Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Approximately counting up to four (extended abstract)

We presenta fully-polynomial scheme to approximate the number of independentsets in graphswith maximum degree four. In general, for graphswithmaximum degree A ~ 4, the scheme approximates a weighted sum of independent sets. The weight of each independent set is expressed in terms of a positive parameter A < ~, where the weight of independent set S is Alsl, We also prove complementary hardness of approximation results, which show that it is hard to approximate the weighted sum for values of A > ~ for some constant c > 0.
Nanoscale engineering optical nonlinearities and nanolasers

Dense photonic integration requires miniaturization of materials, devices and subsystems, including passive components (e.g., engineered composite metamaterials, filters, etc.) and active components (e.g., lasers, modulators, detectors). This paper discusses passive and active devices that recently have been demonstrated in our laboratory and design, fabrication and testing of nanolasers constructed using metal-dielectric-semiconductor resonators confined in all three dimensions and operating at room temperature.
Development and Characterization of a Novel Fusion Protein of a Mutated Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor and Human Serum Albumin in Pichia pastoris

The purpose of the present work was to develop a novel, long-acting and potent human serum albumin/granulocyte colony stimulating factor (HSA/G-CSF) therapeutic fusion protein. The novel fusion protein, called HMG, was constructed by genetically fusing mutated human derived G-CSF (mG-CSF) to the C-terminal of HSA and then prepared in Pichia pastoris. The molecular mass of HMG was about 85 kDa and the isoelectric point was 5.3. Circular dichroism spectroscopy suggested that mG-CSF retained nearly all of its native secondary structure, regardless of fusion. The binding capabilities of mG-CSF moiety to G-CSF receptor and HSA moiety to warfarin showed very little change after fusing. The bioactivity of HMG (11.0×106 IU/mg) was more than twice that of rHSA/G-CSF (4.6×106 IU/mg). A mutation was made at the 718th amino acid of HMG, substituting Ala for Thr, to investigate the glycosylation of HMG expressed in P. pastoris. Data indicated that HMG was modified at Thr718, speculatively with the addition of a mannose chain. In conclusion, a novel HSA/G-CSF fusion protein was successfully constructed based on a mutated G-CSF. This protein showed more potent bioactivity than rHSA/G-CSF and thus may be a suitable long-acting G-CSF.
Research issues in Outlier mining : High-Dimensional Stream Data

Outlier detection is an important research problem in data mining that aims to discover useful abnormal and irregular patterns in large data sets. There exist emerging applications of data streams that require Outlier mining, such as network traffic monitoring, web click analysis, weather forecasting and geo sensor data . Different from data in traditional static databases, data streams are huge in nature and arrive continuously with changing data distribution. This raises new issues that need to be considered when developing Outlier mining techniques for stream data. This paper discusses those issues and how they are addressed in the existing literature.
Chaos Control and Synchronization of a Hyperchaotic Zhou System by Integral Sliding Mode control

In this paper, an adaptive integral sliding mode control scheme is proposed for synchronization of hyperchaotic Zhou systems. In the proposed scheme, an integral sliding mode control is designed to stabilize a hyperchaotic Zhou system with known parameters to its unstable equilibrium at the origin. The control is then applied to the synchronization of two identical systems, i.e., a slave and a master hyperchaotic Zhou system with unknown parameters. The adaptive control mechanism introduced synchronizes the systems by estimating the unknown parameters. Simulation results have shown that the proposed method has an excellent convergence from both speed and accuracy points of view, and it outperforms Vaidyanathan’s scheme, which is a well-recognized scheme in this area.
Application of rpoB sequence similarity analysis, REP‐PCR and BOX‐PCR for the differentiation of species within the genus Geobacillus

Aim: To investigate the applicability of rpoB gene, which encodes the β subunit of RNA polymerase, to be used as an alternative to 16S rRNA for sequence similarity analysis in the thermophilic genus Geobacillus. Rapid and reproducible repetitive extragenic palindromic fingerprinting techniques (REP‐ and BOX‐polymerase chain reaction) were also used.
A family of variable-metric methods derived by variational means

