Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Saturated Fatty Acids Produce an Inflammatory Response Predominantly through the Activation of TLR4 Signaling in Hypothalamus: Implications for the Pathogenesis of Obesity

In animal models of diet-induced obesity, the activation of an inflammatory response in the hypothalamus produces molecular and functional resistance to the anorexigenic hormones insulin and leptin. The primary events triggered by dietary fats that ultimately lead to hypothalamic cytokine expression and inflammatory signaling are unknown. Here, we test the hypothesis that dietary fats act through the activation of toll-like receptors 2/4 and endoplasmic reticulum stress to induce cytokine expression in the hypothalamus of rodents. According to our results, long-chain saturated fatty acids activate predominantly toll-like receptor 4 signaling, which determines not only the induction of local cytokine expression but also promotes endoplasmic reticulum stress. Rats fed on a monounsaturated fat-rich diet do not develop hypothalamic leptin resistance, whereas toll-like receptor 4 loss-of-function mutation and immunopharmacological inhibition of toll-like receptor 4 protects mice from diet-induced obesity. Thus, toll-like receptor 4 acts as a predominant molecular target for saturated fatty acids in the hypothalamus, triggering the intracellular signaling network that induces an inflammatory response, and determines the resistance to anorexigenic signals.
Preparing the Global Software Engineer

With a goal of preparing software engineering students for practice in today's global settings, Uppsala University has for some years run courses involving global collaboration. The "IT in Society" course is one such course which applies an 'Open Ended Group Project' model, in partnership with a local health sector client and global educational partners. Within each iteration of the course, students across the partnering institutions are given a brief around an open-ended problem. They work in collaboration with their client and stakeholders to investigate options and produce a report with their findings and recommendations, informed by global perspectives. The report may or may not be supported by working software prototypes. We analyze student evaluations & reflections on the course to unpack their perceptions of software engineering, the perceived relevance of a global learning experience and its role in reshaping their identities as global software engineers.
Plant cell wall dynamics and wall-related susceptibility in plant–pathogen interactions

The cell wall is a dynamic structure that often determines the outcome of the interactions between plants and pathogens. It is a barrier that pathogens need to breach to colonize the plant tissue. While fungal necrotrophs extensively destroy the integrity of the cell wall through the combined action of degrading enzymes, biotrophic fungi require a more localized and controlled degradation of the cell wall in order to keep the host cells alive and utilize their feeding structures. Also bacteria and nematodes need to degrade the plant cell wall at a certain stage of their infection process, to obtain nutrients for their growth. Plants have developed a system for sensing pathogens and monitoring the cell wall integrity, upon which they activate defense responses that lead to a dynamic cell wall remodeling required to prevent the disease. Pathogens, on the other hand, may exploit the host cell wall metabolism to support the infection. We review here the strategies utilized by both plants and pathogens to prevail in the cell wall battleground.
Incremental Product-line Development

Fundamental to the success of a product-line strategy is having some means to attain the global architecture that all products will share. Migrating to the architecture is often perceived as a difficult part of implementing the strategy. However, the technique presented here permits a low-risk, incremental development of the architecture via a process of negotiation. In effect, small scale product-lines are set up to supply products of a particular type to other systems. Stakeholders of the systems come together to negotiate an interface to the product and define it in an abstract form. As these small scale product-lines increase in number to cover most systems’ entities, their collective abstract interfaces start to define the product-line architecture.
A new structure of 12Slot-10Pole field-excitation flux switching synchronous machine for hybrid electric vehicles

This paper presents a new structure of 12Slot-10Pole field-excitation flux switching synchronous machine (FEFSSM) with all active parts namely field excitation coil (FEC) and armature coil are located on the stator, applied for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). The rotor part consists of single piece iron makes it more robust and becoming more suitable to apply for high speed motor drive system application coupled with reduction gear. The design target is the motor with a maximum torque of 210Nm with reduction gear ratio of 4:1, a maximum power of 123kW, a maximum power density more than 3.5kW/kg, and a maximum speed of 20, 000r/min with similar restrictions and specifications in IPMSM used for LEXUS RX400h. The deterministic design optimization approach is used to treat design parameters defined in rotor, armature and FEC repeatedly until the target performances are achieved, under maximum current density 21A/mm2 for both armature and FEC. A result shows that the proposed design enables to keep the same power density in existing IPMSM installed on a commercial SUV-HEV.
Low Power Control Techniques For TFT LCD Displays

Display power consumption is often the most significant contributor to the overall power budget for many portable devices. Traditionally, liquid crystal display (LCD) power minimization has focused on technology and circuit design. In this paper we take an orthogonal approach, and we introduce several software-only techniques for LCD dynamic power management, which do not require any hardware changes on existing LCDs and their controllers. The power savings achieved are significant: from 40% (with no perceivable image degradation) to 60% (with significant, but tolerable degradation) of total system power, measured on a prototype wearable system platform.
The effects of trading activity on market volatility

