Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IMB-6G, a novel N-substituted sophoridinic acid derivative, induces endoplasmic reticulum stress-mediated apoptosis via activation of IRE1α and PERK signaling

Sophoridinic acid derivatives have received considerable attentions for their potencies in cancer therapy. IMB-6G is a novel N-substituted sophoridinic acid derivative with potent cytotoxicity against tumor cells. In the present study, we explored the antitumor abilities of IMB-6G in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells and investigated the underlying mechanisms. We found that IMB-6G inhibited cell growth and induced mitochondrial-dependent apoptosis in HepG2 and SMMC7721 cells. Analyses of the molecular mechanism of IMB-6G-induced apoptosis indicated IMB-6G induced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress activation. Incubation of HCC cells with IMB-6G induced increase in Bip and CHOP levels, which precede induction of apoptosis. Further study showed IMB-6G activated IRE1α and PERK pathways but did not stimulated ATF6 pathway in HCC cells. Moreover, silencing of IRE1α dramatically abrogated IMB-6G-induced pro-apoptotic ASK1-JNK signaling. Importantly, interruption of CHOP rendered HCC cells sensitive to IMB-6G-induced apoptosis via inactivation of Bim, PUMA and Bax. Thus, the IRE1α-ASK1 and PERK-CHOP pathways may be a novel molecular mechanism of IMB-6G-induced apoptosis. Collectively, our study demonstrates that IMB-6G induces ER stress-mediated apoptosis by activating IRE1α and PERK pathways. Our findings provide a rationale for the potential application of IMB-6G in HCC therapy.
The influence of speed and size on avian terrestrial locomotor biomechanics: Predicting locomotion in extinct theropod dinosaurs

How extinct, non-avian theropod dinosaurs moved is a subject of considerable interest and controversy. A better understanding of non-avian theropod locomotion can be achieved by better understanding terrestrial locomotor biomechanics in their modern descendants, birds. Despite much research on the subject, avian terrestrial locomotion remains little explored in regards to how kinematic and kinetic factors vary together with speed and body size. Here, terrestrial locomotion was investigated in twelve species of ground-dwelling bird, spanning a 1,780-fold range in body mass, across almost their entire speed range. Particular attention was devoted to the ground reaction force (GRF), the force that the feet exert upon the ground. Comparable data for the only other extant obligate, striding biped, humans, were also collected and studied. In birds, all kinematic and kinetic parameters examined changed continuously with increasing speed, while in humans all but one of those same parameters changed abruptly at the walk-run transition. This result supports previous studies that show birds to have a highly continuous locomotor repertoire compared to humans, where discrete ‘walking’ and ‘running’ gaits are not easily distinguished based on kinematic patterns alone. The influences of speed and body size on kinematic and kinetic factors in birds are developed into a set of predictive relationships that may be applied to extinct, non-avian theropods. The resulting predictive model is able to explain 79–93% of the observed variation in kinematics and 69–83% of the observed variation in GRFs, and also performs well in extrapolation tests. However, this study also found that the location of the whole-body centre of mass may exert an important influence on the nature of the GRF, and hence some caution is warranted, in lieu of further investigation.
Vehicle Speed and Length Estimation Using Data from Two Anisotropic Magneto-Resistive (AMR) Sensors

Methods for estimating a car’s length are presented in this paper, as well as the results achieved by using a self-designed system equipped with two anisotropic magneto-resistive (AMR) sensors, which were placed on a road lane. The purpose of the research was to compare the lengths of mid-size cars, i.e., family cars (hatchbacks), saloons (sedans), station wagons and SUVs. Four methods were used in the research: a simple threshold based method, a threshold method based on moving average and standard deviation, a two-extreme-peak detection method and a method based on the amplitude and time normalization using linear extrapolation (or interpolation). The results were achieved by analyzing changes in the magnitude and in the absolute z-component of the magnetic field as well. The tests, which were performed in four different Earth directions, show differences in the values of estimated lengths. The magnitude-based results in the case when cars drove from the South to the North direction were even up to 1.2 m higher than the other results achieved using the threshold methods. Smaller differences in lengths were observed when the distances were measured between two extreme peaks in the car magnetic signatures. The results were summarized in tables and the errors of estimated lengths were presented. The maximal errors, related to real lengths, were up to 22%.
Exercise performance is regulated during repeated sprints to limit the development of peripheral fatigue beyond a critical threshold

What is the central question of this study? We asked whether exercise performance is regulated during all‐out repeated sprints (involving peak cycling‐specific muscle activation and limited pacing strategy) in order to restrain the total degree of peripheral fatigue development. What is the main finding and its importance? Our results showed that power output is adjusted during repeated sprints to limit the development of peripheral fatigue to a critical threshold, independently of the degree of pre‐existing fatigue. These findings emphasize the important role of peripheral fatigue in adjustment of power output during exercise.
FPGA-based Space Vector Delta Modulation Current Controller for Grid connected Converters

