Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance bounds in MIMO linear control with pole location constraint

In this paper, achievable performance bounds in the linear control of stable MIMO linear discrete time systems are derived. The cost function to be minimized is the 2 - norm of the tracking error for a vector step reference, under the constraint that the closed loop poles lie in a prescribed region. The computation of the performance limitation requires the factorization of the plant model using interactors, which capture the finite and infinite non-minimum phase zeros, and their associated directions. The controller achieving the optimal bound is also computed.
Therapeutic targeting of angiotensin II receptor type 1 to regulate androgen receptor in prostate cancer

With the limited strategies for curative treatment of castration‐resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), public interest has focused on the potential prevention of prostate cancer. Recent studies have demonstrated that an angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) has the potential to decrease serum prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) level and improve performance status in CRPC patients. These facts prompted us to investigate the direct effects of ARBs on prostate cancer growth and progression.
Recent advances in potato genomics, transcriptomics, and transgenicsunder drought and heat stresses: a review

Sustainable potato production practices are crucial for food security and social sustainability in the future since potato is a highly nutritious food and it is considered as one of the most promising crops to reduce human hunger and poverty in the world due to its high yield potential. However, being a temperate crop, potato is exposed to various environmental stresses, including extended periods of drought and heat. The majority of potato genomics, transcriptomics, and transgenics studies concentrate on the characterization of molecular mechanisms governing cold hardiness of tubers and response and tolerance mechanisms against diseases. Likewise, potato breeding studies focus on increasing the yield, extending the postharvest storage, and developing cultivars that withstand biotic stresses. The number of genomics, transcriptomics, and transgenics studies of drought and heat tolerance in potato is limited, although they are necessary state-of-the-art research procedures to characterize and identify the regulatory mechanism underlying any stresses in order to develop new crop varieties that can tolerate harsh environmental conditions. For these reasons, this review focuses on recent advances in genomics, transcriptomics, and transgenics of drought and heat tolerance in potato.
Mechanisms of hypothermia‐induced cell protection mediated by microglial cells in vitro

Despite the widespread interest in the clinical applications of hypothermia, the cellular mechanisms of hypothermia‐induced neuroprotection have not yet been clearly understood. Therefore, the aim of this study was to elucidate the cellular effects of clinically relevant hypothermia and rewarming on the morphological and functional characteristics of microglia. Microglial cells were exposed to a dynamic cooling and rewarming protocol. For stimulation, microglial cells were treated with 1 μg/mL lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We found that hypothermia led to morphological changes from ramified to ameboid cell shapes. At 2 h after hypothermia and rewarming, microglial cells were again ramified with extended branches. Moreover, we found enhanced cell activation after rewarming, accompanied by increased phagocytosis and adenosine triphosphate consumption. Interestingly, hypothermia and rewarming led to a time‐dependent significant up‐regulation of the anti‐inflammatory cytokines interleukin‐10 and interleukin‐1 receptor antagonist in stimulated microglial cells. This is in line with the reduced proliferation and time‐dependent down‐regulation of the pro‐inflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor‐alpha and monocyte chemotactic protein‐1 in comparison to normothermic control cells after LPS stimulation. Furthermore, degradation of the inhibitor of the nuclear transcription factor‐kappaB (IkappaB‐alpha) was diminished and delayed under conditions of cooling and rewarming in LPS‐stimulated microglial cells. Thus, our results show that hypothermia and rewarming activate microglial cells, increase phagocytosis and shift the balance of cytokine release in stimulated microglial cells towards the anti‐inflammatory cytokines. This could be a new cellular mechanism of hypothermia‐induced neuroprotection mediated by activated microglial cells.
Do Pregnant Women and Those at Risk of Developing Post-Natal Depression Consume Lower Amounts of Long Chain Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids?

The aims were to compare intakes of long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (LC n-3 PUFA) in pregnant and non-pregnant women in Australia and to compare these intakes to the Australian National Nutrition Survey of 1995 (NNS95) [1] and to determine if the LC n-3 PUFA intakes differed in women who may be ‘at risk’ compared with women ‘not at risk’ of developing post-natal depression (PND). A validated LC n-3 PUFA food frequency questionnaire and pregnant women’s Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) scores were used. LC n-3 PUFA intakes were comparable to the NNS95 but did not differ due to pregnancy or whether or not a woman is at risk of developing PND.
A Dynamically Optimized SSVEP Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) Speller

