Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visualization of calcium transients controlling orientation of ciliary beat

To image changes in intraciliary Ca controlling ciliary motility, we microinjected Ca Green dextran, a visible wavelength fluorescent Ca indicator, into eggs or two cell stages of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. The embryos developed normally into free-swimming, approximately 0.5 mm cydippid larvae with cells and ciliary comb plates (approximately 100 microns long) loaded with the dye. Comb plates of larvae, like those of adult ctenophores, undergo spontaneous or electrically stimulated reversal of beat direction, triggered by Ca influx through voltage-sensitive Ca channels. Comb plates of larvae loaded with Ca Green dextran emit spontaneous or electrically stimulated fluorescent flashes along the entire length of their cilia, correlated with ciliary reversal. Fluorescence intensity peaks rapidly (34-50 ms), then slowly falls to resting level in approximately 1 s. Electrically stimulated Ca Green emissions often increase in steps to a maximum value near the end of the stimulus pulse train, and slowly decline in 1-2 s. In both spontaneous and electrically stimulated flashes, measurements at multiple sites along a single comb plate show that Ca Green fluorescence rises within 17 ms (1 video field) and to a similar relative extent above resting level from base to tip of the cilia. The decline of fluorescence intensity also begins simultaneously and proceeds at similar rates along the ciliary length. Ca-free sea water reversibly abolishes spontaneous and electrically stimulated Ca Green ciliary emissions as well as reversed beating. Calculations of Ca diffusion from the ciliary base show that Ca must enter the comb plate along the entire length of the ciliary membranes. The voltage-dependent Ca channels mediating changes in beat direction are therefore distributed over the length of the comb plate cilia. The observed rapid and virtually instantaneous Ca signal throughout the intraciliary space may be necessary for reprogramming the pattern of dynein activity responsible for reorientation of the ciliary beat cycle.
SCARAB: A continuous authentication scheme for biomedical application

This paper proposes a continuous authentication scheme for use in remote monitored biomedical devices, such as the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator or for a Pacemaker. In the age of remote monitoring, all your heart data is readily available on the device and is accessible to the doctor over the internet. However, it is possible that in the logged-in state and with the computer left unattended, someone else tries to access your data, or modify the ICD/Pacemaker settings, or perhaps (in future applications) even try to instruct a biomedical device to send a shock to your heart when it was not required. While the first two intrude privacy, the third could be potentially lethal - hence it is not currently in use due to security concerns. The scheme proposed in this paper protects the privacy of the user in the previous two cases, allows for the expansion of the remote monitoring realm to allow for the third case, and also deals with channel attacks, in which instructions or data is modified by an adversary over the channel.
Discretionary calorie intake a priority for obesity prevention: results of rapid participatory approaches in low-income US communities.

BACKGROUND Since resources are limited, selecting the most promising targets for obesity interventions is critical. We examined the relative associations of physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption and 'junk food' consumption with BMI and the prevalence of relevant policies in school, work, food outlets and health-care settings. METHODS We conducted intercept surveys in three low-income, high-minority California communities to assess fruit, vegetable, candy, cookie, salty snacks and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and self-reported height, weight and physical activity. We also assessed relevant policies in selected worksites, schools and health-care settings through key informant interviews. RESULTS Data were collected from 1826 respondents, 21 schools, 40 worksites, 14 health-care settings and 29 food outlets. The average intake of salty snacks, candy, cookies and sugar-sweetened beverages was estimated at 2226 kJ (532 kcal) daily, 88% higher than the US Department of Agriculture/Department of Health and Human Services guidelines recommend. Energy from these sources was more strongly related to BMI than reported physical activity, fruit or vegetable consumption. Policies to promote healthy eating and physical activity were limited in worksites. Fruits and vegetables were less salient than junk food in community food outlets. CONCLUSION Targeting consumption of salty snacks, candy cookies and sugar-sweetened beverages appeared more promising than alternative approaches.
Discrete regional distributions suggest diverse functional roles of calcium channel alpha1 subunits in sperm.

