Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Glucose supplements increase human muscle in vitro Na+-K+-ATPase activity during prolonged exercise.

Regulation of maximal Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase activity in vastus lateralis muscle was investigated in response to prolonged exercise with (G) and without (NG) oral glucose supplements. Fifteen untrained volunteers (14 males and 1 female) with a peak aerobic power (Vo(2)(peak)) of 44.8 +/- 1.9 ml.kg(-1). min(-1); mean +/- SE cycled at approximately 57% Vo(2)(peak) to fatigue during both NG (artificial sweeteners) and G (6.13 +/- 0.09% glucose) in randomized order. Consumption of beverage began at 30 min and continued every 15 min until fatigue. Time to fatigue was increased (P < 0.05) in G compared with NG (137 +/- 7 vs. 115 +/- 6 min). Maximal Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase activity (V(max)) as measured by the 3-O-methylfluorescein phosphatase assay (nmol.mg(-1). h(-1)) was not different between conditions prior to exercise (85.2 +/- 3.3 or 86.0 +/- 3.9), at 30 min (91.4 +/- 4.7 vs. 91.9 +/- 4.1) and at fatigue (92.8 +/- 4.3 vs. 100 +/- 5.0) but was higher (P < 0.05) in G at 90 min (86.7 +/- 4.2 vs. 109 +/- 4.1). Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase content (beta(max)) measured by the vanadate facilitated [(3)H]ouabain-binding technique (pmol/g wet wt) although elevated (P < 0.05) by exercise (0<30, 90, and fatigue) was not different between NG and G. At 60 and 90 min of exercise, blood glucose was higher (P < 0.05) in G compared with NG. The G condition also resulted in higher (P < 0.05) serum insulin at similar time points to glucose and lower (P < 0.05) plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine at 90 min of exercise and at fatigue. These results suggest that G results in an increase in V(max) by mechanisms that are unclear.
Adaptive significance of permanent female mimicry in a bird of prey

Permanent female mimicry, in which adult males express a female phenotype, is known only from two bird species. A likely benefit of female mimicry is reduced intrasexual competition, allowing female-like males to access breeding resources while avoiding costly fights with typical territorial males. We tested this hypothesis in a population of marsh harriers Circus aeruginosus in which approximately 40 per cent of sexually mature males exhibit a permanent, i.e. lifelong, female plumage phenotype. Using simulated territorial intrusions, we measured aggressive responses of breeding males towards conspecific decoys of females, female-like males and typical males. We show that aggressive responses varied with both the type of decoys and the type of defending male. Typical males were aggressive towards typical male decoys more than they were towards female-like male decoys; female-like male decoys were attacked at a rate similar to that of female decoys. By contrast, female-like males tolerated male decoys (both typical and female-like) and directed their aggression towards female decoys. Thus, agonistic responses were intrasexual in typical males but intersexual in female-like males, indicating that the latter not only look like females but also behave like them when defending breeding resources. When intrasexual aggression is high, permanent female mimicry is arguably adaptive and could be seen as a permanent ‘non-aggression pact’ with other males.
In situ observation of contact mechanisms in bioinspired adhesives at high magnification

We analyzed the contact mechanisms of bioinspired microfibrillar adhesives using in situ scanning electron microscopy. During adhesion tests we observed that (i) the superioradhesion of mushroom-shaped fibrils is assisted by the stochastic nature of detachment, (ii) the aspect ratio of microfibrils influences the bending/buckling behavior and the contact reformation, and (iii) the backing layer deformation causes the microfibrils to elastically interact with each other. These studies give new insights into the mechanisms responsible for adhesion of bioinspired fibrillar adhesives.
The Sperm‐surface glycoprotein, SGP, is necessary for fertilization in the frog, Xenopus laevis

