Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 100 genetic variants contributing to BMI, a measure of body size, or waist-to-hip ratio (adjusted for BMI, WHRadjBMI), a measure of body shape. Body size and shape change as people grow older and these changes differ substantially between men and women. To systematically screen for age- and/or sex-specific effects of genetic variants on BMI and WHRadjBMI, we performed meta-analyses of 114 studies (up to 320,485 individuals of European descent) with genome-wide chip and/or Metabochip data by the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium. Each study tested the association of up to ~2.8M SNPs with BMI and WHRadjBMI in four strata (men ≤50y, men >50y, women ≤50y, women >50y) and summary statistics were combined in stratum-specific meta-analyses. We then screened for variants that showed age-specific effects (G x AGE), sex-specific effects (G x SEX) or age-specific effects that differed between men and women (G x AGE x SEX). For BMI, we identified 15 loci (11 previously established for main effects, four novel) that showed significant (FDR<5%) age-specific effects, of which 11 had larger effects in younger (<50y) than in older adults (≥50y). No sex-dependent effects were identified for BMI. For WHRadjBMI, we identified 44 loci (27 previously established for main effects, 17 novel) with sex-specific effects, of which 28 showed larger effects in women than in men, five showed larger effects in men than in women, and 11 showed opposite effects between sexes. No age-dependent effects were identified for WHRadjBMI. This is the first genome-wide interaction meta-analysis to report convincing evidence of age-dependent genetic effects on BMI. In addition, we confirm the sex-specificity of genetic effects on WHRadjBMI. These results may provide further insights into the biology that underlies weight change with age or the sexually dimorphism of body shape.
The impact of campus-wide portable computing on computer science education

At least fifty colleges and universities throughout the world have initiated plans under which all students buy, lease, or provide their own portable/laptop computer. The impact of these initiatives on the general educational environment has been widely discussed; however, the impact on the delivery of computer science education has not been. In this working group report we discuss a number of issues pertaining to computer science education in light of campus-wide computing initiatives. Our report relates experiences of faculty already involved in such endeavors plus ideas regarding the future of portable computers in computer science education. As such, it will be beneficial to computer science programmes currently involved in campus-wide computing initiatives as well as those that may become involved in the near future.
Response Time Distributions in Rapid Chess: A Large-Scale Decision Making Experiment

Rapid chess provides an unparalleled laboratory to understand decision making in a natural environment. In a chess game, players choose consecutively around 40 moves in a finite time budget. The goodness of each choice can be determined quantitatively since current chess algorithms estimate precisely the value of a position. Web-based chess produces vast amounts of data, millions of decisions per day, incommensurable with traditional psychological experiments. We generated a database of response times (RTs) and position value in rapid chess games. We measured robust emergent statistical observables: (1) RT distributions are long-tailed and show qualitatively distinct forms at different stages of the game, (2) RT of successive moves are highly correlated both for intra- and inter-player moves. These findings have theoretical implications since they deny two basic assumptions of sequential decision making algorithms: RTs are not stationary and can not be generated by a state-function. Our results also have practical implications. First, we characterized the capacity of blunders and score fluctuations to predict a player strength, which is yet an open problem in chess softwares. Second, we show that the winning likelihood can be reliably estimated from a weighted combination of remaining times and position evaluation.
Involvement of connexin43 phosphorylation and gap junctional communication in vasopressin-induced ROCK-dependent vasoconstriction after hemorrhagic shock.

We examined the roles played by gap junctions (GJs) and the GJ channel protein connexin43 (Cx43) in arginine vasopressin (AVP)-induced vasoconstriction after hemorrhagic shock, and their relationship to Rho kinase (ROCK) and protein kinase C (PKC). The results showed AVP induced an endothelium-independent contraction in rat superior mesenteric arteries (SMAs). Blocking the GJs signiﬁcantly decreased the contractile response of SMAs and vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) to AVP after shock and hypoxia. The selective Cx43-mimetic peptide inhibited the vascular contractile effect of AVP after shock and hypoxia. AVP restored hypoxia-induced decrease of Cx43 phosphorylation at Ser262 and gap-junctional communication in VSMCs. Activation of RhoA with U46619 increased the contractile effect of AVP. This effect was antagonized by the ROCK inhibitor Y27632 and the Cx43-mimetic peptide. In contrast, neither an agonist nor an inhibitor of PKC had significant effects on AVP-induced contraction after hemorrhagic shock. In addition, silencing of Cx43 with siRNA blocked the AVP-induced increase of ROCK activity in hypoxic VSMCs. In conclusion, AVP-mediated vascular contractile effects are endothelium and myoendothelial gap junctions independent. Gap junctions between VSMCs, gap-junctional communication and Cx43 phosphorylation at Ser262 play important roles in the vascular effects of AVP. RhoA/ROCK, but not PKC, is involved in this process.
An Overview of Saturation State of Groundwater with Respect to Some Common Minerals in South Central Ontario

