Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The hydrodynamics of eel swimming II. Effect of swimming speed

SUMMARY Simultaneous swimming kinematics and hydrodynamics are presented for American eels, Anguilla rostrata, swimming at speeds from 0.5 to 2 L s-1. Body outlines and particle image velocimetry (PIV) data were collected using two synchronized high-speed cameras, and an empirical relationship between swimming motions and fluid flow is described. Lateral impulse in the wake is estimated assuming that the flow field represents a slice through small core vortex rings and is shown to be significantly larger than forces estimated from the kinematics via elongated body theory (EBT) and via quasi-steady resistive drag forces. These simple kinematic models predict only 50% of the measured wake impulse, indicating that unsteady effects are important in undulatory force production. EBT does, however, correctly predict both the magnitude and time course of the power shed into the wake. Other wake flow structures are also examined relative to the swimming motions. At all speeds, the wake contains almost entirely lateral jets of fluid, separated by an unstable shear layer that rapidly breaks down into two vortices. The jet's mean velocity grows with swimming speed, but jet diameter varies only weakly with swimming speed. Instead, it follows the body wavelength, which changes more among individuals than at different speeds. Circulation of the stop-start vortex, shed each time the tail changes direction, can also be predicted at low speeds by the integral of squared tail velocity over half of a tail beat. At high speeds, these kinematics predict more circulation than is actually present in the stop-start vortex. Finally, the cost of producing the wake, one component of the total cost of transport, increases with swimming speed to the 1.48 power, lower than would be expected if the power coefficient remained constant over the speed range examined.
Bacterial Flagella: Twist and Stick, or Dodge across the Kingdoms

The flagellum organelle is an intricate multiprotein assembly best known for its rotational propulsion of bacteria. However, recent studies have expanded our knowledge of other functions in pathogenic contexts, particularly adherence and immune modulation, e.g., for Salmonella enterica, Campylobacter jejuni, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli. Flagella-mediated adherence is important in host colonisation for several plant and animal pathogens, but the specific interactions that promote flagella binding to such diverse host tissues has remained elusive. Recent work has shown that the organelles act like probes that find favourable surface topologies to initiate binding. An emerging theme is that more general properties, such as ionic charge of repetitive binding epitopes and rotational force, allow interactions with plasma membrane components. At the same time, flagellin monomers are important inducers of plant and animal innate immunity: variation in their recognition impacts the course and outcome of infections in hosts from both kingdoms. Bacteria have evolved different strategies to evade or even promote this specific recognition, with some important differences shown for phytopathogens. These studies have provided a wider appreciation of the functions of bacterial flagella in the context of both plant and animal reservoirs.
Inhibition of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 by Triciribine Involves the Accessory Protein Nef

ABSTRACT Triciribine (TCN) is a tricyclic nucleoside that inhibits human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication by a unique mechanism not involving the inhibition of enzymes directly involved in viral replication. This activity requires the phosphorylation of TCN to its 5′ monophosphate by intracellular adenosine kinase. New testing with a panel of HIV and simian immunodeficiency virus isolates, including low-passage-number clinical isolates and selected subgroups of HIV-1, multidrug resistant HIV-1, and HIV-2, has demonstrated that TCN has broad antiretroviral activity. It was active in cell lines chronically infected with HIV-1 in which the provirus was integrated into chromosomal DNA, thereby indicating that TCN inhibits a late process in virus replication. The selection of TCN-resistant HIV-1 isolates resulted in up to a 750-fold increase in the level of resistance to the drug. DNA sequence analysis of highly resistant isolate HIV-1H10 found five point mutations in the HIV-1 gene nef, resulting in five different amino acid changes. DNA sequencing of the other TCN-resistant isolates identified at least one and up to three of the same mutations observed in isolate HIV-1H10. Transfer of the mutations from TCN-resistant isolate HIV-1H10 to wild-type virus and subsequent viral growth experiments with increasing concentrations of TCN demonstrated resistance to the drug. We conclude that TCN is a late-phase inhibitor of HIV-1 replication and that mutations in nef are necessary and sufficient for TCN resistance.
A cuspidality criterion for the functorial product on GL(2) × GL(3) with a cohomological application

