Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bach1 Competes with Nrf2 Leading to Negative Regulation of the Antioxidant Response Element (ARE)-mediated NAD(P)H:Quinone Oxidoreductase 1 Gene Expression and Induction in Response to Antioxidants*

The antioxidant response element (ARE) and Nrf2 are known to regulate the expression and coordinated induction of genes encoding detoxifying enzymes including NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase1 (NQO1) in response to antioxidants. In this report, we demonstrate that overexpression of the transcription factor Bach1 in Hep-G2 cells negatively regulated NQO1 gene expression and induction in response to antioxidant t-BHQ. Bandshift and supershift assays revealed that Bach1 binds to the ARE as a heterodimer with small Maf proteins but not as a homodimer or heterodimer with Nrf2. The transfection and ChIP assays revealed that Bach1 and Nrf2 competed with each other to regulate ARE-mediated gene expression. Heme, a negative regulator of Bach1 relieved the Bach1 repression of NQO1 gene expression in transfected cells. The transcription of Bach1 and Nrf2 did not change in response to t-BHQ. Immunofluorescence assays and Western blot analysis revealed that both Bach1 and Nrf2 localized in the cytoplasm and nucleus of the untreated cells. The treatment of cells with t-BHQ resulted in the nuclear accumulation of both Bach1 and Nrf2. Interestingly, the t-BHQ-induced nuclear accumulation of Bach1 was significantly delayed over that of Nrf2. These results led to the conclusion that a balance of Nrf2 versus Bach1 inside the nucleus influences up- or down-regulation of ARE-mediated gene expression. The results further suggest that antioxidant-induced delayed accumulation of Bach1 contributes to the down-regulation of ARE-regulated genes, presumably to reduce the antioxidant enzymes to normal levels.
Functional Assessment of a Camera Phone-Based Wayfinding System Operated by Blind and Visually Impaired Users

We describe a wayfinding system for blind and visually impaired persons that uses a camera phone to determine the user's location with respect to color markers, posted at locations of interest (such as offices), which are automatically detected by the phone. The color marker signs are specially designed to be detected in real time in cluttered environments using computer vision software running on the phone; a novel segmentation algorithm quickly locates the borders of the color marker in each image, which allows the system to calculate how far the marker is from the phone. We present a model of how the user's scanning strategy (i.e. how he/she pans the phone left and right to find color markers) affects the system's ability to detect color markers given the limitations imposed by motion blur, which is always a possibility whenever a camera is in motion. Finally, we describe experiments with our system tested by blind and visually impaired volunteers, demonstrating their ability to reliably use the system to find locations designated by color markers in a variety of indoor and outdoor environments, and elucidating which search strategies were most effective for users.
RNA chaperone activity of L1 ribosomal proteins: phylogenetic conservation and splicing inhibition

RNA chaperone activity is defined as the ability of proteins to either prevent RNA from misfolding or to open up misfolded RNA conformations. One-third of all large ribosomal subunit proteins from E. coli display this activity, with L1 exhibiting one of the highest activities. Here, we demonstrate via the use of in vitro trans- and cis-splicing assays that the RNA chaperone activity of L1 is conserved in all three domains of life. However, thermophilic archaeal L1 proteins do not display RNA chaperone activity under the experimental conditions tested here. Furthermore, L1 does not exhibit RNA chaperone activity when in complexes with its cognate rRNA or mRNA substrates. The evolutionary conservation of the RNA chaperone activity among L1 proteins suggests a functional requirement during ribosome assembly, at least in bacteria, mesophilic archaea and eukarya. Surprisingly, rather than facilitating catalysis, the thermophilic archaeal L1 protein from Methanococcus jannaschii (MjaL1) completely inhibits splicing of the group I thymidylate synthase intron from phage T4. Mutational analysis of MjaL1 excludes the possibility that the inhibitory effect is due to stronger RNA binding. To our knowledge, MjaL1 is the first example of a protein that inhibits group I intron splicing.
Twist It, Touch It, Push It, Swipe It: Evaluating Secondary Input Devices for Use with an Automotive Touchscreen HMI

Touchscreen Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) inherently demand some visual attention. By employing a secondary device, to work in unison with a touchscreen, some of this demand may be alleviated. In a medium-fidelity driving simulator, twenty-four drivers completed four typical in-vehicle tasks, utilising each of four devices -- touchscreen, rotary controller, steering wheel controls and touchpad (counterbalanced). Participants were then able to combine devices during a final 'free-choice' drive. Visual behaviour, driving/task performance and subjective ratings (workload, emotional response, preferences), indicated that in isolation the touchscreen was the most preferred/least demanding to use. In contrast, the touchpad was least preferred/most demanding, whereas the rotary controller and steering wheel controls were largely comparable across most measures. When provided with 'free-choice', the rotary controller and steering wheel controls presented as the most popular candidates, although this was task-dependent. Further work is required to explore these devices in greater depth and during extended periods of testing.
Molecular quantitation of H9N2 avian influenza virus in various organs of broiler chickens using TaqMan real time PCR

