Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temperature-dependent effects of cadmium and purine nucleotides on mitochondrial aconitase from a marine ectotherm, Crassostrea virginica: a role of temperature in oxidative stress and allosteric enzyme regulation

SUMMARY Temperature and heavy metals such as cadmium (Cd) are important environmental stressors that can strongly affect mitochondrial function of marine poikilotherms. In this study, we investigated the combined effects of temperature (20°C and 30°C) and Cd stress on production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidative stress in a marine poikilotherm Crassostrea virginica (the eastern oyster) using mitochondrial aconitase as a sensitive biomarker of oxidative damage. We also assessed potential involvement of mitochondrial uncoupling proteins (UCPs) in antioxidant protection in oyster mitochondria using purine nucleotides (GDP, ATP and ADP) as specific inhibitors, and free fatty acids as stimulators, of UCPs. Our results show that exposure to Cd results in elevated ROS production and oxidative damage as indicated by aconitase inactivation which is particularly pronounced at elevated temperature. Unexpectedly, oyster mitochondrial aconitase was inhibited by physiologically relevant levels of ATP (IC50=1.93 and 3.04 mmol l-1 at 20°C and 30°C, respectively), suggesting that allosteric regulation of aconitase by this nucleotide may be involved in regulation of the tricarboxylic acid flux in oysters. Aconitase was less sensitive to ATP inhibition at 30°C than at 20°C, consistent with the elevated metabolic flux at higher temperatures. ADP and GDP also inhibited mitochondrial aconitase but at the levels well above the physiological concentrations of these nucleotides (6-11 mmol l-1). Our study shows expression of at least three UCP isoforms in C. virginica gill tissues but provides no indication that UCPs protect mitochondrial aconitase from oxidative inactivation in oysters. Overall, the results of this study indicate that temperature stress exaggerates toxicity of Cd leading to elevated oxidative stress in mitochondria, which may have important implications for survival of poikilotherms in polluted environments during seasonal warming and/or global climate change, and suggest a novel temperature-dependent mechanism of allosteric regulation of TCA flux in oyster mitochondria.
A Bifurcated Proteoglycan Binding Small Molecule Carrier for siRNA Delivery

A wider application of siRNA‐ and miRNA‐ based therapeutics is restricted by the currently available delivery systems. We have designed a new type of small molecule carrier (SMoC) system for siRNA modeled to interact with cell surface proteoglycans. This bifurcated SMoC has similar affinity for the model proteoglycan heparin to an equivalent polyarginine peptide and exhibits significant mRNA knockdown of protein levels comparable to lipofectamine and the previously reported linear SMoC.
The CD3-Zeta Chimeric Antigen Receptor Overcomes TCR Hypo-Responsiveness of Human Terminal Late-Stage T Cells

Adoptive therapy of malignant diseases with tumor-specific cytotoxic T cells showed remarkable efficacy in recent trials. Repetitive T cell receptor (TCR) engagement of target antigen, however, inevitably ends up in hypo-responsive cells with terminally differentiated KLRG-1+ CD57+ CD7− phenotype limiting their therapeutic efficacy. We here revealed that hypo-responsiveness of CMV-specific late-stage CD8+ T cells is due to reduced TCR synapse formation compared to younger cells. Membrane anchoring of TCR components contributes to T cell hypo-responsiveness since dislocation of galectin-3 from the synapse by swainsonine restored both TCR synapse formation and T cell response. Transgenic expression of a CD3-zeta signaling chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) recovered hypo-responsive T cells to full effector functions indicating that the defect is restricted to TCR membrane components while synapse formation of the transgenic CAR was not blocked. CAR engineered late-stage T cells released cytokines and mediated redirected cytotoxicity as efficiently as younger effector T cells. Our data provide a rationale for TCR independent, CAR mediated activation in the adoptive cell therapy to avoid hypo-responsiveness of late-stage T cells upon repetitive antigen encounter.
Intraoperative Contamination Influences Wound Discharge and Periprosthetic Infection

Intraoperative bacterial contamination increases risk for postoperative wound-healing problems and periprosthetic infection, but to what extent remains unclear. We asked whether bacterial contamination of the instruments and bone during primary prosthesis insertion was associated with prolonged wound discharge and subsequent periprosthetic infection. During 100 total hip arthroplasties, four intraoperative cultures were taken from the instruments and two portions of removed bone. Postoperatively, the duration of wound discharge was monitored, with Day 5 as the cut-off point. All patients were followed for 2 years to determine whether periprosthetic infection occurred. Bacterial contamination occurred in 36 operative procedures (36%). We found an association between intraoperative contamination and prolonged wound discharge, with a relative risk of 2.5. The culturing of removed bone had a positive predictive value of 81% to 90%. Other factors associated with prolonged wound discharge were rheumatoid arthritis (relative risk, 6.4), use of cement (relative risk, 1.6), and increased blood loss (relative risk, 1.5). Level of Evidence: Level I, prognostic study (prospective cohort study). See the Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Collecting Bilingual Audio in Remote Indigenous Communities