The aim of this study was to design a dynamically optimized steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) brain-computer interface (BCI) system with enhanced performance relative to previous SSVEP BCIs in terms of the number of items selectable on the interface, accuracy, and speed. In this approach, the row/column (RC) paradigm was employed in a SSVEP speller to increase the number of items. The target is detected by subsequently determining the row and column coordinates. To improve spelling accuracy, we added a posterior processing after the canonical correlation analysis (CCA) approach to reduce the interfrequency variation between different subjects and named the new signal processing method CCA-RV, and designed a real-time biofeedback mechanism to increase attention on the visual stimuli. To achieve reasonable online spelling speed, both fixed and dynamic approaches for setting the optimal stimulus duration were implemented and compared. Experimental results for 11 subjects suggest that the CCA-RV method and the real-time biofeedback effectively increased accuracy compared with CCA and the absence of real-time feedback, respectively. In addition, both optimization approaches for setting stimulus duration achieved reasonable online spelling performance. However, the dynamic optimization approach yielded a higher practical information transfer rate (PITR) than the fixed optimization approach. The average online PITR achieved by the proposed adaptive SSVEP speller, including the time required for breaks between selections and error correction, was 41.08 bit/min. These results indicate that our BCI speller is promising for use in SSVEP-based BCI applications.
Explanation Support for the Case-Based Reasoning Tool myCBR

Case-Based Reasoning, in short, is the process of solving new problems based on solutions of similar past problems, much like humans solve many problems. myCBR, an extension of the ontology editor Protege, provides such similarity-based retrieval functionality. Moreover, the user is supported in modelling appropriate similarity measures by forward and backward explanations.
Synthesis and growth kinetics of large-scale CuO nanowires grown by oxidation of Cu films

We report here the study of synthesis and characterization of length-tunable vertically-aligned CuO nanowires grown by thermal oxidation of electrodeposited Cu films. From TEM and electron diffraction analyses, all the CuO nanowires produced were single crystalline with a monoclinic structure. For samples oxidized at different temperatures, the lengths of CuO nanowires were found to increase parabolically with time. The resistance of CuO nanowires was measured to decrease with increasing temperature, which showed the characteristic behavior of semiconducting material.
Journal of Health Global

Systematic literature review of integrated community case management and the private sector in Africa: Relevant experiences and potential next steps Background Despite substantial investments made over the past 40 years in low income countries, governments cannot be viewed as the principal health care provider in many countries. Evidence on the role of the private sector in the delivery of health services is becoming increasingly available. In this study, we set out to determine the extent to which the private sector has been utilized in providing integrated care for sick children under 5 years of age with communi-ty–acquired malaria, pneumonia or diarrhoea.
Total variation regularization filtering for video signal processing

Modern consumer television sets need a high quality format conversion, image enhancement, and artifact reduction. Especially artifacts due to block based coding schemes may degrade image quality and make artifact reduction mandatory. A promising approach to high quality filter design is given by formulating the filter task via a variational problem and use partial differential equations to solve it. In this paper the design of a generalized total variation regularization filter is described. This filter can be applied in many video signal processing steps in consumer television as pre- or post-processing filter, for example as pre-processing filter prior to a motion estimation to improve image quality or analysis results. The usage in coding artifact reduction without knowledge of decoding parameters is presented in greater detail and some results are presented.
Intrinsic Disorder in Transmembrane Proteins: Roles in Signaling and Topology Prediction

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are peculiar stretches of amino acids that lack stable conformations in solution. Intrinsic Disorder containing Proteins (IDP) are defined by the presence of at least one large IDR and have been linked to multiple cellular processes including cell signaling, DNA binding and cancer. Here we used computational analyses and publicly available databases to deepen insight into the prevalence and function of IDRs specifically in transmembrane proteins, which are somewhat neglected in most studies. We found that 50% of transmembrane proteins have at least one IDR of 30 amino acids or more. Interestingly, these domains preferentially localize to the cytoplasmic side especially of multi-pass transmembrane proteins, suggesting that disorder prediction could increase the confidence of topology prediction algorithms. This was supported by the successful prediction of the topology of the uncharacterized multi-pass transmembrane protein TMEM117, as confirmed experimentally. Pathway analysis indicated that IDPs are enriched in cell projection and axons and appear to play an important role in cell adhesion, signaling and ion binding. In addition, we found that IDP are enriched in phosphorylation sites, a crucial post translational modification in signal transduction, when compared to fully ordered proteins and to be implicated in more protein-protein interaction events. Accordingly, IDPs were highly enriched in short protein binding regions called Molecular Recognition Features (MoRFs). Altogether our analyses strongly support the notion that the transmembrane IDPs act as hubs in cellular signal events.
On the Effects of Registrar-level Intervention