For all cusp forms π on GL(3) and π′ on GL(2) over a number field F, H. Kim and F. Shahidi have functorially associated an automorphic form Formula on GL(6) such that L(s, Π) agrees with the Rankin-Selberg L-function of the pair (π, π′). First we establish a criterion as to when Π is cuspidal. Then we apply it to construct non-self-dual, nonmonomial cuspidal cohomology classes for suitable congruence subgroups of SL(3, ℤ). We also analyze the Galois image of certain related l-adic representations.
Antioxidant Effects of Carotenoids in a Model Pigment–protein Complex*

The effect of carotenoids on stability of model photosyn-thetic pigment-protein complexes subjected to chemical oxidation with hydrogen peroxide or potassium ferricya-nide was investigated. The oxidation of carotenoid-less and carotenoid-containing complexes was conducted in the presence or absence of ascorbic acid. The progress of the reactions was monitored by use of absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy. Our results show that carot-enoids may significantly enhance the stability of photo-synthetic complexes against oxidation and their protective (antioxidant) effect depends on the type of the oxi-dant.
Levels of vascular endothelial growth factor are elevated in the vitreous of patients with subretinal neovascularisation.

BACKGROUND: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has been shown to play a major role in intraocular neovascularisation in ischaemic retinal diseases. Subretinal neovascularisation is an important cause of central visual loss, but little is known about the role of this growth factor in its pathogenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible role of VEGF in the development of subretinal neovascularisation. METHODS: Undiluted vitreous samples were obtained from patients undergoing vitrectomy for removal of non-age-related subfoveal neovascular membranes (SFNM). For comparison vitreous from patients undergoing vitrectomy for idiopathic full thickness macular holes (FTMH) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) was used. Indirect enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), with an antibody directed against the conserved N-terminal region of human VEGF165, was used to determine vitreous levels of VEGF. The growth factor was also localised in the vitreous of patients with SFNM by western blot analysis. RESULTS: The mean (SE) VEGF concentration in the vitreous of patients with SFNM was 27.78 (2.22) ng/ml (n = 8), FTMH was 16.62 (0.9) ng/ml (n = 18), and PDR was 37.77 (3.28) ng/ml (n = 16). The differences between the PDR group and SFNM group versus the FTMH group were both significant (p = 0.0001 and p = 0.0015) as analysed by the Wilcoxon rank sum test). CONCLUSIONS: Vitreous levels of VEGF are significantly elevated in eyes with non-age-related subretinal neovascularisation compared with eyes with FTMH but not as elevated as in PDR. This suggests that VEGF is involved in subretinal angiogenesis.
Do Nitroxide Antioxidants Act as Scavengers of O2 or as SOD Mimics?*

Stable nitroxide radicals were reported to act as SOD mimics and catalyze the dismutation of O2 through two different catalytic pathways including reductive and oxidative reaction mechanisms (Samuni, A., Krishna, C. M., Riesz, P., Finkelstein, E. & Russo, A. (1988) J. Biol Chem. 263, 17921-17924). Recent studies directly monitoring O2 and employing kinetics analysis did not reveal SOD activity of nitroxides (Weiss, R. H., Flickinger, A. G., Rivers, W. J., Hardy, M. M., Aston, K. W., Ryan, U. S. & Riley, D. P. (1993) J. Biol. Chem. 268, 23049-23054). Such discrepancy may result in cases where distinction of stoichiometric scavengers from catalytic detoxifiers of O2 is not readily feasible. Nitroxides are effective antioxidants that protect against oxidative injury in various pathological processes. The distinction of their SOD mimic activity from O2 scavenging was established by examining the validity of direct and indirect methods employed to assay SOD-like catalytic activity. Kinetics analysis along with direct EPR monitoring were used to study the mechanism underlying nitroxide reactions with O2. The nitroxide EPR signal decayed in the presence of NADH but otherwise did not decrease with time, thus substantiating its catalytic role in O2 dismutation. The catalytic rate constants for O2 dismutation, determined for the nitroxides tested, were found to increase with [H+], indicating that ·OOH rather than O2 is oxidizing the nitroxide. The results demonstrate the limitations associated with direct kinetics analysis in evaluating SOD mimic activity, underscoring the need for independent assays for valid discrimination of SOD mimics from stoichiometric scavengers of O2.
Opioids and Viral Infections: A Double-Edged Sword

