Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three-dimensional graph drawing by Kamada-Kawai method with Barzilai-Borwein method

This article presents a modification of Kamada-Kawai method (KK) which was designed to produce layouts of simple undirected graphs. Graphs drawn by Kamada-Kawai algorithm exhibit symmetries, tend to produce crossing-free layouts for planar graphs. Original KK uses Newton-Raphson method which needs computation of Hessian matrix in every iteration. It requires higher number of computational operations. This prevents the usage of this method for both large graphs and three-dimensional graphs. Presented idea is to modify KK by Barzilai-Borwein method (BB) which is also iterative method and does not work with Hessian matrix. It enables to use the advantage of the ‘spring’ theory from KK and removes the computational demands of KK. In this article we test presented modification for the drawing of three-dimensional graph.
Microfluidics and the Life Sciences

The field of microfluidics, often also referred to as “Lab-on-a-Chip” has made significant progress in the last 15 years and is an essential tool in the development of new products and protocols in the life sciences. This article provides a broad overview on the developments on the academic as well as the commercial side. Fabrication technologies for polymer-based devices are presented and a strategy for the development of complex integrated devices is discussed, together with an example on the use of these devices in pathogen detection.
Sequence and analysis of a 33 kb fragment from the right arm of chromosome XV of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

We have determined the nucleotide sequence of a cosmid (pEOA423) from chromosome XV of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Analysis of the 33,173 bp sequence reveals the presence of 20 putative open reading frames (ORFs). Five of them correspond to previously known genes (MGM1, STE4, CDC44, STE13, RPB8). The previously published nucleotide sequences are in perfect agreement with our sequence except for STE4 and MGM1. In the latter case, 59 amino acids were truncated from the published protein at its N‐terminal end due to a frameshift. The putative translation products of six other ORFs exhibit significant homology with protein sequences in public databases: O50 03 and O50 17 products are homologs of the ANC1 and MIP1 proteins of S. cerevisiae, respectively; O50 05 product is similar to that of a protein of unknown function from Myxococcus xanthus; O50 12 product is probably a new ATP/ADP carrier; O50 13 product shows homology with group II tRNA synthetases; and the O50 16 product exhibits strong similarity with the N‐terminal domain of the NifU proteins from several prokaryotes. The remaining nine ORFs show no significant similarity. Among these, two contiguous ORFs (O50 19 and O50 20) are very similar to each other, suggesting an ancient tandem duplication. The 33,173 bp sequence has been submitted to EMBL (Accession Number: X92441).
COGNITIVE MODELS AND LITERARY COMPETENCE OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

This descriptive-correlation study examined the relationship of the public junior high school students’ perception on the relevance of cognitive models in studying literature to their literary competence. Utilizing a questionnaire and a literary competence test in gathering data, the results revealed that the 251 respondents deemed that cultural model as relevant for this model prepare them to be multi-culturally literate individuals. They also found that the vicarious experiences gained from studying literature enabled them to make personal connection with literary texts especially on the universality of human existence that afforded them to perceive personal growth model as relevant. Also, the respondents perceived language model as relevant as it provided opportunity to hone their receptive communication skills. Despite the positive perception of the respondents on the relevance of cognitive models in studying literature, the results of the administered literary competence test revealed low performance as the respondents were categorized to have Beginning to Developing levels of proficiency in literary competence along its four dimensions which was affirmed by the non-significant result when the two variables were correlated for relationship. This study calls for an intervention program to hone the literary competence of the junior high school students. Article DOI: https://dx.doi. org/10.20319/pijtel.2019. 31.258280 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
Synthesis of staphylococcal virulence factors is controlled by a regulatory RNA molecule.

The production of most toxins and other exoproteins in Staphylococcus aureus is controlled globally by a complex polycistronic regulatory locus, agr. Secretory proteins are up‐regulated by agr whereas surface proteins are down‐regulated. agr contains two divergent promoters, one of which directs the synthesis of a 514 nucleotide (nt) transcript, RNAIII. In this report, we show that the cloned RNAIII determinant restores both positive and negative regulatory functions of agr to an agr‐null strain and that the RNA itself, rather than any protein, is the effector molecule. RNAIII acts primarily on the initiation of transcription and, secondarily in some cases, at the level of translation. In these cases, translation and transcription are regulated independently. RNAIII probably regulates translation directly by interacting with target gene transcripts and transcription indirectly by means of intermediary protein factors.
Time window for recanalization in basilar artery occlusion

