Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nucleolar organizer region banding in crossbred and non-descript pigs of India

Aim: The objective of this experiment was to study the nucleolar organizer region (NOR)-banding pattern in Large White Yorkshire (LWY) crossbred and non-descript pigs and finding differences in the number of NORs between animals and between genetic groups. Materials and Methods: The experiment was carried out on 15 females, and 15 males of LWY crossbred and non-descript pigs to study NOR-banding pattern by employing ammoniacal silver staining technique. Results: A total of 63 and 65 number of good metaphases were prepared in LWY crossbred, and non-descript pigs and a total of 168 and 143 number of NORs were detected on the 8th and 10th chromosomes in both genetic groups, respectively. The mean number of NORs per metaphase was 2.67 and 2.20 in LWY crossbred and non-descript pigs, respectively. LWY crossbred pig had high mean number of silver-stained NORs (Ag-NORs) per metaphase compared to non-descript pig. In general, it was observed that the highest frequency of metaphases (%) examined had two number of NORs, while the lowest frequency (%) had four number of NORs. The number of NORs observed per metaphase on secondary constrictions of the 8th and 10th chromosome pair in both genetic groups ranged from 2 to 4. The Chi-square test of significance revealed that the observed frequencies do not differ significantly from the expected frequencies. Conclusion: The results confirmed differences across breeds in occurrence and number of NORs on chromosomes in pigs. The mean numbers of NORs present per metaphase vary between the animals indicating the existence of polymorphism for the number of NORs. A higher number of Ag-NORs were observed on chromosome pair 10 in both the genetic groups. It was concluded that NORs were more morphologically distinct and greater on chromosome pair 10 than on pair 8, which suggests a dominant role of chromosome 10 in the global production of ribosomal RNA.
Histogram of Oriented Gradients Based Reduced Feature for Traffic Sign Recognition

Vehicles equipped with automatic traffic sign recognition (TSR) capability has recently attained a lot of attention among computer vision community. There has been a need for a robust TSR which can provide the current state of traffic signs on the road which will in turn assists drivers, autonomous vehicles, and mobile robots. An efficient and effective TSR could facilitate drivers in taking necessary decisions in advance which will ultimately reduce many fatal road accidents and deaths which takes place due to lack of road sign awareness among the drivers. Although there has been a lot of research in this direction, the design of a robust and an efficient TSR system is still an unsolved problem. Therefore, in this work, we have proposed an efficient method of TSR using Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG). We have tried to exploit the usefulness of HOG features for TSR by selecting a proper set of parameters which results in generating more discriminative features. Further, dimensionality reduction using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has also been carried out to reduce the number of redundant features. Finally, the reduced features have been classified using a Kernel Extreme Learning Machine (K-ELM) classifier. Numerous experiments have been performed using GTSRB traffic sign recognition benchmark dataset and results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Modeling Driver Risk Perception on City Roads Using Deep Learning

Research on how risk is perceived by drivers is vital to driving behavior research and driving safety. As risk can be divided into subjective and objective risk, in this paper, we focus on modeling subjective risk perception by drivers using a deep learning method. Different drivers often perceive different levels of subjective risk under the same driving conditions. In addition, different driving conditions or driving events will have different effects on drivers. Based on these two risk perception features, in this paper, we first design an experiment on a city road with two lanes to assess the level of subjective risk perceived by drivers belonging to different groups. We then use a deep learning network-based method to abstract features of the driving environment. These environmental features are integrated with driver risk perception data and this information is used as training and testing data for the learning network. Finally, a long–short-term memory-based method is adopted to model the subjective risk perception of individual drivers based on traffic conditions and vehicle operation data from the driver’s vehicle. Our results show that the proposed method can effectively model the subjective risk perception behavior of drivers, allowing for end-to-end risk perception prediction in future driving assistance systems.
A Case of Sjögren's Syndrome Mimicking Inflammatory Myopathy

Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is a chronic autoimmune disorder, characterized by lymphocytic infiltration of exocrine glands and causing the decreased function of lacrimal and salivary glands. We describe a case of a 34-year-old male who presented with Sjögren's syndrome presenting as myopathy and sensorimotor neuropathy. His creatinine kinase levels were elevated with positive anti-Sjögren's syndrome-related antigen A autoantibodies and anti-Sjögren's syndrome Type B autoantibodies. Electromyography showed evidence of irritable myopathy. Parotid gland biopsy demonstrated focal lymphocytic sialadenitis. The patient favorably responded to high-dose steroids. Thus, although rare, inflammatory myopathy must be considered part of the initial presentation of Sjögren's syndrome.
Forest-based Tabu Search to the Split-delivery Capacitated Arc-routing Problem

