Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The OLCI Neural Network Swarm (ONNS): A Bio-Geo-Optical Algorithm for Open Ocean and Coastal Waters

The processing scheme of a novel in-water algorithm for the retrieval of ocean color products from Sentinel-3 OLCI is introduced. The algorithm consists of several blended neural networks that are specialized for 13 different optical water classes. These comprise clearest natural waters but also waters reaching the frontiers of marine optical remote sensing, namely extreme absorbing or scattering waters. Considered chlorophyll concentrations reach up to 200 mg m-3, non-algae particle concentrations up to 1500 g m-3, and the absorption coefficient of colored dissolved organic matter at 440 nm is up to 20 m-1. The algorithm generates different concentrations of water constituents, inherent and apparent optical properties, and a color index. In addition, all products are delivered with an uncertainty estimate. A baseline validation of the products is provided for various water types. We conclude that the algorithm is suitable for the remote sensing estimation of water properties and constituents of most natural waters.
ISOLATION AND PARTIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF LYMPHOCYTE SURFACE IMMUNOGLOBULINS

Immunoglobulins were isolated from the surfaces of lymphocytes from a variety of lymphocyte populations including murine and human thymus lymphocytes and murine spleen and thoracic duct lymphocytes. Cell surface proteins were labeled with iodide-125I by lactoperoxidase-catalyzed iodination, and recovered in solution either by solubilization in dissociating solvents or active metabolic release. Immunoglobulins were identified and isolated by immunological coprecipitation. The polypeptide chain structure of immunoglobulins isolated from lymphocyte surfaces was analyzed by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of reduced, alkylated samples in acid urea. Human and murine thymus lymphocytes possessed only IgM immunoglobulin on their surfaces. This protein contained light chains and µ-type heavy chains and was characterized by a molecular weight of approximately 200,000. Murine splenic lymphocytes from CBA x C57 animals and congenitally athymic (nu/nu) mice possessed both IgM and IgG on their surfaces. The ratio of µ-chain to γ-chain was about 3/1. The presence of IgM on thymus lymphocytes probably does not reflect trace contamination by B lymphocytes because comparable quantities of IgM were isolated from both cell populations. Metabolic turnover data suggest that this immunoglobulin is synthesized by the cell population studied. These results provide direct evidence for the presence of immunoglobulins composed of light and heavy polypeptide chains on the surfaces of lymphocytes of all classes.
A Parallel Processing Algorithms for Solving Factorization and Knapsack Problems

Quantum and Evolutionary computation are new forms of computing by their unique paradigm for designing algorithms.The Shor’s algorithm is based on quantum concepts such as Qubits, superposition and interference which is used to solve factoring problem that has a great impact on cryptography once the quantum computers becomes a reality. The Genetic algorithm is a computational paradigm based on natural evolution including survival of the fittest, reproduction, and mutation is used to solve NP_hard knapsack problem. These two algorithms are unique in achieving speedup in computation by their adaptation of parallelism in processing.
Sodium and Ionic Strength Sensing by the Calcium Receptor*

The calcium-sensing receptor (CaR) is activated by small changes in extracellular calcium [Ca2+] o ) in the physiological range, allowing the parathyroid gland to regulate serum [Ca2+] o ; however, the CaR is also distributed in a number of other tissues where it may sense other endogenous agonists and modulators. CaR agonists are polycationic molecules, and charged residues in the extracellular domain of the CaR appear critical for receptor activation through electrostatic interactions, suggesting that ionic strength could modulate CaR activation by polycationic agonists. Changes in the concentration of external NaCl potently altered the activation of the CaR by external Ca2+ and spermine. Ionic strength had an inverse effect on the sensitivity of CaR to its agonists, with lowering of ionic strength rendering the receptor more sensitive to activation by [Ca2+] o and raising of ionic strength producing the converse effect. Effects of osmolality could not account for the modulation seen with changes in NaCl. Other salts, which differed in the cationic or anionic species, showed shifts in the activation of the CaR by [Ca2+] o similar to that elicited by NaCl. Parathyroid cells were potently modulated by ionic strength, with addition of 40 mm NaCl shifting the EC50 for [Ca2+] o inhibition of parathyroid hormone by at least 0.5 mm. Several CaR-expressing tissues, including regions of the brain such as the subfornical organ and hypothalamus, could potentially use the CaR as a sensor for ionic strength and NaCl. The Journal guidelines state that the summary should be no longer than 200 words.
SOFI Simulation Tool: A Software Package for Simulating and Testing Super-Resolution Optical Fluctuation Imaging

