Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A fast expert system for electrocardiogram arrhythmia detection

Abstract: A fast expert system for electrocardiogram (ECG) arrhythmia detection has been designed in this study. Selecting proper wavelet details, the ECG signals are denoised and beat locations are detected. Beat locations are later used to locate the peaks of the individual waves present in each cardiac cycle. Onsets and offsets of the P and T waves are also detected. These are considered as ECG features which are later used for arrhythmia detection utilizing a novel fuzzy classifier. Fourteen types of arrhythmias and abnormalities can be detected implementing the proposed procedure. We have evaluated the algorithm on the MIT–BIH arrhythmia database. Application of the wavelet filter with the scaling function which closely resembles the shape of the ECG signal has been shown to provide precise results in this study.
Study on the incidence of Salmonella enteritidis in poultry and meat samples by cultural and PCR methods.

Aim: To study the incidence of S.enteritidis in poultry and meat samples by cultural and PCR methods. Materials and Methods: A total of 130 samples (25 each of chicken, mutton, poultry faeces, cloacal samples and 10 each of liver, spleen and kidney) collected from different sources were subjected to cultural and PCR methods for the presence of Salmonella and Salmonella enteritidis. Primers for invA and sefA gene were used for Salmonella and S.enteritidis respectively. Results: Out of 130 samples, 87 were positive for Salmonella spp. i.e. chicken-16(64%), mutton-12(48%), faeces-23(92%), cloacal swabs-23(92%), liver-5(50%), spleen and kidney samples-4(40%) each by PCR methods, whereas 77 were positive by cultural method i.e. chicken-14(56%), mutton-10(40%), faeces-22(88%), cloacal swabs-21(84%), liver-4(40%), spleen and kidney-3(30% each). Out of 87 positive for Salmonella by PCR method, 59(chicken-12, mutton-7, faeces-17, cloacal swabs-15, liver-3, spleen-2, kidney-3) were positive for S.enteritidis. High incidence of S.enteritidis (68%) in all the above samples are indicative of unhygienic conditions in poultry farms. Selective enrichment with Rappaport-Vassilidias (RV) broths and Tetrathionate (TT) broths were superior over Selenite-F (SF) and Selenite cysteine (SC) broths. Conclusions: High incidence of S.enteritidis was seen in most of poultry samples like chicken, kidney, liver and it's faeces than mutton, which was indicative of contamination of S.enteritidis is more prevalent in poultry farms.
Exercising in a structured versus an unstructured setting : an application of the theory of planned behaviour

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of material in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to: ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study was to examine the constructs of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) in two different exercise settings – structured versus unstructured. Owing to the assumption that individuals may perceive less volitional control in a structured setting versus an unstructured setting, it was hypothesized that perceived behavioural control would be a stronger predictor of exercise behaviour in the structured setting. A secondary purpose of the current study was to assess the utility of using two different exercise outcomes – energy expenditure and exercise frequency – to assess exercise behaviour. Participants (N = 207) were recruited from a first-year kinesiology university class. Data collection occurred over two time periods, nine days apart, and was conducted during class periods. During the first testing session, participants were provided with a questionnaire that assessed TPB constructs and physical activity level in the two settings (structured versus unstructured) using the Modifiable Activity Questionnaire (MAQ). Half of the participants were requested to complete the TPB constructs using energy expenditure as the outcome measure and half were requested to complete the constructs using exercise frequency as the outcome measure. In the second testing session, all participations were asked to report their exercise levels over the previous seven days using the MAQ. In terms of predicting intention, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, contrary to the hypothesis, perceived behavioural control …
Job Satisfaction Among College Teachers: A Comparative Analysis

Job satisfaction, despite being one of the most common areas researched, still continues to fascinate. The relationship between job satisfaction and productivity remains obscure at best, though its effects on lowering absenteeism, attrition and apathy in employees have been well established. The present paper aims to investigate the job satisfaction levels of college teachers of a private management institution in Delhi and a college of Delhi University. A total of 40 college teachers, ranging in teaching experience from 2 to 43 years, were selected for the study. The data was obtained through Paula Lester’s Teacher Job Satisfaction questionnaire which was administered personally. The purpose of the research was to determine the overall levels of job satisfaction of college teachers, compare them according to institution and gender, and examine the individual job dimensions affecting job satisfaction. The methods of data analysis included descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney test and Kruskal-Wallis test to analyze the responses to the research questions about demographic and work profile of teachers, their perceptions of supervision, and teacher’s job satisfaction. The study found the job satisfaction levels to be average with a significant difference between job satisfaction of male and female college teachers, though no such difference was found between institutions.
Efficient dense subspace clustering

