Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PA GE P RO OF 18 Translational Control of Synaptic Plasticity and Learning and Memory

ONE HALLMARK OF LONG-TERM MEMORY CONSOLIDATION is the requirement for new gene expression. Although memory formation has largely focused on transcriptional control (Kandel 2001), it has been known for more than four decades that it also requires protein synthesis (Flexner et al. 1963). This and other early studies offered little in the way of molecular mechanisms because they relied mostly on the injection of general translation inhibitors into animals. The last 10 years, however, have witnessed major advances in our understanding of translational control of memory and its cellular foundation, synaptic plasticity. In this chapter, we discuss the most salient aspects of translational control of these essential brain activities and present our thoughts on some of the key issues remaining to be elucidated.
Validation of the proximal flow convergence method. Calculation of orifice area in patients with mitral stenosis.

BACKGROUND It has been proposed recently that measuring the flow convergence region proximal to an orifice by Doppler flow mapping can provide a means of calculating regurgitant flow rate. Although verified in experimental models, this approach is difficult to validate clinically because there is no ideal gold standard for regurgitant flows in patients. However, this method also can be used to derive cardiac output or flow rate proximal to stenotic orifices and therefore to calculate their areas by the continuity equation (area = flow rate/velocity). Applying this method in mitral stenosis would provide a unique way of validating the underlying concept because the predicted areas could be compared with those measured directly by planimetry. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 40 patients with mitral stenosis using imaging and Doppler echocardiography. Doppler color flow recordings of mitral inflow were obtained from the apex, and the radius of the proximal flow convergence region was measured at its peak diastolic value from the orifice to the first color alias along the axis of flow. Flow rate was calculated assuming uniform radial flow convergence toward the orifice, modified by a factor that accounted for the inflow funnel angle formed by the mitral leaflets. Mitral valve area was then calculated as peak flow rate divided by peak velocity by continuous-wave Doppler. The calculated areas agreed well with those from three comparative techniques over a range of 0.5 to 2.2 cm2: 1) cross-sectional area by planimetry (y = 1.08x-0.13, r = .91, SEE = 0.21 cm2); 2) area derived from the Doppler pressure half-time (y = 1.02x-0.14, r = .89, SEE = 0.24 cm2); and 3) area calculated by the Gorlin equation in the 26 patients who underwent catheterization (y = 0.89x + 0.08, r = .86, SEE = 0.24 cm2). Agreement with planimetry was similar for 22 patients with mitral regurgitation and 18 without it (P > .6), as well as for 6 in atrial fibrillation (P > .2). CONCLUSIONS These results validate the proximal flow convergence concept in the clinical setting and also demonstrate that it can be extended to orifice area calculation using the continuity equation.
Characterisation of Electrospun Poly(lactic acid) Nanofibre Networks

Electrospinning has been regarded as a convenient method of manufacturing polymer-based multi-functional and high performance nanofibres that can significantly contribute to the world of advanced materials. The primary requirement of the process is to obtain nanofibres in continuous form with fine diameters and minimum variations. Secondly, the fibre network has to have minimum area occupied by beads to enhance the network's porosity. These two important characteristics, when achieved, render the nanofibre mats acceptable for many membrane type applications. The relationship between processing parameters and microstructures of nanofibrils is still not well understood. The goals of this study are to obtain a set of robust manufacturing parameters that would reduce the variation in quality while electrospinning non-woven mats of nanofibres from poly(L-lactic) acid (PLLA). The study involves sixteen sets of parametric combinations and the scanning electron microscopy of the produced mats. The desirable combination for producing acceptable networks appears to be low concentration of polymer solution, low feed rate, comparatively high applied voltage and a large distance (within the studied range) between the collector and the needle. However, a low concentration of polymer solution may result in some bead formation if other factors are not changed accordingly.
A Novel Mechanism in MPLS Network under Adversarial Uncertainty

