Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Refinement of SMOS multi-angular brightness temperature and its analysis over reference targets

The Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission has been providing L-band multi-angular brightness temperature observations at a global scale since its launch in November 2009 and has performed well in the retrieval of soil moisture. The multiple incidence angle observations are not obtained at fixed values and the resolution and accuracy change with the grid locations over SMOS snapshot images. Radio frequency interference issues and aliasing at lower look angles increases the uncertainty of observations and thereby affects the soil moisture retrieval that utilizes observations at specific angles. In this study, we propose a processing chain that uses a mixed objective function based on SMOS L1c data products to refine the characteristics of multi-angular observations. The approach was validated using simulations from a radiative transfer model and analyzed over three external targets: Amazon rainforest, Sahara desert, and Antarctic ice. These results could provide insights for selecting and utilizing external targets as part of the upcoming Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission.
Data-derived iterative channel estimation with channel tracking for a mobile fourth generation wide area OFDM system

In this paper an iterative channel estimation technique for a mobile fourth generation coherent orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is proposed. Coherent detection dictates that a per-subband estimate of the frequency response of the channel is generated for each OFDM symbol. This is often achieved by inserting pilot symbols amongst the data symbols in the OFDM modulation grid and interpolating accordingly. This paper proposes a lower complexity channel estimation method that exploits coding gain to achieve a channel estimate that yields an overall system performance that is shown to be comparable to the scattered pilot system, but with only one initial training sequence. A tracking algorithm is proposed which improves performance at high mobile velocities.
Inflammation and Atherosclerosis: A Review of the Role of Interleukin-6 in the Development of Atherosclerosis and the Potential for Targeted Drug Therapy

It has recently been appreciated that atherosclerosis is predominantly an inflammatory process. Atherosclerosis begins with a fatty streak, which is made up almost entirely of monocyte-derived macrophages. The development of an atheroma continues as T-cells, mast cells, and other inflammatory cells are recruited to the intima. This collection of inflammatory cells promotes smooth muscle cell replication and extracellular matrix elaboration, thereby increasing the lesion size. Various studies have highlighted that interleukin-6 (IL-6) is an upstream inflammatory cytokine that plays a central role in propagating the downstream inflammatory response responsible for atherosclerosis. IL-6 release is stimulated by acute infections, chronic inflammatory conditions, obesity, and physiologic stress. The high level of IL-6 found in such conditions has a myriad of functions, including hepatic synthesis of acute-phase reactants, activation of endothelial cells, increased coagulation, activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, and promotion of lymphocyte proliferation and differentiation. Considering the importance of IL-6 in the development of coronary artery disease, targeting its actions could prove to be beneficial. Individuals with a variant in the IL-6 receptor that impairs classic IL-6 signaling were found to have a decreased risk for coronary heart disease. Tocilizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets the IL-6 receptor and has been show to alleviate symptoms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease largely driven by the proinflammatory actions of IL-6. Therefore, further studies are needed to determine the role of tocilizumab and other IL-6 receptor blockers in decreasing the inflammatory response key in the development of atherosclerosis.
Optimized Active Single-Miller Capacitor Compensation With Inner Half-Feedforward Stage for Very High-Load Three-Stage OTAs

This paper introduces a new effective single-Miller capacitor compensation topology for three-stage amplifiers with very large capacitive loads, realized through an active-feedback capacitor together with an inner half-feedforward stage. Moreover, an optimized design strategy which profitably exploits the two left half-plane zeros is presented. To improve the amplifier large signal transient response, the topology also includes an external feedforward path, that only marginally affects the frequency compensation, and a novel slew-rate enhancer section. To validate the solutions presented, a three-stage OTA driving a 10-nF load has been designed and implemented in a standard 0.35-μm CMOS technology. The amplifier occupies less than 0.003-mm2 of die area, provides 2.7-MHz gain-bandwidth product and 0.55-V/μs average slew-rate, while consuming only 25-μA quiescent current.
Inter-firm Networks: Antecedents, Mechanisms and Forms

