Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nanocomposites of polymer and inorganic nanoparticles for optical and magnetic applications

This article provides an up-to-date review on nanocomposites composed of inorganic nanoparticles and the polymer matrix for optical and magnetic applications. Optical or magnetic characteristics can change upon the decrease of particle sizes to very small dimensions, which are, in general, of major interest in the area of nanocomposite materials. The use of inorganic nanoparticles into the polymer matrix can provide high-performance novel materials that find applications in many industrial fields. With this respect, frequently considered features are optical properties such as light absorption (UV and color), and the extent of light scattering or, in the case of metal particles, photoluminescence, dichroism, and so on, and magnetic properties such as superparamagnetism, electromagnetic wave absorption, and electromagnetic interference shielding. A general introduction, definition, and historical development of polymer–inorganic nanocomposites as well as a comprehensive review of synthetic techniques for polymer–inorganic nanocomposites will be given. Future possibilities for the development of nanocomposites for optical and magnetic applications are also introduced. It is expected that the use of new functional inorganic nano-fillers will lead to new polymer–inorganic nanocomposites with unique combinations of material properties. By careful selection of synthetic techniques and understanding/exploiting the unique physics of the polymeric nanocomposites in such materials, novel functional polymer–inorganic nanocomposites can be designed and fabricated for new interesting applications such as optoelectronic and magneto-optic applications.
Comparative analysis of mitochondrial genomes of Rhizophagus irregularis - syn. Glomus irregulare - reveals a polymorphism induced by variability generating elements.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are involved in one of the most widespread plant-fungus interactions. A number of studies on the population dynamics of AM fungi have used mitochondrial (mt) DNA sequences, and yet mt AM fungus genomes are poorly known. To date, four mt genomes of three species of AM fungi are available, among which are two from Rhizophagus irregularis. In order to study intra- and interstrain mt genome variability of R. irregularis, we sequenced and de novo assembled four additional mt genomes of this species. We used 454 pyrosequencing and Illumina technologies to directly sequence mt genomes from total genomic DNA. The mt genomes are unique within each strain. Interstrain divergences in genome size, as a result of highly polymorphic intergenic and intronic sequences, were observed. The polymorphism is brought about by three types of variability generating element (VGE): homing endonucleases, DNA polymerase domain-containing open reading frames and small inverted repeats. Based on VGE positioning, mt sequences and nuclear markers, two subclades of R. irregularis were characterized. The discovery of VGEs highlights the great intraspecific plasticity of the R. irregularis mt genome. VGEs allow the design of powerful mt markers for the typing and monitoring of R. irregularis strains in genetic and population studies.
Current Research Therapeutic Strategies for Alzheimer's Disease Treatment

Alzheimer's disease (AD) currently presents one of the biggest healthcare issues in the developed countries. There is no effective treatment capable of slowing down disease progression. In recent years the main focus of research on novel pharmacotherapies was based on the amyloidogenic hypothesis of AD, which posits that the beta amyloid (Aβ) peptide is chiefly responsible for cognitive impairment and neuronal death. The goal of such treatments is (a) to reduce Aβ production through the inhibition of β and γ secretase enzymes and (b) to promote dissolution of existing cerebral Aβ plaques. However, this approach has proven to be only modestly effective. Recent studies suggest an alternative strategy centred on the inhibition of the downstream Aβ signalling, particularly at the synapse. Aβ oligomers may cause aberrant N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) activation postsynaptically by forming complexes with the cell-surface prion protein (PrPC). PrPC is enriched at the neuronal postsynaptic density, where it interacts with Fyn tyrosine kinase. Fyn activation occurs when Aβ is bound to PrPC-Fyn complex. Fyn causes tyrosine phosphorylation of the NR2B subunit of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5). Fyn kinase blockers masitinib and saracatinib have proven to be efficacious in treating AD symptoms in experimental mouse models of the disease.
In Vitro Pharmacological Characterization of a Novel Selective α7 Neuronal Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Agonist ABT-107

