Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thermally induced changes in lipid composition of raft and non-raft regions of hepatocyte plasma membranes of rainbow trout

SUMMARY In poikilotherms, increases in plasma membrane (PM) cholesterol and an increase in the degree of lipid acyl chain saturation commonly accompany an increase in growth temperature. This has typically been interpreted in terms of membrane fluidity/order homeostasis, but these changes would also be expected to stabilize the structure of PM rafts against thermal perturbation. Rafts are microdomains that organize the molecules of many signaling cascades and are formed as a result of interactions between lipids with saturated acyl chains and cholesterol. No study to date has examined the thermally induced compositional changes of raft and non-raft regions of the PM separately. In this study we have measured the phospholipid class composition and fatty acid composition of raft-enriched (raft) and raft-depleted PM (RDPM) of hepatocytes from trout Oncorhynchus mykiss acclimated to 5°C and 20°C. In the raft, warm acclimation was associated with a reduction in the proportion of phosphatidylcholine from 56% to 30% while phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylinositol each increased from 8% to approximately 20% of the total phospholipid. Additionally, there were significantly fewer unsaturated fatty acids in the raft lipids from warm-acclimated (61%) than from the cold-acclimated trout (68%). In contrast, there were no significant changes in phospholipid class or acyl chain unsaturation in the RDPM. These data suggest that changes in raft lipid composition, rather than the PM as a whole, are particularly important during thermal acclimation.
Two Novel Techniques for Space Compaction on Biological Sequences

The number and size of genomic databases have grown rapidly the last years. Consequently, the number of Internet-accessible databases has been rapidly growing . Therefore there is a need for satisfactory methods for managing this growing information. A lot of effort has been put to this direction. Contributing to this effort this paper presents two algorithms which can eliminate the amount of space for storing genomic information. Our first algorithm is based on the classic n-grams/2L technique for indexing a DNA sequence and it can convert the Inverted Index of this classic algorithm to a more compressed format. Researchers have revealed the existence of repeated and palindrome patterns in DNA of living organisms. The main motivation of this technique is based on this remark and proposes an alternative data structure for handling these sequences. Our experimental results show that our algorithm can achieve a more efficient index than the n-grams/2L algorithm and can be adapted by any algorithm that is based to n-grams/2L The second algorithm is based on the ngrams technique. Perceiving the four symbols of DNA alphabet as vertex of a square scheme imprint a DNA sequence as a relation between vertices, sides and diagonals of a square. The experimental results shows that this second idea succeed even more successfully compression of our index structure.
Inhibitory effects of 2,3,5,4′-tetrahydroxystilbene-2-O-β-d-glucoside on experimental inflammation and cyclooxygenase 2 activity

The inhibitory effects of 2,3,5,4′-tetrahydroxystilbene-2-O-β-d-glucoside (THSG), extracted from the roots of Polygonum multiflorum Thunb, on inflammatory activity in animal models and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) activity in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced mouse RAW264.7 macrophage cells were investigated. The carrageenin (CGN)-induced rat paw oedema model and dimethylbenzene-induced mouse ear oedema model were prepared; MTT assay, semi-quantitative RT-PCR, Western blot and ELISA were adopted. THSG 2.3, 4.6 and 9.2 mg kg− 1 by oral administration inhibited mouse ear oedema and the percentage of inhibition of THSG 9.2 mg kg− 1 is 87%. THSG 3.2, 6.4 and 12.8 mg kg− 1 by oral administration dose-dependently inhibited rat paw oedema and the percentage of inhibition of THSG 12.8 mg kg− 1 is 56% at 6 h. Indomethacin 13 and 9 mg kg− 1 showed 90% and 57% inhibition in the same animal models, respectively. LPS 1 μg ml− 1 significantly up-regulated prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) production (inducing COX-2 activity) by 35% (exogenous arachidonic acid, AA), which was dose-dependently decreased by THSG 1, 10, and 100 μmol L− 1 and the percentage of inhibition of THSG 10 μmol L− 1 was 40%. NS-398 10 μmol L− 1 decreased PGE2 production by 42%. THSG 1, 10, 100 μmol L− 1 was shown to markedly inhibit the LPS-induced COX-2 protein and mRNA expression in RAW264.7 cells (P < 0.05) but had no effect on COX-1 protein and mRNA (P>0.05). In summary, the data showed that THSG possessed an anti-inflammatory effect, which was perhaps related to the inhibition of COX-2 enzyme activity and expression in RAW264.7 macrophage cells.
Asymmetric subarray structure design for mmWave LoS MIMO communication systems

