Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The ARC1 E3 Ligase Promotes a Strong and Stable Self-Incompatibility Response in Arabidopsis Species: Response to the Nasrallah and Nasrallah Commentary[OPEN]

Following the identification of the male (S-locus Cysteine Rich/S-locus Protein 11) and female (S Receptor kinase [SRK]) factors controlling self-incompatibility in the Brassicaceae, research in this field has focused on understanding the nature of the cellular responses activated by these regulators. We previously identified the ARM Repeat Containing1 (ARC1) E3 ligase as a component of the SRK signaling pathway and demonstrated ARC1’s requirement in the stigma for self-incompatible pollen rejection in Brassica napus, Arabidopsis lyrata, and Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we discuss our findings on the role of ARC1 in reconstructing a strong and stable A. thaliana self-incompatibility phenotype, in the context of the putative issues outlined in a commentary by Nasrallah and Nasrallah. Additionally, with their proposed standardized strategy for studying self-incompatibility in A. thaliana, we offer our perspective on what constitutes a strong and stable self-incompatibility phenotype in A. thaliana and how this should be investigated and reported to the greater community.
New achievable rates for the Gaussian broadcast channel with feedback

A coding scheme for the two-receivers Gaussian broadcast channel (BC) with feedback is proposed. For some asymmetric settings it achieves new rate pairs. Moreover, it achieves prelog 2 when the noises at the two receivers are fully positively correlated and of unequal variances, thus allowing us to complete the characterization of the prelog of the two-receivers Gaussian BC with feedback. The new achievable rates also allow us to determine the asymptotic power offset when the noises at the two receivers are uncorrelated.
A nontoxic derivative of Bothrops jararaca venom suitable to generate antibodies against the native venom.

Bothrops jararaca venom was toxoided by stepwise iodination with cold iodine, and doses up to 30 LD50 were non-lethal by i.p. route (BICALHO et al., 1990). Groups of mice injected chronically with the native, or the iodinated venom, have been subjected to histological examination. In the native group, in the spleen, around the white pulp, an acellular, amorphous eosinophilic substance, metachromatic to Methyl Violet, PAS positive, and dichroic to Congo Red under polarized light, was present. Strong congestion in the liver, kidneys and lungs was found. The salivary glands were replenished with an amorphous substance in the serosal acini. The groups injected with the iodinated venom only show discrete alterations, more akin to the control group. The anavenin was immunogenic. Antibody generation in mice and rabbits was detected by ELISA. In mice, active protection against challenge with native venom was presented. The iodinated venom generated a rabbit antiserum with strong lines in gel immunoprecipitation against the lethal venom. A minimum neutralization titer of 2.3 mg ml-1 against the native venom was attained in the first cycle (28 days) of immunization. After 3 cycles (100 days), the protection rose to 5.1 mg ml-1.
Robust control design of an electro-hydraulic actuator

The paper proposes a hierarchical control design of an electro-hydraulic actuator. The high-level hydromotor is modeled with a linear form with parametric uncertainty, while the low-level spool valve is modeled with a polynomial system. The subsystems require different control strategies. At the high level a robust H∞/μ control is used in order to meet the performance specifcations. At the low level a Control Lyapunov Function-based algorithm is proposed, which calculates discrete control input values for the valve. The interaction between the two control systems is guaranteed by the spool displacement, which is the control input at the high level and must be tracked at the low level. The operation of the actuator control system is illustrated through a simulation example.
Supporting Compositional Styles for Software Evolution 1

Software is not just difficult to develop, but it is even more difficult to maintain in the face of changing requirements. The complexity of software evolution can, however, be significantly reduced if we manage to separate the stable artifacts (the “components”) from their configuration (the “scripts”). We have proposed a simple, unifying framework of forms, agents, and channels for modelling components and scripts, and we have developed an experimental composition language, called Piccola, based on this framework, that supports the specification of applications as flexible compositions of stable components. In this paper we show how Piccola can be used to reduce the complexity of software evolution through the specification and use of an appropriate compositional style, and we illustrate the approach through a non-trivial example of mixin layer composition. 1. In Proceedings International Symposium on Principles of Software Evolution (ISPSE 2000)}, Nov 1-2, 2000, Kanazawa, Japan, pp. 11-19.
A Novel Antigen Sensitive to Calcium Chelation That is Associated with the Tip Links and Kinocilial Links of Sensory Hair Bundles