The advantage of multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) is its capability to route the packets through explicit paths. But the nodes in the paths may be possibly attacked by the adversarial uncertainty. Aiming at this problem in MPLS Network, in this paper, we propose a novel mechanism in MPLS network under adversar-ial uncertainty, making use of the theory of artificial intelligence, at first, we find the initialized label switching paths (LSPs) using the A* arithmetic, and secondly, during the process of data transmission, we switch the transmission path duly by taking advantage of the non-monotone reasoning mechanism. Com-pared to the traditional route mechanism, the experimental results show that it improves the security if data transmission remarkably under our novel mechanism in MPLS network.
Structural Aspects of Drug Resistance and Inhibition of HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase

HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase (HIV-1 RT) has been the target of numerous approved anti-AIDS drugs that are key components of Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapies (HAART). It remains the target of extensive structural studies that continue unabated for almost twenty years. The crystal structures of wild-type or drug-resistant mutant HIV RTs in the unliganded form or in complex with substrates and/or drugs have offered valuable glimpses into the enzyme’s folding and its interactions with DNA and dNTP substrates, as well as with nucleos(t)ide reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTIs) drugs. These studies have been used to interpret a large body of biochemical results and have paved the way for innovative biochemical experiments designed to elucidate the mechanisms of catalysis and drug inhibition of polymerase and RNase H functions of RT. In turn, the combined use of structural biology and biochemical approaches has led to the discovery of novel mechanisms of drug resistance and has contributed to the design of new drugs with improved potency and ability to suppress multi-drug resistant strains.
Super: a web server to rapidly screen superposable oligopeptide fragments from the protein data bank

Searching for well-fitting 3D oligopeptide fragments within a large collection of protein structures is an important task central to many analyses involving protein structures. This article reports a new web server, Super, dedicated to the task of rapidly screening the protein data bank (PDB) to identify all fragments that superpose with a query under a prespecified threshold of root-mean-square deviation (RMSD). Super relies on efficiently computing a mathematical bound on the commonly used structural similarity measure, RMSD of superposition. This allows the server to filter out a large proportion of fragments that are unrelated to the query; >99% of the total number of fragments in some cases. For a typical query, Super scans the current PDB containing over 80 500 structures (with ∼40 million potential oligopeptide fragments to match) in under a minute. Super web server is freely accessible from: http://lcb.infotech. monash.edu. au/super.
Analysis of system concepts for bi- and multi-static SAR missions

The performance and capabilities of a bistatic spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) are analyzed, where the transmitter and receiver are in different orbits. Such a configuration may be optimized for a broad range of applications like frequent monitoring, wide swath imaging, single-pass cross-track interferometry, along-track interferometry, resolution enhancement or radar tomography.
A Method of Finding Bad Signatures in an RSA-Type Batch Verification

Batch cryptography has been developed into two main branches - batch verification and batch identification. Batch verification is a method to determine whether a set of signatures contains invalid signatures, and batch identification is a method to find bad signatures if a set of signatures contains invalid signatures. Recently, some significant developments appeared in such field, especially by Lee et al., Ferrara et al. and Law et al., respectively. In this paper, we address some weakness of Lee et al.'s earlier work, and propose an identification method in an RSA-type signature. Our method is more efficient than the well known divide and conquer method for the signature scheme. We conclude this paper by providing a method to choose optimal divide and conquer verifiers. This work was supported by Priority Research Centers Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2009-0093827).
Energy efficient cluster-based resource allocation and topology management for beyond next generation mobile broadband networks

In this paper, two novel energy efficient resource allocation schemes are proposed for beyond next generation mobile networks. The schemes take into account the clustering capability of base stations before assigning users to the base stations. A topology management scheme that adjusts the number of active base stations in accordance with the traffic load and also responds to QoS deterioration is combined with the schemes to improve energy efficiency over the network. The first scheme achieves up to 67% overall energy reduction at base stations for low traffic loads but has poor QoS performance at high traffic levels. The second scheme is better as it has the capability of maintaining a good balance between energy efficiency and QoS over a wide range of traffic loads. It also outperforms the best scheme in the literature in terms of provision of high throughput and tolerable delay at significantly higher effective energy saving percentages.
Informal Mentoring Between Faculty and Medical Students

