Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Sb on the Properties of GaInP Top Cells

It is well known that the efficiency of GaInP/GaAs tandem solar cells is limited by the band gap of the GaInP top cell, which, in turn, is determined by the degree of compositional ordering in the GaInP base layer. Attempts to raise the band gap by the addition of Al to the top cell have met with limited success due to the strong affinity between Al and oxygen. Here we investigate a different approach. It has been shown that the presence of antimony on the surface of GaInP during its growth suppresses the ordering process and increases the band gap. In this paper, we study the effects of Sb on the properties of GaInP top cells. We show that, in addition to raising the band gap of GaInP, it also increases the incorporation of Zn and changes the relative incorporation of Ga and In. These effects depend strongly on the substrate orientation, growth temperature and rate, and the Sb/P ratio in the gas phase. We show that the band gap of the GaInP top cell (and the Voc) can be increased without reducing the minority carrier collection efficiency. The implications of these results are presented and discussed
Efficient shadow map filtering

Shadows provide the human visual system with important cues to sense spatial relationships in the environment we live in. As such they are an indispensable part of realistic computer-generated imagery. Unfortunately, visibility determination is computationally expensive. Image-based simplifications to the problem such as Shadow Maps perform well with increased scene complexity but produce artifacts both in the spatial and temporal domain because they lack efficient filtering support. This dissertation presents novel real-time shadow algorithms to enable efficient filtering of Shadow Maps in order to increase the image quality and overall coherence characteristics. This is achieved by expressing the shadow test as a sum of products where the parameters of the shadow test are separated from each other. Ordinary Shadow Maps are then subject to a transformation into new so called basis-images which can, as opposed to Shadow Maps, be linearly filtered. The convolved basis images are equivalent to a pre-filtered shadow test and used to reconstruct anti-aliased as well as physically plausible all-frequency shadows.
Comparison of the impedance cardiogram with continuous wave radar using body-contact antennas

This paper describes a continuous wave (CW) radar system with body-contact antennas and basic signal processing. The goal is to assess the signals' reproducibility across different subjects as well as a respiration cycle. Radar signals using body-contact antennas with a carrier frequency of 868 MHz are used to acquire the cardiac activity at the sternum. The radar I and Q channel signals are combined to form their magnitude. Signals are collected from six healthy males during paced breathing conditions. The electrocardiogram (ECG) and impedance cardiogram (ICG) signals are acquired simultaneously as reference. The chosen feature in the radar signal is the maximum of its second derivative, which is closest to the ICG B-point. The median and mean absolute errors in pre-ejection period (PEP) in milliseconds between the ICG's B-point and chosen feature in the radar signal range from −6–119.7 ms and 7.8–62.3 ms for all subjects. The results indicate that a reproducible radar signal is obtained from all six subjects. More work is needed on understanding the origin of the radar signals using ultrasound as a comparison.
Ultrasonic computed tomography reconstruction of the attenuation coefficient using a linear array

The attenuation coefficient distribution and sound velocity distribution in the breast can be used to complement B-mode ultrasound imaging in the detection of breast cancer. This study investigated an approach for reconstructing the attenuation coefficient distribution in the breast using a linear array. The imaging setup was identical to that for conventional B-mode breast imaging, and the same setup has been used for reconstruction of sound velocity distributions in previous studies. In this study, we further developed a reconstruction method for the attenuation coefficient distribution. In particular, the proposed method incorporates the segmentation information from B-mode images and uses the sound velocity distribution to compensate for refraction effects. Experiments were conducted with a setup consisting of a 5-MHz, 128-channel linear array, a programmable digital array system, a phantom, and a computer. The constructed phantom contained materials mimicking the following breast tissues: glandular tissue, fat, cysts, high-attenuation tumors, and irregular tumors. Application of the proposed technique resulted in all the cysts and tumors (including high-attenuation arid irregular tumors) being distinguished by thresholding the reconstructed attenuation coefficients. We have demonstrated that it is possible to use the same imaging setup to acquire data for B-mode image, sound velocity distribution, and attenuation coefficient distribution simultaneously. Moreover, the experimental data indicate its potential in improving the detection of breast cancer.
Zinc and DHA have opposing effects on the expression levels of histones H3 and H4 in human neuronal cells

