Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Energy Efficient Routing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (closely deployed nodes) are widely used in applications ranging from weather forecasting to defense. It comprises of data gathering nodes (source), transmitting nodes (routers) and data collecting node. Wide research sprang in this area for improving the efficiency of these networks in terms of packet delivery ratio, throughput and reliability by modifying the conventional routing protocols. Also as the nodes come with limited battery major emphasis is also given to develop energy efficient algorithms. In this paper, an energy efficient adaptive routing protocol is developed for improving the Packet Delivery Ratio and decreasing the packet drop and delay. The proposed technique used RSSI, unused energy and congestion degree for choosing the router. PDR has increased by 0.178% and delay has decreased by 4.1ms.
Establishment of a replication fork barrier following induction of DNA binding in mammalian cells

Understanding the mechanisms that lead to replication fork blocks (RFB) and the means to bypass them is important given the threat that they represent for genome stability if inappropriately handled. Here, to study this issue in mammals, we use integrated arrays of the LacO and/or TetO as a tractable system to follow in time a process in an individual cell and at a single locus. Importantly, we show that induction of the binding by LacI and TetR proteins, and not the presence of the repeats, is key to form the RFB. We find that the binding of the proteins to the arrays during replication causes a prolonged persistence of replication foci at the site. This, in turn, induces a local DNA damage repair (DDR) response, with the recruitment of proteins involved in double-strand break (DSB) repair such as TOPBP1 and 53BP1, and the phosphorylation of H2AX. Furthermore, the appearance of micronuclei and DNA bridges after mitosis is consistent with an incomplete replication. We discuss how the many DNA binding proteins encountered during replication can be dealt with and the consequences of incomplete replication. Future studies exploiting this type of system should help analyze how an RFB, along with bypass mechanisms, are controlled in order to maintain genome integrity.
MEASURING COGNITIVE LOAD FOR VISUALIZATIONS IN LEARNING COMPUTER PROGRAMMING-PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES

Computer programming is a complex skill to acquire for novice learners who are in their initial phase of learning programming. There are many factors that results in difficulties in learning programming. This paper addresses to resolve one core difficulty which is cognitive load [2] [3]. Cognitive load theory [13] is a famous theory of learning. It states that the schema of the long term memory is not well built in the case of novices and also there is a limitation of working memory’s capacity. This makes it hard for novices to understand the concepts and equip with the skills necessary to become programmers. Some efforts used to overcome the cognitive load are the visualization tools for learning programming [14] . There is no accountability on how effective these visualization systems helped in reducing the load. The mechanism to measure cognitive load is not used in the visualization systems. There are two methods of cognitive load measurement namely physiological and non physiological measures. Physiological measures include EKG,GSR[12],EEG[11],Temperature[11] etc. and non physiological measures includes rating scale[6] and some recent research studies have used EEG as a index for cognitive load measurement [7]. We felt that using the physiological measures could be accurate as they are the reflections of the body impulses. There is no user’s control over the measurement. We also decided to use EEG as the latest efforts of measuring the cognitive uses EEG.The study also employed one more physiological measure namely GSR. This paper addresses the cognitive load measurement while using visualization tools by the novice programmers using EEG and GSR as an index of cognitive load.
Enzymatic Cleavage of Type II Restriction Endonucleases on the 2′-O-Methyl Nucleotide and Phosphorothioate Substituted DNA

The effects of nucleotide analogue substitution on the cleavage efficiencies of type II restriction endonucleases have been investigated. Six restriction endonucleases (EcoRV, SpeI, XbaI, XhoI, PstI and SphI) were investigated respectively regarding their cleavage when substrates were substituted by 2′-O-methyl nucleotide (2′-OMeN) and phosphorothioate (PS). Substitutions were made in the recognition sequence and the two nucleotides flanking the recognition sequence for each endonuclease. The endonuclease cleavage efficiencies were determined using FRET-based assay. Results demonstrated a position-dependent inhibitory effect of substitution on the cleavage efficiency for all the six endonucleases. In general, the 2′-OMeN substitutions had greater impact than the PS substitutions on the enzymatic activities. Nucleotides of optimal substitutions for protection against RE cleavage were identified. Experimental results and conclusions in this study facilitate our insight into the DNA-protein interactions and the enzymatic cleavage mechanism, particularly for those whose detailed structure information is not available. In addition, the information could benefit the development of bioengineering and synthetic biology.
An architecture to improve the generalization of interacting device developments for accessibility

