Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship of Electronic Equipment Use Before Bedtime and Sleep Problems: Evidence from Young Adults of Southern China

It was demonstrated that there are lots of impact of the usage of electronic equipment before bedtime to individual health. However previous studies focused on the acute short-term effects rather than long-term accumulating effect. To investigate this issue, 2330 participants were invited to answer the questionnaire about their usage of electronic equipment before bedtime and their sleep quality. Results indicated that: (1) Higher level of using electronic equipment before bedtime, longer sleep onset latency and shorter valid sleep time among individuals; (2) Higher level of using electronic equipment before bedtime, higher sleepiness level and lower self-satisfactions of academic, health, and sleep among individuals; (3) and as mediator, sleep efficiency plays an important role between usage of electronic equipment and daily sleepiness, as well between usage of electronic equipment and self-satisfactions. These results are useful to reveal the longterm accumulating effect of the usage of electronic equipment before bedtime and enrich the understanding of the effect to young adults’ sleep and daily performance.
Incremental Frequent Route Based Trajectory Prediction

Recent technological trends enable modern traffic prediction and management systems in which the analysis and prediction of movements of objects is essential. To this extent the present paper proposes IncCCFR---a novel, incremental approach for managing, mining, and predicting the incrementally evolving trajectories of moving objects. In addition to reduced mining and storage costs, a key advantage of the incremental approach is its ability to combine multiple temporally relevant mining results from the past to capture temporal and periodic regularities in movement. The approach and its variants are empirically evaluated on a large real-world data set of moving object trajectories, originating from a fleet of taxis, illustrating that detailed closed frequent routes can be efficiently discovered and used for prediction.
Adaptable and Adaptive Systems: The Intelligent Control Paradigm for Software Architecture

This paper presents a model-based architectural approach to evolving, or growing, adaptive software systems. The architecture is based on the Viable System Model (VMS) developed by Stafford Beer. The VSM, as a meta-model, tries to capture the essential invariants required by successful, or viable, systems. These types of systems are called Complex Adaptive Systems in Complexity Theory and Intelligent Control Systems in control engineering. I call the VSM-based architecture the Viable Software Architecture. The architecture incorporates the structure and behaviour of viable systems in software. Additionally, the approach permits “piecemeal” growth of the system to include high-levels of behaviour. The goal is to provide a method whereby software can be adapted (designtime, by humans) toward becoming an adaptive system (at runtime, self-controlling software). The Viable Software Architecture is developed in a sequence of stages using UML. Then a component framework specification is given based on the architecture. The overall goal of the approach is discussed.
Lack of Correlation between Activation of Jun–NH2-terminal Kinase and Induction of Apoptosis after Detachment of Epithelial Cells

Detachment of epithelial cells from the extracellular matrix leads to induction of programmed cell death, a process that has been termed “anoikis. ” It has been reported recently that detachment of MDCK cells from matrix results in activation of Jun–NH2-terminal kinases (JNKs) and speculated that these stress activated protein kinases play a causal role in the induction of anoikis (Frisch, S.M., K. Vuori, D. Kelaita, and S. Sicks. 1996. J. Cell Biol. 135:1377–1382). We report here that although JNK is activated by detachment of normal MDCK cells, study of cell lines expressing activated signaling proteins usually controlled by Ras shows that stimulation of JNK fails to correlate with induction of anoikis. Activated phosphoinositide 3-OH kinase and activated PKB/Akt protect MDCK cells from detachment-induced apoptosis without suppressing JNK activation. Conversely, activated Raf and dominant negative SEK1, a JNK kinase, attenuate detachment-induced JNK activation without protecting from apoptosis. zVAD-fmk, a peptide inhibitor of caspases, prevents MDCK cell anoikis without affecting JNK activation. p38, a related stress-activated kinase, is also stimulated by detachment from matrix, but inhibition of this kinase with SB 203580 does not protect from anoikis. It is therefore unlikely that either JNK or p38 play a direct role in detachment-induced programmed cell death in epithelial cells.
The QueuePusher: Enabling Queue Management in OpenFlow

The evolution of Software-Defined Networking and the overall acceptance of protocols such as OpenFlow, demonstrates the added value of decoupling the data plane from the control plane. Existing SDN Controllers enable the expected flexibility from such networks by dynamically providing a fine-grained control of each flow. However, hardware-specific configurations, such as the creation of queues or other mechanisms is out of the scope of these controllers. This work presents an extension to a well known OpenFlow controller (Floodlight) to efficiently handle the management of Traffic Control Queues in OpenFlow switches, resorting to a RESTful northbound interface. The obtained results demonstrate further possibility of developing innovative on-demand resource reservation mechanisms in SDN without adding unbearable overheads.
Scientific Supercomputing with Graphics Processing Units

