Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of alveolar epithelial ICAM-1 in lipopolysaccharide-induced lung inflammation

Intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) is known to play a central role in lung inflammation. Limited information, however, is available regarding the expression and biological function of ICAM-1 in the alveolar epithelial compartment. The current report analyses the expression pattern of ICAM-1 in primary cultures of rat alveolar epithelial cells (AECs) and in the rat lung following instillation of bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide (LPS)) in order to better define the role of alveolar epithelial ICAM-1. AECs stimulated in vitro with LPS were evaluated for ICAM-1 and ICAM-1 messenger ribonucleic acid content. Adherence assays with neutrophils and macrophages were performed. Endotoxin-induced ICAM-1 upregulation on AECs was demonstrated in vivo by immunofluorescence staining. In addition, the effect of intratracheally-instilled anti-ICAM-1 was assessed. Significant upregulation of ICAM-1 occurred in vitro and in vivo on AECs after LPS stimulation. Adherence assays showed a 114% increase in adhesion of neutrophils to AECs. Antibody directed against ICAM-1 reduced this adhesion by 40%. A significant reduction in the number of neutrophils in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and whole lung was seen under airway ICAM-1 blockade. These data indicate that intercellular adhesion molecule-1 participates in the inflammatory response to lipopolysaccharide-induced lung injury in the distal airways by interacting mainly with neutrophils.
Sublethal Concentrations of Pleurocidin-Derived Antimicrobial Peptides Inhibit Macromolecular Synthesis in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Cationic bactericidal peptides are components of natural host defenses against infections. While the mode of antibacterial action of cationic peptides remains controversial, several targets, including the cytoplasmic membrane and macromolecular synthesis, have been identified for peptides acting at high concentrations. The present study identified peptide effects at lower, near-lethal inhibitory concentrations. An amidated hybrid of the flounder pleurocidin and the frog dermaseptin (P-Der), two other pleurocidin derivatives, and pleurocidin itself were studied. At 2 μg/ml, the MIC, P-Der inhibited Escherichia coli growth in a broth dilution assay but did not cause bacterial death within 30 min, as estimated by viable count analysis. Consistent with this, P-Der demonstrated a weak ability to permeabilize membranes but was able to translocate across the lipid bilayer of unilamellar liposomes. Doses of 20 μg/ml or more reduced bacterial viable counts by about 2 log orders of magnitude within 5 min after peptide treatment. Abrupt loss of cell membrane potential, observed with a fluorescent dye, dipropylthiacarbocyanine, paralleled bacterial death but did not occur at the sublethal, inhibitory concentrations. Both lethal and sublethal concentrations of P-Der affected macromolecular synthesis within 5 min, as demonstrated by incorporation of [3H]thymidine, [3H]uridine, and [3H]histidine, but the effects were qualitatively distinct at the two concentrations. Variations of the inhibition pattern described above were observed for pleurocidin and two other derivatives. Our results indicate that peptides at their lowest inhibitory concentrations may be less capable of damaging cell membranes, while they maintain their ability to inhibit macromolecular synthesis. Better understanding of the effects of peptides acting at their MICs will contribute to the design of new peptides effective at lower, less toxic concentrations.
Determinants and Regression Equations for the Calculation of z Scores of Left Ventricular Tissue Doppler Longitudinal Indexes in a Healthy Italian Pediatric Population

Aim. We investigated the predictors of tissue Doppler left ventricular (LV) longitudinal indexes in a healthy Italian pediatric population and established normative data and regression equations for the calculation of z scores. Methods and Results. A total of 369 healthy subjects aged 1–17 years (age of 6.4 ± 1.1 years, 49.1% female) underwent echocardiography. LV peak longitudinal velocity at systole (s '), early diastole (e '), and late diastole (a ') was determined by tissue Doppler. The ratio of peak early diastolic LV filling velocity to e ' was calculated. Age was the only independent determinant of s ' (β = 0.491, p < 0.0001) and the strongest determinant of e ' (β = 0.334, p < 0.0001) and E/e ' (β = −0.369, p < 0.0001). Heart rate was the main determinant of a ' (β = 0.265, p < 0.0001). Male gender showed no effects except for a weak association with lateral s ', suggesting no need of gender-specific reference ranges. Age-specific reference ranges, regression equations, and scatterplots for the calculation of z scores were determined for each index. Conclusion. In a pediatric Italian population, age was the strongest determinant of LV longitudinal dynamics. The availability of age-specific normality data for the calculation of z scores may allow for correctly detecting LV dysfunction in pediatric pathological populations.
Using ER models for microprocessor functional test coverage evaluation