This paper is an effort to review and organize the now vast literature on inter firm networks, with the aim of assessing the important current forms of net work, the organizational mechanisms supporting them, and the main variables that have been shown to influence network emergence and shape. These results are achieved through a literature review encompassing a number of approaches across the social sciences. The paper can therefore be used as a typological state-of-art on inter-firm networks, and as a basis for developing hypotheses of relationship between network antecedents and forms.
Virtual Screening of Phytochemicals to Novel Target (HAT) Rtt109 in Pneumocystis Jirovecii using Bioinformatics Tools.

INTRODUCTION Pneumocystis jirovecii is a fungus that causes Pneumocystis pneumonia in HIV and other immunosuppressed patients. Treatment of Pneumocystis pneumonia with the currently available antifungals is challenging and associated with considerable adverse effects. There is a need to develop drugs against novel targets with minimal human toxicities. Histone Acetyl Transferase (HAT) Rtt109 is a potential therapeutic target in Pneumocystis jirovecii species. HAT is linked to transcription and is required to acetylate conserved lysine residues on histone proteins by transferring an acetyl group from acetyl CoA to form e-N-acetyl lysine. Therefore, inhibitors of HAT can be useful therapeutic options in Pneumocystis pneumonia. AIM To screen phytochemicals against (HAT) Rtt109 using bioinformatics tool. MATERIALS AND METHODS The tertiary structure of Pneumocystis jirovecii (HAT) Rtt109 was modeled by Homology Modeling. The ideal template for modeling was obtained by performing Psi BLAST of the protein sequence. Rtt109-AcCoA/Vps75 protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (PDB structure 3Q35) was chosen as the template. The target protein was modeled using Swiss Modeler and validated using Ramachandran plot and Errat 2. Comprehensive text mining was performed to identify phytochemical compounds with antipneumonia and fungicidal properties and these compounds were filtered based on Lipinski's Rule of 5. The chosen compounds were subjected to virtual screening against the target protein (HAT) Rtt109 using Molegro Virtual Docker 4.5. Osiris Property Explorer and Open Tox Server were used to predict ADME-T properties of the chosen phytochemicals. RESULTS Tertiary structure model of HAT Rtt 109 had a ProSA score of -6.57 and Errat 2 score of 87.34. Structure validation analysis by Ramachandran plot for the model revealed 97% of amino acids were in the favoured region. Of all the phytochemicals subjected to virtual screening against the target protein (HAT) Rtt109, baicalin exhibited highest binding affinity towards the target protein as indicated by the Molegro score of 130.68 and formed 16 H-bonds. The ADME-T property prediction revealed that baicalin was non-mutagenic, non-tumorigenic and had a drug likeness score of 0.87. CONCLUSION Baicalin has good binding with Rtt 109 in Pneumocystis jirovecii and can be considered as a novel and valuable treatment option for Pneumocystis pneumonia patients after subjecting it to invivo and invitro studies.
Latino Immigrant Access to Higher Education in a Bipolar Context of Reception

This study evaluates the recent political context in which foreign-born noncitizen immigrants in the United States exist, their traditional and new settlement locations of residence, and where they are most likely to use public policies that encourage college enrollment. Legislative trends indicate that state activity continues to evolve around the issue of college access for undocumented immigrants, whereas U.S. congressional activity on the federal version of this educational legislation and general immigration policy remains unresolved. n: Este estudio evalúa el contexto político reciente en el que inmigrantes extranjeros no-ciudadanos se encuentran en los Estados Unidos de América; sus arreglos tradicionales y nuevos lugares de residencia, y donde existen más posibilidades de utilizar políticas públicas que apoyan inscripciones universitarias. Tendencias legislativas indican que la actividad estatal continúa evolucionando alrededor del problema de acceso universitario para inmigrantes sin documentos, mientras que la actividad del congreso estadounidense en la versión federal de esta legislación educacional y política inmigratoria general se mantiene sin resolución.
On Automatic Detection of Performance Bugs

