Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High energy electron induced displacement damage in silicon

New measurements of displacement damage factors for electron-irradiated (4 to 53 MeV) bipolar silicon transistors have extended the correlation between nonionizing energy loss and damage factors reported previously another three orders of magnitude downward, to cover a total of six decades. To first order, the correlation remains linear for both n- and p-type silicon, but deviations are observed and explained in terms of differences in the fraction of initial vacancy interstitial pairs that recombines. These differences correlate linearly with the low-energy component of the PKA spectrum. Deep level transient spectroscopy measurements show oxygen- and dopant-related defect levels as well as divacancies. Defect concentrations scaled linearly with gain degradation, and no differences were seen between electron and proton plus neutron irradiated material. The results are consistent with a damage mechanism involving migration of vacancies to form well-separated stable defects. >
Vergleichs-Studie mit neuem Paclitaxel-beschichteten Ballonkatheter

Die Patienten für die zweiarmige prospektive randomisierte kontrollierte von der Herstellerfirma finanzierte CONSEQUENT-Studie wurden zwischen November 2013 und April 2015 an verschiedenen deutschen Zentren rekrutiert. In der Studie sollten die angiografischen und klinischen Ergebnisse nach Behandlung mit dem beschichteten Ballonkatheter oder reiner Ballonangioplastie (plain old balloon angioplasty, POBA) verglichen werden. Aufgenommen wurden 153 Patienten mit symptomatischer pAVK Grad 2–4 nach Rutherford und femoropoplitealen Läsionen, die 1:1 für eine Behandlung mit DCB (n =78) und POBA (n=75) randomisiert wurden. Insgesamt betrug die Länge der Zielläsion 13,2 ±10,4 cm. Bei 40/153 Patienten (26,1%) bestand ein kompletter Verschluss. Bis auf den Gefäßdurchmesser, der in der DCB-Gruppe mit 5,06± 0,77mm kleiner war als in der POBAGruppe gab es keine signifikanten Unterschiede bei der Morphologie der Läsionen zwischen den Gruppen. Die demografischen Charakteristika und kardiovaskulären Risiken waren zwischen beiden Gruppen vergleichbar, Unterschiede gab es nur beim Anteil der Männer und der Kreatininkonzentration im Serum. Die häufigsten Risikofaktoren waren Diabetes (36,6%) und Rauchen (47,7%). Eine KHK wiesen 41,2% der Patienten auf. Primärer Endpunkt war der späte Lumenverlust durch Restenose, festgestellt durch quantitative Angiografie nach 6 Monaten.
Structured light-based high-accuracy depth imaging applied for DIBR in multiview 3DTV

In this paper we address the estimation of scene range for multiview 3DTV applications. Based on their similar setup requirements, we propose a depth camera system combining the strengths of Structured Light and Active Stereo techniques to obtain a fast depth map recovery for a larger variety of scenes and from a wider view with less occlusion. The proposed system is composed by a stereo rig and a projector. A stripe-based one shot pattern is projected into the target scene. Using an efficient decoding technique, reliable correspondences can be found between each camera and the projected pattern. Decoded areas common to both cameras are triangulated and used to calibrate the projector on the fly in order to estimate depth in decoded areas only visible in one camera. Correspondences in undecoded areas are estimated via a stereo matching procedure. The different estimated data is then combined in a single depth map. We introduce a 3 projection method that improves the structured light identification in strong illumination conditions and more robust to color objects surfaces of the scene. We demonstrate the efficacy of the integration method experimental results with special emphasis on its performance in the context of the development and contents creation for depth image-based representation (DIBR) 3DTV.
Generative machine learning produces kinetic models that accurately characterize intracellular metabolic states

