Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surgical mask placement over N95 filtering facepiece respirators: Physiological effects on healthcare workers

Background and objective: Filtering facepiece respirators (‘N95 Masks’) may be in short supply during large‐scale infectious outbreaks. Suggestions have been made to extend their useful life by using a surgical mask as an outer barrier, but the physiological impact of this added barrier upon the wearer has not been studied.
Interactions between Ibrutinib and Anti-CD20 Antibodies: Competing Effects on the Outcome of Combination Therapy

Purpose: Clinical trials of ibrutinib combined with anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies (mAb) for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) report encouraging results. Paradoxically, in preclinical studies, in vitro ibrutinib was reported to decrease CD20 expression and inhibit cellular effector mechanisms. We therefore set out to investigate effects of in vivo ibrutinib treatment that could explain this paradox. Experimental Design: Patients received single-agent ibrutinib (420 mg daily) on an investigator-initiated phase II trial. Serial blood samples were collected pretreatment and during treatment for ex vivo functional assays to examine the effects on CLL cell susceptibility to anti-CD20 mAbs. Results: We demonstrate that CD20 expression on ibrutinib was rapidly and persistently downregulated (median reduction 74%, day 28, P < 0.001) compared with baseline. Concomitantly, CD20 mRNA was decreased concurrent with reduced NF-κB signaling. An NF-κB binding site in the promoter of MS4A1 (encoding CD20) and downregulation of CD20 by NF-κB inhibitors support a direct transcriptional effect. Ex vivo, tumor cells from patients on ibrutinib were less susceptible to anti-CD20 mAb-mediated complement-dependent cytotoxicity than pretreatment cells (median reduction 75%, P < 0.001); however, opsonization by the complement protein C3d, which targets cells for phagocytosis, was relatively maintained. Expression of decay-accelerating factor (CD55) decreased on ibrutinib, providing a likely mechanism for the preserved C3d opsonization. In addition, ibrutinib significantly inhibited trogocytosis, a major contributor to antigen loss and tumor escape during mAb therapy. Conclusions: Our data indicate that ibrutinib promotes both positive and negative interactions with anti-CD20 mAbs, suggesting that successfully harnessing maximal antitumor effects of such combinations requires further investigation. Clin Cancer Res; 22(1); 86–95. ©2015 AACR.
Natural Europe educational games suite: using structured museum-data for creating mobile educational games

This paper presents a suite for configuring and deploying mobile, location-based educational games for natural history museums. We propose a novel approach that uses structured museum-data as game-content and present an initial study thereof. The overall aim is to enable domain-experts, like teachers or museum educators, to create educational games for off-the-shelf mobile phones without requiring neither bespoke programming skills nor expensive setups. Our approach builds on the combination of two strands of work: 1. ) structuring and providing museum-assets as linked data, and 2. ) template-based content creation for mobiles games. This is thought to facilitate reuse of existing data and foster its maintenance on the one hand, as well as providing a timely and engaging mobile interface to museum content on the other hand. Our study is based on two rounds of user-tests with think-aloud observations and questionnaires, and on the developers' notes and reflections that stem from introductory workshops at four natural history museums from the Natural Europe project consortium. We found that both, the workflow for content-creation and the mobile end-user app have high hedonic as well as pragmatic qualities. Thus, the test results indicate that our approach might provide guidance for future work in this domain.
Performance of Buffer-Aided Adaptive Modulation in Multihop Communications

In multihop diversity (MHD) aided multihop links, the nodes are assumed to have buffers for temporarily storing their received packets for further transmission at instances of good channel quality. Since adaptive modulation is employed, the number of packets in each time slot (TS) is affected both by the channel quality and the buffer fullness. During each time-slot (TS), the criterion used for activating a specific hop is that of transmitting the highest number of packets. When more than one hop is capable of transmitting the same number of packets, the particular hop having the highest channel quality (reliability) is activated. Hence, we refer to this regime as the maximum throughput adaptive rate transmission (MTART) scheme. The bit error ratio (BER), the outage probability, the throughput as well as the bandwidth-efficiency of the MTART scheme is analyzed. Our results demonstrate that our MTART regime has the potential of significantly outperforming conventional adaptive modulation. Naturally, the BER is improved by the buffering scheme advocated at the cost of an increased delay. Hence, the distribution of the end-to-end packet delay will also be characterized.
Hybrid male sterility in rice controlled by interaction between divergent alleles of two adjacent genes

