Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MODEL BASED CONTROL OF WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS

In the contribution a (non-exhaustive) overview is given on the use of mathematical models in control systems of wastewater treatment plants. As a starting point, the four building blocks of any controlled process are used, 1) the process itself, 2) the actuators that allow manipulation of the process, 3) the control algorithm that calculates a proper action for disturbance rejection or setpoint tracking and 4) the measurement devices that provide information on the important output variables and disturbances. The use of models in controller design and tuning is reviewed. Besides traditional feedback control via PID, optimal control schemes and MIMO control systems will be covered briefly. Attention is drawn to the usefulness of feedforward control strategies to compensate for the effect of predictable disturbances. The impact of the time-varying and nonlinear nature of bioprocesses on the choice and design of controllers is discussed subsequently. Adaptive and non-linear control approaches that deal with this are explained. Because measurements of disturbances and output variables form an integral part of the control loop, and a lack of adequate instrumentation is still felt as the main bottleneck for the introduction of control systems, the potential solution provided by incorporation of mathematical models in monitoring systems is presented. As a first application of models in this control system input part, the concept of software sensors will be described and illustrated with practical applications. First, the construction of state observers around process models will be introduced. Next, it will be shown how on-line estimates of model parameters can be obtained. Finally, the problem of on-line model selection will be addressed. As software sensors aim at extracting the utmost information from the scarce data, the problem of the richness of information in the data will be shortly introduced and some possible solutions will be proposed. The manner in which rich data can be obtained by excitation of the process variables using advanced control schemes or by performing so-called "In-Sensor-Experiments" will be illustrated using actual data obtained at pilotand full-scale wastewater treatment plants. A second use of mathematical models to provide data to the control algorithm of a treatment plant is the prediction of disturbances on the one hand and prediction of the allowable discharge to the receiving water. For instance, the effect of rain events, the impact of return liquors from sludge treatment or the optimal batch scheduling at production facilities, may be modelled and the model may then be used to predict future influent flows and composition over a certain time horizon. Similarly, incorporating the current and future receiving water quality dynamics in the control strategy receives increasing attention. It will be illustrated using a test case of a large city how mathematical models can be useful to predict the effluent quality required during the forthcoming period to guarantee the receiving water’s quality.
WebPersonalizer: A Server-Side Recommender System Based on Web Usage Mining

Existing approaches to Web personalization often rely heavily on explicit and subjective user input resulting in static profiles which are prone to biases. In this paper we present a usagebased Web personalization system, called WebPersonalizer, drawing heavily upon Web mining techniques, making the personalization process automatic, and dynamic. The system architecture separates the offline tasks of data preparation and Web usage mining, and the online recommendation engine. At the heart of the system is a technique based on clustering of user transactions which allows for the discovery of effective aggregate usage profiles. We discuss how the discovered aggregate profiles can be used in conjunction with the current status of an ongoing Web activity to perform real-time personalization. The Web usage mining approach allows a site to provide effective personalization using anonymous and implicit user behavioral patterns without relying on subjective or personally identifying user input.
Natural Variation in the ATPS1 Isoform of ATP Sulfurylase Contributes to the Control of Sulfate Levels in Arabidopsis1[W]

Variation in mRNA levels for a single isoform of ATP sulfurylase in Arabidopsis affects the total enzyme activity and sulfate assimilation and causes a variation in foliar sulfate levels. Sulfur is an essential macronutrient for all living organisms. Plants take up inorganic sulfate from the soil, reduce it, and assimilate it into bioorganic compounds, but part of this sulfate is stored in the vacuoles. In our first attempt to identify genes involved in the control of sulfate content in the leaves, we reported that a quantitative trait locus (QTL) for sulfate content in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) was underlain by the APR2 isoform of the key enzyme of sulfate assimilation, adenosine 5′-phosphosulfate reductase. To increase the knowledge of the control of this trait, we cloned a second QTL from the same analysis. Surprisingly, the gene underlying this QTL encodes the ATPS1 isoform of the enzyme ATP sulfurylase, which precedes adenosine 5′-phosphosulfate reductase in the sulfate assimilation pathway. Plants with the Bay allele of ATPS1 accumulate lower steady-state levels of ATPS1 transcript than those with the Sha allele, which leads to lower enzyme activity and, ultimately, the accumulation of sulfate. Our results show that the transcript variation is controlled in cis. Examination of ATPS1 sequences of Bay-0 and Shahdara identified two deletions in the first intron and immediately downstream the gene in Bay-0 shared with multiple other Arabidopsis accessions. The average ATPS1 transcript levels are lower in these accessions than in those without the deletions, while sulfate levels are significantly higher. Thus, sulfate content in Arabidopsis is controlled by two genes encoding subsequent enzymes in the sulfate assimilation pathway but using different mechanisms, variation in amino acid sequence and variation in expression levels.
Meta-prediction of protein subcellular localization with reduced voting