During the past decade, H9N2 low pathogenic avian influenza virus (LPAI) has caused considerable economic loss due to decreased production, increased mortality and the cost of vaccination in Iranian poultry industry. Because of widespread occurrence of this disease and the virus potential to mutate to highly-pathogenic (HP) form and transmission to humans, it is, therefore, imperative to understand the pathogenesis and properties of these viruses. In this study, a two step TaqMan real time PCR assay was performed for the quantitation of A/chicken/Iran/772/1998(H9N2) virus in various organs of broiler chickens at different days post inoculation (DPI). Forty 5-week-old commercial broiler chickens were inoculated with the virus. Five chickens were randomly selected on days 1, 3, 6 and 9 PI. Their trachea, lungs, spleen, kidneys, pancreas, blood and faeces were collected for virus detection. A PCR test was performed and the positive samples were used for quantitative real time PCR assay. The result of RT-PCR assay showed the presence of the virus in trachea (40%, 33%), lungs (20%, 66.6%) and spleen (20%, 50%) of infected chickens on days 3 and 6 PI, respectively. The virus was also detected in the kidneys of inoculated chickens on 3 (40%), 6 (60%) and 9 (100%) DPI. In faecal samples the virus was only detected on day 6 PI (83.3%). The molecular quantitation of AIV showed that the AIV titre in the trachea, lungs and spleen of chickens at 3 DPI is lower than the AIV titre at 6 DPI in these organs. The highest titre was observed in the faeces. The AIV titre in all organs of the birds which died at 6 DPI was higher than those of the same organs in the other experimental birds.
Modeling segregation of bidisperse granular materials using physical control parameters in the quasi-2D bounded heap

Quantitatively predicting segregation of size-disperse granular materials is of potential value in many industrial applications. We consider granular segregation of size-bidisperse particles in quasi-2D bounded heaps, a canonical granular flow, using an advection-diffusion transport equation with an additional term to account for particle segregation. The equation is characterized by two dimensionless parameters that are functions of control parameters (flow rate, system size, and particle sizes) and kinematic parameters (flowing layer depth, diffusion coefficient, and percolation length scale). As the kinematic parameters are usually difficult to measure in practice, their dependence on the control parameters is determined directly from discrete element method simulations. Using these relationships, it is possible to determine which values of the control parameters result in a mixed or segregated heap. The approach used here is broadly applicable to a wide range of other flow geometries and particle systems. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 1524–1534, 2015
Camera motion filtering and its applications

Camera motion filtering is important in many applications, such as camera-based visual control interface on a mobile device. In this paper, we first present a robust global motion estimation algorithm based on optical flow and RANSAC, and a strategy that decompose camera motions into individual components frame-by-frame. A motion filtering strategy is then proposed to detect the most dominant motion within each individual component. Acceleration strategies are proposed to make it run real-time. Applications in video analysis and a mobile visual control interface are discussed.
Parental Care of Children: Time Diary Estimates of Quantity, Predictability, and Variety

Time inputs to children are measured using data from the recent Time Use Survey conducted by the University of Michigan. We analyze time parents devote to their children, particularly in their preschool years, in an attempt to find out if there are social-class and education-of-wife differentials in this particular time use that may provide some insight into the intergenerational transmission of income inequality. We also offer some comment on labor supply of women and child care by men. We find that more-educated women spend more time playing with children, helping with the teaching of children, and in child-related travel.
Plan Representation and Plan Execution in Multi-agent Systems for Robot Control

Hardware agents as a part of cooperative multi-agent systems act in dynamically changing environments and accomplish tasks jointly. Since the pure hybrid plan representation provides no explicit means to represent particularly communication, task coordination and distribution in the multi-agent system, the proposed plan representation was adjusted to describe these aspects and combines the hybrid approach and an agent communication language. This paper focuses on the plan execution using this plan representation in a developed multi-agent system for robot control.
System For Product Recommendation In E-Commerce Applications

Recommendation technology, is an important method for information filtering in E-Commerce applications, and can effectively reduce information overload in Internet. It narrows down the choice of products from a large number of product offerings. With increase in the number of E-commerce users and products, the original recommendation algorithms and systems face many challenges namely in modeling user’s interests more accurately, providing more diverse recommendation modes, and supporting large-scale expansion of data. To address these challenges, and meet the present demands of E-commerce applications, a personalized hybrid recommendation system, which can support massive data set, has been designed and implemented on Hadoop.
Infinite number of exponents for a spin-glass transition.

