julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Atrial Natriuretic Peptide Affects Stimulus-Secretion Coupling of Pancreatic β-Cells
2017-09-01

Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) influences glucose homeostasis and possibly acts as a link between the cardiovascular system and metabolism, especially in metabolic disorders like diabetes. The current study evaluated effects of ANP on β-cell function by the use of a β-cell–specific knockout of the ANP receptor with guanylate cyclase activity (βGC-A-KO). ANP augmented insulin secretion at the threshold glucose concentration of 6 mmol/L and decreased KATP single-channel activity in β-cells of control mice but not of βGC-A-KO mice. In wild-type β-cells but not β-cells lacking functional KATP channels (SUR1-KO), ANP increased electrical activity, suggesting no involvement of other ion channels. At 6 mmol/L glucose, ANP readily elicited Ca2+ influx in control β-cells. This effect was blunted in β-cells of βGC-A-KO mice, and the maximal cytosolic Ca2+ concentration was lower. Experiments with inhibitors of protein kinase G (PKG), protein kinase A (PKA), phosphodiesterase 3B (PDE3B), and a membrane-permeable cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) analog on KATP channel activity and insulin secretion point to participation of the cGMP/PKG and cAMP/PKA/Epac (exchange protein directly activated by cAMP) directly activated by cAMP Epac pathways in the effects of ANP on β-cell function; the latter seems to prevail. Moreover, ANP potentiated the effect of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) on glucose-induced insulin secretion, which could be caused by a cGMP-mediated inhibition of PDE3B, which in turn reduces cAMP degradation.
The need for psycho-oncological support for melanoma patients
2017-09-01

Despite an increasing number of promising treatment options, only a limited number of studies concerning melanoma patients' psycho-oncological distress have been carried out. However, multiple screening tools are in use to assess the need for psycho-oncological support. This study aimed first to identify parameters in melanoma patients that are associated with a higher risk for being psycho-oncologically distressed and second to compare patients' self-evaluation concerning the need for psycho-oncological support with the results of established screening tools.We performed a cross-sectional study including 254 melanoma patients from the Center for Dermatooncology at the University of Tuebingen. The study was performed between June 2010 and February 2013. Several screening instruments were included: the Distress Thermometer (DT), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and the patients' subjective evaluation concerning psycho-oncological support. Binary logistic regression was performed to identify factors that indicate the need for psycho-oncological support.Patients' subjective evaluation concerning the need for psycho-oncological support, female gender, and psychotherapeutic or psychiatric treatment at present or in the past had the highest impact on values above threshold in the DT. The odds ratio of patients' self-evaluation (9.89) was even higher than somatic factors like female gender (1.85), duration of illness (0.99), or increasing age (0.97). Patients' self-evaluation concerning the need for psycho-oncological support indicated a moderate correlation with the results of the screening tools included.In addition to the results obtained by screening tools like the DT, we could demonstrate that patients' self-evaluation is an important instrument to identify patients who need psycho-oncological support.
On the Cauchy problem of a degenerate parabolic-hyperbolic PDE with Lévy noise
2017-09-01

In this article, we deal with the stochastic perturbation of degenerate parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs). The particular emphasis is on analyzing the effects of a multiplicative Lévy noise on such problems and on establishing a well-posedness theory by developing a suitable weak entropy solution framework. The proof of the existence of a solution is based on the vanishing viscosity technique. The uniqueness of the solution is settled by interpreting Kruzhkov’s doubling technique in the presence of a noise.
Real-time pose estimation on elevation maps for wheeled vehicles
2017-09-01

Fast and accurate obstacle detection is a crucial component for autonomous robot navigation. It becomes even more important for a shared control vehicle like an electric wheeled walker, since the safety of the vehicle and the user depend on the correct classification of obstacles. This work describes a method for pose estimation of four-wheeled vehicles, which utilizes the fixed resolution of digital elevation maps to generate a detailed vehicle model. The vehicle's wheels are also approximated using digital elevation maps, allowing efficient calculation of wheel to ground contact points and therefore fast and accurate estimation of valid vehicle poses. To evaluate the proposed method, pose estimates are compared to three datasets including ground truth poses: one created using an external tracking system and two created by simulations of wheeled robots. It is also shown that the method is fast enough for real time operation.
Enhancing the performance of adaptive iterative learning control with reinforcement learning
2017-09-01

