Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction of Resistance Mediated by an Attenuated Strain of Valsa mali var. mali Using Pathogen-Apple Callus Interaction System

To study the induced resistance in apple against Valsa mali var. mali (Vmm), a Vmm–apple callus interaction system was developed to evaluate the induced resistance of an attenuated Vmm strain LXS081501 against further infection by a virulent Vmm strain LXS080601. The infection index was up to 97.32 for apple calli inoculated with LXS080601 alone at 15 days after inoculation whereas it was only 41.84 for calli pretreated with LXS081501 followed by LXS080601 inoculation. In addition, the maximum levels of free proline, soluble sugar, and protein in calli treated with LXS081501 plus LXS080601 were 2.14 to 3.47 times higher than controls and 1.42 to 1.75 times higher than LXS080601 treatment. The activities of defense-related enzymes such as phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), peroxidase (POD), and catalase (CAT) as well as β-1,3-glucanase and chitinase in apple calli inoculated with LXS080601 alone or LXS081501 plus LXS080601 increased significantly 24 hai and peaked from 48 to 120 hpi. However, in the latter treatment, the maximum enzyme activities were much higher and the activities always maintained much higher levels than control during the experimental period. These results suggested the roles of osmotic adjustment substances and defense-related enzymes in induced resistance.
Reply to “ Dialog : Object Detection and Object Variance in Autonomous Mental Development ”

Welcome to the second issue of the AMD TC Newsletter. We are glad to announce that the AMD TC Newsletter has received the International Standard Serial Number! In addition to the existing news, you will find an interesting dialog column: the discussions on " Object Detection and Object Variance in Autonomous Mental Development. " Of course, you will have the call for papers, the call A single ISSN uniquely identifies a serial (such as magazines, newspapers, annuals, journals, proceedings) regardless of language or country in which published. ISSN are assigned by a network of over 60 centers worldwide coordinated by the ISSN International Centre located in Paris. ISSN are assigned to serials published in the United States 0 Suppose that we need to discover or design a set of mechanisms in a developmental program that will develop an agent who exhibits a capability of object detection under a wide variety of object variance, following the agent's rich experience of interacting with the real world. For example, a human adult is able to recognize an object in a cluttered background to be a cup (i.e., object detection), largely independent of the cup's position, size, orientation, and the lighting directions, etc. (i.e., object variance). Of course, the capability of handling object variance is not perfect. In pattern recognition, early invariant features have been proposed for recognition (e.g., color, texture, etc.), but those invariant features are applicable only to a particular known setting for a particular task. What set of developmental mechanisms (which are innate) enables an AMD developmental being, biological or artificial, to develop cognitive capabilities of object detection with the associated object variance? One is the " innate physical knowledge " school, which states that the capability of detecting objects and understanding
Management and optimal distribution of large student numbers

In principle, timetabling problems appear at every school and university. However, the degree of difficulty increases dramatically with an increasing number of students and courses for which the scheduling shall be carried out. From the mathematical point of view this is a “hard” problem, since the runtime on a computer cannot be estimated by a simple law (i.e. by a polynomial law) by the number of parameters. These kinds of problems are called “NP hard”. There are three important versions of the timetabling problem at universities, known as the university timetabling problem, i.e. curriculum-based course timetabling, post-enrollment timetabling and examination timetabling. All specified problems are important for room management at universities, for the realization of courses that can be studied according to curricula, and for the satisfaction of students and teachers. These problems are related to the optimization of room management and personnel costs (e.g. by a uniform distribution of students). Thus, the solution to these problems is related to the optimization of “real” costs, a more and more important economic factor at (German) universities. Introduction of the two-tiered Bachelor and Master courses has raised awareness for these problems at German universities: due to the multitude of new courses the timetables which have been established and stood the test of time cannot be used any longer. Moreover classes tend to be more structured and have strong similarities to classical school situations; attendance is compulsory and dependencies between modules determine the feasibility of the curricula. This feasibility is also evaluated while accrediting new study courses. Since 2003, we have been using using an algorithm that has been realized by members of our team for the solution of the post-enrollment-based course timetabling problem at the Technische Universität Berlin. For classes with more than 2000 enrolled students, organization by itself is a challenge; problems may include splitting of those classes into several separate lectures, arranging the associated tutorials into small groups of students, allocating adequate rooms, and scheduling examinations. Moreover, homework and exams need to be administered, whereby, depending on the field of study, very different rules are to be obeyed. This especially pertains to the Department of Mathematics because it offers most of the compulsory classes in mathematics for all fields of study held at Technische Universität Berlin. These are the biggest classes at the university and are to be attended by the majority of students. Thus, the Moses (Mobile Services for Students)-Account has been being developed and used since 2004. This web-based software allows students to enroll in tutorials with a list of preferences for given dates. A special algorithm, providing a globally optimized (with respect to the students' wishes and resources available) solution, processes all registrations.
Automatic move pruning for single-agent search

