Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comet assay of UV-induced DNA damage in retinal pigment epithelial cells.

PURPOSE The molecular mechanisms mediating photic injury to the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell are not clearly understood. This study examined qualitative and quantitative aspects of DNA damage caused by broadband UVA and UVB radiation in RPE cells. METHODS Cultured bovine RPE cells were exposed to doses of between 0 and 0.9 J/cm2 UVA or 0 and 0.09 J/cm2 UVB, as either a suspension or as an attached monolayer. The damage to DNA resulting in single-strand breaks was assessed by means of the comet assay in which the damaged DNA migrates out of the nucleus forming a tail, and this was quantified using image analysis. Two measurements were taken: the mean percentage of tail DNA, which reflects the overall level of DNA damage in the group of cells, and the Olive tail moment, which represents the extent of migration and thus the pattern of DNA damage in individual cells. Cells were processed by the comet assay immediately after UV exposure in acute experiments. To study the occurrence of DNA repair, RPE cells were first exposed to UVB and then incubated at 37 degrees C for either 1 or 24 hours before processing for the comet assay. RESULTS UVA- and UVB-exposed cells showed a mean percentage of tail DNA that was significantly greater than in unexposed cells. Olive tail moment was higher in cells exposed to larger doses of UVB. This parameter also showed a bimodal distribution when assessed 24 hours after exposure to UVB indicating the presence of two distinct subpopulations of cells with small and large tail moments. Cells with very large tail moments were not seen with doses below 0.045 J/cm2. CONCLUSIONS Relatively low doses of UVA and UVB induce the formation of DNA strand breaks in cultured RPE. The tail moment profiles for cells incubated for 24 hours after UVB irradiation are consistent with the occurrence of DNA repair in most cells exposed to low doses and apoptosis in a subpopulation of the cells exposed to high doses.
Sequences of conserved region in the A subunit of DNA gyrase from nine species of the genus Mycobacterium: phylogenetic analysis and implication for intrinsic susceptibility to quinolones

The sequences of a conserved region in the A subunit of DNA gyrase corresponding to the quinolone resistance-determining region were determined for nine mycobacterial species and were compared. Although the nucleotide sequences were highly conserved, they clearly differentiated one species from another. The results of the phylogenetic analysis based on the sequences of the quinolone resistance-determining regions were compared with those provided by the 16S rRNA sequences. Deduced amino acid sequences were identical within the nine species except for amino acid 83, which was frequently involved in acquired resistance to quinolones in many genera, including mycobacteria. The presence at position 83 of an alanine for seven mycobacterial species (M. tuberculosis, M. bovis BCG, M. leprae, M. avium, M. kansasii, M. chelonae, and M. smegmatis) and of a serine for the two remaining mycobacterial species (M. fortuitum and M. aurum) correlated well with the MICs of ofloxacin for both groups of species, suggesting the role of this residue in intrinsic susceptibility to quinolones in mycobacteria.
High-Throughput Thermal Compression Bonding of 20 um Pitch Cu Pillar with Gas Pressure Bonder for 3D IC Stacking

Throughput issue is limiting the adoption of 3D IC stacking process although 3D IC has many advantages in shorter communication lines, lower electrical parasitic and lower package footprint. Local thermal compression bond on each chip stack incurs enormous process time if there is a need to have multi-chip stack and it will be further complicated with the enormous number of chip stack on one 12" wafer. With the proposed temporary stack and final gang bonding process, the time to complete one wafer with multi-chip stack is tremendously reduced to a stage that is very attractive to be implemented in production. Pre-applied wafer level underfill is used as a temporary tacking medium during chip stacking. For the first time, gas pressure gang bonder is used to perform wafer level gang bonding. The high pressure gas in chamber provides uniform bonding pressure to each chip regardless their height. The temporary tacking medium ensures the chip edge is properly sealed, so that no gas leaks into bonding interface. The gas pressure is isotropic, which ensure no risk of chip shifting. The process of using the pre-applied underfill has to be carefully plan and execute to avoid issues of underfill voids, smears and poor bonding. In this paper, high throughput thermal compression bonding on 20μm pitch 10μm diameter micro-pillar array is demonstrated by using the developed two-step bonding method.
Spasticity after Spinal Cord Injury Part 2-Treatment

Spasticity is a common complication after spinal cord injury (SCI) within the upper motor neuron syndrome. We describe it in 2 parts: in the first one (Part 1) the pathophysiology, clinical features and assessment are shown, and in this part (Part 2) its treatment will be considered. Once it has been decided to treat spasticity, the treatment is based on starting with simpler and less problematic activities, and increasing in complexity the procedures against spasticity. The possibilities of therapy with its characteristics are described: control of triggering factors, positioning, physical modalities (stretching, muscle strengthening, cold, splinting/ orthoses, electrical stimulation, robotic devices), oral medication (baclofen, diazepam, clonazepam, tizanidine, clonidine, and cannabinoids), intrathecal baclofen, local injections (phenol, botulinum toxin) or surgical interventions. In order to assess the effectiveness of the different applied treatments we must measure outcomes. A management protocol is proposed for the spasticity of the SCI patient.
Understanding Vrikshasana using body mounted sensors: A statistical approach

