Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards efficient opportunistic communications: A hybrid approach

Wireless mesh networks are well-recognised by their self-organising properties. End-to-end routing protocols are primarily responsible for achieving these advanced features. However, wireless link failures can cause a route to be invalidated and subsequently removed from the routing table in nodes along the path to destination. Once the route is not available, packets addressed for that destination will be dropped. To improve the packet delivery ratio of those end-to-end protocols, we propose a hybrid approach that integrates features of opportunistic protocols into traditional end-to-end routing protocols in mesh networks. The idea is to buffer packets for which there is no path to the destination and attempt to deliver these buffered packets when an alternative route is found or to pass them to neighbours who might eventually be able to establish a route to the destination. To demonstrate the concept, we present the AODV-OPP - an extension of the AODV protocol that uses opportunistic communication. AODVOPP always prefers end-to-end route before attempting to send opportunistically to neighbours. Based on a number of systematic simulation scenarios, we observe that AODV-OPP consistently outperforms the original AODV, with a PDR gain greater than 8% most times and up to 45%.
High Serum Uric Acid Is Associated with Tubular Damage and Kidney Inflammation in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Background Uric acid presents different roles in an organism. High serum uric acid concentrations may induce inflammatory pathways and promote kidney damage through different mechanisms. Therefore, this study investigated the association among high serum uric acid concentrations, renal tubular damage, and renal inflammation assessed via estimation of urinary kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1) and inflammatory cytokines in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Methods Urinary concentrations of KIM-1, IL-1, IL-6, IL-10, and TNF-alpha, as well as other biochemical parameters, were assessed in 125 patients with T2D who were grouped into two groups based on the serum uric acid levels (<6.0 mg/dL and ≥6.0 mg/dL). Patients were also stratified according to the tertiles of serum uric acid concentrations. Results Urinary KIM-1, IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-alpha were higher in patients with serum uric acid concentrations ≥ 6.0 mg/dL. However, the differences between the groups were not statistically significant when the urinary values of KIM-1 and cytokines were normalized by the urinary creatinine concentration. Serum uric acid concentrations were significantly associated with urinary KIM-1 (values normalized by urinary creatinine concentration) and urinary TNF-alpha (absolute values and values normalized by urinary creatinine concentration), independent of the body mass index (BMI) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). Conclusions High serum uric acid concentrations were associated with high urinary KIM-1 levels accompanied by the increase of urinary proinflammatory cytokines in patients with T2D. However, normalization of urinary markers by urine creatinine concentration seems to influence the profile of the results.
Seasonal training and performance of competitive swimmers

To determine the relationship between prescribed training and seasonal-best swimming performance, we surveyed 24 swim coaches and 185 of their age-group and open-class swimmers specializing in sprint (50 and 100 m) and middle-distance (200 and 400 m) events in a summer and winter season. We expressed effects on training as either multiples of swimmers' standard deviations (effect size, ES) or as correlations ( r ). Coaches prescribed higher mileage and longer repetitions of lower intensity to middle-distance swimmers than to sprinters (ES = 0.4-1.5); as competitions approached, repetition intensity and duration of rest intervals increased (ES = 0.5-0.9), whereas session and repetition distances decreased (ES = 0.4-1.3). The 95% likely ranges of the true values for these effects were about - 0.3. Weekly mileage swum at an easy or moderate pace remained at almost 60% of the total throughout both seasons. Interval training reduced gradually from 40% of total distance in the build-up to 30% at the end of tapering. Older swimmers had shorter rests and swam more miles ( r = 0.5-0.8). After partialling out the effects of age on performance ( r = 0.7-0.8), better performance was significantly associated only with greater weekly mileage ( r = 0.5-0.8) and shorter duration of rest intervals ( r = 0.6-0.7) in middle-distance swimmers. Weconclude that periodization of training and differences in training between sprint and middle-distance events were broadly in accord with principles of specificity. Strong effects of specificity on performance were not apparent, but weak effects might have been detected with a larger sample.
Multifunctional lipid/quantum dot hybrid nanocontainers for controlled targeting of live cells.

