Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discovery Biotechnology @bullet Research @bullet Bio-organic Chemistry

Prabha Devi et al. Fungicidal compounds from a marine Ascidian-associated fungus Trichoderma harzianum, ABSTRACT A marine Ascidian-associated fungus, Trichoderma harzianum, (NIO/BCC2000-51) was assessed for its in vitro antagonistic activity against ten fungal phytopathogens and three food-infesting fungi. Fractionation of the cell-free culture filtrate of T. harzianum (NIO/BCC2000-51) showed its ethyl acetate (EA) fraction to be significantly active against fungal phytopathogens; Macrophomina sp, Pyricularia oryzae, Sclerotium rolfsii, Penicillium piceum, Trichoderma koningii, T. longibrachiatum and a food-infesting fungal pathogen Penicillium griseofulvum. Bioassay guided chemical investigation of the ethyl acetate fraction yielded five compounds (1-5); two α-pyrone derivatives, a phenol, a sesquiterpene and an unsaturated hydroxy fatty acid as methyl ester. Of the five isolated secondary metabolites, compounds 2 and 5 are being reported here for the first time from T. harzianum. Compounds 1 and 4 inhibited the growth of Sclerotium rolfsii causing sclerotium wilt or rot disease in tropical plants. Compound 2 and 5 were significantly effective in inhibiting the growth of Macrophomina sp. causing charcoal rot in cereals. Compound 3 showed moderate activity against plant pathogen Penicillium piceum and food pathogen P. griseofulvum. T. harzianum of the present investigation did not show antagonism towards all the three Aspergillus sp. tested, besides being ineffective against T. atroviride and Chalara sp. Though compounds 1, 3 and 4 are known metabolites of T. harzianum, to the best of our knowledge this is the first report of their antagonistic activity against the pathogens tested.
Memshare: a Dynamic Multi-tenant Memory Key-value Cache

Web application performance is heavily reliant on the hit rate of memory-based caches. Current DRAM-based web caches statically partition their memory across multiple applications sharing the cache. This causes under utilization of memory which negatively impacts cache hit rates. We present Memshare, a novel web memory cache that dynamically manages memory across applications. Memshare provides a resource sharing model that guarantees private memory to different applications while dynamically allocating the remaining shared memory to optimize overall hit rate. Today's high cost of DRAM storage and the availability of high performance CPU and memory bandwidth, make web caches memory capacity bound. Memshare's log-structured design allows it to provide significantly higher hit rates and dynamically partition memory among applications at the expense of increased CPU and memory bandwidth consumption. In addition, Memshare allows applications to use their own eviction policy for their objects, independent of other applications. We implemented Memshare and ran it on a week-long trace from a commercial memcached provider. We demonstrate that Memshare increases the combined hit rate of the applications in the trace by an 6.1% (from 84.7% hit rate to 90.8% hit rate) and reduces the total number of misses by 39.7% without affecting system throughput or latency. Even for single-tenant applications, Memshare increases the average hit rate of the current state-of-the-art memory cache by an additional 2.7% on our real-world trace.
Children's Use of Landmarks: Implications for Modularity Theory

Previous studies have shown that disoriented children use the geometric features of the environment to reorient, but the results have not consistently demonstrated whether children can combine such information with landmark information. Results indicating that they cannot suggest the existence of a geometric module for reorientation. However, results indicating that children can use geometric information in combination with landmark information challenge the modularity interpretation. An uncontrolled variable in the studies yielding conflicting results has been the size of the experimental space. In the present studies, which tested young children in spaces of two different sizes, the size of the space affected their ability to use available landmark information. In the small space, the children did not use the landmark to reorient, but in the large space they did. The ability of children to use landmarks in combination with geometric information raises important questions about the existence of an encapsulated geometric module.
Stability Analysis and Resource Allocation for Space-Based Multi-Access Systems

