Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interaction of GTPase-activating protein with p21ras, measured using a continuous assay for inorganic phosphate release.

The mechanism of GTPase-activating protein (GAP) activation of p21ras GTP hydrolysis has been investigated by measuring the kinetics of release of Pi during the hydrolysis. The measurement uses a continuous spectroscopic assay for Pi, based on a guanosine analogue, 2-amino-6-mercapto-7-methylpurine ribonucleoside, as substrate for purine nucleoside phosphorylase [Webb, M.R. (1992) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89, 4884-4887]. This phosphorolysis gives an absorbance increase at 360 nm, so that when the reaction is coupled to GTP hydrolysis, the change in absorbance gives the total amount of Pi released from the p21ras. The rate of the absorbance increase gives the GTPase activity. This provides a non-radioactive method of determining p21ras concentration and GAP activity. It was used to determine the interaction of GAP with wild-type p21ras and two mutants (Leu-61/Ser-186 and Asp-12), all in the GTP (or guanosine 5'-[ beta gamma-imido]triphosphate) form. The Leu-61/Ser-186 mutant binds 10-fold tighter than does the wild-type protein. The Asp-12 mutant binds to GAP with the same affinity as the wild-type protein. A novel GTPase activity was characterized whereby the EDTA-induced nucleotide release and GAP-activated cleavage of bound GTP leads to steady-state turnover of GTP hydrolysis. An assay for GAP is described based on this activity.
An approach to the RF-LSI design for ubiquitous communication appliances

We propose a “wide area ubiquitous network” as a highly economical and convenient wireless system for providing a wide variety of services. Its basic feature is “wide coverage using ultra low power consumption terminals,” and its specific target is a “5-km cell radius using 10-mW transmission power terminals run on ten-year life batteries. ” In this paper we explain the wireless specifications and the low power consumption performance required of wireless terminals used in these ubiquitous networks. We then introduce a design method that harmonizes RF and digital components and an ultra low power consumption LSI design that make it possible to satisfy these requirements.
The Efficacy of Electrosleep Therapy

A review of the literature on the efficacy of electrosleep therapy is presented. The vast majority of non-double-blind based reports are very optimistic about its effectiveness, but the inferences from the double-blind based research are much less positive. It is concluded that the efficacy of electrosleep therapy has not yet been satisfactorily demonstrated.
Microdebates App for Android: A Tool for Participating in Argumentative Online Debates Using a Handheld Device

Micro debates App for Android is a part of a research effort aimed to propose better ways of exchanging ideas and opinions in online communities. With it, a user can argue from a handheld device, using Twitter. One can also visualize opinions of other micro debaters, explore ongoing debates, and see where the consensus is. Under the hood, Micro debates uses computational argumentation to rank opinions and drive the visualization. The result is a visual summary of the debate that takes into account semantic information such as explicit attack relations that link opinions together. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application that brings computational argumentation to handheld devices. We describe the application and its logic, and discuss results from an empirical study.
Message-optimal connected dominating sets in mobile ad hoc networks

A connected dominating set (CDS) for a graph G(V,E) is a subset V1 of V, such that each node in V--V1 is adjacent to some node in V1, and V1 induces a connected subgraph. A CDS has been proposed as a virtual backbone for routing in wireless ad hoc networks. However, it is NP-hard to find a minimum connected dominating set (MCDS). Approximation algorithms for MCDS have been proposed in the literature. Most of these algorithms suffer from a very poor approximation ratio, and from high time complexity and message complexity. Recently, new distributed heuristics for constructing a CDS were developed, with constant approximation ratio of 8. These new heuristics are based on a construction of a spanning tree, which makes it very costly in terms of communication overhead to maintain the CDS in the case of mobility and topology changes.In this paper, we propose the first distributed approximation algorithm to construct a MCDS for the unit-disk-graph with a emph constant approximation ratio, and emph linear time and emph linear message complexity. This algorithm is fully localized, and does not depend on the spanning tree. Thus, the maintenance of the CDS after changes of topology guarantees the maintenance of the same approximation ratio. In this algorithm each node requires knowledge of its single-hop neighbors, and only a constant number of two-hop and three-hop neighbors. The message length is O( log n) bits.
Cognitive-Enhancing Herbal Formulae in Korean Medicine: Identification of Candidates by Text Mining and Literature Review.

