Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tolerization with BLP down‐regulates HMGB1—a critical mediator of sepsis‐related lethality

Tolerization with bacterial lipoprotein (BLP) affords a significant survival benefit in sepsis. Given that high mobility group box protein‐1 (HMGB1) is a recognized mediator of sepsis‐related lethality, we determined if tolerization with BLP leads to alterations in HMGB1. In vitro, BLP tolerization led to a reduction in HMGB1 gene transcription. This was mirrored at the protein level, as HMGB1 protein expression and release were reduced significantly in BLP‐tolerized human THP‐1 monocytic cells. BLP tolerance in vivo led to a highly significant, long‐term survival benefit following challenge with lethal dose BLP in C57BL/6 mice. This was associated with an attenuation of HMGB1 release into the circulation, as evidenced by negligible serum HMGB1 levels in BLP‐tolerized mice. Moreover, HMGB1 levels in peritoneal macrophages from BLP‐tolerized mice were reduced significantly. Hence, tolerization with BLP leads to a down‐regulation of HMGB1 protein synthesis and release. The improved survival associated with BLP tolerance could thus be explained by a reduction in HMGB1, were the latter associated with lethality in BLP‐related sepsis. In testing this hypothesis, it was noted that neutralization of HMGB1, using anti‐HMGB1 antibodies, abrogated BLP‐associated lethality almost completely. To conclude, tolerization with BLP leads to a down‐regulation of HMGB1, thus offering a novel means of targeting the latter. HMGB1 is also a mediator of lethality in BLP‐related sepsis.
Transcriptome Profiles Using Next-Generation Sequencing Reveal Liver Changes in the Early Stage of Diabetes in Tree Shrew (Tupaia belangeri chinensis)

Determining the liver changes during the early stages of diabetes is critical to understand the nature of the disease and development of novel treatments for it. Advances in the use of animal models and next-generation sequencing technologies offer a powerful tool in connection between liver changes and the diabetes. Here, we created a tree shrew diabetes model akin to type 1 diabetes by using streptozotocin to induce hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia. Using RNA-seq, we compiled liver transcriptome profiles to determine the differentially expressed genes and to explore the role of hyperglycemia in liver changes. Our results, respectively, identified 14,060 and 14,335 genes in healthy tree shrews and those with diabetes, with 70 genes differentially expressed between the two groups. Gene orthology and KEGG annotation revealed that several of the main biological processes of these genes were related to translational processes, steroid metabolic processes, oxidative stress, inflammation, and hypertension, all of which are highly associated with diabetes and its complications. These results collectively suggest that STZ induces hyperglycemia in tree shrew and that hyperglycemia induced oxidative stress led to high expression of aldose reductase, inflammation, and even cell death in liver tissues during the early stage of diabetes.
Random maps, coalescing saddles, singularity analysis, and Airy phenomena

A considerable number of asymptotic distributions arising in random combinatorics and analysis of algorithms are of the exponential‐quadratic type, that is, Gaussian. We exhibit a class of “universal” phenomena that are of the exponential‐cubic type, corresponding to distributions that involve the Airy function. In this article, such Airy phenomena are related to the coalescence of saddle points and the confluence of singularities of generating functions. For about a dozen types of random planar maps, a common Airy distribution (equivalently, a stable law of exponent \documentclass{article}\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document}$\frac{3}{2}$\end{document}) describes the sizes of cores and of largest (multi)connected components. Consequences include the analysis and fine optimization of random generation algorithms for a multiple connected planar graphs. Based on an extension of the singularity analysis framework suggested by the Airy case, the article also presents a general classification of compositional schemas in analytic combinatorics. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 19: 194–246, 2001
Design and Control of a Grid-Connected Interleaved Inverter

This paper is concerned with the design and control of a three-phase voltage source grid-connected interleaved inverter. This topology enables the use of low-current devices capable of switching at high frequency, which together with the ripple cancelation feature reduces the size of the output filter and the inverter considerably compared to an equivalent classical two-level voltage source inverter with an LCL output filter using high-current devices with considerably lower switching frequency. Due to its higher switching frequency and low-filter component values, the interleaved inverter also has a much higher bandwidth than the classical inverter, which improves grid voltage harmonics disturbance rejection and increases the speed of response of the inverter and its capability to ride through grid disturbance (e.g., voltage sags and swells). The paper discusses the selection of the number of channels and the filter component values of the interleaved inverter. The design of the digital control system is then discussed in detail. Simulation and practical results are presented to validate the design and demonstrate its capabilities.
THE PROBLEM OF UNOBSERVABLES IN ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING THEORIES

