Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of myosin light chain kinase with lymphocyte membrane- cytoskeleton complex

A specific antibody against myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) was used to identify the presence of a Ca2+-calmodulin-activated MLCK in mouse 1- lymphoma cells. With a double immunofluorescence technique, MLCK was determined to be accumulated directly under Con A-capped structures in a manner similar to that of previously described accumulation of actomyosin. The lymphocyte MLCK was phosphorylated in the uncapped cell and, by immunoprecipitation with a specific MLCK antibody, was shown to possess a Mr of 130,000. The MLCK was also found to constitute a major fraction of the phosphoproteins present in the plasma membrane associated-cytoskeleton. Myosin light chain kinase catalyzed the phosphorylation of both endogenous lymphocyte myosin light chains and those from smooth and skeletal muscle. The enzyme activity was dependent on the presence of Ca2+-calmodulin and was inhibited by the calmodulin-binding drug, trifluoperazine. These data suggest that the membrane-cytoskeleton-associated MLCK activity may be important in regulation of the actinmyosin contraction which is believed to be required for the collection of surface receptors into capped structures.
Low-complexity sequential lossless coding for piecewise-stationary memoryless sources

Three strongly sequential, lossless compression schemes, one with linearly growing per-letter computational complexity, and two with fixed per-letter complexity, are presented and analyzed for memoryless sources with abruptly changing statistics. The first method, which improves on Willems' (1994) weighting approach, asymptotically achieves a lower bound on the redundancy, and hence is optimal. The second scheme achieves redundancy of O(log N/N) when the transitions in the statistics are large, and O (log log N/log N) otherwise. The third approach always achieves redundancy of O (/spl radic/log N/N). Obviously, the two fixed complexity approaches can be easily combined to achieve the better redundancy between the two. Simulation results support the analytical bounds derived for all the coding schemes.
CASE Tools as Organizational Change: Investigating Incremental and Radical Changes in Systems Development

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study into two organizations' experiences with the adoption and use of CASE tools over time. Using a grounded theory research approach, the study characterizes the organizations' experiences in terms of processes of incremental or radical organizational change. These findings are used to develop a theoretical framework for conceptualizing the organizational issues around the adoption and use of these tools-issues that have been largely missing from contemporary discussions of CASE tools. The paper thus has important implications for research and practice. Specifically, the framework and findings suggest that in order to account for the experiences and outcomes associated with CASE tools, researchers should consider the social context of systems development, the intentions and actions of key players, and the implementation process followed by the organization. Similarly, the paper suggests that practitioners will be better able to manage their organizations' experiences with CASE tools if they understand that such implementations involve a process of organizational change over time and not merely the installation of a new technology.
Isolation, Detection, and Characterization of Enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis in Clinical Samples

Bacteroides fragilis is an extensively studied anaerobic bacterium comprising the normal flora of the human gut. B. fragilis is known to be one of the most commonly isolated species from clinical samples and has been shown to cause a wide range of pathologies in humans [1, 2]. As an opportunistic pathogen B. fragilis can cause abscess formation and bacteremia [2]. Additionally in its enterotoxigenic form, B. fragilis is a known cause of diarrheal illness, is associated with inflammatory bowel disease, and has been recently characterized in patients with colon cancer [3 - 5]. As research in the field of the gut microbiome continues to expand at an ever increasing rate due to advances in the availability of next generation sequencing and analysis tools it is important to outline various molecular methods that can be employed in quickly detecting and isolating relevant strains of B. fragilis. This review outlines methods that are routinely employed in the isolation and detection of B. fragilis, with an emphasis on characterizing enterotoxigenic B. fragilis (ETBF) strains.
Dimensions of Suicidality: Analyzing the Domains of the SIS-MAP Suicide Risk Assessment Instrument and the Development of a Brief Screener

This study aimed at validating the domains of suicidality assessed by the Scale for Impact of Suicidality—Management, Assessment and Planning of Care (SIS-MAP) and creating a brief screener based on the full scale. A total of 50 individuals with suicidal ideation were given the SIS-MAP interview. Support was found for these domains of suicide risk; in particular, the subscales of ideation and protective factors for suicide risk were highly reliable. For each domain of suicidality, items most predictive of total risk index scores were selected to create a brief screener aimed at expediting the assessment process. The screener was reliable, predicted overall suicide risk index scores, and approached significance in predicting subsequent suicide attempts.
Fabrication and characterization of graphene-superconductor devices

