Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applicability of Probabilistic Nucleation Modelling for the Analysis of Microfluidics Data

Microfluidics tools have been developing rapidly over the past decade, as they offer unparalleled ability for controlling nucleation and tracking crystallisation events inside very large numbers of individual nanolitre-size droplets. They have demonstrated a significant potential for screening protein crystallization conditions and for the direct determination of inorganic products solubility curves. The accepted basis for analysing microfluidics data is the probabilistic nucleation model originally proposed by Pound and La Mer (1952). Given the significance of this model for the purpose of analysing microfluidics data, the paper conducts a review of its hypotheses, usage and applicability. A step-by-step derivation of the model equations confirms that the time variation of the proportion of empty droplets which microfluidics experiments can provide with high accuracy is indeed the recommended method for estimation of nucleation kinetic parameters from microfluidics experiments. The paper shows that, depending on its implementation, the model predicts different rates of appearance of crystals inside individual droplets. The paper focuses on two distinct implementation modes, referred to as constant supersaturation and single nucleation event modes. By confronting model prediction with microfluidics measurements for eflucimibe in octanol, the paper finds that both modes yield different model predictions, shedding light on the potential and limits of the probabilistic nucleation model for the analysis of microfluidics data.
Enantioseparation and Absolute Configuration Determination of Angular-Type Pyranocoumarins from Peucedani Radix Using Enzymatic Hydrolysis and Chiral HPLC-MS/MS Analysis

Angular-type pyranocoumarins from Peucedani Radix (Chinese name: Qian-hu) have exhibited potential for use on treatment of cancer and pulmonary hypertension. Due to the existence of C-3′ and C-4′ chiral centers, compounds belonging to this chemical type commonly exist in enantiomers and/or diastereoisomers, which may elicit distinct activities during their interactions with the human body. In the present study, a new method, which combines enzymatic hydrolysis with chiral LC-MS/MS analysis, has been developed to determine the absolute configurations of these angular-type pyranocoumarins. Pyranocoumarins isolated from Qian-hu, their enantiomers, or metabolites were individually incubated with rat liver microsomes. As the common end product from enzymatic hydrolysis of all tested pyranocoumarins, cis-khellactone was collected and its absolute configuration was determined by comparison with (+)-cis-khellactone and (−)-cis-khellactone using chiral LC-MS/MS. The absolute configurations of all tested parent pyranocoumarins were determined by combination of LC-MS/MS, NMR and polarimetric analysis. The results revealed that the metabolite cis-khellactone retained the same absolute configurations of the stereogenic carbons as the respective parent compound. This method was proven to be rapid and sensitive and also has advantages in discriminating single enantiomers and mixtures of optical isomers with different ratios.
The transcriptional control of hematopoiesis.

NDERSTANDING how pluripotential stem cells unU dergo progressive restriction of lineage potential and acquire the characteristics of mature, terminally differentiated cells is central to developmental biology. Hematopoietic stem cells and differentiated progenitors are among the best studied and have contributed an important model system for cell differentiation. In this context, hematopoiesis is the process by which blood cells acquire defining phenotypes as a result of coordinated, cell-specific gene expression. The pattern of gene expression within a cell is established by cell-specific transcription factors that mediate the net effect of the variety of proliferation and differentiation signals which impinge on it. Hence, an understanding of transcription factor function is essential to the study of differentiation. One convenient way to coordinate the expression of many individual genes in a terminally differentiated cell is through the aegis of one or a few cell-specific transcription factors. In this simplified scenario, pivotal steps in differentiation are linked to the activation of key transcriptional regulators. The processes actually governing cell differentiation are undoubtedly more complex and are probably mediated through combinations between cell-specific and widely expressed proteins. Nevertheless, lineage-restricted transcription factors provide a valuable starting point in probing the molecular mechanisms of cell differentiation. Studies in this area have been greatly facilitated by advances in mouse genetic techniques, and the results and hypotheses generated by selected experiments involving hematopoietic transcription factors will be reviewed here. Our purpose is to describe representative murine studies that illustrate emerging concepts and to outline outstanding questions.
The three-dimensional architecture of Hox cluster silencing