The paper re-examines the question of excessive implied persistence of volatility estimates when GARCH type models are used. Ten actively traded US stocks are considered and as already established in the literature, when volume traded is inserted in the GARCH (1, 1) or (EGARCH 1, 1) models for returns, the estimated persistence is decreased. Since volume is affected also by within-the-day price movements and hence is not weakly exogenous relative to returns, alternative proxies for trading activities are suggested. It is concluded that the difference between the opening price and the closing price of the previous day accounts also for most of the persistence in the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity.
Diffusion tensor tractography-based group mapping of the pyramidal tract in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Many studies have reported abnormal changes in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) by histogram and region-of-interest-based methods by using diffusion tenor imaging. However, there are few studies on specific white matter fiber tracts of RRMS. Our study sought to use diffusion tensor tractography-based group mapping to investigate the presence of abnormal diffusion in the normal-appearing pyramidal tract (PYT) of RRMS and its possible mechanism. METHODS A PYT probability map was first constructed from data on 20 healthy patients based on the deterministic-based tractography method. The PYT probability map was then applied to 29 RRMS patients to calculate diffusion indices of the PYT. In this study, 4 quantitative indices-fractional anisotropy (FA), directionally averaged diffusion coefficient (D(av)), axial diffusion coefficient (lambda(1)), and radial diffusion coefficient (lambda(23))-were used to characterize the abnormal diffusion. RESULTS Compared with healthy controls, RRMS patients had a significantly higher D(av) and lambda(23) but a lower FA and a trend toward a lower lambda(1) in the normal-appearing PYT. In RRMS patients, PYT lesions had a significantly higher lambda(23) and a lower FA, but there were no differences for D(av) and lambda(1) when compared with the normal-appearing PYT. Moreover, the diffusion indices derived from the normal-appearing PYT were significantly correlated with PYT lesion volumes by using the Spearman correlation analysis. CONCLUSION Our findings confirm the presence of abnormal diffusion in the normal-appearing PYT of RRMS patients and suggest that wallerian degeneration might be its mechanism.
Practical pushing planning for rearrangement tasks

Rearrangement of objects by pushing is a basic manipulation task. The authors (1995) presented a resolution-complete algorithm that plans optimal pushing manipulations for rearrangement tasks but operates in high time and space complexity. In this paper the authors address the issue of practical planning for the same kind of problems. Rather than using a classical heuristic method, the authors propose an alternative approach. The authors present a hierarchical classification of the pushing problems domain into several classes, each characterized by properties of the plans that can solve it. Such a classification allows the authors to consider each class individually, analyze and exploit properties of each class, and suggest individual planning methods. Algorithms for two of the defined classes are presented. Both algorithms were tested in a simulated environment, with up to 32 movable objects and 66 combined DOF. Some of these simulations are presented here.
Xilinx Virtex II Pro implementation of a reconfigurable UMTS digital channel filter

A reconfigurable digital root raised cosine (RRC) filter for a UMTS terrestrial radio access (UTRA) mobile terminal receiver is implemented on a Xilinx Vitrex II Pro Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The filter employs a finite impulse response (FIR) and monitors in-band and out-of-band received signal powers and calculates the appropriate filter length that meets the bit-energy to interference ratio (Eb/No) of the system. The results presented are for the time division duplex (TDD) mode of UTRA.
Propagation characteristic of ridge substrate integrated waveguide

In this paper, a compact and broadband ridge substrate integrated waveguide (RSIW) is analyzed, which is low-loss and easy to fabricate. The RSIW is based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW), and can be completed by inserting a longitudinal central partial-height cuboid metal block or etching a longitudinal central partial-height cuboid then coating the outer surface with metal. Analytical relationship between cutoff frequency and ridge width, relative bandwidth and ridge height is systematically studied. According to the analytical formulas, an X band frequency multiplication RSIW is designed. The simulation results indicates that the insertion loss is lower than 0.043dB, the return loss is higher than 29.9dB, and the cutoff frequency of TE10 mode and TE20 mode respectively are 5.125 GHz and 15.375 GHz, which are in good agreement with the formulas.
How to completely use the PAD space for socially interactive robots

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is becoming more complex and difficult due to the growing number of capabilities demonstrated by socially interactive robots. From this perspective, it is necessary for us to have simple and general methods that enable robots to interact with human beings at an emotional level. Therefore, this paper suggests a method that can efficiently use the PAD emotion space to generate artificial emotions based on a categorization of emotions using cluster analysis. After clustering, emotional appraisals can be extracted according to PAD input vectors using results of the categorization then we can generate blended emotions and calculate an intensity of each emotion. We evaluate the categorization results by using the Davies-Bouldin index and the patterns of emotions that are generated through categorization results. Furthermore, the generated emotions are expressed by a physical mascot-type head robot using our emotion expression model. We will also show how differently emotions are generated according to whether optimization is used or not.
A Lumped-Element Unit Cell for Beam-Forming Networks and Its Application to a Miniaturized Butler Matrix

