Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diet-induced obesity results in endothelial cell desensitization to VEGF-A and permanent islet vascular dysfunction

Background Pancreatic islet microvasculature is essential for optimal islet function and glucose homeostasis. However, islet vessel pathogenesis and its role in the manifestation of metabolic disorders remain understudied. Here we depict a time-resolved decline of intra-islet endothelial cell sensitivity to vascular endothelial cell growth factor A (VEGF-A) in a mouse model of diet-induced obesity. Methods Mice were transplanted with reporter islets in their eyes and put on different diet schemes for 48 weeks. Islet vascular morphology, VEGF-A signaling activity in islet endothelial cells and vessel function were longitudinally monitored by in vivo imaging, while the metabolic implication of islet vessel alterations was measured by glucose tolerance tests and insulin secretion assays. Results In parallel with substantial islet vasculature remodeling, diminished VEGF-A response in islet endothelial cells emerged after 12 weeks of western diet feeding. This led to vessel barrier dysfunction and hemodynamic dysregulation, which delayed transportation of secreted insulin into the blood. Islet vessels also exhibited a remarkable metabolic memory long after the removal of western diet. Neither islet endothelial cell VEGF-A sensitivity nor the vascular damage elicited by 24 weeks of western diet feeding was restored by switching to control diet for another 24 weeks. As a result, these refed mice still exhibited mild but significant impairment in glucose clearance, despite a complete normalization of body weight and insulin sensitivity. While plasma levels of soluble VEGF receptor 1 – the natural VEGF-A trap – were similar in all diet groups, increased activity of atypical protein kinase C (aPKC) was observed under both western diet and recovery conditions, which inhibited VEGF receptor 2 (VEGFR2) internalization and dampened VEGF-A triggered signal transduction in vivo and in human endothelial cells cultured under diet-mimicking conditions. Conclusions Long-term western diet feeding causes irreversible VEGF-A desensitization in islet endothelial cells and islet vessel dysfunction which undermines glucose homeostasis.
Targeting Rab-RILPL Interactions as a Strategy to Downregulate Pathogenic LRRK2 in Parkinson’s Disease

Familial Parkinson’s disease (PD) is frequently linked to multiple disease-causing mutations within Leucine-Rich Repeat Protein Kinase 2 (LRRK2), leading to aberrant kinase activity. Multiple pathogenic effects of enhanced LRRK2 activity have been identified including loss of cilia and centrosomal cohesion defects. When phosphorylated by LRRK2, Rab8a and Rab10 bind to phospho-specific RILPL effector proteins. RILPL-mediated accumulation of pRabs proximal to the mother centriole is critical for initiating deficits in ciliogenesis and centrosome cohesion mediated by LRRK2. We hypothesized that Rab-derived phospho-mimics may serve to block phosphorylated Rab proteins from docking with RILPL in the context of hyperactive LRRK2 mutants. This would serve as an alternative strategy to downregulate pathogenic signaling mediated by LRRK2, rather than targeting LRRK2 kinase activity itself. To test this theory, we designed a series of constrained peptides mimicking phosphorylated Switch II derived from Rab8. These RILPL interacting peptides, termed RIP, were further shown to permeate cells. Further, several peptides were found to bind RILPL2 and restore ciliogenesis and centrosomal cohesion defects in cells expressing PD-associated mutant LRRK2. This research demonstrates the utility of constrained peptides as downstream inhibitors to target pathogenic LRRK2 activity and may provide an alternative approach to target specific pathways activated by LRRK2.
Mime-seq 2.0: a method to sequence microRNAs from specific mouse cell types

Many microRNAs (miRNAs) are expressed with high spatiotemporal specificity during organismal development, with some being limited to rare cell types, often embedded in complex tissues. Yet most miRNA profiling efforts remain at the tissue and organ levels. To overcome challenges in accessing the microRNomes from tissue-embedded cells, we had previously developed mime-seq (miRNome by methylation dependent sequencing), a technique in which cell-specific miRNA methylation in C. elegans and Drosophila enabled chemo-selective sequencing without the need for cell sorting or biochemical purification. Here, we present mime-seq 2.0 for profiling miRNAs from specific mouse cell types. We engineered a chimeric RNA methyltransferase that is tethered to Argonaute and efficiently methylates miRNAs at their 3’-terminal 2’OH in mouse and human cell lines. We also generated a transgenic mouse for conditional expression of this methyltransferase, which can be used to direct methylation of miRNAs in a cell-type of choice. We validated the use of this mouse by profiling miRNAs from B cells and bone marrow plasma cells.
Real-Time Flash Translation Layer for NAND Flash Memory Storage Systems

