Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
pH Landscapes in a Novel Five-Species Model of Early Dental Biofilm

Background Despite continued preventive efforts, dental caries remains the most common disease of man. Organic acids produced by microorganisms in dental plaque play a crucial role for the development of carious lesions. During early stages of the pathogenetic process, repeated pH drops induce changes in microbial composition and favour the establishment of an increasingly acidogenic and aciduric microflora. The complex structure of dental biofilms, allowing for a multitude of different ecological environments in close proximity, remains largely unexplored. In this study, we designed a laboratory biofilm model that mimics the bacterial community present during early acidogenic stages of the caries process. We then performed a time-resolved microscopic analysis of the extracellular pH landscape at the interface between bacterial biofilm and underlying substrate. Methodology/Principal Findings Strains of Streptococcus oralis, Streptococcus sanguinis, Streptococcus mitis, Streptococcus downei and Actinomyces naeslundii were employed in the model. Biofilms were grown in flow channels that allowed for direct microscopic analysis of the biofilms in situ. The architecture and composition of the biofilms were analysed using fluorescence in situ hybridization and confocal laser scanning microscopy. Both biofilm structure and composition were highly reproducible and showed similarity to in-vivo-grown dental plaque. We employed the pH-sensitive ratiometric probe C-SNARF-4 to perform real-time microscopic analyses of the biofilm pH in response to salivary solutions containing glucose. Anaerobic glycolysis in the model biofilms created a mildly acidic environment. Decrease in pH in different areas of the biofilms varied, and distinct extracellular pH-microenvironments were conserved over several hours. Conclusions/Significance The designed biofilm model represents a promising tool to determine the effect of potential therapeutic agents on biofilm growth, composition and extracellular pH. Ratiometric pH analysis using C-SNARF-4 gives detailed insight into the pH landscape of living biofilms and contributes to our general understanding of metabolic processes in in-vivo-grown bacterial biofilms.
A First Step Toward On-Chip Memory Mapping for Parallel Turbo and LDPC Decoders: A Polynomial Time Mapping Algorithm

To meet the higher data rate requirement of current and future communication standards, numerous techniques to decode Turbo and LDPC codes on hardware architecture are developed. Unfortunately, interleaving laws that are used in these codes often result in memory access conflicts when massively parallel architectures are targeted which considerably limits the throughput. In this article, the first dedicated approach that finds conflict free memory mapping for every type of codes and for every type of parallelism in polynomial time is presented. The implementation of this highly efficient algorithm shows significant improvement in terms of computational time compared to state of the art approaches. Ultimately, this could enable memory mapping algorithm to be embedded on chips and executed on the fly to support multiple block lengths and standards.
Unwrapping the Suburban “Package Deal”

Large disparities in educational quality exist between cities and surrounding suburban school districts and are increasing between suburban districts—a trend that emerged over the past several decades and shows signs of growing. Using in-depth interviews, this study examines how children are sorted into different school districts across a metropolitan area. We find that the ideal educational arrangement for nearly all parents is to live in a neighborhood that guarantees access to neighborhood schools that meets their expectations, something we call the “package deal. ” Parents look to the suburbs to achieve this ideal, but not all suburbs provide it. Metropolitan patterns of racial residential segregation, interact with families’ resources and constraints to reproduce racial inequalities in educational opportunities across suburban districts. Integrated approaches to housing and education policy are needed to address parents’ preference to couple residential and school choices and reduce growing suburban inequality.
Improved Projection for Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition

McCallum? s projection operator for cylindrical algebraic decomposition (CAD) represented a huge step forward for the practical utility of the CAD algorithm. This paper presents a simple theorem showing that the mathematics in McCallum? s paper actually point to a better projection operator than he proposes? a reduced McCallum projection. The reduced projection has the potential to not simply speed up CAD computation for problems that are currently solvable in practice, but actually increase the scope of problems that can realistically be attacked via CADs. Additionally, the same methods are used to show that McCallum? s projection can be reduced still further when CAD is applied to certain types of commonly occurring quantifier elimination problems.
Collecting the Dots: Problem Formulation and Solution Elements

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Nonlinear phase-shifts in self-assembled quantum dot samples under CW driving

We analyze the strength of the nonlinear refractive index change associated with the saturation of the ground state absorption or gain of self-assembled quantum dot samples under cw optical injection. The model is based on a two-level framework but takes into account the strong coupling of quantum dots to the wetting layer by thermal excitations and Auger processes. Due to the inhomogeneous broadening and limited density the effect turns out to be weak though it should be experimentally detectable using self-lensing, the shift of Fabry-Perot resonances or interferometric schemes.
Payoff Based IDS Evaluation

