Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-time Algorithmic Detection of a Landing Site using Sensors aboard a Lunar Lander

Planetary Landers can achieve safe, pinpoint landings. This revolutionary capability is possible due to Hi-Def, full coverage photography for Moon & Mars. This paper presents a system, encompassing a suite of sensors and algorithms, capable of perceiving and interpreting information about the Lander‟s position relative to its surroundings lunar coordinates, azimuth, altitude, attitude, velocity as well as determining characteristics of the target environment elevation and obstacles of the lunar surface. Most importantly, the paper describes how the information is used by path planning algorithms to determine areas on the surface where landing is feasible.
Symbolic Execution for BIOS Security

We are building a tool that uses symbolic execution to search for BIOS security vulnerabilities including dangerous memory references (call outs) by SMM interrupt handlers in UEFI-compliant implementations of BIOS. Our tool currently applies only to interrupt handlers for SMM variables. Given a snapshot of SMRAM, the base address of SMRAM, and the address of the variable interrupt handler in SMRAM, the tool uses S2E to run the KLEE symbolic execution engine to search for concrete examples of a call to the interrupt handler that causes the handler to read memory outside of SMRAM. This is a work in progress. We discuss our approach, our current status, our plans for the tool, and the obstacles we face.
Causes and Corrections for Bimodal Multi-Path Scanning With Structured Light

Structured light illumination is an active 3D scanning technique based on projecting/capturing a set of striped patterns and measuring the warping of the patterns as they reflect off a target object's surface. As designed, each pixel in the camera sees exactly one pixel from the projector; however, there are multi-path situations when the scanned surface has a complicated geometry with step edges and other discontinuities in depth or where the target surface has specularities that reflect light away from the camera. These situations are generally referred to multi-path where a camera pixel sees light from multiple projector positions. In the case of bimodal multi-path, the camera pixel receives light from exactly two positions which occurs along a step edge where the edge slices through a pixel so that the pixel sees both a foreground and background surface. In this paper, we present a general mathematical model to address the bimodal multi-path issue in a phase-measuring-profilometry scanner to measure the constructive and destructive interference between the two light paths, and by taking advantage of this interesting cue, separate the paths and make two decoupled phase measurements. We validate our algorithm with a number of challenging real-world scenarios, outperforming the state-of-the-art method.
Cloning and Characterization of Luciferase from a Fijian Luminous Click Beetle

Luminous click beetle is distributed almost exclusively in Central and South America with a single genus in Melanesia. Among these click beetles, the description of Melanesian species has been fragmentary, and its luciferase gene and phylogenetic relation to other click beetles still remain uncertain. We collected a living luminous click beetle, Photophorus jansonii in Fiji. It emits green‐yellow light from two spots on the pronotum and has no ventral luminous organ. Here, we cloned a luciferase gene from this insect by RT‐PCR. The deduced amino acid sequence showed high identity of ~85% to the luciferases derived from other click beetle species. The luciferase of the Fijian click beetle was produced as a recombinant protein to characterize its biochemical properties. The Km for d‐luciferin and ATP were 173 and 270 μm, respectively. The luciferase was pH‐insensitive and the spectrum measured at pH 8.0 showed a peak at 559 nm, which was in the range of green‐yellow light as seen in the luminous spot of the living Fijian click beetle. The Fijian click beetle luciferase was assigned to the Elateridae clade by a phylogenetic analysis, but it made a clearly different branch from Pyrophorus group examined in this study.
Analysing delays between time course gene expression data and biomarkers

Associating time course gene expression data to biomarkers can help to understand disease progression or response to therapy. However, detecting associations between these expression profiles is not a trivial task. Often expression changes occur not simultaneously but delayed in time and common used methods to detect correlation will fail to identify these associations. We have developed an efficient approach, DynOmics, based on Fast Fourier Transform to identify coordinated response dynamics between time course 'omics' experiments and specific biomarkers of interest while taking time shift into account. We applied DynOmics to a rat study investigating molecular response dynamics to different dosages of acetaminophen ('paracetamol'). We show how DynOmics can extract relevant molecule expression profiles that enables a better understanding of the molecular pathways related to acetaminophen toxic dosage and renal damage.
Generalized Estimators for Multiple Testing: Proportion of True Nulls and False Discovery Rate by Generalized Estimators for Multiple Testing: Pro- Portion of True Nulls and False Discovery Rate

Two new estimators are proposed: one for the proportion of true null hypotheses and the other for the false discovery rate (FDR) of one-step multiple testing procedures (MTPs). They outperform existing such estimators when applied to discrete p-values whose null distributions dominate the uniform distribution and reduce to leading such estimators when applied to continuous p-values. For the new estimator of the FDR, we establish its simultaneous asymptotic con-servativeness and justify formally the stopping time property of its threshold for p-values not necessarily independent or continuous. The superior performance of the new estimators is demonstrated theoretically and by simulation studies and an application to next-generation sequencing count data.
Descriptions: a viable choice for video game authors

