Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biocontrol Activity of Volatile-Producing Bacillus megaterium and Pseudomonas protegens against Aspergillus flavus and Aflatoxin Production on Stored Rice Grains

Abstract In our previous study, three bacterial strains, Bacillus megaterium KU143, Microbacterium testaceum KU313, and Pseudomonas protegens AS15, were selected as effective biocontrol agents against Aspergillus flavus on stored rice grains. In this study, we evaluated the inhibitory effects of the volatiles produced by the strains on A. flavus growth and aflatoxin production on stored rice grains. The three strains significantly reduced mycelial growth of A. flavus in dual-culture assays compared with the negative control strain, Sphingomonas aquatilis KU408, and an untreated control. Of these tested strains, volatiles produced by B. megaterium KU143 and P. protegens AS15 markedly inhibited mycelial growth, sporulation, and conidial germination of A. flavus on agar medium and suppressed the fungal populations in rice grains. Moreover, volatiles produced by these two strains significantly reduced aflatoxin production in the rice grains by A. flavus. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the suppression of A. flavus aflatoxin production in rice grains using B. megaterium and P. protegens volatiles.
Long‐term follow‐up of Norwegian horses affected with acquired equine polyneuropathy

BACKGROUND Acquired equine polyneuropathy (AEP), a neurological disease clinically characterised by knuckling of metatarsophalangeal joints, has been described in numerous Nordic horses during the last 20 years. Although clinical recovery has been reported, large-scale data on long-term follow-up of survivors have been lacking. OBJECTIVES To describe long-term survival of AEP affected horses registered in Norway, with a focus on athletic performance and possible residual clinical signs connected to the disease. STUDY DESIGN A retrospective cohort study. METHODS The study includes 143 horses recorded with AEP in Norway from 2000 to 2012, with the follow-up period continuing until 2015. Participating owners of survivors completed a standardised questionnaire, providing information on disease and convalescence, management, performance-level and possible residual clinical signs. To investigate the follow-up of survivors, we performed 2 multivariable linear regression models. RESULTS The follow-up time of survivors was 1.0-14.5 years (median 5.3, interquartile range 2.5-7.2). Fifty-seven horses survived and all but 3 horses returned to previous or higher level of performance. However, possible disease-related residual clinical signs were reported in 14/57 horses. Forty-nine of the survivors were in athletic use at time of contact. The majority of survivors were categorised with low severity-grades at time of diagnosis and the initial grade was significantly associated with time to resumed training. Only 3 horses had experienced relapse/new attack during the follow-up period. MAIN LIMITATION Athletic performance was judged by owners, which renders a possible source of bias. CONCLUSIONS Although AEP is a potential fatal disease, most survivors will recover and return to minimum previous level of athletic performance. Some horses display residual clinical signs, but often without negative effect on performance and relapse of disease is rare.
Salient Object Detection with Chained Multi-Scale Fully Convolutional Network

In this paper, we proposed a novel method for effective salient object detection by designing a chained multi-scale fully convolutional network (CMSFCN). CMSFCN contained multiple single-scale fully convolutional networks (SSFCNs), which were integrated successively by using chained connections and generated saliency prediction results from coarse to fine. The chained connections not only combined the saliency prediction result from previous SSFCN with the input image of current SSFCN, but also combined the intermediate features from previous SSFCN and current SSFCN. With these chained connections, the sequential SSFCNs in CMSFCN automatically learned complemental and discriminative features to improve the saliency predictions progressively. Therefore, after jointly training CMSFCN with an end-to-end manner, precise saliency prediction results were produced under a coarse-to-fine behaviour. Compared with seven state-of-the-art CNN based salient object detection approaches over five benchmark datasets, experimental results demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of CMSFCN.
Removal of magnetoencephalographic artifacts with temporal signal‐space separation: Demonstration with single‐trial auditory‐evoked responses

Magnetic interference signals often hamper analysis of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements. Artifact sources in the proximity of the sensors cause strong and spatially complex signals that are particularly challenging for the existing interference‐suppression methods. Here we demonstrate the performance of the temporally extended signal space separation method (tSSS) in removing strong interference caused by external and nearby sources on auditory‐evoked magnetic fields—the sources of which are well established. The MEG signals were contaminated by normal environmental interference, by artificially produced additional external interference, and by nearby artifacts produced by a piece of magnetized wire in the subject's lip. After tSSS processing, even the single‐trial auditory responses had a good‐enough signal‐to‐noise ratio for detailed waveform and source analysis. Waveforms and source locations of the tSSS‐reconstructed data were in good agreement with the responses from the control condition without extra interference. Our results demonstrate that tSSS is a robust and efficient method for removing a wide range of different types of interference signals in neuromagnetic multichannel measurements. Hum Brain Mapp 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Parameter Estimation for a k-out-of-n: F System

