Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TbUNC119 and Its Binding Protein Complex Are Essential for Propagation, Motility, and Morphogenesis of Trypanosoma brucei Procyclic Form Cells

Flagellum-mediated motility of Trypanosoma brucei is considered to be essential for the parasite to complete stage development in the tsetse fly vector, while the mechanism by which flagellum-mediated motility is controlled are not fully understood. We thus compared T. brucei whole gene products (amino acid sequence) with Caenorhabditis elegans UNC (uncoordinated) proteins, in order to find uncharacterized motility-related T. brucei genes. Through in silico analysis, we found 88 gene products which were highly similar to C. elegans UNC proteins and categorized them as TbCEUN (T. brucei gene products which have high similarity to C. elegans UNC proteins). Approximately two thirds of the 88 TbCEUN gene products were kinesin-related molecules. A gene product highly similar to C. elegans UNC119 protein was designated as TbUNC119. RNAi-mediated depletion of TbUNC119 showed no apparent phenotype. However, knock-down analysis of both TbUNC119 and its binding protein (TbUNC119BP) which was found by yeast two-hybrid analysis showed characteristic phenotypes, including reduced motility, morphological change (extended cell shape), and cellular apoptosis. Based on the observed phenotypes, possible function of the TbUNC119 and TbUNC119BP is discussed.
Expression pattern of high-affinity tyrosine kinase Aduring the development of human fetal spinal cord

Abstract High-affinity tyrosine kinase A (TrkA) is responsible for the biological activities of nerve growth factor. Most studies of the molecular mechanisms of TrkA that underlie the development of the spinal cord have been conducted in animals and the expression pattern of TrkA during the development of the human fetal spinal cord is not well characterized. We investigated 45 3–28-week-old (G3W–G28W) human fetuses. We assessed the expression pattern of TrkA in the human fetal spinal cord using immunohistochemistry, western blot and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction to clarify the spatiotemporal developmental changes and to determine the role TrkA plays in development. TrkA immunoreactive products were detected widely in the alar and basal plates, ependyma, glial cells, gray and white matter, internal limiting membrane, mantle layer, marginal layer, neuroepithelium and neurons during this period of development. Expression levels of TrkA mRNA and protein peaked at G12W and G16W, respectively. The strong expression of TrkA was closely related to the formation of the dorsal and ventral horns, and the differentiation of somatic motor neurons during late embryonic development. Our findings suggest that TrkA receptors play crucial roles during the development of human fetal spinal cord. The characteristic expression patterns may clarify the developmental characteristics of the human spinal cord.
Variation in Craniomandibular Morphology and Sexual Dimorphism in Pantherines and the Sabercat Smilodon fatalis

Sexual dimorphism is widespread among carnivorans, and has been an important evolutionary factor in social ecology. However, its presence in sabertoothed felids remains contentious. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of extant Panthera and the sabertoothed felid Smilodon fatalis. S. fatalis has been reported to show little or no sexual dimorphism but to have been intraspecifically variable in skull morphology. We found that large and small specimens of S. fatalis could be assigned to male and female sexes with similar degrees of confidence as Panthera based on craniomandibular shape. P. uncia is much less craniomandibularly variable and has low levels of sexual size-dimorphism. Shape variation in S. fatalis probably reflects sexual differences. Craniomandibular size-dimorphism is lower in S. fatalis than in Panthera except P. uncia. Sexual dimorphism in felids is related to more than overall size, and S. fatalis and the four large Panthera species show marked and similar craniomandibular and dental morphometric sexual dimorphism, whereas morphometric dimorphism in P. uncia is less. Many morphometric-sexually dimorphic characters in Panthera and Smilodon are related to bite strength and presumably to killing ecology. This suggests that morphometric sexual dimorphism is an evolutionary adaptation to intraspecific resource partitioning, since large males with thicker upper canines and stronger bite forces would be able to hunt larger prey than females, which is corroborated by feeding ecology in P. leo. Sexual dimorphism indicates that S. fatalis could have been social, but it is unlikely that it lived in fusion-fission units dominated by one or a few males, as in sub-Saharan populations of P. leo. Instead, S. fatalis could have been solitary and polygynous, as most extant felids, or it may have lived in unisexual groups, as is common in P. leo persica.
Multi-way interactive capacitive touch system with palm rejection of active stylus for 86” touch screen panels

