Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ontology-Based Education/Industry Collaboration System

As the main supplier of the workforce to the industry, higher education is increasingly criticized for not being abreast with the digital revolution and being disconnected from the industry. Competency-based education was developed to address this issue and bridge the gap between what the university is producing and the requirements of the industry. Hence, tools need to be developed that assists in the analysis process. This paper focuses on proposing a system that models the competencies required by occupations in the industry and higher education curricula and assists in matching profiles from the two domains. The different concepts in the domain are modeled as a semantic web ontology, and an inference engine performs the profile matching. In addition to the profile matching, the system calculates a score for the matching degree using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method.
Fast FRFT-Based Algorithm for 3-D LFM Source Localization With Uniform Circular Array

Localization of linear frequency modulation (LFM) source based on combination of time–frequency analysis and a spatial spectrum estimation technique has received extensive research. However, this scheme is always confined to far-field sources and suffers from high computational cost. In this paper, by performing the fractional Fourier transform to multiple incoherent LFM signals, a fast and closed-form algorithm based on phase difference is proposed for 3-D source localization under a uniform circular array. First, the phase relationship among sensors’ maximum outputs in fractional Fourier domain is exploited to construct indefinite equations, and then the least square method is employed to estimate the source’s azimuth angle, elevation angle, and range simultaneously. Finally, comparing with current approaches, the satisfactory performance of our proposed algorithm is demonstrated, and the effectiveness for dealing with mixed far-field and near-field sources is also confirmed.
An input-centric paradigm for program dynamic optimizations

Accurately predicting program behaviors (e.g., locality, dependency, method calling frequency) is fundamental for program optimizations and runtime adaptations. Despite decades of remarkable progress, prior studies have not systematically exploited program inputs, a deciding factor for program behaviors. Triggered by the strong and predictive correlations between program inputs and behaviors that recent studies have uncovered, this work proposes to include program inputs into the focus of program behavior analysis, cultivating a new paradigm named input-centric program behavior analysis. This new approach consists of three components, forming a three-layer pyramid. At the base is program input characterization, a component for resolving the complexity in program raw inputs and the extraction of important features. In the middle is input-behavior modeling, a component for recognizing and modeling the correlations between characterized input features and program behaviors. These two components constitute input-centric program behavior analysis, which (ideally) is able to predict the large-scope behaviors of a program's execution as soon as the execution starts. The top layer of the pyramid is input-centric adaptation, which capitalizes on the novel opportunities that the first two components create to facilitate proactive adaptation for program optimizations. By centering on program inputs, the new approach resolves a proactivity-adaptivity dilemma inherent in previous techniques. Its benefits are demonstrated through proactive dynamic optimizations and version selection, yielding significant performance improvement on a set of Java and C programs.
Subacute inhalation toxicity study of synthetic amorphous silica nanoparticles in Sprague-Dawley rats

Abstract Synthetic amorphous silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) are one of the most applied nanomaterials and are widely used in a broad variety of industrial and biomedical fields. However, no recent long-term inhalation studies evaluating the toxicity of SiNPs are available and results of acute studies are limited. Thus, we conducted a subacute inhalation toxicity study of SiNPs in Sprague-Dawley rats using a nose-only inhalation system. Rats were separated into four groups and target concentrations selected in this study were as follows: control (fresh air), low- (0.407 ± 0.066 mg/m3), middle- (1.439 ± 0.177 mg/m3) and high-concentration group (5.386 ± 0.729 mg/m3), respectively. The rats were exposed to SiNPs for four consecutive weeks (6 hr/day, 5 days/week) except for control group of rats which received filtered fresh air. After 28-days of inhalation exposure to SiNPs, rats were sacrificed after recovery periods of one, seven and 28 days. Although there were minimal toxic changes such as temporary decrease of body weight after exposure, increased levels of red blood cells (RBCs) and hemoglobin (Hb) concentration, the lung histopathological findings and inflammatory markers in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid including polymorphonuclear (PMN) leukocyte, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), albumin and protein did not show significant changes at any recovery period. The results of this study suggest that the subacute inhalation of SiNPs had no toxic effects on the lung of rats at the concentrations and selected time points used in this study.
Author's Accepted Manuscript Functional Connectivity between Prefrontal and Parietal Cortex Drives Visuo-spatial Attention Shifts Functional Connectivity between Prefrontal and Parietal Cortex Drives Visuo-spatial Attention Shifts

