Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hypoxia modulates the expression of leucine zipper-positive MYPT1 and its interaction with protein kinase G and Rho kinases in pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells

We have shown previously that acute hypoxia downregulates protein kinase G (PKG) expression and activity in ovine fetal pulmonary vessels and pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (SMC). Here, we report that acute hypoxia also reduces the expression of leucinezipper-positive MYPT1 (LZ+ MYPT1), a subunit of myosin light chain (MLC) phosphatase, in ovine fetal pulmonary arterial SMC. We found that in hypoxia, there is greater interaction between LZ+MYPT1 and RhoA and Rho kinase 1 (ROCK1)/Rho kinase 2 (ROCK2) and decreased interaction between LZ+MYPT1 and PKG, resulting in increased MLC20 phosphorylation, a higher pMLC20/MLC20 ratio and SMC contraction. In normoxic SMC PKG overexpression, LZ+MYPT1 expression is upregulated while PKG knockdown had an opposite effect. LZ+MYPT1 overexpression enhanced the interaction between PKG and LZ+MYPT1. Overexpression of a mutant LZ−MYPT1 isoform in SMC mimicked the effects of acute hypoxia and decreased pMLC20/MLC20 ratio. Collectively, our data suggest that hypoxia downregulates LZ+MYPT1 expression by suppressing PKG levels, reduces the interaction of LZ+MYPT1 with PKG and promotes LZ+MYPT1 interaction with RhoA or ROCK1/ROCK2, thereby promoting pulmonary arterial SMC contraction.
How does electricity insecurity affect businesses in low and middle income countries

Electricity insecurity impacts the productivity of manufacturing SMEs negatively, but these impacts are often statistically insignificant and they can at times be positive. Electricity insecurity does not affect the cost-competitiveness of manufacturing SMEs, partly because electricity costs are usually a very small proportion of total costs. Electricity insecurity influences investment in and by SMEs, notably the location of investment, but evidence that it constrains investment is mixed. Policy makers can help to mitigate the impact of electricity insecurity on SMEs by ensuring that outages are planned and by facilitating access to alternative supplies of electricity, including generators and renewable energy. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to a number of people for their contributions to the preparation of this report. Thanks are due to Ilmi Granoff for his comments on the research methodology and final written outputs, to Will McFarland for project support, and to our country partners for their work mapping stakeholders and conducting SME and stakeholder interviews: Mohamed Taher (Bangladesh), Asish Subedi (Nepal), Ifeanyi Austine Okere (Nigeria) and Dickens Kamugisha (Uganda). We would particularly like to express our thanks to all 82 people who agreed to be interviewed for the study. A full list of those interviewed is provided in Annex 9.2. Thanks are also due to the Research and Evidence Divisions Policy Research Fund, which is the specific fund that covered the cost of this research. Finally, thanks are due to Alistair Wray and Hayley Sharp of DFID for their guidance throughout the work. Disclaimer: This material has been funded by UK aid from the UK government. However, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government's official policies. Acknowledgements ii Abbreviations iii Executive summary v 1 Introduction and background 1 1.1 The study 2
A clinicopathological study of human liver allograft recipients harboring preformed IgG lymphocytotoxic antibodies

Twenty‐six adult patients with preformed IgG donor lymphocytotoxic antibodies received primary liver allografts under FK 506 immunosuppression. The effect of the crossmatch‐positive state on early graft function and on the immunopathological and histopathological findings was compared with that of 52 crossmatch‐negative control recipients. The presensitized (crossmatch‐positive) patients had prolongation of early graft dysfunction, underwent more clinically indicated biopsies and had a higher incidence of cellular rejection, both overall (p < 0.05) and within 10 days of transplantation (p < 0.01). They also had a higher incidence of graft failure in the first 180 days (p < 0.01). Hyperacute rejection with necrotizing or neutrophilic arteritis was not seen in the crossmatchpositive grafts. However, histological findings associated with presensitization included platelet margination in central veins and sinusoids in biopsy specimens 60 to 90 min after graft revascularization. Later biopsy specimens had neutrophilic portal venulitis followed by cholangiolar proliferation, acute cholangiolitis and centrilobular hepatocyte swelling that mimicked preservation injury, endothelial activation of arteries with medial changes and relapsing episodes of acute cellular rejection. These clinicopathological observations suggest that lymphocytotoxic antibodies can have a deleterious effect on liver allograft function and survival, even if they do not precipitate immediate or hyperacute rejection. (HEPATOLOGY 1992;16:671–681.)
Characterization and evaluation of spatial jitter's influence on the intrinsic geometric calibration of an infrared camera for gas visualization

