Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long time-course monitoring of ZFP809-mediated gene silencing in transgene expression driven by promoters containing MLV-derived PBS

Expression of Moloney murine leukemia virus (MoMLV)-typed retroviral vectors is strictly suppressed in immature cells such as embryonic stem cells. The phenomenon known as gene silencing is primed by the sequence-specific binding of the zinc finger protein 809 (ZFP809) to the primer-binding site of the vectors. However, it has yet to be determined whether the ZFP809-mediated gene silencing is maintained over a long period. In this study, we established an experimental system that can monitor gene silencing during a long-term cell culture using flow cytometry technology combined with fluorescent reporters for the expression of ZFP809 and the transgene expression driven by the promoters of interest. Time-course analysis using our system revealed that ZFP809 maintains gene silencing effect even at a longtime period. Furthermore, our system was useful for the monitoring of ZFP809-mediated gene silencing regardless of the types of vectors and cell lines. Graphical abstract Time-course monitoring of gene silencing
Risk of follicular lymphoma associated with BCL2 translocations in peripheral blood

Many adults have circulating lymphocytes with the BCL2 gene translocation characteristic of follicular lymphoma. We therefore conducted a nested case–control study of incident lymphomas with peripheral blood obtained a median 4.9 years pre-diagnosis from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. Overall, 13 of 26 cases of lymphoma and 14 of 47 controls had BCL2 major breakpoint region (MBR) translocations in pre-diagnosis blood (odds ratio [OR] = 2.8). Nine cases had BCL2-MBR-positive tumors; eight of these nine had BCL2-MBR translocations in paired blood versus five of the 17 with BCL2-MBR-negative tumors (p = 0.01). Comparing both tumor types to controls, blood BCL2-MBR translocations had a strong, statistically significant association with BCL2-MBR-positive tumors (OR = 26), but not with BCL2-MBR-negative tumors (OR = 0.9). All eight BCL2-MBR-positive tumors with pre-diagnosis BCL2 translocations were clonally related to these circulating cells, based on similarity of recombination sequences. These data indicate that blood BCL2-MBR translocations represent lymphoma precursor clones with malignant potential.
Is There a Future for Deductive Temporal Verification?

In this paper, we consider a tractable sub-class of propositional linear time temporal logic, and provide a complete clausal resolution calculus for it. The fragment is important as it can be used to represent simple Buchi automata. We also show that, just as the emptiness check for a Buchi automaton is tractable, the complexity of deciding unsatisfiability, via resolution, of our logic is polynomial (rather than exponential). Consequently, a Buchi automaton can be represented within our logic, and its emptiness can be tractably decided via deductive methods. This may have a significant impact upon approaches to verification, since techniques such as model checking inherently depend on the ability to check emptiness of an appropriate Buchi automaton. Thus, we also discuss how such a logic might form the basis for practical deductive temporal verification
ThermSense: Smartphone-based breathing sensing platform using noncontact low-cost thermal camera

The ability of sensing breathing Is becoming an increasingly important function for technology that aims at supporting both psychological and physical wellbeing. We demonstrate ThermSense, a new breathing sensing platform based on smartphone technology and low-cost thermal camera, which allows a user to measure his/her breathing pattern in a contact-free manner. With the designed key functions of Thermal Voxel Integration-based breathing estimation and respiration variability spectrogram (RVS, bi-dimensional representation of breathing dynamics), the developed platform provides scalability and flexibility for gathering respiratory physiological measurements ubiquitously. The functionality could be used for a variety of applications from stress monitoring to respiration training.
Retina The Role of ERK 1 / 2 Activation in Sarpogrelate-Mediated Neuroprotection

