Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier can be reversibly converted into a large channel by Ca2+.

Single-channel current measurements of excised patches with reconstituted purified mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier (AAC) indicates the presence of a large low cation selective (PK+/PCl- = 4.3 +/- 0.6) channel. The channel conductance has multiple sublevels and varies from 300 to 600 pS. It has low probability of current fluctuations at Vhold up to 80-100 mV of both signs and is reversibly gated at Vhold > 150 mV. The opening of the channel is Ca(2+)-dependent (1 mM Ca2+) and can be reversibly closed on removal of Ca2+. It is strongly pH dependent and closes completely at pHex 5.2. The AAC-specific inhibitor bongkrekate inhibits the channel partially and completely in combination with ADP, whereas carboxyatractylate did not affect the conductance. The effects of these AAC-specific ligands prove that the channel activity belongs to AAC. The AAC-linked conductance can clearly be differentiated from the porin channel, rarely detected in our preparations. The properties of the AAC-linked channel coincide with the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MTP), which is also affected by the AAC ligands [Hunter, D. R. , & Haworth, R. A. (1979) Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 195, 453-459] and resembles the mitochondrial "multiconductance channel" [Kinnally, K. W. , Campo, M. L. , & Tedeschi, H. T. (1989) J. Bioenerg. Biomembr. 21, 497-506] or "megachannel" [Petronilli, V. , Szabo, I. , & Zoratti, M. (1989) FEBS Lett. 259, 137-143]. Therefore we conclude that the AAC, when converted into a large unselective channel, is a key component in the MTP and thus is involved in the ischemia-reperfusion damage and cytosolic Ca2+ oscillations. The channel opening in AAC is proposed to be caused by binding of Ca2+ to the cardiolipin, tightly bound to AAC, thus releasing positive charges within the AAC which open the gate.
Rare-earth-doped polymer optical waveguide amplifiers

The optical properties and characteristics of rare earth- doped polymers have been studied to evaluate their viability for use in optical amplifiers. Rare earth ions are encapsulated in organic, covalently bonded chromophores. The optical properties of various rare earth chromophores doped into polymers are measured and calculated and are then used in numerical simulations of amplifiers and lasers. The result provide an estimate of their potential device performance and establish the fundamental bases for applications in photonics. Owing to their distinct advantages, such as chromophore energy transfer effects, high rare earth ion concentrations, shielding of the ion form high energy vibrations of the host, enhanced optical transition moments and controllable decay rates and branching ratios, rare earth-doped polymers are found to be promising candidates for various device applications. Numerical simulations for samarium and europium doped polymers indicate that gains about 10 dB and greater are achievable in relatively short polymer optical fiber and waveguide amplifiers. Studies of the dependence of metastable state lifetime of rare earth doped polymer systems on doping concentrations reveal that rare earth chromophores dissociation occurs at low concentrations. These results are used to optimize the parameters of our rare earth doped polymer optical waveguide amplifiers.
Gaussian curvature from flat elastica sheets

We discuss methods of reversibly inducing non-developable surfaces from flat sheets of material at the micro-scale all the way to macroscopic objects. We analyse the elastic ground states of a nematic glass in the membrane approximation as a function of temperature for disclination defects of topological charge +1. An aim is to show that by writing an appropriate director field into such a solid, one could create a surface with Gaussian curvature, dynamically switchable from flat sheets while avoiding stretch energy. In addition to the prospect of programmable structures, such surfaces offer actuation via stretch in thin systems since when illumination is subsequently removed, unavoidable stretches return.
Importance of Linguistic Constraints in Statistical Dependency Parsing

Statistical systems with high accuracy are very useful in real-world applications. If these systems can capture basic linguistic information, then the usefulness of these statistical systems improve a lot. This paper is an attempt at incorporating linguistic constraints in statistical dependency parsing. We consider a simple linguistic constraint that a verb should not have multiple subjects/objects as its children in the dependency tree. We first describe the importance of this constraint considering Machine Translation systems which use dependency parser output, as an example application. We then show how the current state-of-the-art dependency parsers violate this constraint. We present two new methods to handle this constraint. We evaluate our methods on the state-of-the-art dependency parsers for Hindi and Czech.
Detecting Exceptional Actions Using Wearable Sensors' Data for Developing Life-Log Database of Visually Impaired People

This paper proposes our approach to develop a system supporting visually impaired people with life-log. Visually impaired people face daily problems because of lack of information about road conditions. To find the uncomfortable and dangerous points, detecting their exceptional actions, such as tumbling down and getting lost, is effective. In the experiments, we used two units of iPod touch as wearable devices, and measured visually impaired people’s walking as acceleration patterns. As a result, several useful actions appear in acceleration patterns.
Enhancement and recognition of noisy speech within an autoregressive hidden Markov model framework using noise estimates from the noisy signal