Zn and DHA have putative neuroprotective effects and these two essential nutrients are known to interact biochemically. We aimed to identify novel protein candidates that are differentially expressed in human neuronal cell line M17 in response to Zn and DHA that would explain the molecular basis of this interaction. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and MS were applied to identify major protein expression changes in the protein lysates of human Ml7 neuronal cells that had been grown in the presence and absence of Zn and DHA. Proteomic findings were further investigated using Western immunoblot and real-time PCR analyses. Four protein spots, which had significant differential expression, were identified and selected for in-gel trypsin digestion followed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation MS analysis. The resultant peptide mass fingerprint for each spot allowed their respective identities to be deduced. Two human histone variants H3 and H4 were identified. Both H3 and H4 were downregulated by Zn in the absence of DHA (Zn effect) and upregulated by DHA (DHA effect) in the presence of Zn (physiological condition). These proteomic findings were further supported by Western immunoblot and real-time PCR analyses using H3- and H4-specific monoclonal antibodies and oligonucleotide primers, respectively. We propose that dietary Zn and DHA cause a global effect on gene expression, which is mediated by histones. Such novel information provides possible clues to the molecular basis of neuroprotection by Zn and DHA that may contribute to the future treatment, prevention and management of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.
Disruption of Dicer1 induces dysregulated fetal gene expression and promotes hepatocarcinogenesis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Growing evidence suggests that microRNAs coordinate various biological processes in the liver. We describe experiments to address the physiologic roles of these new regulators of gene expression in the liver that are as of yet largely undefined. METHODS We disrupted Dicer, an enzyme essential for the processing of microRNAs, in hepatocytes using a conditional knockout mouse model to elucidate the consequences of loss of microRNAs. RESULTS The conditional knockout mouse livers showed the efficient disruption of Dicer1 at 3 weeks after birth. This resulted in prominent steatosis and the depletion of glycogen storage. Dicer1-deficient liver exhibited increased growth-promoting gene expression and the robust expression of fetal stage-specific genes. The consequence of Dicer elimination included both increased hepatocyte proliferation and overwhelming apoptosis. Over time, Dicer1-expressing wild-type hepatocytes that had escaped Cre-mediated recombination progressively repopulated the entire liver. Unexpectedly, however, two thirds of the mutant mice spontaneously developed hepatocellular carcinomas derived from residual Dicer1-deficient hepatocytes at 1 year of age. CONCLUSIONS Dicer and microRNAs have critical roles in hepatocyte survival, metabolism, developmental gene regulation, and tumor suppression in the liver. Loss of Dicer primarily impairs hepatocyte survival but can promote hepatocarcinogenesis in cooperation with additional oncogenic stimuli.
What is in the feedback? Effect of induced happiness vs. sadness on probabilistic learning with vs. without exploration

According to dominant neuropsychological theories of affect, emotions signal salience of events and in turn facilitate a wide spectrum of response options or action tendencies. Valence of an emotional experience is pivotal here, as it alters reward and punishment processing, as well as the balance between safety and risk taking, which can be translated into changes in the exploration-exploitation trade-off during reinforcement learning (RL). To test this idea, we compared the behavioral performance of three groups of participants that all completed a variant of a standard probabilistic learning task, but who differed regarding which mood state was actually induced and maintained (happy, sad or neutral). To foster a change from an exploration to an exploitation-based mode, we removed feedback information once learning was reliably established. Although changes in mood were successful, learning performance was balanced between the three groups. Critically, when focusing on exploitation-driven learning only, they did not differ either. Moreover, mood valence did not alter the learning rate or exploration per se, when titrated using complementing computational modeling. By comparing systematically these results to our previous study (Bakic et al., 2014), we found that arousal levels did differ between studies, which might account for limited modulatory effects of (positive) mood on RL in the present case. These results challenge the assumption that mood valence alone is enough to create strong shifts in the way exploitation or exploration is eventually carried out during (probabilistic) learning. In this context, we discuss the possibility that both valence and arousal are actually necessary components of the emotional mood state to yield changes in the use and exploration of incentives cues during RL.
Automatic Music Emotion Classification using Artificial Neural Network based on vocal and instrumental Sound Timbres

Detecting emotion features in a song remains as a challenge in various area of research especially in Music Emotion Classification (MEC). In order to classify selected song with certain mood or emotion, the algorithms of the machine learning must be intelligent enough to learn the data features as to match the features accordingly to the accurate emotion. Until now, there were only few studies on MEC that exploit audio timbre features from vocal part of the song incorporated with the instrumental part of a song. Timbre features is the quality of a musical features or sound that distinguishes different types of sound production in human voices and musical instruments such as string instruments, wind instruments and percussion instruments. Most of existing works in MEC are done by looking at audio, lyrics, social tags or combination of two or more classes. The question is does exploitation of both timbre features from both vocal and instrumental sound features helped in producing positive result in MEC? Thus, this research present works on detecting emotion features in Malay popular music using artificial neural network by extracting audio timbre features from both vocal and instrumental sound clips. The findings of this research will collectively improve MEC based on the manipulation of vocal and instrumental sound timbre features, as well as contributing towards the literature of music information retrieval, affective computing and psychology.
Link scheduling in sensor networks for asymmetric average consensus

