Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hepatic triacylglycerol hydrolysis regulates peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor &agr; activity

Recent evidence suggests that fatty acids generated from intracellular triacylglycerol (TAG) hydrolysis may have important roles in intracellular signaling. This study was conducted to determine if fatty acids liberated from TAG hydrolysis regulate peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor &agr; (PPAR&agr;). Primary rat hepatocyte cultures were treated with adenoviruses overexpressing adipose differentiation-related protein (ADRP) or adipose triacylglycerol lipase (ATGL) or treated with short interfering RNA (siRNA) targeted against ADRP. Subsequent effects on TAG metabolism and PPAR&agr; activity and target gene expression were determined. Overexpressing ADRP attenuated TAG hydrolysis, whereas siRNA-mediated knockdown of ADRP or ATGL overexpression resulted in enhanced TAG hydrolysis. Results from PPAR&agr; reporter activity assays demonstrated that decreasing TAG hydrolysis by ADRP overexpression resulted in a 35–60% reduction in reporter activity under basal conditions or in the presence of fatty acids. As expected, PPAR&agr; target genes were also decreased in response to ADRP overexpression. However, the PPAR&agr; ligand, WY-14643, was able to restore PPAR&agr; activity following ADRP overexpression. Despite its effects on PPAR&agr;, overexpressing ADRP did not affect PPAR&ggr; activity. Enhancing TAG hydrolysis through ADRP knockdown or ATGL overexpression increased PPAR&agr; activity. These results indicate that TAG hydrolysis and the consequential release of fatty acids regulate PPAR&agr; activity.
COmBAT: Cross-layer Based testbed with Analysis Tool implemented using software defined radios

In this paper, we discuss the implementation of a CrOss-layer Based testbed with Analysis Tool (COmBAT). COmBAT is developed to enable the design and development process of next-generation cross-layer based wireless communication technologies for tactical ad-hoc networks. The COmBAT architecture comprises of two major components; (i) Adaptive cross-layer (AXL) framework implemented on each node in the testbed and (ii) NEtwork Analyzing Tool (NEAT) that provides a graphical interface for users to track and analyze network metrics as well as provide a single seat control over the network parameters on-the-fly. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of these components in detail and demonstrate its feasibility by implementing three cross-layer based algorithms on COmBAT using a nine node ad-hoc network. The results validate the modularity and adaptability of COmBAT and demonstrate how COmBAT can be used to develop as well as refine current and future cross-layer algorithms providing a feasibility study that lends itself to the transition of theoretical network research from testbed to relevant military hardware.
Surgical anatomy of the axillary nerve branches to the deltoid muscle

Variations in the innervation of the posterior deltoid muscle by the anterior branch of the axillary nerve have been reported. The objective of this study is to clarify the anatomy of the axillary nerve branches to the deltoid muscle. One hundred and twenty‐nine arms (68 right and 61 left) from 88 embalmed cadavers (83 male and 46 female) were included in the study. The anterior and posterior branches of the axillary nerve were identified and their lengths were measured from the point of emergence from the axillary nerve to their terminations in the deltoid muscle. In all cases, the axillary nerves split into two branches (anterior and posterior) within the quadrangular space and none split within the deltoid muscle. In all specimens, the anterior and middle parts of the deltoid muscle received their nerve supplies from the anterior branch of the axillary nerve. The posterior part of the deltoid muscle was supplied only by the anterior branch of the axillary nerve in 2.3% of the specimens, from the posterior branch in 8.5%, and from both branches in 89.1%. There were two sub‐branches of the anterior branch in 4.7% of the specimens. The anterior branch of the axillary nerve supplied not only the anterior and middle parts of the deltoid muscle but also the posterior part in most cases (91.5%). Clin. Anat. 28:118–122, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Face Detection using Neural Network

paper describes a face detection framework that is capable of processing images extremely rapidly while achieving high detection rates. As continual research is being conducted in the area of computer vision, one of the most practical applications under vigorous development is in the construction of a robust real-time face detection system. Successfully constructing a real-time face detection system not only implies a system capable of analyzing video streams, but also naturally leads onto the solution to the problems of extremely constraint testing environments. Analyzing a video sequence is the current challenge since faces are constantly in dynamic motion, presenting many different possible rotational and illumination conditions. While solutions to the task of face detection have been presented, detection performances of many systems are heavily dependent upon a strictly constrained environment. The problem of detecting faces under gross variations remains largely uncovered. This paper gives a face detection system which uses an image based neural network to detect face images.
Levenberg-Marquardt Learning Algorithm for Quaternion-Valued Neural Networks

