Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elementary Properties of Positive Concave Mappings With Applications to Network Planning and Optimization

This paper presents novel methods for computing fixed points of positive concave mappings and for characterizing the existence of fixed points. These methods are particularly important in planning and optimization tasks in wireless networks. For example, previous studies have shown that the feasibility of a network design can be quickly evaluated by computing the fixed point of a concave mapping that is constructed based on many environmental and network control parameters such as the position of base stations, channel conditions, and antenna tilts. To address this and more general problems, given a positive concave mapping, we show two alternative but equivalent ways to construct a matrix that is guaranteed to have spectral radius strictly smaller than one if the mapping has a fixed point. This matrix is then used to build a new mapping that preserves the fixed point of the original positive concave mapping. We show that the standard fixed point iterations using the new mapping converges faster than the standard iterations applied to the original concave mapping. As exemplary applications of the proposed methods, we consider the problems of power and load estimation in networks based on the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technology.
Prediction of quality degradation for mobile video streaming apps: A case study using YouTube

The growing popularity for developing streaming media applications over HTTP triggers new challenges for managing video quality over mobile devices. Quality of online videos gets significantly affected due to the capacity fluctuations of underlying communication channel, which is very much common for cellular mobile networks. Such fluctuations lead to re-buffering and sudden drops in video quality, adversely affecting video watching experience. In this poster, we propose a light-weight method for early detection of network capacity degradation. We explore the traffic characteristics of mobile streaming video apps, by considering YouTube Android app as a use case. We show that by observing the traffic pattern, we can predict possible video quality degradation and video re-buffering events. We develop a methodology for early prediction of possible re-buffering. The experimental results reveal that our proposed scheme works with very high accuracy.
New Perspectives on Antiacne Plant Drugs: Contribution to Modern Therapeutics

Acne is a common but serious skin disease, which affects approximately 80% adolescents and young adults in 11–30 age group. 42.5% of men and 50.9% of women continue to suffer from this disease into their twenties. Bacterial resistance is now at the alarming stage due to the irrational use of antibiotics. Hence, search for new lead molecule/bioactive and rational delivery of the existing drug (for better therapeutic effect) to the site of action is the need of the hour. Plants and plant-derived products have been an integral part of health care system since time immemorial. Therefore, plants that are currently used for the treatment of acne and those with a high potential are summarized in the present review. Most active plant extracts, namely, P. granatum, M. alba, A. anomala, and M. aquifolium exhibit minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) in the range of 4–50 µg/mL against P. acnes, while aromatic oils of C. obovoides, C. natsudaidai, C. japonica, and C. nardus possess MICs 0.005–0.6 μL/mL and phytomolecules such as rhodomyrtone, pulsaquinone, hydropulsaquinone, honokiol, magnolol, xanthohumol lupulones, chebulagic acid and rhinacanthin-C show MIC in the range of 0.5–12.5 μg/mL. Novel drug delivery strategies of important plant leads in the treatment of acne have also been discussed.
Tunable Performance and Consistency Tradeoffs for Geographically Replicated Cloud Services (COLOR)

COLOR (client-oriented layered optimistic replication) is a combination of optimistic and conservative data replication that allows cloud services to be replicated across widely distributed locations without suffering from the latency overhead of strict algorithms, and with quantifiable and controllable tradeoffs between performance and consistency guarantees. The COLOR solution adopts a layered approach to enable optimistic delivery of client messages on top of any existing storage layer that manages the strict replication of the cloud service. When clients may be temporarily exposed to inconsistent states due to replication failures, such inconsistency is made recoverable similar to "optimistic concurrency control" for clients that cache the server state. COLOR supports different numeric parameters to trade the strict consistency for better performance to possibly match Eventual Consistency, while the end-to-end consistency is always guaranteed as the storage layer will never deliver any client messages generated from inconsistent states.
Folate Metabolism Gene 5,10-Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase (MTHFR) Is Associated with ADHD in Myelomeningocele Patients

