Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Store-operated calcium entry and the localization of STIM1 and Orai1 proteins in isolated mouse sinoatrial node cells

In many non-excitable and excitable cells, store-operated calcium entry (SOCE) represents an additional pathway for calcium entry upon Ca2+ store depletion. In a previous study, we demonstrated SOCE activity in intact mouse cardiac pacemaker tissue, specifically from sinoatrial node (SAN) tissue. However, store content as a key determinant of SOCE activity is difficult to measure in intact SAN tissue. Therefore, to investigate the interaction between SOCE and store content and its role in cardiac pacemaking, it is necessary to investigate SOCE activity in single cardiac pacemaker cells. Furthermore, recent studies in other tissues have identified two new proteins involved in SOCE, stromal interacting molecule (STIM), which is an ER Ca2+ sensor, and the surface membrane channel Orai, a prototypic gene encoding for SOCE. However, whether STIM and Orai are expressed in native pacemaker cells is still unknown. In this current study, we examined SOCE activity in single firing pacemaker cells isolated from mouse sinoatrial node tissue. We found a significant rise in Ca2+ entry in response to Ca2+ store depletion. SOCE blockers reduced the amplitude and frequency of spontaneous Ca2+ transients and reduced Ca2+ store content. We demonstrated for the first time that STIM and Orai are expressed in pacemaker cells. After store depletion, STIM1 redistributed to the cell periphery and showed increased co-localization with surface membrane located Orai1, indicating a possible involvement of these proteins in SOCE activity in native cardiac pacemaker cells. These results suggest the novel concept that SOCE plays a functional role in regulating intracellular Ca2+ of cardiac pacemaker cells.
Consistent Minimal Displacement of Branching Random Walks

Let $\mathbb{T}$ denote a rooted $b$-ary tree and let $\{S_v\}_{v\in \mathbb{T}}$ denote a branching random walk indexed by the vertices of the tree, where the increments are i.i. d. and possess a logarithmic moment generating function $\Lambda(\cdot)$. Let $m_n$ denote the minimum of the variables $S_v$ over all vertices at the $n$th generation, denoted by $\mathbb{D}_n$. Under mild conditions, $m_n/n$ converges almost surely to a constant, which for convenience may be taken to be $0$. With $\bar S_v=\max\{S_w: w$ is on the geodesic connecting the root to $v \}$, define $L_n=\min_{v\in \mathbb{D}_n} \bar S_v$. We prove that $L_n/n^{1/3}$ converges almost surely to an explicit constant $l_0$. This answers a question of Hu and Shi.
A Modular Approach to Programming Distributed Real-Time Systems

Conventional real-time programs associate real-time requirements with individual commands in a program. This approach has three weaknesses. First, it intermixes two different design concerns: functional correctness and temporal correctness. Second, by mixing real-time requirements with program statements it makes it harder, and in some cases infeasible, to specify constraints between objects. Third, it limits the ability to independently modify either the timing constraints or the representations of objects. We describe a new approach that separates real-time constraints from functional aspects of an application; real-time constraints are described by synchronization code between the interfaces of objects. Objects in our system are defined using a real-time variant of the Actor model. We define a high-level programming language construct calledRTsynchronizer, which specifies a collection of temporal constraints between actors. Thus, our approach separates what an object does from when it does it. Such separation also facilitates the ability to dynamically modify real-time constraints. We illustrate the use of RTsynchronizers by a number of examples and then describe a meta-architecture that can be used to implement RTsynchronizers.
Major Hemorrhage and Tolerability of Warfarin in the First Year of Therapy Among Elderly Patients With Atrial Fibrillation

