Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Particle Swarm Optimization to solve Multiple Dipole Modelling problems in space applications

An advanced modeling algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been developed to solve Multiple Dipole Modelling (MDM) problems in space applications. Multiple Dipoles Modelling is a technique to represent spacecraft units as a set of equivalent magnetic dipoles able to reconstruct, in the far-field distance, the same original magnetostatic field. This procedure allows preparing a magnetic model of the spacecraft during design and development phases and foreseeing the magnetostatic state of the spacecraft during operation in the final orbit. This latter aspect plays an important role in mission with equipment susceptible to magnetic fields since the spacecraft behaviour with changing environment can be predicted and taken into account during design and development [1]. During the last decades, the MDM problem has been addressed in different ways by many authors for several applications. A main difference resides in the mathematical approach for implementation of the optimisation technique used as solver, which can be of deterministic [2]-[3] or stochastic [4]-[9] nature. For space applications mainly deterministic methods have been applied; nevertheless, due to the highly nonlinear nature of the problem, classic deterministic methods are not always the best choice for this application (problem of local minima and need of suitable initial guesses.). Therefore our research has been driven towards the investigation of an advanced stochastic method.
Azacytidine causes complex DNA methylation responses in myeloid leukemia

Aberrant DNA methylation patterns play an important role in the pathogenesis of hematologic malignancies. The DNA methyltransferase inhibitors azacytidine and decitabine have shown significant clinical benefits in the treatment of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), but their precise mode of action remains to be established. Both drugs have been shown the ability to deplete DNA methyltransferase enzymes and to induce DNA demethylation and epigenetic reprogramming in vitro. However, drug-induced methylation changes have remained poorly characterized in patients and therapy-related models. We have now analyzed azacytidine-induced demethylation responses in myeloid leukemia cell lines. These cells showed remarkable differences in the drug-induced depletion of DNA methyltransferases that coincided with their demethylation responses. In agreement with these data, DNA methylation analysis of blood and bone marrow samples from MDS patients undergoing azacytidine therapy also revealed substantial differences in the epigenetic responses of individual patients. Significant, transient demethylation could be observed in 3 of 6 patients and affected many hypermethylated loci in a complex pattern. Our results provide important proof-of-mechanism data for the demethylating activity of azacytidine in MDS patients and provide detailed insight into drug-induced demethylation responses. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(9):2998–3005]
Inhibition of Cell Migration by 24-kDa Fibroblast Growth Factor-2 Is Dependent upon the Estrogen Receptor*

The single-copy gene for fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) encodes for multiple forms of the protein with molecular masses of 24, 22.5, 22, and 18 kDa. We reported previously that the 24–22-kDa FGF-2 forms inhibit the migration of endothelial and MCF-7 cells by 50% and 70%, respectively. Here we show that this inhibition of migration is mediated by the estrogen receptor (ER). We have found that depletion of the receptor in either cell line abrogates the inhibitory activity of 24-kDa FGF-2 while re-introduction of the ER into deficient cells once again promotes the inhibitory response. To determine whether exposure to 24-kDa FGF-2 resulted in the activation of the estrogen receptor, 3T3 cells were cotransfected with estrogen receptor cDNA and an estrogen regulatory element-luciferase gene reporter construct and treated with 24- and 18-kDa FGF-2. The high molecular weight form stimulated luciferase activity 5-fold while 18-kDa FGF-2 at the same concentration had no effect. Treatment of ER-positive MCF-7 cells transfected with the reporter construct only showed the same results. Inclusion of the pure estrogen antagonist ICI 182,780 blocked the increase in luciferase activity by 24-kDa FGF-2, further indicating that the response was estrogen receptor dependent. Expression of dominant negative FGF receptor 1 inhibited ER activation, indicating that this was the cell surface receptor mediating the effect. Although growth factor-dependent activation of the ER was reported to require mitogen-activated protein kinase-induced phosphorylation at Ser118 in COS and HeLa cells, this mechanism is not involved with the activation by 24-kDa FGF-2. These results suggest that the addition of 55 amino acids to the amino-terminal end of 18-kDa FGF-2 by alternative translation alters FGF-2 function and allows for the activation of a second signaling pathway involving the estrogen receptor.
A 0.18µm CMOS switched-capacitor amplifier using current-starving inverter based op-amp for low-power biosensor applications

