Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Matricellular Protein SMOC2 Potentiates BMP9-Induced Osteogenic Differentiation in Mesenchymal Stem Cells through the Enhancement of FAK/PI3K/AKT Signaling

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can self-renew and differentiate into multiple lineages, making MSC transplantation a promising option for bone regeneration. Both matricellular proteins and growth factors play an important role in regulating stem cell fate. In this study, we investigated the effects of matricellular protein SMOC2 (secreted modular calcium-binding protein 2) on bone morphogenetic protein 9 (BMP9) in mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) and revealed a possible molecular mechanism underlying this process. We found that SMOC2 was detectable in MEFs and that exogenous SMOC2 expression potentiated BMP9-induced osteogenic markers, matrix mineralization, and ectopic bone formation, whereas SMOC2 knockdown inhibited these effects. BMP9 increased the levels of p-FAK and p-AKT, which were either enhanced or reduced by SMOC2 and FAK silencing, respectively. BMP9-induced osteogenic markers were increased by SMOC2, and this increase was partially abolished by silencing FAK or LY290042. Furthermore, we found that general transcription factor 2I (GTF2I) was enriched at the promoter region of SMOC2 and that integrin β1 interacted with SMOC2 in BMP9-treated MEFs. Our findings demonstrate that SMOC2 can promote BMP9-induced osteogenic differentiation by enhancing the FAK/PI3K/AKT pathway, which may be triggered by facilitating the interaction between SMOC2 and integrin β1.
The size-density relation of H ii regions in blue compact dwarf galaxies

Abstract We investigate the size-density relation of H ii regions in blue compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs) by compiling observational data of their size (Di) and electron density (ne). We find that the size-density relation follows a relation with constant column density (ne ∝ Di−1) rather than with constant luminosity (ne ∝ Di−1.5). Such behavior resembles that of Galactic H ii regions, and may imply an underlying “scale-free” connection. Because this size-density relation cannot be explained by static models, we model and examine the evolution of the size-density relation of H ii regions by considering the star formation history and pressure-driven expansion of H ii regions. We find that the size-density relation of the entire BCD sample does not result from an evolutionary sequence of H ii regions but rather reflects a sequence with different initial gas densities (or “hierarchy” of density). We also find that the dust extinction of ionizing photons is significant for the BCD sample, despite their blue optical colors. This means that as long as the emission from H ii regions is used to trace massive star formation, we would miss the star formation activity in dense environments even in low-metallicity galaxies such as BCDs.
Role of collective influence in promoting cooperation

The collective influence on the individuals' behavior have attracted much attention, and interesting phenomena such as social facilitation and social loafing have been studied. In this paper, we consider how the collective influence affects the evolution of cooperation in a structured population of individuals who nourish and benefit from public goods in groups. Individuals are supposed to distribute endowments to different groups to nourish the corresponding public goods. The collective influence is indicated by a tunable parameter α, with larger α corresponding to the players' higher preference to contribute more to the larger groups, which is similar to the social-facilitation effect in the real world, whereas, with smaller α corresponding to individuals' contrary preference, i.e., the social-loafing effect. Interestingly, we find that the heterogeneity of public-goods setting favors cooperation. Furthermore, the system where social loafing occurs performs better than that with social facilitation, in the case of heterogeneous formation.
Neutral lines and azimuthal “transport” of solar energetic particles

We discuss properties of solar energetic particle (SEP) events observed by both Helios spacecraft in the time period March 1976 to March 1980, in particular variations of the intensity time profiles with angular distance between the flare and the observer's magnetic footpoint. Special attention is paid to the neutral lines of the large-scale coronal magnetic field. For individual events we will show that sector boundaries can have a strong influence on intensities and time-scales of SEP events. This can be seen best in events in which both spacecraft are connected more or less symmetrically around the flare site with a sector boundary between them. In a statistical approach we discuss variations of onset and maximum times as well as maximum intensities with angular distance between the flare and the observer's magnetic footpoint for 39 SEP events. The use of two spaceprobes has the advantage that unknown flare parameters, such as the number of injected particles and the time of acceleration, can be eliminated by studying only relative variations of time and intensity with angular distance. These variations were analyzed under consideration of the sector boundaries of the large-scale coronal magnetic field. We find (1) particles can be observed on both sides of sector boundaries during both, impulsive and gradual, events, (2) the onset times of ∼0.5-MeV electrons can be ordered by the occurrence of sector boundaries, inside the flare sector we can define some kind of “azimuthal propagation velocity” Δϕ/Δtons with ≥4°/min, outside the flare sector this velocity is ≤1°/min, (3) the azimuthal propagation of ∼20-MeV protons seems to be systematically slower, (4) there seems to be no difference in the variations of onset times or maximum intensities with angular distance between impulsive and gradual events, and (5) within the broad scatter the variation of the maximum intensity with angular distance is not systematically influenced by the crossing of sector boundaries, despite the obvious influence of sector boundary crossings in individual events. These observations support the association of the fast propagation region (FPR) with the large-scale polarity cells of the coronal magnetic field. The “transport” inside the FPR can be understood in terms of an open cone of propagation. The “transport” outside the FPR can be interpreted in terms of a propagation mechanism or acceleration at a shock.
Use of Spectralon as a diffuse reflectance standard for in-flight calibration of earth-orbiting sensors

