Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insulinoma Cells Contain an Isoform of Ca2+/Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase II δ Associated with Insulin Secretion Vesicles.

The Ca2+/calmodulin dependent protein kinase II (CaM kinase II) is thought to play an important part in glucose-stimulated insulin secretion. To determine which of the known subtypes (α, β, γ,δ ) occur in insulin-secreting cells, we amplified all types of CaM kinase II by RT-PCR and found the β3-, γ-,δ 2- and δ6-subtypes in RINm5F insulinoma cells. None of the other 8 δ-subtypes was present. Antibodies generated against the bacterially expressed association domain of theδ 2-subtype recognized the recombinant γ andδ -subtypes. In INS-1 and RINm5F cells, as well as freshly isolated rat islets, only a 55-kDa protein corresponding in size to theδ 2-subtype expressed in NIH3T3 fibroblasts was detected. The δ2-subtype therefore appears to represent the predominant subtype of CaM kinase II present in insulin secreting cells. The enzyme was primarily associated with cytoskeletal structures, and very little was present in the soluble compartment or detergent soluble fraction in INS-1- or RINm5F-cells. An analysis .
Rendezvous-Guidance Trajectory Planning for Robotic Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance and Interception

This correspondence presents a novel online trajectory-planning method for the autonomous robotic interception of moving targets in the presence of dynamic obstacles, i.e., position and velocity matching (also referred to as rendezvous). The proposed time-optimal interception method is a hybrid algorithm that augments a novel rendezvous-guidance (RG) technique with the velocity-obstacle approach, for obstacle avoidance, first reported by Fiorini and Shiller. The obstacle-avoidance algorithm itself could not be used in its original form and had to be modified to ensure that the online planned path deviates minimally from the one generated by the RG algorithm. Extensive simulation and experimental analyses, some of which are reported in this correspondence, have clearly demonstrated the tangible time efficiency of the proposed interception method
Rotation and Scaling Image Using PCA

An important aspect of human visual system is the ability to recognize objects despite of the change in their position, size, and orientation. Therefore, any pattern recognition system for many applications, such as for industry or military, must have the ability to recognize geometrically distorted patterns, i.e. scaled, rotated and shifted patterns. In this paper Hotelling transform algorithm has been used for scale and rotation invariant image processing, with the help of MATLAB-v10 simulation program, this algorithm has been implemented and tested on many images with black and white format of different scales and rotation angles.
Smart and Green Adaptive Cruise Control for an Electric Vehicle: First Results

This paper concerns the development of the Smart and Green Adaptive Cruise Control aiming at controlling the ego vehicle speed taking into account the road data in order to optimize the energy consumption while improving safety (no collision, under the legal speed, up to the safe headway). A graph search algorithm of Dijkstra is used to build up a velocity pattern offering the best compromise between energy consumed and covered time.
Brief announcement: randomized rumor spreading with fewer phone calls

Suppose a node has an update that it would like to send to n − 1 other nodes. The node with the update could send the message to every other node directly, but this takes θ(n) steps. Another option is to build a fixed-connection network (e.g., a phone tree). Then, a node with an update sends the update to its parent and its children, and the nodes that receive it send it on in a similar way. The update reaches everyone in O(log n) steps, and each node—including the node initiating the rumor—only does constant work. Further, the total number of messages and the total number of phone calls is optimal, n − 1. But if one node in the tree fails, a large subtree becomes unreachable. One solution to this problem is the use of rumor spreading algorithms. These algorithms have two basic operations: push and pull. In a push, a node that has the update and randomly sends the rumor to another participant. In a pull, a node without the rumor asks a random node for any new rumors. We consider two measures of efficiency for rumor spreading algorithms. The first is the number of connections (or phone calls) made. The second measure is the number of times the rumor is transmitted. If two nodes connect but neither of them know the rumor, a phone call may not result in a transmission. If the cost of the phone calls is amortized over many rumors, it makes sense to count transmissions rather than phone calls, but if rumors are rare, the number of phone calls may be more important. (Also important is the number of rounds, or steps, but we do not consider that here.) Among the first to use epidemic algorithms is Demers et. al. [2], in the context of maintaining loose consistency among replicated databases. Many applications followed. The observations here draw most from two phone calls transmissions n push+tree push&pull push&pull 16384 2.2 15.3 5.2 64436 2.1 17.4 5.9 262144 2.0 19.6 6.3 1048576 2.0 22.0 6.7 4194304 2.0 23.4 7.0 Figure 1: There are n nodes in the network, and 10% are dead. The push+tree scheme notifies about 90% of nodes (just a tree notifies less than 10%.) The push&pull algorithm is run until all nodes know the rumor. papers. Karp et al. [4] takes a theoretical approach and give an algorithm that distributes a …
A Peptide Microarray for the Detection of Protein Kinase Activity in Cell Lysate