Infrared cameras for gas visualization, also known as gas cameras, offer a practical and safe way for spotting gas leakages in different industrial sectors such as chemical and oil industries by sensing the intensity of the infrared radiation emitted by a gas and its surroundings within a defined spectral range at which gases of interest (i. e. volatile organic compounds) absorb infrared radiation. If the temperature of the gas differs from the temperature of its surroundings, then the gas appears as a texture in the images of the camera. In order to be able to detect small temperature changes, the camera uses a cooling engine, which is in most of the cases based on the Stirling motor principle. Due to its working principle, the cooler generates vibrations in the housing of the camera and in the detector matrix. These vibrations lead to a spatial jitter in the images. The spatial jitter can affect the performance of image processing techniques or computer vision applications, since it introduces disturbances in the considered scenes. In this work a characterization of the jitter of such gas cameras by means of a single-point vibrometer and image processing techniques is carried out. Furthermore, the influence of the jitter on the geometric calibration of the camera is analyzed. The results show that the vibrations in the camera are periodic and generate detector shifts of about 3 μm in vertical and horizontal direction. In addition, after calibrating the gas camera geometrically, no considerable effects of the jitter on the calculation of the calibration parameters were observed.
Topology-based Plug-and-Play Key-Setup

We study the use of known, well-connected network topology, to improve key setup and management. Specifically, we present the TopKeyS protocol, that uses such known-topology to allow easier, plug and play key distribution. Furthermore, ,TopKeyS improves security by limiting impact of key exposures: it ensures both perfect forward secrecy and proactive key refresh, re-establishing security after exposure. TopKeyS assumes a trusted the authentication server device, whose public key is known to all devices. This server is initialized with the network
Image Forgery Identification Using JPEG Intrinsic Fingerprints

—In this paper a novel method for image forgery detection is presented. The method exploits the fingerprints left by JPEG compression. The fingerprints are obtained by estimating the quantization matrix and are used to detect different forgeries such as copy-paste, cropping, rotation, and brightness changes. Algorithms were developed for detecting forgeries on a single JPEG compressed image and for the more difficult scenario where the forged image is recompressed. The proposed algorithms' performance improves with increasing quality factor unlike block-artifact based detection schemes. Thus it would provide a good complement to the reliability offered by blocking-artifact based schemes at lower quality factors. A database of around 2000 images was used for testing.
Gender, Communication Styles, and Leader Effectiveness

We study gender differences in the behavior, communication, and effectiveness of randomly selected leaders in a laboratory experiment using the turnaround game. Leaders can send nonbinding pre‐play text messages to try to convince followers to coordinate on the Pareto‐efficient equilibrium. The treatment variations consist of the gender of the leader, and whether the communication is one‐way (only leaders send messages) or two‐way (first followers send messages to their leader, and subsequently the leader sends messages to the group). We find that male leaders communicate more assertively. Communication with the followers induces female leaders to express significantly more often that they are part of the group, rather than standing above the group. Despite the different paths in communication, both men and women are equally likely to request the highest effort contribution. Men and women are equally effective leaders.
Hash Table Methods

This is a tutorial survey of hash table methods, chiefly intended for programmers and students of programming who are encountering the subject for the first time. The better-known methods of calculating hash addresses and of handling collisions and bucket overflow are presented and compared. It is shown that under certain conditmns we can guarantee that no two items belonging to a certain class will have the same hash code, thus providing an improvement over the usual notion of a hash code as a randomizing technique. Several alternatives to hashing are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research and further development.
25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease, Myocardial Infarction, and Early Death: Population-Based Study and Meta-Analyses of 18 and 17 Studies

Objective—We tested the hypothesis that reduced plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D associates with increased risk of ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, and early death. Methods and Results—We measured baseline plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D in 10 170 women and men from the Danish general population without vitamin D–fortified food. During 29 years of follow-up, 3100 persons developed ischemic heart disease, 1625 myocardial infarction, and 6747 died. Decreasing plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels were associated with increasing risk of ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, and early death as a function of seasonally adjusted percentile categories (P for trend, 2×10−4–3×10–53). Comparing individuals with plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels at the 1st to 4th percentile with individuals with levels at the 50th to 100th percentile, the multivariable adjusted risk was increased by 40% (95% CI, 14%–72%) for ischemic heart disease, by 64% (25%–114%) for myocardial infarction, by 57% (38%–78%) for early death, and by 81% (40%–135%) for fatal ischemic heart disease/myocardial infarction. In the meta-analyses of 18 and 17 studies, risk of ischemic heart disease and early death were increased by 39% (25%–54%) and 46% (31%–64%) for lowest versus highest quartile of 25-hydroxyvitamin D level. Conclusion—We observed increasing risk of ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, and early death with decreasing plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels. These findings were substantiated in meta-analyses.
Map-generation and identification of multiple sound sources from robot in motion

