Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pressure-based intelligent stent for restenosis control

This paper describes an intelligent stent for Pulmonary Artery Restenosis (PAS) monitoring, comprising MEMS pressure sensors and CMOS electronics. First, a novel MEMS sensor design tool is described and some fabricated PolyMUMPs devices are presented. Then, a proposed low-power analog system for monitoring intelligent stents is analyzed. This architecture is fully-integrated and can be divided into four basic blocks: voltage rectifier, voltage reference, mode-selector and oscillator. The integrated circuit (IC) has been fabricated in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulation results show average power consumptions of 152.1 μW and 547.1 μW in idle and active states, respectively.
Control and Flocking of Networked Systems via Pinning

One of the main purposes for the study of complex network topology and modeling is to understand the influence of network structure on its function and consequently to find effective ways to improve network performance. This paper surveys some recent advances in pinning control approaches to making a dynamical network have a desired behavior. For a network with fixed topology, we review the feasibility, stability and effectiveness of pinning control and adaptive pinning control. We also review pinning-based flocking control of mobile multi-agent networked systems with time-varying topologies. Finally, we point out some future directions.
[Protective effects of Guangdong Liangcha grandes on restraint stress-induced liver damage in mice].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of Guangdong Liangcha Keli on restraint stress-induced liver damage in mice. METHOD Thirty-five male C57BL/6J mice of 7 weeks old were divided into 5 groups randomly with 7 mice in each group: normal group, restraint stress group, 250 mg kg(-1) Vitamin C, Guangdong Liangcha Keli 500 mg kg(-1) and 250 mg kg(-1). After 18 hr restraint stress, the ALT acitivity in plasma, MDA level in plasma and liver, GSH content, GSH-PX and GST activities, NO level and ORAC value in liver were determined. RESULT Compared with restraint model group, Guangdong Liangcha Keli could markedly reduce ALT activity (92.75 +/- 1.91 vs 39.29 +/- 2.56, 32.69 +/- 1.46) U L(-1), and protect the liver damage induced by oxidative stress. In addition, Guangdong Liangcha Keli could effectively increase the ORAC value, GSH content, GSH-PX activity and GST activity and reduce the MDA level and NO level in liver. CONCLUSION Oral treatment of Guangdong Liangcha Keli is found to reduce restraint stress-induced liver damage in terms of above mentioned biochemical parameters, and these protective effects may be related to its free radical scavenging activity and lipid peroxidation inhibitory effects.
Higher education and inequality

ABSTRACT After climate change, rising economic inequality is the greatest challenge facing the advanced Western societies. Higher education has traditionally been seen as a means to greater equality through its role in promoting social mobility. But with increased marketisation higher education now not only reflects the forces making for greater inequality but even exacerbates them. This could be changed but it would require major shifts in higher education policy and practice of which there is currently little sign.
The Retinal Pigment Epithelium Utilizes Fatty Acids for Ketogenesis

Background: RPE cells derive fatty acids from phagocytized photoreceptor outer segments. Results: RPE cells metabolize palmitate to produce β-hydroxybutyrate (β-HB), a ketone body the retina can use as a metabolic substrate. Conclusion: RPE cells produce β-HB as a potential substrate for photoreceptor cells in the outer retina. Significance: This is a novel form of RPE-retina interaction that may be important for retinal cell health and function. Every day, shortly after light onset, photoreceptor cells shed approximately a tenth of their outer segment. The adjacent retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells phagocytize and digest shed photoreceptor outer segment, which provides a rich source of fatty acids that could be utilized as an energy substrate. From a microarray analysis, we found that RPE cells express particularly high levels of the mitochondrial HMG-CoA synthase 2 (Hmgcs2) compared with all other tissues (except the liver and colon), leading to the hypothesis that RPE cells, like hepatocytes, can produce β-hydroxybutyrate (β-HB) from fatty acids. Using primary human fetal RPE (hfRPE) cells cultured on Transwell filters with separate apical and basal chambers, we demonstrate that hfRPE cells can metabolize palmitate, a saturated fatty acid that constitutes ≈15% of all lipids in the photoreceptor outer segment, to produce β-HB. Importantly, we found that hfRPE cells preferentially release β-HB into the apical chamber and that this process is mediated primarily by monocarboxylate transporter isoform 1 (MCT1). Using a GC-MS analysis of 13C-labeled metabolites, we showed that retinal cells can take up and metabolize 13C-labeled β-HB into various TCA cycle intermediates and amino acids. Collectively, our data support a novel mechanism of RPE-retina metabolic coupling in which RPE cells metabolize fatty acids to produce β-HB, which is transported to the retina for use as a metabolic substrate.
A scalable model for knowledge sharing based supervised learning using AdaBoost