In this paper, we tackle the problem of clustering data points drawn from a union of linear (or affine) subspaces. To this end, we introduce an efficient subspace clustering algorithm that estimates dense connections between the points lying in the same subspace. In particular, instead of following the standard compressive sensing approach, we formulate subspace clustering as a Frobenius norm minimization problem, which inherently yields denser con- nections between the data points. While in the noise-free case we rely on the self-expressiveness of the observations, in the presence of noise we simultaneously learn a clean dictionary to represent the data. Our formulation lets us address the subspace clustering problem efficiently. More specifically, the solution can be obtained in closed-form for outlier-free observations, and by performing a series of linear operations in the presence of outliers. Interestingly, we show that our Frobenius norm formulation shares the same solution as the popular nuclear norm minimization approach when the data is free of any noise, or, in the case of corrupted data, when a clean dictionary is learned. Our experimental evaluation on motion segmentation and face clustering demonstrates the benefits of our algorithm in terms of clustering accuracy and efficiency.
Efficient Relay Beamforming Design With SIC Detection for Dual-Hop MIMO Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider a dual-hop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relay wireless network, in which a source-destination pair, which are both equipped with multiple antennas, communicates through a large number of half-duplex amplify-and-forward (AF) relay terminals. Two novel linear beamforming schemes based on the matched filter and regularized zero-forcing precoding techniques are proposed for the MIMO relay system. We focus on the linear process at the relay nodes and design the new relay beamformers by utilizing the channel-state information (CSI) of both backward and forward channels. The proposed beamforming designs are based on the QR decomposition filter at the destination node, which performs successive interference cancellation to achieve the maximum spatial-multiplexing gain. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed beamformers that fulfil both the intranode array gain and distributed array gain outperform other relaying schemes under different system parameters in terms of the ergodic capacity.
Concerted action of target-site mutations and high EPSPS activity in glyphosate-resistant junglerice (Echinochloa colona) from California.

BACKGROUND Echinochloa colona is an annual weed affecting field crops and orchards in California. An E. colona population carrying a mutation in the EPSPS gene endowing resistance to glyphosate, the most widely used non-selective herbicide, was recently identified in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California. Plants from this population, from a suspected glyphosate-resistant (GR) population, and from one susceptible (S) population collected in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California, were used to generate three GR and one S selfed lines to study possible mechanisms involved in glyphosate resistance. RESULTS Based on the amount of glyphosate required to kill 50% of the plants (LD50 ), GR lines were 4-9-fold more resistant than S plants and accumulated less shikimate after glyphosate treatment. GR and S lines did not differ in glyphosate absorption, translocation or metabolism. A different target-site mutation was found in each of two of the GR lines corresponding to Pro106Thr and Pro106Ser substitutions; the mutations were found in different homoeologous EPSPS genes. No mutation was found in the third GR line, which exhibited 1.4-fold higher basal EPSPS activity and a fivefold greater LD50 than S plants. Quantitative RT-PCR revealed that GR lines had similar or lower EPSPS expression than S plants. CONCLUSION It is demonstrated that individuals with different glyphosate resistance mechanisms can coexist in the same population, individuals from different populations may carry different resistance mechanisms and different mechanisms can act in concert within single E. colona plants. However, other plant factors or resistance mechanisms appear to modulate plant expression of EPSPS sensitivity to glyphosate.
Mutagenesis of Paramyxovirus Hemagglutinin-Neuraminidase Membrane-Proximal Stalk Region Influences Stability, Receptor Binding, and Neuraminidase Activity

ABSTRACT Paramyxoviridae consist of a large family of enveloped, negative-sense, nonsegmented single-stranded RNA viruses that account for a significant number of human and animal diseases. The fusion process for nearly all paramyxoviruses involves the mixing of the host cell plasma membrane and the virus envelope in a pH-independent fashion. Fusion is orchestrated via the concerted action of two surface glycoproteins: an attachment protein called hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN [also called H or G depending on virus type and substrate]), which acts as a receptor binding protein, and a fusion (F) protein, which undergoes a major irreversible refolding process to merge the two membranes. Recent biochemical evidence suggests that receptor binding by HN is dispensable for cell-cell fusion. However, factors that influence the stability and/or conformation of the HN 4-helix bundle (4HB) stalk have not been studied. Here, we used oxidative cross-linking as well as functional assays to investigate the role of the structurally unresolved membrane-proximal stalk region (MPSR) (residues 37 to 58) of HN in the context of headless and full-length HN membrane fusion promotion. Our data suggest that the receptor binding head serves to stabilize the stalk to regulate fusion. Moreover, we found that the MPSR of HN modulates receptor binding and neuraminidase activity without a corresponding regulation of F triggering. IMPORTANCE Paramyxoviruses require two viral membrane glycoproteins, the attachment protein variously called HN, H, or G and the fusion protein (F), to couple host receptor recognition to virus-cell fusion. The HN protein has a globular head that is attached to a membrane-anchored flexible stalk of ∼80 residues and has three activities: receptor binding, neuraminidase, and fusion activation. In this report, we have identified the functional significance of the membrane-proximal stalk region (MPSR) (HN, residues 37 to 56) of the paramyxovirus parainfluenza virus (PIV5), a region of the HN stalk that has not had its structure determined by X-ray crystallography. Our data suggest that the MPSR influences receptor binding and neuraminidase activity via an indirect mechanism. Moreover, the receptor binding head group stabilizes the 4HB stalk as part of the general mechanism to fine-tune F-activation.
Automatic Protocol Format Reverse Engineering through Context-Aware Monitored Execution

