Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanistic Investigation of the Inhibition of A#42 Assembly and Neurotoxicity by A#42 C-terminal Fragments

Oligomeric forms of amyloid β -protein (A β ) are key neurotoxins in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previously, we found that C-terminal fragments (CTFs) of A β 42 interfered with assembly of full-length A β 42 and inhibited A β 42-induced toxicity. To decipher the mechanism(s) by which CTFs affect A β 42 assembly and neurotoxicity, here, we investigated the interaction between A β 42 and CTFs using photo-induced cross-linking and dynamic light scattering. The results demonstrate that distinct parameters control CTF inhibition of A β 42 assembly and A β 42-induced toxicity. Inhibition of A β 42-induced toxicity was found to correlate with stabilization of oligomers with hydrodynamic radius ( R H ) = 8–12 nm and attenuation of formation of oligomers with R H = 20–60 nm. In contrast, inhibition of A β 42 paranucleus formation correlated with CTF solubility and the degree to which CTFs formed amyloid fibrils themselves but did not correlate with inhibition of A β 42-induced toxicity. Our findings provide an important insight into the mechanisms by which different CTFs inhibit the toxic effect of A β 42 and suggest that stabilization of non-toxic A β 42 oligomers is a promising strategy for designing inhibitors of A β 42 neurotoxicity. suggests that oligomeric
MAPCloud: Mobile Applications on an Elastic and Scalable 2-Tier Cloud Architecture

The rise in popularity of mobile applications creates a growing demand to deliver richer functionality to users executing on mobile devices with limited resources. The availability of cloud computing platforms has made available unlimited and scalable resource pools of computation and storage that can be used to enhance service quality for mobile applications. This paper exploits the observation that using local resources in close proximity to the user, i.e. local clouds, can increase the quality and performance of mobile applications. In contrast, public cloud offerings (e.g. Amazon Web Services) offer scalability at the cost of higher delays, higher power consumption and higher price on the mobile device. In this paper we introduce MAP Cloud, a hybrid, tiered cloud architecture consisting of local and public clouds and show how it can be leveraged to increase both performance and scalability of mobile applications. We model the mobile application as a workflow of tasks and aim to optimally decompose the set of tasks to execute on the mobile client and 2-tier cloud architecture considering multiple QoS factors such as power, price, and delay. Such an optimization is shown to be NP-Hard, we propose an efficient simulated annealing based heuristic, called CRAM that is able to achieve about84% of optimal solutions when the number of users is high. We evaluate CRAM and the 2-tier approach via implementation(on Android G2 devices and Amazon EC2, S3 and Cloud Front)and extensive simulation using two rich mobile applications(Video-Content Augmented Reality and Image processing). Our results indicate that MAP Cloud provides improved scalability as compared to local clouds, improved efficiency (power/delay)(about 32% lower delays and power) and about 40% decrease in price in comparison to only using public cloud.
A single-chip x-band chirp radar MMIC with stretch processing

A single-chip X-band chirp radar transceiver with direct digital synthesis (DDS) for chirp generation is presented. The radar chip, including receiver, transmitter, quadrature DDS, phase-locked loop (PLL) and analog to digital converter (ADC), has been implemented in a 0. 13μm BiCMOS technology. The stretch processing technique is employed to translate the time interval between the received and the transmitted chirp signals to a single tone at the baseband output with greatly reduced bandwidth, which allows for the use of a low-cost ADC with a reduced input bandwidth of 10MHz for digitizing the received RF chirp with a bandwidth of 150MHz. A Weaver receiver with a dc-offset is employed in order to use a single ADC for detecting the received quadrature signals with image rejection. A quadrature 1GHz DDS with an inverse sinc function for zero-order hold correction is implemented to provide the chirp signals for both receiver and transmitter. A wide-tuning PLL frequency synthesizer is integrated to generate the local oscillator (LO) signals as well as the clock signal for the DDS and ADC. The implemented radar-on-chip (RoC) MMIC occupies a die area of 3.5 × 2.5mm. With a 2.2V supply voltage for analog/RF and a 1.5V supply for digital, the chip consumes 326mW in the receive mode and 333mW in the transmit mode.
Mathematical analysis of unbalanced magnetic pull and detection of mixed air gap eccentricity in induction motor by vibration analysis using MEMS accelerometer