We propose an expectation maximization algorithm to estimate the parameters of a k-out-of-n: F system. Components composing the system are independent and have exponential duration distributions. As an ideal model of a practical system, we cannot observe any component’s duration. The observation consists of lifetime data of the system. Based on a construction of a continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) for the system, we determine some probabilities and expectations conditional on the lifetime of the system. Then, we use an expectation maximization algorithm to estimate the system’s parameters. We carry out simulation studies to test the accuracy of the algorithm.
Effect of Acute Renal Failure upon Cell Division in the Jejunum: Radioautographic and Ultrastructural Studies in the Mouse

SummaryThe effect of acute renal failure upon cell division in the crypts of Lieberlühn of the jejunum was investigated by radio-autography with tritiated thymidine in mice. Acute renal failure was induced in different groups by intraperitoneal injection of the nephrotoxic agent uranyl nitrate or by urinary obstruction. Cell division was inhibited in both groups and was most pronounced with severe renal failure. The inhibition demonstrated closely resembled that found in the proliferating connective tissue cells of wounds and in the esophageal epithelium in acute renal failure. A general inhibitory effect of acute renal failure upon cell division is suggested. Normal ultrastructural appearances were found in jejunal epithelium in severe acute renal failure. Inhibition of cell renewal in acute renal failure may contribute to the development of uremic lesions in the digestive tract.
Convergence of Productivity: An Analysis of the Catch-up Hypothesis within a Panel of States

A consensus appears to have emerged in the literature that per capita income levels and/or levels of productivity in the industrialized market economies have converged significantly over the last century, and especially since the end of the second world war (see, e.g., Abramovitz, Baumol, Baumol and Wolff, De Long, Dollar and Wolff, Dowrick and Nguyen). The results of Abramovitz and Baumol, in particular, highlight these trends. They found an almost perfect inverse relation between labor productivity levels in 1870 and the rate of labor productivity growth between 1870 and 1979 among sixteen OECD countries. Abramovitz also investigated subperiods and found that labor productivity convergence was much slower in the period before World War II than after. Indeed, even in the postwar period, there is evidence from Abramovitz and from Baumol and Wolff that productivity convergence slowed during the 1970s, though this is disputed by Dowrick and Nguyen, who find parameter stability in their catch-up model between preand post-1973 periods when controlling for growth of factor intensities. Results of De Long show little evidence of productivity convergence over the last century when the sample is no longer restricted to OECD countries. However, Baumol and Wolff, using the Summers and Heston’s sample, which covers countries at all levels of development, find convergence in real GDP per capita among the top third or so of the countries over the 1950– 81 period, though it was weaker than among OECD countries alone. More recently, Dollar and Wolff find evidence of convergence of to-
Technical Memorandum Number 819 Centralization vs . Competition in Subcontracting Operations

Consider a set of manufacturers all of which can outsource part of their workload to a third-party in first-come-first-serve order, each with the objective of completing his workload the soonest possible. The resulting manufacturer strategies are not optimal for the system and especially, they do not necessarily result to maximum utilization of the third-party capacity. For this reason, the third-party finds an optimal centralized schedule and devises a savings sharing scheme that makes it more profitable for all manufacturers to follow the centralized schedule rather than the original. In this article we develop optimal centralized strategies and incentive schemes. Then, we perform a computational experiment that quantifies the value of coordination in this production chain first against the original schedule and then against Nash equilibrium schedules under complete or incomplete information. We found that more information benefits dramatically the third-party and the players individually but that they dissipate quickly. Also, we find that competition with complete information under-utilizes third-party capacity by about 7.5% and severely for incomplete information. In contrast, randomly generated schedules without information sharing underutilize the third-party by about 6%. However, Nash (FCFS) schedules provide very strong (weaker) incentives for coordination because our allocation scheme allocates 70% (50%)of the savings to the losers who comprise 53% (42%) of the manufacturers. Our findings lead to policy guidelines that facilitate centralization by allotting a large portion of the savings to the losers. ∗Weatherhead School of Management, Department. of Operations, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7235, gxv5@case.edu †Decision Sciences Department, Lundquist College of Business, 1208 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 974031208, tolga@uoregon.edu
Decission support system for candidates classification in the employment process based on ANFIS method

