Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-Throughput Sequencing of Small RNAs from Pollen and Silk and Characterization of miRNAs as Candidate Factors Involved in Pollen-Silk Interactions in Maize

In angiosperms, successful pollen-pistil interactions are the prerequisite and guarantee of subsequent fertilization and seed production. Recent profile analyses have helped elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying these processes at both transcriptomic and proteomic levels, but the involvement of miRNAs in pollen-pistil interactions is still speculative. In this study, we sequenced four small RNA libraries derived from mature pollen, in vitro germinated pollen, mature silks, and pollinated silks of maize (Zea mays L.). We identified 161 known miRNAs belonging to 27 families and 82 novel miRNAs. Of these, 40 conserved and 16 novel miRNAs showed different expression levels between mature and germinated pollen, and 30 conserved and eight novel miRNAs were differentially expressed between mature and pollinated silks. As candidates for factors associated with pollen-silk (pistil) interactions, expression patterns of the two sets of differentially expressed miRNAs were confirmed by stem-loop real-time RT-PCR. Transcript levels of 22 predicted target genes were also validated using real-time RT-PCR; most of these exhibited expression patterns contrasting with those of their corresponding miRNAs. In addition, GO analysis of target genes of differentially expressed miRNAs revealed that functional categories related to auxin signal transduction and gene expression regulation were overrepresented. These results suggest that miRNA-mediated auxin signal transduction and transcriptional regulation have roles in pollen-silk interactions. The results of our study provide novel information for understanding miRNA regulatory roles in pollen-pistil interactions.
Extractive Text Summarization Using Word Vector Embedding

These days, text summarization is an active research field to identify the relevant information from large documents produced in various domains such as finance, news media, academics, politics, etc. Text summarization is the process of shortening the documents by preserving the important contents of the text. This can be achieved through extractive and abstractive summarization. In this paper, we have proposed an approach to extract a good set of features followed by neural network for supervised extractive summarization. Our experimental results on Document Understanding Conferences 2002 dataset show the effectiveness of the proposed method against various online extractive text summarizers.
Application of an Effective Statistical Technique for an Accurate and Powerful Mining of Quantitative Trait Loci for Rice Aroma Trait

When a phenotype of interest is associated with an external/internal covariate, covariate inclusion in quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses can diminish residual variation and subsequently enhance the ability of QTL detection. In the in vitro synthesis of 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (2AP), the main fragrance compound in rice, the thermal processing during the Maillard-type reaction between proline and carbohydrate reduction produces a roasted, popcorn-like aroma. Hence, for the first time, we included the proline amino acid, an important precursor of 2AP, as a covariate in our QTL mapping analyses to precisely explore the genetic factors affecting natural variation for rice scent. Consequently, two QTLs were traced on chromosomes 4 and 8. They explained from 20% to 49% of the total aroma phenotypic variance. Additionally, by saturating the interval harboring the major QTL using gene-based primers, a putative allele of fgr (major genetic determinant of fragrance) was mapped in the QTL on the 8th chromosome in the interval RM223-SCU015RM (1.63 cM). These loci supported previous studies of different accessions. Such QTLs can be widely used by breeders in crop improvement programs and for further fine mapping. Moreover, no previous studies and findings were found on simultaneous assessment of the relationship among 2AP, proline and fragrance QTLs. Therefore, our findings can help further our understanding of the metabolomic and genetic basis of 2AP biosynthesis in aromatic rice.
A novel mechanism causing imbalance of mitochondrial fusion and fission in human myopathies

Abstract Mitochondrial dynamics play an important role in cellular homeostasis and a variety of human diseases are linked to its dysregulated function. Here, we describe a 15-year-old boy with a novel disease caused by altered mitochondrial dynamics. The patient was the second child of consanguineous Jewish parents. He developed progressive muscle weakness and exercise intolerance at 6 years of age. His muscle biopsy revealed mitochondrial myopathy with numerous ragged red and cytochrome c oxidase (COX) negative fibers and combined respiratory chain complex I and IV deficiency. MtDNA copy number was elevated and no deletions of the mtDNA were detected in muscle DNA. Whole exome sequencing identified a homozygous nonsense mutation (p.Q92*) in the MIEF2 gene encoding the mitochondrial dynamics protein of 49 kDa (MID49). Immunoblotting revealed increased levels of proteins promoting mitochondrial fusion (MFN2, OPA1) and decreased levels of the fission protein DRP1. Fibroblasts of the patient showed elongated mitochondria, and significantly higher frequency of fusion events, mtDNA abundance and aberrant mitochondrial cristae ultrastructure, compared with controls. Thus, our data suggest that mutations in MIEF2 result in imbalanced mitochondrial dynamics and a combined respiratory chain enzyme defect in skeletal muscle, leading to mitochondrial myopathy.
Informative Patterns of Health-Care Utilization Prior to the Diagnosis of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