A lumped-element unit cell for designing compact beam-forming networks (BFNs) is proposed. It is a reciprocal four-port network, which is lossless, isolated, and matched at all ports. The unit cell is designed to behave as planar and compact directional couplers with both arbitrary output amplitude and phase distributions, as well as crossovers with arbitrary output phase distributions. For both cases, design equations are derived. The design procedure is validated numerically and experimentally through several examples. The versatility of the unit cell allows the design of BFNs using only the proposed network topology. As an example, a 4<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\times\,$</tex> </formula>4 Butler matrix is implemented. A strong size reduction is also achieved with respect to classical designs thanks to the lumped-element implementation. The prototype footprint is approximately 25 times smaller than typical transmission-line-based Butler matrices. The structure shows also a very small area compared to state-of-the-art miniaturized 4<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\times\,$</tex> </formula>4 Butler matrix designs. Measurement results confirm the behavior of the Butler matrix as a BFN. The achieved bandwidth is approximately 8%.
A Reduced Reference Image Quality Metric based on feature fusion and neural networks

A Global Reduced Reference Image Quality Metric (IQM) based on feature fusion using neural networks is proposed. The main idea is the introduction of a Reduced Reference degradation-dependent IQM (RRIQM/D) across a set of common distortions. The first stage consists of extracting a set of features from the wavelet-based edge map. Such features are then used to identify the type of degradation using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). The second stage consists of fusing the extracted features into a single measure using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The result is a degradation-dependent IQM measure called the RRIQM/D. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using the TID 2008 database and compared to some existing IQMs. The experimental results obtained using the proposed method demonstrate an improved performance even when compared to some Full Reference IQMs.
Satire Detection from Web Documents Using Machine Learning Methods

Satire exposes humanity's vices and foibles through the use of irony, wit, and sometimes sarcasm too. It is also frequently used in online communities. Recognition of satire can help in many NLP applications like dialogue system and review summarization. In this paper we filter online news articles as satirical or true news documents using SVM (Support Vector Machine) classification method combined with machine learning techniques. With ample training documents SVM tends to give good classification results. For obtaining promising results with SVM an understanding of its working and ways to influence its accuracy is required. We also use various feature extraction strategies and conclude that TF-IDF-BNS feature extraction gives maximum accuracy for detection of satire in web content.
Primum Non Nocere: An Evolutionary Analysis of Whether Antidepressants Do More Harm than Good

Antidepressant medications are the first-line treatment for people meeting current diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. Most antidepressants are designed to perturb the mechanisms that regulate the neurotransmitter serotonin – an evolutionarily ancient biochemical found in plants, animals, and fungi. Many adaptive processes evolved to be regulated by serotonin, including emotion, development, neuronal growth and death, platelet activation and the clotting process, attention, electrolyte balance, and reproduction. It is a principle of evolutionary medicine that the disruption of evolved adaptations will degrade biological functioning. Because serotonin regulates many adaptive processes, antidepressants could have many adverse health effects. For instance, while antidepressants are modestly effective in reducing depressive symptoms, they increase the brain’s susceptibility to future episodes after they have been discontinued. Contrary to a widely held belief in psychiatry, studies that purport to show that antidepressants promote neurogenesis are flawed because they all use a method that cannot, by itself, distinguish between neurogenesis and neuronal death. In fact, antidepressants cause neuronal damage and mature neurons to revert to an immature state, both of which may explain why antidepressants also cause neurons to undergo apoptosis (programmed death). Antidepressants can also cause developmental problems, they have adverse effects on sexual and romantic life, and they increase the risk of hyponatremia (low sodium in the blood plasma), bleeding, stroke, and death in the elderly. Our review supports the conclusion that antidepressants generally do more harm than good by disrupting a number of adaptive processes regulated by serotonin. However, there may be specific conditions for which their use is warranted (e.g., cancer, recovery from stroke). We conclude that altered informed consent practices and greater caution in the prescription of antidepressants are warranted.
Reorganisation of the visual cortex in callosal agenesis and colpocephaly

Structural defects involving eloquent regions of the cerebral cortex may be accompanied by abnormal localisation of function. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we studied the organisation of the visual cortex in a patient with callosal agenesis and colpocephaly, whose visual acuity and binocular visual fields were normal. The stimulus used was a moving grating confined to one hemifield, on a background of moving dots. In addition to activation patterns elicited by stimulation of each hemifield in the patient, the activation pattern was compared to that seen in six normal volunteers. fMRI demonstrated large scale reorganisation of visual cortical areas in the left hemisphere, and fewer activation foci were observed in both occipital lobes when compared with normal subjects.
Automatic and Adaptive Fitting of the Cochlear Implant by Using Interactive Evolutionary Algorithms

