Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Method for Assessment of Natural Killer Cell Cytotoxicity Using Image Cytometry

Natural killer (NK) cells belong to the innate arm of the immune system and though activated NK cells can modulate immune responses through the secretion of cytokines, their primary effector function is through target cell lysis. Accordingly, cytotoxicity assays are central to studying NK cell function. The 51Chromium release assay, is the “gold standard” for cytotoxicity assay, however, due to concerns over toxicity associated with the use and disposal of radioactive compounds there is a significant interest in non-radioactive methods. We have previously used the calcein release assay as a non-radioactive alternative for studying NK cell cytotoxicity. In this study, we show that the calcein release assay varies in its dynamic range for different tumor targets, and that the entrapped calcein could remain unreleased within apoptotic bodies of lysed tumor targets or incompletely released resulting in underestimation of percent specific lysis. To overcome these limitations, we developed a novel cytotoxicity assay using the Cellometer Vision Image Cytometer and compared this method to standard calcein release assay for measuring NK cell cytotoxicity. Using tumor lines K562, 721.221, and Jurkat, we demonstrate here that image cytometry shows significantly higher percent specific lysis of the target cells compared to the standard calcein release assay within the same experimental setup. Image cytometry is able to accurately analyze live target cells by excluding dimmer cells and smaller apoptotic bodies from viable target cell counts. The image cytometry-based cytotoxicity assay is a simple, direct and sensitive method and is an appealing option for routine cytotoxicity assay.
High-Q adaptive matching network for remote powering of UHF RFIDs and wireless sensor systems

Process and temperature independent RF frontend design is important for remotely powered RFID tags and wireless sensor systems. Run-to-run process variations can impact the remote powering performance and therefore read range of aforementioned systems. We introduce analysis and propose a design methodology for high-Q switched capacitor matching network for remote powering. The method is demonstrated with a differential drive rectifier topology with -14 dBm of input power at 900 MHz UHF band. Simulation results show the improvement on delivered power up to 42% and extension of the read range of the sensor system up to 19% with utilization of the proposed work.
Does the Use of Gender-Fair Language Influence the Comprehensibility of Texts?: An Experiment Using an Authentic Contract Manipulating Single Role Nouns and Pronouns

In many languages masculine nouns and pronouns can be interpreted to refer to both male and female referents. However, even when the authors expressly point out that masculine forms are being used to refer to both women and men, readers and listeners predominantly form mental images of men. A gender-fair language that uses either masculine and feminine forms or gender-neutral forms to refer to women and men more equally elicits mental images of women and men. Critics often argue, however, that gender-fair language makes texts less comprehensible (readable). The present study tests this assumption for the German language: 355 students read a randomly assigned text that either used masculine-only forms or consistently used both masculine and feminine forms. After that, they answered the comprehensibility questionnaire by Friedrich (2017). Participants who had read a text in gender-fair language did not give statistically significant lower ratings of comprehensibility than participants who had read a text that used masculine-only forms (partial &eegr;2 < .01; p > .05). The results indicate that the use of gender-fair language does not impair the comprehensibility of texts.
kHealth : Proactive Personalized Actionable Information for Better Healthcare

Mobile devices and sensors are profoundly changing the way we create, consume, and share information. Health aficionados and patients with chronic conditions are increasingly using sensors and mobile devices to track sleep, food, activity, and other physiological observations (e.g., weight, heart rate, blood pressure). This trend is leading to a paradigm shift from reactive medicine to predictive, preventative, personalized, and participatory medicine. This is also empowering an individual to more fully participate in health related decision making. To facilitate this transformation, there is a dearth of research in understanding the richness and nuances of health care data. There are many healthcare applications that utilize mobile devices and sensors to monitor the health of an individual. With increased instrumentation such as use of smart phones and social media provides a fine-grained access to the activities of a person and population in general. Majority of analytics is focused on finding discrepancies in a single stream of observations without much insight into the problem and actionable information. kHealth analyzes observations from passive (no human involvement in data collection) and active (human input involved in data collection) sensors to provide explanations that are intelligible to individuals and when needed their clinicians for well-informed decision making.
TracingandCharacterizationof NT-basedSystemWorkloads