In this communication, we report on an interesting observation of wide-ranging potential for cellular imaging and manipulation: Hydrophobic QDs can be easily incorporated into the bilayer membrane of lipid vesicles. Such lipid/QD nanocontainer hybrid vesicles are capable either to fuse with live cells, thereby stain the cell’s plasma membrane selectively with fluorescent QDs and transfer the vesicle’s cargo into the cell or to transfer into the cytoplasm of live cells. Our results imply that cell and lipid membranes can integrate any kind of hydrophobic nanoparticle whose size matches the membrane thickness, opening novel possibilities to manipulate them as individuals or in ensemble with wide-ranging applications for nanobiotechnology.
A novel indoor localization method using passive phase difference fingerprinting based on channel state information

The device-free channel state information indoor fingerprint localization method may lead to phase offset errors, strong fingerprint noise and low sampling classification accuracy. In light of these characteristics, this article presents an indoor localization algorithm that is based on phase difference processing and principal component analysis. First, during the offline phase, this algorithm calculates phase differences to correct for random phase shifts and random time shifts in communication links. Second, the principal component analysis method is used to reduce the dimensionality of the denoised data and establish a robust fingerprint database. During the online phase, the algorithm trains a back-propagation neural network using the fingerprint data and determines the modelled mapping relationship between the fingerprint data and the physical localization after carrying out the phase difference correction and the principal component analysis–based dimensionality reduction. The experiments show that compared with existing fingerprint location methods, this algorithm has the advantages of significant denoising effectiveness and high localization accuracy.
User Profile Construction in the TWIN Personality-based Recommender System

The information overload experienced by people who use online services and read usergenerated content (e.g. product reviews and ratings) to make their decisions has led to the development of the so-called recommender systems. We address the problem of the large increase in the user-generated reviews, which are added to each day and consequently make it difficult for the user to obtain a clear picture of the quality of the facility in which they are interested. In this paper, we describe the TWIN (“Tell me What I Need”) personality-based recommender system, the aim of which is to select for the user reviews which have been written by like-minded individuals. We focus in particular on the task of User Profile construction. We apply the system in the travelling domain, to suggest hotels from the TripAdvisor 1 site by filtering out reviews produced by people with similar, or like-minded views, to those of the user. In order to establish the similarity between people we construct a user profile by modelling the user’s personality (according to the Big Five model) based on linguistic cues collected from the user-generated text.
Rule Mining and Missing-Value Prediction in the Presence of Data Ambiguities

The success of knowledge discovery in real-world domains often depends on our ability to handle data imperfections. Here we study this problem in the framework of association mining, seeking to identify frequent itemsets in transactional databases where the presence of some items in a given transaction is unknown. We want to use the frequent itemsets to predict "missing items": based on the partial contents of a shopping cart, predict what else will be added. We describe a technique that addresses this task, and report experiments illustrating its behavior.
Comparative activity of the new lipoglycopeptide telavancin in the presence and absence of serum against 50 glycopeptide non-susceptible staphylococci and three vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

BACKGROUND Telavancin, a new multifunctional lipoglycopeptide antibiotic, exhibits broad-spectrum Gram-positive activity against a variety of pathogens. We examined the effects of human serum and antimicrobial concentrations on the activity of telavancin against glycopeptide-intermediate staphylococcal species (GISS), heteroresistant GISS (hGISS) and three vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) compared with vancomycin, quinupristin/dalfopristin, linezolid and daptomycin. METHODS MIC and MBCs were performed against all antimicrobials. Time-kill experiments were performed using two strains of GISS (Mu50; NJ992) and VRSA (VRSAMI; VRSAPA) at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32x MIC. Telavancin and daptomycin were evaluated in the presence and absence of serum. RESULTS All GISS and hGISS were susceptible to the tested agents with telavancin and quinupristin/dalfopristin demonstrating the lowest MIC, followed by daptomycin, linezolid and vancomycin. Against VRSA, daptomycin and quinupristin/dalfopristin had the lowest MIC, followed by linezolid, telavancin and vancomycin. In the presence of serum, telavancin and daptomycin MICs increased 1- to 4-fold. Concentration-dependent activity was demonstrated by telavancin and daptomycin, in the presence and absence of serum. Telavancin and daptomycin were bactericidal against GISS and performed similarly in the presence of serum. Quinupristin/dalfopristin demonstrated bactericidal activity at clinically achievable concentrations, whereas linezolid was bacteriostatic. CONCLUSIONS Telavancin demonstrated concentration-dependent bactericidal activity against GISS, hGISS and VRSA at concentrations equal to or above 4x MIC, which corresponds to therapeutic levels against GISS and clinically achieved concentrations against the VRSA. Similar to daptomycin, telavancin activity was diminished in the presence of serum but bactericidal activity was maintained. Further investigation with telavancin against GISS, hGISS and VRSA is warranted.
PR 2 Rides the Elevator A Problem in Vision-based Localization

