Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
0 Zitterbewegung ( Trembling Motion ) of Electrons in Graphene

This chapter describes a somewhat mysterious phenomenon known in the literature under the German name of “Zitterbewegung” (trembling motion). Both the phenomenon and its name were conceived by Erwin Schrodinger who, in 1930, published the paper Ueber die kraeftefreie Bewegung in der relativistischen Quantenmechanik in which he observed that in the Dirac equation, describing relativistic electrons in a vacuum, the 4 × 4 operators corresponding to components of relativistic velocity do not commute with the free-electron Hamiltonian (Barut & Bracken, 1981; Schroedinger, 1930). In consequence, the electron velocity is not a constant of the motion also in absence of external fields. Such an effect in a vacuum must be of a quantum nature as it does not obey Newton’s first law of classical motion. Schrodinger calculated the resulting time dependence of the electron velocity and position concluding that, in addition to classical motion, they experience very fast periodic oscillations which he called Zitterbewegung (ZB). Schrodinger’s idea stimulated numerous theoretical investigations but no experiments since the predicted frequency h̄ωZ ≃ 2m0c ≃ 1 MeV and the amplitude of about λc = h̄/mc ≃ 3.86 × 10−3Å are not accessible to current experimental techniques. It was recognized that the ZB is due to an interference of states corresponding to the positive and negative electron energies resulting from the Dirac equation (Bjorken & Drell, 1964; Greiner, 1994; Sakurai, 1997). Lock (1979) showed that, if an electron is represented by a wave packet, its ZB has a transient character, i.e. it disappears with time. It was conceived years later that the trembling electron motion should occur also in crystalline solids if their band structure could be represented by a two-band model reminiscent of the Dirac equation (Cannata et al., 1990; Lurie & Cremer, 1970; Vonsovskii et al., 1990; Zawadzki, 1997). An intense interest in ZB of electrons in semiconductors was launched only in 2005 (Schliemann et al., 2005; Zawadzki, 2005). There followed a wave of theoretical considerations for various semiconductor and other systems. It was recognized that the phenomenon of ZB occurs every time one deals with two or more interacting energy bands (Cserti & David, 2006; Rusin & Zawadzki, 2007a; Winkler et al., 2007). As mentioned above, in a vacuum the ZB characteristics are not favorable. In solids, the ZB characteristics are much better but it is difficult to observe the motion of a single electron. However, recently Gerritsma et al. (2010) simulated experimentally the Dirac equation and 15
The Carboxysome Shell Is Permeable to Protons

ABSTRACT Bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) are polyhedral organelles found in an increasingly wide variety of bacterial species. These structures, typified by carboxysomes of cyanobacteria and many chemoautotrophs, function to compartmentalize important reaction sequences of metabolic pathways. Unlike their eukaryotic counterparts, which are surrounded by lipid bilayer membranes, these microbial organelles are bounded by a thin protein shell that is assembled from multiple copies of a few different polypeptides. The main shell proteins form hexamers whose edges interact to create the thin sheets that form the facets of the polyhedral BMCs. Each hexamer contains a central pore hypothesized to mediate flux of metabolites into and out of the organelle. Because several distinctly different metabolic processes are found in the various BMCs studied to date, it has been proposed that a common advantage to packaging these pathways within shell-bound compartments is to optimize the concentration of volatile metabolites in the BMC by maintaining an interior pH that is lower than that of the cytoplasm. We have tested this idea by recombinantly fusing a pH-sensitive green fluorescent protein (GFP) to ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO), the major enzyme component inside the carboxysome. Our results suggest that the carboxysomal pH is similar to that of its external environment and that the protein shell does not constitute a proton barrier. The explanation for the sundry BMC functions must therefore be sought in the characteristics of the pores that traverse their shells.
Patient–provider interaction, patient satisfaction, and health outcomes: testing explanatory models for people living with HIV/AIDS

In the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy era, medication adherence and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) have become critical issues for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH). The purpose of this study was to test explanatory models of how patient–provider interaction and patient satisfaction are related to medication adherence and HRQOL for PLWH. A total of 344 PLWH receiving health-care services from a federally funded clinic in the southwest USA completed a survey questionnaire about their perception of interactions with providers, their satisfaction with services, their medication adherence, and their HRQOL. Comparing four latent variable structural equation models of direct and mediated effects of patient–provider interaction and patient satisfaction, the findings illustrate that the best model is one in which patient–provider interaction has a direct and positive effect on patient satisfaction, medication adherence, and HRQOL. These findings suggest that quality patient–provider interaction is a critical element of health-care services for PLWH, while patient satisfaction is an outcome measure and not a mediating factor for medication adherence and HRQOL.
Animal-specific C-terminal domain links myeloblastosis oncoprotein (Myb) to an ancient repressor complex

