Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bioaccumulation and trophic dilution of human pharmaceuticals across trophic positions of an effluent-dependent wadeable stream

Though pharmaceuticals are increasingly observed in a variety of organisms from coastal and inland aquatic systems, trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals in aquatic food webs have not been reported. In this study, bioaccumulation of select pharmaceuticals was investigated in a lower order effluent-dependent stream in central Texas, USA, using isotope dilution liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (MS). A fish plasma model, initially developed from laboratory studies, was tested to examine observed versus predicted internal dose of select pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals accumulated to higher concentrations in invertebrates relative to fish; elevated concentrations of the antidepressant sertraline and its primary metabolite desmethylsertraline were observed in the Asian clam, Corbicula fluminea, and two unionid mussel species. Trophic positions were determined from stable isotopes (δ15N and δ13C) collected by isotope ratio-MS; a Bayesian mixing model was then used to estimate diet contributions towards top fish predators. Because diphenhydramine and carbamazepine were the only target compounds detected in all species examined, trophic magnification factors (TMFs) were derived to evaluate potential trophic transfer of both compounds. TMFs for diphenhydramine (0.38) and carbamazepine (1.17) indicated neither compound experienced trophic magnification, which suggests that inhalational and not dietary exposure represented the primary route of uptake by fish in this effluent-dependent stream.
Adaptive Clustering based on Residual Energy on Sensor Nodes in Wireless Sensor Network for Multimedia Data

Wireless Sensor Network consists of large number of Sensor Nodes. The main aim is to increase the lifetime of the network as the sensors are deployed mainly to perform unattended operations like Environmental Monitoring, Seismic activity Detection, Industrial Monitoring and Control etc. All these activities require Robust Wireless Communication Protocol with low power consumption. This paper describes how the optimal numbers of Cluster Heads (CH) are elected among the sensor nodes so that energy is optimally consumed for the cluster members to interact with Cluster Heads. The role of the Cluster Head is rotated so that the energy consumption can be distributed evenly and the lifetime of the Wireless Sensor Network can be extended. The experimental results shows that the life time of the network is extended as compared to other approaches like LEACH [1]
Pushing forward in embodied cognition: may we mouse the mathematical mind?

Freely available software has popularized “mousetracking” to study cognitive processing; this involves the on-line recording of cursor positions while participants move a computer mouse to indicate their choice. Movement trajectories of the cursor can then be reconstructed off-line to assess the efficiency of responding in time and across space. Here we focus on the process of selecting among alternative numerical responses. Several studies have recently measured the mathematical mind with cursor movements while people decided about number magnitude or parity, computed sums or differences, or simply located numbers on a number line. After some general methodological considerations about mouse tracking we discuss several conceptual concerns that become particularly evident when “mousing” the mathematical mind.
Finding routes in a public transport network. A case study

There is a need for reliable and trustworthy public transport planner services. Mass transits are trying to solve problems as traffic jams or increasing pollution in densely populated city agglomerations. Passengers are looking for travel information on-line and companies providing public transport solutions often struggle with providing modern trip planner platforms. We address this problem by providing simple and easy to implement solution for shortest paths computation in public transport network of any size. In first part of the paper we present our approach to building time-expanded graph model of public transportation network. We use a structure with multiple vertices within one stop identified by triple (stop, time, line) and edges with constant travel times. Second part introduces k-shortest paths algorithm for created graph. We provide step by step explanation along with code samples. Average algorithm response time is around 1.5s for a public transport network of the size over 2800 stops. This is accepted query time for a web application. None additional speed-up techniques has been used to keep implementation and explanations simple and leaving room for further improvements. Algorithm has been successfully tested in Upper Silesian Industrial District (GOP) in cooperation with main public transport provider in the area (KZK GOP). This real instance is the biggest one in Poland and contains 370 lines and over 2800 stops.
The analysis of spot defect induced faults in MOS circuits

A strategy for modeling spot defect induced faults by their corresponding Boolean functions is developed. The presented strategy is based on the principle of local conduction path analysis. This way of modeling is much more general in the sense that all kinds of faults are unified by one concept, the Boolean function. In this way testing related applications can be done efficiently and can maintain a high quality. <<ETX>>
Binding and cleavage of DNA with the restriction enzyme EcoR1 using time-resolved second harmonic generation