Graphene is the first single-atom-thick two-dimensional material and exhibits a large set of interesting properties. This thesis consists of two parts. The first regards the growth of large-area graphene using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Graphene is grown using CVD on copper catalyst showing high quality with charge carrier mobility exceeding 3000 cm2/Vs. Wet chemical etching is used to transfer graphene to insulating substrates. Cu is removed using either diluted HNO3 or diluted HCl with a small amount of added H2O2. To allow for faster transfer and avoid consuming copper, a hydrogen-bubbling method is developed to delaminate graphene from Cu. Graphene transferred this way shows properties similar to those of graphene transferred using wet etching. To avoid transfer-related issues, graphene is grown non-catalytically directly on insulating substrates such as SiO2, Al2O3, and Si3N4. The grain size is only ~10 nm due to the lack of catalytic activity during growth. Such graphene shows inferior electronic properties with mobility in the order of ~tens of cm2/Vs. Despite that, sheet resistance around kΩ, the possibility to grow several layer thick films, and optical properties similar to those of pristine graphene make it an interesting material. A method for cleaning graphene mechanically using atomic force microscopy (AFM) is developed. By appropriate choice of the applied force, atomically smooth (roughness < 0.2 nm) graphene with improved mobility and reduced doping is achieved. The second part of this thesis considers experiments combining graphene and superconductors. A graphene-based cold-electron bolometer is realized using graphene as absorber material. It shows response to 100 GHz radiation at 300 mK and a temperature responsivity of ~0.4 µV/mK at 300 mK. The Aharonov-Bohm effect is studied in graphene having superconducting or normal metal mirrors. The mirrors improve the visibility of the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations, and up to third order oscillations are observed. Weak localization in inhomogeneous magnetic fields is studied in graphene by putting it in close proximity to a type-II superconductor. A deviation from the homogeneous result is observed for fields smaller than the characteristic field Bφ.
The Extent of Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury in Mice Partly Depends on Duration of Mechanical Ventilation

Background. Mechanical ventilation (MV) has the potential to initiate ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI). The pathogenesis of VILI has been primarily studied in animal models using more or less injurious ventilator settings. However, we speculate that duration of MV also influences severity and character of VILI. Methods. Sixty-four healthy C57Bl/6 mice were mechanically ventilated for 5 or 12 hours, using lower tidal volumes with positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) or higher tidal volumes without PEEP. Fifteen nonventilated mice served as controls. Results. All animals remained hemodynamically stable and survived MV protocols. In both MV groups, PaO2 to FiO2 ratios were lower and alveolar cell counts were higher after 12 hours of MV compared to 5 hours. Alveolar-capillary permeability was increased after 12 hours compared to 5 hours, although differences did not reach statistical significance. Lung levels of inflammatory mediators did not further increase over time. Only in mice ventilated with increased strain, lung compliance declined and wet to dry ratio increased after 12 hours of MV compared to 5 hours. Conclusions. Deleterious effects of MV are partly dependent on its duration. Even lower tidal volumes with PEEP may initiate aspects of VILI after 12 hours of MV.
Crack Propagation of Rolling Contact Fatigue in Ball Bearing Steel Due to Tensile Strain

Crack propagations or failure modes in rolling element bearings, which had been difficult to explain via conventional crack propagation mechanisms such as the orthogonal shear stress mechanism, were discussed from the viewpoint of a tensile strain mechanism. Contact stresses are compressive in three axes, whose values differ from each other; then strain can be tensile in one of these directions, acting at a right angle to the direction of maximum compressive stress. A crack is considered to propagate by this tensile strain. When contact stress is small, a crack produced by some cause can propagate by this elastic tensile strain. When contact stress is large, residual tensile strain is produced by plastic deformation, which can also influence the crack propagation. Several failure modes of rolling element bearings, which had been difficult to explain, were explained by tensile strain.
Maximum Power Point Tracking of a Wind Power system based on The PMSG using Sliding Mode Direct Torque Control

This paper investigates the novel Variable Structure Direct Torque Control (VS-DTC) scheme for Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS) based on the Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) to maximize the generated power from wind turbine. The system includes a wind turbine, a PMSG, two converters and an intermediate DC link capacitor. The efficiency of the WECS can be greatly improved using an appropriate control strategy. Furthermore, the system has strong nonlinear multivariable with many uncertain factors and disturbances. Accordingly, the control strategy combines the technique of Direct Torque Control (DTC) and Sliding Mode (SM) nonlinear control theory. Considering the variation of wind speed, the grid-side converter injects the generated power into the AC network, regulates DC-link voltage and it's used to achieve unity power factor, whereas the PMSG side converter is used to achieve Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). Simulation results, by Matlab/Simulink, have shown the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy for WECS based on the PMSG.
Prototyping and sampling experience to evaluate ubiquitous computing privacy in the real world

