Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mice Lacking Hbp1 Function Are Viable and Fertile

Fetal germ cell development is tightly regulated by the somatic cell environment, and is characterised by cell cycle states that differ between XY and XX gonads. In the testis, gonocytes enter G1/G0 arrest from 12.5 days post coitum (dpc) in mice and maintain cell cycle arrest until after birth. Failure to correctly maintain G1/G0 arrest can result in loss of germ cells or, conversely, germ cell tumours. High mobility group box containing transcription factor 1 (HBP1) is a transcription factor that was previously identified in fetal male germ cells at the time of embryonic cell cycle arrest. In somatic cells, HBP1 is classified as a tumour suppressor protein, known to regulate proliferation and senescence. We therefore investigated the possible role of HBP1 in the initiation and maintenance of fetal germ cell G1/G0 arrest using the mouse model. We identified two splice variants of Hbp1, both of which are expressed in XY and XX fetal gonads, but only one of which is localised to the nucleus in in vitro assays. To investigate Hbp1 loss of function, we used embryonic stem (ES) cells carrying a Genetrap mutation for Hbp1 to generate mice lacking Hbp1 function. We found that Hbp1-genetrap mouse mutant germ cells proliferated correctly throughout development, and adult males were viable and fertile. Multiple Hbp1-LacZ reporter mouse lines were generated, unexpectedly revealing Hbp1 embryonic expression in hair follicles, eye and limbs. Lastly, in a model of defective germ cell G1/G0 arrest, the Rb1-knockout model, we found no evidence for Hbp1 mis-regulation, suggesting that the reported RB1-HBP1 interaction is not critical in the germline, despite co-expression.
A low-complexity null space-based method for blind CFO and DCO estimator in OFDM systems

Although orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) holds great potentials for the next generation wireless communication demands, the carrier frequency offset (CFO) and the DC Offset (DCO) in many practical systems can cause the loss of subcarrier orthogonality and hence severe performance degradation. So far, in the absence of DCO, one most successful CFO estimation approach makes use of the signal null space. However, with DCO, the same kind of easy to-implement null space to both the CFO and DCO terms have not been discovered. A compromise solution has been proposed to first project the signal onto the null space of the DCO term, then carry out the singular value decomposition (SVD) to find out the null space of the resulting CFO term. Although very accurate CFO estimation results can be obtained this way, the involved high computational complexity may pose a major hindrance to its practical deployment. In this paper, we show that it is possible to construct a null space to both the CFO and DCO terms. Our particular construction makes use of the Householder transform. As a consequence, the null space approach to CFO estimation in the presence of DCO can be done just as easily as in the absence of DCO, without having to resort to SVD. Experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain the same estimation accuracy as the state of the art methods, yet with much lower complexity and more than 10 times the speedup gain.
Enhanced Mixtures of Part Model for Human Pose Estimation

Mixture of parts model has been successfully applied to 2D human pose estimation problem either as explicitly trained body part model or as latent variables for the whole human body model. Mixture of parts model usually utilize tree structure for representing relations between body parts. Tree structures facilitate training and referencing of the model but could not deal with double counting problems, which hinder its applications in 3D pose estimation. While most of work targeted to solve these problems tend to modify the tree models or the optimization target. We incorporate other cues from input features. For example, in surveillance environments, human silhouettes can be extracted relative easily although not flawlessly. In this condition, we can combine extracted human blobs with histogram of gradient feature, which is commonly used in mixture of parts model for training body part templates. The method can be easily extend to other candidate features under our generalized framework. We show 2D body part detection results on a public available dataset: HumanEva dataset. Furthermore, a 2D to 3D pose estimator is trained with Gaussian process regression model and 2D body part detections from the proposed method is fed to the estimator, thus 3D poses are predictable given new 2D body part detections. We also show results of 3D pose estimation on HumanEva dataset.
Towards Fixation Prediction: A Nonparametric Estimation-Based Approach through Key-Points

When we look at our environment, we primarily pay attention to visually distinctive objects. Saliency maps are topographical maps of the visually salient parts of scenes in which such visually distinctive objects, henceforth called visually important or salient, can be easily highlighted. Computing these maps is still an open problem whose interest is growing in computer vision. Thus, in this work, we propose a new method to compute these maps based on salient points extracted through local descriptors. After, a nonparametric kernel density estimation method is employed to estimate the final saliency map. In order to assess the performance, we carry out experiments on two large benchmark databases to demonstrate the proposed method performance against the state-of-the-art methods using different scoring metrics. Due to the experimental results obtained, we consider the proposed method is a valid alternative for saliency detection.
Full text document retrieval: Hebrew legal texts (report on the first phase of the responsa retrieval project)

