Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interleukin 4 (IL-4) or IL-7 Prevents the Death of Resting T Cells: Stat6 Is Probably Not Required for the Effect of IL-4

Although much is known about the activation, proliferation, and function of CD4+ T cells, little is known about how they survive as resting T cells in animals. Resting T cells have a half-life in animals of more than a week; however, when they are removed from animals and placed in tissue culture their half-life falls to ∼24 h. In this paper, we show that the survival of resting T cells in vitro is promoted by two cytokines, interleukins 4 and 7 (IL-4, IL-7). They may do this in part by maintaining levels of survival-promoting proteins such as Bcl-2 in the cells, because the levels of Bcl-2 and Bcl-Xl in resting T cells fall rapidly after the cells are isolated from animals, and are maintained by culture in IL-4. Because the IL-4 receptor is known to signal through the JAK1 and JAK3/Stat6 pathway, we tested whether Stat6 was required for IL-4– dependent T cell survival. Surprisingly, we found that IL-4 rescued T cells from apoptosis in what appeared to be a Stat6-independent manner. These results demonstrate that the survival of resting T cells is an active process that can be affected by signals delivered by cytokines and also suggest that the IL-4 receptor on resting T cells may use a novel signaling pathway to facilitate T cell viability.
MODESA: An optimized multichannel slot assignment for raw data convergecast in wireless sensor networks

In aerospace applications, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) collect data from sensor nodes towards a sink in a multi-hop convergecast structure. The throughput requirement of these applications is difficult to meet with a single wireless channel. That is why, in this paper, we focus on a multichannel time slot assignment that minimizes the data gathering cycle. We first formalize the problem as a linear program and compute the optimal time needed for a raw data convergecast in various multichannel topologies. These optimal times apply to sinks equipped with one or several radio interfaces. We then propose our algorithm called MODESA and prove its optimality in various multichannel topologies. We evaluate its performances in terms of number of slots, maximum buffer size and number of active/sleep switches per node. Furthermore, we present variants of MODESA achieving a load balancing between the channels used.
Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

It is estimated that over 90% of all new information produced in the world is being stored on magnetic media, most of it on hard disk drives. Despite their importance, there is relatively little published work on the failure patterns of disk drives, and the key factors that affect their lifetime. Most available data are either based on extrapolation from accelerated aging experiments or from relatively modest sized field studies. Moreover, larger population studies rarely have the infrastructure in place to collect health signals from components in operation, which is critical information for detailed failure analysis. We present data collected from detailed observations of a large disk drive population in a production Internet services deployment. The population observed is many times larger than that of previous studies. In addition to presenting failure statistics, we analyze the correlation between failures and several parameters generally believed to impact longevity. Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.
PV Integrated Smart Charging of PHEVs Based on DC Link Voltage Sensing

The aim of this project is to Design and Performance of a Bidirectional Non Isolated DC-DC Converter for a battery Energy Storage System.A unique control strategy based on DC link voltage sensing, which describes the direction of power flow is presented and the various modes of operation have been described. The practical feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control strategy has been validated by experimental results. The proposed control method based on the change in DC link voltage level due to the change in simple and unique. The battery which contain low charge gets charged by other battery according to smart charging PHEVs.By using this method the charge level of any one battery is maintained through life time.
FATIGUE CRACK GROWTH SIMULATION OF SURFACE CRACKS UNDER ARBITRARY CRACK FACE LOADING

Fatigue crack growth was simulated for a surface crack subjected to arbitrary crack face loads. The simulation was based on the step-by-step integration of a proper fatigue crack growth law along the crack front, enabling complex crack shape changes to be directly predicted. The three-dimensional finite element method with the inverse square singularity near the crack tip considered was employed to calculate the stress intensity factors along the crack front, and the contact elements were also introduced into the cracked surface to avoid the possible overlapping between the crack faces. Several typical crack face loads were analysed, and the results including crack shape development, aspect ratio changes and stress intensity factor variations were given to validate the simulation technique. The results showed that the crack shape is dependent on the applied load and non-semielliptical surface crack profiles may be adopted by fatigue cracks. The simulation is particularly useful and necessary for the fatigue crack growth analysis in a residual stress field.
Moving Object Detection in Time-Lapse or Motion Trigger Image Sequences Using Low-Rank and Invariant Sparse Decomposition

