Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhanced Labeling Techniques to Study the Cytoskeleton During Root Growth and Gravitropism

Gravity effects the growth and development of all living organisms. One of the most obvious manifestations of gravity's effects on biological systems lies in the ability of plants to direct their growth along a path that is dictated by the gravity vector (called gravitropism). When positioned horizontally, in florescence stems and hypocotyls in dicots, and pulvini in monocots, respond by bending upward whereas roots typically bend downward. Gravitropism allows plants to readjust their growth to maximize light absorption for photosynthesis and to more efficiently acquire water and nutrients form the soil. Despite its significance for plant survival, there are still major gaps in understanding the cellular and molecular processes by which plants respond to gravity. The major aim of this proposal was to develop improved fluorescence labeling techniques to aid in understanding how the cytoskeleton modulated plant responses to gravity.
From Noise-Shaped Coding to Energy Efficiency - One bit at the time

Three parameters that drive the research and development of future RF transmitter technologies for high speed wireless communication today are energy efficiency, flexibility and reduction of the physical footprint. This thesis treats the use of single-bit quantization in conjunction with a method called Noise-Shaped Coding (NSC), as an enabler for these parameters, foremost in terms of energy efficiency. The first part of the thesis provides a short introduction to the common Radio Frequency Power Amplifier (RFPA) power efficiency enhancement techniques. The pulsed RF transmitter is introduced in which the RFPA is used as a switch, modulated by a single-bit quantized signal which allows it to operate solely at its two most efficient states. The second part of the thesis provides an introduction to the concept of NSC and the underlying idea of how high signal quality can be achieved with one bit quantization of the signal amplitude. A particular method of implementing NSC, namely the ΣΔ-modulator, is introduced and some common methods for design and analysis are discussed. An optimization-based approach to ΣΔ-modulator design is proposed and benchmarked against conventional methods in terms of its ability to shape the power spectral density of the quantization noise according to a given reconstruction filter response, minimizing the reconstructed error metric. The third and final part of the thesis focuses specifically on the application of ΣΔ-modulation in a pulsed RF transmitter context. The concepts of band-pass and baseband ΣΔ-modulation are introduced. A few important challenges related to the use of ΣΔ-modulation in a pulsed RF-transmitter context are identified. A ΣΔ-modulator topology which handles a complex input signal is investigated in great detail and advantages compared to conventional methods for using ΣΔ-modulation are unveiled by means of theoretical analysis and simulations. A method for suppressing the quantization noise within a frequency band surrounding the modulated RF carrier, enabling the use of more wideband reconstruction filter and moderate pulse-rates, is also presented. A detailed theoretical analysis reveals how optimized Noise-Shaped Coding, as provided by the optimization method introduced in the second part, can be deployed in order to improve the system performance. Finally, the method is validated by experimental measurements on two different high efficiency RFPAs at 1 and 3.5 GHz respectively, showing promising results.
DIFFICULT MASK VENTILATION

Mask ventilation (MV) is an integral skill for all anaesthetists. It forms the starting point of the majority of general anaesthetics and more importantly, it is an essential fall-back technique for maintaining oxygenation during a failed or difficult intubation. Despite its importance, less attention is devoted to MV in research papers and textbooks, with a larger focus on difficult or failed intubation. All anaesthetists require the skill to mask ventilate but more importantly they require the knowledge of how to adjust their management options when faced with a difficult or impossible MV scenario. This tutorial will provide an overview of the definition, incidence, predictors and management of difficult MV. There are some clinical situations when MV is not desirable, such as immediately post trans-sphenoidal surgery, but discussion of these is not within the scope of this tutorial.
A Framework for Acceleration of CNN Training on Deeply-Pipelined FPGA Clusters with Work and Weight Load Balancing

