Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lignin Modi fi cation Leads to Increased Nodule Numbers in Alfalfa 1 [ C ] [ W ] [ OPEN ]

Reduction of lignin levels in the forage legume alfalfa (Medicago sativa) by down-regulation of the monolignol biosynthetic enzyme hydroxycinnamoyl coenzyme A:shikimate hydroxycinnamoyl transferase (HCT) results in strongly increased digestibility and processing ability of lignocellulose. However, these modifications are often also associated with dwarfing and other changes in plant growth. Given the importance of nitrogen fixation for legume growth, we evaluated the impact of constitutively targeted lignin modification on the belowground organs (roots and nodules) of alfalfa plants. HCT downregulated alfalfa plants exhibit a striking reduction in root growth accompanied by an unexpected increase in nodule numbers when grown in the greenhouse or in the field. This phenotype is associated with increased levels of gibberellins and certain flavonoid compounds in roots. Although HCT down-regulation reduced biomass yields in both the greenhouse and field experiments, the impact on the allocation of nitrogen to shoots or roots was minimal. It is unlikely, therefore, that the altered growth phenotype of reduced-lignin alfalfa is a direct result of changes in nodulation or nitrogen fixation efficiency. Furthermore, HCT down-regulation has no measurable effect on carbon allocation to roots in either greenhouse or 3-year field trials.
SenseWaves: Radiowaves for context recognition

We are surrounded by a sensor-enriched environment which is able to provide a broad spectrum of features from various sensor classes that can be utilised for situation and activity awareness. However, the probably most common sensor, shipped with nearly every electronic device nowadays such as mobile phones, notebooks, printers as well as keyboards, mouses, watches, shoes, media players – rumour has spread about even media cups – is mostly not utilised for activity recognition: The RF-sensor. Due to its high penetration, the additional cost for utilising this sensor in an application is considerably low. The application must simply utilise the information available but discarded unused in these devices. Although the wireless channel is frequently utilised for location detection of other active RF devices, it is seldom used to detect other contexts than location from entities that are not actively transmitting. We demonstrate a system for activity recognition based on features extracted from the RF channel. In particular, we show how static changes in the environment such as moved furniture, activity of a person and an ongoing phone call are detected based on RF channel measurements.
Spectral index properties of milliJansky radio sources

At the faintest radio flux densities ( S 1.4 < 10 mJy), conflicting results have arisen regarding whether there is a flattening of the average spectral index between a low radio frequency (325 or 610 MHz) and, for example, 1.4 GHz. We present a new catalogue of 843-MHz radio sources in the European Large Area ISO Survey-South 1 field, which contains the sources, their Australia Telescope Large Area Survey (ATLAS) counterparts and the spectral index distribution of the sources as a function of flux density. We do not find any statistically significant evidence for a trend towards flatter spectral indices with decreasing flux density. We then investigate the spectral index distribution with redshift for those sources with reliable redshifts and explore the infrared properties. An initial sample of faint compact steep-spectrum sources in ATLAS are also presented, with a brief overview of their properties.
Motion control with slow and rapid adaptation for smooth reaching movement under external force disturbance

We proposed a nonlinear reference shaping controller for a manipulator which shares its workspace with humans. In this paper, two adaptation methods to external force; “slow adaptation” and “rapid adaptation” are proposed for smoother reaching movements and submissive behavior to follow the force. These make smooth endpoint speed profiles and movements flexible to follow external force without detecting the force. The slow adaptation moderates the manipulator's endpoint acceleration, and it also enables the manipulator to handle subsequent changes of target endpoint positions. If the endpoint position is significantly changed by excessive external force, the rapid adaptation works to follow the force and restart the reaching movement smoothly. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed through computer simulations.
Acid-base balance evaluation system based on fuzzy inference

An integrated evaluation system for acid-base balance is proposed based on laboratory results in medical practice. It provides degree of each disorder type in acid-base disorder based on fuzzy inference and the reason of each disorder with laboratory results except blood gas test. Evaluation experimental results for 11936 data taken in clinical laboratory of Kochi Medical School Hospital show that healthcare professional in clinical practice evaluates the results as the same as knowledge of clinical practice. The proposed system is a basic system of diagnostic support in evaluation for clinical examination.
Reviving Traditional Chinese Culture Through an Interactive Chat Application

In this paper, we present an interactive system that allows people to enjoy an entertaining experience with traditional Chinese culture. We have created a mobile application called iSage Confucius, which can be used to chat with a virtual Confucius, the famous philosopher in Ancient China. By presenting age-old values and concepts in a new medium, we hope that to spark interest in Confucian culture among a younger generation and help revive a valuable traditional culture in the modern world.
Menstrual Cycle Phase Modulates Emotional Conflict Processing in Women with and without Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) – A Pilot Study