Trace-drivensimulationis commonlyusedby thecomputerarchitectureresearchcommunityto pursue answersto a wide variety of architecturaldesignissues.Tracestakenfrom benchmarkexecution(e.g., SPEC,Bytemark,SPLASH) havebeenstudiedextensivelyto optimize the designof pipelines,branch predictors,andespeciallycachememories.Today’s computerdesignshavebeenoptimizedbasedon the characteristicsof thesebenchmarks. As applicationsbecomemore dependenton servicesand APIs provided by the hostingoperating system,theoverall applicationperformancebecomesmoredependent on efficient operatingsysteminteraction. It hasbeenacknowledgedthatoperatingsystemoverheadcangreatlyaffect thebenefitsprovided by a new designfeature. The reasonwhy the operatingsysteminteractionhas,for the mostpart, been ignoredin pastarchitecturalstudiesis the lack of availabletools that cangeneratekernel-ladentraces. In this contributionwe describethe ongoingefforts to captureoperatingsystemrich traceson the DEC Alpha platform. We will describethecurrentversionof thePatchWrx toolset,originally developed by RichardSites. This tool allows us to obtain trace information of applicationand operatingsystem activity, while introducingminimal overhead. We will describethe current versionof the tool, and demonstrateits capabilitiesby characterizing a number of applications. We will also contrastthe fundamentaldifferencesbetweenusing simple benchmarkprograms,versusstudyingapplicationbasedprograms. This paper demonstratesthat for real applications(MS CD Player, MS Visual C/C++, FX! 32, etc.), the operatingsystemexecutioncan dominatethe overall executiontime of the application,contributingsignificantly to the contentsof any capturedtrace.
A Data Placement Scheme with Time-Related Model for P2P Storages

Maintaining desired data availability while minimizing costs is the primary challenge in designing P2P storages. Data placement schemes and data availability calculation methods are two key design choices. Prior work has used the random placement and steady-state availability analysis model widely. We find this approach has two drawbacks: (1) it ignores the time-related property and greatly underestimates data availability in the short term and (2) it ignores differences in peers' availability and uses a mean value, which also leads to the underestimation of data availability. Both of these drawbacks influence the efficiency of storage and bandwidth resource usage. Also, this approach can not ensure all the objects achieve their expected availability due to the second drawback. This paper develops a different data placement scheme called similar-MTTF-MTTR placement, which takes into consideration differences in pees' dynamic characteristics. Under this scheme, this paper also presents a fine-gained analysis model for short-term data availability calculation. As a result, our scheme improves the efficiency of data maintaining significantly. We validate this by comparing with random placement under three different dynamic environments: a wide-area system (PlanetLab), a corporative environment (desktop personal computers at Microsoft Corporation), and a file-sharing system (Maze). The results show that our scheme can save the storage resource usage significantly under all environments.
An investigation of user engagement factors in E-learning for working adult learners

E-learning is now viewed as an effective, efficient, and persuasive medium for working adult learners. Nevertheless, even though e-learning has been widely accepted among working adults, engaging their users has become a challenge to the e-learning provider. Adult learner had their own characteristic and principal in learning. Focusing on the development of interactive multimedia content only is not a factor to attract these working adult learners to engage with the e-learning system. This paper describes a study with the objective to identify the factors that influence the process of engagement in e-learning among working adult learners. 30 respondents were interviewed face-to-face; all of who are working adult learners with experience in using the e-learning system provided by their companies or agencies. The interview session was tape-recorded, and the analysis was done using a thematic analysis method. Five main themes were identified as factors that influence user engagement in e-learning among working adult learners - Mental and Emotion, Cognitive Abilities, Motivation and Rewards, and Physical and Learning Styles.
C-MAC: A configurable medium access control protocol for sensor networks