A new rank-two variable-metric method is derived using Greenstadt's variational approach [Math. Comp., this issue]. Like the Davidon-Fletcher-Powell (DFP) variable-metric method, the new method preserves the positive-definiteness of the approximating matrix. Together with Greenstadt's method, the new method gives rise to a one-parameter family of variable-metric methods that includes the DFP and rank-one methods as special cases. It is equivalent to Broyden's one-parameter family [Math. Comp., v. 21, 1967, pp. 368-381]. Choices for the inverse of the weighting matrix in the variational approach are given that lead to the derivation of the DFP and rank-one methods directly. In the preceding paper [6], Greenstadt derives two variable-metric methods, using a classical variational approach. Specifically, two iterative formulas are developed for updating the matrix Hk, (i.e., the inverse of the variable metric), where Hk is an approximation to the inverse Hessian G-'(Xk) of the function being minimized. * Using the iteration formula Hk+1 = Hk + Ek to provide revised estimates to the inverse Hessian at each step, Greenstadt solves for the correction term Ek that minimizes the norm N(Ek) = Tr (WEkWEkJ) subject to the conditions
Indonesian speech recognition for hearing and speaking impaired people

This paper outlines our efforts in developing Indonesian speech recognition for hearing and speaking impaired people. The lack of speech-enabling technology and research, as well as a shortage of data on the Indonesian language presents a major challenge for us to deal with. Difficulties arise in developing an Indonesian speech corpus since Indonesian is actually most people’s second language after their own ethnic native language. Collecting all of the possible languages and dialects of the tribes recognized in Indonesia is still the biggest problem we face. In speech recognition, segmented utterances according to labels are usually used as a starting point for training speech models. This segmentation strategy is also one of the main issues. Initialization training utterances with flat segmentation would not give sufficient performance. Here, we used an English speech recognizer to set initial segmentation of Indonesian utterances. This method produced a significant improvement of up to 40% in performance.
Combinatorial Filters

A problem is introduced in which a moving body (robot, human, animal, vehicle, and so on) travels among obstacles and binary detection beams that connect between obstacles or barriers. Each beam can be viewed as a virtual sensor that may have many possible alternative implementations. The task is to determine the possible body paths based only on sensor observations that each simply report that a beam crossing occurred. This is a basic filtering problem encountered in many settings, under a variety of sensing modalities. Filtering methods are presented that reconstruct the set of possible paths at three levels of resolution: (1) the possible sequences of regions (bounded by beams and obstacles) visited, (2) equivalence classes of homo-topic paths, and (3) the possible numbers of times the path winds around obstacles. In the simplest case, all beams are disjoint, distinguishable, and directed. More complex cases are then considered, allowing for any amount of beams overlapping, indistinguishability, and lack of directional information. The method was implemented in simulation. An inexpensive, low-energy, easily deployable architecture was also created which implements the beam model and validates the methods of the article with experiments.
Loss of responsiveness to chemotactic factors by deletion of the C-terminal protein interaction site of angiomotin

We have recently identified a novel protein, named angiomotin, by its ability to bind the angiogenesis inhibitor angiostatin in the yeast two-hybrid system. Angiomotin belongs to a family with two other members, AmotL-1 and -2 characterized by coiled-coil and C-terminal PDZ binding domains. Here we show that the putative PDZ binding motif of angiomotin serves as a protein recognition site and that deletion of three amino acids in this site results in inhibition of chemotaxis. Furthermore, endothelial cells expressing mutant angiomotin failed to migrate and form tubes in an in vitro tube formation assay. To study the effect of angiomotin on embryonic angiogenesis, we generated transgenic mice expressing wild-type angiomotin and the C-terminal deletion mutant driven by the endothelial cell-specific receptor tyrosine kinase (TIE) promoter. Expression of mutant angiomotin in endothelial cells inhibited migration into the neuroectoderm and intersomitic regions resulting in death at embryonic day 9.5. In contrast, mice expressing wild-type angiomotin developed normally and were fertile. These results suggest that the putative PDZ binding motif of angiomotin plays a critical role in regulating the responsiveness of endothelial cells to chemotactic cues.
Adding some smartness to devices and everyday things

