Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cohesin Rings Devoid of Scc3 and Pds5 Maintain Their Stable Association with the DNA

Cohesin is a protein complex that forms a ring around sister chromatids thus holding them together. The ring is composed of three proteins: Smc1, Smc3 and Scc1. The roles of three additional proteins that associate with the ring, Scc3, Pds5 and Wpl1, are not well understood. It has been proposed that these three factors form a complex that stabilizes the ring and prevents it from opening. This activity promotes sister chromatid cohesion but at the same time poses an obstacle for the initial entrapment of sister DNAs. This hindrance to cohesion establishment is overcome during DNA replication via acetylation of the Smc3 subunit by the Eco1 acetyltransferase. However, the full mechanistic consequences of Smc3 acetylation remain unknown. In the current work, we test the requirement of Scc3 and Pds5 for the stable association of cohesin with DNA. We investigated the consequences of Scc3 and Pds5 depletion in vivo using degron tagging in budding yeast. The previously described DHFR–based N-terminal degron as well as a novel Eco1-derived C-terminal degron were employed in our study. Scc3 and Pds5 associate with cohesin complexes independently of each other and require the Scc1 “core” subunit for their association with chromosomes. Contrary to previous data for Scc1 downregulation, depletion of either Scc3 or Pds5 had a strong effect on sister chromatid cohesion but not on cohesin binding to DNA. Quantity, stability and genome-wide distribution of cohesin complexes remained mostly unchanged after the depletion of Scc3 and Pds5. Our findings are inconsistent with a previously proposed model that Scc3 and Pds5 are cohesin maintenance factors required for cohesin ring stability or for maintaining its association with DNA. We propose that Scc3 and Pds5 specifically function during cohesion establishment in S phase.
Psychopathy as a Predictor Variable of The Disposition to Steal

espanol: El proposito del estudio fue comparar la capacidad predictiva de la psicopatia y algunas variables sociodemograficas, sobre la disposicion a robar. La muestra estaba compuesta por 100 prisioneros (86 hombres y 14 mujeres; M = 30.21 anos, DE = 8.42) y 100 participantes de poblacion general (86 hombres y 14 mujeres; M = 26.86 anos, DE = 7.31). La psicopatia y la disposicion a robar se midieron con autoreportes, y se usaron varios analisis de regresion multiple. Los resultados muestran que solo en los presos las variables sociodemograficas tienen valor predictivo (R² = 3.20%, tamano del efecto pequeno). La psicopatia predice significativamente la disposicion a robar, con un tamano del efecto grande, tanto en la comunidad (R² = 67.90%) como en los presos (R² = 72.80%). El componente interpersonal (R² = 75.30%) predice mucho mejor que el afectivo (R² = 23%) en presos, pero el afectivo (R² = 51.20%) predice casi tan bien como el interpersonal (R² = 63.40%) en la poblacion general. Se discuten las implicaciones de los hallazgos para la investigacion, el diagnostico y la intervencion. EnglishThe aim of this study was to compare the capacity of psychopathy and some socio-demographic variables in the prediction of the disposition to steal. The sample was composed of 100 prisoners (86 men and 14 women; M = 30.21 years, SD = 8.42) and 100 participants from general community (86 men and 14 women; M = 26.86 years, SD = 7.31). Psychopathy and disposition to steal were assessed through self-report scales and several multiple-regression techniques were performed. Results show that socio-demographic variables are significant predictors of the disposition to steal only in the group of prison population (effect size was small, R² = 3.20%). The psychopathy is a significant predictor of the disposition to steal among prison population (large effect size: R² = 72.80%) as well as among participants from the general community (large effect size: R² = 67.90%). The interpersonal dimension of psychopathy has a greater predictive value (R² = 75.30%) than the affective dimension (R² = 23%) among prisoners; nevertheless, the predictive values of the affective dimension (R² = 51.20%) and the interpersonal dimension (R² = 63.40%) are similar among participants from the general community. The implications of these findings for diagnosis, intervention and future research are discussed.
A novel AES-256 implementation on FPGA using co-processor based architecture

Efficient hardware architecture for cryptographic algorithms are of utmost need for implementing secured data communication in embedded applications. The hardware implementation of the algorithms though provides less flexibility, but are faster and requires less resource as compared to the software implementation, and hence ideally suited for target specific embedded systems. Though, there exist quite a few research works that propose hardware design for implementing cryptographic algorithm on various hardware platforms like application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), field programmable gate array (FPGA) and micro-controllers, still there lies the need of better hardware design in terms of larger key values, higher throughput and less resource utilization.
On the Behaviour of ACO Algorithms : Studies on Simple Problems

