Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Highly Stretchy Black Gold E‐Skin Nanopatches as Highly Sensitive Wearable Biomedical Sensors

S. Gong, B. Su, K. J. Si, Z. Ma, L. W. Yap, P. Guo, Prof. W. Cheng Department of Chemical Engineering Monash University Clayton , Victoria 3800 , Australia E-mail: wenlong.cheng@monash.edu S. Gong, Dr. B. Su, K. J. Si, Z. Ma, L. W. Yap, P. Guo, Prof. W. Cheng The Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication Clayton , Victoria 3800 , Australia Dr. D. T. H. Lai College of Engineering and Science Victoria University Victoria 8001 , Australia
Towards a price for private information of mobile users: the Arcade apps in Google Play Store case

In this paper we present a first attempt to provide an economic value to mobile users' private information. We claim that when users grant access to an application's required permissions, they disclose private information and data to third parties and let them possibly make revenues out of it. To put a monetary value to such information, we use the price of non-free applications. We use a linear model trained on the 5,187 non-free Arcade apps in Google Play Store that takes a set of permissions in input and estimates the corresponding price. Under the assumption that users "pay" free applications by providing access to more private information (i.e. permissions) and consequently the more permissions are required the less users pay the application, our research aim at showing that the estimated price provides a good proxy to attribute a quantitative value to private and sensitive information of mobile apps' users.
International Journal of Molecular Sciences the Interactions of Aquaporins and Mineral Nutrients in Higher Plants

Aquaporins, major intrinsic proteins (MIPs) present in the plasma and intracellular membranes, facilitate the transport of small neutral molecules across cell membranes in higher plants. Recently, progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms of aquaporin subcellular localization, transport selectivity, and gating properties. Although the role of aquaporins in maintaining the plant water status has been addressed, the interactions between plant aquaporins and mineral nutrients remain largely unknown. This review highlights the roles of various aquaporin orthologues in mineral nutrient uptake and transport, as well as the regulatory effects of mineral nutrients on aquaporin expression and activity, and an integrated link between aquaporins and mineral nutrient metabolism was identified.
Effect of pronounciations on OOV queries in spoken term detection

The spoken term detection (STD) task aims to return relevant segments from a spoken archive that contain the query terms whether or not they are in the system vocabulary. This paper focuses on pronunciation modeling for Out-of-Vocabulary (OOV) terms which frequently occur in STD queries. The STD system described in this paper indexes word-level and sub-word level lattices or confusion networks produced by an LVCSR system using Weighted Finite State Transducers (WFST). We investigate the inclusion of n-best pronunciation variants for OOV terms (obtained from letter-to-sound rules) into the search and present the results obtained by indexing confusion networks as well as lattices. The following observations are worth mentioning: phone indexes generated from sub-words represent OOVs well and too many variants for the OOV terms degrade performance if pronunciations are not weighted.
The CRE1 Cytokinin Pathway Is Differentially Recruited Depending on Medicago truncatula Root Environments and Negatively Regulates Resistance to a Pathogen

Cytokinins are phytohormones that regulate many developmental and environmental responses. The Medicago truncatula cytokinin receptor MtCRE1 (Cytokinin Response 1) is required for the nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with rhizobia. As several cytokinin signaling genes are modulated in roots depending on different biotic and abiotic conditions, we assessed potential involvement of this pathway in various root environmental responses. Phenotyping of cre1 mutant roots infected by the Gigaspora margarita arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiotic fungus, the Aphanomyces euteiches root oomycete, or subjected to an abiotic stress (salt), were carried out. Detailed histological analysis and quantification of cre1 mycorrhized roots did not reveal any detrimental phenotype, suggesting that MtCRE1 does not belong to the ancestral common symbiotic pathway shared by rhizobial and AM symbioses. cre1 mutants formed an increased number of emerged lateral roots compared to wild-type plants, a phenotype which was also observed under non-stressed conditions. In response to A. euteiches, cre1 mutants showed reduced disease symptoms and an increased plant survival rate, correlated to an enhanced formation of lateral roots, a feature previously linked to Aphanomyces resistance. Overall, we showed that the cytokinin CRE1 pathway is not only required for symbiotic nodule organogenesis but also affects both root development and resistance to abiotic and biotic environmental stresses.
DAWWSEN : A DEFENSE MECHANISM AGAINST WORMHOLE ATTACKS IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Many obstacles impede the successful deployment of sensor networks. In addition to the limited resources issue, security is a major concern especially for applications such as home security monitoring, military, and battle field applications. In this paper we present a defense mechanism against wormhole attacks in wireless sensor networks. Specifically, a simple routing tree protocol is proposed and shown to be effective in defending against wormhole attacks through ns-2 simulations.
Soluble Expression of Disulfide Bond Containing Proteins FGF15 and FGF19 in the Cytoplasm of Escherichia coli