There have been many recent advances in capacitive touch systems (CTSs) [1-5]. Multiple-way interactive CTSs (MI-CTSs) that can simultaneously communicate with each other on a real-time basis have been demanded; however, such MI-CTSs have not yet been reported. In addition, palm rejection in an active stylus would be a very useful feature for when the palm inevitably touches a touch screen panel (TSP) [5]. In this paper, an MI-CTS with the palm rejection for an active stylus is reported. This allows simultaneous interaction between CTSs on a real-time basis, while lessening the computational load.
Combinatorial Auction-Based Two-Stage Matching Mechanism for Mobile Data Offloading

In this paper, we study the problem of mobile data offloading for a network that contains multiple mobile network operators (MNOs), multiple WiFi or femtocell access points (APs) and multiple mobile users (MUs). MNOs offload their subscribed MUs’ data traffic by leasing the unused Internet connection bandwidth of third party APs. We propose a combinatorial auction-based two-stage matching mechanism comprised of MU-AP matching and AP-MNO matching. The MU-AP matching is designed to match the MUs to APs in order to maximize the total offloading data traffic and achieve better MU satisfaction. Conversely, for AP-MNO matching, MNOs compete for APs’ service using the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) and the Vickrey auction theories and, in turn, APs will receive monetary compensation. We demonstrated that the proposed mechanism converges to a distributed stable matching result. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm well capture the tradeoff among the total data traffic, social welfare and the QoS of MUs compared to other schemes. Moreover, the proposed mechanism can considerably offload the total data traffic and improve the network social welfare with less computation
Effects of a 60 Minute on Ice Game Simulation on the Balance Error Scoring System

Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) are common in contact sports. There is an association between mTBIs and altered motor function. BioSway technology measures individuals’ balance using the Balance Error Scoring System (BESS). Prior to incorporating BESS testing in concussion protocol, other variables that influence the BESS test require review. The objective of this study is to determine if game fatigue in hockey players also influences the BESS score. 23 male (21.08 ± 1.09) National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes were tested using the BioSway™ (Biodex, USA). The BESS test measures the Sway Index (SI) -a calculation of deviation from the center of mass. Balance errors were counted according to BESS standard testing protocol. Baseline and post BESS scores were completed at rest and following exertion in a standard non-contact practice setting. Heart rate and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded to document fatigue during a 60 minute non contact game simulation. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS v.25. A paired sample t-test comparing sway index in the single, double, and tandem pre and post stances demonstrated no significance (p=.567, .666, .098) respectively. A paired sample t-test demonstrated a significant increase in balance errors in the single leg stance following 60 minutes on ice (p=.006). While mTBIs influence balance, this study demonstrates that game-like exertion also influences single leg stance balance as measured by the BioSway technology and BESS testing protocol. Athlete fatigue should be considered a confounding variable in measure of balance as an indicator of mTBI.
Evaluation of the Influence on the Living Body as a New Transdermal Therapeutic System Magnetic Nanoparticles

