Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Annoyance reactions to traffic noise in Italy and Sweden.

Annoyance reactions to motor vehicle noise have been studied in Sweden and Italy. Every possible care has been taken to assure that the interview forms used to measure reactions have been translated adequately. Exposure factors have been stratified strictly. Nevertheless a difference in exposure could be detected when check measurements were carried out. Despite a higher noise level in Italian homes, annoyance reactions were fewer. This investigation stresses the importance of investigating possible differences in reactions in order to make valid comparisons between results of annoyance studies carried out in different countries.
Research on the Distributed Power Control Algorithm for RFID Readers

This paper presents an enhanced distributed power control algorithm (EDPC) for ratio frequency identification (RFID) reader aiming at the existing power control algorithm (DPC) deficiencies, such as the uncertainties of random backoff, difficult to set up parameters. In order to improve the reader network efficiency and reliability, the proposed EDPC algorithm properly set the reader working time slot, change the reader time-slot selecting mechanism. Simulation and experiment results show that the EDPC algorithm enlarged the reader detection range and shortened detection efficiency, enhanced the whole system performance, comparing to the DAPC and PPC algorithm.
On the composition and optical extinction of particles in the tropopause region

Liquid aerosol particles and ice crystals in subvisible cirrus clouds in the tropopause region are characterized in terms of size distributions, chemical composition, and optical extinction. These particle properties are studied by means of simple models and are related to satellite extinction measurements, particularly for midlatitudes. Sulfuric acid aerosols can take up nitric acid near the ice frost point, just before ice nucleation. Aerosols in the tropopause region may show a larger spread of extinction and extinction ratios at different wavelengths than background stratospheric aerosols. The high surface areas and low extinction ratios of subvisible cirrus deduced from satellite observations are unlikely to be due purely to aerosols, except for high sulfate loadings. It is shown that mixtures of liquid aerosols and ice particles can more readily explain these data with only small cloud fractions along the line of sight of the optical sensors. The efficiency of heterogeneous chlorine activation in aerosol/cloud mixtures, the availability of water vapor, sulfate, and nitrate, and the effects of temperature, ammonium, organics, ice nuclei and aircraft emissions on the properties of particles in the tropopause region are explored.
An adaptive hybrid video-on-demand system

As streaming video and audio over the Internet become popular, the deployment of a large-scale multimedia streaming application requires an enormous amount of server and network resources. In a Video-on-Demand (VoD) environment, batching of video requests are often used to reduce I/O demand and improve throughput. Since users may leave if they experience long waits, a good video scheduling policy needs to consider not only the batch size but also the user defection probabilities and waiting times. Besides, a practical VoD resource sharing scheme should try its best to provide some free stream to serve a high priority client's request immediately because the high priority clients might pay for the requested video. To tackle the above problems, this work proposes a hybrid resource sharing model which combines controlled multicasting and batching scheme. A bandwidth borrowing and reserving scheme is adopted in our hybrid model to give high priority clients prompt service whereas provide low priority clients comparable service as given by the representative scheduling policies in the literature. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed resource sharing scheme is effective and feasible when blocking probability of high priority clients and defection probability of low priority users are used as the performance metrics.
Behavioural Usage Analysis of a Reminiscing App for People Living with Dementia and their Carers

The potential for technology to support memory or enhance cognition for people living with dementia is an area of significant interest. The use of traditional reminiscence memory books and latterly digital systems to facilitate reminiscing has been shown to have some benefit for people living with dementia. However, there is a lack of research that explores how people living with dementia actually interact with digital reminiscence systems. This paper presents a new contribution to knowledge from work-in-progress in a feasibility study of facilitated reminiscence for people with dementia and results show promise in understanding the behaviour of users of interactive technologies.
DIABETIC STUDIES The Review of Sox 9 : A Master Regulator of the Pancreatic Program

Over the last decade, it has been discovered that the transcription factor Sox9 plays several critical roles in governing the development of the embryonic pancreas and the homeostasis of the mature organ. While analysis of pancreata from patients affected by the Sox9 haploinsufficiency syndrome campomelic dysplasia initially alluded to a functional role of Sox9 in pancreatic morphogenesis, transgenic mouse models have been instrumental in mechanistically dissecting such roles. Although initially defined as a marker and maintenance factor for pancreatic progenitors, Sox9 is now considered to fulfill additional indispensable functions during pancreogenesis and in the postnatal organ through its interactions with other transcription factors and signaling pathways such as Fgf and Notch. In addition to maintaining both multipotent and bipotent pancreatic progenitors, Sox9 is also required for initiating endocrine differentiation and maintaining pancreatic ductal identity, and it has recently been unveiled as a key player in the initiation of pancreatic cancer. These functions of Sox9 are discussed in this article, with special emphasis on the knowledge gained from various loss-of-function and lineage tracing mouse models. Also, current controversies regarding Sox9 function in healthy and injured adult pancreas and unanswered questions and avenues of future study are discussed.
Efficient Nuclear Targeting of Granzyme B and the Nuclear Consequences of Apoptosis Induced by Granzyme B and Perforin Are Caspase-dependent, but Cell Death Is Caspase-independent*

