Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of Landfill Leachate by Electrochemical Oxidation and Anaerobic Process

The removal performance of typical refractory organic compounds in landfill leachate was investigated during the electrochemical (EC) oxidation and anaerobic process combined treatment system in this paper. The results indicated that the treatment of landfill leachate by the combined system was highly effective. The toxicity of leachate was notably decreased after the electrochemical oxidation process and the biodegradability was improved. The concentration of the organic acid with low molecular weight in the leachate increased from 28% to 90% based on the biodegradability assays after the EC oxidation process. The anaerobic digestion could further remove the residual organic compounds. At a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 16 hours and an organic loading rate (OLR) of 8 kg COD/m3 d, the concentration of COD, SS, ALK, VA, N‐TKN, N‐NH4 + and P‐PO3 − in UASB effluent were 532, 12, 6744, 400, 540, 455 and 11.6 mg/L, respectively, with approximately 90% removal efficiency of COD. The organic compounds in the landfill leachate revealed different degradation characteristics in the combined system. p‐chloroaniline, bisphenol A, 6‐methyl‐2‐phenyl‐quinoline, dimethylnaphthaline and N′‐(2‐methyl‐4‐chlorophenyl)‐N‐cyclohexyformamidine, classified into the first group in this paper, were completely removed by the EC oxidation and did not reappear in the effluent of the UASB reactor. Phenylacetic acid, 3‐methyl‐indole and N‐cyclohexyl‐acetamide, called the second group, were completely removed, but reappeared in the UASB reactor. 4‐methyl‐phenol, 3,4‐dihydroisoquinoline, 2(3H)‐benzothiazolone, exo‐2‐hydroxycineole and benzothiazole, the third group, were degraded little in the EC oxidation process, but extensively removed by the anaerobic process. Benzoic acid, benzenepropanoic acid and 2‐cyano‐3,5‐dimethyl‐1‐hydroxy‐pyrrole, the fourth group, concentration obviously increased in the EC process, but was completely removed in the UASB reactor. The content of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) markedly increased from 0.68% in the leachate to 16.18% in the effluent from the electrochemical oxidation process (ECeffl). In addition, the degradation rate of organic compounds from the landfill leachate was different in the EC oxidation and anaerobic process.
Identification of pathogen and host-response markers correlated with periodontal disease.

BACKGROUND Periodontitis is the major cause of tooth loss in adults and is linked to systemic illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease and stroke. The development of rapid point-of-care (POC) chairside diagnostics has the potential for the early detection of periodontal infection and progression to identify incipient disease and reduce health care costs. However, validation of effective diagnostics requires the identification and verification of biomarkers correlated with disease progression. This clinical study sought to determine the ability of putative host- and microbially derived biomarkers to identify periodontal disease status from whole saliva and plaque biofilm. METHODS One hundred human subjects were equally recruited into a healthy/gingivitis group or a periodontitis population. Whole saliva was collected from all subjects and analyzed using antibody arrays to measure the levels of multiple proinflammatory cytokines and bone resorptive/turnover markers. RESULTS Salivary biomarker data were correlated to comprehensive clinical, radiographic, and microbial plaque biofilm levels measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) for the generation of models for periodontal disease identification. Significantly elevated levels of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-8 and -9 were found in subjects with advanced periodontitis with Random Forest importance scores of 7.1 and 5.1, respectively. The generation of receiver operating characteristic curves demonstrated that permutations of salivary biomarkers and pathogen biofilm values augmented the prediction of disease category. Multiple combinations of salivary biomarkers (especially MMP-8 and -9 and osteoprotegerin) combined with red-complex anaerobic periodontal pathogens (such as Porphyromonas gingivalis or Treponema denticola) provided highly accurate predictions of periodontal disease category. Elevated salivary MMP-8 and T. denticola biofilm levels displayed robust combinatorial characteristics in predicting periodontal disease severity (area under the curve = 0.88; odds ratio = 24.6; 95% confidence interval: 5.2 to 116.5). CONCLUSIONS Using qPCR and sensitive immunoassays, we identified host- and bacterially derived biomarkers correlated with periodontal disease. This approach offers significant potential for the discovery of biomarker signatures useful in the development of rapid POC chairside diagnostics for oral and systemic diseases. Studies are ongoing to apply this approach to the longitudinal predictions of disease activity.
Assessment in First-Year ICT Education in Australia: Research and Practice

