Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent Improvements in NIST-Fl and Resulting Accuracies of δf/f<7x10-16

Since our last publication describing the accuracy budget for NIST-FI (a laser-cooled Cs fountain primary frequency standard) the authors have made many improvements resulting in nearly a factor of 2 reduction in the uncertainty in the realization of the SI second. Recently the authors reported a combined standard fractional uncertainty of 0.67times10-15
Prion pathogenesis and secondary lymphoid organs (SLO)

Prion diseases are subacute neurodegenerative diseases that affect humans and a range of domestic and free-ranging animal species. These diseases are characterized by the accumulation of PrPSc, an abnormally folded isoform of the cellular prion protein (PrPC), in affected tissues. The pathology during prion disease appears to occur almost exclusively within the central nervous system. The extensive neurodegeneration which occurs ultimately leads to the death of the host. An intriguing feature of the prion diseases, when compared with other protein-misfolding diseases, is their transmissibility. Following peripheral exposure, some prion diseases accumulate to high levels within lymphoid tissues. The replication of prions within lymphoid tissue has been shown to be important for the efficient spread of disease to the brain. This article describes recent progress in our understanding of the cellular mechanisms that influence the propagation of prions from peripheral sites of exposure (such as the lumen of the intestine) to the brain. A thorough understanding of these events will lead to the identification of important targets for therapeutic intervention, or alternatively, reveal additional processes that influence disease susceptibility to peripherally-acquired prion diseases.
Approximation by quadrilateral finite elements

We consider the approximation properties of finite element spaces on quadrilateral meshes. The finite element spaces are constructed starting with a given finite dimensional space of functions on a square reference element, which is then transformed to a space of functions on each convex quadrilateral element via a bilinear isomorphism of the square onto the element. It is known that for affine isomorphisms, a necessary and sufficient condition for approximation of order r + 1 in L p and order r in W 1 p is that the given space of functions on the reference element contain all polynomial functions of total degree at most r. In the case of bilinear isomorphisms, it is known that the same estimates hold if the function space contains all polynomial functions of separate degree r. We show, by means of a counterexample, that this latter condition is also necessary. As applications, we demonstrate degradation of the convergence order on quadrilateral meshes as compared to rectangular meshes for serendipity finite elements and for various mixed and nonconforming finite elements.
Molecular microbiological evaluation of subgingival biofilm sampling by paper point and curette

The present clinical study aimed to investigate if there are differences in microbiological outcomes dependent on the subgingival biofilm collection method. Subgingival biofilm samples were collected from the four deepest pockets (>5 mm) of 17 patients with aggressive periodontitis (AgP) and 33 patients with chronic periodontitis (CP), first by paper point and thereafter by curette. Samples obtained with the same method were pooled together from each patient and forwarded for molecular microbiological analysis by a commercially available assay (IAI Pado Test 4.5) that estimates total bacterial load and levels of Porphyromonas gingivalis, Tannerella forsythia, Treponema denticola and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. Data analysis included frequency of detection, quantification and correlation of detection levels between the two sampling methods. P. gingivalis, T. forsythia and T. denticola were detected in >90% of the samples, and their detection levels exhibited a strong correlation between sampling methods. The detection consistency of A. actinomycetemcomitans was 56% between the two sampling methods. A. actinomycetemcomitans was more readily detected by paper point compared with curette collection with a stronger correlation between the two methods in AgP. Subgingival biofilm sampling by curette or paper point does not yield differences in the detection of the three ‘red complex’ species. However, A. actinomycetemcomitans was more consistently detected by means of paper point collection, which can be crucial in the decision to administer antibiotics as an adjunctive periodontal treatment.
Validation of an FFQ to assess antioxidant intake in overweight postmenopausal women

