Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliable routing for low-power smart space communications

Smart space (SS) communication has rapidly emerged as an exciting new paradigm that includes ubiquitous, grid and pervasive computing to provide intelligence, insight and vision for the emerging world of intelligent environments, products, services and human interaction. Dependable networking of a SS environment can be ensured through reliable routing, efficient selection of error-free links, rapid recovery from broken links and the avoidance of congested gateways. Since link failure and packet loss are inevitable in SS wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the authors have developed an efficient scheme to achieve a reliable data collection for SSs composed of low capacity wireless sensor nodes. WSNs must tolerate a certain lack of reliability without a significant effect on packet delivery performance, data aggregation accuracy or energy consumption. An effective hybrid scheme is presented that adaptively reduces control traffic with a metric that measures the reception success ratio of representative data packets. Based on this approach, the proposed routing scheme can achieve reduced energy consumption while ensuring minimal packet loss in environments featuring high link failure rates. The performance of the proposed routing scheme is experimentally investigated using both simulations and a test bed of TelosB motes. It is shown to be more robust and energy efficient than the network layer provided by TinyOS2.x. The results show that the scheme is able to maintain better than 95% connectivity in an interference-prone medium while achieving a 35% energy saving.
PCR-restriction endonuclease analysis for identification and strain typing of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium subsp. avium based on polymorphisms in IS1311.

Point mutations in the IS 1311 sequences from sheep and cattle strains of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (M. paratuberculosis) and M. avium subsp. avium (M. avium) were targeted to develop a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) that would be useful in the diagnosis and control of Johne's disease. Candidate PCR tests were evaluated for sensitivity, specificity and ease of interpretation of the restriction endonuclease analysis (REA) products. One IS 1311 PCR, amplifying a 608 base pair product, was shown to be suitable when the amplified product was digested with Hinf I and Mse I. The PCR detected 50 fg of template DNA from M. paratuberculosis strain 316 V, the equivalent of 10 organisms. The test was evaluated further using purified DNA from M. paratuberculosis and M. avium isolates and diagnostic samples including primary radiometric cultures. All 89 M. paratuberculosis samples were correctly identified and typed according to host species or IS 900 restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) type. All 28 isolates of M. avium were also correctly identified. A second PCR/REA strategy based on a shorter fragment of IS 1311 was developed for formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples. It correctly differentiated sheep and cattle strains of M. paratuberculosis in 27 tissue samples in which acid fast bacilli had been observed in Ziehl Neelsen stains and in which sufficient amplified product was present for REA with Hinf I. Both tests were specific for M. paratuberculosis when tested against 24 other mycobacterial species. These simple and rapid tests can be used on a range of diagnostic samples for the confirmation of Johne's disease and will be of benefit in control and eradication programmes for this disease.
General Discussion

Asian Economic Papers 4:2 © 2006 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Responding to the paper by Robert Dekle, Cathy Karnchanasai, and Pongsak Hoontrakul on anancing constraints and the fall in arm output in Thailand during the currency crisis, Wing Thye Woo arst spoke on behalf of Jeffrey Sachs. He said that any decrease in output may be due to a demand shock or a supply shock. From the fact that the output decline in Thailand was so large and the swing back so swift, it appears that a supply shock was more likely. The question then is where that supply shock came from. Most arms eventually survived, which suggests that it was not a case of many bad arms having to be cleaned up. If a credit panic was the reason behind the supply shock, there is a high probability that the IMF was responsible for the credit squeeze that led to the supply shock.
Forest water use in the initial stages of reclamation in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region

Following large‐scale surface oil sands mining, large tracts of the boreal forest in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region of Western Canada are legally required to be reclaimed. A greater understanding of how these novel ecosystems function and develop with regard to water use is crucial to aid in the development of regulatory practices and protocols based on information from ecosystem recovery. In this paper, a 12‐year (2003–2014) eddy covariance measurement record of latent and sensible heat fluxes and gross ecosystem productivity of carbon dioxide is analysed to evaluate how a reclaimed boreal forest has developed during its initial growth period. The study site is a reclaimed oil sands saline‐sodic clay shale overburden deposit that was topped with 100 cm of glacial till and 20 cm of peat mineral mix. The site was seeded with barley (Hordeum spp.) in 2001 to reduce erosion of the soil cover whereas aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) and spruce (Picea glauca [Moench] Voss) boreal tree species were planted in 2004. Changes in structure and function corresponded to the transition of dominant vegetation cover from early successional species to forest. Leaf area index increased from a growing season peak of 0.9 in 2003 to 4.0 in 2014 and was associated with an increased growing season gross ecosystem productivity (4.9 to 8.9 g C m−2 day−1), an increased evapotranspiration (1.6 to 3.4 mm day−1), and a decreased partitioning of energy to sensible heat (Bowen's ratio decreased from 1.1 to 0.4). Although canopy conductance increased throughout the 12 years, the shift from early successional species to trees with more conservative water use resulted in a decrease in conductance normalized by leaf area. Water use efficiency has increased slightly since 2008 with an average of 10.0 g CO2 kg−1 H2O for the last 6 years. No prolonged dry periods were observed during the study period. The functioning of this novel ecosystem is evolving as expected on the basis of the trends observed for other natural and disturbed boreal forests.
Grapheme-to-phoneme conversion based on adaptive regularization of weight vectors

