Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distributed Scheduling of Network Connectivity Using Mobile Access Point Robots

In this paper, we consider scenarios where mobility can be exploited to enable reliable communications in wireless networks with scarce resources that are unable to concurrently service their nodes. Specifically, we consider cases where a team of robots operate as mobile access points (APs) that provide service, namely sufficient end-to-end communication routes, to a multihop network of static source nodes which generate data. We introduce the connectivity scheduling problem, a novel framework that combines motion planning of the APs with service scheduling of the source nodes and network routing control so that integrity of communications is guaranteed over time. We formulate the connectivity scheduling problem as a multistage mixed integer programming (MIP) problem, where path planning, service scheduling, and routing decisions are all jointly optimized over a discrete-time horizon. Since MIP problems can grow intractable quickly, we further consider a continuous convex reformulation of the problem and employ sparse optimization techniques, specifically the reweighted ℓ1 regularization scheme, to recover the desired integrality structure of the solution. We propose a decentralized method to solve the above relaxation that is based on the recently developed accelerated distributed augmented Lagrangians (ADAL) algorithm. Specifically, we modify ADAL by incorporating in the algorithm the reweighted ℓ1 scheme, which enables us to recover the desired sparsity structure of the original MIP at the final solution. Numerical results are presented that validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Subtopic-Focused Sentence Scoring in Multi-document Summarization

In previous works, subtopics are seldom mentioned in multi-document summarization while only one topic is focused to extract summary. In this paper, we propose a subtopic- focused model to score sentences in the extractive summarization task. Different with supervised methods, it does not require costly manual work to form the training set. Multiple documents are represented as mixture over subtopics, denoted by term distributions through unsupervised learning. Our method learns the subtopic distribution over sentences via a hierarchical Bayesian model, through which sentences are scored and extracted as summary. Experiments on DUC 2006 data are performed and the ROUGE evaluation results show that the proposed method can reach the state-of-the-art performance.
Direct Identification of Bacteria in Positive Blood Culture Bottles by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

Background With long delays observed between sampling and availability of results, the usefulness of blood cultures in the context of emergency infectious diseases has recently been questioned. Among methods that allow quicker bacterial identification from growing colonies, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry was demonstrated to accurately identify bacteria routinely isolated in a clinical biology laboratory. In order to speed up the identification process, in the present work we attempted bacterial identification directly from blood culture bottles detected positive by the automate. Methodology/Principal Findings We prospectively analysed routine MALDI-TOF identification of bacteria detected in blood culture by two different protocols involving successive centrifugations and then lysis by trifluoroacetic acid or formic acid. Of the 562 blood culture broths detected as positive by the automate and containing one bacterial species, 370 (66%) were correctly identified. Changing the protocol from trifluoroacetic acid to formic acid improved identification of Staphylococci, and overall correct identification increased from 59% to 76%. Lack of identification was observed mostly with viridans streptococci, and only one false positive was observed. In the 22 positive blood culture broths that contained two or more different species, only one of the species was identified in 18 samples, no species were identified in two samples and false species identifications were obtained in two cases. The positive predictive value of bacterial identification using this procedure was 99.2%. Conclusions/Significance MALDI-TOF MS is an efficient method for direct routine identification of bacterial isolates in blood culture, with the exception of polymicrobial samples and viridans streptococci. It may replace routine identification performed on colonies, provided improvement for the specificity of blood culture broths growing viridans streptococci is obtained in the near future.
Pneumocystis‐mediated IL‐8 release by macrophages requires coexpression of mannose receptors and TLR2