A full text retrieval system was designed for the responsa literature, which is a large corpus of Hebrew legal cases. The unique problems of the data base --- mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic and vernaculars, lack of vowels and punctuation, extreme language inflection problems, homographs, existence of thousands of grammatical variants of any given keyword --- dictated development of new methods. Among them we list "grammatical synthesis", which synthesizes all grammatical variants of a given keyword; "Compact KWIC", which enables the user to have a glimpse of the nature of the search before having performed it; effective citation index imbedded in full text searches; and, in general, extensive use of both positive and negative feedback within a single search run. A number of searches performed on a relatively small data base gave in each case a recall of 100%. The average precision was 34%. A KWIC of strategic portions of retrieved documents usually enables a quick disposal of non-relevant material.
Review of multi-regime hybrid vehicle powertrain architecture

In this paper, we present a review of the recent advances in hybrid vehicle powertrain architectural design. The paper begins with a discussion and categorisation of the various types of hybrid vehicles. The current leading technology is the one-mode design of the Toyota Hybrid System, and the intent of the state-of-the-art architectures is to improve upon the perceived weaknesses of the one-mode design. The proposed designs employ multi-regime architectures that allow for the transmission to operate in any one of series, parallel, or power-split configurations, depending upon the road load, driver demand, and control strategy. These new designs found in the literature are discussed and compared. The work allows further study and detailed modelling of the promising multi-regime architectures to be carried out.
A +2.3dBm 124–158GHz Class-C frequency quadrupler with folded-transformer based multi-phase driving

This paper presents a D-band frequency quadrupler from 124GHz to 158GHz. The design leverages a folded-transformer based passive network to generate high-quality and broadband differential quadrature driving signals with low loss for the input tone centered at 35GHz. Then, the four-phase signals drive the 1st-stage frequency doublers to yield fully differential signals at the 2nd harmonic frequency (70GHz), which feed another push-push frequency doubler and generate the desired 4th harmonic output at 140GHz. The push-push doublers are designed based on 2nd harmonic load-pull with Class-C operation for optimized output power and efficiency. The quadrupler is implemented in a 32nm CMOS SOI process occupying only 530μm-by-550μm. It achieves the state-of-the-art output power of +2.3dBm, a peak DC-to-RF efficiency of 5.3%, and the best reported -3dB bandwidth of 24% at D-band under 1.1V supply.
Evaluation of a Feedback Algorithm inspired by Quantum Detection for Dynamic Search Tasks

In this paper we investigate the eﬀectiveness of Relevance Feedback algorithms inspired by Quantum Detection in the context of the Dynamic Domain track. Documents and queries are represented as vectors; the query vector is projected into the subspace spanned by the eigenvector which maximizes the distance between the distribution of quantum probability of relevance and the distribution of quantum probability of non-relevance. When relevant documents are present in the feedback set, the algorithm performs Explicit RF exploiting evidence gathered from relevant passages; if all the documents in the top retrieved are judged as non-relevant, Pseudo RF is performed.
Factors Impacting Software Release Engineering : A Longitudinal Study

Software release teams try to reduce the time needed for the transit of features or bug fixes from the development environment to the production, crossing all the quality gates. However, little is known about the factors that influence the timeto-production and how they might be controlled in order to speed up the release cycles. This paper examines step by step the release process of an industrial software organization aiming to identify factors that have a significant impact on the Lead Time and outcomes of the software releases. Over 14 months of release data have been analyzed (246 releases from the isolated source code branches to the production environment). We discuss three dimensions under which a series of factors could be addressed: Technical, Organizational, and Interactional. We present our finding in terms of implications for release process improvements.
HaPPy: Hyperthread-aware Power Profiling Dynamically

Quantifying the power consumption of individual applications co-running on a single server is a critical component for software-based power capping, scheduling, and provisioning techniques in modern datacenters. However, with the proliferation of hyperthreading in the last few generations of server-grade processor designs, the challenge of accurately and dynamically performing this power attribution to individual threads has been significantly exacerbated. Due to the sharing of core-level resources such as functional units, prior techniques are not suitable to attribute the power consumption between hyperthreads sharing a physical core. In this paper, we present a runtime mechanism that quantifies and attributes power consumption to individual jobs at fine granularity. Specifically, we introduce a hyperthread-aware power model that differentiates between the states when both hardware threads of a core are in use, and when only one thread is in use. By capturing these two different states, we are able to accurately attribute power to each logical CPU in modern servers. We conducted experiments with several Google production workloads on an Intel Sandy Bridge server. Compared to prior hyperthread-oblivious model, HaPPy is substantially more accurate, reducing the prediction error from 20.5% to 7.5% on average and from 31.5% to 9.4% in the worst case.
Consumers' Online Information Search for a New Restaurant for Dining-Out

