Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carvacrol and rosemary oil at higher concentrations induce apoptosis in human hepatoma HepG2 cells

ABSTRACT Natural essential oils are volatile herbal complex compounds which manifest cytotoxic effects on living cells depending on their type and concentration but usually they are not genotoxic. Our previous studies showed that carvacrol (CA) and rosemary essential oil (RO) induced growth inhibition of both human cell lines HepG2 and BHNF-1, with hepatoma HepG2 cells being more sensitive to either compound tested. Cytotoxic concentrations of CA and RO induced the formation of DNA strand breaks. Further ex vivo studies showed that extracts prepared from hepatocytes of CA- and RO-supplemented rats did not increase incision repair activity compared to extracts from liver cells of control animals. Therefore, the aim of this work was to determine the effect of cytotoxic concentrations of CA and RO on the cell cycle and the ability of both natural volatiles to induce DNA fragmentation and apoptotic death of human hepatoma HepG2 cells. These effects were measured after 24 h incubation of HepG2 cells with CA and RO using three independent methods - flow cytometry, internucleosomal DNA fragmentation (electrophoresis) and micronucleus assay. Evaluation of morphological changes and formation of micronuclei in HepG2 cells showed no increase in the number of micronuclei in cells treated by CA and RO compared to control cells. On the other hand, CA and RO induced morphological changes typical for apoptosis in concentration-dependent manner. The presence of necrosis was negligible. Both natural compounds caused shrinking of cytoplasmic membrane and formation of apoptotic bodies. In addition, the highest concentrations of CA and RO induced internucleosomal DNA fragmentation (formation of DNA ladder) in HepG2 cells. Cell cycle analysis revealed the accumulation of cells in the G1 phase, which was accompanied by a reduction in the number of cells in the S phase after 24 h exposure to the substances tested. The cell division was thus slowed down or stopped and this process resulted in cell death
Research of Singular Signal Detection Based on Wavelet Analysis

The singular points of the singular signal often take some important information, which is one of the main characters of a singular signal. Based on wavelet transform multiresolution analysis, it can be used to estimate the singularity. Using the relationship between wavelet transform modulus maxima and singular point, the signal singular point location can be analyzed; the local singularity is described by Lipschitz index. The qualifications of wavelet base for the singular signal detection are studied. It can determine location of signal singular point and singular exponent of singular signal. The example are taken finally, and the conclusion that wavelet transform have specific property for singular signal detection and location analysis. Wavelet transform can analysis the signal elements at certain frequency band and time section, which has good time frequency localization and can seize character of instantaneous changing signals accurately and focus any details of signal for frequency through gradually meticulous sampling step of time field and frequency field.
Complex 3D shape recovery using hybrid geometric shape features in a hierarchical shape segmentation approach

We present a novel and reliable approach for complex object acquisition and surface registration using hybrid geometric shape features in a hierarchical 3D shape approximation and segmentation approach. First, instead of relying on one type of scanned data, we propose to use hybrid data provided that it can support both global and local geometric shape features. The scanned low-resolution global data supplies the global shape prior for registering the high-resolution local surface patches. Local surfaces can thus be optimally registered requiring less overlap and reducing uncertainty. Second, we cannot directly register huge volumes of data simultaneously due to the memory bottlenecks. We segment the global low-resolution model into several meaningful sub-shapes extending a hierarchical algorithm. The local surfaces can be registered on the sub-shapes respectively and all sub-shapes can be merged and rendered after registration. To verify the reliability of the approach, various 3D models have been acquired. The experiments show compelling results by reconstructing very detailed models of complex objects. The approach can be applied to practical 3D modeling applications.
Management of Renal Artery Stenosis - an Update

The role of the renal vasculature in eliciting renovascular hypertension (RVH) was established in 1934, when Goldblatt et al. [1] in a classical experimental study demonstrated that partial obstruction of the renal artery increased mean arterial blood pressure (BP). The pathophysiology of renal artery stenosis (RAS) is incompletely understood but has been postulated to be related to increased afterload from neurohormonal activation and cytokine release [2]. Atherosclerotic RAS (ARAS) is increasingly diagnosed in the expanding elderly population, which also has a high prevalence of arterial hypertension. There is still considerable uncertainty concerning the optimal management of patients with RAS. Many hypertensive patients with RAS have co-existing essential hypertension and furthermore, it is often difficult to determine to what degree the RAS is responsible for the impairment of renal function. There are three possible treatment strategies: medical management, surgery, or percutaneous transluminal renal angioplasty (PTRA) with or without stent implantation. The use of stents has improved the technical success rate of PTRA and also led to lower risk of restenosis, in particular for ostial RAS. PTRA with stenting has therefore replaced surgical revascularisation for most patients with RAS and has led to a lower threshold for intervention. The treatment of choice to control hypertension in fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD) is generally accepted to be PTRA [3]. In ARAS, on the other hand, the benefits with PTRA are less clear [4] and the challenge to identify which patients are likely to benefit from revascularisation remains unknown.
Multilevel, multiactor governance in REDD+: Participation, integration and coordination

