Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bidirectional regulation of Ca2+ sparks by mitochondria-derived reactive oxygen species in cardiac myocytes.

AIMS The cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR) Ca(2+) release channel homotetramer harbours approximately 21 potentially redox-sensitive cysteine residues on each subunit and may act as a sensor for reactive oxygen species (ROS), linking ROS homeostasis to the regulation of Ca(2+) signalling. In cardiac myocytes, arrayed RyRs or Ca(2+) release units are packed in the close proximity of mitochondria, the primary source of intracellular ROS production. The present study investigated whether and how mitochondria-derived ROS regulate Ca(2+) spark activity in intact cardiac myocytes. METHODS AND RESULTS Bidirectional manipulation of mitochondrial ROS production in intact rat cardiac myocytes was achieved by photostimulation and pharmacological means. Simultaneous measurement of intracellular ROS and Ca(2+) signals was performed using confocal microscopy in conjunction with the indicators 5-(-6)-chloromethyl-2',7'-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (for ROS) and rhod-2 (for Ca(2+)). Photoactivated or antimycin A (AA, 5 microg/mL)-induced mitochondrial ROS production elicited a transient increase in Ca(2+) spark activity, followed by gradual spark suppression. Intriguingly, photoactivated mitochondrial ROS oscillations subsequent to the initial peaks mirrored phasic depressions of the spark activity, suggesting a switch of ROS modulation from spark-activating to spark-suppressing. Partial deletion of Ca(2+) stores in the sarcoplasmic reticulum contributed in part to the gradual, but not the phasic, spark depression. H(2)O(2) at 200 microM elicited a bidirectional effect on sparks and produced sustained spark activation at 50 microM. Lowering basal mitochondrial ROS production, scavenging baseline ROS, and applying the sulphydryl-reducing agent dithiothreitol diminished the incidence of spontaneous Ca(2+) sparks and abolished the Ca(2+) spark responses to mitochondrial ROS. CONCLUSION Mitochondrial ROS exert bidirectional regulation of Ca(2+) sparks in a dose- and time (history)-dependent manner, and basal ROS constitute a hitherto unappreciated determinant for the production of spontaneous Ca(2+) sparks. As such, ROS signalling may play an important role in Ca(2+) homeostasis as well as Ca(2+) dysregulation in oxidative stress-related diseases.
An Agent and an Environment: A View on \Having Bodies" | A Case Study on Behavior Learning for Vision-Based Mobile Robot |

This paper discusses how so-called “intelligence” can be emerged as a cognitive process, that is, how an agent can develop its internal representation according to the complexity of the interactions with its environment through its capabilities of sensing and acting. The complexity might be increased by the existence of other active agents, and the development can be possible depending on how the agent can find a new axis in the internal representation in trying to accomplish a given task in the environment including other agents. As an example of such a development, I show a case of a vision-based mobile robot of which task is to shoot a ball into a goal with/without a goal keeper along with preliminary experiments by real robots.
Development of Intestinal Intraepithelial Lymphocytes, NK Cells, and NK 1.1+ T Cells in CD45-Deficient Mice1

The transmembrane protein tyrosine phosphatase CD45 is differentially required for the development and function of B, T, and NK cells, with mice partially deficient for CD45 having a significant inhibition of T cell, but not NK or B cell, development. CD45-mediated signaling has also been implicated in the development of intrathymic, but not extrathymic, intestinal intraepithelial T lymphocytes (iIELs) in the CD45ex6−/− mouse. As NK1.1+ CD3+ (NK-T) cells can also develop through extrathymic pathways, we have investigated the role of CD45 in NK-T cell development. In mice with a complete absence of CD45 expression (CD45ex9−/−) the NK-T cell population was maintained in the iIEL compartment, but not in the spleen. Functionally, CD45-deficient NK-T cells were unable to secrete IL-4 in response to TCR-mediated signals, a phenotype similar to that of CD45-deficient iIELs, in which in vitro cytokine production was dramatically reduced. Using the CD45ex9−/− mouse strain, we have also demonstrated that only one distinct population of NK-T cells (CD8+) appears to develop normally in the absence of CD45. Interestingly, although an increase in cytotoxic NK cells is seen in the absence of CD45, these NK calls are functionally unable to secrete IFN-γ. In the absence of CD45, a significant population of extrathymically derived CD8αα+ iIELs is also maintained. These results demonstrate that in contrast to conventional T cells, CD45 is not required during the development of CD8+ NK-T cells, NK cells, or CD8αα+ iIELs, but is essential for TCR-mediated function and cytokine production.
Task Dependence of Visual and Category Representations in Prefrontal and Inferior Temporal Cortices