To improve flexibility and energy efficiency of Convolutional Neural Networks, a number of cloud computing service providers–including Microsoft, Amazon, and Alibaba–are using FPGA-based CNN accelerators. However, the growing size and complexity of neural networks, coupled with communication and off-chip memory bottlenecks, make it increasingly difficult for multi-FPGA designs to achieve high resource utilization and performance, especially when training. In this work, we present new results for a scalable framework, FPDeep, which helps users efficiently map CNN training logic to multiple FPGAs and automatically generates the resulting RTL implementation. FPDeep is equipped with two mechanisms to facilitate high-performance and energy-efficient training. First, FPDeep improves DSP slice utilization across FPGAs by balancing workload using dedicated partition and mapping strategies. Second, only on-chip memory is used in the CONV layers: a) FPDeep balances CNN weight allocation among FPGAs to improve BRAM utilization; b) training of CNNs is executed in a fine-grained pipelined manner, minimizing the time features need to be cached while waiting for back-propagation leading to a reduced storage demand. We evaluate our framework by training AlexNet, VGG-16, and VGG-19. Experimental results show FPDeep has good scalability to a large number of FPGAs, with the limiting factor being the inter-FPGA bandwidth. With 6 transceivers per FPGA, FPDeep shows linearity up to 83 FPGAs. FPDeep provides, on average, 6.36x higher energy efficiency than GPU servers.
Formación de los precios de alquiler de viviendas en Machala (Ecuador): análisis mediante el método de precios hedónicos

In Ecuador, the housing prices have been rising sharply in recent years due to external and internal factors of the region. In this study, an analysis is performed on the real estate market in the city of Machala. The hedonic prices method was used to explain the setting of prices for rental housing for the year 2013. To cushion the problem of omitted variables a Correo electrónico: anzambra@espol.edu. ec http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.cesjef. 2015.10. 002 0210-0266/© 2015 Asociación Cuadernos de Economía. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L. U. Todos los derechos reservados. Document downloaded from http://www.elsevier. es/, day 28/08/2019. This copy is for personal use. Any transmission of this document by any media or format is strictly prohibited.
Duševné zdravie počas tehotenstva a po pôrode

Tehotenstvo a obdobie po porode predstavuju v živote ženy z hľadiska manifestacie dusevných poruch rizikove obdobie. K najcastejsie sa vyskytujucim porucham patri tokofobia, poporodna skleslosť, poporodna, resp. perinatalna depresia a poporodna psychoza. Etiologicky možno uvažovať aj o prvej manifestacii endogennej dusevnej poruchy alebo o relapse, ci dekompenzacii už v minulosti sa prejavujucej dusevnej poruchy. Napriek skutocnosti, že žena v danom obdobi pravidelne navstevuje ambulanciu lekara, psychicke ťažkosti zostavaju casto nediagnostikovane, co významne znižuje kvalitu života rodicky, negativne posobi na ďalsi priebeh poruchy a predstavuje rizikový faktor suicidalneho konania. Farmakoterapia v tehotenstve a laktacii ma tiež svoje obmedzenia, vždy je potrebne posudiť pomer benefitu a rizika, avsak nielen zo strany matky, ale aj vyvijajuceho sa dieťaťa.
Controlling congestion propagation in a connected vehicle environment with routing

This paper studies how Connected Vehicle (CV) routing can be leveraged to tame the propagation of congestion after the onset of an incident. To do so, the study focuses on an idealized one-way grid network with a homogenous demand pattern. Congestion propagation dynamics is first modeled analytically and simulated in Aimsun considering a scenario with non-adaptive agents. The results are then compared with a set of scenarios in which a percentage of the actors are CVs who communicate with a centralizer server that reports real-time information on the network state. This information is considered by the vehicles to expand the historic path choice set and repeatedly update their routing choices. The results show that CVs can drastically decrease congestion and improve its dissipation, even at low penetration rate values. The study shows that the CV technology in combination with collaborative routing algorithms can bring substantial benefits to urban mobility in a context of spatial scarcity for the private vehicle.
THE ENVIRONMENT AND DISTRIBUTION OF EMITTING ELECTRONS AS A FUNCTION OF SOURCE ACTIVITY IN MARKARIAN 421