Due to the variable garbage collection latency, NAND flash memory storage systems may suffer long system response time, especially when the flash memory is close to be full. Most of existing flash translation layer (FTL) schemes focus on improving the average response time but ignore to provide a desirable worst case response time upper bound. This paper proposes a Real-time Flash Translation Layer (RFTL) scheme to hide the long garbage collection latency while satisfying a worst case response time upper bound that achieves an ideal case. We achieve this by using a distributed partial garbage collection policy that enables RFTL to reclaim the space and to serve the write requests simultaneously. A new block-level address mapping approach is designed to guarantee enough free space to serve the write request arriving at any time period. Experimental results show that our scheme improves both the worst case system response time and the average system response time compared with previous work.
Effects of Different Ecological Restoration Measures on Soil Fertility in Red Soil Eroded Degradation Land

This paper chooses Hetian town as the study area,which is the serious red soil eroded degradation ground in Changting county.By the means of field investigation and laboratory analysis,the paper studied the effects of soil fertility in red soil eroded degradation land under different ecological restoration measures.The results show that:the soil fertilities were improved after adopting the six kinds of ecological restoration measures.Soil organic matter,total N,total P was improved obviously by comparison of normal control.The best effects of improving organic matter and total N are the measures of the mixed plantation of tree,shrub and grass and ecological orchard.Plantation of grass and shrub in ditches can make better effect on improving soil total N;the measures of plantation of grass and shrub in ditches and fertilization have certain effects of improving soil total P.By statistical analysis,the order of the effects of improving soil fertility in the different ecological restoration measures is the mixed plantation of tree,shrub and grassplantation of grass and shrub in ditchesecological orchardplantation grass on total slopefaceforsookfertilization.
Association Mapping Study of Various Desirable Traits of Rice

ackground: This study was performed to evaluate the diversity of various morphological characters and their relationship with yield in rice. The goal of this work was to find quantitative trait loci (QTL) for yield, yield components, and other agronomic variables in 100 different rice germplasm samples, as well as to assess the genetic structure and degree of linkage disequilibrium in the rice germplasm diversity panel. To establish Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) between markers and causative mutations, marker density is essential. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns of various SNP markers on all chromosomes. If markers are sufficiently dense to have good coverage of LD, the LD decay with distance can be compared to the marker density. Methods: Different traits were measured and recorded under Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) experiment. DNA extraction and PCR analysis was done to measure the genotypic characteristics of rice. Genotypic and phenotypic variability was measured by using ANOVA and GWAS. Results: For pair-wise markers, linkage disequilibrium is calculated as R square and plotted versus the distance between the markers. In this study, the overall phenotypic variability among the examined traits was represented by R2 and ranged from 11.47% to 25.44%. The genetic architecture of these traits may be implied by the recently identified genomic regions (loci). An influential replacement for bi-parental gene maps, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) use data from genome-wide markers in large amounts of easily obtained germplasm. Conclusion: The linkage disequilibrium, which is the non-random link between an allele at two or more loci, is used in this mapping method to infer the innate relationships between phenotypic variations and marker polymorphisms. Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) of genotypes provides the information about for the selection of genotypes and determination of new marker trait association.
XX.—Report on the Pennatulida dredged by H.M.S. “Porcupine.”

Works on the subject, to which reference is made, are indicated by figures in heavy type throughout, and a list of them is appended. For the terms " polyp " and " zooid," long admitted to be unsatisfactory, and indicating the completely and incompletely developed members of the colony respectively, we have preferred to use " autozooid " and " siphonozooid," terms first suggested by Professor H. N. MOSELEY (1, p. 118).
A Physiological Approach to Cardio-endurance Training: Indicators of Optimal Parasympathetic Input on Cardiovascular Regulation are Better Predictors of Running Performance of Distance Runners

Poorly organized training schedules that are not focused on optimizing the cardiopulmonary fitness of the runner may lead to negative outcomes in their performance. Further, reduced cardiopulmonary fitness of a distance runner may lead to an imbalance of sympathetic and parasympathetic inputs of cardiac autonomic regulation. This altered balance of the regulation of the heart may recur as a vicious cycle, further hampering the runner's performance. The study assessed the effects of specialized training programs on the remodeling of cardiac autonomic regulation in relation to improving cardiopulmonary fitness and running performance of Sri Lankan male distance runners (N = 22). Before the intervention, runners were found to have more sympathetic dominancy on cardiac autonomic regulation along with suboptimal cardiopulmonary fitness level and suboptimal performance. After the intervention, more parasympathetic dominancy in cardiac autonomic regulation and improved cardiopulmonary fitness parameters were achieved. Post-intervention race timing of long-distance runners was significantly improved (p < 0.05) compared to the pre-intervention race timing irrespective of lower VO 2peak level. The specialized training program used in this study optimized the parasympathetic dominancy of the autonomic regulation of the cardiovascular system of the Sri Lankan national long-distance runners. The runners were able to record significantly improved race timing after the specialized training intervention even though their VO 2peak level was dropped. Thus, it is concluded that achieving parasympathetic dominant cardiac autonomic regulation is a better indicator than achieving higher VO 2max levels given the performance of distance runners.
Multi-tenant access control for cloud services