Super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI) allows one to perform sub-diffraction fluorescence microscopy of living cells. By analyzing the acquired image sequence with an advanced correlation method, i.e. a high-order cross-cumulant analysis, super-resolution in all three spatial dimensions can be achieved. Here we introduce a software tool for a simple qualitative comparison of SOFI images under simulated conditions considering parameters of the microscope setup and essential properties of the biological sample. This tool incorporates SOFI and STORM algorithms, displays and describes the SOFI image processing steps in a tutorial-like fashion. Fast testing of various parameters simplifies the parameter optimization prior to experimental work. The performance of the simulation tool is demonstrated by comparing simulated results with experimentally acquired data.
Advances in the Use of Milk Thistle (Silybum marianum)

Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) is an herbal supplement used to treat liver and biliary disorders. Silymarin, a mixture of flavanoid complexes, is the active component that protects liver and kidney cells from toxic effects of drugs, including chemotherapy. Although milk thistle has not significantly altered the course of chronic liver disease, it has reduced liver enzyme levels and demonstrated anti-inflammatory and T cell—modulating effects. There is strong preclinical evidence for silymarin's hepatoprotective and anticarcinogenic effects, including inhibition of cancer cell growth in human prostate, skin, breast, and cervical cells. Milk thistle is considered safe and well-tolerated, with gastrointestinal upset, a mild laxative effect, and rare allergic reaction being the only adverse events reported when taken within the recommended dose range. More clinical trials of rigorous methodology, using standardized and well-defined products and dosages, are needed to evaluate the potential of silymarin against liver toxicity, chronic liver disease, and human cancers.
Comparative analysis of verbal alignment in human-human and human-agent interactions

Engagement is an important feature in human-human and human-agent interaction. In this paper, we investigate lexical alignment as a cue of engagement, relying on two different corpora : CID and SEMAINE. Our final goal is to build a virtual conversational character that could use alignment strategies to maintain user’s engagement. To do so, we investigate two alignment processes : shared vocabulary and other-repetitions. A quantitative and qualitative approach is proposed to characterize these aspects in human-human (CID) and human-operator (SEMAINE) interactions. Our results show that these processes are observable in both corpora, indicating a stable pattern that can be further modelled in conversational agents.
RED : A Model To Analyze Web Navigation Patterns

Internet has become a popular medium to get and provide information and services. Every user is a potential client, and every site a potential competitor. Surfing the Web produces a trace that hides important information concerning business opportunities and site usability issues. This paper discusses the use of an intelligent agent to interpret Web navigation history and act opportunistically to take advantage of business opportunities. We argue that such an agent should work off-line discovering relevant navigation patterns and work on-line acting upon this information to send messages or change a Web page’s content, whenever a relevant navigation sequence is recognized.
Diglons are heterodimeric proteins composed of IgLON subunits, and Diglon-CO inhibits neurite outgrowth from cerebellar granule cells

