Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Molecular Identification of Commercialized Medicinal Plants in Southern Morocco

Background Medicinal plant trade is important for local livelihoods. However, many medicinal plants are difficult to identify when they are sold as roots, powders or bark. DNA barcoding involves using a short, agreed-upon region of a genome as a unique identifier for species– ideally, as a global standard. Research Question What is the functionality, efficacy and accuracy of the use of barcoding for identifying root material, using medicinal plant roots sold by herbalists in Marrakech, Morocco, as a test dataset. Methodology In total, 111 root samples were sequenced for four proposed barcode regions rpoC1, psbA-trnH, matK and ITS. Sequences were searched against a tailored reference database of Moroccan medicinal plants and their closest relatives using BLAST and Blastclust, and through inference of RAxML phylograms of the aligned market and reference samples. Principal Findings Sequencing success was high for rpoC1, psbA-trnH, and ITS, but low for matK. Searches using rpoC1 alone resulted in a number of ambiguous identifications, indicating insufficient DNA variation for accurate species-level identification. Combining rpoC1, psbA-trnH and ITS allowed the majority of the market samples to be identified to genus level. For a minority of the market samples, the barcoding identification differed significantly from previous hypotheses based on the vernacular names. Conclusions/Significance Endemic plant species are commercialized in Marrakech. Adulteration is common and this may indicate that the products are becoming locally endangered. Nevertheless the majority of the traded roots belong to species that are common and not known to be endangered. A significant conclusion from our results is that unknown samples are more difficult to identify than earlier suggested, especially if the reference sequences were obtained from different populations. A global barcoding database should therefore contain sequences from different populations of the same species to assure the reference sequences characterize the species throughout its distributional range.
A Study of Self-Organizing Map in Interactive Relevance Feedback

With the vast amount of potential relevant documents on the Web, a key question for a retrieval system is how to achieve a high accuracy retrieval under Web setting. The work reported in this paper is our latest effort in examining the effectiveness of applying self organizing maps (SOM) in clustering base interactive relevance feedback. Our experiment results demonstrate that SOM can be used as a clustering tool to generate terms for interactive relevance feedback, which produced a significant improvement over the baseline when measured by R-precision. Our results also show that a preferred strategy for combining blind relevance feedback with interactive relevance feedback is to perform the former first then the latter
Large deviations analysis of variable-rate Slepian-Wolf coding

We analyze the asymptotic performance of ensembles of random binning Slepian-Wolf codes, where each type class of the source might have a different coding rate. In particular, we first provide the exact encoder excess rate exponent as well as the decoder error exponent. Then, using the error exponent expression, we determine the optimal rate function, namely, the minimal rate for each type class needed to satisfy a given requirement on the decoder error exponent. The resulting excess rate exponent is then evaluated for the optimal rate function. Alternating minimization algorithms are provided for the calculation of both the optimal rate function and the excess rate exponent. It is thus exemplified that, compared to fixed-rate coding, larger error exponents may be achieved using variable-rate coding, at the price of a finite excess rate exponent.
Soluble polymeric dual sensor for temperature and pH value.

Two birds with one stone: A thermoresponsive copolymer (see picture, blue beads) bearing a pH-responsive solvatochromic dye (red beads) acts as the first dual sensor for temperature and pH value (black curve). When the hydrophilicity of the copolymer is increased by using a monomer with more hydrophilic side chains, the dual sensing capabilities are lost (red curve), thus providing new insights into the hydration of thermoresponsive polymers.
Collecting Standards: Teaching Botanical Skills in Sweden, 1850–1950

Argument Standards of botanical practice in Sweden between 1850 and 1950 were set, not only in schools and universities, but also in naturalist societies and botanical exchange clubs, and were articulated in handbooks and manuals produced for schoolboys. These standards were maintained among volunteer naturalists in the environmental movement in the 1970s, long after the decline and disappearance of collecting from the curriculum. School science provides a link between the laboratory, the classroom, and the norms and practices of everyday life: between the various “insides” and “outsides” of educational and research settings.
EmuFog: Extensible and scalable emulation of large-scale fog computing infrastructures

