Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spontaneous Organization of Single CdTe Nanoparticles into Luminescent Nanowires

Nanoparticles of CdTe were found to spontaneously reorganize into crystalline nanowires upon controlled removal of the protective shell of organic stabilizer. The intermediate step in the nanowire formation was found to be pearl-necklace aggregates. Strong dipole-dipole interaction is believed to be the driving force of nanoparticle self-organization. The linear aggregates subsequently recrystallized into nanowires whose diameter was determined by the diameter of the nanoparticles. The produced nanowires have high aspect ratio, uniformity, and optical activity. These findings demonstrate the collective behavior of nanoparticles as well as a convenient, simple technique for production of one-dimensional semiconductor colloids suitable for subsequent processing into quantum-confined superstructures, materials, and devices.
Systematics of tropical eastern Pacific fishes.

The tropical eastern Pacific (TEP) extends from the Gulf of California and the southern portion of the outer coast of Baja California southeastward to northern Peru. The region is bounded to the north and south by steep thermal gradients which act as partial barriers isolating the majority of the region's fish fauna from that of the temperate coastal regions of North and South America. To the west is the east Pacific barrier, the world's largest marine biogeographic barrier, a stretch of uninterrupted deep water some 4,000 7,000 km wide between the TEP and the easternmost islands of the central Pacific (the Hawaii, Line and Maquesas island groups; Grigg & Hey, 1992). To the east, the TEP is isolated from the tropical western Atlantic by the Central American land bridge, an impenetrable barrier from the perspective of marine fishes. This barrier has remained intact for the last 3.5 million years since the final closure of the isthmus of Panama (Jackson et al., 1996).
Cyclin D1 Protein Tissue Detection in Laryngeal Cancer

Cyclin D1 (CCND1) is a set of periodic regulatory proteins that is believed to govern cell cycle transit from G1 into S phase. Overexpression of CCND1 leads to abnormal cellular proliferation which underlies processes of tumorigenesis; CCND1 can thus function as a cooperative oncogene in cell transformation. In the present study we investigate the immunohistochemical expression of CCND1 in a well-documented series of 58 laryngeal squamous cell carcinomas (LSCC) and search for statistical associations between CCND1 index and various clinicopathological parameters including several immunomarkers’ expression as well as patients’ disease-free survival. Tissue sections from archival paraffin blocks were stained using the avidin-biotin-peroxidase complex method; the H-295 rabbit polyclonal antibody was applied at dilution of 1:150. The percentage of CCND1 immunoreactive tumor cells for each tumor was counted by an image analysis system. CCND1 staining was confined to cell nuclei and, in the examined samples, ranged from undetectable (i.e. 0% of tumor cells, n = 6) to the majority of tumor cells (i.e. 89% of tumor cells) with mean value: 15.73%. In tumor adjacent, non invasive lesions, strong CCND1 staining was noticed in areas with cellular atypia. In cases with nodal metastases, no change in CCND1 expression in the nodal metastases compared with the primary tumors was observed. p53 protein accumulation in malignant cells was positively linked with CCND1 index (Mann-Whitney U: 205.5, p = 0.034). CCND1 expression appears to be an early event in processes of tumorigenesis and tumor progression in some LSCC. Apart from p53 protein accumulation, CCND1 immunohistochemical expression does not seem to correlate with nodal metastasis, disease recurrence or any other clinicopathological prognostic indicator.
Speed‐up and performance evaluation of piecewise‐linear DC analysis

The good convergence properties of piecewise‐linear (PWL) DC analysis have been thoroughly discussed in many papers. This paper, in turn, concentrates on the speed of PWL DC analysis, where the boundary crossing of linear regions plays a crucial role. Fast methods are presented for performing the following boundary‐crossing computations: LU‐decomposition update, matrix‐equation solution, boundary‐crossing direction, and damping‐factor determination. Special attention is given to those PWL DC analysis methods that perform PWL modelling of the non‐linear components on the fly; an adaptive method is proposed for controlling the accuracy of PWL modelling and speeding up simulation. The computational efficiency of the accelerated PWL DC analysis is discussed and compared with that of conventional, Newton–Raphson iteration‐based, DC analysis. Finally, the performance evaluation is completed with realistic simulation examples: it is demonstrated that the speed of the accelerated PWL DC analysis is comparable with that of the conventional DC analysis. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Early-adult correlates of maltreatment in girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Increased risk for internalizing symptoms and suicidality

