Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Engineering the embryo

Generation of transgenic mice by pronuclear DNA injection into fertilized eggs has been well-established for over 30 y (1). However, it remains a rather crude approach: injected sequences randomly insert as concatamers, they can be mutagenic, and they have variable expression depending on the site of integration, a phenomenon called position effects. In PNAS, Tasic et al. (2) report that pronuclear injection of PhiC31 integrase can catalyze site-specific integration of single-copy transgenes in up to 40% of live pups. This approach can reduce variability because of position effects and provide improved control over transgene expression. This and other recent reports of site-specific integration in zygotes (2–6) reveal additional possibilities for targeted transgenesis in mice and species where ES cells are not available.
On the fictitious play and channel selection games

Considering the interaction through mutual interference of the different radio devices, the channel selection (CS) problem in decentralized parallel multiple access channels can be modeled by strategic-form games. Here, we show that the CS problem is a potential game (PG) and thus the fictitious play (FP) converges to a Nash equilibrium (NE) either in pure or mixed strategies. Using a 2-player 2-channel game, it is shown that convergence in mixed strategies might lead to cycles of action profiles which lead to individual spectral efficiencies (SE) which are worse than the SE at the worst NE in mixed and pure strategies. Finally, exploiting the fact that the CS problem is a PG and an aggregation game, we present a method to implement FP with local information and minimum feedback.
High‐resolution digital brain atlases: a Hubble telescope for the brain

We describe implementation of a method for digitizing at microscopic resolution brain tissue sections containing normal and experimental data and for making the content readily accessible online. Web‐accessible brain atlases and virtual microscopes for online examination can be developed using existing computer and internet technologies. Resulting databases, made up of hierarchically organized, multiresolution images, enable rapid, seamless navigation through the vast image datasets generated by high‐resolution scanning. Tools for visualization and annotation of virtual microscope slides enable remote and universal data sharing. Interactive visualization of a complete series of brain sections digitized at subneuronal levels of resolution offers fine grain and large‐scale localization and quantification of many aspects of neural organization and structure. The method is straightforward and replicable; it can increase accessibility and facilitate sharing of neuroanatomical data. It provides an opportunity for capturing and preserving irreplaceable, archival neurohistological collections and making them available to all scientists in perpetuity, if resources could be obtained from hitherto uninterested agencies of scientific support.
Energy proportionality in near-threshold computing servers and cloud data centers: Consolidating or Not?

Cloud Computing aims to efficiently tackle the increasing demand of computing resources, and its popularity has led to a dramatic increase in the number of computing servers and data centers worldwide. However, as effect of post-Dennard scaling, computing servers have become power-limited, and new system-level approaches must be used to improve their energy efficiency. This paper first presents an accurate power modelling characterization for a new server architecture based on the FD-SOI process technology for near-threshold computing (NTC). Then, we explore the existing energy vs. performance trade-offs when virtualized applications with different CPU utilization and memory footprint characteristics are executed. Finally, based on this analysis, we propose a novel dynamic virtual machine (VM) allocation method that exploits the knowledge of VMs characteristics together with our accurate server power model for next-generation NTC-based data centers, while guaranteeing quality of service (QoS) requirements. Our results demonstrate the inefficiency of current workload consolidation techniques for new NTC-based data center designs, and how our proposed method provides up to 45% energy savings when compared to state-of-the-art consolidation-based approaches.
Grain size mapping in shallow rivers using spectral information: a lab spectroradiometry perspective

Every individual attribute of a riverine environment defines the overall spectral signature to be observed by an optical sensor. The spectral characteristic of riverbed is influenced not only by the type but also the roughness of substrates. Motivated by this assumption, potential of optical imagery for mapping grain size of shallow rivers (< 1 m deep) is examined in this research. The previous studies concerned with grain size mapping are all built upon the texture analysis of exposed bed material using very high resolution (i.e. cm resolution) imagery. However, the application of texturebased techniques is limited to very low altitude sensors (e.g. UAVs) to ensure the sufficient spatial resolution. Moreover, these techniques are applicable only in the presence of exposed substrates along the river channel. To address these drawbacks, this study examines the effectiveness of spectral information to make distinction among grain sizes for submerged substrates. Spectroscopic experiments are performed in controlled condition of a hydraulic lab. The spectra are collected over a water flume in a range of water depths and bottoms with several grain sizes. A spectral convolution is performed to match the spectra to WorldView-2 spectral bands. The material type of substrates is considered the same for all the experiments with only variable roughness/size of grains. The spectra observed over dry beds revealed that the brightness/reflectance increases with the grain size across all the spectral bands. Based on this finding, the above-water spectra over a river channel are simulated considering different grain sizes in the bottom. A water column correction method is then used to retrieve the bottom reflectances. Then the inferred bottom reflectances are clustered to segregate among grain sizes. The results indicate high potential of the spectral approach for clustering grain sizes (overall accuracy of 92%) which opens up some horizons for mapping this valuable attribute of rivers using remotely sensed data.
Dual Quaternion

