Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Whitefly Bemisia tabaci Knottin-1 Gene Is Implicated in Regulating the Quantity of Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus Ingested and Transmitted by the Insect

The whitefly Bemisia tabaci is a major pest to agricultural crops. It transmits begomoviruses, such as Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), in a circular, persistent fashion. Transcriptome analyses revealed that B. tabaci knottin genes were responsive to various stresses. Upon ingestion of tomato begomoviruses, two of the four knottin genes were upregulated, knot-1 (with the highest expression) and knot-3. In this study, we examined the involvement of B. tabaci knottin genes in relation to TYLCV circulative transmission. Knottins were silenced by feeding whiteflies with knottin dsRNA via detached tomato leaves. Large amounts of knot-1 transcripts were present in the abdomen of whiteflies, an obligatory transit site of begomoviruses in their circulative transmission pathway; knot-1 silencing significantly depleted the abdomen from knot-1 transcripts. Knot-1 silencing led to an increase in the amounts of TYLCV ingested by the insects and transmitted to tomato test plants by several orders of magnitude. This effect was not observed following knot-3 silencing. Hence, knot-1 plays a role in restricting the quantity of virions an insect may acquire and transmit. We suggest that knot-1 protects B. tabaci against deleterious effects caused by TYLCV by limiting the amount of virus associated with the whitefly vector.
Stimulatory effect of endothelin‐1 on Na‐dependent phosphate transport and its signaling mechanism in osteoblast‐like cells

Endothelin‐1 (ET‐1) has been reported to modulate bone metabolism both in vivo and in vitro. In the present study, we investigated the effect of ET‐1 on inorganic phosphate (Pi) transport in osteoblast‐like cells, which is now considered to be important for the initiation of bone matrix calcification. ET‐1 time‐ and dose‐dependently stimulated Na‐dependent Pi transport in mouse calvaria‐derived osteoblast‐like MC3T3‐E1 cells, and this effect was dependent on transcriptional and translational process. Kinetic analysis indicated that the change in Pi transport activity induced by ET‐1 was due to alteration in the number of the Pi transporter. BQ123, a selective antagonist for ETA receptor, suppressed the ET‐1‐induced Pi transport, but BQ788, a selective antagonist for ETB receptor, had no effect. The inhibition of phosphoinositide hydrolysis by phospholipase C (PLC) partially attenuated the Pi transport by ET‐1. Propranolol, which inhibits phosphatidic acid phosphohydrolase, also suppressed ET‐1‐induced Pi transport. On the contrary, indomethacin did not affect the stimulatory effect of Pi transport by ET‐1. Calphostin C, a protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor, significantly blunted the stimulatory effect of ET‐1 on Pi transport. Combined effect of PMA and ET‐1 on Pi transport was not additive. Pi transport induced by ET‐1 was also suppressed in PKC down‐regulated cells. In conclusion, the results of the present study indicate that in MC3T3‐E1 osteoblast‐like cells, ET‐1 acting through ET receptor links to a stimulation of Pi transport via activation of PKC through both phosphoinositide and phosphatidylcholine hydrolyses. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A BIT-PARALLEL ALGORITHM FOR SEQUENTIAL PATTERN MATCHING WITH WILDCARDS

Pattern matching with both gap constraints and the one-off condition is a challenging topic, especially in bioinformatics, information retrieval, and dictionary query. Among the algorithms to solve the problem, the most efficient one is SAIL, which is time consuming, especially when the pattern is long. In addition, existing algorithms based on bit-parallelism cannot handle a pattern that has only one pattern character between successive wildcards and the minimum local length constraints are zero. We propose an algorithm BPBM to handle online sequential pattern matching. In BPBM, an extended bit-parallelism operation is used to accelerate the matching process. An effective transition window mechanism with two nondeterministic finite state automatons (NFAs) is adopted to drop the useless scan window. It identifies gap constraints automatically and just scans once to export occurrences with exact match positions. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the BPBM algorithm is more competitive than other peers. It has an absolute advantage on search time complexity. It also has better stability that decreases operation costs with the increasing of the size of sequence alphabet or the length of the pattern. We also study off-line pattern matching. With twice pruning, left-most and right-most, we can increase the matching ratio about 2.08% on average.
Classifying malicious activities in Honeynets using entropy and volume-based thresholds