Members of the Myb oncoprotein and E2F-Rb tumor suppressor protein families are present within the same highly conserved multiprotein transcriptional repressor complex, named either as Myb and synthetic multivuval class B (Myb-MuvB) or as Drosophila Rb E2F and Myb-interacting proteins (dREAM). We now report that the animal-specific C terminus of Drosophila Myb but not the more highly conserved N-terminal DNA-binding domain is necessary and sufficient for (i) adult viability, (ii) proper localization to chromosomes in vivo, (iii) regulation of gene expression in vivo, and (iv) interaction with the highly conserved core of the MuvB/dREAM transcriptional repressor complex. In addition, we have identified a conserved peptide motif that is required for this interaction. Our results imply that an ancient function of Myb in regulating G2/M genes in both plants and animals appears to have been transferred from the DNA-binding domain to the animal-specific C-terminal domain. Increased expression of B-MYB/MYBL2, the human ortholog of Drosophila Myb, correlates with poor prognosis in human patients with breast cancer. Therefore, our results imply that the specific interaction of the C terminus of Myb with the MuvB/dREAM core complex may provide an attractive target for the development of cancer therapeutics.
Isolation and characterization of deletion mutants of herpes simplex virus type 1 in the gene encoding immediate-early regulatory protein ICP4

Using Vero cells transformed with the wild-type gene for ICP4 as the permissive host cell, we isolated herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) mutants containing deletions in both copies of the ICP4 gene. The mutants, d120 and d202, contained deletions of 4.1 and 0.5 kilobases, respectively, in each copy of ICP4. ICP4 mRNA synthesized in d202-infected Vero cells was 0.5 kilobases smaller than that synthesized in cells infected with the wild-type virus. No ICP4 mRNA was detected in d120-infected Vero cells. d120 and d202 specified polypeptides that reacted with ICP4 antiserum and were smaller than the wild-type ICP4 polypeptide by 130 and 30 kilodaltons, respectively. The only other HSV-1 gene products detectable on infection of Vero cells with d120 and d202 were ICP6 (of the early kinetic class of HSV-1 polypeptides), ICP0 (immediate early), ICP22 (immediate early), and ICP27 (immediate early). Immediate-early polypeptides ICP0 and ICP27 were expressed to a higher level in Vero cells infected with an ICP4 temperature-sensitive (ts) mutant (tsB32) at 39 degrees C, indicating immediate-early stimulatory activity associated with the ts ICP4 polypeptide. In addition, the patterns of complementation of d120, d202, and tsB32 in ICP4-transformed cells also demonstrated inhibitory activity associated with the ts form of the ICP4 polypeptide.
New approach in solving the kidnapped robot problem

We present a solution for the global localization of a mobile robot which disposes of a prior map and is waked up in an unknown position. This case is known in robotics as the kidnapped robot problem. The algorithm is based on the adaptation of the 2D SURF (Speeded Up Robust Features) image features to 3D landmarks of the environment. In this way the prior map is built, containing only 3D Surf landmarks. When the robot wakes up in an unknown location the robot starts to search after these landmarks, which are compared to the priory known ones based on the SURF descriptors. To estimate the displacement between the online and offline landmarks the RANSAC random sampling method is used. This method also has the advantage that the falsely detected and associated landmarks are eliminated. The experiments were carried out in an indoor office environment.
Evidence for serum miR-15a and miR-16 levels as biomarkers that distinguish sepsis from systemic inflammatory response syndrome in human subjects

Abstract Background : Serum microRNAs may be useful biomarkers for diagnosing human diseases. We investigated serum levels of miR-15a and miR-16 in patients with sepsis and systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) without infection. Methods : We enrolled 166 sepsis patients, 32 SIRS patients, and 24 normal controls. Serum miR-15a and miR-16 expression levels were determined by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assays (qRT-PCR). Results : Serum miR-15a (p<0.001) and miR-16 (p<0.05) were both significantly higher in sepsis patients compared with normal controls, and miR-15a (p<0.001) and miR-16 (p<0.01) levels in SIRS patients were also significantly higher than those in normal controls. Serum miR-15a and miR-16 levels were not correlated with white blood cell counts. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that miR-15a had the highest area under the curve of 0.858 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.800–0.916] for the diagnosis of sepsis compared with C reactive protein and procalcitonin with areas under the curve of 0.572 (95% CI 0.479–0.665; p=0.198) and 0.605 (95% CI 0.443–0.767; p=0.168), respectively. When its cut-off point was set at 0.21, serum miR-15a had a sensitivity of 68.3% and a specificity of 94.4%. Conclusions : Serum miR-15a and miR-16 can both distinguish sepsis/SIRS from normal controls. miR-15a may be a biomarker that distinguishes between sepsis and SIRS.
Optimizing Parallel Job Performance in Data-Intensive Clusters

