Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preference-Aware View Recommendation System for Cameras Based on Bag of Aesthetics-Preserving Features

In this paper, the framework for a real-time view recommendation system is proposed. The proposed system comprises two parts: offline aesthetic modeling stage and efficient online aesthetic view finding process. A preference-aware aesthetic model is proposed to suggest views according to varied userfavorite photographic styles, where a bottom-up approach is developed to construct an aesthetic feature library with bag-ofaesthetics-preserving features instead of top-down methods that implement the heuristic guidelines (rule-specific features) listed in photography literatures, which is employed in previous works. The proposed model can cover both implicit and explicit aesthetic features and can adapt to users’ preferences with a learning process. In the second part, the learned model is employed in a view finder to help the user to locate the most aesthetic view while taking a photograph. The experimental results show that the proposed features in the library (92.06% in accuracy) outperform the state-of-the-art rule-specific features (83.63% in accuracy) significantly in the photo aesthetic quality classification task, and the rule-specific features are also proved to be encompassed by the proposed features. Meanwhile, it is observed from experiments that the features extracted for contrast information are more effective than those for absolute information, which is consistent with the properties of human visual systems. Furthermore, the user studies for the view recommendation task confirm that the suggested views are consistent with users’ preferences (81.25% agreements).
Specificity of Charge-carrying Residues in the Voltage Sensor of Potassium Channels

Positively charged voltage sensors of sodium and potassium channels are driven outward through the membrane's electric field upon depolarization. This movement is coupled to channel opening. A recent model based on studies of the KvAP channel proposes that the positively charged voltage sensor, christened the “voltage-sensor paddle”, is a peripheral domain that shuttles its charged cargo through membrane lipid like a hydrophobic cation. We tested this idea by attaching charged adducts to cysteines introduced into the putative voltage-sensor paddle of Shaker potassium channels and measuring fractional changes in the total gating charge from gating currents. The only residues capable of translocating attached charges through the membrane-electric field are those that serve this function in the native channel. This remarkable specificity indicates that charge movement involves highly specialized interactions between the voltage sensor and other regions of the protein, a mechanism inconsistent with the paddle model.
Induction of Coproporphyrinogen Oxidase inChlamydomonas Chloroplasts Occurs via Transcriptional Regulation of Cpx1 Mediated by Copper Response Elements and Increased Translation from a Copper Deficiency-specific Form of the Transcript*

Coproporphyrinogen III oxidase, encoded by a single nuclear gene in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, produces three distinct transcripts. One of these transcripts is greatly induced in copper-deficient cells by transcriptional activation, whereas the other forms are copper-insensitive. The induced form of the transcript was expressed coordinately with the cytochromec 6-encoding (Cyc6) gene, which is known to be transcriptionally regulated in copper-deficient cells. The sequence GTAC, which forms the core of a copper response element associated with the Cyc6 gene, is also essential for induction of the Cpx1 gene, suggesting that both are targets of the same signal transduction pathway. The constitutive and induced Cpx1 transcripts have the same half-lives in vivo, and all encode the same polypeptide with a chloroplast-targeting transit sequence, but the shortest one representing the induced form is a 2–4-fold better template for translation than are either of the constitutive forms. The enzyme remains localized to a soluble compartment in the chloroplast even in induced cells, and its abundance is not affected when the tetrapyrrole pathway is manipulated either genetically or by gabaculine treatment.
Dynamic Neural Network Modelling of Somatosensory Pathways Relating to Feedback Control of Anaesthesia

The whole question of consciousness, awareness and depth of anaesthesia is both timely, little understood and deeply challenging. Models of the underlying neural pathway mechanisms/dynamics are necessary for understanding the interactions involved and their structure and function. A neuronal network of the somatosensory pathways is proposed in this paper based on experimental information and physiological investigation into anaesthesia. Existing mathematical neuronal models from the literature have been modified and then employed to describe the dynamics of the proposed pathway network. Effects of anaesthetic agents on the cortex were simulated in the model which describes the evoked cortical responses. The elicited neural model has been further used to implement model-based predictive control of anaesthesia in rats.
Why Is Their Picture on the Wedding Page?