In this study we propose a new method to enhance the performance of iterative learning control (ILC). We focus on robotic tasks dealing with adaptation to the unknown or partially known environment, where the robot has to learn the environment geometry in order to perform the desired task with the given reference forces and torques. The initial motion trajectories are obtained by kinesthetic teaching, whereas the required forces and torques are prescribed by the task. We are interested in incremental learning, which assures smooth and safe operation, aiming at handling of delicate, fragile objects, such as objects made of glass. In order to achieve these goals we propose a new adaptive ILC scheme, where the adaptation is supervised by reinforcement learning. We also show how to apply ILC to orientational motion, taking into account the curved geometry of SO(3). The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified on a bi-manual glass wiping task.
Outdoor obstacle avoidance based on hybrid visual stereo SLAM for an autonomous quadrotor MAV
2017-09-01

We address the problem of on-line volumetric map creation of unknown environments and planning of safe trajectories. The sensor used for this purpose is a stereo camera. Our system is designed to work in GPS denied areas. We design a keyframe based hybrid SLAM algorithm which combines feature-based stereo SLAM and direct stereo SLAM. We use it to grow the map while keeping track of the camera pose in the map. The SLAM system builds a sparse map. For the path planning we build a dense volumetric map by computing dense stereo matching at keyframes and inserting the point clouds in an Octomap. The computed disparity maps are reused on the direct tracking refinement step of our hybrid SLAM. Safe trajectories are then estimated using the RRT* algorithm in the SE(3) state space. In our experiments, we show that we can map large environments with hundreds of keyframes. We also conducted autonomous outdoor flights using a quadcopter to validate our approach for obstacle avoidance.
Isolation of Novel MAMP‐like Activities and Identification of Cognate Pattern Recognition Receptors in Arabidopsis thaliana Using Next‐Generation Sequencing (NGS)–Based Mapping
2017-09-01

Abstract Activation of pattern‐triggered plant immunity requires recognition of microbe‐derived molecular patterns (MAMPs) by plant‐encoded pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). Many plant PRRs are found in selected plant genera only. Transfer of single PRRs or of cassettes expressing several PRRs (PRR stacking) across plant genus boundaries offers the potential to boost disease resistance by improving pathogen recognition features in economically important crop plants. The success of such an approach is most dependent on the availability of a large number of plant PRRs. Here, an efficient method for the identification of novel PRRs in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (hereafter, Arabidopsis for simplicity) is described. This method takes advantage of natural variation in microbial pattern sensitivity among hundreds of Arabidopsis accessions currently available. Identification of pattern‐sensitive as well as pattern‐insensitive accessions facilitates next‐generation sequencing (NGS)–assisted mapping of PRRs. This approach is potentially applicable to the identification of PRRs that recognize patterns of any chemical nature. © 2017 by John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc.
User-interface for teleoperation with mixed-signal haptic feedback
2017-09-01

Haptic feedback for minimally invasive surgery is a widely debated topic, especially force sensors for this kind of application are thoroughly researched. The current state-of-the-art includes several realization options, but none of them are suitable to be integrated in small diameter instruments. In this work, we present a new approach for the generation of haptic feedback by using two separate feedback mechanisms for spatial kinesthetic and unidirectional tactile feedback in a teleoperation system with a parallel kinematic slave robot and the design of the corresponding user interfaces. Kinesthetic forces are measured with proximal sensors in the robot kinematic and displayed with a delta-type kinematic mechanism. Tactile signals are acquired with an acceleration sensor placed closely at the tip of the robot manipulator and conveyed open-loop by a vibrating cylinder to the user's palm. Kinesthetic forces up to 15 N can be displayed up to a frequency of 50 Hz. The tactile interface displays accelerations up to 15m/s for frequencies from 50 Hz to 1000 Hz. The combination of the two interfaces allows the display of high-fidelity haptic feedback with greatly reduced requirements on the interface components.
Expression of KIR2DS1 does not significantly contribute to NK cell cytotoxicity in HLA-C1/C2 heterozygous haplotype B donors
2017-09-01