We developed an inquiry technique, which we called "paratype," based on experience prototyping and event-contingent experience sampling, to survey people in real-life situations about ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technology. We used this tool to probe the opinions of the conversation partners of users of the Personal Audio Loop, a memory aid that can have a strong impact on their privacy. We present the findings of this study and their implications, specifically the need to broaden public awareness of ubicomp applications and the unfitness of traditional data protection guidelines for tackling the privacy issues of many ubicomp applications. We also point out benefits and methodological issues of paratypes and discuss why they are particularly fit for studying certain classes of mobile and ubicomp applications.
Essential Oil of Eucalyptus Gunnii Hook. As a Novel Source of Antioxidant, Antimutagenic and Antibacterial Agents

The present study describes radical scavenging capacity (RSC), antimutagenic and antibacterial properties of the essential oil (EO) of the leaves of Eucalyptus gunnii Hook. (Southern Montenegro). Chemical composition was evaluated by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In oil, 1,8-cineole (67.8%) and α-pinene (14.12%) were the major compounds comprising almost 82% of total EO. EO exhibited moderate DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) scavenging activity, with IC50 value of 7.19 µL/mL. The antimutagenic properties were assayed against the spontaneous and t-BOOH-induced mutagenesis in Escherichia coli IC202 oxyR mutant strain, deficient in removing radical oxygen species (ROS). Reduction of the spontaneous mutagenesis in the presence of E. gunnii EO was only slight, up to 12% at the highest concentration tested. However, when the oxidative mutagen was used, EO displayed more significant reduction of mutagenesis (maximum 23%) in a concentration dependent manner. Antibacterial activity was tested against the selected strains from ATTC and NCIB collections: Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Micrococcus flavus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and the two Escherichia coli strains from our laboratory collection (SY252 and IB112) using both the disk-diffusion and MIC assays. The greatest sensitivity was shown by M. flavus, K. pneumoniae and E. coli lpcA (MIC = 0.83 mg/mL), while the highest resistance was shown by E. coli (ATTC 25922) and S. epidermidis. This study represents the first report on chemical composition and biological activity of the Eucalyptus gunnii in the South Balkan region and beyond.
Ieee Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 1 Robust High-resolution Cloth Using Parallelism, History-based Collisions and Accurate Friction

—In this paper we simulate high resolution cloth consisting of up to 2 million triangles which allows us to achieve highly detailed folds and wrinkles. Since the level of detail is also influenced by object collision and self collision, we propose a more accurate model for cloth-object friction. We also propose a robust history-based repulsion/collision framework where repulsions are treated accurately and efficiently on a per time step basis. Distributed memory parallelism is used for both time evolution and collisions and we specifically address Gauss-Seidel ordering of repulsion/collision response. This algorithm is demonstrated by several high-resolution and high-fidelity simulations.
Exploring the Correlation of Pitch Accents and Semantic Slots for Spoken Language Understanding

We investigate the correlation between pitch accents and semantic slots in human-machine speech. Using an automatic pitch accent detector on the ATIS corpus, we find that most words labelled with semantic slots also carry a pitch accent. Most of the pitch accented words that are not associated with a semantic label are still meaningful, pointing towards the speaker’s intention. Our findings show that prosody constitutes a relevant and useful resource for spoken language understanding, especially considering the fact that our pitch accent detector does not require any kind of manual transcriptions during testing time.
A Color Correlation and Texture-Based Shadow Elimination Method for Rainy Highway Videos

This paper presents a novel method for elimination of cast shadow and water tailing in rainy highway videos. Based on color and texture characteristics of vehicles, background, cast shadow and water tailing region, a fusion method is proposed. First, color correlation is estimated between pixels through dot product of HSI vectors. Second, the texture difference based on gradient of current region and background region is calculated. Then, these two results are fused to both eliminate cast shadow and water tailing region. Experiments show that our method is simple and efficient, also helpful to extract accurate traffic information.
Image‐inspired haptic interaction

We add new modality to image‐based visualization by converting ordinary photos into tangible images, which can be then haptically rendered. This is performed by interactive sketching haptic models on the photos so that the models match the image parts, which will become tangible. In contrast to common geometric modelling, we define the haptic models in a three‐dimensional haptic modelling space distorted by the central projection. Analytic FRep functions (variants of implicit functions) are mostly used for defining the haptic models. The tangible images thus created can realistically simulate some actual three‐dimensional scenes by implementing the principle “What You See Is What You Touch” while in fact still be 2D images. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An analysis of input-output relations in interaction with smart tangible objects

This article focuses on the conceptual relation between the user's input and a system's output in interaction with smart tangible objects. Understanding this input-output relation (IO relation) is a prerequisite for the design of meaningful interaction. A meaningful IO relation allows the user to know what to do with a system to achieve a certain goal and to evaluate the outcome. The work discussed in this article followed a design research process in which four concepts were developed and prototyped. An evaluation was performed using these prototypes to investigate the effect of highly different IO relations on the user's understanding of the interaction. The evaluation revealed two types of IO relations differing in functionality and the number of mappings between the user and system actions. These two types of relations are described by two IO models that provide an overview of these mappings. Furthermore, they illustrate the role of the user and the influence of the system in the process of understanding the interaction. The analysis of the two types of IO models illustrates the value of understanding IO relations for the design of smart tangible objects.
Use of Semantic Features to Classify Patient Smoking Status