vi List of Tables . xi List of Figures . xii Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 1.1 Motivation . 2 1.2 Problem Statement . 4 1.3 Scope and Assumptions . 6 1.4 Thesis . 7 1.5 Summary of Contributions . 7 1.6 Organization of the Dissertation . 9 Chapter 2: Related Work . 10 2.1 Centralized Approaches . 10 2.2 Decentralized Approaches . 11 2.3 Attribute-Based Approaches . 12 2.4 Enforcement and Implementation . 13 Chapter 3: Multi-Tenant Access Control (MTAC) Models . 15 3.1 MTAS . 15 3.1.1 Formalization . 15 3.1.2 Administrative MTAS (AMTAS) Model . 21 3.1.3 Enhanced Trust Models . 25
Overview of MediaEval 2022 Urban Air: Urban Life and Air Pollution

Air pollution and urban life mutually influence each other, posing a challenge for urban management. Monitoring air pollution and urban activities through systems like air pollution stations and CCTV has led to the development of prediction methods and applications. However, limited access to data and narrow datasets with ideal conditions hinder research efforts. To address this, we introduce the UrbanAir task, which provides a streaming dataset from CCTV and air stations in Dalat City, Vietnam. This task focuses on multimodal and crossmodal prediction of air pollution, even in the absence of data from specific stations. It targets researchers in fields such as multimedia information retrieval, machine learning, AI, data science, urban management, and environmental science, among others.
The Inﬂuence of Exogenous Nitrogen Input on the Characteristics of Phytolith-Occluded Carbon in the Kandelia obovata Soil System

: Phytolith-occluded Ccarbon (PhytOC) is an important carbon sink in wetland ecosystems and a mechanism for long-term carbon sequestration. In recent years, nitrogen pollution has become increasingly severe and poses a threat to the healthy development of coastal ecological environments and socio-economic development; therefore, studying the impact of nitrogen deposition on the sequestration potential of PhytOC in the soil of coastal wetlands is highly signiﬁcant. In the present study, two indoor tidal simulation experiments were set up with and without the planting of vegetation. The sequestration capacity and factors that inﬂuence soil PhytOC in the Kandelia obovata soil system were compared and analyzed under ﬁve nitrogen concentrations. The analysis shows that with the introduction of Kandelia obovata , the occluded carbon content of the soil phytoliths was signiﬁcantly increased by 31.45% compared with the non-plant group, and the PhytOC content of the soil increased by 7.94%. The exogenous nitrogen input reduced the PhytOC content of the soil, with a rate of decline exceeding 26%. The PhytOC of the soil phytoliths and the PhytOC content of the soil in the planting group increased with increasing nitrogen concentration, while that of the non-plant group decreased as the concentration of nitrogen increased. The non-plant group was more affected by the exogenous nitrogen concentration than the planting group, and the soil microbial biomass carbon and microbial biomass nitrogen were the main factors that inﬂuenced changes in the PhytOC. In conclusion, nitrogen input has a signiﬁcant inhibitory effect on soil PhytOC sequestration potential in coastal wetlands. Planting Kandelia obovata helps to improve the stability of carbon in wetland soil.
Further Research on Feature Selection and Classiication Using Genetic Algorithms

This paper summarizes work on an approach that combines feature selection and data classiication using Genetic Algorithms. First, it describes our use of Genetic Algorithms combined with a K-nearest neighbor algorithm to optimize classiication by searching for an optimal feature weight-ing, essentially warping the feature space to coalesce individuals within groups and to separate groups from one another. This approach has proven especially useful with large data sets where standard feature selection techniques are computationally expensive. Second, it describes our implementation of the approach in a parallel processing environment, giving nearly linear speed-up in processing time. Third, it will summarize our present results in using the technique to discover the relative importance of features in large biological test sets. Finally, it will indicate areas for future research. 1 The Problem We live in the age of information where data is plentiful , to the extent that we are typically unable to process all of it usefully. Computer science has been challenged to discover approaches that can sort through the mountains of data available and discover the essential features needed to answer a speciic question. These approaches must be able to process large quantities of data, in reasonable time and in the presence of \noisy" data i.e., irrelevant or erroneous data. Consider a typical example in biology. Researchers in the Center for Microbial Ecology (CME) have selected soil samples from three environments found in agriculture. The environments were: near the roots of a crop (rhizosphere), away from the innuence of the crop roots (non-rhizosphere), and from a fallow eld (crop residue). The CME researchers wished to investigate whether samples from those three environments could be distinguished. In particular, they wanted to see if diversity decreased in the rhizosphere as a result of the symbiotic relationship between the roots and its near-neighbor microbes, and if so in what ways. Their rst experiments used the Biolog c test as the discriminator. Biolog consists of a plate of 96 wells, with a diierent substrate in each well. These sub-strates (various sugars, amino acids and other nutrients) are assimilated by some microbes and not by others. If the microbial sample processes the substrate in the well, that well changes color which can be recorded photometrically. Thus large numbers of samples can be processed and characterized based on the substrates they can assimilate. The CME researchers applied the Biolog test to 3 sets of 100 samples …
Adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviours and associated factors among hypertensive patients in bahir dar city, northwest Ethiopia

