Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Recruitment of Raf-1 to Membranes Is Mediated by Direct Interaction with Phosphatidic Acid and Is Independent of Association with Ras*

The serine/threonine kinase Raf-1 is an essential component of the MAPK cascade. Activation of Raf-1 by extracellular signals is initiated by association with intracellular membranes. Recruitment of Raf-1 to membranes has been reported to be mediated by direct association with Ras and by the phospholipase D product phosphatidic acid (PA). Here we report that insulin stimulation of HIRcB fibroblasts leads to accumulation of Ras, Raf-1, phosphorylated MEK, phosphorylated MAPK, and PA on endosomal membranes. Mutations that disrupt Raf-PA interactions prevented recruitment of Raf-1 to membranes, whereas disruption of Ras-Raf interactions did not affect agonist-dependent translocation. Expression of a dominant-negative Ras mutant did not prevent insulin-dependent Raf-1 translocation, but inhibited phosphorylation of MAPK. Finally, the PA-binding region of Raf-1 was sufficient to target green fluorescent protein to membranes, and its overexpression blocked recruitment of Raf-1 to membranes and disrupted insulin-dependent MAPK phosphorylation. These results indicate that agonist-dependent Raf-1 translocation is primarily mediated by a direct interaction with PA and is independent of association with Ras.
Making Electrodes Stretchable

Stretchable electrodes constitute a crucial construction unit for the connection of working circuits of stretchable supercapacitors, batteries, sensors, and other devices. Several key requirements for the manufacture of stretchable electrodes are discussed here, including stretchability, softness, adhesion, surface modification, encapsulation, and biocompatibility. The development of stretchable electrodes is still in progress; in the future it may be possible to endow electronic devices with personifications (e.g., smell, touch, etc.) and will they will be important in the medical field.
TACC3 Is Important for Correct Progression of Meiosis in Bovine Oocytes

Transforming acidic coiled-coil (TACC) proteins are key players during mitosis via stabilization of the spindle. The roles of TACCs during meiosis are however less clear. We used bovine oocytes to study the expression and function of TACC3 during meiosis. TACC3 mRNA was detected in bovine oocytes during meiosis using qRT-PCR, and while it was also expressed in cleavage stage embryos, its expression was down-regulated at the morula and blastocyst stages. Immunofluorescence was used to demonstrate that TACC3 co-localized with tubulin in the metaphase I and II spindles. However, TACC3 was not detected at anaphase or telophase of the first meiotic division. Aurora A, which is known to phosphorylate and activate TACC3 in mitotic cells, showed a similar pattern of gene expression to that of TACC3 in meiotic oocytes and preimplantation embryos. Aurora A protein was however only very transiently associated to the meiotic spindle. Pharmaceutical inhibition of Aurora A activity inhibited TACC3 phosphorylation but did not prevent TACC3 appearance in the spindle. Inhibiting Aurora A activity did however lead to abnormal meiotic spindle formation and impaired maturation of bovine oocytes. Similar results were obtained by knock-down of TACC3 expression using siRNA injection. These results suggest that TACC3 is important for stabilizing the meiotic spindle, but phosphorylation of TACC3 by Aurora A is not required for its recruitment to the meiotic spindle although phosphorylation of TACC3 by other kinases cannot be excluded.
The Evolution of Project Inter-dependencies in a Software Ecosystem: The Case of Apache

Software ecosystems consist of multiple software projects, often interrelated each other by means of dependency relations. When one project undergoes changes, other projects may decide to upgrade the dependency. For example, a project could use a new version of another project because the latter has been enhanced or subject to some bug-fixing activities. This paper reports an exploratory study aimed at observing the evolution of the Java subset of the Apache ecosystem, consisting of 147 projects, for a period of 14 years, and resulting in 1,964 releases. Specifically, we analyze (i) how dependencies change over time, (ii) whether a dependency upgrade is due to different kinds of factors, such as different kinds of API changes or licensing issues, and (iii) how an upgrade impacts on a related project. Results of this study help to comprehend the phenomenon of library/component upgrade, and provides the basis for a new family of recommenders aimed at supporting developers in the complex (and risky) activity of managing library/component upgrade within their software projects.
Bug Hunting in Sensor Network Applications

Testing sensor network applications is an essential and a difficult task. Due to their distributed and faulty nature, severe resource constraints, unobservable interactions, and limited human interaction, sensor networks, make monitoring and debugging of applications strenuous and more challenging. In this paper we present KleeNet — a Klee based platform independent bug hunting tool for sensor network applications before deployment — which can automatically test applications for all possible inputs, and hence, ensures memory safety for TinyOS based applications. Upon finding a bug, KleeNet generates a concrete test case with real input values identifying a specific error path in a program. Additionally, we show that KleeNet integrates well into TinyOS application development life cycle with minimum manual effort, making it easy for developers to test their applications.
Atomistic study on shock behaviour of NiTi shape memory alloy