Virtually all Internet scams make use of domain name resolution as a critical part of their execution (e.g., resolving a spam-advertised URL to its Web site). Consequently, defenders have initiated a range of efforts to intervene within the DNS ecosystem to block such activity (e.g., by blacklisting "known bad" domain names at the client). Recently, there has been a push for domain registrars to take a more active role in this conflict, and it is this class of intervention that is the focus of our work. In particular, this paper characterizes the impact of two recent efforts to counter scammers' use of domain registration: CNNIC's blanket policy changes for the . cn ccTLD made in late 2009 and the late 2010 agreement between eNom and LegitScript to reactively take down "rogue" Internet pharmacy domains. Using a combination of historic WHOIS data and co-temporal spam feeds, we measure the impact of these interventions on both the registration and use of spam-advertised domains. We use these examples to illustrate the key challenges in making registrar-level intervention an effective tool.
Experimental results for the end-effector control of a single flexible robotic arm

Various control schemes for a single flexible robot arm are considered in this paper. They require a limited amount of on-line computations. All trials are performed on the physical process and embody a conclusive, although partial, comparison for this kind of single axis robot. They are representative of some major applied research directions which captured the attention of many researchers throughout the 1980's. Some general conclusions are derived. >
Innovations in visualization

While information is a crucial part of people's everyday lives, many people find that access to information via today's technologies is awkward, stressful, and overly intrusive in their lives. The problem is not with the information itself, but rather with its volume and the unwieldy ways currently provided for interacting with digital content. My research focus is to create interactive information visualizations so that they support people's everyday work and social practices as they interact with information. In this paper I will provide an eclectic overview of my research, particularly featuring the research done by my PhD students.
Map Room to Data and GIS Services: Five University Libraries Evolving to Meet Campus Needs and Changing Technologies

Programs for geospatial support at academic libraries have evolved over the past decade in response to changing campus needs and developing technologies. Geospatial applications have matured tremendously in this time, emerging from specialty tools to become broadly used across numerous disciplines. At many universities, the library has served as a central resource allowing students and faculty across academic departments access to GIS resources. Today, as many academic libraries evaluate their spaces and services, GIS and data services are central in discussions on how to further engage with patrons and meet increasingly diverse researcher needs. As library programs evolve to support increasingly technical data and GIS needs, many universities are faced with similar challenges and opportunities. To explore these themes, data and GIS services librarians and GIS specialists from five universities—the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Texas A&M, New York University, North Carolina State University, and California Polytechnic State University—with different models of library geospatial and data support, describe their programs to help identify common services, as well as unique challenges, opportunities, and future plans.
Convolutional neural network and adaptive guided image filter based stereo matching

This paper presents a novel stereo matching algorithm based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and adaptive guided image filter. Firstly, we trained a convolutional neural network through learning a similarity measure on small image patches to initialize the matching cost. This method can extract the characteristics of the pictures automatically and precisely, and has strong robust against radiometric variations. Then, we aggregate the cost volume with guided image filter whose support window is adaptive rectangular instead of the traditional fixed support window. The variation of the window's kernel is generated by the local spatial distance, color similarity and gradient so that less occluded points will be included in the support region. Moreover, we adopt integral image and box filter to further speed up the computation of this step. At last, we evaluate our method on the Middlebury and show that it preserves the edges well and outperforms the traditional methods greatly.
The Fellowship of Geometry and Quantum Theory

As a striking example of the cross-fertilization between mathematics and other fields, quantum theory has recently emerged as a unifying theme in the modern development of geometry. Ideas from quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and string theory have transformed algebraic and symplectic geometry, and even inspired the creation of a new branch of mathematics (viz. noncommutative geometry). At the same time, progress in fundamental physics increasingly hinges on deep mathematical ideas. The primary aim of this proposal is to make The Netherlands a major player in this development. Our group, based at the Universities of Amsterdam, Nijmegen, and Utrecht (the latter acting as the cluster center or 'hub'), plans to achieve this through the creation of a long-term educational infrastructure, combined with a new large-scale research program in mathematics. The former will nurture a generation of students who are, so to speak, bilingual in relevant areas of both pure mathematics and fundamental physics. This involves 1. Dual Bachelor degree programs in mathematics and physics (3 years); 2. Master programs in mathematical physics (2 years); 3. Specialized Master Classes on key cluster themes (1 year); 4. A PhD program in geometry and quantum theory (4 years). The scale and intensity of this proposal seem unprecedented in Dutch mathematics, yet a number of local circumstances appear to make our initiative timely and feasible. Indeed, part of the envisaged infrastructure already exists at the participating universities, much of the required scientific expertise is already scattered over the proposed cluster members, and most of us have a track record of management and collaboration. The tenured faculty participating in the cluster includes ten full professors and thirteen other researchers. In addition, an active group of younger postdocs and PhD students will be involved in the cluster activities. Some of the most talented Dutch geometers working abroad will be appointed as Fellows of the cluster. The cluster will work in close contact with a Board of Advisors, which includes one Nobel Laureate and two Fields Medalists. Of the ten professors, three are members of the Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW), and one has recently been appointed as the first Royal Academy Professor in mathematics. Of the younger professors, three have received prestigious PIONIER grants from NWO, and one is a recipient of the Spinoza Prize (the highest scientific distinction in The Netherlands). In addition, the work of some of the still younger tenured participants has already …
The Regulation of Photosynthetic Structure and Function during Nitrogen Deprivation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii1[OPEN]

