Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advances in Disk Technology: Performance Issues

Although the computer industry has made regular, significant advances in magnetic recording technology for hard disk drives, some advances-such as those in head design, media, and channel technology-are primarily concerned with increasing disk density and do not necessarily improve total performance. The author asks how, for example, does disk density affect data transfer rate? How do multiple platters affect head seek time? And how does partitioning large capacity drives affect performance for each partition? The answers to these questions-and others like them-largely depend on particular configurations and user workload.
Behavioural adaptation to fatigue warning systems

Driver impairment due to fatigue induced drowsiness is a significant cause of vehicle collisions. One countermeasure that is currently being implemented is Fatigue Warning Systems (FWS) to alert drivers that are drowsy. Behavioural adaptation of drivers to an FWS was evaluated in a closed track study. Thirty-two drivers completed two lengthy overnight drives, separated by one week, with half the drivers completing the second drive with an active FWS. During the drives, drivers voluntarily took breaks for as long as they liked. Behavioural results demonstrate that the FWS had no impact on objective and subjective driver fatigue, on driving time, on the number of breaks or on break duration. Results also demonstrate that 30 minute breaks are an ineffective drowsiness countermeasure These findings suggest that an FWS as currently conceived may not contribute to reduce fatigue induced collisions. For the covering abstract see IRRD E102514.
Top-down Protein Sequencing and MS3 on a Hybrid Linear Quadrupole Ion Trap-Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer*S

Top-down proteomics, the analysis of intact proteins (instead of first digesting them to peptides), has the potential to become a powerful tool for mass spectrometric protein characterization. Requirements for extremely high mass resolution, accuracy, and ability to efficiently fragment large ions have often limited top-down analyses to custom built FT-ICR mass analyzers. Here we explore the hybrid linear ion trap (LTQ)-Orbitrap, a novel, high performance, and compact mass spectrometric analyzer, for top-down proteomics. Protein standards from 10 to 25 kDa were electrosprayed into the instrument using a nanoelectrospray chip. Resolving power of 60,000 was ample for isotope resolution of all protein charge states. We achieved absolute mass accuracies for intact proteins between 0.92 and 2.8 ppm using the “lock mass” mode of operation. Fifty femtomole of cytochrome c applied to the chip resulted in spectra with excellent signal-to-noise ratio and only low attomole sample consumption. Different protein charge states were dissociated in the LTQ, and the sensitivity of the orbitrap allowed routine, high resolution, and high mass accuracy fragment detection. This resulted in unambiguous charge state determination of fragment ions and identification of unmodified and modified proteins by database searching. Protein fragments were further isolated and fragmented in the LTQ followed by analysis of MS3 fragments in the orbitrap, localizing modifications to part of the sequence and helping to identify the protein with these small peptide-like fragments. Given the ready availability and ease of operation of the LTQ-Orbitrap, it may have significant impact on top-down proteomics.
Fixation of Testes and Eyes Using a Modified Davidson's Fluid: Comparison with Bouin's Fluid and Conventional Davidson's Fluid

Most recent revisions of regulatory guidelines for testing effects of chemicals on reproduction recommend Bouin's fluid (BF) or a “comparable fixative” instead of formalin to preserve the morphologic detail of testes for histopathological evaluation. However, picric acid in BF is a health and safety hazard, as well as a laboratory waste disposal problem. Furthermore, use of BF is labor intensive, requiring multiple alcohol rinses to remove picric acid for optimum preservation and immunohistochemical (IHC) detection of testicular antigens that may potentially be used to identify and quantify cells and functional proteins with critical roles in spermatogenesis. Recently a modified Davidson's fluid (mDF) has been reported as an alternative to BF to fix testes for routine histopathological examination. This study compared the overall histomorphologic clarity and the immunoand histochemical staining of testicular specimens fixed in BF and mDF. Additionally, because conventional Davidson's fixative (DF) is used routinely for optimum fixation of eyes, preservation of ocular histomorphology by DF and mDF was compared. mDF resulted in noticeably less shrinkage of the seminiferous tubules and superior overall morphologic detail compared to BF. Unlike DF, the mDF also supported excellent staining of acrosomes with periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) reagent when staging of spermatogenesis was required. IHC detection of androgen receptor and PCNA (to directly and indirectly identify Sertoli cells) as well as protein gene product 9.5 (to label spermatogonia) was superior in mDF compared to BF-fixed specimens. For histopathological examination of the eye, apposition and preservation of rods and cones, and nuclear layers of the retina were slightly inferior with mDF compared to DF. This paper has demonstrated that mDF provides comparable, and in many respects superior preservation of the testes to that of BF, both for IHC staining and for detailed histopathological examination. It also provides an acceptable fixative for eyes, although the quality of cellular preservation is inferior to that of DF.
TGFβ mediates activation of transglutaminase 2 in response to oxidative stress that leads to protein aggregation

