Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Authentication of One Popular Signcryption Scheme

Whether a recipient can prove a signature to others is of great importance. The function is just one reason that we call a signature “signature” rather than others. In this paper, we point out that one popular signcryption signature convinces only the designated document’s recipient that the signer deliberately signed the document. The designated recipient can check the validity of a given signcryptext but cannot prove it to others. We also improve it using the efficient technique developed in Schnorr’s signature instead of a zero-knowledge proof such that the receiver can check the validity of a given signcryptext and can prove it to a third party.
Polymerase chain reaction‐mediated genotyping of Hortaea werneckii, causative agent of tinea nigra

The black yeast Hortaea werneckii is known to be a causative agent of human tinea nigra but is also found in the environment. Strains from dissimilar sources were studied by polymerase chain reaction fingerprinting of nuclear DNA, using primers annealing to repetitive and random sequences. The seven groups found correspond to those known from restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) studies of the mitochondrial DNA of the same strains. Two main groups contained strains from human as well as from non‐human sources. The human strains did not cluster, but were randomly distributed over several populations. It was concluded that these strains are not pathogenic. The factor common to both niches is a relatively high salt concentration.
Effectiveness of recommendations to prevent reactivation of latent tuberculosis infection in patients treated with tumor necrosis factor antagonists.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the impact of official recommendations regarding the management of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection on the rate of active TB in patients receiving treatment with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists. METHODS Data on active TB rates and on screening and treatment of latent TB infection were extracted from the BIOBADASER (Spanish Society of Rheumatology Database on Biologic Products), a registry of patients with rheumatic conditions treated with TNF antagonists. The rates of active TB among the BIOBADASER patients were compared with those in the background Spanish population, and BIOBADASER patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were compared with a cohort of RA patients from the EMECAR (Morbidity and Clinical Expression of Rheumatoid Arthritis) study who were not treated with TNF antagonists and were followed up for 5 years. RESULTS Active TB developed in 34 patients, of whom 32 started taking TNF antagonists prior to the official recommendations on latent TB infection (pre-OR) and 2 began treatment after the recommendations were issued (post-OR). All cases of TB occurred during treatment with infliximab, and 28 of these patients had RA. Pre-OR, the active TB rate in BIOBADASER patients was 20.9-fold higher than in the background Spanish population, while RA patients in the BIOBADASER had rates 22.6- and 6.2-fold higher than the background and EMECAR populations, respectively. Post-OR, 324 patients with a tuberculin skin test result > or =5 mm and/or chest radiograph findings suggestive of past TB were treated for 9 months with isoniazid (INH). Post-OR, active TB rates among the BIOBADASER patients decreased by 78% (incidence risk ratio [IRR] 0.22, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.03-0.88; P = 0.008), while among RA patients in the BIOBADASER, the rate dropped by 83% and reached the EMECAR rate (IRR 1.0, 95% CI 0.02-8.2). There were no INH treatment-related hospitalizations or deaths. CONCLUSION Strategies to treat latent TB infection that are tailored to the at-risk population can effectively and safely lessen the likelihood of active TB in patients treated with TNF antagonists.
Optimization and analysis of permanent-magnet synchronous machine with eccentric magnetic pole shape

An analytical model based on subdomain model method is proposed for surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous machine (SMPMSM) with radial and parallel magnetized eccentric magnetic pole. Further back-EMF, cogging torque and electromagnetic torque is calculated by using this model. This method provides a useful tool to mathematically illustrate the magnets with different circumferential thickness and its accuracy and feasibility have been validated by finite element (FE) method. Finally, particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is used to improve the overall performances of the machine by adjusting the pole shape.
Compilers, hands-off my hands-on optimizations

