Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Guanidinoacetate Is More Effective than Creatine at Enhancing Tissue Creatine Stores while Consequently Limiting Methionine Availability in Yucatan Miniature Pigs

Creatine (Cr) is an important high-energy phosphate buffer in tissues with a high energy demand such as muscle and brain and is consequently a highly consumed nutritional supplement. Creatine is synthesized via the S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) dependent methylation of guanidinoacetate (GAA) which is not regulated by a feedback mechanism. The first objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of GAA at increasing tissue Cr stores. Because SAM is required for other methylation reactions, we also wanted to determine whether an increased creatine synthesis would lead to a lower availability of methyl groups for other methylated products. Three month-old pigs (n = 18) were fed control, GAA- or Cr-supplemented diets twice daily. On day 18 or 19, anesthesia was induced 1–3 hours post feeding and a bolus of [methyl-3H]methionine was intravenously infused. After 30 minutes, the liver was analyzed for methyl-3H incorporation into protein, Cr, phosphatidylcholine (PC) and DNA. Although both Cr and GAA led to higher hepatic Cr concentration, only supplementation with GAA led to higher levels of muscle Cr (P < 0.05). Only GAA supplementation resulted in lower methyl-3H incorporation into PC and protein as well as lower hepatic SAM concentration compared to the controls, suggesting that Cr synthesis resulted in a limited methyl supply for PC and protein synthesis (P < 0.05). Although GAA is more effective than Cr at supporting muscle Cr accretion, further research should be conducted into the long term consequences of a limited methyl supply and its effects on protein and PC homeostasis.
Satellite capacity allocation

Several allocation strategies are investigated for sharing the satellite capacity among user communities requiring circuit-switched or store-and-forward (message-switched) communication service. Teletraffic and queueing models are used to obtain analytical results by which the allocation strategies are compared. It is shown that the capacity required to provide a specified grade of service is strongly dependent upon the particular allocation strategy chosen. Therefore, an allocation strategy can be selected which requires less capacity and hence provides more efficient utilization of the satellite capacity for a specified grade of service.
A Prototype System that Learns by Reading Simplified Texts

Systems that could learn by reading would radically change the economics of building large knowledge bases. This paper describes Learning Reader, a prototype system that extends its knowledge base by reading. Learning Reader consists of three components. The Reader, which converts text into formally represented cases, uses a Direct Memory Access Parser operating over a large knowledge base, derived from ResearchCyc. The Q/A system, which provides a means of quizzing the system on what it has learned, uses focused sets of axioms automatically extracted from the knowledge base for tractability. The Ruminator, which attempts to improve the system's understanding of what it has read by off-line processing, generates questions for itself by several means, including analogies with prior material and automatically constructed generalizations from examples in the KB and its prior reading. We discuss the architecture of the system, how each component works, and some experimental results.
Angiotensin Receptor–Binding Protein ATRAP/Agtrap Inhibits Metabolic Dysfunction With Visceral Obesity

Background Metabolic disorders with visceral obesity have become a major medical problem associated with the development of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and dyslipidemia and, ultimately, life‐threatening cardiovascular and renal diseases. Adipose tissue dysfunction has been proposed as the cause of visceral obesity‐related metabolic disorders, moving the tissue toward a proinflammatory phenotype. Methods and Results Here we first report that adipose tissues from patients and mice with metabolic disorders exhibit decreased expression of ATRAP/Agtrap, which is a specific binding modulator of the angiotensin II type 1 receptor, despite its abundant expression in adipose tissues from normal human and control mice. Subsequently, to examine a functional role of ATRAP in the pathophysiology of metabolic disorders, we produced homozygous ATRAP deficient (Agtrap−/−) mice, which exhibited largely normal physiological phenotype at baseline. Under dietary high fat loading, Agtrap−/− mice displayed systemic metabolic dysfunction, characterized by an increased accumulation of pad fat, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance, along with adipose tissue inflammation. Conversely, subcutaneous transplantation of donor fat pads overexpressing ATRAP derived from Agtrap transgenic mice to Agtrap−/− recipient mice improved the systemic metabolic dysfunction. Conclusions These results demonstrate that Agtrap−/− mice are an effective model of metabolic disorders with visceral obesity and constitute evidence that ATRAP plays a protective role against insulin resistance, suggesting a new therapeutic target in metabolic disorders. Identification of ATRAP as a novel receptor binding modulator of adipose tissue inflammation not only has cardiovascular significance but may have generalized implication in the regulation of tissue function.
Communication Efficient Distributed Machine Learning with the Parameter Server