Enhancement of α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) activity is considered a therapeutic approach for ameliorating cognitive deficits present in Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. In this study, we describe the in vitro profile of a novel selective α7 nAChR agonist, 5-(6-[(3R)-1-azabicyclo[2,2,2]oct-3-yloxy]pyridazin-3-yl)-1H-indole (ABT-107). ABT-107 displayed high affinity binding to α7 nAChRs [rat or human cortex, [3H](1S,4S)-2,2-dimethyl-5-(6-phenylpyridazin-3-yl)-5-aza-2-azoniabicyclo[2.2. 1]heptane (A-585539), Ki = 0.2–0.6 nM or [3H]methyllycaconitine (MLA), 7 nM] that was at least 100-fold selective versus non-α7 nAChRs and other receptors. Functionally, ABT-107 did not evoke detectible currents in Xenopus oocytes expressing human or nonhuman α3β4, chimeric (α6/α3)β4, or 5-HT3A receptors, and weak or negligible Ca2+ responses in human neuroblastoma IMR-32 cells (α3* function) and human α4β2 and α4β4 nAChRs expressed in human embryonic kidney 293 cells. ABT-107 potently evoked human and rat α7 nAChR current responses in oocytes (EC50, 50–90 nM total charge, ∼80% normalized to acetylcholine) that were enhanced by the positive allosteric modulator (PAM) 4-[5-(4-chloro-phenyl)-2-methyl-3-propionyl-pyrrol-1-yl]-benzenesulfonamide (A-867744). In rat hippocampus, ABT-107 alone evoked α7-like currents, which were inhibited by the α7 antagonist MLA. In dentate gyrus granule cells, ABT-107 enhanced spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic current activity when coapplied with A-867744. In the presence of an α7 PAM [A-867744 or N-[(3R)-1-azabicyclo[2.2.2]oct-3-yl]-4-chlorobenzamide hydrochloride (PNU-120596)], the addition of ABT-107 elicited MLA-sensitive α7 nAChR-mediated Ca2+ signals in IMR-32 cells and rat cortical cultures and enhanced extracellular signal-regulated kinase phosphorylation in differentiated PC-12 cells. ABT-107 was also effective in protecting rat cortical cultures against glutamate-induced toxicity. In summary, ABT-107 is a selective high affinity α7 nAChR agonist suitable for characterizing the roles of this subtype in pharmacological studies.
Policy-Based Management Providing QoS in a DiffServ Domain

The Differentiated Services architecture has been proposed to offer quality of service in the Internet. Most works on Diffserv (DS) handles QoS guarantees in a per node basis, which assumes that assuring QoS in a single node also leads to the desired QoS in the entire DS domain. Nevertheless, this is not always true. This paper proposes a framework that offers QoS in a DS domain using Policy basedManagement and fuzzy logic techniques. The QoS controller recon gures all DS nodes according to ingress traf cand domain policies. Policy Based Management is used in this framework to provide QoS in DS domain, control ing heterogeneous equipments of different manufacturers. The performance and function alities of a prototype are shown by simulation of a voice over IP application in different DS topologies.
Isosteric Heat: Comparative Study between Clausius–Clapeyron, CSK and Adsorption Calorimetry Methods