Move pruning is a low-overhead technique for reducing search cost in single-agent search problems by avoiding the generation of duplicate states. Redundant sequences of moves, where the effect of one sequence is provably identical to some other sequence of moves, are suppressed during search. We present an algorithm for automatically identifying redundant move sequences in a general class of single-agent search problems, and a method for selecting redundant move sequences to prune during search. We demonstrate that the redundant move sequences which are to be pruned must be chosen carefully, and give experimental results using our move pruning method which show a speedup of multiple orders of magnitude in a variety of domains. Finally, we give theoretical results on conditions where move pruning does, and does not, affect the correctness of different search algorithms.
Content-Based Video Search over 1 Million Videos with 1 Core in 1 Second

Many content-based video search (CBVS) systems have been proposed to analyze the rapidly-increasing amount of user-generated videos on the Internet. Though the accuracy of CBVS systems have drastically improved, these high accuracy systems tend to be too inefficient for interactive search. Therefore, to strive for real-time web-scale CBVS, we perform a comprehensive study on the different components in a CBVS system to understand the trade-offs between accuracy and speed of each component. Directions investigated include exploring different low-level and semantics-based features, testing different compression factors and approximations during video search, and understanding the time v.s. accuracy trade-off of reranking. Extensive experiments on data sets consisting of more than 1,000 hours of video showed that through a combination of effective features, highly compressed representations, and one iteration of reranking, our proposed system can achieve an 10,000-fold speedup while retaining 80% accuracy of a state-of-the-art CBVS system. We further performed search over 1 million videos and demonstrated that our system can complete the search in 0.975 seconds with a single core, which potentially opens the door to interactive web-scale CBVS for the general public.
Formational parameters and adaptive prototype instantiation for MPEG-4 compliant gesture synthesis

This paper introduces Gesture Engine, an animation system that synthesizes human gesturing behaviors from augmented conversation transcripts using a database of highlevel gesture definitions. An abstract scripting language to specify hand-arm gestures is introduced that incorporates knowledge from sign language research, psycholinguistics, and traditional keyframe animation. A new planning algorithm instantiates and adjusts gestures according to communicative context and temporal constraints obtained from a speech synthesizer The system animates an MPEG-4 compliant skeleton using Body Animation Parameters.
Recommending Concepts to Experts: An Exploration of Recommender Techniques for Collaborative Ontology Engineering Platforms in the Biomedical Domain

Biomedical ontologies such as the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases and others are increasingly produced with the help of collaborative ontology engineering platforms that facilitate cooperation and coordination among a large number of users and contributors. While collaborative approaches to engineering biomedical ontologies can be expected to yield a number of advantages, such as increased participation and coverage, they come with a number of novel challenges and risks. For example, they might suffer from low participation, lack of coordination, lack of control or other related problems that are neither well understood nor addressed by the current state of research. In this paper, we aim to tackle some of these problems by exploring techniques for recommending concepts to experts on collaborative ontology engineering platforms. In detail, this paper will (i) discuss different recommendation techniques from the literature (ii) map and apply these categories to the domain of collaboratively engineered biomedical ontologies and (iii) present prototypical implementations of selected recommendation techniques as
A survey on product backlog change management and requirement traceability in agile (Scrum)

Product backlog comprises the outline of desired functionality in a prioritized order in Scrum. Scrum is an iterative, collaborative, and flexible process to develop a software product. Scrum projects welcome changes at any stage of a project, but such changes significantly affect project management activities and quality, including time and budget overrun. These changes also compromise architectural integrity. The objectives of this research were: 1) to determine how product backlog changes are managed by practitioners in Scrum projects, and 2) to explore the perception of practitioners on the use of requirement traceability for product backlog and project risk management during requirement volatility in Scrum. In this research, we conducted a survey among Scrum practitioners and obtained 89 complete responses through our electronic questionnaire. The practitioners identified the reasons of backlog changes and recorded the changed elements. Majority of practitioners recorded modified requirement as “new requirement,” but they made changes in the original product backlog. The practitioners tended to agree that requirement traceability was helpful in managing product backlog and minimizing project risk. However, majority of the respondents pointed out the lack of specific requirement traceability method for Scrum.
Phase equations for quasi-periodic oscillators

