Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incipient colonisation of Lutzomyia longipalpis in the city of Resistencia, province of Chaco, Argentina (2010-2012)

Lutzomyia longipalpis was recorded for the first time in Argentina in 2004, in the province of Formosa. In the following years, the vector spread to the south and west in the country and was recorded in the province of Chaco in 2010. From November 2010-May 2012, captures of Phlebotominae were made in the city of Resistencia and its surroundings, to monitor the spread and possible colonisation of Lu. longipalpis in the province of Chaco. In this monitoring, Lu. longipalpis was absent in urban sampling sites and its presence was restricted to Barrio de los Pescadores. This suggests that the incipient colonisation observed in 2010 was not followed by continuous installation of vector populations and expansion of their spatial distribution as in other urban centres of Argentina.
Level of service for parking facilities

With the number of motor vehicles rapidly increasing, urban parking has become an intolerable problem in major cities in China. Parking facility service evaluations play an important role in urban transportation planning and operation. This paper introduces a level of service (LOS) concept based on a comprehensive parking study in Beijing, China. The LOS methodology developed by an integrated evaluation model reflects the user's perception of the quality of service. The method combines four important service variables, namely the ratio of peak-hour demand to capacity, average parking space occupying rate, parking cost, and circulation time, into one single index to quantitatively evaluate a parking facility's performance.
Human Cancers Associated with Aberrant DNA Methylation in All Common Gene Is Frequently CDKN 2 / p 16 / MTS 1 Inactivation of the Updated

The tumor suppressor gene CDKN2/p16/MTSI,located on chromosome 9p21, is frequenfly inactivated in many human cancers through homozy gous deletion. Recently, we have reported another pathway of inactivation that Involves loss of transcription associated with de novo methylation of a 5' CpG island of CDKN2/p16 in lung cancers, gliomas, and head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. We now show that this aberrant CpG island methylation also occurs frequently In cell lines of breast cancer (33%), prostate cancer (60%), renal cancer (23%), and colon cancer (92%) and is associated with loss of transcription. Primary tumors of the breast (31%) and colon (40%) also displayed de novo methylation of this CpG Island. This alteration of p16 in colon cancer was particularly striking, since inactivation does not occur through homozygous deletion in this tumor type. Our data show that in tumors, de novo methylation of the 5' CpG lsland ls a frequent mode of inactivation of CDKN2/p16 and also firmly demonstrate that CDKN2/p16 is one of the most frequently altered genes In human neoplasla.
Goal-oriented Composition of Software Process Patterns

The development of high-quality software or software-intensive systems requires custom-tailored process models that fit the organizational and project goals as well as the development contexts. These models are a necessary prerequisite for creating project plans that are expected to fulfill business goals. Although project planners require individual process models custom-tailored to their constraints, software or system developing organizations also require generic processes (i.e., reference processes) that capture project-independent knowledge for similar development contexts. The latter is emphazised by assessment approaches (such as CMMI, SPICE) that require explicit process descriptions in order to reach a certain capability or maturity level. Among other concepts such as polymorphism, templates, or generator-based descriptions, software process patterns are used to describe generic process knowledge. Several approaches for describing the architecture of process patterns have already been published (e.g., [7]). However, there is a lack of descriptions on how to compose process patterns for a specific decelopment context in order to gain a custom-tailored process model for a project. This paper focuses on the composition of process patterns in a goal-oriented way. First, the paper describes which information a process pattern should contain so that it can be used for systematic composition. Second, a composition method is sketched. Afterwards, the results of a proof-of-concept evaluation of the method are described. Finally, the paper is summarized and open research questions are sketched.
Markov Logic Networks for Spatial Language in Reference Resolution

This paper presents an approach for automatically learning reference resolution, which involves using natural language expressions, including spatial language descriptions, to refer to an object in a context. This is useful in conversational systems that need to understand the context of an utterance, like multi-modal or embodied dialogue systems. Markov Logic Networks are explored as a way of jointly inferring a reference object from an utterance with some simple utterance structure, and properties from the real world context. An introduction to mlns, with a small example, is given. Reference resolution and the role of spatial language are introduced. Different aspects of combining an utterance with properties of a context are explored. It is concluded that mlns are promising in resolving a contextual reference object.
RPAIR : a reactant-pair database representing chemical changes in enzymatic reactions