Meta-prediction seeks to harness the combined strengths of multiple predicting programs with the hope of achieving predicting performance surpassing that of all existing predictors in a defined problem domain. We investigated meta-prediction for the four-compartment eukaryotic subcellular localization problem. We compiled an unbiased subcellular localization dataset of 1693 nuclear, cytoplasmic, mitochondrial and extracellular animal proteins from Swiss-Prot 50.2. Using this dataset, we assessed the predicting performance of 12 predictors from eight independent subcellular localization predicting programs: ELSPred, LOCtree, PLOC, Proteome Analyst, PSORT, PSORT II, SubLoc and WoLF PSORT. Gorodkin correlation coefficient (GCC) was one of the performance measures. Proteome Analyst is the best individual subcellular localization predictor tested in this four-compartment prediction problem, with GCC = 0.811. A reduced voting strategy eliminating six of the 12 predictors yields a meta-predictor (RAW-RAG-6) with GCC = 0.856, substantially better than all tested individual subcellular localization predictors (P = 8.2 × 10−6, Fisher's Z-transformation test). The improvement in performance persists when the meta-predictor is tested with data not used in its development. This and similar voting strategies, when properly applied, are expected to produce meta-predictors with outstanding performance in other life sciences problem domains.
Composite Fuzzy Control of Nonlinear Singularly Perturbed Systems

This paper presents the composite fuzzy control to stabilize the nonlinear singularly perturbed (NSP) systems with guaranteed Hinfin control performance. We use the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model to construct the singularly perturbed fuzzy (SPF) systems. The corresponding fuzzy slow and fast subsystems of the original SPF system are also obtained. At first, a set of common positive-define matrices and the controller gains are determined by the Lyapunov stability theorem and linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. Then, a sufficient condition is derived for the robust stabilization of NSP systems. The composite fuzzy control will stabilize the original NSP systems for all epsivisin(0,epsiv*) and the allowable perturbation bound epsiv* can be determined via some algebra inequalities. A practice example is adopted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme
Measurement of normal ocular volume by the use of computed tomography.

BACKGROUND Reduction or increase in ocular volume may indicate ocular pathology. Unfortunately the reference values utilized for ocular volume had been that of non-Africans. It is therefore pertinent to have a reference value of normal for Africans. OBJECTIVE To document the computer tomography (CT) scan measured ocular volume in Benin City, which may serve as a reference for African. MATERIALS AND METHODS The ocular volume of 200 consecutive 'normal' patients (400 eyes) who had CT scan done (using Somatom AR.T, CT scanner, and Siemens) was calculated. The dimensions were obtained at mid-ocular axial slices with maximum anterior-posterior dimension and maximum size of the eye lens. RESULT The mean (mean ± 2 SD) ocular volume for both eyes was 5282.23 mm 3 ± 1755.13 mm 3 (right eye was 5264.26 mm 3 ± 1781.12 mm 3 ; left eye was 5300.20 mm 3 ± 1771.57 mm 3 ). The mean ocular volumes was different for either eyeball and sex (in males the right eye was 5289.80 mm 3 , left eye was 5224.31 mm 3 ; while in females the right eye was 5338.18 mm 3 , left eye was 5240.79 mm 3 ). Ocular volume correlated with the patients' ages P = 0.006 for the right eye, P = 0.008 for the left eye and P = 0.006 for total eyeball volume. CONCLUSION Ocular volume correlated positively with the age of the patients to about 50 years after which some reduction was observed. We noted that males had slightly larger eyeballs in comparison to females, although not at statistical significant level.
Lipopolysaccharides of Rhizobium etliStrain G12 Act in Potato Roots as an Inducing Agent of Systemic Resistance to Infection by the Cyst Nematode Globodera pallida