The binding of EcoR1 to a 90-bp DNA duplex attached to colloidal microparticles and the subsequent cleavage by the enzyme was observed in real time and label-free with time-resolved second harmonic (SH) spectroscopy. This method provides a unique way to investigate biomolecular interactions based on its sensitivity to changes in structure and electrical charge on formation of a complex and subsequent dynamics. The binding of EcoR1 to the recognition sequence in DNA appears as a rapid increase in the SH signal, which is attributed to the enzyme-induced change in the DNA conformation, going from a rod-like to a bent shape. In the presence of the cofactor Mg2+, the subsequent decay in the SH signal was monitored in real time as the following processes occurred: cleavage of DNA, dissociation of the enzyme from the DNA, and diffusion of the 74-bp fragment into the bulk solution leaving the 16-bp fragment attached to the microparticle. The observed decay was dependent on the concentration of Mg2+, which functions as a cofactor and as an electrolyte. With SH spectroscopy the rehybridization dynamics between the rehybridized microparticle bound and free cleaved DNA fragments was observed in real time and label-free following the cleavage of DNA. Collectively, the experiments reported here establish SH spectroscopy as a powerful method to investigate equilibrium and time-dependent biological processes in a noninvasive and label-free way.
Computer-Mediated Communication and Interpersonal Attraction: An Experimental Test of Two Explanatory Hypotheses

The aims of this study were (a) to investigate the influence of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on interpersonal attraction and (b) to examine two underlying processes in the CMC-interpersonal attraction relationship. We identified two variables that may mediate the influence of CMC on interpersonal attraction: self-disclosure and direct questioning. Focusing on these potential mediating variables, we tested two explanatory hypotheses: the CMC-induced direct questioning hypothesis and the CMC-induced self-disclosure hypothesis. Eighty-one cross-sex dyads were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: text-only CMC, visual CMC, and face-to-face communication. We did not find a direct effect of CMC on interpersonal attraction. However, we did find two positive indirect effects of text-only CMC on interpersonal attraction: text-only CMC stimulated both self-disclosure and direct questioning, both of which in turn enhanced interpersonal attraction. Results are discussed in light of uncertainty reduction theory and CMC theories.
Improving hopping stability of a biped by muscular stretch reflex

Animals have several peripheral feedback control networks such as stretch reflexes that are supposed to be contributing to stability of their behavior. In this paper, we focus on rolling stability of hopping of a biped robot, and investigate several schemes on an experimental robot for implementing the stretch reflex: no reflex, undelayed and delayed reflex, how they contribute to the stability. For eliminating effect of changing environment and initial postures, we conduct large number of hopping experiments on a real robot. From the experimental results, we can conclude (1) two reflex schemes, with delay and without delay, can both increase the frontal stability in hopping, and (2) the delay time has little influence on the stability. By these result, we can derive a stable hopping controller for a biped robot, and may be able to understand the mechanism of human adaptive hopping as well.
Genetic mouse models for skin research: Strategies and resources

A number of features contributed to establishing the mouse as the favorite model organism for skin research: the genetic and pathophysiological similarities to humans, the small size and relatively short reproductive period, meaning low maintenance costs, and the availability of sophisticated tools for manipulating the genome, gametes, and embryos. While initial studies depended on strains displaying skin abnormalities due to spontaneous genetic mutations, the availability of the transgenic and knockout technologies and their astonishing perfection during the last decades allowed the development of mouse lines permitting any imaginable genetic modification including gene inactivation, substitution, modification, or overexpression. While these technologies have already contributed to the functional analysis of several genes and processes related to skin research, continued progress requires understanding, awareness, and access to these mouse resources. This review will identify the strategies currently employed for the genetic manipulation of mice in skin research, and outline current resources and their limitations. genesis 50:652–664, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Category-based intrinsic motivation

A goal of epigenetic robotics is to design a control architecture that implements an ongoing, autonomous developmental process which is unsupervised, unscheduled, and taskindependent. The developmental process we are currently exploring contains three essential mechanisms: categorization, prediction, and intrinsic motivation. In this paper we describe a hybrid approach that uses Growing Neural Gas for categorization, neural networks for prediction, and Intelligent Adaptive Curiosity for intrinsic motivation. We apply this system to a physical robot operating in a dynamic visual environment and analyze the types of categories it forms.
SciNet: Interactive Intent Modeling for Information Discovery

Current search engines offer limited assistance for exploration and information discovery in complex search tasks. Instead, users are distracted by the need to focus their cognitive efforts on finding navigation cues, rather than selecting relevant information. Interactive intent modeling enhances the human information exploration capacity through computational modeling, visualized for interaction. Interactive intent modeling has been shown to increase task-level information seeking performance by up to 100%. In this demonstration, we showcase SciNet, a system implementing interactive intent modeling on top of a scientific article database of over 60 million documents.
Knowledge Compilation Meets Communication Complexity

