Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stability of housekeeping genes in alveolar macrophages from COPD patients

The stability of housekeeping genes is critical when performing gene expression studies. To date, there have been no studies that look at the stability of commonly used housekeeping genes in alveolar macrophages. Expression levels may be affected by culture, stimulation or disease severity. The present study investigated the expression level of 10 housekeeping genes and analysed the stability of their expression in alveolar macrophages from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients (n = 22) who were classified according to disease severity. Guanine nucleotide-binding protein, beta polypeptide 2-like 1 (GNB2L1), hypoxanthine phosphoribosyl transferase 1 (HPRT1) and ribosomal protein L32 (RPL32) were the most stably expressed in alveolar macrophages, irrespective of disease severity. There was no difference in the expression levels of 10 housekeeping genes between mild and moderate/severe patients. GNB2L1, HPRT1 and RPL32 were also stably expressed in alveolar macrophages cultured with no stimulation, or with interleukin-1β, lipopolysaccharide or tumour necrosis factor-α stimulation. In conclusion, as fluctuations in the expression of some housekeeping genes were observed, including glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, it is recommended that guanine nucleotide binding protein, beta polypeptide 2-like 1 be used as a reference gene for alveolar macrophages in similar study designs, or that the stability of housekeeping genes be validated in alveolar macrophages prior to expression studies.
An offloading algorithm based on channel quality in mobile integration network

With the fast development of modern society, intelligent terminals, such as smart phones, are going to be a part of our life. How to support these terminals with excellent network service is a serious problem and needs to be solved quickly. In all the solutions, mobile integration network which integrates fixed network and mobile network and can make full use of these two networks is a hot topic. In this paper, we introduced mobile integration network firstly, and then proposed an offloading algorithm based on channel quality to solve the offloading problem. Besides, a simulation experiment was also performed and comparison was made between the proposed algorithm and no offloading situations, including traffics transmitting only through LTE and only through WiFi respectively, by comparing different results we found that network with the proposed offloading algorithm had better throughput and less delay, thus validated our proposed offloading algorithm.
Compact CPW bandpass filter with ultra-wide stopband using slow-wave structure

In this paper, a compact bandpass filter with an ultra-wide upper stopband is proposed using novel slow-wave resonators, which consist of one conventional and one tapered coplanar-waveguide (CPW) sections with two identical loaded short-stubs. Such resonator can not only introduce the adjustable fundamental resonance f0, but also shift the spurious to higher frequency bands. Then, based on the proposed resonators with a symmetrical-coupled scheme, a bandpass filter operating at the center frequency (i.e., f0) of 2.1 GHz with a 3-dB fractional bandwidth 18.8% is implemented and fabricated. The measured result exhibits a stopband rejection greater than -21.5 dB up to 14.2f0.
The Neural Correlates of Phonological Short-term Memory: A Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

Neuropsychological reports and activation studies by means of positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have suggested that the neural correlates of phonological short-term memory are located in the left hemisphere, with Brodmann's area (BA) 40 being responsible for short-term storage, and BA 44 for articulatory rehearsal. However, a careful review of the literature on the role of left BA 40 shows that the data are equivocal. We tested these hypotheses by means of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Participants performed four tasks: two phonological judgements, thought to require only articulatory rehearsal without the contribution of short-term storage; a digit span, which involves both, short-term storage and articulatory rehearsal; and a pattern span, this last being the control task. The sites of stimulation were left BA 40, left BA 44 and the electrode location vtx, plus a baseline without TMS. Reaction times increased and accuracy decreased in the case of the phonological judgements and digit span after stimulation of both left sites, suggesting that BA 40, in addition to BA 44, is involved in phonological judgements. Possible explanations are discussed, namely, the possibility that (i) the neural correlates of rehearsal are not limited to BA 44 and (ii) phonological judgements involve processes other than rehearsal. We also consider the effects of using different tasks and responses to resolve some of the discrepancies in the literature.
Speaker verification using minimum verification error training

We propose a minimum verification error (MVE) training scenario to design and adapt an HMM-based speaker verification system. By using the discriminative training paradigm, we show that customer and background models can be jointly estimated so that the expected number of verification errors (false accept and false reject) on the training corpus are minimized. An experimental evaluation of a fixed password speaker verification task over the telephone network was carried out. The evaluation shows that MVE training/adaptation performs as well as MLE training and MAP adaptation when the performance is measured by the average individual equal error rate (based on a posteriori threshold assignment). After model adaptation, both approaches lead to an individual equal error-rate close to 0.6%. However, experiments performed with a priori dynamic threshold assignment show that MVE adapted models exhibit false rejection and false acceptance rates 45% lower than the MAP adapted models, and therefore lead to the design of a more robust system for practical applications.
The Impact of Young Workers on the Aggregate Labor Market

