Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in Cell Structure, Morphology and Activity of Streptomyces venezuelae during the Growth, Shocking and Jadomycin ProductionStages

Streptomyces venezuelae have the ability to synthesize a group of novel benzoxazolophenanthridine antibiotics called jadomycin. The aim of the study was to investigate the changes in activity, cell structure and morphology of Streptomyces venezuelae while subjected to different environmental conditions during the growth, ethanol shocking, and jadomycin production stages. The activity of S. venezuelae was measured using the triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC) technique while the microbial population was measured using the optical density and plate count techniques. Samples from each stage were viewed under the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The specific TF yield was calculated by dividing the TF yield by the number of cells. The specific TF yield remained constant at 2.44 x 10-8(μmol/CFU) during the growth period in nutrient rich medium and decreased to 0.25 x 10-8 μmol/CFU and 0.28 x 10-8 μmol/CFU during the acclimatization to the nutrient deprived-amino acid rich production medium and after shocking and then increased to 3.67 x 10-8 μmol/CFU during jadomycin production. The ethanol shock did not cause 100% of the cells to change their morphology. Remarkable changes were observed in the morphology and structure (cell diameter, vacuoles present and septation/sporulation) of S. venezuelae during the four consecutive stages (growth, acclimatization, shocking and jadomycin production). The elemental analysis provided information for verifying jadomycin B purity (97.86%). However, it was not possible to detect jadomycin B within cells. It is probable that jadomycin was produced outside the cells by extracellular enzymes as opposed to intracellularly by the uptake of isoleucine and glucose. The white pellets (cells), obtained by centrifugation of production medium, supports the idea that jadomycin B is produced outside the cells as jadomycin is highly coloured compound. It is also possible that the cells were highly efficient at excreting the secondary metabolites. These hypotheses need further investigation.
Fiber optic sensor system for stress monitoring in power cables

Monitoring of stress in power cables is of great interest to determine the cable lifetime, especially under rough environmental conditions like in offshore wind energy plants. Standard single mode fibers are generally included in power cables for data transfer. In our approach we developed a sensor device which uses single mode fibers already included in the cables and a short pulse broadband light source. This allows measuring temperature and pressure via time resolved Raman backscattering photon counting as well as monitoring bending and torsion via fiber bragg gratings.
On Reservation-Based MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ad Hoc Networks With Directional Antenna

In this paper, we study the issues of medium access control (MAC) for multihop wireless networks with directional antennas. Existing solutions to directional antenna MAC problems rarely account for the impact of minor lobes and typically assume that the neighboring nodes' locations are known a priori. As a result, they are not applicable to practical systems or mobile nodes. In this paper, we propose a reservation-based directional medium access control (RDMAC) protocol for multihop wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. The design objective of RDMAC is to increase the network throughput by reducing interference among neighboring nodes. We then develop an analytical model for RDMAC to investigate the throughput performance of RDMAC under arbitrary node density. The analytical model provides insights into RDMAC parameter settings. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed RDMAC through ns-2 simulations. The results validate the accuracy of our analytical model and show that our mechanism outperforms existing solutions, in terms of higher throughput.
Expression of Collagen XVIII and Localization of Its Glycosaminoglycan Attachment Sites*

Collagen XVIII is the only currently known collagen that carries heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycan side chains. The number and location of the glycosaminoglycan attachment sites in the core protein were determined by eukaryotic expression of full-length chick collagen XVIII and site-directed mutagenesis. Three Ser-Gly consensus sequences carrying glycosaminoglycan side chains were detected in the middle and N-terminal part of the core protein. One of the Ser-Gly consensus sequences carried a heparan sulfate side chain, and the remaining two had mixed chondroitin and heparan sulfate side chains; thus, recombinant collagen XVIII was a hybrid of heparan sulfate and chondroitin proteoglycan. In contrast, collagen XVIII from all chick tissues so far assayed have exclusively heparan sulfate side chains, indicating that the posttranslational modification of proteins expressed in vitro is not entirely identical to the processing that occurs in a living embryo. Incubating the various mutated collagen XVIIIs with retinal basement membranes showed that the heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycan side chains mediate the binding of collagen XVIII to basement membranes.
Relationship of axis II pathology to sex- and drug-related risk behaviors among patients in HIV primary care