This study examines the saturation state of the groundwater within the South Central Ontario. An Excel Spread sheet methodology has been employed to calculate saturation states with respect to calcite, dolomite, gypsum and halite. Having revealed the different factors involved, the methodology was tested on some selected samples within laboratory error +/- 2%. When the results were compared with Langelier index (LI) and with the PhreeqC codes, the methodology was found to be consistently accurate for fixed electrical charges (not requiring Eh data), and with low to moderate ionic strengths. It can be understood from this study that, when saturation indices are extracted from large database and plotted on maps, they can be very useful in quickly observing spatial variability of saturation states that could be related to groundwater flow systems, including chemistry of formations (aquifers) and their variability with depth of wells or recharge/discharge conditions.
Intact memory for local and distal cues in male and female rats that lack adult neurogenesis

The dentate gyrus is essential for remembering the fine details of experiences that comprise episodic memory. Dentate gyrus granule cells receive highly-processed sensory information and are hypothesized to perform a pattern separation function, whereby similar sensory inputs are transformed into orthogonal neural representations. Behaviorally, this is believed to enable distinct memory for highly interfering stimuli. Since the dentate gyrus is comprised of a large number of adult-born neurons, which have unique synaptic wiring and neurophysiological firing patterns, it has been proposed that neurogenesis may contribute to this process in unique ways. Some behavioral evidence exists to support this role, whereby neurogenesis-deficient rodents are impaired at discriminating the fine visuospatial details of experiences. However, the extent to which newborn neurons contribute to dentate gyrus-dependent learning tasks is unclear. Furthermore, since most studies of dentate gyrus function are conducted in male rats, little is known about how females perform in similar situations, and whether there might be sex differences in the function of adult neurogenesis. To address these issues, we examined spatial discrimination memory in transgenic male and female rats that lacked adult neurogenesis. The first task probed memory for the position of local objects in an open field, assessed by behavioral responses to novel object locations. The second task examined memory for distal environmental cues. All rats were able to successfully discriminate local and distal cue changes. Males and females also performed comparably, although females displayed higher levels of rearing and locomotion. Collectively, our results indicate that rats are capable of learning about local and distal cues in the absence of adult neurogenesis.
Association of Birth Weight with Cardiovascular Parameters in Adult Rats During Baseline and Stressed Conditions

Low birth weight (LBW) due to intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) in humans is associated with increased blood pressure (BP) in adulthood. In Western countries, IUGR is based on uteroplacental dysfunction. We used an animal model of uteroplacental dysfunction to evaluate this correlation. We hypothesize that IUGR increases baseline BP and alters the BP response to acute stress, which may explain BP differences in previous studies using stressful methods to obtain BP. IUGR was induced by bilateral uterine artery ligation in pregnant Wistar rats according to a modified method of Wigglesworth. BP was measured in the offspring using telemetry, allowing for unstressed measurements in conscious animals. Cardiovascular data were obtained at the age of 12 wk during baseline and acute olfactory stress induced by an ammonia gauze. Rats born after IUGR had a lower birth weight versus controls and did not completely catch up in weight. At baseline, systolic BP (SBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), and pulse pressure (PP) were elevated in IUGR rats versus controls, by 8, 6, and 5 mm Hg, respectively. There was a strong negative correlation between birth weight and SBP and between birth weight and PP. During acute stress, there was a tendency to reach a higher peak in SBP and to need a longer period to recover in IUGR animals. We conclude that IUGR is associated with increased baseline BP.
A 250MHz-2GHz wide range delay-locked loop

This paper describes a wide range delay-locked loop (DLL) for synchronous clocking, to support dynamic frequency and voltage scaling. The DLL achieves a wide range by using multiple phases from its variable delay line. A phase detector is proposed to increase the locking speed and alleviate the phase offset owing to the inherent mismatch of the charge pump. The DLL achieves a static phase error of under 10 ps. At 1 GHz, its RMS jitter and peak-to-peak jitter are 1.57 ps and 10.7 ps respectively.
Circuit Techniques for Operational Amplifier Speed and Accuracy Improvement: Analog Circuit Design with Structural Methodology

