Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protocol for Heterologous Expression of Insect Odourant Receptors in Drosophila

Insect olfactory receptors (ORs) are tuned to volatile chemicals, they are expressed in the membrane of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), housed in sensilla on the antenna. The olfactory apparatus is under strong selection and ORs are tuned to vital chemical signals, mediating social communication, feeding and oviposition, and avoidance of predators and pathogens. An emerging technique to reliably and efficiently identify the key ligands of ORs is to express single ORs in heterologous cell systems for subsequent screening. Several in vivo and in vitro platforms have been developed; we here provide a step-by-step protocol for OR expression in Drosophila melanogaster OSNs. Following RNA extraction, molecular cloning of ORs and injection of plasmid vectors into Drosophila embryos to create flies with OR transgenes, single ORs are expressed, via crossing with specific transgene promoters in OSNs of ab3 and T1 antennal sensilla. This approach enables replicable single sensillum electrophysiological recordings (SSR) from readily distinguishable Drosophila sensilla, containing OSNs expressing transgenic ORs. We expect this method to be applicable to ORs across insect orders and to increasingly contribute to chemical ecology research. Heterologous expression enables thorough investigation of single ORs, towards the identification of yet unknown, behaviourally and ecologically relevant chemical signals. It also enables investigations of the functional properties of ORs and their evolutionary diversification, through comparative structure-activity studies across phylogenies.
Alternate Phosphorylation/O-GlcNAc Modification on Human Insulin IRSs: A Road towards Impaired Insulin Signaling in Alzheimer and Diabetes

Impaired insulin signaling has been thought of as important step in both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) regulate functions and interaction of insulin with insulin receptors substrates (IRSs) and activate insulin signaling downstream pathways via autophosphorylation on several tyrosine (TYR) residues on IRSs. Two important insulin receptor substrates 1 and 2 are widely expressed in human, and alternative phosphorylation on their serine (Ser) and threonine (Thr) residues has been known to block the Tyr phosphorylation of IRSs, thus inhibiting insulin signaling and promoting insulin resistance. Like phosphorylation, O-glycosylation modification is important PTM and inhibits phosphorylation on same or neighboring Ser/Thr residues, often called Yin Yang sites. Both IRS-1 and IRS-2 have been shown to be O-glycosylated; however exact sites are not determined yet. In this study, by using neuronal network based prediction methods, we found more than 50 Ser/Thr residues that have potential to be O-glycosylated and may act as possible sites as well. Moreover, alternative phosphorylation and O-glycosylation on IRS-1 Ser-312, 984, 1037, and 1101 may act as possible therapeutic targets to minimize the risk of AD and T2DM.
An Adaptive Penalty-Based Learning Extension for Backpropagation and its Variants

Over the years, many improvements and refinements of the backpropagation learning algorithm have been reported. In this paper, a new adaptive penalty-based learning extension for the backpropagation learning algorithm and its variants is proposed. The new method initially puts pressure on artificial neural networks in order to get all outputs for all training patterns into the correct half of the output range, instead of mainly focusing on minimizing the difference between the target and actual output values. The technique is easy to implement and computationally inexpensive. In this study, the new approach has been applied to the backpropagation learning algorithm as well as the RPROP learning algorithm and simulations have been performed. The superiority of the new proposed method is demonstrated. By applying the extension, the number of successful runs can be greatly increased and the average number of epochs to convergence can be well reduced on various problem instances. Furthermore, the change of the penalty values during training has been studied and its observation shows the active role the penalties play within the learning process.
Mass Distribution of Spiral Galaxies in a Thin Disk Model with Velocity Curve Extrapolation

We model a spiral galaxy by a thin axially symmetric disk that includes both visible and dark matter. The surface mass density of the disk is calculated directly from the rotational velocity curve without extra assumptions. We simplify the standard application of the model. Since most velocity curves are known out to some radius, r_{max}, we extrapolate them by attaching a Keplerian tail. The numerical procedure and the extrapolation are tested with a known toy mass density and shown to reconstruct it with a good precision if r_{max} includes a sufficient part of the velocity curve. Mass density curves are calculated for Milky Way and NGC 3198. We vary the extent of the flat part of the velocity curves from 30 kpc to 200 kpc and show that does not affect appreciably the calculated mass density inside r_{max}=30 kpc. The reconstructed masses for Milky Way are 15 x 10^10 solar masses inside the visible disk and 23 x 10^10 solar masses inside 30 kpc. For NGC 3198, the reconstructed mass inside the visible disk is 6.5 x 10^10 solar masses and 11 x 10^10 solar masses inside 30 kpc. The total galactic masses are roughly proportional to the extent of the flat part of the velocity curves which is currently unknown. The high light-to-mass ratios obtained for the visible disks of the galaxies - 11 solar units for Milky way and 9.3 for NGC 3198 - suggest presence of dark matter. The method is also applied to NGC 3031 - a spiral galaxy with a declining velocity curve in which case it is able to reconstruct both the mass density curve and the total mass (14 x 10^10 solar masses).
A systematic survey for infrared star clusters with |b| < 20° using 2MASS