Abstract On August 17, 2003, two women placed a union announcement in the Grand Forks Herald and became the first same-sex couple in North Dakota to do so (Lee, 2003). This announcement generated a flood of letters, both pro and con, that appeared in on the editorial page in the Herald over the next several weeks. In this exploratory study, I conduct a content analysis of those letters. Through this analysis, the three primary thematic categories emerged upon which writers based their arguments. They include those grounded in issues of tolerance, arguments based on Christian values and Scripture and those that focused on normalization. Additionally, the letters reveal something about rural versus urban sensibilities in that relatively more urban Grand Forks residents were less likely to write negative letters than their counterparts from neighboring small towns. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings and suggestions for future research.
Unraveling Patterns of Site-to-Site Synonymous Rates Variation and Associated Gene Properties of Protein Domains and Families

In protein-coding genes, synonymous mutations are often thought not to affect fitness and therefore are not subject to natural selection. Yet increasingly, cases of non-neutral evolution at certain synonymous sites were reported over the last decade. To evaluate the extent and the nature of site-specific selection on synonymous codons, we computed the site-to-site synonymous rate variation (SRV) and identified gene properties that make SRV more likely in a large database of protein-coding gene families and protein domains. To our knowledge, this is the first study that explores the determinants and patterns of the SRV in real data. We show that the SRV is widespread in the evolution of protein-coding sequences, putting in doubt the validity of the synonymous rate as a standard neutral proxy. While protein domains rarely undergo adaptive evolution, the SRV appears to play important role in optimizing the domain function at the level of DNA. In contrast, protein families are more likely to evolve by positive selection, but are less likely to exhibit SRV. Stronger SRV was detected in genes with stronger codon bias and tRNA reusage, those coding for proteins with larger number of interactions or forming larger number of structures, located in intracellular components and those involved in typically conserved complex processes and functions. Genes with extreme SRV show higher expression levels in nearly all tissues. This indicates that codon bias in a gene, which often correlates with gene expression, may often be a site-specific phenomenon regulating the speed of translation along the sequence, consistent with the co-translational folding hypothesis. Strikingly, genes with SRV were strongly overrepresented for metabolic pathways and those associated with several genetic diseases, particularly cancers and diabetes.
Characterizing Croatian Wheat Germplasm Diversity and Structure in a European Context by DArT Markers

Narrowing the genetic base available for future genetic progress is a major concern to plant breeders. In order to avoid this, strategies to characterize and protect genetic diversity in regional breeding pools are required. In this study, 89 winter wheat cultivars released in Croatia between 1936 and 2006 were genotyped using 1,229 DArT (diversity array technology) markers to assess the diversity and population structure. In order to place Croatian breeding pool (CBP) in a European context, Croatian wheat cultivars were compared to 523 European cultivars from seven countries using a total of 166 common DArT markers. The results show higher genetic diversity in the wheat breeding pool from Central Europe (CE) as compared to that from Northern and Western European (NWE) countries. The most of the genetic diversity was attributable to the differences among cultivars within countries. When the geographical criterion (CE vs. NWE) was applied, highly significant difference between regions was obtained that accounted for 16.19% of the total variance, revealing that the CBP represents genetic variation not currently captured in elite European wheat. The current study emphasizes the important contribution made by plant breeders to maintaining wheat genetic diversity and suggests that regional breeding is essential to the maintenance of this diversity. The usefulness of open-access wheat datasets is also highlighted.
Performance Analysis of AES and TwoFish Encryption Schemes

The two main characteristics of a good encryption algorithm are: Security and Speed. Usually security algorithms have to be embedded in a variety of applications like e-banking, online shopping, mails etc. So they should be fast as well as secure in different environments. In this paper, we do security v/s performance analysis of two algorithms Two fish and AES. First, we will discuss security issues of both algorithms by considering their safety factor. Then we study encryption speed of both algorithms by encrypting different type of data (text, image, audio) and analyze their performance in terms of throughput of every algorithm on different size of RAMs. The results show the relationship between performance of algorithms and size of RAM and type of data.
Limited Discrepancy Search

Many problems of practical interest can be solved using tree search methods because carefully tuned successor ordering heuristics guide the search toward regions of the space that are likely to contain solutions. For some problems, the heuristics often lead directly to a solution— but not always. Limited discrepancy search addresses the problem of what to do when the heuristics fail. Our intuition is that a failing heuristic might well have succeeded if it were not for a small number of "wrong turns" along the way. For a binary tree of height d, there are only d ways the heuristic could make a single wrong turn, and only d(d-i)/2 ways it could make two. A small number of wrong turns can be overcome by systematically searching all paths that differ from the heuristic path in at most a small number of decision points, or "discrepancies. " Limited discrepancy search is a backtracking algorithm that searches the nodes of the tree in increasing order of such discrepancies. We show formally and experimentally that limited discrepancy search can be expected to outper-form existing approaches. 1 Introduction In practice, many search problems have spaces that are too large to search exhaustively. One can often find solutions while searching only a small fraction of the space by relying on carefully tuned heuristics to guide the search toward regions of the space that are likely to contain solutions. For many problems, heuristics can lead directly to a solution—most of the time. In this paper, we consider what to do when the heuristics fail. We will focus our attention on procedures for tree search. Our objective is simple: For search problems with heuristically ordered successors, we will develop a search procedure that is more likely to find a solution in any given time limit than existing methods such as chronological backtracking and iterative sampling [Lan-gley, 1992]. The outline of this paper is as follows: In the next section, we discuss existing algorithms. Limited discrepancy search (LDS) is introduced in Section 3 and compared to existing techniques in Section 4. We discuss variations of LDS that we believe will be useful for solving realistic problems in Section 5. We conclude by presenting our experimental results in Section 6. 2 Existing Strategies Consider a tree search problem for which the successor ordering heuristic is so good that it almost always leads directly to a solution. Such problems are common both …
Mobile User Needs: Efficient Transactions

