Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of internalization and endosome formation of epidermal growth factor in transfected NIH-3T3 cells by computerized image- intensified three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy

Computerized image-intensified fluorescence microscopy has been used to quantify routing and subcellular concentrations of rhodaminated EGF (Rh- EGF) during its receptor-mediated endocytosis in two transfected NIH- 3T3 cell lines expressing 2 X 10(5) and 1.5 X 10(6) receptors per cell, respectively. A series of images were digitized by focusing at different depths through the volume of a single cell. The digitized pictures were corrected for fluorescence photobleaching, and removal of out-of-focus fluorescence contributions by deconvolution using the point spread function of the microscope optics (Agard, D. A., and J. W. Sedat. 1980. Proc. Soc. Photo-Opt. Instr. Eng. 264:110-117) allowed automatic computer analysis of the time dependence of endosomal vesicle size and fluorescence intensity in a live cell and also enabled the study of isolated vesicles. An increase in the amount of fluorescence bound to the cell surface, either by increasing the number of receptors expressed per cell or the concentration of Rh-EGF in the incubation drop, yielded an increase in the total fluorescence of internalized vesicles without an increase in their number and area. The linear relation between fluorescence intensity and area for vesicles at different times indicates that EGF concentration is conserved. This is compatible with fusion of small vesicles to form larger ones. However, as endocytosis proceeds, a twofold increase in the slope of the fluorescence vs. area plots is observed for larger vesicles, suggesting that active sorting causes the EGF to be concentrated. Alternatively, this factor could be produced by cumulative fluorescence contributions from stacked membranes. Since coated pits are internalized independent of their occupancy with EGF receptor, we propose that endocytosis does not involve a mechanism specifically recognizing occupied receptor but is rather triggered by a global intracellular event.
Active Control of Camera Parameters for Object Detection Algorithms

Camera parameters not only play an important role in determining the visual quality of perceived images, but also affect the performance of vision algorithms, for a vision-guided robot. By quantitatively evaluating four object detection algorithms, with respect to varying ambient illumination, shutter speed and voltage gain, it is observed that the performance of the algorithms is highly dependent on these variables. From this observation, a novel active control of camera parameters method is proposed, to make robot vision more robust under different light conditions. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach, which improves the performance of object detection algorithms, compared with the conventional auto-exposure algorithm.
Adaptation and evaluation of the National Cancer Institute's Diet History Questionnaire and nutrient database for Canadian populations

Abstract Background and objective Despite assumed similarities in Canadian and US dietary habits, some differences in food availability and nutrient fortification exist. Food-frequency questionnaires designed for the USA may therefore not provide the most accurate estimates of dietary intake in Canadian populations. Hence, we undertook to evaluate and modify the National Cancer Institute's Diet History Questionnaire (DHQ) and nutrient database. Methods Of the foods queried on the DHQ, those most likely to differ in nutrient composition were identified. Where possible these foods were matched to comparable foods in the Canadian Nutrient File. Nutrient values were examined and modified to reflect the Canadian content of minerals (calcium, iron, zinc) and vitamins (A, C, D, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate and B12). DHQs completed by 13 181 Alberta Cohort Study participants aged 35–69 years were analysed to estimate nutrient intakes using the original US and modified versions of the DHQ databases. Misclassification of intake for meeting the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) was determined following analysis with the US nutrient database. Results Twenty-five per cent of 2411 foods deemed most likely to differ in nutrient profile were subsequently modified for folate, 11% for vitamin D, 10% for calcium and riboflavin, and between 7 and 10% for the remaining nutrients of interest. Misclassification with respect to meeting the DRI varied but was highest for folate (7%) and vitamin A (7%) among men, and for vitamin D (7%) among women over 50 years of age. Conclusion Errors in nutrient intake estimates owing to differences in food fortification between the USA and Canada can be reduced in Canadian populations by using nutrient databases that reflect Canadian fortification practices.
Effects of action observation on brain activity, function and strength

This thesis aimed to examine whether observation of force based actions could moderate subsequent executed force and behavioural performance, and also brain activity during and following the action observation. There are six chapters, four that present empirical investigations, a general introduction (Chapter 1) and a general discussion (Chapter 6). Chapter 2 presents behavioural data that examined the effects of observing exerted force on an executed force response. The data revealed that the executed force was moderated by the condition observed so that observation of a 100% force caused increased force response compared to observation of a 50% and 0% force. Chapter 3 further examined whether bouts of observation could also moderate subsequent force and dexterity execution. Three experiments were conducted. In Experiments 1 and 2, observation of hand force based actions significantly moderated the executed hand dexterity. In Experiment 3, observation of leg force actions significantly moderated the executed leg force response. Overall, the data revealed that bouts of action force observation moderated the executed force and dexterity responses. Chapter 4 used fMRI to examine the brain activity during action force observation. The data revealed significant activity in the Superior Frontal Gyrus (SMA), part of the mirror neuron system. The finding was consistent with other findings in the literature, supporting the notion that observation of action force activates the same areas of the brain as those used for execution. To examine the relationship between action priming and brain activity, Chapter 5 again used fMRI, but to investigate resting brain activity. The data revealed significant mirror neurone system activity following action force observation compared to pre-observation and control conditions. The thesis is discussed (Chapter 6) in terms of how action observation could be used clinically for rehabilitation, and moreover, how further experimental directions could be added to these findings.
IC and KM in a Macroeconomic Perspective: The Portuguese Case