Air gap eccentricity fault existing in the induction motor may be of the form static or dynamic or together known as mixed eccentricity. Due to this, an unbalanced magnetic pull (UMP) will be setup between stator and rotor. This can cause bearing damage, rubbing of rotor with stator and may develop unwanted vibration and noise, which may results in premature failure of the motor. In this context, this paper presents the mathematical analysis of unbalanced magnetic pull due to air gap eccentricity in induction motor. Experimental investigations have been carried out to detect mixed airgap eccentricity fault by vibration signature analysis using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometer under different operating conditions. The spectral analysis of motor vibration has been carried out using radix-2 decimation in time Fast Fourier Transform algorithm (DIT-FFT). The presence of side band harmonic frequencies around fundamental component in the motor vibration signal spectrum indicates mixed eccentricity fault. The experimental results demonstrate that it is possible to identify the mixed airgap eccentricity fault by vibration signature analysis using MEMS accelerometer. A simple method has been proposed to find the fault severity in the motor under variable load conditions due to mixed air gap eccentricity.
Orm1 and Orm2 are conserved endoplasmic reticulum membrane proteins regulating lipid homeostasis and protein quality control

Yeast members of the ORMDL family of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane proteins play a central role in lipid homeostasis and protein quality control. In the absence of yeast Orm1 and Orm2, accumulation of long chain base, a sphingolipid precursor, suggests dysregulation of sphingolipid synthesis. Physical interaction between Orm1 and Orm2 and serine palmitoyltransferase, responsible for the first committed step in sphingolipid synthesis, further supports a role for the Orm proteins in regulating sphingolipid synthesis. Phospholipid homeostasis is also affected in orm1Δ orm2Δ cells: the cells are inositol auxotrophs with impaired transcriptional regulation of genes encoding phospholipid biosynthesis enzymes. Strikingly, impaired growth of orm1Δ orm2Δ cells is associated with constitutive unfolded protein response, sensitivity to stress, and slow ER-to-Golgi transport. Inhibition of sphingolipid synthesis suppresses orm1Δ orm2Δ phenotypes, including ER stress, suggesting that disrupted sphingolipid homeostasis accounts for pleiotropic phenotypes. Thus, the yeast Orm proteins control membrane biogenesis by coordinating lipid homeostasis with protein quality control.
Supporting family engagement in weight management

As obesity is increasing in many countries, helping people manage their weight has become an important issue. Medical research has shown that the family context may be important to promote lifestyle changes. Our work aims at designing a collaborative environment to engage a family in support of an individual needing to manage his or her weight. This paper presents the first step in our iterative design process which aimed at collecting information about the needs of overweight and obese people, and about the type of environment they would find useful for them and their family.
Delay in postnatal growth and development of offspring produced by maternal restraint stress during pregnancy in the rat.

Rats were subjected to restraint stress for nine hours daily, on three consecutive days, at various stages of pregnancy from days 9–20, and the postnatal development and behaviour of the offspring assessed on a wide-ranging battery of tests. Stress at any of the stages of pregnancy investigated caused a significant decrease in offspring body weight persisting up to 6 weeks of age, and delayed the appearance of certain developmental landmarks such as ear opening, auditory startle and cliff avoidance responses. Postnatal mortality and impairment of ability to orient to the home cage were also significantly increased in the offspring from rats stressed on days 18–20 of pregnancy. In a second experiment, the effects of restraint stress on days 18–20 were investigated in more detail. At birth, stressed and control offspring were fostered onto mothers from the same treatment group or cross-fostered onto mothers from the opposite treatment group and assessed as before, to determine whether the adverse effects observed in the first experiment were prenatally or postnatally mediated. The effects were most marked in prenatally stressed pups reared by stressed mothers and least marked in controls reared by controls, with the other two cross-fostered groups being intermediate; this indicates that the effects were induced partly prenatally at the time of treatment and partly postnatally by the rearing mothers that had been stressed.
Pioneers of eye movement research

Recent advances in the technology affording eye movement recordings carry the risk of neglecting past achievements. Without the assistance of this modern armoury, great strides were made in describing the ways the eyes move. For Aristotle the fundamental features of eye movements were binocular, and he described the combined functions of the eyes. This was later given support using simple procedures like placing a finger over the eyelid of the closed eye and culminated in Hering's law of equal innervation. However, the overriding concern in the 19th century was with eye position rather than eye movements. Appreciating discontinuities of eye movements arose from studies of vertigo. The characteristics of nystagmus were recorded before those of saccades and fixations. Eye movements during reading were described by Hering and by Lamare in 1879; both used similar techniques of listening to sounds made during contractions of the extraocular muscles. Photographic records of eye movements during reading were made by Dodge early in the 20th century, and this stimulated research using a wider array of patterns. In the mid-20th century attention shifted to the stability of the eyes during fixation, with the emphasis on involuntary movements. The contributions of pioneers from Aristotle to Yarbus are outlined.
Challenges in the computational design of proteins

