Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Localization of the Noradrenaline Transporter in Rat Adrenal Medulla and PC12 Cells

Abstract : The noradrenaline transporter (NAT) is present in noradrenergic neurons and a few other specialized cells such as adrenal medullary chromaffin cells and the rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cell line. We have raised antibodies to a 49‐residue segment (NATM2) of the extracellular region (residues 184‐232) of bovine NAT. Affinity‐purified NATM2 antibodies specifically recognized an 80‐kDa band in PC12 cell membranes by western blotting. Bands of a similar size were also detected in membranes from human neuroblastoma (SK‐N‐SH) cells expressing endogenous NAT and human embryonic kidney (HEK293) cells stably expressing bovine NAT. Immunocytochemistry of rat adrenal tissue showed that NAT staining was colocalized with tyrosine hydroxylase in medullary chromaffin cells. Most NAT immunoreactivity in rat adrenal chromaffin and PC12 cells was present in the cytoplasm and had a punctate appearance. Cell surface biotinylation experiments in PC12 cells confirmed that only a minor fraction of the NAT was present at the cell surface. Subcellular fractionation of PC12 cells showed that relatively little NAT colocalized with plasma membrane, synaptic‐like microvesicles, recycling endosomes, or trans‐Golgi vesicles. Most of the NAT was associated with [3H]noradrenaline‐containing secretory granules. Following nerve growth factor treatment, NAT was localized to the growing tip of neurites. This distribution was similar to the secretory granule marker secretogranin I. We conclude that the majority of NAT is present intracellularly in secretory granules and suggest that NAT may undergo regulated trafficking in PC12 cells.
The Solar Wind in the Outer Heliosphere: Physical Processes in the Termination Shock and Heliosheath

The solar wind evolves as it moves outward due to interactions with both itself and with the circum-heliospheric interstellar medium. The speed is, on average, constant out to 30 AU, then starts a slow decrease due to the pickup of interstellar neutrals. These neutrals reduce the solar wind speed by about 20% before the termination shock (TS). The pickup ions heat the thermal plasma so that the solar wind temperature increases outside 20-30 AU. Solar cycle effects are important; the solar wind pressure changes by a factor of 2 over a solar cycle and the structure of the solar wind is modified by interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) near solar maximum. The first direct evidences of the TS were the observations of streaming energetic particles by both Voyagers 1 and 2 beginning about 2 years before their respective TS crossings. The second evidence was a slowdown in solar wind speed commencing 80 days before Voyager 2 crossed the TS. The TS was a weak, quasi-perpendicular shock which transferred the solar wind flow energy mainly to the pickup ions. The heliosheath has large fluctuations in the plasma and magnetic field on time scales of minutes to days.
MABAC - Matrix Based Clustering Algorithm

Clustering is a prominent method in the data mining field. It is a discovery process that groups data such that intra cluster similarity is maximized and the inter cluster similarity is minimized. Clustering has been widely used in a variety of areas and many clustering algorithms have been developed in response. Almost every report emphasizes differences and ignores similarities among algorithms. This is true in general and specifically for the algorithms of central concern in this paper: agglomerative hierarchical ones. The principal view adopted here is that improved clustering quality can be achieved through exploiting commonalties among methods, e.g., considerations relating to merging clusters and criteria for it, e.g., single link merging (SLINK, OPTICS); edge cut merging (CHAMELEON, ROCK); and criteria based on the square of the adjacency matrix (OPTICS, ROCK). MABAC (matrix based clustering), a proposed algorithm, introduces a goodness function based on notions of link and inner link that in turn involve direct and indirect similarity measures. It provides good clustering quality for data with different shape, density and can be modified for some applications such as web mining, microarray data analysis and sequence alignment analysis.
User Behavior in Crowdfunding Platforms -- Exploratory Evidence from Switzerland

Crowdfunding platforms as a new way of financing in the web 2.0 have increased over the last years, but only little is known how users (project initiators and (potential) project backers) behave during a campaign. Using a dataset of 492 projects (including 10'439 donations) published on one of the dominant crowdfunding platforms in Switzerland, we explore the user behavior in crowdfunding. Our results show that the first days of a campaign are crucial. Successful projects generate a significant share of their intended funding goal just in the first days of a campaign. Moreover, the early interaction patterns on the project page initialize social emergent developments like herding effects for the remaining campaign duration. Finally, we show how project initiators can adapt to backer behavior to increase their funding chances.
Angiocardiographic and anatomic findings in origin of both great arteries from the right ventricle.