Context: Software performance is a critical non-functional requirement, appearing in many fields such as mission critical applications, financial, and real time systems. In this work we focused on early detection of performance bugs, our software under study was a real time system used in the mobile advertisement / marketing domain. Goal: Find a simple and easy to implement solution, predicting performance bugs. Method: We built several models using four machine learning methods, commonly used for defect prediction: C4.5 Decision Trees, Naive Bayes, Bayesian Networks, and Logistic Regression. Results: Our empirical results show that a C4.5 model, using lines of code changed, file's age and size as explanatory variables, can be used to predict performance bugs (recall = 0.73, accuracy = 0.85, and precision = 0.96). We show that reducing the number of changes delivered on a commit, can decrease the chance of performance bug injection. Conclusions: We believe that our approach can help practitioners to eliminate performance bugs early in the development cycle. Our results are also of interest to theoreticians, establishing a link between functional bugs and (non-functional) performance bugs, and explicitly showing that attributes used for prediction of functional bugs can be used for prediction of performance bugs.
kmer-SVM: a web server for identifying predictive regulatory sequence features in genomic data sets

Massively parallel sequencing technologies have made the generation of genomic data sets a routine component of many biological investigations. For example, Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequence assays detect genomic regions bound (directly or indirectly) by specific factors, and DNase-seq identifies regions of open chromatin. A major bottleneck in the interpretation of these data is the identification of the underlying DNA sequence code that defines, and ultimately facilitates prediction of, these transcription factor (TF) bound or open chromatin regions. We have recently developed a novel computational methodology, which uses a support vector machine (SVM) with kmer sequence features (kmer-SVM) to identify predictive combinations of short transcription factor-binding sites, which determine the tissue specificity of these genomic assays (Lee, Karchin and Beer, Discriminative prediction of mammalian enhancers from DNA sequence. Genome Res. 2011; 21:2167–80). This regulatory information can (i) give confidence in genomic experiments by recovering previously known binding sites, and (ii) reveal novel sequence features for subsequent experimental testing of cooperative mechanisms. Here, we describe the development and implementation of a web server to allow the broader research community to independently apply our kmer-SVM to analyze and interpret their genomic datasets. We analyze five recently published data sets and demonstrate how this tool identifies accessory factors and repressive sequence elements. kmer-SVM is available at http://kmersvm.beerlab. org.
Analysis of mobile subscribers' behavior pattern based on non-negative matrix factorization

As the increasing number of intelligent mobile phones that are available for people which lead to tones of network flow data are produced. Hence, how to dig the user's behavior pattern by using the data collected form mobile phones is a significant problem. While some achievements have been made in this area, it is still too complicated to be put into practice due to various conditions needed by traditional research method. Meanwhile, users' data of mobile communication network gradually improved, so that it only requires part of information to reach the ideal status. Hence, we propose a Non-negative Matrix Factorization based method to analyze the mobility patterns of mobile phone users, i.e., find the groups of people with the similar mobility patterns. The experimental results on the real data obtained from the capital of a south province validate our proposed method.
Synset Based Multilingual Dictionary: Insights, Applications and Challenges

