Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spectral analysis of frequency domain multiplication-free adaptive filter with the MDFT

The paper analyses the spectrum of a frequency domain multiplication-free adaptive filter (FDMAF) using a modified discrete Fourier transform (MDFT) pair. The proposed FDMAF employs the MDFT and differential pulse code modulation in an input part and the reference input vectors are used in an update equation for the adaptive filter coefficients. Also, it can be simply controlled by adjusting the amplitude of the MDFT pair output signals and can obtain an output signal with stable convergence characteristics and without accumulated error. The condition used to analyse the algorithm has zero-mean, wide-sense stationary and white Gaussian noise.
Long-term follow-up of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in 310 patients.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) induces thrombocytopenia by means of an autoimmune mechanism. Despite the available therapies a subset of patients develop chronic refractory severe thrombocytopenia (i.e. a platelet count consistently lower than 20 to 30x10(9)/L), and life-threatening bleeding can occasionally occur. It has been suggested that the risk of major bleeding is higher in elderly patients and in patients with bleeding at diagnosis. However, since clear data on the influence of clinical and/or laboratory parameters on outcome are lacking, some patients may be receiving unnecessary treatment. DESIGN AND METHODS We made a retrospective analysis of a series of 310 patients with chronic ITP (108 males and 202 females), with a median age at diagnosis of 40 years (range 8-87 years). The median follow-up time was 121 months, (range 7-434 months). Therapy was most often started in the presence of hemorrhagic complications and/or a platelet count <30x10(9)/L either at diagnosis or during follow-up. RESULTS Our findings confirmed that patients who were symptomatic at diagnosis were more likely to have bleeding during their follow-up. Moreover, all the patients who suffered major bleeding during their follow-up had median platelet counts of 10x10(9)/L (range 1-20) at that time. Only one patient, aged 43 years, died of hemorrhage following prolonged severe thrombocytopenia. Age >60 years was not associated with any significant differences in incidence of bleeding at diagnosis or during follow-up. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS We conclude that prospective studies are required to evaluate whether it may be reasonable to treat only symptomatic patients, independently of age.
Crystal Structure of the Chromodomain Helicase DNA-binding Protein 1 (Chd1) DNA-binding Domain in Complex with DNA*

Background: The Chd1 DNA-binding domain is required for binding DNA outside the nucleosome core. Results: The Chd1 DNA-binding domain primarily engages one strand of a straight DNA duplex. Conclusion: Yeast Chd1 and Isw1 bind DNA with distinct geometries, yet contact the phosphate backbone using similar elements. Significance: Knowledge of protein-DNA interactions is important for understanding how chromatin remodelers productively engage nucleosomes. Chromatin remodelers are ATP-dependent machines that dynamically alter the chromatin packaging of eukaryotic genomes by assembling, sliding, and displacing nucleosomes. The Chd1 chromatin remodeler possesses a C-terminal DNA-binding domain that is required for efficient nucleosome sliding and believed to be essential for sensing the length of DNA flanking the nucleosome core. The structure of the Chd1 DNA-binding domain was recently shown to consist of a SANT and SLIDE domain, analogous to the DNA-binding domain of the ISWI family, yet the details of how Chd1 recognized DNA were not known. Here we present the crystal structure of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Chd1 DNA-binding domain in complex with a DNA duplex. The bound DNA duplex is straight, consistent with the preference exhibited by the Chd1 DNA-binding domain for extranucleosomal DNA. Comparison of this structure with the recently solved ISW1a DNA-binding domain bound to DNA reveals that DNA lays across each protein at a distinct angle, yet contacts similar surfaces on the SANT and SLIDE domains. In contrast to the minor groove binding seen for Isw1 and predicted for Chd1, the SLIDE domain of the Chd1 DNA-binding domain contacts the DNA major groove. The majority of direct contacts with the phosphate backbone occur only on one DNA strand, suggesting that Chd1 may not strongly discriminate between major and minor grooves.
Analysis of restart simulation: Theoretical basis and sensitivity study

