Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The seven-span transmembrane receptor CD97 has a cellular ligand (CD55, DAF)

CD97 is an activation-induced antigen on leukocytes with a seven-span transmembrane (7-TM) region homologous to the secretin receptor superfamily. However, in contrast to this group of peptide hormone receptors, CD97 has an extended extracellular region with three EGF domains at the NH2 terminus, two of them with a calcium binding site. By demonstrating that lymphocytes and erythrocytes specifically adhere to CD97-transfected COS cells we here show that CD97 in parallel with its molecular evolution has acquired the ability to bind cellular ligands. A mAb selected on its capacity to block the adhesion between CD97 transfectants and red cells was found to be directed to the NH2- terminal short consensus repeat (SCR) of decay accelerating factor (DAF, CD55), a regulatory protein of the complement cascade. The specificity of the interaction of CD97 with CD55 was established by the observation that erythrocytes that lack CD55, obtained from patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) or the CD55, phenotype Inab, failed to adhere to CD97 transfectants. This is the first demonstration of a cellular ligand for a 7-TM receptor.
Generalized Total Time Derivatives

Forms of generalized total time derivative proposed by Wesley and by Mocanu are compared. It is shown that in the important special case of a " test charge " q or small rigid-walled detector moving with instantaneous velocity () t = v v all forms agree on an electromagnetic force law that is the Lorentz law plus a nominally " unobservable " gradient term, q-Ñ × A v , which integrates to zero around closed circuits (A = vector potential).
Making healthier or killing enemies? Bacterial volatile-elicited plant immunity plays major role upon protection of Arabidopsis than the direct pathogen inhibition

ABSTRACT Bacterial volatiles protect plants either by directly inhibiting a pathogenic fungus or by improving the defense capabilities of plants. The effect of bacterial volatiles on fungal growth was dose-dependent. A low dosage did not have a noticeable effect on Botrytis cinerea growth and development, but was sufficient to elicit induced resistance in Arabidopsis thaliana. Bacterial volatiles displayed negative effects on biofilm formation on a polystyrene surface and in in planta leaf colonization of B. cinerea. However, bacterial volatile-mediated induced resistance was the major mechanism mediating protection of plants from B. cinerea. It was responsible for more than 90% of plant protection in comparison with direct fungal inhibition. Our results broaden our knowledge of the role of bacterial volatiles in plant protection.
Object-oriented database systems

The object model which is based on the abstract data type concept, provides a natural and more powerful modeling capability. This modeling power, coupled with efficiency of implementation, makes object-oriented database systems suitable for complex applications, such as engineering design applications. The author concentrates on: differences between object-oriented databases and object-oriented programming languages and differences between object-oriented databases and classical (relational) databases. The author argues the need for supporting schema evolution and object versions. <<ETX>>
Feature extraction for bearing fault diagnosis using composite multiscale entropy

Multiscale entropy (MSE) is a popular algorithm to measure the complexity of a time series for multiple scales. However, the conventional MSE algorithm yields imprecise estimation of entropy for a time series with large time scale factors. In this paper, a composite multiscale entropy (CMSE) method is proposed to overcome this drawback. In the CMSE algorithm, with scale factors of τ, we calculate the sample entropies (SampEns) of all coarse-grained series and then define the mean of τ SampEns as the entropy values. This proposed algorithm is then applied to two different kinds of simulated noise signals and a set of real vibration data. These results demonstrate that the proposed CMSE provides more precise entropy calculation than the convectional MSE. Furthermore, as a feature extractor for a bearing faulty signal, CMSE provides a higher distinguishability, compared with MSE.
Integrating N-best SMT Outputs into a TM System

In this paper, we propose a novel framework to enrich Translation Memory (TM) systems with Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) outputs using ranking. In order to offer the human translators multiple choices, instead of only using the top SMT output and top TM hit, we merge the N-best output from the SMT system and the k-best hits with highest fuzzy match scores from the TM system. The merged list is then ranked according to the prospective post-editing effort and provided to the translators to aid their work. Experiments show that our ranked output achieve 0.8747 precision at top 1 and 0.8134 precision at top 5. Our framework facilitates a tight integration between SMT and TM, where full advantage is taken of TM while high quality SMT output is availed of to improve the productivity of human translators.
Investment policies in advanced defense R & D programs

