Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrating dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory with traditional bioenergetic models

Summary Dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory offers a systematic, though abstract, way to describe how an organism acquires and uses energy and essential elements for physiological processes, in addition to how physiological performance is influenced by environmental variables such as food density and temperature. A ‘standard’ DEB model describes the performance (growth, development, reproduction, respiration, etc.) of all life stages of an animal (embryo to adult), and predicts both intraspecific and interspecific variation in physiological rates. This approach contrasts with a long tradition of more phenomenological and parameter-rich bioenergetic models that are used to make predictions from species-specific rate measurements. These less abstract models are widely used in fisheries studies; they are more readily interpretable than DEB models, but lack the generality of DEB models. We review the interconnections between the two approaches and present formulae relating the state variables and fluxes in the standard DEB model to measured bioenergetic rate processes. We illustrate this synthesis for two large fishes: Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) and Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). For each, we have a parameter-sparse, full-life-cycle DEB model that requires adding only a few species-specific features to the standard model. Both models allow powerful integration of knowledge derived from data restricted to certain life stages, processes and environments.
Modulation of mandibular loading and bite force in mammals during mastication

SUMMARY Modulation of force during mammalian mastication provides insight into force modulation in rhythmic, cyclic behaviors. This study uses in vivo bone strain data from the mandibular corpus to test two hypotheses regarding bite force modulation during rhythmic mastication in mammals: (1) that bite force is modulated by varying the duration of force production, or (2) that bite force is modulated by varying the rate at which force is produced. The data sample consists of rosette strain data from 40 experiments on 11 species of mammals, including six primate genera and four nonprimate species: goats, pigs, horses and alpacas. Bivariate correlation and multiple regression methods are used to assess relationships between maximum (ϵ1) and minimum (ϵ2) principal strain magnitudes and the following variables: loading time and mean loading rate from 5% of peak to peak strain, unloading time and mean unloading rate from peak to 5% of peak strain, chew cycle duration, and chew duty factor. Bivariate correlations reveal that in the majority of experiments strain magnitudes are significantly (P<0.001) correlated with strain loading and unloading rates and not with strain loading and unloading times. In those cases when strain magnitudes are also correlated with loading times, strain magnitudes are more highly correlated with loading rate than loading time. Multiple regression analyses reveal that variation in strain magnitude is best explained by variation in loading rate. Loading time and related temporal variables (such as overall chew cycle time and chew duty factor) do not explain significant amounts of additional variance. Few and only weak correlations were found between strain magnitude and chew cycle time and chew duty factor. These data suggest that bite force modulation during rhythmic mastication in mammals is mainly achieved by modulating the rate at which force is generated within a chew cycle, and less so by varying temporal parameters. Rate modulation rather than time modulation may allow rhythmic mastication to proceed at a relatively constant frequency, simplifying motor control computation. )
Determination of the Two-Dimensional ARMA Model Order Using Rank Test Based Approach

Determination of the order of a two-dimensional (2-D) ARMA model is a key first step toward the goal of modeling a process. In this paper, a rank test approach for 2-D ARMA model order determination is proposed. This method shows that the information of AR and MA orders are implicitly contained in two different correlation matrices and the AR and MA orders of the 2-D ARMA model can be independently determined before parameter estimation. In the proposed method, the model is assumed causal, stable, linear, and spatial shift-invariant with P1times P2 quarter plane (QP) support. Analysis and simulation results demonstrate the applicability of this approach.
Mutation of pfm affects the adherence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to host cells and the quorum sensing system.

