Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bacterial mechanosensitive channels: models for studying mechanosensory transduction.

SIGNIFICANCE Sensations of touch and hearing are manifestations of mechanical contact and air pressure acting on touch receptors and hair cells of the inner ear, respectively. In bacteria, osmotic pressure exerts a significant mechanical force on their cellular membrane. Bacteria have evolved mechanosensitive (MS) channels to cope with excessive turgor pressure resulting from a hypo-osmotic shock. MS channel opening allows the expulsion of osmolytes and water, thereby restoring normal cellular turgor and preventing cell lysis. RECENT ADVANCES As biological force-sensing systems, MS channels have been identified as the best examples of membrane proteins coupling molecular dynamics to cellular mechanics. The bacterial MS channel of large conductance (MscL) and MS channel of small conductance (MscS) have been subjected to extensive biophysical, biochemical, genetic, and structural analyses. These studies have established MscL and MscS as model systems for mechanosensory transduction. CRITICAL ISSUES In recent years, MS ion channels in mammalian cells have moved into focus of mechanotransduction research, accompanied by an increased awareness of the role they may play in the pathophysiology of diseases, including cardiac hypertrophy, muscular dystrophy, or Xerocytosis. FUTURE DIRECTIONS A recent exciting development includes the molecular identification of Piezo proteins, which function as nonselective cation channels in mechanosensory transduction associated with senses of touch and pain. Since research on Piezo channels is very young, applying lessons learned from studies of bacterial MS channels to establishing the mechanism by which the Piezo channels are mechanically activated remains one of the future challenges toward a better understanding of the role that MS channels play in mechanobiology.
A Review of Wireless-Sensor-Network-Enabled Building Energy Management Systems

Reducing energy consumption within buildings has been an active area of research in the past decade; more recently, there has been an increased influx of activity, motivated by a variety of issues including legislative, tax-related, as well as an increased awareness of energy-related issues. Energy usage both in commercial and residential buildings represents a significant portion of overall energy consumption; however, much of this may be categorized as waste, that is, energy usage that does not fulfil a definite purpose. In the past decade, the viability of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies has been demonstrated, leading to increased possibilities for novel services for building energy management. This development has resulted in numerous approaches being proposed for harnessing WSNs for energy management and conservation. This article surveys the state-of-the-art in building energy management systems. A generic architecture is proposed after which a detailed taxonomy of existing documented systems is presented. Gaps in the literature are highlighted and directions for future research identified.
The effect of teacher support on primary school students’ reading engagement: the mediating role of reading interest and chinese academic self-concept

Abstract The subjects of this research were 776 pupils from grade three to grade six in Shandong Province, China. This study examined the influence of teacher support on students’ reading engagement, and the mediating variables between those two factors, as measured by the perception of teachers’ support scale, reading engagement scale, reading interest scale and Chinese academic self-concept scale. Results showed that the reading engagement of primary school students who lived in urban areas was significantly greater than that of students in rural areas. Moreover, teacher support positively influenced primary school students’ reading engagement, and reading interest had a mediating effect on teacher support and reading engagement, whereas the Chinese academic self-concept did not mediate such relations. However, Chinese academic self-concept completely mediated the relationship between teacher support and reading interest, such that there was a specific sequential effect between teacher support and reading engagement that formed an intermediating chain.
Policy-based self-adaptive architectures: a feasibility study in the robotics domain

Robotics is a challenging domain which sometimes exhibits a clear need for self-adaptive capabilities, as such functionality offers the potential for robots to account for their unstable and unpredictable deployment domains. This paper focuses on a feasibility study in applying a policy- and architecture-based approach to the development of self-adaptive robotic systems. We describe two case studies in which we construct self-adaptive Robocode and Mindstorms robots, report on our development experiences, and discuss the challenges we encountered. The paper establishes that it is feasible to apply our approach to the robotics domain, contributes a discussion of the architectural issues we encountered, and further evaluates our general-purpose approach.
OECD Health Care Quality Indicator Project. The expert panel on primary care prevention and health promotion.