Investment in advanced defense technologies is a common characteristic of modern age armed forces. The operational benefit of such technologies is an S-shaped function of their technological progress, which is highly uncertain. We model investment problem facing a defense decision maker, aiming to maximize the value of a military system, by choosing its target technological level and the quantity to be procured. We show that the optimal investment is a discontinuous function of the available budget. Under a certain threshold, no investment is optimal. Above this budget, a sizable investment is optimal. Very low budgets prohibit investments in advanced R&D, but somewhat larger ones require investments in highly-uncertain advanced technologies. Yet higher budgets allow for investment in advanced R&D, but with preference towards low-risk programs. With very high budget levels highly uncertain technologies are allocated a larger share of the budget. We further show that maintaining the flexibility to adjust investments along the R&D program is beneficial, in accordance with standard "real options" results. This flexibility may, however, lead decision makers to invest more in earlier periods, in order to enjoy better control over the results of the latter parts of the program.
An Adaptive Energy Efficient and Reliable Gossip Routing Protocol For Mobile Adhoc Networks

—The current ad hoc network routing protocols require all the nodes to be awake and keep listening which results in waste of energy. The existing energy efficient routing protocols and topology management schemes increase the computing complexity and acquire extra overhead or equipments. To over come these drawbacks, in this paper, we design an Adaptive Energy Efficient and Reliable Gossip Routing (AEERG) Protocol for Mobile Ad hoc Networks. The major objective of the protocol is to achieve energy efficiency and reliability. In this protocol, we set a counter to represent the current number of neighbors at each node which are kept in active state. The value of the counter is adaptively adjusted based on the packet delivery ratio. This results in less energy consumption and reliability in the network-wide communication. By simulation results, we show that the proposed protocol achieves good delivery ratio and high throughput with less packet drop and energy consumption.
Distribution of hypocretin-containing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus and C-fos-immunoreactive neurons in the VLPO.

The present study investigated the distribution of neurons implicated in the regulation of sleep in three species generally used in sleep research, i.e., mice, rats and cats. We focused on sleep active neurons in the ventral lateral preoptic (VLPO) area and the hypocretin/orexin-containing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus. The latter groups of neurons were found recently to play an important role in the regulation of REM sleep. The expression of the transcription factor, c-Fos, was used to identify the VLPO. In mice and rats, in response to sleep, a discrete cluster of c-Fos positive cells was found in the VLPO. In mice, this cluster was located more medially compared to the rat, and as in the rat, galanin immunostained neurons were found in the VLPO. In the cat, c-Fos positive cells did not segregate to a specific location but were more diffusely represented in the preoptic area. In all three species, orexin/hypocretin-containing neurons were located only in the lateral hypothalamus with the distribution being more diffuse in the cat. The grouping of sleep-active cells in rodents makes it feasible to extract these cells for tissue culture and molecular analysis. Moreover, given that rodents have a distinct circadian distribution of sleep-wakefulness, the connectivity with the suprachiasmatic nucleus can also be determined.
A hybrid control strategy for multiple mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints

This paper explains a hybrid control strategy developed to coordinate multiple autonomous mobile robots with nonholonomic constraints. The robots are required to navigate in an obstacles populated environment with a predetermined geometric formation. The nonlinear robot dynamics are fully state feedback linearized in order to yield linear controllable systems while the dynamics of the environment are handled by an event based hybrid automata. The chattering effect of the switched system is tackled by incorporating sliding dynamics in the automata. The proposed system is implemented through simulation and the results are shown to verify its operation.
Noise rejection strategy and experimental research on partial discharge at DC voltage

Partial discharges (PD) in HVDC equipment are not the predominant degradation factor. However, they can be a failure precursor (particularly when electrical trees are formed), so that monitoring PD could be a tool to infer imminent failures. In order to monitor PD on site, one major problem at DC voltage is the absence of tools able to distinguish noise from PD signals. In this paper, corona, surface and internal discharges measured under DC voltage are extracted from noise and interference resorting to a new strategy of noise rejection at DC voltage.
MoCHA: Augmenting pervasive displays through mobile devices and web-based technologies

In this article, we propose a web-based system, called MoCHA display, for rich interactions between pervasive displays and users with a mobile device. Our scheme consists of a web-centric architecture, in which both the screen and the mobile device simply need to run a web browser. Our contributions are twofold. First, we develop a distributed architecture based on modern web technologies and cloud computing to provide rich interactions between users equipped with a mobile device and pervasive screens. Second, we devise a mechanism for practical and secure binding of screens and mobile devices based on their proximity. We present a prototype of the system as well as some preliminary results about its usability and performance.
Stylized facts of trading activity in the high frequency FX market : An Empirical Study

In this paper, we focus on studying the statistical properties (stylized facts) of the trading activity in the Foreign Exchange (FX) market which is the most liquid financial market in the world. We use a unique high-frequency dataset of anonymised individual traders’ historical transactions on an account level provided by OANDA. To the best of our knowledge, this dataset can be considered to be the biggest available high-frequency dataset of the FX market individual traders’ historical transactions. The established stylized facts can be grouped under three main headings: scaling laws, seasonality statistics and correlation behaviour. Our work confirms established stylized facts in the literature but also goes beyond those as we have discovered four new scaling laws and established six quantitative relationships amongst them, holding across EUR/USD and EUR/CHF transactions. The established stylized facts of the trading activity in high-frequency FX markets can offer insights into the market workings and traders’ behaviour but also serve as a benchmark for validating agent-based models of FX markets.
A Study of Speculative Distributed Scheduling on the Cell/B.E.

