Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increases in intracellular pH facilitate endocytosis and decrease availability of voltage‐gated proton channels in osteoclasts and microglia

• Voltage‐gated H+ channels help to compensate for the pH and voltage disturbances generated by production of reactive oxygen species. • In this study, we investigated how changes in the intracellular pH levels control H+ channel activity in macrophage‐lineage cells, osteoclasts and microglia. • An increase in intracellular pH decreased the numbers of H+ channels available at the plasma membrane through facilitation of dynamin‐dependent endocytic internalization. • This inhibitory regulation mechanism for H+ channels is novel. • The results help us to understand better the significance of the intracellular pH levels in membrane dynamics and H+ channel availability, which, in turn, may modulate natural immunity.
Natural Evolution and Human Consciousness

A visual conscious experience is my empirical basis. All that we know comes to us through conscious experiences. Thanks to natural evolution, we have nearly direct perception, and can largely trust the information we attain. There is full integration, with no gaps, of organisms in the continuous world. Human conscious experiences, on the other hand, are discrete. Consciousness has certain limits for its resolution. This is illustrated by the so-called light-cone, with consequences for foundations in physics. Traditional universals are replaced by feels and distributions. Conscious experiences can be ordered within a framework of conceptual spaces. Triple Aspect Monism (TAM) can represent the dynamics of conscious systems. However, to fully represent the creative power of human consciousness, an all-inclusive view is suggested: Multi Aspect Monism (MAM).
Hydrogen degradation in InP HEMTs

In this work we have investigated the degradation of InP HEMTs due to hydrogen exposure. We show for the first time that there are two independent degradation mechanisms that affect, respectively, the intrinsic and extrinsic portions of the device. Under the gate, H reacts with Ti and creates a TiH compound with a larger lattice that Ti. This induces stress and the resulting piezoelectric effect shifts the threshold voltage, V/sub T/, of the transistor. This mechanism is found to be largely reversible. In the recessed region next to the gate, hydrogen modifies the surface stoichiometry of the exposed InAlAs. This results in a reduction in the sheet carrier concentration underneath. This mechanism is not reversible.
Preceptor Preparation: An Investment in the Future Generation of Nurses

Nurse preceptors fulfill a primary role in the success of preceptorship experiences during the education of student nurses in their final year of study. Evidence suggests that this success depends greatly on adequate preceptor role preparation and support. The purposes of this qualitative, descriptive study were to explore and describe preceptor role support and development within the context of a rural and northern mid-sized Canadian community. More specifically, in this study the following are described: preceptors (a) perception of past role preparation and current role support; (b) use and evaluation of the existing print-based fourth-year Preceptor Resource Manual (PRM); (c) perception of role support facilitators and barriers; and (d) recommendations for improvements to preceptor role preparation and support. Data were collected through individual and group interviews. Through content analysis four major themes emerged: accessible resources, role complexity, partners in precepting, and role development.
Sorting and reorganization of centrosomes during oocyte maturation in the mouse

In animal oocytes, the centrosome exists as an acentriolar aggregate of centrosomal material that is regulated in a dynamic manner throughout the process of meiotic maturation. Recently, it has been demonstrated that in female meiotic systems spindle assembly is likely regulated by chromosomal and microtubule/microtubule‐associated influences. The purpose of this study was to analyze the distribution of the integral centrosomal protein, pericentrin, during the course of meiotic maturation. The function of the centrosome during meiotic progression was evaluated by exposing oocytes to pharmacological agents that perturb cytoplasmic homeostasis (cycloheximide, nocodazole, cytochalasin D, taxol, and vanadate). Pericentrin was localized to the spindle poles during metaphase of meiosis‐I as O‐ and C‐shaped structures. At anaphase, these structures fragment, become displaced from the spindle poles, and associate with the lateral spindle margin. The metaphase spindle at meiosis‐II had incomplete pericentrin rings at both spindle poles. Vanadate treatment, a known inhibitor of dynein‐ATPase, resulted in meiotic arrest, constriction of the spindle pole, and an aggregation of pericentrin at the spindle poles. After taxol exposure, pericentrin incorporation into both spindle poles and cytoplasmic centrosomes was increased. Treatment of oocytes with cycloheximide, nocodazole, and cytochalasin D, influenced early events associated with chromosome capture and spindle assembly and altered the number and distribution of cytoplasmic centrosomes. Thus, although pericentrin incorporation is not required for meiotic spindle formation, the dynamic reorganization of pericentrin and changes in centrosome microtubule nucleating capacity are involved in critical cell cycle transitions during meiotic maturation. Microsc. Res. Tech. 49:435–444, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Difficulties in Learning C++ and GUI Programming with Qt Platform: View of Students