As a delivery carrier, the nanoparticles are broadly applied in various fields for excellent infiltration characteristics. In recent years, there has been new rearch was investigated in the medical area, but the research of influence on a living body is seldom studied. In this study, the influence on the living body as new transdermal carrier system using magnetic nanoparticles was investigated. The application of magnetic nanoparticles coated medication on the mice model investigated that the effect of treatment on the atopic dermatitis. The skin tissues were stained, and the section of skin tissues was observed by the optical Microscope. In vivo efficacy studies in mice model revealed highly efficient improvement of AD-like skin lesions. Furthermore the magnetic nanoparticles are useful as novel delivery drug carrier via human dermal papilla cell experiment. The results indicated that the magnetic nanoparticles are useful as new the transdermal carrier , and it proved that it is a highly efficient system useful as novel medicine delivery system.
Carbon nanomaterial/thermoplastic polyurethane composites for sports application : preparation, characterization and simulation

Carbon nanomaterials have been widely studied in various fields since their discovery. Their ultrahigh surface-to-volume ratios, low density, as well as outstanding thermal and mechanical properties, make them excellent candidates as nanofillers for high-performance and light-weight polymer composites. The major objectives of this project include two aspects: i) preparation of polyurethane (PU)-based composites reinforced by chemically functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene oxide (GO), respectively, with improved mechanical properties and thermal stability; ii) conducting the finite-element analysis (FEA) with Abaqus/Standard to study the mechanical performance of PU and the GO/PU composite under conditions of large-deflection bending typical for shoe soles. [Continues. ]
Building Super Structures through “Buckyballs and Buckytubes”

Nanotechnology represents a subject which is a synthesis of different sciences and technologies at the nanometer scale. In other words, it involves a different approach to the way we arrange and rearrange matter, which in turn can be harnessed to develop need based technologies. Until 1985, graphite and diamond were believed to be the only naturally occurring forms of carbon. In the year 1902, seven year old Buckminster Fuller, like all his other classmates was given a set of toothpicks and peas to design whatever he wanted in the class. The objective of that exercise was to judge the creativity and aptitude of the child, but it took several years for people to realize the immense significance of the truncated icosahedron structure that little Buckminster had made (Figure 1). Indeed at first glance, it looked as if he had tried to model his design to make a ball like structure from the straight toothpicks, but this very structure was much more. Several years later, scientists understood that such a structure was one of the most stable freestanding designs that man had ever created. And that too from a young boy, who had trouble with geometry, being unable to understand the abstraction necessary to imagine that a chalk dot on the blackboard represented a mathematical point or that an imperfectly drawn line with an arrow on the end was meant to stretch off to infinity. This man, Richard Buckminster Fuller went on to become one of the greatest scientific thinkers of all times. He gave to the world the concept of Geodesic Dome, Ephemeralization and Spaceship Earth. The most famous example of Geodesic dome being the shiny spherical structure is the Epcot Center at Disneyland in Florida, USA (Figure 2). On 4th September, 2010, Google used an interactively rotatable fullerene C60 as the second 'o' in their logo to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the fullerenes.
C. elegans Germline-Deficient Mutants Respond to Pathogen Infection Using Shared and Distinct Mechanisms

Reproduction extracts a cost in resources that organisms are then unable to utilize to deal with a multitude of environmental stressors. In the nematode C. elegans, development of the germline shortens the lifespan of the animal and increases its susceptibility to microbial pathogens. Prior studies have demonstrated germline-deficient nematodes to have increased resistance to Gram negative bacteria. We show that germline-deficient strains display increased resistance across a broad range of pathogens including Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria, and the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans. Furthermore, we show that the FOXO transcription factor DAF-16, which regulates longevity and immunity in C. elegans, appears to be crucial for maintaining longevity in both wild-type and germline-deficient backgrounds. Our studies indicate that germline-deficient mutants glp-1 and glp-4 respond to pathogen infection using common and different mechanisms that involve the activation of DAF-16.
Differential Selection on Carotenoid Biosynthesis Genes as a Function of Gene Position in the Metabolic Pathway: A Study on the Carrot and Dicots