Arc-routing problems (ARPs) aim to determine the least-cost vehicle routes of a specified arc subset in a graph. The split-delivery capacitated arc-routing problem (SDCARP) generalizes conventional ARPs by allowing an arc to be serviced by more than one vehicle. Because of its great complexity, the existing approaches for solving SDCARP are scant and most of them are meta-heuristics. In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of SDCARP solution structures. Then we devise a forest-based tabu search algorithm, which involves several forest-based neighborhood operators, for seeking the optimal solution. By using our method, the search space can be significantly reduced. The computational results demonstrate that our approach outperforms previous methods and is able to improve several state-of-the-art solutions on SDCARP benchmark instances.
Polydatin exerts anti-tumor effects against renal cell carcinoma cells via induction of caspase-dependent apoptosis and inhibition of the PI3K/Akt pathway

Purpose Polydatin, a stilbenoid glucoside of a resveratrol derivative, has many biological functions, including antitumor effects. However, the antitumor effects of polydatin in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) have not been investigated. Materials and methods In the current study, MTT assays, transwell invasion assays and wound healing assays were performed to examine cell proliferation, invasion and migration. An apoptosis nucleosome ELISA was used to measure apoptosis. Caspase activity assays were applied to measure the activities of caspase-3/9. A Western blot assay was used to measure the change in protein levels. Results Our data demonstrated that polydatin inhibited the proliferation of RCC cells but not normal renal epithelial cells in a time- and dose-dependent manner. Polydatin also triggered apoptosis in a caspase-dependent manner. Moreover, polydatin treatment also led to the downregulation of Bcl-2 and Mcl-1 and to activation of Bax. Ectopic expression of Bcl-2 and Mcl-1 or silencing of Bax could repress the apoptosis that was induced by polydatin. Moreover, incubation with polydatin also suppressed the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in RCC cells. Conclusion Taken together, our data indicated that polydatin may be applied as a potent agent against RCC.
Complete chloroplast genome sequences of Dioscorea: Characterization, genomic resources, and phylogenetic analyses

Dioscorea L. , the largest genus of the family Dioscoreaceae with over 600 species, is not only an important food but also a medicinal plant. The identification and classification of Dioscorea L. is a rather difficult task. In this study, we sequenced five Dioscorea chloroplast genomes, and analyzed with four other chloroplast genomes of Dioscorea species from GenBank. The Dioscorea chloroplast genomes displayed the typical quadripartite structure of angiosperms, which consisted of a pair of inverted repeats separated by a large single-copy region, and a small single-copy region. The location and distribution of repeat sequences and microsatellites were determined, and the rapidly evolving chloroplast genome regions (trnK-trnQ, trnS-trnG, trnC-petN, trnE-trnT, petG-trnW-trnP, ndhF, trnL-rpl32, and ycf1) were detected. Phylogenetic relationships of Dioscorea inferred from chloroplast genomes obtained high support even in shortest internodes. Thus, chloroplast genome sequences provide potential molecular markers and genomic resources for phylogeny and species identification.
Habituation effects in computer security warning

ABSTRACT Security warning is a form of computer dialog communication that is used to inform the users on the risks of allowing random applications to run on a computer system. Accordingly, it is specifically designed to impersonate a legitimate security alerting function (e.g., notify, warn and advice) to a user about the consequence effect of an action. However, most of the computer users tend to ignore those security warnings conveying the same message over and over again. This eventually leads to habituation. Considering the fact that there is a significant lack of focus been paid to address this issue, the main objective of this paper is to describe and summarize the related studies on users’ habituation to the security warnings. This paper presents a systematic literature review to explore the current key issues, challenges and the possible solutions related to habituation effects in security warnings. It is expected that this paper could contribute to a more complete understanding of the habituation effects in security warnings and eventually bring benefits to the research communities or general publics.
Dual $P$- $Q$ Theory Based Energy-Optimized Dynamic Voltage Restorer for Power Quality Improvement in a Distribution System

This paper deals with the protection of critical loads from voltage-related power quality issues using a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR). A generalized control algorithm based on instantaneous space phasor and dual <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P$</tex-math></inline-formula>-<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$</tex-math> </inline-formula> theory has been proposed to generate the instantaneous reference voltages to compensate the load voltages with direct power flow control. The proposed algorithm adapts energy-optimized series voltage compensation, which results in a reduction of energy storage requirement. The proposed DVR control scheme can support the load from voltage-related power quality issues irrespective of the load current profile. Each leg of the three-phase three-leg split capacitor inverter is used to inject series compensation voltage in respective phases of the system. Model-based computer simulation studies and real-time experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.
Approximation of excessive backlog probabilities of two tandem queues

