Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Analysis of the Algorithms for the Construction of Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Tree Vani V

The advances in VLSI technology have led to complex and larger circuits. As the circuits become complex and large, the amount of time required for the design of such circuits increases. The people in the VLSI industry are looking for faster EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools so as to reduce the design time. Routing is a phase in the design (physical design) of electronic circuits, wherein pins of a net will be interconnected and this uses Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Trees. Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Tree problem is to find a minimum length tree connecting the given set of points using only horizontal and vertical line segments, with the additional set of points (Steiner points). Steiner points are introduced to reduce the total length of the tree and to connect in rectilinear manner. The problem of finding Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Tree is one of the fundamental problems in the field of electronic design automation. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the various Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Tree algorithms proposed till date and shows that there is a need for an algorithm or approach to produce better solution quality (reduced wire length) in less time. Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Tree is widely used in global routing phase of VLSI design and wire length estimation.
An Algorithm for Burned Area Detection in the Brazilian Cerrado Using 4 µm MODIS Imagery

The Brazilian Cerrado is significantly affected by anthropic fires every year, which makes the region an important source of pyrogenic emissions. This study aims at generating improved 1 km monthly burned area maps for Cerrado based on remote-sensed information. The algorithm relies on a burn-sensitive vegetation index based on MODIS daily values of near and middle infrared reflectance and makes use of active fire detection from multiple sensors. Validation is performed using reference burned area (BA) maps derived from Landsat imagery. Results are also compared with MODIS standard BA products. A monthly BA database for the Brazilian Cerrado is generated covering the period 2005–2014. Estimated value of BA is 1.3 times larger than the value derived from reference data, making the product suitable for applications in fire emission studies and ecosystem management. As expected the intra and inter-annual variability of estimated BA over the Brazilian Cerrado is in agreement with the regime of precipitation. This work represents the first step towards setting up a regional database of BA for Brazil to be developed in the framework of BrFLAS, an R and D project in the areas of fire emissions and ecosystem management planning.
Performance Analysis of Antenna Calibration in Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission System

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) Transmission/Rec-eption technology has shown to improve the system performance. In Time-division duplex system, it can easily obtain channel information by the channel reciprocity. However, a crucial point to realize the channel reciprocity is the antenna calibration problem. This paper aims at analyzing the impact of un-calibrated channel on the precoding matrix under zero forcing precoding in CoMP system. A theoretical model is set and some properties presented in this work give an overview of the calibration problem. Additionally, we propose a new scheme for inter BS calibration. System simulation results show the necessity of antenna calibration.
The Separate Spheres Model of Gendered Inequality

Research on role congruity theory and descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes has established that when men and women violate gender stereotypes by crossing spheres, with women pursuing career success and men contributing to domestic labor, they face backlash and economic penalties. Less is known, however, about the types of individuals who are most likely to engage in these forms of discrimination and the types of situations in which this is most likely to occur. We propose that psychological research will benefit from supplementing existing research approaches with an individual differences model of support for separate spheres for men and women. This model allows psychologists to examine individual differences in support for separate spheres as they interact with situational and contextual forces. The separate spheres ideology (SSI) has existed as a cultural idea for many years but has not been operationalized or modeled in social psychology. The Separate Spheres Model presents the SSI as a new psychological construct characterized by individual differences and a motivated system-justifying function, operationalizes the ideology with a new scale measure, and models the ideology as a predictor of some important gendered outcomes in society. As a first step toward developing the Separate Spheres Model, we develop a new measure of individuals’ endorsement of the SSI and demonstrate its reliability, convergent validity, and incremental predictive validity. We provide support for the novel hypotheses that the SSI predicts attitudes regarding workplace flexibility accommodations, income distribution within families between male and female partners, distribution of labor between work and family spheres, and discriminatory workplace behaviors. Finally, we provide experimental support for the hypothesis that the SSI is a motivated, system-justifying ideology.
Risk Factors and Mortality Associated With Resistance to First-Line Antiretroviral Therapy: Multicentric Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Analyses