Compounds of formula (I): (I) [in which: Z represents a group of formula R represents a hydrogen atom, a 1-pyridyl group or a group of formula -YR' (in which: R' represents an alkyl group, an alkanoyl group a carbamoyl group or a heterocyclic group; and Y represents an oxygen or a sulphur atom); X represents a hydrogen atom or a hydroxy group; and the alpha -amino acid moiety is in the D(-) configuration] are prepared by silylating the corresponding compound having an amino group at the 6-penam or 7-cepham position, acylating the silylated compound with D(-)-p-hydroxyphenglycyl chloride hydrochloride or D(-)-p-hydroxyphenylglycyl chloride hydrochloride and then hydrolyzing the acylated product. By carrying out the reaction in the presence of an N-alkylpyrrolidone, it is possible to improve the yields and purity of the desired product.
Bisimulation Equivalence is Decidable for All Context-Free Processes

We have shown that bisimulation equivalence is decidable for BPA. As the proof involves two semi-decision procedures it is not obvious how to determine the complexity of solving this problem. Moreover it does not provide us with an intuitive technique for deciding bisimilarity as does the tableau method in [14, 13] which also has the advantage of providing us with a way of extracting a complete axiomatization for normed BPA processes. A similar result for full BPA would be a proper extension of Milner's axiom system for regular processes [16].
Terahertz Active Photonic Crystals for Condensed Gas Sensing

The terahertz (THz) spectral region, covering frequencies from 1 to 10 THz, is highly interesting for chemical sensing. The energy of rotational and vibrational transitions of molecules lies within this frequency range. Therefore, chemical fingerprints can be derived, allowing for a simple detection scheme. Here, we present an optical sensor based on active photonic crystals (PhCs), i.e., the pillars are fabricated directly from an active THz quantum-cascade laser medium. The individual pillars are pumped electrically leading to laser emission at cryogenic temperatures. There is no need to couple light into the resonant structure because the PhC itself is used as the light source. An injected gas changes the resonance condition of the PhC and thereby the laser emission frequency. We achieve an experimental frequency shift of 10−3 times the center lasing frequency. The minimum detectable refractive index change is 1.6 × 10−5 RIU.
Sliding-mode control analog integrated circuit for switching DC-DC power converters

This communication describes the design and implementation of a microelectronic CMOS analog integrated circuit that provides versatile sliding-mode control laws for switching DC-DC power converters. In addition to perform general linear-surface state control laws, the controller circuit includes compensating dynamics. The proposal of this analog IC design, which operates in current-mode processing, exhibits good performance as far as operation speed, power consumption, suitability for low-voltage operation and robustness in front of interference are concerned. The main circuit, which allows modular connection, is composed of externally linearized transconductors based on current conveyors, current-mode amplifiers and filtering stages, and a transimpedance high-speed hysteretic comparator. Full-transistor-level post-layout simulations for a CMOS 0.8 /spl mu/m technology and experimental results validate the high-speed functionality of the proposed sliding-mode controller ASIC implementation.
Monarch: a tool to emulate transport protocol flowsover the internet at large

This paper proposes Monarch, a novel tool that accurately emulates transport protocol flows from an end host controlled by its user to any other Internet host that responds to simple TCP, UDP, or ICMP packet probes. Since many Internet hosts and routers respond to such probes, Monarch can evaluate transport protocols, such as TCP Reno, TCP Vegas, and TCP Nice, over a large and diverse set of Internet paths. Current approaches to evaluating these protocols need control over both end hosts of an Internet path. Consequently, they are limited to a small number of paths between nodes in testbeds like PlanetLab, RON or NIMI. Monarch's ability to evaluate transport protocols with minimal support from the destination host enables many new measurement studies. We show the feasibility of using Monarch for three example studies: (a) understanding transport protocol behavior over network paths that are less explored by the research community, such as paths to cable and DSL hosts, (b) investigating the relative performance of different transport protocol designs, such as TCP Vegas and TCP Reno, and (c) testing protocol implementations under a wide range of experimental conditions.
Combining speaker identification and BIC for speaker diarization

