Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dr-FtsA, an Actin Homologue in Deinococcus radiodurans Differentially Affects Dr-FtsZ and Ec-FtsZ Functions In Vitro

The Deinococcus radiodurans genome encodes homologues of divisome proteins including FtsZ and FtsA. FtsZ of this bacterium (Dr-FtsZ) has been recently characterized. In this paper, we study FtsA of D. radiodurans (Dr-FtsA) and its involvement in regulation of FtsZ function. Recombinant Dr-FtsA showed neither ATPase nor GTPase activity and its polymerization was ATP dependent. Interestingly, we observed that Dr-FtsA, when compared with E. coli FtsA (Ec-FtsA), has lower affinity for both Dr-FtsZ and Ec-FtsZ. Also, Dr-FtsA showed differential effects on GTPase activity and sedimentation characteristics of Dr-FtsZ and Ec-FtsZ. For instance, Dr-FtsA stimulated GTPase activity of Dr-FtsZ while GTPase activity of Ec-FtsZ was reduced in the presence of Dr-FtsA. Stimulation of GTPase activity of Dr-FtsZ by Dr-FtsA resulted in depolymerization of Dr-FtsZ. Dr-FtsA effects on GTPase activity and polymerization/depolymerisation characteristics of Dr-FtsZ did not change significantly in the presence of ATP. Recombinant E. coli expressing Dr-FtsA showed cell division inhibition in spite of in trans expression of Dr-FtsZ in these cells. These results suggested that Dr-FtsA, although it lacks ATPase activity, is still functional and differentially affects Dr-FtsZ and Ec-FtsZ function in vitro.
Designing Systems that Train Learning Ability: From Theory to Practice

Empirical and theoretical evidence is presented to support the conclusion that improvement of learning ability is an important and viable educational goal. However, the improvement of learning ability necessitates development not only of specific learning skills, which we know how to teach, but also an executive control mechanism that automatically accesses and combines learning skills whenever they are needed. Metacognitive theorists are currently investigating evidence that some executive skills can be imparted through direct training. However, a theme that emerges repeatedly in our review is that executive learning skills cannot be trained easily or by direct instruction alone, but must be developed gradually and automated over an extended period of time. It follows that genuine improvement of academic aptitude is not likely to result from anything less than a thoughtful, systematic curriculum that complements direct training in learning strategies, and thereby “engineers” the gradual evolution of important executive control skills.
Standard Errors of Fitted Component Means ofNormal

In this paper use consider the problem of providing standard errors of the component means in normal mixture models tted to univariate or multi-variate data by maximumlikelihood via the EM algorithm. Two methods of estimation of the standard errors are considered: the standard information-based method and the computationally-intensive bootstrap method. They are compared empirically by their application to three real data sets and by a small-scale Monte Carlo experiment.
3D Modeling and Simulation of Human Activities in Smart Spaces

For smart home researchers, it is essential to test activity recognition algorithms with various sets of sensory data. However, diverse sensory datasets are not always available due to several constraints, including limited budgets. Consequently, smart home simulators have recently grown in importance. However, there is still a need for realistic synthetic sensory data. This paper presents a simulator, 'Persim 3D', which relies on automatic scenario generation to create realistic sensory data. Persim 3D provides a 3D graphical user interface to help users' spatial perception, sensors that operate in real-time, similar to actual sensors, and a virtual character that lives in a virtual environment. These features allow users to generate longitudinal simulation data and eventually contribute to activity recognition research.
How Happy are Dutch teachers

The central aim of this study was to investigate hap-piness, motivation, and work demands in everyday working life of Dutch secondary school teachers using a diary methodology. We conducted a diary study among 245 teachers. Throughout five wor-king days, teachers reported two work-related acti-vities they spent most time in. They also reported their happiness levels during each of those activi-ties. In addition, they reported how demanding each activity was, as well as their motivation for pursuing the particular activities. The results de-monstrate the importance of self-concordant moti-vation for teacher well-being. Moreover, our findings reveal that activities associated with hi-ghest happiness are not necessarily associated with lowest demands.
Reciprocal conversion of Gtr1 and Gtr2 nucleotide-binding states by Npr2-Npr3 inactivates TORC1 and induces autophagy

Autophagy is an intracellular degradation process that delivers cytosolic material to lysosomes and vacuoles. To investigate the mechanisms that regulate autophagy, we performed a genome-wide screen using a yeast deletion-mutant collection, and found that Npr2 and Npr3 mutants were defective in autophagy. Their mammalian homologs, NPRL2 and NPRL3, were also involved in regulation of autophagy. Npr2-Npr3 function upstream of Gtr1-Gtr2, homologs of the mammalian RRAG GTPase complex, which is crucial for TORC1 regulation. Both npr2∆ mutants and a GTP-bound Gtr1 mutant suppressed autophagy and increased Tor1 vacuole localization. Furthermore, Gtr2 binds to the TORC1 subunit Kog1. A GDP-bound Gtr1 mutant induced autophagy even under nutrient-rich conditions, and this effect was dependent on the direct binding of Gtr2 to Kog1. These results revealed that 2 molecular mechanisms, Npr2-Npr3-dependent GTP hydrolysis of Gtr1 and direct binding of Gtr2 to Kog1, are involved in TORC1 inactivation and autophagic induction.
Phonotactic language identification using high quality phoneme recognition