METHODS. Albino mice were treated intraperitoneally with saline or sarpogrelate, a 5-HT2A antagonist, immediately before light exposure (LE). Following LE, retinas were harvested for a high-throughput phosphorylation microarray to quantify activated phosphorylated proteins in G protein–coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling. To confirm microarray results and define temporal changes, Western blots of select GPCR signaling proteins were performed. Since both methodologies implicated MAPK/ERK activation, the functional significance of sarpogrelate-mediated ERK1/2 activation was examined by inhibition of ERK1/2 phosphorylation via pretreatment with the MEK inhibitor (MEKi) PD0325901. The degree of neuroprotection was evaluated with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) and electroretinography (ERG). To determine the effects of sarpogrelate on gene expression, a qPCR array measuring the expression of 84 genes involved in oxidative stress and cell death was performed 48 hours post LE.
Rapid pole climbing with a quadrupedal robot

This paper describes the development of a legged robot designed for general locomotion of complex terrain but specialized for dynamical, high-speed climbing of a uniformly convex cylindrical structure, such as an outdoor telephone pole. This robot, the RiSE V3 climbing machine—mass 5.4 kg, length 70 cm, excluding a 28 cm tail appendage—includes several novel mechanical features, including novel linkage designs for its legs and a non-backdrivable, energy-dense power transmission to enable high-speed climbing. We summarize the robot's design and document a climbing behavior that achieves rapid ascent of a wooden telephone pole at 21 cm/s, a speed previously unachieved—and, we believe, heretofore impossible—with a robot of this scale. The behavioral gait of the robot employs the mechanical design to propel the body forward while passively maintaining yaw, pitch, and roll stability during climbing locomotion. The robot's general-purpose legged design coupled with its specialized ability to quickly gain elevation and park at a vertical station silently with minimal energy consumption suggest potential applications including search and surveillance operations as well as ad hoc networking.
Credibility of Crime Allegations

The lack of hard evidence in allegations about sexual misconduct makes it difficult to separate true allegations from false ones. We provide a model in which victims and potential libelers face the same costs and benefits from making an allegation, but the tendency for perpetrators of sexual misconduct to engage in repeat offenses allows semiseparation to occur, which lends credibility to such allegations. Our model also explains why reports about sexual misconduct are often delayed, and why the public rationally assigns less credibility to these delayed reports. (JEL D82, J16, K14, K42)
Assessment of the effect of narrowband UVB and broadband UVB on mice skin using optical coherence tomography

Ultraviolet B (UVB) has been used in dermatological phototherapy widely. Narrowband UVB (NB-UVB), with a peak at 311nm, is considered more effective than broadband UVB (BB-UVB). However, the safety of NB-UVB is controversial. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), a novel, non-invasive and depth-resolved imaging technology, is a useful tool for detection of the skin structure in vivo. This study assessed the effect of NB-UVB and BB-UVB on the skin using OCT for the first time. In this study, Balb/c mouse model was surveyed by an OCT system with 1310 nm central wavelength. The two UVB sources were applied on mice dorsal skin with equal biological doses. Mice skin were exposed with increasing UVB doses (1MED, 3MEDs and 5MEDs), OCT images of UVB induced skin tissues were obtained 48h later. The experimental results indicated that, the changes of NB-UVB induced skin tissues (increase in stratum corneum, crust formation, increase of penetration depth of the light and erythema/edema response) are similar to that of BB-UVB induced skin tissues at low and moderate UVB doses. However, the skin tissues exposed with 5MEDs NB-UVB suffered from more lesions than BB-UVB induced skin tissues. In conclusion, potential risk should be considered before NB-UVB phototherapy. Optimized treatment times and frequency as well as close clinical monitoring (e.g., using OCT to real-time monitor the lesions) should be taken to reduce the latent risk of NB-UVB phototherapy.
Answering Queries from Statistics and Probabilistic Views

Systems integrating dozens of databases, in the scientific domain or in a large corporation, need to cope with a wide variety of imprecisions, such as: different representations of the same object in different sources; imperfect and noisy schema alignments; contradictory information across sources; constraint violations; or insufficient evidence to answer a given query. If standard query semantics were applied to such data, all but the most trivial queries will return an empty answer.
Axonal endoplasmic reticulum is very narrow

