Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of nitric oxide synthase enhances superoxide activity in canine kidney.

To evaluate the role of a potential interaction between superoxide anion (O(2)(-)) and nitric oxide (NO) in regulating kidney function, we examined the renal responses to intra-arterial infusion of a superoxide dismutase mimetic, tempol (0.5 mg.kg(-1). min(-1)), in anesthetized dogs treated with or without NO synthase inhibitor, N(omega)-nitro-l-arginine (NLA; 50 microg.kg(-1). min(-1)). In one group of dogs (n = 10), tempol infusion alone for 30 min before NLA infusion did not cause any significant changes in renal blood flow (RBF; 5.2 +/- 0.4 to 5.0 +/- 0.4 ml.min(-1). g(-1)), glomerular filtration rate (GFR; 0.79 +/- 0.04 to 0.77 +/- 0.04 ml.min(-1). g(-1)), urine flow (V; 13.6 +/- 2.1 to 13.9 +/- 2.5 microl.min(-1). g(-1)), or sodium excretion (U(Na)V; 2.4 +/- 0.3 to 2.2 +/- 0.3 micromol.min(-1). g(-1)). Interestingly, when tempol was infused in another group of dogs (n = 12) pretreated with NLA, it caused increases in V (4.4 +/- 0.4 to 9.7 +/- 1.4 microl.min(-1). g(-1)) and in U(Na)V (0.7 +/- 0.1 to 1.3 +/- 0.2 micromol.min(-1). g(-1)) without affecting RBF or GFR. Although NO inhibition caused usual qualitative responses in both groups of dogs, the antidiuretic (47 +/- 5 vs. 26 +/- 4%) and antinatriuretic (67 +/- 4 vs. 45 +/- 11%) responses to NLA were seen much less in dogs pretreated with tempol. NLA infusion alone increased urinary excretion of 8-isoprostane (13.9 +/- 2.7 to 22.8 +/- 3.6 pg.min(-1). g(-1); n = 7), which returned to the control levels (11.6 +/- 3.4 pg.min(-1). g(-1)) during coadministration of tempol. These data suggest that NO synthase inhibition causes enhancement of endogenous O(2)(-) levels and support the hypothesis that NO plays a protective role against the actions of O(2)(-) in the kidney.
Fundamental and speculative shocks, what drives electricity prices?

In the paper, Structural Vector Autoregressive models (SVAR) are used to identify fundamental and speculative shocks, in the UK electricity market. The structural shocks are identified via short run restrictions, which are imposed on the matrix of instantaneous effects. In the research, two main types of shocks are considered: fundamental shocks, which result from unexpected changes of demand, supply and generation costs and speculative shocks, which are associated solely with electricity prices. The results indicate that speculative shocks play an important role in the price setting process. Although they account for a significant part (from 30% to 95%) of the price volatility, I do not find evidence that the influence differs between peak and off-peak hours. When fundamental shocks are considered, some dependence between their effects on electricity prices and periods of the day is confirmed. For example, the impact of wind supply shocks on electricity prices is significantly stronger during the peak hours than during the off-peak hours. Moreover, the supply shocks become a major source of electricity price volatility during the peak hours. Finally, it is confirmed that shocks associated with generation costs (prices of fuels) don't have any instantaneous effect on the electricity prices.
The Optimized Schwarz Method with a Coarse Grid Correction

Optimized Schwarz methods (OSMs) use Robin transmission conditions across the subdomain interfaces. The Robin parameter can then be optimized to obtain the fastest convergence. A new formulation is presented with a coarse grid correction. The optimal parameter is computed for a model problem on a cylinder, together with the corresponding convergence factor which is smaller than that of classical Schwarz methods. A new coarse space is presented, suitable for OSM. Numerical experiments illustrating the effectiveness of OSM with a coarse grid correction, both as an iteration and as a preconditioner, are reported.
Pyramid Codes: Flexible Schemes to Trade Space for Access Efficiency in Reliable Data Storage Systems

