Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Active immunization alters the plasma nicotine concentration in rats.

The ability of active immunization to alter nicotine distribution was studied in rats. Animals were immunized with 6-(carboxymethylureido)-(+/-)-nicotine (CMUNic) linked to keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH). Antibody titers determined by ELISA, using CMUNic coupled to albumin as the coating antigen, were greater than 1:10,000. Antibody binding was inhibited by neither of the nicotine metabolites cotinine and nicotine-N-oxide but was inhibited to a greater extent by CMUNic than by nicotine; this suggests the presence of antibodies to the linker structure as well as antibodies to nicotine. Antibody affinity for nicotine measured by soluble radioimmunoassay was 2.4 +/- 1.6 x 10(7) M-1, and binding capacity was 1.3 +/- 0.7 x 10(-6) M, which corresponds to 0.1 +/- 0.05 mg/ml of nicotine-specific IgG per milliliter of serum. One week after their second boost, groups of eight anesthetized rats immunized with either CMUNic-KLH or KLH alone received nicotine 0.03 mg/kg (equivalent to two cigarettes in a human) via the jugular vein over 10 sec. This dosing regimen was shown to mimic the arterio-venous nicotine concentration gradient typical of nicotine delivered by cigarette smoking in humans. Plasma nicotine concentrations at 10 to 40 min were 4 to 6-fold higher in the CMUNic-KLH rats than in controls (P < .001). Nicotine binding in plasma determined by equilibrium dialysis was markedly increased in the CMUNic-KLH group (83.4 +/- 6.8% vs. 16.4 +/- 14.2%), but brain nicotine concentrations at 40 min did not differ (37.9 +/- 4.5 vs. 44.0 +/- 8. 4 ng/g, CMUNic-KLH vs. KLH, P = .1). The amount of nicotine bound to antibody in plasma, estimated from the in vivo data, was 9% of the administered dose. These data demonstrate that active immunization can bind a significant fraction of a clinically relevant nicotine dose in plasma. Observing this effect with antibodies of modest affinity and titer is encouraging, but better immunogens may be needed to alter nicotine distribution to brain and modify nicotine's behavioral effects.
Control of hysteresis: theory and experimental results

Hysteresis in smart materials hinders the wider applicability of such materials in actuators. In this paper, a systematic approach for coping with hysteresis is presented. The method is illustrated through the example of controlling a commercially available magnetostrictive actuator. We utilize the low-dimensional model for the magnetostrictive actuator that was developed in earlier work. For low frequency inputs, the model approximates to a rate-independent hysteresis operator, with current as its input and magnetization as its output. Magnetostrictive strain is proportional to the square of the magnetization. In this paper, we use a classical Preisach operator for the rate-independent hysteresis operator. In this paper, we present the results of experiments conducted on a commercial magnetostrictive actuator, the purpose of which was the control of the displacement/strain output. A constrained least-squares algorithm is employed to identify a discrete approximation to the Preisach measure. We then discuss a nonlinear inversion algorithm for the resulting Preisach operator, based on the theory of strictly-increasing operators. This algorithm yields a control input signal to produce a desired magnetostrictive response. The effectiveness of the inversion scheme is demonstrated via an open-loop trajectory tracking experiment.
Evolutionary and developmental dynamics of the dentition in Muroidea and Dipodoidea (Rodentia, Mammalia)

