Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Exact Geometric Predicates for Delauny Triangulations

A time efficient implementation of the exact computation paradigm relies on arithmetic filters which are used to speed up the exact computation of easy instances of the geometric predicates. Depending of what is called ``easy instances'', we usually classify filters as static or dynamic and also some in between categories often called semi-static. In this paper, we propose, in the context of three dimensional Delaunay triangulations: --- automatic tools for the writing of static and semi-static filters, --- a new semi-static level of filtering called translation filter, --- detailed benchmarks of the success rates of these filters and comparison with rounded arithmetic, long integer arithmetic and filters provided in Shewchuk's predicates. Our method is general and can be applied to all geometric predicates on points that can be expressed as signs of polynomial expressions. This work is applied in the CGAL library.
Merbarone Inhibits the Catalytic Activity of Human Topoisomerase IIα by Blocking DNA Cleavage*

Merbarone is a catalytic inhibitor of topoisomerase II that is in clinical trials as an anticancer agent. Despite the potential therapeutic value of this drug, the mechanism by which it blocks topoisomerase II activity has not been delineated. Therefore, to determine the mechanistic basis for the inhibitory action of merbarone, the effects of this drug on individual steps of the catalytic cycle of human topoisomerase IIα were assessed. Concentrations of merbarone that inhibited catalytic activity ≥80% had no effect on either enzyme·DNA binding or ATP hydrolysis. In contrast, the drug was a potent inhibitor of enzyme-mediated DNA scission (in the absence or presence of ATP), and the inhibitory profiles of merbarone for DNA cleavage and relaxation were similar. These data indicate that merbarone acts primarily by blocking topoisomerase II-mediated DNA cleavage. Merbarone inhibited DNA scission in a global (rather than site-specific) fashion but did not appear to intercalate into DNA or bind in the minor groove. Since the drug competed with etoposide (a cleavage-enhancing agent that binds directly to topoisomerase II), it is proposed that merbarone exerts its inhibitory effects through interactions with the enzyme and that the drug shares an interaction domain on topoisomerase II with cleavage-enhancing agents.
The Effect of the Internet on Pricing in the Airline Industry

We examine the relationship between nonlinear pricing and consumer search costs in the airline industry during a period of increasing Internet use. We find that higher Internet usage increases the spread between unrestricted and restricted fares. We also find that the ratio of unrestricted to restricted ticket fares increases with more competition, but the effect is smaller as a result of a larger population searching for airline travel online, implying that the Internet is inducing more competitive firm behavior. The data support models of price discrimination through brand differentiation, but do not support standard consumer search cost models well.
A comprehensive systematic review on lateral/horizontal violence in the profession of nursing

Review Questions/Objective The overall aim of this comprehensive systematic review is to synthesise the best available evidence on the experience of lateral/horizontal violence in the profession of nursing and the effectiveness of programs/strategies meant to decrease its prevalence or mitigate its negative effects. Specifically, this review will seek to answer the following questions: •What is the experience of being a licensed nurse who is a victim of lateral/horizontal violence? •What is the experience of being a student nurse who is a victim of lateral/horizontal violence? •What is the impact of experiencing lateral/horizontal violence on job retention and job satisfaction? •What are the most effective interventions/strategies for decreasing the prevalence or mitigating the negative effects of lateral/horizontal violence on licensed nurses? Inclusion Criteria Types of Participants This review will consider studies with a focus on licensed nurses and student nurses. For purposes of this review ‘licensed nurse’ refers to a nurse who holds a license to practice nursing at any level. Due to the ambiguity of nomenclature, different titles for licensed nurse will be considered, including but not limited to registered nurse, practical nurse, vocational nurse. ) Types of Interventions/Phenomena of Interest The qualitative component of this review will consider as phenomena of interest the actual experience of horizontal/lateral violence by licensed nurses and student nurses. The quantitative component of this review will examine interventions/strategies meant to decrease the prevalence or mitigate the effects of lateral/horizontal violence on licensed or student nurses. Some examples of programs or strategies reported in the literature are intense education programs, cognitive rehearsal strategies, zero tolerance policies and workshops. Context This review will consider research on the experience of lateral/horizontal violence in the profession of nursing and the efficacy/effectiveness of programs/strategies that are designed to decrease its prevalence or mitigate its negative effects in any setting where licensed or student nurses practise. Types of Outcomes The qualitative component of this review will include experiential accounts of being a nurse or student nurse who has experienced lateral/horizontal violence. The quantitative component of this review will consider studies that report outcomes such as but not limited to: •types and intensity/severity of effects of lateral/horizontal violence on licensed or student nurses •number of lateral/horizontal violence episodes/ prevalence of lateral/horizontal violence. •job satisfaction •job retention.
The Human ZIP1 Transporter Mediates Zinc Uptake in Human K562 Erythroleukemia Cells*

