Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VERY LONG CHAIN FATTY ACID SPHINGOMYELIN IN NUCLEAR LIPID MICRODOMAINS OF HEPATOCYTES AND HEPATOMA CELLS: CAN THE EXCHANGE FROM C24:0 TO C16:0 AFFECT SIGNAL PROTEINS AND VITAMIN D RECEPTOR?

Lipid microdomains localised in inner nuclear membrane are considered platforms for active chromatin anchoring. Stimuli as surgery, vitamin D or glucocorticoid drugs influence there gene expression, DNA duplication and RNA synthesis. Here, we used ultra fast liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry to identify sphingomyelin species coupled with immunoblotting analysis to comprehensively map differences in nuclear lipid microdomains purified from hepatocytes and hepatoma cells. We showed that nuclear lipid microdomains lost saturated very long fatty acid (C24:0) sphingomyelin in cancer cells and enriched in long fatty acid (C16:0) sphingomyelin. We also found that signaling proteins, such as STAT3, Raf1, and PKCζ, were increased and Vitamin D receptor was reduced in cancer cells. Since recent researches showed a shift in sphingolipid composition from C24:0 to C16:0 in relation to cell life, we performed a comparative analysis of properties among C16:0 sphingomyelin, C24:0 sphingomyelin and cholesterol. Our results induced to hypothesise that the enrichment of C16:0 sphingomyelin could determine enhanced dynamic properties of nuclear lipid microdomains in cancer cells with an increased shuttling of proteins signaling molecules.
Pricing Discretely Monitored Barrier Options by a Markov Chain

Barrier options have become commonplace in the option market, and a variety of other financial contracts may also be thought of in terms of barrier options. But the existence of a price barrier can significantly complicate the option valuation problem when volatility is time-varying, or the barrier itself moves over time, or the barrier is only monitored at discrete intervals. In this article, Duan et al. present a new Markov chain technology for pricing barrier options that readily handles all of these problems. Out-and-in options can be valued within their framework even when volatility follows a GARCH process and a discretely monitored time-varying barrier is present.
Efficient approach to top-k dominating queries on service selection

The top-k dominating query is an emerging technology which is used to obtain k services that dominate the highest number of services. The advantage of top-k dominating query is even more obvious in dealing with concurrent requests. In this paper, we improve the dominance-based approach that adopts top-k dominating queries to generate a solution for a given request. Based on the proposed service selection scheme, k outstanding services would be efficiently obtained by using our optimal algorithms. The experiment demonstrates that our optimal approach outperforms the previous dominance-based method and traditional method for service selection.
Trade-offs in monitoring social interactions

Social interaction is one of the basic components of human life that impacts thoughts, emotions, decisions, and the overall wellbeing of individuals. In this regard, monitoring social activity constitutes an important factor in a number of disciplines, particularly those related to social and health sciences. Sensor-based social interaction data collection has been seen as a groundbreaking tool, having the potential to overcome the drawbacks of traditional self-reporting methods and revolutionize social behavior analysis. However, monitoring of social interactions typically implies a trade-off between the quality of collected data and the levels of unobtrusiveness and privacy respect, aspects that can affect spontaneity in subjects' behavior. In this article we discuss the challenges of automatic monitoring of social interactions; then we provide an overview of the current automatic monitoring concepts and the associated trade-offs. We finally present our approach of using non-visual and non-auditory mobile sources that mitigate privacy concerns and do not interfere with individuals daily routines, while providing a reliable platform for social interaction data collection.
A proposed technique of online face authentication to be used for the user identification

A technique of online face authentication has been proposed which may be used for the user identification. Pre processing of acquired image has been accomplished through consecutive steps viz. image reading and subsequent adjustment of illumination level and feature extraction from a certain portion of the clipped image to form a template. Provision for automatic uploading of the template through internet to remote server by the client background service has been made. Eigen values of the clipped block of image, i.e. template have been calculated and compared with those of already saved image in the remote server in order to authenticate the received image along with the password of the user. The present work based on person based authentication is expected to be less prone to be cracked by the hackers and has provided a higher recognition rate of the transmitted images from the client side.
Incremental persuasion through microblogging: a survey of Twitter users in Latvia

Emerging socio-technical environments facilitate the advancement of existing social activities and creation of innovative forms of online social influence. Social networks and microblogging services are few of the most frequently used forms of online interaction. These channels provide means for intensive communication embodying persuasion in one way or the other. This paper presents features of Twitter to uncover inbuilt persuasion patterns that influence users' behaviors and attitudes. An online survey of Twitter users in Latvia was carried out receiving 403 valid responses for quantitative data analysis. Recent frameworks for designing persuasive systems and measuring the success of Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSSs) were applied in the evaluation process. The main findings from this study relate to incremental behavior and attitude change among Twitter users. Other results magnify the understanding of social influence patterns amongst Twitter users. These findings could be used for further research focused on the persuasive potential of Twitter.
Learning reactive admittance control