We have conducted a C++ and GUI programming workshop with Qt platform and a set of 14 tutorials on the several of concepts and topics of programming fundamentals and Qt framework. This is a programming workshop with computer lab sessions without any formal lectures. The aim is to understand how difficulties for students in learning C++ and GUI programming. A set of web-based questionnaire according to the 14 fundamental programming tutorials has been conducted and come out with an analysis and discussion of results. Preliminary result has shown that the students could create GUI applications easily with the difficult and multi-paradigm programming language such as C++ using programming IDE tools that comes with GUI builder.
Emission Ratiometry for Simultaneous Calcium and Action Potential Measurements with Coloaded Dyes in Rabbit Hearts: Reduction of Motion and Drift

Simultaneous Ca and AP Emission Ratiometry. Introduction: Optical measurements of the cardiac calcium transient (Ca) and transmembrane action potential (AP) may be performed simultaneously with emission ratiometry to lessen motion artifacts and photobleaching effects. We examined changes in emission spectrum in perfused rabbit hearts coloaded with Rh237 and a green‐emitting Ca dye (Fluo‐4 or Oregon Green BAPTA 1) to determine wavelength bands for emission ratiometry and to test whether ratiometry reduces motion artifacts and drift.
Casein micelle structure: a concise review

Phadungath, C. Casein micelle structure: a concise review Songklanakarin J. Sci. Technol. , 2005, 27(1) : 201-212 Milk is a complex biological fluid with high amount of proteins, lipid and minerals. The function of milk is to supply nutrients such as essential amino acids required for the growth of the newborn. In addition, due to the importance of casein and casein micelles for the functional behavior of dairy products, the nature and structure of casein micelles have been studied extensively. However, the exact structure of casein micelles is still under debate. Various models for casein micelle structure have been proposed. Most of the proposed models fall into three general categories, which are: coat-core, subunit (sub-micelles), and internal structure models. The coat-core models, proposed by Waugh and Nobel in 1965, Payens in 1966, Parry and Carroll in 1969, and Paquin and co-workers in 1987, describe the micelle as an aggregate of caseins with outer layer differing in composition form the interior, and the structure of the inner part is not accurately identified. The sub-micelle models, proposed by Morr in 1967, Slattery and Evard in 1973, Schmidt in 1980, Walstra in 1984, and Ono and Obata in 1989, is considered to be composed of roughly spherical uniform subunits. The last models, the internal structure models, which were proposed by Rose in 1969, Garnier and RibadeauDumas in 1970, Holt in 1992, and Horne in 1998, specify the mode of aggregation of the different caseins.
Outcome of Nonvascularized Bone Grafting for Osteonecrosis of the Femoral Head

Osteonecrosis is a disease with a wide-ranging etiology and poorly understood pathogenesis seen commonly in young patients. Various head-preserving procedures have been used for this disease to avert the need for total hip replacement. These include various vascularized and nonvascularized bone grafting procedures. We will describe the use of bone-grafting through a window at the femoral head-neck junction for the treatment of osteonecrosis of the femoral head. Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-enriched allograft was used to avoid donor site morbidity. Nineteen patients (21 hips) were followed up for a mean of 48 months (range, 36–55 months) after a bone grafting procedure in which the diseased bone was replaced by a bone graft substitute (combination of demineralized bone matrix, processed allograft bone chips, and a thermoplastic carrier). Eighteen of 21 hips (86%) were clinically successful at latest followup. Two of these patients have minimal radiographic progression (< 2 mm head collapse). This procedure is straightforward technically, led to low morbidity, and did not necessitate procurement of donor site bone graft. This procedure may be effective at avoiding or forestalling the need for total hip arthroplasty in young patients with early to intermediate stages of osteonecrosis of the femoral head.
Dynamic Voltage Scaling Using Scene Change Detection for Video Playback on Mobile AMOLED Displays

