Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pvr expression regulators in equilibrium signal control and maintenance of Drosophila blood progenitors

Blood progenitors within the lymph gland, a larval organ that supports hematopoiesis in Drosophila melanogaster, are maintained by integrating signals emanating from niche-like cells and those from differentiating blood cells. We term the signal from differentiating cells the ‘equilibrium signal’ in order to distinguish it from the ‘niche signal’. Earlier we showed that equilibrium signaling utilizes Pvr (the Drosophila PDGF/VEGF receptor), STAT92E, and adenosine deaminase-related growth factor A (ADGF-A) (Mondal et al., 2011). Little is known about how this signal initiates during hematopoietic development. To identify new genes involved in lymph gland blood progenitor maintenance, particularly those involved in equilibrium signaling, we performed a genetic screen that identified bip1 (bric à brac interacting protein 1) and Nucleoporin 98 (Nup98) as additional regulators of the equilibrium signal. We show that the products of these genes along with the Bip1-interacting protein RpS8 (Ribosomal protein S8) are required for the proper expression of Pvr. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.03626. 001
A Survey on Opportunistic Routing Protocols

Opportunistic routing (OR) is a recent routing technique for wireless multihop networks. It exploits the broadcast nature of wireless medium which is not utilized by traditional routing. The important features of OR is selection of forwarding nodes and co-ordination among the nodes to deliver the packets to their destination. Therefore, OR works well in wireless multihop networks with higher node density such as mesh or sensor networks. OR enables multiple paths and dynamic relay selection, thus it obtains higher link reliability and larger transmission range. This paper reviews some of the OR protocols.
miR-146a–Mediated Extracellular Matrix Protein Production in Chronic Diabetes Complications

OBJECTIVE microRNAs (miRNAs), through transcriptional regulation, modulate several cellular processes. In diabetes, increased extracellular matrix protein fibronectin (FN) production is known to occur through histone acetylator p300. Here, we investigated the role of miR-146a, an FN-targeting miRNA, on FN production in diabetes and its relationship with p300. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS miR-146a expressions were measured in endothelial cells from large vessels and retinal microvessels in various glucose levels. FN messenger RNA expression and protein levels with or without miR-146a mimic or antagomir transfection were examined. A luciferase assay was performed to detect miR-146a’s binding to FN 3′–untranslated region (UTR). Likewise, retinas from type 1 diabetic rats were studied with or without an intravitreal injection of miR-146a mimic. In situ hybridization was used to localize retinal miR-146a. Cardiac and renal tissues were analyzed from type 1 and type 2 diabetic animals. RESULTS A total of 25 mmol/L glucose decreased miR-146a expression and increased FN expression compared with 5 mmol/L glucose in both cell types. miR-146a mimic transfection prevented such change, whereas miR-146a antagomir transfection in the cells in 5 mmol/L glucose caused FN upregulation. A luciferase assay confirmed miR-146a’s binding to FN 3′-UTR. miR-146a was localized in the retinal endothelial cells and was decreased in diabetes. Intravitreal miR-146a mimic injection restored retinal miR-146a and decreased FN in diabetes. Additional experiments showed that p300 regulates miR-146a. Similar changes were seen in the retinas, kidneys, and hearts in type 1 and type 2 diabetic animals. CONCLUSIONS These studies showed a novel, glucose-induced molecular mechanism in which miR-146a participates in the transcriptional circuitry regulating extracellular matrix protein production in diabetes.
Understanding and Addressing the Stigma in Mental Health Within the Asian and Asian-American Culture

Mental health stigma can be defined as the display of negative attitudes, based on prejudice and misinformation, in response to a marker of illness. Stigma creates mental distress for individuals, which furthers stigmatizing attitudes, thereby making it a relentless force and as incompetent in achieving life goals such as living independently or having a good job. Over the years, researchers have consistently highlighted the problem of mental health service underutilization within the Asians and Asian-Americans communities. As such, understanding the cultural contexts that facilitate good outcomes may offer a lever or stigma reduction. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to understand and address the sociocultural and psychological paradigms of the stigma in mental health within Asians and Asian-Americans. This chapter will cover the history of stigma within the Asian culture, Asian's mental health, mental health services utilization within the Asian culture, and methods of addressing the stigma within the Asian culture to promote the utilization of mental health services.
Disk scheduling in a multimedia I/O system