When used to support users with motor impairment, sensor-based interaction devices rely heavily on exploiting the available user movements to work properly. This implies that the design of sensor-based interaction devices depend on proper attending requirements associated with many possible disabilities. As a result, it may be necessary, for a given device, to carry out detailed personalization with respect to adjusting sensors, interaction primitives and mapping to software applications. We propose an architectural approach to support the flexible customization of sensor-based input devices so as to provide a systematic procedure to personalize input devices according to user needs. The architecture defines a model that exploits discrete and continuous input dimensions associated with sensors and allows designing novel input devices. We illustrate the use of the architecture with implementations that exploits accelerometers and gyro sensors in two input devices.
Sensor Setups for State and Wind Estimation for Airborne Wind Energy Converters

An unscented Kalman filter with joint state and parameter estimation is proposed for aerodynamics, states and wind conditions for airborne wind energy converters. The proposed estimator relies on different measurement setups. Due to the strict economic constraints of wind energy converters, the sensor setups are chosen with minimal cost and reliability issues in mind. Simulation data with a high fidelity system model and experimental tests using flight data, together with wind measurements obtained using a lidar system for altitude wind measurements, are used for validation. The data was obtained during test flights of the EnerK\'ite EK30, an airborne wind energy converter currently in research operation in Brandenburg, Germany. Feasible accuracies were achieved even with the simplest of setups and illustrate the gain achievable by airborne sensors. Additionally, the results encourage further research into use of the obtained wind estimates for site assessment.
The Tickler: A Compliant Wearable Tactile Display for Stroking and Tickling

We present the Tickler, a compliant wearable tactile display that creates natural-feeling stroking sensations. The current state-of-the-art of tactile devices relies primarily on vibrotactile stimulation, which limits the possible sensations that can be created. There is a wide range of applications for tactile devices mimicking the sensation created by human touch, including mediated social touch and also tactile feedback applications. The Tickler employs an array of parallel bars that slowly move laterally over the skin in different patterns. It is underactuated and compliant, so that it can move with the skin of the user. In this paper we describe the Tickler, consider possible applications and present a preliminary user study.
NURBS Interpolation with FPGA Acceleration

NURBS are used mainly to represent 3D models, being included in standards like OpenGL (Phigs) and used in computer graphics and manufacturing systems, representing adequately, in a compact way, almost any shape. For this sake, NURBS algorithms are implemented in graphical processing units (GPUs) hardware, but its rigid processing architecture and power consumption makes it inadequate in embedded systems implementations. An alternative to this case, instead of another technologies like microcontrollers or dedicated integrated circuits, is the use of reconfigurable logic with FPGAs, more adequate to embedded systems in relation to GPUs. This work proposes a Soc System on a chip implementation, using FPGA and the Verilog sysnthesis language, aiming implement an embedded system for computer graphics NURBS interpolation tools and visualization.
IL-15 Expression on RA Synovial Fibroblasts Promotes B Cell Survival

Introduction The purpose of this study was to examine the role of RA Synovial Fibroblast (RASFib) IL-15 expression on B cell survival. Methods Magnetically sorted peripheral blood memory B cells from 15 healthy subjects were cocultured with RASFib. Results RASFib constitutively expressed membrane IL-15. Survival of isolated B cells cultured for 6 days, below 5%, was extended in coculture with RASFib to 52+/−8% (p<0.001). IL-15 neutralizing agents but not isotype controls, reduced this rate to 31+/−6% (p<0.05). Interestingly, rhIL-15 had no effect on isolated B cells but significantly increased their survival in coculture with RASFib. In parallel, B cell IL-15R chains were upregulated in cocultures. BAFF and VCAM-1, that are expressed on RASFib, were tested as potential candidates involved in upregulating B cell IL-15R. Culture of B cells in the presence of rhBAFF or rhVCAM-1 resulted in significantly increased survival, together with upregulation of all three IL-15R chains; in parallel, rhIL-15 potentiated the anti-apoptotic effect of BAFF and VCAM-1. Both BAFF and VCAM-1 neutralizing agents downmodulated the effect of RASFib on B cell survival and IL-15R expression. In parallel, rhIL-15 had a lower effect on the survival of B cells cocultured with RASFib in the presence of BAFF or VCAM-1 neutralizing agents. Peripheral blood B cells from 15 early RA patients demonstrated an upregulated IL-15R and increased survival in cocultures. Conclusion IL-15 expression on RASFib significantly contributes to the anti-apoptotic effect of RASFib on B cells. IL-15 action is facilitated by BAFF and VCAM-1 expressed on RASFib, through an upregulation of IL-15R chains.
On scalable distributed sensor fusion