ABSTRACT By Nelson (1970)'s categorization, purchasing a service such as dining-out at a new restaurant is ‘experience-oriented’ in its nature, and its quality cannot be easily searched before the actual consumption. However, it has been suggested that the interactive nature of the Internet will improve market efficiency by creating a new channel of communication that allows the provision of information about experience attributes in a readily available format (e.g., other consumers' rating online). The paper empirically investigates this notion by exploring consumers' online information search behavior for a new restaurant for fine dining. The extent of usage of various online information sources and the perceived importance of each source are investigated in the United States and in Taiwan. Results show that information from other consumers is considered more important than information from sellers, but that US consumers favor non-Internet sources of information while Taiwanese consumers favor online sources.
Decoupled Loudness and Range Control for a Source Located Within a Small Virtual Acoustic Environment

For headphone-based spatial auditory display systems, binaural synthesis of sound localization cues typically use source reproduction level as the primary control for source range. This approach can be quite effective when indirect sound is simulated in order to externalize virtual sources within a small virtual acoustic environment. A computationally efficient simulation solution is described here that does not rely solely upon the sound reproduction level of the source to control source range (i.e., perceived egocentric distance), and provides an extremely economical synthesis of the indirect sound component that is effective in creating externalized spatial auditory images. The performance of the solution has been psychophysically validated using indirect scaling methods that required experimental listeners to compare two displayed sound stimuli and report which of the two was the louder or the closer. In particular, it was shown that the simulation allows for decoupled loudness and range control for a source located near the listener’s head, so that equally loud sources can be positioned at varying source range. Likewise, within certain limits, source loudness may be varied while holding source range constant. This performance feature has benefits for auditory display applications for which selective attention should be supported for a spatially distributed set of virtual sound sources.
Critical Function of γH2A in S-Phase

Abstract Phosphorylation of histone H2AX by ATM and ATR establishes a chromatin recruitment platform for DNA damage response proteins. Phospho-H2AX (γH2AX) has been most intensively studied in the context of DNA double-strand breaks caused by exogenous clastogens, but recent studies suggest that DNA replication stress also triggers formation of γH2A (ortholog of γH2AX) in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Here, a focused genetic screen in fission yeast reveals that γH2A is critical when there are defects in Replication Factor C (RFC), which loads proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) clamp onto duplex DNA. Surprisingly Chk1, Cds1/Chk2 and the Rad9-Hus1-Rad1 checkpoint clamp, which are crucial for surviving many genotoxins, are fully dispensable in RFC-defective cells. Immunoblot analysis confirms that Rad9-Hus1-Rad1 is not required for formation of γH2A by Rad3/ATR in S-phase. Defects in DNA polymerase epsilon, which binds PCNA in the replisome, also create an acute need for γH2A. These requirements for γH2A were traced to its role in docking with Brc1, which is a 6-BRCT-domain protein that is structurally related to budding yeast Rtt107 and mammalian PTIP. Brc1, which localizes at stalled replication forks by binding γH2A, prevents aberrant formation of Replication Protein A (RPA) foci in RFC-impaired cells, suggesting that Brc1-coated chromatin stabilizes replisomes when PCNA or DNA polymerase availability limits DNA synthesis.
Asymptotic enumeration of integer matrices with constant row and column sums

Let s,t,m,n be positive integers such that sm=tn. Let M(m,s;n,t) be the number of m x n matrices over {0,1,2,. } with each row summing to s and each column summing to t. Equivalently, M(m,s;n,t) counts 2-way contingency tables of order m x n such that the row marginal sums are all s and the column marginal sums are all t. A third equivalent description is that M(m,s;n,t) is the number of semiregular labelled bipartite multigraphs with m vertices of degree s and n vertices of degree t. When m=n and s=t such matrices are also referred to as n x n magic squares with line sums equal to t. We prove a precise asymptotic formula for M(m,s;n,t) which is valid over a range of (m,s;n,t) in which m,n become infinite while remaining approximately equal and the average entry is not too small. This range includes the case where m/n, n/m, s/n and t/m are bounded from below.
Dissociation between rate of hepatic lipoprotein secretion and hepatocyte microtubule content

