Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mating promotes lactic-acid gut bacteria in a gift-giving insect

Mating is a ubiquitous social interaction with the potential to influence the microbiome by facilitating transmission, modifying host physiology, and in species where males donate nuptial gifts to females, altering diet. We manipulated mating and nuptial gift consumption in two insects that differ in nuptial gift size, the Mormon cricket Anabrus simplex and the decorated cricket Gryllodes sigillatus, with the expectation that larger gifts are more likely to affect the gut microbiome. Surprisingly, mating, but not nuptial gift consumption, affected bacterial community structure, and only in Mormon crickets. The change in structure was due to a precipitous drop in the abundance of lactic-acid bacteria in unmated females, a taxon known for their beneficial effects on nutrition and immunity. Mating did not affect phenoloxidase or lysozyme-like antibacterial activity in either species, suggesting that any physiological response to mating on host-microbe interactions is decoupled from the systemic immunity. Protein supplementation also did not affect the gut microbiome in decorated crickets, suggesting that insensitivity of gut microbes to dietary protein could contribute to the lack of an effect of nuptial gift consumption. Our study provides experimental evidence that sexual interactions can affect the microbiome and suggests mating can promote beneficial gut bacteria.
Cloning, nucleotide sequencing, and expression of the Azospirillum brasilense lon gene: involvement in iron uptake

The lon gene of Escherichia coli encodes the lon (La) protease, which is associated with cellular protein degradation. A lon gene homolog from Azospirillum brasilense, a nitrogen-fixing soil bacterium which lives in association with the roots of cereal grasses, was cloned and characterized. The nucleotide sequence of the A. brasilense lon gene was determined. It contains an open reading frame that encodes a protein of 810 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of about 90 kDa. The deduced amino acid sequence showed a high level of homology with the sequences of all the known lon gene products. An open reading frame homologous to the E. coli clpX gene was found in front of the lon gene. Transcriptional analysis showed that the lon gene of A. brasilense is induced by heat shock and that the mRNA is monocistronic. An A. brasilense mutant, with Tn5 inserted in the lon gene, was shown to be defective in iron uptake and failed to express two membrane proteins that are induced by iron starvation in the parental strain.
Design principles and implementation of acceleration feedback to improve performance of DC drives

An attempt is made to demonstrate the principles, design methodologies, and implementation of acceleration feedback to substantially improve the performance of DC servodrives. The impetus behind this work is the need to improve the stiffness of drives used in motion control applications where load fluctuations cause unacceptable motion errors. Such applications dominate the robotics field, as well as many manufacturing processes. To achieve lower amplitudes of load-induced motion errors implies achieving a basic improvement in stiffness. Rather then attempting to improve stiffness by the classical approach of using higher velocity and position state feedback gains, it is demonstrated that acceleration feedback allows substantially higher overall stiffness without requiring higher bandwidths of the velocity and position loops. It is also pointed out that acceleration feedback acts as an active inertia which produces the higher stiffness. The performance via both simulation and experiments on two DC drive test systems is demonstrated. <<ETX>>
Eeg-based emotion recognition with brain network using independent components analysis and granger causality

With the continuous development of brain imaging technology, it has become a hot area of neuroscience and information technology to research the human emotion changes, cognitive status and psychiatric disorders. In recent years, any smart device can be used as a terminal sensor in the Internet of Things for information interaction. It will be the new research aspect for Brain-Computer Interface(BCI) to regard the human brain (the most intelligent “device”) as a terminal sensor in the Internet of Things and to construct the network based on the human brains (we name it as Internet of Brains). In this paper, a model of wearable affective computing was proposed for discriminating different emotional states and constructing the Internet of Brains, by means of effective connectivity of EEG-based brain network. Firstly, we proposed a rational emotion-induced psychological experiment to collect the EEG data under different emotional states. Then, Independent Component Analysis (ICA) was used to decompose different independent components based on different emotional states; Granger Causality Analysis (GCA) was utilized to detect the interactive dependencies between each independent component in order to construct the causal connectivity brain network (CCBN); Dynamic characteristics, including causal density and causal flow of the CCBN, were extracted based on Graph Theory. Finally, the corresponding law between characteristics of EEG pattern and “inner” emotional state was discovered to establish affective computing model. Furthermore, the model of wearable affective computing was constructed based on above law with the portable EEG acquisition device, and prototype system of wearable affective computing based on Internet of Brains was achieved for BCI.
Book review: David Donald, Sandy Lazarus & Nadeen Moolla, Educational Psychology in Social Context: Ecosystemic Applications in Southern Africa (5th ed.)