Basilar artery occlusion (BAO) is one of the most devastating forms of stroke and few patients have good outcomes without recanalization. Most centers apply recanalization therapies for BAO up to 12–24 hours after symptom onset, which is a substantially longer time window than the 4.5 hours used in anterior circulation stroke. In this speculative synthesis, we discuss recent advances in BAO treatment in order to understand why and under which circumstances longer symptom duration might not necrotize the brainstem and turn therapeutic attempts futile. We raise the possibility that distinct features of the posterior circulation, e.g., highly developed, persistent collateral arterial network, reverse filling of the distal basilar artery, and delicate plasma flow siding the clot, might sustain brittle patency of brainstem perforators in the face of stepwise growth of the thrombus. Meanwhile, the tissue clock characterizing the rapid necrosis of a typical anterior circulation penumbra will not start. During this perilous time period, recanalization at any point would salvage the brainstem from eventual necrosis caused by imminent reinforcement and further building up of the clot.
Segmentation of heterogeneous document images : an approach based on machine learning, connected components analysis, and texture analysis. (Segmentation d'images hétérogènes de documents : une approche basée sur l'apprentissage automatique de données, l'analyse en composantes connexes et l'analyse 

Document page segmentation is one of the most crucial steps in document image analysis. It ideally aims to explain the full structure of any document page, distinguishing text zones, graphics, photographs, halftones, figures, tables, etc. Although to date, there have been made several attempts of achieving correct page segmentation results, there are still many difficulties. The leader of the project in the framework of which this PhD work has been funded (*) uses a complete processing chain in which page segmentation mistakes are manually corrected by human operators. Aside of the costs it represents, this demands tuning of a large number of parameters; moreover, some segmentation mistakes sometimes escape the vigilance of the operators. Current automated page segmentation methods are well accepted for clean printed documents; but, they often fail to separate regions in handwritten documents when the document layout structure is loosely defined or when side notes are present inside the page. Moreover, tables and advertisements bring additional challenges for region segmentation algorithms. Our method addresses these problems. The method is divided into four parts:1. Unlike most of popular page segmentation methods, we first separate text and graphics components of the page using a boosted decision tree classifier.2. The separated text and graphics components are used among other features to separate columns of text in a two-dimensional conditional random fields framework.3. A text line detection method, based on piecewise projection profiles is then applied to detect text lines with respect to text region boundaries.4. Finally, a new paragraph detection method, which is trained on the common models of paragraphs, is applied on text lines to find paragraphs based on geometric appearance of text lines and their indentations. Our contribution over existing work lies in essence in the use, or adaptation, of algorithms borrowed from machine learning literature, to solve difficult cases. Indeed, we demonstrate a number of improvements : on separating text columns when one is situated very close to the other; on preventing the contents of a cell in a table to be merged with the contents of other adjacent cells; on preventing regions inside a frame to be merged with other text regions around, especially side notes, even when the latter are written using a font similar to that the text body. Quantitative assessment, and comparison of the performances of our method with competitive algorithms using widely acknowledged metrics and evaluation methodologies, is also provided to a large extend. (*) This PhD thesis has been funded by Conseil General de Seine-Saint-Denis, through the FUI6 project Demat-Factory, lead by Safig SA
Asking Costs Little? The Impact of Tasks in Video QoE Studies on User Behavior and User Ratings

Three crowdsourcing video QoE studies have been conducted to investigate the inﬂuence of tasks on user behavior and quality perception. Different dimensions of tasks have been applied to impaired video clips and their impact on task success, focus time, and QoE was measured. Our ﬁndings suggest that task presence or absence has no inﬂuence on the user. However, continuous tasks can improve the focus times of users, and hard tasks are suitable to ﬁlter unreliable participants.
Evaluation on the factors that influence performance of mobile ad hoc network

The purpose of this paper is to further study on the fundamental problems of routing protocol, circumscribed in the field of mobile Ad Hoc network (MANet). This paper mainly analyze and compare different factors that influence performance of mobile Ad Hoc network adopting AODV (Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing ) protocol, focusing on the factors of node mobility, network size, and network load.
Why receptor reserve matters for neurokinin1 (NK1) receptor antagonists