ABSTRACT Recent studies have shown that living and heat-killed cells of the rhizobacterium Rhizobium etli strain G12 induce in potato roots systemic resistance to infection by the potato cyst nematodeGlobodera pallida. To better understand the mechanisms of induced resistance, we focused on identifying the inducing agent. Since heat-stable bacterial surface carbohydrates such as exopolysaccharides (EPS) and lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are essential for recognition in the symbiotic interaction betweenRhizobium and legumes, their role in the R. etli-potato interaction was studied. EPS and LPS were extracted from bacterial cultures, applied to potato roots, and tested for activity as an inducer of plant resistance to the plant-parasitic nematode. Whereas EPS did not affect G. pallida infection, LPS reduced nematode infection significantly in concentrations as low as 1 and 0.1 mg ml−1. Split-root experiments, guaranteeing a spatial separation of inducing agent and challenging pathogen, showed that soil treatments of one half of the root system with LPS resulted in a highly significant (up to 37%) systemic induced reduction ofG. pallida infection of potato roots in the other half. The results clearly showed that LPS of R. etli G12 act as the inducing agent of systemic resistance in potato roots.
Low-Penetrance Variants and Susceptibility to Sporadic Malignant Melanoma

Although malignant melanoma (MM) is mainly a sporadic disease, about 3 to 15% of the cases may show familial aggregation [1, 2]. The diagnosis of melanoma in different members of the same families does indeed suggest there is a genetically-based hereditary predisposi‐ tion in a significant percentage of the cases. However, this predisposition has proven to be genetically heterogeneous. Only two high-penetrance genes had been described so far: CDKN2A and CDK4 [1]. Yet mutations in these genes are found in only 30–40% of melano‐ ma kindreds, indicating the existence of additional genes involved in melanoma predisposi‐ tion [1]. Also, common low-penetrance alleles of the human pigmentation MC1R gene have been implicated in melanoma predisposition as well [3-13]. More recently, several other pig‐ mentation genes, such as ASIP, TYR, TYRP1, SLC45A2 and OCA2 have also emerged as be‐ ing potentially important in both normal human pigmentation variation and in melanoma susceptibility [14-17].
Neuroscience and legal responsibility

Chapter 1 Introduction Nicole A. Vincent Chapter 2 Criminal Common Law Compatibilism Stephen J. Morse Chapter 3 What can neurosciences say about responsibility? Taking the distinction between theoretical and practical reason seriously Anne Ruth Mackor Chapter 4 Irrationality, mental capacities and neuroscience Jillian Craigie and Alicia Coram Chapter 5 Skepticism Concerning Human Agency: Sciences of the Self vs. 'Voluntariness' in the Law Paul Sheldon Davies Chapter 6 The Implications of Heuristics and Biases Research on Moral and Legal Responsibility: A Case Against the Reasonable Person Standard Leora Dahan-Katz Chapter 7 Moral Responsibility and Consciousness: Two Challenges, One Solution Neil Levy Chapter 8 Translating Scientific Evidence into the Language of the 'Folk': Executive Function as Capacity-Responsibility Katrina L. Sifferd Chapter 9 Neuroscience, deviant appetites and the criminal law Colin Gavaghan Chapter 10 Is Psychopathy a Mental Disease? Thomas Nadelhoffer & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Chapter 11 Addiction, choice, and disease: How voluntary is voluntary action in addiction? Jeanette Kennett Chapter 12 How may neuroscience affect the way that the criminal courts deal with addicted offenders? Wayne Hall & Adrian Carter Chapter 13 Enhancing Responsibility Nicole A. Vincent Chapter 14 Guilty Minds in Washed Brains? Manipulation Cases, Excuses and the Normative Prerequisites of Liberal Legal Orders Christoph Bublitz & Reinhard Merkel
Network Flow Integer Programming to Track Elliptical Cells in Time-Lapse Sequences

