Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ER stress and Rho kinase activation underlie the vasculopathy of CADASIL

Cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) leads to premature stroke and vascular dementia. Mechanism-specific therapies for this aggressive cerebral small vessel disease are lacking. CADASIL is caused by NOTCH3 mutations that influence vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) function through unknown processes. We investigated molecular mechanisms underlying the vasculopathy in CADASIL focusing on endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and RhoA/Rho kinase (ROCK). Peripheral small arteries and VSMCs were isolated from gluteal biopsies of CADASIL patients and mesentery of TgNotch3R169C mice (CADASIL model). CADASIL vessels exhibited impaired vasorelaxation, blunted vasoconstriction, and hypertrophic remodeling. Expression of NOTCH3 and ER stress target genes was amplified and ER stress response, Rho kinase activity, superoxide production, and cytoskeleton-associated protein phosphorylation were increased in CADASIL, processes associated with Nox5 upregulation. Aberrant vascular responses and signaling in CADASIL were ameliorated by inhibitors of Notch3 (γ-secretase inhibitor), Nox5 (mellitin), ER stress (4-phenylbutyric acid), and ROCK (fasudil). Observations in human CADASIL were recapitulated in TgNotch3R169C mice. These findings indicate that vascular dysfunction in CADASIL involves ER stress/ROCK interplay driven by Notch3-induced Nox5 activation and that NOTCH3 mutation–associated vascular pathology, typical in cerebral vessels, also manifests peripherally. We define Notch3-Nox5/ER stress/ROCK signaling as a putative mechanism-specific target and suggest that peripheral artery responses may be an accessible biomarker in CADASIL.
SENSITIZATION SESSIONS FOR HEALTHY ENVIRONMENTS Stakeholders’ point of view

Healthy food choices and regular physical activity are two key behaviours that help prevent the premature development of chronic diseases, obesity and their complications. To raise awareness on the issue, numerous sensitization sessions were held across Quebec to sensitize stakeholders on ways of facilitating healthy environments (physical, economic, sociocultural and political) that promote healthy food choices and active lifestyle. The objectives were to 1) explore the knowledge and skills acquired during the sessions and 2) examine the transfer from sessions toward concrete actions for fostering environments conducive to healthy lifestyles. Individual interviews were conducted with 52 stakeholders (F=41; M=11). The results reveal, first, that most of the stakeholders consolidated or even improved their knowledge and skills and were better able to recognize the four types of environments in their respective workplaces. They also developed a common vocabulary and a better understanding of the the influence of environments on lifestyles. Second, the transfer into action, although possible, was more problematic because the concerted actions needed to facilitate healthy environments are complex. These results will be discussed in light of Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s four-level pyramid model. Sensitization sessions can be viewed as a societal project encouraging influential stakeholders to develop environments conducive to healthy lifestyles.
Mining of Association Rules with Secured Manner in Horizontally Distributed Databases

Data mining methodology has emerged as a means of identifying patterns and trends from large quantities of data. Data mining go hand in hand: most tools operate by gathering all data into a central site, then running an algorithm against that data. This paper addresses the problem of computing association rules within such a scenario. We assume homogeneous databases: All sites have the same schema, but each site has information on different entities.
High-efficiency Bidirectional Buck–Boost Converter for Residential Energy Storage System

This paper proposes a bidirectional dc–dc converter for residential micro-grid applications. The proposed converter can operate over an input voltage range that overlaps the output voltage range. This converter uses two snubber capacitors to reduce the switch turn-off losses, a dc-blocking capacitor to reduce the input/output filter size, and a 1:1 transformer to reduce core loss. The windings of the transformer are connected in parallel and in reverse-coupled configuration to suppress magnetic flux swing in the core. Zero-voltage turn-on of the switch is achieved by operating the converter in discontinuous conduction mode. The experimental converter was designed to operate at a switching frequency of 40–210 kHz, an input voltage of 48 V, an output voltage of 36–60 V, and an output power of 50–500 W. The power conversion efficiency for boost conversion to 60 V was ≥98.3% in the entire power range. The efficiency for buck conversion to 36 V was ≥98.4% in the entire power range. The output voltage ripple at full load was <3.59 Vp.p for boost conversion (60 V) and 1.35 Vp.p for buck conversion (36 V) with the reduced input/output filter. The experimental results indicate that the proposed converter is well-suited to smart-grid energy storage systems that require high efficiency, small size, and overlapping input and output voltage ranges.
The Journal of Wildlife Management