This paper describes a third-generation parameter server framework for distributed machine learning. This framework offers two relaxations to balance system performance and algorithm efficiency. We propose a new algorithm that takes advantage of this framework to solve non-convex non-smooth problems with convergence guarantees. We present an in-depth analysis of two large scale machine learning problems ranging from l1 -regularized logistic regression on CPUs to reconstruction ICA on GPUs, using 636TB of real data with hundreds of billions of samples and dimensions. We demonstrate using these examples that the parameter server framework is an effective and straightforward way to scale machine learning to larger problems and systems than have been previously achieved.
Requirement for the Budding Yeast Polo Kinase Cdc5 in Proper Microtubule Growth and Dynamics

ABSTRACT In many organisms, polo kinases appear to play multiple roles during M-phase progression. To provide new insights into the function of the budding yeast polo kinase Cdc5, we generated novel temperature-sensitive cdc5 mutants by mutagenizing the C-terminal noncatalytic polo box domain, a region that is critical for proper subcellular localization. One of these mutants, cdc5-11, exhibited a temperature-sensitive growth defect with an abnormal spindle morphology. Strikingly, provision of a moderate level of benomyl, a microtubule-depolymerizing drug, permitted cdc5-11 cells to grow significantly better than the isogenic CDC5 wild type in a FEAR (cdc Fourteen Early Anaphase Release)-independent manner. In addition, cdc5-11 required MAD2 for both cell growth and the benomyl-remedial phenotype. These results suggest that cdc5-11 is defective in proper spindle function. Consistent with this view, cdc5-11 exhibited abnormal spindle morphology, shorter spindle length, and delayed microtubule regrowth at the nonpermissive temperature. Overexpression of CDC5 moderately rescued the spc98-2 growth defect. Interestingly, both Cdc28 and Cdc5 were required for the proper modification of the spindle pole body components Nud1, Slk19, and Stu2 in vivo. They also phosphorylated these three proteins in vitro. Taken together, these observations suggest that concerted action of Cdc28 and Cdc5 on Nud1, Slk19, and Stu2 is important for proper spindle functions.
Inferring App Demand from Publicly Available Data

With an abundance of products available online, many online retailers provide sales rankings to make it easier for consumers to find the best-selling products. Successfully implementing product rankings online was done a decade ago by Amazon, and more recently by Apple's App Store. However, neither market provides actual download data, a very useful statistic for both practitioners and researchers. In the past, researchers developed various strategies that allowed them to infer demand from rank data. Almost all of that work is based on an experiment that shifts sales or collaboration with a vendor to get actual sales data. In this research, we present an innovative method to use public data to infer the rank--demand relationship for the paid apps on Apple's iTunes App Store. We find that the top-ranked paid app for iPhone generates 150 times more downloads compared to the paid app ranked at 200. Similarly, the top paid app on iPad generates 120 times more downloads compared to the paid app ranked at 200. We conclude with a discussion on an extension of this framework to the Android platform, in-app purchases, and free apps.
Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus: Epidemiology, Pathogenesis and Implications for Honey Bee Health

Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) is a widespread RNA virus of honey bees that has been linked with colony losses. Here we describe the transmission, prevalence, and genetic traits of this virus, along with host transcriptional responses to infections. Further, we present RNAi-based strategies for limiting an important mechanism used by IAPV to subvert host defenses. Our study shows that IAPV is established as a persistent infection in honey bee populations, likely enabled by both horizontal and vertical transmission pathways. The phenotypic differences in pathology among different strains of IAPV found globally may be due to high levels of standing genetic variation. Microarray profiles of host responses to IAPV infection revealed that mitochondrial function is the most significantly affected biological process, suggesting that viral infection causes significant disturbance in energy-related host processes. The expression of genes involved in immune pathways in adult bees indicates that IAPV infection triggers active immune responses. The evidence that silencing an IAPV-encoded putative suppressor of RNAi reduces IAPV replication suggests a functional assignment for a particular genomic region of IAPV and closely related viruses from the Family Dicistroviridae, and indicates a novel therapeutic strategy for limiting multiple honey bee viruses simultaneously and reducing colony losses due to viral diseases. We believe that the knowledge and insights gained from this study will provide a new platform for continuing studies of the IAPV–host interactions and have positive implications for disease management that will lead to mitigation of escalating honey bee colony losses worldwide.
Bone mineral density, arterial stiffness, and coronary atherosclerosis in healthy postmenopausal women