Spatial chromatin organization is emerging as an important mechanism to regulate the expression of genes. However, very little is known about genome architecture at high-resolution in vivo. Here, we mapped the three-dimensional organization of the human Hox clusters with chromosome conformation capture (3C) technology. We show that computational modeling of 3C data sets can identify candidate regulatory proteins of chromatin architecture and gene expression. Hox genes encode evolutionarily conserved master regulators of development which strict control has fascinated biologists for over 25 years. Proper transcriptional silencing is key to Hox function since premature expression can lead to developmental defects or human disease. We now show that the HoxA cluster is organized into multiple chromatin loops that are dependent on transcription activity. Long-range contacts were found in all four silent clusters but looping patterns were specific to each cluster. In contrast to the Drosophila homeotic bithorax complex (BX-C), we found that Polycomb proteins are only modestly required for human cluster looping and silencing. However, computational three-dimensional Hox cluster modeling identified the insulator-binding protein CTCF as a likely candidate mediating DNA loops in all clusters. Our data suggest that Hox cluster looping may represent an evolutionarily conserved structural mechanism of transcription regulation.
Prophylactic vertebroplasty procedure applied with a resorbable bone cement can decrease the fracture risk of sandwich vertebrae: long-term evaluation of clinical outcomes

A sandwich vertebra is formed after multiple osteoporotic vertebral fractures treated by percutaneous vertebroplasty, which has a risk of developing new fractures. The purpose of our study was to (i) investigate the occurrence of new fractures in sandwich vertebra after cement augmentation procedures and to (ii) evaluate the clinical outcomes after prophylactic vertebral reinforcement applied with resorbable bone cement. From June 2011 to 2014, we analysed 55 patients with at least one sandwich vertebrae and treated with percutaneous vertebroplasty. Eighteen patients were treated by prophylactic vertebroplasty with a resorbable bone cement to strengthen the sandwich vertebrae as the prevention group. The others were the non-prevention group. All patients were examined by spinal radiographs within 1 day, 6 months, 12 months, 24 months and thereafter. The incidence of sandwich vertebra is 8.25% (55/667) in our study. Most sandwich vertebrae (69.01%, 49/71) are distributed in the thoracic–lumbar junction. There are 24 sandwich vertebrae (18 patients) and 47 sandwich vertebrae (37 patients) in either prevention group or non-prevention group, respectively. No significant difference is found between age, sex, body mass index, bone mineral density, cement disk leakage, sandwich vertebrae distribution or Cobb angle in the two groups. In the follow-up, 8 out of 37 (21.6%) patients (with eight sandwich vertebrae) developed new fractures in non-prevention’ group, whereas no new fractures were detected in the prevention group. Neither Cobb angle nor vertebral compression rate showed significant change in the prevention group during the follow-up. However, in the non-prevention group, we found that Cobb angle increased and vertebral height lost significantly (P < 0.05). Prophylactic vertebroplasty procedure applied with resorbable bone cement could decrease the rate of new fractures of sandwich vertebrae.
Coordination control with BCOOPL

This paper introduces BCOOPL (Basic Concurrent ObjectOriented Programming Language), a language specifically designed to support component-oriented programming. BCOOPL is more than just a programming language. It can also be seen as a design language with which high level architectural elements, like software components and connectors, can be specified. BCOOPL is centered around two concepts: interfaces and patterns. Operations to be implemented in objects are specified in an interface using an augmented regular expression notation, not only detailing when a specific operation may be invoked, but also detailing the parties that are allowed to do so. Object behavior is defined separately with so called patterns. BCOOPL encourages the design of high-quality software components through high level OO abstractions including the built-in support of the Observer and Mediator design patterns. A key characteristic of the Observer design pattern is that it reduces the coupling between objects. An object provides its services by issuing notifications without being aware of the clients that actually use the services. It is up to the clients to link to these notifications in order to receive them. The notifications of various objects can be synchronized with patterns, which are specified using the same regular expression notation as for interfaces. An object in this role can be seen as a mediator controlling the interactions between independently operating objects. As a result, component behavior is decoupled from their interactions with other components, which is a prerequisite for system adaptations and reusability. The expressive and descriptive power of BCOOPL is demonstrated in an extended example in which a solution is given for a real-time, process control problem.
Long intronic GAA•TTC repeats induce epigenetic changes and reporter gene silencing in a molecular model of Friedreich ataxia

Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is caused by hyperexpansion of GAA•TTC repeats located in the first intron of the FXN gene, which inhibits transcription leading to the deficiency of frataxin. The FXN gene is an excellent target for therapeutic intervention since (i) 98% of patients carry the same type of mutation, (ii) the mutation is intronic, thus leaving the FXN coding sequence unaffected and (iii) heterozygous GAA•TTC expansion carriers with ∼50% decrease of the frataxin are asymptomatic. The discovery of therapeutic strategies for FRDA is hampered by a lack of appropriate molecular models of the disease. Herein, we present the development of a new cell line as a molecular model of FRDA by inserting 560 GAA•TTC repeats into an intron of a GFP reporter minigene. The GFP_(GAA•TTC)560 minigene recapitulates the molecular hallmarks of the mutated FXN gene, i.e. inhibition of transcription of the reporter gene, decreased levels of the reporter protein and hypoacetylation and hypermethylation of histones in the vicinity of the repeats. Additionally, selected histone deacetylase inhibitors, known to stimulate the FXN gene expression, increase the expression of the GFP_(GAA•TTC)560 reporter. This FRDA model can be adapted to high-throughput analyses in a search for new therapeutics for the disease.
Nutrition and breast cancer.

The article on male breast cancer appearing elsewhere in this issue of the Journal subtly re-emphasizes the not too commonly accepted premise that human breast cancer, as is expressed in a recent article' from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, may be preventable. This paper by Wynder adequately affirms that most human cancers are environmentally induced and generally are related to habits, such as smoking, poor nutrition, and excessive alcohol consumption. It also emphasizes that the greatest influences on nutritional carcinogenesis appear to be dietary deficiencies and excesses, both of which may affect hormonal balance. ' That nutrition is a common environmental factor in patients with breast cancer also is postulated by several other authors who note that the increased consumption of fats, so common now in the affluent western world, alters the bacterial flora in the gut and so leads to the production of various steroid compounds, including estrogens, that are carcinogenic to the
OJECTS UNDER FORESEE UNCERTAINTY RAHUL THAKURTA MANAGEMENT BHUBANESWAR

Uncertainty appears as a significant barrier to projects attaining their intended performance goals; thereby contri uting to project failure. Literature on project management under uncertainty has recommended a contingency however based on the premise that the level of uncertainty is static over project duration. We relaxed the assumption by considering variation in the level of uncertainty with project progress following three different patterns viz. inc creasing and uniform. Implementation of the same was carried out by considering analogous patterns of addition of requir ments resembling the scenario of foreseen uncertainty during software project development. System dynamics approach was further used in order to analyze the impact of some of the chosen project management policies on the project performance with temporal variations in uncertainty as described above. The results of this study necessitates adoption of different proj management policies as the temporal variations in the level of foreseen uncertainty emerged as a contingency factor contri uting to variations in project performance. The implications of the findings on research and practice have also been outlined
Addressing Performance Heterogeneity in MapReduce Clusters with Elastic Tasks