C-MAC is a highly configurable MAC protocol realized as an architecture of medium access control strategies that can be combined to produce application-specific protocols. By selecting the proper strategies and configuring their parameters, programmers can instantiate MAC protocols that closely match their applications' requirements. C-MAC relies on static metaprogramming techniques to achieve high configurability without compromising size and performance. A previous implementation of C-MAC for the Mica2 mote produced B-MAC-like instances that are smaller, faster, and make better use of the network than the original TINYOS B-MAC. In this work, we implemented and evaluated EPOS C-MAC in the scope of the EPOSMote project. The EPOSMote devices used in this work feature an IEEE 802.15. 4 compliant radio. This motivated us to evaluate additional configuration parameters, including synchronization (e.g. beacon-based), contention, and data handling (e.g. error detection). As a result, C-MAC has undergone a major redesign and now features an architecture whose elements are more fine-grained and thus can be reused in a larger variety of scenarios.
Adaptively layered statistical volumetric obscurance

We accelerate volumetric obscurance, a variant of ambient occlusion, and solve undersampling artifacts, such as banding, noise or blurring, that screen-space techniques traditionally suffer from. We make use of an efficient statistical model to evaluate the occlusion factor in screen-space using a single sample. Overestimations and halos are reduced by an adaptive layering of the visible geometry. Bias at tilted surfaces is avoided by projecting and evaluating the volumetric obscurance in tangent space of each surface point. We compare our approach to several traditional screen-space ambient obscurance techniques and show its competitive qualitative and quantitative performance. Our algorithm maps well to graphics hardware, does not require the traditional bilateral blur step of previous approaches, and avoids typical screen-space related artifacts such as temporal instability due to undersampling.
Efficient and Approximate Simulation Algorithm of Kinetic Folding of an RNA Molecule

Recently it is recognized as a very important research topic to simulate kinetic folding of an RNA molecule in order to understand its functionality in vivo. In this paper, we will propose a new approach to simulating kinetic folding of an RNA molecule based on a new idea of “enumerating secondary structures by a graph. ” Although most of the previous works try to reduce the conformation space of a given RNA molecule in order to escape from the combinatorial explosion problem, the present paper gives us an efficient and approximate simulation methodology for hairpin formation with keeping the conformation space completely. As far as the authors’ knowledge, this is the first polynomial update time simulation algorithm for kinetic folding analysis of an RNA molecule which has a nice theoretical property that the convergence point of its simulation always exactly coincides with the equilibrium distribution of secondary structures of the RNA molecule. We evaluated the time efficiency and the accuracy of the proposed method against the exhaustive method which numerically simulates the master equation by completely generating all secondary structures. The results show that the proposed method is much faster than the exhaustive method and that the proposed method gives us well approximated simulation results.
Frequency of Lymph Node Metastasis According to the Size of Tumors in Resected Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma with a Size of 30 mm or Smaller

Background: This study analyzed the relation between the tumor size and the lymph node metastasis in adenocarcinoma of the lung with a size of 30 mm or smaller. Methods: Four hundred thirteen patients who had undergone curative resection for lung adenocarcinoma were enrolled. If the tumor presented ground-glass opacities on the preoperative high-resolution computed tomography, both the total size including ground-glass opacities and the solid size alone were measured. To calculate the rates of lymph node metastasis by the tumor size, the tumors were divided into six groups by their sizes: 5 mm or less, 6 to 10 mm, 11 to 15 mm, 16 to 20 mm, 21 to 25 mm, and 26 to 30 mm. Results: The average numbers of dissected lymph nodes and dissected lymph node stations were 17 and 5, respectively. Seventy-five patients (18%) were postoperatively discovered to have positive nodes. The rates of node metastasis in each total size group were 0/1 (0%), 0/29 (0%), 5/77 (7%), 17/121 (14%), 27/101 (27%), and 26/84 (31%), respectively. The rates of node metastasis in each solid size group were 0/37 (0%), 1/53 (2%), 9/88 (10%), 17/104 (16%), 23/78 (30%), and 25/53 (47%), respectively. The area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic curves for the total size was measured as 0.701, and that for the solid size was measured as 0.777. By multivariate analysis, solid size, maximum standardized uptake value, and lymphovascular invasion were independent significant predictive factors. Conclusions: Solid size, maximum standardized uptake value, and lymphovascular invasion were independent predictors for lymph node metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma. The size of the solid component explained the relation between the tumor size and the lymph node metastasis more accurately than that explained by the total tumor size on high-resolution computed tomography.
Efficient Implementation of Global Variance Compensation for Parametric Speech Synthesis