Tip links are extracellular, cell-surface-associated filaments of unknown molecular composition that are thought to gate the mechanotransducer channel of the sensory hair cell. They disappear from the hair bundle in response to calcium chelation and lanthanum treatment and resist degradation by the protease subtilisin. A monoclonal antibody derived from a hybridoma screen identified a novel antigen associated with tip links, the tip-link antigen. The tip-link antigen is also associated with kinocilial links, subtilisin-resistant filaments that are sensitive to calcium chelation and connect the kinocilium to the tallest stereocilia of the hair bundle. Furthermore, the tip-link antigen is expressed in the retina, where it is associated with the ciliary calyx, a ring of microvilli that surrounds the outer segment of the photoreceptor. The tip-link antigen rapidly disappears from the surface of the hair bundle in response to calcium chelation. It is also subtilisin resistant, relative to the ankle-link antigen, an antigen associated with another type of hair bundle link. The tip-link antigen is lanthanum sensitive and, like tip links, reappears on the surface of the hair bundle after calcium chelation. The monoclonal antibody to the tip-link antigen immunoprecipitates two concanavalin A-reactive polypeptides with apparent molecular masses of 200 and 250 kDa from detergent extracts of the retina. These results provide the first identification of a cell surface antigen associated with tip links, indicate that tip links share properties in common with kinocilial links, and reveal a second epitope that, along with the ankle-link antigen, is common to both sensory hair bundles and the ciliary calyx of photoreceptors.
The politics of sustainable development: Global norms for national implementation

The idea of sustainable development has survived nearly a decade of rhetorical excess and academic criticism. From the Brundtland report to Agenda 21, it has remained the central goal and guiding norm of environment‐and‐development politics. Though an essentially contested concept, it retains a widespread moral appeal. This is possibly due to the concept's dual ethical foundation. By giving expression to both ‘realist’ (natural‐law) and ‘consensualist’ (democratic) norms, it can claim support with respect to a broad spectrum of moral imperatives. The potential of the idea as a mobilising force for domestic political change lies in a combination of scientifically‐based moral urgency and a near‐unanimous global acclamation. In addition, the politics of the UNCED process provide new and effective arenas for an emerging global civil society at a time of declining influence for national interest groups. The potential for change is illustrated by a descriptive analysis of the follow‐up to the Rio Summit in the .
Cutting Edge: NKp80 Uses an Atypical Hemi-ITAM To Trigger NK Cytotoxicity

The human NK cell receptor NKp80 stimulates cytotoxicity upon engagement of its genetically linked ligand AICL. However, the mechanisms underlying NKp80-mediated signaling are unknown. In this study, we dissected NKp80 signaling using the NK cell line NK92MI. We demonstrated that NKp80, but not NKp80 mutated at tyrosine 7 (NKp80/Y7F), is tyrosine phosphorylated. Accordingly, NKp80/Y7F, but not NKp80/Y30F or NKp80/Y37F, failed to induce cytotoxicity. NKp80 phosphopeptides comprising the hemi-ITAM–like sequence surrounding tyrosine 7 bound Lck- and Syk-family kinases; accordingly, cross-linking of NKp80, but not NKp80/Y7F, induced Syk phosphorylation. Moreover, inhibition of Syk kinase, but not ZAP-70 kinase, impaired cytotoxic responses through NKp80. Atypical residues in the hemi-ITAM–like motif of NKp80 cause an altered stoichiometry of phosphorylation but did not substantially affect NK cytotoxicity. Altogether, these results show that NKp80 uses an atypical hemi-ITAM and Syk kinase to trigger cellular cytotoxicity.
Practical Tips for Implementing Peer Editing Tasks in the Foreign Language Classroom.