For the high-frequency-peaked BL Lac object Mrk 421, we study the variation of the spectral energy distribution (SED) as a function of source activity, from quiescent to active. We use a fully automatized χ2-minimization procedure, instead of the “eyeball” procedure more commonly used in the literature, to model nine SED data sets with a one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model and examine how the model parameters vary with source activity. The latter issue can finally be addressed now, because simultaneous broadband SEDs (spanning from optical to very high energy photon) have finally become available. Our results suggest that in Mrk 421 the magnetic field (B) decreases with source activity, whereas the electron spectrum's break energy (γbr) and the Doppler factor (δ) increase—the other SSC parameters turn out to be uncorrelated with source activity. In the SSC framework, these results are interpreted in a picture where the synchrotron power and peak frequency remain constant with varying source activity, through a combination of decreasing magnetic field and increasing number density of γ ⩽ γbr electrons: since this leads to an increased electron–photon scattering efficiency, the resulting Compton power increases, and so does the total (= synchrotron plus Compton) emission.
Antimicrobial activity of biogenic silver nanoparticles synthesized using Tridax procumbens L.

Resistance emergency has necessitated continuous search for drugs with least toxicity, effective, affordable and eco-friendly which possess new mode of action to cater the rising emergency. In this study, T. procumbens was used for biogenic synthesis of silver nanoparticles and investigated for antibacterial and antifungal activity. Characterization was done by UV-Vis spectrum, SEM, XRD, EDAX and FTIR. The UV-vis spectrum max was observed at 452 nm. EDAX AgNPs revealed total yield of 96.7% with 100 % purity, whilst SEM and XRD revealed spherical and elongated shape with an average grain size of 3.973 nm. FTIR examination provided evidence for presence of primary amides, aromatic ketones and aliphatic amines groups that could be responsible for synthesis and stability of the synthesized silver nanoparticles. Bio potential analysis of the synthesized biogenic silver nanoparticles showed antimicrobial activity against the twelve human and fish pathogens tested with 10 mm zone of inhibition and among the eight fungal strains involved in this study, Penicillium restrictum MTCC 3391 and Trichoderma virens MTCC 794 recorded inhibition. The findings recommend the use of T. procumbens, a weed plant for biogenic nanoparticle production and can be applied as antimicrobial agent. Isolation and identification of the molecules acting as stabilizers and reducing agents is the scope of further research.
Diet-sensitive prognostic markers for cardiovascular and renal disease

Diet plays a relevant role in the development and progression of lifestyle-related diseases like hypertension and type 2 diabetes and the subsequent risk of cardiovascular and renal disease. Riphagen used several diet-sensitive biomarkers to further explore the effects of diet on cardiovascular and renal health. Lifestyle measures including dietary sodium restriction and increased potassium intake are recognized to lower blood pressure. Increased potassium intake during sodium restriction, however, was found to have little effect on blood pressure. Riphagen investigated the effects of potassium supplementation on blood pressure and fluid balance in 35 (pre)hypertensive subjects during a fully controlled sodium-restricted diet using a panel of biomarkers. Potassium supplementation was found to have a relatively small blood pressure-lowering effect during sodium restriction. The blood pressure-lowering effects seemed mitigated by activation of several counter regulatory mechanisms involved in regulation of fluid balance and blood pressure (i.e., vasopressin, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system [RAAS], and heart rate). Vascular calcification is also an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Matrix Gla protein (MGP) is a vitamin K-dependent inhibitor of soft tissue calcification. During vitamin K insufficiency, MGP is inactive. Riphagen investigated the prevalence of vitamin K insufficiency and its health consequences through measurement of inactive MGP in a general population-based cohort. Vitamin K insufficiency was found to be a common phenomenon especially among elderly and subjects with chronic diseases and was associated with an increased (cardiovascular) mortality risk. Diet-sensitive biomarkers are a useful tool to further explore the effects of diet on cardiovascular and renal health.
Orientation Dependence of White Matter T 2 * Contrast at 7 T : A Direct Demonstration

Recently a great deal of interest at fields of 7T or more has been high resolution T2 -weighted images [1,2]. A FLASH-like sequence [3] can easily generate very high resolution (e.g. 0.2x0.2x1.0mm voxels) images in a reasonable time frame (<10 minutes), with relatively low distortion and SAR load. An impressive level of structure can be seen, not just due to the resolution but also because of increased contrast between tissues, especially around blood vessels. However, as explored by Li and colleagues [4], there is also considerable contrast in white matter areas that is not properly understood. Li suggests various contrast mechanisms including differences in iron concentration and/or organization/orientation, variation in myelin density, and variation in density and orientation of venous micro-vascular elements. This study attempts to directly address the question of possible orientation components to the contrast.
ETECTION OF P HISHING T WEETS