Abstract We examined whether maltreatment experienced in childhood and/or adolescence prospectively predicts young adult functioning in a diverse and well-characterized sample of females with childhood-diagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (N = 140). Participants were part of a longitudinal study and carefully evaluated in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood (M age = 9.6, 14.3, and 19.7 years, respectively), with high retention rates across time. A thorough review of multisource data reliably established maltreatment status for each participant (M κ = 0.78). Thirty-two (22.9%) participants experienced at least one maltreatment type (physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect). Criterion variables included a broad array of young adult measures of functioning gleaned from multiple-source, multiple-informant instruments. With stringent statistical control of demographic, prenatal, and family status characteristics as well as baseline levels of the criterion variable in question, maltreated participants were significantly more impaired than nonmaltreated participants with respect to self-harm (suicide attempts), internalizing symptomatology (anxiety and depression), eating disorder symptomatology, and well-being (lower overall self-worth). Effect sizes were medium. Comprising the first longitudinal evidence linking maltreatment with key young adult life impairments among a carefully diagnosed and followed sample of females with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, these findings underscore the clinical importance of trauma experiences within this population.
On human-machine interfaces based on electrical brain signals

Nowadays brain machine interfacing (BMI) and its non-invasive branch, brain computer interfacing (BCI), is a marvelous scientific concept which describes any communication channel established directly from the brain, to the surrounding physical world by bypassing the natural neural-muscular peripheral system. The proliferation of sophisticated communication and electronic devices paved the way for a renaissance in brain computer interfacing. Each BCI is tailored for a specific application regarding the hardware employed and the computational techniques and algorithmic approaches used to form its elements. In this dissertation, novel mathematical methods as well as design considerations are combined to shape the imaginary-based BCI for control applications. For each application an overview of each component is presented and the entire system is evaluated. Each dataset was evaluated offline by calculating evoked potential (EP), power band spectrum and event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analysis. In order to design a BCI several mental strategies can be used. This project addresses EEG classification during limb movement imagination and relaxation. For this purpose two essential aspects should be considered. On one side, the quality of imaginary tasks performed by the subjects and their ability to control their mind affects highly the performance of EEGbased BCI. On the other side, application of BCI systems heavily depends on the online EEG signal processing feasibility. During online experiments, the moving windows starting from the beginning of the trial were used for feature extraction and classification. Each trial session consisted of two consecutive phases, relaxation and hand movement imagination. EEG-based brain-actuated control requires a classifier to discriminate between mental states. In this way, online feature extraction and classification of EEG signals are the most important parts. I investigated in particular a selection of feature extraction schemes exploited for the proposed BCI paradigms. These feature sets can be categorized under three groups: IV Time-frequency analysis, fractal components, and higher order statistics. Initially the power spectrum was estimated to extract online features, which are theta, alpha, beta, and gamma power bands. The feature vectors were formed and fed into the classifier. There are many different types of classifiers, with some being far more effective than others. In this work, I investigated the effect of classification methods and their adaptation on the performance of BCI. The LDA, QDA and soft-SVM in the current work were implemented in a special architecture. The results demonstrated that the classification accuracy of ensemble SVM was significantly higher than that of the single SVM. The output of the decision making algorithm was presented to the subject during experiments as bio-feedback using simulated hand demonstration, a robotic hand prosthetics, a robot and an avatar in the virtual world. All experiments were carried out on human subjects.
Extraction d'un vocabulaire de surprise par mélange de filtrage collaboratif et d'analyse de sentiments

L'informatique subit actuellement une mutation profonde: les ameliorations mate- rielles et les grandes quantites de donnees disponibles fournissent un terrain fertile a la re- cherche en apprentissage automatique. Dans ce contexte, le principal defi est de tenir compte des preferences des utilisateurs pour proposer un acces personnalise a l'information. Les sys- temes de recommandation creent des profils utilisateurs et objets en utilisant les revues utilisa- teurs, et ces profils refletent les preferences des utilisateurs et les caracteristiques des objets. Nous proposons ici une analyse par combinaison de systemes de recommandation et classifieurs de polarite qui met en evidence le vocabulaire de la surprise. En effet, la recommandation ana- lyse le passe et anticipe les attentes d'un utilisateur tandis que le classifieur de polarite prend en entree une revue deja ecrite par l'utilisateur: nous montrons que l'ecart entre l'experience attendue et le retour reel sur un objet permet de construire un lexique de la surprise.
Pharmacological evidence that nitric oxide may be a retrograde messenger in the enteric nervous system

