Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mad3 KEN Boxes Mediate both Cdc20 and Mad3 Turnover, and Are Critical for the Spindle Checkpoint

Mitotic progression is controlled by proteolytic destruction of securin and cyclin. The mitotic E3 ubiquitin ligase, known as the anaphase promoting complex or cyclosome (APC/C), in partnership with its activators Cdc20p and Cdh1p, targets these proteins for degradation. In the presence of defective kinetochore-microtubule interactions, APC/CCdc20 is inhibited by the spindle checkpoint, thereby delaying anaphase onset and providing more time for spindle assembly. Cdc20p interacts directly with Mad2p, and its levels are subject to careful regulation, but the precise mode(s) of APC/C Cdc20 inhibition remain unclear. The mitotic checkpoint complex (MCC, consisting of Mad3p, Mad2p, Bub3p and Cdc20p in budding yeast) is a potent APC/C inhibitor. Here we focus on Mad3p and how it acts, in concert with Mad2p, to efficiently inhibit Cdc20p. We identify and analyse the function of two motifs in Mad3p, KEN30 and KEN296, which are conserved from yeast Mad3p to human BubR1. These KEN amino acid sequences resemble ‘degron’ signals that confer interaction with APC/C activators and target proteins for degradation. We show that both Mad3p KEN boxes are necessary for spindle checkpoint function. Mutation of KEN30 abolished MCC formation and stabilised Cdc20p in mitosis. In addition, mutation of Mad3-KEN30, APC/C subunits, or Cdh1p, stabilised Mad3p in G1, indicating that the N-terminal KEN box could be a Mad3p degron. To determine the significance of Mad3p turnover, we analysed the consequences of MAD3 overexpression and found that four-fold overproduction of Mad3p led to chromosome bi-orientation defects and significant chromosome loss during recovery from anti-microtubule drug induced checkpoint arrest. In conclusion, Mad3p KEN30 mediates interactions that regulate the proteolytic turnover of Cdc20p and Mad3p, and the levels of both of these proteins are critical for spindle checkpoint signaling and high fidelity chromosome segregation.
The observation of intact hepatic endothelial cells by cryo‐electron microscopy

Liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) can optimally be imaged by whole mount transmission electron microscopy (TEM). However, TEM allows only investigation of vacuum‐resistant specimens and this usually implies the study of chemically fixed and dried specimens. Cryo‐electron microscopy (cryo‐EM) can be used as a good alternative for imaging samples as whole mounts. Cryo‐EM offers the opportunity to study intact, living cells while avoiding fixation, dehydration and drying, at the same time preserving all solubles and water as vitrified ice. Therefore, we compared the different results obtained when LSECs were vitrified using different vitrification conditions. We collected evidence that manual blotting at ambient conditions and vitrification by the guided drop method results in the production of artefacts in LSECs, such as the loss of fenestrae, formation of gaps and lack of structural details in the cytoplasm. We attribute these artefacts to temperature and osmotic effects during sample preparation just prior to vitrification. By contrast, by using an environmentally controlled glove box and a vitrification robot (37 °C and 100% relative humidity), these specific structural artefacts were nearly absent, illustrating the importance of controlled sample preparation. Moreover, data on glutaraldehyde‐fixed cells and obtained by using different vitrification methods suggested that chemical prefixation is not essential when vitrification is performed under controlled conditions. Conditioned vitrification therefore equals chemical fixation in preserving and imaging cellular fine structure. Unfixed, vitrified LSECs show fenestrae and fenestrae‐associated cytoskeleton rings, indicating that these structures are not artefacts resulting from chemical fixation.
Elastic bands: connecting path planning and control

Elastic bands are proposed as the basis for a framework to close the gap between global path planning and real-time sensor-based robot control. An elastic band is a deformable collision-free path. The initial shape of the elastic is the free path generated by a planner. Subjected to artificial forces, the elastic band deforms in real time to a short and smooth path that maintains clearance from the obstacles. The elastic continues to deform as changes in the environment are detected by sensors, enabling the robot to accommodate uncertainties and react to unexpected and moving obstacles. While providing a tight connection between the robot and its environment, the elastic band preserves the global nature of the planned path. The framework is outlined, and an efficient implementation based on bubbles is discussed. <<ETX>>
3D Face Modeling from Video