This paper presents an investigation of assessment in firstyear Information and Communications Technology (ICT) courses with a focus on Australian universities. This study was part of a project that aimed to identify and disseminate good practices in first-year ICT teaching in Australian universities. Through a systematic review of the last five years of research literature and interviewing 30 academics who were involved in the design and delivery of the first-year learning experience in Australian universities, we have formed a comprehensive view of current assessment practices, and outlined the unique challenges faced by teachers when designing assessment for their first-year ICT students. Key findings of the literature survey and the insights gained from the academic participants have been collated to provide examples of good practice in the field and to recommend areas for further investigation.
New Advances of microRNAs in Glioma Stem Cells, With Special Emphasis on Aberrant Methylation of microRNAs

Malignant brain tumors are thought to be originate from a small population of cells that display stem cell properties, including the capacity of self‐renewal, multipotent differentiation, initiation of tumor tissues. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been identified in gliomas in which they are named as glioma stem cells (GSCs). GSCs, sharing some characteristics with normal neural stem cells (NSCs), contribute to the cellular origin for primary gliomas and the recurrence of malignant gliomas after current conventional therapy. Recently, increasing evidences have showed that miRNAs play a central role in GSCs. In this review we focus on the role of GSCs in gliomas and in the abnomal expression of miRNAs in GSCs. Furthermore, we also discuss epigenetic dysregulation of tumor‐suppressor miRNAs by promoter DNA methylation is involved in the regulation of GSCs biology. Recent advances in understanding dysregulated expression of miRNAs and methylation of tumor‐suppressor miRNAs in GSCs and their possible use as new therapeutic targets of gliomas. J. Cell. Physiol. 229: 1141–1147, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
KÜLTÜREL RENK KÖRLÜĞÜ: KÜLTÜREL DEĞERLER VE İŞ TATMİNİ ARASINDAKİ İLİŞKİ ÜZERİNE GÜÇLENDİRMENİN ARACILIK (MEDIATION) ETKİSİ

Ozet: Kulturel degerler ve is tatmini arasindaki iliski uzerinde guclendirmenin aracilik (dolayli) etkisini inceleyen bu calisma, banka ve uretim calisanlarinin iki orneklemi uzerinde yurutulmustur. “Guclendirme algilarinin, kulturel degerler ve is tatmini arasindaki iliskilerde aracilik etkileri (rolleri) vardir” seklinde gelistirilen calisma hipotezi, banka ornekleminde yeterli destek bulamazken, uretim ornekleminde ise tam destek bulmustur. Bu bulgular, guclendirme yonetim tarzinin ulusal kulturle uyum gostermedigini, oldugu gibi degil, farkli anlayislar ile ancak uygulanabilecegini ve de etki ve otonomi guclendirme boyutlarina agirlik verilmesinin yerinde olacagini gostermektedir. Buna karsilik, calisma bulgulari, guclendirme algisi dusuk yonetim tarzi ile kulturel degerler arasinda var olan uyum icin ampirik kanit saglamaktadir. Anahtar Sozcukler: Kulturel Degerler, s Tatmini, Guclendirme Abstract:: The study which examines the mediation effect of employee empowerment on the relationship between cultural values and job satisfaction is employed on two samples of bank employees and factory workers. The hypothesis of the study which is based on the consideration which perceptions of empowerment have mediator effects on the relationship between cultural values and job satisfaction finds out partially support for the bank employees sample and fully support for the factory workers sample. These findings indicate that cultural values do not fit in empowerment and empowerment can be performed well on condition that different approaches are used. These findings also show that empowerment can be only performed with impact and autonomy. However, the study findings provide empirical evidence that management style in lower perceptions of empowerment does fit in cultural values. Key Words: Cultural Values, Job Satisfaction, Empowerment
Efficient Evaluation of SVM Classifiers Using Error Space Encoding