The Ca channels of male germ-line cells are partially characterized, but the molecular properties and subcellular localization of the Ca channels of mature sperm are unknown. Here, we probe rodent sperm with anti-peptide antibodies directed to cytosolic domains of cloned rat brain alpha1A, alpha1C, and alpha1E Ca channel subunits. Each recognizes a 200- to 245-kDa band on immunoblots of whole rat sperm extracts. A smaller ( approximately 110-kDa) alpha1C band also is detected. Confocal fluorescence images of mouse sperm show characteristic patterns of punctate alpha1A-, alpha1C-, and alpha1E-immunoreactivity. For alpha1A, the puncta are larger, less numerous, and more variable in distribution than for alpha1C and alpha1E. They are absent from the acrosomal crescent, but are present elsewhere over the sperm head, often at the apical tip and equatorial segment. They also are found at irregular intervals along both the midpiece and the principal piece of the flagellum. For alpha1C and alpha1E, puncta are dense along dorsal and ventral aspects of the acrosomal cap. For alpha1E but not alpha1C, the remainder of the acrosomal region also is labeled. Neither is found in the postacrosomal region or on the midpiece. Puncta of alpha1C and alpha1E occur at regular intervals each in two parallel rows, at the dorsal and ventral aspects of the proximal segment of the flagellar principal piece. The puncta in these arrays become less abundant and intense in the distal flagellum. These results demonstrate that multiple Ca channel proteins are present in mature sperm and are regionally localized in ways that may give them different regulatory roles.
Inhomogeneity correction using an estimated linear field map

A fast and robust method for correcting magnetic resonance image distortion due to field in homogeneity is proposed and applied to spiral k‐space scanning. The method consists of acquiring a local field map, finding the best fit to a linear map, and using it to deblur the image distortions due to local frequency variations. The linear field map is determined using a maximum likelihood estimator with weights proportional to the pixel intensity. The method requires little additional computation and is robust in low signal regions and near abrupt field changes. Additionally. It can be used in combination with other deblurring methods. The application of this method is illustrated in conjunction with a mura'slice, T2‐weighted, breath‐held spiral scan of the liver.
A New Role of the Mosquito Complement-like Cascade in Male Fertility in Anopheles gambiae

Thioester-containing protein 1 (TEP1) is a key immune factor that determines mosquito resistance to a wide range of pathogens, including malaria parasites. Here we report a new allele-specific function of TEP1 in male fertility. We demonstrate that during spermatogenesis TEP1 binds to and removes damaged cells through the same complement-like cascade that kills malaria parasites in the mosquito midgut. Further, higher fertility rates are mediated by an allele that renders the mosquito susceptible to Plasmodium. By elucidating the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying TEP1 function in spermatogenesis, our study suggests that pleiotropic antagonism between reproduction and immunity may shape resistance of mosquito populations to malaria parasites.
Does local competition increase the coexistence of species in intransitive networks?

Competitive intransitivity, a situation in which species' competitive ranks cannot be listed in a strict hierarchy, promotes species coexistence through "enemy's enemy indirect facilitation. " Theory suggests that intransitivity-mediated coexistence is enhanced when competitive interactions occur at local spatial scales, although this hypothesis has not been thoroughly tested. Here, we use a lattice model to investigate the effect of local vs. global competition on intransitivity-mediated coexistence across a range of species richness values and levels of intransitivity. Our simulations show that local competition can enhance intransitivity-mediated coexistence in the short-term, yet hinder it in the long-term, when compared to global competition. This occurs because local competition slows species disaggregation, allowing weaker competitors to persist longer in the shifting spatial refuges of intransitive networks, enhancing short-term coexistence. Conversely, our simulations show that, in the long-term, local competition traps disaggregated species in unfavorable areas of the competitive arena, where they are excluded by superior competitors. As a result, in the long-term, global intransitive competition allows a greater number of species to coexist than local intransitive competition.
Quintessential inflation on the brane and the relic gravity wave background

Quintessential inflation describes a scenario in which both inflation and dark energy (quintessence) are described by the same scalar field. In conventional braneworld models of quintessential inflation gravitational particle-production is used to reheat the universe. This reheating mechanism is very inefficient and results in an excessive production of gravity waves which violate nucleosynthesis constraints and invalidate the model. We describe a new method of realizing quintessential inflation on the brane in which inflation is followed by 'instant preheating' (Felder, Kofman and Linde 1999). The larger reheating temperature in this model results in a smaller amplitude of relic gravity waves which is consistent with nucleosynthesis bounds. The relic gravity wave background has a 'blue' spectrum at high frequencies and is a generic byproduct of successful quintessential inflation on the brane.
Menopoz: Klimakterik Belirtiler ve Cinsel Doyum Aras›ndaki ‹liflki

