Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biochemical Characterization of the Arabidopsis Protein Kinase SOS2 That Functions in Salt Tolerance1

The Arabidopsis Salt Overly Sensitive 2(SOS2) gene encodes a serine/threonine (Thr) protein kinase that has been shown to be a critical component of the salt stress signaling pathway. SOS2 contains a sucrose-non-fermenting protein kinase 1/AMP-activated protein kinase-like N-terminal catalytic domain with an activation loop and a unique C-terminal regulatory domain with an FISL motif that binds to the calcium sensorSalt Overly Sensitive 3. In this study, we examined some of the biochemical properties of the SOS2 in vitro. To determine its biochemical properties, we expressed and isolated a number of active and inactive SOS2 mutants as glutathione S-transferase fusion proteins in Escherichia coli. Three constitutively active mutants, SOS2T168D, SOS2T168DΔF, and SOS2T168DΔ308, were obtained previously, which contain either the Thr-168 to aspartic acid (Asp) mutation in the activation loop or combine the activation loop mutation with removal of the FISL motif or the entire regulatory domain. These active mutants exhibited a preference for Mn2+ relative to Mg2+ and could not use GTP as phosphate donor for either substrate phosphorylation or autophosphorylation. The three enzymes had similar peptide substrate specificity and catalytic efficiency. Salt overly sensitive 3 had little effect on the activity of the activation loop mutant SOS2T168D, either in the presence or absence of calcium. The active mutant SOS2T168DΔ308 could not transphosphorylate an inactive protein (SOS2K40N), which indicates an intramolecular reaction mechanism of SOS2 autophosphorylation. Interestingly, SOS2 could be activated not only by the Thr-168 to Asp mutation but also by a serine-156 or tyrosine-175 to Asp mutation within the activation loop. Our results provide insights into the regulation and biochemical properties of SOS2 and the SOS2 subfamily of protein kinases.
Color-Selective Cells in Monkey Area V4 Effect of Background Colors on the Tuning of

Effect of background colors on the tuning of color-selective cells in monkey area V4. When objects are viewed in different illuminants, their color does not change or changes little in spite of significant changes in the wavelength composition of the light reflected from them. In previous studies, we have addressed the physiology underlying this color constancy by recording from cells in areas V1, V2, and V4 of the anesthetized monkey. Truly color-coded cells, ones that respond to a patch of a given color irrespective of the wavelength composition of the light reflected from it, were only found in area V4. In the present study, we have used a different approach to test the responses of V4 cells in both anesthetized and awake behaving monkeys. Stimuli of different colors, embedded within a Mondrian-type multicolored background, were used to identify the chromatic selectivity of neurons. The illumination of the background was then varied, and the tuning of V4 neurons was tested again for each background illumination. With anesthetized monkeys, the psycho-physical effect of changing background illumination was inferred from our own experience, whereas in the awake behaving animal, it was directly reported by the monkey. We found that the majority of V4 neurons shifted their color-tuning profile with each change in the background illumination: each time the color of the background on the computer screen was changed so as to simulate a change in illumination , cells shifted their color-tuning function in the direction of the chromaticity component that had been increased. A similar shift was also observed in colored match-to-sample psychometric functions of both human and monkey. The shift in monkey psychometric functions was quantitatively equivalent to the shift in the responses of the corresponding population of cells. We conclude that neurons in area V4 exhibit the property of color constancy and that their response properties are thus able to reflect color perception. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the organization of the visual cortex is its functional specialization, by which we mean that different attributes of the visual scene, among them color, are processed by anatomically separate and functionally specialized systems (Livingstone and Hubel 1988; Zeki 1978; Zeki et al. 1991). Functional specialization is also reflected in the temporal perceptual dimension because different attributes of the visual scene are perceived asynchronously, color being perceived before motion and form (Arnold et al. 2001; Moutoussis and Zeki 1997a,b). The notion of a …
[12] G. N. Frederickson. Data Structures for On-line Updating of Minimum Spanning Trees, with Applications. Siam