MapReduce applications, which require access to a large number of computing nodes, are commonly deployed in heterogeneous environments. The performance discrepancy between individual nodes in a heterogeneous cluster present significant challenges to attain good performance in MapReduce jobs. MapReduce implementations designed and optimized for homogeneous environments perform poorly on heterogeneous clusters. We attribute suboptimal performance in heterogeneous clusters to significant load imbalance between map tasks. We identify two MapReduce designs that hinder load balancing: (1) static binding between mappers and their data makes it difficult to exploit data redundancy for load balancing; (2) uniform map sizes is not optimal for nodes with heterogeneous performance. To address these issues, we propose FlexMap, a user-transparent approach that dynamically provisions map tasks to match distinct machine capacity in heterogeneous environments. We implemented FlexMap in Hadoop-2.6. 0. Experimental results show that it reduces job completion time by as much as 40% compared to stock Hadoop and 30% to SkewTune.
Towards Broadband Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks - The Vehicular Mesh Network (VMESH) MAC Protocol

The current medium access control (MAC) protocol of the wireless access in vehicular environments (WAVE) system is based on IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) and enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA), which have drawbacks in supporting throughput-sensitive non-safety applications in vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET). In order to address the problem, we propose a novel MAC protocol, namely vehicular MESH network (VMESH), which is specifically designed for the control channel (CCH) and multiple service channels (SCHs) structure of WAVE. A synchronized and distributed beaconing scheme is employed in the VMESH protocol for the purposes of neighborhood awareness and dynamic resource reservation on SCHs. The advantages of the VMESH protocol in supporting the throughput-sensitive non-safety applications in VANET are shown through the theoretical analysis comparing to the current WAVE MAC.
A Study on the Effect of Organophosphorus Pesticide Malathion on Hepato-Renal and Reproductive Organs of Heteropneustes fossilis (Bloch)

Organophosphorus pesticides are used in the agricul tural field due to their rapid biodegradability and non-persistent nature to contr ol the pest but their broad spectrum of harmful effects extends far beyond the pest. It is proved by the facts that are experimentally studied by numbers of investigators with the applic ation of varying concentration of pesticides on the living organisms around the world. Main obje ctive of this paper is to carryout an empirical study to investigate the effect of sub-le thal Malathion on liver, kidney and ovary of the freshwater catfish “ Heteropneustes fossilis. ”. LC 50 value of Malathion was calculated by probit analysis (Finney, 1964) and LC 50 for 96 hours is found to be 0.98 ppm. Sub-lethal concentration of 0.2 ppm is prepared by using stand ard technique (APHA, 1985). For this study, Control Group was being freed from the treat ment of Malathion where as experimental group was treated with sub-lethal Malathion concent ration of 0.2 ppm. Histological tissues were collected from both control group and experimental group at three different time interval up to one month and the technique of MICROTOMY is being used for the histopathological study of the tissues.
Improved Simultaneous Localization and Mapping using a Dual Representation of the Environment

The designer of a mapping system for mobile robots has to choose how to model the environment of the robot. Popular models are feature maps and grid maps. Depending on the structure of the environment, each representation has certain advantages. In this paper, we present an approach that maintains feature maps as well as grid maps of the environment. This allows a robot to update its pose and map estimate based on the representation that models the surrounding of the robot in the best way. The model selection procedure is obtained by reinforcement learning and takes a decision based on the current observation. As we will illustrate in simulation as well as in real world experiments, this allows a robot to learn accurate maps in a more robust way than approaches using only feature or only grid maps.
Evaluation Of Large Area Additively Manufactured Fiber Reinforced Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (abs)

