Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transcriptional Profiling of Bone Marrow Stromal Cells in Response to Porphyromonas gingivalis Secreted Products

Periodontitis is an infectious inflammatory disease that destroys the tooth-supporting (periodontal) tissues. Porphyromonas gingivalis is an oral pathogen highly implicated in the pathogenesis of this disease. It can exert its effects to a number of cells, including osteogenic bone marrow stromal cells which are important for homeostastic capacity of the tissues. By employing gene microarray technology, this study aimed to describe the overall transcriptional events (>2-fold regulation) elicited by P. gingivalis secreted products in bone marrow stromal cells, and to dissect further the categories of genes involved in bone metabolism, inflammatory and immune responses. After 6 h of challenge with P. gingivalis, 271 genes were up-regulated whereas 209 genes were down-regulated, whereas after 24 h, these numbers were 259 and 109, respectively. The early (6 h) response was characterised by regulation of genes associated with inhibition of cell cycle, induction of apoptosis and loss of structural integrity, whereas the late (24 h) response was characterised by induction of chemokines, cytokines and their associated intracellular pathways (such as NF-κB), mediators of connective tissue and bone destruction, and suppression of regulators of osteogenic differentiation. The most strongly up-regulated genes were lipocalin 2 (LCN2) and serum amyloid A3 (SAA3), both encoding for proteins of the acute phase inflammatory response. Collectively, these transcriptional changes elicited by P. gingivalis denote that the fundamental cellular functions are hindered, and that the cells acquire a phenotype commensurate with propagated innate immune response and inflammatory-mediated tissue destruction. In conclusion, the global transcriptional profile of bone marrow stromal cells in response to P. gingivalis is marked by deregulated homeostatic functions, with implications in the pathogenesis of periodontitis.
Physically-accurate fur reflectance

Rendering photo-realistic animal fur is a long-standing problem in computer graphics. Considerable effort has been made on modeling the geometric complexity of fur, but the reflectance of fur fibers is not well understood. Fur has a distinct diffusive and saturated appearance, that is not captured by either the Marschner hair model or the Kajiya-Kay model. In this paper, we develop a physically-accurate reflectance model for fur fibers. Based on anatomical literature and measurements, we develop a double cylinder model for the reflectance of a single fur fiber, where an outer cylinder represents the biological observation of a cortex covered by multiple cuticle layers, and an inner cylinder represents the scattering interior structure known as the medulla. Our key contribution is to model medulla scattering accurately---in contrast, for human hair, the medulla has minimal width and thus negligible contributions to the reflectance. Medulla scattering introduces additional reflection and transmission paths, as well as diffusive reflectance lobes. We validate our physical model with measurements on real fur fibers, and introduce the first database in computer graphics of reflectance profiles for nine fur samples. We show that our model achieves significantly better fits to the measured data than the Marschner hair reflectance model. For efficient rendering, we develop a method to precompute 2D medulla scattering profiles and analytically approximate our reflectance model with factored lobes. The accuracy of the approach is validated by comparing our rendering model to full 3D light transport simulations. Our model provides an enriched set of controls, where the parameters we fit can be directly used to render realistic fur, or serve as a starting point from which artists can manually tune parameters for desired appearances.
Females of carotenoid-supplemented males are more faithful and produce higher quality offspring

Reproduction is known to increase the basal metabolic rate and generate oxidative stress, a possible proximate cost of reproduction. Carotenoids have been shown to be in vitro antioxidant molecules and, in a number of instances, to contribute in vivo to the antioxidant protection of the organism against the deleterious effects of free radicals and oxidative stress. These compounds are also involved in the up- and downregulation of the immune system. Thus, carotenoids may improve a male’s health status and condition during breeding and enhance his attractiveness through, for example, a higher investment into mating activities. The differential allocation hypothesis predicts that females should invest more in reproduction when mated to more attractive partners. Therefore, a supplementary dose of carotenoids during breeding should increase male attractiveness and translate into higher reproductive success via a higher reproductive effort by their mate. We tested this hypothesis in great tits by supplementing males with carotenoids during their female’s fertile period. We subsequently transferred entire clutches into unmanipulated foster nests. Thus, any effect of our carotenoid supplementation to males on their reproductive success must be due to female differential reproductive investment. Offspring sired by carotenoid-supplemented males were found to grow bigger and heavier and to fledge more successfully. Carotenoid-supplemented males also lost less paternity. Our results illustrate the fitness benefits males can accrue from carotenoids and underline the selective pressure imposed on males to optimize carotenoid acquisition. Key words: carotenoids, differential allocation hypothesis, extrapair paternity, great tit, Parus major. [Behav Ecol]
Totally interpolating biorthogonal multiwavelet systems with balancing orders