LetXbe the constrained random walk on ℤ+2having increments (1,0), (-1,1), and (0,-1) with respective probabilities λ, µ1, and µ2representing the lengths of two tandem queues. We assume thatXis stable and µ1≠µ2. Let τnbe the first time when the sum of the components ofXequalsn. LetYbe the constrained random walk on ℤ×ℤ+having increments (-1,0), (1,1), and (0,-1) with probabilities λ, µ1, and µ2. Let τ be the first time that the components ofYare equal to each other. We prove thatPn-xn(1),xn(2)(τ<∞) approximatespn(xn) with relative errorexponentially decayinginnforxn=⌊nx⌋,x∈ℝ+2, 00. An affine transformation moving the origin to the point (n,0) and lettingn→∞ connect theXandYprocesses. We use a linear combination of basis functions constructed from single and conjugate points on a characteristic surface associated withXto derive a simple expression for ℙy(τ<∞) in terms of the utilization rates of the nodes. The proof that the relative error decays exponentially innuses a sequence of subsolutions of a related Hamilton‒Jacobi‒Bellman equation on a manifold consisting of three copies of ℝ+2glued to each other along the constraining boundaries. We indicate how the ideas of the paper can be generalized to more general processes and other exit boundaries.
Influence of DC Link Capacitance on Power Efficiency of Single-Phase Inverter

The capacitor sizing for the capacitive DC link of a single-phase inverter is usually based on a pre-determined voltage ripple limitation, ripple current capability, and/or energy storage requirement. Nevertheless, it is lack of justifications of the pre-determined criteria. This paper aims to investigate the dependency between the DC-link capacitance and the converter-level efficiency of a single-phase inverter. The major sources of the converter power loss, i.e., IGBTs, capacitors, and inductors, are quantitatively modeled considering the varying DC-link voltage. It provides an additional dimension to optimize the capacitor selection for capacitive DC links. The theoretical analyses are verified by both simulations and experiments.
Compatibility between object size and response side in grasping: the left hand prefers smaller objects, the right hand prefers larger objects

It has been proposed that the brain processes quantities such as space, size, number, and other magnitudes using a common neural metric, and that this common representation system reflects a direct link to motor control, because the integration of spatial, temporal, and other quantity-related information is fundamental for sensorimotor transformation processes. In the present study, we examined compatibility effects between physical stimulus size and spatial (response) location during a sensorimotor task. Participants reached and grasped for a small or large object with either their non-dominant left or their dominant right hand. Our results revealed that participants initiated left hand movements faster when grasping the small cube compared to the large cube, whereas they initiated right hand movements faster when grasping the large cube compared to the small cube. Moreover, the compatibility effect influenced the timing of grip aperture kinematics. These findings indicate that the interaction between object size and response hand affects the planning of grasping movements and supports the notion of a strong link between the cognitive representation of (object) size, spatial (response) parameters, and sensorimotor control.
Draft Whole-Genome Sequences of Seven Listeria monocytogenes Strains with Variations in Virulence and Stress Responses

Listeria monocytogenes is an important foodborne pathogen that causes listeriosis. Here, we report the draft genome sequences of seven L. monocytogenes strains isolated from food, environmental, and clinical sources. ABSTRACT Listeria monocytogenes is an important foodborne pathogen that causes listeriosis. Here, we report the draft genome sequences of seven L. monocytogenes strains isolated from food, environmental, and clinical sources. Sequence differences at the genome level may help in understanding why these strains displayed different virulence and stress response characteristics.
A Current Controller based on SPAACE for Parallel Charging Systems of Energy-Storage Urban Rails

Response overshoot is an undesired behavior that acceleraes system aging and even causes damage in high-power electronics system. In this paper, we proposed a current control method for improving dynamic performance of charging systems that serve for energy-storage urban rails. A current controller is implemented to reduce the damage of capacitors and switching devices in the charging system. Specially, set point automatic adjustment with correction enabled (SPAACE) is designed to the control method, with the aim of reducing the current overshoot. Therefore our method can optimize responsiveness of the charging system especially at the beginning of the charging. Compared with the traditional current controller, the main characteristic of the proposed current controller is that it can effectively reduce the current overshoot without compromising the speed of the closed-loop current control. A laboratory testbed has been built to verify the effectiveness of the design. Experiment results show that the proposed method can suppress the current overshooting as intended.
The Primacy of Philosophy for Effective Learning

: This paper argues that philosophy matters more than platforms - and even learning object design - in effective online education. Much of the literature concerning quality, experiential learning and associated pedagogical issues for online learning falls short of examining the fundamental role of educational philosophy. While questions of platform and design are also relevant, they represent second order considerations in the overall scheme of effective learning. It seems likely that this gap helps to explain why meaningful online and e-learning pedagogies have not flourished or matured alongside the growth of online learning.
Opportunities and challenges associated with fecal progesterone metabolite analysis