1 The effects of inhibition of nitric oxide synthase on neuro‐neuronal and neuromuscular transmission during motility reflexes in the small intestine of the guinea‐pig were examined. 2 Isolated segments of intestine were secured in a three chambered organ bath so that different parts of the reflex pathways could be independently exposed to drug‐containing solutions. Reflexes were evoked by distension or compression of the mucosa in two adjacent chambers and reflex responses were recorded from the circular muscle with intracellular microelectrodes in the third chamber. Thus, the actions of drugs at connections between sensory neurones and interneurones, between interneurones and other interneurones and at motor neurones could be distinguished. 3 NG‐monomethyl‐l‐arginine (l‐NMMA; 100 μm), an inhibitor of nitric oxide synthase, did not affect the ascending excitatory reflex when added to either the central stimulation chamber or the recording chamber. 4 In contrast, l‐NMMA (100 μm) enhanced the descending inhibitory reflex when added to the chamber in which stimuli were applied. This effect was prevented by prior exposure to l‐arginine (100 μm), which had no effect by itself. Conduction of reflexes between the stimulus chamber and the recording chamber was unaffected by the presence of l‐NMMA in an intervening chamber. 5 l‐NMMA (100 μm) added to the recording chamber depressed the descending inhibitory reflex, an effect that was prevented by previous exposure to l‐arginine. 6 The nitric oxide donor, sodium nitroprusside (100 μm), added to the stimulus chamber, depressed both ascending excitatory and descending inhibitory reflexes. When added to the middle chamber, sodium nitroprusside had no effect on conduction of reflexes through this chamber. 7 It is deduced that nitric oxide, released from the cell bodies of descending interneurones, suppresses transmission from synaptic connections made with them by enteric sensory neurones.
Advanced application for multichannel teleconferencing audio systems

This thesis deals with advanced digital signal processing techniques applied to multichannel teleconferencing audio systems, focusing on their benefits and drawbacks. A teleconferencing system should provide a realistic representation of visual and sound fields, allowing a natural communication among participants anywhere in the world as they were all in the same room. In this context, the work faces several issues mainly concerning on multichannel acoustic echo cancellation. Furthermore, immersive audio reproduction and listening environment equalization are taken into consideration with the aim of improving the performance of conventional teleconferencing systems. All the novel contributions given in the aforementioned scenario are discussed in this thesis. As regards multichannel acoustic echo cancellation, new solutions for channels decorrelation are described [1][2][3][4][5]: they are especially conceived for stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation and based on the “missingfundamental” phenomenon. Moreover, a novel variable step-size approach for improving the convergence speed of adaptive algorithms applied to a stereophonic acoustic echo canceller is discussed [6]. Afterwards, in the field of immersive audio, efficient solutions for real time implementation of Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) [7][8][9] and two possible phase approximations of the driving functions for further lowering the computational complexity are given [10]. Doctoral School on Engineering Sciences Università Politecnica delle Marche Moreover, a WFS-based digital pointing of line arrays is discussed centered on the idea of reproducing a virtual source through WFS formulas [8][11]. With the aim of applying WFS technique to real scenarios, a WOLA-based approach for Wave Domain Adaptive Filtering is discussed [12]. As regards listening environment equalization, the analysis of a novel multipoint magnitude equalization is presented [13][14]. Then, a new solution for phase equalization is introduced in order to improve the perceived audio quality [15]. Eventually, a minor contribution on an ESPRIT-based approach for bass enhancement is presented based on a high resolution spectral estimation technique and a subspace fundamentals tracker [16].
Interaction of the BKCa channel gating ring with dendrotoxins

Two classes of small homologous basic proteins, mamba snake dendrotoxins (DTX) and bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI), block the large conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel (BKCa, KCa1.1) by production of discrete subconductance events when added to the intracellular side of the membrane. This toxin-channel interaction is unlikely to be pharmacologically relevant to the action of mamba venom, but as a fortuitous ligand-protein interaction, it has certain biophysical implications for the mechanism of BKCa channel gating. In this work we examined the subconductance behavior of 9 natural dendrotoxin homologs and 6 charge neutralization mutants of δ-dendrotoxin in the context of current structural information on the intracellular gating ring domain of the BKCa channel. Calculation of an electrostatic surface map of the BKCa gating ring based on the Poisson-Boltzmann equation reveals a predominantly electronegative surface due to an abundance of solvent-accessible side chains of negatively charged amino acids. Available structure-activity information suggests that cationic DTX/BPTI molecules bind by electrostatic attraction to site(s) on the gating ring located in or near the cytoplasmic side portals where the inactivation ball peptide of the β2 subunit enters to block the channel. Such an interaction may decrease the apparent unitary conductance by altering the dynamic balance of open versus closed states of BKCa channel activation gating.
Female-mediated differential sperm storage in a fly with complex spermathecae, Scatophaga stercoraria