Mentoring skills are valuable assets for academic medicine faculty, who help shape the professionalism of the next generation of physicians. Mentors are role models who also act as guides for students’ personal and professional development over time. Mentors can be instrumental in conveying explicit academic knowledge required to master curriculum content. Importantly, they can enhance implicit knowledge about the “hidden curriculum” of professionalism, ethics, values and the art of medicine not learned from texts. In many cases, mentors also provide emotional support and encouragement. The relationship benefits mentors as well, through greater productivity, career satisfaction, and personal gratification. Maximizing the satisfaction and productivity of such relationships entails self-awareness, focus, mutual respect, and explicit communication about the relationship. In this article, the authors describe the development of optimal mentoring relationships, emphasizing the importance of experience and flexibility in working with beginning to advanced students of different learning styles, genders, and races. Concrete advice for mentor “do's and don'ts” is offered, with case examples illustrating key concepts.
Synthesisation A Way To Enhance Image Using Texture Synthesis

Image Enhancement is found to be a very effective technique useful in today’s digital image processing applications. Generating novel photo-realistic imagery from smaller examples has been widely recognized as significant in computer graphics. A wide number of applications require realistic textures to be synthesized for object decoration in virtual scenes. Basically, Texture synthesis is used to create large non-repetitive background images and expand small pictures by removing noise and also to fill in holes in images. We present a simple image-based method of generating novel visual appearance in which a new image is synthesized by stitching together small patches of existing images. We call this process image quilting. First, we use quilting as a fast and very simple texture synthesis algorithm which produces surprisingly good results for a wide range of textures. Second, we extend the algorithm to perform texture transfer – rendering an object with a texture taken from a different object. More generally, we demonstrate how an image can be re-rendered in the style of a different image. The method works directly on the images and does not require 3D information.
Ku-band AlGaN/GaN HEMT with over 30W

AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) were developed for Ku-band applications. The operating voltage characteristics in CW operating conditions were investigated. The developed AlGaN/GaN HEMT with combined two dies of 12 mm gate periphery exhibits output power of over 30 W with a power added efficiency (PAE) of 12% under VDS = 30 V, CW operating condition at 14.25 GHz, and a gain compression level of 3 dB.
Detecting Switches Against Non-Stationary Opponents

Interactions in multiagent systems are generally more complicated than single agent ones. Game theory provides solutions on how to act in multiple agent scenarios; however, it assumes that all agents will act rationally. Moreover, some works also assume the opponent will use a stationary strategy. These assumptions usually do not hold in real world scenarios where agents have limited capacities and may deviate from a perfect rational response. Our goal is still to act optimally in this cases by learning the appropriate response and without any prior policies on how to act. Thus, we focus on the problem when another agent in the environment uses different stationary strategies over time. This paper introduces DriftER, an algorithm that 1) learns a model of the opponent, 2) uses that to obtain an optimal policy and then 3) determines when it must re-learn due to an opponent strategy change. We provide theoretical results showing that DriftER guarantees to detect switches with high probability. Also, we provide empirical results in normal form games and then in a more realistic scenario, the Power TAC simulator.
FCAN: Flash Crowds Alleviation Network Using Adaptive P2P Overlay of Cache Proxies

With the rapid spread of information and ubiquitous access of browsers, flash crowds, a sudden, unanticipated surge in the volume of request rates, have become the bane of many Internet websites. This paper models and presents FCAN, an adaptive network that dynamically optimizes the system structure between peer-to-peer (P2P) and client-server (C/S) configurations to alleviate flash crowds effect. FCAN constructs P2P overlay on cache proxy server layer to distribute the flash traffic from origin server. It uses policy-configured DNS redirection to route the client requests in balance, and adopts strategy load detection to monitor and react the load changes. Our preliminary simulation results showed that the system is overall well behaved, which validates the correctness of our design.
A Robust Solution to High-Accuracy Geolocation: Quadruple Integration of GPS, IMU, Pseudolite, and Terrestrial Laser Scanning