SUMMARY When it comes to mouse evo‐devo, the fourth premolar–first molar (P4–M1) dental complex becomes a source of longstanding controversies among paleontologists and biologists. Muroidea possess only molar teeth but with additional mesial cusps on their M1. Developmental studies tend to demonstrate that the formation of such mesial cusps could result from the integration of a P4 germ into M1 during odontogenesis. Conversely, most Dipodoidea conserve their fourth upper premolars and those that lost these teeth can also bear additional mesial cusps on their first upper molars. The aim of this study is to assess this developmental model in both Muroidea and Dipodoidea by documenting the morphological evolution of the P4–M1 complex across 50 Ma. Fourteen extinct and extant species, including abnormal and mutant specimens were investigated. We found that, even if their dental evolutionary pathways strongly differ, Dipodoidea and Muroidea retain common developmental characteristics because some of them can present similar dental morphological trends. It also appears that the acquisition of a mesial cusp on M1 is independent from the loss of P4 in both superfamilies. Actually, the progressive decrease of the inhibitory effect of P4, consequent to its regression, could allow the M1 to lengthen and mesial cusps to grow in Muroidea. Apart from these developmental explanations, patternings of the mesial part of first molars are also deeply constrained by morpho‐functional requirements. As there is no obvious evidence of such mechanisms in Dipodoidea given their more variable dental morphologies, further developmental investigations are needed.
Molecular Mechanism of Yisui Shengxue Granule, a Complex Chinese Medicine, on Thalassemia Patients Suffering from Hemolysis and Anemia of Erythrocytes

The objective of this study was to investigate the therapeutic biological mechanism of Yisui Shengxue Granule (YSSXG), a complex Chinese medicine, on the hemolysis and anemia of erythrocytes from patient with thalassemia disease. Sixteen patients with thalassemia (8 cases of α-thalassemia and 8 cases of β-thalassemia) disease were collected and treated with YSSXG for 3 months. The improvements of blood parameter demonstrated that YSSXG had a positive clinical effect on patients with thalassemia disease. For patients with α-thalassemia disease, RT-PCR showed that YSSXG upregulated the relative mRNA expression level of α-globin to β-globin and downregulated DNMT1, DNMT3a, and DNMT3b mRNA compared with pretreatment. Western blotting showed that YSSXG downregulated the expression of DNMT1 and DNMT3a. For patients with β-thalassemia disease, the relative expression level of A γ-globin to α-globin had an increasing trend and the level of BCL11A mRNA expression obviously increased. For all patients, RT-PCR showed that YSSXG upregulated mRNA expression of SPTA1 and SPTB. Activities of SOD and GSH-Px significantly increased and MDA obviously reduced on erythrocyte and blood serum after YSSXG treatment. TEM showed that YSSXG decreased the content of inclusion bodies. Activities of Na+K+-ATPtase and T-ATPtase of erythrocyte increased significantly after YSSXG treatment. This study provides the basis for mechanisms of YSSXG on thalassemia suffering with hemolysis and anemia of erythrocytes from patient.
How Do Consumers Motivate Experts? Reputational Incentives in an Auto Repair Market*

Moral hazard exists in expert‐service markets because sellers have an incentive to shade their reports of the buyer's condition to increase the short‐run demand for their services. The California vehicle emission inspection market offers a rare opportunity to examine how reputational incentives work in such a market. I show that consumers are 30 percent more likely to return to a firm at which they previously passed than to one at which they previously failed and that demand is sensitive to a firm's failure rate across all consumers. These and other results suggest that demand incentives are strong in this market because consumers believe that firms differ greatly in their consumer friendliness and are skeptical even about those they choose. Weak demand incentives in other expert‐service markets are not a direct consequence of moral hazard, but rather of its interaction with switching costs and consumers' belief that firms are relatively homogeneous.
Advanced Lightweight, Dependable and secure Trust System for Clustered wireless sensor networks

□ The major challenge faced by wireless sensor networks are security and communication delay. To solve this issue, a trust model is required to identify malevolent, selfish and compromised nodes. The existing trust systems developed for WSNs are incapable of satisfying these requirements because of their high overhead and low dependability. This paper does a brief review of the various trust models. Wide varieties of trust models are currently available to improve security and efficiency of wireless sensor networks. Among them, Lightweight Dependable Trust System for Clustered wireless sensor network (LDTS) is a suitable one. The LDTS proposes a lightweight trust decision making scheme predicated on nodes in the clustered WSNs. To reduce calculation overheads and improve energy efficiency LDTS is enhanced by integrating a unique protocol defined for data exchange and whenever a node transmits a packet, the packet is validated against this protocol.
Performance analysis of multi-threaded multi-core CPUs