Fibroblast growth factor 19 (FGF19) is the human ortholog of mouse FGF15, and both proteins function as an endocrine signal to regulate various liver functions. FGF15/FGF19 protein contains two disulfide bonds. It is unfavorable to form disulfide bonds in Escherichia coli (E. coli) cytoplasm because of the bacterial cytoplasmic reducing environment. Modification of the cytoplasmic reducing environment and/or co-expression of protein chaperones are common strategies to express disulfide bond containing proteins in E. coli. In the current study, we report a method to produce soluble FGF15/FGF19 protein in cytoplasm of E. coli. Several commercial available strains with the disruption of thiol-redox pathways, and/or co-expression of redoxase or refolding chaperones were used to develop this novel method for expression of FGF15/FGF19 in E. coli. Mutation of the thiol-disulfide bond reducing pathway in E. coli or N-terminal fusion of thioredox (TRX) alone is not enough to support disulfide bond formation in FGF15/19 proteins. However, TRX fusion protein improved FGF19 solubility in strains of thiol-redox system mutants. In addition, DsbC co-expressed in thiol-redox system mutants alone improved and further enhanced FGF19 solubility with combination of TRX fusion tag. The soluble FGF19 proteins were easily purified through Ni-NTA affinity chromatography and anion exchange chromatography, and the purified protein maintained its biological activities, confirmed by suppressing hepatic Cyp7a1 gene transcription in mice and by activating ERK1/2 signaling pathway in HepG2 cells. In contrast, soluble FGF15 protein in cytoplasm remained very low using these strategies. In summary, we have successfully developed a method to express functional FGF19 protein in prokaryotic cells, and this strategy may be adapted for the expression of other disulfide-containing proteins.
Proceedings of the 2002 Usenix Annual Technical Conference Think: a Software Framework for Component-based Operating System Kernels

Building a flexible kernel from components is a promising solution for supporting various embedded systems. The use of components encourages code re-use and reduces development time. Flexibility permits the system to be configured at various stages of the design, up to run time. In this paper, we propose a software framework, called THINK, for implementing operating system kernels from components of arbitrary sizes. A unique feature of THINK is that it provides a uniform and highly flexible binding model to help OS architects assemble operating system components in varied ways. An OS architect can build an OS kernel from components using THINK without being forced into a predefined kernel design (e.g. exo-kernel, micro-kernel or classical OS kernel). To evaluate the THINK framework, we have implemented KORTEX, a library of commonly used kernel components. We have used KORTEX to implement several kernels, including an L4-like micro-kernel, and kernels for an active network router, for the Kaffe Java virtual machine, and for a Doom game. Performance measurements show no degradation due to componentization and the systematic use of the binding framework, and that application-specific kernels can achieve speed-ups over standard general-purpose operating systems such as Linux.
Fast nonlinear adaptive filtering using a partial window conjugate gradient algorithm

In this paper a modified form of the partial conjugate gradient algorithm is presented for use in nonlinear filtering using neural networks. The algorithm is based on using a gradient average window to provide a trade-off between convergence rate and complexity which, depending on the choice of averaging window, is (in both complexity and speed of convergence) intermediate between the conventional backpropagation (BP) algorithm and the Newton methods. An additional simplification is introduced by replacing the calculated optimum step size /spl alpha//sub k/ by a normalized step size /spl alpha/~, in the same manner as the normalized LMS algorithm. This new algorithm is applied to a cascaded neural network/nonlinear least mean squares structure for the identification of a nonlinear system. This proposed algorithm demonstrates improved convergence rates with even small choices of window size.
Phrase elimination in greedy parsing dictionary coders with deferred innovation

Summary form only given. LZ dictionary coders parse the message into successive substrings, each consists two parts, the citation, the longest prefix phrase that has already been accommodated in the dictionary, and the innovation, the symbol immediately following the citation. Suppose the input alphabet set is A and the dictionary D = {p/sub 1/, p/sub 2/. p/sub n/} is a set of phrases where p/sub i//spl isin/A*, parsed by a greedy-parsing LZ coder. Represented in the form of a dictionary search tree, the process matching a phrase in D with a citation can be viewed as traversing from the root of the dictionary tree by matching consecutive symbols from the input until the mismatching innovation occurs. The dictionary is reduced to D'=D/spl bsol/E. Its phrase index is then encoded by a less redundant code (LRC) with upper bound of codeword length. The expected number of phrases in D' was estimated. It was also verified with experiments that such estimation is accurate. It was also shown that 3% improvement is typical over LZW coders with LRC and 5% better than standard LZW.
Stochastic decoding for LDPC convolutional codes