OBJECTIVE The main aims of this study were to identify candidates for cognitive-enhancing herbal formulae from the Korean medicine literature and to obtain preliminary data that experimental and clinical researchers could use to develop new cognitive-enhancing drugs. METHODS The authors systematically searched for terms related to cognitive enhancement in Dongui Bogam (or Dongyi Baojian), a seminal Korean medicine book. They also reviewed the existing literature on the effects of candidates for cognitive-enhancing herbal formulae and their main constituents. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Twenty-three candidates were selected for cognitive-enhancing herbal formulae and their main constituents. For 14 herbal formulae among the 23 candidates, on average 5.6 published research papers per herbal formula describing cognitive-enhancing effects were found. In addition, some published papers were identified for 5 main constituents most frequently used to make up the 23 candidates.
LiveGantt: Interactively Visualizing a Large Manufacturing Schedule

In this paper, we introduce LiveGantt as a novel interactive schedule visualization tool that helps users explore highly-concurrent large schedules from various perspectives. Although a Gantt chart is the most common approach to illustrate schedules, currently available Gantt chart visualization tools suffer from limited scalability and lack of interactions. LiveGantt is built with newly designed algorithms and interactions to improve conventional charts with better scalability, explorability, and reschedulability. It employs resource reordering and task aggregation to display the schedules in a scalable way. LiveGantt provides four coordinated views and filtering techniques to help users explore and interact with the schedules in more flexible ways. In addition, LiveGantt is equipped with an efficient rescheduler to allow users to instantaneously modify their schedules based on their scheduling experience in the fields. To assess the usefulness of the application of LiveGantt, we conducted a case study on manufacturing schedule data with four industrial engineering researchers. Participants not only grasped an overview of a schedule but also explored the schedule from multiple perspectives to make enhancements.
Integrated metagenomic and metaproteomic analyses of marine biofilm communities

Metagenomic and metaproteomic analyses were utilized to determine the composition and function of complex air–water interface biofilms sampled from the hulls of two US Navy destroyers. Prokaryotic community analyses using PhyloChip-based 16S rDNA profiling revealed two significantly different and taxonomically rich biofilm communities (6,942 taxa) in which the majority of unique taxa were ascribed to members of the Gammaproteobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria and Clostridia. Although metagenomic sequencing indicated that both biofilms were dominated by prokaryotic sequence reads (> 91%) with the majority of the bacterial reads belonging to the Alphaproteobacteria, the Ship-1 metagenome harbored greater organismal and functional diversity and was comparatively enriched for sequences from Cyanobacteria, Bacteroidetes and macroscopic eukaryotes, whereas the Ship-2 metagenome was enriched for sequences from Proteobacteria and microscopic photosynthetic eukaryotes. Qualitative liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry metaproteome analyses identified 678 unique proteins, revealed little overlap in species and protein composition between the ships and contrasted with the metagenomic data in that ~80% of classified and annotated proteins were of eukaryotic origin and dominated by members of the Bacillariophyta, Cnidaria, Chordata and Arthropoda (data deposited to the ProteomeXchange, identifier PXD000961). Within the shared metaproteome, quantitative 18O and iTRAQ analyses demonstrated a significantly greater abundance of structural proteins from macroscopic eukaryotes on Ship-1 and diatom photosynthesis proteins on Ship-2. Photosynthetic pigment composition and elemental analyses confirmed that both biofilms were dominated by phototrophic processes. These data begin to provide a better understanding of the complex organismal and biomolecular composition of marine biofilms while highlighting caveats in the interpretation of stand-alone environmental ‘-omics’ datasets.
Characterization of the Dynamic Changes of Microorganisms in Cutlassfish (Trichiurus haumela) under the Cold Storage with Composite Natural Preservatives Based on Culture-Dependent and 16S rRNA-DGGE Technology

