Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mannosylglycerate stabilizes staphylococcal nuclease with restriction of slow β‐sheet motions

Mannosylglycerate is a compatible solute typical of thermophilic marine microorganisms that has a remarkable ability to protect proteins from thermal denaturation. This ionic solute appears to be a universal stabilizing agent, but the extent of protection depends on the specific protein examined. To understand how mannosylglycerate confers protection, we have been studying its influence on the internal motions of a hyperstable staphylococcal nuclease (SNase). Previously, we found a correlation between the magnitude of protein stabilization and the restriction of fast backbone motions. We now report the effect of mannosylglycerate on the fast motions of side‐chains and on the slower unfolding motions of the protein. Side‐chain motions were assessed by 13CH3 relaxation measurements and model‐free analysis while slower unfolding motions were probed by H/D exchange measurements at increasing concentrations of urea. Side‐chain motions were little affected by the presence of different concentrations of mannosylglycerate or even by the presence of urea (0.25M), and show no correlation with changes in the thermodynamic stability of SNase. Native hydrogen exchange experiments showed that, contrary to reports on other stabilizing solutes, mannosylglycerate restricts local motions in addition to the global motions of the protein. The protein unfolding/folding pathway remained undisturbed in the presence of mannosylglycerate but the solute showed a specific effect on the local motions of β‐sheet residues. This work reinforces the link between solute‐induced stabilization and restriction of protein motions at different timescales, and shows that the solute preferentially affects specific structural elements of SNase.
The NEAR Command and Data Handling System

T he Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft’s command and data handling (C&DH) system is designed to manage complex operations and to collect data when the spacecraft is out of contact with ground control. During ground contacts, the C&DH system accepts uplink commands and memory loads that describe a timeordered set of events to follow, and it transmits previously recorded data back to the ground station. This article describes the overall C&DH system, gives details on each of the components, and tells how the system was tested prior to spacecraft integration. Solid-state data recorders and flight computers are also discussed.
Barrier strain influence on the high speed properties of compressively strained InGaAsP multi-quantum well laser structures

We report an extensive experimental study of barrier strain influence on high speed properties of compressively strained quaternary (InGaAsP) multi-quantum well DFB lasers emitting at 1.55 /spl mu/m. It is experimentally shown that a strong decrease of nonlinear gain coefficient can be obtained by reducing the barrier strain, leading to quantum well laser structures with damping coefficient as low as 0.18 ns, i.e. intrinsic bandwidth as high as 50 GHz. This result is explained by a substantial reduction of carrier capture time to escape time ratio, due to an increase of the well/barrier offset between the conduction and valence bands.
A Novel Coordinated Edge Caching with Request Filtration in Radio Access Network

Content caching at the base station of the Radio Access Network (RAN) is a way to reduce backhaul transmission and improve the quality of experience. So it is crucial to manage such massive microcaches to store the contents in a coordinated manner, in order to increase the overall mobile network capacity to support more number of requests. We achieve this goal in this paper with a novel caching scheme, which reduces the repeating traffic by request filtration and asynchronous multicast in a RAN. Request filtration can make the best use of the limited bandwidth and in turn ensure the good performance of the coordinated caching. Moreover, the storage at the mobile devices is also considered to be used to further reduce the backhaul traffic and improve the users' experience. In addition, we drive the optimal cache division in this paper with the aim of reducing the average latency user perceived. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms existing algorithms.
The Australian public's preferences for emergency care alternatives and the influence of the presenting context: a discrete choice experiment

Objectives The current study seeks to quantify the Australian public's preferences for emergency care alternatives and determine if preferences differ depending on presenting circumstances. Setting Increasing presentations to emergency departments have led to overcrowding, long waiting times and suboptimal health system performance. Accordingly, new service models involving the provision of care in alternative settings and delivered by other practitioners continue to be developed. Participants A stratified sample of Australian adults (n=1838), 1382 from Queensland and 456 from South Australia, completed the survey. This included 951 females and 887 males from the 2045 people who met the screening criteria out of the 4354 people who accepted the survey invitation. Interventions A discrete choice experiment was used to elicit preferences in the context of one of four hypothetical scenarios: a possible concussion, a rash/asthma-related problem involving oneself or one's child and an anxiety-related presentation. Mixed logit regression was used to analyse the dependent variable choice and identify the relative importance of care attributes and the propensity to access care in each context. Results Results indicated a preference for treatment by an emergency physician in hospital for possible concussion and treatment by a doctor in ambulatory settings for rash/asthma-related and anxiety-related problems. Participants were consistently willing to wait longer before making trade-offs in the context of the rash/asthma-related scenario compared with when the same problem affected their child. Results suggest a clear preference for lower costs, shorter wait times and strong emphasis on quality care; however, significant preference heterogeneity was observed. Conclusions This study has increased awareness that the public's emergency care choices will differ depending on the presenting context. It has further demonstrated the importance of service quality as a determinant of healthcare choices. The findings have also provided insights into the Australian public's reactions to emergency care reforms.
Rosuvastatin Liver Partitioning in Cynomolgus Monkeys: Measurement In Vivo and Prediction Using In Vitro Monkey Hepatocyte Uptake

