Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF INTERFACE AND ITS EFFECT ON PROPERTIES OF MICROINJECTION MOULDING NANOCOMPOSITES WITH FUNCTIONALIZED CARBON NANOTUBES

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) exhibit unique thermal, electrical and mechanical properties and their nanocomposites have attracted the attention of many scientists due to the strong application potential in electronics, chemical and biological sensing and reinforced composite materials (Baughman et al, 2002). An effective process for the production of nanocomposites with CNT is microinjection moulding (µIM), the most efficient and cost-effective process for the large-scale production of thermoplastic nanocomposite microparts with low reinforcement content and exceptional electrical properties. The present work reports, mainly, the dispersion, distribution and interface of CNT in polyamide 6 (PA 6) in nanocomposites with different CNT content produced using μIM. EXPERIMENTAL
Multi-source Multi-view Clustering via discrepancy penalty

With the advance of technology, entities can be observed in multiple views. Multiple views containing different types of features can be used for clustering. Although multi-view clustering has been successfully applied in many applications, the previous methods usually assume the complete instance mapping between different views. In many real-world applications, information can be gathered from multiple sources, while each source can contain multiple views, which are more cohesive for learning. The views under the same source are usually fully mapped, but they can be very heterogeneous. Moreover, the mappings between different sources are usually incomplete and partially observed, which makes it more difficult to integrate all the views across different sources. In this paper, we propose MMC (Multi-source Multi-view Clustering), which is a framework based on collective spectral clustering with a discrepancy penalty across sources, to tackle these challenges. MMC has several advantages compared with other existing methods. First, MMC can deal with incomplete mapping between sources. Second, it considers the disagreements across sources while treating views in the same source as a cohesive set. Third, MMC also tries to infer the instance similarities across sources to enhance the clustering performance. Extensive experiments conducted on real-world data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte-binding antigen 175 triggers a biophysical change in the red blood cell that facilitates invasion

Significance The blood-stage malaria parasite, the merozoite, invades the human red blood cell (RBC) using receptor–ligand interactions between the parasite and host cell surface, yet the function of these interactions to invasion is not known. We have analyzed the binding between one key merozoite invasion ligand, called erythrocyte-binding antigen 175 (EBA175), and glycophorin A on the RBC surface (the most dominant surface antigen) and explored how this interaction affects the biophysical properties of the red cell. Using a combination of imaging techniques, we demonstrate that the malaria parasite changes the biophysical nature of the red cell, facilitating its own entry by effectively reducing the energy barrier to invasion. This study demonstrates a red cell biophysical contribution to merozoite entry. Invasion of the red blood cell (RBC) by the Plasmodium parasite defines the start of malaria disease pathogenesis. To date, experimental investigations into invasion have focused predominantly on the role of parasite adhesins or signaling pathways and the identity of binding receptors on the red cell surface. A potential role for signaling pathways within the erythrocyte, which might alter red cell biophysical properties to facilitate invasion, has largely been ignored. The parasite erythrocyte-binding antigen 175 (EBA175), a protein required for entry in most parasite strains, plays a key role by binding to glycophorin A (GPA) on the red cell surface, although the function of this binding interaction is unknown. Here, using real-time deformability cytometry and flicker spectroscopy to define biophysical properties of the erythrocyte, we show that EBA175 binding to GPA leads to an increase in the cytoskeletal tension of the red cell and a reduction in the bending modulus of the cell’s membrane. We isolate the changes in the cytoskeleton and membrane and show that reduction in the bending modulus is directly correlated with parasite invasion efficiency. These data strongly imply that the malaria parasite primes the erythrocyte surface through its binding antigens, altering the biophysical nature of the target cell and thus reducing a critical energy barrier to invasion. This finding would constitute a major change in our concept of malaria parasite invasion, suggesting it is, in fact, a balance between parasite and host cell physical forces working together to facilitate entry.
Social Cognition and Interaction in Chronic Users of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “Ecstasy”)

