Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A molecular dynamics strategy for CSαβ peptides disulfide-assisted model refinement

Many cysteine-stabilized antimicrobial peptides from a variety of living organisms could be good candidates for the development of anti-infective agents. In the absence of experimentally obtained structural data, peptide modeling is an essential tool for understanding structure–activity relationships and for optimizing the bioactive moieties. Focusing on cysteine-rich peptide structures, we reproduced the case of structure predictions in the so-called midnight zone. We developed our protocol on a training set derived by clustering the available cysteine-stabilized αβ (CSαβ) structures in nine different representative families and tested it on peptides randomly selected from each family. Starting from draft models, we tested a structure-based disulfide predictor and we used cysteine distances as constraints during molecular dynamics. Finally, we proposed an analysis for final structure selection. Accordingly, we obtained a mean root mean square deviation improvement of 21% for the test set. Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to predict the network of disulfide bridges in cysteine-stabilized peptides and to use this result to improve the accuracy of structural predictions. Finally, we applied the methods to predict the structure of royalisin, a cysteine-rich peptide with unknown structure.
Improving Community Health Nurses' Knowledge of Heart Failure Education Principles: A Descriptive Study

The number of individuals diagnosed with heart failure continues to increase, often requiring repeated hospitalizations and readmissions. Patient education is essential for patients to self-manage this chronic illness. This study aims to describe nurses' knowledge of heart failure self-management education principles. Sixty-one nurses working in the community completed a 20-item survey, assessing their knowledge of diet, fluids, weight changes, signs and symptoms of worsening condition, medications, and exercise. Correct responses for individual survey items ranged from 14% to 100% with only 2 of 20 questions answered correctly by all participants. Frequently missed questions focused on notification of the physician regarding blood pressure, dizziness, weight monitoring, and use of salt substitutes. Findings of this study appear to suggest that an education and communication intervention may be effective at improving nurses' knowledge of heart failure education principles because more questions were answered correctly by >90% of nurses, following the intervention.
Anti-infective potential of caffeic acid and epicatechin 3-gallate isolated from methanol extract of Euphorbia hirta (L.) against Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Euphorbia hirta (L.) plant is traditionally used in Malaysia for the treatment of gastrointestinal, bronchial and respiratory ailments caused by nosocomial infectious agents. Bioactivity-guided fractionation of the methanol extract of the aerial parts of E. hirta and analysis using high-performance liquid chromatography have led to the isolation of two antibacterial compounds. These compounds were identified as caffeic acid (CA) and (–)-epicatechin 3-gallate (ECG) based on spectroscopic analyses and comparison with previously published data. Using broth microdilution method, both ECG and CA had demonstrated significant minimum inhibitory concentration of 15.6 and 31.3 μg/mL respectively, against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Time-kill assessment of ECG and CA displayed bactericidal effect on P. aeruginosa cells.
At the Crossroads of Evolutionary Computation and Music: Self-Programming Synthesizers, Swarm Orchestras and the Origins of Melody

This paper introduces three approaches to using Evolutionary Computation (EC) in Music (namely, engineering, creative and musicological approaches) and discusses examples of representative systems that have been developed within the last decade, with emphasis on more recent and innovative works. We begin by reviewing engineering applications of EC in Music Technology such as Genetic Algorithms and Cellular Automata sound synthesis, followed by an introduction to applications where EC has been used to generate musical compositions. Next, we introduce ongoing research into EC models to study the origins of music and detail our own research work on modelling the evolution of melody.
GLM in Life Insurance 1 GENERALIZED LINEAR MODELS IN LIFE INSURANCE : DECREMENTS AND RISK FACTOR ANALYSIS UNDER SOLVENCY II

The need to accurately understand the factors underlying lapse, surrender and mortality (collectively termed ‘decrements’ for the purposes of this paper) rates in life insurance is increasing because of (inter alia) the effect of International Accounting Principles, Solvency II and MCEV reporting. The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of Generalized Linear Models to capture empirical dependencies between risk factors and to understand the best factors to allow for in a correct calibration of lapse risk. After a brief description of theoretical aspects of Generalized Linear Models and their applications in analyzing for risk factors, we have investigated the lapse and surrender experience data of a large Italian bancassurer. The investigation covered the period from 1991 to 2007. The products concerned were life insurance savings policies, with a preponderance of single premium or recurrent single premium products. The case study results show in the specific case of the chosen Italian company the importance of policy duration, as expected, but also show the sensitivity of lapse rates to calendar year of exposure, to product class and to policyholder age. The work has been carried out by analysing only readily available risk factor data and could hence be substantially improved by a refinement of the underlying database. The results presented in this paper are to be interpreted as being work in progress, to be further refined in the weeks leading up to the AFIR conference.
Invariant measures for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation on the disc

