Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Generation of Integration-free Induced Neural Stem Cells from Mouse Fibroblasts*

The viral vector-mediated overexpression of the defined transcription factors, Brn4/Pou3f4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc (BSKM), could induce the direct conversion of somatic fibroblasts into induced neural stem cells (iNSCs). However, viral vectors may be randomly integrated into the host genome thereby increasing the risk for undesired genotoxicity, mutagenesis, and tumor formation. Here we describe the generation of integration-free iNSCs from mouse fibroblasts by non-viral episomal vectors containing BSKM. The episomal vector-derived iNSCs (e-iNSCs) closely resemble control NSCs, and iNSCs generated by retrovirus (r-iNSCs) in morphology, gene expression profile, epigenetic status, and self-renewal capacity. The e-iNSCs are functionally mature, as they could differentiate into all the neuronal cell types both in vitro and in vivo. Our study provides a novel concept for generating functional iNSCs using a non-viral, non-integrating, plasmid-based system that could facilitate their biomedical applicability.
Quality assessment of audio: Increasing applicability scope of objective methods via prior identification of impairment types

In this paper the design of a double-ended (intrusive) diagnostic tool for identifying five types of degradation in audio signals is reported. The impairment types taken into consideration are additive contamination with pink noise, occurrences of signal mutes, distortion by magnitude clipping, and the previous two types mixed with pink noise. As a simple solution to accomplish the established goal, a threshold-based hierarchical classification system is proposed, being completely defined from pre-processing of the input signals, passing through the estimation of a few characteristic features, up to data clustering criteria. Performance evaluation of the classifier is carried out via a validation database containing 60 impaired signals for each type of impairment, with five distinct degradation intensity levels. Considering the types and range of degradation levels considered in this work, excellent results are achieved, scoring above 96% of correctly classified data in the worst case. System performance in identifying mixed impairment types tends to deteriorate as the strength of the noise component increases.
The contribution of different frequency bands in class separability of covert speech tasks for BCIs

Several recent studies demonstrate the possibility of using user initiated covert speech mental tasks in brain computer interfaces with varying degrees of success, but details of the best frequency features had not been investigated. In this work, ten volunteers in the age range of 22–70 years participated in the experiment. Eight of them were neurologically healthy, one user was dyslexic, and another was autistic. The four words “back”, “forward”, “left”, and “right” were shortened into “BA”, “FO”, “LE”, and “RY”, which are phonetically dissimilar and cognitively relevant directional commands. Participants were asked to covertly speak each as soon as the letters appeared on a screen. Volunteers completed five recording runs. During each run the four words were presented in random succession to avoid sequence bias. The recorded EEG data from the ten users were analysed to discover the best features within a Gabor Transform of the signals, i.e., those yielding the highest word-pair classification accuracy for this specific type of linguistic mental activity. Using this BCI, suitable class separability of covert speech tasks is confirmed for all, including disabled users, with consistently high classification accuracy from 72% to 88% in all cases. Like motor imagery tasks, Alpha and Beta band activity were found to contain 12% and 31% of the most important features respectively. Gamma band activity, which indicates high mental functions, contains 57% of the most important features in this study.
Tracing Analytic Ray Curves for Light and Sound Propagation in Non-Linear Media

The physical world consists of spatially varying media, such as the atmosphere and the ocean, in which light and sound propagates along non-linear trajectories. This presents a challenge to existing ray-tracing based methods, which are widely adopted to simulate propagation due to their efficiency and flexibility, but assume linear rays. We present a novel algorithm that traces analytic ray curves computed from local media gradients, and utilizes the closed-form solutions of both the intersections of the ray curves with planar surfaces, and the travel distance. By constructing an adaptive unstructured mesh, our algorithm is able to model general media profiles that vary in three dimensions with complex boundaries consisting of terrains and other scene objects such as buildings. Our analytic ray curve tracer with the adaptive mesh improves the efficiency considerably over prior methods. We highlight the algorithm's application on simulation of visual and sound propagation in outdoor scenes.
acn-1, a C. elegans homologue of ACE, genetically interacts with the let-7 microRNA and other heterochronic genes