Transglutaminase 2 (TGase2) is a ubiquitously expressed enzyme that catalyzes irreversible post‐translational modification of protein, forming cross‐linked protein aggregates. We previously reported that intracellular TGase2 is activated by oxidative stress. To elucidate the functional role of TGase2 activation in cells under the oxidatively stressed condition, we identified the mediator that activates TGase2. In this study, we showed that low levels of oxidative stress trigger the release of TGFβ, which subsequently activates TGase2 through the nuclear translocation of Smad3. Analysis of substrate proteins reveals that TGase2‐mediated protein modification results in a decrease of protein solubility and a collapse of intermediate filament network, which leads to aggregation of proteins. We confirm these results using lens tissues from TGase2‐deficient mice. Among several antioxidants tried, only N‐acetylcysteine effectively inhibits TGFβ‐mediated activation of TGase2. These results indicate that TGFβ mediates oxidative stress‐induced protein aggregation through activation of TGase2 and suggest that the formation of protein aggregation may not be a passive process of self‐assembly of oxidatively damaged proteins but may be an active cellular response to oxidative stress. Therefore, TGFP‐TGase2 pathway may have implications for both the pathogenesis of age‐related degenerative diseases and the development of pharmaceutics. —Shin, D. ‐M. , Jeon, J.‐H. , Kim, C. ‐W. , Cho, S. ‐Y. , Lee, H. ‐J., Jang, G. ‐Y. , Jeong, E. M. , Lee, D. ‐S. , Kang, J.‐H. , Melino, G. , Park, S. ‐C. , Kim, I. ‐G. TGFβ mediates activation of transglutaminase 2 in response to oxidative stress that leads to protein aggregation. FASEB J. 22, 2498–2507 (2008)
Retinal Neurostimulator for a Multifocal Vision Prosthesis

A neurostimulator application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) with scalable circuitry that can stimulate 14 channels, has been developed for an epi-retinal vision prosthesis. This ASIC was designed to allow seven identical units to be connected to control up to 98 channels, with the ability to stimulate 14 electrodes simultaneously. The neurostimulator forms part of a vision prosthesis, designed to restore vision to patients who have lost their sight due to retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. For charge balance, the neurostimulator was designed to stimulate with current sources and sinks operating together, and with the ability to drive a hexagonal mosaic of electrodes to reduce the electrical crosstalk that occurs when multiple bipolar stimulation sites are active simultaneously. A hexagonal mosaic of electrodes surrounds each stimulation site and has been shown to effectively isolate each site, increasing the ability to inject localized independent charge into multiple regions simultaneously.
Identification of Biological Neural Network Using Jumping Gene Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, a jumping gene genetic algorithm is adopted to identify the topology of biological neural networks. The neural network is modeled with Hindmarsh-Rose neurons with synaptic coupling. Based on a single observable state of each neuron, it is possible to reveal the topology of the entire network under a framework of synchronization. The simulation results demonstrate that the topological structure of a neural network can be estimated accurately even if the exact models of the neurons are unknown.
Multiphasic thyrotropin responses to thyroid hormone administration in man.