In conservation paradigms, management actions for umbrella species also benefit co‐occurring species because of overlapping ranges and similar habitat associations. The greater sage‐grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is an umbrella species because it occurs across vast sagebrush ecosystems of western North America and is the recipient of extensive habitat conservation and restoration efforts that might benefit sympatric species. Biologists' understanding of how non‐target species might benefit from sage‐grouse conservation is, however, limited. Reptiles, in particular, are of interest in this regard because of their relatively high diversity in shrublands and grasslands where sage‐grouse are found. Using spatial overlap of species distributions, land cover similarity statistics, and a literature review, we quantified which reptile species may benefit from the protection of intact sage‐grouse habitat and which may be affected by recent (since about 1990) habitat restoration actions targeting sage‐grouse. Of 190 reptile species in the United States and Canadian provinces where greater sage‐grouse occur, 70 (37%) occur within the range of the bird. Of these 70 species, about a third (11 snake and 11 lizard species) have >10% of their distribution area within the sage‐grouse range. Land cover similarity indices revealed that 14 of the 22 species (8 snake and 6 lizard species) had relatively similar land cover associations to those of sage‐grouse, suggesting greater potential to be protected under the sage‐grouse conservation umbrella and greater potential to be affected, either positively or negatively, by habitat management actions intended for sage‐grouse. Conversely, the remaining 8 species are less likely to be protected because of less overlap with sage‐grouse habitat and thus uncertain effects of sage‐grouse habitat management actions. Our analyses of treatment databases indicated that from 1990 to 2014 there were at least 6,400 treatments implemented on public land that covered approximately 4 million ha within the range of the sage‐grouse and, of that, >1.5 million ha were intended to at least partially benefit sage‐grouse. Whereas our results suggest that conservation of intact sagebrush vegetation communities could benefit ≥14 reptiles, a greater number than previously estimated, additional research on each species' response to habitat restoration actions is needed to assess broader claims of multi‐ taxa benefits when it comes to manipulative sage‐grouse habitat management. Published 2020. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.
Changes in Heterotrophic Picoplankton Community Structure after Induction of a Phytoplankton Bloom under Different Light Regimes

Bacterial and archaeal diversity and succession were studied during a mesocosm experiment that investigated whether changing light regimes could affect the onset of phytoplankton blooms. For this, 454-pyrosequencing of the bacterial V1-V3 and archaeal V3-V9 16S rRNA regions was performed in samples collected from four mesocosms receiving different light irradiances at the beginning and the end of the experiment and during phytoplankton growth. In total, 46 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with ≥1% relative abundance occurred (22–34 OTUs per mesocosm). OTUs were affiliated mainly with Rhodobacteraceae, Flavobacteriaceae and Alteromonadaceae. The four mesocosms shared 11 abundant OTUs. Dominance increased at the beginning of phytoplankton growth in all treatments and decreased thereafter. Maximum dominance was found in the mesocosms with high irradiances. Overall, specific bacterial OTUs had different responses in terms of relative abundance under in situ and high light intensities, and an early phytoplankton bloom resulted in different bacterial community structures both at high (family) and low (OTU) taxonomic levels. Thus, bacterial community structure and succession are affected by light regime, both directly and indirectly, which may have implications for an ecosystem’s response to environmental changes.
Tooth Crack Severity Assessment in the Early Stage of Crack Propagation Using Gearbox Dynamic Model

Localized tooth crack in gearboxes may be reflected in impulse components of gearbox vibration signals. Crack induced impulses have been used for crack detection and fault diagnosis. In reported studies, researchers have used statistical indicators of the identified impulses, such as root mean square (RMS) and kurtosis, to track the growth of crack. These reported statistical indicators are only effective when crack levels are high and they are unable to detect tooth crack and assess crack severity in the early stage of crack propagation. In addition, no reported studies have focused on studying how tooth crack level affects crack induced impulses. Specifically, what the dominant segments of crack induced impulses are and which segment is affected more by crack growth within a certain crack level range. This paper uses dynamic modeling to study how crack level affects crack induced impulses. First, impulses are generated with a spur gearbox dynamic model under constant working conditions. Second, an exponentially damped sinusoidal model is utilized to fit the impulses and the Matrix Pencil Method is used for model parameter estimation. Finally, relationships between crack level and impulses are studied based on the obtained model parameters. The results have shown that the segments in the fifth and the sixth frequency bands of impulses are two dominant segments, while other segments have little contribution, for the gearbox system under investigation. Within a certain crack level range, there exists an impulse segment which is more affected by the crack level. In terms of the early stage of crack propagation, the segment in the sixth frequency band of the impulse is more affected by crack growth. On this basis, three new statistical indicators have been developed with the segment in sixth frequency band of the impulse and have shown their effectiveness for tooth crack severity level assessment in the early stage of crack propagation. These results have good potential for detection and severity assessment of early tooth cracks in gearboxes.
Vibration suppression of truncated conical shells embedded with magnetostrictive layers based on first order shear deformation theory