This paper investigates the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation of a Space-Vector Delta Modulation Current Controller (SV-DMCC) for three-phase Grid connected Converters (GcCs). The proposed SV-DMCC is synthesized in the stationary reference frame (α,β) based on the sliding mode theory. The applied voltage vectors are accurately selected in order to reduce the current errors on α and β axis. The implementation of the SV-DMCC on FPGA was achieved with a very low execution time, which allowed a significant reduction of the current THD. Simulation and experimental results are presented and discussed in order to show the benefits of the investigated SV-DMCC compared to traditional delta modulation current controllers.
Imbalance fault detection of marine current turbine under condition of wave and turbulence

Marine current turbine (MCT) have been widely used nowadays, it is important to monitor their health state. Unnecessary marine biological growth or marine pollutants attached to the moving parts will affect the operation of the system by introducing imbalance. The imbalance, regarded as faults, would change the performance of turbine and lead to progressively increasing damages. In this paper, a marine current turbine prototype with permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) has been studied. An innovative imbalance fault detection method is proposed for marine current turbines under the condition of wave and turbulence. In the proposed method, the average frequency of current is calculated through synchronous sampling. Meanwhile, current fluctuation influence is reduced during one revolution. The empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and spectrum analysis are used to achieve fault characteristics. Theoretical analysis, simulation and experimental results under different conditions validate the proposed method. Moreover the proposed method could be used for long-term marine current turbine monitoring in respect to its simplicity and low time cost.
Concrete with Recycled Glass as Fine Aggregates

Recycled waste glasses were used as sand replacement in concrete at 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100% replacement ratios. Diverse concrete properties were tested in fresh and hardened states with three concrete grades; that is, with compressive strengths of 30, 45, and 60 MPa (4350, 6525, and 8700 psi). The incorporation of glass sand showed no significant influence on fresh or mechanical properties of concrete. Drying shrinkage was reduced due to the negligible water absorption of glass sand, especially at lower water-cement ratios (wc). Resistance to chloride ion penetration was substantially enhanced because of the improved and densified microstructure at the interface transition zone (ITZ). Based on alkali-silica reaction (ASR) tests up to 49 days, cement mortar containing glass sand was found to exhibit innocuous expansion. Use of mineral admixtures, such as fly ash and slag cement, could further improve the durability of concrete containing waste glass particles.
Implementation of a picture based user interface to assist the elderly suffering from memory problems

The development of user interface technologies for elderly people with memory problems is a difficult task. This paper proposes a wearable projection based communication system and communication language based on path based structured user interface. The path based user interface is based on Augmentive and Alternative communication systems which focus on picture communication. A conceptualized view of this communication channel is modeled on an abstract level using User Interface Description Language which will provide the best support for various different wearable solutions. The Projection interface consists of a camera, projector and acceleration sensor which detects the users input operation by tap operations.
Towards efficient range queries in mobile ad hoc networks using DHTs

Recently, Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) explicitly designed for the use in MANETs have been proposed. Thus, many DHT-based distributed network applications from the domain of the Internet can be expected to be efficiently ported to MANETs. While the exact key lookups provided by such DHTs might be sufficient for many applications, range queries are often a desirable feature in wireless ad hoc networks (e.g. in sensor networks). However, the implementation of range queries using DHTs is a non-trivial task. In this paper we present a straight-forward implementation of Distributed Segment Trees as proposed in [4] on top of MADPastry [3] to provide DHT-based range queries for MANETs. The main goal of this work is to gain a first insight into the question whether DHT-based approaches for range queries are feasible in MANETs. First experimental results indicate that DHTs can indeed enable efficient range queries in MANETs.
A pilot feasibility study of virtual patient simulation to enhance social work students’ brief mental health assessment skills

ABSTRACT This study presents preliminary feasibility and acceptability data on the use of virtual patient (VP) simulations to develop brief assessment skills within an interdisciplinary care setting. Results support the acceptability of technology-enhanced simulations and offer preliminary evidence for an association between engagement in VP practice simulations and improvements in diagnostic accuracy and clinical interviewing skills. Recommendations and next steps for research on technology-enhanced simulations within social work are discussed.
ASP: A Fast Adversarial Attack Example Generation Framework based on Adversarial Saliency Prediction