Processors are constantly changing and becoming more advanced. They incorporate new concepts and ideas into the architecture with each evolution. One such concept is multi-threading. It aims at increasing the processors performance by reducing its idle time. It is the ability of the processor to execute multiple threads simultaneously on different cores present inside. Multi-threading concepts have also been incorporated in embedded systems which employ either a single-core or multi-core architecture. The aim of this study is to evaluate how effectively multi-threading improves processor utilization on multiple cores by taking both single and dual core processors and evaluating the performance of each by comparing the number of instructions executed per second. The results of this study give an edge to multi-threading in a single-core processor when compared to a dual-core processor when performance aspects are considered. Our analysis helps us to design the processor architecture in such a way that we utilize both the concepts of multi-threading and multi-core architecture to achieve maximum performance. The results of Simultaneous Multi-threading (SMT) performance improvement is encouraging when compared with dual-core processors.
Coexistence of WiFi and LTE in unlicensed bands: A proportional fair allocation scheme

The use of the unlicensed spectrum by LTE networks (LTE-U or LAA-LTE) is being considered by mobile operators in order to satisfy increasing traffic demands and to make better use of the licensed spectrum. However, coexistence issues arise when LTE-U coverage overlaps with other technologies currently operating in unlicensed bands, in particular WiFi. Since LTE uses a TDMA/OFDMA scheduled approach, coexisting WiFi networks may face starvation if the channel is fully occupied by LTE-U transmissions. In this paper we derive a novel proportional fair allocation scheme that ensures fair coexistence between LTE-U and WiFi. Importantly, we find that the proportional fair allocation is qualitatively different from previously considered WiFi-only settings and that since the resulting allocation requires only quite limited knowledge of network parameters it is potentially easy to implement in practice, without the need for message-passing between heterogeneous networks.
Regulation of the Yeast Formin Bni1p by the Actin‐Regulating Kinase Prk1p

The formin family of proteins promotes the assembly of linear actin filaments in the cells of diverse eukaryotic organisms. The predominant formins in mammalian cells are self‐inhibited by an intramolecular interaction between two terminal domains and are activated by the binding of the Rho GTPases and other factors. In this study, we show that Bni1p, a formin required for the assembly of actin cables in budding yeast, is also regulated by an autoinhibitory mechanism and phosphorylation by the actin regulatory kinase Prk1p, and possibly Ark1p as well, plays a key role in unlocking the inhibition. Bni1p is phosphorylated by Prk1p at three [L/V/I]xxxxTG motifs in vitro, and the phosphorylation is sufficient to activate Bni1p by disrupting its intramolecular interaction. This finding extends the roles of Prk1p in the regulation of actin dynamics to be associated with both anterograde and retrograde transport pathways, i.e. exocytosis and endocytosis, in yeast.
Lexical Similarity Based On Quantity Of Information Exchanged - Synonym Extraction

There are a lot of approaches for measuring semantic similarities between words. This paper proposes a new method based on the analysis of a monolingual dictionary. We can view the word definitions of a dictionary as a network: its nodes are the headwords found in the dictionary and its edges represent the relations between a headword and the words present in its definition. In this view, the meaning of a word is defined by the total quantity of information, in which each element of its definition contributes. The similarity between two words is defined by the maximal quantity of information exchanged between them through the network. In order to assess the performance, our measure of similarity will be compared with others measures and some applications using this measure will also be described.
In vivo monitoring of Staphylococcus aureus biofilm infections and antimicrobial 1 therapy efficacy by 18 F-FDG-MicroPET in a mouse model 2 3

