Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Salicylic Acid and Sodium Salicylate Alleviate Cadmium Toxicity to Different Extents in Maize (Zea mays L.)

The role of salicylic acid in Cd tolerance has attracted more attention recently but no information is available on the efficiency of different forms of salicylic acid. The aim was thus to investigate whether both the acid and salt forms of salicylic acid provide protection against Cd stress and to compare their mode of action. Young maize plants were grown under controlled environmental conditions. One group of 10-day-old seedlings were treated with 0.5 mM SA or NaSA for 1 day then half of the pants were treated with 0.5 mM Cd for 1 day. Another group of seedlings was treated with 0.5 mM CdSO4 for 1 day without pre-treatment with SA or NaSA, while a third group was treated simultaneously with Cd and either SA or NaSA. Both salicylic acid forms reduced the Cd accumulation in the roots. Treatment with the acidic form meliorated the Cd accumulation in the leaves, while Na-salicylate increased the phytochelatin level in the roots and the amount of salicylic acid in the leaves. Furthermore, increased antioxidant enzyme activity was mainly induced by the acid form, while glutathione-related redox changes were influenced mostly by the salt form. The acidic and salt forms of salicylic acid affected the two antioxidant systems in different ways, and the influence of these two forms on the distribution and detoxification of Cd also differed. The present results also draw attention to the fact that generalisations about the stress protective mechanisms induced by salicylic acid are misleading since different forms of SA may exert different effects on the plants via separate mechanisms.
Adaptive routing for video streaming with QoS support over SDN networks

In this paper, we propose an adaptive routing approach for video streaming with QoS (Quality of Service) support over Software Defined Networks (SDN), called ARVS. In our approach, base layer packets and enhancement layer packets of video bit streams are treated separately as two levels of QoS flows (level-1 and level-2 QoS flows). During video streaming, if the shortest path does not satisfy the delay variation constraint, the base layer packets have the first priority to be rerouted to a calculated feasible path based on the available bandwidth of this path, and the enhancement layer packets will stay on the shortest path. However, if there is no available bandwidth in this path, the base layer packets will stay on the shortest path while the enhancement layer packets will be rerouted to this path. In this way, the video quality would be enhanced due to the congestion of the shortest path has been mitigated. Simulation results have shown that, compared with OpenQoS, our approach can reduce up to 77.3% of the packet loss rate for the base layer packets of video bit streams and also enhance at least 51.4% coverage under various network loads of the shortest path and the feasible path.
COHOMOLOGY AND REPRESENTATION THEORY

In these lectures we shall consider a few aspects of the interaction between group cohomology and group representation theory. That interaction has grown tremendously in the last thirty years to the point that homological methods are now standard in modular representation theory. The subject is much too large to give a complete picture in the space of a half semester of lectures. Consequently, we will concentrate on the methods and results required for one application: the classification of endotrivial modules. The classification is a statement about modules over group algebras and makes almost no mention of homological algebra or cohomology. Yet its proof relies in fundamental ways on the therory of support varieties, on the computations of the cohomology rings of extraspecial groups and on several items from group cohomology. An outline of the course is the following. In general we assume a basic knowledge of homological algebra and group representations. The first two or three sections will cover foundational material and be treated mostly as review. In the later sections we encounter some theorems whose proofs, because of time constraints, will be omited or only sketched.
A Semi-supervised Clustering Approach for Semantic Slot Labelling

Work on training semantic slot labellers for use in Natural Language Processing applications has typically either relied on large amounts of labelled input data, or has assumed entirely unlabelled inputs. The former technique tends to be costly to apply, while the latter is often not as accurate as its supervised counterpart. Here, we present a semi-supervised learning approach that automatically labels the semantic slots in a set of training data and aims to strike a balance between the dependence on labelled data and prediction accuracy. The essence of our algorithm is to cluster clauses based on a similarity function that combines lexical and semantic information. We present experiments that compare different similarity functions for both our semi-supervised setting and a fully unsupervised baseline. While semi-supervised learning expectedly outperforms unsupervised learning, our results show that (1) this effect can be observed based on very few training data instances and that increasing the size of the training data does not lead to better performance, and (2) that lexical and semantic information contribute differently in different domains so that clustering based on both types of information offers the best generalisation.
Patrolling a Region with a Structured Swarm of Robots with Limited Individual Capabilities