In this study, the main microbe dynamic changes of cutlassfish (Trichiurus haumela) treated with composite natural preservatives under the cold storage (4±1) °C were studied by the methods of culture-dependent and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) fingerprinting analysis based on the sequence of 16S rRNA V3 region gene, which provided the theory basis and reference to the composite natural preservatives’ mechanism and extended the shelf-life of aquatic products. The results showed that 13 kinds of bacteria were identified by the culture-dependent methods, the dominant bacteria belonged to Shewanella putrefaciens and Pseudomonas fluorescens. By sequencing analysis, 12 kinds of bacteria in main DGGE spectra stripe of cutlassfish. In the later periods, the specific spoilage organism (SSO) for the treatment group with composite natural preservatives and the controlled of cutlassfish were highly similar. Psychrobacter sp. was the main bacterium in the initial stage of the storage. With the extension of storage time, the proportion of Shewanella sp. and Pseudomonas sp. increased gradually and they took the place of Psychrobacter sp. to be the dominant bacteria in the process of storage. Thereinto, Pseudomonas fluorescens and Vibrio sp. both took high proportions in the process of storage. At the same time, composite natural preservatives had an obvious growth inhibition effects on the bacteria of cutlassfish such as Shewanella sp. and Pseudomonas sp.
Heart Rate Detection Using Microsoft Kinect: Validation and Comparison to Wearable Devices

Contactless detection is one of the new frontiers of technological innovation in the field of healthcare, enabling unobtrusive measurements of biomedical parameters. Compared to conventional methods for Heart Rate (HR) detection that employ expensive and/or uncomfortable devices, such as the Electrocardiograph (ECG) or pulse oximeter, contactless HR detection offers fast and continuous monitoring of heart activities and provides support for clinical analysis without the need for the user to wear a device. This paper presents a validation study for a contactless HR estimation method exploiting RGB (Red, Green, Blue) data from a Microsoft Kinect v2 device. This method, based on Eulerian Video Magnification (EVM), Photoplethysmography (PPG) and Videoplethysmography (VPG), can achieve performance comparable to classical approaches exploiting wearable systems, under specific test conditions. The output given by a Holter, which represents the gold-standard device used in the test for ECG extraction, is considered as the ground-truth, while a comparison with a commercial smartwatch is also included. The validation process is conducted with two modalities that differ for the availability of a priori knowledge about the subjects’ normal HR. The two test modalities provide different results. In particular, the HR estimation differs from the ground-truth by 2% when the knowledge about the subject’s lifestyle and his/her HR is considered and by 3.4% if no information about the person is taken into account.
Fabrication of Dish-Shaped Micro Parts by Laser Indirect Shocking Compound Process

Compound process technology has been investigated for many years on a macro scale, but only a few studies can be found on a micro scale due to the difficulties in tool manufacturing, parts transporting and punch-die alignment. In this paper, a novel technology of combining the laser shock wave and soft punch was introduced to fabricate the dish-shaped micro-parts on copper to solve these difficulties. This compound process includes deep drawing, punching and blanking and these processes can be completed almost at the same time because the duration time of laser is quite short, so the precision of the micro-parts can be ensured. A reasonable laser energy of 1550 mJ made the morphology, depth of deformation, dimensional accuracy and surface roughness achieve their best results when the thickness of the soft punches was 200 μm. In addition, thicker soft punches may hinder the compound process due to the action of unloading waves based on the elastic wave theory. So, the greatest thickness of the soft punches was 200 μm.
Effective Control of Chronic γ-Herpesvirus Infection by Unconventional MHC Class Ia–Independent CD8 T Cells

