Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The adhesion mediated by the P‐selectin P–selectin glycoprotein ligand‐1 (PSGL‐1) couple is stronger for shorter PSGL‐1 variants

Interactions between P‐sel and the PSGL‐1 mediate the earliest adhesive events during an inflammatory response. Human PSGL‐1 displays a high degree of genetic polymorphism that has been diversely associated with susceptibility to human diseases. In the central part of PSGL‐1, a 10‐aa motif is repeated 14, 15, or 16 times. Moreover, two mutations, M62I and M274V, are often found giving the most common variant M62–M274 with 16 motifs (M16M) and its variants I62–M274 (I16M). Two other variants exist with 15 repeated motifs (M62–M274; M15M) and with 14 motifs (M62–V274; M14V). We investigated the potential difference in the adhesive properties between these natural variants stably expressed in the HEK cell line by using the BFP technique. Their interactions with P‐sel were found to be of catch bond‐type, and the dissociation force was primarily dependent on the number of decameric motifs: the shorter the PSGL‐1, the larger the bond strength. Finally, we found that the M62I mutation, which is close to the binding site to P‐sel, reduced the adhesiveness to P‐sel effectively. Collectively, these data shed new light on the polymorphism of PSGL‐1 and could help the research on its associations to human pathologies.
Complex Deep Structure of the African Low‐Velocity Zone

Abstract We use recently deployed seismological arrays in Africa to sample a 2D cross section through the mantle down to the core–mantle boundary (CMB). By making use of travel‐time residuals of S , ScS , and SKS phases, a new shear‐velocity model of the African low‐velocity zone (ALVZ) is derived. Our model suggests between 1.2% shear‐velocity reduction at the top and 5% at the bottom with respect to 1D reference models. The average reduction over the whole low‐velocity zone (LVZ) amounts to 2% in the presented model and is therefore about twice as strong as values found in global tomographic models. The top of the LVZ reaches up to 1200‐km depth, and its lateral extent at the CMB is about 35°. We propose the existence of a gap of 300 km, splitting the structure into two blocks. Our results are based on remarkable differences in SK ( K ) S travel‐time residuals over a few degrees distance. The complexity of the structure could provide a key to an improved understanding of the deep‐mantle LVZ dynamics and composition by comparison to geodynamic models. The gap in the model might suggest that the 2D cross section is cutting through a 3D indentation in the boundary of the ALVZ but may also be interpreted as a sign of two individual plumes, rather than one large homogeneous upwelling. Electronic Supplement: Figures of preprocessed original waveforms aligned with the synthetics for the corresponding event, and tables of applied corrections.
Adherence to the Tobacco-Free School Policy in Rural India

Background: In India, 267 million adults use tobacco with prevalence of 35% in rural areas and 13% among those between 15 and 24 years. With 40% of India’s population below 19 years, tobacco-free schools (TFS) can be a critical strategy for preventing tobacco-use among youth. This study examined the extent of and factors associated with complete adherence to national TFS guidelines among rural schools in the state of Maharashtra. Methods: Trained observers visited 507 rural schools to check adherence to eleven TFS criteria and conducted a cross-sectional survey of school-level indicators. These data were coupled with school-based information from the District Information System for Education (DISE) to analyze factors associated with TFS-adherence. Results: Only 11% of schools adhered to all eleven TFS criteria. Majority (72%) prohibited sale of tobacco inside and within 100 yards of the school; 63% displayed no-smoking posters; and 59% banned tobacco use inside premises. However, only 18% consulted with state tobacco advisor and only 28% of schools had tobacco prevention messages on school stationery. Bivariate analysis revealed that complete TFS-adherence was associated with participation of school in sports (p<0.001) and extra-curricular competitions (p<0.001); internet connectivity (p<0.005) and e-learning facilities (p<0.05); and teachers’ attendance at capacity-building workshops (p<0.05). A logistic model identified competitive sports participation (OR=3.27, p<0.005) as a key predictor of adherence to the TFS policy. Conclusion: This is the first study in India that measures and examines compliance among rural schools with national TFS guidelines; thus filling an existing gap in the tobacco control literature. Schools that provide students and staff with opportunities for overall development seem more likely to implement tobacco-free guidelines. By understanding the hard-to-meet criteria, policy-makers and practitioners can support schools in becoming tobacco-free. Integrating tobacco control programs with overall development goals of the school is one way forward.
Effects of Extracellular Matrix Components on Axonal Outgrowth from Peripheral Nerves of Adult Animalsin Vitro