The magnitude and temporal pattern of serum TSH suppression after single or multiple doses of thyroid hormone (T3, T4, or triiodothyroacetic acid) were studied using third and fourth generation TSH assays (sensitivities, 0.01 and 0.001 mU/L, respectively). A constant T3 dose (263 micrograms i.v.) administered at a uniform clock time (1200 h) produced identical serum TSH suppression patterns, (percent of control TSH vs. hours) in euthyroid and hypothyroid subjects. The percent log TSH vs. log time plot revealed three temporally distinct linear suppression phases: phase 1, a rapid TSH suppression, onset 1 h and lasting for 10-20 h; phase 2, slower suppression, onset between 10 and 20 h and lasting for 6-8 weeks; and phase 3, an invariable low TSH level (< 0.01 mU/L) with chronic T3 suppression (100 micrograms four times a day). TSH escaped maximal suppression at a similar serum T3 level in both euthyroid and hypothyroid subjects (2.9 +/- 0.2 vs. 3.5 +/- 0.5 nmol/L, respectively; P > 0.9), despite different basal serum T3 values (2.0 +/- 0.1 vs. 0.6 +/- 0.1 nmol/L, respectively; P < 0.01). Two milligrams of triiodothyroacetic acid or 2 mg T4 given iv at 1200 h produced TSH suppression patterns similar to T3. The phase 1 suppression varied with the clock time of T3 administration, (steeper responses were seen at 2400 vs. 1200 h), whereas phase 2 responses were unaltered. This study shows that thyroid hormone suppression of TSH is a complex, biphasic, nonlinear process, which is reproducible and independent of thyroid status or the thyroid hormone analog used. It is hypothesized that phase 1 reflects inhibition of release of preformed hormone, whereas phase 2 likely reflects inhibition of de novo synthesis and/or thyrotroph storage of TSH. In contrast, phase 3 secretion seems to represent basal constitutive TSH release, which may have relevance to the role of thyroid hormone-suppressive therapy in the treatment of patients with benign or neoplastic thyroid disease.
Cross-lingual Similarity Calculation for Plagiarism Detection and More - Tools and Resources

Agenda • EC-Joint Research Centre (JRC) – Who we are • Monolingual plagiarism detection (PD) work at the JRC • Cross-lingual similarity calculation at the JRC • Named entity (NE) matching across languages • Linking related news items across languages • Identifying translations of documents • JRC's multilingual tools and resources • Summary JRC-Who we are • European Commission (scientific-technical arm of public administration) • Non-commercial • Multidisciplinary / multilingual • Main product: Europe Media Monitor (EMM) • ~ 150,000 online news articles / day in ~ 50 languages • ~ 3600 Sources (worldwide , with focus on Europe) • In-depth analysis in 20 languages (NewsExplorer) • 24/7, updated every 10 minutes • Freely accessible via Agenda • EC-Joint Research Centre (JRC) – Who we are • Monolingual plagiarism detection (PD) work at the JRC • Cross-lingual similarity calculation at the JRC • Named entity (NE) matching across languages • Linking related news items across languages • Identifying translations of documents • JRC's multilingual tools and resources • Summary Monolingual PD work • N-gram overlap between pairs of documents • Karp-Rabin algorithm, using word 5-grams • to weed out duplicates in the IAEA document database (ca. 350K documents) • to find news article near-duplicates in EMM (applied to all news clusters) • Method: Search for longest (in chars) word 6-grams of each document in EC database and on the web (avoiding strings from document template) • If target documents pass similarity threshold: • Full-text comparison of matching documents to detect significant matches • Visualise document overlap and manually check. Agenda • EC-Joint Research Centre (JRC) – Who we are • Monolingual plagiarism detection (PD) work at the JRC • Cross-lingual similarity calculation at the JRC • Named entity (NE) matching across languages • Linking related news items across languages • Identifying translations of documents • JRC's multilingual tools and resources • Summary Multilingual NER Merging name variants 20% + 80% Condition: • For all newly found name forms, detect whether they are a variant of an existing NE: • Transliteration; • Normalisation, using ~30 handwritten rules and removing vowels; • Calculate similarity (threshold: 94%). • Below threshold AE new entity • For frequent or highly visible names, manually launch a Wikipedia mining process. • Check for each variant of a name whether there is a Wikipedia entry. • New name variants, in all scripts, will be recognised in new EMM …
Development of Carrot Medium Suitable for Conidia Production of Venturia nashicola

