Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PREPARATION AND MECHANICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF EPOXY BASED COMPOSITE DEVELOPED BY BIOWASTE MATERIAL

Increasing concern about environment has made scientist and engineers very eager in their search for environmental friendly materials. So lot of research is going on today in the field of material science to develop newer materials. Natural fibers are getting much attention of researchers, engineers and scientists as reinforcement in the polymer matrix to develop natural fiber reinforced polymer composites. In the present work an attempt has been made to develop natural fibers reinforced polymer matrix composite. Advantages of using natural fibers are density reduction, cost savings and less weight to strength ratio. Composites with 10, 20 and 30 wt % coconut shell powder epoxy composites have been fabricated using Hand layup technique. Mechanical properties of these composites have been analyzed in detail.
The Energy-Signaling Hub SnRK1 Is Important for Sucrose-Induced Hypocotyl Elongation1[CC-BY]

An energy signaling pathway, photoperiod, and light intensity regulate sugar-induced hypocotyl elongation. Emerging seedlings respond to environmental conditions such as light and temperature to optimize their establishment. Seedlings grow initially through elongation of the hypocotyl, which is regulated by signaling pathways that integrate environmental information to regulate seedling development. The hypocotyls of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) also elongate in response to sucrose. Here, we investigated the role of cellular sugar-sensing mechanisms in the elongation of hypocotyls in response to Suc. We focused upon the role of SnRK1, which is a sugar-signaling hub that regulates metabolism and transcription in response to cellular energy status. We also investigated the role of TPS1, which synthesizes the signaling sugar trehalose-6-P that is proposed to regulate SnRK1 activity. Under light/dark cycles, we found that Suc-induced hypocotyl elongation did not occur in tps1 mutants and overexpressors of KIN10 (AKIN10/SnRK1.1), a catalytic subunit of SnRK1. We demonstrate that the magnitude of Suc-induced hypocotyl elongation depends on the day length and light intensity. We identified roles for auxin and gibberellin signaling in Suc-induced hypocotyl elongation under short photoperiods. We found that Suc-induced hypocotyl elongation under light/dark cycles does not involve another proposed sugar sensor, HEXOKINASE1, or the circadian oscillator. Our study identifies novel roles for KIN10 and TPS1 in mediating a signal that underlies Suc-induced hypocotyl elongation in light/dark cycles.
A survey on nonlinear applications of modified particle filter

Recent years particle filtering has evolved as a powerful method in solving many problems in engineering field. The problems include non-Gaussian noise and nonlinear functions. Particle filter is very useful in analysing nonlinear and non-Gaussian systems. In this paper nonlinear applications of modified particle filter like tracking, estimation, detection, equalisation and localization are discussed in detail and performance comparison of Modified Particle filters with other existing methods is also done and inferences has been made based on error performances.
Computer simulation of infrared spectra and structures of molecular nanoparticles

Molecular nanoparticles, i.e. molecular aggregates held together by weak intermolecular interactions, are ubiquitous in planetary atmospheres and the interstellar space. Although they play a crucial role for radiative energy transfer and chemical processes, the understanding of their properties — which can differ significantly from those of the bulk — is still in its infancy. The present thesis is devoted to a better understanding of the influence of intrinsic properties of these particles on their infrared spectra. The influence of shape, size, architecture and phase on infrared spectra is modeled at a molecular level and propensity rules are established. The high complexity of these huge aggregates, which are composed of up to tens of thousands of molecules, makes a straightforward interpretation of their infrared spectra difficult or even impossible. The present thesis makes use of a combination of a quantum mechanical model for the calculation of the vibrational spectra — the extended vibrational exciton model — and a molecular dynamics approach for the generation of the particle structures. Calculations are performed for pure and mixed aggregates containing NH 3, SF 6, C0 2, CO, and CHF 3.With a microscopic model at hand, it becomes even possible to go beyond system specific effects to uncover general underlying trends.
Xiphoid Surface Temperature Predicts Mortality in a Murine Model of Septic Shock

ABSTRACT Sepsis continues to be a major challenge for modern medicine. Several preclinical models were developed to study sepsis and each has strengths and weaknesses. The cecal slurry (CS) method is a practical alternative because it does not require surgery, and the infection can be dosed. However, one disadvantage is that the dosage must be determined for each CS preparation using survival studies. Our aim was to refine a survival protocol for the CS model by determining a premonitory humane endpoint that would reduce animal suffering. Mice become hypothermic in sepsis; therefore, we tested whether reductions in surface temperature (Ts), measured by noninvasive infrared thermometry, could predict eventual death. We injected 154 C57BL/6J mice with CS (0.9–1.8 mg/g) and periodically monitored Ts at the xiphoid process over 5 days. We used, as predictors, combinations of temperature thresholds (29°C –31°C) and times, postinjection (18–36 h). A receiver-operator curve, sensitivity, and specificity were determined. A Distress Index value was calculated for the threshold conditions. The optimum detection threshold (highest Youden index) was found at Ts ⩽ 30.5°C at 24 h (90% specific, 84% sensitive). This threshold condition reduced animal suffering by 41% while providing an accurate survival rate estimate. Using this threshold, only 13 of 154 mice would have died from sepsis; 67 would have been euthanized at 24 h, and only 7 of 154 would have been euthanized unnecessarily. In conclusion, using a humane endpoint of Ts ⩽ 30.5°C at 24 h accurately predicts mortality and can effectively reduce animal suffering during CS survival protocols.
A secure interoperable architecture for building-automation applications

