Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Trust Model Based on Reputation in P2P Network

A trust model is put forward based on reputation to solve trust issue between nodes in the P2P network. The trust is divided into direct trust and indirect trust in the model when the node trust is computed. And the value of the two trust as mentioned before is computed though the given method. According to the historic results and other's recommendation, node can evaluate the trust and then make a choice. Simulation results show that, the trust model can effectively resist the malicious nodes, greatly improve the success rate of information interaction and make more effective in building trust relationship between nodes.
Familiarity with and social distance from people who have serious mental illness.

OBJECTIVES This study examined the effects of familiarity with and social distance from persons who have serious mental illness on stigmatizing attitudes about mental illness. METHODS A total of 208 community college students completed three written measures about familiarity, perception of dangerousness, fear, and social distance. Path analysis with manifest-variable structural modeling techniques was used to test a version of a model in which familiarity influences the perception of dangerousness, which in turn influences fear, which influences social distance from persons with serious mental illness. RESULTS Most of the participants reported experience with mental illness. Scores on the three written measures largely supported the path model. Correlations between the perception of dangerousness and fear as well as between fear and social distance were particularly strong. CONCLUSIONS Approaches to social change that increase the public's familiarity with serious mental illness will decrease stigma. Further studies are warranted that focus on how contact between members of the general public and persons who have serious mental illness may be facilitated.
Angiopoietin‐regulated recruitment of vascular smooth muscle cells by endothelial‐derived heparin binding EGF‐like growth factor

Recruitment of vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC) by endothelial cells (EC) is essential for angiogenesis. Endothelial‐derived heparin binding EGF‐like growth factor (HB‐EGF) was shown to mediate this process by signaling via ErbB1 and ErbB2 receptors in SMCs. 1) Analysis of ErbB‐ligands demonstrated that primary ECs expressed only HB‐EGF and neuregulin‐1. 2) Primary SMCs expressed ErbB1 and ErbB2, but not ErbB3 or ErbB4. 3) Consistent with their known receptor specificities, recombinant HB‐EGF, but not neuregulin‐1, stimulated tyrosine phosphorylation of ErbB1 and ErbB2 and migration in SMCs. 4) Neutralization of HB‐EGF or inhibition of ErbB1 or ErbB2 blocked 70–90% of the potential of ECs to stimulate SMC migration. Moreover, 5) angiopoietin‐1, an EC effector with a role in recruitment of SMC‐like cells to vascular structures in vivo, enhanced EC‐stimulated SMC migration by a mechanism involving up‐regulation of endothelial HB‐EGF. Finally, 6) immunohistochemical analysis of developing human tissues demonstrated that HB‐EGF was expressed in vivo in ECs associated with SMCs or pericytes but not in ECs of the hyaloid vessels not associated with SMCs. These results suggest an important role for HB‐EGF and ErbB receptors in the recruitment of SMCs by ECs and elaborate on the mechanism by which angiopoietins exert their vascular effects. —Iivanainen E. , Neli‐markka L. , Elenius V. , Heikkinen S. ‐M. , Junttila T. T. , Sihombing L. , Sundvall M. , Määttä J. A. , Laine V. J. O. , Ylä‐Herttuala S. , Higashiyama S. , Alitalo K. , Elenius K. Angiopoietin‐regulated recruitment of vascular smooth muscle cells by endothelial‐derived heparin binding EGF‐like growth factor. FASEB J. 17, 1609–1621 (2003)
Efficiently Indexing Large Sparse Graphs for Similarity Search

The graph structure is a very important means to model schemaless data with complicated structures, such as protein-protein interaction networks, chemical compounds, knowledge query inferring systems, and road networks. This paper focuses on the index structure for similarity search on a set of large sparse graphs and proposes an efficient indexing mechanism by introducing the Q-Gram idea. By decomposing graphs to small grams (organized by κ-Adjacent Tree patterns) and pairing-up on those κ-Adjacent Tree patterns, the lower bound estimation of their edit distance can be calculated for candidate filtering. Furthermore, we have developed a series of techniques for inverted index construction and online query processing. By building the candidate set for the query graph before the exact edit distance calculation, the number of graphs need to proceed into exact matching can be greatly reduced. Extensive experiments on real and synthetic data sets have been conducted to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed indexing mechanism.
The Regulatory Subunit of PKA-I Remains Partially Structured and Undergoes β-Aggregation upon Thermal Denaturation