The current state-of-the-art approach in grapheme-to-phoneme (g2p) conversion is structured learning based on the Margin Infused Relaxed Algorithm (MIRA), which is an online discriminative training method for multiclass classification. However, it is known that the aggressive weight update method of MIRA is prone to overfitting, even if the current example is an outlier or noisy. Adaptive Regularization of Weight Vectors (AROW) has been proposed to resolve this problem for binary classification. In addition, AROW’s update rule is simpler and more efficient than that of MIRA, allowing for more efficient training. Although AROW has these advantages, it has not been applied to g2p conversion yet. In this paper, we first apply AROW to g2p conversion which is structured learning problem. In an evaluation that employed a dataset including noisy data our proposed approach achieves a 5.3% error reduction rate compared to MIRA implemented in DirecTL+ in terms of phoneme error rate while requiring only 78% the training time. Index Terms:g2p conversion, out-of-vocabulary word, online discriminative training, structured learning, AROW
Cryopreserved rat liver slices: a critical evaluation of cell viability, histological integrity, and drug-metabolizing enzymes.

The effects of a cryopreservation procedure on the biochemical, morphological and functional integrity of rat liver slices just after thawing and after 24 h culture were evaluated. Freshly prepared slices were incubated in modified University of Wisconsin solution containing 50% fetal calf serum and 10% dimethyl sulfoxide for 20 min on ice prior to a rapid cooling in liquid nitrogen. After 10-40 days, slices were thawed rapidly at 42 degrees C. Total protein content and (3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) (MTT) reduction were well preserved at thawing, whereas ATP content was markedly decreased relative to freshly prepared slices (-83%). The major microscopic findings in sections of just-thawed liver slices consisted of hepatocellular dissociation and minimal apoptosis. The qualitative profile of antipyrine (AP) metabolism was well preserved in cryopreserved slices, but the amounts of phase I and phase II AP metabolites produced over a 3-h incubation period were markedly reduced relative to fresh slices (-58 to -71%). When cryopreserved slices were cultured for 24 h after thawing, the viability was markedly reduced, as reflected by the almost complete absence of MTT reduction and the loss of ATP content. Histological examinations showed extensive cellular necrosis. The amount of AP metabolites produced by cryopreserved slices was similar after a 3- or a 24-h culture period, indicating that AP metabolism capacities were lost at 24 h culture. In conclusion, our results suggest that cryopreserved rat liver slices may be a useful model for short-term in vitro determination of drug metabolism pathways. Further work is required to extend their use for toxicological studies.
High-Affinity Cation Binding to Organic Cation Transporter 1 Induces Movement of Helix 11 and Blocks Transport after Mutations in a Modeled Interaction Domain between Two Helices

Voltage-clamp fluorometry was performed with a cysteine-deprived mutant of rat organic cation transporter 1 (rOCT1) in which Phe483 in transmembrane α-helix (TMH) 11 close to the extracellular surface was replaced by cysteine and labeled with tetramethylrhodamine-6-maleimide. Potential-dependent fluorescence changes were observed that were sensitive to presence of substrates choline, tetraethylammonium (TEA), and 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP) and of the nontransported inhibitor tetrabutylammonium (TBuA). Using potential-dependent fluorescence changes as readout, one high-affinity binding site per substrate and two high-affinity binding sites for TBuA were identified in addition to the previously described single interaction sites. In a structure model of rOCT1 with an inward open cleft that was derived from a known crystal structure of lacY permease, Phe483 is close to Trp147 in TMH 2. In contrast, in a model with an outward open cleft these amino acids are far apart. After replacement of Phe483 or Trp147 by cysteine or serine, high-affinity binding of TBuA leads to inhibition of MPP or TEA uptake, whereas it has no effect on cation uptake by wild-type rOCT1. Coexisting high-affinity cation binding sites in organic cation transporters may collect low concentration xenobiotics and drugs; however, translocation including transitions between outward- and inward-oriented conformations may only be induced when a low-affinity cation binding site is loaded. We propose that cations bound to high-affinity sites may be translocated together with cations bound to low-affinity sites or that they may block the translocation mechanism.
BDI Agents with Fuzzy Perception for Simulating Decision Making in Environments with Imperfect Information

