Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mesenchymal Bone Marrow Cell Therapy in a Mouse Model of Chagas Disease. Where Do the Cells Go?

Background Chagas disease, resulting from infection with the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), is a major cause of cardiomyopathy in Latin America. Drug therapy for acute and chronic disease is limited. Stem cell therapy with bone marrow mesenchymal cells (MSCs) has emerged as a novel therapeutic option for cell death-related heart diseases, but efficacy of MSC has not been tested in Chagas disease. Methods and Results We now report the use of cell-tracking strategies with nanoparticle labeled MSC to investigate migration of transplanted MSC in a murine model of Chagas disease, and correlate MSC biodistribution with glucose metabolism and morphology of heart in chagasic mice by small animal positron emission tomography (microPET). Mice were infected intraperitoneally with trypomastigotes of the Brazil strain of T. cruzi and treated by tail vein injection with MSC one month after infection. MSCs were labeled with near infrared fluorescent nanoparticles and tracked by an in vivo imaging system (IVIS). Our IVIS results two days after transplant revealed that a small, but significant, number of cells migrated to chagasic hearts when compared with control animals, whereas the vast majority of labeled MSC migrated to liver, lungs and spleen. Additionally, the microPET technique demonstrated that therapy with MSC reduced right ventricular dilation, a phenotype of the chagasic mouse model. Conclusions We conclude that the beneficial effects of MSC therapy in chagasic mice arise from an indirect action of the cells in the heart rather than a direct action due to incorporation of large numbers of transplanted MSC into working myocardium.
Spectrum Trading in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Multistage Bayesian Game

In this paper, we study spectrum trading in cognitive radio (CR) networks with multiple primary services (PSs) and multiple secondary services (SSs) from a game-theoretic perspective. We propose a multistage Bayesian game-based trading model which accounts for unknown private information of players (for example, the number of user connections in PSs may be unknown to the SSs) as in practical network scenarios. The perfect Bayesian equilibrium (PBE) is derived by solving an involved sequential optimization problem. We formulate the joint Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and use the KKT translation technique to obtain the PBE at each stage. Simulation demonstrates the convergence of the sequence of strategies in the multistage Bayesian game.
A cross-sectional study

Identifying those patients who underperform in the 6-minute walk test (6MWT<350m), and the reasons for their poor performance, is a major concern in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To explore the accuracy and relevance of the 4-m gait-speed (4MGS) test, and the 5-repetition sit-to-stand (5STS) test, as diagnostic markers, and clinical determinants, of poor performance in the 6MWT. We recruited 137 patients with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to participate in our cross-sectional study. Patients completed the 4MGS and 5STS tests, with quantitative (in seconds) and qualitative ordinal data collected; the latter were categorized using a scale of 0 to 4. The following potential covariates and clinical determinants of poor 6MWT were collated: age, quadriceps muscle-strength (QMS), health status, dyspnea, depression, and airflow limitation. Area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve data (AUC) was used to assess accuracy, with logistic regression used to explore relevance as clinical determinants. The AUCs generated using the 4MGS and 5STS tests were comparable, at 0.719 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.629–0.809) and 0.711 (95%CI 0.613–0.809), respectively. With ordinal data, the 5STS test wasmost accurate (AUC of 0.732; 95%CI 0.645–0.819); the 4MGS test showed poor discriminatory power (AUC <0.7), although accuracy improved (0.726, 95% CI 0.637–0.816) when covariates were included. Unlike the 4MGS test, the 5STS test provided a significant clinical determinant of a poor 6MWT (odds ratio 1.23, 95% CI 1.05–1.44). The 5STS test reliably predicts a poor 6MWT, especially when using ordinal data. Used alone, the 4MGS test is reliable when measured with continuous data. Abbreviations: 4MGS test = 4-m gait-speed test, 5STS test = 5-repetition sit-to-stand test, 6MWT = 6-minute walk test, CAT = Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Assessment Test, COPD = chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, FEV1 = forced expiratory volume in 1second, MRC = Medical Research Council, GOLD = Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease, HAD = Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, QMS = quadriceps muscle strength, LR+ = positive likelihood ratio, LR = negative likelihood ratio, ROC = receiver-operating characteristic, AUC= area under the curve, SPPB = Short Physical Performance Battery.
Testing Halfspaces