ABSTRACT The heterochronic pathway in C. elegans controls the relative timing of cell fate decisions during post-embryonic development. It includes a network of microRNAs (miRNAs), such as let-7, and protein-coding genes, such as the stemness factors, LIN-28 and LIN-41. Here we identified the acn-1 gene, a homologue of mammalian angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), as a new suppressor of the stem cell developmental defects of let-7 mutants. Since acn-1 null mutants die during early larval development, we used RNAi to characterize the role of acn-1 in C. elegans seam cell development, and determined its interaction with heterochronic factors, including let-7 and its downstream interactors – lin-41, hbl-1, and apl-1. We demonstrate that although RNAi knockdown of acn-1 is insufficient to cause heterochronic defects on its own, loss of acn-1 suppresses the retarded phenotypes of let-7 mutants and enhances the precocious phenotypes of hbl-1, though not lin-41, mutants. Conversely, the pattern of acn-1 expression, which oscillates during larval development, is disrupted by lin-41 mutants but not by hbl-1 mutants. Finally, we show that acn-1(RNAi) enhances the let-7-suppressing phenotypes caused by loss of apl-1, a homologue of the Alzheimer's disease-causing amyloid precursor protein (APP), while significantly disrupting the expression of apl-1 during the L4 larval stage. In conclusion, acn-1 interacts with heterochronic genes and appears to function downstream of let-7 and its target genes, including lin-41 and apl-1.
Autophagy Activation in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Contributes to the Tolerance of Oxaliplatin via Reactive Oxygen Species Modulation

Purpose: Understanding the roles of mammalian autophagy in cancer highlights recent advances in the pharmacologic manipulation of autophagic pathways as a therapeutic strategy for cancer. However, autophagy status and corresponding functions in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after therapeutic stress remain to be clarified. This study was to determine whether the autophagic machinery could be activated after chemotherapy and the contribution of autophagy to tolerance of oxaliplatin in HCC. Experimental Design: Autophagy activation and cell death induced by oxaliplatin were examined in two HCC cell lines as well as in vivo using an HCC model in nude mice. HCC tissue samples with or without locoregional chemotherapy before surgery were also examined by immunohistochemical and electron microscopic analysis. Results: Autophagy was functionally activated in HCC cell lines and xenografts after oxaliplatin treatment. Suppression of autophagy using either pharmacologic inhibitors or RNA interference of essential autophagy gene enhanced cell death induced by oxaliplatin in HCC cells. Generation of reactive oxygen species has an important role in the induction of cell death by oxaliplatin in combination with autophagy inhibitors. Critically, the combination of oxaliplatin with autophagy inhibitor chloroquine resulted in a more pronounced tumor suppression in HCC xenografts. Furthermore, autophagy-specific protein LC3 and autophagic autophagosome formation were induced to a significantly higher level in HCC specimens that had been subjected to locoregional chemotherapy. Conclusions: Autophagy activation under therapy stress contributes to HCC tumor cell survival. Targeting the autophagy pathway is a promising therapeutic strategy to enhance the effects of chemotherapy and improve clinical outcomes in HCC patients. Clin Cancer Res; 17(19); 6229–38. ©2011 AACR.
Processor allocation policies for message-passing parallel computers

When multiple jobs compete for processing resources on a parallel computer, the operating system kernel's processor allocation policy determines how many and which processors to allocate to each. In this paper we investigate the issues involved in constructing a processor allocation policy for large scale, message-passing parallel computers supporting a scientific workload. We make four specific contributions: We define the concept of efficiency preservation as a characteristic of processor allocation policies. Efficiency preservation is the degree to which the decisions of the processor allocator degrade the processor efficiencies experienced by individual applications relative to their efficiencies when run alone. We identify the interplay between the kernel processor allocation policy and the application load distribution policy as a determinant of efficiency preservation. We specify the details of two families of processor allocation policies, called Equipartition and Folding. Within each family, different member policies cover a range of efficiency preservation values, from very high to very low. By comparing policies within each family as well as between families, we show that high efficiency preservation is essential to good performance, and that efficiency preservation is a more dominant factor in obtaining good performance than is equality of resource allocation.
A Stochastic Japanese Morphological Analyzer Using a Forward-DP Backward-A* N-Best Search Algorithm

We present a novel method for segmenting the input sentence into words and assigning parts of speech to the words. It consists of a statistical language model and an efficient two-pass N-best search algorithm. The algorithm does not require delimiters between words. Thus it is suitable for written Japanese. The proposed Japanese morphological analyzer achieved 95.1% recall and 94.6% precision for open text when it was trained and tested on the ATR Corpus.
RML: A Generic Language for Integrated RDF Mappings of Heterogeneous Data