With the excellent accuracy and feasibility, the Neural Networks have been widely applied into the novel intelligent applications and systems. However, with the appearance of the Adversarial Attack, the NN based system performance becomes extremely vulnerable:the image classification results can be arbitrarily misled by the adversarial examples, which are crafted images with human unperceivable pixel-level perturbation. As this raised a significant system security issue, we implemented a series of investigations on the adversarial attack in this work: We first identify an image's pixel vulnerability to the adversarial attack based on the adversarial saliency analysis. By comparing the analyzed saliency map and the adversarial perturbation distribution, we proposed a new evaluation scheme to comprehensively assess the adversarial attack precision and efficiency. Then, with a novel adversarial saliency prediction method, a fast adversarial example generation framework, namely "ASP", is proposed with significant attack efficiency improvement and dramatic computation cost reduction. Compared to the previous methods, experiments show that ASP has at most 12 times speed-up for adversarial example generation, 2 times lower perturbation rate, and high attack success rate of 87% on both MNIST and Cifar10. ASP can be also well utilized to support the data-hungry NN adversarial training. By reducing the attack success rate as much as 90%, ASP can quickly and effectively enhance the defense capability of NN based system to the adversarial attacks.
Fatigue testing of defected steel beams retrofitted using sandwich-layered high and normal modulus CFRP sheets

CFRP sheets are extensively used to strengthen defected steel members due to the advantages of high strength and light weight of CFRP. Among different types of CFRP sheets, high modulus sheets showed better performance in extending the fatigue life of defected steel elements. It was found that fibre breakage was the main failure mode for specimens reinforced with high modulus CFRP sheets comparing to debonding failure in the interface between CFRP and steel for specimens repaired with normal modulus CFRP. It is generally believed that failure should occur within the adhesive layer in the form of cohesion failure so that the FRP material can be better utilised. In this study, CFRP sheets with high and normal modulus were applied in a sandwich layered manner. Fatigue tests were conducted with fatigue life being compared with those obtained from previous tests. Results showed that failure happened consistently in the interface of steel and epoxy resin with a fatigue life of around 80% of that strengthened with high modulus CFRP sheets only.
Lipoteichoic Acid Inhibits Staphylococcus aureus Biofilm Formation

A biofilm is an aggregate of microorganisms in which cells adhere to biological or non-biological surfaces and is responsible for various infectious diseases. Infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus, including pneumonia, endocarditis, and osteomyelitis, are often associated with colonization and biofilm formation. Although lipoteichoic acid (LTA) is involved in biofilm formation, the specific role of LTA is not clearly understood. In this study, we demonstrated that LTA released from Lactobacillus plantarum could inhibit S. aureus biofilm formation and aggregation without affecting the growth of S. aureus in various in vitro and in vivo models. L. plantarum LTA (Lp.LTA) also inhibited biofilm formation of S. aureus clinical isolates, including a methicillin-resistant strain. Remarkably, Lp.LTA not only interfered with S. aureus biofilm formation, but it also disrupted a pre-formed biofilm. Mechanism studies demonstrated that Lp.LTA inhibited expression of the ica-operon, which is responsible for the production of poly-N-acetylglucosamine, a key molecule required for S. aureus biofilm development. Lp.LTA increased the release of autoinducer-2 from S. aureus, which contributed to the inhibition of S. aureus biofilm formation. Moreover, Lp.LTA treatment enhanced susceptibility of the biofilm to various antibiotics and to macrophages. Interestingly, Lp.LTA without D-alanine moieties was not able to inhibit biofilm formation by S. aureus. In conclusion, the present study suggests that LTA can inhibit S. aureus biofilm formation, and therefore could be applied for preventing and/or treating infectious diseases caused by S. aureus biofilms.
KDEEP: Protein-Ligand Absolute Binding Affinity Prediction via 3D-Convolutional Neural Networks

Accurately predicting protein-ligand binding affinities is an important problem in computational chemistry since it can substantially accelerate drug discovery for virtual screening and lead optimization. We propose here a fast machine-learning approach for predicting binding affinities using state-of-the-art 3D-convolutional neural networks and compare this approach to other machine-learning and scoring methods using several diverse data sets. The results for the standard PDBbind (v.2016) core test-set are state-of-the-art with a Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.82 and a RMSE of 1.27 in pK units between experimental and predicted affinity, but accuracy is still very sensitive to the specific protein used. KDEEP is made available via PlayMolecule.org for users to test easily their own protein-ligand complexes, with each prediction taking a fraction of a second. We believe that the speed, performance, and ease of use of KDEEP makes it already an attractive scoring function for modern computational chemistry pipelines.
B-vitamin status and bone mineral density and risk of lumbar osteoporosis in older females in the United States.