In this paper, a novel 3D face modeling approach from monocular video is proposed. The core of the approach is to deform the generic face model based on the facial feature information extracted from video frames in order to reconstruct a specific 3D face model. The approach composed of following steps: marking facial feature points for the first video frame, and extracting face contour at the beginning, then performing affine correction to track these feature points in the following video frames. At the same time, face contour is extracted. Generic face model is employed to adapt the actual 3D face by deformations based on the facial feature information extracted from video frames. A specific 3D face model is generated at last. Texture mapping is carried out on the 3D face geometric model to generate a realistic 3D model of a specific human face at the final step. Experiments show that this approach is effective and easy to use.
Loss of Klotho during melanoma progression leads to increased filamin cleavage, increased Wnt5A expression, and enhanced melanoma cell motility

We have previously shown that Wnt5A‐mediated signaling can promote melanoma metastasis. It has been shown that Wnt signaling is antagonized by the protein Klotho, which has been implicated in aging. We show here that in melanoma cells, expressions of Wnt5A and Klotho are inversely correlated. In the presence of recombinant Klotho (rKlotho), we show that Wnt5A internalization and signaling is decreased in high Wnt5A‐expressing cells. Moreover, in the presence of rKlotho, we observe an increase in Wnt5A remaining in the medium, coincident with an increase in sialidase activity, and decrease in syndecan expression. These effects can be inhibited using a sialidase inhibitor. In addition to its effects on Wnt5A internalization, we also demonstrate that Klotho decreases melanoma cell invasive potential by a second mechanism that involves the inhibition of calpain and a resultant decrease in filamin cleavage, which we demonstrate is critical for melanoma cell motility.
FORCED APART: DISCOVERING DISENTANGLED REP-

Learning a better representation with neural networks is a challenging problem, which has been tackled from different perspectives in the past few years. In this work, we focus on learning a representation that would be useful in a clustering task. We introduce two novel loss components that substantially improve the quality of produced clusters, are simple to apply to arbitrary models and cost functions, and do not require a complicated training procedure. We perform an extensive set of experiments, supervised and unsupervised, and evaluate the proposed loss components on two most common types of models, Recurrent Neural Networks and Convolutional Neural Networks, showing that the approach we propose consistently improves the quality of KMeans clustering in terms of mutual information scores and outperforms previously proposed methods.
Phase Transformations in Novel Medium Carbon High Hardenability Steels

Novel steels with high hardenability were proposed to replace the conventional HY-TUF steels for the large parts manufacturing. The chemical composition of the steels under consideration was, mass. %: C – 0.16. 0.18; Cr – 2.35. 2.55; Mn – 0.67. 1.99; Si – 0.76. 1.03; Ni – 1.17. 2.31; Mo – 0.34. 0.47; S. P < 0.025. The dilatometer experiments revealed that during the continuous cooling of the steels with the constant rates 0.1. 30 °C/s only martensite and bainite transformations occurred. for conventional HY-TUF steel ferrite and pearlite formed after cooling with the rates 0.1. 0.3 °C/s.
Extremal Graphs for Homomorphisms II

Extremal problems for graph homomorphisms have recently become a topic of much research. Let hom(G,H) denote the number of homomorphisms from G to H. A natural set of problems arises when we fix an image graph H and determine which graph(s) G on n vertices and m edges maximize hom(G,H) . We prove that if H is loop‐threshold, then, for every n and m, there is a threshold graph G with n vertices and m edges that maximizes hom(G,H) . Similarly, we show that loop‐quasi‐threshold image graphs have quasi‐threshold extremal graphs. In the case H=P3o , the path on three vertices in which every vertex in looped, the authors [5] determined a set of five graphs, one of which must be extremal for hom(G,P3o) . Also in this article, using similar techniques, we determine a set of extremal graphs for “the fox,” a graph formed by deleting the loop on one of the end‐vertices of P3o . The fox is the unique connected loop‐threshold image graph on at most three vertices for which the extremal problem was not previously solved.
Ocean Salinity Sensing Using Long-Period Fiber Gratings Functionalized with Layer-by-Layer Hydrogels