In this paper, we report our effort at the standardization, design and partial implementation of a multilingual dictionary in the context of three large scale projects, viz., (i) Cross Lingual Information Retrieval, (ii) English to Indian Language Machine Translation, and (iii) Indian Language to Indian Language Machine Translation. These projects are large scale, because each project involves 8-10 partners spread across the length and breadth of India with great amount of language diversity. The dictionary is based not on words but on wordnet SYNSETS, i.e., concepts. Identical dictionary architecture is used for all the three projects, where source to target language transfer is initiated by concept to concept mapping. The whole dictionary can be looked upon as an M X N matrix where M is the number of synsets (rows) and N is the number of languages (columns). This architecture maps the lexeme(s) of one language- standing for a concept- with the lexeme(s) of other languages standing for the same concept. In actual usage, a preliminary WSD identifies the correct row for a word and then a lexical choice procedure identifies the correct target word from the corresponding synset. Currently the multilingual dictionary is being developed for 11 languages: English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Oriya. Our work with this framework makes us aware of many benefits of this multilingual concept based scheme over language pair-wise dictionaries. The pivot synsets, with which all other languages link, come from Hindi. Interesting insights emerge and challenges are faced in dealing with linguistic and cultural diversities. Economy of representation is achieved on many fronts and at many levels. We have been eminently assisted by our long standing experience in building the wordnets of two major languages of India, viz., Hindi and Marathi which rank 5 th (~500 million) and 14 th (~70 million) respectively in the world in terms of the number of people
Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology How an " Imperative " Is Development Was Saved from a failing Course of Action – a Case Study

When an information systems (IS) development project exceeds time, budget and functional constraints a point is reached where the decision has to be made to abandon it or attempt to save it. Some systems are of such value that management is prepared to take extraordinary measures to save them. This paper examines a case study of one such system whose development was saved from likely failure by a combination of good project management, intervention of a business sponsor and a synergistic relationship between management and the system developers. Organizational culture's role in the project's development is also examined in order to present a more ho-listic view of how the project's successful outcome was generated.
How Can Everyone Have Sufficient Clean Water Without Conflict

This article provides a statistical update of Australia’s water situation including data on usage, consumption, and volume supplied, and some recent developments in water policy, science and technology that might assist in managing the nation’s future water supply challenges. The prevailing 20th century water paradigm is then contrasted with some emerging perspectives that might herald a shift in Australian thinking about water, a shift that could influence behavioural change and begin to answer some of the water demand challenges the nation faces in the 21st century. Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)1 , is used to briefly examine the way water has been valued and measured, and the systems and worldviews that have influenced the past Australian human-water relationship. The same framework is then used to explore emerging perspectives on water, providing contrast between 20th century and emergent thought and debate. I conclude that these more recent perspectives, some with old foundations, are signs of a shift in water values and ethics and that Australia is crafting new stories, forming new worldviews, creating new systems and technologies, and developing new measures of success for its water futures.
Teacher Gesture and Lexical Focus on Form in a Foreign Language Classroom

This article explores the use of gesture by a French language teacher during lexical focus on form (FonF). The analysis compares pre-emptive FonF (before a problem in communication has occurred), and reactive FonF (after a problem has occurred) and looks at the differences between teacher-initiated and learner-initiated FonF in the use and type of gesture. Ten hours of classroom interaction in an intermediate, French as a foreign language course were video-recorded. Overall, 110 form-focused episodes (FEEs) were identified, half of them – verbs and collocations, in particular – accompanied by gestures. Results revealed that the initiator and the type of FonF (reactive vs. pre-emptive) may have influenced the number of gestures and the duration of the FFEs. Indeed, 91.6% of the learner-initiated versus 49% of the teacher-initiated FFEs were accompanied by gestures (iconics were the most used), and pre-emptive learner-initiated FFEs led, on average, to longer and more complex gestural explanations from the teacher.Cette étude documente l’utilisation des gestes d’un enseignant de français pendant des épisodes de centration sur la forme lexicale. L’analyse compare les centrations préventives sur la forme — avant qu’un problème dans la communication ait lieu, et les centrations réactives sur la forme — après qu’un problème se soit présenté, et examine les différences d’utilisation et de type de geste entre les centrations sur la forme initiées par l’enseignant et par les apprenants. Dix heures d’interaction dans une classe de français langue étrangère de niveau intermédiaire ont été enregistrées. En tout, 110 épisodes de centration sur la forme ont été identifiés, la moitié — verbes et collocations en particulier — accompagnés par des gestes. Les résultats révèlent que l’initiateur et le type de centration sur la forme (réactive ou préventive) peuvent avoir influencé le nombre de gestes et la durée des épisodes de centration sur la forme. En effet, 91.6% des centrations initiées par les apprenants, contre 49% initiées par l’enseignant, étaient accompagnées par des gestes (les gestes iconiques étant les plus utilisés), et les centrations préventives sur la forme initiées par les apprenants ont conduit à des explications gestuelles de l’enseignant en moyenne plus longues et plus complexes.
The Short-term Efficacy of Subthreshold Micropulse Yellow (577-nm) Laser Photocoagulation for Diabetic Macular Edema

