Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lack of direct evidence for the carbon-starvation hypothesis to explain drought-induced mortality in trees

The carbon-starvation hypothesis has been formulated to explain tree mortality due to long-term drought (1). It predicts an eventual depletion of tree carbon stores as a result of stomatal closure and insufficient carbon assimilation to meet carbon demands for tissue maintenance. Consistent with this, Adams et al. (2) show that drought-stressed …
Path planning for inchworm-like robot moving in narrow space

Considering the kinematic constraints and the path discreteness, a novel path planning method based on the feasible gait is proposed for an inchworm-like robot moving in a narrow space in this paper. Firstly, by analyzing the locomotion modes and the basic gaits of the robot, some arithmetic operators to describe the change of the position and orientation are defined, and a gait graph model is also presented. Secondly, making reference to the main idea of the partial dynamic window method, the path planning method is proposed, which include the environment modeling based on the dynamic partial grid map and the feasible gait searching algorithm based on the complete or incomplete traversal. Finally, some simulations and experiments are provided to validate the rationality and the validity of the path planning method.
Targeting on poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase activity with DNA‐damaging hybrid lactam‐steroid alkylators in wild‐type and BRCA1‐mutated ovarian cancer cells

Conjugated lactam‐steroid alkylators (LSA) have been shown to exhibit superior activity at controlling cancer models and overlap drug resistance to conventional chemjournalapy. Hybrid LSA combine two active compounds in a single molecule and incorporate modified steroids bearing lactam moiety in one or more steroid rings functioning as vectors for cytotoxic agents. We first describe a novel class of LSA that generate excellent anticancer activity against UWB1.289 and UWB1.289 + BRCA1 human ovarian cancer cell lines. Both UWB1.289 and UWB1.289 + BRCA1 cells carry mutations in the tumor suppressor gene TP53 while UWB1.289 cell line carries a germline BRCA1 mutation. In vitro, in vivo, and in silico, experimental methods were utilized to determine the poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerases (PARPs) activity and mRNA transcription, DNA damage, cytostatic and cytotoxic effects, and virtual molecular interactions, in order to study the molecular mechanisms of activity of the tested LSA. LSA produce anticancer activity through dual action by combining the direct induction of cellular DNA damage with the inhibition of PARP activity and consecutive DNA repair activity. BRCA1‐mutated UWB1.289 ovarian cancer cells with defective PARP‐oriented repair mechanism show significantly higher sensitivity to these agents. Combined drug effect on DNA damage and repair is a novel approach in cancer therapeutics.
Ventral Approach to the Rat Middle Ear for Otologic Research

OBJECTIVE: To describe a simple approach to the rat middle ear because there are few clear descriptions of this technique with minimal morbidity and mortality. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Six male Long-Evans rats were used in this study. We designed a cervical approach to the middle ear with the purpose of creating an experimental model of ossiculoplasty that permits the postoperative survival of the animal. RESULTS: It was possible in all cases to visualize the majority of structures of the tympanic cavity: promontory, round window, stapedial artery, stapes, incus, and tympanic membrane. There were no cases of postoperative infection or facial paralysis. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The ventral approach to the rat middle ear is a rapid and simple technique that makes the rat the animal of choice for many otologic investigations.
Diagnosis and management of endometriosis: summary of NICE guidance

#### What you need to know Endometriosis is one of the most common gynaecological disorders, affecting an estimated 10% of women in the reproductive age group (usually 15-49 years old), and in the UK it is the second most common gynaecological condition (after fibroids). 1 Endometriosis is hormone mediated and is associated with menstruation. The precise cause is not known, but it is widely accepted that endometrial cells deposited in the pelvis by retrograde menstruation are capable of implantation and development. It is a long term condition causing pelvic pain, painful periods, and subfertility. Endometriosis presents a diagnostic and clinical challenge, with many women left undiagnosed, often for many years. Small observational studies have reported delays of 4-10 years in diagnosis,2 3 which can result in decreased quality of life4 and disease progression.5 The diagnostic delay is not limited to adults; endometriosis is also often missed in adolescent girls,6 and this guideline aims to improve care by highlighting this age group in some recommendations. This article summarises the most recent recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on diagnosis and management of endometriosis.7 The recommendations were based on …
Advances in Brief Redox Regulation of Glutathione S-Transferase Induction by Benzyl Isothiocyanate : Correlation of Enzyme Induction with the Formation of Reactive Oxygen Intermediates 1