This paper addresses the problem of testing whether a Boolean-valued function f is a halfspace, i.e. a function of the form f(x) = sgn(w · x - θ). We consider halfspaces over the continuous domain Rn (endowed with the standard multivariate Gaussian distribution) as well as halfspaces over the Boolean cube {−1, 1}n (endowed with the uniform distribution). In both cases we give an algorithm that distinguishes halfspaces from functions that are e-far from any halfspace using only poly(1/e) queries, independent of the dimension n. Two simple structural results about halfspaces are at the heart of our approach for the Gaussian distribution: the first gives an exact relationship between the expected value of a halfspace f and the sum of the squares of f's degree-1 Hermite coefficients, and the second shows that any function that approximately satisfies this relationship is close to a halfspace. We prove analogous results for the Boolean cube {−1, 1}n (with Fourier coefficients in place of Hermite coefficients) for balanced halfspaces in which all degree-1 Fourier coefficients are small. Dealing with general halfspaces over {−1, 1}n poses significant additional complications and requires other ingredients. These include "cross-consistency" versions of the results mentioned above for pairs of halfspaces with the same weights but different thresholds; new structural results relating the largest degree-1 Fourier coefficient and the largest weight in unbalanced halfspaces; and algorithmic techniques from recent work on testing juntas [FKR+02].
The Effect of Numbered Head Together Learning Model on Social Skills and Learning Outcomes of IPS Class V Students

This study aims to determine the Numbereed Head Together Learning Model for social skills and social studies learning outcomes for Cluster II Students in Ujung Tanah District. This type of research is quantitative research. This research uses a quasi-experimental research type. The subjects used in this study were students in class V cluster II, Ujung Tanah District, Makassar City with a total of 60 students. The instruments used in this study were data collection instruments, namely tests, observations and documentation sheets. Descriptive and inferential test analysis techniques (manova). Based on the results of the t-test analysis, the application of the Numbered Head Together learning model to social skills and social studies learning outcomes in cluster II, Ujung Tanah District, Makassar City has increased significantly. The results of the manova test of Numbered Head Together Learning on social skills and social studies learning outcomes in cluster II, Ujung Tanah District, Makassar City show a significant increase, so
Corporate Memory Management through Agents

The CoMMA project (Corporate Memory Management through Agents) aims at developing an open, agent-based platform for the management of a corporate memory by using the most advanced results on the technical, the content, and the user interaction level. We focus here on methodologies for the setup of multi-agent systems, requirement engineering and knowledge acquisition approaches.
SHPRH regulates rRNA transcription by recognizing the histone code in an mTOR-dependent manner

Significance Transcription of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), which composes the ribosome with other proteins, is tightly regulated to maintain the right number of ribosomes. Many DNA repair proteins have functions in addition to their role in DNA repair. We provide evidence that SHPRH functioning in DNA repair at stalled DNA replication forks recognizes epigenetic histone codes of rDNA through its plant homeodomain (PHD) and modulates 47S rRNA transcription. SHPRH bound to rDNA promoters and promoted RNA polymerase I recruitment for rRNA transcription. SHPRH localization to the rDNA promoter was inhibited by trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 4, which is a mark of the rDNA promoter at poised status on starvation. Collectively, we suggest a mechanism controlling 47S rRNA transcription by SHPRH in a histone methylation-dependent manner. Many DNA repair proteins have additional functions other than their roles in DNA repair. In addition to catalyzing PCNA polyubiquitylation in response to the stalling of DNA replication, SHPRH has the additional function of facilitating rRNA transcription by localizing to the ribosomal DNA (rDNA) promoter in the nucleoli. SHPRH was recruited to the rDNA promoter using its plant homeodomain (PHD), which interacts with histone H3 when the fourth lysine of H3 is not trimethylated. SHPRH enrichment at the rDNA promoter was inhibited by cell starvation, by treatment with actinomycin D or rapamycin, or by depletion of CHD4. SHPRH also physically interacted with the RNA polymerase I complex. Taken together, we provide evidence that SHPRH functions in rRNA transcription through its interaction with histone H3 in a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)-dependent manner.
Kajian Dinamika Atmosfer saat Kejadian Hujan Lebat di Wilayah Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara Menggunakan Model WRF-ARW dan Citra Satelit Himawari-8

Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara adalah kawasan pesisir di wilayah Provinsi Sumatera Utara yang hampir keseluruhannya terletak di wilayah administratif Kabupaten Deli Serdang. Topografi wilayah Kabupaten Deli Serdang terdiri dari daerah pantai, dataran rendah, dan dataran tinggi pegunungan. Secara geografis, Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara berbatasan langsung dengan Selat Malaka. Kondisi geografis dan topografi ini berpengaruh terhadap dinamika atmosfer di wilayah Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara yang memiliki curah hujan yang relatif tinggi. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan karakteristik dinamika atmosfer saat kejadian hujan lebat di wilayah Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara berdasarkan beberapa kejadian hujan lebat terpilih yang terjadi di wilayah Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara selama tahun 2016, yaitu pada tanggal 10 Februari 2016, 23 Agustus 2016, 18 September 2016, dan 8 Oktober 2016. Penentuan kejadian hujan lebat ini dilakukan sesuai dengan kriteria intensitas curah hujan lebat di wilayah Indonesia yang ditetapkan oleh BMKG, yaitu 10-20 mm/jam atau 50-100 mm/hari. Analisis dinamika atmosfer dilakukan menggunakan model cuaca skala meso WRF-ARW (Weather Research and Forecasting-Advanced Research WRF) dan citra satelit Himawari-8. Penelitian ini menggunakan data FNL (Final Analysis) untuk model WRF-ARW, data kanal infrared (IR) untuk citra satelit Himawari-8, data GSMaP (Global Satellite Mapping Precipitation), dan data observasi dari Stasiun Meteorologi Kualanamu. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa hujan lebat yang terjadi di wilayah Pesisir Timur Sumatera Utara merupakan akibat dari aktivitas konvektif yang terjadi di wilayah tersebut. Hal ini diperlihatkan oleh adanya awan Cumulonimbus (Cb) pada citra satelit Himawari-8 yang ditunjukkan oleh nilai suhu puncak awan yang sangat rendah.
Transactional Partitioning: A New Abstraction for Main-Memory Databases

The growth in variety and volume of OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) applications poses a challenge to OLTP systems to meet performance and cost demands in the existing hardware landscape. These applications are highly interactive (latency sensitive) and require update consistency. They target commodity hardware for deployment and demand scalability in throughput with increasing clients and data. Currently, OLTP systems used by these applications provide trade-offs in performance and ease of development over a variety of applications. In order to bridge the gap between performance and ease of development, we propose an intuitive, high-level programming model which allows OLTP applications to be modeled as a cluster of application logic units. By extending transactions guaranteeing full ACID semantics to provide the proposed model, we maintain ease of application development. The model allows the application developer to reason about program performance, and to influence it without the involvement of OLTP system designers (database designers) and/or DBAs. As a result, the database designer is free to focus on efficient running of programs to ensure optimal cluster resource utilization.
The Complexity of Extended Formulations

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? William Blake To Mom and Dad. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First I would like to thank my parents. I dedicate this work to my dad, the first PhD in the family, and to my mom, who may be the only person who never doubted I could get there too. I could fill another thesis with what you both have done for me and I would just be getting started. Thank you for everything. I'm incredibly lucky to have had not one but two wonderful advisors, Lance Fort-now and Sebastian Pokutta. Lance: getting to be a complexity theorist has been a dream come true for me. Thank you for your support, your patience, and of course for bringing me down South. Sebastian: what started as a class to fill a minor requirement turned into the most productive research of my career. If I can remember just some of the many insights you've shared with me about research and life, I'll do very well. I'd like to acknowledge the other members of my committee: Greg Blekherman, Dick Lipton, and Santosh Vempala. Thank you for your feedback and helpful discussions , many of which happened even before you agreed to serve on my committee. I'd also like to thank my coauthors and collaborators through the years, with special recognition for Gábor Braun: your guidance was more than once the critical piece I needed to move forward. During these years of living on a graduate student's budget, I've counted my wealth in family and friends. I'd be foolish to try to do justice to all of you by name, so let me just say that your words and support have carried me through this journey, more than you may know. One friend deserves special mention: Melanie Wertz. You were practically my third advisor. You've seen me through this journey from one side to the other with a patient ear, encouraging words, and a wisdom that is truly out of this world. v I would like to thank Northwestern University, where I started my PhD, and Georgia Tech, where I finished, for fostering a supportive environment where students can succeed. I also want to thank my past mentors: And of course none of my work would have been possible without the organizations that funded my research, including my …
A novel peptide inhibits the influenza virus replication by preventing the viral attachment to the host cells

Avian influenza viruses (AIV), the causative agent of avian flu or bird flu, cause widespread morbidity and mortality in poultry. The symptoms of the disease range from mild flu like symptoms to death. These viruses possess two important surface glycoproteins, namely hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) against which neutralizing antibodies are produced. Due to the highly mutative nature of the genes which encode these proteins, the viruses often confer resistance to the current anti-viral drugs making the prevention and treatment of infection challenging. In our laboratory, we have recently identified a novel anti-viral peptide (P1) against the AIV H9N2 from a phage displayed peptide library. This peptide inhibits the replication of the virus in ovo and in vitro by its binding to the HA glycoprotein. In the current study, we demonstrate that the peptide inhibits the virus replication by preventing the attachment to the host cell but it does not have any effect on the viral fusion. The reduction in the viral nucleoprotein (NP) expression inside the host cell has also been observed during the peptide (P1) treatment. This novel peptide may have the potential to be developed as a therapeutic agent for the treatment and control of avian influenza virus H9N2 infections.
Monochromatic and bichromatic reverse skyline search over uncertain databases