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate depression and anxiety levels, climacteric symptoms and sexual satisfaction in naturally occurred and surgically induced postmenopausal women and also the effects of symptoms on the sexual satisfaction. Method: Fifty women (32 natural menopauses and 18 surgical menopauses) attended to this study in Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Pamukkale University. Psychological outcome was measured by using the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D), Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA), Green Climacteric Symptom Scale (GKS) and Golombock Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction (GRISS). Findings: This majority of the group were housewives living in urban parts, and from primary school level of education. HAM-D (7.74(5.70) and HAM-A (14.26(10.16) scores showed that these women suffered from mild depression and anxiety symptoms. Most of the climacteric symptoms were difficulties in concentrating (n:36 72%), feeling tense or nervous (n:31 62%), feeling tired or lacking in energy (n:30 60%); feeling unhappy (n:30 60%); crying spells (n:26 52%), loss of interest in things (n:29 58%), irritability (n:27 54%), hot flashes (n:32 64%), night sweats (n:27 54%), and decrease in sexual desire (n:34 68%). We found a negative correlation between education levels, climacteric symptoms and anorgasmia, sensuality, avoidance scores of GRISS (p 0.05).
Direct Interaction of the NifL Regulatory Protein with the GlnK Signal Transducer Enables the Azotobacter vinelandiiNifL-NifA Regulatory System to Respond to Conditions Replete for Nitrogen*

The Azotobacter vinelandii NifL-NifA regulatory system integrates metabolic signals for redox, energy, and nitrogen status to fine tune regulation of the synthesis of molybdenum nitrogenase. The NifL protein utilizes discrete mechanisms to perceive these signals leading to the formation of a protein-protein complex, which inhibits NifA activity. Whereas redox signaling is mediated via a flavin-containing PAS domain in the N-terminal region of NifL, the nitrogen status is sensed via interaction with PII-like signal transduction proteins and small molecular weight effectors. The nonuridylylated form of the PII-like protein encoded by A. vinelandii glnK (Av GlnK) stimulates NifL to inhibit transcriptional activation by NifA in vitro. Here we demonstrate that the nonmodified form of Av GlnK directly interacts with A. vinelandii NifL and that this interaction is dependent on Mg2+, ATP, and 2-oxoglutarate. Differences were observed in the regulation of the Av GlnK-NifL interaction by 2-oxoglutarate compared with the role of this effector in modulating the interaction of enteric PII-like proteins with their receptors. We also report that the interaction between Av GlnK and NifL is abolished by site-directed substitution of a single amino acid in the T-loop region of Av GlnK and that uridylylation of the conserved tyrosine residue in the T-loop inhibits the interaction. No association was detected between Av GlnK and the N-terminal region of NifL and our results demonstrate that Av GlnK directly interacts with the C-terminal histidine protein kinase-like domain.
A Multi-layered Synergistic Approach to Motion Planning with Complex Goals

This paper describes an approach for solving motion planning problems for mobile robots involving temporal goals. The temporal goals are described over subsets of the workspace (called propositions) using temporal logic. The approach uses an instantiation of a multi-layered synergistic planning framework that has been proposed recently. In this framework, a high-level planner constructs high-level plans using a discrete abstraction of the system, the temporal logic specifications and the low- level exploration information. A low-level sampling-based planner uses the suggested high-level plans and the dynamics of the system to explore the state-space of the system for feasible trajectories satisfying the specification. The construction and exploration of the discrete abstraction are critical issues that affect the overall performance of the approach. A geometry-based approach for constructing the abstraction, and a lazy high-level search technique for its exploration are discussed. The proposed techniques result in computational speedups of close to 10 times over earlier approaches for second-order nonlinear robot models in challenging workspace environments with obstacles and for a variety of temporal logic specifications.
The exploration for the e-commerce protection support system

In recent years, the rapid development of e-commerce brings monetary interests for all participating parties, but some key issues as integrity, transaction security, and commodity security remain and may harm e-commerce. These key issues significantly impede the participants' enthusiasm and motivation involving in e-commerce and also restrict its development. This article analyzes the key issues that may harm the interests of all parties in the e-commerce business using the protection of interests, and presents the plan of establishing an e-commerce protection support system (ECPSS) which can fundamentally resolve the issues.
Physician and Patient Migration to Ambulatory Surgery Centers as a Response to Poor Safety at Hospitals