This work presents the calorimetric study of five adsorbents with different chemical and textural characteristics: MOF-199, MCM-41, SBA-15, activated carbon prepared from corn cob (GACKP) and graphite. These solids were used to establish the differences between isosteric heats evaluated by three different methods: Clausius–Clapeyron (C-C), Chakraborty, Saha and Koyama (CSK) and Adsorption Calorimetry (A-Cal). The textural characterization results show solids that have values of specific surface area between 2271 m2·g−1 for the MOF-199 and 5.2 m2·g−1 for the graphite. According to the results obtained for the isosteric heats for each sample, the magnitude varies depending on the coverage of the adsorbate and the textural characteristics of each adsorbent. Solids with an organized structure have isosteric heat values that are coincident among the three methods. Meanwhile, heterogeneous solids such as activated carbon values evaluated by the CKS and C-C have a high dispersion method regarding the adsorption calorimetry method. The results obtained show that the adsorption calorimetry, being a direct experimental measurement method, presents less dispersed data. At low quantities, the isosteric heat of nitrogen adsorption decreased in the order MOF-199, GACKP, MCM-41, SBA-15 and Graphite. The order for the isosteric heats values was coherent with the surface characteristics of each of the solids, especially with the pore size distribution. Finally, throughout the coverage examined in this work, the isosteric heats for nitrogen adsorption determined by adsorption calorimetry (A-Cal) were larger than the evaluated by C-C and CSK indirect methods of vaporization. According to the results, it is shown that the adsorption calorimetry allows values of the isosteric heats of adsorption with an error of less than 2% to be established and also reveals the complex nature of the heterogeneity or homogeneity of the adsorbent.
Design of language models at various phases of Tamil speech recognition system

This paper describes the use of language models in various phases of Tamil speech recognition system for improving its performance. In this work, the language models are applied at various levels of speech recognition such as segmentation phase, recognition phase and the syllable and word level error correction phase. The speech signals were segmented at phonetic level based on their acoustic characteristics. The wrongly identified segmentation points were detected and corrected using articulatory feature based phoneme language model. The segmented signals were mapped to their phonemes. The ambiguities in the recognized phonemes were reduced by using inter and intra word based language models. The recognized phonemes were grouped together to form syllables and then words. The errors in the syllables and words were detected and corrected by using the syllable and morpheme based language models developed for Tamil language. The performance of the Tamil speech recognition system was improved by using the language models at different phases of speech recognition. Recognition rate of 74.11% was obtained by applying language models at segmentation phase, which was further improved to 84.11% at phoneme recognition phase and finally to 87.1% at syllable level and word level recognition phase. Thus the use of language models has drastically reduced the error rates at various levels and improved the recognition rate of Tamil speech recognition system. Keywords: Language model, articulatory features, morphemes, syllables.
Decentralized Utility Maximization for Adaptive Management of Shared Resource Pools

Resource pools are collections of computational resources which can be shared by different applications. The goal with that is to accommodate the workload of each application, by splitting the total amount of resources in the pool among them. In this sense, utility functions have been pointed as the main tool for enabling self-optimizing behaviour in such pools. The goal with that is to allow resources from the pool to be split among applications, in a way that the best outcome is obtained. Whereas different solutions in this context exist, it has been found that none of them tackles the problem we deal with in a total decentralized way. In this paper, we then present a decentralized utility maximization approach for adaptive and optimal management of shared resource pools.
Profiling energy consumption of DASH video streaming over 4G LTE networks

Video streaming is a major source of unprecedented traffic growth in mobile networks, especially in high-speed 4G LTE networks. However, video streaming also poses a critical challenge on energy consumption. The battery-on smartphones and tablets can not sustain active online video streaming for several hours over cellular networks. In this paper, we seek to understand how DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) based video streaming can be energy efficient in the context of LTE networks. We profile the impacts of different streaming strategies and configurations (i.e., segment length and buffer size) on energy consumption. We analyze radio resource control (RRC) to explain and quantify their impacts. Our measurements in real LTE networks show that there still exists a large saving space (more than 30%) for us to improve energy efficiency of mobile devices using appropriate DASH settings. The saving space in some extreme cases can be even larger.
Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Role of Family in Postsecondary Settings: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