Early-detection tests for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) are needed. Since a hypothetical screening test would be applied during antecedent clinical encounters, we sought to define the variability in health-care utilization leading up to PDAC diagnosis. This was a retrospective cohort study that included patients diagnosed with PDAC in the Indianapolis, Indiana, area between 1999 and 2013 with at least 1 health-care encounter during the antecedent 36-month period (n = 1,023). Patients were classified by unique patterns of health-care utilization using a group-based trajectory model. The prevalences of PDAC signals, such as diabetes mellitus (DM) and chronic pancreatitis, were compared. Four distinct trajectories were identified, the most common (42.0%) being having few clinical encounters more than 6 months prior to PDAC diagnosis (late acceleration). In all cases, a minority of persons had DM (30.6%, with 9.5% <1.5 years before PDAC) or any pancreatic disorder (39.9%); these were least common in the late-acceleration group (DM, 14.7%; any pancreatic disorder, 32.1% (P < 0.001)). The most common pattern of antecedent care was having few clinical encounters until shortly before PDAC diagnosis. Since the majority of patients diagnosed with PDAC do not have an antecedent PDAC signal, early-detection strategies limited to these groups may not apply to the majority of cases.
History of Depression and Frontostriatal Connectivity During Reward Processing in Late Adolescent Boys

Given that depression in men is associated with risk for seriously adverse consequences, evaluating how putative neural mechanisms of depression—such as reward-related frontostriatal connectivity—may be altered in late adolescent boys with a history of depression is an important research aim. Adolescents and adults with depression have been demonstrated to show blunted striatal response and heightened medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activation to winning reward. Function in reward circuits appears to be best understood as coordination of regions within frontostriatal circuitry, and alterations to this circuitry could occur in those with a history of depression. The current study evaluated functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and mPFC in a sample of 166 ethnically diverse boys with and without a history of depression. Participants completed an fMRI monetary reward paradigm at age 20. Lifetime history of depression and other psychiatric illnesses was measured prospectively and longitudinally, using structured clinical interviews at 7 time points from ages 8 to 20. Boys with a history of depression showed heightened positive connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and the mPFC relative to boys with no psychiatric history when winning rewards relative to losing rewards. This altered frontostriatal connectivity pattern was also associated with greater number of depressive episodes in the boys’ lifetime. History of depression in late adolescent boys may be associated with altered coordination between the nucleus accumbens and mPFC when winning reward. This coordination could reflect oversignaling of the mPFC to dampen typical ventral striatum response or enhance weak ventral striatum response.
Mechanical characteristics of hipped SiC particulate-reinforced aluminum alloy metal matrix composites

Al-Cu alloy matrix composites reinforced with various volume fraction of SiC particulates (SiCp) were prepared by conventional powder metallurgy (PM) and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) processes. The tensile and fracture behavior of PM and HIPPed composites were studied. The experimental results were compared with the shear-lag, Eshelby and modified Eshelby micro-mechanics models. The composite stiffness tends to increase with increasing SiCp volume fraction. The modified Eshelby model correlated well with the experimental results whereas the stiffness prediction of shear-lag model was lower than the experimental data. The fracture stresses of PM and HIPPed metal matrix composites decrease with increasing SiCp volume fraction. This was attribute to the cracking of SiCp upon tensile deformation.
RF Photonics: An Optical Microcombs’ Perspective

Over the past decade, optical frequency combs generated by high-Q microresonators, or optical microcombs, which feature compact device footprints, low power consumption, and high repetition rates in broad optical bandwidths, have led to a revolution in a wide range of fields including metrology, telecommunications, radio frequency (RF) photonics, spectroscopy, sensing, and quantum optics. Among these, an application that has attracted great interest is the use of optical microcombs for RF photonics, where they offer enhanced functionalities as well as reduced size and power consumption over other approaches. This paper reviews the recent advances in this emerging field. We provide an overview of the main achievements that have been obtained to date, and highlight the strong potential of optical microcombs for RF photonics applications. We also discuss some of the open challenges and limitations that need to be addressed for practical applications.
Enhanced Independent Pole Control of Hybrid MMC-HVdc System

This paper presents an enhanced independent pole control scheme for hybrid modular multilevel converter based on a full-bridge submodule and half-bridge submodule. A detailed analysis of the power distribution between upper and lower arms under asymmetrical dc pole voltages is presented. It is found that the fundamental ac currents in the upper and lower arms are asymmetrical. To enable operation under asymmetrical dc pole voltages, an enhanced independent pole control scheme is proposed. The controller is composed of two dc control loops, two ac control loops, and circulating current suppression control based on current injection. Six modulation indices are presented to independently control the upper and lower arms. With this controller, the dc voltage operating region is significantly extended. To ride through a pole-to-ground dc fault without bringing dc bias at the neutral point of the interface transformer, a pole-to-ground dc fault ride through strategy is proposed. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme are verified by simulation results using PSCAD/EMTDC.
Personality predicting model based on user's linguistic behavior