Governance is the act or manner of governing. Multilevel, multiactor, participatory governance allows stakeholders to negotiate, formulate and implement policy. • Multilevel, multiactor governance of REDD+ schemes will be needed to overcome differences between government ministries, and to build the trust of investors and local citizens. • Creating new forms of governance that allow stakeholders with different degrees of political influence and different interests to come together could be time consuming but will allow REDD+ to achieve the 3Es+.
Learning Discriminant Functions based on Genetic Programming and Rough Sets

Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan 700, R.O. C. E-mail: bcchien@mail.nutn. edu.tw Department of Information Engineering, I-Shou University Kaohsiung County, Taiwan 840, R.O. C. E-mail: m9003012@isu.edu.tw Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 811, R.O. C. E-mail: tphong@nuk.edu.tw
Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research1

This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind.
Detecting Chaos from Agricultural Product Price Time Series

Analysis of the characteristics of agricultural product price volatility and trend forecasting are necessary to formulate and implement agricultural price control policies. Taking wholesale cabbage prices as an example, a multiple test methodology has been adopted to identify the nonlinearity, fractality, and chaos of the data. The approaches used include the R/S analysis, the BDS test, the power spectra, the recurrence plot, the largest Lyapunov exponent, the Kolmogorov entropy, and the correlation dimension. The results show that there is chaos in agricultural wholesale price data, which provides a good theoretical basis for selecting reasonable forecasting models as prediction techniques based on chaos theory can be applied to forecasting agricultural prices.
Erdös–Rényi laws for dynamical systems

We establish Erdös–Rényi limit laws for Lipschitz observations on a class of non‐uniformly expanding dynamical systems, including logistic‐like maps. These limit laws give the maximal average of a time series over a time window of logarithmic length. We also give results on maximal averages of a time series arising from Hölder observations on intermittent‐type maps over a time window of polynomial length. We consider the rate of convergence in the limit law for subshifts of finite type and establish a one‐sided rate bound for Gibbs–Markov maps.
Charting the Protein Complexome in Yeast by Mass Spectrometry*

It has become evident over the past few years that many complex cellular processes, including control of the cell cycle and ubiquitin-dependent proteolysis, are carried out by sophisticated multisubunit protein machines that are dynamic in abundance, post-translational modification state, and composition. To understand better the nature of the macromolecular assemblages that carry out the cell cycle and ubiquitin-dependent proteolysis, we have used mass spectrometry extensively over the past few years to characterize both the composition of various protein complexes and the modification states of their subunits. In this article we review some of our recent efforts, and describe a promising new approach for using mass spectrometry to dissect protein interaction networks.
Fast accurate eigenvalue computations using the Cholesky factorization

Let H = DAD where A is a positive definite matrix and D is diagonal and nonsingular. We show that if the condition number of a is much less than that of D then we can use algorithms based on the Cholesky factorization of H to compute the eigenvalues of H to high relative accuracy more efficiently than by Jacobi's method. The new methods are generally slower than tridiagonalization methods (which do not deliver the eigenvalues to maximal relative accuracy) but can be up to 4 times faster when the condition number of D is very large.
Accurate Sensitivity Analysis of the Dynamic Characteristics of a Power Converter

Proper design of a switching power supply regulator loop requires proper assessment of the impact of component value variations upon the loop frequency response characteristics. Worst-case phase margin and worst-case gain margin are pieces of information a designer can use to assess whether or not the converter will be properly regulated for given component value variations. To find this type of information reliably using sensitivity analysis requires first reliably determining the loop frequency response. Models can be used to determine the converter loop's frequency response but they do not accurately predict the converter's dynamic behavior at higher frequencies whereas brute force simulation, though more accurate than modeling, can be time-consuming. A novel approach is proposed which uses the steady-state analysis capabilities of the software tool SUPRA coupled with Fast Fourier Analysis in order to obtain frequency response characteristics more reliably than through the use of models and more quickly than through the use of brute force simulation. A two-stage approach is used to reduce the complexity of determining the loop frequency response. The search of the combination of component values providing the worst case frequency response characteristics is performed using nonlinear optimization.
Heritage Tourism Web Portal Page Sequencing