Phoneme Recognizers followed by Language Modeling (PRLM) have consistently yielded top performance in language identiﬁcation (LID) task. Parallel ordering of PRLMs (PPRLM) improves performance even more. Since tokenizer is the most important part of LID system the high quality phoneme recognizer is employed. Two different multilingual databases for training phoneme recognizers are compared and the amount of sufﬁcient training data is studied. Reported results are on data from NIST 2003 LID evaluation. Our four PRLM systems have Equal Error Rate (EER) of 2.4% on 12 languages task. This result compares favorably to the best known result from this task.
Reboxetine versus paroxetine versus placebo: effects on cognitive functioning in depressed patients

Impaired cognitive functioning is often associated with major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, a number of agents used to treat MDD are known to have negative effects on cognitive functioning. We report an assessment of the effects of the selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor reboxetine, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor paroxetine, and placebo on a variety of measures of cognitive functioning in patients with MDD.Cognitive functioning in 74 adult patients (aged 18–65 years) with a confirmed diagnosis of MDD (DSM-IV) was assessed as part of two identical, randomized, double-blind, placebo- and active-treatment-controlled, fixed/flexible dose comparisons of 8 weeks of treatment with reboxetine (8–10 mg/day), paroxetine (20–40 mg/day) and placebo. Cognitive function was assessed at baseline, day 14 and day 56 using a selection of tasks from the Cognitive Drug Research computerized assessment system, including Simple Reaction Time, Digit Vigilance, Choice Reaction Time, Numeric Working Memory, Word Recognition and Critical Flicker Frequency.The results in the 74 patients (reboxetine n = 25, paroxetine n = 23, placebo n = 26) showed that reboxetine significantly improved the ability to sustain attention at day 56 compared with baseline (P = 0.023). In addition, patients who received reboxetine experienced significant improvements in their speed of cognitive functioning when tested at day 56 compared to baseline (P = 0.024). No significant changes or trends in this direction were seen among patients who received either placebo or paroxetine.The results of the present study provide objective data to support the possibility that reboxetine favourably affects cognitive processes in depressed patients.
The Influence of Meaning-making after Spousal Loss on Trajectories of Psychological Distress

Stress process researchers note that people actively seek to alter the impact of stressful life events through various coping mechanisms. Spousal bereavement sometimes requires individuals to revise their assumptions about the world and themselves. Meaning-making, comprising the dual processes of searching for and finding meaning, may be employed to alleviate symptoms of grief following spousal bereavement. The current study uses multilevel modeling to examine the influence of searching for and finding meaning on individual growth trajectories of psychological distress using data from 764 widows and widowers from a nationally representative longitudinal study. Results indicate that searching for meaning after spousal loss may be a double-edged sword: it is beneficial when meaning is found, but harmful when meaning remains elusive. Widows and widowers who searched for but did not find meaning exhibited the highest initial levels of psychological distress, but they also had slightly faster declines in psychological distress, becoming more similar to other meaning-making groups over time.
Effect of cycloheximide on heat-induced cell killing, radiosensitization, and loss of cellular DNA polymerase activities in Chinese hamster ovary cells.

A whole-cell assay technique for DNA polymerase alpha and beta was used to measure the activities of both enzymes in Chinese hamster ovary cells after hyperthermic treatment at 43 degrees C in the presence or absence of 10 micrograms/ml cycloheximide (CHM). In the same experiments, the effect of CHM on heat killing and heat radiosensitization was also investigated. CHM treatment before and during heating protected the cells for all three end points, i.e., heat-induced cell killing, radiosensitization, and loss of cellular DNA polymerase activities.
Robust Beamformer Using Manifold Separation Technique for Semispherical Conformal Array

Conventional beamformers suffer from problems of finite samples, desired signal pointing errors, as well as imperfect array. A simple and robust beamformer based on the manifold separation technique (MST) is proposed in this letter to alleviate these problems. Using MST, the steering vector of an arbitrary array can be modeled as the product of an array sampling matrix and a vector with a Vandermonde structure. Robust characteristics are found by using this transformation. The analysis is verified via simulations based on a real-world semispherical conformal antenna array.
Teachers' Entrepreneurial Profile: Case Study

This article was prepared in order to investigate whether the teachers working in a Business Administration BA degree have an entrepreneurial profile, with the aim of finding whether such teachers are able to support the Pedagogical Proposal of the Institution to which they belong to in what concerns the requirement of the course and also the Pedagogical Proposal of the course itself. The methodological procedure adopted was the Documentary Analysis, i.e., a study that is based on documents such as books, statistic maps, journal articles and the procedure of a Case Study. The data collection technique adopted was also the Documentary Analysis plus a Survey-type questionnaire. As a result, the Research has shown that the teachers of said course do have an entrepreneurial profile that range from medium to medium-high, plus a good knowledge of Entrepreneurship Education, which can truly guarantee the Course Pedagogical Proposal.
Test Item Arrangement and Adaptation Level.