The cover of this thesis shows a visualization of the input data used by the Parallel Ocean Program. The visualization software was created by Jeroen Rietveld as part of his masters project, which was supervised by Ben van Werkhoven. The algorithm for the visualization of the terrain was developed by Ben as part of teaching the Computer Graphics course. The picture on the cover shows a visu-alization that uses particles to visualize the flow of the ocean. The colors show the velocities of the particles as they move along the flow. A special thanks to Maarten van Meersbergen for helping to create the high-resolution screenshot.
Windei, the Drosophila Homolog of mAM/MCAF1, Is an Essential Cofactor of the H3K9 Methyl Transferase dSETDB1/Eggless in Germ Line Development

The epigenetic regulation of gene expression by the covalent modification of histones is a fundamental mechanism required for the proper differentiation of germ line cells during development. Trimethylation of histone 3 lysine 9 (H3K9me3) leads to chromatin silencing and the formation of heterochromatin by recruitment of heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1). dSETDB1/Eggless (Egg), the ortholog of the human methyltransferase SETDB1, is the only essential H3K9 methyltransferase in Drosophila and is required for H3K9 trimethylation in the female germ line. Here we show that Windei (Wde), the Drosophila homolog of mouse mAM and human MCAF1, is an essential cofactor of Egg required for its nuclear localization and function in female germ line cells. By deletion analysis combined with coimmunoprecipitation, we have identified the protein regions in Wde and Egg that are necessary and sufficient for the interaction between the two proteins. We furthermore identified a region of Egg that gets covalently modified by SUMOylation, which may facilitate the formation of higher order chromatin-modifying complexes. Together with Egg, Wde localizes to euchromatin, is enriched on chromosome 4, and binds to the Painting of fourth (POF) protein. Our data provide the first genetic and phenotypic analysis of a mAM/MCAF1 homolog in a model organism and demonstrate its essential function in the survival of germ line cells.
Policy Reuse for Transfer Learning Across Tasks with Different State and Action Spaces

Policy Reuse is a reinforcement learning method in which learned policies are saved and reused in similar tasks. The policy reuse learner extends its exploration to probabilistically include the exploitation of past policies, with the outcome of significantly improving its learning efficiency. In this paper we demonstrate that Policy Reuse can be applied for transfer learning among tasks in different domains by defining and using a mapping between their state and action spaces. We use the Keepaway domain where we show that Policy Reuse can outperform the results of basic learning.
Wire and Cable Update-1985

Power distribution within a large modern petrochemical complex involves many thousands of feet of instrument and power cables that must be applied and installed with optimum life, reliability, and cost. Current practice and trends in evaluating, sizing, specifying, and installing the more commonly used cables and cable systems in petrochemical plants are reviewed. Current trends in industrial cable design and construction are considered. This includes low-and medium-voltage power cable, control cable, and instrument cable. The relative merits of various materials used in cable constructions are reviewed with particular emphasis on insulations, shields, jackets, and overall sheaths. Protection of cable from harsh environmental conditions is included. Methods are presented for selecting the proper cable construction for differing applications. Installation methods, including conduit, tray, and direct burial systems, are reviewed with emphasis on the additional ampacity tables for the 0-2000-V cables proposed for the 1987 National Electrical Code (NEC). These tables, as well as the existing NEC tables for the 2001-35 000-V cables, were generated using the Neher-McGrath method which permits the calculation of any conductor ampacity for a specific installation. Proper conductor sizing is presented based on short circuit rating, voltage drop, temperature rating, and actual cable installation method.
Light-weight Internet-scale Universal Storage [ Technical Challenge ]

Many new applications, for example Wikis, social networks, and distributed recommender systems, require the efficient integration of decentralized and heterogenous data sources at a large scale. In this paper, we present our vision of a universal storage for RDF-like triple data based on a structured P2P system and the universal relation model as its key enabling technologies to achieve flexibility, robustness, and efficiency for large-scale distributed data storage and query processing. We outline the steps we have already accomplished successfully and discuss a roadmap to achieve the final goal of a practical, light-weight implementation of our storage system.
Functional Changes in Muscle Afferent Neurones in an Osteoarthritis Model: Implications for Impaired Proprioceptive Performance