Twitter is an immensely popular social networking site and micro blogging service where people post short messages of 140 characters called tweets. Phishers have started using Twitter as a medium to spread phishing scams because of the fast spread of information. We deployed our system for end users by providing an easy to use “Web framework” which takes the tweet id and the specific keyword, and in return it will give tweets indicating legitimate or unsafe. We have a green background indicating a legitimate or safe URL and red symbols indicating the malicious or phishing URL with the help of APIs and machine learning algorithm.
A prosodic account of Italian exclamative sentences: a gating test

This study investigates the intonation of Bari exclamative sentences. In this Southern variety of Italian, the prosodic features of non-wh exclamatives and broad focus statements have been studied in both production and perception. By means of a gating experiment, stimuli of partial or complete utterances were presented to listeners in order to verify the melodic differences between sentence minimal pairs, i.e. exclamative vs. assertive. Results obtained with listeners suggest that the initial f0 pattern has a very strong effect on the perception of exclamatives.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF HALOS WITH DIFFERENT MASS RATIOS TO THE OVERALL GROWTH OF CLUSTER-SIZED HALOS

We provide a new observational test for a key prediction of the ΛCDM cosmological model: the contributions of mergers with different halo-to-main-cluster mass ratios to cluster-sized halo growth. We perform this test by dynamically analyzing 7 galaxy clusters, spanning the redshift range 0.13 < zc < 0.45 and caustic mass range 0.4–1.5 M☉, with an average of 293 spectroscopically confirmed bound galaxies to each cluster. The large radial coverage (a few virial radii), which covers the whole infall region, with a high number of spectroscopically identified galaxies enables this new study. For each cluster, we identify bound galaxies. Out of these galaxies, we identify infalling and accreted halos and estimate their masses and their dynamical states. Using the estimated masses, we derive the contribution of different mass ratios to cluster-sized halo growth. For mass ratios between ∼0.2 and ∼0.7, we find a ∼1σ agreement with ΛCDM expectations based on the Millennium simulations I and II. At low mass ratios, ≲ 0.2, our derived contribution is underestimated since the detection efficiency decreases at low masses, ∼2 × 1014 M☉. At large mass ratios, ≳ 0.7, we do not detect halos probably because our sample, which was chosen to be quite X-ray relaxed, is biased against large mass ratios. Therefore, at large mass ratios, the derived contribution is also underestimated.
Directions for Big Data Graph Analytics Research

In the era of big data, interest in analysis and extraction of information from massive data graphs is increasing rapidly. This paper examines the field of graph analytics from a query processing point of view. Whether it be determination of shortest paths or finding patterns in a data graph matching a query graph, the issue is to find interesting characteristics or information content from graphs. Many of the associated problems can be abstracted to problems on paths or problems on patterns. Unfortunately, seemingly simple problems, such as finding patterns in a data graph matching a query graph are surprisingly difficult (e.g., dual simulation has cubic complexity and subgraph isomorphism is NP-hard). In addition, the iterative nature of algorithms in this field makes the simple MapReduce style of parallel and distributed processing less effective. Still, the need to provide answers even for very large graphs is driving the research. Progress, trends and directions for future research are presented.
Light scattering control with neural networks in transmission and reflection

Scattering often limits the controlled delivery of light in applications such as biomedical imaging, optogenetics, optical trapping, and fiber-optic communication or imaging. Such scattering can be controlled by appropriately shaping the light wavefront entering the material. Here, we demonstrate a machine-learning approach for light control. Using pairs of binary intensity patterns and intensity measurements we train neural networks (NNs) to provide the wavefront corrections necessary to shape the beam after the scatterer. Additionally, we demonstrate that NNs can be used to find a functional relationship between transmitted and reflected speckle patterns. As a proof of the validity of this relationship, we demonstrate focusing and scanning of light in transmission through opaque media using reflected light. Our approach demonstrates the versatility of NNs for light shaping and for efficiently and flexibly correcting for scattering. In particular, the feasibility of transmission control based on reflected light opens up new opportunities for applications in optical imaging, sensing, and light delivery.
Pollen analyses from a 50 000‐yr rodent midden series in the southern Atacama Desert (25° 30′ S)