The goal of this project was to design the vision system onboard a PR2 robot tasked with navigating between floors in the ICICS X-Wing at UBC. The vision task includes the detection and localization of elevator buttons that must be pressed in order to ride the elevator to a desired floor. The system is implemented in ROS, the Robotic Operating System from Willow Garage, and executed on the PR2. OpenCV and Template Matching are used to detect the elevator buttons while stereo enhanced by a projected textured light display is used to localize the robot with respect to the detected elevator buttons.
Simplified Plant Estimation for Multichannel Active Noise Control

This paper describes novel plant identification and adaptive noise control algorithms that exploit a specific spatio-temporal structure of the multichannel secondary propagation path in simple acoustic environments. A gradient-based plant identification method is proposed that significantly reduces the number of parameters within the secondary path model. We then propose a hybrid adjoint/filtered-X LMS adaptive algorithm that reduces the overall error feedback delay of the adjoint LMS algorithm by taking advantage of the separable structure of the proposed plant model. Simulations verify the accurate estimation capabilities of the proposed methods.
Growth Cones Integrate Signaling from Multiple Guidance Cues1

Nerve growth factor (NGF) and semaphorin3A (Sema3A) are guidance cues found in pathways and targets of developing dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons. DRG growth cone motility is regulated by cytoplasmic signaling triggered by these molecules. We investigated interactions of NGF and Sema3A in modulating growth cone behaviors of axons extended from E7 chick embryo DRGs. Axons extending in collagen matrices were repelled by Sema3A released from transfected HEK293 cells. However, if an NGF-coated bead was placed adjacent to Sema3A-producing cells, axons converged at the NGF bead. Growth cones of DRGs raised in 10-9 M NGF were more resistant to Sema3A-induced collapse than when DRGs were raised in 10-11 M NGF. After overnight culture in 10-11 M NGF, 1-hr treatment with 10-9 M NGF also increased growth cone resistance to Sema3A. Pharmacological studies indicated that the activities of ROCK and PKG participate in the cytoskeletal alterations that lead to Sema3A-induced growth cone collapse, whereas PKA activity is required for NGF-mediated reduction of Sema3A-induced growth cone collapse. These results support the idea that growth cone responses to a guidance cue can be modulated by interactions involving coincident signaling by other guidance cues.
Deletion of the titin N2B region accelerates myofibrillar force development but does not alter relaxation kinetics

ABSTRACT Cardiac titin is the main determinant of sarcomere stiffness during diastolic relaxation. To explore whether titin stiffness affects the kinetics of cardiac myofibrillar contraction and relaxation, we used subcellular myofibrils from the left ventricles of homozygous and heterozygous N2B-knockout mice which express truncated cardiac titins lacking the unique elastic N2B region. Compared with myofibrils from wild-type mice, myofibrils from knockout and heterozygous mice exhibit increased passive myofibrillar stiffness. To determine the kinetics of Ca2+-induced force development (rate constant kACT), myofibrils from knockout, heterozygous and wild-type mice were stretched to the same sarcomere length (2.3 µm) and rapidly activated with Ca2+. Additionally, mechanically induced force-redevelopment kinetics (rate constant kTR) were determined by slackening and re-stretching myofibrils during Ca2+-mediated activation. Myofibrils from knockout mice exhibited significantly higher kACT, kTR and maximum Ca2+-activated tension than myofibrils from wild-type mice. By contrast, the kinetic parameters of biphasic force relaxation induced by rapidly reducing [Ca2+] were not significantly different among the three genotypes. These results indicate that increased titin stiffness promotes myocardial contraction by accelerating the formation of force-generating cross-bridges without decelerating relaxation.
Pricing and architecture of the Internet: Historical perspectives from telecommunications and transportation

