Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Regulation of Endothelial Vasomotor Function

The endothelium plays an important role in the regulation of vasomotor tone and the maintenance of vascular integrity. Endothelial dysfunction, i.e., impaired endothelial dependent dilation, is a fundamental component of the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. Although endothelial dysfunction is associated with a number of cardiovascular disease risk factors, those risk factors are not the only determinants of endothelial dysfunction. Despite knowing many molecules involved in endothelial signaling pathways, the genetic contribution to endothelial function has yet to be fully elucidated. This mini-review summarizes current evidence supporting the genetic contribution to endothelial vasomotor function. Findings from population-based studies, association studies for candidate genes, and unbiased large genomic scale studies in humans and rodent models are discussed. A brief synopsis of the current studies addressing the genetic regulation of endothelial responses to exercise training is also included.
Knowledge management for sustainability-oriented freight villages

Knowledge management (KM) is a planned, structured approach of systematically and actively managing ideas, information, and knowledge of employees, and it could be an important component for accelerating an organization towards sustainability. The concept of freight village (FV) is developed from a sustainability-oriented perspective, which is playing an important role in the trend of pursuing sustainable logistics industry. This paper seeks to adopt the KM as an aid to addressing sustainable development of freight villages (FVs). On the basis of operative functions, two knowledge flows functioning in the context of a sustainability-oriented FV have been described, which named internal knowledge flow and supportive knowledge flow. Then, a mode of interacting processes is proposed to clarify that KM are improving the sustainability level of a business organisation on different layers. Finally, a KM framework conducting FVs for their sustainable development is provided. The tasks and characteristics of knowledge application at three levels of sustainability-oriented FVs are also detailed in this paper.
Endothelial Fate and Angiogenic Properties of Human CD34+ Progenitor Cells in Zebrafish

Objective—The vascular competence of human-derived hematopoietic progenitors for postnatal vascularization is still poorly characterized. It is unclear whether, in the absence of ischemia, hematopoietic progenitors participate in neovascularization and whether they play a role in new blood vessel formation by incorporating into developing vessels or by a paracrine action. Methods and Results—In the present study, human cord blood–derived CD34+ (hCD34+) cells were transplanted into pre- and postgastrulation zebrafish embryos and in an adult vascular regeneration model induced by caudal fin amputation. When injected before gastrulation, hCD34+ cells cosegregated with the presumptive zebrafish hemangioblasts, characterized by Scl and Gata2 expression, in the anterior and posterior lateral mesoderm and were involved in early development of the embryonic vasculature. These morphogenetic events occurred without apparent lineage reprogramming, as shown by CD45 expression. When transplanted postgastrulation, hCD34+ cells were recruited into developing vessels, where they exhibited a potent paracrine proangiogenic action. Finally, hCD34+ cells rescued vascular defects induced by Vegf-c in vivo targeting and enhanced vascular repair in the zebrafish fin amputation model. Conclusion—These results indicate an unexpected developmental ability of human-derived hematopoietic progenitors and support the hypothesis of an evolutionary conservation of molecular pathways involved in endothelial progenitor differentiation in vivo.
Multimodal agent interfaces and system architectures for health and fitness companions

Multimodal conversational spoken dialogues using physical and virtual agents provide a potential interface to motivate and support users in the domain of health and fitness. In this paper we present how such multimodal conversational Companions can be implemented to support their owners in various pervasive and mobile settings. In particular, we focus on different forms of multimodality and system architectures for such interfaces.
“Going with the Flow” or Not: Evidence of Positive Rheotaxis in Oceanic Juvenile Loggerhead Turtles (Caretta caretta) in the South Pacific Ocean Using Satellite Tags and Ocean Circulation Data

The movement of juvenile loggerhead turtles (n = 42) out-fitted with satellite tags and released in oceanic waters off New Caledonia was examined and compared with ocean circulation data. Merging of the daily turtle movement data with drifter buoy movements, OSCAR (Ocean Surface Current Analyses - Real time) circulation data, and three different vertical strata (0–5 m, 0–40 m, 0–100 m) of HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model) circulation data indicated the turtles were swimming against the prevailing current in a statistically significant pattern. This was not an artifact of prevailing directions of current and swimming, nor was it an artifact of frictional slippage. Generalized additive modeling was used to decompose the pattern of swimming into spatial and temporal components. The findings are indicative of a positive rheotaxis whereby an organism is able to detect the current flow and orient itself to swim into the current flow direction or otherwise slow down its movement. Potential mechanisms for the means and adaptive significance of rheotaxis in oceanic juvenile loggerhead turtles are discussed.
A sound dependency analysis for secure information flow (extended version)