Background The regulatory subunit (R) of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) is a modular flexible protein that responds with large conformational changes to the binding of the effector cAMP. Considering its highly dynamic nature, the protein is rather stable. We studied the thermal denaturation of full-length RIα and a truncated RIα(92-381) that contains the tandem cyclic nucleotide binding (CNB) domains A and B. Methodology/Principal Findings As revealed by circular dichroism (CD) and differential scanning calorimetry, both RIα proteins contain significant residual structure in the heat-denatured state. As evidenced by CD, the predominantly α-helical spectrum at 25°C with double negative peaks at 209 and 222 nm changes to a spectrum with a single negative peak at 212–216 nm, characteristic of β-structure. A similar α→β transition occurs at higher temperature in the presence of cAMP. Thioflavin T fluorescence and atomic force microscopy studies support the notion that the structural transition is associated with cross-β-intermolecular aggregation and formation of non-fibrillar oligomers. Conclusions/Significance Thermal denaturation of RIα leads to partial loss of native packing with exposure of aggregation-prone motifs, such as the B' helices in the phosphate-binding cassettes of both CNB domains. The topology of the β-sandwiches in these domains favors inter-molecular β-aggregation, which is suppressed in the ligand-bound states of RIα under physiological conditions. Moreover, our results reveal that the CNB domains persist as structural cores through heat-denaturation.
Optical computed tomography for imaging the breast: first look

The purpose of the study is to compare computed tomography optical imaging with traditional breast imaging techniques. Images produced by computed tomography laser mammography (CTLMTM) scanner are compared with images obtained from mammography, and in some cases ultrasound and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). During the CTLM procedure, a near infrared laser irradiates the breast and an array of photodiodes detectors records light scattered through the breast tissue. The laser and detectors rotate synchronously around the breast to acquire a series of slice data along the coronal place. The procedure is performed without any breast compression or optical matching fluid. Cross-sectional slices of the breast are produced using a reconstruction algorithm. Reconstruction based on the diffusion theory is used to produce cross-sectional slices of the breast. Multiple slice images are combined to produce a three dimensional volumetric array of the imaged breast. This array is used to derive axial and sagittal images of the breast corresponding to cranio-caudal and medio-lateral images used in mammography. Over 200 women and 3 men have been scanned in clinical trials. The most obvious features seen in images produced by the optical tomography scanner are vascularization and significant lesions. Breast features caused by fibrocystic changes and cysts are less obvious. Breast density does not appear to be a significant factor in the quality of the image. We see correlation of the optical image structure with that seen with traditional breast imaging techniques. Further testing is being conducted to explore the sensitivity and specificity of optical tomography of the breast.
A human serum‐enriched medium formulation supports high viability and marker expression in primary melanocyte cultures from the outer root sheath and epidermis

Formulating clinically relevant melanocyte cultivation media that maintain the balance between proliferation and maturation to functional melanocytes is a major experimental and regulatory challenge. Within the translation of human melanocytes from the outer root sheath of human hair follicle (HUMORS), we developed a melanocyte medium free of chemical mitogens, chemical melanogenesis enhancers and bovine products, enabling proliferation as well as melanotic differentiation. The formulation involved the replacement of bovine pituitary extract (BPE) and bovine serum (FBS) with human serum (HS) combined with ascorbic acid, CaCl2, epinephrine, L‐glutamine, insulin and fibroblast growth factor. The cultivation efficiency was characterized through proliferation and exertion of melanotic phenotype, gene and protein expression of melanotic markers and melanin content. Having established an application‐directed BPE‐free formulation, we then re‐formulated a research‐grade medium with BPE for purposes of even more effective in vitro cultivation, adjusted to specific requirements of HUMORS and normal human epidermal melanocytes (NHEM).
Efficient Linearizable Write Operations Using Bounded Global Time Uncertainty