Protocol reverse engineering has often been a manual process that is considered time-consuming, tedious and error-prone. To address this limitation, a number of solutions have recently been proposed to allow for automatic protocol reverse engineering. Unfortunately, they are either limited in extracting protocol fields due to lack of program semantics in network traces or primitive in only revealing the flat structure of protocol format. In this paper, we present a system called AutoFormat that aims at not only extracting protocol fields with high accuracy, but also revealing the inherently “non-flat”, hierarchical structures of protocol messages. AutoFormat is based on the key insight that different protocol fields in the same message are typically handled in different execution contexts (e.g., the runtime call stack). As such, by monitoring the program execution, we can collect the execution context information for every message byte (annotated with its offset in the entire message) and cluster them to derive the protocol format. We have evaluated our system with more than 30 protocol messages from seven protocols, including two text-based protocols (HTTP and SIP), three binary-based protocols (DHCP, RIP, and OSPF), one hybrid protocol (CIFS/SMB), as well as one unknown protocol used by a real-world malware. Our results show that AutoFormat can not only identify individual message fields automatically and with high accuracy (an average 93.4% match ratio compared with Wireshark), but also unveil the structure of the protocol format by revealing possible relations (e.g., sequential, parallel, and hierarchical) among the message fields. ∗Part of this research has been supported by the National Science Foundation under grants CNS-0716376 and CNS-0716444. The bulk of this work was performed when the first author was visiting George Mason University in Summer 2007.
Occupational and Nonoccupational Farm Fatalities Among Youth for 2000 Through 2012 in Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT Agriculture is one of the most hazardous industries in the United States. It is crucial to analyze the previously collected farm fatality data in Pennsylvania involving youth to identify fatality sources and to delineate prevention strategies to mitigate future occurrences. The Penn State Farm and Agricultural Injury Database was updated to include the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) for source and event or exposure. Occupational and nonoccupational incidents were compared based on age groups, religious sect, source of injury, and the injury event or exposure. A total of 82 fatalities to youth under 20 years were identified. Youth under 5 years old had the highest fatality rate of 87.1 fatalities per 100,000 farm household youth per year. The percentages of occupational and nonoccupational fatalities were 30.5% and 62.2%, respectively. Three primary sources accounted for 76% of the 82 farm fatalities: vehicles, machinery, and structures and surfaces. The majority of fatally injured youth (78%) were Anabaptist. The Anabaptist youth were 7 times more likely to be involved in occupational incidents than the non-Anabaptist youth. Youth <10 years of age who were not alone at the time of the fatal incident accounted for about half of the deaths, indicating the peril of adults attempting to supervise youth in the workplace. This fatal injury analysis to youth has identified common fatality injury patterns and risk factors to youth. The data can be used to identify intervention strategies for youth and underserved populations (Anabaptists) and can be used to help motivate adults and parents to adopt safety practices to prevent future injury occurrences. This paper also helps to illustrate the value of state-based monitoring of farm injury to youth using methods available to many states and territories.
Expression of Wild-type p53 Is Required for Efficient Global Genomic Nucleotide Excision Repair in UV-irradiated Human Fibroblasts*

We have shown previously that Li-Fraumeni syndrome fibroblasts homozygous for p53 mutations are deficient in the removal of UV-induced cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers from genomic DNA, but still proficient in the transcription-coupled repair pathway (Ford, J. M., and Hanawalt, P. C. (1995) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 92, 8876–8880). We have now utilized monoclonal antibodies specific for cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers or 6-4 photoproducts, respectively, to measure their repair in UV-irradiated human fibroblasts. Cells homozygous for p53 mutations were deficient in the repair of both photoproducts, whereas cells heterozygous for mutant p53 exhibited normal repair of 6-4 photoproducts, but decreased initial rates of removal of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, compared with normal cells. The specificity of the effect of wild-type p53 on nucleotide excision repair was demonstrated in a p53 homozygous mutant cell line containing a tetracycline-regulated wild-type p53 gene. Wild-type p53 expression and activity were suppressed in the presence of tetracycline, whereas withdrawal of tetracycline resulted in the induction of p53 expression, cell cycle checkpoint activation, and DNA damage-induced apoptosis. The regulated expression of wild-type p53 resulted in the recovery of normal levels of repair of both cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers and 6-4 photoproducts in genomic DNA, but did not alter the transcription-coupled repair of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers. Therefore, the wild-type p53 gene product is an important determinant of nucleotide excision repair activity in human cells.
Data-oriented transaction execution