Success or failure of any mgovernment mobile service project is decided by the effectiveness of the service itself. This paper is one of a series of four papers investigating mobile user needs in a current research project that endeavours to measure the effectiveness of mgovernment services. In order to achieve as precise a measurement as possible, mobile services are analysed from the perspective of the mgovernment users. Mobile-user-centric mgovernment makes satisfying citizen and business needs the centrepiece in its planning so as to create communities of networked users, not just portals, for individual users. Hence, this paper analyses part of a real-world opinion survey, extracting facts that are used as metrics to measure the effectiveness of existing or proposed mservices.
Fiber-optic-based Corrosion Sensor using OTDR

We propose and demonstrate for the first time an optical sensor for the corrosion process in metal (Aluminum) using the optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) technique. Our proposed sensor system consists of several sensor heads connected to a commercial OTDR by a single-mode optical fiber and fiber couplers. Each sensor head consists of an optical fiber having the cleaved end coated with an aluminum film. For laboratory measurements the corrosion action was simulated by controlled etching of the Al film on the sensor head. The OTDR detects the light reflected by each sensor head. As the aluminum is etched the reflection decreases. Our proposed sensor system is multipoint and can detect the corrosion rate for each head several kilometers away from the OTDR. This system may have applications in harsh environments such as in deepwater oil wells, for the evaluation of the corrosion process in the inner wall of the casing pipes.
Role of (Drug) Transporters in Imaging in Health and Disease

This report is the summary of presentations at the symposium sponsored by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, April 26–30, at Experimental Biology 2014 in San Diego, CA. The presentations focused on the role of transporters in imaging in health and disease and on assessing transporter function in vivo. Imaging is an important diagnostic tool in clinics and is a novel tool for in vivo visualization of transporter function. Many imaging substrates and endogenous markers for organ function are organic anions. In this symposium, the bile salt transporter sodium taurocholate cotransporting polypeptide and the liver organic anion transporting polypeptides (OATPs) as well as the renal organic anion transporters (OATs) were addressed in detail; e.g., OATPs mediate transport of contrast agents used for magnetic resonance imaging of the liver or transport agents used for hepatobiliary scintigraphy, and OATs transport substances used in renography. In addition, the symposium also focused on the multidrug-resistance transporter 1 (MDR1 or P-gp), which is the most important gatekeeper in epithelial or endothelial barriers for preventing entry of potentially harmful substances into organs. Novel substrates suitable for positron emission tomography (PET) allow the study of such transporters at the blood-brain barrier or while they are mediating uptake of drugs into hepatocytes, and, importantly, PET tracers also now allow renography. Finally, quantitative data on transporter expression in human organs allow the development of improved physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models for drug disposition. Hence, the combined efforts using novel substrates for in vivo visualization of transporters and quantification of transporters will lead to a deeper understanding of transporter function in disease and allow development of novel PBPK models for disease states.
Security analysis of blowfish algorithm

Blowfish algorithm (BA) is a symmetric block cipher with a 64-bit block size and variable key lengths from 32 bits up to a maximum of 448 bits. In order to measure the degree of security of blowfish algorithm, some cryptographic tests must be applied such as randomness test, avalanche criteria and correlation coefficient. In this paper we attempt to analyze the security of blowfish using avalanche criteria and correlation coefficient. We analyzed the randomness of the Blowfish output in an earlier paper titled “Randomness Analysis on Blowfish Block Cipher using ECB and CBC Modes”. The results obtained from the analysis of correlation coefficient showed that Blowfish algorithm gives a good nonlinear relation between plaintext and ciphertext while the results of avalanche effect indicate that the algorithm presents good avalanche effect from the second round. C++ is used in the implementation of the blowfish algorithm; MATLAB programming (Mathworks, R., 2012a) is used in the implementation of avalanche effect and correlation coefficient.
Transient Receptor Potential Channel M4 and M5 in Magnocellular Cells in Rat Supraoptic and Paraventricular Nuclei

