Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Production, Characterization, and Partial Amino Acid Sequence of Xylanase A from Schizophyllum commune

Xylanase A, one of several extracellular xylanases produced by Schizophyllum commune strain Delmar when grown in submerged culture with spruce sawdust as carbon source, was purified 43-fold in 25% yield with respect to total xylanase activity. Although some polysaccharide was strongly bound to the purified enzyme, the complex could be dissociated by sodium dodecyl sulfate and appeared homogeneous on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The molecular weight of the protein, calculated from the electrophoretic mobility, was 33,000. The molecular activity of the purified xylanase A, determined with soluble larch xylan as substrate, was 1.4 X 10(5) min-1, with xylobiose and xylose as the major products. The enzyme had a pH optimum of 5.0 and a temperature optimum of 55 degrees C in 10-min assays. The acid hydrolysate of xylanase A was rich in aspartic acid and aromatic amino acids. The sequence of 27 residues at the amino terminus showed no homology with known sequences of other proteins.
Wild mouse open field behavior is embedded within the multidimensional data space spanned by laboratory inbred strains

The vast majority of studies on mouse behavior are performed on laboratory mouse strains (Mus laboratorius), while studies of wild‐mouse behavior are relatively rare. An interesting question is the relationship between the phenotypes of M. laboratorius and the phenotypes of their wild ancestors. It is commonly believed, often in the absence of hard evidence, that the behavior of wild mice exceeds by far, in terms of repertoire richness, magnitude of variables and variability of behavioral measures, the behavior of the classical inbred strains. Having phenotyped the open field behavior (OF) of eight of the commonly used laboratory inbred strains, two wild‐derived strains and a group of first‐generation‐in‐captivity local wild mice (Mus musculus domesticus), we show that contrary to common belief, wild‐mouse OF behavior is moderate, both in terms of end‐point values and in terms of their variability, being embedded within the multidimensional data space spanned by laboratory inbred strains. The implication could be that whereas natural selection favors moderate locomotor behavior in wild mice, the inbreeding process tends to generate in mice, in some of the features, extreme and more variable behavior.
Integrated Analysis of Vascular and Nonvascular Changes From Color Retinal Fundus Image Sequences

Algorithms are presented for integrated analysis of both vascular and nonvascular changes observed in longitudinal time-series of color retinal fundus images, extending our prior work. A Bayesian model selection algorithm that combines color change information, and image understanding systems outputs in a novel manner is used to analyze vascular changes such as increase/decrease in width, and disappearance/appearance of vessels, as well as nonvascular changes such as appearance/disappearance of different kinds of lesions. The overall system is robust to false changes due to inter-image and intra-image nonuniform illumination, imaging artifacts such as dust particles in the optical path, alignment errors and outliers in the training-data. An expert observer validated the algorithms on 54 regions selected from 34 image pairs. The regions were selected such that they represented diverse types of vascular changes of interest, as well as no-change regions. The algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 82% and a 9% false positive rate for vascular changes. For the nonvascular changes, 97% sensitivity and a 10% false positive rate are achieved. The combined system is intended for diverse applications including computer-assisted retinal screening, image-reading centers, quantitative monitoring of disease onset and progression, assessment of treatment efficacy, and scoring clinical trials.
The effect of Alternaria brassicicola infection on the reproductive fitness of the naturally occurring littoral ruderals Cakile maritima and C. edentula

Cakile maritima and C. edentula are naturalised hosts of the necrotroph Alternaria brassicicola that occur along the coast of New South Wales, Australia. The effect of infection on the growth and reproduction of both host species was investigated. Plant height, leaf number and pod number of C. maritima were reduced by up to 69, 50 and 30% of the control, respectively, and similar responses were observed for plant, pod and seed weight. Regression analysis showed that A. brassicicola infection reduced various measures of host fitness and fecundity (plant weight, pod number and weight). Negative correlations existed between disease severity and measures of plant growth and reproductive ability, but a positive correlation existed with incidence of infected seed during pod maturation. The responses of C. edentula to infection were generally similar to those of C. maritima. These data show that infection with A. brassicicola can reduce the growth and reproductive potential of C. maritima and C. edentula.
3D PRINTING PHARMACEUTICAL FORMULATION OF DRUGS IN PERSONALIZED THERAPY