vi List of Tables . ix List of Figures . x Chapter 1: Statement of Purpose . 1 Chapter 2: Background . 3 2.1 Extrusion Background . 3 2.2 Single Screw Extrusion . 3 2.3 Twin Screw Extrusion . 5 2.4 Fused Deposition Modeling . 7 2.5 Big Area Additive Manufacturing . 10 2.6 Material Extrusion Build Parameters . 11 Chapter 3: Mechanical Characterization of Large Area Additive Manufactured Components . 16 3.1 Case Studies . 17 3.2 Digital Image Correlation . 17 Chapter 4: Experimental Procedures . 19 4.1 Material Selection . 19 4.2 BAAM Extrusion Parameters . 22 4.3 Rheology . 23 4.4 Critical Fiber Length . 24 4.5 Single Bead Characterization . 24 viii 4.6 Tensile Specimens . 25 4.7 Tensile Test . 27 4.8 Fractography . 29 4.9 Neck Growth Variation between ABS-20GF Tensile Samples . 29 4.10 Neck Growth and Screw Speed Relationship . 30 Chapter 5: Results and Discussion . 32 5.1 Rheological Results . 32 5.2 ABS-20GF Single Bead Characterization . 32 5.3 Tensile Results . 33 5.4 Fractography . 39 5.5 Critical Fiber Length . 42 5.6 Neck Growth Variation between ABS-20GF Tensile Samples . 43 5.7 Neck Growth and Screw Speed Relationship for ABS-20CF Samples . 44 Chapter 6: Conclusion . 48 6.1 Future Work . 49 Chapter 7: References . 50 Vita . 54
Persistent lymphocytosis of natural killer cells in autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura (ATP) patients after splenectomy

We report three patients with primary autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura (ATP) who developed an absolute lymphocytosis (lymphocyte count > 5×109/I) after splenectomy and with a lymphocyte count between 5.4 and 8.9×109/I. An immunophenotype study showed that the peripheral blood lymphocytosis was a persistent NK cell expansion (CD2+, CD56+, CD3‐), and was characterized by a typical large granular lymphocytes (LGL) morphology. Two of these three ATP patients were refractory to splenectomy.
Unsupervised Models of Images by Spikeand-Slab RBMs

The spike-and-slab Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) is defined by having both a real valued "slab" variable and a binary "spike" variable associated with each unit in the hidden layer. In this paper we generalize and extend the spike-and-slab RBM to include non-zero means of the conditional distribution over the observed variables given the binary spike variables. We also introduce a term, quadratic in the observed data that we exploit to guarantee that all conditionals associated with the model are well defined – a guarantee that was absent in the original spike-and-slab RBM. The inclusion of these generalizations improves the performance of the spike-and-slab RBM as a feature learner and achieves competitive performance on the CIFAR-10 image classification task. The spike-and-slab model, when trained in a convolutional configuration, can generate sensible samples that demonstrate that the model has captured the broad statistical structure of natural images.
Inflammation-Related Effects of Diesel Engine Exhaust Particles: Studies on Lung Cells In Vitro

Diesel exhaust and its particles (DEP) have been under scrutiny for health effects in humans. In the development of these effects inflammation is regarded as a key process. Overall, in vitro studies report similar DEP-induced changes in markers of inflammation, including cytokines and chemokines, as studies in vivo. In vitro studies suggest that soluble extracts of DEP have the greatest impact on the expression and release of proinflammatory markers. Main DEP mediators of effects have still not been identified and are difficult to find, as fuel and engine technology developments lead to continuously altered characteristics of emissions. Involved mechanisms remain somewhat unclear. DEP extracts appear to comprise components that are able to activate various membrane and cytosolic receptors. Through interactions with receptors, ion channels, and phosphorylation enzymes, molecules in the particle extract will trigger various cell signaling pathways that may lead to the release of inflammatory markers directly or indirectly by causing cell death. In vitro studies represent a fast and convenient system which may have implications for technology development. Furthermore, knowledge regarding how particles elicit their effects may contribute to understanding of DEP-induced health effects in vivo, with possible implications for identifying susceptible groups of people and effect biomarkers.
Human-Robot Cooperative Conveyance Using Speech and Head Gaze

In this study, we designed a strategy using speech and head gaze and a set of voice commands for cooperative conveyance by a human and a robot. In the designed strategy, the human turns his or her head to face the robot and gives one of twelve spoken commands in the set. In order to start and stop the robot moving, the human sends nonverbal cues by changing his or her point of gaze. We developed a mobile robot that interacts with a human based on the strategy and the command set, which was evaluated with ten young novices. The results of this study imply that most young people can quickly learn how to cooperate with our robot to move objects using speech and head gaze.