ABSTRACT The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an interconnected network of tubules and sheets. In most tissues of the body, ER tubules have a diameter of ∼60 nm. Using new methods for serial-section electron microscopy, a distinct class of very narrow, 20- to 30-nm-diameter tubules were found in neurons of both the central and peripheral nervous system. The narrow tubules appear to be the most abundant form of ER in axons, and are also found interspersed in the cell bodies and dendrites. At the site of branch points, there is a small sheet that has a similarly narrow lumen. The narrowness of the ER is likely to be important for the as yet poorly characterized functions of the axonal ER. Summary: Using new methods of serial-section electron microscopy, the axonal ER is found to consist of unusually narrow tubules compared with ER tubules in other cells.
Continuous Casting of Titanium Alloy by an Induction Cold Crucible

Titanium alloy was continuously cast by an induction heating making use of a segmented conductive cold crucible. In this process, the electromagnetic coupling between the coil and the metallic change is promoted through the gaps between the segments. A liquid titanium alloy is confined detached from the crucible wall accompanied with the induction heating and the magnetic stirring. The controlled supply of the raw materials and the simultaneous continuous withdrawal of the ingot enabled the stable casting.A technique of casting titanium alloy ingot by the supply of titanium turnings mixed with the alloy elements was demonstrated. This is of great advantage to the increase of titanium alloy species which can be cast. There was neither increase in copper contents nor decrease in volatile elements such as aluminum.Suitable casting parameters resulted in the crack free surface with the unevenness as flat as ±5 μm. For the achievement of good surface quality, the casting velocity is so chosen that the solidification front on the periphery of the ingot is to be adjusted to the point where the melt and the crucible wall meet each other.
Fully automated joint space width measurement and digital X-ray radiogrammetry in early RA

Objectives To study fully automated digital joint space width (JSW) and bone mineral density (BMD) in relation to a conventional radiographic scoring method in early rheumatoid arthritis (eRA). Methods Radiographs scored by the modified Sharp van der Heijde score (SHS) in patients with eRA were acquired from the SWEdish FarmacOTherapy study. Fully automated JSW measurements of bilateral metacarpals 2, 3 and 4 were compared with the joint space narrowing (JSN) score in SHS. Multilevel mixed model statistics were applied to calculate the significance of the association between ΔJSW and ΔBMD over 1 year, and the JSW differences between damaged and undamaged joints as evaluated by the JSN. Results Based on 576 joints of 96 patients with eRA, a significant reduction from baseline to 1 year was observed in the JSW from 1.69 (±0.19) mm to 1.66 (±0.19) mm (p<0.01), and BMD from 0.583 (±0.068) g/cm2 to 0.566 (±0.074) g/cm2 (p<0.01). A significant positive association was observed between ΔJSW and ΔBMD over 1 year (p<0.0001). On an individual joint level, JSWs of undamaged (JSN=0) joints were wider than damaged (JSN>0) joints: 1.68 mm (95% CI 1.70 to 1.67) vs 1.54 mm (95% CI 1.63 to 1.46). Similarly the unadjusted multilevel model showed significant differences in JSW between undamaged (1.68 mm (95% CI 1.72 to 1.64)) and damaged joints (1.63 mm (95% CI 1.68 to 1.58)) (p=0.0048). This difference remained significant in the adjusted model: 1.66 mm (95% CI 1.70 to 1.61) vs 1.62 mm (95% CI 1.68 to 1.56) (p=0.042). Conclusions To measure the JSW with this fully automated digital tool may be useful as a quick and observer-independent application for evaluating cartilage damage in eRA. Trial registration number NCT00764725.
3-D Placement of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Station for Maximum Coverage of Users With Different QoS Requirements

