Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Authenticity of Ecuadorian Commercial Honeys

: Control of honey frauds is needed in Ecuador to protect bee keepers and consumers because simple syrups and new syrups with eucalyptus are sold as genuine honeys. Authenticity of Ecuadorian commercial honeys was tested with a vortex emulsion consisting on one volume of honey:water (1:1) dilution, and two volumes of diethyl ether. This method allows a separation of phases in one minute to discriminate genuine honeys that form three phase and fake honeys that form two phases; 34 of the 42 honeys analyzed from five provinces of Ecuador were genuine. This was confirmed with 1H NMR spectra of honey dilutions in deuterated water with an enhanced aminoacid region with signals for proline, phenylalanine and tyrosine. Classic quality indicators were also tested with this method (sugars, HMF), indicators of fermentation (ethanol, acetic acid), and residues of citric acid used in the syrup manufacture. One of the honeys gave a false positive for genuine, being an admixture of genuine honey with added syrup, evident for the high sucrose. Sensory analysis was the final confirmation to recognize the honey groups studied here, namely honey produced in combs by Apis mellifera, fake honey, and honey produced in cerumen pots by Geotrigona, Melipona, and Scaptotrigona. This is a valuable contribution to protect honey consumers, and to develop the beekeeping industry in Ecuador.
Endothelial Cells in Endogenous and Transplanted Pancreatic Islets: Differences in the Expression of Angiogenic Peptides and Receptors

Background/Aims: An important reason for the large amount of islets required for successful islet transplantation is likely to be inadequate engraftment of the transplanted islets. Thus, the revascularization is of major importance for graft survival. In order to study the expression of angiogenic peptides and receptors on islet endothelial cells (EC), we needed methods giving access to such endothelium. Therefore, we developed methods to isolate EC from islets transplanted intraportally or beneath the kidney capsule. Methods: Pancreatic islets were isolated, cultured and syngeneically transplanted into the liver or beneath the kidney capsule of C57BL/6 mice. One month post-transplantation, the islets were retrieved and EC from these islets were explanted. EC were also collected from freshly isolated and cultured non-transplanted islets. The EC were purified with Dynabeads and identified with immunocytochemistry. Angiogenesis GEArray technology was used to study angiogenic gene expression. Results: Several angiogenic genes were expressed in EC; e.g. endostatin, pigment-epithelial derived factor, vascular endothelial growth factor and angiopoietin-2, and their expression were affected by culture. Conclusion: The expression of angiogenesis-related genes in islet EC from non-transplanted islets is affected by culture. Moreover, we also describe a technique, which makes it possible to obtain EC from transplanted islets.
Measuring General Aviation Pilot Judgment Using a Situational Judgment Technique

This paper reports on 2 studies that were conducted to develop and to evaluate a situational judgment test (SJT) for general aviation (GA) pilots. An initial 51-item test was constructed in which each item described an in-flight situation that required a decision on the part of the pilot and 4 alternative solutions to the situation. Subject matter experts were used to generate a scoring key from the alternatives that the experts recommended for a typical GA pilot. In Study 1, the test was administered in paper-and-pencil format to 246 participants. Results from that first study showed that the test had acceptable psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency and distribution. In Study 2, the test was administered to 467 participants over the Internet. Analyses resulted in the reduction of the test to 39 items, with an internal consistency reliability (coefficient alpha) of . 747. Construct validation was accomplished through correlation with a measure of the number of times the participant had been involved in an accident or other hazardous aviation event. Pilots who had higher (better) scores on the SJT were found to have experienced fewer hazardous events, which was taken as supporting the construct validity of the test. Evaluation of mode of administration (paper-and-pencil vs. Internet) showed that the 2 forms were equivalent. These results suggest that the SJT has potential for use in the assessment of judgment or aeronautical decision making by GA pilots, and might be useful in the evaluation of training. The implications of the findings, regarding equivalence of the 2 administration formats, are discussed.
Nonlinear optimal perturbations in a Couette flow: bursting and transition

