Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insulin Regulates the Unfolded Protein Response in Human Adipose Tissue

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is increased in obesity and is postulated to be a major contributor to many obesity-related pathologies. Little is known about what causes ER stress in obese people. Here, we show that insulin upregulated the unfolded protein response (UPR), an adaptive reaction to ER stress, in vitro in 3T3-L1 adipocytes and in vivo, in subcutaneous (sc) adipose tissue of nondiabetic subjects, where it increased the UPR dose dependently over the entire physiologic insulin range (from ∼35 to ∼1,450 pmol/L). The insulin-induced UPR was not due to increased glucose uptake/metabolism and oxidative stress. It was associated, however, with increased protein synthesis, with accumulation of ubiquitination associated proteins, and with multiple posttranslational protein modifications (acetylations, methylations, nitrosylations, succinylation, and ubiquitinations), some of which are potential causes for ER stress. These results reveal a new physiologic role of insulin and provide a putative mechanism for the development of ER stress in obesity. They may also have clinical and therapeutic implications, e.g., in diabetic patients treated with high doses of insulin.
Large scale inhomogeneity and local dynamical friction

We investigate the effect of a density gradient on Chandrasekhar's dynamical friction formula based on the method of 2-body encounters in the local approximation. We apply these generalizations to the orbit evolution of satellite galaxies in Dark Matter haloes. We find from the analysis that the main influence occurs through a position-dependent maximum impact parameter in the Coulomb logarithm, which is determined by the local scale-length of the density distribution. We also show that for eccentric orbits the explicit dependence of the Coulomb logarithm on position yields significant differences for the standard homogeneous force. Including the velocity dependence of the Coulomb logarithm yields ambigous results. The orbital fits in the first few periods are further improved, but the deviations at later times are much larger. The additional force induced by the density gradient, the inhomogeneous force, is not antiparallel to the satellite motion and can exceed 10% of the homogeneous friction force in magnitude. However, due to the symmetry properties of the inhomogeneous force, there is a deformation and no secular effect on the orbit at the first order. Therefore the inhomogeneous force can be safely neglected for the orbital evolution of satellite galaxies. For the homogeneous force we compare numerical N-body calculations with semi-analytical orbits to determine quantitatively the accuracy of the generalized formulae of the Coulomb logarithm in the Chandrasekhar approach. With the local scale-length as the maximum impact parameter we find a significant improvement of the orbital fits and a better interpretation of the quantitative value of the Coulomb logarithm.
J ul 2 00 6 Scale-free networks with a large-to small-world transitio n

Recently there have been a tremendous interest in models of n etworks with a power-law distribution of degree— so called “scale-free networks. ” It has been observed that s uch networks, normally, have extremely short pathlengths, scaling logarithmically or slower with system siz e. As en exotic and unintuitive example we propose a simple stochastic model capable of generating scale-free n etworks with linearly scaling distances. Furthermore, by tuning a parameter the model undergoes a phase transition to a regime with extremely short average distances. We characterize the degree-degree correlation and cluster ing properties of this class of networks.
Real-time multitarget visual tracking with an active camera

This paper presents a real-time surveillance system to track multiple moving objects by controlling a pan-tilt camera platform. In order to describe the relationship between the targets and camera in this surveillance system, the input/output hidden Markov model (HMM) is applied here in the well-defined spherical camera coordinate. Since the targets are hard to be distinguished with one single camera when they are close to each other, we extend the particle filter for multitarget tracking with depth level estimate to track interacting targets. The targets overlapping each other still can be tracked in the images captured by single camera. Furthermore, an optimal camera action selection strategy is proposed to track multitarget within its limited field of view. The maximization of mutual information for the action design is formalized and implemented by the Monte Carlo method. The overall performance has been validated in the experiments of real-time tracking.
A shape-from-shading method of polyhedral objects using prior information

We propose a new method for recovering the 3D shape of a polyhedral object from its single 2D image using the shading information contained in the image and the prior information on the object. In a strict sense, we cannot recover the shape of a polyhedron from an incorrect line drawing, even if it is practically almost correct. In order to overcome this problem, we propose a flexible face positioning method that can permit inconsistencies in the recovered shape that arise from vertex-position errors contained in incorrect line drawings. Also, we propose to use prior information about the horizontality and verticality of special faces and the convex and concave properties of the edges in order to attain good solutions and present a method of formulating such prior information as physical constraints. The shape-from-shading method is formulated as a minimization problem of a nonlinear cost function with the nonlinear constraints and its solution is searched by a global optimization algorithm. In the experiments with a synthetic image and three kinds of real images, shapes that are similar to those of the actual objects were recovered in all cases. As a result, the proposed method has proven to be effective in the shape recovery of simple-shape polyhedral objects.
Switching On: How to Boot Clock Synchronization in Partially Synchronous Systems