Choosing a language for knowledge representation and reasoning involves a trade-off between two competing desiderata: succinctness (the encoding should be small) and tractability (the language should support efficient reasoning algorithms). The area of knowledge compilation is devoted to the systematic study of representation languages along these two dimensions--in particular, it aims to determine the relative succinctness of languages. Showing that one language is more succinct than another typically involves proving a nontrivial lower bound on the encoding size of a carefully chosen function, and the corresponding arguments increase in difficulty with the succinctness of the target language. In this paper, we introduce a general technique for obtaining lower bounds on Decomposable Negation Normal Form (DNNFs), one of the most widely studied and succinct representation languages, by relating the size of DNNFs to multi-partition communication complexity. This allows us to directly translate lower bounds from the communication complexity literature into lower bounds on the size of DNNF representations. We use this approach to prove exponential separations of DNNFs from deterministic DNNFs and of CNF formulas from DNNFs.
Modelling and Handling Seams in Wide-Area Sensor Networks

The fields of wearable computing, augmented reality and ubiquitous computing are in principle highly convergent, as they all promise a Utopian future in which the devices embedded in the environment, our bodies and our clothes will have reached a level integration such that we can intuitively perceive and interact with our environment. However, the reality as practised in research labs and limited commercial deployments has been that budgetary and technical constraints have actually kept these fields separate and distinct. One manifestation of this separation is in the choice of sensors used to build systems in each domain. A truly cross-disciplinary project has to incorporate sensors of much greater heterogeneity than has occurred heretofore. The way in which sensors are deployed results in spatial seams that can act as obstacles to the provision of services across different areas. This paper takes an architectural approach to handling events from different tracking systems and maintaining a consistent spatial model of people and objects. The principal distinguishing feature is the automatic derivation of dataflow network of distributed sensors, dynamically and at run-time, based on requirements expressed by clients.
Beta Hebbian Learning for intrusion detection in networks with MQTT Protocols for IoT devices

This paper aims to enhance security in IoT device networks through a visual tool that utilizes three projection techniques, including Beta Hebbian Learning (BHL), t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) and ISOMAP, in order to facilitate the identification of network attacks by human experts. This work research begins with the creation of a testing environment with IoT devices and web clients, simulating attacks over Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) for recording all relevant traffic information. The unsupervised algorithms chosen provide a set of projections that enable human experts to visually identify most attacks in real-time, making it a powerful tool that can be implemented in IoT environments easily.
Myelin/oligodendrocyte glycoprotein is alternatively spliced in humans but not mice

Myelin/oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) is an integral membrane protein expressed on the oligodendrocyte cell surface and the outermost surface of myelin sheaths. Due to this localization, MOG is a primary target antigen involved in immune‐mediated demyelination. We previously reported that MOG is a unique member of the immunoglobulin (Ig) superfamily in that it possesses two large hydrophobic domains. MOG is highly conserved between deduced peptide sequences of rodent and human MOG (≈89% identity). We have completed an investigation of alternative splicing within the human and mouse MOG genes. Reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) analysis of total cellular RNA isolated from both fetal and adult human central nervous system (CNS) tissues reveals a complex array of alternatively spliced MOG‐specific variants and the presence of two novel exons. Exon 3 encodes a short hydrophilic domain containing multiple in‐frame termination codons that would result in truncation of MOG prior to translation of its transmembrane domain. Exon 7 encodes an additional hydrophilic domain that replaces MOG's second hydrophobic domain in one splice variant. We also observed that five of our eight MOG variants exhibited an alternative internal 3′ splice acceptor within MOG's terminal exon. Surprisingly, no splicing was observed in a developmental study using mouse brainstem RNA. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Parallel Independent Component Analysis Approach to Investigate Genomic Influence on Brain Function

Relationships between genomic data and functional brain images are of great interest but require new analysis approaches to integrate the high-dimensional data types. This letter presents an extension of a technique called parallel independent component analysis (paraICA), which enables the joint analysis of multiple modalities including interconnections between them. We extend our earlier work by allowing for multiple interconnections and by providing important overfitting controls. Performance was assessed by simulations under different conditions, and indicated reliable results can be extracted by properly balancing overfitting and underfitting. An application to functional magnetic resonance images and single nucleotide polymorphism array produced interesting findings.
BODILY BENCHMARK: GESTURAL/PHYSIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS BY REMOTE/WEARABLE SENSING

