Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of Varroa and viral pathogens in the collapse of honeybee colonies: a modelling approach

Summary 1. The ecto-parasitic mite Varroa destructor is a serious world-wide pest of the honeybee Apis mellifera and has being linked with the death of millions of colonies, although its role in colony death has remained elusive. 2. A simulation model was developed to explain the link between the mite and collapse of the host bee colony, given that colony death does not always occur. We investigated the effects of two pathogens, deformed wing virus (DWV) and acute paralysis virus (APV), vectored by the mite, on the host colony. 3. Two previously published simulation models, a bee and a mite, were combined and adapted for use in temperate climates with a variety of bee diseases. The model was constructed using Modelmaker® software, which allows the progression of a disease in the host colony to be followed daily. 4. The population dynamics generated by the model were similar to those observed in a natural honeybee colony. When DWV- or APV-transmitting mites were introduced into the colony, its adult worker bee population collapsed either during winter or spring for DWV, or autumn to spring for APV. This corresponds well with field observations of colony death in Europe. 5. The model revealed that DWV initially had little effect on the colony but during late summer, as the population of DWV-transmitting mites increased, the virus caused a reduction in the number of healthy young bees entering the overwintering population. This imbalance in the age structure of the overwintering bees resulted in the eventual death of the colony during the winter or spring. As few as 2000‐3600 mites in autumn could kill a colony. 6. In contrast, APV transmitted by Varroa was only able to kill the honeybee colony if a large (10 000+) mite population was already present when an overt APV infection occurred. It was difficult for APV to become established within the bee population due to it causing rapid host death. 7. The model predicts that the less virulent DWV will become more widely established than the highly virulent APV, and that mite control measures need to be taken prior to the production of overwintering bees.
A directed expansion topology control algorithm for mobile Ad-Hoc networks

In this paper we present the directed expansion algorithm, a distributed and proactive topology control algorithm used for increasing the coverage of mobile nodes over a geographical area while maintaining network connectivity. The proposed approach is fully distributed and assumes a free-space wireless propagation model and no-obstacle navigation field. The algorithm relies on a virtual network backbone, and assumes the existence of a distributed mechanism for computing the network backbone. The proposed algorithm also maintains a fully connected topology by making the expansion task aware of the location and extent of the network backbone. We describe the directed expansion algorithm in detail, and present simulation results and performance analysis. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in expanding coverage over a geographical area.
Tertiary Biomaterial Encapsulation Controls the Release of FGF-2 without Impacting Bioactivity

Diseases that restrict the flow of blood to muscles in the peripheral limbs or the heart remain prevalent causes of reduced quality of life and death in developed countries. Signaling molecules that play a role in the regenerative responses are currently being exploited as potential therapies to restore blood flow and tissue function. Fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2) is a potent stimulator of neovascularization. It is believed that a controlled release of a delivered cytokine is superior to a bolus administration for achieving the desired regenerative effect. Therefore, we incorporated FGF-2-containing microspheres into a hydrogel and further encased this hydrogel into a collagen capsule for implantation. Cytokine release was controlled and constant over a month-long study period, and FGF-2 released from this tertiary encapsulation system maintained its bioactivity, as measured by its proliferative effects on endothelium. In a subcutaneous mouse model, FGF-2 treatment induced a systemic response that included increased stem cell chemoattractant cytokines, the mobilization of a potent CXCR4 + angiogenic population, and also an increase in the density of small diameter blood vessels. These observations were accompanied by no changes in the systemic levels of inflammatory cytokines. Overall, tertiary encapsulation of FGF-2 retards its release and allows for a more controlled and constant delivery of FGF-2, while maintaining its bioactive effects on endothelial cells and systemic responses in vivo.
A DDoS Attack Defending Scheme Based on Network Processor

The distributed denial of service attacks have become more and more frequent and caused some fatal problems. Many researches have been done to detect and defend such attacks, however, many solutions are still in the phase of theoretical studies. Some of them may have certain practical value, but they have to reconstruct the existing network and the routing instruments with great cost. This paper proposes a DDoS attack defending scheme based on network processor. The scheme takes advantage of network processor’s powerful process ability to divide the network flow into different types firstly, and then uses a QoS mechanism to ensure essential communications as well as to eliminate the attack flow to the greatest extent. Experiment results show that the scheme can provide enough bandwidth for high priority flow, and effectively weaken the attack flow.
What motivates Indian firms to invest abroad

