Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Localization of SpoVAD to the Inner Membrane of Spores of Bacillus subtilis

ABSTRACT The products of the hexacistronic spoVA operon of Bacillus subtilis may be involved in the transport of dipicolinic acid into the forespore during sporulation and its release during spore germination. The major hydrophilic coding region of B. subtilis spoVAD was cloned, the protein was expressed in Escherichia coli as a His tag fusion protein, and a rabbit antiserum was raised against the purified protein. Western blot analyses of fractions from B. subtilis spores showed that SpoVAD is an integral inner membrane protein present at levels >50-fold higher than those of the spore's nutrient germinant receptors that are also present in the inner membrane. SpoVAD also persisted in outgrowing spores.
Sensemaking in prison: Inmate identity as a working understanding

This study examines some of the ways in which correctional officers construct, communicate, and defend a shared account of inmate identity in a maximum-security prison. Through sensemaking activities embodied in informal conversational routines, correctional officers produce a working understanding of the prisoner that is a central element in the reproduction of social control in the prison. The data suggest that challenges to the dominant assumptions embodied in key sensemaking categories may be met by a variety of defensive strategies. These strategies are embedded in the informal conversational routines of the group. Through the selective use of official records, by reframing tolerance as a social control strategy, and through participation in acts of ritual insubordination, correctional officers maintain a working understanding of the inmate that is demeaning, derogatory, and ultimately stereotypical. This research contributes to our understanding of occupational culture in the justice system, and to a fuller appreciation of sensemaking processes in formal organizations.
Activity‐Responsive Pacing Produces Long‐Term Heart Rate Variability

Introduction: Long‐term heart rate variability (HRV) measures, including the standard deviation of means of successive 5‐minute epochs of R‐R interval intervals (SDANN) and the power law slope (β), are important prognostic measures, yet their physiologic basis is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that long‐term HRV arises from physical activity in a randomized cross‐over study in patients with rate‐responsive pacemakers.
Producing implicit diversity in ANN ensembles

Combining several ANNs into ensembles normally results in a very accurate and robust predictive models. Many ANN ensemble techniques are, however, quite complicated and often explicitly optimize some diversity metric. Unfortunately, the lack of solid validation of the explicit algorithms, at least for classification, makes the use of diversity measures as part of an optimization function questionable. The merits of implicit methods, most notably bagging, are on the other hand experimentally established and well-known. This paper evaluates a number of straightforward techniques for introducing implicit diversity in ANN ensembles, including a novel technique producing diversity by using ANNs with different and slightly randomized link structures. The experimental results, comparing altogether 54 setups and two different ensemble sizes on 30 UCI data sets, show that all methods succeeded in producing implicit diversity, but that the effect on ensemble accuracy varied. Still, most setups evaluated did result in more accurate ensembles, compared to the baseline setup, especially for the larger ensemble size. As a matter of fact, several setups even obtained significantly higher ensemble accuracy than bagging. The analysis also identified that diversity was, relatively speaking, more important for the larger ensembles. Looking specifically at the methods used to increase the implicit diversity, setups using the technique that utilizes the randomized link structures generally produced the most accurate ensembles.
Instruments for Screening for Depression and Dementia in a Long‐Term Care Facility

The high prevalence of mental disorders such as depression and dementia in institutionalized elderly patients warrants screening for psychiatric diagnosis in patients newly admitted to long‐term care facilities. The diagnostic accuracy of the Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was evaluated against a standardized psychiatric interview. The MMSE was found to be 81% sensitive and 83% specific in screening for dementia using a previously established cutpoint of less than 24/30 points. Adjusting MMSE scores for physical disabilities precluding completion of specific tasks on the MMSE did not significantly change the diagnostic accuracy of the test. The GDS was 47% sensitive and 75% specific in screening for depression using the suggested cutpoint of greater than 13/30 points. The MMSE was significantly correlated with functional status (r = 0.48, P = .0001), but not with the scores on the GDS or the clinical diagnosis of depression. The GDS did not correlate with functional status. In summary, the MMSE is a good screening test for dementia in institutionalized elderly, but the GDS is not sensitive for depression in this population.
Translation of a Ski School Sun Safety Program to North American Ski and Snowboard Schools

Health promotion programs that develop and implement strategies to promote sun safety practices to children have the potential to reduce skin cancer occurrence later in life. Go Sun Smart (GSS), a sun safety program for employees and guests of ski areas, was distributed to determine if an enhanced dissemination strategy was more effective than a basic dissemination strategy at reaching parents at ski and snowboard schools. On-site observations of GSS use and surveys of 909 parents/caregivers with children enrolled in ski and snowboard schools at 63 ski areas were conducted and analyzed using techniques for clustered designs. No differences were identified by dissemination strategy. Greater implementation of GSS (>5 messages posted) was associated with greater parental recall, 36.6% versus 16.7%, of materials, but not greater sun protection practices. Greater recall of messages, regardless of level of implementation, resulted in greater sun protection practices including applying sunscreen (p < .05), providing sunglasses and goggles (p < .01), and more use of all sun protection practices (p < .01). Ski areas with more program materials appeared to reach parents with sun safety advice and thus convinced them to take more precautions for their children. Sun safety need not be at odds with children’s outdoor recreation activities.
The prediction of stress in carers: The role of behaviour, reported self care and dementia in patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease

Stress scores were elicited from relatives living with Parkinsonian patients and correlated with various aspects of the patients' impairment. The (usually female) relatives looking after male patients reported higher levels of stress than husbands looking after their wives. In general, the best predictor of relatives' stress was the behavioural rating scale of the CAPE and a reported selfcare scale designed for the study. The relative contribution of Parkinsonian motor impairment and cognitive impairment to relatives' stress scores was examined. While motor impairment was still associated with relatives' stress after controlling for sex and cognitive deterioration, both dementia and cognitive impairment measured by the Mini‐Mental State Examination were not associated with relatives' stress if Parkinsonian disability was controlled for.
Mechanism of cell death mediated by a BF2‐chelated tetraaryl‐azadipyrromethene photodynamic therapeutic: Dissection of the apoptotic pathway in vitro and in vivo

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an established treatment modality for cancer. ADPM06 is an emerging non‐porphyrin PDT agent which has been specifically designed for therapeutic application. Recently, we have demonstrated that ADPM06‐PDT is well tolerated in vivo and elicits impressive complete response rates in various models of cancer when a short drug‐light interval is applied. Herein, the mechanism of action of ADPM06‐PDT in vitro and in vivo is outlined. Using a drug and light combination that reduces the clonogenicity of MDA‐MB‐231 cells by >90%, we detected a well‐orchestrated apoptotic response accompanied by the activation of various caspases in vitro. The generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon photosensitizer irradiation was found to be the key instigator in the observed apoptotic response, with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) found to be the intracellular site of initial PDT damage, as determined by induction of a rapid ER stress response post‐PDT. PDT‐induced apoptosis was also found to be independent of p53 tumor suppressor status. A robust therapeutic response in vivo was demonstrated, with a substantial reduction in tumor proliferation observed, as well as a rapid induction of apoptosis and initiation of ER stress, mirroring numerous aspects of the mechanism of action of ADPM06 in vitro. Finally, using a combination of 18F‐labeled 3′‐deoxy‐3′‐fluorothymidine (18F‐FLT) nuclear and optical imaging, a considerable decrease in tumor proliferation over 24‐hr in two models of human cancer was observed. Taken together, this data clearly establishes ADPM06 as an exciting novel PDT agent with significant potential for further translational development.
Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Data Collection in Developing Regions - Thesis Proposal

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Rapidly diverging evolution of an atypical alkaline phosphatase (PhoAaty) in marine phytoplankton: insights from dinoflagellate alkaline phosphatases

Alkaline phosphatase (AP) is a key enzyme that enables marine phytoplankton to scavenge phosphorus (P) from dissolved organic phosphorus (DOP) when inorganic phosphate is scarce in the ocean. Yet how the AP gene has evolved in phytoplankton, particularly dinoflagellates, is poorly understood. We sequenced full-length AP genes and corresponding complementary DNA (cDNA) from 15 strains (10 species), representing four classes of the core dinoflagellate lineage, Gymnodiniales, Prorocentrales, Suessiales, and Gonyaulacales. Dinoflagellate AP gene sequences exhibited high variability, containing variable introns, pseudogenes, single nucleotide polymorphisms and consequent variations in amino acid sequence, indicative of gene duplication events and consistent with the “birth-and-death” model of gene evolution. Further sequence comparison showed that dinoflagellate APs likely belong to an atypical type AP (PhoAaty), which shares conserved motifs with counterparts in marine bacteria, cyanobacteria, green algae, haptophytes, and stramenopiles. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that PhoAaty probably originated from an ancestral gene in bacteria and evolved divergently in marine phytoplankton. Because variations in AP amino acid sequences may lead to differential subcellular localization and potentially different metal ion requirements, the multiple types of APs in algae may have resulted from selection for diversifying strategies to utilize DOP in the P variable marine environment.
Accuracy-Based Scoring for DOT: Towards Direct Error Minimization for Data-Oriented Translation

In this work we present a novel technique to rescore fragments in the Data-Oriented Translation model based on their contribution to translation accuracy. We describe three new rescoring methods, and present the initial results of a pilot experiment on a small subset of the Europarl corpus. This work is a proof-of-concept, and is the first step in directly optimizing translation decisions solely on the hypothesized accuracy of potential translations resulting from those decisions.
Self-Localization with RFID snapshots in densely tagged environments