Low-rank and sparse representation based methods have attracted wide attention in background subtraction and moving object detection, where moving objects in the scene are modeled as pixel-wise sparse outliers. Since in real scenarios moving objects are also structurally sparse, recently researchers have attempted to extract moving objects using structured sparse outliers. Although existing methods with structured sparsity-inducing norms produce promising results, they are still vulnerable to various illumination changes that frequently occur in real environments, specifically for time-lapse image sequences where assumptions about sparsity between images such as group sparsity are not valid. In this paper, we first introduce a prior map obtained by illumination invariant representation of images. Next, we propose a low-rank and invariant sparse decomposition using the prior map to detect moving objects under significant illumination changes. Experiments on challenging benchmark datasets demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed method under complex illumination changes.
Effects of adenosine on the functions of circulating polymorphonuclear leukocytes during hyperdynamic endotoxemia

Endotoxin-activated polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNL) adhere to the vascular endothelium and cause damage by the release of toxic superoxide anions (O2-). Because adenosine is a potent inhibitor of PMNL in vitro, the present study investigates the effects of this nucleoside on the functions of circulating PMNL in a standardized porcine model of hyperdynamic endotoxemia. Ten anesthesized pigs received an intravenous (i.v.) 330-min infusion of endotoxin (5 microg/kg of body weight per h). Another 10 pigs were also infused with endotoxin plus adenosine (150 microg/kg/min [i.v.]); this treatment was begun 30 min prior to the beginning of endotoxin treatment. Control groups (five animals per group) received either adenosine or physiological saline. Infusion of endotoxin caused severe neutropenia, shedding of L-selectin, upregulation of beta2-integrins, increased binding of C3-coated zymosan particles, and subsequent phagocytosis by PMNL. While phagocytosis-induced production of oxygen radicals appeared to decrease, extracellular release of superoxide anions was strongly enhanced. Infusion of adenosine during endotoxemia had no effect on neutropenia, expression of adhesion molecules, C3-induced adhesion, phagocytosis, or intracellular production of oxygen radicals, whereas extracellular release of O2- was strongly inhibited. Thus, i.v. infusion of adenosine during endotoxemia could be useful in protecting from O2(-)-mediated tissue injury without compromising the bactericidal mechanisms of PMNL.
A 1-volt, 2.5-mW, 2.4-GHz frequency synthesizer in 0.35-µm CMOS technology

In this paper, we present a low voltage, low power, 2.4-GHz frequency synthesizer designed in 0.35-µm CMOS technology. The frequency synthesizer is implemented with an Integer-N phase-locked loop (PLL). The PLL can achieve a frequency tuning step of 1-MHz and is capable of covering the whole 2.4-GHz ISM band. The voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) output frequency is firstly divided by a novel tri-modulus current-mode prescaler. The prescaler output is converted to rail-to-rail swing and drives the true single phase clocked register (TSPC) CMOS counters. The loop filter is designed to be 2nd order and implemented off-chip with passive devices. The post-layout simulation results show that the phase noise of the VCO is −107 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, and the PLL reference spur level of the PLL is below −50 dBc.
Safe Implementation of Computerized Provider Order Entry for Adult Oncology

Summary Background: Oncology has lagged in CPOE adoption due to the narrow therapeutic index of chemotherapy drugs, individualized dosing based on weight and height, regimen complexity, and workflows that include hard stops where safety checks are performed and documented. Objectives: We sought to establish CPOE for chemotherapy ordering and administration in an academic teaching institution using a commercially available CPOE system. Methods: A commercially available CPOE system was implemented throughout the hospital. A multidisciplinary team identified key safety gaps that required the development of a customized complex order display and a verification documentation workflow. Staff reported safety events were monitored for two years and compared to the year prior to go live. Results: A workflow was enabled to capture real-time provider verification status during the time from ordering to the administration of chemotherapy. A customized display system was embedded in the EMR to provide a single screen view of the relevant parameters of chemotherapy doses including current and previous patient measurements of height and weight, dose adjustments, provider verifications, prior chemotherapy regimens, and a synopsis of the standard regimen for reference. Our system went live with 127 chemotherapy plans and has been expanded to 189. Staff reported safety events decreased following implementation, particularly in the area of prescribing and transcribing by the second year of use. Conclusions: We observed reduced staff reported safety events following implementation of CPOE for inpatient chemotherapy using an electronic verification workflow and an embedded custom clinical decision support page. This implementation demonstrates that CPOE can be safely used for inpatient chemotherapy, even in an extremely complex environment.
Risk factors for first-ever ischemic stroke: a hospital-based case-control study in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