Abstract The shock behaviour of NiTi shape memory alloy is investigated by using molecular dynamics simulation. The nano-pillar samples of the alloy are subjected to the impact of a piston with a velocity of 350 m/s at initial environment temperatures of 325 and 500 K. At 325 K, we observe two different pathways of the formation of BCO phase, the gradient twins, and the detwinning phenomena, strongly depending on the local stress and the deformation state. As the initial temperature increases to 500 K, the plasticity is dominated by the dislocation movements rather than the twinning at 325 K. The phase transformation and plasticity result in stress attenuation when the stress wave propagates through the nano-pillar. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that multiple stress peaks occur due to the formation of local complex atomic structures with various wave speeds, leading to the catch up and overlap of the stress waves.
Definition and Classification of Negative Motor Signs in Childhood

In this report we describe the outcome of a consensus meeting that occurred at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, March 12 through 14, 2005. The meeting brought together 39 specialists from multiple clinical and research disciplines including developmental pediatrics, neurology, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, physical therapy, occupational therapy, physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurophysiology, muscle physiology, motor control, and biomechanics. The purpose of the meeting was to establish terminology and definitions for 4 aspects of motor disorders that occur in children: weakness, reduced selective motor control, ataxia, and deficits of praxis. The purpose of the definitions is to assist communication between clinicians, select homogeneous groups of children for clinical research trials, facilitate the development of rating scales to assess improvement or deterioration with time, and eventually to better match individual children with specific therapies. “Weakness” is defined as the inability to generate normal voluntary force in a muscle or normal voluntary torque about a joint. “Reduced selective motor control” is defined as the impaired ability to isolate the activation of muscles in a selected pattern in response to demands of a voluntary posture or movement. “Ataxia” is defined as an inability to generate a normal or expected voluntary movement trajectory that cannot be attributed to weakness or involuntary muscle activity about the affected joints. “Apraxia” is defined as an impairment in the ability to accomplish previously learned and performed complex motor actions that is not explained by ataxia, reduced selective motor control, weakness, or involuntary motor activity. “Developmental dyspraxia” is defined as a failure to have ever acquired the ability to perform age-appropriate complex motor actions that is not explained by the presence of inadequate demonstration or practice, ataxia, reduced selective motor control, weakness, or involuntary motor activity.
Transition from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion

This paper deals with gait transition from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion of a biped robot. The robot is controlled by our developed locomotion control system composed of nonlinear oscillators, and gait transition is achieved by changing parameters in the control system according to outer commands. Numerical simulations verified that the proposed control system obtains smooth gait transition from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion.
Discriminant Manifold Learning via Sparse Coding for Robust Feature Extraction

Most off-the-shelf subspace learning methods directly calculate the statistical characteristics of the original input images, while ignoring different contributions of different image components. In fact, to extract efficient features for image analysis, the noise or trivial structure in images should have little contribution and the intrinsic structure should be uncovered. Motivated by this observation, we propose a new subspace learning method, namely, discriminant manifold learning via sparse coding (DML_SC) for robust feature extraction. Specifically, we first decompose each input image into several components via dictionary learning, and then regroup the components into a more important part (MIP) and a less important part (LIP). The MIP can be considered as the clean portion of the image residing on a low-dimensional submanifold, while the LIP as noise or trivial structure within the image. Finally, the MIP and LIP are incorporated into manifold learning to learn a desired discriminative subspace. The proposed method is general for both cases with and without class labels, hence generating supervised DML_SC (SDML_SC) and unsupervised DML_SC (UDML_SC). Experimental results on four benchmark data sets demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed DML_SCs on both image recognition and clustering tasks.
Electrochemically fabricated Fe–Ni alloy nanowires and their structural characterization

Abstract Anodic alumina oxide membrane was used to electrodeposit Fe–Ni alloy nanowires by varying the potential. The morphology of electrodeposited alloy nanowires was studied by means of X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy characterization techniques. The results indicate that Fe–Ni alloy nanowires have stable fcc phase at −1.4 V and −0.7 V and the content of iron inside nanopores increased with increasing applied potential during deposition. This can be verified by the current density vs time graphs of depositing Fe and Ni nanowires, the current density ratio of Ni to Fe at lower applied potential is greater than at comparatively higher applied potential.
Ticks Collected from Selected Mammalian Hosts Surveyed in the Republic of Korea During 2008-2009

