Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Competitive Design of Energy Harvesting Communications in Wireless Fading Channels

This paper considers the design of online transmission strategies for slotted energy harvesting point-to-point communication systems in wireless fading channels. Online transmission strategies decide the amount of energy allocated to each transmission slot based on the energy harvested amounts and channel gains observed in the current and previous time slots. Offline strategies, in contrast, assume non-causal knowledge of future energy arrivals and channel gains. We adopt a worst case design objective. For a given online policy, we are interested in computing its maximum rate gap that is defined as the difference between the offline and online rates, maximized over all possible energy arrivals and channel states. The competitive rate gap is then defined as the minimum maximum rate gap over all possible online strategies. Here, we obtain, within a constant, the maximum rate gap for the Myopic policy, which equally distributes the available energy over the remaining slots, and provide an upper and a lower bound on the competitive rate gap. Moreover, we propose a new online policy targeting the competitive rate gap. Numerical results show that the policy proposed performs close to the competitive rate gap lower bound in constant and arbitrarily varying channels, and obtains good performance with real energy harvesting traces.
Comparison of growth & function of endothelial progenitor cells cultured on deproteinized bovine bone modified with covalently bound fibronectin and bound vascular endothelial growth factor

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to assess and compare the growth and function of Endothelial Progenitor Cells (EPCs) cultured on covalently bonded Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) and covalently bonded Fibronectin (FN) coating on deproteinized bovine bone (DBB) (test samples), compared to non-modified DBB blocks (control sample). MATERIALS AND METHODS The test samples were prepared by plasma polymerization of allylamine onto DBB blocks. Group1 of test samples were prepared with VEGF coating (VEGF-DBB) where as the Group2 test samples were coated with FN (FN-DBB). Non-modified DBB blocks served as a Control. EPCs were isolated and cultivated from buffy coats of peripheral blood of healthy volunteers and cultivated in the different samples and examined at time intervals of 24 h, 3 days, and 7 days. Evaluation of growth by cell count and cell morphology was done using Confocal Laser Scanning Electron Microscopy; vitality and function of cells was assessed using MTT assay and RT-PCR and ELISA for eNOS and iNOS respectively. RESULTS The results of the study show that both VEGF and FN could be successfully immobilized by plasma polymerization onto a complex, porous, three-dimensional structure of DBB. When comparing vital cell coverage, proliferation and function of EPCs, FN-DBB provided more positive values followed by VEGF-DBB as compared to DBB samples. eNOS level were significant higher in VEGF-DBB and FN-DBB when compared to DBB (P = 0.019 and P = 0.002). The difference between VEGF-DBB and FN-DBB was not significant. CONCLUSIONS Biomimetic coatings of Fibronectin may clinically relate to faster angiogenesis and earlier healing potential.
PERSPECTIVES OF THE USE OF MODERN BUILDING MATERIALS IN ROAD CONSTRUCTION

The authors analyzed the foreign experience of using keyed joints in reinforced concrete span structures of bridges. Fiber concrete with polypropylene fibers was chosen as the investigated material. Such fibers are chemically neutral, water-resistant, have a high resistance to dynamic loads, reduce the risk of formation and development of cracking, increase abrasion what is important in the manufacture of road construction. Optimization of concrete composition with polypropylene fibers for concreting joints by physical and mechanical parameters was carried out. Parameters of optimization were compressive strength, tensile strength at bending, axial tensile strength, prism strength and abrasion. The authors performed a series of tests to study the behavior of fiber concrete in keyed joints. The analysis of obtained results out depending on the nature of failure, the value of the ultimate load and fiber concrete deformations were carried out. The influence on the joints strength of the cross-section reinforcement percentage and the nature of placement of the reinforcing rods was considered. It was established if to place a cross-reinforcement in two levels it increases the strength of joints in comparison with a single level with the same percentage of reinforcement. It was noted that the fracture of all samples occurred from the sear key. Cracking of fiber concrete experimental samples occurred at later stages of loading compared with samples of ordinary concrete, and the fracture was not brittle, without tearing off parts of concrete. Increase in strength is due to the chaotic placement of polypropylene fibers in concrete, and therefore, to remove fibers from concrete, it is necessary to spend more energy, which ultimately leads to an increase in strength of joint. Experimental data suggest possibility and feasibility of polypropylene fibers in concrete joints in precast concrete structures of bridges
MicroRNAs as serum biomarkers for periodontitis.

