Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vesicular Glutamate Transporter-Dependent Glutamate Release from Astrocytes

Astrocytes exhibit excitability based on variations of their intracellular Ca2+ concentrations, which leads to glutamate release, that in turn can signal to adjacent neurons. This glutamate-mediated astrocyte–neuron signaling occurs at physiological intracellular Ca2+ levels in astrocytes and includes modulation of synaptic transmission. The mechanism underlying Ca2+-dependent glutamate release from astrocytes is most likely exocytosis, because astrocytes express the protein components of the soluble N-ethyl maleimide-sensitive fusion protein attachment protein receptors complex, including synaptobrevin 2, syntaxin, and synaptosome-associated protein of 23 kDa. Although these proteins mediate Ca2+-dependent glutamate release from astrocytes, it is not well understood whether astrocytes express functional vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUTs) that are critical for vesicle refilling. Here, we find in cultured and freshly isolated astrocytes the presence of brain-specific Na+-dependent inorganic phosphate cotransporter and differentiation-associated Na+-dependent inorganic phosphate cotransporter that have recently been identified as VGLUTs 1 and 2. Indirect immunocytochemistry showed a punctate pattern of VGLUT immunoreactivity throughout the entire cell body and processes, whereas pharmacological inhibition of VGLUTs abolished mechanically and agonist-evoked Ca2+-dependent glutamate release from astrocytes. Taken together, these data indicate that VGLUTs play a functional role in exocytotic glutamate release from astrocytes.
OPTIMAL PRICING FOR COMPETITIVE SERVICE FACILITIES WITH BALKING AND VEERING CUSTOMERS

This paper focuses on determining the optimal pricing strategy for a service providing firm with multiple facilities. The market is involved with some other competing firms providing the same service. The firm and its competitors might devise three different pricing policies as uniform mill pricing, distinct mill pricing and delivered pricing. Customers choose the facilities probabilistically based on their perceived utility to being served. After they received at a congested facility, some of them balk from entering the queue and go directly to another facility rather than coming back to their origins. As a result, the arrival rate for a facility is varying on the level of congestion in all facilities. This situation requires us to find equilibrium point of facilities’ arrival rates. For this purpose, a heuristic procedure is developed. The resulted non-linear and complex model is proposed to solve using a hybrid algorithm of Particle Swarm Intelligence and Differential Evolution, two continuous approximate optimization algorithms. An illustrative example is given to show the model’s applicability and the algorithm’s efficiency. Different scenarios in terms of sensitivity analysis are also mentioned to capture managerial insights.
NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS: Integrating New and Existing Technology and Information Sharing into an Effective Homeland Security Strategy

Abstract : SEE REPORT In brief, there are specific data, information-sharing, and technology challenges facing the country in developing and implementing a national preparedness strategy. * The nature of the terrorist threat makes it difficult to identify and differentiate information that can provide an early indication of a terrorist threat from the mass of data available to those in positions of authority responsible for homeland security. * We face considerable barriers cultural, legal, and technical--in effectively collecting and sharing information. * Many technologies key to addressing threats are not yet available, and many existing technologies have not been effectively adapted for the threats the country now faces. The real challenge, however, is not just to find the right solutions to each of these problems but to weave solutions together in an integrated and intelligent fashion so that they are collectively more than the sum of their parts. At the national level, this will require developing a blueprint, or architectural construct, that defines both the homeland security mission and the information, technologies, and approaches necessary to perform the mission in a way that is divorced from organizational parochialism and cultural differences. Local, state, and federal agencies responsible for homeland security will need to carry out their respective roles under this construct with a great deal of assistance from the private sector. Fortunately, there are starting points for addressing each challenge and actions are being taken to strengthen security in a broad range of areas. But there will still be a need for mechanisms to make sure that things happen as they should.
Voice Activity Detection in MTF-Based Power Envelope Restoration

This paper reports comparative evaluations of conventional voice activity detection (VAD) methods in reverberant environments. Both conventional and standard (G.729) methods are discussed. In general, these methods work well under clean conditions, but their performance is drastically affected by reverberation. Preliminary comparative evaluations showed that the false acceptance rate (FAR) is significantly increased due to the false rejection rate (FRR) being moderately increased by reverberation. We therefore developed a method using MTFbased power envelope restoration to improve the robustness of VAD in reverberant environments. This restoration method can blindly restore the power envelope of reverberant speech based on the MTF concept. The proposed method consists of an MTFbased restoration method as the front end and a conventional VAD method as the final decision. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method is superior to conventional methods with regard to robustness and providing accurate VAD (reducing both FAR and FRR) in reverberant environments.
Achieving Quality in Open-Source Software

