Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nucleotidyl Cyclase Activity of Particulate Guanylyl Cyclase A: Comparison with Particulate Guanylyl Cyclases E and F, Soluble Guanylyl Cyclase and Bacterial Adenylyl Cyclases Cyaa and Edema Factor

Guanylyl cyclases (GCs) regulate many physiological processes by catalyzing the synthesis of the second messenger cGMP. The GC family consists of seven particulate GCs (pGCs) and a nitric oxide-activated soluble GC (sGC). Rat sGC α1β1 possesses much broader substrate specificity than previously assumed. Moreover, the exotoxins CyaA from Bordetella pertussis and edema factor (EF) from Bacillus anthracis possess nucleotidyl cyclase (NC) activity. pGC-A is a natriuretic peptide-activated homodimer with two catalytic sites that act cooperatively. Here, we studied the NC activity of rat pGC-A in membranes of stably transfected HEK293 cells using a highly sensitive and specific HPLC-MS/MS technique. GTP and ITP were effective, and ATP and XTP were only poor, pGC-A substrates. In contrast to sGC, pGC-A did not use CTP and UTP as substrates. pGC-E and pGC-F expressed in bovine rod outer segment membranes used only GTP as substrate. In intact HEK293 cells, pGC-A generated only cGMP. In contrast to pGCs, EF and CyaA showed very broad substrate-specificity. In conclusion, NCs exhibit different substrate-specificities, arguing against substrate-leakiness of enzymes and pointing to distinct physiological functions of cyclic purine and pyrimidine nucleotides.
Automatically detecting lung nodules based on shape descriptor and semi-supervised learning

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) has become a major research topic in medical imaging, and one of the most important CAD applications is the detection of lung nodules. The paper is to develop a CAD system for automatically detecting lung nodules in computed tomography (CT) images. The system includes three parts: pulmonary parenchyma segmentation, ROI extraction, and nodule prediction of ROI based on ADE-Co-Forest. At the beginning, we proposed the new pulmonary parenchyma segmentation method; In the stage of ROI extraction, circle shape descriptor is exploited to reduce the false positives; Although the samples can be easily collected from routine medical examinations, it is usually impossible for medical experts to make a diagnosis for each of the collected samples. So we use the semi-supervised learning method ADE-Co-Forest to predict the nodules. Thus, in the predicting stage, we can use a few of labeled samples and a lot of unlabeled samples to learn a well-performed classifier. The experimental results demonstrate that the CAD system gets high sensitivity and low false-positive.
Understanding the Contextual Factors that Influence School Counselors' Multicultural Diversity Integration Practices.

This study explores the contextual factors that influence a school counselor’s decision to actively integrate multicultural diversity in his/her work. Through using the Integrating Multicultural Diversity Questionnaire (IMDQ) the effectiveness of multicultural diversity training, the types of multicultural diversity practices that are used with frequency and the challenges experienced and/or anticipated in integrating multicultural diversity practices in educational settings are investigated. Results indicate a significant number of participants do not daily integrate multicultural diversity practices because of a reported lack of skills and support as well as ineffectual pre-service multicultural diversity training.
Compensating for window effects in the calculation of spectrographic instantaneous bandwidth

Exact results derived by Cohen and Lee (1988-1990) are used to study the distortion induced by the window in the computation of instantaneous bandwidth via the spectrogram. These concepts have been recently used in an interesting study regarding lesion-induced blood flow disturbances, where an approximation was made to compensate for the window effects. We show that this compensation is accurate for stationary signals, but becomes increasingly poorer as the signal becomes less stationary (e.g., large frequency modulations). We propose an alternative technique to reduce the window distortions, and point out the use of other time-frequency distributions that do not suffer such distortions.
Challenging the Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis: Senile Plaques and Amyloid‐β as Protective Adaptations to Alzheimer Disease

Abstract: Ever since their initial description over a century ago, senile plaques and their major protein component, amyloid‐β, have been considered key contributors to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease. However, counter to the popular view that amyloid‐β represents an initiator of disease pathogenesis, we herein challenge dogma and propose that amyloid‐β occurs secondary to neuronal stress and, rather than causing cell death, functions as a protective adaptation to the disease. By analogy, individuals suffering from altitude sickness nearly always have elevated levels of hemoglobin. However, while hemoglobin is toxic to cells in culture and increased erythropoiesis at sea level can be deadly, it is clear that the increases in hemoglobin occurring at altitude are beneficial. Amyloid, like hemoglobin, may also be beneficial, in this case, following neuronal stress or disease. Although controversial, a protective function for amyloid‐β is supported by all of the available literature to date and also explains why many aged individuals, despite the presence of high numbers of senile plaques, show little or no cognitive decline. With this in mind, we suspect that current therapeutic efforts targeted toward lowering amyloid‐β production or removal of deposited amyloid‐β will only serve to exacerbate the disease process.
Visualizing the Evolution of Compound Digraphs with TimeArcTrees

