Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nedd4-2 and the Regulation of Epithelial Sodium Transport

Nedd4-2 is a ubiquitin ligase previously demonstrated to regulate endocytosis and lysosomal degradation of the epithelial Na+ channel (ENaC) and other ion channels and transporters. Recent studies using Nedd4-2 knockout mice specifically in kidney or lung epithelia has revealed a critical role for this E3 ubiquitin ligase in regulating salt and fluid transport in these tissues/organs and in maintaining homeostasis of body blood pressure. Interestingly, the primary targets for Nedd4-2 may differ in these two organs: in the lung Nedd4-2 targets ENaC, and loss of Nedd4-2 leads to excessive ENaC function and to cystic fibrosis – like lung disease, whereas in the kidney, Nedd4-2 targets the Na+/Cl− cotransporter (NCC) in addition to targeting ENaC. In accord, loss of Nedd4-2 in the distal nephron leads to increased NCC abundance and function. The aldosterone-responsive kinase, Sgk1, appears to be involved in the regulation of NCC by Nedd4-2 in the kidney, similar to its regulation of ENaC. Collectively, these new findings underscore the physiological importance of Nedd4-2 in regulating epithelial salt and fluid transport and balance.
Adding Pleasure to Business: Conventions and Tourism

ABSTRACT This article identifies the benefits to be gained when convention delegates engage in tourism and recreational activities at destinations by extending their trips and/or bringing guests. The key factors contributing to the decision of whether or not to extend the trip and bring a guest are reviewed, and a number of research questions are identified. Finally, a number of suggestions are made to illustrate how convention and tourism professionals can help stimulate the extenders and delegates' guests markets.
Reaction times in the perception of quantity in Icelandic

Icelandic has a contrast of vowel and consonant quantity. Previous research has shown that the ratio of vowel to rhyme duration is the major cue for quantity, with vowel spectrum additionally playing a role in the three central vowels of Icelandic, [ɛ], [ɔ], and [o]. This paper describes an experiment in which reaction times are measured as well as identification judgments for three stimulus continua, one containing the vowel [a], two having the vowel [ɛ] with different vowel quality, suggesting either a long or a short vowel. It was hypothesized, and experimentally confirmed, that reaction times are longer for the continuum having the vowel [a]. In that case the listener is forced to base his or her judgment of quantity on both the vowel and the following consonant.
Experiments Using MAR for Aligning Corpora

We present some experiments conducted within the context of one of the shared tasks of the ACL 2005 Workshop on Building and Using Parallel Texts. We have employed a new model for finding the alignments. This new model takes a recursive approach in order to find the alignments. As its computational costs are quite high, a method for splitting the training sentences in smaller parts is used.
Cardiac Phosphoproteomics during Remote Ischemic Preconditioning: A Role for the Sarcomeric Z-Disk Proteins

Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) induced by brief ischemia/reperfusion cycles of remote organ (e.g., limb) is cardioprotective. The myocardial cellular changes during RIPC responsible for this phenomenon are not currently known. The aim of this work was to identify the activation by phosphorylation of cardiac proteins following RIPC. To achieve our aim we used isobaric tandem mass tagging (TMT) and reverse phase nanoliquid chromatography tandem spectrometry using a Linear Trap Quadropole (LTQ) Orbitrap Velos mass spectrometer. Male C57/Bl6 mice were anesthetized by an intraperitoneal injection of Tribromoethanol. A cuff was placed around the hind limb and inflated at 200 mmHg to prevent blood flow as confirmed by Laser Doppler Flowmetry. RIPC was induced by 4 cycles of 5 min of limb ischemia followed by 5 min of reperfusion. Hearts were extracted for phosphoproteomics. We identified approximately 30 phosphoproteins that were differentially expressed in response to RIPC protocol. The levels of several phosphoproteins in the Z-disk of the sarcomere including phospho-myozenin-2 were significantly higher than control. This study describes and validates a novel approach to monitor the changes in the cardiac phosphoproteome following the cardioprotective intervention of RIPC and prior to index ischemia. The increased level of phosphorylated sarcomeric proteins suggests they may have a role in cardiac signaling during RIPC.
Robot Control of Animal

The Robot Sheepdog Project has developed a mobile robot that gathers a ock of ducks and manoeuvres them safely to a speciied goal position. This is the rst example of a robot system that exploits and controls an animal's behaviour to achieve a useful task. A potential-eld model of ocking behaviour was constructed and used to aid the design of two novel ock-control methods. These methods are described and evaluated in a series of simulated and real-world experiments.
L1 mediated homophilic binding and neurite outgrowth are modulated by alternative splicing of exon 2.