Unbound plasma concentrations may not reflect those in target tissues, and there is a need for methods to predict tissue partitioning. Here, we investigate the unbound liver partitioning (Kpu,u) of rosuvastatin, a substrate of hepatic organic anion transporting peptides, in cynomolgus monkeys and compare it with that determined using hepatocytes in vitro. Rosuvastatin (3 mg/kg) was administered orally to monkeys and plasma and liver (by ultrasound-guided biopsy) collected over time. Uptake into monkey hepatocytes was evaluated up to steady state. Binding in monkey plasma, liver, and hepatocytes was determined using equilibrium dialysis. Mean in vivo Kpu,u was 118 after correcting total liver partitioning by plasma and liver binding. In vitro uptake data were analyzed by compartmental modeling to determine active uptake clearance, passive diffusion, the intracellular unbound fraction, and Kpu,u. In vitro Kpu,u underpredicted that in vivo, resulting in the need for an empirical in vitro to in vivo scaling factor of 10. Adjusting model parameters using hypothetical scaling factors for transporter expression and surface area or assuming no effect of protein binding on active transport increased partitioning values by 1.1-, 6-, and 9-fold, respectively. In conclusion, in vivo rosuvastatin unbound liver partitioning in monkeys was underpredicted using hepatocytes in vitro. Modeling approaches that allow integrating corrections from passive diffusion or protein binding on active uptake could improve the estimation of in vivo intracellular partitioning of this organic anion transporting peptide substrate. A similar assessment of other active hepatic transport mechanisms could confirm and determine the extent to which limited accumulation in isolated hepatocytes needs to be considered in drug development.
Pozzolanic behaviour of a bagasse ash from the boiler of a Cuban sugar factory

The paper presents a study of the pozzolanic reaction kinetics between calcium hydroxide and sugar cane bagasse ash (SCBAB) from the boiler of a sugar factory. A pozzolanic activity method (conductometric method) based on measurement of the electrical conductivity of the SCBAB/calcium hydroxide solution as the reaction proceeds is applied and the kinetic parameters are then quantified by applying a kinetic–diffusive model to the process. The kinetic parameters that characterise the process (in particular, the reaction rate constant and the free energy of activation) were determined with relative accuracy in the fitting process of the model. The pozzolanic activity is quantitatively evaluated according to the obtained values of the kinetic parameters. Other experimental techniques, such as X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, are also employed. Comparison with another bagasse ash calcined under controlled conditions in the laboratory is carried out. The results show the good pozzolanic prope.
Dynamic and aggressive scheduling techniques for power-aware real-time systems

In this paper we address power-aware scheduling of periodic hard real-time tasks using dynamic voltage scaling. Our solution includes three parts: (a) a static (off-line) solution to compute the optimal speed, assuming worst-case workload for each arrival, (b) an on-line speed reduction mechanism to reclaim energy by adapting to the actual workload, and (c) an online, adaptive and speculative speed adjustment mechanism to anticipate early completions of future executions by using the average-case workload information. All these solutions still guarantee that all deadlines are met. Our simulation results show that the reclaiming algorithm saves a striking 50% of the energy, over the static algorithm. Further our speculative techniques allow for an additional approximately 20% savings over the reclaiming algorithm. In this study, we also establish that solving an instance of the static power-aware scheduling problem is equivalent to solving an instance of the reward-based scheduling problem [1, 4] with concave reward functions.
Channel shortening algorithms for multiple intersymbol interference channels

We consider channel shortening (CS) algorithms for communication systems where multiple single antenna nodes are transmitting single carrier signals to a single antenna receiver over known intersymbol interference channels. We discuss seven methods to shorten the intersymbol interference (ISI) channels, and the parameters are optimized from a generalized mutual information (GMI) perspective. The motivation for dealing with seven methods is that each one may come across as the “natural” CS receiver, and we therefore consider them all in order to compare their performances. A favorable outcome is that the strongest method is also the one that is easiest to optimize.
TagIt: An Integrated Indexing and Search Service for File Systems