Opioids and their receptors have received remarkable attention because they have the ability to alter immune function, which affects disease progression. In vitro and in vivo findings as well as observations in humans indicate that opioids and their receptors positively or negatively affect viral replication and virus-mediated pathology. The present study reviews recent insights in the role of opioids and their receptors in viral infections and discusses possible therapeutic opportunities. This review supports the emerging concept that opioids and their receptors have both favorable and unfavorable effects on viral disease, depending on the type of virus. Targeting of the opioid system is a potential option for developing effective therapies; however caution is required in relation to the beneficial functions of opioid systems.
Embodied Interaction through Movement in a Course Work

Designing for and through movement is becoming increasingly important in human computer interaction, and it is widely accepted that the designers should develop their bodily skills and learn how to use the movement as design material. Yet, the reports on the education space around embodied interaction are scarce. We present an approach for teaching and designing embodied interaction in collaboration with contemporary dance choreographers. We describe a workshop, where after movement sessions, simple projects were implemented by the participants. The evaluation of projects and student feedback indicate that the four learning objectives, namely: 1) movement as a design material, 2) bodily skills needed for technological implementation, 3) movement qualities, and 4) practical projects, were attained for most of the participants. For some participants, however, the movement qualities were hard concepts to grasp and utilize in design, and this difficulty had an impact on all the other learning objectives. Further experiments with new tools, techniques, contexts, and guidelines are therefore required to highlight the importance of movement qualities in design.
Creating Micro-Orifice Using a Modified Ophthalmic Laser System

Laser microdrilling is the process of material removal by ablation using focused laser pulses. With brief preamble on laser system, how a micro-orifice is created successfully on 50 µm thick copper foil using modified Nd:YAG ophthalmic laser is elucidated. The micro-orifice is required to control the flow of lubricant from the centrifugal lubricator used in spacecraft moving mechanisms. The orifices are characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the process parameters are optimized. Orifices from 1.5 µm to 2.7 µm diameter are produced. The work is further extended to drill microholes in 60 µm copper wire. It is observed that the bead formed at melt zone near the hole can be conveniently used for microjoining.
Structural Coupling of 11‐cis‐7‐Methyl‐retinal and Amino Acids at the Ligand Binding Pocket of Rhodopsin †

It was previously shown that opsin can be regenerated with the newly synthesized 11‐cis‐7‐methyl‐retinal forming an artificial visual pigment. We now extend this study to include mutants at positions close to the retinal to further dissect the interactions of native and artificial chromophores with opsin. Several mutants at M207, W265 and Y268 have been obtained and regenerated with 11‐cis‐retinal and the 7‐methyl analog. M207 is the site of the point mutation M207R associated with the retinal degenerative disease retinitis pigmentosa. All the studied mutants regenerated with 11‐cis‐retinal except for M207C which proved to be completely misfolded. The naturally occurring M207R mutant formed a pigment with an unprotonated Schiff base linkage, altered photobleaching and low MetarhodopsinII stability. Mutants regenerated with the 7‐methyl analog showed altered photobleaching reflecting a structural perturbation in the vicinity of M207. The newly obtained mutants at M207 also showed reduced levels of transducin activation with M207R showing essentially no transducin activation. Our results highlight the tight coupling of the vicinity of C7 of retinal and M207 and support the involvement of this amino acid residue in the conformational changes associated with rhodopsin photoactivation.
Fine-Grained Profiling for Data-Intensive Workflows

