Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WFCAM, Spitzer/IRAC and SCUBA observations of the massive star-forming region DR21/W75 - I. The collimated molecular jets

We present wide-field near-infrared (IR) images of the DR21/W75 high-mass star-forming region, obtained with the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. Broad-band JHK and narrow-band H 2 1-0S(1) images are compared to archival mid-IR images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and 850-μm dust-continuum maps obtained with the Submillimeter Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA). Together these data give a complete picture of dynamic star formation across this extensive region, which includes at least four separate star-forming sites in various stages of evolution. The H 2 data reveal knots and bow shocks associated with more than 50 individual flows. Most are well collimated, and at least five qualify as parsec-scale flows. Most appear to be driven by embedded, low-mass protostars. The orientations of the outflows, particularly from the few higher mass sources in the region (DR21, DR21(OH), W75N and ERO 1), show some degree of order, being preferentially orientated roughly orthogonal to the chain of dusty cores that runs north-south through DR21. Clustering may inhibit disc accretion and therefore the production of outflows; we certainly do not see enhanced outflow activity from clusters of protostars. Finally, although the low-mass protostellar outflows are abundant and widely distributed, the current generation does not provide sufficient momentum and kinetic energy to account for the observed turbulent motions in the DR21/W75 giant molecular clouds. Rather, multiple epochs of outflow activity are required over the million-year time-scale for turbulent decay.
3D Ground Penetrating Radar to Detect Tree Roots and Estimate Root Biomass in the Field

The objectives of this study were to detect coarse tree root and to estimate root biomass in the field by using an advanced 3D Ground Penetrating Radar (3D GPR) system. This study obtained full-resolution 3D imaging results of tree root system using 500 MHz and 800 MHz bow-tie antennas, respectively. The measurement site included two larch trees, and one of them was excavated after GPR measurements. In this paper, a searching algorithm, based on the continuity of pixel intensity along the root in 3D space, is proposed, and two coarse roots whose diameters are more than 5 cm were detected and delineated correctly. Based on the detection results and the measured root biomass, a linear regression model is proposed to estimate the total root biomass in different depth ranges, and the total error was less than 10%. Additionally, based on the detected root samples, a new index named “magnitude width” is proposed to estimate the root diameter that has good correlation with root diameter compared with other common GPR indexes. This index also provides direct measurement of the root diameter with 13%–16% error, providing reasonable and practical root diameter estimation especially in the field.
Leave a Reply: An Analysis of Weblog Comments

Access to weblogs, both through commercial services and in academic studies, is usually limited to the content of the weblog posts. This overlooks an important aspect distinguishing weblogs from other web pages: the ability of weblog readers to respond to posts directly, by posting comments. In this paper we present a large-scale study of weblog comments and their relation to the posts. Using a sizable corpus of comments, we estimate the overall volume of comments in the blogosphere; analyze the relation between the weblog popularity and commenting patterns in it; and measure the contribution of comment content to various aspects of weblog access.
Memory-based particle filter for real-time object tracking

Particle filter tracking algorithm based on global features becomes invalid when the target's appearance changes or is similar to the background. In order to solve such problems, we propose a memory-based particle filter which considers both local and global feature. Particles provide reliable matching area for local features so that error matching points can be eliminated. Then, local feature points matched to the target will guide the propagation of particles in order to avoid particle degeneration. Experimental results show the tracking effect of the proposed method under various conditions such as scale variation, sudden change of illumination, rotation and so on.
Distributed Resource Discovery in Sub-Logarithmic Time

We present a new distributed algorithm for the resource discovery problem introduced by Harchol-Balter, Leighton, and Levin in PODC'99. The resource discovery problem consists of a synchronous network with n machines in which at any timestep any machine v can PUSH or PULL a message to/from any other machine u whose (IP) address is known to v. Messages can contain addresses which then change the "topology". The goal of a distributed resource discovery problem is to enable all machines to learn the addresses of all other machines as fast as possible while keeping the number of messages sent low. We present a randomized distributed algorithm that achieves this goal in O(log D log log n) rounds using O(n) messages, where D is the strong diameter of the initial topology. Up to the log log n factor, our round complexity is best possible given the trivial Omega(log D) lower bound. For many typical networks with D = o(n), our running time is a drastic improvement over prior O(log n) round algorithms. In particular, for networks with polylogarithmic diameter an O(log^2 log n) running time and thus an almost exponential speedup is obtained.
Rehabilitation of Musculoskeletal Injuries Using the Rutgers Ankle Haptic Interface: Three Case Reports