Interaction with the unique fungus Pneumocystis (Pc) promotes IL‐8 release by human alveolar macrophages (AM), although the receptor(s) mediating IL‐8 release have not been identified. TLR2 recognizes fungal components and mediates release of host defense cytokines and chemokines, although whether TLR2 mediates signaling in response to Pc is not known. In the current study, Pc induced IL‐8 release by human AM, and AM pretreatment with anti‐TLR2 neutralizing antibody reduced IL‐8 release. However, in nonphagocytic human embryonic kidney (HEK)293 cells transfected with human TLR2 cDNA, incubation with Pc did not induce IL‐8 release, whereas these same cells released IL‐8 in response to the TLR2 agonist lipoteichoic acid. Targeted gene silencing of AM mannose receptors (MR; phagocytic receptors for Pc) using small interfering RNA also reduced Pc‐mediated IL‐8 release in human AM. However, HEK293 cells transfected with human MR cDNA alone did not release IL‐8 in response to Pc. In contrast, HEK293 cells cotransfected with human TLR2 and human MR cDNA released IL‐8 in response to Pc. In human AM, Pc promoted direct interaction of MR and TLR2, IL‐8 release was reduced markedly upon simultaneous blocking of TLR2 and gene silencing of MR, and IL‐8 release was dependent in part on transcription factor NF‐κB and ERK1/2 and JNK MAPKs. These studies demonstrate that Pc‐mediated IL‐8 release by human AM requires the coexpression of MR and TLR2 and further supports the concept that combinatorial interactions of macrophage innate receptors provide specificity of host defense cell responses to infectious challenge.
Increase in Neurite Outgrowth Mediated by Overexpression of Actin Depolymerizing Factor

Growth cone motility is regulated by changes in actin dynamics. Actin depolymerizing factor (ADF) is an important regulator of actin dynamics, and extracellular signal-induced changes in ADF activity may influence growth cone motility and neurite extension. To determine this directly, we overexpressed ADF in primary neurons and analyzed neurite lengths. Recombinant adenoviruses were constructed that express wild-type Xenopus ADF/cofilin [XAC(wt)], as well as two mutant forms of XAC, the active but nonphosphorylatable XAC(A3) and the less active, pseudophosphorylated XAC(E3). XAC expression was detectable on Western blots 24 hr after infection and peaked at 3 d in cultured rat cortical neurons. Peak expression was ∼75% that of endogenous ADF. XAC(wt) expression caused a slight increase in growth cone area and filopodia but decreased filopodia numbers on neurite shafts. At maximal XAC levels, neurite lengths increased >50% compared with controls infected with a green fluorescent protein-expressing adenovirus. Increased neurite extension was directly related to the expression of active XAC. Expression of the XAC(E3) mutant did not increase neurite extension, whereas expression of the XAC(A3) mutant increased neurite extension but to a lesser extent than XAC(wt), which was partially phosphorylated. XAC expression had minimal, if any, impact on F-actin levels and did not result in compensatory changes in the expression of endogenous ADF or actin. However, F-actin turnover appeared to increase based on F-actin loss after treatment with drugs that block actin polymerization. These results provide direct evidence that increased ADF activity promotes process extension and neurite outgrowth.
Learning and Emotional Intelligence in Agents

Neurological evidence was uncovered by A. Demasio revealing the existence of ‘emotional intelligence’ and its importance. Following this breakthrough many computational models of emotions were developed. Although, psychological research on emotions recognized memory and experience as the main factors that define and shape the complexity of the emotional process, existing computational models of emotion did not incorporate experience or learning. We are proposing a model of an agent named PETEEI - a PET with Evolving Emotional Intelligence. PETEEI was modeled to produce emotions according to its own experience. Furthermore, PETEEI filters and expresses emotions according to its own moods and previous experience.
Multi-objective job placement in clusters

One of the key decisions made by both MapReduce and HPC cluster management frameworks is the placement of jobs within a cluster. To make this decision, they consider factors like resource constraints within a node or the proximity of data to a process. However, they fail to account for the degree of collocation on the cluster's nodes. A tight process placement can create contention for the intra-node shared resources, such as shared caches, memory, disk, or network bandwidth. A loose placement would create less contention, but exacerbate network delays and increase cluster-wide power consumption. Finding the best job placement is challenging, because among many possible placements, we need to find one that gives us an acceptable trade-off between performance and power consumption. We propose to tackle the problem via multi-objective optimization. Our solution is able to balance conflicting objectives specified by the user and efficiently find a suitable job placement.
Teacher Opinions on the Problems Faced in Reading and Writing by Syrian Migrant Children in Their First Class at Primary School.