: Writing, regardless where it is found in today's curriculum, has become more interactive in nature; peer editing reflects this shift. Still, a number of foreign language instructors are at a loss as to where to begin such activities. This article presents ideas on how to design and carry out a peer editing task and demonstrates several methods that can fit most writing task situations. These methods can be used at all levels of second language writing development, to help students gain vital editing skills that not only will improve a peer's paper, but in time also increase their own confidence in writing, improve the content and conventions of their written work, and enhance their thinking skills.
A Background Correction Method Based on Lazy Snapping

Interactive segmentation is greatly practical importance in image processing and very useful for selecting objects of interest in images. This is still a topic of much study. In this paper we propose a simple background correction method, it can eliminate some regions which is confused as objects of interest. Our method is suitable for the case that background is rich and foreground has small color differences. This method is based on Lazy Snapping and combining Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) with K-means. We show that the proposed method increases segmentation accuracy in the same user-provided scribbles and reduce effort on the part of the user.
Sleep stage classification by body movement index and respiratory interval indices using multiple radar sensors

Disturbed sleep has become more common in recent years. To increase the quality of sleep, undergoing sleep observation has gained interest as an attempt to resolve possible problems. In this paper, we evaluate a non-restrictive and non-contact method for classifying real-time sleep stages and report on its potential applications. The proposed system measures body movements and respiratory signals of a sleeping person using a multiple 24-GHz microwave radar placed beneath the mattress. We determined a body-movement index to identify wake and sleep periods, and fluctuation indices of respiratory intervals to identify sleep stages. For identifying wake and sleep periods, the rate agreement between the body-movement index and the reference result using the R&K method was 83.5 ± 6.3%. One-minute standard deviations, one of the fluctuation indices of respiratory intervals, had a high degree of contribution and showed a significant difference across the three sleep stages (REM, LIGHT, and DEEP; p <; 0.001). Although the degree that the 5-min fractal dimension contributed-another fluctuation index-was not as high as expected, its difference between REM and DEEP sleep was significant (p <; 0.05). We applied a linear discriminant function to classify wake or sleep periods and to estimate the three sleep stages. The accuracy was 79.3% for classification and 71.9% for estimation. This is a novel system for measuring body movements and body-surface movements that are induced by respiration and for measuring high sensitivity pulse waves using multiple radar signals. This method simplifies measurement of sleep stages and may be employed at nursing care facilities or by the general public to increase sleep quality.
Efficient Selection of Mappings and Automatic Quality-driven Combination of Matching Methods

The AgreementMaker system for ontology matching includes an extensible architecture that facilitates the integration and performance tuning of a variety of matching methods, an evaluation mechanism, which can make use of a reference matching or rely solely on "inherent" quality measures, and a multi-purpose user interface, which drives both the matching methods and the evaluation strategies. In this paper, we focus on two main features of AgreementMaker. The former is an optimized method that performs the selection of mappings given the similarities between entities computed by any matching algorithm, a threshold value, and the desired cardinalities of the mappings. Experiments show that our method is more efficient than the typically adopted combinatorial method. The latter is the evaluation framework, which includes three "inherent" quality measures that can be used both to evaluate matching methods when a reference matching is not available and to combine multiple matching results by defining the weighting scheme of a fully automatic combination method.
A PRELOAD AND AFTERLOAD SENSITIVE ARTIFICIAL VENTRICLE TO TEST CARDIOVASCULAR PROSTHESES

