Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Size control during organogenesis: Development of the lateral line organs in zebrafish

Many genes that play essential roles in organ growth have been identified across a range of organisms. However, the mechanisms by which growing organs can sense their sizes and stop growing when they reach their proper sizes remain poorly understood. The mechanosensory organs of the fish lateral line system (neuromasts) provide an ideal system to address this question for the following reasons. First, each superficial neuromast is composed of a small number of cells situated on the body surface, making it relatively easy to quantify organ size throughout development. Second, while the sensory cells of superficial neuromasts are continuously renewed, overall organ size is homeostatically maintained. Third, there is another type of neuromast showing an opposite mode of growth: that is, canal neuromasts increase in size in proportion to organism body size. Here, we review recent findings regarding the mechanisms that control organ size in the zebrafish lateral line.
Fabrication of gel glass containing high rendering phosphor mixture via sol-gel process for LEDs

In this study, gel glass containing yellow, green and orange phosphors is fabricated via sol-gel process. Effects of different temperatures on condensation time of the sol and density of the gel glass are investigated. The gel glass is detected to confirm micro structure by SEM. The phosphors are well dispersed in the glass without phosphor degradation. The white light is successfully observed by packaging the glass to the blue LED chip. This study reveals that glass prepared by the sol-gel process has the ability to disperse phosphor or phosphor mixture at low temperature. The gel glass containing different phosphors in proper ratio applied in LED package realizes high CRI LED.
Measurement of nitric oxide release evoked by systemic hypoxia and adenosine from rat skeletal muscle in vivo

It is accepted that NO plays a role in hypoxic vasodilatation in several tissues. For rat hindlimb muscle there is evidence that during systemic hypoxia endogenously released adenosine acts on endothelial A1 receptors to evoke dilatation in a NO‐dependent fashion, implying requirement for, or mediation by, NO. We tested in vivo whether systemic hypoxia and adenosine release NO from muscle. In anaesthetized rats, arterial blood pressure (ABP) and femoral blood flow (FBF) were recorded allowing computation of femoral vascular conductance (FVC). Blood samples taken from femoral artery and vein allowed electrochemical measurement of plasma [NO] after reduction of NO3− and NO2−. Systemic hypoxia and adenosine infusion for 5 min each, evoked an increase in FVC that was attenuated by the NO synthase (NOS) inhibitor l‐NAME (Group 1, n= 8) and adenosine A1 receptor antagonist 8‐cyclopentyl‐1,3‐dipropylxanthine (DPCPX, Group 2, n= 6). Concomitant systemic hypoxia and adenosine infusion evoked increases in venous–arterial [NO] difference ([NO]v‐a) from −1.4 ± 0.85 to 6.6 ± 1.6 and 2.3 ± 0.78 to 8.4 ± 1.8 nmol l−1, respectively (mean ±s.e.m), which were abolished by l‐NAME (−0.72 ± 0.90 to −0.87 ± 0.74 and 0.72 ± 0.85 to −0.97 ± 1.1 nmol l−1, respectively). DPCPX also abolished the hypoxia‐evoked increase in [NO]v‐a (control −4.2 ± 1.8 to 12.5 ± 3.7 nmol l−1, with DPCPX −0.63 ± 2.6 to 3.3 ± 2.9 nmol l−1) and decreased the adenosine‐evoked increase in [NO]v‐a (control 1.1 ± 1.5 to 24 ± 14, with DPCPX −0.43 ± 2.9 to 12 ± 5.9 nmol l−1). These results allow the novel conclusion that the muscle vasodilatation of systemic hypoxia is partly mediated by adenosine acting at endothelial A1 receptors to stimulate synthesis and release of NO, which then induces dilatation.
The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 Tat antagonist, Ro 5-3335, predominantly inhibits transcription initiation from the viral promoter