We present methods for patrolling and surveillance in an environment with a distributed swarm of robots with limited capabilities. We make use of a distributed triangulation of the work space, in which a set of n stationary sensors provides coverage control; in addition, there are k mobile robots that can move between the sensors. Building on our prior work on structured exploration of unknown spaces with multi-robot systems, we can make use of a triangulation that is constructed in a distributed fashion and guarantees good local navigation properties, even when sensors and robots have very limited capabilities. This physical data structure allows triangles to sense, compute, and communicate the information required to guide navigating robots while circulating in the region. We present: 1) A description of a real-world robot platform (the r-one robots) with limited capabilities that allows coverage, communication and mobility 2) A summary of how to achieve coverage by building a triangulation of the workspace, and the ensuing properties. 3) A description of a simple local policy (LRV, for Least Recently Visited) for achieving coverage by the patrolling robots. 4) A description of a alternative local policy (AR, for Age Rank) that identifies important vertices, thus ensuring smaller refresh times for those, and allowing more flexible response to events. 5) Experimental results for both policies.
Changes in Investors' Risk Appetite - An Assessment of Financial Integration and Interdependence

Investors' attitude towards risk is a key factor driving the movement in asset prices. Global reduction in investors' risk appetite has coincided with episodes of global financial market correction. In this paper, we derive a measure for risk appetite based on the methodology of Gai and Vause (2006) for investors in the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong, and use them to help assess the issues of financial integration and financial market interdependence. Indicators are constructed to gauge the relationship between the risk appetite and the extent of financial integration between these stock markets. The results from the indicators point to very limited financial integration between these five financial markets. Furthermore, the degree of co-movement between risk appetite measures and the stock and bond market performance is examined using the dynamic conditional correlation. The empirical results reveal that there exists interdependence between the changes in the risk appetite and the stock market returns in the US, Japan and Hong Kong, while the "flight-to-quality" phenomenon is apparent in the bond market of the five economies.
Targeting of Moloney murine leukemia virus gag precursor to the site of virus budding

Retrovirus Moloney murine leukemia virus (M-MuLV) matures by budding at the cell surface. Central to the budding process is the myristoylated viral core protein precursor Gag which, even in the absence of all other viral components, is capable of associating with the cytoplasmic leaflet of the plasma membrane and assembling into extracellular virus- like particles. In this paper we have used heterologous, Semliki Forest virus-driven, expression of M-MuLV Gag to study the mechanism by which this protein is targeted to the cell surface. In pulse-chase experiments, BFA, monensin, and 20 degrees C block did not affect incorporation of Gag into extracellular particles thereby indicating that the secretory pathway is not involved in targeting of Gag to the cell surface. Subcellular fractionation studies demonstrated that newly synthesized Gag became rapidly and efficiently associated with membranes which had a density similar to that of plasma membrane- derived vesicles. Protease-protection studies confirmed that the Gag- containing membranes were of plasma membrane origin, since in crude cell homogenates, the bulk of newly synthesized Gag was protease- resistant as expected of a protein that binds to the cytoplasmic leaflet of the plasma membrane. Taken together these data indicate that targeting of M-MuLV Gag to the cell surface proceeds via direct insertion of the protein to the cytoplasmic side of the plasma membrane. Furthermore, since the membrane insertion reaction is highly efficient and specific, this suggests that the reaction is dependent on as-yet-unidentified cellular factors.
Microrobotic platform for mechanical stimulation of swimming microorganism on a chip

We propose a microrobotic platform that stimulates swimming microorganisms in a microfluidic chip with high speed and accuracy. The developed platform comprises (1) high-speed microrobots that can generate a millinewton-level driving force, micrometer-level positioning accuracy, and a millimeter per second level drive speed through the actuation of motorized stages with permanent magnets and (2) high-speed online vision sensor capable of capturing images on the order of 1000 frames per second. The specific design and architecture of the proposed platform are also presented. The proposed platform stimulates and observes swimming microorganisms in a microfluidic chip through a mechanical approach. This platform provides on-chip investigation with high functionality that has been difficult to achieve with previous approaches and contributes towards the discovery of previously unknown functions of swimming microorganisms in the bioscience fields.
Can intergroup conflict aid the growth of within- and between-group social capital?

Abstract This study seeks to explore the effects of interdepartmental conflict on bonding social capital within a department and bridging social capital between departments. Two-period data were collected from 213 respondents in 71 high-tech and manufacturing firms in Taiwan. These respondents work in research and development departments and cooperate with marketing departments. The results indicate that intergroup task and emotional conflicts promote bonding social capital within the research and development department. Up to a moderate level, task conflict subsequently promotes the development of structural and relational bridging social capital; however, an increase in task conflict above a moderate level becomes detrimental to structural and relational bridging social capital. Intergroup emotional conflict does not influence bridging social capital. Furthermore, intergroup conflict is unrelated to cognitive bridging social capital. The results provide insights into intergroup interactions, offering a novel means for managers to increase group social capital using the levels of conflict that naturally occur between departments.
Pulse width modulation of multilevel delta-sigma output for class S power amplifier