A peg-in-hole insertion task is used as an example to illustrate the utility of direct associative reinforcement learning methods for learning control under real-world conditions of uncertainty and noise. An associative reinforcement learning system has to learn appropriate actions in various situations through a search guided by evaluative performance feedback The authors used such a learning system, implemented as a connectionist network, to learn active compliant control for peg-in-hole insertion. The results indicated that direct reinforcement learning can be used to learn a reactive control strategy that works well even in the presence of a high degree of noise and uncertainty. <<ETX>>
Fluorescence lifetime snapshots reveal two rapidly reversible mechanisms of photoprotection in live cells of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Photosynthetic organisms avoid photodamage to photosystem II (PSII) in variable light conditions via a suite of photoprotective mechanisms called nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ), in which excess absorbed light is dissipated harmlessly. To quantify the contributions of different quenching mechanisms to NPQ, we have devised a technique to measure the changes in chlorophyll fluorescence lifetime as photosynthetic organisms adapt to varying light conditions. We applied this technique to measure the fluorescence lifetimes responsible for the predominant, rapidly reversible component of NPQ, qE, in living cells of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Application of high light to dark-adapted cells of C. reinhardtii led to an increase in the amplitudes of 65 ps and 305 ps chlorophyll fluorescence lifetime components that was reversed after the high light was turned off. Removal of the pH gradient across the thylakoid membrane linked the changes in the amplitudes of the two components to qE quenching. The rise times of the amplitudes of the two components were significantly different, suggesting that the changes are due to two different qE mechanisms. We tentatively suggest that the changes in the 65 ps component are due to charge-transfer quenching in the minor light-harvesting complexes and that the changes in the 305 ps component are due to aggregated light-harvesting complex II trimers that have detached from PSII. We anticipate that this technique will be useful for resolving the various mechanisms of NPQ and for quantifying the timescales associated with these mechanisms.
EMG based classification for continuous thumb angle and force prediction

Human hand functions range from precise-minute handling to heavy and robust movements. Remarkably, 50 percent of all hand functions are made possible by the thumb. Therefore, developing an artificial thumb which can mimic the actions of a real thumb precisely is a major achievement. Despite many efforts dedicated to this area of research, control of artificial thumb movements in resemblance to our natural movement, still poses as a challenge. Most of the development in this area is based on discontinuous thumb position control, which makes it possible to recreate several of the most important functions of the thumb but does not result in total imitation. This work looks into the classification of Electromyogram (EMG) signals from thumb muscles for the prediction of thumb angle and force during flexion motion. For this purpose, an experimental setup is developed to measure the thumb angle & force throughout the range of flexion and simultaneously gather the EMG signals. Further various different features are extracted from these signals for classification and the most suitable feature set is determined and applied to different classifiers. A `piecewise- discretization' approach is used for continuous angle prediction. Breaking away from previous researches, the frequency-domain features performed better than the time-domain features, with the best feature combination turning out to be MDF-MNF-MNP. As for the classifiers, the Support Vector Machine proved to be the most accurate classifier giving about 70% accuracy for both angle and force classification and close to 50% for joint angle-force classification.
Establishment and Characterization of a Highly Tumorigenic African American Prostate Cancer Cell Line, E006AA-hT

Genuine racial differences in prostate cancer (PCa) biology have been considered among the potential reasons to explain PCa disparities. There is no animal model to represent all aspects of human PCa and, more specifically, to be used for PCa disparity research. The lack of a spontaneously transformed in vitro cell-based model system has been a significant impediment to investigating and understanding potential molecular mechanisms, and the hormonal, genetic, and epigenetic factors underlying the biological and clinical aggressiveness of PCa in African American (AA) men. In this study, we established and characterized the E006AA-hT cell line as a highly tumorigenic subline of the previously characterized primary AA-PCa cell line, E006AA. Extensive characterization of the E006AA-hT cell line was accomplished using cytodifferentiation and prostate-specific markers, spectral karyotyping, cell line authentication assays, cell proliferation and migration assays, and in vitro tumorigenesis assays. Spectral karyotyping of E006AA-hT showed a hypertriploid chromosome complement and shared cytogenetic changes similar to its parental cells such as diploid X, absence of Y-chromosomes, numerical gains in chromosomes 5,6,8,10,17,20,21, and marker chromosomes of unknown origin. In addition, E006AA-hT also presented numerous clonal and structural aberrations such as insertion, deletion, duplication, and translocations in chromosomes 1-5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, and 18. The E006AA-hT cell line was shown to be highly tumorigenic and produced tumors at an accelerated growth rate in both athymic nude and triple-deficient SCID mice. Silencing the mutated androgen receptor (AR-599 Ser>Gly) did not affect proliferation (loss-of-function), but decreased migration (gain-of-function) in E006AA-hT and its parental cell type. These data support that AR-point mutations may lead simultaneously to different “loss-of-function” and “gain-of-function” phenotypes in PCa cells. E006AA-Par and its subline as the only available spontaneously transformed low- and highly-tumorigenic primary AA-PCa cell lines could be used for basic and translational research aimed in supporting prostate cancer disparity research.
Elevated Serum Transferrin Saturation and Mortality