Even though the title suggests that this book’s main focus is on educational psychology (and therefore educational psychologists), this book is actually aimed primarily at teachers (educators). For the purposes of this review, the terms ‘educational psychology’ and ‘educational psychologists’ are, therefore, used in a broad sense here and will include the concepts ‘teaching’ and ‘teachers’, respectively. The advent of the post-apartheid era prompted fundamental changes in educational psychology praxis in South Africa, with the emphasis shifting towards meeting the needs of the entire South African population rather than just those of a select few. The adoption of a negotiated scope of practice document for educational psychology has also contributed significantly to the regulation of the way in which professionals in the different registration categories do their work. Moreover, the erstwhile post-apartheid Department of Education (currently referred to as the Department of Basic Education) has introduced a number of successive policy documents designed to change and regulate the teaching profession, the latest being the Curriculum Assessment and Policy Statement (CAPS). This notwithstanding, the state of education in South Africa remains a source of great concern for all educationists (theoreticians as well as practitioners). The recent drop in the number of learners passing Grade 12 has led many stakeholders to question whether the education authorities are on the ‘right’ track. This review should be read against this background.
Observer/Kalman Filter Identification With Wavelets

Understanding the dynamic characteristics of the target system is a fundamentally important step in designing reliable closed loop control systems. One method for identifying linear models from the target uses the observer/Kalman filter identification/eigensystem realization algorithm (OKID/ERA) combination. This focuses on time domain representations of plant input and output data. The wavelet transform is capable of providing an efficient mixed time-frequency domain representation of time domain data. We have investigated if this would give any benefit for OKID/ERA. We show how to apply the wavelet transform within the OKID creating a new wavelet-OKID/ERA technique and then compare its performance, using common discrete wavelet families, against a standard procedure. Results indicate that the potential attractiveness of the wavelet approach do not translate into a practical reality.
Major and Trace Element Geochemistry of Coals and Intra-Seam Claystones from the Songzao Coalfield, SW China

Silicic, mafic and alkali intra-seam tonsteins have been known from SW China for a number of years. This paper reports on the geochemical compositions of coals and tonsteins from three seam sections of the Songzao Coalfield, SW China, and evaluates the geological factors responsible for the chemical characteristics of the coal seams, with emphasis on the influence from different types of volcanic ashes. The roof and floor samples of the Songzao coal seams mostly have high TiO2 contents, consistent with a high TiO2 content in the detrital sediment input from the source region, namely mafic basalts from the Kangdian Upland on the western margin of the coal basin. The coals from the Songzao Coalfield generally have high ash yields and are highly enriched in trace elements including Nb, Ta, Zr, Hf, rare earth elements (REE), Y, Hg and Se; some variation occurs among different seam sections due to input of geochemically different volcanic ash materials. The geochemistry of the Songzao coals has also been affected by the adjacent tonstein/K-bentonite bands. The relatively immobile elements that are enriched in the altered volcanic ashes also tend to be enriched in the adjacent coal plies, possibly due to leaching by groundwaters. The coals near the alkali tonstein bands in the Tonghua and Yuyang sections of the Songzao Coalfield are mostly high in Nb, Ta, Zr, Hf, Th, U, REE and Y. Coal samples overlying the mafic K-bentonite in the Tonghua section are high in V, Cr, Zn and Cu. The Datong coal, which has neither visible tonstein layers nor obvious volcanogenic minerals, has high TiO2, V, Cr, Ni, Cu and Zn concentrations in the intervals between the coal plies affected by mafic and alkaline volcanic ashes. This is consistent with the suggestion that a common source material was supplied to the coal basin, derived from the erosion of mafic basaltic rocks of the Kangdian Upland. Although the Songzao coal is generally a high-sulfur coal, most of the chalcophile trace elements show either poor or negative correlations with total iron sulfide contents. The absence of traditional pyrite-metal associations may reflect wide variations in the concentrations of these elements in individual pyrite/marcasite components, or simply poor retention of these elements in the pyrite/marcasite of the relevant coals.
Morphology Segregation of Galaxies in Color-Color Gradient Space

We have found the u - r color versus g - i color gradient space can be used for highly successful morphology classification of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In this space, galaxies form well-separated early- and late-type branches. The location of galaxies along the branches reflects the degree and locality of star formation activity, and monotonically corresponds to the sequence of morphological subclasses. When the concentration index is also used, the completeness and reliability of classification reaches about 91% for a training set of SDSS galaxies brighter than rpet ≈ 15.9. At the faintest magnitudes (rpet ≈ 17.5) of the SDSS spectroscopic sample, the accuracy still remains at about 88%. The new classification scheme will help us find accurate relations of galaxy morphology with spatial and temporal environments, and help us to understand the origin of morphology of galaxies.
**title** Asp Conference Series, Vol. **volume***, **year of Publication** **names of Editors** a Trial Symbolic Dynamics of the Planar Three-body Problem