This article provides a systematic review of the literature pertaining to students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the potential role of family members in higher education settings. The research questions guiding the review included: (a) What is the identified role(s) of family members of postsecondary students with ASD in postsecondary educational settings? and (b) Does family involvement in postsecondary education settings result in positive outcomes for students with ASD? The search terms, Autism Spectrum Disorder, familial involvement, postsecondary education, and educational success and appropriate synonyms, yielded six articles that fit the inclusion criteria for this review: empirically-based studies conducted in the United States, either dissertations or peer-reviewed articles, published between the years 2003 and 2014, and included some mention of family support or involvement for college students with ASD. Given the very small sample of articles that met the criteria for this review and the limitations of each article, not enough research on family involvement exists to answer the research questions. It is unclear whether or not family members should be involved in postsecondary educational settings, what their potential roles might be, and if family member involvement would be beneficial for students with ASD.
Testing the Competing Entrepreneurial Intention's Antecedents on Public University Students

This study focused on the entrepreneurial intention’s antecedents in higher-education level. It examined the effect of need for achievement, self-efficacy, and risk-taking propensity on intention to be entrepreneurs. It used a sample of 204public university students and analyzed the proposed hypotheses by using multivariate analysis. The major findings are: [1] tendency to take risks is the dominant antecedent, compared to other variables, [2] students’ self-efficacy correlates positively with intention to be entrepreneurs, and [3] student’s positive perception on need for achievement and entrepreneurial intention mirrors a dramatic change of social perception on self-employed status in highly educated people. The successful government policy on entrepreneurship education at the university level can be a reference for similar programs. This study contributes on building the entrepreneurialeducation’s body of knowledge through testing the inducing entrepreneurship subject as a compulsory subject.
Differences in maternal lineages of New Zealand Black mice defined by restriction endonuclease analysis of mitochondrial DNA and by expression of maternally transmitted antigen

Two substrains of New Zealand Black (NZB) mice have been compared with respect to expression of a maternally transmitted cell surface antigen, Mta, defined by cloned cytolytic T cells, and for restriction enzyme polymorphisms of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). These independent assays of maternal cytoplasmic inheritance provide strong evidence for genetic contamination of the NZB/BlPt substrain (NZB/Bl mice from Michael Potter's separate colony at the National Institutes of Health), in which the typical NZB immunologic abnormalities are at least partially ameliorated. The decisive data are the restriction enzyme maps of mtDNA for NZB/BlPt, which were identical with those of the common "old inbred" strains and quite different from those of NZB/BlN (NZB/Bl mice from the breeding facility at the National Institutes of Health). It is probable that the contamination of the NZB/BlPt substrain is related to phenotypic changes in their autoimmune state. More interestingly, the data are consistent with, although they do not prove, involvement of the mitochondrial genome in expression of a cell surface molecule.
Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience

A new approach for fast parallel reductions on trees over distributed memory environments is presented. The start point of our approach is to employ the serialized representation of trees. Along this data representation with high memory locality and ease of initial data representation, we developed an parallelized algorithm which shares the essence with the parallel algorithm for parentheses matching problems. Our algorithm not only is proven to be theoretically efficient, but also has a fast implementation in a BSP style.
Nonlinear summation of M- and L-cone inputs to phasic retinal ganglion cells of the macaque

We have studied the responses of ganglion cells in the macaque retina to stimuli that alternate in color. With most color combinations, the phasic retinal ganglion cells, which sum input from M- and L-cones in both center and surround, showed a response with twice the alternation frequency at equal luminance. This frequency doubling was directly related to the degree to which the M- and L-cones were stimulated out- of-phase with one another, and thus varied with the wavelength combinations used. It was absent with wavelength combinations that lay along tritanopic confusion lines, when at equal luminance the M- and L- cones are not modulated. Such a frequency-doubled response is evidence for a nonlinearity at or before M- and L-cone summation. The effect became much smaller or was abolished when the receptive field center alone was stimulated, indicating that its mechanism lies in the surround or in a center-surround interaction. Also, it was much more marked at high luminance levels, being almost absent at retinal illuminances below 100 td. Its origin is not clear, but it seems to derive more from the L- than the M-cone. The results imply that phasic cells, through this nonlinearity, could respond to the red-green equal luminance borders used in some psychophysical experiments.
3-Draw: a tool for designing 3D shapes