PURPOSE This article describes a project undertaken as part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Healthcare Quality Indicator (HCQI) Project, which aimed to develop a set of quality indicators representing the domains of primary care, prevention and health promotion, and which could be used to assess the performance of primary care systems. METHODS Existing quality indicators from around the world were mapped to an organizing framework which related primary care, prevention, and health promotion. The indicators were judged against the US Institute of Medicine's assessment criteria of importance and scientific soundness, and only those which met these criteria and were likely to be feasible were included. An initial large set of indicators was reduced by the primary care expert panel using a modified Delphi process. RESULTS A set of 27 indicators was produced. Six of them were related to health promotion, covering health-related behaviours that are typically targeted by health education and outreach campaigns, 13 to preventive care with a focus on prenatal care and immunizations and eight to primary clinical care mainly addressing activities related to risk reduction. The indicators selected placed a strong emphasis on the public health aspects of primary care. CONCLUSIONS This project represents an important but preliminary step towards a set of measures to evaluate and compare primary care quality. Further work is required to assess the operational feasibility of the indicators and the validity of any benchmarking data drawn from international comparisons. A conceptual framework needs to be developed that comprehensively captures the complex construct of primary care as a basis for the selection of additional indicators.
Identifying stroke in the field. Prospective validation of the Los Angeles prehospital stroke screen (LAPSS).

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Reliable identification of stroke patients in the field by prehospital personnel could expedite delivery of acute stroke therapy. The Los Angeles Prehospital Stroke Screen (LAPSS) is a 1-page instrument designed to allow prehospital personnel to rapidly identify acute stroke patients in the field. We performed a prospective, in-the-field validation study of the LAPSS. METHODS Paramedics assigned to 3 University of California at Los Angeles-based advanced life support units were trained and certified in use of the LAPSS. Over 7 months, paramedics completed the LAPSS on noncomatose, nontrauma patients with complaints suggestive of neurological disease. LAPSS form stroke identification results were compared with emergency department and final hospital discharge diagnoses. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, accuracy, and likelihood ratios were calculated for LAPSS identification of ischemic stroke, currently symptomatic transient ischemic attack, and intracerebral hemorrhage. RESULTS Of a total of 1298 runs, 34% were for nontraumatic, noncomatose neurologically relevant complaints. Thirty-six of these patients (3% of all transports) had a final diagnosis of acute symptomatic cerebrovascular disease (21 ischemic strokes, 7 transient ischemic attacks, and 8 intracerebral hemorrhages). LAPSS forms were completed on 206 patients. Paramedic performance when completing the LAPSS demonstrated sensitivity of 91% (95% CI, 76% to 98%), specificity of 97% (95% CI, 93% to 99%), positive predictive value of 86% (95% CI, 70% to 95%), and negative predictive value of 98% (95% CI, 95% to 99%). With correction for the 4 documentation errors, positive predictive value increased to 97% (95% CI, 84% to 99%). CONCLUSIONS The LAPSS allows prehospital personnel to identify patients with acute cerebral ischemia and intracerebral hemorrhage with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity.
An empirical assessment of the link between Decision support system (DSS) capabilities, competencies and firm performance: A mediating role of absorptive capacity

The empirical study provides a quantitative analysis of the management information systems support capabilities, competencies, and their impact on performance. The paper highlights the position of Decision support systems (DSS) and the importance of absorptive capacity for performance of companies. Based on the survey conducted and the results obtained, DSS proved to be one of the main drivers of enhancing company's performance. Moreover, the integration of DSS has significant impact on absorptive capacity through its capabilities. The latter in its turn predicts the outcomes for the company, both market-based and operating firm performance. The ability to utilize the knowledge and information gained by DSS directly improve the crucial indicators of the company. The findings of the current paper provide valuable implications for business practitioners, researchers and executives, emphasizing the necessity of implementation of DSS as the tool for improving firm performance and strengthening of competitive advantage.
Does Selection against Transcriptional Interference Shape Retroelement-Free Regions in Mammalian Genomes?

Background Eukaryotic genomes are scattered with retroelements that proliferate through retrotransposition. Although retroelements make up around 40 percent of the human genome, large regions are found to be completely devoid of retroelements. This has been hypothesised to be a result of genomic regions being intolerant to insertions of retroelements. The inadvertent transcriptional activity of retroelements may affect neighbouring genes, which in turn could be detrimental to an organism. We speculate that such retroelement transcription, or transcriptional interference, is a contributing factor in generating and maintaining retroelement-free regions in the human genome. Methodology/Principal Findings Based on the known transcriptional properties of retroelements, we expect long interspersed elements (LINEs) to be able to display a high degree of transcriptional interference. In contrast, we expect short interspersed elements (SINEs) to display very low levels of transcriptional interference. We find that genomic regions devoid of long interspersed elements (LINEs) are enriched for protein-coding genes, but that this is not the case for regions devoid of short interspersed elements (SINEs). This is expected if genes are subject to selection against transcriptional interference. We do not find microRNAs to be associated with genomic regions devoid of either SINEs or LINEs. We further observe an increased relative activity of genes overlapping LINE-free regions during early embryogenesis, where activity of LINEs has been identified previously. Conclusions/Significance Our observations are consistent with the notion that selection against transcriptional interference has contributed to the maintenance and/or generation of retroelement-free regions in the human genome.
Discovery and Validation of New Potential Biomarkers for Early Detection of Colon Cancer