Abstract Some HIV+ patients continue to engage in high-risk behaviors post-diagnosis. To tailor risk reduction interventions for “positives,” it is necessary to understand contributing factors. We recently showed that HIV+ patients with co-morbid Axis I psychiatric and substance use disorders had the highest rates of ongoing risk behavior and those without diagnoses the lowest; substance dependence was more impactful than psychiatric disorders. In this companion paper, we provide complementary information about Axis II pathology based on data obtained from the same sample of 179 patients receiving HIV primary care. Patients were categorized as sub-threshold or as having personality traits/disorders (BR ≥ 75) on any of the 14 personality scales of the Millon Multiaxial Personality Inventory (MCMI-III). HIV risk behaviors assessed included (1) the number of sexual partners; (2) any sex without a condom; (3) lifetime and recent injection drug use (IDU); and (4) sharing of injection equipment. After controlling for a diagnosis of alcohol or drug dependence, borderline patients were more likely to have multiple sexual partners and to use condoms irregularly. Trends for multiple sex partners also were observed among patients with antisocial and depressive personality traits/disorders. Antisocial patients also were more likely to be current IDUs. Positives with personalities characterized by risk-taking tendencies and/or decreased capacity to engage in good self-care may benefit from risk reduction interventions that take their feelings of power/invincibility or (conversely) powerlessness/helplessness into account. For patients with antisocial and/or borderline traits/disorders, a “one size fits all” intervention focusing primarily on skills training is likely to fail because the underlying factors driving behavior are not being adequately addressed.
High-resolution phenotyping identifies NK cell subsets that distinguish healthy children from adults

Natural killer (NK) cells are critical in immune defense against infected, stressed or transformed cells. Their function is regulated by the heterogeneous expression of a wide array of surface receptors that shape its phenotypic diversity. Although NK cells develop in the bone marrow and secondary lymphoid tissues, substantive differentiation is apparent in the peripheral blood including known age-related variation. In order to gain greater insight into phenotypic and functional variation within peripheral blood NK cells across age groups, we used multi-parametric, polyfunctional flow cytometry to interrogate the NK cell variability in 20 healthy adults and 15 5–10, 11–15 and 16–20 year-old children. We found that the normative ranges in both adults and children displayed great inter-individual variation for most markers. While the expression of several receptors did not differ, among those that did, the majority of the differences existed between adults and the three pediatric groups, rather than among children of different ages. Interestingly, we also identified variation in the individual expression of some markers by sex and ethnicity. Combinatorial analysis of NK cell receptors revealed intermediate subsets between the CD56bright and CD56dim NK cells. Furthermore, on examining the NK cell diversity by age, adults were discovered to have the lowest developmental diversity. Thus, our findings identify previously unappreciated NK cell subsets potentially distinguishing children from adults and suggest functional correlates that may have relevance in age-specific host defense.
Efficient Buffer Tree Creation Using Mixed Branch and Bound and Dynamic Programming Techniques

In order to reduce circuit delay and help driving large fan-out, buffer insertion needs to be performed during logic and physical synthesis. This optimization activity is often done based on dynamic programming. We introduce a new and effective method in which we combine dynamic programming and branch and bound techniques in order to improve the run time and quality of the buffer tree as compared to common methods. We solve the problem for the specific case of buffering balanced trees, where all loads have identical required time and input load capacitance. We provide the underlying concepts for a generalized version of our algorithm, where a set of different load capacitances and required times is given.
Identification of protein‐bound carbohydrates by mass spectrometry