Here we report the molecular mechanism underlying the induction of glutathione S-transferase (GST) in rat liver epithelial RL34 cells treated with a cancer chemopreventive isothiocyanate compound, benzylisothiocyanate (BITC). BITC was found to significantly induce GST activity in RL34 cells. Northern and Western blot analyses demonstrated that BITC specifically enhanced the production of the class p GST isozyme (GSTP1). Our studies demonstrated for the first time that the addition of BITC to the cells resulted in an immediate increase in the reactive oxygen intermediates (ROIs) detected by a fluorescence probe, 2*,7*-dichlorofluorescin diacetate. The level of the ROIs in the cells treated with BITC (10mM) was ;50-fold higher than those in the control cells. Furthermore, glutathione depletion by diethyl maleate significantly enhanced BITC-induced ROI production and accelerated the BITC-induced elevation of the GST activity, whereas pretreatment of the cells with glutathione inhibited both the ROI production and GST induction. The structure-activity relationship of the isothiocyanates also indicated that the ROI-producing activities closely correlated with their GST-inducing potencies. Moreover, the GSTP1 enhancer I-containing region was found to be essential for induction of the GSTP1 gene by intracellular ROI inducers such as BITC and diethyl maleate. These data suggest the involvement of the redox regulation on the induction of GSTP1 by BITC.
Reducing human assessment of machine translation quality to binary classifiers

This paper presents a method to predict human assessments of machine translation (MT) quality based on the combination of binary classifiers using a coding matrix. The multiclass categorization problem is reduced to a set of binary problems that are solved using standard classification learning algorithms trained on the results of multiple automatic evaluation metrics. Experimental results using a large-scale humanannotated evaluation corpus show that the decomposition into binary classifiers achieves higher classification accuracies than the multiclass categorization problem. In addition, the proposed method achieves a higher correlation with human judgments on the sentence-level compared to standard automatic evaluation measures.
A fusion attitude determination method based on quaternion for MEMS gyro/accelerometer/magnetometer

With the development of new technologies and market demand changing, MEMS gyroscope has been widely used. But low accuracy, large drift and other defects limit its application in some areas. This paper presents an attitude fusion algorithm based on the MEMS gyroscope, MEMS accelerometer and MEMS magnetometer. Firstly, the error model of the MEMS gyroscope was established, and rotation vector method to determine the gyro attitude was introduced. Then the state equation and observation equation of the designed Kalman filter was derived. Finally, experimental results illustrated the effectiveness of the fusion algorithm. That is, with the proposed fusion attitude determination algorithm, it is able to compensate gyro drift and provide a reliable and stable attitude for a long time.
Synthesizing Aligned Random Pattern Digraphs from protein sequence patterns

An essential step of protein function analysis is to discover patterns that represent functional regions in a set of protein family sequences. However, the same functional region of a protein family that occurs in different sequences may contain variations that resulted from biological substitutions, deletions, and insertions. Thus, a sequence pattern representing this functional region seldom repeats precisely at the exact position with the same amino acid residues. To capture these variable associations, we developed a pattern synthesis process. First, we used an effective sequence pattern discovery algorithm to discover high order patterns as input. Next, we group and align these similar discovered patterns into Aligned Random Pattern Clusters (ARPCs). During the clustering process, each ARPC is transformed into a probabilistic structural pattern called the Aligned Random Pattern Digraph (ARPD). The advantages of our synthesis process are 1) the synthesized patterns are not confined to a fixed protein region since the ARPCs captures the similar patterns by their variable sites, 2) the ARPDs retain both horizontal pattern associations and vertical site variations, and 3) the search space for synthesizing input patterns is smaller than that for aligning input sequences. Our method successfully discovers two functional protein regions of the Cytochrome Complex protein family: the proximal and distal binding segment that binds the iron molecule of the heme ligand from each side of the plane without relying on prior knowledge.
NDH-1 Is Important for Photosystem I Function of Synechocystis sp. Strain PCC 6803 under Environmental Stress Conditions

Cyanobacterial NDH-1 interacts with photosystem I (PSI) to form an NDH-1-PSI supercomplex. Here, we observed that absence of NDH-1 had little, if any, effect on the functional fractions of PSI under growth conditions, but significantly reduced the functional fractions of PSI when cells of Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 were moved to conditions of multiple stresses. The significant reduction in NDH-1-dependent functional fraction of PSI was initiated after PSII activity was impaired. This finding is consistent with our observation that the functional fraction of PSI under growth conditions was rapidly and significantly decreased with increasing concentrations of DCMU, which rapidly and significantly suppressed PSII activity by blocking the transfer of electrons from QA to QB in the PSII reaction center. Furthermore, absence of NDH-1 resulted in the PSI limitation at the functionality of PSI itself but not its donor-side and acceptor-side under conditions of multiple stresses. This was supported by the result of a significant destabilization of the PSI complex in the absence of NDH-1 but the presence of multiple stresses. Based on the above results, we propose that NDH-1 is important for PSI function of Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 mainly via maintaining stabilization of PSI under conditions of environmental stresses.
Formal verification for microprocessors with extendable instruction set

