Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CTH05-2: Rateless Codes for the Gaussian Multiple Access Channel

We consider communication over the Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC) with unknown set of active users. The proposed multiple access strategy is distributed and achieves a maximum sum rate point on the boundary of the capacity region for this channel for any set of active users S simultaneously, as if S were known at the transmitters. The proposed coding scheme splits each user into a set of virtual users, each of which can be decoded using a single-user decoder at the receiver instead of having to decode all users jointly. We also present a generalization of this scheme to the case where the channel gains differ between users and each user only knows its own channel gain.
Molecular Genetic Analysis of an Endotoxin Nonresponder Mutant Cell Line : A Point Mutation in a Conserved Region of MD2 Abolishes Endotoxin-induced Signaling

Somatic cell mutagenesis is a powerful tool for characterizing receptor systems. We reported previously two complementation groups of mutant cell lines derived from CD14-transfected Chinese hamster ovary–K1 fibroblasts defective in responses to bacterial endotoxin. Both classes of mutants expressed a normal gene product for Toll-like receptor (TLR)4, and fully responded to stimulation by tumor necrosis factor (TNF)or interleukin (IL)-1 . We identified the lesion in one of the complementation groups in the gene for MD-2, a putative TLR4 coreceptor. The nonresponder phenotype of this mutant was reversed by transfection with MD-2. Cloning of MD-2 from the nonresponder cell line revealed a point mutation in a highly conserved region resulting in a C95Y amino acid exchange. Both forms of MD-2 colocalized with TLR4 on the cell surface after transfection, but only the wild-type cDNA reverted the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) nonresponder phenotype. Furthermore, soluble MD-2, but not soluble MD-2 C95Y , functioned to enable LPS responses in cells that expressed TLR4. Thus, MD-2 is a required component of the LPS signaling complex and can function as a soluble receptor for cells that do not otherwise express it. We hypothesize that MD-2 conformationally affects the extracellular domain of TLR4, perhaps resulting in a change in affinity for LPS or functioning as a portion of the true ligand for TLR4.
Impact of Project Attributes on Project Management Strategies - A Context of G2C e-Government in India

The extant literature on management of e-Government projects discusses success factors in detail. However, it is observed that the contingency aspects of management of these projects have not been given sufficient attention. The classification of e-Government projects based on specific project attributes is an area where the current understanding is rather inadequate. The relationship between certain eGovernment project attributes and different management strategies has also not been explored adequately. In this paper, we examine the impact of two important project attributes on certain important aspects of project management. This paper employs cases of e-Government projects to demonstrate the framework so developed. A classification of such projects based on the mandatory/optional nature of concerned service and the mandatory/optional nature of intermediaries - two important project attributes - has been proposed. We have also demonstrated how this classification can act as a handle for deciding on certain important aspects of project management.
A Tool to Quickly Detect Short Hamstring Syndrome in Boys who Play Soccer

Abstract There is a lack of studies of alternative techniques differing from the straight leg raise test (SLR) and the passive knee extension test (PKE) to diagnose short hamstring syndrome (SHS). We built a predictive model with simple parameters to diagnose SHS and implemented it in a mobile app. This cross-sectional study analyzed 85 Spanish boys aged 10–16 years who played soccer in 2012. Outcomes: SHS (SLR<70° and/or PKE>15°), and grade II SHS (SLR<60° and/or PKE≥35°). Secondary variables: toe-touch test (TT), body mass index (BMI), age, laterality and number of years registered as part of a federation. A risk table implemented in a mobile app was built to estimate the probability of SHS and grade II SHS according to secondary variables. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was calculated and we constructed risk groups. Scoring factors for SHS: low TT, younger age and lower BMI. AUC: 0.89 (95% CI: 0.82–0.96, p<0.001). Scoring factors for grade II SHS: younger age, higher BMI, left footed and lower TT. AUC: 0.78 (95% CI: 0.68–0.88, p<0.001). We provide a tool with minimum material but with a high discriminatory power to quickly calculate whether a boy who plays soccer has SHS. The models need validation studies.
Design of a Hummingbird Crypto Core implementing BIST technique