Generating large omics datasets has become routine practice to gain insights into cellular processes, yet deciphering such massive datasets and determining intracellular metabolic states remains challenging. Kinetic models of metabolism play a critical role in integrating omics data, as they provide explicit connections between metabolite concentrations, metabolic fluxes, and enzyme levels. However, the difficulties in determining kinetic parameters that govern cellular physiology hinder the broader adoption of these models by the research community. Here we present RENAISSANCE (REconstruction of dyNAmIc models through Stratified Sampling using Artificial Neural networks and Concepts of Evolution strategies), a generative machine learning framework for efficiently parameterizing large-scale kinetic models with dynamic properties matching experimental observations. Through seamless integration and consolidation of diverse omics data and other relevant information, like extracellular medium composition, physicochemical data, and expertise of domain specialists, we show that the proposed framework accurately characterizes unknown intracellular metabolic states, including metabolic fluxes and metabolite concentrations, in E. coli’s metabolic network. Moreover, we show that RENAISSANCE successfully estimates missing kinetic parameters and reconciles them with sparse and noisy experimental data, resulting in a substantial reduction in parameter uncertainty and a notable improvement in the accuracy and reliability of the parameter estimates. The proposed framework will be invaluable for researchers who seek to analyze metabolic variations involving changes in metabolite and enzyme levels and enzyme activity in health and biotechnological studies.
The ATM-E6AP-MASTL axis mediates DNA damage checkpoint recovery

Checkpoint activation after DNA damage causes a transient cell cycle arrest by suppressing CDKs. However, it remains largely elusive how cell cycle recovery is initiated after DNA damage. In this study, we discovered the upregulated protein level of MASTL kinase hours after DNA damage. MASTL promotes cell cycle progression by preventing PP2A/B55-catalyzed dephosphorylation of CDK substrates. DNA damage-induced MASTL upregulation was caused by decreased protein degradation, and was unique among mitotic kinases. We identified E6AP as the E3 ubiquitin ligase that mediated MASTL degradation. MASTL degradation was inhibited upon DNA damage as a result of the dissociation of E6AP from MASTL. E6AP depletion reduced DNA damage signaling, and promoted cell cycle recovery from the DNA damage checkpoint, in a MASTL-dependent manner. Furthermore, we found that E6AP was phosphorylated at Ser-218 by ATM after DNA damage and that this phosphorylation was required for its dissociation from MASTL, the stabilization of MASTL, and the timely recovery of cell cycle progression. Together, our data revealed that ATM/ATR-dependent signaling, while activating the DNA damage checkpoint, also initiates cell cycle recovery from the arrest. Consequently, this results in a timer-like mechanism that ensures the transient nature of the DNA damage checkpoint.
Scorpionfish BPI is highly active against multiple drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis patients

Chronic pulmonary infection is a hallmark of cystic fibrosis (CF) and requires continuous antibiotic treatment. In this context, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Pa) is of special concern since colonizing strains frequently acquire multiple drug resistance (MDR). Bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI) is a neutrophil-derived, endogenous protein with high bactericidal potency against Gram-negative bacteria. However, a significant range of CF patients produce anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies against BPI (BPI-ANCA) thereby neutralizing its bactericidal function. In accordance with literature, we describe that 54.3% of a total of 46 CF patients expressed BPI-ANCA. Importantly, an orthologous protein to human BPI (huBPI) derived from the scorpionfish Sebastes schlegelii (scoBPI) completely escaped recognition by these autoantibodies. Moreover, scoBPI exhibited high anti-inflammatory potency towards Pa LPS, and was bactericidal against MDR Pa derived from CF patients at nanomolar concentrations. In conclusion, our results highlight the potential of highly active orthologous proteins of huBPI in treatment of MDR Pa infections, especially in the presence of BPI-ANCA.
Hypoxia-inducible factor 2 is a key determinant of manganese excess and polycythemia in SLC30A10 deficiency