In this paper we present a flow-sensitive analysis for secure information flow for Java bytecode. Our approach consists in computing, at different program points, a dependency graph which tracks how input values of a method may influence its outputs. This computation subsumes a points-to analysis (reflecting how objects depend on each others) by addressing dependencies arising from data of primitive type and from the control flow of the program. Our graph construction is proved to be sound by establishing a non-interference theorem stating that an output value is unrelated with an input one in the dependency graph if the output remains unchanged when the input is modified. In contrast with many type-based information flow techniques, our approach does not require security levels to be known during the computation of the graph: security aspects of information flow are checked by labeling "a posteriori" the dependency graph with security levels.
Reconfigurable Computing : Architectures , Design Methods , and Applications

Reconfigurable computing is becoming increasingly attractive for many applications. This survey covers three aspects of reconfigurable computing: architectures, design methods, and applications. Our paper includes recent advances in reconfigurable architectures, such as the Altera Stratix II and Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA devices. We identify major trends in generalpurpose and special-purpose design methods. We describe a variety of driving applications for reconfigurable technology, including data encryption, video processing, network security, and image generation. It is shown that reconfigurable computing designs are capable of achieving up to 500 times speedup and 70% energy savings over microprocessor implementations for specific applications.
Climate Change: A Chance for Political Re-Engagement?

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Light sport exercise detection based on smartwatch and smartphone using k-Nearest Neighbor and Dynamic Time Warping algorithm

Implementation of human activity recognition in daily life has been widely applied, one of which is for the health sector. This research proposes a light sport exercise activity detection system that can be easily done by person. Among these activities are walking, push up, sit up, and squat jump. The system is able to recognize the movements made by the user and calculate the number movements. This research involved 25 respondents, 15 samples were used for training data, and 10 samples for the test data. The system uses the accelerometer sensor on a smartphone and smartwatch that is placed on the left hand of the user. Time series data from accelerometer value will be process by sliding window method with k-Nearest Neighbor algorithm and Dynamic Time Warping as a main classification algorithm. In the feature extraction process, walking activity is not entered into the system since it has random pattern. Thus, only push up, sit up, and squat jump activities are classified into the system. On the value of k = 3, the accuracy of push up motion is 76.67%, then 80% for sit up, and 96.67% for squat jump activity. Based on this result, we can conclude that k-Nearest Neighbor and Dynamic Time Warping can classify the light sport exercise activity.
The Crowd is a Collaborative Network

The main goal of this paper is to show that crowdworkers collaborate to fulfill technical and social needs left by the platform they work on. That is, crowdworkers are not the independent, autonomous workers they are often assumed to be, but instead work within a social network of other crowdworkers. Crowdworkers collaborate with members of their networks to 1) manage the administrative overhead associated with crowdwork, 2) find lucrative tasks and reputable employers and 3) recreate the social connections and support often associated with brick and mortar-work environments. Our evidence combines ethnography, interviews, survey data and larger scale data analysis from four crowdsourcing platforms, emphasizing the qualitative data from the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform and Microsoft's proprietary crowdsourcing platform, the Universal Human Relevance System (UHRS). This paper draws from an ongoing, longitudinal study of Crowdwork that uses a mixed methods approach to understand the cultural meaning, political implications, and ethical demands of crowdsourcing.
Epizootiological study of rodent-borne hepatitis E virus HEV-C1 in small mammals in Hanoi, Vietnam

There is concern about the zoonotic potential of rodent-borne hepatitis E virus, designated as HEV-C1. However, epizootiological information about HEV-C1 is limited. To address this issue, serum samples from 443 small mammals captured at 5 sites in Hanoi, Vietnam, were examined for anti-HEV-C1 IgG antibodies. In addition, livers of seropositive animals were examined for viral RNA. Anti-HEV-C1 antibodies were detected in 57 (12.9%) of the 443 serum samples. Seropositive animals were found in all of the sites (4.7% to 22.2%). Anti-HEV-C1 antibodies were detected from 48 (12.3%) of 389 Rattus norvegicus and 9 (19.6%) of 46 R. tanezumi, but were not detected from 8 Suncus murinus. Viral RNAs were detected from 13 (22.8%) of the 57 seropositive rodents. The detection rate of viral RNA in seropositive R. tanezumi (66.7%, 6/9) was significantly higher than that in seropositive R. norvegicus (14.6%, 7/48). The results suggest that R. tanezumi is more susceptible than R. norvegicus to HEV-C1 infection. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that Vietnamese strains were divided into 3 clusters in genetic group 2 of HEV-C1. Multiple clusters of viruses were detected at several sites without species specificity, suggesting that 3 clusters of HEV-C1 co-circulate in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Understand Instant Video Clip Sharing on Mobile Platforms: Twitter's Vine as a Case Study