Abstract In the last decades cardiovascular diseases greatly increased worldwide, and bioengineering provided new technologies and cardiovascular prostheses to medical doctors and surgeons. Ventricular assist devices aroused notable interests. As a consequence it is important to faithfully reproduce the interaction between the prostheses and the cardiovascular system when in-vitro experiments are performed. For this reason, a new and improved kind of test benches become necessary. In this paper an artificial ventricle connected to a hydraulic circuit is described. The ventricle's control architecture is based on the estimation of some characteristic parameters. It is showed how this control strategy leads to the mutual interaction between the artificial ventricle and the hydraulic circuit and a correct mean atrial (preload) and aortic (afterload) pressure sensitivity and hydrodynamics.
Hsp90 and Caveolin Are Key Targets for the Proangiogenic Nitric Oxide–Mediated Effects of Statins

3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl (HMG)–coenzyme A reductase inhibitors or statins exert direct beneficial effects on the endothelium in part through an increase in nitric oxide (NO) production. Here, we examined whether posttranslational modifications of the endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) could account for the proangiogenic effects of statins. We used endothelial cells (ECs) isolated from cardiac microvasculature, aorta, and umbilical veins, as well as dissected microvessels and aortic rings, that were cultured on reconstituted basement membrane matrix (Matrigel). Tube or precapillary formation was evaluated after statin treatment, in parallel with immunoblotting and immunoprecipitation experiments. Atorvastatin stimulated NO-dependent angiogenesis from both isolated and outgrowing (vessel-derived) ECs, independently of changes in eNOS expression. We found that in macro- but not microvascular ECs, atorvastatin stabilized tube formation through a decrease in caveolin abundance and its inhibitory interaction with eNOS. We also identified the chaperone protein hsp90 as a key target for the proangiogenic effects of statins. Using geldanamycin, an inhibitor of hsp90 function, and overexpression of recombinant hsp90, we documented that the statin-induced phosphorylation of eNOS on Ser1177 was directly dependent on the ability of hsp90 to recruit Akt in the eNOS complex. Finally, we showed that statin promoted the tyrosine phosphorylation of hsp90 and the direct interaction of hsp90 with Akt, which further potentiated the NO-dependent angiogenic processes. Our study provides new mechanistic insights into the NO-mediated angiogenic effects of statins and underscores the potential of these drugs and other modulators of hsp90 and caveolin abundance to promote neovascularization in disease states associated or not with atherosclerosis.
Medial Profiles for Modeling Deformation and Statistical Analysis of Shape and their Use in Medical Image Segmentation

We present a novel medial-based, multi-scale approach to shape representation and controlled deformation. We use medial-based profiles for shape representation, which follow the geometry of the structure and describe general, intuitive, and independent shape measures (length, orientation, and thickness). Controlled shape deformations (stretch, bend, and bulge) are obtained either as a result of applying deformation operators at certain locations and scales on the medial profiles, or by varying the weights of the main variation modes obtained from a new hierarchical (multi-scale) and regional (multi-location) principal component analysis of the medial profiles. We demonstrate the ability to produce controlled shape deformations on a medial-based representation of the corpus callosum. We show how this control of shape deformations facilitates the design of a layered framework for image segmentation and present results of segmenting the corpus callosum from 2D mid-sagittal magnetic resonance images of the human brain. Furthermore we show how the medial-based representation facilitates hierarchical, deformation-specific statistical shape analysis of segmented corpora callosa.
A New Linear-Time ``On-Line'' Algorithm for Finding the Smallest Initial Palindrome of a String

Despite significant advances in linear-time scanning algorithms, particularly those based wholly or in par t on either Cook's linear-time simulation of two-way deterministic pushdown automata or Weiner's algorithm, the problem of recognizing the initial leftmost nonvoid palindrome of a string in time proportional to the length N of the palindrome, examining no symbols other than those in the palindrome, has remained open. The present algorithm solves this problem, assuming tha t addition of two integers less than or equal to N may be performed in a single operation. Like th e Knuth-Morris-Prat t algorithm, i t runs in time independent of the size of the input alphabet. T h e algorithm as presented finds only even palindromes. However, an extension allows one to recognize the initial odd or even palindrome of length 2 or greater. Other easy extensions permit the recognition of strings (wwR) * of even palindromes and of all the initial palindromes. I t appears possible tha t further extension may be used to show tha t (wwR) * is in a sense recognizable in real time on a reasonably defined random access machine. xEv WORDS AND PHa~SES: linear-time algorithm, on-line recognition, palindrome CR CATEGORIES: 5.22, 5.25, 5.30
Frontotemporal dementia: clinical and therapeutic features