IgLONs are a family of four cell adhesion molecules belonging to the Ig superfamily that are thought to play a role in cell-cell recognition and growth-cone migration. One member of the family, opioid-binding cell-adhesion molecule (OBCAM), might act as a tumour suppressor. Previous work has shown that limbic-system-associated protein (LAMP), CEPU-1/Neurotrimin and OBCAM interact homophilically and heterophilically within the family. Here, we show that, based on their relative affinities, CEPU-1 might be both a homo- and a heterophilic cell adhesion molecule, whereas LAMP and OBCAM act only as heterophilic cell adhesion molecules. A binding assay using recombinant IgLONs fused to human Fc showed that IgLONs are organized in the plane of the membrane as heterodimers, and we propose that IgLONs function predominantly as subunits of heterodimeric proteins (Diglons). Thus, the four IgLONs can form six Diglons. Furthermore, although singly transfected cell lines have little effect on neurite outgrowth, CHO cell lines expressing both CEPU-1 and OBCAM (Diglon-CO) inhibit neurite outgrowth from cerebellar granule cells.
The Effect of Vaccination on the Evolution and Population Dynamics of Avian Paramyxovirus-1

Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) is a pathogenic strain of avian paramyxovirus (aPMV-1) that is among the most serious of disease threats to the poultry industry worldwide. Viral diversity is high in aPMV-1; eight genotypes are recognized based on phylogenetic reconstruction of gene sequences. Modified live vaccines have been developed to decrease the economic losses caused by this virus. Vaccines derived from avirulent genotype II strains were developed in the 1950s and are in use globally, whereas Australian strains belonging to genotype I were developed as vaccines in the 1970s and are used mainly in Asia. In this study, we evaluated the consequences of attenuated live virus vaccination on the evolution of aPMV-1 genotypes. There was phylogenetic incongruence among trees based on individual genes and complete coding region of 54 full length aPMV-1 genomes, suggesting that recombinant sequences were present in the data set. Subsequently, five recombinant genomes were identified, four of which contained sequences from either genotype I or II. The population history of vaccine-related genotype II strains was distinct from other aPMV-1 genotypes; genotype II emerged in the late 19th century and is evolving more slowly than other genotypes, which emerged in the 1960s. Despite vaccination efforts, genotype II viruses have experienced constant population growth to the present. In contrast, other contemporary genotypes showed population declines in the late 1990s. Additionally, genotype I and II viruses, which are circulating in the presence of homotypic vaccine pressure, have unique selection profiles compared to nonvaccine-related strains. Collectively, these data show that vaccination with live attenuated viruses has changed the evolution of aPMV-1 by maintaining a large effective population size of a vaccine-related genotype, allowing for coinfection and recombination of vaccine and wild type strains, and by applying unique selective pressures on viral glycoproteins.
High‐volume infiltration analgesia in total knee arthroplasty: a randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial

Background: High‐volume infiltration analgesia may be effective with a low risk of side effects in hip and knee arthroplasty. The present placebo‐controlled study was carried out to evaluate the analgesic effect of high‐volume infiltration analgesia in bilateral total knee arthroplasty, along with a detailed description of the infiltration technique.
Synchronization of biological neural network systems with stochastic perturbations and time delays

With advances in biochemistry, molecular biology, and neurochemistry there has been impressive progress in the understanding of the molecular properties of anesthetic agents. However, despite these advances, we still do not understand how anesthetic agents affect the properties of neurons that translate into the induction of general anesthesia at the macroscopic level. There is extensive experimental verification that collections of neurons may function as oscillators and the synchronization of oscillators may play a key role in the transmission of information within the central nervous system. This may be particularly relevant to understanding the mechanism of action for general anesthesia. In this paper, we develop a stochastic synaptic drive firing rate model for an excitatory and inhibitory cortical neuronal network in the face of system time delays. In addition, we provide sufficient conditions for global asymptotic mean-square synchronization for this model.
On the Etiology of Climates.

A review of some of the conceptual and methodological progress that has been made in the area of climate research is presented. A discussion of current thinking on the etiology of climates follows, and an integrative conceptual scheme is developed. This perspective is based on Mead's (1934) symbolic interactionism as the process through which individuals come to attach meaning to events. Implications of this approach to the etiology of climates are discussed with respect to measurement issues, the management of climate acquisition in organizations, and the change and development of climates over time.
Constrained Low-Rank Representation for Robust Subspace Clustering