RESTART (Repetitive Simulation Trials After Reaching Thresholds) is a widely applicable accelerated simulation technique that allows the evaluation of extremely low probabilities. This paper revisits the theoretical basis of RESTART in a more general and rigorous way. The unbiasedness of the estimator is proved and its variance is derived without need of making any assumption on the simulated system. From this analysis, the gain obtained with RESTART as well as the optimal parameter values that maximise the gain are derived. The sensitivity of the method to the choice of the importance function, threshold values and number of retrials for each threshold is studied, providing simple bounds on the impact on the gain of each of these choices.
Acceptance by Erwinia spp. of R Plasmid R68.45 and Its Ability to Mobilize the Chromosome of Erwinia chrysanthemi

R plasmid R68.45 was transferred in broth matings from Escherichia coli to strains of Erwinia amylovora, E. carotovora subsp. atroseptica, E. chrysanthemi, and E. herbicola (Enterobacter agglomerans); the frequency of transfer ranged from 2 × 10−8 to 5 × 10−4 per input donor cell depending on the bacterial species. The drug resistance markers tet+, amp+, and kan+ were stable in these Erwinia species. Transconjugants of Erwinia spp. , but not of the wild-type parent Erwinia strains, acquired levels of antibiotic resistance (tetracycline, 50 μg/ml; ampicillin, 200 μg/ml; kanamycin 200 μg/ml) similar to those of the donor R68.45-bearing strain of Escherichia coli. Erwinia transconjugants (with one exception of E. carotovora subsp. atroseptica) were donors of the antibiotic resistance markers; the frequency of transfer was consistently higher with an E. coli strain than with Erwinia spp. as recipients, and when matings were done on a solid surface (membranes) rather than in liquid. Transfer of chromosomal markers ade+, gal+, gtu+ (utilization of galacturonate), his+, leu+, lys+, thr+, and trp+ occurred in crosses between E. chrysanthemi strains harboring R68.45 and appropriate recipient strains; the frequency of transfer ranged from 9.0 × 10−8 to 2.0 × 10−6 depending on the selective marker. Analysis of the coinheritance of unselected markers among various classes of recombinants revealed linkage between thr-leu-lys-ade and between trp and his, thus confirming earlier findings with the Hfr-type donor cells. Since R68.45 mobilized an array of chromosomal markers in the wild-type as well as genetically marked strains of E. chrysanthemi, the system, used in conjunction with the existing Hfr strains, should provide a useful tool to study the genetics of plant pathogenicity of this bacterial species. In contrast to E. chrysanthemi, R68.45 did not mobilize chromosomal markers ilv+, his+, rbs+, ser+, and thr+ in E. amylovora EA178.
Andrographolide inhibits hypoxia-inducible factor-1 through phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/AKT pathway and suppresses breast cancer growth

Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) is a master regulator of the transcriptional response to hypoxia. HIF-1α is one of the most compelling anticancer targets. Andrographolide (Andro) was newly identified to inhibit HIF-1 in T47D cells (a half maximal effective concentration [EC50] of 1.03×10−7 mol/L), by a dual-luciferase reporter assay. It suppressed HIF-1α protein and gene accumulation, which was dependent on the inhibition of upstream phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT pathway. It also abrogated the expression of HIF-1 target vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene and protein. Further, Andro inhibited T47D and MDA-MB-231 cell proliferation and colony formation. In addition, it exhibited significant in vivo efficacy and antitumor potential against the MDA-MB-231 xenograft in nude mice. In conclusion, these results highlighted the potential effects of Andro, which inhibits HIF-1, and hence may be developed as an antitumor agent for breast cancer therapy in future.
Mining Continuous Code Changes to Detect Frequent Program Transformations