The secretory lysosomes of cytolytic lymphocytes house the principal apoptotic molecules for eliminating virus-infected cells: a membranolytic agent, perforin, and the serine protease, granzyme B. Perforin allows granzyme B access to cytosolic and nuclear substrates that, when cleaved, result in the characteristic apoptotic phenotype. Key among these substrates is a family of cytoplasmic caspases that mediate cell suicide. We have examined the caspase dependence of several nuclear and cytoplasmic parameters of apoptosis induced by purified perforin and granzyme B. Cell membrane leakage in response to perforin and granzyme B was independent of caspase activation; however, nuclear events such as DNA fragmentation and nuclear condensation and disintegration were abolished by the broad-acting caspase inhibitor, z-VAD-fmk. Despite being spared from nuclear damage, z-VAD-fmk-treated cells exposed to both cytotoxins uniformly died when they were re-cultured, while cells exposed to perforin or granzyme alone survived and proliferated as readily as untreated cells. Pretreatment of cells with z-VAD-fmk also resulted in reduced granzyme B nuclear uptake following addition of perforin; however, its uptake into the cytoplasm in the absence of perforin was unaffected. We conclude that cell death in response to perforin and granzyme B does not require caspase activation and still proceeds efficiently through non-nuclear pathways when nuclear substrate cleavage is inhibited.
Mobile multi-flash photography

Multi-flash (MF) photography offers a number of advantages over regular photography including removing the effects of illumination, color and texture as well as highlighting occlusion contours. Implementing MF photography on mobile devices, however, is challenging due to their restricted form factors, limited synchronization capabilities, low computational power and limited interface connectivity. In this paper, we present a novel mobile MF technique that overcomes these limitations and achieves comparable performance as conventional MF. We first construct a mobile flash ring using four LED lights and design a special mobile flash-camera synchronization unit. The mobile device’s own flash first triggers the flash ring via an auxiliary photocell. The mobile flashes are then triggered consecutively in sync with the mobile camera’s frame rate, to guarantee that each image is captured with only one LED flash on. To process the acquired MF images, we further develop a class of fast mobile image processing techniques for image registration, depth edge extraction, and edge-preserving smoothing. We demonstrate our mobile MF on a number of mobile imaging applications, including occlusion detection, image thumbnailing, image abstraction and object category classification.
Dembo polymerase chain reaction technique for detection of bovine abortion, diarrhea, and respiratory disease complex infectious agents in potential vectors and reservoirs

Bovine abortion, diarrhea, and respiratory disease complexes, caused by infectious agents, result in high and significant economic losses for the cattle industry. These pathogens are likely transmitted by various vectors and reservoirs including insects, birds, and rodents. However, experimental data supporting this possibility are scarce. We collected 117 samples and screened them for 44 bovine abortive, diarrheal, and respiratory disease complex pathogens by using Dembo polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is based on TaqMan real-time PCR. Fifty-seven samples were positive for at least one pathogen, including bovine viral diarrhea virus, bovine enterovirus, Salmonella enterica ser. Dublin, Salmonella enterica ser. Typhimurium, and Neospora caninum; some samples were positive for multiple pathogens. Bovine viral diarrhea virus and bovine enterovirus were the most frequently detected pathogens, especially in flies, suggesting an important role of flies in the transmission of these viruses. Additionally, we detected the N. caninum genome from a cockroach sample for the first time. Our data suggest that insects (particularly flies), birds, and rodents are potential vectors and reservoirs of abortion, diarrhea, and respiratory infectious agents, and that they may transmit more than one pathogen at the same time.
A highly conserved protein of unknown function in Sinorhizobium meliloti affects sRNA regulation similar to Hfq