The open source software community has published a substantial body of research on OSS quality. Focusing on this peer-reviewed body of work lets us draw conclusions from empirical data rather than rely on the large volume of evangelical opinion that has historically dominated this field. This body of published research has become much more critical and objective in its efforts to understand OSS development, and a consensus has emerged on the key components of high-quality OSS delivery. This article reviews this body of research and draws out lessons learned, investigating how the approaches used to deliver high-quality OSS differ from, and can be incorporated into, closed-source software development
Role of Atp-dependent Calcium Regulation in Modulation of Drosophila 2 Synaptic Thermotolerance. 3 4 5

1 Role of ATP-dependent calcium regulation in modulation of Drosophila 2 synaptic thermotolerance. 3 4 5 Klose M.K. , Boulianne, G.L. , Robertson, R.M. , and Atwood H.L. 6 7 Running Title: Hyperthermic calcium regulation. 8 9 Department of Physiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 10 M5S 1A8 11 Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Biosciences Complex, Kingston, 12 Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 13 3 Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, The Hospital for Sick 14 Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 1L7 15 16 Corresponding Author: Markus K. Klose 17 12-401 Toronto Medical Discovery Tower 18 101 College St., Toronto, ON 19 CANADA M5G 1L7 20 phone: (416) 813-8703 21 fax: (416) 813-2122 22 23 24 25 Articles in PresS. J Neurophysiol (May 27, 2009). doi:10.1152/jn.91209. 2008
THUP: A P2P Network Robust to Churn and DoS Attack Based on Bimodal Degree Distribution

Hierarchical unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for file sharing systems such as Gnutella and Kazaa have made a tremendous achievement in the last decade. However, while these P2P networks can be tolerant to churn, i.e., the dynamics of peer participation and departure (or fault), there still remains the issue of vulnerability to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, i.e., when the highest degree peers are removed. In order to overcome this shortcoming, we focus on a bimodal degree distribution, which is tolerant to both churn and DoS attacks. However, the network topology affects the network stability that was not taken into considered in the previous works. Therefore, we analyze the optimal network topology for DoS attack tolerance, and accordingly develop the peer joining procedure to construct and maintain the proposed network topology. Our proposed scheme is dubbed THUP (churn/DoS Tolerant, Hierarchical, Unstructured, P2P network). Performance evaluation conducted through computer simulations shows that THUP substantially improves the stability and communication efficiency compared with other existing P2P networking structures.
The role of interdisciplinary science in the study of ancient pottery

AbstractIn the context of the modern world, the term ceramics suggests a very versatile group of materials capable of being designed to have particular physical and chemical properties and to fulfil a wide range of functions, functions that traditionally have often been fulfilled by other types of material.1 While suitably designed ceramics may hold the key to overcoming many of humankind's future technological problems, it is interesting to reflect on how much ceramics can also tell us about our past. Future technological innovations in ceramics will influence and be influenced by wider aspects of human culture; so too it may be expected that there was a similar relationship between ancient ceramics and the past societies that made them. In archaeology, ceramics hold an important and varied role as a key to understanding many aspects of the development of human civilisations. This paper aims to explore some of the ways in which ceramics have been studied by archaeologists, and to illustrate some of the m.
On predicting religion labels in microblogging networks

Religious belief plays an important role in how people behave, influencing how they form preferences, interpret events around them, and develop relationships with others. Traditionally, the religion labels of user population are obtained by conducting a large scale census study. Such an approach is both high cost and time consuming. In this paper, we study the problem of predicting users' religion labels using their microblogging data. We formulate religion label prediction as a classification task, and identify content, structure and aggregate features considering their self and social variants for representing a user. We introduce the notion of representative user to identify users who are important in the religious user community. We further define features using representative users. We show that SVM classifiers using our proposed features can accurately assign Christian and Muslim labels to a set of Twitter users with known religion labels.
Verification of the CD2RDBMS Transformation Case in Flora-2

Model transformations play a key role in model-driven development. They are used to generate, refactor, synthesize, reverse engineer and simplify models among others. The accuracy of transformations will impact not only transformations themselves, but also the models, the first class entities of MDE. Verification of correctness properties ensures the quality of both transformations and models. VOLT workshop has been addressing this important research area for several years. As a solution for the VOLT-2015 case on transformation between class diagrams and RDBMS models, we provide a verification approach, namely MOTIF, in Flora-2 language. By specifying models, transformations and verification in the same language, we aim at closing the research gap between models and verification formalism.
Randomized Boolean Gossiping