Background Impaired proprioceptive performance is a significant clinical issue for many who suffer osteoarthritis (OA) and is a risk factor for falls and other liabilities. This study was designed to evaluate weight-bearing distribution in a rat model of OA and to determine whether changes also occur in muscle afferent neurones. Methodology/Principal Findings Intracellular recordings were made in functionally identified dorsal root ganglion neurones in acute electrophysiological experiments on the anaesthetized animal following measurements of hind limb weight bearing in the incapacitance test. OA rats but not naïve control rats stood with less weight on the ipsilateral hind leg (P = 0.02). In the acute electrophysiological experiments that followed weight bearing measurements, action potentials (AP) elicited by electrical stimulation of the dorsal roots differed in OA rats, including longer AP duration (P = 0.006), slower rise time (P = 0.001) and slower maximum rising rate (P = 0.03). Depolarizing intracellular current injection elicited more APs in models than in naïve muscle afferent neurones (P = 0.01) indicating greater excitability. Axonal conduction velocity in model animals was slower (P = 0.04). Conclusions/Significance The present study demonstrates changes in hind limb stance accompanied by changes in the functional properties of muscle afferent neurones in this derangement model of OA. This may provide a possible avenue to explore mechanisms underlying the impaired proprioceptive performance and perhaps other sensory disorders in people with OA.
A self-awareness routing scheme with power control for underlay spectrum sharing networks

Dynamic spectrum sharing technology through the underlay approach in cognitive radio systems is becoming one of the most important issues to improve the spectrum utilization. In this paper, we first introduce a novel routing selection scenario for underlay spectrum sharing network. The scenario consists of three parts: spectrum management network (SMN), secondary user network (SUN) and primary user network (PUN). Through the spectrum information collection in SMN and the spectrum related information exchange between the SMN and SUN in a common channel, the underlay model can avoid the interference to the PUN as much as possible. To better establish an effective and practical routing selection model in SUN and minimize the interference to PUN, we propose a self-awareness routing (SAR) scheme, based on the power control approach and the router capacity metric. The simulation results validate that SAR can achieve a high level performance not only in the routing quality, but also in the minimization of the interference to the PUN.
STATUS OF THE LINAC-COMMISSIONING FOR THE HEAVY ION CANCER THERAPY FACILITY HIT

The accelerator part of the clinical facility for cancer therapy using energetic proton and ion beams (C, He and O) has been designed by GSI, is presently installed, and under comissioning at the Radiologische Universitatsklinik in Heidelberg, Germany. In this contribution the current status of the linear accelerator is reported. After first tests of the RFQ at GSI with a proton beam, the commissioning of the injector linac in Heidelberg has started recently. The commissioning is performed in three steps for the LEBT, the RFQ and the IH-DTL successively. For this purpose, a versatile beam diagnostics test bench has been designed. This paper will provide for a status report of the linac commissioning.
Summarizing large-scale, multiple-document news data: sparse methods and human validation

News media signicantly drives the course of events. Understanding how has long been an active and important area of research. Now, as the amount of online news media available grows, there is even more information calling for analysis, an ever increasing range of inquiry that one might conduct. We believe subject-specic summarization of multiple news documents at once can help. In this paper we adapt scalable statistical techniques to perform this summarization under a predictive framework using a vector space model of documents. We reduce corpora of many millions of words to a few representative key-phrases that describe a specied subject of interest. We propose this as a tool for news media study. We consider the ecacies of four dierent
A biophysical marker of severity in sickle cell disease

The search for predictive biomarkers of disease has largely focused on molecular indicators; however, mechanical and biophysical markers, which can integrate multiple pathways across length scales, may provide a more global picture of the underlying pathophysiology. Sickle cell disease, the first disease to have its molecular origins decoded, affects millions of people worldwide and has been studied intensively at the molecular, cellular, tissue and organismal level for a century since its initial description. However, there are still few, if any, markers that allow us to characterize the severity of this disease. Because the complications of sickle cell disease are largely due to vaso-occlusive events, we hypothesized that a physical metric characterizing the vaso-occlusive process could serve as a marker of disease severity. Here we use a simple microfluidic device to characterize the dynamics of jamming in physiologically relevant conditions, using the rate of change of the resistance to flow following a sudden deoxygenation event. Our studies show that this single biophysical parameter could be used to distinguish between patients with divergent clinical outcomes, unlike existing laboratory tests. Our assay provides a biophysical marker of disease severity that could be used to guide timing of clinical interventions, to monitor the progression of the disease, and to measure the efficacy of drug response, transfusion, and novel small molecules in an in vitro setting.
Altered expression of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase modifies response to methotrexate in mice

