Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
V-band signal generation by photonic frequency doubling with periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a novel photonic signal generation method for V-band applications, where a two-tone photonic signal is provided with a combination of optical modulation and optical frequency doubling. Based on the method, a fundamental light at 1.55 mum is modulated at a frequency of 30 GHz and the optical frequency is doubled with a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide. The experimental result is in agreement with the calculation and a V-band two-tone signal at 775 nm with a frequency separation of 60 GHz is obtained.
On Dynamic Resource Provisioning for Consolidated Servers in Virtual Data Centers

Server consolidation based on Operating System (OS) virtualization technologies aims to increase the total resource utilization in data centers. However, efﬁciently capitalizing on the available resources requires tools to automatically monitor and allocate resources to the running servers as needed, while maintaining their Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. In the presence of workload ﬂuctuations that cause diverse and unforeseeable resource usages building such tools is challenging. In this paper, two novel techniques are presented that control the CPU allocation for running servers. Firstly, a Single Input Single Output (SISO) ﬁrst-order Kalman ﬁlter is designed to dynamically allocate the CPU of individual Virtual Machines (VMs). The motivations to use Kalman ﬁlter are the nonlinear behavior of the system and the known fact that the Kalman ﬁlter is the optimum linear tracking controller in the sense that it minimizes the estimated error covariance when some presumed conditions are met. Secondly, a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) feedback controller that dynamically allocates CPU for multi-tier server applications is presented. The controller makes global decisions by coupling the resource usage of all components. By this way, a fast response to sudden changes in CPU usage is achieved, which causes tiers to saturate.
Low computation vision-based navigation for mobile robots

In the design and construction of mobile robots vision has always been one of the most potentially useful sensory systems. In practice however, it has also become the most difficult to successfully implement. I have designed a small, light, cheap, and low power Mobot Vision System that can be used to guide a mobile robot in a constrained environment. The target environment is the surface of Mars, although I believe the system should be applicable to other conditions as well. It is my belief that the constraints of the Martian environment will allow the implementation of a system that provides vision based guidance to a small mobile rover. The purpose of this vision system is to process realtime visual input and provide as output information about the relative location of safe and unsafe areas for the robot to go. It could also be programmed to do additional tasks such as tracking a small number of interesting features, for example the lander or large rocks (for scientific sampling). The system I have built was designed to be self contained. It has its own camera and on board processing unit. It draws a small amount of power and exchanges a very small amount of information with the host robot. The project had two parts, first the construction of a hardware platform, and second the implementation of a successful vision algorithm. For the first part of the project I built a small self contained vision system. It employs a cheap but fast general purpose microcontroller (a 68332) connected to a Charge Coupled Device (CCD). The CCD provides the CPU with a continuous series of medium resolution gray-scale images (64 by 48 pixels with 256 gray levels at 10-30 frames a second). In order to accommodate my goals of low power, light weight, and small size I bypassed the traditional NTSC video and used a purely digital solution. As the frames are captured any desired algorithm can then be implemented on the microcontroller to extract the desired information from the images and communicate it to the host robot. Additionally, conventional optics are typically oversized for this application so I have employed aspheric lenses, pinhole lenses, and lens sets. It is my hypothesis that a simple vision algorithm does not require huge amounts of computation and that goals such as constructing a complete three dimensional map of the environment are difficult, wasteful, and possibly unreachable. …
Systems of quadratic equations: Efficient solution algorithms and conditions for solvability

We study multivariate systems of quadratic equations of the form F (x) = s where F : ℝn → ℝn and Fi a quadratic function of x for i = 1, . , n. These types of equations arise across a variety of applications including sensor network localization, power systems and matrix factorization. In general, solving systems of quadratic equations is a challenging task, and in its most general form is NP-hard. In this paper, we approach this problem from a different perspective: We characterize domains over which the problem can be solved efficiently. For any such domain, we develop an efficient algorithm that terminates with: a) a solution in the domain, or b) a certificate of non-existence of the solution in the domain. Further, we derive conditions on s that guarantee the existence of a solution in the domain. We show how this result can be used to construct convex inner approximations to the feasible set of a Quadratically Constrained Quadratic Program (QCQP). Finally, we illustrate the results on simple examples from these application domains.
Environmental Impact Analysis to Support Biofuel Development in the Pacific Northwest – Water Resources Component