Sterility is common in hybrids between divergent populations, such as the indica and japonica subspecies of Asian cultivated rice (Oryza sativa). Although multiple loci for plant hybrid sterility have been identified, it remains unknown how alleles of the loci interact at the molecular level. Here we show that a locus for indica-japonica hybrid male sterility, Sa, comprises two adjacent genes, SaM and SaF, encoding a small ubiquitin-like modifier E3 ligase-like protein and an F-box protein, respectively. Most indica cultivars contain a haplotype SaM+SaF+, whereas all japonica cultivars have SaM−SaF− that diverged by nucleotide variations in wild rice. Male semi-sterility in this heterozygous complex locus is caused by abortion of pollen carrying SaM−. This allele-specific gamete elimination results from a selective interaction of SaF+ with SaM−, a truncated protein, but not with SaM+ because of the presence of an inhibitory domain, although SaM+ is required for this male sterility. Lack of any one of the three alleles in recombinant plants does not produce male sterility. We propose a two-gene/three-component interaction model for this hybrid male sterility system. The findings have implications for overcoming male sterility in inter-subspecific hybrid rice breeding.
The AHI: an audio and haptic interface for contact interactions

We have implemented a computer interface that renders synchronized auditory and haptic stimuli with very low (0.5ms) latency. The audio and haptic interface (AHI) includes a Pantograph haptic device that reads position input from a user and renders force output based on this input. We synthesize audio by convolving the force profile generated by user interaction with the impulse response of the virtual surface. Auditory and haptic modes are tightly coupled because we produce both stimuli from the same force profile. We have conducted a user study with the AHI to verify that the 0.5ms system latency lies below the perceptual threshold for detecting separation between auditory and haptic contact events. We discuss future applications of the AHI for further perceptual studies and for synthesizing continuous contact interactions in virtual environments.
Word Ordering as Unsupervised Learning Towards Syntactically Plausible Word Representations

The research question we explore in this study is how to obtain syntactically plausible word representations without using human annotations. Our underlying hypothesis is that word ordering tests, or linearizations, is suitable for learning syntactic knowledge about words. To verify this hypothesis, we develop a differentiable model called Word Ordering Network (WON) that explicitly learns to recover correct word order while implicitly acquiring word embeddings representing syntactic knowledge. We evaluate the word embeddings produced by the proposed method on downstream syntax-related tasks such as part-of-speech tagging and dependency parsing. The experimental results demonstrate that the WON consistently outperforms both order-insensitive and order-sensitive baselines on these tasks.
The Relation of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to Winter Tornado Outbreaks

Abstract Winter tornado activity (January–March) between 1950 and 2003 was analyzed to determine the possible effect of seasonally averaged sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the ENSO phase, on the location and strength of tornado outbreaks in the United States. Tornado activity was gauged through analyses of tornadoes occurring on tornado days (a calendar day featuring six or more tornadoes within the contiguous United States) and strong and violent tornado days (a calendar day featuring five or more tornadoes rated F2 and greater within the contiguous United States). The tornado days were then stratified according to warm (37 tornado days, 14 violent days), cold (51 tornado days, 28 violent days), and neutral (74 tornado days, 44 violent days) winter ENSO phase. It is seen that during winter periods of neutral tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures, there is a tendency for U.S. tornado outbreaks to be stronger and more frequent than they are during winter periods of anomalously.
Visibility in Computer Graphics

Visibility computation was crucial for computer graphics from its very beginning. The first visibility algorithms in computer graphics aimed to determine visible surfaces in a synthesized image of a three-dimensional scene. Nowadays there are many different visibility algorithms for various visibility problems. We propose a new taxonomy of visibility problems that is based on a classification according to the problem domain. We provide a broad overview of visibility problems and algorithms in computer graphics grouped by the proposed taxonomy. We survey visible surface algorithms, visibility culling algorithms, visibility algorithms for shadow computation, global illumination, point-based and image-based rendering, and global visibility computations. Finally, we discuss common concepts of visibility algorithm design and several criteria for the classification of visibility algorithms.
How tonicity regulates genes: story of TonEBP transcriptional activator

TonEBP stimulates genes whose products drive cellular accumulation of organic osmolytes and HSP70, which protect cells from the deleterious effects of hypertonicity and urea, respectively. Mice deficient in the TonEBP gene display severe atrophy of the renal medulla because cells failed to adapt to the hyperosmolality. Emerging data suggest that TonEBP plays a key role in the urinary concentrating mechanism by stimulating the UT‐A urea transporters and possibly AQP2 water channel. Thus, TonEBP is an essential regulator in the urinary concentrating mechanism. Studies on structural basis of TonEBP function have revealed the structure of the DNA binding domain, and defined the transactivation domains. Molecular mechanisms underlying the nucleocytoplasmic trafficking, transactivation, and phosphorylation in response to changes in tonicity need to be understood in molecular detail. Such knowledge is needed for the identification of the sensor that detects changes in ambient tonicity and signals to TonEBP.
Measuring blood pressure accurately: new and persistent challenges.