In recent years, lightweight cryptography which focuses on designing new cryptographic primitives with small hardware footprint and with low average and peak power consumption, has received a lot of attention. Hummingbird, an ultra-lightweight cryptographic algorithm has been developed both with lightweight software and lightweight hardware implementations keeping resource-constrained devices in mind. In this paper, we describe FPGA implementation with both software simulation as well as HW implementation of Hummingbird algorithm on Altera Platform. Moreover, testability of a complex chip is of prime concern now a days. Built-In-Self-Test (BIST) is a widely accepted approach for this purpose. In this paper design of a Hummingbird Crypto Core implementing BIST technique is proposed and both software and hardware implementation is performed. Here LFSR is used as pseudorandom test pattern generator and Signature Analysis is used as a Data Compression Technique. The proposed Crypto Core is simulated in Quartus II simulation software for the Altera Cyclone II family device as well as hardware implementation done in Altera DE2 board and performance is analyzed and compared with the other research works on Hummingbird implementation.
piggyBac-based insertional mutagenesis in the presence of stably integrated P elements in Drosophila

P element-mediated mutagenesis has been used to disrupt an estimated 25% of genes essential for Drosophila adult viability. Mutation of all genes in the fly genome, however, poses a problem, because P elements show significant hotspots of integration. In addition, advanced screening scenarios often require the use of P element-based tools like the generation of germ-line mosaics using FLP recombinase-mediated recombination or gene misexpression using the UAS/Gal4 system. These techniques are P element-based and can therefore not be combined with the use of P elements as mutagenic agents. To circumvent these limitations, we have developed an insertional mutagenesis system using non-P element transposons. An enhanced yellow fluorescent protein-marked piggyBac-based mutator element was mobilized by a piggyBac specific transposase source expressed from a Hermes-based jump-starter transposon marked with enhanced cyan fluorescent protein. In a pilot screen, we have generated 798 piggyBac insertions on FRT bearing third chromosomes of which 9% have sustained a putatively piggyBac-related lethal hit. The FRTs present on the target chromosome remained stably integrated during the screen and could subsequently be used to generate germ-line clones associated with maternal and zygotic phenotypes. PCR-based analysis of insertion loci shows that 57% of the insertions are in genes for which no P element insertions have been reported. Our data demonstrate the potential of this technique to facilitate the quest for saturation mutagenesis of the Drosophila genome. The system is Drosophila nonspecific and potentially applicable in a broad spectrum of nonmodel organisms.
Regularization Paths for Sparse Nonnegative Least Squares Problems with Applications to Life Cycle Assessment Tree Discovery

The nonnegative least squares problems are useful in applications where the physical nature of problem domain permits only additive linear combinations. We discuss the l1-regularized nonnegative least squares (L1-NLS) problem, where l1-regularization is used to induce sparsity. Although l1-regularization has been successfully used in least squares regression, when combined with nonnegativity constraints, developments of algorithms and their understandings have been limited. We propose an algorithm that generates the entire regularization paths of the L1-NLS problem. We prove the correctness of the proposed algorithm and illustrate a novel application in environmental sustainability. The application relates to life cycle assessment (LCA), a technique used to estimate environmental impact during the entire lifetime of a product. We address an inverse problem in LCA. Given environmental impact factors of a target product and of a large library of constituents, the goal is to reverse engineer an inventory tree for the product. Using real-world data sets, we demonstrate how our L1-NLS approach controls the size of discovered trees, and how the full regularization paths effectively illustrate the spectrum of discovered trees with varying sparsity and compositions.
Does drought control emergence and survival of grass seedlings in semi-arid rangelands? An example with a Patagonian species