In this paper, a millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel with asymmetric subarray structures in the line of sight (LoS) scenario is considered. The concept of effective degrees of freedom (EDoF) is introduced to measure the maximum spatial multiplexing gain available for the MIMO system. A criterion based on the maximized EDoF is given out for the design of antenna deployments. A specific analytic relation between the parameters of antenna configuration and transmission distance is further obtained for codebook based phase shifters. Compared to previous structures, the asymmetric subarray structure can provide both array gains and spatial multiplexing gains and is beneficial for making a tradeoff between multiplexing gains and diversity gains. At the same time, the upper and lower bounds of the EDoF are also estimated under extreme cases. Based on the Ricean fading channel model, the sensitivity of our system is studied by taking more realistic deployments and propagation conditions into consideration. The simulation results indicate that the optimally designed structure is robust to the geometrical change and misplacement and thus it is a feasible solution for mmWave LoS MIMO applications.
Using unified parallel C to parallelize the FDTD method of computational electrodynamics

This paper discusses a parallel implementation of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method using Unified Parallel C (UPC). UPC is an extension of ANSI C — primarily designed for programming distributed memory parallel hardware. The FDTD method is a powerful and widely used numerical technique in computational electromagnetics community. It is a resource — CPU cycles and memory — hungry technique. Consequently, a parallel implementation is highly desirable to decrease time-to-solution and be able to study larger problems with limited resources. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to exploit UPC to parallelize the FDTD method. We evaluate the performance of our implementation on a cluster of four SunFire v890 compute nodes — each equipped with 16 processing cores — and report impressive speedups.
Comparative performance analysis of multiplexer based single precision floating point multipliers

Floating-point arithmetic plays major role in computer systems. The single precision floating point arithmetic operations are multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. Among all these multiplication is extensively used and involves composite arithmetic functions. The single precision (32-bit) floating point number split into three parts namely Sign part, and Exponent part and Mantissa part. The most significant bit of the number is a sign bit and it is a 1-bit length. Next 8-bits represent the exponent part of the number and next 23-bits represent the mantissa part of the number. Mantissa part needs large 24-bit multiplication. The performance of the single-precision floating point number mostly based on the occupied area and delay of the multiplier. In this paper, performance comparison of multiplexer based single precision floating point multiplication using Array, Wallace tree and Vedic multipliers is done in terms of area and delay. These floating point multipliers modules are programmed and synthesized using Verilog in Xilinx ISE Simulator. Maximum propagated path delay and number of slices required on FPGA are compared for different multipliers. From the result it is concluded that Multiplexer based Vedic multiplier method has a great impact on improving the speed and reducing the area required on FPGA.
Awareness on psychosomatic health among adolescent girls of three schools in north Kolkata

Introduction: Psychosomatic health of adolescent girls at crossroads of childhood and mature adulthood, may lead to various health problems in future. Objective: To determine the improvement in the knowledge and attitude on health among adolescent girl students of Kolkata after the health education intervention. Materials and Methods: This ‘Health Education Intervention Study’ was conducted in October and November 2006, in three senior secondary schools of North Kolkata. The Simple Random Sampling Technique was applied to select three schools from the spot map of North Kolkata for this study, and 282 girl students in the adolescent age group of 13 to 19 years were selected from the completed updated list of students from the enrollment registers in these schools. Results: The mean age of the participants was 15.7 years (±1.8 years). This health education intervention showed a significant improvement in their knowledge on adolescent health, in the aspects of sex differences in pubertal spurts, probable causes of health problems during adolescence, physical changes in adolescent boys and girls, and psychological problems of adolescence. A significant improvement in positive attitude was observed, with regard to their opinion on substance abuse in the adolescent period and importance of sex education for adolescents. Conclusion: This study revealed some unknown parts of psychosomatic health among adolescent girls, in this part of India.
Upper and Lower Tight Error Bounds for Feature Omission with an Extension to Context Reduction

In this work, fundamental analytic results in the form of error bounds are presented that quantify the effect of feature omission and selection for pattern classification in general, as well as the effect of context reduction in string classification, like automatic speech recognition, printed/handwritten character recognition, or statistical machine translation. A general simulation framework is introduced that supports discovery and proof of error bounds, which lead to the error bounds presented here. Initially derived tight lower and upper bounds for feature omission are generalized to feature selection, followed by another extension to context reduction of string class priors (aka language models) in string classification. For string classification, the quantitative effect of string class prior context reduction on symbol-level Bayes error is presented. The tightness of the original feature omission bounds seems lost in this case, as further simulations indicate. However, combining both feature omission andcontext reduction, the tightness of the bounds is retained. A central result of this work is the proof of the existence, and the amount of a statistical threshold w.r. t. the introduction of additional features in general pattern classification, or the increase of context in string classification beyond which a decrease in Bayes error is guaranteed.
A contingency management intervention for adolescent marijuana abuse and conduct problems.