To identify a molecule involved in sperm‐egg plasma membrane binding at fertilization, a monoclonal antibody against a sperm‐surface glycoprotein (SGP) was obtained by immunizing mice with a sperm membrane fraction of the frog, Xenopus laevis, followed by screening of the culture supernatants based on their inhibitory activity against fertilization. The fertilization of both jellied and denuded eggs was effectively inhibited by pretreatment of sperm with intact anti‐SGP antibody as well as its Fab fragment, indicating that the antibody recognizes a molecule on the sperm's surface that is necessary for fertilization. On Western blots, the anti‐SGP antibody recognized large molecules, with molecular masses of 65–150 kDa and minor smaller molecules with masses of 20–28 kDa in the sperm membrane vesicles. SGP was distributed over nearly the entire surface of the sperm, probably as an integral membrane protein in close association with microfilaments. More membrane vesicles containing SGP bound to the surface were found in the animal hemisphere compared with the vegetal hemisphere in unfertilized eggs, but the vesicle‐binding was not observed in fertilized eggs. These results indicate that SGP mediates sperm‐egg membrane binding and is responsible for the establishment of fertilization in Xenopus.
A single active nanoelectromechanical tuning fork front-end radio-frequency receiver

Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) offer the potential to revolutionize fundamental methods employed for signal processing in today’s telecommunication systems, owing to their spectral purity and the prospect of integration with existing technology. In this work we present a novel, front-end receiver topology based on a single device silicon nanoelectromechanical mixer-filter. The operation is demonstrated by using the signal amplification in a field effect transistor (FET) merged into a tuning fork resonator. The combination of both a transistor and a mechanical element into a hybrid unit enables on-chip functionality and performance previously unachievable in silicon. Signal mixing, filtering and demodulation are experimentally demonstrated at very high frequencies ( > 100 MHz), maintaining a high quality factor of Q = 800 and stable operation at near ambient pressure (0.1 atm) and room temperature (T = 300 K). The results show that, ultimately miniaturized, silicon NEMS can be utilized to realize multi-band, single-chip receiver systems based on NEMS mixer-filter arrays with reduced system complexity and power consumption.
Association between Helicobacter pylori infection and inflammatory bowel disease: A meta‐analysis and systematic review of the literature†

Background: Epidemiologic data suggest a protective effect of Helicobacter pylori infection against the development of autoimmune disease. Laboratory data illustrate H. pylori's ability to induce immune tolerance and limit inflammatory responses. Numerous observational studies have investigated the association between H. pylori infection and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Our aim was to perform a systematic review and meta‐analysis of this association. Methods: Medline, EMBASE, bibliographies, and meeting abstracts were searched by 2 independent reviewers. Of 369 abstracts reviewed, 30 promising articles were reviewed in detail. Twenty‐three studies met our inclusion criteria (subject N = 5903). Meta‐analysis was performed with the metan command in Stata 10.1. Results: Overall, 27.1% of IBD patients had evidence of infection with H. pylori compared to 40.9% of patients in the control group. The estimated relative risk of H. pylori infection in IBD patients was 0.64 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.54–0.75). There was significant heterogeneity in the included studies that could not be accounted for by the method of IBD and H. pylori diagnosis, study location, or study population age. Conclusions: These results suggest a protective benefit of H. pylori infection against the development of IBD. Heterogeneity among studies and the possibility of publication bias limit the certainty of this finding. Further studies investigating the effect of eradication of H. pylori on the development of IBD are warranted. Because environmental hygiene and intestinal microbiota may be strong confounders, further mechanistic studies in H. pylori mouse models are also necessary to further define the mechanism of this negative association. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2009;)
Novel Self-Reference Based Image Watermarking Scheme

In this paper, a novel image watermarking scheme based on a self-reference technique is proposed. The meaningful watermark is embedded into a gray-level image according to the relation between the constructed reference image and the original host. In order to be robust against Jpeg compression, the reference image should be robust under Jpeg compression. Firstly, the original image is transformed into DCT domain; and then most of the high frequency coefficients are omitted; after the quantization step and inverse DCT transform, we can obtain a robust reference. By considering the relation between the original image and its reference, we can embed the watermark into the host. The watermark extraction process is oblivious. Experimental results under several attacks show good robustness of the proposed scheme. Especially under cropping and Jpeg compression attacks, the watermark can be extracted with only few errors.
The nature of concussion: a speculative hypothesis