Abstract This paper provides the analysis of bursting and transition to turbulence in a Couette flow, based on the growth of nonlinear optimal disturbances. We use a global variational procedure to identify such optimal disturbances, defined as those initial perturbations yielding the largest energy growth at a given target time, for given Reynolds number and initial energy. The nonlinear optimal disturbances are found to be characterized by a basic structure, composed of inclined streamwise vortices along localized regions of low and high momentum. This basic structure closely recalls that found in boundary-layer flow (Cherubini et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 689, 2011, pp. 221–253), indicating that this structure may be considered the most ‘energetic’ one at short target times. However, small differences in the shape of these optimal perturbations, due to different levels of the initial energy or target time assigned in the optimization process, may produce remarkable differences in their evolution towards turbulence. In particular, direct numerical simulations have shown that optimal disturbances obtained for large initial energies and target times induce bursting events, whereas for lower values of these parameters the flow is directly attracted towards the turbulent state. For this reason, the optimal disturbances have been classified into two classes, the highly dissipative and the short-path perturbations. Both classes lead the flow to turbulence, skipping the phases of streak formation and secondary instability which are typical of the classical transition scenario for shear flows. The dynamics of this transition scenario exploits three main features of the nonlinear optimal disturbances: (i) the large initial value of the streamwise velocity component; (ii) the streamwise dependence of the disturbance; (iii) the presence of initial inclined streamwise vortices. The short-path perturbations are found to spend a considerable amount of time in the vicinity of the edge state (Schneider et al., Phys. Rev. E, vol. 78, 2008, 037301), whereas the highly dissipative optimal disturbances pass closer to the edge, but they are rapidly repelled away from it, leading the flow to high values of the dissipation rate. After this dissipation peak, the trajectories do not lead towards the turbulent attractor, but they spend some time in the vicinity of an unstable periodic orbit (UPO). This behaviour led us to conjecture that bursting events can be obtained not only as homoclinic orbits approaching the UPO, as recently found by van Veen & Kawahara (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 107, 2011, p. 114501), but also as heteroclinic orbits between the equilibrium solution on the edge and the UPO.
Spark-SIFT: A Spark-Based Large-Scale Image Feature Extract System

The feature extraction is critical step in the image processing, with the popularity of the content-based image retrieval, how to extract the feature of the big-scale images quickly is become the very important and significant. In many big data dealing frameworks, spark is a memory based data processing framework with obvious advantages over processing speed. In this paper, we design a large-scale image feature extract framework based in spark. The framework contains three part,1) the base interface of image processing, 2) the sift algorithm in the spark. 3) The sequence of images. The problem of load unbalance will happened when the sizes of images to deal have wide difference, so to solve this problem, we propose the segmentationimage feature extract algorithm in the spark. In the algorithm, the big image is segmented to several parts for the more fast dealing speed. The experiment shows the framework has well speed compared with the single. When dealing the images which sizes is 4g in 7 machine, the speed reaches about 19.5. The segmentation-image feature extraction algorithm improves speed by 7.8 times when dealing 480M image set.
Stable Isotope Probing Links Taxonomy with Function in Microbial Communities Microbial ecologists have a culture-independent means for analyzing sources of metabolic activities among complex mixtures of microbes

S table isotope probing (SIP) is proving to be a powerful tool for molecular microbial ecologists, providing a culture-independent means of investigating populations that conduct particular metabolic processes in specific environments. Moreover, this alternative means for linking taxonomic identity with function may also assist microbiologists in developing strategies for isolating elusive microorganisms that are involved in biogeochemical processes. One approach relies on density gradient centrifugation to separate organisms on the basis of having different guanidine-cytosine (GC) contents. Furthermore, with steadily increasing availability of C-enriched substrates and the potential of using other isotopes such as N, microbial ecologists can now address challenging questions surrounding natural processes.
3D printed multi-channel EEG sensors for zebrafish