[32] V. V. Vazirani. A theory of alternating paths and blossoms for proving correctness of the O(p V E) general graph maximum matching algorithm. [13] G. N. Frederickson. Ambivalent data structures for dynamic 2-edge-connectivity and k smallest spanning trees. Linear time algorithms for nding a sparse k-connected spanning subgraph of a k-connected graph. Re-randomization and average case analysis of fully dynamic graph algorithms. Average Case Analysis of Dynamic Graph Algorithms 23 In fact, backwards analysis rst was used in computational geometry for exactly this purpose by Chew [5]. Note that our technique can also be used to analyze the average case performance of randomized dynamic graph algorithms. (A randomized algorithm is an algorithm that makes use of random choices for computing the solution to a worst case input.) For the connectivity problems considered in this paper the running time of an update consists of two parts: an expected running time of O(n= p m +log n) (where m is the number of edges after the update) plus an amortized constant time for rebuilds. It is an interesting open question whether the data structure can be improved by distributing the costs of rebuilds over previous updates in a way that gives an expected time bound of O(n= p m + log n) per update. Eppstein [9] suggested that a good average case behavior for some of the above problems can also be shown for node insertions and deletions.
Spectral efficiency of FDMA/TDMA wireless systems with transmit and receive antenna arrays

The ever growing need for higher capacity in wireless systems has fueled the interest in exploiting the spatial dimension-through the use of antennas arrays-to improve the utilization of the available radio spectrum. As a result, a large number of space-time techniques have been proposed wherein arrays are used to mitigate interference and enhance signal levels. More recently, information theory has shown that, with spatial data multiplexing, very large spectral efficiencies can be attained in multipath channels using transmit and receive antenna arrays. In this paper, the system benefit of using transmit and receive arrays in multicell scenarios is evaluated as a function of both the propagation environment and the number of antennas. Our results confirm the potential for very large system spectral efficiencies associated with the use of transmit and receive arrays, in particular in interference-limited rich-multipath conditions wherein the ability to perform interference mitigation-leading to tighter spectral reuse-and spatial data multiplexing grows with the number of antennas. In environments free of multipath, the potential is smaller but still very significant, associated with interference mitigation and signal enhancement only, since spatial data multiplexing is no longer possible.
A Fast Fault-Tolerant Architecture for Sauvola Local Image Thresholding Algorithm Using Stochastic Computing

Binarization plays an important role in document image processing, particularly in degraded document images. Among all local image thresholding algorithms, Sauvola has excellent binarization performance for degraded document images. However, this algorithm is computationally intensive and sensitive to the noises from the internal computational circuits. In this paper, we present a stochastic implementation of Sauvola algorithm. Our experimental results show that the stochastic implementation of Sauvola needs much less time and area and can tolerate more faults, while consuming less power in comparison with its conventional implementation.
Spatially structured genetic variation in a broadcast spawning bivalve: quantitative vs. molecular traits

Abstract Understanding the origin, maintenance and significance of phenotypic variation is one of the central issues in evolutionary biology. An ongoing discussion focuses on the relative roles of isolation and selection as being at the heart of genetically based spatial variation. We address this issue in a representative of a taxon group in which isolation is unlikely: a marine broadcast spawning invertebrate. During the free‐swimming larval phase, dispersal is potentially very large. For such taxa, small‐scale population genetic structuring in neutral molecular markers tends to be limited, conform expectations. Small‐scale differentiation of selective traits is expected to be hindered by the putatively high gene flow. We determined the geographical distribution of molecular markers and of variation in a shell shape measure, globosity, for the bivalve Macoma balthica (L.) in the western Dutch Wadden Sea and adjacent North Sea in three subsequent years, and found that shells of this clam are more globose in the Wadden Sea. By rearing clams in a common garden in the laboratory starting from the gamete phase, we show that the ecotypes are genetically different; heritability is estimated at 23%. The proportion of total genetic variation that is between sites is much larger for the morphological additive genetic variation (QST = 0.416) than for allozyme (FST = 0.000–0.022) and mitochondrial DNA cytochrome‐c‐oxidase‐1 sequence variation (ΦST = 0.017). Divergent selection must be involved and intraspecific spatial genetic differentiation in marine broadcast spawners is apparently not constrained by low levels of isolation.
Have Capital Market Anomalies Attenuated in the Recent Era of High Liquidity and Trading Activity?