Recent growth in the number of physician-owned ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and similar specialty hospitals in the U.S. has led to research regarding overutilization of surgical services (Courtemanche and Plotzke (2010), conflicts of interest due to potential of self-referral (Mitchell (2008), Hollingsworth et al. (2010), Jon R. Gabel et al. (2008)), the consequences for healthcare costs (Barro et al. (2006)) and negligible welfare benefits (Weber (2010)). The focus of this study is to examine quality measures of both hospitals, physicians and ownership relationships in the light of recent growth in the number of physicianowned surgery Centers (ASCs). The key questions that we ask are: what role does patient safety at the hospitals play in the choice of practice-setting by the physicians and how does the profit-motive (for doctors with ownership shares) affect this relationship? We exploit the 15-year trend in migration of physicians from hospital outpatient departments (HOPD) to ASC settings. We hypothesize 1) that the migration of physicians and patient referrals is a response to poor safety at the hospital, and 2) that the high quality physicians are more likely to lead the change and therefore, may be at the forefront of this migration. Preliminary results indicate that when hospitals are found to have above-normal rates of unnecessary patient care complications, the likelihood of physician migration increases by as much as 41 percent. Further, we find that high quality physicians are more likely to choose ASCs over HOPDs when referring them for outpatient procedures. Finally, we find that physicians who have an ownership interest in an ASC are significantly more likely than non-owners to respond to poor performance by the hospital where they have been practicing. The magnitude of responses, however, vary across types of ownership arrangements.
Phytochemical Screening & Evaluation of Antimicrobial Activity of Glycyrrhiza Glabra Linn

The present study was undertaken to explore the phytochemical screening & antimicrobial activity of stems of Glycyrrhiza Glabra L. (Leguminaceae). Glycyrrhiza Glabra L. were screened for their antimicrobial activity by agar well diffusion method, standard screening method & disc diffusion method. In the phytochemical screening showed presence of secondary metabolites, flavonides, glycosides & terpenoids. It is also showed potent against almost all the test organism. Study indicate that Glycyrrhiza Glabra has antibacterial, antioxidant, antimalerial, antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory and anti-hyper glycemic properties. Various other effects like antiulcer, antiviral, antihapatotoxic, antifungal and herpes simplex have also been studies. One of the most commonly reported side effects with licorice supplementation is elevated blood pressure.
A comparison of classification approaches for threat detection in CT based baggage screening

Computed Tomography (CT) based baggage security screening systems are of increasing use in transportation security. The ability to automatically identify potential threat item is a key aspect of current research in this area. Here we present a comparison of varying classification approaches for the automated detection of threat objects in cluttered 3D CT imagery from such security screening systems. By combining 3D medical image segmentation techniques with 3D shape classification and retrieval methods we compare five varying final classification stage approaches and present significant performance achievements in the automated detection of specified exemplar items.
Fine-grain distributed shared memory on clusters of workstations

Shared memory, one of the most popular models for programming parallel platforms, is becoming ubiquitous both in low-end workstations and high-end servers. With the advent of low-latency networking hardware, clusters of workstations strive to offer the same processing power as high-end servers for a fraction of the cost. In such environments, shared memory has been limited to page-based systems that control access to shared memory using the memory’s page protection to implement shared memory coherence protocols. Unfortunately, false sharing and fragmentation problems force such systems to resort to weak consistency shared memory models that complicate the shared memory programming model. This thesis studies fine-grain distributed shared memory (FGDSM) systems on networks of workstations to support shared memory and it explores the issues involved in the implementation of FGDSM systems on networks of commodity workstations running commodity operating systems. FGDSM systems rely on fine-grain memory access control to selectively restrict reads and writes to cache-block-sized memory regions. The thesis presents Blizzard, a family of FGDSM systems running on a network of workstations. Blizzard supports the Tempest interface that implements shared memory coherence protocols as user-level libraries. Therefore, application-specific protocols can be developed to eliminate the overhead of the fine-grain access control. First, this thesis investigates techniques to implement fine-grain access control on commodity workstations. It presents four different techniques that require little or no additional hardware (software checks with executable editing, the memory’s controller ECC, a combination of these two techniques, and a custom fine-grain access control accelerator board). Furthermore, the thesis examines the integration of hardware fine-grain techniques within commodity operating systems. Second, this thesis investigates messaging subsystem design for shared memory coherence protocols. It explores implications of extending Berkeley active messages so that explicit polling is not required and protocols are not limited to request/reply semantics. The thesis explores supporting implicit polling using binary rewriting to insert polls in the application code. In addition, it shows that shared memory coherence protocols, while not pure request/reply protocols, have bounded buffer requirements. Accordingly, it proposes a buffer allocation policy that does not require buffers in a node’s local memory in the common case, yet is robust enough to handle arbitrary traffic streams. Third, this thesis investigates extending FGDSM systems to clusters of multiprocessor workstations. FGDSM systems are especially suited for supporting shared memory on multi-