Current climate change models for arid ecosystems challenge our ability to understand the effects of droughts on plant population dynamics. In a sandy soil plant community from the Patagonian steppe, we studied soil water dynamics and its effects on grass regeneration. Our hypothesis was that a decrease in precipitation would not change soil water dynamics of the top soil layer where most of the seeds and seedling roots are located. First, we simulated soil water dynamics with a balance model (DINAQUA) for different years and soil layers, in two different periods related to the emergence and survival of plants. Then, we performed a manipulative field experiment in which we generated a drought gradient by intercepting 0%, 25%, 50%, and 80% of the precipitation for two different microsites (vegetated and bare soil). We quantified drought effects on emergence, survival, and biomass of seedlings using a native grass (Bromus pictus Hook). Soil water content in the top soil layer at the end of growing season was a 61% less than mid and bottom soil layers, independently of the climatic condition of the year. The simulations suggested that drought reduces the maximum depth of water infiltration, but available water for plants in the top layer where seedlings have their roots, was not modified, in agreement with our field experiment measurements. Consistently, the emergence (51%), survival (65%), and biomass (15 g/ind) of seedlings were not affected by drought levels. However, there is a positive microsite effect on biomass (36%), indicating a facilitative role of adult plants on grass seedlings. We interpreted these results as indicative that seed germination and seedling recruitment will not be heavily impacted by increasing water deficit in the Patagonian steppe. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Fluid manipulation among individuals with lower urinary tract symptoms: a mixed methods study.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVE To determine, qualitatively and quantitatively, how individuals use fluid manipulation to self-manage the urinary symptoms of daytime frequency, urgency and urine leakage and the underlying rationale for this behaviour. BACKGROUND Lower urinary tract symptoms are prevalent and burdensome, and little is known about how individuals with lower urinary tract symptoms manipulate their fluid intake. DESIGN A mixed methods design included statistical analysis of data from a population-based survey of urologic symptoms and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews. METHOD Quantitative data came from 5503 participants of the baseline Boston Area Community Health Survey, a population-based, random sample epidemiologic survey of urologic symptoms. Qualitative data came from in-depth interviews with a random subsample from Boston Area Community Health of 152 black, white and Hispanic men and women with LUTS. RESULTS Qualitative data showed that some respondents restricted fluid intake while others increased it, in both cases with the expectation of improved symptoms. Quantitative data showed that fluid intake was greater in men and women reporting frequency (p < 0·001). Women with frequency drank significantly more water (p < 0·001), while women with urgency drank significantly less water (p = 0·047). CONCLUSIONS This study found divergent expectations of the role of fluids in alleviating symptoms, leading some individuals to restrict and others to increase fluid intake. Individuals with lower urinary tract symptoms may need guidance in fluid management. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Nurses should be aware that patients may self-manage lower urinary tract symptoms by restricting fluid intake, putting them at risk for dehydration, constipation and urinary tract infection, but also that they may be increasing their fluid intake, which could worsen symptoms. This study pinpoints a specific area of need among patients with lower urinary tract symptoms and provides a practical opportunity for nurses to assist their patients with behavioural and fluid management by emphasising the clinical guidelines.
Pattern of Protein Expression in Developing Wheat Grains Identified through Proteomic Analysis

Grain development is one of the biological processes, which contributes to the final grain yield. To understand the molecular changes taking place during the early grain development, we profiled proteomes of two common wheat cultivars P271 and Chinese Spring (CS) with large and small grains, respectively at three grain developmental stages (4, 8, and 12 days post anthesis). An iTRAQ (isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation) based proteomics approach was used for this purpose. More than 3,600 proteins were reported to accumulate during early grain development in both wheat cultivars. Of these 3,600 proteins, 130 expressed differentially between two wheat cultivars, and 306 exhibited developmental stage-specific accumulation in either or both genotypes. Detailed bioinformatic analyses of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) from the large- and small-grain wheat cultivars underscored the developmental differences observed between them and shed light on the molecular and cellular processes contributing to these differences. In silico localization of either or both sets of DEPs to wheat chromosomes exhibited a biased genomic distribution with chromosome 4D contributing largely to it. These results corresponded well with the earlier studies, performed in common wheat, where chromosome 4D was reported to harbor QTLs for yield contributing traits specifically grain length. Collectively, our results provide insight into the molecular processes taking place during early grain development, a knowledge, which may prove useful in improving wheat grain yield in the future.
Coming into focus: the nonovarian origins of ovarian cancer.