3D printing offers the key for manufacturing new pharmaceutical forms and devices with complex structures and geometry that meet individual needs of patients, improving compliance, accessibility and affordability of medicines. Also, due to 3D printing technologies, on demand fabrication of pharmaceutical products in critical situations may be an easy task in the future. In this review we focused on the main 3D printing technologies, 3D printers and 3D software platforms widely used at present. Also, we discuss the most important achievements that have been obtained lately using 3D printing in the pharmaceutical field.
Singing information processing based on singing voice modeling

In this paper, we propose a novel area of research referred to as singing information processing. To shape the concept of this area, we first introduce singing understanding systems for synchronizing between vocal melody and corresponding lyrics, identifying the singer name, evaluating singing skills, creating hyperlinks between phrases in the lyrics of songs, and detecting breath sounds. We then introduce music information retrieval systems based on similarity of vocal melody timbre and vocal percussion, and singing synthesis systems. Common signal processing techniques for modeling singing voices that are used in these systems, such as techniques for extracting the vocal melody from polyphonic music recordings and modeling the lyrics by using phoneme HMMs for singing voices, are discussed.
Optimal co-monitoring strategy for coupled dynamics with distributed Kalman filtering

In this brief paper, coupled heterogeneous dynamic has been discussed and an optimal co-estimation with distributed Kalman filter strategy is proposed for monitoring such dynamic with consideration of incomplete information scenario. The experiment result shows that proposed co-estimation strategy obtains better effect to estimate the state of coupled heterogeneous monitoring under the noisy environment compared to separate DKF.
Performance Improvement of Camera Tracking Method Using the Feature Landmark Database

This paper describes a camera tracking method which can be used in outdoor and indoor environments using natural feature tracking. In conventional methods, much time and human cost are needed to construct landmark database because they require measuring some absolute positions of feature beforehand. Furthermore, tracking methods have considerable problems that they require much computational cost and cannot recover from tracking failures. We propose an automatic method for constructing landmark database to reduce the time for preparation. The key idea of our method is combining use of natural features in the background and a fiducial marker. We adopt the local invariant feature for matching to achieve the improvement of speed and robustness of camera tracking process. Keyword Camera Tracking, Feature Landmark Database, Local Invariant Feature
Scalable, parallel, scientific databases

Large scientific applications which rely on highly parallel computational analysis require highly parallel data access. We describe an object-oriented scientific database system that achieves nearly linear scale-up over large, million object data sets. Of primary importance are those features which seem central to the development of this, or any other parallel database system. These include techniques of object distribution, of multi-operator parallelism, and of indirect object referencing. It also appears to require a query server architecture instead of the more common page server configurations.
Locality-Constrained Multi-Task Joint Sparse Representation for Image Classification

SUMMARY In the image classiﬁcation applications, the test sample with multiple man-handcrafted descriptions can be sparsely represented by a few training subjects. Our paper is motivated by the success of multi-task joint sparse representation (MTJSR), and considers that the di ﬀ erent modalities of features not only have the constraint of joint sparsity across di ﬀ erent tasks, but also have the constraint of local manifold structure across di ﬀ erent features. We introduce the constraint of local manifold structure into the MTJSR framework, and propose the Locality-constrained multi-task joint sparse representation method (LC-MTJSR). During the optimization of the formulated objective, the stochastic gradient descent method is used to guarantee fast convergence rate, which is essential for large-scale image categorization. Experiments on several challenging object classiﬁcation datasets show that our proposed algorithm is better than the MTJSR, and is competitive with the state-of-the-art multiple kernel learning methods. key words: image classiﬁcation, multi-task learning, sparse representation
Subjective Concurrent Separation Logic

From Owicki-Gries’ resource invariants and Jones’ rely/guarantee to modern variants based on separation logic, axiomatic program logics for concurrency have a limited form of compositionality. Proving non-trivial properties usually requires the use of auxiliary state, which is “objective” in the sense that each thread’s auxiliary state is given a globally-unique name. Since auxiliary state exposes the program’s global structure to each local thread, axiomatic approaches fail to be compositional in the presence of auxiliary state. We propose “subjective” auxiliary state as a solution to this historical limitation of axiomatic program logics. Each thread can be verified with a subjective view on auxiliary state: auxiliary state can be partitioned to either belong to the self (i.e., the thread itself) or to the other (i.e., its environment). We formulate Subjective Concurrent Separation Logic as a combination of the resource invariant method, separation logic, and subjective auxiliary state for a first-order, stateful, concurrent language. The logic provides compositional verification even when auxiliary state is needed. We give an operational proof of logic’s soundness.
PSO-based power control of two series resonant inverters sharing resonant capacitor for domestic induction heating