Reliable and accurate geolocation is essential for airborne and land-based remote sensing applications. The detection, discrimination, and remediation of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and other munitions and explosives of concern (MEC) using the currently available detection and geolocation technologies often yield unsatisfactory results, failing to detect all MEC present at a site or to discriminate between MEC and nonhazardous items. Thus, the goal of this paper is to design and demonstrate a high-accuracy geolocation methodology that will address centimeter-level relative accuracy requirements of a man-portable electromagnetic (EM) sensor system in open and impeded environments. The proposed system design is based on the tight quadruple integration of the Global Positioning System (GPS), the inertial measurement unit (IMU) system, the terrestrial radio-frequency (RF) system pseudolite (PL), and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to support high-accuracy geolocation for a noncontact EM mapping system in GPS-challenged environments. The key novel component of the proposed multisensor system is the integration of TLS that can provide centimeter-level positioning accuracy in a local frame and thus enables a GPS/IMU/PL-based navigation system to achieve both high absolute and relative positioning accuracy in GPS-impeded environments. This paper presents the concept design of the quadruple integration system, the algorithmic approach to data integration with a special emphasis on TLS integration with GPS/IMU/PL, and the performance assessment based on real data, where centimeter-level relative geolocation accuracy is demonstrated during the GPS signal blockage.
Fractal image coding using SSIM

Since Jacquin proposed original fractal image compression technique in 1990, fractal coding method has been developed into various schemes. Traditionally, fractal coding uses mean square error (MSE) to evaluate similarity of image blocks, but the similarity evaluated by MSE usually differs from human visual system (HVS). Compared with MSE, structural similarity (SSIM) is an image measure index which is more appropriate for the HVS. This paper proposes a new fractal coding scheme which uses structural similarity to measure the similarity between image blocks and compute these blocks' coefficients. The experiment results show that the proposed method generates higher quality images for the HVS than MSE scheme.
Human herpesvirus-6 and multiple sclerosis: relapsing-remitting versus secondary progressive

Recently, it has been suggested that human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) may play a role in the pathogenesis of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), but there is not enough information related to the role of HHV-6 in secondary-progressive MS (SPMS). To address this question, we evaluated HHV-6 prevalence, active viral replication and viral load measured by quantitative real-time PCR, in DNA and mRNA extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and DNA extracted from serum; the samples were collected from 31 SPMS and 31 RRMS patients in a one-year follow-up study, and sex- and age-matched controls. The results were as follows: i) We found a statistical significant difference in HHV-6 DNA prevalences between RRMS and SPMS patients in: DNA extracted from PBMCs (P= 0.027), DNA extracted from serum (P= 0.010) and mRNA extracted from PBMCs (P =0.010). When we compared HHV-6 prevalences from RRMS patients in relapse and in remission with those from SPMS patients, we only achieved a statistical significance for the relapses (P=0.003 in DNA from PBMCs, and P<0.001 in DNA from serum samples and mRNA from PBMCs). ii) We only found HHV-6 variant A among HHV-6 positive samples in serum. iii) We did not find any difference in HHV-6 viral loads. These results suggest that HHV-6A does not play an active role in SPMS, while this virus may contribute to the pathogenesis of RRMS triggering MS attacks in a subset of patients. Multiple Sclerosis 2007; 13: 578-583. http://msj.sagepub. com
Role of Structure-Based Changes due to Somatic Mutation in Highly Homologous DNA-Binding and DNA-Hydrolyzing Autoantibodies Exemplified by A23P Substitution in the VH Domain