The objective of this study is to evaluate, according to the opinions of teachers, the problems faced by the children of Syrian families who have taken refuge in Turkey since 2011 with regard to their linguistic and communication skills, as well as their reading and writing process in Turkish as a foreign language. The research group is composed of seven teachers working in the first class of public primary schools attended by Syrian children. The study, which is based on the statements and perceptions of teachers, has been designed with the descriptive approach in the qualitative research method. Linguistic problems faced by Syrian immigrant children during their reading and writing process in Turkish as a foreign language, as well as the opinions of teachers on solution recommendations, are treated in detail in the study. The opinions of teachers are assessed under four main theme: Opinions on preparatory processes of instructing Turkish as a foreign language; opinions on communication approaches and the program implemented during the instruction of reading and writing; the importance of cooperation in the solving of problems; and opinions on instructing Turkish to Syrian children in a more effective manner. The study found that class teachers experience many problems in teaching Turkish reading and writing as a foreign language to Syrian students, as well as developing their linguistic and communication skills. The findings also reveal that teachers tend to look for support from their colleagues and other students in their classes, rather than from the families of children.
When Expiry Date for Educational Mediocrity Dawns: A Case of Three Selected Secondary Schools

Abstract The paper examines educational scars endured by underperforming schools after resilience from underachievement to high performance. This is a case study of three secondary schools, premised on a qualitative research and underscored by the Phenomenological Approach and the Learning Organisation Philosophy. Theresearch question guiding the paper is: what enables the vestiges of underperformance to persist to linger in theminds of institutional incumbents, long after a school’s resilience? Data were collected with literature study andinterviewing technique. Three secondary schools were conveniently sampled out of thirteen from KgakotlouCircuit in Capricorn District of Limpopo Province. Principal findings reveal that underachievement sticks in theminds of institutional incumbents. Furthermore, an institution that once underperformed, has a great likelihood ofexperiencing its recurrence in no time. Finally, educational mediocrity can never replace excellence for ever. Theresearcher recommends that further studies on educational scars left behind by institutional underperformance beundertaken.
Prospectives for Online Trust Management

Innovation in technologies for online service provision has been explosive during the relatively short history of the Internet, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. As a result there is an enormous amount and variety of resources available online. Currently there is little control over the quality of online resources by users and peer service providers, with the result that many Web sites provide low quality and even deliberately malicious or misleading services with little fear of being sanctioned. Without any practical means of assessing the quality of online resources, users are left in the dark when making decisions about which resources they can safely access, and that best fit their needs. This situation can be described in terms of trust management, meaning that serious service providers should be able to correctly represent the quality of their services, and service consumers should be able to reliably assess the quality of online services before they decide to use and depend on a particular service. This paper discusses the prospectives for reliable trust management for provision and consumption of online resources. As it turns out, this a hard problem that no single method alone can solve. Instead, we need to start experimenting with various approaches to identify methods or combinations of such methods that give participants the best trust management capability.
Essential veterinary education in modern molecular tools for the detection of disease: what veterinarians will need to know about genomics and molecular biology and diagnostics (including bioterrorist weapons) in 2025.