Distributed key-value stores employed in data centers treat each key-value pair as a shared memory register. For fault-tolerance and performance, each key-value pair is replicated. Various models exist for the consistency of data amongst the replicas. While atomic consistency, also known as linearizability, provides the strongest form of consistency for read and write operations, various key-value stores, such as Cassandra, and Dynamo, offer only eventual consistency instead. One main motivation for such a decision is performance degradation when guaranteeing atomic consistency. In this paper, we use time with known bounded uncertainty to improve the performance of write operations, while maintaining atomic consistency. We show how to use the concept of commit wait in a shared memory register to perform a write operation in one phase (message round trip), instead of two. We evaluate the solution experimentally by comparing it to ABD, a well-known algorithm for achieving atomic consistency in an asynchronous network, which uses two phases for write operations. We also compare our protocol to an eventually consistent register. Our experiments show an improved throughput, and lower write latency, compared to the ABD algorithm.
Performance of MBMS with minimum SINR algorithm

In this paper, performance analysis of Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) in cellular CDMA considering a soft HO algorithm has been carried out. Performance has been studied considering the fact that broadcast takes place only at a single base station (BS). A 19 cell cluster has been assumed for evaluating signal to interference ratio (SINR) at user terminal. SINR is chosen dynamically in a novel manner so as to provide satisfactory broadcast service to 90 % users. Minimum SINR based broadcasting is chosen so as to satisfy the QoS requirement of the user with lowest quality of signal among 90 % of the users in the network. Fountain code is used in the application layer for the broadcast services while turbo code has been considered as a physical layer forward error correction (FEC) code. Influence of physical layer issues like soft HO parameters and impact of application layer Raptor code and physical layer turbo code on broadcast services has been investigated.
Protection of Genetic Diversity and Maintenance of Connectivity among Reef Corals within Marine Protected Areas

Abstract: High‐latitude coral reefs (HLRs) are potentially vulnerable marine ecosystems facing well‐documented threats to tropical reefs and exposure to suboptimal temperatures and insolation. In addition, because of their geographic isolation, HLRs may have poor or erratic larval connections to tropical reefs and a reduced genetic diversity and capacity to respond to environmental change. On Australia's east coast, a system of marine protected areas (MPAs) has been established with the aim of conserving HLRs in part by providing sources of colonizing larvae. To examine the effectiveness of existing MPAs as networks for dispersal, we compared genetic diversity within and among the HLRs in MPAs and between these HLRs and tropical reefs on the southern Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The 2 coral species best represented on Australian HLRs (the brooding Pocillopora damicornis and the broadcast‐spawning Goniastrea australensis) exhibited sharply contrasting patterns of diversity and connectedness. For P. damicornis, the 8‐locus genetic and genotypic diversity declined dramatically with increasing latitude (Na= 3.6–1.2, He= 0.3–0.03, Ng:N = 0.87–0.06), although population structure was consistent with recruitment derived largely from sexual reproduction (Go:Ge= 1.28–0.55). Genetic differentiation was high among the HLRs (FST[SD]= 0.32 [0.08], p < 0.05) and between the GBR and the HLRs (FST= 0.24 [0.06], p < 0.05), which indicates these temperate populations are effectively closed. In contrast for G. australensis, 9‐locus genetic diversity was more consistent across reefs (Na= 4.2–3.9, He= 0.3–0.26, Ng:N = 1–0.61), and there was no differentiation among regions (FST= 0.00 [0.004], p > 0.05), which implies the HLRs and the southern GBR are strongly interconnected. Our results demonstrate that although the current MPAs appear to capture most of the genetic diversity present within the HLR systems for these 2 species, their sharply contrasting patterns of connectivity indicate some taxa, such as P. damicornis, will be more vulnerable than others, and this disparity will provide challenges for future management.
QoE-Aware Admission Control for Multimedia Applications in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