This review outlines the use of modern methods of mass spectrometry, mainly based on electrospray ionization and matrix‐assisted lased desorption/ionization, for the identification of protein‐bound carbohydrates. The techniques are briefly described together with methods for glycan release and purification prior to mass spectrometry. Fragmentation of glycans, produced under various conditions, is described in the context of obtaining structural information at the sensitivity required for proteomic work.
Men's Sense of Humor and Women's Responses to Courtship Solicitations: An Experimental Field Study

Producing humor might function as a fitness indicator associated with greater desirability during dating selection. A male confederate in a bar was instructed to tell (or not tell) funny jokes to two other male confederates. A few minutes later, when the second of two male confederates left, the first male confederate asked a female who was near his table and who had heard the funny jokes for her phone number. The previous expression of humor was associated with greater compliance with the male confederate's request and with a higher positive evaluation. The possible effects of humor are discussed from an evolutionary perspective.
Transdermal Patch of Anti-Diabetic Drug

In the present work, monolithic matrix transdermal systems containing Drug x were prepared using various ratios of the polymer blends of hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) and Eudragit S 100 (ES) with triethyl citrate as a plasticizer. A 32 full factorial design was employed. The concentration of HPMC and ES were used as independent variables, while percentage drug release was selected as dependent variable. Physical evaluation was performed such as moisture content, moisture uptake, tensile strength, flatness and folding endurance. In-vitro diffusion studies were performed using cellulose acetate membrane (pore size 0.45 μ) in a Franz’s diffusion cell. The concentration of diffused drug was measured using UV-visible spectrophotometer (Jasco V-530) at λ max 269 nm. The experimental results shows that the transdermal drug delivery system (TDDS) containing ES in higher proportion gives sustained the release of drug. Keyword: HPMC, Eudragit S 100, Drug x, Transdermal Delivery.
A novel low-complexity and high-performance frame-skipping transcoder in DCT domain

This paper presents a novel frame-skipping transcoding scheme for improving picture quality and reducing computational complexity. Performing in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain, it eliminates the high computation from the process of DCT and inverse DCT (IDCT). To maintain an acceptable video quality after frame-rate conversion, the proposed scheme uses two strategies: one is transferring macroblock (MB) coding code by a judgment criterion to reduce the drift error, and the other is re-calculating the prediction residual to minimize the re-encoding error. Furthermore, the transcoder use a structure comprised of a separate decoder and a partial encoder to enhance the implementation efficiency. Simulation results show that, as compared to traditional transcoders, the proposed transcoder has a lower complexity and higher performance.
CRLH leaky wave antenna with tunable polarization

A novel reconfigurable LWA that takes advantage of the characteristics of Composite Right Left Handed (CRLH) materials to achieve polarization reconfigurability is presented in this paper. The antenna polarization can be continuously changed from linear to circular varying the propagation constant of the CRLH transmission line while radiating in broadside direction. The antenna has frequency dependent polarization reconfigurability, however by properly loading the LWA with variable capacitors frequency independent polarization reconfigurability is achieved. Simulated radiation patterns show that the proposed antenna design exhibits consistent gain for all its configurations.
An Ultra-Low-Voltage 160 MS/s 7 Bit Interpolated Pipeline ADC Using Dynamic Amplifiers

This paper presents a 0.55 V, 7 bit, 160 MS/s pipeline ADC using dynamic amplifiers. In this ADC, high-speed open-loop dynamic amplifiers with a common-mode detection technique are used as residue amplifiers to increase the ADC's speed, to enhance the robustness against supply voltage scaling, and to realize clock-scalable power consumption. To mitigate the absolute gain constraint of the residue amplifiers in a pipeline ADC, the interpolated pipeline architecture is employed to shift the gain requirement from absolute to relative accuracy. To show the new requirements of the residue amplifiers, the effects of gain mismatch and nonlinearity of the dynamic amplifiers are analyzed. The 7 bit prototype ADC fabricated in 90 nm CMOS demonstrates an ENOB of 6.0 bits at a conversion rate of 160 MS/s with an input close to the Nyquist frequency. At this conversion rate, it consumes 2.43 mW from a 0.55 V supply. The resulting FoM of the ADC is 240 fJ/conversion-step.
A novel input-parallel output-parallel connected DC-DC converter modules with automatic sharing of currents