In this paper, we present the deduction of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for training quaternion-valued feedforward neural networks, using the framework of the HR calculus. Its performances in the real-and complex-valued cases lead to the idea of extending it to the quaternion domain, also. The proposed method is exemplified on time series prediction applications, showing a significant improvement over the quaternion gradient descent algorithm.
The voyage of an invasive species across continents: genetic diversity of North American and European Colorado potato beetle populations

The paradox of successful invading species is that they are likely to be genetically depauperate compared to their source population. This study on Colorado potato beetles is one of the few studies of the genetic consequences of continent‐scale invasion in an insect pest. Understanding gene flow, population structure and the potential for rapid evolution in native and invasive populations offers insights both into the dynamics of small populations that become successful invaders and for their management as pests. We used this approach to investigate the invasion of the Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) from North America to Europe. The beetles invaded Europe at the beginning of the 20th century and expanded almost throughout the continent in about 30 years. From the analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers, we found the highest genetic diversity in beetle populations from the central United States. The European populations clearly contained only a fraction of the genetic variability observed in North American populations. European populations show a significant reduction at nuclear markers (AFLPs) and are fixed for one mitochondrial haplotype, suggesting a single successful founder event. Despite the high vagility of the species and the reduction of genetic diversity in Europe, we found a similar, high level of population structure and low gene flow among populations on both continents. Founder events during range expansion, agricultural management with crop rotation, and selection due to insecticide applications are most likely the causes partitioning genetic diversity in this species.
Toll-Like Receptor 9-Dependent Immune Activation by Unmethylated CpG Motifs in Aspergillus fumigatus DNA

ABSTRACT Phagocytic defenses are critical for effective host defenses against the opportunistic fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. Previous studies found that following challenge with A. fumigatus, Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) knockout mice survived longer than wild-type mice. However, the mechanism responsible was not defined. Here we demonstrate that A. fumigatus contains unmethylated CpG sequences, the natural ligands for TLR9. A. fumigatus DNA and synthetic CpG-rich oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) containing sequences found in the A. fumigatus genome potently stimulated the production of proinflammatory cytokines in mouse bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) and human plasmacytoid dendritic cells. The response was decreased when the fungal DNA was treated with a CpG methylase or with CpG-specific endonucleases. A role for TLR9 was demonstrated as cytokine production was abolished in BMDCs from TLR9-deficient mice. Moreover, transfection of HEK293 cells with human TLR9 conferred responsiveness to synthetic CpG-rich ODNs containing sequences found in A. fumigatus DNA. Taken together, these data demonstrate that TLR9 detects A. fumigatus DNA, resulting in the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines, which may contribute to the immune response to the pathogen.
Non-Coherent Energy Collection Approach for TOA Estimation in UWB Systems

This paper examines the performance of time of arrival (TOA) estimation techniques for an UWB system employing a non-coherent energy collection receiver. The performance of two different algorithms, namely, the threshold-crossing (TC) and the maximum selection (MAX) algorithms, are compared in terms of TOA estimation error. The effect of the TOA estimation error on position calculation is evaluated for the iterative DavidonFletcher-Powell (DFP) quasi-Newton algorithm. It is found that the TOA estimation algorithms examined lead to similar results when applied to positioning.
Super-linear gate and super-quadratic wire lower bounds for depth-two and depth-three threshold circuits

In order to formally understand the power of neural computing, we first need to crack the frontier of threshold circuits with two and three layers, a regime that has been surprisingly intractable to analyze. We prove the first super-linear gate lower bounds and the first super-quadratic wire lower bounds for depth-two linear threshold circuits with arbitrary weights, and depth-three majority circuits computing an explicit function. (1) We prove that for all ε ≪ √log(n)/n, the linear-time computable Andreev’s function cannot be computed on a (1/2+ε)-fraction of n-bit inputs by depth-two circuits of o(ε3 n3/2/log3 n) gates, nor can it be computed with o(ε3 n5/2/log7/2 n) wires. This establishes an average-case “size hierarchy” for threshold circuits, as Andreev’s function is computable by uniform depth-two circuits of o(n3) linear threshold gates, and by uniform depth-three circuits of O(n) majority gates. (2) We present a new function in P based on small-biased sets, which we prove cannot be computed by a majority vote of depth-two threshold circuits of o(n3/2/log3 n) gates, nor with o(n5/2/log7/2n) wires. (3) We give tight average-case (gate and wire) complexity results for computing PARITY with depth-two threshold circuits; the answer turns out to be the same as for depth-two majority circuits. The key is a new method for analyzing random restrictions to linear threshold functions. Our main analytical tool is the Littlewood-Offord Lemma from additive combinatorics.
A THESIS IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

