Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ZIP4 silencing improves bone loss in pancreatic cancer

Metabolic bone disorders are associated with several types of human cancers. Pancreatic cancer patients usually suffer from severe nutrition deficiency, muscle wasting, and loss of bone mass. We have previously found that silencing of a zinc transporter ZIP4 prolongs the survival and reduces the severity of the cachexia in vivo. However, the role of ZIP4 in the pancreatic cancer related bone loss remains unknown. In this study we investigated the effect of ZIP4 knockdown on the bone structure, composition and mechanical properties of femurs in an orthotopic xenograft mouse model. Our data showed that silencing of ZIP4 resulted in increased bone tissue mineral density, decreased bone crystallinity and restoration of bone strength through the RANK/RANKL pathway. The results further support the impact of ZIP4 on the progression of pancreatic cancer, and suggest its potential significance as a therapeutic target for treating patients with such devastating disease and cancer related disorders.
Time bounds for periodic hypercube gossiping

Hypercube gossiping facilitates highly efficient data dissemination for a wide range of applications whereat live streaming, not limited to multimedia, marks the periodic exchange of data. Uses of periodic hypercube gossiping range from the estimation of system state vectors, such as object tracking or real-time business intelligence to audio communication. In such real-time applications, the ability to bound latency is of vital importance. Traversal time denotes the multi-hop latency between sending a data packet from a source node of the overlay network and receiving it at the destination node. It depends on the abstract communication complexity of the network topology, the physical properties of the underlay network, and last but not least, the timing mode employed in the algorithmic implementation of the high-level gossiping communication scheme. In this paper, we analyze the magnitude of worst-case latency for periodic gossiping in F1 mode on a binary hypercube overlay network. We show that, due to wait delay caused by data sojourning at intermediate overlay nodes, it is highly dependent on the timing or synchronization of the communication. We present four basic timing modes and derive worst case wait latency and traversal time bounds and compare these analytic measures to results from a simulation with a life-like network delay distribution derived from large-scale latency measurements.
A Comparison Between Specific Autism-Spectrum Disorders According to Clinical and Demographic Factors in Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults

Kanner-type autism and Asperger’s disorder are characterized by deficits in communication, socialization, or both. Little work has been done to compare Kanner-type autism with Asperger’s disorder in terms of demographic and clinical variables. This chart-review study compares Asperger’s syndrome, Kanner-type autism, and Asperger’s syndrome comorbid with other neuropsychiatric disorders. It also compares Kanner-type autism comorbid with other neuropsychiatric disorders, finding that neuropsychiatric comorbidity was common. Overall, there were few differences between groups, but allergies,
Big Data, Thick Mediation, and Representational Opacity

Abstract:In 2008, the phrase "big data" shifted in meaning. It turned from referring to a problem and an opportunity for organizations with very large data sets to being the talisman for an emerging economic and cultural order that is both celebrated and feared for its deep and pervasive effects on the human condition. Economically, the phrase now denotes a data-mediated form of commerce exemplified by Google. Culturally, the phrase stands for a new form of knowledge and knowledge production. In this essay, we explore the connection between these two implicit meanings, considered as dimensions of a real social and scientific transformation with observable properties. We develop three central concepts: the datasphere, thick mediation, and representational opacity. These concepts provide a theoretical framework for making sense of how the economic and cultural dimensions interact to produce a set of effects, problems, and opportunities, not all of which have been addressed by big data's critics and advocates.
Three-Phase Flow Measurement in the Offshore Oil Industry Is There a Place for Process Tomography ?

The problem of how to meter oil/water/gas mixtures is still a significant one in the oil industry. Considerable research has been conducted into the development of a three-phase flowmeter suitable for use in an offshore environment, and a number of commercial instruments are now available. This paper discusses why three phase flow measurement is important, the principal strategies which may be used to meter three-phase flow, and the way in which tomographic imaging techniques can applied to the problem of three-phase flow measurement.
Optimization and Pseudospectra, with Applications to Robust Stability