Protein design has many applications not only in biotechnology but also in basic science. It uses our current knowledge in structural biology to predict, by computer simulations, an amino acid sequence that would produce a protein with targeted properties. As in other examples of synthetic biology, this approach allows the testing of many hypotheses in biology. The recent development of automated computational methods to design proteins has enabled proteins to be designed that are very different from any known ones. Moreover, some of those methods mostly rely on a physical description of atomic interactions, which allows the designed sequences not to be biased towards known proteins. In this paper, we will describe the use of energy functions in computational protein design, the use of atomic models to evaluate the free energy in the unfolded and folded states, the exploration and optimization of amino acid sequences, the problem of negative design and the design of biomolecular function. We will also consider its use together with the experimental techniques such as directed evolution. We will end by discussing the challenges ahead in computational protein design and some of their future applications.
The Association between Databases for Indexing Studies Intended for an Exercise Meta-Analysis of Arthritis Randomized Controlled Trials

Objective. The purpose of this study was to determine the database indexing of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for a meta-analysis addressing the effects of exercise on pain and physical function in adults with arthritis and other rheumatic diseases (AORD). Methods. The number, percentage, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for included articles at initial and follow-up periods were calculated from PubMed, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CINAHL, SPORTDiscus, and DAO databases. The number needed to review (NNR) was also calculated along with the number of articles retrieved by expert review. Cross-referencing from reviews and included articles also occurred. Results. Thirty-four of 36 articles (94.4%, 95% CI, 81.3–99.3) were located by database searching. PubMed and CENTRAL yielded 32 of 36 articles (88.9%, 73.9–96.9). Two articles not identified in any of the other databases were found in either CINAHL or SPORTDicsus. Two other articles were located by scanning the reference lists of review articles. The NNR ranged from 2 (CINAHL) to 118 (SPORTDiscus). More articles were identified in EMBASE at follow-up (36%, 12.1–42.2 versus 86.1%, 70.5–95.3). Conclusions. Searching multiple databases and cross-referencing from reviews was important for identifying RCTs addressing the effects of exercise on pain and physical function in adults with AORD.
Contour detection based on nonclassical receptive field inhibition

We propose a biologically motivated method, called nonclassical receptive field (non-CRF) inhibition (more generally, surround inhibition or suppression), to improve contour detection in machine vision. Non-CRF inhibition is exhibited by 80% of the orientation-selective neurons in the primary visual cortex of monkeys and has been shown to influence human visual perception as well. Essentially, the response of an edge detector at a certain point is suppressed by the responses of the operator in the region outside the supported area. We combine classical edge detection with isotropic and anisotropic inhibition, both of which have counterparts in biology. We also use a biologically motivated method (the Gabor energy operator) for edge detection. The resulting operator responds strongly to isolated lines, edges, and contours, but exhibits weak or no response to edges that are part of texture. We use natural images with associated ground truth contour maps to assess the performance of the proposed operator for detecting contours while suppressing texture edges. Our method enhances contour detection in cluttered visual scenes more effectively than classical edge detectors used in machine vision (Canny edge detector). Therefore, the proposed operator is more useful for contour-based object recognition tasks, such as shape comparison, than traditional edge detectors, which do not distinguish between contour and texture edges. Traditional edge detection algorithms can, however, also be extended with surround suppression. This study contributes also to the understanding of inhibitory mechanisms in biology.
Electrical Resistance Tomography for Assessment of Cracks in Concrete

A study on the feasibility of using electrical resistance tomography (ERT) for detecting cracks in concrete is presented in this article. The previous studies have demonstrated that cracks in concrete can be detected with ERT in cylindrical geometries. In this work, the main focus is on investigating the capability of ERT for crack detection and characterization in more realistic geometries in which the sensor array is attached to one planar surface of concrete. The feasibility of ERT in crack detection is tested with: 1) concrete slabs containing plastic plates; and 2) beams with real cracks generated by three-point bending. The results with slabs demonstrate the ability of ERT to distinguish between crack-like defects with different depths and to detect laminar defects. The results with beams verify that the method is also feasible in the case of real cracks.
Comparing Response Inhibition and Flexibility for Two Components of Executive Functioning in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Normal Children

Objective The aim of this study was investigating and comparing two components of executive functioning in children with high function autism with normal children. Methods This study was correlation descriptive (causal-comparative). There were two groups, one consisted of 15 participants of children with high function autism disorder (Intelligence quotient [IQ]>80) and the other consisted of 15 normal children, all age and education matched. They were compared with two neuro-cognitive tests, Color Word Stroop and Wisconsin Card Sorting, and one IQ test called Ravens Progressive Matrices test. Findings Analysis of data showed significant difference in both executive functionings, response inhibition (Stroop) and flexibility (Wisconsin Card Sorting) between normal children and children with autism disorder, but there was no significant relation between age and IQ and executive functioning in children with autism. Conclusion The results showed that children with autism disorder have deficits in executive functions regardless of their IQ level and it can be attributed to the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders.
An IP-based triggering method for LTE MTC devices