The theoretic fundamentals of distributed information fusion are well developed. However, practical applications of these theoretical results to dynamic sensor networks have remained a challenge. There has been a great deal of work in developing distributed fusion algorithms applicable to a network centric architecture. In general, in a distributed system such as ad hoc sensor networks, the communication architecture is not fixed. In those cases, the distributed fusion approaches based on pedigree information may not scale due to limited communication bandwidth. In this paper, we focus on scalable fusion algorithms and conduct analytical performance evaluation to compare their performance. The goal is to understand the performance of these algorithms under different operating conditions. Specifically, we evaluate the performance of channel filter fusion, Chernoff fusion, Shannon fusion, and Bhattacharyya fusion algorithms. We also compare their performance to Naive fusion and ldquooptimalrdquo centralized fusion under a specific communication pattern.
Speeding Up Isosurface Extraction Using Interval Trees

The interval tree is an optimally efficient search structure proposed by Edelsbrunner (1980) to retrieve intervals on the real line that contain a given query value. We propose the application of such a data structure to the fast location of cells intersected by an isosurface in a volume dataset. The resulting search method can be applied to both structured and unstructured volume datasets, and it can be applied incrementally to exploit coherence between isosurfaces. We also address issues of storage requirements, and operations other than the location of cells, whose impact is relevant in the whole isosurface extraction task. In the case of unstructured grids, the overhead, due to the search structure, is compatible with the storage cost of the dataset, and local coherence in the computation of isosurface patches is exploited through a hash table. In the case of a structured dataset, a new conceptual organization is adopted, called the chess-board approach, which exploits the regular structure of the dataset to reduce memory usage and to exploit local coherence. In both cases, efficiency in the computation of surface normals on the isosurface is obtained by a precomputation of the gradients at the vertices of the mesh. Experiments on different kinds of input show that the practical performance of the method reflects its theoretical optimality.
Electronic Currency for the Internet

Security: Forging paper currency is difficult. Unfortunately, electronic currency is just data and is easily copied. Copying or double spending of electronic currency should be prevented or detected. Ideally the illegal creation, copying, and reuse of electronic cash should be unconditionally or computationally impossible. Some systems rely instead on post-fact detection and punishment of double spending [1].
Evaluation of superoxide dismutase levels in local drug delivery system containing 0.2% curcumin strip as an adjunct to scaling and root planing in chronic periodontitis: A clinical and biochemical study

Aim: Curcumin has proven properties such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, and it also accelerates wound healing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme, in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF), and the impact of nonsurgical treatment on the antioxidant profile using 0.2% curcumin strip as local drug delivery. Materials and Methods: A total of twenty subjects of age 35–55 years and 15 subjects with chronic periodontitis, each with bilateral 5–6 mm probing pocket depth, were selected for this study. Healthy group consists of 5 sites in which no bleeding on probing, no pocket depth. Group I – It consists of 15 sites with chronic periodontitis, in which scaling and root planing (SRP) was done (control group). Group II – It consists of 15 sites, in which SRP followed by the placement of curcumin strip inside the pocket (SRP + curcumin strip) (test group). GCF collection was done preoperatively and postoperatively after 21 days. The SOD activity was assessed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: In this study, all the clinical parameters were significantly reduced in test and control sites. Further, SOD levels were significantly improved in test sites when compared with control sites. Conclusion: Thus, the present study concluded that curcumin strip can be effectively used as an adjunct to SRP in treatment of chronic periodontitis and serves as antioxidant in subgingival environment.
Is Credit Event Risk Priced ? ∗

Reduced form models of default that attribute a large fraction of credit spreads to compensation for credit event risk typically preclude the most plausible economic justification for such risk to be priced: namely, a “contagious” response of the market portfolio to the credit event. When this channel is introduced within a general equilibrium framework for an economy containing a large number of firms, the typical credit event risk premium has an upper bound of just a few basis points, and it is dwarfed by the contagion premium. Empirically, returns on the market portfolio covary with credit events, which indicates that ex ante compensation for the risk that a bond will jump to default is significantly lower than the upper bound we identify in our calibrations.
Fast Fractal Coding Algorithm Based on Twice Pre-searching

A fast fractal coding algorithm is proposed in this paper. This algorithm is based on Jacquin's full search algorithm. When matching range-domain blocks, by utilizing the variance of the image block and the relativity between the image blocks, this algorithm performs twice pre-searching, thus avoiding vast matching computation and reducing the coding time greatly. Experimental results show that the coding time can be reduced approximately by 80% while the PSNR of the most reconstructed images is increased by this algorithm.
Constructing Indices of Rural Living Standards in Northwestern Bangladesh

This study aimed to construct indices of living standards in rural Bangladesh that could be useful to study health outcomes or identify target populations for poverty-alleviation programmes. The indices were constructed using principal component analysis of data on household assets and house construction materials. Their robustness and use was tested and found to be internally consistent and correlated with maternal and infant health, nutritional and demographic indicators, and infant mortality. Indices derived from 9 or 10 household asset variables performed well; little was gained by adding more variables but problems emerged if fewer variables were used. A ranking of the most informative assets from this rural, South Asian context is provided. Living standards consistently and significantly improved over the six-year study period. It is concluded that simple household socioeconomic data, collected under field conditions, can be used for constructing reliable and useful indices of living standards in rural South Asian communities that can assist in the assessment of health, quality of life, and capabilities of households and their members.
Provisioning of Complex Adaptive Services

