Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dietary Protein Distribution Positively Influences 24-h Muscle Protein Synthesis in Healthy Adults123

The RDA for protein describes the quantity that should be consumed daily to meet population needs and to prevent deficiency. Protein consumption in many countries exceeds the RDA; however, intake is often skewed toward the evening meal, whereas breakfast is typically carbohydrate rich and low in protein. We examined the effects of protein distribution on 24-h skeletal muscle protein synthesis in healthy adult men and women (n = 8; age: 36.9 ± 3.1 y; BMI: 25.7 ± 0.8 kg/m2). By using a 7-d crossover feeding design with a 30-d washout period, we measured changes in muscle protein synthesis in response to isoenergetic and isonitrogenous diets with protein at breakfast, lunch, and dinner distributed evenly (EVEN; 31.5 ± 1.3, 29.9 ± 1.6, and 32.7 ± 1.6 g protein, respectively) or skewed (SKEW; 10.7 ± 0.8, 16.0 ± 0.5, and 63.4 ± 3.7 g protein, respectively). Over 24-h periods on days 1 and 7, venous blood samples and vastus lateralis muscle biopsy samples were obtained during primed (2.0 μmol/kg) constant infusion [0.06 μmol/(kg⋅min)] of l-[ring-13C6]phenylalanine. The 24-h mixed muscle protein fractional synthesis rate was 25% higher in the EVEN (0.075 ± 0.006%/h) vs. the SKEW (0.056 ± 0.006%/h) protein distribution groups (P = 0.003). This pattern was maintained after 7 d of habituation to each diet (EVEN vs. SKEW: 0.077 ± 0.006 vs. 0.056 ± 0.006%/h; P = 0.001). The consumption of a moderate amount of protein at each meal stimulated 24-h muscle protein synthesis more effectively than skewing protein intake toward the evening meal.
On the Relationship Between Job Performance and Ratings of Job Performance: What Do We Really Know?

Murphy (2008) provides a clear and concise statement of various models of job performance ratings. Indeed, there is much to be gained, both conceptually and practically, from such a systematic analysis and articulation. Further, Murphy’s ultimate conclusion, that an increased focus on better ‘‘climates’’ for performance rating will result in better performance ratings, certainly represents a positive next step for the improvement of performance evaluation. The organizational context in which ratings occur is definitely a vital consideration with respect to the quality of the performance ratings obtained. Future research should certainly focus on defining those aspects of the organizational context that are most important for highquality performance ratings as well as methodologies for evaluating the climate for performance appraisal in organizations. Yet, Murphy builds this analysis on a troubling cornerstone. Specifically, as emphasized in the title and throughout the paper, the starting point is the ‘‘weak relationship between job performance and ratings of job performance. ’’ This premise is particularly troubling in several of its implications. Three potential implications stand out: (a) there is solid evidence that the relationship between job performance and ratings of job performance is weak, (b) research on performance appraisal and rating interventions to date has had little practical impact on the relationship between ratings and performance, and (c) future work focusing on organizational development (OD) type interventions will lead to a demonstrated improvement in the relationship between ratings and performance. These implications warrant further examination.
Proliferative capacity of oligodendrocytes in the demyelinating twitcher spinal cord

The proliferative capacity of oligodendrocytes was investigated in the spinal white matter of the twitcher mouse, a murine model of a genetic demyelinating disease globoid cell leukodystrophy (GLD), in which degeneration of oligodendrocytes due to metabolic perturbation has been well documented. In normal mice at 30 and 45 days of age, proliferating cells labeled with 5‐bromo‐2′‐deoxyuridine (BrdU) were scarce, and the majority of BrdU‐labeled cells did not immunostain with antibodies for oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, or microglia/macrophages. Only a few cells with markers for oligodendrocytes, carbonic anhydrase (CA), or the Pi form of glutathione‐S‐transferase (Pi), were labeled with BrdU. In the twitcher spinal cord, total numbers of BrdU‐labeled cells were almost 6 times that of the normal littermate mice at 30 days of age, and 28 times at 45 days of age. However, this increase was largely due to an increase of cells labeled with F4/80, a marker for the microglia/macrophages. CA or Pi positive cells only constituted less than 10% of all labeled cells. With progression of demyelination from 30—45 days, total numbers of CA positive or Pi positive oligodendrocytes decreased, but percentages of cells double‐labeled with BrdU and CA or Pi remained fairly constant. The results indicated that oligodendrocytes proliferated, to some extent, in the twitcher despite the genetic metabolic defect, and their decrease in number with progression of disease was not due to declined proliferation but rather cellular degeneration as the result of an intrinsic metabolic perturbation. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Designing Modular Hardware Accelerators in C with ROCCC 2.0