Abstract NK cells are functionally controlled by the killer immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) family that comprises inhibitory (iKIR) and activating (aKIR) members. Genetic association studies suggest that donors expressing aKIRs next to iKIRs will be superior donors in the setting of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation of patients with leukemia. However, contrary evidence states that aKIR expression may be irrelevant or even detrimental. Using a complex methodology incorporating KIR-Q-PCR, double fluorescence and viSNE analysis, we characterized subset distribution patterns and functionality in haplotype A donors which lack aKIRs and haplotype B donors that express a variety of B-specific genes. Here, we show that the alloreactive KIR2DS1+ NK cell subset in HLA-C1/C2 donors is highly responsive towards C2-expressing targets but quantitatively small and as such does not significantly contribute to cytotoxicity. Thus, we fail to find a direct link between haplotype allocation status and NK cell cytotoxicity at least in HLA-C1/C2 heterozygous donors.
The emergence of the Ladakhi inferential and experiential markers from a marker for admirativity (non-commitment): the case ofḥdugandsnaŋ
2017-09-01

Abstract The Ladakhi inferential markers /-suk/ ~ /-sok/ and /-tok/ ~ /-tuk/ can be shown to be related to the Old and Classical Tibetan verb ḥdug , originally a lexical verb with the meaning ‘stay, live, sit’. The development of ḥdug into auxiliaries for the opposite evidential values of external direct knowledge (or immediate sense perception) and of indirect knowledge (or inferences) in various modern Tibetic dialects has a parallel in the development of the Classical Tibetan verb snaŋ , originally ‘shine, appear’ into auxiliaries for both direct and indirect knowledge in some Balti and Ladakhi varieties. This parallel development indicates that the dominant factor underlying the choice of the auxiliaries is not a question of sources of knowledge and access channels (evidentiality) but a speaker’s attitude of commitment or non-commitment (admirativity)
Direct dark matter search with the CRESST-III experiment - status and perspectives
2017-09-01

The CRESST-III experiment, located in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory&#13;\\n(LNGS, Italy), aims at the direct detection of dark matter (DM) particles. Scintillating CaWO4&#13;\\ncrystals operated as cryogenic detectors are used as target material for DM-nucleus scattering.&#13;\\nThe simultaneous measurement of the phonon signal from the CaWO4 crystal and of the emitted&#13;\\nscintillation light in a separate cryogenic light detector is used to discriminate backgrounds from&#13;\\na possible dark matter signal. The experiment aims to significantly improve the sensitivity for&#13;\\nlow-mass ( 5-10 GeV/c2) DM particles by using optimized detector modules with a nuclear&#13;\\nrecoil-energy threshold 100 eV. The current status of the experiment as well as projections&#13;\\nof the sensitivity for spin-independent DM-nucleon scattering will be presented.
Performative iconicity
2017-09-01