A fundamentally new type of CAD system for designing shape that is intuitive, easy to use, and powerful is presented. It is based on a paradigm that can be described as designing directly in 3-D. By virtue of two hand-held sensors, designers using 3-Draw to sketch their ideas in the air feel as if they're actually holding and working on objects. Current design practice and related work are reviewed, and current work on 3-Draw is summarized. To capture the flavor of 3-Draw, construction of a sample model of a 12-m yacht is described. 3-Draw's features and data structures are discussed. <<ETX>>
Factor analysis-based approaches applied to the speaker diarization task of meetings : a preliminary study

This paper presents a preliminary study on the use of the Factor Analysis (FA) methods in an automatic speaker diarization process, dedicated to the meeting rooms. Indeed, the speaker diarization process, based on the topdown E-HMM approach, integrates a FA-based speaker modeling in an additional resegmentation step, which aims at helping the refinement of the output segmentation. Classically applied in speaker recognition to deal with channel variability issues, two main schemes of the FA application are proposed here: to deal with the (1) inter-speaker variability and with (2) the inter-segment variability. Different kinds of experiments have been conducted on the dataset of the last NIST/RT’09 evaluation campaign, leading to very interesting and promising results. For instance, they show that the couple of schemes proposed in this paper obtained competitive performance, compared to the baseline process, despite the small amount of development data used in this paper for the FA parameter estimation. Unexpectedly, they tend to show that the inter-segment variability component can be helpful for speaker diarization.
A double-blind, placebo-controlled test o f2do fcalorie deprivation: effects on cognition, activity, sleep, and interstitial glucose

Background: Anecdotal information and limited research suggest that short-term caloric deprivation adversely affects cognition. However, this issue has not been studied using double-blind, placebo-controlledprocedures,becausetheformulationofacaloriedeficientfeedingregimenidenticaltoonewithcaloriesisimpossible using ordinary foods. Therefore, test meals varying in caloric content, but indistinguishable in sensory characteristics, were formulated using hydrocolloid-based gels as the principal structural component. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of 2 d of near-total caloric deprivation on cognitive function, satiety, activity, sleep, and glucose concentrations in a controlled environment. Design: A double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study of caloricdeprivationwasconducedinacontrolledenvironmentfor48h. Cognitive function in 27 healthy young subjects was assessed repeatedlywithstandardizedtestsofvigilance,reactiontime,learning, memory,logicalreasoning,mood,andsatiety.Wrist-wornmonitors were used to assess ambulatory vigilance, activity, and sleep. Interstitial glucose concentrations were assessed continuously with a minimally invasive monitor. Results: When the subjects received the near calorie-free diets, meancalorieconsumptiontotaled1311kJ(313kcal)overthetesting period. During the fully fed treatment sessions, the subjects consumed a mean of 9612 kJ/d (2294 kcal/d), which matched their individual, daily energy requirements. Satiety and interstitial glucose concentrations were lower during the calorie-deprived diet (P 0.001) than during the fully fed diet. There were no detectable effects of calorie deprivation on any aspect of cognitive performance, ambulatory vigilance, activity, or sleep. The mood states assessed,includingfatigue,werenotaffectedbycaloriedeprivation. Conclusions: Cognitive performance, activity, sleep, and mood are not adversely affected in healthy humans b y2do fcaloriedeprivation when the subjects and investigators are unaware of the calorie content of the treatments. Am J Clin Nutr 2008;88: 667–76.
Noise in a phase-quadrature pulsed energy restore oscillator

Low phase noise oscillators are ubiquitous building blocks for radio frequency applications and pulse energy restore oscillator can represent the paradigm for a circuit class characterized by improved noise figures. Design of these oscillators requires numerical simulation tools capable of finding both a steady state solution and an accurate variational representation of the circuit model, even if the circuit model does not satisfy Lipschitz continuity. An extended steady state method with this capability has been implemented in our simulator and it has been used to asses the design choices in a test case oscillator, as described in this paper.