The efficacy of virtual reality-based rehabilitation for orthopedic patients needs to be determined. This paper presents three case studies in which the use of the Rutgers Ankle haptic interface for ankle rehabilitation is evaluated. The Rutgers Ankle is a computer-controlled compact robotic platform that measures foot position and orientation and provides resistive forces and torques, It has been integrated with a PC running an airplane piloting VR exercise and a custom electronic control box. The system underwent pilot clinical trials in an outpatient clinic in the State of New Jersey (USA). The goals of the pilot tests were to determine how well the current design of the interface worked in a clinical setting and to provide preliminary evidence of efficacy (whether patients benefited from incorporating the RA into their rehabilitation program). Results on three patients participating in the study showed improvements in range of motion, torque generation capacity and ankle mechanical work over six rehabilitation sessions. Objective measures obtained by the Rutgers Ankle show improvement in task accuracy to 100% for Case 1, a five-fold increase in ankle power output for Case 2, and a three-fold increase for Case 3. Both Case 2 and Case 3 reached 100% task accuracy by the end of the two-week rehabilitation training. Results from these case studies are being used in software enhancements and construction of a dual-platform system.
Impact of angular spread on massive MIMO channel estimation

Large scale antenna arrays technology has the potential of bringing many advantages to future wireless systems. Energy and spectral efficiency are going to be the most important features. Hence, accurate estimate of channel state information (CSI) makes these advantages achievable. This paper investigates the effects of angular spread on the accuracy of channel estimation for massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) wireless communication systems. The model we consider consists of user equipment (UE) and a base station with large antenna array. Linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) is used to estimate the uplink channel of a massive MIMO system using a pilot signal. It is shown that higher spatial correlation (SC) positively affects the accuracy of channel estimation when the signal to noise ratio is kept constant.
Association of Active Caspase 8 with the Mitochondrial Membrane during Apoptosis: Potential Roles in Cleaving BAP31 and Caspase 3 and Mediating Mitochondrion-Endoplasmic Reticulum Cross Talk in Etoposide-Induced Cell Death

ABSTRACT It was recently demonstrated that during apoptosis, active caspase 9 and caspase 3 rapidly accumulate in the mitochondrion-enriched membrane fraction (D. Chandra and D. G. Tang, J. Biol. Chem.278:17408-17420, 2003). We now show that active caspase 8 also becomes associated with the membranes in apoptosis caused by multiple stimuli. In MDA-MB231 breast cancer cells treated with etoposide (VP16), active caspase 8 is detected only in the membrane fraction, which contains both mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum (ER), as revealed by fractionation studies. Immunofluorescence microscopy, however, shows that procaspase 8 and active caspase 8 predominantly colocalize with the mitochondria. Biochemical analysis demonstrates that both procaspase 8 and active caspase 8 are localized mainly on the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM) as integral proteins. Functional analyses with dominant-negative mutants, small interfering RNAs, peptide inhibitors, and Fas-associated death domain (FADD)- and caspase 8-deficient Jurkat T cells establish that the mitochondrion-localized active caspase 8 results mainly from the FADD-dependent and tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated death domain-dependent mechanisms and that caspase 8 activation plays a causal role in VP16-induced caspase 3 activation and cell death. Finally, we present evidence that the OMM-localized active caspase 8 can activate cytosolic caspase 3 and ER-localized BAP31. Cleavage of BAP31 leads to the generation of ER- localized, proapoptotic BAP20, which may mediate mitochondrion-ER cross talk through a Ca2+-dependent mechanism.
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) detects microstructural reorganization in the brain associated with chronic irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common gastrointestinal disorder characterized by recurring abdominal pain associated with alterations in bowel habits. We hypothesized patients with chronic visceral pain associated with IBS may have microstructural differences in the brain compared with healthy control subjects (HCs), indicative of long-term neural reorganization of chronic pain pathways and regions associated with sensory integration. In the current study we performed population-based voxel-wise DTI comparisons and probabilistic tractography in a large sample of phenotyped patients with IBS (n=33) and HCs (n=93). Patients had lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in thalamic regions, the basal ganglia and sensory/motor association/integration regions as well as higher FA in frontal lobe regions and the corpus callosum. In addition, patients had reduced mean diffusivity (MD), within the globus pallidus, and higher MD in the thalamus, internal capsule, and coronal radiata projecting to sensory/motor regions, suggestive of differential changes in axon/dendritic density in these regions. Sex differences in FA and MD were also observed in the patients but not in HCs. Probabilistic tractography confirmed a higher degree of connectivity in patients between the thalamus and pre-frontal cortex, as well as the medial dorsal thalamic nuclei and anterior cingulate cortex, and a lower degree of connectivity between the globus pallidus and thalamus. Together, these results support the hypothesis that patients with chronically recurring visceral pain from IBS have long-term microstructural changes within the brain, particular in regions associated with integration of sensory information and cortico thalamic modulation. The current study involving patients with chronic visceral pain associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) demonstrates microstructural differences in the brain compared with healthy control subjects (HCs), indicative of long-term neural reorganization of chronic pain pathways and regions associated with sensory integration.
Deployment and mobility for animal social life monitoring based on preferential attachment