With the rapidly development of mobile networking and end-terminals, anytime and anywhere data access become readily available nowadays. Given the crowdsourced content capturing and sharing, the preferred length becomes shorter and shorter, even for such multimedia content as video. A representative is Twitter's Vine service, which, available exclusively to mobile users, enables them to create ultra-short video clips, and instantly post and share them with their followers. In this paper, we present an initial study on this new generation of instant video clip sharing service over mobile platforms, taking Vine as a case. We closely investigate the architecture of Vine, and reveal how its service is empowered with a combination of advanced mobile and cloud computing platforms. Through a dataset of over 50, 000 video clips and over 1, 000, 000 user profiles, which is available online for academic use, we examine the unique viewing behaviors of Vine uses, particularly batch viewing and passive viewing. We further analyze the video lifetime and propagation patterns in this new service, as well as the distinct social relations therein. Our study lead to critical observations that would help with improving the energy-efficiency and scalability of Vine-like services.
Ahead of the curve in the MBA bubble: Institutional narcissism and the narrative reconstruction of moral agency

Abstract Academic criticism of institutional narcissism in business schools is well established. But little scholarly attention has been devoted to insider critics of business schools. Filling this research gap – from an interdisciplinary narrative perspective – is the aim of this article. It draws attention to one of the many autobiographical narratives that have recently been published by MBA graduates. Narcissism here appears as an important theme, both on an institutional and a personal level. What role does narration play for coping with narcissism? To explore this question, this paper offers a close reading of Ahead of the curve: Two years at Harvard Business School (2008) by Philip Delves Broughton. After a brief introduction to institutional narcissism and organizational narrative studies, the article illustrates how narrative functions as a sense-making tool for understanding institutional narcissism and as a means to reconstruct individual moral agency. The study pushes the frontiers of narrative studies by providing an innovative blend of empirical organizational research and literary studies, while also touching upon genre, interdisciplinarity, and the ethical responsibility of business in society.
A Method of Reconstructing 3D Models from Sketches by Extracting Features

The automatic reconstruction of a 3D object from a sketch has been very crucial research area in Computer- Aided Design and Computer Vision since decades. Conventionally most of proposed methods have applied the technique of line labelling. However, generally line labeling technique could be difficult for the reconstruction when input sketches include many curves. In this paper, a method for the reconstruction of mechanical parts by extracting features repeatedly is proposed. In the method, the sketches of cubes, cylinders, holes and fillets are applied as features. Four examples that are difficult for line labelling technique are indicated in this paper.
The Impact of Question and Scale Characteristics on Scale Direction Effects

Scale direction effects refer to the impact on survey responses of the direction in which a response scale is presented or read, holding other scale features constant. Scale direction tends to produce primacy effects. However, empirical research on scale direction effects turns up mixed evidence – scale direction effects are observed in some studies on some items, but not in other studies for other items. As a result, it is not clear under what circumstances scale direction effects can be expected. It is also unclear what questions are more prone to scale direction effects and what scale features induce or reduce scale direction effects. This paper advances the literature by examining empirically the impact of two question level characteristics (i.e., type of survey questions and location of questions in the questionnaire) and two scale features (i.e., type of response scales and the number of scale points) on scale direction effects. We found that scale direction effects are stronger for non-attitudinal items, earlier survey items, and items with longer scales. In addition, the moderating impact of question type, question location, and scale length on scale direction effects is more pronounced for items administered via Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing than in self-administration. These findings have important implications for designing response scales in surveys.
The challenge of comorbidity in clinical trials for multiple sclerosis

Objective: We aimed to provide recommendations for addressing comorbidity in clinical trial design and conduct in multiple sclerosis (MS). Methods: We held an international workshop, informed by a systematic review of the incidence and prevalence of comorbidity in MS and an international survey about research priorities for studying comorbidity including their relation to clinical trials in MS. Results: We recommend establishing age- and sex-specific incidence estimates for comorbidities in the MS population, including those that commonly raise concern in clinical trials of immunomodulatory agents; shifting phase III clinical trials of new therapies from explanatory to more pragmatic trials; describing comorbidity status of the enrolled population in publications reporting clinical trials; evaluating treatment response, tolerability, and safety in clinical trials according to comorbidity status; and considering comorbidity status in the design of pharmacovigilance strategies. Conclusion: Our recommendations will help address knowledge gaps regarding comorbidity that interfere with the ability to interpret safety in monitored trials and will enhance the generalizability of findings from clinical trials to “real world” settings where the MS population commonly has comorbid conditions.
Gravity in gauge mediation

We investigate O'Raifeartaigh-type models for F-term supersymmetry break- ing in gauge mediation scenarios in the presence of gravity. It is pointed out that the vacuum structure of those models is such that in metastable vacua gravity mediation contribution to scalar masses is always suppressed to the level below 1 percent, almost sufficient for avoiding FCNC problem. Close to that limit, gravitino mass can be in the range 10-100 GeV, opening several interesting possibilities for gauge mediation models, in- cluding Giudice-Masiero mechanism for µ and Bµ generation. Gravity sector can include stabilized moduli.
Dimensional Dependence of Black Hole Formation in Self-Similar Collapse of Scalar Field

We study classical and quantum self-similar collapses of a massless scalar field in higher dimensions, and examine how the increase in the number of dimensions affects gravitational collapse and black hole formation. Higher dimensions seem to favor formation of black hole rather than other final states, in that the initial data space for black hole formation enlarges as dimension increases. On the other hand, the quantum gravity effect on the collapse lessens as dimension increases. We also discuss the gravitational collapse in a brane world with large but compact extra dimensions.
Endocrine Mechanisms Underlying Plasticity in Metamorphic Timing in Spadefoot Toads1

Abstract Amphibian larvae respond to heterogeneous environments by varying their rates of growth and development. Several amphibian species are known to accelerate metamorphosis in response to pond drying or resource restriction. Some of the most extensive studies to date on developmental responses to pond drying have been conducted on species of spadefoot toads (family Pelobatidae). We have found that tadpoles of two species of spadefoot toad accelerate metamorphosis when exposed to water volume reduction in the laboratory (to simulate a drying pond). Furthermore, Western spadefoot toad (Spea hammondii) tadpoles accelerated metamorphosis in response to food restriction, which was intended to simulate a decline in resource availability in the larval habitat. Metamorphic acceleration was accompanied by increased whole body 3,5,3′-triiodothyronine and hindbrain corticotropin-releasing hormone content by 24 hr after transfer of tadpoles from high to low water. Food restriction for 4 day accelerated metamorphosis and elevated whole body thyroid hormone content. Although tadpoles accelerated metamorphosis and activated their thyroid axis in response to the two environmental manipulations, the kinetics of the responses were greater for water volume reduction than for resource restriction. The modulation of hormone secretion and action by environmental factors provides a mechanistic basis for plasticity in the timing of amphibian metamorphosis, and the neuroendocrine stress axis may play a central role in developmental plasticity.
The Perfect Storm: Anxiety and Depression in Adolescents in the 21 Century Implication for Treatment in Residential Settings

Although Anxiety Disorders and Major Depression are distinct disorders, many researchers and clinicians have found that the two problems co-exist in many patients. They are “partners in crime” and appear to be biologically predisposed to occur together (Marano, 2003; Clark & Watson, 1991; Alloy, et al. 1990). In addition, they are neuro-chemically related and share many of the same symptoms such as fatigue, low self-esteem, sleep disturbance, irritability, and poor concentration (Iny, et al. 1993). Already representing the bulk of mental disorders, professionals warn us that an unprecedented rise of anxiety and depression is in sight (Gray, 2010).
Open-circuited switch fault detection for fault tolerant matrix converter motor drive systems

This paper describes a high speed fault detection strategy to detect and identify open-circuit device failures in matrix converter motor drive systems. The proposed fault detection algorithm is based on analysis of the currents circulating through the drive system and the bidirectional switches gating signals. The presented technique described in this paper is used to identify not only a fault caused in a single device but also multiple device failures. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed fault detection technique.