Manganese is an essential yet potentially toxic metal. Initially reported in 2012, mutations in SLC30A10 are the first known inherited cause of manganese excess. SLC30A10 is an apical membrane transport protein that exports manganese from hepatocytes into bile and from enterocytes into the lumen of the gastrointestinal tract. SLC30A10 deficiency results in impaired gastrointestinal manganese excretion, leading to severe manganese excess, neurologic deficits, liver cirrhosis, polycythemia, and erythropoietin excess. Neurologic and liver disease are attributed to manganese toxicity. Polycythemia is attributed to erythropoietin excess, but the basis of erythropoietin excess in SLC30A10 deficiency has yet to be established. Here we demonstrate that erythropoietin expression is increased in liver but decreased in kidneys in Slc30a10-deficient mice. Using pharmacologic and genetic approaches, we show that liver expression of hypoxia-inducible factor 2 (Hif2), a transcription factor that mediates the cellular response to hypoxia, is essential for erythropoietin excess and polycythemia in Slc30a10-deficient mice, while hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF1) plays no discernible role. RNA-seq analysis determined that Slc30a10-deficient livers exhibit aberrant expression of a large number of genes, most of which align with cell cycle and metabolic processes, while hepatic Hif2 deficiency attenuates differential expression of half of these genes in mutant mice. One such gene downregulated in Slc30a10-deficient mice in a Hif2-dependent manner is hepcidin, a hormonal inhibitor of dietary iron absorption. Our analyses indicate that hepcidin downregulation serves to increase iron absorption to meet the demands of erythropoiesis driven by erythropoietin excess. Finally, we also observed that hepatic Hif2 deficiency attenuates tissue manganese excess, although the underlying cause of this observation is not clear at this time. Overall, our results indicate that HIF2 is a key determinant of pathophysiology in SLC30A10 deficiency. Graphical abstract
Molecular investigation of TSHR gene in Bangladeshi congenital hypothyroid patients

The disorder of thyroid gland development or thyroid dysgenesis (TH) accounts for 80-85% cases of congenital hypothyroidism (CH). Hence, the understanding of molecular etiology of TH is prerequisite. Mutations in TSHR gene is mostly associated with thyroid dysgenesis, prevent or disrupt normal development of the gland. The current study detects two nonsynonymous mutations (p.Ser508Leu, p.Asp727Glu) in transmembrane (TM)-region (Exon 10) of TSHR gene in 21 patients with dysgenesis by sequencing-based analysis. Later, transmembrane (TM)-region of TSHR protein is modelled by homology modeling. Transmembrane (TM)-region of TSHR protein is targeted by small molecules thyrogenic drugs, MS437 and MS438 to perceive the effect of mutations. The damaging effect in drug-protein complexes of mutants were envisaged by molecular docking and interactions. The binding affinity of wild type protein was much higher than the mutant cases for both of the ligands (MS437 and MS438). Molecular dynamics simulates dynamic behavior of wild type and mutant complexes. MS437-TSHR368-764MT2 and MS438-TSHR368-764MT1 show stable conformations in biological environments. Finally, PCA reveals structural and energy profile discrepancies. TSHR368-764MT1 exhibits much variations than TSHR368-764WT and TSHR368-764MT2, emphasizing more damaging pattern in TSHR368-764MT1. The study might be helpful to understand molecular etiology of thyroid dysgenesis (TH) exploring the mutational impact on TSHR protein to the interaction with agonists.
Peptide ligands for the affinity purification of adeno‐associated viruses from HEK 293 cell lysates

Adeno‐associated viruses (AAVs) are the vector of choice for delivering gene therapies that can cure inherited and acquired diseases. Clinical research on various AAV serotypes significantly increased in recent years alongside regulatory approvals of AAV‐based therapies. The current AAV purification platform hinges on the capture step, for which several affinity resins are commercially available. These adsorbents rely on protein ligands—typically camelid antibodies—that provide high binding capacity and selectivity, but suffer from low biochemical stability and high cost, and impose harsh elution conditions (pH < 3) that can harm the transduction activity of recovered AAVs. Addressing these challenges, this study introduces peptide ligands that selectively capture AAVs and release them under mild conditions (pH = 6.0). The peptide sequences were identified by screening a focused library and modeled in silico against AAV serotypes 2 and 9 (AAV2 and AAV9) to select candidate ligands that target homologous sites at the interface of the VP1‐VP2 and VP2‐VP3 virion proteins with mild binding strength (KD ~ 10−5–10−6 M). Selected peptides were conjugated to Toyopearl resin and evaluated via binding studies against AAV2 and AAV9, demonstrating the ability to target both serotypes with values of dynamic binding capacity (DBC10% > 1013 vp/mL of resin) and product yields (~50%–80%) on par with commercial adsorbents. The peptide‐based adsorbents were finally utilized to purify AAV2 from a HEK 293 cell lysate, affording high recovery (50%–80%), 80‐ to 400‐fold reduction of host cell proteins (HCPs), and high transduction activity (up to 80%) of the purified viruses.
Hysteresis mechanisms of pentacene thin-film transistors with polymer/oxide bilayer gate dielectrics

