Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Software Resolved Networks: Rethinking Enterprise Networks with IPv6 Segment Routing

Enterprise networks often need to implement complex policies that match business objectives. They will embrace IPv6 like ISP networks in the coming years. Among the benefits of IPv6, the recently proposed IPv6 Segment Routing (SRv6) architecture supports richer policies in a clean manner. This matches very well the requirements of enterprise networks. In this paper, we propose Software Resolved Networks (SRNs), a new architecture for IPv6 enterprise networks. We apply the fundamental principles of Software Defined Networks, i.e., the ability to control the operation of the network through software, but in a different manner that also involves the endhosts. We leverage SRv6 to enforce and control network paths according to the network policies. Those paths are computed by a centralized controller that interacts with the endhosts through the DNS protocol. We implement a Software Resolved Network on Linux endhosts, routers and controllers. Through benchmarks and simulations, we analyze the performance of those SRNs, and demonstrate that they meet the expectations of enterprise networks.
Analysis of the 9p21.3 sequence associated with coronary artery disease reveals a tendency for duplication in a CAD patient

Tandem segmental duplications (SDs) greater than 10 kb are widespread in complex genomes. They provide material for gene divergence and evolutionary adaptation, while formation of specific de novo SDs is a hallmark of cancer and some human diseases. Most SDs map to distinct genomic regions termed ‘duplication blocks’. SDs organization within these blocks is often poorly characterized as they are mosaics of ancestral duplicons juxtaposed with younger duplicons arising from more recent duplication events. Structural and functional analysis of SDs is further hampered as long repetitive DNA structures are underrepresented in existing BAC and YAC libraries. We applied Transformation-Associated Recombination (TAR) cloning, a versatile technique for large DNA manipulation, to selectively isolate the coronary artery disease (CAD) interval sequence within the 9p21.3 chromosome locus from a patient with coronary artery disease and normal individuals. Four tandem head-to-tail duplicons, each ∼50 kb long, were recovered in the patient but not in normal individuals. Sequence analysis revealed that the repeats varied by 10-15 SNPs between each other and by 82 SNPs between the human genome sequence (version hg19). SNPs polymorphism within the junctions between repeats allowed two junction types to be distinguished, Type 1 and Type 2, which were found at a 2:1 ratio. The junction sequences contained an Alu element, a sequence previously shown to play a role in duplication. Knowledge of structural variation in the CAD interval from more patients could help link this locus to cardiovascular diseases susceptibility, and maybe relevant to other cases of regional amplification, including cancer.
Visuospatial Working Memory as a Fundamental Component of the Eye Movement System

Humans make frequent movements of the eyes (saccades) to explore the visual environment. Here, we argue that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) is a fundamental component of the eye movement system. Memory representations in VSWM are functionally integrated at all stages of orienting: (a) selection of the target; (b) maintenance of visual features across the saccade; (c) the computation of object correspondence after the saccade, supporting the experience of perceptual continuity; and (d) the correction of gaze when the eyes fail to land on the intended object. VSWM is finely tuned to meet the challenges of active vision.
Defence Responses of Arabidopsis thaliana to Infection by Pseudomonas syringae Are Regulated by the Circadian Clock

The circadian clock allows plants to anticipate predictable daily changes in abiotic stimuli, such as light; however, whether the clock similarly allows plants to anticipate interactions with other organisms is unknown. Here we show that Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) has circadian clock-mediated variation in resistance to the virulent bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 (Pst DC3000), with plants being least susceptible to infection in the subjective morning. We suggest that the increased resistance to Pst DC3000 observed in the morning in Col-0 plants results from clock-mediated modulation of pathogen associated molecular pattern (PAMP)-triggered immunity. Analysis of publicly available microarray data revealed that a large number of Arabidopsis defence-related genes showed both diurnal- and circadian-regulation, including genes involved in the perception of the PAMP flagellin which exhibit a peak in expression in the morning. Accordingly, we observed that PAMP-triggered callose deposition was significantly higher in wild-type plants inoculated with Pst DC3000 hrpA in the subjective morning than in the evening, while no such temporal difference was evident in arrhythmic plants. Our results suggest that PAMP-triggered immune responses are modulated by the circadian clock and that temporal regulation allows plants to anticipate and respond more effectively to pathogen challenges in the daytime.
Dual process in large number estimation under uncertainty