The neural cell adhesion molecule (CAM) L1 is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily that has been implicated in neuronal adhesion, neurite outgrowth, and axon guidance. The clinical importance of L1 is illustrated by pathological mutations that lead to hydrocephalus, mental retardation, motor defects, and early mortality. The L1 gene is composed of 28 exons, including exons 2 and 27 that are spliced alternatively, and mutations in exon 2 are associated with severe neurological abnormalities in humans. To elucidate the role of L1 exon 2, a recombinant Fc fusion protein called Delta2L1 was constructed lacking the second exon in the extracellular domain of L1. When bound to fluorescent beads, L1 exhibited homophilic binding while Delta2L1 did not. However, L1 beads coaggregated with the Delta2L1 beads. Similarly, in cell binding studies, L1 bound to L1 and Delta2L1 did not bind to Delta2L1 but it bound moderately to L1. Given the reduced binding of Delta2L1, we tested its effect on neurons. By comparison to L1, a lower percentage of dissociated neurons extended neurites on Delta2L1, and there was a modest decrease in the length of the neurites that grew. Neurite outgrowth from reaggregated neurons was much less robust on Delta2L1 than on L1. The combined results indicate that Delta2L1 does not bind homophilically but it can interact with L1 containing exon 2. The reduced binding and neurite promoting activity of Delta2L1 provides an explanation for certain pathological mutations in L1 that lead to clinically apparent disease in the absence of the normal form of L1 in the nervous system.
Viscosity and gas/oil ratio curves estimation using advances to neural networks

In oil and gas industry, prior prediction of certain properties is needed ahead of exploration and facility design. Viscosity and gas/oil ratio (GOR), are among those properties described through curves with their values varying over a specific range of reservoir pressures. However, the usual prediction approach could result into curves that are not consistent, exhibiting scattered behaviour as compared to the real curves. In this paper two advances to artificial neural networks are implemented to solve the problem. These are Support Vector Regressors and Functional Networks. Statistical error measures have been used and showed the high performance of the proposed techniques. Moreover, the predicted curves are consistent with the actual curves.
A Virtual World for Collaboration: The AETZone

Participation in learning communities, and the construction of knowledge in communities of practice, are important considerations in the use of 3D immersive worlds. This article describes the creation of this type of learning environment in AETZone, an immersive virtual environment in use within graduate programs at Appalachian State University since 2000. Both student and faculty perceptions of elements such as presence, co-presence, and the forging of active community are presented, along with examples of formal and informal activities which serve as the base for teaching and learning in the Zone.
Aspect-Oriented Modeling Based on AOSD with Use Case

Disclosed is a novel apparatus for the production of a sustained inductively coupled non-argon plasma discharge in flowing gas in a 13-25 mm (analytical size) containment tube at atmospheric pressure. The apparatus is developed for elemental analysis of injected aerosol or powdered samples, and particularly for air monitoring applications.
Simulation of Distributed Multi-Pump Raman Amplifiers in Different Transmission Media

Three types of distributed Raman amplifiers; forward, backward and bidirectional pumping configurations are simulated and compared in this paper. Since the nonlinear effect of the fiber type is an important parameter in determining the simulation process, two types of fibers are used in our simulation; Z-fiber and dispersion shifted fiber (DSF). In each case the optimum parameters such as pump and signal powers, amplified spontaneous emission and noise figure are derived. We found that there is minimum total input power for backward case and there is minimum fluctuation in signal power along the fiber which leads to having the lowest ripple in signal to noise ratio. Indeed, DSFs have proper noise figure level and more uniform signal gain relative to the Zfibers. Generally speaking, the fiber parameters have strong effects on the operation of multi-pump distributed Raman amplifiers, because of their nonlinearities. Keywords—Raman amplifiers, Z-fibers, dispersion shifted fibers, numerical simulation.
Spatially Balanced Sampling of Natural Resources

The spatial distribution of a natural resource is an important consideration in designing an efficient survey or monitoring program for the resource. Generally, sample sites that are spatially balanced, that is, more or less evenly dispersed over the extent of the resource, are more efficient than simple random sampling. We review a unified strategy for selecting spatially balanced probability samples of natural resources. The technique is based on creating a function that maps two-dimensional space into one-dimensional space, thereby defining an ordered spatial address. We use a restricted randomization to randomly order the addresses, so that systematic sampling along the randomly ordered linear structure results in a spatially well-balanced random sample. Variable inclusion probability, proportional to an arbitrary positive ancillary variable, is easily accommodated. The basic technique selects points in a two-dimensional continuum, but is also applicable to sampling finite populations or one-dimensional continua embedded in two-dimensional space. An extension of the basic technique gives a way to order the sample points so that any set of consecutively numbered points is in itself a spatially well-balanced sample. This latter property is extremely useful in adjusting the sample for the frame imperfections common in environmental sampling.
Scalable algorithms for clustering large datasets with mixed type attributes