The aim of this work is to create a decision support system based on Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), which will be used for objective classification of employees in the employment process by analyzing available information about the candidates. Information about the candidates is extracted from the relevant documents on one company during the advertising for job in Information Technology (IT) sector. Filtration and normalization of the data were performed after they had been acquired, the decision support system being realized was implemented in the form of hybrid model, made of fuzzy logic synthesis and neural network, as well as presented by acronym ANFIS. The initial ANFIS system is divided into two subsystems as the result of complexity of the very problem, as well as of more attributes. By training and testing (checking) the obtained Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) structures, the one with the lowest error is chosen. The operation of the network has been demonstrated by the valuable simulation model. The successful validation of the resulting system has been made by validation data.
User cooperation enabled traffic offloading in urban hotspots

In this paper, we propose to serve the mobile stations in an urban traffic hotspot by combining user cooperation with traffic offloading to the vast amount of residential WLAN access points. Different to existing virtual MIMO approaches, we include local users, which are assigned to the access points and compete for the physical resources. Furthermore, all signal processing shall be done on the mobile station side. This makes the protocol fully transparent for the access points and allows it to be overlaid on the existing infrastructure and protocols. We thereby discuss the necessary coordination with the local users and suggest a hybrid protocol implementation with distributed spatial multiplexing for the WLAN access at 2.4 GHz and a local exchange with message flooding at 60 GHz, all with single omnidirectional antennas. Using a numerical simulation framework with realistic parameters and channel models, the protocol is thoroughly evaluated, considering multiple clusters and spatial reuse. It is thereby shown that the 60 GHz exchange is very efficient even with omnidirectional antennas. For a moderate cluster size of 16 nodes per cluster, a 10 fold increase in the sum rate is achieved. By scaling the bandwidth for the user cooperation this gain can be further scaled.
Endogenous morphine and codeine in the brain of non human primate.

BACKGROUND Morphine is the most used compound among narcotic analgesics. Apart from its presence in the poppy plant, morphine has been shown to be endogenously present in different tissues of mammals and lower animals. MATERIAL/METHODS The presence of endogenous morphine and codeine was investigated by Gas Chromatography/ Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) in the brain of non human primate. The release of endogenous morphine from monkey brain slices was studied in vitro in the presence of high potassium concentrations with and without calcium in the medium. RESULTS Endogenous morphine, and its direct precursor codeine, was for the first time detected by GC/MS in the brain of non human primate. High potassium concentrations depolarized neurons releasing endogenous morphine twofold above basal line levels in a calcium dependent mechanism. CONCLUSIONS This finding confirms the presence of the endogenous alkaloid throughout the phylogenesis of the nerve system of mammals and lower animals and indicates that endogenous morphine might function as a neuromodulator/neurotransmitter agent in the central nervous system (CNS) of non human primates.
Comparison of ribotyping and genome fingerprinting of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis patients

Forty Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains, previously characterized by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, were ribotyped with EcoRI, BamHI, ClaI, and PvuII. Ribotyping with PvuII proved to be as discriminatory as pulsed-field gel electrophoresis with XbaI or DraI while EcoRI and BamHI were not. ClaI contributed further ribotypes, some of which might be due to a transposable element.
Customized Selection and Integration of Visualization (CVIS) Tool for Instructors

Instructors are not using well-designed computer-based visualization as widely as expected. Even among instructors using visualizations in teaching, their integration strategy is not aligned to their objectives with the visualization to bring about effective learning. As a result, the higher level learning outcomes possible with visualizations is often missed. In such context, we present a web-based tool, Customized Visualization Selection and Integration (CVIS) tool that selects visualizations customized to the specified instructional setting. It also guides instructors to implement the appropriate instructional strategy with visualization that is aligned to their instructional objective. The tool has been pilot tested for usefulness and effectiveness with engineering instructors with instructors accepting it as a practical solution towards effective teaching with visualizations.
Modeling an electrically driven graphene-nanoribbon laser for optical interconnects

Graphene has two very important optical properties of population inversion of electrons, and broadband optical gain. As a result, graphene has potential for use in lasers and amplifiers. In this work, we presented a quantum master model and analyzed the properties for the electrically pumped single-AGNR vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) to investigate the lasing action and laser properties for realistic experimental parameters. A semiclassical approximation for the output power and laser linewidth is also derived. The laser threshold power was several orders of magnitude lower than that currently achievable with semiconductor microlasers. Our results have demonstrated that a single-AGNR VCSEL can serve as a nanolaser with ultralow lasing threshold. Implementation of such a GNR-based VCSEL is especially promising for optical interconnection systems since VCSELs emit low optical power and single longitudinal mode over a wide wavelength spectral range through tailoring GNRs.
Widespread vegetative compatibility groups in the dry-rot fungus Serpula lacrymans