The causal fungus of pear scab, Venturia nashicola, grows slowly and rarely produces conidia on artificial media in the laboratory, but it produced conidia on the Cheongah medium containing Cheongah powder. V. nashicola grew too slow to produce conidia until 15 days after cultivation but produced conidia with 4 × 104 conidia/plate 30 days after cultivation on the Cheongah medium containing 1% Cheongah powder. V. nashicola showed a peak production of conidia with 4.5 × 105 conidia/plate 60 days after cultivation on the carrot medium containing 2% carrot powder, one of the constituents of Cheongah powder. The carrot medium is considered to be the best medium to obtain conidia of V. nashicola in the laboratory until now. This is the first report on the development of a suitable medium for conidia production of V. nashicola, as far as we know.
Model order estimation of highly correlated signals applied on measured data

The paper deals with the model order estimation of a covariance matrix in the case of two coherent incoming signals on an antenna array. The paper also deals with the estimation of the angle of arrival (AoA). The used model order estimation techniques, are Minimum descriptive length (MDL), information theoretic criteria (AIC) and method which uses pseudo-spectrum of the direction of arrival (DoA). In the paper a motivation of the model order estimation in the AoA tasks is explained and the problems state of the art is described. Several methods of model order estimation are presented, their analysis executed and an experimental verification of the selected methods is performed.
Data‐Driven Models of Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Dynamics: A Review

Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) threatens animal health and leads to considerable economic losses worldwide. Progress towards minimizing both veterinary and financial impact of the disease will be made with targeted disease control policies. To move towards targeted control, specific targets and detailed control strategies must be defined. One approach for identifying targets is to use mathematical and simulation models quantified with accurate and fine-scale data to design and evaluate alternative control policies. Nevertheless, published models of FMDV vary in modelling techniques and resolution of data incorporated. In order to determine which models and data sources contain enough detail to represent realistic control policy alternatives, we performed a systematic literature review of all FMDV dynamical models that use host data, disease data or both data types. For the purpose of evaluating modelling methodology, we classified models by control strategy represented, resolution of models and data, and location modelled. We found that modelling methodology has been well developed to the point where multiple methods are available to represent detailed and contact-specific transmission and targeted control. However, detailed host and disease data needed to quantify these models are only available from a few outbreaks. To address existing challenges in data collection, novel data sources should be considered and integrated into models of FMDV transmission and control. We suggest modelling multiple endemic areas to advance local control and global control and better understand FMDV transmission dynamics. With incorporation of additional data, models can assist with both the design of targeted control and identification of transmission drivers across geographic boundaries.
A New Detection Model for Saliency Map

Visual attention is a mechanism which filters out redundant visual information and focus on the most relevant parts when observing an image,many bottom-up computational models of visual attention have been devised to get the saliency map for an image.In this paper, a new visual attention model is proposed.Based on the experimental results obtained in this study, as compared with existing bottom-up visual model, the proposed model has better visual detection performance and low computational complexity. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i11. 3582 Full Text: PDF
Theoretical and experimental investigations about wavelength switching of a current tuned multi-section DFB laser based on REC technique

The wavelength-switching time of a multi-section tunable semiconductor distributed feedback (DFB) laser based on reconstruction equivalent chirp (REC) is studied and measured. The measurement system is based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with two arms having almost the same length. The measurements are studied both in theory and experiments. All the results are presented and discussed, to help the optimization of testing and packaging such tunable lasers in future.
Service differentiation without prioritization in 802 . 11 WLANs