Symbolic dynamics is applied to the planar three-body problem. Symbols are defined on the planar orbit when it experiences a syzygy crossing. If the body i is in the middle at the syzygy crossing and the vectorial area of the triangle made with three bodies changes sign from + to −, number i is given to this event, whereas if the vectorial area changes sign from − to +, number i + 3 is given. We examine the case of free-fall three-body problem for the first few digits of symbol sequences, and we examine the case with angular momentum only for the first digit of the symbol sequences. This trial experiments show some new aspects of the planar three-body problem.
Information Amount and Obviousness Influence Hypothesis Generation

This study focuses on the availability of rule learning. Cherubini, Castelvecchio & Cherubini (2005); Cherubini, Rusconi, Russo, Di Bari, & Sacchi (2010) confirmed that the availability of rule learning was influenced by the information amount of the rule. Information amount was explained by how many examples could be covered by a rule. For a rule, the more number of examples could be converted, the less information amount would have. For example, in 2-4-6 task, the information amount in the rule of “even number increase” is 1/n and in the rule of “the third number is the sum of other two” is 1/n 2 . The information amount theory suggests that a rule with higher information amount is generated more easily than a lower one. However, Some researches (Barsalou,1982; Rips,1989; Medin, Lynch, Coley, & Atran,1997; Shafto, Coley, & Baldwin,2007; Guhe, Pease, & Smail,2011) showed that rule learning would be impacted by the information background of participants. In this paper, information background was defined as the obviousness of the rule. Inspired by dual process model of deductive reasoning (Evans, 2003, 2010; Sloman, 1996; Barrouillet, was the rule-base category learning, the other was information integration. In the case of rule-based learning, participants could abstract a linguistic and explicit rule from materials, while they cannot discover an explicit rule but still can classify materials when doing information integration tasks, which seems to be implicit. This article assume that rule learning process may also conducted by both explicit and implicit systems and which system would be adopted may related to the information amount and obviousness of rules. Experiment 2 was designed to test this hypothesis. With 70 college students' participated, a revised 2-4-6 task was used to examine our hypothesis. Both experiments were presented by Psychtoolbox 3.0 on MATLAB. Experiment 1 found that there were two independent factors, the information amount and the obviousness of the rule, significantly influence availability of rule learning. Experiment 2 is the same as experiment 1 except a rule description between every block of learning. The result of experiment 2 indicated that rules with high information amount and obviousness are more easier to be learned and expressed, while rules of low information amount combine with less obvious could be learned either but hardly be expressed clearly. These results consist with the dual process model in deductive reasoning and reveal that the rules with high amount information and obviousness are processing by an explicit rule system, and with lower amount information and less obviousness are processing by an implicit rule system.
Evaluation of Hot Mix Asphalt Moisture Sensitivity Using the Nottingham Asphalt Test Equipment

Moisture sensitivity of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) mixtures, generally called stripping, is a major form of distress in asphalt concrete pavement. It is characterized by the loss of adhesive bond between the asphalt binder and the aggregate (a failure of the bonding of the binder to the aggregate) or by a softening of the cohesive bonds within the asphalt binder (a failure within the binder itself), both of which are due to the action of loading under traffic in the presence of moisture. The evaluation of HMA moisture sensitivity has been divided into two categories: visual inspection test and mechanical test. However, most of them have been developed in pre-Superpave mix design. This research was undertaken to develop a protocol for evaluating the moisture sensitivity potential of HMA mixtures using the Notthingham Asphalt Tester (NAT). The mechanisms of HMA moisture sensitivity were reviewed and the test protocol using the NAT were developed. Different types of blends as moisture-sensitive groups and non-moisture-sensitive groups were used to evaluate the potential of the proposed test. The test results were analyzed with three parameters based on performance character: the retained flow number depending on critical permanent deformation failure (RFN sub P), the retained flow number depending on cohesion failure (RFN sub C), and energy ratio (ER). Analysis based on energy ratio of elastic strain (ER sub EE) at flow number of cohesion failure (FN sub C) has higher potential to evaluate the HMA moisture sensitivity than other parameters. If the measurement error in data-acquisition process is removed, analyses based on RFN sub P and RFN sub C would also have high potential to evaluate the HMA moisture sensitivity. The vacuum pressure saturation used in American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) T 283 and proposed test has a risk to damage specimen before the load applying.
A Compact Binary Aggregated Descriptor via Dual Selection for Visual Search

