Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GaN FET-based synchronous buck converter with 10-bit 4-MHz digital pulse width modulator

Architecture of the gallium nitride (GaN) FET-based synchronous buck converter with 10-bit, 4-MHz digital pulse width modulator (DPWM) is presented. The DPWM integrated in proposed architecture has a high resolution and a high operating frequency. In addition, the proposed architecture can control its duty-cycle and dead-time of PWM outputs detail by this DPWM. The testing board, which is manufactured by discrete devices and a custom IC, demonstrates 26.9-W with 91.3% efficiency of the power stage at 4-MHz switching frequency. Experimental results also show the wide duty-range operation controlled by the DPWM.
Product Cordial Sets of Trees

A binary vertex coloring (labeling) f : V (G) → Z2 of a graph G is said to be friendly if the number of vertices labeled 0 is almost the same as the number of vertices labeled 1. This friendly labeling induces an edge labeling f∗ : E(G) → Z2 defined by f∗(uv) = f(u)f(v) for all uv ∈ E(G). Let ef (i) = |{uv ∈ E(G) : f∗(uv) = i}| be the number of edges of G that are labeled i. Product-cordial index of the labeling f is the number pc(f) = |ef (0) − ef (1)|. The product-cordial set of the graph G, denoted by PC(G), is defined by PC(G) = {pc(f) : f is a friendly labeling of G }. In this paper, we determine the product-cordial sets of certain classes of trees.
NKX3.1 as a Marker of Prostatic Origin in Metastatic Tumors

NKX3.1 is a prostatic tumor suppressor gene located on chromosome 8p. Although most studies have shown that staining for NKX3.1 protein is positive in the majority of primary prostatic adenocarcinomas, it has been shown to be downregulated in many high-grade prostate cancers, and completely lost in the majority of metastatic prostate cancers (eg, in 65% to 78% of lesions). A recent study showed that NKX3.1 staining with a novel antibody was highly sensitive and specific for high-grade prostatic adenocarcinoma when compared with high-grade urothelial carcinoma. This raised the question that this antibody may perform better than earlier used antibodies in metastatic prostate tumors. However, the sensitivity and specificity for prostate carcinomas for this antibody in metastatic lesions was not determined. Although prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and prostatic-specific acid phosphatase (PSAP) are excellent tissue markers of prostate cancer, at times they may be expressed at low levels, focally, or not at all in poorly differentiated primary and metastatic prostatic adenocarcinomas. The purpose of this study was to determine the performance of NKX3.1 as a marker of metastatic adenocarcinoma of prostatic origin. Immunohistochemical staining against NKX3.1, PSA, and PSAP was carried out on a tissue microarray (TMA) (0.6-mm tissue cores) of hormone naïve metastatic prostate adenocarcinoma specimens from lymph nodes, bone, and soft tissue. To determine the specificity of NKX3.1 for prostatic adenocarcinoma, we used TMAs that contained cancers from various sites including the urinary bladder, breast, colon, salivary gland, stomach, pancreas, thyroid, and central nervous system, and standard paraffin sections of cancers from other sites including the adrenal cortex, kidney, liver, lung, and testis. Overall 349 nonprostatic tumors were evaluated. Any nuclear staining for NKX3.1 was considered positive and the percentage of cells with nuclear staining and their mean intensity level were assessed visually. Sensitivity was calculated by considering a case positive if any TMA core was positive. The sensitivity for identifying metastatic prostatic adenocarcinomas overall was 98.6% (68/69 cases positive) for NKX3.1, 94.2% (65/69 cores positive) for PSA, and 98.6% (68/69 cores positive) for PSAP. The specificity of NKX3.1 was 99.7% (1/349 nonprostatic tumors positive). The sole positive nonprostatic cancer case was an invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast. NKX3.1 seems to be a highly sensitive and specific tissue marker of metastatic prostatic adenocarcinoma. In the appropriate clinical setting, the addition of IHC staining for NKX3.1, along with other prostate-restricted markers, may prove to be a valuable adjunct to definitively determine prostatic origin in poorly differentiated metastatic carcinomas.
Saline tracer visualized with three‐dimensional electrical resistivity tomography: Field‐scale spatial moment analysis

