Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Instantaneous secretion rate of growth hormone in lambs: relationships with sleep, food intake, and posture.

Relationships among sleep, feeding behavior, posture, and GH secretion were investigated in two groups of ruminant lambs in January (n = 6) and May (n = 3). Lambs were placed in individual cages and fed ad libitum. Behavioral features were obtained from continuous polygraphic recording. Blood was collected from undisturbed sheep every 3 min for 24 h via an indwelling catheter connected to a peristaltic pump. One month after the sampling session, ovine GH (oGH) was iv administered to evaluate oGH kinetic parameters. From GH plasma concentrations and oGH kinetic parameters, the instantaneous secretion rate of GH was reconstituted using a numerical deconvolution method. All lambs exhibited normal behavioral patterns. The clearance of oGH was similar for the two groups, and the daily production rates of GH were estimated at 14.60 +/- 7.99 micrograms/kg.24 h in January and 10.57 +/- 5.21 micrograms/kg.24 h in May. Analysis of concentration profiles indicate an episodic pattern of GH secretion into plasma. The mean number of peaks was 16.22 +/- 4.47/24 h, and the mean duration was 47.2 +/- 12.8 min for the nine sheep. When instantaneous secretion rates were taken into account, the number of identified peaks was similar, but the mean duration was reduced (32.9 +/- 9.8 min for the nine sheep). Significant relationships were not found between GH plasma concentration profiles and the state of vigilance, food behavior, or posture. Conversely, when the instantaneous secretion rates were taken into account, the highest GH production rate was detected during rest, i.e. slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, absence of food intake or rumination, and lying down. It is emphasized that the use of GH instantaneous secretion rate instead of GH concentration is of importance when evaluating the relationships between GH dynamics and short duration events. It is concluded that the influence of vigilance on GH secretion, which has already been demonstrated in humans, is likely to exist in other species.
Dynamic Expression of Imprinted Genes Associates with Maternally Controlled Nutrient Allocation during Maize Endosperm Development[W][OPEN]

Genomic imprinting refers to the differential expression of parental alleles in a parent-of-origin manner. Through a genome-wide identification of the imprinted genes in hybrid maize endosperm, this work provides evidence that the allele-specific expression status of the most imprinted genes is subject to dynamic change associated with different developmental events in the maize endosperm. In angiosperms, the endosperm provides nutrients for embryogenesis and seed germination and is the primary tissue where gene imprinting occurs. To identify the imprintome of early developing maize (Zea mays) endosperm, we performed high-throughput transcriptome sequencing of whole kernels at 0, 3, and 5 d after pollination (DAP) and endosperms at 7, 10, and 15 DAP, using B73 by Mo17 reciprocal crosses. We observed gradually increased expression of paternal transcripts in 3- and 5-DAP kernels. In 7-DAP endosperm, the majority of the genes tested reached a 2:1 maternal versus paternal ratio, suggesting that paternal genes are nearly fully activated by 7 DAP. A total of 116, 234, and 63 genes exhibiting parent-specific expression were identified at 7, 10, and 15 DAP, respectively. The largest proportion of paternally expressed genes was at 7 DAP, mainly due to the significantly deviated parental allele expression ratio of these genes at this stage, while nearly 80% of the maternally expressed genes (MEGs) were specific to 10 DAP and were primarily attributed to sharply increased expression levels compared with the other stages. Gene ontology enrichment analysis of the imprinted genes suggested that 10-DAP endosperm-specific MEGs are involved in nutrient uptake and allocation and the auxin signaling pathway, coincident with the onset of starch and storage protein accumulation.
Modular HPC I/O Characterization with Darshan