Driver, Functional connectivity between prefrontal and parietal cortex drives visuo-spatial attention shifts, Neuropsychologia, This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting galley proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Abstract It is well established that the frontal eye-fields (FEF) in the dorsal attention network (DAN) guide top-down selective attention. In addition, converging evidence implies a causal role for the FEF in attention shifting, which also recruits the ventral attention network (VAN) and fronto-striatal regions. To investigate the causal influence of the FEF as (part of) a central hub between these networks, we applied thetaburst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) off-line, combined with functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) during an cued visuo-spatial attention shifting paradigm. We found that TBS over the right FEF impaired performance on a visual discrimination task in both hemifields following attention shifts, while only left hemifield performance was affected when cued to maintain the focus of attention. These effects recovered ca. 20 minutes post stimulation. Furthermore, particularly following attention shifts, TBS suppressed the 2 neural signal in bilateral FEF, right inferior and superior parietal lobule (IPL/SPL) and bilateral supramarginal gyri (SMG). We observed a decreased functional connectivity following attention shifts between right FEF and right SMG as well as right putamen immediately post stimulation. Importantly, the extent of suppressed connectivity with right SMG correlated with behavioural impairment following attention shifts. The main finding of this study demonstrates that influences from the right FEF on the SMG in the ventral attention network causally underly attention shifts by enabling disengagement from the current focus of attention.
An Electrically Actuated DC-to-11-GHz Liquid-Metal Switch

A liquid-metal RF shunt switch is presented that combines a dielectric spacer over the RF path with electrolyte-filled capillary troughs to facilitate low-power electrical actuation. The switch demonstrates between 20- and 30-dB isolation in the dc to 5-GHz range, and greater than 10-dB isolation from 5 to 11 GHz. This switch has between 0.2- and 1.2-dB insertion loss from dc to 5 GHz.
Aggregate bandwagon effect on online videos' viewership: Value uncertainty, popularity cues, and heuristics

This study examines the aggregate bandwagon effect of popularity cues on the viewership of online user-generated videos. Cognitive and behavioral theories of information processing suggest that Web users, overwhelmed by information and quality uncertainty, will gravitate toward the popular choices made by earlier decision makers, which appear via indicators such as hit counts to forge quality impressions. Building on the theories, we hypothesize that how much viewer exposure videos will attract at any future time depends on their viewership accumulated individually; furthermore, this viewership cascade is moderated by pictorial and verbal preview because such information reduces quality uncertainty for content shoppers. Our longitudinal model tests these hypotheses using an extensive real-life dataset on video clips retrieved from a video-sharing site. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
From Novice to Expert: A Surgical Care Practitioner's Reflection on Their Role Development

As co-lead for the AfPP Advancing Surgical Roles Specialist Interest Group, I was recently asked about which procedures a surgical care practitioner (SCP) can be trained to undertake and how the SCP role can be developed fully within the remit of the surgical team. This question enabled me to reflect upon and explore the development of my own role of a vascular and general SCP using Benner's adaptation of the Dreyfus’ expertise acquisition model that describes the transition that nurses and, one could argue, all healthcare professionals make from novice to expert practitioners (Benner 1984) (Figure 1)
Revocable Key-Aggregate Cryptosystem for Data Sharing in Cloud

With the rapid development of network and storage technology, cloud storage has become a new service mode, while data sharing and user revocation are important functions in the cloud storage. Therefore, according to the characteristics of cloud storage, a revocable key-aggregate encryption scheme is put forward based on subset-cover framework. The proposed scheme not only has the key-aggregate characteristics, which greatly simplifies the user’s key management, but also can revoke user access permissions, realizing the flexible and effective access control. When user revocation occurs, it allows cloud server to update the ciphertext so that revoked users can not have access to the new ciphertext, while nonrevoked users do not need to update their private keys. In addition, a verification mechanism is provided in the proposed scheme, which can verify the updated ciphertext and ensure that the user revocation is performed correctly. Compared with the existing schemes, this scheme can not only reduce the cost of key management and storage, but also realize user revocation and achieve user’s access control efficiently. Finally, the proposed scheme can be proved to be selective chosen-plaintext security in the standard model.
SDNManager: A Safeguard Architecture for SDN DoS Attacks Based on Bandwidth Prediction

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has quickly emerged as a promising technology for future networks and gained much attention. However, the centralized nature of SDN makes the system vulnerable to denial-of-services (DoS) attacks, especially for the currently widely deployed multicontroller system. Due to DoS attacks, SDN multicontroller model may additionally face the risk of the cascading failures of controllers. In this paper, we propose SDNManager, a lightweight and fast denial-of-service detection and mitigation system for SDN. It has five components: monitor, forecast engine, checker, updater, and storage service. It typically follows a control loop of reading flow statistics, forecasting flow bandwidth changes based on the statistics, and accordingly updating the network. It is worth noting that the forecast engine employs a novel dynamic time-series (DTS) model which greatly improves bandwidth prediction accuracy. What is more, to further optimize the defense effect, we also propose a controller dynamic scheduling strategy to ensure the global network state optimization and improve the defense efficiency. We evaluate SDNManager through a prototype implementation tested in a real SDN network environment. The results show that SDNManager is effective with adding only a minor overhead into the entire SDN/OpenFlow infrastructure.
Summarizing and Mining Inverse Distributions on Data Streams via Dynamic Inverse Sampling