In space-based networks, the data relay satellites can assist low-earth-orbit satellites in relaying data to other satellites or the ground station and improve the real time system throughput. To take full advantage of transmission resource of the cooperative relays, this paper proposes a multiple access and resource allocation strategy, in which relays can receive and transmit simultaneously according to channel characteristics of space-based systems. Based on the queueing theoretic formulation, the stability of the proposed protocol is analyzed and the maximum stable throughput region is derived, which would provide the appropriate guidance for the design of the system optimal control. Simulation results exhibit multiple factors that affect the stable throughput and verify the theoretical analysis.
One strategy does not serve all: tailoring wireless transmission strategies to user profiles

The proliferation of smartphones and tablet devices is changing the landscape of user connectivity and data access from predominantly static users to a mix of static and mobile users. While significant advances have been made in wireless transmission strategies (e.g., network MIMO) to meet the increased demand for capacity, such strategies primarily cater to static users. To cope with growing heterogeneity in data access, it is critical to identify and optimize strategies that can cater to users of various profiles to maximize system performance and more importantly, improve users' quality of experience. Towards this goal, we first show that users can be profiled into three distinct categories based on their data access (mobility) and channel coherence characteristics. Then, with real-world experiments, we show that the strategy that best serves users in these categories varies distinctly from one profile to another and belongs to the class of strategies that emphasize either multiplexing (eg., netMIMO), diversity (eg., distributed antenna systems) or reuse (eg., conventional CSMA). Two key challenges remain in translating these inferences to a practical system, namely: (i) how to profile users, and (ii) how to combine strategies to communicate with users of different profiles simultaneously. In addressing these challenges, we present the initial design of TRINITY - a practical system that effectively caters to a heterogeneous set of users spanning multiple profiles simultaneously.
Neuromodulation of arthropod mechanosensory neurons

Arthropod mechanosensory afferents have long been known to receive efferent synaptic connections onto their centrally located axon terminals. These connections cause presynaptic inhibition by attenuating the action potentials arriving at the axon terminals, thus reducing the synaptic potentials in the postsynaptic neurons. This type of inhibition can specifically reduce the excitation of selected postsynaptic neurons while leaving others unaffected. However, recent research has demonstrated that sensory signals detected by arthropod mechanosensory neurons can also be synaptically modulated before they ever arrive at the axon terminals. In arachnids and crustaceans, wide and complex networks of synapses on all parts of the afferent neurons, including the somata and dendrites, provide mechanisms to inhibit or enhance the responses to mechanical stimuli as they are being detected. This modulation will affect the signal transmission to all axonal branches and postsynaptic cells of the affected receptor neuron. In addition to the increased complexity of mechanosensory information transmission produced by these synapses, a variety of circulating neuroactive substances also modulate these neurons by acting on their postsynaptic receptors. Microsc. Res. Tech. 58:299–311, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The developmental cognitive trajectory of the 22q11.2 deletion

Background: The 22q11.2 deletion (22qDS) is a microdeletion syndrome which commonly leads to an uneven profile of Learning difficulties (LD), with superior verbal compared to nonverbal intellectual and memory functions in children and adolescents. However, in adult samples these differences reduce. There are two accounts of the reduction in the verbal-nonverbal discrepancy with age. The dominant hypothesis is that normative measures of verbal intelligence decline and so approximate nonverbal intelligence. The other is that normative nonverbal intelligence increases while verbal intelligence remains stable. Few studies have investigated this longitudinally and none with a UK sample. Aim: The aim was to examine longitudinally the pattern of developmental cognitive changes in verbal and nonverbal intellectual and memory functions. Method: Twenty-four participants with 22qDS, who were previously cognitively assessed between 2004- 2008 were re-examined in 2011. Intellectual, memory and executive functions were assessed. Results: Verbal and nonverbal intellectual functions were in the below average range and verbal was significantly superior to nonverbal intelligence at initial assessment. This discrepancy disappeared at follow-up as expected. Contrary to the dominant hypothesis, no cognitive scores declined with age. Nonverbal intellectual functioning improved to approximate the original level of verbal functioning, which remained stable. There were no verbal-nonverbal discrepancies in memory, but there were unexpected gender effects. Conclusion: This is the first longitudinal study to show increasing nonverbal and stable verbal functioning with age in a UK 22qDS sample. Factors which could potentially account for this unexpected pattern are considered along with bias, confounding and other methodological issues. The potential clinical and educational implications of the findings are discussed. Further studies with large samples are required to examine in more detail the main findings.
Musical Instrument Recognizer "Instrogram" and Its Application to Music Retrieval Based on Instrumentation Similarity