Visual categorization is an essential perceptual and cognitive process for assigning behavioral significance to incoming stimuli. Categorization depends on sensory processing of stimulus features as well as flexible cognitive processing for classifying stimuli according to the current behavioral context. Neurophysiological studies suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the inferior temporal cortex (ITC) are involved in visual shape categorization. However, their precise roles in the perceptual and cognitive aspects of the categorization process are unclear, as the two areas have not been directly compared during changing task contexts. To address this, we examined the impact of task relevance on categorization-related activity in PFC and ITC by recording from both areas as monkeys alternated between a shape categorization and passive viewing tasks. As monkeys viewed the same stimuli in both tasks, the impact of task relevance on encoding in each area could be compared. While both areas showed task-dependent modulations of neuronal activity, the patterns of results differed markedly. PFC, but not ITC, neurons showed a modest increase in firing rates when stimuli were task relevant. PFC also showed significantly stronger category selectivity during the task compared with passive viewing, while task-dependent modulations of category selectivity in ITC were weak and occurred with a long latency. Finally, both areas showed an enhancement of stimulus selectivity during the task compared with passive viewing. Together, this suggests that the ITC and PFC show differing degrees of task-dependent flexibility and are preferentially involved in the perceptual and cognitive aspects of the categorization process, respectively.
Characterization of an aerodynamic lens for transmitting particles greater than 1 micrometer in diameter into the Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometer

Abstract. We have designed and characterized a new inlet and aerodynamic lens for the Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) that transmits particles between 80 nm and more than 3 μm in vacuum aerodynamic diameter. The design of the inlet and lens was optimized with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of particle trajectories. Major changes include a redesigned critical orifice holder and valve assembly, addition of a relaxation chamber behind the critical orifice, and a higher lens operating pressure. The transmission efficiency of the new inlet and lens was characterized experimentally with size-selected particles. Experimental measurements are in good agreement with the calculated transmission efficiency.
Incrementally Improving SAT-based Bounded Model Checking

Bounded Model Checking (BMC) based on Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) methods has recently gained popularity as a viable alternative to BDD-based techniques for verifying large designs. This work proposes a number of conceptually simple, but extremely effective, optimizations for enhancing the performance of SATbased BMC flows. The keys ideas include (1) a novel idea to combine SAT-based inductive reasoning and BMC, (2) clever orchestration of variable ordering and learned information in an incremental framework for BMC, and (3) BMC-specific ordering strategies for the SAT solver. Our experiments, conducted on a wide range of industrial designs, show that the proposed optimizations consistently provide between 1-2 orders of magnitude speedup and can be extremely useful in enhancing the efficacy of typical SATBMC tools.
Fibroblast Growth Factors Are Required for Efficient Tumor Angiogenesis 1

