Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Corticosteroids and Neuropeptides on the Expression of Defensins in Bovine Tracheal Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Susceptibility to bacterial pneumonia in cattle is enhanced by stressors such as transportation, weaning, and commingling, which trigger a physiologic stress response resulting in elevated levels of endogenous corticosteroids and catecholamines. To determine the effect of neuroendocrine mediators on the expression of innate defense peptides in the lung, bovine tracheal epithelial cells were exposed to dexamethasone, catecholamines, acetylcholine, or substance P, and then β-defensin expression was quantified using real-time reverse transcription-PCR. Basal expression of tracheal antimicrobial peptide (TAP) mRNA was not affected by any of the mediators tested. However, induction of TAP expression by lipopolysaccharide was significantly inhibited by pretreatment with dexamethasone. Bronchial biopsy specimens from dexamethasone-treated calves had significantly lower expression of TAP and lingual antimicrobial peptide (LAP) mRNA than saline-treated controls following 48 h of treatment. Lipopolysaccharide-elicited neutrophil recruitment was enhanced in the lungs of dexamethasone-treated calves compared to saline-treated controls. These findings indicate that modulation of epithelial antimicrobial peptide expression is one mechanism through which corticosteroids and stress may impair innate pulmonary defenses.
Enforcing User Privacy in Web Applications using Erlang

Social networking applications on the web handle the personal data of a large number of concurrently active users. These applications must comply with complex privacy requirements, while achieving scalability and high performance. Applying constraints to the ﬂow of data through such applications to enforce privacy policy is challenging because individual components process data belonging to many different users. We introduce a practical approach for uniformly enforcing privacy requirements in such applications using the actor-based Erlang programming language. To isolate the personal data of users, we exploit Erlang’s inexpensive process model and use Erlang’s message passing mechanism to add policy checks. We illustrate this approach by describing the architecture of a privacy-preserving message dispatcher in a micro-blogging service. Our performance evaluation of a prototype implementation shows that this approach can enforce ﬁne-grained privacy guarantees with a low performance overhead.
Performance of cell-free massive MIMO systems with MMSE and LSFD receivers

Cell-Free Massive MIMO comprises a large number of distributed single-antenna access points (APs) serving a much smaller number of users. There is no partitioning into cells and each user is served by all APs. In this paper, the uplink performance of cell-free systems with minimum mean squared error (MMSE) and large scale fading decoding (LSFD) receivers is investigated. The main idea of LSFD receiver is to maximize achievable throughput using only large scale fading coefficients between APs and users. Capacity lower bounds for MMSE and LSFD receivers are derived. An asymptotic approximation for signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of MMSE receiver is derived as a function of large scale fading coefficients only. The obtained approximation is accurate even for a small number of antennas. MMSE and LSFD receivers demonstrate five-fold and two-fold gains respectively over matched filter (MF) receiver in terms of 5%-outage rate.
An AC Input Switching-Converter-Free LED Driver With Low-Frequency-Flicker Reduction

This paper presents a novel switching-converter-free ac–dc light-emitting diode (LED) driver with low-frequency-flicker reduction for general lighting applications. The proposed driving solution can minimize the system size as it enables the monolithic integration of the controller and power transistors while both the bulky off-chip electrolytic capacitors and magnetics are eliminated. Moreover, the driver can effectively reduce the harmful optical flicker at the double-line-frequency by employing a novel quasi-constant power control scheme while maintaining high efficiency and a good power factor (PF). The proposed driver is implemented with a single controller integrated circuit chip, which includes the controller and high-voltage power transistors, and the off-chip diode bridge and valley-fill circuit. The chip is fabricated with a 0.35- $\mu \text{m}$ 120-V high-voltage CMOS process and occupies 1.85 mm2. The driver can provide up to 7.8-W power to the LED and achieves 87.6% peak efficiency and an over 0.925 PF with only 17.3% flicker from a 110-Vac 60-Hz input.
Online and Distributed Bayesian Moment Matching for Parameter Learning in Sum-Product Networks

Probabilistic graphical models provide a general and flexible framework for reasoning about complex dependencies in noisy domains with many variables. Among the various types of probabilistic graphical models, sum-product networks (SPNs) have recently generated some interest because exact inference can always be done in linear time with respect to the size of the network. This is particularly attractive since it means that learning an SPN from data always yields a tractable model for inference. However, existing parameter learning algorithms for SPNs operate in batch mode and do not scale easily to large datasets. In this work, we explore online algorithms to ensure that parameter learning can also be done tractably with respect to the amount of data. More specifically, we propose a new Bayesian moment matching (BMM) algorithm that operates naturally in an online fashion and that can be easily distributed. We demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of BMM in comparison to online extensions of gradient descent, exponentiated gradient and expectation maximization on 20 classic benchmarks and 4 large scale datasets.
Information technology and the international public sphere

