Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Antioxidant Protein Peroxiredoxin 4 Is Epigenetically Down Regulated in Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia

The antioxidant peroxiredoxin (PRDX) protein family comprises 6 members, which are implicated in a variety of cellular responses, including growth factor signal transduction. PRDX4 resides in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where it locally controls oxidative stress by reducing H2O2 levels. We recently provided evidence for a regulatory function of PRDX4 in signal transduction from a myeloid growth factor receptor, the granulocyte colony-stimulating factor receptor (G-CSFR). Upon activation, the ligand-induced G-CSFR undergoes endocytosis and routes via the early endosomes where it physically interacts with ER-resident PRDX4. PRDX4 negatively regulates G-CSFR mediated signaling. Here, we investigated whether PRDX4 is affected in acute myeloid leukemia (AML); genomic alterations and expression levels of PRDX4 were investigated. We show that genomic abnormalities involving PRDX4 are rare in AML. However, we find a strong reduction in PRDX4 expression levels in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) compared to normal promyelocytes and different molecular subtypes of AML. Subsequently, the possible role of DNA methylation and histone modifications in silencing of PRDX4 in APLs was investigated. We show that the reduced expression is not due to methylation of the CpG island in the promoter region of PRDX4 but correlates with increased trimethylation of histone 3 lysine residue 27 (H3K27me3) and lysine residue 4 (H3K4me3) at the transcriptional start site (TSS) of PRDX4, indicative of a bivalent histone code involved in transcriptional silencing. These findings suggest that the control of G-CSF responses by the antioxidant protein PRDX4 may be perturbed in APL.
Analyzing and Mapping Sweat Metabolomics by High-Resolution NMR Spectroscopy

The content of human sweat is studied by high-resolution NMR, and the majority of organic components most often found in sweat of conditionally healthy people are identified. Original and simple tools are designed for sweat sampling from different areas of human body. The minimal surface area needed for sampling is in the range of 50–100 cm2. On all the surface parts of the human body examined in this work, the main constituents forming a sweat metabolic profile are lactate, glycerol, pyruvate, and serine. The only exception is the sole of the foot (planta pedis), where trace amounts of glycerol are found. An attempt is made to explain the presence of specified metabolites and their possible origin.
Adaptive feature learning CNN for behavior recognition in crowd scene

Learning and recognizing 3-dimension (3D) adaptive features are important for crowd scene understanding in video surveillance research. Deep learning architectures such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have recently shown much success in various computer vision applications. Existing approaches such as hand-crafted method and 2D-CNN architectures are widely used in adaptive feature representations on image data. However, learning dynamic and temporal features in 3D scale features in videos remains an open problem. In this study, we proposed a novel technique 3D-scale Convolutional Neural Network (3DS-CNN), based on the decomposition of 3D feature maps into 2D spatio and 2D temporal feature representations. Extensive experiments on hundreds of video scene were demonstrated on publicly available crowd datasets. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations indicate that the proposed model display superior performance when compared to baseline approaches. The mean average precision of 95.30% was recorded on WWW crowd dataset.
Active Control of Forklift Truck Cabin Noise : A Feasibility Study and Computer Experiments

During the last decade noise has come to be considered a growing problem in our homes, at our work places and also in different kind of vehicles. The noise level is very important for well being and maintaining a high standard of acoustic comfort. During recent years, however, the noise level inside working machines, e.g. forklift trucks, has also been considered a problem. A question is if it may be possible to reduce the low frequency cabin noise by using active noise control, and thereby improving the comfort for the truck driver. This paper addresses a feasibility study of applying active noise control to reduce the noise level inside a forklift truck cabin. The paper discusses the noise situation inside the truck cabin as well as the active noise control strategy for a practical forklift truck installation. Computer experiments performed in MATLAB and based on noise signals recorded in a truck cabin are presented. The preliminary results show the feasibility of using active noise control to attenuate low-frequency cabin noise related to the rotation speed of the engine.
Detecting invertebrate species in archived collections using next‐generation sequencing