Compound digraphs are a widely used model in computer science. In many application domains these models evolve over time. Only few approaches to visualize such dynamic compound digraphs exist and mostly use animation to show the dynamics. In this paper we present a new visualization tool called TimeArcTrees that visualizes weighted, dynamic compound digraphs by drawing a sequence of node‐link diagrams in a single view. Compactness is achieved by aligning the nodes of a graph vertically. Edge crossings are reduced by drawing upward and downward edges separately as colored arcs. Horizontal alignment of the instances of the same node in different graphs facilitates comparison of the graphs in the sequence. Many interaction techniques allow to explore the given graphs. Smooth animation supports the user to better track the transitions between views and to preserve his or her mental map. We illustrate the usefulness of the tool by looking at the particular problem of how shortest paths evolve over time. To this end, we applied the system to an evolving graph representing the German Autobahn and its traffic jams.
A Non-cooperative hierarchical Opportunistic Spectrum Access for cognitive radio networks

We consider a non-cooperative Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) where Secondary Users (SUs) access opportunistically the spectrum licensed for Primary Users (PUs) in TV white spaces (TVWS). As sensing licensed channels is time and energy consuming, we consider a hierarchical Cognitive Radio (CR) architecture, where CR base stations sense a subset of the spectrum in order to locate some free frequencies. Thereafter, a SU that needs to communicate through TVWS sends a request to a CR base station for a free channel. We model the problem using a Partially Observable Stochastic Game (POSG), and we take into consideration the energy consumption of CR base stations and the Quality of Services (QoS) of SUs. Since solving POSG optimally may require a significant amount of time and computational complexity, we model the OSA problem using a game theoretical approach, and we propose a symmetric Nash equilibrium solution concept. Finally, we provide some simulations that validate our theoretical findings.
A Working Memory System With Distributed Executive Control

Working memory consists of domain-specific storage facilities and domain-general executive control processes. In some working memory theories, these control processes are accounted for via a homunculus, the central executive. In the present article, the author defends a mechanistic view of executive control by adopting the position that executive control is situated in the context of goal-directed behavior to maintain and protect the goal and to select an action to attain the goal. On the basis of findings in task switching and dual tasking, he proposes an adapted multicomponent working memory model in which the central executive is replaced by three interacting components: an executive memory that maintains the task set, a collection of acquired procedural rules, and an engine that executes the procedural rules that match the ensemble of working memory contents. The strongest among the rules that match the ensemble of working memory contents is applied, resulting in changes of the working memory contents or in motor actions. According to this model, goals are attained when the route to the goals is known or can be searched when the route is unknown (problem solving). Empirical evidence for this proposal and new predictions are discussed.
Examining Machine Learning for Adaptable End-to-End Information Extraction Systems

All components of a typical IE system have been the object of some machine learning research, motivated by the need to improve time taken to transfer to new domains. In this paper we survey such methods and assess to what extent they can help create a complete IE system that can be easily adapted to new domains. We also lay out a general prescription for an IE system in a new domain, employing existing components and technologies where possible. The goal is a system that can be adapted to a new domain with minimal human intervention (say by someone who may be a domain expert but need not be a computational linguist). We propose research directions for automating the process further, reducing the need for hand-tagged training data by relying on biases intrinsic to the information extraction task, and employing boot-strapping and active learning.
Weighted sum-rate maximization for a set of interfering links via branch and bound

We consider the problem of weighted sum-rate maximization (WSRMax) for an arbitrary set of interfering links. This problem is known to be NP-hard; therefore, it is extremely difficult to solve even for a relative small number of links. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a solution method, based on the branch and bound technique, which solves WSRMax problem with an optimality certificate. At each step of the proposed algorithm, an upper and a lower bound are computed for the optimal value of the underlying problem. The algorithm terminates when the difference between the upper and the lower bound is smaller than a specified tolerance. The proposed algorithm can be further used to provide other performance benchmarks by back-substituting it into any network design method which relies on WSRMax. It is also very useful for evaluating the performance loss encountered by any heuristic algorithm.
A ROBUST AUTOMATIC GAIT MONITORING APPROACH USING A SINGLE IMU FOR HOME-BASED APPLICATIONS