Widespread use of wireless networks nowadays raises many problems for service providers in managing their resources. These problems are caused mainly by restricted bandwidth and variable radio condition in this type of network. Moreover, with the emergence of multimedia traffic and its requirements in terms of quality, admission control is hence an inevitable choice to optimize network resources while maintaining high service quality at users. In this paper, we propose an admission control mechanism based on quality of experience (QoE) perceived by users. The human QoE is obtained by a tool called pseudo subjective quality assessment (PSQA), which is based on statistic learning using random neural network (RNN). Instead of relying on technical parameters such as bandwidth, loss, or latency, which do not correlate well with human perception, our scheme is based on mean opinion score (MOS) but without interaction from real humans. The simulation results demonstrate the better performance of our proposition compared to the loss-based approach regarding user satisfaction evaluated by achieved QoE at user and bandwidth utilization of the network evaluated by good put.
Viewing YouTube from a metropolitan area: What do users accessing from residential ISPs experience?

In this work, we perform a controlled study on the perceived experience of viewing YouTube videos as observed from the end users' point of view through their residential ISPs in a metropolitan area. This study is conducted using our tool Pytomo, which we developed to emulate the end users' experience of viewing YouTube videos. Pytomo crawls and downloads YouTube videos to collect a number of measures, including information about the YouTube servers that are delivering them. This open-source tool was provided to a group of volunteers located in the Kansas City metropolitan area. These volunteers, who use different residential ISPs to access the Internet, were instructed to synchronously run the tool to collect the measurement data. Based on the data collected over specific time windows (separated by three months), we observed that there is a noticeable difference in the quality of experience depending on the residential ISPs. Furthermore, the content distribution policies for YouTube, for different residential ISPs vary and the round trip time is not the primary factor for choosing video servers.
Passivity-based Control of Robot Manipulators Subject to Constraints

This paper presents a passivity-based controller design capable of achieving autonomous obstacle avoidance for robot manipulators subject to joint position and joint rate constraints. The control objectives are achieved by exploiting the passivity properties of the system and utilizing barrier function ideas to reshape the control Lyapunov function. The final control Lyapunov function is reminiscent of those used in the artificial potential field method.
Regulation of human apolipoprotein A-I expression in Caco-2 and HepG2 cells by all-trans and 9-cis retinoic acids.

Retinoids are reported to stimulate apolipoprotein (apo) A-I gene promoter activity (Rottman et al. 1991. Mol. Cell. Biol. 11: 3814-3820) and apoA-I protein secretion by monkey hepatocytes (Kaptein et al. 1993. Arterioscler. Thromb. 13: 1505-1514). In this study we have assessed the effects of retinoids on parameters of apoA-I biosynthesis in human cell lines. Caco-2 and HepG2 cells (human intestinal and hepatoma cell lines, respectively, both known to express and secrete apoA-I) were stably transfected with a reporter gene construct containing 1.3 kb of the 5-'flanking region of the human apoA-I gene linked to the firefly luciferase coding region. These cells were incubated for 48 h with 10 microM all-trans retinoic acid (RA) or 9-cis RA. The cells were then assayed for luciferase activity, for apoA-I mRNA level, and for secretion of apoA-I protein in the medium. Secretion of apoB was monitored as well. In Caco-2 cells, all-trans and 9-cis RA increased luciferase activity, mRNA content, and protein secretion by 40% to 80% above control. Strikingly, in HepG2 cells all-trans and 9-cis RA caused a more marked stimulation of luciferase activity (by 100-150%) but a weaker increase of mRNA content and protein secretion (by 25-30%). In contrast, apoB secretion was inhibited by the two retinoids in Caco-2 cells and not changed in HepG2 cells. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Lack of H+-pyrophosphatase Prompts Developmental Damage in Arabidopsis Leaves on Ammonia-Free Culture Medium