Vibration phenomena in mechanical structures including conical shells are usually undesirable. In order to overcome this problem, this study investigates active vibration control of isotropic truncated conical shells containing magnetostrictive actuators. The first-order shear deformation theory and the Hamilton principle are handled to obtain vibration equations. Moreover, a negative velocity feedback control law is used to actively suppress the vibration. The Ritz and modified Galerkin methods are utilized to obtain results of shell vibration. The results are validated by comparison with the results of literature and finite element software. Finally, the effects of control gain value, magnetostrictive layers thickness, isotropic layer thickness, length and semi-vertex angle of the conical shell on vibration suppression characteristics are obtained in details.
Regression Testing for Trusted Database Applications

Regression testing is any type of software testing, which seeks to uncover regression bugs. Regression bugs occur as a consequence of program changes. Common methods of regression testing are re-running previously run tests and checking whether previously-fixed faults have re-emerged. Regression testing must be conducted to confirm that recent program changes have not harmfully affected existing features and new tests must be created to test new features. Testers might rerun all test cases generated at earlier stages to ensure that the program behaves as expected. However, as a program evolves the regression test set grows larger, old tests are rarely discarded, and the expense of regression testing grows. Repeating all previous test cases in regression testing after each major or minor software revision or patch is often impossible due to time pressure and budget constraints. On the other hand, for software revalidation by arbitrarily omitting test cases used in regression testing is risky. Our proposed algorithms automate an important portion of the regression-testing process, and they operate more efficiently than most other regression test selection algorithms. The algorithms are more general than most other techniques. They handle regression test selection for single procedures and for groups of interacting procedures. They also handle all language constructs and all types of program modifications for procedural languages.
GENERIC FLOWS OF SUSTAINABLE URBAN FORM : An Investigation On Integrated Interactions Between Energy And Information Flows In The Context Of Urban Form . The Case Of Isfahan

Urban form as an intermediate between human and its peripheral environment is embodiment of formative and transformative flows of built form. Energy flows of urban form production, operation and maintenance lead to generating and transforming of built form which is the transmitter of information flows as visual and perceptual flows between human as receptor and built environment. On this basis, continuous and integrated interactions between human and living environment have been considered as energy operational flows of environmental comfort (heating and cooling energy demand) and informational flows of perception, cognition and evaluation of built form (focusing on visual interaction) which are two generic flows of built form in relation with human. These relations and interconnections between energy and information flows have been excavated based on Eco Efficient Urban Form model (EEUF model). The present research aiming at exploring the relations between these two flows with built form and between them have been scrutinized based on two distinct state of Occlusivity factor, distribution of built elements in vertical plane (occlusivity factor for operational energy flows, Adolphe,2001: mean openness of urban spaces to the sky, reflecting the height distribution of built elements which presents horizontal perimeter cuts in vertical planes of built form ;) and the length of the occluding radial boundary from each vantage point (Benedikt, 1979: 53) (Isovist occlusivity for visual information flows) It resembles the horizontal built elements perimeter map, which provides a comparative measure of the overall boundary of each isovist. Analytical context of the study has been chosen from the morphological aspects of Isfahan in the form of ten morphological types presenting general morphological trends of Isfahan. Regarding to these, results indicate that there is an Inverse correlation between the two state of occlusivity factor, occlusivity in vertical planes for energy performances and occlusivity in horizontal planes for sustainable visual information flows between built form and humans. The results demonstrate that the tissues with organic morphological aspects and structure have high value of energy performances occlusivisty factor especially effective for decreasing in heating energy demand in cold seasons and have low value of Isovist occlusivity factor which indicate high value of Isovist compactness leading to coherency in visual information flows. Hence, results depict that the integration between two generic flows of sustainable urban form is demonstrable for old tissues with old organic morphological patterns. Proceedings of the 11th Space Syntax Symposium GENERIC FLOWS OF SUSTAINABLE URBAN FORM: An investigation on integrated interactions between energy and information flows in the context of urban form. The case of isfahan. 143.2
Automatic rule-based correction of stochastic syntactic 1 annotation of Czech

