Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maneuvering Control of Planar Snake Robots Using Virtual Holonomic Constraints

This paper investigates the problem of maneuvering control for planar snake robots. The control objective is to make the center of mass of the snake robot converge to a desired path and traverse the path with a desired velocity. The proposed feedback control strategy enforces virtual constraints encoding a lateral undulatory gait, parametrized by the states of dynamic compensators used to regulate the orientation and forward speed of the snake robot.
Reverse Polarization in Amino acid and Nucleotide Substitution Patterns Between Human–Mouse Orthologs of Two Compositional Extrema

Genome-wide analysis of sequence divergence patterns in 12 024 human–mouse orthologous pairs reveals, for the first time, that the trends in nucleotide and amino acid substitutions in orthologs of high and low GC composition are highly asymmetric and polarized to opposite directions. The entire dataset has been divided into three groups on the basis of the GC content at third codon sites of human genes: high, medium, and low. High-GC orthologs exhibit significant bias in favor of the replacements, Thr → Ala, Ser → Ala, Val → Ala, Lys → Arg, Asn → Ser, Ile → Val etc., from mouse to human, whereas in low-GC orthologs, the reverse trends prevail. In general, in the high-GC group, residues encoded by A/U-rich codons of mouse proteins tend to be replaced by the residues encoded by relatively G/C-rich codons in their human orthologs, whereas the opposite trend is observed among the low-GC orthologous pairs. The medium-GC group shares some trends with high-GC group and some with low-GC group. The only significant trend common in all groups of orthologs, irrespective of their GC bias, is (Asp)Mouse → (Glu)Human replacement. At the nucleotide level, high-GC orthologs have undergone a large excess of (A/T)Mouse → (G/C)Human substitutions over (G/C)Mouse → (A/T)Human at each codon position, whereas for low-GC orthologs, the reverse is true.
Biosynthesis of rat liver pyruvate kinase. Measurement of enzyme lifetime and the rate of synthesis at weaning.

Sodium dodecyl sulphate/polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis of immunoprecipitates of liver cytosol with anti-(L-type pyruvate kinase) serum revealed proteins of mol.wt. 56 000 and 42 000 in addition to the heavy and light chains. The ratio of the 56 000 mol.wt. to the 42 000 mol.wt. protein increased under dietary conditions that resulted in an increase in the apparent specific activity of hepatic pyruvate kinase. The 42 000 mol.wt. protein was removed from immunoprecipitates if the liver cytosol was partially purified by pH precipitation and (NH4)2SO4 fractionation before addition of the antiserum. This technique may be used to analyse the formation of pure L-type pyruvate kinase in liver. By using H14CO3-labelling, the t1/2 of L-type pyruvate kinase was estimated as 75 +/- 1.7 h in post-weaned high-carbohydrate-diet-fed rats. Before weaning there was little immunoreactive pyruvate kinase in rat liver cytosol. Induction began between 6 and 24 h after weaning and reached a maximum value 120 h after weaning. When clearly enhanced total pyruvate kinase activity was first observed at 24 h post-weaning, the apparent specific activity of hepatic pyruvate kinase was considerably lower than the specific activity of the pure isolated enzyme. When the induction of L-type pyruvate kinase was monitored by the incorporation of L-[4,5-3H]leucine, the maximum rate of synthesis occurred 24--48 h after weaning. After this period synthesis declined, indicating a relatively slow turnover of the enzyme once the enzyme concentration was established in the liver.
Isolation and nucleotide sequence of the gene encoding cytotoxic necrotizing factor 1 of Escherichia coli

Cytotoxic necrotizing factors (CNFs) are dermonecrotic protein toxins produced by human and animal clinical isolates of Escherichia coli. In this study, the CNF1 determinant was isolated and sequenced, showing that expression of biologically active toxin is governed by a unique open reading frame encoding a protein of 1,014 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 113.7 kDa. Nucleotide and protein data base searches showed significant homology between CNF1 and the dermonecrotic toxin of Pasteurella multocida. In particular, the two toxins were found to share a hydrophobic region of about 220 amino acids which is a potential membrane-spanning domain.
Backup-resource based failure recovery approach in SDN data plane