In this paper, we propose and study a randomized Boolean gossiping process, where nodes taking value from $\{0,1\}$ pairwise meet over an underlying graph in a random manner at each time step and the two interacting nodes update their states by random logistic rules drawn from the set $\{{\it AND}, {\it OR}\}$. This model is a generalization of the classical gossiping process and serves as a simplified probabilistic Boolean network. First of all, using standard theories from Markov chain we show that almost surely, the network state asymptotically converge to a consensus. We also establish a characterization of the distribution of this limit for large-scale networks with all-to-all communication in light of mean-field approximation methods. Next, we study how the number of communication classes in the network state space relates to the topology of the underlying interaction graph and obtain a full characterization: A line interaction graph with $n$ nodes generates $2n$ communication classes; A cycle graph with $2n$ nodes generates $n+3$ communication classes, and a cycle graph with $2n+1$ nodes generates $n+2$ communication classes; For any connected graph which is not a line or a cycle, the number of communication classes is either five or three, where three is achieved if and only if the graph contains an odd cycle.
Resilient and Power-Efficient Multi-Function Channel Buffers in Network-on-Chip Architectures

Network-on-Chips (NoCs) are quickly becoming the standard communication paradigm for the growing number of cores on the chip. While NoCs can deliver sufficient bandwidth and enhance scalability, NoCs suffer from high power consumption due to the router microarchitecture and communication channels that facilitate inter-core communication. As technology keeps scaling down in the nanometer regime, unpredictable device behavior due to aging, infant mortality, design defects, soft errors, aggressive design, and process-voltage-temperature variations, will increase and will result in a significant increase in faults (both permanent and transient) and hardware failures. In this paper, we propose QORE-a fault tolerant NoC architecture with Multi-Function Channel (MFC) buffers. The use of MFC buffers and their associated control (link and fault controllers) enhance fault-tolerance by allowing the NoC to dynamically adapt to faults at the link level and reverse propagation direction to avoid faulty links. Additionally, MFC buffers reduce router power and improve performance by eliminating in-router buffering. We utilize a machine learning technique in our link controllers to predict the direction of traffic flow in order to more efficiently reverse links. Our simulation results using real benchmarks and synthetic traffic mixes show that QORE improves speedup by 1.3x and throughput by 2.3x when compared to state-of-the art fault tolerant NoCs designs such as Ariadne and Vicis. Moreover, using Synopsys Design Compiler, we also show that network power in QORE is reduced by 21 percent with minimal control overhead.
PTSD risk associated with a functional DRD2 polymorphism in heroin‐dependent cases and controls is limited to amphetamine‐dependent individuals

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a pathologic response to severe stress, is a common co‐morbid disorder in substance‐dependent individuals. Evidence from twin studies suggests that PTSD is moderately heritable. Genetic association studies to date have reported a limited number of replicated findings. We conducted a candidate gene association study in trauma‐exposed individuals within the Comorbidity and Trauma Study's sample (1343 heroin‐dependent cases and 406 controls from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods). After data cleaning, the 1430 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) retained for analyses provided coverage of 72 candidate genes and included additional SNPs for which association was previously reported as well as 30 ancestry‐informative markers. We found a functional DRD2 promoter polymorphism (rs12364283) to be most highly associated with PTSD liability [odds ratio (OR) 1.65 (1.27–2.15); P = 1.58 × 10−4]; however, this association was not significant, with a stringent Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. The top hits include SNPs from other dopaminergic system genes: DRD2 DRD3, TH and DBH. Additional analyses revealed that the association involving rs12364283 is largely limited to amphetamine‐dependent individuals. Substantial risk is observed in amphetamine‐dependent individuals, with at least one copy of this SNP [OR 2.86 (1.92–4.27); P = 2.6 × 10−7]. Further analyses do not support extensive mediation of PTSD risk via self‐reported impulsivity (BIS total score). These findings suggest roles for impairment in inhibitory control in the pathophysiology of PTSD and raise questions about stimulant use in certain populations (e.g. those in combat).
E-Commerce Reviews Management System Based on Online Customer Reviews Mining

E-commerce website accumulates a large number of customer reviews for merchandise and online shopping services. E-commerce enterprises and manufacturers could get customer opinion to improve service and merchandise through mining customer reviews. The paper presents a prototype system could be used to track and manage customer reviews, through mining topics and sentiment orientation from online customer reviews. The paper studied Chinese reviews mining processing steps and methods. Finally, this study applied text mining to costumer reviews. Through case study, the method can efficiently identify topics to enterprises.
A high efficiency DC-DC converter based on bidirectional half-bridge