Aim: A scheme for understanding how the human body organizes postural movements while performing Vrikshasana is developed in the format of this paper. Settings and Design: The structural characteristics of the body and the geometry of the muscular actions are incorporated into a graphical representation of the human movement mechanics in the frontal plane. A series of neural organizational hypotheses enables us to understand the mechanics behind the hip and ankle strategy: (1) Body sway in the mediolateral direction; and (2) influence of hip and ankle to correct instabilities caused in body while performing Vrikshasana. Materials and Methods: A methodological study on 10 participants was performed by mounting four inertial measurement units on the surface of the trapezius, thoracolumbar fascia, vastus lateralis, and gastrocnemius muscles. The kinematic accelerations of three mutually exclusive trials were recorded for a period of 30 s. Results: The results of every trial were processed using two different approaches namely statistical signal processing (variance and cross-correlation). Conclusions obtained from both these studies were in favor of the initial hypothesis. Conclusions: This study enabled us to understand the role of hip abductors and adductors, and ankle extensions and flexions in correcting the posture while performing Vrikshasana.
Dynamic of partial discharges in cables with inner cavities during thermal and DC stresses

Over last decades, electrical networks have evolved towards high-voltage direct current systems, ensuring connection of offshore renewable energy production sites and to shore-based networks. The constant growth of HVDC networks brings about improvements in several fields. In particular, the use of cables with synthetic polymeric insulation instead of traditional cables with oil-impregnated insulation reduces costs. However, despite continuous upgrade of production lines, it is not possible to totally avoid the formation of microvoids inside crosslinked polyethylene insulation that appear at the junctions of spherulites [1]. Considering applied field in DC cables, cavities in the micrometre range are considered below a critical value and should not generate partial discharges. Thus, they cannot be detected by conventional partial discharges (PD) tests. The possible impact of these small cavities on the cable lifetime and behaviour is unknown. A question arises whether those microscale cavities may increase in size inside the polymer matrix, due to various applied constraints, until reaching a critical size above which discharges can occur. More generally, can shape and dimensions of cavities evolve under the combined effects of electric field, including locally enhanced field due to space charges, and temperature?
Comparative proteomic profiles of the hepatopancreas in Fenneropenaeus chinensis response to hypoxic stress

Hypoxia, as one suboptimal environmental condition, can affect the physiological state of shrimp during pond aquaculture. To better understand the mechanism of response to hypoxic stress in Chinese shrimp Fenneropenaeus chinensis, proteome research approach was utilized. Differentially expressed proteins of hepatopancreas in adult Chinese shrimp between the control and hypoxia‐stressed groups were screened. By 2‐DE analysis, 67 spots showed obvious changes after hypoxia. Using LC‐ESI‐MS/MS, 51 spots representing 33 proteins were identified including preamylase, arginine kinase, phosphopyruvate hydratase, citrate synthase, ATP synthase alpha subunit, chymotrypsin BI, chitinase, ferritin, C‐type lectin receptors, transketolase, formylglutathione hydrolase, formyltetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase, aldehyde dehydrogenase, glutathione peroxidase, cytosolic manganese superoxide dismutase, protein disulfide isomerase, β‐actin, oncoprotein nm23, crustacyanin‐C1 and so on. These proteins could be functionally classified into several groups such as proteins related to energy production, metabolism‐related proteins, immune‐related proteins, antioxidant proteins, chaperones, cytoskeleton proteins and ungrouped proteins. The transcription levels of ten selected genes encode the identified proteins were analyzed by real‐time PCR at different sampling times of hypoxia. This study is the first analysis of differentially expressed proteins in the hepatopancreas of shrimp after hypoxia and provides a new insight for further study in hypoxic stress response of shrimp at the protein level.
Effects of local arteriosclerosis on carotid baroreflex sensitivity and on heart rate and arterial pressure variability in humans

