strength was 14.5, 95% confidence interval 7.4 to 21.6) and functional impairment (difference in increase on SF-36 physical functioning was 17.3, 6.2 to 28.4) and their attendance at school increased significantly (difference in increase in percentage school attendance was 18.2, 0.8 to 35.5). They also reported a significant reduction in several accompanying symptoms. Self reported improvement was largest in the therapy group. Conclusion Cognitive behaviour therapy is an effective treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome in adolescents.
A NOVEL APPROACH LIVE STREAMING USING COOL STREAMING

A number of commercial peer-to-peer systems for live streaming have been introduced in recent years. The behavior of these popular systems has been extensively studied in several measurement papers. Due to the proprietary nature of these commercial systems, however, these studies have to rely on a “black-box” approach, where packet traces are collected from a single or a limited number of measurement points, to infer various properties of traffic on the control and data planes. Although such studies are useful to compare different systems from end-user’s perspective, it is difficult to intuitively understand the observed properties without fully reverse-engineering the underlying systems. In this paper we describe how cool streaming are used and We emphasize three salient features of this data-driven design: 1) easy to implement, as it does not have to construct and maintain a complex global structure; 2) efficient, as data forwarding is dynamically determined according to data availability while not restricted by specific directions; and 3) robust and resilient, as the partnerships enable adaptive and quick switching among multi-suppliers.
Development of an Application Ontology for Beta Cell Genomics Based On the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations

The development process for the beta cell genomics application ontology (BCGO) is described. This process should be generally applicable and consists of integration of a subset of reference ontologies. A key element is use of the Ontology for Biomedical Investigation (OBI) as an ontology framework. Another element is enriching ontologies using existing patterns when needed. The ontology is validated in three aspects based on our needs including data annotation, queries and automated classification. The BCGO is available on: http://bcgoontology.googlecode. com/svn/trunk/release/v0.1/bcgo.owl.
Leaking Uninitialized Secure Enclave Memory via Structure Padding (Extended Abstract)

Intel software guard extensions (SGX) aims to provide an isolated execution environment, known as an enclave, for a user-level process to maximize its confidentiality and integrity. In this paper, we study how uninitialized data inside a secure enclave can be leaked via structure padding. We found that, during ECALL and OCALL, proxy functions that are automatically generated by the Intel SGX Software Development Kit (SDK) fully copy structure variables from an enclave to the normal memory to return the result of an ECALL function and to pass input parameters to an OCALL function. If the structure variables contain padding bytes, uninitialized enclave memory, which might contain confidential data like a private key, can be copied to the normal memory through the padding bytes. We also consider potential countermeasures against these security threats.
Quantitative angiography of the left anterior descending coronary artery: correlations with pressure gradient and results of exercise thallium scintigraphy.

To evaluate, during cardiac catheterization, what constitutes a physiologically significant obstruction to blood flow in the human coronary system, computer-based quantitative analysis of coronary angiograms was performed on the angiograms of 31 patients with isolated disease of the proximal left anterior descending coronary artery. The angiographic severity of stenosis was compared with the transstenotic pressure gradient measured with the dilation catheter during angioplasty and with the results of exercise thallium scintigraphy. A curvilinear relationship was found between the pressure gradient across the stenosis (normalized for the mean aortic pressure) and the residual minimal area of obstruction (after subtracting the area of the angioplasty catheter). This relationship was best fitted by the equation: normalized mean pressure gradient = a + b . log [obstruction area], r = . 74. The measurements of the percent area of stenosis (cutoff 80%) and of the transstenotic pressure gradient (cutoff 0.30) obtained at rest correctly predicted the occurrence of thallium perfusion defects induced by exercise in 83% of the patients.
Nickel-copper alloy tapes as textured substrates for YBCO coated conductors

NiCuCo alloy tape was studied as textured substrates for YBCO coated conductors application. The addition of a small amount of cobalt was pursued in order to enhance the microstructure of the NiCu alloy. The use of different thermal treatments during the recrystallization process permitted to obtain area densities of cube orientation as high as 95%. The substrate was thoroughly characterized by means of x-ray diffraction, EBSD and SEM analyses. Further, the mechanical properties and the magnetic behaviour of this substrate have been investigated and compared with those exhibited by Ni, NiW and NiCu tapes. The suitability of this alloy substrate for YBCO coated conductors has been tested through the deposition of a conventional CeO2/YSZ/CeO2 buffer layer architecture using a Pd transient layer. Apart from passivating Ni-Cu-Co substrate, the use of a Pd transient layer produces a relevant texture sharpening in the out-of-plane orientation and the full width at half maximum of the ? -scan drops from about 9° of NiCuCo to 2° of Pd layer. This sharp texture is transferred to the YBCO film and the results indicate that NiCuCo alloy is a promising alternative substrate for the realization of YBCO coated conductors.
Using the Corpus of Spoken Afrikaans to generate an Afrikaans chatbot