Identifying repetitive code changes benefits developers, tool builders, and researchers. Tool builders can automate the popular code changes, thus improving the productivity of developers. Researchers would better understand the practice of code evolution, advancing existing code assistance tools even further. Developers would particularly benefit if such tools can learn and support repetitive code changes that are in progress. Unfortunately, the existing tools that aim at detecting frequent code change patterns predominantly focus on analyzing the static source code of an application rather than dynamic code changes, and thus, they can not learn from the changes on-the-fly. We present the first approach that identifies previously unknown frequent code change patterns from a continuous sequence of code changes. Our novel algorithm effectively handles two major challenges that distinguish continuous code change pattern mining from the existing data mining techniques: overlapping transactions and transactions containing multiple instances of the same item kind. We evaluated our algorithm on 1,520 hours of code development collected from 23 developers, and showed that it is effective, useful, and scales to big amounts of data. We analyzed some of the mined code change patterns and discovered ten popular kinds of high level program transformations.
Risk markers of sudden cardiac death in standard 12-lead electrocardiograms

Abstract The annual incidence of sudden cardiac death (SCD) is estimated at 1 per 1,000 for adults over the age of 35 years, and 1 per 100,000 for adolescents and young adults. Although the overall incidence of unexpected SCD among previously healthy persons is small, the emotional impact of these events is devastating. The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) has been used as a risk assessment tool from healthy occupational applicants and athletes to patients with cardiovascular disorders. The ECG is also routinely recorded in the majority of patients hospitalized for non-cardiovascular causes. Thus, it is a widely used tool intended for identification of unsuspected heart disease generally, as well as for diagnosing specific disorders predisposing to fatal arrhythmias in subjects who have not experienced such events but who are at increased risk. Recognition of specific ECG features is of importance for prevention of SCD in asymptomatic persons. The purpose of this review is to catalog the disorders associated with SCD that may be reflected in 12-lead ECGs seen in office or hospital practices and to discuss their prevalence and the magnitude of risks. The focus is on ECG findings suggesting increased SCD risk among the asymptomatic subjects without previously diagnosed cardiac disease.
Nitric oxide: a newly discovered function on wound healing

AbstractWound healing impairment represents a particularly challenging clinical problem to which no efficacious treatment regimens currently exist. The factors ensuring appropriate intercellular communication during wound repair are not completely understood. Although protein-type mediators are well-established players in this process, emerging evidence from both animal and human studies indicates that nitric oxide (NO) plays a key role in wound repair. The beneficial effects of NO on wound repair may be attributed to its functional influences on angiogenesis, inflammation, cell proliferation, matrix deposition, and remodeling. Recent findings from in vitro and in vivo studies of NO on wound repair are summarized in this review. The unveiled novel mechanisms support the use of NO-containing agents and/or NO synthase gene therapy as new therapeutic regimens for impaired wound healing.
A 915 MHz, Ultra-Low Power 2-Tone Transceiver With Enhanced Interference Resilience

An ultra-low-power RF envelope-detection radio has been designed for low-power short-range wireless applications. It introduces an interference rejection technique that improves the in-band selectivity by 24.5 dB. The transmitter adopts the power-efficient direct-modulation architecture, and the receiver maintains the simplicity and low power consumption of envelope detection receivers. In the 915 MHz ISM band at 10 kbps the transmitter output level reaches - 3 dBm with 33.9% global efficiency, while the receiver achieves -83 dBm sensitivity with 121 μW power consumption. The Tx and Rx implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology occupy 0.71 and 1.27 mm2 , respectively.
Myocardin Regulates Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Inflammatory Activation and Disease