Information technology and globalization have each been the objects of enormous hope and considerable disappointment. So too is their combination in the notion of an international public sphere supported by the Internet and other communications media. This is basic to the dream of international civil society that has flourished since the early 1990s as the collapse of communism and opening of capitalist markets. And indeed, such an international public sphere clearly already exists. Equally clearly, however, it has not yet provided the basis for cosmopolitan democracy its advocates have hoped. The task of this paper is to outline something of the stakes of thinking about an international public sphere, the role that information technology can play in it, and some of the challenges that lie in the way of realizing its potential. I will discuss IT and the international public sphere against the background of globalization and shifting bases of for the production and dissemination of knowledge. I will not attempt to review the empirical specifics of where and how and by whom the Internet is used, or how public communication based on one technology compares to that based on others. While this would be useful and there are beginning to be interesting case studies to complement the usual journalistic anecdotes, social science research on the Internet has barely started. The present paper does not offer findings so much as attempt to orient questions.
Cellular Uptake and Photo-Cytotoxicity of a Gadolinium(III)-DOTA-Naphthalimide Complex “Clicked” to a Lipidated Tat Peptide

A new bifunctional macrocyclic chelator featuring a conjugatable alkynyl-naphthalimide fluorophore pendant group has been prepared and its Gd(III) complex coupled to a cell-penetrating lipidated azido-Tat peptide derivative using Cu(I)-catalysed “click” chemistry. The resulting fluorescent conjugate is able to enter CAL-33 tongue squamous carcinoma cells, as revealed by confocal microscopy, producing a very modest anti-proliferative effect (IC50 = 93 µM). Due to the photo-reactivity of the naphthalimide moiety, however, the conjugate’s cytotoxicity is significantly enhanced (IC50 = 16 µM) upon brief low-power UV-A irradiation.
Modeling the competitive effects of nucleosomes on transcription factors binding

Transcription factor-DNA interactions play a central role in transcriptional control. These bindings are stochastic processes and regulated by the nucleosomes in vivo. However, most of the current models tend to neglect nucleosomes and regard bindings as discrete binary events rather than continuous ones. To address the issues, we proposed a model by integrating TF bindings to nucleosomal and naked DNA in a quantitative manner. We evaluated the predictive ability of the model using the experimental TF binding profiles and functional DNA binding sites. The evaluation results show that incorporating nucleosome can greatly improve the prediction accuracy of in vivo binding for many TFs in yeast over the models disregarding the nucleosomes.
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE INDEBTEDNESS OF BRAZILIAN COMPANIES

The aim of this paper is to provide insights on the determinants of the indebtedness of Brazilian companies. Initially, this paper replicates the main empirical tests on the literature. The reduced explanatory power of the results led us to propose a new methodology using the GMM method of Blundell and Bond (1998), which points out companies with higher proportions of fixed assets on total assets present higher indebtedness. Our results indicate that estimation of the equations implied by the target leverage model tends to generate seriously biased estimates if the endogeneity of the covariates is not explicitly considered in the analysis.
RARD: The Related-Article Recommendation Dataset

Recommender-system datasets are used for recommender-system evaluations, training machine-learning algorithms, and exploring user behavior. While there are many datasets for recommender systems in the domains of movies, books, and music, there are rather few datasets from research-paper recommender systems. In this paper, we introduce RARD, the Related-Article Recommendation Dataset, from the digital library Sowiport and the recommendation-as-a-service provider Mr. DLib. The dataset contains information about 57.4 million recommendations that were displayed to the users of Sowiport. Information includes details on which recommendation approaches were used (e.g. content-based filtering, stereotype, most popular), what types of features were used in content based filtering (simple terms vs. keyphrases), where the features were extracted from (title or abstract), and the time when recommendations were delivered and clicked. In addition, the dataset contains an implicit item-item rating matrix that was created based on the recommendation click logs. RARD enables researchers to train machine learning algorithms for research-paper recommendations, perform offline evaluations, and do research on data from Mr. DLib's recommender system, without implementing a recommender system themselves. In the field of scientific recommender systems, our dataset is unique. To the best of our knowledge, there is no dataset with more (implicit) ratings available, and that many variations of recommendation algorithms. The dataset is available at this http URL, and published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY) license.
Secret communication using artificial noise

The problem of secret communication between two nodes over a wireless link is considered, where a passive eaves- dropper may overhear the communication. It is desired that the eavesdropper be unable to decode the message. We show that secrecy can be achieved by adding artificially generated noise to the information bearing signal such that it does not degrade the intended receiver's channel. We consider two different scenarios; one in which the transmitter has multiple transmit antennas and the other in which the transmitter has a single antenna but 'helper' nodes are available. In the multiple antenna scenario, the degrees of freedom provided by the multiple antennas is used to generate artificial noise intelligently so that it degrades only the eavesdropper's channel. In the multiple helper scenario, even though the transmitter does not have multiple antennas, the helper nodes simulate the effect of multiple antennas and allow the transmitter to generate artificial noise as in the previous case.
Mutiscale Mapper: A Framework for Topological Summarization of Data and Maps