Frontotemporal dementia is a major cause of dementia in the presenium. It is characterized by significant changes in behavior and personality, while cognitive functioning as assessed by traditional psychometric tests is relatively preserved. Thus, many patients present to the psychiatrist because of the prominence of behavioral symptoms, such as apathy, disinhibition, perseverative or
A Location Prediction Algorithm with Daily Routines in Location-Based Participatory Sensing Systems

Mobile node location predication is critical to efficient data acquisition and message forwarding in participatory sensing systems. This paper proposes a social-relationship-based mobile node location prediction algorithm using daily routines (SMLPR). The SMLPR algorithm models application scenarios based on geographic locations and extracts social relationships of mobile nodes from nodes' mobility. After considering the dynamism of users' behavior resulting from their daily routines, the SMLPR algorithm preliminarily predicts node's mobility based on the hidden Markov model in different daily periods of time and then amends the prediction results using location information of other nodes which have strong relationship with the node. Finally, the UCSD WTD dataset are exploited for simulations. Simulation results show that SMLPR acquires higher prediction accuracy than proposals based on the Markov model.
Automatic Organization and Generation of Presentation Slides for E-Learning

The effectiveness of an e-learning system for distance education to a large extent depends on the relevancy and presentation of learning content to the learner. The ability to gather documents on a particular topic from the web and adapt the contents of the document to suit the learner is an important task from the content creation perspective of e-learning. For the developer of e-learning material the provision to automatically extract, organize, and present content material would improve its effectiveness. This paper proposes to extract information from documents using language processing techniques and organizing the content into appropriate presentation slides for learning purposes using domain ontology and learning oriented pedagogy ontology.
Kasabach-Merritt Syndrome Associated to Angiosarcoma of the Breast. A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Introduction Kasabach-Merritt syndrome is characterized by the association of a consumptive thrombohemorrhagic disorder and angioma occurring usually in children. In the present study, a case of Kasabach-Merritt syndrome associated to an angiosarcoma of the breast is reported. Clinical History The tumor together with the thrombohemorrhagic disorder manifested in a 28-year-old woman. The patient underwent mastectomy. The tumor recurred in the same site 2 years later. The patient died of severe anemia 8 years after the first appearance of the angiosarcoma. Material and Methods Tissues were formalin fixed and paraffin embedded; in addition, selected sections were immunohistochemically stained. Results and Conclusions A well-differentiated angiosarcoma was visible throughout the removed organ. A review of the literature showed that only 6 cases of Kasabach-Merritt syndrome associated to malignant vascular tumors have been previously reported. All these 6 cases occurred in adult patients. On the contrary, Kasabach-Merritt syndrome associated to benign vascular tumors affects children. This is the first case occurring in the breast.
A visual interface technique for exploring OLAP data with coordinated dimension hierarchies

Multi-dimensional data occurs in many domains while a wide variety of text based and visual interfaces for querying such data exists. But many of these interfaces are not applicable to OLAP, as they do not support use of dimension hierarchies for selection and aggregation. We introduce an interface technique which supports visual querying of OLAP data, that has been implemented in the SGViewer tool. It is based on a data graph rather than a data cube representation of the data. Our interface presents each dimension hierarchy in a zoomable panel which supports selection and aggregation at multiple levels. Users explore data and query it by making selections in several dimension views. Three view coordinations are identified; progressive, global and result only. Our main contribution, the progressive view coordination provides better support for query refinement than existing interfaces, by helping users decide the next query step with intermediate result overviews, and by helping users change a previous selection decision with retained selection context views. Our interface technique is demonstrated with a web log dataset of visits organised into time, download, visitor and referrer address dimensions.