Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
F-actin aggregates in transformed cells

Polymerized actin has been found aggregated into distinctive patches inside transformed cells in culture. The F-actin-specific fluorescent probe, nitrobenzoxadiazole-phallacidin, labels these F-actin aggregates near the ventral cell surface of cells transformed by RNA or DNA tumor viruses, or by chemical mutagens, or spontaneously. Their appearance in all eight transformed cell types studied suggests their ubiquity and involvement in transformation morphology. Actin patches developed in normal rat kidney (NRK) cells transformed by a temperature-sensitive mutant of Rous sarcoma virus (LA23-NRK) within 30 min after a shift from the nonpermissive (39 degrees C) to the permissive temperature (32 degrees C). Patch appearance paralleling viral src gene expression tends to implicate pp60src kinase activity in destabilizing the cytoskeleton. However, appearance of the actin aggregates in cells not transformed by retrovirus calls for alternative mechanisms, perhaps involving an endogenous kinase, for this apparently common trait.
Frozen state conditions for asymptotic consensus of time-varying cooperative nonlinear networks

In this paper we present new results on asymptotic consensus for continuous-time nonlinear time varying cooperative networks. We endow the well known assumption of integral connectivity proposed by Moreau with a remarkable additional feature of being frozen in state variables, making its direct verification more straightforward. Moreover, we give an estimate of the exponential rate of convergence towards the agreement manifold.
HPV16 Tumor Associated Macrophages Suppress Antitumor T Cell Responses

Purpose: High-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) is the main etiologic factor for cervical cancer. The severity of HPV-associated cervical lesions has been correlated to the number of infiltrating macrophages. The objective of this work is to characterize the role of tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) on the immune cellular response against the tumor. Experimental Design: We used the HPV16 E6- and E7-expressing TC-1 mouse tumor model to study the effect of TAM on T-cell function in vitro, and depleted TAM, using clodronate-containing liposomes, to characterize its role in vivo. Results: TAM, characterized by the positive expression of CD45, F4/80, and CD11b, formed the major population of infiltrating tumor cells. TAM displayed high basal Arginase I activity, producing interleukin-10 (IL-10); they were resistant to iNOSII activity induction, therefore reversion to M1 phenotype, when stimulated in vitro with lipopolysaccharide/IFNγ, indicating an M2 phentoype. In cultures of isolated TAM, TAM induced regulatory phenotype, characterized by IL-10 and Foxp3 expression, and inhibited proliferation of CD8 lymphocytes. In vivo, depletion of TAM inhibited tumor growth and stimulated the infiltration of tumors by HPV16 E749-57-specific CD8 lymphocytes, whereas depletion of Gr1+ tumor-associated cells had no effect. Conclusions: M2-like macrophages infiltrate HPV16-associated tumors causing suppression of antitumor T-cell response, thus facilitating tumor growth. Depletion or phenotype alteration of this population should be considered in immunotherapy strategies.
Heritability of Intelligence

Intelligence has been studied and measured for about 100 years. During that time researchers initially made casual observations that intelligence was substantially heritable, but they did not have enough data nor the appropriate methodology to quantify heritability. It was not pursued as an important focus of research until the end of the 60s. During the 60s, it was commonly believed (even by appropriately educated scholars) that humans were primarily the product of their environments. This belief was applied to intelligence in a deductive manner, with the starting assumption taken to be true and with all implications accorded equal truth. Since there was no inductive path established, people used their unproved assumptions to design various social programs with the expectation that they would elevate the intelligence of groups known to exhibit low intelligence. Parents were urged to provide stimulating home environments in order to cause their children to become smart.
From Corals to Canyons: The Great Barrier Reef Margin

The significance of submerged fossil coral reefs as important archives of abrupt global sea level rise and climate change has been confirmed by investigations in the Caribbean [Fairbanks, 1989] and the Indo-Pacific (see Montaggioni [2005] for a summary) and by recent Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) activities in Tahiti [Camoin et al., 2007]. Similar submerged (40-130 meters) reef structures are preserved along the margin of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), but they have not yet been systematically studied. The submerged reefs have the potential to provide critical new information about the nature of past global sea level and climate variability and about the response of the GBR to these past and perhaps future environmental changes [Beaman et al., 2008]. Equally important for GBR Marine Park managers is information about the role of the reefs as habitats and substrates for modern biological communities. Here we summarize the highlights and broader implications of a September- October 2007 expedition on the R/V Southern Surveyor (Australian Marine National Facility, voyage SS07/2007) to investigate the shelf edge, upper slope, and submarine canyons along the GBR margin.
Experimental analysis of a privacy-preserving scalar product protocol