A tourism portal is a reliable interface for providing valuable information on the Web for the tourism industry. The purpose of this paper is to design an efficient portal for the heritage tourism industry. Correlation analysis is used to illustrate how heritage Web portal functionalities should be sequenced based on the level and direction of association between two or more functionalities. ANOVA analysis is used to assess the reliability of the data. Since portals are essential tools for e-commerce applications, results of the study can be utilized to enhance the efficiency of other ecommerce and e-government initiatives.
Designing ICT-based Learning Scenarios for Special Target Groups-Meeting Senior Learner Needs -

Demographic changes and the growing importance of lifelong learning to support the employability of the ageing workforce demand for the consideration of learning programs designed according to the specific needs of older learners. In this context especially the use of Information and Communication Technology for training senior learners seems a fruitful path to follow. A learning approach based on self-guided learning activities that focus on the collaboration between learners is especially welcomed by senior learners. Practical experiences made in the framework of the ICT4T project suggest that Learning Management Systems like Moodle offer a number of tools that can support a learning approach appropriate in senior learning, if adapted to the target group’s needs from a didactical and usability perspective.
MEAN stack to enhance the advancement of parking application: A narrative review

Parking is becoming a problem, especially during rush hour. This is an effect of increasing number of private cars that demand of parking space to follow increase. In order to anticipate this key issue of parking, then the smart parking system has been developed. Advancement of smart parking has been a key concern to produce an application system with high performance, flexibility, and scalability in emerging technologies that can provide information about parking in real-time. The empirical study in this area has conducted various parking system reservations, monitoring, and guidance systems that can make parking process easier. This review emphasizes the aim to give a narrative review of the papers in our pool of papers to prove the evidence and provide an application technology advancement to produce a real-time parking system. The review has included 22 papers from our pool of papers which has examined, which are analyzed from used system technology to build the smart parking application. The narrative review was carried out to exposes the existing application parking and compared to parking application that have implemented a MEAN stack. Search terms used in the literature review are applications that have been elaborate a study of smart parking application as a key concern of this study. Synthesis of the papers on the pool has suggested that there is an optimistic reason that a MEAN stack approach might be effective to produce a real-time application high performance, flexibility, and scalability technologies from a smart parking application.
Control of decentralized geometric formations of mobile robots

Mobile robot formations differ in accordance to the mission, environment and robot abilities. In the case of decentralized control, the ability to achieve the shapes of these formations has to be built in the controllers of each robot. In this paper two types of basic formations are investigated, platoon and V-shape. Leader follower approach is applied for controllers design to drive each robot toward achieving the desired geometric shape of the formation.
Immune complexes can trigger specific, T cell-dependent, autoanti-IgG antibody production in mice

Immunization of mice with a combination of passively administered syngeneic IgG (anti-p-azophenylarsonate [anti-Ars]) antibody and a soluble, multivalent form of the antibody's corresponding antigen (Limulus polyphemus hemocyanin conjugated with Ars [Lph-Ars]) resulted in specific autoanti-IgG Fc (rheumatoid factor) production. The response was rapid and only anti-IgG of the IgM isotype is found. Because immunization with either the IgG antibody or the antigen alone did not result in rheumatoid antibody production, immune complexes appear to be the active form of the immunogens. Antibody/antigen ratios that resulted in maximal anti-IgG antibody responses were the same as those required for peak in vitro immunoprecipitation, i.e., equivalence. Previous exposure of the mice to the exogenously supplied antigen was not required for the response. The response to immune complexes is specific because mice immunized with IgG2a-containing complexes produced autoanti-IgG2a, while mice immunized with IgG1- containing complexes produced anti-IgG1 with little reactivity to other IgG isotypes. IgG2a blocked in its complement-fixing capacity was more effective in eliciting the anti-IgG2a response than native IgG2a, suggesting a possible role for the complement system in modulating the anti-IgG2a response. Induction of rheumatoid factor production by immune complexes could be induced in xid mice but not in nu/nu mice, indicating T lymphocyte dependence of the response. In contrast, the B lymphocyte activator lipopolysaccharide was able to elicit vigorous rheumatoid factor production in both nu/nu and normal mice, demonstrating that nu/nu mice contain B cells capable of making the response. Rheumatoid antibody produced in the immune complex- or LPS- induced responses is Fc specific and has relatively low affinity for IgG that is not bound to antigen.
Task Dispersal Measurement in Dynamic Reconfigurable NoCs