Author(s): Ananthanarayanan, Ganesh | Advisor(s): Stoica, Ion | Abstract: Extensive data analysis has become the enabler for diagnostics and decision making in many modern systems. These analyses have both competitive as well as social benefits. To cope with the deluge in data that is growing faster than Moore's law, computation frameworks have resorted to massive parallelization of analytics jobs into many fine-grained tasks. These frameworks promised to provide efficient and fault-tolerant execution of these tasks. However, meeting this promise in clusters spanning hundreds of thousands of machines is challenging and a key departure from earlier work on parallel computing.A simple but key aspect of parallel jobs is the all-or-nothing property: unless all tasks of a job are provided equal improvement, there is no speedup in the completion of the job. The all-or-nothing property is critical for the promise of efficient and fault-tolerant parallel computations on large clusters. Meeting this promise in clusters of these scales ischallenging and a key departure from prior work on distributed systems. This work examines the execution of a job from first principles and propose techniques spanning the software stack of data analytics systems such that its tasks achieve homogeneous performance while overcoming the various heterogeneities. To that end, we will propose techniques for (i) caching and cache replacement for parallel jobs, which outperforms even Belady's MIN (that uses an oracle), (ii) data locality, and (iii) straggler mitigation. Our analyses and evaluation are performed using workloads from Facebook and Bing production datacenters. Along the way, we will also describe how we broke the myth of disk-locality's importance in datacenter computing.
Price Comparison and Price Dispersion: Products and Retailers at Different Internet Maturity Stages

The Internet can make markets more competitive, but whether this holds for on-line price levels and price dispersion is unclear, perhaps because the maturity, or level of development, of Internet markets has not been widely studied. This paper explores how the maturity of an Internet market affects on-line market pricing in relation to types of products and retailers. It analyzes the pricing differences between pure on-line retailers (e-tailers) and hybrid retailers (multichannel retailers) for three categories of products (books, CDs, digital cameras) in two countries with different levels of Internet maturity (China and the United States). The results show that (1) e-tailer price dispersion is lower in the United States than in China, (2) price levels in the two countries vary with product types, and (3) in both countries, e-tailers have lower price levels and price dispersion than hybrid retailers. These findings suggest that the maturation of Internet markets may lead to lower prices and price dispersion, but with variations dependent on type of product and retailer.
[Attitudes of adolescents toward suicide: Q-methodological approach].

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to identify attitudes of adolescents toward suicide. METHODS Q-methodology which provides a method of analyzing the subjectivity of each item was used. Thirty middle and high school students classified 37 selected statements into a normal distribution using a 9 point scale. Collected data were analyzed using the Quanl PC Program. RESULTS Three types of attitudes toward suicide were identified. The first type (opposing suicide-moral minded) showed an attitude of opposing suicide and thinking that suicide is a sin. The second type (understanding-empathizing suicidal person) showed an attitude of understanding the situation of the adolescents who has suicidal ideation and empathizing with them. The third type (ambivalent attitude) showed an attitude of understanding the suicidal person but, at the same time, opposing suicide. CONCLUSION Results of the study indicate that different approaches to suicide prevention programs should be developed based on the three types of suicide attitudes among adolescents.
Random parameter-switching synthesis of a class of hyperbolic attractors.

The parameter perturbation methods (the most known being the OGY method) apply small wisely chosen swift kicks to the system once per cycle, to maintain it near the desired unstable periodic orbit. Thus, one can consider that a new attractor is finally generated. Another class of methods which allow the attractors born, imply small perturbations of the state variable [see, e.g., J. Güémez and M. A. Matías, Phys. Lett. A 181, 29 (1993)]. Whatever technique is utilized, generating any targeted attractor starting from a set of two or more of any kind of attractors (stable or not) of a considered dissipative continuous-time system cannot be achieved with these techniques. This kind of attractor synthesis [introduced in M. -F. Danca, W. K. S. Tang, and G. Chen, Appl. Math. Comput. 201, 650 (2008) and proved analytically in Y. Mao, W. K. S. Tang, and M. -F. Danca, Appl. Math. Comput. (submitted)] which starts from a set of given attractors, allows us, via periodic parameter-switching, to generate any of the set of all possible attractors of a class of continuous-time dissipative dynamical systems, depending linearly on the control parameter. In this paper we extend this technique proving empirically that even random manners for switching can be utilized for this purpose. These parameter-switches schemes are very easy to implement and require only the mathematical model of the underlying dynamical system, a convergent numerical method to integrate the system, and the bifurcation diagram to choose specific attractors. Relatively large parameter switches are admitted. As a main result, these switching algorithms (deterministic or random) offer a new perspective on the set of all attractors of a class of dissipative continuous-time dynamical systems.
High-resolution ultrasonography in assessing temporomandibular joint disc position.