DNA microarray enables the analysis of DNA or mRNA expression levels, but it has not been possible to completely understand life using obtained information. Consequently, protein or peptide arrays have attracted much interest. Since the development of a practical protein microarray is still far away in light of handling difficulties, the peptide microarray is a promising tool for analyzing protein functions. We have developed a peptide microarray to detect protein kinase activity in cell lysate. All substrate peptides for kinases were immobilized chemoselectively on amino-coated glass slides. After phosphorylation of the immobilized peptides, phosphorylation was detected by fluorescence imaging. We detected the protein kinase activities, including that in cell lysate, in response to drug stimulation. Therefore, this peptide microarray would be useful for a high-throughput kinase assay of intracellular signals and would be applicable to drug screening.
Platelet-rich plasma for bone healing and regeneration

ABSTRACT Introduction: Successful healing of large bone defects (LBDs) is a complicated phenomenon because the body’s natural ability often fails to effectively repair the LBDs. New modalities should be utilized to increase the quality and accelerate bone healing. Platelet concentrates in different forms can be considered an attractive option for such purpose. Areas covered: Platelets as a natural source of growth factors, cytokines, and other micro and macromolecules are hypothesized to improve bone healing. This review has covered important concepts regarding platelet-rich plasma (PRP) including mechanisms of action, preparation protocols and their differences, and factors affecting the PRP efficacy during bone healing. In addition, the most recent studies in different levels which evaluated the role of PRP on bone repair has been reviewed and discussed to clarify the controversies and conflicts, and to illustrate a future prospective and directions for orthopedic surgeons to overcome current limitations and difficulties. Expert opinion: As the efficacy of PRP is dependent on various factors, the outcome of PRP therapy is variable and unpredictable in orthopedic patients. Therefore, it is still too soon to suggest PRP as the first line treatment option in complicated bone injuries such as LBDs and nonunions. However, combination of PRP with natural and synthetic biomaterials can enhance the effectiveness of PRP.
Chromosome Number and Karyotype Analysis of Yacon

Yacon(Smallanthus sonchifolius) is the Asteraceae perennial dicotyledonous herbs,easy to produce the variation form new species,in order to determine our introduction Yacon number of chromosomes,pretreat yacon Root by 8-hydroxyquinoline solution(0.002 M)for 3～4 h,then fix it by Carnoy's solution,degrade cell wall by acid solution,stain it by Carbol fuchsin,etc.The research ascertains chromosome number of yacon and analysis on chromosme karyotype of yacon somatic cell.The analysis indicates that the chromosome number of yacon is 2n=52=30m+2sm,and its nuclear type is classified to "2B" of Stebbins classification.
Robust Background Subtraction via the Local Similarity Statistical Descriptor

Background subtraction based on change detection is the first step in many computer vision systems. Many background subtraction methods have been proposed to detect foreground objects through background modeling. However, most of these methods are pixel-based, which only use pixel-by-pixel comparisons, and a few others are spatial-based, which take the neighborhood of each analyzed pixel into consideration. In this paper, inspired by a illumination- invariant feature based on locality-sensitive histograms proposed for object tracking, we first develop a novel texture descriptor named the Local Similarity Statistical Descriptor (LSSD), which calculates the similarity between the current pixel and its neighbors. The LSSD descriptor shows good performance in illumination variation and dynamic background scenes. Then, we model each background pixel representation with a combination of color features and LSSD features. These features are then embedded in a low-cost and highly efficient background modeling framework. The color and texture features have their own merits and demerits; they can compensate each other, resulting in better performance. Both quantitative and qualitative evaluations carried out on the change detection dataset are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Synaptic kainate currents reset interneuron firing phase

Hippocampal interneuron activity has been linked to epileptogenesis, seizures and the oscillatory synaptic activity detected in behaving rats. Interneurons fire at specific times in the rhythmic cycles that comprise these oscillations; however, the mechanisms controlling these firing patterns remain unclear. We have examined the role of synaptic input in modulating the firing of spontaneously active rat hippocampal interneurons. We find that synaptic glutamate receptor currents of 20–30 pA increase instantaneous firing frequency and reset the phase of spontaneously firing CA1 stratum oriens interneurons. Kainate receptor (KAR)‐mediated currents are particularly effective at producing this phase reset, while AMPA receptor currents are relatively ineffective. The efficacy of KAR‐mediated currents is probably due to their 3‐fold longer decay. Given the small amplitude of the currents needed for this phase reset, coincident activation of only a few KAR‐containing synapses could synchronize firing in groups of interneurons. These data suggest that KARs are potent modulators of circuit behaviour and their activation alters hippocampal interneuron output.
Helicobacter pylori accelerates the biliary epithelial cell proliferation activity in hepatolithiasis.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Several authors have reported the presence of H. pylori in the human biliary tract. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the presence of H. pylori on the epithelial cell proliferation activity in the biliary tract with hepatolithiasis. METHODOLOGY A histopathological examination and polymerase chain reaction were used to detect the presence of H. pylori from fourteen patients with hepatolithiasis. The cell proliferation activity in the biliary epithelia was determined using proliferating cell nuclear antigen staining. RESULTS A histopathological examination and polymerase chain reaction analysis demonstrated H. pylori to be detected in 5 (37%) and 4 (29%) out of 14 patients, respectively. The proliferating cell nuclear antigen labeling index was significantly higher in the H. pylori-positive patients (28.3%) than in the H. pylori-negative individuals (4.9%). CONCLUSIONS H. pylori is present in the biliary tract of patients with hepatolithiasis, while H. pylori promotes the formation of stones in the biliary tract. The development of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma might therefore be linked to the presence of H. pylori because of the accelerated activity of cell kinetics in the epithelium of the biliary tract.
Performance of OFDM Systems in Rayleigh Fading Channels with Phase Noise and Channel Estimation Errors