Modern video game development activities have become as specialized as movie-making activites. Gifted story-writers, artists, and animators have replaced programmers in most content creation activities. However, there is still one area where computer programmers play a big role. Stories, characters, and events are still controlled by scripts that are written in "C-like" languages. Therefore, scripting the video game content usually requires a high level of programming knowledge. Some scripting is simple, such as specifying specific game objects. However, in order to take advantage of knowledge learned during game play, authors need to be able to specify dynamic game objects. This often requires authors to create complex definitions, which are composed of a series of variable assignments in programming languages. In this paper, we show how these definitions can be replaced by a more natural mechanism, which we call descriptions. We also present the results of a user study that shows that authors with no programming skills can use descriptions more effectively than definitions and that the authors prefer descriptions.
Effects of Psychological Capital on Mental Health and Substance Abuse

Luthans, Youssef, Sweetman, and Harms proposed a holistic approach to psychological capital that involves examining psychological capital and its effects across multiple life domains, including work, relationships, and health. This article focuses on the effects of psychological capital on objective health outcomes. Using data from a sample of 1,889 U.S. Army soldiers, we demonstrate that soldiers with higher levels of psychological capital prior to deployment were less likely to receive diagnoses for mental health problems and substance abuse postdeployment. In addition, the effects of psychological capital on mental health diagnoses were mediated by soldiers’ overall health perceptions.
Widespread grey matter pathology dominates the longitudinal cerebral MRI and clinical landscape of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Menke/Koerner et al. use structural MRI to explore the extent of longitudinal changes in cerebral pathology in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and their relationship to clinical features. A characteristic white matter tract pathological signature is seen cross-sectionally, while cortical involvement dominates longitudinally. This has implications for the development of biomarkers for diagnosis versus therapeutic monitoring.
Quantum Private Queries: Security Analysis

A security analysis of the recently introduced Quantum Private Query (QPQ) protocol is presented. The latter is a cheat sensitive quantum protocol to perform a private search on a classical database. It allows a user to retrieve an item from the database without revealing which item was retrieved, and at the same time it ensures data privacy of the database (the information that the user retrieves in a query is bounded). The security analysis is based on information-disturbance tradeoffs which show that whenever the provider tries to obtain information on the query, the query (encoded into a quantum system) is disturbed so that the person querying the database can detect the privacy violation. The security bounds are derived under the assumption that a unique answer corresponds to each query. To remove this assumption, some simple variants of the protocol are illustrated, and it is conjectured that analogous security bounds apply to them.
Use of the Cornell Scale in Nondemented Patients

The Cornell scale is a 19‐item clinician‐administered scale of depression that uses information from interviews with both patients and their caregivers. The Cornell scale has been validated in demented patients. In this study, the Cornell scale was psychometically tested in nondemented geriatric subjects by administering it to 15 depressed patients, 15 patients with other psychiatric diagnoses, and 15 normal control subjects. The Cornell scale had high interrater reliability (Cohen's κ = 0.74), internal consistency (Kuder‐Richardson's coefficient = 0.98), and sensitivity, and correlated significantly (Spearman's r = 0.81) with Research Diagnostic Criteria psychiatric diagnoses associated with various intensity of depression. To our knowledge, the Cornell scale is the only depression‐rating instrument that has been validated in both demented and nondemented geriatric subjects.
The role of the information specialist in supporting knowledge transfer: a public health information case study.

OBJECTIVES To create research bulletins for public health professionals that support knowledge transfer and evidence-based practice. METHODS The methodology for the bulletins comprises five stages: scoping the topic, searching for relevant literature, selecting and obtaining relevant articles, assessing the quality of articles including evidence grading, producing a comment on quality and implications for practice and writing the research bulletin. An ABC -- applicability, brevity and clarity -- is considered at each stage to ensure that bulletins meet the needs of their intended audience. RESULTS Nine research bulletins have been produced on a range of health promotion topics. Bulletins are distributed to Welsh health professionals and are available online. The bulletins have developed since their inception to incorporate evaluation and feedback. Most significant among these developments has been introduction of an Implications for Practice section to promote uptake of research. CONCLUSIONS Research bulletins support busy health professionals in evidence-based practice by assigning a level of evidence, highlighting implications for practice and providing a comment on quality. The bulletins further develop the extended role for information professionals in knowledge transfer and dissemination.
Choroid Plexus Megalin Is Involved in Neuroprotection by Serum Insulin-Like Growth Factor I