Petrie, J., Wickham, R. , Madsen, K. , Davis, A. , Barber, M. , Smith, C.T. & Hasan, M. (2017). Environmental impact analysis to support biofuel development in the Pacific Northwest – water resources component. NARA Final Reports. Pullman, WA. Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance.
Metformin Inhibits Glutaminase Activity and Protects against Hepatic Encephalopathy

Aim To investigate the influence of metformin use on liver dysfunction and hepatic encephalopathy in a retrospective cohort of diabetic cirrhotic patients. To analyze the impact of metformin on glutaminase activity and ammonia production in vitro. Methods Eighty-two cirrhotic patients with type 2 diabetes were included. Forty-one patients were classified as insulin sensitizers experienced (metformin) and 41 as controls (cirrhotic patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus without metformin treatment). Baseline analysis included: insulin, glucose, glucagon, leptin, adiponectin, TNFr2, AST, ALT. HOMA-IR was calculated. Baseline HE risk was calculated according to minimal hepatic encephalopathy, oral glutamine challenge and mutations in glutaminase gene. We performed an experimental study in vitro including an enzymatic activity assay where glutaminase inhibition was measured according to different metformin concentrations. In Caco2 cells, glutaminase activity inhibition was evaluated by ammonia production at 24, 48 and 72 hours after metformina treatment. Results Hepatic encephalopathy was diagnosed during follow-up in 23.2% (19/82): 4.9% (2/41) in patients receiving metformin and 41.5% (17/41) in patients without metformin treatment (logRank 9.81; p = 0.002). In multivariate analysis, metformin use [H.R. 11.4 (95% CI: 1.2–108.8); p = 0.034], age at diagnosis [H.R. 1.12 (95% CI: 1.04–1.2); p = 0.002], female sex [H.R. 10.4 (95% CI: 1.5–71.6); p = 0.017] and HE risk [H.R. 21.3 (95% CI: 2.8–163.4); p = 0.003] were found independently associated with hepatic encephalopathy. In the enzymatic assay, glutaminase activity inhibition reached 68% with metformin 100 mM. In Caco2 cells, metformin (20 mM) decreased glutaminase activity up to 24% at 72 hours post-treatment (p<0.05). Conclusions Metformin was found independently related to overt hepatic encephalopathy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and high risk of hepatic encephalopathy. Metformin inhibits glutaminase activity in vitro. Therefore, metformin use seems to be protective against hepatic encephalopathy in diabetic cirrhotic patients.
Saproxylic beetles of a hardwood floodplain forest canopy

The results of a pilot project on the saproxylic beetle fauna of the canopy and trunk layers of a Central European hardwood floodplain forest are presented. Of a total catch of 1190 beetles trapped by flight interception traps, 340 specimens belonged to 92 species classified as obligatory, facultative or potential saproxylics. The species composition of both layers differed substantially. Several species considered rare and threatened were collected, some in high numbers.
The Unique Pentagonal Structure of an Archaeal Rubisco Is Essential for Its High Thermostability*