AIM Studies demonstrated that periodontitis modulates microRNA (miRNAs) expression rates in periodontal tissue. However, the relationship between periodontitis and miRNAs profile in circulation remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the effects of periodontitis on serum miRNAs profile in a rat model. MATERIAL AND METHODS Male Wistar rats (n = 32, 8 weeks old) were divided into four groups of eight rats each. The control groups received no treatment for 2 or 4 weeks. In the other two groups, periodontitis was ligature induced for 2 or 4 weeks. Serum miRNAs expression profiles of each group were compared. RESULTS Ligation around teeth induced periodontal inflammation at 2 weeks and periodontal tissue destruction at 4 weeks. Microarray results showed that 25 miRNAs were expressed with a <0.5 or >2 difference between the control and periodontitis groups at 4 weeks. Results of real-time PCR revealed that the periodontitis group up-regulated expression rates of serum miR-207 and miR-495 at 2 weeks, and miR-376b-3p at 4 weeks (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION Serum miRNAs (miR-207, miR-495, and miR-376b-3p) could be valuable biomarkers for periodontitis.
Temporal Interaction and Causal Influence in Community-Based Question Answering

During the last decade, community-based question answering (CQA) sites have accumulated a vast amount of questions and their crowdsourced answers over time. How to efficiently identify the quality of answers that are relevant to a given question has become an active line of research in CQA. The major challenge of CQA is the accurate selection of high-quality answers w.r. t given questions. Previous approaches tend to model the semantic matching between individual pair of one question and its corresponding answer (how fitting an answer is to a posted question). However, these works ignore the temporal interactions between answers (how previous answers influence the late posted answers). For example, a rational user likely adapts others’ opinions, revises his inclinations, and posts a more appropriate answer after understanding the given question and previously posted answers. As a result, this paper devises an architecture named Temporal Interaction and Causal Influence LSTM (TC-LSTM) to effectively leverage not only the causal influence between question-answer (how appropriate an answer is for a given question) but also the temporal interactions between answers-answer (how a high-quality answer gradually forms). In particular, long short-term memory (LSTM) is used to capture the explicit question-answer influence and the implicit answers-answer interactions. Experiments are conducted on SemEval 2015 CQA dataset for answer classification task and Baidu Zhidao Dataset for answer ranking task. The experimental results show the advantage of our model comparing with other state-of-the-art methods.
Budgeted Multi-Armed Bandits with Multiple Plays

We study the multi-play budgeted multi-armed bandit (MP-BMAB) problem, in which pulling an arm receives both a random reward and a random cost, and a player pulls L(≥ 1) arms at each round. The player targets at maximizing her total expected reward under a budget constraint B for the pulling costs. We present a multiple ratio confidence bound policy: At each round, we first calculate a truncated upper (lower) confidence bound for the expected reward (cost) of each arm, and then pull the L arms with the maximum ratio of the sum of the upper confidence bounds of rewards to the sum of the lower confidence bounds of costs. We design a 0- 1 integer linear fractional programming oracle that can pick such the L arms within polynomial time. We prove that the regret of our policy is sublinear in general and is log-linear for certain parameter settings. We further consider two special cases of MP-BMABs: (1) We derive a lower bound for any consistent policy for MP-BMABs with Bernoulli reward and cost distributions. (2) We show that the proposed policy can also solve conventional budgeted MAB problem (a special case of MP-BMABs with L = 1) and provides better theoretical results than existing UCB-based pulling policies.
Efficacy of Compression Garments on Recovery From a Simulated Rugby Protocol