Most of the world’s languages are under-resourced, and most under-resourced languages lack a writing system and literary tradition. As these languages fall out of use, we lose important sources of data that contribute to our understanding of human language. The first, urgent step is to collect and orally translate a large quantity of spoken language. This can be digitally archived and later transcribed, annotated, and subjected to the full range of speech and language processing tasks, at any time in future. We have been investigating a mobile application for recording and translating unwritten languages. We visited indigenous communities in Brazil and Nepal and taught people to use smartphones for recording spoken language and for orally interpreting it into the national language, and collected bilingual phrase-aligned speech recordings. In spite of several technical and social issues, we found that the technology enabled an effective workflow for speech data collection. Based on this experience, we argue that the use of special-purpose software on smartphones is an effective and scalable method for large-scale collection of bilingual audio, and ultimately bilingual text, for languages spoken in remote indigenous communities.
Quantum mechanics of the doubled torus

We investigate the quantum mechanics of the doubled torus system, introduced by Hull [1] to describe T-folds in a more geometric way. Classically, this system consists of a world-sheet Lagrangian together with some constraints, which reduce the number of degrees of freedom to the correct physical number. We consider this system from the point of view of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics. In this case the constraints are second class, and we can quantize on the constrained surface using Dirac brackets. We perform the quantization for a simple T-fold background and compare to results for the conventional non-doubled torus system. Finally, we formulate a consistent supersymmetric version of the doubled torus system, including supersymmetric constraints.
Stability of Multiple Receiving Nodes Slotted ALOHA for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, communication may be achieved without a central entity (base station) and nodes communicate with each other in a half-duplex manner. In those kinds of networks each node either will be in a transmitting mode or in a receiving mode or in an idle mode. Stability of half-duplex slotted ALOHA is studied in terms of the node transmitting probability, the node receiving probability, capture ratio and the number of retransmission attempts. A close form equation is obtained for the stable operation of a distributed random access protocol with multiple receiving nodes. This equation provides the relationship between the new packet transmission probability from each mobile node, capture ratio and the number of retransmission attempts. The results of this study may be used for system design of half-duplex contention- based multiple access schemes with and without capture and retransmission cut-off.
An inter-comparison of the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) and the Tourism Climate Index (TCI) in Europe

Much research has been devoted to quantifying optimal or unacceptable climate conditions both generally and for specific tourism segments or activities over the last 10 years. This knowledge is not incorporated in the Tourism Climate Index (TCI), which has also been subject to other substantial critiques. To more accurately assess the climatic suitability of destinations for leisure tourism, the Holiday Climate Index (HCI) was developed. A major advancement of the HCI is that its variable rating scales and the component weighting system are based on this aforementioned literature of tourists’ stated climatic preferences. This paper will discuss the design of the HCI and how the limitations of the TCI were overcome. It then presents an inter-comparison of the results from HCI:Urban and TCI for geographically diverse urban destinations across Europe. The results illustrate how the HCI:Urban rates the climate of many cities higher than the TCI, particularly in shoulder seasons and the winter months, which is more consistent with observed visitation patterns. The results empirically demonstrate that use of the TCI should be discontinued.
Length dependence of variables associated with temporal dispersion in human motor nerves

Temporal dispersion in motor nerves is associated with changes of amplitude, area, duration, and Fourier spectra of compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) when comparing responses to proximal and distal stimulation. These changes depend on the length of the nerve segment. To quantitatively assess this dependence, motor conduction studies of nerve segments of various lengths were performed in the median, ulnar, and tibial nerves of 86 test subjects, aged 4 to 73 years. Amplitude, area, duration, and spectral energy above 49 Hz of CMAPs were measured. Values after distal and proximal stimulation of each nerve segment were compared to determine amplitude decay, area decay, protraction, and high‐frequency attenuation. A significant length dependence of amplitude decay was found in the tibial and ulnar nerves, of area decay in the median and ulnar nerves, and of CMAP duration in the ulnar and tibial nerves. The length dependence of the high‐frequency attenuation was significant in all nerves studied. This report provides normative data for variables associated with temporal dispersion. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Muscle Nerve 24: 527–533, 2001
On the Interactive Visualization of a Logistics Scenario : Requirements and Possible Solutions