Anti-DNA autoantibodies are responsible for tissue injury in lupus. A subset of DNA-specific antibodies capable of DNA cleavage can be even more harmful after entering the living cells by destroying nuclear DNA. Origins of anti-DNA autoantibodies are not fully understood, and the mechanism of induction of DNA-cleaving activity remains speculative. The autoantibody BV04-01 derived from lupus-prone mouse is the only DNA-hydrolyzing immunoglobulin with known 3D structure. Identification and analysis of antibodies homologous to BV04-01 may help to understand molecular bases and origins of DNA-cleaving activity of autoantibodies. BLAST search identified murine anti-DNA autoantibody MRL-4 with sequences of variable region genes highly homologous to those of autoantibody BV04-01. Despite significant homology to BV04-01, not only MRL-4 had no DNA-cleaving activity, but also reversion of its unusual P23 mutation to the germline alanine resulted in a dramatic loss of affinity to DNA. Contrary to this effect, transfer of the P23 mutation to the BV04-01 has resulted in a significant drop in DNA binding and almost complete loss of catalytic activity. In the present paper we analyzed the properties of two homologous autoantibodies and mutants thereof and discussed the implications of unusual somatic mutations for the development of autoantibodies with DNA-binding and DNA-hydrolyzing activity.
On a Semantics for Active Logic

The object of study for this thesis is the problem of modelling the reasoning of real-world agents. In particular, a semantics for active logic, which is a logical formalism conceived to be able to cope with the passing of time as well as inconsistency, is analysed, criticised and refined. Based on what is called perception functions, a notion of perceived temporal structure is defined, which allows inconsistent knowledge bases to have models. Using such structures, a consequence relation called active consequence is constructed. Active consequence was previously believed to coincide with classical logical consequence when restricted to a certain subset of the language and consistent premises. We show that this identity does not hold due to the problem of Σ-undeterminism – that there are sentences for which it cannot be determined whether they follow actively from a given set Σ – and suggest a refined definition of active consequence as a solution. Our main result, however, is that we show that active consequence is explosive, that is, that anything follows actively from a direct contradiction. Consequently, and contrary to what has been previously claimed, a logic based on this consequence relation is not paraconsistent.
Urinary tract infection: a cohort of older people with urinary incontinence.

Objective: To evaluate epidemiological aspects of urinary tract infection in older patients with urinary incontinence living in long-term care institutions in Belo Horizonte. Method: Concurrent cohort held from April 1st to October 1st, 2015. The study was conducted in two long-term care institutions in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, with 84 incontinent older people. Results: Cumulative incidence of urinary tract infection was 19% (95% CI: 7.83-23.19) and the incidence density was 3.6 cases/100 people-month of follow-up period. The variables Bacteriuria and Institution presented statistical association with the occurrence of urinary tract infection. Conclusion: It is observed that the incidence of urinary tract infection in the study was smaller than in other similar international and national studies, however this is an important world health problem for the older population, with impact on mortality of these individuals. Objetivo: Avaliar aspectos epidemiológicos da infecção do trato urinário em pacientes idosos com incontinência urinária, residentes em instituições de longa permanência, de Belo Horizonte. Método: Coorte concorrente realizada no período de 01 de abril a 01 de outubro de 2015. O estudo foi realizado em duas instituições de longa permanência, na cidade de Belo Horizonte, MG, com 84 idosos incontinentes. Resultados: A incidência acumulada de infecção do trato urinário foi de 19% (IC 95%: 7,83-23,19) e a densidade de incidência foi de 3,6 casos/100 pessoas-mês de seguimento. As variáveis Bacteriúria e Instituição apresentaram associação estatística com a ocorrência de infecção do trato urinário. Conclusão: Observa-se que a incidência de infecção do trato urinário no estudo foi menor que em outros estudos nacionais e internacionais semelhantes, no entanto trata-se de um importante problema de saúde mundial para os idosos, com impacto na mortalidade desses indivíduos.