Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Utilization of Holonomic Distribution Control for Reactionless Path Planning

This article introduces a new technique for planning reactionless paths to a point in Cartesian space, for manipulators mounted on a free-floating satellite. It is based on decomposition of the manipulator joint space into sets referred to as primitives which have redundancy one with respect to the attitude motion of the base body. The time duration of the manipulator motion is divided into sub-intervals. During a given sub-interval only one primitive is used. The choice of feasible sequence of primitives and times for their actuation, that satisfies given path constraints is made using mixed-variables optimization solver based on a mesh adaptive direct search algorithm
IL-9 and IL-13 Production by Activated Mast Cells Is Strongly Enhanced in the Presence of Lipopolysaccharide: NF-κB Is Decisively Involved in the Expression of IL-91

Mast cells, due to their ability to produce a large panel of mediators and cytokines, participate in a variety of processes in adaptive and innate immunity. Herein we report that in primary murine bone marrow-derived mast cells activated with ionomycin or IgE-Ag the bacterial endotoxin LPS strongly enhances the expression of IL-9 and IL-13, but not IL-4. This costimulatory effect of LPS is absent in activated mast cells derived from the LPS-hyporesponsive mouse strain BALB/c-LPSd, although in these cells the proinflammatory cytokine IL-1 can still substitute for LPS. The enhanced production of mast cell-derived IL-13 in the presence of IL-1 is a novel observation. Coactivation of mast cells with LPS leads to a synergistic activation of NF-κB, which is shown by an NF-κB-driven reporter gene construct. In the presence of an inhibitor of NF-κB activation, the production of IL-9 is strongly decreased, whereas the expression of IL-13 is hardly reduced, and that of IL-4 is not affected at all. NF-κB drives the expression of IL-9 via three NF-κB binding sites within the IL-9 promoter, which we characterize using gel shift analyses and reporter gene assays. In the light of recent reports that strongly support critical roles for IL-9 and IL-13 in allergic lung inflammation, our results emphasize the potential clinical importance of LPS as an enhancer of mast cell-derived IL-9 and IL-13 production in the course of inflammatory reactions and allergic diseases.
Usability Framework for Web Mashup Makers for Casual Users

Web mashups are becoming increasingly popular. A mashup is a Web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated form. Several mashup creation tools, so-called mashup makers, exist and many of them are advertised as easy to use tools for casual users. These tools target Web users without programming background and promise that creating a Web mashup is just a matter of a few mouse clicks. However, no profound usability evaluations have been performed to justify those claims. The purpose of this PhD research work is twofold. Firstly, we want to investigate the usability of these mashup makers and verify if they indeed satisfy their promise of being easy to use. Secondly, and also for the purpose of accomplishing the first goal, we will develop a usability framework that can be used to evaluate the usability of existing and future Web mashup makers. In this paper, we discus the research objectives of the PhD work, the methodology used, related work, as well as the results achieved so far.
The Epidemiology of Neuroendocrine Tumors in Taiwan: A Nation-Wide Cancer Registry-Based Study

Background The epidemiology of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) is not well illustrated, particularly for Asian countries. Methods The age-standardized incidence rates and observed survival rates of NETs diagnosed in Taiwan from January 1, 1996 to December 31, 2008 were calculated using data of the Taiwan Cancer Registry (TCR) and compared to those of the Norwegian Registry of Cancer (NRC) and the US Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Results During the study period, a total of 2,187 NET cases were diagnosed in Taiwan, with 62% males and a mean age of 57.9 years-old. The age-standardized incidence rate of NETs increased from 0.30 per 100,000 in 1996 to 1.51 per 100,000 in 2008. The most common primary sites were rectum (25.4%), lung and bronchus (20%) and stomach (7.4%). The 5-year observed survival was 50.4% for all NETs (43.4% for men and 61.8% for women, P<0.0001). The best 5-year observed survivals for NETs by sites were rectum (80.9%), appendix (75.7%), and breast (64.8%). Conclusions Compared to the data of Norway and the US, the age-standardized incidence rate of NETs in Taiwan is lower and the major primary sites are different, whereas the long-term outcome is similar. More studies on the pathogenesis of NETs are warranted to devise preventive strategies and improve treatment outcomes for NETs.
Impact of parallel programming models and CPUs clock frequency on energy consumption of HPC systems

Energy consumption has become one of the greatest challenges in the field of high performance computing (HPC). The energy cost produced by supercomputers during the lifetime of the installation is similar to acquisition. Thus, besides its impact on the environment, energy is a limiting factor for the HPC. Our research aims to reduce the energy consumption of computer systems to run parallel HPC applications. In this article we analyse the possible influence on the energy consumption of parallel programming paradigms of shared memory (OpenMP) and message passing (MPI), and the behaviour of systems at different clock frequencies of CPUs. The results show that the programming model has a major impact on the energy consumption of computer systems. It was found that the impact of reduced clock frequencies on the execution time, energy efficiency, and maximum power consumption depends not only on the type of application but also on its implementation in a specific programming model. We believe that another criteria to consider when choosing a parallel programming model is the impact on energy consumption.
Clinical performance of three bolus calculators in subjects with type 1 diabetes mellitus: a head-to-head-to-head comparison.