Oscillations and rhythmic activity are seen in natural and man-made systems. Dynamics of oscillators can be compactly described by phase domain models. Phase equations for periodic, single-frequency oscillators have been developed and utilized in analyzing oscillation phenomena that arise in electronic systems, circadian clocks, and the nervous system. We consider quasi-periodic oscillators and present a general phase model theory and numerical techniques for the construction of phase equations for multi-frequency oscillators. We demonstrate the utility of these phase equations in analyzing oscillators experiencing perturbations.
Symbolic dynamic and frequency analysis in foetal monitoring

Foetal heart rate variability is widely considered an important parameter to assess foetal reactivity and wellbeing. Traditional approaches to analyze foetal heart rate and its variability, such as Time and Frequency Domain Analyses, have shown some limitations, due to their inability to highlight nonlinear dynamics potentially relevant. Hence, in the last decades, nonlinear analysis methods have gained a growing interest and the integration of parameters derived from these techniques and traditional ones could be a way to improve the assessment of foetal development and/or distress. In this work, we proposed a comparison between new index obtained with a nonlinear analysis (Symbolic Dynamic Analysis) and more traditional parameters computed by the power spectral density of the foetal heart variability signals (Frequency Domain Analysis). A dataset of 579 cardiotocographic signals from healthy foetuses, recorded from the 24th to the 42th gestation week, was examined using both above-mentioned methods. The obtained results demonstrate that Symbolic Dynamics, as much as Frequency Domain Analysis, could be a useful tool in foetal development assessing.
Reciprocal Collision Avoidance With Motion Continuity Constraints

This paper addresses decentralized motion planning among a homogeneous set of feedback-controlled, decision-making agents. It introduces the continuous control obstacle ( Cn-CO), which describes the set of Cn-continuous control sequences (and thus trajectories) that lead to a collision between interacting agents. By selecting a feasible trajectory from Cn-CO's complement, a collision-free motion is obtained. The approach represents an extension to the reciprocal velocity obstacle (RVO, ORCA) collision-avoidance methods so that trajectory segments verify Cn continuity rather than piecewise linearity. This allows the large class of robots capable of tracking Cn-continuous trajectories to employ it for partial motion planning directly-rather than as a mere tool for collision checking. This paper further establishes that both the original velocity obstacle method and several of its recently developed reciprocal extensions (which treat specific robot physiologies only) correspond to particular instances of Cn-CO. In addition to the described extension in trajectory continuity, Cn-CO thus represents a unification of existing RVO theory. Finally, the presented method is validated in simulation-and a parameter study reveals under which environmental and control conditions Cn-CO with admits significantly improved navigation performance compared with inflated approaches based on ORCA.
The risk evaluation for hazardous materials transportation

In order to cut down the accident rate in hazardous materials transportation, three aspects are discussed in this paper: human factors, material factors and environmental factors. Then, an indexing system and integrated assessment model are established based on fuzzy mathematics and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Each assessment value of human-materials-environment factors can be calculated by utilizing the model. Furthermore, a 3-dimension frame model was presented to perform early warning according to 4 different risk ranks. At last, a case study has been done by this paper and shows that the assessing results of various factors, which have been described in this indexing system, are in accord with realistic conditions of the enterprise. This research results can be employed by correlative enterprises to take predictive control measures effectively, and they are also significant to the departments of transportation security and supervision.
Dynamic variation in forebrain estradiol levels during song learning

Estrogens shape brain circuits during development, and the capacity to synthesize estrogens locally has consequences for both sexual differentiation and the acute modulation of circuits during early learning. A recently optimized method to detect and quantify fluctuations in brain estrogens in vivo provides a direct means to explore how brain estrogen production contributes to both differentiation and neuromodulation during development. Here, we use this method to test the hypothesis that neuroestrogens are sexually differentiated as well as dynamically responsive to song tutoring (via passive video/audio playback) during the period of song learning in juvenile zebra finches. Our results show that baseline neuroestradiol levels in the caudal forebrain do not differ between males and females during an early critical masculinization window. Instead, we observe a prominent difference between males and females in baseline neuroestradiol that emerges during the subadult stage as animals approach sexual maturity. Second, we observe that fluctuating neuroestradiol levels during periods of passive song tutoring exhibit a markedly different profile in juveniles as compared to adults. Specifically, neuroestrogens in the caudal forebrain are elevated following (rather than during) tutor song exposure in both juvenile males and females, suggesting an important role for the early consolidation of tutor song memories. These results further reveal a circadian influence on the fluctuations in local neuroestrogens during sensory/cognitive tasks. Taken together, these findings uncover several unexpected features of brain estrogen synthesis in juvenile animals that may have implications for secondary masculinization as well as the consolidation of recent sensory experiences. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 75: 271–286, 2015
Outcome of the cementless Taperloc stem: a comprehensive literature review including arthroplasty register data