A tick survey was conducted to determine the relative abundance and distribution of ticks associated with selected mammals in the Republic of Korea (ROK) during 2008-2009. A total of 918 ticks were collected from 76 mammals (6 families, 9 species) captured at 6 provinces and 3 Metropolitan Cities in ROK. Haemaphysalis longicornis (54.4%) was the most frequently collected tick, followed by Haemaphysalis flava (28.5%), Ixodes nipponensis (7.6%), Ixodes pomerantzevi (4.8%), Ixodes persulcatus (4.6%), and Haemaphysalis japonica (0.1%). Adults (57.0%) and nymphs (28.7%) of Ixodes and Haemaphysalis spp. were collected most frequently from medium or large mammals in this survey, while few larvae (14.3%) were collected. Hydropotes inermis was the most frequently captured mammal (52.6%), with a 16.4 tick index and 5 of 6 species of ticks collected during this survey. H. longicornis (69.7%) was the predominant tick collected from H. inermis, followed by H. flava (22.2%), I. persulcatus (6.1%), I. nipponensis (1.8%), and H. japonica (0.2%).
Selecting Parenting Measures for Assessing Family-Based Prevention Interventions

The metaconstruct of parenting covers a wide variety of more narrowly defined constructs, including parenting practices, parenting style (see Darling and Steinberg 1993), and parental social cognitions. Parenting practices refer to sets of specific parenting behaviors that parents are observed to do, report that they do, or say they would do in interactions with their own children. They vary by specific content (e.g., praising the child, checking the child’s homework on a regular basis) and socialization goals (e.g., cooperation with family members, academic achievement). Parenting style refers to the more global context in which parenting practices are implemented, as opposed to actions that are domain specific. Parenting style is thought to moderate the effectiveness of parenting practices. Parental social cognitions refer to parents’ attitudes, values, and beliefs concerning parenting. The focus of this chapter is on parenting practices (see Liddle and Rowe, this volume, which focuses on measures of family functioning).
Estimate sequence methods: extensions and approximations

The approach of estimate sequence oers an interesting rereading of a number of accelerating schemes proposed by Nesterov [Nes03], [Nes05], and [Nes06]. It seems to us that this framework is the most appropriate descriptive framework to develop an analysis of the sensitivity of the schemes to approximations. We develop in this work a simple, self-contained, and unified framework for the study of estimate sequences, with which we can recover some accelerating scheme proposed by Nesterov, notably the acceleration procedure for constrained cubic regularization in convex optimization, and obtain easily generalizations to regularization schemes of any order. We analyze carefully the sensitivity of these algorithms to various types of approximations: partial resolution of subproblems, use of approximate subgradients, or both, and draw some guidelines on the design of further estimate sequence schemes.
A communication architecture for large heterogeneous wireless networks

Capacity scaling in wireless networks under homogeneous node placement and traffic demands has been widely studied over the last decade. In general networks, however, both the node placement and traffic demands can be highly non-uniform. In this paper, we present a communication architecture that operates a wireless network under such heterogeneous settings. The proposed scheme includes the existing communication schemes for large wireless networks—multi-hopping, cooperative communication, cooperative multi-hopping—as special cases. We illustrate through a few specific wireless network scenarios that the proposed scheme can perform significantly better, even scaling-wise, than any of these previous schemes.
The Predictive Power of Zero Intelligence in Financial Markets

Standard models in economics stress the role of intelligent agents who maximize utility. However, there may be situations where constraints imposed by market institutions dominate strategic agent behavior. We use data from the London Stock Exchange to test a simple model in which minimally intelligent agents place orders to trade at random. The model treats the statistical mechanics of order placement, price formation, and the accumulation of revealed supply and demand within the context of the continuous double auction and yields simple laws relating order-arrival rates to statistical properties of the market. We test the validity of these laws in explaining cross-sectional variation for 11 stocks. The model explains 96% of the variance of the gap between the best buying and selling prices (the spread) and 76% of the variance of the price diffusion rate, with only one free parameter. We also study the market impact function, describing the response of quoted prices to the arrival of new orders. The nondimensional coordinates dictated by the model approximately collapse data from different stocks onto a single curve. This work is important from a practical point of view, because it demonstrates the existence of simple laws relating prices to order flows and, in a broader context, suggests there are circumstances where the strategic behavior of agents may be dominated by other considerations.
An integrated buffer management strategy for the TDD mode in IEEE 802.16 BWA networks

