Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Calcium-dependent Nr 4 a 1 expression in mouse Leydig cells requires distinct AP 1 / CRE and MEF 2 elements

The nuclear receptor NR4A1 is expressed in steroidogenic Leydig cells where it plays pivotal roles by regulating the expression of several genes involved in steroidogenesis and male sex differentiation including Star, HSD3B2, and Insl3. Activation of the cAMP and Ca2+ signaling pathways in response to LH stimulation leads to a rapid and robust activation of Nr4a1 gene expression that requires the Ca2+/CAMKI pathway. However, the downstream transcription factor(s) have yet to be characterized. To identify potential Ca2+/CaM effectors responsible for hormone-induced Nr4a1 expression, MA-10 Leydig cells were treated with forskolin to increase endogenous cAMP levels, dantrolene to inhibit endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ release, and W7 to inhibit CaM activity. We identified Ca2+-responsive elements located in the discrete regions of the Nr4a1 promoter, which contain binding sites for several transcription factors such as AP1, CREB, and MEF2. We found that one of the three AP1/CRE sites located at –255 bp is the most responsive to the Ca2+ signaling pathway as are the two MEF2 binding sites at –315 and –285 bp. Furthermore, we found that the hormone-induced recruitment of phospho-CREB and of the co-activator p300 to the Nr4a1 promoter requires the Ca2+ pathway. Lastly, siRNAmediated knockdown of CREB impaired NR4A1 expression and steroidogenesis. Together, our data indicate that the Ca2+ signaling pathway increases Nr4a1 expression in MA-10 Leydig cells, at least in part, by enhancing the recruitment of coactivator most likely through the MEF2, AP1, and CREB transcription factors thus demonstrating an important interplay between the Ca2+ and cAMP pathways in regulating Nr4a1 expression. Calcium-dependent Nr4a1 expression in mouse Leydig cells requires distinct AP1/CRE and MEF2 elements
Value-led personas : a methodology to promote sustainable user-centered design?

This paper explores how values can be the focus in user-centered design through the use of value-led personas. Its starting point was exploring value-driven alternative models for micro-business based on the principles of open source. The research documented in this paper is a participatory design process with two emergent micro-businesses as co-researchers. The stakeholders of each micro-business were presented as value-led personas, representing a deep understanding of their values and beliefs gained from ethnographic data. In this project, the use of value-led personas effectively communicated the core values of each micro-business and enabled participants to visualize how stakeholders would interact with the organization. Value-led personas thus have the potential to be an effective communication technique in user-centered design that can lead to purposeful action.
El comportamiento de apertura de puerta en ratas motivado por el deseo de contacto social Door-Opening Behavior in Rats Motivated by Desire for Social Contact

Several authors have used rodents to model social learning phenomena. In particular, some researchers have proposed rodents as a model for studying the underlying mechanisms of pro-social behavior. Recent findings suggest that empathy plays a key role in helping behavior. However, desire for social contact has also been proposed as an alternative explanation. Thus, the main goal of the present experiment was to contrast both accounts within the same experiment. Two groups of rats were used in a task that involves testing rats in pairs. Particularly, the study evaluated whether the mere presence of a cage mate was sufficient to evoke helping behavior (door openings), or if the presence of a conspecific in an aversive situation is necessary (soaked in water). The results showed that rats quickly learned to perform the helping behavior only towards a distressed cage-mate. We suggested that a mechanism of empathy is responsible for the reported results. © 2017 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Asociación Mexicana de Comportamiento y Salud. This is an Open Access article under the license CC BY-NC-ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Real Time Data Acquisition System Based on ARM and CAN Bus

-The Design & Implementation of ARM Based Data Acquisition System presented here is an intelligent remote unit based on embedded technology for data acquisition, monitoring and output control. This system is very much compact in design, as it uses a highly integrated 32-bit RISC microcontroller along with serial A/D converters. This device has high performance and offers the widest range of features viz., flexibility, reliability, durability, when compared with conventional and old solutions to control and data acquisition. A real time data acquisition system based on ARM and CAN BUS was implemented. This data acquisition system has two parts-transmitter section and receiver section. Two parameters, temperature and pressure are sensed via temperature sensor and pressure sensor respectively and the ADC result is displayed. Monitored data is then transmitted by two CAN controllers via CAN bus to receiver section. Transmission of pressure is given high priority. At the receiver section transmitted data is received by single CAN controller and the received data is displayed. If temperature exceeds a threshold a buzzer is activated. RTX Kernel which is a small footprint RTOS supported by Keil μvision is programmed in embedded C. Keywords--Data Acquisition System, Fieldbus, RTOS, Controller Area Network
An Innovative Systems Approach for Research on Urban Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation

This paper presents an innovative research on urban risk reduction and climate change adaptation that combines case studies, grounded theory and systems analysis, which could be used as a template for similar urban and interdisciplinary investigations. This new approach allows theory to be built not only on any specific situation/system, but also on how this situation/system could be improved. Moreover, it allows investigations that cross the traditional boundaries between disciplines and sectors as regards: (a) the methods applied; (b) the research focus; (c) the heterogeneous set of practitioners and experts involved; and (d) the outcomes that are relevant to more than one discipline or sector.
The Prosody Of Elliptical Constructions In Brazilian Portuguese: An Experimental Study

Os fenomenos de elipse sao estudados a partir de duas hipoteses coni¬‚itantes: A hipotese semântica, que defende que a identifcacao elipse-antecedente e de natureza semântica, nao sendo necessario propor a existencia de estrutura sintatica; e a hipotese sintatica, que argumenta a favor da existencia de identifcacao estrutural entre a elipse e o antecedente. Teorias alternativas tem relacionado condicoes de licenciamento de elipse a questoes de estrutura informacional, especialmente considerando os conceitos de foco e topico. Neste artigo, como forma de testar as hipoteses acima, realizou-se um estudo prosodico de sentencas elipticas produzidas por 12 falantes do PB do sexo feminino e com idade entre 20 e 35 anos. O teste consistiu de cinco sentencas para serem completadas pelos participantes e 28 imagens contendo duas cenas; em cada cena havia pelo menos um item diferente (acao, objeto ou sujeito). Os resultados mostraram um padrao interessante. No caso de elipse, a informacao dada foi geralmente desacentuada, enquanto a informacao contrastada (acao, objeto ou sujeito) foi entoacionalmente marcada por contorno alto (H) ou baixo-alto (LH). Se considerarmos que itens contrastivos sao movidos para a periferia a esquerda, deixando um traco na posicao original, entao, pode-se deduzir que nesses casos ha estrutura sintatica desacentuada.
Title Categorical discrimination of human body parts bymagnetoencephalography

Right © 2015 Nakamura, Yanagisawa, Okamura, Fukuma, Hirata, Araki, Kamitani and Yorifuji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Dynamic GPU Memory Management for Training Deep Neural Networks

GPUs are being used to train neural networks. Most widely used machine learning frameworks require the intermediate outputs of all layers of a neural network to ﬁt in the DRAM memory of GPU. GPU memory is a limited resource and hence, this requirement limits the size of the neural networks that can be trained in a given GPU. We study a previously proposed memory manager - vDNN, which virtualizes CPU and GPU memory, hence allowing networks to be trained on the same GPU which couldn’t be trained earlier due to lack of GPU memory. However, the training time of a neural network with vDNN increases considerably when availability of GPU memory is less. We propose an improvement in its design, which improves its performance by about 42% to 65% for the evaluated networks(AlexNet, VGG) relative to performance of baseline memory manager used by the current machine learning frameworks. Finally we discuss the issues of memory fragmentation and CPU memory consumption while designing such memory manager.
The changing character of EUFOR Althea: power politics or learning?

Abstract States have different strategic cultures when it comes to legitimating the use of military force and its relation with other foreign policy instruments. However, increasingly, military operations are conducted in multilateral forums; EU military operations are one of the most notable examples of this development. While some claim that these operations reflect power relations between nations with different strategic cultures, others argue that these common missions involve states in a process of collective learning and convergence of interests. Drawing upon an advocacy coalition approach, this paper confronts the competing hypotheses in the case of European Union Force (EUFOR) Althea in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), as the EU’s longest running military operation (since 2004). On the basis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with policymakers and politicians, this paper concludes that the evolution of EUFOR Althea has been primarily the result of the power politics of different coalitions, but there have also been a few instances of learning.
Removal of internal multiples with the common-focus-point (CFP) approach: Part 1 — Explanation of the theory

Removal of surface and internal multiples can be formulated by removing the influence of downward-scattering boundaries and downward-scattering layers. The involved algorithms can be applied in a model-driven or a data-driven way. A unified description is proposed that relates both types of algorithms based on wave theory. The algorithm for the removal of surface multiples shows that muted shot records play the role of multichannel prediction filters. The algorithm for the removal of internal multiples shows that muted CFP gathers play the role of multichannel prediction filters. The internal multiple removal algorithm is illustrated with numerical examples. The conclusion is that the layer-related version of the algorithm has significant practical advantages.
S-wave reflection and surface wave surveys in liquefaction affected areas: a case study of the Hinode area, Itako, Ibaraki, Japan