This paper describes a new algorithm to enhance and recognise noisy speech when only the noisy signal is available. The system uses autoregressive hidden Markov models (HMMs) to model the clean speech and noise and combines these to form a model for the noisy speech. The probability framework developed is then used to reestimate the noise models from the corrupted speech waveform and the process is repeated. Enhancement is performed using the Wiener filters formed from the final clean speech models and noise estimates. Results are presented for additive stationary Gaussian and coloured noise.
Motor Imagery BCI Research Based on Sample Entropy and SVM

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) is a system that provides an artificial communication between the human brain and the external world. It may give disabled people direct control over a neuro-prosthesis by their intentions that are reflected in their brain signals. In this paper, brain electric field data (EEG) was recorded though 28 electrodes placed on the scalp. According to the fact that EEG is non-stationary and non-linear; a non-linear dynamic method called Sample Entropy (SampEn) was applied to extract the features of EEG. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier was structured for pattern classification. The final results show that SampEn is an effective method to extract the feature of different brain states.
Functional Characteristics of ES Cell–derived Cardiac Precursor Cells Identified by Tissue-specific Expression of the Green Fluorescent Protein

In contrast to terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes, relatively little is known about the characteristics of mammalian cardiac cells before the initiation of spontaneous contractions (precursor cells). Functional studies on these cells have so far been impossible because murine embryos of the corresponding stage are very small, and cardiac precursor cells cannot be identified because of the lack of cross striation and spontaneous contractions. In the present study, we have used the murine embryonic stem (ES, D3 cell line) cell system for the in vitro differentiation of cardiomyocytes. To identify the cardiac precursor cells, we have generated stably transfected ES cells with a vector containing the gene of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) under control of the cardiac α-actin promoter. First, fluorescent areas in ES cell–derived cell aggregates (embryoid bodies [EBs]) were detected 2 d before the initiation of contractions. Since Ca2+ homeostasis plays a key role in cardiac function, we investigated how Ca2+ channels and Ca2+ release sites were built up in these GFP-labeled cardiac precursor cells and early stage cardiomyocytes. Patch clamp and Ca2+ imaging experiments proved the functional expression of the L-type Ca2+ current (ICa) starting from day 7 of EB development. On day 7, using 10 mM Ca2+ as charge carrier, ICa was expressed at very low densities 4 pA/pF. The biophysical and pharmacological properties of ICa proved similar to terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes. In cardiac precursor cells, ICa was found to be already under control of cAMP-dependent phosphorylation since intracellular infusion of the catalytic subunit of protein kinase A resulted in a 1.7-fold stimulation. The adenylyl cyclase activator forskolin was without effect. IP3-sensitive intracellular Ca2+ stores and Ca2+-ATPases are present during all stages of differentiation in both GFP-positive and GFP-negative cells. Functional ryanodine-sensitive Ca2+ stores, detected by caffeine-induced Ca2+ release, appeared in most GFP-positive cells 1–2 d after ICa. Coexpression of both ICa and ryanodine-sensitive Ca2+ stores at day 10 of development coincided with the beginning of spontaneous contractions in most EBs. Thus, the functional expression of voltage-dependent L-type Ca2+ channel (VDCC) is a hallmark of early cardiomyogenesis, whereas IP3 receptors and sarcoplasmic Ca2+-ATPases are expressed before the initiation of cardiomyogenesis. Interestingly, the functional expression of ryanodine receptors/sensitive stores is delayed as compared with VDCC.
Developing a model of robot behavior to identify and appropriately respond to implicit attention-shifting

In this paper, we present our current research on developing a model of robot behavior that leads to feelings of “being together” using the robot's body position and orientation. Creating feelings of “being together” will be an essential skill for robots that live with humans and adapt to daily human activities such as walking together or establishing joint attention to information in the environment. We observe people's proxemic behavior in joint attention situations and develop a model of behavior for robots to detect a partner's attention shift and appropriately adjust its body position and orientation in establishing joint attention with the partner. We experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of our model, and our results demonstrate the model's effectiveness.
Asymptotic Theory for Estimating the Singular Vectors and Values of a Partially-observed Low Rank Matrix with Noise