We address the problem of network booting: Distributed processes boot at unpredictable times and require to start some distributed algorithm; we consider clock synchronization algorithms in systems of processes where at most exhibit Byzantine behavior. Obviously, assumptions like ”there are always at most one third of the running processes Byzantine faulty” do not hold during system start-up when processes boot one after the other. Another peculiarity of network booting is message loss, even if perfect communication is assumed: A message that is sent by a correct process could be lost because the receiver has not completed booting when the message arrives. Using a partially synchronous model where upper and lower bounds upon transmission and computation time exist but are unknown, we show that a suitable modification of Srikanth & Toueg’s non-authenticated clock synchronization algorithm can handle network booting and guarantees bounded precision both during normal operation and start-up. Accuracy (in the sense of clocks being within a linear envelope of real-time) is only guaranteed, however, if sufficiently many correct processes are eventually up and running.
A Compact Fireball Model of Gamma-Ray Bursts

It is proposed that the gamma-ray burst (GRB) photons near the peak of the spectrum at several hundred keV are produced on very compact scales, where photon production is limited by blackbody effects and/or the requirement of energetic quanta (E > 2mec2) for efficient further production. The fast variation of order milliseconds in the time profile is then a natural expectation, given the other observed GRB parameters. Analytic calculations are presented to show that the escape of nonthermal, energetic gamma rays can emerge within 1 s of the thermal photons from a gammasphere of below 1012 cm. The minimum asymptotic bulk Lorentz factor in this model is found to be of order several hundred if the photosphere is of order 3 × 1011 cm and greater for larger or smaller photospheric radii. It is suggested that prompt ultra-high-energy gamma rays might provide a new constraint on the asymptotic Lorentz factor of the outflow.
Harvesting the low-hanging fruits: defending against automated large-scale cyber-intrusions by focusing on the vulnerable population

The orthodox paradigm to defend against automated social-engineering attacks in large-scale socio-technical systems is reactive and victim-agnostic. Defenses generally focus on identifying the attacks/attackers (e.g., phishing emails, social-bot infiltrations, malware offered for download). To change the status quo, we propose to identify, even if imperfectly, the vulnerable user population, that is, the users that are likely to fall victim to such attacks. Once identified, information about the vulnerable population can be used in two ways. First, the vulnerable population can be influenced by the defender through several means including: education, specialized user experience, extra protection layers and watchdogs. In the same vein, information about the vulnerable population can ultimately be used to fine-tune and reprioritize defense mechanisms to offer differentiated protection, possibly at the cost of additional friction generated by the defense mechanism. Secondly, information about the user population can be used to identify an attack (or compromised users) based on differences between the general and the vulnerable population. This paper considers the implications of the proposed paradigm on existing defenses in three areas (phishing of user credentials, malware distribution and socialbot infiltration) and discusses how using knowledge of the vulnerable population can enable more robust defenses.
A Missing Data Approach to Correct for Direct and Indirect Range Restrictions with a Dichotomous Criterion: A Simulation Study

A recurring methodological problem in the evaluation of the predictive validity of selection methods is that the values of the criterion variable are available for selected applicants only. This so-called range restriction problem causes biased population estimates. Correction methods for direct and indirect range restriction scenarios have widely studied for continuous criterion variables but not for dichotomous ones. The few existing approaches are inapplicable because they do not consider the unknown base rate of success. Hence, there is a lack of scientific research on suitable correction methods and the systematic analysis of their accuracies in the cases of a naturally or artificially dichotomous criterion. We aim to overcome this deficiency by viewing the range restriction problem as a missing data mechanism. We used multiple imputation by chained equations to generate complete criterion data before estimating the predictive validity and the base rate of success. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to investigate the accuracy of the proposed correction in dependence of selection ratio, predictive validity, and base rate of success in an experimental design. In addition, we compared our proposed missing data approach with Thorndike’s well-known correction formulas that have only been used in the case of continuous criterion variables so far. The results show that the missing data approach is more accurate in estimating the predictive validity than Thorndike’s correction formulas. The accuracy of our proposed correction increases as the selection ratio and the correlation between predictor and criterion increase. Furthermore, the missing data approach provides a valid estimate of the unknown base rate of success. On the basis of our findings, we argue for the use of multiple imputation by chained equations in the evaluation of the predictive validity of selection methods when the criterion is dichotomous.
Time-Consistent Management of a Liquidity Trap : Monetary and Fiscal policy with Debt ∗