In this paper we show that, despite some disadvantageous properties of radio frequency identification (RFID), it is possible to localize a mobile robot quite accurately in environments which are densely tagged. We therefore employ a recently presented probabilistic fingerprinting technique called RFID snapshots. This method interprets short series of RFID measurements as feature vectors and is able to position a mobile robot after a training phase. It requires no explicit sensor model and is capable of exploiting given tag infrastructures, e.g., provided by supermarket shelves containing labeled products.
Colorization by Matrix Completion

Given a monochrome image and some manually labeled pixels, the colorization problem is a computer-assisted process of adding color to the monochrome image. This paper proposes a novel approach to the colorization problem by formulating it as a matrix completion problem. In particular, taking a monochrome image and parts of the color pixels (labels) as inputs, we develop a robust colorization model and resort to an augmented Lagrange multiplier algorithm for solving the model. Our approach is based on the fact that a matrix can be represented as a low-rank matrix plus a sparse matrix. Our approach is effective because it is able to handle the potential noises in the monochrome image and outliers in the labels. To improve the performance of our method, we further incorporate a so-called local-color-consistency idea into our method. Empirical results on real data sets are encouraging.
On the Edge of a New Frontier: Is Gerontological Social Work in the UK Ready to Meet Twenty-First-Century Challenges?

This article explores the readiness of gerontological social work in the UK for meeting the challenges of an ageing society by investigating the focus on work with older people in social work education and the scope of gerontological social work research. The discussion draws on findings from two exploratory studies: a survey of qualifying master's programmes in England and a survey of the content relating to older people over a six-year period in four leading UK social work journals. The evidence from master's programmes suggests widespread neglect of ageing in teaching content and practice learning. Social work journals present a more nuanced picture. Older people emerge within coverage of generic policy issues for adults, such as personalisation and safeguarding, and there is good evidence of the complexity of need in late life. However, there is little attention to effective social work interventions, with an increasingly diverse older population, or to the quality of gerontological social work education. The case is made for infusing content on older people throughout the social work curriculum, for extending practice learning opportunities in social work with older people and for increasing the volume and reporting of gerontological social work research.
Discovery of Rare Homozygous Mutations from Studies of Consanguineous Pedigrees

The unmasking of recessive mutations by virtue of biparental inheritance of the same ancestral haplotype on which they reside (autozygosity) has provided human geneticists with one of their most powerful tools in unraveling the genetic basis of autosomal recessive disorders. This has historically been achieved by tracking the blocks of homozygosity as surrogates of autozygosity using polymorphic microsatellite markers. Mapping the entire set of autozygous blocks per individual (autozygome) at high resolution became possible with the advent of high‐density SNP arrays. The more recent availability of next‐generation sequencing has markedly accelerated the rate at which rare recessive mutations are identified by obviating the need to prioritize genes for sequencing within candidate autozygous loci. This unit will review the individual and combined use of these techniques in the context of mapping novel recessive disease genes, as well as potential pitfalls and recommended solutions. Curr. Protoc. Hum. Genet. 75:6.12. 1‐6.12. 13. © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Mitotic Figure Recognition: Agreement among Pathologists and Computerized Detector

Despite the prognostic importance of mitotic count as one of the components of the Bloom – Richardson grade [3], several studies ([2, 9, 10]) have found that pathologists’ agreement on the mitotic grade is fairly modest. Collecting a set of more than 4,200 candidate mitotic figures, we evaluate pathologists' agreement on individual figures, and train a computerized system for mitosis detection, comparing its performance to the classifications of three pathologists. The system’s and the pathologists’ classifications are based on evaluation of digital micrographs of hematoxylin and eosin stained breast tissue. On figures where the majority of pathologists agree on a classification, we compare the performance of the trained system to that of the individual pathologists. We find that the level of agreement of the pathologists ranges from slight to moderate, with strong biases, and that the system performs competitively in rating the ground truth set. This study is a step towards automatic mitosis count to accelerate a pathologist's work and improve reproducibility.
Cheetah: Just-in-Time Taint Analysis for Android Apps

Current static-analysis tools are often long-running, which causes them to be sidelined into nightly build checks. As a result, developers rarely use such tools to detect bugs when writing code, because they disrupt their workflow. In this paper, we present Cheetah, a static taint analysis tool for Android apps that interleaves bug fixing and code development in the Eclipse integrated development environment. Cheetah is based on the novel concept of Just-in-Time static analysis that discovers and reports the most relevant results to the developer fast, and computes the more complex results incrementally later. Unlike traditional batch-style static-analysis tools, Cheetah causes minimal disruption to the developer's workflow. This video demo showcases the main features of Cheetah: https://www.youtube. com/watch? v=i_KQD-GTBdA.
Sustainability strategies of the company TimorL: extending the applicability of legitimacy theory