This paper presents two chatbot systems, ALICE and Elizabeth, illustrating the dialogue knowledge representation and pattern matching techniques of each. We discuss the problems which arise when using the Corpus of Spoken Afrikaans (Korpus Gesproke Afrikaans) to retrain the ALICE chatbot system with human dialogue examples. A Java program to convert from dialogue transcripts to the AIML linguistic knowledge representation formalism provides a basic implementation of corpus-based chatbot training. The Java program used the Afrikaans dialogue corpus texts to generate two versions of the Afrikaans chatbot.
Classifying Traffic Scenes Using The GIST Image Descriptor

This paper investigates classification of traffic scenes in a very low bandwidth scenario, where an image should be coded by a small number of features. We introduce a novel dataset, called the FM1 dataset, consisting of 5615 images of eight different traffic scenes: open highway, open road, settlement, tunnel, tunnel exit, toll booth, heavy traffic and the overpass. We evaluate the suitability of the GIST descriptor as a representation of these images, first by exploring the descriptor space using PCA and k-means clustering, and then by using an SVM classifier and recording its 10-fold cross-validation performance on the introduced FM1 dataset. The obtained recognition rates are very encouraging, indicating that the use of the GIST descriptor alone could be sufficiently descriptive even when very high performance is required.
VOICE BASED INTERACTIVE MODIFICATION OF WEB BASED MOVIES

The Internet is becoming a massive knowledge resource for 3D multimedia information such as movies, news clips, and children’s stories. Multimedia information can be interactively modified using multimodal interfaces for entertainment to incorporate subjective perception in a scenario and to analyze situations using many what-if scenario modifications. In this paper we describe an XML voice interaction model for 3D XML movies retrieved over the Internet. This voice model can be used to dynamically and interactively modify and edit 3D movies and archive or transmit them to others over the Internet. Performance analysis has been presented.
Measuring Phonological Development: A Follow-up Study of Five Children Acquiring Finnish

This study applies the Phonological Mean Length of Utterance measurement (PMLU; Ingram & Ingram, 2001; Ingram, 2002) to the data of five children acquiring Finnish and evaluates their phonological development longitudinally at four different age points: 2;0, 2;6, 3;0, and 3;6. The children's results on PMLU and related measures are discussed together with remarks on individual differences regarding the acquisition of consonants, consonant clusters and word length. During the period analyzed the children's phonetic inventories increase and they gradually overcome the constraints against long words and consonant sequences. The PMLU method's ability to reflect the qualitative changes and individual differences between the children is found to be limited in some respects, although overall development can be noted in the values. The PMLU method's strengths and weaknesses are evaluated critically and improvements suggested.
Cuprous oxide nanoparticles inhibit the growth of cervical carcinoma by inducing autophagy

Cervical carcinoma is one of the main causes of women’s cancer, and substantial side effects from standard treatment including platinum-based chemotherapy limit the options for escalation. In this paper, using cervical cancer cell lines and tumor-bearing mice as models, we report that CONPs could inhibit the proliferation of cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Especially CONPs could inhibit tumor growth as cisplatin without weight loss. CONPs could also induce autophagy through AKT/mTOR pathway, which demonstrates that CONPs has the potential clinical applications.
Development and characterization of Powder Metallurgy (PM) 2XXX series Al alloy products and Metal Matrix Composite (MMC) 2XXX Al/SiC materials for high temperature aircraft structural applications

The results of a series of material studies performed by the Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Company over the time period from 1980 to 1991 are discussed. The technical objective of these evaluations was to develop and characterize advanced aluminum alloy materials with temperature capabilities extending to 350 F. An overview is given of the first five alloy development efforts under this contract. Prior work conducted during the first five modifications of the alloy development program are listed. Recent developments based on the addition of high Zr levels to an optimum Al-Cu-Mg alloy composition by powder metallurgy processing are discussed. Both reinforced and SiC or B4C ceramic reinforced alloys were explored to achieve specific target goals for high temperature aluminum alloy applications.
Characterization of α‐casozepine, a tryptic peptide from bovine αs1‐casein with benzodiazepine‐like activity