As we know, quaternions are very efficient for representing rotations with clear geometric meaning (rotation axis and angle) and only one redundancy. Unfortunately, they do not handle translations, which meanwhile can be made multiplicative along with rotations via the use of homogeneous coordinates. Despite also being 4-tuples, homogeneous coordinates are algebraically incompatible with quaternions. In 1873, dual quaternions were introduced by William Kingdom Clifford [1] in an effort to combine rotations and translations while retaining the benefits of the quaternion representation of rotations.
In Praise of a Model but Not Its Conclusions: Commentary on Cooper, Catmur, and Heyes (2012)

Cooper et al. (this issue) develop an interactive activation model of spatial and imitative compatibilities that simulates the key results from Catmur and Heyes (2011) and thus conclude that both compatibilities are mediated by the same processes since their single model can predict all the results. Although the model is impressive, the conclusions are premature because they are based on an incomplete review of the relevant literature and because the model includes some questionable assumptions. Moreover, a competing model (Scheutz & Bertenthal, 2012) is introduced that suggests the two compatibilities are not mediated by the same processes. We propose that more research is necessary before concluding that spatial and imitative compatibilities are mediated by the same processes.
A yttrium aluminosilicate glass fiber with graded refractive index fabricated by melt‐in‐tube method

A graded-index fiber with yttrium aluminosilicate (YAS) glass core was fabricated by a “Melt-in-Tube” method. The refractive index and stress profiles of the fibers exhibit a highly symmetrical gradient tendency along the radial axis which is in accordance with the results of element migration. Based on the formation mechanism of YAS glass core, the relationships between the refractive index/stress profile and the spontaneous migration are discussed. A linear all-fiber laser based on the obtained fiber shows a laser output threshold of 11.48 mW and slope efficiency of 8.3%. The near-field beam intensity distribution of fiber laser with spectrum FWHM of 0.24nm indicates the good laser beam quality. The facile “Melt-in-tube” method was proved to be reliable in designing graded-index fiber through the dissolution and diffusion process, which is more advanced than commonly used “Rod-in-tube” method. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Stabilizing membrane domains antagonizes n-alcohol anesthesia

Diverse molecules induce general anesthesia with potency strongly correlated both with their hydrophobicity and their effects on certain ion channels. We recently observed that several n-alcohol anesthetics inhibit heterogeneity in plasma membrane derived vesicles by lowering the critical temperature (Tc) for phase separation. Here we exploit conditions that stabilize membrane heterogeneity to further test the correlation between the anesthetic potency of n-alcohols and effects on Tc. First we show that hexadecanol acts oppositely to n-alcohol anesthetics on membrane mixing and antagonizes ethanol induced anesthesia in a tadpole behavioral assay. Second, we show that two previously described ‘intoxication reversers’ raise Tc and counter ethanol’s effects in vesicles, mimicking the findings of previous electrophysiological and behavioral measurements. Third, we find that hydrostatic pressure, long known to reverse anesthesia, also raises Tc in vesicles with a magnitude that counters the effect of butanol at relevant concentrations and pressures. Taken together, these results demonstrate that ∆Tc predicts anesthetic potency for n-alcohols better than hydrophobicity in a range of contexts, supporting a mechanistic role for membrane heterogeneity in general anesthesia. INTRODUCTION The potencies of many general anesthetics are roughly proportional to their oil:water partition coefficient over more than five orders of magnitude in overall concentration (1). This Meyer-Overton correlation suggests membrane involvement, and anesthetics have been shown to decrease lipid chain ordering, lower the main chain melting temperature, and increase membrane spontaneous curvature, fluidity, and conductance (2–4). However, these effects are small (5) and often cannot account for those molecules which deviate from Meyer-Overton (6). Most recent attention focuses on the ion channels known to be most sensitive to these compounds (7), where extensive structural work (8–10) suggests that anesthetic effects are mediated by specific residues in hydrophobic, membrane spanning regions. High potency general anesthetics such as etomidate and barbiturates are more effective at potentiating channels and producing anesthesia than predicted from their hydrophobicity alone, and evidence is accumulating that these compounds bind directly and specifically to channels at the interface between subunits (11). Many researchers also favor a direct binding mechanism of anesthetic action for lower potency anesthetics, including the n-alcohol anesthetics investigated here (8). However, channels are proposed to contain more numerous binding sites for these compounds (11–13), each with low affinity, leaving open the possibility that these anesthetics interact with channels more as a solvent than as a ligand.
Factors involved in white‐to‐brown adipose tissue conversion and in thermogenesis: a review