Balancing order property of totally interpolating biorthogonal multiwavelet systems with finite impulse response two-band multifilter banks is studied. Based on interpolating and FIR properties, we show that approximation order condition is equivalent to balancing order condition. As a consequence, prefiltering can be avoided if a totally interpolating biorthogonal multiwavelet system satisfies approximation order conditions.
PHYSICALLY REALISTIC MODELS OF CATASTROPHIC BUBBLE COLLAPSES

When gas micro-bubbles are forced with an acoustic field they typically undergo a slow expansion followed by a violent collapse. During the expansion phase a significant amount of vapor enters the bubble. While much of this vapor is expelled as the bubble collapses, significant excess vapor is trapped in the interior during this violent collapse. As the bubble collapses this vapor is significantly heated and undergoes dissociative chemical reactions. Applications which take advantage of these acoustically driven chemical reactions are generally known as sonochemistry. Using the results of direct numerical simulations as a base, reduced models of the transport and gas dynamics of this sonochemical process are carefully developed. The models are compared to experimental data, showing that the reduced formulations can be used to predict real phenomena.
Structured Sparsity: from Mixed Norms to Structured Shrinkage

Sparse and structured signal expansions on dic- tionaries can be obtained through explicit modeling in the coefficient domain. The originality of the present contribution lies in the construction and the study of generalized shrinkage operators, whose goal is to identify structured significance maps. These generalize Group LASSO and the previously introduced Elitist LASSO by introducing more flexibility in the coefficient domain modeling. We study experimentally the performances of corresponding shrinkage operators in terms of significance map estimation in the orthogonal basis case. We also study their performance in the overcomplete situation, using iterative thresholding.
Marital Quality, Forgiveness, Empathy, and Rumination: A Longitudinal Analysis

McCullough, Rachal, et al.’s (1998) social-psychological framework of forgiveness informed a longitudinal study that examined the extent to which marital forgiveness is determined by social-cognitive (the offended spouse’s rumination and emotional empathy) and relationship variables (the quality of the relationship in which the offense took place). In the study, 119 husbands and 124 wives from long- and medium-term marriages in north Italy provided data at two time points separated by a 6-month interval. Structural equation models showed that rumination and empathy independently predicted concurrent marital forgiveness. Forgiveness in turn predicted concurrent marital quality. Finally, reciprocal directions of effect emerged between forgiveness and marital quality over time. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for promoting forgiveness, and future research directions are outlined.
MultiProtIdent: identifying proteins using database search and protein-protein interactions.

Protein identification is important in proteomics. Proteomic analyses based on mass spectra (MS) constitute innovative ways to identify the components of protein complexes. Instruments can obtain the mass spectrum to an accuracy of 0.01 Da or better, but identification errors are inevitable. This study shows a novel tool, MultiProtIdent, which can identify proteins using additional information about protein-protein interactions and protein functional associations. Both single and multiple Peptide Mass Fingerprints (PMFs) are input to MultiProtIdent, which matches the PMFs to a theoretical peptide mass database. The relationships or interactions among proteins are considered to reduce false positives in PMF matching. Experiments to identify protein complexes reveal that MultiProtIdent is highly promising. The website associated with this study is http://dbms104.csie. ncu.edu. tw/.
Intent Communication between Autonomous Vehicles and Pedestrians

When pedestrians encounter vehicles, they typically stop and wait for a signal from the driver to either cross or wait. What happens when the car is autonomous and there isn't a human driver to signal them? This paper seeks to address this issue with an intent communication system (ICS) that acts in place of a human driver. This intent system has been developed to take into account the psychology behind what pedestrians are familiar with and what they expect from machines. The system integrates those expectations into the design of physical systems and mathematical algorithms. The goal of the system is to ensure that communication is simple, yet effective without leaving pedestrians with a sense of distrust in autonomous vehicles. To validate the ICS, two types of experiments have been run: field tests with an autonomous vehicle to determine how humans actually interact with the ICS and simulations to account for multiple potential behaviors.The results from both experiments show that humans react positively and more predictably when the intent of the vehicle is communicated compared to when the intent of the vehicle is unknown. In particular, the results from the simulation specifically showed a 142 percent difference between the pedestrian's trust in the vehicle's actions when the ICS is enabled and the pedestrian has prior knowledge of the vehicle than when the ICS is not enabled and the pedestrian having no prior knowledge of the vehicle.
Poland Within the European Union: New Awkward Partner or New Heart of Europe?