BACKGROUND Numerous population-based epidemiological studies have shown the prevalence and strength of vascular risk factors for stroke but little is known about risk factors of stroke in Taiwan. The aim of this study was to identify vascular risk factors in a group of first-ever ischemic stroke patients in Taiwan. METHODS The study consisted of 228 consecutively hospitalized cases of first-ever ischemic stroke and 228 healthy age- and sex-matched control subjects. Conditional logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate the risk factors. RESULTS Significant risk factors included hypertension (odds ratio [OR] 2.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.53-4.80), atrial fibrillation (OR 14.8, 95% CI = 2.32-94.73), ischemic heart disease (OR 4.4, 95% CI = 1.48-13.38), cigarette smoking (OR 2.3, 95% CI = 1.10-4.96), left ventricular hypertrophy (OR 2.7, 95% CI = 1.18-6.16), and other abnormal electrocardiographic findings (OR 2.1, 95% CI = 1.11-3.80). CONCLUSIONS Several vascular risk factors of first-ever ischemic stroke were identified. A population-based study involving more vascular risk factors is needed for generalization.
Quantifying Variability of Avian Colours: Are Signalling Traits More Variable?

Background Increased variability in sexually selected ornaments, a key assumption of evolutionary theory, is thought to be maintained through condition-dependence. Condition-dependent handicap models of sexual selection predict that (a) sexually selected traits show amplified variability compared to equivalent non-sexually selected traits, and since males are usually the sexually selected sex, that (b) males are more variable than females, and (c) sexually dimorphic traits more variable than monomorphic ones. So far these predictions have only been tested for metric traits. Surprisingly, they have not been examined for bright coloration, one of the most prominent sexual traits. This omission stems from computational difficulties: different types of colours are quantified on different scales precluding the use of coefficients of variation. Methodology/Principal Findings Based on physiological models of avian colour vision we develop an index to quantify the degree of discriminable colour variation as it can be perceived by conspecifics. A comparison of variability in ornamental and non-ornamental colours in six bird species confirmed (a) that those coloured patches that are sexually selected or act as indicators of quality show increased chromatic variability. However, we found no support for (b) that males generally show higher levels of variability than females, or (c) that sexual dichromatism per se is associated with increased variability. Conclusions/Significance We show that it is currently possible to realistically estimate variability of animal colours as perceived by them, something difficult to achieve with other traits. Increased variability of known sexually-selected/quality-indicating colours in the studied species, provides support to the predictions borne from sexual selection theory but the lack of increased overall variability in males or dimorphic colours in general indicates that sexual differences might not always be shaped by similar selective forces.
Longitudinal Relations Between Depressive Symptoms and Externalizing Behavior in Adolescence: Moderating Effects of Maltreatment Experience and Gender

Among the explanations for the high rates of co-occurrence between depressive symptoms and externalizing behavior is the possibility of direct causal associations between the two symptom groups. However, the mechanisms by which co-occurrence arises may not be the same across etiologically significant variables. A gender-balanced sample of 303 adolescents (ages 9–12 at the first assessment) with carefully assessed histories of maltreatment experience and 151 demographically matched nonmaltreated adolescents were assessed over the period of 1 year. Multiple-group cross-lagged panel analyses assessed the equivalence of longitudinal relations between depressive symptoms and externalizing behavior for gender/maltreatment status groups. Consistent with previous findings, the results suggest that girls, particularly maltreated girls, who exhibit early externalizing behavior are at high risk for the development of subsequent depressive symptoms.
Niobium Oxide Film Deposition Using a High-Density Plasma Source

Niobium oxide was deposited reactively using a new type of high-density plasma sputter source. The plasma beam used for sputtering is generated remotely and its path to the target defined by the orthogonal locations of two electromagnets: one at the orifice of the plasma tube and the other just beneath the target plane. To accommodate very large batches of substrates, the trade-off between load capacity and deposition rates was evaluated. The effect on deposition rate was determined by moving the plasma source away from the target in one direction and by moving the target assembly away in an orthogonal direction. A simple methodology was used to reestablish the reactive deposition rate and oxide quality even when large changes were made to the chamber geometry. Deposition parameters were established to produce nonabsorbing niobium oxide films of about 100- and 350-nm thicknesses. The quality of the niobium oxide films was studied spectroscopically, ellipsometrically, and stoichiometrically.
Architectural design of a software engine for adaptation control in the ADOPTA e-learning platform

In recent years, the field of adaptive web-based systems becomes one of the key research e-learning areas. Efforts are focused on tools for creating and managing content that on the one hand can be adapted to various goals, preferences, knowledge and learning style of a learner and, on the other hand, can be reused by various authors and exchanged between different systems. Our article discusses a proposal for software engine construction to adaptable content delivery and to adaptive process management. This adaptation control engine is a part of the ADOPTA - adaptive technology-enhanced platform for edutainment. Our approach is based on web services that enables, besides reusing and exchanging of learning content, also reusing of application functionality.
Models of translation equivalence among words