Nul doute que les programmes d'enseignement veterinaire de demain mettront davantage l'accent que ceux d'aujourd'hui sur les outils moleculaires existants et a venir. Ils devront egalement permettre aux futurs veterinaires de savoir exactement quels types de resultats ils peuvent attendre de chaque methode particuliere (par exemple, des methodes de diagnostic specifiques par opposition aux methodes non specifiques, des caracterisations phenotypiques versus genotypiques, etc.). En outre, les etudiants devront acquerir de solides connaissances sur les types de tests le plus appropries dans chaque situation clinique ou epidemiologique, et sur les conclusions a tirer ou a ne pas tirer des resultats obtenus. En consequence, les programmes d'enseignement veterinaire devront porter sur les elements suivants: principes de la biologie moleculaire et de la genomique ; detection des maladies et caracterisation des tests moleculaires ; principes et applications de la taxonomie microbienne, de la comparaison de sequences et de l'epidemiologie moleculaire (en particulier: identification taxonomique, enquetes epidemiologiques, evolution genetique et tracabilite des souches) ; role des veterinaires dans le domaine des zoonoses et de la sante publique.
Increasing the intra-Golgi pH of cultured LS174T goblet-differentiated cells mimics the decreased mucin sulfation and increased Thomsen-Friedenreich antigen (Gal beta1-3GalNac alpha-) expression seen in colon cancer.

Mucins in ulcerative colitis and colon cancer share common properties of reduced sulfation and increased oncofetal carbohydrate antigen expression. It has previously been shown that there is no simple correlation between these changes and the activity of the relevant glycosyl-, sialyl-, and sulfo-transferases. We examined mucin sulfation and expression of oncofetal Thomsen-Friedenreich (TF) antigen (galactosyl beta1-3N-acetylgalactosamine alpha-) in the goblet cell-differentiated human colon cancer cell line LS174T following treatment with bafilomycin A(1, )which raises intra-Golgi pH, or monensin, which disrupts medial-trans Golgi transport. Cells were dual-labeled with sodium [(35)S]-sulfate and D-[6-(3)H(N)]-glucosamine hydrochloride, or labeled with L-[U-(14)C]-threonine alone. Mucin was purified using Sepharose CL-4B gel filtration. Mucin sulfo-Lewis(a) and TF antigen expression were assessed using the F2 anti-sulfo-Lewis(a) monoclonal antibody and peanut agglutinin binding respectively. Bafilomycin (0.01 microM; 48 h) reduced total mucin sulfation, expressed relative to incorporation of glucosamine, to 0.50 +/- 0.04 d.p.m. [(35)S]-sulfate per d.p.m. [(3)H]-glucosamine compared to control, 0.84 +/- 0.05 (p < 0.001, n = 16). This was accompanied by 50.3 +/- 8.0% increased expression of TF antigen (p < 0.01) and 50.1 +/- 5.5% decreased expression of sulfo-Lewis(a) (p < 0.01). The reduced sulfate:glucosamine ratio was largely due to increased incorporation of glucosamine into newly synthesized mucin rather than reduction in total sulfate incorporation. In contrast, monensin only reduced total mucin glycosylation at concentrations > 0.1 microM and had no significant effect on mucin sulfation or TF expression. Intra-Golgi alkalinization affects mucin glycosylation, resulting in decreased mucin sulfation and increased expression of TF antigen, changes that mimic those seen in cancerous and premalignant human colonic epithelium.
High level fusion of profile-based human action recognition using multi-view RGBD information

Human action recognition system is fundamental of human activity and behavior recognition, especially for video analysis technologies. In this paper, we introduce an improvement method for human action recognition proposed by P.Chawalitsittikul et al. The actions from RGBD multi-views, taken from cameras at different static-viewpoints in the overlapping Area of Interest, are fused at high-level decision. Our empirical fusion model is derived from performances of action recognition in various viewpoints: front, slant, side, back-slant, and back. The results shown that the fusion model improves significantly the accuracy using only one more camera.
The Genetic Architecture of Natural Variation in Recombination Rate in Drosophila melanogaster

