Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural and Functional Analysis of Human Cytomegalovirus US3 Protein

ABSTRACT Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) unique short region 3 (US3) protein, a type I membrane protein, prevents maturation of class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules by retaining them in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and thus helps inhibit antigen presentation to cytotoxic T cells. US3 molecules bind to class I MHC molecules in a transient fashion but retain them very efficiently in the ER nonetheless. The US3 luminal domain is responsible for ER retention of US3 itself, while both the US3 luminal and transmembrane domains are necessary for retaining class I MHC in the ER. We have expressed the luminal domain of US3 molecule in Escherichia coli and analyzed its secondary structure by using nuclear magnetic resonance. We then predicted the US3 tertiary structure by modeling it based on the US2 structure. Unlike the luminal domain of US2, the US3 luminal domain does not obviously interact with class I MHC molecules. The luminal domain of US3 dynamically oligomerizes in vitro and full-length US3 molecules associate with each other in vivo. We present a model depicting how dynamic oligomerization of US3 may enhance its ability to retain class I molecules within the ER.
Comparing CAVE, wall, and desktop displays for navigation and wayfinding in complex 3D models

Computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D visualization techniques are at the heart of many engineering processes such as aircraft, ship, and automobile design. These visualization tasks require users to navigate or wayfind through complex 3D geometric models consisting of millions of parts. Despite numerous studies, it remains unclear whether large-screen displays improve user performance for such activities. We present a user study comparing standard desktop, immersive room (i.e., CAVE), and wall displays with 3D stereo/head-tracking, and mono/no head-tracking. We observed individual differences between users and found that the presence of contextual structure greatly impacted performance, suggesting that providing structure and developing interaction techniques accommodating a wide range of users yields better performance than focusing on display characteristics alone
Cooperative MIMO-beamforming for multiuser relay networks

In this paper, we develop a beamforming algorithm for multiuser MIMO-relaying wireless systems. We consider a relaying scenario with multiple sources transmitting to one or more destination nodes through several relay terminals. Each relay is equipped with multiple antennas. We jointly design the beamforming matrices of the cooperating relays by minimizing both the noise received at each destination node and the interference caused by the sources not targeting this node. We impose additional constraints that preserve the received signal from each source at its targeted destination node. The relay beamforming problem is shown to be a convex optimization problem and is formulated as a second-order cone program that can be efficiently solved using interior point methods. Numerical simulations are presented showing the superior performance of our beamforming technique compared to previously proposed zero forcing relay beamforming.
Depth Compensation Model for Gaze Estimation in Sport Analysis

A depth compensation model is presented as a novel approach to reduce the effects of parallax error for head-mounted eye trackers. The method can reduce the parallax error when the distance between the user and the target is prior known. The model is geometrically presented and its performance is tested in a totally controlled environment with aim to check the influences of eye tracker parameters and ocular biometric parameters on its behavior. We also present a gaze estimation method based on epipolar geometry for binocular eye tracking setups. The depth compensation model has shown very promising to the field of eye tracking. It can reduce 10 times less the influence of parallax error in multiple depth planes.
Eszopiclone treatment for insomnia: effect size comparisons in patients with primary insomnia and insomnia with medical and psychiatric comorbidity.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this post hoc analysis was to compare the treatment effect size of eszopiclone 3 mg for insomnia in patients with a diagnosis of primary insomnia and in several of the psychiatric and medical conditions that are most commonly comorbid with insomnia. METHOD Data were analyzed from 5 large, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of adult outpatients of at least 1 month duration published between 2006 and 2009. Diary-derived indices of sleep and daytime functioning and the Insomnia Severity Index were compared for patients with primary insomnia (DSM-IV-TR criteria, n = 828) and for those with insomnia comorbid with major depressive disorder (MDD, DSM-IV-TR criteria, n = 545), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD, DSM-IV-TR criteria, n = 595), perimenopause/postmenopause (Stages of Reproductive Aging Workshop criteria, n = 410), and rheumatoid arthritis (American College of Rheumatology criteria, n = 153). Cohen d effect sizes were calculated for each individual study as the between-treatment difference score divided by the pooled standard deviation. RESULTS Effect sizes ranged from 0.40 to 0.69 (small-medium) as early as week 1 and were maintained at 0.26-0.63 at week 4 for sleep latency, wake time after sleep onset, and total sleep time. Sleep latency and total sleep time effect sizes increased from week 1 to week 4 in the primary insomnia group. At week 4, effect sizes on all 3 parameters and the Insomnia Severity Index tended to be highest for the primary insomnia patients and tended to be lowest for patients with comorbid GAD and MDD. The effect sizes for daytime functioning were small for all insomnia patient groups. CONCLUSIONS Eszopiclone 3 mg is an effective treatment for insomnia across 5 clinically diverse patient populations; however, magnitude of effect is mediated by underlying comorbidity and their treatments, with largest measures of effect seen in primary insomnia and lowest in MDD and GAD. These consistent results, and the fact that clinical trials were conducted in patients being treated as appropriate for their comorbid clinical conditions, support the results' real-world generalizability and utility to clinical practice.
Evolutionary perspectives on the origins of human social institutions

