Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural dynamics inside a functionalized metal–organic framework probed by ultrafast 2D IR spectroscopy

Significance A unique aspect of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is their structural flexibility coexisting with a degree of regularity. Adsorbed guest molecules can cause MOF pore shapes to deform. Pore shape changes may be related to the high capacity and selectivity of the MOFs for gas adsorption and other processes. MOF flexibility and other properties are influenced by fast dynamics of the framework. Direct measurements to characterize fast motions of the MOFs have not been applied previously. We show that 2D IR spectroscopy can be performed on functionalized MOFs. We use 2D IR and other ultrafast IR methods to elucidate the timescales for ultrafast structural fluctuations and how they are influenced by a solvent filling the pores. The structural elasticity of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is a key property for their functionality. Here, we show that 2D IR spectroscopy with pulse-shaping techniques can probe the ultrafast structural fluctuations of MOFs. 2D IR data, obtained from a vibrational probe attached to the linkers of UiO-66 MOF in low concentration, revealed that the structural fluctuations have time constants of 7 and 670 ps with no solvent. Filling the MOF pores with dimethylformamide (DMF) slows the structural fluctuations by reducing the ability of the MOF to undergo deformations, and the dynamics of the DMF molecules are also greatly restricted. Methodology advances were required to remove the severe light scattering caused by the macroscopic-sized MOF particles, eliminate interfering oscillatory components from the 2D IR data, and address Förster vibrational excitation transfer.
Propagation characteristics of over-layered planar transmission line transformers

An over-layered planar transmission line transformer obtained by deposition of high dielectric constant thin films over the conductors printed on alumina substrates is proposed. The resulting effective dielectric constant becomes very high, dispersion is very low, and the cutoff frequency of higher order modes is significantly increased. The theoretical behavior of this device was investigated using the simulator HP-HFSS and the results were compared to those obtained for a coplanar transmission line transformer printed on conventional bulk substrate with relative dielectric constant of 80
Multilayer neural-net robot controller with guaranteed tracking performance

A multilayer neural-net (NN) controller for a general serial-link rigid robot arm is developed. The structure of the NN controller is derived using a filtered error/passivity approach. No off-line learning phase is needed for the proposed NN controller and the weights are easily initialized. The nonlinear nature of the NN, plus NN functional reconstruction inaccuracies and robot disturbances, mean that the standard delta rule using backpropagation tuning does not suffice for closed-loop dynamic control. Novel online weight tuning algorithms, including correction terms to the delta rule plus an added robust signal, guarantee bounded tracking errors as well as bounded NN weights. Specific bounds are determined, and the tracking error bound can be made arbitrarily small by increasing a certain feedback gain. The correction terms involve a second-order forward-propagated wave in the backpropagation network. New NN properties including the notions of a passive NN, a dissipative NN, and a robust NN are introduced.
Cost-Effective Eradication of an Outbreak of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in a Community Teaching Hospital

Abstract During an eight-month period, 25 hospitalized patients became infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in a 464-bed acute care, medical-surgical teaching hospital. There were only five cases during the eight months prior to the outbreak period (P < 0.0001). Initial measures, including category-specific isolation and education, did not limit the spread of the outbreak of a strain of MRSA. This prompted institution of additional measures including (1) strict isolation of all infected and colonized cases; (2) prospective microbiological surveillance to detect additional cases; (3) multiple site cultures of identified cases to determine the extent of colonization; (4) employee and environment surveillance; (5) antibiotic decolonization of patients and employees; and (6) educational efforts. The highest number of personnel carriers were noted in one of the critical care units where most of the cases occurred. The decolonization protocol was 100% effective for personnel carriers. The incidence of nosocomial cases of MRSA fell to zero in the five months following the implementation of the strategy. The cost of the entire eradication process was approximately half that of treating a single MRSA bacteremia.
The critical regularization value: Incorporating spatial smoothness to enhance signal detection in highly noisy fMRI data