The involvement of circulating insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) in the beneficial effects of physical exercise on the brain makes this abundant serum growth factor a physiologically relevant neuroprotective signal. However, the mechanisms underlying neuroprotection by serum IGF-I remain primarily unknown. Among many other neuroprotective actions, IGF-I enhances clearance of brain amyloid β (Aβ) by modulating transport/production of Aβ carriers at the blood-brain interface in the choroid plexus. We found that physical exercise increases the levels of the choroid plexus endocytic receptor megalin/low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein-2 (LRP2), a multicargo transporter known to participate in brain uptake of Aβ carriers. By manipulating choroid plexus megalin levels through viral-directed overexpression and RNA interference, we observed that megalin mediates IGF-I-induced clearance of Aβ and is involved in IGF-I transport into the brain. Through this dual role, megalin participates in the neuroprotective actions of IGF-I including prevention of tau hyperphosphorylation and maintenance of cognitive function in a variety of animal models of cognitive loss. Because we found that in normal aged animals, choroid plexus megalin/LRP2 is decreased, an attenuated IGF-I/megalin input may contribute to increased risk of neurodegeneration, including late-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Variations in plantar pressure variables across five cardiovascular exercises.

PURPOSE To quantify variations in plantar pressure variables in healthy adults across five cardiovascular exercises. METHODS Ten young (19-35 yr old) and 10 middle-aged (45-60 yr old) individuals participated. After equipment familiarization, plantar pressure data were recorded during walking, running, elliptical training, stair climbing, and recumbent biking. Separate one-way analyses of variance with repeated measures identified significant differences in pressure variables across exercises and between age groups under the forefoot, arch, and heel. RESULTS Forefoot: Peak pressures were higher during walking (253 kPa), running (251 kPa), and elliptical training (213 kPa) than stair climbing (130 kPa) and recumbent biking (41 kPa; P < or = 0.001). Biking pressures were lower than all other conditions (P < 0.001). Arch: Pressures were higher during running (144 kPa) compared with all other conditions (P < or = 0.001). Intermediate-level pressures during walking (119 kPa) and elliptical training (102 kPa) exceeded those during stair climbing (80 kPa; P < or = 0.002). Pressures were lowest during recumbent biking (33 kPa; P < 0.001). Heel: Pressures were highest during walking (215 kPa) and running (188 kPa), exceeding those recorded during all other activities (P < 0.001). Moderate elliptical training pressures (94 kPa) surpassed stair climbing values (66 kPa; P = 0.014). Pressures were lowest during recumbent biking (25 kPa; P < 0.001). The only significant difference identified between age groups was a larger arch contact area in the young compared with middle-aged, when averaged across exercises (P = 0.011). CONCLUSIONS When protection of the forefoot is important (e.g., diabetic foot neuropathies), biking and stair climbing offer optimal pressure reductions. If protecting the heel from high pressures and forces is warranted, recumbent biking, stair climbing, and elliptical training provide greater relief.
The Relationship Between X-ray Luminosity and Duty Cycle for Dwarf Novae and their Specific Frequency in the Inner Galaxy

We measure the duty cycles for an existing sample of well-observed, nearby dwarf novae (DNe) using data from American Association of Variable Star Observers, and present a quantitative empirical relation between the duty cycle of DNe outbursts and the X-ray luminosity of the system in quiescence. We have found that log DC = 0.63(±0.21) × (log LX(erg s-1) - 31.3) - 0.95(±0.1), where DC stands for duty cycle. We note that there is intrinsic scatter in this relation greater than what is expected from purely statistical errors. Using the DN X-ray luminosity functions from Pretorius & Knigge and Byckling et al., we compare this relation to the number of DNe in the Galactic Bulge Survey which were identified through optical outbursts during an 8-d-long monitoring campaign. We find a specific frequency of X-ray-bright (LX ≳ 1031 erg s- 1) cataclysmic variables (CVs) undergoing DNe outbursts in the direction of the Galactic bulge of 6.6± 4.7{×} 10^{-5} M_{{*sun;}}^{-1}. Such a specific frequency would give a solar neighbourhood space density of long-period CVs of ρ = 5.6 ± 3.9 × 10-6 pc-3. We advocate the use of specific frequency in future work, given that projects like Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will detect DNe well outside the distance range over which ρ ≈ const.
Recent developments in human immunodeficiency virus-1 latency research