Purpose This pilot study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of subthreshold micropulse yellow (577-nm) laser photocoagulation (SMYLP) in the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME). Methods We reviewed 14 eyes of 12 patients with DME who underwent SMYLP with a 15% duty cycle at an energy level immediately below that of the test burn. The laser exposure time was 20 ms and the spot diameter was 100 µm. Laser pulses were administered in a confluent, repetitive manner with a 3 × 3 pattern mode. Results The mean follow-up time was 7.9 ± 1.6 months. The baseline-corrected visual acuity was 0.51 ± 0.42 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR), which was improved to 0.40 ± 0.35 logMAR (p = 0.025) at the final follow-up. The central macular thickness at baseline was 385.0 ± 111.0 µm; this value changed to 327.0 ± 87.7 µm (p = 0.055) at the final follow-up. Conclusions SMYLP showed short-term efficacy in the treatment of DME and did not result in retinal damage. However, prospective, comparative studies are needed to better evaluate the efficacy and safety of this treatment.
Glutathione transferase P1‐1 as an arsenic drug‐sequestering enzyme

Arsenic‐based compounds are paradoxically both poisons and drugs. Glutathione transferase (GSTP1‐1) is a major factor in resistance to such drugs. Here we describe using crystallography, X‐ray absorption spectroscopy, mutagenesis, mass spectrometry, and kinetic studies how GSTP1‐1 recognizes the drug phenylarsine oxide (PAO). In conditions of cellular stress where glutathione (GSH) levels are low, PAO crosslinks C47 to C101 of the opposing monomer, a distance of 19.9 Å, and causes a dramatic widening of the dimer interface by approximately 10 Å. The GSH conjugate of PAO, which forms rapidly in cancerous cells, is a potent inhibitor (Ki = 90 nM) and binds as a di‐GSH complex in the active site forming part of a continuous network of interactions from one active site to the other. In summary, GSTP1‐1 can detoxify arsenic‐based drugs by sequestration at the active site and at the dimer interface, in situations where there is a plentiful supply of GSH, and at the reactive cysteines in conditions of low GSH.
City life makes females fussy: sex differences in habitat use of temperate bats in urban areas

Urbanization is a major driver of the global loss of biodiversity; to mitigate its adverse effects, it is essential to understand what drives species' patterns of habitat use within the urban matrix. While many animal species are known to exhibit sex differences in habitat use, adaptability to the urban landscape is commonly examined at the species level, without consideration of intraspecific differences. The high energetic demands of pregnancy and lactation in female mammals can lead to sexual differences in habitat use, but little is known of how this might affect their response to urbanization. We predicted that female Pipistrellus pygmaeus would show greater selectivity of forging locations within urban woodland in comparison to males at both a local and landscape scale. In line with these predictions, we found there was a lower probability of finding females within woodlands which were poorly connected, highly cluttered, with a higher edge : interior ratio and fewer mature trees. By contrast, habitat quality and the composition of the surrounding landscape were less of a limiting factor in determining male distributions. These results indicate strong sexual differences in the habitat use of fragmented urban woodland, and this has important implications for our understanding of the adaptability of bats and mammals more generally to urbanization.