Current technology for domestic induction heating requires to deliver a wide range of power (50 W-3.5 kW) to the vessel to be heated. In addition to this, the considered power control strategy must ensure high reachability and compliance with some constraints. This work is focused on applying the Phase Shift Control (PSC) modulation to control the power delivered to two induction loads. The considered topology is based on two half-bridge resonant inverters that control two domestic induction heating loads sharing a single resonant capacitor. The two outputs to be controlled are coupled, leading to a harder control problem. Therefore, a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm based on the gradient information is proposed to perform the power control by considering the PSC modulation. Finally, simulations are discussed and verified with some experimental results obtained in a prototype induction heating system.
A case study in selective visualization of unsteady 3D flow

In this case study, we explore techniques for the purpose of visualizing isolated flow structures in time-dependent data. Our primary industrial application is the visualization of the vortex rope, a rotating helical structure which builds up in the draft tube of a water turbine. The vortex rope can be characterized by high values of normalized helicity, which is a scalar field derived from the given CFD velocity data. In two related applications, the goal is to visualize the cavitation regions near the runner blades of a Kaplan turbine and a water pump, respectively. Again, the flow structure of interest can be defined by a scalar field, namely by low pressure values. We propose a particle seeding scheme based on quasi-random numbers, which minimizes visual artifacts such as clusters or patterns. By constraining the visualization to a region of interest, occlusion problems are reduced and storage efficiency is gained.
Genotype-phenotype correlation in a large group of Turkish patients with familial mediterranean fever: evidence for mutation-independent amyloidosis.

OBJECTIVES Differences in clinical manifestations of familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) between different ethnic groups have been documented. The FMF gene was recently cloned and four missense mutations (Met694Val, Met680Ile, Val726Ala, and Met694Ile) that account for a large percentage of the patients were identified. The results of initial mutation studies have led to the hypothesis that phenotypic variation of the disease may be attributable to the existence of some of these mutations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether this phenotypic variation is associated with the existence of particular mutations in Turkish FMF patients living in Turkey. METHODS Four missense mutations and genotype-phenotype correlation were investigated in 167 Turkish FMF patients. The patients were grouped according to the presence of the Met694Val and the Met680Ile mutations, and 12 clinical parameters were compared between the groups. RESULTS The presence of the Met694Val mutation was not found to be associated with a severe form of the disease or the development of amyloidosis. Arthritis frequency was found to be lower in the patients with homozygous Met680Ile mutation. CONCLUSIONS None of the four missense mutations is associated with a severe disease or the development of amyloidosis in Turkish FMF patients living in Turkey. The influence of unknown environmental factors and/or the presence of other genetic changes are necessary to explain the phenotypic variation of the disease and the development of amyloidosis.
Feasibility and opportunity study of an optimized flows and storages pooling in city logistics

City logistics, considered as the last step of supply chain management, aims to optimally plan, manage and control the freight movements within a logistical network in urban areas. Freight transportation causes significant negative impacts on the quality of living in urban areas in terms of congestion, emissions and space consumption. Collaboration has been introduced to alleviate these negative impacts; however, collaboration in city logistics projects is challenging, since additional efforts of planning and control of collaboration are significant. In recent years, pooling has emerged as a collaborative strategy that leads towards systematic collaboration between stakeholders involved while they are well-informed about the processes and have direct influence on decision making.The aim of this thesis is to study possible forms of pooling in the context of city logistics in order to analyse conditions for an efficient pooling implementation. To this end, we have conducted a comprehensive literature review on city logistics in order to analyse and classify its different aspects. Surveying the literature also conducted to identify a lack of systematic analysis on pooling in city logistics. In order to overcome this research gap, we have proposed a general stepwise framework that aids to identify all necessary steps toward an efficient pooling implementation. Furthermore, we have introduced a novel concept, called ‘typology of flow’, to analyse different possibilities of logistics pooling at a first step and to identify potential constraints before pooling implementation at a second step. We have quantified the impacts of these constraints on the efficiency of pooling using a real case raised from the literature. At the end, we have used our proposed framework, novel concept of typology of flow and results obtained from our experimental analysis in order to classify important factors for city logistics pooling viability in long term.
Bandwidth Management For Distributed Systems