Considering IEEE 802.16 networks having different types of service flows, in this paper, we propose a rearranging scheme of a two-tier hierarchy for the TDD mode in IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access networks to dynamically adapt to the traffic burstiness according to the change of instant buffers on buffer management. We demonstrate the performance improvement of the rearranging scheme in terms of accumulated throughput and fairness in the finite buffer case compared with the fixed rule by simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme in the case of finite buffer depth not only can provide much better fairness and achieve higher accumulated throughput but also is less buffer-consuming than that without rearranging, meaning that the hardware cost can be reduced by employing the proposed scheme.
Evaluation of Radial Basis Functions for the Deformation of Unstructured Meshes

The radial basis function (RBF) mesh deformation methodology is used in this paper to impose large deformations on two-dimensional unstructured hybrid meshes around airfoils, including translation and rigid rotation of the airfoil with respect to its original position. It is realized that, for such large deformations, some of the adopted RBFs failed to produce acceptable deformed meshes: the resulting meshes include large areas with overlapping elements. In order to improve the resulting mesh quality the RBF mesh deformation methodology is combined with a Laplacian smoothing operator, which is repeatedly called after the completion of the basic RBF mesh deformation procedure. A widely adopted metric for mesh quality is used to evaluate the quality of the deformed mesh, with and without Laplacian smoothing, for various radial basis functions. Results for unstructured hybrid meshes are presented, demonstrating the effect of the various RBFs as well as the application of Laplacian smoothing, in terms of grid quality metric values.
The effect of Ta dopant on the electronic and optical properties of anatase TiO2: a first-principles study

We study the electronic and optical properties of pure and Ta-doped anatase TiO2 structures using a plane-wave-based first-principles calculation. The pure anatase TiO2 has an indirect band gap of 2.76 eV, while the Ta-doped anatase TiO2 is a metal. Zero-energy dielectric constants of 4.02 and 3.48 were found for E || a and E || c, respectively, in the pure anatase TiO2. Based on the calculated imaginary parts of the dielectric function (ε2), the pure anatase TiO2 has anisotropic interband transition edges of 2.75 eV and 3.55 eV for E || a and E || c respectively, which show an optical dichroism. The Ta-doped anatase TiO2 is found to have metallic behaviour, which is clearly observable through the significantly high electronic absorption in ε2 at the zero energy level. However, the Ta-doped TiO2 also shows anisotropic interband transition edges of 2.55 eV and 3.45 eV for E || a and E || c, respectively, based on ε2. Based on these results, Ta dopant plays an important role for the semiconductor-to-metallic transformation in anatase TiO2. At the same time, Ta dopant also promotes the red-shift of the interband transition edges and enhances the dichroism. This study presents the significant modification in the optical properties of anatase TiO2 due to the presence of Ta dopant based on the dielectric functions.
Cooperative Spectrum Sensing and Communication in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive radio systems, secondary users should continuously sense the licensed spectrum in case a primary user starts to transmit. Whether or not the secondary users can sense the spectrum during the secondary communication is an attractive problem. In this paper, we consider a particular wireless cooperative communication system acting as a secondary system, and demonstrate that by exploiting the cooperative property of the cooperative communication, the secondary system dose sensing while communicating. Compared with the conventional periodical sensing scheme, the proposed method achieves better sensing performance without any overhead. The theoretical analysis is given, and the sensing performance of the secondary system is investigated. Simulation results show that the sensing performance of the proposed method is improved significantly as opposed to that of the conventional spectrum sensing.
IFCC Reference Method for the Measurement of HbA 1 c in Human Blood

1 Department of Clinical Chemistry, Malmö University Hospital, Lund University, Malmö, Sweden 2 Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Penzberg, Germany 3 Center of Disease Control, Atlanta, USA 4 Institute of Biopathological Medicine, Ono, Japan 5 Department of Clinical Chemistry, Isala Klinieken, Zwolle, The Netherlands 6 Department of Science and Biomedical Technology, University of Milan, Milan, Italy 7 Institute of Biomedical Technology, Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, Milan, Italy 8 IRCCS Hospital San Raffaele, Milan, Italy 9 Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Gent, Gent, Belgium 10 Standard Reference Center, Kawasaki, Japan. 11 SKZL Queen Beatrix Hospital, Winterswijk, The Netherlands
Accurate localization with respect to moving objects via multiple-body registration

Many mobile manipulation tasks require the robot to be accurately localized with respect to the object where the manipulation has to be executed. These tasks include autonomous docking and positioning as well as pick and place or logistics tasks. State-of-the-art approaches to the problem commonly assume that the environment is static and localize the robot with respect to predetermined locations. In this paper, we present an approach that relaxes the static assumption and enables a robot to accurately localize with respect to a reference object that could be moved in the environment. The core of the paper is an extension of the generalized ICP method to handle multiple rigid bodies that move independently to each others. Experiments in both simulated and real world scenarios show that our approach is able to localize the robot with respect to a moved object with an accuracy of less than one centimeter.