Ant Colony Optimization is a metaheuristic that has been applied successfully to several optimization problems (for an overview see Dorigo and Di Caro [2]). Usually ant algorithms have been tested on benchmark problems or real world problems. In this paper we start studying the behaviour of ants algorithms on simple problems. The aim of this study is to show that some interesting aspects of ant algorithms can be observed on quite simple problems. These observations help to understand the behaviour of ant algorithms on more complex problems. Moreover, we propose a new pheromone evaluation method, called relative pheromone evaluation, which performs better than the standard method on some of our test problems. We argue that relative pheromone evaluation will be interesting also for solving more complex problems.
Image based drinks identification for dietary assessment

In this paper, we propose a method to detect and recognize different types of drinks with a view to estimate its nutrient values using vision based algorithms. We use visual saliency and thresholding techniques to segment out the drink region from the image. After detection, both speed up robust features and color based visual features are used to create a Bag of Features (BoF). This BoF model is employed for recognition of drinks. Based on experimentation, our proposed method confirms that it is capable of detecting and recognizing different drinks categories with an accuracy greater than 89%.
‘On the outside I’m smiling but inside I’m crying’: communication successes and challenges for undergraduate academic writing

Abstract Student difficulties with the transition to writing in higher education are well documented whether from a ‘study skills’, an ‘academic socialisation’ or an ‘academic literacies’ perspective. In order to more closely examine the challenges faced by students from widening participation backgrounds and diverse routes into undergraduate study, this project focuses on first-year undergraduate experiences of developing academic literacies on an Education Studies programme at one university in England. It highlights the impact of different support and guidance within and beyond their degree programme where attempts to embed academic literacy development are part of subject modules. The paper reports the findings generated using a mixed methods interpretive approach. Questionnaires were collected at the beginning (n = 48) and end of the students’ first year (n = 44), and interviews and visual data collection methods (n =19) were used at the mid-point of the academic year. Key findings highlight students’ expectations of achievement on entry to university and the influence of the emotional journey of students as they begin to make progress as academic writers. Identifying, selecting and applying academic reading were an enduring concern whilst some students struggled with the digital literacy implicit in undergraduate work. Importantly, some strategies developed to support student transition to academic writing in higher education may have unintended consequences as they progress through the first year.
Impact of Antidepressants on Cytokine Production of Depressed Patients in Vitro

The interplay between immune and nervous systems plays a pivotal role in the pathophysiology of depression. In depressive episodes, patients show increased production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-1β and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α. There is limited information on the effect of antidepressant drugs on cytokines, most studies report on a limited sample of cytokines and none have reported effects on IL-22. We systematically investigated the effect of three antidepressant drugs, citalopram, escitalopram and mirtazapine, on secretion of cytokines IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-17, IL-22 and TNF-α in a whole blood assay in vitro, using murine anti-human CD3 monoclonal antibody OKT3, and 5C3 monoclonal antibody against CD40, to stimulate T and B cells respectively. Citalopram increased production of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α and IL-22. Mirtazapine increased IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-22. Escitalopram decreased IL-17 levels. The influence of antidepressants on IL-2 and IL-4 levels was not significant for all three drugs. Compared to escitalopram, citalopram led to higher levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-17 and IL-22; and mirtazapine to higher levels of IL-1β, IL-17, IL-22 and TNF-α. Mirtazapine and citalopram increased IL-22 production. The differing profile of cytokine production may relate to differences in therapeutic effects, risk of relapse and side effects.
Evolutionary Models for Formation of Network Motifs and Modularity in the Saccharomyces Transcription Factor Network

Many natural and artificial networks contain overrepresented subgraphs, which have been termed network motifs. In this article, we investigate the processes that led to the formation of the two most common network motifs in eukaryote transcription factor networks: the bi-fan motif and the feed-forward loop. Around 100 million y ago, the common ancestor of the Saccharomyces clade underwent a whole-genome duplication event. The simultaneous duplication of the genes created by this event enabled the origin of many network motifs to be established. The data suggest that there are two primary mechanisms that are involved in motif formation. The first mechanism, enabled by the substantial plasticity in promoter regions, is rewiring of connections as a result of positive environmental selection. The second is duplication of transcription factors, which is also shown to be involved in the formation of intermediate-scale network modularity. These two evolutionary processes are complementary, with the pre-existence of network motifs enabling duplicated transcription factors to bind different targets despite structural constraints on their DNA-binding specificities. This process may facilitate the creation of novel expression states and the increases in regulatory complexity associated with higher eukaryotes.
Smart hill climbing for agile dynamic mapping in many-core systems

