Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Salt tolerance and screening for genetic changes in rice mutants after gamma irradiation using RAPD and microsatellite (RAMP) markers.

Two Vietnamese rice mutants (M2-2 and M2-4 - second generation line 2 and line 4 respectively), induced by gamma irradiation were examined and compared to their parent (TT), and the Australian cultivar Amaroo (Am) for salt tolerance and genomic differences. Seedlings in tissue culture provided high yields and good quality DNA, espe- cially with young shoots. Changes in DNA of the mutants in comparison to TT and Am were successfully assessed using RAPD-PCR (random amplified polymorphic DNA-polymerase chain reaction) and RAMP-PCR (random ampli- fied microsatellite polymorphism-polymerase chain reaction) molecular marker techniques. RAMP-PCR was better than RAPD-PCR at disclosing genetic changes between closely related individuals, and only RAMP-PCR was able to detect polymorphic bands between the two mutants. A measure of heterozygocity and genetic differentiation, the G- statistic demonstrated that comparisons between Am and TT, M2-2 or M2-4 showed moderate genetic differentiation, but comparisons between TT and M2-2 or M2-4 showed low genetic differentiation. Percentage polymorphism be- tween TT, M2-2, M2-4 and Am detected by RAPD-PCR were similar to those detected by RAMP-PCR (about 10%). DNA bands that were polymorphic between the two mutant lines were sequenced, two bands mapped on numerous chromosomes of rice, while two other bands mapped on one or two chromosomes, and these DNA bands on the whole coded for regulatory genes. The results showed that especially RAMP-PCR is a versatile, sensitive and cost ef- fective method for measuring genomic differences between closely related plants.
Variable-dimension vector quantization of speech spectra for low-rate vocoders

Optimal vector quantization of variable-dimension vectors in principle is feasible by using a set of fixed dimension VQ codebooks. However, for typical applications, such a multi-codebook approach demands a grossly excessive and impractical storage and computational complexity. Efficient quantization of such variable-dimension spectral shape vectors is the most challenging and difficult encoding task required in an important family of low bit-rate vocoders. The authors introduce a simple and effective formulation of variable-dimension vector quantization (VDVQ) which quantizes variable-dimension vectors using a single universal codebook having fixed dimension yet covering the entire range of input vector dimensions under consideration. This VDVQ technique is applied to quantize variable-dimension spectral shape vectors leading to a high quality speech coder at the low bit-rate of 2.5 kb/s. The combination of a universal spectral codebook and structured VQ reduces storage and computational complexity, yet delivers a high quantization efficiency and enhanced perceptual quality of the coded speech. <<ETX>>
Processor-In-Memory System Simulator

The Problem: The extent of previous work on processor in memory systems using merged DRAM-logic process technology [1, 2, 3, 4] indicates that the technology has great promise. Most of the results to date, however, have been architectural studies with simulation results or proposed architectures. Relatively few designs make it to final silicon due to the prohibitively high Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs of this new process technology. Of the designs that do make it to silicon, many have found that a merged DRAM-logic process is fickle: subtle noise or leakage problems can lead to a non-working DRAM array. This difficulty in realizing PIM architectures in silicon has left the research community with a lack of real platforms for compiler and application development, and thus there is much uncertainty about our ability to efficiently utilize these typically fine-grained parallel processor systems.
Impact of Denial-of-Service in security protocols

Denial-of-Service (DOS) attacks are unavoidable in networked systems. These attacks have their impact on security protocols. As defence against DoS has been built more and more into security protocols, this paper studies how to evaluate the risk of DoS in security protocols. First, we build a formal framework to model protocol operations and attacker capabilities. Then we propose an economic model for the risk evaluation. By characterizing the intruder capability with a probability model, our risk evaluation model specifies the “Risk-Factor” (RF) for the security protocols. The “Risk-Factor” represents how much computing resources are expected to lose with a given level of confidence. The proposed model can help users to have a better understanding of the protocols they are using, and in the meantime help designers to examine their designs and get clues of improvement.
Episodes of momentary resilience in daily life are associated with HRV reductions to stressful operations in firefighters: an ambulatory assessment approach using bayesian multilevel modeling

ABSTRACT Background: Resilience is discussed to constitute a protective buffer against stress, thus fostering health. Methods: This study aimed to assess resilience both via traditional questionnaire and in everyday life on a momentary basis, and to relate these measures to autonomic functioning (heart rate variability, HRV) in 38 male firefighters during a weekday. Stressful operations, non-stressful operations and routine work at the firestation were coded during 24 hours. Momentary negative affect, feelings of resilience, and HRV were recorded via ecological momentary assessment. Findings: Questionnaire-assessed resilience was significantly positively associated with aggregated momentary resilience (r = .58, p < .001), but unrelated to HRV. However, controlling for multiple confounders (e.g., age, smoking, bodily movement, waist-to-height ratio) momentary resilience was associated with attenuated HRV and lower negative affect during stressful encounters only. Discussion: The findings suggest that momentary feelings of resilience are accompanied by vagal withdrawal to stress, possibly indicating psychological flexibility and adaptive responding to stress.
Concurrent alcohol and tobacco use among school-going adolescents in Namibia: Prevalence and risk factors