Invertebrate biodiversity measured at mostly family level is widely used in biological monitoring programmes to assess anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems. However, next‐generation sequencing (NGS) could allow development of new more sensitive biomonitoring tools by allowing rapid species identification. This could be accelerated if archived invertebrate collections and environmental information from past programmes are used to understand species distributions and their environmental responses. In this study, we take archived macroinvertebrate samples from two sites collected on multiple occasions and test whether NGS can successfully detect species. Samples had been stored in 70% ethanol at room temperature for up to 12 years. Three amplicons ranging from 197 to 274 bps within the DNA barcode region were amplified from samples and compared to DNA barcoding libraries to identify species. We were able to amplify partial DNA barcodes from most samples, and species were often detected with multiple amplicons. However, some singletons and taxa poorly covered by DNA barcoding were missed. This suggests additional DNA barcodes will be required to fill ‘gaps’ in current DNA barcode libraries for aquatic macroinvertebrates and/or that it may not be possible to detect all taxa in a sample. Furthermore, older samples often detected fewer taxa and were less reliable for amplification, suggesting NGS is best used on samples within 8 years of collection. Nevertheless, many common taxa with existing DNA barcodes were reliably identified with NGS and were often present at sites across multiple years, showing the potential of NGS for detecting common and abundant species in archived material.
Beam-Deflection Using Gradient Refractive-Index Media for 60-GHz End-Fire Antenna

This communication describes a beam-tilting technique for planar dipole antennas utilizing gradient refractive-index metamaterial (GRIM) unit-cells. Beam-deflection mechanism is based on the phase shift phenomena resulting from the interaction of the EM waves with media of different refractive-indices implemented using GRIM unit-cells. The GRIM unit-cell comprises of a stub-loaded I-shaped resonant structure that is directly integrated onto the dipole antenna. The simulation and experimental results show that an antenna with a 5 × 4 array of GRIM unit-cells can steer the main beam in the E-plane by +26° with respect to the end-fire direction over 57-64 GHz. The antenna exhibits 4-dB gain enhancement and S11 better than -10 dB from 57-64 GHz. It is also shown that a quad-feed dipole antenna with GRIM arrays can deflect the beam by ±56°.
Synthesis , Characterization and CO Tolerance Evaluation in PEMFCs of Pt 2 RuMo Electrocatalysts

Pt2RuMo/C catalysts were synthesized by the modified polyol method in the presence and absence of Li(C2H5)3BH (LBH), annealed at 600 ◦C under H2 atmosphere to improve the reduction of Pt and Ru to provide stronger interactions between Mo and another metals. LBH affected the physico-chemical characteristics of Pt2RuMo, that is, in the presence of LBH an increment of Mo(IV) amount and a decrease in the PtRu alloying degree were observed. The catalytic activity for hydrogen oxidation in the presence and absence of CO (CO tolerance) of the Pt2RuMo/C catalysts as anodes in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) was compared to that of a commercial PtRu/C catalyst. The results indicated that the CO tolerance increased with an increase in Mo(IV) content, but the stability increased with an increment of the amount of Ru oxides in the catalysts.
Rural forest-based communities, economic shocks, and economic trajectories

Kathleen P. Bell, School of Economics, University of Maine, USA (kpbell@maine.edu) Mindy Crandall, School of Forest Resources, University of Maine, USA (mindy.crandall@maine.edu) Darla K. Munroe, Department of Geography, Ohio State University, USA (munroe.9@osu.edu) Chris Colocousis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, James Madison University, USA (colococr@jmu.edu) Anita Morzillo, Department of Natural Resource and the Environment, University of Connecticut, USA (anita.morzillo@uconn.edu)
Modelling Price Transmission within the Supply Chain under a European Protected Designation of Origin Framework: The Case of Parmigiano Reggiano in Italy