Background Accurate detection of characteristic proteins secreted by colon cancer tumor cells in biological fluids could serve as a biomarker for the disease. The aim of the present study was to identify and validate new serum biomarkers and demonstrate their potential usefulness for early diagnosis of colon cancer. Methods The study was organized in three sequential phases: 1) biomarker discovery, 2) technical and biological validation, and 3) proof of concept to test the potential clinical use of selected biomarkers. A prioritized subset of the differentially-expressed genes between tissue types (50 colon mucosa from cancer-free individuals and 100 normal-tumor pairs from colon cancer patients) was validated and further tested in a series of serum samples from 80 colon cancer cases, 23 patients with adenoma and 77 cancer-free controls. Results In the discovery phase, 505 unique candidate biomarkers were identified, with highly significant results and high capacity to discriminate between the different tissue types. After a subsequent prioritization, all tested genes (N = 23) were successfully validated in tissue, and one of them, COL10A1, showed relevant differences in serum protein levels between controls, patients with adenoma (p = 0.0083) and colon cancer cases (p = 3.2e-6). Conclusion We present a sequential process for the identification and further validation of biomarkers for early detection of colon cancer that identifies COL10A1 protein levels in serum as a potential diagnostic candidate to detect both adenoma lesions and tumor. Impact The use of a cheap serum test for colon cancer screening should improve its participation rates and contribute to decrease the burden of this disease.
Older assistant nurses’ motivation for a full or extended working life

Abstract The aim of this study was to explore older workers’ motivation for a full or extended working life. With particular focus on assistant nurses aged 55–64 years, working in the elderly care sector. Focus group interviews were conducted with five different groups of assistant nurses. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews and five main themes were developed from the data: ‘Organisational issues’, ‘Health-related problems’, ‘Private issues’, ‘Meaningfulness and appreciation’ and ‘Social support’. Several of the main themes concerned problems with too high work demands of the assistant nurses. These findings suggest that it is important to improve the working conditions of assistant nurses in order to create a more sustainable working life. Increasing the number of staff and improving recovery opportunities and work–life balance could be important steps to improving the working conditions for this group. Finally, upgrading the competency and professionalism of assistant nurses could help to increase the motivation for a full or extended working life.
Distinct 3-O-Sulfated Heparan Sulfate Modification Patterns Are Required for kal-1−Dependent Neurite Branching in a Context-Dependent Manner in Caenorhabditis elegans

Heparan sulfate (HS) is an unbranched glycosaminoglycan exhibiting substantial molecular diversity due to multiple, nonuniformly introduced modifications, including sulfations, epimerization, and acetylation. HS modifications serve specific and instructive roles in neuronal development, leading to the hypothesis of a HS code that regulates nervous system patterning. Although the in vivo roles of many of the HS modifications have been investigated, very little is known about the function of HS 3-O-sulfation in vivo. By examining patterning of the Caenorhabditis elegans nervous system in loss of function mutants of the two 3-O-sulfotransferases, hst-3.1 and hst-3.2, we found HS 3-O-sulfation to be largely dispensable for overall neural development. However, generation of stereotypical neurite branches in hermaphroditic-specific neurons required hst-3.1, hst-3.2, as well as an extracellular cell adhesion molecule encoded by kal-1, the homolog of Kallmann Syndrome associated gene 1/anosmin-1. In contrast, kal-1−dependent neurite branching in AIY neurons required catalytic activity of hst-3.2 but not hst-3.1. The context-dependent requirement for hst-3.2 and hst-3.1 indicates that both enzymes generate distinct types of HS modification patterns in different cell types, which regulate kal-1 to promote neurite branching. We conclude that HS 3-O-sulfation does not play a general role in establishing the HS code in C. elegans but rather plays a specialized role in a context-dependent manner to establish defined aspects of neuronal circuits.
A Deep Architecture for Semantic Parsing

Many successful approaches to semantic parsing build on top of the syntactic analysis of text, and make use of distributional representations or statistical models to match parses to ontology-specific queries. This paper presents a novel deep learning architecture which provides a semantic parsing system through the union of two neural models of language semantics. It allows for the generation of ontology-specific queries from natural language statements and questions without the need for parsing, which makes it especially suitable to grammatically malformed or syntactically atypical text, such as tweets, as well as permitting the development of semantic parsers for resourcepoor languages.
Text Classification: Classifying Plain Source Files with Neural Network

