Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intracerebroventricular Injection of Lipopolysaccharide Increases Gene Expression of Connexin32 Gap Junction in Rat Hippocampus

Introduction Gap junctions are intercellular membrane channels that provide direct cytoplasmic continuity between adjacent cells. This communication can be affected by changes in expression of gap junctional subunits called Connexins (Cx). Changes in the expression and function of connexins are associated with number of brain neurodegenerative diseases. Neuroinflammation is a hallmark of various central nervous system (CNS) diseases, like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy. Neuroinflammation causes change in Connexins expression. Hippocampus, one of the main brain regions with a wide network of Gap junctions between different neural cell types, has particular vulnerability to damage and consequent inflammation. Cx32 – among Connexins– is expressed in hippocampal Olygodandrocytes and some neural subpopulations. Although multiple lines of evidence indicate that there is an association between neuroinflammation and the expression of connexin, the direct effect of neuroinflammation on the expression of connexins has not been well studied. In the present study, the effect of neuroinflammation induced by the Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on Cx32 gene and protein expressions in rat hippocampus is evaluated. Methods LPS (2.5µg/rat) was infused into the rat cerebral ventricles for 14 days. Cx32 mRNA and protein levels were measured by Real Time PCR and Western Blot after 1st, 7th and 14th injection of LPS in the hippocampus. Results Significant increase in Cx32 mRNA expression was observed after 7th injection of LPS (P < 0.001). However, no significant change was observed in Cx32 protein level. Conclusion LPS seems to modify Cx32 GJ communication in the hippocampus at transcription level but not at translation or post-translation level. In order to have a full view concerning modification of Cx32 GJ communication, effect of LPS on Cx32 channel gating should also be determined.
Access-Aware In-memory Data Cache Middleware for Relational Databases

Data systems are typically categorized into source-of-truth systems that serve as primary stores for the user-generated writes, reads and other complex queries. In recent years, scientists regularly encounter limitations due to large data sets in many areas, especially for the query of big data. In this paper, we construct Access-aware In-memory Data Cache Middleware (AIDCM) for relational databases, which is an integral part of RDBMS and in-memory cache. On one hand, AIDCM provides low latency while supporting log-based trigger in the presence of updates to maintain data consistency. On the other hand, AIDCM translate the frequently accessed data to column-oriented in-memory cache by the column access frequency to ensure heavy hitter queries. We also present the experimental results to describe our middleware supporting a wide range of applications with big data.
Staphylococcus aureus Strains That Express Serotype 5 or Serotype 8 Capsular Polysaccharides Differ in Virulence

ABSTRACT Most isolates of Staphylococcus aureus produce a serotype 5 (CP5) or 8 (CP8) capsular polysaccharide. To investigate whether CP5 and CP8 differ in their biological properties, we created isogenic mutants of S. aureus Reynolds that expressed CP5, CP8, or no capsule. Biochemical analyses of CP5 and CP8 purified from the isogenic S. aureus strains were consistent with published structures. The degree of O acetylation of each polysaccharide was similar, but CP5 showed a greater degree of N acetylation. Mice challenged with the CP5+ strain showed a significantly higher bacteremia level than mice challenged with the CP8+ strain. Similarly, the CP5+ strain survived preferentially in the bloodstream and kidneys of infected mice challenged with a mixed inoculum containing both strains. The enhanced virulence of the CP5+ strain in vivo correlated with its greater resistance to in vitro killing in whole mouse blood. Likewise, in vitro opsonophagocytic killing assays with human neutrophils and sera revealed greater survival of the Reynolds (CP5) strain, even though the kinetics of opsonization by C3b and iC3b was similar for both the CP5+ and CP8+ strains. Electron micrographs demonstrated C3 molecules on the cell wall beneath the capsule layer for both serotype 5 and 8 strains. Purified CP5 and CP8 stimulated a modest oxidative burst in human neutrophils but failed to activate the alternative complement pathway. These results indicate that CP5 and CP8 differ in a number of biological properties, and these differences likely contribute to the relative virulence of serotype 5 and 8 S. aureus in vivo.
Sexual shape dimorphism accelerated by male–male competition, but not prevented by sex-indiscriminate parental care in dung beetles (Scarabaeidae)