Property damage results from liquefaction that occurs easily in soft sandy layers. Moreover, liquefaction damage tends to be more serious at locations where earthquake ground motions are locally amplified. It is commonly understood that ground stiffness is correlated with S-wave velocity (Vs); in addition, the structure of the local subsurface is important for predicting local earthquake ground motion. Surface wave and S-wave reflection surveys are efficient, non-destructive techniques used to obtain two-dimensional S-wave velocity distributions and to map subsurface structures. In this study, we performed surface wave and S-wave reflection surveys to investigate the Hinode area of Itako, Ibaraki, Japan. This area suffered serious liquefaction damage during the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of 2011. Using subsurface boundaries imaged by the reflection surveys and the Vs structures obtained by surface wave analyses, it is possible to extrapolate geological and hydraulic information obtained by boring and cone penetration tests (CPTs). The combined information was used to delineate the layer in which liquefaction occurred, identified as an artificial layer of sandy dredged material, formed after 1970. The results of this study confirmed the effectiveness and applicability of geophysical surveys to the evaluation of the liquefaction potential. These methods enable us to predict the spatial distribution of liquefiable soils for future large earthquakes. We performed surface wave and S-wave reflection surveys to investigate the Hinode area of Itako, Ibaraki, Japan. This area suffered serious liquefaction damage during the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of 2011. Using subsurface boundaries imaged by the reflection surveys and the Vs structures obtained by surface wave analyses, we delineated the layer in which liquefaction occurred.
Contribution Nut and Seed Consumption and Inflammatory Markers in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Rui Jiang, David R. Jacobs, Jr., Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, Moyses Szklo, David Herrington, Nancy S. Jenny, Richard Kronmal, and R. Graham Barr 1 Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY. 2 Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. 3 Department of Nutrition, Institute of Basal Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. 4 Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. 5 Department of Epidemiology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. 6 Department of Internal Medicine/Cardiology, School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. 7 Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Vermont, Colchester, VT. 8 Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. 9 Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY.
The Finite Point Method for Reaction-Diffusion Systems in Developmental Biology

In this paper, the finite point method (FPM) is presented for solving nonlinear reaction–diffusion systems which are often employed in mathematical modeling in developmental biology. In order to avoid directly solving a coupled nonlinear system, a predicator–corrector scheme is applied. The finite point method is a truly meshfree technique based on the combination of the moving least squares approximation on a cloud of points with the point collocation method to discretize the governing equations. The lack of dependence on a mesh or integration procedure is an important feature, which makes the FPM simple, efficient and applicable to solve nonlinear problems in complex domains. We present numerical solutions for two cases of interest, namely the well-studied Schnakenberg model and the Gierer–Meinhardt model, in various regions to demonstrate the effects of various domain geometries on the resulting biological patterns.
Automatic Font Generation For Early-Modern Japanese Printed Books

The National Diet Library makes images of earlymodern Japanese printed books public on the Internet so that anyone can read the valuable books, which have been published during Meiji era to early Showa era. For the efficient and convenient use of the data, it is necessary to convert image data into text data. However, it is difficult to recognize character images of early-modern printed books correctly by existing OCRs. The multi-fonts character recognition method for early-modern printed books has been proposed. The method requires huge number of character images of those old books while the current methods to collect character images are very limited. In this paper, we propose a new method to complement learning data for the multi-fonts character recognition method by automatically generating character images with deep learning. For that purpose, we construct the neural network that automatically generates character images which have the features similar to the corresponding characters to be found in other early-modern Japanese printed books.
A Privacy Measurement Framework for Multiple Online Social Networks against Social Identity Linkage

Recently, the number of people who are members of multiple online social networks simultaneously has increased. However, if these people share everything with others, they risk their privacy. Users may be unaware of the privacy risks involved with sharing their sensitive information on a network. Currently, there are many research efforts focused on social identity linkage (SIL) on multiple online social networks for commercial services, which exacerbates privacy issues. Many existing studies consider methods of encrypting or deleting sensitive information without considering if this is unreasonable for social networks. Meanwhile, these studies ignore privacy awareness, which is rudimentary and critical. To enhance privacy awareness, we discuss a user privacy exposure measure for users who are members of multiple online social networks. With this measure, users can be aware of the state of their privacy and their position on a privacy measurement scale. Additionally, we propose a straightforward method through our framework to reduce information loss and foster user privacy awareness by using spurious content for required fields.
Title : Isotopic insights into migration patterns of Pacific bluefin tuna in the eastern Pacific 1 Ocean 2 3