Purpose – This study aims to identify the legitimacy strategies employed by one of the largest Portuguese cement companies to defend and downplay its sustainability performance and activities related to two major controversies involving the company: co‐incineration and the location of the Outao plant.Design/methodology/approach – A single case study methodology is employed for the empirical research. Sustainability reports were analysed in order to identify TimorL's sustainability disclosure practices, and semi‐structured interviews were conducted to complement the case analysis. This paper emphasises legitimacy theory and legitimacy repair strategies that were identified by Suchman.Findings – Legitimacy strategies, including “don’t panic”; “create monitors”; “justify”; “disassociate” and “explain”, were identified in the actions TimorL took after the above‐mentioned controversies. The company initiated a series of actions to respond to the company's “crisis”. The conclusions of the study support the argu.
Design and Evaluation of a Quasi-Passive Knee Exoskeleton for Investigation of Motor Adaptation in Lower Extremity Joints

In this study, we describe the mechanical design and control scheme of a quasi-passive knee exoskeleton intended to investigate the biomechanical behavior of the knee joint during interaction with externally applied impedances. As the human knee behaves much like a linear spring during the stance phase of normal walking gait, the exoskeleton implements a spring across the knee in the weight acceptance (WA) phase of the gait while allowing free motion throughout the rest of the gait cycle, accomplished via an electromechanical clutch. The stiffness of the device is able to be varied by swapping springs, and the timing of engagement/disengagement changed to accommodate different loading profiles. After describing the design and control, we validate the mechanical performance and reliability of the exoskeleton through cyclic testing on a mechanical knee simulator. We then describe a preliminary experiment on three healthy adults to evaluate the functionality of the device on both left and right legs. The kinetic and kinematic analyses of these subjects show that the exoskeleton assistance can partially/fully replace the function of the knee joint and obtain nearly invariant moment and angle profiles for the hip and ankle joints, and the overall knee joint and exoskeleton complex under the applied moments of the exoskeleton versus the control condition, implying that the subjects undergo a considerable amount of motor adaptation in their lower extremities to the exoskeletal impedances, and encouraging more in-depth future experiments with the device.
Production and Perception of Laryngeal Constriction in the Early Vocalizations of Bai and English Infants

Age Constricted Dynamic Unconstricted Total 0-3 248 (83%) 45 (15%) 7 (2%) 300 4-6 158 (53%) 127 (42%) 15 (5%) 300 7-9 145 (48%) 89 (30%) 66 (22%) 300 10-12 105 (35%) 89 (30%) 106 (35%) 300 Total 656 (55%) 350 (29%) 194 (16%) 1200
Mining , Using and Maintaining Source Statistics for Adaptive Data Integration

To make query processing effective in data integration scenarios, the mediator needs to be able to gather and use statistics about data sources as well as to adapt to the often conflicting user preferences. We present a framework for effectively mining multiple types of statistics including source coverage statistics, inter-source overlap statistics and source latency profiles. Using these statistics enables the mediator to optimize the coverage and execution cost respectively. However, users in data integration systems often require query plans that are optimal with respect to multiple objectives and such objectives often conflict. We present a joint optimization model that uses latency as well as coverage/overlap statistics simultaneously to support a spectrum of tradeoffs between the coverage and latency requirements of query plans. Moreover, motivated by the dynamic and evolving nature of data integration systems, we introduce an incremental approach for maintaining source statistics. We describe the details of our approaches and present extensive experimental results in the context of Bibfinder, a fielded bibliographic mediator system. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of statistics learning and maintenance and multi-objective optimization.
Are Teachers Tired of Responsibilities?

Are Teachers Tired of Responsibilities? Estonian educational life is at a crossroad. Schools and their educational functions have become the focus of public discussion because of the worrisome tendencies in childhood and adolescent life (dropping out of school, deteriorating mental and physical health, increase in self-destructive behaviour, etc.). Many teachers are overtaken by tiredness and apathy. To the amazement of colleagues, even the best teachers are suffering from burnout and leaving school. What are the reasons for these phenomena? The general context of this article is the problem of sustainability in education and, consequently, the sustainability of society. This paper focuses on how teachers perceive themselves as subjects and how they can promote learners' becoming subjects and is based on 48 narrative essays. The author has interpreted the outcomes relying on the works of A. Maslow, L. Vygotsky, V. Peavy, and M. Fullan. The most significant conclusion is that there is a contradiction between the teachers' strong feeling of mission and responsibility which contrasts with the diminishing possibilities of implementing these priorities in their real work. Teachers assume they are accepted as decisive and responsible professionals. Furthermore, they expect other participants of educational processes to share responsibility.