Comparing serially acquired fMRI scans is a typical way to detect functional brain changes in different conditions. However, this approach introduces additional variation on physical and physiological conditions, which results in substantial noise. To improve sensitivity and accuracy of signal detection in such highly noisy fMRI data, potentially important information should be incorporated. Here we propose a new significance indicator, the critical regularization value (CR-value), which detects significantly changed voxels by taking both the magnitude of the voxel-wise signal variation and spatial smoothness into account. The CR-value allows voxels that survive in a stronger sparse constraint to be considered as more significant. We demonstrate our method using a simulation dataset and a real fMRI dataset collected from the previous study. The results show that CR-value more accurately detects the true activation than GLM P-value, Posterior Probability Maps (PPM) and the Threshold Free Cluster Enhancement (TFCE) in noisy datasets.
Ligand-independent Dimerization Activates the Stress Response Kinases IRE1 and PERK in the Lumen of the Endoplasmic Reticulum*

IRE1 and PERK are type I transmembrane serine/threonine protein kinases that are activated by unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to signal adaptive responses. IRE1 is present in all eukaryotic cells and signals the unfolded protein response through its kinase and endoribonuclease activities. PERK signals phosphorylation of a translation initiation factor to inhibit protein synthesis in higher eukaryotic cells but is absent in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. The amino acid sequences of the amino-terminal ER luminal domains (NLDs) from IRE1 and PERK display limited homology and have diverged among species. In this study, we have demonstrated that the NLD of yeast Ire1p is required for signaling. However, the NLDs from human IRE1α and murine IRE1β and the Caenorhabditis elegans IRE1 and PERK function as replacements for the S. cerevisiae Ire1p-NLD to signal the unfolded protein response. Replacement of the Ire1p-NLD with a functional leucine zipper dimerization motif yielded a constitutively active kinase that surprisingly was further activated by ER stress. These results demonstrate that ER stress-induced dimerization of the NLD is sufficient for IRE1 and PERK activation and is conserved through evolution. We propose that ligand-independent activation of IRE1 and PERK permits homodimerization upon accumulation of unfolded proteins in the lumen of the ER.
Herpesvirus Entry Mediator Ligand (HVEM-L), a Novel Ligand for HVEM/TR2, Stimulates Proliferation of T Cells and Inhibits HT29 Cell Growth*

Herpesvirus entry mediator (HVEM), a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor family, mediates herpesvirus entry into cells during infection. Upon overexpression, HVEM activates NF-κB and AP-1 through a TNF receptor-associated factor (TRAF)-mediated mechanism. Using an HVEM-Fc fusion protein, we screened soluble forms of novel TNF-related proteins derived from an expressed sequence tag data base. One of these, which we designated HVEM-L, specifically bound to HVEM-Fc with an affinity of 44 nm. This association was confirmed with soluble and membrane forms of both receptor and ligand. HVEM-L mRNA is expressed in spleen, lymph nodes, macrophages, and T cells and encodes a 240-amino acid protein. A soluble, secreted form of the protein stimulates proliferation of T lymphocytes during allogeneic responses, inhibits HT-29 cell growth, and weakly stimulates NF-κB-dependent transcription.
Aggregate Degradation by Growth Plate Proteases

For long bone growth to occur, calcification of the matrix must begin in the lower hypertrophic zone of the growth plate. It generally is accepted that physeal proteoglycans help regulate mineralization, and that, at least in vitro, smaller proteoglycan fragments are less inhibitory of mineral formation. It also has been shown that proteoglycan degrading enzymes are concentrated in the hypertrophic zone, where calcification occurs. Thus, one can hypothesize that these enzymes are involved in the calcification process. Proteoglycans appear mainly as the aggregate form in the physis, and this study demonstrates the ability of the naturally occurring physeal enzymes to degrade proteoglycan aggregate, without first disaggregating it. Because the matrix constituents probably limit hypertrophic cell size and shape, this degradation may have some relationship to the rate of growth of the physis.
Generalized topologies of single-stage input-current-shaping circuits