Data services such as search, discovery, and management in scalable distributed environments have traditionally been decoupled from the underlying file systems, and are often deployed using external databases and indexing services. However, modern data production rates, looming data movement costs, and the lack of metadata, entail revisiting the decoupled file system-data services design philosophy. In this paper, we present TagIt, a scalable data management service framework aimed at scientific datasets, which is tightly integrated into a shared-nothing distributed file system. A key feature of TagIt is a scalable, distributed metadata indexing framework, using which we implement a flexible tagging capability to support data discovery. The tags can also be associated with an active operator, for pre-processing, filtering, or automatic metadata extraction, which we seamlessly offload to file servers in a load-aware fashion. Our evaluation shows that TagIt can expedite data search by up to 10$\times$ over the extant decoupled approach. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering $\rightarrow$ File systems management; • Information systems $\rightarrow$ Distributed storage;
Clustering of multipath components utilizing geometrical parameters for indoor double-directional propagation channel

This paper proposes a new clustering method by using scattering points obtained from the measurement-based ray tracer (MBRT). Wideband MIMO channel sounder was used to measure propagation path in indoor environments. The parameters of multipath components (MPCs) were extracted by the space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) algorithm. Comparison between traditional and new clustering method by altering the parameter vector inputted into KPowerMeans algorithm (KPM) was carried out to assess the performance by using several cluster validity indices (CVIs). Simulation results suggest that the proposed method has a better performance than traditional algorithm.
Multiple instances object detection

Since the beginning of the new century the growing popularity of markerless augmented reality (AR) applications inspired the research in the area of object instance detection, registration and tracking. The usage of common daily objects or specially developed fliers or magazines (e.g. IKEA) as AR markers became more popular than traditional ARtoolkit-like black/white patterns. Although there are many different methods for object instance detection emerging every year, very little attention is paid to the case where multiple instances of the same object are present in the scene and need to be augmented (e.g. a table full of fliers, several exemplars of historical coins in the museum, etc.). In this paper we review existing methods of multiple instance detection and propose a new method for grayscale images overcoming the limitations of previous methods.
A Framework for BGP Abnormal Events Detection

Detection of abnormal BGP events is of great importance to preserve the security and robustness of the Internet inter-domain routing system. In this paper, we propose an anomaly detection framework based on machine learning techniques to identify the anomalous events by training a model for normal BGP-updates and measuring the extent of deviation from the normal model during the abnormal occasions. Our preliminary results show that the features generated and selected are capable of improving the classification results to distinguish between anomalies and normal BGP update messages. Furthermore, the clustering results demonstrate the effectiveness of formed models to detect the similar types of BGP anomalies. In a more general context, an interdisciplinary research is performed between network security and data mining to deal with real-world problems and the achieved results are promising.
A ground-complete axiomatization of finite-state processes in generic process algebra

The three classical process algebras CCS, CSP and ACP present several diﬀerences in their respective technical machinery. This is due, not only to the diﬀerence in their operators, but also to the terminology and “way of thinking” of the community which has been (and still is) working with them. In this paper we will ﬁrst discuss such diﬀerences and try to clarify the diﬀerent usage of terminology and concepts. Then, as a result of this discussion, we deﬁne a generic process algebra where each basic mechanism of the three process algebras (including minimal ﬁxpoint based unguarded recursion) is expressed by an operator and which can be used as an underlying common language. We show an example of the advantages of adopting such a language instead of one of the three more specialized algebras: producing a complete axiomatization for Milner‘s observational congruence in the presence of (unguarded) recursion and static operators. More precisely, we provide a syntactical characterization (allowing as many terms as possible) for the equations involved in recursion operators, which guarantees that transition systems generated by the operational semantics are ﬁnite-state. Vice-versa we show that every process admits a speciﬁcation in terms of such a restricted form of recursion. We then present an axiomatization which is ground-complete over such a restricted signature. Notably, we also show that the two standard axioms of Milner for weakly unguarded recursion can be expressed by using just a single axiom.
Frequency and Character of Extreme Aerosol Events in the Southwestern United States: A Case Study Analysis in Arizona

This study uses more than a decade’s worth of data across Arizona to characterize the spatiotemporal distribution, frequency, and source of extreme aerosol events, defined as when the concentration of a species on a particular day exceeds that of the average plus two standard deviations for that given month. Depending on which of eight sites studied, between 5% and 7% of the total days exhibited an extreme aerosol event due to either extreme levels of PM10, PM2.5, and/or fine soil. Grand Canyon exhibited the most extreme event days (120, i.e., 7% of its total days). Fine soil is the pollutant type that most frequently impacted multiple sites at once at an extreme level. PM10, PM2.5, fine soil, non-Asian dust, and Elemental Carbon extreme events occurred most frequently in August. Nearly all Asian dust extreme events occurred between March and June. Extreme Elemental Carbon events have decreased as a function of time with statistical significance, while other pollutant categories did not show any significant change. Extreme events were most frequent for the various pollutant categories on either Wednesday or Thursday, but there was no statistically significant difference in the number of events on any particular day or on weekends versus weekdays.
Sites of Binding and Orientation in a Four‐Location Model for Protein Stereospecificity