We examine whether the recent regime of increased liquidity and trading activity is associated with attenuation of prominent equity return anomalies due to increased arbitrage. We find that the majority of the anomalies have attenuated and the average returns from a portfolio strategy based on prominent anomalies have approximately halved after decimalization. We provide evidence that hedge fund assets under management, short interest and aggregate share turnover have led to the decline in anomaly-based trading strategy profits in recent years. Overall, our work indicates that policies to stimulate liquidity and ameliorate trading costs improve capital market efficiency.
Detrusor contractility

Objective: This paper comprises a critical assessment of the many competing ways of assessing detrusor contractility in the urodynamic clinic. It is based on measurements made in a group of elderly women, and the conclusions apply, strictly speaking, only to that population. Detrusor contractility has two aspects, which appear to be independent of each other: the strength of the detrusor contraction and whether the contraction is adequately sustained. The second of these can be assessed quite simply from postvoid residual urine. The main aim of the paper therefore is to identify and recommend one or two best methods of measuring detrusor contraction strength. Conclusions: For research, the isovolumetric detrusor pressure should be measured during a continuous occlusion test or a mechanical stop test, effected by blocking the outlet with a balloon catheter. For routine clinical use, where ease of performance and minimization of repeat catheterization are important considerations, the isovolumetric detrusor pressure may be estimated from a simple contractility index PIP[Formula: See Text] (=p [Formula: See Text] + Q [Formula: See Text], in the usual urodynamic units). The older indices detrusor coefficient, projected isovolumetric pressure and bladder contractility index, the detrusor power and the well-known contractility nomogram, are not recommended for use in older women. Except for specialized research purposes, the Watts factor does not offer enough advantages to offset the complex calculation required. These conclusions may require modification for male patients.
Electromigration failure of SnAgCu lead-free BGA package assembled with SnPb solder paste

Electromigration damage in Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) lead-free solder joints of Ball Grid Array (BGA) package assembled with eutectic SnPb paste was investigated after current stressing at 100°C with a density of 1×104 A·cm-2 for up to 180 h. The under bump metallization (UBM) for the mixed solder joints on the substrate side was Cu/electroplated Ni, while the pad on the printed circuit board (PCB) side was Cu plate. The results show that open failure occurred in the Cu trace at the upper-right corner of the solder joint with a downward current flow in the thermo-eletromigration test. As the current crowding occurred at that point and induced the Ni and Cu atoms excessive migration. The Pb atoms were found to move in the same direction as with the electron current flow, and accumulated at the anode. The two new factors, the initial concentration gradient of Pb atoms and current density distribution in the solder bump, for the redistribution of Pb-rich phases to be considered to clarify that phenomenon. Meanwhile, the polarity effect of electro-migration on the interfacial reaction of mixed solder bump was obvious. Electric current enhance the growth IMC layers at anode, and the interfacial microstructure of triple layers ((Cu, Ni)6Sn5, Cu6Sn5, and Cu3Sn) was observed. While the growth of IMC at anode, Cu6Sn5, was retarded.
Prognostic Effect of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor and EGFRvIII in Glioblastoma Multiforme Patients