For the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), currently under development for the Earth Observing System, we plan to use deployable diffuse reflectance panels to provide a flight calibration of its nine cameras. Near-lambertian reflectance characteristics are desirable to facilitate flat-field camera intercomparisons and to allow each camera to be calibrated under the same illumination levels. Panel spatial and spectral uniformity and stability with time are also required. Spectralon™, a commercially available diffuse reflectance material made from polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), has been baselined in the MISR design. To assess the suitability ofthis material, a series of environmental exposure tests were performed. No degradation of the optical properties was apparent following proton bombardment, and stability through UV illumination was satisfactory, provided simple cleaning and handling procedures were implemented. One surprise during the testing, however, was a buildup of several thousand volts of static charge, which developed while simulating a rare pass through an auroral storm. Such a potential for charge buildup is not unique to PTFE, but exists for many thermal control paints used to cover spacecraft exteriors. Further testing of the charged Spectralon failed to produce arcing to the metallic housing frame, and models indicate that charge neutralization will occur after passage through the storm. For these reasons we intend to fly Spectralon as per our original plan.
Grain boundary fine structure of ultrananocrystalline diamond thin films measured by Raman scattering

Structural units of the grain boundaries in ultrananocrystalline diamond thin films with different grain sizes were investigated using Raman spectroscopy. Characteristic peaks of well-defined molecular structural building blocks were detected in the near-infrared excited Raman spectra of these materials by limiting the excitation volume to the size of the crystallites using an optical microscope and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. The analysis of the spectra provides evidence for the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons and different sp3 CHx groups in grain boundaries of these materials.
Continuous and discontinuous contact problem of a functionally graded orthotropic layer indented by a rigid cylindrical punch: Analytical and finite element approaches

In this study, the continuous and discontinuous contact problems of a functionally graded (FG) orthotropic layer lying on a homogeneous and isotropic layer were investigated. The orthotropic layer was indented by a rigid cylindrical punch which was subjected to a concentrated normal force, and a homogeneous isotropic layer was firmly attached to a rigid substrate. For the analytical solution, the general expressions for the stresses and displacements were obtained in the presence of body forces by using elasticity theory and Fourier integral transforms. The continuous and discontinuous contact problems were reduced to the singular integral equations by means of boundary conditions. The system of the singular integral equations was solved using the Gauss‐Chebyshev integration formula. Then, the finite element solution of the two cases was also performed. Analytical results and numerical results (FEM) for critical load, initial separation distance, separation region in discontinuous contact, contact lengths under the punch, and contact stress distributions between the layer‐punch and layer‐layer were obtained for the dimensionless quantities.
Feasibility study of cultivating desi‐type chickpea genotypes in cold and temperate regions

Shifting the sowing time of chickpea plants from spring to autumn in arid and semi‐arid regions of Iran is unavoidable. To study the feasibility of this issue, 32 desi‐type chickpea genotypes were planted in Mashhad (as a temperate region) and Jolgeh Rokh (as a cold region) to screen cold‐tolerant genotypes. The results revealed that 100% and 19% of the genotypes planted in Mashhad and Jolgeh Rokh had a survival range of 76–100%. MCC918 in Mashhad and MCC913 in Jolgeh Rokh had the highest height (69 and 33 cm, respectively). The highest biological yields in Mashhad and Jolgeh Rokh were found in MCC576 (1743 g m−2) and MCC207 (658 g m−2), respectively. The grain yield of 41% (13 genotypes) and 34% (11 genotypes) of the genotypes planted in Mashhad and Jolgeh Rokh was higher than the total average (316 and 82 g m−2, respectively). Also, the maximum grain yield in Mashhad was about 2.3 times higher than in Jolgeh Rokh. According to the present experimental results, MCC259, MCC576, and MCC607 in Mashhad as a cold temperate region and MCC207, MCC212, and MCC605 in Jolgeh Rokh as a cold region had the highest winter survival percentage and grain yield compared to the other genotypes.
Impact of in-plane anisotropic strain on the polarization behavior of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