Clustering is a widely used technique in data mining applications for discovering patterns in underlying data. Most traditional clustering algorithms are limited to handling datasets that contain either numeric or categorical attributes. However, datasets with mixed types of attributes are common in real life data mining applications. In this article, we present two algorithms that extend the Squeezer algorithm to domains with mixed numeric and categorical attributes. The performance of the two algorithms has been studied on real and artificially generated datasets. Comparisons with other clustering algorithms illustrate the superiority of our approaches. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 20: 1077–1089, 2005.
Effect of gravity wave temperature fluctuations on homogeneous ice nucleation in the tropical tropopause layer

Abstract. The impact of high-frequency fluctuations of temperature on homogeneous nucleation of ice crystals in the vicinity of the tropical tropopause is investigated using a bin microphysics scheme for air parcels. The imposed temperature fluctuations come from measurements during isopycnic balloon flights near the tropical tropopause. The balloons collected data at high frequency, guaranteeing that gravity wave signals are well resolved. With the observed temperature time series, the numerical simulations with homogeneous freezing show a full range of ice number concentration (INC) as previously observed in the tropical upper troposphere. In particular, a low INC may be obtained if the gravity wave perturbations produce a non-persistent cooling rate (even with large magnitude) such that the absolute change in temperature remains small during nucleation. This result is explained analytically by a dependence of the INC on the absolute drop in temperature (and not on the cooling rate). This work suggests that homogeneous ice nucleation is not necessarily inconsistent with observations of low INCs.
Image-Based Empirical Information Acquisition, Scientific Reliability, and Long-Term Digital Preservation for the Natural Sciences and Cultural Heritage

The tools and standards of best practice adopted by natural science (NS) and cultural heritage (CH) professionals will determine the digital future of NS and CH digital imaging work. This tutorial discusses emerging digital technologies and explores issues influencing widespread adoption of digital practices for NS and CH. The tutorial explores a possible digital future for NS and CH through key concepts; adoption of digital surrogates, empirical (scientific) provenance, perpetual digital conservation, and ‘born archival’ semantic knowledge management. The tutorial discusses multiple image based technologies along with current research including; Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), Photometric Stereo, and new research in the next generation of multi-view RTI. This research involves extending stereo correspondence methods. These technologies permit generation of digital surrogates that can serve as trusted representations of ‘real world’ content. The tutorial explores how empirical provenance contributes to the reliability of digital surrogates, and how perpetual digital conservation can ensure that digital surrogates will be archived and available for future generations. The tutorial investigates the role of semantically based knowledge management strategies and their use in simplifying ease of use by natural science and CH professionals as well as long term preservation activities. The tutorial also investigates these emerging technologies’ potential to democratize digital technology, making digital tools and methods easy to adopt and make NS and CH materials widely available to diverse audiences. The tutorial concludes with handson demonstrations of image-based capture and processing methods and a practical problem solving Q&A with the audience.
Learning-based detection of acne-like regions using time-lapse features

Objective evaluation of acne treatment requires observing test subjects for multiple months. To capture the appearance of acne lesions during the treatment period, a subject is photographed at imaging sessions separated by time intervals of days or weeks. The efficacy of the treatment method is evaluated by counting the number of acne lesions in the acquired skin images. Traditionally, the counting of acne lesions has been done manually. However, manual counting is unreliable and time consuming; therefore in recent years there has been an increasing interest in automatically detecting and counting acne lesions using computer-based methods. In this paper we model acne-like and non-acne regions using spatio-temporal features, and use a supervised learning approach to find the separating hyperplane between the regions in the feature space. The temporal component is an important feature because acne lesions change over time, while scars and other marks remain constant. Precise alignment is a challenge in computing meaningful temporal features. The images must be aligned to a subpixel level, exceeding the requirements of typical face alignment algorithms. We have acquired and aligned a time series acne dataset by imaging a human subject with facial acne under the same illumination and pose on 39 different days over a period of three months. The resulting time-lapse video of skin with precision alignment is the first of its kind and impressively demonstrates the temporal evolution of acne lesions. We use this registered time-lapse set to train and test an acne lesion classifier.
Object-Centred Recognition of Human Activity

This paper describes an approach to real-time human activity recognition using hidden Markov models (HMMs) and sensorised objects, and its application to rehabilitation of stroke patients with apraxia or action disorganisation syndrome (AADS). Results are presented for the task of making a cup of tea. Unlike speech or other sequential decoding problems where HMMs have previously been successfully applied, human actions can occur simultaneously or at least in overlapping time. The solution proposed in this paper is based on a parallel, asynchronous set of detectors, each responsible for the detection of one of the component sub-goals of the tea-making task. The inputs to these detectors are formed from the outputs of sensors attached to the objects involved in that sub-goal, plus hand coordinate data. The sensors, comprising an accelerometer and three force-sensitive resistors, are packaged in a coaster which can be easily attached to the base of a mug or jug. In tests on complete tea-making trials, error rates range from less than 5% for sub-goals where all of the objects involved are sensorised, to up to 30% for detectors that rely on hand-coordinate data alone. The complete set of detectors runs in real-time. It is concluded that a set of parallel HMM-based sub-goal detectors combined with fully sensorised objects, is a viable, accurate and easily deployable approach to real-time object-centred human activity recognition.
Financial Aid and Students’ College Decisions