Cross‐well electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) was used to monitor the migration of a saline tracer in a two‐well pumping‐injection experiment conducted at the Massachusetts Military Reservation in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. After injecting 2200 mg/L of sodium chloride for 9 hours, ERT data sets were collected from four wells every 6 hours for 20 days. More than 180,000 resistance measurements were collected during the tracer test. Each ERT data set was inverted to produce a sequence of 3‐D snapshot maps that track the plume. In addition to the ERT experiment a pumping test and an infiltration test were conducted to estimate horizontal and vertical hydraulic conductivity values. Using modified moment analysis of the electrical conductivity tomograms, the mass, center of mass, and spatial variance of the imaged tracer plume were estimated. Although the tomograms provide valuable insights into field‐scale tracer migration behavior and aquifer heterogeneity, standard tomographic inversion and application of Archie's law to convert electrical conductivities to solute concentration results in underestimation of tracer mass. Such underestimation is attributed to (1) reduced measurement sensitivity to electrical conductivity values with distance from the electrodes and (2) spatial smoothing (regularization) from tomographic inversion. The center of mass estimated from the ERT inversions coincided with that given by migration of the tracer plume using 3‐D advective‐dispersion simulation. The 3‐D plumes seen using ERT exhibit greater apparent dispersion than the simulated plumes and greater temporal spreading than observed in field data of concentration breakthrough at the pumping well.
Effect of exercise training on quality of life in multiple sclerosis: a meta-analysis

Using meta-analytic procedures, this study examined the overall effect of exercise training interventions on quality of life (QOL) among individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). We searched MEDLINE, PSYCHINFO and CURRENT CONTENTS PLUS for the period of 1960 to November 2006 using the key words exercise, physical activity and physical fitness in conjunction with QOL and MS. We further conducted a manual search of bibliographies of the retrieved papers as well as literature reviews and contacted study authors about additional studies. Twenty-five journal articles were located and reviewed, and only 13 provided enough data to compute effect sizes expressed as Cohen's d. One hundred and nine effect sizes were retrieved from the 13 studies with 484 MS participants and yielded a weighted mean effect size of g = 0.23 (95% CI = 0.15, 0.31). There were larger effects associated with MS-specific measures of QOL and fatigue as an index of QOL. The nature of the exercise stimulus further influenced the magnitude of the mean effect size. The cumulative evidence supports that exercise training is associated with a small improvement in QOL among individuals with MS. Multiple Sclerosis 2008; 14: 129—135. http://msj.sagepub. com
Effect of Walkability on Users Choice of “Walking” the Last Mile to Transit Stations: A Case of Delhi Metro

There is growing recognition of the importance of Last Mile Connectivity (LMC) to mass transit systems. In the context of Delhi, albeit a shift can be seen in the provisioning of LMC, and despite previous studies indicating that more than 50% of metro rail users walk to and/or from metro stations, yet the seriousness with which pedestrian environment is woven into transit planning is lacking. The paper is based on an empirical study conducted by the author, of approximately 800 samples of metro users surveyed across seven stations of Delhi Metro, representing different station typologies, ridership and locational contexts. The paper focuses on the “walk” choice of users across a variety of factors related to their socio-economic strata, trip characteristics and station context. A parallel study is conducted to audit the pedestrian environment within one kilometre distance around each station. The paper further attempts to investigate whether pedestrian environment affects user choice of opting for “walk” as the last mile choice. It also ranks the performance of the case stations in terms of various attributes of walkability. In conclusion, the paper contends that overall walkability environment offered to transit commuters is crucial in the share of walk trips for last mile commute and the distance commuters are willing to walk. It recommends that walking as LMC choice needs to be promoted through enhanced user experience in absence of which a significant amount of last mile travel will happen through unsustainable mechanised modes.
Another set of verifiable conditions for average Markov decision processes with Borel spaces

