Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reprogramming of murine and human somatic cells using a single polycistronic vector

Directed reprogramming of somatic cells by defined factors provides a novel method for the generation of patient-specific stem cells with the potential to bypass both the practical and ethical concerns associated with somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) and human embryonic stem (hES) cells. Although the generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has proven a robust technology in mouse and human, a major impediment to the use of iPS cells for therapeutic purposes has been the viral-based delivery of the reprogramming factors because multiple proviral integrations pose the danger of insertional mutagenesis. Here we report a novel approach to reduce the number of viruses necessary to reprogram somatic cells by delivering reprogramming factors in a single virus using 2A “self-cleaving” peptides, which support efficient polycistronic expression from a single promoter. We find that up to four reprogramming factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc) can be expressed from a single virus to generate iPS cells in both embryonic and adult somatic mouse cells and we show that a single proviral copy is sufficient to generate iPS cells from mouse embryonic fibroblasts. In addition we have generated human induced pluripotent stem (hiPS) cell lines from human keratinocytes, demonstrating that a single polycistronic virus can reprogram human somatic cells.
Effects Of Technological Change And Institutional Reform On Production Growth In Chinese Agriculture

Recent rapid agricultural production growth in Chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs, technological change, and institutional reform. An accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors. Institutional change, like the introduction of the household production responsibility system, has contributed to past growth in production. However, technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs, in particular land. Continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
A Vector Hardware Accelerator with Circuit Simulation Emphasis

A floating-point vector accelerator has been built which runs circuit simulation efficiently. The design considerations of the accelerator are based on the time-consuming parts of SPICE2, available off-the-shelf parts, advanced software tools experience and cost/performance. The three board accelerator can run the entire application program complied from a high-level language. A personal workstation, such as the PC-AT, is used for the general I/O tasks such as file handling and network support. The processor has a Single-Instruction Multiple-Data 64-bit floating-point pipelined architecture. It can achieve a maximum speed of 8 Mips and 8 MFlops. A floating-point processor based on two functional units, a multiplier and an ALU, and an integer processor work in parallel to achieve the high performance. The accelerator attached to a PC-AT runs SPICE2 60 times faster than the personal workstation alone and achieves double the performance of a VAX 8650.
IGen: Generation of router-level Internet topologies through network design heuristics

Network researchers often need to evaluate newly proposed algorithms and protocols over realistic topologies. Many researchers use random networks for such evaluations. Unfortunately, random networks do not accurately model real networks and important parameters such as link metrics or iBGP configurations are often ignored. We propose IGen, a freely available topology generator that uses network design heuristics to generate realistic IP network topologies. We explain the objectives of IGen and describe the topology generation process in details.
Towards the feminization of accounting practice: Lessons from the experiences of Japanese women in the accounting profession

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to open up the Anglo-centred argument in gender and accounting by exploring the relationship of women and accounting in a different social and cultural context. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws on in-depth ethnographical studies to explore the real- life experiences of 66 Japanese women (9 percent of all women CPAs) who have entered the accounting profession from a range of backgrounds and generations. Findings - The paper finds that some women accounting professionals in Japan have brought about changes in accounting practice there by applying a uniquely feminine approach in their day-to-day work. Their strict approach is attuned to the ongoing globalization in the field of accountancy, and this has helped to widen the opportunities for women. Research limitations/implications - This paper demonstrates that, in order to understand the issues surrounding gender and accounting, it is important to consider the prevailing social context and its underpinnings. In the Japanese “interdependent” social context, gender is intertwined in the process of accounting to establish its “independent” status. Practical implications - It has been argued that the unique social and cultural context in Japan will make it difficult for the country to converge its accounting and auditing with global standards. By incorporating a gender perspective, the paper aims to clarify the social assumptions under which accounting and auditing operate in Japan. Originality/value - By making a close analysis of the process by which Japanese women have entered the accounting profession, the paper reveals the connection between the growing significance of auditing and the changing role and position of women.
Classes of Delay-Independent Multimessage Multicast Networks under the Generalized Model