Abstract Background The empathogen 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is the prototypical prosocial club drug inducing emotional openness to others. It has recently been shown that acutely applied 3,4-MDMA in fact enhances emotional empathy and prosocial behavior, while it simultaneously decreases cognitive empathy. However, the long-term effects of 3,4-MDMA use on socio-cognitive functions and social interactions have not been investigated yet. Therefore, we examined emotional and cognitive empathy, social decision-making, and oxytocin plasma levels in chronic 3,4-MDMA users. Methods We tested 38 regular but recently abstinent 3,4-MDMA users and 56 3,4-MDMA-naïve controls with the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition, the Multifaceted Empathy Test, and the Distribution Game and the Dictator Game. Drug use was objectively quantified by 6-month hair analyses. Furthermore, oxytocin plasma levels were determined in smaller subgroups (24 3,4-MDMA users, 9 controls). Results 3,4-MDMA users showed superior cognitive empathy compared with controls in the Multifaceted Empathy Test (Cohen’s d=.39) and in the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (d=.50), but they did not differ from controls in emotional empathy. Moreover, 3,4-MDMA users acted less self-serving in the Distribution Game. However, within 3,4-MDMA users, multiple regression analyses showed that higher 3,4-MDMA concentrations in hair were associated with lower cognitive empathy (βMDMA=-.34, t=-2.12, P<.05). Oxytocin plasma concentrations did not significantly differ between both groups. Conclusions We conclude that people with high cognitive empathy abilities and pronounced social motivations might be more prone to 3,4-MDMA consumption. In contrast, long-term 3,4-MDMA use might nevertheless have a detrimental effect on cognitive empathy capacity.
Locating and Visualizing the Most Valuable Business Processes States in Large Control Policy Graphs Produced by POMDP

This paper is motivated by the problem of identifying and presenting the most valuable states delivered by a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) policy graph with large number of edges and nodes. A control policy graph is the result of executing a POMDP algorithm to a well-defined set of system state transitions, and is composed of a prediction about the value achieved by each state transition that occurs in a business process execution environment. In addition to our problem, the business process state transitions are not always controlled (because of workaround occurrence) and are not fully observable (not know exactly the system state). Moreover, along with the increasing complexity of business processes, the control policy graphs produced by POMDP are exploding in number of edges and nodes, making the best solution identification and visualization a difficult task. Therefore, this paper presents a decision making approach dealing with the non observable states, and filtering of large control policy graphs. Summing up, this process offers a support tool to engineer the decision-making, locating the business process execution states that maximize the delivered value for the organization. This work is located in the Enterprise Engineering field and the approach to locate and visualize the most valuable states delivered by a POMDP uses a previous work that explains how to integrate the business processes modelling with the Markov theories.
Functional genomics analysis of vitamin D effects on CD4+ T cells in vivo in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis ‬

Significance Vitamin D has been suggested to be associated with beneficial immunomodulation in autoimmune diseases. We demonstrate that the protective effect of vitamin D in an animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS) is linked to multiple signaling and metabolic pathways critical for T-cell activation and differentiation into pathogenic T helper (Th) 1 and Th17 subsets in vivo. This effect is mediated by epigenetic mechanisms as reflected by genome-wide reduction of DNA methylation and upregulation of microRNAs, with concomitant downregulation of their protein-coding target genes. Our data support the role of vitamin D in modulating risk for human disease, because orthologues of nearly 50% of MS candidate risk genes changed their expression in vivo in CD4+ T cells upon vitamin D supplementation. Vitamin D exerts multiple immunomodulatory functions and has been implicated in the etiology and treatment of several autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS). We have previously reported that in juvenile/adolescent rats, vitamin D supplementation protects from experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model of MS. Here we demonstrate that this protective effect associates with decreased proliferation of CD4+ T cells and lower frequency of pathogenic T helper (Th) 17 cells. Using transcriptome, methylome, and pathway analyses in CD4+ T cells, we show that vitamin D affects multiple signaling and metabolic pathways critical for T-cell activation and differentiation into Th1 and Th17 subsets in vivo. Namely, Jak/Stat, Erk/Mapk, and Pi3K/Akt/mTor signaling pathway genes were down-regulated upon vitamin D supplementation. The protective effect associated with epigenetic mechanisms, such as (i) changed levels of enzymes involved in establishment and maintenance of epigenetic marks, i.e., DNA methylation and histone modifications; (ii) genome-wide reduction of DNA methylation, and (iii) up-regulation of noncoding RNAs, including microRNAs, with concomitant down-regulation of their protein-coding target RNAs involved in T-cell activation and differentiation. We further demonstrate that treatment of myelin-specific T cells with vitamin D reduces frequency of Th1 and Th17 cells, down-regulates genes in key signaling pathways and epigenetic machinery, and impairs their ability to transfer EAE. Finally, orthologs of nearly 50% of candidate MS risk genes and 40% of signature genes of myelin-reactive T cells in MS changed their expression in vivo in EAE upon supplementation, supporting the hypothesis that vitamin D may modulate risk for developing MS.
Prospective monitoring of adenovirus infection and type analysis after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation: A single‐center study in Korea

Epidemiologic studies of human adenovirus (HAdV) in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) recipients have been conducted mostly in European countries where HAdV 2 (species C) has been most prevalent in the community. The main objective of this study was to investigate the epidemiology and the characteristics of HAdV infection in Korean allogeneic HCT recipients (<19 years).
Deep Context-Sensitive Facial Landmark Detection With Tree-Structured Modeling

