Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploration of remotely sensed forest structure and ultrasonic range sensor metrics to improve empirical snow models

Current methods to estimate snow accumulation and ablation at the plot and watershed levels can be improved as new technologies offer alternative approaches to more accurately monitor snow dynamics and their drivers. Here we conduct a meta‐analysis of snow and vegetation data collected in British Columbia to explore the relationships between a wide range of forest structure variables – obtained from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), hemispherical photography (HP) and Landsat Thematic Mapper – and several indicators of snow accumulation and ablation estimated from manual snow surveys and ultrasonic range sensors. By merging and standardizing all the ground plot information available in the study area, we demonstrate how LiDAR‐derived forest cover above 0.5 m was the variable explaining the highest percentage of absolute peak snow water equivalent (SWE) (33%), while HP‐derived leaf area index and gap fraction (45° angle of view) were the best potential predictors of snow ablation rate (explaining 57% of variance). This study reveals how continuous SWE data from ultrasonic sensors are fundamental to obtain statistically significant relationships between snow indicators and structural metrics by increasing mean r2 by 20% when compared to manual surveys. The relationships between vegetation and spectral indices from Landsat and snow indicators, not explored before, were almost as high as those shown by LiDAR or HP and thus point towards a new line of research with important practical implications. While the use of different data sources from two snow seasons prevented us from developing models with predictive capacity, a large sample size helped to identify outliers that weakened the relationships and suggest improvements for future research. A concise overview of the limitations of this and previous studies is provided along with propositions to consistently improve experimental designs to take advantage of remote sensing technologies, and better represent spatial and temporal variations of snow. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Time-reversed electromagnetic wave propagation in case of directional antennas

In this paper, we study the influence of directional antennas on the propagation of time reversal (TR) ultra wideband (UWB) electromagnetic waves in a typical indoor environment. The directional antennas are formed by a dipole and a reflection horn with different flare directions. The results demonstrate that the directional antennas can influence the time and spatial focusing characteristics of the TR UWB electromagnetic waves. It implies that the UWB communication performance can be improved by using directional antennas.
Predicting Code-switching in Multilingual Communication for Immigrant Communities

Immigrant communities host multilingual speakers who switch across languages and cultures in their daily communication practices. Although there are in-depth linguistic descriptions of code-switching across different multilingual communication settings, there is a need for automatic prediction of code-switching in large datasets. We use emoticons and multi-word expressions as novel features to predict code-switching in a large online discussion forum for the Turkish-Dutch immigrant community in the Netherlands. Our results indicate that multi-word expressions are powerful features to predict code-switching.
A role for muscarinic excitation: Control of specific singing behavior by activation of the adenylate cyclase pathway in the brain of grasshoppers

Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors exert slow and prolonged synaptic effects in both vertebrate and invertebrate nervous systems. Through activation of G proteins, they typically decrease intracellular cAMP levels by inhibition of adenylate cyclase or stimulate phospholipase C and the turnover of inositol phosphates. In insects, muscarinic receptors have been credited with two main functions: inhibition of transmitter release from sensory neuron terminals and regulation of the excitability of motoneurons and interneurons. Our pharmacological studies with intact and behaving grasshoppers revealed a functional role for muscarinic acetylcholine receptors as being the basis for specific arousal in defined areas of the brain, underlying the selection and control of acoustic communication behavior. Periodic injections of acetylcholine into distinct areas of the brain elicited songs of progressively increasing duration. Coinjections of the muscarinic receptor antagonist scopolamine and periodic stimulations with muscarine identified muscarinic receptor activation as being the basis for the underlying accumulation of excitation. In contrast to reports from other studies on functional circuits, muscarinic excitation was apparently mediated by activation of the adenylate cyclase pathway. Stimulation of adenylate cyclase with forskolin and of protein kinase A with 8-Br-cAMP mimicked the stimulatory effects of muscarine whereas inhibition of adenylate cyclase with SQ22536 and of protein kinase A with H-89 and Rp-cAMPs suppressed muscarine-stimulated singing behavior. Activation of adenylate cyclase by muscarinic receptors has previously been reported from studies on membrane preparations and heterologous expression systems, but a physiological significance of this pathway remained to be demonstrated in an in vivo preparation.
Adopting super-efficiency as alternative approach to evaluate operating efficiency of information and communication technology companies in Thailand