Lately, we have witnessed how European Institutions have directed many efforts at improving the effectiveness of food quality schemes (FQS) to address the increasing complexity that has affected all elements of the operating structure of agrifood supply chains worldwide, especially prices. In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis of the price transmission process in the dairy sector between farm and retail markets within the protected designation of origin (PDO) framework and its non-protected counterpart in Italy. This paper considers a unique dataset for the PDO Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and for a non-protected counterpart in Italy covering a recent period after the price crises that took place nearly a decade ago. A multivariate error correction type approach was estimated together with the corresponding impulse response functions to provide useful insights for understanding the differences in the performance of the price transmission process between protected and non-protected food products. Contrary to most of the previous literature, our results support the hypothesis of symmetric price dynamics along the PDO cheese supply chain. The fewer number of farmers reduces the market power at the retail level generating more efficient price transmission dynamics. Short-run dynamics suggest that in the PDO cheese market farmers and retailers react quicker and with a similar magnitude to market changes, while in the conventional cheese market, retailers benefit in the short run from quicker and of higher magnitude responses to unanticipated market shocks.
Electrical and Spectral Characteristics of a Low-Temperature Argon–Oxygen Plasma Jet With Syringe Needle-Ring Electrodes

Low-temperature atmospheric-pressure argon-oxygen plasma jet is generated with syringe needle-ring electrodes, which is powered by a sinusoidal excitation voltage at 8 kHz. The volume percentage of the oxygen content in the argon gas is as high as 12.5%. It is found that the rotational temperature of nitrogen is in the range of 297-320 K, and the vibrational temperature is almost unchanged to be about 2475 K, which is obtained by comparing the simulated spectrum with the measured spectrum at the C3 Πu → B3Πg (Δv = -2) band transition. The electronic excitation temperature is in the range of 8587-8994 K as obtained by the Boltzmann's plot method, the electron temperature at the tip of syringe needle is about 7.3 eV as estimated by the Einstein's equation, and the densities of atomic oxygen and molecular nitrogen are, respectively, on the order of magnitude of 1016cm-3 as determined by actinometry method, respectively. Moreover, the 2-D and 1-D distributions of the electric field magnitude are estimated by the 2-D finite-element software. At a time of 45.7 μs and an instantaneous applied voltage of 8 kV, the electric field magnitude at the edge of the ring ground electrode is the largest, and it is 15.9 kV/cm at the tip of the syringe needle.
B2R2: Building an Efficient Front-End for Binary Analysis

—Current binary analysis research focuses mainly on the back-end, but not on the front-end. However, we note that there are several key design points in the front-end that can greatly improve the efﬁciency of binary analyses. To demonstrate our idea, we design and implement B2R2, a new binary analysis platform that is fast with regard to lifting binary code and evaluating the corresponding IR. Our platform is written purely in F#, a functional programming language, without any exter-nal dependencies. Thus, it naturally supports pure parallelism. B2R2’s IR embeds metadata in its language for speeding up data-ﬂow analyses, and it is designed to be efﬁcient for evaluation. Therefore, any binary analysis technique can beneﬁt from our IR design. We discuss our design decisions to build an efﬁcient binary analysis front-end, and summarize lessons learned. We also make our source code public on GitHub.
Determination of ethanol in breath for legal purposes using a five-filter infrared analyzer: studies on response to volatile interfering substances