Test coverage evaluation is one of the most critical issues in microprocessor software-based testing. Whenever the test is developed in the absence of a structural model of the microprocessor, the evaluation of the final test coverage may become a major issue. In this paper, we present a microprocessor modeling technique based on entity-relationship diagrams allowing the definition and the computation of custom coverage functions. The proposed model is very flexible and particularly effective when a structural model of the microprocessor is not available.
Home, sense of place and visitors' intepretations of digital cultural immersive experiences in museums: An application of the “embodied constructivist GTM digital ethnography in situ” method

What is the relationship between the visitor's hybrid identity and his/her interpretation process? How can his/her relationship with one or more places affect the understanding of a real place, a virtual place, or a digital representation of a real place through augmented panoramas? This paper will answer these two research questions, interpreting the patterns emerging from data collected about visitors' experiences in the immersive environment PLACE-Hampi, designed by Sarah Kenderdine and Jeffrey Shaw. The paper is based on a method which the author calls “embodied constructivist GTM digital ethnography in situ”.
Design of WARP: A wireless open-access research platform

This paper presents the design of WARP, a custom platform for research in advanced wireless algorithms and applications. The platform consists of both custom hardware and FPGA implementations of key communications blocks. The hardware consists of FPGA-based processing boards coupled to wideband radios and other I/O interfaces; the algorithm implementations already include a flexible OFDM physical layer. Both the hardware specifications and algorithm implementations will be freely available to academic researchers to enable the development of a widely disseminated, highly capable platform for wireless research.
Brilliant or Bad: The Gendered Social Construction of Exceptionalism in Early Adolescence

From kindergarten through college, students perceive boys as more intelligent than girls, yet few sociological studies have identified how school processes shape students’ gender status beliefs. Drawing on 2.5 years of longitudinal ethnography and 196 interviews conducted at a racially diverse, public middle school in Los Angeles, this article demonstrates how educators’ differential regulation of boys’ rule-breaking by course level contributed to gender-based differences in students’ perceptions of intelligence. In higher-level courses—where affluent, White, and Asian American students were overrepresented—educators tolerated 6th-grade boys’ rule-breaking, such that boys challenged girls’ opinions and monopolized classroom conversations. By 8th grade, students perceived higher-level boys as more exceptionally intelligent than girls. However, in lower-level courses—where non-affluent Latinx students were overrepresented—educators penalized 6th-grade boys’ rule-breaking, such that boys disengaged from classroom conversations. By 8th grade, lower-level students perceived girls as smarter than boys, but not exceptional. This article also demonstrates how race intersected with gender when shaping students’ perceptions of intelligence, with students associating the most superlatives with affluent White boys’ capabilities. Through this analysis, I develop a new theoretical understanding of how school processes contribute to the gendered social construction of exceptionalism and reproduce social inequalities in early adolescence.
Assessment of a Margin Squeeze as an Abuse of Dominant Position under EU Competition Law

It is not illegal for an undertaking to have dominant position under EU competition law but such undertakings have a special responsibility to ensure that its conduct does not distort competition. Margins squeeze is one of the many different measures that can be construed as an abuse of an undertakings dominant position under Article 102 TFEU. Margin squeeze can be implemented by a vertically-integrated undertaking with a dominant position on the upstream level (wholesale) that supplies a key input to downstream operators (retail), and also competes on the downstream level in providing services to end users. The dominant undertaking can abuse its position by a margin squeeze by setting its upstream operations wholesale price and its downstream operations retail price at such a level that the margin spread between these two prices will be insufficient for an equally efficient competitor to profitably trade on the downstream market. This abuse has an exclusionary effect on the downstream market since competitors won’t be able stay profitable as a result of the vertically-integrated dominant undertakings pricing practice. The EU case-law concerning the assessment of margin squeeze as an abuse of dominant position is relatively newly developed and has been the subject of lively academic debates and some controversy. The objective of this thesis is to analyze how margin squeeze has been assessed as an abuse of dominance by the EU judicature and the Commission and whether margin squeeze should be assessed under same requirements as refusal to deal when the dominant undertaking has voluntarily decided to deal with its downstream competitors.
Social Network Profile and Policy

A social network describes an entity's relationship with other entities for interacting. The digital world currently consists of many isolated communities or domains that enable entities to form social networks within each community but not across communities because of the undisclosed, incomplete or incompatible connectivity protocols and data representation. A specification for the social network profile and policy is presented in this paper with the aim to address these issues by providing a common representation for defining the entity's relations and their social attributes, and its connectivity expectations and preferences. Furthermore, this profile and policy specification paves the path for supporting entities in automating their actions and managing their social networks.
A Large-Scale Study on Predicting and Contextualizing Building Energy Usage