Emerging data stream management systems approach the challenge of massive data distributions which arrive at high speeds while there is only small storage by summarizing and mining the distributions using samples or sketches. However, data distributions can be "viewed" in different ways. A data stream of integer values can be viewed either as the forward distribution f (x), ie. , the number of occurrences of x in the stream, or as its inverse, f-1 (i), which is the number of items that appear i times. While both such "views" are equivalent in stored data systems, over data streams that entail approximations, they may be significantly different. In other words, samples and sketches developed for the forward distribution may be ineffective for summarizing or mining the inverse distribution. Yet, many applications such as IP traffic monitoring naturally rely on mining inverse distributions.We formalize the problems of managing and mining inverse distributions and show provable differences between summarizing the forward distribution vs the inverse distribution. We present methods for summarizing and mining inverse distributions of data streams: they rely on a novel technique to maintain a dynamic sample over the stream with provable guarantees which can be used for variety of summarization tasks (building quantiles or equidepth histograms) and mining (anomaly detection: finding heavy hitters, and measuring the number of rare items), all with provable guarantees on quality of approximations and time/space used by our streaming methods.We also complement our analytical and algorithmic results by presenting an experimental study of the methods over network data streams.
Oxidation of linoleic and palmitic acid in pre-hibernating and hibernating common noctule bats revealed by 13C breath testing

ABSTRACT Mammals fuel hibernation by oxidizing saturated and unsaturated fatty acids from triacylglycerols in adipocytes, yet the relative importance of these two categories as an oxidative fuel may change during hibernation. We studied the selective use of fatty acids as an oxidative fuel in noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula). Pre-hibernating noctule bats that were fed 13C-enriched linoleic acid (LA) showed 12 times higher tracer oxidation rates compared with conspecifics fed 13C-enriched palmitic acid (PA). After this experiment, we supplemented the diet of bats with the same fatty acids on five subsequent days to enrich their fat depots with the respective tracer. We then compared the excess 13C enrichment (excess atom percentage, APE) in breath of bats for torpor and arousal events during early and late hibernation. We observed higher APE values in breath of bats fed 13C-enriched LA than in bats fed 13C-enriched PA for both states (torpor and arousal), and also for both periods. Thus, hibernating bats selectively oxidized endogenous LA instead of PA, probably because of faster transportation rates of polyunsaturated fatty acids compared with saturated fatty acids. We did not observe changes in APE values in the breath of torpid animals between early and late hibernation. Skin temperature of torpid animals increased by 0.7°C between early and late hibernation in bats fed PA, whereas it decreased by −0.8°C in bats fed LA, highlighting that endogenous LA may fulfil two functions when available in excess: serving as an oxidative fuel and supporting cell membrane functionality. Summary: Pre-hibernating and hibernating noctule bats oxidize linoleic acid instead of palmitic acid, probably because of faster transportation of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the body of bats.
Goal Setting Education and Counseling Practices of Diabetes Educators

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify goal setting education practices used by diabetes educators working with type 2 diabetes patients. Methods Data were collected by a mail questionnaire with 179 diabetes educators purposively selected from the 2008 American Association of Diabetes Educators membership listing. Results Many diabetes educators (52%) reported that more than 75% of their patients set goals for diabetes control. Independent factor patterns for the frequency of information collected from the patient for the first diabetes education session showed that educators either focused on patients’ self-management practices (exercise and dietary practices, knowledge, and social impacts of diabetes) or issues with learning about self-management, such as understanding the patient’s learning style and motivation for managing diabetes. Factor patterns overall showed diverse approaches to working with patients, including strategies used with patients struggling with dietary goals and the importance of tasks to complete during the first patient session. Conclusion Although most educators reported practices that were largely patient centered as promoted by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and models of chronic disease management, patterns of practice suggest that diabetes educators vary considerably in how they apply education practices, especially with dietary self-management education.
Expression of angiogenic factors and plexiform lesions in the lungs of broiler and layer chickens: A comparison1