Due to a high contrast ratio, a wide color gamut, and thinness and flexibility, Active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) displays are widely used in mobile devices like smartphones. But frequent user interactions and limited battery capacity make low-power approaches highly required in AMOLED displays more and more. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) method based on scene change detection for video playback on a mobile AMOLED display panel. This method first employs the entropies of Y, Cb, and Cr components in the YCbCr color space for macroblocks in each video frame to detect the scene change and determine when to do DVS. And then it associates the luminance with the Y component and extracts the relationship between Cb and Cr components and the supply voltage to the display panel to determine how much to do DVS. We implemented this method for an MPEG4/H.264 player on an evaluation board with a mobile AMOLED display panel. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves on average 19.7% power saving compared to the original video on an AMOLED display. Also, the proposed algorithm recovered the luminance of the AMOLED display from 93% to 96%.
Decreasing the diameter of cycles

Alon, Gyárfás, and Ruszinkó 1 established a bound for the minimum number of edges that have to be added to a graph of n ≥ n0 vertices in order to obtain a graph of diameter 2. Alon et al. approximated n0 by a polynomial function of the maximum degree of the initial graph. They conjectured that the minimum value for n0 is 12 for the case of Cn, as opposed to n0 = 274 obtained by calculations for the general case. In this paper we prove their conjecture. For the reduction to diameter 3 of a cycle, we also improve the bounds from 1 showing that the minimum number of edges that need to be added to the cycle Cn is between n − 59 and n − 8. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 43: 299–303, 2003
If money only grew on trees-The transition

Lars Carlsson Introduction "Russia is endowed with enormous forest resources. " Unfortunately, this is a common claim based on misconception. Russia does not have enormous forest resources but a tremendous amount of forests, which is something quite different. Why is Russia, despite its affluence in terms of forests, unable to utilize its endowments to generate economic growth and social welfare? What happened to all the hope that the forest sector would become a central engine in the transition toward a Russian market economy? This article attempts to answer these questions by using the forest sector as an example, but other sectors would certainly apply. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the size of a natural resource and its economic value. This scenario is illustrated in a great number of developing countries, where they often possess significant "resources," but due to various political, organizational and technological factors, their resources are not contributing to the well-being of their people. Accordingly, the Russian forests are not necessarily assets just because they exist. A forest resource can be regarded as an asset in an economic sense only within a suitable framework of institutional arrangements. The same applies with technology. A general renewal of forest technology is not the solution to the current problem, despite its common claim. Without adequate institutional arrangements, any technological investment could be in vain. Indeed, Russia does have huge forests. The total forested area is about three to four times that of Canada and stretches over eleven time zones. Russia holds 23% of the world's forest areas, and 55% of the coniferous stock, just to mention a couple of relevant measures (Nilsson and Shvidenko 1997). However, after about ten years of transition, the figures are discouraging (Table 1). From consulting the figures in Table 1, it becomes evident that "the invisible hand" of the market economy has not yet touched the Russian forest sector in any significant way. For example, consider Arkhangelsk, one of Russia's largest forest regions. Here harvesting reached a peak in 1987/88 with a total of around 25 million m. Since then, cutting has drastically decreased and, in 1996, the harvesting level was only about 29 percent that of 1988. Between 1990 and 1996, the production of commercial wood dropped from 19.4 million m to 7.2 million m, and in 1994, production fell below the 1940 level (Carlsson et al. 1999). The situation is virtually the
A novel MTPA control for IPMSMs based on extremum seeking control