We consider the behavior of the overlap of $m(g~2)$ paths at the spin-glass transition for a directed polymer in a random medium. We show that an infinite number of exponents is required to describe these overlaps. This is done in an $\ensuremath{\epsilon}=d\ensuremath{-}2$ expansion without using the replica trick.
Towards Fully Automated Test Management for Large Complex Systems

Development of large and complex software intensive systems with continuous builds typically generates large volumes of information with complex patterns and relations. Systematic and automated approaches are needed for efficient handling of such large quantities of data in a comprehensible way. In this paper we present an approach and tool enabling autonomous behavior in an automated test management tool to gain efficiency in concurrent software development and test. By capturing the required quality criteria in the test specifications and automating the test execution, test management can potentially be performed to a great extent without manual intervention. This work contributes towards a more autonomous behavior within a distributed remote test strategy based on metrics for decision making in automated testing. These metrics optimize management of fault corrections and retest, giving consideration to the impact of the identified weaknesses, such as fault-prone areas in software.
Aggregate Demand, Conflict, and Capacity in the Inflationary Process

The dominant view relating to unemployment and inflation is that inflation will be constant at a level of unemployment (the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment, NAIRU) determined on the supply side of the economy (and in the labor market in particular). Further, the economy will tend to converge to (or oscillate around) that level of unemployment. Moreover, demand variables or economic policy changes are thought to have no influence whatsoever on NAIRU. An alternative perspective on inflation would indicate that there would be no automatic forces leading to a level of aggregate demand consistent with constant inflation. Inflationary pressures would arise from, inter alia, a role of conflict over income shares, and from cost elements, with the price of raw materials, especially oil, being the most important. Insofar as there are supply-side factors impinging on the inflationary process, these would arise from the level of productive capacity (relative to aggregate demand) and from conflict over income shares. This paper focuses on the arguments and the evidence that supply-side constraints should be viewed as arising from capacity constraints, rather than from the operation of the labor market.
A Hybrid Sales Forecasting Method Based on Stable Seasonal Pattern Models and BPNN

Since many operations of corporation are depend on sales forecasting. It's very important for corporations predict their sales data accurately and reliably. Most of retail businesses are seasonally, therefore, lots of them are using seasonal sales forecasting methods to forecast their sales data and get better results. This paper proposes a hybrid sales forecasting method which combines stable seasonal pattern model and back propagation neural network (BPNN) to forecast retail sales. Practical forecast result in commodity shows it's more accurate than typical seasonal forecasting methods.
Filtering error log as time series in complex service-based storage systems

Mining log pattern to analyze the faults in large scale distributed system is affected by the existence of redundant and ambiguous noisy error logs. While existing works try to compress logs in a coarse granularity from temporal and spatial view to remove the redundancy, they fail to reserve those ambiguous logs that might truly relate to a fault, which misleads the fault characterizing result. By modeling error logs as time series and examining the similarity between trash error log template and target error log, the ambiguous error logs are kept and the affected patterns can be effectively removed. Experiments in a practical complex service-based storage show that up to 92% of the affected patterns can be filtered.
RANDOM FINITE SETS AND SEQUENTIAL MULTI-TARGET TRA

Random finite set provides a rigorous foundation for optimal Bayes multi-target filtering. The major hurdle faced in Bayes multi-target filtering is the inherent computational intractability. Even the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter, which propagates only the first moment (or PHD) instead of the full multi-target posterior, still involves multiple integrals with no closed forms. In this paper, we highlight the relationship between Radon-Nikodym derivative and set derivative of random finite sets that enables a Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) implementation of the optimal multitarget filter. In addition, a generalised SMC method to implement the PHD filter is also presented. The SMC PHD filter has an attractive feature-its computational complexity is independent of the (time-varying) number of targets.
Image forgery detection through residual-based local descriptors and block-matching

We propose a new image forgery detection technique which fuses the outputs of two very diverse tools, based on machine learning and block-matching, respectively. The machine-learning tool builds upon some local descriptors recently proposed in the steganalysis field, which are selected and merged based on an ad hoc measure of reliability. The block-matching tool leverages on the patchmatch algorithm for fast search of candidate matchings. Both tools are fine-tuned so as to optimize their fusion which, in turn, exploits the respective strengths and weaknesses of each tool. The proposed technique ranked first in phase 1 of the first Image Forensics Challenge organized in 2013 by the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
A practical approach to using spot urine protein/creatinine ratios for assessing proteinuria in pregnancy

Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the spot urine protein/creatinine ratio compared with the 24-hour urine protein in pregnancy. Study Design: In this prospective cohort study of inpatient pregnant women, the protein/creatinine ratio and dipstick protein were assessed from a single urine sample collected at the start of the 24-hour urine. Both tests were compared with the 24-hour urine protein for correlation and test characteristics. Results: In the 196 specimens analysed, we found a strong correlation between the spot urine protein/creatinine ratio and 24-hour urine protein (r 2 = 0.78, P < 0.01). A protein/creatinine ratio <0.1 ruled out significant proteinuria (≥300 mg/day) with sensitivity and negative predictive value 100%. A protein/creatinine ratio ≥0.4 detected significant proteinuria (specificity and positive predictive value of 100%). A protein/creatinine ratio ≥4.6 had a specificity and positive predictive value of 100% for detecting severe proteinuria (≥5000 mg/day). Urine dipsticks correlated poorly with the 24-hour urine protein (r 2 = 0.40, P = 0.826). Nineteen percent of dipsticks reading nil or trace were false-negative results. Conclusion: The spot urine protein/creatinine ratio correlated well with the 24-hour urine protein and performed better than the urine dipsticks. Significant proteinuria in pregnancy was excluded if the protein/creatinine ratio was <0.1 and identified when it was ≥0.4.
Paint selection

In this paper, we present Paint Selection, a progressive painting-based tool for local selection in images. Paint Selection facilitates users to progressively make a selection by roughly painting the object of interest using a brush. More importantly, Paint Selection is efficient enough that instant feedback can be provided to users as they drag the mouse. We demonstrate that high quality selections can be quickly and effectively "painted" on a variety of multi-megapixel images.
The Role of Trauma in Conduct Disorder

Summary Trauma is proposed as a key to understanding the development and persistence of conduct disorder, in conjunction with other contributing factors. Trauma history is ubiquitous in the conduct disordered population, and trauma effects can help to account for many features of conduct disorder, including lack of empathy, impulsivity, anger, acting-out, and resistance to treatment. The current standard of care fails to fully address trauma, which may partially explain the low success rate of extant treatment approaches. A trauma-informed perspective is introduced to current models of conduct disorder. Research, prevention, and treatment implications are discussed.
Diagnostic Testing for Pandemic Influenza in Singapore

With the relative global lack of immunity to the pandemic influenza A/H1N1/2009 virus that emerged in April 2009 as well as the sustained susceptibility to infection, rapid and accurate diagnostic assays are essential to detect this novel influenza A variant. Among the molecular diagnostic methods that have been developed to date, most are in tandem monoplex assays targeting either different regions of a single viral gene segment or different viral gene segments. We describe a dual-gene (duplex) quantitative real-time RT-PCR method selectively targeting pandemic influenza A/H1N1/2009. The assay design includes a primer-probe set specific to only the hemagglutinin (HA) gene of this novel influenza A variant and a second set capable of detecting the nucleoprotein (NP) gene of all swine-origin influenza A virus. In silico analysis of the specific HA oligonucleotide sequence used in the assay showed that it targeted only the swine-origin pandemic strain; there was also no cross-reactivity against a wide spectrum of noninfluenza respiratory viruses. The assay has a diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of 97.7% and 100%, respectively, a lower detection limit of 50 viral gene copies/PCR, and can be adapted to either a qualitative or quantitative mode. It was first applied to 3512 patients with influenza-like illnesses at a tertiary hospital in Singapore, during the containment phase of the pandemic (May to July 2009).
Molecular Cloning of Caveolin-3, a Novel Member of the Caveolin Gene Family Expressed Predominantly in Muscle (*)

Caveolin, a 21-24-kDa integral membrane protein, is a principal component of caveolar membranes in vivo. Caveolin interacts directly with heterotrimeric G-proteins and can functionally regulate their activity. Recently, a second caveolin gene has been identified and termed caveolin-2. Here, we report the molecular cloning and expression of a third member of the caveolin gene family, caveolin-3. Caveolin-3 is most closely related to caveolin-1 based on protein sequence homology; caveolin-1 and caveolin-3 are 65% identical and 85% similar. A single stretch of eight amino acids (FEDVIAEP) is identical in caveolin-1, −2, and −3. This conserved region may represent a “caveolin signature sequence” that is characteristic of members of the caveolin gene family. Caveolin-3 mRNA is expressed predominantly in muscle tissue types (skeletal muscle, diaphragm, and heart) and is selectively induced during the differentiation of skeletal C2C12 myoblasts in culture. In many respects, caveolin-3 is similar to caveolin-1: (i) caveolin-3 migrates in velocity gradients as a high molecular mass complex; (ii) caveolin-3 colocalizes with caveolin-1 by immunofluorescence microscopy and cell fractionation studies; and (iii) a caveolin-3-derived polypeptide functionally suppresses the basal GTPase activity of purified heterotrimeric G-proteins. Identification of a muscle-specific member of the caveolin gene family may have implications for understanding the role of caveolin in different muscle cell types (smooth, cardiac, and skeletal) as previous morphological studies have demonstrated that caveolae are abundant in these cells. Our results also suggest that other as yet unknown caveolin family members are likely to exist and may be expressed in a regulated or tissue-specific fashion.