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations behind Indian firms’ outward investment, i.e. whether these firms are investing abroad in search of market, resource, technology, strategic-assets, efficiency, etc. Outward FDI by Indian firms has increased considerably in recent years. Such investments have gone to more than hundred host countries and into various sectors. The higher volume of outward FDI following policy reforms requires examination of factors that have motivated Indian firms to invest in different host countries. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical analysis is done for the period from 2008-2009 to 2011-2012 using firm-destination panel data with appropriate adjustment for clustering. Findings – The analysis provides evidence of the existence of multiple motives behind such investments. Indian firms are found to have invested abroad in search of resource, technology (strategic-assets) and efficiency, whereas the evidence on market-seeking motive is found to be at .
Inferring and Exploiting Categories for Next Location Prediction

Predicting the next location of a user based on their previous visiting pattern is one of the primary tasks over data from location based social networks (LBSNs) such as Foursquare. Many different aspects of these so-called "check-in" profiles of a user have been made use of in this task, including spatial and temporal information of check-ins as well as the social network information of the user. Building more sophisticated prediction models by enriching these check-in data by combining them with information from other sources is challenging due to the limited data that these LBSNs expose due to privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose a framework to use the location data from LBSNs, combine it with the data from maps for associating a set of venue categories with these locations. For example, if the user is found to be checking in at a mall that has cafes, cinemas and restaurants according to the map, all these information is associated. This category information is then leveraged to predict the next checkin location by the user. Our experiments with publicly available check-in dataset show that this approach improves on the state-of-the-art methods for location prediction.
Wavelet Features for Recognition of First Episode of Schizophrenia from MRI Brain Images

Machine learning methods are increasingly used in various fields of medicine, contributing to early diagnosis and better quality of care. These outputs are particularly desirable in case of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, due to the inherent potential for creating a new gold standard in the diagnosis and differentiation of particular disorders. This paper presents a scheme for automated classification from magnetic resonance images based on multiresolution representation in the wavelet domain. Implementation of the proposed algorithm, utilizing support vector machines classifier, is introduced and tested on a dataset containing 104 patients with first episode schizophrenia and healthy volunteers. Optimal parameters of different phases of the algorithm are sought and the quality of classification is estimated by robust cross validation techniques. Values of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity over 71% are achieved.
Sustainable tourism and the emergence of new environmental norms

Since 1990s environmental protection and awareness became major issues. Consumers are more and more aware of environmental issues and conscious of existing pollution caused by mass tourism. Consequently a new segment of demand desiring sustainable tourism products have appeared, enhancing service providers to offer this type of products. This paper analyzes the evolution of service provider’s offer adapting to demand preferences modification. Using a theoretical framework, it explains how environmental quality standards become general norms in tourism industry. By analyzing cases of monopoly and duopoly, it considers different possible frameworks and strategic choices that may be implemented by the incumbent. Though, it explains the role of supply in the emergence of new environmental norms.
MODIFICATION OF ZYMOSAN-INDUCED RELEASE OF LYSOSOMAL ENZYMES FROM HUMAN POLYMORPHONUCLEAR LEUKOCYTES BY CYTOCHALASIN B

During the process of phagocytosis, polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) release lysosomal enzymes into the extracellular medium. When the antibiotic cytochalasin B (CB) is present in the incubation medium along with phagocytable particles, enhanced recovery of enzyme activities from the incubation medium has been observed. These findings have led to the interpretation that CB enhances lysosomal enzyme release. Our results contradict this interpretation. The lysosomal enzymes acid phosphatase and β-galactosidase are unstable after they are released from cells. During the first 5–15 min of phagocytosis, significant amounts of both acid phosphatase and β-galactosidase can be recovered from the extracellular medium. After this, the recovery of enzyme from the medium declines, presumably because the rate of loss of lysosomal enzyme activity exceeds the rate of release at later time periods. In the presence of CB, the appearance of lysosomal enzymes in the extracellular medium of cells exposed to zymosan is retarded for 5–10 min, after which it begins and then continues for approximately 20 min. At the end of a 30-min incubation period, therefore, in the absence of CB, extracellular levels of lysosomal enzymes (especially those which are unstable) are declining toward low levels while, in the presence of CB, extracellular enzyme levels are continuing to rise. We also measured the lysosomal enzyme remaining within cells after exposure to zymosan. CB retarded the disappearance of enzyme from cells and resulted in significantly less total cell enzyme loss. Thus, in the presence of CB, a greater proportion of the lysosomal enzyme lost from cells is recovered in the extracellular medium. In contrast to the previous conclusions that CB enhances lysosomal enzyme release, our results indicate that CB delays and decreases the zymosan-stimulated release of lysosomal enzymes from PMN. Since CB inhibits phagocytosis by PMN, our results indicate that the antibiotic modifies the mechanism of release of lysosomal enzymes, resulting in zymosan stimulation of their release independently of phagocytosis.
SNPHarvester: a filtering-based approach for detecting epistatic interactions in genome-wide association studies