Psychological studies have shown that the personality can affect the way on writing or talking. However, designing an effective model is a challenging task. The paper presents a personality analysis model to analyze the personality for micro-bloggers'. The model is based on the big-five model, and the evaluated dataset is collected by crawling micro-blog posts. KNN is used to verify the performance. The experimental results show the validity of the present model. Existing problems and further works are also presented in the end.
Dynamic Changes in Interfacial Tension between Liquid Fe Alloy and Molten Slag Induced by Chemical Reactions

: The authors investigated the change in the interfacial tension with time for various combinations of molten slag and liquid Fe to elucidate the mechanism of the change in interfacial tension between liquid Fe alloy and molten slag over time accompanying reduction/oxidation reactions. The behavior of the change in the interfacial tension over time can be explained by the adsorption of oxygen at the interface and the diffusion of oxygen from the interface into the bulk of the liquid Fe and molten slag. In addition to that, we found that the interfacial tension decreases slowly and greatly from its initial value to a minimum point and then increases slowly to the final equi-librium state when molten silicate slag with low viscosity is brought into contact with liquid Fe without Al content and some of its SiO 2 decomposes and dissolves into the liquid Fe. we sug-gest that the detachment of oxygen adsorbed at the interface into the liquid Fe is very slow and may be the rate-limiting step.
An Inverse Finite Element Approach to Calculate Full-Field Forming Strains

A methodology to calculate surface strains from a rectangular grid placed on a forming blank is introduced. This method consists of treating the grid points as nodes of a finite element (FE) model and assigning elements to the grid. The strains are then computed following FE analysis. If higher order elements are used, also more information within the element can be obtained which allows a coarser grid without loss of accuracy. This is the major advantage of the approach presented herein.
Adaptive pixel defect correction

Although the number of pixels in image sensors is increasing exponentially, production techniques have only been able to linearly reduce the probability that a pixel will be defective. The result is a rapidly increasing probability that a sensor will contain one or more defective pixels. Sensors with defects are often discarded after fabrication because they may not produce aesthetically pleasing images. To reduce the cost of image sensor production, defect correction algorithms are needed that allow the utilization of sensors with bad pixels. We present a relatively simple defect correction algorithm, requiring only a small 7 by 7 kernel of raw color filter array data that effectively corrects a wide variety of defect types. Our adaptive edge algorithm is high quality, uses few image lines, is adaptable to a variety of defect types, and independent of other on-board DSP algorithms. Results show that the algorithm produces substantially better results in high-frequency image regions compared to conventional one-dimensional correction methods.
Acoustic Echo Control with Frequency-Domain Stage-Wise Regression

This letter introduces frequency domain stage-wise regression to acoustic echo control. By approximating the echo path as concatenate short segments in frequency domain, simple regression in the frequency domain can be carried out to estimate the echo contributed by consecutive far-end signal blocks stage by stage. A non-stationarity controlled smoothing factor is proposed alongside the regression procedure to mitigate the increasing variance of estimation when no significant echo but only near-end background noise is present. Experiments are carried out to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach, especially in unstable environment.
In Vivo Imaging of Quantum Dots Encapsulated in Phospholipid Micelles

Fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) have the potential to revolutionize biological imaging, but their use has been limited by difficulties in obtaining nanocrystals that are biocompatible. To address this problem, we encapsulated individual nanocrystals in phospholipid block–copolymer micelles and demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo imaging. When conjugated to DNA, the nanocrystal-micelles acted as in vitro fluorescent probes to hybridize to specific complementary sequences. Moreover, when injected into Xenopus embryos, the nanocrystal-micelles were stable, nontoxic (<5 × 109 nanocrystals per cell), cell autonomous, and slow to photobleach. Nanocrystal fluorescence could be followed to the tadpole stage, allowing lineage-tracing experiments in embryogenesis.
Response of Cracked Cantilever Beam Subjected to Traversing Mass

The present work emphasizes the dynamic response of double cracked cantilever beam subjected to a traversing mass. The cracks are located at different positions of the beam with random crack depths. The response of the damaged structure has been evaluated employing a numerical procedure of Runge-Kuuta method. The effects of crack depth, traversing mass, traversing speed and crack location on the response of the structure are studied. Finite element analysis (FEA) using the commercial ANSYS 15 has been presented to validate the adopted numerical method.Copyright © 2015 by ASME
OF CONTENTS ( TOC ) Deriving Three-Dimensional Structure of ZnO Nanowires / nanobelts by STEM