Background:Understanding the factors associated with HIV drug resistance development and subsequent mortality is important to improve clinical patient management. Methods:Analysis of individual electronic health records from 4 HIV programs in Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, and Cambodia, linked to data from 5 cross-sectional virological studies conducted among patients receiving first-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) for ≥6 months. Adjusted logistic and Cox-regression models were used to identify risk factors for drug resistance and subsequent mortality. Results:A total of 2257 patients (62% women) were included. At ART initiation, median CD4 cell count was 100 cells per microliter (interquartile range, 40–165). A median of 25.1 months after therapy start, 18% of patients had ≥400 and 12.4% ≥1000 HIV RNA copies per milliliter. Of 180 patients with drug resistance data, 83.9% had major resistance(s) to nucleoside or nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and 74.4% dual resistance. Resistance to nevirapine, lamivudine, and efavirenz was common, and 6% had etravirine cross-resistance. Risk factors for resistance were young age (<35 years), low CD4 cell count (<200 cells/&mgr;L), and poor treatment adherence. During 4978 person-years of follow-up after virological testing (median = 31.8 months), 57 deaths occurred [rate = 1.14/100 person-years; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.88 to 1.48]. Mortality was higher in patients with resistance (hazard ratio = 2.08; 95% CI: 1.07 to 4.07 vs. <400 copies/mL), and older age (hazard ratio = 2.41; 95% CI: 1.24 to 4.71 for ≥43 vs. ⩽34 years), and lower in those receiving ART for >30 months. Conclusions:Our findings underline the importance of optimal treatment adherence and adequate virological response monitoring and emphasize the need for resistance surveillance initiatives even in HIV programs achieving high virological suppression rates.
Molecular cloning and regulation of expression of the genes for initiation factor 3 and two aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases

A 22-kilobase fragment of the Escherichia coli chromosome which contains the genes for translation initiation factor 3, phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase, and threonyl-tRNA synthetase was cloned into plasmid pACYC184. The hybrid plasmid (designated pID1) complements a temperature-sensitive pheS lesion in E. coli NP37. pID1-transformed NP37 overproduce initiation factor 3 and phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase. Gene expression from pID1 was studied in vitro in a coupled transcription-translation system and in minicells. The results suggest that the genes for initiation factor 3 and phenylalanyl- and threonyl-tRNA synthetase are regulated by different mechanisms.
No-Reflow Phenomenon

No-reflow is responsible for 40% of the primary percutaneous coronary intervention without complete myocardial reperfusion despite successful reopening of the infarct-related artery. This review describes the main pathophysiological mechanisms of no-reflow, its clinical manifestation, including the strong association with increased in-hospital mortality, malignant arrhythmias, and cardiac failure as well as the diagnostic methods. The latter ranges from simple angiographic thrombolysis in myocardial infarction grade score to more complex angiographic indexes, imaging techniques such as myocardial contrast echo or cardiac magnetic resonance, and surrogate clinical end points such as ST-segment resolution. This review also summarizes the strategies of prevention and treatment of no-reflow, considering the most recent studies results regarding medical therapy and devices.
A voxel-based morphometry comparison of the 3.0T ADNI-1 and ADNI-2 volumetric MRI protocols

The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative 3.0T MRI image acquisition scheme changed between the original ADNI‐1 grant and the two subsequent grants (ADNI‐GO and ADNI‐2). The aim of the current study was to investigate the compatibility of the 3.0T ADNI‐1 and ADNI‐2 T1‐weighted volumes using voxel‐based morphometry (VBM).
Noise Properties of Fe-ZnO Nanorod Ultraviolet Photodetectors