Rapid, accurate, and real-time measurements of ocean salinity are of great importance for a host of scientific, commercial, and defense applications. We demonstrate a highly sensitive, fast-responding fiber-optic salinity sensor that integrates long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs) with ionic strength-responsive hydrogel. The submicron-thick hydrogel was synthesized via layer-by-layer electrostatic assembly of partially quaternized poly(4-vinylpyridine) (qP4VP) and poly(acrylic acid), followed by chemical cross-linking. Spectroscopic ellipsometry measurement of a hydrogel made of 37% quaternized qP4VP showed robust and reversible swelling/deswelling in solutions with salt concentrations ranging from 0.4 to 0.8 M (22.8–44.7 g/kg) around pH 8.1. The swelling/deswelling process induced large changes in the refractive index of the hydrogel, leading to resultant shift in the resonance wavelength (RW) of LPFGs. The salinity-dependent optical response of the hydrogel-coated LPFGs is in good agreement with ellipsometry measurement. LPFGs coated with the hydrogel exhibited a sensitivity of 7 nm RW shift/M (125.5 pm/‰) with a measurement time less than 5 s. The shift in the resonance wavelength correlated linearly with salt concentration, making quantification of measured salinity straightforward.
Quantitive evaluation of Web site content and structure

Describes an approach automatically to classify and evaluate publicly accessible World Wide Web sites. The suggested methodology is equally valuable for analyzing content and hypertext structures of commercial, educational and non‐profit organizations. Outlines a research methodology for model building and validation and defines the most relevant attributes of such a process. A set of operational criteria for classifying Web sites is developed. The introduced software tool supports the automated gathering of these parameters, and thereby assures the necessary “critical mass” of empirical data. Based on the preprocessed information, a multi‐methodological approach is chosen that comprises statistical clustering, textual analysis, supervised and non‐supervised neural networks and manual classification for validation purposes.
NEUROLOGICAL INFECTIONS IN THE RETURNING INTERNATIONAL TRAVELER

Clinicians may encounter international travelers returning with exotic infections, emerging infectious diseases, or resurgent old-world infections. Many of these infectious diseases can affect the nervous system directly or indirectly. The contemporary neurologist should therefore be cognizant of the clinical manifestations, potential complications, and appropriate management of common travel-related infections. This chapter focuses on five important infections that affect the central nervous system and that may be encountered in returning travelers: Japanese encephalitis, malaria, rabies, dengue, and neurocysticercosis. The clinical manifestations, suggested evaluation, and treatment are discussed for each infection.
Automatic and accurate shadow detection from (potentially) a single image using near-infrared information

Shadows, due to their prevalence in natural images, are a long studied phenomenon in digital photography and computer vision. Indeed, their presence can be a hindrance for a number of algorithms; accurate detection (and sometimes subsequent removal) of shadows in images is thus of paramount importance. In this paper, we present a method to detect shadows in a fast and accurate manner. To do so, we employ the inherent sensitivity of digital camera sensors to the near-infrared (NIR) part of the spectrum. We start by observing that commonly encountered light sources have very distinct spectra in the NIR, and propose that ratios of the colour channels (red, green and blue) to the NIR image gives valuable information about impinging illumination. In addition, we assume that shadows are contained in the darker parts of an image for both visible and NIR. This latter assumption is corroborated by the fact that a number of colorants are transparent to the NIR, thus making parts of the image that are dark in both the visible and NIR prime shadow candidates. These hypotheses allow for fast, accurate shadow detection in real, complex, scenes, including soft and occlusion shadows. We demonstrate that the process is reliable enough to be performed in-camera on still mosaicked images by simulating a modified colour filter array (CFA) that can simultaneously capture NIR and visible images. Finally, we show that our binary shadow maps can be the input of a matting algorithm to improve their precision in a fully automatic manner.
Opportunistic infections (non-cytomegalovirus) in live related renal transplant recipients