Facial landmark detection is typically cast as a point-wise regression problem that focuses on how to build an effective image-to-point mapping function. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep learning approach for contextually discriminative feature construction together with effective facial structure modeling. The proposed learning approach is able to predict more contextually discriminative facial landmarks by capturing their associated contextual information. Moreover, we present a tree model to characterize human face structure and a structural loss function to measure the deformation cost between the ground-truth and predicted tree model, which are further incorporated into the proposed learning approach and jointly optimized within a unified framework. The presented tree model is able to well characterize the spatial layout patterns of facial landmarks for capturing the facial structure information. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach against the state-of-the-art over the MTFL and AFLW-full data sets.
Joint Design of Overlaid Communication Systems and Pulsed Radars

The focus of this paper is on coexistence between a communication system and a pulsed radar sharing the same bandwidth. Based on the fact that the interference generated by the radar onto the communication receiver is intermittent and depends on the density of scattering objects (such as, e.g., targets), we first show that the communication system is equivalent to a set of independent parallel channels, whereby precoding on each channel can be introduced as a new degree of freedom. We introduce a new figure of merit, named the compound rate, which is a convex combination of rates with and without interference, to be optimized under constraints concerning the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (including signal-dependent interference due to clutter) experienced by the radar and obviously the powers emitted by the two systems: the degrees of freedom are the radar waveform and the aforementioned encoding matrix for the communication symbols. We provide closed-form solutions for the optimum transmit policies for both systems under two basic models for the scattering produced by the radar onto the communication receiver, and account for possible correlation of the signal-independent fraction of the interference impinging on the radar. We also discuss the region of the achievable communication rates with and without interference. A thorough performance assessment shows the potentials and the limitations of the proposed co-existing architecture.
Carbon Nanotube Aerogels

Aerogels are ultralight, highly porous materials typicallyfabricated by subjecting a wet-gel precursor to critical-point-drying (CPD) or lyophilization (freeze-drying) in order toremove background liquid without collapsing the network.Microscopically, aerogels are composed of tenuous networksof clustered nanoparticles, and the materials often haveunique properties, including very high strength-to-weight andsurface-area-to-volume ratios. To date most aerogels are fab-ricated from silica
Cold-inducible RNA-binding protein (CIRP) induces translation of the cell-cycle inhibitor p27Kip1

Abstract The CDK inhibitor p27Kip1 plays a central role in controlling cell proliferation and cell-cycle exit. p27Kip1 protein levels oscillate during cell-cycle progression and are regulated by mitogen or anti-proliferative signaling. The abundance of the protein is frequently determined by post-transcriptional mechanisms including ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis and translational control. Here, we report that the cold-inducible RNA-binding protein (CIRP) selectively binds to the 5′ untranslated region of the p27Kip1 mRNA. CIRP is induced, modified and relocalized in response to various stress stimuli and can regulate cell survival and cell proliferation particularly during stress. Binding of CIRP to the 5′UTR of the p27Kip1 mRNA significantly enhanced reporter translation. In cells exposed to mild hypothermia, the induction of CIRP correlated with increased translation of a p27Kip1 5′UTR reporter and with the accumulation of p27Kip1 protein. shRNA-mediated CIRP knockdown could prevent the induction of translation. We found that p27Kip1 is central for the decreased proliferation at lower temperature, since p27Kip1 KO mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) hardly increased their doubling time in hypothermic conditions, whereas wild-type MEFs significantly delayed proliferation in response to cold stress. This suggests that the CIRP-dependent p27Kip1 upregulation during mild hypothermia contributes to the cold shock-induced inhibition of cell proliferation.
Social Media Analysis based on Semanticity of Streaming and Batch Data

Languages shared by people differ in different regions based on their accents, pronunciation and word usages. In this era sharing of language takes place mainly through social media and blogs. Every second swing of such a micro posts exist which induces the need of processing those micro posts, in-order to extract knowledge out of it. Knowledge extraction differs with respect to the application in which the research on cognitive science fed the necessities for the same. This work further moves forward such a research by extracting semantic information of streaming and batch data in applications like Named Entity Recognition and Author Profiling. In the case of Named Entity Recognition context of a single micro post has been utilized and context that lies in the pool of micro posts were utilized to identify the sociolect aspects of the author of those micro posts. In this work Conditional Random Field has been utilized to do the entity recognition and a novel approach has been proposed to find the sociolect aspects of the author (Gender, Age group).
Inpatient satisfaction at different public sector hospitals of a metropolitan city in Pakistan: a comparative cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT Objective: To observe inpatient satisfaction at different public sector hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan. Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out during 2010–2012 in four major public sector hospitals of Karachi. A total of 710 patients completed the study. Responses were gathered in a self-structured questionnaire that comprised of four dimensions of satisfaction with doctor, staff, administration and treatment. Average Score of each dimension was taken and compared using one way analysis of variance. Result: Satisfaction with doctors, staff and administration of provincial and federal hospitals were comparatively similar (P > 0.05). However, satisfaction with treatment significantly differed in all four hospitals (P < 0.0001). Highest satisfaction with treatment was observed among inpatients of hospital running by medical institute (P < 0.0001). Comparison with respect to different departments revealed significant difference for treatment satisfaction of medicine and surgery units. Patients who were admitted from emergency mode acquired lowest satisfaction in all aspects. Conclusion: Response of inpatients from public sector hospitals showed satisfaction with healthcare personnel and related administration. However, treatment dimension needs to be improved to get more satisfaction.
Effect of default menus on food selection and consumption in a college dining hall simulation study