Bidirectional DC-DC converter (BDC), is being widely used in all kinds of fields as both charger and discharger which can greatly lessen the volume and weight of the whole applied system. This paper analyzes mainstream topological structures of BDC and then proposes a bidirectional half-bridge converter with Micro Control Unit (MCU) in control of three working modes: buck charging mode, boost discharging mode and buck-boost mode. Afterwards, experiments are made to validate the availability of the proposed prototype. Besides, the constancy of the output voltage is tested via simulation, and prototype tests are also accomplished to verify the constancy of both discharging voltage and charging current and the automatic switching of the system. As a result, the system attains high conversion efficiency that runs up to 94%.
Time Scale Estimation Method Based on Anisotropic Diffusion

How to determine the stopping mechanism and parameters is the key in the anisotropic diffusion filtering of images. This paper introduces image structures similarity (SSIM) to time scale estimation based on anisotropic diffusion. It proposes a novel estimation method of the optimal diffusion time scale by SSIM. The method correlates well with the judgment of human observers and needs not to estimate noise variance compared with MMSE, SNR, minimal correlation coefficient and others. The efficacy of the scheme is demonstrated with experiments on some images.
NON-WELLFOUNDED MEREOLOGY

This paper is a systematic exploration of non-wellfounded mereology. Motivations and applications suggested in the literature are considered. Some are exotic like Borges’ Aleph, and the trinity; other examples are less so, like time traveling bricks, and even Geach’s Tibbles the Cat. The authors point out that the transitivity of non-wellfounded parthood is inconsistent with extensionality. A non-wellfounded mereology is developed with careful consideration paid to rival notions of supplementation and fusion. Two equivalent axiomatizations are given, and are compared to classical mereology. We provide a class of models with respect to which the non-wellfounded mereology is sound and complete.
Simultaneous Multiwavelength Observations of Sagittarius A*

We observed Sgr A* using the Very Large Array (VLA) and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) at multiple centimeter and millimeter wavelengths on 2003 June 17. The measured flux densities of Sgr A*, together with those obtained from the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and the Keck II 10 m telescope on the same date, are used to construct a simultaneous spectrum of Sgr A* from 90 cm to 3.8 μm. The simultaneous spectrum shows a spectral break at about 3.6 cm, a possible signature of synchrotron self-absorption of the strong radio outburst that occurred near epoch 2003 July 17. At 90 cm, the flux density of Sgr A* is 0.22 ± 0.06 Jy, suggesting a sharp decrease in flux density at wavelengths longer than 47 cm. The spectrum at long cm wavelengths appears to be consistent with free-free absorption by a screen of ionized gas with a cutoff ~100 cm. This cutoff wavelength appears to be three times longer than that of ~30 cm suggested by Davies, Walsh, & Booth based on observations in 1974 and 1975. Our analysis suggests that the flux densities of Sgr A* at wavelengths longer than 30 cm could be attenuated and modulated by stellar winds from massive stars close to Sgr A*.
Effects of OsteoKing on osteoporotic rabbits

Heng-Gu-Gu-Shang-Yu-He-Ji, also known as OsteoKing, is used as a herbal Traditional Chinese Medicine for the treatment of bone disease, including femoral head necrosis and osteoarthritis. However, whether OsteoKing has anti-osteoporotic properties has remained to be elucidated. The purpose of the present study was therefore to investigate the effects of OsteoKing on ovariectomy-induced osteoporosis in rabbits. Female New Zealand white rabbits were randomly divided into an ovariectomized (OVX) group and a sham-surgery group. The rabbits in the OVX group were subjected to an ovariectomy, while the rabbits in the sham group were subjected to the removal of an area of fat near the two ovaries. Bone mineral density, mechanical properties, serum biochemical parameters and micro-architecture were examined at 150 days post-OVX to characterize the experimental animal model. Once the osteoporotic rabbit model had been established, the rabbits in the OVX group were divided into the following groups: Model group, nilestriol group and 300 and 600 mg/kg OsteoKing groups, containing 16 rabbits in each group. OsteoKing and nilestriol were administered orally. The bone mineral density, mechanical properties, serum biochemical parameters, histology and micro-architecture were examined using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometric analysis, mechanical assessments, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, histopathological evaluation and micro-computerized tomography examination following 60 days and 120 days of treatment, respectively. Treatment with OsteoKing led to an elevation in the bone mineral density of the vertebra and serum phosphorus levels, reduced serum concentrations of osteocalcin, procollagen type I N-terminal peptide, tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase 5b and cross-linked N-telopeptide of type I collagen, improved mechanical properties (maximum load, stiffness and energy absorption capacity), and micro-architecture of the lumbar vertebra in the OVX osteoporotic rabbit model following treatment for 120 days. In conclusion, it was demonstrated that OsteoKing is effective in the prevention of estrogen deficiency-associated bone loss and may be a promising drug for the treatment of post-menopausal osteoporosis.