Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Engineering Surface Ligands of Noble Metal Nanocatalysts in Tuning the Product Selectivity

Nanosized noble metal catalysts supported on high-surface-area support are of great importance for numerous industrial chemical processes to mediate reaction pathways in heterogeneous catalysis. Control of surface area and surface energy of nanocatalysts is a key to achieving high activity and selectivity for desired products. In the past decade, new synthetic methodologies for noble metal nanocatalysts with well-defined nanostructures have been developed. Wet-chemical preparation of noble metal nanocatalysts usually involves the utilization of specific surfactants that can bind the surface of nanocatalysts as ligands to control the nanostructures and prevent the coalescence of nanocatalysts. Surface ligands that form a densely packed self-assembled monolayer offer a facile solution to tune the surface energy of nanocatalysts, and, therefore, the selectivity of products. In this minireview, we highlight the recent advances in understanding the role of surface ligands in control over the product selectivity in a multi-product reaction using noble metal nanocatalysts. The review is outlined according to the three possible roles of surface ligands, including steric effect, orientation effect and surface charge state, in varying the adsorption/binding of reactants/transition states.
What It Is To Be Conscious : Exploring the Plausibility of Consciousness in Deep Learning Computers ( Peter )

As artificial intelligence and robotics progress further and faster every day, designing and building a conscious computer appears to be on the horizon. Recent technological advances have allowed engineers and computer scientists to create robots and computer programs that were previously impossible. The development of these highly sophisticated robots and AI programs has thus prompted the age-old question: can a computer be conscious? The answer relies on addressing two key sub-problems. The first is the nature of consciousness: what constitutes a system as conscious, or what properties does consciousness have? Secondly, does the physical make-up of the robot or computer matter? Is there a particular composition of the robot or computer that is necessary for consciousness, or is consciousness unaffected by differences in physical properties? My aim is to explore these issues with respect to deep-learning computer programs. These programs use artificial neural networks and learning algorithms to create highly sophisticated, seemingly intelligent computers that are comparable to, yet fundamentally different from, a human brain. Additionally, I will discuss the required actions we must take in order to come to a consensus on the consciousness of deep learning computers.
A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Background: Tranexamic acid (TXA) is an antifibrinolytic drug widely used to reduce blood loss during joint replacements, including total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and total hip arthroplasty (THA). However, there is no final consensus regarding the composition of an optimal administration of TXA regime between topical and systemic (intravenous). The purpose of our study was to compare the efficacy of topical and intravenous (IV) regimen of TXA during TKA and THA. Methods:Five relevant electronic online databases, PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science and Chinese Biomedical Database were systematically searched in November 2015. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared topical with intravenous TXA in patients with TKA or THA were included. The search terms included “topical,” “intravenous,” “tranexamic acid,” “knee arthroplasty” and “hip arthroplasty. ” Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed the risk of bias and study quality. Data were analyzed with Review Manager 5.3 software. Grades of Recommendation Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) were used to assess the quality of evidence. Results: Sixteen RCTs with 1250 patients undergoing TKA and 4 RCTs involving 550 patients undergoing THA were included. There were no significant differences in total blood loss (mean difference [MD]TKA= 28.72mL, 95% confidence interval [CI] 195.97 to 138.54 mL, P=0.74; MDTHA=14.03mL, 95% CI 35.53 to 63.59mL; P=0.78), total drain out (MDTKA= 3.09mL, 95% CI 39.05 to 32.88mL; P=0.87; MDTHA 31.00mL, 95% CI 66.56 to 4.66mL; P=0.09), and transfusion rates (ORTKA=0.90, 95% CI 0.58–1.40, P=0.64; ORTHA=1.19, 95% CI 0.67–2.09; P=0.63) between topical and intravenous (IV) TXA. Conclusions: The current evidence suggested that topical TXA was equally effective and safe compared with intravenous TXA in reducing blood loss and transfusion rate following TKA or THA. We recommended that either topically or systemically could be used in TKA and THA to decrease perioperative blood loss. Abbreviations: CI = confidence interval, DVT = deep venous thrombosis, MD = mean difference, OR = odds risk, PE = pulmonary embolism, PRISMA = Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, RCT = randomized controlled trials, TKA = total knee arthroplasty, TXA = tranexamic acid.
Prevention of Chronic Experimental Colitis Induced by Dextran Sulphate Sodium (DSS) in Mice Treated with FR91