In this paper, we describe the design and prototypical implementation of an interactive visualization in a logistics scenario for the needs of digital engineering. We applied the goals of digital engineering to realize an interactive visual browsing and analysis tool by a seamless integration of different data-sets. Furthermore, we take user requirements into consideration, which also come out of the virtual logistics scenario. Therefore complex information models were simplified in order to fulfill user goals in a comfortable way. Finally, we evaluated the implemented prototype by interviewing experts. The result contains valuable feedback to the suitability for typical logistic applications nowadays.
Exploiting Equality Generating Dependencies in Checking Chase Termination

The chase is a well-known algorithm with a wide range of applications in data exchange, data cleaning, data integration, query optimization, and ontological reasoning. Since the chase evaluation might not terminate and it is undecidable whether it terminates, the problem of defining (decidable) sufficient conditions ensuring termination has received a great deal of interest in recent years. In this regard, several termination criteria have been proposed. One of the main weaknesses of current approaches is the limited analysis they perform on equality generating dependencies (EGDs). In this paper, we propose sufficient conditions ensuring that a set of dependencies has at least one terminating chase sequence. We propose novel criteria which are able to perform a more accurate analysis of EGDs. Specifically, we propose a new stratification criterion and an adornment algorithm. The latter can both be used as a termination criterion and be combined with current techniques to make them more effective, in that strictly more sets of dependencies are identified. Our techniques identify sets of dependencies that are not recognized by any of the current criteria.
Attribute control charts using generalized zero‐inflated Poisson distribution

This paper presents a control charting technique to monitor attribute data based on a generalized zero‐inflated Poisson (GZIP) distribution, which is an extension of ZIP distribution. GZIP distribution is very flexible in modeling complicated behaviors of the data. Both the technique of fitting the GZIP model and the technique of designing control charts to monitor the attribute data based on the estimated GZIP model are developed. Simulation studies and real industrial applications illustrate that the proposed GZIP control chart is very flexible and advantageous over many existing attribute control charts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Layer Disruption Model: A Runtime Approach to Multi-Core Processors and Serial Code

Most of the actual approaches to address the problem of serial code executing on parallel multi-core processors try to exploit the parallelism of the code during compile time. Such a solution is very efficient but places the burden on the programmer to know the code will be running on a parallel architecture. In addition, the programmer needs to know the details of the architecture in order to generate efficient parallel code.In this work we present an alternative approach, the layer disruption model, that improves the performance of serial code executing on parallel architectures. We present a small test case that shows the benefits of the model.
Natural Genetic Variation for Growth and Development Revealed by High-Throughput Phenotyping in Arabidopsis thaliana

Leaf growth and development determines a plant’s capacity for photosynthesis and carbon fixation. These morphological traits are the integration of genetic and environmental factors through time. Yet fine dissection of the developmental genetic basis of leaf expansion throughout a growing season is difficult, due to the complexity of the trait and the need for real time measurement. In this study, we developed a time-lapse image analysis approach, which traces leaf expansion under seasonal light variation. Three growth traits, rosette leaf area, circular area, and their ratio as compactness, were measured and normalized on a linear timescale to control for developmental heterogeneity. We found high heritability for all growth traits that changed over time. Our study highlights a cost-effective, high-throughput phenotyping approach that facilitates the dissection of genetic basis of plant shoot growth and development under dynamic environmental conditions.
Efficient parallel dynamics computation of human figures

An efficient parallel algorithm for forward dynamics computation of human figures is proposed. The algorithm is capable of handling any kinematic chains including structure-varying ones. The asymptotic complexity of the algorithm is O(N) in serial computation and O(log N) in parallel computation on O(N) processors for most practical kinematic chains. The idea is to assemble a kinematic chain by adding the joints one by one and compute the constraint forces at the new joints using the principle of virtual work. The parallelism of the algorithm can be adapted for parallel processing systems with any number of processors by simply changing the assembly order. Simulation examples on an 8-node cluster demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm.
An overview of “ Picking Pockets on the Lawn : The Development of Tactics and Strategies in a Mobile Game ”

Most ubiquitous systems try and hide the seams that can be apparent in their operation, making the operational features of the system transparent to the users. A different way of looking at the design of ubiquitous systems is to incorporate the seamful nature of the system into a part of the system. Barkhuus, Chalmers, Tennent et al. present Treasure, an outdoor mobile multiplayer game which takes into account of the seamful nature of GPS and wifi networks. They specifically look at the tactics and strategies that arise through the users playing the game, proposing that replay of games is vital for the evaluation of such a system.
Recursive blind minimax estimation: improving mse over recursive least squares

We consider the problem of on-line (or recursive) parameter estimation in which, at each moment, an unknown deterministic parameter vector must be re-estimated from measurements corrupted by additive noise. We present efficient algorithms for calculating two variants of the blind minimax estimator, which is a biased estimator proven to outperform least squares in terms of mean squared error. These operate in the same setting as the recursive least squares (RLS) method and utilize it. Both algorithms have a computational complexity in par with RLS. We discuss the advantages and shortcomings of the presented methods and demonstrate through simulations situations in which they produce substantial gain over RLS.
Process scheduling of Linux in embedded system