Obesity is the result of energy intake chronically exceeding energy expenditure. Classical treatments against obesity do not provide a satisfactory long‐term outcome for the majority of patients. After the demonstration of functional brown adipose tissue in human adults, great effort is being devoted to develop therapies based on the adipose tissue itself, through the conversion of fat‐accumulating white adipose tissue into energy‐dissipating brown adipose tissue. Anti‐obesity treatments that exploit endogenous, pharmacological and nutritional factors to drive such conversion are especially in demand. In the present review, we summarize the current knowledge about the various molecules that can be applied in promoting white‐to‐brown adipose tissue conversion and energy expenditure and the cellular mechanisms involved.
Constructive Disjunction in Oz

Constraint programming has been proved as an excellent tool to solve combinatori-al problems in many application areas. Through constraint propagation large parts of the search space can be pruned away. Hard problems are those which involve disjunc-tive constraints introducing non-determinism. While the introduction of choice-points for disjunctive constraints may lead to combinatorial explosion, other approaches only check whether the disjunction can still be satissed. Constructive disjunction instead lifts common information of alternatives up and thus allows other parts of the computation to beneet from this extra information. This form of propagation improves pruning of search spaces for certain classes of problems, such as scheduling, time tabling and the like, enormously. We present how to realize constructive disjunction for nite domain constraints without local computation spaces in the concurrent constraint language Oz. The implementation is achieved with minimal eeort reusing existing concepts. Our implementation scheme is suited for other constraint systems based on arc-consistency algorithms too.
Modeling Perceived Screen Resolution Based on Position and Orientation of Wrist-Worn Devices

This paper presents a model allowing inferences of perceivable screen content in relation to position and orientation of mobile or wearable devices with respect to their user. The model is based on findings from vision science and allows prediction of a value of effective resolution that can be perceived by a user. It considers distance and angle between the device and the eyes of the observer as well as the resulting retinal eccentricity when the device is not directly focused but observed in the periphery. To validate our model, we conducted a study with 12 participants. Based on our results, we outline implications for the design of mobile applications that are able to adapt themselves to facilitate information throughput and usability.
Investigating the Role of an Overview Device in Multi-Device Collaboration

The availability of mobile device ecologies enables new types of ad-hoc co-located decision-making and sensemaking practices in which people find, collect, discuss, and share information. However, little is known about what kind of device configurations are suitable for these types of tasks. This paper contributes new insights into how people use configurations of devices for one representative example task: collaborative co-located trip-planning. We present an empirical study that explores and compares three strategies to use multiple devices: no-overview, overview on own device, and a separate overview device. The results show that the overview facilitated decision- and sensemaking during a collaborative trip-planning task by aiding groups to iterate their itinerary, organize locations and timings efficiently, and discover new insights. Groups shared and discussed more opinions, resulting in more democratic decision-making. Groups provided with a separate overview device engaged more frequently and spent more time in closely-coupled collaboration.
Human Behavioural Ecology

Human behavioural ecology (HBE) can be defined as the evolutionary ecology of human behaviour. Its central focus is how the behaviour of modern humans reflects our species’ history of natural selection. The field has grown rapidly over the last twenty years, in anthropology and other social and behavioural sciences. It passes under many names, including Darwinian (or evolutionary) anthropology, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary biological anthropology, human ethology, sociobiology, socioecology and biosocial (or biocultural) science. Most researchers generally shun using the controversial term sociobiology, for three reasons: the inaccurate equation of sociobiology with kin selection (which is but one of its models), the general but erroneous view that sociobiologists see behaviour as genetically determined, and to distance themselves from popular but highly speculative works under that label.
Obesity and Hormonal Abnormalities