One of the main treatments currently used in humans to fight cancer is chemotherapy. A huge number of compounds with antitumor activity are present in nature, and many of their derivatives are produced by microorganisms. However, the search for new drugs still represents a main objective for cancer therapy, due to drug toxicity and resistance to multiple chemotherapeutic drugs. In animal models, a short-time oral administration of dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) induces colitis, which exhibits several clinical and histological features similar to ulcerative colitis (UC). However, the pathogenic factors responsible for DSS-induced colitis and the subsequent colon cancer also remain unclear. We investigated the effect of FR91, a standardized lysate of microbial cells belonging to the Bacillus genus which has been previously shown to have significant immunomodulatory effects, against intestinal inflammation. Colitis was induced in mice during 5 weeks by oral administration 2% (DSS). Morphological changes in the colonic mucosa were evaluated by hematoxylin-eosin staining and immunohistochemistry methods. Adenocarcinoma and cryptal cells of the dysplastic epithelium showed cathenin-β, MLH1, APC, and p53 expression, together with increased production of IFN-γ. In our model, the optimal dose response was the 20% FR91 concentration, where no histological alterations or mild DSS-induced lesions were observed. These results indicate that FR91 may act as a chemopreventive agent against inflammation in mice DSS-induced colitis.
The intracellular fate of zonula occludens 2 is regulated by the phosphorylation of SR repeats and the phosphorylation/O-GlcNAcylation of S257

ZO-2 nuclear import and accumulation in speckles is regulated by phosphorylation of its SR repeats by SRPK1 in a process initiated by EGF activation of AKT. ZO-2 nuclear exportation is favored by O-GlcNAc of S257 at the nucleus, whereas maturation of tight junctions is accompanied by ZO-2 phosphorylation at S257 by PKCζ.
Network public sentiment orientation analysis based on HMM Model

In recent years, the web has become one of the main carrier of social public opinion, so the network public opinion needed a new natural language processing technology to identify the information efficiently and accurately, analysis and classify the public opinions effectively. In this paper, the text semantic orientation analysis method is proposed based on Hidden Markov Model to improve the accuracy of the network public opinion orientation analysis. Reference the thought of emotional vocabulary tendency analysis method, and consider the context to analysis the semantic orientation of the text. Experimental results show that, this algorithm can improve the stability and accuracy of network public opinion orientation analysis effectively.
Interactions between Land Use and Flood Management in the Chi River Basin

The damages caused by floods remain an issue in the Chi River Basin, Thailand. Therefore, an integrated flood management framework needs to be developed to minimize the negative effects of floods of different magnitude. In response, a hydrological model (SWAT) and a hydraulic (1D/2D SOBEK) model were integrated to simulate floods in detailed way and to analyse the current system. The developed modelling framework enabled to analyse the impacts of different structural and non-structural measures based on economic and technical efficiency criteria. An optimum combination of aforesaid measures was then chosen since it could considerably reduce flood extent and its damage. Additionally, the study illustrates the effects of land use changes on floods, which indicated little or no significant potential impact on flood regime at river basin level, but rather at sub-basin scale. This finding is important for a better understanding of the scale and direction of impacts of future developments.
Intelligent Flow Control under a Game Theoretic Framework

In this chapter, we organize our work in two parts. The first part deals with the connection admission control (CAC) problem in ATM networks. By taking dynamic CAC from a different point of view, we propose a cooperative game model that considers certain combination of user preferences to optimize the call block probability while maintaining certain negotiated QoS. After deriving the product form of utility function of different traffic type as user preferences, we use genetic algorithm to optimize this objective function to maintain fair share during the transmission along each traffic connection. The second part tries to model the noncooperative user behavior in resource allocation process under a generalized auction framework. We propose an optimal auction rule that leads to the equilibrium in repeated dynamic game. We also use neural networks to model the user strategy in bidding and briefly discuss the formation of common knowledge in repeated game and the allocation efficiency. Contrary to our CAC scheme as a centralized network control mechanism, the auction to allocate network resources is suitable to a decentralized control environment. The common trait for these two parts is that we use some computational intelligence techniques to solve the complicated modeling and optimization problem in resource allocation.
Cupid: Congestion-free consistent data plane update in software defined networks

With the popular applications of SDN in load balancing and failure recovery, the controller schedules affected flows to redundant paths to avoid network congestions and failures by updating flow tables in data plane. However, inconsistent flow table updating may lead to transient incorrect network behaviors or undesired performance degradation. Therefore, the consistency imposes dependencies among updates, so that the order of updates must be carefully considered to keep the consistency. To update flow tables consistently and efficiently, in this paper, we propose an update ordering approach - Cupid. To avoid high overhead in update ordering, we divide the global dependencies among updates into local restrictions by: 1) partitioning a new routing path into several independent segments, 2) identifying critical nodes controlling traffic shifting between the old path and new path, and 3) constructing a dependency graph among critical nodes for potential congested links. We then design a heuristic algorithm to resolve the dependency graph. To save the flow table space, a switch keeps only one flow entry with multiple ports for a flow during updating. Our simulation shows that Cupid schedules updates at least 2 times faster and has less throughput losses than the state-of-the-art approaches in both fat-tree and mesh networks.
A Long-Run Equilibrium Demand Function: The Mexican Tourism