This paper proposes a novel maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) control strategy based on the extremum seeking control (ESC) for interior permanent magnet synchronous machine (IPMSM) drives. The insights of the MTPA characteristics are analyzed as the research foundation. Unlike the common signal injection scheme, the high-frequency current in the proposed scheme is injected in a new reference frame mathematically for the MTPA point detecting and the torque angle updating, rather than injected to the current or voltage command. The virtual current injection would not result in the torque ripples. Therefore the proposed MTPA control structure would not affect the normal speed or current control and no additional power loss exists. Moreover it is robust against the rotor flux and inductance variations caused by the change of current and temperature. The proposed scheme dose not need any on-line estimation for motor parameters or premade look-up tables. Therefore it reduces the computational burden effectively. The simulation results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed MTPA control scheme.
Embodied Pedagogical Agents: From Visual Impact to Pedagogical Implications

Embodied pedagogical agents – visually represented, computer generated characters in pedagogical roles, such as virtual instructors, mentors and learning companions – populate the digital society in increasing numbers. They are found in educational programmes from preschool to university, as well as in broader educational contexts in the form of medical counsellors, virtual health coaches, information guides, etc. Since long, they also appear in edutainment and infotainment settings. The thesis addresses psychological, cognitive and social aspects of embodied virtual characters in pedagogical contexts with respect to ‘static visual characteristics’, i.e. underlying visual characteristics. On the basis of theoretical considerations as well as several empirical studies, it is argued that users’ visual and aesthetic experience of embodied pedagogical characters (EPCs) is too important to be treated as a secondary issue – not the least with respect to central pedagogical goals to motivate and engage. The main conclusions of the thesis are: (i) that visual aspects in EPCs can be related to pedagogical outcomes, (ii) that there may be significant relations between visual and social characteristics of EPCs and learner characteristics, and (iii) that EPCs may reproduce stereotypes from everyday real life human-human interaction, as well as from traditional visual media – but that they simultaneously harbour a considerable potential to challenge stereotypes. As a tool for the research community, a framework of a visual graphical design space is proposed. The framework may scaffold the design of user evaluations, which often are blurred by uncontrolled visually related variables. With regard to weak user evaluations, the thesis furthermore argues that there is a problem with user evaluations based upon the concept of ‘the User’, i.e. an averaged standardized user. In order to reveal important correlations between agent characteristics and user characteristics, it is often necessary to identify relevant subgroups of users rather than to treat the whole user group as an ‘averaged user’. And finally – virtual agents may have a not yet thought of potential as research tools … (Less)
Pilot Study of COBAS PCR and Ligase Chain Reaction for Detection of Rectal Infections Due to Chlamydia trachomatis

ABSTRACT We tested rectal specimens from men who have sex with men for Chlamydia trachomatis by using COBAS PCR (Roche Diagnostics) and ligase chain reaction LCR (Abbott laboratories) and compared three PCR specimen-processing procedures. Chlamydiae were detected by one or more procedures in 22 of 186 specimens. All three PCR tests were positive for 17 specimens, all of which also tested positive by LCR.
[Nephrotoxicity of mitomycin C (apropos of 25 case reports). Results of a multicenter survey organized by the Society of Nephrology].

We have studied 25 cases of hemolytic and uremic syndrome (H.U.S.) induced by mitomycin C, collected from 1976 to 1982 in 12 Nephrology Centers. Mitomycin C was administered in successive cures at a cumulative dose higher than 50 mg/m2. This H.U.S. is characterized by its slow and late occurrence, by extra-renal, mainly respiratory, manifestations that may reveal the disease, and finally by its pathological aspects. Mesangiolysis and endothelial or mesangial enlarged and atypical nuclei are observed in addition to the usual lesions of thrombotic micro-angiopathy. The prognosis was very poor in the first cases reported. It was better, however, in the patients studied more recently, because the cumulative dose was lower. In severe cases, plasma exchange might improve long-term prognosis. The disease might be due to a direct toxic effect of mitomycin C on the vascular endothelium.
Lack of glucose phosphotransferase function in phosphofructokinase mutants of Escherichia coli