Software Defined Networking (SDN) enables the underlying infrastructure to be abstracted from the network services and controlled by one or more controllers. If a link or a node fails, the switches that can detect the failure have to either inform controller to update flow tables or transform the data to pre-configured paths to recover the failure. However, existing failure recovery approaches mainly consider the recovery delay and packet loss, and ignore the storage resources consumption for backup paths in case of link or node failure. Moreover, the Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) that stores flow entries is expensive and limited with high-energy consumption. Thus in order to minimize the consumption of backup resources and meet the required failure recovery delay, a backup-resource based failure recovery approach is proposed. Two metrics are proposed to grade physical links, and three kinds of strategies for different graded links are provided, based on which the approach tries to use less flow entries to recover link failure and meets the required failure recovery delay, while guaranteeing the reliability of the network. Simulations show that backup-resource based approach can use as less flow entries as possible to ensure the performance of failure recovery and satisfy the required delay of important traffic at the same time. Moreover, the approach has good and steady performance in networks of different scales and connectivity.
Mixture toxicity of nickel and zinc to Daphnia magna is noninteractive at low effect sizes but becomes synergistic at high effect sizes

To incorporate metal mixture toxicity effects into risk‐assessment procedures, more information is needed about combined and interactive effects of metal mixtures during chronic exposure. The authors investigated the toxicity of binary Ni–Zn mixtures in 2 independent full‐factorial experiments using standard chronic (21‐d) Daphnia magna reproduction toxicity tests. Global statistical analysis (i.e., when considering all investigated mixture treatments simultaneously) showed noninteractive effects according to the concentration addition model and significant synergistic effects according to the independent action model. However, treatment‐specific statistical analysis revealed that both occurrence and type of interactive effect were dependent on the effect size at which Ni and Zn were combined in the mixture. Only noninteractive or weakly antagonistic effects occurred in mixture treatments in which each of the individual metals produced only weak adverse effects on its own (i.e., ≤20% reduction of reproductive performance). On the other side of the spectrum, synergistic mixture effects occurred in all mixture treatments where both metals already caused a > 20% (for independent action) and a > 40% (for concentration addition) effect on reproduction on their own. Because low effect sizes are the most relevant in most regulatory frameworks, the authors' data suggest that the concentration addition and independent action mixture toxicity models can both serve as conservative models for predicting effects of Ni–Zn mixtures. The present study highlights the importance of investigating metal mixture toxicity at low effect sizes and warns against extrapolating conclusions about metal mixture interactions from high to low effect sizes. Environ Toxicol Chem 2015;34:1091–1102. © 2015 SETAC
Xanthine Oxidase Inhibition for Hyperuricemic Heart Failure Patients: Design and Rationale of the EXACT-HF Study

According to the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an estimated 5.1 million adult Americans have heart failure (HF), and projections show that by the year 2030 the prevalence of HF in the United States will increase by 25%. 1 Despite guideline-recommended therapy for patients with HF and reduced ejection fraction,2 the overall 5-year mortality remains ≈50%, and the 1-year mortality in patients with New York Heart Association functional class III to IV HF on maximal medical therapy is 35% to 40%. Given the public health burden of HF, there is a clear need for improved medical therapies. Reduced myocardial antioxidant activity and increased oxidant damage have been demonstrated in animal models of HF, and markers of oxidative stress are increased in HF patients.3 These data support the thesis that reactive oxygen species may contribute to the progression of myocardial failure. Xanthine oxidase (XO) is among the potential stimuli of formation of reactive oxygen species in HF and may be an important target for therapy.4 Current evidence supports the hypothesis that HF is associated with an increase in the activity of XO, which, in turn, increases production of superoxide and uric acid (UA) during purine metabolism. The resulting nitroso-redox imbalance5 may be exacerbated by decreased activity of nitric oxide synthase (Figure 1). Significant hyperuricemia (ie, serum UA ≥9.5 mg/dL) is present in ≈25% of patients with HF and reduced ejection fraction.6,7 In addition to nitroso-redox imbalance, other contributors to hyperuricemia in HF include activation of proinflammatory cytokines, impaired vascular function, and renal insufficiency, as well as loop diuretic therapy.8 In patients with HF, there is a strong relationship between elevated UA levels and worsening symptoms,9 impaired exercise tolerance,10 and increased mortality.6 On the basis of these findings, …
Resistive Memories for Ultra-Low-Power embedded computing design