L'A. propose un modele sur les origines des institutions sociales integrant les deux grandes orientations theoriques sur la question. A partir de l'examen de plusieurs institutions sociales specifiques, il developpe un modele dans lequel la communaute, investie d'une configuration probable de relations sociales, constitue l'unite fondamentale de l'organisation sociale humaine, et qui affirme que la potentialite des communautes de varier en fonction de la demographie et de l'ecologie fonde les parametres de l'evolution d'autres institutions sociales. Le contexte chronologique est l'evolution a long terme du lignage humain. L'A. soutient que les differentes institutions sociales ont des histoires differentes : certaines remontent a l'origine du genre Homo, d'autres aux changements evolutionnistes plus recents, d'autres encore a l'expansion demographique humaine des dix mille dernieres annees.
Further results on the DRF method for edge detection

The magnitude-distance and maximum-value-distance filters are analyzed, and fast realizations are proposed to implement a DRF cascade for edge detection. It is shown that the maximum-value-distance filter is well adapted to parallel processing and works two times as fast as the magnitude-distance filter. It is shown also that the adaptive gradient is an optimal estimate for edge-pixel verification after zero-crossing detection. The efficiency of the proposed algorithms is confirmed by experimental results. <<ETX>>
Deferasirox removes cardiac iron and attenuates oxidative stress in the iron‐overloaded gerbil

Iron‐induced cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in iron‐overloaded patients. Deferasirox is a novel, once daily oral iron chelator that was recently approved for the treatment of transfusional iron overload. Here, we investigate whether deferasirox is capable of removing cardiac iron and improving iron‐induced pathogenesis of the heart using the iron overload gerbil model. Animals were randomly divided into three groups: control, iron overload, and iron overload + deferasirox treatment. Iron‐dextran was given 100 mg/kg per 5 days i.p for 10 weeks. Deferasirox treatment was taken post iron loading and was given at 100 mg/kg/day p.o for 1 or 3 months. Cardiac iron concentration was determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy. Compared with the untreated group, deferasirox treatment for 1 and 3 months decreased cardiac iron concentration 17.1% (P = 0.159) and 23.5% (P < 0.05), respectively. These treatment‐associated reductions in cardiac iron were paralleled by decreases in tissue ferritin expression of 20% and 38% at 1 and 3 months, respectively (P < 0.05). Using oxyblot analysis and hydroethidine fluorescence, we showed that deferasirox significantly reduces cardiac protein oxidation and superoxide abundance by 36 and 47.1%, respectively (P < 0.05). Iron‐induced increase in oxidative stress was also associated with increased phosphorylation of ERK‐, p38‐, and JNK‐mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK). Interestingly, deferasirox treatment significantly diminished the phosphorylation of all three MAPK subfamilies. These results suggest that deferasirox may confer a cardioprotective effect against iron induced injury. Am. J. Hematol. 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Three Tools for Forecasting Federal Elections: Lessons from 2001

What is the best way to predict Australian federal election results? This article analyses three forecasting tools: opinion polls, economic models, and betting odds. Historically, we find that opinion polls taken close to the election are quite accurate, while economic models provide better medium-run forecasts. The November 2001 federal election largely follows this pattern, although the economic models provided more accurate projections than recorded through the 1990s. Against these, we compare betting odds, analysing a rich data source from one of Australia's largest bookmakers, Centrebet. The betting market not only correctly forecast the election outcome, but also provided very precise estimates of outcomes in a host of individual electorates. Betting fluctuations present an intriguing quantitative record of the shifting fortunes of the campaign. Particularly in marginal seats, the press may have better served its readers by reporting betting odds than by conducting polls. We conclude that the results of these three models can help determine how important the events of August and September 2001 were in deciding the outcome of the election.
A unifying framework for understanding state-dependent network dynamics in cortex

Activity in neocortex exhibits a range of behaviors, from irregular to temporally precise, and from weakly to strongly correlated. So far there has been no single theoretical framework that could explain all these behaviors, leaving open the possibility that they are a signature of radically different mechanisms. Here, we suggest that this is not the case. Instead, we show that a single theory can account for a broad spectrum of experimental observations, including specifics such as the fine temporal details of subthreshold cross-correlations. For the model underlying our theory, we need only assume a small number of well-established properties common to all local cortical networks. When these assumptions are combined with realistically structured input, they produce exactly the repertoire of behaviors that is observed experimentally, and lead to a number of testable predictions.
One year experience using mycobacterial blood cultures to diagnose tuberculosis in patients with prolonged fever in Vietnam