Tat, the transcriptional transactivator protein of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), is required for viral replication in vitro. The Tat antagonist, Ro 5-3335, and its analog, Ro 24-7429, have been shown to inhibit replication of HIV-1 and to reduce steady-state viral RNA in infected cells (M.-C. Hsu et al., Science 254:1799-1802, 1991, and M.-C. Hsu et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 90:6395-6399, 1993). Analysis of HIV-1 long terminal repeat-driven reporter gene transcription in a recombinant adenovirus by nuclear run-on assay indicated that the drug predominantly inhibits Tat-dependent initiation and also exerts a measurable effect on elongation. This result may imply a common mechanism for Tat-mediated transcription initiation and elongation.
An Analog-to-Information converter for Biomedical Signals based on Compressive Sensing

In this paper an Analog-to-Information converter based on the Compressive Sensing (CS) paradigm and particularly suited for biomedical signals with Nyquist frequency up to 100 kHz is presented. The circuit has been designed and fabricated in CMOS 180 nm technology and exploits a 16-channel Random Modulation pre-Integration (RMPI) architecture, that has been proven to be the most versatile CS approach. The circuits also embeds a smart and innovative saturation checking mechanism, that allows signal reconstruction without performance reduction even in presence of saturation. Measurements on real electrocardiogram (ECG) and electromyogram (EMG) signals available in public databases confirm that circuit performances on different settings are aligned with the theoretical expected ones.
Prognostic markers in esophageal cancer: from basic research to clinical use

Esophageal cancer (EC) remains a leading cause of cancer-related death in Asian countries. Due to the biology of EC, including aggressive local invasion, early metastasis and drug resistance, EC has a low survival rate. Therefore, molecular markers for prognosis judgment are urgently required so as to identify subgroups of patients that will benefit from more aggressive therapeutic interventions. So far, many genes and miRNAs, such as VEGF, cyclin D1, and miR-21, have been shown to be valuable when predicting the prognosis of EC. Some circulating molecules, including miR-200c, miR-1246, miR-31, have been identified as the independent risk factors for poor survival. However, the function and mechanism of these molecules in EC remains unclear. More clinical studies should be performed to promote the clinical use of prognosis-related markers in the management of EC.
Asymmetry in Wireless Power Transfer Between a Superconducting Coil and a Copper Coil

Wireless power transfer (WPT) is of increasing interests today. High temperature superconducting (HTS) WPT has been demonstrated to be more efficient than copper WPT. In our previous work, we found that the efficiency of WPT from a copper coil to a HTS coil is lower than the efficiency of WPT from the same HTS coil to the same copper coil. Thus, the transmitter and the receiver are asymmetric and this asymmetry degrades WPT performance. In this paper, it is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally that for WPT between a HTS coil and a copper coil: asymmetry does exist and influences properties; the root of the asymmetry is the different resistances between the HTS coil and the copper coil; the effects of the asymmetry can be eliminated by optimizing the load; the proposed theoretical calculation fits the experimental results well.
Advanced Multiple Watermarking Scheme for Copyright Protection and Image Authentication

 Abstract — The advancement in communication medium is producing large volume of digital information which needs to be protected. Watermarking is a technique that is used to hide secret information into original signal in a manner that improves overall quality of the original signal. In case of digital image watermarking, another area that is drawing attention is the multiple watermarking, where more than one watermark is embedded into single multimedia object. Multiple watermarks are normally proposed as a method to provide extra security to an image by embedding two or more secret messages into the cover image. In the present research work, the concept of multiple watermarking is used to hide both copyright and authentication information into a color image. For this purpose a wavelet transformation based on texture properties and secret sharing using visual cryptography is used. The various benchmarks and attacks are applied on the watermarked images to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Experimental results indicate that the proposed watermarking scheme is highly robust and does not degrade the original signal. To minimize the difference between original and watermarked singular values, an optimized-quality formula is proposed. First, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is defined as a performance index in a matrix form. Then, an optimized-quality functional that relates the performance index to the quantization technique is obtained. Experimental results show that the watermarked image can keep a high PSNR and achieve less mean square error (MSE) even when the number of coefficients for embedding a watermark bit increases.
A survey of data mining softwares used for real projects