The longstanding debate between A Behavioral Theory of the Firm and Threat Rigidity Theory persists because most empirical contributions have merely focused on rare events during adversity; namely organizational risk-taking. As such these contributions give insufficient attention to the most common activities of individual agents; i.e. conservative activities. By taking a cultural view on these organizational learning theories, we refocus on the observable actions of individual agents and interactions between organizational agents during adversity and success. We argue that these high probability events are a good start point to understand the debate better. 1 Tom De schryver can be contacted at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (NISCO), Postbus 9104, 6500 HE, Nijmegen The Netherlands, t.deschryver@maw.ru. nl. Tom De Schryver can also be contacted at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam at t.de. schryver@fsw.vu. nl 2 I thank the anonymous OLKC reviewer for pointing out Foss and Felin (2006) to me.
Cultural factors, stigma, stress, and help-seeking attitudes among college students

The study is examining the role of cultural and psychological factors that predict attitudes towards seeking mental health treatment. Given the role of treatment in reducing emotional distress, it is important to understand the issues people consider when exploring mental health treatment options. Specifically, constructs of stigma and acculturation were explored in relation to both attitudes toward and intentions to seek mental health treatment. Undergraduate and graduate students (246 women, 82 men; 237 White, 89 Nonwhite) recruited from two state colleges and a community college participated in an online survey assessing demographics as well as measures of stigma, acculturation, ethnic identity, racial stressors, mental health, attitudes towards helpseeking, and actual help-seeking. Stigma was found to be a significant mediator of acculturation (measured as relationship to heritage culture and ethnic identity) and attitudes towards seeking mental health treatment, lending support to the importance of not using just race/ethnicity as a proxy variable for culture when investigating barriers to seeking mental health treatment. In addition, not all types of stigma were significant predictors; while public and personal stigmas were significant, self-stigma was not a significant factor. Since public stigma and personal stigma are speculated to be the first part of the cognitive process associated with stigma, efforts should be made to develop interventions at the public stigma level before the stigma is internalized. Greater personal stigma for men and greater cultural stigma for ethnic minority participants warrant further investigation into the different types of stigma. In addition, racial/ethnic minority participants reported greater race-related stress than their White counterparts; race-related stress was associated with increased anxiety and stress symptoms. For the racial/ethnic minority participants, heritage acculturation and ethnic identity were protective factors, in that greater heritage acculturation was associated with lower levels of stress and stronger ethnic identity was associated with increased intentions towards seeking counseling. Furthermore, future research in this area can elucidate the complex measurement issues with the constructs of acculturation and stigma in college students.
An incrementally maintainable index for approximate lookups in hierarchical data

Several recent papers argue for approximate lookups in hierarchical data and propose index structures that support approximate searches in large sets of hierarchical data. These index structures must be updated if the underlying data changes. Since the performance of a full index reconstruction is prohibitive, the index must be updated incrementally.We propose a persistent and incrementally maintainable index for approximate lookups in hierarchical data. The index is based on small tree patterns, called pq-grams. It supports efficient updates in response to structure and value changes in hierarchical data and is based on the log of tree edit operations. We prove the correctness of the incremental maintenance for sequences of edit operations. Our algorithms identify a small set of pq-grams that must be updated to maintain the index. The experimental results with synthetic and real data confirm the scalability of our approach.
Monolithic above-IC resonator technology for integrated architectures in mobile and wireless communication

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of an above-IC bulk acoustic wave technology for wireless applications. A double-lattice bulk acoustic wave (BAW) filter with balanced input and output has been designed and integrated as a post-process directly above 0.25 /spl mu/m BiCMOS wafers comprising RF circuits. This filter, featuring moderate insertion loss of -3dB and extreme out-of-band rejection (>-50 dB) is used in a simplified RF front-end receiver for the WCDMA standard, as well as in a new type of filtering LNA comprising two broadband amplifiers and one BAW filter.
Food recognition using Codebook-based model with sparse-coding