BACKGROUND Insulin pump systems now provide automated bolus calculators (ABCs) that electronically calculate insulin boluses to address carbohydrate intake and out-of-range blood glucose (bG) levels. We compared the efficacy of three ABCs (Accu-Chek(®) Combo [Roche Insulin Delivery Systems (IDS), Inc., Fishers, IN, a member of the Roche Group], Animas(®) 2020 [Animas Corp., West Chester, PA, a Johnson and Johnson company], and MiniMed Paradigm Bolus Wizard(®) [Medtronic MiniMed, Northridge, CA]) to safely reduce postprandial hyperglycemia in type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). METHODS T1DM subjects (n = 24) were recruited at a single center for a prospective, triple crossover study. ABCs with the programmed target range (80-140 mg/dL) were used in random order. Postprandial hyperglycemia was induced by reducing the calculated bolus by 25%. Two hours after test meals, the ABCs were allowed to determine whether a correction bolus was needed. Differences between 6-h bG values after test meals that achieved 2-h postprandial hyperglycemia and the mean of the target range (110 mg/dL) were determined. RESULTS The mean difference between 6-h bG levels following test meals and the 110 mg/dL bG target with the MiniMed device (47.4 ± 31.8 mg/dL) was significantly higher than the Animas (17.3 ± 30.9 mg/dL) and Roche IDS (18.8 ± 33.8 mg/dL) devices (P = 0.0022 and P = 0.0049, respectively). The number of meals with 2-h postprandial hyperglycemia and bG levels at 2 h was similar. Roche IDS and Animas devices recommended correction boluses significantly (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.0002, respectively) more frequently than the MiniMed device. ABC use was not associated with severe hypoglycemia. There was no significant difference in the rate of mild hypoglycemia (bG <60 mg/dL not requiring assistance) among the three groups (Roche IDS and Animas, n = 2; MiniMed, n = 0). CONCLUSIONS In this study, the Roche IDS and Animas devices were more efficacious in controlling postprandial hyperglycemia than the MiniMed device. This may be due, in part, to differences in ABC setup protocols and algorithms. Use of ABCs can assist in controlling postprandial glycemia without significant hypoglycemia.
Dynamic barriers and tunneling. New views of hydrogen transfer in enzyme reactions

Abstract Hydrogen-transfer processes are expected to show appreciable quantum mechanical behavior. Intensive investigations of enzymes under their physiological conditions show this to be true in practically every example investigated. Initially, tunneling was treated either as a tunneling correction [cf. Bell, The Tunnel Effect in Chemistry, Chapman & Hall, New York, (l980)], or as corner-cutting [Truhlar et al., J. Chem. Phys. 100, 12771 (l996)]. This worked well as long as the observed properties could be explained by “corrections” to transition-state theory. However, over the past several years, enzymatic behaviors have been observed that are so deviant as to lie outside of transition-state theory. This phenomenon is discussed in the context of the enzyme, soybean lipoxygenase. An environmentally coupled hydrogen-tunneling model is presented that derives from the treatments of Kuznetsov and Ullstrup [Can. J. Chem. 77, 689 (l999)], and includes heavy-atom reorganization (temperature-dependent and largely isotope-independent), together with heavy-atom gating (temperature- and isotope-dependent). This treatment can explain a wide range of behaviors and leads to a new view of the origin of kinetic isotope effects in hydrogen-transfer reactions. These properties link enzyme fluctuations to the hydrogen-transfer reaction coordinate, making a quantum view of H-transfer necessarily a dynamic view of catalysis.
Signaling Pathways in Trypanosoma cruzi that Modulate Host Cell Interaction

Members of the Gp85/trans-sialidase (Gp85/TS) superfamily and mucins play an essential role in the invasion of host cells by T. cruzi trypomastigotes. Together, they constitute a large portion of the genome; approximately 700 and 433 genes encode Gp85/TS glycoproteins and mucins (as do a similar amount of pseudogenes), respectively. Gp85/TS proteins bind to a variety of host cell receptors and extracellular matrix components and binding of TS to host cells is in- dependent of their enzymatic activity. Because mucins are the main substrate for TS, their interaction with host cells has been described as carbohydrate-dependent. Complex signaling cascades operate during the infection process within both parasite and host cells, but most research into signaling events has been limited to those of host cells. Much less informa- tion about the parasitic side is available; these pathways will be the subjects of intense research in the near future. Analy- ses of protein kinases and phosphatases in the parasite genome show pathways common to other organisms, but also para- site-specific pathways that should be exploited as candidates for drug targeting.
Multi-Label Learning With Fuzzy Hypergraph Regularization for Protein Subcellular Location Prediction