Abstract Objective To test an obesity prevention strategy derived from behavioural economics (optimal defaults plus delay), focused on changing the college dining hall service method. Design After a uniform pre-load, participants attended an experimental lunch in groups randomized to one of three conditions: a nutrient-dense, lower-fat/energy lunch as an optimal default (OD); a less-nutrient-dense, higher-fat/energy lunch as a suboptimal default (SD); or a free array (FA) lunch. In the OD condition, students were presented a menu depicting healthier vegetarian and omnivore foods as default, with opt-out alternatives (SD menu) available on request with a 15 min wait. In the SD condition, the same menu format was used with the positioning of food items switched. In the FA condition, all choices were presented in uniform fonts and were available immediately. Setting Private rooms designed to provide a small version of a college dining hall, on two campuses of a Northeastern US university. Subjects First-year college students (n 129). Results There was a significant main effect for condition on percentage of optimal choices selected, with 94 % of food choices in the OD condition optimal, 47 % in the FA condition optimal and none in the SD condition optimal. Similarly, energy intake for those in the SD condition significantly exceeded that in the FA condition, which exceeded that in the OD condition. Conclusions Presenting menu items as optimal defaults with a delay had a significant impact on choice and consumption, suggesting that further research into its long-term applicability is warranted.
Some assembly required: Redefining the mitotic checkpoint

ABSTRACT The spindle assembly checkpoint (also known as the spindle or mitotic checkpoint) is a surveillance system that ensures fidelity of chromosome segregation. Here we suggest, in light of historical and more recent evidence, that this signaling system monitors kinetochore attachment and spindle assembly by two distinct, but functionally overlapping, pathways.
Semiformal Verification of Software-Controlled Connections

The verification of both hardware and embedded software has become an important subject over the last years. However, neither standalone verification approaches like simulation-based or emulation nor state-of-the-art formal verification approaches are able to co-verify hardware/software modules in complex SoCs. This work proposes a semiformal approach to formally verify software-controlled connections in an attempt to start closing the hardware/software formal co-verification gap. Currently, this architectural aspect is partially verified using simulation. This approach presented interesting results compared to formal verification and simulation methods.
WAVE PROPAGATION IN HIGH POROSITY BONES - A CELLULAR MODEL

Summary Experimental ultrasonic studies for high porosity cancellous bone give the results which can not be properly described in the wide frequency range (especially for high frequencies) using two phase macrocontinual models (Biot’s or Schoenberg model). Hence, a cellular model for propagation of ultrasonic waves in such media is proposed. The sensivity analysis of frequency dependent phase velocities and attenuations of both longitudinal ultrasonic waves is presented in order to extract physical properties and structural parameters of the cellular model which mostly influence wave parameters. The parameters calculated from the proposed model are compared with the data obtained from Biot’s theory. It was shown that only for the long wave range (low frequencies) the predictions of both considered models are close to each other and that the results obtained from cellular model are in good qualitative agreement with the experimental data received from ultrasonic studies.
Failure Detectors to Solve Asynchronous k-Set Agreement: a Glimpse of Recent Results

In the k-set agreement problem, each process proposes a value and has to decide a value in such a way that a decided value is a proposed value and at most k different values are decided. This problem can easily be solved in synchronous systems or in asynchronous systems prone to t process crashes when t < k. In contrast, it has been shown that k-set agreement cannot be solved in asynchronous systems when k < t. Hence, since several years, the failure detector-based approach has been investigated to circumvent this impossibility. This approach consists in enriching the underlying asynchronous system with an additional module per process that provides it with information on failures. Hence, without becoming synchronous, the enriched system is no longer fully asynchronous. This paper surveys this approach in both asynchronous shared memory systems and asynchronous message passing systems. It presents and discusses recent results and associated k-set agreement algorithms.