Contemporary high-performance computing (HPC) applications encompass a broad range of distinct I/O strategies and are often executed on a number of different compute platforms in their lifetime. These large-scale HPC platforms employ increasingly complex I/O subsystems to provide a suitable level of I/O performance to applications. Tuning I/O workloads for such a system is nontrivial, and the results generally are not portable to other HPC systems. I/O profiling tools can help to address this challenge, but most existing tools only instrument specific components within the I/O subsystem that provide a limited perspective on I/O performance. The increasing diversity of scientific applications and computing platforms calls for greater flexibility and scope in I/O characterization.In this work, we consider how the I/O profiling tool Darshan can be improved to allow for more flexible, comprehensive instrumentation of current and future HPC I/O workloads. We evaluate the performance and scalability of our design to ensure that it is lightweight enough for full-time deployment on production HPC systems. We also present two case studies illustrating how a more comprehensive instrumentation of application I/O workloads can enable insights into I/O behavior that were not previously possible. Our results indicate that Darshan's modular instrumentation methods can provide valuable feedback to both users and system administrators, while imposing negligible overheads on user applications.
( Not ) Interacting with a Robot Photographer

We have deployed a robot “photographer” at several events. The robot, Lewis, navigates through the space, opportunistically taking photographs of people. We summarize the different types of human-robot interactions we have observed at these events, and put forth some possible explanations for the different behaviors. We also discuss potential models for human-robot interactions in this constrained setting.
Immunization with SmIg, a novel tegument protein from Schistosoma mansoni, fails to induce protection in mice but reduces liver pathology

SUMMARY Proteins associated with the schistosome tegument are of great importance for the development of new intervention strategies since they may be exposed on the surface of the parasite. Herein, we have isolated a cDNA clone encoding for the Schistosoma mansoni SmIg and its recombinant protein was tested as a potential vaccine candidate. Initially, its amino acid sequence was analysed by bioinformatics and shown to possess an N-terminal signal peptide, a C-terminal transmembrane helix, 4 glycosylation sites, an immunoglobulin conserved domain and 73% similarity with a hypothetical S. japonicum protein of unknown function. SmIg was produced by E. coli as a recombinant protein (rSmIg) and its protective effectiveness was evaluated against S. mansoni infection with 100 cercariae in a murine model. Mice immunized with rSmIg induced an immune response characterized by dominant IgG1 isotype and significant levels of IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-10 and IL-4. Although immunogenic, the recombinant vaccine failed to induce worm burden reduction when compared to the infected control group. However, rSmIg-immunized mice had significant reductions of liver granuloma volume and fibrosis content by 31·8% and 49%, respectively. In conclusion, SmIg is a new tegument protein from S. mansoni that plays an important role in reducing pathology induced by parasite infection.
Kinetic Models Describing Biomolecular Interactions at Surfaces

To say that the adsorption of molecules from solution to a surface is an important phenomenon in biochemistry is to make a major understatement. Indeed, so much of the fundamental chemistry of life occurs at interfacial regions [1–12] (Table 4.1) that the biochemists or biophysicists who take their subject seriously are required to have both an adequate understanding of how these processes occur and how they might be measured experimentally. The major thrust of this volume is concerned with interrogating the adsorption of biologically important molecules to surfaces by the use of optical biosensor technology. In this chapter, we discuss adsorption events from the perspective of monitoring a measurement signal which provides information, in real time, on the extent of solute adsorption to a surface. As discussion of time-dependent adsorption phenomena necessitates the use of kinetic models, we spend our time reviewing kinetic models that describe a wide range of adsorption behavior. We begin, however, by introducing the terminology of adsorption so that we might have the necessary language with which to conduct a discussion of the subject.
Spoken translation: challenges and opportunities

In this paper the research issues and approach to the spoken translation problem will be presented and discussed in the framework of new opportunities offered to multilingual person to person communication on the Web. New challenges arise in the research paradigm due to the availability of huge multimedia content that can be used in the communication process. The NESPOLE! project, a common EU NSF funded project exploring future applications in the e-commerce and e-service sectors, will also be presented and discussed.
Introducing Shape Constraint Via Legendre Moments in a Variational Framework for Cardiac Segmentation on Non-contrast CT Images

In thoracic radiotherapy, some organs should be considered with care and protected from undesirable radiation. Among these organs, the heart is one of the most critical to protect. Its segmentation from routine CT scans provides valuable information to assess its position and shape. In this paper, we present a novel variational segmentation method for extracting the heart on non-contrast CT images. To handle the low image contrast around the cardiac borders, we propose to integrate shape constraints using Legendre moments and adding an energy term in the functional to be optimized. Results for whole heart segmentation in non-contrast CT images are presented and comparisons are performed with manual segmentations.
Being Multi-Disciplinary in Development Studies: Why and How