BACKGROUND A large proportion of US adults have elevated transferrin saturation, an indicator of a predisposition for iron overload. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between elevated serum transferrin saturation and mortality. METHODS This cohort study was conducted using data from the First Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I (1971–1974) (NHANES I) merged with the NHANES I Epidemiologic Followup Study (1992) (N = 10,714). We used SUDAAN and appropriate weights to make population estimates for the adult US population (aged 25 to 74 years at baseline). All-cause mortality was evaluated in relation to serum transferrin saturation of greater than 45%, greater than 50%, greater than 55%, and greater than 60% using Cox proportional hazards regression. RESULTS In a Cox proportional hazards model controlling for potential confounders, including comorbid diseases, smoking, and cholesterol, all-cause mortality is significantly greater for persons with a serum transferrin saturation of more than 55%, compared with those with saturations below this cutoff (hazards ratio [HR] =1.60, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.17–2.21). No one who died had hemochromatosis as any of the 20 listed causes of death. Many of the underlying causes of death for persons with serum transferrin saturation levels of more than 55% are common causes of death in the general population, although these persons were more likely to have died of cirrhosis and diabetes, a finding consistent with iron overload. CONCLUSIONS In this nationally representative cohort of adults, those with elevated serum transferrin saturation, more than 2% of the adult US population, were at increased risk for all-cause mortality.
Heuristic constraint-path routing decision system

Heuristic QoS algorithms under strict constraints perform poorly in terms of finding a path that is suitable for a user's QoS needs-the multiple constraint path problem (MCP). Exact QoS algorithms, on the other hand, guarantee that a path satisfying user needs would be found and offer a more realistic approach for solving the MCP problem in view of the fact that the NP-complete character of graphs are not common in real networks. This fact has driven approaches like the SAMCRA and A*prune algorithms. However, these algorithms still have very high running times relative to heuristic approaches. When QoS routing algorithms are used in online traffic engineering (TE) environments it may be necessary to route thousands of traffic flows each minute. Exact algorithms simply cannot work in such environments. We propose a heuristic algorithm that is suitable for working in an online TE environment. Simulations show that this algorithm produce high success rates in terms of finding suitable constraint paths for user flows while at the same time having execution times comparable to another heuristic based algorithms.
A COGNITIVE “ THUMB ON THE SCALE ” : COMPENSATORY THINKING AND ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT

This paper presents a theory of sunk-cost bias that accounts for the complementarity of actions and thoughts about actions. Decision-makers choose not just what to do but, through an attention allocation process called elaboration, how much utility they will obtain from what they do. As in earlier models of sunk-cost biases, individuals exhibit limited memory and a preference for consistency – posed here as “error aversion. ” “Forward-looking” individuals optimally allocate elaborative efforts while those influenced by error aversion use them to compensate for, and thereby neutralize, past errors. Because decision-makers rely on remembered enjoyment from past choices as a memory kludge for product quality, the elaborative allocation biases arising from error aversion result in escalation of commitment. The results are robust to whether individuals are naïve or sophisticated about their past error aversion and to whether or not they anticipate the influence of elaboration on future consumption choices and therefore behave strategically.
Hierarchical Homomorphic Encryption Based Privacy Preserving Distributed Association Rule Mining

Privacy is an important issue in the field of distributed association rule mining, where multiple parties collaborate to perform mining on the collective data. The parties do not want to reveal sensitive data to other parties. Most of the existing techniques for privacy preserving distributed association rule mining suffer from weak privacy guarantees and have a high computational cost involved. We propose a novel privacy preserving distributed association rule mining scheme based on Paillier additive homomorphic cryptosystem. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is more efficient and scalable compared to the existing techniques based on homomorphic encryption.
Demo: Point matching for PTZ camera autotracking

This paper considers the problem of PTZ camera autotracking. The system is composed of a controller and a tracker, which follows the target in consecutive frames captured by the camera. Since the target might potentially cover a large fraction of the image or might even be only partly visible, the tracking is done through points matching, using local features instead of global ones. Using a PI control scheme with adaptive gain factors, the controller steers the camera towards the target by smoothly changing the pan, tilt and zoom parameters of the camera. Results demonstrate the relevance of the approach in the typical surveillance application.
Generating Privacy-Preserved Recommendation Using Homomorphic Authenticated Encryption