Abstract Upton, CM, Brown, FC, and Hill, JA. Efficacy of compression garments on recovery from a simulated rugby protocol. J Strength Cond Res 31(11): 2977–2982, 2017—The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of lower limb compression garments on recovery in club-level rugby players. Nineteen participants (age, 20.3 ± 1.7 years, height, 184.2 ± 7.5 cm, and body mass, 89.5 ± 9.9 kg) completed a rugby-specific, muscle-damaging protocol before being assigned to a compression garment group (n = 10) or a SHAM (“recovery” drink) treatment (n = 9). The compression group wore the garments for 48 hours after exercise, whereas SHAM consumed a sweetened, low energy drink within an hour of protocol completion. Perceived muscle soreness (PMS), creatine kinase (CK), maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC), and countermovement jump (CMJ) height were measured at baseline, post, 24, and 48 hours after exercise. Perceived muscle soreness was significantly lower in the compression group compared with the SHAM group at both 24 and 48 hours after exercise (p ⩽ 0.05). The compression group was also subject to lower CK values than SHAM, as demonstrated by a significant time by group effect (p ⩽ 0.05). There was no significant group effect for MVIC or CMJ (p > 0.05). Wearing compression garments after a rugby-specific, muscle-damaging protocol seems to reduce PMS and circulating concentrations of CK, suggesting improved recovery from muscle-damaging exercise.
Transcription of telomeric DNA leads to high levels of homologous recombination and t-loops

The formation of DNA loops at chromosome ends (t-loops) and the transcription of telomeres producing G-rich RNA (TERRA) represent two central features of telomeres. To explore a possible link between them we employed artificial human telomeres containing long arrays of TTAGGG repeats flanked by the T7 or T3 promoters. Transcription of these DNAs generates a high frequency of t-loops within individual molecules and homologous recombination events between different DNAs at their telomeric sequences. T-loop formation does not require a single strand overhang, arguing that both terminal strands insert into the preceding duplex. The loops are very stable and some RNase H resistant TERRA remains at the t-loop, likely adding to their stability. Transcription of DNAs containing TTAGTG or TGAGTG repeats showed greatly reduced loop formation. While in the cell multiple pathways may lead to t-loop formation, the pathway revealed here does not depend on the shelterins but rather on the unique character of telomeric DNA when it is opened for transcription. Hence, telomeric sequences may have evolved to facilitate their ability to loop back on themselves.
Sodium Channel Remodeling in Subcellular Microdomains of Murine Failing Cardiomyocytes

Background Cardiac sodium channel (NaV1.5) dysfunction contributes to arrhythmogenesis during pathophysiological conditions. Nav1.5 localizes to distinct subcellular microdomains within the cardiomyocyte, where it associates with region‐specific proteins, yielding complexes whose function is location specific. We herein investigated sodium channel remodeling within distinct cardiomyocyte microdomains during heart failure. Methods and Results Mice were subjected to 6 weeks of transverse aortic constriction (TAC; n=32) to induce heart failure. Sham–operated on mice were used as controls (n=20). TAC led to reduced left ventricular ejection fraction, QRS prolongation, increased heart mass, and upregulation of prohypertrophic genes. Whole‐cell sodium current (INa) density was decreased by 30% in TAC versus sham–operated on cardiomyocytes. On macropatch analysis, INa in TAC cardiomyocytes was reduced by 50% at the lateral membrane (LM) and by 40% at the intercalated disc. Electron microscopy and scanning ion conductance microscopy revealed remodeling of the intercalated disc (replacement of [inter‐]plicate regions by large foldings) and LM (less identifiable T tubules and reduced Z‐groove ratios). Using scanning ion conductance microscopy, cell‐attached recordings in LM subdomains revealed decreased INa and increased late openings specifically at the crest of TAC cardiomyocytes, but not in groove/T tubules. Failing cardiomyocytes displayed a denser, but more stable, microtubule network (demonstrated by increased α‐tubulin and Glu‐tubulin expression). Superresolution microscopy showed reduced average NaV1.5 cluster size at the LM of TAC cells, in line with reduced INa. Conclusions Heart failure induces structural remodeling of the intercalated disc, LM, and microtubule network in cardiomyocytes. These adaptations are accompanied by alterations in NaV1.5 clustering and INa within distinct subcellular microdomains of failing cardiomyocytes.
Subinhibitory Concentrations of Bacteriostatic Antibiotics Induce relA-Dependent and relA-Independent Tolerance to β-Lactams

