Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DMCA: A Combined Data Mining Technique for Improving the Microarray Data Classification Accuracy

Data mining techniques are important to sift through the huge amount of gene expression values in microarrays resulting in valuable biological knowledge. An important example is classifying cancer samples, which is crucial to biologists for cancer diagnosis and treatment. In this paper we propose the DMCA technique in which the main objective is reducing the number of genes needed for accurate classification. The proposed technique is a combination of two feature selection techniques, f-score and entropy-based, and a powerful classifier, Support Vector Machines. DMCA achieved promising results and is characterized by being flexible in all of its stages. When applied to two public microarray datasets, DMCA succeeded in reducing the number of gene expression values needed to classify a sample by 71.29% and guaranteed reliable classification accuracy.
TacTowers: an interactive training equipment for elite athletes

The interactive training equipment, TacTower, is aimed at supporting multiple elite athletes, such as handball players in training their micro-tactical skills in close-contact situations. It focuses on psychomotor abilities and trains the skills involved in reading the opponents' actions and anticipating the outcome while reacting accordingly. The Tac-Tower prototype will be demonstrated live, and here we summarize the main design issues, to give the reader a sense of how the elite sports context stands out from other interaction design domains. There is much potential for interaction design for the elite athletic community, as this domain holds interesting challenges while also inspiring relevant, new forms of interaction design for other domains.
ASB7 regulates spindle dynamics and genome integrity by targeting DDA3 for proteasomal degradation

Uematsu et al. show that ASB7 ubiquitinates DDA3, which facilitates Kif2a-mediated depolymerization of microtubules (MTs) for proteasomal degradation. The presence of MTs prevents the ASB7–DDA3 interaction, suggesting a feedback loop to appropriately regulate MT polymerization and spindle dynamics.
Navigating institutional complexities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how female entrepreneurs navigate complex and challenging institutional environments. It draws on institutional theory and the concept of response strategies to institutional pressures to explore the institutional barriers that female entrepreneurs encounter and highlights the strategies women employ to overcome them. Design/methodology/approach This paper builds on a case study of female entrepreneurs engaged in food processing in Tanzania. It draws on semi-structured interviews with nine female entrepreneurs, one focus group discussion with six female entrepreneurs and two semi-structured interviews with representatives from women’s business associations (WBAs). Findings This paper reveals a repertoire of active strategies enacted by women entrepreneurs, including advocacy through WBAs, bootstrapping, semi-informal operations, co-location of home and business, spouse involvement in the business, downplay of gender identity, reliance on persistence and passion and networking through WBAs. While these strategies involve various degrees of agency, the findings indicate that collective efforts through WBAs offer women the most promise in terms of influencing institutional structures. Originality/value While there is a growing body of literature examining how institutions influence female entrepreneurs, there is a dearth of knowledge on how women experience institutional complexities and actively react to institutional barriers, complexities and contradictions. This paper shows the value of analytical attention to female entrepreneurs’ agency by highlighting women’s active responses and documenting a repertoire of strategies.
SOUNDVIEW: SENSING COLOR IMAGES BY KINESTHETIC AUDIO

An experimental system called SoundView has been developed, which allows the exploration of a color image through touch and hearing. The image is mapped onto a virtual surface with a ne-grained color dependent roughness texture. The user explores the image by moving a pointer device over the image. The pointer acts like a virtual gramophone needle, and the sound produced depends on the motion as well as on the color of the area explored. The roughness texture is obtained by constructing a mapping of three dimensional color space onto a three dimensional sound space. The mapping tries to achieve maximal alignment of the color and sound spaces by preserving the perceptual metrical and topological structure of color space, as well as by incorporating common associations between sound and color.
Mechanism of the enhanced epidermal growth factor-induced growth response of genetically hypertensive vascular myocytes.

Although enhanced growth of the vascular myocyte is believed to play a role in hypertensive cardiovascular disease, the cellular basis of altered growth regulation is not completely understood. The present study demonstrates that in the presence of 10% fetal calf serum, the logarithmic growth rate of cultured mesenteric artery myocytes of the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is similar to that of the normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) control rat. However, in the presence of low levels of fetal calf serum, SHR myocytes respond to epidermal growth factor (EGF) with increased growth, whereas WKY cells do not. This difference does not result from different numbers or affinities of EGF receptors in these cell lines. Examination of EGF-induced growth responses of SHR and WKY myocytes in the presence of varying levels of insulin or fetal calf serum indicates that, compared with WKY myocytes, SHR myocytes have a lower requirement for factors that confer competence to respond to EGF. Another property of the SHR myocytes is an elevation of free intracellular Ca2+. To determine whether a difference in cellular Ca2+ metabolism might play a role in the differential growth response, growth of myocytes in medium containing 0.25, 0.75, or 1.25 mM extracellular Ca2+ and 5% fetal calf serum was examined. Myocytes of SHR showed enhanced growth in the presence of 5% fetal calf serum at all levels of extracellular Ca2+. It is concluded that, although vascular myocytes of SHR and WKY rats have the capacity to grow at similar rates, under limiting conditions, the SHR myocyte growth response is enhanced. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
GraphWrap: a system for interactive wrapping of pdf documents using graph matching techniques