Data mining is a key in knowledge discovery process. In recent years, its application is becoming a fast growing field, and more and more software products are developed based on different application background. In this paper, we make a survey of data mining tools used for real projects, evaluate their impact factors with a new definition and reveal that open source softwares are becoming more widely used and there is seldom single software is used for solving real problems.
Role of ataxia‐telangiectasia mutated (ATM) in porcine oocyte in vitro maturation

Ataxia‐telangiectasia mutated (ATM) is critical for the DNA damage response, cell cycle checkpoints, and apoptosis. Significant effort has focused on elucidating the relationship between ATM and other nuclear signal transducers; however, little is known about the connection between ATM and oocyte meiotic maturation. We investigated the function of ATM in porcine oocytes. ATM was expressed at all stages of oocyte maturation and localized predominantly in the nucleus. Furthermore, the ATM‐specific inhibitor KU‐55933 blocked porcine oocyte maturation, reducing the percentages of oocytes that underwent germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and first polar body extrusion. KU‐55933 also decreased the expression of DNA damage‐related genes (breast cancer 1, budding uninhibited by benzimidazoles 1, and P53) and reduced the mRNA and protein levels of AKT and other cell cycle‐regulated genes that are predominantly expressed during G2/M phase, including bone morphogenetic protein 15, growth differentiation factor 9, cell division cycle protein 2, cyclinB1, and AKT. KU‐55933 treatment decreased the developmental potential of blastocysts following parthenogenetic activation and increased the level of apoptosis. Together, these data suggested that ATM influenced the meiotic and cytoplasmic maturation of porcine oocytes, potentially by decreasing their sensitivity to DNA strand breaks, stimulating the AKT pathway, and/or altering the expression of other maternal genes.
Development of normative values for resting and exercise rate pressure product.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to develop multivariate models to quantify resting, submaximal, and maximal rate pressure products (RPP). METHODS A validation sample (N = 1623) was randomly selected from a clinically healthy population, and four cross-validation samples were randomly selected from a clinical cohort. The cross-validation samples were patients who had a negative exercise ECG with (Neg-Med, N = 179) and without cardiovascular drug (Neg-NoMed, N = 350), and patients who had a positive exercise ECG with (Pos-Med, N = 60) and without cardiovascular drug (Pos-NoMed, N = 75). Men made up 83% of the validation sample (mean age = 44.2+/-8.7) and women 17% (mean age = 39.7+/-10.1). The validation sample was used to develop multiple regression equations to quantify resting, submaximal, and maximal RPP. RESULTS Results indicated that gender, body mass index (BMI), and physical activity level (Ex-code) were significantly related with resting RPP. Gender, age, BMI, and Ex-code were significantly related with maximal RPP. Gender, age, BMI, Ex-code, and percent of maximal heart rate at submaximal exercise (%HRmax) were significantly related with submaximal RPP. The multiple correlations for the resting, submaximal, and maximal models were 0.29 (SE = 16.75 beats x min(-1) x mm Hg), 0.87 (SE = 29.04 beats x min(-1) x mm Hg), and 0.31 (SE = 42.41 beats x min(-1) x mm Hg), respectively. The accuracy of the models was confirmed when applied to the Neg-NoMed and Pos-NoMed samples but not the Neg-Med and Pos-Med samples. This result suggest that the regression models developed from this study can be generalized to other populations where patients were not taking cardiovascular medication. Microcomputer programs were suggested to evaluate RPP at rest, maximal exercise, and submaximal exercise. CONCLUSION Normative RPP for resting and exercise relies on multiple fitness parameters. Practical regression models are developed and can be applied to patients without cardiovascular medication.
Clinical correlates of the pathology underlying parkinsonism: A population perspective