We experimentally demonstrate that the presence of switching between two fundamental modes with orthogonal linear polarization in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers and the current at which this phenomenon occurs depend on both the magnitude and the orientation of an externally induced in-plane anisotropic strain. We interpret this behavior by considering the anisotropy in gain and in refractive index, both induced by the in-plane strain, and by accounting for a redshift of the two gain curves as a result of current-induced heating.
The hydrodynamical alpha-effect in a compressible medium

The problem of the interaction of large-scale vortices with small-scale homogeneous isotropic helical turbulence in a compressible medium is considered. Averaged equations are derived using a closure procedure which is based on the functional technique. It is shown that the averaged vorticity equation has solutions that grow exponentially in time and which describe the effect of amplification of large-scale helical vortices by turbulence (hydrodynamical α-effect). The dependence of the growth rate on the compressibility is analysed, the limiting cases of incompressible fluid and turbulence δ-correlated in time being considered. The applications of the hydrodynamical α-effect discussed include the Earth's atmosphere and interstellar gas of spiral galaxies.
A self-diagnosis under 2D projectivity for local descriptor base template matching

2D projectivity is an invertible mapping to present the perspective imaging of a world plane by projective translation, called homography. Good image feature have to be robust under 2D projectivity caused by any camera movements. In the standard performance evaluation of template matching, many real captured images of many scenes are ordinarily used. However it is not enough to evaluate the robustness under 2D projectivity in detail because the variations of real camera pose and position in the 3D world are limited and the capturing cost is expensive. During the early stage of the template matching development, an easy performance evaluation method is required to examine the behavior. We propose a self-diagnosis method to measure the robustness of local descriptor base template matching between a template image and reference images which are created by projective translation of the template image. We focus on the template matching consisting of a feature point extraction and a local descriptor matching. The proposed method evaluates the spatial accuracy of the feature points and the estimated template positions in the reference images with local descriptor matchings. Four metrics, feature point precision (PP), feature point recall (PR), local descriptor matching precision (MP) and local descriptor matching recall (MR) are introduced to evaluate the performance. The experiment results will be appeared in the final manuscript to show the effectiveness of our method.
Conformational splitting: A more powerful criterion for dead‐end elimination

Dead‐end elimination (DEE) is a powerful theorem for selecting optimal protein side‐chain orientations from a large set of discrete conformations. The present work describes a new approach to dead‐end elimination that effectively splits conformational space into partitions to more efficiently eliminate dead‐ending rotamers. Split DEE makes it possible to complete protein design calculations that were previously intractable due to the combinatorial explosion of intermediate conformations generated during the convergence process. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 21: 999–1009, 2000
Application of an acoustic model to determine in situ permeability of a borehole

A simple acoustic model has been developed to study the attenuation of a tube wave due to fluid flow from a borehole into its surrounding porous formation. It is found that attenuation increases with increasing porosity, with increasing frequency, and with decreasing borehole radius. Comparison with field data indicates that this attenuation mechanism can be significant for formations with a permeability exceeding about 100 millidarcy (md). Utilizing an appropriate correction for intrinsic attenuation, it is also demonstrated that tube wave attenuation data obtained through full waveform acoustic logs can be used to estimate in situ formation permeability.
Obesity as a Risk Factor for Different Cancers: Systematic Review

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) categorization of Body Max Index, obesity is frequently measured in clinical practice by expressing body weight as a function of height (BMI). There is good evidence that obesity raises the risk of many cancers, such as esophageal adenocarcinoma, postmenopausal breast, pancreatic, colorectal, endometrial, liver cancer and kidney cancer. The study aims to summarize current evidence regarding Obesity as a risk factor for different cancers. The PubMed database and EBSCO Information Services were utilised to choose the articles. In our review, all pertinent articles related to our subject and other publications were used. Other articles that have nothing to do with this subject were not included. The group members looked through a certain format in which the data had been extracted. Obesity is a significant risk factor for the occurrence and progression of many cancer types especially when it comes to GI cancers such as colorectal, gastric, and liver cancer. This has been linked to multiple pathophysiological reasons such as lower immunological response in obese patients. However, it is worth noting that in many cases strong evidence has not been established for obesity as a risk factor, and some studies suggest that sex may play a critical role when it comes to obesity as a risk factor for cancer.
Building the Seamless Dispute Resolution Web: A Status Report on the American Bar Association Task Force on E-commerce and Alternative Dispute Resolution