In mobile computing, context-awareness indicates the ability of a system to obtain and use information on aspects of the system environment. To implement context-awareness, mobile system components have to be augmented with the ability to capture aspects of their environment. Recent work has mostly considered location-awareness, and hence augmentation of mobile artifacts with locality. We discuss augmentation of mobile artifacts with diverse sets of sensors and perception techniques for awareness of context beyond location. We report experience from two projects, one on augmentation of mobile phones with awareness technologies, and the other on embedding of awareness technology in everyday non-digital artifacts.
CDK2 knockdown enhances head and neck cancer cell radiosensitivity

Abstract Purpose: Cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) is critically involved in cell cycling and has been proposed as a potential cancer target. It remains largely elusive whether CDK2 targeting alters the tumor cell radiosensitivity. Materials and methods: CDK2−/− and wild type (WT) mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEF) as well as six human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines (SAS, FaDu, Cal-33, HSC-4, UTSCC-5, UTSCC-8) were used. Upon CDK2 knockdown using small interfering technology, colony formation, DNA double-strand breaks (DSB), cell cycle distribution and expression and phosphorylation of major proteins regulating cell cycle and DNA damage repair were examined. Results: CDK2−/− MEF and CDK2 HNSCC knockdown cell cultures were more radiosensitive than the corresponding controls. Repair of DSB was attenuated under CDK2 knockout or knockdown. In contrast to data in MEF, combined CDK2 knockdown with irradiation showed no cell cycling alterations in SAS and FaDu cultures. Importantly, CDK2 knockdown failed to radiosensitize SAS and FaDu when cultured in a more physiological three-dimensional (3D) extracellular matrix environment. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that targeting of CDK2 radiosensitizes HNSCC cells growing as monolayer. Additional studies performed under more physiological conditions are warranted to clarify the potential of CDK2 as target in radiotherapy.
Towards Extracting Semantic Information from Texts

This paper presents the general architecture of a system which creates a map of semantic information around a named entity (Person, Organization, etc.). Thus, after the user specifies a named entity, the system searches on the web and returns the first 200 web pages containing the specified entity, applies semantic roles on the returned paragraphs, and extracts a map of related actions involving the searched entity. This map of actions can then be chronologically ordered, thus illustrating the actions a certain entity has performed in a specific time frame (or at least the way it is reflected by the online world).
Health and Quality of Life

Background: Oral health-related quality of life can be assessed positively, by measuring satisfaction with mouth, or negatively, by measuring oral impact on the performance of daily activities. The study objective was to validate two complementary indicators, i.e., the OIDP (Oral Impacts on Daily Performances) and Oral Satisfaction 0–10 Scale (OSS), in two qualitatively different socio-demographic samples of the Spanish adult population, and to analyse the factors affecting both perspectives of well-being. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed, recruiting a Validation Sample from randomly selected Health Centres in Granada (Spain), representing the general population (n = 253), and a Working Sample (n = 561) randomly selected from active Regional Government staff, i.e., representing the more privileged end of the socio-demographic spectrum of this reference population. All participants were examined according to WHO methodology and completed an inperson interview on their oral impacts and oral satisfaction using the OIDP and OSS 0–10 respectively. The reliability and validity of the two indicators were assessed. An alternative method of describing the causes of oral impacts is presented. Results: The reliability coefficient (Cronbach's alpha) of the OIDP was above the recommended 0.7 threshold in both Validation and Occupational samples (0.79 and 0.71 respectively). Test-retest analysis confirmed the external reliability of the OSS (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, 0.89; p < 0.001) Some subjective factors (perceived need for dental treatment, complaints about mouth and intermediate impacts) were strongly associated with both indicators, supporting their construct and criterion validity. The main cause of oral impact was dental pain. Several socio-demographic, behavioural and clinical variables were identified as modulating factors. Conclusion: OIDP and OSS are valid and reliable subjective measures of oral impacts and oral satisfaction, respectively, in an adult Spanish population. Exploring simultaneously these issues may provide useful insights into how satisfaction and impact on well-being are constructed. Published: 18 November 2008 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2008, 6:101 doi:10.1186/1477-7525-6-101 Received: 16 March 2008 Accepted: 18 November 2008 This article is available from: http://www.hqlo. com/content/6/1/101 © 2008 Montero et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Testability Estimation Based on Controllability and Observability Parameters