The objective of this study was to examine the relation between the 5, 10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene and behaviors related to attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in individuals with myelomeningocele. The rationale for the study was twofold: folate metabolizing genes, (e.g. MTHFR), are important not only in the etiology of neural tube defects but are also critical to cognitive function; and individuals with myelomeningocele have an elevated incidence of ADHD. Here, we tested 478 individuals with myelomeningocele for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder behavior using the Swanson Nolan Achenbach Pelham-IV ADHD rating scale. Myelomeningocele participants in this group for whom DNAs were available were genotyped for seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the MTHFR gene. The SNPs were evaluated for an association with manifestation of the ADHD phenotype in children with myelomeningocele. The data show that 28.7% of myelomeningocele participants exhibit rating scale elevations consistent with ADHD; of these 70.1% had scores consistent with the predominantly inattentive subtype. In addition, we also show a positive association between the SNP rs4846049 in the 3′-untranslated region of the MTHFR gene and the attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder phenotype in myelomeningocele participants. These results lend further support to the finding that behavior related to ADHD is more prevalent in patients with myelomeningocele than in the general population. These data also indicate the potential importance of the MTHFR gene in the etiology of the ADHD phenotype.
The Prostacyclin Analogue Carbacyclin Inhibits Ca2+‐Activated K+ Current in Aortic Baroreceptor Neurones of Rats

1 Previous studies indicate that prostacyclin (PGI2) increases the activity of baroreceptor afferent fibres. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that PGI2 inhibits Ca2+‐activated K+ current (IK(Ca)) in isolated baroreceptor neurones in culture. 2 Rat aortic baroreceptor neurones in the nodose ganglia were labelled in vivo by applying a fluorescent dye (DiI) to the aortic arch 1–2 weeks before dissociation of the neurones. Outward K+ currents in baroreceptor neurones evoked by depolarizing voltage steps from a holding potential of −40 mV were recorded using the whole‐cell patch‐clamp technique. 3 Exposure of baroreceptor neurones to the stable PGI2 analogue carbacyclin significantly inhibited the steady‐state K+ current in a dose‐dependent and reversible manner. The inhibition of K+ current was not caused indirectly by changes in cytosolic Ca2+ concentration. The Ca2+‐activated K+ channel blocker charybdotoxin (ChTX, 10−7m) also inhibited the K+ current. In the presence of ChTX or in the absence of Ca2+, carbacyclin failed to inhibit the residual K+ current. Furthermore, in the presence of high concentrations of carbacyclin, ChTX did not cause further reduction of K+ current. 4 Carbacyclin‐induced inhibition of IK(Ca) was mimicked by 8‐bromo‐cAMP and by activation of G‐protein with GTPγS. The inhibitory effect of carbacyclin on IK(Ca) was abolished by GDPβS, which blocks G‐protein activation, and by a selective inhibitor of cAMP‐dependent protein kinase, PKI5–24. 5 The results demonstrate that carbacyclin inhibits ChTX‐sensitive IK(Ca) in isolated aortic baroreceptor neurones by a G‐protein‐coupled activation of cAMP‐dependent protein kinase. This mechanism may contribute to the PGI2‐induced increase in baroreceptor activity demonstrated previously.
Respiratory Syncytial Virus Attachment Glycoprotein Contribution to Infection Depends on the Specific Fusion Protein