Objective— Atherosclerosis, the cause of 50% of deaths in westernized societies, is widely regarded as a chronic vascular inflammatory disease. Vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) inflammatory activation in response to local proinflammatory stimuli contributes to disease progression and is a pervasive feature in developing atherosclerotic plaques. Therefore, it is of considerable therapeutic importance to identify mechanisms that regulate the VSMC inflammatory response. Approach and Results— We report that myocardin, a powerful myogenic transcriptional coactivator, negatively regulates VSMC inflammatory activation and vascular disease. Myocardin levels are reduced during atherosclerosis, in association with phenotypic switching of smooth muscle cells. Myocardin deficiency accelerates atherogenesis in hypercholesterolemic apolipoprotein E−/− mice. Conversely, increased myocardin expression potently abrogates the induction of an array of inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and adhesion molecules in VSMCs. Expression of myocardin in VSMCs reduces lipid uptake, macrophage interaction, chemotaxis, and macrophage-endothelial tethering in vitro, and attenuates monocyte accumulation within developing lesions in vivo. These results demonstrate that endogenous levels of myocardin are a critical regulator of vessel inflammation. Conclusions— We propose myocardin as a guardian of the contractile, noninflammatory VSMC phenotype, with loss of myocardin representing a critical permissive step in the process of phenotypic transition and inflammatory activation, at the onset of vascular disease.
Yellow fever vaccine induces integrated multilineage and polyfunctional immune responses

Correlates of immune-mediated protection to most viral and cancer vaccines are still unknown. This impedes the development of novel vaccines to incurable diseases such as HIV and cancer. In this study, we have used functional genomics and polychromatic flow cytometry to define the signature of the immune response to the yellow fever (YF) vaccine 17D (YF17D) in a cohort of 40 volunteers followed for up to 1 yr after vaccination. We show that immunization with YF17D leads to an integrated immune response that includes several effector arms of innate immunity, including complement, the inflammasome, and interferons, as well as adaptive immunity as shown by an early T cell response followed by a brisk and variable B cell response. Development of these responses is preceded, as demonstrated in three independent vaccination trials and in a novel in vitro system of primary immune responses (modular immune in vitro construct [MIMIC] system), by the coordinated up-regulation of transcripts for specific transcription factors, including STAT1, IRF7, and ETS2, which are upstream of the different effector arms of the immune response. These results clearly show that the immune response to a strong vaccine is preceded by coordinated induction of master transcription factors that lead to the development of a broad, polyfunctional, and persistent immune response that integrates all effector cells of the immune system.
Molecular Axonal Propagation of Simple and Complex Spikes in Cerebellar Purkinje Neurons

In cerebellar Purkinje neurons, the reliability of propagation of high-frequency simple spikes and spikelets of complex spikes is likely to regulate inhibition of Purkinje target neurons. To test the extent to which a one-to-one correspondence exists between somatic and axonal spikes, we made dual somatic and axonal recordings from Purkinje neurons in mouse cerebellar slices. Somatic action potentials were recorded with a whole-cell pipette, and the corresponding axonal signals were recorded extracellularly with a loose-patch pipette. Propagation of spontaneous and evoked simple spikes was highly reliable. At somatic firing rates of 200 spikes/sec, 10% of spikes failed to propagate, with failures becoming more frequent only at maximal somatic firing rates ( 260 spikes/sec). Complex spikes were elicited by climbing fiber stimulation, and their somatic waveforms were modulated by tonic current injection, as well as by paired stimulation to depress the underlying EPSCs. Across conditions, the mean number of propagating action potentials remained just above two spikes per climbing fiber stimulation, but the instantaneous frequency of the propagating spikes changed, from 375 Hz during somatic hyperpolarizations that silenced spontaneous firing to 150 Hz during spontaneous activity. The probability of propagation of individual spikelets could be described quantitatively as a saturating function of spikelet amplitude, rate of rise, or preceding interspike interval. The results suggest that ion channels of Purkinje axons are adapted to produce extremely short refractory periods and that brief bursts of forward-propagating action potentials generated by complex spikes may contribute transiently to inhibition of postsynaptic neurons.
Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English

The present study uses probabilistic models of corpus data in a novel way, to measure and compare the syntactic predictive capacities of speakers of different varieties of the same language. The study finds that speakers' knowledge of probabilistic grammatical choices can vary across different varieties of the same language and can be detected psycholinguistically in the individual. In three pairs of experiments, Australians and Americans responded reliably to corpus model probabilities in rating the naturalness of alternative dative constructions, their lexical-decision latencies during reading varied inversely with the syntactic probabilities of the construction, and they showed subtle covariation in these tasks, which is in line with quantitative differences in the choices of datives produced in the same contexts.
Sex and sugar in yeast: two distinct GPCR systems