Precipitation in northern Chile is controlled by two great wind belts—the southern westerlies over the southern Atacama and points south (> 24° S) and the tropical easterlies over the northern and central Atacama Desert (16–24° S). At the intersection of these summer and winter rainfall regimes, respectively, is a Mars‐like landscape consisting of expansive surfaces devoid of vegetation (i.e. absolute desert) except in canyons that originate high enough to experience runoff once every few years. Pollen assemblages from 39 fossil rodent middens in one of these canyons, Quebrada del Chaco (25° 30′ S), were used to infer the history of vegetation and precipitation at three elevations (2670–2800 m; 3100–3200 m; 3450–3500 m) over the past 50 000 years. When compared to modern conditions and fossil records to the north and south, the pollen evidence indicates more winter precipitation at > 52, 40–33, 24–17 k cal. yr BP, more precipitation in both seasons at 17–14 k cal. yr BP, and more summer precipitation from 14–11 k cal. yr BP. Younger middens are scarce at Quebrada del Chaco, and the few Holocene samples indicate hyperarid conditions comparable to today. The only exception is a pollen assemblage that indicates a brief but significant interlude of increased winter precipitation in the last millennium. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
OBSERVATIONS OF Arp 220 USING HERSCHEL-SPIRE: AN UNPRECEDENTED VIEW OF THE MOLECULAR GAS IN AN EXTREME STAR FORMATION ENVIRONMENT

We present Herschel Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver Fourier Transform Spectrometer (Herschel SPIRE-FTS) observations of Arp 220, a nearby ultra-luminous infrared galaxy. The FTS provides continuous spectral coverage from 190 to 670 μm, a wavelength region that is either very difficult to observe or completely inaccessible from the ground. The spectrum provides a good measurement of the continuum and detection of several molecular and atomic species. We detect luminous CO (J = 4–3 to 13–12) and water rotational transitions with comparable total luminosity ∼2 × 108 L☉; very high-J transitions of HCN (J = 12–11 to 17–16) in absorption; strong absorption features of rare species such as OH+, H2O+, and HF; and atomic lines of [C i] and [N ii]. The modeling of the continuum shows that the dust is warm, with T = 66 K, and has an unusually large optical depth, with τdust ∼ 5 at 100 μm. The total far-infrared luminosity of Arp 220 is LFIR ∼ 2 × 1012 L☉. Non-LTE modeling of the extinction corrected CO rotational transitions shows that the spectral line energy distribution of CO is fit well by two temperature components: cold molecular gas at T ∼ 50 K and warm molecular gas at T ∼ 1350+280 − 100 K (the inferred temperatures are much lower if CO line fluxes are not corrected for dust extinction). These two components are not in pressure equilibrium. The mass of the warm gas is 10% of the cold gas, but it dominates the CO luminosity. The ratio of total CO luminosity to the total FIR luminosity is LCO/LFIR ∼ 10−4 (the most luminous lines, such as J = 6–5, have LCO, J = 6–5/LFIR ∼ 10−5). The temperature of the warm gas is in excellent agreement with the observations of H2 rotational lines. At 1350 K, H2 dominates the cooling (∼20 L☉ M−1☉) in the interstellar medium compared to CO (∼0.4 L☉ M−1☉). We have ruled out photodissociation regions, X-ray-dominated regions, and cosmic rays as likely sources of excitation of this warm molecular gas, and found that only a non-ionizing source can heat this gas; the mechanical energy from supernovae and stellar winds is able to satisfy the large energy budget of ∼20 L☉ M−1☉. Analysis of the very high-J lines of HCN strongly indicates that they are solely populated by infrared pumping of photons at 14 μm. This mechanism requires an intense radiation field with T > 350 K. We detect a massive molecular outflow in Arp 220 from the analysis of strong P Cygni line profiles observed in OH+, H2O+, and H2O. The outflow has a mass ≳ 107 M☉ and is bound to the nuclei with velocity ≲ 250 km s−1. The large column densities observed for these molecular ions strongly favor the existence of an X-ray luminous AGN (1044 erg s−1) in Arp 220.