Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gap junctional coupling with cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes induces the cardiomyogenic differentiation of fetal human mesenchymal stem cells

Rationale: Gap junctional coupling is important for functional integration of transplanted cells with host myocardium. However, the role of gap junctions in cardiomyogenic differentiation of such cells has not been directly investigated. Objective: To study the role of Cx43 in cardiomyogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). Methods: Knockdown of Cx43 was established in Cx43-rich fetal amniotic membrane hMSCs (Cx43 ↓ fetal AM hMSCs), while Cx43 was overexpressed in Cx43-poor adult adipose tissue hMSCs (Cx43 ↑ adult AT hMSCs). The hMSCs were exposed to cardiomyogenic stimuli by co-incubation with neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (nrCMCs) for 10 days. Differentiation was assessed by immunostaining and whole-cell current-clamping. To establish whether the effects of Cx43 knockdown could be reversed, Cx45 was overexpressed in Cx43 ↓ fetal AM hMSCs. Results: Ten days after co-incubation not a single Cx43 ↓ fetal AM hMSC or adult AT MSC expressed α -actinin, while control fetal AM hMSCs did (2.18 ± 0.39 % , n=5,000). Moreover, functional cardiomyogenic differentiation, based on action potential recordings, occurred only in control fetal AM hMSCs. Cx45 overexpression in Cx43 ↓ fetal AM hMSCs restored their ability to undergo cardiomyogenesis. Conclusion: Cx43 and in their absence Cx45 is required for transdifferentiation of fetal AM hMSCs into functional cardiomyocytes after co-incubation with nrCMCs. However, Cx43 overexpression does not endow adult AT hMSCs with the capacity to differentiate into cardiomyocytes in co-culture with nrCMCs. Heterocellular gap junctional coupling thus plays an important role in the transfer of cardiomyogenic signals from nrCMCs to hMSCs but is not sufﬁcient to induce cardiomyogenic differentiation in adult AT hMSCs. em-bedded so-called hemichannels or connexons. Gap junctions permit the bidirectional passage of small molecules and ions between cells and are thus able to regulate both physiological and pathophysiologi-cal processes. Data was analyzed by Student’s t -test for direct comparisons. Analysis of variance followed by appropriate post-hoc analysis was performed for multiple comparisons. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS 16.0 for Windows (SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA). Differences were considered statistically signiﬁcant at P<0.05.
End – to – End Secure Data Delivery in Wireless Sensor Networks

— Typical sensor nodes are resource constrained devices containing user level applications, operating system components, and device drivers in a single address space, with no form of memory protection. A malicious user could easily capture a node and tamper the applications running on it, in order to perform different types of attacks. In this paper, we propose a 3-Tier Security Framework composed by physical security schemes, cryptography of communication channels and live forensics protection techniques that allows for secure WSN deployments. Each of the abovementioned techniques maximizes the security levels leading to a tamper proof sensor node. Even if the physical protection of the nodes is bypassed which is common in wireless sensor attacks, the attacker must surpass 2 more security tiers in order to perform a valid attack on the underlying network. By applying the proposed security framework, secure communication between nodes is guaranteed, identified captured nodes are silenced and their destructive effect on the rest of the network infrastructure is minimized due to the early measures applied. Our main concern is to propose a framework that balances its attributes between robustness, as long as security is concerned and cost effective implementation as far as resources (energy consumption) are concerned.
Impact of Exchange Rate Devaluation in Ethiopia and Forecasting Foreign Exchange Rate Using ARIMA Model