The effort and time spent in wild life monitoring increases with the area and the number of objects to observe. Deployment of wireless sensor nodes enables a scalable sampling method and fine granularity of data collection. When we include resource rich actor nodes the data collection and evaluation are further optimized. However realistic mobility data is missing for various animal species to develop prototypes of wireless network based monitoring systems. In this paper, the problem of the absence of realistic data is considered from a social network perspective. Node deployment and mobility algorithms are provided to model a complete system of an animal swarm to be used for animal social life monitoring. A novel spatial cut-off preferential attachment model and center of mass concept are used and extended for the models according to the characteristics of the animal swarms. In the application scenario of a gorilla swarm, each gorilla is equipped with a sensor node for the monitoring of the social system. The local interaction patterns among the mobile nodes are also monitored throughout the network life time to observe the social interactions among animals and to determine the role of each animal in the society. The performance of the monitoring protocol and the applicability of the deployment and mobility models are presented through extensive simulations.
Global cooperative design in legacy system reengineering project

Businesses become globally distributed and speed to market is a critical success for new products. However, global cooperative design in legacy system reengineering is formidable because of the communication and coordination issues. Besides finding the domain expertise via the agents and distributing the different process steps at different sites, establishing communication queues and conducting the process steps accordingly will dramatically reduce the impact of the communication delay to the entire project and shorten the time to market. In Lattice/spl reg/ system reengineering, this model was adopted, and the impact of the communication delay occurred in global cooperative design was minimized.
Cordycepin activates AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) via interaction with the γ1 subunit

Cordycepin is a bioactive component of the fungus Cordyceps militaris. Previously, we showed that cordycepin can alleviate hyperlipidemia through enhancing the phosphorylation of AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK), but the mechanism of this stimulation is unknown. Here, we investigated the potential mechanisms of cordycepin‐induced AMPK activation in HepG2 cells. Treatment with cordycepin largely reduced oleic acid (OA)‐elicited intracellular lipid accumulation and increased AMPK activity in a dose‐dependent manner. Cordycepin‐induced AMPK activation was not accompanied by changes in either the intracellular levels of AMP or the AMP/ATP ratio, nor was it influenced by calmodulin‐dependent protein kinase kinase (CaMKK) inhibition; however, this activation was significantly suppressed by liver kinase B1 (LKB1) knockdown. Molecular docking, fluorescent and circular dichroism measurements showed that cordycepin interacted with the γ1 subunit of AMPK. Knockdown of AMPKγ1 by siRNA substantially abolished the effects of cordycepin on AMPK activation and lipid regulation. The modulating effects of cordycepin on the mRNA levels of key lipid regulatory genes were also largely reversed when AMPKγ1 expression was inhibited. Together, these data suggest that cordycepin may inhibit intracellular lipid accumulation through activation of AMPK via interaction with the γ1 subunit.
Learning to Adapt Web Information Extraction Knowledge and Discovering New Attributes via a Bayesian Approach

This paper presents a Bayesian learning framework for adapting information extraction wrappers with new attribute discovery, reducing human effort in extracting precise information from unseen Web sites. Our approach aims at automatically adapting the information extraction knowledge previously learned from a source Web site to a new unseen site, at the same time, discovering previously unseen attributes. Two kinds of text-related clues from the source Web site are considered. The first kind of clue is obtained from the extraction pattern contained in the previously learned wrapper. The second kind of clue is derived from the previously extracted or collected items. A generative model for the generation of the site-independent content information and the site-dependent layout format of the text fragments related to attribute values contained in a Web page is designed to harness the uncertainty involved. Bayesian learning and expectation-maximization (EM) techniques are developed under the proposed generative model for identifying new training data for learning the new wrapper for new unseen sites. Previously unseen attributes together with their semantic labels can also be discovered via another EM-based Bayesian learning based on the generative model. We have conducted extensive experiments from more than 30 real-world Web sites in three different domains to demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework.
Surgical Palliative Drainage in Un-resectable Malignant Biliary Obstruction