The SMc01113/YbeY protein, belonging to the UPF0054 family, is highly conserved in nearly every bacterium. However, the function of these proteins still remains elusive. Our results show that SMc01113/YbeY proteins share structural similarities with the MID domain of the Argonaute (AGO) proteins, and might similarly bind to a small-RNA (sRNA) seed, making a special interaction with the phosphate on the 5′-side of the seed, suggesting they may form a component of the bacterial sRNA pathway. Indeed, eliminating SMc01113/YbeY expression in Sinorhizobium meliloti produces symbiotic and physiological phenotypes strikingly similar to those of the hfq mutant. Hfq, an RNA chaperone, is central to bacterial sRNA-pathway. We evaluated the expression of 13 target genes in the smc01113 and hfq mutants. Further, we predicted the sRNAs that may potentially target these genes, and evaluated the accumulation of nine sRNAs in WT and smc01113 and hfq mutants. Similar to hfq, smc01113 regulates the accumulation of sRNAs as well as the target mRNAs. AGOs are central components of the eukaryotic sRNA machinery and conceptual parallels between the prokaryotic and eukaryotic sRNA pathways have long been drawn. Our study provides the first line of evidence for such conceptual parallels. Furthermore, our investigation gives insights into the sRNA-mediated regulation of stress adaptation in S. meliloti.
Fullerene ( Version 4 . 5 ) A Program for the Topological Analysis of Fullerenes User ’ s Manual

This is an open-source code and you may use and modify the program at your own will. If you like to know why, read the article p.485 (2012). However, we kindly ask that if our program is used, and data are subsequently published, to cite the references given below. Before you distribute the program to other agencies or users outside your group/department please make them aware that their name should be added into our user's database. For more details go to our website at Massey University: For any questions concerning this program please feel free to contact us. We are always open to improvements and suggestions. We also recommend to cite the following book (many of the concepts used can be found here): book is highly recommended. It helps understanding how this program functions. Acknowledgement: PS is indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn) for financial support in terms of a Humboldt Research Award, and to both Prof. Gernot Frenking and Dr. Ralf Tonner (Marburg) for support during his extended stay in Marburg where writing of this program began. We acknowledge the help of Darko Babić, Patrick W. Fowler (Sheffield) and David E. Manolopoulos (Oxford) for permission to freely distribute their Fortran subroutines which we modified and implemented in this program package. We also thank Prof. Ottorino Ori (Zagreb) and Jan Goedgebeur (Gent) for fruitful discussions.
Schwann cells expressing dismutase active mutant SOD1 unexpectedly slow disease progression in ALS mice

Neurodegeneration in an inherited form of ALS is non-cell-autonomous, with ALS-causing mutant SOD1 damage developed within multiple cell types. Selective inactivation within motor neurons of an ubiquitously expressed mutant SOD1 gene has demonstrated that mutant damage within motor neurons is a determinant of disease initiation, whereas mutant synthesis within neighboring astrocytes or microglia accelerates disease progression. We now report the surprising finding that diminished synthesis (by 70%) within Schwann cells of a fully dismutase active ALS-linked mutant (SOD1G37R) significantly accelerates disease progression, accompanied by reduction of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in nerves. Coupled with shorter disease duration in mouse models caused by dismutase inactive versus dismutase active SOD1 mutants, our findings implicate an oxidative cascade during disease progression that is triggered within axon ensheathing Schwann cells and that can be ameliorated by elevated dismutase activity. Thus, therapeutic down-regulation of dismutase active mutant SOD1 in familial forms of ALS should be targeted away from Schwann cells.
Glycine reduces tissue lipid peroxidation in hypoxia-reoxygenation-induced necrotizing enterocolitis in rats.

PURPOSE To assess the protective effect of glycine in an experimental model of Neonatal Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC). METHODS Fifty (50) neonatal Wistar rats, from a litter of six female rats and weighing 4 to 6 grams, were used. Five animals were cannibalized and the 45 remaining were distributed into three groups: the G1 normal control group (n=12); the G2 Group (n=16), of animals that underwent hypoxia-reoxygenation (HR); the G3 Group of animals (n=17) that underwent HR following a 5% intraperitoneal glycine infusion. The animals underwent hypoxia in a CO2 chamber receiving an air flow of 100% CO2 for 5 minutes and reoxygenation receiving an O2 flow at 100% for 5 minutes. One centimeter long small bowel and colon segments were prepared for histological analysis. The rest of the bowel was removed in a block and frozen at minus 80 degrees C for homogenization and determination of tissue malondialdehyde (MDA). Tissue lesions were classified as Grade 0 to Grade 5, according to the level of damaged mucosa. RESULTS The animals in Group G1 had levels of small bowel and colon lesion significantly smaller as compared to the animals in Groups G2 and G3. The G2 group had mean MDA values significantly higher than the animals in the G1 (p = .015) and G3 (p=0.021) groups. MDA values did not differ significantly (p = 0.992) for the animals in groups G1 and G3. CONCLUSION Glycine reduces tissue MDA levels (a measurement of lipid peroxidation) following HR in neonatal rats.
A Method to Control Parameters of Evolutionary Algorithms by Using Reinforcement Learning