We have previously determined the crystal structure of a novel pentagonal ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) from the hyperthermophilic archaeon, Thermococcus kodakaraensis KOD1. Here we have carried out biochemical studies to identify the necessities and/or advantages of this intriguing pentagonal structure. The structure indicated the presence of three neighboring residues (Glu-63, Arg-66, and Asp-69), participating in ionic interactions within unique dimer-dimer interfaces. We constructed three single mutant proteins (E63S, R66S, and D69S) and one triple mutant protein (E63S/R66S/D69S) by replacing the charged residues with serine. The wild type (WT) and all mutant proteins were purified and subjected to gel permeation chromatography at various temperatures. WT and D69S proteins were decameric at all temperatures examined between 30 and 90 °C. The majority of E63S and R66S were decamers at 30 °C but were found to gradually disassemble with the elevation in temperature. E63S/R66S/D69S was found in a dimeric form even at 30 °C. An interesting correlation was found between the subunit assembly and thermostability of the proteins. Circular dichroism and differential scanning calorimetry analyses indicated that the denaturation temperatures of dimeric enzymes (E63S, R66S, and E63S/R66S/D69S) were ∼95 °C, whereas those of the enzymes retaining a decameric structure (WT and D69S) were ∼110 °C. Disassembly into tetramer or dimer units did not alter the slopes of the Arrhenius plots, indicating that the decameric structure had no effect on catalytic performance per se. The results indicate that the decameric assembly of Tk-Rubisco contributes to enhance the thermostability of the enzyme. Taking into account the growth temperature of strain KOD1 (65–100 °C), the decameric structure of Tk-Rubisco can be considered essential for the stable presence of the enzyme in the host cells. This study provides an interesting example in which the thermostability of a protein can be enhanced by formation of a unique quaternary structure not found in mesophilic enzymes.
Activation of a Drosophila Janus kinase (JAK) causes hematopoietic neoplasia and developmental defects.

In mammals, many cytokines and growth factors stimulate members of the Janus kinase (JAK) family to transduce signals for the proliferation and differentiation of various cell types, particularly in hematopoietic lineages. Mutations in the Drosophila hopscotch (hop) gene, which encodes a JAK, also cause proliferative defects. Loss‐of‐function alleles result in lethality and underproliferation of diploid tissues of the larva. A dominant gain‐of‐function allele, Tumorous‐lethal (hopTum‐l), leads to formation of melanotic tumors and hypertrophy of the larval lymph glands, the hematopoietic organs. We show that a single amino acid change in Hop is associated with the hopTum‐l mutation. Overexpression of either wild‐type hop or hopTum‐l in the larval lymph glands causes melanotic tumors and lymph gland hypertrophy indistinguishable from the original hopTum‐l mutation. In addition, overexpression of Hop in other tissues of the larva leads to pattern defects in the adult or to lethality. Finally, overexpression of either hop or hopTum‐l in Drosophila cell culture results in tyrosine phosphorylation of Hop protein. However, overexpression of hopTum‐l results in greater phosphorylation than overexpression of the wild‐type. We conclude that hopTum‐l encodes a hyperactive Hop kinase and that overactivity of Hop in lymph glands causes malignant neoplasia of Drosophila blood cells.
The Major Roles of DNA Polymerases Epsilon and Delta at the Eukaryotic Replication Fork Are Evolutionarily Conserved

Coordinated replication of eukaryotic genomes is intrinsically asymmetric, with continuous leading strand synthesis preceding discontinuous lagging strand synthesis. Here we provide two types of evidence indicating that, in fission yeast, these two biosynthetic tasks are performed by two different replicases. First, in Schizosaccharomyces pombe strains encoding a polδ-L591M mutator allele, base substitutions in reporter genes placed in opposite orientations relative to a well-characterized replication origin are strand-specific and distributed in patterns implying that Polδ is primarily involved in lagging strand replication. Second, in strains encoding a polε-M630F allele and lacking the ability to repair rNMPs in DNA due to a defect in RNase H2, rNMPs are selectively observed in nascent leading strand DNA. The latter observation demonstrates that abundant rNMP incorporation during replication can be tolerated and that they are normally removed in an RNase H2-dependent manner. This provides strong physical evidence that Polε is the primary leading strand replicase. Collectively, these data and earlier results in budding yeast indicate that the major roles of Polδ and Polε at the eukaryotic replication fork are evolutionarily conserved.
Weight-of-Evidence concepts : introduction and application to sediment management