Building-automation systems enable building administrators and inhabitants to monitor and control their buildings from within the building itself, as well as from outside using remote access tools. In recent years, many such control systems have been developed for both residential and nonresidential buildings, with increasing levels of functionality. Due to the growing number of building-automation system manufacturers, which use different network and communication protocols with no interoperability, it is often not possible to integrate the use of components from different manufacturers in a single building. To overcome this major limitation, we have developed a multilayer architecture for building-automation, designed to allow remote management of buildings, while making it possible to use components from different manufacturers. Our architecture implements an advanced secure interface for building-automation software, using secure event-handling and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). The architecture is designed to provide energy consumption and monitoring applications with an interface protecting their privacy.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 5-15-2012 AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE USEFULNESS OF WEAKNESS PATTERNS IN BUSINESS PROCESS REDESIGN

Business Process Management (BPM) is a topic with growing relevance for businesses as well as public organisations. Until today, the analysis part of a BPM cycle is mostly done manually. Process modelling methods are not designed to allow for automated analysis. Our aim is to show that meaningful weakness patterns that support semi-automatic analysis of business process diagrams (BPD) can be defined when a semantically enhanced modelling method is used. We derive exemplary weakness patterns by analysing literature and interviews from a business process redesign project. These are applied to a set of process models, in which occurrences of these weaknesses are being searched automatically. A comparison of achieved and expected results indicates that our approach helps to identify weaknesses within the processes and therefore supports business process analysis endeavours.
Using Behavioral Profiles to Detect Software Flaws in Network Servers

Some software faults, namely security vulnerabilities, tend to elude conventional testing methods. Since the effects of these faults may not be immediately perceived nor have a direct impact on the server's execution (e.g., a crash), they can remain hidden even if exercised by the test cases. Our detection approach consists in inferring a behavioral profile of a network server that models its correct execution by combining information about the implemented state machine protocol and the server's internal execution. Flaws are automatically detected if the server's behavior deviates from the profile while processing the test cases. This approach was implemented in a tool, which was used to analyze several FTP vulnerabilities, showing that it can effectively find various kinds of flaws.
Motorcycles that See: Multifocal Stereo Vision Sensor for Advanced Safety Systems in Tilting Vehicles

Advanced driver assistance systems, ADAS, have shown the possibility to anticipate crash accidents and effectively assist road users in critical traffic situations. This is not the case for motorcyclists, in fact ADAS for motorcycles are still barely developed. Our aim was to study a camera-based sensor for the application of preventive safety in tilting vehicles. We identified two road conflict situations for which automotive remote sensors installed in a tilting vehicle are likely to fail in the identification of critical obstacles. Accordingly, we set two experiments conducted in real traffic conditions to test our stereo vision sensor. Our promising results support the application of this type of sensors for advanced motorcycle safety applications.
Design of error normalized LMS adaptive filter for EEG signal with eye blink & PLI artefacts

Analysis of spectral behaviour of the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is a major hurdle due to the presence of artefacts. These artefacts are the low amplitude signals generated from unconscious ocular activity and muscles activity of human body. In our research we mainly considered Eye blink artefacts and Power Line Interference (PLI) for denoising. Since the source and noise in received signals originate from different sources, Least Mean Square (LMS) Adaptive filtering has been comprehensively used for filtering. Even after filtering the results show that considerable artefact components still persist in clean EEG signals. In this paper, we propose Error Normalized LMS (ENLMS) algorithm as the overhead computation with LMS for further filtering the signals. Further we applied signum to the proposed algorithm and developed Error Normalized Sign Regressor LMS (ENSRLMS), Error Normalized Sign LMS (ENSLMS) and Error Normalized Sign Sign LMS (ENSSLMS). It is concluded that the proposed Adaptive filter reduces the Eye Blink and PLI artefacts present in EEG signals without removing significant information embedded in these records.
Unsupervised stereo matching using correspondence consistency