BACKGROUND Previous data suggest that elevated serum total homocysteine (tHcy) may be a risk factor for bone fracture and osteoporosis. Nutritional causes of elevated tHcy are suboptimal B-vitamin status. To our knowledge, this is the first nationally representative report on the relation of B vitamins and bone health from a population with folic acid fortification. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this analysis was to examine the relation between B-vitamin status biomarkers and bone mineral density (BMD), risk of osteoporosis, and biomarkers of bone turnover. DESIGN We examined the relation of tHcy, methylmalonic acid (MMA), and serum/red blood cell folate and total-body and lumbar spine BMD in women aged ≥50 y participating in the NHANES 1999-2004 (n = 2806), a nationally representative cross-sectional survey. These are the only years with concurrent measurement of tHcy and whole-body dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. We also examined B-vitamin biomarkers relative to bone turnover markers, bone alkaline phosphatase, and urinary N-terminal cross-linked telopeptide of type I collagen in a 1999-2002 subset with available data (n = 1813). RESULTS In comparison with optimal concentrations, women with elevated tHcy were older with lower serum vitamin B-12, red blood cell folate, and dietary micronutrient intakes and had significantly higher mean ± SE markers of bone turnover (bone alkaline phosphatase: 15.8 ± 0.59 compared with 14.0 ± 0.25 μg/L; urinary N-terminal cross-linked telopeptide of type I collagen: 48.2 ± 2.9 compared with 38.9 ± 0.90 nmol bone collagen equivalents per mmol creatinine/L). Elevated MMA (OR: 1.88; 95% CI: 1.10, 3.18) and tHcy (OR: 2.17; 95% CI: 1.14, 4.15) were related to increased risk of lumbar osteoporosis. When examined as a continuous variable, tHcy was negatively associated, serum folates were positively associated, and MMA and vitamin B-12 were not significantly associated with lumbar and total-body BMD. CONCLUSION In this nationally representative population of older US women with high exposure to B vitamins through food fortification and dietary supplements, only elevated tHcy and MMA were independently associated with risk of lumbar spine osteoporosis.
EXPLoRa: Extending the performance of LoRa by suitable spreading factor allocations

LoRaWAN is emerging as an attractive network infrastructure for ultra low power Internet of Thing devices. Albeit the technology itself is quite mature and specified, how to effectively allocate wireless resources so as to support a large amount of devices in a same terrestrial area is an open challenge. This paper contributes by proposing two algorithms (of incremental complexity) which are shown to outperform the basic Adaptive Rate Strategy (ADR) so far considered. A first approach, named EXPLoRa-SF, shows the benefits of a simple strategy which does not limit to use (as per ADR) distance/RSSI measurements, but also selects Spreading Factors (SF) based on the total number of connected devices. The advantages attained with EXPLoRa-SF further lead us to propose a more sophisticated algorithm, named EXPLoRa-AT, which employs an innovative “ordered waterfilling” approach which attempts to allocate the spreading factors so as to equalize the Time on Air of the packets transmitted by the system's end devices in each spreading factor's group. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms significantly outperform the basic ADR strategy, and particularly the EXPLoRa-AT algorithm appears very robust to different operating conditions and consistently guarantees high bit rates in the case of high traffic loads.
Key escrow schemes with sliding window for privacy-aware anomaly detection system

Requirements for a traffic monitoring system can be very demanding as both privacy and performance aspects have to be taken into account jointly. Moreover, the legislation sets forth strict rules that must also be met. Various cryptographic primitives provide invaluable tools for realising privacy enforcing mechanisms in such a system with respect to the above mentioned goals. In this paper, we consider an arbitrary traffic anomaly detection system consisting of two stages. The first stage pre-processes the monitored traffic with both data rate reduction and privacy protection in mind. The second stage is in charge of the final analysis and storing the relevant information. In particular, the privacy sensitive information is encrypted on per flow basis by the first stage, so that the second stage cannot access any flow without an appropriate key, which is given only when there is a strong reason to do so. In this setting, we study a sliding window type of mechanism for escrowing a secret decryption key from the first stage to the second in response to observing a sufficient number of malicious events within a specified time duration. Given the flow specific key, the second stage can then take a closer look at the corresponding part of the traffic, and decide on further actions. As a result, the privacy of the other users cannot be violated.
Parametric Optimization of Lateral NIPIN Phototransistors for Flexible Image Sensors

Curved image sensors, which are a key component in bio-inspired imaging systems, have been widely studied because they can improve an imaging system in various aspects such as low optical aberrations, small-form, and simple optics configuration. Many methods and materials to realize a curvilinear imager have been proposed to address the drawbacks of conventional imaging/optical systems. However, there have been few theoretical studies in terms of electronics on the use of a lateral photodetector as a flexible image sensor. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of a Si-based lateral phototransistor as the pixel of a high-efficiency curved photodetector by conducting various electrical simulations with technology computer aided design (TCAD). The single phototransistor is analyzed with different device parameters: the thickness of the active cell, doping concentration, and structure geometry. This work presents a method to improve the external quantum efficiency (EQE), linear dynamic range (LDR), and mechanical stability of the phototransistor. We also evaluated the dark current in a matrix form of phototransistors to estimate the feasibility of the device as a flexible image sensor. Moreover, we fabricated and demonstrated an array of phototransistors based on our study. The theoretical study and design guidelines of a lateral phototransistor create new opportunities in flexible image sensors.