Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment With a Novel Hemigramicidin-TEMPO Conjugate Prolongs Survival in a Rat Model of Lethal Hemorrhagic Shock

Objective:We sought to develop a therapeutic agent that would permit prolongation of survival in rats subjected to lethal hemorrhagic shock (HS), even in the absence of resuscitation with asanguinous fluids or blood. Methods and Results:We synthesized a series of compounds that consist of the electron scavenger and superoxide dismutase mimic, 4-amino-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-N-oxyl (4-NH2-TEMPO), conjugated to fragments and analogs of the membrane-active cyclopeptide antibiotic, gramicidin S. Using an in vivo assay, wherein isolated intestinal segments were loaded inside the lumen with various test compounds, we studied these compounds for their ability to prevent ileal mucosal barrier dysfunction induced by subjecting rats to profound HS for 2 hours. The most active compound in this assay, XJB-5-131, ameliorated peroxidation of the mitochondrial phospholipid, cardiolipin, in ileal mucosal samples from rats subjected to HS. XJB-5-131 also ameliorated HS-induced activation of the pro-apoptotic enzymes, caspases 3 and 7, in ileal mucosa. Intravenous treatment with XJB-5-131 (2 &mgr;mol/kg) significantly prolonged the survival of rats subjected to profound blood loss (33.5 mL/kg) despite administration of only a minimal volume of crystalloid solution (2.8 mL/kg) and the absence of blood transfusion. Conclusion:These data support the view that mitochondrially targeted electron acceptors and SOD mimics are potentially valuable therapeutics for the treatment of serious acute conditions, such as HS, which are associated with marked tissue ischemia.
Reduce to the Max: A Simple Approach for Massive-Scale Privacy-Preserving Collaborative Network Measurements (Extended Version)

Privacy-preserving techniques for distributed computation have been proposed recently as a promising framework in collaborative inter-domain network monitoring. Several different approaches exist to solve such class of problems, e.g., Homomorphic Encryption (HE) and Secure Multiparty Computation (SMC) based on Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm (SSS). Such techniques are complete from a computation-theoretic perspective: given a set of private inputs, it is possible to perform arbitrary computation tasks without revealing any of the intermediate results. In fact, HE and SSS can operate also on secret inputs and/or provide secret outputs. However, they are computationally expensive and do not scale well in the number of players and/or in the rate of computation tasks. In this paper we advocate the use of "elementary" (as opposite to "complete") Secure Multiparty Computation (E-SMC) procedures for traffic monitoring. E-SMC supports only simple computations with private input and public output, i.e., it can not handle secret input nor secret (intermediate) output. Such a simplification brings a dramatic reduction in complexity and enables massive-scale implementation with acceptable delay and overhead. Notwithstanding its simplicity, we claim that an E-SMC scheme is sufficient to perform a great variety of computation tasks of practical relevance to collaborative network monitoring, including, e.g., anonymous publishing and set operations. This is achieved by combining a E-SMC scheme with data structures like Bloom Filters and bitmap strings.
Use of clinical pharmacists to perform depression screening.

Our clinic recognized that depression screening for patients with diabetes is important since estimates indicate that 18-28% of patients with diabetes have coexisting depression.1 Despite the high comorbidity, 50% of these patients remain undiagnosed with depression and two of every three patients are untreated. 1,2 Identification and treatment of depression are important not only to decrease depressive symptoms, but also to improve diabetes outcomes since depression is associated with increased rates of hyperglycemia, decreased adherence with medication regimens and diet, and increased complications of diabetes. 3-5
High School Public Speaking Curriculum: Assessment Through Student Voice

Research indicates that high-school students may not be receiving effective instruction in public speaking, which would benefit them academically, personally, and professionally (Morreale, Osborn, & Pearson, 2000). The current study evaluates the effectiveness of high school public speaking instruction in English language arts classes in a school district in the Midwest. Following a conventional qualitative content analysis approach, the study yielded the following three themes: (a) a lack of effective instruction in speech development, (b) a lack of effective instruction in speech delivery, and (c) a lack of effective assessment of speech delivery. This research is of benefit to school districts because they can use these findings to understand the general problems that exist in public-speaking curricula and to guide their evaluations of their own public-speaking curriculum.
Effects of virtual arm representations on interaction in virtual environments

Many techniques for visualization and interaction that potentially increase user performance have been studied in the growing field of virtual reality. However, the effects of virtual-arm representations on users' performance and perception in selection tasks have not been studied before. This paper presents the results of a user study of three different representations of the virtual arm: "hand only," "hand+forearm," and "whole arm" which includes the upper arm. In addition to the representations' effects on performance and perception in selection tasks, we investigate how the users' performance changes depending on whether collisions with objects are allowed or not. The relationship between the virtual-arm representations and the senses of agency and ownership are also explored. Overall, we found that the "whole arm" condition performed worst.
Towards an enhanced revenue model for virtual networks embedding problem