The neurohypophysial hormones, vasopressin (VP) and oxytocin (OT), are synthesised by magnocellular cells in the supraoptic nucleus (SON) and the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus. The release of VP into the general circulation from the neurohypophysis increases during hyperosmolality, hypotension and hypovolaemia. VP neurones increase hormone release by increasing their firing rate as a result of adopting a phasic bursting. Depolarising after potentials (DAPs) following a series of action potentials are considered to be involved in the generation of the phasic bursts by summating to plateau potentials. We recently discovered a fast DAP (fDAP) in addition to the slower DAP characterised previously. Almost all VP neurones expressed the fDAP, whereas only 16% of OT neurones had this property, which implicates the involvement of fDAP in the generation of the firing patterns in VP neurones. Our findings obtained from electrophysiological experiments suggested that the ionic current underlying the fDAP is mediated by those of two closely‐related Ca2+‐activated cation channels: the melastatin‐related subfamily of transient receptor potential channels, TRPM4 and TRPM5. In the present study, double/triple immunofluorescence microscopy and reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction techniques were employed to evaluate whether TRPM4 and TRPM5 are specifically located in VP neurones. Using specific antibodies against these channels, TRPM5 immunoreactivity was found almost exclusively in VP neurones, but not in OT neurones in both the SON and PVN. The most prominent TRPM5 immunoreactivity was in the dendrites of VP neurones. By contrast, most TRPM4 immunoreactivity occurred in cell bodies of both VP and OT neurones. TRPM4 and TRPM5 mRNA were both found in a cDNA library derived from SON punches. These results indictate the possible involvement of TRPM5 in the generation of the fDAP, and these channels may play an important role in determining the distinct firing properties of VP neurones in the SON.
Evaluation of Bias Correction Method for Satellite-Based Rainfall Data

With the advances in remote sensing technology, satellite-based rainfall estimates are gaining attraction in the field of hydrology, particularly in rainfall-runoff modeling. Since estimates are affected by errors correction is required. In this study, we tested the high resolution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) morphing technique (CMORPH) satellite rainfall product (CMORPH) in the Gilgel Abbey catchment, Ethiopia. CMORPH data at 8 km-30 min resolution is aggregated to daily to match in-situ observations for the period 2003–2010. Study objectives are to assess bias of the satellite estimates, to identify optimum window size for application of bias correction and to test effectiveness of bias correction. Bias correction factors are calculated for moving window (MW) sizes and for sequential windows (SW’s) of 3, 5, 7, 9, …, 31 days with the aim to assess error distribution between the in-situ observations and CMORPH estimates. We tested forward, central and backward window (FW, CW and BW) schemes to assess the effect of time integration on accumulated rainfall. Accuracy of cumulative rainfall depth is assessed by Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE). To systematically correct all CMORPH estimates, station based bias factors are spatially interpolated to yield a bias factor map. Reliability of interpolation is assessed by cross validation. The uncorrected CMORPH rainfall images are multiplied by the interpolated bias map to result in bias corrected CMORPH estimates. Findings are evaluated by RMSE, correlation coefficient (r) and standard deviation (SD). Results showed existence of bias in the CMORPH rainfall. It is found that the 7 days SW approach performs best for bias correction of CMORPH rainfall. The outcome of this study showed the efficiency of our bias correction approach.
Single-track circuit codes

Single-track circuit codes (STTCs) are circuit codes with codewords of length n such that all the n tracks which correspond to the n distinct coordinates of the codewords are cyclic shifts of the first track. These codes simultaneously generalize single-track Gray codes and ordinary circuit codes. They are useful in angular quantization applications in which error detecting and/or correcting capabilities are needed. A parameter k, called the spread of the code, measures the strength of this error control capability. We consider the existence of STCCs for small lengths n/spl les/17 and spreads k/spl les/6, constructing some optimal and many good examples. We then give a general construction method for STCCs which makes use of ordinary circuit codes. We use this construction to construct examples of codes with 360 and 1000 codewords which are of practical importance. We also use the construction to prove a general result on the existence of STCCs for general spreads.
Protein Phosphatase Magnesium Dependent 1A (PPM1A) Plays a Role in the Differentiation and Survival Processes of Nerve Cells

The serine/threonine phosphatase type 2C (PPM1A) has a broad range of substrates, and its role in regulating stress response is well established. We have investigated the involvement of PPM1A in the survival and differentiation processes of PC6-3 cells, a subclone of the PC12 cell line. This cell line can differentiate into neuron like cells upon exposure to nerve growth factor (NGF). Overexpression of PPM1A in naive PC6-3 cells caused cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase followed by apoptosis. Interestingly, PPM1A overexpression did not affect fully differentiated cells. Using PPM1A overexpressing cells and PPM1A knockdown cells, we show that this phosphatase affects NGF signaling in PC6-3 cells and is engaged in neurite outgrowth. In addition, the ablation of PPM1A interferes with NGF-induced growth arrest during differentiation of PC6-3 cells.