The exchange rate is an important indicator of economic activity that policymakers use to formulate policies. This paper is based on fitting historical nominal exchange rate time series expressed in terms of past values of itself plus current and lagged values of error term using the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model over the period 1971-2020, resulting in the model (2,1,1) to forecast the next 15 years. The projection's performance is assessed using data from the preceding fifty years sourced from World Bank, and the forecast indicates that domestic currency depreciation will become more prevalent in order to stimulate exports. Moreover, the ARDL model is used to examine the impact of exchange rate, import, export, and inflation rate on RGDP from 1977 to 2018. The unit root test (Augmented Dickey- Fuller test) was used to verify the integration order of the variables. The five variables are used in the cointegration analysis. The bounds test of cointegration was used in this work. The results showed that the F-statistics value is greater than the upper boundaries at all levels of significance, indicating that individual variables have a long-term relationship with RGDP. This led to the estimation of the Error Correction Model (ECM), in which 25.1 percent of the disequilibrium is adjusted annually to bring the system back into equilibrium. Furthermore, nominal exchange rate and import has positive contribution to RGDP while inflation has adverse effect on RGDP in the long-run. Besides, inflation has a negative impact to RGDP in the short run due to its lag period effects.
Do emotional difficulties and peer problems hew together from childhood to adolescence? The case of with a history of developmental language disorder

Children and adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) are, overall, vulnerable to difficulties in emotional adjustment and in peer relations. However, previous research has shown that different subgroups follow different trajectories in respect of quality of peer relations. Less is known of the trajectories of emotional development. We consider here the possibility that development in these two domains is interrelated: that is, the trajectories of emotional and peer problems will proceed in parallel. We conducted longitudinal joint trajectories analyses of emotional and peer relations in a sample of young people identified as having DLD at age 7 years and seen at intervals up to 16 years. Potential influences on joint trajectory group membership were examined. Findings revealed five distinct joint trajectories. Emotional and peer difficulties do hew together from childhood to adolescence for just over half of the sample, but not all. The variables most clearly associated with group membership were pragmatic language ability, prosociality and parental mental health. This is the first study to examine joint longitudinal trajectories of emotional and peer difficulties in individuals with DLD. We demonstrate that development in individuals with DLD is heterogeneous and identify three key variables associated with personal and social adjustment from childhood to adolescence. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
Continental-scale temperature variability in PMIP3 simulations and PAGES 2k regional temperature reconstructions over the past millennium

Estimated external radiative forcings, model results, and proxy-based climate reconstructions have been used over the past several decades to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying observed climate variability and change over the past millennium. Here, the recent set of temperature reconstructions at the continental-scale generated by the PAGES 2k project and a collection of state-of-the-art model simulations driven by realistic external forcings are jointly analysed. The ﬁrst aim is to estimate the consistency between model results and reconstructions for each continental-scale region over the time and frequency domains. Secondly, the links between regions are in-vestigated to determine whether reconstructed global-scale covariability patterns are similar to those identiﬁed in model simulations. The third aim is to assess the role of external forcings in the observed temperature variations. From a large set of analyses, we conclude that models are in relatively good agreement with temperature reconstructions for Northern Hemisphere regions, particularly in the Arctic. This is likely due to the relatively large amplitude of the externally forced response across northern and high-latitude regions, which results in a clearly detectable signature in both reconstructions and simulations. Conversely, models disagree strongly with the reconstructions in the Southern Hemisphere. Furthermore, the simulations are more regionally co-herent than the reconstructions, perhaps due to an underestimation of the magnitude of internal variability in models or
Integrated likelihood for the treatment of nuisance parameters

In literature, several tools have been proposed to make inference about a parameter of interest ψ in presence of nuisance parameters. Among these, the integrated likelihood seems to gain popularity. Commonly used in Bayesian inference, the integrated likelihood has been recently studied also under the frequentist paradigm. We contribute to this analysis studying first its properties in presence of many nuisance parameters, and in particular in situations when the number of nuisance parameters increases with the sample size. In this setting, indeed, the usual inferential tools, based on the profile likelihood, may perform poorly, and the use of the integrated likelihood can be an alternative to higher order methods. In particular, we focus on the asymptotic behaviour of the signed square root integrated likelihood ratio statistic, studied in a two-index asymptotics setting, in which both the sample size and the dimension of the nuisance parameter increase to infinity. As a second topic of the thesis, when there is a sufficient statistic for the nuisance parameter, we study conditions of equivalence of integrated and conditional likelihoods. Finally, some efforts are done to study the effect of the presence of nuisance parameters on pairwise likelihood and on the related score function. A correction useful to reduce the profile pairwise score bias is presented.
Video Anti Forensic - A Review