&NA; Plexiform lesions are characteristic histological changes of pulmonary arteries in human patients with severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and are regarded as angiogenic lesions. Meat‐type broiler chickens are susceptible to PAH and can develop plexiform lesions spontaneously. Whether the lesion development in broilers is associated with PAH predisposition and lung angiogenic environment remains unclear. Moreover, little is known about the cellular origin of these structures. In this work, plexiform lesions were detected in both layer chickens (a strain known to be resistant to PAH) and broiler chickens aged between 1 and 6 wk with normal pulmonary arterial pressures. Within each of the sampled ages, the lesion density did not differ between strains, with an exception of wk 4 when broiler was higher than layer. In contrast to the trend of age‐related decline in layers, lesion densities in broilers demonstrated bi‐phasic alterations characterized by a gradual decrease during wk 1 to 3 followed by a sudden increase at wk 4. The mRNA of 6 angiogenic factors in the lung tissue, namely, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)‐2, angiopoietin (Ang)‐1, angiopoietin receptor Tie‐2, transforming growth factor (TGF)‐&bgr;1, hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), and interleukin (IL)‐8, were differentially expressed between strains. However, none of them was found to be significantly correlated with the lesion density by strain and age‐adjusted partial correlation analysis. An in vivo experiment revealed impaired differentiation of endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) into endothelial cells during the producing of plexiform lesions, as evidenced by increased expression of endothelial CD133, a maker of EPC, but reduced expression of CD31, a marker of mature endothelial cells, in the parent vessels of plexiform lesions compared to normal vessels. Collectively, it appears unlikely that the predisposition to PAH or intrapulmonary angiogenic environment contributes to the lesion development in broilers when compared with layers. It is suggested that the lesion development is associated with increased pulmonary arterial pressure, and that local EPC dysfunction may play a role in the process.
Data‐assisted protein structure modeling by global optimization in CASP12

In CASP12, 2 types of data‐assisted protein structure modeling were experimented. Either SAXS experimental data or cross‐linking experimental data was provided for a selected number of CASP12 targets that the CASP12 predictor could utilize for better protein structure modeling. We devised 2 separate energy terms for SAXS data and cross‐linking data to drive the model structures into more native‐like structures that satisfied the given experimental data as much as possible. In CASP11, we successfully performed protein structure modeling using simulated sparse and ambiguously assigned NOE data and/or correct residue‐residue contact information, where the only energy term that folded the protein into its native structure was the term which was originated from the given experimental data. However, the 2 types of experimental data provided in CASP12 were far from being sufficient enough to fold the target protein into its native structure because SAXS data provides only the overall shape of the molecule and the cross‐linking contact information provides only very low‐resolution distance information. For this reason, we combined the SAXS or cross‐linking energy term with our regular modeling energy function that includes both the template energy term and the de novo energy terms. By optimizing the newly formulated energy function, we obtained protein models that fit better with provided SAXS data than the X‐ray structure of the target. However, the improvement of the model relative to the 1 modeled without the SAXS data, was not significant. Consistent structural improvement was achieved by incorporating cross‐linking data into the protein structure modeling.
Inactivation of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Kinase 2 by Mitochondrial Reactive Oxygen Species*

Background: Reactive oxygen species (ROS) can potentially regulate metabolism, but the targets are unclear. Results: Mitochondrial ROS oxidize cysteines on pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 2 (PDHK2), leading to pyruvate dehydroge-nase complex activation. Conclusion: Inactivation of PDHK2 by ROS suggests how the redox regulation of metabolism may occur. Significance: This finding indicates a novel pathway through which mitochondrial ROS may alter metabolism. Reactive oxygen species are byproducts of mitochondrial respiration and thus potential regulators of mitochondrial function. Pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 2 (PDHK2) inhibits the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, thereby regulating entry of carbohydrates into the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. Here we show that PDHK2 activity is inhibited by low levels of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) generated by the respiratory chain. This occurs via reversible oxidation of cysteine residues 45 and 392 on PDHK2 and results in increased pyruvate dehydrogenase complex activity. H2O2 derives from superoxide (O2̇̄), and we show that conditions that inhibit PDHK2 also inactivate the TCA cycle enzyme, aconitase. These findings suggest that under conditions of high mitochondrial O2̇̄ production, such as may occur under nutrient excess and low ATP demand, the increase in O2̇̄ and H2O2 may provide feedback signals to modulate mitochondrial metabolism.
Rotation matrix optimization with quaternion

This paper shows that the representation with the quaternions improves the efficiency in optimization of rotation matrix. The effects of vibration caused by oscillating objects can be suppressed if the object is fixed with the adequate attitude. In general, Euler angles are widely known as a representation of rotation matrices, however it is difficult to optimize the attitude angle by using Euler angles. This is because Euler angles have trigonometric functions. Contrarily, rotation matrices described by the quaternions do not include trigonometric functions and the effectiveness of the quaternions has already recognized in the field such as computer vision and robotics. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the quaternions representation for optimization problems through a numerical example.