Wireless LANs carry a mixture of traffic, with different delay and throughput requirements. The usual way to provide low-delay services is to give priority to such traffic. However this creates an incentive for throughput sensitive traffic also to use this service, which degrades overall network performance. We propose to allow applications to trade off delay for throughput, without giving preference to one class over another, by simultaneously scaling IEEE 802.11’s CWmin and TXOP limit parameters. We provide a model of this scheme with two traffic classes, and show that increasing CWmin and TXOP limit in equal proportion reduces, but does not eliminate, the incentive for bulk data users to use the low-delay service. We show that subtracting a small constant from CWmin eliminates this incentive, while still giving improved performance to both classes.
Instance Specific Discriminative Modal Pursuit: A Serialized Approach

With the fast development of data collection techniques, a huge amount of complex multi-modal data are generated, shared and stored on the Internet. The burden of extracting multi-modal features for test instances in data analysis becomes the main fact that hurts the efficiency of prediction. In this paper, in order to reduce the modal extraction cost in serialized classification system, we propose a novel end-to-end serialized adaptive decision approach named Discriminative Modal Pursuit (DMP), which can automatically extract instance-specifically discriminative modal sequence for reducing the cost of feature extraction in the test phase. Rather than jointly optimize a highly nonconvex empirical risk minimization problem, we are inspired by LSTM, and the proposed DMP can turn to learn the decision policies which predict the label information and decide the modalities to be extracted simultaneously within limited modal acquisition budget. Consequently, DMP approach can balance the classification performance and modal feature extraction cost by utilizing different modalities for different test instances. Empirical studies show that DMP is more efficient and effective than existing modal/feature extraction methods.
Differential evolution as applied to electromagnetics: Advances, comparisons, and applications

Several optimization strategies have been proposed in the last decades for the solution of problems in the framework of electromagnetics. Because of the high non-linearity and non-convexity of many problems at hand which are characterized by a large number of unknown parameters, global iterative approaches based on stochastic, multiple-agent algorithms have shown working effectively and being able to recover suitable solutions. Among them, the Differential Evolution (DE) has demonstrated being an effective and stable optimization approach, particularly efficient when dealing with continuous spaces. In this paper, the latest advancements on the use of DE-based approaches to the solution of optimization problems in electromagnetics are shown and reviewed. Comparisons with other global optimization approaches will be also reported pointing out advantages and limitations of the different strategies in several fields of application.
Diversity and Distribution of DNA Sequences with Affinity to Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria of the β Subdivision of the Class Proteobacteria in the Arctic Ocean

ABSTRACT The spatial distribution and diversity of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria of the β subdivision of the class Proteobacteria(hereinafter referred to as ammonia oxidizers) in the Arctic Ocean were determined. The presence of ammonia oxidizers was detected by PCR amplification of 16S rRNA genes using a primer set specific for this group of organisms (nitA and nitB, which amplifies a 1.1-kb fragment between positions 137 and 1234, corresponding to Escherichia coli 16S rDNA numbering). We analyzed 246 samples collected from the upper water column (5 to 235 m) during March and April 1995, September and October 1996, and September 1997. Ammonia oxidizers were detected in 25% of the samples from 5 m, 80% of the samples from 55 m, 88% of the samples from 133 m, and 50% of the samples from 235 m. Analysis of nitA-nitB PCR product by nested PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) showed that all positive samples contained the same major band (band A), indicating the presence of a dominant, ubiquitous ammonia oxidizer in the Arctic Ocean basin. Twenty-two percent of the samples contained additional major bands. These samples were restricted to the Chukchi Sea shelf break, the Chukchi cap, and the Canada basin; areas likely influenced by Pacific inflow. The nucleotide sequence of the 1.1-kb nitA-nitB PCR product from a sample that contained only band A grouped with sequences designated group 1 marine Nitrosospira-like sequences. PCR-DGGE analysis of 122 clones from four libraries revealed that 67 to 71% of the inserts contained sequences with the same mobility as band A. Nucleotide sequences (1.1 kb) of another distinct group of clones, found only in 1995 samples (25%), fell into the group 5 marineNitrosomonas-like sequences. Our results suggest that the Arctic Ocean β-proteobacterial ammonia oxidizers have low diversity and are dominated by marine Nitrosospira-like organisms. Diversity appears to be higher in Western Arctic Ocean regions influenced by inflow from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering and Chukchi seas.