A popular technique to measure efficiency comprise of a two-stage approach, consisting Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with Tobit regression. Since the highest efficiency score of DEA is censored at one, this method has some weakness of covering additional information at the upper bound of the efficiency scores. This research adopts the super-efficiency model as an alternative of DEA-based approach for a two-stage efficiency measurement. The super-efficiency is quite different from the traditional DEA model because its bound is extended more than one. The cross-section data of information and communication technology companies in 2010 was conducted from the Department of Internal Trade in Thailand, studying how the operating efficiency scores are affected by the number of the internal boards, external boards, stakeholders, patents, research and development, established years, subsidiaries, and products. The empirical results of super-efficiency offer the advantages over the traditional DEA. It also provides some useful information to improve the operating efficiency scores.
Large-Scale Functional Brain Network Abnormalities in Alzheimer’s Disease: Insights from Functional Neuroimaging

Functional MRI (fMRI) studies of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have begun to reveal abnormalities in large-scale memory and cognitive brain networks. Since the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system is a site of very early pathology in AD, a number of studies have focused on this region of the brain. Yet it is clear that other regions of the large-scale episodic memory network are affected early in the disease as well, and fMRI has begun to illuminate functional abnormalities in frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices as well in MCI and AD. Besides predictable hypoactivation of brain regions as they accrue pathology and undergo atrophy, there are also areas of hyperactivation in brain memory and cognitive circuits, possibly representing attempted compensatory activity. Recent fMRI data in MCI and AD are beginning to reveal relationships between abnormalities of functional activity in the MTL memory system and in functionally connected brain regions, such as the precuneus. Additional work with “resting state” fMRI data is illuminating functional-anatomic brain circuits and their disruption by disease. As this work continues to mature, it will likely contribute to our understanding of fundamental memory processes in the human brain and how these are perturbed in memory disorders. We hope these insights will translate into the incorporation of measures of task-related brain function into diagnostic assessment or therapeutic monitoring, which will hopefully one day be useful for demonstrating beneficial effects of treatments being tested in clinical trials.
Chain-Related Proteins A and B Histocompatibility Complex Class I Sequestration of the NKG 2 D Ligands Major NK Cell Recognition by Intracellular Adenovirus E 3 / 19 K Promotes Evasion of

Published Ahead of Print 20 February 2008. 2008, 82(9):4585. DOI: 10.1128/JVI.02251-07. J. Virol. Tomasec and Gavin W. G. Wilkinson Steven Cox, Ann-Margaret Little, Eddie C. Y. Wang, Peter Sester, Katja Koebernick, Veronika Groh, Thomas Spies, Owen, Richard J. Stanton, Virginie Prod'homme, Martina Brian P. McSharry, Hans-Gerhard Burgert, Douglas P. Chain-Related Proteins A and B Histocompatibility Complex Class I Sequestration of the NKG2D Ligands Major NK Cell Recognition by Intracellular Adenovirus E3/19K Promotes Evasion of
The Circadian Clock in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. What Is It For? What Is It Similar To?1

The physiology of the circadian (daily) clock has been well studied in the unicellular eukaryote Chlamydomonas reinhardtii . Circadian rhythms of phototaxis, chemotaxis, cell division, UV sensitivity, and adherence to glass have been characterized in this green alga. Circadian phototaxis was even
Sirius: A rapid development of DSM graphical editor