As a result of the Jurisdiction Project's attention to the role of dispute resolution in fostering e-commerce, there appeared to be a clear need for a neutral non-provider entity. The entity's purpose would be to create a task force to study disputes in cyberspace and assist with the development of proposed protocols, guidelines and standards for dispute resolution as it relates to e-commerce and the Internet. In September 2000, the ABA established such a Task Force to study the emergence of standards for the resolution of disputes arising from business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce transactions. The Task Force consists of representatives from five ABA sections: Dispute Resolution, Business Law, Litigation, International Law and Practice, and Intellectual Property. Within its mission, the Task Force has examined the role of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), in particular, addressing disputes that result from e-commerce.
Bayesian Analysis of the Functional-Coefficient Autoregressive Heteroscedastic Model

In this paper, we propose a new model called the functional-coefficient autoregressive heteroscedastic (FARCH) model for nonlinear time series. The FARCH model extends the existing functional-coefficient autoregressive models and double-threshold autoregressive heteroscedastic models by providing a flexible framework for the detection of nonlinear features for both the conditional mean and conditional variance. We propose a Bayesian approach, along with the Bayesian P-splines technique and Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm, to estimate the functional coefficients and unknown parameters of the model. We also conduct model comparison via the Bayes factor. The performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated via a simulation study. A real data set derived from the daily S&P 500 Composite Index is used to illustrate the methodology.
X-ray clusters from a high-resolution hydrodynamic PPM simulation of the cold dark matter universe

A new three-dimensional hydrodynamic code based on the piecewise parabolic method (PPM) is utilized to compute the distribution of hot gas in the standard Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)-normalized cold dark matter (CDM) universe. Utilizing periodic boundary conditions, a box with size 85 h(exp-1) Mpc, having cell size 0.31 h(exp-1) Mpc, is followed in a simulation with 270(exp 3)=10(exp 7.3) cells. Adopting standard parameters determined from COBE and light-element nucleosynthesis, Sigma(sub 8)=1.05, Omega(sub b)=0.06, we find the X-ray-emitting clusters, compute the luminosity function at several wavelengths, the temperature distribution, and estimated sizes, as well as the evolution of these quantities with redshift. The results, which are compared with those obtained in the preceding paper (Kang et al. 1994a), may be used in conjuction with ROSAT and other observational data sets. Overall, the results of the two computations are qualitatively very similar with regard to the trends of cluster properties, i.e., how the number density, radius, and temeprature depend on luminosity and redshift. The total luminosity from clusters is approximately a factor of 2 higher using the PPM code (as compared to the 'total variation diminishing' (TVD) code used in the previous paper) with the number of bright clusters higher by a similar factor. The primary conclusions of the prior paper, with regard to the power spectrum of the primeval density perturbations, are strengthened: the standard CDM model, normalized to the COBE microwave detection, predicts too many bright X-ray emitting clusters, by a factor probably in excess of 5. The comparison between observations and theoretical predictions for the evolution of cluster properties, luminosity functions, and size and temperature distributions should provide an important discriminator among competing scenarios for the development of structure in the universe.
Lattice statistics studies of massless phases

Many important concepts used in the study of complex systems have their origin in the lattice statistical mechanics of cooperative phase transitions. The classic order-disorder transitions of Potts/Ising models illustrate emergent phenomena such as spontaneous symmetry breaking, scale-free critical behaviour and power-law singularities. However, a class of lattice statistics models show that rather more complex behaviour can be obtained, under conditions which are suffciently general that they might also occur in less idealised models. A 5-state lattice statistics model is analysed to explore behaviour in and around a so-called "massless phase". The massless phase, characterised by power law decay of correlations, appears as an intermediate regime between high temperature disorder and low-temperature ordering. The critical exponents (and fractal spatial distributions) occur over a finite range of temperatures. The state of the massless phase is characterised by a topological ordering with analogues of spin-waves being the dominant perturbations. The transition from the ordered to massless phases is analysed using new exact series expansions obtained by the finite lattice method. The results are also compared to Monte Carlo simulations. The results are compared to other studies in the small number of cases where such series expansions exist for comparable models, including the 6-state "clock model". One of the properties that makes the massless phase dificult to study is the weak nature of the associated Kosterlitz-Thouless transition with exponentially-weak behaviour rather than power-law behaviour. As a further diffculty, the limiting behaviour is confined to a narrow regime, outside which one sees an apparent "cross-over" to power law behaviour. This suggests that behaviour analogous to the "massless phases" will be diffcult to characterise as one moves beyond idealised lattice systems.