To flexibly explore the trade-offs between storage space and access efficiency in reliable data storage systems, we describe two classes of erasure resilient coding schemes: basic and generalized pyramid codes. The basic pyramid codes can be simply derived from any existing codes, and thus all known efficient encoding/decoding techniques directly apply. The generalized pyramid codes are radically advanced new codes, which can further improve access efficiency and/or reliability upon the basic pyramid codes. We also establish a necessary condition for any failure pattern to be ever recoverable, and show that the generalized pyramid codes are optimal in failure recovery (i.e., the necessary condition is also sufficient, and any failure pattern that is ever recoverable can indeed be recovered).
How the ELF Ruined Christmas

Throughout the last few decades, computer software has experienced an arms race between exploitation techniques leveraging memory corruption and detection/protection mechanisms. Effective mitigation techniques, such as Address Space Layout Randomization, have significantly increased the difficulty of successfully exploiting a vulnerability. A modern exploit is often two-stage: a first information disclosure step to identify the memory layout, and a second step with the actual exploit. However, because of the wide range of conditions under which memory corruption occurs, retrieving memory layout information from the program is not always possible. In this paper, we present a technique that uses the dynamic loader's ability to identify the locations of critical functions directly and call them, without requiring an information leak. We identified several fundamental weak points in the design of ELF standard and dynamic loader implementations that can be exploited to resolve and execute arbitrary library functions. Through these, we are able to bypass specific security mitigation techniques, including partial and full RELRO, which are specifically designed to protect ELF data-structures from being coopted by attackers. We implemented a prototype tool, Leakless, and evaluated it against different dynamic loader implementations, previous attack techniques, and real-life case studies to determine the impact of our findings. Among other implications, Leakless provides attackers with reliable and non-invasive attacks, less likely to trigger intrusion detection systems.
Generalized Scheduler Providing Multimedia Services Over HSDPA

Providing multimedia service is particularly challenging in wireless networks such as high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) system for the fading properties of its radio links. In this paper, a generalized scheduling algorithm is presented, which allows controlling over user fairness as well as balancing fairness-throughput trade-off. Furthermore, we show that the generalized algorithm can well support minimum data rate for services requiring minimum rate guarantee, which is important in providing QoS for multimedia services over HSDPA. System level simulations are carried out to investigate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results show that the algorithm achieves what have been expected in various environments.
Safety of human olfactory mucosal biopsy for the purpose of olfactory ensheathing cell harvest and nerve repair: a prospective controlled study in patients undergoing endoscopic sinus surgery.

BACKGROUND Nasal olfactory mucosa is an accessible source of olfactory ensheathing cells for spinal cord regeneration. However, safety of the biopsy technique and the effects on sense of smell and nasal function have not been robustly assessed in the form of a prospective controlled study. METHODOLOGY National Health Service ethical approval was granted for this study of 131 patients. The primary outcome measure was olfactory function and the secondary outcomes included postoperative complication rates as well as the SNOT 22, NOSE scale scores and surgeon reported (Lund-Kennedy score) nasal function outcomes. RESULTS 65 patients underwent functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) and superior turbinate biopsy, and 66 patients underwent FESS only as the control group. There was no significant difference in complication rates between the two groups. All Olfactory function outcomes were unaffected following olfactory biopsy. We demonstrated that the patients quality of life and nasal patency as well as surgeon reported outcome measurements remain unaffected following olfactory harvesting. CONCLUSIONS We have uniquely provided level 2a evidence for the safety of endoscopic biopsy of olfactory mucosa, which does not affect nasal function or the sense of smell compared to standard FESS without biopsy.
Achieving Optimal Misclassification Proportion in Stochastic Block Models