Purpose: The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is overexpressed in ∼50% to 60% of glioblastoma multiforme tumors, and the most common EGFR mutant, EGFRvIII, is expressed in 24% to 67% of cases. We sought to determine whether glioblastoma multiforme expression of either overexpressed wild-type EGFR or the mutant EGFRvIII is an independent predictor of overall patient survival. Experimental Design: Glioblastoma multiforme patients (n = 196) underwent a ≥95% volumetric tumor resection followed by conformal radiation. Their EGFR and EGFRvIII status was determined by immunohistochemistry and survival analyses were done. Results: In our study of glioblastoma multiforme patients, 46% (n = 91) failed to express EGFR, 54% (n = 105) had overexpression of the wild-type EGFR, and 31% (n = 61) also expressed the EGFRvIII. Patients within groups expressing the EGFR, EGFRvIII, or lacking EGFR expression did not differ in age, sex, Karnofsky performance scale score, extent of tumor resection, or radiation. The median overall survival times for patients with tumors having EGFR expression absent, overexpressed only, or mutant (EGFRvIII) were 0.96, 0.98, and 1.07 years, respectively. However, for patients surviving ≥1 year, these values were 2.03, 2.02, and 1.21 years (P < 0.0001; log-rank test comparing EGFRvIII with all others). This effect remained significant in the multivariate analysis after adjustment for all other cofactors including age and Karnofsky performance scale score (rate ratio 4.34; 95% confidence interval, 2.21-8.51). Conclusions: Neither the overexpressed wild-type EGFR nor EGFRvIII was an independent predictor of median overall survival in this selected cohort of patients who underwent extensive tumor resection. However, in patients surviving ≥1 year, the expression of EGFRvIII was an independent negative prognostic indicator.
Looking for Candidate Translational Equivalents in Specialized, Comparable Corpora

Previous attempts at identifying translational equivalents in comparable corpora have dealt with very large 'general language' corpora and words. We address this task in a specialized domain, medicine, starting from smaller non-parallel, comparable corpora and an initial bilingual medical lexicon. We compare the distributional contexts of source and target words, testing several weighting factors and similarity measures. On a test set of frequently occurring words, for the best combination (the Jaccard similarity measure with or without tf.idf weighting), the correct translation is ranked first for 20% of our test words, and is found in the top 10 candidates for 50% of them. An additional reverse-translation filtering step improves the precision of the top candidate translation up to 74%, with a 33% recall.
An Optimized Solution for Cross-Domain System Bus Transaction Processing

Since multi-core processor and System-On-Chip (SOC) have developed fast in recent years, the interconnection bus becomes a key factor to system performance. Recently, it is reported that for most desktop and embedded systems, bus bandwidth has not been fully exploited, and the data transfer efficiency is low. In this paper, we show that the frequent cross-domain bus transaction is the main bottleneck of I/O performance promotion. Then based on a Hyper Transport (HT) 3.0 bus controller design, we propose an optimization scheme which includes a pipelined design methodology for cross-domain bus transaction and asynchronous FIFO designs using Globally Ratiochronous Locally Synchronous (GRLS) technology. The experiment shows that our solution increases the HT bus read and write bandwidths about 34.8% and 13.5% respectively, and it reduces the latency about 40%. Although our solution is based on well known system buses technologies - AMBA AXI and HT bus technologies, it can be easily implemented in systems with other bus technologies.
Outer edges of debris discs - How sharp is sharp?