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and risk factors for concurrent alcohol and tobacco use among school-going adolescents in Namibia. Data were from a sample of 4 531 Namibian middle school children (females = 53.1%; mean age = 15.8 years, SD = 1.8 years). They completed the Namibia Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) in 2013. Overall, 74.4% of alcohol users in the past month were frequent tobacco users; whereas 40.5% of tobacco users in the past month were frequent alcohol users. Compared to students who were neither alcohol nor tobacco users (63.1%), concurrent alcohol and tobacco users were more likely to self-report with a lack of parent support, to have used illicit drugs, to have engaged in school truancy, to be sedentary in behaviour, to have engaged in a physical fight, and to have had two or more sexual partners. Substance use prevention and treatment programmes with adolescents should routinely address their risk for comorbid tobacco and alcohol use.
Three Angry Men: An Augmented-Reality Experiment in Point-of-View Drama

“Three Angry Men” is an augmented reality experience, in which the user becomes a character in a radically abridged version of the play “Twelve Angry Men. ” The other characters in this experience appear to the user as texture-mapped video mixed with the physical surroundings. At any time, the user may change seats to occupy a different character’s point of view and experience a different interpretation of the play. “Three Angry Men” suggests that augmented reality can be used in a new class of entertainment and informal education applications.
The Impact of Personalized Preventive Care on Health Care Quality, Utilization, and Expenditures

Abstract The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact on health care utilization and expenditure trends over time of a personalized preventive medicine program delivering individualized care focused on lifestyle behavior modification, disease prevention, and compliance with quality-related metrics. MD-Value in Prevention (MDVIP) is a network of affiliated primary care physicians who utilize a model of health care delivery based on an augmented physician-patient relationship and focused on personalized preventive health care. Multivariate modeling was used to control for demographics, socioeconomics, supply of health care services, and health status among 10,186 MDVIP members and randomly selected, matched nonmembers. Health care utilization and expenditure trends were tracked from the pre period prior to member enrollment for a period of up to 3 years post enrollment. MDVIP members experienced reduced utilization of emergency room and urgent care services compared to nonmembers. Program savings ranges indicated that, over time, increasing percentages of members achieved cost savings compared to nonmembers. Older age groups were more likely to realize savings in the early years with preventive activities indicating condition management, and younger age groups were most likely to achieve savings by the third year after enrollment. These results indicate that a primary care model based on an enhanced physician-patient relationship and focused on quality and personalized preventive care within a time frame of 3 years can achieve positive health care expenditure outcomes and improved health management.
Investigation on planar UWB antenna with triple band-notched characteristics

A novel ultrawideband (UWB) printed planar antenna with triple band-notched characteristics is proposed and discussed in this paper. The realization of the proposed antenna's triple band-notched characteristics is owed to slots on the ground plane and the radiating patch. By employing a curve-shaped defected ground structure (DGS) on the ground plane, a notched band of (SATCOM) 8.0-8.4 GHz is achieved. By embedding two arc-shaped slots on the radiating patch, another two notched bands of (WIMAX) 3.3-3.6 GHz and (WLAN) 5.1-5.8 GHz are achieved. The proposed antenna has been successfully simulated, fabricated, and measured. Moreover, the designed antenna is compact size and lower cost, which is benefit for UWB communication system.
Silent Ischemic Heart Disease and Pericardial Fat Volume in HIV-Infected Patients: A Case-Control Myocardial Perfusion Scintigraphy Study

Objectives to determine the prevalence of asymptomatic ischemic heart disease (IHD) in HIV patients by myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) and to determine the value of coronary artery calcium score (CACS), carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) and pericardial fat volume as screening tools for detection of IHD in subjects with HIV. Background Patients with HIV seem prone to early development of IHD. Methods 105 consecutive HIV patients (mean age 47.4 years; mean duration of HIV 12.3 years; mean CD4+ cell count 636×106/L; all receiving antiretroviral therapy) and 105 controls matched for age, gender and smoking status, without history of IHD were recruited. MPS, CACS, cIMT, pericardial fat volume, and cardiovascular risk scores were measured. Results HIV patients demonstrated higher prevalence of perfusion defects than controls (18% vs. 0%; p<0.001) despite similar risk scores. Of HIV patients with perfusion defects, 42% had a CACS = 0. CACS and cIMT were similar in HIV patients and controls. HIV patients on average had 35% increased pericardial fat volume and increased concentration of biomarkers of atherosclerosis in the blood. HIV patients with myocardial perfusion defects had increased pericardial fat volume compared with HIV patients without perfusion defects (314±43 vs. 189±12 mL; p<0.001). Conclusions HIV patients had an increased prevalence of silent IHD compared to controls as demonstrated by MPS. The finding was strongly associated with pericardial fat volume, whereas cardiovascular risk scores, cIMT and CACS seem less useful as screening tools for detection of myocardial perfusion defects in HIV patients.
The Dynamic Nature of Speech Perception