Almost 30 years after its initial discovery, infection with the human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) remains incurable and the virus persists due to reservoirs of latently infected CD4+ memory T-cells and sanctuary sites within the infected individual where drug penetration is poor. Reactivating latent viruses has been a key strategy to completely eliminate the virus from the host, but many difficulties and unanswered questions remain. In this review, the latest developments in HIV-persistence and latency research are presented.
A Preliminary Study on the Prevention of Posterior Capsule Opacification by Photodynamic Therapy with Bacteriochlorin A in Rabbits

Purpose: Photodynamic therapy (PDT) with bacteriochlorin a (BCA) has proven to be successful in the treatment of cancers and to be cytocidal for lens epithelial cells (LECs) in culture. The present study aimed to determine whether PDT with BCA is also effective in destroying LECs in the capsular bag in vivo and could therefore be a strategy for prevention of posterior capsule opacification (PCO). Materials and Methods: BCA was obtained by saponification and acid hydrolysis of bacteriochlorophyll a and was formulated in 30% polyethylene glycol, 20% ethanol and 50% water. Nine albino rabbits were anesthesized and both pupils dilated. Extracapsular lens extraction by phacoemulsification was performed on both eyes. One eye of each animal served as control. In the other eye, 1.5 ml BCA (10 or 50 µg/ml) was injected in the capsular bag and after 10 min, the eye was illuminated with a diode laser (wavelength 760 nm) for 10 or 15 min. Six weeks after surgery, the rabbits were sacrificed and the globes were enucleated, the capsular bags and the corneas removed, fixed and examined using stereomicroscopy and light microscopy. Results: In the control capsular bags, extensive proliferation of LECs and formation of a complete ring of Soemmering was found, while in the PDT-treated capsular bags, LEC proliferation was markedly diminished and an incomplete irregular and much thinner ring of Soemmering was formed. Using the presently described application, the corneas of the PDT-treated animals were opaque and swollen and had lost their endothelial lining. Conclusion: PDT with BCA induces cell death in LECs and greatly reduces the formation of a ring of Soemmering. Therefore, it could be a promising novel means of prevention of PCO, provided the total length of the treatment can be substantially reduced and the negative effects on corneal transparency avoided.
Overview of Annotation Creation: Processes & Tools

Creating linguistic annotations requires more than just a reliable annotation scheme. Annotation can be a complex endeavour potentially involving many people, stages, and tools. This chapter outlines the process of creating end-to-end linguistic annotations, identifying specific tasks that researchers often perform. Because tool support is so central to achieving high quality, reusable annotations with low cost, the focus is on identifying capabilities that are necessary or useful for annotation tools, as well as common problems these tools present that reduce their utility. Although examples of specific tools are provided in many cases, this chapter concentrates more on abstract capabilities and problems because new tools appear continuously, while old tools disappear into disuse or disrepair. The two core capabilities tools must have are support for the chosen annotation scheme and the ability to work on the language under study. Additional capabilities are organized into three categories: those that are widely provided; those that often useful but found in only a few tools; and those that have as yet little or no available tool support.
Structural Analysis of the Rubisco-Assembly Chaperone RbcX-II from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

The most prevalent form of the Rubisco enzyme is a complex of eight catalytic large subunits (RbcL) and eight regulatory small subunits (RbcS). Rubisco biogenesis depends on the assistance by specific molecular chaperones. The assembly chaperone RbcX stabilizes the RbcL subunits after folding by chaperonin and mediates their assembly to the RbcL8 core complex, from which RbcX is displaced by RbcS to form active holoenzyme. Two isoforms of RbcX are found in eukaryotes, RbcX-I, which is more closely related to cyanobacterial RbcX, and the more distant RbcX-II. The green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii contains only RbcX-II isoforms, CrRbcX-IIa and CrRbcX-IIb. Here we solved the crystal structure of CrRbcX-IIa and show that it forms an arc-shaped dimer with a central hydrophobic cleft for binding the C-terminal sequence of RbcL. Like other RbcX proteins, CrRbcX-IIa supports the assembly of cyanobacterial Rubisco in vitro, albeit with reduced activity relative to cyanobacterial RbcX-I. Structural analysis of a fusion protein of CrRbcX-IIa and the C-terminal peptide of RbcL suggests that the peptide binding mode of RbcX-II may differ from that of cyanobacterial RbcX. RbcX homologs appear to have adapted to their cognate Rubisco clients as a result of co-evolution.
Sensing the World: Social Sensorium in the Chemical Use of Selected Youth in the Philippines

This study uses the interpretive approach in looking into the everyday chemical use of the youth in a port city of the Philippines. It is an attempt at “sensing the world,” of these youth. Herein, the senses become the “lens” through which their social lives could be understood. This study explored the youth’s sensorial experience from chemical use and hopes to provide the reader a glimpse of such chemical sensorium. Keywords: Anthropology of the senses, chemical use, Philippines, youth, sociality of chemical use