Instrumentation is an important cue in retrieving musical content. Conventional methods for instrument recognition performing notewise require accurate estimation of the onset time and fundamental frequency (FO) for each note, which is not easy in polyphonic music. This paper presents a non-notewise method for instrument recognition in polyphonic musical audio signals. Instead of such note-wise estimation, our method calculates the temporal trajectory of instrument existence probabilities for every FO and visualizes it as a spectrogram-like graphical representation, called an instrogram. This method can avoid the influence by errors of onset detection and FO estimation because it does not use them. We also present methods for MPEG-7-based instrument annotation and music information retrieval based on the similarity between instrograms. Experimental results with realistic music show the average accuracy of 76.2% for the instrument annotation and that the instrogram-based similarity measure represents the actual instrumentation similarity better than an MFCC-based one
Adaptive Local Thresholding for Fluorescence Cell Micrographs

An adaptive local thresholding method for microscope based high content analysis (HCA) is proposed. Cell micrographs of HCA contain detailed objects both in and out of focus, which cannot be correctly segmented by global thresholding methods. The proposed method utilizes adaptive local neighborhood size and double thresholding, and is able to produce segmentations that conform closely to perceptually relevant structures in the original image, robust to background noise and variation. The proposed method is applied to the segmentation of mitochondria in fluorescence cell micrographs. Comparison with both hand segmentation and other global and local thresholding methods shows that the proposed method produces results of comparable quality to hand segmentation and discovers much more detailed structure than any previous thresholding methods.
SMEs in Developing Countries Need Support to Address the Challenges of Adopting e-commerce Technologies

Although research indicates e-commerce offers viable and practical solutions for organizations to meet challenges of a predominantly changing environment, the few available studies related to SMEs in developing countries reveal a delay or failure of SMEs in adopting ICT and e-commerce technologies. The various factors identified as causes for the reticence can be broadly classified as Internal Barriers and External Barriers. This paper presents a model for barriers to adoption of ICT and e-commerce based on the results of an exploratory pilot study and survey. It identifies support for SMEs in Sri Lanka at different distinct levels of sophistication in SMEs with regard to ICT and e-commerce. It also determines a strong need for necessary support and discusses the availability of the support. Finally it proposes an initial framework to eTransorm SMEs.
Competent and unaware of it : the development of 'tacit forms of key competencies' among adults in unpaid, informal learning situations outside formal employment