IDS are regularly evaluated by comparing their false positive and false negative rates on ROC curves. However, this mechanism generally ignores both the context within which the IDS operates and the attacker's own ability to adapt to IDS behavior. In this paper, we propose an alternative strategy for evaluating IDS based around multiple strategies. Each strategy defines how an attacker profits from attacking a target, and describes victory conditions for the attacker and defender. By mapping the results of ROC analysis to these strategies, we produce results which evaluate defensive mechanisms by their capacity to frustrate an attacker.
A Robust Power Allocation Algorithm in Cognitive Radio Networks ⋆

Traditional distributed resources allocation algorithms are based on the hypothesis of perfect channel in cognitive radio networks. In fact, the parameters of the channel are variable, uncertain in some degree or even turbulent. Considering an ellipsoidal uncertainty set to describe the fluctuation of the interference gain, a robust power allocation algorithm is proposed to maximize the data rate of the cognitive users under both CR-to-PR interference constraint and the maximum transmit power for each cognitive user. In order to solve this optimization problem having infinite number of constraints, we transform it into an optimization problem with finite number of constraints under the worst case conditions. Computer experiments show that the proposed algorithm not only provides stability and robustness to the CR networks but also guarantee seamless communication.
Monitoring Fetal Heart Rate during Pregnancy: Contributions from Advanced Signal Processing and Wearable Technology

Monitoring procedures are the basis to evaluate the clinical state of patients and to assess changes in their conditions, thus providing necessary interventions in time. Both these two objectives can be achieved by integrating technological development with methodological tools, thus allowing accurate classification and extraction of useful diagnostic information. The paper is focused on monitoring procedures applied to fetal heart rate variability (FHRV) signals, collected during pregnancy, in order to assess fetal well-being. The use of linear time and frequency techniques as well as the computation of non linear indices can contribute to enhancing the diagnostic power and reliability of fetal monitoring. The paper shows how advanced signal processing approaches can contribute to developing new diagnostic and classification indices. Their usefulness is evaluated by comparing two selected populations: normal fetuses and intra uterine growth restricted (IUGR) fetuses. Results show that the computation of different indices on FHRV signals, either linear and nonlinear, gives helpful indications to describe pathophysiological mechanisms involved in the cardiovascular and neural system controlling the fetal heart. As a further contribution, the paper briefly describes how the introduction of wearable systems for fetal ECG recording could provide new technological solutions improving the quality and usability of prenatal monitoring.
BROADBAND MICROWAVE MEASUREMENTS OF RELATIVE PERMITTIVITY AND PERMEABILITY OF MATERIALS

A short review of modern techniques for broadband microwave measuring complex permittivity and permeability of materials at broadband microwave frequencies has been presented. Classification of type of the measurement methods to extract the complex permittivity and permeability of bulk materials has been done in this paper. Mathematical models of all the above-mentioned measurement types of methods are reviewed. Advantages and disadvantages of existing measurement devices/systems are described according to the classification made. A new design of test devices for the measurement system operating in broadband microwave frequency range has been proposed. Measurement system on the basis of the proposed device can be used for a measuring the ordinary bulk materials, ferrites (including fully magnetized) and magnetic materials but much cheaper then one to be made. The system is much cheaper than a free space measurement system. The approach to define the permeability tensor of magnetic materials using the test device is proposed as well.
De Novo Kidney Regeneration with Stem Cells

Recent studies have reported on techniques to mobilize and activate endogenous stem-cells in injured kidneys or to introduce exogenous stem cells for tissue repair. Despite many recent advantages in renal regenerative therapy, chronic kidney disease (CKD) remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality and the number of CKD patients has been increasing. When the sophisticated structure of the kidneys is totally disrupted by end stage renal disease (ESRD), traditional stem cell-based therapy is unable to completely regenerate the damaged tissue. This suggests that whole organ regeneration may be a promising therapeutic approach to alleviate patients with uncured CKD. We summarize here the potential of stem-cell-based therapy for injured tissue repair and de novo whole kidney regeneration. In addition, we describe the hurdles that must be overcome and possible applications of this approach in kidney regeneration.
YOUQMON: a system for on-line monitoring of YouTube QoE in operational 3G networks

