Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Voltage-sensitive potassium channels in Limulus ventral photoreceptors

The steady-state slope conductance of Limulus ventral photoreceptors increases markedly when the membrane is depolarized from rest. The ionic basis of this rectification has been examined with a voltage- clamp technique. Tail currents that occur when membrane potential is repolarized after having been depolarized have been identified. The tail currents reverse direction at a voltage that becomes more positive when Ko is increased. Rectification is reduced by extracellular 4- aminopyridine and by intracellular injection of tetra-ethyl-ammonium (TEA). These results indicate that the membrane rectification around resting potential is due primarily to voltage-sensitive K+ channels. The increase in gK caused by depolarization is not mediated by a voltage-dependent rise in in Cai++, since intracellular injection of Ca++ causes a decrease rather than an increase in slope conductance. TEA can be used to examine the functional role of the K+ channels because it blocks them without substantially affecting the light- activated Na+ conductance. The effect of TEA on response-intensity curves shows that the K+ channels serve to compress the voltage range of receptor potentials.
A 0 . 13m SiGe BiCMOS Colpitts-Based VCO for-Band Radar Transmitters

This paper presents a Colpitts-based voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for -band radar applications. In the proposed circuit, the oscillation signal is directly drawn from the switching transistor bases by means of the primary winding of a transformer tank, while the secondary winding drives the output buffer. This solution improves both tuning range and oscillation swing with respect to traditional millimeter-wave VCO topologies without increasing power supply. The oscillator is implemented in a 0.13m SiGe BiCMOS technology, along with high-frequency dividers to enable low-frequency testing. The VCO exhibits a phase noise of 99.3 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from an oscillation frequency of 76 GHz and a tuning range of 4.9% with a consumption of 65 mW at 2.5-V power supply. The VCO is also used to drive a two-stage power amplifier in a fully integrated -band transmitter that is able to deliver an overall output power as high as 15 dBm at 76 GHz.
Reliability and Availability Analysis of a Repairable <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$k$</tex></formula>-out-of-<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$n:G$</tex></formula> System With <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$R$</tex></formula> Repairmen Subje

The <i>k</i>-<i>out</i>-<i>of</i>-<i>n</i>:<i>G</i> system is widely used in reliability and maintenance engineering. We consider a general <i>k</i>-<i>out</i>-<i>of</i>-<i>n</i>:<i>G</i> system which has identical components with identical repair time and lifetime distributions. There are <i>R</i> identical repairmen in the system. The shut-off rules of suspended animation, continuous operation, and a mixture of these two are studied. Repair times and lifetimes are assumed to be statistically independent and exponentially distributed (within, and between). We derive new closed form solutions for important performance measures including steady state availability, mean time to system failure, and mean time to first system failure.
Author ' s personal copy VOLTAGE-GATED Ca 2 + INFLUX AND MITOCHONDRIAL Ca 2 + INITIATE SECRETION FROM APLYSIA NEUROENDOCRINE CELLS

Neuroendocrine secretion often requires prolonged voltage-gated Ca entry; however, the ability of Ca from intracellular stores, such as endoplasmic reticulum or mitochondria, to elicit secretion is less clear. We examined this using the bag cell neurons, which trigger ovulation in Aplysia by releasing egg-laying hormone (ELH) peptide. Secretion from cultured bag cell neurons was observed as an increase in plasma membrane capacitance following Ca influx evoked by a 5-Hz, 1-min train of depolarizing steps under voltage-clamp. The response was similar for step durations of P50 ms, but fell off sharply with shorter stimuli. The capacitance change was attenuated by replacing external Ca with Ba, blocking Ca channels, buffering intracellular Ca with EGTA, disrupting synaptic protein recycling, or genetic knock-down of ELH. Regarding intracellular stores, liberating mitochondrial Ca with the protonophore, carbonyl cyanide-p-trifluoromethoxyphenylhydrazone (FCCP), brought about an EGTA-sensitive elevation of capacitance. Conversely, no change was observed to Ca released from the endoplasmic reticulum or acidic stores. Prior exposure to FCCP lessened the train-induced capacitance increase, suggesting overlap in the pool of releasable vesicles. Employing GTP-c-S to interfere with endocytosis delayed recovery (presumed membrane retrieval) of the capacitance change following FCCP, but not the train. Finally, secretion was correlated with reproductive behavior, in that neurons isolated from animals engaged in egg-laying presented a greater train-induced capacitance elevation vs quiescent animals. The bag cell neuron capacitance increase is consistent with peptide secretion requiring high Ca, either from influx or stores, and may reflect the all-or-none nature of reproduction. 2013 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Extracting Bilingual Dictionary from Comparable Corpora with Dependency Heterogeneity