From the beginning of Shakespeare’s dramatic long poem The Rape of Lucrece , Tarquin and Lucrece are presented as antagonists: lust-breathed Tarquin ( 3 ) vs. chaste Lucrece ( 7 ). This opposition also connects them with one another, and the key to their relationship lies in a statement that is uttered late in the poem, when Lucrece is looking at the Troy painting and says: “These contraries such unity do hold” (1558). The characterisation of both Tarquin and Lucrece on the level of content is mirrored on the level of language. For example, when Tarquin in the second line of the epyllion is described to be “borne by the trustless wings of false desire”, the apparent parallelism (adjective followed by a noun) in fact contains an antagonistic structure. Throughout the poem, the inner debate that characterises him before the rape of Lucrece is presented in terms of self-division on the level of content; linguistically, this is rendered by means of chiasmus. In the following, I will show that the relations of synonymy and parallelism as well as of chiasmus and oxymoron can be found throughout the poem, and that they are part of the larger setup of the text in that they imitate the content iconically , i.e. form and meaning correspond to each other. They also become performative as the language enacts the content. Parallelism and chiasmus are part of the semiotic setup and of the dramatic structure of the poem, and they go beyond mere poetic form and content (in the sense of action) as they are also part of the complex technique of character representation.
Haas' theorem revisited
2017-09-01

Haas' theorem describes all partchworkings of a given non-singular plane tropical curve giving rise to a maximal real algebraic curve. The space of such patchworkings is naturally a linear subspace of the -vector space generated by the bounded edges of , and whose origin is the Harnack patchworking. The aim of this note is to provide an interpretation of affine subspaces of parallel to . To this purpose, we work in the setting of abstract graphs rather than plane tropical curves. We introduce a topological surface above a trivalent graph , and consider a suitable affine space of real structures on compatible with . We characterise as the vector subspace of whose associated involutions induce the same action on . We then deduce from this statement another proof of Haas' original result. Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures
THE STOREROOM AS PROMISE: The Discovery of the Ethnological Museum Depot as an Exhibition Method in the 1970s
2017-09-01

Abstract This article concerns an exhibition format that I call the depot exhibition. These exhibitions are museum presentations that turn the depot into their subject matter. (“Visible storage” is the most well‐known variant.) While this approach to museum exhibition has a current appeal, especially in German‐speaking countries, it is not new. Its appearance in North America in the 1970s was connected with postcolonial debates and coincided with a controversial sociopolitical discourse in which the concept of the depot promised to solve the central problems of a particular type of museum: the ethnological museum. I argue that the concept of the depot exhibition had an effect on other types of museums because these kinds of exhibitions made promises that concerned museums in general. The concept is at the root of an influential reflexive museum praxis that is distinguished by self‐criticism and the relinquishment of authority from the museum to visitors.
Kinematic model based visual odometry for differential drive vehicles
2017-09-01

This work presents KMVO, a ground plane based visual odometry that utilizes the vehicle's kinematic model to improve accuracy and robustness. Instead of solving a generic image alignment problem, the motion parameters of a differential drive vehicle can be directly estimated from RGB- D image data. In addition, a method for outlier rejection is presented that can deal with large percentages of outliers. The system is designed to run in real time on a single thread of a mobile CPU. The results of the proposed method are compared to other publicly available visual odometry and SLAM methods on a set of nine real world image sequences of different indoor environments.
Das Meer beschreiben: Schriftlichkeitspraktiken der Masters der Royal Navy im langen 18. Jahrhundert
2017-09-01

Abstract Describing the Seas: Writing Practices of the Masters of the Royal Navy in the Long Eighteenth Century . The masters (that is, navigating officers) of the Royal Navy in the long eighteenth century are usually associated more with practical knowledge and experience than with an involvement with learned or ‚book‘ knowledge. However, their professional practices were based to a high degree on the usage and production of texts. This article examines how literary practices shaped the production of hydrographic knowledge by masters, in how far these practices resembled those of learned culture at the time, and how masters employed them to gain access to the scientific community.
Anti-inflammatory role of myeloid-derived suppressor cells in asthma in vivo
2017-09-01