This paper addresses two technologies as an example of optimized devices for FPGA and fixed-logic IC design (as non volatile Flip-Flops). In FPGAs, the replacement of the SRAM based configuration memory with ReRAM allows saving area and suppressing the standby power consumption. Although the non-volatility eliminates standby power consumption, the leakage current through the ReRAM during run time depends on the high resistive state (HRS) value. A Conductive Bridge RAM (CBRAM) cell with dual-layer electrolyte stack with a resistance ratio higher than 106 has been proposed to minimize the leakage current in the operating mode. The introduction of ReRAM in fixed-logic IC circuits allows unifying non-volatility, zero standby leakage, and rapid power on/off operations. Endurance, low operating voltage and high speed are the main ReRAM specifications to enable the design of non-volatile Flip-Flop with fast switching. An HfO2/Ti based OxRAM cell with a switching time lower than 10ns at 1V and a high endurance up to 108 cycles has been proposed for this application.
High performance implementation of tax fraud detection algorithm

Tax fraud includes a large spectrum of methods to deny the facts and realities, claiming wrong information, and accomplishing financial businesses regardless of what the legal frameworks are. Nowadays, with the development tax systems and the large volume of the data stored in them, need is felt for a tool by which we can process the stored data and provide users with the information obtained from it. According to tax politics, especially value-added tax, the rate of tax fraud is now increasing. Based on the investigations, recent researchers tend to use similar and standard methods to detect tax fraud, which includes, association rules, clustering, neural networks, decision trees, Bayesian networks, regression and genetic algorithms. Because of large volume of tax database, most of the studied methods about fraud detection are computationally intensive. In order to increase the performance of fraud detection algorithms such as Bayesian networks, parallelism techniques are used in this paper. We used parallel technology of Microsoft . Net, parallel loops and P-LINQ on the Intel Xeon server with 16, X7755 dual core processors and memory of 32GB. The implementation results on real database show that a speedup of up to 9.2x is achieved.
Image Segmentation Using Thresholding and Swarm Intelligence

Image segmentation is a significant technology for image process. Many segmentation methods have been brought forward to deal with image segmentation, among these methods thresholding is the simple and important one. To overcome shortcoming without using space information many thresholding methods based on 2-D histogram are often used in practical work. These methods segment images by using the gray value of the pixel and the local average gray value of it, and thus provide better results than the methods based on 1-D histogram. However, its time-consuming computation is often an obstacle in real time application systems. In this paper, fast image segmentation methods based on swarm intelligence and 2-D Fisher criteria thresholding are presented. The proposed approaches have been implemented and tested on several real images. Experiments results indicate that the proposed methods provides improved search performance which are efficient methods to help select optimum 2D thresholds with much less computation cost and suitable for real time applications.
Role of p73 Dinucleotide Polymorphism in Prostate Cancer and p73 Protein Isoform Balance