Abstract Objective To validate an FFQ to assess antioxidant intake in overweight postmenopausal women. Design A seventy-four-item antioxidant 1-month FFQ was developed based on major antioxidant sources in the American diet. Forty overweight postmenopausal women participated in a 9-month observational study and completed four sets of FFQ and 7 d food record (7dFR) every 3 months. Twelve-hour fasting blood was collected for plasma antioxidant measurement at the first visit. Setting Connecticut, USA. Subjects Forty overweight postmenopausal women. Results Spearman correlation coefficients of 1-month antioxidant intake estimated from the first set of FFQ and 7dFR ranged from 0·34 to 0·87, except for γ-tocopherol. The proportion of participants categorized into the extremely opposite tertiles averaged 7 %. Significant correlations were observed for diet–plasma vitamin C, α-tocopherol and carotenoids (P < 0·05). No time effect was observed on the dietary antioxidant intakes estimated from four 7dFR and four FFQ. Dietary antioxidants estimated from averaged four 7dFR showed moderate to high correlation with those estimated from averaged four FFQ and from each FFQ collected every 3 months. Bland–Altman plots did not show any systematic bias. Averaged misclassifications were below 10 % between these two instruments. Conclusions These findings attested a reasonable validity and a good acceptance of this 1-month FFQ in assessing both short-term and long-term diverse antioxidant intakes in these overweight postmenopausal women. The use of this FFQ in associating antioxidant intake with disease risk needs further investigation.
Novel Technique of Multislice CT Angiography for Diagnosis of Portosystemic Shunts in Sedated Dogs

Diagnosing portosystemic shunts (PSS) can be challenging in veterinary patients. Multiple imaging techniques have been described to diagnose PSS. The aim of the study was to investigate whether a novel multi-slice computed tomography (CT) angiographic protocol could be used for diagnosis of PSS in dogs utilizing only patient sedation and without the need of test injection. Independent, blinded reviewers evaluated CT studies in a randomized order for study quality, shunt presence, number, and location of shunt origin and termination. Twenty two confirmed dogs were included in the study including 16 dogs with single extrahepatic congenital PSS, one dog with single intrahepatic congenital PSS, and two dogs with multiple acquired PSS. Three of the dogs (3/22) were surgically and histologically confirmed free of shunts. Final diagnosis was confirmed by surgery or necropsy. The new CT angiography protocol was shown to be diagnostic in dogs with PSS with no need for general anesthesia, test injections, delay times or timing determinations. Specificity and sensitivity were good (100%). The quality of the studies was considered good in the majority of cases (20/22). The amount of motion artifact in the CT scans was minimal, and had no effect on the diagnostic quality. The CT protocol was found to be a useful, fast, and accurate tool for diagnosing portosystemic shunts with a 16-slice system.
Long‐term oral intake of aluminium or zinc does not accelerate Alzheimer pathology in AβPP and AβPP/tau transgenic mice

Whether or not the oral intake of metals such as aluminium (Al) and zinc (Zn) is a risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been a matter of controversy. Lack of AD pathology in patients with Al encephalopathy indicates Al does not cause AD. On the other hand, some epidemiological studies have suggested high Al increases the occurrence of AD. Our purpose is to test if high Al in drinking water is a risk factor for AD. We administered Al and Zn in drinking water to Tg2576, a transgenic mouse model for amyloid β‐protein (Aβ) deposition with the Aβ precursor protein (AβPP) mutations (K670N/M671L), and Tg2576/tau(P301L), a model for Aβ and tau deposition. Deionized water was given to the control Tg2576 and Tg2576/tau. After administration for 4–10 months of approximately 100 mg/kg body weight Al or Zn per day, we were not able to find by quantitative immunohistochemical analyses differences in the deposition of Aβ and tau between the treated and untreated groups. Nor did the Al or Zn treatment affect the amount of soluble Aβ and Aβ*56, an Aβ oligomer, measured by ELISA or immunoblot. The oral intake of excess Al or Zn does not accelerate AD pathology in the transgenic mouse models for Aβ and tau accumulation. Such results do not seem to support the notion that excessive oral intake of Al or Zn is a risk factor for AD.
MRF Optimization via Dual Decomposition: Message-Passing Revisited

