Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SHOCam: A 3D Orbiting Algorithm

In this paper we describe a new orbiting algorithm, called SHOCam, which enables simple, safe and visually attractive control of a camera moving around 3D objects. Compared with existing methods, SHOCam provides a more consistent mapping between the user's interaction and the path of the camera by substantially reducing variability in both camera motion and look direction. Also, we present a new orbiting method that prevents the camera from penetrating object(s), making the visual feedback -- and with it the user experience -- more pleasing and also less error prone. Finally, we present new solutions for orbiting around multiple objects and multi-scale environments.
Exploring “Other Body(s)” of Knowledge: Getting to the Heart of the Story About Aging and Physical Activity

Aging is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon subject to a continual redefining of the physical, social, psychological, and cultural self. The collective of these subtleties poses a number of challenges for policy makers, program and community leaders, health professionals, and researchers when trying to enhance quality of life for older adults through physical activity. In this article we reflect on how we have come to know about aging and physical activity and argue why expanding the research agenda will better get to the “heart” of active living in the later years.
A Good Study Break: Effects of Nature versus TV on Attention

Recent research has found fascinating connections between nature exposure and human well-being. In particular, previous research suggests that nature is a restorative environment for attention once an individual experiences mental fatigue. This study investigates whether the viewing of natural environments on television allows for regeneration of attention as well. Participants were assigned to one of four 20 minute study breaks: viewing either a completely natural setting in a park near campus, a semi-built environment on campus, nature TV, or a popular sitcom. There attention was tested before and after the treatments using a backwards digit-span test. While no significant results were found, a trend suggested that nature was the most restorative of the four treatments. This tells us that nature on TV cannot replace the real experience.
Technology Policy and Co-operative R&D the role of Relational Research Capacity

Evolutionary theories of technological change and industrial dynamics give primary importance to interaction between heterogeneous agents, endowed with complementary assets and competencies. Accordingly, support to co-operative R&D is central to technology policy, as a mean for increasing system connectivity, triggering virtuous cycles of learning and promoting variety. The paper investigates the “chemistry of technological co-operation”, relating its effectiveness and results to the partners’ relational research capacity, i.e. their ability to evaluate, integrate, process and exploit knowledge flows generated by the interaction. A functional specification for the relational research capacity is proposed and its properties are investigated. The formal analysis works as a guideline for the statement of research hypothesis related to the effectiveness of co-operative R&D programmes, to be tested on empirical grounds.
Performance evaluation of mobile radio slotted ALOHA with smart antennas

We report an investigation into the effect of using smart antennas on the performance of the slotted ALOHA protocol with capture in a mobile communications environment with Rayleigh and log-normal fading. Our results demonstrate that by using smart antennas, we can achieve higher performance in terms of capture probability and throughput when compared to a conventional antenna system using the slotted ALOHA protocol.
The Oxidative Stress-Induced Increase in the Membrane Expression of the Water-Permeable Channel Aquaporin-4 in Astrocytes Is Regulated by Caveolin-1 Phosphorylation

The reperfusion of ischemic brain tissue following a cerebral stroke causes oxidative stress, and leads to the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Apart from inflicting oxidative damage, the latter may also trigger the upregulation of aquaporin 4 (AQP4), a water-permeable channel expressed by astroglial cells of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and contribute to edema formation, the severity of which is known to be the primary determinant of mortality and morbidity. The mechanism through which this occurs remains unknown. In the present study, we have attempted to address this question using primary astrocyte cultures treated with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as a model system. First, we showed that H2O2 induces a significant increase in AQP4 protein levels and that this is inhibited by the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (NAC). Second, we demonstrated using cell surface biotinylation that H2O2 increases AQP4 cell-surface expression independently of it’s increased synthesis. In parallel, we found that caveolin-1 (Cav1) is phosphorylated in response to H2O2 and that this is reversed by the Src kinase inhibitor 4-Amino-5-(4-chlorophenyl)-7-(t-butyl)pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine (PP2). PP2 also abrogated the H2O2-induced increase in AQP4 surface levels, suggesting that the phosphorylation of tyrosine-14 of Cav1 regulates this process. We further showed that dominant-negative Y14F and phosphomimetic Y14D mutants caused a decrease and increase in AQP4 membrane expression respectively, and that the knockdown of Cav1 inhibits the increase in AQP4 cell-surface, expression following H2O2 treatment. Together, these findings suggest that oxidative stress-induced Cav1 phosphorylation modulates AQP4 subcellular distribution and therefore may indirectly regulate AQP4-mediated water transport.
The effects of feed intake and purified cellulose on the endogenous ileal amino acid flow in growing pigs