To achieve high retrieval accuracy over a large scale image/video dataset, recent research efforts have demonstrated that employing extremely high-dimensional descriptors such as the Fisher Vector (FV) and the Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors (VLAD) can yield good performance. To enable fast search, the FV (or VLAD) is usually compressed by product quantization (PQ) or hashing. However, compressing high-dimensional descriptors via PQ or hashing may become intractable and infeasible due to both the storage and computation requirements for the linear/nonlinear projection of PQ or hashing methods. We develop a novel compact aggregated descriptor via dual selection for visual search. We utilize both sample-specific Gaussian component redundancy and bit dependency within a binary aggregated descriptor to produce its compact binary codes. The proposed method can effectively reduce the codesize of the raw aggregated descriptors, without degrading the search accuracy or introducing additional memory footprint. We demonstrate the significant advantages of the proposed binary codes in solving the approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) visual search problem. Experimental results on extensive datasets show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
Implementation of Anonymous Credential System with Efficient Proofs for Monotone Formulas on Attributes Excluding Restriction

An anonymous credential system allows a user to convince a service provider anonymously that he/she owns certified attributes. Previously, we proposed an anonymous credential system to prove user's attributes to satisfy a monotone formula, i.e., A logic relation with any combination of AND/OR relations. However, this system has a restriction that the user can prove the monotone formula when only one attribute is true for any OR relation. Recently, we proposed the improved system to overcome the restriction, by adopting Linear Homonorphic (LH) signature scheme to generate a certificate that contains the minimum attribute set as required in the verification. However, the improved system has never been implemented, and thus the practicality is not evaluated. In this paper, we implement the system using a fast pairing library, and measure the processing times and data sizes, when changing the number of user's attributes and the size of the proved relation.
THE DYNAMIC ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF A COMMUNICATION LINK WITH STATIONARY AND NONSTATIONARY ARRIVALS

Most research in queueing theory is typically based on the steady-state analysis. In today’s dynamically changing traffic environment, the steady-state analysis may not provide enough information to operators regarding Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and dynamic design. In addition, the steady state analysis is not practical for nonstationary arrivals. In this paper, we consider the time-dependent behavior of a communication link depicted by an Erlang loss queue with stationary and nonstationary arrival rates. The time-dependent analysis for stationary arrival rates captures the dynamic nature of the system during its transient phase. The time-dependent analysis for nonstationary arrivals is of great interest since the arrival rate in most communication systems varies over time. In this paper, we review and compare various methods that have been proposed in the literature for the timedependent analysis of the nonstationary Erlang loss system for both stationary arrivals and nonstationary arrivals. We try to classify five practical methods into two categories: (1) closed-form exact solution and closed-form approximation; (2) numerical exact solution and numerical approximation. Our work tries to compare their computation complexity and accuracy. We apply some of these techniques to dimensioning dynamically a single communication system.
A Study of Gradient Descent Schemes for General-Sum Stochastic Games

Zero-sum stochastic games are easy to solve as they can be cast as simple Markov decision processes. This is however not the case with general-sum stochastic games. A fairly general optimization problem formulation is available for general-sum stochastic games by Filar and Vrieze [2004]. However, the optimization problem there has a non-linear objective and non-linear constraints with special structure. Since gradients of both the objective as well as constraints of this optimization problem are well defined, gradient based schemes seem to be a natural choice. We discuss a gradient scheme tuned for two-player stochastic games. We show in simulations that this scheme indeed converges to a Nash equilibrium, for a simple terrain exploration problem modelled as a general-sum stochastic game. However, it turns out that only global minima of the optimization problem correspond to Nash equilibria of the underlying general-sum stochastic game, while gradient schemes only guarantee convergence to local minima. We then provide important necessary conditions for gradient schemes to converge to Nash equilibria in general-sum stochastic games.
Enhanced hepatitis C virus genome replication and lipid accumulation mediated by inhibition of AMP-activated protein kinase

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with dysregulation of both lipid and glucose metabolism. As well as contributing to viral replication, these perturbations influence the pathogenesis associated with the virus, including steatosis, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes. AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) plays a key role in regulation of both lipid and glucose metabolism. We show here that, in cells either infected with HCV or harboring an HCV subgenomic replicon, phosphorylation of AMPK at threonine 172 and concomitant AMPK activity are dramatically reduced. We demonstrate that this effect is mediated by activation of the serine/threonine kinase, protein kinase B, which inhibits AMPK by phosphorylating serine 485. The physiological significance of this inhibition is demonstrated by the observation that pharmacological restoration of AMPK activity not only abrogates the lipid accumulation observed in virus-infected and subgenomic replicon-harboring cells but also efficiently inhibits viral replication. These data demonstrate that inhibition of AMPK is required for HCV replication and that the restoration of AMPK activity may present a target for much needed anti-HCV therapies.
Fast matrix multiplication

This paper deals with three aspects of algebraic complexity. The first section is concerned with lower bounds on the number of operations required to compute several functions. Several theorems are presented and their proofs sketched. The second section deals with relationships among the complexities of several sets of functions. In the third section, several matrices of general interest are examined and upper bounds on the number of operations required to multiply by them are constructively derived.