Tourism demand in Mexico is around 80 percent represented by USA visitors. The goal of this paper is to explain the long-term effects of Tourism Demand in Mexico with respect to US visitors. To reach our goal the methodology of this paper follows the Johansen cointegration analysis and using annual time-series data, a single equation is estimated. With the empirical analyze, we study the tourism demand elasticities considering public investment, relative prices of tourist products, and US income per capita. Further analysis shows only one direction of a strongly positive Granger-causality going from number of tourists to the relative prices. We show that US income positively affects the Mexican tourism demand.
Reprogramming to Pluripotency Can Conceal Somatic Cell Chromosomal Instability

The discovery that somatic cells are reprogrammable to pluripotency by ectopic expression of a small subset of transcription factors has created great potential for the development of broadly applicable stem-cell-based therapies. One of the concerns regarding the safe use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in therapeutic applications is loss of genomic integrity, a hallmark of various human conditions and diseases, including cancer. Structural chromosome defects such as short telomeres and double-strand breaks are known to limit reprogramming of somatic cells into iPSCs, but whether defects that cause whole-chromosome instability (W-CIN) preclude reprogramming is unknown. Here we demonstrate, using aneuploidy-prone mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) in which chromosome missegregation is driven by BubR1 or RanBP2 insufficiency, that W-CIN is not a barrier to reprogramming. Unexpectedly, the two W-CIN defects had contrasting effects on iPSC genomic integrity, with BubR1 hypomorphic MEFs almost exclusively yielding aneuploid iPSC clones and RanBP2 hypomorphic MEFs karyotypically normal iPSC clones. Moreover, BubR1-insufficient iPSC clones were karyotypically unstable, whereas RanBP2-insufficient iPSC clones were rather stable. These findings suggest that aneuploid cells can be selected for or against during reprogramming depending on the W-CIN gene defect and present the novel concept that somatic cell W-CIN can be concealed in the pluripotent state. Thus, karyotypic analysis of somatic cells of origin in addition to iPSC lines is necessary for safe application of reprogramming technology.
Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, and Literature

In this innovative approach to southern literary cultures, Thadious Davis analyzes how black southern writers use their spatial location to articulate the vexed connections between society and environment, particularly under segregation and its legacies. Basing her analysis on texts by Ernest Gaines, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Natasha Trethewey, Olympia Vernon, Brenda Marie Osbey, Sybil Kein, and others, Davis reveals how these writers reconstitute racial exclusion as creative black space, rather than a site of trauma and resistance. Utilizing the social and political separation epitomized by segregation to forge a spatial and racial vantage point, Davis argues, allows these writers to imagine and represent their own subject matter and aesthetic concerns. Focusing particularly on Louisiana and Mississippi, Davis deploys new geographical discourses of space to expand analyses of black writers' relationship to the South and to consider the informing aspects of spatial narratives on their literary production. She argues that African American writers not only are central to the production of southern literature and new southern studies, but also are crucial to understanding the shift from modernism to postmodernism in southern letters. A paradigm-shifting work, Southscapes restores African American writers to their rightful place in the regional imagination, while calling for a more inclusive conception of region. |In this provocative approach to southern literary cultures, Thadious Davis analyzes how black southern writers use their spatial location to articulate the vexed connections between society and environment, particularly under segregation and its legacies. Basing her analysis on texts by Ernest Gaines, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Natasha Trethewey, Olympia Vernon, Brenda Marie Osbey, and others, Davis reveals how these writers reconstitute racial exclusion as creative black space, rather than a site of trauma and resistance.
The K King Problem, an Abstract Model for Computing Aircraft Landing Trajectories: On Modeling a Dynamic Hybrid System with Constraints

Motivated by the problem of computing trajectories of a set of aircraft in their final descent, we introduce the K king problem, a dramatic simplification of the initial problem in which time and space are discretized. A constraint-based model relying on several specific global constraints is introduced. Computational experiments are reported and show that small instances of this problem can be solved in reasonable time.
Expression Patterns of Developmental Control Genes in Normal andEngrailed-1 Mutant Mouse Spinal Cord Reveal Early Diversity in Developing Interneurons