In the paper a method for estimation the circuit testability on the register transfer level (RTL) is presented. The method allows to perform fast testability estimation in linear time complexity (regarding the number of components and interconnects of the circuit). Proposed approach is based on utilization of controllability and observability measurement for estimation of overall circuit testability. The application of developed method is demonstrated in a software tool for the development of RTL benchmark circuits with predefined testability properties. The results gained by our testability analysis method are compared with the results of professional ATPG tool. Experiments show the good correlation of the results obtained by our method and professional ATPG tool with significantly lower time complexity when our algorithm is used
Evaluation of losses in three-level neutral-point-clamped and T-type quasi-Z-source inverters with modified carrier based modulation method

In recent years, the significant growth of the number of inverters connected to the grid as a consequence of the development of renewable energy sources, especially photovoltaic modules, has caused that focus is on innovative inverter circuitries. This paper presents a comparison between two different configurations of three-phase three-level inverters: the neutral-point-clamped and the T-type. Both topologies have been combined with a quasi-Z-source network in order to obtain the straightforward benefits that it offers, by using a modulation technique which introduces shoot-through states. Conventional carrier based modulation techniques have been modified in order to optimize the switching pattern for the T-type circuit. Moreover, a comprehensive simulation study is performed in order to state if T-type topology could be considered as a good alternative to neutral-point-clamped topology.
Step-Count Promotion Through a School-Based Intervention

The purpose was to determine the effects of a school-based pedometer intervention (SBPI) on daily accrued steps, academic performance, attendance, tardiness, and fitness performance in middle school students. Students from one, public middle school were assigned to a control (n = 46) or a 6-week SBPI (n = 46). Both groups recorded daily accrued pedometer steps. Grade point average (GPA), tardiness, absenteeism, and physical fitness scores were assessed. While baseline daily accrued step-counts were similar (p = NS), SBPI significantly increased daily accrued step-counts versus control (p < 0.05). During the study interval, academic performance increased in both groups, while SBPI had reduced tardiness (p < 0.05) and a tendency for reduced absenteeism (p = 0.06) postintervention. Shuttle and mile run performance decreased from pre- to postintervention in both groups. These data suggest that SBPI can increase physical activity levels and decrease tardiness in middle school students, without translating into short-term improvements in academic or physical fitness performance.
Cloning, expression, purification and characterisation of Erwinia carotovora L-asparaginase in Escherichia coli