Electroencephalography (EEG) is being widely used to study cognitive and brain functions in epilepsy and other neurological diseases. Also, zebrafish is becoming a popular animal model to be used in biological in vivo tests, because of its cost effectiveness, genetic accessibility, and experimental accessibility. However, multichannel EEG signals have not been measured from zebrafish due to technical limitations. Only single-channel data from zebrafish brain is being measured, but it uses invasive methods, which induce unnecessary artifacts. Also, recently, 3D printing techniques have been becoming popular, and can provide cheaper and faster fabrication steps than traditional fabrication techniques such as MEMS. Therefore, in this study, we introduce a noninvasive multichannel EEG recording system that implements the 3D printing technique to record signals from underwater animals such as zebrafish. With the developed EEG sensors, EEG signals from the cranial area of zebrafish were successfully acquired. The capability to non-invasively measure multi-channel EEG signals from zebrafish can provide great opportunity in studying neurological diseases.
APPLICATION OF MODEL REDUCTION FOR MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL

Abstract In this paper model reduction methods are used to obtain a nonlinear process model for designing a model predictive controller (MPC). The corresponding controller and its closed-loop response is then compared with controllers that are determined from the original model and a linearized version of this model. The reduced dimensional nonlinear MPC controller performs almost as well as the nonlinear MPC controller that is based on the original model and considerably better than the linear MPC controller.
Cell‐surface Notch1 expression identifies a primitive phenotype within CD34+CD38− haematopoietic cells

Notch signalling has been implicated in haematopoietic stem cell self‐renewal. Although several studies have tested the effect of activating or inhibiting the Notch signalling pathway in stem cells, no study has yet determined the functional differences associated with expressing Notch1. The aims of this study were to characterise the expression of human cell‐surface Notch1 in cord blood (CB) CD34+ cells and to study the function of Notch in CD34+ cells in vitro.
Potential role of NADH oxidoreductase-derived reactive O2 species in calf pulmonary arterial PO2-elicited responses.

Our laboratory has previously reported evidence that tone responses of isolated endothelium-removed calf pulmonary arteries elicited by changes in PO2 appear to be mediated via changes in H2O2 and guanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate, and that the PO2 sensor mechanism is hypothesized to involve changes in superoxide anion (O2-.) production by a microsomal NADH-oxidoreductase, which is the major source of O2-. detected by lucigenin-elicited chemiluminescence (CL) in this tissue. In this study we examined if the flavoprotein-directed inhibitor of O2-. producing NAD(P)H oxidoreductases, diphenyliodonium (DPI), could be employed as an inhibitor of O2-. production by NADH oxidoreductase, which functions as a selective probe for PO2-elicited tone responses in calf pulmonary arterial smooth muscle. It was found that 1 microM DPI inhibited NADH-dependent production of CL in the arterial smooth muscle homogenate by 49% (n = 10). DPI reduced basal CL from endothelium-removed pulmonary arteries by 41% (n = 15). In endothelium-removed pulmonary arteries precontracted with U-46619, the hypoxic contraction of 2.3 +/- 0.5 g was reduced to 0.1 +/- 0.4 g (n = 7) by DPI, and the reoxygenation relaxation of 32.7 +/- 7.5% was decreased to 4.4 +/- 1.4% (n = 7). DPI did not have any significant effect on U-46619- or K(+)-elicited tone generation. DPI also did not alter the relaxation to H2O2 (1 microM-0.1 mM, n = 6), nitric oxide (0.42 nM-420 nM, n = 12), or isoproterenol (1 nM-1 microM, n = 6). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Characterization of striatal activity in conscious rats: Contribution of NMDA and AMPA/kainate receptors to both spontaneous and glutamate‐driven firing