Dimorphic sexual differences in shape and body size are called sexual dimorphism and sexual size dimorphism, respectively. The degrees of both dimorphisms are considered to increase with sexual selection, represented by male–male competition. However, the degrees of the two dimorphisms often differ within a species. In some dung beetles, typical sexual shape dimorphisms are seen in male horns and other exaggerated traits, although sexual size dimorphism looks rare. We hypothesized that the evolution of this sexual shape dimorphism without sexual size dimorphism is caused by male–male competition and their crucial and sex-indiscriminate provisioning behaviors, in which parents provide the equivalent size of brood ball with each of both sons and daughters indiscriminately. As a result of individual-based model simulations, we show that parents evolve to provide each of sons and daughters with the optimal amount of resource for a son when parents do not distinguish the sex of offspring and males compete for mates. This result explains why crucial and sex-indiscriminate parental provisioning does not prevent the evolution of sexual shape dimorphism. The model result was supported by empirical data of Scarabaeidae beetles. In some dung beetles, sexual size dimorphism is absent, compared with significant sexual size dimorphism in other horned beetles, although both groups exhibit similar degrees of sexual shape dimorphism in male horns and other exaggerated traits.
Recent developments for multi-leg QCD amplitudes with massive particles

We review the extension of modern techniques for the calculation of helicity amplitudes in QCD to massive particles. The focus is on the use of supersymmetric Ward identites that relate amplitudes with massive quarks to those with massive scalars, the application of on-shell recursion relations to amplitudes with massive quarks and an extension of the CSW rules to massive scalars.
The real regulator for a product of 3 surfaces

Let X be a general complex algebraic K3 surface, and CH2(X, 1) Bloch’s higher Chow group ([Blo1]). In [C-L2] it is proven that the real regulator r2,1 : CH 2(X, 1)⊗ R→ H1,1(X,R) is surjective (Hodge-D-conjecture). The question addressed in this paper is whether a similar story holds for products of K3 surfaces. We prove a general regulator result for a product of two surfaces, and then deduce, under the assumptions of [a variant of] the Bloch-Beilinson conjecture regarding the injectivity of the Abel-Jacobi map for smooth quasiprojective varieties defined over number fields, that the (induced) regulator map r3,1 : CH 3(X×Y, 1)→ { H2 tr(X,R)⊗H tr(Y,R) } ∩H2,2(X×Y ) is trivial for a general pair of K3 surfaces, where H2 tr(X,R) is the space of transcendental classes in H2(X,R).
An Analysis Engine for Dependable Elicitation of Natural Language Use Case Description and Its Application to Industrial Use Cases

LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOTICE: This report has been submitted for publication outside of IBM and will probably be copyrighted if accepted for publication. It has been issued as a Research Report for early dissemination of its contents. In view of the transfer of copyright to the outside publisher, its distribution outside of IBM prior to publication should be limited to peer communications and specific requests. After outside publication, requests should be filled only by reprints or legally obtained copies of the article (e.g. , payment of royalties). Copies may be requested from IBM T. J. Abstract We present 1) a novel application of a pipeline of linguistic analysis engines for understanding contents of a natural language use case specification; and 2) results of the first of a kind large scale experiment of application of linguistic techniques to industrial use cases. In spite of the recent developments in formal specification, natural language remains the predominant mode for specifying requirements. Therefore, for dependable system development and for automation of software engineering activities, a robust and scalable natural language processing technique is required that can translate natural language textual requirements into computer based models. We present one such technique that can process natural language use case descriptions. The novelty of our technique lies in our choice of architecture , which enables us to configure and extend the analysis engine to multiple domains and languages. We also report the results of applying our prototype to 80 industrial and academic use case descriptions. The results of our experiment indicate that our approach is very promising.
Approaches and Challenges for Guaranteeing Quality of Service in Next Generation Internet

: - The prime focus of today’s Internet is on providing connectivity without assurance of service quality (QoS). However, many real-time applications such as teleconferencing and IP telephony require stringent QoS guarantees in delays and bandwidth which impose strict resource constraints on paths being used. In this paper we review the basic mechanisms and protocols to support QoS guarantees in the next generation Internet. We outline the various approaches and discuss their limitations and the challenges for the future. In particular, admission control, resource reservation, packet scheduling, and routing mechanisms are discussed.
“How am I Prepping for All of That and Still Fitting Sleep into My Day?”: The Tale of Two Teachers Seeking to Include Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Secondary Mainstream Classroom

ii Acknowledgements iii Chapter 1: Introduction 1.0 Research Context 1 1.1 Research Problem 4 1.2 Purpose of the Study 5 1.3 Research Questions 6 1.4 Researcher Positioning Statement 6 1.5 Overview of the MTRP 7 Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.0 Introduction 8 2.1 Current Conceptions of Inclusion 8 2.2 Teachers’ Experiences with the Inclusion of Students with ASD 9 2.3 Collaboration of Teachers with School and Community Members 11 2.3. 1 Collaboration of teachers with parents and other professionals 11 2.3. 2 The influence of educational assistants 12 2.4 Assistive Technology in the Inclusive Classroom 14 2.5 Social Outcomes of Students with ASD in Mainstream Classrooms 15 2.6 Academic Outcomes of Students with ASD in Mainstream Classrooms 18
Isolation of a 40-kDa Huntingtin-associated Protein*