This paper proposes an approach for bilingual dictionary extraction from comparable corpora. The proposed approach is based on the observation that a word and its translation share similar dependency relations. Experimental results using 250 randomly selected translation pairs prove that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the traditional context-based approach that uses bag-of-words around translation candidates.
On Including the User Dynamic in Learning to Rank

Ranking query results effectively by considering user past behaviour and preferences is a primary concern for IR researchers both in academia and industry. In this context, LtR is widely believed to be the most effective solution to design ranking models that account for user-interaction features that have proved to remarkably impact on IR effectiveness. In this paper, we explore the possibility of integrating the user dynamic directly into the LtR algorithms. Specifically, we model with Markov chains the behaviour of users in scanning a ranked result list and we modify Lambdamart, a state-of-the-art LtR algorithm, to exploit a new discount loss function calibrated on the proposed Markovian model of user dynamic. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach on publicly available LtR datasets, finding that the improvements measured over the standard algorithm are statistically significant.
Multicasting in a High-Port Sub-μ sec Latency Hipo λ aos Optical Packet Switch

We demonstrate a Hipoλaos optical packet switch (OPS) configuration that can support optical data multicasting in a sub-μsec 256-port layout. The proposed multicast OPS relies on the low-latency and high-port Hipoλaos OPS architecture, extending its capabilities from unito multicast operation through simple modifications at its egress wavelength-routing stage. It exploits the WDM cyclic properties of the arrayed waveguide grating router stage in conjunction with multi-wavelength conversion (WC) in semiconductor optical amplifier–Mach–Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI) toward scaling from a unito a multicast OPS design, with the level of multi-wavelength WC defining the multicast degree. Optical multicasting up to five nodes is experimentally demonstrated at 10 Gb/s, revealing error-free operation at 10−9 with less than 2-dB power penalty compared with the unicast operation. The broadband operational characteristics of the multicast operation have been also investigated at 10 Gb/s, utilizing pairs of wavelengths with different channel spacing and validating the multicast credentials of the switch across all the necessary wavelength channels for a 256-port configuration. Finally, a mixed traffic scenario involving both unicast and multicast optical traffic is demonstrated at 10 Gb/s, revealing error-free performance for all cases, with a <0.2 dB excess power penalty of multicasted packets over the unicast data.
Resveratrol attenuates hypoxic injury in a primary hepatocyte model of hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress following hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation (HSR) is regulated, in part, by inflammatory and apoptotic mediators such as necrosis factor &kgr;B (NF-&kgr;B) and p53. Sirtuin 1 (Sirt-1) is a metabolic intermediary that regulates stress responses by suppressing NF-&kgr;B and p53 activity. Resveratrol is a naturally occurring polyphenolic antioxidant and Sirt-1 agonist. The aim of this study was to determine whether resveratrol protects hepatocytes following HSR or hypoxia. METHODS In vivo, HSR was achieved in male rats by arterial blood withdrawal to 30 ± 2 mm Hg for 1 hour before resuscitation with or without resveratrol (Res, 30 mg/kg). Hepatic tissue was stained and scored for necrosis, interleukin 6, and Sirt-1 expression. In vitro, primary rat hepatocytes were subjected to 8 hours of hypoxia without or with Res (100 µM). Cells were analyzed immediately or after 6 hours of normoxia, for survival and markers of injury (lactate dehydrogenase assay, lipid peroxidation, and mitochondrial integrity). Cell lysates were collected for cytochrome c analysis and immunoprecipitated using antibodies against NF-&kgr;B (p65) or p53. RESULTS In vivo, animals subject to HSR exhibited increased expression of markers of hepatocyte damage compared with those sham operated, concomitant with lower Sirt-1 expression. In vitro, hypoxia followed by normoxia resulted in increased cell death, an effect that was blunted by Res. Analysis of cell and mitochondrial function demonstrated that Res inhibited the detrimental effects of hypoxia in isolated hepatocytes. CONCLUSION Resveratrol prevents cell death in HSR and exerts a protective effect on the mitochondria in a hepatocyte model of hypoxic injury-reoxygenation possibly via Sirt-1 modulation of p53 and NF-&kgr;B activity.
Age and birth cohort effects on rates of alcohol dependence.