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE IS A MAJOR PUBLIC HEALTH issue, affecting approximately 25% of US adults, or roughly 50 million Americans. The prevalence of high blood pressure increases dramatically with age, such that the lifetime risk of high blood pressure approaches 100%. Despite the availability of effective antihypertensive agents, rates of hypertension treatment and control have remained low and static over the last decade. Control of blood pressure begins with accurate measurement leading to appropriate diagnosis and treatment decisions. For more than 100 years, clinicians and researchers have used the mercury sphygmomanometer, a simple, gravitybased instrument, for blood pressure measurement. Because of its accuracy and reliability, the mercury sphygmomanometer is generally regarded as the gold standard against which all other devices for blood pressure measurement should be compared. In recent years, with the confluence of concern that mercury is contaminating the environment plus the development of electronic/digital equipment for blood pressure measurement, many health care institutions have replaced the mercury manometer with alternate equipment. Experience with the reliability of the mercury manometer has contributed to a lack of attention both to issues of accuracy and to regulation of nonmercury measurement devices. The effort to remove mercury manometers from health care facilities has created unanticipated problems and challenges to measuring blood pressure accurately. Recently the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified mercury and mercury compounds as persistent bioaccumulative toxins. Most of the toxic effects of mercury are associated with mercury compounds, especially methyl mercury. Long-term exposure to mercury compounds has been associated with serious health problems, but the elemental mercury enclosed in manometers is quite stable and has rarely been reported to cause health problems. This same elemental mercury has been used in dental amalgam in fillings for years with no recognized toxicity. As part of EPA efforts, a memorandum of understanding regarding elimination of mercury waste was signed in 1998 between the EPA and the American Hospital Association. This memorandum created “Hospitals for a Healthy Environment,” a voluntary project requesting all hospitals to virtually eliminate mercury waste by 2005. The memorandum and the associated project have already led to mercury manometers being removed from many hospitals, health systems, and clinics. The controversy over mercury has led to an examination of several issues related to accurate blood pressure determination, involving both the instrument used and other issues of quality. These issues, recently discussed in a working meeting convened by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the American Heart Association, should be of interest to clinicians, researchers, health care administrators, manufacturers, and policy makers.
Differentiation of two distinct K conductances in the basolateral membrane of turtle colon

The K conductance of the basolateral membrane of turtle colon was measured in amphotericin-treated cell layers under a variety of ionic conditions. Changing the composition of the bathing solutions changed not only the magnitude but also the physical properties of the basolateral K conductance. The results are consistent with the notion that altered ionic environments can lead to changes in the relative abundance of two different populations of K channels in the basolateral membrane, which can be differentiated on the basis of pharmacological specificity, ion selectivity, and tracer kinetics. In the following article (Germann, W. J., S. A. Ernst, and D. C. Dawson, 1986, Journal of General Physiology, 88:253-274), we present evidence consistent with the hypothesis that one of these conductances was due to the same channels that give rise to the normal resting basolateral K conductance of the transporting cells, while the other was associated with experimental maneuvers that led to extreme swelling of the epithelial cells.
A unified framework for the performance analyses of diversity energy detectors over fading channels

This paper revisits the problem of energy detection of an unknown deterministic signal over a myriad of fading environments. Specifically, a new analytical approach based on six alternative series representations of the generalised Marcum Q-function of real order in conjunction with moments or derivatives of the Moment Generating Function of Signal-to-Noise Ratio SNR is proposed to analyse the performance of Maximal-Ratio Combining MRC and Square-Law Combining SLC energy detectors with independent but non-identically distributed i.n. d fading statistics. Our analytical framework is sufficiently general, and capable of handling half-odd integer values for the time-bandwidth product and non-integer fading severity indices for the Nakagami-m fading environment, as well as i.n. d Rice and mixed fading scenarios. Many of these cases were either intractable with the classical probability density function/contour integral approaches, or had resisted a simple/computationally efficient solution. Selected numerical results are also provided for the Receiver Operating Characteristic ROC of MRC and SLC diversity-based energy detectors over Rice and Nakagami-m channels.
Acoustic time delay estimation and sensor network self-localization: Experimental results