This paper investigates the impact of incorporating memory usage in the revenue computing objective function defined in [1]. Towards this end, an enhanced revenue function has been proposed and tested on both live data, obtained through the CoMon monitoring facility for PlanetLab [2], and GT-ITM based simulations [3]. It has been found that, under the condition of uniform and constant weights, the addition of a memory usage term significantly increases the net revenue generated and also modifies its temporal characteristics. Hence, neglecting memory usage will produce flawed resource allocations and thus inefficient virtual network embedding systems.
Mechanical cue‐induced YAP instructs Skp2‐dependent cell cycle exit and oncogenic signaling

Mechanical tensions are usually generated during development at spatially defined regions within tissues. Such physical cues dictate the cellular decisions of proliferation or cell cycle arrest. Yet, the mechanisms by which mechanical stress controls the cell cycle are not yet fully understood. Here, we report that mechanical cues function upstream of Skp2 transcription in human breast cancer cells. We found that YAP, the mechano‐responsive oncogenic Hippo signaling effector, directly promotes Skp2 transcription. YAP inactivation induces cell cycle exit (G0) by down‐regulating Skp2, causing p21/p27 to accumulate. Both Skp2 reconstitution and p21/p27 depletion can rescue the observed defect in cell cycle progression. In the context of a tissue‐mimicking 3D culture system, Skp2 inactivation effectively suppresses YAP‐driven oncogenesis and aberrant stiff 3D matrix‐evoked epithelial tissue behaviors. Finally, we also found that the expression of Skp2 and YAP is positively correlated in breast cancer patients. Our results not only reveal the molecular mechanism by which mechanical cues induce Skp2 transcription, but also uncover a role for YAP‐Skp2 oncogenic signaling in the relationship between tissue rigidity and cancer progression.
Mitochondrial glutaminase enhances extracellular glutamate production in HIV‐1‐infected macrophages: Linkage to HIV‐1 associated dementia

Dysfunction in mononuclear phagocyte (MP, macrophages and microglia) immunity is thought to play a significant role in the pathogenesis of HIV‐1 associated dementia (HAD). In particular, elevated extracellular concentrations of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, produced by MP as a consequence of viral infection and immune activation, can induce neuronal injury. To determine the mechanism by which MP‐mediated neuronal injury occurs, the concentration and rates of production of extracellular glutamate were measured in human monocyte‐derived macrophage (MDM) supernatants by reverse phase high‐performance liquid chromatography (RP‐HPLC). Measurements were taken of supernatants from MDM infected with multiple HIV‐1 strains including ADA and DJV (macrophage tropic, M‐tropic), and 89.6 (dual tropic). High levels of glutamate were produced by MDM infected with M‐tropic viruses. AZT, an inhibitor of HIV‐1 replication, inhibited glutamate generation, demonstrating a linkage between HIV‐1 infection and enhanced glutamate production. In our culture system, glutamate production was dependent upon the presence of glutamine and was inhibited by 6‐diazo‐5‐oxo‐l‐norleucine, a glutaminase inhibitor. Supernatants collected from HIV‐1‐infected MP generated more glutamate following glutamine addition than supernatants isolated from uninfected MP. These findings implicate the involvement of a glutamate‐generating enzyme, such as phosphate‐activated mitochondrial glutaminase (PMG) in MP‐mediated glutamate production.
Properties and performance of the block shift network

As an interconnection network, hypercube topology offers certain advantages such as high data bandwidth and low message latency to achieve computational efficiency. However, a significant drawback of this topology is that the number of ports per node increases with the number of nodes. In addition, in many applications not all the links are used equally frequently, and links on certain dimensions may be idle most of the time during a computation. This suggests that we can provide connections over certain dimensions only to reduce the number of links and can still attain comparable performance. In this paper, we propose a new network, called the Block Shift Network (BSN), for constructing very large multicomputer systems for efficient parallel processing. The network is defined through a pair of parameters and cost and performance of a BSN can be controlled by carefully selecting appropriate parameters defining the network. Actually, many popular networks such as the hypercube, the shuffle-exchange, and the complete networks are instances of the BSN. The topological properties of the BSN with different parameters are analyzed and compared with those of existing popular networks. Basic data movement operations on the BSN are also designed and analyzed. The results show that the BSN with certain parameters can surpasses the hypercube in several respects while retaining most of its advantages, especially when the traffic has the locality property.
Expression of genes at the agouti locus and mitotic activity of the hair bulb of the mouse.