Among LDPC codes, LDPC convolutional codes (LDPC-CCs) seem to be more suitable for variable length applications. However, a LDPC-CC decoder is difficult to implement for its long latency and large storage usage. The stochastic computation makes the decoding of LDPC-CCs more efficient, but the boundary effect of sliding window causes poor performance. In this paper, a stochastic LDPC-CC decoder with virtual edge compensation as well as decoder architecture is presented. The simulation results based on (491, 3, 6) time-varying LDPC-CC show that under the same signal-to-noise ratio, our proposed decoder could achieve better performance, 60% less decoding latency and 40% storage reduction compared to log-BP decoder with 10 processors.
Bearing resistance of reinforced soil–aggregate systems

This paper presents the results of laboratory California bearing ratio tests carried out on compacted unreinforced and reinforced soil–aggregate systems. The soil used in these tests is clay of low plasticity and the tests were conducted in the standard California bearing ratio mould. For reinforced soil–aggregate systems, layers of geosynthetics were introduced at the interface of the soil and aggregate layers and sometimes within the aggregate layer also. The various geosynthetics used in these tests were a geotextile, a biaxial geogrid and a geonet. The water content used during compaction was varied in different tests to study the effect of the water content and the unit weight of the soil on the bearing resistance of the reinforced soil–aggregates. The effect of the quantity of reinforcement and the form of reinforcement was also studied. As expected, the bearing resistance of soil–aggregate systems is improved with an increase in quantity or the stiffness of the reinforcement. It is observed that wi.
Effect of section thickness on creep and stress rupture behaviour of DS CM247 nickel base superalloy

Abstract The effect of section thickness on creep and stress rupture behaviour of DS CM247 nickel base superalloy at three temperatures viz. 760, 982 and 1038°C, has been investigated in an effort to identify the factors contributing to the observed creep/stress rupture behaviour. Irrespective of section thickness, the shape of creep curves at the lowest temperature of 760°C differs from the shape of those at the higher temperatures, showing significantly higher primary creep strain (PCS). At higher temperatures the creep curves exhibit limited primary and secondary regimes, but predominant tertiary regime. Such a difference in shapes of the creep curves is related to the difference in dislocation bypass mechanisms operating at these temperatures. The variation of minimum creep rate (MCR) and time to rupture (tf) with section size indicates a progressive creep strengthening at 760 and 982°C, while a progressive creep weakening at 1038°C with decreasing specimen thickness. Such a behaviour can be explained in terms of relative extents of the surface oxide layer (contributing to creep strengthening) and γ′ depleted zone (causing creep weakening) formed at these temperatures. Further, the creep strengthening at 760 and 982°C as well as weakening at 1038°C is more pronounced for the thinner specimens.
Oxidative Stress and Aminopeptidases in Parkinson’s Disease Patients with and without Treatment

Background/Objective: Mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress and protein metabolism impairment are the main molecular events underlying the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, only few studies have addressed the changes produced by these phenomena in the blood of PD patients. Our purpose was to compare oxidative stress between newly diagnosed PD patients (ntPD) and PD patients under treatment (tPD). We also analyzed changes in plasma activity of several aminopeptidases (AP) involved in the metabolism of various active peptides.Methods: Plasma lipid peroxide (LPO) and lactate (LAC) concentrations were measured by colorimetric methods, and plasma AP activities were determined by fluorometric assay. Results: LPO and LAC concentrations were significantly elevated in ntPD and tPD patients versus controls, but there were no differences between the PD groups. Alanine-, cystine- and aspartate-AP activities were significantly lower in tPD versus ntPD patients. Nondenaturing electrophoresis and Western blot results confirmed these findings. Conclusions: The plasma LPO and LAC levels were high in both PD groups, indicating that they are elevated at an early stage of PD and are not affected by anti-PD treatment. The higher AP activities in ntPD versus tPD patients suggest that anti-PD treatment may improve protein metabolism while not altering oxidative stress. A therapy directed to reduce oxidative stress and normalize AP activity may be useful in the treatment of PD.
Emotionally Negative Pictures Enhance Gist Memory

In prior work on how true and false memory are influenced by emotion, valence and arousal have often been conflated. Thus, it is difficult to say which specific effects are caused by valence and which are caused by arousal. In the present research, we used a picture-memory paradigm that allowed emotional valence to be manipulated with arousal held constant. Negatively valenced pictures elevated both true and false memory, relative to positive and neutral pictures. Conjoint recognition modeling revealed that negative valence (a) reduced erroneous suppression of true memories and (b) increased the familiarity of the semantic content of both true and false memories. Overall, negative valence impaired the verbatim side of episodic memory but enhanced the gist side, and these effects persisted even after a week-long delay.
Representation results for defeasible logic

The importance of transformations and normal forms in logic programming, and generally in computer science, is well documented. This paper investigates transformations and normal forms in the context of Defeasible Logic, a simple but efficient formalism for nonmonotonic reasoning based on rules and priorities. The transformations described in this paper have two main benefits: on one hand they can be used as a theoretical tool that leads to a deeper understanding of the formalism, and on the other hand they have been used in the development of an efficient implementation of defeasible logic.
Fabrication of HA/β‐TCP scaffolds based on micro‐syringe extrusion system