Basic metabolism involves all metabolic pathways necessary for the survival of cells. Almost all of the chemical compounds in these pathways are already identified, and thus our interest is to investigate how they act to maintain dynamic systems such as living organisms. On the other hand, secondary metabolism is seen in differentiated cells in special species. Antibiotics in fungi is one example which is important for medical and many other purposes. They are believed to have some advantages for individuals as a whole. However, they are not necessary for each cell to survive, and it is often not understood why they are synthesized. Only small portions of the pathways involving secondary metabolism are known despite many efforts. Currently, large numbers of compounds are registered in such databases as KEGG/LIGAND [1, 2], in the hopes of uncovering the whole picture and the basic rules governing secondary metabolism. In the present, however, the proportion of compounds involved in known enzymatic reactions or metabolic pathways are less than half of those registered in these databases. Most of these compounds are supposed to be catalyzed with the same types of reactions as those in the basic metabolism pathways. Thus, collecting the known chemical changes of basic metabolites can help us to predict the types of enzymatic reactions occurring in secondary metabolism as well as the possible intermediates in synthetic and degradation pathways. We have already constructed the RC (Reaction Classification) method [3] based on reactant-pair relationships, using a computerized method of chemical structure comparison (molecular alignment) [4]. A reactant pair is defined as a pair of a substrate and a product that preserve chemical substructures through enzymatic reactions. We extracted “reaction center” atoms, which are the atoms directly involved in the reactions. This is a powerful scheme to systematically and comprehensively analyze enzymatic reactions on a genomic scale. However, there were some cases where biologically suitable molecular alignments could not be obtained without any knowledge of enzyme preferences. Therefore, we have developed a new database containing manually compiled reactant pairs and molecular alignments incorporating biochemical knowledge.
Extraction and simplification of iso-surfaces in tandem

The tandem algorithm combines the marching cube algorithm for surface extraction and the edge contraction algorithm for surface simplification in lock-step to avoid the costly intermediate step of storing the entire extracted surface triangulation. Beyond this basic strategy, we introduce refinements to prevent artifacts in the resulting triangulation, first, by carefully monitoring the amount of simplification during the process and, second, by driving the simplification toward a compromise between shape approximation and mesh quality. We have implemented the algorithm and used extensive computational experiments to document the effects of various design options and to further fine-tune the algorithm.
Teacher Leadership in Practice: Mapping the Negotiation of the Position of the Special Educational Needs Coordinator in Schools

ABSTRACT Special needs care has taken on a substantial evolution within education. Special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) are no longer considered to provide individual guidance to students but to support and professionalize regular teachers in fulfilling special needs care in their classroom. In doing so, they act as teacher leaders. Many concerns are raised about how teacher leadership may interfere with the existing working relationships in schools. In this study, we use Positioning Theory as a theoretical approach to obtain an in-depth understanding of how the position of the SENCO and the responsibilities attached to this position are negotiated within the school. The findings illustrate that SENCOs received the legitimacy to act as teacher leaders when their expertise was recognized, when teachers perceived their task as first-line helpers, and when school principals were willing to release power.
Host RNA Polymerase Requirements for Transcription of the Human Hepatitis Delta Virus Genome

ABSTRACT Replication of the genome of hepatitis delta virus (HDV) requires RNA-directed RNA synthesis using a host polymerase(s). This manuscript reviews the relevant published evidence. It also provides two new studies, both of which made use of transiently transfected Huh7 cells undergoing HDV RNA-directed RNA synthesis. For the first study, RNA transcription inhibitors were added to the transfected cells for periods of 1 to 2 days, after which assays of the effects on the accumulation of processed unit-length genomic HDV RNA were performed. For the second study, nuclei were isolated at 6 days after transfection, and then in vitro runoff transcription was used to assay the effects of RNA transcription inhibitors. Overall, the data support the interpretation that HDV transcription does not require host polymerase I or III (pol I or III) but at least primarily involves an enzyme resembling pol II.
A rank based description language for qualitative preferences

In this paper we develop a language for representing complex qualitative preferences among problem solutions. We use ranked knowledge bases to represent prioritized goals. A basic preference description, that is a ranked knowledge base together with a preference strategy, defines a preference relation on models which represent problem solutions. Our language allows us to express nested combinations of preference descriptions using various connectives. This gives the user the possibility to represent her preferences in a natural, concise and flexible manner.
Neurophysiological Signals Parametrically Track Subjective Conflict during Intertemporal Choice