This book examines the first five years of Polish EU membership. The combination of Poland’s potential power as a major, and possibly controversial, player in both the region and Europe as a whole, and the apparent salience of Euroscepticism in domestic electoral politics at the core of the Polish government and party system presented the possibility that Poland would be a ‘new awkward partner’ in Europe. However, although Poles may have voted for EU-critical parties in large numbers no ‘Eurosceptic backlash’ has emerged. In fact, far from being a ‘new awkward partner’, Poland has tried to portray itself as the ‘new heart of Europe’ and it certainly came to be increasingly perceived as such in Brussels and by its European allies. This book focuses on two linked questions. Firstly, what impact has Poland had upon the EU as a new member state? Secondly, how has becoming an EU member impacted upon public attitudes towards the EU and Polish domestic politics, particularly on its party and electoral politics? Szczerbiak provides the first detailed empirical case study of the impact of Poland’s EU membership on its politics and of Poland's impact on the EU. The book also makes broader theoretical contributions to our understanding of EU relations with its member states. As a result of the above, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Politics, political science and European integration.
International Commodity Prices and the Australian Stock Market

We propose a method for estimating the earliest time during the trading day when overnight information is reflected in domestic share prices, and use it to measure the impact of international commodities on four Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) indices. While evidence is found that the ASX opening price does not fully reflect overnight news, this information is absorbed within 15 min of the opening time. Using appropriately constructed returns, we find international commodities to have a statistically significant and economically meaningful effect on the ASX. Nevertheless, the S&P 500 index appears to be a more important contributor of relevant overnight information.
Experimental investigation of a characteristic shock formation distance in finite-amplitude noise propagation

Unlike initially sinusoidal waveforms, the definition of the "shock formation distance" for noise is complicated by the fact that not all shocks form at the same rate. Examination of the concept of a "characteristic" shock formation distance for noise raises some questions: Is there some generalization of the shock formation distance for sinusoidal signals that can be applied to noise? If so, is it inversely proportional to amplitude and frequency, as the pure tone distance is? In this study, initially sinusoidal, narrowband, and broadband noise data have been acquired using 3.18 mm microphones flush mounted along the walls of an anechoically terminated plane-wave tube. The behavior of the time derivative statistics for the sine-wave tests has been used to guide formulation of a statistical definition of a characteristic shock formation distance for initially Gaussian noise.
Reduced-Reference image quality assessment based on 2-D discrete FFT and Edge Similarity

Reduced-Reference (RR) image quality measures aim to predict the perceptual quality of distorted image using only partial information about the original image. In this paper, an effective Reduced-Reference image quality assessment algorithm based on FFT transform and Edge Similarity is introduced. The main design principle of the proposed method is choice of the best blocks of Image. After dividing the source images into blocks of 16×16 pixels, calculating the FFT Transform for each block, the FFT Transform gives best blocks of image. Next, the important features blocks of the image were recognized by Edge and the same actions were done on the image of distortions and finally, the similarity of both images was calculated. The experimental results on LIVE and CSIQ databases show that our RR proposed metric correlates well with the subjective quality scores, also in comparison with commonly used full-reference metric and with a state-of-the-art reduced reference.
The NIR to UV continuum of radio loud vs. radio quiet quasars

Starting from a sample of SDSS quasars appearing also in the 2MASS survey, we study the continuum properties of ∼ 1000 objects observed in 8 bands, from NIR to UV. We construct the mean spectral energy distribution (SED) and compare and contrast the continua of radio loud (RLQ) and radio quiet (RQQ) objects. The SEDs of the two populations are significantly different, in the sense that RLQs are redder with power law spectral indices h αRLQi = −0.55 ±0.04 and h αRQQi = −0.31 ±0.01 in the spectral range between 10 14.5 and 10 15.35 Hz. This difference is discussed in terms of different extinctions, different disc temperatures, or slopes of the non-thermal component.
On the Security of Yuan et al.'s Undeniable Signature Scheme

Undeniable signatures were proposed to limit the public veriflcation property of ordinary digital signature. In fact, the veriflcation of such signatures cannot be obtained without the help of the signer via the conflrmation/disavowal protocols. In this paper, we reconsider the security of the undeniable signature scheme proposed by Yuan et al. at ICICS 2007, and point out their scheme does not satisfy the security model of invisibility the authors presented.
Implementation of Common Genetic and Bacteriological Algorithms in Optimizing Testing Data in Mutation Testing

In this article, at first mutation testing is dealt with. Due to the high costs of mutation testing, it is usually tried to improve testing data by the use of evolutionary algorithms. Genetic algorithms are one of the most commonly used evolutionary algorithms. At first these algorithms are simulated and implemented, and then they are compared with the new bacteriological algorithms, inspired by the growth of the bacteria in nature.
Disparate effects of deficient expression of connexin43 on atrial and ventricular conduction: evidence for chamber-specific molecular determinants of conduction.