The automated text file categorization has an important place in computer engineering, particularly in the process called data management automation. A lot has been written about text classification and the methods allowing classification of these files are well known. Unfortunately most studies are theoretical and for practical implementation more research is needed. I decided to contribute with a research focused on creating of a classifier for different kinds of programs (source files, scripts…). This paper will describe practical implementation of the classifier for text files depending on file content.
Visual saliency-based babbling of unknown dynamic environments

Our everyday environment contains many different objects and we are frequently confronted to new objects, may it be known objects with a new shape or color, or completely new objects (smartphones or tablet computers, for instance, did not exist at all in our environment a few years ago). A robot working in our environment should then be able to deal with such modiﬁcations. It should in particular be able to identify these objects and what to do with them, i.e. their affordances. Human infants learn these affordances through an interaction with the environment called body babbling [1]. Developmental robotics [2] encourages applying the same exploration step in robots. But, how to deﬁne an environment exploration strategy that would work on any kind of environment and object that the robot may encounter before knowing them and their features?
Don't Brick Your Car: Firmware Confidentiality and Rollback for Vehicles

In modern cars, there are a number of controllers that play a major role in the overall operations of the vehicles. The secure and updated firmware of these controllers is crucial to the overall security and reliability of the vehicle and its electronic system (s). Therefore, the life cycle of these controllers should be carefully managed. In this paper, we examine the vehicular firmware updates process and their associated security issues. We have analysed the security of the firmware update protocol proposed in the EVITA project, referred as EVITA protocol, which is considered as a main industrial effort in this field and found some potential shortcomings. Based on the analysis, in this paper we have suggested a number of improvements to the EVITA protocol, related with safety and security measures. The proposed improved protocol, also referred as EVITA+ protocol includes a rollback mechanism while preserving the confidentiality of the firmware. The integrity and authenticity of the flash driver are also considered in the EVITA+ protocol. The EVITA+ protocol is formally analysed using Casper FDR and Scyther to ensure the security of the firmware update process. Finally, we provide an insight analysis and our experience in relation to the efficiency, suitability and performance of the aforementioned tools in the field of automotive security.
Vehicular speed estimation using received signal strength from mobile phones

This paper introduces an algorithm that estimates the speed of a mobile phone by matching time-series signal strength data to a known signal strength trace from the same road. Knowing a mobile phone's speed is useful, for example, to estimate traffic congestion or other transportation performancemetrics. The proposed algorithmcan be implemented in the carrier's infrastructure with Network Measurement Reports obtained by a base station or on a mobile phone with signal strength readings obtained by the handset and depending on implementation choices, promises lower energy consumption than Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. We evaluate the effectiveness of our algorithm on highway and arterial roads using GSM signal strength traces obtained from several phones over a one month period. The results show that the Correlation algorithm is significantly more accurate than existing techniques based on handoffs or phone localization.
Vehicle recognition based on radar and vision sensor fusion for automatic emergency braking

In this paper, a vehicle recognition algorithm based on radar and vision sensors is proposed with the application to automatic emergency braking. While the commercial radar detects both vehicles and road infrastructure including guardrail and tunnel, in general it does not distinguish between a vehicle and a non-vehicle object. Furthermore, it is well known that while it provides relatively coarse accuracy in the lateral (or azimuth) direction although the accuracy of the radar is high in longitudinal (or radial) direction. These characteristics of radar may cause false detection of a primary vehicle, i.e. the closest preceding vehicle in the same lane, thus resulting in false activation of automatic emergency braking. To improve the false detection, a vehicle recognition method based on shape and motion attributes is suggested. The motion attribute is designed to determine whether the object is either stationary or dynamic and the shape attribute aims to identify whether the objective is a vehicle or not by sensor fusion. Finally, the performance of the proposed vehicle recognition algorithm is validated via the field test data.
Performance analysis of deflection routing in optical burst-switched networks

This paper concerns itself with the performance of deflection routing in optical burst-switched networks based on just-enough-time (JET) signaling. Generally speaking, buffer requirement is not vital for JET-based optical burst switching (OBS). However, if deflection routing is enabled, optical buffers are necessary to solve the insufficient offset time problem. A variant of priority queuing model is proposed to approximate burst loss probability and the results show that the model provides an accurate estimation. We also evaluate the performance of deflection routing in Arpanet-2 topology. Simulation results indicate that deflection routing evidently brings significant blocking performance gain, especially with fewer wavelengths and under lighter load. In addition, we notice that excessive deflection will cause longer end-to-end delay and reduce the blocking performance. Therefore, it is necessary to control the maximum allowed deflection occurrences of a burst.