Abstract The difference in location between the receptor occupancy curve of an agonist and its functional response has been described as receptor reserve. This “reserve” for a specific receptor has been found to differ from tissue to tissue and between agonists acting on the same tissue. Recently, two structurally different neurokinin 1 (NK1) receptor antagonists were taken into human and both were tested as antidepressants and for insomnia. Vestipitant and Casopitant both have high affinity for the human NK1 receptor (pKi = 9.4 and 10.2, respectively). In human, at the chosen clinical doses, receptor occupancy was measured in the frontal cortex, at 24 hours post administration, as ∼90% for vestipitant (15 mg) and ∼100% for casopitant (30 mg). In patients with moderate to severe major depression, vestipitant given at 15 mg for 8 weeks showed no statistical significant benefit as measured by change in baseline in HAM-D total score; whereas casopitant at 80 mg achieved statistically significant improvement versus placebo at week 8 (LOCF HAMD17 = −2.7, p = 0.023). A lower dose of 30 mg showed a clear but not significant separation from placebo. However, in acute studies in insomnia, both vestipitant and casopitant at 15 mg and 30 mg, respectively, significantly reduced latency to persistent sleep, wakenings after sleep onset and increased total sleep time by similar amounts. These clinical results suggest that for major depression the receptor occupancy of an NK1 antagonist needs to be very high (almost 100%), whereas, for insomnia a lower occupation is sufficient to give clinical effect.
The reliability of the isotropic fractionator method for counting total cells and neurons

Background The Isotropic Fractionator (IF) is a method used to determine the cellular composition of nervous tissue. It has been mostly applied to assess variation across species, where differences are expected to be large enough not to be masked by methodological error. However, understanding the sources of variation in the method is important if the goal is to detect smaller differences, for example, in same-species comparisons. Comparisons between different mice strains suggest that the IF is consistent enough to detected these differences. Nevertheless, the internal validity of the method has not yet been examined directly. Method In this study, we evaluate the reliability of the IF method for the determination of cellular and neuronal numbers. We performed repeated cell counts of the same material by different experimenters to quantify different sources of variation. Results In total cell counts, we observed that for the cerebral cortex most of the variance was at the counter level. For the cerebellum, most of the variance is attributed to the sample itself. As for neurons, random error along with the immunological staining correspond to most of the variation, both in the cerebral cortex and in the cerebellum. Test-retest reliability coefficients were relatively high, especially for cell counts. Conclusions Although biases between counters and random variation in staining could be problematic when aggregating data from different sources, we offer practical suggestions to improve the reliability of the method. While small, this study is a most needed step towards more precise measurement of the brain’s cellular composition. Highlights Most variance in cell counts was between counters (η = 0.58) for cerebral cortices. For cerebella, most of the variance was attributed to the samples (η = 0.49). Variance in immunocytochemical counts was mostly residual/random (η > 0.8). Test-retest reliability was high (same counter, same sample). Practical suggestions are offered to improve the reliability of the method.
Structure of the bacillus subtilis YYCN protein: A putative N‐acetyltransferase

Bhupesh Taneja, Sarah Maar, Ludmilla Shuvalova, Frank Collart, Wayne Anderson, and Alfonso Mondragón* Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry, Feinberg Medical School, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois Environmental Research Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois
Vesicourethral anastomotic strictures after radical prostatectomy: efficacy of transurethral balloon dilation.

PURPOSE To assess the efficacy of transurethral balloon dilation of vesicourethral anastomotic strictures after radical retropubic prostatectomy. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty-five consecutive patients in whom vesicourethral anastomotic strictures developed after radical prostatectomy underwent fluoroscopically guided transurethral balloon dilation (n = 27), cystoscopically guided transurethral incision of the bladder neck (n = 10), or dilation performed by urologists who used various techniques (n = 8). RESULTS Transurethral balloon dilation was successful in 16 (59%) of 27 patients. Ten of the 11 patients who did not respond favorably underwent transurethral incision of the bladder neck. Seven (70%) of these patients required either repeat attempts or subsequent balloon dilation. New urinary incontinence developed in one patient treated primarily with transurethral incision of the bladder neck but in no patients treated with transurethral balloon dilation. CONCLUSION Anastomotic strictures after radical prostatectomy can be effectively treated with transurethral balloon dilation with no serious complication. Refractoriness to balloon dilation may be related to the presence of dense scar tissue.
Is Experimental Economics Living Up to Its Promise

Introduction The question that is the title of this essay already suggests that experimental economics has at least reached a sufficient state of maturity that we can try to take stock of its progress, and consider how that progress matches the anticipations we may have had for the field several decades ago, when it and we were younger. So it will help to begin by reconstructing what some of those anticipations were.
A new approach to quasi-static analysis with application to microstrip

The measured equation of invariance (MEI), a new, rapid technique for electromagnetic field analysis, is applied to planar circuit problems. Variations of the technique applicable to microstrip geometry are described. As a demonstration, it is then applied to electrostatic analysis of structures held at different potentials, using novel umbilical meshes. The MEI technique offers the possibility of order-of-magnitude increases in computational speed for typical problems of microwave CAD. <<ETX>>
Mission-time 3D reconstruction with quality estimation