A new message-passing scheme for MRF optimization is proposed in this paper. This scheme inherits better theoretical properties than all other state-of-the-art message passing methods and in practice performs equally well/outperforms them. It is based on the very powerful technique of Dual Decomposition [1] and leads to an elegant and general framework for understanding/designing message-passing algorithms that can provide new insights into existing techniques. Promising experimental results and comparisons with the state of the art demonstrate the extreme theoretical and practical potentials of our approach.
A dehydrin gene isolated from feral olive enhances drought tolerance in Arabidopsis transgenic plants

Dehydrins belong to a protein family whose expression may be induced or enhanced by developmental process and environmental stresses that lead to cell dehydration. A dehydrin gene named OesDHN was isolated and characterized from oleaster (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea, var. sylvestris), the wild form of olive. To elucidate the contribution of OesDHN in the development of drought tolerance, its expression levels were investigated in oleaster plants during development and under drought stress condition. The involvement of OesDHN in plant stress response was also evaluated in Arabidopsis transgenic lines, engineered to overexpress this gene, and exposed to a controlled mild osmotic stress. OesDHN expression was found to be modulated during development and induced under mild drought stress in oleaster plants. In addition, the Arabidopsis transgenic plants showed a better tolerance to osmotic stress than wild-type plants. The results demonstrated that OesDHN expression is induced by drought stress and is able to confer osmotic stress tolerance. We suggest a role for OesDHN, as a putative functional marker of plant stress tolerance.
A-CAM: a 135-kD receptor of intercellular adherens junctions. I. Immunoelectron microscopic localization and biochemical studies

The recently described adherens junction-specific 135-kD protein (Volk, T., and B. Geiger, 1984, EMBO (Eur. Mol. Biol. Organ.) J., 3:2249-2260) was localized along cardiac muscle intercalated discs by immunogold labeling of ultrathin frozen sections. Analysis of this labeling indicated that the 135-kD protein, adherens junction-specific cell adhesion molecule (A-CAM), is tightly associated with the plasma membrane unlike vinculin labeling, which was present along the membrane- bound plaques of the fascia adherens. In cultured chick lens cells, A- CAM was associated with Ca2+-dependent junctions that were cleaved upon a decrease of extracellular Ca2+ concentrations to less than or equal to 0.5 mM. In the chelator-separated junction, A-CAM became exposed to exogenously added antibodies or to proteolytic enzymes. Upon addition of trypsin to EGTA-treated cells, A-CAM was cleaved into three major cell-bound antigenic peptides with apparent molecular masses of 78, 60, and 46 kD, suggesting that the extracellular domain of A-CAM has a size greater than or equal to kD. Incubation of electrophoretic gels with 125I-concanavalin A (Con A) indicated that one of the major Con A- binding proteins in chicken lens membranes is a integral of 135-kD glycoprotein that was partially purified on Con A-Sepharose column and identified as A-CAM by immunoblotting. Detergent partitioning assay using Triton X-114 biphasic system was carried out to determine whether A-CAM displays properties of an integral membrane protein. This assay indicated that the intact A-CAM molecule was recovered in the buffer phase but its cell-associated tryptic peptides, which presumably lost a great part of the A-CAM extracellular extension, readily partitioned into the detergent phase. The results obtained in this and in the following paper (Volk, T., and B. Geiger, 1986, J. Cell Biol., 103:1451- 1464) strongly suggest that A-CAM is a Ca2+-dependent adherens junction- specific membrane glycoprotein that is involved in intercellular adhesion in these sites.
Boosting the Minimum Margin: LPBoost vs. AdaBoost

LPBoost seemingly should have better generalization capability than AdaBoost according to the margin theory (Schapire, 1999) because LPBoost optimizes the minimum margin directly. Thus far, however, there is no empirical comparison and theoretical explanation of LPBoost against AdaBoost. We have conducted an experimental evaluation on the classification performance of LPBoost and AdaBoost in this paper. Our results show that the LPBoost performs worse than AdaBoost in most cases. By considering the margin distribution, we present an explanation. Also, our finding indicates that besides the minimum margin, which is directly and globally optimized in LPBoost, the margin distribution plays a more important role in terms of the learned strong classifierpsilas classification performance.
Towards responsive Sensitive Artificial Listeners