- In the recent years the availability of the digital multimedia devices (such as cameras, mobile-phones, digital recorders, etc.) has increased rapidly. Digital photos have been widely used as historical records and as evidences of real happenings in applications from journalist reporting, police investigation, law enforcement, insurance, medical and dental examination, military
PVT-ROBUST ULTRA-LOW-JITER CLOCK MULTIPLIERS USING AN INJECTION-LOCKING TECHNIQUE

This thesis presents process-voltage-temperature (PVT)-robust ultra-low-jitter clock multipliers using an injection-locking technique. First, an injection-locked clock multiplier (ILCM) using a two-phase PVT-calibrator is proposed. The proposed PVT-calibration technique is based on the dual-loop architecture which consists of a main-voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and a replica-VCO. While the main-VCO is injection-locked and generates the precise target frequency, the real-time frequency variation of the replica-VCO can be monitored by the PVT-calibrator which adjusts the control voltage shared by the two identical VCOs. Using the two-phase calibration technique, the tradeoff between the calibration resolution and the lock time was removed. The proposed ILCM, fabricated in the 65-nm CMOS process, generated five different reference frequencies, i.e., 19.2, 28.8, 48.0, 57.6, and 96.0 MHz with a 19.2 MHz external clock. When injection-locked, the integrated jitter from 1 kHz to 10 MHz of the 96-MHz signal was 1.69 ps. The proposed PVT-calibrator restricted the phase noise degradation over the temperature range of 30 to 80 °C to less than 0.5 dB. Second, a fractional-resolution ILCM using a delay-locked-loop (DLL)-based PVT-calibrator is proposed. In this architecture, the ring-type VCO and the voltage-controlled delay line (VCDL) of the DLL consist of identical delay cells, and they share the same control voltage. Thus, by changing the ratio between the numbers of stages of the VCDL and the VCO, the frequency of the VCO can be calibrated at a target frequency, a non-integer times the reference frequency. The proposed ILCM, designed in the 65-nm CMOS process, generated output frequencies that range from 1.2 to 2.0 GHz with a frequency resolution of 40 MHz with a 400-MHz reference clock. When injection-locked, the integrated jitter from 1 kHz to 40 MHz of the 1.6-GHz signal was 440 fs. The proposed DLL-based PVT-calibrator restricted the degradations of phase noise and jitter over the temperature and the supply variations to less than 0.7 dB and 20%, respectively. Both architectures presented in this thesis can overcome real-time frequency drifts as well as static process variations; thus, excellent jitter performance can be sustained during any environmental variations.
BnaC9.SMG7b functions as a positive regulator of number of seeds

Running head: 1 BnaC9.SMG7b regulates NSS in Brassica napus. 2 3 Corresponding author information: 4 Name: Dengfeng Hong 5 Affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong 6 Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China 7 E-mail: dfhong@mail.hzau. edu.cn 8 Fax: +86 (0)27-87281713 9 Tel: +86 (0)27-87281713 10 11 Research Area: 12 Genes, development and evolution 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Plant Physiology Preview. Published on October 22, 2015, as DOI:10.1104/pp.15. 01040
A preliminary studio for the F gen of Canine Distemper Virus as target for phylogenetic analysis