The ZIP superfamily of transporters plays important roles in metal ion uptake in diverse organisms. There are 12 ZIP-encoding genes in humans, and we hypothesize that many of these proteins are zinc transporters. In this study, we addressed the role of one human ZIP gene, hZIP1, in zinc transport. First, we examined 65Zn uptake activity in K562 erythroleukemia cells overexpressing hZIP1. These cells accumulated more zinc than control cells because of increased zinc influx. Moreover, consistent with its role in zinc uptake, hZIP1 protein was localized to the plasma membrane. Our results also demonstrated that hZIP1 is responsible for the endogenous zinc uptake activity in K562 cells. hZIP1 is expressed in untransfected K562 cells, and the increase in mRNA levels found inhZIP1-overexpressing cells correlated with the increased zinc uptake activity. Furthermore, hZIP1-dependent 65Zn uptake was biochemically indistinguishable from the endogenous activity. Finally, inhibition of endogenous hZIP1 expression with antisense oligonucleotides caused a marked decrease in endogenous65Zn uptake activity. The observation that hZIP1 is the major zinc transporter in K562 cells, coupled with its expression in many normal cell types, indicates that hZIP1 plays an important role in zinc uptake in human tissues.
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors suppress UV-induced human immunodeficiency virus type 1 gene expression at the posttranscriptional level

Gene expression of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is induced not only by trans activation mediated through a gene product (tat) encoded by the virus but also by treatment of virus-carrying cells with DNA-damaging agents such as UV light. Employing an artificially constructed DNA in which the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene was placed under the control of the HIV-1 long terminal repeat, we analyzed the induction process in HeLa cells and found that inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase suppressed UV-induced HIV-1 gene expression but not tat-mediated expression. We also found that suppression occurs at the posttranscriptional level. These results indicate that HIV-1 gene expression is activated by at least two different mechanisms, one of which involves poly-ADP ribosylation. A possible new role of poly-ADP ribosylation in the regulation of specific gene expression is also discussed.
Fast fault detection of open power switch in cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverters

The Cascaded H-Bridge topology has in recent years become popular for use in medium voltage drives. The reliability of this topology however is of concern due to the large number of semiconductor switches. The natural redundancy possessed by the CHB topology can only be realized if failed devices may be identified and removed from the system. In this paper a fault diagnostic method for open switch fault is proposed. The method is based on the prediction of the active and zero voltage states of each module. With the proposed method, the exact location of the switch under fault in an H-bridge module can be determined quickly. The performance of the proposed technique has been verified through simulation.
Horizontally Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna Array Using Cascaded Cavities

A new structure of horizontally polarized (HP) antenna array is presented for azimuthal omnidirectional coverage. The proposed antenna array is engineered by breaking the fringing held symmetry along the typical parallel strip-lines, which is implemented by loading held-block structures alternatively and periodically. In physics, the blocking structures constrain the fringing helds inside, producing a series of rectangular open cavities operating at the TM1n0 (n = 0.5) mode. Counterintuitively, these asymmetric open cavities are able to generate an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the E plane with horizontal polarization, similar to the linear magnetic current array. In order to verify the design strategy, a hve-unit center-fed cascaded cavity array is fabricated and tested. The measured bandwidth is 120 MHz (5.83-5.95 GHz) with reflection coefhcient lower than -10 dB. The HP omnidirectional pattern at 5.9 GHz provides a gain variation of 1.94 dB ranging from 6.7-8.64 dBi.
Ectopic production of VapCs from Enterobacteria inhibits translation and trans‐activates YoeB mRNA interferase