The field of Development Studies is undoubtedly pertinent and relevant as it focuses on issues and problems of less developed countries in the post World War II. After the 1950s, Development Studies with multi- and inter-disciplinary base was established to explore the dynamics of changes taking place in postcolonial societies. This was perceived as the key approaches to the complex development issues, however the concept itself is still poorly understood and misconstrued. This article aims to discuss the relevance, directions and destination of Development Studies, particularly in Malaysia. Included in these highlights are the epistemology of Development Studies, the socio-historical path that this discipline had gone through in the developing countries and also in Malaysia, and the sustainability and challenges of a multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge, established in local universities. This article ends with recommendations proposed in promoting ways and strategies to develop and sustain a multi- and inter-disciplinary Development Studies for the future. ABSTRAK Bidang Pengajian Pembangunan adalah penting dan releven kerana ia memberi tumpuan terhadap isu-isu dan masalah berhubung dengan negara- negara membangun pada pasca Perang Dunia II. Selepas tahun-tahun 1950- an, Pengajian Pembangunan berasaskan multi dan inter-disiplin telah dibentuk untuk meneliti dinamik perubahan yang berlangsung di negara- negara yang pernah dijajah. Ini disifatkan sebagai pendekatan-pendekatan yang penting untuk menelaah isu-isu pembangunan yang begitu ruwet, namun konsep pengajian pembangunan itu sendiri masih kurang difahami. Makalah ini bertujuan membincangkan kesesuaian, halatuju dan destinasi Pengajian Pembangunan, khususnya di Malaysia. Termasuk di dalam perbincangan ini ialah epistemologi Pengajian Pembangunan, liku-liku sosio-sejarah yang telah dilewati oleh disiplin ini di negara-negara membangun termasuk di Malay- sia, kemampanan serta cabaran-cabaran yang dihadapi dalam disiplin ilmu yang berasaskan multi dan inter-disiplin di universiti-universiti tempatan. Makalah ini berakhir dengan menyarankan beberapa cadangan dan strategi untuk membentuk serta mengekalkan Pengajian Pembangunan berasaskan multi dan inter-disiplin untuk masa depan.
Catecholamines released from local adrenergic axon terminals are possibly involved in fine tuning of steroid secretion from zona glomerulosa cells: functional and morphological evidence.

The effect of supramaximal electric field stimulation on [3H]noradrenaline (NA) release and hormone production by rat adrenal capsule-glomerulosa preparations was studied using a microvolume perfusion system. A substantial proportion (about 20%) of nerve endings (varicosities) were observed close to zona glomerulosa cells, and about half of them appeared to be catecholaminergic, as judged by the chromaffin reaction of the synaptic vesicles studied at electron microscopic level. In tissue, preloaded with [3H]NA, the release of NA in response to electrical stimulation was frequency-dependent. Reserpinization, calcium removal or inhibition of Na+ influx by tetrodotoxin completely blocked NA release by field stimulation, indicating that the release resulted from axonal activity and is of vesicular origin. Neither the alpha 2-adrenoceptor agonist xylazine nor the muscarine-receptor agonist oxotremorine affected the stimulation-evoked release of [3H]NA, suggesting that, in contrast with other neurones present in the central nervous system or in the peripheral autonomic nervous system but like those in the median eminence, these axon terminals contained few presynaptic modulatory receptors. The NA (10.20 +/- 1.79 (S.E.M.) micrograms/g, n = 9), adrenaline (24.38 +/- 5.50 micrograms/g, n = 9) and dopamine (0.35 +/- 0.09 micrograms/g, n = 6) contents of the preparations were high, as determined by high-performance liquid chromatography. Our observations that the release and content of NA is high, and that a substantial proportion of catecholaminergic axon terminals lie in close proximity to zona glomerulosa cells (median value of the distance 300 nm) or to smooth muscle cells of the vessels, suggest that NA released from local adrenergic neurones without being presynaptically modulated may play an important role in fine-tuning both steroid production and/or blood flow through the gland, itself a powerful modulator of the adrenocortical response. This local modulating effect of NA may be especially significant when sympathetic activity is enhanced.
StackThreads/MP: integrating futures into calling standards