In vivo monitoring of Staphylococcus aureus biofilm infections and antimicrobial 1 therapy efficacy by F-FDG-MicroPET in a mouse model 2 3 Victoria Garrido, María Collantes, Montserrat Barberán, Iván Peñuelas, Javier Arbizu, 4 Beatriz Amorena, María Jesús Grilló# 5 6 Running head: S. aureus biofilm monitoring by FDG-MicroPET in mice 7 8 Unidad de Sanidad Animal, Instituto de Agrobiotecnología (CSIC-UPNA-Gobierno de 9 Navarra), Mutilva Navarra, Spain; Unidad de Investigación MicroPET, Center for 10 Applied Medical Research (CIMA) and Clínica Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, 11 Spain; Unidad de Histología y Anatomía Patológica, Facultad de Veterinaria, 12 Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain; Servicio de Medicina Nuclear, Clínica 13 Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain 14 15
Capacity bounds via duality with applications to multiple-antenna systems on flat-fading channels

A technique is proposed for the derivation of upper bounds on channel capacity. It is based on a dual expression for channel capacity where the maximization (of mutual information) over distributions on the channel input alphabet is replaced with a minimization (of average relative entropy) over distributions on the channel output alphabet. We also propose a technique for the analysis of the asymptotic capacity of cost-constrained channels. The technique is based on the observation that under fairly mild conditions capacity achieving input distributions "escape to infinity. " The above techniques are applied to multiple-antenna flat-fading channels with memory where the realization of the fading process is unknown at the transmitter and unknown (or only partially known) at the receiver. It is demonstrated that, for high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the capacity of such channels typically grows only double-logarithmically in the SNR. To better understand this phenomenon and the rates at which it occurs, we introduce the fading number as the second-order term in the high-SNR asymptotic expansion of capacity, and derive estimates on its value for various systems. It is suggested that at rates that are significantly higher than the fading number, communication becomes extremely power inefficient, thus posing a practical limit on practically achievable rates. Upper and lower bounds on the fading number are also presented. For single-input-single-output (SISO) systems the bounds coincide, thus yielding a complete characterization of the fading number for general stationary and ergodic fading processes. We also demonstrate that for memoryless multiple-input single-output (MISO) channels, the fading number is achievable using beam-forming, and we derive an expression for the optimal beam direction. This direction depends on the fading law and is, in general, not the direction that maximizes the SNR on the induced SISO channel. Using a new closed-form expression for the expectation of the logarithm of a noncentral chi-square distributed random variable we provide some closed-form expressions for the fading number of some systems with Gaussian fading, including SISO systems with circularly symmetric stationary and ergodic Gaussian fading. The fading number of the latter is determined by the fading mean, fading variance, and the mean squared error in predicting the present fading from its past; it is not directly related to the Doppler spread. For the Rayleigh, Ricean, and multiple-antenna Rayleigh-fading channels we also present firm (nonasymptotic) upper and lower bounds on channel capacity. These bounds are asymptotically tight in the sense that their difference from capacity approaches zero at high SNR, and their ratio to capacity approaches one at low SNR.
Sodium Channel Activation Gating Is Affected by Substitutions of Voltage Sensor Positive Charges in All Four Domains

The role of the voltage sensor positive charges in the activation and deactivation gating of the rat brain IIA sodium channel was investigated by mutating the second and fourth conserved positive charges in the S4 segments of all four homologous domains. Both charge-neutralizing (by glutamine substitution) and -conserving mutations were constructed in a cDNA encoding the sodium channel α subunit that had fast inactivation removed by the incorporation of the IFMQ3 mutation in the III–IV linker (West, J.W., D.E. Patton, T. Scheuer, Y. Wang, A.L. Goldin, and W.A. Catterall. 1992. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 89:10910–10914.). A total of 16 single and 2 double mutants were constructed and analyzed with respect to voltage dependence and kinetics of activation and deactivation. The most significant effects were observed with substitutions of the fourth positive charge in each domain. Neutralization of the fourth positive charge in domain I or II produced the largest shifts in the voltage dependence of activation, both in the positive direction. This change was accompanied by positive shifts in the voltage dependence of activation and deactivation kinetics. Combining the two mutations resulted in an even larger positive shift in half-maximal activation and a significantly reduced gating valence, together with larger positive shifts in the voltage dependence of activation and deactivation kinetics. In contrast, neutralization of the fourth positive charge in domain III caused a negative shift in the voltage of half-maximal activation, while the charge-conserving mutation resulted in a positive shift. Neutralization of the fourth charge in domain IV did not shift the half-maximal voltage of activation, but the conservative substitution produced a positive shift. These data support the idea that both charge and structure are determinants of function in S4 voltage sensors. Overall, the data supports a working model in which all four S4 segments contribute to voltage-dependent activation of the sodium channel.
The Effects of Social Exclusion on Play Experience and Hostile Cognitions in Digital Games