The Pseudomonas aeruginosa quorum sensing (QS) system is controlled by the signal molecules acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) that are synthesized from acyl enoyl-acyl carrier proteins (acyl-ACPs) provided by the fatty acid biosynthesis cycle. Pfm (PA2950), an enoyl-CoA reductase, has previously been shown to affect swimming mobility and fatty acid biosynthesis. In this report, we further show that pfm influences bacterial adherence to human cells. Microarray assay results suggest that pfm affects bacterial adherence through its influence on the QS system. Further experiments confirmed that the pfm mutant strain produces significantly less QS signal molecules than the corresponding wild-type strain. Using strains Escherichia coli DH5α(pECP64, lasB'-lacZ) and E. coli DH5α(pECP61.5, rhlA'-lacZ), biosensors for N-(3-oxododecanoyl) homoserine lactone (3O-C(12) -HSL) and N-butyryl homoserine lactone (C(4) -HSL), respectively, we found that pfm mutant strain produces decreased amounts of both signal molecules. Elastase activity and pyocyanin measurements further confirmed the reduced levels of 3O-C(12) -HSL and C(4) -HSL in the pfm mutant. Finally, bacterial virulence, as assessed by the Caenorhabditis elegans worm killing assay, is decreased in the pfm mutant. Taken together, these data indicate that pfm can be an important target for the control of P. aeruginosa infectivity.
THE APPLICATION OF THE CRITICAL INCIDENT TECHNIQUE TO INVESTIGATE EMAIL USAGE: CONTRIBUTION TO THEORY AND PRACTICE

In the past years, a number of academics criticized MIS research for its low practical contributions. One approach to overcome this issue is the critical incident technique. The goal of this project is to demonstrate the application of the critical incident technique to study user interaction with email systems. The outcome is a set of practical recommendations together with a valid theoretical framework.
Emotion recognition from color facial images based on multilinear image analysis and Log-Gabor filters

A novel approach is proposed for emotion recognition from low resolution color facial images. The 3D color images are unfolded to 2D matrix based on multilinear algebra. Then, the features are extracted from them by Log-Gabor filters. The optimum features are selected based on mutual information. These features are classified using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier. Experimental results carry out that the proposed method has large improvement in emotion recognition for 3D color facial images. Furthermore, the color subspace has a great impact in the rate of emotion recognition from low resolution images.
Multivariate quadratic trapdoor functions based on multivariate quadratic quasigroups

We have designed a new class of multivariate quadratic trapdoor functions. The trapdoor functions are generated by quasigroup string transformations based on a class of quasigroups called multivariate quadratic quasi-groups (MQQ). The public key schemes using these trapdoor functions are bijective mappings, they do not perform message expansions and can be used both for encryption and signatures. The public key consist of n quadratic polynomials with n variables where n = 140; 160; 180,. A particular characteristic of our public key scheme is that it is very fast; it has the speed of decryption/signature generation as a typical symmetric block cipher.
Concurrency and locality of content demand

Distribution of media data over the Internet is increasing in popularity and volume. This poses challenges not only for network operators but also for service providers when it comes to serving the demand in a cost-efficient way. In this paper, we approach this problem by investigating the potential of co-operative approaches where locality in space (users in the same network) and locality in time (concurrent downloads) are exploited such that as many requests as possible may be handled inside the access and metro networks. This approach may contribute not only to reducing transport costs (less traffic in core networks and at peering points) by but also improve the end user experience (by reduced round trip times and exclusion of some possible bottlenecks). To this end we develop a method to measure the possible gains from, firstly, optimal handling of concurrent downloads and, secondly, optimal utilization local availability. We apply the method to BitTorrent data from two metropolitan access networks and find that the bandwidth savings amount to between 10% and 20% when optimizing concurrent downloads and between 56% and 66% when exploiting local availability with a simulated network cache.
Operational Skill Training Needs Analysis for Manufacturing Industry