A Honeynet is a network designed by the Honeynet Project organization to gather information on security threats and attacks. Honeynets are being used by numerous institutions to proactively improve network security by identifying malicious and unauthorized activities in production and private networks. A Honeynet captures a substantial amount of network data and logs. The analysis of these datasets to identify malicious activities is a challenging task. The main aim of the work in this paper is to employ an anomaly detection technique to classify different types of malicious activities present in Honeynet. In particular, we use feature-based and volume-based schemes for Honeynet data classification. A detailed analysis of various traffic features is carried out, and the most appropriate ones for Honeynet traffic are selected. The classification of malicious activities is achieved by applying entropy-based distributions and traffic volume distributions. Entropy-based distributions are used for feature-based parameters, whereas traffic volume distributions are used for volume-based parameters. The behavior of various anomalies or malicious activities is classified using the selected features and their respective threshold values. Finally, we propose a mapping between the various anomalies and their associated behavior, which can be further used to identify similar anomalies in other Honeynet data sets. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Lessons Learned from Comparison Between Q-learning and Sarsa Agents in Bargaining Game

A compound having the general formula RxCOH[COR]y, wherein R is a lower alkyl hydrocarbon radical, y is 0 or 1, and x is 2 when y is 1 and 3 when y is 0, is prepared by admixing carbon monoxide, a transition metal halide, and an organomonolithium compound or an anionic equivalent thereof.
Enhanced toughening of poly(propylene) with reclaimed‐tire rubber

The dynamic vulcanization of reclaimed-tire rubber (RTR) and homopolypropylene (PP) was performed by melt-mixing using either a sulfur crosslinking agent, maleic anhydride (MA), dicumyl peroxide (DCP), or the combination of MA and DCP, in two consecutive machines, first a two-roll mill and then a counterrotating twin-screw extruder. In the case of applying a sulfur crosslinking agent, it was demonstrated that the RTR/PP blend at the ratio of 30/70 had the highest impact strength. This could be attributed to the limitation of carbon black in the blend. When the combination of MA and DCP was applied, the result was higher impact strength of the blend at the same ratio. This could be attributed to not only the cohesion between the polymer chains in each phase, PP phase and rubber phase, but also the interfacial adhesion between PP and RTR chains in these two phases. For comparison, the GRT/PP blends with and without sulfur crosslinking agent were prepared as well. All these blends showed low impact strength, which was nearly the same as that of PP. The effects of different crosslinking agents on dispersion and distribution of rubber domain size, viscosity, and percentage crystallinity were also studied. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 510–515, 2004
Evaluations on contribution of backdrivability and force measurement performance on force sensitivity of actuators

The importance of force measurement and back-drivability in realizing force sensitive actuator is widely acknowledged. There are studies on fidelity of torque sensors and backdrivability individually, but limited study are made on investigating effect of torque fidelity and backdrivability on force sensitivity of the actuation system. In this paper, we developed backdrivable electro-hydrostatic actuator equipped with torque sensor to analyze the effect of torque fidelity and backdrivability on force sensitive control system. We implemented friction compensation controller and evaluated force sensitivity of the actuator by residual friction torque after the friction compensation. Method using pressure sensor and torque sensor were compared. Effect of backdrivability was performed by comparing friction torque of Harmonic Drive joint and joint with developed actuator.
STATCOM applying flat-packaged IGBTs connected in series

A STATCOM, which compensates 60MVA of a negative-phase-sequence power of Japanese bullet trains, has to achieve a low cost, a small size, and a high reliability. In order to enlarge capacity, the authors have developed techniques of connecting flat-packaged IGBTs in series. This STATCOM consists of two banks of inverters, where 12 single-phase inverters are connected by multistage (four-stage) transformers. When IGBTs are connected in series, the problem is to achieve stable and dynamic voltage balance among IGBTs. In order to realize a practical way, RC snubbers, a gate timing adjustment, and pole clamps are used for dynamic balance and resistors are used for static balance. In addition, active clamping circuits are used to prevent IGBTs from over-voltage during the severe network accident (e.g., short circuit). Furthermore, the control diagram of this STATCOM is shown and a method to operate without resonance between STATCOM and outer filter is discussed. Finally, this STATCOM has been evaluated in the actual field. During experiments of using bullet trains, it was shown that the negative-phase-sequence current was well compensated . The STATCOM has been used in Central Japan Railway Company since September 2003.
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce E-payment Strategies of Bank Card Innovations

This paper is concerned with the business strategy in managing payment innovations. Particularly, the study looks at the smart card-electronic cash (e-cash) innovation in the financial service industry. The smart card e-cash has yet to overcome obstacles to its diffusion. Given the e-commerce opportunity, banks and non-banks compete to deploy smart card technology for Internet use. A review of previous payment innovations is also carried out to provide suggesting direction on the innovation proliferation. The paper firstly examines the payment market on the whole (the global review). The subsequent section discusses the challenges in the e-payment world and the strategies to support the diffusion of the smart card innovations.
Beyond Affymetrix arrays: expanding the set of known hybridization isotherms and observing pre-wash signal intensities