Wireless Sensor Networks constitute a recent technology where the nodes cooperate to obtain, in a totally distributed way, certain function of the sensed data. One example is the average consensus algorithm, which allows every node to converge to the global average. However, this algorithm presents two major drawbacks in practice. The first one is that instantaneous symmetric links are required, which are hard to ensure in practice because of the presence of wireless interferences. The second one is that all the nodes are required to communicate with all of their local neighbors in every iteration, which can lead to an unbounded delay. In order to solve these issues, we propose a novel link scheduling protocol that activates certain suitable links in each iteration, leading to a new scheme of communications where the links are asymmetric and the communications are performed in a asynchronous manner. This new scheme only requires connectivity and symmetric links on average to guarantee convergence, which are ensured by our link scheduling protocol.
Boronic acid-based inhibitor of autotaxin reveals rapid turnover of LPA in the circulation

Autotaxin (ATX) is a secreted nucleotide pyrophosphatase/phosphodiesterase that functions as a lysophospholipase D to produce the lipid mediator lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a mitogen, chemoattractant, and survival factor for many cell types. The ATX-LPA signaling axis has been implicated in angiogenesis, chronic inflammation, fibrotic diseases and tumor progression, making this system an attractive target for therapy. However, potent and selective nonlipid inhibitors of ATX are currently not available. By screening a chemical library, we have identified thiazolidinediones that selectively inhibit ATX-mediated LPA production both in vitro and in vivo. Inhibitor potency was approximately 100-fold increased (IC50 ∼ 30 nM) after the incorporation of a boronic acid moiety, designed to target the active-site threonine (T210) in ATX. Intravenous injection of this inhibitor into mice resulted in a surprisingly rapid decrease in plasma LPA levels, indicating that turnover of LPA in the circulation is much more dynamic than previously appreciated. Thus, boronic acid-based small molecules hold promise as candidate drugs to target ATX.
A WordNet Detour to FrameNet

via WordNet”. The system can be used to overcome sparse-data problems of statistical systems trained on current FrameNet data. We devise a weighting scheme to select the best frame(s) out of a set of candidate frames, and present first figures of evaluation. In diesem Aufsatz beschreiben wir einen regelbasierten Ansatz zur Uberbruckung fehlender Lexikoneintrage in FrameNet. WordNet Synsets dienen als „
MALE FARMERS COPING WITH LOSS OF SPOUSE: IMPACTS ON FARMING OPERATION AND FAMILY LIFE

OF THESIS MALE FARMERS COPING WITH THE LOSS OF SPOUSE: IMPACTS ON FARMING OPERATION AND FAMILY LIFE Losing a spouse is as devastating an experience anyone will ever deal with in his or her life. Research, however, shows that men have a harder and longer time coping with the loss of a spouse than women. When the widower’s profession is farming, there are no resources to specifically help that individual with their loss. The purpose of this research was to gain insight into the lives of widowed farmers with particular focus on transitions in their farming operation and their family life. Through their stories, we learn what is happening before the loss of the female spouse on the farm, during the bereavement period, and how the farmer handles the situation after the bereavement period has ended. Findings indicate that the Cooperative Extension Service can play a major role in supporting our widowed farmers as they seek a new normal for their farm operation and family life. Also, farming widowers have more stress following the loss of a spouse due to the added aspect of managing the farm and the home simultaneously after the passing of their spouse. Recommendations include further expanding spousal bereavement materials to include a section for males and in particular farming widowers.
Characterisation of the Candida albicans Phosphopantetheinyl Transferase Ppt2 as a Potential Antifungal Drug Target

Antifungal drugs acting via new mechanisms of action are urgently needed to combat the increasing numbers of severe fungal infections caused by pathogens such as Candida albicans. The phosphopantetheinyl transferase of Aspergillus fumigatus, encoded by the essential gene pptB, has previously been identified as a potential antifungal target. This study investigated the function of its orthologue in C. albicans, PPT2/C1_09480W by placing one allele under the control of the regulatable MET3 promoter, and deleting the remaining allele. The phenotypes of this conditional null mutant showed that, as in A. fumigatus, the gene PPT2 is essential for growth in C. albicans, thus fulfilling one aspect of an efficient antifungal target. The catalytic activity of Ppt2 as a phosphopantetheinyl transferase and the acyl carrier protein Acp1 as a substrate were demonstrated in a fluorescence transfer assay, using recombinant Ppt2 and Acp1 produced and purified from E.coli. A fluorescence polarisation assay amenable to high-throughput screening was also developed. Therefore we have identified Ppt2 as a broad-spectrum novel antifungal target and developed tools to identify inhibitors as potentially new antifungal compounds.
Systematic Characterization of Long Noncoding RNAs Reveals the Contrasting Coordination of Cis- and Trans-Molecular Regulation in Human Fetal and Adult Hearts