AIMS The purpose of this study was to determine the diagnostic value of high-resolution ultrasonography (US) in temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disc displacements. MATERIALS AND METHODS A number of 74 patients (148 TMJs) with signs and symptoms of TMJ disorders, according to the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders, were included in this study. All patients received US and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of both TMJs 1 to 5 days after the clinical examination. MRI examinations were performed using 1.5 T MRI equipment (Siemens Avanto, Siemens, Erlangen). Ultrasonographic examination was performed on a Hitachi EUB 8500 (Hitachi Medical Corp., Tokyo, Japan) scanner with L 54 M6.5-13 MHz linear transducer. RESULTS MRI depicted 68 (45.95%) normal joints, 47 (31.76%) with disc displacement with reduction, 33 (22.3%) with disc displacement without reduction and 34 (22.97%) with degenerative changes. US detected 78 (52.7%) normal joints, 37 (25%) with disc displacement with reduction, 33 (22.3%) with disc displacement without reduction and 21 (14.19%) with degenerative changes. Compared to MRI, US showed a sensitivity of 93.1%, specificity of 87.88%, accuracy of 90.32%, a positive predictive value of 87.1% and a negative predictive value of 93.55% for overall diagnosis of disc displacement. The Youden index was 0.81. CONCLUSIONS Based on our results, high-resolution ultrasonography showed high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in the diagnosis of TMJ disc displacement. It could be a valuable imaging technique in assessing TMJ disc position. The diagnostic value of high-resolution ultrasonography depends strictly on the examiner's skills and on the equipment used.
Correlates and outcomes of dementia among dialysis patients: the Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study.

BACKGROUND Recent studies suggest a high prevalence of cognitive impairment and dementia in persons with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), yet risk factors for dementia and its prognostic significance in persons with ESRD remain unclear. The goals of this study were to determine the prevalence, correlates and dialysis-related outcomes of dementia in an international sample of haemodialysis patients. METHODS We analysed data collected from a cohort of 16 694 patients in the Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study. Dementia was defined as a diagnosis of dementia documented in the medical record. We used logistic regression to determine the baseline correlates of dementia and Cox proportional hazards models to determine the relative risk (RR) of death and dialysis withdrawal for patients with dementia, while adjusting for a number of confounding factors. RESULTS Overall, 4% of the cohort had a recorded diagnosis of dementia. In the cross-sectional analyses, risk factors for dementia in the general population including age, black race, low educational attainment, cerebrovascular disease and diabetes, as well as modifiable uraemia-related factors, including markers of malnutrition and anaemia, were independently associated with dementia. After adjustment for a number of confounding factors, dementia was associated with an increased risk of death [RR 1.48, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.32-1.66] and dialysis withdrawal (RR 2.01, 95% CI 1.57-2.57). CONCLUSIONS Dementia is associated with adverse outcomes among ESRD patients. Dialysis providers should consider instituting routine screening for cognitive impairment among elderly patients in order to identify those at risk for associated adverse outcomes.
Factors Underlying Technology Adoption in Academic Libraries in Kuwait

ABSTRACT The study analyzed factors shaping adoption of technology in academic libraries in Kuwait. The research was based on interviews conducted with library directors, staff, and users, combined with observation and document analysis. A major aspect of the Kuwaiti context was a relative lack of financial restraints and an enthusiasm for technology within society as a whole. Other important influences shaping technology adoption specifically within libraries were the top down decision-making style and a quest for prestige, in a context of a lack of library culture among users, shortage of professional staff, and a strong, perhaps exaggerated, faith in technology as a solution to problems.
Glamdring: Automatic Application Partitioning for Intel SGX

Trusted execution support in modern CPUs, as offered by Intel SGX enclaves, can protect applications in untrusted environments. While prior work has shown that legacy applications can run in their entirety inside enclaves, this results in a large trusted computing base (TCB). Instead, we explore an approach in which we partition an application and use an enclave to protect only security-sensitive data and functions, thus obtaining a smaller TCB. We describe Glamdring, the first source-level partitioning framework that secures applications written in C using Intel SGX. A developer first annotates security-sensitive application data. Glamdring then automatically partitions the application into untrusted and enclave parts: (i) to preserve data confidentiality, Glamdring uses dataflow analysis to identify functions that may be exposed to sensitive data; (ii) for data integrity, it uses backward slicing to identify functions that may affect sensitive data. Glamdring then places security-sensitive functions inside the enclave, and adds runtime checks and cryptographic operations at the enclave boundary to protect it from attack. Our evaluation of Glamdring with the Memcached store, the LibreSSL library, and the Digital Bitbox bitcoin wallet shows that it achieves small TCB sizes and has acceptable performance overheads.