This letter reports the development of Fe-doped ZnO (FZO) nanorods via a low-temperature hydrothermal method and the fabrication of FZO nanorod metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetector (PD). The average length and diameter of the FZO nanorods were 4.5 μm and ~ 100 nm, respectively. The ultraviolet-to-visible rejection ratio of the sample was ~ 23 when biased at 1 V, and the fabricated PD was visible-blind with a sharp cut-off at 375 nm. Furthermore, the noise equivalent power and detectivity of the fabricated FZO nanorod MSM PD were 6.27×10<sup>-10</sup> W and 2.12×10<sup>10</sup> cm·Hz<sup>0.5</sup>·W<sup>-1</sup>, respectively.
Dynamic ordered sets with exponential search trees

We introduce exponential search trees as a novel technique for converting static polynomial space search structures for ordered sets into fully-dynamic linear space data structures. This leads to an optimal bound of O(√log n/log log n) for searching and updating a dynamic set X of n integer keys in linear space. Searching X for an integer y means finding the maximum key in X which is smaller than or equal to y. This problem is equivalent to the standard text book problem of maintaining an ordered set. The best previous deterministic linear space bound was O(log n/log log n) due to Fredman and Willard from STOC 1990. No better deterministic search bound was known using polynomial space. We also get the following worst-case linear space trade-offs between the number n, the word length W, and the maximal key U < 2W: O(min log log n + log n/logW, log log n ⋅ log log U/log log log U). These trade-offs are, however, not likely to be optimal. Our results are generalized to finger searching and string searching, providing optimal results for both in terms of n.
The metal chaperone Atox1 regulates the activity of the human copper transporter ATP7B by modulating domain dynamics

The human transporter ATP7B delivers copper to the biosynthetic pathways and maintains copper homeostasis in the liver. Mutations in ATP7B cause the potentially fatal hepatoneurological disorder Wilson disease. The activity and intracellular localization of ATP7B are regulated by copper, but the molecular mechanism of this regulation is largely unknown. We show that the copper chaperone Atox1, which delivers copper to ATP7B, and the group of the first three metal-binding domains (MBD1–3) are central to the activity regulation of ATP7B. Atox1–Cu binding to ATP7B changes domain dynamics and interactions within the MBD1–3 group and activates ATP hydrolysis. To understand the mechanism linking Atox1–MBD interactions and enzyme activity, we have determined the MBD1–3 conformational space using small angle X-ray scattering and identified changes in MBD dynamics caused by apo–Atox1 and Atox1–Cu by solution NMR. The results show that copper transfer from Atox1 decreases domain interactions within the MBD1–3 group and increases the mobility of the individual domains. The N-terminal segment of MBD1–3 was found to interact with the nucleotide-binding domain of ATP7B, thus physically coupling the domains involved in copper binding and those involved in ATP hydrolysis. Taken together, the data suggest a regulatory mechanism in which Atox1-mediated copper transfer activates ATP7B by releasing inhibitory constraints through increased freedom of MBD1–3 motions.
Drosophila DJ-1 Decreases Neural Sensitivity to Stress by Negatively Regulating Daxx-Like Protein through dFOXO

DJ-1, a Parkinson's disease (PD)–associated gene, has been shown to protect against oxidative stress in Drosophila. However, the molecular mechanism underlying oxidative stress-induced phenotypes, including apoptosis, locomotive defects, and lethality, in DJ-1-deficient flies is not fully understood. Here we showed that Daxx-like protein (DLP), a Drosophila homologue of the mammalian Death domain-associated protein (Daxx), was upregulated under oxidative stress conditions in the loss-of-function mutants of Drosophila DJ-1β, a Drosophila homologue of DJ-1. DLP overexpression induced apoptosis via the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)/Drosophila forkhead box subgroup O (dFOXO) pathway, whereas loss of DLP increased resistance to oxidative stress and UV irradiation. Moreover, the oxidative stress-induced phenotypes of DJ-1β mutants were dramatically rescued by DLP deficiency, suggesting that enhanced expression of DLP contributes to the DJ-1β mutant phenotypes. Interestingly, we found that dFOXO was required for the increase in DLP expression in DJ-1β mutants and that dFOXO activity was increased in the heads of DJ-1β mutants. In addition, subcellular localization of DLP appeared to be influenced by DJ-1 expression so that cytosolic DLP was increased in DJ-1β mutants. Similarly, in mammalian cells, Daxx translocation from the nucleus to the cytosol was suppressed by overexpressed DJ-1β under oxidative stress conditions; and, furthermore, targeted expression of DJ-1β to mitochondria efficiently inhibited the Daxx translocation. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that DJ-1β protects flies against oxidative stress- and UV-induced apoptosis by regulating the subcellular localization and gene expression of DLP, thus implying that Daxx-induced apoptosis is involved in the pathogenesis of DJ-1-associated PD.
Social Constructionism in Housing Research