Recently, with the increasing of unhealthy diets and the attracted attention for healthy life, how to manage the dietary life is becoming more and more important. In this paper, we aim to construct a food-log system, which can auto-recognize the menu contents from food image taken by mobile phone. In order to increase recognition rate of food image, this research explores the typical codebook-based mode-Bag-of Feature (BOF), and the improved sparse-coding (Sc) based one for image representation, which is one of the main factors for affecting on food-log system. Furthermore, instead of pooling all the coded local features globally, the Spatial Pyramid Matching (SPM) strategy is adopted to integrated them from various spatial scale sub-regions. The experimental results validate that the Sc-based codebook model can achieve much better performance than the typically Bag-of-Feature on dish recognition.
Magnetic Assisted Navigation in Electrophysiology and Cardiac Resynchronisation: A Review

Magnetic assisted navigation is a new innovation that may prove useful in catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac resynchronization therapy. The ability to steer extremely floppy catheters and guidewires may allow for these to be positioned safely in previously inaccessible areas of the heart. The integration of other new technology, such as image integration and electroanatomic mapping systems, should advance our abilities further. Although studies have shown the technology to be feasible, with the advantage to the physician of decreased radiation exposure, studies need to be performed to show additional benefit over standard techniques.
Segmenting the Left Ventricle in 3D Using a Coupled ASM and a Learned Non-Rigid Spatial Model

This paper presents a new approach to higher dimensional segmentation. We present an extended Active Shape Model (ASM) formulation for the segmentation of multi-contour anatomical structures. We employ coupling and weighting schemes to improve the robustness of ASM segmentation. 3D segmentation is achieved through propagation of a 2D ASM using a learned non-rigid spatial model. This approach does not suﬀer from the training and aligning diﬃculties faced by direct 3D model-based methods. Experimental results are encouraging at this early stage, and future directions of research are provided.
Validations of the Character Mosaic Report

Abstract : The United States Air Force Academy s Center for Character and Leadership Development produced the Character Mosaic Report for freshmen cadets. The report provides individual scores on nine different virtues embodied in the AF Core Values, along with scores on each of the four elements of The ARDA Model (i.e., Awareness, Reasoning, Deciding, Acting). The virtue scores were initially created through reviewing previously validated instruments that exhibited face validity. Evidences of convergent and discriminant validity were provided through a series of exploratory factor analyses; each factor additionally demonstrated sufficient reliability (i.e., Cronbach s alpha values of at least 0.70). Two Mosaic virtues were presumed to be related to two constructs from the Moral Foundations Questionnaire , and subsequent correlations provided evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Scale scores on each of four elements of The ARDA Model were validated through varying methods. The Awareness scale reflected scores from the Situational Judgment Test a USAFA instrument that had demonstrated content validity with subject matter experts (i.e., the Air Officer Commanding and the Academy Military Trainers).
Modeling and Solving the Multi-agent Pathfinding Problem in Picat

The multi-agent pathfinding (MAPF) problem has attracted considerable attention because of its relation to practical applications. In this paper, we present a constraint-based declarative model for MAPF, together with its implementation in Picat, a logic-based programming language. We show experimentally that our Picat-based implementation is highly competitive and sometimes outperforms previous approaches. Importantly, the proposed Picat implementation is very versatile. We demonstrate this by showing how it can be easily adapted to optimize different MAPF objectives, such as minimizing makespan or minimizing the sum of costs, and for a range of MAPF variants. Moreover, a Picat-based model can be automatically compiled to several general-purpose solvers such as SAT solvers and Mixed Integer Programming solvers (MIP). This is particularly important for MAPF because some MAPF variants are solved more efficiently when compiled to SAT while other variants are solved more efficiently when compiled to MIP. We analyze these differences and the impact of different declarative models and encodings on empirical performance.
Multi-band maximum a posteriori multi-transformation algorithm based on the discriminative combination

According to auditory characteristics of human's hearing system, a multi-band maximum a posteriori multi-transformation algorithm based on the discriminative combination is developed to improve the performance of speech recognition systems in noisy environment. The algorithm utilizes the difference between noise's spectrum and speech's spectrum, and the different effects of noise on recognition performance in different frequency bands. It compensates the effect of noise with a discriminative function and maximum a posteriori multi-transformation. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the maximum a posterior linear regression algorithm. The results also show that the utilization of effective band with information redundancy helps to improve the recognition performance.
Stability Analysis of Implicit Polynomial Systems