Relatively little is known of the growth requirements for regenerating axons of the peripheral nervous system of adult animals. In the present study, we show that extracellular matrix material secreted by the Engelbreth-Holm-Swarm tumor cell line (matrigel) supports axonal growth from explanted peripheral nerve-dorsal root ganglia (DRG) preparations of adult mice and amphibia in serum-free media, without addition of growth factors. Axonal growth in matrigel was much more profuse than that in the more commonly used gels of type 1 collagen and, after some days in culture, was accompanied by migration of Schwann cells along axons. The most abundant protein in matrigel is laminin, which has been shown in many studies to support axonal growth but, surprisingly, antisera to laminin did not inhibit axonal growth in matrigel. To determine the ability of the major components of matrigel, laminin, type IV collagen, and heparan sulfate proteoglycan (HSPG), to support axonal growth, these proteins were added to preparations of mouse peripheral nerve-DRGs in type I collagen gels. Regenerating axons were significantly longer in the presence of laminin and type IV collagen than in control cultures, while HSPG had a slight inhibitory effect. In this assay system, however, diluted matrigel solution was even more effective in stimulating axonal growth than laminin or type IV collagen, either alone or in combination. The results suggest that in addition to laminin and type IV collagen, other components within matrigel may contribute to its ability to support axonal growth.
Vascular Actions of Aldosterone

Aldosterone exerts direct effects on the vascular system by inducing oxidative stress, inflammation, hypertrophic remodeling, fibrosis, and endothelial dysfunction. Aldosterone exerts its effects through genomic and nongenomic pathways in a mineralocorticoid receptor (MR)-dependent or independent manner. Other aldosterone receptors such as GPR30 have been identified. A tight relation exists between the aldosterone and angiotensin II pathways, as well as with the endothelin-1 system. There is a correlation between plasma levels of aldosterone and cardiovascular risk. Recently, an increasing body of evidence has underlined the importance of aldosterone in cardiovascular complications associated with the metabolic syndrome, such as arterial remodeling and endothelial dysfunction. Blockade of MR is an increasingly used evidence-based therapy for many forms of cardiovascular disease, including hypertension, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes mellitus.
Semiautomatic visual-attention modeling and its application to video compression

This research aims to sufficiently increase the quality of visual-attention modeling to enable practical applications. We found that automatic models are significantly worse at predicting attention than even single-observer eye tracking. We propose a semiautomatic approach that requires eye tracking of only one observer and is based on time consistency of the observer's attention. Our comparisons showed the high objective quality of our proposed approach relative to automatic methods and to the results of single-observer eye tracking with no postprocessing. We demonstrated the practical applicability of our proposed concept to the task of saliency-based video compression.
Matching data dissemination algorithms to application requirements

A distinguishing characteristic of wireless sensor networks is the opportunity to exploit characteristics of the application at lower layers. This approach is encouraged by device resource constraints, and acceptable because devices are inexpensive and numerous enough that they can be dedicated to specific applications. Many data dissemination protocols have been proposed for multi-hop communication in sensor networks, each evaluated in some scenario. The premise of this paper is that, if protocols are designed to exploit application requirements, then no one protocol can be optimized for all applications.Instead, a family of protocols are needed, with guidance to match protocol to application. We show through field experiments with two tracking applications that choice of diffusion algorithm can affect application performance by 40--60%. These applications motivate the design of two new diffusion algorithms: push and one-phase pull diffusion. We describe these algorithms in comparison to previous algorithms, then systematically explore their performance as the number of sinks and sources, the traffic rate and node placement varies, and with and without geographic proximity in node placement and with and without geographically scoped communication. We characterize algorithm performance and highlight the effect of the choice of algorithm parameters. The end result of this work are guidelines to help application developers to match dissemination algorithms to application performance requirements.
The Design and Implementation of StrandCast

In this paper, we present a detailed overview of StrandCast, an application-layer multicast protocol for stretch invariant applications. StrandCast’s distribution topology is a linear list of participating receivers, which we call a strand. We describe three benefits that StrandCast has over traditional application-layer multicast topologies. The first is low and constant stress levels. The second is fast join and leave operations. The third benefit is a semireliable transmission scheme that makes long strands practical for very large groups of receivers. We also discuss various stretch invariant applications for which StrandCast is most suitable, including systems that utilize receiver-driven layered multicast for scalable congestion control.
Constrained minimum-time trajectory generation for a laboratory-scale magnetic-levitation system

In this paper we present a method to generate minimum-time constrained trajectories for a magnetic-levitation (Maglev) system. The Maglev model is a differentially flat system, and as such it has the useful property that the input and the state trajectories can be completely characterised by the so-called flat output. We propose a B-splines parameterisation for the flat output, and the corresponding parameterisation for the performance output, the states, and the inputs. Using this parameterisation the problem of minimum-time constrained trajectory planning is cast into a feasibility-search problem in the spline control-points space, in which the constraint region is characterised by a polytope. A close approximation of the minimum-time trajectory is obtained by systematically searching the end-time that makes the constraint polytope to be minimally feasible. Experimental results, validating the method on a laboratory real system, are presented.
Security of PHR Model on Public Cloud using MultiAuthority and Key Policy Attribute based Encryption