The plant vacuolar H+-pyrophosphatase (H+-PPase) functions as a proton pump coupled with the hydrolysis of pyrophosphate (PPi). Loss-of-function mutants (fugu5s and vhp1) of the H+-PPase of Arabidopsis thaliana show clear morphological phenotypes in the cotyledons, caused by inhibition of gluconeogenesis from seed storage lipids due to excessive accumulation of PPi. In this study, we investigated the phenotypes of the fugu5 and vhp1 mutants during vegetative growth under a specific nitrogen nutritional regime. When nitrate in the culture medium was the sole nitrogen source, growth of the mutant rosette leaves was severely compromised. Interestingly, trypan blue staining revealed notable cell death at the leaf blade–petiole junctions of young leaves, a region known to have meristematic features. Physical contact of the leaf tip with the culture medium also triggered leaf atrophy, suggesting that absorption of some elements through the hydathodes was probably involved in this phenotype. Prevention of such leaf–medium contact resulted in a marked decrease in phosphate content in the shoots, and suppressed leaf atrophy. Furthermore, fugu5 necrotic symptoms were rescued completely by heterologous expression of yeast cytosolic soluble pyrophosphatase IPP1 or uncoupling-type H+-PPases that retained only PPi-hydrolysis activity, indicating that the damage of actively proliferating cells was caused by the loss of the PPi-hydrolyzing function of H+-PPase. Importantly, cell death and growth defects of the fugu5 leaves were suppressed completely by the simple addition of ammonium (>1 mM) to the culture medium. The PPi content in the shoots of fugu5 grown on ammonium-free medium was 70% higher than that of the wild type, and PPi levels were restored to normal upon growth on ammonium-supplemented medium. Together, these findings suggest that the PPi-hydrolyzing activity of H+-PPase is essential to maintain the PPi contents at optimal levels when grown on ammonium-free culture medium, and any direct contact of the leaves with the culture medium may raise PPi levels in the leaves through increased phosphate uptake.
Trends in acceptance of euthanasia among the general public in 12 European countries (1981-1999).

BACKGROUND We wanted to examine how the acceptance of euthanasia among the general public in Western Europe has changed in the last decades, and we wanted to look for possible explanations. METHODS We analysed data from the European Values Surveys, held in 1981, 1990, and 1999-2000 in 12 West European countries. In each country, representative samples of the general public were interviewed using the same structured questionnaire in all countries. Euthanasia was explained in the questionnaires as 'terminating the life of the incurably sick'. RESULTS A total of 46 199 respondents participated in the surveys. A significant increase in acceptance of euthanasia could be observed in all countries except (West) Germany. While the average increase in euthanasia acceptance was 22%, the increase was particularly obvious in Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. Although changes in several characteristics of respondents, such as decrease in religious beliefs, rising belief in the right to self-determination, and (to a lesser extent) rise in levels of education, were associated with growing acceptance of euthanasia, they could only partly explain the increase of euthanasia acceptance over the years. CONCLUSIONS An increase of euthanasia acceptance among the general public took place over the last two decades in almost all West European countries, possibly indicating a growing support for personal autonomy regarding medical end-of-life decisions. If this trend continues, it is likely to increase the public and political debate about the (legal) regulation of euthanasia under certain conditions of careful medical practice in several West European countries.
Visual, Laughter, Applause and Spoken Expression Features for Predicting Engagement Within TED Talks

There is an enormous amount of audio-visual content available on-line in the form of talks and presentations. The prospective users of the content face difficulties in finding the right content for them. However, automatic detection of interesting (engaging vs. non-engaging) content can help users to find the videos according to their preferences. It can also be helpful for a recommendation and personalised video segmentation system. This paper presents a study of engagement based on TED talks (1338 videos) which are rated by on-line viewers (users). It proposes novel models to predict the user’s (on-line viewers) engagement using high-level visual features (camera angles), the audience’s laughter and applause, and the presenter’s speech expressions. The results show that these features contribute towards the prediction of user engagement in these talks. However, finding the engaging speech expressions can also help a system in making summaries of TED Talks (video summarization) and creating feedback to presenters about their speech expressions during talks.