Background— Warfarin is effective in the prevention of stroke in atrial fibrillation but is under used in clinical care. Concerns exist that published rates of hemorrhage may not reflect real-world practice. Few patients ≥80 years of age were enrolled in trials, and studies of prevalent use largely reflect a warfarin-tolerant subset. We sought to define the tolerability of warfarin among an elderly inception cohort with atrial fibrillation. Methods and Results— Consecutive patients who started warfarin were identified from January 2001 to June 2003 and followed for 1 year. Patients had to be ≥65 years of age, have established care at the study institution, and have their warfarin managed on-site. Outcomes included major hemorrhage, time to termination of warfarin, and reason for discontinuation. Of 472 patients, 32% were ≥80 years of age, and 91% had ≥1 stroke risk factor. The cumulative incidence of major hemorrhage for patients ≥80 years of age was 13.1 per 100 person-years and 4.7 for those <80 years of age (P=0.009). The first 90 days of warfarin, age ≥80 years, and international normalized ratio (INR) ≥4.0 were associated with increased risk despite trial-level anticoagulation control. Within the first year, 26% of patients ≥80 years of age stopped taking warfarin. Perceived safety issues accounted for 81% of them. Rates of major hemorrhage and warfarin termination were highest among patients with CHADS2 scores (an acronym for congestive heart failure, hypertension, age ≥75, diabetes mellitus, and prior stroke or transient ischemic attack) of ≥3. Conclusions— Rates of hemorrhage derived from younger noninception cohorts underestimate the bleeding that occurs in practice. This finding coupled with the short-term tolerability of warfarin likely contributes to its underutilization. Stroke prevention among elderly patients with atrial fibrillation remains a challenging and pressing health concern.
Vision-Only Localization

Autonomous and intelligent vehicles will undoubtedly depend on an accurate ego localization solution. Global navigation satellite systems suffer from multipath propagation rendering this solution insufficient. Herein, we present a real-time system for six-degrees-of-freedom ego localization that uses only a single monocular camera. The camera image is harnessed to yield an ego pose relative to a previously computed visual map. We describe a process to automatically extract the ingredients of this map from stereoscopic image sequences. These include a mapping trajectory relative to the first pose, global scene signatures and local landmark descriptors. The localization algorithm then consists of a topological localization step that completely obviates the need for any global positioning sensors such as GNSS. A metric refinement step that recovers an accurate metric pose is subsequently applied. Metric localization recovers the ego pose in a factor graph optimization process based on local landmarks. We demonstrate centimeter-level accuracy by a set of experiments in an urban environment. To this end, two localization estimates are computed for two independent cameras mounted on the same vehicle. These two independent trajectories are thereafter compared for consistency. Finally, we present qualitative experiments of an augmented reality (AR) system that depends on the aforementioned localization solution. Several screen shots of the AR system are shown confirming centimeter-level accuracy and subdegree angular precision.
Effects of Clinical Mastitis on Reproductive Performance in Holstein Cows

Gunay A. , U. Gunay: Effects of Clinical Mastitis on Reproductive Performance in Holstein Cows. Acta Vet. Brno 2008, 77: 555-560. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of clinical mastitis on reproductive performance in 135 early lactation cows. The animals were divided into two groups according to the occurrence of mastitis as follows: group I (n = 45), clinical mastitis prior to the first artificial insemination breeding; group II (n = 45), clinical mastitis after artificial insemination and being diagnosed pregnant. Forty-five cows without any mastitis served as control group. Calving to first service intervals were significantly longer (P < 0.05) in cows with clinical mastitis before first service (group I; 95.2 ± 5.4 d) than in cows with clinical mastitis after first service (group II; 77.4 ± 8.2 d) and in control cows (75.9 ± 6.3 d). Calving to conception interval with clinical mastitis before first service (119.1 ± 10.6 d) and in cows with clinical mastitis after first service (141.7 ± 14.0 d) was significantly longer (P < 0.05) than in control (94.1 ± 10.3 d) cows. On the other hand, the number of services per conception was larger (P < 0.05) in cows with clinical mastitis after first service (3.4 ± 0.9) than in cows with clinical mastitis before first service (2.1 ± 0.9) and in cows with no clinical mastitis (1.8 ± 0.8). This study indicated that clinical mastitis during early lactation in Holstein cows had a negative impact on their reproductive performance. Dairy cows, artificial insemination, fertility, service
GUI Regression Test Selection Based on Event Interaction Graph Strategy