HE action of genes at the agouti locus, in combination with “wild” genes at other color loci, results in coat color phenotypes which range from all black ( a / a ) to all yellow (Ay / ) . Between these two extremes is the agouti phenotype (A/--) which is typically characterized by the presence of a subapical yellow band on an otherwise black hair. These observations indicate that alleles at the agouti locus control the nature of the pigment manufactured by melanocytes in the hair bulb, i.e., whether it is black (eumelanin) or yellow (phaeomelanin) , or whether both eumelanin and phaeomelanin will be produced (the agouti pattern). The action of the agouti gene ( A ) apparently is to control a mechanism which causes a rapid and rhythmic switch between the production of black and yellow pigment during the course of hair growth. The expression of this activity however is conditioned by the environment so that the agouti pigment pattern varies according to the integumentary environment of the hair follicle, the hair growth generation, and the hair type ( GALBRAITH 1964). Moreover, genotypically agouti melanocytes do not produce yellow pigment if they reside in hair bulbs that exceed 1 1 Op in diameter ( GALBRAITH 1969), nor do they produce yellow pigment when in extrafollicular environments (SILVERS 1957; MARKERT and SILVERS 1956). These observations indicate that the hair follicle itself plays an important role in the expression of alleles at the agouti locus. This view is supported by the work of SILVERS and RUSSELL (1955) and SILVERS (1958a, b, 1965) who have demonstrated that the melanogenic response of pigment cells is in accordance with the agouti-locus genotype of the follicle in which they reside rather than their own agouti-locus genotype. Thus the inherent capacity of the melanocyte is to produce black pigment, and phaeomelanin is produced only in the local environment of a hair follicle of appropriate agouti-locus genotype. The nature of this environment is not known, but it has been suggested that the production of yellow pigment is associated with follicular activity ( DANNEEL 1947; CLEFFMANN 1953; GALBRAITH 1964). CLEFFMANN (1963) has proposed that an elevated mitotic rate in the follicular matrix is associated with banding in agouti animals and this view would seem to be supported by the work of GALBRAITH (1964) who demonstrated that the agouti pigment pattern could be altered by the administration of the mitotic inhibitor colchicine during the period of yellow band formation.
Rolling the Dice : Recent Results in Probabilistic Social Choice

When aggregating the preferences of multiple agents into one collective choice, it is easily seen that certain cases call for randomization or other means of tiebreaking. For example, if there are two alternatives, a and b, and two agents such that one prefers a and the other one b, there is no deterministic way of selecting a single alternative without violating one of two basic fairness conditions known as anonymity and neutrality. Anonymity requires that the collective choice ought to be independent of the agents’ identities whereas neutrality requires impartiality towards the alternatives.1 Allowing lotteries as social outcomes hence seems like a necessity for impartial collective choice. Indeed, most common “deterministic” social choice functions such as plurality rule, Borda’s rule, or Copeland’s rule are only deterministic as long as there is no tie, which is usually resolved by drawing a lot. The use of lotteries for the selection of officials interestingly goes back to the world’s first democracy in Athens, where it was widely regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy (Headlam, 1933), and has recently gained increasing attention in political science (see, e.g., Goodwin, 2005; Dowlen, 2009; Stone, 2011; Guerrero, 2014). It turns out that randomization—apart from guaranteeing impartiality—allows the circumvention of well-known impossibility results such as the GibbardSatterthwaite Theorem. Important questions in this context are how much “randomness” is required to achieve positive results and which assumptions are made about the agents’ preferences over lotteries. In this chapter, I will survey some recent axiomatic results in the area of probabilistic social choice. Probabilistic social choice functions (PSCFs) map collections of individual preference relations over alternatives to lotteries over alternatives and were first for-
Self Organized Maps for Intestinal Contractions Categorization with Wireless Capsule Video Endoscopy

Wireless Capsule Video Endoscopy constitutes a recent technology in which a capsule with micro-camera attached to it is swallowed by the patient, emitting a RF signal which is recorded as a video of its trip throughout the gut. We applied this technology to develop a first approach in intestinal contractions categorization, under the perspective of intestinal motility assessment. In order to automatically cluster the different types of contractions, we designed a computer vision system which describes video sequences in terms of classical image descriptors. We used Self Organized Maps (SOM) to build a two-dimensional representation of the different types of contractions, which were clustered by the SOM in a non-supervised way. In this work, we describe the methodology used, as well as the qualitative results of the visual assessment of this technique using a database of intestinal contractions previously labelled by the specialist in a selected pool of test studios.
A Cryptosystem Using the Concepts of Algebraic Geometric Code