Microarray hybridization studies have attributed the nonlinearity of hybridization isotherms to probe saturation and post-hybridization washing. Both processes are thought to distort ‘true’ target abundance because immobilized probes are saturated with excess target and stringent washing removes loosely bound targets. Yet the paucity of studies aimed at understanding hybridization and dissociation makes it difficult to align physicochemical theory to microarray results. To fill the void, we first examined hybridization isotherms generated on different microarray platforms using a ribosomal RNA target and then investigated hybridization signals at equilibrium and after stringent wash. Hybridization signal at equilibrium was achieved by treating the microarray with isopropanol, which prevents nucleic acids from dissolving into solution. Our results suggest that (i) the shape of hybridization isotherms varied by microarray platform with some being hyperbolic or linear, and others following a power-law; (ii) at equilibrium, fluorescent signal of different probes hybridized to the same target were not similar even with excess of target and (iii) the amount of target removed by stringent washing depended upon the hybridization time, the probe sequence and the presence/absence of nonspecific targets. Possible physicochemical interpretations of the results and future studies are discussed.
Real-time embedded skew detection and frame removal

It is common to observe document skew and frame artifacts while photocopying and scanning documents. The motivation of this work is to embed skew correction and frame removal in the copy pipeline of a device to achieve ‘one touch’ cleanup. The two challenges that this poses are the need for: (a) substantially reducing computation and memory requirements and (b) minimizing the false positives. Peripheral document features, such as, page/content edges are low-complexity document skew predictors, and content-based approaches are of relatively higher complexity skew predictors. But state-of-the-art page edge detection methods fail on low-contrast document images, or for similar scanbed/document background. To minimize false positives required in embedded implementations, we propose: (1) a robust page edge detection algorithm that is a multiplicative combination of gradients and line based page edge detectors, (2) a robust skew detection algorithm that is a linear combination of page/content edge and content based predictors, and (3) a pipeline for skew correction and frame removal that uses these algorithms and has near-100% accuracy over a wide range of document images.
Steerable, Progressive Multidimensional Scaling

Current implementations of multidimensional scaling (MDS), an approach that attempts to best represent data point similarity in a low-dimensional representation, are not suited for many of today's large-scale datasets. We propose an extension to the spring model approach that allows the user to interactively explore datasets that are far beyond the scale of previous implementations of MDS. We present MDSteer, a steerable MDS computation engine and visualization tool that progressively computes an MDS layout and handles datasets of over one million points. Our technique employs hierarchical data structures and progressive layouts to allow the user to steer the computation of the algorithm to the interesting areas of the dataset. The algorithm iteratively alternates between a layout stage in which a subselection of points are added to the set of active points affected by the MDS iteration, and a binning stage which increases the depth of the bin hierarchy and organizes the currently unplaced points into separate spatial regions. This binning strategy allows the user to select onscreen regions of the layout to focus the MDS computation into the areas of the dataset that are assigned to the selected bins. We show both real and common synthetic benchmark datasets with dimensionalities ranging from 3 to 300 and cardinalities of over one million points
Parallelized TCSPC for Dynamic Intravital Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging: Quantifying Neuronal Dysfunction in Neuroinflammation

Two-photon laser-scanning microscopy has revolutionized our view on vital processes by revealing motility and interaction patterns of various cell subsets in hardly accessible organs (e.g. brain) in living animals. However, current technology is still insufficient to elucidate the mechanisms of organ dysfunction as a prerequisite for developing new therapeutic strategies, since it renders only sparse information about the molecular basis of cellular response within tissues in health and disease. In the context of imaging, Förster resonant energy transfer (FRET) is one of the most adequate tools to probe molecular mechanisms of cell function. As a calibration-free technique, fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) is superior for quantifying FRET in vivo. Currently, its main limitation is the acquisition speed in the context of deep-tissue 3D and 4D imaging. Here we present a parallelized time-correlated single-photon counting point detector (p-TCSPC) (i) for dynamic single-beam scanning FLIM of large 3D areas on the range of hundreds of milliseconds relevant in the context of immune-induced pathologies as well as (ii) for ultrafast 2D FLIM in the range of tens of milliseconds, a scale relevant for cell physiology. We demonstrate its power in dynamic deep-tissue intravital imaging, as compared to multi-beam scanning time-gated FLIM suitable for fast data acquisition and compared to highly sensitive single-channel TCSPC adequate to detect low fluorescence signals. Using p-TCSPC, 256×256 pixel FLIM maps (300×300 µm2) are acquired within 468 ms while 131×131 pixel FLIM maps (75×75 µm2) can be acquired every 82 ms in 115 µm depth in the spinal cord of CerTN L15 mice. The CerTN L15 mice express a FRET-based Ca-biosensor in certain neuronal subsets. Our new technology allows us to perform time-lapse 3D intravital FLIM (4D FLIM) in the brain stem of CerTN L15 mice affected by experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis and, thereby, to truly quantify neuronal dysfunction in neuroinflammation.
Sequence Variations of Full-Length Hepatitis B Virus Genomes in Chinese Patients with HBsAg-Negative Hepatitis B Infection