6 School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, 7 USA 8 Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, 120 Ocean View Blvd, Pacific Grove, CA USA 9 93950 10 3 Ocean Associates, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NMFS, NOAA, La Jolla, CA 92037, 11 USA 12 4 Fisheries Resources Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries 13 Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), La Jolla, CA 14 92037, USA 15 † Now at: Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 16 02138, USA 17
Weighted Content Based Methods for Recommending Connections in Online Social Networks

Online Social Networks currently have an important role in the life of millions of active internet users. Cases like Twitter are of special attention since a lot of connections are made between people who never met before and with no need of reciprocation. For this reason it is important to nd new ways to provide recommendations that may be of interest for users. Should these recommendations focus on the popularity, on the activity, location, common friends or content? Should recommendations be inuenced by egocentric or global network metrics? This research is the rst phase of an in-depth study of a large dataset based on Twitter which aims to answer the previous questions. Despite many studies based on global rankings, the authors believe that recommendations should mostly be based on the preferences made by users in their own networks. This stage of the study focuses on the popularity and activity of links as indicators to predict connections.For this end, the authors compute a weight for each of these features, which varies for each user. Each pair tested is accepted if it satises a minimum total weight. Results show a slight but important improvement in performance when using two features instead of one, the results gives an insight that if more features are considered more improvements in predictions will be found. The results of this paper can and should be accompanied with more research.
Synthesis of Bis(phosphonatomethyl)-, Bis(phosphinatomethyl)-, and Bis(phosphinoxidomethyl)amines, as Well as Related Ring Bis(phosphine) Platinum Complexes

Abstract The double Kabachnik–Fields condensation of primary amines with 2 equivalents of the other reagents (formaldehyde and a >P(O)H species, such as dialkyl phosphites, diphenylphosphine oxide, as well as the related dioxaphosphorine and oxaphosphorine derivatives) carried out under microwave conditions afforded the title products in 79–94% yields. The bis(phosphinoxidomethyl)amines were converted, after double deoxygenation, to the corresponding ring platinum complexes.
Does Trade Liberalisation Trigger Tax Competition? Theory and Evidence from OECD Countries

This article aims at assessing the empirical relevance of New Economic Geography models of tax competition. We rely on a simple model to specify tax reactions functions, which we estimate with a panel covering (up to) 26 OECD countries over the period 1982 to 2006. We provide striking support for the two main predictions regarding the slope and the constant of the reaction function: national governments seem to adjust their corporate tax rate towards the level chosen in countries that are more populated, and they tend to set higher corporate tax rates when their country enjoys a high real market potential. Through the latter effect, trade integration exerts a positive influence on the level of corporate taxation. However, using a theoretically grounded index of bilateral trade integration, we also show that trade liberalization gives rise to significant tax interactions in the setting of effective average tax rates in the case of European countries, thus exerting a downward pressure on corporate tax rates.
Stuttgart Masterarbeit Design and Development of Software Agents for Location Privacy-risk estimation

The usage of mobile devices has become ubiquitous in today’s world. More people are adopting smartphones to be able to connect with family and friends, easily perform day-to-day tasks, discover new facets, etc. The smartphones are location-enabled and because of this, the rise of Location-Based Applications (LBAs) in the last decade has been phenomenal. Different LBAs use location information for advertising, recommendations, finding new friends, suggesting a new point of interests, etc., based on user trends. However, sharing location data can reveal personality traits, illnesses, political inclinations and religious views. When the location data is collected for a certain period, whereabouts can be easily guessed. For instance, once the location information is collected for a few days, the arrival and departure time from “work” location can be easily estimated. Thus, the characteristics revealed just by location details are narrowly perceived by most users and imposes a privacy risk. To address this privacy risk, a software agent is developed which helps to estimate and visualize this threat. It can push notifications and aware the user about the privacy risk before he/she decides to share the location with LBAs. In this thesis, we present an algorithm that predicts the user’s future movements with confidence percentages. This algorithm processes the raw location coordinates and extracts the meaningful locations. Based on the meaningful locations, a prediction model is formed. This model is used to predict future visits based on the user’s current location. The algorithm is evaluated using real-life data from Microsoft Geolife dataset. To inform the user about the privacy threat, a visualization of future visits with confidence percentages is implemented. Finally, a prototype on an Android device is developed to help user estimate the privacy risk before sharing location information on LBAs.