Looking through the history of software development there are two mutually agreed factors used for software process and product effectiveness measurement: the level of abstraction and the level of reusability. The essential goals, among many, that have to be achieved are: increasing developer's productivity, decreasing cost (in time and money) of software construction while preserving desired quality level and improving software reusability and maintainability. Model Driven Software Development (MDSD), which is generally based on the model-centric approach to software development, appears as a challenging paradigm. MDSD is focused on the creation of semantically rich models concerning problem and solution domains while leaving the execution domain to the model based code generators. Created models are often based on a graphical representation and supported by graphical design tools, which, in the most common case, can't be universal. Depending on problem-domain, and based on Domain-Specific Model (DSM) appropriate graphical editing tool must be created. In this paper the emphasis is put on Sirius framework for developing a DSM Graphical Editor, which simplifies the product specification, reduces design time and rapidly increases the overall productivity. The main advantages of Sirius framework usage have been illustrated by the creation of a RESTful Sensor Web Network Editor.
Transcriptome analysis of the zebrafish pineal gland

The zebrafish pineal gland (epiphysis) is a site of melatonin production, contains photoreceptor cells, and functions as a circadian clock pace maker. Here, we have used microarray technology to study the zebrafish pineal transcriptome. Analysis of gene expression at three larval and two adult stages revealed a highly dynamic transcriptional profile, revealing many genes that are highly expressed in the zebrafish pineal gland. Statistical analysis of the data based on Gene Ontology annotation indicates that many transcription factors are highly expressed during larval stages, whereas genes dedicated to phototransduction are preferentially expressed in the adult. Furthermore, several genes were identified that exhibit day/night differences in expression. Among the multiple candidate genes suggested by these data, we note the identification of a tissue‐specific form of the unc119 gene with a possible role in pineal development. Developmental Dynamics 238:1813–1826, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Recognition of splice junctions on DNA sequences by BRAIN learning algorithm

MOTIVATION The problem addressed in this paper is the prediction of splice site locations in human DNA. The aims of the proposed approach are explicit splicing rule description, high recognition quality, and robust and stable 'one shot' data processing. RESULTS These results are achieved by means of a new learning algorithm [BRAIN (Batch Relevance-based Artificial INtelligence)], described in the paper, inferring Boolean formulae from examples, and by considering the splicing rules as disjunctive normal form (DNF) formulae. The formula terms are computed in an iterative way, by identifying from the training set a relevance coefficient for each attribute. The classification is then refined by a neural network and combined with a discriminant analysis procedure. This splice site recognition method shows low error rates (0.0002 and 0.0003) and high correlation coefficient measures (0.83 and 0.81) for donor and acceptor sites, respectively; better than other methods. AVAILABILITY The BRAIN package (Borland Turbo Pascal for Windows) is available on the EMBL file server. (ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/software/dos under nnbrain$.exe). CONTACT rampo@vaxsa.csied. unisa.it
Short-term leprosy forecasting from an expert opinion survey

We conducted an expert survey of leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) and neglected tropical disease experts in February 2016. Experts were asked to forecast the next year of reported cases for the world, for the top three countries, and for selected states and territories of India. A total of 103 respondents answered at least one forecasting question. We elicited lower and upper confidence bounds. Comparing these results to regression and exponential smoothing, we found no evidence that any forecasting method outperformed the others. We found evidence that experts who believed it was more likely to achieve global interruption of transmission goals and disability reduction goals had higher error scores for India and Indonesia, but lower for Brazil. Even for a disease whose epidemiology changes on a slow time scale, forecasting exercises such as we conducted are simple and practical. We believe they can be used on a routine basis in public health.
Correlations and Anticorrelations in LDA Inference