In this paper, two generalized topologies of single-stage input current shaping (S/sup 2/ICS) circuits are derived: S/sup 2/ICS circuits with two-terminal ICS cells and S/sup 2/ICS circuits with three-terminal ICS cells. It is shown that most of the published S/sup 2/ICS circuits belong to either of the two generalized topologies. It is also shown that the two generalized S/sup 2/ICS topologies are functionally equivalent. Based on the generalized approach, a few new S/sup 2/ICS circuits are developed. Experimental results obtained on a selected pair of S/sup 2/ICS circuits with 2-terminal and 3-terminal ICS cells are also provided.
The Genetic Basis of Toxin Production in Cyanobacteria

Abstract The increasing incidence of mass developments of Cyanobacteria in fresh- and brackish water is a matter of growing concern due to the production of toxins that threaten human and livestock health. The toxins that are produced by freshwater Cyanobacteria comprise hepatotoxins (cyclic peptides such as microcystins and nodularin, as well as alkaloids such as cylindrospermopsin) and neurotoxins (alkaloids such as anatoxin-a, anatoxin-a(S) and saxitoxins). The variation in toxicity between and within species of Cyanobacteria has been recognised for a long time. However, the toxic and non-toxic genotypes within a species cannot be discriminated under the microscope, which has been a major obstacle in identifying those factors that influence toxin production both in the laboratory and in the field. During the last decade, major advances were achieved due to the elucidation and functional characterisation of genes, such as the gene cluster encoding the synthesis of the hepatotoxic heptapeptide, microcystin. Genetic techniques, in particular, have been used to explore (i) the genetic basis, biosynthesis pathways, and physiological regulation of toxin (microcystin) production, (ii) gene loss processes resulting in a patchy distribution of the microcystin synthetase gene cluster among genera and species, as well as (iii) the distribution and abundance of the microcystin genes in the environment. In recent years, experience in detecting microcystin genes directly in the field has increased enormously and robust protocols for the extraction of DNA and the subsequent detection of genes by PCR (polymerase chain reaction)-based methods are now available. Due to the high sensitivity of PCR, it is possible to detect toxic genotypes long before a toxic cyanobacterial bloom may occur. Consequently, waterbodies that are at risk of toxic bloom formation can be identified early on in the growing season along with environmental factors that can potentially influence the abundance of toxin producing genotypes.
Vibrational simulation of offshore floating wind turbine and its directional movement control by fuzzy logic

In this paper, a certain type of wind turbine has been simulated and its foundation directions has been controlled by fuzzy logic. This turbine model collection has seven degrees of freedom and turbine directional movement controls by placing three jacks on three bases and using powers on bases. Movement control has been done by considering two movement inputs and angular velocity between bases and relationship between this movement and angular speed and their effect on turbine directional movement. For angle movement and angle speed has considered three areas and nine equations to control directional movement among bases and regarding to three angle speeds in turbine symmetrically and with similar behavior totally will obtain 27 equations to control movement and angular speeds among bases. Turbine inputs have considered as steps and angle movement rate decreased by controller to one fourth of initial rate.
Resource management for task-based parallel programs over a multi-kernel. : BIAS: Barrelfish Inter-core Adaptive Scheduling