This paper describes recent advances in speaker diarization by incorporating a speaker identification step. This system builds upon the LIMSI baseline data partitioner used in the broadcast news transcription system. This partitioner provides a high cluster purity but has a tendency to split the data from a speaker into several clusters, when there is a large quantity of data for the speaker. Several improvements to the baseline sys- tem have been made. Firstly, a standard Bayesian information criterion (BIC) agglomerative clustering has been integrated re- placing the iterative Gaussian mixture model (GMM) cluster- ing. Then a second clustering stage has been added, using a speaker identification method with MAP adapted GMM. A fi- nal post-processing stage refines the segment boundaries using the output of the transcription system. On the RT-04f and ES- TER evaluation data, the improved multi-stage system provides between 40% and 50% reduction of the speaker error, relative to a standard BIC clustering system.
NovaSearch at TREC 2014 Microblog Track: Reranking with Wikipedia Page Views

Abstract : This paper describes our participation in the TREC 2014 Microblog real-time search task. We investigate whether page views from Wikipedia can be used successfully to estimate relevant time periods for queries. To this end, we use a recently published temporal reranking method by Efron et al. [2], which uses kernel density estimation.
Chronic Conditions: Results of the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey, 1998-2000

This research examines the predictors of 2-year declines in physical and mental health for beneficiaries surveyed in the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS). Regression results indicate that age, arthritis of the hip/knee, sciatica, and pulmonary diseases, comorbidity at baseline, and increased comorbidity between baseline and followup were predictors of decline in physical health; however, these account for very small amounts of variance. The number of newly diagnosed chronic conditions and depression predicted decline in mental health. Beneficiaries deceased at followup were of lower socioeconomic status, and had lower physical and mental health scores than the analytic sample.
Stimulated echo diffusion weighted imaging of the liver at 3 Tesla

Diffusion time (Δ) effect in diffusion measurements has been validated as a sensitive biomarker in liver fibrosis by rat models. To extend this finding to clinical study, a reliable imaging technique is highly desirable. This study aimed to develop an optimal stimulated echo acquisition mode (STEAM) diffusion‐weighted imaging (DWI) method dedicated to human liver imaging on 3 Tesla (T) and preliminarily investigate the dependence effect in healthy volunteers.
Validation of Cosmed’s FitMate™ in Measuring Oxygen Consumption and Estimating Resting Metabolic Rate

The purpose of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of the FitMate™ metabolic system (Cosmed, Rome, Italy) in measuring oxygen consumption and estimating resting metabolic rate (RMR). The FitMate™ is a new, small (20 × 24 cm) metabolic analyzer designed for measurement of oxygen consumption and energy expenditure during rest and exercise. Subjects included 60 healthy adults (N = 30 males, N = 30 females) ranging in age from 19 to 65 years (mean ± SD age, 36.9 ± 13.4 years) and body mass index (BMI) from 19.2 to 44.8 kg/m2 (27.7 ± 6.2 kg/m2). Subjects were given two 10 min RMR tests in one test session during which RMR was measured simultaneously with the Douglas bag and FitMate™ systems. No significant differences were found between Douglas bag and FitMate™ systems for oxygen consumption (242 ± 49 and 240 ± 49 ml/min, respectively, P = 0.066, r = 0.97, mean ± SD absolute difference 2.83 ± 11.68 ml/min) or RMR (1,662 ± 340 and 1,668 ± 344 kcal/day, P = 0.579, r = 0.97, mean ± SD absolute difference 5.81 ± 80.70 kcal/day). These data indicate that the FitMate™ is a reliable and valid system for measuring oxygen consumption and RMR in adults.
Efficient pedestrian detection with group lasso

In this paper we deal with pedestrian detection and propose the use of group lasso to learn from data a compact and meaningful representation out of a high dimensional dictionary of local features. Group lasso, a regularized method with a sparsity-enforcing penalty term, has the very nice property of performing feature selection while preserving the internal structure of the dictionary. In our study we consider in particular variable-size HoGs, whose internal structure is composed by cells and blocks: since the entries of a block need to be computed together, the feature selection process is designed so to keep them or discard them all. The detection algorithm we obtain is a very neat procedure, simple to train and computationally efficient, which allows us to achieve a very good compromise between performance and computational cost, making the method very appropriate for video surveillance applications.
The flavonoid baicalein promotes NMDA receptor‐dependent long‐term potentiation and enhances memory

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE There is growing interest in the physiological functions of flavonoids, especially in their effects on cognitive function and on neurodegenerative diseases. The aim of the current investigation was to evaluate the role of the flavonoid baicalein in long‐term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampal CA1 region and cognitive behavioural performance.
Critical Limb Ischemia: Current Trends and Future Directions