BACKGROUND Epidemiological studies of traits such as alcohol dependence and depression have often found lifetime rates in younger individuals exceeding those found in older individuals. This suggests additional influences of birth cohort or period effects so that individuals in later-born cohorts have an increased lifetime risk. METHODS Data from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism were used to investigate secular trends for alcoholism and related conditions and to examine risk predictors while taking the cohort effect into account. We used data on 4099 interviewed parents and siblings of alcohol-dependent subjects and 1054 members of control families. We used survival analysis techniques and the Cox proportional hazards regression model to estimate the relative risk for demographic covariates. We used the relative sample to predict risk in the sibling of the proband and family history information to determine whether there was a bias when deceased individuals were excluded from analysis. RESULTS In the control sample, we observed a 1.8% lifetime rate of DSM-III-R alcohol dependence in women born before 1940, as contrasted to a 13% rate in women born after 1960, and a 15% lifetime rate in men born before 1940, contrasted with a 28% rate in men born after 1960. As expected, lifetime rates in relatives were increased when compared with controls. Highly significant risk ratios (RR) were observed for gender (RR, 2.3), cohort of birth (RR, 1.5 over a decade), daily smoking (RR, 2.0), heavy smoking (RR, 3.0), and comorbid diagnoses of antisocial personality (RR, 2.2) and depression (RR, 1.6). Analysis of the family history data indicated higher rates of alcohol dependence in relatives who were deceased compared to those who were living. CONCLUSIONS Marked cohort differences were observed and may reflect real changes over time, or artifacts of memory recall, differential mortality, or public awareness. The analysis of all relatives (living or deceased) indicates that associated mortality may, in part, explain the secular trends seen when analyses are restricted to living, personally interviewed individuals.
Real-time tracking of highly articulated structures in the presence of noisy measurements

This paper presents a novel approach for model-based real-time tracking of highly articulated structures such as humans. This approach is based on an algorithm which efficiently propagates statistics of probability distributions through a kinematic chain to obtain maximum a posteriori estimates of the motion of the entire structure. This algorithm yields the least squares solution in linear time (in the number of components of the model) and can also be applied to non-Gaussian statistics using a simple but powerful trick. The resulting implementation runs in real-time on standard hardware without any pre-processing of the video data and can thus operate on live video. Results from experiments performed using this system are presented and discussed.
Characterization of interfacial solvent in protein complexes and contribution of wet spots to the interface description