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the correlation between bone mineral density (BMD), arterial stiffness, and coronary atherosclerosis in healthy postmenopausal women. Methods: We performed a retrospective review of 152 postmenopausal women who visited the health promotion center for a routine checkup, after excluding participants who had factors affecting BMD and coronary artery disease. BMD was evaluated by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry in the lumbar spine and femur. Arterial stiffness was measured by brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), and coronary atherosclerosis was assessed by 64-row multidetector computed tomography. Results: Women with osteoporosis had a significantly higher baPWV than those in the osteopenia and normal BMD groups. Higher baPWV was also associated with the presence of atherosclerosis. The baPWV was significantly positively correlated with age, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio and negatively correlated with femur BMD. The optimum predictive value of baPWV in coronary atherosclerosis was estimated using the receiver operating characteristic curve. A cutoff of 1,506 cm/second would give a sensitivity of 83.3% and specificity of 82.9%. A higher overall risk for coronary atherosclerosis emerges with higher baPWV levels (>1,500 cm/s) after controlling for age and cardiovascular risk factors. Conclusions: Arterial stiffness by measuring baPWV can be a useful independent predictor for coronary atherosclerosis. In addition, our results suggest that postmenopausal women with osteoporosis should be considered for further evaluation of coronary atherosclerosis.
Prediction model of resistivity and compressive strength of waste LCD glass concrete

The purpose of this study is to establish a prediction model for the electrical resistivity (Er) of self-consolidating concrete by using waste LCD (liquid crystal display) glass as part of the fine aggregate and then, to analyze the results obtained from a series of laboratory tests. A hyperbolic function is used to perform nonlinear multivariate regression analysis of the electrical resistivity prediction model, with parameters such as water-binder ratio (w/b), curing age (t) and waste glass content (G). Furthermore, the relationship of compressive strength and electrical resistivity of waste LCD glass concrete is also found by a logarithm function, while compressive strength is evaluated by the electrical resistivity of non-destructive testing (NDT). According to relative regression analysis, the electrical resistivity and compressive strength prediction models are developed, and the results show that a good agreement is obtained using the proposed prediction models. From the comparison between the predicted analysis values and test results, the MAPE value of electrical resistivity is 17.0-18.2% and less than 20%, the MAPE value of compressive strength evaluated by Er is 5.9-10.6% and nearly less than 10%. Therefore, the prediction models established in this study have good predictive ability for electrical resistivity and compressive strength of waste LCD glass concrete. However, further study is needed in regard to applying the proposed prediction models to other ranges of mixture parameters.
High multipole transitions in NIXS: Valence and hybridization in 4f systems

Momentum-transfer (q) dependent non-resonant inelastic X-ray scattering measurements were made at the N4, 5 edges for several rare-earth compounds. With increasing q, giant dipole resonances diminish, to be replaced by strong multiplet lines at lower energy transfer. These multiplets result from two different orders of multipole scattering and are distinct for systems with simple 4f0 and 4f1 initial states. A many-body theoretical treatment of the multiplets agrees well with the experimental data on ionic La and Ce phosphate reference compounds. Comparing measurements on CeO2 and CeRh3 to the theory and the phosphates indicates sensitivity to hybridization as observed by a broadening of 4f0-related multiplet features. We expect such strong, non-dipole features to be generic for NIXS from f-electron systems.
Identification of Forensically Informative SNPs in the Domestic Dog Mitochondrial Control Region *

Abstract: Dog hair is often found at crime scenes either due to the dog’s involvement in the crime or secondary transfer. As little nuclear DNA is present in shed hair, a 1000 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial control region (mtCR) from 552 dogs was assessed for forensically useful sequence variation. Through pairwise alignment to a standard reference sequence, existing haplotypes were further described and 36 new haplotypes and 24 new single nucleotide polymorphisms were identified. The probability of exclusion was found to be 0.957. Breeds were found to have similar sequences, although not identical. No genetic basis was found for grouping dogs by either purebred or mixed or geographic location within the continental United States. Our research demonstrates that the domestic dog mtCR has not been thoroughly surveyed for sequence variation and that a single database comprised of purebred and mixed breed dogs is sufficient for the continental United States.
Distributed data flow language for multi-party protocols

This paper presents a novel object-oriented approach to modeling the semantics of distributed multi-party protocols such as leader election, distributed locks or reliable multicast, and a programming language that supports it. The approach extends our live distributed objects (LO) model with the new concept of a distributed flow (DF), a stream of events that flow concurrently at multiple locations. DFs correspond to local variables, private fields, and method parameters in Java-like languages; they're means by which one stores and communicates state. Protocol instances correspond to Java objects; they consume and output flows; their internal states are encapsulated as internal flows, and their internal logic is represented as operations on flows. Our language provides a new type of concern separation: the semantic structure of protocols is decoupled from implementation details such as construction and maintenance of overlays, trees, and other structures used for scalability. These can be generated by the compiler or at deployment time. This can be done differently in different parts of the network, to match the local environment.
DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE CYLINDER