Service oriented computing is becoming the standard paradigm to support the creation of applications composed of services selected from a registry. Nowadays, we are assisting to the proliferation of standardized approaches to describe such services, but there is the general agreement of distinguishing between the general characteristics of services and the characteristics associated with service invocation. In many cases, the selection of services is static and based on matching techniques to retrieve the most appropriate service. The paper presents the MAIS architecture to provide highly adaptive services in a mobile and interactive environment and we focused on service selection and invocation, contextaware orchestration and mechanisms for managing user interaction in a service-oriented architecture. We propose adaptivity at different levels: at process level, during the selection of a concrete service, and also at end user level. Selection is based on suitable ontologies and considers the actual context and user characteristics to retrieve the most suitable services. The paper describes the main components of the architecture and exemplifies them on a simple process for a shipping company.
An evolutionary approach to genetic algorithm on minimizing network coding resources

Considering a multicast scenario, we want to minimize the resources used for network coding while achieving the desired throughput. We demonstrate a standard genetic algorithm (GA) approach to the solution of this NP-hard problem. Features of standard GA are shown through simulations, based on which we propose our improved GA approach. By enlarging initial population, adopting dynamic mutation and crossover rate and improving the evaluation of fitness value, our improved GA's performance is priory to the standard GA, which is testified through simulations on networks randomly generated.
Is Education Used as a Signaling Device for Productivity in Developing Countries ? Evidence from Ghana

This paper investigates whether education is used as a signaling device for worker productivity in developing countries. To do such we employ a simple test of employer learning on Ghana manufacturing data. We find no evidence of educational signaling for individuals who were hired through direct contacts in the firm, and thus for workers for which employers arguably have more information about their true abilities. In contrast, education acts as signal for workers who were hired through more formal channels, although only for those that do not receive on-the-job-training. Outline
Overexpression, purification, DNA binding, and dimerization of the Escherichia coli uvrD gene product (helicase II).

We have subcloned the Escherichia coli uvrD gene under control of the inducible phage lambda PL promoter and report a procedure for the large-scale purification of helicase II protein. Yields of approximately 60 mg of > 99% pure helicase II protein, free of detectable nuclease activity, are obtained starting from 250 g of induced E. coli cells containing the overexpression plasmid. Overproduction of helicase II protein at these levels is lethal in E. coli. The extinction coefficient of helicase II protein was determined to be epsilon 280 = 1.06 (+/- 0.05) x 10(5) M-1 (monomer) cm-1 [20 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.3 at 25 degrees C), 0.2 M NaCl, and 20% (v/v) glycerol, 25 degrees C]. We also present a preliminary characterization of the dimerization and DNA binding properties of helicase II and a systematic examination of its solubility properties. The apparent site size of a helicase II monomer on ss-DNA is 10 +/- 2 nucleotides as determined by quenching of the intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence of the protein upon binding poly(dT). In the absence of DNA, helicase II protein can self-assemble to form at least a dimeric species at concentrations > 0.25 microM (monomer) and exists in a monomer-dimer equilibrium under a variety of solution conditions. However, upon binding short oligodeoxynucleotides, the dimeric form of helicase II is stabilized, and dimerization stimulates the ss-DNA-dependent ATPase activity, suggesting that the dimer is functionally important. On the basis of these observations and similarities between helicase II and the E. coli Rep helicase, which appears to function as a dimer [Chao, K. , & Lohman, T. (1991) J. Mol. Biol. 221, 1165-1181], we suggest that the active form of helicase II may also be a dimer or larger oligomer.
SysBioCube: A Data Warehouse and Integrative Data Analysis Platform Facilitating Systems Biology Studies of Disorders of Military Relevance

SysBioCube is an integrated data warehouse and analysis platform for experimental data relating to diseases of military relevance developed for the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command Systems Biology Enterprise (SBE). It brings together, under a single database environment, pathophysio-, psychological, molecular and biochemical data from mouse models of post-traumatic stress disorder and (pre-) clinical data from human PTSD patients. SysBioCube will organize, centralize and normalize this data and provide an access portal for subsequent analysis to the SBE. It provides new or expanded browsing, querying and visualization to provide better understanding of the systems biology of PTSD, all brought about through the integrated environment. We employ Oracle database technology to store the data using an integrated hierarchical database schema design. The web interface provides researchers with systematic information and option to interrogate the profiles of pan-omics component across different data types, experimental designs and other covariates.