This interpretive study focusses on women's and men's perceptions of their development of 'tacit forms of key competencies', and explores ways in which this learning experience, the development of 'tacit knowledge', takes place. All the research participants had taken, or were taking, time off paid work due to parenthood, caring responsibilities and/or being made redundant. The research combines biographical, ethnographical and phenomenological elements. Data are presented from in-depth, (socio)biographic interviews with 33 adults (25 women and 8 men), aged between 23 and 57 years, living in south east England. The research participants speak of the challenges they faced in their roles as managers of families, and as parents, spouses and carers; of their unrecognised 'tacit' learning experiences; of the 'change in personality'; and of the impact of unpaid work and unemployment on their self-esteem, confidence and (dis)satisfaction. Their 'stories' offer a powerful basis for analysis of aspects of their unrecognised 'tacit' learning experiences. The focus of the study is the inter-relationship between the research participants' degrees of awareness about their acquired 'tacit forms of key competencies' and 'tacit knowledge' on the one hand, and the degree of confidence and 'self-assurance' they draw from the recognition of these 'tacit forms of key competencies' on the other. The analysis of the research participants' accounts reveals how a person's awareness (or unawareness) of the development of 'tacit forms of key competencies' influences confidence, self-esteem and self-identity. The interplay of education, class, and the situation of being in or out of paid work, has an effect on how far individuals acknowledge, recognise and value the 'tacit' knowledge and the 'tacit forms of key competencies' they have developed. Understanding learning from the perspectives of the individual and the various contexts within which 'tacit' and informal learning takes place requires crossing boundaries between the fields of management, economics, education and training, psychology and sociology. This study seeks to advance the discussion on the development of 'tacit knowledge' in terms of what does it mean for the individual, acknowledging their contexts, experiences and biographies as well as their emotions and feelings.
Chemokines, innate and adaptive immunity, and respiratory disease

Selective leukocyte trafficking and recruitment is primarily regulated by a specific family of small proteins called “chemokines”. This extended family shepherds and guides leukocytes through their lives, facilitating their development, regulating their interactions with other leukocyte types, and guiding their recruitment to sites of inflammation. Through the actions of chemokines, allergen sensitization is regulated in atopic asthma, through the controlled migration of dendritic cells, T- and B-lymphocytes, mast cells and basophils. Subsequently, atopic inflammation is driven by chemokine-directed recruitment of eosinophils, basophils and lymphocytes. Diseases from cancer to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to interstitial fibrosis are all potential targets for chemokine receptor antagonism. Innate immunity (the early pattern-recognition responses to stimuli such as lipopolysaccharide, viral proteins and bacterial DNA) needs to bridge the gap to specific immunity and antibody production and immunological memory. Again, chemokines are likely to be fundamental mediators of these responses. Chemokines are fundamental regulators of leukocyte homeostasis and inflammation, and their antagonism by small molecule chemokine receptor antagonists may be of enormous importance in the future treatment of human respiratory disease.
Interconnect Synthesis for Recon gurable Multi-FPGA Architectures 1

Most reconngurable multi-fpga architectures have a programmable interconnection network that can be reconngured to implement diierent interconnection patterns between the fpgas and memory devices on the board. Partitioning tools for such architectures must produce the necessary pin-assignments and interconnect connguration stream that correctly implement the partitioned design. We call this process Interconnect Synthesis for reconngurable architectures. In this paper, we present an interconnection synthesis technique that is independent of the target reconng-urable architecture. We have developed an automatic interconnect synthesis tool that is based on Boolean satissability. The target interconnection architecture is modeled in an architecture speciication language. The desired interconnections among the fpgas are speciied as in the form of a netlist. The tool automatically generates the pin-assignments and the required values for the connguration-inputs in the architecture speciication. We modeled several reconngurable architectures and performed interconnect synthesis for varying number of desired nets. We provide experimental results that demonstrate the eeectiveness of the interconnection synthesis technique.
opisthorchis viverrini infestation and endogenous nitrosamines as risk factors for cholangiocarcinoma in thailand