I study optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian model with an occasionally binding zero lower bound that leads to liquidity trap episodes. I analyze the use of government spending and labor income tax as components of the discretionary fiscal stimulus package at the liquidity trap. Reliance on either of these instruments depends on whether the government budget is relaxed or has to be balanced. If the government has to balance its budget period by period, it relies more on the spending instrument. Varying the debt burden across time makes the government rely more on the use of labor taxes because discretionary incentives introduced by debt help to reduce the time-inconsistency problem of the tax rate response at the liquidity trap. Moreover, I show that the risk of falling into the liquidity trap leads to the accumulation of the optimal long run government debt buffer that reduces the frequency of reaching the zero lower bound. JEL Codes: E52, E62, E63, H21, H63
Supplementary Material 1 Occluder Removal Results

The organization of the material is as follows. In Section 1, some additional results of occluder removal are shown. Some example reconstructions for Internet photo collections are shown in Section 2. Experiments on BRDF databases are discussed in Section 3. The approach we took for processing color images is described in Section 4. Figures 1 and 2 show some additional results.
Cue Preference in a Multidimensional Categorization Task

Many natural categories vary along multiple dimensions. The present studies address two ma in questions underlying categorization with multiple dimensions. First, how well can humans perform in a categorization task consisting of five categories varying along nine continuously valued dimensions? Second, what are the properties of the cues preferred by humans if not all the available cues are used? Remarkably, participants not only learned to distinguish among the five categories, but they also learned to do so using only the relevant dimensions. A satisficing model of categorization was best able to account for participants’ responses. In addition, in a cue preference task, the results showed that nearly all participants preferred to use the dimension with the greatest variance when the number of dimensions available was restricted, in accord with predictions made by the satisficing model.
An improved modelling scheme for photometric moments with inclusion of spatial weights for visual servoing with partial appearance/disappearance

Visual servoing based on photometric data is of great interest since it does not necessitate any image processing or visual tracking steps. A vital issue in such methods is the change in the image resulting from the appearance and disappearance of portions of the scene from the camera field-of-view during the visual servo. In this paper, we propose a spatial weighting scheme to counter this problem. A general model for photometric moments that allows for inclusion of spatial weights is presented. A custom weighting function is then chosen and specific properties of its derivative are exploited in order to develop the interaction matrix in analytical form. The resultant effects on the invariance properties are discussed. Experiments have been performed to validate the visual servoing with the proposed weighting scheme on a 4 dof robot arm.
Detection of Hidden Fraudulent URLs within Trusted Sites Using Lexical Features

Internet security threats often involve the fraudulent modification of a web site, often with the addition of new pages at URLs where no page should exist. Detecting the existence of such hidden URLs is very difficult because they do not appear during normal navigation and usually are not indexed by search engines. Most importantly, drive-by attacks leading users to hidden URLs, for example for phishing credentials, may fool even tech-savvy users, because such hidden URLs are increasingly hosted within trusted sites, thereby rendering HTTPS authentication ineffective. In this work, we propose an approach for detecting such URLs based only on their lexical features, which allows alerting the user before actually fetching the page. We assess our proposal on a dataset composed of thousands of URLs, with promising results.
Strategy Acquisition for the Game "Othello" Based on Reinforcement Learning

A deflector for a cable transport system, wherein the cable is provided with a plurality of members each supporting a load, has a wheel rotatable about an upright axis and provided around its periphery with a plurality of angularly equispaced guides. Each such guide is carried on one end of a short arm pivoted itself on the periphery of the wheel so that the guides can be pushed to the side by the load-carrying members as they pass. The guides are small synthetic-resin sheaves which are rotatable about respective axes on their respective arms. The arms normally project radially inwardly of the wheel. In the case of a system wherein the arc of the deflection is flatter than the wheel curvature a cam is provided to array those guides in contact with the cable along the desired arc.
Stochastic noisy image detection in vision system

A novel scheme of IFSS (interframe shift sampling) for detection or restoration of a noisy image for a vision system is presented. The relation between sampling pitch and SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) gain is given. The benefits of SNR gain and data compression will be obtained in the case of oversampling. It is shown that the scheme of IFSS is very useful for vision systems operating in an intensely noisy environment and the image transmission from deep space vehicles. <<ETX>>
The relationship between relative humidity and the dewpoint temperature in moist air - A simple conversion and applications