Multiple spermathecae potentially allow selective sperm use, provided that sperm from rival males are stored differentially, that is, in different proportions across storage compartments. In the yellow dung fly, Scatophaga stercoraria, females have three spermathecae arranged as a doublet and singlet. To test whether females store the sperm of rival males actively and differentially, we mated fixed male pairs to three females. After copulation, females were (1) dissected immediately before they could start laying a clutch of eggs, (2) left awake for 30 min but prevented from oviposition, or (3) anaesthetized with carbon dioxide for 30 min to interfere with the muscular control presumably required for sperm transport from the site of insemination to the spermathecae. For each female, we estimated the proportion of the second male's sperm stored in her spermathecae (S(2)value), using sperm length as a male marker. After copulation, the S(2)values in the singlet and doublet spermathecae differed significantly, indicating differential sperm storage during copulation. Postcopulatory treatment affected differential sperm storage significantly. Females dissected immediately had lower S(2)values in the doublet than in the singlet spermatheca, while females left awake showed the reverse pattern for the same two males. This reversal did not occur when females were treated with carbon dioxide. The results indicate differential storage of sperm from different males during copulation and that female muscular activity can affect storage and separation of competing ejaculates beyond copulation. Copyright 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Set2 Is a Nucleosomal Histone H3-Selective Methyltransferase That Mediates Transcriptional Repression

ABSTRACT Recent studies of histone methylation have yielded fundamental new insights pertaining to the role of this modification in gene activation as well as in gene silencing. While a number of methylation sites are known to occur on histones, only limited information exists regarding the relevant enzymes that mediate these methylation events. We thus sought to identify native histone methyltransferase (HMT) activities from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Here, we describe the biochemical purification and characterization of Set2, a novel HMT that is site-specific for lysine 36 (Lys36) of the H3 tail. Using an antiserum directed against Lys36 methylation in H3, we show that Set2, via its SET domain, is responsible for methylation at this site in vivo. Tethering of Set2 to a heterologous promoter reveals that Set2 represses transcription, and part of this repression is mediated through the HMT activity of the SET domain. These results suggest that Set2 and methylation at H3 Lys36 play a role in the repression of gene transcription.
Interleukin 2 Activates BB/W Diabetic Rat Lymphoid Cells Cytotoxic to Islet Cells

We compared the cytotoxic effects to islet cells of lymphoid cells from diabetic and diabetes-resistant (DR) BioBreeding/Worcester (BB/W) rats with a 51Cr-release assay to detect lysis of normal rat islet cells. Splenic lymphoid cells from diabetic rats were more cytotoxic to islet cells (11.3 ± 3.8%) than were lymphoid cells from DR rats (4.0 ± 2.6%). This difference was amplified by incubating the lymphoid cells for 20 h with 5 μg/ml concanavalin A (ConA); islet cell lysis was 39.3 ± 4.5% by ConA-activated diabetic cells and 9.6 ± 2.7% by ConA-activated DR cells. The cytotoxic lymphoid cells were identified as natural killer (NK) cells, because treatment of diabetic lymphoid cells with anti-asialo GM1 serum and complement selectively removed a monoclonal antibody-defined subset of NK cells (OX8+), and the NK-depleted lymphoid cells were not cytotoxic to either islet or NK-sensitive YAC-1 cells, even after culture with ConA. Of several lymphokine products of ConA-stimulated lymphoid cells, interleukin 2 (IL-2), but not interleukin 1 or interferon-γ, significantly activated splenic lymphoid cells cytotoxic to islet cells, and the lymphoid cells from diabetic rats were more sensitive to IL-2 (3 U/ml) than were the cells from DR rats (30 U/ml). This study reveals the presence of ConA- and IL-2-responsive islet cytotoxic NK cells in the diabetic BB/W rat and suggests that IL-2 activation of NK cells may contribute to islet β-cell destruction and diabetes in this animal.
CS2LiYCl6: Ce Neutron gamma detection system

A growing interest in detection of neutron radiation in scientific and security applications stimulates work on new neutron scintillators and detection systems. This includes one of the most interesting materials that has been recently discovered for thermal neutron detection - Cs2LiYCl6:Ce (CLYC). This material exhibits excellent scintillation properties for thermal neutron detection including gamma-neutron discrimination. It can also be successfully used for a gamma ray spectroscopy due to its excellent energy resolution (5.1% fwhm at 662 kV). In this paper we present a system designed and built to work with CLYC for neutron and gamma ray detection. The system accepts signals directly from a photomultiplier and in turn provides signals that can be fed to any MCA. Using pulse height and pulse shape discrimination it distinguishes these two types of radiation on the fly. The system works in the gamma energy range of 0 to approximately 4 MeV with discrimination. A variable range is also possible by changing the gain on a photomultiplier (no discrimination, for gamma ray spectroscopy).
Design of a high gain time difference amplifier

In integrated circuits, time resolution is preferred over voltage resolution as it offers larger operating range. Time difference amplifiers are also useful in measurement of small phase differences. A simple but high gain Time Difference Amplifier (TDA) is presented in this paper. The TDA amplifies the width of a pulse for precise measurement of time difference. The pulse width amplification is achieved by linear charging and discharging of a capacitor with time. The proposed circuit provides a constant gain of 120 for the input pulse width in the range of 20-240ps. The TDA operates at a supply voltage of 1.2 V and consumes 48.6 μW power. The amplifier has been implemented in 180nm UMC technology using Cadence tool.