BACKGROUND The traditional view of epithelial ovarian cancer asserts that all tumor subtypes share a common origin in the ovarian surface epithelium (OSE) DESIGN: A literature review was carried out to summarize the emerging understanding of extraovarian sources of epithelial ovarian carcinomas. RESULTS Historically, there were no diagnostic criteria for documenting the origin of ovarian epithelial carcinomas. Moreover, there are no normal epithelial tissues in the ovary with morphologic similarities to these tumors. In fact, no precursor lesions have ever been reproducibly identified in the ovary. However, there is a strong correlation between extrauterine Müllerian tissue and the development of ovarian carcinomas, tumors of low malignant potential, and cystadenomas. The most recent support for this hypothesis comes from the careful analysis of risk-reducing bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy specimens from BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers. These studies showed that a significant majority of high-grade serous ovarian carcinomas, the most common subtype, arise from the fallopian tube fimbriae rather than the OSE. CONCLUSIONS Mounting evidence indicates that the vast majority of epithelial ovarian carcinomas are not ovarian in origin. Extrauterine Müllerian epithelium from various sites in the reproductive tract likely accounts for the diverse morphology and behavior of these tumors.
Surprise in the Learning of Color

In two experiments, we investigate whether, in English, children’s difficulty learning color adjectives might stem from their overwhelming tendency to be used in prenominal position (e.g., “blue cup”), where word order causes the adjective to arrive ahead of its meaning, rather than post-nominal presentation (e.g., “the cup is blue”), where the meaning cues the word. We consider factors of sequencing from the point of view of models of animal learning. Results indicate that children as young as 2 years begin to reliably master color words when hearing them in training presented post-nominally, but not pre-nominally, and that adults challenged with learning novel color categories are affected by the same ordering effects. We suggest that children’s difficulty with color word learning is in part due to the challenge of having to make predictions from words to the properties they refer to, rather than being able to make predictions from the world to the words.
MDL-based Acquisition of Substitutability Relationships between Discourse Connectives

Knowledge of which lexical items convey the same meaning in a given context is important for many Natural Language Processing tasks. This paper concerns the substitutability of discourse connectives in particular. This paper proposes a datadriven method based on a Minimum Description Length (MDL) criterion for automatically learning substitutability of connectives. The method is shown to outperform two baseline classifiers.
Primary cutaneous melanoma. Prognostic classification of anatomic location

Background. Anatomic location has been identified by several investigators as a significant prognostic factor for patients with primary cutaneous melanoma (CM). However, the best determination of higher and lower risk sites is still controversial, and the biologic significance of tumor site in the course of primary CM is unknown. The aim of the present study was to identify higher and lower risk sites based on multivariate analysis.
Speech Recognition, Articulatory Feature Detection, and Speech Synthesis in Multiple Languages

Abstract : This document provides a summary of work completed by General Dynamics under the work unit 71840871, Speech Interfaces for Multinational Collaboration, for the period August 2004 to February 2009 under contract FA8650-04-C-6443. The speech technologies developed during this period include speech recognizers, Articulatory Feature (AF) detectors, and speech synthesizers. Speech recognition systems were developed for 15 different languages, and three methods were investigated for improving the performance of the systems: vocal tract length normalization, speaker adaptive training, and recognizer output voting error reduction. English AF detectors were developed using Gaussian mixture models, two-class Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs), fusion MLPs, and multi-class MLPs. The outputs of the AF detectors were used to form the feature set for a speech recognizer. Speech synthesis systems were created for 13 different languages, and the following system modifications were investigated: expanding the label set to include additional contextual factors, changing the minimum description length control factor, and applying speaker clustering and adaption to create new voices. In addition, two graphical user interfaces were developed for training new voices and synthesizing speech in real-time.
A Nuclear Action of the Eukaryotic Cochaperone Rap46 in Downregulation of Glucocorticoid Receptor Activity