Huntington's disease is caused by an expanded CAG trinucleotide repeat coding for a polyglutamine stretch within the huntingtin protein. Currently, the function of normal huntingtin and the mechanism by which expanded huntingtin causes selective neurotoxicity remain unknown. Clues may come from the identification of huntingtin-associated proteins (HAPs). Here, we show that huntingtin copurifies with a single novel 40-kDa protein termed HAP40. HAP40 is encoded by the open reading frame factor VIII-associated gene A (F8A) located within intron 22 of the factor VIII gene. In transfected cell extracts, HAP40 coimmunoprecipitates with full-length huntingtin but not with an N-terminal huntingtin fragment. Recombinant HAP40 is cytoplasmic in the presence of huntingtin but is actively targeted to the nucleus in the absence of huntingtin. These data indicate that HAP40 is likely to contribute to the function of normal huntingtin and is a candidate for involvement in the aberrant nuclear localization of mutant huntingtin found in degenerating neurons in Huntington's disease.
Travel career patterns: the motivations of Indonesian and Malaysian muslim tourists

Indonesia and Malaysia have a combined population of ~225 million Muslims. Little academic work has been conducted on their motives for nonpilgrimage, leisure-based travel. Building on the travel career pattern approach for assessing tourist motivation, this study sought to uncover the motivational patterns of Muslim tourists in this part of Southeast Asia. A combined total of 356 respondents from the two countries were sampled and the patterns of tourist motives between these Muslim tourists and data from previous studies of Western tourists were compared. Comparisons between the Malaysian data and the Indonesian data were also undertaken. The special importance of relationships, nature appreciation, and safety in the Muslim data compared to responses from Western respondents was identified. Close parallels between the Malaysian and Indonesian Muslim motivation patterns were found. The results were interpreted as highly consistent with Islamic teaching and the collectivist culture of the two communities.
A Probabilistic Doxastic Temporal Logic for Reasoning about Beliefs in Multi-agent Systems

We present Probabilistic Doxastic Temporal (PDT) Logic, a formalism to represent and reason about probabilistic beliefs and their evolution in multi-agent systems. It can quantify beliefs through probability intervals and incorporates the concepts of frequency functions and epistemic actions. We provide an appropriate semantics for PDT and show how agents can update their beliefs with respect to their observations.
Ambivalent occupational identities under modern workplace demands: the case of Swiss retail apprentices

Abstract This article investigates how Swiss retail apprentices construct their occupational identities under modern workplace affordances. The Swiss retail sector has become more competitive in recent decades; as a consequence, retail businesses look for skilled and responsible employees who are flexible in regard to work tasks and schedules. The article focuses on apprentices’ experiences and sense-making, and specifically examines how retail work conditions not only generate pressure and insecurity, but also offer possibilities for personal identification. Results are based on a qualitative study with retail apprentices involving interviews, focus groups, and observations in vocational education and training schools. Retail apprentices strongly identify with the skilled nature of retail work and even the demand for continuous skill development to ensure that they remain employable. However, they are more critical of the flexible way in which their work is organised and develop divided sense-makings around the demands for responsible autonomy. In short, retail work is perceived in ambivalent ways, oscillating between valorising some of the realities of retail work and suffering from others. The discussion points to the kinds of working and learning conditions within companies that hinder apprentices’ ability to cope with the demands of the modern retail workplace.
Impact of Clock Frequency and Number of Cores on GPU Performance

Modern graphics processing units (GPUs) containing massive parallel hardware have become more flexible with unified shader cores which can run diverse graphics operations. Moreover, programmers can run general-purpose applications on GPUs easily, since GPU vendors provide user-friendly application programming interfaces (APIs). Many studies for improving system performance using GPUs have been researched intensively. Study on the GPU architecture is challenging, because the GPU architecture is totally different to the traditional CPU architecture. This paper analyzes the GPU performance according to GPU parameters with various number of cores and clock frequency. According to our simulations, the GPU performance improves by 125.8% and 16.2% on average as the number of cores and clock frequency increase, respectively. However, the performance is saturated when memory system cannot service the data requests efficiently, resulting in memory bottleneck. Consequently, memory bottleneck problem should be considered for efficient GPU architecture design.
Analysis and design considerations for high performance caches

Memory access is the major bottleneck of today's high-performance microprocessors. This thesis provides a systematic and quantitative analysis of the performance trade-offs of major cache (fast memory) topologies. It allows early insight into these trade-offs because performance and costs are controlled by circuit and layout level issues which are difficult to evaluate at initial stages in a design. The thesis establishes a common reference frame that incorporates many implementation possibilities. Within this frame, objective comparisons are made to observe the behavior of caches of various sizes and bandwidths. The approach was to first optimize the speed of a building block, and then to use the block consistently to design larger cache circuits, such as 16Kbyte and 32Kbyte single-ported, and 8Kbyte and 16Kbyte dual-ported to achieve different optimization goals. The simulation results of the circuits are collected in the R Spreadsheet. It presents the effectiveness of the design considerations for optimizing speed, bandwidth, and area (to reduce power consumption) to meet a variety of specifications. One result is that doubling the size of an 8Kbyte single-ported cache in the common reference frame increases the access time by less than 10%. The results are process-independent, allowing the spreadsheet to serve as a convenient reference for cache design and research. Thesis Supervisor: Thomas F. Knight JR Title: Senior Research Scientist
Quantum corrections to the Weizsäcker-Williams gluon distribution function at small x.