Many computer vision tasks require efficient evaluation of Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers on large image databases. Our goal is to efficiently evaluate SVM classifiers on a large number of images. We propose a novel Error Space Encoding (ESE) scheme for SVM evaluation which utilizes large number of classifiers already evaluated on the similar data set. We model this problem as an encoding of a novel classifier (query) in terms of the existing classifiers (query logs). With sufficiently large query logs, we show that ESE performs far better than any other existing encoding schemes. With this method we are able to retrieve nearly 100% correct top-k images from a dataset of 1 Million images spanning across 1000 categories. We also demonstrate application of our method in terms of relevance feedback and query expansion mechanism and show that our method achieves the same accuracy 90 times faster than exhaustive SVM evaluations.
NewsInEssence: A System For Domain-Independent, Real-Time News Clustering and Multi-Document Summarization

NEWSINESSENCE is a system for finding, visualizing and summarizing a topic-based cluster of news stories. In the generic scenario for NEWSINESSENCE, a user selects a single news story from a news Web site. Our system then searches other live sources of news for other stories related to the same event and produces summaries of a subset of the stories that it finds, according to parameters specified by the user.
Algorithm of Image Contour Extracting Based on Human-Computer Interaction

An algorithm based on human-computer interaction is put forward aiming at the disadvantages of low accuracy of image contour and low degree thinning of contour. First, to reduce image noise is necessary by filtering, the following thing is to change image into gray image. The gray image is segmented by fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm. In the algorithm, the edge is traversed at given initial vertex. According to neighbor relationship between the point on the contour with neighbor pixels, curve can be confirmed to remain or not. In the following, curve contour vertices can be concluded by the traversal order. Experimental results show that high contour accuracy can be obtained to detect image by the algorithm. In regional consistency, the algorithm is better than some traditional algorithms of image edge detection. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
Quantitative analysis of the binding affinity of poly(ADP-ribose) to specific binding proteins as a function of chain length

Poly(ADP-ribose) (PAR) is synthesized by poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases in response to genotoxic stress and interacts non-covalently with DNA damage checkpoint and repair proteins. Here, we present a variety of techniques to analyze this interaction in terms of selectivity and affinity. In vitro synthesized PAR was end-labeled using a carbonyl-reactive biotin analog. Binding of HPLC-fractionated PAR chains to the tumor suppressor protein p53 and to the nucleotide excision repair protein XPA was assessed using a novel electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). Long ADP-ribose chains (55-mer) promoted the formation of three specific complexes with p53. Short PAR chains (16-mer) were also able to bind p53, yet forming only one defined complex. In contrast, XPA did not interact with short polymer, but produced a single complex with long PAR chains (55-mer). In addition, we performed surface plasmon resonance with immobilized PAR chains, which allowed establishing binding constants and confirmed the results obtained by EMSA. Taken together, we developed several new protocols permitting the quantitative characterization of PAR–protein binding. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the affinity of the non-covalent PAR interactions with specific binding proteins (XPA, p53) can be very high (nanomolar range) and depends both on the PAR chain length and on the binding protein.
Vitamin A Supplementation Redirects the Flow of Retinyl Esters from Peripheral to Central Organs in Neonatal Rats Raised under Vitamin A‐Marginal Conditions

Vitamin A (VA, retinol) supplementation is used to reduce child mortality in countries with high rates of malnutrition. Existing research suggests that neonates (<1 mo old) may have a limited capacity to store VA in organs other than the liver; however, the knowledge about VA distribution and kinetics in individual non‐hepatic organs is limited.
Designing Highly Flexible and Usable Cyberinfrastructures for Convergence