Silicon biosensor arrays for the generation of chemical images have been proposed for the study of cell migration and tissue development. In order for these arrays to be viable they need highly accurate and low-power read channels. Low-power designs are key to making sure that heat generated by the silicon chip does not affect the bio-samples being tested. This paper presents an ultra-low power switched capacitor amplifier design for use in such a biosensor system. The amplifier was designed using a commercial 0. 18μm process with a reduced supply voltage of 0.9V to minimize power consumption. The amplifier has an input signal bandwidth of 1kHz and consumes only 4μW with a 1MHz sampling rate. The total harmonic distortion (THD) of the amplifier output is -67.68dB resulting in an effective resolution of 10.96 bits.
Angiotensin II dose-effect curves and Schild regression plots for characterization of different angiotensin II AT1 receptor antagonists in clinical pharmacology.

The 'Schild regression' method is based on the principle of assessing the rightward shift of agonist dose-effect curves in the presence of different doses/concentrations of the respective receptor antagonist and presenting their relationship in a double log plot (i.e. the 'Schild plot'). The original method was developed to quantitatively characterize antagonistic drugs in experimental pharmacology. The method was adopted for evaluation of various AT1 antagonists in humans utilizing (human) angiotensin II as the agonist. Angiotensin II (Ang II) in continuous intravenous dose-incremental administration resulted in a clearly dose-dependent increase in blood pressure. All AT1 antagonists tested after oral administration yielded concentration-dependent rightward shifts of those Ang II dose-effect curves that were quantified as dose ratio (DR). DR minus 1 (DR-1) enabled the assessment of antagonist time kinetics in humans and a quantitatively precise determination of the half-life of antagonism in vivo. Schild plots allowed for assessment of apparent Ki doses indicative of a twofold rightward shift of the Ang II effect, thus providing the means for a rational comparison of the pharmacological potency of many of these compounds, where the Ki doses obtained at 24 h after administration were in the range of 'therapeutic' doses. Schild plots of a variety of substances showed linear relations independent of whether the blockade was deemed surmountable or not. It is therefore assumed that this property does not play a role at clinical doses/concentrations. Slopes slightly below 1 in the Schild plots of all tested antagonists point to a second 'counterregulatory' vasodilatory mechanism of action of Ang II which becomes apparent with AT1 blockade in conditions of high doses/concentrations of Ang II. Concentration vs. effect relationships indicate that if assessed at the same degree of direct vascular antagonism, other effects, such as increase in plasma renin activity, may be present to a varying degree with different antagonists. Thus for irbesartan, the potency to stimulate renin release was found to be at least twice that of candesartan. These observations should stimulate further research into the relevance of these dynamic differences between the various compounds. Thus, methodologies relying on fundamental principles of experimental pharmacology can provide the clinical pharmacologist with powerful tools to measure accurately degree of antagonism and time kinetics and to investigate the nature of receptor antagonism in humans.
The role of protected areas in destination choice in the European Alps