We have studied the electrical stability of organic poly-4-vinyl phenol (PVP)/inorganic oxide bilayer gate dielectrics for low-voltage pentacene thin-film transistors (TFTs). Curing conditions of spin-cast PVP influence on the drain current-gate bias hysteresis behavior; long term curing reduces the magnitude of the hysteresis, which can also be reduced by decreasing the PVP thickness. The electron charge injection from gate electrode plays as another cause of the electrical hysteresis. These instabilities are categorized into the following three: channel/dielectric interface-induced, slow polarization-induced, and gate charge injection-induced hystereses. By examining the hysteresis behavior of pentacene TFTs with five different combinations of bilayer dielectric, we clarified the instability mechanisms responsible for the electrical hysteresis.
Design and fabrication of an IPMC-embedded tube for minimally invasive surgery applications

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is receiving much attention for a number of reasons, including less trauma, faster recovery and enhanced precision. The traditional robotic actuators do not have the capabilities required to fulfill the demand for new applications in MIS. Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite (IPMC), one of the most promising smart materials, has extensive desirable characteristics such as low actuation voltage, large bending deformation and high functionality. Compared with traditional actuators, IPMCs can mimic biological muscle and are highly promising for actuation in robotic surgery. In this paper, a new approach which involves molding and integrating IPMC actuators into a soft silicone tube to create an active actuating tube capable of multi-degree-of-freedom motion is presented. First, according to the structure and performance requirements of the actuating tube, the biaxial bending IPMC actuators fabricated by using solution casting method have been implemented. The silicone was cured at a suitable temperature to form a flexible tube using molds fabricated by 3D Printing technology. Then an assembly based fabrication process was used to mold or integrate biaxial bending IPMC actuators into the soft silicone material to create an active control tube. The IPMC-embedded tube can generate multi-degree-of-freedom motions by controlling each IPMC actuator. Furthermore, the basic performance of the actuators was analyzed, including the displacement and the response speed. Experimental results indicate that IPMC-embedded tubes are promising for applications in MIS.
The Evolution of LeanStore

: LeanStore is a high-performance key-value storage engine optimized for many-core processors and NVMe SSDs. This paper provides the first full system overview of all LeanStore components, several of which have not yet been described. We also discuss crucial implementation details, and the evolution of the entire system towards a design that is both simple and efficient.
On the Monotonic Character of the Power Functions of Two Multivariate Tests

1. Summary and introduction. The largest characteristic root has been proposed in [2] as a test statistic in (i) the multivariate analysis of variance test, and (ii) testing that two sets of variates are independent. In this paper it is shown that, in each case, the power function is a monotonically increasing function of each non-centrality parameter, separately. This property was stated in [2] without proof. This provides a stronger result than would be obtained by any direct use of Anderson's Theorem [1] which implies that the power function increases when all the roots are simultaneously increased in the same ratio. The proof of the monotonocity property for the multivariate analysis of variance is given in Section 3, and in Section 4 it is shown how the proof is modified for testing independence between two sets of variates. 2. Preliminaries for the multivariate analysis of variance situation. Let u, s and n denote respectively the "effective" number of variates, the degrees of freedom of the hypothesis and the degrees of freedom for the error and let t = min (u, s). Then, with X _ [xij]:u X s and Y- [yij]:u X n, the canonical form for the d.f. in the multivariate analysis of variance model was obtained in [2, p. 86] to be
Particle Acceleration by Astrophysical Shocks

A new mechanism is proposed for acceleration of a power-law distribution of cosmic rays with approximately the observed slope. High-energy particles in the vicinity of a shock are scattered by Alfven waves carried by the converging fluid flow leading to a first-order acceleration process in which the escape time is automatically comparable to the acceleration time. Shocks from supernova explosions propagating through the interstellar medium can account for the acceleration of galactic cosmic rays. Similar processes occurring in extragalactic radio sources can lead to efficient in situ acceleration of relativistic electrons.
Working with Disaggregated Systems. What are the Challenges and Opportunities of RDMA and CXL?