Objective Folates provide one-carbon units for nucleotide synthesis and methylation reactions. A common polymorphism (677C→T) in methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) encodes an enzyme with reduced activity. Response to the antifolate methotrexate (MTX) may be modified in 677TT individuals because MTHFR converts nonmethylated folates, used for thymidine and purine synthesis, to 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, used in homocysteine remethylation to methionine. To study potential interactions between MTHFR activity and MTX, we examined the impact of decreased and increased MTHFR expression on MTX response in mice. Methods Mthfr-deficient (Mthfr+/− and Mthfr−/−) and wild-type (Mthfr+/+) mice were injected with MTX or saline and assessed for hematological parameters (hematocrit, hemoglobin, red, and white blood cell numbers), plasma homocysteine, nephrotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, and splenic 2′-deoxyuridine 5′-triphosphate/2′-deoxythymidine 5′-triphosphate ratios. MTHFR-overexpressing transgenic mice (MTHFR-Tg) were generated, metabolites and folate distributions were measured, and response to MTX was assessed. Results MTX-treated Mthfr+/− and Mthfr−/− mice displayed hyperhomocysteinemia and decreased hematocrit, hemoglobin, and red blood cell numbers compared with wild-type animals. Mthfr−/− mice also showed increased nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity. MTHFR-Tg mice were generated and confirmed to have increased levels of MTHFR with altered distributions of folate and thiols in a tissue-specific manner. After MTX treatment, MTHFR-Tg mice exhibited the same decreases in hematological parameters as Mthfr-deficient mice, and significantly decreased thymidine synthesis (higher 2′-deoxyuridine 5′-triphosphate/2′-deoxythymidine 5′-triphosphate ratios) compared with wild-type mice, but they were protected from MTX-induced hyperhomocysteinemia. Conclusion Underexpression and overexpression of Mthfr/MTHFR increase MTX-induced myelosuppression but have distinct effects on plasma homocysteine and nephrotoxicity. Pharmacogenetic analysis of polymorphisms in folate-dependent enzymes may be useful in optimization of MTX therapy.
The Effect of Phenazine-1-Carboxylic Acid on the Morphological, Physiological, and Molecular Characteristics of Phellinus noxius

In this study, the effect of phenazine-1-carboxylic acid (PCA) on morphological, physiological, and molecular characteristics of Phellinus noxius has been investigated, and the potential antifungal mechanism of PCA against P. noxius was also explored. The results revealed that PCA showed in vitro antifungal potential against P. noxius and completely inhibited P. noxius hyphae at concentrations >40 μg/mL. PCA inhibited both mycelial growth and the loss of mycelial biomass in vitro in a dose-dependent manner. Morphological changes in PCA-treated P. noxius hyphae, such as irregularly swollen mycelia as well as short hyphae with increased septation and less branching, were observed by optical microscopy. The intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels were significantly increased in PCA-treated P. noxius cells as compared to control groups. Induced hyperpolarization of the mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), repressed superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and up-regulated gene expression of seven tested genes were also found in PCA-treated P. noxius groups. Thus, the present results suggested that the mechanism of action of PCA against P. noxius might be attributed to direct damage of mycelium and high intracellular ROS production, and indirect induction of genes involved in cell detoxification, oxidation-reduction process, and electron transport of the respiratory chain.
FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION IN A MODEL OF GROWTH THROUGH CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

This paper presents an endogenous growth model in which the research activity is financed by intermediaries that are able to reduce the incidence of researcher's moral hazard. It is shown that financial activity is growth promoting because it increases research productivity. It is also found that a subsidy to the financial sector may have larger growth effects than a direct subsidy to research. Moreover, because of the presence of moral hazard, increasing the subsidy rate to R&D may reduce the growth rate. I show that there exists a negative relation between the financing of innovation and the process of capital accumulation. Concerning welfare, the presence of two externalities of opposite sign stemming from financial activity may cause the no-tax equilibrium to provide an inefficient level of financial services. Thus, policies oriented to balance the effects of the two externalities will be welfare improving.
Efficient estimation of graphlet frequency distributions in protein-protein interaction networks

MOTIVATION Algorithmic and modeling advances in the area of protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis could contribute to the understanding of biological processes. Local structure of networks can be measured by the frequency distribution of graphlets, small connected non-isomorphic induced subgraphs. This measure of local structure has been used to show that high-confidence PPI networks have local structure of geometric random graphs. Finding graphlets exhaustively in a large network is computationally intensive. More complete PPI networks, as well as PPI networks of higher organisms, will thus require efficient heuristic approaches. RESULTS We propose two efficient and scalable heuristics for finding graphlets in high-confidence PPI networks. We show that both PPI and their model geometric random networks, have defined boundaries that are sparser than the 'inner parts' of the networks. In addition, these networks exhibit 'uniformity' of local structure inside the networks. Our first heuristic exploits these two structural properties of PPI and geometric random networks to find good estimates of graphlet frequency distributions in these networks up to 690 times faster than the exhaustive searches. Our second heuristic is a variant of a more standard sampling technique and it produces accurate approximate results up to 377 times faster than the exhaustive searches. We indicate how the combination of these approaches may result in an even better heuristic. AVAILABILITY Supplementary information is available at http://www.cs. toronto.edu/~natasha/BIOINF-2005-0946/Supplementary.pdf. Software implementing the algorithms is available at http://www.cs. toronto.edu/~natasha/BIOINF-2005-0946/estimate_grap-hlets.html. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.