According to dual process theory, there are two systems in the mind: an intuitive and automatic System 1 and a logical and effortful System 2. While many previous studies about number estimation have focused on simple heuristics and automatic processes, the deliberative System 2 process has not been sufficiently studied. This study focused on the System 2 process for large number estimation. First, we described an estimation process based on participants’ verbal reports. The task, corresponding to the problem-solving process, consisted of creating subgoals, retrieving values, and applying operations. Second, we investigated the influence of such deliberative process by System 2 on intuitive estimation by System 1, using anchoring effects. The results of the experiment showed that the System 2 process could mitigate anchoring effects.
A low-barrier hydrogen bond mediates antibiotic resistance in a noncanonical catalytic triad

Substrate participation in forming a catalytic triad aids in antibiotic resistance by aminoglycoside N3-acetyltransferases. One group of enzymes that confer resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics through covalent modification belongs to the GCN5-related N-acetyltransferase (GNAT) superfamily. We show how a unique GNAT subfamily member uses a previously unidentified noncanonical catalytic triad, consisting of a glutamic acid, a histidine, and the antibiotic substrate itself, which acts as a nucleophile and attacks the acetyl donor molecule. Neutron diffraction studies allow for unambiguous identification of a low-barrier hydrogen bond, predicted in canonical catalytic triads to increase basicity of the histidine. This work highlights the role of this unique catalytic triad in mediating antibiotic resistance while providing new insights into the design of the next generation of aminoglycosides.
Local Word Embeddings for Query Expansion Based on Co-Authorship and Citations

Word embedding techniques have gained a lot of interest from natural language processing researchers recently and they are valuable resource in identifying a list of semantically related terms for a search query. These related terms build a natural addition for query expansion, but might mismatch when the application domains use different jargon. Using the Skip-Gram algorithm of Word2Vec, terms are selected only from a specific subset of the corpus, which is extended by documents from co-authorship and citations. We demonstrate that locally-trained word embeddings with this extension provides a valuable augmentation and can improve retrieval performance. First result suggest that query expansion and word embeddings could also benefit from other related information.
Mechanical and shape-memory behavior of shape-memory polymer composites with hybrid fillers

Shape-memory polymer (SMP) materials have several drawbacks such as low strength, low stiffness and natural insulating tendencies, which seriously limit their development and applications. Much effort has been made to improve their mechanical properties by adding particle or fiber fillers to reinforce the polymer matrix. However, this often leads to the mechanical properties being enhanced slightly, but the shape-memory effect of reinforced SMP composites being drastically reduced. The experimental results reported here suggested that the mechanical resistive loading and thermal conductivity of a composite (with hybrid filler content of 7.0 wt%) were improved by 160 and 200%, respectively, in comparison with those of pure bulk SMP. Also, the glass transition temperature of the composite was enhanced to 57.28 °C from the 46.38 °C of a composite filled with 5.5 wt% hybrid filler, as determined from differential scanning calorimetry measurements. Finally, the temperature distribution and recovery behavior of specimens were recorded with infrared video in a recovery test, where a 28 V direct current circuit was applied. The effectiveness of carbon black and short carbon fibers being incorporated into a SMP with shape recovery activated by electricity has been demonstrated. These hybrid fillers were explored to improve the mechanical and conductive properties of bulk SMP. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry
100-megawatt Q-switched Er-glass laser

A very high energy Q-switched Er-glass laser is reported. We incorporated a rotating, resonant mirror/Porro-cavity reflector optical arrangement to achieve very high shutter speeds on the cavity Q of a laser designed for energetic, flashlamp-pumped, 600-us, 1540-nm pulses. Reproducible 3.75-J, 35-ns, 1533-nm laser pulses were obtained at a repetition ratc less than 1 minute. Our work shows that reliable, very high energy, Q-switched, Er-glass laser pulses at 1533 nm can be generated mechanically with no apparent damage to laser cavity components. We demonstrate the applications of this eye safe wavelength to energetic processes such as LIBS and materials processing. The laser could also serve as a new tool for bioeffects studies and targeting applications.
Forecasting user attention during everyday mobile interactions using device-integrated and wearable sensors

Visual attention is highly fragmented during mobile interactions, but the erratic nature of attention shifts currently limits attentive user interfaces to adapting after the fact, i.e. after shifts have already happened. We instead study attention forecasting - the challenging task of predicting users' gaze behaviour (overt visual attention) in the near future. We present a novel long-term dataset of everyday mobile phone interactions, continuously recorded from 20 participants engaged in common activities on a university campus over 4.5 hours each (more than 90 hours in total). We propose a proof-of-concept method that uses device-integrated sensors and body-worn cameras to encode rich information on device usage and users' visual scene. We demonstrate that our method can forecast bidirectional attention shifts and predict whether the primary attentional focus is on the handheld mobile device. We study the impact of different feature sets on performance and discuss the significant potential but also remaining challenges of forecasting user attention during mobile interactions.
A Review of Multimode Interference in Tapered Optical Fibers and Related Applications

