Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physical effects of direct drilling equipment on undisturbed soils. III. Wheat seedling performance and in-groove micro-environment in a dry soil

A method of measuring soil relative humidity at the seed-soil zone in direct drilled grooves is described. Grooves were formed by several combinations of three selected coulter types and seed covering methods. In-groove soil relative humidity was measured at the same time when seeds were growing under controlled constant climatic conditions in a soil initially under severe moisture stress. A negative correlation coefficient of r = 0.75 was found between the in-groove relative humidity and combined counts of seedling emergence and sub-surface unemerged seedling survival. The ability of seed grooves to retain moisture vapour was described in terms of'moisture vapour potential captivity' (MVPC). A minimum value of MVPC = 0.4 was suggested for the dry soil of this experiment. A mathematical model relating in-groove relative humidity and seedling emergence plus sub-surface seedling survival was developed. Specifications of coulter design and seed covering methods were suggested which might create bett.
Acquiring Grounded Representations of Words with Situated Interactive Instruction

We present an approach for acquiring grounded representations of words from mixed-initiative, situated interactions with a human instructor. The work focuses on the acquisition of diverse types of knowledge including perceptual, semantic, and procedural knowledge along with learning grounded meanings. Interactive learning allows the agent to control its learning by requesting instructions about unknown concepts, making learning efficient. Our approach has been instantiated in Soar and has been evaluated on a table-top robotic arm capable of manipulating small objects.
An Interphalangeal Coordination-based Joint Motion Planning for Humanoid Fingers: Experimental Verification

The purpose of this paper is to verify the practical effectiveness of an interphalangeal coordination-based joint motion planning method for humanoid finger operations. For the purpose, several experiments have been performed and comparative experimental results are shown. Through the experimental works, it is confirmed that according to the employed joint motion planning method, the joint configurations for a finger's trajectory can be planned stably or not, and consequently the actual joint torque command for controlling the finger can be made moderately or not. Finally, this paper analyzes that the interphalangeal coordination-based joint motion planning method is practically useful for implementing a stable finger manipulation. It is remarkably noted that the torque pattern by the method is well-balanced. Therefore, it is expected that the control performance of humanoid or prosthetic fingers can be enhanced by the method.
Comparison of TaqMan PCR Assays for Detection of the Melioidosis Agent Burkholderia pseudomallei in Clinical Specimens

ABSTRACT Melioidosis is an emerging infectious disease caused by the soil bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. In diagnostic and forensic settings, molecular detection assays need not only high sensitivity with low limits of detection but also high specificity. In a direct comparison of published and newly developed TaqMan PCR assays, we found the TTS1-orf2 assay to be superior in detecting B. pseudomallei directly from clinical specimens. The YLF/BTFC multiplex assay (targeting the Yersinia-like fimbrial/Burkholderia thailandensis-like flagellum and chemotaxis region) also showed high diagnostic sensitivity and provides additional information on possible geographic origin.
Gridded Parasitic Patch Stacked Microstrip Antenna with Beam Shift Capability for 60 GHz Band

A microstrip antenna design is introduced in which a rectangular microstrip patch is coupled electromagnetically with a gridded rectangular patch placed above. The gridded patch consists of nine identical rectangular parts separated by a distance which is much smaller than a free space wavelength for a central frequency. The antenna is designed to operate in the 60 GHz band and is fabricated on a conventional PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) thin substrate. The antenna return loss bandwidth is comparable to a single parasitic patch aperture coupled antenna, while the proposed antenna gain is higher. Measurement results are in good agreement with simulation. Measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth is from 54 GHz up to 67 GHz. It fully covers the unlicensed band around 60 GHz. The measured antenna realized gain at 60 GHz is close to 8 dB, while the simulated antenna radiation efficiency is 85%. A simple beam shifting method is possible for this antenna structure by connecting adjacent outside parts in the gridded patch. The designed antenna is suitable for a high speed wireless communication system in particular for a user terminal in a fifth generation (5G) cellular network.
Challenges in understanding psychiatric disorders and developing therapeutics: a role for zebrafish