While FPGA-based hardware accelerators have repeatedly been demonstrated as a viable option, their programmability remains a major barrier to their wider acceptance by application code developers. These platforms are typically programmed in a low level hardware description language, a skill not common among application developers and a process that is often tedious and error-prone. Programming FPGAs from high level languages would provide easier integration with software systems as well as open up hardware accelerators to a wider spectrum of application developers. In this paper, we present a major revision to the Riverside Optimizing Compiler for Configurable Circuits (ROCCC) designed to create hardware accelerators from C programs. Novel additions to ROCCC include (1) intuitive modular bottom-up design of circuits from C, and (2) separation of code generation from specific FPGA platforms. The additions we make do not introduce any new syntax to the C code and maintain the high level optimizations from the ROCCC system that generate efficient code. The modular code we support functions identically as software or hardware. Additionally, we enable user control of hardware optimizations such as systolic array generation and temporal common subexpression elimination. We evaluate the quality of the ROCCC 2.0 tool by comparing it to hand-written VHDL code. We show comparable clock frequencies and a 18% higher throughput. The productivity advantages of ROCCC 2.0 is evaluated using the metrics of lines of code and programming time showing an average of 15x improvement over hand-written VHDL.
Centrality, Network Capacity, and Modularity as Parameters to Analyze the Core-Periphery Structure in Metabolic Networks

Genome-scale metabolic networks of organisms are normally very large and complex. Previous studies have shown that they are organized in a hierarchical and modular manner. In particular, a core-periphery modular organization structure has been proposed for metabolic networks. However, no methods or parameters are available in the literature to quantitatively evaluate or find the hierarchical and modular structure of metabolic networks. In this paper, we propose a parameter called ldquocore coefficientrdquo to quantitatively evaluate the core-periphery structure of a metabolic network. This parameter is defined based on the concept of closeness centrality of metabolites and a newly defined parameter: network capacity. To find or define the core and the periphery modules of a metabolic network, we further developed a method to decompose metabolic networks based on a quantitative parameter of modularity and a procedure of core extraction. The method has been developed with genome-scale metabolic networks of five representative organisms, which include Aeropyrum pernix, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Homo sapiens . The results were compared with two artificially generated network models.
Adaptive Synchronization in IEEE802.15.4e Networks

Industrial low-power wireless mesh networks are shifting towards time-synchronized medium access control (MAC) protocols which are able to yield over 99.9% end-to-end reliability and radio duty cycles well below 1%. In these networks, motes use time slots to communicate, and neighbor motes maintain their clocks' alignment, typically within 1 ms. Temperature, supply voltage, and fabrication differences cause the motes' clocks to drift with respect to one another. Neighbor motes need to re-synchronize periodically through pairwise communication. This period is typically determined a priori, based on the worst case drift. In this paper, we propose a novel technique which measures and models the relative clock drift between neighbor motes, thereby reducing the effective drift rate. Instead of resynchronizing at a preset rate, neighbor motes resynchronize only when needed. This reduces the minimum achievable duty cycle of an idle network by a factor of 10, which in turn lowers the mote power consumption and extends the network lifetime. This Adaptive Synchronization is implemented as part of IEEE802.15. 4e in the OpenWSN protocol stack and is validated through extensive experimentation.
Model based specification validation for automatic train protection and block system

A novel train radio system, namely automatic train protection and block (ATPB), is proposed to reconstruct and improve the efficiency of the conventional rail lines. In development of the software system of the ATPB, the formal method is intended to be used to formally analyze its functional requirements specification (FRS) to guarantee the safety and reliability. Firstly, the FRS is written informally in natural language (i.e. Japanese). In order to ensure the correspondence between the natural language specification and the formal specification, a new strategy is proposed, including establishing the dynamic state translations (DSTs), UML diagrams and formal VDM++ model, and verifying the internal consistence of specification. In this paper, only the DSTs are discussed. They expressed the train operation process and the state changes of components, and help to determine the parameters.
Exploring skin conductance synchronisation in everyday interactions

Detecting interpersonal and emotional aspects of behaviour is a growing area of research within HCI. However, this work primarily processes data from individuals, rather than drawing on the dynamics of an interaction between people. Literature in social psychology and neuroscience suggests that the synchronisation of peoples' biosignals, in particular skin conductance (EDA), can be indicative of complex interpersonal aspects such as empathy. This paper reports on an exploratory, mixed methods study to test the potential of EDA synchronisation to indicate qualities of interpersonal interaction in real-world relationships and contexts. We show that EDA synchrony can be indicate meaningful social aspects in everyday settings, linking it to the mutual emotional engagement of those interacting. This connects to earlier work on empathy in psychotherapy, and suggests new interpretations of EDA sychronisation in other social contexts. We then outline how these findings open opportunities for novel HCI and ubicomp applications, supporting training of social skills such as empathy for doctors, and more generally to explore shared experiences such as multiplayer games.
Identification of neurovascular changes associated with cerebral amyloid angiopathy from subject-specific hemodynamic response functions