The diversity of Fog Computing deployment models and the lack of publicly available Fog infrastructure makes the design of an efficient application or resource management policy a challenging task. Such research often requires a test framework that facilitates the experimental evaluation of an application or protocol design in a repeatable and controllable manner. In this paper, we present EmuFog — an extensible emulation framework tailored for Fog computing scenarios — that enables the from-scratch design of Fog Computing infrastructures and the emulation of real applications and workloads. EmuFog enables researchers to design the network topology according to the use-case, embed Fog Computing nodes in the topology and run Docker-based applications on those nodes connected by an emulated network. Each of the sub-modules of Emu Fog are easily extensible, although EmuFog provides a default implementation for each of them. The scalability and efficacy of EmuFog are evaluated both on synthetic and real-world network topologies.
Robot personality based on the equations of emotion defined in the 3D mental space

The authors deal with human-like head robots in order to develop new head mechanisms and functions for a humanoid robot that has the ability to communicate naturally with a human by expressing human-like emotion. When humans communicate through auditory or visual sensations, they estimate their mental state through not only the information of each sensation but also their mental model. A robot's mental model consists of a 3D mental space having a pleasantness, and activation and a certainty axes. When the robot senses the stimulus, a mental vector moves in this mental space based on the equations of emotion. We also propose a robot personality which consists of sensing personality and expression personality. Further, we assign and load various sensing personalities.
Adaptive 3-Dimensional Topology Control for Wireless Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks

Developing an adaptive 3-dimensional (3D) topology control algorithm is important because most wireless nodes are mobile and deployed in buildings. Moreover, in buildings, wireless link qualities and topologies change frequently due to various objects and the interference from other wireless devices. Previous topology control algorithms can suffer significant performance degradation because they only use the Euclidean distance for the topology construction. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive 3D topology control algorithm for wireless ad-hoc sensor networks, especially in indoor environments. The proposed algorithm adjusts the minimum transmit power adaptively with considering the interference effect. To construct the local topology, each node divides the 3D space, a sphere centered at itself, into k equal cones by using Platonic solid (i.e., regular k-hedron) and selects the neighbor that requires the lowest transmit power in each cone. Since the minimum transmit power values depend on the effect of interferences, the proposed algorithm can adjust topology adaptively and preserve the network connectivity reliably. To evaluate the performance of algorithms, we conduct various experiments with simulator and real wireless platforms. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the previous algorithms in terms of the packet delivery ratio and the energy consumption with relatively low complexity. key words: 3-dimension, Topology Control, Wireless Ad-hoc Sensor Network
On-Line Boosting Tracking Based on Color Information and Haar-Like Features

In view of the learning and improvement ability of on-line boosting algorithm framework, implemented a target tracking system which mixed color information and Haar-like features together. To solve the shortage of the Haar-like features, first used color histogram equalization to the frame image to enhance the image's color information, then used Bhattacharyya coefficient to calculate the similarity of the candidate targets and the previous target, selected the one which had the maximum similarity as the tracked target and compared the similarity and confidence's variance to determine whether to update the target's color histogram or not. According to experiment, this method makes a good tracking in complex background and situation when the target takes a large rotation, better improves the tracking accuracy, and has certain robustness.
A Note on Measurement of Social-Psychological Belief Systems

A Note on Measurement of Social-Psychological Belief Systems Paul E. Green, Yoram Wind, and Arun K. Jain 204 Changes in Explicit Information and Brand Perceptions Vithala R. Rao 209 Improving Sales Forecasts for Appliances Hoy F. Carman 214 Can Private Brand Buyers Be Identified? Philip C. Burger and Barbara Schott 219 Informal Group Influence on Risk Taking Arch G. Woodside 223 An Exploratory Investigation of Brand Switching William A. Chance and Norman D. French 226
Defensive Responses to Early Memories with Peers: a Possible Pathway to Disordered Eating

Abstract Childhood and early adolescence experiences, specifically those that provide an adulthood enriched with warm and safe memories, are consistently stated in literature as powerful emotional regulators. In contrast, individuals who scarcely recall positive experiences may begin to believe that others see the self as inferior, inadequate and unattractive. In order to cope with a perceived loss of social desirability and achieve other’s acceptance, individuals may become submissive, and women, particularly, may resort to the presentation of a perfect body image. Both mechanisms are defensive responses suggested to be associated with mental health difficulties, particularly disordered eating behaviors. The present study aimed at exploring the association between early memories of warmth and safeness with peers and eating psychopathology. Also, a path analysis was conducted to investigate the mediator role of submissiveness and perfectionistic self-presentation focused on body image on this association, in a sample of 342 female students. Results revealed that the absence of early positive memories with peers holds a significant effect over eating psychopathology’s severity, and also that this effect is mediated through submissiveness and body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation. This model accounted for 13%, 19% and 51% of submissiveness, perfectionistic self-presentation of body image and eating psychopathology’s variances, respectively, and showed excellent model fit.
Capacity Releasing Diffusion for Speed and Locality