Profiling is an effective dynamic analysis approach to investigate complex applications. ParaTrac is a user-level profiler using file system and process tracing techniques for data-intensive workflow applications. In two respects ParaTrac helps users refine the orchestration of workflows. First, the profiles of I/O characteristics enable users to quickly identify bottlenecks of underlying I/O subsystems. Second, ParaTrac can exploit fine-grained data-processes interactions in workflow execution to help users understand, characterize, and manage realistic data-intensive workflows. Experiments on thoroughly profiling Montage workflow demonstrate that ParaTrac is scalable to tracing events of thousands of processes and effective in guiding fine-grained workflow scheduling or workflow management systems improvements.
A Study on the Cluster Innovation Based on Weighted Knowledge Network

Today the industry cluster in developing countries comes to the bottleneck which is “big but not strong” because of excessive reliance on cost competition and lack of innovation ability. Therefore, industry cluster in space does not mean the economic competitive, the innovation network is the source of competitive advantage in the cluster. Gradually, how to promote the innovation network of industry cluster in developing countries becomes an urgent problem to explore and solve. In this paper, we review the knowledge network in the industry cluster and the weighted complex network, analyze the mechanism of cluster innovation, and at last give the tactics in order to create continuous momentum for the cluster innovation. The conclusion of this paper has some significance as reference for those policy-makers who try to improve industry cluster innovation.
Stability analysis of delayed 4-channel bilateral teleoperation systems

This paper studies the stability of a delayed 4-channel bilateral teleoperation system based on the passivity framework. Assuming that the operator and the environment are passive systems, the stability of the teleoperation system is reduced to ensuring the passivity of a master control unit (MCU), a slave control unit (SCU), and the time-delayed communication channel. Each of these three blocks is modeled as a 2 × 2 transfer function matrix and passified using our proposed approach in a multi-loop feedback (MLF) structure. We report conditions on the controllers of the 4-channel architecture that are sufficient for passivity of MCU and SCU. Simulation results confirm the validity of these conditions for the stability of the teleoperation system.
TWO PROBLEMS FOR STOCHASTIC FLOWS ASSOCIATED WITH NONLINEAR PARABOLIC EQUATIONS

In this paper, we solve two problems for some nonlinear SPDE driven by FiskStratonovich stoachastic integral. The main assumption is the commuting property of the drift and diffusion vector fields with respect of the Lie bracket. In the first problem (P1) we construct a classical solution for some nonlinear SPDE of parabolic type by assuming the compatibilty condition concerning the mentioned vector fields. The second problem (P2) is a related filtering one for a non-markovian system of SDEs involving a backward parabolic equation of Kolmogorov type with parameter.
Targeting of protein ERGIC-53 to the ER/ERGIC/cis-Golgi recycling pathway

ERGIC-53 is a lectin-type membrane protein that continuously recycles between the ER, ER-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC) and the cis- Golgi. To identify the targeting signals that mediate this recycling, N- glycosylated and myc-tagged variants of ERGIC-53 were constructed. By monitoring endoglycosidase H resistance, we measured the loss from the ER-ERGIC-cis-Golgi cycle of ERGIC-53. A domain exchange approach with the plasma membrane reporter protein CD4 showed that the transmembrane and the lumenal domains are not sufficient, while the cytoplasmic domain of ERGIC-53 is required and sufficient for pre-medial-Golgi localization. However, the ERGIC-53 cytoplasmic domain on CD4 lead to increased ER-staining by immunofluorescence microscopy indicating that this domain alone cannot provide for unbiased recycling through the ER- ERGIC-cis-Golgi compartments. Complete progress through the ER-ERGIC- cis-Golgi recycling pathway requires the cytoplasmic domain acting together with the lumenal domain of ERGIC-53. Dissection of the cytoplasmic domain revealed a COOH-terminal di-lysine ER-retrieval signal, KKFF, and an RSQQE targeting determinant adjacent to the transmembrane domain. Surprisingly, the two COOH-terminal phenylalanines influence the targeting. They reduce the ER-retrieval capacity of the di-lysine signal and modulate the RSQQE determinant.
Analysis of cross modulation in W-CDMA receivers