Large Network-on-Chips (NoCs) with thousands of tiles benefit from dynamic task mapping techniques in which the assignment of tasks to tiles is decided at run-time. Dynamic task mapping technique can suffer from fragmentation with free nodes being dispersed as application are mapped and released, continuously. Using these dispersed free tiles results in interference among the task traffics of different applications. The aim of this paper is to distinguish and measure the traffic contention among the tasks of an application (internal contention) and the tasks of different applications (external contention). External contention is one of the factors which decrease the application efficiency and increase the power consumption and latency. This paper also proposes a method to decrease the external contention during task mapping scenario. The proposed technique shows up to 66.34% reduction in external communication in comparison with state-of-the-art task mapping techniques.
Role of Basic Residues within or near the Predicted Transmembrane Helix 2 of the Human Breast Cancer Resistance Protein in Drug Transport

The human breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP/ABCG2) mediates efflux of drugs and xenobiotics out of cells. In this study, we investigated the role of five basic residues within or near transmembrane (TM) 2 of BCRP in transport activity. Lys452, Lys453, His457, Arg465, and Lys473 were replaced with Ala or Asp. K452A, K453D, H457A, R465A, and K473A were stably expressed in human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells, and their plasma membrane expression and transport activities were examined. All of the mutants were expressed predominantly on the plasma membrane of HEK cells. After normalization to BCRP levels, the activities of K452A and H457A in effluxing mitoxantrone, boron-dipyrromethene-prazosin, and Hoechst33342 were increased approximately 2- to 6-fold compared with those of wild-type BCRP, whereas the activities of K453D and R465A were decreased by 40 to 60%. Likewise, K452A and H457A conferred increased resistance to mitoxantrone and 7-ethyl-10-hydroxy-camptothecin (SN-38), and K453D and R465A exhibited lower resistance. The transport activities and drug-resistance profiles of K473A were not changed. These mutations also differentially affected BCRP ATPase activities with a 2- to 4-fold increase in Vmax/Km for K452A and H457A and a 40 to 70% decrease for K453D and R465A. These mutations may induce conformational changes as manifested by the altered binding of the 5D3 antibody to BCRP in the presence of prazosin and altered trypsin digestion. Molecular modeling and docking calculations indicated that His457 and Arg465 might be directly involved in substrate binding. In conclusion, we have identified several basic residues within or near TM2 that may be important for interaction of substrates with BCRP.
Generation of Dominant Selectable Markers for Resistance to Pseudomonic Acid by Cloning and Mutagenesis of theileS Gene from the Archaeon Methanosarcina barkeri Fusaro

ABSTRACT Currently, only one selectable marker is available for genetic studies in the archaeal genus Methanosarcina. Here we report the generation of selectable markers that encode resistance to pseudomonic acid (PAr) in Methanosarcinaspecies by mutagenesis of the isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase gene (ileS) from Methanosarcina barkeri Fusaro. TheM. barkeri ileS gene was obtained by screening of a genomic library for hybridization to a PCR fragment. The complete 3,787-bp DNA sequence surrounding and including the ileS gene was determined. As expected, M. barkeri IleS is phylogenetically related to other archaeal IleS proteins. TheileS gene was cloned into aMethanosarcina-Escherichia coli shuttle vector and mutagenized with hydroxylamine. Nine independent PAr clones were isolated after transformation of Methanosarcina acetivorans C2A with the mutagenized plasmids. Seven of these clones carry multiple changes from the wild-type sequence. Most mutations that confer PAr were shown to alter amino acid residues near the KMSKS consensus sequence of class I aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. One particular mutation (G594E) was present in all but one of the PAr clones. The MIC of pseudomonic acid for M. acetivorans transformed with a plasmid carrying this single mutation is 70 μg/ml of medium (for the wild type, the MIC is 12 μg/ml). The highest MICs (560 μg/ml) were observed with two triple mutants, A440V/A482T/G594E and A440V/G593D/G594E. Plasmid shuttle vectors and insertion cassettes that encode PAr based on the mutant ileS alleles are described. Finally, the implications of the specific mutations we isolated with respect to binding of pseudomonic acid by IleS are discussed.