Input-parallel output-parallel (IPOP) connected converters allow the use of low-current and low-power converter modules for high-power applications. In this paper, an IPOP converter topology is proposed, which consists of two half-bridge converter modules by applying an interleaving connection in the rectifier diodes. Moreover, without a dedicated current-sharing controller, the proposed converter system can achieve equal sharing of the input current or/and load current. Both the operation analysis and the current equal sharing scheme are analyzed for the IPOP converter system. In addition, it is concluded that the equal sharing of the input current or/and load current can be achieved even in the presence of substantial mismatches in various module parameters. The proposed method can be extended to the IPOP system that consists of three or more converter modules. The stability and performance of the proposed converter system are verified by an experimental 1500W prototype consisting of two half-bridge converter modules.
Detection and tracking algorithm for 77GHz automotive FMCW radar

Today, radar driven active safety systems are widely used in automotive applications. The characteristic of FMCW (Frequency Modulation Continuous Wave) are high credibility, high compactness, and low cost. However, it is difficult to detect and track range and velocity in multi-target situations due to clutter, including stationary targets. In this paper, we propose signal processing algorithms to suppress clutter and to detect moving targets. The proposed algorithms were verified on the real road.
Recipe Popularity Prediction with Deep Visual-Semantic Fusion

Predicting the popularity of user-created recipes has great potential to be adopted in several applications on recipe-sharing websites. To ensure timely prediction when a recipe is uploaded, a prediction model needs to be trained based on the recipe's content features (i.e., its visual and semantic features). This paper presents a novel approach to predicting recipe popularity using deep visual-semantic fusion. We first pre-train a deep model that predicts the popularity of recipes based on each single modality. We insert additional layers to the two models and concatenate their activations. Finally, we train a network comprising fully connected (FC) layers on the fused features to learn more powerful features, which are used for training a regressor. Based on experiments conducted on more than 150K recipes collected from the Cookpad website, we present a comprehensive comparison with several baselines to verify the effectiveness of our method. The best practice for the proposed method is also described.
SDRE based adaptive optimal sliding mode control for re-entry vehicle

This paper considers the robust attitude control problem of re-entry vehicle in the presence of the parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. Based on SDRE method, an optimal sliding surface is first obtained through the minimization of a selected performance index function. Then, an adaptive sliding mode controller is designed to guarantee the reachability condition of the related optimal sliding surface. The switching gains are obtained on-line through an adaptation scheme, which eliminates the requirement of a priori knowledge of the upper bound on the lumped uncertainties. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is verified by both theoretical analysis and simulation results.
Ultra-Brief Mindfulness Training Reduces Alcohol Consumption in At-Risk Drinkers: A Randomized Double-Blind Active-Controlled Experiment