The vertebrate spinal cord has long served as a useful system for studying the pattern of cell differentiation along the dorsoventral (d/v) axis. In this paper, we have defined the expression of several classes of genes expressed in restricted d/v domains in the intermediate region (IR) of the mouse spinal cord, in which most interneurons are generated. From this analysis, we have found that spinal cord interneurons and their precursors express unique combinations of transcription factors and Notch ligands at the onset of their differentiation. The domains of expression of a number of different classes of genes share similar boundaries, indicating that there could be a basic subdivision of the ventral IR into four distinct regions. This differential gene expression suggests that spinal cord interneurons acquire unique identities early in their development and that Notch signaling mechanisms may participate in the determination of cell fate along the d/v axis. Gene expression studies inEngrailed-1 (En-1) mutants showed thatEn-1-expressing and other closely positioned classes of neurons do not require the homeodomain protein En-1 for their early pattern of differentiation. Rather, it is suggested thatEn-1 may function to distinguish a subset of interneurons during the later maturation of the spinal cord.
Motion segmentation via overlapping temporal windows

In this paper we present a novel approach to motion segmentation. Initially, the video sequence is divided in overlapping temporal windows. Our algorithm performs over-segmentation on each window separately. Concretely, quadruples of trajectories are used as motion subspaces and the Ordered Residual Kernel is employed as an affinity metric between trajectories. The corresponding graph of the computed affinity matrix is partitioned via a random walk algorithm. A motion dissimilarity score is proposed to correlate the computed segments as well as a merging mechanism that fuses the individual segmentation results of successive windows. Experiments on the Berkeley motion segmentation dataset demonstrate the scalability and accuracy of our method compared to the existing approaches.
ROS: A Rack-based Optical Storage System with Inline Accessibility for Long-Term Data Preservation

The combination of the explosive growth in digital data and the need to preserve much of this data in the long term has made it an imperative to find a more cost-effective way than HDD arrays and more easily accessible way than tape libraries to store massive amounts of data. While modern optical discs are capable of guaranteeing more than 50-year data preservation without migration, individual optical disks' lack of the performance and capacity relative to HDDs or tapes has significantly limited their use in datacenters. This paper presents a Rack-scale Optical disc library System, or ROS in short, that provides a PB-level total capacity and inline accessibility on thousands of optical discs built within a 42U Rack. A rotatable roller and robotic arm separating and fetching the discs are designed to improve disc placement density and simplify the mechanical structure. A hierarchical storage system based on SSD, hard disks and optical discs are presented to hide the delay of mechanical operation. On the other hand, an optical library file system is proposed to schedule mechanical operation and organize data on the tiered storage with a POSIX user interface to provide an illusion of inline data accessibility. We evaluate ROS on a few key performance metrics including operation delays of the mechanical structure and software overhead in a prototype PB-level ROS system. The results show that ROS stacked on Samba and FUSE can provide almost 323MB/s read and 236MB/s write throughput, about 53ms file write and 15ms read latency via 10GbE network for external users, exhibiting its inline accessibility. Besides, ROS is able to effectively hide and virtualize internal complex operational behaviors and be easily deployable in datacenters.
A Framework of Large-Scale Terrain Visualization Based on GPU

In this paper an efficient solution of large scale, interactive terrain visualization is proposed based on graphic hardware. The method of multi-thread is adopted to resolve the bottle-neck problem of data fetching from the external memory, and the methods of level of details (LODs) based on view- dependent and mesh rendering in graphics programmable units (GPU) are used to ensure visual quality and high rendering frame rate. Our framework exploits restricted quadtree structure to recursively subdivide a square block by the algorithm of top- down refinement, and takes advantage of the character of GPU vertex texture to render surface in shaders which extremely reduce time spending by parallel processing. Experimental results show that the framework is output sensitive, effective and satisfies the requirements of interactive large scale terrain visualization.
Making The Transition To Four-Year Institutions: Academic Preparation And Transfer. CCRS Working Paper No. 13.

In this study, we examine the role of academic preparation in the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions. We address two specific questions: To what extent do academically unprepared students transfer to four-year institutions? And, can positive experiences in community colleges diminish the role of inadequate academic preparation? The results, which are based on analyses of Florida’s unit record data of first-time community college students, indicate that a substantial proportion of students who enter community colleges academically unprepared do indeed transfer to four-year institutions. Moreover, successful completion of intermediate outcomes — such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate degree — enhances students’ probability of transfer. However, the ability of community colleges to mitigate the negative effects of inadequate academic preparation is limited: successful completion of even the most demanding intermediate outcomes does not alleviate the negative consequences of entering higher education unprepared. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.