This article provides a retrospective of our original paper by the same title in the Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Multimedia, published in 1993. This article examines the problem of disk scheduling in a multimedia I/O system. In a multimedia server, the disk requests may have constant data rate requirements and need guaranteed service. We propose a new scheduling algorithm, SCAN-EDF, that combines the features of SCAN type of seek optimizing algorithm with an Earliest Deadline First (EDF) type of real-time scheduling algorithm. We compare SCAN-EDF with other scheduling strategies and show that SCAN-EDF combines the best features of both SCAN and EDF. We also investigate the impact of buffer space on the maximum number of video streams that can be supported.We show that by making the deadlines larger than the request periods, a larger number of streams can be supported.We also describe how we extended the SCAN-EDF algorithm in the PRISM multimedia architecture. PRISM is an integrated multimedia server, designed to satisfy the QOS requirements of multiple classes of requests. Our experience in implementing the extended SCAN-EDF algorithm in a generic operating system is discussed and performance metrics and results are presented to illustrate how the SCAN-EDF extensions and implementation strategies have succeeded in meeting the QOS requirements of different classes of requests.
Repeated Small Perturbation Approach Reveals Transcriptomic Steady States

The study of biological systems dynamics requires elucidation of the transitions of steady states. A “small perturbation” approach can provide important information on the “steady state” of a biological system. In our experiments, small perturbations were generated by applying a series of repeating small doses of ultraviolet radiation to a human keratinocyte cell line, HaCaT. The biological response was assessed by monitoring the gene expression profiles using cDNA microarrays. Repeated small doses (10 J/m2) of ultraviolet B (UVB) exposure modulated the expression profiles of two groups of genes in opposite directions. The genes that were up-regulated have functions mainly associated with anti-proliferation/anti-mitogenesis/apoptosis, and the genes that were down-regulated were mainly related to proliferation/mitogenesis/anti-apoptosis. For both groups of genes, repetition of the small doses of UVB caused an immediate response followed by relaxation between successive small perturbations. This cyclic pattern was suppressed when large doses (233 or 582.5 J/m2) of UVB were applied. Our method and results contribute to a foundation for computational systems biology, which implicitly uses the concept of steady state.
Stratospheric ozone depletion: A review of concepts and history

Stratospheric ozone depletion through catalytic chemistry involving man‐made chlorofluorocarbons is an area of focus in the study of geophysics and one of the global environmental issues of the twentieth century. This review presents a brief history of the science of ozone depletion and describes a conceptual framework to explain the key processes involved, with a focus on chemistry. Observations that may be considered as evidence (fingerprints) of ozone depletion due to chlorofluorocarbons are explored, and the related gas phase and surface chemistry is described. Observations of ozone and of chlorine‐related trace gases near 40 km provide evidence that gas phase chemistry has indeed currently depleted about 10% of the stratospheric ozone there as predicted, and the vertical and horizontal structures of this depletion are fingerprints for that process. More striking changes are observed each austral spring in Antarctica, where about half of the total ozone column is depleted each September, forming the Antarctic ozone hole. Measurements of large amounts of ClO, a key ozone destruction catalyst, are among the fingerprints showing that human releases of chlorofluorocarbons are the primary cause of this change. Enhanced ozone depletion in the Antarctic and Arctic regions is linked to heterogeneous chlorine chemistry that occurs on the surfaces of polar stratospheric clouds at cold temperatures. Observations also show that some of the same heterogeneous chemistry occurs on the surfaces of particles present at midlatitudes as well, and the abundances of these particles are enhanced following explosive volcanic eruptions. The partitioning of chlorine between active forms that destroy ozone and inert reservoirs that sequester it is a central part of the framework for our understanding of the 40‐km ozone decline, the Antarctic ozone hole, the recent Arctic ozone losses in particularly cold years, and the observation of record midlatitude ozone depletion after the major eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the early 1990s. As human use of chlorofluorocarbons continues to decrease, these changes throughout the ozone layer are expected to gradually reverse during the twenty‐first century.
A Method for File Valuation in Information Lifecycle Management

ILM is based on the idea that in an enterprise different information have different values. Valuable information is stored on systems with a high quality of service (QoS). The value changes over time and therefore migration of information is required to cheaper storage systems with a lower QoS. Automated migration makes ILM dynamic. Such automation requires storage systems to understand what files are important at what time so that right policies can be applied. In this point ILM nowadays lacks information valuation methods. This paper looks at how the value of a file can be measured. Different from traditional methods using metadata leading to a classical decimal-value we show how the value can be derived using a probabilistic method. Here the value of a file is calculated from usage information and expressed as a “probability of further use”. This is a new method which allows valuation depending on the future importance of a file. Feasibility of the new method is verified by generating file migration rules for ILM.
3D time-of-flight cameras for mobile robotics