Matrix completion algorithms recover a low rank matrix from a small fraction of the entries, each entry contaminated with additive errors. In practice, the singular vectors and singular values of the low rank matrix play a pivotal role for statistical analyses and inferences. This paper proposes estimators of these quantities and studies their asymptotic behavior. Under the setting where the dimensions of the matrix increase to infinity and the probability of observing each entry is identical, Theorem 4.1 gives the rate of convergence for the estimated singular vectors; Theorem 4.3 gives a multivariate central limit theorem for the estimated singular values. Even though the estimators use only a partially observed matrix, they achieve the same rates of convergence as the fully observed case. These estimators combine to form a consistent estimator of the full low rank matrix that is computed with a non-iterative algorithm. In the cases studied in this paper, this estimator achieves the minimax lower bound in Koltchinskii et al. (2011). The numerical experiments corroborate our theoretical results.
Microinjection molding of plastic microfluidic chips including circular microchannels

In this study, a microfluidic chip prototype having circular microchannels was replicated by microinjection molding process, employing a modularized and sectioned micromold system (MSMS). In the viewpoint of microfluidic manipulation, a microchannel with circular cross-section shows several advantages over a conventional rectangular and/or square microchannel. To achieve a mass production of the microchannels with circular or round cross-sections, the micromold was designed and fabricated based on the concept of MSMS. It consisted of several micromold modules, each having half-circular cross-sectional microstructures on its one-side surface. The modules were precisely manufactured by a deep X-ray lithography using a synchrotron radiation and a subsequent nickel electroforming process. Then, the MSMS for a microinjection molding process was constructed by assembling the nickel modules. After the molding of plastic plate with open microchannels of half-circular cross-section, a thermal bonding of microinjection-molded plates was carried out to produce the microfluidic chip prototype including the circular microchannels. Observation of the surface quality, measurement of cross-sectional profiles, and microfluidic test were carried out, which verified the usefulness of the present fabrication process. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 54:42–50, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers
Molecular pathogenesis and clinical variability of homozygous β0-thalassemia in populations of Jammu region of J&K state (India)

Abstract This study was undertaken to evaluate the variation in the clinical presentation of homozygous β0-thalassemia from severe disease to a beta-thalassemia intermedia phenotype and to look for the contribution of associated factors in this variation of clinical course. Type of β0-thalassemia mutations, associated α-thalassemia, and XmnI polymorphism in the gamma globin gene, which are known to affect the clinical course of the disease, were investigated from 15 homozygous β0-thalassemia patients comprising 11 patients with β-thalassemia major and 4 patients with β-thalassemia intermedia. Transfusion dependency and the age at which the patient presented with symptoms were used to assess the degree of clinical severity of these patients. Three different β0-thalassemia mutations viz. CD 41–42 (−TTCT), CD 8–9 (+ G) and 619 bp deletion, were encountered among the 30 beta-thalassemia alleles. It was observed that the type of β0-thalassemia mutations was not different between the two groups, but co-inheritance of one or more α-gene deletions and the presence of the XmnI polymorphism were associated with lesser severity of the disease.
Submicroscopic Plasmodium falciparum infections and multiplicity of infection in matched peripheral, placental and umbilical cord blood samples from Gabonese women

In malaria‐endemic regions, pregnant women are more susceptible to malarial infections than non‐pregnant women. The main objective of this study, which was conducted in the malaria hyperendemic town of Lambaréné (Gabon, Central Africa), was to characterize Plasmodium falciparum infections in peripheral, placental and cord blood from women of different gravidities with submicroscopic infections. Using the P. falciparum merozoite surface protein 2 (MSP 2) * gene as a polymorphic marker in polymerase chain reactions, we analysed genetic diversity and multiplicity of infection in isolates from all three kinds of samples of 184 pregnant women at delivery. We detected infection in 44% of the women who were originally negative by microscopy. Equally important was the finding that the placenta had the highest prevalence of infection (P < 0.001). There was no correlation with gravidity status or age of the patients. The multiplicities of infection in the peripheral and placental blood samples did not differ and single infection was observed in cord blood, independently of the gravidity. The FC27/MSP 2 was the predominant allelic family. The major FC27 alleles detected in the peripheral, placental and cord blood were sequenced and found to be closely related to the published K1 form sequence. Below microscopy level, the placenta remains the most infected organ and this submicroscopic carriage of parasites may contribute to the development and maintenance of immunity to malaria during pregnancy.
Environmental policy : an evolutionary perspective

The environmental issue is usually addressed from a cost on abatement / preservation perspective. But to effectively conserve the environment, we haveto be actually willing to do so, which might not always be the case. In the present work, I address the polluting problem from a "political" point of view. Is it possible to reach a sufficient amount of pepale who are actually willing to sustain a good environment quality ? Or will we always be in a state dominated by the less environmentally aware people ? With the help of a simple model, we will find that the result depends, amongst others, on the initial state and on some possible psychological aspects.
Designing a Microfluidic Device with Integrated Ratiometric Oxygen Sensors for the Long-Term Control and Monitoring of Chronic and Cyclic Hypoxia