Background and purpose The validity of various data sources for the assessment of the outcome quality of medical devices was investigated by comparative analysis of the published data sources available for a sample of implants. It was the aim of the study to determine the performance of this implant and to identify potential bias factors inherent to the various datasets. Methods A comprehensive literature search was carried out from English-language, peer-reviewed journals and worldwide reports from national arthroplasty registers. Publications from Medline-listed journals were included. The main parameter was revision rate, calculated as “revisions per 100 observed component years” to allow adjusted direct comparison of different datasets. Results Of 16 clinical studies that met the inclusion criteria, 9 originated from the implant developer's hospital. In the clinical studies category, publications from the developer's hospital suggested considerably lower revision rates than the other datasets. In fact, the values quoted were 5.5 times below the average of all other studies, and 9.51 times lower than in the Australian arthroplasty register. These differences are statistically significant. Interpretation The cementless Taperloc stem is an implant that shows good performance regarding revision rates in registry data and in clinical studies. However, the excellent results published by the developer's clinic are generally not reproducible by other surgeons. In terms of reference data, registry data are able to make an important contribution to the assessment of clinical sample-based studies, particularly regarding evaluation of the extent to which published results are reproducible in daily routine.
Facial First Impressions of Partner Preference Traits: Trustworthiness, Status, and Attractiveness

This research used the minimal exposure paradigm to examine facial first impressions of traits of trustworthiness, status, and attractiveness, considered important in verbal models of partner preferences. Heterosexual participants rated opposite-sex faces comprising either naturalistic images or youthful-looking averaged faces on trustworthiness, status, and attractiveness following 33, 100, and 500 ms masked presentation. The pattern masks were phase scrambled to provide the same overall color composition, brightness, and spatial frequency content as the presented faces. Trustworthiness, status, and attractiveness judgments were all reliable at above-chance levels even at 33 ms presentation, and extra time (100 or 500 ms) only led to modest improvement in the correspondence with an independent set of time-unconstrained judgments. The increasing prevalence of online images and internet-based relationships make these findings timely and important.
Pellas, N. & Kazanidis, I. (2013). The impact of computer self-efficacy, situational interest and academic self-concept in virtual communities of inquiry during the distance learning procedure through Second Life. World

The current study investigates a case where the online learning procedure in three-dimensional (3D) technologicallyadvanced environments of the Web 2.0 is growing at an exponential rate. In this occasion it is highly imperative need to understand students’ interactions in this innovative mode of e-Education that requires from educators and scholars not only analysis conceptually, but also an empirically-driven optimization. The community of inquiry (CoI) model (or framework) consists to be as one of the most prominent multi-dimensional constructs that it is widely used to represent several distinct dimensions of social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence, as a unique and fundamental theoretical concept to measure students’ interactions in contemporary electronic environments. Although, the effectiveness of these multi-dimensional constructs creates a dilemma to researchers who want the breadth and comprehensiveness of this model for the precision and clarity of users’ (instructors and students) dimensions with other motivational and learning variables. To address this dilemma, the current empirical study presents statistical analyses from the “trinity” constructs of the CoI model by utilizing correlation and hierarchical regression analyses with two fundamental motivational (computer self-efficacy and situational interest) and another one learning (academic self-concept) variables. This study goes one step further and introduces the conspicuously indisputable intervention of a virtual (V)CoI and its utilization in multi-user virtual worlds, like Second Life (SL). The study findings of one hundred thirty-five (135) participants who enrolled in several online sessions unveiled that the situational interest was the only significant predictor of social presence. The computer self-efficacy was not a significant predictor of the CoI model, while on the other hand academic self-concept was a significant predictor in a revamped attempt to validate the strong relationship among constructs within it. According to the aforementioned reasons, it can be surmised that the successful combination of the VCoI in Second Life, surpassing irrefutable and inherent shortcomings to a future-driven sustainable use and growth.