Recently developed 3D time-of-flight cameras have an enormous potential for mobile robotic applications in particular for mapping and navigation tasks. This paper presents a new approach for online adaptation of different camera parameters to environment dynamics. These adaptations allow the usage of state-of-the-art 3D cameras reliably in real world environments and enable capturing of 3D scenes with up to 30 frames per second. The performance of the approach is evaluated with respect to different robotic specific tasks in changing environments. A video, showing the performance of the approach, is available at (S. May, et al., 2006)
Proteome Sampling by the HLA Class I Antigen Processing Pathway

The peptide repertoire that is presented by the set of HLA class I molecules of an individual is formed by the different players of the antigen processing pathway and the stringent binding environment of the HLA class I molecules. Peptide elution studies have shown that only a subset of the human proteome is sampled by the antigen processing machinery and represented on the cell surface. In our study, we quantified the role of each factor relevant in shaping the HLA class I peptide repertoire by combining peptide elution data, in silico predictions of antigen processing and presentation, and data on gene expression and protein abundance. Our results indicate that gene expression level, protein abundance, and rate of potential binding peptides per protein have a clear impact on sampling probability. Furthermore, once a protein is available for the antigen processing machinery in sufficient amounts, C-terminal processing efficiency and binding affinity to the HLA class I molecule determine the identity of the presented peptides. Having studied the impact of each of these factors separately, we subsequently combined all factors in a logistic regression model in order to quantify their relative impact. This model demonstrated the superiority of protein abundance over gene expression level in predicting sampling probability. Being able to discriminate between sampled and non-sampled proteins to a significant degree, our approach can potentially be used to predict the sampling probability of self proteins and of pathogen-derived proteins, which is of importance for the identification of autoimmune antigens and vaccination targets.
Waveguide Simulation Using the High-Order Symplectic Finite-Difference Time-Domain Scheme

Abstract—The high-order symplectic finite-difference time-domain scheme is applied to modeling and simulation of waveguide structures. First, the perfect electric conductor boundary is treated by the image theory. Second, to excite all possible modes, an efficient source excitation method is proposed. Third, the modified perfectly matched layer is extended to its high-order form for absorbing the evanescent waves. Finally, a high-order scattering parameter extraction technique is developed. The cases of waveguide resonator, waveguide discontinuities, and periodic waveguide structure demonstrate that the high-order symplectic finite-difference time-domain scheme can obtain better numerical results than the traditional finite-difference timedomain method and save computer resources.
Cultural Amenities, Subcultures and Entrepreneurship

Paradoxically, what powers knowledge-based economies is not knowledge. Rather, it is their capacity for creativity. Creativity transforms knowledge into valuable ideas and products, resulting in innovation and entrepreneurial activity. Previous research has stressed the relevance of creativity as a geographically-bounded source of spillovers where the culture provides an important stimulus. However, what specific kind of culture is actually needed and under which conditions it arises, remains both unknown and controversial. A rising stream of research has focused on the amenities offered, such as operas, museums and theaters, and how they affect local creativity and entrepreneurial outcomes – yet, with mixed results. This paper fills this important gap in the literature by positing that rather than mainstream culture it is subcultural life that explains why some places emerge as creative hotspots while others do not. We utilize explorative factor analysis to compare the impact of different proxies measuring subcultural amenities against measures which have traditionally been used to reflect "mainstream" culture on startup rates in German cities. Our findings confirm that the co-presence of subcultural amenities is positively associated to entrepreneurship. By contrast, mainstream culture has no significant impact on local startup rates. These findings make an important contribution to the recent controversy within the regional studies literature and provide insights and guidance for thought leaders in policy and urban planning.
Measuring up Online: The Relationship between Social Presence and Student Learning Satisfaction.

The study examined students' perceptions of social presence in online and face-to-face course environments. Data from surveys of 112 undergraduate students (80 in online, 32 in face-to-face classes) are presented. Statistical tests include t-tests and ordinary least squares regression tests. Students' perceptions of social presence were similar in the online and face-to-face sections, and predicted their learner satisfaction scores. Experience in online courses had a statistically significant effect on online students' perceptions of social presence. Students' social presence scores did not have a significant effect on their learning outcomes, perhaps due to the small amount of variation in learning outcomes.
Differential Susceptibility of Interneurons Expressing Neuropeptide Y or Parvalbumin in the Aged Hippocampus to Acute Seizure Activity