The effects of level of feed intake (0.8, 1.2 and 1.6 kg/d) and body-weight of the pig (49 and 92 kg) in Expt 1, and dietary neutral-detergent fibre (NDF; 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 g/kg) in Expt 2 on the endogenous ileal flow of amino acids (AA) and nitrogen were studied with protein-free diets into which purified wood cellulose was incorporated at the expense of maize starch. In Expt 1, one of the protein-free diets containing 90 g NDF/kg was used. Female pigs were fitted with a simple ‘T’ cannula at the terminal ileum. In Expt 1, the endogenous ileal AA and N flow, expressed as g/kg dry matter (DM) intake, decreased significantly (P < 0.05) with increasing DM intake, except for proline. By contrast, the values expressed as g/d remained constant. There was no significant difference in endogenous ileal flow (P > 0.05) between initial body-weights of 45 and 90 kg except for histidide, isoleucine, phenylalanine, threonine, valine and serine, in which the ileal flow determined at the higher body-weight was significantly higher (P < 0.05). In Expt 2, the effects of dietary cellulose levels on the endogenous ileal flow of AA and N were not significant (P > 0.05), although the values tended to increase as dietary cellulose levels increased for most AA and for N. It is concluded that the daily endogenous ileal flow of AA and N remains relatively similar at different DM intake and cellulose levels. Therefore, correction of apparent ileal digestibility of AA and N to the true ileal digestibility should be made with the endogenous ileal flow values expressed on a daily amount basis, not the values expressed on a DM intake basis
Can deviation from standard beauty become appealing?: an age perspective

Objective: This article aims to qualitatively explore the possibilities of amplifying the female representations in advertising and other types of marketing communication that embraces mature women by the beauty industry. Method : We interviewed women who are 40 years old and older, and leaders from multinational and Brazilian beauty companies. We also ran a survey experiment testing the persuasiveness of a fashion ad. Main results: Consumers are persuaded by ads displaying mature women, but the industry representatives are skeptical about the commercial appeal of these images. Contributions: The usual communication and marketing practices from leader companies are not grounded by the logic of value co-creation. These companies seem not to be consumer-oriented as a prominent practice. Relevance/Originality: Beauty standards and communication and marketing content should be understood from a social and political configuration that belongs to the organizational field from the contemporary fashion and cosmetic industries. Marketing practices are oriented by power and prestige relations, and by values and norms that are shared within this field. Managerial Implications: It is possible to amplify beauty standards and, by doing so, to better meet mature women’s aspirations.
The Forgotten History of Cognitive Task Analysis

Many reports of recent research on topics in cognitive systems engineering describe their methods by distinguishing cognitive task analysis from “traditional” or “behavioral” task analysis. A hallmark of modern cognitive task analysis (CTA) methods is that they place primary focus on understanding the cognitive demands of a task and the knowledge and strategies that underlie performance. While cognitive task analysis may have seemed to be a revolutionary approach introduced in recent years, a review of the history of task analysis reveals many things that have been lost in modern treatments of the history of human factors. This presentation will review some highlights of this forgotten history, including the ideas and methods of the Psychotechnicians, the earliest industrial psychologists, the Taylorists, and others who contributed to modern CTA. Task analysis never lacked cognitive categories. Even microscale “time and motion” studies involved the analysis of the work of domain experts. Basic ideas of human -machine systems and of complexity also appear in some of the earliest literatures — industrial psychology of the first decades of the 20th century.
Structural basis for promiscuity and specificity during Candida glabrata invasion of host epithelia