Water networks in protein interfaces can complement direct interactions contributing significantly to molecular recognition, function, and stability of protein association. Thus, water can be seen as an extension or addition of protein structural features, which may add plenty of information to protein interfacial definition. However, solvent is frequently neglected in protein interaction studies. Analysis of the interfacial information contained in the PDB is essential to achieve more accurate descriptions of protein interfaces. With this aim, we have used the SCOWLP database (http://www.scowlp.org) and applied computational geometry methods to extract and analyze interfacial information of a high‐resolution nonredundant dataset of 176 protein complexes containing obligate and transient interfaces. We have identified all interfacial residues and characterized them in terms of temperature factors, secondary structure, residue composition, and pairing preferences to understand their contribution to the interface description. We have paid special attention to water‐bridged residues; focusing on those that interact only mediated by a water molecule called wet spots. Our results show that 40.1% of the interfacial residues are interacting through water and that wet spots represent a 14.5% of the total, emphasizing the importance of the inclusion of solvent in protein interaction studies, and the contribution of wet spots to interfacial description. Wet spots present similar characteristics to residues binding buried water molecules in the core or cavities of proteins; being preferably located in nonregular secondary structures and establishing hydrogen bonds by their main‐chains. We observe that obligate and transient interfaces present a comparable amount of solvent. Moreover, the role of solvent in both complex types differs according to the different nature of their interfaces. The information obtained in our studies will assist in the process of accomplishing more accurate descriptions of protein interfaces and may be helpful to improve comparison of protein family interfaces, to facilitate rational ligand design, and to guide protein docking. Proteins 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Maximum likelihood point cloud acquisition from a mobile platform

This paper describes an approach to acquire locally consistent range data scans from a moving sensor platform. Data from a vertically mounted rotating laser scanner and odometry position estimates are fused and used to estimate maximum likelihood point clouds. An estimation algorithm is applied to reduce the accumulated error after a full rotation of the range finder. A configuration consisting of a SICK laser scanner mounted on a rotational actuator is described and used to evaluate the proposed approach. The data sets analyzed suggest a significant improvement in point cloud consistency, even over a short travel distance.
Convolutional Neural Networks for Page Segmentation of Historical Document Images

This paper presents a page segmentation method for handwritten historical document images based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). We consider page segmentation as a pixel labeling problem, i.e., each pixel is classified as one of the predefined classes. Traditional methods in this area rely on hand-crafted features carefully tuned considering prior knowledge. In contrast, we propose to learn features from raw image pixels using a CNN. While many researchers focus on developing deep CNN architectures to solve different problems, we train a simple CNN with only one convolution layer. We show that the simple architecture achieves competitive results against other deep architectures on different public datasets. Experiments also demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method compared to previous methods.
Trandolapril/verapamil combination in hypertensive diabetic patients

Cardiovascular diseases are directly affected by arterial hypertension. When associated with diabetes mellitus, the potential deleterious effects are well amplified. Both conditions play a central role in the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, and renal insufficiency. Prevalence of hypertension is much higher among diabetic than non-diabetic patients, and the hypertensive patient is more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Current international guidelines recommend aggressive reductions in blood pressure (BP) in hypertensive patients with additional risk factors, including cardiovascular risk factors, and emphasize the relevance of intensive reduction in patients with diabetes mellitus; a goal of 130/80 mm Hg is required. To achieve BP target a combination of antihypertensives will be needed, and the use of long-acting drugs that are able to provide 24-hour efficacy with a once-daily dosing confers the noteworthy advantages of compliance improvement and BP variation lessening. Lower dosages of the individual treatments of the combination therapy can be administered for the same antihypertensive efficiency as that attained with high dosages of monotherapy. Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and calcium-channel blockers as a combination have theoretically compelling advantages for vessel homeostasis. Trandolapril/verapamil sustained release combination has showed beneficial effects on cardiac and renal systems as well as its antihypertensive efficacy, with no metabolic disturbances. This combination can be considered as an effective therapy for the diabetic hypertensive population.
Dynamic computation in a recurrent network of heterogeneous silicon neurons

We describe a neuromorphic chip with a two-layer excitatory-inhibitory recurrent network of that exhibits localized clusters of neural activity. Unlike other recurrent networks, the clusters in our network are pinned to certain locations due to transistor mismatch introduced in fabrication. As described in previous work, our pinned clusters respond selectively to oriented stimuli and the neurons' preferred orientations are distributed similar to the visual cortex. Here we show that orientation computation is rapid when activity alternates between layers (staccato-like), dislodging pinned clusters, which promotes fast cluster diffusion
Structural Analyses of the Slm1-PH Domain Demonstrate Ligand Binding in the Non-Canonical Site