The recent investigation of privacy-preserving data mining has been motivated by the growing concern about the privacy of individuals when their data is stored, aggregated, and mined for information. In an effort towards practical algorithms for privacy-preserving data mining solutions, we analyze and implement solutions to an important primitive: the privacy-preserving scalar product of two vectors held by different parties. Privacypreserving scalar products are an important component of privacy-preserving data mining algorithms, particularly when data is vertically partitioned between two or more parties. We examine a cryptographically secure privacypreserving data mining solution in different computational settings. Our experimental results show that in the absence of special-purpose hardware accelerators or practical optimizations, the computational complexity, rather than the communication complexity, is the performance bottleneck. We also evaluate several practical optimizations to improve the efficiency.
Mudança Organizacional na Transição entre as Fases do Ciclo de Vida das Pequenas e Médias Empresas

The objective of the study presented here was to generate knowledge about how the change in the transition between phases of SMEs’ life cycle occurs. Our analysis was done with inspiration in the synthesis done buy Demers (2007), witch describes how organizational change occurs and what mechanisms, among ideology, strategy and structure, determines it in the transition between phases of organizational life cycle. The research method was qualitative in a multiple case study of four SMEs in distinct phases of their life cycle. Data collection was done using semi-structured interviews with key informants within organizations and documental analysis. Results reinforce the organizational life cycle model, witch advocates that organizations, in their evolution or growth process, have some development phases in common; each phase has its own characteristics and occurs in association with changes in different organizational dimensions, even though changes are not always planned or controlled.
Empirical Evaluation of Mobile WiMAX with MIMO

Mobile WiMAX is claimed to have the greatest potential of all wireless access technologies already in the markets with respect to network capacity, range, mobility, and quality of service support. Mobile WiMAX has also adopted MIMO as an essential element for increasing capacity and data propagation reliability. However, there are few publicly available studies demonstrating what is possible with Mobile WiMAX in practice and none that empirically evaluates the performance gains attained with MIMO. We fill this gap by comparing spacetime coding based 2x2 MIMO with single antenna mode in our Mobile WiMAX testbed. We conduct thorough measurements that involve vehicular mobility with different types of traffic. We find that MIMO significantly increases the reliability of data propagation over the wireless link, which is particularly evident when we consider TCP traffic. Since 3GPP LTE, the main rival to Mobile WiMAX, equipment and publicly deployed networks are yet to become available, HSPA and the soon-tobe-deployed HSPA+ amendments to UMTS are the only wireless technologies challenging Mobile WiMAX. Thus, we also compare Mobile WiMAX with HSPA, providing the first publicly available side-by-side measurement study.
A Survey on Object Detection Tracking and Identification in a Video Surveillance System

Object tracking in a crowd remains one of the challenging problems of video surveillance system. The task of object tracking is one of the most important components of real time video surveillance and monitoring systems. Many researches are taking place in intelligent and automated security surveillance systems due to an increasing demand for such systems. They are useful in public areas such as airports, underground stations, retail shops, hospitals, banks, and mass events. One of the most critical requirements for surveillance systems is tracking of stationary foreground regions which are used for tracking of stolen objects or vehicles in parking area. Object tracking based methods are one of the choice to detect stationary foreground objects. This paper provides various techniques or methods that are used for detecting, tracking and identification of objects.
Comparison of Storage Conditions for Human Vaginal Microbiome Studies

Background The effect of storage conditions on the microbiome and metabolite composition of human biological samples has not been thoroughly investigated as a potential source of bias. We evaluated the effect of two common storage conditions used in clinical trials on the bacterial and metabolite composition of the vaginal microbiota using pyrosequencing of barcoded 16S rRNA gene sequencing and 1H-NMR analyses. Methodology/Principal Findings Eight women were enrolled and four mid-vaginal swabs were collected by a physician from each woman. The samples were either processed immediately, stored at −80°C for 4 weeks or at −20°C for 1 week followed by transfer to −80°C for another 4 weeks prior to analysis. Statistical methods, including Kolmogorovo-Smirnov and Wilcoxon tests, were performed to evaluate the differences in vaginal bacterial community composition and metabolites between samples stored under different conditions. The results showed that there were no significant differences between samples processed immediately after collection or stored for varying durations. 1H-NMR analysis of the small molecule metabolites in vaginal secretions indicated that high levels of lactic acid were associated with Lactobacillus-dominated communities. Relative abundance of lactic acid did not appear to correlate with relative abundance of individual Lactobacillus sp. in this limited sample, although lower levels of lactic acid were observed when L. gasseri was dominant, indicating differences in metabolic output of seemingly similar communities. Conclusions/Significance These findings benefit large-scale, field-based microbiome and metabolomic studies of the vaginal microbiota.
Resource-Cost Analysis for Massively Multiplayer Online Games