Control of virus infection is mediated in part by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) Class Ia presentation of viral peptides to conventional CD8 T cells. Although important, the absolute requirement for MHC Class Ia–dependent CD8 T cells for control of chronic virus infection has not been formally demonstrated. We show here that mice lacking MHC Class Ia molecules (Kb−/−xDb−/− mice) effectively control chronic γ-herpesvirus 68 (γHV68) infection via a robust expansion of β2-microglobulin (β2-m)-dependent, but CD1d-independent, unconventional CD8 T cells. These unconventional CD8 T cells expressed: (1) CD8αβ and CD3, (2) cell surface molecules associated with conventional effector/memory CD8 T cells, (3) TCRαβ with a significant Vβ4, Vβ3, and Vβ10 bias, and (4) the key effector cytokine interferon-γ (IFNγ). Unconventional CD8 T cells utilized a diverse TCR repertoire, and CDR3 analysis suggests that some of that repertoire may be utilized even in the presence of conventional CD8 T cells. This is the first demonstration to our knowledge that β2-m–dependent, but Class Ia–independent, unconventional CD8 T cells can efficiently control chronic virus infection, implicating a role for β2-n–dependent non-classical MHC molecules in control of chronic viral infection. We speculate that similar unconventional CD8 T cells may be able to control of other chronic viral infections, especially when viruses evade immunity by inhibiting generation of Class Ia–restricted T cells.
Material damage evaluation with measured microdefects and multiresolution numerical analysis

This paper presents an alternative method of material damage evaluation based on the X-ray computer tomography-detected microdefects and multiscale computer simulation. This is achieved by developing a method of the digital diagnosis and full-field numerical calculation of material degradation in macroscopic material test specimens. The method comprised three basic components: (a) digital detection and processing of micro/mesoscale material defects of macroscopic material test specimens; (b) multilevel meshing and multilevel finite element analysis for evaluating local/global material degradation; and (c) synchronized experimental and numerical determination of material damage. The unique contributions of the proposed approach include (a) a multilevel finite element meshing and analysis scheme that makes the full-field estimation of material degradation in macroscopic test specimens computationally tractable on regular workstations, (b) full-field exploration of mesoscale material defects (i.e., those with a feature size from several micrometers to a few millimeters), which play a crucial role in failure analysis of engineering components, and (c) the proposed method offers a significantly better accuracy in estimating material degradation in terms of effective modulus than the conventional analytical models in continuum damage mechanics and micromechanics. Test results of aluminum alloys confirm the efficacy of our approach in the digital interrogation of material degradation.
Some supplementation for NEH heuristic in solving flow shop problem

NEH is the concluded most efficient constructive method in solving the permutation flow shop problem with makespan objective. The original NEH required that all the ties in both the initial permutation and the partial sequences must be enumerated, which will be non-polynomial in the worst case. Several kinds of methods are presented to break the ties in a quick time. Together with the basic method, all the fifteen methods are evaluated on the famous Reeves' benchmarks and Taillard's instances, and the most suitable ties breaking policy is recommended.
Dynamic and Partial FPGA Exploitation

Today's field programmable gate array (FPGA) architectures, like Xilinx's Virtex-II series, enable partial and dynamic run-time self-reconfiguration. This feature allows the substitution of parts of a hardware design implemented on this reconfigurable hardware, and therefore, a system can be adapted to the actual demands of applications running on the chip. Exploiting this possibility enables the development of adaptive hardware for a huge variety of applications. A novel method for communication interfaces using look up table (LUT)-based communication primitives enables an exact separation of reconfigurable parts and a fast and intelligent bus-system. A new adaptive software/hardware reconfigurable system is presented in this paper, using a real application in the automotive domain implemented on a Xilinx Virtex-II 3000 FPGA to present results
A Primer of a Sensor Calibration Procedure for Embedded Applications