Manufacturers face the problem of how to enhance the operational skill of the operators, with the purpose of improving overall efficiency and quality. A three-step method is offered in this paper to solve the problem. The method includes key position analysis, key motion cells analysis, and key skill cells analysis. Key positions are observed by bottleneck and CTQ analysis from all positions. Key motions cells are found by five principles from key positions. And key skill cells are found by cluster analysis and simulation from key motion cells. Empirical results show that the three-step method can extract information from the operations in plant to form the key skill cells with high efficiency and precision. The three-step method can effectively help us observe the key motions and transfer them into key skill cells which will be the fundament for skill training, and thus the problem of operational skill training needs analysis is solved.
The Economics of Strategic Opportunity by Jerker Denrell

As emphasized by Barney (1986), any explanation of superior profitability must account for why the resources supporting such profitability could have been acquired for a price below their rent generating capacity. Building upon the literature in economics on coordination failures and incomplete markets, we suggest a framework for analyzing such strategic factor market inefficiencies. Our point of departure is that a strategic opportunity exists whenever prices fail to reflect the value of a resource’s best use. This paper examines the challenges of imputing a resource’s value in the absence of explicit price guidance and suggests the likely characteristics of strategic opportunities. Our framework also suggests that the discovery of strategic opportunity is often a matter of “serendipity” and access to relevant idiosyncratic resources. This latter observation provides prescriptive advice, although the analysis also explains why more detailed guidance has to be firm specific.
Bacteriophage P1 Ban protein is a hexameric DNA helicase that interacts with and substitutes for Escherichia coli DnaB.

Since the ban gene of bacteriophage P1 suppresses a number of conditionally lethal dnaB mutations in Escherichia coli, it was assumed that Ban protein is a DNA helicase (DnaB analogue) that can substitute for DnaB in the host replication machinery. We isolated and sequenced the ban gene, purified the product, and analysed the function of Ban protein in vitro and in vivo. Ban hydrolyses ATP, unwinds DNA and forms hexamers in the presence of ATP and magnesium ions. Since all existing conditionally lethal dnaB strains bear DnaB proteins that may interfere with the protein under study, we constructed a dnaB null strain by using a genetic set-up designed to provoke the conditional loss of the entire dnaB gene from E.coli cells. This novel tool was used to show that Ban restores the viability of cells that completely lack DnaB at 30 degrees C, but not at 42 degrees C. Surprisingly, growth was restored by the dnaB252 mutation at a temperature that is restrictive for ban and dnaB252 taken separately. This indicates that Ban and DnaB are able to interact in vivo. Complementary to these results, we demonstrate the formation of DnaB-Ban hetero-oligomers in vitro by ion exchange chromatography. We discuss the interaction of bacterial proteins and their phage-encoded analogues to fulfil functions that are essential to phage and host growth.
Subjective assessment of frame loss concealment methods in 3D video

This paper investigates the subjective impact resulting from different concealment methods for coping with lost frames in 3D video communication systems. It is assumed that a high priority channel is assigned to the main view and only the auxiliary view is subject to either transmission errors or packet loss, leading to missing frames at the decoder output. Three methods are used for frame concealment under different loss ratios. The results show that depth is well perceived by users and the subjective impact of frame loss not only depends on the concealment method but also exhibits high correlation with the disparity of the original sequence. It is also shown that under heavy loss conditions it is better to switch from 3D to 2D rather than presenting concealed 3D video to users.
Huffman coding and decoding using Android

Code compression technique is used for the reduction of codes to allow transportation of digital data from the transmitter (source) to the receiver (destination). These fixed length codes are converted into variable length codes having varied number of bits. The Huffman coding technique is found to be an optimal solution of transportation of data. It generally follows the Lossless Compression technique where symbols in encoded data are converted into a binary symbol and this precomputed text availed is further divided into blocks having variable lengths and condensed under efficient algorithm encoding procedure using code words having limited value. To increase the compression ratio these code words could be reused for encoding different compatible blocks. An Android app is been created to portray this technique for the ease understanding.
Extending Greenland temperature records into the late eighteenth century