A new approach of human activity monitoring with a single Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) capable of gait recognition and assessment is proposed for home-based applications. The method estimates the foot motion using a single IMU, then automatically segments the motion into steps, and extracts multiple kinematics templates. It classifies each segment by extracting Mahalanobis distance-based features from multiple sections of the motion templates and then training a Support Vector Machine. The proposed wearable system can distinguish between nine classes of activities with a classification accuracy of 99.6%. It can also discriminate between normal and abnormal gait patterns with an accuracy of 98.7%. In addition to a high recognition rate, the proposed approach provides a Gait Similarity Score (GSS) of the performed gait to its desired/normal pattern. The experimental results indicate the capability of GSS measure for assessing the quality of motion in “pre-”, “initial”, “mid” and “terminal” stages of swin.
Digital Autotuning of DC–DC Converters Based on a Model Reference Impulse Response

This paper proposes a model reference-based autotuning technique for digitally controlled voltage-mode dc-dc converters. The proposed solution performs a comparison between the measured system impulse response and a reference derived from the desired dynamic performances, and minimizes the error function acting on the regulator parameters. Two different approaches are investigated to evaluate the impulse response: a deterministic tuning, injecting a duty-cycle impulse, and a statistical tuning, based on white noise injection in the control loop. Compared to existing approaches, this solution has the advantages of simplicity, small-signal processing, and on-line tuning capabilities. Experimental investigation is performed on a 20-A, 1.5-V digitally controlled synchronous buck converter, and both simulations and experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
Resveratrol Increases Glucose Induced GLP-1 Secretion in Mice: A Mechanism which Contributes to the Glycemic Control

Resveratrol (RSV) is a potent anti-diabetic agent when used at high doses. However, the direct targets primarily responsible for the beneficial actions of RSV remain unclear. We used a formulation that increases oral bioavailability to assess the mechanisms involved in the glucoregulatory action of RSV in high-fat diet (HFD)-fed diabetic wild type mice. Administration of RSV for 5 weeks reduced the development of glucose intolerance, and increased portal vein concentrations of both Glucagon-like peptid-1 (GLP-1) and insulin, and intestinal content of active GLP-1. This was associated with increased levels of colonic proglucagon mRNA transcripts. RSV-mediated glucoregulation required a functional GLP-1 receptor (Glp1r) as neither glucose nor insulin levels were modulated in Glp1r-/- mice. Conversely, levels of active GLP-1 and control of glycemia were further improved when the Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor sitagliptin was co-administered with RSV. In addition, RSV treatment modified gut microbiota and decreased the inflammatory status of mice. Our data suggest that RSV exerts its actions in part through modulation of the enteroendocrine axis in vivo.
Hepatitis C virus induces oxidative stress, DNA damage and modulates the DNA repair enzyme NEIL1

Background and Aims: Hepatitis C virus (HCV)‐induced chronic inflammation may induce oxidative stress which could compromise the repair of damaged DNA, rendering cells more susceptible to spontaneous or mutagen‐induced alterations, the underlying cause of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. In the current study we examined the induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) resulting from HCV infection and evaluated its effect on the host DNA damage and repair machinery.
Characterization of polymorphic microsatellites in the Pacific sardine Sardinops sagax sagax (Clupeidae)

We isolated 11 microsatellites from the Pacific sardine Sardinops sagax sagax . The number of alleles and H E among 30 individuals from a single population ranged from four to 24 and from 0.606 to 0.959, respectively. Pacific sardines are a vital economic resource in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, but insufficiently polymorphic loci have limited inferences about its stock structure and genetic variation. The level of variability of these new markers will prove useful in testing hypotheses on the stock-structure and long-term genetic integrity of the species.
An Efficient Scheduling Method for Grid Systems Based on a Hierarchical Stochastic Petri Net

This paper addresses the problem of resource scheduling in a grid computing environment. One of the main goals of grid computing is to share system resources among geographically dispersed users, and schedule resource requests in an efficient manner. Grid computing resources are distributed, heterogeneous, dynamic, and autonomous, which makes resource scheduling a complex problem. This paper proposes a new approach to resource scheduling in grid computing environments, the hierarchical stochastic Petri net (HSPN). The HSPN optimizes grid resource sharing, by categorizing resource requests in three layers, where each layer has special functions for receiving subtasks from, and delivering data to, the layer above or below. We compare the HSPN performance with the Min-min and Max-min resource scheduling algorithms. Our results show that the HSPN performs better than Max-min, but slightly underperforms Min-min.
A Revolution in One Classroom: The Case of Mrs. Oublier