ABSTRACT Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an important pathogen causing acute lower respiratory tract disease in children. The RSV attachment glycoprotein (G) is not required for infection, as G-null RSV replicates efficiently in several cell lines. Our laboratory previously reported that the viral fusion (F) protein is a determinant of strain-dependent pathogenesis. Here, we hypothesized that virus dependence on G is determined by the strain specificity of F. We generated recombinant viruses expressing G and F, or null for G, from the laboratory A2 strain (Katushka RSV-A2GA2F [kRSV-A2GA2F] and kRSV-GstopA2F) or the clinical isolate A2001/2-20 (kRSV-2-20G2-20F and kRSV-Gstop2-20F). We quantified the virus cell binding, entry kinetics, infectivity, and growth kinetics of these four recombinant viruses in vitro. RSV expressing the 2-20 G protein exhibited the greatest binding activity. Compared to the parental viruses expressing G and F, removal of 2-20 G had more deleterious effects on binding, entry, infectivity, and growth than removal of A2 G. Overall, RSV expressing 2-20 F had a high dependence on G for binding, entry, and infection. IMPORTANCE RSV is the leading cause of childhood acute respiratory disease requiring hospitalization. As with other paramyxoviruses, two major RSV surface viral glycoproteins, the G attachment protein and the F fusion protein, mediate virus binding and subsequent membrane fusion, respectively. Previous work on the RSV A2 prototypical strain demonstrated that the G protein is functionally dispensable for in vitro replication. This is in contrast to other paramyxoviruses that require attachment protein function as a prerequisite for fusion. We reevaluated this requirement for RSV using G and F proteins from clinical isolate 2-20. Compared to the laboratory A2 strain, the G protein from 2-20 had greater contributions to virus binding, entry, infectivity, and in vitro growth kinetics. Thus, the clinical isolate 2-20 F protein function depended more on its G protein, suggesting that RSV has a higher dependence on G than previously thought.
Transdiagnostic Factors andMediation of the Relationship BetweenPerceivedRacial Discrimination andMental Disorders

IMPORTANCE Multivariable comorbidity research indicates that many common mental disorders are manifestations of 2 latent transdiagnostic factors, internalizing and externalizing. Environmental stressors are known to increase the risk for experiencing particular mental disorders, but their relationships with transdiagnostic disorder constructs are unknown. The present study investigated one such stressor, perceived racial discrimination, which is robustly associated with a variety of mental disorders.
Cystic fibrosis and airway submucosal glands

The chronic pulmonary infections and inflammation associated with cystic fibrosis (CF) are responsible for almost all the morbidity and mortality of this disease. Our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the very early stages of CF lung disease, that result directly from mutations in the CF gene, is relatively poor. However, the demonstration that the predominant sites of expression of the CF gene in normal lungs are the submucosal glands, together with the histological observations showing that hyperplasia of these glands and mucin occlusion of the gland ducts are the earliest signs of disease in the CF lung, suggest that malfunction of the submucosal glands may be an important factor contributing to the early pathophysiology of CF lung disease. This review describes the function of submucosal glands in normal lungs, and the way in which their function may be disrupted in CF and may thus contribute to the early stages of CF lung disease. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mobile databases: a selection of open issues and research directions

This paper reports on the main results of a specific action on mobile databases conducted by CNRS in France from October 2001 to December 2002. The objective of this action was to review the state of progress in mobile databases and identify major research directions for the French database community. Rather than provide a survey of all important issues in mobile databases, this paper gives an outline of the directions in which the action participants are now engaged, namely: copy synchronization in disconnected computing, mobile transactions, database embedded in ultra-light devices, data confidentiality, P2P dissemination models and middleware adaptability.
Tracking the Position and Rotational Orientation of a Catheter Using a Transmit Array System

A new method for detecting the rotational orientation and tracking the position of an inductively coupled radio frequency (ICRF) coil using a transmit array system is proposed. The method employs a conventional body birdcage coil, but the quadrature hybrid is eliminated so that the two excitation channels can be used separately. The transmit array system provides RF excitations such that the body birdcage coil creates linearly polarized and changing RF pulses instead of a conventional rotational forward-polarized excitation. The receive coils and their operations are not modified. Inductively coupled RF coils are constructed on catheters for detecting rotational orientation and for tracking purposes. Signals from the anatomy and from tissue close to the ICRF coil are different due to the new RF excitation scheme: the ICRF coil can be separated from the anatomy in real time, and after doing so, a color-coded image is reconstructed. More importantly, this novel method enables a real-time calculation of the absolute rotational orientation of an ICRF coil constructed on a catheter.
Non-Selective Evolution of Growing Populations