The study examined whether the alterations in heart rate variability (HRV) and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) observed in patients with coronary artery disease can also be discerned in otherwise healthy subjects with mild‐to‐moderate arteriosclerosis in the carotid artery bifurcation. Based on the results of carotid duplex ultrasonography, subjects were designated as either having no arteriosclerotic lesions (n = 18), unilateral (n = 19) or bilateral lesions (n = 18) in the bifurcation. Electrocardiograms were recorded and simultaneous and continuous records of arterial pressure were obtained. Resting HRV was determined by calculating the spectral power density in three frequency bands: 0–0·05 Hz [very low frequency (VLF) band], 0·05–0·15 [low frequency (LF) band] and 0·15–2 Hz (high frequency band), whereas the arterial pressure variability (APV) was determined from spectral power density of the VLF and LF bands. Carotid BRS was evaluated by measuring R‐R intervals during application of pulse‐synchronous graded pressures (40 to −65 mmHg) in a neck‐chamber device. Analysis of variance revealed no effect of mild‐to‐moderate carotid arteriosclerosis on the spectral components of HRV and APV or on BRS. It thus appears that mild‐to‐moderate asymptomatic carotid arteriosclerosis does not affect carotid BRS, APV or HRV at rest.
Field Experiments on Anchoring of Economic Valuations

A pillar of behavioral research is that preferences are constructed during the process of choice. A prominent finding is that uninformative numerical "anchors" influence judgment and valuation. It remains unclear whether such processes influence market equilibria. We conduct two experiments that extend the study of anchoring to field settings. The first experiment produces evidence that some consumers' valuations can be anchored in novel situations; there is no evidence that experienced agents are influenced by anchors. The second experiment finds that anchors have only transient effects on market outcomes that converge to equilibrium predictions after a few market periods.
Modelling and observations of the katabatic flow dynamics over Greenland

The katabatic wind system over the Greenland ice sheet is studied using simulations of the hydrostaticNorwegian Limited Area Model (NORLAM) and measurements of an instrumented aircraft.The structure and the dynamics of the katabatic wind over the ice sheet are investigated for a casestudy of the aircraft-based experiment KABEG (Katabatic wind and boundary layer front experimentaround Greenland) in the area of southern Greenland in April/May 1997. Monthly mean structures andindividual contributions of the momentum budget integrated over the boundary layer are examinedfor one winter month. The NORLAM is able to simulate realistically the structures of the katabaticwind system in the lowest 400 m. The comparison with KABEG aircraft measurements for a katabaticwind case with strong synoptic forcing shows good agreement for the momentum budget terms. Thepure katabatic force represents the main mechanism for the boundary layer wind field, but a considerableinfluence of the large-scale synoptic forcing is found as well. Acceleration components from theNORLAM forecasts are also presented for the whole month of January 1990. The monthly mean fieldsshow significant regional differences because of different inversion strengths and synoptic forcings. Inparticular, Southeast Greenland is influenced by transient synoptic cyclones and the associated cloudpatterns. All other areas of the slopes of the Greenland ice sheet are characterized by a downslopekatabatic acceleration. The pressure gradient force over the northwestern part of the Greenland icesheet points in the direction of the local katabatic force, which explains the relatively strong monthlymean near surface winds over the ice. Over the southwestern and northeastern parts of Greenland, however, no significant synoptic support of the katabatic winds is present, and the synoptic pressuregradient is even opposed to the katabatic force in some regions.
Current harmonic reduction using Current Injection technique in a converter system

In this work a Current Injection technique has been introduced to mitigate Current Harmonics and to improve Power factor present in a high power Converter system. This work proposes the simultaneous Current Injection in all of the three phases. Current Injection technique has to be performed with the help of a Injection Networks and Injection Devices. A Passive Resistance Emulator is used to adjust the amplitude of the Injection Current according to the load current variation, which helps to improve the performance of the Current Injection principle for the proposed high power Converter system. This work has been simulated with the help of MATLAB Simulink.
Learning in feedforward layered networks: the tiling algorithm

The authors propose a new algorithm which builds a feedforward layered network in order to learn any Boolean function of N Boolean units. The number of layers and the number of hidden units in each layer are not prescribed in advance: they are outputs of the algorithm. It is an algorithm for growth of the network, which adds layers, and units inside a layer, at will until convergence. The convergence is guaranteed and numerical tests of this strategy look promising.
A Theoretical Model and Framework for Understanding Knowledge Management System Implementation

The study’s objective is to arrive at a theoretical model and framework to guide research into the implementation of KMS, while also seeking to inform practice. In order to achieve this, the paper applies the critical success factors (CSF) method in a field study of successful KMS implementations across 12 large multinational organisations operating in a range of sectors. The paper first generates a ‘collective set’ of CSFs from extant research to construct an a priori model and framework: this is then empirically validated and extended using the field study findings to arrive at a ‘collective set’ of CSFs for all 12 organisations. These are then employed to refine and extend the theoreti - cal model using insights from the literature on capability theory. It is hoped that the model and framework will aid theory building and future empirical research on this highly important and relevant topic.
Urdu to Punjabi Machine Translation: An Incremental Training Approach