With telecommunications in a slump, the search is on for ways to re-invigorate this key industry. The main problems are clearly economic much more than technological, and many of the proposed remedies would lead to new architectures for the Internet that would provide for greater control by carriers. They would drastically reduce the role of the end-to-end principle, the main foundation for the success of the Internet, in which functionality resides at the edges of the network. The proposals to restrict voice over Internet (VoIP) are just one part of this trend. Historical precedents from telecommunications for introduction of differentiated services and sophisticated charging methods on the Internet are discouraging. The general trend has been towards decreasing price discrimination and simpler pricing. The history of transportation presents a different picture, with frequent movements towards increasing price discrimination and more complicated pricing (although with many noteworthy reversals). Charging according to the nature of the goods being transported has been and continues to be the norm. Since the incentives to price discriminate are increasing, and the ability to do so is also growing, it is conceivable that telecommunications might break with its historical record and follow the example of transportation. It is therefore of interest to examine the evolution of pricing and quality differentiation in transportation. Some historical sketches on the evolution of pricing in transportation are presented. Their implications for telecommunications, and especially for Internet pricing and architecture, are discussed.
Cosmological Gamma-Ray Bursts and Evolution of Galaxies

Evolution of the rate density of cosmological gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) is calculated and compared to the BATSE brightness distribution in the context of binary neutron star mergers as the source of GRBs, taking account of the realistic star formation history in the universe and evolution of compact binary systems. We tried two models of the evolution of cosmic star formation rate (SFR): one is based on recent observations of SFRs at high redshifts, while the other is based on a galaxy evolution model of stellar population synthesis that reproduces the present-day colors of galaxies. It is shown that the binary merger scenario of GRBs naturally results in the rate evolution of ∝(1 + z)2-2.5 up to z ~ 1, which has been suggested independently from the compatibility between the number-brightness distribution and duration-brightness correlation. If the cosmic SFR has its peak at z ~ 1-2 as suggested by recent observations, then the effective power index of the GRB photon spectrum, α ≳ 1.5, is favored, which is softer than the recent observational determination of α = 1.1 ± 0.3. However, high-redshift starbursts (z ≳ 5) in elliptical galaxies, which have not yet been detected, can alleviate this discrepancy. The redshift of GRB 970508 is likely about 2, just below the upper limit that is recently determined, and the absorption system at z = 0.835 seems not to be the site of the GRB.
Molecular characterisation of a Chiamydophila felis isolate from a cat in Italy