Problem statement: Cryptosystem using linear codes was developed in 1 978 by Mc-Eliece. Later in 1985 Niederreiter and others developed a m odified version of cryptosystem using concepts of linear codes. But these systems were not used frequ ently because of its larger key size. In this study we were designing a cryptosystem using the concepts of algebraic geometric codes with smaller key size. Error detection and correction can be done efficien tly by simple decoding methods using the cryptosystem developed. Approach: Algebraic geometric codes are codes, generated usi ng curves. The cryptosystem use basic concepts of elliptic cur ves cryptography and generator matrix. Decrypted information takes the form of a repetition code. Du e to this complexity of decoding procedure is reduced. Error detection and correction can be carr ied out efficiently by solving a simple system of linear equations, there by imposing the concepts of security along with error detection and correction . Results: Implementation of the algorithm is done on MATLAB and comparative analysis is also done on various parameters of the system. Attacks are co mmon to all cryptosystems. But by securely choosing curve, field and representation of element s in field, we can overcome the attacks and a stabl e system can be generated. Conclusion: The algorithm defined here protects the informatio n from an intruder and also from the error in communication c hannel by efficient error correction methods.
Abstracting security-critical applications for model checking in a model-driven approach

Model checking at the design level makes it possible to find protocol flaws in security-critical applications automatically. But depending on the size of the application and especially on the abstraction of the application model, model checking may need a lot of resources, primarily time. To reduce the complexity, the application models are usually highly abstracted. But in a model-driven approach with automatic generation of runnable applications the application models need to be detailed and are often too complex to check in reasonable time. In this paper we describe an approach to handle this problem by using additional UML models to restrict the protocol runs, the attacker abilities and the numbers of participants. This makes model checking of large applications in our model-driven approach called SecureMDD possible without manual abstraction of the generated specifications. For model checking we use AVANTSSAR and show how the restrictions modeled within UML are translated. We demonstrate our approach with a smart card based electronic ticketing example.
Design and Analysis of High-Index-Contrast Gratings Using Coupled Mode Theory

We analyze high-refractive-index-contrast subwavelength grating structures using truncated coupled mode theory (CMT). CMT not only provides physical insight into the role of each mode in the overall response but also allows for improved design. An analytic expression is derived for the design of broadband reflectors, providing a near-optimal design that is within 0.08% of the maximum broadband reflectivity calculated by the finite-difference time-domain method. Furthermore, the CMT is used to design a high-quality narrow-band reflector with 28% improved quality factor over previously reported results, as quantified by rigorous coupled wave analysis.
Predictive Study of Psychological Variables Impact in Family Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimer

This study aimed to identify the predictor variables of: (1) Evaluation of Care; (2) Depression; (3) Anxiety; and (4) Stress - Impact variables in care of relatives with Alzheimer's dementia. The sample consists of 86 caregivers, 49 spouse caregivers and 37 children caregivers. Both groups are primary caregivers and care mostly for more than 3 years, 12 to 24 hours a day. It was used a Socio-demographic and clinical Questionnaire, the Scale of Caregiving Appraisal, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale - HADS, Stress Perception Scale, Social Support Scale - SSS, Ways of Coping, and the Barthel Index. 16 Multiple Regressions were performed, 8 for each group. The results obtained show us differences between groups with respect to predicted variables. It is evident the role of sex in the group of spouses and Social Support in the Children Group and the inability of coping strategies for the prediction of the variables in both groups.
A CCA and ICA-Based Mixture Model for Identifying Major Depression Disorder

The fMRI signals are usually filtered before processing and analyzing. This process can result in the loss of information carried by the higher frequency in the low frequency fluctuation. ICA and CCA are two classical methods in fMRI. ICA finds the statistically independent components of the observed data, however these components are usually physiologically uninterpretable without auxiliary procedures. CCA decomposes two sets of data into component pairs in some order, however these components may be mixtures of real signals and noise. In order to obtain statistically independent components and avoid the loss of information in the process of filtering, we propose a mixed model based on ICA and CCA, which does not need to filter the data. It is shown by the experiments that the new model has some advantages compared with the classical ICA and CCA. The components obtained by the new model is statistically independent. The useful information included in the low frequency fluctuation can be preserved. Experiments on synthetic data show satisfying results. As an application, this new model is used to design an algorithm to discriminate the major depressions from normal controls, with encouraging experimental results.
Solving the edge server streaming bottleneck with the separation principle

The well-known edge server bottleneck is shown in this paper to be the result of a mismatch between the general-purpose architecture and the special-purpose data functions it was not intended to perform exclusively. Six overheads are identified that contribute significantly to the bottleneck. To solve this bottleneck problem, a solution is to apply the principle of separation between control and data functions. While the idea is not new, the application of this principle to the edge server architecture is novel in the convergence of three technologies: network, server, and storage. Notable performance has been obtained with this approach using ASIC implementation for TCP or UDP streaming applications.