This paper estimates the response of the unemployment rate and labor force participation rate to exogenous variation in the youth share of the working age population, using cross-state variation in lagged birth rates as an instrumental variable. A one percent increase in the youth share reduces the unemployment rate of young workers by more than one percent, and of older workers by more than two percent, holding conditions in other states constant. It raises the labor force participation rate by about a third of a percent for young workers, and by much less for older workers, again ceteris paribus. These results are consistent with increasing returns to scale ('thick market externalities') in the labor market. Young workers are frequently mismatched in their employment, and firms create jobs to take advantage of this mismatch. Data on gross job creation and destruction in manufacturing support this theory. I also reconcile these results with existing evidence on the labor market impact of young workers.
On the role of intrinsic noise on the response of the p53-Mdm2 module

The protein p53 has a well established role in protecting genomic integrity in human cells. When DNA is damaged p53 induces the cell cycle arrest to prevent the transmission of the damage to cell progeny, triggers the production of proteins for DNA repair and if the damage can not be repaired the p53-mediated apoptotic pathway is ultimately activated. The p53-Mdm2 feedback loop seems to be the key circuit in this response of cells to damage. Measurements in individual human cells have shown that p53 and its regulator Mdm2 develop sustained oscillations over long periods of time, even in the absence of stress. Here we study three stochastic models of the p53-Mdm2 circuit. The models capture the response of the p53-Mdm2 circuit in its basal state, in the presence of DNA damage, and under oncogenic signals. They are studied through Gillespie’s simulations, mean field methods and analytical approaches within the context of the linear noise approximation. While we can not discard that other sources of noise may also be important, our results compare quantitatively well with existing experimental data in single cells, supporting the relevance of the intrinsic noise in tuning cellular functions.
Fault Detection and Isolation Problem: Sliding Mode Fuzzy Observers and Linear Integer Programming

In this paper, we present some results obtained from the application of a class of sliding mode observers to the model-based fault diagnosis problem in non-linear dynamic systems. A Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model is used to describe the system and then sliding mode observers are designed to estimate the system state vector, from this the diagnostic signal-residual, is generated by the comparison of measured and estimated output. The linear integer programming technique is proposed to solve the fault isolation problem based in signal-residual. The proposed technique allows determinating the faulted component corresponding to the active signal-residual. This paper shows an application of the fault diagnosis technique which was tested satisfactorily in a two-tank hydraulic system.
Tag Gardening for Folksonomy Enrichment and Maintenance

As social tagging applications continuously gain in popularity, it becomes more and more accepted that models and tools for (re-)organizing tags are needed. Some first approaches are already practically implemented. Recently, activities to edit and organize tags have been described as "tag gardening". We discuss different ways to subsequently revise and reedit tags and thus introduce different "gardening activities"; among them models that allow gradually adding semantic structures to folksonomies and/or that combine them with more complex forms of knowledge organization systems. Moreover, power tags are introduced as tag gardening candidates and the personal tag repository TagCare is presented.
Argument Structure and Morphological Factors in Noun and Verb Processing: An fMRI Study

In a functional MRI (fMRI) study, we have investigated the grammatical categories of object noun, event noun and verb in order to assess the cortical regions of activation supporting their processing. Twelve Italian healthy participants performed a lexical decision task. They had to decide whether a string was an Italian word or not. Words could be objects like medaglia (medal), or events like the noun pianto (cry); or the verb dormire (to sleep). Noun and verb comparison shows differences in regions of activation in the left Inferior Frontal cortex and in the extent of the same areas. We have found specific areas of activation for object noun, and similarities in the pattern of activation for event noun and verb. The activations induced by pseudowords highly resembled the areas activated by the corresponding word category. The implications of the results are discussed in light of the recent debate on the role of grammatical category in the brain.
A Study of Anaphoric Expressions in Human Produced Scientific Abstracts

One of the main reasons for having low quality automatic extracts is the presence of dangling anaphors. This paper analyses the referential expressions in a corpus of human written scientific summaries and tries to identify ways for improving the quality of automatic extracts. By recording the distance between the anaphoric expressions and their referents we noticed that humans do not use an aggregation-like process to avoid the dangling anaphors. The small number of anaphoric pronouns noticed in the summaries suggests that inclusion of a pronominal anaphora resolution module in a summarisation system is not necessary, but one which resolves referential noun phrases should be included given the large number of anaphoric noun phrases. These ideas were reiterated by investigating computer produced extracts.
A formal framework for comparing group key agreement protocols with partial forward secrecy