Filament-wound composite pressure vessels are an important type of high-pressure container that is widely used in the commercial and aerospace industries. The metallic pressure vessels are having more strength but due to their high weight to strength ratio and corrosive properties they are least preferred in aerospace as well as oil and gas industries. These industries are in need of pressure vessels which will have low weight to strength ratio without affecting the strength. On the other hand FRP composite materials with their higher specific strength and moduli and tailoribility characteristics will result in reduction of weight of the structure. In this dissertation work ANSYS software is used to carry out the structural analysis of steel and FRP composite pressure vessels. For studying the effect of winding angle, pressure and thickness of the FRP composite pressure vessel analytical calculation will be more time consuming and less accurate. So the analytical results are calculated for steel pressure vessel and compared wit Ansys results. For the same geometrical parameters of the steel pressure vessel the stress state of FRP composite pressure vessel is calculated under different internal pressures by Ansys and experimentally. So for different pressure values ansys results of steel and composite pressure vessel are compared. To have optimized FRP composite pressure vessel some of the composite parameters like no. of ply and angle of ply is taken as per available reference. The solution is presented and discussed for various orientation angles. Test specimens have four layers, which have various orientation angles. The layers are oriented symmetrically for (45o/ 45o)s (55o /-55o )s (65o/-65o )s (75 o /-75 o )s and (88 o /-88 o )s orientations. From the FE results it is observed that the optimum winding angle for the composite pressure vessel analysis with the internal pressure loading case is obtained as 65⁰. A finite element method and experimental approaches are studied to verify optimum winding angles and internal pressures. Finally weight and structural efficiency of composite pressure vessel is compared with steel pressure vessel.
Role of Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3β in Cardioprotection

Limitation of infarct size by ischemic/pharmacological pre- and postconditioning involves activation of a complex set of cell-signaling pathways. Multiple lines of evidence implicate the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) as a key end effector of ischemic/pharmacological pre- and postconditioning. Increasing the ROS threshold for mPTP induction enhances the resistance of cardiomyocytes to oxidant stress and results in infarct size reduction. Here, we survey and synthesize the present knowledge about the role of glycogen synthase kinase (GSK)-3β in cardioprotection, including pre- and postconditioning. Activation of a wide spectrum of cardioprotective signaling pathways is associated with phosphorylation and inhibition of a discrete pool of GSK-3β relevant to mitochondrial signaling. Therefore, GSK-3β has emerged as the integration point of many of these pathways and plays a central role in transferring protective signals downstream to target(s) that act at or in proximity to the mPTP. Bcl-2 family proteins and mPTP-regulatory elements, such as adenine nucleotide translocator and cyclophilin D (possibly voltage-dependent anion channel), may be the functional downstream target(s) of GSK-3β. Gaining a better understanding of these interactions to control and prevent mPTP induction when appropriate will enable us to decrease the negative impact of the reperfusion-induced ROS burst on the fate of mitochondria and perhaps allow us to limit propagation of damage throughout and between cells and consequently, to better limit infarct size.
Electrical and Manufacturing Limitations for the Miniaturization of Ion Trap Devices with Digital Excitation

Electrical and Manufacturing Limitations for the Miniaturization of Ion Trap Devices with Digital Excitation Derek Joseph Andrews Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, BYU Master of Science Developing portable mass spectrometry systems is an active area of research due to its broad range of useful applications, including environmental monitoring, threat detection, and space exploration. The mass analyzer is one of the key elements of the mass spectrometry system to develop for a portable system. Ion traps are a good candidate for the mass analyzer in a portable mass spectrometry system because the operating pressure scales with size. This allows for scaling down the other components of the system including the vacuum and electrical systems. Researchers at BYU are making an effort to develop miniature ion traps based on a planar geometry. The ion traps are made using microfabrication processes. A summary of the plates developed at BYU is presented in this work. Results from experiments to test the effects of pitch alignment on one design of planar ion trap plates are also presented. Conventional ion traps use a sinusoidal waveform to drive them. Driving the ion trap with a digital waveform has many benefits including extended mass range, lower voltage, and more control over the waveform. One of the difficulties involved in using a digital waveform is creation of a high voltage, high frequency waveform. This work details the design of a digital circuit capable of outputting a waveform with an amplitude of 100 VP-P at a frequency of 5 MHz and lower. This waveform was applied to a new ion trap design based on wire electrodes instead of planar electrodes. This trap offers many benefits over the planar ion traps developed at BYU. This work presents mass spectra obtained using a square digital waveform applied to the wire ion trap.
Moderate deviations for the range of planar random walks

Given a symmetric random walk in $Z^2$ with finite second moments, let $R_n$ be the range of the random walk up to time $n$. We study moderate deviations for $R_n -E R_n$ and $E R_n -R_n$. We also derive the corresponding laws of the iterated logarithm.