In this paper a platform that implements the digital processing and RF carrier generation for class S PA operation is presented. This implementation consists of a bandpass delta sigma modulator (DSM) with a multi-level quantizer followed by a pulse width modulator and frequency upconversion stage. The principle of operation is described and validation is provided through simulation and experimental measurements on a prototype of the modulator. It is shown that the output from the new modulator can achieve significant improvements in SNR performance compared to a two level DSM with little added computational overhead.
Endothelin-1-, Endothelin-A-, and Endothelin-B-Receptor Expression Is Correlated with Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Expression and Angiogenesis in Breast Cancer

Purpose: Endothelin-1 (ET-1) and its receptors (ETAR and ETBR), referred to as the endothelin (ET) axis, are overexpressed in breast carcinomas, and influence tumorigenesis and tumor progression by various mechanisms, including angiogenesis. The objective of the study was to clarify if expression of the ET axis participates in angiogenesis of breast carcinoma Experimental Design: We analyzed expression of ET-1, ETAR, ETBR, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) immunohistochemically in 600 tissue array specimens from 200 paraffin-embedded breast carcinomas performing tissue microarray technology. Microvessel density (MVD) was determined by counting microvessels (identified by factor VIII) in each core specimen. Results: Moderate or strong immunostaining was observed for ET-1 in 25.4%, for ETAR in 43.7%, and for ETBR in 22.2% of breast carcinomas. Of all cases, 44.7% showed significant expression of VEGF. MVD varied between different tumor specimens (range, 0–80; median, 17). We observed a statistically significant correlation between MVD and ET expression status with higher MVD in ET-positive tumors. Moreover, expression of VEGF was found more frequently in tumors with overexpression of the ET axis (each P < 0.001). Staining of VEGF was correlated positively with MVD Conclusions: These results indicate that increased ET-1, ETAR, and ETBR expression is associated with increased VEGF expression and higher vascularity of breast carcinomas and, thus, could be involved in the regulation of angiogenesis in breast cancer. Our findings provide evidence that the expression pattern of the ET-axis and in particular of ETAR may have clinical relevance in future antiangiogenic targeted therapies for breast cancer.
Scalable Name Lookup in NDN Using Effective Name Component Encoding

Name-based route lookup is a key function for Named Data Networking (NDN). The NDN names are hierarchical and have variable and unbounded lengths, which are much longer than IPv4/6 address, making fast name lookup a challenging issue. In this paper, we propose an effective Name Component Encoding (NCE) solution with the following two techniques: (1) A code allocation mechanism is developed to achieve memory-efficient encoding for name components, (2) We apply an improved State Transition Arrays to accelerate the longest name prefix matching and design a fast and incremental update mechanism which satisfies the special requirements of NDN forwarding process, namely to insert, modify, and delete name prefixes frequently. Furthermore, we analyze the memory consumption and time complexity of NCE. Experimental results on a name set containing 3,000,000 names demonstrate that compared with the character trie NCE reduces overall 30% memory. Besides, NCE performs a few millions lookups per second (on an Intel 2.8 GHz CPU), a speedup of over 7 times compared with the character trie. Our evaluation results also show that NCE can scale up to accommodate the potential future growth of the name sets.
Analysis of the Noise Reduction Property of Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Systems Using a Novel Type-2 Membership Function

In this paper, the noise reduction property of type-2 fuzzy logic (FL) systems (FLSs) (T2FLSs) that use a novel type-2 fuzzy membership function is studied. The proposed type-2 membership function has certain values on both ends of the support and the kernel and some uncertain values for the other values of the support. The parameter tuning rules of a T2FLS that uses such a membership function are derived using the gradient descend learning algorithm. There exist a number of papers in the literature that claim that the performance of T2FLSs is better than type-1 FLSs under noisy conditions, and the claim is tried to be justified by simulation studies only for some specific systems. In this paper, a simpler T2FLS is considered with the novel membership function proposed in which the effect of input noise in the rule base is shown numerically in a general way. The proposed type-2 fuzzy neuro structure is tested on different input-output data sets, and it is shown that the T2FLS with the proposed novel membership function has better noise reduction property when compared to the type-1 counterparts.
GamingAnywhere

We present the first open source cloud gaming system, called GamingAnywhere. In addition to its openness, we have designed, GamingAnywhere for high extensibility, portability, and reconfigurability. We implemented it on Windows, Linux, OS X, and Android. We conducted extensive experiments to evaluate its performance. Our experimental results indicate that GamingAnywhere is efficient, scalable, adaptable to network conditions, and achieves high responsiveness and streaming quality. GamingAnywhere can be employed by researchers, game developers, service providers, and end users for setting up cloud gaming testbeds, which we believe, will stimulate more research into innovations for cloud gaming systems and applications.
The Effect of Alignment Changes on Unilateral Transtibial Amputee’s Gait: A Systematic Review