The purpose of review was increasing number of opportunistic infections with use of newer immunosuppression and difficulty in diagnosis and management of such patients. For this review, MEDLINE database was searched from 2000 to 2006 with the keywords of opportunistic infections in renal transplantation. Opportunistic infection is a serious clinical complication in patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy after kidney transplantation. The two major factors for successful renal transplantation are better control of rejection and better prevention and treatment of infection. In renal allograft recipient, immunosuppressive drug therapy is the major cause of immunocompromised status and occurrence of infections, which arise most commonly as a result of invasion by endogenous opportunists. The opportunistic infections with varicella zoster viruses, parvovirus B-19, polyomavirus, nocardia and mucormycosis in immunosuppressed patients were present with severe complications that are reviewed in this article. As a result of use of strong immunosuppressive drugs like tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetyl and antirejection therapy with antithymocyte globulins, these infections are now seen frequently, so they should always be included in differential diagnostic consideration. New diagnostic procedures and new treatment strategies are required to allow early detection and successful treatment of opportunistic infections in kidney transplant recipients.
A Model-Based Diagnosis Framework for Distributed Systems

We present a distributed model-based diagnostics architecture for embedded diagnostics. We extend the traditional model-based definition of diagnosis to a distributed diagnosis definition, in which we have a collection of distributed components whose interconnectivity is described by a directed graph. Assuming that each component can compute a local minimal diagnosis based only on sensors internal to that component and knowledge only of its own system description, we describe an algorithm that guarantees a globally sound, complete and minimal diagnosis for the complete system. By compiling diagnoses for groups of components based on the interconnectivey graph, the algorithm efficiently synthesizes the local diagnoses computed in distributed components into a globally-sound system diagnosis using a graph-based message-passing approach.
Quantitative Determination of Free Radical Scavenging , Antitumor and Antimicrobial Activities of Some Myanmar Herbal Plants

Various organic and aqueous extracts of leaves of Ardisia japonica Blume, Ageartum conyzoides Linn. , and Cocculus hirsutus Linn Diels. , obtained by maceration were screened for their antioxidant and anti-tumor and antimicrobial activities in this research. All of these extracts have remarkable antioxidant activities and EC50 values were 12. 72μg/ml for A. japonica, 15. 19μg/ml for A. conyzoide and 10. 68μg/ml for C. hirsutus respectively. According to results from bioassay with carrot discs infected with Agrobacterium tumefaciens, no gall was detected in carrot disks treated with 100 ppm dose of C. hirsutus and A. japonica crude extracts and 1000ppm dose of A. conyzoides extract after 3 weeks incubation. According to the in vitro brine shrimp larvae lethal toxicity test, the LC50 value of the crude extract ranged from 890ppm for A. japonica, 768ppm for A. conyzoides and 587ppm for C. hirsutus respectively and that were very much higher than that of potassium dichromate. A. japonica was selected to do further experiments as it has highest LC50 value among these three plants. In in vivo toxicity test with mice model, there is no toxicity of A. japonica extract dosage up to 2500mg/kg/day indicating its safety for further experiments. According to antagonistic activities against nine different species of food borne and human pathogenic microorganisms by the agar-well diffusion method, the methanol fraction of crude extract of the leaves of A. japonica showed strong inhibitory activity against the food borne pathogenic bacteria Shigella boydii with 34mm in diameter. Ethyl acetate fractions also showed best results against other pathogens. The MIC value was in the ranged from 0.625 to 5.0mg/ml and the MBC value was in the ranged from 0.625 to 10.0mg/ml for these tested microorganisms. Therefore, the research clearly indicates that these herbal plants of Myanmar’s dry farm land are expectionally advantageous for human health especially A. japonica can be used as anti-microbial drug or antioxidant diet or as food preservative.
Positron emission tomography (PET) evaluation of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA).