Cholanglocarcinoma (CCA) is one of the most common cancers In north‐east Thailand and has been associated with infestation by the liver fluke Opisthorchis viverrini (OV). Two samples of 12‐hr overnight urine (after dosing with proline and ascorbic acid or proline alone) were collected from 20 Inhabitants from each of 5 contrasting incidence areas for CCA. The incidence of CCA was not correlated with either the amount of NPRO or other nitrosamino acids, endogenous nitrosation potential (difference in NPRO levels between proline dose and proline and ascorbic dose), or nitrate level. However, when urinary levels of nitrosamino acids were compared in subjects living in high‐risk areas, subjects who were positive for OV antibody excreted significantly more (P < 0.01) NPRO (12.3 ± 18.7 μg/12 hr) after proline ingestion than those who were negative (3.5 ± 3.2 μg/12 hr). After ingestion of ascorbic acid, the NPRO levels in the positive subjects were significantly reduced (p < 0.01) to 2.4 ± 2.0 μg/12 hr, suggesting that endogenous nitrosation of proline was inhibited. Thus, endogenous nitrosation potential estimated from the difference between NPRO and the sum of nitrosamino acids excreted in the 2 urine samples was significantly higher in subjects positive for the OV antibody. Small amounts of pre‐formed nitrosamines were found in fermented fish and pork food items, which are consumed frequently in the high‐risk area for CCA. These results suggest that the interaction between chemical carcinogens, especially nitrosamines, and OV infestation may play a role in the development of cholangiocarcinoma in Thailand.
Min Flow Rate Maximization for Software Defined Radio Access Networks

We consider a cloud-based heterogeneous network of base stations (BSs) connected via a backhaul network of routers and wired/wireless links with limited capacity. The optimal provision of such networks requires proper resource allocation across the radio access links in conjunction with appropriate traffic engineering within the backhaul network. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm for joint resource allocation across the wireless links and flow control over the entire network. The proposed algorithm, which maximizes the min-rate among all the transmitted commodities, is based on a decomposition approach that leverages both the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and the weighted-MMSE (WMMSE) algorithm. We show that this algorithm is easily parallelizable and converges globally to a stationary solution of the joint optimization problem. The proposed algorithm can also be extended to networks with multi-antenna nodes and other utility functions.
Supporting a Youth with Cerebellar Ataxia into Adolescence.

CASE Zoe, a 13-year-old white girl, presents as a new patient to your pediatric clinic with complaints of frequent emesis, anxiety, and learning problems, and previous diagnosis of cerebellar ataxia. Parents accompany Zoe and state, "it is really hard for her to go out, she gets sick and falls easily. " She was born full term by vaginal delivery without complications. Given globally delayed milestones, she received early intervention services. Feeding problems began at infancy, including gastroesophageal reflux and aspiration pneumonia.At age 2, Zoe saw a neurologist and brain MRI revealed cerebellar atrophy. She recently saw a geneticist and genetic studies are pending. Parents report receiving "little" information regarding prognosis; through their own research, they read about individuals having similar symptoms in adulthood, with a degenerative pattern. They worry that Zoe is "still very young and we do not know what her future will be like. "Despite ongoing speech and feeding challenges, the parents report difficulty finding a speech and language therapist in their area. Zoe does see an otolaryngologist for frequent otitis media and hearing loss and an ophthalmologist for vision problems. Still, she continues to fall further behind in school. Furthermore, she is intensely afraid of falling at school and has few friends, resulting in the family being at a loss regarding "what to do about school. "She lives with both parents and 2 healthy older sisters. Her mother has Crohn's disease and has been unable to work. Her maternal aunt is close to Zoe and has hypothyroidism. Her father works as an insurance agent and resources have been "tight. " Zoe's mother describes "making" Zoe go out to the movies, "otherwise she just stays home. " Zoe usually needs assistance to walk in public, to keep from stumbling. Parents share that simply being in a public place or meeting a new physician may trigger emesis. Zoe does enjoy interacting with neighborhood children and says she wants to be "normal," wear nail polish, and date. She seeks independence, often refusing to use her wheelchair. Parents feel she requires more intensive occupational and physical therapy.On examination, she is very slender with hypertelorism and nystagmus. Holding an emesis bag, she gags intermittently, producing clear secretions. She has a notable tremor and walks slightly stooped with wide-based gait. Her few words demonstrate articulation differences and cognitive expression characteristic of a younger child. She wears light make-up and age-appropriate clothes. She asks, "When can I go home? "At the end of the visit, parents share their worry that Zoe is "so young and we do not know anything, what to expect, or what to tell her. " As the family's new medical home, they ask you to weigh in on what to do next to best support her? Where do you begin?