In this paper, an approach for modelling and analysis of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) is proposed. By using our models, based on Markov process and queuing theory, we can investigate the impact of various factors, such as game types, the number of players, the intensity of players or NCPs interaction, the number of regions in a game world, avatar region-transition rate, and network configuration, on the system performance. A number of resource-cost functions are defined, which map the system resource consumed to the cost during a game play. We choose the federated peer-to-peer architecture as a target for this study, since it is a typical and potential architecture proposed recently and attracting more attention.
A low power fully integrated analog baseband circuit with variable bandwidth for 802.11 a/b/g WLAN

This paper presents experimental results of an analog baseband circuit with variable bandwidth for WLAN direct conversion receiver in UMC 0.18/spl mu/m CMOS process. A seventh order Chebyshev lowpass filter with triple bandwidth is used in the analog baseband circuit. The bandwidth is selectable from 7.56MHz, 19.5MHz, or 26.5MHz. The circuit adopts the servo loop for dc offset cancellation. It also has a gain range from 20dB to 60 dB with 10 dB steps while only dissipating 22.248mW. In addition, an automatic frequency tuning loop (ATL) is reported to achieve the bandwidth accuracy of the filter.
Tropospheric ozone: Seasonal behavior, trends, and anthropogenic influence

We present an analysis of data for tropospheric ozone with a focus on spatial and temporal variations. Surface ozone at mid-latitudes displays two modes of seasonal behavior: a broad summer maximum within a few hundred kilometers of populated and industrialized regions in Europe and the United States and a minimum in summer or autumn in sparsely populated regions remote from industrial activity-in Tasmania and Canada for example. The current data base for different regions, in combination with limited historical data, indicates that summertime concentrations of ozone near the surface in rural areas of Europe and the central and eastern United States may have increased by approximately 6–22 ppb (20%–100%) since the 1940's. The seasonal cycle of ozone in the middle troposphere over Europe, the United States, and northern Japan is very similar to that at the surface with a summer maximum, but it is quite different from that at 300 mbar, which is characterized by a maximum in spring. There is good evidence for an increase in ozone in the middle troposphere over Europe during the past 15 years and weaker evidence for a similar increase over North America and Japan. The increase in tropospheric ozone contributes significantly to the trend in the column of ozone and may compensate for 20%–30% of the decrease in ozone in the stratosphere over middle and high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. We argue that the summer maximum in ozone and the observed trends are due to photochemical production associated with anthropogenic emissions of NOx, hydrocarbons, and CO from combustion of fossil fuels. A strong seasonal variation in ozone observed at Natal, Brazil (6°S), may also result from emissions of NOx and hydrocarbons, in this case from agricultural burning. Maximum concentrations at Natal are similar to values found at mid-latitudes in summer. Tropical ozone exhibits strong spatial and temporal variability.
Considering Hysteresis in LNAPL Lens Geometry , Mobility , and Well Thicknesses

When released to the subsurface, LNAPLs (light nonaqueous phase liquids) will distribute as residual saturation in the form of disconnected blobs and ganglia or as larger accumulations in the form of mobile lenses near the water table. The conceptual model assumed for the distribution of these immiscible contaminants greatly affects important characteristics such as the rate of mass transfer, the mobility of the contaminant, and estimates for the areal extent and volume of contamination. Although the transport and distribution of LNAPLs is strongly affected by subsurface heterogeneities and knowledge of stratigraphic detail is typically limited, a better understanding of NAPL distribution in homogeneous and simple layered soils should result in more accurate conceptualizations of site contamination, better interpretations of observed field data, and more realistic mobility estimates. This paper highlights a new conceptual model for the geometry of LNAPL pools and lenses and illustrates how the phenomenon of saturation hysteresis and the concept of imbibition entry pressures plays a critical role in the description of LNAPL lenses at equilibrium. It is proposed that the geometry of LNAPL lenses cannot be fully understood without considering hysteresis in capillary pressure-saturation relations. In fact, it is proposed that NAPL lenses of any measurable thickness cannot be stable without this hysteresis. Considering this, attempts to model LNAPL distribution must account for this phenomenon, and it can also be important in estimating LNAPL mobility or in interpreting product thickness in monitoring wells. This conceptual model was verified by laboratory flume studies and applied to calculations of maximum LNAPL lens thickness and the location of an LNAPL lens with respect to the capillary fringe. It was found that the model was a good predictor of these values. The proposed model also implies that the mobilization of LNAPL lenses will occur at lower hydraulic gradients than would otherwise be predicted. Additionally, the potential significance of accounting for hysteresis and imbibition entry pressures when interpreting well product thicknesses and other field data is discussed.
Modeling the transport of volatile organics in variably saturated media