Background. Molecular markers for prostate cancer (PCa) risks are currently lacking. Here we address the potential association of a dinucleotide polymorphism (DNP) in exon 2 of the p73 gene with PCa risk/progression and discern any disruption of p73 protein isoforms levels in cells harboring a p73 DNP allele. Methods. We investigated the association between p73 DNP genotype and PCa risk/aggressiveness and survival by fitting logistic regression models in 1,292 incident cases and 682 controls. Results. Although we detected no association between p73 DNP and PCa risk, a significant inverse relationship between p73 DNP and PCa aggressiveness (AT/AT + GC/AT versus GC/GC, OR = 0.55, 95%Cl = 0.31–0.99) was detected. Also, p73 DNP is marginally associated with overall death (dominant model, HR = 0.76, 95%Cl = 0.57–1.00, P = 0.053) as well as PCa specific death (HR = 0.69, 95%Cl = 0.45–1.06, P = 0.09). Western blot analyses for p73 protein isoforms indicate that cells heterozygous for the p73 DNP have lower levels of ∆Np73 relative to TAp73 (P < 0.001). Conclusions. Our findings are consistent with an association between p73 DNP and low risk for PCa aggressiveness by increasing the expressed TAp73/∆Np73 protein isoform ratio.
Hybrid Modulation Technique for Grid-Connected Cascaded Photovoltaic Systems

In this paper, a control method based on the derivative of power is introduced for single-stage single-phase grid-connected cascaded H-bridge (CHB) photovoltaic inverters. The proposed scheme uses solar arrays derivative of power with respect to current to track maximum power point of each array individually. Using this method along with hybrid modulation technique allows utilization of CHB cells up to their full potential. The control system has a simple structure, and is inherently able to stabilize the system under heavy mismatching conditions where the modulation index goes higher than unity. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is verified by simulation and experimental results.
Light-weight Key Management Scheme for Active RFID Applications

Due to low-cost and its practical solution, the integration of RFID tag to the sensor node called smart RFID has become prominent solution in various fields including industrial applications. Nevertheless, the constrained nature of smart RFID system introduces tremendous security and privacy problem. One of them is the problem in key management system. Indeed, it is not feasible to recall all RFID tags in order to update their security properties (e.g. update their private keys). On the other hand, using common key management solution like standard TLS/SSL is too heavy-weight that can drain and overload the limited resources. Furthermore, most of existing solutions are highly susceptible to various threats reaching from privacy threats, physical attacks to various technics of Man-in-the-Middle attacks. This paper introduces novel key management system, tailored to the limited resources of smart RFID system. It proposes light-weight mutual authentication and identity protection to mitigate the existing threats.
Anomalies in Auction Choice Behavior

Ivanova-Stenzel and Salmon (2004a) established some interesting yet puzzling results regarding biddersâ€™ preferences between auction formats. The finding is that bidders strongly prefer the ascending to the first price sealed bid auction on a ceteris paribus basis but they are not willing to pay up to an entry price for entering into an ascending auction instead of a first price that would equalize the profits between the two. While it was found that risk aversion on the part of the bidders could resolve this anomaly the claim that risk aversion drives overbidding in first price auctions is somewhat controversial. In this study we examine two competing explanations for the observed behavior; loss aversion and â€œclock aversionâ€ , i.e. a dislike for some aspect of the clock based bidding mechanism. We find that neither alternative explanation can account for biddersâ€™ auction choice behavior leaving risk aversion as the only un-falsified hypothesis.
Sequential Selling and Information Dissemination in the Presence of Network Effects

In this paper, we examine how a seller sells a product/service with a positive consumption externality, and customers are uncertain about the product's/service's value. Because early adopters learn this value, we consider the customers' intrinsic signaling incentives and positive feedback effects. Anticipating this, the seller commits to provide price discounts to the followers, and charges the leader a high price. Thus, the profit-maximizing pricing features the cream skimming strategy. We also show that the lack of seller's commitment is detrimental to the social welfare; nonetheless, the sequential selling still boosts up the seller's profit. Embedding a physical network with arbitrary payoff externality among customers, we investigate the optimal targeting strategy in the presence of information asymmetry. We provide precise indices for this leader selection problem. For undirected graphs, we should simply choose the player with the highest degree, irrespective of the seller's commitment power. Going beyond this family of networks, in general the seller's commitment power affects the optimal targeting strategy.
Binder-Free Tungsten Carbide Fabricated by Pulsed Current Sintering