We present GraphWrap, a novel and innovative approach to wrapping PDF documents. The PDF format is often used to publish large amounts of structured data, such as product specifications, measurements, prices or contact information. As the PDF format is unstructured, it is very difficult to use this data in machine processing applications. Wrapping is the process of navigating the data source, semi-automatically extracting the data and transforming it into a structured form. GraphWrap enables a non-expert user to create such data extraction programs for almost any PDF file in an intuitive and interactive manner. We show how a wrapper can be created by selecting an example instance and interacting with the graph representation to set conditions and choose which data items to extract. In the background, the corresponding instances are found using an algorithm based on subgraph isomorphism. The resulting wrapper can then be run on other pages and documents which exhibit a similar visual structure.
The HB-6, CDw75, and CD76 differentiation antigens are unique cell- surface carbohydrate determinants generated by the beta-galactoside alpha 2,6-sialyltransferase

Expression of the beta-galactoside alpha 2,6-sialyltransferase (alpha 2,6-ST) was shown to regulate the generation of multiple cell-surface differentiation antigens (Ags) that may be necessary for lymphocyte function. A new mAb was produced, termed HB-6, that was shown to identify a novel neuraminidase-sensitive cell-surface Ag expressed by subpopulations of human lymphocytes and erythrocytes. In attempting to isolate a cDNA encoding the HB-6 antigen by expression cloning, a cDNA encoding the alpha 2,6-ST (EC 2.4.99.1) was obtained. Since expression of the alpha 2,6-ST protein was shown to be limited to the Golgi apparatus, the cell-surface HB-6 Ag was demonstrated to be the product of alpha 2,6-ST activity. Interestingly, alpha 2,6-ST expression also generated two other neuraminidase-sensitive lymphocyte cell-surface differentiation Ags, CDw75, and CD76. The HB-6, CDw75, and CD76 mAb identified distinct Ags that were differentially expressed by different B cell lines and exhibited different patterns of expression in tissue sections. These results indicate that alpha 2,6-ST expression is a critical regulatory step in the formation of the Ags that are recognized by these mAb, and that an alpha 2,6-linked sialic acid residue is an essential component of each Ag. Thus, expression of a single ST can result in the generation of multiple distinct antigenic determinants on the cell surface which can be distinguished by mAb and may have regulatory roles in lymphocyte function.
Modeling the Relationship among Linguistic Typological Features with Hierarchical Dirichlet Process

We propose that topic models can be used to represent the relationship among lin- guistic typological features. Typological features are typically analyzed in terms of universal implications. We argue that topic models can better capture some phenomena, such as uni- versal tendencies, which are hard to be explained by implications. We conduct experiments to evaluate the predictive accuracy of our Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP) model on the WALS dataset. We discover some interesting findings. Topics regarding word order types are recognized. We also find a topic that regards areal tendency.
Greek Teachers’ Attitude towards Multiculturalism: Psychometric Properties of the Teacher Multicultural Attitudes Survey Scale (TMAS)

Τhe aim of the present study is to adapt the “Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey (TMAS)” developed by Ponterotto, Baluch, Greig, & Rivera (1998), to Greek teachers. More specifically, it examines the reliability and validity of the “Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey (TMAS)” as an appropriate instrument for the evaluation of Greek teachers’ multicultural attitudes. The Greek version of the questionnaire was administered to 273 teachers from different regions of Greece and its validity and reliability were tested. The data analysis led to a three-factor structure. The results indicated that the Greek version of the “Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey (TMAS)” is a reliable psychometric tool and can be used to evaluate Greek teachers’ style toward multiculturalism.
How Does the Digital Transformation Affect Organizations? Key Themes of Change in Work Design and Leadership