This paper describes work in the recently started project SEMAINE, which aims to build a set of Sensitive Artificial Listeners – conversational agents designed to sustain an interaction with a human user despite limited verbal skills, through robust recognition and generation of non-verbal behaviour in real-time, both when the agent is speaking and listening. We report on data collection and on the design of a system architecture in view of real-time responsiveness.
Obesogenic television food advertising to children in Malaysia: sociocultural variations

Background Food advertising on television (TV) is well known to influence children's purchasing requests and models negative food habits in Western countries. Advertising of unhealthy foods is a contributor to the obesogenic environment that is a key driver of rising rates of childhood obesity. Children in developing countries are more at risk of being targeted by such advertising, as there is a huge potential for market growth of unhealthy foods concomitant with poor regulatory infrastructure. Further, in developing countries with multi-ethnic societies, information is scarce on the nature of TV advertising targeting children. Objectives To measure exposure and power of TV food marketing to children on popular multi-ethnic TV stations in Malaysia. Design Ethnic-specific popular TV channels were identified using industry data. TV transmissions were recorded for each channel from November 2012 to August 2013 (16 hr/day) for randomly selected weekdays and weekend days during normal days and repeated during school holidays (n=88 days). Coded food/beverage advertisements were grouped into core (healthy), non-core (non-healthy), or miscellaneous (unclassified) food categories. Peak viewing time (PVT) and persuasive marketing techniques were identified. Results Non-core foods were predominant in TV food advertising, and rates were greater during school holidays compared to normal days (3.51 vs 1.93 food ads/hr/channel, p<0.001). During normal days’ PVT, the ratio of non-core to core food advertising was higher (3.25 food ads/hr/channel), and this more than trebled during school holidays to 10.25 food ads/hr/channel. Popular channels for Indian children had the lowest rate of food advertising relative to other ethnic groups. However, sugary drinks remained a popular non-core product advertised across all broadcast periods and channels. Notably, promotional characters doubled for non-core foods during school holidays compared to normal days (1.91 vs 0.93 food ads/hr/channel, p<0.001). Conclusions This study highlights non-core food advertising, and predominantly sugary drinks are commonly screened on Malaysian TV channels. The majority of these sugary drinks were advertised by multinational companies, and this observation warrants regulatory attention.
Research of Similar Images Based on Global Descriptors and Multiple Clustering

— The development of search engine for similar images stays yet a scientific challenge. Since every image is represented by one or more vectors, the research stage becomes very hard. To raise these difficulties, we suggest inserting a search engine based on multiple representations of images where every image will be represented by three vectors that are color, texture and shape. In the research phase, we applied on the first one clustering on every level of representation for all images stored on the database. This has enabled us to obtain fifteen classes of colors, ten classes of texture and twenty classes of shape. Finally we compute the descriptors associated to the research image and we detect the classes of membership for each level of the representation. Note that the proposed method allowed us to reduce the number of images to check to 7% on average of the database.
Three-level converter based active filter for harmonic compensation of 4MW induction furnace

The paper explains the power quality study conducted in a 4 MW mini steel plant, having fault level of 250 MVA, to investigate the critical electrical problems caused by the harmonics and the development of a STATCOM as a solution for harmonic mitigation. A 500 kVAR STATCOM is realized with a current controlled three level voltage source converter (VSC). The hardware configuration and the control strategy have been dealt in detail. Site installation and experimental results demonstrating STATCOM's performance are also presented.
Stm1p, a G4 Quadruplex and Purine Motif Triplex Nucleic Acid-binding Protein, Interacts with Ribosomes and Subtelomeric Y′ DNA in Saccharomyces cerevisiae*