Introduction: Tumor resection is the curative therapy in the patients with malignant obstruction and in nonoperable patients non-surgical palliative therapy, is recommended. These methods may not be successful in some cases because of the various reasons, so the surgical intervention is needed to eliminate biliary obstruction. The aim of this study is to introduce and evaluate a new method for drainage in the patients with un-resectable malignant obstruction in biliary system. Method: This study included 21 patients with un-resectable tumor of biliary tract causing obstruction. After exploring the abdomen, segment II and III of liver will be dissected and then a part of segment III will be removed. In all of cases feeding tube will be put in the duct. Two to three biliary ducts will be specified; thus, feeding tube at least number 5 will be inserted inside the duct and guided through the liver so that it reaches the large ducts inside. A Roux arch will be created afterwards, and will be anastomosed to the liver capsule in parachute procedure. After operation patients will be monitored for the outbreak of cholangitis, anastomosis leakage, pruritus and the decrease of bilirubin level. Results: The new method of surgery in patients with malignant obstruction of the biliary tract was exclusively palliative in all 21 cases. The 30-day mortality in the study group was 14.3% (n=3/21). Pruritus was comparatively cured in the patients (85.7%), and prevalence of cholangitis was decreased after the intervention (19% to 14.3%). Anastomosis was leaked in just one patient. Conclusion: In patients with amalignant obstruction in biliary tract in hilum of liver which non-surgical procedures were not successful, so hepatojejunostomy might be more effective.
A Virtualized Harvard Architectural Approach to Protect Kernel Code

Most modern computers which implement the von Neumann architecture have the risk of being attacked by modifying kernel code, because code is put in the same address space as the data. In this paper, the virtualization of Harvard memory architecture is implemented as a patch to the current operating system to separate the code fetch and the data operation on the kernel code, and thus solve the problem at its root. The implementation of our virtualization is described in detail, its effectiveness to resist attacks is evaluated and the impact on the current operating system is fully analyzed. The experiment results show our approach is effective, has no side effect on the normal functions of the operating system and incurs very little overhead.
Novel Miniature and Broadband Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Star Mixers

In this paper, three monolithic star mixers using a new miniature dual balun are proposed. The first one is a double spiral transformer mixer, and the second one is a trifilar transformer mixer. Both of these are fabricated using a commercial GaAs pseudomorphic HEMT process. The third is a 3-D transformer mixer, which is fabricated using a commercial CMOS process. These mixers exhibit bandwidths over 25-45 GHz (57%) with local oscillator isolations better than 20 dB. These star mixers are smaller than (lambda/6timeslambda/6) for the mixer core area. Compared with traditional star mixers, these mixers demonstrate 80% size reduction, and achieve good performance with the smallest chip size among all star mixers using monolithic microwave integrated circuit processes.
Targeting the Strategies of a Bid Sniper

Bid sniping is a dubious practice used in online auctions whereby a bidder makes a bid in the closing moments in an attempt to deny other bidders time to react. The primary goal for a bid sniper is to win the auction for the lowest price possible, without the risk of being forced into submitting any higher bids if there is competition for the item. This paper investigates the phenomenon of bid sniping and its prevalence in commercial online auctions. We seek to show the extent of bid sniping, understand the rationale of why it occurs, what effect this has on the other auction participants, and what can be done to prevent the practice. Based on this understanding, we present a software bidding agent that follows a bid sniping strategy. The agent has the ability to suppress an auction's price through knowing when to bid, how much to bid, how to deal with rivals, and when to cease bidding. We also propose a new online auction format that can eliminate/reduce the effect of bid sniping. The proposal adds an undisclosed random time-out extension to an auction's finishing time to entice bidders to bid their maximum amount immediately or risk being excluded from the auction.
eGOB: eukaryotic Gene Order Browser

UNLABELLED A large number of genomes have been sequenced, allowing a range of comparative studies. Here, we present the eukaryotic Gene Order Browser with information on the order of protein and non-coding RNA (ncRNA) genes of 74 different eukaryotic species. The browser is able to display a gene of interest together with its genomic context in all species where that gene is present. Thereby, questions related to the evolution of gene organization and non-random gene order may be examined. The browser also provides access to data collected on pairs of adjacent genes that are evolutionarily conserved. AVAILABILITY eGOB as well as underlying data are freely available at http://egob.biomedicine. gu.se SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. CONTACT tore.samuelsson@medkem.gu.se.
Performance comparisons of power allocation mechanisms for downlink handoff in the WCDMA system with microcellular environments

This paper investigates different power allocation algorithms for downlink handoff in the wideband code division multiple access system from both outage performance and power efficiency perspectives. Traditionally, the site selection diversity transmission (SSDT) scheme has been viewed as the optimal solution for downlink handoff from the standpoint of power efficiency, which selects the best base station to transmit downlink signals to the user. However, from the outage performance perspective, the user at the cell boundary may have poor quality if there is only one serving base station. Thus, we are motivated to develop an improved SSDT scheme that can take both power efficiency and outage performances in account. In this paper, we propose a joint link proportional power allocation (LPPA) and SSDT scheme. Through analysis and simulation, we demonstrate that the proposed joint LPPA and SSDT scheme is the optimal power allocation solution for downlink handoff in the WCDMA system, which not only can improve the outage performance over the SSDT scheme when the traffic intensity is low, but can be very power efficient as the SSDT scheme in the heavy traffic situation.