In Release 11, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced the ability for Service Capability Servers (SCS) / Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Servers to request that the Mobile Core Network (MCN) deliver a Short Message Service (SMS) device trigger to the User Equipment (UE). The ability to send a trigger avoids the need for the UE to maintain constant contact with the SCS via keep-alive messaging. Keep-alive messaging can be particularly wasteful when considering the nature of M2M Communications. The SMS based triggering solution requires that the UE support an application that listens on an SMS port for triggers. In this paper, we propose an IP-Based trigger delivery method. The proposed triggering method allows a UE to receive a trigger by simply listening on a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port. The solution also allows the UE to reply to the SCS with a small application specific response. We present the call flow for the new triggering method and the required enhancements to the 3GPP Machine-Type Communication Interworking Function (MTC-IWF). The paper concludes by presenting a demonstration platform that shows the IP-based trigger delivery method working with a commercially available Long Term Evolution (LTE) UE and a oneM2M compliant M2M Server.
Measuring the impact of the Thoracolumbar Injury Classification and Severity Score among 458 consecutively treated patients

Abstract Context The Thoracolumbar Injury Classification and Severity Score (TLICS) was proposed to improve injury classification and guide surgical decision-making of thoracolumbar spinal trauma (TLST), but its impact on the care of patients has not been quantified. Study design Retrospective study. Patient sample Analysis of 458 patients treated for TLST trauma from 2000 through 2010 at a single center. Outcome measures Neurological status – ASIA Impairment Scale (AIS), failure of conservative treatment, and surgical complications. Methods Clinical and radiological data were evaluated. Patients were grouped according to the period before (2000–2006) and after (2007–2010) utilization of the TLICS. Results From 2000 to 2006, 148 patients were initially treated conservatively (C) and 66 were surgically (S) treated. In the C group, the TLICS ranged from 1 to 7 (median 1; mean 1.57). In the S group, the TLICS ranged from 2 to 10 (median 2; mean 4.14). The TLICS matched treatment in 97.9% of conservatively treated patients. From 2007 to 2010, 162 patients were initially treated C and 82 were treated S. In the C group, the TLICS ranged from 1 to 4 (median 1; mean 1.48). In the S group, the TLICS ranged from 2–10 (median 4; mean 4.4). The TLICS matched treatment in 98.8% of C-treated patients. Overall, failure of C treatment occurred in nine patients; most failures (7/9) and all three missed distractive injuries occurred prior to use of the TLICS. Conclusions After introduction of the TLICS, there was a trend towards more successful conservative treatment with fewer conversions to surgical treatment.
Investigation of clamping effect on the welding residual stress and deformation of monel plates by using the ultrasonic stress measurement and finite element method

Welding of nickel-based alloys is increasingly used in the industry to manufacture many important components of the marine industries, chemical processing, etc. In this study, a 3D thermo-mechanical finite element analysis is employed to evaluate residual stresses and deformations caused by the tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding of Monel 400 (Nickel-Copper alloy) plates. The finite element (FE) results related to the residual stresses and deformations have been verified by using the hole-drilling stress measurement and common dimensional measurement tools, respectively. Residual stresses analyzed by the FE simulation are then compared with those obtained from ultrasonic stress measurement. The ultrasonic stress measurement is based on acoustoelasticity law, which presents the relation between the acoustic waves and the stress of material. The ultrasonic stress measurement is carried out by using longitudinal critically refracted ( L CR ) waves which are longitudinal ultrasonic waves propagated parallel to the surface inside the tested material. Two welded plates are experimentally prepared (with and without using clamp) to investigate the clamping effect on the welding residual stress and deformations. By utilizing the FE analysis along with the L CR method, the distribution of longitudinal residual stress could be achieved. It has been concluded that the applied methodologies are enough accurate to distinguish the clamping effect on the welding residual stresses and deformations of Monel plates.
The Measurement of Porosity in Composite Materials Using Infrared Thermography

The presence of porosity in polymeric matrix composites degrades the en gineering performance, and for many critical applications it is necessary to ensure that the porosity of the as-manufactured composites is minimized. Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, such as ultrasonics or X-ray, are often used to inspect composites for porosity and non-conforming parts are rejected. An infrared thermographic technique is described here, which can be used to determine the degree of porosity in polymeric matrix composite materials. The technique consists of heating one face of the part with a high power laser and observing the thermal response on the other face as the heat diffuses through the part. Internal defects such as porosity modify the apparent diffusivity and reduce the rate and quantity of heat transferred to the opposite face. Experiments were conducted on carbon-epoxy samples with a range of known porosities and varying thick nesses and the thermal response was measured. The results show that for the high porosity samples smaller temperature rises, with longer times to reach the maximum were observed on the opposite face. An analysis of the heat transfer through the samples is presented and this analysis shows how the thermal diffusivity influences the temperature rise observed on the opposite face. The results from this analysis were used to interpret the experimental thermal response in terms of an apparent diffusivity and a good correlation was obtained between the diffusivity and the porosities for the samples tested.