Testing is an efficient mean for assuring the quality of software. Nowadays, Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) make up a big part of applications being developed. Within the scope of regression testing, some test cases from the original GUI are usable and others are unusable. This paper presents an algorithm that drops the unusable test cases and creates new test cases based on the main differences between the two GUIs, which are represented as uncovered edges. Furthermore, the algorithm creates a new test suite for the modified version by combining the usable test cases and the new created test cases. Keywords— regression testing; reusable test cases; event interaction Graph; flow
Slap Fingerprint Segmentation

This paper presents a novel approach in seg- menting multiple fingerprints from an image. Such an image is taken by a scanner capable of recording several fingers simultaneously. A combination of two-staged mean shift and ellipse-fitting algorithms as well as an elaborate sub- sequent set of rules is used to segment the single fingertip images. First, the mean shift which is a well-established feature-space analysis technique is used to identify the dif- ferent components of the fingers. Then the orientation and size of each component is determined by the application of a robust ellipse-fitting algorithm. Finally the rules locate the fingertips. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate the success of the approach.
Microorganisms with a Taste for Vanilla: Microbial Ecology of Traditional Indonesian Vanilla Curing

ABSTRACT The microbial ecology of traditional postharvesting processing of vanilla beans (curing) was examined using a polyphasic approach consisting of conventional cultivation, substrate utilization-based and molecular identification of isolates, and cultivation-independent community profiling by 16S ribosomal DNA based PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. At two different locations, a batch of curing beans was monitored. In both batches a major shift in microbial communities occurred after short-term scalding of the beans in hot water. Fungi and yeast disappeared, although regrowth of fungi occurred in one batch during a period in which process conditions were temporarily not optimal. Conventional plating showed that microbial communities consisting of thermophilic and thermotolerant bacilli (mainly closely related to Bacillus subtilis, B. licheniformis,, and B. smithii) developed under the high temperatures (up to 65°C) that were maintained for over a week after scalding. Only small changes in the communities of culturable bacteria occurred after this period. Molecular analysis revealed that a proportion of the microbial communities could not be cultured on conventional agar medium, especially during the high-temperature period. Large differences between both batches were observed in the numbers of microorganisms, in species composition, and in the enzymatic abilities of isolated bacteria. These large differences indicate that the effects of microbial activities on the development of vanilla flavor could be different for each batch of cured vanilla beans.
Ein modalitätsspezifisches Wortgedächtnis ist ausreichend : Wortgedächtnismodalität bei Leseanfängern und Neuronalen Netzen

Zusammenfassung. Wortstruktureffekte besagen, dass bekannte Buchstabenfolgen von vertrauten Worten einfacher zu erinnern und leichter zu lesen sind, als weniger bekannte oder neue Buchstabenfolgen von seltener auftretenden Worten. Es ist daher einleuchtend, dass eine quantitative Zunahme an neuer Wortstruktur den Leseschwierigkeitsgrad vorhersagt. Z. B. sind Zahlworte leichter zu lesen als Reimworte mit neuem Wortanfang, und Reimworte sind wiederum leichter zu lesen als Nicht-Worte mit neuer Buchstabenfolge. Deutsche Leseanfanger zeigten jedoch nicht diesen haufig zu beobachtenden Wortstruktureffekt beim Lesen (Lange-Kuttner, 2005). Hangt dies moglicherweise damit zusammen, dass sie eine Pravalenz des auditorischen Gedachtnisses beim Lesen haben (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993)? Es wurde daher bei englischsprachigen und deutschen Kindern der Zusammenhang des Lesens mit dem Wortstruktureffekt im auditiven vs. visuellen Wortgedachtnis analysiert. Wahrend der Wortstruktureffekt im visuellen Gedachtnis bei allen.
Strategies for the prevention and treatment of sudden cardiac death