The method of finding point of bending on efficiency curve in a distributed systems has been presented. The performance of distributed environment was studied as a cost function of mean network throughput and memory buffers availability. The method can be used then to build up an autonomic bandwidth management. The bounding point on efficiency curve was found as well analytically as for testing facility of a distributed laboratory environment. The influence of data replication and scheduling strategy on final results has been included. The computer simulation has been supported by analytical calculation. Two regions of different behavior on universal hyperbolic like dependence of the performance versus mean network throughput was shown up. A method of finding bounding point has been discuss in order to optimize efficiency of the considered system by such parameters like memory buffers and network bandwidth.
Wearable Sensors for eLearning of Manual Tasks: Using Forearm EMG in Hand Hygiene Training

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to eLearning that makes use of smart wearable sensors. Traditional eLearning supports the remote and mobile learning of mostly theoretical knowledge. Here we discuss the possibilities of eLearning to support the training of manual skills. We employ forearm armbands with inertial measurement units and surface electromyography sensors to detect and analyse the user’s hand motions and evaluate their performance. Hand hygiene is chosen as the example activity, as it is a highly standardized manual task that is often not properly executed. The World Health Organization guidelines on hand hygiene are taken as a model of the optimal hygiene procedure, due to their algorithmic structure. Gesture recognition procedures based on artificial neural networks and hidden Markov modeling were developed, achieving recognition rates of 98.30% (±1.26%) for individual gestures. Our approach is shown to be promising for further research and application in the mobile eLearning of manual skills.
Infrastructure-Aware Functional Testing of MapReduce Programs

Programs that process a large volume of data generally run in a distributed and parallel architecture, such as the programs implemented in the processing model MapReduce. In these programs, developers can abstract the infrastructure where the program will run and focus on the functional issues. However, the infrastructure configuration and its state cause different parallel executions of the program and some could derive in functional faults which are hard to reveal. In general, the infrastructure that executes the program is not considered during the testing, because the tests usually contain few input data and then the parallelization is not necessary. In this paper a testing technique is proposed to generate different infrastructure configurations for a given test input data, and then the program is executed in these configurations in order to reveal functional faults. This testing technique is automatized by using a test engine and is applied to a case study. As a result, several infrastructure configurations are automatically generated and executed for a test case revealing a functional fault that is then fixed by the developer.
Molecular basis for the specification of floral organs by APETALA3 and PISTILLATA

How different organs are formed from small sets of undifferentiated precursor cells is a key question in developmental biology. To understand the molecular mechanisms underlying organ specification in plants, we studied the function of the homeotic selector genes APETALA3 (AP3) and PISTILLATA (PI), which control the formation of petals and stamens during Arabidopsis flower development. To this end, we characterized the activities of the transcription factors that AP3 and PI encode throughout flower development by using perturbation assays as well as transcript profiling and genomewide localization studies, in combination with a floral induction system that allows a stage-specific analysis of flower development by genomic technologies. We discovered considerable spatial and temporal differences in the requirement for AP3/PI activity during flower formation and show that they control different sets of genes at distinct phases of flower development. The genomewide identification of target genes revealed that AP3/PI act as bifunctional transcription factors: they activate genes involved in the control of numerous developmental processes required for organogenesis and repress key regulators of carpel formation. Our results imply considerable changes in the composition and topology of the gene network controlled by AP3/PI during the course of flower development. We discuss our results in light of a model for the mechanism underlying sex-determination in seed plants, in which AP3/PI orthologues might act as a switch between the activation of male and the repression of female development.
Characterization of the global impact of low temperature gas plasma on vegetative microorganisms

Plasma medicine and also decontamination of bacteria with physical plasmas is a promising new field of life science with huge interest especially for medical applications. Despite numerous successful applications of low temperature gas plasmas in medicine and decontamination, the fundamental nature of the interactions between plasma and microorganisms is to a large extent unknown. A detailed knowledge of these interactions is essential for the development of new as well as for the enhancement of established plasma‐treatment procedures. In the present work we introduce for the first time a growth chamber system suitable for low temperature gas plasma treatment of bacteria in liquid medium. We have coupled the use of this apparatus to a combined proteomic and transcriptomic analyses to investigate the specific stress response of Bacillus subtilis 168 cells to treatment with argon plasma. The treatment with three different discharge voltages revealed not only effects on growth, but also clear evidence of cellular stress responses. B. subtilis suffered severe cell wall stress, which was made visible also by electron microscopy, DNA damages and oxidative stress as a result of exposure to plasma. These biological findings were supported by the detection of reactive plasma species by OES measurements.