Single‐unit activity in the striatum of unrestrained, conscious rats was characterized by extracellular recording in combination with iontophoresis. To avoid the confounding effect of motor‐related changes in firing rate, measurements were restricted to periods when animals were at quiet rest. Recording electrodes were lowered stepwise through 4.0 mm of anterior striatum in 36 equal ventral movements of 111 μm to assess the ratio of spontaneously active vs. silent neurons. Spontaneous activity was assessed at each step followed by iontophoretic glutamate (GLU) application to expose silent neurons. Eleven such experimental sessions resulted in a total of 100 spontaneously active and 264 silent neurons, indicating that without overt movement the large majority (72.7%) of striatal cells are silent. Spontaneously active neurons, moreover, discharged at low rates (4.85 ± 0.85 spikes/s). In separate experiments, both the AMPA/kainate (CNQX: 6‐cyano‐2,3‐dihydroxy‐7‐nitro‐quinoxaline disodium salt) and NMDA (AP5: D‐(‐)‐2‐amino‐5‐phosphonovaleric acid) GLU‐receptor antagonists blocked the activity of most spontaneously active (83% CNQX, 69% AP5), and GLU‐stimulated silent (68% CNQX, 98% AP5) units. Collectively, our results are consistent with an overall low level of striatal activity in the absence of strong excitatory input. When neuronal activity is initiated, however, it appears that both NMDA and AMPA/kainate receptors are critical for maintaining continuous impulse activity. Synapse 47:91–100, 2003. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Growth, Cell Division, and Fragmentation in a Species of Flexibacter

Flexibacter FS-1, a gram-negative gliding bacterium was grown in liquid culture as long (over 100-μm) filaments. The filaments possessed a triple-track wall which resembled that found in other gram-negative bacteria. Although phase-contrast microscopy indicated that the long filaments were nonseptate, electron microscopy revealed three or four septa along the length of each filament. The septa contained lysozyme-sensitive, electron-opaque material, presumed to be peptidoglycan, sandwiched between cell membranes. The outer triple track wall was not part of the septum. Mesosomes were seen in various areas of the cell and frequently were observed attached to septa in different stages of completion. Studies of the organism in slide culture revealed that individual filaments grew in an exponential fashion and divided in the middle despite the long length and multiseptate condition. When the temperature of a liquid culture growing exponentially with a generation time of 90 minutes was shifted from 30 to 35 C, the filaments fragmented into three or four shorter cells within 120 min. The short cells continued to grow exponentially at 35 C at approximately the same rate as at 30 C. When the culture was shifted back to 30 C, the cells immediately stopped dividing and began to elongate. After a period of 2 to 3 hr, cell division resumed. It is suggested that the shift-up in temperature induced the completion of the cross wall (centripetal growth of the triple-track wall) and cell separation at the sites of previously formed septa, whereas the shift-down in temperature caused a transient inhibition of cross-wall formation but not of growth. Fragmentation was inhibited by sodium azide but took place despite the inhibition of protein synthesis by chloramphenicol or the inhibition of deoxyribonucleic acid synthesis by mitomycin C.
Batch, incremental and instantaneous adaptation techniques for speech recognition

We present a framework for maximum a posteriori adaptation of large scale HMM speech recognizers. In this framework, we introduce mechanisms that take advantage of correlations present among HMM parameters in order to maximize the number of parameters that can be adapted by a limited number of observations. We are also separately exploring the feasibility of instantaneous adaptation techniques. Instantaneous adaptation attempts to improve recognition on a single sentence, the same sentence that is used to estimate the adaptation. We show that sizable gains (20-40% reduction in error rate) can be achieved by either batch or incremental adaptation for large vocabulary recognition of native speakers. The same techniques cut the error rate for recognition of non-native speakers by factors of 2 to 4, bringing their performance much closer to the native speaker performance. We also demonstrate that good improvements in performance (25-30%) are realized when instantaneous adaptation is used for recognition of non-native speakers.
Shaping, invagination, and closure of the chick embryo otic vesicle: Scanning electron microscopic and quantitative study

Scanning electron microscopy, light microscopy, and morphometric analysis were used to study the morphological changes of the otic placode and vesicle before and during invagination and closure processes. Our results reveal that the otic placode undergoes shaping between stages HH9 and HH12; during this period the rostrocaudal axis is shortened, while the lateromedial axis of the placode lengthens. The presence of long cytokinesis bridges during this period suggests that cellular displacements after mitosis may participate in the shaping of the otic placode. The shaping process appears to facilitate the approach of the otic placode to the neural tube. From stage HH12 on, the otic anlage gradually becomes a U‐shaped structure with its medial portion in intimate apposition to the rhombencephalic neural tube. The coincidence in time between the beginning of intimate otic anlage–rhombencephalon contact and active invagination suggests that these two processes are related.
A method to estimate activation energy of power transformer insulation using time domain spectroscopy data

