Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pixie Dust: The Silicate Features in the Diffuse Interstellar Medium

We have analyzed the 9.7 and "18" μm interstellar silicate absorption features along the line of sight toward four heavily extincted galactic WC-type Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. We construct two interstellar extinction curves from 1.25 to 25 μm using near-IR extinction measurements from the literature, along with the silicate profiles of WR 98a (representing the local ISM) and GCS 3 (representing the Galactic center). We have investigated the mineralogy of the interstellar silicates by comparing extinction profiles for amorphous silicates with olivine and pyroxene stoichiometry to the 9.7 and "18" μm absorption features in the WR 98a spectrum. In this analysis, we have considered solid and porous spheres and a continuous distribution of ellipsoids. While it is not possible to simultaneously provide a perfect match to both profiles, we find that the best match requires a mixture of these two types of compounds. We also consider iron oxides, aluminosilicates, and silicate carbide (SiC) as grain components. Iron oxides cannot be accommodated in the observed spectrum, while the amount of Si in SiC is limited to <4%. Finally, we discuss the cosmic elemental abundance constraints on the silicate mineralogy, grain shape, and porosity.
Global chaos synchronization for four-scroll attractor by nonlinear control

This paper investigates the global synchronization method of two identical systems and two different chaotic systems. The proposed method is effective and convenient to synchronize two identical systems and two different chaotic systems by using nonlinear control functions. The method has been applied successfully to make two identical four-scroll attractor and also two different chaotic systems; four-scroll attractor and Lorenz system globally synchronized. Numerical simulations are given to validate the proposed synchronization methods.
Targeted Disruption of β-Arrestin 2-Mediated Signaling Pathways by Aptamer Chimeras Leads to Inhibition of Leukemic Cell Growth

β-arrestins, ubiquitous cellular scaffolding proteins that act as signaling mediators of numerous critical cellular pathways, are attractive therapeutic targets because they promote tumorigenesis in several tumor models. However, targeting scaffolding proteins with traditional small molecule drugs has been challenging. Inhibition of β-arrestin 2 with a novel aptamer impedes multiple oncogenic signaling pathways simultaneously. Additionally, delivery of the β-arrestin 2-targeting aptamer into leukemia cells through coupling to a recently described cancer cell-specific delivery aptamer, inhibits multiple β-arrestin-mediated signaling pathways known to be required for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) disease progression, and impairs tumorigenic growth in CML patient samples. The ability to target scaffolding proteins such as β-arrestin 2 with RNA aptamers may prove beneficial as a therapeutic strategy. Highlights An RNA aptamer inhibits β-arrestin 2 activity. Inhibiting β-arrestin 2 impedes multiple tumorigenic pathways simultaneously. The therapeutic aptamer is delivered to cancer cells using a cell-specific DNA aptamer. Targeting β-arrestin 2 inhibits tumor progression in CML models and patient samples.
Building a forensic corpus to test language-based indicators of deception

Experimental laboratory results, often performed with college student subjects, have proposed several linguistic phenomena as indicative of speaker deception. We have identified a subset of these phenomena that can be formalized as a linguistic model. The model incorporates three classes of language-based deception cues: (1) linguistic devices used to avoid making a direct statement of fact, for example, hedges; (2) preference for negative expressions in word choice, syntactic structure, and semantics; (3) inconsistencies with respect to verb and noun forms, for example, verb tense changes. The question our research addresses is whether the cues we have adapted from laboratory studies will recognize deception in real-world statements by suspects and witnesses. The issue addressed here is how to test the accuracy of these linguistic cues with respect to identifying deception. To perform the test, we assembled a corpus of criminal statements, police interrogations, and civil testimony that we annotated in two distinct ways, first for language-based deception cues and second for verification of the claims made in the narrative data. The paper discusses the possible methods for building a corpus to test the deception cue hypothesis, the linguistic phenomena associated with deception, and the issues involved in assembling a forensic corpus.
Enhanced listen-before-talk scheme for LTE in unlicensed band

Extending LTE technology to unlicensed band 5GHz is a research focus to alleviate the problem of scarce spectrum resource. Listen-before-talk (LBT) scheme is necessary in unlicensed band to ensure the fair utilization of spectrum resource among different radio access technologies (RATs). Aiming at overcoming the drawbacks that there are limited opportunities and fixed location for clear channel assessment (CCA) to sense channel in LBT scheme, we propose an enhanced LBT scheme with performing random back-off process and adjusting the times of sensing channel according to the state of channel for LTE with Licensed-Assisted Access (LTE-LAA) to achieve the fairness of channel access. Moreover, we also propose a model in which applies enhanced LBT scheme to calculate the throughput for APs and LTE small cells in the coexistence of WIFI and LTE. Simulation results show that enhanced LBT scheme can solve the problem that the throughput of WIFI is constrained by LTE which uses original LBT scheme in the WIFI-LTE coexistence scenario. Moreover, compared to original LBT scheme, our enhanced LBT scheme can also solve the problem that only one operator can transmit in the coexistence of LTE and LTE deployed by different operators.
Construction and Characterization of a Streptococcus suis Serotype 2 Recombinant Expressing Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein

Streptococcus suis serotype 2 (S. suis 2) is an important pathogen, responsible for diverse diseases in swine and humans. To obtain a S. suis 2 strain that can be tracked in vitro and in vivo, we constructed the Egfp-HA9801 recombinant S. suis 2 strain with egfp and spcr genes inserted via homologous recombination. To assess the effects of the egfp and spcr genes in HA9801, the biochemical characteristics, growth features and virulence in Balb/C mice were compared between the recombinant and the parent HA9801 strain. We detected the EGFP expression from Egfp-HA9801 by epifluorescence microscopy. The results showed that the biochemical characterization and growth features of the Egfp-HA9801 recombinant were highly similar to that of the parent HA9801. We did not find significant differences in lethality (50% lethal dose), morbidity and mortality between the two strains. Furthermore, the bacterial counts in each various tissues of Egfp-HA9801-infected mice displayed similar dynamic compared with the HA9801-infected mice. Our results also showed that the Egfp-HA9801 cells grown at 37°C for 36 h displayed greater green fluorescence signals than the cells grown at 28°C for 36 h and 37°C for 24 h. The fluorescence in the tissue cryosections of Egfp-HA9801-injected mice was also stronger than that of the HA9801 group. Together, these results indicate that the egfp and spcr insertions into the Egfp-HA9801 recombinant did not significantly change the virulence when compared with HA980, and this EGFP labeled strain can be used for future S. suis 2 pathogenesis research.
Educational justice for undocumented students: How school counselors encourage student persistence in schools

School counselors are critical intermediaries in K-12 schools who can help students from undocumented immigrant families persist in school. Yet, a dearth of research exists about their advocacy work, or the range of efforts they make to support unauthorized youth. This paper asks, 1) what challenges do counselors face and strive to overcome to promote undocumented students’ persistence in school? ; and 2) what strategies do counselors use to encourage students to persist? Data come from an embedded case study with seven school counselors and a family intervention specialist in two Texas school districts on the U.S.-Mexico border. The findings revealed that two of participants’ biggest challenges in terms of student persistence—and their strategies to help—related to complexities arising from students commuting across the border to school and students’ transient living situations. Despite participants networking on behalf of students and families, forming partnerships and seeking services for students and families, counselors recognized limits to their efforts. Policies impeded their assistance, and events that were out of their control inhibited them from potentially acting as empowering agents for students in critical ways. While counselors can develop strong, trusting school-student partnerships to encourage student persistence, more research must explore how school leaders can act as empowerment agents and build capacity to serve newly arrived or undocumented families.
International Journal of Nephrology and Renovascular Disease Dovepress Long-term Effect of Cinacalcet Hydrochloride on Abdominal Aortic Calcification in Patients on Hemodialysis with Secondary Hyperparathyroidism

Background: Secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) is one of the common complications in dialysis patients, and is associated with increased risk of vascular calcification. The effects of cinacalcet hydrochloride treatment on bone and mineral metabolism have been previously reported, but the benefit of cinacalcet on vascular calcification remains uncertain. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of cinacalcet on abdominal aortic calcification in dialysis patients. Subjects and methods: Patients were on maintenance hemodialysis with insufficiently controlled SHPT (intact parathyroid hormone [PTH] .180 pg/mL) by conventional therapies. All subjects were initially administered 25 mg cinacalcet daily, with concomitant use of calcitriol analogs. Abdominal aortic calcification was annually evaluated by calculating aortic calcifica-tion area index (ACAI) using multidetector computed tomography (MDCT), from 12 months before to 36 months after the initiation of cinacalcet therapy. Results: Twenty-three patients were analyzed in this study. The mean age was 59.0±8.7 years, 34.8% were women, and the mean dialysis duration was 163.0±76.0 months. After administration of cinacalcet, serum levels of intact PTH, phosphorus, and calcium significantly decreased, and mean Ca × P values significantly decreased from 67.4±7.9 mg 2 /dL 2 to 52±7.7 mg 2 /dL 2. Although the ACAI value did not decrease during the observation period, the increase in ACAI between 24 months and 36 months after cinacalcet administration was significantly suppressed. Conclusion: Long-term administration of cinacalcet was associated with reduced progression of abdominal aortic calcification, and achieving appropriate calcium and phosphorus levels may reduce the rates of cardiovascular events and mortality in patients on hemodialysis.
Sentiment analysis using neural network