The need for a rapid-to-deploy solution for providing wireless cellular services can be realized by unmanned aerial vehicle base stations (UAV-BSs). To the best of our knowledge, this letter is the first in literature that studies a novel 3-D UAV-BS placement that maximizes the number of covered users with different quality-of-service requirements. We model the placement problem as a multiple circles placement problem and propose an optimal placement algorithm that utilizes an exhaustive search (ES) over a 1-D parameter in a closed region. We also propose a low-complexity algorithm, namely, maximal weighted area (MWA) algorithm to tackle the placement problem. Numerical simulations are presented showing that the MWA algorithm performs very close to the ES algorithm with a significant complexity reduction.
Energy Usage Behavior Modeling in Energy Disaggregation via Hawkes Processes

Energy disaggregation, the task of taking a whole home electricity signal and decomposing it into its component appliances, has been proved to be essential in energy conservation research. One powerful cue for breaking down the entire household’s energy consumption is user’s daily energy usage behavior, which has so far received little attention: existing works on energy disaggregation mostly ignored the relationship between the energy usages of various appliances by householders across different time slots. The major challenge in modeling such a relationship in that, with ambiguous appliance usage membership of householders, we find it difficult to appropriately model the influence between appliances, since such influence is determined by human behaviors in energy usage. To address this problem, we propose to model the influence between householders’ energy usage behaviors directly through a novel probabilistic model, which combines topic models with the Hawkes processes. The proposed model simultaneously disaggregates the whole home electricity signal into each component appliance and infers the appliance usage membership of household members and enables those two tasks to mutually benefit each other. Experimental results on both synthetic data and four real-world data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model, which outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in not only decomposing the entire consumed energy to each appliance in houses but also the inference of household structures. We further analyze the inferred appliance-householder assignment and the corresponding influence within the appliance usage of each householder and across different householders, which provides insight into appealing human behavior patterns in appliance usage.
007: Democratically Finding The Cause of Packet Drops

Network failures continue to plague datacenter operators as their symptoms may not have direct correlation with where or why they occur. We introduce 007, a lightweight, always-on diagnosis application that can find problematic links and also pinpoint problems for each TCP connection. 007 is completely contained within the end host. During its two month deployment in a tier-1 datacenter, it detected every problem found by previously deployed monitoring tools while also finding the sources of other problems previously undetected.
Properties and microstructure of thin LiNbO_3 films prepared by a sol-gel process

Thin LiNbO_3 films were prepared from polymerized sol-gel precursor solutions having various concentrations and water:alkoxide ratios in an effort to investigate the effects of these and other processing variables on the resultant film properties and microstructure. Films deposted on silicon substrates were mostly amorphous when pyrolyzed at 435°C for 30 min. Randomly oriented polycrystalline films having distinctive microstnietures were produced using longer heating times or higher temperatures. All of the films exhibited low refractive indices due to porosity, which was attributed to the low level of hydrolysis water required to produce stable polymeric precursor solutions. When single-crystal LiNbO_4 was used as the substrate, epitaxial growth of the film resulted. This ideal case establishes the feasibility of producing epitaxial films via sol-gel processing. All films were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and thin-film x-ray diffraction patterns.
VisIRR

In this article, we present an interactive visual information retrieval and recommendation system, called VisIRR, for large-scale document discovery. VisIRR effectively combines the paradigms of (1) a passive pull through query processes for retrieval and (2) an active push that recommends items of potential interest to users based on their preferences. Equipped with an efficient dynamic query interface against a large-scale corpus, VisIRR organizes the retrieved documents into high-level topics and visualizes them in a 2D space, representing the relationships among the topics along with their keyword summary. In addition, based on interactive personalized preference feedback with regard to documents, VisIRR provides document recommendations from the entire corpus, which are beyond the retrieved sets. Such recommended documents are visualized in the same space as the retrieved documents, so that users can seamlessly analyze both existing and newly recommended ones. This article presents novel computational methods, which make these integrated representations and fast interactions possible for a large-scale document corpus. We illustrate how the system works by providing detailed usage scenarios. Additionally, we present preliminary user study results for evaluating the effectiveness of the system.
Comparison between ARB and CARB processes on an AA5754/AA6061 composite