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel and concise technique of fabricating HA/β‐TCP composite ceramic scaffolds for bone tissue engineering via extrusion deposition method.Design/methodology/approach – A new rapid prototyping (RP) machine called motor assisted micro‐syringe (MAM) system is used in the authors' research. It is implemented to control the morphology, pore size and porosity of scaffolds precisely and to optimize their mechanical properties in this study.Findings – In the fabrication process, HA/β‐TCP ceramic composite slurry with prominent uniformity, stability and liquidity is prepared by deliberating the influential factors such as its ingredient, pH and viscosity. After optimizing the system parameters, scaffolds with homogeneous and interconnected pores in sizes ranging from 50 to 580 μm were obtained, and the whole process had excellent stability and repeatability. The average compressive strength of scaffolds with a porosity of around 50% reaches 50.33 MPa after si.
NSAP+: Supporting Transparent Computing Applications with a Service-Oriented Protocol

Service delivery is becoming a hot topic in transparent computing (TC). However, transfers in TC lack adequate support for applications with nonresident content and lower-latency requirements. In this article, the authors analyze the quantitative benefits attributed to TC (lower latency) and find that benefits can't be assured in multiple terminal machine scenarios. They propose a proof-of-concept design of a service-oriented and QoS-assured protocol, NSAP+, over an existing TC network architecture.
The Metabochip, a Custom Genotyping Array for Genetic Studies of Metabolic, Cardiovascular, and Anthropometric Traits

Genome-wide association studies have identified hundreds of loci for type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction, as well as for related traits such as body mass index, glucose and insulin levels, lipid levels, and blood pressure. These studies also have pointed to thousands of loci with promising but not yet compelling association evidence. To establish association at additional loci and to characterize the genome-wide significant loci by fine-mapping, we designed the “Metabochip,” a custom genotyping array that assays nearly 200,000 SNP markers. Here, we describe the Metabochip and its component SNP sets, evaluate its performance in capturing variation across the allele-frequency spectrum, describe solutions to methodological challenges commonly encountered in its analysis, and evaluate its performance as a platform for genotype imputation. The metabochip achieves dramatic cost efficiencies compared to designing single-trait follow-up reagents, and provides the opportunity to compare results across a range of related traits. The metabochip and similar custom genotyping arrays offer a powerful and cost-effective approach to follow-up large-scale genotyping and sequencing studies and advance our understanding of the genetic basis of complex human diseases and traits.
Quantifying Auditory Event-Related Responses in Multichannel Human Intracranial Recordings

Multichannel intracranial recordings are used increasingly to study the functional organization of human cortex. Intracranial recordings of event-related activity, or electrocorticography (ECoG), are based on high density electrode arrays implanted directly over cortex, combining good temporal and spatial resolution. Developing appropriate statistical methods for analyzing event-related responses in these high dimensional ECoG datasets remains a major challenge for clinical and systems neuroscience. We present a novel methodological framework that combines complementary, existing methods adapted for statistical analysis of auditory event-related responses in multichannel ECoG recordings. This analytic framework integrates single-channel (time-domain, time–frequency) and multichannel analyses of event-related ECoG activity to determine statistically significant evoked responses, induced spectral responses, and effective (causal) connectivity. Implementation of this quantitative approach is illustrated using multichannel ECoG data from recent studies of auditory processing in patients with epilepsy. Methods described include a time–frequency matching pursuit algorithm adapted for modeling brief, transient cortical spectral responses to sound, and a recently developed method for estimating effective connectivity using multivariate autoregressive modeling to measure brief event-related changes in multichannel functional interactions. A semi-automated spatial normalization method for comparing intracranial electrode locations across patients is also described. The individual methods presented are published and readily accessible. We discuss the benefits of integrating multiple complementary methods in a unified and comprehensive quantitative approach. Methodological considerations in the analysis of multichannel ECoG data, including corrections for multiple comparisons are discussed, as well as remaining challenges in the development of new statistical approaches.
Object-oriented scale-adaptive filtering for human detection from stereo images

In this paper, an effective and efficient methodology to extract visual evidence of suitable scale for object detection, object-orient scale-adaptive filtering (OOSAF), is proposed. With OOSAF, object extraction from stereo images is formulated as the design of scale-adaptive filters. Based on OOSAF, two methods for human detection from stereo images are developed. One is to detect human objects with close distances to the camera for intelligent human-machine interaction, and the other is to detect human heads in distant crowds for security surveillance. Experiments show that, with OOSAF, efficient solutions for human detection from stereo images could be achieved with high detection rates and low false alarm rates.