Although the function of vascular endothelial growth factor in the induction of tumor angiogenesis is well understood, the role of a second group of angiogenic factors, the fibroblast growth factors (FGFs), remains elusive. We used a recombinant adenovirus expressing soluble FGF receptor (AdsFGFR) to interfere with FGF function in tumor angiogenesis. AdsFGFR repressed endothelial cell proliferation in vitro and inhibited tumor angiogenesis in an ex vivo bioassay, in which endothelial cells were cocultured with angiogenic tumor biopsies in a collagen gel. Moreover, AdsFGFR repressed tumor angiogenesis and hence tumor growth in vivo in allograft transplantation experiments. Whereas adenoviral expression of a soluble form of VEGF receptor 1 (AdsFlt) predominantly affected the initiation of tumor angiogenesis, soluble FGF receptor (sFGFR) appeared to impair the maintenance of tumor angiogenesis. The combination of sFGFR and soluble Flt exhibited a synergistic effect in the repression of tumor growth. Finally, i.v. injection of AdsFGFR resulted in a dramatic repression of tumor growth in a transgenic mouse model of pancreatic b cell carcinogenesis. Similar to control infections with AdsFlt, tumorassociated vessel density was decreased, indicating that the expression of sFGFR impaired tumor angiogenesis. These data indicate that FGFs play a critical role in tumor angiogenesis.
Automated High-Throughput Genotyping for Study of Global Epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Based on Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Units

ABSTRACT Large-scale genotyping of Mycobacterium tuberculosisis especially challenging, as the current typing methods are labor-intensive and the results are difficult to compare among laboratories. Here, automated typing based on variable-number tandem repeats (VNTRs) of genetic elements named mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units (MIRUs) in 12 mammalian minisatellite-like loci ofM. tuberculosis is presented. This system combines analysis of multiplex PCRs on a fluorescence-based DNA analyzer with computerized automation of the genotyping. Analysis of a blinded reference set of 90 strains from 38 countries (K. Kremer et al., J. Clin. Microbiol. 37:2607–2618, 1999) demonstrated that it is 100% reproducible, sensitive, and specific for M. tuberculosis complex isolates, a performance that has not been achieved by any other typing method tested in the same conditions. MIRU-VNTRs can be used for analysis of the global genetic diversity ofM. tuberculosis complex strains at different levels of evolutionary divergence. To fully exploit the portability of this typing system, a website was set up for the analysis of M. tuberculosis MIRU-VNTR genotypes via the Internet. This opens the way for global epidemiological surveillance of tuberculosis and should lead to novel insights into the evolutionary and population genetics of this major pathogen.
Institutions Matter, but in Surprising Ways: New Evidence on Regional Institutions in Africa

Quantitative research on institutions and development tries to show convincingly that institutions matter for development, but the cross-country literature is saddled with the problem of endogeneity and cannot tell us which institutions are important. Micro and meso level studies argue for the importance of particular institutions, but they have small, non-representative samples. This paper uses household wealth and regional (within country) institutional variables to analyze the effects of multiple institutions in a large representative sample that covers thirteen African countries. The analysis avoids the problem of endogeneity and thus provides new evidence on institutions. I find that several distinct institutions are highly significant. Reducing the fear of crime increases wealth and improving the legal system increases wealth when fear of crime or trust in the national government is high. Corruption in different levels of government has positive and negative effects, which suggests that policies aimed at reducing crime and improving courts will be more effective than those broadly targeted at corruption. The effects of institutions are nonlinear and interactions between different institutions are important. Variation in urban versus non-urban regions and between local and national level institutions matters as well, suggesting that country-level work on institutions ignores important aspects of institutional functioning. 1 Ph.D. Candidate, Cornell University department of Applied Economics and Management. email: amg84@cornell.edu. The U.S. Department of Education provided support for this work through a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. I would like to thank Chris Barrett for his continuing help and advice on this research, Steve Kyle and Per PinstrupAnderson for their comments, and my wife Christina for her support. This work benefited from the participants of group two at the 2008 European School on New Institutional Economics (ESNIE) and from comments from Andrew Shrank, Roberto Balbiati and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya also at ESNIE 2008. Many helpful comments also came from the participants in Chris Barretts Applied Economics and Management 765 seminar at Cornell University.
Relay transmission for air-to-undersea magnetic induction communication