Protein subcellular location prediction aims to predict the location where a protein resides within a cell using computational methods. Considering the main limitations of the existing methods, we propose a hierarchical multi-label learning model FHML for both single-location proteins and multi-location proteins. The latent concepts are extracted through feature space decomposition and label space decomposition under the nonnegative data factorization framework. The extracted latent concepts are used as the codebook to indirectly connect the protein features to their annotations. We construct dual fuzzy hypergraphs to capture the intrinsic high-order relations embedded in not only feature space, but also label space. Finally, the subcellular location annotation information is propagated from the labeled proteins to the unlabeled proteins by performing dual fuzzy hypergraph Laplacian regularization. The experimental results on the six protein benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method by comparing it with the state-of-the-art methods, and illustrate the benefit of exploiting both feature correlations and label correlations.
International Journal of Biological & Medical Research Python Fat: Effect on Collagen Levels of Human Keloid Tissue. a B C D

Aim: The present study is aimed at verifying the curative powers of python fat by subjecting it to scientific analysis with a view to showing evidence of its actual effects on keloid tissues, since it has been applied in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Method: In this study, the effect of python fat on collagen levels of human keloid tissue culture was determined. Keloid tissues, surgically removed from 9 patients were incubated with python fat. There was subsequent isolation, purification and quantitative determination of collagen levels after incubation of the keloid tissue in a 48hr conditioned media and with increasing doses of python fat. Result: The result gave a mean collagen concentration (mg/ml) of 91.07, 85.78, and 79.95 respectively. The results also reveal a successive decrease in the means of collagen concentration by 7.48%, 12.85% and 18.77% of their estimated original values and a dose-dependent increase in collagenase activity with increasing amount of python fat. Conclusion: The study shows that python fat decreases the collagen concentrations in the keloid tissues by increasing the collagenase activity, and as such can be regarded as a suitable antikeloidal agent for use especially by complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners.
Automatic Discovery of Physical Topology in Ethernet Networks

Ethernet is becoming increasingly popular in metro and access networks due to the high bandwidth available at low cost. Nonetheless, native Ethernet lacks some features that are important for sophisticated network management; providing accurate knowledge on the physical topology is one of them. Therefore, automatic physical topology discovery in support of network management is essential in Ethernet networks. Former work either focused on Layer-3 topology discovery or only provided the active topology excluding the physical links inactivated by rapid spanning tree protocol. This paper introduces a novel mechanism capable of automatically discovering the entire physical topology of Ethernet networks. Our algorithm collects information available even in low-cost off- the-shelf Ethernet switches and then calculates the physical topology of the entire network. This paper describes the method and its implementation in a testbed network for assessing the performance and the robustness of the mechanism.
Stochastic characterization of aircraft digital avionics electromagnetic vulnerability: A statistical electromagnetics approach

Past experience has clearly shown it is imperative that the design of aircraft systems take into account early on in their life cycle measures to incorporate “hardness” against a barrage of likely and sometimes unexpected Electromagnetic (EM) environments. In the design, development, integration and installation of avionics systems, including digital electronic equipment and cabling for aircraft, engineers must determine the potential for Electromagnetic Interference/Vulnerability (EMI/V) of such systems when exposed to incident energy in advance. EM fields can be due to nearby high power radars or other friendly (cosite) or even hostile EM radiation sources that can significantly interfere with installed systems and personnel. This becomes a life-cycle logistical challenge that can cost a great deal of time, manpower and money to retrofit or fix only after problems have been encountered. The most effective approach is to identify and prevent such problems from occurring in advance, to the extent possible, and to anticipate the range of problems that may be encountered. This paper discusses the application of a Statistical Electromagnetics approach that is intended to provide a cost-effective alternative and a proven means of reasonably addressing this problem. This is achieved by bridging statistical and deterministic (analytical, computer-based) methods in an overall process that reduces computational resource requirements.
Circulating Biomarkers of Diabetic Retinopathy: An Overview Based on Physiopathology

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the main cause of working-age adult-onset blindness. The currently available treatments for DR are applicable only at advanced stages of the disease and are associated with significant adverse effects. In early stages of DR the only therapeutic strategy that physicians can offer is a tight control of the risk factors for DR. Therefore, new pharmacological treatments for these early stages of the disease are required. In order to develop therapeutic strategies for early stages of DR new diagnostic tools are urgently needed. In this regard, circulating biomarkers could be useful to detect early disease, to identify those diabetic patients most prone to progressive worsening who ought to be followed up more often and who could obtain the most benefit from these therapies, and to monitor the effectiveness of new drugs for DR before more advanced DR stages have been reached. Research of biomarkers for DR has been mainly based on the pathogenic mechanism involved in the development of DR (i.e., AGEs, oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, inflammation, and proangiogenic factors). This review focuses on circulating biomarkers at both early and advanced stages that could be relevant for the prediction or detection of DR.
Containment of Conjunctive Queries under Access Limitations ( extended abstract )