Background Pleckstrin homology (PH) domains are common membrane-targeting modules and their best characterized ligands are a set of important signaling lipids that include phosphatidylinositol phosphates (PtdInsPs). PH domains recognize PtdInsPs through two distinct mechanisms that use different binding pockets on opposite sides of the β-strands 1 and 2: i) a canonical binding site delimited by the β1-β2 and β3-β4loops and ii) a non-canonical binding site bordered by the β1-β2 and β5-β6loops. The PH domain-containing protein Slm1 from budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is required for actin cytoskeleton polarization and cell growth. We recently reported that this PH domain binds PtdInsPs and phosphorylated sphingolipids in a cooperative manner. Principal Findings To study the structural basis for the Slm1-PH domain (Slm1-PH) specificity, we co-crystallized this domain with different soluble compounds that have structures analogous to anionic lipid head groups of reported Slm1 ligands: inositol 4-phosphate, which mimics phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate (PtdIns(4)P), and phosphoserine as a surrogate for dihydrosphingosine 1-phosphate (DHS1-P). We found electron densities for the ligands within the so-called non-canonical binding site. An additional positively charged surface that contacts a phosphate group was identified next to the canonical binding site. Conclusions Our results suggest that Slm1-PH utilizes a non-canonical binding site to bind PtdInsPs, similar to that described for the PH domains of β-spectrin, Tiam1 and ArhGAP9. Additionally, Slm1-PH may have retained an active canonical site. We propose that the presence of both a canonical and a non-canonical binding pocket in Slm1-PH may account for the cooperative binding to PtdInsPs and DHS-1P.
Dynamic Addressing in Wireless Sensor Networks without Location Awareness

Sensor Networks have applications in diverse fields. They can be deployed for habitat modeling, temperature monitoring and industrial sensing. They also find applications in battlefield awareness and emergency (first) response situations. While unique addressing is not a requirement of many data collecting applications of wireless sensor networks, it is vital for the success of applications such as emergency response. Data that cannot be associated with a specific node becomes useless in such situations. In this work we propose a novel dynamic addressing mechanism for wireless sensor networks that are not location-aware. The scheme enables successful reuse of addresses in event-driven wireless sensor networks introducing minimal latencies and efficiently addressing packet loss. It also eliminates the need for network-wide Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) to ensure uniqueness of network level addresses.
Phoneme discrimination using KS algebra I

In our work we define a new algebra of operators as a substitute for fuzzy logic. Its primary purpose is for construction of binary discriminators for phonemes based on spectral content. It is optimized for design of non-parametric computational circuits, and makes uses of 4 operations: $\min$, $\max$, the difference and generalized additively homogenuous means.
Application of fast SOCP based statistical sizing in the microprocessor design flow

In this paper we have applied statistical sizing in an industrial setting. Efficient implementation of the statistical sizing algorithm is achieved by utilizing a dedicated interior-point solution method. The new solution method is capable of solving a robust linear program, that is mapped onto a second-order conic program, an order of magnitude faster than the previously explored formulation. Our sizing algorithm is unique in that it represents variability in circuit delay analytically by formulating a robust linear program. The algorithm allows efficient and superior area minimization under statistically formulated timing yield constraints. In this paper, we also report the first use of statistical gate sizing in an industrial microprocessor design flow as a post-synthesis optimization step. Statistical delay models were generated for a 90nm CMOS standard cell library used in the design of an industrial low-power 32bit x86 microprocessor and practical issues related to iterative convergence were explored. When compared to the deterministic sizing, the area savings are 26% for the microprocessor module. The runtime of the algorithm is very low compared to existing statistical sizing methods, achieving an almost 15X speed-up, and scales as O(N1.5), where N is the circuit size.