The recent i2b2 NLP Challenge smoking classification task offers a rare chance to compare different natural language processing techniques on actual clinical data. We compare the performance of a classifier which relies on semantic features generated by an unmodified version of MedLEE, a clinical NLP engine, to one using lexical features. We also compare the performance of supervised classifiers to rule-based symbolic classifiers. Our baseline supervised classifier with lexical features yields a microaveraged F-measure of 0.81. Our rule-based classifier using MedLEE semantic features is superior, with an F-measure of 0.83. Our supervised classifier trained with semantic MedLEE features is competitive with the top-performing smoking classifier in the i2b2 NLP Challenge, with microaveraged precision of 0.90, recall of 0.89, and F-measure of 0.89.
Physical factors affecting the transport and fate of colloids in saturated porous media

Saturated soil column experiments were conducted to explore the influence of colloid size and soil grain size distribution characteristics on the transport and fate of colloid particles in saturated porous media. Stable monodispersed colloids and porous media that are negatively charged were employed in these studies. Effluent colloid concentration curves and the final spatial distribution of retained colloids by the porous media were found to be highly dependent on the colloid size and soil grain size distribution. Relative peak effluent concentrations decreased and surface mass removal by the soil increased when the colloid size increased and the soil median grain size decreased. These observations were attributed to increased straining of the colloids; i.e., blocked pores act as dead ends for the colloids. When the colloid size is small relative to the soil pore sizes, straining becomes a less significant mechanism of colloid removal and attachment becomes more important. Mathematical modeling of the colloid transport experiments using traditional colloid attachment theory was conducted to highlight differences in colloid attachment and straining behavior and to identify parameter ranges that are applicable for attachment models. Simulated colloid effluent curves using fitted first‐order attachment and detachment parameters were able to describe much of the effluent concentration data. The model was, however, less adequate at describing systems which exhibited a gradual approach to the peak effluent concentration and the spatial distribution of colloids when significant mass was retained in the soil. Current colloid filtration theory did not adequately predict the fitted first‐order attachment coefficients, presumably due to straining in these systems.
k-IOS: Intersection of spheres for efficient proximity query

We present a new bounding volume structure, k-IOS that is an intersection of k spheres, for accelerating proximity query including collision detection and Euclidean distance computation between arbitrary polygon-soup models that undergo rigid motion. Our new bounding volume is easy to implement and highly efficient both for its construction and runtime query. In our experiments, we have observed up to 4.0 times performance improvement of proximity query compared to an existing well-known algorithm based on swept sphere volume (SSV) [1]. Moreover, k-IOS is strictly convex that can guarantee a continuous gradient of distance function with respect to object's configuration parameter.
Mining Commercial Networks from Online Financial News

Financial news articles exhibit sufficient information to disclose commercial entities and their behavior. In this paper, a method for commercial network construction is presented, in which natural language processing techniques are applied in commercial entity tagging and commercial relation mining to handle abbreviation recognition, co-reference resolution and contextual commercial relation mining. Preliminary experiments show our method is encouraging. Another contribution of this work is that some fundamental resources are developed for research on commercial network construction. A commercial entity lexicon is manually compiled to collect active commercial entities and a commercial relation lexicon is created to collect keywords that flag commercial relations. Illustration and applications are also discussed, which undoubtedly discloses a promising future of commercial network study.
Artifact versus reality—How astrocytes contribute to synaptic events

The neuronal doctrine, developed a century ago regards neuronal networks as the sole substrate of higher brain function. Recent advances in glial physiology have promoted an alternative hypothesis, which places information processing in the brain into integrated neuronal‐glial networks utilizing both binary (neuronal action potentials) and analogue (diffusional propagation of second messengers/metabolites through gap junctions or transmitters through the interstitial space) signal encoding. It has been proposed that the feed‐forward and feed‐back communication between these two types of neural cells, which underlies information transfer and processing, is accomplished by the release of neurotransmitters from neuronal terminals as well as from astroglial processes. Understanding of this subject, however, remains incomplete and important questions and controversies require resolution. Here we propose that the primary function of perisynaptic glial processes is to create an “astroglial cradle” that shields the synapse from a multitude of extrasynaptic signaling events and provides for multifaceted support and long‐term plasticity of synaptic contacts through variety of mechanisms, which may not necessarily involve the release of “glio” transmitters. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.