In this paper we give a new set of verifiable conditions for the existence of average optimal stationary policies in discrete-time Markov decision processes with Borel spaces and unbounded reward/cost functions. More precisely, we provide another set of conditions, which only consists of a Lyapunov-type condition and the common continuity-compactness conditions. These conditions are imposed on the primitive data of the model of Markov decision processes and thus easy to verify. We also give two examples for which all our conditions are satisfied, but some of conditions in the related literature fail to hold.
Les tâches trajectorielles en interaction homme-machine : cas des tâches de navigation

Cette these s' attelle a la modelisation formelle des tâches trajectorielles et contribue a la constitution d'une base scientifique pour la pratique et la recherche en interaction homme-machine. Dans un premier temps, nous proposons une definition mathematique des tâches trajectorielles en nous concentrant sur un cas particulier : les tâches impliquant un mouvement canalise, ou tâches de navigation. En procedant a des raisonnements theoriques sur la base de la loi de Fitts, nous aboutissons a un modele formel et generique : la loi de navigation, declinee sous trois formes ( integrale, locale et statistique ).
CNS Control of Metabolism Insights into the role of neuronal glucokinase

De Backer I, Hussain SS, Bloom SR, Gardiner JV. Insights into the role of neuronal glucokinase. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 311: E42–E55, 2016. First published May 17, 2016; doi:10.1152/ajpendo.00034. 2016. —Glucokinase is a key component of the neuronal glucose-sensing mechanism and is expressed in brain regions that control a range of homeostatic processes. In this review, we detail recently identified roles for neuronal glucokinase in glucose homeostasis and counterregulatory responses to hypoglycemia and in regulating appetite. We describe clinical implications from these advances in our knowledge, especially for developing novel treatments for diabetes and obesity. Further research required to extend our knowledge and help our efforts to tackle the diabetes and obesity epidemics is suggested.
Node Selection Algorithms with Data Accuracy Guarantee in Service-Oriented Wireless Sensor Networks

The service-oriented architecture is considered as a new emerging trend for the future of wireless sensor networks in which different types of sensors can be deployed in the same area to support various service requirements. The accuracy of the sensed data is one of the key criterions because it is generally a noisy version of the physical phenomenon. In this paper, we study the node selection problem with data accuracy guarantee in service-oriented wireless sensor networks. We exploit the spatial correlation between the service data and aim at selecting minimum number of nodes to provide services with data accuracy guaranteed. Firstly, we have formulated this problem into an integer nonlinear programming problem to illustrate its NP-hard property. Secondarily, we have proposed two heuristic algorithms, namely, Separate Selection Algorithm (SSA) and Combined Selection Algorithm (CSA). The SSA is designed to select nodes for each service in a separate way, and the CSA is designed to select nodes according to their contribution increment. Finally, we compare the performance of the proposed algorithms with extended simulations. The results show that CSA has better performance compared with SSA.
Design and Development of Enterprise Storage Systems with Hybrid Disks for Future Datacenters

A hybrid disk consists of a small amount of NonVolatile flash Memory (NVM) as fast storage media to complement the rotational magnetic recording disk, normally considered slow but with large storage capacity. In this paper, we present the design and development work of an enterprise hybrid disk drive storage system for future datacenter. We also design a new type of dynamic cache algorithms that can simplify cache management architecture and enhance operation performance. Evaluation with enterprise storage workloads shows that the average IOPS (Input/Output per second) can be increased up to 300% and can outperform the IOPS of high speed enterprise SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) disk drive for certain workloads. Another advantage of hybrid disk drive is power saving, for which the power consumption can be reduced by more than 50%, compared with the enterprise hard disk drive. We envision that hybrid disks can be a cost-effective replacement of high speed hard disks in enterprise storage systems that empower datacenters with large storage capacity, high performance and low energy consumption.
GALT deficiency causes UDP-hexose deficit in human galactosemic cells.