In a network, a node is said to incur a delay if its encoding of each transmitted symbol involves only its received symbols obtained before the time slot in which the transmitted symbol is sent (hence the transmitted symbol sent in a time slot cannot depend on the received symbol obtained in the same time slot). A node is said to incur no delay if its received symbol obtained in a time slot is available for encoding its transmitted symbol sent in the same time slot. Under the classical model, the discrete memoryless multimessage multicast network (MMN) is characterized by one channel and every node in the network incurs a delay. On the other hand, under the generalized model, the MMN can be characterized by multiple channels and some nodes in the network may incur no delay. In this paper, we obtain the capacity regions for three classes of MMN under the generalized model, namely the deterministic network dominated by product distribution, the MMN consisting of independent DMCs and the wireless erasure network. In addition, we show that for any MMN belonging to one of the above three classes, the set of achievable rate tuples under the generalized model and under the classical model are the same, which implies that the set of achievable rate tuples for the MMN does not depend on the amount of delay incurred by each node in the network.
A low-power low-voltage digital bus interface for MCM-based microsystems

This paper describes a digital local bus interface, which is designed for use in a multi-chip-composed microsystem. The chip area using a CMOS 1. 6µm n-well technology is 1mm2. Power consumption at 5V@100kHz is less than 500µW and for 5V@4MHz less than 2mW due to a smart power management of all functional blocks. The bus interface is able to transmit a digital code, bitstream, analog voltage, frequency, duty-cycle and also provides calibration facilities, service request and interrupt request for the smart sensors or microactuators.
The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplements of Potential Concern during Breast Cancer Chemotherapy

Objective. While many Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) are unlikely to interact negatively with conventional oncology treatment, some ingestible CAM substances have biological activities that may reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy or radiation. This study surveyed women with breast cancer in order to document the extent to which women with breast cancer use these CAM substances of concern concurrently with conventional treatments. Methods. A total of 398 women completed a survey describing their use of CAM at various time points in their cancer treatment. This report focuses on a subsample of 250 women receiving chemotherapy or radiation who reported using specific one or more of several chemotherapies. Results. Of those participating, 104 (43.7%) of those receiving chemotherapy (n = 238) and 45 (32.3%) of those receiving radiation (139; 58.4% of all patients) reported using one or more CAM substances that could be cause for concern when taken concurrently. Conclusion. Research is needed to understand the real risks associated with CAM and conventional polypharmacy. If risks associated with CAM conventional polypharmacy use prove to be substantial then improved systems to assure all women get advice regarding herb and supplement use during breast cancer treatment appear to be needed.
Designing Kernel Scheme for Classifiers Fusion

In this paper, we propose a special fusion method for combining ensembles of base classifiers utilizing new neural networks in order to improve overall efficiency of classification. While ensembles are designed such that each classifier is trained independently while the decision fusion is performed as a final procedure, in this method, we would be interested in making the fusion process more adaptive and efficient. This new combiner, called Neural Network Kernel Least Mean Square1, attempts to fuse outputs of the ensembles of classifiers. The proposed Neural Network has some special properties such as Kernel abilities,Least Mean Square features, easy learning over variants of patterns and traditional neuron capabilities. Neural Network Kernel Least Mean Square is a special neuron which is trained with Kernel Least Mean Square properties. This new neuron is used as a classifiers combiner to fuse outputs of base neural network classifiers. Performance of this method is analyzed and compared with other fusion methods. The analysis represents higher performance of our new method as opposed to others.
Some scaling limits for a brownian polymer in a Gaussian medium

In this paper, we give some information about the asymptotic behavior of a one-dimensional Brownian polymer in random medium represented by a Gaussian eld in R+ R, which is assumed to be a white noise in time. Then, according to the spatial covariance of the eld, we give some sharp upper and lower bounds on the partition function and on the growth of the polymer when the time parameter goes to in nity. Key words and phrases: Polymer model, Random medium, Lyapunov exponent, Gaussian eld, Free energy, Wandering exponent. This authors research partially supported by CAPES. yThis authors research partially supported by NSF grant no. : 0204999.
Genetic Graph Drawing