In this paper, we introduce a new scalable platform for knowledge sharing based group learning in an adaptive boosting(AdaBoost) environment for supervised learning Though knowledge sharing has been an active area of research in semi supervised learning, the concept has not been explored thoroughly in supervised learning framework. In our proposed algorithm, several learner members are trained simultaneously on sub sets of original feature spaces. Every agent is trained using the same baseline algorithm such as Artificial Neural Network (ANN). In each knowledge sharing session the colony of agents calculates difficulty of each of the training samples and accordingly changes weight distribution over training data space based on a probabilistic metric. Finally, for classification purpose, the decisions of all the agents are conglomerated based on a novel variant of majority voting. Based on voting protocol, we present three different ensemble learning algorithms. Extensive simulations performed on samples from Color FERET and UCI databases reveal that our algorithm outperforms traditional non cooperative boosting algorithms and some recent variants of collaborative boosting algorithms in terms of training error convergence rate, classification accuracy, and resiliency against labeling noise. Furthermore, error-diversity relationships of the ensemble learners are investigated using Kappa-Error diagrams. The results are promising.
A Latent Class Conjoint Analysis for analysing graduates’ profiles

This paper aims to stabilize the relationship between universities and companies. Lombardy companies with at least 15 employees were asked them to manifest their preferences choosing among profiles of new graduates. A Latent Class Metric Conjoint Analysis is employed to evaluate the ideal graduate’s profile for a job position and to detect the existence of subgroups of companies having homogeneous preferences about such features. Abstract Questo lavora mira ad analizzare la relazione tra aziende ed università. Alle imprese lombarde con almeno 15 dipendenti è stato chiesto di esprimere le loro preferenze fra alcuni profili dei neolaureati a loro sottoposti per una possibile nuova assunzione. Un modello Latent Class Conjoint è stato utilizzato per valutare il profilo ideale fra i candidati e individuare l’esistenza di sottogruppi di imprese.
Application of the isobologram technique for the analysis of combined effects with respect to additivity as well as independence.

Combined actions of two substances with similar effects are frequently expressed by pairs of doses that produce a fixed response, usually 50%, in so-called isobolograms (ED50 isobolograms). In addition to the dose scales in such graphs we propose the addition of effect scales, where possible, to indicate the effect at certain doses, e.g., the ED30. We further propose to construct isoboles for expected independent interaction, in addition to the additivity line, for which purpose a simple procedure is delineated. In practice, an independent isobole for 50% effect passes through the point formed by the ED30s of A and of B in ED50 isobolograms. Thus, the ED30s constitute the "zenith" of an independent isobole in ED50 isobolograms. It is shown that theoretical independent isoboles can either represent additive, overadditive, or underadditive interactions, depending on the steepness of the dose-response curves of the components. Hence, drugs with shallow dose-response curves exhibit overadditive independent effects, compounds with exponentially steep curves show additive independent interactions. Substances with very steep dose-response curves, producing lethal effects, exhibited marked underadditive effects which could be ascribed largely to an independent mechanism of action of the components. Hence, the inclusion of independent isoboles into conventional isobolograms provides new insights into the mechanisms of interactions and into the actions of the components. Interactions can thus be characterized better and more completely, and misinterpretations appear less likely than with conventional isoboles.
It's a risky business: The place of risk within the curriculum