Community detection is a fundamental statistical problem in network data analysis. Many algorithms have been proposed to tackle this problem. Most of these algorithms are not guaranteed to achieve the statistical optimality of the problem, while procedures that achieve information theoretic limits for general parameter spaces are not computationally tractable. In this paper, we present a computationally feasible two-stage method that achieves optimal statistical performance in misclassification proportion for stochastic block model under weak regularity conditions. Our two-stage procedure consists of a generic refinement step that can take a wide range of weakly consistent community detection procedures as initializer, to which the refinement stage applies and outputs a community assignment achieving optimal misclassification proportion with high probability. The practical effectiveness of the new algorithm is demonstrated by competitive numerical results.
Tamoxifen-Induced Cre-loxP Recombination Is Prolonged in Pancreatic Islets of Adult Mice

Tamoxifen (Tm)-inducible Cre recombinases are widely used to perform gene inactivation and lineage tracing studies in mice. Although the efficiency of inducible Cre-loxP recombination can be easily evaluated with reporter strains, the precise length of time that Tm induces nuclear translocation of CreERTm and subsequent recombination of a target allele is not well defined, and difficult to assess. To better understand the timeline of Tm activity in vivo, we developed a bioassay in which pancreatic islets with a Tm-inducible reporter (from Pdx1PB-CreERTm;R26RlacZ mice) were transplanted beneath the renal capsule of adult mice previously treated with three doses of 1 mg Tm, 8 mg Tm, or corn oil vehicle. Surprisingly, recombination in islet grafts, as assessed by expression of the β-galactosidase (β-gal) reporter, was observed days or weeks after Tm treatment, in a dose-dependent manner. Substantial recombination occurred in islet grafts long after administration of 3×8 mg Tm: in grafts transplanted 48 hours after the last Tm injection, 77.9±0.4% of β-cells were β-gal+; in β-cells placed after 1 week, 46.2±5.0% were β-gal+; after 2 weeks, 26.3±7.0% were β-gal+; and after 4 weeks, 1.9±0.9% were β-gal+. Islet grafts from mice given 3×1 mg Tm showed lower, but notable, recombination 48 hours (4.9±1.7%) and 1 week (4.5±1.9%) after Tm administration. These results show that Tm doses commonly used to induce Cre-loxP recombination may continue to label significant numbers of cells for weeks after Tm treatment, possibly confounding the interpretation of time-sensitive studies using Tm-dependent models. Therefore, investigators developing experimental approaches using Tm-inducible systems should consider both maximal recombination efficiency and the length of time that Tm-induced Cre-loxP recombination occurs.
Applied-Information Technology with Using Bayesian Belief Network for Strategy Selection of Developing Mountainous Areas

strategy selection of developing mountainous areas is an important topic in recent years, usually we believe the financial support is the most relevant factor to the development, under the condition of lack of enough money, we should first choose the best strategy which is an optimal choice for the development of economy. In this paper, we proposed to use the Bayesian belief network for the strategy selection. The optimal selection can be treated as an important guidance to consider the development of local economy.
Fault-Tolerant Extension of Hypercube Algorithm for Efficient, Robust Group Communications in MANETs

Securing multicast communications in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) has become one of the most challenging research directions in the areas of wireless networking and security. MANETs are emerging as the desired environment for an increasing number of commercial and military applications, addressing also an increasing number of users. Security on the other hand, is becoming an indispensable requirement of our modern life for all these applications. However, the limitations of the dynamic, infrastructure-less nature of MANETs impose major difficulties in establishing a secure framework suitable for group communications. The design of efficient key management (KM) schemes for MANET is of paramount importance, since the performance of the KM functions (key generation, entity authentication, key distribution/agreement) imposes an upper limit on the efficiency and scalability of the whole secure group communication system. In this work, we contribute towards efficient, robust and scalable, secure group communications for MANETs, by extending an existing key agreement (KA) scheme (where all parties contribute equally to group key generation) –Hypercube to tolerate multiple member failures with low cost, through its integration with a novel adaptively proactive algorithm. We assume that the participating users have already been authenticated via some underlying mechanism and we focus on the design and analysis of a fault-tolerant Hypercube, with the aim to contribute to the robustness and efficiency of Octopus-based schemes (an efficient group of KA protocols for MANETs using Hypercube as backbone). We compare our algorithm with the existing approach, and we evaluate the results of our analysis. Through our analysis and simulation results we demonstrate how the new Hypercube algorithm enhances the robustness of the Octopus schemes maintaining their feasibility in MANETs at the same time.
Visualization for the document space