Obesity is associated with multiple alterations in the endocrine system, including abnormal circulating blood hormone concentrations, which can be due to changes in the pattern of their secretion and/or metabolism, altered hormone transport and/or action at the level of target tissues. In recent years a great stimulus in both basic and clinical research has, on one hand, produced a great deal of knowledge on the pathophysiology of obesity, and, on the other, led to the discovery of new hormones, such as leptin (1) and orexins (2). This chapter reviews the main alterations in the classic endocrine systems, specifically those related to the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis, the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor 1 (GH/IGF-1) axis, and the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis. The discussion will focus on human endocrinology, and animal studies will be referred to only when relevant to the organization of current knowledge. Several other endocrine systems will not be discussed, and readers are referred to extensive recent reviews in the field (3,4). The recent discovery of the product of the ob gene, leptin, has pointed to the role of adipose tissue as an endocrine organ, capable of interacting with the central nervous system and other peripheral tissues by an integrated network, mainly devoted to the regulation of the energy balance and fuel stores. The impressive growth of knowledge that has followed the discovery of leptin in 1996 is under continuous investigation. Other chapters of this book review this exciting topic, which will probably radically modify our clinical and therapeutic approach to obesity and related metabolic disorders in the next few years.
Support for Non-Null Types in Java

We implemented support for non-null types in Java according to the description in [1]. We built our implementation on top of the Polyglot Java compiler as a language extension. Our extension allows programmers to provide annotations specifying whether a variable is allowed to ever take on a null value and provides an augmented type system to enforce these guarantees. Once the separation between non-null and possibly null types is enforced, it is straightforward to modify Java’s typechecking rules to ensure possibly null variables are never used in an unsafe manner, such as dereferencing. In addition to improving software reliability, preventing null-related errors at compile time improves efficiency as superfluous runtime checks can be removed. A complication exists in that Java allows access to partially initialized objects during construction whose fields may not obey their nullity annotations. We address this issue by making special considerations for such “raw” types in a manner similar to the approach of Fähndrich and Leino. Nullity and rawness properties must be manually specified by programmers, but only about 5% of lines require annotations [1].
Cross-Sectional Examination of Crystallinity of Carbon Fibers by Transmission Electron Microscopy

Carbon fibers are attractive light structural materials especially for the aerospace industry due to their distinguished advantages such as low density, high specific tensile modulus and strength. [1] Within the fiber, although the graphite structure layers primarily align along the fiber axis, the stacking of these layers along the transverse direction produces complicated domain structures with different size and orientation, and the properties of the fiber are influenced by the crystallinity status. The aim of this work is to examine the crystallinity in the cross-section of the carbon fibers by transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
Genistein Can Mitigate the Effect of Radiation on Rat Lung Tissue

Abstract We investigated whether genistein could protect the lung from radiation-induced injury. We hypothesized that genistein would reduce the levels of inflammatory cytokines and ROS after irradiation and therefore lead to reduced DNA damage and functional deficits. Whole lungs of Sprague-Dawley rats were irradiated with 18 Gy at ∼0.5 Gy/min. At 28 weeks a micronucleus assay was used to examine DNA damage and, using immunohistochemical analysis, expression of IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α and TGF-β, macrophage activation, oxidative stress (8-OHdG) and collagen levels were measured. A TBARS assay was used to measure the level of malondialdehyde. Functional damage was assessed by measuring the breathing rate of the rats over the course of the experiment. The increase in breathing rate after irradiation was damped in rats receiving genistein during the phase of pneumonitis (6–10 weeks), and there was a 50–80-day delay in lethality in this group. Genistein treatment also decreased the levels of the inflammatory cytokines TNF-α, IL-1β and TGF-β and led to a reduction in collagen content, a reduction in 8-OHdG levels, and complete protection against DNA damage measured in surviving rats at 28 weeks after irradiation. These results demonstrates that genistein treatment can provide partial protection against the early (pneumonitis) effects of lung irradiation and reduce the extent of fibrosis, although not sufficiently to prevent lethality at the radiation dose used in this study.
BioFidget Demo: Biofeedback for Respiration Training Using an Augmented Fidget Spinner

This demonstration presents BioFidget, a biofeedback system that integrates physiological sensing and display into a smart fidget spinner for respiration training. We present a simple yet novel hardware design that transforms a fidget spinner into 1) a nonintrusive heart rate variability (HRV) sensor, 2) an electromechanical respiration sensor, and 3) an information display. The combination of these features enables users to engage in respiration training through designed tangible and embodied interactions, without requiring them to wear additional physiological sensors. The results of this empirical user study prove that the respiration training method reduces stress, and the proposed system meets the requirements of sensing validity and engagement with 32 participants in a practical setting.