Summary On the basis of a rationale provided by Helson's adaptation level theory it was predicted that students would perceive items arranged in a hard-medium-easy (H-M-E) order as being easier than the same items arranged easy-medium-hard. Eighty-five men and women college students served as Ss for the study. The dependent variable consisted of two arrangements (H-M-E and E-M-H) of a midterm examination. A multivariate analysis of the data provided evidence that generally confirmed the preceding conjecture, but also found that Ss' perceptions did not significantly influence their scores. That is, using true-false or multiple-choice items. Ss received the same test scores regardless of the context in which they found the items.
Broadcasting algorithms in radio networks with unknown topology

In this paper we present new randomized and deterministic algorithms for the classical problem of broadcasting in radio networks with unknown topology. We consider directed n-node radio networks with specified eccentricity D (maximum distance from the source node to any other node). Our first main result closes the gap between the lower and upper bound: we describe an optimal randomized broadcasting algorithm whose running time complexity is O(D log(n/D) + log/sup 2/n), with high probability. In particular, we obtain a randomized algorithm that completes broadcasting in any n-node radio network in time O(n), with high probability. The main source of our improvement is a better "selecting sequence" used by the algorithm that brings some stronger property and improves the broadcasting time. Next, we demonstrate how to apply our approach to deterministic broadcasting, and describe a deterministic oblivious algorithm that completes broadcasting in almost optimal time O(n log/sup 2/D). Finally, we show how our randomized broadcasting algorithm can be used to improve the randomized complexity of the gossiping problem.
Effect of Display Technology on Perceived Scale of Space

Objective: Our goal was to evaluate the degree to which display technologies influence the perception of size in an image. Background: Research suggests that factors such as whether an image is displayed stereoscopically, whether a user’s viewpoint is tracked, and the field of view of a given display can affect users’ perception of scale in the displayed image. Method: Participants directly estimated the size of a gap by matching the distance between their hands to the gap width and judged their ability to pass unimpeded through the gap in one of five common implementations of three display technologies (two head-mounted displays [HMD] and a back-projection screen). Results: Both measures of gap width were similar for the two HMD conditions and the back projection with stereo and tracking. For the displays without tracking, stereo and monocular conditions differed from each other, with monocular viewing showing underestimation of size. Conclusions: Display technologies that are capable of stereoscopic display and tracking of the user’s viewpoint are beneficial as perceived size does not differ from real-world estimates. Evaluations of different display technologies are necessary as display conditions vary and the availability of different display technologies continues to grow. Applications: The findings are important to those using display technologies for research, commercial, and training purposes when it is important for the displayed image to be perceived at an intended scale.
Activation of Aurora-A Is Essential for Neuronal Migration via Modulation of Microtubule Organization

Neuronal migration is a critical feature to ensure proper location and wiring of neurons during cortical development. Postmitotic neurons migrate from the ventricular zone into the cortical plate to establish neuronal lamina in an “inside-out” gradient of maturation. Here, we report that the mitotic kinase Aurora-A is critical for the regulation of microtubule organization during neuronal migration via an Aurora-A–NDEL1 pathway in the mouse. Suppression of Aurora-A activity by inhibitors or siRNA resulted in severe impairment of neuronal migration of granular neurons. In addition, in utero injection of the Aurora-A kinase-dead mutant provoked defective migration of cortical neurons. Furthermore, we demonstrated that suppression of Aurora-A impaired microtubule modulation in migrating neurons. Interestingly, suppression of CDK5 by an inhibitor or siRNA reduced Aurora-A activity and NDEL1 phosphorylation by Aurora-A, which led to defective neuronal migration. We found that CDK5RAP2 is a key molecule that mediates functional interaction and is essential for centrosomal targeting of Aurora-A. Our observations demonstrated novel and surprising cross talk between Aurora-A and CDK5 during neuronal migration.
Hierarchical salient object detection for assisted grasping

Visual scene decomposition into semantic entities is one of the major challenges when creating a reliable object grasping system. Recently, we introduced a bottom-up hierarchical clustering approach [1] which is able to segment objects and parts in a scene. In this paper, we introduce a transform from such a segmentation into a corresponding, hierarchical saliency function. In comprehensive experiments we demonstrate its ability to detect salient objects in a scene. Furthermore, this hierarchical saliency defines a most salient corresponding region (scale) for every point in an image. Based on this, an easy-to-use pick and place manipulation system was developed and tested exemplarily.
A New Robust Color Descriptor for Face Detection