Achieving high performance for compute bounded numerical kernels typically requires an expert to hand select an appropriate set of Single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) instructions, then statically scheduling them in order to hide their latency while avoiding register spilling in the process. Unfortunately, this level of control over the code forces the expert to trade programming abstraction for performance which is why many performance critical kernels are written in assembly language. An alternative is to either resort to auto-vectorization (see Figure 1) or to use intrinsic functions, both features offered by compilers. However, in both scenarios the expert loses control over which instructions are selected, which optimizations are applied to the code and moreover how the instructions are scheduled for a target architecture. Ideally, the expert would need assembly-like control over their SIMD instructions beyond what intrinsics provide while maintaining a C-level abstraction for the non-performance critical parts. In this paper, we bridge the gap between performance and abstraction for SIMD instructions through the use of custom macro intrinsics that provide the programmer control over the instruction selection, and scheduling, while leveraging the compiler to manage the registers. This provides the best of both assembly and vector intrinsics programming so that a programmer can obtain high performance implementations within the C programming language.
Asian Dust Events of April 1998

On April 15 and 19, 1998, two intense dust storms were generated over the Gobi desert by springtime low-pressure systems descending from the northwest. The windblown dust was detected and its evolution followed by its yellow color on SeaWiFS satellite images, routine surface-based monitoring, and through serendipitous observations. The April 15 dust cloud was recirculating, and it was removed by a precipitating weather system over east Asia. The April 19 dust cloud crossed the Pacific Ocean in 5 days, subsided to the surface along the mountain ranges between British Columbia and California, and impacted severely the optical and the concentration environments of the region. In east Asia the dust clouds increased the albedo over the cloudless ocean and land by up to 10–20%, but it reduced the near-UV cloud reflectance, causing a yellow coloration of all surfaces. The yellow colored backscattering by the dust eludes a plausible explanation using simple Mie theory with constant refractive index. Over the West Coast the dust layer has increased the spectrally uniform optical depth to about 0.4, reduced the direct solar radiation by 30–40%, doubled the diffuse radiation, and caused a whitish discoloration of the blue sky. On April 29 the average excess surface-level dust aerosol concentration over the valleys of the West Coast was about 20–50 μg/m3 with local peaks >100 μg/m3. The dust mass mean diameter was 2–3 μm, and the dust chemical fingerprints were evident throughout the West Coast and extended to Minnesota. The April 1998 dust event has impacted the surface aerosol concentration 2–4 times more than any other dust event since 1988. The dust events were observed and interpreted by an ad hoc international web-based virtual community. It would be useful to set up a community-supported web-based infrastructure to monitor the global aerosol pattern for such extreme aerosol events, to alert and to inform the interested communities, and to facilitate collaborative analysis for improved air quality and disaster management.
Sparse Signal Recovery in a Transform Domain

The ability to efficiently and sparsely represent seismic data is becoming an increasingly important problem in geophysics. Over the last thirty years many transforms such as wavelets, curvelets, contourlets, surfacelets, shearlets, and many other types of ’x-lets’ have been developed. Such transform were leveraged to resolve this issue of sparse representations. In this work we compare the properties of four of these commonly used transforms, namely the shift-invariant wavelets, complex wavelets, curvelets and surfacelets. We also explore the performance of these transforms for the problem of recovering seismic wavefields from incomplete measurements.
On the thresholds of knowledge

Three major findings in the domain of artificial intelligence are articulated. The first is the knowledge principle, which states that if a program is to perform a complex task well, it must know a great deal about the world in which it operates. The second is a plausible extension of that principle, called the breadth hypothesis, which states that there are two additional abilities necessary for intelligent behavior in unexpected situations: falling back on increasingly general knowledge, and analogizing to specific but far-flung knowledge. The third finding is a concept of AI as an empirical inquiry system requiring the experimental testing of ideas on large problems. It is concluded that together these concepts can determine a direction for future AI research. <<ETX>>
Structural rearrangements in single ion channels detected optically in living cells

Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy was used to detect single fluorescently labeled voltage-gated Shaker K+ channels in the plasma membrane of living cells. Tetramethylrhodamine (TMR) attached to specific amino acid positions in the voltage-sensing S4 segment changed fluorescence intensity in response to the voltage-driven protein motions of the channel. The voltage dependence of the fluorescence of single TMRs was similar to that seen in macroscopic epi-illumination microscopy, but the exclusion of nonchannel fluorescence revealed that the dimming of TMR upon voltage sensor rearrangement was much larger than previously thought, and is due to an extreme, ≈20-fold suppression of the elementary fluorescence. The total internal reflection voltage-clamp method reveals protein motions that do not directly open or close the ion channel and which have therefore not been detected before at the single-channel level. The method should be applicable to a wide assortment of membrane-associated proteins and should make it possible to relate the structural rearrangements of single proteins to simultaneously measured physiological cell-signaling events.
Fertilization effects on species density and primary productivity in herbaceous plant communities

Fertilization experiments in plant communities are often interpreted in the context of a hump-shaped relationship between species richness and productivity. We analyze results of fertilization experiments from seven terrestrial plant communities representing a productivity gradient (arctic and alpine tundra, two old-field habitats, desert, short- and tall-grass prairie) to determine if the response of species richness to experimentally increased productivity is consistent with the hump-shaped curve. In this analysis, we compared ratios of the mean response in nitrogen-fertilized plots to the mean in control plots for aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and species density (D; number of species per plot of fixed unit area). In general, ANPP increased and plant species density decreased following nitrogen addition, although considerable variation characterized the magnitude of response. We also analyzed a subset of the data limited to the longest running studies at each site (]4 yr), and found that adding 9 to 1 3gNm 2 yr 1 (the consistent amount used at all sites) increased ANPP in all communities by approximately 50% over control levels and reduced species density by approximately 30%. The magnitude of response of ANPP and species density to fertilization was independent of initial community productivity. There was as much variation in the magnitude of response among communities within sites as among sites, suggesting community-specific mechanisms of response. Based on these results, we argue that even long-term fertilization experiments are not good predictors of the relationship between species richness and productivity because they are relatively small-scale perturbations whereas the pattern of species richness over natural productivity gradients is influenced by long-term ecological and evolutionary processes.
The Windy Prize-Collecting Rural Postman Problem : An Ant-Colony Based Heuristic Satu

The Prize-collecting Rural Postman Problem, also known as the Privatized Rural Postman Problem, is an arc-routing problem where each demand edge is associated with a profit, which is collected once if the edge is served, independently of the number of traversals. Included edges incur in routing costs proportionally to the number of traversals. In this paper, we introduce the Windy Privatized Rural Postman Problem in which routing costs also depend on the direction of the traversals. For this problem, we propose a solution heuristic based on ant-colony optimization. The proposed method is capable of constructing profitable closed walks with low computational load. The quality of the obtained solutions can be assessed comparing their values to lower bounds.
Benchmarking ontology-based annotation tools for the Semantic Web

This paper discusses and explores the main issues for evaluating ontology-based annotation tools, a key component in text mining applications for the Semantic Web. Semantic annotation and ontologybased information extraction technologies form the cornerstone of such applications. There has been a great deal of work in the last decade on evaluating traditional information extraction (IE) systems in terms of performance, but such methods are not sufficient for ontology-based systems. Furthermore, usability aspects need to be considered such as scalability, accessibility and interoperability. We outline the main requirements in terms of both usability and performance, proposing possible solutions and using examples of existing tools and resources.
32 × 32 CMOS SPAD Imager for Gated Imaging, Photon Timing, and Photon Coincidence