The speech perception system must be flexible in responding to the variability in speech sounds caused by differences among speakers and by language change over the lifespan of the listener. Indeed, listeners use lexical knowledge to retune perception of novel speech (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). In that study, Dutch listeners made lexical decisions to spoken stimuli, including words with an ambiguous fricative (between [f] and [s]), in either [f]- or [s]-biased lexical contexts. In a subsequent categorization test, the former group of listeners identified more sounds on an [εf]—[εs] continuum as [f] than the latter group. In the present experiment, listeners received the same exposure and test stimuli, but did not make lexical decisions to the exposure items. Instead, they counted them. Categorization results were indistinguishable from those obtained earlier. These adjustments in fricative perception therefore do not depend on explicit judgments during exposure. This learning effect thus reflects automatic retuning of the interpretation of acoustic-phonetic information.
Continuation-based Computation of Global Isochrons

Isochrons are foliations of phase space that extend the notion of phase of a stable periodic orbit to the basin of attraction of this periodic orbit. Each point in the basin of attraction lies on only one isochron, and two points on the same isochron converge to the periodic orbit with the same phase. Global isochrons, that is, isochrons extended into the full basin of attraction rather than just a neighborhood of the periodic orbit, can form remarkable foliations. For example, accumulations of all isochrons can occur in arbitrarily small regions of phase space; the limit of such an accumulation is called the phaseless set, which lies on the boundary of the basin of attraction of the periodic orbit. Since global isochrons must typically be approximated numerically, such complicated geometries are often difficult to realize for actual examples. Indeed, the computation of global isochrons can be challenging, particularly for systems with multiple time scales. We present a novel method for computing isochron.
Proving Possession and Retrievability within a Cloud Environment : A Comparative Survey

Outsourcing data to a remote Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is a growing trend for numerous organizations alleviating the burden of local data storage and maintenance. While Cloud computing makes these advantages more appealing than ever, it also brings new challenging security threats towards user’s outsourced data. It’s of crucial importance to customers to have strong evidence that they actually get the service they pay for. Moreover, they need to verify that all their data copies are not being tampered with or partially deleted over time. As a result, data owners need to be convinced that their data are correctly stored in the Cloud. So, one of the biggest concerns with cloud data storage is that of data integrity verification at untrusted servers. In order to solve the problem of data integrity checking, many schemes are proposed under different systems and security models. In this paper we surveyed two core integrity proving schemes in detail along with different methods used for data integrity in both the schemes. Keywords— Cloud Service Provider, Provable Data Possession, Proof of Retrievability.
The Fusion Protein of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Triggers p53-Dependent Apoptosis

ABSTRACT Infection with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) frequently causes inflammation and obstruction of the small airways, leading to severe pulmonary disease in infants. We show here that the RSV fusion (F) protein, an integral membrane protein of the viral envelope, is a strong elicitor of apoptosis. Inducible expression of F protein in polarized epithelial cells triggered caspase-dependent cell death, resulting in rigorous extrusion of apoptotic cells from the cell monolayer and transient loss of epithelial integrity. A monoclonal antibody directed against F protein inhibited apoptosis and was also effective if administered to A549 lung epithelial cells postinfection. F protein expression in epithelial cells caused phosphorylation of tumor suppressor p53 at serine 15, activation of p53 transcriptional activity, and conformational activation of proapoptotic Bax. Stable expression of dominant-negative p53 or p53 knockdown by RNA interference inhibited the apoptosis of RSV-infected A549 cells. HEp-2 tumor cells with low levels of p53 were not sensitive to RSV-triggered apoptosis. We propose a new model of RSV disease with the F protein as an initiator of epithelial cell shedding, airway obstruction, secondary necrosis, and consequent inflammation. This makes the RSV F protein a key target for the development of effective postinfection therapies.
Who Might Be Interested in a Deep Borehole Disposal Facility for Their Radioactive Waste?