The $\epsilon$-pseudospectrum of a matrix A is the subset of the complex plane consisting of all eigenvalues of all complex matrices within a distance $\epsilon$ of A. We are interested in two aspects of "optimization and pseudospectra. " The first concerns maximizing the function "real part" over an $\epsilon$-pseudospectrum of a fixed matrix: this defines a function known as the $\epsilon$-pseudospectral abscissa of a matrix. We present a bisection algorithm to compute this function. Our second interest is in minimizing the $\epsilon$-pseudospectral abscissa over a set of feasible matrices. A prerequisite for local optimization of this function is an understanding of its variational properties, the study of which is the main focus of the paper. We show that, in a neighborhood of any nonderogatory matrix, the $\epsilon$-pseudospectral abscissa is a nonsmooth but locally Lipschitz and subdifferentially regular function for sufficiently small $\epsilon$; in fact, it can be expressed locally as the maximum of a finite number of smooth functions. Along the way we obtain an eigenvalue perturbation result: near a nonderogatory matrix, the eigenvalues satisfy a Holder continuity property on matrix space---a property that is well known when only a single perturbation parameter is considered. The pseudospectral abscissa is a powerful modeling tool: not only is it a robust measure of stability, but it also reveals the transient (as opposed to asymptotic) behavior of associated dynamical systems.
An Efficient Solar Energy Harvester for Wireless Sensor Nodes

Solar harvesting circuits have been recently proposed to increase the autonomy of embedded systems. One key design challenge is how to optimize the efficiency of solar energy collection under non stationary light conditions. This paper proposes a scavenger that exploits miniaturized photovoltaic modules to perform automatic maximum power point tracking at a minimum energy cost. The system adjusts dynamically to the light intensity variations and its measured power consumption is less than 1 mW. Experimental results show increments of global efficiency up to 80%, diverging from ideal situation by less than 10%, and demonstrate the flexibility and the robustness of our approach.
l-Arginine Reverses p47phox and gp91phox Expression Induced by High Salt in Dahl Rats

Abstract—Derangements in the production and degradation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as well as nitric oxide (NO) have been implicated in cardiovascular diseases. We explored how supplementation with l-arginine, an NO synthase substrate, restores such derangements of ROS/NO systems in Dahl salt-sensitive, hypertensive (DS) rats. We detected an increase of NADPH oxidase activity, a key enzyme that produces superoxide, in the membrane fraction of the renal cortex derived from DS rats loaded with high salt for 4 weeks; high salt loading also remarkably increased urinary H2O2, 8-isoprostane, and thromboxane B2 excretion and decreased plasma NO end products. These changes from high salt loading were counteracted by oral l-arginine supplementation. We further examined expression patterns of NADPH oxidase subunits in renal cortex derived from these animals. High salt loading increased gp91phox and p47phox but not p22phox or Rac1 or mRNA abundance, which were counteracted with l-arginine supplementation. Western blot analyses after subcellular fractionation revealed that l-arginine supplementation distinctly decreases membrane localization of p47phox protein, as it decreases total expression of Rac1 protein in DS rats with high salt loading. These results disclose that high salt loading causes a deficiency in available l-arginine amounts for NO synthases and induces NADPH oxidase activation in the renal cortex of DS rats, which l-arginine supplementation markedly restores. Since superoxide rapidly eliminates NO, which inhibits sodium reabsorption in the cortical collecting duct, superoxide production caused by upregulated NADPH oxidase activity in the renal cortex of high salt–loaded DS rats may accelerate sodium reabsorption and hypertension.
STUDY OF GLYCATED HEMOGLOBIN , SIALIC ACID AND LIPID PROFILE IN NON DIABETIC MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION PATIENTS

Background: Myocardial infarction is one of the commonest diagnosis in hospitalized patients and one of the leading causes of death in industrialized countries. Stress hyperglycemia in non diabetic subjects has important cardiovascular implications. High Sialic acid levels in serum of patients with myocardial infarction indicates not only the disease severity but also prognosis. Aim: To evaluate the relationship between Glycated haemoglobin, Sialic acid and lipid profile in myocardial infarction patients in the local population. Materials and methods: A total of 100 subjects comprising of 50 non diabetic myocardial infarction patients as cases and 50 age matched healthy people as controls were evaluated for Glycated hemoglobin, Sialic acid and lipid profile. Results: Significant association was found between Glycated haemoglobin, Sialic acid and lipid profile in non diabetic myocardial infarction patients with respect to controls. Conclusions: These newer parameters in conjunction with traditional markers like lipid profile will help to better characterize the disease risk and progression. However more studies with greater sample size need to be done in this regard.
Clustering Data Without Distance Functions

Data mining is being applied with profit in many applications . Clustering or segmentation of data is an important data mining application. One of the problems with traditional clustering methods is that they require the analyst to define distance functions that are not always available. In this paper, we describe a new method for clustering without distance functions.
PERCEPTION OF SMILED FRENCH SPEECH BY NATIVE VS. NON- NATIVE LISTENERS: A PILOT STUDY

Smiling is a visible expression and it has been shown that it is audible too (Tartter [5], Tartter and Braun [6], Schroder et al. [4], Auberge and Cathiard [1]). The aim of this paper is to investigate the perception of the prosody of smile in 2 different languages. In order to elicitate smi led speech, 6 speakers of Quebec French were required to read sentences displayed with or without caricatures. The sentences produced were used as stimuli for a perception test administered to 10 listeners of Quebec French and 10 listeners of German who had no knowledge of French. Results suggest that some prosodic cues are universals and others are culture specific.
How Does Treatment Self-Selection Affect Inferences About Political Communication?