Star Super scalar's (StarSs) programming model converts a sequential application in C or Fortran into an efficient parallel program. The resulting parallel code is highly dynamic in the sense that data analysis and task scheduling occur at run-time, while the application executes. In this paper we compare this approach to the strategy adopted by other multi-core programming environments. The prize to pay for dynamic scheduling and dependence tracking is higher runtime overhead. We propose a distributed scheduler for Task Dependence Graphs (TDGs) to attenuate the scheduling cost in heterogeneous multi-core architectures. This scheduler allows the cores to speculatively select tasks from a conservative estimate of the TDG. In case of conflicts or lack of tasks a lightweight centralized scheduler services the faulting core after which the latter resumes its participation in the distributed scheme. Experiments with Cell Super scalar (CellSs) on a representative set of benchmarks demonstrate the reduction in runtime overhead achieved by the distributed scheduler. This reduction in runtime overhead carries over directly to a performance improvement for a large fraction of the benchmarks.
No . 04 / 06 Evasive Reform : Informalisation in a Liberalised Economy with Wage-Setting Unions by Indraneel Dasgupta and Sugata Marjit

We examine the impact of economic deregulation on employer evasion of union-mandated ‘formal’ wage-contracts in an import-competing industry. We show that, if the state maintains industrial employment despite import liberalisation, through cheaper credit to firms, then employer evasion will increase, due to a rise in the formal-informal wage gap. Institutional delays in punishment of employer evasion generate this outcome. Greater employer evasion will entail greater diversion of resources to employer-union conflicts. To moderate such waste, the state must attenuate its role as the enforcer of contracts between unions and employers, thereby reducing the total income of workers, and, paradoxically, firms’ profits. Our results explain observed trends in developing countries, which are characterised by large informal labour markets. JEL Classification Number: J51, J52, O12, O17.
Inferring Generalized Pick-and-Place Tasks from Pointing Gestures

In this paper, we describe how to simplify the instruction of robots to perform pick-and-place tasks. This is achieved by inferring additional information about the environment, locations in it, and the used object, based on semantic knowledge. We use the Kinect RGB-D camera mounted on a PR2 robot and the human tracking system OpenNI that allows the interpretation of simple human gestures. Our application builds enables virtual movements of objects freely in space and the use of an ontology for reasoning about the plausibility of the tasks specified by releasing objects in certain locations. Our experiments show how relatively complex object manipulation tasks can be specified as simply as “drag-and-drop”.
A new wall clutter reduction strategy for through wall radar imaging

This paper deals with the problem of mitigating the wall clutter in through wall radar imaging. The clutter caused by the presence of the front wall, always has large amplitude and long span of time, tending to shadow the target signal. In order to reduce the wall clutter, the singular value decomposition (SVD) method, and the SaS algorithm, which treats the clutter from a given scan (data measured at one location) as a shifted and Scaled (SaS) version of reference clutter, are introduced. Based on these two techniques, a new wall clutter reduction strategy is proposed in this paper. The approach uses SVD technique to provide the reference clutter, and then subtracts the clutter from each scan using the reference clutter and SaS algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed approach combining advantages of these two techniques presents better performance than other clutter reduction techniques.
In transition: self-expression in recent African LGBTIQ narratives

ABSTRACT There is a long tradition of multiple sexualities in Africa, but it is a tradition that has been violently interrupted by Western colonialism. Neocolonial extension of these prohibitions shapes the ongoing struggle for rights among LGBTIQ individuals and communities throughout the African continent, with variations from country to country. As with other such social movements, the arts reflect and reinscribe strong prejudices or contend with them, and in the process presage a broad but tentative growth in the tolerance of diversity. Homosexuality is still outlawed in 34 African countries, yet it has never been vilified in 13 others. This essay will survey a selection of African fiction and films that take differing positions on these controversial social movements. Whereas a Western model for LGBTIQ rights rarely seems appropriate in African contexts, it is clear that Africans are offering new ways of being queer that challenge essentialism while giving the lie to those who deny the existence of “non-normative” African sexualities.
The role of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy in medicine: addressing the psychological and physical symptoms stemming from adverse life experiences.