Due to recent technological advances, organizations currently face massive changes of their work design and leadership. Unfortunately, the exact nature of these changes is still unclear as most existing studies were conducted during earlier stages of the digital transformation and the available literature is highly fragmented. To provide an up-to-date overview on the changes in work design and leadership resulting from the digital transformation and to structure our existing knowledge in this domain, we conducted an open-ended online survey with 49 recognized digitalization experts and identified key themes of change. In sum, four key themes of change affecting both work design and leadership emerged, namely changes in work-life and health, the use of information and communication technology, performance and talent management and organizational hierarchies. In addition, two macro-level change dimensions regarding the structure of work and relationship-oriented leadership evolved. While some of the identified changes were partly covered in earlier studies, others have so far not received much attention despite their apparently high relevance in the current stage of the digital transformation. The results of this study therefore provide an important basis for future research and help organizations to strategically prepare for the requirements of the digital age.
The Role of Histone Methylation and H2A.Z Occupancy during Rapid Activation of Ethylene Responsive Genes

Ethylene signaling pathway leads to rapid gene activation by two hierarchies of transcription factors with EIN3/EIL proteins as primary ones and ERF proteins as secondary ones. The role of chromatin modifications during the rapid gene activation is not known. In this work we studied trimethylated histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4me3) and lysine 27 (H3K27me3), two opposite histone methylation marks for gene activity, during the induction course of three ethylene-responsive genes (ERF1, AtERF14 and ChiB). We found that the three genes displayed different histone modification profiles before induction. After induction, H3K4me3 was increased in the 5′ region and the gene body of ERF1, while H3K27me3 was decreased in the promoter of AtERF14. But the modification changes were later than the gene activation. Analysis of other rapidly inducible ERF genes confirmed the observation. In addition, histone H2A.Z occupancy on the three genes and the association of the H3K27me3-binding protein LHP1 with AtERF14 and ChiB were not affected by the inductive signal. However, the mutation of genes encoding H2A.Z and LHP1 attenuated and enhanced respectively the induction of target genes and altered H3K4me3. These results indicate that the induction of ethylene-responsive genes does not require immediate modulation of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 and dissociation of LHP1 and H2A.Z from the targets, and suggest that the chromatin structure of the genes before induction is committed for transcriptional activation and that H3K4me3 is not required for ethylene-responsive gene activation, but may serve as a mark for gene activity.
Factors affecting job performance: an integrative review of literature

PurposeJob performance is an important variable, which primarily affects outcomes at three levels: the micro level (i.e. the individual), the meso level (i.e. the group) and the macro level (i.e. the organisation). This paper aims to identify, analyse and synthesise factors that affect job performance.Design/methodology/approachThrough an extensive integrative review of literature, this study identifies and classifies the factors that affect job performance. A synthesised model based on the schema of demands, resources and stressors is also developed.FindingsThe demands identified are grouped into physical, cognitive and affective. Stressors adversely affecting job performance are classified at an individual level, job level and family level. Finally, resources are classified at an individual level, job level, organisational level and social level.Research limitations/implicationsThis review enhances the job demands-resources (JD-R) model to job demands-resources-stressors (JD-R-S) model by identifying a separate category of variables that are neither job demands nor resources, but still impede job performance.Practical implicationsThe subgroups identified under demands, resources and stressors provide insights into job performance enhancement strategies, by changing, managing or optimising them.Originality/valueThis study helps in better understanding the factors that go on to impact job performance differentially, depending on the group to which they belong. It gives a holistic picture of factors affecting job performance, thereby integrating classifying and synthesising the vast literature on the topic.
A Formal Model for Integrated Retrieval from Software Libraries

The central problem associated with libraries of object-oriented software components is that of retrieval: how to nd in the library those components that can be used in the construction of a particular application. Approaches to this problem can be classiied into three categories based upon the way components are represented: external classiication, structural matching and behavioural. The aim of the research described in this paper is to unify these existing approaches to the component retrieval problem into a formally speciied object-oriented framework, providing a model enabling comparison and description of integrated retrieval schemes.
CReF: a central-residue-fragment-based method for predicting approximate 3-D polypeptides structures

In silico prediction of protein tertiary structure is one of the most important and unsolved problems in current structural bioinformatics. In this article, we describe CReF, a central-residue-fragment-based method to predict approximate 3-D polypeptides structures. With CReF we expect to obtain approximate 3-D structures which can then be used as starting conformations in refinement procedures employing state-of-the-art molecular mechanics methods such as molecular dynamics simulations. CReF does not make use of entire fragments, but only the phi, psi torsion angle information of the central residue in the template fragments obtained from PDB. After applying clustering techniques to these data, and guided by a consensus secondary structure prediction of the target sequence, we build approximate conformations for the target sequence. The method is very fast. We illustrate its efficacy in three case studies of polypeptides whose sizes vary from 34 to 70 amino acids. As indicated by the RMSD values, our initial results show that the predicted conformations adopt a fold similar to the experimental structures. Starting from these approximate conformations, the search space is expected to be greatly reduced and the refinement steps can consequently demand a much reduced computational effort to achieve a more accurate polypeptide 3-D structure.
Wotan: A tool for rapid evaluation of FPGA architecture routability without benchmarks