The diagnosis of origin of both great arteries from the morphologic right ventricle requires angiocardiographic demonstration that (1) the pulmonary artery and aorta arise from the same ventricle and the anatomic features of the ventricle are those of right ventricular myocardium, and (2) fibrous continuity between the morphologic mitral valve and either semilunar (aortic or pulmonic) valve is absent. The inter-relationship of the great arteries at the level of the semilunar valves varies. The basic anomaly may exist with a normally positioned heart, dextrocardia, ventricular inversion, or common (single) ventricle. Pulmonic stenosis is common and usually is present when isolated dextrocardia exists. Subaortic stenosis may be present. Other cardiovascular malformations also may occur, including abnormalities of the atrioventricular valves, patent ductus arteriosus, right aortic arch, isolation of the left subclavian artery, hypoplastic left ventricle, peripheral pulmonary artery stenosis, coarctation of t.
Enhancement in Spectral Efficiency using Transmit-side Channel Shortener for MISO-OFDM Systems

Time-domain channel shortening filters (CSFs) are used in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems to increase the spectral efficiency. We consider transmit-side CSF to reduce the cyclic prefix (CP) length required for the OFDM symbol. We first construct a simple CSF scheme which, however, has a poorer spectral efficiency (SE) when compared to a system with adequate CP length (which we refer to as a full-CP system). We then propose a modified CSF (MCSF) structure that exploits the null-space of an under-determined system of equations, and provides independent equivalent channels to the receiver. The SE of the MCSF is shown to be generally higher than the full-CP system when the chosen CP length is significantly smaller than the channel delay spread. Simulated BLER performance for turbo-coded multi-antenna OFDM systems reveals that the MCSF can provide up to 2 dB gain in Eb/N0 when compared with the full-CP system for the same transmit information rate.
Using e-learning dialogues in higher education

Dialogue is arguably one of the most important components of any learning process. However, as student numbers increase and more emphasis is given to electronic delivery of courses, opportunities for effective dialogue may be missed. The technology to support e-learning dialogue is readily available, but design of the dialogue structures and understanding of learners’ online communication behaviour requires further research. This paper reports on a study of the use of asynchronous discussion forums to support online dialogue in undergraduate learning and teaching in two groups of students. Initial empirical evidence, obtained from online communication behaviour data and assessment results, is presented to support a positive association between students' participation in e-learning dialogues and learning outcomes. Other factors that could influence effective exploitation of e-learning dialogues such as tutor intervention, students' perceptions, dialogue quality and learning outcomes are discussed, along with implications for the design of such systems.
A Comprehensive Investigation of Variables Related to Children's Self-Perceptions

In recent decades much has been revealed regarding children’s self-perceptions and sense of worth. Children engage in social comparisons to gauge their strengths and weaknesses relative to those around them. Thus one’s environment plays a critical role impacting one’s perceptions of self. Other variables suggested as contributing to children’s formulation of self-worth, include academic achievement, perception of victimization by peers, and academic placement. However, findings have been inconsistent in regard to the extent to which these variables relate to self-worth. The present study sought to discern if these variables relate to children’s self-perceptions. Results revealed a positive correlation between students’ scholastic competence, self-perception scores and cognitive skills and academic achievement in reading, language arts, and mathematics. Findings also suggest that the children’s self-perceptions and sense of worth were significantly different, depending upon their academic group. Moreover, children in Learning Support demonstrated more pervasive negative self-perceptions across non-academic domains of competence, whereas the opposite effect was not evident for students in the gifted program. A significant, negative relationship was revealed between each domain of selfperception and perceptions of victimization. In addition, children in Learning Support perceive themselves to be more frequently victimized by their peers than students in either Regular Education or in Gifted Support. Educational implications, recommendations for future research, and study limitations are discussed.
SGXCrypter: IP protection for portable executables using Intel's SGX technology

Executable packing schemes are popular for obfuscating the binary code of a target program through compression or encryption, and can be leveraged for protecting proprietary code against analysis and reverse engineering. Although achieving their confidentiality objective, packed executables are prepended with decryption or decompression code that processes the rest of the binary, which is a lucrative target for reverse-engineering attackers. To thwart such attacks, we introduce a novel packing scheme called SGXCrypter, which utilizes Intel's novel Software Guard Extensions to securely unpack and execute Windows binaries. Unlike state-of-the-art crypters, SGXCrypter's code is never flagged as malicious against 35 popular antivirus engines, minimally increasing the loading time of the protected executable by an average of 0.6 seconds per MB.
Ultrasmall spot size scanning laser ophthalmoscopy