BACKGROUND Myocardial conduction depends on intercellular transfer of current at gap junctions. Atrial myocytes express three different gap junction channel proteins-connexin43 (Cx43), connexin45 (Cx45), and connexin40 (Cx40)-- whereas ventricular myocytes express only Cx43 and Cx45. However, the physiological roles of individual connexins are unknown. We have previously shown that mice heterozygous for a null mutation in the gene encoding Cx43 (Cx43(+/-) mice) express 50% of the normal amount of Cx43 in ventricular myocardium and exhibit marked slowing of ventricular conduction. METHODS AND RESULTS To determine whether atrial conduction is affected in Cx43(+/-) mice, we measured atrial conduction velocity in isolated hearts, performed detailed ECG and electrophysiological studies in intact animals, and determined the amount of cardiac connexins in atrial and ventricular tissue. Ventricular conduction velocity was reduced by 38% in Cx43(+/-) mice compared with wild-types, but atrial conduction velocity in the same hearts was normal. QRS duration was significantly greater in Cx43(+/-) mice than in wild-types, but P-wave duration and amplitude did not differ. Atrial expression of Cx43 was reduced by 50%. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that Cx43 is a principal conductor of intercellular current in the ventricle because ventricular conduction is significantly slowed when Cx43 content is reduced by only 50%. In contrast, a similar reduction in Cx43 content in atrial muscle has no effect on atrial conduction, suggesting that Cx40 (which is expressed in atrial but not ventricular myocytes) is a major electrical coupling protein in atrial muscle. Thus, Cx43 and Cx40 may be chamber-specific determinants of myocardial conduction.
On the secrecy capacity region of the Wiretap Broadcast Channel

This work investigates the secrecy capacity region of the Wiretap Broadcast Channel (WBC) where an encoder communicates two private messages over a Broadcast Channel (BC) while keeping both messages secret from the eavesdropper. Our main result is the derivation of a novel outer bound and an inner bound on the secrecy capacity region of this setting. These results allow us to characterize the capacity region for three non-degraded classes of WBCs: the deterministic and the semi-deterministic WBC with a more noisy eavesdropper, and the WBC when users exhibit less noisiness order between them.
Stability Criteria for Impulsive Systems With Time Delay and Unstable System Matrices

This paper studies stability problems of a class of impulsive systems with time delay whose linear parts contain unstable system matrices. By using the method of variation of parameters, Lyapunov functions and inequalities, several stability criteria are established for both linear and nonlinear impulsive systems with time delay. It is shown that the time delay systems can be stabilized by impulses even if the system matrices are unstable. Several numerical examples are given to illustrate the results.
A COGNITIVE MODEL OFTHE LEARNING CURVE

This articleprovidesa cognitive foundationof theparametersthatregulateamodelof thelearningcurve. Organizationalearningandits actualoccurrencearelinkedto thenumberof availablecategoriesandto theamount of informationto beprocessed. GuidoFioretti via SanMassimo8 10123Torino Italy Fax: ++390744425713 E-mail: fellow1@icer.it guido.fioretti@lycos.com
Clonal Architecture of Secondary Acute Myeloid Leukemia Defined by Single-Cell Sequencing

Next-generation sequencing has been used to infer the clonality of heterogeneous tumor samples. These analyses yield specific predictions—the population frequency of individual clones, their genetic composition, and their evolutionary relationships—which we set out to test by sequencing individual cells from three subjects diagnosed with secondary acute myeloid leukemia, each of whom had been previously characterized by whole genome sequencing of unfractionated tumor samples. Single-cell mutation profiling strongly supported the clonal architecture implied by the analysis of bulk material. In addition, it resolved the clonal assignment of single nucleotide variants that had been initially ambiguous and identified areas of previously unappreciated complexity. Accordingly, we find that many of the key assumptions underlying the analysis of tumor clonality by deep sequencing of unfractionated material are valid. Furthermore, we illustrate a single-cell sequencing strategy for interrogating the clonal relationships among known variants that is cost-effective, scalable, and adaptable to the analysis of both hematopoietic and solid tumors, or any heterogeneous population of cells.
Alternating Combination Trilateration for Unknown Nodes of Sensor Networks

A process which determines the physical locations of nodes in a wireless sensor networks is called self-localization. Self-localization is critical for medium-to large-scale sensor networks because manual localization or pre-positioning is often impossible due to time requirements, cost constraints or inherent limitations of deployment. Most previously proposed algorithms to the problem are unable to locate sensor nodes accurately. Furthermore, the estimated location is very sensitive to the ranging error. In this paper, we present an alternating combination trilateration algorithm based on fewer beacons, the relative position of sensor nodes, weighted function and weighted polygon. Our main objective is to obtain accurate location, robustness to the ranging error, lower communication overhead, and avoid accurate synchronization, intensive computations. Numerical simulations verify its good performance when sensor nodes are deployed asymmetrically.