Phosphofructokinase (pfkA) mutants of Escherichia coli are impaired in growth on all carbon sources entering glycolysis at or above the level of fructose 6-phosphate (nonpermissive carbon sources), but growth is particularly slow on sugars, such as glucose, which are normally transported and phosphorylated by the phosphoenolpyruvate, (PEP)-dependent phosphotransferase system (PTS).
Efficacy and Safety of Ethanol Ablation for Thyroglossal Duct Cysts

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: TGDC is a common congenital neck lesion, which has been treated by surgery. Although surgery is curative, it has drawbacks such as scars and surgical morbidity. Therefore, we applied EA as an alternative treatment technique. The purpose of this study was the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of EA for TGDC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Between May 2005 and July 2008, we performed EA in 11 patients with TGDC who refused surgery. All patients were confirmed as having benign lesions before treatment. US-guided aspiration of the cystic fluid was followed by injection of absolute ethanol (99%). The injected volume of ethanol was 50%–80% of the volume of fluid aspirated. We evaluated the therapeutic outcome, including volume reduction of the TGDC, improvement of cosmetic problems and symptoms, and complications. RESULTS: The initial volume of the cysts ranged from 0.67 to 29.39 mL (mean, 6.0 mL). The procedure was performed in 1–3 sessions (mean, 1.4 sessions). Follow-up US was performed in 10 patients from 3 to 29 months (mean, 13.6 months). The mean volume of the cyst was 6.0 ± 8.4 mL, and volume reduction was 43.9%–100% (mean, 81.3%, P = .005) at last follow-up. Therapeutic success (volume reduction of >50%) was observed in 8 patients (8/10, 80%). Significant improvement of symptom- (P = .005) and cosmetic-grading scores (P = .003) was observed at last follow-up. No significant complications were observed during the procedure or follow-up periods. CONCLUSIONS: EA seems to be an effective and safe treatment method for TGDC.
Role of phosphorylation of the sarcoplasmic reticulum in the cardiac response to catecholamines.

The ability of catecholamines to accelerate relaxation in the myocardium appears to be due in part to phosphorylation of the sarcoplasmic reticulum by a cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase. Phospholamban, the substrate for this cyclic AMP-induced phosphorylation, is a 20–22 000 dalton protein that is deeply imbedded in the lipid bilayer of the cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum. Phosphorylation of phospholamban is accompanied by acceleration of calcium transport into the cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum. This stimulatory effect is due in part to an increase in the Ca2+ sensitivity of the calcium pump and reduction in an apparent positive cooperativity between the two Ca2+-binding sites of the calcium pump ATPase. These findings suggest that the dephospho-form of phospholamban inhibits calcium transport by the cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum through an interaction with the calcium pump ATPase. The ability of cyclic AMP-induced phosphorylation to accelerate calcium transport may result from elimination of inhibitory effects of dephospho-phospholamban. This hypothesis is supported by similar Ca2+ dependences of calcium transport in phosphorylated cardiac and fast skeletal sarcoplasmic reticulum, the latter lacking phospholamban.
Deep Face Feature for Face Alignment

In this paper, we present a deep learning based image feature extraction method designed specifically for face images. To train the feature extraction model, we construct a large scale photo-realistic face image dataset with ground-truth correspondence between multi-view face images, which are synthesized from real photographs via an inverse rendering procedure. The deep face feature (DFF) is trained using correspondence between face images rendered from different views. Using the trained DFF model, we can extract a feature vector for each pixel of a face image, which distinguishes different facial regions and is shown to be more effective than general-purpose feature descriptors for face-related tasks such as matching and alignment. Based on the DFF, we develop a robust face alignment method, which iteratively updates landmarks, pose and 3D shape. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method can achieve state-of-the-art results for face alignment under highly unconstrained face images.