ABSTRACT The magnetic induction (MI) communication is an emerging undersea communication method, but its practical application is restricted by its limited communication distance. In this paper, an air-to-undersea magnetic induction communication scheme based on relay transmission is proposed, which can not only increase the penetrating depth but also expand the radial distance, so as to obtain a large submerged coverage of magnetic induction communication. What's more, the undersea magnetic field distribution is used to define the submerged communication range which is used as a measurement for evaluating the performance of the proposed scheme. The numerical results demonstrate that the relay transmission can multiply the submerged depth and radial distance of MI communication by deploying multiple relay nodes in predetermined positions, thus significantly increase underwater coverage of the air-to-undersea MI communication.
Importance of arterial pulse pressure as a predictor of coronary heart disease risk in PROCAM.

AIMS To investigate pulse pressure (PP) as an independent predictor of coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. METHODS AND RESULTS On the basis of a 10-year follow-up of 5389 men aged 35-65 at recruitment into PROCAM, we used a proportional hazards model to calculate the effect of systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and PP on CHD risk after correcting for age, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, smoking, diabetes, and family history of premature CHD. Increases of 10 mmHg in DBP, SBP, and PP were associated with an increased CHD hazard ratio (HR) of approximately 10%. When the group was divided into the age groups <50, 50-59, and >59 years, this relationship was seen in the age group 50-59 years for DBP, SBP, and PP and in men aged > or =60 for PP only (25% increase in HR). Overall, CHD risk in men with PP > or =70 mmHg was more three times that of men with PP <50 mmHg. This increased risk was not apparent at age <50 years, was greatest at age >60 years, and was also present in men who were normotensive at recruitment (SBP < or =160 mmHg, DBP < or =95 mmHg). CONCLUSION In older European men, increased PP is an important independent determinant of coronary risk, even among those initially considered normotensive.
Quit While Ahead: Evaluating Truncated Rankings

Many types of search tasks are answered through the computation of a ranked list of suggested answers. We re-examine the usual assumption that answer lists should be as long as possible, and suggest that when the number of matching items is potentially small -- perhaps even zero -- it may be more helpful to "quit while ahead", that is, to truncate the answer ranking earlier rather than later. To capture this effect, metrics are required which are attuned to the length of the ranking, and can handle cases in which there are no relevant documents. In this work we explore a generalized approach for representing truncated result sets, and propose modifications to a number of popular evaluation metrics.
On symptomatic heterozygous alpha‐sarcoglycan gene mutation carriers

Mutations in the human alpha‐sarcoglycan gene on chromosome 17q21.2 have been shown to cause a severe childhood autosomal recessive muscular dystrophy, a less severe limb girdle muscular dystrophy, exercise intolerance, or asymptomatic hyperCKemia. Here, we describe the clinical findings in a German family harboring a 371 T > C (Ile124Thr) missense mutation in the alpha‐sarcoglycan gene. Whereas our index patient, an 11‐year‐old girl homozygous for this mutation, presented with a severe Duchenne‐like phenotype, 7 out of 12 heterozygous mutation carriers from three generations showed mild to moderate scapular winging. In analogy to symptomatic female dystrophinopathy carriers, our results suggest that heterozygous alpha‐sarcoglycan gene mutation carriers can be symptomatic with selective muscle weakness. This finding may be attributed to an additional negative variation in a yet unknown modifier gene essential to the function of the sarcoglycan complex in shoulder girdle muscles.
Evidence that U5 snRNP recognizes the 3′ splice site for catalytic step II in mammals