The human pathogenic yeast Candida glabrata harbors more than 20 surface-exposed, epithelial adhesins (Epas) for host cell adhesion. The Epa family recognizes host glycans and discriminates between target tissues by their adhesin (A) domains, but a detailed structural basis for ligand-binding specificity of Epa proteins has been lacking so far. In this study, we provide high-resolution crystal structures of the Epa1A domain in complex with different carbohydrate ligands that reveal how host cell mucin-type O-glycans are recognized and allow a structure-guided classification of the Epa family into specific subtypes. Further detailed structural and functional characterization of subtype-switched Epa1 variants shows that specificity is governed by two inner loops, CBL1 and CBL2, involved in calcium binding as well as by three outer loops, L1, L2, and L3. In summary, our study provides the structural basis for promiscuity and specificity of Epa adhesins, which might further contribute to developing anti-adhesive antimycotics and combating Candida colonization.
Data Flow Analysis of System Specifications in Lotos

In LOTOS, a system is specified as a behaviour expression describing the externally observable behaviour of the system in terms of possible sequences of interactions between the system and its environment. The desired control flow and data flow that must be established by a possible implementation of the system are specified in the behaviour expression as implicit enumerations of allowed sequences of interaction identifiers and relationships among interaction parameters, respectively. A model exposing the desired flow of data within the allowed control flow expressed in a system specification in LOTOS is presented. Based on the explicit information provided by the model, data flow anomaly detection and data flow oriented test selection are facilitated. A comprehensive example, i.e. an alternating bit protocol specification, is used to illustrate both these validation activities. An error in this specification is revealed by the analysis of a data flow anomaly detected within the specification. A set of test paths is derived from the specification by the application of an existing data flow oriented test selection criterion, called all-uses criterion.
Human TPX2 is required for targeting Aurora-A kinase to the spindle

Aurora-A is a serine-threonine kinase implicated in the assembly and maintenance of the mitotic spindle. Here we show that human Aurora-A binds to TPX2, a prominent component of the spindle apparatus. TPX2 was identified by mass spectrometry as a major protein coimmunoprecipitating specifically with Aurora-A from mitotic HeLa cell extracts. Conversely, Aurora-A could be detected in TPX2 immunoprecipitates. This indicates that subpopulations of these two proteins undergo complex formation in vivo. Binding studies demonstrated that the NH2 terminus of TPX2 can directly interact with the COOH-terminal catalytic domain of Aurora-A. Although kinase activity was not required for this interaction, TPX2 was readily phosphorylated by Aurora-A. Upon siRNA-mediated elimination of TPX2 from cells, the association of Aurora-A with the spindle microtubules was abolished, although its association with spindle poles was unaffected. Conversely, depletion of Aurora-A by siRNA had no detectable influence on the localization of TPX2. We propose that human TPX2 is required for targeting Aurora-A kinase to the spindle apparatus. In turn, Aurora-A might regulate the function of TPX2 during spindle assembly.
Making a success of Principles-based regulation

The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) leads the way in the development of Principles-based regulation of the financial services industry. It is proposing a significant shift towards reliance on broadly stated Principles rather than more detailed rules. The implications of a more Principles-based approach for regulators, those regulated by the FSA and those whose interests the regulatory regime is designed to protect are the subject of ongoing dialogue.
Deleterious Effect of Dithizone‐DMSO Staining on Insulin Secretion in Rat and Human Pancreatic Islets