This paper provides the analysis of the joint effects of oscillator phase noise and channel estimation errors on the performance of OFDM in Rayleigh fading channels. The contribution of the above impairments to the signal distortion is mathematically described, and a proof of the distribution of the intercarrier interference (ICI) is also provided. Analytic and simulation results for the bit error rate (BER) of the system, with and without channel estimation errors, are then presented
Activity‐dependent maturation of excitatory synaptic connections in solitary neuron cultures of mouse neocortex

Activity plays important roles in the formation and maturation of synaptic connections. We examined these roles using solitary neocortical excitatory neurons, receiving only self‐generated synaptic inputs, cultured in a microisland with and without spontaneous spike activity. The amplitude of excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs), evoked by applying brief depolarizing voltage pulses to the cell soma, continued to increase from 7 to 14 days in culture. Short‐term depression of EPSCs in response to paired‐pulse or 10‐train‐pulse stimulation decreased with time in culture. These developmental changes were prevented when neurons were cultured in a solution containing tetrodotoxin (TTX). The number of functional synapses estimated by recycled synaptic vesicles with FM4‐64 was significantly smaller in TTX‐treated than control neurons. However, the miniature EPSC amplitude remained unchanged during development, irrespective of activity. Transmitter release probability, assessed by use‐dependent blockade of N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate receptor‐mediated EPSCs with MK‐801, was higher in TTX‐treated than control neurons. Therefore, the activity‐dependent increase in EPSC amplitude was mainly ascribed to the increase in synapse number, while activity‐dependent alleviation of short‐term depression was mostly ascribed to the decrease in release probability. The effect of activity blockade on short‐term depression, but not EPSC amplitude, was reversed after 4 days of TTX removal, indicating that synapse number and release probability are controlled by activity in very different ways. These results demonstrate that activity regulates the conversion of immature synapses transmitting low‐frequency input signals preferentially to mature synapses transmitting both low‐ and high‐frequency signals effectively, which may be necessary for information processing in mature cortex.
An Improved Signal Segmentation Using Moving Average and Savitzky-Golay Filter

Analysis of long-term EEG signals needs that it be segmented into pseudo stationary epochs. That work is done by regarding to statistical characteristics of a signal such as amplitude and frequency. Time series measured in real world is frequently non-stationary and to extract important information from the measured time series it is significant to utilize a filter or smoother as a pre-processing step. In the proposed approach, the signal is initially filtered by Moving Average (MA) or Savitzky-Golay filter to attenuate its short-term variations. Then, changes of the amplitude or frequency of the signal is calculated by Modified Varri method which is an acceptable algorithm for segmenting a signal. By using synthetic and real EEG data, the proposed methods are compared with original approach (simple Modified Varri). The simulation results indicate the absolute advantage of the proposed methods.
Equilibrium fluctuations in an N-particle coasting beam: Schottky noise effects

We discuss the longitudinal dynamics of an unbunched beam with a collective effect due to the vacuum chamber and with the discreteness of an N-particle beam (Schottky noise) included. We start with the 2N equations of motion (in angle and energy) with random initial conditions. The 2D phase space density (Klimontovich density) for the N particles is a sum of delta functions and satisfies the Klimontovich equation and the Vlasov equation. An arbitrary function of the energy also satisfies the Vlasov equation and we linearize about a convenient equilibrium density taking the initial conditions to be independent, identically distributed random variables with the equilibrium distribution. The linearized equations can be solved using a Laplace transform in time and a Fourier series in angle. The resultant stochastic process for the phase space density is analyzed and compared with a known result. Work is in progress to study the full nonlinear problem.
Physical inactivity, water intake and constipation as risk factors for colorectal cancer among adults in Jordan.