MOTIVATION Hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are available for genome-wide association (GWA) studies nowadays. The epistatic interactions of SNPs are believed to be very important in determining individual susceptibility to complex diseases. However, existing methods for SNP interaction discovery either suffer from high computation complexity or perform poorly when marginal effects of disease loci are weak or absent. Hence, it is desirable to develop an effective method to search epistatic interactions in genome-wide scale. RESULTS We propose a new method SNPHarvester to detect SNP-SNP interactions in GWA studies. SNPHarvester creates multiple paths in which the visited SNP groups tend to be statistically associated with diseases, and then harvests those significant SNP groups which pass the statistical tests. It greatly reduces the number of SNPs. Consequently, existing tools can be directly used to detect epistatic interactions. By using a wide range of simulated data and a real genome-wide data, we demonstrate that SNPHarvester outperforms its recent competitor significantly and is promising for practical disease prognosis. AVAILABILITY http://bioinformatics.ust. hk/SNPHarvester.html.
Performance Assessment of Ubiquitous Networked Systems

In this paper we present the methodology we propose for the performance assessment of ubiquitous networked systems. Our methodology relies on emulation of both the ubiquitous nodes and the network interconnections between them. This approach makes it possible to conveniently perform experiments with a large number of nodes in controlled network conditions. We illustrate our approach with experimental results obtained on a large-scale testbed, StarBED2. Experiments are performed using the support software RUNE, and the WLAN emulator QOMET.
Structuring very large domain models: experiences from industrial MDSD projects

View/Viewpoint approaches like IEEE 1471-2000, or Kruchten's 4+1-view model are used to structure software architectures at a high level of granularity. While research has focused on architectural languages and with consistency between multiple views, practical questions such as the structuring at a lower level of detail have not been dealt with. This paper aims at filling this gap by reporting personal experiences from a very large scale industrial domain modeling project. There, structuring the logical view turned out to be a critical success factor. We explain the project and its setting, analyze the role and repercussions of model structuring, and examine the implications model structuring decisions have on other parts of the project. We then explain the model structure abstracted from a very large scale industrial modeling project. Finally, we discuss lessons learned.
The incidence between the R&D and the productivity of Slovak regions: additional evidence from alternative indicator of labor input

Presented paper expands the previous research of the various effects of components of research and development (R&D) on the productivity of 8 Slovak regions at NUTS 3 level during the period 1997-2011. The paper suggests alternative indicators for labor input (number of employees and total employment) to obtain upper and lower bound on the true value of labor elasticity of regional output. Such approach is striving to produce results of higher reliability, than those obtained by a single estimate. Thus, the paper compares the obtained panel estimates with results of previous analysis, to draw conclusions about regional production technology and its response to the changes in two components of R&D: technological progress and R&D inventories. Based on the results of the paper it is possible to assume that despite substantial effects of technological progress on regional production technology the level of R&D inventories is very unlikely to affect the regional production.
Sealing Ability of Three Commercial Mineral Trioxide Aggregates and an Experimental Root-End Filling Material

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to compare the sealability of three different commercial types of mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) and calcium enrichment mixture (CEM) cement as an experimental root-end filling material. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-six single rooted teeth were cleaned, shaped, and obturated. The apical 3 mm of each root was resected and root-end cavities with 3 mm depth were prepared. The samples were randomly divided into 4 experimental groups comprised of 10 roots each. The cavities were filled with CEM cement and MTAs. Six roots were used as positive and negative controls. Samples were prepared and then immersed in 1% methylene blue dye for 3 days. Roots were split longitudinally and examined under stereomicroscope. RESULTS: Positive and negative controls responded as expected. CEM cement showed the least mean dye penetration value. ANOVA revealed no statistically significant differences among experimental groups. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that the experimental CEM cement exhibited similar sealing property as commercial types of MTA.
Calnexin and BiP act as sequential molecular chaperones during thyroglobulin folding in the endoplasmic reticulum

Before secretion, newly synthesized thyroglobulin (Tg) folds via a series of intermediates: disulfide-linked aggregates and unfolded monomers-->folded monomers-->dimers. Immediately after synthesis, very little Tg associated with calnexin (a membrane-bound molecular chaperone in the ER), while a larger fraction bound BiP (a lumenal ER chaperone); dissociation from these chaperones showed superficially similar kinetics. Calnexin might bind selectively to carbohydrates within glycoproteins, or to hydrophobic surfaces of secretory proteins while they form proper disulfide bonds (Wada, I., W.-J. Ou, M.-C. Liu, and G. Scheele, J. Biol. Chem. 1994. 269:7464-7472). Because Tg has multiple disulfides, as well as glycans, we tested a brief exposure of live thyrocytes to dithiothreitol, which resulted in quantitative aggregation of nascent Tg, as analyzed by SDS-PAGE of cells lysed without further reduction. Cells lysed in the presence of dithiothreitol under non-denaturing conditions caused Tg aggregates to run as reduced monomers. For cells lysed either way, after in vivo reduction, Tg coprecipitated with calnexin. After washout of dithiothreitol, nascent Tg aggregates dissolved intracellularly and were secreted ultimately. 1 h after washout, > or = 92% of labeled Tg was found to dissociate from calnexin, while the fraction of labeled Tg bound to BiP rose from 0 to approximately 40%, demonstrating a "precursor-product" relationship. Whereas intralumenal reduction was essential for efficient Tg coprecipitation with calnexin, Tg glycosylation was not required. These data are among the first to demonstrate sequential chaperone function involved in conformational maturation of nascent secretory proteins within the ER.
A priori convergence of the Generalized Empirical Interpolation Method