The Canine Distemper is one of the main infectious diseases in domestic dogs. The introduction of live attenuated-viral vaccines has helped to maintain the disease under control. However, in the past few decades it has been observed worldwide a rising number of cases even in vaccinated animals. The Canine Distemper Virus lineages circulating in the world have been described based on the hemagglutinin analyses, due to its high degree of genetic variability. Recently, new studies have reported greater variations in the amino acidic sequence of a region in the fusion protein. In order to determine the variability of the field strains in comparison with the vaccines and strains from other lines, in this dissertation the genomic variability of the Fsp region from the canine distemper virus fusion protein gene is analyzed. With this purpose, a Polymerase Chain Reaction with reverse transcription, capable of amplifying this variable region, was implemented, and identified through its nucleotide sequence. These sequences were compared with vaccine strains and with field strains of known lineages. Additionally, a phylogenetic tree was built for this variable region. The results of the nucleotides comparison show that the field strains have more homology to the vaccine strain Onderstepoort and according to phylogeny, it would belong to the America 1 lineage.
Tapping Twitter Data for Analyzing and Visualizing Public Tapping Twitter Data for Analyzing and Visualizing Public Sentiments on Censorship Sentiments on Censorship

The main objective of this research study is to analyse and visualize Twitter data with tags “#Censorship”. A connection was established with twitter using Twitter API, and receiving the tweets on Google Spreadsheets. Data visualization was performed using various tools such as Voyant Tools, Tableau, Google Spreadsheet and Orange in order to generate different visualizations based upon, language, geographical areas, retweets etc. The sentiment analysis was performed for the sentiments that were attached to the given set of data by the public in their respective tweets. The 23680 tweets were retrieved during the data collection time and there were 13,771 retweets out of these tweets. The most popular application for using twitter by the users was Twitter Web Client which constituted of the 33.67% (7972 tweets); the second most popular app was Android with 23.61% (5592 Tweets) and Twitter for iPhone stayed at third place with a share of 20.07% (4753 Tweets). The most frequent used Hashtags (#) in the tweets were #Twitter, #Facebook, #Google, #YouTube etc. Results show that negative tweets are enormously higher than the neutral sentiments.
Utilizing Grillage of One-Dimensional Elements for Stability Problems of Rectangular Plates Resting on Elastic Foundations

— In many cases solution for s tability of p late resting on elastic foundation problems have been available for limited regular geometries, but where irregular boundaries or partial contact are encountered difficulties arise because it will be necessary to describe the governing equation of motion in a general mathematical form. The intention of this study is to extend analytical solutions of the discrete one-dimensional beam elements resting on elastic foundation for solution of plate buckling problems. The solution can be stated as an extension of the so-called discrete parameter approach where the physical domain is broken down into discrete sub-domains. The derivations of the governing differential equations and geometric stiffness terms obtained to observe the influences of foundation parameters. Analytical solution of the discrete one-dimensional elements extended for solution of complex plate problems.
Information Processing in the Lateral-Line System of Fish

Fish and some aquatic amphibians use their mechanosensory lateral-line system to localize objects and navigate by means of hydrodynamic cues. How a fish determines an object's position and shape only through the lateral-line system and the ensuing neuronal processing is still a challenging problem, handled here. This dissertation is composed of two major parts. The first is devoted to neuronal encoding, focusing on a model of perceiving a vibrating sphere, a dipole. It is extended to other stimuli such as translating spheres, ellipsoids, and even wakes (vortex rings). The theoretical model is fully verified by experiment. In the second part the process of neuronal decoding of stimuli is analyzed. Here two key questions are answered: How a fish can determine the position of an object in 3-dimensional space and how a somatotopic map can emerge in the Torus through an STDP learning rule with vision stemming the optic Tectum as a teacher.
The Impact of Finance on Willingness to Pay for Low-Cost Latrines in Rural Cambodia: Evidence from a Randomized-Controlled Trial Pre-Analysis Plan