Concussion is one of the commonest forms of neurological injury seen throughout the world. Although common in sport, this condition has parallels in the types of injury suffered in motor vehicle crashes, falls, and other forms of brain trauma.1 Despite the fact that the effects of brain injuries have been recognised for at least 3000 years and the clinical state of concussion initially described over 1000 years ago,2 the understanding of the pathophysiology of these injuries remains limited. One issue that remains difficult to reconcile is the absence of consistent neuroimaging abnormalities in the face of dramatic symptoms. This may in part be because concussion is due to a functional rather than structural lesion but also that the anatomical locus may be not cortical as is often assumed. The acute symptoms of concussion are described in detail in many published studies. Prospectively validated signs and symptoms include amnesia, loss of consciousness, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, attentional deficit, and nausea.3–7 The attentional deficit is often loosely described by clinicians as “confusion” or “disorientation”. While these terms are often seen as sine qua non of concussion, it is more scientifically appropriate to use the correct terminology. Other recently documented clinical features …
Quality-of-Service in Machine-to-Machine service provisioning process

This paper tackles the problem of Quality-of-Service (QoS) in heterogeneous Machine-to-Machine (M2M) systems. The concern for QoS guaranties has been widely expressed in the past for both wired and wireless networks. However, only recently when these two types of networks have converged into one, thus making one huge heterogeneous system called M2M, new concerns have emerged. In this paper we measured energy consumption for different communication technologies and proposed an energy consumption model for iOS devices that can be used in future QoS specifications. Finally, we defined a QoS metric that includes both energy and time consumption aspects of one simple M2M service.
Beauty and the Sources of Discrimination

We analyze discrimination against less attractive people on a TV game show with high stakes. The game has a rich structure that allows us to disentangle the relationship between attractiveness and the determinants of a player’s earnings. Unattractive players perform no worse than attractive ones, and are equally cooperative in the prisoner’s dilemma stage of the game. Nevertheless, they are substantially more likely to be eliminated by their peers, even though this is costly. We investigate third party perceptions of discrimination by asking subjects to predict elimination decisions. Subjects implicitly assign a role for attractiveness but underestimate its magnitude.
HECATAEUS: Regulating schema evolution

HECATAEUS is an open-source software tool for enabling impact prediction, what-if analysis, and regulation of relational database schema evolution. We follow a graph theoretic approach and represent database schemas and database constructs, like queries and views, as graphs. Our tool enables the user to create hypothetical evolution events and examine their impact over the overall graph before these are actually enforced on it. It also allows definition of rules for regulating the impact of evolution via (a) default values for all the nodes of the graph and (b) simple annotations for nodes deviating from the default behavior. Finally, HECATAEUS includes a metric suite for evaluating the impact of evolution events and detecting crucial and vulnerable parts of the system.
Active origami by 4D printing

Recent advances in three dimensional (3D) printing technology that allow multiple materials to be printed within each layer enable the creation of materials and components with precisely controlled heterogeneous microstructures. In addition, active materials, such as shape memory polymers, can be printed to create an active microstructure within a solid. These active materials can subsequently be activated in a controlled manner to change the shape or configuration of the solid in response to an environmental stimulus. This has been termed 4D printing, with the 4th dimension being the time-dependent shape change after the printing. In this paper, we advance the 4D printing concept to the design and fabrication of active origami, where a flat sheet automatically folds into a complicated 3D component. Here we print active composites with shape memory polymer fibers precisely printed in an elastomeric matrix and use them as intelligent active hinges to enable origami folding patterns. We develop a theoretical model to provide guidance in selecting design parameters such as fiber dimensions, hinge length, and programming strains and temperature. Using the model, we design and fabricate several active origami components that assemble from flat polymer sheets, including a box, a pyramid, and two origami airplanes. In addition, we directly print a 3D box with active composite hinges and program it to assume a temporary flat shape that subsequently recovers to the 3D box shape on demand.
Socially-aware caching strategy for content centric networking