Introduction To evaluate the use of mycobacterial blood cultures (MBC) in diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) in patients with prolonged fever admitted to a Vietnamese referral hospital. Results MBCs from 94 patients (66% male; median age 33 years; 75% HIV positive) were evaluated: 14 were mycobacterium positive (all HIV positive), and MBC was the only positive specimen in 9 cases (41%). Three positive cases were identified as Mycobacterium avium and the remaining M. tuberculosis (one case could not be identified). Conclusion MBC can be a valuable additional method to diagnose TB, particularly in immunosuppressed HIV patients when sputum cannot be collected.
Switching transients in distribution systems whith Distributed Generation

This paper describes methods used to analyze power system transients. Overvoltage analysis techniques are evaluated. The complete system, including power cables and power generation is simulated using the ATP version of the Electromagnetic Transient Program (EMTP) in addition with several experimental cases. A new method to power quality analysis, and detection of switching of the reclose rele and cable voltage reflections using wavelets, is proposed. Comparisons between the power cable models are included. Experimental results of adverse effects in a power generation distributed along the feeder and power cables from transmission lines are shown.
Detection and modeling of non‐Gaussian apparent diffusion coefficient profiles in human brain data

This work details the observation of non‐Gaussian apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) profiles in multi‐direction, diffusion‐weighted MR data acquired with easily achievable imaging parameters (b ≈ 1000 s/mm2). A technique is described for modeling the profile of the ADC over the sphere, which can capture non‐Gaussian effects that can occur at, for example, intersections of different tissue types or white matter fiber tracts. When these effects are significant, the common diffusion tensor model is inappropriate, since it is based on the assumption of a simple underlying diffusion process, which can be described by a Gaussian probability density function. A sequence of models of increasing complexity is obtained by truncating the spherical harmonic (SH) expansion of the ADC measurements at several orders. Further, a method is described for selection of the most appropriate of these models, in order to describe the data adequately but without overfitting. The combined procedure is used to classify the profile at each voxel as isotropic, anisotropic Gaussian, or non‐Gaussian, each with reference to the underlying probability density function of displacement of water molecules. We use it to show that non‐Gaussian profiles arise consistently in various regions of the human brain where complex tissue structure is known to exist, and can be observed in data typical of clinical scanners. The performance of the procedure developed is characterized using synthetic data in order to demonstrate that the observed effects are genuine. This characterization validates the use of our method as an indicator of pathology that affects tissue structure, which will tend to reduce the complexity of the selected model. Magn Reson Med 48:331–340, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Guiding a Person with Blindness and Intellectual Disability in Indoor Travel with Fewer Auditory Cues

This study assessed the possibility of guiding a person with blindness and intellectual disability during indoor travel with fewer auditory cues. To improve the chances of success, the orientation system used to present the cues was set to monitor the person's travel and to provide extra cues in case of errors. The results indicated that infrequent presentations of the cues and the provision of extra cues in case of errors maintained high levels of independent moves, albeit of increased duration.
A tool for characterizing and succinctly representing the data access patterns of applications

Application address streams contain a wealth of information that can be used to characterize the behavior of applications. However, the collection and handling of address streams is complicated by their size and the cost of collecting them. We present PSnAP, a compression scheme specifically designed for capturing the fine-grained patterns that occur in well structured, memory intensive, high performance computing applications. PSnAP profiles are human readable and reveal a great deal of information about the application memory behavior. In addition to providing insight to application behavior the profiles can be used to replay a proxy synthetic address stream for analysis. We demonstrate that the synthetic address streams mimic very closely the behavior of the originals.
ECPC

Sensor networks have particularly important applications in challenging environments. However, those challenging environments also pose significant challenges to network sustainability and reliability. In such environments, the network often becomes disruptive and even unavailable during downtime. This results in undesired loss of valuable spatial-temporal sensor data. Data persistence can be achieved by using in-situ encoding and caching of data through distributed mechanisms. However, the existing methods in the literature are mainly based on network random walks, which not only incur significant communication overhead, but also are prone to network or node failures. In this article, we present ECPC, a distributed Erasure Coding with randomized Power Control protocol for preserving data in disruptive sensor networks. ECPC only requires each sensor node to perform several rounds of broadcast in its neighborhood at some randomly chosen radio transmission power levels, and thus it incurs low communication overhead. We proved that ECPC achieves the expected code degree distribution and pseudo-global randomness of erasure coding principles. We have also evaluated the performance of ECPC by comparing it with several key related approaches in the literature (such as EDFC and RCDS). The performance comparisons validate that our proposed ECPC protocol can reach higher data reliability under varying node failure probabilities. In addition, ECPC protocol is also shown to be scalable with different network sizes.
[Residues of antibiotics and other inhibitory substances in milk].