Serpula lacrymans is the most notorious decayer of wooden buildings in temperate regions. The occurrence of geographically widespread vegetative compatibility groups (VCG) in S. lacrymans in Europe is demonstrated in this study. Among 22 heterokaryotic isolates of S. lacrymans, five VCG were found. The most widespread VCG included isolates from Belgium, south and central Norway, separated by more than 1500 km. No other genetic variation, measured as DNA sequence variation or ISSR polymorphisms, was detected between the investigated S. lacrymans isolates, whereas a considerable level of genetic variation was found among five European isolates of the sister taxon, S. himantioides. It is hypothesised that isolates of S. lacrymans have lost their ability to recognize self from nonself due to sharing of similar VC alleles, caused by a recent genetic bottleneck during the establishment in northern Europe. Isolates re-isolated from overlapping mycelial zones between different compatible isolates had significantly slower growth than that of the original isolates and the different isolates within a VCG had different growth morphology, indicating that isolates within a single VCG may belong to different genets.
A systematic approach to classifier selection on combining multiple classifiers for handwritten digit recognition

Much research has been done on combining multiple classifiers for handwritten character recognition to improve the performance of the classifier. Given a fixed set of classifiers using the same or different kinds of feature set, they focus on a methodology to combine all of the classifiers. In this paper, given a variable set of classifiers, we focus on a methodology to determine which subset of classifiers achieves the optimal combination results. In order to evaluate the dependency between classifiers, we propose a similarity measure between them which can be calculated from the errors generated by each classifier. This similarity measure allows us to compare the performance of one combination case relative to those of the other cases without performing any experiments. Using five individual neural net classifiers with different feature sets [gradient, structural, UDLRH (up-down left-right hole), mesh and LSF (large stroke feature)], we perform handwritten digit recognition experiments. With three combination methods [majority voting, Borda count and LCA (linear confidence accumulation)], we perform combination experiments for all possible cases of three classifiers selected from among the above five. Then, we compare their rankings in terms of the recognition rate with that in terms of the similarity measure. This comparison shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Group on Human-ComputerInteraction 1-1-2011 Measuring the Mobile User Experience : Conceptualization and Empirical Assessment

User experience is commonly considered important for IT adoption and use. However, a formal measure that captures a user’s holistic experience obtained through the use of an IT artifact has not been developed. In this study, we propose a new measure of user experience and examine its validity using the data collected from over 240 smartphone mobile users in South Korea. Based on prior research on brand experience in marketing, we conceptualize user experience as a second order construct with four sub-dimensions. The convergent and discriminant validity of the measurement items of mobile user experience is examined along with the established measurement items of the cognitive absorption, which is similar to the proposed construct in that both capture what a user has experienced while interacting with an IT artifact. Further, we examine the effects of the proposed construct on perceived usefulness, satisfaction, and continuous intention.
Barriers to participation in a randomized controlled trial of Qigong exercises amongst cancer survivors: lessons learnt.

BACKGROUND Clinical trials on cancer subjects have one of the highest dropout rates. Barriers to recruitment range from patient-related, through institutional-related to staff-related factors. This paper highlights the low response rate and the recruitment barriers faced in our Qigong exercises trial. MATERIALS AND METHOD The Qigong trial is a three-arm trial with a priori power size of 114 patients for 80% power. The University Malaya Medical Centre database showed a total of 1,933 patients from 2006-2010 and 751 patients met our inclusion criteria. These patients were approached via telephone interview. 131 out of 197 patients attended the trial and the final response rate was 48% (n=95/197). RESULTS Multiple barriers were identified, and were regrouped as patient- related, clinician-related and/or institutional related. A major consistent barrier was logistic difficulty related to transportation and car parking at the Medical Centre. conclusions: All clinical trials must pay considerable attention to the recruitment process and it should even be piloted to identify potential barriers and facilitators to reduce attrition rate in trials.
Effective components of Chinese herbs reduce central nervous system function decline induced by iron overload

Abnormally increased levels of iron in the brain trigger cascade amplification in Alzheimer′s disease patients, resulting in neuronal death. This study investigated whether components extracted from the Chinese herbs epimedium herb, milkvetch root and kudzuvine root could relieve the abnormal expression of iron metabolism-related protein in Alzheimer′s disease patients. An APP swe/PS1ΔE9 double transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer′s disease was used. The intragastric administration of compounds from epimedium herb, milkvetch root and kudzuvine root improved pathological alterations such as neuronal edema, increased the number of neurons, downregulated divalent metal transporter 1 expression, upregulated ferroportin 1 expression, and inhibited iron overload in the cerebral cortex of mice with Alzheimer′s disease. These compounds reduced iron overload-induced impairment of the central nervous system, indicating a new strategy for developing novel drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer′s disease.