Nitrogen deprivation induces orderly, multilevel down-regulation of the photosynthetic apparatus, energy capture, and carbon fixation. The accumulation of carbon storage compounds by many unicellular algae after nutrient deprivation occurs despite declines in their photosynthetic apparatus. To understand the regulation and roles of photosynthesis during this potentially bioenergetically valuable process, we analyzed photosynthetic structure and function after nitrogen deprivation in the model alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolite, and lipid profiling and microscopic time course data were combined with multiple measures of photosynthetic function. Levels of transcripts and proteins of photosystems I and II and most antenna genes fell with differing trajectories; thylakoid membrane lipid levels decreased, while their proportions remained similar and thylakoid membrane organization appeared to be preserved. Cellular chlorophyll (Chl) content decreased more than 2-fold within 24 h, and we conclude from transcript protein and 13C labeling rates that Chl synthesis was down-regulated both pre- and posttranslationally and that Chl levels fell because of a rapid cessation in synthesis and dilution by cellular growth rather than because of degradation. Photosynthetically driven oxygen production and the efficiency of photosystem II as well as P700+ reduction and electrochromic shift kinetics all decreased over the time course, without evidence of substantial energy overflow. The results also indicate that linear electron flow fell approximately 15% more than cyclic flow over the first 24 h. Comparing Calvin-Benson cycle transcript and enzyme levels with changes in photosynthetic 13CO2 incorporation rates also pointed to a coordinated multilevel down-regulation of photosynthetic fluxes during starch synthesis before the induction of high triacylglycerol accumulation rates.
Scaling-out community watershed management for multiple benefits in rainfed areas.

This chapter focuses on the watershed development programme in India. It assesses the ways and means of enhancing the benefits of watershed programmes through scaling-out strategies by identifying biophysical and socioeconomic drivers of success based on critical analysis of case studies. It also identifies conditions for larger participation of the stakeholders in the watershed activities, which is a prerequisite for successful implementation and sustainability of the watershed development projects.
Headache Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Their Association With Psychological, Behavioral, and Socio‐Environmental Factors

Objective. — This cross‐sectional study on a randomly drawn population sample of children and adolescents (n = 3399; aged 9 to 15) aimed at the assessment of patterns of associations between psychosocial variables and primary headache disorders like migraine (MIG) or tension‐type headache. A headache‐free group served as a control.
RAD51 gene polymorphisms and sporadic colorectal cancer risk in Poland.

BACKGROUND DNA repair processes play an important role in protection against carcinogenic factors. Mutations in DNA repair genes, which code proteins engaged in repair processes, may lead to carcinogenesis and among others also to colorectal cancer (CRC) development. The genetic variability in RAD51 may contribute to the appearance and progression of various cancers including CRC. The aim of the study was to compare the distribution of genotypes of RAD51 135G>C and 172G>T polymorphism between colorectal cancer patients and controls. MATERIAL AND METHODS Both polymorphisms were evaluated by PCR-RFLP methods in colorectal tissue of 320 colorectal cancer subjects and 320 healthy subjects who served as controls. RESULTS In the present work we demonstrated a significant positive association between the RAD51 C/C genotype and colorectal carcinoma. Variant 135C allele of RAD51 increased the cancer risk. However, we did not observe any relationship between each polymorphism and colorectal cancer progression assessed by node metastasis, tumour size and Dukes' stage. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that variant genotypes of the 135G>C of RAD51 polymorphism may be positively associated with colorectal carcinoma in the Polish population. Further studies conducted on a larger group are required to clarify this point.