The paper presents a multiple sound sources mapping system from a robot embedded microphone array. The robot localizes sound direction and recognizes what sound it is while the robot is in motion. Then the system estimates the positions of the sound sources using triangulation from a short time period of directional localization results. Three key components are denoted: 1) accurate directional localization and separation of multiple sound sources using a microphone array 2) separated sound recognition from a several tens of milliseconds input signal 3) sound position estimation using the RAndom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm from a tracked sound stream. By combining these techniques, the proposed system provides surrounding sound information: “Where does the sound come from? ” and “What is the sound? ”. It works with short term signal input, and is helpful to initially notice surrounding events.
A new method for occupational fraud detection in process aware information systems

Today, companies have turned to use fraud detection methods to reduce their financial losses that have been arisen in this way. Thus, Process aware information systems are vulnerable to insider frauds. Flexibility in these systems gives the opportunity for fraudsters to commit illegal activities. Strict security controls on these systems at runtime reduces their flexibility. Moreover, the frequent changes in these systems make inefficient the ordinary fraud detection methods and it remains as a challenge for organizations. In this paper, we propose a new fraud detection method that uses both statistical information about system's log and process model mined from it to detect fraudulent instances. Our method reduces false positive rate and supports loop, parallel and selection structures in processes. The experimental results show effectiveness of the approach as it represents value of more than 0.8 for F-measure.
Comparison of land skin temperature from a land model, remote sensing, and in situ measurement

Land skin temperature (Ts) is an important parameter in the energy exchange between the land surface and atmosphere. Here hourly Ts from the Community Land Model version 4.0, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite observations, and in situ observations from the Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observation Project in 2003 were compared. Both modeled and MODIS Ts were interpolated to the 12 station locations, and comparisons were performed under MODIS clear‐sky condition. Over four semiarid stations, both MODIS and modeled Ts show negative biases compared to in situ data, but MODIS shows an overall better performance. Global distribution of differences between MODIS and modeled Ts shows diurnal, seasonal, and spatial variations. Over sparsely vegetated areas, the model Ts is generally lower than the MODIS‐observed Ts during the daytime, while the situation is opposite at nighttime. The revision of roughness length for heat and the constraint of minimum friction velocity from Zeng et al. ( ) bring the modeled Ts closer to MODIS during the day and have little effect on Ts at night. Five factors contributing to the Ts differences between the model and MODIS are identified, including the difficulty in properly accounting for cloud cover information at the appropriate temporal and spatial resolutions, and uncertainties in surface energy balance computation, atmospheric forcing data, surface emissivity, and MODIS Ts data. These findings have implications for the cross evaluation of modeled and remotely sensed Ts, as well as the data assimilation of Ts observations into Earth system models.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 7-15-2012 Understanding The Use Of Enterprise Content Management Systems In Coordination Type Of Organizations

Today, information is increasingly becoming a key business resource and organizations begin to implement Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS) to share those information. ECMS is an emerging approach that enables efficient sharing of business-related information. However, there is still a significant lack of knowledge on how to efficiently make use of these technologies for sharing information that support organization’s business operations. In this paper, we investigate the use of ECMS in organizations that emphasize high levels of process integration termed as Coordination. We use a qualitative research approach to illustrate that in Coordination type of organizations, ECMS is useful for (1) sharing unstructured information, (2) sharing information that supports integrated business processes and (3) internal and external sharing. Finally, to ensure that ECMS can be effectively used for information sharing, our findings suggest three elements to be taken into considerations namely (1) relevant information that needs to be shared, (2) the patterns of integrated business processes that requires information sharing and (3) users that involve in the process of sharing. The finding is significant for business and IT managers because it will guide them with ways to use ECMS and gain more benefits from it.
Impact of technology scaling on substrate noise generation mechanisms [mixed signal ICs]

The performance of mixed-mode ICs can be severely limited by the substrate noise that is generated by digital circuits. To reduce this problem and to assess its evolution with CMOS technology scaling, the different mechanisms that generate this substrate noise need to be well understood. In this paper, we show that with technology scaling substrate noise due to power-supply-line coupling becomes the dominant coupling mechanism, which is several orders of magnitude larger than the substrate noise due to the source/drain capacitive coupling and the impact ionization. Further, we show that the peak value of the power-supply-line coupling noise becomes more dependent on the switching activity ratio of the circuit rather than the Ldi/dt noise as a result of the decrease in switching time with technology scaling. These insights are believed to be very useful for the development of low-noise digital design techniques in future CMOS technologies.
Cultures of Trust: A Cross-Cultural Study on the Formation of Trust in an Electronic Environment