This paper presents a novel technique to estimate activation energy of oil-paper insulation in power transformer from time domain spectroscopy recoded at any given temperature. Existing literatures show that, remaining life of transformer insulation can be estimated if the information regarding its activation energy can be obtained. The activation energy of transformer insulation can be obtained based on its frequency spectrum measured at two different temperatures. However, it is quite difficult to record the frequency spectrum at two different temperatures for the transformers which are operating in the field. Considering the aforesaid difficulty, in the present work, a technique is adopted that can evaluate the activation energy of transformer insulation based on the time domain spectroscopy data recorded at a temperature. In order to investigate the effectiveness, the proposed technique is applied to a test sample having preset moisture content to estimate its activation energy. The estimated activation energy using the proposed technique, is validated with the results obtained using other existing technique. The proposed technique is then applied to several real-life power transformers to estimate their corresponding activation energy. The estimated activation energy for the transformers is used to assess their remaining life.
TNFR-Associated Factor 6 Regulates TCR Signaling via Interaction with and Modification of LAT Adapter

TNFR-associated factor (TRAF)6 is an essential ubiquitin E3 ligase in immune responses, but its function in adaptive immunity is not well understood. In this study, we show that TRAF6 is recruited to the peripheral ring of the T cell immunological synapse in Jurkat T cells or human primary CD4+ T cells conjugated with staphylococcal enterotoxin E–pulsed B cells. This recruitment depends on TRAF6 interacting with linker for activation of T cells (LAT) via its TRAF domain. Although LAT was indispensable for TCR/CD28-induced TRAF6 ubiquitination and its ligase activity, RNA interference–induced TRAF6 knockdown in T cells decreased TCR/CD28-induced LAT ubiquitination, tyrosine phosphorylation, and association with tyrosine kinase ZAP70. Overexpression of TRAF6 or its catalytically inactive form C70A promoted and decreased, respectively, LAT tyrosine phosphorylation upon stimulation. Moreover, LAT was ubiquitinated at Lys88 by TRAF6 via K63-linked chain. In addition, TRAF6 was required for and synergized with LAT to promote the TCR/CD28-induced activation of NFAT. These results reveal a novel function and mechanism of TRAF6 action in the TCR–LAT signaling pathway distinct from its role in TCR-induced NF-κB activation, indicating that LAT also plays an adapter role in TCR/CD28-induced activation of TRAF6.
Non‐uniform assembly of the Bacillus anthracis exosporium and a bottle cap model for spore germination and outgrowth

Spores of Bacillus anthracis are enclosed by an exosporium composed of a basal layer and an external hair‐like nap. The nap is formed by a collagen‐like glycoprotein called BclA, while the basal layer contains many different proteins, one of which is a spore‐specific alanine racemase (Alr). In this study, we employed fluorescence microscopy and a fluorescently labelled anti‐Alr monoclonal antibody (mAb) to examine the distribution of Alr within the exosporium. Binding of the mAb occurred over approximately three‐quarters of the exosporium but not in a cap‐like region at one end of the spore, indicating the absence or inaccessibility of Alr in this region. We also determined that the cap‐like region, or cap, corresponds to the first part of the exosporium assembled within the mother cell during sporulation and the only part of the exosporium assembled in a ΔexsY mutant strain of B. anthracis. Our results provide the first direct evidence that exosporium assembly is a non‐uniform process and suggest that exosporium formation is discontinuous. Finally, we demonstrated that during spore germination and outgrowth, the outgrowing cell always escapes from its exosporium shell by popping through the cap, suggesting that the cap is designed to facilitate the emergence of the outgrowing cell.