We used star density maps obtained from the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) to obtain a sample of star clusters in the entire Galactic Plane with |b| < 20°. A total of 1788 star cluster candidates are identified in this survey. Among those are 681 previously known open clusters and 86 globular clusters. A statistical analysis indicates that our sample of 1021 new cluster candidates has a contamination of about 50 per cent. Star cluster parameters are obtained by fitting a King profile to the star density. These parameters are used to statistically identify probable new globular cluster candidates in our sample. A detailed investigation of the projected distribution of star clusters in the Galaxy demonstrates that they show a clear tendency to cluster on spatial scales in the order of 12–25 pc, a typical size for molecular clouds.
Geometric characterization of reduced-order dynamic observer error linearization for uncontrolled multi-output systems

In this paper, we introduce the concept of reduced-order dynamic observer error linearization (RDOEL) for uncontrolled multi-output systems, which is a natural extension of the (conventional) observer error linearization (OEL) as well as a modified version of dynamic observer error linearization (DOEL). We first state necessary conditions for RDOEL, and then provide a necessary and sufficient condition in terms of Lie algebras of vector fields, which has not yet been completely established even in OEL.
Using GO terms to evaluate protein clustering

Motivation: Protein sequence data is growing at an exponential rate. However a considerable portion of this data is redundant, with many new sequences being very similar to others in the databases. While clustering has been used to reduce this redundancy, the influence of sequence similarity in the functional quality of the clusters is still unclear. Results: In this work, we introduce a greedy graph-based clustering algorithm, which is tested using the Swiss-Prot database. We study the topology of the protein space as function of the threshold BLAST e-values, and the functional characterization of the clusters using the Gene Ontology. Initial results show that seemingly the cluster centers alone can capture a large portion of the information content of the database, therefore largely reducing its redundancy. Also it was found an expected increase of cluster functional coherence and characterization with the stringency of the threshold, as well as the amount of information captured by the
Antarctic new particle formation from continental biogenic precursors

Abstract. Over Antarctica, aerosol particles originate almost entirely from marine areas, with minor contribution from long-range transported dust or anthropogenic material. The Antarctic continent itself, unlike all other continental areas, has been thought to be practically free of aerosol sources. Here we present evidence of local aerosol production associated with melt-water ponds in continental Antarctica. We show that in air masses passing such ponds, new aerosol particles are efficiently formed and these particles grow up to sizes where they may act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). The precursor vapours responsible for aerosol formation and growth originate very likely from highly abundant cyanobacteria Nostoc commune (Vaucher) communities of local ponds. This is the first time freshwater vegetation has been identified as an aerosol precursor source. The influence of the new source on clouds and climate may increase in future Antarctica, and possibly elsewhere undergoing accelerating summer melting of semi-permanent snow cover.
Organizational Design and Management Accounting Change

Changing management accounting systems requires more than appropriate implementation.It is argued that structural characteristics of an organization, centralization in particular, should also be taken into account when deciding on a change.Centralization implies higher costs of communication because the decision-maker has to obtain information from organizational participants who have incentives to inffluence the decision.A limit on communication reduces inffluence costs but at the same time it also lowers the quality of the decision.As a result of that, centralized organizations (i) will implement changes in their accounting systems less often than decentralized ones (ii) will more often implement top-down, i.e. ignore local information.
Do (Female) Founders Influence (Female) Joiners to Become Founders too

Female founders are scarce, certainly those employing personnel. Do (female) founders affect the likelihood of (female) joiners to become founders too? Recent research demonstrates that joiners are more sensitive to contextual influences than founders. Joining a startup could provide a context to experiment provisional founder identities, especially if the founder is perceived as a role model. Role models are more likely to be influential, the more similar they are to the focal person, especially if both are minorities, as is the case for women in entrepreneurial environments. We study how joiner-founder (gender) homophily affects the likelihood of female and male joiners to become founders themselves. We find a relatively large and robust positive effect among female joiners that can be attributed to the role modeling function of female founders. Female entrepreneurs hiring personnel may thus have a multiplier effect in reducing gender gaps in entrepreneurship rates.
Language expressiveness and quality of service for publish/subscribe systems