The usage of disaggregated systems in large scale data-centers offers a lot of flexibility and easy scalability in comparison to the traditional statically configured scale-up and scale-out systems. Disaggregated architectures allow for the creation of software composable systems [Li17, Li18]. On the one hand, this allows seamless integration of specialized hardware like FPGAs or GPUs as well as a high degree of elasticity to scale a system with its workload by dynamically adding and removing resources via software. On the other hand, however, it also brings several challenges like an additional communication overhead for memory accesses, which is especially critical for In-Memory databases.
View-Invariant Gait Recognition Based on Head and Shoulder Shape Analysis

To improve the recognition rate and resolve the view problem in gait analysis, a view-invariant method is presented. This method extracts the mean shape of the head and shoulder models in a gait cycle by using the Procrustes Shape Analysis (PSA) algorithm. Then, the mean shape is converted from 2-D space to 1-D space by unfolding the 2D mean shape from the top point of the head. Furthermore, the piecewise approximation (PA) of the unfolded mean shape is segmented corresponding to the average distance value. The obtained PA is adopted for estimating views and recognizing the gait. Finally, the presented method is conducted on the CASIA B database. The results illustrate that the PA is a powerful discriminative feature for view estimation and gait recognition, and the performance has been improved when there is view variation.
Overcoming the pseudomorphic critical thickness limit using compliant substrates

We demonstrated the high‐quality molecular beam epitaxy growth of exceedingly thick In0.14Ga0. 86As pseudomorphic layers on thin, free‐standing, compliant GaAs substrates. We first fabricated 800‐A‐thick compliant platforms before growing a lattice‐mismatched layer on the platform. The layer we grew exceeds its usual critical thickness by about twenty times without strain relaxation. X‐ray analysis confirms a shift in the InGaAs peaks grown on the compliant substrate, indicating an unrelaxed strain of 0.9%. Moreover, atomic force microscope profiles verify that layers grown on compliant substrates are much smoother than layers grown on a plain substrate.
Heuristic algorithms for the multiple depot vehicle scheduling problem

We consider the NP-hard Multiple Depot Vehicle Scheduling Problem, in which a given set of time-tabled trips have to be assigned to vehicles stationed at different depots, so as to minimize the number of vehicles used and the overall operational cost. The problem arises in the management of transportation companies. In this paper some structural properties of the problem are studied and used to design a new polynomial-time heuristic algorithm which always guarantees the use of the minimum number of vehicles. Several effective refining procedures are also proposed. Extensive computational results on test problems involving up to 1,000 trips and 10 depots are reported, showing that the new approach always produces very tight approximate solutions in small computing times and outperforms other heuristics from the literature.
Sensitivity of a Spectrally Filtered and Nudged Limited-Area Model to Outer Model Options

Abstract Numerical filters required to control spatial computational modes in a limited-area model (LAM) that uses the unstaggered. A grid are developed and tested over the complex topography of the Great Basin of the western United States. The filters are founded upon Fourier expansions of forecast deviation fields and function equally effectively for both periodic and aperiodic local structures. Unlike other spatial filters, the approach used here avoids any direct contamination of larger scales. Provided that the shortest resolved wavelength of two grid intervals is removed, the results do not depend strongly on the range of filtered short waves or on the type and order of horizontal space difference approximations. This approach leads naturally to methods in which the large scales predicted by an ambient outer model can be directly incorporated within the complete domain of the inner LAM, rather than just through conditions applied at the lateral boundaries of the LAM. This technique has some similari.