Subspace clustering aims to partition the data points drawn from a union of subspaces according to their underlying subspaces. For accurate semisupervised subspace clustering, all data that have a must-link constraint or the same label should be grouped into the same underlying subspace. However, this is not guaranteed in existing approaches. Moreover, these approaches require additional parameters for incorporating supervision information. In this paper, we propose a constrained low-rank representation (CLRR) for robust semisupervised subspace clustering, based on a novel constraint matrix constructed in this paper. While seeking the low-rank representation of data, CLRR explicitly incorporates supervision information as hard constraints for enhancing the discriminating power of optimal representation. This strategy can be further extended to other state-of-the-art methods, such as sparse subspace clustering. We theoretically prove that the optimal representation matrix has both a block-diagonal structure with clean data and a semisupervised grouping effect with noisy data. We have also developed an efficient optimization algorithm based on alternating the direction method of multipliers for CLRR. Our experimental results have demonstrated that CLRR outperforms existing methods.
Private security and crime control

This article argues that the persistence of coercive tactics is not just limited to the excluded, the anti-citizens. It explores the routine use of coercion in contemporary practices for the government of conduct. Rather than simply seen as repressive or negative, such strategies are best regarded as productive, seeking to shape individual agency in particular ways. I point to the range of punitive measures operated by private security and highlight the multiple objectifications of the governed that these specify.
Un robot motivé pour apprendre : Le rôle des motivations intrinsèques dans le développement sensorimoteur

Cet article presente des travaux recents qui illustrent comment un robot dote d’un systeme de motivation intrinseque peut explorer son environnement et apprendre une succession de tâches qui n’ont pas ete specifiees par son programmeur. Un programme generique controle le robot et le pousse a rechercher des situations ou ses progres en prediction sont maximaux. Ces situations, que l’on appelle " niches de progres ", dependent des opportunites presentes dans l’environnement mais aussi de la morphologie, des contraintes cognitives specifiques, et de l’experience passee du robot. Des premiers resultats ont ete obtenus dans le domaine de la locomotion, de la decouverte des " affordances ", et des echanges prelinguistiques. Dans chacune de ces experiences, le robot explore les situations " interessantes " de son point de vue par rapport a ses capacites d’apprentissage et les contraintes de son espace sensorimoteur. L’article discute les resultats de ces premieres experiences et conclut sur la possibilite de fournir en retour aux neurosciences et a la psychologie, inspiratrices de ces travaux en robotique, de nouvelles pistes de reflexions et de nouveaux concepts pour penser les processus de developpement chez l’enfant.
Programming Plans and Programming Expertise

This paper addresses issues of the nature of expertise in programming and asks whether “programming plans” represent the underlying deep structure of a program. It reports an experiment that investigated the effect, on experienced programmers, of highlighting the plan structure of a computer program, while they were performing both plan-related and unrelated tasks. The effect was examined in both Pascal and BASIC. For Pascal programmers, perceptual cues to the plan structure were useful only for plan-related tasks, but the same cues were of no benefit to experienced BASIC programmers in any of the tasks. These results suggest that the actual content of programming plans does not generalise across different languages, although it is possible that the BASIC programmers can use other plans. From these results a more detailed description of programming plans and their role in programming expertise can be developed. The fact that BASIC programmers were not sensitive to the same plans as Pascal programmers implies that plans cannot represent the underlying deep structure of the programming problem.
Superior cytotoxicity with ganciclovir compared with acyclovir and 1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylthymine in herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase-expressing cells: a novel paradigm for cell killing.