Background Selection of genes involved in metabolic pathways could target them differently depending on the position of genes in the pathway and on their role in controlling metabolic fluxes. This hypothesis was tested in the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway using population genetics and phylogenetics. Methodology/Principal Findings Evolutionary rates of seven genes distributed along the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway, IPI, PDS, CRTISO, LCYB, LCYE, CHXE and ZEP, were compared in seven dicot taxa. A survey of deviations from neutrality expectations at these genes was also undertaken in cultivated carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus), a species that has been intensely bred for carotenoid pattern diversification in its root during its cultivation history. Parts of sequences of these genes were obtained from 46 individuals representing a wide diversity of cultivated carrots. Downstream genes exhibited higher deviations from neutral expectations than upstream genes. Comparisons of synonymous and nonsynonymous substitution rates between genes among dicots revealed greater constraints on upstream genes than on downstream genes. An excess of intermediate frequency polymorphisms, high nucleotide diversity and/or high differentiation of CRTISO, LCYB1 and LCYE in cultivated carrot suggest that balancing selection may have targeted genes acting centrally in the pathway. Conclusions/Significance Our results are consistent with relaxed constraints on downstream genes and selection targeting the central enzymes of the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway during carrot breeding history.
Accommodation responses and refractive error.

Previous investigations have reported considerable individual differences in the resting point of accommodation. Recent independent studies in Davis, Calif. , and Cardiff, Wales, indicate that part of these variations are related to refractive errors. The average dioptric value of the resting point of accommodation is lowest for corrected myopes, highest for corrected hyperopes, and intermediate for emmetropes. Another part of the variation in resting point is related to individual differences in the far point accommodation. There appears to be no significant relationship between the resting point and near point of accommodation.
The Prevalence of Past 12‐Month and Lifetime DSM‐IV Eating Disorders by BMI Category in US Men and Women

OBJECTIVE This study aims to determine whether the prevalence of lifetime and past 12-month DSM-IV eating disorders (ED) diagnoses differed by body mass index category among men and women in a general population sample. METHODS Data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (n = 12 337 adults) were analysed using logistic regression. Analyses were conducted separately by gender. RESULTS Lifetime ED prevalence was 2.22% in men and 4.93% in women. In both genders, the prevalence of any lifetime and past 12-month ED, binge eating disorder and recurrent binge eating was highest among obese individuals. Among obese men and women, lifetime and past 12-month ED prevalence was highest among those with class III obesity. CONCLUSION Eating disorders were most prevalent among high-weight individuals. This information is important for planning targeted public health ED and obesity prevention and intervention activities, as well as for informing the clinical care of obese individuals. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.
A Novel Key Sharing Fuzzy Vault Scheme

A novel key sharing fuzzy vault scheme is proposed based on the classic fuzzy vault and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol. In this proposed scheme, two users cooperatively build their fuzzy vault for their shared key using their own biometrics. Either of the users can use their own biometrics to unlock the fuzzy vault with the help of the other to get their shared key without risk of disclosure of their biometrics. Thus, they can unlock the fuzzy vault cooperatively. The security of our scheme is based on the security of the classic fuzzy vault scheme, one-way hash function and the discrete logarithm problem in a given finite group
SDAFT: a novel scalable data access framework for parallel BLAST

To run search tasks in a parallel and load-balanced fashion, existing parallel BLAST schemes such as mpiBLAST introduce a data initialization preparation stage to move database fragments from the shared storage to local cluster nodes. Unfortunately, a quickly growing sequence database becomes too heavy to move in the network in today's big data era. In this paper, we develop a Scalable Data Access Framework (SDAFT) to solve the problem. It employs a distributed file system (DFS) to provide scalable data access for parallel sequence searches. SDAFT consists of two inter-locked components: 1) a data centric load-balanced scheduler (DC-scheduler) to enforce data-process locality and 2) a translation layer to translate conventional parallel I/O operations into HDFS I/O. By experimenting our SDAFT prototype system with real-world database and queries at a wide variety of computing platforms, we found that SDAFT can reduce I/O cost by a factor of 4 to 10 and double the overall execution performance as compared with existing schemes.
A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Students’ Intuitions When Interpreting CIs