This paper proposes a simple and efficient technique for variance compensation to improve the perceptual quality of synthetic speech in parametric speech synthesis. First, we analyze the problem of spectral and F0 enhancement with global variance (GV) in HMM-based speech synthesis. In the conventional GV-based parameter generation, the enhancement is achieved by taking account of a GV probability density function with fixed GV model parameters for every output utterance through the speech parameter generation process. We find that the use of fixed GV parameters results in much smaller variations of GVs in synthesized utterances than those in natural speech. In addition, the computational cost is high because of iterative optimization. This paper examines these issues in terms of multiple objective measures such as variance characteristics, GV distortions, and GV correlations. We propose a simple and fast compensation method based on a global affine transformation that provides a GV distribution closer to that of natural speech and improves the correlation of GVs between natural and generated parameter sequences. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed variance compensation methods outperform the conventional GV-based parameter generation in terms of objective and subjective speech similarity to natural speech while maintaining speech naturalness.
Spatio-Spectral Exploration Combining In Situ and Remote Measurements

Adaptive exploration uses active learning principles to improve the efficiency of autonomous robotic surveys. This work considers an important and understudied aspect of autonomous exploration: in situ validation of remote sensing measurements. We focus on high- dimensional sensor data with a specific case study of spectroscopic mapping. A field robot refines an orbital image by measuring the surface at many wavelengths. We introduce a new objective function based on spectral unmixing that seeks pure spectral signatures to accurately model diluted remote signals. This objective reflects physical properties of the multi-wavelength data. The rover visits locations that jointly improve its model of the environment while satisfying time and energy constraints. We simulate exploration using alternative planning approaches, and show proof of concept results with the canonical spectroscopic map of a mining district in Cuprite, Nevada.
Very compact radio emission from high-mass protostars - II. Dust disks and ionized accretion flows

This paper reports 43 GHz imaging of the high-mass protostars W 33A, AFGL 2591 and NGC 7538 IRS9 at ∼0.04 �� and ∼0.6 �� resolution. In each case, weak (∼mJy-level), compact (O ∼ 100 AU) emission is detected, which has an elongated shape (axis ratio ∼3). However, for AFGL 2591 and NGC 7538 IRS9, the emission is single-peaked, while for the highest- luminosity source, W 33A, a "mini-cluster" of three sources is detected. The derived sizes, flux densities, and broad-band radio spectra of the sources support recent models where the initial expansion of H  regions around very young O-type stars is prevented by stellar gravity. In these models, accretion flows onto high-mass stars originate in large-scale molecular envelopes and become ionized close to the star. These models reproduce our observations of ionized gas as well as the structure of the molecular envelopes of these sources on 10 3 −10 4 AU scales derived previously from single-dish sub-millimeter continuum and line mapping. For AFGL 2591, the 43 GHz flux density is also consistent with dust emission from a disk recently seen in near-infrared "speckle" images. However, the alignment of the 43 GHz emission with the large-scale molecular outflow argues against an origin in a disk for AFGL 2591 and NGC 7538 IRS9. In contrast, the outflow from W 33A does not appear to be collimated. Together with previously presented case studies of W 3 IRS5 and AFGL 2136, our results indicate that the formation of stars and stellar clusters with luminosities up to ∼10 5 Lproceeds through accretion and produces collimated outflows as in the solar-type case, with the "additional feature" that the accretion flow becomes ionized close to the star. Above ∼10 5 L� , clusters of H  regions appear, and outflows are no longer collimated, possibly as the result of mergers of protostars or pre-stellar cores.
No 46 / 03 ( slightly revised version ) Department of Economics , University of Kassel Explaining de facto judicial independence