When choosing between equally desirable options, how is decision conflict represented in the brain? We measured neurophysiological signals that are believed to reflect decision processes in different brain regions as participants made intertemporal decisions. Participant-specific delayed rewards (e.g., $20.30 in 10 days)—generated based on each participant's hyperbolic discount function—were presented to parametrically vary the amount of decision conflict in different choice pairs. We found that conflict negativity and pupil dilation track varying degrees of conflict, suggesting the anterior cingulate and locus coeruleus/norepinephrine system are implicated in value comparison and conflict monitoring processes. We show that the neuroeconomic and psychophysiological approaches can be integrated to better understand the neural systems and processes underlying decision making.
Individual differences in temporal selective attention

Every waking moment we are bombarded with large amounts of information. Given the limited ability to process this information at a conscious level, some sort of selection for further processing is required to identify the most relevant information (e.g., other road users) while ignoring irrelevant information as much as possible (e.g., a commercial billboard). Our attentional system plays a crucial role in this selection process. When attention is allocated at specific moments in time, we typically refer to this as temporal selective attention, which can be studied using the attentional blink paradigm. The attentional blink is the inability to identify relevant information when it is shown within half a second of earlier presented relevant information. By studying the origin of this inability we hope to better understand how our brain selects and processes information over time. Our research specifically focused on addressing the question how people differ in their ability to rapidly select and process relevant information. We show that individuals who have little difficulty in identifying information in close temporal proximity allocate their attention earlier in time and more precisely than individuals who have more trouble performing such a task. Furthermore, the individuals who perform well seem to chop the incoming information into smaller pieces, leading to less confusion regarding the order in which the information was presented. Finally, we demonstrate a number of ways in which individuals can be trained to improve their ability to process rapidly presented information.
In vitro activity (MICs and rate of kill) of AFN-1252, a novel FabI inhibitor, in the presence of serum and in combination with other antibiotics

Abstract AFN-1252 is a novel inhibitor of FabI, an essential enzyme in fatty acid biosynthesis in Staphylococcus spp. AFN-1252 exhibits typical MIC90 values of ⩽0·015 μg/ml against diverse clinical isolates of S. aureus, oral absorption, long elimination half-live and efficacy in animal models. We now report high binding (∼95%) to serum proteins of mouse, rat, dog and humans, associated with an eight-fold increase in minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and which may be responsible for the long elimination half-lives on pharmacokinetic studies. Unlike daptomycin, AFN-1252 activity is not reduced in the presence of lung surfactant. AFN-1252 exhibits a short post-antibiotic effect of 1·1 hours against methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) following a 4-hour exposure period. The AFN-1252 unique spectrum of activity is not compromised by interactions with major antibiotic classes, but demonstrates synergy with low concentrations of gentamicin against MSSA and MRSA. These studies support the continued investigation of AFN-1252 as a targeted therapeutic for staphylococcal infections.
Shape oriented line drawing in real-time 3DCG

In 2D animation and comics, the line quality of object outlines and contour lines are often varied to emphasize or exaggerate the shape of an object. One such technique is to vary the line thickness pending on the object shape. This technique is often used in sketching and drawing to give objects a greater sense of depth or dimension. When using toon rendering to simulate a 2D-esque effect in 3D animation, techniques that render object outlines of constant thickness, such as that proposed by [Saito and Takahashi 1990], are popular due to their ease of application. While existing methods such as that proposed by [Goodwin et al. 2007] allow for a certain level of dynamic line thickness through the use of shad-ing, they require long calculation times and are not suited for real time rendering.
Methods to Characterize Sensors for Capturing Body Sounds

Ambulatory monitoring of body sounds is still hindered today by a lack of systematic optimization of sensor, sensor packaging and mounting conditions. This paper presents generic, objective and application-independent evaluation methods that can be used for quantitative on-body sensor optimization. The methods are applied on the evaluation of a thin, bendable and ultra low-power piezoelectric sensor to capture body sounds. The results of this study show that both chest expansion and the pitch of speech can be determined reliably with this sensor, even under conditions of walking, whereas heart sounds can be captured only under quiet, motionless conditions. A low-pass filtering effect of the sensor assembly with a very low cut-off frequency made further investigation of lung sounds impossible. The presented methods can be used in future studies to optimize sensor, sensor packaging and mounting conditions.
Approximation to the moments of cumulative sums