Despite the signicant number of existing tools, incorporating data from multiple sources and dierent formats into the Linked Open Data cloud remains complicated. No mapping formalisation exists to dene how to map such heterogeneous sources into rdf in an integrated and interoperable fashion. This paper introduces the rml mapping language, a generic language based on an extension over r2rml, the w3c standard for mapping relational databases into rdf. Broadening r2rml’s scope, the language becomes source-agnostic and extensible, while facilitating the denition of mappings of multiple heterogeneous sources. This leads to higher integrity within datasets and richer interlinking among resources.
A Stopping Criterion for Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have an inherent stopping criterion, parity-check constraints (equations). By testing the parity-check constraints, an LDPC decoder can detect successful decoding and stop their decoding, which is, however, not possible with turbo codes. In this paper, we propose a stopping criterion to predict decoding failure of LDPC codes, instead of detecting successful decoding. If the decoder predicts the decoding failure in advance, the receiver can more rapidly response to the transmitter and request for additional parity bits with an automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol, which reduces overall system latency. The receiver can also save power consumption by avoiding unnecessary decoder iterations. The proposed stopping criterion makes use of the variations of the number of satisfied parity-check constraints in the belief-propagation (BP) decoding which is always tested in the conventional BP decoding to detect successful decoding. Thus, the proposed stopping criterion does not require any additional complexity. The counting of satisfied parity-check constraints shows behaviors of the BP decoding, which comes, otherwise, from the observations of changes of log-likelihood ratio (LLR) values in multi-bit resolution with additional complexity.
Preventing performance drops of coal mills due to high moisture content

Coal mills pulverize and dry the coal dust before it is blown into the furnace in coal-fired power plants. The coal mills can only deliver the requested coal flow if certain conditions are fulfilled. These are normally considered as constraints on individual variables. However, combinations of more than one variable might cause problems even though these individually variables are in an acceptable region. This paper deals with such a problem. The combination of a high load of the power plant, a large load change and high moisture content in the coal, can force the coal mill into a state where coal is accumulated instead of being blown into the furnace. This paper suggests a simple method for preventing the accumulation of the coal in the mill, by limiting the requested coal flow considering the coal moisture content and the temperature outside the mill.
The complexity of leadership and organisations

The thesis contributes to the evolving process of moving the study of Complexity from the arena of metaphor to something real and operational. Acknowledging this phenomenon ultimately changes the underlying assumptions made about working environments and leadership; organisations are dynamic and so should their leaders be. Dynamic leaders are behaviourally complex. Behavioural Complexity is a product of behavioural repertoire - range of behaviours; and behavioural differentiation - where effective leaders apply appropriate behaviour to the demands of the situation. Behavioural Complexity was operationalised using the Competing Values Framework (CVF). The CVF is a measure that captures the extent to which leaders demonstrate four behaviours on four quadrants: Control, Compete, Collaborate and Create, which are argued to be critical to all types of organisational leadership. The results provide evidence to suggest Behavioural Complexity is an enabler of leadership effectiveness; Organisational Complexity (captured using a new measure developed in the thesis) moderates Behavioural Complexity and leadership effectiveness; and leadership training supports Behavioural Complexity in contributing to leadership effectiveness. Most definitions of leadership come down to changing people’s behaviour. Such definitions have contributed to a popularity of focus in leadership research intent on exploring how to elicit change in others when maybe some of the popularity of attention should have been on eliciting change in the leader them self. It is hoped that this research will provoke interest into the factors that cause behavioural change in leaders that in turn enable leadership effectiveness and in doing so contribute to a better understanding of leadership in organisations.
In vitro and in vivo comparative study of itraconazole bioavailability when formulated in highly soluble self‐emulsifying system and in solid dispersion

A semisolid self‐emulsifying system (SES) of itraconazole consisting of oleic acid, polysorbate 80 and coajuvant (citric acid) was prepared by a hot‐melt technique and then compared with hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) solid dispersion (SD) coated onto inert sugar spheres as a reference formulation for in vitro and in vivo disposition in rats. The optimal SES greatly increased dissolution rates in gastric (pH 1.2) and intestinal fluid (pH 6.8) by forming a microemulsion (150–250 nm), whereas that of SD was minimal. The tissue uptake of itraconazole from SES in whole intestine, liver and Peyer's patches of the rats was more favorable than that from SD and linearly increased as a function of administering dose. Interestingly, the uptake ratio of Peyer's patches relative to liver also increased linearly in the case of SES while that of SD was almost unchanged. After repeated dosing for 1 week, both SES and SD increased the areas of Peyer's patch region in intestinal tissues but no distinct histopathological damage of the intestine was observed except the hepatocytes. Due to the biopharmaceutical differences of SES in terms of efficient solubilization, easy dispersibility and higher lymphatic transport, the in vivo bioavailability of SES was about twice greater than that of SD in rats. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Problem of the Coronary Changes Due To Disturbance of Vascular Wall Permeability

investigations we, too, found that in the genesis of vascular wall fibrinoid the entrance of plasma components into the vascular wall and the necrosis of the smooth muscles of the blood vessel play the leading role. 3, 4, 7 The typical vascular fibrinoid develops exclusively when the two components act simultaneously, as has also been proved by our experiments involving sensitization with horse serum Kadar et aL.S In the investigations in which we had been trying to clarify the role played by plasma imbibition and parallel with it the disturbance of transport through the vascular wall we found a subendothelial
A sketching interface for feature curve recovery of free-form surfaces