Judicial Independence (JI) as factually implemented varies considerably between countries. Since de iure JI is an imperfect predictor of de facto JI, a number of variables that might determine the factual level of judicial independence is theoretically discussed and empirically tested. A distinction between factors that can be influenced in the short run and those that are the result of historical development and are exempt from shortterm modification is made. Ascertaining the relative relevance of these two groups of variables promises to be policy-relevant because attempts to make judiciaries more independent within governance programs might be seriously constrained by factors beyond the control of national governments and international organizations. Key Terms: Judicial independence, informal institutions, formal institutions JEL classification: D 72, D 78, H 11, K 42 * Department of Economics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Universitaetsstr. 12, D45117 Essen, Germany, Phone: +49-201-183-3655, Fax: +49-201-183-3974, Email: bhayo@vwl.uni-essen.de. ** Department of Economics, University of Kassel, Nora-Platiel-Str. 4, 34107 Kassel, Phone: +49-561-804-3089, Fax: +49-561-804-2818, Email: voigt@wirtschaft.unikassel. de. The authors wish to thank Anne van Aaken, Karolin Billing, Lorenz Blume, Dieter Nautz, Jan Wagner, and Erich Weede for helpful comments.
Exploring Type-and-Identity-Based Proxy Re-Encryption Scheme to Securely Manage Personal Health Records

Commercial Web-based Personal-Health Record (PHR) systems can help patients to share their personal health records (PHRs) anytime from anywhere. PHRs are very sensitive data and an inappropriate disclosure may cause serious problems to an individual. Therefore commercial Web-based PHR systems have to ensure that the patient health data is secured using state-of-the-art mechanisms. In current commercial PHR systems, even though patients have the power to define the access control policy on who can access their data, patients have to trust entirely the access-control manager of the commercial PHR system to properly enforce these policies. Therefore patients hesitate to upload their health data to these systems as the data is processed unencrypted on untrusted platforms. Recent proposals on enforcing access control policies exploit the use of encryption techniques to enforce access control policies. In such systems, information is stored in an encrypted form by the third party and there is no need for an access control manager. This implies that data remains confidential even if the database maintained by the third party is compromised. In this paper we propose a new encryption technique called a type-and-identity-based proxy re-encryption scheme which is suitable to be used in the healthcare setting. The proposed scheme allows users (patients) to securely store their PHRs on commercial Web-based PHRs, and securely share their PHRs with other users (doctors).
Coherence vector of Oriented Gradients for traffic sign recognition using Neural Networks

This paper makes use of Coherence Vector of Oriented Gradients (CVOG) for traffic sign recognition. Experiments are conducted on German Traffic Sign benchmark dataset. The results on traffic sign recognition using CVOG features with neural network classifier is promising. The results based on the combination of other features gave better recognition rates.
Dynamic structures in Escherichia coli: Spontaneous formation of MinE rings and MinD polar zones

In Escherichia coli, division site selection is regulated in part by the Min-protein system. Oscillations of the Min proteins from pole to pole every ≈40 sec have been revealed by in vivo studies of GFP fusions. The dynamic oscillatory structures produced by the Min proteins, including a ring of MinE protein, compact polar zones of MinD, and zebra-striped oscillations in filamentous cells, remain unexplained. We show that the Min oscillations, including mutant phenotypes, can be accounted for by in vitro-observed interactions involving MinD and MinE, with a crucial role played by the rate of nucleotide exchange. Recent discoveries suggest that protein oscillations may play a general role in proper chromosome and plasmid partitioning.