FPGA routing architectures consist of routing wires and programmable switches which together account for a significant portion of the fabric delay and area. Routing architectures have traditionally been evaluated using a full CAD flow with a suite of benchmark circuits. While the results of such a flow can be accurate, CAD tools are often tuned to a specific architecture type and can take a long time to run which prohibits quick exploration of different architectures early in the design process. In this paper we present an alternative approach that quickly estimates routability for a wide range of architectures without the use of benchmark circuits. Our new routability predictor first assigns congestion probabilities to the architecture's routing resources based on demand estimates found via efficient path enumeration through the routing graph. Next, we compute the probabilities of successfully routing different source/sink connections and finally we combine them to assign an overall routability score. We describe our predictor and present routability estimates for a range of 6-LUT and 4-LUT architectures, showing reasonable agreement with routability results from the full VPR CAD flow in much less CPU time.
Tactor placement in wrist worn wearables

Vibro-tactile stimulation has been revealed as a potentially effective means to deliver spontaneous notifications like alerts to recipients that are focused on other tasks (although only at very low bit rates, and depending on the place at which the tactors are placed). This work addresses the issue of the amount of information that can be perceived via stimuli coming from wrist worn tactors, given the recipient is not expecting or attentive to the potential occurrence of an alert. Assuming apparel like wrist watches with embedded tactors to represent the alert delivery platform, we investigate - respecting physiognomical properties of tactile perception-the effectiveness of different tactor placements. We compare the case of embedding 4 tactors underneath the “face” of the wrist watch, against the case of embedding it into the wristband (“wrist”). A user study of 1,823 trials has been conducted involving recipients exposed to different levels of engagement in a certain activity. The experiments show, that the amount of information perceived via spontaneous tactile alerts ranges from 1.90–2.49 bits at low, to 1.59–2.41 bits at high levels of engagement. The “wrist” tactor placement achieves a 41.6 % higher perception bit rate than the “face” tactor placement.
Dose-dependent Effects of Smoked Cannabis on Capsaicin-induced Pain and Hyperalgesia in Healthy Volunteers

Background:Although the preclinical literature suggests that cannabinoids produce antinociception and antihyperalgesic effects, efficacy in the human pain state remains unclear. Using a human experimental pain model, the authors hypothesized that inhaled cannabis would reduce the pain and hyperalgesia induced by intradermal capsaicin. Methods:In a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover trial in 15 healthy volunteers, the authors evaluated concentration–response effects of low-, medium-, and high-dose smoked cannabis (respectively 2%, 4%, and 8% 9-&dgr;-tetrahydrocannabinol by weight) on pain and cutaneous hyperalgesia induced by intradermal capsaicin. Capsaicin was injected into opposite forearms 5 and 45 min after drug exposure, and pain, hyperalgesia, tetrahydrocannabinol plasma levels, and side effects were assessed. Results:Five minutes after cannabis exposure, there was no effect on capsaicin-induced pain at any dose. By 45 min after cannabis exposure, however, there was a significant decrease in capsaicin-induced pain with the medium dose and a significant increase in capsaicin-induced pain with the high dose. There was no effect seen with the low dose, nor was there an effect on the area of hyperalgesia at any dose. Significant negative correlations between pain perception and plasma &dgr;-9-tetrahydrocannabinol levels were found after adjusting for the overall dose effects. There was no significant difference in performance on the neuropsychological tests. Conclusions:This study suggests that there is a window of modest analgesia for smoked cannabis, with lower doses decreasing pain and higher doses increasing pain.
Stochastic Query Covering for Fast Approximate Document Retrieval

We design algorithms that, given a collection of documents and a distribution over user queries, return a small subset of the document collection in such a way that we can efficiently provide high-quality answers to user queries using only the selected subset. This approach has applications when space is a constraint or when the query-processing time increases significantly with the size of the collection. We study our algorithms through the lens of stochastic analysis and prove that even though they use only a small fraction of the entire collection, they can provide answers to most user queries, achieving a performance close to the optimal. To complement our theoretical findings, we experimentally show the versatility of our approach by considering two important cases in the context of Web search. In the first case, we favor the retrieval of documents that are relevant to the query, whereas in the second case we aim for document diversification. Both the theoretical and the experimental analysis provide strong evidence of the potential value of query covering in diverse application scenarios.