Cochlear Implants (CI) are electronic devices that stimulate directly the auditory nerve to allow totally deaf patients to hear again. However they are more and more difficult to tune. The goal of this paper is to propose an automatic fitting method adaptable to different sound environments by using an interactive evolutionary algorithm. Real experiments on volunteer implanted patients are presented, which shows the efficiency of interactive evolution for this purpose. In the future, our goal is to add a piece of software to the CI signal processor that will automatically choose the best parameters setting depending on the class of the sound environment picked up by the microphone.
Coxsackievirus B Exits the Host Cell in Shed Microvesicles Displaying Autophagosomal Markers

Coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3), a member of the picornavirus family and enterovirus genus, causes viral myocarditis, aseptic meningitis, and pancreatitis in humans. We genetically engineered a unique molecular marker, “fluorescent timer” protein, within our infectious CVB3 clone and isolated a high-titer recombinant viral stock (Timer-CVB3) following transfection in HeLa cells. “Fluorescent timer” protein undergoes slow conversion of fluorescence from green to red over time, and Timer-CVB3 can be utilized to track virus infection and dissemination in real time. Upon infection with Timer-CVB3, HeLa cells, neural progenitor and stem cells (NPSCs), and C2C12 myoblast cells slowly changed fluorescence from green to red over 72 hours as determined by fluorescence microscopy or flow cytometric analysis. The conversion of “fluorescent timer” protein in HeLa cells infected with Timer-CVB3 could be interrupted by fixation, suggesting that the fluorophore was stabilized by formaldehyde cross-linking reactions. Induction of a type I interferon response or ribavirin treatment reduced the progression of cell-to-cell virus spread in HeLa cells or NPSCs infected with Timer-CVB3. Time lapse photography of partially differentiated NPSCs infected with Timer-CVB3 revealed substantial intracellular membrane remodeling and the assembly of discrete virus replication organelles which changed fluorescence color in an asynchronous fashion within the cell. “Fluorescent timer” protein colocalized closely with viral 3A protein within virus replication organelles. Intriguingly, infection of partially differentiated NPSCs or C2C12 myoblast cells induced the release of abundant extracellular microvesicles (EMVs) containing matured “fluorescent timer” protein and infectious virus representing a novel route of virus dissemination. CVB3 virions were readily observed within purified EMVs by transmission electron microscopy, and infectious virus was identified within low-density isopycnic iodixanol gradient fractions consistent with membrane association. The preferential detection of the lipidated form of LC3 protein (LC3 II) in released EMVs harboring infectious virus suggests that the autophagy pathway plays a crucial role in microvesicle shedding and virus release, similar to a process previously described as autophagosome-mediated exit without lysis (AWOL) observed during poliovirus replication. Through the use of this novel recombinant virus which provides more dynamic information from static fluorescent images, we hope to gain a better understanding of CVB3 tropism, intracellular membrane reorganization, and virus-associated microvesicle dissemination within the host.
The neurobiology, diagnosis, and treatment of narcolepsy

Narcolepsy is a common cause of chronic sleepiness distinguished by intrusions into wakefulness of physiological aspects of rapid eye movement sleep such as cataplexy and hallucinations. Recent advances provide compelling evidence that narcolepsy may be a neurodegenerative or autoimmune disorder resulting in a loss of hypothalamic neurons containing the neuropeptide orexin (also known as hypocretin). Because orexin promotes wakefulness and inhibits rapid eye movement sleep, its absence may permit inappropriate transitions between wakefulness and sleep. These discoveries have considerably improved our understanding of the neurobiology of sleep and should foster the development of rational treatments for a variety of sleep disorders. Ann Neurol 2003
The Dual Effect of Economic Development on Trust in the Central Government: Evidence from Two Waves of a National Survey in China*

Abstract:Using individual-level survey data while incorporating county/district-level information on per capita gross domestic product, this study finds that economic development in China has a dual effect on popular trust in the central government. First, positive individual-level perception of family economic conditions (compared to the past) increases trust in central government. Second, county/district-level per capita GDP is negatively correlated with individual-level trust in the central government. Methodologically, the article suggests that researchers may conduct contextualized thought experiment to establish logical priority of one event over another, particularly when it is impractical to empirically determine the temporal sequence of phenomena that are observed simultaneously in cross-sectional surveys. The article also suggests that China scholars may employ cross-region comparison as a substitute for longitudinal research when it comes to projecting long-term effects of quantitatively traceable changes such as economic development.