Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cryptopleurine Analogs with Modification of E Ring Exhibit Different Mechanism to Rac-Cryptopleurine and Tylophorine

Tylophorine analogs exhibit a broad range of pharmacological activities, including anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-autoimmune, and anti-virus effects. Structure-activity relationship study of different structure tylophorine analogs can provide further understanding of their biological activity. Modifications on the E ring of the quinolizidine moiety of cryptopleurine analogs changed the potency and the selective inhibitory effect on NF-κB, AP-1, and CRE signaling pathways. Functional cryptopleurine analogs showed potent inhibition of NF-κB signaling pathway in both HepG2 and HEK-293 cell lines. The E ring structure analogs also differed in suppression of protein translation, and expression of cyclin D1. Our results showed that DCB-3503 or Rac-cryptopleurine could be a scaffold for modification to yield compounds with different mechanisms of action.
LIMITS ON THE EVENT RATES OF FAST RADIO TRANSIENTS FROM THE V-FASTR EXPERIMENT

We present the first results from the V-FASTR experiment, a commensal search for fast transient radio bursts using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). V-FASTR is unique in that the widely spaced VLBA antennas provide a discriminant against non-astronomical signals and a mechanism for the localization and identification of events that is not possible with single dishes or short baseline interferometers. Thus, far V-FASTR has accumulated over 1300 hr of observation time with the VLBA, between 90 cm and 3 mm wavelength (327 MHz–86 GHz), providing the first limits on fast transient event rates at high radio frequencies (>1.4 GHz). V-FASTR has blindly detected bright individual pulses from seven known pulsars but has not detected any single-pulse events that would indicate high-redshift impulsive bursts of radio emission. At 1.4 GHz, V-FASTR puts limits on fast transient event rates comparable with the PALFA survey at the Arecibo telescope, but generally at lower sensitivities, and comparable to the “fly's eye” survey at the Allen Telescope Array, but with less sky coverage. We also illustrate the likely performance of the Phase 1 SKA dish array for an incoherent fast transient search fashioned on V-FASTR.
Counterexample-guided abstraction refinement for symbolic model checking

The state explosion problem remains a major hurdle in applying symbolic model checking to large hardware designs. State space abstraction, having been essential for verifying designs of industrial complexity, is typically a manual process, requiring considerable creativity and insight.In this article, we present an automatic iterative abstraction-refinement methodology that extends symbolic model checking. In our method, the initial abstract model is generated by an automatic analysis of the control structures in the program to be verified. Abstract models may admit erroneous (or "spurious") counterexamples. We devise new symbolic techniques that analyze such counterexamples and refine the abstract model correspondingly. We describe aSMV, a prototype implementation of our methodology in NuSMV. Practical experiments including a large Fujitsu IP core design with about 500 latches and 10000 lines of SMV code confirm the effectiveness of our approach.
Mining chemical patents with an ensemble of open systems

The significant amount of medicinal chemistry information contained in patents makes them an attractive target for text mining. In this manuscript, we describe systems for named entity recognition (NER) of chemicals and genes/proteins in patents, using the CEMP (for chemicals) and GPRO (for genes/proteins) corpora provided by the CHEMDNER task at BioCreative V. Our chemical NER system is an ensemble of five open systems, including both versions of tmChem, our previous work on chemical NER. Their output is combined using a machine learning classification approach. Our chemical NER system obtained 0.8752 precision and 0.9129 recall, for 0.8937 f-score on the CEMP task. Our gene/protein NER system is an extension of our previous work for gene and protein NER, GNormPlus. This system obtained a performance of 0.8143 precision and 0.8141 recall, for 0.8137 f-score on the GPRO task. Both systems achieved the highest performance in their respective tasks at BioCreative V. We conclude that an ensemble of independently-created open systems is sufficiently diverse to significantly improve performance over any individual system, even when they use a similar approach. Database URL: http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/CBBresearch/Lu/Demo/tmTools/.
Additive character sequences with small alphabets for compressed sensing matrices

Compressed sensing is a novel technique where one can recover sparse signals from the undersampled measurements. In this paper, a K × N measurement matrix for compressed sensing is deterministically constructed via additive character sequences. The Weil bound is then used to show that the matrix has asymptotically optimal coherence for N = K2, and that it is a tight frame. A sparse recovery guarantee for the incoherent tight frame is also discussed. Numerical results show that the deterministic sensing matrix guarantees empirically reliable recovery performance via an l1-minimization method for noiseless measurements.
Changes in the Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean estimated from the CESM Last Millennium Ensemble