Stochastic hill climbing algorithm is adapted to rapidly find the appropriate start node in the application mapping of network-based many-core systems. Due to highly dynamic and unpredictable workload of such systems, an agile run-time task allocation scheme is required. The scheme is desired to map the tasks of an incoming application at run-time onto an optimum contiguous area of the available nodes. Contiguous and unfragmented area mapping is to settle the communicating tasks in close proximity. Hence, the power dissipation, the congestion between different applications, and the latency of the system will be significantly reduced. To find an optimum region, we first propose an approximate model that quickly estimates the available area around a given node. Then the stochastic hill climbing algorithm is used as a search heuristic to find a node that has the required number of available nodes around it. Presented agile climber takes the steps using an adapted version of hill climbing algorithm named Smart Hill Climbing, SHiC, which takes the runtime status of the system into account. Finally, the application mapping is performed starting from the selected first node. Experiments show significant gain in the mapping contiguousness which results in better network latency and power dissipation, compared to state-of-the-art works.
Improved Meet-in-the-Middle Attacks on Round-Reduced Crypton-256

The meet-in-the-middle (MITM) attack has prove to be efficient in analyzing the AES block cipher. Its efficiency has been increasing with the introduction of various techniques such as differential enumeration, key-dependent sieve, super-box etc. The recent MITM attack given by Li and Jin has successfully mounted to 10-round AES-256. Crypton is an AES-like block cipher. In this paper, we apply the MITM method to the cryptanalysis of Crypton-256. Following Li and Jin’s idea, we give the first 6-round distinguisher for Crypton. Based on the distinguisher as well as the properties of Crypton’s simple key schedule, we successfully launch MITM attacks on Crypton-256 reduced to 9 and 10 rounds. For 9-round Crypton-256, our MITM attack can recover the 256-bit key with a time complexity 2, a memory complexity 2. For the 10-round version, we give two MITM attacks. The basic attack requires a time complexity 2 and memory complexity 2. The time/memory complexity of the advanced MITM attack on 10-round Crypton is 2/2. Our MITM attacks share the same data complexity 2 and their error rates are negligible.
LIPID PROFILES IN CHILDREN WITH ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA ON L-ASPARAGINASE THERAPY

Background: Abnormal blood lipid profiles have been associated with many malignant diseases especially in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on L-asparaginase therapy Objective: To investigate the frequency and clinical significance of altered lipid profiles in children with Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on L-asparaginase therapy Patients and Methods: A prospective study was carried out between February 2008 till January 2009 on a total of 50 patients with recently diagnosed and non-treated acute lymphoblastic leukemia who were admitted to pediatric oncology unit at Basrah Maternity and Children hospital. Fasting blood for lipid profiles [cholesterol (CH), Triglycerides (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein(LDL), very low density Lipoprotein (VLDL)] were obtained from 30 children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia at diagnosis, during induction therapy with L-Asparaginase and after induction without L-Asparaginase, their ages range between (1-15) years and 20 patients were excluded because of incomplete information (non compliance). Results: Thirty patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) were studied, 20(66.7%) males and 10(33.3%) females. An altered lipid profile was observed during therapy with L-asparaginase especially (CH,TG), the means (222.3±62.9 mg/dl, 223.1±88.31 mg/dl) respectively were higher than the level before the initiation of therapy (158±36 mg/dl, 119.4±57.3mg/dl) and after induction (139.8±61.5 mg/dl, 96.2±30.7 mg/dl) and these were statistically highly significant (P-value <0.001) while no significant changes regarding other types of lipid profile. This study showed no significant changes of lipid profiles in relation to morphological type, risk of leukemia, sex, age and body mass index (BMI), before, during and after therapy with L-Asparaginase. Conclusion: Hyperlipidemia especially cholesterol and triglyceride levels were significantly higher during treatment with L -Asparaginse and were reversible after drug discontinuation but showed no significant correlation with age, BMI, risk group and morphological types.
Event triggered distributed collaborative control

We consider the collaborative control of a group of autonomous mobile agents. Building upon our earlier work we consider the communication needs and connectivity of the agents' network as they move. We develop algorithms that automatically sense the possibility of connectivity loss among the agents. We also consider the automatic detection of path disconnection when more than one path need to be maintained between pairs of agents. Using local probing schemes we formulate such problems as event-triggered control problems. We develop distributed algorithms that automatically select some agents and move them appropriately so as to maintain certain degree of desired connectivity among the moving agents. We characterize the trade-off between the gain from maintaining a certain degree of connectivity vs. the combined cost of communications and the associated dynamic re-positioning of agents. The results illustrate the efficiency achieved by event-triggered control in such problems. We also describe the resulting communication topologies and in particular their similarity to dynamic small world topologies.
Issues in Front-End Decision Making on Projects