In recent years, tapered optical fibers (TOFs) have attracted increasing interest and developed into a range of devices used in many practical applications ranging from optical communication, sensing to optical manipulation and high-Q resonators. Compared with conventional optical fibers, TOFs possess a range of unique features, such as large evanescent field, strong optical confinement, mechanical flexibility and compactness. In this review, we critically summarize the multimode interference in TOFs and some of its applications with a focus on our research project undertaken at the Optoelectronics Research Centre of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
Effect of the pattern of food intake on human energy metabolism

The pattern of food intake can affect the regulation of body weight and lipogenesis. We studied the effect of meal frequency on human energy expenditure (EE) and its components. During 1 week ten male adults (age 25–61 years, body mass index 20·7–30·4 kg/m2) were fed to energy balance at two meals/d (gorging pattern) and during another week at seven meals/d (nibbling pattern). For the first 6 d of each week the food was provided at home, followed by a 36 h stay in a respiration chamber. O2 consumption and CO2 production (and hence EE) were calculated over 24 h. EE in free-living conditions was measured over the 2 weeks with doubly-labelled water (average daily metabolic rate, ADMR). The three major components of ADMR are basal metabolic rate (BMR), diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) and EE for physical activity (ACT). There was no significant effect of meal frequency on 24 h EE or ADMR. Furthermore, BMR and ACT did not differ between the two patterns. DIT was significantly elevated in the gorging pattern, but this effect was neutralized by correction for the relevant time interval. With the method used for determination of DIT no significant effect of meal frequency on the contribution of DIT to ADMR could be demonstrated.
3D Scene Reconstruction Using Omnidirectional Vision and LiDAR: A Hybrid Approach

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to obtain accurate 3D reconstructions of large-scale environments by means of a mobile acquisition platform. The system incorporates a Velodyne LiDAR scanner, as well as a Point Grey Ladybug panoramic camera system. It was designed with genericity in mind, and hence, it does not make any assumption about the scene or about the sensor set-up. The main novelty of this work is that the proposed LiDAR mapping approach deals explicitly with the inhomogeneous density of point clouds produced by LiDAR scanners. To this end, we keep track of a global 3D map of the environment, which is continuously improved and refined by means of a surface reconstruction technique. Moreover, we perform surface analysis on consecutive generated point clouds in order to assure a perfect alignment with the global 3D map. In order to cope with drift, the system incorporates loop closure by determining the pose error and propagating it back in the pose graph. Our algorithm was exhaustively tested on data captured at a conference building, a university campus and an industrial site of a chemical company. Experiments demonstrate that it is capable of generating highly accurate 3D maps in very challenging environments. We can state that the average distance of corresponding point pairs between the ground truth and estimated point cloud approximates one centimeter for an area covering approximately 4000 m2. To prove the genericity of the system, it was tested on the well-known Kitti vision benchmark. The results show that our approach competes with state of the art methods without making any additional assumptions.
An Assessment of the Impact of Urbanization on Soil Erosion in Inner Mongolia

Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China, has experienced severe soil erosion following a period of rapid economic development and urbanization. To investigate how urbanization has influenced the extent of soil erosion in Inner Mongolia, we used urbanization and soil erosion data from 2000 through 2010 to determine the relationship between urbanization and soil erosion patterns. Two empirical equations—the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and the Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ)—were used to estimate the intensity of soil erosion, and we performed backward linear regression to model how it changed with greater urbanization. There was an apparent increase in the rate of urbanization and a decrease in the area affected by soil erosion in 2010 compared to the corresponding values for 2000. The urban population stood at 11.32 million in 2010, which represented a 16.47% increase over that in 2000. The area affected by soil erosion in 2000 totaled 704,817 km2, yet it had decreased to 674,135 km2 by 2010. However, a path of modest urban development (rural–urban mitigation) and reasonable industrial structuring (the development of GDP-2) may partially reduce urbanization’s ecological pressure and thus indirectly reduce the threat of soil erosion to human security. Therefore, to better control soil erosion in Inner Mongolia during the process of urbanization, the current model of economic development should be modified to improve the eco-efficiency of urbanization, while also promoting new modes of urbanization that are environmentally sustainable, cost-effective, and conserve limited resources.
What Can the Spinal Cord Teach Us about Learning and Memory?