This technical note develops a robust stability analysis method for a class of implicit polynomial systems subject to uncertain constant parameters. A polynomial (with respect to the state and uncertain parameters) Lyapunov function is computed to assess the robust local stability of the system and to provide a robust estimate of the domain of attraction. The results are given in terms of linear matrix inequalities that are affinely dependent on the system state and uncertain parameters. Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the developed approach.
The atomic structure of adeno-associated virus (AAV-2), a vector for human gene therapy

The structure of the adeno-associated virus (AAV-2) has been determined to 3-Å resolution by x-ray crystallography. AAV is being developed as a vector for gene therapy to treat diseases including hemophilia, cancer, and cystic fibrosis. As in the distantly related autonomous parvoviruses, the capsid protein has a β-barrel fold, but long loops between the β-strands share little structural homology with other parvoviruses, leading to unique surface features. Most prominent are groups of threefold-related peaks, each an intimate association of loops from two neighboring subunits. Mutations affecting cell entry and receptor binding are clustered near the positively charged side of each peak, implicating the region in attachment to the cellular receptor, heparan sulfate proteoglycan. Amino acids involved in antibody binding are in the same general vicinity. The structure will guide rational engineering of vector capsids to tailor cellular targeting and to avoid immediate neutralization by an immune system sensitized by prior exposure to AAV.
Appropriating Tools for Teaching and Research Through Collaborative Independent Study

In my first year at the University of Oklahoma, I visited the classroom of a student teacher who'd been through our English Education program. During class she organized students into groups of three and gave them a handout that provided them a plot summary of the previous night's reading. In the summary she'd deleted various pieces of information and replaced them with blanks, telling the class that in each group, each student should fill in the missing information for one of the pages and when they were finished they should read aloud their pages for the purpose of providing a complete summary of the text they'd read. When I asked her afterward what her goal for this exercise had been, the student teacher told me that she wished to engage her students in "cooperative learning," to have them work together in a group to produce a collaborative summary of the story. She said that her pre-service course work had stressed cooperative learning and she was developing activities such as this one to implement the practice. My experience with this teacher illustrates a problem I've found with teacher education programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels: Professors develop courses that they think provide students with tools and practices for their teaching, but don't really know the extent to which students adopt these tools to their teaching in the intended manner. Yet my experience with this student and with other students over the years leads me to question how faithfully students reconstruct the concepts they get in coursework when applying them in their own teaching, no matter how wisely they discuss them in the college classroom.
Controlling four-wave mixing and six-wave mixing in a multi-Zeeman-sublevel atomic system with electromagnetically induced transparency

We theoretically investigate the dually dressed electromagnetically induced transparency, and the multidressed four-wave mixing (FWM) and six-wave mixing (SWM) processes in an inverted-$Y$-type atomic system with Zeeman sublevels. The results show that the Zeeman degeneracy of the dark states can be lifted by the dressing field as its intensity is increased. Moreover, the derived analytical expressions indicate that one can, for example, selectively create secondary dark states on the multi-Zeeman-sublevel dark states (by tuning the coupling field), distinguish two different types of dark states generated in two FWM processes (by properly controlling the coupling field intensity), and selectively enhance multi-FWM signals coming from various paths consisting of split Zeeman sublevels (by tuning the dressing field). The SWM signals can be either enhanced or suppressed by controlling the dressing field.
Stochastic Local Search for POMDP Controllers

The search for finite-state controllers for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) is often based on approaches like gradient ascent, attractive because of their relatively low computational cost. In this paper, we illustrate a basic problem with gradient-based methods applied to POMDPs, where the sequential nature of the decision problem is at issue, and propose a new stochastic local search method as an alternative. The heuristics used in our procedure mimic the sequential reasoning inherent in optimal dynamic programming (DP) approaches. We show that our algorithm consistently finds higher quality controllers than gradient ascent, and is competitive with (and, for some problems, superior to) other state-of-the-art controller and DP-based algorithms on large-scale POMDPs.
Negotiating with Rebels

When rebels provide social services, do they have more leverage negotiating the terms of a peace deal? The literature suggests service-providing groups may, on average, have a wider base of support and a more centralized organizational structure. We argue that these features deter potential spoilers from breaking away from the organization during negotiation processes. This, in turn, makes governments more willing to enter negotiations since the threat from spoilers is smaller. Thus, compared to nonproviders, service-providing rebels are more likely to engage in negotiations and these processes are likely to be more stable. This article analyzes these propositions by gathering service provision data on nearly 400 rebel groups and their involvement in and behavior during peace talks. It also serves as an introduction to a larger project about the implications of rebel service provision on conflict outcomes.