The importance of the front-end decision-making phase in projects is being increasingly recognized—the need to “do the right project” is on a par with “doing the project right. ” This area is underrepresented in the literature, but there are a number of key themes that run throughout, identifying key issues or difficulties during this stage. This article looks at some of these themes and includes: the need for alignment between organizational strategy and the project concept; dealing with complexity, in particular the systemicity and interrelatedness within project decisions; consideration of the ambiguity implicit in all major projects; taking into account psychological and political biases within estimation of benefits and costs; consideration of the social geography and politics within decision-making groups; and preparation for the turbulence within the project environment, including the maintenance of strategic alignment.
Sequencing Intractable DNA to Close Microbial Genomes

Advancement in high throughput DNA sequencing technologies has supported a rapid proliferation of microbial genome sequencing projects, providing the genetic blueprint for in-depth studies. Oftentimes, difficult to sequence regions in microbial genomes are ruled “intractable” resulting in a growing number of genomes with sequence gaps deposited in databases. A procedure was developed to sequence such problematic regions in the “non-contiguous finished” Desulfovibrio desulfuricans ND132 genome (6 intractable gaps) and the Desulfovibrio africanus genome (1 intractable gap). The polynucleotides surrounding each gap formed GC rich secondary structures making the regions refractory to amplification and sequencing. Strand-displacing DNA polymerases used in concert with a novel ramped PCR extension cycle supported amplification and closure of all gap regions in both genomes. The developed procedures support accurate gene annotation, and provide a step-wise method that reduces the effort required for genome finishing.
Understanding Disease Control: Influence of Epidemiological and Economic Factors

We present a model of disease transmission on a regular and small world network and compare different control options. Comparison is based on a total cost of epidemic, including cost of palliative treatment of ill individuals and preventive cost aimed at vaccination or culling of susceptible individuals. Disease is characterized by pre-symptomatic phase, which makes detection and control difficult. Three general strategies emerge: global preventive treatment, local treatment within a neighborhood of certain size and only palliative treatment with no prevention. While the choice between the strategies depends on a relative cost of palliative and preventive treatment, the details of the local strategy and, in particular, the size of the optimal treatment neighborhood depend on the epidemiological factors. The required extent of prevention is proportional to the size of the infection neighborhood, but depends on time till detection and time till treatment in a non-nonlinear (power) law. The optimal size of control neighborhood is also highly sensitive to the relative cost, particularly for inefficient detection and control application. These results have important consequences for design of prevention strategies aiming at emerging diseases for which parameters are not nessecerly known in advance.
Visual feedback techniques for telemanipulation and system status sensualization

A general effort in telemanipulation is to establish as many and as high quality sensory channels as possible between the human operator and the remote site. However, most of the tasks require only a portion of human sensory skills, typically - besides visual information - kinesthetic, haptic and tactile force-feedback. But realizing teleoperators providing transparent force-feedback over a long distance is still a challenge because of the low bandwidth, varying network delay and the probably unknown remote environment. Therefore, the senses that are not necessary for controlling the process should be used to support the operator to enhance or substitute the force feedback. In system status sensualization the goal is to provide an interpretation of sensory information that can be easily and effectively perceived by the operator. However, traditional analogous or digital instrumentation requires that the operator directs his sight right to the instrument to read the values. Furthermore, these values are usually important only if they are in an abnormal state. In case of a quite complex system (an airplane or a power plant) this process is very time-consuming and often needs several operators. In this paper we propose new visualization methods using peripheral vision to transmit visual information matched to the capabilities of the human visual system. The novel method could be applied for both sensory substitution and system status sensualization. The theoretical background of this work is a mathematical model of the human photopic contrast sensitivity proposed by the authors in a previous work. The novel visualization methods are analyzed experimentally via comparative tests.
Investigating Readiness of Virtual Classroom Environment (VCE) among Students

Virtual classroom environment (VCE) is a platform for learners as it has thepotential to increase learners’ academic performance. The main objectiveof this paper is to investigate the readiness for VCE among students at alocal university in Malaysia. A survey was conducted with 217 respondents.Questionnaires administered comprised sections on the demography ofrespondents and their readiness for virtual classroom and TechnologyReadiness Index 2.0 (TRI 2.0). The Kruskal-Wallis test was conductedin the data analysis. The dimensions of the Technology Readiness Index;(i) insecurity, (ii) discomfort, (iii) innovativeness , and (iv) optimism,were analysed. The results showed only the ‘discomfort’ dimension hada statistically different average total score between the three generationgroups according to their age, namely; (i) Generation X (those born between1965 and 1979); (ii) Generation Y (born between 1980 and 1994); and(iii) Generation Z (born in 1995 or later). The mean rank of total score for‘discomfort’ shows that Generation X has the highest mean rank among thethree generation groups. Thus, the results suggest future qualitative studiesto unravel the ‘discomfort’ dimension for Generation X group. Keywords: virtual classroom environment (VCE); technology readinessindex 2.0