Experimental results are presented on propagation, coherence, and time-delay estimation (TDE) from a microphone array in an outdoor aeroacoustic environment. The primary goal is to understand the achievable accuracy of acoustic TDE using low-cost, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) speakers and microphones. In addition, through the use of modulated pseudo-noise sequences, the experiment seeks to provide an empirical understanding of the effects of center frequency, bandwidth, and signal duration on TDE effectiveness and compares this to the theoretical expectations established by the Weiss-Weinstein lower bound. Finally, sensor network self-localization is performed using a maximum likelihood estimator and the time-delay estimates. Experimental network localization error is presented as a function of the acoustic calibration signal parameters.
THE CURRENT STATUS OF MONITORING FOR PROCESS MICRO-ORGANISMS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY: RESULTS OF AN INDUSTRY QUESTIONNAIRE

Abstract In biotechnology-based industrial processing, micro-organisms may be handled in large concentrations in liquid culture (fermentation). Where biotechnology is used for high value products such as pharmaceuticals, conditions are usually controlled closely. Containment is important for safety and economic reasons, therefore release of the process organism and its products into the work environment is likely to be minimized. Nevertheless, instances can and do occur where containment is breached. Although monitoring the workplace for release of process organisms must be seen as advantageous from a worker safety point of view, no specific guidance is given to the biotechnology industry. We conducted a survey by questionnaire to find out what methods were being used to monitor for process micro-organisms or their products in biotechnology, what sampling methods were used, what use was made of acquired data, details of any standards used and any need for further information. This paper describes the questionnaire used in the survey and the results obtained. The results showed that a range of monitoring methods were being used in well-defined sampling strategies, the monitoring information being used to maintain or improve work conditions. However, a need was identified for further information on sampling methods and ‘typical’ levels of micro-organisms that may be anticipated in the biotechnology workplace.
SPARC64TM XII: Fujitsu's latest 12 core processor for mission critical servers

This paper describes the design, microarchitecture, and performance of the latest Fujitsu SPARC64 XII 12 core microprocessor which has been developed for high performance, mission critical servers. Dual instruction pipelines, 8-way SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading), a high CPU frequency of over 4 GHz, and a 12 core design have doubled the chip performance compared with the previous SPARC64 X+, while keeping its high single thread performance.
On MMSE-Based Estimation of Amplitude and Complex Speech Spectral Coefficients Under Phase-Uncertainty

Among the most commonly used single-channel approaches for the enhancement of noise corrupted speech are Bayesian estimators of clean speech coefficients in the short-time Fourier transform domain. However, the vast majority of these approaches effectively only modifies the spectral amplitude and does not consider any information about the clean speech spectral phase. More recently, clean speech estimators that can utilize prior phase information have been proposed and shown to lead to improvements over the traditional, phase-blind approaches. In this work, we revisit phase-aware estimators of clean speech amplitudes and complex coefficients. To complete the existing set of estimators, we first derive a novel amplitude estimator given uncertain prior phase information. Second, we derive a closed-form solution for complex coefficients when the prior phase information is completely uncertain or not available. We put the novel estimators into the context of existing estimators and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.
FRIT based optimized PI tuning for DC link voltage control of grid connected solar PV system

The grid connected photovoltaic (PV) system have been modeled and simulated using control algorithm with dedicated PI control for dc link voltage regulation. Generally, the PI controller used for the system is tuned using trial and error method but this method is having manual limitation for the tuning of controller so as to obtain the desired response like as regulating dc link voltage to reference value. Fictitious reference iterative tuning (FRIT) method using particle swarm optimization (PSO) helps to generate optimized gains for PI controller which can results in the improved response in terms of response time and overshoot. In this paper, PSO-FRIT based optimized tuning of controller is proposed for the application in LCL filter interfaced grid connected PV system. The current controlled dc-ac power converter has been used for grid connected PV system. Active power reference current for pulse width modulated (PWM) converter is been generated using power balance theory (PBT). The idea of the FRIT based optimized tuning of PI controller is implemented by using the input data and output data from the system obtained using the trial and error method based controller gains. The power quality of the system configuration have been maintained as according to the IEEE-519 standards.