The understanding of the processes of dissolution, volatilization, and gas-liquid partitioning in porous media is very limited. The few models which attempt to characterize the transport of volatile organics such as petroleum products and halogenated hydrocarbon solvents in variably saturated media all assume that mass transfer processes are at equilibrium. In addition, gas phase advection is neglected by assuming that gas phase pressures are uniformly atmospheric and that density gradients are negligible. In this study a model was developed to solve for water phase flow and transport and density dependent gas phase flow and transport. Simple expressions for dissolution, volatilization, and gas-liquid partitioning, employing the concept of an overall mass transfer coefficient, were incorporated into the model. The transport of trichloroethylene in a variably saturated vertical cross section, under a variety of conditions, was simulated. Results of the simulations appeared qualitatively correct. The importance of gas phase processes in increasing subsurface contamination from volatile organics, and in dissipating residual amounts of these substances, was demonstrated. The lack of similar analytical and/or numerical models, or suitable experimental studies, excluded the possibility of validating, or verifying, the model.
ASSESSMENT OF SOIL FERTILITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND THEIR CONSTRAINTS IN DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHIC LOCATIONS OF NEPAL

A farmers’ field survey was conducted in 2009 to evaluate soil fertility management practices and their constraints in certain hill and valley farming systems of Nepal. Thirty households from Okharpouwa village development committee (VDC), Nuwakot and thirty households from Fulbari VDC, Chitwan districts were surveyed using semi-structured questionnaires. In addition, key informants’ interview, checklist survey, observation in the field and documentation of the individual cases were carried out during this research. The study revealed that farm yard manure (FYM) was the major source of nutrients, although the use of poultry manure, goat manure, green manure and chemical fertilizers was also common. We realized that the management of FYM and that of other types of organic manure in the manure pit and in the field was not efficient in conserving nutrients. Similarly, farmers preferred the continuous cultivation of cereal or commercial crops, without mixing the crops or rotating with legumes, the sliced terrace risers in hills, which constrained better production in hills and valleys of Nepal. The specific problems in hills included erosion and leaching of nutrients, soil acidification, while those of valley lands included the imbalanced use of fertilizers, intensive cropping, and crop failure due to improper management.
Screening for Gastric Cancer: The Usefulness of Endoscopy

Gastric cancer screening is common in countries with high prevalence rates of gastric cancer. However, data supporting the effectiveness of gastric cancer screening are lacking. Thus, the aim of this review was to examine the current evidence on gastric cancer screening. Herein, we reviewed radiographic and endoscopic tests as methods of gastric cancer screening. Previous cohort studies and case-control studies have demonstrated reduced gastric cancer mortality in study populations that had undergone gastric cancer screening with radiographic tests. Recently, a case-control study in Japan reported a 30% reduction in gastric cancer mortality when screening was undertaken via endoscopy. Also, endoscopic screening for gastric cancer exhibited higher sensitivity and specificity than radiographic screening. Moreover, most cost-effectiveness analyses on the best strategy for detecting early gastric cancer have generally concluded that endoscopy is more cost-effective than radiographic testing. Although data on the impact of endoscopy screening programs on gastric cancer mortality are limited, recent study results suggest that gastric cancer screening by endoscopy in average-risk populations performs better than radiography screening. Further evaluation of the impact of these screening methods should take into account cost and any associated reduction in gastric cancer mortality.
Optimal execution with mulitplicative price impact

We consider the so-called “optimal execution problem” in algorithmic trading, which is the problem faced by an investor who has a large number of stock shares to sell over a given time horizon and whose actions have impact on the stock price. In particular, we develop and study a price model that presents the stochastic dynamics of a geometric Brownian motion and incorporates a log-linear effect of the investor’s transactions. We then formulate the optimal execution problem as a twodimensional degenerate singular stochastic control problem. Using both analytic and probabilistic techniques, we establish simple conditions for the market to allow for no price manipulation and we develop a detailed characterisation of the value function and the optimal strategy. In particular, we derive an explicit solution to the problem if the time horizon is infinite. Interesting features of the problem’s solution include the facts that (a) the value function may be discontinuous as a function of the time horizon and (b) an optimal strategy may not exist even when the value function is finite.