YouTube is changing the way operators manage network performance monitoring. In this paper we introduce YOUQMON, a novel on-line monitoring system for assessing the Quality of Experience (QoE) undergone by HSPA/3G customers watching YouTube videos, using network-layer measurements only. YOUQMON combines passive traffic analysis techniques to detect stalling events in YouTube video streams, with a QoE model to map stallings into a Mean Opinion Score reflecting the end-user experience. We evaluate the stalling detection performance of YOUQMON with hundreds of YouTube video streams, and present results showing the feasibility of performing real-time YouTube QoE monitoring in an operational mobile broadband network.
Capturing the semantics of individual viewpoints on social signals in interpersonal communication

The Social Web provides a vast source of user-generated content embedding different views on real life events and activities. Although there is a notable effort to utilise this content in personalisation applications, the existing approaches do not exploit the diversity of individual viewpoints for user modelling and adaptation. On the other hand, the semantic web community has developed extensive apparatus to capture and analyse the semantics of content. However, this apparatus has not been used for capturing the semantics of individual viewpoints to empower the next generation of personilisation systems that embrace diversity. This paper introduces ViewS, a framework for capturing viewpoint semantics from textual user-contributed comments on human activities. ViewS has been instantiated for the domain of interpersonal communication focusing on social signals, for which diverse interpretations can be given according to individual backgrounds and experiences. An experimental study has been conducted including participants providing comments on job interview videos. The semantic augmentation of textual comments has been validated with two experts. The results show that semantic enrichment of surface forms can improve the annotation process. Three enrichment methods have been evaluated. The extracted viewpoint semantics has been combined with user profiles to illustrate interesting user patterns for personalisation.
An Obstacle Based Realistic Ad-Hoc Mobility Model for Social Networks

An efficient deployment of a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) requires a realistic approach towards the mobility of the hosts who want to communicate with each other over a wireless channel. Since ad-hoc networks are driven by human requirements, instead of considering the random movement of mobile nodes, we concentrate on the social desire of the nodes for getting connected with one another and provide here a framework for the mobility model of the nodes based on Social Network Theory. In this paper, we capture the preferences in choosing destinations of pedestrian mobility pattern on the basis of Social Factor (Y F ) and try to find out the essential impact of Y F on the Pause Time of the nodes. Also, instead of considering an unobstructed terrain, we carry out our simulations in presence of obstacles which block the node movement. Thus, we present here a more realistic mobility distribution pattern. Further, a relative comparison of the proposed model with the popular Random Way-Point (RWP) Model is also done.
Increasing the Quality and Quantity of Source Language Data for Unsupervised Cross-Lingual POS Tagging

Bilingual corpora offer a promising bridge between resource-rich and resource-poor languages, enabling the development of natural language processing systems for the latter. English is often selected as the resource-rich language, but another choice might give better performance. In this paper, we consider the task of unsupervised cross-lingual POS tagging, and construct a model that predicts the best source language for a given target language. In experiments on 9 languages, this model improves on using a single fixed source language. We then show that further improvements can be made by combining information from multiple source languages.
Forward sequential algorithms for best basis selection

The problem of signal representation in terms of basis vectors from a large, over-complete, spanning dictionary has been the focus of much research. Achieving a succinct, or 'sparse', representation is known as the problem of best basis representation. Methods are considered which seek to solve this problem by sequentially building up a basis set for the signal. Three distinct algorithm types have appeared in the literature which are here termed basic matching pursuit (BMP), order recursive matching pursuit (ORMP) and modified matching pursuit (MMP). The algorithms are first described and then their computation is closely examined. Modifications are made to each of the procedures which improve their computational efficiency. The complexity of each algorithm is considered in two contexts; one where the dictionary is variable (time-dependent) and the other where the dictionary is fixed (time-independent). Experimental results are presented which demonstrate that the ORMP method is the best procedure in terms of its ability to give the most compact signal representation, followed by MMP and then BMP which gives the poorest results. Finally, weighing the performance of each algorithm, its computational complexity and the type of dictionary available, recommendations are made as to which algorithm should be used for a given problem.
Astrocyte reactivity after brain injury—: The role of galectins 1 and 3