The analysis of ethanol in exhaled breath is widely accepted and used worldwide for legal purposes to gather evidence of alcohol-impaired driving. Most evidential breath-alcohol instruments incorporate infrared (IR) spectroscopy as the analytical principle focusing on C–H or C–O stretching frequencies in ethanol molecules. The instrument approved for legal purposes in Sweden is called Evidenzer and is equipped with five infrared filters of which four are used for identification and quantification of ethanol and the fifth is a reference filter. The response of Evidenzer was tested against 21 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and the instrument was programmed to deduct any bias caused by these VOCs if present in a sample of breath. If the amount deducted exceeds a certain threshold value, the entire test is aborted. Whenever this happens, the police request a specimen of venous blood for analysis by gas chromatography. Of a total of 24 072 drunken drivers, the evidential breath-alcohol test was aborted on 27 occasions (0.11%) because an interfering substance was present above the critical threshold. The VOCs most commonly identified in blood were acetone, isopropanol and/or methyl ethyl ketone (MEK). Elevated levels of acetone and isopropanol might arise during ketogenesis in people suffering from diabetes, or in those who eat low carbohydrate diets. High concentrations of acetone and MEK are probably caused by people drinking a technical alcohol product (T-Red), which is available in Sweden and is denatured with these agents. This study confirms that relatively few apprehended drivers in Sweden have elevated concentrations of VOCs in breath other than ethanol. Even the aborted breath tests, to a large extent, contained ethanol above the legal limit for driving.
An algorithm based on interacting multiple models for maneuvering target tracking

Kanlman filtering algorithm is commonly used as radar target tracking algorithm. In allusion to the problems caused by the filter divergence and inapposite model parameters of Kaiman filtering, such as low target tracking precision, this paper proposes an adaptive tracking algorithm with Markov probability, namely Interacting Multiple Models (IMM) algorithm, to improve the radar target tracking precision. IMM algorithm can efficiently track one maneuvering target and then realize the adaptive tracking of the target. Simulation results show that IMM algorithm has perfect tracking stability and high tracking precision.
Modeling of PWR Biological Shield Boration Using SCALE6.1 Hybrid Shielding Methodology

The PWR biological shield concrete activation is analyzed using SCALE6.1 hybrid deterministic-stochastic shielding methodology. Since accurate geometry representation is a paramount step for this type of shielding calculation involving heterogeneous three dimensional regions (reactor core, thermal shield, downcomer, pressure vessel, cavity, and shield), the Monte Carlo method is the method of choice. A detailed model of a combinatorial geometry, materials and characteristics of a typical PWR reactor was based on best available input data. The sources of ionizing radiation included fission neutrons and photons originating from the HBR-2 benchmark critical core. The activation reduction of reactor biological shield materials was investigated via concrete boration, which is applied when shielding from ionizing neutron radiation is especially important. The concrete boration is common method for activation reduction (i.e. local thermal stress lowering) in nuclear shields since the B has especially high thermal neutron cross section which effectively captures thermalized neutrons and decreases their (n,γ) reaction in structural materials. The reduction of secondary gamma emissions from radiative capture of thermalized neutrons in biological shield has been examined via concrete boration with natural boron (B) and boron carbide (B4C). The possibility of neutron flux mitigation in a biological shield as well as impurity isotopes (Co, Eu and Eu) activity decrease was especially explored. Satisfactory boron concentration which leads to saturation of neutron flux attenuation has been proposed. The activation levels of impurities in concrete, activated above the limit of IAEA clearance for the free release limit, have been estimated. The obtained results showed that activation over IAEA limits is mostly present in a thin layer of borated shield facing the critical reactor core in cavity, while the bulk of the shield is activated below IAEA threshold. The saturation of the neutron flux attenuation was clearly demonstrated for several boron concentrations so even small amounts of boron in biological shield drastically benefit in overall flux reduction.
A thesaurus for improving information retrieval in an integrated legal expert system

This paper presents a critical analysis of a legal expert system architecture, focusing the knowledge representation that represents the most important step in the construction of a modern legal information system. After a long period of experience, we can speak of global systems, because the formalized system knowledge is only a part of system data that may be improved to the user also from a periferic data bases. The new legal systems are tools that can offer information for decision aid and user consulting from different modules and also they offer a sophisticated information retrieval founded, for instance, upon hypertext models or thesauri.
Endogenous Formation Of Partnerships With Moral Hazard