Accurate and detailed 3-dimensional (3D) models of the underwater environment are becoming increasingly important in modern marine surveys, since they convey immense information that can be easily interpreted. Techniques such as bundle adjustment (BA) and structure from motion (SfM), which jointly estimate sparse 3D points of the scene and camera poses, have gained popularity in underwater mapping applications. However, for large-area surveys these methods are computationally expensive and not intended for online application. This paper proposes an SfM pipeline based on solving the BA problem in an incremental and efficient way. Furthermore, the new system can provide not only the solution of the optimization (camera trajectory along time and the 3D points of the environment), but also the estimate of the uncertainty associated with the 3D reconstruction. This system is able to produce results in mission-time, i.e. while the robot is in the water or very shortly afterwards. Such quick availability is of great importance during survey operations as it allows data quality assessment in-situ, and eventual replanning of missions in case of need.
Effect of forage/concentrate ratio and soybean oil supplementation on in vitro fatty acid profile of sheep rumen liquor

Abstract In an in vitro trial, the effect of forage/concentrate ratio (F/C) and soybean oil (SO) supplementation on rumen liquor fatty acids profile was studied with the aim to evaluate changes in the profiles of biohydrogenation intermediates during the fermentation process. Feed samples of four diets were inoculated with sheep rumen liquor: i) high F/C and no SO; ii) high F/C and SO; iii) low F/C and no SO; iv) low F/C and SO. Fermentation times were 6, 12 h. Trans fatty acid were formed when oil supplement or a low forage content were present in the diets, but at different times of fermentation, as a consequence of a shift from the usual rumen biohydrogenation pathway. In fact, when a higher forage percentage was included in the diet, the alternative pathways of rumen biohydrogenation did not occur; trans10 C18:1 concentration was low and neither trans10, cis12 CLA nor trans, trans CLA appeared.
Comparative study for understanding the behaviour of natural ester with mineral oil as a transformer insulating liquid

Dielectric behavior of a commercially available sunflower oil based natural ester is compared with Shell Diala mineral oil and presented in this paper. Sequence of Frequency Domain Spectroscopy (FDS) and Polarisation Depolarisation Current (PDC) measurements are performed on oil samples with different ageing and temperature conditions. The observed response patterns show that real capacitance and AC conductivity is dispersed in low frequency region of FDS. Moreover, measured polarisation current monotonically decreases over measuring time. This study has identified that this behaviour is due to the electrode polarisation phenomenon, which is affected by temperature and ageing. This paper also investigates the gassing behavior of natural ester under transformer operating environment. Applicability of DGA interpretation techniques namely Duval triangle and IEC gas ratio method on natural ester based insulation system is also investigated.
Trimester-Specific Weight Gain and Midpregnancy Diastolic Blood Pressure Rebound During Normotensive Pregnancy

The longitudinal exposure–response relationship between trimester-specific gestational weight gain (GWG) and blood pressure (BP) during pregnancy is not well understood. We retrospectively assessed 1112 uncomplicated, normotensive pregnant women whose body weight and BP were measured from 12+0 to 40+0 weeks of gestation from a hospital-based cohort. By using growth curve modeling, a J-shaped pattern dominated diastolic BP (DBP) changing dynamics, with a midpregnancy drop at 20+0 to 22+0 weeks followed by a rebound. Using group-based trajectory modeling, 3 distinctive trajectories of DBP were identified: high–J shaped (18.5%), moderate–J shaped (48.3%), and low–J shaped (33.1%), as well as 3 distinctive GWG trajectories: high increasing (14.7%), moderate increasing (48.6%) and low increasing (36.8%). A temporal coincidence between the maximal rate of GWG and DBP transition from its nadir to rebound was observed during 20+0 to 22+0 weeks. Moreover, women in the high-increasing GWG group had the highest probability of being in the high–J DBP group. The GWG rate during the late midsecond trimester (22+0 to 26+0 weeks) was consistently associated with an elevated DBP level: for every 200 g/wk increase, the multivariable-adjusted odds ratio was 1.27 (95% confidence interval, 1.13–1.43) for the trajectory shift to the high–J group and 1.20 (95% confidence interval, 1.07–1.35) for the occurrence of diastolic prehypertension after 37+0 weeks. Furthermore, adding a trimester-specific GWG rate (22+0 to 26+0 weeks) contributed to the incremental yield for the prediction of diastolic prehypertension after 37+0 weeks. Our results thus provide the timing and extent of gestational weight control relevant to the optimized BP level during pregnancy.