Escherichia coll straini isolates from children in Southwest Nigeria. Joairntal of Itnfectiotus Diseases 181, 252-260 PAIBA, G. A. , GIBBENS, J. C. , PASCOE, S. J., WILESMITH, J. W. , KIDD, S. A. , BYRNE, C. , RYAN, J. B. , SMITH, R. P., MCLAREN, I. M. , FUTTER, R. J., KAY, A. C. , JONES, Y. E. , CHAPPELL, S. A. , WILLSHAW, G. A. & CHEASTY, T. (2002) Faecal carriage of verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli 0157 in cattle and sheep at slaughter in Great Britain. Veterinary Record 150, 593-598 PAUL, M. , TSUKAMOTO, T. , GHOSH, A. R. , BHATTACHARYA, S. K. , MANNA, B. , CHAKRABARTI, S. , NAIR, G. B. , SACK, D. A. , SEN, D. , TAKEDA, Y. (1994) The significance of enteroaggregative Escherichia coli in the etiology of hospitalized diarrhoea in Calcutta, India and the demonstration of a new honey-combed pattern of aggregative adherence. FEMS Microbiology Letters 15, 319-325 SAVARINO, S. J., FASANO, A. , ROBERTSON, D. C. & LEVINE, M. M. (1991) Enteroaggregative Esclierichia coli elaborate a heat-stable enterotoxin demonstrable in an in vitro rabbit intestinal miodel. Joturnial ol Clitnical Itivestigation 87, 14501455 SCHMIDT, H. , KNOP, C. , FRANKE, S. , ALEKSIC, S. , HEESEMANN, J. & KARCH, H. (1995) Development of PCR for screening of enteroaggregative Esclherichia coli. Jotirtnal of Clinical Microbiology 33, 701-705 SUZART, S. , GUTH, B. E. C. , PEDROSO, M. Z. , OKAFOR, U. M. & GOMES, T. A. (2001) Diversity of surface structures and virulence genetic markers among enteroaggregative Eschericliia coli (EAEC) strains with and without the EAEC DNA probe sequence. FEMS Microbiology Letters 201, 163-168 VIAL, P. A. , ROBINS-BROWNE, R. , LIOR, H. , PRADO, V. , KAPER, J. B. & NATARO, J. P. (1988) Characterisation of enteroadherent-aggregative Esclierichia coli, a putative agent of diarrheal disease. Jouirtnal of IlnJectious Diseases 158, 70-79 WANKE, C. A. , MAYER, H. , WEBER, R. , ZBINDEN, R. , WATSON, D. A. & ACHESON, D. ( 1998) Enteroaggregative Esclierichia coli as a potential cause of diarrheal disease in adults infected with immunodeficiency virus. journal of Itnfectious Diseases 178, 185-190 WASTESON,Y. (2001) Zoonotic Esclierichia coli.Acta Veterinaria Scandiniavica 95, 79-84 YATSUYANAGI, J., KINOUCHI, Y. , SAITO, S. , SATO, H. & MORITA, M. 1996a) Enteropathogenic Eschericliln coli strains harboring enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAggEC) heat-stable enterotoxingene isolated from a food-borne like outbreak. Kansenshogaki Zasshi 70, 73-79 YATSUYANAGI, J., SAITO, S. , KINOUCHI, Y. , SATO, H. , MORITA, M. & ITOH, K. (1996b) Characteristics of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli and E coli harboring enteroaggregative E coli heat-stable enterotoxinI (EAST1) genie isolated from a water-borne outbreak. Kansenshogaku Zasslii 70, 215223
Diethylnitrosamine-induced Liver Tumors in Mice-acetylglucosaminyltransferase III in the Progression of N New Evidence for an Extra-Hepatic Role of Updated Version

N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase III (GlcNAc-TIII) is encoded by the Mgat3 gene and catalyzes the addition of the bisecting GlcNAc to the core of N-glycans. Mice lacking GlcNAc-TIII due to the insertion mutation Mgat3 (termed Mgat3), exhibit retarded progression of liver tumors induced by diethylnitrosamine (DEN; M. Bhaumik et al., Cancer Res.,58: 2881–2887, 1998). This phenotype seemed to be due to a reduction, in activity or amount, of a circulating glycoprotein(s) that enhances DEN-induced liver tumor progression. Here, we provide new evidence to support this hypothesis. First, we show that mice with a deletion mutation of the Mgat3 gene coding exon (Mgat3 , termed Mgat3) also exhibit retarded progression of DEN-induced liver tumors. At 7 months there was a significant decrease in liver weight (;27%;P < 0.01), reflecting reduced tumor burden in Mgat3 mice. In addition, tumors were generally fewer and smaller, and histological changes were less severe in Mgat3 livers. Therefore, tumor progression is retarded in mice with two different null mutations in the Mgat3 gene. Second, we show that the development of DEN-induced tumors is unaltered by high levels of GlcNAc-TIII in the liver of transgenic mice. TheMgat3 gene coding exon under the control of the major urinary protein (MUP) promoter was used to generate transgenic mice that express GlcNAc-TIII in liver. Following DEN injection and phenobarbitol treatment, however, no significant differences were observed between MUP/Mgat3transgenic and control mice in either tumor numbers or liver weight. The combined data provide strong evidence that retarded progression of tumors in mice lacking GlcNAc-TIII is due to the absence of the bisecting GlcNAc residue on N-glycans of a circulating glycoprotein(s) from a tissue other than liver.