The first AG dinucleotide downstream from the branchpoint sequence (BPS) is chosen as the 3′ splice site during catalytic step II of the splicing reaction. The mechanism and factors involved in selection of this AG are not known. Early in mammalian spliceosome assembly, U2AF65 binds to the pyrimidine tract between the BPS and AG. Here we show that U2AF65 crosslinking is replaced by crosslinking of three proteins of 110, 116 and 220 kDa prior to catalytic step II, and we provide evidence that all three proteins are components of U5 snRNP. These proteins interact with pre‐mRNA in the region spanning from immediately downstream of U2 snRNP's binding site at the BPS to just beyond the 3′ splice site. We also demonstrate that there are strict constraints on both the sequence and the distance between the BPS and AG for catalytic step II. Together, these observations suggest that U5 snRNP is positioned on the 3′ splice site by an interaction (direct or indirect) with U2 snRNP bound at the BPS and by a direct interaction with the pyrimidine tract. The functional AG for catalytic step II may be specified, in turn, by its location with respect to the U5 snRNP binding site.
Enhanced Subquery Optimizations in Oracle

This paper describes enhanced subquery optimizations in Oracle relational database system. It discusses several techniques -- subquery coalescing, subquery removal using window functions, and view elimination for group-by queries. These techniques recognize and remove redundancies in query structures and convert queries into potentially more optimal forms. The paper also discusses novel parallel execution techniques, which have general applicability and are used to improve the scalability of queries that have undergone some of these transformations. It describes a new variant of antijoin for optimizing subqueries involved in the universal quantifier with columns that may have nulls. It then presents performance results of these optimizations, which show significant execution time improvements.
A Note on the Eigensystem of the Covariance Matrix of Dichotomous Guttman Items

We consider the covariance matrix for dichotomous Guttman items under a set of uniformity conditions, and obtain closed-form expressions for the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matrix. In particular, we describe the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matrix in terms of trigonometric functions of the number of items. Our results parallel those of Zwick (1987) for the correlation matrix under the same uniformity conditions. We provide an explanation for certain properties of principal components under Guttman scalability which have been first reported by Guttman (1950).
Simulated annealing for throughput optimization in communication networks with window flow control

A queuing model of a multichain network is presented where the network is window flow controlled on its virtual channel of the communication network. Its performance is optimized based on simulated annealing. The solution space is assumed to be the set of all admissible service rates of all stations with the nonlinear cost constraint. The optimum total throughput of the network is determined for different chain packets. It is shown that the most desirable method against congestion in any region is to speed up the transmission rate of that channel, but since this costs too much, alternative methods should be considered which reduce the window size within the tolerable limit of throughputs. <<ETX>>
Challenging Entropy-based Anomaly Detection and Diagnosis in Cellular Networks

In this paper we challenge the applicability of entropy-based approaches for detecting and diagnosis network traffic anomalies, and claim that full statistics (i.e., empirical probability distributions) should be applied to improve the change-detection capabilities. We support our claim by detecting and diagnosing large-scale traffic anomalies in a real cellular network, caused by specific OTT (Over The Top) services and smartphone devices. Our results clearly suggest that anomaly detection and diagnosis based on entropy analysis is prone to errors and misses typical characteristics of traffic anomalies, particularly in the studied scenario.
Wavelet based spatial — Spectral hyperspectral image classification technique using Support Vector Machines

Classifying the heterogeneous classes present in the hyper spectral image is one of the recent research issues in the field of remote sensing. The classification accuracy can be improved if and only if both the feature extraction and classifier selection are proper. As the classes present in the hyper spectral image are having different textures, textural classification is entertained. Wavelet based textural feature extraction is entailed. As hyper spectral images are having dozen numbers of bands, few bands are selected and wavelet transform is applied. For each of the sub band Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) are calculated. From GLCMs co-occurrence features are derived for individual pixels. Apart from Co-occurrence features, statistical features are also calculated. Addition of statistical and co-occurrence features of individual pixels at other individual bands form new features. By the process of adding these new features of approximation band and individual sub-bands at the pixel level, Combined Features are derived. These Combined Features are used for classification. Support Vector Machines with Binary Hierarchical Tree (BHT) classifier is developed to classify the data by One Against All(OAA) methodology. Airborne Visible Infra Red Imaging Sensor (AVIRIS) image of Cuprite — Nevada field is inducted for the experiment and the results are compared with the ground truth and with the maximum likelihood classifier output which available in HIAT toolbox.