This work introduces a model of fuzzy perception for BDI agents, to support the simulation of decision making processes in environments with imperfect information. An application to a fuzzy prey-predator environment was developed, as an example, where the process of deciding which prey a predator should attack is based on its fuzzy perception of the strength of the prey, and on the comparison of the preys’ strengths with its own strength. Different simulations were realized for the comparative evaluation of different types of predator agents, in contexts with and without competition between predators. The quantitative analysis of the simulations shows that the fuzzy predator agent presents the best scores. However, the important result is that the fuzzy predator seems to behave more adequately in the environment, in the sense that it presents an apparently more natural, coherent and realistic behavior.
Potential of soil moisture retrieval for tropical peatlands in Indonesia using ALOS-2 L-band full-polarimetric SAR data

ABSTRACT In this paper, a soil moisture retrieval from full-polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is investigated for sparsely vegetated soil surfaces. An improved retrieval method adapting the variations in vegetation is proposed by incorporating the generalized volume model into the polarimetric two-scale two-component model (PTSTCM). The feasibility of the method, termed as the adaptive PTSTCM, has been tested for tropical peatland sites in Indonesia which exhibit a variety of sparse vegetation cover on soil after land clearing activities. The data were collected in March and August 2017 with the time domain reflectometry (TDR) probe for a total of 18 sample points over 11 regions. The method was applied to ALOS-2 L-band quad-pol SAR data that were acquired simultaneously with field measurements. We compared the results between the proposed adaptive PTSTCM and the original PTSTCM that utilizes specific types of volume model (i.e., randomly, horizontally, and vertically oriented volume models). Scatterplots of estimated versus measured results reveal that the adaptive PTSTCM yields a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 5.1vol. and inversion rate of 35.0 and 58.5 for March and August data, respectively, which are found to be superior to those of the original PTSTCM.
Experimental Diabetes Mellitus in Different Animal Models

Animal models have historically played a critical role in the exploration and characterization of disease pathophysiology and target identification and in the evaluation of novel therapeutic agents and treatments in vivo. Diabetes mellitus disease, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by high blood glucose levels for a prolonged time. To avoid late complications of diabetes and related costs, primary prevention and early treatment are therefore necessary. Due to its chronic symptoms, new treatment strategies need to be developed, because of the limited effectiveness of the current therapies. We overviewed the pathophysiological features of diabetes in relation to its complications in type 1 and type 2 mice along with rat models, including Zucker Diabetic Fatty (ZDF) rats, BB rats, LEW 1AR1/-iddm rats, Goto-Kakizaki rats, chemically induced diabetic models, and Nonobese Diabetic mouse, and Akita mice model. The advantages and disadvantages that these models comprise were also addressed in this review. This paper briefly reviews the wide pathophysiological and molecular mechanisms associated with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, particularly focusing on the challenges associated with the evaluation and predictive validation of these models as ideal animal models for preclinical assessments and discovering new drugs and therapeutic agents for translational application in humans.
The Grammatical Function Analysis between Adnoun Clause and Noun Phrase in Korean

This research focuses on analysis of the grammatical functions between an adnoun clause and a noun phrase in Korean. The key task is to determine the relation between two constituents in terms of one of the various functional categories such as subject, object, complement, and appositive. The problem is mainly caused by the fact that functional morpheme, crucial for identifying the relation, is not used in the noun phrase. We propose a statistical method in determining the grammatical functions. A tagged corpus is used for training a new model and a smoothing technique known as "backed off" is employed to tackle the data sparse problem. As experimental tests prove our model to be useful, we make it assist error detection of parsing results.
Improved digital calibration technology in a 12-b, 40-MS/s pipelined ADC