An implementation scheme of fine-grain multithreading that needs no changes to current calling standards for sequential languages and modest extensions to sequential compilers is described. Like previous similar systems, it performs an asynchronous call as if it were an ordinary procedure call, and detaches the callee from the caller when the callee suspends or either of them migrates to another processor. Unlike previous similar systems, it detaches and connects arbitrary frames generated by off-the-shelf sequential compilers obeying calling standards. As a consequence, it requires neither a frontend preprocessor nor a native code generator that has a builtin notion of parallelism. The system practically works with unmodified GNU C compiler (GCC). Desirable extensions to sequential compilers for guaranteeing portability and correctness of the scheme are clarified and claimed modest. Experiments indicate that sequential performance is not sacrificed for practical applications and both sequential and parallel performance are comparable to Cilk[8], whose current implementation requires a fairly sophisticated preprocessor to C. These results show that efficient asynchronous calls (a.k.a. future calls) can be integrated into current calling standard with a very small impact both on sequential performance and compiler engineering.
Design of High-Rate Serially Concatenated Codes with Low Error Floor

In this paper we look at the serial concatenation of short linear block codes with a rate-1 recursive convolutional encoder, with a goal of designing high-rate codes with low error floor. We observe that under turbo-style decoding the error floor of the concatenated codes with extended Hamming codes is due to detectable errors in many cases. An interleaver design addressing this is proposed in this paper and its effectiveness is verified numerically. We next examine the use of extended BCH codes of larger minimum distance, resulting in an improved weight spectrum of the overall code. Reduced complexity list decoding is used to decode the BCH codes in order to obtain low decoding complexity for a negligible loss in performance.
A Bioinformatics Approach to the Identification, Classification, and Analysis of Hydroxyproline-Rich Glycoproteins[W][OA]

Hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins (HRGPs) are a superfamily of plant cell wall proteins that function in diverse aspects of plant growth and development. This superfamily consists of three members: hyperglycosylated arabinogalactan proteins (AGPs), moderately glycosylated extensins (EXTs), and lightly glycosylated proline-rich proteins (PRPs). Hybrid and chimeric versions of HRGP molecules also exist. In order to “mine” genomic databases for HRGPs and to facilitate and guide research in the field, the BIO OHIO software program was developed that identifies and classifies AGPs, EXTs, PRPs, hybrid HRGPs, and chimeric HRGPs from proteins predicted from DNA sequence data. This bioinformatics program is based on searching for biased amino acid compositions and for particular protein motifs associated with known HRGPs. HRGPs identified by the program are subsequently analyzed to elucidate the following: (1) repeating amino acid sequences, (2) signal peptide and glycosylphosphatidylinositol lipid anchor addition sequences, (3) similar HRGPs via Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, (4) expression patterns of their genes, (5) other HRGPs, glycosyl transferase, prolyl 4-hydroxylase, and peroxidase genes coexpressed with their genes, and (6) gene structure and whether genetic mutants exist in their genes. The program was used to identify and classify 166 HRGPs from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) as follows: 85 AGPs (including classical AGPs, lysine-rich AGPs, arabinogalactan peptides, fasciclin-like AGPs, plastocyanin AGPs, and other chimeric AGPs), 59 EXTs (including SP5 EXTs, SP5/SP4 EXTs, SP4 EXTs, SP4/SP3 EXTs, a SP3 EXT, “short” EXTs, leucine-rich repeat-EXTs, proline-rich extensin-like receptor kinases, and other chimeric EXTs), 18 PRPs (including PRPs and chimeric PRPs), and AGP/EXT hybrid HRGPs.
Noise Maps for Quantitative and Clinical Severity Towards Long-Term ECG Monitoring