Inference of the document-specific topic distributions in latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) [2] and decoding in compressed sensing [3] exhibit many similarities. Given a matrix and a noisy observed vector, the goal of both tasks is to recover a sparse vector that, when combined with the matrix, provides a good explanation of the noisy observed data. In the case of LDA, the matrix corresponds to the topic-specific distributions over words, the noisy observed vector corresponds to the observed word frequencies for a single document, and the sparse vector corresponds to the document-specific distribution over topics for that document. In the scenario typically considered in the compressed sensing literature (i.e., a small, dense observed vector and a large, very sparse latent vector) the latent structure can be recovered exactly provided the matrix in question satisfies the restricted isometry property [4]. Satisfying this property means that no row in the matrix can be reconstructed from a sparse, linear combination of the other rows. Even though it is infeasible to test whether an arbitrary matrix satisfies the restricted isometry property, it is possible to use intuitions about this property, along with theorems about random matrices, to design improved compressed sensing systems and to prove theorems about the situations in which compressed sensing will work and why.
Near-Optimal Hashing Algorithms for Approximate Nearest Neighbor in High Dimensions

We present an algorithm for the c-approximate nearest neighbor problem in a d-dimensional Euclidean space, achieving query time of O(dn 1c2/+o(1)) and space O(dn + n1+1c2/+o(1)). This almost matches the lower bound for hashing-based algorithm recently obtained in (R. Motwani et al., 2006). We also obtain a space-efficient version of the algorithm, which uses dn+n logO(1) n space, with a query time of dnO(1/c2). Finally, we discuss practical variants of the algorithms that utilize fast bounded-distance decoders for the Leech lattice
Landform modification by palaeo-ice streams in east-central Ireland

Abstract In eastern Ireland, subglacial bedforms including drumlins and Rogen moraines were modified by headward erosion along two ice streams which had overlapping flow tracks. The ice streams, which had tidewater termini, are dated by geochronometric and morphostratigraphic methods to <15.014 C kyr BP (Castleblaney ice stream) and ~13.814C kyr BP (Armagh ice stream). Bedforms along ice-stream tracks show a morphological continuum which reflects a down-ice increase in the degree of modification by ice-stream activity (i.e. resulting in unmodified →remoulded/overprinted →crosscut →streamlined bedforms). The down-ice changes in bedform types are inferred to relate to changes in subglacial drainage and sediment-transport mechanisms. Bedform and sedimentary evidence suggest that discrete subglacial meltwater channels which developed up- ice changed in a down-ice direction to unchannelized flows which deepened towards the ice margin. Meltwater release from subglacial cavities, and produced by strain heating at sheared ice-stream margins, probably helped support ice-stream flow, which ended as the volume of subglacial meltwater discharge decreased. Dated millennial-scale cycles of ice activity may be related to instability at tidewater margins, followed by complex thermal and hydraulic responses within the ice mass.
SpamTracer: How stealthy are spammers?

The Internet routing infrastructure is vulnerable to the injection of erroneous routing information resulting in BGP hijacking. Some spammers, also known as fly-by spammers, have been reported using this attack to steal blocks of IP addresses and use them for spamming. Using stolen IP addresses may allow spammers to elude spam filters based on sender IP address reputation and remain stealthy. This remains a open conjecture despite some anecdotal evidences published several years ago. In order to confirm the first observations and reproduce the experiments at large scale, a system called SpamTracer has been developed to monitor the routing behavior of spamming networks using BGP data and IP/AS traceroutes. We then propose a set of specifically tailored heuristics for detecting possible BGP hijacks. Through an extensive experimentation on a six months dataset, we did find a limited number of cases of spamming networks likely hijacked. In one case, the network owner confirmed the hijack. However, from the experiments performed so far, we can conclude that the fly-by spammers phenomenon does not seem to currently be a significant threat.
Reorganization of Visual Processing in Age-Related Macular Degeneration Depends on Foveal Loss