Background: In recent decades, the issue of adherence to lifestyle modifications is one of the keys to improving blood pressure control. Although lifestyle modification is a strong recommendation for the prevention and treatment of hypertension, little is known about the hindering and provoking factors with adherence to the recommended lifestyle modification in Ethiopia, particularly in Bahir Dar City. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate factors associated with the recommended lifestyle behaviours among people with hypertension in Bahir Dar City. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at Bahir Dar city governmental hospitals from February-March 2020. Proportional allocation and systematic random sampling techniques were used. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews and clients’ chart reviews. The logistic regression model was used to assess the association between predictors and adherence to lifestyle modification. The association was interpreted using the odds ratio and 95% confidence interval. Results: The result of 375 respondents included in this study, 210 (56%) were male. The mean age of the participants was 52.8 years. The proportion of adherence to healthy lifestyle modification was 14.9% (CI: 11.3, 18.4). Educational level college and above (AOR=7.6, CI=1.65, 34.81), knowledgeable about hypertension (AOR=4.8, CI=1.84, 12.27), measuring of blood pressure only on appointment date (AOR=0.2, CI=0.03, 0.64), and had strong social support (AOR=7.1, CI=2.85, 17.46) were adherence to lifestyle modification. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that participants have low adherence to healthy lifestyle modification. Therefore, availed a social network of family and friends; providing healthy lifestyle education to address the participants’ knowledge of hypertension is an integral part of overall health in people with hypertension.
Transforming Academic Libraries: Exploring Emerging Trends and Technologies

Purpose: This paper aims to provide baseline information about emerging trends and technologies with implications, especially for academic libraries of today and tomorrow. Design/methodology/approach: This descriptive study adopts a comprehensive approach to examine the impact of emerging technologies based on the authors’ knowledge and extensive review and analysis of existing literature and scholarly articles related to the discussed technologies. Findings: Technological advancements in this domain complement traditional academic libraries, and it is evident that the adoption of new technology is more prevalent in academic libraries in Western countries compared to India. Research Limitations: This study discusses selected emerging trends and technologies affecting academic libraries based on examples from developed countries. Practical Implications: By implementing the technical development trends discussed in this article, LIS professionals who work in academic libraries would be better able to meet the information needs of their customers.
SEISMIC TRIGGERING EFFECT OF TIDAL STRESS

The tidal stress field of a layered spherically symmetric Earth due to the Sun and Moon is used to investigate its relation with earthquake occurrence. For the 70 strong earthquakes occurred during the last 24 years in or near China, we computed the tidal stress in spherical polar co-ordinate at the focus at the time of occurrence. The normal and tangential stress components along the slip direction on the earthquake fault plane are then found by co-ordinate transformation. Coulomb's criterion of shear fracture is used to determine whether these stress components will trigger the earthquakes or not.The results show that among the 70 earthquakes, 43 have had triggering effect and for the 18 events occured in North China 14 of them have had triggering effect. It may be concluded that for shallow strike slip earthquakes there are significant triggering effect, while for oblique slip and dip slip earthquakes tidal stress has very little triggering effect. From 72 events occurred over other parts of the world similar conclusion is obtained.Finally, for the purpose, of earthquake prediction, a way in finding a time interval during which the tidal stress may trigger earthquake on possible faults in North China is suggested.
Easy measures for evaluating non-English corpora for language engineering. Some lessons from Arabic and Bengali.

In this paper we develop a framework for fast profiling and quality verification of datasets for language engineering and information retrieval research. The profiling steps consist of an initial tokenization of the corpus to produce a frequency list from which some basic statistics are derived. Manual sampling is carried out to detect obvious discrepancies. Two diagnostic tests are performed to check for sparseness related measures. The behaviour of the function words is traced to gauge homogeneity of their distribution in documents.