With the rapid growth in use of social networking sites in the past decade, it has become a notable medium for people to express their views or opinions. This has fostered & promoted sentiment analysis as a dynamic & potential area of research where new techniques & models need to be explored for continuous improvement in result accuracy. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic neural network (PNN) with a self-adaptive approach to perform sentiment analysis on tweets. Probabilistic Neural Network as a multi-layered feed-forward neural network is an apt choice because of its prominent features of adaptive learning, fault tolerance, parallelism and generalization which provide a superior performance. Also, the smoothing parameter of PNN plays a great role for predicting an accurate class of classifier. So a self-adaptive algorithm is used to calculate and optimize the smoothing parameter in our research. Two types of Probabilistic Neural Network models are implemented in the proposed approach. First model of PNN, also called as PNNS has single value of smoothing parameter for whole network. Second model, also called as PNNC has different values of smoothing parameter for each class. The training and testing dataset is collected from Twitter using Twitter API. Accuracy of both model PNNS and PNNC is calculated and result shows that the PNNC has a better performance than PNNS.
Consonants /s/ /t/ /l/ and the Syllables in Malay Language

Language is a medium for communication between humans. Language used code which is a combination of phonemes that form words and sentences. Each word has one or more syllables, while the combination of vowel and consonants will produce syllables. Articulation process involves the function of several human systems such as respiratory system, throat, voice cord and vellum working together in combinations ensuring perfect production of sound and speech. Each alphabet produces pattern on the tongue and hard palate contact as they were pronounced. This paper presents a pilot study on the production of /s/, /t/ and /l/, and the syllables by an adult speaker using an Electropalography (EPG). The participant, who speaks Malay as her first language recorded the production of /s/, /t/ and /l/ and the syllables. The Reading EPG palate used in this study has 62 electrodes which matched the tongue-palate contact. Data was analyzed using Articulate Assist 1.18. The purpose of this study is to observe the differences of tongue-palate contact between the consonants /s/, /t/ and /l/. Results indicate significant differences between production of /s/, /t/ and /l/ with the syllables.
Essential keypoints to enhance visual object recognition with saliency-based metrics

The authors propose a novel pre-processing phase that can be integrated into conventional methods to detect and recognize planar visual objects in printed materials with low computational cost and higher accuracy. A simple yet efficient visual saliency estimation technique based on regional contrast is developed to quickly filter out low informative regions in printed materials. By eliminating noisy or unimportant keypoint candidates, our proposed method not only reduces unnecessary computational cost of keypoint descriptors but also increases robustness and accuracy of visual object recognition. Our experimental results show that the whole visual object recognition process can be speeded up 46 times and the accuracy can increase up to 23%. These are desirable advantages for an augmented reality system, especially on mobile devices. Furthermore, this pre-processing stage is independent of the choice of features and matching model in a general process. Therefore it can be used to boost the performance of existing systems into real-time manner.
Efficient k-Dominant Skyline Processing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network amalgamates sensing, computing and communication technologies. Because of the energy limitation of sensor nodes, how to manage the data collected by the sensor nodes energy-efficiently becomes the focus of the research recently. As the main mean of multi-decision and data mining, skyline query plays a more and more important role in sensing applications. However, as the increase of data dimensionality, skyline query results extend greatly, which not only obstacles the decision, but also costs most of the energy of the nodes. In this article, k-dominant skyline query is researched deeply to deal with the above problem. An energy-efficient $k$-dominant skyline query algorithm (EKS) is proposed to calculate the $k$-dominant skyline of the wireless sensor network. The experimental results show that EKS could reduce the communication cost of the sensor network,while it calculates the k-dominant skyline, therefore, prolong the life-span of it.
Designing cross-coupled bandpass filters with transmission zeros in lossy microstrip

Bandpass filters play a significant role in many wireless communication systems. The filters pass desired signals and reject unwanted one. In this paper, we design a four-pole bandpass filter using a rigorous computer simulation. The resonators used are square open-loop resonators. To get a sharper selectivity around the pass band, transmission zeros though cross-coupling between resonators are introduced. In simulation, we compare the results for relative permittivity 4.4 and 4.9, and for tangent loss 0.025 (lossy) and 0.0 (lossless). The simulation shows, the required specifications are fulfilled for lossless case, whereas for lossy case, an insertion loss of 8.3 dB observed. For verification, the bandpass filter is built in FR4. In this lossy microstrip, a measurement shows, we get an insertion loss of about 6.64 dB and a bandwidth of about 120 MHz.
Glucosylation of Rho/Ras Proteins by Lethal Toxin – Implications of Actin Re-Organization and Apoptosis in C. Sordellii-Associated Disease

