Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polymer-Ceramic Spiral Structured Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering: Effect of Hydroxyapatite Composition on Human Fetal Osteoblasts

For successful bone tissue engineering, a scaffold needs to be osteoconductive, porous, and biodegradable, thus able to support attachment and proliferation of bone cells and guide bone formation. Recently, hydroxyapatites (HA), a major inorganic component of natural bone, and biodegrade polymers have drawn much attention as bone scaffolds. The present study was designed to investigate whether the bone regenerative properties of nano-HA/polycaprolactone (PCL) spiral scaffolds are augmented in an HA dose dependent manner, thereby establishing a suitable composition as a bone formation material. Nano-HA/PCL spiral scaffolds were prepared with different weight ratios of HA and PCL, while porosity was introduced by a modified salt leaching technique. Human fetal osteoblasts (hFOBs) were cultured on the nano-HA/PCL spiral scaffolds up to 14 days. Cellular responses in terms of cell adhesion, viability, proliferation, differentiation, and the expression of bone-related genes were investigated. These scaffolds supported hFOBs adhesion, viability and proliferation. Cell proliferation trend was quite similar on polymer-ceramic and neat polymer spiral scaffolds on days 1, 7, and 14. However, the significantly increased amount of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and mineralized matrix synthesis was evident on the nano-HA/PCL spiral scaffolds. The HA composition in the scaffolds showed a significant effect on ALP and mineralization. Bone phenotypic markers such as bone sialoprotein (BSP), osteonectin (ON), osteocalcin (OC), and type I collagen (Col-1) were semi-quantitatively estimated by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction analysis. All of these results suggested the osteoconductive characteristics of HA/PCL nanocomposite and cell maturation were HA dose dependent. For instance, HA∶PCL = 1∶4 group showed significantly higher ALP mineralization and elevated levels of BSP, ON, OC and Col-I expression as compared other lower or higher ceramic ratios. Amongst the different nano-HA/PCL spiral scaffolds, the 1∶4 weight ratio of HA and PCL is shown to be the most optimal composition for bone tissue regeneration.
Theoretical foundations of dynamical Monte Carlo simulations

Monte Carlo methods are utilized as computational tools in many areas of chemical physics. In this paper, we present the theoretical basis for a dynamical Monte Carlo method in terms of the theory of Poisson processes. We show that if: (1) a ‘‘dynamical hierarchy’’ of transition probabilities is created which also satisfy the detailed‐balance criterion; (2) time increments upon successful events are calculated appropriately; and (3) the effective independence of various events comprising the system can be achieved, then Monte Carlo methods may be utilized to simulate the Poisson process and both static and dynamic properties of model Hamiltonian systems may be obtained and interpreted consistently.
Expression of functional domains of beta G-spectrin disrupts epithelial morphology in cultured cells

Spectrin is a major structural protein associated with the cytoplasmic surface of plasma membranes of many types of cells. To study the functions of spectrin, we transfected Caco-2 intestinal epithelial cells with a plasmid conferring neomycin resistance and encoding either actin-binding or ankyrin-binding domains of beta G-spectrin fused with beta-galactosidase. These polypeptides, in principle, could interfere with the interaction of spectrin with actin or ankyrin, as well as block normal assembly of alpha- and beta-spectrin subunits. Cells expressing the fusion proteins represented only a small fraction of neomycin-resistant cells, but they could be detected based on expression of beta-galactosidase. Cells expressing spectrin domains exhibited a progressive decrease in amounts of endogenous beta G- spectrin, although alpha-spectrin was still present. Beta G-spectrin- deficient cells lost epithelial cell morphology, became multinucleated, and eventually disappeared after 10-14 d in culture. Spectrin- associated membrane proteins, ankyrin and adducin, as well as the Na+,K(+)-ATPase, which binds to ankyrin, exhibited altered distributions in cells transfected with beta G-spectrin domains. E- cadherin and F-actin, in contrast to ankyrin, adducin, and the Na+,K(+)- ATPase, were expressed, and they exhibited unaltered distribution in beta G-spectrin-deficient cells. Cells transfected with the same plasmid encoding beta-galactosidase alone survived in culture as the major population of neomycin-resistant cells, and they exhibited no change in morphology or in the distribution of spectrin-associated membrane proteins. These results establish that beta G-spectrin is essential for the normal morphology of epithelial cells, as well as for their maintenance in monolayer culture.
What Is Systemic Liquidity Risk? Will Liquidity Rules under Basel Iii Lower Systemic Risk? Impact of the Net Stable Funding Ratio on Globally Oriented Banks