Abstract The changes in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current system associated with the Polar, sub-Antarctic and Subtropical Fronts in the Atlantic are examined in a ten-member ensemble using the Community Earth System Model. Results for the ensemble average mean show that the Polar Front at 25°W shifts to the south by 0.8° during 1970–2000 compared to its mean latitude over the period 1050–1950. This shift is significant because it is more than twice the standard deviation of the mean latitude time series during 1050–1950. The shift is caused by a slight southward displacement of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which in turn is caused by a southward shift in the latitude of the maximum zonal wind stress. The sub-Antarctic Front also shows a small southward shift after 1970, with a maximum latitudinal displacement of 0.2°. However, this shift is not significant compared to the standard deviation of the time series during 1050–1950. The Subtropical Front does not change its latitude during 1970–2000 compared to 1050–2000 because there is very little change in the wind-stress curl in the subtropics. Differences in temperature and salinity throughout the water column at 25°W reveal that during 1970–2000 there is freshening of Antarctic Intermediate Water, whereas the Circumpolar Deep Water becomes saltier.
Fuzzy and Cross-App Replay for Smartphone Apps

The behavior of smartphone apps is driven by input from sensors such as GPS, microphone, or camera. Hence the ability to construct test inputs, and send these inputs to the app is essential for testing. Leveraging our prior results in recording and replaying sensor inputs in Android apps we have constructed a new approach that helps automate smartphone app testing by capturing the input log (sensor stream) and using this log in two ways. First, we fuzz (alter) the log in a semantically-meaningful way: by applying principled transformations (e.g., changing GPS coordinates or navigation speed), a new input log is constructed, which represents a new test case. Second, we use the log captured in app A to test an app B which offers similar functionality, e.g., GPS navigation or image recognition. We have applied our approach to several widely-used Android apps and found that the approach is effective: it has revealed new bugs in four popular apps; has produced new test cases that increase coverage; and has produced test cases from logs originating in other apps.
Herpes Simplex Labialis after Epidural or Parenteral Morphine: A Randomized Prospective Trial in an Australian Obstetric Population

A prospective randomized controlled trial was conducted in women undergoing emergency and elective caesarean section to determine whether epidural morphine predisposes to postoperative herpes simplex labialis and whether the risk is increased or decreased by previous oral herpes or pruritus. Following cannulation of the epidural space, analgesia for labour and/or caesarean section was induced in two groups of similar age, parity, preoperative status and anaesthetic. According to tables of random numbers, 386 were allocated to receive parenteral morphine and 425 to receive epidural morphine. Postoperative herpes labialis was diagnosed by laboratory culture and microscopy. Patients who received epidural morphine were 11.5 times (95% CI 2.6–49.4) more likely than the parenteral morphine group to suffer herpes labialis. A past history of oral herpes increased the risk of herpes labialis by 8.6 times (95 % CI 3.3–22.0). When the influence of past herpes infection and route of morphine were taken into account, no separate association between pruritus and herpex simplex labialis could be demonstrated.
Changes in the Expression of the Extracellular Matrix Molecules Tenascin‐C and Tenascin‐R after 3–Acetylpyridine‐induced Lesion of the 01ivocerebe1lar System of the Adult Rat

In the central nervous system of rodents, the extracellular matrix glycoproteins tenascin‐C and tenascin‐R are expressed predominantly by astrocytes and oligodendrocytes respectively. Both molecules support neurite outgrowth from several neuronal cell types when presented as uniform substrates. When offered as a sharp boundary with a permissive substrate, however, both molecules prevent neurite elongation. On the basis of these observations it has been suggested that tenascin‐C and tenascin‐R may be relevant in determining the cellular response after injury in the adult rodent central nervous system. To investigate whether tenascin‐C and tenascin‐R may play important functional roles in the lesioned central nervous system, we have analysed their expression in the olivocerebellar system of the adult rat after 3–acetylpyridine‐induced degeneration of nerve cells in the inferior olivary nucleus. Tenascin‐C mRNA was not detectable at any time in the unlesioned or lesioned inferior olivary nucleus by in situ hybridization. In the cerebellar cortex, tenascin‐C mRNA in Golgi epithelial cells was down‐regulated 3 days after the lesion and returned to control values 80 days after the lesion. Tenascin‐R mRNA was expressed by distinct neural cell types in the unlesioned olivocerebellar system. After a lesion, the density of cells containing tenascin‐R transcripts increased significantly in the inferior olivary nucleus and in the white matter of the cerebellar cortex. Immunohistochemical and immunochemical investigations confirmed these observations at the protein level. Our data thus suggest differential functions of tenascin‐C and tenascin‐R in the injured central nervous system.
Editorial Bias in Crowd-Sourced Political Information