Diffusions and related random walk procedures are of central importance in many areas of machine learning, data analysis, and applied mathematics. Because they spread mass agnostically at each step in an iterative manner, they can sometimes spread mass "too aggressively," thereby failing to find the "right" clusters. We introduce a novel Capacity Releasing Diffusion (CRD) Process, which is both faster and stays more local than the classical spectral diffusion process. As an application, we use our CRD Process to develop an improved local algorithm for graph clustering. Our local graph clustering method can find local clusters in a model of clustering where one begins the CRD Process in a cluster whose vertices are connected better internally than externally by an $O(\log^2 n)$ factor, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the cluster. Thus, our CRD Process is the first local graph clustering algorithm that is not subject to the well-known quadratic Cheeger barrier. Our result requires a certain smoothness condition, which we expect to be an artifact of our analysis. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates improved results, in particular for realistic social graphs where there are moderately good---but not very good---clusters.
A camera self-calibration method based on dual constraints of multi-view images

Camera calibration is the essential step of obtaining 3D information from 2D views in the field of computer vision, which is widely used in the area of 3D reconstruction, navigation, visual supervision, etc. A camera self-calibration method based on dual constraints of multi-view images is proposed to make calibration possible when there is no reference calibration block or the movement of camera is arbitrary. In this method, multi-view images are preprocessed first to select three images which are most suitable for camera self-calibration, then we use the method based on the genetic algorithm, the camera parameters are finally estimated by using epipolar geometry matching error and reprojection error as fitness functions as two steps. Experimental results show that the proposed camera self-calibration method is correct and effective.
Neuropsychological evaluation of blast-related concussion: Illustrating the challenges and complexities through OEF/OIF case studies

Background/objective: Soldiers of Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF) sustain blast-related mild traumatic brain injury (concussion) with alarming regularity. This study discusses factors in addition to concussion, such as co-morbid psychological difficulty (e.g. post-traumatic stress) and symptom validity concerns that may complicate neuropsychological evaluation in the late stage of concussive injury. Case report: The study presents the complexities that accompany neuropsychological evaluation of blast concussion through discussion of three case reports of OEF/OIF personnel. Discussion: The authors emphasize uniform assessment of blast concussion, the importance of determining concussion severity according to acute-injury characteristics and elaborate upon non-concussion-related factors that may impact course of cognitive limitation. The authors conclude with a discussion of the need for future research examining the impact of blast concussion (particularly recurrent concussion) and neuropsychological performance.
Determining Review Coverage by Extracting Topic Sentences Using A Graph-based Clustering Approach

Reviews of technical articles or documents must be thorough in discussing their content. At times a review may be based on just one section in a document, say the Introduction. Review coverage is the extent to which a review covers the “important topics” in a document. In this paper we present an approach to evaluate the coverage of a submission by a review. We use a novel agglomerative clustering technique to group the submission’s sentences into topic clusters. We identify topic sentences from these clusters, and calculate review coverage in terms of the overlaps between the review and the submission’s topic sentences. We evaluate our coverage identification approach on peer-review data from Expertiza, a collaborative, web-based learning application. Our approach produces a high correlation of 0.51 with human-provided coverage values.
Philosophical enquiry as a pedagogical tool to implement the CAPS curriculum: Final-year pre-service teachers’ perceptions

In this paper, we argue that philosophical enquiry, as practised using community of enquiry pedagogy, is an appropriate implementation strategy for Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) if the principles that underlie the curriculum are to be taken seriously. Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy for Children Programme and its community of enquiry pedagogy were intended as a classroom means to enhance children’s critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking and prepare them for democratic citizenship. A previous study suggested that pre-service teachers benefitted from exposure to this pedagogy. The aim of this study was to explore the extent to which pre-service teachers, after a brief experiential
Geometric Embedding for Learning Combinatorial Structures