While hardware technology has undergone major advancements over the past decade, transaction processing systems have remained largely unchanged. The number of cores on a chip grows exponentially, following Moore's Law, allowing for an ever-increasing number of transactions to execute in parallel. As the number of concurrently-executing transactions increases, contended critical sections become scalability burdens. In typical transaction processing systems the centralized lock manager is often the first contended component and scalability bottleneck. In this paper, we identify the conventional thread-to-transaction assignment policy as the primary cause of contention. Then, we design DORA, a system that decomposes each transaction to smaller actions and assigns actions to threads based on which data each action is about to access. DORA's design allows each thread to mostly access thread-local data structures, minimizing interaction with the contention-prone centralized lock manager. Built on top of a conventional storage engine, DORA maintains all the ACID properties. Evaluation of a prototype implementation of DORA on a multicore system demonstrates that DORA attains up to 4.8x higher throughput than a state-of-the-art storage engine when running a variety of synthetic and real-world OLTP workloads.
Different telomere damage signaling pathways in human and mouse cells

Programmed telomere shortening in human somatic cells is thought to act as a tumor suppressor pathway, limiting the replicative potential of developing tumor cells. Critically short human telomeres induce senescence either by activating p53 or by inducing the p16/RB pathway, and suppression of both pathways is required to suppress senescence of aged human cells. Here we report that removal of TRF2 from human telomeres and the ensuing de‐protection of chromosome ends induced immediate premature senescence. Although the telomeric tracts remained intact, the TRF2ΔBΔM‐induced premature senescence was indistinguishable from replicative senescence and could be mediated by either the p53 or the p16/RB pathway. Telomere de‐protection also induced a growth arrest and senescent morphology in mouse cells. However, in this setting the loss of p53 function was sufficient to completely abrogate the arrest, indicating that the p16/RB response to telomere dysfunction is not active in mouse cells. These findings reveal a fundamental difference in telomere damage signaling in human and mouse cells that bears on the use of mouse models for the telomere tumor suppressor pathway.
Assessment of the multiple-biomarker approach for diagnosis of myocardial infarction in patients presenting with symptoms suggestive of acute coronary syndrome.

BACKGROUND Cardiac troponin is the preferred biomarker for detecting acute myocardial injury and infarction (MI). We studied whether multiple biomarkers of numerous pathophysiological pathways would increase the diagnostic accuracy for detecting MI. METHODS Seven biomarkers [myeloperoxidase, soluble CD40 ligand, placental growth factor, matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), cardiac troponin I (cTnI), N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide] and estimated glomerular filtration rate were measured in 457 patients presenting on admission with symptoms suggestive of acute coronary syndrome. Twenty-five patients (5.4%) received MI diagnoses. Clinical sensitivities and specificities were evaluated from 99th-percentile reference values. Forward and backward stepwise logistic regression modeling techniques were used to identify biomarkers that were independently predictive of MI. RESULTS Biomarker sensitivities ranged from 20% to 96%, and specificities ranged from 19% to 89%. MMP-9 had the highest sensitivity, but its specificity was 19%. cTnI demonstrated a sensitivity of 72% (95% CI, 51%-88%) and a specificity of 89% (95% CI, 85%-92%). In multivariate models, cTnI (P < 0.001) and either hsCRP (P = 0.009) or MMP-9 (P = 0.03) were independently predictive of MI. Addition of hsCRP or MMP-9 increased the specificity to 95% (95% CI, 92%-97%) or 91% (95% CI, 88%-94%), respectively, but reduced the sensitivity to 56% (95% CI, 35%-76%) and 68% (95% CI, 47%-85%) relative to cTnI alone. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that the most clinically accurate biomarker for the early diagnosis of MI is the use of cTnI alone, rather than a multiple-biomarker approach, when an analytically robust cardiac troponin assay based on the 99th percentile is used.
Prevalence of psoriasis phenotypes among men and women in the USA

We present the largest set of US prevalence data for psoriasis to date, obtained from three prospective cohort studies describing validated clinical phenotypes of psoriasis, including novel data about the prevalence of inverse (intertriginous) psoriasis in these groups. Nonplaque psoriasis phenotypes have been largely unmeasured in observational and interventional studies, and this has led to an under‐recognition of this aspect of psoriatic disease.