Clostridium sordellii causes disease in livestock and life-threatening illnesses in humans. Pathogenic C. sordellii strains produce up to seven virulence factors, including lethal toxin (TcsL), hemorrhagic toxin, a hemolysin, a DNAse, a collagenase, and a lysolecithinase cell. TcsL exhibits an A-B toxin-like structure and enters its target cells by receptor-mediated endocytosis. Inside the, TcsL mono-glucosylates low molecular weight GTP-binding proteins of the Ras and Rho families. This article reviews recent progress for (i) re-enforcing (H/K/N)Ras glucosylation and subsequent inhibition of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) / Akt survival signalling pathway as the cause of TcsL-induced apoptotic cell death, and (ii) showing the critical nature of Rac1 glucosylation in the loss of epithelial and endothelial barrier function. Finally, the detection of TcsL-induced glucosylation of Rac1 and (H/K/N)Ras using glucosylation- sensitive antibodies is presented as a new method to track TcsL activity.
A PREDICTIVE MODEL OF FLIGHT CREW PERFORMANCE IN AUTOMATED AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AND FLIGHT MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS

This paper describes Air-MIDAS, a model of pilot performance in interaction with varied levels of automation in flight management operations. The model was used to predict the performance of a two person flight crew responding to clearance information generated by the Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS). The model represents the information requirements, decision processes, communication processes, and motor performance required by the flight crew to integrate flight management automation and ground-side automation in clearance aiding. Stochastic variations in environment and flight crew interruption were entered into the model, which then generated predictions of flight crew decision-making and clearance enactment strategies. The model’s predictions were then compared to full-mission LOFT-type simulation data in which CTAS clearances were systematically varied in performance requirements and timing at top-of-descent. The paper describes the model, its development and implementation, the simulation test of the model predictions, and the empirical validation process. The complex human performance model allows variations in CTAS design to be explored through predictive simulation. Procedures and performance criteria as well as situational variations can be controlled and tested. The model and its supporting data provide a generalizable tool that is being expanded to include air/ground compatibility and ATC crew interactions in air traffic management.
Effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction programme on pain and quality of life in chronic pain patients: a randomised controlled clinical trial.

Principal applicant and corresponding author: Prof Samuel Yeung-shan Wong 4/F, Department of Community and Family Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Public Health, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR, China Tel: (852) 2252 8774 Fax: (852) 2606 3500 E-mail: yeungshanwong@cuhk.edu. hk SYS Wong 黃仰山 Effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction programme on pain and quality of life in chronic pain patients: a randomised controlled clinical trial
Constructing the Model of Leadership Orientations Affecting on School Organizational Culture

School organizational culture affected the school effectiveness, while the leadership styles were the key factor affecting the school organizational culture. Quantitative research with purposive sampling was adapted in this study to investigate the faculty of universities in Shanghai area to explore the influence factors of organizational culture, and building the model. The results showed that (1) leadership of intuitive vision and ethical orientation affected organizational culture positively; (2) people orientation leadership had negative impact on organizational culture. So we suggested that university should promote the strength of intuitive and ethical orientation leadership, and avoid the weakness of people orientation leadership to establish a good school organizational culture.
Effects of unidirectional flow shear stresses on the formation, fractal microstructure and rigidity of incipient whole blood clots and fibrin gels

Abstract Incipient clot formation in whole blood and fibrin gels was studied by the rheometric techniques of controlled stress parallel superposition (CSPS) and small amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS). The effects of unidirectional shear stress on incipient clot microstructure, formation kinetics and elasticity are reported in terms of the fractal dimension (df) of the fibrin network, the gel network formation time (TGP) and the shear elastic modulus, respectively. The results of this first haemorheological application of CSPS reveal the marked sensitivity of incipient clot microstructure to physiologically relevant levels of shear stress, these being an order of magnitude lower than have previously been studied by SAOS. CSPS tests revealed that exposure of forming clots to increasing levels of shear stress produces a corresponding elevation in df, consistent with the formation of tighter, more compact clot microstructures under unidirectional flow. A corresponding increase in shear elasticity was recorded. The scaling relationship established between shear elasticity and df for fibrin clots and whole blood confirms the fibrin network as the dominant microstructural component of the incipient clot in terms of its response to imposed stress. Supplementary studies of fibrin clot formation by rheometry and microscopy revealed the substantial additional network mass required to increase df and provide evidence to support the hypothesis that microstructural changes in blood clotted under unidirectional shear may be attributed to flow enhanced thrombin generation and activation. CSPS also identified a threshold value of unidirectional shear stress above which no incipient clot formation could be detected. CSPS was shown to be a valuable haemorheological tool for the study of the effects of physiological and pathological levels of shear on clot properties.