Critical limb ischemia (CLI), which is at the end of the peripheral artery disease (PAD) spectrum, is associated with excessively high risk for cardiovascular events, including myocardial infarction, and death. [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] Mortality rates as high as 20% within 6 months from diagnosis and
Parallel Simulation of Parallel File Systems and I/O Programs

Efficient I/O implementations can have a significant impact on the performance of parallel applications. This paper describes the design and implementation of PIOSIM, a parallel simulation library for MPI-IO programs. The simulator can be used to predict the performance of existing MPI-IO programs as a function of architectural characteristics, caching algorithms, and alternative implementations of collective I/O operations. We describe the simulator and presents the results of a number of performance studies to evaluate the impact of the preceding factors on a set of MPI-IO benchmarks, including programs from the NAS benchmark suite.
Biofilm inhibitory and eradicating activity of wound care products against Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis biofilms in an in vitro chronic wound model

Although several factors contribute to wound healing, bacterial infections and the presence of biofilm can significantly affect healing. Despite that this clearly indicates that therapies should address biofilm in wounds, only few wound care products have been evaluated for their antibiofilm effect. For this reason, we developed a rapid quantification approach to investigate the efficacy of wound care products on wounds infected with Staphylococcus spp.
Extracting a bilingual semantic grammar from FrameNet-annotated corpora

We present the creation of an English-Swedish FrameNet-based grammar in Grammatical Framework. The aim of this research is to make existing framenets computationally accessible for multilingual natural language applications via a common semantic grammar API, and to facilitate the porting of such grammar to other languages. In this paper, we describe the abstract syntax of the semantic grammar while focusing on its automatic extraction possibilities. We have extracted a shared abstract syntax from ~58,500 annotated sentences in Berkeley FrameNet (BFN) and ~3,500 annotated sentences in Swedish FrameNet (SweFN). The abstract syntax defines 769 frame-specific valence patterns that cover 77,8% examples in BFN and 74,9% in SweFN belonging to the shared set of 471 frames. As a side result, we provide a unified method for comparing semantic and syntactic valence patterns across framenets.
Predicting Customer Online Shopping Adoption - an Evaluation of Data Mining and Market Modelling Approaches

Abstract - Accurate prediction of shopping channel preferences has become an important issue for retailers seeking to maximize customer loyalty. In data mining, novel approaches such as neural networks (NN) have been proposed to predict the probability of class memberships in addition to statistical methods from marketing modelling. However, Data Mining suggests new approaches to data preprocessing in order to maximise predictive accuracy, such as rebalancing skewed class distributions of the target variable. Conflicting best practices exist in data mining and market modelling, without diffusion between the two disciplines. To reflect this discrepancy, we evaluate the predictive accuracy of balanced versus imbalanced classification of consumer online shopping behaviour using logistic regression and NN. Experimental predictions are computed using socio-demographic, product and Internet shopping specific variables to classify consumers into “online shoppers”, “browsers” and “non-Internet shoppers” using UK sample survey data. Our findings suggest that rebalancing data increases accuracy for both methods. In addition, NN provide superior classification accuracy and limited interpretation of explanations for class membership.
Tubulin and calmodulin. Effects of microtubule and microfilament inhibitors on localization in the mitotic apparatus

Indirect immunofluorescence was used to determine the distribution of calmodulin in the mitotic apparatus of rat kangaroo PtK2 and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. The distribution of calmodulin in PtK2 cells was compared to the distribution of tubulin, also as revealed by indirect immunofluorescence. During mitosis, calmodulin was found to be a dynamic component of the mitotic apparatus. Calmodulin first appeared in association with the forming mitotic apparatus during midprophase. In metaphase and anaphase, calmodulin was found between the spindle poles and the chromosomes. While tubulin was found in the interzonal region throughout anaphase, calmodulin appeared in the interzone region only at late anaphase. The interzonal calmodulin of late anaphase condensed during telophase into two small regions, one on each side of the midbody. Calmodulin was not detected in the cleavage furrow. In view of the differences in the localization of calmodulin, tubulin, and actin in the mitotic apparatus, experiments were designed to determine the effects of various antimitotic drugs on calmodulin localization. Cytochalasin B, an inhibitor of actin microfilaments, had no apparent effect on calmodulin or tubulin localization in the mitotic apparatus of CHO cells. Microtubule inhibitors, such as colcemid and N2O, altered the appearance of tubulin- and calmodulin-specific fluorescence in mitotic CHO cells. Cold temperature (0 degrees C) altered tubulin- specific fluorescence of metaphase PtK2 cells but did not alter calmodulin-specific fluorescence. From these studies, it is concluded that calmodulin is more closely associated with the kinetichore-to-pole microtubules than other components of the mitotic apparatus.