Relational data may have access limitations, i.e., relations may require certain attributes to be selected when they are accessed; this happens, for instance, while querying web data sources (wrapped in relational form) or legacy databases. It is known that the evaluation of a conjunctive query under access limitations requires a recursive algorithm that is encoded into a Datalog program. In this paper we address the problem of containment of conjunctive queries under access limitations, which is highly relevant in query optimization. Checking containment in this case would amount to check containment of recursive Datalog programs, which is undecidable in general. We show however, that due to the specific form of the Datalog programs resulting from encoding access limitations, the containment problem is in fact decidable. We provide a decision procedure based on chase techniques, and study its computa-
Polymorphism in Gag Gene Cleavage Sites of HIV-1 Non-B Subtype and Virological Outcome of a First-Line Lopinavir/Ritonavir Single Drug Regimen

Virological failure on a boosted-protease inhibitor (PI/r) first-line triple combination is usually not associated with the detection of resistance mutations in the protease gene. Thus, other resistance pathways are being investigated. First-line PI/r monotherapy is the best model to investigate in vivo if the presence of mutations in the cleavage sites (CS) of gag gene prior to any antiretroviral treatment might influence PI/r efficacy. 83 patients were assigned to initiate antiretroviral treatment with first-line lopinavir/r monotherapy in the randomised Monark trial. We compared baseline sequence of gag CS between patients harbouring B or non-B HIV-1 subtype, and between those who achieved viral suppression and those who experienced virological failure while on LPV/r monotherapy up to Week 96. Baseline sequence of gag CS was available for 82/83 isolates; 81/82 carried at least one substitution in gag CS compared to HXB2 sequence. At baseline, non-B subtype isolates were significantly more likely to harbour mutations in gag CS than B subtype isolates (p<0.0001). Twenty-three patients experienced virological failure while on lopinavir/r monotherapy. The presence of more than two substitutions in p2/NC site at baseline significantly predicted virological failure (p = 0.0479), non-B subtype isolates being more likely to harbour more than two substitutions in this specific site. In conclusion, gag cleavage site was highly polymorphic in antiretroviral-naive patients harbouring a non-B HIV-1 strain. We show that pre-therapy mutations in gag cleavage site sequence were significantly associated with the virological outcome of a first-line LPV/r single drug regimen in the Monark trial.
Pixel swapping and parity based image steganography algorithm

In the era of digitalization, Most of the data is transmitted through the internet. Digital data security is a prominent issue for this century. There is the variety of techniques used to protect data during communication. Among all of them, apple of my eyes steganography method plays a significant role in digital communication. Steganography method reduces a chance of information detection while data transmission. Steganography is the art of hiding the existence of a message between the sender and intended beneficiary. Steganography has been used to conceal secret information in various types of files, such as digital images, audio and video. In steganography, the part of information has embedded in the carrier in such way that it is not perceptible to the world and appears as normal. However, in cryptography, the message is twisted to make it tremendously tricky so that it becomes a hard nut to crack even for experts. In this paper, I have presented a unique design of image steganography algorithm based on parity and substitution for gray scale and color image. It has numerous advantages compare to others techniques. Moreover, it can withstand with all kind passive steganalysis. For steganalysis, I used visual attack, LSB palne attack, machine learning technique and χ2 test.
An efficient quantum search engine on unsorted database

We consider the problem of finding one or more desired items out of an unsorted database. Patel has shown that if the database permits quantum queries, then mere digitization is sufficient for efficient search for one desired item. The algorithm, called factorized quantum search algorithm, presented by him can locate the desired item in an unsorted database using $O(log_{4}N)$ queries to factorized oracles. But the algorithm requires that all the property values must be distinct from each other. In this paper, we discuss how to make a database satisfy the requirements, and present a quantum search engine based on the algorithm. Our goal is achieved by introducing auxiliary files for the property values that are not distinct, and converting every complex query request into a sequence of calls to factorized quantum search algorithm. The query complexity of our algorithm is $O(P*Q*M*log_{4}N)$, where P is the number of the potential simple query requests in the complex query request, Q is the maximum number of calls to the factorized quantum search algorithm of the simple queries, M is the number of the auxiliary files for the property on which our algorithm are searching for desired items. This implies that to manage an unsorted database on an actual quantum computer is possible and efficient.