Contents: Introduction, Keith Jacobs, Jim Kemeny and Tony Manzi The philosophical assumptions of constructionism, Max Travers Relativism, subjectivity and the self: a critique of social constructionism, Peter King Extending constructionist social problems to the study of housing problems, Jim Kemeny Constructing the meaning of social exclusion as a policy metaphor, Greg Marston Housing pathways - a social constructionist research framework, David Clapham Necessary welfare measure or policy failure: media reports of public housing in Sydney in the 1990s, Kathleen J. Mee Organizational research: conflict and power within UK and Australian social housing organizations, Michael Darcy and Tony Manzi Social constructionism and international comparative housing research, Anna Haworth, Tony Manzi and Jim Kemeny Index.
Reducing "Structure From Motion": a General Framework for Dynamic Vision - Part 2: Experimental Evaluation

A number of methods have been proposed in the literature for estimating scene-structure and ego-motion from a sequence of images using dynamical models. Although all methods may be derived from a "natural" dynamical model within a unified framework, from an engineering perspective there are a number of trade-offs that lead to different strategies depending upon the specific applications and the goals one is targeting. Which one is the winning strategy? In this paper we analyze the properties of the dynamical models that originate from each strategy under a variety of experimental conditions. For each model we assess the accuracy of the estimates, their robustness to measurement noise, sensitivity to initial conditions and visual angle, effects of the bas-relief ambiguity and occlusions, dependence upon the number of image measurements and their sampling rate.
Overcoming IoT Language Barriers Using Smartphone SDRs

In the Internet of Things (IoT) era, smartphones are expected to frequently interact with IoT devices and even facilitate various IoT applications. Due to limited roles, energy constraints, etc., however, IoT devices may use mission-tailored or proprietary wireless protocols that smartphones do not speak natively. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to the wireless “language barrier” problem between the smartphones and IoT devices of the future. We first demonstrate that smartphones have become powerful enough to process software defined radio (SDR) for some known wireless protocols. Moreover, we show that the SDRs can be packaged as “apps” and be downloaded from app stores for OS-independent deployment. Second, we show different SDR protocols on the smartphone can concurrently run through a shared RF to serve multi-tasked applications on it as might happen in diversified IoT environments. For proof-of-concept, we implement a prototype architecture that has all the SDR logic and supporting middleware on an Android smartphone which uses a USRP as the simple RF-end. Finally, we demonstrate that IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 802.15. 4 SDRs on a smartphone, respectively, communicate with a ZigBee sensor mote, a ZigBee smart lightbulb, and a commercial Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE) device, concurrently.
Flow Cytometric Bivariate Analysis of DNA and Cytokeratin in Colorectal Cancer