Caseins are a known source of biologically active peptides. In this study, we have shown evidence of a novel anxiolytic activity in a tryptic hydrolysate of bovine αs1‐casein. Injection of 3 mg/kg of this hydrolysate significantly reduced the epileptic symptoms caused by pentylenetetrazole in rats. Anxiety reduction was also observed when the hydrolysate was tested in the elevated plus‐maze and in the conditioned defensive burying rat models. Peptides isolated from the hydrolysate were examined for their affinity for the γ‐amino‐butyric acid (GABA) type A receptor. Only one peptide, named α‐casozepine, corresponding to the 91–100 fragment from bovine αs1‐casein, expressed affinity for GABAA receptor. In vitro, the peptide had 10,000 less affinity for the benzodiazepine site of the GABAA than did diazepam. However, in the conditioned defensive burying paradigm it was 10‐fold more efficient than diazepam. The difference observed between the in vitro and in vivo activity of α‐casozepine could not been explained by an action via the peripheral‐type benzodiazepine receptor; α‐casozepine had no affinity for this receptor. The α‐casozepine amino acid sequence could be related to the carboxy‐terminal sequence of the polypeptide diazepam binding inhibitor, an endogenous ligand of the central GABAA and peripheral‐type benzodiazepine receptors.
A signal separation method for phased array radars

Interferences, clutter and thermal noises greatly influence the target detection by using phased array radars at low signal-to-noise ratio. A blind signal separation based brief and effective signal detection model for phased array radars is brought forward in order to extract the target information Based on the advanced mixing signal model, a method combining the Wavelet Transform (WT) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is proposed. The signal separability of the phased array radars' signals in the clutter and jamming environment is discussed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is quite effective to extract the target signals and the jamming signals, which is quite practical in the modern war.
Correspondence Between Effective Mode Area and Dispersion Variations in Defected Core Photonic Crystal Fibers

In the present paper, the impact of defect insertion in the core area of a large core HF7 fiber on the effective mode area and chromatic dispersion characteristics is investigated to enhance the performance parameters of photonic crystal fibers (PCF). The obtained results meet the requirements of the wideband high-speed optical transmission systems. A novel method for increasing the effective mode area of PCFs without increasing the hole pitch is presented that is based on the mode field distribution modification by defect insertion. Furthermore, it is shown that the dispersion curve is predictable from the effective mode area variations in response to changing the defect parameters. Based on the aforementioned characteristics, the first fully systematic procedure to design a large mode area, dispersion flattened, low-loss and single-mode PCF is presented and employed to design a defected core fiber with chromatic dispersion of 2.9 ± 0.5 ps/(km·nm) in the S + C + L communication band with effective mode area larger than 80 μm2 in the same wavelength range with excellent loss and single-modeness properties.
Do complex population histories drive higher estimates of substitution rate in phylogenetic reconstructions?

Our curiosity about biodiversity compels us to reconstruct the evolutionary past of species. Molecular evolutionary theory now allows parameterization of mathematically sophisticated and detailed models of DNA evolution, which have resulted in a wealth of phylogenetic histories. But reconstructing how species and population histories have played out is critically dependent on the assumptions we make, such as the clock‐like accumulation of genetic differences over time and the rate of accumulation of such differences. An important stumbling block in the reconstruction of evolutionary history has been the discordance in estimates of substitution rate between phylogenetic and pedigree‐based studies. Ancient genetic data recovered directly from the past are intermediate in time scale between phylogenetics‐based and pedigree‐based calibrations of substitution rate. Recent analyses of such ancient genetic data suggest that substitution rates are closer to the higher, pedigree‐based estimates. In this issue, Navascués & Emerson (2009) model genetic data from contemporary and ancient populations that deviate from a simple demographic history (including changes in population size and structure) using serial coalescent simulations. Furthermore, they show that when these data are used for calibration, we are likely to arrive at upwardly biased estimates of mutation rate.
Computer Vision: Visual Extent of an Object

The visual extent of an object reaches beyond the object itself. It is reflected in image retrieval techniques which combine statistics from the whole image in order to identify the image within. Nevertheless, it is still unclear to what degree and how this visual extent of an object affects the classification performance. Here we analyze the visual extent of an object on the Pascal VOC dataset using bag of words implementation with SIFT Descriptors. Our analysis is performed from two angles: (a) Not knowing the object location, we determine where in the image the support for object classification resides (normal situation) and (b) Assuming that the object location is known, we evaluate the relative potential of the object and its surround, and of the object border and object interior (ideal situation).
17-beta-estradiol in relation to age at menarche and adult obesity in premenopausal women.