The aim of the study was determination of the contamination of raw milk, milk for consumption and powdered milk with antibiotics and inhibitory substances. The study was carried out in the years 1990-1993 with the assistance of the Province Sanitary-Epidemiological Stations using methods agreeing with the Polish Norms 91/A-86033: the enzymatic test Penzym, the microbiological tests S.STD Polulest and the plate method. In all, 16334 samples were tested. Depending on the method used the number of positive samples was: in raw milk: from 13.1 to 22.4% in milk for consumption: from 10.5 to 19.5% in powdered milk: from 12.9 to 18.2%. These results point out that the health quality of milk is insufficient, both milk for processing and milk in the market failing to meet the standards. The source of the seem to be inadequate hygienic conditions during milking and, especially, failure to meet the necessary requirements for keeping the time period during which milk is not suitable for consumption after treatment with antibiotics.
Low-cost semantic enhancement to digital library metadata and indexing: Simple yet effective strategies

Most existing digital libraries use traditional lexically-based retrieval techniques. For established systems, completely replacing, or even making significant changes to the document retrieval mechanism (document analysis, indexing strategy, query processing and query interface) would require major technological effort, and would most likely be disruptive. In this paper, we describe ways to use the results of semantic analysis and disambiguation, while retaining an existing keyword-based search and lexicographic index. We engineer this so the output of semantic analysis (performed off-line) is suitable for import directly into existing digital library metadata and index structures, and thus incorporated without the need for architecture modifications.
Accelerating multiple alignment on FPGA with a high-level hardware description language

The paper describes an experience of creating a hardware implementation of a pairwise sequence alignment algorithm in a high-level hardware description language. The implementation is created to be run on an FPGA with a high latency interface to a PC (ethernet). Thus, a lot of control logic is implemented in hardware together with the main pipeline. We use a HaSCoL hardware description language for that purpose and discuss pros and cons of this approach compared to software implementation of the control logic on an embedded processor. We also discuss how the language helps to describe hardware and how it could help more as well.
Instructional Support for Teachers and Guided Feedback for Students in an Adaptive eLearning Environment

Adaptive Tutorials are Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) in which students typically interact with a simulation towards a task-goal while being guided and remediated. Adaptive Tutorials can exhibit different kinds of feedback: students are given guidance based on their interaction, and teachers can also receive feedback on their own authoring choices to drive reflection and content adaptation. This paper will discuss different types of feedback which students are given within Adaptive Tutorials and their pedagogical utility. It will then look at providing teachers with timely support and feedback as well as post-hoc solution traces, to improve student learning. We suggest a refined ITS design and development lifecycle to better support teachers in the design of good pedagogy. We provide this in the form of the Adaptive eLearning Platform, which is a tool to support teachers in the adaptation of tutorials and the creation of customized student feedback. This in turn can result in an improved student experience, with more guidance and better learning.
Pyridine nucleotide cycle of Salmonella typhimurium: isolation and characterization of pncA, pncB, and pncC mutants and utilization of exogenous nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide

Mutants of Salmonella typhimurium LT-2 deficient in nicotinamidase activity (pncA) or nicotinic acid phosphoribosyltransferase activity (pncB) were isolated as resistant to analogs of nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. Information obtained from interrupted mating experiments placed the pncA gene at 27 units and the pncB gene at 25 units on the S. typhimurium LT-2 linkage map. A major difference in the location of the pncA gene was found between the S. typhimurium and Escherichia coli linkage maps. The pncA gene is located in a region in which there is a major inversion of the gene order in S. typhimurium as compared to that in E. coli. Growth experiments using double mutants blocked in the de novo pathway to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) (nad) and in the pyridine nucleotide cycle (pnc) at either the pncA or pncB locus, or both, have provided evidence for the existence of an alternate recycling pathway in this organism. Mutants lacking this alternate cycle, pncC, have been isolated and mapped via cotransduction at 0 units. Utilization of exogenous NAD was examined through the use of [14C]carbonyl-labeled NAD and [14C]adenine-labeled NAD. The results of these experiments suggest that NAD is degraded to nicotinamide mononucleotide at the cell surface. A portion of this extracellular nicotinamide mononucleotide is then transported across the cell membrane by nicotinamide mononucleotide glycohydrolase and degraded to nicotinamide in the process. The remaining nicotinamide mononucleotide accumulates extracellularly and will support the growth of nadA pncB mutants which cannot utilize the nicotinamide resulting from the major pathway of NAD degradation. A model is presented for the utilization of exogenous NAD by S. typhimurium LT-2.