We correlated the clinical features with pathological findings in an autopsy series of cases of incident parkinsonism. We used the medical records‐linkage system of the Rochester Epidemiology Project to identify all incident cases of parkinsonism in Olmsted County, MN, for the years 1976 to 1990. Medical histories were abstracted in a standardized manner. Included in this study were those incident cases who died and underwent autopsy. Brain sections were studied with routine histology and special stainings. A neuropathologist blinded to any clinical information assigned cases to neuropathological categories. We found 364 incident cases of parkinsonism of which 235 were deceased at the time of this study; there were 39 autopsied brains available for analysis (17% of deceased cases). Of the 16 patients diagnosed pathologically with Lewy body disease, documentation indicated that 8 had an early dementia, 3 had prominent dysautonomia, and 2 had prominent ataxia. Of the 7 patients diagnosed pathologically with progressive supranuclear palsy, 4 had no documentation of supranuclear gaze palsy, and 3 had no documentation of early falls. Of the 3 patients diagnosed pathologically with multiple system atrophy, none had prominent ataxia or dysautonomia documented. Of the 5 patients with vascular disease at pathology, none had been given the clinical diagnosis of vascular parkinsonism. Of the 8 cases given the clinical diagnosis of drug‐induced parkinsonism, 6 were found to have basal ganglia pathology. The autopsied cases in this study were not representative of all patients with parkinsonism, because atypical cases are more likely to come to autopsy than typical ones. Despite this selection bias, the retrospective data collection, and the small sample size, we made several observations that illustrate the difficulty in achieving an accurate antemortem diagnosis of parkinsonism. © 2002 Movement Disorder Society
New document-context term weights and clustering for information retrieval

In this thesis we investigate new methods to deal with the pol ysemy and word mismatch problems in information retrieval (IR). We tackle polysemy by using ‘document-contexts’, which are text windows centred on query terms in a document. Analysis of the words in the vicinity of a query term can identify its specific meaning in the context. In IR, ma ny of the commonly used term weights are variants of the TF-IDF form. The tradit ion TF-IDF weight of a term depends only on the occurrence statistics of the term i tself. We have studied a novel ‘context-dependent’ term weight, which incorporate s information based on the words found in the document-contexts of a term. These term we ights are generated by a Boost and Discount (B&D) procedure, which utilizes any rel evance information that is available to estimate the probability of relevance o f a context. Such relevance information may come from actual relevance judgments that a user makes on a (small) number of documents, as in ‘relevance feedback’ (RF). The the oretical justification of our scheme to calculate the new term weights is provided by a probabilistic nonrelevance decision model of IR. We present experiments in the RF setting to test the context-dependent term weights. We demonstrate that using the new term weights can yield statistically significant improvement in retrieval c ompared with the traditional weights. Regarding the word mismatch problem, one plausible solution is to use clustering techniques. A traditional clustering evaluation measure u sed in IR is the MK1, which is a score calculated for the single ‘optimal cluster’ that c an be extracted from the clustering result. MK1 is appropriate if a single retrieved clus ter is desired. However, in some applications it may be desirable for the retrieval resu lts to be presented in multiple clusters according to sub-topics. For this case, we in troduce a new evaluation measure, called CS, which corresponds to finding an optimal co mbination of clusters. We define a sub-class of CS, called CS1, applicable when the clus ters are disjoint. By reformulating the optimization to a 0-1 linear fractional programming problem, we
Using hidden Markov model for Chinese business card recognition

Business card recognition is a difficult problem. Characters in business card are small with diverse font types. An approach using the left-right hidden Markov model is proposed for business card recognition. The hidden Markov model will output a top-10 candidate list as its recognition result. A postprocessing stage is followed to improve the recognition result. The postprocessing stage uses a bigram table as linguistic information to search for the optimized recognition result from the top-10 candidate list. Our experiments are built on the recognition of company item and address item in Chinese business cards. Bigram table and hidden Markov models are trained with a telephony database. 100 address items and 30 company items are used for testing. Experimental results reveal the validity of our proposed method.
An Empirical Study on the Relationship between Self-Control and Employees’ Initiative Behavior: The Intermediary Role of Emotion Burnout

This paper establishes the relationship model between trait self-control and employees’ initiative behavior, using emotion burnout as an intermediary variable, and analyzes the modulation effect of occupation types on it. This paper explores the interactive effects and influence mechanism through the empirical analysis of 189 samples. The results show that the emotion burnout has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between trait self-control and employees’ initiative behavior; that is the emotion burnout has a negative effect on employee’ initiative behavior. Besides, we also find out that the occupation types have a regulatory effect on the relationship between emotion burnout and employees’ initiative behavior.
Cost‐effectiveness of additional hepatitis B virus nucleic acid testing of individual donations or minipools of six donations in the Netherlands