This paper investigates the role of protected areas (PA) for destination choice in the European Alps. It is based on the analysis of the most relevant types of PA (national park, nature park, biosphere reserve), constituting part of the supply of tourism development, and a representative survey of the German population interested in holidays in the alpine area, representing the demand. Our analysis of the legal framework showed that all three types of PA facilitate tourism development, albeit in different ways. The survey included a generic choice experiment of alpine destinations with 17 attributes. Its location in or close to a PA was included as one variable. This destination demand study in an area of origin provided a different perspective on the preference for PA compared to other studies, and revealed significant differences between respondents with and without previous experiences in the Alps. The alpine experienced tourist is more likely to distinguish between the various types of PA such as national park and nature park. For the inexperienced alpine tourist, representing latent demand, the branding effect of PA is rather limited. For nearly all tourists, experienced and inexperienced, and across all segments, offers that include a nature experience are important. Nature experience, which is offered by all types of PA, is of high relevance within the destination choice and should therefore be used more intensely in destination marketing based on PA. Overall, this study shows that the role of PA for destination choice is not as strong as is reported by most of the published literature, as most of these studies are based on surveys in the destination and use single item scaling questions, which overvalue the role of PA.
The U.S.-Israeli Strategic Alliance: How the United States Is Contributing to a "Disappearing" Palestine

This paper examines the implications of the U.S.-Israeli strategic alliance on the proposed “two state solution”. This alliance has its roots in common values and mutuality of national interests, interests that have produced intelligence sharing, technology transfer, and military assistance between the U.S. and Israel. These exchanges have led to extensive U.S. support of Israel’s militarization in the Jordan Valley. It is also this strategic alliance that serves to support the continued annexation of the West Bank while diminishing future attempts at reaching a proposed “two state solution”.
Schizotypal dimensions: An intermediate phenotype associated with the COMT high activity allele

Background: Although catechol‐O‐methyltransferase (COMT) has long been suggested to be implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, association studies have generated discrepant results concerning the involvement of the COMT gene in schizophrenia. As several studies have suggested that schizotypal traits might be genetically related to schizophrenia, increased statistical power to detect gene effects could be obtained by using dimensional personality traits in unaffected relatives. Methods: We tested the hypothesis that the functional Val158Met COMT polymorphism might contribute to the variance of self‐reported schizotypal scores in a sample of 106 unaffected subjects, composed of controls (N = 57), first‐degree relatives of schizophrenic (N = 27) and of bipolar (N = 22) probands. We also looked for specific associations between COMT polymorphisms and the three dimensions of schizotypy (positive, negative, disorganized) assessed by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Results: We found that self‐reported SPQ scores are related to COMT genotype (P = 0.01), with individuals homozygous for the high activity allele having the highest scores. This association is primarily due to specific associations with the positive (P = 0.001) and negative (P = 0.04) dimensions. Conclusions: Our data support the hypothesis that the functional COMT polymorphism could be involved in different psychotic dimensions. This confirms that studying specific schizotypal dimensions can help to identify the genes involved in the pathogenesis of psychosis. Copyright © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc., A Wiley Company
Long-Run Impacts of Intergovernmental Transfers

ABSTRACT We provide regression discontinuity evidence on long-run impacts of a temporary increase in federal transfers to local governments in Brazil. Revenues and expenditures in treatment communities increased by about 20 percent during a four-year period in the early 1980s. Previously established schooling and literacy gains of school-age cohorts as well as reduced poverty in the community overall as of 1991 are generally attenuated but persist in 2000. Children and adolescents born after the funding boost show gains of about 0.06–0.10 standard deviation across the entire score distribution of two nationwide exams at the end of the 2000s.
INCEpTION - Corpus-based Data Science from Scratch