The correctness of processors is a key for their application. Although some verification methods were developed and successfully applied to conventional microprocessors, only a few of them were used in the context of application specific devices. This work introduces a formal verification approach for a reconfigurable microprocessor with extendable instruction set. The application of this approach is demonstrated using register transfer description of the CoMPARE processor and the Stanford Validity Checker as prover. Some undesired side effects of different instructions that were not discovered during the simulation were found by the verification process. In addition some deficiencies of the hardware description notation as specification formalism were shown.
Shape-Based Pedestrian Segmentation in Still Images

Pedestrian segmentation is a problem of considerable practical interest. In this work we present an extended version of our shape-based model for pedestrian segmentation, which can also be used to give an initial guess of the 2D pedestrians pose/orientation. The proposed model is initialized by a bounding-box of the person under analysis, which can be estimated by a person detector. The basic idea of the proposed model is to create a graph around the detected person, based on a scale invariant shape model and the estimated contour is given by a path in the graph that maximizes certain boundary energy. In practice, such energy should be large in the boundary between the foreground/background. To cope with pose/shape variations, the final estimate is given by a selection scheme, which takes into consideration the individual estimate given by different generated graphs. Experimental results indicated that the proposed technique works well in non trivial images, with comparable accuracy to the state-of-the-art.
High Directivity CTL-Couplers and a New Technique for the Measurement of CTL-Coupler Parameters

A very powerful method to measure the parameters of a one-section Coupled Transmission Line (CTL) coupler is presented. Three transmission measurements at the frequency of maximum coupling is sufficient to give the even and odd mode impedances (Z/sub e/, Z/sub 0/) and the even and odd mode lengths (Theta/sub e/,Theta/sub 0/). Explicit equations are presented for the necessary calculations. A new method for wideband improvement of CTL-coupler directivity when Theta/sub e/ /spl ne/ Theta/sub 0/ has been developed. The theory is presented with all necessary equations and it covers bothTheta/sub e/ > Theta/sub 0/ (microstrip) and Theta/sub e/ < Theta/sub 0/. The new method makes use of short compensating sections in the coupler to achieve a directivity pole at an arbitrary frequency. The wanted bandwidth determines the optimum location of the pole. Several examples with design data are given.
Diabetes, Depression and Nonadherence: Exploring Hopelessness as a Mediating Factor: A Preliminary Study

Background: A well-documented phenomenon among patients with diabetes is the comorbid occurrence of depression which impacts adherence rates in patients. The symptoms of depression that may cause the most interference include fatigue, loss of motivation, and hopelessness. However, the exact way in which depression impacts nonadherence to diabetes treatment is still unknown. The purpose of the present study was to examine patients diagnosed with diabetes to measure the relationships between depression, hopelessness, and nonadherence. Methods: Adults with a known diagnosis of Type I or Type II Diabetes (N=100; mean age: 56.2, 63.6% male, 47.5% Caucasian, 33.3% African American, and 14.1% Hispanic) were recruited from a southeastern outpatient family medicine clinic. Patients were asked to complete the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities Questionnaire, and the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale to assess for levels of depression, hopelessness, self-care, and medication adherence. Results: Results of a regression analysis concluded that both depression and hopelessness were significant predictors of level of nonadherence. Thus, as depression and hopelessness increase, so does the level of patient nonadherence. However, hopelessness was not shown to be a mediator between depression and nonadherence. Conclusions: It was found that depression and hopelessness have significant negative impacts on adherence levels. These results suggest future research should continue to investigate hopelessness as one potential mediator between depression and nonadherence. In the future, intervention studies for patients with diabetes and comorbid depression should consider implementing a brief, evidence-based treatment for depression and measure the treatment’s impact on patient nonadherence rates, patients’ depressive symptomology, and hopelessness scores. Key points: Significant findings of this study include the relationship between depression, hopelessness, and nonadherence in patients with diabetes. More specifically, it was found that depression and hopelessness have significant negative impacts on adherence levels. This study paid special attention to hopelessness as one possible factor for this relationship. The study adds to the literature by identifying significant levels of not only depression but also hopelessness among patients diagnosed with diabetes contribute to greater nonadherence rates.
Analysis of a Fluid-Structure Interaction Problem Recast in an Optimal Control Setting