Background Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is characterized by a cluster of psychological and somatic symptoms during the late luteal phase of the menstrual cycle that disappear after the onset of menses. Behavioral differences in emotional and cognitive processing have been reported in women with PMS, and it is of particular interest whether PMS affects the parallel execution of emotional and cognitive processing. Related to this is the question of how the performance of women with PMS relates to stress levels compared to women without PMS. Cortisol has been shown to affect emotional processing in general and it has also been shown that women with severe PMS have a particular cortisol profile. Methods We measured performance in an emotional conflict task and stress levels in women with PMS (n = 15) and women without PMS (n = 15) throughout their menstrual cycle. Results We found a significant increase (p = 0.001) in the mean reaction time for resolving emotional conflict from the follicular to the luteal cycle phase in all subjects. Only women with PMS demonstrated an increase in physiological and subjective stress measures during the luteal menstrual cycle phase. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the menstrual cycle modulates the integration of emotional and cognitive processing in all women. Preliminary data are supportive of the secondary hypothesis that stress levels are mediated by the menstrual cycle phase only in women with PMS. The presented evidence for menstrual cycle-specific differences in integrating emotional and cognitive information highlights the importance of controlling for menstrual cycle phase in studies that aim to elucidate the interplay of emotion and cognition.
Estimating Chinese Interprovincial OutPut Spillovers with Provincial Input-Output Tables

This paper aims at estimating productivity improvement of Chinese 17 relatively backward provinces in manufactures through importing manufactured intermediates from advanced provinces on the basis of just published 2002 national and provincial input-output tables. As Chinese regional inequality remains large, North-South spillover models of trade are appropriate to guide this study. Applying reliable methods to approximate net interprovincial imports by province and sector and the allocation of imported manufactured inputs among sectors within each province, we use a Cob-Douglas production function incorporating Dixit-Stiglitz type increasing returns to variety to deal with the manufactured inputs, and treat the output spillovers as one part of total factor productivity. According to our estimations, as expected, interprovincial imports of manufactured inputs have significant impacts on industrial sectors as well on all sectors of these provinces.
NON-NEGATIVE MATRIX FACTORIZATION AND CLASSIFIERS : EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is one of the recently emerged dimensionality reduction methods. Unlike other methods, NMF is based on non-negative constraints, which allow to learn parts from objects. In this paper, we combine NMF with four classifiers (nearest neighbor, kernel nearest neighbor, k-local hyperplane distance nearest neighbor and support vector machine) in order to investigate the influence of dimensionality reduction performed by NMF on the accuracy rate of the classifiers and establish when NMF is useless. Experiments were conducted on three real-world datasets (Japanese Female Facial Expression, UCI Sonar and UCI BUPA liver disorder). The first dataset contains face images as patterns whereas patterns in two others are composed of numerical measurements not constituting any real physical objects when assembled together. The preliminary conclusion is that while NMF turned out to be useful for lowering a dimensionality of face images, it caused a degradation in classification accuracy when applied to other two datasets. It indicates that NMF may not be good for datasets where patterns cannot be decomposed into meaningful parts, though this thought requires further, more detailed, exploration. As for classifiers, k-local hyperplane distance nearest neighbor demonstrated a very good performance, often outperforming other tested classifiers.
Distributed measurement censoring for estimation with wireless sensor networks

Motivated by the savings in communication bandwidth and sensor transmission energy, data selection for estimation with wireless sensor networks is investigated in this paper. Existing approaches to data selection inherently treat sensing and transmission to a central fusion unit as of equal cost. However, energy expenditure in sensing is generally a fraction of that needed for communication. To alleviate the latter, measurement censoring at sensor nodes is proposed here for data reduction, along with a novel maximum likelihood estimator that optimally incorporates knowledge of the censored data model. Furthermore, a closed-form expression for the Cramér-Rao lower bound on the estimator variance is presented. Numerical studies show that the estimator using censored measurements achieves error values that are competitive with alternative methods, under various sensing conditions, while retaining lower computational complexity.
Random generation of structured genomic sequences