In recent years, corpus-based data science has seen rapid adoption both in science and in industry. Developing corpusbased models for text mining from scratch has penetrated a huge number of application fields. This renders common approached to corpus annotation unscalable. Instead machineassisted annotation with a human-in-the loop is becoming crucial for the adoption of NLP by data scientists. INCEpTION [1] is a web-based annotation platform for machine-assisted annotation which provides such a tool. The platform targets users in any domain or application scenario that are in need of text that is annotated with specific categories and relations or linked to knowledge bases. It uses machine learning to provide annotation suggestions including activelearning driven guidance, thus improving annotator efficiency and quality. The modular architecture allows using different external annotation services to provide such suggestions. It supports entity disambiguation and linking, cross-document coreference, as well as fact linking using custom domainspecific RDF-based internal knowledge bases or using local or remote external knowledge bases through SPARQL. Annotation interoperability is ensured through the use of UIMA [2] as well as through the support of various annotation formats including CLARIN TCF [3]. At the level of the annotation scheme, the platform is compatible with the DKPro Core [4] type system facilitating interoperability with many of the NLP tools integrated within DKPro Core. INCEpTION is a multi-user platform. Users assume different roles (e.g. admin, project creator, normal user) on the platform as well as in individual projects (manager, annotator, adjudicator). User authorization can be delegated to an external mechanism users to be authenticated against infrastructure identity providers. This is essential for the deployment of the platform at the level of local or national infrastructures where it is used by users from many different organizations. Being a web-based tool these geographically distributed users can also conveniently collaborate on annotation projects within the platform. Further connectivity with other services is possible through a remote access API compatible with the OpenMinTeD AERO protocol1 that permits the automated setup and management of annotation projects. This allows projects to embed the annotation tool into a larger annotation campaign management
Effects of Plumage Color Modifier Genes and Storage Duration on Eggs Qualities Traits of Japanese Quail (Cortunix Japonica) Reared In Subtropical Climate

The main objective of this research was to study the effect of storage duration on egg quality of two genotypes with different feather color (yellow and wild-type quails or brown). Research variables were the weight of eggs, interior and exterior quality of eggs. 780 eggs from two groups of 45 quails per genotype, collected and stored during 13 days, were used. The tests used in our study were the Student’s t-test, the ANOVA and the post-ANOVA tests. The results carried out a significant difference among the different genotypes concerning the external eggs quality (P 0.05) onto weight loss. However, there is no significant effect (P>0.05) for internal quality of eggs. Concerning storage duration, it affected significantly the parameters of internal quality of eggs (P<0.001) such as height of egg yolk, height of white, egg yolk’s diameter, albumen and yolk index, Haugh unit. The best parameters were recorded from eggs storaged between 1 and 5 days. In the same way, eggs loss weight was significantly affected by storage time which ranged from -0.06 g to - 0.22 g. Relation between storage duration and color of feather affected significantly the level of eggs albumen.
Mitigating uncertainty for industrial service operations: a multi case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of industrial service uncertainties and the approaches for mitigating these uncertainties. The paper also sheds light on how the interplay of potential uncertainties due to service operation challenges shapes the decisiveness of product-centric businesses. Design/methodology/approach – To better understand how industrial firms mitigate uncertainties of industrial service provision by their supply chains, the authors adopted a qualitative multi-case logic methodology. The approach is based on a research model of uncertainty avoidance and uncertainty reduction which the authors applied in an exploratory study with three major multi-national firms in the aerospace industry: BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce. Findings – From the analysis, the authors found that to mitigate industrial service uncertainty, there is a need for aftermarket-oriented organisation, audit-oriented governance, relationship-oriented intelligence and lifecycle-or.
Laser engineering of three-dimensional (3D) structures in paper-based microfluidic devices

Microfluidic engineering technology has been widely used for implementing lab-on-chip (LOC) type point of care (POC) devices since its origins in the 1990s. LOC devices offer some distinct advantages such as the possibility of reducing the quantity of valuable samples or reagents needed and the shortening of the detection times, both of which result from their compact structure [1]. Paper-based microfluidic devices, which are regarded as a low-cost alternative to conventional POC diagnostics tools, have also been popularly studied in the last few decades, and a huge number of advantages have been explored, such as low-cost, mass production, disposability, being equipment free etc. [2] However, some disadvantages or limitations are also apparent, such as issues with the control of flow rate, multiplexed detection on the same device footprint and further reduction of size [2]. As a result, 3D microfluidic paper analytical devices, as an alternative solution, have been proposed in recent years, which enable distribution of fluids in both lateral and vertical directions.
Anergic T cells act as suppressor cells in vitro and in vivo