Emerging architecture designs include tens of processing cores on a single chip die; it is believed that the number of cores will reach the hundreds in not so many years from now. However, most common workloads cannot expose fluctuating parallelism, insufficient to utilize such systems. The combination of these issues suggests that large-scale systems will be either multiprogrammed or have their unneeded resources powered off. To achieve these features, workloads must be able to provide a metric on their parallelism which the system can use to dynamically adapt per-application resource allotments.Adaptive resource management requires scheduling abstractions to be split into two cooperating layers. The system layer that is aware of the availability of resources and the application layer which can accurately and iteratively estimate the workload's true resource requirements.This thesis addresses these issues and provides a self-adapting work-stealing scheduling method that can achieve expected performance while conserving resources. This method is based on deterministic victim selection (DVS) that controls the concentration of the load among the worker threads. It allows to use the number of spawned but not yet processed tasks as a metric for the requirements. Because this metric measures work to be executed in the future instead of past behavior, DVS is versatile to handlevery irregular workloads.
Shaping and compositional modification of zinc oxide nanowires under energetic manganese ion irradiation

For ZnO nanowires of 150 to 200 nm diameter standing on a flat substrate, the development of the surface contour/morphology and the local elemental composition under 175 keV Mn irradiation has been investigated both experimentally and by means of three-dimensional dynamic Monte Carlo computer simulation. The simulation results reveal a complex interplay of sputter erosion, implant incorporation, resputtering and atomic mixing, which is discussed in detail. The sputter-induced thinning of the wire is in good quantitative agreement with the experimental results obtained from pre- and post-irradiation scanning electron microscopy. The experiments also confirm the predicted sharpening of the tip, neck formation at the bottom interface, and ultimately the detachment of the nanowires from the substrate at high ion fluence. Additional good agreement with experimental results from nano-x-ray fluorescence is also obtained for the continuously increasing Mn/Zn atomic ratio within the nanowires as a function of ion fluence. The simulation yields a great deal of additional information that has not been accessible in the experiments. From this, preferential sputtering of O compared with Zn is deduced. A significant contamination of the wires with substrate material arises from ion mixing at the wire/substrate interface, rather than from redeposition of sputtered substrate atoms. Surprising hollow profiles are observed. Their formation is attributed to a special mechanism of collisional transport which is characteristic of the irradiation of nanowires at a suitable combination of wire diameter and ion energy.
Constraints from electric dipole moments on chargino baryogenesis in the minimal supersymmetric standard model

A commonly accepted mechanism of generating baryon asymmetry in the minimal supersymmetric standard model ~MSSM! depends on the CP violating relative phase between the gaugino mass and the Higgsino m term. The direct constraint on this phase comes from the limit of electric dipole moments ~EDM’s! of various light fermions. To avoid such a constraint, a scheme which assumes that the first two generation sfermions are very heavy is usually evoked to suppress the one-loop EDM contributions. We point out that under such a scheme the most severe constraint may come from a new contribution to the electric dipole moment of the electron, the neutron, or atoms via the chargino sector at the two-loop level. As a result, the allowed parameter space for baryogenesis in the MSSM is severely constrained, independent of the masses of the first two generation sfermions.
Preparation, in Vitro and in Vivo Evaluation of Liposomal/Niosomal Gel Delivery Systems for Clotrimazole

Clotrimazole, which is an imidazole derivative antifungal agent, was widely used for the treatment of mycotic infections of the genitourinary tract. To develop alternative formulation for the vaginal administration of clotrimazole to provide sustained and controlled release of appropriate drug for local vaginal therapy, liposomes/niosomes were evaluated as delivery vehicles. To optimize the preparation of liposomes/niosomes with regard to size and entrapment efficiency, multilamellar liposomes/niosomes containing drug were prepared by lipid hydration method. The prepared liposomes/niosomes were incorporated into 2% carbopol gel, and the systems were evaluated for drug stability in phosphate-buffered saline (pH 7.4) and simulated vaginal fluid at 37 ± 1°C. Further, the vesicle gel system was evaluated by antifungal activity and tolerability on tissue level in rat.
Detection, Velocity Estimation and Imaging of Fast Moving Targets Using Single Antenna SAR

