Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.11p DCF for Multiplatooning Communications With Autonomous Vehicles

Platooning has been identified as a promising framework to improve road capacity, on-road safety, and energy efficiency. Enabling communications among vehicles in platoons is expected to enhance platoon control by keeping constant intervehicle and interplatoon distances. Characterizing the performance of intra- and interplatoon communications in terms of throughput and packet transmission delays is crucial for validating the effectiveness of information sharing on platoon control. In this paper, we introduce an IEEE 802.11p-based communication model for multiplatooning (a chain of platoons) scenarios. We present a probabilistic performance analysis of distributed-coordination-function-based intra- and interplatoon communications. Expressions for the transmission attempt probability, collision probability, packet delay, packet-dropping probability, and network throughput are derived. Numerical results show that the performance of interplatoon communications is affected by the transmissions of the first and last vehicles in a multiplatoon. This effect is reduced with an increase of the platoon number in the multiplatoon. In addition, the communication performance for three typical multiplatooning application scenarios is investigated, indicating that the IEEE 802.11p-based communication can support the timely delivery of vehicle information among platoons for diverse on-road applications.
The Nucleus- and Endoplasmic Reticulum-Targeted Forms of Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase 61F Regulate Drosophila Growth, Life Span, and Fecundity

ABSTRACT The protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) T cell PTP (TCPTP) and PTP1B share a high level of catalytic domain sequence and structural similarity yet display distinct differences in substrate recognition and function. Their noncatalytic domains contribute to substrate selectivity and function by regulating TCPTP nucleocytoplasmic shuttling and targeting PTP1B to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The Drosophila TCPTP/PTP1B orthologue PTP61F has two variants with identical catalytic domains that are differentially targeted to the ER and nucleus. Here we demonstrate that the PTP61F variants differ in their ability to negatively regulate insulin signaling in vivo, with the nucleus-localized form (PTP61Fn) being more effective than the ER-localized form (PTP61Fm). We report that PTP61Fm is reliant on the adaptor protein Dock to attenuate insulin signaling in vivo. Also, we show that the PTP61F variants differ in their capacities to regulate growth, with PTP61Fn but not PTP61Fm attenuating cellular proliferation. Furthermore, we generate a mutant lacking both PTP61F variants, which displays a reduction in median life span and a decrease in female fecundity, and show that both variants are required to rescue these mutant phenotypes. Our findings define the role of PTP61F in life span and fecundity and reinforce the importance of subcellular localization in mediating PTP function in vivo.
Current and emerging therapies for the treatment of osteoporosis

Osteoporosis represents a weakening of bone tissue due to an imbalance in the dynamic processes of bone formation and bone resorption that are continually ongoing within bone tissue. Most currently available osteoporosis therapies are antiresorptive agents. Over the past decade, bisphosphonates, notably alendronate and risedronate, have become the dominant agents with newer bisphosphonates such as ibandronate and zoledronic acid following a trend of less frequent dosing regimens. Synthetic estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) continue to be developed as drugs that maintain the bone-protective effects of estrogen while avoiding its associated adverse side effects. Currently available agents of this class include raloxifene, the only SERM available in the United States (US), and lasofoxifene and bazedoxifene, available in Europe. Calcitonin, usually administered as a nasal spray, completes the list of currently approved antiresorptive agents, while parathyroid hormone analogs represent the only anabolic agents currently approved in both the US and Europe. Strontium ranelate is an additional agent available in Europe but not the US that has both anabolic and antiresorptive activity. New agents expected to further expand therapeutic options include denosumab, a monoclonal antibody inhibitor of the resorptive enzyme cathepsin K, which is in the final stages of Food and Drug Administration approval. Other agents in preclinical development include those targeting specific molecules of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway involved in stimulating bone formation by osteoblast cells. This review discusses the use of currently available agents as well as highlighting emerging agents expected to bring significant changes to the approach to osteoporosis therapy in the near future.
Feeding toxicity and impact of imidacloprid formulation and mixtures with six representative pesticides at residue concentrations on honey bee physiology (Apis mellifera)