The relative humidity (RH) and the dewpoint temperature (td) are two widely used indicators of the amount of moisture in air. The exact conversion from RH to td, as well as highly accurate approximations, are too complex to be done easily without the help of a calculator or computer. However, there is a very simple rule of thumb that can be very useful for approximating the conversion for moist air (RH > 50%), which does not appear to be widely known by the meteorological community: td decreases by about 1°C for every 5% decrease in RH (starting at td= t, the dry bulb temperature, when RH = 100%). This article examines the mathematical basis and accuracy of this and other relationships between the dewpoint and relative humidity. Several useful applications of the simple conversion are presented, in particular the computation of the cumulus cloud-base level (or lifting condensation level) as zLCL >> (20 + t/5)(100 – RH), where zLCL is in meters when t is in degrees Celcius and RH in percent. Finally, a his.
Transcriptomal changes and functional annotation of the developing non-human primate choroid plexus

The choroid plexuses are small organs that protrude into each brain ventricle producing cerebrospinal fluid that constantly bathes the brain. These organs differentiate early in development just after neural closure at a stage when the brain is little vascularized. In recent years the plexus has been shown to have a much more active role in brain development than previously appreciated thereby it can influence both neurogenesis and neural migration by secreting factors into the CSF. However, much of choroid plexus developmental function is still unclear. Most previous studies on this organ have been undertaken in rodents but translation into humans is not straightforward since they have a different timing of brain maturation processes. We have collected choroid plexus from three fetal gestational ages of a non-human primate, the baboon, which has much closer brain development to humans. The transcriptome of the plexuses was determined by next generation sequencing and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software was used to annotate functions and enrichment of pathways of changes in the transcriptome. The number of unique transcripts decreased with development and the majority of differentially expressed transcripts were down-regulated through development suggesting a more complex and active plexus earlier in fetal development. The functional annotation indicated changes across widespread biological functions in plexus development. In particular we find age-dependent regulation of genes associated with annotation categories: Gene Expression, Development of Cardiovascular System, Nervous System Development and Molecular Transport. Our observations support the idea that the choroid plexus has roles in shaping brain development.
Performance based algorithm for the detection and extraction of human skin

This paper presents the comparative analysis of various color space models like RGB, HSV and YCbCr color models for detection and extraction of human skin from it. Skin detection is broadly used in applications like face detection, tracking of the body parts and hand gesture analysis, for retrieval of skin and blocking of unpleasant contents. The proposed method is performed in four phases; the effect of color space transformation on skin detection performance and finding the appropriate color space for skin detection; the role of the illuminance part of a color space; the appropriate pixel based skin color modeling technique; and finally, the effect of color fidelity algorithms on color based skin classification. The heterogeneity of RGB color space is detached by using HSV and YCbCr color space models. In this paper the input image captured from a camera is converted into three different color space models i.e. RGB, HSV and YCbCr and then performance analysis of algorithms is to be evaluated on the basis of skin detection and extraction.
A Note-taking Appliance for Intelligence Analysts

Note-taking is a very simple and quite common activity of intelligence analysts, especially all-source analysts. Common as this activity is, there is little or no technology specifically aimed at making it more effective and efficient: it is mostly carried out by cumbersome copy-paste interactions with standard applications (such as Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word). This paper describes how sophisticated natural language processing technologies, user-interest specifications , and human-interface design have been integrated to produce a lightweight, fail-soft appliance aimed at reducing the cognitive load of note-taking. This appliance condenses user-selected source passages and adds them to a note-file. The condensations are grammatical, preserve relations of interest to the user, and avoid distortions of meaning.
Efficient Mobility Management for Seamless Roaming between WWAN and WLAN

As we are moving toward the next generation all-IP wireless networks, we are facing the integration of non-homogeneous networks, such as wireless wide area networks (WWAN) and wireless local area networks (WLAN). In vertical handoff between WWAN and WLAN, the mobile hosts are required to be able to move freely across different networks while satisfying the quality of service requirements for a variety of applications. In order to maintain continuity of connection and seamless roaming with particular emphasis on the data applications, in this paper, we propose novel mobility management system which integrates a connection manager (CM) that can intelligently detect the network conditions change and a virtual connectivity manager (VC) that uses end-to-end principle to maintain the session connectivity. In our solution, handoff rate and ping-pong effect can be significantly reduced using CM. Meanwhile, mobility can be made transparent to application without network infrastructure support using VC, which can also handle mobility under Network Address Translation (NAT) and simultaneous movements scenarios. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed schemes. Our prototyping system shows that seamless roaming between WLAN and WWAN can be achieved while much better performance can be obtained comparing with the one using traditional scheme.