[1] At present, continuous instrumental temperature records for Greenland reach back to the late nineteenth century at a few sites. Combining early observational records from locations along the south and west coasts, it has been possible to extend the overall record back to the year 1784. The new extended Greenland temperature record is 9% incomplete. There are, however, sufficient new data (an additional 74 complete winters and 52 complete summers) to provide a valuable indication of late eighteenth century and nineteenth century seasonal trends. Comparison of the previously published records with additional observational series digitized from Danish Meteorological Institute Yearbooks has also revealed inhomogeneities in some of the existing twentieth century temperature records. These problems have been eliminated in the new extended Greenland temperature record. A long homogeneous west Greenland instrumental temperature record is of great value for the interpretation of the growing number of Greenland ice core records. A first comparison of the new record with highly resolved Greenland ice core data is presented. Correlations between west Greenland winter temperatures and the ice core winter season proxy are found to be r = 0.67 and r = 0.60 for the periods 1785– 1872 and 1873–1970, respectively.
Clustering based association rule mining on online stores for optimized cross product recommendation

The Online Shopping Experience has opened the new ways of business and shopping. Now the traditional terms of shopping have been changed and new terms to shop online emerge into customers' online shopping behaviors and preferences. Extracting interesting shopping patterns from ever increasing data is not a trivial task. We need intelligent association rule mining of the available data; that can be practically knowledgeable for the online retail stores, so that they can make viable business decisions. This paper will help to understand the importance of data mining techniques, i.e., association rules, clustering and concept hierarchy in order to provide business intelligence for improved sales, marketing and consumers' satisfaction.
Predicting participation restriction in community-dwelling older men: the Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project.

BACKGROUND participation restriction, defined as 'problems an individual may experience in involvement in life situations' (e.g. work and leisure), reflects difficulty functioning at a societal level and is a key component of disability. Our objective was to describe changes in participation in older men over a 2-year period and to identify baseline variables associated with participation and change in participation over the 2-year period. METHODS one thousand and three hundred and twenty-seven community-dwelling men aged 70 years or over who completed the baseline and 2-year follow-up phases of the Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project, a population-based cohort study in Sydney, Australia, were studied. Participation restriction and a range of other variables were measured using self-report and performance measures. Regression analyses were conducted to examine factors associated with participation and change in participation. RESULTS over the 2-year period, participation in life roles deteriorated in 47.3% (627/1,327) of men, stayed the same in 20.7% (275/1,327) and improved in the remainder (32.0%). Overall, there was a significant deterioration in participation (P < 0.001). Reduced participation at 2-year follow-up was significantly associated with the following baseline factors: age, more comorbidities, mild cognitive impairment or dementia, lower mood, weakness, slower gait, worse activities of daily living performance, driving and baseline participation score. These variables explained 56% of the variance in participation at 2 years. CONCLUSION participation in life roles worsened over a 2-year period in some community-dwelling older men. A number of associated factors were identified, which may provide targets for intervention to improve participation among older men.
Examining the Coherence of the Top Ranked Tweet Topics

Topic modelling approaches help scholars to examine the topics discussed in a corpus. Due to the popularity of Twitter, two distinct methods have been proposed to accommodate the brevity of tweets: the tweet pooling method and Twitter LDA. Both of these methods demonstrate a higher performance in producing more interpretable topics than the standard Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) when applied on tweets. However, while various metrics have been proposed to estimate the coherence of the generated topics from tweets, the coherence of the top ranked topics, those that are most likely to be examined by users, has not been investigated. In addition, the effect of the number of generated topics K on the topic coherence scores has not been studied. In this paper, we conduct large-scale experiments using three topic modelling approaches over two Twitter datasets, and apply a state-of-the-art coherence metric to study the coherence of the top ranked topics and how K affects such coherence. Inspired by ranking metrics such as precision at n, we use coherence at n to assess the coherence of a topic model. To verify our results, we conduct a pairwise user study to obtain human preferences over topics. Our findings are threefold: we find evidence that Twitter LDA outperforms both LDA and the tweet pooling method because the top ranked topics it generates have more coherence; we demonstrate that a larger number of topics (K) helps to generate topics with more coherence; and finally, we show that coherence at n is more effective when evaluating the coherence of a topic model than the average coherence score.
Brain Ultrasonography Findings in Neonatal Seizure; a Cross-sectional Study