BACKGROUND Physical activity has been found to play a role in cancer prevention. The purpose of this matched case-control study was to investigate the association between physical activity levels, water intake, constipation and colorectal cancer (CRC). MATERIALS AND METHODS Two hundred and thirty-two patients diagnosed with CRC (125 male, 107 female) were enrolled in this case-control study. Cases were matched to 271 population controls (137 male, 134 female). RESULTS Drinking more than 4 cups of water daily decreased the risk of CRC by 33-42%; however, this effect was non-significant. Having constipation was found to be a significant risk factor for developing CRC with an OR=6.284 (95%CI=2.741-14.40). With reference to sedentary behavior, minimum activity (600-3000 Metabolic Equivalents Task (MET)) had 43% protection against CRC and the level of Health Enhancing Physical Activity OR was 0.58 (at 95%CI; 0.37-0.92). A significant negative association was found between CRC and physical activity levels expressed as both METs and MET-hours/week (p for trend=0.017 and 0.03, respectively). Among females, a significant trend of reduction in CRC by 62% was observed with increasing the level of physical activity expressed in MET (p for trend=0.04). CONCLUSIONS The risk of CRC may be reduced by adopting a healthy lifestyle and practicing physically activity regularly, especially among females. Consuming adequate amounts of water and healthy bowel motility could also reduce the risk of CRC.
G-CSF: function and modes of action (Review).

Since the observations in the 1960s that granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) stimulated the proliferation of granulocytic cells in semisolid cultures of bone marrow cells, G-CSF has established itself as a useful clinical agent for increasing levels of neutrophilic granulocytes. However, these early findings did not firmly establish whether G-CSF is a genuine regulator of granulocyte formation under normal physiological conditions or rather acts as an emergency regulator, playing an important role only under stress conditions. The advent of has allowed us to evaluate these questions in a physiological setting through analysis of mice with a targeted mutation of G-CSF or its receptor, while the development of relevant cell models has enabled us to dissect the molecular basis of G-CSF action. This review discusses our current state of knowledge regarding the role of G-CSF in granulopoiesis.
A new method for fast and accurate determination of the temperature coefficients of material constants up to 700°C. Application to LGS

Accurate sets of material constants and temperature coefficients are required to develop high temperature SAW sensors. It was previously shown that SAW Fractional Frequency Curve measurements combined with numerical optimization could help ease the burden of the experimental determination of some of these coefficients. To determine the other “missing” coefficients, it was suggested to use complementary BAW FFC measurements. However, to keep the global experimental effort as low as possible, a solution had to be found to avoid fabricating additional BAW devices on special LGS orientations. In this work, we describe a practical solution to simultaneously acquire BAW and SAW FFCs. Experimental results are presented then used to compute values of some of the missing coefficients. This demonstrates the whole method as being a promising way to determine accurate temperature coefficients with reduced experimental effort.
Microscopic theory for the phase separation of self-propelled repulsive disks

Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal suspensions, we study analytically and numerically a microscopic model for self-propelled particles lacking alignment interactions. In this model, even for purely repulsive interactions, a dynamical instability leading to phase separation has been reported. Starting from the many-body Smoluchowski equation, we develop a mean-field description based on a novel closure scheme and derive the effective hydrodynamic equations. We demonstrate that the microscopic origin of the instability is a force imbalance due to an anisotropic pair distribution leading to self-trapping. The phase diagram can be understood in terms of two quantities: a minimal drive and the force imbalance. At sufficiently high propulsion speeds there is a reentrance into the disordered fluid.
Rare but not so rare: The evolving spectrum of Whipple's disease.

Knowledge about Whipple's disease began to emerge in 1907, when George Hoyt Whipple recognized the first case of the disease that now bears his name. He reported the case of a 36-year-old physician with "a gradual loss of weight and strength, stools consisting chiefly of neutral fat and fatty acids, indefinite abdominal signs, and a peculiar multiple arthritis" (1). Findings at autopsy consisted of poly-serositis, aortic valve vegetations and deposition of fat in the intestinal mucosa and regional lymph nodes with marked infiltration by foamy macrophages (1). It was originally thought to be a disorder of fat metabolism, and the term 'intestinal lipodystrophy' was proposed. Whipple's disease has since been recognized as a rare, multivisceral, chronic disease with a clinical presentation dominated by a symptom triad of diarrhea, weight loss and malabsorption. However, digestive symptoms are often preceded for months or years by other symptoms, the most common being arthralgia, although cardiovascular, neurological or pulmonary involvement may be more prominent at times. Once considered the ideal case report, recent characterization of Tropheryma whippelii by means of broad range bacterial ribosomal DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis (2,3) and its subsequent cultivation (4) has led to a veritable explosion of individual case reports, case series and hitherto unrecognized manifestations of the disease, such that it is now considered an underdiagnosed infectious disease (5). It is timely to provide an update on new developments in Whipple's disease.