The drawing of graphs is widely recognized as a very important task in diverse elds of research and development. Examples include VLSI Design and plant layout. Also, many CASE methodologies and interactive dataintensive applications should perform graph drawing and should manage a large amount of constraints including semantic ones. On the other hand, when the information that must be visualized is changing constantly, is necessary to develop automatic methods to partially (or totally) redraw the diagrams. We want to obtain drawings that are optimal in the sense of readability. However, is di cult to create a general-purpose graph drawer and is also computationally expensive. Genetic algorithms (GAs) have recently received a growing interest and have been applied in many design problems. In this paper we describe why the GAs-based approach is a good alternative to obtain a general exible tool for Graph Drawing Problems, dealing also with semantic aesthetics. Free Form Deformation (FFD) has been used in structural design problems in combination with GAs. We also present an approach to automatic graph drawing based on GAs and FFD, for improving of a given layout by exploring its neighborhood. The search space is reduced and the readability of the drawings is improved. Also the Mental Map is almost preserved. Transactions on Information and Communications Technologies vol 20, © 1998 WIT Press, www.witpress. com, ISSN 1743-3517
Survey of Service Discovery Architectures for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Efficient and timely service discovery is a crucial feature for the usability of mobile ad-hoc networks. In recent years a number of service discovery protocols have been developed and they have different view points toward the mobile ad hoc environment. These different view points made them have different service discovery architectures. In this paper we classify the existing service discovery protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks into several discovery architectures and survey the features of the discovery architectures. Depending on whether a directory exists or not, the service discovery architecture can be divided into two categories: directory-less architecture and directory-based architecture. The directory-based architecture can be also divided into two categories: centralized directory architecture and distributed directory architecture. The centralized directory architecture relies on one or a few centralized directories but in the distributed directory architecture, directories are further distributed and deployed dynamically. We also subdivide the distributed directory architecture, depending on whether directories reside on mobile ad hoc networks or on infrastructure-based networks, into two categories: infrastructure-less distributed directory architecture and infrastructure-based distributed directory architecture. In this paper we discuss the difference of the environments on which each of the discovery architectures is based. Moreover, we show the pros and cons of them compared with one another.
Promoting Social Change Through Game Education: A Program Evaluation

With clear vision and dedicated energy, Pixel Arts (PA) actualizes the promise of the Maker Movement in education by creating communities of practice that emphasize design for learning, that can inform youths’ experience in traditional schooling (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014). PA provides youth in the greater Portland OR Metro area with opportunities to join in a community of learning that celebrates making in the context of games and that promotes healthy internalization of maker identities. Fueled with an awareness of the inequality in excellent educational experiences currently seen in the US, PA aims to engage youth who experience the brunt of this inequality by nurturing skills and learning identities. One “free-of-charge game-camp” at a time, PA reaches youth who, primarily for SES reasons, lack opportunities for academic and personal enrichment in STEM fields, thereby bridging the local digital-divide. With game-design as their theme, it’s PA’s intention that participating youth acquire both technical and personal learning skills. In this report, we present a snapshot of how well PA is doing, in terms of meeting their outcome goals. Not content to rely on anecdotal evidence/testimonies as their success-indicators, PA follows empirically based assessment practices. This report presents their camp training and assessment model and a snapshot of an effectiveness evaluation utilizing data generated from eight camps. Evidence of technical skill learning comes from work-documentation and evidence of growth in “the non-cognitives” comes from both quantitative and qualitative sources. Results indicate that PA’s unique curriculum effectively nurtures youths’ technical and non-cognitive learning skills.
THE FUNCTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HYPORHEIC ZONE IN STREAMS AND RIVERS

▪ Abstract The hyporheic zone is an active ecotone between the surface stream and groundwater. Exchanges of water, nutrients, and organic matter occur in response to variations in discharge and bed topography and porosity. Upwelling subsurface water supplies stream organisms with nutrients while downwelling stream water provides dissolved oxygen and organic matter to microbes and invertebrates in the hyporheic zone. Dynamic gradients exist at all scales and vary temporally. At the microscale, gradients in redox potential control chemical and microbially mediated nutrient transformations occurring on particle surfaces. At the stream-reach scale, hydrological exchange and water residence time are reflected in gradients in hyporheic faunal composition, uptake of dissolved organic carbon, and nitrification. The hyporheic corridor concept describes gradients at the catchment scale, extending to alluvial aquifers kilometers from the main channel. Across all scales, the functional significance of the hyporheic z.
Architecture and traffic modelling of a utility metering wireless sensor network

In this paper we present a remote utility metering system based on ZigBee used to collect data from residential electricity, gas and water meters. In order to reduce the use of network resources and to evaluate the sensor network performance, a simulation study was carried out with two types of data related to electronic and non electronic metering devices. The study was conducted using a simulator which was developed using the OMNeT++ platform. The results show that for some application scenarios ZigBee is a valid technological solution to the remote utility metering problem.
Increasing throughput and fairness in the downlink of cellular systems with N-fold sectorization