We propose a novel approach to automatically tracking elliptical cell populations in time-lapse image sequences. Given an initial segmentation, we account for partial occlusions and overlaps by generating an over-complete set of competing detection hypotheses. To this end, we fit ellipses to portions of the initial regions and build a hierarchy of ellipses, which are then treated as cell candidates. We then select temporally consistent ones by solving to optimality an integer program with only one type of flow variables. This eliminates the need for heuristics to handle missed detections due to partial occlusions and complex morphology. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a range of challenging sequences consisting of clumped cells and show that it outperforms state-of-the-art techniques.
Parental motivation to change body weight in young overweight children

Abstract Objective To determine what factors are associated with parental motivation to change body weight in overweight children. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Dunedin, New Zealand. Subjects Two hundred and seventy-one children aged 4–8 years, recruited in primary and secondary care, were identified as overweight (BMI≥85th percentile) after screening. Parents completed questionnaires on demographics; motivation to improve diet, physical activity and weight; perception and concern about weight; parenting; and social desirability, prior to being informed that their child was overweight. Additional measures of physical activity (accelerometry), dietary intake and child behaviour (questionnaire) were obtained after feedback. Results Although all children were overweight, only 42 % of parents perceived their child to be so, with 36 % indicating any concern. Very few parents (n 25, 8 %) were actively trying to change the child’s weight. Greater motivation to change weight was observed for girls compared with boys (P=0·001), despite no sex difference in BMI Z-score (P=0·374). Motivation was not associated with most demographic variables, social desirability, dietary intake, parenting or child behaviour. Increased motivation to change the child’s weight was observed for heavier children (P<0·001), those who were less physically active (P=0·002) and more sedentary (P<0·001), and in parents who were more concerned about their child’s weight (P<0·001) or who used greater food restriction (P<0·001). Conclusions Low levels of parental motivation to change overweight in young children highlight the urgent need to determine how best to improve motivation to initiate change.
Opposite shell-coiling morphs of the tropical land snail Amphidromus martensi show no spatial-scale effects

Much can be learned about evolution from the identification of those factors maintaining polymorphisms in natural populations. One polymorphism that is only partially understood occurs in land snail species where individuals may coil clockwise or anti-clockwise. Theory shows that polymorphism in coiling direction should not persist yet species in several unrelated groups of land snails occur in stably polymorphic populations. A solution to this paradox may advance our understanding of evolution in general. Here, we examine two possible explanations: firstly, negative frequency-dependent selection due to predation; secondly, random fixation of alternative coiling morphs in tree-sized demes, giving the impression of wider polymorphism. We test these hypotheses by investigating morph-clustering of empty shells at two spatial scales in Amphidromus martensi populations in northern Borneo: the spatial structure of snail populations is relatively easy to estimate and this information may support one or other of the hypotheses under test. For the smaller scale we make novel use of a statistic previously used in botanical studies (the K-function statistic), which allows clustering of more than one morph to be simultaneously investigated at a range of scales and which we have corrected for anisotropy. We believe this method could be of more general use to ecologists. The results show that consistent clustering or separation of morphs cannot be clearly detected at any spatial scale and that predation is not frequency-dependent. Alternative explanations that do not require strong spatial structuring of the population may be needed, for instance ones involving a mechanism of selection actively maintaining the polymorphism.
Inverse Agonist Activity of Selected Ligands of the Cysteinyl-Leukotriene Receptor 1