In this paper, we present a semi-automatic approach to efficiently and robustly recover the characteristic feature curves of a given free-form surface. The technique supports a sketch-based interface where the user just has to roughly sketch the location of a feature by drawing a stroke directly on the input mesh. The system then snaps this initial curve to the correct position based on a graph-cut optimization scheme that takes various surface properties into account. Additional position constraints can be placed and modified manually which allows for an interactive feature curve editing functionality. We demonstrate the usefulness of our technique by applying it to a practical problem scenario in reverse engineering. Here, we consider the problem of generating a statistical (PCA) shape model for car bodies. The crucial step is to establish proper feature correspondences between a large number of input models. Due to the significant shape variation, fully automatic techniques are doomed to failure. With our simple and effective feature curve recovery tool, we can quickly sketch a set of characteristic features on each input model which establishes the correspondence to a pre-defined template mesh and thus allows us to generate the shape model. Finally, we can use the feature curves and the shape model to implement an intuitive modeling metaphor to explore the shape space spanned by the input models.
A distributed resource management architecture that supports advance reservations and co-allocation

The realization of end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees in emerging network-based applications requires mechanisms that support first dynamic discovery and then advance or immediate reservation of resources that will often be heterogeneous in type and implementation and independently controlled and administered. We propose the Globus Architecture for Reservation and Allocation (GARA) to address these four issues. GARA treats both reservations and computational elements such as processes, network flows, and memory blocks as first-class entities, allowing them to be created, monitored, and managed independently and uniformly. It simplifies management of heterogeneous resource types by defining uniform mechanisms for computers, networks, disk, memory, and other resources. Layering on these standard mechanisms, GARA enables the construction of application-level co-reservation and co-allocation libraries that applications can use to dynamically assemble collections of resources, guided by both application QoS requirements and the local administration policy of individual resources. We describe a prototype GARA implementation that supports three different resource type-parallel computers, individual CPU under control of the dynamic soft real-time scheduler, and integrated services networks, and provide performance results that quantify the costs of our techniques.
Training Quality-Aware Filters for No-Reference Image Quality Assessment

With the rapid increase of digital imaging and communication technology usage, there's now great demand for fast and practical image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms that can predict an image's quality as consistently as humans. The authors propose a general-purpose, no-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) with the goal of developing a model that does not require prior knowledge about nondistorted reference images and the types of distortions. The key is to obtain effective image representations using learning quality-aware filters (QAFs). Unlike other regression models, they also use a random forest to train the mapping from the feature space. Extensive experiments conducted on the LIVE and CSIQ datasets demonstrate that the proposed NR-IQA metric QAF can achieve better prediction performance than the other state-of-the-art approaches in terms of both prediction accuracy and generalization capability.
Endogenous cannabinoid, anandamide, acts as a noncompetitive inhibitor on 5‐HT3 receptor‐mediated responses in Xenopus oocytes

The cloned 5‐HT3 receptor from NCB‐20 neuroblastoma cells was expressed in Xenopus oocytes and the effect of the endogenous cannabinoid ligand, anandamide, was investigated on the function of this receptor. The oocytes expressing the cloned 5‐HT3 receptors were voltage‐clamped at −70 mV. Anandamide, at the concentration range of 0.1–100 μM, reversibly inhibited 1 μM 5‐HT induced currents. The inhibition of 5‐HT induced currents by anandamide was concentration‐dependent with an EC50 of 3.7 μM and slope value of 0.94. This inhibitory effect was not dependent on the membrane potential and anandamide did not have an effect on the reversal potential of 5‐HT‐induced currents. In the presence of 10 μM anandamide, the maximum 5‐HT‐induced response was also inhibited and the respective EC50 values were 3.4 μM and 3.1 μM in the absence and presence of anandamide, indicating that anandamide acts as a noncompetitive antagonist on 5‐HT3 receptors. CB1 receptor antagonist SR‐141716A (1 μM) and pertussis toxin (5 μg/ml) did not cause a significant change on the inhibition of 5‐HT responses by anandamide. The effect of anandamide was not changed by preincubating the oocytes with 0.2 mM 8‐Br‐cAMP, a membrane‐permeable analog of cAMP, or Sp‐cAMPS (0.1 mM), a membrane‐permeable protein kinase A activator. These results suggest that the effect of anandamide is independent of the activation of cAMP pathway and not mediated by the activation of PTX sensitive G‐proteins. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the endogenous cannabinioid anandamide inhibits the function of 5‐HT3 receptors expressed in Xenopus oocytes in a cannabinoid‐receptor independent and noncompetitive manner. Synapse 46:150–156, 2002. Published 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.