Online service providers started to providepersonalized recommendation to the users by collecting userprivate sensitive data. Traditionally the user private data isencrypted using a symmetric encryption algorithm beforestoring it in the cloud to provide another layer of security fordata at rest. It makes users' data secure from third parties, butnot the service provider. We propose a method that generatesrecommendations using homomorphically encrypted data in aprivacy preserved manner to provide protection against serviceprovider. We also verify the correctness of computations doneby a third parties and the service provider over encrypteddata using homomorphic authenticators and some securecryptographic protocols.
The improvements on automatic mandarin pronunciation evaluation

Automatic pronunciation evaluation (APE) often works in noise environment. With MFCC based automatic speech recognizer (ASR) embedded, APE's noise robustness is not usually satisfied. Since it improves anti-noise performances of ASR, power normalized cepstrum coefficient (PNCC) [1] is introduced i n t o APE in this paper. Experiment of noise environment shows improvement in both APE and recognition performances. In order to discriminate mispronunciation APE needs standard “golden” acoustic models. The speaker adaptation models of APE need to be trained by standard pronounced utterances of target speaker. But standard pronunciation is not usually expected in APE. In this paper a new speaker adaptation strategy is suggested. A recognizer of speaker independent (SI) is used to selected correct pronounced utterances for adaptation training. The adapted system achieved better score correlation with subjective scores.
Assessing Databases in .NET - Comparing Approaches

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) appeared recently as the new language of the . NET framework — is the new kid of the town. This query-language, an extension to C# and Visual Basic, allows the query expressions to benefit from the features previously available only to imperative code — the rich metadata, IntelliSense, compile-time syntax checking, and static typing. In this paper, we intend to compare the methods provided by . NET to query databases (LINQ, SQL and Object). This comparison will be done in terms of performance and in terms of the approach used. To guide this comparison, a running-example will be used.
Japanese and Canadian Children’s Beliefs about Child and Adult Knowledge: A Case for Developmental Equifinality?

Children do not know everything that adults know, nor do adults know everything that children know. The present research examined the universality of beliefs about child and adult knowledge and their development with 4- and 7-year-old Canadian and Japanese children (N = 96). In both countries, all children were able to identify adult-specific knowledge and only older children displayed beliefs about child-specific knowledge. However, Japanese and Canadian children differed in whether they used their own knowledge in deciding whether a person who knew an item was a child or an adult. In addition, parental and child beliefs were related in Japan but not in Canada. These findings indicate that children growing up in different cultures may take different paths in developing beliefs about age-related knowledge. Implications for theories of socio-cognitive development and learning are discussed.
A Multimedia-Oriented Digital Ecosystem: A new collaborative environment

Nowadays, most of the information exchanged in Internet (particularly through social networks) is in the form of multimedia data. Each actor in Internet (individuals, enterprises, territorial communities, etc.) becomes producer and consumer of contents. Development and increasing demand for multimedia data offer producers/consumers more choices and opportunities for sharing in collaborative environments. Nevertheless, social network platforms and other traditional collaborative environments present limitations regarding content selection and collection, categorization and classification, aggregation, linking and interoperability, usage control and privacy. In this context, this ongoing work proposes a MultiMedia-Oriented Digital EcoSystem (MMDES) as a new environment of collaboration, sharing, and computing of multimedia content and applications ensuring the benefits of all its participants. In this paper, we formally define MMDES components, objectives and rules through a dedicated ontology. We also present here a P2P architectural design for MMDES.
Computing multiway cut within the given excess over the largest minimum isolating cut

Let $(G,T)$ be an instance of the (vertex) multiway cut problem where $G$ is a graph and $T$ is a set of terminals. For $t \in T$, a set of nonterminal vertices separating $t$ from $T \setminus \{T\}$ is called an \emph{isolating cut} of $t$. The largest among all the smallest isolating cuts is a natural lower bound for a multiway cut of $(G,T)$. Denote this lower bound by $m$ and let $k$ be an integer. In this paper we propose an $O(kn^{k+3})$ algorithm that computes a multiway cut of $(G,T)$ of size at most $m+k$ or reports that there is no such multiway cut. The core of the proposed algorithm is the following combinatorial result. Let $G$ be a graph and let $X,Y$ be two disjoint subsets of vertices of $G$. Let $m$ be the smallest size of a vertex $X-Y$ separator. Then, for the given integer $k$, the number of \emph{important} $X-Y$ separators \cite{MarxTCS} of size at most $m+k$ is at most $\sum_{i=0}^k{n \choose i}$.