Random sequences are very useful in bioinformatics. According to a very powerful paradigm, they represent the “background noise” from which the actual biological information must differentiate. For example, random sequences are widely used in order to detect overand under-represented motifs, or to determine whether scores of pairwise alignments are relevant. Analytic approaches do exist for these kinds of problems. But, for the most complex cases, experimental approach (i.e. in silico generation of random sequences) is still necessary. Random sequences must obey to a model that takes into account some relevant properties of actual sequences. Usually, the model is based on statistical parameters only: the numbers of occurrences of oligomers in a given biological sequence lead to the parameters of a Markovian model. Our aim is to enrich these classical models by adding structural parameters. Comparing biological sequences to such more “realistic” random sequences may help to discover more refined biological properties. We present a methodology and a software, GenRGenS, for generating genomic sequences and structures, which obey both to statistical and syntaxic (grammatical) parameters. In section 2, we briefly describe an algorithm which generates random words of a context-free language according to a given probability distribution. In section 3, we illustrate the method by applying it to basic RNA secondary structures, using the GenRGenS software.
A Systematic Review of the Efficacy of Bioactive Compounds in Cardiovascular Disease: Phenolic Compounds

The prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is rising and is the prime cause of death in all developed countries. Bioactive compounds (BAC) can have a role in CVD prevention and treatment. The aim of this work was to examine the scientific evidence supporting phenolic BAC efficacy in CVD prevention and treatment by a systematic review. Databases utilized were Medline, LILACS and EMBASE, and all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with prospective, parallel or crossover designs in humans in which the effects of BAC were compared with that of placebo/control were included. Vascular homeostasis, blood pressure, endothelial function, oxidative stress and inflammatory biomarkers were considered as primary outcomes. Cohort, ecological or case-control studies were not included. We selected 72 articles and verified their quality based on the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, establishing diverse quality levels of scientific evidence according to two features: the design and bias risk of a study. Moreover, a grade of recommendation was included, depending on evidence strength of antecedents. Evidence shows that certain polyphenols, such as flavonols can be helpful in decreasing CVD risk factors. However, further rigorous evidence is necessary to support the BAC effect on CVD prevention and treatment.
Singularity analysis of a novel three translational DoF parallel robot considering kinematic asymmetric property

The particular family of lower mobility parallel manipulators by employing modified version of Delta robot is proposed in this paper. The proposed novel mechanism like ordinary Delta parallel mechanism has three degrees of pure translational freedom. One of the main differences between this mechanism and Delta parallel mechanism is the position of robot's three active joints relative to each other which has caused the change in geometry of platforms, and shapes the asymmetrical structure in the robot mechanism and its workspace. Another difference arises from an architectural optimization methodology by consideration of mixed performance index which has been utilized in this mechanism for reaching a better compromise between the dexterity of manipulator and its workspace. After introducing architecture of the robot, developed kinematic closed-form solution is verified using MSC. Adams©. Then Jacobian matrix is generated in order to evaluate the singularity problem of proposed mechanism. After that, workspace of the robot is investigated and compared with ordinary Delta mechanism.
A Study on Techniques and Architecture of Sentiment Analysis

Today most of the products and the services are available online so that direct interaction between the service provider and the customer is established. Now the feedback of the products and the services is taken in the form of online reviews. Sentiment Analysis is the technique comes under opinion mining to analyze these reviews and concludes the review sentiment. In this paper, a study on different types of sentiment analysis techniques is defined along with the exploration of the architecture of sentiment analysis.
Degeneracy loci and polynomial equation solving 1

Let V be a smooth equidimensional quasi-affine variety of dimension r over C and let F be a (p× s)-matrix of coordinate functions of C[V ], where s ≥ p+ r. The pair (V, F ) determines a vector bundle E of rank s− p over W := {x ∈ V | rkF (x) = p}. We associate with (V, F ) a descending chain of degeneracy loci of E (the generic polar varieties of V represent a typical example of this situation). The maximal degree of these degeneracy loci constitutes the essential ingredient for the uniform, bounded error probabilistic pseudo-polynomial time algorithm which we are going to design and which solves a series of computational elimination problems that can be formulated in this framework. We describe applications to polynomial equation solving over the reals and to the computation of a generic fiber of a dominant endomorphism of an affine space.
Theoretical Insight into Business Workflow Virtualization of E-Commerce

In our daily life, more and more commercial activities that have traditionally been conducted via physical mechanisms are being conducted virtually by means of information technologies (ITs). With the tendency of increasing virtualization of e-commerce, it's necessary to study the emerging phenomena from a novel theoretical perspective. According to previous literature communication media have been playing a vital role in IT-enabled business workflow virtualization. This research focuses on business workflow and proposes theoretical insight from media characteristic and relevant perspective. This study provides a new theoretical insight into workflow virtualization and workflow management, which are playing the core role in the research field of e-commerce. Finally, this work also presents potential future research for workflow management.
IMMIGRATION, LITERACY, AND MOBILITY: A CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF WELL-EDUCATED CHINESE IMMIGRANTS' TRAJECTORIES IN CANADA