ABSTRACT The nucleotide (p)ppGpp is a key regulator of bacterial metabolism, growth, stress tolerance, and virulence. During amino acid starvation, the Escherichia coli (p)ppGpp synthetase RelA is activated by deacylated tRNA in the ribosomal A-site. An increase in (p)ppGpp is believed to drive the formation of antibiotic-tolerant persister cells, prompting the development of strategies to inhibit (p)ppGpp synthesis. We show that in a biochemical system from purified E. coli components, the antibiotic thiostrepton efficiently inhibits RelA activation by the A-site tRNA. In bacterial cultures, the ribosomal inhibitors thiostrepton, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline all efficiently abolish accumulation of (p)ppGpp induced by the Ile-tRNA synthetase inhibitor mupirocin. This abolishment, however, does not reduce the persister level. In contrast, the combination of dihydrofolate reductase inhibitor trimethoprim with mupirocin, tetracycline, or chloramphenicol leads to ampicillin tolerance. The effect is independent of RelA functionality, specific to β-lactams, and not observed with the fluoroquinolone norfloxacin. These results refine our understanding of (p)ppGpp's role in antibiotic tolerance and persistence and demonstrate unexpected drug interactions that lead to tolerance to bactericidal antibiotics.
Sensory Deprivation Triggers Synaptic and Intrinsic Plasticity in the Hippocampus

Hippocampus, a temporal lobe structure involved in learning and memory, receives information from all sensory modalities. Despite extensive research on the role of sensory experience in cortical map plasticity, little is known about whether and how sensory experience regulates functioning of the hippocampal circuits. Here, we show that 9 ± 2 days of whisker deprivation during early mouse development depresses activity of CA3 pyramidal neurons by several principal mechanisms: decrease in release probability, increase in the fraction of silent synapses, and reduction in intrinsic excitability. As a result of deprivation-induced presynaptic inhibition, CA3-CA1 synaptic facilitation was augmented at high frequencies, shifting filtering properties of synapses. The changes in the AMPA-mediated synaptic transmission were accompanied by an increase in NR2B-containing NMDA receptors and a reduction in the AMPA/NMDA ratio. The observed reconfiguration of the CA3-CA1 connections may represent a homeostatic adaptation to augmentation in synaptic activity during the initial deprivation phase. In adult mice, tactile disuse diminished intrinsic excitability without altering synaptic facilitation. We suggest that sensory experience regulates computations performed by the hippocampus by tuning its synaptic and intrinsic characteristics.
Lung Cancer Screening and Smoking Cessation Clinical Trials. SCALE (Smoking Cessation within the Context of Lung Cancer Screening) Collaboration

&NA; National recommendations for lung cancer screening for former and current smokers aged 55‐80 years with a 30‐pack‐year smoking history create demand to implement efficient and effective systems to offer smoking cessation on a large scale. These older, high‐risk smokers differ from participants in past clinical trials of behavioral and pharmacologic interventions for tobacco dependence. There is a gap in knowledge about how best to design systems to extend reach and treatments to maximize smoking cessation in the context of lung cancer screening. Eight clinical trials, seven funded by the National Cancer Institute and one by the Veterans Health Administration, address this gap and form the SCALE (Smoking Cessation within the Context of Lung Cancer Screening) collaboration. This paper describes methodological issues related to the design of these clinical trials: clinical workflow, participant eligibility criteria, screening indication (baseline or annual repeat screen), assessment content, interest in stopping smoking, and treatment delivery method and dose, all of which will affect tobacco treatment outcomes. Tobacco interventions consider the “teachable moment” offered by lung cancer screening, how to incorporate positive and negative screening results, and coordination of smoking cessation treatment with clinical events associated with lung cancer screening. Unique data elements, such as perceived risk of lung cancer and costs of tobacco treatment, are of interest. Lung cancer screening presents a new and promising opportunity to reduce morbidity and mortality resulting from lung cancer that can be amplified by effective smoking cessation treatment. SCALE teamwork and collaboration promise to maximize knowledge gained from the clinical trials.
Interdigital tissue remodelling in the embryonic limb involves dynamic regulation of the miRNA profiles