This pre-analysis 1 plan describes the methods to be employed in the study “The Impact of Finance on Willingness to Pay for Low-Cost Latrines in Rural Cambodia. ” The primary goals of this study are: (1) to measure the effect of access to finance on willingness to pay (WTP) for sanitary latrines among residents of rural Cambodia; (2) to determine whether this effect is particularly important for the poor. In future research, funding permitting, we will: (3) measure the relationship between WTP and use of the latrines; (4) determine whether access to finance affects this relationship; (5) determine whether there is any causal relationship between price paid and subsequent use, as well as whether access to finance affects this relationship; (6) measure any peer effects on subsequent use or adoption.
Board # 60: Learning to Make Change by Revolutionizing Departments: Initial Team Experiences

The launch of NSF’s program “Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments” (RED) provided an unparalleled opportunity to examine change in action from its inception. This program charges grantees to achieve ​“significant sustainable changes necessary to overcome longstanding issues in their undergraduate programs and educate inclusive communities of engineering and computer science students prepared to solve 21st-century challen​ges” with the goal of creating “coherent professional and technical threads. ​ to ensure that students develop deep knowledge in their discipline more effectively and meaningfully​” (NSF Solicitation). To date, thirteen teams have commenced their projects, which range in scale and scope from re-visioning curriculum units to coordinated change across aggregated departments to experimental co-curricular opportunities. The faculty teams enacting this change represent intentionally interdisciplinary groups, with disciplinary experts working with social scientists and engineering education researchers. Their work is supported by our project RED Participatory Action Research in that we coordinate activities across awardees and also create cross-institution analyses to develop larger lessons to share with the engineering education community. The work described here explores the initial conceptions of RED team members with respect to readiness to enact change, captured via focus group interviews and informal discussions conducted within six months of their award being granted. We found that the teams reported significant negotiation at the onset of the project. First, teams reported the need to re-situate their collective understanding of the project itself, including how the project fit into the current vision of the operations of their institution, since almost nine months had passed following final submission. Second, teams negotiated communication strategies and key messaging to outside parties (e.g. the remainder of the department members). The roll-out of large scale projects like the ones funded in this program hinges on an effective communication approach; developing an effective approach required significant discussion among team members. Finally, teams experienced challenges relating to how they implemented their guiding theories of change (inclusion of which was mandated in the proposal process). For each point, we illustrate with narrative taken from team discussions and connect these points to larger issues of faculty development as change agents and team members. Given the repeated calls for increasing the rate and scale of change in engineering education, this paper contributes actionable recommendations for change agents and team coordinators.
Exercise reduces postprandial plasma triacylglycerol concentrations in adolescent boys

PURPOSE: Atherosclerosis is initiated in childhood. Therefore reducing postprandial triacylglycerol concentrations even in young people could potentially slow atherogenic progression. This study sought to investigate if continuous exercise and intermittent games activity would reduce postprandial triacylglycerol concentrations in adolescent boys. METHODS: Nineteen subjects were randomly assigned to either a Continuous exercise group ( N = 10) or an Intermittent games activity group ( N = 9) and underwent two, 2 d trials. Trials were performed a minimum of 7 days apart in a randomized order, consisting of a Rest trial and either a Continuous exercise or Intermittent games trial. In the rest trial subjects took no exercise on day 1. On day 1 of the exercise trial subjects completed four blocks (approximately 15 min each) of uphill treadmill walking or intermittent games activity with 3 min rest between each block. On day 2, subjects came to the laboratory after an overnight fast and finger prick blood samples were obtained in the fasted state. Subjects then consumed a test meal (1.25 g fat, 1.07 g carbohydrate, 0.20 g protein, and 67 kJ per kg body mass). Further blood samples were collected at 30 and 45 min and 1, 3, 4 and 6 h postprandially. RESULTS : The total area under the triacylglycerol versus time curve was lower on day 2 following exercise in both groups (Student’s t-tests for correlated means, Continuous exercise group 14%, P = 0.050; Intermittent games group 26%, P = 0.002). CONCLUSION: Both continuous exercise and intermittent games type activity reduce postprandial triacylglycerol concentrations in adolescent boys when performed the afternoon before ingesting a high fat meal.