Content Centric Networking (CCN) emerged as a replacement architecture for the current Internet. CCN resorts to in-network caching to enhance end-user delivery performance. At the same time, Online Social Networks (OSN) have become the common paradigm to exchange information between users. OSNs carry extremely valuable information about their users and their relationships. This knowledge can help to drastically improve the efficiency of CCN. We present a novel caching strategy for CCN based on social information. We conjecture a small number of users - the Influential users - dominate the activity, receive most attention from other users and produce content more likely to be consumed. Our caching strategy privileges the Influential users and cache pro-actively their content in the network. Through extensive simulation experiments based on two social network scenarios, LastFM and Facebook, and substantial number of users in a CCN topology, we demonstrate the value of our approach. We also implemented and deployed our strategy on PlanetLab and it improves drastically the caching performances of CCN.
Kernel-Based Fuzzy Local Binary Pattern for Gait Recognition

Gait recognition has received increasing attention in biometrics. However, more effort is needed to enhance the performance. In this paper, we investigate a novel descriptor for gait recognition known as Kernel-based Fuzzy Local Binary Pattern (KFLBP). The spatio-temporal static and dynamic characteristics of a gait sequence is first summarized using a Gait-Energy Image (GEI). Then, the proposed approach combines multiple FLBP with different radii to better handle uncertainty in GEI and improve the recognition performance. We evaluate the proposed method on CASIA B dataset at different view angles. We also compare the performance with other feature extraction methods and explore the impact of different walking covariates on the performance.
Fast Motion Estimation on Range Image Sequences Acquired with a 3-D Camera

This paper presents a computationally efficient approach to estimate translational 3-D motion from range images sequences, that is adapted from a 2-D motion estimation algorithm. An implementation of the algorithm is evaluated for computational efficiency as well as robustness in the presence of noise for both synthetic and real-life range data acquired with a PMD device, a high-speed low-resolution 3-D camera.
Expression of basic fibroblast growth factor and its receptor in the retina of Royal College of Surgeons rats. A comparative study.

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to identify whether abnormalities in the synthesis of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) or its receptor (bFGF-R) were responsible for the photoreceptor dystrophy in Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rats. METHODS The polymerase chain reaction was used to detect the expression of bFGF and bFGF-R messenger RNA in the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and the neural retina of RCS dystrophic rats and in PVG/C and RCS-rdy+ control animals. RESULTS In the RPE, it was found that there was no significant difference in the expression of bFGF and bFGF-R between RCS rats and the controls at the ages of 21 days and 3 mo. In the neural retina, the level of bFGF expression was lower in the 21-day-old RCS rats compared with the control group, but bFGF-R expression was as strong as in the PVG/C and RCS-rdy+ animals. However, in 3-mo-old RCS rat neural retina, the bFGF and bFGF-R expression was found to be significantly lower than in the control animals. CONCLUSIONS Although the mutant gene in RCS rats is expressed in the RPE cells, these results suggest that there is no significant defect in bFGF or bFGF-R expression in the RPE cells of RCS rats, which would be an initiating factor in the development of photoreceptor degeneration in these animals. The lowered bFGF levels in the neural retina at early stages (postnatal day 21) may explain the prolongation of photoreceptor survival when exogenous bFGF is injected.
Efficient forward dynamics simulation and optimization of locomotion: from legged robots to biomechanical systems

Locomotion of both walking robots and biomechanical systems show redundancies in the joint angle trajectory required to move the leg to a certain position and biomechanical systems additionally in muscle recruition. This paper shows the use of efficient dynamics modeling, dynamics algorithms and optimal control techniques to solve for optimal solutions to (goal oriented or measured reference) motions that as well solve the redundancy problems. Forward dynamics calculations are performed to solve both problems synchronously. A new approach proposed by the authors to the forward dynamics simulation and optimization problem outperforms commonly used methods by two orders of magnitude in numerical efficiency.
ML Time-Frequency Synchronization for MIMO-OFDM Systems in Unknown Frequency Selective Fading Channels