Background The underlying mechanism of HBsAg-negative hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is notoriously difficult to elucidate because of the extremely low DNA levels which define the condition. We used a highly efficient amplification method to overcome this obstacle and achieved our aim which was to identify specific mutations or sequence variations associated with this entity. Methods A total of 185 sera and 60 liver biopsies from HBsAg-negative, HBV DNA-positive subjects or known chronic hepatitis B (CHB) subjects with HBsAg seroclearance were amplified by rolling circle amplification followed by full-length HBV genome sequencing. Eleven HBsAg-positive CHB subjects were included as controls. The effects of pivotal mutations identified on regulatory regions on promoter activities were analyzed. Results 22 and 11 full-length HBV genomes were amplified from HBsAg-negative and control subjects respectively. HBV genotype C was the dominant strain. A higher mutation frequency was observed in HBsAg-negative subjects than controls, irrespective of genotype. The nucleotide diversity over the entire HBV genome was significantly higher in HBsAg-negative subjects compared with controls (p = 0.008) and compared with 49 reference sequences from CHB patients (p = 0.025). In addition, HBsAg-negative subjects had significantly higher amino acid substitutions in the four viral genes than controls (all p<0.001). Many mutations were uniquely found in HBsAg-negative subjects, including deletions in promoter regions (13.6%), abolishment of pre-S2/S start codon (18.2%), disruption of pre-S2/S mRNA splicing site (4.5%), nucleotide duplications (9.1%), and missense mutations in “α” determinant region, contributing to defects in HBsAg production. Conclusions These data suggest an accumulation of multiple mutations constraining viral transcriptional activities contribute to HBsAg-negativity in HBV infection.
Through-Wall Detection of Human Being's Movement by UWB Radar

Ultrawideband (UWB) radar technology has emerged as one of the preferred choices for through-wall detection due to its high range resolution and good penetration. The resolution is a result of high bandwidth of UWB radar and helpful for better separation of multiple targets in complex environment. Detection of human targets through a wall is interesting in many applications. One significant characteristic of human is the periodic motion, such as breathing and limb movement. In this letter, we apply the UWB radar system in through-wall human detection and present the methods based on fast Fourier transform and S transform to detect and identify the human's life characteristic. In particular, we can extract the center frequencies of life signals and locate the position of human targets from experimental data with high accuracy. Compared with other research studies in through-wall detection, this letter is concentrated in the processing and identifying of the life signal under strong clutter. It has a high signal-to-noise ratio and simpler to implement in complex environment detection. We can use the method to search and locate the survivor trapped under the building debris during earthquake, explosion, or fire.
The Research Progress of Melanin

The sources of melanin and the sorts of melanin are introduced. New techniques for extraction and analysis of natural melanin were introduced. New analytical techniques are high performance liquid chromatography, high-speed countercurrent chromatography, high performance capillary electrophoresis and chromatography-mass spectrometry. The relationship of polyketide melanogenesis molecular biology to that of nonmelanin-producing pathways in a wide range of fungi and other organisms is discussed. The applications of melanin are introduced.
SRAMs in Scaled Technologies under Process Variations: Failure Mechanisms, Test & Variation Tolerant Design

The inter-die and intra-die variations in process parameters (in particular, threshold voltage (Vt)) can lead to large number of failures in an SRAM array, thereby, degrading the design yield in nanometer technologies. To improve parametric yield of nano-scaled memories, different circuit and architectural level techniques can be used. In this paper, we first analyze and model different SRAM failures due to parameter variations, and discuss test methodologies to test for process variation induced failures. Next, we describe two different self-repairing techniques-at the circuit level, using adaptive body biasing and at the architecture level, using built-in-self-test (BIST), redundancy and address remapping. The discussed self-repair mechanisms can improve design yield much beyond what can be achieved using row/column redundancy and error correcting codes (ECC) alone