Noise and artifacts are inherent contaminating components and are particularly present in Holter electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring. The presence of noise is even more significant in long-term monitoring (LTM) recordings, as these are collected for several days in patients following their daily activities; hence, strong artifact components can temporarily impair the clinical measurements from the LTM recordings. Traditionally, the noise presence has been dealt with as a problem of non-desirable component removal by means of several quantitative signal metrics such as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), but current systems do not provide any information about the true impact of noise on the ECG clinical evaluation. As a first step towards an alternative to classical approaches, this work assesses the ECG quality under the assumption that an ECG has good quality when it is clinically interpretable. Therefore, our hypotheses are that it is possible (a) to create a clinical severity score for the effect of the noise on the ECG, (b) to characterize its consistency in terms of its temporal and statistical distribution, and (c) to use it for signal quality evaluation in LTM scenarios. For this purpose, a database of external event recorder (EER) signals is assembled and labeled from a clinical point of view for its use as the gold standard of noise severity categorization. These devices are assumed to capture those signal segments more prone to be corrupted with noise during long-term periods. Then, the ECG noise is characterized through the comparison of these clinical severity criteria with conventional quantitative metrics taken from traditional noise-removal approaches, and noise maps are proposed as a novel representation tool to achieve this comparison. Our results showed that neither of the benchmarked quantitative noise measurement criteria represent an accurate enough estimation of the clinical severity of the noise. A case study of long-term ECG is reported, showing the statistical and temporal correspondences and properties with respect to EER signals used to create the gold standard for clinical noise. The proposed noise maps, together with the statistical consistency of the characterization of the noise clinical severity, paves the way towards forthcoming systems providing us with noise maps of the noise clinical severity, allowing the user to process different ECG segments with different techniques and in terms of different measured clinical parameters.
Hermann Ebbinghaus et l'tude exprimentale de la mmoire humaine

Resume ; Les travaux d'Hermann Ebbinghaus sur la memoire humaine ont ete analyses dans le but de souligner l'importante contribution de cet auteur au niveau experimental mais aussi et surtout conceptuel. Il s'avere qu'Ebbinghaus avait clairement etabli la distinction entre deux modes d'expression de la memoire ; l'un implicite, mesure par l'economie au reapprentissage et l'autre explicite, mesure par le souvenir de l'evenement ou du materiel. S'appliquant surtout a ne pas reduire la memoire au souvenir, il developpa un indicateur base sur l'economie en temps ou en nombre d'essais realisee lors d'un second apprentissage. Ainsi, il remarqua qu'un evenement non evocable ni meme reconnaissable etait tout de meme present en memoire puisqu'il suscitait encore une economie lors de son reapprentissage. Cependant, des la fin du XIXe siecle, les chercheurs travaillant dans le domaine de la memoire ont prefere utiliser les tests classiques de rappel et de reconnaissance. Aujourd'hui, de nombreuses mesures implicites de la memoire a caractere perceptif, lexical ou conceptuel sont mises en œuvre et ont toutes en commun avec la methode de reapprentissage le fait que les contenus de memoire ne sont pas testes directement. La decouverte recente de nombreuses dissociations entre ces nouvelles mesures et les tests classiques de rappel et de reconnaissance a permis l'emergence d'un nouveau champ de recherches dont Ebbinghaus fut le precurseur : celui de la memoire implicite et de la memoire explicite. ; Mots cles : Ebbinghaus, histoire de la psychologie, memoire implicite et explicite.
Integrated System Analysis Environment for the Continuous Consistency and Completeness Checking

Modelers create models of a system during information system development. Models should be correct, complete and consistent in order to be most useful. Modeler must have possibility to use software that helps to automate these kinds of checks in order to raise the speed of work and quality of its results. This article describes the software system that allows to perform strategic-and detailed analysis of a database-centric information system without using complicated visual notations. System supports methodological framework for the Enterprise Information System (EIS) strategic analysis (like the one that is described by Roost et al. [1]). User of the proposed system records specification in a database as a single integrated model. We propose database queries that help to find consistency and completeness (CC) problems of the recorded models.