This paper addresses maximum-likelihood (ME) time-frequency synchronization algorithm joint with channel estimation for MIMO-OFDM systems in frequency selective fading channels. In proposed algorithm, we use two steps to maximize a proposed metric to obtain first frequency offset and then timing. Using these two estimates, the channel is identified. An iterative algorithm is proposed to improve frequency offset estimation. The performance of the proposed synchronization approach, in terms of timing failure probability and mean square error of the estimated frequency offset, was compared with literature. Based on simulation results, the Cramer-Rao lower bound is obtained with a few iterations
Quality of life is impaired not only in vitamin D deficient but also in vitamin D-insufficient pre-menopausal women

Background: Vitamin D deficiency may be more common in pre-menopausal women than previously thought and it may impair quality of life (QoL). Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate QoL in pre-menopausal women with vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency. Subjects and methods: This is a cross-sectional study in which subjects were enrolled between September 1st and November 30th, 2011. Healthy pre-menopausal women with weakness, fatigue and non-specific pain were assigned into three groups according to their 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) levels: ≤20 ng/ml (vitamin D deficient, no.=30), 21–29 ng/ml (vitamin D insufficient, no.=30) and ≥30 ng/ml (vitamin D sufficient, no.=20). Short form-36 (SF-36) scores, age, calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P), and PTH levels were compared among the groups and correlations of SF-36 scores with age, serum 25-OHD, Ca, P, and PTH were done. Results: There were significant differences among the groups with regard to PTH (p=0.008), physical component score (p=0.02), mental component score (p=0.035), physical functioning score (p=0.0001), and vitality score (p=0.05). Apart from PTH and physical functioning score, the results were significant when vitamin D-insufficient and -sufficient women were compared. Serum 25-OHD, but not PTH was correlated with some of the scales of SF-36. Conclusions: Some components of QoL are impaired not only in vitamin D deficient but also in insufficient pre-menopausal women, and impairment is related to 25-OHD rather than PTH levels.
A counting renaissance: combining stochastic mapping and empirical Bayes to quickly detect amino acid sites under positive selection

MOTIVATION Statistical methods for comparing relative rates of synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions maintain a central role in detecting positive selection. To identify selection, researchers often estimate the ratio of these relative rates (dN/dS) at individual alignment sites. Fitting a codon substitution model that captures heterogeneity in dN/dS across sites provides a reliable way to perform such estimation, but it remains computationally prohibitive for massive datasets. By using crude estimates of the numbers of synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions at each site, counting approaches scale well to large datasets, but they fail to account for ancestral state reconstruction uncertainty and to provide site-specific dN/dS estimates. RESULTS We propose a hybrid solution that borrows the computational strength of counting methods, but augments these methods with empirical Bayes modeling to produce a relatively fast and reliable method capable of estimating site-specific dN/dS values in large datasets. Importantly, our hybrid approach, set in a Bayesian framework, integrates over the posterior distribution of phylogenies and ancestral reconstructions to quantify uncertainty about site-specific dN/dS estimates. Simulations demonstrate that this method competes well with more-principled statistical procedures and, in some cases, even outperforms them. We illustrate the utility of our method using human immunodeficiency virus, feline panleukopenia and canine parvovirus evolution examples.
Reference Dependent Preferences and the Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction: Theory and Evidence

The impact of wage increases on job satisfaction is explored theoretically and empirically. To do this, we apply a utility function that rises with the absolute wage level as well as with wage increases. It is shown that when employees can influence their wages by exerting effort, myopic utility maximization directly implies increasing and concave shaped wage profiles. Furthermore, employees get unhappier over time staying on a certain job although wages increase. Using data from 19 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel we find empirical support for both the form of the utility function and the decreasing job satisfaction patterns.