Personal Health Record (PHR) is a web based set of tools that provides the facility to exchange and maintain a complete electronic health record of a patient. Third-party service providers are available to maintain PHRs like HealthVault1, Google Health or Web MD. These applications allow individuals to enter, store and share their own health data, upload health measurements from their devices or from hospital EHR systems. Another alternative is to outsource PHR to the third party cloud service providers or on semi trusted servers. It helps to increase PHR efficiency and to overcome problems associated with maintaining own specialized data centers. However, serious privacy concern arises as data are exposed to unauthorized users. The potential solution to this problem is to encrypt the data before outsourcing, however while encrypting data the issue of key management, data privacy and fine grained access remains a major concern. Taking these issues into consideration the paper proposes a model for securing PHR stored in semitrusted third party servers by adopting attribute-based encryption (ABE). The advantage of ABE is, the complexity of encryption and decryption linearly increases with the increase number of attributes which are desired for large systems, although the challenge to make system collusion resistant need to be handled efficiently. To overcome these challenges the model proposes the use of dual system encryption methodology. The encryption techniques from Multi-authority ABE and Key-Policy ABE are combined. Use of MA-ABE technique proves beneficial for key management and flexible access and potential security threat of colluding users is handled by KP-ABE. To this end, proposed framework has attempted to achieve data security by MAABE and data privacy by KP-ABE scheme thus improving overall security of the system.
Nephritogenic antibodies bind in glomeruli through interaction with exposed chromatin fragments and not with renal cross-reactive antigens

Cross-reactivity of anti-double stranded DNA (anti-dsDNA) antibodies with glomerular antigens has been postulated as a key factor in the development of lupus nephritis. Because no direct proof has been presented on anti-dsDNA antibodies binding in vivo to glomerular structures, we have analysed the binding of potentially nephritogenic anti-dsDNA antibodies to α-actinin and laminin. By enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) analyses, we demonstrate that monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) bind both double-stranded DNA and α-actinin at high affinity. However, when added to nephritic kidney sections they did not bind to such structures, but rather to nucleosome-containing structures within the mesangial matrix or the glomerular basement membranes (GBMs). Nucleosomes, anti-nuclear antibodies and complexes of them were tested for their binding to glomerular components such as agrin, perlecan and laminin using SPR analysis. Nucleosomes bound to laminin, marginally to agrin, but not to perlecan or heparan sulphate-depleted agrin. Anti-histone H2B and anti-nucleosome antibodies in complex with nucleosomes slightly increased the binding of nucleosomes to agrin, while binding to laminin was slightly decreased compared to nucleosomes alone. In conclusion, the availability of nucleosomal antigens and the binding of these antigens to components of the mesangial matrix and GBM seem crucial for the glomerular deposition of immune complexes.
The Class I Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor MS-275 Prevents Pancreatic Beta Cell Death Induced by Palmitate

Elevation of the dietary saturated fatty acid palmitate contributes to the reduction of functional beta cell mass in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. The diabetogenic effect of palmitate is achieved by increasing beta cell death through induction of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress markers including activating transcription factor 3 (Atf3) and CAAT/enhancer-binding protein homologous protein-10 (Chop). In this study, we investigated whether treatment of beta cells with the MS-275, a HDAC1 and HDAC3 activity inhibitor which prevents beta cell death elicited by cytokines, is beneficial for combating beta cell dysfunction caused by palmitate. We show that culture of isolated human islets and MIN6 cells with MS-275 reduced apoptosis evoked by palmitate. The protective effect of MS-275 was associated with the attenuation of the expression of Atf3 and Chop. Silencing of HDAC3, but not of HDAC1, mimicked the effects of MS-275 on the expression of the two ER stress markers and apoptosis. These data point to HDAC3 as a potential drug target for preserving beta cells against lipotoxicity in diabetes.
Offloading Mobile Traffic via Green Content Broker

A continuous surge of mobile data traffic not only congests mobile networks but also results in a dramatic increase in the energy consumption of mobile networks. Device-to-device (D2D) communications is a promising technique for offloading mobile data traffic and enhancing energy efficiency of mobile networks. By enabling D2D communications, the base stations (BSs) may reduce their energy consumption through traffic offloading, and mobile users may increase their quality of services by retrieving contents from their neighboring peers instead of the remote BSs. By leveraging D2D communications, we propose a novel mobile traffic offloading scheme-the content brokerage. In the content brokerage scheme, a new network node called the green content broker (GCB) is introduced to arrange the content delivery between the content requester and the content owner. The GCB is powered by green energy, e.g., solar energy, to reduce the CO2 footprints of mobile networks. In the scheme, maximizing traffic offloading with the constraints of the amount of green energy and bandwidth is an nondeterministic polynomial time (NP) problem. We propose a heuristic traffic offloading (HTO) algorithm to approximate the optimal solution with low computational complexity. Our simulation results valid the performance of the content brokerage scheme and the HTO algorithm.
Best practices for evaluating single nucleotide variant calling methods for microbial genomics