Toxin–antitoxin loci have been identified in almost all free‐living prokaryotes, often in high copy numbers. The biological function and molecular targets of the abundant vapBC loci are not yet known. Here we analyse the vapBC loci of Salmonella LT2 and Shigella plasmid pMYSH6000. Both loci encode putative PIN (PilT N‐terminal) domain toxins, and antitoxins that may regulate vapBC transcription. We show that vapBCLT2 and vapBCpMYSH are bona fide TA loci: (i) both VapCs inhibited cell growth very efficiently and were counteracted by the cognate VapBs; (ii) both VapCs inhibited translation; (iii) transcription of the vapBC loci was induced by amino acid starvation and chloramphenicol, consistent with the proposal that VapB is an unstable inhibitor of vapBC transcription; (iv) ectopic expression of both VapCs induced a bacteriostatic condition that could be reversed by the cognate antitoxins. Unexpectedly, induction of vapC in Escherichia coli resulted in mRNA cleavage at stop‐codons. Surprisingly, these cleavages depended on the yefM yoeB locus, indicating cross‐activation between different toxins, that is, VapC activated YoeB mRNA interferase. Activation of YoeB depended on Lon, indicating that Lon degrades YefM antitoxin. Based on these results we present a model that explains activation of YoeB.
Radiation Therapy for Pediatric Central Nervous System Tumors

Radiation therapy is an important component of treatment of many pediatric central nervous system tumors. The radiation treatment target is determined by tumor histology, extent of disease, anticipated pattern of spread, and expected pattern of failure. Children cured of their tumors live to experience the long-term sequelae of radiation treatment, including developmental, neurocognitive, neuroendocrine, and hearing late effects. The development of more conformal radiation techniques has decreased inadvertent radiation dose to normal tissues and should decrease long-term treatment sequelae that are the result of normal tissue radiation. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy improves treatment conformity and decreases high dose to nearby normal tissues; however, it delivers a larger volume of low- and intermediate-dose radiation. Proton radiation eliminates exit dose to normal tissues, thereby eliminating approximately 50% of unnecessary radiation to normal tissues. The long-term clinical benefits of proton radiation in the pediatric population are just beginning to be reported in the literature.
Absolute quantification in dopaminergic neurotransmission SPECT using a Monte Carlo-based scatter correction and fully 3-dimensional reconstruction.

UNLABELLED Dopamine transporter (DAT) ligands have been developed for in vivo imaging of the dopaminergic system in SPECT. Although the visual analysis of SPECT images is, in general, suitable for clinical assessment, the accurate quantification of the striatal uptake might increase the sensitivity of the technique and help in the early diagnosis, follow-up, and eventual treatment response of Parkinson's disease (PD). This work is focused on assessment of the quantification of specific uptake of (99m)Tc-DAT ligands when compensation for all degrading phenomena is performed. METHODS The SimSET Monte Carlo (MC) code was used to generate a set of SPECT projections of a numeric striatal phantom with different specific uptake ratios (SURs). An absolute quantification method (AQM), which performs a MC-based scatter compensation and a fully 3-dimensional (3D) reconstruction, was implemented. The scatter estimate was included in the reconstruction algorithm. RESULTS The use of attenuation, point-spread-function (PSF), and scatter corrections resulted in an improvement in the value of the SUR of 37% on average with respect to the reconstruction without corrections. The magnitude of each improvement corresponded to 7% for the attenuation correction, 12% for the PSF correction using a 2-dimensional reconstruction algorithm and a further 11% for the PSF correction using a 3D reconstruction algorithm, and 7% for the scatter correction. CONCLUSION Our findings indicate that the PSF correction plays a major role in the quantification of striatal uptake in comparison with the attenuation correction and the scatter correction. The implemented method also provides an absolute quantification procedure based on MC methods that do not depend on empiric approximations. The relative quantification results using the proposed AQM accounted for 96%-97% of the nominal SUR, whereas the limit achieved using only primary photons attained 98%-99%. The volumetric activity values obtained using the AQM converged toward the nominal values.
Towards asynchronous metacomputing in MPI