Abstract Background Like other complex psychosocial interventions, mindfulness-based treatments comprise various modality-specific components as well as nonspecific therapeutic ingredients that collectively contribute to efficacy. Consequently, the isolated effects of mindfulness strategies per se remain unclear. Methods Using a randomized double-blind design, we compared the isolated effects of 11-minutes of “supervised” mindfulness instruction against a closely matched active control (relaxation) on subjective, physiological, and behavioral indices of maladaptive alcohol responding in drinkers at risk of harm from alcohol use (n = 68). Simple follow-up instructions on strategy use were provided, but practice was unsupervised and not formally monitored. Results Both groups showed acute reductions in craving after training, although a trend group x time interaction (P = .056) suggested that this reduction was greater in the relaxation group (d = 0.722 P < .001) compared with the mindfulness group (d = 0.317, P = .004). Furthermore, upregulation of parasympathetic activity was found after relaxation (d = 0.562; P < .001) but not mindfulness instructions (d = 0.08; P > .1; group x time interaction: P = .009). By contrast, only the mindfulness group showed a reduction in past-week alcohol consumption at 7-day follow-up (-9.31 units, d = 0.593, P < .001), whereas no significant reduction was seen in the relaxation group (-3.00 units, d = 0.268, P > .1; group x time interaction: P = .026). Conclusion Very brief mindfulness practice can significantly reduce alcohol consumption among at-risk drinkers, even with minimal encouragement to use this strategy outside of the experimental context. The effects on consumption may therefore represent a lower bound of efficacy of “ultra-brief” mindfulness instructions in hazardous drinkers, at least at short follow-up intervals.
A cassava drought inducible CC-type glutaredoxin, MeGRX232, negatively regulates drought tolerance in Arabidopsis by inhibition of ABA-dependent stomatal closure

CC-type glutaredoxins (GRXs) are a land plant-specific GRX subgroup that evolved from CGFS GRXs, and participate in organ development and stress responses through the regulation of transcription factors. Here, genome-wide analysis identified 18 CC-type GRXs in the cassava genome, of which six (MeGRX058, 232, 360, 496, 785, and 892) were induced by drought and ABA stress in cassava leaves. Furthermore, we found that overexpression of MeGRX232 results in drought hypersensitivity in soil-grown plants, with a higher water loss rate, but with increased tolerance of mannitol and ABA in Arabidopsis on the sealed agar plates. The ABA induced stomatal closure is impaired in MeGRX232-OE Arabidopsis. Further analysis reveals that the overexpression of MeGRX232 leads to more ROS accumulation in guard cells. MeGRX232 can interact with TGA5 from Arabidopsis and MeTGA074 from cassava in vitro and in vivo. The results of microarray assays show that MeGRX232-OE affected the expression of a set of drought and oxidative stress related genes. Taken together, we demonstrated that CC-type GRXs involved in ABA signal transduction and play roles in response to drought through regulating stomatal closure. Novelty statement: We found that drought and ABA stress induced the transcription of CC-type glutaredoxins (GRXs) in cassava leaves. Ectopic expression of one of them, MeGRX232 in Arabidopsis affected the sensitivity to abscisic acid (ABA) and mannitol, and caused drought hypersensitivity by impairment of ABA-dependent stomatal closure.
Depression and Learning Disabilities in Children

Performance-Verbal IQ discrepancy scores are compared for 27 depressed and 15 nondepressed children all of whom experienced learning difficulties. Brumbach (1985) reported a significant association between depression and Performance IQ deficits for children with learning difficulties. In contrast to Brumbach's finding, no difference was observed in Performance IQ deficit between depressed and nondepressed children in the current study. Moreover, only 10% of depressed children showed such a deficit. This result differed significantly from Brumbach's findings (34%). Implications of these results are discussed within the context of nascent interest in the relationship between depression and learning disabilities.
SOLVENT EXTRACTION AND CHROMATOGRAPHIC DETERMINATION OF POLYPHENOLS IN OLIVE POMACE

Olive oil mill waste obtained after two-phase olive oil extraction process was subjected to conventional liquid solvent extraction under different pH/temperature/duration conditions using different types of food-grade solvents. The independent variables were: solvent type (ethanol percentage), extraction temperature (20-90 °C), extraction time (30 min-24 h) and pH (210.3) of extraction solvent while the response variables were total phenolic content and antioxidant activity of obtained extracts. The optimum solvent extraction conditions for phenols were 120 min at 70 °C using 60% ethanol as extraction solvent, at solvent to sample ratio 5:1 (v/w). For quantification of major bioactive olive polyphenols hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol and oleuropein in obtained extracts, fast and simple RP-HPLC-DAD method was developed and validated. Oleuropein was presented in highest amounts with average value of 115.14±0.19 mg/kg of fresh olive pomace.