2 chapter how to address the systemic part of Liquidity risk chapter summary T he financial crisis highlighted the lack of sound liquidity risk management at financial institutions and the need to address systemic liquidity risk—the risk that multiple institutions may face simultaneous difficulties in rolling over their short-term debts or in obtaining new short-term funding through widespread dislocations of money and capital markets. Under Basel III, individual banks will have to maintain higher and better-quality liquid assets and to better manage their liquidity risk. However, because they target only individual banks, the Basel III liquidity rules can play only a limited role in addressing systemic liquidity risk concerns. Larger liquidity buffers at each bank should lower the risk that multiple institutions will simultaneously face liquidity shortfalls; but the Basel III rules do not address the additional risk of such simultaneous shortfalls arising out of the interconnectedness of various institutions across a host of financial markets. More needs to be done to develop macroprudential techniques to measure and mitigate systemic liquidity risks. The chapter suggests three separate methods of measuring systemic liquidity risk, each of which could be used to construct a macroprudential tool. Each technique measures an institution's ongoing contribution to systemwide liquidity risk, thereby establishing an objective basis on which to charge an institution for the externality it imposes on the financial system. The details of the methods described here are only illustrative. Moreover, it is unrealistic to expect there to be a single, best measure for systemic liquidity risk, so the three measures should be viewed as complementary. The chapter does not take a view on the type of charge that would be best for mitigating systemic liquidity risk—a macroprudential capital surcharge, fee, tax, insurance premium, or some other instrument. Rather, it stresses the importance of having a macroprudential tool that would allow for a more effective private-public burden sharing of systemic liquidity risk management, which in turn would help minimize the tendency for financial institutions to collectively underprice liquidity risk in good times. The approach taken to address systemic liquidity risk should be multipronged and build on the recommendations made in the October 2010 GFSR, which noted that improvements in market infrastructure could help mitigate systemic liquidity risks. For instance, some risks associated with collateral management in secured funding markets could be addressed through greater use of central counterparties for repurchase agreements and through-the-cycle haircuts, or …
A New Jacobian Matrix for Optimal Learning of Single-Layer Neural Networks

This paper investigates the learning of a wide class of single-hidden-layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs) with two sets of adjustable parameters, i.e., the nonlinear parameters in the hidden nodes and the linear output weights. The main objective is to both speed up the convergence of second-order learning algorithms such as Levenberg-Marquardt (LM), as well as to improve the network performance. This is achieved here by reducing the dimension of the solution space and by introducing a new Jacobian matrix. Unlike conventional supervised learning methods which optimize these two sets of parameters simultaneously, the linear output weights are first converted into dependent parameters, thereby removing the need for their explicit computation. Consequently, the neural network (NN) learning is performed over a solution space of reduced dimension. A new Jacobian matrix is then proposed for use with the popular second-order learning methods in order to achieve a more accurate approximation of the cost function. The efficacy of the proposed method is shown through an analysis of the computational complexity and by presenting simulation results from four different examples.
Senescent changes in parafoveal color appearance: saturation as a function of stimulus area.

The chromatic content (saturation) of monochromatic stimuli (480, 505, 577, and 650 nm) was scaled as a function of field size at three different retinal locations by 58 observers ranging from 18 to 83 yr of age. The different retinal locations (6 deg nasal, 2.5 deg inferior and 6 deg temporal eccentricity) were chosen according to anatomical studies demonstrating different degrees of senescent losses of cones or ganglion cells. Nine field sizes were tested, ranging from 0.0096 to 0.96 deg in diameter. The subjects used a percentage scale to judge the saturation of the flashed stimulus presentations (2 s on, 5 s off). The data analysis demonstrated that older observers require larger field sizes than younger observers to perceive hue as well as larger field sizes to reach the same level of scaled saturation. The spatial dependency of color appearance for younger and older observers was not correlated with senescent losses in retinal cells reported for the different retinal locations. The data were modeled by using an impulse-response function (i.e., Naka-Rushton equation) so that perceptive fields could be compared to electrophysiological measures of receptive fields or dendritic fields of retinal and cortical cells.
Streaming matching of events

Streaming matching of events based on its content has many applications including customer subscriptions or recommendations for new ads. Customer subscriptions system requires minimal delay between event appearance and corresponding notifications. Such system should be horizontally scalable with regard to events and customers. There are many approaches to solving this task ranging from brute-force ones to utilizing some complex data structures. We present our approach integrated into several high-loaded production services at Yandex.Classifieds.
Miller-Dieker Syndrome with der(17)t(12;17)(q24.33;p13.3)pat Presenting with a Potential Risk of Mis-identification as a de novo Submicroscopic Deletion of 17p13.3