Imidacloprid is the most widely used insecticide in agriculture. In this study, we used feeding methods to simulate in-hive exposures of formulated imidacloprid (Advise® 2FL) alone and mixtures with six representative pesticides for different classes. Advise, fed at 4.3 mg/L (equal to maximal residue detection of 912 ppb active ingredient [a.i.] in pollen) induced 36% mortality and 56% feeding suppression after 2-week feeding. Treatments with individual Bracket (acephate), Karate (λ-cyhalothrin), Vydate (oxamyl), Domark (tetraconazole), and Roundup (glyphosate) at residue level had a mortality range of 1.3–13.3%, statistically similar to that of control (P>0.05). The additive/synergistic toxicity was not detected from binary mixtures of Advise with different classes of pesticides at residue levels. The feeding of the mixture of all seven pesticides increased mortality to 53%, significantly higher than Advise only but still without synergism. Enzymatic data showed that activities of invertase, glutathione S-transferase, and acetylcholinesterase activities in imidacloprid-treated survivors were mostly similar to those found in control. Esterase activity mostly increased, but was significantly suppressed by Bracket (acephate). The immunity-related phenoloxidase activity in imidacloprid-treated survivors tended to be lower, but most treatments were statistically similar to the control. Increase of cytochrome P450 activity was correlated with Advise concentrations and reached significant difference at 56 mg/L (12 ppm a.i.). Our data demonstrated that residue levels of seven pesticide in pollens/hive may not adversely affect honey bees, but long term exclusive ingestion of the maximal residue levels of imidacloprid (912 ppb) and sulfoxaflor (3 ppm a.i.) may induce substantial bee mortality. Rotating with other insecticides is a necessary and practical way to reduce the residue level of any given pesticide.
ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF PSEUDOMONAS AERUGINOSA WITH ANTAGONISTIC ACTIVITY AGAINST PYTHIUM APHANIDERMATUM

SUMMARY A study was conducted to isolate and characterize bacterial strains from greenhouse soils with potential for suppression of Pythium damping-off of cucumber. Out of 100 bacterial isolates collected from greenhouse soils, 20 isolates were found to be antagonistic to Pythium aphanidermatum in in vitro studies. The size of the growth inhibition zone of P. aphanidermatum on potato dextrose agar varied from 4 to 9 mm, with an average of 6.2 mm. Identification of these bacterial isolates to the species level using API20NE as well as sequences of the 16S ribosomal RNA confirmed their identity as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Bacterial isolates showed optimum growth at 30˚C, whereas a temperature of 37˚C favored bacterial antagonistic activity. Bacterial growth and antagonistic activity were not affected at high salinity levels (10 dS m -1 ) known to be stressful to cucumber production. This provides evidence for tolerance to salinity among the isolated bacteria. In vivo assays provided evidence for inhibition of Pythium damping-off at 28˚C, with no effect on growth of cucumber seedlings. This is the first report of occurrence of Ps. aeruginosa with antagonistic activity against P. aphanidermatum in greenhouse soils in Oman.
Reducing TLB and memory overhead using online superpage promotion

Modern microprocessors contain small translation lookaside buffers (TLBs) that maintain a cache of recently used translations. A TLB's coverage is the sum of the number of bytes mapped by each entry. Applications with working sets larger than the TLB coverage will perform poorly due to high TLB miss rates. Superpages have been proposed as a mechanism for increasing TLB coverage. A superpage is a virtual memory page with size and alignment that are a power of two multiple of the system's base page size. In this paper, we describe online policies for superpage management that monitor TLB miss traffic to decide when a superpage should be constructed. Our policies take into account both the benefit of a superpage promotion (potential for preventing future misses) and the cost (page copying). Although our approach increases the cost of each TLB miss, the net effect is to improve total execution time by eliminating a large number of misses without significantly increasing memory usage, thereby improving system performance.
Stress and addiction: contribution of the corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) system in neuroplasticity

Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) has been shown to induce various behavioral changes related to adaptation to stress. Dysregulation of the CRF system at any point can lead to a variety of psychiatric disorders, including substance use disorders (SUDs). CRF has been associated with stress-induced drug reinforcement. Extensive literature has identified CRF to play an important role in the molecular mechanisms that lead to an increase in susceptibility that precipitates relapse to SUDs. The CRF system has a heterogeneous role in SUDs. It enhances the acute effects of drugs of abuse and is also responsible for the potentiation of drug-induced neuroplasticity evoked during the withdrawal period. We present in this review the brain regions and circuitries where CRF is expressed and may participate in stress-induced drug abuse. Finally, we attempt to evaluate the role of modulating the CRF system as a possible therapeutic strategy for treating the dysregulation of emotional behaviors that result from the acute positive reinforcement of substances of abuse as well as the negative reinforcement produced by withdrawal.
Nanotechnology in the real world: Redeveloping the nanomaterial consumer products inventory