We study Gibbs measures invariant under the flow of the NLS on the unit disc of $\R^2$. For that purpose, we construct the dynamics on a phase space of limited Sobolev regularity and a wighted Wiener measure invariant by the NLS flow. The density of the measure is integrable with respect to the Wiener measure for sub cubic nonlinear interactions. The existence of the dynamics is obtained in Bourgain spaces of low regularity. The key ingredient are bilinear Strichartz estimates for the free evolution. The bilinear effect in our analysis results from simple properties of the Bessel functions and estimates on series of Bessel functions.
Partial discharge characteristic of electrical trees in polymeric cable insulation

The growth mechanism of electrical tree in high voltage and extra high voltage dielectric system is needed for early identification, in order to resist the complete insulation failure. In power system equipment, electrical tree formation prevention is very much crucial for reliable and long term operation of cable section. There are so many varieties of electrical tree structure can formed from a weak region or a imperfection site in cable insulation viz branch-type trees, bush-type trees and bush-branch type trees depending on the voltage applied. Electrical treeing was developed in a needle-plane geometry using 5µm tip radius hyperbolic needle shape and a 2 mm gap from the tip of the needle to plane electrode in polymeric samples. This project was conducted by simulations based work in order to understand the characteristics of electrical trees in solid dielectric materials. In this work, electrical tree formation mechanism in solid dielectric material was modeled using MATLAB environment and done experimental work in high voltage laboratory with the application of 100 kV AC source with 50 Hz supply voltage. After the experiment the sample was viewed under FESEM for observation of electrical tree growth. It was found that the FESEM was particularly useful for searching for electrical damage in the polymeric insulation material where treeing phenomena takes place.
Structure, form, and meaning in the mental lexicon: evidence from Arabic

Does the organization of the mental lexicon reflect the combination of abstract underlying morphemic units or the concatenation of word-level phonological units? We address these fundamental issues in Arabic, a Semitic language where every surface form is potentially analyzable into abstract morphemic units – the word pattern and the root – and where this view contrasts with stem-based approaches, chiefly driven by linguistic considerations, in which neither roots nor word patterns play independent roles in word formation and lexical representation. Five cross-modal priming experiments examine the processing of morphologically complex forms in the three major subdivisions of the Arabic lexicon – deverbal nouns, verbs, and primitive nouns. The results demonstrate that root and word pattern morphemes function as abstract cognitive entities, operating independently of semantic factors and dissociable from possible phonological confounds, while stem-based approaches consistently fail to accommodate the basic psycholinguistic properties of the Arabic mental lexicon.
Detailed mapping of methylcytosine positions at the CpG island surrounding the Pa promoter at the bcr-abl locus in CML patients and in two cell lines, K562 and BV173.

Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is associated with a translocation of the protooncogene c-abl from chromosome 9 to chromosome 22, where it fuses to proximal exons of the bcr gene. The expression of the hybrid gene bcr-abl is regulated by the bcr promoter and results in a translation product with high tyrosine kinase activity. In most CML cases, one of two abl promoters (Pa) is nested within the bcr-abl transcription unit, but appears to be usually silent. Recently, de novo methylation of the Pa region and its correlation with disease progression were reported. As these previous studies were limited to the use of methylation-sensitive restriction endonucleases, our aim here was to obtain a complete map of methylcytosines and its variants in CML patients and in model cell lines. To achieve this, bisulfite conversion of cytosines (but not methylcytosines) to uracils in genomic DNA was employed. After modification, the region of interest was PCR-amplified and the products were cloned and sequenced. The results show methylation at a high level and in a homogenous pattern in the BV173 cell line, corresponding to the translocated abl alleles. Variant methylation observed in K562 cells correlates with multiple bcr-abl loci and an intact chromosome 9. Patients that were methylation-positive in restriction analysis showed sporadic and heterogenous occurrence of methylcytosines in bisulfite modification assays. Corresponding results were obtained using a quantitative Southern analysis of the extent of methylation. We conclude that restriction analysis combined with PCR is able to find rare cases of hypermethylation, e. g. , for diagnostic purposes, but does not reflect the dominating level of methylation in Ph-positive cells.
Potential Activity of 3-(2-Chlorophenyl)-1-phenyl-propenonein Accelerating Wound Healing in Rats