BACKGROUND aneurysmal disease is associated with an inflammatory cell infiltrate and enzymatic degradation of the vessel wall. AIM OF THE STUDY to detect increased metabolic activity in abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) by means of positron emission tomography (PET-imaging). STUDY DESIGN twenty-six patients with AAA underwent PET-imaging. RESULTS in ten patients, PET-imaging revealed increased fluoro-deoxy-glucose (18-FDG) uptake at the level of the aneurysm. Patients with positive PET-imaging had one or more of the following elements in their clinical history: history of recent non-aortic surgery (n = 4), a painful inflammatory aortic aneurysm (n = 2), moderate low back pain (n = 2), rapid (> 2;5 mm in 6 months) expansion (n = 4), discovery by PET-scan of a previously undiagnosed lung cancer (n = 3) or parotid tumour (n = 1). Five patients with a positive PET scan required urgent surgery within two to 30 days. Among the 16 patients with negative PET-imaging of their aneurysm, only one had recent non-aortic surgery, none of them required urgent surgery, only two had a rapidly expanding AAA, and in only one patient, PET-imaging revealed an unknown lung cancer. CONCLUSION these data suggest a possible association between increased 18-FDG uptake and AAA expansion and rupture.
Structure, Mechanical and Tribological Properties of MoSN/MoS2 Multilayer Films

MoSN/MoS2 multilayer films were deposited by a sputtering MoS2 target in alternate Ar and Ar/N2 mixed atmospheres with different nitrogen flow rates. The influence of nitrogen flow rates on the microstructure, mechanical and tribological properties of the prepared films were investigated. The multilayer film exhibited the preferred orientation of (002) plane for MoS2 sublayers and amorphous structure for MoSN sublayers. Introducing N2 into the source gas resulted in a much more compact structure for multilayer films due to the suppression of columnar growth of MoS2 film. With the increase of the nitrogen flow rate, the hardness of the multilayer film firstly increased from 2.3 to 10.5 GPa as the nitrogen flow rate increased from 4 to 10 sccm and then turned downwards to 6.5 GPa at 20 sccm. MoSN/MoS2 film deposited with an optimized microstructure exhibited low friction coefficients below 0.03 and a wear life higher than 1.8×105 revolutions in vacuum. Meanwhile, the optimized film showed an ultralow friction coefficient of 0.004~0.01 and wear rate of 4.7 × 10−7 mm3/N·m in an ultrahigh vacuum. Both the enhanced hardness by N-doping and sustainable formed MoS2 tribofilm contributed to the improved tribological property of MoSN/MoS2 multilayer film.
The RNAmute web server for the mutational analysis of RNA secondary structures

RNA mutational analysis at the secondary-structure level can be useful to a wide-range of biological applications. It can be used to predict an optimal site for performing a nucleotide mutation at the single molecular level, as well as to analyze basic phenomena at the systems level. For the former, as more sequence modification experiments are performed that include site-directed mutagenesis to find and explore functional motifs in RNAs, a pre-processing step that helps guide in planning the experiment becomes vital. For the latter, mutations are generally accepted as a central mechanism by which evolution occurs, and mutational analysis relating to structure should gain a better understanding of system functionality and evolution. In the past several years, the program RNAmute that is structure based and relies on RNA secondary-structure prediction has been developed for assisting in RNA mutational analysis. It has been extended from single-point mutations to treat multiple-point mutations efficiently by initially calculating all suboptimal solutions, after which only the mutations that stabilize the suboptimal solutions and destabilize the optimal one are considered as candidates for being deleterious. The RNAmute web server for mutational analysis is available at http://www.cs. bgu.ac. il/~xrnamute/XRNAmute.
Accurate Sensors Localization in Underground Mines or Tunnels

In this paper, a novel localization algorithm tailored for underground mines is proposed. Using the proposed algorithm, each regular (i.e position-unaware) node estimates its distances to the anchor (i.e., position-aware) nodes exploiting only its locally available information. Furthermore, a new hop count adjustment scheme, which complies with the labyrinthic nature of underground mines, is developed to ensure an accurate distance estimation, thereby making our localization algorithm more precise. Simulations show that our proposed algorithm, consistently outperforms in underground mines the best representative localization algorithms currently available in the literature in terms of accuracy, even with the presence of radiation irregularities.