The fact that colchicines inhibits hepatic secretion of very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) particles has been interpreted to mean that microtubules are involved in hepatic VLDL secretion. To further define this relationship, we have attempted to see if changes in hepatic VLDL secretion are associated with changes in hepatocyte microtubule or tubulin content. Accordingly, hepatic secretion of VLDL was increased in rats, and the hepatocyte content of both microtubules (using quantitative morphometric methods) and tubulin (using a time-decay colchicine binding assay) was determined. In acute experiments, VLDL secretion was increased by perfusion of isolated rat livers for 2 h with varying concentrations of free fatty acids (FFA). Results indicate that hepatic VLDL triglyceride (TG) secretion at perfusate FFA levels of 0.7 μEq/ml is threefold greater (P < 0.01) than when livers are perfused without added FFA. However, no differences are observed in the content of microtubules in these livers: specifically, microtubules occupy 0.029 percent of hepatocyte cytoplasm in livers perfused without FFA and 0.030 percent of cytoplasm in livers perfused with FFA. In chronic experiments, rats were fed for 1 wk with either standard rat chow or a hyperlipidemic (sucrose/lard) diet. With the experimental diet, plasma triglyceride levels increase threefold over controls, and liver VLDL-TG production, as determined by [(3)H]glycerol turnover studies, is 55 percent greater (P < 0.01) than controls. However, microtubules occupy 0.027 percent of the cytoplasm of hepatocyte cytoplasm whether rats are on standard or hyperlipidemic diets. Furthermore, the tubulin content of isolated hepatocytes does change, and represents 1 percent of hepatocyte soluble protein, irrespective of diet. These results suggest that increases in hepatic VLDL secretion can occur without any demonstrable change in hepatocyte assembled microtubule or tubulin content, and raise questions as to the role played by microtubules in hepatic VLDL secretion.
Capturing Hand or Wrist Vein Images for Biometric Authentication Using Low-Cost Devices

Biometric recognition is becoming more and more important owing to the need for authentication in several fields like security or convenience applications. In this paper, a new imaging capturing technique based on near-infrared illumination [1] to acquire wrist vein pattern images for biometric purposes is analysed. Experiments and tests involving data acquisition in different illumination conditions are described using a population of 30 test subjects. Comparison and analysis of the data collected with other techniques show that this hardware method is suitable to obtain high quality wrist veins images that can be used in the feature extraction phase to extract the wrist vein patterns for biometric recognition.
ISOP current mode AC-AC converter with high frequency AC link

This paper presents a modular AC-AC converter with high frequency AC link. It is constructed from connecting multiple current mode AC-AC converters with high frequency AC link in series at the input sides and parallel at the output sides (ISOP). This topology allows the use of low voltage power switch. Control strategy and operation principle of the converter are investigated. Four operation modes are analyzed. The control strategy ensures the proper sharing of the input voltage and the proper sharing of the output current among the ISOP AC-AC converter by directly controlling the input voltage. The converter is validated with experimental results. This ISOP AC-AC converter is especially suited for applications where the input voltage is relatively high and the output voltage is relatively low.
Ad Hoc QoS Routing Protocol Based on Pertinence between Delay and Bandwidth

A QoS routing protocol (IQAODV) is proposed in this paper which integrated delay and bandwidth by establishing the relationship between delay and bandwidth to converse bandwidth to delay, and resolves the problem that intermediate node cannot send RREP information in QAODV routing protocol. The performance of IQAODV is much better than QAODV's and IQAODV is more suitable to transmit multi-media traffic by the simulation results.
A treatment of the substation grounding grids in multilayer earth by using FEM with irregular hexahedron element

Based on finite-element method of 1-dimensional conductor element coupled with 3-dimensional soil element, a coordinate transformation is carried out. The irregular hexahedron domain of element is mapped onto a cube domain. Considering the frequency dependent characteristic of the discretized elements, the grounding performance of the substation grounding grids in multilayer earth is analyzed, and the influencing factors such as grounding resistance and earth surface potential are calculated. Compared with the results of the measurement, the presented method is proved to be correct. It reduces the number of units and speeds up the calculation obviously under the precondition that the accuracy of the calculation is adequately ensured.
An effective quality improvement approach for low quality finger vein image

In recent years, finger vein authentication technology becomes a new highlight in biometric technology. However, the acquired images are low quality because of near-infrared conditions and different structures in different parts of finger, which will severely impacts identification accuracy of the whole system. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the quality of images. In this paper, an effective approach for improving the quality of images is proposed. At first, edge-preserving filter is used for denoising, and then the small blurred finger vein textures are enhanced by elliptic highpass filter. Finally, histogram equalization enhances the contrast of images. The experimental images and estimation results show that the finger vein images become much clearer than original ones, and prove the proposed approach is efficient to improve the quality of images.