Introduction We examine the problems of optimization and Bayesian reasoning in combinatorial spaces including graph structures and permutations. One strategy is to embed combinatorial sets into continuous spaces and work there with powerful analytic tools. This trick has proven quite effective in, for example, continuous relaxations of integer programming problems [2]. Some work in machine learning has used implicit or explicit continuous embeddings of combinatorial problems [1, 6, 4], but the connection to the topology and analytic properties of the embedding space is typically not made explicit, nor fully exploited. We argue that the embedding approach offers a powerful way to finesse some of the challenges of combinatoric spaces. We outline two of our research directions in this space: rapid Bayesian network structure identification via induced topology, and Bayesian inference on permutations via low-dimensional embedding.
Cross-resistance mechanism of respiratory syncytial virus against structurally diverse entry inhibitors

Significance Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes major disease in pediatric and elderly patients, urging the development of efficacious therapeutics. This study establishes a recombinant RSV reporter strain for drug discovery and identifies an entry inhibitor class targeting the viral fusion (F) protein. Biochemical, structural, and functional characterization of the inhibitor spotlights two microdomains governing the conformational stability of prefusion F. Mutations in these domains cause broad cross-resistance against the compound and RSV entry inhibitors in preclinical and clinical development, without mandatory loss of in vivo pathogenicity, challenging the possible clinical benefit of current RSV entry inhibitor classes. Anti-RSV campaigns should better target postentry steps or proactively circumvent resistance to entry inhibition. The resistant RSV reporter strain developed here establishes a strategy toward this goal. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading pediatric pathogen that is responsible for a majority of infant hospitalizations due to viral disease. Despite its clinical importance, no vaccine prophylaxis against RSV disease or effective antiviral therapeutic is available. In this study, we established a robust high-throughput drug screening protocol by using a recombinant RSV reporter virus to expand the pool of RSV inhibitor candidates. Mechanistic characterization revealed that a potent newly identified inhibitor class blocks viral entry through specific targeting of the RSV fusion (F) protein. Resistance against this class was induced and revealed overlapping hotspots with diverse, previously identified RSV entry blockers at different stages of preclinical and clinical development. A structural and biochemical assessment of the mechanism of unique, broad RSV cross-resistance against structurally distinct entry inhibitors demonstrated that individual escape hotspots are located in immediate physical proximity in the metastable conformation of RSV F and that the resistance mutations lower the barrier for prefusion F triggering, resulting in an accelerated RSV entry kinetics. One resistant RSV recombinant remained fully pathogenic in a mouse model of RSV infection. By identifying molecular determinants governing the RSV entry machinery, this study spotlights a molecular mechanism of broad RSV resistance against entry inhibition that may affect the impact of diverse viral entry inhibitors presently considered for clinical use and outlines a proactive design for future RSV drug discovery campaigns.
Genetic and Ultrastructural Analysis Reveals the Key Players and Initial Steps of Bacterial Magnetosome Membrane Biogenesis

Magnetosomes of magnetotactic bacteria contain well-ordered nanocrystals for magnetic navigation and have recently emerged as the most sophisticated model system to study the formation of membrane bounded organelles in prokaryotes. Magnetosome biosynthesis is thought to begin with the formation of a dedicated compartment, the magnetosome membrane (MM), in which the biosynthesis of a magnetic mineral is strictly controlled. While the biomineralization of magnetosomes and their subsequent assembly into linear chains recently have become increasingly well studied, the molecular mechanisms and early stages involved in MM formation remained poorly understood. In the Alphaproteobacterium Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense, approximately 30 genes were found to control magnetosome biosynthesis. By cryo-electron tomography of several key mutant strains we identified the gene complement controlling MM formation in this model organism. Whereas the putative magnetosomal iron transporter MamB was most crucial for the process and caused the most severe MM phenotype upon elimination, MamM, MamQ and MamL were also required for the formation of wild-type-like MMs. A subset of seven genes (mamLQBIEMO) combined within a synthetic operon was sufficient to restore the formation of intracellular membranes in the absence of other genes from the key mamAB operon. Tracking of de novo magnetosome membrane formation by genetic induction revealed that magnetosomes originate from unspecific cytoplasmic membrane locations before alignment into coherent chains. Our results indicate that no single factor alone is essential for MM formation, which instead is orchestrated by the cumulative action of several magnetosome proteins.