Dithizone (DTZ) is a selective stain for pancreatic islets which facilitates their identification, being of special interest in human islet isolation assessment. Nevertheless, there are few studies concerning its potential toxic effects on islet function. In our study, we have evaluated the effects of DTZ (dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide [DMSO] 1% w/v) at three different concentrations (2, 10, and 100 pg/ml) on insulin response to glucose in human and rat islets. Likewise, we studied the effect of incubation time, in the presence of DTZ at the above-mentioned concentrations, on insulin release. Only when DTZ was employed at low concentrations and for a short period of incubation (10 min) was there no impairment of pancreatic islet function. Moreover, even at this low concentration, DTZ became deleterious for islet function when the incubation period with the dye was prolonged for 30 min. Culture (24 h) of previously stained islets produced a partial recovery of insulin response. In conclusion, our findings indicate (a) DTZ should not be employed to collect islets for functional studies because of its deleterious effect on β-cell function, (b) DTZ's deleterious effects on β-cell function should be considered if this dye is used to purify islets by fluorescence-activated cell sorting for transplantation.
Reconstructing functional brain networks: have we got the basics right?

Both at rest and during the executions of cognitive tasks, the brain continuously creates and reshapes complex patterns of correlated dynamics. Thus, brain functional activity is naturally described in terms of networks, i.e., sets of nodes, representing distinct subsystems, and links connecting node pairs, representing relationships between them. Recently, brain function has started being investigated using a statistical physics understanding of graph theory, an old branch of pure mathematics (Newman, 2010). Within this framework, network properties are independent of the identity of their nodes, as they emerge in a non-trivial way from their interactions. Observed topologies are instances of a network ensemble, falling into one of few universality classes and are therefore inherently statistical in nature. Functional network reconstruction comprises various steps: first, nodes are identified; then, links are established according to a certain metric. This gives rise to a clique with an all-to-all connectivity. Deciding which links are significant is done by choosing which values of these metrics should be taken into account. Finally, network properties are computed and used to characterize the network. Each of these steps contains an element of arbitrariness, as graph theory allows characterizing systems once a network is reconstructed, but is neutral as to what should be treated as a system and to how to isolate its constituent parts. Here we discuss some aspects related to the way nodes, links and networks in general are defined in system-level studies using noninvasive techniques, which may be critical when interpreting the results of functional brain network analyses.
Research on construction of semantic dictionary in the football field

This paper is mainly through the following research process to show: first of all, making a pretreatment to news text corpus in football field, including word segmentation, de-stop words and POS tagging, and then extract the candidate concept set in the processed corpus, And then use the Word2Vec tool to train the corpus to get the multidimensional vector model file for all the words in the corpus, after that combining the statistical algorithm TF-IDF and word embedding to determine the domain concepts. Finally, we calculate all cosine values between any a concept in domain concepts and any a word in model file, and extract three words with higher cosine value as synonyms for a input word to construct semantic dictionary after those words are sorted by value size.
Ultrastructural Characterization of the Implant Interface Response to Loading

Dynamic loading can affect the bone surrounding implants. For ultrastructural exploration of the peri-implant tissue response to dynamic loading, titanium implants were installed in rat tibiae, in which one implant was loaded while the contralateral served as the unloaded control. The loaded implants received stimulation either within 24 hrs after implantation (immediate loading) or after a 28-day healing period (delayed loading) for 4, 7, 14, 21, or 28 days. The samples were processed for histology and gene expression quantification. Compared with the unloaded control, bone-to-implant contact increased significantly by immediate loading for 28 days (p < .05), but not in case of delayed loading. No effect of loading was observed on the bone formation in the implant thread areas, on the blood vessel area, and on endosteal callus formation. Loading during healing (immediate) for 7 days induced, relative to the unloaded control, a 2.3-fold increase of Runx2 in peri-implant cortical bone (p < .01) without a change in the RANKL/Opg ratio. Loading after healing (delayed) for 7 days up-regulated Runx2 (4.3-fold, p < .01) as well as Opg (22.3-fold, p < .05) compared with the unloaded control, resulting in a significantly decreased RANKL/Opg ratio. These results indicate a stimulating effect of dynamic loading on implant osseointegration when applied during the healing phase. In addition, gene expression analyses revealed molecular adaptations favoring bone formation and, at the same time, affecting bone remodeling.
White blood cell count in generalized aggressive periodontitis after non-surgical therapy.