This is a discussion document, which explores the notions of risk and safety within the Health and Physical Education Curriculum. The focus on risk management and safety are a consequence of concerns and recognition of ‘risk’ in communities; risks to children’s health and safety issues when keeping children safe. The Nationa l Administration Guideline 5 (i), which directs schools to provide a ‘safe physical and emotional environment for students’ is a manifestation of this concern. Mention is made of the effect that this emphasis on ‘risk’ and safety has on our teaching ‘spaces’ and children’s learning. A risky world In today’s world, risks and dangers surround us. There is the media’s reporting of health scares, risky events, accidents, and dangers lurking in the backyard and in the global community. This is part of our current awareness of risk in the physical and social environment. One recent experience of media attention was at the height of the SARS outbreak. There was huge media coverage of the spread of the disease. We were bombarded with safety warnings, knowledge of its transmission (that was known at the time), rate of onset, effects, the progression of the virus worldwide, to safety warnings for travelers (my tertiary institution e-mailed all staff to cancel or defer unnecessary travel to Asia). Later when the death toll had risen throughout the world, we were informed of the fate of economies and tourism. The file that I have in my office is bulging, although little has been added in these last months – it has nearly disappeared from view. At least in the media. Even more recently, there have been other areas of risk to focus our attention on, not nearly as immediately frightening as SARS, at least in the here and now, but possibly harmful in the future. The genetic modification (GM) of organisms is one such case. A weekend newspaper, the New Zealand Herald (August 23-24, 2003) had a focus on GM with double page articles on the topic. We were notified that ‘we have to ensure that GM is safe’ (editorial), that the ‘Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) will have to weigh up not just the health and environmental risks, but also the potential economic risks to our exports’ (Over to Erma), that ‘Managing the Risks’ was possible, but ‘Is it Safe? ’ and ‘even some organic food is at risk of contamination during processing’. There are of course other risks and dangers to worry about, three of which were reported in the same newspaper; the collision between a motorboat and a boardsailor where a yachtsman commented ‘the risk of such accidents could never be eliminated’, groups wielding lethal weapons fighting on the streets of Auckland which created ‘the potential
Control of type IV collagenase activity by components of the urokinase–plasmin system: a regulatory mechanism with cell‐bound reactants

The urokinase‐type plasminogen activator (uPA) and the matrix‐degrading metalloproteinases MMP‐2 and MMP‐9 (type IV collagenases/gelatinases) have been implicated in a variety of invasive processes, including tumor invasion, metastasis and angiogenesis. MMP‐2 and MMP‐9 are secreted in the form of inactive zymogens that are activated extracellularly, a fundamental process for the control of their activity. The physiological mechanism(s) of gelatinase activation are still poorly understood; their comprehension may provide tools to control cell invasion. The data reported in this paper show multiple roles of the uPA–plasmin system in the control of gelatinase activity: (i) both gelatinases are associated with the cell surface; binding of uPA and plasmin(ogen) to the cell surface results in gelatinase activation without the action of other metallo‐ or acid proteinases; (ii) inhibition of uPA or plasminogen binding to the cell surface blocks gelatinase activation; (iii) in soluble phase plasmin degrades both gelatinases; and (iv) gelatinase activation and degradation occur in a dose‐ and time‐dependent manner in the presence of physiological plasminogen and uPA concentrations. Thus, the uPA–plasmin system may represent a physiological mechanism for the control of gelatinase activity.
Exploiting PubChem for virtual screening