We present the design and simulations of a single-photon sensitive imager based on single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) with an innovative pixel architecture that includes four separate SPADs with independent active time-gating and quenching circuit, a shared time-to-digital converter (TDC) with 50-ps resolution, four independent photon counters, and multiple operation modes. The TDC is driven by smart arbitration logic, which preserves spatial information among the four detectors; furthermore, an alternative operation mode exploits photon-coincidence on multiple detectors to reduce the effect of high background levels, e.g., in light detection and ranging applications with strong ambient light. Key features are the ability to operate in simultaneous photon counting and timing modes for capturing 2-D and 3-D images of the scene in a single shot (frame), the option of a counting-only mode, reducing power consumption, and increasing achievable frame-rate when timing information is not needed, and the ability to individually shut down noisy detectors or to enable just some regions of interests.
Serum Surfactant Protein D: Biomarker of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Background: Surfactant protein D (SP-D) is a lung-specific protein proposed to predict clinical outcomes in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, the changes in serum SP-D during acute exacerbation (AECOPD) episodes and the relationship of serum SP-D with the overall severity of the disease in stable COPD (SCOPD) remain unclear. Methods: Serum SP-D levels were analyzed in three groups, including AECOPD (n=40), SCOPD (n=71), and controls (n=60). In AECOPD group, serum SP-D levels were determined at 1, 5, 14, and 30 days post-exacerbation. In SCOPD group, BODE (body mass index, airflow obstruction, dyspnea, exercise capacity) index was evaluated for severity assessment. Results: Serum SP-D levels were sequentially elevated from the controls to the SCOPD, and then to the AECOPD (p < 0.001). During an AECOPD episode, the raised serum SP-D levels subsided at day 5 (p > 0.05), fell markedly at day 14 (p < 0.001), and continued to decline at day 30 (p < 0.001). Among patients with SCOPD, serum SP-D levels correlated positively with the BODE index (p < 0.01). Conclusions: The longitudinal changes in serum SP-D levels during an AECOPD episode suggest that SP-D may be a potential systemic biomarker for COPD exacerbation. The correlation of serum SP-D levels with the BODE index suggests that circulating SP-Ds can reflect the overall severity of SCOPD.
Outlier Detection using Semi Supervised Data with Reverse Nearest Neighbors

Outlier Detection is very prominent in determining characters and features of a given data and detecting it high dimensional has its own challenges like Curse of Dimensionality. It was a common notion that distance based methods was not ideal in detecting outliers, in high dimensional data. Recently Reverse Nearest Neighbors counts, where, to how many points, a point is a neighbor is calculated, gave a new direction to detect outliers in high dimension giving rise to concept called hubness.In any given dataset few points has more information than other points, by virtue these points occur less frequently than other points. They can be determined with the help of hubness phenomenon. These data points will be the point of interest in this paper. Supervised learning is to classify the data by assigning labels to input data. By learning from the past occurrencesand assigning label to the outcome, we will determine the semi supervised outliers with reverse neighbors, there by overcoming the hubness aware approaches for classified machine learning in high
Regulation of Taurine Transport Systems by Protein Kinase CK2 in Mammalian Cells

Maintaining cell volume is critical for cellular function yet shift in cell volume is a prerequisite for mitosis and apoptosis. The ubiquitously and evolutionary conserved serine/threonine kinase CK2 promotes cell survival and suppresses apoptosis. The present review describes how mammalian cells regulate the cellular content of the major cellular organic osmolyte, taurine with emphasis on CK2 mediated regulation of active taurine uptake and volume-sensitive taurine release. Furthermore, we discuss how CK2-mediated regulation of taurine homeostasis is potentially involved in cellular functions such as proliferation and survival.
The hrp23 Protein in the Balbiani Ring Pre-mRNP Particles Is Released Just before or at the Binding of the Particles to the Nuclear Pore Complex