We explored how students interpret the relative likelihood of capturing a population parameter at various points of a CI in two studies. First, an online survey of 101 students found that students’ beliefs about the probability curve within a CI take a variety of shapes, and that in fixed choice tasks, 39% CI [30, 48] of students’ responses deviated from true distributions. For open ended tasks, this proportion rose to 85%, 95% CI [76, 90]. We interpret this as evidence that, for many students, intuitions about CIs distributions are ill-formed, and their responses are highly susceptible to question format. Many students also falsely believed that there is substantial change in likelihood at the upper and lower limits of the CI, resembling a cliff effect (Rosenthal and Gaito, 1963; Nelson et al., 1986). In a follow-up study, a subset of 24 post-graduate students participated in a 45-min semi-structured interview discussing the students’ responses to the survey. Analysis of interview transcripts identified several competing intuitions about CIs, and several new CI misconceptions. During the interview, we also introduced an interactive teaching program displaying a cat’s eye CI, that is, a CI that uses normal distributions to depict the correct likelihood distribution. Cat’s eye CIs were designed to help students understand likelihood distributions and the relationship between interval length, C% level and sample size. Observed changes in students’ intuitions following this teaching program suggest that a brief intervention using cat’s eyes can reduce CI misconceptions and increase accurate CI intuitions.
Advanced miniature mixed mode bending setup for in-situ interface delamination characterization

A novel test frame configuration was developed and employed to design a new miniature mixed mode bending (MMMB) setup for in-situ characterization of interface delamination in miniature multi-layer structures to accomplish full range of mode mixities. This advanced setup is specially designed with sufficiently small dimensions to fit in a scanning electron microscope and under an optical microscope for detailed real-time fracture analysis during delamination. Analysis of the loads in the new test configuration was performed and a special loading configuration was identified which replicates pure mode II loading better than the conventional end notch flexture (ENF) test. Special care was taken to minimize non-linearities, such as friction, the influence of gravity and geometrical non-linearities. Finite element simulation of the designed setup were performed to show its ability to access all loading modes. Preliminary delamination tests conducted on homogeneous bilayer samples under scanning electron microscope (SEM) proved the new setup configuration is capable of measuring the crack length, crack opening profile and crack delamination mechanism in addition to the conventional energy release rate measurements.
CAFS: a novel lightweight cache‐based scheme for large‐scale intrusion alert fusion

In this paper, we present some practical experiences on implementing an alert fusion mechanism from our project. After investigation on most of the existing alert fusion systems, we found the current body of work alternatively weighed down in the mire of insecure design or rarely deployed because of their complexity. As confirmed by our experimental analysis, unsuitable mechanisms could easily be submerged by an abundance of useless alerts. Even with the use of methods that achieve a high fusion rate and low false positives, attack is also possible. To find the solution, we carried out analysis on a series of alerts generated by well‐known datasets as well as realistic alerts from the Australian Honey‐Pot. One important finding is that one alert has more than an 85% chance of being fused in the following five alerts. Of particular importance is our design of a novel lightweight Cache‐based Alert Fusion Scheme, called CAFS. CAFS has the capacity to not only reduce the quantity of useless alerts generated by intrusion detection system, but also enhance the accuracy of alerts, therefore greatly reducing the cost of fusion processing. We also present reasonable and practical specifications for the target‐oriented fusion policy that provides a quality guarantee on alert fusion, and as a result seamlessly satisfies the process of successive correlation. Our experiments compared CAFS with traditional centralized fusion. The results showed that the CAFS easily attained the desired level of simple, counter‐escapable alert fusion design. Furthermore, as a lightweight scheme, CAFS can easily be deployed and excel in a large amount of alert fusions, which go towards improving the usability of system resources. To the best of our knowledge, our work is a practical exploration in addressing problems from the academic point of view. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.