Summarizing topological information from datasets and maps defined on them is a central theme in topological data analysis. \textsf{Mapper}, a tool for such summarization, takes as input both a possibly high dimensional dataset and a map defined on the data, and produces a summary of the data by using a cover of the codomain of the map. This cover, via a pullback operation to the domain, produces a simplicial complex connecting the data points. The resulting view of the data through a cover of the codomain offers flexibility in analyzing the data. However, it offers only a view at a fixed scale at which the cover is constructed. Inspired by the concept, we explore a notion of a tower of covers which induces a tower of simplicial complexes connected by simplicial maps, which we call {\em multiscale mapper}. We study the resulting structure, its stability, and design practical algorithms to compute its associated persistence diagrams efficiently. Specifically, when the domain is a simplicial complex and the map is a real-valued piecewise-linear function, the algorithm can compute the exact persistence diagram only from the 1-skeleton of the input complex. For general maps, we present a combinatorial version of the algorithm that acts only on \emph{vertex sets} connected by the 1-skeleton graph, and this algorithm approximates the exact persistence diagram thanks to a stability result that we show to hold. We also relate the multiscale mapper with the \v{C}ech complexes arising from a natural pullback pseudometric defined on the input domain.
Improved fingercode for filterbank-based fingerprint matching

FingerCode has been shown to be an effective representation to capture both the local and global information in a fingerprint. However, the performance of fingercode is influenced by the reference point detection process, and the AAD features cannot fully extract the discriminating information in fingerprints. In this paper, we first propose a new rotation-invariant reference point location method, and then combine the direction features with the AAD features to form an oriented fingercode. Experiments conducted on a large fingerprint database (NIST-4) show that the proposed method produces a much improved matching performance.
Information Systems Usage in Business and Management

Information systems in the world of business and management exist to serve varied needs. This article examines the role of information systems technology in business activities and management functions and discusses how organisations can best use information systems. This study provides managers and researchers with a framework for effective use of information systems for business and management purposes and offers an alternative approach to investigate the impact of new technology. The author concludes that a need exists for further research in this field to increase understanding of information systems usage in business and management. The study recommends that more attention be paid to information systems technology, as it is key to better management and succeeding in business.
EFFECTS OF CROSSFIT LESSONS IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION ON THE AEROBIC CAPACITY OF YOUNG STUDENTS

Strength training in adolescents is one of the pending subjects of Physical Education. Habitually, improvements in physical condition are solely and exclusively related to training in aerobic resistance. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of the incorporation of Crossfit along with aerobic games on aerobic capacity over a period of 8 weeks in a group of teens during their physical education sessions at the school. The study examined 82 subjects between 16-18 years of age, who were high school students. 40 women and 42 men were distributed into two groups, experimental and control. The results indicate that the effect on aerobic capacity measured through the course navette test is significantly positive through the inclusion of crossfit methodology along with aerobic games in physical education sessions.
Aspect based multi-document summarization

Multi-document summarization is useful when a user deals with a group of heterogeneous documents and wants to compile the important information present in the collection, or there is a group of homogeneous documents, taken out from a large corpus as a result of a query. We present an approach to automatic multi-document summarization that depends on clustering and sentence extraction. User provides a query, based on the query; documents that are relevant to the query are extracted from a document corpus containing documents from various domains. An n × n similarity matrix is created among the sentences having sentence level similarity in all extracted documents. Then clusters of similar sentences are formed using Markov clustering algorithm. In each cluster, each sentence is assigned five different weights 1. Chronological weight of sentence (Document level) 2. Position weight of sentence (position of sentence in the document) 3. Sentence weight (based on term weight) 4. Aspect based weight (sentence containing aspect words) and 5. Synonymy and Hyponym Weight. Then top ranked sentences having highest weight are extracted from each cluster and presented to user.
Human Segmentation in a Complex Situation Based on Properties of the Human Visual System

Segmenting multiple humans is a challenging problem in complex situation. This paper proposes a human segmentation method by fusing motion, colour and stereo cues. Making use of the psychophysical and neurophysiological conclusions about human recognition, the algorithm mimics the mechanism of HSV to human segmentation. In simple situation, it can segment the human body by using colour and motion cues. In complex situation, especially people overlapping in the image because of the 3D scene projection onto 2D image plane, the difference frames can not segment each object. We add the depth cue to segment the overlapping object. Experimental results prove the algorithm works robustly, adaptively and efficiently
Neural basis of visual deficits recovery: visual residual functions and multisensory integration.