BACKGROUND Periodontal bacteria are known to invade the systemic circulation. Chronic low-level bacteremia and a systemic inflammatory response have been suggested as a pathogenetic link between periodontal disease and atherosclerosis. The purpose of this study was to examine the systemic effect of a non-surgical therapy on white blood cell count (WBC count) and differential blood count in smoking and non-smoking generalized aggressive periodontitis (GAP) patients. METHODS 27 adult periodontitis patients (13 smokers and 14 non-smokers) with previously untreated GAP were subjected to 3 sessions of oral hygiene procedure. Afterwards, the patients were treated by scaling and root planing under local anaesthesia. Periodontal examinations were performed after supragingival pretreatment and three months after subgingival therapy. Pocket probing depth (PPD) and relative attachment level (RAL) were measured with Florida probe and disc probe. Accompanying clinical evaluation venous blood samples were taken to analyse the WBC counts and differential blood counts. For statistical analysis non-parametric tests were utilized. RESULTS No clinical or demographic differences were found between smokers (n=13) and non-smokers (n=14). PPD, bleeding on probing (BoP) and suppuration improved significantly after therapy both in smokers and non-smokers. Following periodontal treatment WBC counts, neutrophil and platelet counts decreased significantly in non-smokers (p< or =0.004), while in smokers only platelet counts were significantly reduced (p=0.006). Non-smokers showed a significantly higher reduction of WBC counts (p=0.005) and neutrophils (p=0.001) compared to smokers. CONCLUSION The results indicate that a therapeutical intervention may have a systemic effect on the blood count in GAP patients. This effect seems to differ between smokers and non-smokers.
Effects of Head-down Tilt on Nerve Conduction in Rhesus Monkeys

Background: Few studies have focused on peripheral nerve conduction during exposure to microgravity. The −6° head-down tilt (HDT) comprises an experimental model used to simulate the space flight environment. This study investigated nerve conduction characteristics of rhesus monkeys before and after prolonged exposure to HDT. Methods: Six rhesus monkeys (3–4 years old) were tilted backward 6° from the horizontal. Nerve conduction studies (NCSs) were performed on the median, ulnar, tibial, and fibular motor nerves. Analysis of variance with a randomized block design was conducted to compare the differences in the NCS before and 7, 21, and 42 days after the −6° HDT. Results: The proximal amplitude of the CMAP of the median nerve was significantly decreased at 21 and 42 days of HDT compared with the amplitude before HDT (4.38 ± 2.83 vs. 8.40 ± 2.66 mV, F = 4.85, P = 0.013 and 3.30 ± 2.70 vs. 8.40 ± 2.66 mV, F = 5.93, P = 0.004, respectively). The distal amplitude of the CMAP of the median nerve was significantly decreased at 7, 21, and 42 days of HDT compared with the amplitude before HDT (7.28 ± 1.27 vs. 10.25 ± 3.40 mV, F = 4.03, P = 0.039; 5.05 ± 2.01 vs. 10.25 ± 3.40 mV, F = 6.25, P = 0.04; and 3.95 ± 2.79 vs. 10.25 ± 3.40 mV, F = 7.35, P = 0.01; respectively). The proximal amplitude of the CMAP of the tibial nerve was significantly decreased at 42 days of HDT compared with the amplitude before HDT (6.14 ± 1.94 vs. 11.87 ± 3.19 mV, F = 5.02, P = 0.039). Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the compound muscle action potential amplitudes of nerves are decreased under simulated microgravity in rhesus monkeys. Moreover, rhesus monkeys exposed to HDT might be served as an experimental model for the study of NCS under microgravity.