Linux is a multi-user multi-tasking operating system. Process scheduling is the hardcore of this multi-tasking operating system. The characteristics of process scheduling of embedded Linux are analyzed. The real-time scheduling algorithm of embedded Linux is especially discussed and an instance of priority-driven scheduling algorithm is illustrated in detail. In this example, the problem of priority inversion in process scheduling is solved perfectly.
A new approach of color image quantization based on Normalized Cut algorithm

This paper presents a novel color quantization method based on Normalized Cut clustering algorithm, in order to generate a quantized image with the minimum loss of information and the maximum compression ratio, which benefits the storage and transmission of the color image. This new method uses a deformed Median Cut algorithm as a coarse partition of color pixels in the RGB color space, and then take the average color of each partition as the representative color of a node to construct a condensed graph. By employing the Normalized Cut clustering algorithm, we could get the palette with defined color number, and then reconstruct the quantized image. Experiments on common used test images demonstrate that our method is very competitive with state-of-the-art color quantization methods in terms of image quality, compression ratio and computation time.
Selectivity in early prosocial behavior

Prosocial behavior requires expenditure of personal resources for the benefit of others, a fact that creates a “problem” when considering the evolution of prosociality. Models that address this problem have been developed, with emphasis typically placed on reciprocity. One model considers the advantages of being selective in terms of one’s allocation of prosocial behavior so as to improve the chance that one will be benefitted in return. In this review paper, we first summarize this “partner choice” model and then focus on prosocial development in the preschool years, where we make the case for selective partner choice in early instances of human prosocial behavior.
THE EMERGENCE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERS AMONG ASIAN WOMEN IN HOSPITALITY

As women increasingly occupy key leadership roles in government, industry and society, their styles and approaches towards leading others continues to attract attention in the literature. The focus of this attention is best served in celebrating the transformational nature of women in leadership by illuminating their approach to leadership in a transformational manner. Of particular importance in this regard is the rapid growth and expansion of the Asian hospitality and tourism industry. Increasingly, women will be holding leadership positions of influence, bringing with them a range of leadership styles and approaches worth careful examination in the context of eastern cultural paradigms.
Regulation and coordination of nuclear envelope and nuclear pore complex assembly

In metazoans with “open” mitosis, cells undergo structural changes involving the complete disassembly of the nuclear envelope (NE). In post-mitosis, the dividing cell faces the difficulty to reassemble NE structures in a highly regulated fashion around separated chromosomes. The de novo formation of nuclear pore complexes (NPCs), which are gateways between the cytoplasm and nucleoplasm across the nuclear membrane, is an archetype of macromolecular assembly and is therefore of special interest. The reformation of a functional NE further involves the reassembly and organization of other NE components, the nuclear membrane and NE proteins, around chromosomes in late mitosis. Here, we discuss the function of NE components, such as lamins and INM proteins, in NE reformation and highlight recent results on coordination of NPC and NE assembly.
Bayesian elicitation of veterinary beliefs regarding systemic dry cow herapy : Variation and importance for clinical trial design

The two key aims of this research were: (i) to conduct a probabilistic elicitation to quantify the variation in veterinarians’ beliefs regarding the efficacy of systemic antibiotics when used as an adjunct to intra-mammary dry cow therapy and (ii) to investigate (in a Bayesian statistical framework) the strength of future research evidence required (in theory) to change the beliefs of practising veterinary surgeons regarding the efficacy of systemic antibiotics, given their current clinical beliefs. The beliefs of 24 veterinarians in 5 practices in England were quantified as probability density functions. Classic multidimensional scaling revealed major variations in beliefs both within and between veterinary practices which included: confident optimism, confident pessimism and considerable uncertainty. Of the 9 veterinarians interviewed holding further cattle qualifications, 6 shared a confidently pessimistic belief in the efficacy of systemic therapy and whilst 2 were more optimistic, they were also more uncertain. A Bayesian model based on a synthetic dataset from a randomised clinical trial (showing no benefit with systemic therapy) predicted how each of the 24 veterinarians’ prior beliefs would alter as the size of the clinical trial increased, assuming that practitioners would update their beliefs rationally in accordance with Bayes’ theorem. The study demonstrated the usefulness of probabilistic elicitation for evaluating the diversity and strength of practitioners’ beliefs. The major variation in beliefs observed raises interest in the veterinary profession’s approach to prescribing essential medicines. Results illustrate the importance of eliciting prior beliefs when designing clinical trials in order to increase the chance that trial data are of sufficient strength to alter the clinical beliefs of practitioners and do not merely serve to satisfy researchers.