Acute seizure (AS) activity in old age has an increased predisposition for evolving into temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Furthermore, spontaneous seizures and cognitive dysfunction after AS activity are often intense in the aged population than in young adults. This could be due to an increased vulnerability of inhibitory interneurons in the aged hippocampus to AS activity. We investigated this issue by comparing the survival of hippocampal GABA-ergic interneurons that contain the neuropeptide Y (NPY) or the calcium binding protein parvalbumin (PV) between young adult (5-months old) and aged (22-months old) F344 rats at 12 days after three-hours of AS activity. Graded intraperitoneal injections of the kainic acid (KA) induced AS activity and a diazepam injection at 3 hours after the onset terminated AS-activity. Measurement of interneuron numbers in different hippocampal subfields revealed that NPY+ interneurons were relatively resistant to AS activity in the aged hippocampus in comparison to the young adult hippocampus. Whereas, PV+ interneurons were highly susceptible to AS activity in both age groups. However, as aging alone substantially depleted these populations, the aged hippocampus after three-hours of AS activity exhibited 48% reductions in NPY+ interneurons and 70% reductions in PV+ interneurons, in comparison to the young hippocampus after similar AS activity. Thus, AS activity-induced TLE in old age is associated with far fewer hippocampal NPY+ and PV+ interneuron numbers than AS-induced TLE in the young adult age. This discrepancy likely underlies the severe spontaneous seizures and cognitive dysfunction observed in the aged people after AS activity.
High-Performance Soft Decision Algorithm for Bursty Channel Decoding of Reed–Solomon Codes

A novel burst-error correcting algorithm-based ordered-statistics decoding (BC-OSD) is proposed for the Reed–Solomon (RS) decoder. It combines the characteristics of the bursty channel and takes an advantage of the channel information to determine the information set. The multisegment burst error can be decoded, which makes significant improvement on the decoding performance. Moreover, we propose a reduced complexity version of the Gaussian elimination, which can save more than 70% of storage resources that is optimized for efficient hardware implementation. The proposed algorithm can give a coding gain reaching up to 0.95, 0.82, and 0.75 dB compared with reformulated inversionless burst-error correcting algorithm (RiBC), hard-decision decoding (HDD), and BCHDD-LCC algorithm, respectively, when SER is 10−4.
Modal Logic over Higher Dimensional Automata ( extended abstract ) ⋆

Higher dimensional automata (HDA) are a model of concurrency [5, 8] that can express most of the traditional partial order models like Mazurkiewicz traces, pomsets, event structures, or Petri nets. Modal logics, interpreted over Kripke structures, are the logics for reasoning about sequential behavior and interleaved concurrency. Modal logic is a well behaved subset of first-order logic; many variants of modal logic are decidable. However, there are no modal-like logics for the more expressive HDA models. We introduce and develop a modal logic over HDAs which incorporates two modalities for reasoning about “during” and “after”. This general higher dimensional modal logic (HDML) is shown to be decidable and we provide a complete axiomatic system for it. With higher dimensional automata concurrent systems can be modeled at different levels of abstraction, not only as all possible interleavings of their concurrent actions. HDAs can model concurrent systems at any granularity level and make no assumptions about the durations of the actions. Moreover, HDAs are not constrained to only before-after modeling, but represent also the “during”. Work has been done on defining temporal logics over Mazurkiewicz traces [4], and strong results like decidability and expressive completeness are known [7]. For general partial orders, temporal logics usually become undecidable [1]. For the more expressive event structures there are fewer works on modal logics. There is hardly any work on logics for higher dimensional automata and, as far as we know, there is no work on modal logics for HDAs. In practice, modal logics, like temporal logics or dynamic logics, are desirable because they are generally decidable, as opposed to full first-order logic, which is undecidable. That is why we introduce and develop a logic in the style of standard modal logic which has HDAs as models, hence, the name higher dimensional modal logic (HDML). This is our language for talking about general models of concurrent systems. We prove that HDML is decidable using an extension of the filtration technique. We associate to HDML an axiomatic system which is proven to be sound and complete for HDAs. The proof of completeness is rather involved and is based on a constructive method of building the canonical model for a consistent formula. The construction starts with a minimal model and gradually enlarges it using two constructions (for lifting and enriching the model) that may be associated to the two different diamond operators of HDML.
Head Tracking Using a Textured Polygonal Model

We describe the use of a three-dimensional textured model of the human head under perspective projection to track a person’s face. The system is hand-initialized by projecting an image of the face onto a polygonal head model. Tracking is achieved by finding the six translation and rotation parameters to register the rendered images of the textured model with the video images. We find the parameters by mapping the derivative of the error with respect to the parameters to intensity gradients in the image. We use a robust estimator to pool the information and do gradient descent to find an error minimum.