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulation presents many computational difficulties, particularly when the densities of the fluid and structure are close. A previous report [P. Kuberry and H. Lee, Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Engrg. , 267 (2013), pp. 594--605] has suggested that recasting the FSI problem in the context of optimal control may significantly reduce computation time. This paper introduces a Neumann type control along with detailed analysis for the stability and existence of an optimal solution for a given time step. The existence of Lagrange multipliers is proved, and an optimality system is derived. A gradient-based optimization algorithm is then presented with numerical results confirming its effectiveness in computing an accurate solution.
Embedded questions in ebooks on programming: useful for a) summative assessment, b) formative assessment, or c) something else?

We discuss uses of embedded computing questions (ECQs) in interactive electronic textbooks on programming, identifying a non-exhaustive list of three main categories of ECQs and nine subcategories. The main categories are: ECQs that introduce content, ECQs that reinforce learning, and ECQs that highlight content. We provide examples from an existing ebook, discuss how student perceptions may pose challenges to the use of ECQs, and invite the research community to debate ECQs and investigate them empirically.
TREC 2015 paper submission UWM-UO @ 2015 Clinical Decision Support Track: QE by Weighted Keywords using PRF

In the 2015 CDS track, the queries have been expanded in four different ways which we called four different modes. The results shows statistically significantly improvement in terms of infAP, infNDCG and iP10 for some modes as compared to baseline mode which is generated using original query (summary) only without any expansion terms.
Apocynin, a plant-derived, cartilage-saving drug, might be useful in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether apocynin, 1-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)ethanone, is able to diminish inflammation-induced cartilage destruction in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), studied in a human in vitro model. METHODS Apocynin was added to cultures of RA peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNC). Cartilage-destructive activity was determined by addition of culture supernatant to tissue samples of human articular cartilage. In addition, the proliferation of PBMNC, their production of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TN-Falpha), interleukin (IL)-1 and IL-10, and T-cell production of interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) and IL-4, as measures for T1 and T2 cell activity, were determined. RESULTS Apocynin was able to counteract RA PBMNC-induced inhibition of cartilage matrix proteoglycan synthesis, while no effect on inflammation-enhanced proteoglycan release was found. The effect was accompanied by a decrease in IL-1 and TNF-alpha production by the MNC. No effect on T-cell proliferation was found, but the production of IFN-gamma, IL-4 and T-cell-derived IL-10 was strongly diminished. Most important, apocynin did not show any direct adverse effects on chondrocyte metabolism; on the contrary, it diminished the release of proteoglycans from the cartilage matrix. CONCLUSION Apocynin in vitro inhibits inflammation-mediated cartilage destruction without having adverse effects on cartilage. The latter may be an advantage of apocynin over many other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Therefore, apocynin might have an added beneficial effect in protecting RA patients from joint destruction.
Trends and EIE higher education response to the current global technical challenges

The European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering (EAEEIE) has been for 20 years and still is dedicated to supporting Electrical and Information Engineering (EIE) across Europe. Its new Strategic Alignment of Electrical and Information Engineering in European Higher Education Institutions (SALEIE), an EU supported project, gathers together a global team aiming to provide higher education models in the EIE disciplines that can respond to the key global technical challenges. This paper deals with findings within the SALEIE project's work package WP3 (Global Challenges), namely: state-of-the-art in implementation of the Bologna recommendation for Bachelor and Master, technical challenges that the EIE higher education faces nowadays, and existing models in EIE higher education and their degree of response to key global technical challenges.
Regional distribution of myelin basic protein in the central nervous system of quaking, jimpy, and normal mice during development and aging

Myelin basic protein (MBP) was quantified using a RIA technique in the spinal cord, cerebellum, diencephalon plus brainstem region and cerebral hemispheres of two dysmyelinating murine mutants, quaking (qk) and jimpy (jp) mice. Comparison was made with normal control values. The whole life‐span has been investigated: ie, ages ranging from 0 to 26 days for the jp, 0 to one year for the qk, and prenatal stage to three years for the control animals. Assays in the mutants at early ages were rendered feasible by the use of marker genes, which has allowed the diagnosis of the mutation at birth, 12 days before the expression of their typical tremor phenotype. Special care was given to the period of early myelinogenesis in order to clarify the dysynchrony between the various parts of the central nervous system.