Metacomputing so far has been done mostly in more or less static configurations. However, applications with dynamic irregular behavior are increasing in significance and the computing platforms more often are time-sharing environments with varying system load. Thus, possibilities for dynamic connection and dynamic workload migration are becoming important. The paper discusses an approach to perform asynchronous workload balancing using the standard parallel library MPI. MPI and threads typically live in more or less separated worlds and the thread extension of MPI-2 is mainly meant to exploit more efficiently per SMP node within a model which is still mostly SPMD. We have extended MPI by dynamic mechanisms to automatically balance workload on the basis of threads and dynamic status/resource monitoring. Our extended library TeMPI is designed to run with in a minimum version with MPICH and thus MPICH-G2 in the Globus grid environment.
Models of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm: Characterization and Clinical Applications

Abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) are responsible for considerable morbidity, mortality, and cost to society. The pathogenesis of AAA formation, however, remains poorly understood. Animal models have been used in a range of experiments designed to provide further objective scientific assessment of the pathogenesis as well as the treatment of AAA. The purpose of this manuscript is to review the current models of AAA and their potential clinical implications.
Prediction of the tuberculosis reinfection proportion from the local incidence.

BACKGROUND Reinfection is a major contributor to tuberculosis (TB). It seems that the higher the local incidence, the higher the proportion of reinfection. METHODS Based on a systematic review of the literature, we established a regression model to predict the reinfection proportion from the local incidence. We then used our local data to verify the algorithm. RESULTS Of the 23 studies addressing reinfection in recurrent TB, 6 were population based. The reinfection proportion was correlated with the local incidence (reinfection proportion=-29.7+36.8 x log Incidence) (95% confidence interval [CI] for coefficient, 15.3-58.3; R2=0.849). The reinfection proportion in Taiwan (incidence, 62.4/100,000 people) was estimated to be 36% (95% CI, 3%-69%). Of our 49 recurrent patients, 51% had reinfection. Patients with reactivation seemed more likely to have underlying diseases and less likely to be smear positive. The relapse isolates seemed more resistant than the initial isolates. CONCLUSIONS The regression model could possibly predict the TB reinfection proportion from the local incidence. This algorithm is probably helpful in policy making for TB control programs. In areas where TB is endemic, reinfection might be responsible for >50% of TB cases, and aggressive surveillance to detect asymptomatic carriers could be an important strategy for controlling the disease.
Summary and discussion of : “ Exact Post-selection Inference for Forward Stepwise and Least Angle Regression

In this report we summarize the recent paper [Taylor et al., 2014] which proposes new inference tools for methods that perform variable selection and estimation in an adaptive regression. Although this paper mainly studies forward stepwise regression (FS) and least angle regression (LAR), the approach in this paper is not limited to these cases. This paper describes how to carry out exact inference after any polyhedron selection mechanism, and the approach is applicable to both FS and LAR.
Advances on GaN based switch mode amplifiers for communication applications

This paper presents the design and implementation of a switch mode power amplifier as a building block for a purely digital transmitter chain for communication applications using high-power Gallium Nitride (GaN) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) with high electronic mobility transistors (HEMTs). For square-wave excitation the measured output power and drain efficiency are 5 W and 64 %, respectively, enabling a highly efficient transmit chain. For evaluation purposes the amplifier has also been driven by a bandpass delta-sigma modulator (BDSM). In case of a 900 MHz continuous wave (CW) signal, the measured output power and drain efficiency are 2.3 W and 42 %, respectively.
An overview of the Sandia national laboratories genomes to life project, "carbon sequestration in Synechococcus sp.: from molecular machines to hierarchical modeling"