Background—The molecular regulation of heart development is regulated by cis- and trans-factors acting on the genome and epigenome. As a class of important regulatory RNAs, the role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in human heart development is still poorly understood. Furthermore, factors that interact with lncRNAs in this process are not well characterized. Methods and Results—Using RNA sequencing, we systematically define the contrasting lncRNA expression patterns between fetal and adult hearts. We report that lncRNAs upregulated in adult versus fetal heart have different sequence features and distributions. For example, the adult heart expresses more sense lncRNAs compared with fetal heart. We also report the coexpression of lncRNAs and neighboring coding genes that have important functions in heart development. Importantly, the regulation of lncRNA expression during fetal to adult heart development seems to be due, in part, to the coordination of specific developmental epigenetic modifications, such as H3K4me1 and H3k4me3. The expression of promoter-associated lncRNAs in adult and fetal hearts also seems to be related to these epigenetic states. Finally, transcription factor–binding analysis suggests that lncRNAs are directly regulating cardiac gene expression during development. Conclusions—We provide a systematic analysis of lncRNA control of heart development that gives clues to the roles that specific lncRNAs play in fetal and adult hearts.
Disc electrophoretic patterns of uteroglobin and serum proteins in rabbit blastocoelic fluid.

Specific proteins exist in the uterine fluid of the rabbit, but not in the maternal blood serum. These have been named `blastokinin' Krishnan & Daniel, 1967) and `uteroglobin' (Beier, 1968a). It appears on the basis of their physiochemical properties that blastokinin and uteroglobin may be identical. Blastokinin appears in uterine fluid at 3 days post coitum (p.c.) and reaches maximal concentrations at 5 days p.c. , disappearing by the 9th day. It also occurs in blastocoelic fluid at 6 days p.c. (Beier, 1968b). The purpose of this investigation was to study the ontogeny of uteroglobin and serum proteins in the blastocoelic fluid of the rabbit in relation to implantation. Adult, nulliparous, New Zealand white rabbits were mated twice with two fertile bucks and injected intravenously with 20 i.u. human chorionic gonadotrophin immediately afterwards. Autopsies were performed at intervals between 5 and 10 days later. The blastocysts from does killed 5 to 6\m=1/2\days p.c. were collected by flushing the uterine horn with physiological saline. The saline was filtered off and the blastocysts were weighed and placed in a pre-cooled centrifuge tube. They were then broken up with a hypodermic needle and centrifuged at about 3000 rev/min for 10 min. The blastocoelic fluid was removed by aspiration, its volume was measured, and it was frozen for later use. At 5 to 6\m=1/2\ days p.c. , it was necessary to pool the blastocysts from three does in order to obtain enough blastocoelic fluid for analysis. At 7 to 10 days p.c. , it was only necessary to pool those of a single doe. Maternal serum and peritoneal fluid were also collected at autopsy. The protein concentration of the blastocoelic and peritoneal fluids and of the maternal serum was determined by the method of Lowry, Rosebrough, Farr & Randall (1951), using bovine serum albumin as a standard. The procedure of Ornstein & Davis (1961) was used for disc electrophoresis of these fluids. Except for the protein-deficient fluids of early blastocysts, each column was made up to contain 0-2 mg protein. Protein-rich fluids (e.g. serum, peritoneal and blastocoelic fluids of 7 to 10 days p.c.) took up little volume and were added directly to the sample gel. However, the volume of
A Novel Multiple Kernel Sparse Representation based Classification for Face Recognition

It is well known that sparse code is effective for feature extraction of face recognition, especially sparse mode can be learned in the kernel space, and obtain better performance. Some recent algorithms made use of single kernel in the sparse mode, but this didn’t make full use of the kernel information. The key issue is how to select the suitable kernel weights, and combine the selected kernels. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple kernel sparse representation based classification for face recognition (MKSRC), which performs sparse code and dictionary learning in the multiple kernel space. Initially, several possible kernels are combined and the sparse coefficient is computed, then the kernel weights can be obtained by the sparse coefficient. Finally convergence makes the kernel weights optimal. The experiments results show that our algorithm outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms and demonstrate the promising performance of the proposed algorithms.
Analyzing traffic characteristics between backbone networks based on Hadoop

Nowadays, along with the development of mobile network, the network traffic is growing rapidly, including traffic between backbone networks. ISPs are seriously puzzled by the explosive growth of traffic between backbone networks. Therefore, the research and analysis of traffic characteristics between backbone networks becomes essential. In this paper, based on the Hadoop platform, we analyze the monthly traffic features of two provinces by using the real data collected by our self-developed traffic monitoring system. Besides, we use SARIMA model to select a daily trace that can represent the monthly trace best. Then, through analyzing the distribution of packet counts, flow duration, and user online time and so on, we examine the basic traffic characteristics and user behavior characteristics from the perspective of flows.