Most state-of-the-art approaches to object and face detection rely on intensity information and ignore color information, as it usually exhibits variations due to illumination changes and shadows, and due to the lower spatial resolution in color channels than in the intensity image. We propose a new color descriptor, derived from a variant of Local Binary Patterns, designed to achieve invariance to monotonic changes in chroma. The descriptor is produced by histograms of encoded color texture similarity measures of small radially-distributed patches. As it is based on similarities of local patches, we expect the descriptor to exhibit a high degree of invariance to local appearance and pose changes. We demonstrate empirically by simulation the invariance of the descriptor to photometric variations, i.e. illumination changes and image noise, geometric variations, i.e. face pose and camera viewpoint, and discriminative power in a face detection setting. Lastly, we show that the contribution of the presented descriptor to face detection performance is significant and superior to several other color descriptors, which are in use for object detection. This color descriptor can be applied in color-based object detection and recognition tasks.
Random Forests of Phonetic Decision Trees for Acoustic Modeling in Conversational Speech Recognition

In this paper, we present a novel technique of constructing phonetic decision trees (PDTs) for acoustic modeling in conversational speech recognition. We use random forests (RFs) to train a set of PDTs for each phone state unit and obtain multiple acoustic models accordingly. We investigate several methods of combining acoustic scores from the multiple models, including maximum-likelihood estimation of the weights of different acoustic models from training data, as well as using confidence score of -value or relative entropy to obtain the weights dynamically from online data. Since computing acoustic scores from the multiple models slows down decoding search, we propose clustering methods to compact the RF-generated acoustic models. The conventional concept of PDT-based state tying is extended to RF-based state tying. On each RF tied state, we cluster the Gaussian density functions (GDFs) from multiple acoustic models into classes and compute a prototype for each class to represent the original GDFs. In this way, the number of GDFs in each RF tied state is decreased greatly, which significantly reduces the time for computing acoustic scores. Experimental results on a telemedicine automatic captioning task demonstrate that the proposed RF-PDT technique leads to significant improvements in word recognition accuracy.
Limitations of the Trail Making Test Part-B in Assessing Frontal Executive Dysfunction

Abstract Part B of the Trail Making Test (TMT-B) is one of the most widely used neuropsychological tests of “executive” function. A commonly held assumption is that the TMT-B can be used to detect frontal executive dysfunction. However, so far, research evidence has been limited and somewhat inconclusive. In this retrospective study, performance on the TMT-B of 55 patients with known focal frontal lesions, 27 patients with focal non-frontal lesions and 70 healthy controls was compared. Completion time and the number of errors made were examined. Patients with frontal and non-frontal lesions performed significantly worse than healthy controls for both completion time and the number of errors. However, there was no significant difference for both completion time and the number of errors when patients with frontal and non-frontal lesions were compared. Performance was also not significantly different between patients with focal lesions within different regions of the frontal lobe (orbital, left lateral, right lateral, medial). Our findings suggest that the TMT-B is a robust test for detection of brain dysfunction. However, its capacity for detecting frontal executive dysfunction appears rather limited. Clinicians should be cautious when drawing conclusions from performance on the TMT-B alone. (JINS, 2015, 21, 169–174)
Gender Difference, Exposure to Domestic Violence and Adolescents' Identity Development

Domestic abuse is a kind of violence common in South Africa which for most part focuses on women. Children and adolescents who witness these abuses are hardly the focus of domestic abuse research. Hence the need to understand the relationship between gender, exposure to domestic violence and identity development of adolescents. Based on a cross-sectional design, a questionnaire with three sections A, B and C was used to collect data from 109 randomly selected adolescent young men and girls from the University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus), Limpopo Province in South Africa. Age of participants ranged from 15-20 years with a mean age of 18.7 years (SD = .946). The child exposure to domestic violence scale (CEDV) was used to dichotomize exposed and non exposed groups while gender was defined as male/female. Two hypotheses were stated within a 2-way factorial ANOVA. Results showed a significant main effect for group exposure, (F (1,109) =9.395, P Gender and Exposure were not significant. However, mean scores of participants show that non-exposed males had higher changes in identity development (M =118.3, SD = 18.7) than females (M = 115.4, SD =19.4) but the difference did not reach an acceptable level of significance. These findings have significant practical implications for domestic violence and children witnessing this violence and the health and psychological outcomes for adolescent development and adult life. The study also suggests the need for more research in this direction and a need for culturally relevant programmes to help adolescents and children in abusive homes and in addition help families deal with myths that have cultural relevance to factors maintaining battering.