Different opinions about flow cytometric estimates of DNA aneuploidy and/or S‐phase fraction (SPF) as supplementary prognostic markers in colorectal cancer are to some degree associated with methodology. Using univariate DNA analysis, we have previously investigated the DNA ploidy in colorectal cancer, its heterogeneity within and between tumors and its relation to survival. To improve detection of DNA aneuploid subpopulations and particularly estimation of their SPF's we investigated a method for bivariate DNA/cytokeratin analysis on fine‐needle aspirates of 728 frozen biopsies from 157 colorectal tumors. Unfixed aspirates were stained with propidium iodide and FITC‐conjugated anti‐cytokeratin antibody in a saponin‐buffer. A significant association between SPF and debris was observed. There were no substantial difference in DNA ploidy patterns between univariate and bivariate measurements (concordance was 92–95%). No new DNA aneuploid subpopulations were detected in cytokeratin‐gated compared to ungated or univariate histograms. Debris‐adjusted SPF's of cytokeratin‐gated histograms were significantly higher than of ungated histograms, also for subpopulations with DI>1.4 (p < 0.0001). There was no significant association between SPF and survival.
Human T Cell Lymphotropic Virus Type I (HTLV-I)-Specific CD4+ T Cells: Immunodominance Hierarchy and Preferential Infection with HTLV-I1

CD4+ T cells predominate in early lesions in the CNS in the inflammatory disease human lymphotropic T cell virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP), but the pathogenesis of the disease remains unclear and the HTLV-I-specific CD4+ T cell response has been little studied. We quantified the IFN-γ-producing HTLV-I-specific CD4+ T cells, in patients with HAM/TSP and in asymptomatic carriers with high proviral load, to test two hypotheses: that HAM/TSP patients and asymptomatic HTLV-I carriers with a similar proviral load differ in the immunodominance hierarchy or the total frequency of specific CD4+ T cells, and that HTLV-I-specific CD4+ T cells are preferentially infected with HTLV-I. The strongest CD4+ T cell response in both HAM/TSP patients and asymptomatic carriers was specific to Env. This contrasts with the immunodominance of Tax in the HTLV-I-specific CD8+ T cell response. The median frequency of HTLV-I-specific IFN-γ+ CD4+ T cells was 25-fold greater in patients with HAM/TSP (p = 0.0023, Mann-Whitney) than in asymptomatic HTLV-I carriers with a similar proviral load. Furthermore, the frequency of CD4+ T cells infected with HTLV-I (expressing Tax protein) was significantly greater (p = 0.0152, Mann-Whitney) among HTLV-I-specific cells than CMV-specific cells. These data were confirmed by quantitative PCR for HTLV-I DNA. We conclude that the high frequency of specific CD4+ T cells was associated with the disease HAM/TSP, and did not simply reflect the higher proviral load that is usually found in HAM/TSP patients. Finally, we conclude that HTLV-I-specific CD4+ T cells are preferentially infected with HTLV-I.
MetaFlow: Metagenomic profiling based on whole-genome coverage analysis with min-cost flows

High-throughput sequencing (HTS) of metagenomes is proving essential in understanding the environment and diseases. State-of-the-art methods for discovering the species and their abundances in an HTS metagenomic sample are based on genome-specific markers, which can lead to skewed results, especially at species level. We present MetaFlow, the first method based on coverage analysis across entire genomes that also scales to HTS samples. We formulated this problem as an NP-hard matching problem in a bipartite graph, which we solved in practice by min-cost flows. On synthetic data sets of varying complexity and similarity, MetaFlow is more precise and sensitive than popular tools such as MetaPhlAn, mOTU, GSMer and BLAST, and its abundance estimations at species level are two to four times better in terms of ℓ1-norm. On a real human stool data set, MetaFlow identifies B.uniformis as most predominant, in line with previous human gut studies, whereas marker-based methods report it as rare. MetaFlow is freely available at http://cs.helsinki. fi/gsa/metaflow
An Outlier Detection Method Based on Clustering

In this paper we propose a clustering based method to capture outliers. We apply K-means clustering algorithm to divide the data set into clusters. The points which are lying near the centroid of the cluster are not probable candidate for outlier and we can prune out such points from each cluster. Next we calculate a distance based outlier score for remaining points. The computations needed to calculate the outlier score reduces considerably due to the pruning of some points. Based on the outlier score we declare the top $n$ points with the highest score as outliers. The experimental results using real data set demonstrate that even though the number of computations is less, the proposed method performs better than the existing method.