The ability of integrating into a unified percept sensory inputs deriving from different sensory modalities, but related to the same external event, is called multisensory integration and might represent an efficient mechanism of sensory compensation when a sensory modality is damaged by a cortical lesion. This hypothesis has been discussed in the present dissertation. Experiment 1 explored the role of superior colliculus (SC) in multisensory integration, testing patients with collicular lesions, patients with subcortical lesions not involving the SC and healthy control subjects in a multisensory task. The results revealed that patients with collicular lesions, paralleling the evidence of animal studies, demonstrated a loss of multisensory enhancement, in contrast with control subjects, providing the first lesional evidence in humans of the essential role of SC in mediating audio-visual integration. Experiment 2 investigated the role of cortex in mediating multisensory integrative effects, inducing virtual lesions by inhibitory theta-burst stimulation on temporo-parietal cortex, occipital cortex and posterior parietal cortex, demonstrating that only temporo-parietal cortex was causally involved in modulating the integration of audio-visual stimuli at the same spatial location. Given the involvement of the retino-colliculo-extrastriate pathway in mediating audio-visual integration, the functional sparing of this circuit in hemianopic patients is extremely relevant in the perspective of a multisensory-based approach to the recovery of unisensory defects. Experiment 3 demonstrated the spared functional activity of this circuit in a group of hemianopic patients, revealing the presence of implicit recognition of the fearful content of unseen visual stimuli (i.e. affective blindsight), an ability mediated by the retino-colliculo-extrastriate pathway and its connections with amygdala. Finally, Experiment 4 provided evidence that a systematic audio-visual stimulation is effective in inducing long-lasting clinical improvements in patients with visual field defect and revealed that the activity of the spared retino-colliculo-extrastriate pathway is responsible of the observed clinical amelioration, as suggested by the greater improvement observed in patients with cortical lesions limited to the occipital cortex, compared to patients with lesions extending to other cortical areas, found in tasks high demanding in terms of spatial orienting. Overall, the present results indicated that multisensory integration is mediated by the retino-colliculo-extrastriate pathway and that a systematic audio-visual stimulation, activating this spared neural circuit, is able to affect orientation towards the blind field in hemianopic patients and, therefore, might constitute an effective and innovative approach for the rehabilitation of unisensory visual impairments.
Isolation of a lipid a bound polypeptide responsible for “LPS- initiated” mitogenesis of C3H/HeJ spleen cells

The experiments by Sultzer and Nilsson (1), and later by Watson and Riblet (2), established that spleen cells from the C3H/HeJ strain of mouse were refractory to the mitogenic effects of bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS). More recently, however, experiments from our laboratory (3) demonstrated that spleen cells from C3H/HeJ mice were in fact responsive to some preparations of LPS but not to others, and that the method of extraction played a critical role in determining activity. In particular, preparations of LPS prepared by extraction with aqueous butanol had potent mitogenic activity. Our data showed that the mitogenic activity of such positive preparations of LPS coisolated with the LPS during gel filtration chromatography and subsequent equilibrium banding on CsCl. In addition, lipid A isolated from positive preparations of LPS was also capable of stimulating C3H/HeJ spleen cells. Taken together, these experiments provided rather convincing data that it was the LPS (in particular the lipid A) itself, or some contaminant very tightly bound to the lipid A, which was responsible for its biological activity. We further demonstrated that treatment of positive preparations of LPS with hot phenol rendered such preparations nonmitogenic for C3H/HeJ spleens, yet activity for other strains was only moderately decreased. These experiments would suggest either that the phenol treatment chemically alters the lipid A region of the LPS molecule or that such treatment removes the putative tightly bound contaminant responsible for C3H/HeJ mitogenesis. In the experiments reported here, we have explored in greater detail the role of lipid A in the stimulation of C3H/HeJ spleen cells. For these experiments we have utilized our earlier observations that the antibiotic polymyxin B forms a highly stable molecular complex with the lipid A region of LPS (4), and that such polymyxin B-LPS complexes are unable to mitogenically stimulate B lymphocytes (5). In addition, we have attempted to distinguish between the two potential modes of action of phenol on LPS, namely, the chemical alteration of the lipid A or the removal of a tightly bound contaminant by phenol treatment. The results of the experiments we report here support the interpretation that mitogenic activity of positive preparations of LPS is associated with a low mol wt phenol soluble polypeptide of approximately 10,000 mol wt. After partial purification, this polypeptide intitiates a significant mitogenic response at concentrations as low as 10 μg/ml. We conclude that the C3H/HeJ strain of mouse is a true nonresponder to the stimulatory effects of the lipid A region of LPS.