An ultrasmall spot size scanning laser ophthalmoscope has been developed that employs an annular aberration-corrected incident beam to increase the effective numerical aperture of the eye thereby reducing the width of the probing light spot. Parafovea and foveal cone photoreceptor visibility determined from small area retinal image scans are discussed from the perspective of mode matching between the focused incident beam and the waveguide modes of individual cones. The cone visibility near the fovea centralis can be increased with the annular illumination scheme whereas the visibility of larger parafovea cones drops significantly as a consequence of poorer mode match. With further improvements of the implemented wavefront correction technology it holds promise for individual cone-photoreceptor imaging at the fovea centralis and for optical targeting of the retina with increased resolution.
A Linear Model for Managing the Risk of Antimicrobial Resistance Originating in Food Animals

A linear population risk model used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) estimates the risk of human cases of campylobacteriosis caused by fluoroquinolone‐resistant Campylobacter. Among the cases of campylobacteriosis attributed to domestically produced chicken, the fluoroquinolone resistance is assumed to result from the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry in the United States. Properties of the linear population risk model are contrasted with those of a farm‐to‐fork model commonly used for microbial risk assessments. The utility of the linear population model for the purpose for which it was used by CVM is discussed.
Learning Information Extraction Patterns Using WordNet

Information Extraction (IE) systems often use patterns to identify relevant information in text but these are difficult and time-consuming to generate manually. This paper presents a new approach to the automatic learning of IE patterns which uses WordNet to judge the similarity between patterns. The algorithm starts with a small set of sample extraction patterns and uses a similarity metric, based on a version of the vector space model augmented with information from WordNet, to learn similar patterns. This approach is found to perform better than a previously reported method which relied on information about the distribution of patterns in a corpus and did not make use of WordNet.
Real-Time Dual-Band Haptic Music Player for Mobile Devices

We introduce a novel dual-band haptic music player for real-time simultaneous vibrotactile playback with music in mobile devices. Our haptic music player features a new miniature dual-mode actuator that can produce vibrations consisting of two principal frequencies and a real-time vibration generation algorithm that can extract vibration commands from a music file for dual-band playback (bass and treble). The algorithm uses a "haptic equalizer" and provides plausible sound-to-touch modality conversion based on human perceptual data. In addition, we present a user study carried out to evaluate the subjective performance (precision, harmony, fun, and preference) of the haptic music player, in comparison with the current practice of bass-band-only vibrotactile playback via a single-frequency voice-coil actuator. The evaluation results indicated that the new dual-band playback outperforms the bass-only rendering, also providing several insights for further improvements. The developed system and experimental findings have implications for improving the multimedia experience with mobile devices.
Rescheduling Oriented Dependent Tasks Spread Domain Computing

To narrow the scope of rescheduling tasks is one of the effective ways to improve the grid dependent tasks rescheduling efficiency. For how to determine the scope which should improve the effic iency of rescheduling problem as far as possible without affecting the application performance, this paper proposed the resche duling tasks spread domain concept and its method of computation. Beginning with a minimum tasks set to rescheduling, the computing process is oriented by resource share conflict and data transmission dependent of tasks, and limited by the degree of task to optimize the performance of the whole application. Experimentation results show that static scheduling strategy could maintain the performance advantages compare with the dynamic strategy, thus the efficiency of proposed rescheduling tasks spread domain is validated.
Parenting, family functioning and lifestyle in a new culture: the case of African migrants in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

This study documented the parenting styles among African migrants now living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and assessed how intergenerational issues related to parenting in a new culture impact on family functioning and the modification of lifestyles. A total of 10 focus group discussions (five with parents and five with 13–17-year-old children; N = 85 participants) of 1.5–2 hours duration were conducted with Sudanese, Somali and Ethiopian migrant families. The analysis identified three discrete themes: (i) parenting-related issues; (ii) family functioning and family relations; and (iii) lifestyle changes and health. African migrant parents were restrictive in their parenting; controlled children's behaviours and social development through strict boundary-setting and close monitoring of interests, activities, and friends; and adopted a hierarchical approach to decision-making while discouraging autonomy among their offspring. Programmes seeking to improve the health and welfare of African migrants in their host countries need to accommodate the cultural and social dimensions that shape their lives. Such programmes may need to be so broad as to apply an acculturation lens to planning, and to assist young people, parents and families in addressing intergenerational issues related to raising children and growing up in a different social and cultural milieu.
IMAGE SEGMENTATION IN MEDICAL IMAGING VIA GRAPH-CUTS