Astrocytes react to brain injury in a heterogeneous manner with only a subset resuming proliferation and acquiring stem cell properties in vitro. In order to identify novel regulators of this subset, we performed genomewide expression analysis of reactive astrocytes isolated 5 days after stab wound injury from the gray matter of adult mouse cerebral cortex. The expression pattern was compared with astrocytes from intact cortex and adult neural stem cells (NSCs) isolated from the subependymal zone (SEZ). These comparisons revealed a set of genes expressed at higher levels in both endogenous NSCs and reactive astrocytes, including two lectins—Galectins 1 and 3. These results and the pattern of Galectin expression in the lesioned brain led us to examine the functional significance of these lectins in brains of mice lacking Galectins 1 and 3. Following stab wound injury, astrocyte reactivity including glial fibrillary acidic protein expression, proliferation and neurosphere‐forming capacity were found significantly reduced in mutant animals. This phenotype could be recapitulated in vitro and was fully rescued by addition of Galectin 3, but not of Galectin 1. Thus, Galectins 1 and 3 play key roles in regulating the proliferative and NSC potential of a subset of reactive astrocytes. GLIA 2015;63:2340–2361
Endogenous Life Expectancy in a Simple Model of Growth

In an overlapping generations economy reproductive agents mature safely through two periods of life and face an endogenous probability of surviving for a third period. Given this probability, which depends on aggregate outcomes, each agent maximises her expected lifetime utility by choosing consumption and savings. The dynamic general equilibrium of the economy is characterised by multiple development regimes associated with different levels of economic activity and different rates of life expectancy. Transition between these regimes may or may not occur depending on parameter values and initial conditions.
Retransmission method with Network Coding based on reordering delay in wireless LAN

Recently, Network Coding (NC) has been popularly applied to wireless networks in order to improve channel utilization. In wireless LANs, when NC is applied to packet retransmission, a base station can simultaneously retransmit multiple packets destined to different wireless stations for a single retransmission trial. On the other hand, at a receiver side, out-of-order packet reception can occur, and the additional reordering process is required. However, existing NC-based retransmission methods do not consider this reordering delay explicitly, hence packet transfer delay may increase seriously. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel NC-based retransmission method considering packet reordering delay in order to improve packet transfer delay and jitter of received packets. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method by computer simulation.
One word at a time: Mental representations of object shape change incrementally during sentence processing

Abstract We report on two experiments that ask when and under what linguistic conditions comprehenders construct detailed shape representations of mentioned objects, and whether these can change over the course of a sentence when new information contradicts earlier expectations. We used Japanese because the verb-final word order of Japanese presented a revealing test case where information about objects can radically change with a subsequent verb. The results show that language understanders consistently generate a distinct and detailed shape for an object by integrating the semantic contributions of different sentential elements. These results first confirm that the tendency to generate specific shape information about objects that are involved in described events is not limited to English, but is also present in Japanese, a typologically and genetically distinct language. But more importantly, they shed light on the processing mechanism of object representation, showing that mental representations are initiated sentence medially, and are rapidly revised if followed by a verb that implies a change to an object shape. This work contributes to ongoing research on incremental language processing – comprehenders appear to construct extremely detailed semantic representations early in a sentence, and modify them as needed.
Comprehensive Suppression of All Apoptosis-Induced Proliferation Pathways as a Proposed Approach to Colorectal Cancer Prevention and Therapy

Mutations in the WNT/beta-catenin pathway are present in the majority of all sporadic colorectal cancers (CRCs), and histone deacetylase inhibitors induce apoptosis in CRC cells with such mutations. This apoptosis is counteracted by (1) the signaling heterogeneity of CRC cell populations, and (2) the survival pathways induced by mitogens secreted from apoptotic cells. The phenomena of signaling heterogeneity and apoptosis-induced survival constitute the immediate mechanisms of resistance to histone deacetylase inhibitors, and probably other chemotherapeutic agents. We explored the strategy of augmenting CRC cell death by inhibiting all survival pathways induced by the pro-apoptotic agent LBH589, a histone deacetylase inhibitor: AKT, JAK/STAT, and ERK signaling. The apoptosis-enhancing ability of a cocktail of synthetic inhibitors of proliferation was compared to the effects of the natural product propolis. We utilized colorectal adenoma, drug-sensitive and drug-resistant colorectal carcinoma cells to evaluate the apoptotic potential of the combination treatments. The results suggest that an effective approach to CRC combination therapy is to combine apoptosis-inducing drugs (e.g., histone deacetylase inhibitors, such as LBH589) with agents that suppress all compensatory survival pathways induced during apoptosis (such as the cocktail of inhibitors of apoptosis-associated proliferation). The same paradigm can be applied to a CRC prevention approach, as the apoptotic effect of butyrate, a diet-derived histone deacetylase inhibitor, is augmented by other dietary agents that modulate survival pathways (e.g., propolis and coffee extract). Thus, dietary supplements composed by fermentable fiber, propolis, and coffee extract may effectively counteract neoplastic growth in the colon.