Group key agreement protocols form an essential part of secure group communications. Providing perfect forward secrecy is one of the security requirements of group key agreement protocols. However not all protocols can meet the above requirement and they provide only partial forward secrecy. Partial forward secrecy considers the secrecy of a previously agreed session key, when some long-term keys used in the computation of session key, is compromised. Among the protocols which satisfy partial forward secrecy, the one with lesser probability of loss of session key given that the long-term keys are probably compromised, would be stronger than those with a higher probability of loss of session key given that the long-term keys are compromised with the same probability. To the best of our understanding no formal technique has been proposed for comparing protocols providing partial forward secrecy. We propose a formal framework for comparing group key agreement protocols with respect to partial forward secrecy. A metric - degree of partial forward secrecy - has been introduced to make the comparison. An algorithm is proposed for the computation of the metric. The proposed formal framework is illustrated by comparing a set of group key agreement protocols providing a wide range of partial forward secrecy and which uses different cryptographic primitives. The formal framework would be first step towards development of tools for comparison of group key agreement protocols with respect to partial forward secrecy.
Genetic Operators and Inductive Logic Programming : Fisher ’ s Theorem of Natural Selection

We are interested in inducing equational theories from facts. Our current, limited prototype that implements inductive equational logic programming using evolutionary techniques shows good convergence behavior for small problems but relatively poor convergence for larger problems. Therefore we are concerned with the design of our genetic operators. We chose to study the evolutionary population dynamics of our system through a set of experiments and compare it to the theoretical behavior predicted by Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection in order to determine the quality of our genetic operators. The evolutionary population dynamics of our system behaves as predicted by Fisher’s Theorem and therefore we conclude that the design of our genetic operators is appropriate and that the poor convergence behavior in larger problems is due to limitations of the prototype.
Bioengineering and Biotechnology Perspective Article Cyanobacteria as a Platform for Biofuel Production

Cyanobacteria have great potential as a platform for biofuel production because of their fast growth, ability to fix carbon dioxide gas, and their genetic tractability. Furthermore they do not require fermentable sugars or arable land for growth and so competition with crop-land would be greatly reduced. In this perspective we discuss the challenges and areas for improvement most pertinent for advancing cyanobacterial fuel production, including: improving genetic parts, carbon fixation, metabolic flux, nutrient requirements on a large scale, and photosynthetic efficiency using natural light. On October 31, 2011 world population officially hit seven billion, only 12 years after the six billion mark in 1999. The age of exploration and discovery of untapped land and untouched resources is over, humanity must now learn to cultivate and renew energy sources in the same way that we do for food. The ability of biology to renew and reproduce holds great promise for sustainable fuel production if it can be effectively harnessed. Specifically, pho-tosynthetic life self-replicates the intricate machinery needed for capture and conversion of light energy and waste carbon dioxide. We are already utilizing photosynthesis through the fermentation of farm crops for bioethanol production. However, though this is a renewable source of fuel, it competes with cropland (Wit-cover et al., 2013). What is needed is biological fuel production that functions orthogonally to food production. The use of plant-derived lignocellulose derived from agricultural waste as a source of fermentable sugars is an option favored by many current start-up companies. However, this material consists mainly of heavily cross-linked polymers responsible for plant structure and strength, thus the process for breaking down such material to a form that can be readily utilized by bacteria for fermentation is a highly energy intensive process (Sanderson, 2011). Alternatively, the use of photosynthetic microorganisms as a platform for biological fuel production has gained considerable popularity as an option that could potentially avoid some of the problems aforementioned (Machado and Atsumi, 2012). As pho-tosynthetic microorganisms directly fix carbon dioxide as their primary carbon source, the need for a source of fermentable sugars as a carbon feedstock for biological fuel production could be eliminated. Eukaryotic algae and cyanobacteria have been the primary organisms of interest for this strategy of fuel production. Both can grow much faster than plants and do not need to be grown on arable land (Dismukes et al., 2008). Furthermore, these organisms are grown submerged in water, which allows …
Relational Model of and its Appraisal on Environment Supporting Factors and Customer Knowledge Management Performance

Composed of knowledge acquisition, transfer, application and innovation, customer knowledge management's influences on customer knowledge management performance has been the subject of numerous studies. But relative empirical results are lacking in regard to how corporate optimization efforts of organizational environment will improve its customer knowledge management performance. To further investigate the impacts of organizational supporting factors to customer knowledge management performance, this paper proposes that a dynamic IT system is a key organizational environment supporting factor, which is based on knowledge management, having customer-orientated corporate culture, optimized organizational structure and inter-functional coordination. Against this background, we empirically tested the influences of organizational environment supporting factors on customer knowledge management performance, measured by balanced scorecard. The empirical results show that the organizational environment supporting factor, constituted from customer knowledge management orientation, exerts significant enhancing influences on customer knowledge management performance.
Inflation control around the world: Why are some contries more successful than others?