Purpose When individuals with central vision loss due to macular degeneration (MD) view stimuli in the periphery, most of them activate the region of retinotopic cortex normally activated only by foveal stimuli—a process often referred to as reorganization. Why do some show this reorganization of visual processing whereas others do not? We reported previously that six individuals with complete bilateral loss of central vision showed such reorganization, whereas two with bilateral central vision loss but with foveal sparing did not, and we hypothesized that the effect occurs only after complete bilateral loss of foveal vision. Here, we conduct a stronger test of the dependence of reorganization of visual processing in MD on complete loss of foveal function, by bringing back one (called MD6) of the two participants who previously did not show reorganization and who showed foveal sparing. MD6 has now lost all foveal function, and we predicted that if large-scale reorganization of visual processing in MD individuals depends on complete loss of foveal input, then we will now see such reorganization in this individual. Methods MD6 and two normally sighted control subjects were scanned. Stimuli were gray-scale photographs of objects presented at either the fovea or a peripheral retinal location (i.e., the MD participant’s preferred retinal locus or the control participants’ matched peripheral location). Results In MD6, visual stimulation at the preferred retinal locus significantly activated not only the expected “peripheral” retinotopic cortex but also the deprived “foveal” cortex. Crucially, MD6 exhibited no such large-scale reorganization 5 years earlier when she had some foveal sparing. By contrast, in the control participants, stimulation at the matched peripheral location produced significant activation in peripheral retinotopic cortex only. Conclusions We conclude that complete loss of foveal function may be a necessary condition for large-scale reorganization of visual processing in individuals with MD.
The three classes of hydrogenases from sulfate-reducing bacteria of the genus Desulfovibrio.

Three types of hydrogenases have been isolated from the sulfate-reducing bacteria of the genus Desulfovibrio. They differ in their subunit and metal compositions, physico-chemical characteristics, amino acid sequences, immunological reactivities, gene structures and their catalytic properties. Broadly, the hydrogenases can be considered as 'iron only' hydrogenases and nickel-containing hydrogenases. The iron-sulfur-containing hydrogenase ([Fe] hydrogenase) contains two ferredoxin-type (4Fe-4S) clusters and an atypical iron-sulfur center believed to be involved in the activation of H2. The [Fe] hydrogenase has the highest specific activity in the evolution and consumption of hydrogen and in the proton-deuterium exchange reaction and this enzyme is the most sensitive to CO and NO2-. It is not present in all species of Desulfovibrio. The nickel-(iron-sulfur)-containing hydrogenases [( NiFe] hydrogenases) possess two (4Fe-4S) centers and one (3Fe-xS) cluster in addition to nickel and have been found in all species of Desulfovibrio so far investigated. The redox active nickel is ligated by at least two cysteinyl thiolate residues and the [NiFe] hydrogenases are particularly resistant to inhibitors such as CO and NO2-. The genes encoding the large and small subunits of a periplasmic and a membrane-bound species of the [NiFe] hydrogenase have been cloned in Escherichia (E.) coli and sequenced. Their derived amino acid sequences exhibit a high degree of homology (70%); however, they show no obvious metal-binding sites or homology with the derived amino acid sequence of the [Fe] hydrogenase. The third class is represented by the nickel-(iron-sulfur)-selenium-containing hydrogenases [( NiFe-Se] hydrogenases) which contain nickel and selenium in equimolecular amounts plus (4Fe-4S) centers and are only found in some species of Desulfovibrio. The genes encoding the large and small subunits of the periplasmic hydrogenase from Desulfovibrio (D.) baculatus (DSM 1743) have been cloned in E. coli and sequenced. The derived amino acid sequence exhibits homology (40%) with the sequence of the [NiFe] hydrogenase and the carboxy-terminus of the gene for the large subunit contains a codon (TGA) for selenocysteine in a position homologous to a codon (TGC) for cysteine in the large subunit of the [NiFe] hydrogenase. EXAFS and EPR studies with the 77Se-enriched D. baculatus hydrogenase indicate that selenium is a ligand to nickel and suggest that the redox active nickel is ligated by at least two cysteinyl thiolate and one selenocysteine selenolate residues. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)