This paper presents a numediart project in collaboration with two artistic projects: Musichoregraphie d’appartement by Andre Serre-Milan [63] and BioDiva by Laurence Moletta (Nios Karma) [34]. The scope of this project was to offer technological forecasting and development consultancy to these two artists that both share a common goal of using gestures to control on audiovisual rendering on stage (see section 2). We developed a first prototype for synchronized recording, visualization and editing of multimodal signals (audio, video, sensors) (see section 3.1). We updated our technologies for gesture recognition using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) (see section 3.2) and mapping interpolation (see section 3.3). We ported our longterm attention computer vision algorithm from EyesWeb to Max / MSP (see section 3.4). We achieved initial promising results for the prototyping of the BioDiva gestural interface (see section 4.1) and for the analysis using the long-term attention model of the Musichoregraphie d’appartement recording sessions (see section 4.2). We plan to improve our multimodal signal recording and analysis tool towards a more efficient annotation tool (see section 5.1). We plan to build a dedicated wireless sensor interface to overcome all the related issues we met so far (see section 5.2). We plan to use new textiles for the improvement of sensors, sensor interfaces and integration in performers’ costumes (see section 5.3).
Thrombus Burden Is Associated With Clinical Outcome After Intra-Arterial Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke

Background and Purpose— Studies have established a relation between recanalization and improved clinical outcome in acute ischemic stroke patients; however, intra-arterial clot size has not been routinely assessed. The aim of the study was to determine the impact of intra-arterial thrombus burden on intra-arterial treatment (IAT) and clinical outcome. Methods— A retrospective review of our IAT stroke database included procedure time, recanalization, symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage, poor outcome (modified Rankin Scale score ≥4 at discharge), and mortality. The modified Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction thrombus grade was dichotomized into grades 0 to 3 (no clot or moderate thrombus, <2 vessel diameters) versus grade 4 (large thrombus, >2 vessel diameters). Results— Data were collected on 135 patients with thrombus grading. The baseline median National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score was higher in patients of grade 4 compared with grades 0 to 3 (19 vs 17, P=0.012). Grade 4 thrombi required longer (median, range) times for IAT (113, 37 to 415 minutes vs 74, 22 to 215 minutes, respectively; P<0.001) and higher rates of mechanical clot disruption (wire, angioplasty, snare, stent, or Merci retriever) compared with grades 0 to 3 (76% vs 53%, P=0.005). There were no differences in rates of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (6.6% vs 4.1%, P=0.701) or recanalization (50% vs 61%, P=0.216) in grade 4 versus grades 0 to 3. Multivariate analysis adjusted for age, baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, and artery of involvement showed that grade 4 thrombi were independently associated with poor outcome (odds ratio=2.4; 95% CI, 1.06 to 5.57; P=0.036) and mortality (odds ratio=4.0; 95% CI, 1.2 to 13.2; P=0.023). Conclusions— High thrombus grade as measured by the modified Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction criteria may be a risk factor that contributes to poor clinical outcome.
Assimilation of Compliance Software in Highly Regulated Industries: An Empirical Multitheoretical Investigation

In this paper we follow a theory-based approach to study the assimilation of compliance software in highly regulated multinational enterprises. These relatively new software products support the automation of controls which are associated with mandatory compliance requirements. We use institutional and success factor theories to explain the assimilation of compliance software. A framework for analyzing the assimilation of Access Control Systems (ACS), a special type of compliance software, is developed and used to reflect the experiences obtained in four in-depth case studies. One result is that coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures significantly effect ACS assimilation. On the other hand, quality aspects have only a moderate impact at the beginning of the assimilation process, in later phases the impact may increase if performance and improvement objectives become more relevant. In addition, it turns out that position of the enterprises and compatibility heavily influence the assimilation process.
Effect of High Doses of Dietary Vitamin E on the Concentrations of Vitamin E in Several Brain Regions, Plasma, Liver, and Adipose Tissue of Rats

Abstract: The object of this study was to assess the influence of high levels of dietary vitamin E on vitamin E concentrations in specific areas of the brain. Four‐week‐old male rats were fed vitamin E‐deficient, control, and high‐vitamin E (1,000 IU/kg) diets for 4 months. Concentrations of α‐tocopherol in serum, adipose tissue, liver, cerebrum, cerebellum, and striatum were determined by liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. In the high‐vitamin E group, α‐tocopherol concentrations in cerebrum, cerebellum, and striatum increased uniformly to 1.4‐fold of values in controls; serum, adipose tissue, and liver attained even higher concentrations: 2.2‐, 2.2‐, and 4.6‐fold, respectively, of control values. As observed before, brain levels of α‐tocopherol were somewhat resistant to vitamin E deficiency, in contrast to the peripheral tissues.