The Internet has dramatically expanded citizens’ access to and ability to engage with political information. On many websites, any user can contribute and edit “crowd-sourced” information about important political figures. One of the most prominent examples of crowd-sourced information on the Internet is Wikipedia, a free and open encyclopedia created and edited entirely by users, and one of the world’s most accessed websites. While previous studies of crowd-sourced information platforms have found them to be accurate, few have considered biases in what kinds of information are included. We report the results of four randomized field experiments that sought to explore what biases exist in the political articles of this collaborative website. By randomly assigning factually true but either positive or negative and cited or uncited information to the Wikipedia pages of U.S. senators, we uncover substantial evidence of an editorial bias toward positivity on Wikipedia: Negative facts are 36% more likely to be removed by Wikipedia editors than positive facts within 12 hours and 29% more likely within 3 days. Although citations substantially increase an edit’s survival time, the editorial bias toward positivity is not eliminated by inclusion of a citation. We replicate this study on the Wikipedia pages of deceased as well as recently retired but living senators and find no evidence of an editorial bias in either. Our results demonstrate that crowd-sourced information is subject to an editorial bias that favors the politically active.
Improvements in Indirect Blood Pressure Estimation via Electrocardiography and Photoplethysmography

Abstract—With the rapid adoption of wearable technology, a ubiquitous platform may exist for continuous cuff-less blood pressure monitoring. Devices that monitor photoplethysmography (PPG) and/or electrocardiography (ECG) signals may be capable of accurately estimating blood pressure. Previous work has demonstrated promising estimation techniques, but they remain infeasible for consumer adoption due to their need for per-subject calibration and/or lack of performance. This paper explores improvements to these approaches by expanding the feature space and exploring more expressive models that estimate mean arterial, systolic, and diastolic blood pressures. These models are trained with features and targets derived from 12,000 sets of ECG, PPG, and blood pressure time-series data. Results indicate that the additional features had a positive impact on results but less so than increasing model complexity. While significant improvements were accomplished, all models struggled to estimate systolic blood pressure to a commercially viable standard. Results indicate that future work should assess convolutional and/ or recurrent neural networks as candidates for this estimation problem.
Title Learning image-specific parameters for interactive segmentation

In this paper, we present a novel interactive image segmentation technique that automatically learns segmentation parameters tailored for each and every image. Unlike existing work, our method does not require any offline parameter tuning or training stage, and is capable of determining image-specific parameters according to some simple user interactions with the target image. We formulate the segmentation problem as an inference of a conditional random field (CRF) over a segmentation mask and the target image, and parametrize this CRF by different weights (e.g., color, texture and smoothing). The weight parameters are learned via an energy margin maximization, which is solved using a constraint approximation scheme and the cutting plane method. Experimental results show that our method, by learning image-specific parameters automatically, outperforms other state-of-the-art interactive image segmentation techniques.
Groin Pain Characteristics and Recurrence Rates: Three-year Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Self-gripping Progrip Mesh and Sutured Polypropylene Mesh for Open Inguinal Hernia Repair

Objective:The aim of this study was to investigate long-term groin pain and inguinal hernia recurrence rates of 2 types of mesh and to describe the evolution of postoperative groin sensory disturbances. Summary of Background Data:Some patients with an inguinal hernia develop chronic pain following open mesh insertion. Previous trials comparing a semi-resorbable, self-gripping Progrip mesh with a standard sutured polypropylene mesh found conflicting results regarding recurrence rates and residual groin pain. Methods:Patients aged >18 years scheduled for open primary hernia repair were randomized to a self-gripping mesh (Progrip) or a polypropylene mesh (standard). Removal of the inguinal nerves was left to the discretion of the surgeon. Pain was measured using Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) over a 3-year period. Pain characteristics and hernia recurrences were determined using physical examination. Results:Data of 274 patients were complete (75% three-year follow-up rate). Pain steadily decreased over time in both groups in a similar fashion (moderate pain 3.7% in each group). Hyperesthesia was experienced by 2.2% and 3.7% and hypoesthesia in 12% and 19% in Progrip and standard group, respectively. One of seven Progrip patients reported a foreign body feeling versus 1 of 5 standard patients (P = 0.06). Altered skin sensations were not related to a neurectomy. Hernia recurrence rate was 11.5% in the Progrip and 5% in the standard group (P = 0.05). Conclusions:Three years after insertion of a self-gripping Progrip mesh or a sutured polypropylene mesh for an open primary inguinal hernia repair, groin pain is minimal, although altered groin skin sensations and foreign body feeling are quite common. A Progrip hernia repair is associated with a high recurrence rate.
A hybrid framework for the specification of automated material handling systems

This paper presents a hybrid framework that specifies and characterizes the capabilities of generic components in an automated material handling system (AMHS). The framework also provides rules and mechanism for binding these capabilities together so as to facilitate the process of task planning for AMHSs. As a hybrid framework, the formal mathematics of communicating sequential process (CSP) is tightly integrated to the unified modeling language (UML) to provide three important entities, namely, the object structure diagram, object communication diagram and CSP-based state chart to extend the capability of a UML model in specifying the key properties of AMHSs including synchronization, parallelism and communication. The results would bring us a step closer to the generation of a fully automated task-planning executive for AMHSs.
Transition Entropy in Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes

This paper proposes a new heuristic algorithm suitable for real-time applications using partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). The algorithm is based in a reward shaping strategy which includes entropy information in the reward structure of a fully observable Markov decision process (MDP). This strategy, as illustrated by the presented results, exhibits near-optimal performance in all examples tested.
A 200mA switched capacitor voltage regulator on 32nm CMOS and regulation schemes to enable DVFS

A wide programmable voltage range combined with fast response times are fundamental requirements for the voltage regulator to enable dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) in microprocessors and SoCs. This work investigates the feasibility of a switched capacitor voltage regulator as a solution for distributed power delivery in such systems. In the context of rated currents of several hundreds of mA, this paper closely examines various indices like regulation, losses. ripple, and response times in a representative 1.8V input, 200mA 0.6V–1.05V programmable output complete on-die switched capacitor voltage regulator. Control techniques that can be used to achieve regulation while keeping the losses at minimum under this wide range of operating conditions are delineated. The results are generic and may be used for any other two phase switched capacitor (SC) topology, voltage specifications, and CMOS process. Verification using simulations and experimental results from a converter built on 32nm CMOS are presented. In conclusion, switched capacitor voltage regulators (SCVRs) show fast response times, have multiple high efficiency output voltages, low standby leakage, and inherently high light load efficiency, thereby making them an excellent candidate to enable multiple voltage domains in a chip and to carry out DVFS for power savings.
Texture classification: are filter banks necessary?

We question the role that large scale filter banks have traditionally played in texture classification. It is demonstrated that textures can be classified using the joint distribution of intensity values over extremely compact neighborhoods (starting from as small as 3 /spl times/ 3 pixels square), and that this outperforms classification using filter banks with large support. We develop a novel texton based representation, which is suited to modeling this joint neighborhood distribution for MRFs. The representation is learnt from training images, and then used to classify novel images (with unknown viewpoint and lighting) into texture classes. The power of the method is demonstrated by classifying over 2800 images of all 61 textures present in the Columbia-Utrecht database. The classification performance surpasses that of recent state-of-the-art filter bank based classifiers such as Leung & Malik, Cula & Dana, and Varma & Zisserman.
Sensitive electrochemical immunosensor based on three-dimensional nanostructure gold electrode

A sensitive electrochemical immunosensor was developed for detection of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) based on a three-dimensional nanostructure gold electrode using a facile, rapid, “green” square-wave oxidation-reduction cycle technique. The resulting three-dimensional gold nanocomposites were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and cyclic voltammetry. A “sandwich-type” detection strategy using an electrochemical immunosensor was employed. Under optimal conditions, a good linear relationship between the current response signal and the AFP concentrations was observed in the range of 10–50 ng/mL with a detection limit of 3 pg/mL. This new immunosensor showed a fast amperometric response and high sensitivity and selectivity. It was successfully used to determine AFP in a human serum sample with a relative standard deviation of <5% (n=5). The proposed immunosensor represents a significant step toward practical application in clinical diagnosis and monitoring of prognosis.
Semaphorin 3A Is a New Early Diagnostic Biomarker of Experimental and Pediatric Acute Kidney Injury

Background Semaphorin 3A is a secreted protein that regulates cell motility and attachment in axon guidance, vascular growth, immune cell regulation and tumor progression. However, nothing is known about its role in kidney pathophysiology. Here, we determined whether semaphorin3A is induced after acute kidney injury (AKI) and whether urinary semaphorin 3A can predict AKI in humans undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Methods and Principal Findings In animals, semaphorin 3A is localized in distal tubules of the kidney and excretion increased within 3 hr after reperfusion of the kidney whereas serum creatinine was significantly raised at 24 hr. In humans, using serum creatinine, AKI was detected on average only 48 hours after CPB. In contrast, urine semaphorin increased at 2 hours after CPB, peaked at 6 hours (2596±591 pg/mg creatinine), and was no longer significantly elevated 12 hours after CPB. The predictive power of semaphorin 3A as demonstrated by area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve for diagnosis of AKI at 2, 6, and 12 hours after CPB was 0.88, 0.81, and 0.74, respectively. The 2-hour urine semaphorin measurement strongly correlated with duration and severity of AKI, as well as length of hospital stay. Adjusting for CPB time and gender, the 2-hour semaphorin remained an independent predictor of AKI, with an odds ratio of 2.19. Conclusion Our results suggest that semaphorin 3A is an early, predictive biomarker in experimental and pediatric AKI, and may allow for the reliable early diagnosis and prognosis of AKI after CPB, much before the rise in serum creatinine.