OBJECTIVE To describe an innovative treatment for adolescent marijuana abuse and provide initial information about its feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy. METHOD Provided an intervention composed of (1) a clinic-administered, abstinence-based incentive program; (2) parent-directed contingency management targeting substance use and conduct problems; (3) a clinic-administered incentive program for parent participation; and (4) individual cognitive-behavioral therapy for adolescents. Data are presented for 19 adolescents, age 15-18 years. Measures of substance use, psychopathology, and parenting were collected before and after the 14-week treatment. Substance use measures were also collected 1 month post-treatment. Substance use was monitored by twice-weekly urine and breath testing. An intent-to-treat model was used. RESULTS Adolescents and parents attended an average of 10.3 and 10.6 of 14 sessions, respectively. Substance use, externalizing behaviors, and negative parenting behaviors decreased by treatment end. Urine testing indicated that abstinence increased from 37% at intake to 74% at treatment end (z value = 2.28, p = .02) and that 53% of adolescents were abstinent 30 days post-treatment. CONCLUSIONS Preliminary data provide support for the feasibility and acceptability of a family-based, contingency management model to treat adolescent substance use and conduct problems. Controlled efficacy studies with larger samples are needed.
Ventilator settings and outcome of respiratory failure in chronic interstitial lung disease.

BACKGROUND While patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) may be particularly susceptible to ventilator-induced lung injury, ventilator strategies have not been studied in this group of patients. PURPOSES To describe the clinical course and outcome of patients with ILD and acute respiratory failure in relation to ventilatory parameters. METHODS We retrospectively identified a cohort of ventilated patients with ILD who had been admitted to five ICUs at a single institution. We analyzed demographic data, pulmonary function test results, severity of illness, and the parameters of continuous ventilation for the initial 24 h after admission to the ICU. Primary outcomes were survival to hospital discharge and 1-year survival. MAIN RESULTS Of 94 patients with ILD, 44 (47%) survived to hospital discharge and 39 (41%) were alive at 1 year. Nonsurvivors were less likely to be postoperative, had higher severity of illness, and were ventilated at higher airway pressures and lower tidal volumes. Step changes in positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) of > 10 cm H(2)O were attempted in 20 patients and resulted in an increase in plateau pressure (median difference, + 16 cm H(2)O; interquartile range [IQR], 9 to 24 cm H(2)O) and a decrease in respiratory system compliance (median difference, - 0.28 mL/kg/cm H(2)O; IQR, - 0.43 to - 0.13 mL/kg/cm H(2)O). The Cox proportional hazards model revealed that high PEEP (hazard ratio, 4.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.06 to 11.15), acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) III score predicted mortality (hazard ratio 1.33; 95% CI, 1.18 to 1.50), age (hazard ratio, 1.03; 95% CI, 1 to 1.05), and low Pao(2)/fraction of inspired oxygen ratio (hazard ratio, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.92 to 0.99) to be independent determinants of survival. CONCLUSION Both severity of illness and high PEEP settings are associated with the decreased survival of patients with ILD who are receiving mechanical ventilation.
Detrusor Instability Score in the Evaluation of Stress Urinary Incontinence

Abstract. The major cause of failure in the surgical treatment of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) in women is an occult detrusor instability. In order to detect detrusor instability and its degree, urological histories were standardized by scoring the replies to ten specific questions with 0 (indicative of SUI), 1 or 2 (slightly and markedly indicative of detrusor instability, respectively). The sum of the scores was termed the “detrusor instability score” (DIS).
Equity in higher education: Socioeconomic status and its effect on access to higher education in post-socialist Mongolia

Higher education participation has grown worldwide in the past two decades. Mongolia is not an exception. Higher education enrollment grew twelve-fold in Mongolia after the collapse of socialism. This dissertation examines whether the higher education enrollment increase has improved the opportunity to access higher education for students from lower income families. The dissertation addressed the following research questions. To what extent does socioeconomic status influence access to higher education in post-socialist Mongolia? To what extent are government financial assistance programs reaching their target groups? And, how has the role of socioeconomic status in influencing access to higher education changed in the past two decades? Using probabilistic data from cross-sectional Household Social and Economic Survey in Mongolia from 2008 and 2011, I ran logistic regressions, multinomial regressions, age-cohort analyses, and cross-tabulations to find answers to these questions. The statistical models were based on economics and sociology of education literature and status attainment theories. Sequential model building technique was implemented. The key contribution of this study is the innovative approach in creating a composite socioeconomic status variable (SES) out of six sub-scales, taking advantage of the wealth of information on diverse household revenues and expenditures available in the household surveys. The key findings of this study include: family background (SES) is a highly significant predictor of college access in post-socialist Mongolia. As of 2012, government financial assistance programs lack strong priorities, rather demonstrating a flattened-out distribution of the limited resources among students from the entire societal spectrum. Female students have higher probability of accessing higher education than their male counterparts throughout all four locations of residence. Age-cohort analyses revealed that socioeconomic status was a significant predictor of college access for all age-cohorts whose college entrance years ranged from 1994 to 2010. The effect of family background remained relatively stable for these years. Predicted probability of attending college increased for three older age-cohorts, except the fourth—the youngest cohort. And the increase in the probability of attending college from one generation to another was less for the lower SES groups and larger for the highest SES groups.
Robust diagnostics for Bayesian compressive sensing with applications to structural health monitoring

In structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for civil structures, signal compression is often important to reduce the cost of data transfer and storage because of the large volumes of data generated from the monitoring system. Compressive sensing is a novel data compressing method whereby one does not measure the entire signal directly but rather a set of related ("projected") measurements. The length of the required compressive-sensing measurements is typically much smaller than the original signal, therefore increasing the efficiency of data transfer and storage. Recently, a Bayesian formalism has also been employed for optimal compressive sensing, which adopts the ideas in the relevance vector machine (RVM) as a decompression tool, such as the automatic relevance determination prior (ARD). Recently publications illustrate the benefits of using the Bayesian compressive sensing (BCS) method. However, none of these publications have investigated the robustness of the BCS method. We show that the usual RVM optimization algorithm lacks robustness when the number of measurements is a lot less than the length of the signals because it can produce sub-optimal signal representations; as a result, BCS is not robust when high compression efficiency is required. This induces a tradeoff between efficiently compressing data and accurately decompressing it. Based on a study of the robustness of the BCS method, diagnostic tools are proposed to investigate whether the compressed representation of the signal is optimal. With reliable diagnostics, the performance of the BCS method can be monitored effectively. The numerical results show that it is a powerful tool to examine the correctness of reconstruction results without knowing the original signal.
Isolation and characterization of SYS genes from yeast , multicopy suppressors of the functional loss of the transport GTPase Ypt 6 p

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the YPT6 gene encodes the homologue of the mammalian Rab6 protein found in the Golgi apparatus. Deletion of YPT6 in yeast produces a phenotype showing temperature-sensitive growth and partial missorting of the vacuolar enzyme, carboxypeptidase Y. To identify proteins that might: (1) interact with Ypt6p; or (2) act in the same pathway, we have isolated four multicopy suppressors, named SYS1, SYS2, SYS3 and SYS5, that can complement the temperature-sensitive growth phenotype of the ypt6 null mutant. On high expression, these genes are also able to partially suppress the missorting of carboxypeptidase Y. SYS2 on a multicopy plasmid suppresses in addition the temperature-sensitive phenotype of sec7-1, a mutant defective in transport between and from the Golgi compartment. Gene disruption of SYS1 and SYS2 did not result in significant growth defects. However, deletion of SYS1 and/or SYS2 in the ypt6 null mutant enhances defects in vacuolar protein sorting and in cell growth. Whereas protein secretion was not significantly affected in these mutants, the processing of αfactor precursor by the Kex2 protease was inhibited, suggesting a function of YPT6 and its null mutant suppressors in transport between the late Golgi and a prevacuolar, endosome-like compartment.
Evolution of trust systems from PCs to mobile devices: Building secured and trusted ecosystems

A trust ecosystem for mobile devices based on trusted computing principles is presented. The trust ecosystem model from the latest PC platform provides a reference for the evolution of a trust model for the diverse mobile device market. By balancing the trusted computing burden between the mobile device and network and separating service delivery/access control decisions and error reporting from remediation, the processing in the network is hugely simplified, and efficiency in the use of network resources is increased. Additionally, certification and accreditation of the mobile devices trust security capabilities provides a white box view into a mobile devices security architecture and a means to gain a high level of trust assurance in the mobile device.
Characterization of a Two-component System in Streptococcus pyogenes Which Is Involved in Regulation of Hyaluronic Acid Production*

Hyaluronic acid production by group A streptococci is regulated by transcriptional control. In this study, transposon mutagenesis of an unencapsulated strain yielded an encapsulated mutant. Two genes homologous to sensors and response regulators of bacterial two-component systems were identified downstream of the transposon insertion. Inactivation of the putative sensor gene, csrS, in three different unencapsulated strains yielded encapsulated mutant strains. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays determined factor(s) in a cytoplasmic extract of an unencapsulated group A streptococcal strain was binding to a double-stranded DNA fragment derived from the has operon promoter. In contrast, similarly prepared cytoplasmic extracts from acsrS deletion mutant did not shift the fragment. The putative response regulator, CsrR, was partially purified and was shown to bind the has operon promoter fragment. The affinity and specificity of CsrR for the fragment were increased significantly after incubation with acetyl phosphate. DNase I footprinting determined that the acetyl phosphate-treated CsrR was binding to key sequences in the promoter and the coding region of hasA. Therefore, a two-component system is repressing the production of hyaluronic acid in group A streptococci using a phosphorylation-dependent binding interaction between the response regulator CsrR and the promoter region of the has operon.