Non-selective effects, like genetic drift, are an important factor in modern conceptions of evolution, and have been extensively studied for constant population sizes (Kimura, 1955; Otto and Whitlock, 1997). Here, we consider non-selective evolution in the case of growing populations that are of small size and have varying trait compositions (e.g. after a population bottleneck). We find that, in these conditions, populations never fixate to a trait, but tend to a random limit composition, and that the distribution of compositions “freezes” to a steady state. This final state is crucially influenced by the initial conditions. We obtain these findings from a combined theoretical and experimental approach, using multiple mixed subpopulations of two Pseudomonas putida strains in non-selective growth conditions (Matthijs et al, 2009) as model system. The experimental results for the population dynamics match the theoretical predictions based on the Pólya urn model (Eggenberger and Pólya, 1923) for all analyzed parameter regimes. In summary, we show that exponential growth stops genetic drift. This result contrasts with previous theoretical analyses of non-selective evolution (e.g. genetic drift), which investigated how traits spread and eventually take over populations (fixate) (Kimura, 1955; Otto and Whitlock, 1997). Moreover, our work highlights how deeply growth influences non-selective evolution, and how it plays a key role in maintaining genetic variability. Consequently, it is of particular importance in life-cycles models (Melbinger et al, 2010; Cremer et al, 2011; Cremer et al, 2012) of periodically shrinking and expanding populations.
Improving collection selection with overlap awareness in P2P search engines

Collection selection has been a research issue for years. Typically, in related work, precomputed statistics are employed in order to estimate the expected result quality of each collection, and subsequently the collections are ranked accordingly. Our thesis is that this simple approach is insufficient for several applications in which the collections typically overlap. This is the case, for example, for the collections built by autonomous peers crawling the web. We argue for the extension of existing quality measures using estimators of mutual overlap among collections and present experiments in which this combination outperforms CORI, a popular approach based on quality estimation. We outline our prototype implementation of a P2P web search engine, coined MINERVA, that allows handling large amounts of data in a distributed and self-organizing manner. We conduct experiments which show that taking overlap into account during collection selection can drastically decrease the number of collections that have to be contacted in order to reach a satisfactory level of recall, which is a great step toward the feasibility of distributed web search.
Functional interaction of the circadian clock and UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8-controlled UV-B signaling pathways in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Circadian clocks regulate many molecular and physiological processes in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), allowing the timing of these processes to occur at the most appropriate time of the day in a 24-h period. The accuracy of timing relies on the synchrony of the clock and the environmental day/night cycle. Visible light is the most potent signal for such synchronization, but light-induced responses are also rhythmically attenuated (gated) by the clock. Here, we report a similar mutual interaction of the circadian clock and non-damaging photomorphogenic UV-B light. We show that low-intensity UV-B radiation acts as entraining signal for the clock. UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8 (UVR8) and CONSTITUTIVELY PHOTOMORPHOGENIC 1 (COP1) are required, but ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL 5 (HY5) and HY5 HOMOLOG (HYH) are dispensable for this process. UV-B responsiveness of clock gene expression suggests that photomorphogenic UV-B entrains the plant clock through transcriptional activation. We also demonstrate that UV-B induction of gene expression under these conditions is gated by the clock in a HY5/HYH-independent manner. The arrhythmic early flowering 3-4 mutant showed non-gated, high-level gene induction by UV-B, yet displayed no increased tolerance to UV-B stress. Thus, the temporal restriction of UV-B responsiveness by the circadian clock can be considered as saving resources during acclimation without losing fitness.
Cytotoxicity of New Stilbenoids from Pholidota chinensis and Their Spin‐Labeled Derivatives