The statistical machine translation approach is highly popular in automatic translation research area and promising approach to yield good accuracy. Efforts have been made to develop Urdu to Punjabi statistical machine translation system. The system is based on an incremental training approach to train the statistical model. In place of the parallel sentences corpus has manually mapped phrases which were used to train the model. In preprocessing phase, various rules were used for tokenization and segmentation processes. Along with these rules, text classification system was implemented to classify input text to predefined classes and decoder translates given text according to selected domain by the text classifier. The system used Hidden Markov Model(HMM) for the learning process and Viterbi algorithm has been used for decoding. Experiment and evaluation have shown that simple statistical model like HMM yields good accuracy for a closely related language pair like Urdu-Punjabi. The system has achieved 0.86 BLEU score and in manual testing and got more than 85% accuracy.
Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor γ Induces a Clearance Mechanism for the Amyloid-β Peptide

We investigated whether peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) could be involved in the modulation of the amyloid cascade causing Alzheimer's disease. Inducing expression or activating PPARγ using synthetic agonists of the thiazolinedione family results in a dramatic decrease in the levels of the amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide in the conditioned medium of neuronal and non-neuronal cells. PPARγ does not affect expression or activity of any of the secretases involved in the generation of the Aβ peptide but induces a fast, cell-bound clearing mechanism responsible for the removal of the Aβ peptide from the medium. Although PPARγ expression is generally low in the CNS, induction of PPARγ expression during inflammation could be beneficial for inducing Aβ clearance. We confirm that the Aβ clearance mechanism can indeed be induced by PPARγ activation in primary murine-mixed glia and cortical neuronal cultures. Our results suggest that PPARγ-controlled mechanisms should be explored further as potential drug targets for Alzheimer's disease treatment.
Asymptotics and calibration of local volatility models

Abstract We derive a direct link between local and implied volatilities in the form of a quasilinear degenerate parabolic partial differential equation. Using this equation we establish closed-form asymptotic formulae for the implied volatility near expiry as well as for deep in- and out-of-the-money options. This in turn leads us to propose a new formulation near expiry of the calibration problem for the local volatility model, which we show to be well posed.
Leishmania donovani Exploits Myeloid Cell Leukemia 1 (MCL-1) Protein to Prevent Mitochondria-dependent Host Cell Apoptosis*

Apoptosis is one of the mechanisms used by host cells to remove unwanted intracellular organisms, and often found to be subverted by pathogens through use of host anti-apoptotic proteins. In the present study, with the help of in vitro and in vivo approaches, we documented that the macrophage anti-apoptotic protein myeloid cell leukemia 1 (MCL-1) is exploited by the intra-macrophage parasite Leishmania donovani to protect their “home” from actinomycin D-induced mitochondria-dependent apoptosis. Among all the anti-apoptotic BCL-2 family members, infection preferentially up-regulated expression of MCL-1 at both the mRNA and protein levels and compared with infected control, MCL-1-silenced infected macrophages documented enhanced caspase activity and increased apoptosis when subjected to actinomycin D treatment. Phosphorylation kinetics and ChIP assay demonstrated that infection-induced MCL-1 expression was regulated by transcription factor CREB (cAMP-response element-binding protein) and silencing of CREB resulted in reduced expression of MCL-1 and increased apoptosis. During infection, MCL-1 was found to be localized in mitochondria and this was significantly reduced in Tom70-silenced macrophages, suggesting the active role of TOM70 in MCL-1 transport. In the mitochondria, MCL-1 interacts with the major pro-apoptotic protein BAK and prevents BAK-BAK homo-oligomer formation thereby preventing cytochrome c release-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction. Silencing of MCL-1 in the spleen of infected mice showed decreased parasite burden and increased induction of splenocyte apoptosis. Collectively our results showed that L. donovani exploited the macrophage anti-apoptotic protein MCL-1 to prevent BAK-mediated mitochondria-dependent apoptosis thereby protecting its niche, which is essential for disease progression.
Initial and long-term competency of citizens trained in CPR.

Lay citizens trained in a three-hour course can perform CPR at an acceptable level when tested immediately after class. By one year after training, retention of most CPR skills is poor. The 20- 15 minutes necessary for retention testing appeared to improved performance on subsequent retention testing. Therefore, a one-how review class with mannequin practice was established to reinforce skills. For students initially trained one year earlier, review classes significantly improved competency in almost all procedures and raised it to the level found after initial training.
An Itra-high Speed Real-time T Processor

To meet the real-time demand of ultra-high speed, long size FFT in some specific communication or signal processing systems, a real-time FFT processor is presented in this paper, which can fulfill real-time demand of 512 points complex FFT at 1GHz sample rate. And with our strategy, longer size FFT can be implemented only adding some stage and enlarge the control counter. By paralleling data processing, we solve the problems coming with high clock frequency, such as power consumption and design complexity.