The Sandia-led Genomes to Life (GTL) project: "Carbon Sequestration in Synechococcus Sp. : From Molecular Machines to Hierarchical Modeling," is focused on developing, prototyping, and applying new computational tools and methods to ellucidate the biochemical mechanisms of the carbon sequestration of Synechococcus Sp. , an abundant marine cyanobacteria known to play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Our effort includes five subprojects: an experimental investigation, three computational biology efforts, and a fifth which deals with addressing computational infrastructure challenges of relevance to this project and the genomes to life program as a whole. Our experimental effort is designed to provide biology and data to drive the computational efforts and includes significant investment in developing new experimental methods for uncovering protein partners, characterizing protein complexes, identifying new binding domains. Our computational efforts include coupling molecular simulation methods with knowledge discovery from diverse biological data sets for high-throughput discovery and characterization of protein-protein complexes and developing a set of novel capabilities for inference of regulatory pathways in microbial genomes across multiple sources of information through the integration of computational and experimental technologies.
Role of the Copper(II) Complex Cu[15]pyN5 in Intracellular ROS and Breast Cancer Cell Motility and Invasion

Multiple mechanisms related to metastases undergo redox regulation. Cu[15]pyN5 is a redox‐active copper(II) complex previously studied as a chemotherapy sensitizer in mammary cells. The effects of a cotreatment with Cu[15]pyN5 and doxorubicin (dox) were evaluated in two human breast cancer cell lines: MCF7 (low aggressiveness) and MDA‐MB‐231 (highly aggressive). Cu[15]pyN5 decreased MCF7‐directed cell migration. In addition, a cotreatment with dox and Cu[15]pyN5 reduced the proteolytic invasion of MDA‐MB‐231 cells. Cell detachment was not affected by exposure to these agents. Cu[15]pyN5 and dox significantly increased intracellular ROS in both cell lines. This increase could be at least partially due to H2O2 accumulation. The combination of Cu[15]pyN5 with dox may be beneficial in breast cancer treatment as it could help reduce cancer cell migration and invasion. Moreover, the ligand [15]pyN5 has a high affinity for copper(II) and displays potential anti‐angiogenic properties. Overall, we present a potential drug that might arrest the progression of breast cancer by different and complementary mechanisms.
Words and worlds : modelling verbal descriptions of situations

In this book, the reader is invited to enter a strange world in which you can tell the age of the captain by counting the animals on his ship, where runners do not get tired, and where water gets hotter when you add it to other water. It is the world of a curious genre, known as “word problems” or “story problems”. It originated in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, China, and India, and is the subject of daily rituals among students and teachers in mathematics classrooms all around the world. An international group of scholars with a shared interest in this phenomenon explore multiple aspects of this world from multiple perspectives. These discussions take us deep into philosophical issues of the relationships between words, mathematical systems, and the physical and social worlds we all inhabit. Empirical investigations are reported that throw light on how students and their teachers experience and interpret this activity, raising profound questions about the nature and purposes of mathematics teaching/learning in general and how it could be improved. N E W D I R E C T I O N S I N M A T H E M A T I C S A N D S C I E N C E E D U C A T I O N
Switched Linear Multi-Robot Navigation Using Hierarchical Model Predictive Control

Multi-robot navigation control in the absence of reference trajectory is rather challenging as it is expected to ensure stability and feasibility while still offer fast computation on control decisions. The intrinsic high complexity of switched linear dynamical robots makes the problem even more challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel HMPC based method to address the navigation problem of multiple robots with switched linear dynamics. We develop a new technique to compute the reachable sets of switched linear systems and use them to enable the parallel computation of control parameters. We present theoretical results on stability, feasibility and complexity of the proposed approach, and demonstrate its empirical advance in performance against other approaches.