The publish/subscribe paradigm is known for its loosely coupled interactions and event filtering capabilities. Traditional applications using pub/sub systems require large-scale deployment and high event throughput. Thus, pub/sub has always put the emphasis on scalability and performance, to the detriment of filtering expressiveness and quality of service. The matching language is usually limited to topic-based or content-based event filtering and does not allow complex stream-based subscriptions to be expressed. Messages are delivered on a best-effort basis without any ordering or reliability guarantees. Installing additional services and event processing systems at the endpoints can overcome the limitations of pub/sub systems. However, we argue that such solutions are inefficient and put a lot of strain on the pub/sub layer itself. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is to develop integrated solutions to extend pub/sub language expression and quality of service, and demonstrate that our approach results in better performance from a holistic perspective. We first describe multiple case studies for pub/sub and identify major features which need to be supported. We then extract those requirements from our use cases and develop general solutions within the pub/sub layer. Features we have supported so far includes total order and ranked data dissemination. Finally, we conduct experiments to compare the performance of our approach to baselines which rely on end-to-end services and perform holistic evaluations to assess the impact of our work.
The Fault Diagnosis of Garbage Crusher Based on Ant Colony Algorithm and Neural Network

The garbage crusher is one of the important parts in recoverable coal production line. To diagnose its faults during the working process, Back Propagation algorithm is used. However, it has some shortcomings, such as low precision solution, slow searching speed and easy convergence to the local minimum points. To overcome this problem, a novel method which integrates Back Propagation neural network (BP NN) and Ant Colony Algorithm(ACA) is proposed in this paper. ACA has the advantages such as positive feedback, distributed computation and using a constructive greedy heuristic. In this paper, ACA is used to train the weights and the thresholds of BP NN, so the searching speed and the precision can be improved. An case study is given. The result shows that the proposed method improves the training efficiency and the fault classification accuracy.
Surveying the Opportunities for Textual CBR: A Position Paper

Riesbeck (1997) writes, that the . goal for AI and cBR in particular should be understood as "building components that reduce . the stupidity of the systems in which they’ function. " (pg. 377) This is an excellent description of the niche that textual ease-based reasoning can and should occupy. This position paper explores some of directions in which this goal can be pursued, with special attention to the role of task orientation. Progress in information retrieval and databases have brought us powerful, flexible tools for managing large amounts of textual data, yet from a user’s point of view, these systems often seem stupid. They aim for a leastcommon-denominator interface, ensuring that every possible query can be posed, but do little io help satisfy user’s most common goals, They treat data uniformly, putting the burden on the user to distinguish structural elements that are relevant for a particular task. As a result, users must master complex querying conventions to accomplish even simple tasks. To this problem, case-based reasoning brings the legacy of planning and problem-solving research. Case-based reasoners, like human reasoners, seek retrieval because they have a problem to solve. CBR systems build their indexing and retrieval mechanisms within knowledge frameworks that identify important features and problem-solving strategies. An effective textual
Utilizing jump flooding in image-based soft shadows

This paper studies the usage of the GPU as a collection of groups of related processing units, where each group communicates in some way to complete a computation efficiently and effectively. In particular, we use the GPU to perform jump flooding to pass information among groups of processing units in the design of two simple real-time soft shadow algorithms. These two algorithms are purely image-based in generating plausible soft shadows. Their computational costs depend mainly on the resolution of the shadow map or the screen. They run on an order of magnitude faster than existing comparable methods.
What international educational evaluations tell us about education quality in developing nations

Few developing countries participate in external educational evaluations. Information gaps on education quality make it imperative to expand such evaluations. Furthermore, international comparability across different evaluations should be improved. In addition, data from evaluations must be combined with data on access or coverage. Finally, educational evaluations reveal social inequalities; socioeconomic status has a systematic influence on educational outcomes, but social gradients vary over countries. Resources alone cannot explain massive performance gaps between developing and developed countries. Large efficiency improvements must occur in classrooms and schools. The need is not for “league tables,” but for data that allow countries to judge the appropriateness of their policies and strategies in an international context. Efficient and targeted application of resources and policies to improve education in developing countries requires information on system performance, inequalities, progress and stagnation. International evaluations should be expanded to more countries, should be better anchored and comparable, and should be demystified. Too little international educational evaluation is the enemy of progress.
The Evidence for Increased L1 Activity in the Site of Human Adult Brain Neurogenesis

Retroelement activity is a common source of polymorphisms in human genome. The mechanism whereby retroelements contribute to the intraindividual genetic heterogeneity by inserting into the DNA of somatic cells is gaining increasing attention. Brain tissues are suspected to accumulate genetic heterogeneity as a result of the retroelements somatic activity. This study aims to expand our understanding of the role retroelements play in generating somatic mosaicism of neural tissues. Whole-genome Alu and L1 profiling of genomic DNA extracted from the cerebellum, frontal cortex, subventricular zone, dentate gyrus, and the myocardium revealed hundreds of somatic insertions in each of the analyzed tissues. Interestingly, the highest concentration of such insertions was detected in the dentate gyrus—the hotspot of adult neurogenesis. Insertions of retroelements and their activity could produce genetically diverse neuronal subsets, which can be involved in hippocampal-dependent learning and memory.
Parallel Pattern Detection for Architectural Improvements