Abstract: This article presents the results of a 7‐year‐long quest into the development of a “dream tool” for our research in information science and scientometrics and more recently, network science. The results are two cyberinfrastructures (CI): The Cyberinfrastructure for Information Visualization and the Network Workbench that enjoy a growing national and interdisciplinary user community. Both CIs use the cyberinfrastructure shell (CIShell) software specification, which defines interfaces between data sets and algorithms/services and provides a means to bundle them into powerful tools and (Web) services. In fact, CIShell might be our major contribution to progress in convergence. Just as Wikipedia is an “empty shell” that empowers lay persons to share text, a CIShell implementation is an “empty shell” that empowers user communities to plug‐and‐play, share, compare and combine data sets, algorithms, and compute resources across national and disciplinary boundaries. It is argued here that CIs will not only transform the way science is conducted but also will play a major role in the diffusion of expertise, data sets, algorithms, and technologies across multiple disciplines and business sectors leading to a more integrative science.
A second locality for the Namib darkling beetle Onymacris brainei (Tenebrionidae, Coleoptera) and first report on its molecular phylogenetic placement

Abstract Onymacris brainei Penrith, 1984 – the most recent species of Onymacris to be described – is known only from its type locality in the Namib Desert, adjacent to the Cunene River in northern Namibia. No additional specimens are known to have been collected beyond the type series. Herein, we report on eight specimens discovered at a second site near the original locality. DNA from four beetles was used to determine the phylogenetic placement of O. brainei among congeners, based on sequence data from one nuclear (histone III) and two mitochondrial (cox1, cox2) genes. Maximum likelihood analysis identifies O. brainei as a member of the ‘white’ Onymacris clade, in which it forms a strongly supported subclade with O. bicolor and O. marginipennis. More broadly, its phylogenetic placement augments previous molecular results that revealed a sister taxon relationship between the ‘white’ Onymacris and a second genus, Physadesmia. The paraphyly of Onymacris with respect to Physadesmia highlights a need for nomenclatural change, but revision should await acquisition of genetic data for the few species outstanding in both genera.
Longitudinal reciprocal relationships between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction

This study aims to understand change in core self-evaluations by investigating dynamics of CSE and life experiences as indicated by job satisfaction with a multilevel perspective in terms of within- and between-individual change. Core self-evaluations have been proposed as static personality traits that influence individuals’ life experiences from the dispositional perspective. However, core self-evaluations were derived from and can also be influenced by life experiences from the contextual perspective. Based on the corresponsive principle of personality development, this study incorporated both dispositional and contextual perspectives of personality to examine longitudinal reciprocal relationships between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction with changes operating in within-person and between-person process. Longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey from 1997 to 2006 were used. A total of 5,827 participants are selected in the database (48.6% are males and 51.4% are females). Issues relating to within- and between-person change phenomena of core self-evaluations and job satisfaction were first addressed. Then, latent difference score models and cross-lagged models were used to examine the longitudinal reciprocal relationship between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction for within- and between-person changes, respectively. In general, results revealed that there is a longitudinal reciprocal relationship between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction both at within- and between-person change process. The current findings suggested core self-evaluations as a whole is a dynamic construct that continues interact with life experiences, rather than a static personality trait.
Influence of Fractal Lacunarity on the Performance of Dipole Antennas with Generalized Koch Curves

In recent years fractal geometries have been explored by various research groups around the world due to their purported potential of realizing multi-resonant antennas, possibly with smaller size and greater radiation efficiency. Most of the initial works in this direction were experimental approaches, but very recently the attention has been brought towards exploiting fractal features in antenna design. While these past attempts have been on regular fractal geometries and were aimed at quantitatively relating fractal dimension with antenna characteristics, in this paper we strive to extend this approach to more generalized situations. In this context we suggest a novel parameter to quantize the fractal lacunarity and use this to explain the behavior of dipole antennas made of generalized triangular Koch curves
Reasoning and Reflection in the Game of Nomic: Self-Organising Self-Aware Agents with Mutable Rule-Sets