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein Stm1 was originally identified as a G4 quadruplex and purine motif triplex nucleic acid-binding protein. However, more recent studies have suggested a role for Stm1p in processes ranging from antiapoptosis to telomere maintenance. To better understand the biological role of Stm1p and its potential for G*G multiplex binding, we used epitope-tagged protein and immunological methods to identify the subcellular localization and protein and nucleic acid partners of Stm1p in vivo. Indirect immunofluorescence microscopy indicated that Stm1p is primarily a cytoplasmic protein, although a small percentage is also present in the nucleus. Conventional immunoprecipitation found that Stm1p is associated with ribosomal proteins and rRNA. This association was verified by rate zonal separation through sucrose gradients, which showed that Stm1p binds exclusively to mature 80 S ribosomes and polysomes. Chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments found that Stm1p preferentially binds telomere-proximal Y′ element DNA sequences. Taken together, our data suggest that Stm1p is primarily a ribosome-associated protein, but one that can also interact with DNA, especially subtelomeric sequences. We discuss the implications of our findings in relation to prior genetic, genomic, and proteomic studies that have identified STM1 and/or Stm1p as well as the possible biological role of Stm1p.
Teachers in Transition: The Impact of Antiracist Professional Development on Classroom Practice

This article examines the impact of an antiracist professional development project on eighty-four suburban white teachers, all of whom are part of a voluntary desegregation program. Analysis of writing-sample data reveals that forty-eight of the eighty-four participants took antiracist actions as a result of their new learning about race and racism. In all, 142 specific actions were noted. The categories of action-taking related to three parameters of schooling: the quality of interpersonal interactions among school and community members, the curriculum, and the institution's policies regarding support services for students of color. The relationship between changes in the educators' racial-identity development and their behaviors is discussed as are the elements that contributed to the antiracist educational outcomes.
An Efficient Architecture for Lifting-Based Forward and Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform

In this research, an architecture that performs both forward and inverse lifting-based discrete wavelet transform is proposed. The proposed architecture reduces the hardware requirement by exploiting the redundancy in the arithmetic operation involved in DWT computation. The proposed architecture does not require any extra memory to store intermediate results. The proposed architecture consists of predict module, update module, address generation module, control unit and a set of registers to establish data communication between predict and update modules. The symmetrical extension of images at the boundary to reduce distorted images has been incorporated in our proposed architecture as mentioned in JPEG2000. This architecture has been described in VHDL at the RTL level and simulated successfully using ModelSim simulation environment
Block-sparse compressed sensing: non-convex model and iterative re-weighted algorithm

Compressed sensing is a new sampling technique which can exactly reconstruct sparse signal from a few measurements. In this article, we consider the block-sparse compressed sensing with special structure assumption about the signal. A novel non-convex model is proposed to reconstruct the block-sparse signals. In addition, the conditions of the proposed model for recovering the block-sparse noise or noise-free signals are presented. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed non-convex method surpasses the convex method (the mixed -norm optimization) and some algorithms without considering the block-sparse structure (the - and -norm optimization).
Is Learning-to-Rank Cost-Effective in Recommending Relevant Files for Bug Localization?

Software bug localization aiming to determine the locations needed to be fixed for a bug report is one of the most tedious and effort consuming activities in software debugging. Learning-to-rank (LR) is the state-of-the-art approach proposed by Ye et al. to recommending relevant files for bug localization. Ye et al.'s experimental results show that the LR approach significantly outperforms previous bug localization approaches in terms of "precision" and "accuracy". However, this evaluation does not take into account the influence of the size of the recommended files on the efficiency in detecting bugs. In practice, developers will generally spend more code inspection effort to detect bugs if larger files are recommended. In this paper, we use six large-scale open-source Java projects to evaluate the LR approach in the context of effort-aware bug localization. Our results, surprisingly, show that, when taking into account the code inspection effort to detect bugs, the LR approach is similar to or even worse than the standard VSM (Vector Space Model), a naïve IR-based bug localization approach.