Wound healing involves inflammation followed by granular tissue development and scar formation. In this study, synthetic chalcone 3-(2-Chlorophenyl)-1-phenyl-propenone (CPPP) was investigated for a potential role in enhancing wound healing and closure. Twenty-four male rats were divided randomly into 4 groups: carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) (0.2 mL), Intrasite gel, and CPPP (25 or 50 mg/mL). Gross morphology, wounds treatment with the CPPP, and Intrasite gel accelerate the rate of wound healing compared to CMC group. Ten days after surgery, the animals were sacrificed. Histological assessment revealed that the wounds treated with CPPP showed that wound closure site contained little amount of scar and the granulation tissue contained more collagen and less inflammatory cells than wound treated with CMC. This finding was confirmed with Masson's trichrome staining. The antioxidant defence enzymes catalase (CAT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were significantly increased in the wound homogenates treated with CPPP (P < 0.05) compared to CMC treated group. However, in the CPPP treatment group, lipid peroxidation (MDA) was significantly decreased (P < 0.05), suggesting that the CPPP also has an important role in protection against lipid peroxidation-induced skin injury after ten days of treatment with CPPP, which is similar to the values of cytokines TGF-β and TNF-α in tissue homogenate. Finally the administration of CPPP at a dosage of 25 and 50 mg/kg was suitable for the stimulation of wound healing.
Face recognition with enhanced privacy protection

This paper presents a novel approach for face based biometric recognition. The proposed method is based on the sorted index numbers (SIN) of appearance based facial features. A new algorithm is introduced to measure the similarity between SIN vectors. Due to the non-invertibility of the transformation from the original features to the SIN vectors, the proposed method can preserve the privacy of the users. The effectiveness of the proposed method is tested on a large generic data set, which contains images from several well known face databases. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution may improve the recognition accuracy in both identification and verification scenarios.
Optimization of Machining Parameters in ECM of Al/B4C Composites Using Taguchi Method

Aluminium metal matrix composites (AMMCs) are now gaining their usage in aerospace and automotive industries because of their inherent properties like high strength to weight ratio, low wear rate etc. Electrochemical Machining (ECM) allowed success in the production of newer materials, especially for the aerospace and biomedical applications. In this paper an attempt is made to machine the LM6 Al/B4Cp composites using electrochemical machining process. Boron carbide particles of 30 micron size are reinforced in LM6 Al alloy matrix with 2.5%, 5% and 7.5% by weight. Taguchi's L27 orthogonal array is chosen to design the experiments and 27 tests are conducted to study the effect of various machining parameters like applied voltage, feed rate, electrolyte concentration and percentage of reinforcement on the material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (SR) and radial over cut (ROC). Signal-to-noise (S/N), the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analyses are employed to find the optimal levels and to analyze the effect of electrochemical machining parameters on MRR, SR and ROC. Confirmation tests with optimal levels of machining parameters are conducted to validate the test results. Experimental results have shown that the responses in ECM can be improved effectively through this approach.
Social problem solving in chronic pain: An integrative model of coping predicts mental health in chronic pain patients

Despite several models of coping have been proposed in chronic pain, research is not integrative and has not yet identified a reliable set of beneficial coping strategies. We intend to offer a comprehensive view of coping using the social problem-solving model. Participants were 369 chronic pain patients (63.78% women; mean age 58.89 years; standard deviation = 15.12 years). Correlation analyses and the structural equation model for mental health revealed potentially beneficial and harmful problem-solving components. This integrative perspective on general coping could be used to promote changes in the way patients deal with stressful conditions other than pain.
No Flower no Fruit - Genetic Potentials to Trigger Flowering in Fruit Trees

The development of flower buds and a sufficient fruit set are basic requirements for fruit growers to generate a marketable crop. However, fruit trees remain in a juvenile (nonflowering) phase for years, and after a transition period of getting reproductively competent they enter the adult phase of tree life. The reproductive phase is associated with the ability to alternate between the production of vegetative and reproductive buds. Efficient breeding is limited in fruit trees due to the long period of juvenility. Therefore, it is important to accelerate flowering by reducing the juvenile phase of the tree. In fruit production, precocious flowering of the tree is also favoured to reduce the vegetative phase of tree development after planting in order to obtain the earliest fruit crop. Additional critical aspects of flower development in fruit trees, such as alternate bearing, accentuate the necessity to improve our understanding on genetic factors controlling floral initiation as well as flower and fruit development in perennial fruit trees. Most of what we know about regulating floral development is based on research in annual plants, like Arabidopsis thaliana. In this review, we summarize floral transition, meristem development and flower bud formation in Malus domestica, one of the most important representatives of temperate fruit trees. We also focus on current findings of the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth obtained in Arabidopsis and how this knowledge can be applied to fruit trees, particular to apple. We discuss state-of-the-art and future research to manipulate maturation and flower initiation in apple.
Electrothermal and phase-change dynamics in chalcogenide-based memories