The potential suppressive effects of allospecific anergic T cells were investigated both in vitro and in vivo. Allospecific T cells were rendered unresponsive in vitro using immobilized anti‐CD3 mAb. These anergic T cells profoundly inhibited proliferation of responsive T cells in an antigen‐specific manner. The observed inhibition did not appear to be due to the release of inhibitory cytokines in that secretion of IL‐2, IFN‐γ, IL‐4, IL‐10 and TGF‐β was greatly reduced following the induction of anergy, and neutralizig mAb specific for IL‐4, IL‐10 and TGF‐β failed to reverse the inhibition. Furthermore, the suppression mediated by anergic T cells required cell to cell contact. In vivo, adoptive transfer of anergic T cells into recipients of allogeneic skin grafts led to prolonged skin graft survival. Consistent with the lack of inhibitory cytokine production by the anergic cells, prolongation of skin allograft rejection was not influenced by the simultaneous administration of a neutralizing anti‐IL‐4 antibody. These results indicate that anergic T cells can function as antigen‐specific suppressor cells both in vitro and in vivo.
A Deterministic Nonsmooth Frank Wolfe Algorithm with Coreset Guarantees

We present a new Frank-Wolfe (FW) type algorithm that is applicable to minimization problems with a nonsmooth convex objective. We provide convergence bounds and show that the scheme yields so-called coreset results for various Machine Learning problems including 1-median, Balanced Development, Sparse PCA, Graph Cuts, and the $\ell_1$-norm-regularized Support Vector Machine (SVM) among others. This means that the algorithm provides approximate solutions to these problems in time complexity bounds that are not dependent on the size of the input problem. Our framework, motivated by a growing body of work on sublinear algorithms for various data analysis problems, is entirely deterministic and makes no use of smoothing or proximal operators. Apart from these theoretical results, we show experimentally that the algorithm is very practical and in some cases also offers significant computational advantages on large problem instances. We provide an open source implementation that can be adapted for other problems that fit the overall structure.
Benign chronic neutropenia with abnormalities involving 16q22, affecting mother and daughter

We report a case of familial, chronic, benign neutropenia in a 17‐year‐old female showing (1) the spontaneous expression of a heritable rare fragile site at 16q22 and (2) a deletion at the same region. The del(16)(q22), which most likely originated from the fragile site, was the main clonal abnormality detected in the patient's bone marrow cells, whereas a few cells with either del(16)(q22) or fra(16)(q22) were seen in the patient's peripheral blood. Interestingly, the del(16q) was also detected in the patient's uncultured cells, as demonstrated by FISH, excluding an in vitro origin of the del(16q) during culture. The bone marrow was hypocellular with decreased neutrophils and their precursors. Absolute neutrophil counts ranged from (0.62 to 1.24) × 109/L with a median value of 1.02 × 109/L. The patient had a more severe neutropenia than her mother, which correlated with the presence of more cells with del(16q) in the marrow. The patient's mother, who was also diagnosed with neutropenia, revealed only a few cells with the rare fra(16)(q22) in her peripheral blood cells, whereas her bone marrow showed cells with both fra(16)(q22) and del(16)(q22), although the del(16q) was present in only 2/20 cells. Some possible candidate genes contributing to the pathogenesis of the neutropenia are discussed. Chromosome abnormalities involving the 16q22 breakpoint have been observed in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). In this patient, the del(16)(q22) risk factor is unknown for subsequent development of MDS or AML. Another point to consider is the need to determine the origin of a chromosome abnormality, particularly when the clinical picture does not fit the chromosome findings. Although, the observation of a constitutional structural abnormality in a mosaic form is an extremely rare event, it is somewhat different in the case of a fragile site expression, which can, as in this case, be present in some cells and not in others. Am. J. Hematol. 81:262–270, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.