Importance of the field: PubChem is a public molecular information repository, a scientific showcase of the National Institutes of Health Roadmap Initiative. The PubChem database holds > 27 million records of unique chemical structures of compounds (compound ID) derived from nearly 70 million substance depositions (substance ID), and contains > 449,000 bioassay records with thousands of in vitro biochemical and cell-based screening bioassays established targeting > 7000 proteins and genes linking to > 1.8 million of substances. Areas covered in this review: This review builds on recent PubChem-related computational chemistry research reported by other authors while providing readers with an overview of the PubChem database, focusing on its increasing role in cheminformatics, virtual screening and toxicity prediction modeling. What the reader will gain: These publicly available data sets in PubChem provide great opportunities for scientists to perform cheminformatics and virtual screening research for computer-aided drug design. However, the high volume and complexity of the data sets, in particular the bioassay-associated false positives/negatives and highly imbalanced data sets in PubChem, also create major challenges. Several approaches regarding the modeling of PubChem data sets and development of virtual screening models for bioactivity and toxicity predictions are also reviewed. Take home message: Novel data-mining cheminformatics tools and virtual screening algorithms are being developed and used to retrieve, annotate and analyze the large-scale and highly complex PubChem biological screening data for drug design.
Perfect plane wave injection for symplectic finite-difference time-domain scheme

In this paper, the method of splitting plane wave finite-difference time-domain (SP-FDTD) algorithm is presented for the initiation of plane wave sources in symplectic finite-difference time-domain (SFDTD) scheme. By splitting the fields on one-dimensional (1D) grid and using the nature of numerical plane wave in FDTD, an efficient plane wave sources is simulated on 1D grid, and a perfect match is achieved for a plane wave propagating at any angle forming an integer grid cell ratio. Numerical examples show the valid of the proposed method.
Inference Based on Structural Vector Autoregressions Identified With Sign and Zero Restrictions: Theory and Applications

In this paper, we develop algorithms to independently draw from a family of conjugate posterior distributions over the structural parameterization when sign and zero restrictions are used to identify structural vector autoregressions (SVARs). We call this family of conjugate posteriors normal‐generalized‐normal. Our algorithms draw from a conjugate uniform‐normal‐inverse‐Wishart posterior over the orthogonal reduced‐form parameterization and transform the draws into the structural parameterization; this transformation induces a normal‐generalized‐normal posterior over the structural parameterization. The uniform‐normal‐inverse‐Wishart posterior over the orthogonal reduced‐form parameterization has been prominent after the work of Uhlig (2005). We use Beaudry, Nam, and Wang's (2011) work on the relevance of optimism shocks to show the dangers of using alternative approaches to implementing sign and zero restrictions to identify SVARs like the penalty function approach. In particular, we analytically show that the penalty function approach adds restrictions to the ones described in the identification scheme.
A comparative review of the challenges encountered in sentiment analysis of Indian regional language tweets vs English language tweets

With the developed use of online medium these days for sharing views, sentiments and opinions about products, services, organization and people, micro blogging and social networking sites are acquiring a huge popularity. One of the biggest social media sites namely Twitter is used by several people to share their life events, views and opinion about different areas and concepts. Sentiment analysis is the computational research of reviews, opinions, attitudes, views and peoples’ emotions about different products, services, firms and topics through categorizing them as negative and positive emotions. Sentiment analysis of tweets is a challenging task. This paper makes a critical review on the comparison of the challenges associated with sentiment analysis of Tweets in English Language versus Indian Regional Languages. Five Indian languages namely Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and Bengali have been considered in this research and several challenges associated with the analysis of Twitter sentiments in those languages have been identified and conceptualized in the form of a framework in this research through systematic review.
Control of inverted pendulum robot that can change the center of gravity by use of self-evolving adaptive controller

To adapt to a changing environment, to use multiple models is effective. The authors have also proposed two multiple models, i.e., Self-Organizing Adaptive Controller (SOAC), and Self-Evolving Adaptive Controller (SEAC). SOAC has a fixed structure and therefore, an incremental learning to adapt a novel environment is difficult. On the other hand, the SEAC has an evolving structure and therefore, incremental learning is very easy. In addition, the network structure tends to be smart. This is because the number of modules is one at first and the new module is increased as needed. Before now, simulation study regarding the SEAC has been proposed but there is no report dealing with using actual equipment. Thus, in this paper, we report control experiments using the SEAC with actual equipment developed by the authors.
Dual Function of the Propeptide of Prouroguanylin in the Folding of the Mature Peptide