BACKGROUND A substantial body of research shows that adverse life experiences contribute to both psychological and biomedical pathology. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an empirically validated treatment for trauma, including such negative life experiences as commonly present in medical practice. The positive therapeutic outcomes rapidly achieved without homework or detailed description of the disturbing event offer the medical community an efficient treatment approach with a wide range of applications. METHODS All randomized studies and significant clinical reports related to EMDR therapy for treating the experiential basis of both psychological and somatic disorders are reviewed. Also reviewed are the recent studies evaluating the eye movement component of the therapy, which has been posited to contribute to the rapid improvement attributable to EMDR treatment. RESULTS Twenty-four randomized controlled trials support the positive effects of EMDR therapy in the treatment of emotional trauma and other adverse life experiences relevant to clinical practice. Seven of 10 studies reported EMDR therapy to be more rapid and/or more effective than trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. Twelve randomized studies of the eye movement component noted rapid decreases in negative emotions and/or vividness of disturbing images, with an additional 8 reporting a variety of other memory effects. Numerous other evaluations document that EMDR therapy provides relief from a variety of somatic complaints. CONCLUSION EMDR therapy provides physicians and other clinicians with an efficient approach to address psychological and physiologic symptoms stemming from adverse life experiences. Clinicians should therefore evaluate patients for experiential contributors to clinical manifestations.
Recombinant soluble IgA Fc receptor: generation, biochemical characterization, and functional analysis of the recombinant protein

We previously described the cloning of a human myeloid cell surface receptor for the Fc region of immunoglobulin A (FcαR). In the present study, a soluble version of the FcαR (solFcαR) was generated by removing the transmembrane and cytoplasmic coding regions from full‐length FcocR cDNA and ligating into a mammalian expression vector. COS‐7 cells transfected with the solFcαR plasmid secreted a protein that inhibited both immunoglobulin A (IgA) and anti‐FcaR monoclonal antibody (mAb) binding to FcαR+ U937 cells. Furthermore, the solFcαR bound specifically to and could be eluted from an anti‐FcαR mAb‐immunoaffinity column, retaining biological activity. Analysis by sodium dodecyl sulfate‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS‐PAGE) demonstrated that the recombinant full‐length FcαR migrates over a molecular mass range of approximately 40‐60 kd, consistent with the reported size and heterogeneity of the naturally occurring myeloid cell surface FcocR. The solFcocR ran on SDS‐PAGE as a smaller band (37‐55 kd) that reduced to two bands of 23 and 25 kd following N‐glycanase treatment, indicating that the FcαR is a heavily glycosylated protein. The biochemical data, coupled with flow cytometry studies showing that the recombinant FcαRs bind to five different anti‐FcαR mAbs, clearly demonstrate that the cloned FcαR corresponds directly to the major FcαR species expressed on human monocytes, neutrophils, and myeloid cell lines. The generation of soluble receptor protein will permit in‐vestigations of the role of FcocR in IgA‐mediated im‐munoregulation, effector functions, and disease.
Towards a repertoire-building approach: multilingualism in language classes for refugees in Luxembourg

ABSTRACT This contribution examines how the diverse language resources that teachers and learners bring to the classroom can support the process of language learning. It draws on a range of linguistic ethnographic data collected at a French language course that was attended mostly by Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Luxembourg. Drawing on the analysis of multilingual interactional practices, the article sheds light on some of the opportunities for learning that emerged as a result of translation, translanguaging and receptive multilingualism. It discusses the relevance of these practices for building a repertoire of resources that enables forced migrants to communicate in multilingual contexts such as Luxembourg.
Time-frequency spectral estimation of multichannel EEG using the Auto-SLEX method

In this paper, we apply a new time-frequency spectral estimation method for multichannel data to epileptiform electroencephalography (EEG). The method is based on the smooth localized complex exponentials (SLEX) functions which are time-frequency localized versions of the Fourier functions and, hence, are ideal for analyzing nonstationary signals whose spectral properties evolve over time. The SLEX functions are simultaneously orthogonal and localized in time and frequency because they are obtained by applying a projection operator rather than a window or taper. In this paper, we present the Auto-SLEX method which is a statistical method that 1) computes the periodogram using the SLEX transform, 2) automatically segments the signal into approximately stationary segments using an objective criterion that is based on log energy, and 3) automatically selects the optimal bandwidth of the spectral smoothing window. The method is applied to the intracranial EEG from a patient with temporal lobe epilepsy. This analysis reveals a reduction in average duration of stationarity in preseizure epochs of data compared to baseline. These changes begin up to hours prior to electrical seizure onset in this patient.