Abstract Ecological validity is vital to experimental research because designs that are too artificial may not speak to any real-world political phenomenon. One such concern is treatment of self-selection: if individuals in the real-world self-select treatments, such as political communications, how well does the sample average treatment effect estimate the effects of message exposure for those individuals who would—if given the choice—opt-in to and out of receiving treatment? This study shows that randomization masks effect heterogeneity between individuals who would select different messages if given the choice. Yet, such selections are themselves complex, revealing additional challenges for realistically studying treatments prone to self-selection. The evidence of effect heterogeneity raises questions about the appropriateness of random assignment experiments for studying political communication and the results more broadly advance our understanding of citizens’ selection into and responses to communications when, as they often do, have choice over what messages to receive.
ASCA Discovery of Diffuse 6.4 keV Emission near the Sagittarius C Complex: A New X-Ray Reflection Nebula

We present an ASCA discovery of diffuse hard X-ray emission from the Sgr C complex with its peak in the vicinity of the molecular cloud core. The X-ray spectrum is characterized by a strong 6.4 keV line and large absorption. These properties suggest that Sgr C is a new X-ray reflection nebula that emits fluorescent and scattered X-rays via irradiation from an external X-ray source. We found no adequately bright source in the immediate Sgr C vicinity to fully account for the fluorescence. The irradiating source may be the Galactic nucleus Sgr A*, which was brighter in the past than it is now, as is suggested from observations of the first X-ray reflection nebula Sgr B2.
Multi-Layered Channel Patterning by Local Heating of Hydrogels

In this letter, we conducted a new method to fabricate channels inside cell structures for tissue engineering applications. A cell-embedded hydrogel is locally melted to fabricate channels inside cell structures. The fabricated channels can be used as vascular-like networks to supply nutrition and oxygen to cells, or patterning another types of cells inside the cell structures. Microelectrodes were prepared as heaters on a glass substrate by photolithography techniques. The channel patterning was conducted using the microelectrodes. The channel width and height are controlled by the heating duration when the applied voltage to the microelectrodes is constant. The multi-layered channel fabrication was achieved by repeating melting-filling hydrogel. Patterning of different cell types in hydrogel was conducted using liver cells and fibroblast cells. The proposed method can fabricate vascular-like channels in cell structures to achieve in vitro 3-D co-culture cell systems.
An exploration of the associations among internet use, depression, anxiety and stress among youths

The aim of present study was to investigate relationships between problematic internet use and depression, anxiety and stress, and to determine the predictive strength of problematic internet use on depression, anxiety and stress. Research group of the study was composed of 543 university students (154 male and 378 female). The age of university students including research group differed between 17 and 28, the mean age was 18.49 ( SD = 1.06). In current study, Problematic Internet Use Scale, Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale and personal data form developed by researchers were used as measures. Research results indicated that there were significant associations between problematic internet use and depression, anxiety and stress. As a consequence of regression results, problematic internet use was a significant predictor of depression, anxiety and stress. The results were discussed in the light of the relevant literature.
Toward Scalable and Proactive Multi-Agent Teams

Teamwork becomes very important in many dynamic, multi-agent environments. A multi-agent team can scale up in at least two ways: the size of the team and the complexity of the problem. In this paper, we tackle these issues through proactive information exchange to improve team effectiveness and communication efficiency, and through dynamic task assignment to improve the flexibility of team formation. We also propose a three-tier communication infrastructure to support efficient and flexible communication among team members. We have done some experiments to demonstrate the advantage of proactive information and dynamic task assignment over teamwork.
Cheating and Anti-Cheating in Gossip-Based Protocol: An Experimental Investigation

During recent years, there has been a rapid growth in deployment of gossip-based protocol in many multicast applications. In a typical gossip-based protocol, each node acts as dual roles of receiver and sender, independently exchanging data with its neighbors to facilitate scalability and resilience. However, most of previous work in this literature seldom considered cheating issue of end users, which is also very important in face of the fact that the mutual cooperation inherently determines overall system performance. In this paper, we investigate the dishonest behaviors in decentralized gossip-based protocol through extensive experimental study. Our original contributions come in two-fold: In the first part of cheating study, we analytically discuss two typical cheating strategies, that is, intentionally increasing subscription requests and untruthfully calculating forwarding probability, and further evaluate their negative impacts. The results indicate that more attention should be paid to defending cheating behaviors in gossip-based protocol. In the second part of anti-cheating study, we propose a receiver-driven measurement mechanism, which evaluates individual forwarding traffic from the perspective of receivers and thus identifies cheating nodes with high incoming/outgoing ratio. Furthermore, we extend our mechanism by introducing reliable factor to further improve its accuracy. The experiments under various conditions show that it performs quite well in case of serious cheating and achieves considerable performance in other cases.
$I_n$-local Johnson-Wilson spectra and their Hopf algebroids