Reverse skyline queries over uncertain databases have many important applications such as sensor data monitoring and business planning. Due to the existence of uncertainty in many real-world data, answering reverse skyline queries accurately and efficiently over uncertain data has become increasingly important. In this paper, we model the probabilistic reverse skyline query on uncertain data, in both monochromatic and bichromatic cases, and propose effective pruning methods to reduce the search space of query processing. Moreover, efficient query procedures have been presented seamlessly integrating the proposed pruning methods. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed approach with various experimental settings.
Carotid arteries ultrasound for predicting coronary artery disease

Ischemic heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the world. Myocardial infarction or even death might be the initial presentation of ischemic heart disease. Myocardial infarction is the leading cause of long-term mortality in stroke surviving patients. The aim of this paper is to present the possibilities of predicting coronary artery disease in stroke patients. Evaluating carotid arteries intima-media thickness (IMT), plaque morphology, and degree of stenosis can give us valuable additional information for predicting cardiovascular risk and silent coronary artery disease in otherwise asymptomatic patients. Measuring IMT and assessing carotid atherosclerotic plaque is justified in subjects with high vascular risk profile.
Performance analysis of the Raft consensus algorithm on Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum on cloud

The use of private or consortium blockchains in organizations’ applications is growing. A relevant aspect of blockchains is the choice of consensus mechanism. This decision delimits which blockchain solutions are suitable for the private scenario. Once the consensus mechanism is chosen, more than one blockchain may be enabled. However, this decision making is not trivial and requires detailed experimental indicators about algorithms and blockchains performance. In this context, we provide a comprehensive performance analysis of the Raft consensus mechanism based on its implementation in Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum blockchain solutions. We performed our experiments on an OpenStack private cloud using each blockchain developer’s default settings for virtual machines. Our findings show how the implementation of each solution can impact the application’s performance under certain conditions.
Place recognition based on matching of planar surfaces and line segments

This paper considers the potential of using three-dimensional (3D) planar surfaces and line segments detected in depth images for place recognition. A place recognition method is presented that is based on matching sets of surface and line features extracted from depth images provided by a 3D camera to features of the same type contained in a previously created environment model. The considered environment model consists of a set of local models representing particular locations in the modeled environment. Each local model consists of planar surface segments and line segments representing the edges of objects in the environment. The presented method is designed for indoor and urban environments. A computationally efficient pose hypothesis generation approach is proposed that ranks the features according to their potential contribution to the pose information, thereby reducing the time needed for obtaining accurate pose estimation. Furthermore, a robust probabilistic method for selecting the best pose hypothesis is proposed that allows matching of partially overlapping point clouds with gross outliers. The proposed approach is experimentally tested on a benchmark dataset containing depth images acquired in the indoor environment with changes in lighting conditions and the presence of moving objects. A comparison of the proposed method to FAB-MAP and DLoopDetector is reported.
Enhancing Security and Confidentiality in Decentralized Payment System Based on Blockchain Technology

The advent of blockchain technology (BC), has revolutionized the financial landscape with its decentralized, immutable, and verifiable characteristics. Blockchain technology can be deployed in many applications, however the Decentralized Payment System (DPS) can be considered as the most widely used application among all others. The public nature of early decentralized payment systems (e.g. bitcoin) has led to privacy challenges, making them susceptible to cybercriminal activities such as ransomware attacks and illegal financial transactions. This research investigates various decentralized payment systems adopted in blockchain technology and outlines the security requirements necessary to safeguard user transactions. The objectives of this study include examining payment transactions in decentralized systems, identifying potential threats, proposing improved and efficient security solutions, and assessing personal data sharing confidentiality.
A Lightweight Security Solution for Mitigation of Hatchetman Attack in RPL-based 6LoWPAN

In recent times, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a significant rise in industries, and we live in the era of Industry 4.0, where each device is connected to the Internet from small to big. These devices are Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled and are capable of perspective analytics. By 2023, it’s anticipated that over 14 billion smart devices will be available on the Internet. These applications operate in a wireless environment where memory, power, and other resource limitations apply to the nodes. In addition, the conventional routing method is ineffective in networks with limited resource devices, lossy links, and slow data rates. Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), a new routing protocol for such networks, was proposed by the IETF’s ROLL group. RPL operates in two modes: Storing and Non-Storing. In Storing mode, each node have the information to reach to other node. In Non-Storing mode, the routing information lies with the root node only. The attacker may exploit the Non-Storing feature of the RPL. When the root node transmits User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or control message packet to the child nodes, the routing information is stored in the extended header of the IPv6 packet. The attacker may modify the address from the source routing header which leads to Denial of Service (DoS) attack. This attack is RPL specific which is known as Hatchetman attack. This paper shows significant degradation in terms of network performance when an attacker exploits this feature. We also propose a lightweight mitigation of Hatchetman attack using game theoretic approach to detect the Hatchetman attack in IoT.