<b>Background:</b> Asthma is a chronic lung inflammatory disease driven by over-activation of T helper 2 (Th2) cells. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are innate immune cells characterized by their potential to suppress T-cell response. objective: To characterize MDSCs accumulation and function in allergic asthma in vivo. <b>Methods:</b> Allergic airway inflammation was induced in mice by ovalbumin (OVA) and house dust mite (HDM) challenge. MDSC accumulation was quantified by flow cytometry. To assess the functional in vivo impact, MDSCs were adoptively transferred intravenously (IV) or intratracheally (IT). <b>Results:</b> Our studies demonstrate that neutrophilic MDSCs (PMN-MDSCs) are decreased in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and lungs of allergic airway inflammation in vivo. IV- or IT-transferred PMN-MDSCs were recruited to the lungs and BALF of asthmatic mice and suppressed the infiltration and local activity of Th2 and Th17 inflammatory cells. Adoptively transferred PMN-MDSCs reduced PAS-positive cells, pulmonary histopathological inflammatory scores and ameliorated airway hyperresponsiveness in asthmatic mice. Infiltration of inflammatory cells and pro-inflammatory cytokines released in BALF as well as expression of lung inflammatory transcription factors was decreased after PMN-MDSCs transfer. Arginase1, nitric oxide synthase 2, Cyclooxygenase 2 and A20 pathway were involved in the anti-inflammatory role of MDSCs in asthmatic mice. <b>Conclusions:</b> Collectively, our results demonstrate that MDSCs suppress Th2-dominant inflammation and improve lung function in asthmatic mice in vivo. Adoptive cellular transfer of MDSCs may represent an attractive therapeutic strategy for allergic asthma.
Solar neutrino detectors as sterile neutrino hunters
2017-09-01

The large size and the very low radioactive background of solar neutrino detectors such as Borexino at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy offer a unique opportunity to probe the existence of neutrino oscillations into new sterile components by means of carefully designed and well calibrated anti-neutrino and neutrino artificial sources. In this paper we briefly summarise the key elements of the SOX experiment, a program for the search of sterile neutrinos (and other short distance effects) by means of a144Ce-144Pr anti-neutrino source and, possibly in the medium term future, with a51Cr neutrino source.
Commutative hypergroups associated with a hyperfield
2017-09-01

Let [Formula: see text] be a commutative hypergroup and [Formula: see text] a discrete commutative hypergroup. In this paper we introduce a commutative hypergroup [Formula: see text] associated with a hyperfield [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] based on [Formula: see text]. Moreover, for the hyperfield [Formula: see text] of a compact commutative hypergroup [Formula: see text] of strong type based on a discrete commutative hypergroup [Formula: see text] of strong type, we introduce the dual hyperfield [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] based on [Formula: see text] and show that [Formula: see text].
The iconicity of literary analysis
2017-09-01

In this paper, we propose that the iconicity of Logical Form can help us evaluate the adequateness of an interpretation. We consider the relationship between iconicity, literary texts, formal semantic analysis and interpretation. With the help of an example taken from the poem “This was a Poet –” (Fr446, J448) by Emily Dickinson, we explain in which way a formal semantic analysis is iconic of the meaning of a text. We then compare this iconic analysis to other interpretative utterances about literary texts, in particular to statements that can be considered allegories of the text meaning. With this comparison we come to the conclusion that a formal semantic analysis does not restrict interpretation, but serves as guidance towards finding out about all relevant and complex structures that should also be followed in an interpretation. A linguistic analysis is thus to be seen as a measure to test the adequacy of interpretations.
Background simulations for the ECHo experiment
2017-09-01

ECHo-1K is an experiment designed to measure the electron neutrino mass from the spectrum of the electron capture on 163Ho using an array of 100 magnetic micro calorimeters each loaded with 10 Bq of 163Ho. In this article, we present the results of our activities in the investigation of possible backgrounds to the electron capture spectrum using GEANT4 based Monte-Carlo simulations of the sources 166mHo, 40K, 210Pb and the 238U decay chain. For standard contaminations of the used materials, the contribution of the investigated sources is well below the background induced by the pile-up of 163Ho decays. Nonetheless, care has to be taken to avoid accidental contamination during the manufacturing and storage of the detectors, since a few mBq in total on the surface of all 100 detectors of either 40K (∼ 12 mBq) from residual potassium, or 210Pb (∼ 4 mBq) from radon emanation yield a background as large as the expected signal.