Modern higher education is today supported by electronic Learning Management Systems providing formal educational learning material, some even integrating repositories containing supplemental material and providing adaptation during the learning process. Virtual laboratories allow access to rare or distributed equipment to students. This paper depicts a primer of such fundamental supplement for students of instrumentation or embedded courses. The exercise provides theoretical background and a cloud access to an affordable hardware via SaaS (Software as a Service) as PaaS (Platform as a Service), or a web based access to a simulation engine. Either case, students are able to calculate and organize experiments, provide input values and get acquired or simulated result. General Terms eLearning, Adaptability, Agent-based, Learning Management Systems, Virtual Laboratory, Online Laboratory.
Communication optimal parallel multiplication of sparse random matrices

Parallel algorithms for sparse matrix-matrix multiplication typically spend most of their time on inter-processor communication rather than on computation, and hardware trends predict the relative cost of communication will only increase. Thus, sparse matrix multiplication algorithms must minimize communication costs in order to scale to large processor counts. In this paper, we consider multiplying sparse matrices corresponding to Erdős-Rényi random graphs on distributed-memory parallel machines. We prove a new lower bound on the expected communication cost for a wide class of algorithms. Our analysis of existing algorithms shows that, while some are optimal for a limited range of matrix density and number of processors, none is optimal in general. We obtain two new parallel algorithms and prove that they match the expected communication cost lower bound, and hence they are optimal.
University of Huddersfield Repository The Effect of Physical Weight and Stimulus Spatial Location on Lexical Decision: Implications for Embodied Cognition

Traditional models of cognition within cognitive psychology have utilised dualistic perspectives and largely ignored the roles of the motor systems and bodily experiences. More recent embodied approaches have sought to combat this dualism by incorporating the motor systems and bodily experiences into their perspectives. Recent research has highlighted the role of bodily experiences in shaping cognition (Proffitt, 2006; Jostmann et al., 2009), how language comprehension can be embodied and grounded in physical experiences (Glenberg and Kaschak, 2002; Zwaan and Yaxley, 2003) and also how stimulus spatial location can influence responses (Meteyard et al., 2008; Dunn et al., 2014). The present study aimed to explore those areas and provide empirical evidence in support as well as explore a gap in current research. The literature search indicated an abundance of embodied system research but a lack of research looking at possible interactions between the systems, it was this gap that was explored within the present study. Utilising a lexical decision task and methods similar to that of Proffitt (2006) three experiments were conducted. A total of 64 participants underwent standard and spatial lexical decision tasks. Three experiments were conducted exploring the bodily effect of weight, stimulus spatial effect and interactions between embodied systems.Results from the three experiments displayed a lack of support for past research regarding the effect of the bodily experience of weight. Results also displayed a main effect of word type leading to the indication that the comprehension of the word/non-word letter strings affected task performance. Analysis of results proposed that a cohesion effect between embodied systems facilitated task performance. It was concluded that further research is needed in order to fully understand the possibility of dominance or cohesion effects within an embodied perspective.
Feature fusion for high-accuracy keyword spotting

This paper assesses the role of robust acoustic features in spoken term detection (a.k.a keyword spotting - KWS) under heavily degraded channel and noise corrupted conditions. A number of noise-robust acoustic features were used, both in isolation and in combination, to train large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) systems, with the resulting word lattices used for spoken term detection. Results indicate that the use of robust acoustic features improved KWS performance with respect to a highly optimized state-of-the art baseline system. It has been shown that fusion of multiple systems improve KWS performance, however the number of systems that can be trained is constrained by the number of frontend features. This work shows that given a number of frontend features it is possible to train several systems by using the frontend features by themselves along with different feature fusion techniques, which provides a richer set of individual systems. Results from this work show that KWS performance can be improved compared to individual feature based systems when multiple features are fused with one another and even further when multiple such systems are combined. Finally this work shows that fusion of fused and single feature bases systems provide significant improvement in KWS performance compared to fusion of singlefeature based systems.