We study statistical methods based on the use of information retrieved from the Web in attempt to solve two Natural Language Processing tasks: Word Sense Disambiguation and Recognizing Textual Entailment. For Word Sense Disambiguation, we present a measure for semantic relatedness based on the simple Lesk algorithm. We measure kind of mutual information between the gloss of each sense of the word and the context of the word: namely, the scores of the sense s is the frequency (as the number of webpages found by Google) of the context where the word is substituted by the gloss of the sense s, divided by the frequency of the gloss itself (again, as the number of webpages found by Google). In the SemCor dataset our method has the coverage of 100% (i.e., our method always gives some answer) and an accuracy of 0.47. On the Senseval 2 dataset, our method has an accuracy of 0.45, which outperforms some other Lesk-based methods (again with 100% coverage). For Recognizing Textual Entailment, we propose a new cause-effect non-symmetric measure. First, we search over a large corpus for sentences which contain the discourse marker " because " and create a database of cause-effect pairs. The entailment recognition is based on measuring the probability of a cause-effect relation between the Text and the Hypothesis using the relative frequencies of words from the cause-effect pairs. Our results outperform the baseline system, over the three test sets of the PASCAL Recognizing Textual Entailment Challenges (RTE). The measure is good at determining the " true " class, while it is less accurate at the " false " class. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisors, Dr. Alexander Gelbukh and Dr. Sivaji Bandyopadhyay for valuable guidance and advice. I am also grateful to my family and friends for their understanding and support.
Multimodal collaborative handwriting training for visually-impaired people

"McSig" is a multimodal teaching and learning environ-ment for visually-impaired students to learn character shapes, handwriting and signatures collaboratively with their teachers. It combines haptic and audio output to realize the teacher's pen input in parallel non-visual modalities. McSig is intended for teaching visually-impaired children how to handwrite characters (and from that signatures), something that is very difficult without visual feedback. We conducted an evaluation with eight visually-impaired children with a pretest to assess their current skills with a set of character shapes, a training phase using McSig and then a post-test of the same character shapes to see if there were any improvements. The children could all use McSig and we saw significant improvements in the character shapes drawn, particularly by the completely blind children (many of whom could draw almost none of the characters before the test). In particular, the blind participants all expressed enjoyment and excitement about the system and using a computer to learn to handwrite.
Incremental learning with support vector machines

Support vector machines (SVMs) have become a popular tool for machine learning with large amounts of high dimensional data. In this paper an approach for incremental learning with support vector machines is presented, that improves the existing approach of Syed et al. (1999). An insight into the interpretability of support vectors is also given.
Diagnostic performance of 64-row coronary CT angiography in detecting significant stenosis as compared with conventional invasive coronary angiography

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study is to evaluate the accuracy of 64-multidetector-row computed tomography angiography (CTA) in comparison to conventional invasive angiography (CIA) in the diagnosis of significant stenosis (≥ 50%) of coronary artery tree. METHODS Assessment of CTA in the detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) was performed in patients referred because of symptoms or stress studies suggestive of ischemia. For this purpose, among more than 1000 cases of coronary CTA in a 20 months period a study population of 54 patients suspected to have significant stenosis of the coronary artery tree was investigated. The CIA procedure was performed in these patients one month after CTA. The accuracy of CTA in detecting significant stenosis was compared to CIA. RESULTS For vessel based analysis of 179 coronary vessels, CTA had a sensitivity of 96%, specificity of 87.5%, positive predictive value of 90.5%, and negative predictive value of 94.6%. For patient-base analysis, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of CTA were 97.9%, 28.6%, 66.6%, and 90.2%, respectively. CONCLUSION The findings of this study reveal that CT angiography with 64-slice scanner could be considered as a suitable technique for rapid triage of patients presenting to hospitals with chest pain. High values of sensitivity and PPV reveal the good performance of CTA in detecting CAD.
Design and analysis of power semiconductor test circuits