In an effort to extend the classical lagrangian interpolation tools, new interpolating methods that use general interpolating functions are explored. The Generalized Empirical Interpolation Method (GEIM) belongs to this class of new techniques. It generalizes the plain Empirical Interpolation Method by replacing the evaluation at interpolating points by application of a class of interpolating linear functions. Since its efficiency depends critically on the choice of the interpolating functions (that are chosen by a Greedy selection procedure), the purpose of this paper is therefore to provide a priori convergence rates for the Greedy algorithm that is used to build the GEIM interpolating spaces.
13C Tracers for Glucose Degrading Pathway Discrimination in Gluconobacter oxydans 621H

Gluconobacter oxydans 621H is used as an industrial production organism due to its exceptional ability to incompletely oxidize a great variety of carbohydrates in the periplasm. With glucose as the carbon source, up to 90% of the initial concentration is oxidized periplasmatically to gluconate and ketogluconates. Growth on glucose is biphasic and intracellular sugar catabolism proceeds via the Entner–Doudoroff pathway (EDP) and the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP). Here we studied the in vivo contributions of the two pathways to glucose catabolism on a microtiter scale. In our approach we applied specifically 13C labeled glucose, whereby a labeling pattern in alanine was generated intracellularly. This method revealed a dynamic growth phase-dependent pathway activity with increased activity of EDP in the first and PPP in the second growth phase, respectively. Evidence for a growth phase-independent decarboxylation-carboxylation cycle around the pyruvate node was obtained from 13C fragmentation patterns of alanine. For the first time, down-scaled microtiter plate cultivation together with 13C-labeled substrate was applied for G. oxydans to elucidate pathway operation, exhibiting reasonable labeling costs and allowing for sufficient replicate experiments.
Property-Based Remote Attestation Oriented to Cloud Computing

As the new computing service pattern of cloud computing develops rapidly, the security problem of cloud computing has become a hot research topic. Before the user passes important data or computing task to the cloud, the user of the cloud may want to verify the trusted status of the platform which actually carries out the computing task in the cloud. And the remote attestation mechanism in Trusted Computing is suited for the cloud user's verification need. In this paper, the property-based remote attestation mechanism in Trusted Computing is imported into clouding computing, and a property-based remote attestation method oriented to cloud computing is designed based on the characteristics of cloud computing. In this method, through the attestation proxy, the remote attestation of the computing platform's security property is realized without disclosing the platform's configuration, and users can validate the security property of the actual computing platform in the virtual cloud computing environment.
Symmetric Construction of Biorthogonal Multiwavelets with Short Sequences

This paper presents a novel approach for construct- ing symmetric compactly supported biorthogonal multiwavelets with short sequences. Starting from the symmetric properties of scaling and wavelet functions, parameterized symmetric forms of the polyphase matrices can be derived, which greatly simplify the construction problem of compactly supported biorthogonal multiwavelets. Moreover, according to the perfect reconstruction matrix equations, the parameters of polyphase matrices can be reduced, which finally leads to our proposed algorithm for the construction of symmetric compactly supported biorthogonal multiwavelets with short sequences.
Comparison of Data Fusion Methods Using Crowdsourced Data in Creating a Hybrid Forest Cover Map

Data fusion represents a powerful way of integrating individual sources of information to produce a better output than could be achieved by any of the individual sources on their own. This paper focuses on the data fusion of different land cover products derived from remote sensing. In the past, many different methods have been applied, without regard to their relative merit. In this study, we compared some of the most commonly-used methods to develop a hybrid forest cover map by combining available land cover/forest products and crowdsourced data on forest cover obtained through the Geo-Wiki project. The methods include: nearest neighbour, naive Bayes, logistic regression and geographically-weighted logistic regression (GWR), as well as classification and regression trees (CART). We ran the comparison experiments using two data types: presence/absence of forest in a grid cell; percentage of forest cover in a grid cell. In general, there was little difference between the methods. However, GWR was found to perform better than the other tested methods in areas with high disagreement between the inputs.