Conventionally, plasma or milk progesterone evaluations are used to determine the reproductive status of female animals. Collection of such samples is often associated with difficulties of animal handling and restraint. Measurable quantities of progesterone metabolites are found in feces of animals. Their concentrations are known to be well correlated to plasma progesterone levels and are, therefore, used as non-invasive samples for assessing reproductive function in a wide range of animal species. Although the analysis of fecal progesterone metabolites has been widely accepted in many laboratories, several factors are known to affect the results from this valuable analytical technique. Some of these factors include storage/transportation media for fecal samples, type of solvent that is used for extraction of progesterone metabolites from feces, and the type and sensitivity of an assaying technique employed. Although fecal progesterone metabolites analysis is associated with some difficulties, it can effectively be used to monitor reproductive function in a wide range of animal species. This review aims to highlight the usefulness of fecal progesterone metabolite analysis as a non-invasive technique in monitoring reproductive function in animals. The article mainly focuses on the many opportunities and challenges associated with this analytical technique.
Radiation Pattern of the Spherical Antenna Array Based on Archimedean Spiral

This paper describes radiation pattern measurements of the antenna array based on Archimedean spiral on a spherical surface. The analysis encompasses measurements of this antenna array with 8, 16 and 24 patch antenna elements. In addition, the calculation of radiation diagrams was made in two orthogonal planes. Calculation was made using a developed moment method program with spectral-domain approach. The measured results are compared with the calculated and show excellent matching.
Comparison of Bi-Modal Coherent Sea Clutter Models

Modelling and simulation of radar sea-clutter is extremely important for evaluating radar detection algorithms and to stimulate radar processors during development and testing. Of the many aspects of sea-clutter, the Doppler spectrum plays a key role in determining the statistics which are important for coherent processing. In this paper, the evolving Doppler spectrum model and the spatially and temporal limited clutter model are described and analysed. Simulated data is generated using both models with parameters estimated from the Ingara medium grazing angle sea clutter data set. This allows a comprehensive study of the strengths and weaknesses of each model over a range of polarisations and swell angles.
Arbitration-Based Deadlock Mitigation Mechanism for Fast Connection Establishment in Autonomous Self-Organized Bluetooth MANETs

Bluetooth MANETs that consist of Bluetoothenabled terminals are mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), and can be used for prospective communication methodologies in disaster situations. The minimization of latencies in a connection between Bluetooth-enabled terminals is the most important research issue with Bluetooth MANETs. In order to counter the issue, we have proposed a combination method between Classic Bluetooth (Classic) and connection-based Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). However, the latency of the combination method is still large and has limited applicability to Bluetooth MANETs in real world scenarios. In this paper, we propose a new fast connection establishment method for Bluetooth MANETs to minimize the latency by utilizing both BLE-broadcast and Classic. In addition, since the procedure of connection establishment between terminals is performed in an autonomous distributed manner, the statuses of terminals can become deadlocked. To tackle this problem, we also propose and employ a new arbitration method by using uniquely assigned IDs for each terminal. We have implemented and evaluated our proposed method as applications for smartphones with Android OS. As a result, we can confirm that our proposed method has a reduced latency. In addition, we have demonstrated that our proposed method can achieve a 3-second latency in a configuration with deadlocks. Furthermore, we have confirmed that our proposed method can be frequently applied to largerscaled networks.
The impact of explicit culturally transmitted frames on economic decision making

by Aaron David Lightner, M.A. Washington State University May 2017 Chair: Edward H. Hagen Researchers have long theorized about cooperative behavior, often citing outcomes in experimental economic studies. Many of these studies have investigated the impact of framing effects on behavior in economic games such as the ultimatum game (UG), often using minimal framing cues (e.g., a manipulation involving a single sentence or word) that do not involve unambiguous offer expectations and generally result in small, unidirectional effects relative to the unframed UG. This study tests the hypothesis that in an UG explicitly framed as a prevalent Western economic institution – foreign currency exchange – participants will make and accept offers closely conforming to expectations associated with the institution (i.e., very small amounts allocated to bankers and large amounts to customers). This effect is predicted to emerge regardless of how labels, such as banker and customer, are applied to proposers and responders. Participants were recruited on Amazon Mturk and randomized into one of two conditions. In the control condition, participants played a standard UG. In the treatment condition, participants were given detailed instructions explicitly describing the frame and their roles as either customer or banker. As predicted, participants in the treatment condition frequently allocated large amounts to customers and small amounts to bankers, regardless of which roles were applied to
A High Step-Up Dual Switches DC-DC Converter with Three-Winding Coupled Inductor and Charge Pump

This paper proposes a high step-up dual switches dc-dc converter with three-winding coupled inductor and charge pump. The proposed converter achieves higher voltage gain and lower voltage stresses of the switches than the conventional converter with the same number of components. Moreover, divided structure of the output capacitor reduces the voltage stresses of the output capacitors. In this paper, the operational principle and the steady state analysis of the proposed converter are shown. The operation of the proposed converter has been confirmed by a reduced scale circuit experiment.