We analyze the formation of partnerships as a sequential choice-of-sizes game with moral hazard within coalitions; once formed, partnerships compete a la Cournot in the marketplace. We show that when moral hazard within coalitions is very severe, no partnership will form. However, when moral hazard is not too severe the coalition structure will be either similar or more concentrated than without moral hazard. We also show that, while without moral hazard too many coalitions are formed in equilibrium as compared to the efficient outcome, moral hazard may be responsible for an inefficiency of opposite sign.
A Comparison between Revised NCEP ATP III and IDF Definitions in Diagnosing Metabolic Syndrome in an Urban Sri Lankan Population: The Ragama Health Study

Background. The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) within individual cohorts varies with the definition used. The aim of this study was to compare the prevalence of MetS between IDF and revised NCEP ATP III criteria in an urban Sri Lankan population and to investigate the characteristics of discrepant cases. Methods. 2985 individuals, aged 35–65 years, were recruited to the study. Anthropometric and blood pressure measurements and laboratory investigations were carried out following standard protocols. Results. Age and sex-adjusted prevalences of MetS were 46.1% and 38.9% by revised NCEP and IDF definitions, respectively. IDF criteria failed to identify 21% of men and 7% of women identified by the revised NCEP criteria. The discrepant group had more adverse metabolic profiles despite having a lower waist circumference than those diagnosed by both criteria. Conclusion. MetS is common in this urban Sri Lankan cohort regardless of the definition used. The revised NCEP definition was more appropriate in identifying the metabolically abnormal but nonobese individuals, especially among the males predisposed to type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease. Further research is needed to determine the suitability of the currently accepted Asian-specific cut-offs for waist circumference in Sri Lankan adults.
Composite signature based watermarking for fingerprint authentication

Digital watermarking is a technology to hide information in digital media. We extend the digital watermarking technique Phasemark™, originally developed solely for image authentication, to biometrics to assist in forensic analysis. Using a signature extracted from the Fourier phase of the original image, we hide an encoded signature back into the original image forming a watermarked image. The hiding occurs in the Fourier transform frequency domain. The detection process computes the Fourier transform of the watermarked images, extracts the embedded signature and then correlates it with a calculated signature. Various correlation metrics determine the identity degree of biometric authentication. We show how a composite filter can be used in conjunction with Phasemark™ for robust authentication of fingerprints.
Identification of Transcription Factor Genes and Their Correlation with the High Diversity of Stramenopiles

The biological diversity among Stramenopiles is striking; they range from large multicellular seaweeds to tiny unicellular species, they embrace many ecologically important autothrophic (e.g., diatoms, brown algae), and heterotrophic (e.g., oomycetes) groups. Transcription factors (TFs) and other transcription regulators (TRs) regulate spatial and temporal gene expression. A plethora of transcriptional regulatory proteins have been identified and classified into families on the basis of sequence similarity. The purpose of this work is to identify the TF and TR complement in diverse species belonging to Stramenopiles in order to understand how these regulators may contribute to their observed diversity. We identified and classified 63 TF and TR families in 11 species of Stramenopiles. In some species we found gene families with high relative importance. Taking into account the 63 TF and TR families identified, 28 TF and TR families were established to be positively correlated with specific traits like number of predicted proteins, number of flagella and number of cell types during the life cycle. Additionally, we found gains and losses in TF and TR families specific to some species and clades, as well as, two families with high abundance specific to the autotrophic species and three families with high abundance specific to the heterotropic species. For the first time, there is a systematic search of TF and TR families in Stramenopiles. The attempts to uncover relationships between these families and the complexity of this group may be of great impact, considering that there are several important pathogens of plants and animals, as well as, important species involved in carbon cycling. Specific TF and TR families identified in this work appear to be correlated with particular traits in the Stramenopiles group and may be correlated with the high complexity and diversity in Stramenopiles.