OpAmp is the main analog building block for both the systems on discrete elements and systems on silicon. The parameters of OpAmp often define and limit the overall system performance. CMOS technology provides an opportunity to use more complex structural solutions and circuit techniques to improve OpAmp accuracy, power/speed ratio, to add new functional advantages, like low voltage supply operation capability or rail to rail input without the switching point, everything for negligible additional component cost. The circuit techniques that will be demonstrated during this course were proven in design of leading industrial OpAmps. These techniques are unified by a common structural design approach, based on the following principles: system analysis at the high level of abstraction using the graphic tools like signal flow graphs, and generation of the set of equivalent graph modifications, equivalent graph transformations to the form when every important parameter in the system or the amplifier is controlled by a dedicated feedback loop; stability of these loops is achieved without compensation capacitors, by using one-stage (preferably current) amplifiers, system synthesis consists of implementation of the set of the gain structure modifications followed by simulations based on available library of cells, and final selection of the best circuit solutions.
Adaptive Nonlinear Disturbance Observer Using a Double-Loop Self-Organizing Recurrent Wavelet Neural Network for a Two-Axis Motion Control System

This paper proposes an adaptive nonlinear disturbance observer (ANDO) for identification and control of a two-axis motion control system driven by two permanent-magnet linear synchronous motors servo drives. The proposed control scheme incorporates a feedback linearization controller (FLC), a new double-loop self-organizing recurrent wavelet neural network (DLSORWNN) controller, a robust controller, and an <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> ${{\mathcal H}_\infty }$</tex-math></inline-formula> controller. First, an FLC is designed to stabilize the <italic>XY </italic> table system. Then, a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) is designed to estimate the nonlinear lumped parameter uncertainties that include the external disturbances, cross-coupled interference, and frictional force. However, the <italic>XY</italic> table performance is degraded by the NDO error due to parameter uncertainties. To improve the robustness, the ANDO is designed to attain this purpose. In addition, the robust controller is designed to recover the approximation error of the DLSORWNN, while the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${{\mathcal H}_\infty }$</tex-math></inline-formula> controller is specified such that the quadratic cost function is minimized and the worst-case effect of the NDO error must be attenuated below a desired attenuation level. The online adaptive control laws are derived using the Lyapunov stability analysis and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> ${{\mathcal H}_\infty }$</tex-math></inline-formula> control theory, so that the stability of the ANDO can be guaranteed. The experimental results show the improvements in disturbance suppression and parameter uncertainties, which illustrate the superiority of the ANDO control scheme.
Suppression of Skeletal Muscle Turnover in Cancer Cachexia: Evidence from the Transcriptome in Sequential Human Muscle Biopsies

Purpose: The mechanisms underlying muscle wasting in patients with cancer remain poorly understood, and consequently there remains an unmet clinical need for new biomarkers and treatment strategies. Experimental Design: Microarrays were used to examine the transcriptome in single biopsies from healthy controls (n = 6) and in paired biopsies [pre-resection baseline (weight-loss 7%) and 8 month post-resection follow-up (disease-free/weight-stable for previous 2 months)] from quadriceps muscle of patients with upper gastrointestinal cancer (UGIC; n = 12). Results: Before surgery, 1,868 genes were regulated compared with follow-up (false discovery rate, 6%). Ontology analysis showed that regulated genes belonged to both anabolic and catabolic biologic processes with overwhelming downregulation in baseline samples. No literature-derived genes from preclinical cancer cachexia models showed higher expression in baseline muscle. Comparison with healthy control muscle (n = 6) revealed that despite differences in the transcriptome at baseline (941 genes regulated), the muscle of patients at follow-up was similar to control muscle (2 genes regulated). Physical activity (step count per day) did not differ between the baseline and follow-up periods (P = 0.9), indicating that gene expression differences reflected the removal of the cancer rather than altered physical activity levels. Comparative gene expression analysis using exercise training signatures supported this interpretation. Conclusions: Metabolic and protein turnover–related pathways are suppressed in weight-losing patients with UGIC whereas removal of the cancer appears to facilitate a return to a healthy state, independent of changes in the level of physical activity. Clin Cancer Res; 18(10); 2817–27. ©2012 AACR.
Target prediction for small, noncoding RNAs in bacteria

Many small, noncoding RNAs in bacteria act as post-transcriptional regulators by basepairing with target mRNAs. While the number of characterized small RNAs (sRNAs) has steadily increased, only a limited number of the corresponding mRNA targets have been identified. Here we present a program, TargetRNA, that predicts the targets of these bacterial RNA regulators. The program was evaluated by assessing whether previously known targets could be identified. The program was then used to predict targets for the Escherichia coli RNAs RyhB, OmrA, OmrB and OxyS, and the predictions were compared with changes in whole genome expression patterns observed upon expression of the sRNAs. Our results show that TargetRNA is a useful tool for finding mRNA targets of sRNAs, although its rate of success varies between sRNAs.
3D-Digital soil property mapping by geoadditive models