To document the marketing and distribution of nano-enabled products into the commercial marketplace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies created the Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory (CPI) in 2005. The objective of this present work is to redevelop the CPI by leading a research effort to increase the usefulness and reliability of this inventory. We created eight new descriptors for consumer products, including information pertaining to the nanomaterials contained in each product. The project was motivated by the recognition that a diverse group of stakeholders from academia, industry, and state/federal government had become highly dependent on the inventory as an important resource and bellweather of the pervasiveness of nanotechnology in society. We interviewed 68 nanotechnology experts to assess key information needs. Their answers guided inventory modifications by providing a clear conceptual framework best suited for user expectations. The revised inventory was released in October 2013. It currently lists 1814 consumer products from 622 companies in 32 countries. The Health and Fitness category contains the most products (762, or 42% of the total). Silver is the most frequently used nanomaterial (435 products, or 24%); however, 49% of the products (889) included in the CPI do not provide the composition of the nanomaterial used in them. About 29% of the CPI (528 products) contain nanomaterials suspended in a variety of liquid media and dermal contact is the most likely exposure scenario from their use. The majority (1288 products, or 71%) of the products do not present enough supporting information to corroborate the claim that nanomaterials are used. The modified CPI has enabled crowdsourcing capabilities, which allow users to suggest edits to any entry and permits researchers to upload new findings ranging from human and environmental exposure data to complete life cycle assessments. There are inherent limitations to this type of database, but these modifications to the inventory addressed the majority of criticisms raised in published literature and in surveys of nanotechnology stakeholders and experts. The development of standardized methods and metrics for nanomaterial characterization and labelling in consumer products can lead to greater understanding between the key stakeholders in nanotechnology, especially consumers, researchers, regulators, and industry.
Diffusion Algorithms in Multimedia Social Networks: a preliminary model

Despite the great amount of research done in the Online Social Networks (OSNs) field, only few works have investigated the use of multimedia data in such realm. Instead, it is the authors’ opinion that a novel data model that takes into account the intrinsic characteristics of multimedia may be of great help in managing Multimedia OSNs for providing more effective algorithms. In this paper, we describe a novel OSN data model that supports easy management of multimedia content in a unique framework, providing a more effective and efficient mechanism for data and information management in a variety of applications, especially for Influence Analysis aims.
Myricetin exhibits anti-glioma potential by inducing mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, inhibition of cell migration and ROS generation.

PURPOSE To study the antiproliferative effects of myricetin in human glioma U251 cells together with assessing its effects on cell cycle, apoptosis, apoptosis-related proteins, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and cell migration. METHODS Cell viability of human glioma cells after myricetin treatment was assessed by MTT assay. Phase-contrast and confocal fluorescence microscopies were used to assess the morphological changes that occured in these cells following myricetin treatment. Flow cytometry using propidium iodide (PI) and Annexin-V FITC as probes was employed to evaluate the effects on cell cycle arrest and apoptosis induction, respectively. The effect of myricetin on intracellular ROS production was measured by flow cytometry with a fluorescent probe CM-DCFH2-DA. RESULTS Myricetin induced a dose-dependent as well as time-dependent growth inhibitory effect in U251 human glioma cells. Myricetin treatment resulted in U251 cells detachment from adjacent cells making clusters of cells floating in the medium. Detached cells had irregular shape and incapable to maintain their membranes intact. Apoptotic cell death was induced by myricetin treatment as witnessed by fluorescence microscopy. The percentage of early and late apoptotic cells increased from 0.41% and 8.2% to 23.1% and 10.2%, 25.2% and 19.4%, to finally 36.2% and 28.4% after treatment with 15 μM, 60 μM and 120 μM of myricetin, respectively. We also observed a dose-dependent increase in Bax and Bad levels and a dose-dependent decrease in Bcl-2 and Bcl-xl expression levels following myricetin treatment. Cell cycle arrest in G2/M phase of the cell cycle was also induced by the drug treatment. A concentration-dependent ROS generation was also witnessed and a 3-fold increase of ROS production was seen after 60 μM myricetin treatment. CONCLUSION Myricetin exerts anticancer effects in U251 human glioma cells by inducing mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis, G2/M phase cell cycle arrest, ROS generation and inhibition of cell migration.
SURFACE RECONSTRUCTION OF LARGE COMPLEX STRUCTURES FROM MIXED RANGE DATA – THE ERECHTHEION EXPERIENCE

We present the procedure and technologies used to modelling of the Erechtheion at the Acropolis in Athens, a large complex structure with many challenges to data acquisition, processing, and visualisation. We used two scanners, one for medium range highresolution coverage (1-5 mm lateral data spacing) and one long-range scanner to capture some top sections occluded from the first scanner. We also used high-resolution digital images for image-based reconstruction using Photogrammetric and image matching techniques and for texture mapping. We focus in this paper on the geometric reconstruction from the range sensors. Several issues had to be addressed. Our system must be able to work with data obtained at different resolutions and accuracies and acquired from any viewpoint. The marble surfaces were of different age from one part to another due to decades of restoration. This resulted in different reflectance properties and apparent laser penetration that varied from area to area. Another problem resulted from the huge amount of data. The billions of generated 3D points by all sensors are currently beyond the processing capabilities of commercially available software or hardware. Reducing the data to a manageable size without losing important details had to be addressed.
Automatic Detection of Solder Joint Defects on Integrated Circuits