ABSTRACT The treatment of psychiatric disorders presents three major challenges to the research and clinical community: defining a genotype associated with a disorder, characterizing the molecular pathology of each disorder and developing new therapies. This Review addresses how cellular and animal systems can help to meet these challenges, with an emphasis on the role of the zebrafish. Genetic changes account for a large proportion of psychiatric disorders and, as gene variants that predispose to psychiatric disease are beginning to be identified in patients, these are tractable for study in cellular and animal systems. Defining cellular and molecular criteria associated with each disorder will help to uncover causal physiological changes in patients and will lead to more objective diagnostic criteria. These criteria should also define co-morbid pathologies within the nervous system or in other organ systems. The definition of genotypes and of any associated pathophysiology is integral to the development of new therapies. Cell culture-based approaches can address these challenges by identifying cellular pathology and by high-throughput screening of gene variants and potential therapeutics. Whole-animal systems can define the broadest function of disorder-associated gene variants and the organismal impact of candidate medications. Given its evolutionary conservation with humans and its experimental tractability, the zebrafish offers several advantages to psychiatric disorder research. These include assays ranging from molecular to behavioural, and capability for chemical screening. There is optimism that the multiple approaches discussed here will link together effectively to provide new diagnostics and treatments for psychiatric patients. Summary: In this review, we discuss strengths and limitations of prevalent laboratory models that are used for understanding psychiatric disorders and developing therapeutics, with emphasis on the zebrafish.
On the capacity of doubly correlated MIMO channels

In this paper, we analyze the capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Rayleigh-fading channels in the presence of spatial fading correlation at both the transmitter and the receiver, assuming the channel is unknown at the transmitter and perfectly known at the receiver. We first derive the determinant representation for the exact characteristic function of the capacity, which is then used to determine the trace representations for the mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and other higher-order statistics (HOS). These results allow us to exactly evaluate two relevant information-theoretic capacity measures - ergodic capacity and outage capacity - and the HOS of the capacity for such a MIMO channel. The analytical framework presented in the paper is valid for arbitrary numbers of antennas, and generalizes the previously known results for independent and identically distributed or one-sided correlated MIMO channels to the case when fading correlation exists on both sides. We verify our analytical results by comparing them with Monte Carlo simulations for a correlation model based on realistic channel measurements as well as a classical exponential correlation model
Implementation of quantitative perfusion imaging techniques for functional brain mapping using pulsed arterial spin labeling

We describe here experimental considerations in the implementation of quantitative perfusion imaging techniques for functional MRI using pulsed arterial spin labeling. Three tagging techniques: EPISTAR, PICORE, and FAIR are found to give very similar perfusion results despite large differences in static tissue contrast. Two major sources of systematic error in the perfusion measurement are identified: the transit delay from the tagging region to the imaging slice; and the inclusion of intravascular tagged signal. A modified technique called QUIPSS II is described that decreases sensitivity to these effects by explicitly controlling the time width of the tag bolus and imaging after the bolus is entirely deposited into the slice. With appropriate saturation pulses the pulse sequence can be arranged so as to allow for simultaneous collection of perfusion and BOLD data that can be cleanly separated. Such perfusion and BOLD signals reveal differences in spatial location and dynamics that may be useful both for functional brain mapping and for study of the BOLD contrast mechanism. The implementation of multislice perfusion imaging introduces additional complications, primarily in the elimination of signal from static tissue. In pulsed ASL, this appears to be related to the slice profile of the inversion tag pulse in the presence of relaxation, rather than magnetization transfer effects as in continuous arterial spin labeling, and can be alleviated with careful adjustment of inversion pulse parameters. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
SIMULATION AND GENETIC ALGORITHMS FOR CONTROL PLANNING OF UNDERWATER VEHICLE TRAJECTORIES