We compute the quantum corrections to the gluon distribution function in the background of a non-Abelian Weizsaecker-Williams field. These corrections are valid to all orders in the effective coupling {alpha}{sub {ital s}}{mu}, where {mu}{sup 2} denotes the average valence quark color charge squared per unit area. We find ln(1/{ital x}) logarithmic corrections to the classical gluon distribution function. The one-loop corrections to the classical Weizsaecker-Williams field do not contribute to these singular terms in the distribution function. Their effect is to cause the running of {alpha}{sub {ital s}}. {copyright} {ital 1995 The American Physical Society. }
Utility of the Taiwan version of the Screening Tool for Autism in Two-Year-Olds to detect autism in children aged three years

ABSTRACT Background: The Taiwan version of the Screening Tool for Autism in Two-Year-Olds (T-STAT) had been developed for identifying autism disorder (AD) in children aged 24–35 months. Two studies were performed to elucidate its utility for AD in children aged 36–48 months. Method: In Study 1, the receiver operating characteristics were utilised to select a cutoff score for the T-STAT with 34 children with AD and with developmental delay (DD). In study 2, 147 children with AD, DD, and pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) were participated for validation. Results: In study 1, the results indicated that a cutoff of 1.25 would yield high sensitivity and specificity. In study 2, the concurrent agreements between T-STAT risk and clinical diagnosis were high for children with AD and DD, but not PDD-NOS. Conclusions: The results showed that T-STAT was a promising Level 2 screening tool for AD in children aged three years.
Choice of initial states in nonequilibrium dynamics

Imposing initial conditions to nonequilibrium systems at some time t_0 leads, in renormalized quantum field theory, to the appearance of singularities in the variable t-t_0 in relevant physical quantities, such as energy density and pressure. The origin of these `initial singularities' can be traced back to the choice of initial state. We construct here, by a Bogoliubov transformation, initial states such that these singularities are eliminated. While the construction is not unique it can be considered a minimal way of taking into account the nonequilibrium evolution of the system prior to t_0.
The Contextual Role of Regulatory Stakeholder Pressure in Proactive Environmental Strategies: An Empirical Test of Competing Theoretical Perspectives

Guided by two competing theoretical perspectives, we investigate the contextual role of perceived regulatory stakeholder pressure in the relationship between firms’ strategic orientation and their pursuit of a proactive environmental strategy (PES). While the enhancing perspective suggests that perceived regulatory stakeholder pressure strengthens the association between strategic orientation and PES, the buffering perspective argues that greater regulatory stakeholder pressure mitigates this relationship. Our study looks at a sample of 349 German energy sector firms to identify which perspective holds greater explanatory power. Surprisingly, the empirical findings go beyond the arguments made in the buffering perspective: high perceived regulatory stakeholder pressure not only weakens but also eradicates the relationship between strategic orientation and the pursuit of a PES. Our results indicate that in the case of high perceived regulatory stakeholder pressure, market-oriented considerations are eclipsed by the need to gain legitimacy within the regulatory stakeholder context.
Platelet Activation and Blood Coagulation

Summary Platelet activation and blood coagulation are complementary, mutually dependent processes in haemostasis and thrombosis. Platelets interact with several coagulation factors, while the coagulation product thrombin is a potent platelet-activating agonist. Activated platelets come in a procoagulant state after a prolonged elevation in cytosolic [Ca2+]i. Such platelets, e. g. when adhering to collagen via glycoprotein VI, expose phosphatidylserine (PS) at their outer surface and produce (PS-exposing) membrane blebs and microvesicles. Inhibition of aminophospholipid translocase and activation of phospholipid scramblase mediate the exposure of PS, whereas calpain-mediated protein cleavage leads to membrane blebbing and vesiculation. Surface-exposed PS strongly propagates the coagulation process by facilitating the assembly and activation of tenase and prothrombinase complexes. Factor IXa and platelet-bound factor Va support these activities. In addition, platelets can support the initiation phase of coagulation by providing binding sites for prothrombin and factor XI. They thereby take over the initiating role of tissue factor and factor VIIa in coagulation activation.