Conventional sectorized cellular systems deploy 3 or 6 sectors which are separated with directed antennas to avoid inter-sector interference and to spatially reuse available radio resources. However, innovations in next generation networks such as multi-antenna systems and distributed antenna systems allow mitigation and even exploitation of inter-sector interference. In this paper, we discuss how the antenna beamwidth needs to be adjusted to avoid or create inter-sector interference in order to maximize throughput while trying to increase fairness amongst users for non-cooperative and cooperative transmission concepts in sectorized cellular systems. A key result is: The introduction of intra-site cooperation renders higher-order sectorization reusing the antennas of conventional 3-fold sectorization attractive.
Compound K Attenuates the Development of Atherosclerosis in ApoE−/− Mice via LXRα Activation

Background: Atherosclerosis is a fundamental pathological process responded to some serious cardiovascular events. Although the cholesterol-lowering drugs are widely prescribed for atherosclerosis therapy, it is still the leading cause of death in the developed world. Here we measured the effects of compound K in atherosclerosis formation and investigated the probably mechanisms of the anti-antherosclerosis roles of compound K. Methods: We treated the atherosclerotic model animals (apoE−/− mice on western diet) with compound K and measured the size of atherosclerotic lesions, inflammatory cytokine levels and serum lipid profile. Peritoneal macrophages were collected in vitro for the foam cell and inflammasome experiments. Results: Our results show that treatment with compound K dose-dependently attenuates the formation of atherosclerotic plaques by 55% through activation of reverse cholesterol transport pathway, reduction of systemic inflammatory cytokines and inhibition of local inflammasome activity. Compound K increases the cholesterol efflux of macrophage-derived foam cells, and reduces the inflammasome activity in cholesterol crystal stimulated macrophages. The activation of LXRα may contribute to the athero-protective effects of compound K. Conclusion: These observations provide evidence for an athero-protective effect of compound K via LXRα activation, and support its further evaluation as a potential effective modulator for the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis.
Financial Frictions and Optimal Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy

In this paper we set up a small open economy model with financial frictions, following Curdia and Woodford (2010)’s model. Unlike other results in the literature such as Curdia and Woodford (2010), McCulley and Ramin (2008) and Taylor (2008), we find that optimal monetary policy should not respond to changes in domestic interest rate spreads when the source of fluctuations are exogenous financial shocks. A novel result here is that the optimal size of policy responses to changes in the credit spread is large when the disturbance source are shocks to the foreign interest rate. Our results suggest that such a response is welfare enhancing.
Noise-induced interspike interval correlations and spike train regularization in spike-triggered adapting neurons

Spike generation in neurons produces a temporal point process, whose statistics is governed by intrinsic phenomena and the external incoming inputs to be coded. In particular, spike-evoked adaptation currents support a slow temporal process that conditions spiking probability at the present time according to past activity. In this work, we study the statistics of interspike interval correlations arising in such non-renewal spike trains, for a neuron model that reproduces different spike modes in a small adaptation scenario. We found that correlations are stronger as the neuron fires at a particular firing rate, which is defined by the adaptation process. When set in a subthreshold regime, the neuron may sustain this particular firing rate, and thus induce correlations, by noise. Given that, in this regime, interspike intervals are negatively correlated at any lag, this effect surprisingly implies a reduction in the variability of the spike count statistics at a finite noise intensity.
Characterization of the energy consumption of websites: Impact of website implementation on resource consumption

This document presents the Web Energy Archive (WEA) project led by the Green Code Lab. This tools aims at measuring the computer resource consumption (energy, memory.) of the loading of a website in a browser. Firstly, considering the measure of 500 websites, website behavior can be characterized in terms of environmental impact. In a second step, best practices (green patterns) can be recommended to developers but also to browser editors.
A Comparison of Two and Three Dimensional Wire Antennas for Biomedical Applications

Miniature antennas are necessary to reduce the size of communications and biomedical devices, specifcally for a retinal prosthesis. A comparison of two dimensional and three dimensional antennas are presented as an attempt to miniaturize and reduce the antenna footprint size while enhancing antenna characteristics such as bandwidth, maximum gain and the radiation pattern. This work explores various two dimensional antennas and converts them into three dimensional implementations by folding and rotating the dipole arms. This changes the current vector alignment which can enhance the antenna characteristics. Further comparison between the 2D and 3D antennas are investigated in a transmitter/reciever system. The 2D and 3D antennas are tested and compared in air and inside eye phantoms to replicate the communications link of a retinal prosthesis system. To accurately model the vitreous humor of the eye, methods to mimic the electrical properties of a biological medium are also investigated. This work demonstrates the feasibility of three dimensional wire antennas for the application of a retinal prosthesis. Three dimensional wire antennas are ideal due to their smaller planar size, wider bandwidth and coupling characteristics in comparison to the two dimensional implementation.