Cardiovascular diseases account for 40% of all deaths in the West. Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a major health problem affecting over 300,000 patients annually in the United States alone. Presence of coronary artery disease (CAD), usually in the setting of diminished left ventricular ejection fraction, is still the single major risk factor for SCD. Additionally, acute myocardial ischemia, structural cardiac defects, anomalous coronary arteries, cardiomyopathies, genetic mutations, and ventricular arrhythmias are all attributed to SCD, demonstrating the perplexity of this condition. With the recent advancements in cardiovascular medicine, the incidence of SCD is expected to increase steeply as the prevalence of CAD and heart failure is uprising in general population. Considering SCD, the major challenge confronting contemporary cardiology, multiple strategies for prevention against SCD have been developed. β-blockers have been shown to reduce the risk of SCD, whereas implantable cardioverter–defibrillator devices are found to be effective at terminating the malignant arrhythmias. In recent years, multiple clinical trials were carried out to identify patients who may benefit from preventive intervention, including medical therapy and automatic cardioverter–defibrillator implantations. This review article provides insight into the advanced strategies for the prevention and treatment of SCD based on the data available in medical literature to date.
Understanding the parallel scalability of an implicit unstructured mesh CFD code

In this paper, the authors identify the scalability bottlenecks of an unstructured grid CFD code (PETSc-FUN3D) by studying the impact of several algorithmic and architectural parameters and by examining different programming models. The authors discuss the basic performance characteristics of this PDE code with the help of simple performance models developed in their earlier work, presenting primarily experimental results. In addition to achieving good per-processor performance (which has been addressed in the cited work and without which scalability claims are suspect) they strive to improve the implementation and convergence scalability of PETSc-FUN3D on thousands of processors.
Cassandra: a structured storage system on a P2P network

Cassandra is a distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size across many commodity servers, with no single point of failure. Reliability at massive scale is a very big challenge. Outages in the service can have significant negative impact. Hence Cassandra aims to run on top of an infrastructure of hundreds of nodes (possibly spread across different datacenters). At this scale, small and large components fail continuously; the way Cassandra manages the persistent state in the face of these failures drives the reliability and scalability of the software systems relying on this service. Cassandra has achieved several goals -- scalability, high performance, high availability and applicability. In many ways Cassandra resembles a database and shares many design and implementation strategies with databases. Cassandra does not support a full relational data model; instead, it provides clients with a simple data model that supports dynamic control over data layout and format.
Feeding ecology of bonobos living in forest‐savannah mosaics: Diet seasonal variation and importance of fallback foods

Primates along with many other animal taxa are forced to cope with large shifts in basic ecological conditions because of rapid anthropogenically induced changes of their habitats. One of the coping strategies for primates is to adjust their diet to these changes, and several studies have demonstrated the importance of fallback resources for this. Bonobos, like chimpanzees, might be particularly vulnerable to habitat fragmentation because of their high dependence on fruit availability. Little is known, however, about bonobo feeding ecology in fragmented habitats and their use of fallback resources. In this study, we investigate diet seasonal variation and the exploitation of preferred and fallback foods in a bonobo population living in forest‐savannah mosaics. Results show that bonobos have adapted to this fragmented habitat by feeding on only a few fruit species, including an important number of non‐tree species (liana, herb and savannah shrub), in comparison to populations living in dense forests. These non‐tree plants have been defined as fallback and non‐preferred foods, which are most probably consumed to maintain high frugivory. Interestingly, we identified that preferred foods are all typical of mature forests while fallback resources are mainly found in forest edges or disturbed areas. This finding indicates that bonobos prefer to use mature forests when feeding, as they do for nesting, but extend their range use to forest areas in close proximity to humans when the availability of preferred fruits is low. Finally, we show that bonobo diet relies heavily on two abundant fallback fruits: Musanga cecropioides and Marantochloa leucantha. Other studies have demonstrated that the selection of abundant fallback resources enables primates to subsist at high densities and to maintain cohesive groups, as observed at this study site. Our findings suggest that bonobos living in forest‐savannah mosaics can be considered as staple fallback food consumers. Am. J. Primatol. 77:948–962, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Maternal exercise during pregnancy reduces risk of mammary tumorigenesis in rat offspring (886.1)