Introduction: Screening of newborns with seizure, who have curable pathologic brain findings, might be able to improve their final outcome by accelerating treatment intervention. The present study aimed to evaluate the brain ultrasonography findings of newborns hospitalized with complaint of seizure. Methods: The present cross-sectional study designed to evaluate brain ultrasonography findings of hospitalized newborns complaining seizure. Neonatal seizure was defined as presence of tonic, clonic, myoclonic, and subtle attacks in 1 - 28 day old newborns. Results: 100 newborns with the mean age of 5.82 ± 6.29 days were evaluated (58% male). Most newborns were in the < 10 days age range (76%), term (83%) and with normal birth weight (81%). 22 (22%) of the ultrasonography examinations showed a pathologic finding. A correlation was only found between birth age and probability of the presence of a pathologic problem in the brain as the frequency of these problems was significantly higher in pre-term newborns (p = 0.023). Conclusion: Based on the findings of the present study, frequency of pathologic findings in neonatal brain ultrasonography was 22%. Hemorrhage (12%) and hydrocephaly (7%) were the most common findings. The only factor correlating with increased probability of positive findings was the newborns being pre-term.
THE CIRCUMNUCLEAR STAR FORMATION ENVIRONMENT OF NGC 6946: Br γ AND H2 RESULTS FROM KECK INTEGRAL FIELD SPECTROSCOPY

We present a three-dimensional data cube of the K-band continuum and the Br γ, H2 S(0), and S(1) lines within the central 18. ″5 × 13. ″8 (520 pc × 390 pc) region of NGC 6946. Data were obtained using OSIRIS, a near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph at Keck Observatory, with Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics. The 0. ″3 resolution allows us to investigate the stellar bulge and the forming star clusters in the nuclear region on 10 pc scales. We detect giant H ii regions associated with massive young star clusters in the nuclear spiral/ring (R ∼ 30 pc) and in the principal shocks along the nuclear bar. Comparisons of the Br γ fluxes with Pa α line emission and radio continuum indicate AK ∼ 3, AV ∼ 25 for the nuclear star-forming regions. The most luminous H ii regions are restricted to within 70 pc of the center, despite the presence of high gas columns at larger radii (R ∼ 200 pc). H2 emission is restricted to clouds within R ∼ 60 pc of the center, resembling the distribution of HCN line emission. We propose that gas-assisted migration of the young star clusters is contributing to the buildup of the nuclear bar and nuclear star cluster (R < 30 pc) in this galaxy.
Efficacy and Safety of Emergency Ureteroscopic Management of Ureteral Calculi

Purpose To evaluate the efficacy and safety of the ureteroscopic management of ureteral stones immediately after a first colic attack. Materials and Methods We retrospectively analyzed the data of 226 patients with obstructive ureteral stones who underwent ureteroscopy with stone retrieval. The 67 patients in group A underwent ureteroscopy within 48 hours of admission to our emergency department, whereas the 159 patients in group B underwent ureteroscopy more than 48 hours after admission. The chi-square test was used to evaluate and compare stone-free status, auxiliary procedures, and complications and the Kruskal-Wallis and Fisher's exact tests were used to analyze qualitative data. Results Mean stone sizes in groups A and B were 2.41±1.62 mm and 4.11±2.64 mm, respectively. No patient experienced a major complication during or after the procedure. Stone-free rates were 89.55% and 89.93%, respectively. Conclusions Emergency ureteroscopy in cases of obstructive ureteral stones is both safe and effective and offers the advantages of immediate stone fragmentation and the relief of acute-onset colic pain.