The present work aims to compare two processes: Accumulative Roll Bonding and Cross Accumulative Roll Bonding (CARB). Both processes consist in the repetition of rolling but the second technique adds a 90° rotation of the sheet around its normal direction between each rolling. Microstructure, mechanical properties and texture were compared for both processes on an AA5754/AA6061 composite. As a result a thinner and less elongated microstructure was obtained in the CARB process leading to an isotropy and an improvement of the mechanical properties. Besides, the texture was characterized by the rotated Cube component for both processes but for CARB it is of less strength.
Maximal Vector Computation in Large Data Sets

Finding the maximals in a collection of vectors is relevant to many applications. The maximal set is related to the convex hull---and hence, linear optimization---and nearest neighbors. The maximal vector problem has resurfaced with the advent of skyline queries for relational databases and skyline algorithms that are external and relationally well behaved.The initial algorithms proposed for maximals are based on divide-and-conquer. These established good average and worst case asymptotic running times, showing it to be O(n) average-case. where n is the number of vectors. However, they are not amenable to externalizing. We prove, furthermore, that their performance is quite bad with respect to the dimensionality, k, of the problem. We demonstrate that the more recent external skyline algorithms are actually better behaved, although they do not have as good an apparent asymptotic complexity. We introduce a new external algorithm, LESS, that combines the best features of these. experimentally evaluate its effectiveness and improvement over the field, and prove its average-case running time is O(kn).
Serum vitamin D profile of Nigerian children with asthma: Association with asthma severity and control

Childhood asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disorder with increasing prevalence even in Africa. Vitamin D, with anti‐inflammatory and immune‐modulatory properties, may have effects on the severity and level of symptoms control in childhood asthma. We aimed to assess the serum vitamin D levels in children with asthma as related to disease severity and control in a tropical region.
Planning and processing of measurements in a waveguide aimed at determination of permittivity of dielectric inclusion

The methods are developed for reconstructing permittivity of the inclusion in a rectangular waveguide with perfectly conducting walls by comparing the results of multifrequency measurements of the principal waveguide mode transmission coefficient with the data obtained from numerical solution to Maxwell's equations. Optimal schemes for experimentation and processing of the obtained data are proposed on the basis of comparison of experimental data with closed-form solutions for cases of empty waveguide and the waveguide containing a uniform diaphragm.
Immediate effects of monochromatic infrared energy on microcirculation in healthy subjects.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of monochromatic infrared energy (MIRE) on the microcirculation of the skin surface of the feet in healthy subjects. BACKGROUND DATA Near-infrared energy was shown to increase microcirculation in an animal study. In humans, only one case study demonstrated that MIRE increases microcirculation in the skin of the lower limbs. METHODS Thirty healthy volunteers were recruited and randomly allocated into three groups to receive either: (1) active MIRE; (2) sham MIRE (placebo group); or (3) warm packs (control group) on the feet. The MIRE device comprised an array of 60 x 890 nm LEDs attached to flexible pads (3×7.5 cm). Each diode spot size was 0.2 cm(2), and each LED power was 12 mW with a power density of 60 mW/cm(2). The arrays were placed in direct contact with the skin for 30 min delivering a total fluence of 108 J/cm(2) over an area of 22.5 cm(2). Capillary blood cell velocity (CBV) and superficial skin blood flow (flux) were recorded before and after intervention. RESULTS Significant differences among the three groups were recorded in both CBV and flux (both p<0.05). Post-hoc comparisons indicated that a significantly greater increase in both CBV and flux occurred in the active MIRE group than in the placebo group and control group (all p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS A 30-min MIRE produced a significantly greater increase in the CBV and flux of the feet in the active MIRE group than in the placebo and control groups.