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Emerging research indicates that modifying lifestyle factors during pregnancy may convey long‐term health benefits to offspring. This study was designed to determine whether maternal exercise during pregnancy leads to reduced mammary tumorigenesis in female offspring. Pregnant rats were randomly assigned to exercised and sedentary groups, with the exercised group having free access to a running wheel and the sedentary group housed with a locked wheel during pregnancy. Female pups from exercised or sedentary dams were weaned at 21 days of age and fed a high fat diet without access to a running wheel. At 6 weeks, all pups were injected with the carcinogen N‐methyl‐N‐nitrosourea (MNU). Mammary tumor development in all pups was monitored for 15 weeks. Pups from exercised dams had a substantially lower tumor incidence (42.9%) compared to pups from sedentary dams (100%). Of the pups with tumors, the pups from exercised dams had a higher tumor frequency (1.7±0.4 tumors/rat) than pups from sedentary dams (1.2±0.2 tumors/rat). Neither tumor latency nor histological grade differed between the two groups. These data are the first to demonstrate that exercise during pregnancy potentiates reduced tumorigenesis in offspring. This study provides an important foundation towards developing more effective modes of behavior modification for cancer prevention.
A new algorithm for high-speed projection in point rendering applications

Point based rendering techniques have recently become a promising alternative for high quality rendering of complex scenes. In order to handle a high number of points, the current graphics cards structure has to be analyzed for efficient exploitation of the hardware resources available. In this context, the real time perspective projections become a challenge because of the reduced number of dividers available in the graphics cards and their recursive structure. In this paper, we present a point projection algorithm that avoids the division operations. The technique we propose is based on the identification of the candidate pixels on the screen, and the selection of the correct one through simple comparison operations. The simplicity of the algorithm we propose permits the utilization of different projection units operating in parallel. We also present a scheduling that permits the introduction and efficient exploitation of a pipelined system. The algorithm is regular, simple, and characterized by efficient data management so that the processing rate is directly associated with the number of projection units employed. As a result, real time performance for the projection operations, even for critical scenes, can be achieved.
Insights into the Autotrophic CO2 Fixation Pathway of the Archaeon Ignicoccus hospitalis: Comprehensive Analysis of the Central Carbon Metabolism

ABSTRACT Ignicoccus hospitalis is an autotrophic hyperthermophilic archaeon that serves as a host for another parasitic/symbiotic archaeon, Nanoarchaeum equitans. In this study, the biosynthetic pathways of I. hospitalis were investigated by in vitro enzymatic analyses, in vivo 13C-labeling experiments, and genomic analyses. Our results suggest the operation of a so far unknown pathway of autotrophic CO2 fixation that starts from acetyl-coenzyme A (CoA). The cyclic regeneration of acetyl-CoA, the primary CO2 acceptor molecule, has not been clarified yet. In essence, acetyl-CoA is converted into pyruvate via reductive carboxylation by pyruvate-ferredoxin oxidoreductase. Pyruvate-water dikinase converts pyruvate into phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP), which is carboxylated to oxaloacetate by PEP carboxylase. An incomplete citric acid cycle is operating: citrate is synthesized from oxaloacetate and acetyl-CoA by a (re)-specific citrate synthase, whereas a 2-oxoglutarate-oxidizing enzyme is lacking. Further investigations revealed that several special biosynthetic pathways that have recently been described for various archaea are operating. Isoleucine is synthesized via the uncommon citramalate pathway and lysine via the α-aminoadipate pathway. Gluconeogenesis is achieved via a reverse Embden-Meyerhof pathway using a novel type of fructose 1,6-bisphosphate aldolase. Pentosephosphates are formed from hexosephosphates via the suggested ribulose-monophosphate pathway, whereby formaldehyde is released from C-1 of hexose. The organism may not contain any sugar-metabolizing pathway. This comprehensive analysis of the central carbon metabolism of I. hospitalis revealed further evidence for the unexpected and unexplored diversity of metabolic pathways within the (hyperthermophilic) archaea.