A search method using an evolutionary algorithm such as a genetic algorithm (GA) is very effective if the parameter is appropriately set. However, the optimum parameter setting was so difficult that each optimal method depending on each problem pattern must be developed one by one. Therefore, this has required special expertise and large amounts of verification experiment. In order to solve this problem, a new method called gadaptive parameter controlh is proposed, which adaptively controls parameters of an evolutionary algorithm. However, since this method just increases the selection probability of a search operator that generated a well evaluated individual, this is apt to be a shortsighted optimization method. On the contrary, a method is proposed to realize longsighted optimal parameter control of GA using reinforcement learning. However, this method does neither consider the calculation cost of search operators nor multipoint search characteristics of GA. This paper proposes a method to efficiently control parameters of an evolutionary algorithm by using the reinforcement learning where the reward decision rules are elaborately incorporated under the consideration of GAfs multipoint search characteristics and calculation cost of the search operator. It is expected that this method can efficiently learn parameters to optimally select search operators of GA for approximately solving Travelling Salesman Problems (TSPs).
Efficient resource management for the P2P Web caching

P2P based file sharing systems have become an extremely popular and they are highly scalable, self-configurable and fault tolerant. Some researches exploit them for the Web caching systems to solve the scalability issue. However they treat the Web objects as homogeneous objects and there is no concern about the various Web characteristics. This paper suggests an efficient Web caching system which manages the objects by different policies to exploit the characteristics of Web objects. Basically, we apply the different caching policies to the objects according to their size. Small-sized objects are stored by themselves but large-sized objects are stored by division into many small blocks which are distributed in the clients and the object header block is stored rather than the large object itself. Moreover we give large sized objects higher priority than small sized objects and maximize the effect of hit for a large-sized object which increase the byte hit rate. We examine the performance of the efficient policies via a trace driven simulation and demonstrate effective enhancement of the Web cache performance.
Nitrous Oxide Formation in the Colne Estuary in England: the Central Role of Nitrite

Nitrate and nitrite concentrations in the water and nitrous oxide and nitrite fluxes across the sediment-water interface were measured monthly in the River Colne estuary, England, from December 1996 to March 1998. Water column concentrations of N2O in the Colne were supersaturated with respect to air, indicating that the estuary was a source of N2O for the atmosphere. At the freshwater end of the estuary, nitrous oxide effluxes from the sediment were closely correlated with the nitrite concentrations in the overlying water and with the nitrite influx into the sediment. Increases in N2O production from sediments were about 10 times greater with the addition of nitrite than with the addition of nitrate. Rates of denitrification were stimulated to a larger extent by enhanced nitrite than by nitrate concentrations. At 550 μM nitrite or nitrate (the highest concentration used), the rates of denitrification were 600 μmol N · m−2 · h−1 with nitrite but only 180 μmol N · m−2 · h−1 with nitrate. The ratios of rates of nitrous oxide production and denitrification (N2O/N2 × 100) were significantly higher with the addition of nitrite (7 to 13% of denitrification) than with nitrate (2 to 4% of denitrification). The results suggested that in addition to anaerobic bacteria, which possess the complete denitrification pathway for N2 formation in the estuarine sediments, there may be two other groups of bacteria: nitrite denitrifiers, which reduce nitrite to N2 via N2O, and obligate nitrite-denitrifying bacteria, which reduce nitrite to N2O as the end product. Consideration of free-energy changes during N2O formation led to the conclusion that N2O formation using nitrite as the electron acceptor is favored in the Colne estuary and may be a critical factor regulating the formation of N2O in high-nutrient-load estuaries.
An Empirical Study of Transition and Adoption of the Scrum Framework in Legacy Products

Agile software development (ASD) methods attempt to foster agility as one dimension of the complex activity of delivering software solutions to gain business advantage in turbulent environments. It is however unknown whether such methods improve code delivery in software houses producing legacy mainframe software where the source code is not in an object-oriented programming language. In this paper, we evaluate whether there is any impact on the development process by the adoption of the Scrum framework, using a combination of quantitative and interpretive analysis on empirical data. We first test the significance of the code metrics committed by the developers before and after the transition and adoption. Using in-depth knowledge of the commercial project, we then interpret the results of statistical tests on the null hypothesis that the metrics show no significant change. The study has been conducted using real life empirical data gathered from the development of a sample commercial legacy product. 1 In a software development context, confusion can occur when referring to the term ‘agile’ (with a small ‘a’) and ‘Agile’ (with a capital ‘A’). In the interests of clarity, we use ‘agile’ as the dictionary definition of the term – ‘able to move quickly and easily; able to think and understand quickly’ http://oxforddictionaries.com; in contrast, ‘Agile’ (software development) refers to a specific set of processes, techniques and stances that have evolved and are underpinned by, the values of the non-profit organization, the Agile Alliance, http://www.agilealliance. com.