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has a variety of information available to support Civil Works project planning and operations. While this information must be interpreted to inform conclusions, clear guidance is often not available to describe how best to compare and integrate different types of information. This special report introduces a Weight-ofEvidence (WOE) approach that USACE staff can use to interpret the many Lines of Evidence (LOEs) available in the information based on the conclusions that they support and how much weight they each should have in the decision, helping to bridge the data-to-decisions gap. A case study is presented applying WOE to evaluate potential sediment placement sites for dredged material from New Haven Harbor, CT, the busiest port on Long Island Sound and one of the busiest ports in New England. The analysis demonstrates how diverse pieces of information can be evaluated based on their quality, resolution, and relevance and combined in the context of the problem at hand to aid robust and transparent USACE Civil Works decision-making. DISCLAIMER: The contents of this report are not to be used for advertising, publication, or promotional purposes. Citation of trade names does not constitute an official endorsement or approval of the use of such commercial products. All product names and trademarks cited are the property of their respective owners. The findings of this report are not to be construed as an official Department of the Army position unless so designated by other authorized documents. DESTROY THIS REPORT WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED. DO NOT RETURN IT TO THE ORIGINATOR.
Morphology and molecular composition of isolated postsynaptic junctional structures

The solubilization of isolated brain synaptosomal plasma membranes by various detergents was studied and in each case found to depend upon detergent concentration. By using conditions sufficient to extract maximally protein and phospholipid from the membranes, postsynaptic junctional particles were isolated with each of four detergents and their ultrastructural appearances and protein contents compared. Two basic structural forms were identified. One, isolated with Triton X-100, consists of a planar array of dense-staining particles ca. 20 nm in diameter. It resembles the postsynaptic density seen in undigested synaptosomal plasma membranes. The other, isolated with sodium deoxycholate, contains less protein. It has the same overall shape and dimensions as the postsynaptic density, but consists of a branching network of short 5 nm fibres (the postsynaptic junctional lattice) making up an array of contiguous polygons, each ca. 20 nm across. The interior of these polygonal elements seems to be hydrophobic since it cannot be penetrated by metallic salts used for negative staining. It is suggested that the dense-staining 20 nm subunits observed at the postsynaptic junctional site may be composed of hydrophobic proteins inserted into the hollow cores of the lattice polygons. Electrophoretic analysis of the proteins present in the various postsynaptic junctional preparations identified two major common components with molecular masses of 275000 and 47500. The latter is tentatively identified as actin. Components comigrating respectively with α-and β-tubulin are present, and the relation of the lattice structure to subjacent microtubules is discussed.
An Evaluation of the Robustness of MTS for Imbalanced Data

In classification problems, the class imbalance problem will cause a bias on the training of classifiers and will result in the lower sensitivity of detecting the minority class examples. The Mahalanobis-Taguchi System (MTS) is a diagnostic and forecasting technique for multivariate data. MTS establishes a classifier by constructing a continuous measurement scale rather than directly learning from the training set. Therefore, it is expected that the construction of an MTS model will not be influenced by data distribution, and this property is helpful to overcome the class imbalance problem. To verify the robustness of MTS for imbalanced data, this study compares MTS with several popular classification techniques. The results indicate that MTS is the most robust technique to deal with the classification problem on imbalanced data. In addition, this study develops a "probabilistic thresholding method" to determine the classification threshold for MTS, and it obtains a good performance. Finally, MTS is employed to analyze the radio frequency (RF) inspection process of mobile phone manufacturing. The data collected from the RF inspection process is typically an imbalanced type. Implementation results show that the inspection attributes are significantly reduced and that the RF inspection process can also maintain high inspection accuracy.
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy in Children at Risk for Substance Abuse