In this paper an automatic inspection method for the diagnosis of solder joint defects on integrated circuits mounted in surface mounting technology is presented. The diagnosis is handled as a classification problem with a neural network approach. Two classes of solder joints have been fixed with respect to the amount of the soldering paste. These correspond to acceptable and non acceptable solder joints to assure the correct working of the integrated circuits. The images of the boards under test are acquired by an acquisition system; then they are pre-processed to extract the region of interest for the diagnosis. A "geometric" features vector is extracted from this region and it feeds a multi layer perceptron neural network. Experimental results show that these networks perform high recognition rate and the robustness of the proposed method.
Dimming of fluorescent lamps by varying the duty cycle in electronic ballast with integrated boost converter to the half bridge inverter

This paper presents one electronic ballast for high power factor used to trigger and control the brightness of fluorescent lamps. The converter used has a single stage where the processing power factor correction stage of power and drive of the lamp are integrated. The integration aims to simplify the power converter and thus make it economically more attractive. The brightness control is provided by varying the duty cycle of drive the switches of the converter. Experimental results and computer simulation are presented at the end of this paper.
Preferred intraarticular corticosteroids and associated practice: a survey of members of the American College of Rheumatology.

OBJECTIVE To determine which intraarticular steroids are used by rheumatologists and whether this use and associated practice vary with time and place of training. METHOD American College of Rheumatology members were mailed questionnaires that focused on steroid use in the adult knee. RESULTS The steroids favored by the respondents were methylprednisolone acetate (MPA), preferred most by those trained in the eastern U.S.; triamcinolone hexacetonide (TH), preferred by those trained in the Midwest and Southwest; and triamcinolone acetonide (TA), preferred by those trained in the West. Only TH was chosen primarily because of efficacy. Regardless of concentration, respondents used 1 ml of steroid. Most (especially those recently trained) combined steroid with local anesthetic. Post-injection instructions varied: 29% did not restrict weight-bearing; 8% recommended limited weight-bearing for 1 week or more. CONCLUSION MPA, TH, and TA were favored. Associated techniques varied, based in part on where and when training took place. Research is needed to provide a more rational basis for clinical practice.
Application of the Inhomogeneous Lippmann-Schwinger Equation to Inverse Scattering Problems

In this paper we present a hybrid approach to numerically solving two-dimensional electromagnetic inverse scattering problems, whereby the unknown scatterer is hosted by a possibly inhomogeneous background. The approach is “hybrid” in that it merges a qualitative and a quantitative method to optimize the way of exploiting the a priori information on the background within the inversion procedure, thus improving the quality of the reconstruction and reducing the data amount necessary for a satisfactory result. In the qualitative step, this a priori knowledge is utilized to implement the linear sampling method in its near-field formulation for an inhomogeneous background, in order to identify the region where the scatterer is located. On the other hand, the same a priori information is also encoded in the quantitative step by extending and applying the contrast source inversion method to what we call the “inhomogeneous Lippmann--Schwinger equation''; the latter is a generalization of the classical Lippmann--.
Kernel scatter-difference based discriminant analysis for face recognition

There are two problems with the Fisher linear discriminant analysis (FLDA) for face recognition. One is the singularity problem of the within-class scatter matrix due to small training sample size. The other is that FLDA cannot efficiently describe complex nonlinear variations of face images with illumination, pose and facial expression variations, due to its linear property. A kernel scatter-difference based discriminant analysis is proposed to overcome these two problems. We first use the nonlinear kernel trick to map the input data into an implicit feature space F. Then a scatter-difference based discriminant rule is defined to analysis the data in F. The proposed method can not only produce nonlinear discriminant features in accordance with the principle of maximizing between-class scatter and minimizing within-class scatter, but also avoid the singularity problem of the within class scatter matrix. Experiments on the FERET database show an encouraging recognition performance of the new algorithm.
High glucose-induced oxidative stress increases transient receptor potential ( TRP ) channel expression in human monocytes Short title : High glucose affects TRPC

This is an uncopyedited electronic version of an article accepted for publication in Diabetes. The American Diabetes Association, publisher of Diabetes, is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it by third parties. The definitive publisher-authenticated version will be available in a future issue of Diabetes in print and online at http://diabetes.diabetesjournals. org. Diabetes Publish Ahead of Print, published online January 12, 2010
Passivity of virtual free-floating dynamics rendered on robotic facilities

This paper describes a control strategy to achieve high fidelity dynamics simulation rendered on admittance controlled robotic facilities. It explores the reasons for an increasing energy found in the virtual dynamics of a free-floating satellite rendered on a six degree of freedom robot, which can lead the system to become unstable and proposes a method to cope with it. The proposed method identifies the sources of intrinsic instability provoked by time delays that are found in the computational loop of the rendered dynamics and counteracts their destabilizing effects using the passivity criteria. The performance of the system and the benefits of the method are shown in simulations and are verified experimentally.