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown revolutionary performance improvements for matching cost computation in stereo matching. However, conventional CNN-based approaches to learn the network in a supervised manner require a large number of ground-truth disparity maps, which limits their applicability. To overcome this limitation, we present a novel framework to learn a CNNs architecture for matching cost computation in an unsupervised manner. Our method leverages an image domain learning combined with stereo epipolar constraints. Exploiting the correspondence consistency between stereo images as supervision, our method selects the training samples in each iteration during network training and uses them to learn the network. To boost the performance, we also propose a multi-scale cost computation scheme. Experimental results show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods including even supervised learning based methods on various benchmarks.
The spatial correlates of wildlife distribution around Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo

This study explores the relationship between human activity and the distribution of wildlife populations in north-eastern Congo. It is hypothesized that the presence of agricultural communities, proximity to urban markets and conservation practices affect three characteristics of wildlife distribution: the presence (range), abundance and community structure of large mammal populations. The area studied was extensive and required the use of wildlife sampling and remote sensing techniques to generate data on wildlife distribution and the explanatory factors. The results show that wildlife protection is associated with high animal abundance. However, the presence of agricultural populations is not associated with low animal abundance.
Opposite roles of cannabinoid receptors 1 and 2 in hepatocarcinogenesis

Objective The endocannabinoid system (ECS) exerts key roles in the development of liver fibrosis and fatty liver, two diseases that promote the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Although cannabinoids exert potent antitumour effects in vitro, the contribution of the ECS to carcinogenesis in vivo remains elusive. Design Expression of key components of the ECS, including endocannanabinoids, endocannabinoid-degrading enzymes and endocannabinoid receptors, was determined in healthy liver and tumours. Diethylnitrosamine-induced hepatocarcinogenesis was determined in mice deficient in fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), the main anandamide (AEA)-degrading enzyme, in cannabinoid receptor (CB)1, CB2, or transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1)-deficient mice. Results Murine and human HCCs displayed activation of the ECS with strongly elevated expression of CB1 and CB2 but only moderately altered endocannabinoid levels. Contrary to the antitumour effects of cannabinoids in vitro, we observed increased hepatocarcinogenesis in FAAH-deficient mice, a mouse model with increased AEA levels. Accordingly, inactivation of CB1, the main receptor for AEA, in wild-type or FAAH-deficient mice suppressed hepatocarcinogenesis. In contrast, inactivation of CB2 increased hepatocarcinogenesis. CB1 was strongly expressed within HCC lesions and its inactivation suppressed proliferation and liver fibrosis. CB2 was predominantly expressed in macrophages. CB2 inactivation decreased the expression of T-cell-recruiting chemokines and inhibited hepatic T-cell recruitment including particular CD4+ T cells, a population with known antitumour effects in HCC. TRPV1 deletion did not alter HCC development. Conclusions Similar to their role in fibrogenesis, CB1 and CB2 exert opposite effects on hepatocarcinogenesis and may provide novel therapeutic targets.
In-Fiber Optic Salinity Sensing: A Potential Application for Offshore Concrete Structure Protection

The protection of concrete structures against corrosion in marine environments has always been a challenge due to the presence of a saline solution—A natural corrosive agent to the concrete paste and steel reinforcements. The concentration of salt is a key parameter influencing the rate of corrosion. In this paper, we propose an optical fiber-based salinity sensor based on bundled multimode plastic optical fiber (POF) as a sensor probe and a concave mirror as a reflector in conjunction with an intensity modulation technique. A refractive index (RI) sensing approach is analytically investigated and the findings are in agreement with the experimental results. A maximum sensitivity of 14,847.486/RIU can be achieved at RI = 1.3525. The proposed technique is suitable for in situ measurement and monitoring of salinity in liquid.
A regulatory loop involving miR-29c and Sp1 elevates the TGF-β1 mediated epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in lung cancer

Specificity protein1 (Sp1) is required for TGF-β-induced epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) which has been demonstrated to aggravate the progression of cancer including lung cancer. microRNA-29c (miR-29c) is identified to inhibit EMT, but the correlation between miR-29c and Sp1 in human lung cancer remain incompletely clarified. Here, we confirmed decreased expression of miR-29c and enhanced expression of Sp1 in lung cancer tissues (n = 20) and found that Sp1 could be targeted and inhibited by miR-29c. Besides, the expression of miR-29c was down-regulated in high-metastatic lung cancer cell lines and TGF-β1-treated cells. The inhibition of miR-29c or overexpression of Sp1 in 95C and A549 cells dramatically enhanced the cell migration and invasion, and also induced the decrease in the expression of epithelial markers, e.g. thyroid transcription factor 1 (TTF-1) and E-cadherin, together with an increase in mesenchymal markers including vimentin, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), which could be restored by overexpression of miR-29c mimics during the TGF-β-induced EMT. Moreover, dual-luciferase reporter assay was performed and the results indicated that miR-29c/Sp1 could form an auto-regulatory loop with TGF-β1, which impaired TGFB1 transcription. Furthermore, miR-29c overexpression could abrogate the tumor progression and inhibit the Sp1/TGF-β expressions in vivo, indicating that miR-29c could be a tumor suppressor and repress the Sp1/TGF-β axis-induced EMT in lung cancer.
Formulation Nanocapsule of Turmeric Extract, Characterization on Oral Administration and Its Ability as Antibacterial