Control of oxygen over cell cultures in vitro is a topic of considerable interest, as chronic and cyclic hypoxia can alter cell behaviour. Both static and transient hypoxic levels have been found to affect tumour cell behaviour; it is potentially valuable to include these effects in early, in vitro stages of drug screening. A barrier to their inclusion is that rates of transient hypoxia can be a few cycles/hour, which is difficult to reproduce in traditional in vitro cell culture environments due to long diffusion distances from control gases to the cells. We use a gas-permeable three-layer microfluidic device to achieve spatial and temporal oxygen control with biologically-relevant switching times. We measure the oxygen profiles with integrated, ratiometric optical oxygen sensors, demonstrate sensor and system stability over multi-day experiments, and characterize a pre-bleaching process to improve sensor stability. We show, with both finite-element modelling and experimental data, excellent control over the oxygen levels by the device, independent of fluid flow rate and oxygenation for the operating flow regime. We measure equilibration times of approximately 10 min, generate complex, time-varying oxygen profiles, and study the effects of oxygenated media flow rates on the measured oxygen levels. This device could form a useful tool for future long-term studies of cell behaviour under hypoxia.
Real-time Pattern Isolation and Recognition Over Immersive Sensor Data Streams

Data streams appear in many recent applications, where data are constantly changing or take the form of continuously arriving streams. We focus on data streams generated by sensors for monitoring users in immersive environments. To recognize users' interactions, we need to analyze the aggregation of several sensor data streams and match the result to a set of known actions. In addition, we need to separate a continuous series of actions into recognizable atomic actions. Hence, we first propose a distance metric, weighted-sum Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), suitable for similarity measurement of immersive data sequences. Subsequently, we propose a mutual information based heuristic for separation of the action sequences. Finally, we perform several empirical experiments using real-world virtual-reality devices to verify the effectiveness of our approach.
Malware behavioral analysis system: TWMAN

Malware is an important topic of security threat research. In this paper, a behavioral malware analysis system TWMAN was presented. This study focuses on using real operation system (OS) environment to analysis malware behavioral. Many researchers try to use virtual machine (VM) system to monitor the malware behaviors. These malware samples will only compromise the virtual operating system or virtual machine, which cannot reflect in the real operating system or real environment. Therefore, some malware researchers don't want their systems to be analyzed in VM environment, because the analyzer cannot much useful information in VM environment. There are many Anti-VM techniques which are used to ward off the collection, analysis, and reverse engineering features of the VM based malware analysis platform. There are differences between these two behaviors: malware behavior in real environment and in virtual environment. Therefore, malware researcher would get inaccurate analysis results from VM based malware analysis platform. In order to retrieve correct malware behavioral information, we need flexible, adaptable, and quickly analysis environment, which could discovery malware behavioral in real operation system environment, and which can quickly restore clear operation system to analysis another malware sample. For this reason, this study developed Taiwan Malware Analysis Net(TWMAN), a real operation system environment for malware behavioral analysis and analysis report. We believe this system would be helpful to improve the correctness of malware analysis result and reduce the loss rate of malware analysis.
Efficient Sample Reuse in Policy Gradients with Parameter-Based Exploration

The policy gradient approach is a flexible and powerful reinforcement learning method particularly for problems with continuous actions such as robot control. A common challenge is how to reduce the variance of policy gradient estimates for reliable policy updates. In this letter, we combine the following three ideas and give a highly effective policy gradient method: (1) policy gradients with parameter-based exploration, a recently proposed policy search method with low variance of gradient estimates; (2) an importance sampling technique, which allows us to reuse previously gathered data in a consistent way; and (3) an optimal baseline, which minimizes the variance of gradient estimates with their unbiasedness being maintained. For the proposed method, we give a theoretical analysis of the variance of gradient estimates and show its usefulness through extensive experiments.
TCP Performance Degradation of In-Sequence Delivery in LTE Link Layer

LTE networks have been rapidly commercialized for 4G cellular communications systems in all over the world as well as Korea. Because many internet applications use TCP as their transport layer protocol, TCP throughput measurements and its performance improvements in LTE networks is very important. In this paper, we analyze the impact of “in-sequence delivery” in LTE link layer on TCP RTT increment. When HARQ or ARQ in LTE link layer is working frequently for error recovery, it increases TCP RTT and decreases TCP throughput seriously. Therefore, in order to get better TCP throughput with the same packet error probability, we should decrease TCP RTT when HARQ or ARQ in LTE link layer is working for error recovery. We propose "out-of-sequence delivery" in LTE link layer in order to decrease TCP RTT. From our test results, "out-of-sequence delivery" outperforms “insequence delivery”. While "out-of-sequence delivery" makes LTE link layer design simpler, but its throughput gain is considerable.