Characterizing the three‐dimensional (3D) shape of a nanostructure by conventional imaging techniques in scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy can be limited or complexed by various factors, such as 2D projection, diffraction contrast and unsure orientation of the nanostructure with respect to the electron beam direction. In this paper, in conjunction with electron diffraction and imaging, the 3D morphologies of ZnO nanowires and nanobelts synthesized via vapor deposition approach were reconstructed by electron tomography in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). The cross‐sections of these one‐dimensional nanostructures include triangle, hexagonal, and rectangle shapes. Combined the reconstructed shape with the crystalline information supplied by electron diffraction patterns recorded from the same nanowire/nanobelt, the growth direction and its exposed surfaces were uniquely identified. Totally three different growth directions were confirmed. These directions are <0001>, <2 0> and <2 3>, corresponding to <001>, <100> and <101> orientations in three‐index notation. The <0001> growth nanowires show triangle or hexagonal cross‐sections, with exposed {01 0} side surfaces. The dominant surfaces of the <2 > growth nanobelt are ± (0001) planes. Both hexagonal and rectangle cross‐sections were observed in the <2 3> growth ZnO nanostructures. Their surfaces include {01 0}, { 101} and { 112} planes. The nanobelts with a large aspect ratio ~ 10 normally grow along <2 0> direction, while nanobelts with small aspect ratio are along <2 3> growth direction. The approach and methodology demonstrated here can be extended to any nanostructures that can be crystalline, polycrystalline or even amorphous.
Optimization of energy harvesting based on the uniform deformation of piezoelectric ceramic

Since the piezoelectric properties were used for energy harvesting, almost all forms of energy harvester needs to be bonded with a mass block to achieve pre-stress. In this article, disc type piezoelectric energy harvester is chosen as the research object and the relationship between mass bonding area and power output is studied. It is found that if the bonding area is changed as curved, which is usually complanate in previous studies, the deformation of the circular piezoelectric ceramic is more uniform and the power output is enhanced. In order to test the change of the deformation, we spray several homocentric annular electrodes on the surface of a piece of bare piezoelectric ceramic and the output of each electrode is tested. Through this optimization method, the power output is enhanced to more than 11mW for a matching load about 24kΩ and a tip mass of 30g at its resonant frequency of 139Hz.
Exercise training characteristics in cardiac rehabilitation programmes: a cross-sectional survey of Australian practice

Introduction Exercise training is a core component of cardiac rehabilitation (CR), however, little information exists regarding the specific exercise interventions currently provided for coronary heart disease in Australian practice. We aimed to analyse the current status of exercise-based CR services across Australia. Design Cross-sectional survey. Methods Australian sites offering exercise-based CR were identified from publically available directories. All sites were invited by email to participate in an online Survey Monkey questionnaire between October 2014 and March 2015, with reminders via email and phone follow-up. Questions investigated the demographics and format of individual programmes, as well as specific exercise training characteristics. Results 297 eligible programmes were identified, with an 82% response rate. Most sites (82%) were based at hospital or outpatient centres, with home (15%), community (18%) or gym-based options (5%) less common. While CR was most often offered in a comprehensive format (72% of sites), the level of exercise intervention varied greatly among programmes. Most frequently, exercise was prescribed 1–2 times per week for 60 min over 7 weeks. Almost one-quarter (24%) had a sole practitioner supervising exercise, although the majority used a nurse/physiotherapist combination. Low to moderate exercise intensities were used in 60% of programmes, however, higher intensity prescriptions were not uncommon. Few sites (<6%) made use of technology, such as mobile phones or the internet, to deliver or support exercise training. Conclusions While advances have been made towards providing flexible and accessible exercise-based CR, much of Australia's service remains within traditional models of care. A continuing focus on service improvement and evidence-based care should, therefore, be considered a core aim of those providing exercise for CR in order to improve health service delivery and optimise outcomes for patients.
SIT: A Lightweight Encryption Algorithm for Secure Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) being a promising technology of the future is expected to connect billions of devices. The increased number of communication is expected to generate mountains of data and the security of data can be a threat. The devices in the architecture are essentially smaller in size and low powered. Conventional encryption algorithms are generally computationally expensive due to their complexity and requires many rounds to encrypt, essentially wasting the constrained energy of the gadgets. Less complex algorithm, however, may compromise the desired integrity. In this paper we propose a lightweight encryption algorithm named as Secure IoT (SIT). It is a 64-bit block cipher and requires 64-bit key to encrypt the data. The architecture of the algorithm is a mixture of feistel and a uniform substitution-permutation network. Simulations result shows the algorithm provides substantial security in just five encryption rounds. The hardware implementation of the algorithm is done on a low cost 8-bit micro-controller and the results of code size, memory utilization and encryption/decryption execution cycles are compared with benchmark encryption algo-rithms. The MATLAB code for relevant simulations is available online at https://goo.gl/Uw7E0W.