The use of turmeric is restricted by its low solubility in water, therefore it has low bioavailability. This obstacle can be solved by the development of nanoparticle technology. This study aimed to develop nanoparticles formulation using turmeric extract and chitosan as the matrix and sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) as cross linker, to study its characteristics on oral administration and capabilities as antibacterial. The method used in the formulation of nanoparticles was ionic gelation followed by spray drying on formula A and oven drying at 50oC on B. The result of nanoparticle or nanocapsule characterizations are: average size of particles on A and B is 428 nm and 840 nm, its zeta-potential on A and B is -11.47 mV and -20.22 mV, with spherical particle morphology. Entrapment efficiency on A and B is 88% and 78%. These formulas also has a good stability in AIF (Artificial Intestinal Fluid) after 3 hours on A and B is 78% and 51%. Its ability as antibacterial agent was evaluated by agar diffusion on E. coli bacterial, both formulas provide a middle inhibition in diameter clear zone 7-10 mm. It was concluded that A formulation of nanocapsule turmeric extract has characteristics can used oral administration and potential as antibacterial.
A Unified Bayesian Inference Framework for Generalized Linear Models

In this letter, we present a unified Bayesian inference framework for generalized linear models (GLM), which iteratively reduces the GLM problem to a sequence of standard linear model (SLM) problems. This framework provides new perspectives on some established GLM algorithms derived from SLM ones and also suggests novel extensions for some other SLM algorithms. Specific instances elucidated under such framework are the GLM versions of approximate message passing (AMP), vector AMP, and sparse Bayesian learning. It is proved that the resultant GLM version of AMP is equivalent to the well-known generalized approximate message passing. Numerical results for one-bit quantized compressed sensing demonstrate the effectiveness of this unified framework.
The IDA3 adapter, required for intraflagellar transport of I1 dynein, is regulated by ciliary length

We determined how the ciliary motor I1 dynein is transported. A specialized adapter, IDA3, facilitates I1 dynein attachment to the ciliary transporter called intraflagellar transport (IFT). Loading of IDA3 and I1 dynein on IFT is regulated by ciliary length.
Molecular evaluation of microalgal communities in full-scale waste stabilisation ponds

ABSTRACT Waste stabilisation ponds (WSPs) are widely used across the world as a passive wastewater treatment for domestic wastewaters, but little is known about their ecology, especially their phototrophic communities. This study uses molecular methods and flow cytometry to assess the cyanobacterial and eukaryotic communities longitudinally throughout two systems, one treating domestic wastewater and the other mixed industrial/domestic wastewaters. More variation was seen between the systems than between different stages in the treatment processes for both eukaryotic and cyanobacterial communities. Chlorella species and Planktophrix cyanobacteria dominated both treatment systems. Arthrospira cyanobacteria were detected only in the industrial/domestic system. The balance between non-photosynthetic and photosynthetic organisms is rarely considered, though both play vital roles in WSP functioning. Flow cytometry showed that the facultative and first maturation pond in the industrial system contained a lower proportion of photosynthetic organisms compared to the domestic system. This is reflected in the species richness data and low dissolved oxygen levels detected. All data indicated that both systems are significantly different from one another and that variation longitudinally throughout the systems is lower. A more systematic study is needed to determine if it is the wastewater source rather than the initial inoculum that drives community composition. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
MYC associated zinc finger protein promotes the invasion and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma by inducing epithelial mesenchymal transition

MYC associated zinc finger protein (MAZ) plays a key role in regulation of gene expression and tumor development. Studies have shown that deregulated expression of MAZ is closely related to the progression of tumors such as glioblastoma, breast cancer, prostate cancer and liposarcoma. However, the role of MAZ in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not been fully elucidated. Here, we found that expression of MAZ was increased in HCC and correlated to the distant metastasis of HCC. Moreover, we found that MAZ had a relationship with zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 and 2 (ZEB1 and ZEB2), two important mesenchymal markers in epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) that were over-expressed in HCC. After knocking-down MAZ expression in HCC cell lines using RNA interruption, HCC cell proliferation, tumorigenesis, invasion and migration were significantly inhibited. In addition, we found that expression of other EMT markers was also changed besides ZEB1 and ZEB2 by decreasing MAZ expression, both detected in vivo and in vitro assays. Therefore, we conclude that MAZ can promote the invasion and metastasis of HCC by inducing EMT.