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a small-vessel disease preferentially affecting posterior brain regions. Recent evidence has demonstrated the efficacy of functional MRI in detecting CAA-related neurovascular injury, however, it is unknown whether such perturbations are associated with changes in the hemodynamic response function (HRF). Here we estimated HRFs from two different brain regions from block design activation data, in light of recent findings demonstrating how block designs can accurately reflect HRF parameter estimates while maximizing signal detection. Patients with a diagnosis of probable CAA and healthy controls performed motor and visual stimulation tasks. Time-to-peak (TTP), full-width at half-maximum (FWHM), and area under the curve (AUC) of the estimated HRFs were compared between groups and to MRI features associated with CAA including cerebral microbleed (CMB) count. Motor HRFs in CAA patients showed significantly wider FWHM (P = 0.006) and delayed TTP (P = 0.03) compared to controls. In the patient group, visual HRF FWHM was positively associated with CMB count (P = 0.03). These findings indicate that hemodynamic abnormalities in patients with CAA may be reflected in HRFs estimated from block designs across different brain regions. Moreover, visual FWHM may be linked to structural MR indications associated with CAA.
F1-dependent translation of mitochondrially encoded Atp6p and Atp8p subunits of yeast ATP synthase

The ATP synthase of yeast mitochondria is composed of 17 different subunit polypeptides. We have screened a panel of ATP synthase mutants for impaired expression of Atp6p, Atp8p, and Atp9p, the only mitochondrially encoded subunits of ATP synthase. Our results show that translation of Atp6p and Atp8p is activated by F1 ATPase (or assembly intermediates thereof). Mutants lacking the α or β subunits of F1, or the Atp11p and Atp12p chaperones that promote F1 assembly, have normal levels of the bicistronic ATP8/ATP6 mRNAs but fail to synthesize Atp6p and Atp8p. F1 mutants are also unable to express ARG8m when this normally nuclear gene is substituted for ATP6 or ATP8 in mitochondrial DNA. Translational activation by F1 is also supported by the ability of ATP22, an Atp6p-specific translation factor, to restore Atp6p and to a lesser degree Atp8p synthesis in the absence of F1. These results establish a mechanism by which expression of ATP6 and ATP8 is translationally regulated by F1 to achieve a balanced output of two compartmentally separated sets of ATP synthase genes.
Prodrug Strategy to Achieve Lyophilizable, High Drug Loading Micelle Formulations Through Diester Derivatives of β‐Lapachone

β-Lap prodrug micelle strategy improves the formulation properties of β-lap therapeutics. The resulting micelles yield apparent high β-lap solubility (>7 mg mL(-1) ), physical stability, and ability to reconstitute after lyophilization. In the presence of esterase, β-lap prodrugs are efficiently converted into parent drug (i.e., β-lap), resulting in NQO1-dependent lethality of NSCLC cells.
Judgement and choice in the 1999 South African election

Abstract In this article, we set out the basic points of the theoretical framework of voter choice that underlie the Opinion ’99 research project. In contrast to prevailing theories that have characterized voter choice in South Africa as an ethnic or racial census, this approach emphasizes the role of how voters learn about government performance and the alternatives offered by opposition parties. We then deduce a very simplified model that consciously excludes all ‘structural’ variables and includes only measures of voter evaluations of government performance and views of political parties and candidates. We use discriminant analysis (DA) to predict the partisan preferences of respondents from a nationally representative September 1998 survey with these measures. We find that the partisan choices of a very large majority of South Africans can be correctly predicted with this model.
Grip Strength Cutpoints for the Identification of Clinically Relevant Weakness

Background. Weakness is common and contributes to disability, but no consensus exists regarding a strength cutpoint to identify persons at high risk. This analysis, conducted as part of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Sarcopenia Project, sought to identify cutpoints that distinguish weakness associated with mobility impairment, defined as gait speed less than 0.8 m/s. Methods. In pooled cross-sectional data (9,897 men and 10,950 women), Classification and Regression Tree analysis was used to derive cutpoints for grip strength associated with mobility impairment. Results. In men, a grip strength of 26–32 kg was classified as “intermediate” and less than 26 kg as “weak”; 11% of men were intermediate and 5% were weak. Compared with men with normal strength, odds ratios for mobility impairment were 3.63 (95% CI: 3.01–4.38) and 7.62 (95% CI 6.13–9.49), respectively. In women, a grip strength of 16–20 kg was classified as “intermediate” and less than 16 kg as “weak”; 25% of women were intermediate and 18% were weak. Compared with women with normal strength, odds ratios for mobility impairment were 2.44 (95% CI 2.20–2.71) and 4.42 (95% CI 3.94–4.97), respectively. Weakness based on these cutpoints was associated with mobility impairment across subgroups based on age, body mass index, height, and disease status. Notably, in women, grip strength divided by body mass index provided better fit relative to grip strength alone, but fit was not sufficiently improved to merit different measures by gender and use of a more complex measure. Conclusions. Cutpoints for weakness derived from this large, diverse sample of older adults may be useful to identify populations who may benefit from interventions to improve muscle strength and function.
Reconsidering ‘Traditional’ Food: The Case of Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese

Amongst the hundreds of cases of regional specific products being produced all over Europe, the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese system can be considered one of the most eloquent, mature and successful examples avant la lettre of rural development. About 8,000 dairy farmers, cheese dairies and ripening firms comply with the strict production regulations that guarantee the specificity of this product. Employment in the Parmigiano Reggiano production system is twice as high as in the industrial dairy system and the pressure of the system on the environment is significantly lower. As Parmigiano Reggiano cheese has to compete on the same market as more industrial Grana cheeses, the system is not immune to the cost-price squeeze affecting European agriculture. The accelerated introduction of cost reducing technologies may compromise the typicality of the product, endanger its competitive position on the market and weaken its future collective performance. A convergence of views and a strong cohesion among actors is necessary to reach new agreements about the direction being taken by technological development in order to safeguard the success Parmigiano Reggiano cheese has been able to generate in the past
Design and Implementation in FPGA of a MIMO Decoder for a 4G Wireless Receiver

In this paper we address the implementation in FPGAs of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) decoder embedded in a prototype of a 4G mobile receiver. This MIMO decoder is part of a multi-carrier code-division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) radio system, equipped with multiple antennas at both ends of the link, that is able to handle up to 32 users and provides raw transmission bit-rates up to 125 Mbps. The task of the MIMO decoder is to appropriately combine the signals simultaneously received on all antennas to construct an improved signal, free from interference, from which to estimate the transmitted symbols. A comprehensive explanation of the complete design process is provided, including architectural decisions, floating-point to fixed-point translation and description of the validation procedure. Implementation results using FPGA devices of the Xilinx Virtex-4 family are also reported.
VCLab's Tools for 3D range data processing

Post-processing of 3D scanned data is still the bottleneck for a wider diffusion of this technology. In this paper we describe our second generation tools for processing 3D scanned data. In particular, our tools support: range maps alignment, range maps merge (or fusion), mesh simplification and color attribute management. This software package has been implemented by scratch and encompasses both up-to-date solutions and some original methods (merging, simplification, color management and, in part, alignment). The paper presents the architecture of the tools, the features supported and algorithms used; finally, an evaluation of its use in the framework of a complex acquisition in the Cultural Heritage domain (3D scanning of a bronze statue) is reported.
Using Local Information to Significantly Improve Classification Performance

In this research we propose to derive new features based on data samples' local information with the aim of improving the performance of general supervised learning algorithms. The creation of new features is inspired by the measure of average precision which is known to be a robust measure that is insensitive to the number of retrieved items in information retrieval. We use the idea of average precision to weight the neighbours of an instance and show that this weighting strategy is insensitive to the number of neighbours in the locality. Information captured in the new features allows a general classifier to learn additional useful peripheral knowledge that are helpful in building effective classification models. We comprehensively evaluate our method on real datasets and the results show substantial improvements in the performance of classifiers including SVM, Bayesian networks, random forest, and C4.5.
Real-time hand shape recognition for human interface

Recently, a natural and user-friendly human interface has been actively researched. Although conventional user interfaces are based on keyboards and mice, human body actions can be used for a human-machine interface. From this point of view, we have researched into vision-based real-time human motion analysis. The important point is that we have employed vision-based methods, because they do not impose any physical restrictions on users. We present a robust hand shape recognition system based on an eigenspace method, in which we employ a simple additional learning feature, and we show its performance through some experiments.
Controlling short-channel effects in deep-submicron SOI MOSFETs for improved reliability: a review

This paper examines the performance degradation of a MOS device fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) due to the undesirable short-channel effects (SCE) as the channel length is scaled to meet the increasing demand for high-speed high-performing ULSI applications. The review assesses recent proposals to circumvent the SCE in SOI MOSFETs and a short evaluation of strengths and weaknesses specific to each attempt is presented. A new device structure called the dual-material gate (DMG) SOI MOSFET is discussed and its efficacy in suppressing SCEs such as drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL), channel length modulation and hot-carrier effects, all of which affect the reliability of ultra-small geometry MOSFETs, is assessed.