Enzyme-prodrug therapy using ganciclovir and herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) has demonstrated excellent antitumor activity in many different types of malignant cells. Previously, we noted that ganciclovir was substantially more cytotoxic than other HSV-TK substrates. Therefore, we embarked on a study to determine the basis for the superior cytotoxicity of ganciclovir. In U251tk human glioblastoma cells that stably express HSV-TK, ganciclovir elicited a >4 log cell kill instead of the < or =1.5 log cell kill mediated by two other HSV-TK substrates, 1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylthymine (araT) and acyclovir. Study of the metabolism of these drugs demonstrated that acyclovir was poorly phosphorylated to its active triphosphate with DNA incorporation below the limit of detection, which may explain the < 1 log cell kill in these cells. Lower levels of ganciclovir triphosphate accumulated compared with araT triphosphate (araTTP) under conditions that induced < or =1 log cell kill (67 versus 1235 pmol/10(7) cells, respectively), and the half-life for the triphosphate of ganciclovir was shorter than that of araT (terminal half-lives of 15 and 41 h, respectively). Incorporation of ganciclovir monophosphate into DNA was less than that of araT monophosphate, and both analogues were retained in DNA for > or =48 h. Thus, the superior cytotoxicity of ganciclovir was not due to enhanced metabolism to active forms. Highly cytotoxic concentrations of ganciclovir produced only weak inhibition of DNA synthesis. This allowed cells to proceed through S and G2-M phases during and after drug exposure, resulting in a doubling of cell number by 48 h after drug washout. As they attempted to progress through the cell cycle a second time, ganciclovir-treated cells accumulated in early S-phase and remained there until cell death, suggesting that ganciclovir incorporation in the DNA template was important for cytotoxicity. In contrast, strong inhibition of DNA synthesis by araTTP prevented cells from traversing the cell cycle for at least 12 h after drug washout, when the active metabolite was largely degraded araT-treated cells were unable to divide for at least 72 h after drug exposure, at which point the surviving cells displayed a normal cell cycle distribution pattern. Based on the results presented here, we propose a novel paradigm in which the ability of ganciclovir to incorporate into DNA without inhibiting progression through S-phase, combined with high cytotoxicity for incorporated ganciclovir monophosphate, produces multilog cytotoxicity.
The Prevalence of Speech and Language Impairment in Two Sydney Metropolitan Schools

Children from kindergarten through grade 6 in two mainstream Sydney metropolitan schools were assessed for speech and/or language impairment. The two schools were selected to represent children from a range of socio-economic status groups and to include children from disadvantaged and non-English speaking backgrounds. Of the 437 children assessed, 145 were estimated to be speech and/or language impaired. The proportion of children with a communication impairment was estimated to be from 28.8% to 37.6% (95% confidence interval). Estimated prevalence results for impairments of voice, articulation/phonology, language and stuttering are presented, as well as results for pupils of non-English speaking backgrounds.
Immunogenicity and Protective Efficacy of a Live Attenuated H5N1 Vaccine in Nonhuman Primates

The continued spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza viruses among poultry and wild birds, together with the emergence of drug-resistant variants and the possibility of human-to-human transmission, has spurred attempts to develop an effective vaccine. Inactivated subvirion or whole-virion H5N1 vaccines have shown promising immunogenicity in clinical trials, but their ability to elicit protective immunity in unprimed human populations remains unknown. A cold-adapted, live attenuated vaccine with the hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) genes of an H5N1 virus A/VN/1203/2004 (clade 1) was protective against the pulmonary replication of homologous and heterologous wild-type H5N1 viruses in mice and ferrets. In this study, we used reverse genetics to produce a cold-adapted, live attenuated H5N1 vaccine (AH/AAca) that contains HA and NA genes from a recent H5N1 isolate, A/Anhui/2/05 virus (AH/05) (clade 2.3), and the backbone of the cold-adapted influenza H2N2 A/AnnArbor/6/60 virus (AAca). AH/AAca was attenuated in chickens, mice, and monkeys, and it induced robust neutralizing antibody responses as well as HA-specific CD4+ T cell immune responses in rhesus macaques immunized twice intranasally. Importantly, the vaccinated macaques were fully protected from challenge with either the homologous AH/05 virus or a heterologous H5N1 virus, A/bar-headed goose/Qinghai/3/05 (BHG/05; clade 2.2). These results demonstrate for the first time that a cold-adapted H5N1 vaccine can elicit protective immunity against highly pathogenic H5N1 virus infection in a nonhuman primate model and provide a compelling argument for further testing of double immunization with live attenuated H5N1 vaccines in human trials.