In conventional methods of velocity estimation of moving targets using single antenna SAR, if the Doppler-shift exceeds PRF/2, in other words, if the radial velocity of a fast moving target exceeds the "blind velocity", the radial velocity estimation ambiguity will occur. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to detect and image fast moving targets. Specially, this method can accurately estimate the velocities of fast moving targets beyond the "blind velocity" limit. Numerical simulation and real data are provided to validate the method
A Multimedia Information Retrieval Algorithm in P2P Networks Based on the Classification of Peers

The Multimedia Information Retrieval (MIR) in the P2P networks has been widely studied. In this paper, we propose a new comprehensive similarity function to calculate the similarity of peers in the P2P networks so as to classify these peers. We also apply the relevance feedback in the process of retrieval in order to improve the speed and accuracy of retrieval. In simulation, we compare our algorithm to the traditional method on the basis of the performance of the test which includes four types of thousands of files (text, image, video, and audio). The results show that our algorithm performs better on both speed and accuracy.
Hiding Yourself Behind Collaborative Users When Using Continuous Location-Based Services

The prosperity of location-based services (LBSs) makes more and more people pay close attention to personal privacy. In order to preserve users privacy, several schemes utilized a trusted third party (TTP) to obfuscate users, but these schemes were suspected as the TTP may become the single point of failure or service performance bottleneck. To alleviate the suspicion, schemes with collaborative users to achieve k-anonymity were proposed. In these schemes, users equipped with short-range communication devices could communicate with adjacent users to establish an anonymous group. With this group, the user can obfuscate and hide herself behind at least k−1 other users. However, these schemes are usually more efficient in snapshot services than continuous ones. To cope with the inadequacy, with the help of caching in mobile devices, we propose a query information blocks random exchange and results caching scheme (short for CaQBE). In this scheme, a particular user is hidden behind collaborative users in snapshot service, and then the caches further preserve the privacy in continuous service. In case of the active adversary launching the query correlation attack and the passive adversary launching the impersonation attack, a random collaborative user selection and a random block exchange algorithm are also utilized. Then based on the feature of entropy, a metric to measure the privacy of the user against attacks from the active and passive adversaries is proposed. Finally, security analysis and experimental comparison with other similar schemes further verify the optimal of our scheme in effectiveness of preservation and efficiency of performance.
Tissue differences in the concentration of triiodothyronine nuclear binding sites in the rat: liver, kidney, pituitary, heart, brain, spleen, and testis.

Using a previously reported in vivo isotopic displacement technique, we have demonstrated limited nuclear binding sites for L-triiodothyronine (T3) in the following rat tissues: liver, kidney, heart, anterior pituitary, brain, spleen and testis. The concentration of these sites expressed both per mg DNA and per g tissue (wet wt) varied widely. If liver is normalized to 1, the relative binding capacity per mg DNA is: pituitary, 1.3; liver, 1.0; kidney, 0.87; heart, 0.65; brain, 0.44; spleen, 0.03; testis, 0.004. The relative binding capacity per g tissue is: pituitary, 3.7; kidney, 1.5; liver, 1.0; heart, 0.45; brain, 0.24; spleen, 0.18; and testis, 0.01. Approximately 40–50% of available sites are saturated at endogenous levels of circulating T3 and the calculated association constants of nuclear binding appear similar in the various tissues studied. The relatively low concentration of binding sites in brain, spleen, and testis is of interest since these tissues do not respond to thyroid hormone with the .
Electronic Communications of the EASST Volume 29 ( 2010 ) Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques ( GT-VMT 2010 ) De-/ Reconstructing Model Transformation Languages

The diversity of today’s model transformation languages makes it hard to compare their expressiveness and provide a framework for interoperability. Deconstructing and then re-constructing model transformation languages by means of a unique set of most primitive constructs facilitates both. We thus introduce T-Core, a collection of primitives for model transformation. Combining T-Core with a (programming or modelling) language enables the design of model transformation formalisms. We show how basic and more advanced features from existing model transformation languages can be re-constructed using T-Core primitives.