Cysteinyl leukotrienes (CysLTs) are associated with several inflammatory processes, including asthma. Due to this association, considerable effort has been invested in the development of antagonists to the CysLT receptors (CysLT1R). Many of these molecules have been shown to specifically interact with CysLT1R, but little is known about their impact on the conformation of the receptor and its activity. We were especially interested in possible inverse agonist activity of the antagonists. Using a constitutively active mutant (N106A) of the human CysLT1R and the wild-type (WT) receptor coexpressed with the Gαq subunit of the trimeric G protein, we were able to address this issue with ligands commonly used in therapy. We demonstrated that some of these molecules are inverse agonists, whereas others act as partial agonists. In cells expressing the CysLT1R mutant N106A exposed to Montelukast, Zafirlukast, or 3-[[3-[2-(7-chloroquinolin-2-yl)vinyl]phenyl]-(2-dimethylcarbamoylethylsulfanyl)methylsulfanyl] propionic acid (MK571), the basal inositol phosphate production was reduced by 53 ± 6, 44 ± 3, and 54 ± 4%, respectively. On the other hand, 6(R)-(4-carboxyphenylthio)-5(S)-hydroxy-7(E),9(E),11(Z),14(Z)-eicosatetraenoic acid (BayU9773) and 1-[2-hydroxy-3-propyl-4-[4-(1H-tetrazole-5-YL)-butoxy]-phenyl ethanone] (LY171883) acted as partial agonists and α-pentyl-3-[2-quinolinylmethoxy] benzyl alcohol (REV 5901) as a neutral antagonist. However, in cells expressing CysLT1R and Gαq, all antagonists used had inverse agonist activity. The decrease in basal inositol phosphate production by ligands with inverse agonist activity could be inhibited by a more neutral antagonist, confirming the specificity of the reaction. We demonstrate here that Montelukast, MK571, and Zafirlukast can act as inverse agonists on the human CysLT1 receptor.
The attitudes of primary care providers towards screening for colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE the scientific community supports the appropriateness of colorectal cancer screening, and there is consensus on the need to raise awareness about the significance of prevention among both health care professionals and the population. The goal was to record the attitude of primary care providers towards colorectal cancer screening, as well as the main barriers to both patient and provider participation. METHODS a cross-sectional, observational study was performed of 511 professionals in Albacete Health District. Variables included views on screening effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, acceptance by providers and patients, barriers to participation, frequency of prevention recommendations, and education needs. RESULTS most (76 %) considered screening was effective; 85 % said acceptance of fecal occult blood testing was intermediate or high, and 68.2 % this is also the case for colonoscopy when needed; 71.9 % would recommend screening should a population-based program be implemented (currently only 9.7 % recommends this). Correspondence analysis revealed that recommendation is more common when assigned populations are smaller. CONCLUSIONS most providers consider screening is both effective and acceptable for patients. In today´s situation, where screening is only performed in an opportunistic manner, the proportion of professionals who commonly recommend screening for the mid-risk population is low, especially when assigned populations are huge.
Multicenter Evaluation of a Candida albicans Peptide Nucleic Acid Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization Probe for Characterization of Yeast Isolates from Blood Cultures

ABSTRACT We evaluated aliquots from 244 clinical blood culture bottles that demonstrated yeasts on Gram stain using a Candida albicans peptide nucleic acid (PNA) fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) probe. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of the C. albicans PNA FISH test in this study were 99%, 100%, 100%, and 99.3%, respectively.
Information-Theoretic Multi-view Domain Adaptation: A Theoretical and Empirical Study

Multi-view learning aims to improve classification performance by leveraging the consistency among different views of data. The incorporation of multiple views was paid little attention in the studies of domain adaptation, where the view consistency based on source data is largely violated in the target domain due to the distribution gap between different domain data. In this paper, we leverage multiple views for cross-domain document classification. The central idea is to strengthen the views' consistency on target data by identifying the associations of domain-specific features from different domains. We present an Information-theoretic Multi-view Adaptation Model (IMAM) using a multi-way clustering scheme, where word and link clusters can draw together seemingly unrelated features across domains, which boosts the consistency between document clusterings that are based on the respective word and link views. Moreover, we demonstrate that IMAM can always find the document clustering with the minimal disagreement rate to the overlap of viewbased clusterings. We provide both theoretical and empirical justifications of the proposed method. Our experiments show that IMAM significantly outperforms traditional multi-view algorithm cotraining, the co-training-based adaptation algorithm CODA, the single-view transfer model CoCC and the large-margin-based multi-view transfer model MVTL-LM.