Parallel texts (bitexts) have properties that distinguish them from other kinds of parallel data. First, most words translate to only one other word. Second, bitext correspondence is typically only partialmany words in each text have no clear equivalent in the other text. This article presents methods for biasing statistical translation models to reflect these properties. Evaluation with respect to independent human judgments has confirmed that translation models biased in this fashion are significantly more accurate than a baseline knowledge-free model. This article also shows how a statistical translation model can take advantage of preexisting knowledge that might be available about particular language pairs. Even the simplest kinds of language-specific knowledge, such as the distinction between content words and function words, are shown to reliably boost translation model performance on some tasks. Statistical models that reflect knowledge about the model domain combine the best of both the rationalist and empiricist paradigms.
Physical and Mental Quality of Life in Chronic Pancreatitis: A Case-Control Study From the North American Pancreatitis Study 2 Cohort

Objectives The objective of this study was to define the quality of life (QOL) in patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP). Methods We studied 443 well-phenotyped CP subjects and 611 control subjects prospectively enrolled from 20 US centers between 2000 and 2006 in the North American Pancreatitis Study 2. Responses to the SF-12 questionnaire were used to calculate the mental (MCS) and physical component summary scores (PCS) with norm-based scoring (normal ≥50). Quality of life in CP subjects was compared with control subjects after controlling for demographic factors, drinking history, smoking, and medical conditions. Quality of life in CP was also compared with known scores for several chronic conditions. Results Both PCS (38 [SD, 11.5] vs 52 [SD, 9.4]) and MCS (44 [SD, 11.5] vs 51 [SD, 9.2]) were significantly lower in CP compared with control subjects (P < 0.001). On multivariable analyses, compared with control subjects, a profound decrease in physical QOL (PCS 12.02 points lower) and a clinically significant decrease in mental QOL (MCS 4.24 points lower) was seen due to CP. Quality of life in CP was similar to (heart, kidney, liver, lung disease) or worse than (nonskin cancers, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis) other chronic conditions. Conclusions The impact of CP on QOL appears substantial. The QOL in CP subjects appears to be worse or similar to the QOL of many other chronic conditions.
On Automated Policy Generation for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper we describe an approach to the problem of automated policy generation for mobile ad hoc networks. The automated policy generation problem is difficult in its own right. It becomes even more challenging when the context environment to consider is a mobile ad hoc network. We have designed an optimization-based, utility-driven approach aimed at generating optimal policies with respect to the given network objectives. The main novelty of this approach is in the combination of optimization heuristics and network simulation to solve the problem. We describe this approach, present the software architecture of our implementation, and illustrate the approach with a case study on automated generation of DiffServ-based QoS policies for a 50-node mobile ad hoc network.
Automatic Cell Detection in Fluorescent Embryonic Stem Cell Images

We studied two seperate algorithms to automatically detect and count embryonic stell cells from fluoresecent miscrocopy images. The first algorithm is based on a graph mining approach that makes strong assumptions about the topology of the cells. The second algorithm is a machine learning approach that exploits supervised learning technique and uses only 10 positive and 10 negative cell examples for training. For the given dataset the graph mining approach performs (85% accurate) slightly better then the machine learning approach (72% accurate). Nevertheless, we propose a platform that combines visual analytics with machine learning approach to tackle cell counting problem in general for all cell types.
P1, P2 and P3 Structuring of CIGSE Solar Cells With A Single Laser Wavelength

Manufacturing of CIGSe thin film solar modules involves typically one laser structuring step (P1) and two mechanical structuring steps (P2 and P3) for serial interconnection. In our approach, complete laser structuring is successfully demonstrated by application of short nanosecond laser pulses (<10 ns) with a single, visible wavelength of 532 nm. The P1 and the P3 trenches are scribed by induced and direct ablation, respectively. For the P2 scribe, the thermal input of the ns laser pulses is used to transform the CIGSe absorber layer locally into a highly conductive compound to provide proper electrical interconnection. These findings promise further simplification and flexibility to thin film solar cell production.
Strategyproof Classification with Shared Inputs

Strategy proof classification deals with a setting where a decision-maker must classify a set of input points with binary labels, while minimizing the expected error. The labels of the input points are reported by self-interested agents, who might lie in order to obtain a classifier that more closely matches their own labels, thus creating a bias in the data; this motivates the design of truthful mechanisms that discourage false reports. Previous work [Meir et al., 2008] investigated both decision-theoretic and learning-theoretic variations of the setting, but only considered classifiers that belong to a degenerate class. In this paper we assume that the agents are interested in a shared set of input points. We show that this plausible assumption leads to powerful results. In particular, we demonstrate that variations of a truthful random dictator mechanism can guarantee approximately optimal outcomes with respect to any class of classifiers.