The stereospecificity of the enzyme isocitrate dehydrogenase was examined by steady‐state kinetics and x‐ray crystallography. The enzyme has the intriguing property that the apoenzyme in the absence of divalent metal showed a selectivity for the inactive l‐enantiomer of the substrate isocitrate, whereas the enzyme containing magnesium showed selectivity for the physiologically active d‐enantiomer. The hydrogen atom on the C2 carbon that is transferred during the reaction was, in both the d‐ and l‐isocitrate complexes, in an orientation very close to that expected for delivery of a hydride ion to the cosubstrate NADPT+. The beta‐carboxylate that is eliminated as a CO2 molecule during the reaction occupied the same site on the protein in both the d‐ and l‐isocitrate complexes. In addition, the C3 carbon was in the same protein site in both the d‐ and l‐enantiomers. Only the fourth group, the OH atom, was in a very different position in the apo enzyme and in the metal‐containing complexes. A four‐location model is necessary to explain the enantiomeric specificity of IDH in contrast to the conventional three‐point attachment model. The thermodynamic and kinetic ramifications of this model are explored.
Amplified visual immunosensor integrated with nanozyme for ultrasensitive detection of avian influenza virus

Nanomaterial-based artificial enzymes or nanozymes exhibits superior properties such as stability, cost effectiveness and ease of preparation in comparison to conventional enzymes. However, the lower catalytic activity of nanozymes limits their sensitivity and thereby practical applications in the bioanalytical field. To overcome this drawback, herein we propose a very simple but highly sensitive, specific and low-cost dual enhanced colorimetric immunoassay for the detection of avian influenza virus A (H5N1) through facile in situ synthesis of gold nanoparticles and their peroxidase-like enzymatic activity. 3,3’,5,5’-Tetramethylbenzidine (TMBZ) was used as a reducing agent to produce gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) from a viral target-specific antibody-gold ion complex. The developed blue color from the sensing design was further amplified through catalytic activity of Au NPs in presence of TMBZ–hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) complex. The developed dual enhanced colorimetric immunosensor enables the detection of avian influenza virus A (H5N1) with a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.11 pg/mL. Our results further confirms that the developed assay has superior sensitivity than the conventional ELISA method, plasmonic-based bioassay and commercial flu diagnostic kits.
Hysteresis Analysis of High Precision PZT Actuator in Dual-Stage Hard Disk Drive

In Hard disk drive (HDD) industry, the demand for faster HDD with higher storage capacities had led to the use of a dual-stage servo system with a high precision PZT actuator. However, the PZT actuator is made of piezoelectric material which exhibits hysteresis. Hysteresis causes inaccuracies and oscillations in the system responses. In this paper, the hysteresis behavior is examined for a new high resolution (a few nanometers) PZT actuator fabricated for dual stage actuator. The new PZT actuator has the first resonance at a frequency twenty times higher than the first resonant mode of PZT actuator used at present in HDD. A generalized Prandtl-Ishlinskii (GPI) model is obtained by using curve-fitting with the examined hysteresis behavior. Then the inverse of the GPI model is extracted which can be used as the hysteresis compensator. Finally a model-free hysteresis compensator using adaptive Neural Network algorithm is being proposed for future research.
Interval-Passing Algorithm for Non-Negative Measurement Matrices: Performance and Reconstruction Analysis

We consider the Interval-Passing Algorithm (IPA), an iterative reconstruction algorithm for reconstruction of non-negative sparse real-valued signals from noise-free measurements. We first generalize the IPA by relaxing the original constraint that the measurement matrix must be binary. The new algorithm operates on any non-negative sparse measurement matrix. We give a performance comparison of the generalized IPA with the reconstruction algorithms based on 1) linear programming and 2) verification decoding. Then we identify signals not recoverable by the IPA on a given measurement matrix, and show that these signals are related to stopping sets responsible to failures of iterative decoding algorithms on the binary erasure channel (BEC). Contrary to the results of the iterative decoding on the BEC, the smallest stopping set of a measurement matrix is not the smallest configuration on which the IPA fails. We analyze the recovery of sparse signals on subsets of stopping sets via the IPA and provide sufficient conditions on the exact recovery of sparse signals. Reconstruction performance of the IPA using the IEEE 802.16e LDPC codes as measurement matrices are given to show the effect of stopping sets in the performance of the IPA.
Aeolus Toolbox for Dynamics Wind Farm Model, Simulation and Control

This paper presents the wind farm simulation model developed in the EU-FP7 project, AEOLUS. The idea is to provide a publicly available simulation package for researchers developing farm level control solutions. With the software it is possible to auto generate a wind farm simulation model in Mat-lab/Simulink based on turbine parameters and farm geometry. The input to the farm simulator is power set points of individual turbines. Outputs from the farm simulation are power production, nacelle wind speed and fatigue loads (damage equivalent loads) of each turbine.