We analyzed the programming dynamics in phase-change memory (PCM) cells. The chalcogenide phase-change mechanism and phase distribution in the programmed cell is studied by both experiments and a numerical model, which self-consistently addresses the electrical-thermal conduction phase transition. We show that the reset-set transition is strongly coupled to the electronic switching in the amorphous phase, thus supporting the need for a self-consistent electrothermal-phase transition model to correctly account for all experimental evidences.
Tourists' experience of Virtual Reality applications

Virtual Reality (VR) has enjoyed a significant upswing of interest from researchers and businesses generally but also specifically from the tourism sector. However, qualitative research on tourists' experience of VR applications is scarce. Therefore, the present study aims to explore tourists' experience of VR using the Lake District National Park as a case study. 35 VR experiments and interviews with tourists were conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings show a positive attitude towards the use of VR in the tourism context as tourists were fully immersed in the experience which appeared to influence their behavioral intention to visit the destination in the future.
ESCHERICHIA COLI O157:H7 IN FREE-RANGING DEER IN NEBRASKA

In order to determine the prevalence and distribution of the human pathogen, Escherichia coli O157:H7, in free-ranging deer, hunters were asked to collect and submit fecal samples from deer harvested during a regular firearm season (14–22 November 1998). Prior to the season, 47% of the hunters with permits in the southeastern Nebraska (USA) study area indicated a willingness to participate in the study. Approximately 25% of successful hunters in the area submitted deer fecal samples. Escherichia coli O157:H7 was cultured from four (0.25%) of 1,608 total samples submitted. All of the fecal samples that were properly identified (1,426) and all that were positive for E. coli O157:H7 were from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). We were unable to detect a statistically significant geographic distribution pattern of E. coli O157:H7. The presence of E. coli O157:H7 in the feces of free-ranging deer has implications not only for hunters, consumers of venison, and others in contact with deer or deer feces, but also for the development of strategies aimed at reducing and/or controlling this pathogen in water sources and domestic livestock.
SAR-ocean wave inversion using image cross spectra

Image cross-spectra obtained by combining pairs of single look SAR images are utilized in an inversion scheme for extracting the underlying ocean wave spectrum. The reasons for proposing the use of image cross-spectra instead of standard multilook spectra are twofold. First, the image cross-spectra are shown to significantly reduce the speckle noise level while preserving the spectral shape. Second, the image cross-spectra provide information about the wave propagation direction. A closed form expression of the ocean-to-SAR spectral transform and its inversion is formulated for the cross-spectral case. The inversion method is based on computing the full derivative of the nonlinear ocean-to-SAR image cross-spectral transform. The SAR image cross-spectra are shown to yield a SNR typically 16-25 dB higher than the corresponding standard 3 look image spectra. The noise level is typically reduced with a factor of 20 compared to the 3 look spectra and a factor of 60 compared to the single look spectra. The inherent information about the wave propagation direction is utilized in the inversion scheme to resolve the 180-degree ambiguity without using any external information. The method is demonstrated on airborne C-band SAR data. >
Performance-based prognosis scheme for industrial gas turbines

In this paper, we present a novel method for performance-based prognostics of industrial gas turbines. The concept of performance adaptation is implemented through a dynamic engine model that is developed in Matlab/Simulink environment to diagnose the health of the gas turbine. The proposed method is tested under variable operating conditions at both steady state and transient operational modes for estimating and predicting the compressor degradation. Different types of mathematical representations are used to fit the diagnosis results and consequently prognose the performance behavior of the engine. The results demonstrate the promising prospect of our proposed method for predicting accurately and efficiently the performance of gas turbine compressors as they degrade over time.
EFFECT OF SPECIMEN SIZES ON FLEXURAL COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH OF CONCRETE

This paper studies, by experimental means, the length and depth variations of a flexural compressive member. A series of C-shaped specimens subjected to axial compressive load and bending moment were tested. The test specimen thickness was kept constant where the size effect in out-of-plan direction is not considered. The test results are curve fitted using Levenberg-Marquardt's least square method to obtain parameters for the modified size effect law (MSEL) of Kim et al. The analysis results show that the effect of specimen length and depth on ultimate strength was apparent, but their effect on the ultimate strain was negligible. More general parameters for MSEL are suggested.