Meiotic recombination ensures proper chromosome segregation in many sexually reproducing organisms. Despite this crucial function, rates of recombination are highly variable within and between taxa, and the genetic basis of this variation remains poorly understood. Here, we exploit natural variation in the inbred, sequenced lines of the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) to map genetic variants affecting recombination rate. We used a two-step crossing scheme and visible markers to measure rates of recombination in a 33 cM interval on the X chromosome and in a 20.4 cM interval on chromosome 3R for 205 DGRP lines. Though we cannot exclude that some biases exist due to viability effects associated with the visible markers used in this study, we find ~2-fold variation in recombination rate among lines. Interestingly, we further find that recombination rates are uncorrelated between the two chromosomal intervals. We performed a genome-wide association study to identify genetic variants associated with recombination rate in each of the two intervals surveyed. We refined our list of candidate variants and genes associated with recombination rate variation and selected twenty genes for functional assessment. We present strong evidence that five genes are likely to contribute to natural variation in recombination rate in D. melanogaster; these genes lie outside the canonical meiotic recombination pathway. We also find a weak effect of Wolbachia infection on recombination rate and we confirm the interchromosomal effect. Our results highlight the magnitude of population variation in recombination rate present in D. melanogaster and implicate new genetic factors mediating natural variation in this quantitative trait.
TECHNICAL BRIEF: Optimized pipeline for isolation of high-quality RNA from corneal cell subpopulations

Purpose: Attempts to determine the transcriptional profile of discrete subsets of limbal epithelial cells in situ using laser capture microdissection (LCM) face two major challenges. First, the transcriptional profile of cells within a tissue may rapidly change as the tissue is excised and exposed to cold ischemia. Second, there is a risk of degradation of the RNA as the cellular compartment is separated from the remaining tissue. An optimized protocol for LCM of corneal epithelium is presented to address these issues. Methods: Experiments using porcine eye globes were carried out to determine both optimal procedures and settings for tissue harvest, transport, storage, histology, LCM, and RNA isolation. The optimized protocol was validated using human corneal epithelium. Results: To facilitate preservation of the gene expression profile, we have developed a mechanical tool for dissection of cornea that, in combination with flash freezing, enables tissue to be stored within 5 min of enucleation of the eye. Furthermore, we describe how RNA from limbal crypt cells may be obtained using a procedure involving cryosectioning, histological staining, and LCM. Conclusion: In this paper, we describe an optimized method for isolating high-quality RNA from cellular subpopulations confined to the limbal crypts of the cornea. The procedure yields RNA in amounts and quality suitable for downstream gene expression analyses, such as microarrays or next generation sequencing.
Continuous k-Nearest Neighbor Queries in Road Networks Using Oracle Spatial

The growing availability of location-aware mobile devices and wireless communication induces the need for techniques for implementing locationbased services. A technique which has many applications in location-based services is k -Nearest Neighbor search. This paper investigates the challenges in answering continuous k -Nearest Neighbor search queries in the case where mobile devices are constrained to movement on a road network, and where the distance of a moving object is measured in travel time. We propose a method for building a graph representation of a road network, along with an algorithm for finding the k -Nearest Neighbors and continuously maintaining the result using this representation. Two approaches for modeling the database are presented—one using the features of Oracle Spatial and one using B-tree indexing combined with precomputation. We have performed experiments to compare the performance of these approaches, revealing that precomputation can increase the efficiency of the algorithm.
Challenge for Manga Processing: Sketch-based Manga Retrieval

We propose a sketch-based system for manga image retrieval. In the system, users simply draw sketches, and similar images are retrieved in real time from a manga database. The results are updated every time the user draws a stroke and therefore users can intuitively interact with the system. The proposed method consists of a simple and efficient sliding window-based feature description framework and interactive re-ranking schemes, which are introduced because the characteristics of manga images are different from those of naturalistic images, and thus, traditional image retrieval methods are not effective. Additionally, the future directions of improving the current retrieval system, including by using a combination of text features and image features, and the construction of a large database are discussed.