Context. Rings or annulus-like features have been observed in most imaged debris discs. Outside the main ring, while some systems (e.g., ! Pictoris and AU Mic) exhibit smooth surface brightness profiles (SB) that fall o! roughly as " r # 3.5 , others (e.g. HR 4796A and HD 139664) display large drops in luminosity at the ring’s outer edge and steeper radial luminosity profiles. Aims. We seek to understand this diversity of outer edge profiles under the “natural” collisional evolution of the system, without invoking external agents such as planets or gas. Methods. We use a multi-annulus statistical code to follow the evolution of a collisional population, ranging in size from dust grains to planetesimals and initially confined within a belt (the “birth ring”). The crucial e! ect of radiation pressure on the dynamics and spatial distribution of the smallest grains is taken into account. We explore the dependence of the resulting disc surface brightness profile on various parameters. Results. The disc typically evolves toward a “standard” steady state, where the radial surface brightness profile smoothly decreases with radius as r # 3.5 outside the birth ring. This confirms and extends the semi-analytical study of Strubbe & Chiang (2006, ApJ, 648, 652) and provides a firm basis for interpreting observed discs. Deviations from this typical profile, in the form of a sharp outer edge and a steeper fall-o! , occur for two “extreme” cases: 1) when the birth ring is so massive that it becomes radially optically thick for the smallest grains. However, the required disc mass is probably too high here to be realistic; 2) when the dynamical excitation of the dust-producing planetesimals is so low ($ e% and $ i %& 0.01) that the smallest grains, which otherwise dominate the optical depth of the system, are preferentially depleted. This low-excitation case, although possibly not generic, cannot be ruled out by observations for most systems, . Conclusions. Our “standard” profile provides a satisfactory explanation for a large group of debris discs that show smooth outer edges and SB ' r # 3.5 . Systems with sharper outer edges, barring other confining agents, could still be explained by “natural” collisional evolution if their dynamical excitation is very low. We show that such a dynamically-cold case provides a satisfactory fit to the specific HR4796A ring.
Experimental analysis of the search space for 20 000-word speech recognition

In this paper we investigate the search eeort for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. In particular, we study the eeect of diierent pruning techniques on the search eeort and on search errors. The experimental results show that it is much more eecient in the search procedure to use a tree lexicon than a linear lexicon. For the tree search method, we study the search space in detail. For the 20 000-word task under consideration, a reasonable compromise between the search eeort and the recognition accuracy can be achieved by an average number of 13 000 state hypotheses per time frame. This eeort is ve orders of magnitude lower than the potential size of the search space. All experiments are based on our phoneme-based large vocabulary speech recognition system used in the 1994 ARPA benchmark test ? ].
The Lid Domain of Caenorhabditis elegans Hsc70 Influences ATP Turnover, Cofactor Binding and Protein Folding Activity

Hsc70 is a conserved ATP-dependent molecular chaperone, which utilizes the energy of ATP hydrolysis to alter the folding state of its client proteins. In contrast to the Hsc70 systems of bacteria, yeast and humans, the Hsc70 system of C. elegans (CeHsc70) has not been studied to date. We find that CeHsc70 is characterized by a high ATP turnover rate and limited by post-hydrolysis nucleotide exchange. This rate-limiting step is defined by the helical lid domain at the C-terminus. A certain truncation in this domain (CeHsc70-Δ545) reduces the turnover rate and renders the hydrolysis step rate-limiting. The helical lid domain also affects cofactor affinities as the lidless mutant CeHsc70-Δ512 binds more strongly to DNJ-13, forming large protein complexes in the presence of ATP. Despite preserving the ability to hydrolyze ATP and interact with its cofactors DNJ-13 and BAG-1, the truncation of the helical lid domain leads to the loss of all protein folding activity, highlighting the requirement of this domain for the functionality of the nematode's Hsc70 protein.
Performance and trade-offs of opportunistic routing in underwater networks

Underwater acoustic channel imposes many challenges into underwater networks communication, such as high bit error, temporary losses of connectivity due to shadow zones, limited bandwidth capacity and communication signal spreading over large areas. Opportunistic routing is a new routing paradigm that allows more than one node to forward a packet by taking advantage of the broadcast medium and overhearing of the packet transmission. In this paper we investigate the tradeoffs present in opportunistic routing for underwater networks. In one hand opportunistic routing may increase the time it takes to receive a packet, since there is an increase in delay to allow all the nodes that are possible forwards to receive the packet. On the other hand, opportunistic routing can help mitigated underwater challenges, by providing gain in packet reception and channel utilization. We provided an analysis of underwater channel utilization efficiency in opportunistic routing. We evaluated the performance on random deployments, showing that by using opportunistic routing we have a gain in packet reception and channel utilization in underwater networks.