This paper focuses on two important questions concerning inflation performance in a country sample of forty-two of the most developed countries in the world. The firrst is why inflation tends to be more volatile in some countries than in others, in particular in very small, open economies and emerging market economies compared to the large and more developed ones. The empirical analysis suggests that the volatility of the risk premium in multilateral exchange rates, the degree of exchange rate pass-through to inflation, and monetary policy predictability play a key role in explaining the cross-country variation in inflation volatility. Other variables, related to economic development and size, international trade, output volatility, exposure to external shocks, and central bank independence are not found significant. The second question is what explains the general decline in inflation volatility over the sample period. Using a panel approach, the empirical analysis confirms that the adoption of inflation targeting has played a critical role in this improvement in addition to the three variables found important in the cross-country analysis. Inflation targeting therefore continues to play an important role in reducing inflation volatility even after adding the three controls to the panel analysis. The main conclusions are found to be robust to changes in the country sample and to different estimation methods.
Metabolic, respiratory and cardiovascular responses to acute and chronic hypoxic exposure in tadpole shrimp Triops longicaudatus

SUMMARY Hypoxic exposure experienced during sensitive developmental periods can shape adult physiological capabilities and define regulatory limits. Tadpole shrimp were reared under normoxic (19–21 kPa O2), moderate (10–13 kPa O2) or severe (1–3 kPa O2) hypoxic conditions to investigate the influence of developmental oxygen partial pressure (PO2) on adult metabolic, respiratory and cardiovascular physiology. Developmental PO2 had no effect on metabolic rate or metabolic response to hypoxic exposure in adults. All rearing groups decreased O2 consumption as water PO2 decreased. Heart rate, stroke volume and cardiac output were independent of PO2 down to 5 kPa O2 in all rearing groups. Below this, cardiac output was maintained only in tadpole shrimp reared under severe hypoxic conditions. The enhanced ability to maintain cardiac output was attributed to an increase in hemoglobin concentration and O2-binding affinity in those animals. Oxygen-delivery potential was also significantly higher in the group reared under severe hypoxic conditions (1336 μl O2 min–1) when compared with the group reared under normoxic conditions (274 μl O2 min–1). Differences among the rearing groups that were dependent on hemoglobin were not considered developmental effects because hemoglobin concentration could be increased within seven days of hypoxic exposure independent of developmental PO2. Hypoxia-induced hemoglobin synthesis may be a compensatory mechanism that allows tadpole shrimp to regulate O2 uptake and transport in euryoxic (O2 variable) environments. The results of this study indicate that increased hemoglobin concentration, increased O2-binding affinity and transient decreases in metabolic demand may account for tadpole shrimp hypoxic tolerance.
Design of linear and efficient power amplifiers by generalization of the Doherty theory

The Doherty power amplifier (PA) is now established as one the most widely adopted architectures for enhancement of energy efficiency in wireless communication transmitters. More than 80 years after its invention, most of today's implementations still rely on the original circuit topology. This paper describes a new Doherty solution continuum that is revealed when the original λ/4 combiner is replaced by a generic, analytically derived, lossless combiner network. As a result, novel Doherty PA solutions that in practice are both more efficient and more linear are enabled. A variety of practical design examples are included to illustrate how the presented techniques can enable enhanced performance in both traditional and emerging mm-wave 5G wireless communication transmitter applications.
Influence of baryonic physics on the merger timescale of galaxies in N-body/hydrodynamical simulations

In previous work, we studied the merger timescale of galaxies in a high-resolution cosmological hydro/N-body simulation. We now investigate the potential influence of uncertainties in the numerical implementation of baryonic physics on the merger timescale. The simulation used in the previous work was affected by the overcooling problem, which caused the central galaxies of large halos to be too massive. This might be responsible for producing a shorter merger timescale than that in the real universe. We perform a similar simulation, but in which the stellar mass is reduced significantly to model another extreme case of low stellar mass. Our result indicates that in this case the merger timescale is systematically higher than that we measured before. However, the difference in these two cases is only about 10%, except for satellites in nearly radial orbits where the difference is larger, reaching 23 percent. Since the two simulations correspond to both the low and high stellar mass limiting cases, and nearly radial orbits account for only a small part of the satellites' orbits, our results indicate that the fitting formula that we presented previously is applicable to good accuracy.