The Game of Nomic was developed to investigate the idea that any modifiable rule-based system could result in situations where the ruleset is paradoxical, contradictory or incomplete. This has interesting and important implications for designers of open, self-organising, rule-based systems, if our concern is to ensure that the system should operate within a 'corridor' of behavior, or should avoid certain non-normative states. To investigate this issue, this paper presents the preliminary design, implementation and operation of a self-organising multi-agent system in which the agents play the Game of Nomic. While not yet in a position to test Suber's hypothesis fully, we can see how different agent strategies can reason, reflect, and make decisions that benefit their internal objectives relative to the game itself, by using an awareness of themselves, other players, the ruleset and the projected outcome of proposed rule modifications.
Newly Identified Gait Patterns in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis May Be Related to Push-off Quality

Background Limited walking ability is an important problem for patients with multiple sclerosis. A better understanding of how gait impairments lead to limited walking ability may help to develop more targeted interventions. Although gait classifications are available in cerebral palsy and stroke, relevant knowledge in MS is scarce. Objective The aims of this study were: (1) to identify distinctive gait patterns in patients with MS based on a combined evaluation of kinematics, gait features, and muscle activity during walking and (2) to determine the clinical relevance of these gait patterns. Design This was a cross-sectional study of 81 patients with MS of mild-to-moderate severity (Expanded Disability Status Scale [EDSS] median score=3.0, range=1.0–7.0) and an age range of 28 to 69 years. Method The patients participated in 2-dimensional video gait analysis, with concurrent measurement of surface electromyography and ground reaction forces. A score chart of 73 gait items was used to rate each gait analysis. A single rater performed the scoring. Latent class analysis was used to identify gait classes. Results Analysis of the 73 gait variables revealed that 9 variables could distinguish 3 clinically meaningful gait classes. The 9 variables were: (1) heel-rise in terminal stance, (2) push-off, (3) clearance in initial swing, (4) plantar-flexion position in mid-swing, (5) pelvic rotation, (6) arm-trunk movement, (7) activity of the gastrocnemius muscle in pre-swing, (8) M-wave, and (9) propulsive force. The EDSS score and gait speed worsened in ascending classes. Limitations Most participants had mild-to-moderate limitations in walking ability based on their EDSS scores, and the number of walkers who were severely limited was small. Conclusions Based on a small set of 9 variables measured with 2-dimensional clinical gait analysis, patients with MS could be divided into 3 different gait classes. The gait variables are suggestive of insufficient ankle push-off.
Joint Modeling of Ability and Differential Speed Using Responses and Response Times

ABSTRACT With computerized testing, it is possible to record both the responses of test takers to test questions (i.e., items) and the amount of time spent by a test taker in responding to each question. Various models have been proposed that take into account both test-taker ability and working speed, with the many models assuming a constant working speed throughout the test. The constant working speed assumption may be inappropriate for various reasons. For example, a test taker may need to adjust the pace due to time mismanagement, or a test taker who started out working too fast may reduce the working speed to improve accuracy. A model is proposed here that allows for variable working speed. An illustration of the model using the Amsterdam Chess Test data is provided.
The effect of pitch, intensity and pause duration in punctuation detection

The purpose of this research is to automatically detect punctuation in speech using only prosodic cues. We aim to integrate prosodic elements such as pauses, changes in f0 and amplitude range, into an Automatic Speech Recognition engine in order to generate punctuation for read speech, without taking the context of the sentences into consideration. We trained acoustic models of the prosodic features of two Punctuation Marks (PMs): full-stop and comma, which we assume have distinct prosodic characteristics. A Neural Network was used to estimate the weights assigned to each prosodic feature that corresponds to a particular PM, later to be used by a PM classifier. Results show that 87% of full-stops were detected, with only 14% false alarms. Nevertheless, since most commas are realized with no pitch breaks, only 54% of the commas were detected, with 35% false alarms. Our results support the hypothesis that acoustic-prosodic cues provide useful evidence about phrases.