This essay probes the relationship between instructional policy and teaching practice. In the mid 1980s, California State officials launched an ambitious effort to revise mathematics teaching and learning. The aim was to replace mechanical memorization with mathematical understanding. This essay considers one teacher’s response to the new policy. She sees herself as a success for the policy: she believes that she has revolutionized her mathematics teaching. But observation of her classroom reveals that the innovations in her teaching have been filtered through a very traditional approach to instruction. The result is a remarkable melange of novel and traditional material. Policy has affected practice in this case, but practice has had an even greater effect on policy.
Rendition techniques for HDR scenes in painting, photography, and electronic imaging

Painters have reproduced High Dynamic Range (HDR) scenes for 5 centuries; photographers have used multiple exposures for 165 years; scientists have used electronic imaging modifications of range for 50 years. This paper reviews the history of the different rendition techniques. Some techniques use trial and error to find the best rendition. Others use psychophysical models of human vision, or physical models of color cameras. All techniques use the partnership of the physics of light, and the psychophysics of human vision.
Romancing the Robots: Social Robots and Society

A structural toy which comprises a plurality of flat rods equipped with grooves along the longitudinal edges having widths corresponding with the thickness of the flat rods and depths corresponding with a quarter of their width. The flat rods have first perforations disposed along their longitudinal axis, adapted for receiving the ends of crosswise connectable further flat rods. The first perforations comprise three at least partly circular sections passing into each other and having diameters and center spacings corresponding with one half of the width of the flat rods. The flat rods have circular second perforations at a distance from their ends corresponding with one half of the width of the flat rods which have a diameter corresponding with one half of the width of the flat rods for the reception of coupling members, and the coupling members have at least one projection adjusted to the diameter of the first and second perforations in the flat rods.
Highly sensitive optical response of optical fiber long period gratings to nanometer-thick ionic self-assembled multilayers

Ionic self-assembled multilayers deposited on long period fiber gratings (LPGs) yield dramatic resonant-wavelength shifts, even with nanometer-thick films. Fine control of the refractive index and the thickness of these films was achieved by altering the relative fraction of the anionic and cationic materials combined with layer-by-layer deposition. We demonstrate the feasibility of this highly controllable deposition technique for fine-tuning grating properties. In addition a variety of biological and chemical sensing agents can easily be incorporated into these films, which makes this an attractive platform for realization of high-performance LPG-based sensors.
Rewards and Liabilities of Presentation Software as an Ancillary Tool: Prison or Paradise?.

This study is presented as an exploratory research effort regarding students' perceptions of PowerPoint presentations used by college instructors in a basic Fundamentals of Public Speaking course. Data were collected to determine the outcomes in four primary areas: General Questions about PowerPoint use; Perceived Effectiveness of POwerPoint; Demographics of the Respondents; and Student Preference for Future Use. Four hundred and eighty-five (N.485) surveys were collected from participants. Respondents ranged in age from 17-57 years old with a mean age of 24. Results indicated that: (1) 29 percent of the students had been exposed to PowerPoint in other classes, and 33 percent had given presentations using it; (2) students had a higher effect for classes using PowerPoint as a lecture tool; (3) 69 percent of the students perceived PowerPoint as a cognitive aid; and (4) the use of the technology significantly increased the desire for Hispanic students and English-as-a-second-language students to want to see the technology used in other classes. (Contains 7 references and 4 tables of data; the survey instrument is attached.) (Author/RS) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************************
Coke Photomicrograph Segmentation Based on an Improved Mean Shift Method

In the view of characteristics for coke micrograph, a segmentation algorithm combining mean shift and edge confidence, is proposed. Firstly, the edge confidence of image pixels is calculated, and with the edge confidence the weighting function of mean shift algorithm is computed, the sampling points of feature space are weighted in order to improve the accuracy of detected modes. Secondly, coke image is segmented preliminarily by iterating the weighted mean shift vector. Because that the number of clusters in initial segmentation is larger than that of the actual clusters, which may result in over-segmentation, the combining conditions are set by the spatial distance and the average value of the edge confidence. The coke photomicrograph is finally segmented with the new combining conditions. Experimental results show that with the proposed algorithm the segmentation among different optical textures of coke is more reasonable and effective.