This dissertation interrogates the deficit assumptions about English proficiency of skilled immigrants who were recruited by Canadian governments between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through the lens of literacy as social practice, the eighteen-month ethnographic qualitative research explores the sequential experiences of settlement and economic integration of seven well-educated Chinese immigrant professionals. The analytical framework is built on sociocultural approaches to literacy and learning, as well as the theories of discourses and language reproduction. Using multiple data sources (observations, conversational interviews, journal and diary entries, photographs, documents, and artifacts collected in everyday lives), I document many different ways that well-educated Chinese immigrants take advantage of their language and literacy skills in English across several social domains of home, school, job market, and workplace. Examining the trans-contextual patterning of the participants’ language and literacy activities reveals that immigrant professionals use literacy as assistance in seeking, negotiating, and taking hold of resources and opportunities within certain social settings. However, my data show that their language and literacy engagements might not always generate positive consequences for social networks, job opportunities, and upward economic mobility. Close analyses of processes and outcomes of the participants’ engagements across these discursive discourses make it very clear that the monolithic assumptions of the dominant language shape and reinforce structural barriers by constraining their social participation, decision making, and learning practice, and thereby make literacy’s consequences unpredictable. The deficit model of language proficiency serves the grounds for linguistic stereotypes and economic marginalization, which produces profoundly consequential effects on immigrants’ pathways as they strive for having access to resources and opportunities in the new society. My analyses illuminate the ways that language and literacy create the complex web of discursive spaces wherein institutional agendas and personal desires are intertwined and collide in complex ways that constitute conditions and processes of social and economic mobility of immigrant populations. Based on these analyses, I argue that immigrants’ successful integration into a host country is not about the mastery of the technical skills in the dominant language. Rather, it is largely about the recognition and acceptance of the value of their language use and literacy practice as they attempt to partake in the globalized new economy.
Constraint-Based Tiled Windows

Typical computer workstations employ window managers for creating, destroying, and arranging windows on the screen. Window managers generally follow either a desktop metaphor, allowing windows to overlap each other like sheets of paper on a desk, or they use a tiling model, arranging each window with a specific size and location that avoids overlap. Desktop models allow for the most layout freedom, but can be frustrating to use when dealing with a large number of windows that must all be visible at once. Tiling models guarantee that each window will be completely visible on the screen, but thus far have provided relatively poor mechanisms for controlling layout decisions. This article describes work in tiled window management featuring a constraint-based layout mechanism. With it the user can specify the appearance of individual windows and constrain relationships between windows, thus exercising necessary control over the tiling process. We discuss our constraint model and then detail an implementation approach that would make use of those constraints.
A semantic-based message interaction model and application of Web Services

The semantic connection between services reflects the correlation among Web Services on business logic. Therefore it is considered that the semantic connection between services is an essential of Web service composition and execution. In this paper, we analysis the semantic link of output and input messages among different services, and then, a semantic-based message interaction model of web aervices was purposed, base on it, we apply the semantic connection into all aspects of service composition. Thus, the developer can combine the component services to form new value-added web services.
Problem solving and the co-ordination of innovative activities

In the context of increasingly globalized markets, ever more complex supply chains and international manufacturing networks, corporate decision-making processes involve more and more actors, variables and criteria. This is a challenge for corporate head quarters. Many have argued that the role once attributed to the integrated innovative organisation and its R&D laboratories is increasingly associated with the functioning of networks of specialised innovators. The aim of this paper is to argue that the role of large firms may have changed, but it is far from disappeared. It looks at the interplay of increasing knowledge specialisation, the development of products of increasing complexity that perform a widening range of functionalities, and the emergence and diffusion of new design strategies for both products and organisations, namely modularity. The emergence of modularity as a product and organisational design strategy is clearly connected to recent trends in organisational design. Modularity would allow the decoupling of complex artifacts into simpler, self-contained modules. Each module would, at the extreme, become the sole business of a specialised trade. This paper builds upon the idea that there are cognitive limits to this process of modularisation: what kinds of problems firms solve, and how they solve them, set limits to the extent of division of labour among firms. We draw implications of such limits for both management and economic theory.
(DP 1984-06) Block Recursiveness of the Household Production Model Under Risk

Block-recursiveness of the household production model is a convenient property to have in the analysis of household production relations. We show here that, with perfectly competitive rural markets, block-recursiveness holds when production risk is additive but not when it is multiplicative. Block-recursiveness does not hold under price risk, additive or otherwise. This has some troubling implications for approaches that require homogeneous functions.