BACKGROUND We hypothesize that premenopausal endogenous estradiol may be associated with age at menarche and adult overweight and obesity, potentially contributing to breast cancer risk. METHODS We assessed age at menarche by questionnaire among 204 healthy Norwegian women, aged 25-35 years. Measures of body composition included body mass index (BMI, kg/m(2)), waist circumference (WC, cm), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and fat percentage dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, (DEXA). Daily salivary 17-beta-estradiol (E(2)) concentrations were collected throughout one entire menstrual cycle and assessed by radioimmunoassay (RIA). Linear regression analyses and linear mixed models for repeated measures were used and potential confounding factors and effect modifiers were tested. RESULTS Among women with an early age at menarche (< or =12 years), the overall mean salivary E(2) concentration increased by 3.7 pmol/l (95% confidence interval, 1.8-5.7 pmol/l) with each 9.8 cm (1 SD) increase in WC, which represents a 20.7% change in the mean for the total group. Among the same early maturers, a 1 SD (0.06) change in WHR was directly associated with a 24.0% change in mean E(2) concentration for the total group. CONCLUSIONS Our findings support the hypothesis that early age at menarche, together with adult overweight and obesity, result in high levels of 17-beta-estradiol throughout the menstrual cycle.
RIG-I Mediates Innate Immune Response in Mouse Neurons Following Japanese Encephalitis Virus Infection

Background Neuroinflammation associated with Japanese encephalitis (JE) is mainly due to the activation of glial cells with subsequent release of proinflammatory mediators from them. The recognition of viral RNA, in part, by the pattern recognition receptor retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) has been indicated to have a role in such processes. Even though neurons are also known to express this receptor, its role after JE virus (JEV) infections is yet to be elucidated. Methodology/Principal Findings Upon infecting murine neuroblastoma cells and primary cortical neurons with JEV the expression profile of key proinflammatory cyto/chemokines were analyzed by qRT-PCR and bead array, both before and after ablation of RIG-I. Immunoblotting was performed to evaluate the levels of key molecules downstream to RIG-I leading to production of proinflammatory mediators. Changes in the intracellular viral antigen expression were confirmed by intracellular staining and immunoblotting. JEV infection induced neuronal expression of IL-6, IL-12p70, MCP-1, IP-10 and TNF-α in a time-dependent manner, which showed significant reduction upon RIG-I ablation. Molecules downstream to RIG-I showed significant changes upon JEV-infection, that were modulated following RIG-I ablation. Ablation of RIG-I in neurons also increased their susceptibility to JEV. Conclusions/Significance In this study we propose that neurons are one of the potential sources of proinflammatory cyto/chemokines in JEV-infected brain that are produced via RIG-I dependent pathways. Ablation of RIG-I in neurons leads to increased viral load and reduced release of the cyto/chemokines.
Ex vivo MR volumetry of human brain hemispheres

The aims of this work were to (a) develop an approach for ex vivo MR volumetry of human brain hemispheres that does not contaminate the results of histopathological examination, (b) longitudinally assess regional brain volumes postmortem, and (c) investigate the relationship between MR volumetric measurements performed in vivo and ex vivo.
Assessing packet delivery delay in multi-layered satellite networks

Non-Geostationary satellite networks have many advantages to enable ubiquitous wireless environments such as, extensive coverage, disaster-resistance, and efficient power consumption. Furthermore, to use these networks more efficiently, multi-layered satellite networks are a promising approach, due to their ability to achieve increases in network capacity and to detour traffic efficiently, while maintaining the advantages of each layer. However, they suffer from high delay. In this paper, we focus on constellation design of two-layered satellite networks, in particular on the satellite altitude that minimizes the total packet delivery delay of the network. We express the relationship between the total packet delivery delay and the satellite altitude in mathematical form and develop an expression for determining the altitude to minimize total packet delivery delay. Simulation results validate our analyses.