The case of submarine rendezvous where a high-maneuverability AUV should meet a submarine platform for energy, samples and data service is considered. The AUV has a set of thrusters. It is difficult to know how to activate the thrusters for the rendezvous operation. A simulation is developed to consider several scenarios, with submarine obstacles, and to solve the control problem. Genetic algorithms are used to determine the best AUV trajectory from surface to the final state, and to obtain the best control planning, using the thrusters, for path following along the trajectory. This paper describes the problem and the solution in simulation. Several scenarios are considered, and the solutions are presented. The simulation system will be used for programming a real AUV before diving.
Conditional knockout of smooth muscle sodium calcium exchanger type‐1 lowers blood pressure and attenuates Angiotensin II‐salt hypertension

The functions of smooth muscle sodium calcium exchanger (NCX) in the vasculature are controversial and poorly understood. To determine the possible roles of NCX in the vascular phenotype and function, we developed a novel mouse model (SM‐NCX1 KO) in which the smooth muscle‐specific NCX type‐1 (NCX1) was conditionally knocked out using tamoxifen‐inducible Cre‐loxP recombination technique. SM‐NCX1 KO mice exhibit significantly lower blood pressure and attenuated angiotensin II (Ang II)‐salt‐induced hypertension (measured by radio telemetry and intra‐arterial catheterization). Isolated, pressurized mesenteric small resistance arteries from SM‐NCX1 KO mice, compared to control arteries, were characterized by the following: (1) ~90% reduced NCX1 protein expression; (2) impaired functional responses to (i) acute NCX inhibition by SEA0400 or SN‐6, (ii) NCX activation by low [Na+]o, and (iii) Na+ pump inhibition by ouabain; (3) attenuated myogenic reactivity; and (4) attenuated vasoconstrictor response to phenylephrine but not Ang II. These results provided direct evidence that arterial NCX1 normally mediates net Ca2+ influx that helps maintain basal vascular tone in small resistance arteries and blood pressure under physiological conditions. Importantly, NCX1 contributes to blood pressure elevation in Ang II‐salt hypertension, possibly by regulating α‐adrenergic receptor activation.
Estimating Applicability of New Mobile Content Formats to Organizational Use

Innovations on information and communication technology reshape organizational communication. Our ability to estimate applicability of new technologies and content formats to organizational use has been limited to generic quantitative methods at the level of technologies and industries and elaborate qualitative methods targeting specific phenomena at the organizational level. In this paper we estimate quantitatively the applicability of MMS, SMS, XHTML, and XML to organizational use based on an analysis of all communication of an organization unit. We enumerate over 700 communication genres using a genre-based information systems planning method, categorise them with taxonomy of communication forms, and summarise the results quantitatively per category. SMS, XHTML, and especially XML seem to match the contemporary communication practices of the organization to a much higher extent than MMS. Affect of changes in organizational communication practices and generality of the results are discussed in the end as well as applicability of the method for other purposes.
Engineering of IF1‐susceptive bacterial F1‐ATPase

Abstract IF1, an inhibitor protein of mitochondrial ATP synthase, suppresses ATP hydrolytic activity of F1. One of the unique features of IF1 is the selective inhibition in mitochondrial F1 (MF1); it inhibits catalysis of MF1 but does not affect F1 with bacterial origin despite high sequence homology between MF1 and bacterial F1. Here, we aimed to engineer thermophilic Bacillus F1 (TF1) to confer the susceptibility to IF1 for elucidating the molecular mechanism of selective inhibition of IF1. We first examined the IF1‐susceptibility of hybrid F1s, composed of each subunit originating from bovine MF1 (bMF1) or TF1. It was clearly shown that only the hybrid with the β subunit of mitochondrial origin has the IF1‐susceptibility. Based on structural analysis and sequence alignment of bMF1 and TF1, the five non‐conserved residues on the C‐terminus of the β subunit were identified as the candidate responsible for the IF1‐susceptibility. These residues in TF1 were substituted with the bMF1 residues. The resultant mutant TF1 showed evident IF1‐susceptibility. Reversely, we examined the bMF1 mutant with TF1 residues at the corresponding sites, which showed significant suppression of IF1‐susceptibility, confirming the critical role of these residues. We also tested additional three substitutions with bMF1 residues in α and γ subunits that further enhanced the IF1‐susceptibility, suggesting the additive role of these residues. We discuss the molecular mechanism by which IF1 specifically recognizes F1 with mitochondrial origin, based on the present result and the structure of F1‐IF1 complex. These findings would help the development of the inhibitors targeting bacterial F1.
Implications of an Absolute Simultaneity Theory for Cosmology and Universe Acceleration

An alternate Lorentz transformation, Absolute Lorentz Transformation (ALT), has similar kinematics to special relativity yet maintains absolute simultaneity in the context of a preferred reference frame. In this study, it is shown that ALT is compatible with current experiments to test Lorentz invariance only if the proposed preferred reference frame is locally equivalent to the Earth-centered non-rotating inertial reference frame, with the inference that in an ALT framework, preferred reference frames are associated with centers of gravitational mass. Applying this theoretical framework to cosmological data produces a scenario of universal time contraction in the past. In this scenario, past time contraction would be associated with increased levels of blueshifted light emissions from cosmological objects when viewed from our current perspective. The observation that distant Type Ia supernovae are dimmer than predicted by linear Hubble expansion currently provides the most direct evidence for an accelerating universe. Adjusting for the effects of time contraction on a redshift–distance modulus diagram produces a linear distribution of supernovae over the full redshift spectrum that is consistent with a non-accelerating universe.
Alterations in Serum Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Eicosanoids in Patients with Mild to Moderate Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Smoking is a major risk factor for several diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). To better understand the systemic effects of cigarette smoke exposure and mild to moderate COPD—and to support future biomarker development—we profiled the serum lipidomes of healthy smokers, smokers with mild to moderate COPD (GOLD stages 1 and 2), former smokers, and never-smokers (n = 40 per group) (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT01780298). Serum lipidome profiling was conducted with untargeted and targeted mass spectrometry-based lipidomics. Guided by weighted lipid co-expression network analysis, we identified three main trends comparing smokers, especially those with COPD, with non-smokers: a general increase in glycero(phospho)lipids, including triglycerols; changes in fatty acid desaturation (decrease in ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and an increase in monounsaturated fatty acids); and an imbalance in eicosanoids (increase in 11,12- and 14,15-DHETs (dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acids), and a decrease in 9- and 13-HODEs (hydroxyoctadecadienoic acids)). The lipidome profiles supported classification of study subjects as smokers or non-smokers, but were not sufficient to distinguish between smokers with and without COPD. Overall, our study yielded further insights into the complex interplay between smoke exposure, lung disease, and systemic alterations in serum lipid profiles.
Correction of Liver Steatosis by a Hydrophobic Iminosugar Modulating Glycosphingolipids Metabolism

The iminosugar N-(5′-adamantane-1′-yl-methoxy)-pentyl-1-deoxynoijirimycin (AMP-DNM), an inhibitor of glycosphingolipid (GSL) biosynthesis is known to ameliorate diabetes, insulin sensitivity and to prevent liver steatosis in ob/ob mice. Thus far the effect of GSL synthesis inhibition on pre-existing NASH has not yet been assessed. To investigate it, LDLR(−/−) mice were kept on a western-type diet for 12 weeks to induce NASH. Next, the diet was continued for 6 weeks in presence or not of AMP-DNM in the diet. AMP-DNM treated mice showed less liver steatosis, inflammation and fibrosis. Induction of fatty acid beta-oxydation was observed, as well as a reduction of plasma lipids. Our study demonstrates that AMP-DNM treatment is able to significantly correct pre-existing NASH, suggesting that inhibiting GSL synthesis may represent a novel strategy for the treatment of this pathology.
Fast Video Encoding Algorithm Based on Motion Estimation for H.264/AVC

Motion estimation is the most time consuming part in H.264/AVC. In this paper, according to computing redundancy of UMHexagonS algorithm, the method of motion vector distribution prediction is proposed and combines with designed patterns to achieve adaptive sub-regional searching. Simulation results show that the proposed motion estimation scheme achieves reducing 21.48% motion estimation encoding time with a good rate-distortion performance compared to UMHexagonS algorithm in JM18.4. The proposed algorithm improves the performance of real-time encoding.
Symbolic-numeric sparse interpolation of multivariate polynomials

We consider the problem of sparse interpolation of an approximate multivariate black-box polynomial in floating-point arithmetic. That is, both the inputs and outputs of the black-box polynomial have some error, and all numbers are represented in standard, fixed-precision, floating point arithmetic. By interpolating the black box evaluated at random primitive roots of unity, we give efficient and numerically robust solutions. We note the similarity between the exact Ben-Or/Tiwari sparse interpolation algorithm and the classical Prony's method for interpolating a sum of exponential functions, and exploit the generalized eigenvalue reformulation of Prony's method. We analyze the numerical stability of our algorithms and the sensitivity of the solutions, as well as the expected conditioning achieved through randomization. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our techniques in practice through numerical experiments and applications.
Foraminiferal Assemblage and Bioindicators for Evaluation of the Anthropogenic Impact in the Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro, SE Brazil

In January 2000, Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro experienced a major oil spilling caused by a break down in one PETROBRAS oil pipeline. Over than 1.3 tons of fuel oil escaped into the bay water in the northern region. Studies of foraminiferal taphonomic assemblages in sediment samples collected on three periods in the same stations, before and after the spilling, were important for the pollution impact evaluation during eight years. In 2005, in the north region, TOC values were higher than in 1999. It was observed the increase of test abnormalities, corrosion and dwarfism. Abundance and species richness reduced in 2005 and increased in 2008 but they did not reach the 1999 levels. Trends of dominant species confirmed the increase of pollution values in 2005: Abundance of A. tepida increased while B. elegantissima reduced. In 2008 there was an increase in the species richness with the occurrence of agglutinated species.
XSW: Accelerating Biological Database Search on Xeon Phi

In this paper we present XSW, a new parallel Smith-Waterman algorithm for searching protein sequence databases on the Xeon Phi coprocessor. In order to make full use of the compute power of the many-core Xeon Phi hardware, we have used a two-level parallelization scheme: the thread level coarse-grained and VPU level fine-grained parallelism to implement our algorithm. At the thread level, XSW employs multi-threading to implement the SIMD parallelism. At the VPU level, we have used the Knights Corner instructions to gain more data parallelism. We have also reorganized the database and made use of the parallel shuffling operations on Xeon Phi to achieve better I/O efficiency. Evaluations on real protein sequence databases show that XSW achieves the peak performance of 70 GCUPS on a single Intel Xeon Phi 7110 card. Compared to two other well parallelized Smith-Waterman algorithms: the multi-core CPU-based SWIPE and the GPU-based CUDASW++ 3.0, XSW achieves much better performance than SWIPE. And XSW achieves comparable performance but better accuracy than CUDASW++ 3.0. To our knowledge this is the first reported implementation of the Smith-Waterman algorithm on Xeon Phi. The executable binary code of XSW is available at http://sdu-hpcl.github. io/XSW/.
Strategic Role Engineering Approach to Visual Role Based Access Control (V-RBAC)

-- Work on Role Based Access Control (RBAC) has emerged as the principle type of access control model in theory and practice. RBAC has frequently been criticized for the difficulty of setting up an initial role structure and for inflexibility in rapidly changing application. This paper offers a new role engineering approach to Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), referred to as visual role mining. The key idea is to graphically represent user-permission assignments to enable quick analysis and elicitation of meaningful roles. In turn, we propose an idea of merging two algorithms in a hybrid fashion: ADVISER and EXTRACT. The former role structure is a heuristic used to represent the user-permission assignments of a given set of roles. The proposed hybrid approach is a fast probabilistic algorithm that, when used in conjunction with ADVISER, allows for a visual elicitation of roles even in absence of predefined roles. Results confirm the quality of the proposal and demonstrate its viability in supporting role engineering decisions.