In this paper we present a data-driven approach to modeling end user energy consumption in residential and commercial buildings. Our model is based upon a data set of monthly electricity and gas bills, collected by a utility over the course of several years, for approximately 6,500 buildings in Cambridge, MA. In addition, we use publicly available tax assessor records and geographical survey information to determine corresponding features for the buildings. Using both parametric and non-parametric learning methods, we learn models that predict distributions over energy usage based upon these features, and use these models to develop two end-user systems. For utilities or authorized institutions (those who may obtain access to the full data) we provide a system that visualizes energy consumption for each building in the city; this allows companies to quickly identify outliers (buildings which use much more energy than expected even after conditioning on the relevant predictors), for instance allowing them to target homes for potential retrofits or tiered pricing schemes. For other end users, we provide an interface for entering their own electricity and gas usage, along with basic information about their home, to determine how their consumption compares to that of similar buildings as predicted by our model. Merely allowing users to contextualize their consumption in this way, relating it to the consumption in similar buildings, can itself produce behavior changes to significantly reduce consumption.
Performance of a Coupled Reinforced Learning-Fuzzy Control Approach to the Control of a Solar Domestic Hot Water System

The paper discusses the results of a comparative analysis of the performance of different control strategies applied to a reference solar DHW system. Three classes of control strategies have been considered: so-called naïve control strategies based on the on-off control of the solar collectors pump using temperatures difference, solar irradiation or both; fuzzy-based control strategies; and a reinforced learning-based strategy coupling a Qlearning algorithm to a fuzzy controller. The performance figures used in the analysis are the seasonal performance factor at the primary side of the circuit (SPFcoll), the seasonal performance factor of the whole DHW preparation process (SPFDHW) and the number of times the circulation pump is switched on and off (NONOFF). The analysis, carried out numerically, has been performed using the TRNSYS simulation software coupled to a LabVIEW implementation of the controllers. The analysis suggests that controllers able to find a nearly optimal policy without requiring prior modelling of the system can be implemented using a reinforced learning algorithm and supports the fact that well designed control strategies can increase significantly the performance of such systems.
AAAI/RoboCup-2001 Robot Rescue

The AAAI/RoboCup Robot Rescue event is designed to push researchers to design robotic systems for urban search and rescue. The rules were written to approximate a real rescue situation in a simulated environment constructed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This article discusses the arena, the rules for the 2001 event, the research approaches of the participants, and future challenges.
Protective variant for hippocampal atrophy identified by whole exome sequencing

We used whole‐exome sequencing to identify variants other than APOE associated with the rate of hippocampal atrophy in amnestic mild cognitive impairment. An in‐silico predicted missense variant in REST (rs3796529) was found exclusively in subjects with slow hippocampal volume loss and validated using unbiased whole‐brain analysis and meta‐analysis across 5 independent cohorts. REST is a master regulator of neurogenesis and neuronal differentiation that has not been previously implicated in Alzheimer's disease. These findings nominate REST and its functional pathways as protective and illustrate the potential of combining next‐generation sequencing with neuroimaging to discover novel disease mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets. Ann Neurol 2015;77:547–552
Tribbles 3: A Novel Regulator of TLR2-Mediated Signaling in Response to Helicobacter pylori Lipopolysaccharide

Helicobacter pylori causes chronic gastritis, peptic ulcers, and gastric carcinoma. Gastric epithelial cells provide the first point of contact between H. pylori and the host. TLRs present on these cells recognize various microbial products, resulting in the initiation of innate immunity. Although previous reports investigated TLR signaling in response to intact H. pylori, the specific contribution of H. pylori LPS with regard to functional genomics and cell-signaling events has not been defined. This study set out to define downstream signaling components and altered gene expression triggered by H. pylori LPS and to investigate the role of the signaling protein tribbles 3 (TRIB3) during the TLR-mediated response to H. pylori LPS. Cotransfections using small interfering RNA and dominant-negative constructs demonstrated that H. pylori LPS functions as a classic TLR2 ligand by signaling through pathways involving the key TLR signaling components MyD88 adaptor-like, MyD88, IRAK1, IRAK4, TNFR-associated factor 6, IκB kinase β, and IκBα. Microarray analysis, real-time PCR, and ELISA revealed the induction of a discrete pattern of chemokines as a direct effect of LPS:TLR2 signaling. H. pylori infection was associated with decreased expression of TRIB3 in human gastric epithelial cell lines and tissue samples. Additionally, H. pylori decreased expression of C/EBP homologous protein and activating transcription factor 4, the transcription factors involved in the induction of TRIB3 expression. Furthermore, knockdown of TRIB3 and C/EBP homologous protein enhanced TLR2-mediated NF-κB activation and chemokine induction in response to H. pylori LPS. Thus, modulation of TRIB3 by H. pylori and/or its products may be an important mechanism during H. pylori-associated pathogenesis.
Peer-to-Peer Television : Ready for Prime Time ?