In this presentation, we show some experimental results of binder-free WC with Nano WC sintered by Pulsed Electric Current Sintering (PECS) process also known as Field Assisted Sintering Technology (FAST). The particle size of WC powder is almost 80 nm. These binder-free WC have extremely hardness and stiffness. However, these mechanical properties are dependent on the sintering condition, e.g., maximum temperature, applied presssure, etc. We show some relationship between mechanical properties and sintering condition to improve to sinter the binder-free WC
Selecting effective expansion terms for diversity

Query expansion has been successfully applied in Information Retrieval, mostly for adhoc search tasks. On the other hand, query expansion can also fail, particularly in light of query ambiguity. For an ambiguous query, an effective strategy is to diversify the search results, in the hope of retrieving at least one relevant result for each of the possible information needs underlying the query. In this paper, we propose to tailor query expansion to diversify the search results in order to tackle query ambiguity. In particular, we introduce a novel approach to select diverse expansion terms given a suitable partition of the feedback provided by the search users. Thorough experiments in the context of the TREC 2009, 2010 and 2011 Web tracks examine the effectiveness of our approach at improving the diversification performance of state-of-the-art query expansion techniques.
The Crystallization Kinetics of Polypropylene/Organo Montmorillonite Nanocomposites Modified with Calcium Pimelate

Polypropylene/organo montmorillonite nanocomposites modified with 0.001-0.1 wt% calcium pimelate, a β-nucleating agent, were prepared using twin screw extruder. The effects of calcium pimelate content on crystallization behavior were investigated using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The crystallization kinetics were studied using both nonisothermal and isothermal methods. The development of relative crystallinity with the crystallization time was analyzed by the Avrami equation. For nonisothermal studies, the Kissingers theory was employed and the crystallization activation energy was calculated. The results showed that the crystallization temperature shifted to a higher temperature range when calcium pimelate was added. The alpha crystal form of polypropylene nanocomposite was suppressed, by the additions of calcium pimelate, while beta crystallization reaction was accelerated.
Extracellular Regulation of Bone Morphogenetic Protein Activity by the Microfibril Component Fibrillin-1*

Since the discovery of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) as pluripotent cytokines extractable from bone matrix, it has been speculated how targeting of BMPs to the extracellular matrix (ECM) modulates their bioavailability. Understanding these processes is crucial for elucidating pathomechanisms of connective tissue disorders characterized by ECM deficiency and growth factor dysregulation. Here, we provide evidence for a new BMP targeting and sequestration mechanism that is controlled by the ECM molecule fibrillin-1. We present the nanoscale structure of the BMP-7 prodomain-growth factor complex using electron microscopy, small angle x-ray scattering, and circular dichroism spectroscopy, showing that it assumes an open V-like structure when it is bioactive. However, upon binding to fibrillin-1, the BMP-7 complex is rendered into a closed ring shape, which also confers latency to the growth factor, as demonstrated by bioactivity measurements. BMP-7 prodomain variants were used to map the critical epitopes for prodomain-growth factor and prodomain-prodomain binding. Together, these data show that upon prodomain binding to fibrillin-1, the BMP-7 complex undergoes a conformational change, which denies access of BMP receptors to the growth factor.
met*: A Method for Discriminating Metonymy and Metaphor by Computer

The met* method distinguishes selected examples of metonymy from metaphor and from literalness and anomaly in short English sentences. In the met* method, literalness is distinguished because it satisfies contextual constraints that the nonliteral others all violate. Metonymy is discriminated from metaphor and anomaly in a way that [1] supports Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) view that in metonymy one entity stands for another whereas in metaphor one entity is viewed as another, [2] permits chains of metonymies (Reddy 1979), and [3] allows metonymies to co-occur with instances of either literalness, metaphor, or anomaly. Metaphor is distinguished from anomaly because the former contains a relevant analogy, unlike the latter. The met* method is part of Collative Semantics, a semantics for natural language processing, and has been implemented in a computer program called meta5. Some examples of meta5's analysis of metaphor and metonymy are given. The met* method is compared with approaches from artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.