BACKGROUND: To further reduce the risk of hepatitis B virus (HBV) transmission by blood transfusion, nucleic acid testing (NAT) can be employed. The aim of this study is to estimate the incremental cost‐effectiveness ratio (ICER) in the Netherlands of employing a triplex NAT assay aimed at HBV nucleic acid detection in individual donations (ID‐NAT) or in minipools of 6 donations (MP‐6‐NAT), compared to a triplex NAT assay in minipools of 24 donations (MP‐24‐NAT).
Saddle point bit error rate computations for optical communication systems incorporating equalizers

Bit error rate computations for optical communication systems incorporating equalizers and under both noise and intersymbol interference (ISI) are discussed. An accurate method based on saddle point approximation is used. Previous work using saddle point approximation considered only basic integration-and-dump detection. The use of equalizers other than integration-and-dump complicates the computation because of the complexity of the moment generating function involved. When ISI is strong, use of an equalizer such as raised-cosine filtering is important for ISI reduction. To help optical receiver design, this paper explains the use of saddle point approximation when an equalizer is used. In addition to integration-and-dump, cosine and raised-cosine equalizers are considered for ISI reduction. To study the interdependence between the received waveform and equalizer used, two different input pulses are also considered. To verify the computation accuracy, exact contour integration based on the numerical quadrature method is performed. Results show that saddle point approximation can provide a fast and accurate computation. From the bit error rate (BER) performance computed, it is found that the traditional use of matched filtering has a poor performance when either ISI is strong or the APD gain is large, and the use of a proper equalizer can significantly improve the performance. In other words, the best choice of an equalizer design depends on the input waveform, amount of ISI, and the APD gain. >
Nature's inordinate fondness for metabolic enzymes: why metabolic enzyme loci are so frequently targets of selection

Metabolic enzyme loci were some of the first genes accessible for molecular evolution and ecology research. New technologies now make the whole genome, transcriptome or proteome readily accessible, allowing unbiased scans for loci exhibiting significant differences in allele frequency or expression level and associated with phenotypes and/or responses to natural selection. With surprising frequency and in many cases in proportions greater than chance relative to other genes, glycolysis and TCA cycle enzyme loci appear among the genes with significant associations in these studies. Hence, there is an ongoing need to understand the basis for fitness effects of metabolic enzyme polymorphisms. Allele‐specific effects on the binding affinity and catalytic rate of individual enzymes are well known, but often of uncertain significance because metabolic control theory and in vivo studies indicate that many individual metabolic enzymes do not affect pathway flux rate. I review research, so far little used in evolutionary biology, showing that metabolic enzyme substrates affect signalling pathways that regulate cell and organismal biology, and that these enzymes have moonlighting functions. To date there is little knowledge of how alleles in natural populations affect these phenotypes. I discuss an example in which alleles of a TCA enzyme locus associate with differences in a signalling pathway and development, organismal performance, and ecological dynamics. Ultimately, understanding how metabolic enzyme polymorphisms map to phenotypes and fitness remains a compelling and ongoing need for gaining robust knowledge of ecological and evolutionary processes.
Characterization of a Feline Influenza A(H7N2) Virus

During December 2016–February 2017, influenza A viruses of the H7N2 subtype infected ≈500 cats in animal shelters in New York, NY, USA, indicating virus transmission among cats. A veterinarian who treated the animals also became infected with feline influenza A(H7N2) virus and experienced respiratory symptoms. To understand the pathogenicity and transmissibility of these feline H7N2 viruses in mammals, we characterized them in vitro and in vivo. Feline H7N2 subtype viruses replicated in the respiratory organs of mice, ferrets, and cats without causing severe lesions. Direct contact transmission of feline H7N2 subtype viruses was detected in ferrets and cats; in cats, exposed animals were also infected via respiratory droplet transmission. These results suggest that the feline H7N2 subtype viruses could spread among cats and also infect humans. Outbreaks of the feline H7N2 viruses could, therefore, pose a risk to public health.