Although eukaryotic G‐protein coupled receptor (GPCR) systems are well known for their ability to detect and mediate rapid responses to extracellular signals, the full range of stimuli to which they respond may not yet have been identified. Activation of GPCRs by hormones, pheromones, odorants, neurotransmitters, light and different taste compounds is well established. However, the recent discovery of a glucose‐sensing GPCR system in Saccharomyces cerevisiae has unexpectedly added common nutrients to this list of stimuli. This GPCR system mediates glucose activation of adenylate cyclase during the switch from respirative/gluconeogenic metabolism to fermentation. The GPCR system involved in pheromone signalling in S. cerevisiae has already served as an important model and tool for the study of GPCR systems in higher eukaryotic cell types. Here, we highlight the similarities and differences between these two signalling systems. We also indicate how the new glucose‐sensing system can serve as a model for GPCR function and as a tool with which to screen for heterologous components of signalling pathways as well as for novel ligands in high‐throughput assays.
Two Fast Methods for Estimating the Minimum Standby Supply Voltage for Large SRAMs

The data retention voltage (DRV) defines the minimum supply voltage for an SRAM cell to hold its state. Intra-die variation causes a statistical distribution of DRV for individual cells in a memory array. We present two fast and accurate methods to estimate the tail of the DRV distribution. The first method uses a new analytical model based on the relationship between DRV and static noise margin. The second method extends the statistical blockade technique to a recursive formulation. It uses conditional sampling for rapid statistical simulation and fits the results to a generalized Pareto distribution (GPD) model. Both the analytical DRV model and the generic GPD model show a good match with Monte Carlo simulation results and offer speedups of up to four or five orders of magnitude over Monte Carlo at the 6σ point. In addition, the two models show a very close agreement with each other at the tail up to 8σ. For error within 5% with a confidence of 95%, the analytical DRV model and the GPD model can predict DRV quantiles out to 8σ and 6. 6σ respectively; and for the mean of the estimate, both models offer within 1% error relative to Monte Carlo at the 4σ point.
Cerberus ’ 08 Standard Platform League Team Qualification Document

“Cerberus” team made its debut in the 4-Legged league in RoboCup 2001 competition. This was the first international team participating in the league as a result of the joint research effort of Boğaziçi University (BU), Istanbul, Turkey and Technical University Sofia, Plovdiv branch (TUSP), Plovdiv, Bulgaria [1]. The team competed in Robocup since then, except Robocup 2004. Since 2004, Boğaziçi University is maintaining the team. In 2005, despite the fact that it was the only team competing with ERS-210s (not ERS210As), Cerberus won the first place in the technical challenges. In 2006, we have carried out our success with old ERS-210s to the more powerful ERS-7s by reaching the quarter finals. We lost only three games to the eventual first, third, and fourth place teams. Boğaziçi University has a strong research group in AI. The introduction of Robocup as a unifying theme for different areas of study in autonomous robots has attracted many talented students and accelerated research efforts with more than 30 journal and conference papers. Currently, the department has teams both in Robocup four legged and rescue simulation leagues. Together with the introduction of the new humanoid robot Nao [2] as the new standard platform as a replacement for Aibo, the team now has a new challenge to make the robots play soccer in a more “humanlike” manner and the opportunity to test the methods developed for bipedal walking and control against other teams. We will be collaborating with Işık University. The variety of robotic platforms that the team has worked on so far also brought the necessity to develop a platformindependent robotics library [3], details of which will be provided in this document. The rest of the document provides information about research done by our team in various fields of AI and robotics which we intend to apply to the new platform for playing soccer such as, vision, localization, locomotion, and planning and coordination/cooperation.