In the design of 12-bits 40MSample/s pipelined ADC, the traditional close-loop high performance residue amplifier in first stage is replaced by an open-loop amplifier to reduce power dissipation and increase circuit speed. The errors brought by open-loop amplifier are evaluated and calibrated by an improved statistics-based background calibration technology. A self-adaptive search algorithm and a magnitude incremental comparison algorithm are presented in statistics-based background calibration technology to improve residue difference estimator circuit and LUT (look up table) of binary monotonically function respectively. The improved calibration technology can reduce digital circuit power dissipation and size significantly. Simulation results show that power consumption of digital circuit is reduced by 93% and room of ROM is saved by 84%. The ADC is implemented in SMIC 0.18 CMOS process, consumes 210 mW, and has a layout size of 3.2*3.7 mm2.
From Birdsong to Human Speech Recognition: Bayesian Inference on a Hierarchy of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Our knowledge about the computational mechanisms underlying human learning and recognition of sound sequences, especially speech, is still very limited. One difficulty in deciphering the exact means by which humans recognize speech is that there are scarce experimental findings at a neuronal, microscopic level. Here, we show that our neuronal-computational understanding of speech learning and recognition may be vastly improved by looking at an animal model, i.e., the songbird, which faces the same challenge as humans: to learn and decode complex auditory input, in an online fashion. Motivated by striking similarities between the human and songbird neural recognition systems at the macroscopic level, we assumed that the human brain uses the same computational principles at a microscopic level and translated a birdsong model into a novel human sound learning and recognition model with an emphasis on speech. We show that the resulting Bayesian model with a hierarchy of nonlinear dynamical systems can learn speech samples such as words rapidly and recognize them robustly, even in adverse conditions. In addition, we show that recognition can be performed even when words are spoken by different speakers and with different accents—an everyday situation in which current state-of-the-art speech recognition models often fail. The model can also be used to qualitatively explain behavioral data on human speech learning and derive predictions for future experiments.
Characterization of the celB gene coding for beta-glucosidase from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus and its expression and site-directed mutation in Escherichia coli

The celB gene encoding the cellobiose-hydrolyzing enzyme beta-glucosidase from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus has been identified, cloned, and sequenced. The transcription and translation gene was overexpressed in Escherichia coli, resulting in high-level (up to 20% of total protein) production of beta-glucosidase that could be purified by a two-step purification procedure. The beta-glucosidase produced by E. coli had kinetic and stability properties similar to those of the beta-glucosidase purified from P. furiosus. The deduced amino acid sequence of CelB showed high similarity with those of beta-glycosidases that belong to glycosyl hydrolase family 1, implicating a conserved structure. Replacement of the conserved glutamate 372 in the P. furiosus beta-glucosidase by an aspartate or a glutamine led to a high reduction in specific activity (200- or 1,000-fold, respectively), indicating that this residue is the active site nucleophile involved in catalysis above 100 degrees C.
Effect of Land Application of Poultry Waste on Pesticide Loss

3 List of figures . 5 Acknowledgements . 6 Introduction . 7 A. Purpose and Objectives . 9 B. Related Research and Activities . 9 Methods and Procedures . 10 Principal Findings and Significance . 14 Conclusions . 17 Literature Cited . 19
A synthesis of the impact of Russian forests on the global carbon budget for 1961–1998

An attempt is made to synthesize the current understanding of the impact of Russian forests on the global carbon (C) budget for the period 1961–1998 (37 years), based on a detailed inventory of pools and fluxes in 1988–1992, and a historical reconstruction of a full forest carbon budget for 1961–1998. All major intermediate indicators of the budget (phytomass, net primary production, impact of disturbances, soil respiration, etc.) were independently estimated and compared with earlier reported results. During the entire period, the C pools of Russian forest land (FL, 882.0 × 106 ha in 1998) increased by 433 Tg C yr−1, of which 153 Tg C yr−1 are accumulated in live biomass, 57 Tg C yr−1 in above- and below-ground dead wood, and 223 Tg C yr−1 are sequestered in soil. A significant part of this increase deals with land-cover changes. The annual average C uptake by the FL from the atmosphere, defined by a flux-based method, is estimated to be −322 Tg C yr−1 for 1961–1998. The lateral transport to the lithosphere and hydrosphere comprised 47 Tg C yr−1 (including charcoal), which is considered part of the “missing C sink. ” The uncertainties (excluding unrecognized biases) of averages for the entire period are estimated to be in the range of ±5–8% and ±24% for major fluxes out/into the atmosphere and for net ecosystem exchange, respectively (a priori confidential probability of 0.9). If the impact of land-cover change is excluded, the average annual sink in 1961–1998, estimated by both pool- and flux-based methods, was 268 ± 94 and 272 ± 68 Tg C yr−1, respectively. The reported results are in line with recent estimates for Northern Eurasia made by inverse modeling at the continental scale, if land classes other than forests contribute to the total sink of terrestrial vegetation.