Balbiani ring (BR) pre-mRNP particles reside in the nuclei of salivary glands of the dipteran Chironomus tentans and carry the message for giant-sized salivary proteins. In the present study, we identify and characterize a new protein component in the BR ribonucleoprotein (RNP) particles, designated hrp23. The protein with a molecular mass of 20 kD has a single RNA-binding domain and a glycine-arginine-serine–rich auxiliary domain. As shown by immunoelectron microscopy, the hrp23 protein is added to the BR transcript concomitant with transcription, is still present in the BR particles in the nucleoplasm, but is absent from the BR particles that are bound to the nuclear pore complex or are translocating through the central channel of the complex. Thus, hrp23 is released just before or at the binding of the particles to the nuclear pore complex. It is noted that hrp23 behaves differently from two other BR RNP proteins earlier studied: hrp36 and hrp45. These proteins both reach the nuclear pore complex, and hrp36 even accompanies the RNA into the cytoplasm. It is concluded that each BR RNA-binding protein seems to have a specific flow pattern, probably related to the particular role of the protein in gene expression.
Breaking the Integrin Hinge

Integrins are heterodimeric (α, β) cell adhesion receptors. We demonstrate that point mutations in the cytoplasmic domains of both the α and β subunits promote constitutive signaling by the integrin αβ. By generating charge reversal mutations, we show these “activating” mutations may act by disrupting a potential salt bridge between the membrane-proximal portions of the α and β subunit cytoplasmic domains. Thus, the modulation of specific interactions between the α and β subunit cytoplasmic domains may regulate transmembrane signaling through integrins. In addition, these activating mutations induce dominant alterations in cellular behavior, such as the assembly of the extracellular matrix. Consequently, somatic mutations in integrin cytoplasmic domains could have profound effects in vivo on integrin-dependent functions such as matrix assembly, cell migration, and anchorage-dependent cell growth and survival.
Segmentation and classification of THCs on PCBAs

The dramatic increase of electronic waste requires automatic recycling, including technologies from machine vision. A framework for segmentation and classification of THC (through-hole components) mounted on PCBAs is presented, using both RGB and depth frames from the Kinect sensor by Microsoft. A segmentation approach, combining local and global features in a flexible manner, is shown to optimize a freely definable cost function globally. We interleave segmentation and classification as we form the final components using a simple, yet robust shape model.
Modulation of Fetuin-A by Estrogen and Caloric Restriction in Experimental Rat Model of Menopause

Background and objectives: Menopause is accompanied by higher prevalence of atherogenic lipid profiles, central obesity, and insulin resistance. Hepatic steatosis is frequent in postmenopausal women. Fetuin-A level is strongly related to liver fat content. Its role in menopausal metabolic derangements is largely unknown. We aimed to investigate the relation between fetuin-A and the development of menopausal metabolic complications related to obesity and if caloric restriction/estrogen supplementation could alleviate these abnormalities. Methods: Adult female Wistar rats were either bilaterally ovariectomized (OVX) (30 rats) or sham operated (sham group, n=10 rats). OVX rats were randomly subdivided into ovariectomized group (OVX), ovariectomized group treated with 17-β estradiol (OVX+E2), and ovariectomizedcaloric restricted group (OVX+CR) (n=10/group). Thirteen weeks following surgery, serum levels of glucose, insulin, lipids, fetuin-A and adiponectin were estimated. Weight of visceral fat and triacylglycerol (TAG) content of liver were assessed. Results: Serum fetuin-A level was increased following ovariectomy (113%, P<0.001). This was associated with increased visceral adiposity, abnormal lipid profile, insulin resistance, hypoadiponectinaemia and excessive accumulation of hepatic triacylglycerol (TAG). However, estrogen (E2) supplementation/caloric restriction (CR) significantly suppressed elevated Fetuin-A (by 41.9%, P<0.001 and 31.2%, P<0.001, respectively). In addition, CR was equally effective as E2 replacement in reversing metabolic abnormalities. Conclusion: Fetuin-A could be one of the factors contributing to the development of metabolic complications related to menopausal obesity. Caloric restriction alone can ameliorate those complications without the hazardous effects of estrogen replacement; possibly, through inhibition of serum fetuin-A level. Keywords