With the shift in general purpose computing to increasingly parallel architectures comes a need for clever architectures to achieve high parallelism on previously sequential or poorly parallelized code. In order to fully utilize the many-core systems of the present and future, a shift must occur in architecture design philosophy to understanding how the parallel programming process affects design decisions. Parallel patterns provide a way to create parallel code for a wide variety of algorithms. Additionally they provide a convenient classification mechanism that is both understandable to programmers and that exhibit similar behaviors that can be architecturally exploited. In this work we explore the capabilities of pattern driven dynamic architectures as well as detection mechanisms useful for dynamic and static parallel pattern recognition.
Phase I Trial of the Positron-Emitting Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) Peptide Radioligand 18F-AH111585 in Breast Cancer Patients

The integrin αvβ3 receptor is upregulated on tumor cells and endothelium and plays important roles in angiogenesis and metastasis. Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptide ligands have high affinity for these integrins and can be radiolabeled for PET imaging of angiogenesis or tumor development. We have assessed the safety, stability, and tumor distribution kinetics of a novel radiolabeled RGD-based integrin peptide-polymer conjugate, 18F-AH111585, and its feasibility to detect tumors in metastatic breast cancer patients using PET. Methods: The biodistribution of 18F-AH111585 was assessed in 18 tumor lesions from 7 patients with metastatic breast cancer by PET, and the PET data were compared with CT results. The metabolic stability of 18F-AH111585 was assessed by chromatography of plasma samples. Regions of interest (ROIs) defined over tumor and normal tissues of the PET images were used to determine the kinetics of radioligand binding in tissues. Results: The radiopharmaceutical and PET procedures were well tolerated in all patients. All 18 tumors detected by CT were visible on the 18F-AH111585 PET images, either as distinct increases in uptake compared with the surrounding normal tissue or, in the case of liver metastases, as regions of deficit uptake because of the high background activity in normal liver tissue. 18F-AH111585 was either homogeneously distributed in the tumors or appeared within the tumor rim, consistent with the pattern of viable peripheral tumor and central necrosis often seen in association with angiogenesis. Increased uptake compared with background (P = 0.002) was demonstrated in metastases in lung, pleura, bone, lymph node, and primary tumor. Conclusion: 18F-AH111585 designed to bind the αvβ3 integrin is safe, metabolically stable, and retained in tumor tissues and detects breast cancer lesions by PET in most anatomic sites.
Access to Information, Transaction Costs and Marketing Choice of Rural Households between Middlemen and Direct Buyers in Bangladesh

This paper assesses the impact of information cost and other transaction costs on rural producers' discrete choice between selling to middlemen and direct buyers, and continuous choice of selling intensity to middlemen and direct buyers. Using transaction costs economics as an analytical framework to decompose the different origins of transaction costs, the paper empirically investigates the impact of transaction costs on farm households' marketing behaviour in the context of Bangladesh. Empirical findings of this paper suggest that access to information in the form of access to telephone and other form of transaction costs play a significant role in producers' marketing behaviour. For information cost, a unit change in distance to telephone increases the probability of choosing direct buyer over middlemen by more than 4 percent and sales to direct buyer by more than 8 percent.
A fundamental study on a method to detect slower phrases in Japanese dialog speech

A slower phrase in spontaneous conversational speech is caused by emphasis, thinking during speaking and so on. To include such useful information with man-machine communication, we investigate a method to detect local slower phrase from time sequence of mora duration in Japanese dialog speech. At first we prepare speech samples, which contains phrases slowed considerably. Then the flow of the process to obtain phrase averaged mora duration is explained. In this method, speech period, mora boundaries and phrase boundaries are obtained from acoustical features. A threshold is applied to phrase averaged mora duration. An experiment to detect a local slower phrase is carried out. The slowed phrases are detected with high recall rate.
Microbial Cell Factories Robo-lector – a Novel Platform for Automated High-throughput Cultivations in Microtiter Plates with High Information Content

Background: In industry and academic research, there is an increasing demand for flexible automated microfermentation platforms with advanced sensing technology. However, up to now, conventional platforms cannot generate continuous data in high-throughput cultivations, in particular for monitoring biomass and fluorescent proteins. Furthermore, microfermentation platforms are needed that can easily combine cost-effective, disposable microbioreactors with downstream processing and analytical assays.