Chemical investigation of the leave and stem of Pholidota chinensis Lindl has resulted in the isolation and characterization of three new stilbenoids. Their structures were established on the basis of spectroscopic evidence. A series of spin‐labeled stilbene derivatives were synthesized. All of the new compounds were tested for cytotoxicity, and the results revealed that most of the spin‐labeled stilbene derivatives showed superior cytotoxicity in vitro.
Final Report for 2000 Yukon River King Salmon -ichthyophonus Pilot Study

When king salmon enter the Yukon River on their spawning migration in mid June, over 25% of the population are infected with Ichthyophonus. The percent of infected fish remains relatively constant until the fish pass river mile 1,319 at Dawson, Y.T. , then it drops to 13% when they reach river mile 1,745 at Whitehorse, Y.T. When the sexes are examined separately, slightly more females are infected than males (29% vs 22%). The percent of fish exhibiting clinical signs (diseased) is 2-3% when they enter the river, but increases to over 20% at river mile 715 near Tanana, AK. Disease prevalence within the population remains constant at > 20% until fish pass Dawson, then the percent of diseased fish drops to < 9% at Whitehorse. When the sexes are examined separately, male disease prevalence is highest at Tanana (22.6%) then gradually drops to just 12.9% at Whitehorse. Females however, continue to show an increase in disease prevalence peaking at river mile 1,081 near Circle, AK, at 36.4%, then dropping to just 5.3% at Whitehorse. Data on infection and disease collected from kings at Nenana on the Tanana River more closely resembles that seen at Whitehorse than the lower and middle Yukon River. When data collected in 1999 and 2000 are compared the prevalence of infection in males remains the same while a 15% drop in infection prevalence occurs in females. There is also a drop in the percent of infected fish showing Ichthyophonus infection of the muscle. This difference may be related to a 2 o C lower river temperature in 2000 compared with 1999. Significant egg resorption was seen in 25% of females but no correlation with Ichthyophonus infection could be made. The cause of resorption and the extent to which it affects fecundity has yet to be determined. Attempts to experimentally infect Chinook salmon and rainbow trout with Yukon River Ichthyophonus isolates were essentially unsuccessful by both feeding of infected tissues and injection of cultured spores. However, other unrelated fish species were infected without difficulty. A method for non-lethal sampling of adult spawning Chinook salmon for Ichthyophonus was developed using known infected fish and live returning spawners. The method consisted of taking punch biopsies of skin and muscle and culturing the biopsy tissue in vitro. A 100% correlation was made between known infected fish and cultured biopsy tissue.
From brain to earth and climate systems: Small-world interaction networks or not?

We consider recent reports on small-world topologies of interaction networks derived from the dynamics of spatially extended systems that are investigated in diverse scientific fields such as neurosciences, geophysics, or meteorology. With numerical simulations that mimic typical experimental situations, we have identified an important constraint when characterizing such networks: indications of a small-world topology can be expected solely due to the spatial sampling of the system along with the commonly used time series analysis based approaches to network characterization.
High throughput thin film materials science

Abstract Combinatorial techniques, in which a library of chemical formulations is scanned for specific activity, have been used extensively to expedite the discovery phase of pharmaceutical compounds. Such techniques have more recently come to prominence in relation to the discovery of novel functional inorganic materials using methods of thin film deposition. Here the aim is to prepare a thin film sample containing a spread of compositions so that localised measurements can explore a range of properties across the phase diagram. The application of high throughput thin film techniques to the optimisation of materials properties has its roots in earlier studies which exploited position-dependent process variables to assist optimisation protocols. Indeed, we argue here that one of the biggest challenges facing combinatorial materials science is to ensure that property variations can be ascribed solely to composition changes, by achieving sufficient control over the inevitable variation in other process parameters. This review provides a discussion of the range of parameters, including composition, which can be controllably varied as a function of position during thin film growth. In addition to the growth techniques themselves, we discuss the requirements placed on materials diagnostics and property measurements, which are essential for the high throughput capability to be realised.