RAP46 is a eukaryotic cochaperone that associates with several proteins, including the heat shock protein hsp70/hsc70 and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). Here we show a downregulation of GR-mediated transactivation by RAP46 via a mechanism independent of a cytoplasmic action of this cochaperone. We demonstrate a specific cytoplasmic–nuclear recruitment of RAP46 by the liganded GR that results in inhibition of the transactivation function of the receptor. A repeated sequence motif [EEX4]8 at the NH2 terminus of RAP46 or BAG-1L, a larger isoform of RAP46, is responsible for this downregulation of GR activity. BAG-1, a shorter isoform with only a duplication of the [EEX4] sequence, does not inhibit GR activity. The [EEX4]8 motif, when linked to an otherwise unrelated protein, abrogated the inhibitory action of endogenous RAP46 on GR-mediated transactivation. The nuclear effects of RAP46 and BAG-1L are specific since GR-mediated inhibition of AP-1 activity was not affected. These studies identify the [EEX4]8 sequence as a signature motif for inhibition of GR-mediated transactivation and demonstrate a specific nuclear action of a eukaryotic cochaperone in the regulation of GR activity.
1 A Proposal of Writing-Life Log and Its Implementation Using a Retrieval-Based Camera-Pen

This paper proposes a notion called writing-life log and a camera-pen for implementing the notion. The writing-life log is to log all of user’s writing activities for capturing the generation of information by the user. We focus here on logging user’s handwriting activities. For this purpose, we employ a camera-pen developed by ourselves. As compared to the Anoto pen, it has an advantage that it works on ordinary paper documents and is capable of locating recovered digital ink onto the corresponding electronic document. In order to make the pen more realistic, we introduce the recognition of pen-up and down states as well as global repositioning of recovered handwriting by matching it to physical ink.
Functional expression cloning reveals a central role for the receptor for activated protein kinase C 1 (RACK1) in T cell apoptosis

Mammalian cDNA expression cloning was used to identify novel genes that regulate apoptosis. Using a functional screen, we identified a partial cDNA for the receptor for activated protein kinase C 1 (RACK1) through selection for resistance to phytohemagglutinin and γ‐irradiation. Expression of this partial cDNA in T cell lines using a mammalian expression vector produced an increase in RACK1 expression and resulted in resistance to dexamethasone‐ and ultraviolet‐induced apoptosis. Down‐regulation of RACK1 using RNA interference abolished the resistance of the transfected cells to apoptosis. Overexpression of full‐length RACK1 also resulted in the suppression of apoptosis mediated by several apoptotic stimuli, and this effect was quantitatively consistent with the effects of the original cDNA isolated on endogenous RACK1 levels. Together, these findings suggest that RACK1 plays an important role in the intracellular signaling pathways that lead to apoptosis in T cells.
A Novel Privacy Enhancing Algorithm for Biometric System

Biometrics provide the possibility of unique and convenient authentication. As its application areas grow rapidly, the problems, such as identity fraud and cross matching, threaten the security of biometric systems. Moreover, privacy concerns are associated with biometrics. In this paper we focus on privacy enhancing techniques for biometric systems, which can protect biometric information and enable using biometrics without exposure of privacy. A novel privacy enhancing algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is integrated in a 3D face recognition algorithm and tested using the FRGC database. By using the proposed algorithm, high security can be achieved as well as good verification performance.