We consider a generalization E(n) of the Johnson-Wilson spectrum E(n) for which E(n) is a local ring with maximal ideal In. We prove that the spectra E(n), E(n) and ( E(n) are Bouseld equivalent. We also show that the Hopf algebroid E(n) E(n) is a free E(n) -module, generalizing a result of Adams and Clarke for KU KU.
Limit Theorems for Markovian Bandwidth-Sharing Networks with Rate Constraints

Bandwidth-sharing networks provide a natural modeling framework for describing the dynamic flow-level interaction among elastic data transfers in computer and communication systems, and can be used to develop traffic pricing/charging mechanisms. At the same time, such models are exciting from an operations research perspective because their analysis requires techniques from stochastic modeling and optimization. In this paper, we develop a framework to approximate bandwidth-sharing networks under the assumption that the number of users as well as the capacities of the system are large, and the assumption that the traffic that each user is allowed to submit is bounded above by some rate, which is standard in practice. We also assume that customers on each route in the network abandon according to exponential patience times. Under Markovian assumptions, we develop fluid and diffusion approximations, which are quite tractable: for most parameter combinations, the invariant distribution is multivariate normal, with mean and diffusion coefficients that can be computed in polynomial time as a function of the size of the network.
Multiscale Shape Analysis and Applications

This paper presents the preliminary version of a tutorial review on multiscale shape analysis and applications in computer vision. The multiscale paradigm has emerged as one of the most powerful concepts in computer vision, meeting applications in virtually all areas. This review includes both linear and nonlinear approaches, presenting an application to the characterization of neural cells CSCC'99 Proc.Pages:5471-5476
Vocal Tract Articulation in Zebra Finches

Background Birdsong and human vocal communication are both complex behaviours which show striking similarities mainly thought to be present in the area of development and learning. Recent studies, however, suggest that there are also parallels in vocal production mechanisms. While it has been long thought that vocal tract filtering, as it occurs in human speech, only plays a minor role in birdsong there is an increasing number of studies indicating the presence of sound filtering mechanisms in bird vocalizations as well. Methodology/Principal Findings Correlating high-speed X-ray cinematographic imaging of singing zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) to song structures we identified beak gape and the expansion of the oropharyngeal-esophageal cavity (OEC) as potential articulators. We subsequently manipulated both structures in an experiment in which we played sound through the vocal tract of dead birds. Comparing acoustic input with acoustic output showed that OEC expansion causes an energy shift towards lower frequencies and an amplitude increase whereas a wide beak gape emphasizes frequencies around 5 kilohertz and above. Conclusion These findings confirm that birds can modulate their song by using vocal tract filtering and demonstrate how OEC and beak gape contribute to this modulation.
QUEPA: QUerying and Exploring a Polystore by Augmentation

Polystore systems (or simply polystores) have been recently proposed to support a common scenario in which enterprise data are stored in a variety of database technologies relying on different data models and languages. Polystores provide a loosely coupled integration of data sources and support the direct access, with the local language, to each specific storage engine to exploit its distinctive features. Given the absence of a global schema, new challenges for accessing data arise in these environments. In fact, it is usually hard to know in advance if a query to a specific data store can be satisfied with data stored elsewhere in the polystore. QUEPA addresses these issues by introducing augmented search and augmented exploration in a polystore, two access methods based on the automatic enrichment of the result of a query over a storage system with related data in the rest of the polystore. These features do not impact on the applications running on top of the polystore and are compatible with the most common database systems. QUEPA implements in this way a lightweight mechanism for data integration in the polystore and operates in a plug-and-play mode, thus reducing the need for ad-hoc configurations and for middleware layers involving standard APIs, unified query languages or shared data models. In our demonstration audience can experience with the augmentation construct by using the native query languages of the database systems available in the polystore.
Performance enhancement for physical layer network coding via mapping diversity

In this work, for the two-way relay channel employing physical layer network coding, mapping diversity is realized via repetitive transmission at the relay. Under time division transmission scheme, the effect of mapping diversity on overall physical layer network coded system performance is investigated and it is shown to attain lower symbol error rates within lower time slots without a change at data rate.