The work of recent decades has shown that the nervous system changes continually throughout life. Activity-dependent central nervous system (CNS) plasticity has many different mechanisms and involves essentially every region, from the cortex to the spinal cord. This new knowledge radically changes the challenge of explaining learning and memory and greatly increases the relevance of the spinal cord. The challenge is now to explain how continual and ubiquitous plasticity accounts for the initial acquisition and subsequent stability of many different learned behaviors. The spinal cord has a key role because it is the final common pathway for all behavior and is a site of substantial plasticity. Furthermore, because it is simple, accessible, distant from the rest of the CNS, and directly connected to behavior, the spinal cord is uniquely suited for identifying sites and mechanisms of plasticity and for determining how they account for behavioral change. Experimental models based on spinal cord reflexes facilitate study of the gradual plasticity that makes possible most rapid learning phenomena. These models reveal principles and generate concepts that are likely to apply to learning and memory throughout the CNS. In addition, they offer new approaches to guiding activity-dependent plasticity so as to restore functions lost to injury or disease.
Artificial Antigen Presenting Cells: An Off the Shelf Approach for Generation of Desirable T-Cell Populations for Broad Application of Adoptive Immunotherapy

Adoptive transfer of antigen specific T-cells can lead to eradication of cancer and viral infections. The broad application of this approach has further been hampered by the limited availability of adequate numbers of T-cells for treatment in a timely manner. This has led to efforts for the development of efficient methods to generate large numbers of T-cells with specificity for tumor or viral antigens that can be harnessed for use in cancer therapy. Recent studies have demonstrated that during encounter with tumor antigen, the signals delivered to T-cells by professional antigen-presenting cells can affect T-cell programming and their subsequent therapeutic efficacy. This has stimulated efforts to develop artificial antigen-presenting cells that allow optimal control over the signals provided to T-cells. In this review, we will discuss the cellular artificial antigen-presenting cell systems and their use in T-cell adoptive immunotherapy for cancer and infections.
An Implementation of VR Chemistry Experiment System

This paper introduces a virtual reality (VR) chemical experiment system using a wireless Head-mounted displays (HMD) and a Leap Motion. Using a wireless network, the system integrates the server and client without extra wearable device so as to provide an immersive virtual experience of chemistry education. The Leap Motion is utilized to detect hands and fingers' position and motion information, which is delivered to the VR server and client. In the client, a virtual environment is represented to user's sight by the HMD with a smart phone, which has a certain computation capability. The user is able to control his avatar in the virtual environment of chemical experiment, which interacts with virtual objects in real time.
Predicting the effects of parasite co-infection across species boundaries

It is normal for hosts to be co-infected by parasites. Interactions among co-infecting species can have profound consequences, including changing parasite transmission dynamics, altering disease severity and confounding attempts at parasite control. Despite the importance of co-infection, there is currently no way to predict how different parasite species may interact with one another, nor the consequences of those interactions. Here, we demonstrate a method that enables such prediction by identifying two nematode parasite groups based on taxonomy and characteristics of the parasitological niche. From an understanding of the interactions between the two defined groups in one host system (wild rabbits), we predict how two different nematode species, from the same defined groups, will interact in co-infections in a different host system (sheep), and then we test this experimentally. We show that, as predicted, in co-infections, the blood-feeding nematode Haemonchus contortus suppresses aspects of the sheep immune response, thereby facilitating the establishment and/or survival of the nematode Trichostrongylus colubriformis; and that the T. colubriformis-induced immune response negatively affects H. contortus. This work is, to our knowledge, the first to use empirical data from one host system to successfully predict the specific outcome of a different co-infection in a second host species. The study therefore takes the first step in defining a practical framework for predicting interspecific parasite interactions in other animal systems.
Essential Roles of E3 Ubiquitin Ligases in p53 Regulation

The ubiquitination pathway and proteasomal degradation machinery dominantly regulate p53 tumor suppressor protein stability, localization, and functions in both normal and cancerous cells. Selective E3 ubiquitin ligases dominantly regulate protein levels and activities of p53 in a large range of physiological conditions and in response to cellular changes induced by exogenous and endogenous stresses. The regulation of p53’s functions by E3 ubiquitin ligases is a complex process that can lead to positive or negative regulation of p53 protein in a context- and cell type-dependent manner. Accessory proteins bind and modulate E3 ubiquitin ligases, adding yet another layer of regulatory control for p53 and its downstream functions. This review provides a comprehensive understanding of p53 regulation by selective E3 ubiquitin ligases and their potential to be considered as a new class of biomarkers and therapeutic targets in diverse types of cancers.