Miller-Dieker syndrome involves a severe type of lissencephaly, which is caused by defects in the lissencephaly gene (LIS1). We report the case of a female infant with der(17)t(12;17)(q24.33;p13.3)pat caused by an unbalanced segregation of the parental balanced translocation of 17p with other chromosomes. The proband presented with facial dysmorphism, arthrogryposis, and intrauterine growth retardation. Most cases of Miller-Dieker syndrome have a de novo deletion involving 17p13.3. When Miller-Dieker syndrome is caused by an unbalanced translocation, mild-to-severe phenotypes occur according to the extension of the involved partner chromosome. However, a pure partial monosomy derived from a paternal balanced translocation is relatively rare. In this case, the submicroscopic cryptic deletion in the proband was initially elucidated by FISH, and karyotype analysis did not reveal additional chromosome abnormalities such as translocation. However, a family history of recurrent pregnancy abnormalities strongly suggested familial translocation. Sequential G-banding and FISH analysis of the father's chromosomes showed that the segment of 17p13.3→pter was attached to the 12qter. Thus, we report a case that showed resemblance to the findings in cases of a nearly pure 17p deletion, derived from t(12;17), and delineated by whole genome array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). If such cases are incorrectly diagnosed as Miller-Dieker syndrome caused by de novo 17p13.3 deletion, the resultant improper genetic counseling may make it difficult to exactly predict the potential risk of recurrent lissencephaly for successive pregnancies.
Max-margin Latent Dirichlet Allocation for Image Classification and Annotation

We present the max-margin latent Dirichlet allocation, a max-margin variant of supervised topic models, for image classification and annotation. Our model for image classification (called MMLDA c ) integrates discriminative classification with generative topic models. Our model for image annotation (called MMLDA a ) extends MMLDA c to the case of multi-label problems, where each image can be associated with more than one annotation terms. We derive efficient learning algorithms for both models and demonstrate experimentally the advantages of our proposed models over other baseline methods.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 2015 How Open Innovation and Information Systems Affect R & D Performance : A Knowledge Sharing Perspective

Open innovation is a paradigm for knowledge sourcing among organizations. Extant literature argues that organizations should take advantage of both external and internal ideas for innovation in organizations. For open innovation to be effective, however, organizations must be able to source knowledge to partners as well absorb the ideas and knowledge from external parties. It is critical to share the knowledge in the organization, and then both the external and internal knowledge can be applied to help the business. We argue that information systems (IS) play a key role in assimilation of knowledge and are critical to adoption of open innovation. In this research, we investigate how IS can facilitate the adoption of open innovations and knowledge sharing, and whether knowledge sharing affects organizational research and development (R&D) performance. In this Research-in-Progress we will test our research model with a matched-pair response survey involving two respondents from each organization. We expect that IS strategies will have direct effect on the level of open innovation adoption and that knowledge sharing will play a mediating role between open innovation and R&D performance.
Relational Aggressiveness in Adolescence: Relations With Emotional Awareness and Self-Control

Involvement in relationally aggressive conduct is an important contributor to maladaptive functioning in both childhood and adulthood. Decreased emotional awareness and impairments of self-control are risk factors for relational aggressiveness, while emotional awareness can also be treated as an important prerequisite for proper self-control. The aim of the study was to examine the associations between dimensions of emotional awareness (attention to emotions and emotional clarity), self-control, and relational aggressiveness. Self-control was also examined as a mediating variable between emotional awareness and relational aggressiveness. Self-report measures of trait meta-mood, alexithymia, self-control, and relational aggressiveness were completed by 214 adolescents (129 females), aged 15–23. The confirmatory factor analysis confirmed two factors of emotional awareness: (1) inattention to emotions (reflecting low attention to emotions and externally oriented thinking) and (2) a lack of emotional clarity (reflecting difficulties in identifying emotion, difficulties in describing emotion, and low clarity of emotion). Self-control and mood repair ability inversely correlated with proactive and reactive relational aggressiveness, whereas the clarity component of the meta-mood trait only inversely predicted reactive relational aggressiveness. Structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that direct relationships between inattention to emotions and relational aggressiveness, as well as between lack of emotional clarity and relational aggressiveness were non-significant. Nevertheless, a lack of emotional clarity was indirectly and significantly associated with relational aggressiveness through decreased self-control.
Information Theoretic Adaptive Radar Waveform Design for Multiple Extended Targets