Guanylyl cyclase activating peptide II (GCAP-II), an endogenous ligand of guanylyl cyclase C, is produced via the processing of the precursor protein (prepro-GCAP-II). We have previously shown that the propeptide in pro-GCAP-II functions as an intramolecular chaperone in the proper folding of the mature peptide, GCAP-II (Hidaka, Y., Ohno, M., Hemmasi, B., Hill, O., Forssmann, W.-G., and Shimonishi, Y. (1998) Biochemistry 37, 8498–8507). Here, we report an essential region in pro-GCAP-II for the correct disulfide pairing of the mature peptide, GCAP-II. Five mutant proteins, in which amino acid residues were sequentially deleted from the N terminus, and three mutant proteins of pro-GCAP-II, in which N-terminal 6, 11, or 17 amino acid residues were deleted, were overproduced usingEscherichia coli or human kidney 293T cells,respectively. Detailed analysis of in vivo or in vitro folding of these mutant proteins revealed that one or two amino acid residues at the N terminus of pro-GCAP-II are critical, not only for the chaperone function in the folding but also for the net stabilization of pro-GCAP-II. In addition, size exclusion chromatography revealed that pro-GCAP-II exists as a dimer in solution. These data indicate that the propeptide has two roles in proper folding: the disulfide-coupled folding of the mature region and the dimerization of pro-GCAP-II.
Interpreting the estimated timing of migration events between hybridizing species

The question of whether speciation can occur in the presence of gene flow has long been a contentious one. However, measuring the amount and timing of gene flow remains challenging. The computer program IMa2 allows researchers to estimate the timing of migration events for each locus during analyses, and these estimates have been used to infer the timing of introgression and mode of speciation. We use simulated data sets to examine the degree to which gene‐flow timing estimates can be used for these purposes, and what demographic conditions and data sets may be most amenable to gene‐flow timing estimation. We find that the 90% highest posterior density (HPD) interval of gene‐flow timing is almost always substantially wider than the actual window of gene flow, and increasing the information content of the data set in terms of number of loci, number of sequences sampled or locus length (and thus number of variable sites) has little impact on the posterior distribution over the range of values we tested. Even when simulated gene flow only occurred over the most recent 0.01% of the species’ history, the HPD interval usually encompasses the inferred divergence time. Our results indicate that gene‐flow timing estimates made using the method currently implemented in IMa2 cannot reliably be used to make inferences about the timing of introgression between diverged species or to distinguish between speciation with gene flow and allopatric speciation followed by one or more episodes of gene flow.
A 0.54-0.55 THz 2×4 coherent source array with EIRP of 24.4 dBm in 65nm CMOS technology

This paper presents a monolithically integrated 2×4 coherent source array operating at 0.54-0.55 Tera-Hertz (THz) in 65nm digital CMOS technology. The source array contains 20 oscillating elements which can radiate in-phase THz signal via each of their own differential slot ring antennas. Each of the oscillating elements is made of a triple-pushed Colpitts voltage controlled oscillator (TPCVCO). Among these oscillating elements, 16 are used for radiation source cores and 4 are used for synchronization bridges. The source array is tested to radiate 61 and 126 μW peak power near 0.55 THz by consuming 0.5 and 1.3W DC power, respectively. According to measured antenna directivity of 36.4dBi and simulated radiation efficiency of 50%, source array's Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP) can be estimated as 21.2 and 24.4 dBm, respectively. The output spectrum can also be tuned from 0.54 to 0.55 THz by varying the transistor bulk voltage. The measured phase noise is -79dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. To the best of our knowledge, this is the 1st coherent THz source made of monolithically integrated silicon IC technology beyond 0.5 THz.