The District of Columbia Tuition Assistance Grant Program (DCTAG), instituted in 1999, allows D.C. residents to attend public colleges and universities throughout the country at considerably lower in-state tuition rates. We use the sharp decline in the price of public colleges and universities faced by D.C. residents to estimate the effects of price on college application and enrollment decisions. We find that DCTAG increased the likelihood that students applied to eligible institutions and markedly increased college enrollment rates among recent high school graduates. Enrollments increased primarily at less selective colleges and universities, with no decrease at more selective schools.
Market Operations in Electric Power Systems : Forecasting, Scheduling, and Risk Management

Preface. Chapter 1: Market Overview in Electric Power Systems. Chapter 2: Short-Term Load Forecasting. Chapter 3: Electricity Price Forecasting. Chapter 4: Price-Based Unit Commitment. Chapter 5: Arbitrage in Electricity Markets. Chapter 6: Market Power Analysis Based on Game Theory. Chapter 7: Generation Asset Valuation and Risk Analysis. Chapter 8: Security-Constrained Unit Commitment. Chapter 9: Ancillary Services Auction Market Design. Chapter 10: Transmission Congestion Management and Pricing. Appendix A: List of Symbols. Appendix B: Mathematical Derivation. Appendix C: RTS Load Data. Appendix D: Example Systems Data. Appendix E: Game Theory Concepts. Appendix F: Congestion Charges Calculation. References. Index.
Weighting imputation methods and their evaluation under shell-neighbor machine

The paper studies three typical weighting strategies for Shell-Neighbor Imputation (SNI) algorithm, while there are many weighting modes that can be used in the SNI. To best capture the imputation efficiency, a new metrics, called goodess, is proposed for evaluating imputation algorithms. We conduct some experiments for examining the proposed approached, and demonstrate that (1) distance-frequency-weighting strategy is the best one for the shell-neighbor imputation; (2) the goodness is much better than the RMSE if there is a few individual values of serious deviation, otherwise, the goodness is the same as the RMSE at measuring the imputation efficiency.
PD Fuzzy Logic with non-collocated PID approach for vibration control of flexible joint manipulator

The increased complexity of the dynamics of robots manipulator considering joint elasticity makes conventional model-based control strategies complex and difficult to synthesize. This paper presents investigations into the development of PD type Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) with non-collocated Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) for trajectory tracking and vibration control of a flexible joint manipulator. To study the effectiveness of the controllers, a PD type Fuzzy Logic Controller is developed for tip angular position control of a flexible joint manipulator. This is then extended to incorporate a non-collocated PID Controller for vibration reduction of the flexible joint system. Simulation results of the response of the flexible joint manipulator with the controllers are presented in time and frequency domains. The performances of the non-collocated PID control schemes are examined in terms of input tracking capability, level of vibration reduction and time response specifications. Finally, a comparative assessment of the control techniques is presented and discussed.
Fisheries Bycatch as an Inadvertent Human-Induced Evolutionary Mechanism

Selective harvesting of animals by humans can affect the sustainability and genetics of their wild populations. Bycatch - the accidental catch of non-target species - spans the spectrum of marine fauna and constitutes a harvesting pressure. Individual differences in attraction to fishing vessels and consequent susceptibility to bycatch exist, but few studies integrate this individual heterogeneity with demography. Here, we tested for the evidence and consequences of individual heterogeneity on the demography of the wandering albatross, a seabird heavily affected by fisheries bycatch. We found strong evidence for heterogeneity in survival with one group of individuals having a 5.2% lower annual survival probability than another group, and a decrease in the proportion of those individuals with the lowest survival in the population coinciding with a 7.5 fold increase in fishing effort in the foraging areas. Potential causes for the heterogeneity in survival are discussed and we suggest that bycatch removed a large proportion of individuals attracted by fishing vessels and had significant phenotypic and population consequences.
Immunological considerations in in utero hematopoetic stem cell transplantation (IUHCT)

In utero hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (IUHCT) is an attractive approach and a potentially curative surgery for several congenital hematopoietic diseases. In practice, this application has succeeded only in the context of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorders. Here, we review potential immunological hurdles for the long-term establishment of chimerism and discuss relevant models and findings from both postnatal hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and IUHCT.