Previously we reported that stable transfection of human UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (hUGP2) rescued galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase (GALT)-deficient yeast from "galactose toxicity. " Here we test in human cell lines the hypothesis that galactose toxicity was caused by excess accumulation of galactose-1-phosphate (Gal-1-P), inhibition of hUGP2, and UDP-hexose deficiency. We found that SV40-transformed fibroblasts derived from a galactosemic patient accumulated Gal-1-P from 1.2+/-0.4 to 5.2+/-0.5 mM and stopped growing when transferred from 0.1% glucose to 0.1% galactose. Control fibroblasts accumulated little Gal-1-P and continued to grow. The GALT-deficient cells had 157+/-10 micromoles UDP-glucose/100 g protein and 25+/-5 micromoles UDP-galactose/100 g protein when grown in 0.1% glucose. The control cells had 236+/-25 micromoles UDP- glucose/100 g protein and 82+/-10 micromoles UDP-galactose/100 g protein when grown in identical medium. When we transfected the GALT-deficient cells with either the hUGP2 or GALT gene, their UDP-glucose content increased to 305+/-28 micromoles/100 g protein (hUGP2-transfected) and 210+/-13 micromoles/100 g protein (GALT-transfected), respectively. Similarly, UDP-galactose content increased to 75+/-12 micromoles/100 g protein (hUGP2-transfected) and 55+/-9 micromoles/100 g protein (GALT-transfected), respectively. Though the GALT-transfected cells grew in 0.1% galactose with little accumulation of Gal-1-P (0.2+/-0.02 mM), the hUGP2-transfected cells grew but accumulated some Gal-1-P (3.1+/-0.4 mM). We found that 2.5 mM Gal-1-P increased the apparent KM of purified hUGP2 for glucose-1-phosphate from 19.7 microM to 169 microM, without changes in apparent Vmax. The Ki of the reaction was 0.47 mM. Gal-1-P also inhibited UDP-N-acetylglucosamine pyrophosphorylase, which catalyzes the formation of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. We conclude that intracellular concentrations of Gal-1-P found in classic galactosemia inhibit UDP-hexose pyrophosphorylases and reduce the intracellular concentrations of UDP-hexoses. Reduced Sambucus nigra agglutinin binding to glycoproteins isolated from cells with increased Gal-1-P is consistent with the resultant inhibition of glycoprotein glycosylation.
FINANCING THE SOLAR ENERGY MARKET THROUGH THE USE OF SECURITIZATION – THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES

This article corresponds with the research on the implementation of general sustainable development ideas. Moreover, it addresses the issue of using securitization in financing the solar energy market in the U.S. The aim of the research is to identify the essential characteristics of lease securitization of photovoltaic installations, as well as illustrate the current market development of these instruments. The paper discusses theoretical framework of securitization, identifies essential characteristics of the photovoltaic installation market in the context of its potential regarding the use of the securitization process, and presents the state of the securitization market in the discussed area. The characteristics presented in the article are based on the examples of the United States economy – the birthplace of lease securitization of photovoltaic installations, as well as the only state, where the analysed instrument finds practical application, so far.
Human tissue kallikrein gene family: a rich source of novel disease biomarkers

The organization of the human tissue kallikrein gene family has now been fully elucidated. This family contains 15 genes encoding secreted serine proteases, which share significant homologies at both the DNA and amino acid level. Two members of the human kallikrein gene family, prostate-specific antigen and human kallikrein 2, have already found important clinical application as prostate cancer biomarkers. In this review, we examine the diagnostic and prognostic value of the 15 human kallikrein genes and proteins. It is clear that at least a few members show promise of becoming novel cancer and other disease biomarkers.
Book Review: Marketing Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings

This is a timely readings book, edited as marketing scholars become more concerned with theory (Hunt 1983, p. 9) and history (Fullerton ]985, p. 152). The editors identify three reasons for publishing a book on marketing theory at this time. First, better marketing theories must be developed as tools to further the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing practice. Second, theories are needed to establish the image of marketing among other social sciences as an "independent scholarly discipline that is capable of addressing society's needs" (p. iii). Third, an increased interest in marketing theory may be necessary to offset what is perceived as an excessive concern with methodological issues by marketing researchers. The key issues addressed in this review are twofold. First, Sheth and Garrett attempt to demonstrate the importance of classic articles and the relevance of marketing history in theory building. Second, they try to forward a taxonomy of 11 schools of thought that represent the spectrum of interest in theoretical research in the discipline. The purpose of this review is to demonstrate that the editors were successful in the first attempt but not in the second. The review consists of four sections. The first delineates the organization of the book, the next two address each of the key issues, and the last is a concluding comment.
[The genetic polymorphism of 7 Y-STR loci and haplotype in Tibetan population].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the genetic polymorphism of 7 Y-STR loci and haplotypes in Tibetan population. METHODS The DNA samples from 67 Tibetan men were analyzed by PCR and the denatured PAGE followed by silver staining. RESULTS 25 alleles were identified for 6 loci including DYS393, DYS389 I, DYS19, DYS390, DYS389 II and DYS392, 22 alleles were identified for DYS385, the frequency distributions were between 0.0149-0.5075, the DP value distributions were between 0.5075-0.8991, the DP value of DYS 385 was the highest. 51 haplotypes were identified for the YH6 system which consisted of the 7 loci, the DP value of this system was 0.9887, the alleles for DYS393 and DYS389 II were few, it followed that perhaps Tibetan population had met with bottleneck event in their evolution process. CONCLUSION The 7 STR loci above belong to loci of high discriminating ability, the haplotypes are highly polymorphic.
Lesson of the month 1: Obesity hypoventilation (Pickwickian) syndrome a reversible cause of severe pulmonary hypertension

Abstract Obesity hypoventilation syndrome (OHS) is a condition in which an individual with a body mass index >30 kg/m2 develops daytime alveolar hypoventilation (defined as a resting PaCO2 >45 mmHg) that cannot be attributed to other pathologies. It is a condition with increasing prevalence and rising cost to healthcare systems worldwide. Right heart failure and pulmonary hypertension are well-known complications of this syndrome. Here, we present the case of a female patient with OHS who presented to our centre with severe pulmonary hypertension, which resolved with appropriate treatment. We also review this clinical condition and its diagnosis and management.
Group I and Group III metabotropic glutamate receptor subtypes provide enhanced neuroprotection

Neuroprotection by the metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) system has been linked to the modulation of both the free radical nitric oxide (NO) and programmed cell death (PCD). Because the cellular mechanisms that ultimately determine neuronal PCD rely upon the independent pathways of genomic DNA degradation, externalization of membrane phosphatidylserine (PS) residues, and the activation of associated cysteine proteases, we investigated the ability of the individual mGluR subtypes to modulate the distinct pathways of NO‐induced PCD in primary rat hippocampal neurons. Membrane PS residue externalization occurred within the initial 3 hr after exposure to the NO donors (300 μM SNP or 300 μM NOC‐9), preceded genomic DNA fragmentation, and was present in 80 ± 2% of the neurons within a 24‐hr period. NO exposure also led to the rapid induction of both caspase 1‐like and caspase 3‐like activities that were determined to be necessary, at least in part, for the generation of NO‐induced genomic DNA degradation, but distinct from the detrimental effects of intracellular acidification. Yet, only caspase 1‐like activity was necessary for the modulation of PS residue externalization. Activation of group I mGluR subtypes utilized an effective, “upstream” mechanism for the inhibition of cysteine protease activity that offered an enhanced level of neuroprotection through both the preservation of genomic DNA integrity and the maintenance of PS membrane asymmetry. Group II and Group III mGluR subtypes maintained DNA integrity and group III mGluR subtypes additionally prevented PS residue externalization through mechanisms that were targeted below the level of caspase activation. Our work elucidates the independent nature of the mGluR subtypes to not only provide discrete levels of protection against neuronal PCD, but also offer robust therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative disease. J. Neurosci. Res. 62:257–272, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.