Background: For the past 30 years, bacterial L-asparaginases have been used as therapeutic agents in the treatment of acute childhood lymphoblastic leukemia. It is found in a variety of organisms such as microbes, plants and mammals. Their intrinsic low-rate glutaminase activity, however, causes serious side-effects, including neurotoxicity, hepatitis, coagulopathy and other dysfunctions. Erwinia carotovora asparaginase shows decreased glutaminase activity, so it is believed to have fewer side-effects in leukemia therapy. Our aim was to clone, express, purify and characterize E. carotovora asparaginase. Materials and Methods: L-asparaginase from E. carotovora NCYC 1526 (ErA) was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli strain BL21 (DE3). The enzyme was purified to homogeneity by affinity chromatography. Various conditions were tested to maximize the production of recombinant asparaginase in E. coli. Results: A new L. asparaginase from E. carotovora NCYC 1526 (ErA) was successfully cloned, expressed and purified in E. coli BL21 (DE3). The specific activity of the enzyme was 430 IU/mg. Conclusion: The results of the present work form the basis for a new engineered form of ErA for future therapeutic use, which could be extended with crystallographic studies.
Training feedforward neural networks using orthogonal iteration of the Hessian eigenvectors

The paper describes a training algorithm for multilayer perceptrons. It has scalable memory requirements, which may range from O(W) to O(W/sup 2/), although in practice the useful range is limited to lower complexity levels. The algorithm is based upon a novel iterative estimation of the principal eigensubspace of the Hessian, together with a quadratic step estimation procedure. It is shown that the new algorithm has convergence time comparable to conjugate gradient descent, and may be preferable if early stopping is used as it converges more quickly during the initial phases. Results of experiments to confirm the algorithm's performance are presented.
Threshold saturation on channels with memory via spatial coupling

We consider spatially coupled code ensembles. A particular instance are convolutional LDPC ensembles. It was recently shown that, for transmission over the memoryless binary erasure channel, this coupling increases the belief propagation threshold of the ensemble to the maximum a-posteriori threshold of the underlying component ensemble. This paved the way for a new class of capacity achieving low-density parity check codes. It was also shown empirically that the same threshold saturation occurs when we consider transmission over general binary input memoryless channels. In this work, we report on empirical evidence which suggests that the same phenomenon also occurs when transmission takes place over a class of channels with memory. This is confirmed both by simulations as well as by computing EXIT curves.
Differential Susceptibilities of Human Lung Primary Cells to H1N1 Influenza Viruses

ABSTRACT Human alveolar epithelial cells (AECs) and alveolar macrophages (AMs) are the first lines of lung defense. Here, we report that AECs are the direct targets for H1N1 viruses that have circulated since the 2009 pandemic (H1N1pdm09). AMs are less susceptible to H1N1pdm09 virus, but they produce significantly more inflammatory cytokines than AECs from the same donor. AECs form an intact epithelial barrier that is destroyed by H1N1pdm09 infection. However, there is significant variation in the cellular permissiveness to H1N1pdm09 infection among different donors. AECs from obese donors appear to be more susceptible to H1N1pdm09 infection, whereas gender, smoking history, and age do not appear to affect AEC susceptibility. There is also a difference in response to different strains of H1N1pdm09 viruses. Compared to A/California04/09 (CA04), A/New York/1682/09 (NY1682) is more infectious and causes more epithelial barrier injury, although it stimulates less cytokine production. We further determined that a single amino acid residue substitution in NY1682 hemagglutinin is responsible for the difference in infectivity. In conclusion, this is the first study of host susceptibility of human lung primary cells and the integrity of the alveolar epithelial barrier to influenza. Further elucidation of the mechanism of increased susceptibility of AECs from obese subjects may facilitate the development of novel protection strategies against influenza virus infection. IMPORTANCE Disease susceptibility of influenza is determined by host and viral factors. Human alveolar epithelial cells (AECs) form the key line of lung defenses against pathogens. Using primary AECs from different donors, we provided cellular level evidence that obesity might be a risk factor for increased susceptibility to influenza. We also compared the infections of two closely related 2009 pandemic H1N1 strains in AECs from the same donor and identified a key viral factor that affected host susceptibility, the dominance of which may be correlated with disease epidemiology. In addition, primary human AECs can serve as a convenient and powerful model to investigate the mechanism of influenza-induced lung injury and determine the effect of genetic and epigenetic factors on host susceptibility to pandemic influenza virus infection.