As the demand for electricity grows rapidly nowadays, power semiconductor devices managing ascending power consumption have become indispensable. The requirement of high power density increases, hence power electronics converters possessing the capability of large current and high switching frequency are now leading the developing trend. Therefore, obtaining accurate data of in-use devices and circuits should be greatly concerned. For the purpose of characterising the emerging power semiconductor, two test circuits have been implemented which possess one of two mainstream current sensing devices respectively. With the significantly high bandwidth, the coaxial shunt resistor is applied in current mensuration for accuracy in the first version of power semiconductor test circuit. However, to address the high current measurement, current transformers are introduced to the second version which provide the necessary galvanic isolation and relatively low disturbance while measuring large current. In this paper, a characterization of high speed switching series IGBT (IKW20N60H3) has been done on both versions under a conventional 400V/20A rated condition. Both the switching characteristics of high speed 600V-IGBT and the reverse behavior of its parallel diode have been observed and recorded with the experimental waveform tested by two current sensing devices respectively. The comparison concludes that the coaxial shunt resistor is a excellent candidate for measuring low current while the current transformer is more suitable for high current identification.
Marine Bioactives: Pharmacological Properties and Potential Applications against Inflammatory Diseases

Inflammation is a hot topic in medical research, because it plays a key role in inflammatory diseases: rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other forms of arthritis, diabetes, heart diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, allergies, asthma, even cancer and many others. Over the past few decades, it was realized that the process of inflammation is virtually the same in different disorders, and a better understanding of inflammation may lead to better treatments for numerous diseases. Inflammation is the activation of the immune system in response to infection, irritation, or injury, with an influx of white blood cells, redness, heat, swelling, pain, and dysfunction of the organs involved. Although the pathophysiological basis of these conditions is not yet fully understood, reactive oxygen species (ROS) have often been implicated in their pathogenesis. In fact, in inflammatory diseases the antioxidant defense system is compromised, as evidenced by increased markers of oxidative stress, and decreased levels of protective antioxidant enzymes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). An enriched diet containing antioxidants, such as vitamin E, vitamin C, β-carotene and phenolic substances, has been suggested to improve symptoms by reducing disease-related oxidative stress. In this respect, the marine world represents a largely untapped reserve of bioactive ingredients, and considerable potential exists for exploitation of these bioactives as functional food ingredients. Substances such as n-3 oils, carotenoids, vitamins, minerals and peptides provide a myriad of health benefits, including reduction of cardiovascular diseases, anticarcinogenic and anti-inflammatory activities. New marine bioactives are recently gaining attention, since they could be helpful in combating chronic inflammatory degenerative conditions. The aim of this review is to examine the published studies concerning the potential pharmacological properties and application of many marine bioactives against inflammatory diseases.
Extraction of feedback information from circuit netlists

For a successful analog/mixed signal design, various layout constraints have to be seriously addressed, which is one of the reasons why automatic design of analog layouts is intrinsically more difficult than that of digital layouts. Since feedback has long been a mysterious effect in virtually all analog integrated circuits, improving on constraint file can be done according to feedback information. In this paper, the technique of feedback circuit extraction (FCE) is presented, which is the transformation of feedback design descriptions from circuit level to functional level. Novelly, the algorithm of FCE utilizes the direction of signal flow to extract detailed information of intentional feedback network
Effects of pH and Temperature on the Stability of Fumonisins in Maize Products

This paper is a study of the stability of fumonisins in dough based on maize flour prepared in a phosphate buffer with a pH of 3.5, 5.5 or 7.5 and baked at a temperature within the range of 100–250 °C. Buffers with various pH values were tested, since it is well-known that pH may significantly influence interactions of fumonisins with other substances. A standard analytical procedure was used to determine the concentration of free fumonisins. Hydrolysis in an alkaline medium was then applied to reveal the hidden forms, while the total fumonisins concentations was determined in another measurement. The total concentration of fumonisins was statistically higher in pH = 3.5 and pH = 5.5 than the concentration of free fumonisins; no similar difference was found at pH = 7.5. The applied phosphate buffer pH 7.5 may enhance solubility of fumonisins, which would increase extraction efficiency of free analytes, thereby decreasing the difference between concentrations of total and free fumonisins. Hydrolysed B1 fumonisin (HFB1) and partially hydrolysed B1 fumonisin (isomers a and b: PHFB1a and PHFB1b, respectively) were the main investigated substances. For baking temperatures below 220 °C, fumonisins were slightly more stable for pH = 5.5 than for pH = 3.5 and pH = 7.5. In both of these latter cases, the concentration of partially hydrolysed fumonisins grew initially (up to 200 °C) with an increase in the baking temperature, and then dropped. Similar behaviour was observed for free HFB1, which may suggest the following fumonisin degradation mechanism: initially, the tricarballylic acid (TCA) groups are removed from the molecules, and next, the HFB1 molecules disintegrate.