Next‐generation sequencing in combination with quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed a dynamic miRNA signature in the interdigital mesoderm of the chick embryonic hinlimb in the course of interdigit remodelling. During this period, 612 previously known chicken miRNAs (gga‐miRNAs) and 401 non‐identified sequences were expressed in the interdigital mesoderm. Thirty‐six microRNAs, represented by more than 750 reads per million, displayed differential expression between stages HH29 (6 id) and HH32 (7.5 id), which correspond to the onset and the peak of interdigital cell death. Twenty miRNAs were upregulated by at least 1.5‐fold, and sixteen were downregulated by at least 0.5‐fold. Upregulated miRNAs included miRNAs with recognized proapoptotic functions in other systems (miR‐181 family, miR‐451 and miR‐148a), miRNAs associated with inflammation and cell senescence (miR‐21 and miR‐146) and miRNAs able to induce changes in the extracellular matrix (miR‐30c). In contrast, miRNAs with known antiapoptotic effects in other systems, such as miR‐222 and miR‐205, became downregulated. In addition, miR‐92, an important positive regulator of cell proliferation, was also downregulated. Together, these findings indicate a role for miRNAs in the control of tissue regression and cell death in a characteristic morphogenetic embryonic process based on massive apoptosis.
Growth attainment in German children born preterm, and cardiovascular risk factors in adolescence. Analysis of the population representative KiGGS data

Abstract Aim: To compare the growth attainment of preterm children and their cardiovascular risk factors at adolescence with the values measured in term children in Germany. Methods: About 17,641 children aged 0 to <18 years were studied between 2003 and 2006 in the population representative German KiGGS survey (“German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents”) using questionnaires, physical examinations, standardized anthropometric and blood pressure measurements, and blood sample analyses. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was employed for the analyses of anthropometric parameters. Results: About 11.8% of the 16,737 children with complete and valid data had been born preterm. After adjustment for covariates the estimated z-scores over the total age range were larger in term compared to preterm children for length/height (P<0.001; estimated difference B=0.277, 95% CI 0.191–0.362), head circumference (P<0.001; B=0.238, 95% CI 0.144–0.333), BMI (P=0.001; B=0.160, 95% CI 0.069–0.252), and skinfold thickness (P=0.220; B=0.058, 95% CI −0.035 to 0.151). The onset of pubertal development was slightly (but not significantly) earlier in term compared to preterm children. At 14 to <18 years, anthropometric and biochemical indicators of cardiovascular diseases were not worse in preterm compared to term children. Conclusions: Preterm-born German adolescents remained significantly shorter, lighter, and had a smaller head circumference than term-born adolescents, but the risk indicators for cardiovascular diseases were not higher.
Self-Wicking Nanowire Grids

We have been developing a new type of grid for cryo electron microscopy (cryoEM) that is essentially “self-blotting” [1] and can be used in conjunction with a robotic device called Spotiton [2,3] that dispenses small volumes (~50pL) of sample using a piezo electric nozzle. Nanowires can be grown on the copper surface of an EM grid using a simple chemical reaction. We usually use sandwich grids where one side is copper and the other is Rhodium (figure 1) so as to provide one smooth surface for adhering to the plastic substrate which can have either lacey or patterned holes, choice of carbon or gold film can be put on the plastic and then the plastic is removed to leave one with the desired substrate on the nanowire grid. When small volumes of sample are applied to the nanowire grids as soon as the sample comes into contact with the wires it is rapidly wicked away, leaving behind a thin film that is then rapidly plunged into liquid ethane to achieve vitrification.