Cross modulation distortion (XMD) of narrow and wide-band jammers in W-CDMA mobile receivers is analyzed using statistical methods and a novel HPSK signal model. Statistical properties of HPSK signals are compared to those of QPSK and OQPSK signals and their effect on XMD is explained. The derived closed-form expressions for XMD are confirmed by the measured data.
Simulations of carbon nanotube tip assisted mechano-chemical reactions on a diamond surface

The interaction of a carbon nanotube tip with two chemically modified caps with a single-height-stepped C diamond surface is studied by performing molecular dynamics simulations. The and radicals are attached to the end cap of a nanotube. The forces for solving the classical equations of motion are derived from Brenner's many-body reactive potential. Depending on the surface impact site, the nanotube initial velocity towards the diamond surface, and the nanotube withdrawal rate a variety of mechano-chemical reactions have been observed. The strong tip-surface interaction results in creation of chemically different nanostructures on the diamond surface for tip, while the tip with allows us to remove a dimer of carbon atoms from the upper terrace of diamond. The possibility of using a nanotube with chemically modified caps for selective etching and nanolithography on different semiconductor surfaces is discussed.
Comparing different holonomic mobile robots

This paper presents a comparison between three different holonomic mobile robots. The first has three caster wheels with wheel angular velocities actuation and carries the name C3P. The second is omni-directional wheeled mobile robot and the third is a special holonomic robot configuration developed by ETH named Ramsis II. Inverse kinematic and forward dynamic models are presented for each robot for the simulation process. The simulation results illustrate the performance of each robot in comparison to the others. The comparison is done with respect to three main aspects; 1) the mobility, 2)the total energy consumed by each robot in a finite interval of time, and 3) the hardware complexity. A cost functional is obtained to demonstrate the comparison, and a criteria is developed to measure the hardware complexity of each robot. The weight sum method enables the cost functional to show the importance of each aspect and to distinguish between the lowest cost platform with respect to each aspect importance.
Sleeping tablet consumption, self reported quality of sleep, and working conditions. Group of Occupational Physicians of APSAT.

STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aim was to assess the frequency of sleep disorders in relation to working conditions. DESIGN--This was a cross sectional study. Data were collected prospectively, on a standardised form, by 13 occupational physicians. The quality of sleep was assessed by self perceived sleep disturbances and consumption of sleeping tablets. Working conditions were described by the worksite physician as well as by the participants. SETTING--2769 small or medium sized firms in the Paris area. PARTICIPANTS--A random sample of 7629 wage earners was studied. Among the participants, 61% were men and 39% women; 44% were blue collar workers. MAIN RESULTS--The prevalence of sleeping tablet consumption was 6.1% and 11.3% respectively for men and women. Sixteen percent of men and 26% of women stated that they had sleep disturbances (p < 0.001). In both sexes, drug consumption and sleep disturbances increased with age and were highest among individuals aged 55 years and more. No association between working conditions (exposure to noise, assembly line working, or physical workload) and sleep disturbances or drug consumption was found. Sleeping tablet consumption was higher among subjects reporting a bad atmosphere at work; the same was true for men with little interest in their job and for women working under time pressure. For both sexes, subjects reporting any of these conditions were more likely to report sleep disturbances. CONCLUSIONS--A high prevalence of self reported sleep problems and related drug consumption was observed. Physical working conditions were not related to the quality of sleep in contrast to perceived job conditions. The results suggest that sleep quality might be a useful health indicator for the occupational physician.