An information retrieval frame work that promotes graphical displays, and that will make documents in the computer visualizable to the searcher, is described. As examples of such graphical displays, two simulation results of using a Kohonen feature map to generate map displays for information retrieval are presented and discussed. The map displays are a mapping from a high-dimensional document space to a two-dimensional space. They show document relationships by various visual cues, such as dots, links, clusters, and areas, as well as their measurement and spatial arrangement. Using the map displays as an interface for document retrieval systems, the user is provided with richer visual information to support browsing and searching. <<ETX>>
Spoken Digits Recognition using Weighted MFCC and Improved Features for Dynamic Time Warping

this paper, we propose novel techniques for feature parameter extraction based on MFCC and feature recognition using dynamic time warping algorithm for application in speaker-independent isolated digits recognition. Using the proposed Weighted MFCC (WMFCC), we achieve low computational overhead for the feature recognition stage since we use only 13 weighted MFCC coefficients instead of the conventional 39 MFCC coefficients including the delta and double delta features. In order to capture the trends or patterns that a feature sequence presents during the alignment process, we compute the local and global features using Improved Features for DTW algorithm (IFDTW), rather than using the pure feature values or their estimated derivatives. The experiments based on TI-Digits corpus demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed techniques leading to higher recognition accuracy of 98.13%.
Network Overlay Construction under Limited End-to-End Addressability

Network overlay construction has found many applications in today’s Internet, such as P2P networks [1][2], end-host multicast [3][4], and network security [5]. Many researchers have proposed solutions to building an overlay network among a given group of end-hosts. The usual overlay construction assumes two-way network communication— each host can initiate connections to and accept requests from other hosts. This is not always true on the Internet due to the use of Network Address Translation (NAT) and firewalls. Our experiments with one P2P file-sharing system revealed that over 34% of hosts were guarded hosts, i.e., hosts that cannot accept connections from other Internet hosts. The lack of two-way communication capability presents a challenge because only a subset of hosts can act as overlay routers. Using a cluster-base approach, we design a new overlay construction mechanism called e*, which organizes members based on reachability and intelligently select overlay routers to reduce end-to-end latencies on the overlay. Under realistic scenarios involving guarded hosts, e* can reduce average end-to-end latency on the overlay by 28-61% compared to existing protocols. Furthermore, e* significantly improves the worst case end-to-end latency on the overlay.
Flow analysis of natural rubber in a capillary rheometer. 2: Flow patterns and entrance velocity profiles in the die

An investigation was carried out to determine the effect of variations in test conditions, such as die geometry, for example die entry angles, on the flow patterns observed in the die of a Davenport Extrusion Rheometer. In addition, the velocity profile near the die entrance was determined for different piston displacements. The results indicate that the velocity profile generated in the capillary near the die entrance was parabolic in form. However, there appeared to be a non-zero velocity at the capillary wall. Melt fracture was observed, this being linked with the appearance of a disturbance in the flow along the capillary, the disturbance being of a converging helical form.
Meerkat: Detecting Website Defacements through Image-based Object Recognition