In this paper, we use an information theoretic approach to design radar waveforms suitable for simultaneously estimating and tracking parameters of multiple extended targets. Our approach generalizes the information theoretic water-filling approach of Bell to allow optimization for multiple targets simultaneously. Our paper has three main contributions. First, we present a new information theoretic design criterion for a single transmit waveform using a weighted linear sum of the mutual informations between target radar signatures and the corresponding received beams (given the transmitted waveforms). We provide a family of design criteria that weight the various targets according to priorities. Then, we generalize the information theoretic design criterion for designing multiple waveforms under a joint power constraint when beamforming is used both at the transmitter and the receiver. Finally, we provide a highly efficient algorithm for optimizing the transmitted waveforms in the cases of single waveform and multiple waveforms. We also provide simulated experiments of both algorithms based on real targets and comment on the generalization of the proposed technique for other design criteria, e.g., the linearly weighted noncausal MMSE design criterion
Bidirectional Label Propagation over Graphs

Graph-Based label propagation algorithms are popular in the state-of-the-art semi-supervised learning research. The key idea underlying this algorithmic family is to enforce labeling consistency between any two examples with a positive similarity. However, negative similarities or dissimilarities are equivalently valuable in practice. To this end, we simultaneously leverage similarities and dissimilarities in our proposed semi-supervised learning algorithm which we term Bidirectional Label Propagation (BLP). Difierent from previous label propagation mechanisms that proceed along a single direction of graph edges, the BLP algorithm can propagate labels along not only positive but also negative edge directions. By using an initial neighborhood graph and class assignment constraints inherent among the labeled examples, a set of class-speciflc graphs are learned, which include both positive and negative edges and thus reveal discriminative cues. Over the learned graphs, a convex propagation criterion is carried out to ensure consistent labelings along the positive edges and inconsistent labelings along the negative edges. Experimental evidence discovered in synthetic and real-world datasets validates excellent performance of the proposed BLP algorithm.
Problems in Empirical Political Science

The journal serves many ends. It is a journal of contemporary politics striving to publish intellectually engaging and accessible analyses and commentaries on current political issues and events. PS is the principal peda-gogic journal within the profession offering articles on teaching, training , and curriculum development. Political science is a community enterprise; the community of empirical political scientists needs access to the body of data necessary to replicate existing studies to understand , evaluate, and especially build on this work. Unfortunately, the norms we have in place now do not encourage, or in some cases even permit, this aim. Following are suggestions that would facilitate replication and are easy to implement by teachers, students, dis-sertation writers, graduate programs , authors, reviewers, funding agencies, and journal and book editors. As virtually every good methodology text explains, the only way to understand and evaluate an empirical analysis filly is to know the exact process by which the data were generated and the analysis produced. Without adequate documentation , scholars often have trouble replicating their own results months later. Since sufficient information is usually lacking in political science, trying to replicate the results of others, even with their help, is often impossible. For quantitative and qualitative analyses alike, we need the answers to questions such as these: also the journal of the profession. As illustrated by the symposium, PS is a forum in which political scientists from all regions of the country and world, from every type of degree-granting institution, as well as from all subfields can debate what it means to be a "politi-cal scientist" and where the rules and tools of our practice can be identified, debated, and ultimately agreed upon. How were the respondents se-lected? Who did the interviewing? What was the question order? How did you decide which informants to interview or villages to visit? How long did you spend in each commu-nity? Did you speak to people in their language or through an inter-preter? Which version of the ICPSR file did you extract information from? How knowledgeable were the coders? How frequently did the coders agree? Exactly what codes were originally generated and what were all the recodes per-formed? Precisely which measure of unemployment was used? What were the exact rules used for conducting the content analysis? When did the time series begin and end? What countries were included in your study and how were they cho-sen? What …
Composing and Analyzing Crowdsourcing Workflows

When trying to crowdsource complex tasks, it is often better to break the big task into a set of smaller tasks and connect them into a production workflow [Little et al. 2009; Little et al. 2010]. Such workflows often allow a set of workers to work together in a task, creating an “assembly line for knowledge work” and allow the completion of tasks that are too complex or difficult for any participating individual to accomplish. Recent research [Dai et al. 2013; Lin et al. 2012] has focused on analyzing and optimizing existing workflows, using Partially Observed Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). The results indicate that using decision-theoretic approaches for dynamically adjusting the settings of crowdsourcing workflows and exchanging among multiple, existing workflows can lead to substantial improvements in both the quality and the overall cost of executing a workflow. In this work, we present a method for creating and analyzing arbitrary workflows, and generating predictions about the resulting quality and cost of a given workflow. Specifically, we focus on the following questions: