Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Absolute Stability of Nonlinear Systems with Piecewise Linear Sector Condition

The circle theorem is one of the most important methods for study of absolute stability of nonlinear systems. In circle theorem, it is assumed that the nonlinearity term is located between linear bounds of a typical sector. In this paper the absolute stability of nonlinear systems with generalized sector condition is studied in which the bounds of the sector are piecewise linear in general. Therefore this method could be applied to the sector with nonlinear bounds. In this paper using modified Nyquist criterion, it is proved that the study of absolute stability of a nonlinear system using circle theorem could be reduced to the study of stability of equalized linear system. The aim of this paper is to define a pseudo circle region that the Nyquist plot of the linear system with nonlinearity in sector condition with piecewise bounds doesn’t have any intersection with that region and encircle it m times in the counterclockwise direction where m is the number of poles of linear part of the system with positive real parts.
Moiety Names in South-Eastern Australia: Distribution and Reconstructed History

This report1 forms part of the project ‘Skin and kin in Aboriginal Australia: linguistic and historical perspectives on the dynamics of social categories’, whose object is to document and map the Australian systems of social category names and reconstruct their prehistory.2 Social category systems include subsections, sections and moieties. Here, we report on the moiety names in six of the terminological sets found in south-eastern Australia— identified on the basis of (near-)identical names.3 Typically, these terminological sets extend over a number of different languages, including languages that are not closely related linguo-genetically to one another. Moreover, the terminologies may differ between languages that are closely related to one another. We do not discuss moiety names that co-occur
Empirical Risk Minimization for Metric Learning Using Privileged Information

Traditional metric learning methods usually make decisions based on a fixed threshold, which may result in a suboptimal metric when the inter-class and inner-class variations are complex. To address this issue, in this paper we propose an effective metric learning method by exploiting privileged information to relax the fixed threshold under the empirical risk minimization framework. Privileged information describes useful high-level semantic information that is only available during training. Our goal is to improve the performance by incorporating privileged information to design a locally adaptive decision function. We jointly learn two distance metrics by minimizing the empirical loss penalizing the difference between the distance in the original space and that in the privileged space. The distance in the privileged space functions as a locally adaptive decision threshold, which can guide the decision making like a teacher. We optimize the objective function using the Accelerated Proximal Gradient approach to obtain a global optimum solution. Experiment results show that by leveraging privileged information, our proposed method can achieve satisfactory performance.
Depression, substance use, and sexual orientation as cofactors in HIV-1 infected men: cross-cultural comparisons.

The co-occurrence of major depression in medical populations has been the subject of much controversy in the past decade. Although some investigators have suggested that reports of an increased prevalence of depression may, in part, be due to misclassification based on physician reliance on self-report methods (Perez-Stable et al. 1990) or on failure to adjust for symptoms induced by physical illness (Plumb and Holland 1977), most studies have suggested that the prevalence of depression is high, although often undetected by the primary care physician (Perez-Stable et al. 1990; Schulberg et al. 1985). Schulberg and colleagues (1985) state that it is unclear whether this oversight reflects true limitations in the physician's diagnostic acumen, his/her lack of concern for social implications, or whether it is an artifact of existing classification procedures. Regardless of the reasons for its underreporting, the detection and treatment of depression is crucial, especially for medically ill patients, because depressive disorders may adversely affect survival, length of hospital stay, compliance with therapy, ability to care for oneself, and quality of life (Schulberg et al. 1985).
The Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) Shigella Surveillance Study in Peru

Abstract Background The Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) Peru site will enroll subjects in a periurban area of the low Amazon rainforest. The political department of Loreto lags behind most of Peru in access to improved sources of water and sanitation, per capita income, children born <2.5 kg, and infant and child mortality. Chronic undernutrition as manifested by linear growth shortfalls is common, but wasting and acute malnutrition are not. Methods The recruitment of children seeking care for acute diarrheal disease takes place at a geographic cluster of government-based primary care centers in an area where most residents are beneficiaries of free primary healthcare. Results Rates of diarrheal disease, dysentery, and Shigella are known to be high in the region, with some of the highest rates of disease documented in the literature and little evidence in improvement over the last 2 decades. This study will update estimates of shigellosis by measuring the prevalence of Shigella by polymerase chain reaction and culture in children seeking care and deriving population-based estimates by measuring healthcare seeking at the community level. Conclusions Immunization has been offered universally against rotavirus in the region since 2009, and in a context where adequate water and sanitation are unlikely to obtain high standards in the near future, control of principal enteropathogens through immunization may be the most feasible way to decrease the high burden of disease in the area in the near future.
Detecting spatially highly resolved network modules: A multi subject approach

The connectivity analysis of spatially highly resolved data results in networks comprising an immense number of nodes and edges which makes it hard or even impossible to investigate the high-dimensional (HD) network as a whole. A solution to this problem is offered by a connectivity-based segmentation of the HD networks into subsets of functionally similar nodes (network modules) that exhibit pronounced interaction. However, an investigation of the results at group level is problematic as identified modules are not assigned to each other across different subjects. In this work, we propose a rearrangement of the subject-specific networks into an integrative tensor which is subsequently decomposed into additive factors. This reorganization provides subject-independent networks together with subject-specific loadings enabling a group-wide segmentation of the resulting networks at the large scale.
Purification of an 80,000-Mr glycylprolyl peptidase from Bacteroides gingivalis

An enzyme from Bacteroides gingivalis SUNYAB A7A1-28 that hydrolyzes the synthetic peptide glycyl-L-proline 4-methoxy-beta-naphthylamide was purified 1,040-fold by urea extraction, gel filtration, ion-exchange chromatography, and fast protein liquid chromatography. The molecular weight of the enzyme was 80,000 as determined by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and 75,000 as determined by gel filtration. The optimum pH for the hydrolysis of glycyl-L-proline 4-methoxy-beta-naphthylamide was 7.5 to 8.5. The enzyme activity was inhibited by the serine protease inhibitors diisopropyl fluorophosphate and phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride by 82.5 and 78%, respectively. The activity was also inhibited by Hg2+ (55.6%) and Zn2+ (45%).
TRUST ON THE WEB : THE POWER OF SUBJECTIVE NORM ACROSS CULTURES

This study finds that subjective norm plays a critical role in online trust formation. It is the covariate of all cultural variables. For a person of any cultural orientation, others' opinions matter. Uncertainty avoidance and power distance, but not collectivism, most strongly influence subjective norm and trust constructs. Introduction While e-commerce is a global phenomenon, and understanding the cross-cultural aspects of online trust creation is inevitably crucial for its success, little study has been done on online trust and culture. Winning customers' trust is key to e-commerce success, yet " research on trust and trust beliefs in e-commerce has mostly ignored the possible effects of national culture " (Gefen and Heart, 2006, 1). Furthermore, no work has examined culture and trust at the individual level in an online context. Extending McKnight, Choudhury, and Kacmar's trust model (2002), this study explored the relationship between online trust formation and cultural influences at the individual level.
Identification of Cohesive Ends and Genes Encoding the Terminase of Phage 16-3

ABSTRACT Cohesive ends of 16-3, a temperate phage of Rhizobium meliloti 41, have been identified as 10-base-long, 3′-protruding complementary G/C-rich sequences. terS and terL encode the two subunits of 16-3 terminase. Significant homologies were detected among the terminase subunits of phage 16-3 and other phages from various ecosystems.
Protecting Important Sites for Biodiversity Contributes to Meeting Global Conservation Targets

Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation efforts and now cover nearly 13% of the world's land surface, with the world's governments committed to expand this to 17%. However, as biodiversity continues to decline, the effectiveness of PAs in reducing the extinction risk of species remains largely untested. We analyzed PA coverage and trends in species' extinction risk at globally significant sites for conserving birds (10,993 Important Bird Areas, IBAs) and highly threatened vertebrates and conifers (588 Alliance for Zero Extinction sites, AZEs) (referred to collectively hereafter as ‘important sites’). Species occurring in important sites with greater PA coverage experienced smaller increases in extinction risk over recent decades: the increase was half as large for bird species with>50% of the IBAs at which they occur completely covered by PAs, and a third lower for birds, mammals and amphibians restricted to protected AZEs (compared with unprotected or partially protected sites). Globally, half of the important sites for biodiversity conservation remain unprotected (49% of IBAs, 51% of AZEs). While PA coverage of important sites has increased over time, the proportion of PA area covering important sites, as opposed to less important land, has declined (by 0.45–1.14% annually since 1950 for IBAs and 0.79–1.49% annually for AZEs). Thus, while appropriately located PAs may slow the rate at which species are driven towards extinction, recent PA network expansion has under-represented important sites. We conclude that better targeted expansion of PA networks would help to improve biodiversity trends.
Efficient decision tree construction for mining time-varying data streams

Mining streaming data has been an active research area to address requirements of applications, such as financial marketing, telecommunication, network monitoring, and so on. A popular technique for mining these continuous and fast-arriving data streams is decision trees. The accuracy of decision trees can deteriorate if the distribution of values in the stream changes over time. In this paper, we propose an approach based on decision trees that can detect distribution changes and re-align the decision tree quickly to reflect the change. The technique exploits a set of synopses on the leaf nodes, which are also used to prune the decision tree. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can detect the distribution changes in real-time with high accuracy, and re-aligning a decision tree can improve its performance in clustering the subsequent data stream tuples.
Characterization of Upper-Limb Pathological Tremors: Application to Design of an Augmented Haptic Rehabilitation System

In this paper, an adaptive filtering technique is proposed to estimate and characterize pathological tremors caused by Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Essential Tremor (ET). The technique is based on the formulation of band-limited multiple Fourier Linear Combiners (BMFLC) and is called Enhanced-BMFLC (E-BMFLC). The effectiveness of the designed filter is statistically evaluated through a clinical study involving 14 PD and 13 ET patients. The hand tremors of the participants are studied in three Degrees Of Freedom (DOF). Using statistical analysis, it is shown that the new design of the filter significantly enhances the accuracy in comparison with the performance of conventional BMFLC filtering. In addition, E-BMFLC significantly reduces the sensitivity to parameter tuning and intrapatient variabilities. The observed improvements are achieved by modulating the memory of the proposed filter, and by enriching the utilized harmonic model. The proposed filter is then used to develop a safe haptics-enabled robotic rehabilitation architecture, designed for patients having hand tremors. The architecture is entitled Augmented Haptic Rehabilitation (AHR), which enables adaptive management of the involuntary components of the hand motion while delivering assist-as-needed haptic therapy (for the voluntary component) and avoiding unsafe amplification of hand tremors. Experimental evaluations are provided to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed AHR system.
Classification using High Order Dissimilarities in Non-euclidean Spaces

This paper introduces a novel classification algorithm named MAP-DID. This algorithm combines a maximum a posteriori (MAP) approach using the well-known Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) method with a term that forces the various Gaussian components within each class to have a common structure. That structure is based on higher-order statistics of the data, through the use of the dissimilarity increments distribution (DID), which contains information regarding the triplets of neighbor points in the data, as opposed to typical pairwise measures, such as the Euclidean distance. We study the performance of MAP-DID on several synthetic and real datasets and on various non-Euclidean spaces. The results show that MAP-DID outperforms other classifiers and is therefore appropriate for classification of data on such spaces.
Structural Basis of Ordered Binding of Donor and Acceptor Substrates to the Retaining Glycosyltransferase, α-1,3-Galactosyltransferase*

Bovine α-1,3-galactosyltransferase (α3GT) catalyzes the synthesis of the α-galactose (α-Gal) epitope, the target of natural human antibodies. It represents a family of enzymes, including the histo blood group A and B transferases, that catalyze retaining glycosyltransfer reactions of unknown mechanism. An initial study of α3GT in a crystal form with limited resolution and considerable disorder suggested the possible formation of a β-galactosyl-enzyme covalent intermediate (Gastinel, L. N., Bignon, C., Misra, A. K., Hindsgaul, O., Shaper, J. H., and Joziasse, D. H. (2001) EMBO J. 20, 638–649). Highly ordered structures are described for complexes of α3GT with donor substrate, UDP-galactose, UDP- glucose, and two acceptor substrates, lactose and N-acetyllactosamine, at resolutions up to 1.46 Å. Structural and calorimetric binding studies suggest an obligatory ordered binding of donor and acceptor substrates, linked to a donor substrate-induced conformational change, and the direct participation of UDP in acceptor binding. The monosaccharide-UDP bond is cleaved in the structures containing UDP-galactose and UDP-glucose, producing non-covalent complexes containing buried β-galactose and α-glucose. The location of these monosaccharides and molecular modeling suggest that binding of a distorted conformation of UDP-galactose may be important in the catalytic mechanism of α3GT.
Detecting Key Structural Features within Highly Recombined Genes

Many microorganisms exhibit high levels of intragenic recombination following horizontal gene transfer events. Furthermore, many microbial genes are subject to strong diversifying selection as part of the pathogenic process. A multiple sequence alignment is an essential starting point for many of the tools that provide fundamental insights on gene structure and evolution, such as phylogenetics; however, an accurate alignment is not always possible to attain. In this study, a new analytic approach was developed in order to better quantify the genetic organization of highly diversified genes whose alleles do not align. This BLAST-based method, denoted BLAST Miner, employs an iterative process that places short segments of highly similar sequence into discrete datasets that are designated "modules. " The relative positions of modules along the length of the genes, and their frequency of occurrence, are used to identify sequence duplications, insertions, and rearrangements. Partial alleles of sof from Streptococcus pyogenes, encoding a surface protein under host immune selection, were analyzed for module content. High-frequency Modules 6 and 13 were identified and examined in depth. Nucleotide sequences corresponding to both modules contain numerous duplications and inverted repeats, whereby many codons form palindromic pairs. Combined with evidence for a strong codon usage bias, data suggest that Module 6 and 13 sequences are under selection to preserve their nucleic acid secondary structure. The concentration of overlapping tandem and inverted repeats within a small region of DNA is highly suggestive of a mechanistic role for Module 6 and 13 sequences in promoting aberrant recombination. Analysis of pbp2X alleles from Streptococcus pneumoniae, encoding cell wall enzymes that confer antibiotic resistance, supports the broad applicability of this tool in deciphering the genetic organization of highly recombined genes. BLAST Miner shares with phylogenetics the important predictive quality that leads to the generation of testable hypotheses based on sequence data.
Exposure to Bisphenol A Prenatally or in Adulthood Promotes TH2 Cytokine Production Associated with Reduction of CD4+CD25+ Regulatory T Cells

Background Bisphenol A (BPA) is a widespread endocrine-disrupting chemical that can affect humans and animals. Objectives We investigated the effects of adult or prenatal exposure to BPA on T-helper (TH)1/TH2 immune responses and the mechanisms underlying these effects. Methods To evaluate the effects of exposure to BPA in adulthood, male Leishmania major–susceptible BALB/c and –resistant C57BL/6 mice were subcutaneously injected with 0.625, 1.25, 2.5, and 5 μmol BPA 1 week before being infected with L. major. To evaluate prenatal exposure, female mice were given BPA-containing drinking water at concentrations of 1, 10, and 100 nM for 2 weeks, then mated, and given BPA for another week. Male 10-week-old offspring were infected with L. major. Footpad swelling was assessed as a measure of the course of infection. Results Mice exposed to BPA prenatally or in adulthood showed a dose-dependent increase in footpad swelling after being infected with L. major. Exposure to BPA in adulthood significantly promoted antigen-stimulated production of interleukin (IL)-4, IL-10, and IL-13 but not interferon-γ (IFN-γ). However, mice prenatally exposed to BPA showed increased production of not only IL-4 but also IFN-γ. The percentages of CD4+CD25+ cells were decreased in mice exposed to BPA either prenatally or in adulthood. Effects of prenatal BPA exposure were far more pronounced than effects of exposure in adulthood. Conclusion BPA promotes the development of TH2 cells in adulthood and both TH1 and TH2 cells in prenatal stages by reducing the number of regulatory T cells.
Act 2.0: The Next Generation of Assistive Consumer Technology Research

Purpose: This paper reviews current research on assistive consumer technologies (ACT 1.0) and discusses a series of research challenges that need to be addressed before the field can move towards tools that are more effective and more readily adopted by consumers (ACT 2.0). Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper. Our perspective, commensurate with our current research and areas of expertise, is that of consumer researchers.Findings: We argue that while substantial advances have been made in the technical design of ACTs – and the algorithms that power recommendation systems – there are substantial barriers to wide-scale consumer adoption of such tools that need to be addressed. In particular, future ACT designs will need to better integrate current research in human judgment and decision making to improve the ease with which such tools can be used.Originality/value: From the perspective of consumer researchers, this paper highlights a set of key areas of enquiry that have the potential to substantially advance assistive consumer technology research.
Cloning, Sequence Analysis, and Expression in Escherichia coli of the Gene Encoding an α-Amino Acid Ester Hydrolase from Acetobacter turbidans

ABSTRACT The α-amino acid ester hydrolase from Acetobacter turbidans ATCC 9325 is capable of hydrolyzing and synthesizing β-lactam antibiotics, such as cephalexin and ampicillin. N-terminal amino acid sequencing of the purified α-amino acid ester hydrolase allowed cloning and genetic characterization of the corresponding gene from an A. turbidans genomic library. The gene, designated aehA, encodes a polypeptide with a molecular weight of 72,000. Comparison of the determined N-terminal sequence and the deduced amino acid sequence indicated the presence of an N-terminal leader sequence of 40 amino acids. The aehA gene was subcloned in the pET9 expression plasmid and expressed in Escherichia coli. The recombinant protein was purified and found to be dimeric with subunits of 70 kDa. A sequence similarity search revealed 26% identity with a glutaryl 7-ACA acylase precursor from Bacillus laterosporus, but no homology was found with other known penicillin or cephalosporin acylases. There was some similarity to serine proteases, including the conservation of the active site motif, GXSYXG. Together with database searches, this suggested that the α-amino acid ester hydrolase is a β-lactam antibiotic acylase that belongs to a class of hydrolases that is different from the Ntn hydrolase superfamily to which the well-characterized penicillin acylase from E. coli belongs. The α-amino acid ester hydrolase of A. turbidans represents a subclass of this new class of β-lactam antibiotic acylases.