Living donor transplantation and other modern methods of liver treatment are usually based on computed tomography (CT). Our work is motivated by two following clinical application. First is living-related liver transplantation (LRLT). It is the case when healthy voluntary donor gives a part of his liver to treated person. Second are oncologic resections. It is treatment for patient with liver cancer.
An Adaptive Rayleigh-Laplacian Based MAP Estimation Technique for Despeckling SAR Images using Stationary Wavelet Transform

Removal of speckle noise from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is an important step before performing any image processing operations on these images. This paper presents a novel Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) based technique for the purpose of removing the speckle noise from the SAR returns. Maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) condition which uses a prior knowledge is used to estimate the noise free wavelet coefficients. The proposed MAP estimator is designed for this purpose which uses Rayleigh distribution for modeling the speckle noise and Laplacian distribution for modeling the statistics of the noise free wavelet coefficients. The parameters required for MAP estimator is determined by technique used for parameter estimation after SWT. Moreover an Laplacian â€“ Gaussian based MAP estimator is also applied and the parameter estimation is done using the same method used for the proposed algorithm. For the purpose of enhancing the visual quality and to restore more edge information, a wavelet based resolution enhancement technique is also used after applying the Inverse stationary Wavelet Transform (ISWT), using interpolation technique. The experimental results show that the proposed despeckling algorithm efficiently removes speckle noise from the SAR images and restores the edge information as well.
Vittimizzazione e senso di insicurezza nei confronti del crimine in Italia: un’analisi empirica sul caso italiano

L’obiettivo di questo lavoro e studiare la relazione tra esperienza di vittimizzazione e senso di insicurezza dei cittadini. Ad un primo sguardo la relazione tra i fenomeni sembra ovvia: e probabile che chi ha subito un reato di recente si senta piu insicuro di chi non l’ha subito. Tuttavia, molte ricerche in paesi stranieri hanno mostrato che la relazione tra l’insicurezza e il crimine e piu complessa. Nella prima parte del lavoro viene discussa la letteratura sul tema, descrivendo i risultati di ricerca contraddittori a cui sono giunti diversi studi. Nella seconda parte viene realizzata un’analisi dei dati tratti dalla seconda Indagine sulla sicurezza dei cittadini. I risultati indicano che tra le persone che hanno subito reati contro la persona (minacce, scippi e rapine) e contro la proprieta (furti in appartamento, furti di automobili) la quota di persone insicure per strada e nella propria abitazione e sensibilmente piu alta rispetto a quella delle persone non vittimizzate. Anche i modelli multivariati mostrano che, a parita di caratteristiche sociodemografiche e del luogo di residenza, la propensione all’insicurezza nei confronti del crimine e piu elevata tra chi ha subito diversi tipi di reati, seguiti da chi ha subito un reato contro la persona e da chi ha subito un reato contro la proprieta, rispetto a chi negli ultimi tre anni non ha subito alcun reato.
A Fine-Grain, Uniform, Energy-Efficient Delay Element for 2-Phase Bundled-Data Circuits

Contemporary digitally controlled delay elements (DEs) trade off power overheads and delay quantization error (DQE). This article proposes a new programmable DE that provides a balanced design that yields low power with moderate DQE even under process, voltage, and temperature variations. The element employs and leverages the advantages offered by a 28nm fully depleted silicon on insulator technology, using back body biasing to add an extra dimension to its programmability. To do so, a novel generic delay shift block is proposed, which enables incorporating both fine and coarse delays in a single DE that can be easily integrated into digital systems, which is an advantage over hybrid DEs that rely on analog design.
Prenatal and early life influences on epigenetic age in children: a study of mother–offspring pairs from two cohort studies

DNA methylation-based biomarkers of aging are highly correlated with actual age. Departures of methylation-estimated age from actual age can be used to define epigenetic measures of child development or age acceleration (AA) in adults. Very little is known about genetic or environmental determinants of these epigenetic measures of aging. We obtained DNA methylation profiles using Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChips across five time-points in 1018 mother–child pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Using the Horvath age estimation method, we calculated epigenetic age for these samples. AA was defined as the residuals from regressing epigenetic age on actual age. AA was tested for associations with cross-sectional clinical variables in children. We identified associations between AA and sex, birth weight, birth by caesarean section and several maternal characteristics in pregnancy, namely smoking, weight, BMI, selenium and cholesterol level. Offspring of non-drinkers had higher AA on average but this difference appeared to resolve during childhood. The associations between sex, birth weight and AA found in ARIES were replicated in an independent cohort (GOYA). In children, epigenetic AA measures are associated with several clinically relevant variables, and early life exposures appear to be associated with changes in AA during adolescence. Further research into epigenetic aging, including the use of causal inference methods, is required to better our understanding of aging.