The social nature of multiplayer games provides compelling play experiences that are dynamic, unpredictable, and satisfying; however, playing digital games with others can result in feeling socially excluded. There are several known harmful effects of ostracism, including on cognition and the interpretation of social information. To investigate the effects of social exclusion in the context of a multiplayer game, we developed and validated a social exclusion paradigm that we embedded in an online game. Called Operator Challenge, our paradigm influenced feelings of social exclusion and access to hostile cognitions (measured through a word-completion task). In addition, the degree of experienced belonging predicted player enjoyment, effort, and the number of hostile words completed; however, the experience measures did not mediate the relationship between belonging and access to hostile cognitions. Our work facilitates understanding the causes and effects of exclusion, which is important for the study of player experience in multiplayer games.
Fine-Grained Identification with Real-Time Fairness in Mobile Social Networks

Mutual user identification is a necessary step for trust establishment among users in an unattended mobile social network (MSN). Directly exposing identity information to others unknown may cause total unfairness in identity loss when the other party of the identification process misbehaves. Using an on-line trusted third party (TTP) for user identification will cause communication and security problems, while a traditional off-line TTP solution will generate delay in fairness enforcement. In this paper, we propose a novel fine-grained identification protocol, which provides confidentiality, unlinkability, and real-time fairness without the involvement of TTP. In the protocol, identification is carried out by an iterative identification information exchange process, where two participating users have to disclose part of their identification information to each other in each iteration. The process terminates whenever one of them fails to do so. In this way, if a user loses part of its identification information to another user, then it must have obtained an approximately equal amount of identification information of that user. Therefore, misbehavior is discouraged, and fairness is improved. Through analysis we demonstrate that fairness can be well guaranteed as long as users strictly follow the protocol rules. Extensive simulation results further confirm that the proposed protocol can significantly reduce fairness loss in MSN environment.
3D face recognition

Face recognition has recently received much attention as a biometric security means well accepted by users. 3D face recognition, exploiting the geometry of the facial surface, addresses the two most sensitive aspects of face recognition: viewpoint and illumination changes. This paper presents a 3D face recognition approach based on the geometrical comparison of a set of profiles. These profiles are obtained as parallel planar cuts of the facial surfaces. In a first step, normalised profiles are extracted from each face independently thanks to the intrinsic symmetry of faces. The homologue profiles of test and reference surfaces are then matched two by two. The individual distances of profile pairs are combined into a global distance. The global distance after optimisation is used as criterion to state the similarity of faces. Results are presented for a population of 81 persons of a 3D face database of intermediate quality.
Entropy and n-gram Analysis of Malicious PDF Documents

Malware is a persistent problem in field of computer security and its complexity has increased multiple folds in past decade. In past few years malicious documents attacks have emerged as preferred method to bypass the security of a host computer. This work assumes that such kind of exploits do not carry any important information and hence should not be highly random. However use of randomness is not a deterministic approach for detection of malicious code but gives a useful indication to malware analyst. This research report presents two discrete analyses of malicious PDF documents. One is entropy and other being n-gram term frequency.