Evidence strongly indicates that the risk for developing a substance abuse (SA) disorder is not randomly distributed in the population. However, the mechanisms underlying this risk are largely unknown. Particularly, little is known about neurobiological mechanisms involved in SA vulnerability. Increased risk for SA has been linked to behavioral disorders such as attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan, conduct disorder (CD) during childhood and adolescence, and adult antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Previous research has suggested that these latter disorders may be associated with frontal lobe dysfunction. Consequently, it is postulated that a component of the liability to SA is associated with a variant of frontal cortical physiology. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that this physiologic variation will be manifested by abnormalities of brain energy and membrane phospholipid metabolism detectable by in vivo phosphorus 31 (31P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).
A flexible ADC approach for mixed-signal SoC platforms

Time-to-market pressure and increased design complexity has created what is called a "design gap" in the design of systems-on-chip (SoC). As a solution to that problem the platform-based design (PBD), based on the design-reuse methodology, has been proposed, and successfully applied to digital systems. However, nowadays, the analog part of SoC does not take advantage of PBD and therefore dominates the overall design time, cost and risk. In this paper we propose a mixed-signal FPGA (FPMA) platform as a solution to the problems described above. Specifically, we address the feasibility of a flexible reprogrammable/reconfigurable ADC platform based on the pipelined architecture. We discuss the programmability issues with respect to the performance-flexibility trade-offs, we justify our decisions and we demonstrate several possible ADC architectures.
Decreased Expression of Toll-Like Receptor-4 and MD-2 Correlates with Intestinal Epithelial Cell Protection Against Dysregulated Proinflammatory Gene Expression in Response to Bacterial Lipopolysaccharide1

The lumenal surface of the colonic epithelium is continually exposed to Gram-negative commensal bacteria and LPS. Recognition of LPS by Toll-like receptor (TLR)-4 results in proinflammatory gene expression in diverse cell types. Normally, however, commensal bacteria and their components do not elicit an inflammatory response from intestinal epithelial cells (IEC). The aim of this study is to understand the molecular mechanisms by which IEC limit chronic activation in the presence of LPS. Three IEC lines (Caco-2, T84, HT-29) were tested for their ability to activate an NF-κB reporter gene in response to purified, protein-free LPS. No IEC line responded to LPS, whereas human dermal microvessel endothelial cells (HMEC) did respond to LPS. IEC responded vigorously to IL-1β in this assay, demonstrating that the IL-1 receptor signaling pathway shared by TLRs was intact. To determine the reason for LPS hyporesponsiveness in IEC, we examined the expression of TLR4 and MD-2, a critical coreceptor for TLR4 signaling. IEC expressed low levels of TLR4 compared with HMEC and none expressed MD-2. To determine whether the low level of TLR4 expression or absent MD-2 was responsible for the LPS signaling defect in IEC, the TLR4 or MD-2 gene was transiently expressed in IEC lines. Transient transfection of either gene individually was not sufficient to restore LPS signaling, but cotransfection of TLR4 and MD-2 in IEC led to synergistic activation of NF-κB and IL-8 reporter genes in response to LPS. We conclude that IEC limit dysregulated LPS signaling by down-regulating expression of MD-2 and TLR4. The remainder of the intracellular LPS signaling pathway is functionally intact.
Development of a Codeshare Flight-Profitability System at Delta Air Lines

Delta Air Lines, Inc., forms alliances with other airlines to expand the network of markets it can serve through a process known as codesharing. Codesharing allows an airline to place its marketing code on an alliance partner's flights. A carrier can then sell these flights, although an alliance partner operates them. Alliances can improve the revenue streams of their members; however, the amount of revenue increase depends significantly on which flights are chosen for codeshare. As alliances have evolved, the number of flights being codeshared has grown, and the rules that airlines must follow have become more complex. The authors have built a codeshare flight-profitability system that automates the codeshare flight-selection process. The system chooses a set of codeshare flights that maximizes total system revenue for Delta while satisfying the rules that the alliance, the government, and the airlines' unions have set. The initial impact of this decision-making tool appears to be promising. Codeshared decisions, which Delta previously made without the benefit of optimization technologies, took one to two days to complete. The new system for choosing codeshared flights seeks to increase Delta's operating revenue by up to $50 M per year while reducing the planning cycle to several hours.