In this paper we present a cross-cultural comparison on users’ perception on computer security issues, with a special emphasis on the notion of trust. The study was conducted by bringing together two previous approaches on trust: the user studies conducted previously in Finland were repeated in Sweden, with only slight alterations to account for national features, such as language and choice of national examples, in order to track down cultural variation in how users perceive trust in the electronic world. The outcome is a to-the-point description of when, where, and how the designer or system builder should take cultural issues into account when trying to convince an online shopper of his trustworthiness. Also, the checklist for the designer, presented as the outcome of the Finnish user study, is further elaborated and refined based on these new results.
Audio source authentication and splicing detection using acoustic environmental signature

Audio splicing is one of the most common manipulation techniques in the audio forensic world. In this paper, the magnitudes of acoustic channel impulse response and ambient noise are considered as the environmental signature and used to authenticate the integrity of query audio and identify the spliced audio segments. The proposed scheme firstly extracts the magnitudes of channel impulse response and ambient noise by applying the spectrum classification technique to each suspected frame. Then, correlation between the magnitudes of query frame and reference frame is calculated. An optimal threshold determined according to the statistical distribution of similarities is used to identify the spliced frames. Furthermore, a refining step using the relationship between adjacent frames is adopted to reduce the false positive rate and false negative rate. Effectiveness of the proposed method is tested on two data sets consisting of speech recordings of human speakers. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated for various experimental settings. Experimental results show that the proposed method not only detects the presence of spliced frames, but also localizes the forgery segments. Comparison results with previous work illustrate the superiority of the proposed scheme.
A simple simulation environment for calculating the Video Destruction Level of Internet Certification Service

In Internet Certification Service (ICS), we use the content associated sensitive data extraction technology to increase the security of High Definition video copyright for ICS disc. An important item of ICS is to evaluate the Video Destruction Level (VDL) after extracting sensitive data. This paper presents a flexible and easy simulation environment to calculate the VDL based on DirectShow and Matlab.
Throughput performance optimization in cognitive radio networks under Rayleigh fading

We consider a time slotted cognitive radio (CR) network under Rayleigh fading where multiple secondary users (SUs) contend for spectrum usage over available primary users' channels. In the contention, all SUs use common access probabilities to decide whether they access one of available channels. We focus on the throughput performance of an arbitrary SU. To improve the throughput performance of SUs, it is desirable that the access probabilities are adapted to the information on channel status and fading condition. In the analysis, we derive the optimal access probabilities that maximize the throughput performance of an arbitrary SU. From our analysis, we provide an insight on how to obtain optimal access probabilities in the CR network. We also investigate the effect of the knowledge of channel status and fading condition on throughput performance. Numerical results are provided to investigate throughput performance behavior.
Common ground ? Urban neighborhoods as survey respondents see them

The authors' research examines how urban residents define neighborhood and whether their definitions influence their answers to other survey questions. They use data from a 1988 Nashville, Tennessee, study to tap respondents' neighborhood definitions as well as the symbolic and physical identities they attribute to their own neighborhoods. Territorial meanings predominate among respondents when neighborhood is considered in the abstract, although few definitions are exclusively territorial in nature. At a more concrete level, individuals living near one another often give the same name for their neighborhood of residence but differ markedly in their reports of the area's physical size and complexity. Such differences do not have much impact on answers to vague-referent questions about neighborhood life (i.e., questions in which the concept of neighborhood is left undefined). The fact that at least some survey results appear relatively insensitive to respondents' definitional idiosyncrasies should reassure practitioners. The authors nevertheless recommend that a few items be included in survey instruments to help clarify people's understanding of neighborhood and other quasi-factual geographic concepts
Discrete Tomography : A Modern Inverse Problem Reconsidered by Optimization

Optimization theory is a key technology for inverse problems of reconstruction in science, engineering and economy. Discrete tomography is a modern research field dealing with the reconstruction of finite objects in, e.g., VLSI chip design or medical imaging. In this paper, we use new optimization problems and methods to approximately resolve this NP-hard problem. Our new introductions base on interpretations, algorithms and learning methods coming from the theories of coding and optimal experimental design. Here, we combine optimization with exploiting geometrical-algebraical symmetries or, more generally, equivariances.