The deep borehole disposal (DBD) concept for certain types of radioactive wastes has been discussed for many decades, but has enjoyed limited R&D interest compared to ‘conventional’ geological disposal in an excavated repository at a few hundreds of metres depth. This article explores the circumstances under which a national waste management programme might wish to consider DBD. Starting with an assumption that further R&D will answer technical issues of DBD feasibility, it examines the types of waste that might be routed to borehole disposal and the strategic drivers that might make DBD attractive. The article concludes by identifying the types of national programme that might wish to pursue DBD further and the pre-requisites for them to give it serious consideration.
Fixed-point feedforward deep neural network design using weights +1, 0, and −1

Feedforward deep neural networks that employ multiple hidden layers show high performance in many applications, but they demand complex hardware for implementation. The hardware complexity can be much lowered by minimizing the word-length of weights and signals, but direct quantization for fixed-point network design does not yield good results. We optimize the fixed-point design by employing backpropagation based retraining. The designed fixed-point networks with ternary weights (+1, 0, and -1) and 3-bit signal show only negligible performance loss when compared to the floating-point coun-terparts. The backpropagation for retraining uses quantized weights and fixed-point signal to compute the output, but utilizes high precision values for adapting the networks. A character recognition and a phoneme recognition examples are presented.
Predicting protein functions from redundancies in large-scale protein interaction networks

Interpreting data from large-scale protein interaction experiments has been a challenging task because of the widespread presence of random false positives. Here, we present a network-based statistical algorithm that overcomes this difficulty and allows us to derive functions of unannotated proteins from large-scale interaction data. Our algorithm uses the insight that if two proteins share significantly larger number of common interaction partners than random, they have close functional associations. Analysis of publicly available data from Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals >2,800 reliable functional associations, 29% of which involve at least one unannotated protein. By further analyzing these associations, we derive tentative functions for 81 unannotated proteins with high certainty. Our method is not overly sensitive to the false positives present in the data. Even after adding 50% randomly generated interactions to the measured data set, we are able to recover almost all (≈89%) of the original associations.
Architecture of an Automated Coaching System for Elderly Population

We present an automated coaching system for elderly population living in assisted homes. The system guides its users through a sequence of exercises and tests. Each exercise is demonstrated by a pre-recorded video of a coach, checked for correct execution and qualitatively evaluated. Automatic coaching advices are generated in order to improve the execution. Performance measurements are shown as an immediate feedback to the user, and stored and evaluated over time. The system is designed to allow for a remote interaction with a coach, and, to bolster social aspect of the exercise, for concurrent exercise of two (or eventually multiple) remote users.
A Cyclic Coding Based Perceptual Hashing Algorithm

An arbitrarily rotated image should not be recognized as a different one, but the conventional image perceptual hashing algorithms can only deal with this partially. Different to watermarking, image perceptual hashing does not need to embed information into the image content, this make it possible that perceptual hashing can treat the synchronization problem in a new manner. In this paper, three cyclic coding based perceptual hashing methods are proposed, and the performance under rotation is tested as well as other common attacks. Meanwhile, by dividing the image signal into three perceptual channels, we discuss which one is better for coding with in spatial domain.
Principles and Problems of Audit Automation as a Precursor to Continuous Auditing

When implementing continuous auditing, experience indicates that auditors will likely attempt to first automate the processes that they already use, are comfortable with and are already accepted for external auditing and reporting purposes rather than trying to start from scratch, especially when dealing with audits of ongoing operations. However, because of the experience of low productivity and failed expectations with prior technology implementations, special care needs to be taken when change is brought about by automation. As we argue in this paper, not only must audit automation be undertaken systematically, it also has to incorporate reengineering in the sense of first transforming manual audit processes to facilitate their automation. This is not full blown reengineering of the clean sheet sort, but this hybrid approach is one that is more likely to succeed from a change management perspective, and more likely to lead to a positive outcome. The key for avoiding the potential downsides of automation, though, is to have a clear understanding of what audit automation is trying to achieve and follow a methodical procedure to achieve those goals.
The Complex Dynamics of Sponsored Search Advertising Markets

This paper provides a comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of online advertising markets, mostly based on techniques from the emergent discipline of complex systems analysis. First, we look at how the display rank of a URL link influences its click frequency, for both sponsored search and organic search. Second, we study the market structure that emerges from these queries, especially the market share distribution of different advertisers. We show that the sponsored search market is highly concentrated, with less than 5% of all advertisers receiving over 2/3 of the clicks in the market. Furthermore, we show that both the number of ad impressions and the number of clicks follow power law distributions of approximately the same coefficient. However, we find this result does not hold when studying the same distribution of clicks per rank position, which shows considerable variance, most likely due to the way advertisers divide their budget on different keywords. Finally, we turn our attention to how such sponsored search data could be used to provide decision support tools for bidding for combinations of keywords. We provide a method to visualize keywords of interest in graphical form, as well as a method to partition these graphs to obtain desirable subsets of search terms.