Innovations in sequencing technologies have allowed biologists to make incredible advances in understanding biological systems. As experience grows, researchers increasingly recognize that analyzing the wealth of data provided by these new sequencing platforms requires careful attention to detail for robust results. Thus far, much of the scientific Communit’s focus for use in bacterial genomics has been on evaluating genome assembly algorithms and rigorously validating assembly program performance. Missing, however, is a focus on critical evaluation of variant callers for these genomes. Variant calling is essential for comparative genomics as it yields insights into nucleotide-level organismal differences. Variant calling is a multistep process with a host of potential error sources that may lead to incorrect variant calls. Identifying and resolving these incorrect calls is critical for bacterial genomics to advance. The goal of this review is to provide guidance on validating algorithms and pipelines used in variant calling for bacterial genomics. First, we will provide an overview of the variant calling procedures and the potential sources of error associated with the methods. We will then identify appropriate datasets for use in evaluating algorithms and describe statistical methods for evaluating algorithm performance. As variant calling moves from basic research to the applied setting, standardized methods for performance evaluation and reporting are required; it is our hope that this review provides the groundwork for the development of these standards.
Intraday Dynamics of Volatility and Duration: Evidence from Chinese Stocks

We propose a new joint model of intraday returns and durations to study the dynamics of several Chinese stocks. We include three U.S. stocks for comparison. Flexible innovation distributions are used for durations and returns, and the total variance of returns is decomposed into different volatility components associated with different transaction horizons. The new model provides strong improvements in density forecasts for duration and returns and only modest gains for points forecasts of the variance of returns. The conditional hazard functions are non-monotonic and there is strong evidence for different volatility components. Although diurnal patterns, volatility components, and market microstructure implications are similar across the markets, there are interesting differences. Durations for lightly traded Chinese stocks tend to carry more information than heavily traded stocks. Chinese investors usually have longer investment horizons, which may be explained by the specific trading rules in China.
Observations of negative bias temperature instability defect generation via on the fly electron spin resonance

We demonstrate “on the fly” electron spin resonance (ESR) in which the defect generation process in the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) can be observed without recovery contamination. Elevated temperature and modest negative gate bias generates ESR spectra due to E′ center defects. The NBTI generated E′ center spectrum disappears upon stress condition removal, a result consistent with recovery. Our observations support the idea that NBTI is triggered by inversion layer hole capture at an E′ precursor site which leads to depassivation of nearby interface trap precursors.We demonstrate “on the fly” electron spin resonance (ESR) in which the defect generation process in the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) can be observed without recovery contamination. Elevated temperature and modest negative gate bias generates ESR spectra due to E′ center defects. The NBTI generated E′ center spectrum disappears upon stress condition removal, a result consistent with recovery. Our observations support the idea that NBTI is triggered by inversion layer hole capture at an E′ precursor site which leads to depassivation of nearby interface trap precursors.
Physiological Study of Cooperative Infection by Restricted Bacteriophage T1

The ability of certain phages to successfully infect a restricting host at a high multiplicity of infection is known as cooperative infection or cooperation. We have examined the ability of unmodified T1 (T1·0) to participate in cooperative infection in cells possessing the P1 restriction system. We have found that cooperation is dependent upon protein synthesis during the first few minutes after phage infection. However, we have been unable to attribute the necessary protein to a known T1 cistron. Degradation of the restricted T1 genome is approximately equally extensive whether cooperative infection occurs or whether it is blocked by chloramphenicol. It is postulated that an inducible host repair mechanism may be responsible for the phenomenon of cooperative infection.
Fine-grained sentiment analysis of online reviews

A huge number of online reviews which are valuable voice of customer benefit consumers and product designers. However, with increasing growth of reviews and commodity attributes becoming more diverse, the traditional sentiment analysis of overall emotional tendency already can't satisfy the needs of buyers and manufacturers. Consumers hope to get analysis results of target attributes and manufacturers hope to master strengths and weaknesses of products and also consumers' taste. This study conducts a fine-grained sentiment analysis research to solve this problem and we increase generality of the application by the general methods we use to crawl reviews, produce general category of product attributes in women' dress and find implicit features based on POS rules.