Abstract:We propose an approximation to the mean of the ratio of cumula tive sums of a sequence of independently distributed nonnegative random va riables. We investigate leading term and higher order approximations. The result is applied to ve ctor ratio approximation, changepoint analysis, and kernel regression, and compared with re sults in the literature. The Canadian Journal of Statistics : 1–19; 2013 c © 2013 Statistical Society of Canada
Power-Line Interference Detection and Suppression in ECG Signal Processing

A novel power-line interference (PLI) detection and suppression algorithm is presented to preprocess the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. A distinct feature of this proposed algorithm is its ability to detect the presence of PLI in the ECG signal before applying the PLI suppression algorithm. No PLI suppression operation will be performed if PLI is not detected. We propose a PLI detector that employs an optimal linear discriminant analysis (LDA) algorithm to make a decision for the PLI presence. An efficient recursive least-squares (RLS) adaptive notch filter is also developed to serve the purpose of PLI suppression. Experimental results demonstrate superior performance of this proposed algorithm.
PolyprOnline: polyproline helix II and secondary structure assignment database

The polyproline helix type II (PPII) is a regular protein secondary structure with remarkable features. Many studies have highlighted different crucial biological roles supported by this local conformation, e.g. in the interactions between biological macromolecules. Although PPII is less frequently present than regular secondary structures such as canonical alpha helices and beta strands, it corresponds to 3–10% of residues. Up to now, PPII is not assigned by most popular assignment tools, and therefore, remains insufficiently studied. PolyprOnline database is, therefore, dedicated to PPII structure assignment and analysis to facilitate the study of PPII structure and functional roles. This database is freely accessible from www.dsimb. inserm.fr/dsimb_tools/polyproline.
Experiments in Base-NP Chunking and Its Role in Dependency Parsing for Thai

This paper studies the role of base-NP information in dependency parsing for Thai. The baseline performance reveals that the base-NP chunking task for Thai is much more difficult than those of some languages (like English). The results show that the parsing performance can be improved (from 60.30% to 63.74%) with the use of base-NP chunk information, although the best chunker is still far from perfect (F�=1 = 83.06%).
State space modeling of a reheater system in power generation plant

Generally, the main components of a power plant are a gas turbine, a boiler and a steam turbine. Factors such as high pressure and temperatures affect the operational conditions and efficiency of large complex systems such as the power generation plants. Hence, it is desirable that the power plant be properly controlled in order to achieve optimum performance. Thus, a state space model is proposed. The model is mathematically convenient structure for control design and analysis of multivariable dynamic system. In addition, this approach is based on time domain analysis and synthesis using state variables. This paper focuses on the development of a state space model for a reheater system, which is one of the subsystems in the boiler of a power plant. The structural properties of the system are also analyzed. Thus, the possibility of integrating uncertainties and applying other mathematical techniques in modeling the system can be further explored.
Philosophies and Advances in Scaling Mining Algorithms to Large Databases

Data mining has become increasingly important as a key to analyzing, digesting and understanding the flood of digital data. Achieving this goal requires scaling mining algorithms to large databases. Many classic mining algorithms require multiple database scans and/or random access to database records. Work in this area focuses on overcoming limitations imposed when scanning a large database multiple times or accessing records at random is costly or impossible, as well as innovative algorithms and data structures to speed up computation. In this paper, we focus on illustrating scalability principles by highlighting some of the key innovations and techniques.
Sensitive detection assays for influenza RNA do not reveal viremia in US blood donors.

BACKGROUND There have been anecdotal reports of influenza viremia since the 1960s. We present an assessment of the prevalence of seasonal and 2009 H1N1 influenza viremia (via RNA testing) in blood donor populations using multiple sensitive detection assays. METHODS Several influenza RNA amplification assays, including transcription-mediated amplification (TMA) and 2 reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays, were evaluated and used to test donor samples. Retrospective samples from 478 subjects drawn at sites with high influenza activity were tested. Prospective samples were collected from 1004 blood donors who called their donation center within 3 days of donation complaining of influenza-like illness (ILI). The plasma collected on the day of donation for these subjects was tested. RESULTS Of the repository samples, 2 of 478 plasma samples were initially reactive but not repeat reactive by influenza TMA. Of blood donors reporting ILI symptoms postdonation, 1 of 1004 samples was TMA initially reactive but not repeat reactive; all samples were nonreactive by RT-PCR testing. CONCLUSIONS Targeting blood donor populations most likely to have influenza infection, we failed to detect influenza RNA in 1482 donor samples, with most tested by 3 different RNA assays. Seasonal influenza does not appear to pose a significant contamination threat to the blood supply.