Website defacements and website vandalism can inflict significant harm on the website owner through the loss of sales, the loss in reputation, or because of legal ramifications. Prior work on website defacements detection focused on detecting unauthorized changes to the web server, e.g., via host-based intrusion detection systems or file-based integrity checks. However, most prior approaches lack the capabilities to detect the most prevailing defacement techniques used today: code and/or data injection attacks, and DNS hijacking. This is because these attacks do not actually modify the code or configuration of the website, but instead they introduce new content or redirect the user to a different website. In this paper, we approach the problem of defacement detection from a different angle: we use computer vision techniques to recognize if a website was defaced, similarly to how a human analyst decides if a website was defaced when viewing it in a web browser. We introduce MEERKAT, a defacement detection system that requires no prior knowledge about the website's content or its structure, but only its URL. Upon detection of a defacement, the system notifies the website operator that his website is defaced, who can then take appropriate action. To detect defacements, MEERKAT automatically learns high-level features from screenshots of defaced websites by combining recent advances in machine learning, like stacked autoencoders and deep neural networks, with techniques from computer vision. These features are then used to create models that allow for the detection of newly-defaced websites. We show the practicality of MEERKAT on the largest website defacement dataset to date, comprising of 10,053,772 defacements observed between January 1998 and May 2014, and 2,554,905 legitimate websites. Overall, MEERKAT achieves true positive rates between 97.422% and 98.816%, false positive rates between 0.547% and 1.528%, and Bayesian detection rates between 98.583% and 99.845%, thus significantly outperforming existing approaches.
Active and hybrid mode-locked semiconductor lasers with external fiber Bragg grating cavities for high-speed optical fiber networks

The realization of future high-speed optical communication systems will require stable optical sources, capable of producing low-jitter and chirp-free short optical pulses at high repetition rates. For this purpose, active and hybrid mode-locked semiconductor lasers are considered to be promising candidates. Among them, external cavity lasers (ECLs) with a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) as hybrid distributed Bragg reflector (HDBR) are an interesting alternative approach that offer potentially many advantages over other candidates of pulse sources. This thesis deals with the simulation, realization and characterization of semiconductor FBG-ECLs that are used for active and hybrid mode-locking at 10 and 40 GHz. It comprises the design of laser chips with and without saturable absorbers for active and hybrid mode-locking, respectively. For 10 GHz pulsed lasers, four different types of semiconductor laser diodes have been used and compared with the same uniform FBG. As for active mode-locking at 10 GHz, one-segmented semiconductor laser diodes with a straight and curved waveguide have both produced 3.8 ps FWHM pulses at a wavelength of 1552 nm with a very low timing jitter of 160 fs rms. This is to our knowledge the lowest timing jitter for mode-locked semiconductor lasers with a hybrid external cavity. The Fabry-Perot laser diodes, however, are more affected by non-perfect anti-reflection coatings at the side of the external cavity. It was shown experimentally and by numerical simulations as well that this led to the emergence of satellite pulses trailing the main pulse. This can be a severe limitation for practical applications within optical networks. As for hybrid mode-locking at 10 GHz, 6-7 ps FWHM optical pulses were generated by laser diodes with a short electrical absorber segment. Lasers
Tumor Necrosis Factor-α Increases in the Brain after Intracerebral Hemorrhage and Thrombin Stimulation

OBJECTIVE: The goals of this study were 1) to determine the effects of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) on brain tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α levels, which are still controversial; 2) to investigate the role of TNF-α in ICH-induced brain injury; 3) to examine the effects of thrombin on brain TNF-α levels; and 4) to elucidate the role of TNF-α in thrombin-induced neuroprotection. METHODS: Autologous whole blood and thrombin were injected into the right caudate of rats or mice. Brain TNF-α was then determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunohistochemistry. Brain edema and neurological deficits were also examined. RESULTS: Perihematomal TNF-α levels increased after ICH. ICH-induced brain edema was less in TNF-α knockout mice compared with wild-type mice (P < 0.05). Intracerebral infusion of thrombin also caused an increase in brain TNF-α levels. Thrombin preconditioning reduced thrombin-induced brain edema, but this effect was not blocked by a neutralizing TNF-α antibody. CONCLUSION: Increase of perihematomal TNF-α levels contributes to brain edema formation after ICH. Thrombin may be a major mediator of ICH-induced TNF-α production, but thrombin-induced brain tolerance may not be TNF-α mediated.