In many digital soil mapping (DSM) applications, soil properties must be predicted not only for a single but for multiple soil depth intervals. In the GlobalSoilMap project, as an example, predictions are computed for the 0– 5 cm, 5–15 cm, 15–30 cm, 30–60 cm, 60–100 cm, 100–200 cm depth intervals (Arrouays et al., 2014). Legacy soil data are often used for DSM. It is common for such datasets that soil properties were measured for soil horizons or for layers at varying soil depth and with non-constant thickness (support).
Class-specific material categorisation

Although a considerable amount of work has been published on material classification, relatively little of it studies situations with considerable variation within each class. Many experiments use the exact same sample, or different patches from the same image, for training and test sets. Thus, such studies are vulnerable to effectively recognising one particular sample of a material as opposed to the material category. In contrast, this paper places firm emphasis on the capability to generalise to previously unseen instances of materials. We adopt an appearance-based strategy, and conduct experiments on a new database which contains several samples of each of eleven material categories, imaged under a variety of pose, illumination and scale conditions. Together, these sources of intra-class variation provide a stern challenge indeed for recognition. Somewhat surprisingly, the difference in performance between various state-of-the-art texture descriptors proves rather small in this task. On the other hand, we clearly demonstrate that very significant gains can be achieved via different SVM-based classification techniques. Selecting appropriate kernel parameters proves crucial. This motivates a novel recognition scheme based on a decision tree. Each node contains an SVM to split one class from all others with a kernel parameter optimal for that particular node. Hence, each decision is made using a different, optimal, class-specific metric. Experiments show the superiority of this approach over several state-of-the-art classifiers
Energy-minimized design for IP over WDM networks under modular router line cards

On a router-port basis, our previous study [1] found that lightpath bypass strategy can significantly save power consumption over the lightpath non-bypass strategy. However, in real network systems, router ports are organized by network line cards or modules; on each line card there are multiple router ports. In this paper, we evaluate the energy consumption of an IP over WDM network in the context of modularized router ports. We develop mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for power consumption minimization under the lightpath bypass strategy. We also compare the cases of lightpath bypass and nonbypass. It is found that for modularized route ports, the strategy of optical bypass can significantly outperform the strategy of non-bypass. Also, under different types of modular router line cards, a mixed deployment of different types of router line cards consumes the least energy compared to the deployment of a single type of line card.
LMI-Based Stability and Performance Conditions for Continuous-Time Nonlinear Systems in Takagi–Sugeno's Form

This correspondence presents the stability analysis and performance design of the continuous-time fuzzy-model-based control systems. The idea of the nonparallel-distributed-compensation (non-PDC) control laws is extended to the continuous-time fuzzy-model-based control systems. A nonlinear controller with non-PDC control laws is proposed to stabilize the continuous-time nonlinear systems in Takagi-Sugeno's form. To produce the stability-analysis result, a parameter-dependent Lyapunov function (PDLF) is employed. However, two difficulties are usually encountered: 1) the time-derivative terms produced by the PDLF will complicate the stability analysis and 2) the stability conditions are not in the form of linear-matrix inequalities (LMIs) that aid the design of feedback gains. To tackle the first difficulty, the time-derivative terms are represented by some weighted-sum terms in some existing approaches, which will increase the number of stability conditions significantly. In view of the second difficulty, some positive-definitive terms are added in order to cast the stability conditions into LMIs. In this correspondence, the favorable properties of the membership functions and nonlinear control laws, which allow the introduction of some free matrices, are employed to alleviate the two difficulties while retaining the favorable properties of PDLF-based approach. LMI-based stability conditions are derived to ensure the system stability. Furthermore, based on a common scalar performance index, LMI-based performance conditions are derived to guarantee the system performance. Simulation examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Channel Feedback Quantization for High Data Rate MIMO Systems

In this work, we study a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless system where the channel state information is partially available at the transmitter through a feedback link. Based on singular value decomposition, the MIMO channel is split into independent sub-channels. Effective feedback of the required spatial channel information entails efficient quantization/encoding of a unitary matrix. We propose two schemes for quantizing unitary matrices via Givens rotations and examine the performance for a scenario where the rates allocated to the sub-channels are selected according to their corresponding gains. Numerical results show that the proposed schemes offer a significant performance improvement as compared to that of MIMO systems without feedback, with a negligible increase in the complexity