Peer-to-peer (P2P) live video multicast transmits a stream to a large population of Internet nodes, utilizing the uplink bandwidth of participating peers. Media delivery is accomplished via a distributed protocol that lets peers self-organize into distribution trees or meshes. Different from P2P file sharing, such as BitTorrent, audio and video are streamed in real-time to provide all connected peers with a viewing experience akin to broadcast television. Unlike content delivery networks (CDNs), P2P multicast does not require an expensive dedicated infrastructure. It can, in principle, scale to an unlimited number of users as its resources grow with each new peer.
Association between 3801T>C Polymorphism of CYP1A1 and Idiopathic Male Infertility Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Epidemiological studies have evaluated the association between 3801T>C polymorphism of CYP1A1 gene and the risk for idiopathic male infertility, but the results are inconclusive. We aimed to derive a more precise estimation of the relationship by conducting a meta-analysis of case-control studies. Methods This study conformed to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. PubMed, Embase and CNKI databases were searched through November 2013 to identify relevant studies. Pooled odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were used to assess the strength of the association between CYP1A1 3801T>C polymorphism and idiopathic male infertility risk. Q-test was performed to evaluate between-study heterogeneity and publication bias was appraised using funnel plots. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to evaluate the robustness of meta-analysis findings. Results Six studies involving 1,060 cases and 1,225 controls were included in this meta-analysis. Overall, significant associations between 3801T>C polymorphism and idiopathic male infertility risk were observed in allelic comparison (OR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.01–1.83), homozygous model (OR = 2.18, 95% CI: 1.15–4.12), and recessive model (OR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.09–3.20), with robust findings according to sensitivity analyses. However, subgroup analyses did not further identify the susceptibility to idiopathic male infertility in all comparisons. Funnel plot inspections did not reveal evidence of publication bias. Conclusions The current meta-analysis provides evidence of a significant association between CYP1A1 3801T>C polymorphism and idiopathic male infertility risk. Considering the limitation inherited from the eligible studies, further confirmation in large-scale and well-designed studies is needed.
Creating brand awareness in outdoor advertising : Designing for interactivity and presence

This thesis aims to explore the design process of incorporating elements of presence and interactivity in order to measure brand awareness in outdoor advertising. The paper starts out with a description of research related to the field. It then goes through the process of the construction of two kinds of prototypes; one traditional and one interactive advertisement. Two prototypes which are exposed to twelve participants in order to measure a difference in brand recall between them. The result of this measurement is then presented and followed with a discussion. In the end we conclude that the implementation of interactivity and presence when designing for interactive advertisement can in some ways be used to increase brand recall. It may however also lead to the loss of secondary text-based information that is better received through traditional advertisement.
Regular Fabric of Via Programmable Logic Device Using EXclusive-or Array (VPEX) for EB Direct Writing

The photo-mask cost of standard-cell-based ASICs has been increased so prohibitively that low-volume production LSIs are difficult to fabricate due to high non-recurring engineering (NRE) cost including mask cost. Recently, user-programmable devices, such as FPGAs are started to be used for low-volume consumer products. However, FPGAs cannot be replaced for general purpose because of its lower speed-performance and higher power consumption. In this paper, we propose the user-programmable architecture called VPEX (Via Programmable logic device using EXclusive-or array), in which the hardware logic can be programmed by changing layout patterns on 2 via-layers. The logic element (LE) of VPEX consists of complex-gate-type EXclusive OR (EXOR) and Inverter (NOT) gates. The single LE can output 12 logics which include NOT, Buffer (BUF), all 2-inputs logic functions, 3-inputs AOI21 and inverted-output multiplexer (MUXI) by changing via-1 layout pattern. Furthermore, via-1 layout is optimized for high-throughput EB direct writing, so mask-less programming will be realized in VPEX. We compared the performance of area, speed, and power consumption of VPEX with that of standard-cell-based ASICs and FPGAs. As a result, the speed performance of VPEX was much better than FPGAs and about 1.3-1.6 times worse than standard-cells. We believe that the combination of VPEX architecture and EB direct writing is the best solution for low-volume production LSIs.
SPIRAL: efficient and exact model identification for hidden Markov models

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) have received considerable attention in various communities (e.g, speech recognition, neurology and bioinformatic) since many applications that use HMM have emerged. The goal of this work is to identify efficiently and correctly the model in a given dataset that yields the state sequence with the highest likelihood with respect to the query sequence. We propose SPIRAL, a fast search method for HMM datasets. To reduce the search cost, SPIRAL efficiently prunes a significant number of search candidates by applying successive approximations when estimating likelihood. We perform several experiments to verify the effectiveness of SPIRAL. The results show that SPIRAL is more than 500 times faster than the naive method.