Introduction Prosthetic alignment, positioning of a prosthetic foot relative to a socket, is an iterative process in which an amputee’s gait is optimized through repetitive optical gait observation and induction of alignment adjustments when deviations are detected in spatiotemporal and kinematic gait parameters. An important limitation of the current prosthetic alignment approach is the subjectivity and the lack of standardized quantifiable baseline values. The purpose of this systematic review is to investigate if an optimal alignment criterion can be derived from published articles. Moreover, we investigated the effect of alignment changes on spatiotemporal, kinematic and kinetic gait parameters. Results A total of 11 studies were included, two controlled before-and-after studies and nine-interrupted time series studies. Discussion The results demonstrate that alignment changes have a predictable influence on the included kinetic parameters. However, the effect of alignment changes on spatio-temporal and kinematic gait parameters are generally unpredictable. These findings suggest that it is imperative to include kinetics in the process of dynamic prosthetic alignment. Partially this can be established by communication with the prosthetic user in terms of perceived socket comfort, but the use of measurement tools should also be considered. While current literature is not conclusive about an optimal alignment, future alignment research should focus on alignment optimisation based on kinetic outcomes.
Video Indexing Using Face Detection and Face Recognition Methods

This paper presents a video indexing approach, that combines face detection and face recognition. The frames of the video sequences are scanned for faces by a Neural Network based face detector and the faces are extracted from the sequence. The faces are then grouped into clusters by a combination of a face recognition method using pseudo two-dimensional Hidden Markov Models and the k-means clustering algorithm. Each resulting cluster consists of the face images of the one person. In the next step the detected faces are labeled as one of the different people in the video sequence and the occurrence of the people can be evaluated. The results of the proposed approach on a TV broadcast news sequence are presented. The system was able to distinguish between three different newscasters and an interviewed person.
The Development of the Treatment Integrity - Efficient Scale for Cognitive Behavioral Treatment for Youth Anxiety (TIES-CBT-YA)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TREATMENT INTEGRITY – EFFICIENT SCALE FOR COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL TREATMENT FOR YOUTH ANXIETY (TIES-CBT-YA) By Meghan M. Smith, M.S. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2017 Major Director: Bryce D. McLeod, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Psychology Department Brief, easy to use, psychometrically strong (i.e., pragmatic) instruments are needed to support implementation research; the current study assessed whether it was possible to develop a pragmatic observational treatment integrity instrument and reduce the amount of time coders spend making treatment integrity ratings (while maintaining score validity) of therapists delivering two protocols of individual cognitive-behavioral treatment (ICBT) for youth anxiety in research and practice settings. The 12-item instrument was derived from four observational treatment integrity instruments with promising score reliability and validity that assess adherence, competence, differentiation, and alliance. A sample of 106 youths (M age = 10.12, SD = 1.81, ages 7-14; 42.50% Female; 69.80% Caucasian) received one of three treatments to address anxiety: standard ICBT in a research setting (n = 51) or standard ICBT (n = 22), modular ICBT (n = 16), or usual care (UC; n = 17) in practice settings. Four coders independently coded fiveand 15minute segments sampled from four sessions from each client (N = 756 sessions). Ten percent of sessions were double-coded for reliability purposes. Reliability, sensitivity to change, construct validity, and predictive validity from the two segments were compared to full session treatment integrity scores independently archived in a study assessing the same clients. Across fiveand 15-minute segments, the instrument produced promising score reliability and convergent validity evidence for adherence, competence, and alliance items (items intended for inclusion in ICBT for youth anxiety; M ICCs = .62, SD = .17; M rs = .58, SD = .12) and poor score reliability and validity evidence for differentiation items (items intended for inclusion in other treatment domains; M ICCs = .21, SD = .28; M rs = .27, SD = .25). This study met its primary aim, to develop an instrument that can be coded in less than 20 minutes while maintaining evidence of score validity. Researchers interested in developing such instruments can use this study design as a roadmap. Future research should investigate whether psychometric findings replicate across samples, why certain items (e.g., client-centered interventions) did not evidence score validity, and how this type of instrument can inform EBT training.
STAT5 fits the RISK profile for cardioprotection

How wonderful would it be if there were a simple, cheap, safe, non-invasive treatment that could be administered to a patient to protect their organs from ischemia and reperfusion? Such a treatment might be used to protect the organs during temporary loss of blood flow, as occurs for example during a heart attack or stroke. As unlikely as this may sound, such a treatment has indeed been discovered, although research into the mechanism is only just beginning. A recent paper by Heusch et al. in Circulation Research has taken the first step in this direction, as explained below.