Morphological tagging and lemmatisation have become a standard instrument for exploring large textual corpora. Syntactic annotation, on the other hand, is often limited to small, mainly manually annotated corpora. The aim of our project Syntactic annotation of Czech corpora (cf. grant GAČR No. P406/10/0434) is to provide reliable syntactic annotation of large corpora of Czech in which the user will be able to choose the representation of structures and the type of annotation he prefers. In this paper I present a system of automatic annotation, currently under development, which will be used in the project. I demonstrate that even in automatic natural language processing we cannot dispense with a rigorous formal description of the language system. I discuss existing syntactic annotation tools, propose linguistic solutions to recurrent errors in parsing – automatic rule-based correction of syntactic annotation – and I also present preliminary results of tests of this annotation tool.
C ONCEALER : Secure Time-Varying Location Data Outsourcing

This paper provides efﬁcient mechanisms to support selection queries for OLAP operators over encrypted data, stored at the public cloud. Our motivation arises from the use-case where the data owner ( e . g ., mapping services, such as Google Map) provides access to third-party services ( e . g ., advertisers) over outsourced dynamic spatial-temporal data ( e . g ., users GPS locations) using an untrusted cloud. While modern searchable encryption techniques (that exploit novel data structures over ciphertext) can be used, we argue that they exhibit two shortcomings in our context. First, such techniques require specialized data structures, while we would like to leverage and build cryptographic solutions over existing database systems and exploit existing database access methods. More importantly, existing SSE techniques leak data distributions, which in turn can leak the data records. We develop a system, entitled C ONCEALER that exploits carefully chosen encryption techniques combined with ways to add fake tuples in order to realize an efﬁcient system that offers a higher level of security. We experimentally validate the efﬁciency of the proposed algorithms over a large dataset, the size of which prior approaches have not scaled to.
A SPATIAL PROPENSITY SCORE MATCHING TO EVALUATE THE IMPACTS OF GROWING SUGARCANE ON SOCIAL INDICATORS IN PRODUCING REGIONS

The expansion of sugarcane growing in Brazil, spurred particularly by increased demand for ethanol, has triggered the need to evaluate the economic, social and environmental impacts of this process, both on the country as a whole and on the growing regions. Even though the balance of costs and benefits is positive from an overall standpoint, this may not be so in specific producing regions, due to negative externalities. The objective of this paper is to estimate the effect of growing sugarcane on the human development index (HDI) and its sub-indices in cane producing regions. In the literature on matching effects this is interpreted as the effect of the treatment on the treated. Location effects are controlled by spatial econometric techniques, giving rise to the spatial propensity score matching model. We analyze 424 minimum comparable areas (MCAs) in the treatment group, compared with 907 MCAs in the control group. The results suggest that the presence of sugarcane growing in these areas is not relevant to determine their social conditions, whether for better or worse. It is thus likely that public policies, especially those focused directly on improving education, health and income generation/distribution, have much more noticeable effects on the municipal HDI.
Do macroeconomic variables influence Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE 30) stock prices in India?

Nowadays, financial well-being of a country is being measured by stock market indices. Broadly, the stock markets are a coalescence of exchanges and markets dealing with issuance and trading of securities. Such markets allow firms to procure long-term financesin exchange for a part of their profits to investors. Similarly, there are varied macroeconomic factors which connote a country’s financial status and these two vital segments of India’s economy might as well be related or impacted by each other’s movements through time. This study’s fundamental objective is to appraise the relationship linking select macroeconomic variables viz., call money rate, money supply (M3), exchange rate, gold &silver prices, forex reserves, and consumer price index as a proxy for inflation, and the stock prices of 30firms which form the basis for the principal barometer of India’s economy, Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex (BSE30). It tries to understand the degree of impact of select macroeconomic variables on prices of stocks and vice-versa. In this study, time series data is used. The required data is collected from reliable secondary sources such as RBI, BSE and other international sites. This study is conducted for the period Jan 2000Aug 2017 month-wise and results were anticipated using OLS method and Granger causality test. And found Call Money rate, Exchange rate and Forex reserves showing significant impact on theIndian BSE 30 Index.
Simplified Balancing of Composite Flight Control Surfaces after Repainting

When repainting aircrafts special care has to be taken with respect to the flight controls. For several aircraft types then a new balancing of these parts is required. This can be done by the calculation method which includes measuring the paint thickness of these parts before stripping and after the new painting. Typically, these parts are of carbon composite (CFRP). Up to now only the paintborer was available for paint thickness measurements on CFRP: destructively and time consuming. Now, the microwave based paint thickness gauge FSC1 is available. This paper describes the use of the FSC1 in the repainting and the balancing by calculation process of the CFRP flight controls of a Boeing 737-800. Using the FSC1 reduced man hours and increased the measuring precision definitely when compared with the paintborer. The described advantages certainly also hold for a lot of other aircraft types.