Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Complete Genome Sequences of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Phages vB_PaeP_PcyII-10_P3P1 and vB_PaeM_PcyII-10_PII10A

ABSTRACT vB_PaeP_PcyII-10_P3P1 and vB_PaeM_PcyII-10_PII10A are Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteriophages belonging, respectively, to the Lit1virus genus of the Podoviridae family and the Pbunavirus genus of the Myoviridae family. Their genomes are 72,778 bp and 65,712 bp long, containing 94 and 93 predicted open reading frames, respectively.
Automatic and precise extraction of generic objects using saliency-based priors and contour constraints

This paper deals with automatic video segmentation without supervision or interactions. We examine a method for automatic noise reduction in segmented video frames utilizing contour information, which we have dubbed the Contour-Classification method. This method uses information about the contours of the segmented image mask in order to accurately reduce noise in segmented video frames. We will also examine which we have developed, called the Erosion-Dilation method. Our proposed method is then composed of these two fundamental techniques: Contour-Classification and Erosion-Dilation. Test results indicate our proposed method precisely removes noise regions from videos with low error rate when compared with both the original unaltered segmentation result and the Erosion-Dilation method.
Role of Hepcidin in the Setting of Hypoferremia during Acute Inflammation

The anemia of chronic disease (also called anemia of inflammation) is an acquired disorder of iron homeostasis associated with infection, malignancy, organ failure, trauma, or other causes of inflammation. It is now widely accepted that induction of hepcidin expression in response to inflammation might explain the characteristic hypoferremia associated with this condition. To determine the role of hepcidin in acute inflammation and the regulation of its receptor, the iron exporter, ferroportin, wild-type, heterozygote and hepcidin knockout mice (Hepc−/−) were challenged with sublethal doses of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Six hours after injection, ferroportin mRNA and protein levels were assessed in the duodenum and the spleen and plasma iron was determined. Our results demonstrate that hepcidin is crucial, though not the sole mediator of LPS-mediated acute hypoferremia, and also that hepcidin major contribution relies on decreased ferroportin protein levels found in the spleen. Furthermore, we establish that LPS-mediated repression of the membrane iron transporter DMT1 and oxidoreductase Dcytb in the duodenum is independent of hepcidin. Finally, our results in the hepc+/− mice indicate that elevated hepcidin gene expression is not a prerequisite for the setting of hypoferremia during early inflammatory response, and they highlight the intimate crosstalk between inflammatory and iron-responsive pathways for the control of hepcidin.
RDF provisioning for the Internet of Things

We present the platform-independent Wiselib RDF Provider for embedded IoT devices such as sensor nodes. It enables the devices to act as semantic data providers. They can describe themselves, including their services, sensors, and capabilities, by means of RDF documents. Used in a protocol stack that provides Internet connectivity (6LowPAN) and a service layer (CoAP), a sensor can autoconfigure itself, connect to the Internet, and provide Linked Data without manual intervention. We introduce Streaming HDT, a lightweight serialization format for RDF documents that allows for transmitting compressed documents with minimal effort for the encoding; this is tailored for typical IoT applications where the embedded devices are often senders and seldom receivers of complete documents.
Investigating Pedagogical Content Knowledge-in-Action

Abstract: This paper investigates the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of a teacher educator who teaches 5th-grade mathematics in a school in the context of a university-school partnership project. PCK is analyzed in a qualitative way through video-taped classroom episodes with focus on interactions between the teacher and the students as well as the teacher’s reflections and pedagogical reasoning on the interactions. The analyses indicate examples of PCK development during teaching, especially refinement in the domain of knowledge of instructional strategies and representations. This knowledge improved as a result of reflection on student questioning and analysis of students’ misconceptions. Different roles of being teacher, teacher educator, and researcher afforded opportunities to gain insights on how to develop knowledge required for teaching and analyze it in order to facilitate future teachers’ learning.
Has the advancing onset of spring vegetation green‐up slowed down or changed abruptly over the last three decades?

Aim Change in spring phenology is a sensitive indicator of ecosystem response to climate change, and exerts first-order control on the ecosystem carbon and hydrological cycles. The start of season (SOS) in spring can be estimated from satellite data using different spatiotemporal scales, data sets and algorithms. To address the impacts of these differences on trends of SOS, a Bayesian analysis is applied to investigate the rate of SOS advance and whether that advance has slowed down or changed abruptly over the last three decades. Location 30°‐75° N in the Northern Hemisphere. Methods We applied four algorithms to three different satellite data sets (AVHRR, Terra-MODIS and SPOT) to obtain an ensemble of SOS estimates. A Bayesian analysis was applied to test different hypotheses of SOS trends. Results Over the period 1982‐2011, SOS is likely (74%) to have experienced a significant advance best described by a linear trend (−1.4 ± 0.6 days decade −1 ). At hemispheric and continental scales, deceleration or abrupt changes in the SOS trend are unlikely (< 30%) to have occurred. Trend analysis restricted to the last decade suggests no significant SOS advance since 2000. This lack of trend can be explained by large interannual variations of SOS and uncertainties in SOS extraction, in the context of a short-term decadal-period analysis. Spatial analyses show that SOS advance could have slowed down over parts of western North America, and the SOS trend could have abruptly changed over parts of Canada and Siberia. Main conclusions SOS advance is unlikely to have slowed down or changed abruptly at a hemispheric scale over the last three decades. At a regional scale, SOS advance could have slowed down or abruptly changed due to changes in winter chilling or fire regimes. Trends of SOS derived from different satellites were within the uncertainties of SOS extraction.
Bayesian methods for the evaluation of Tritium: Relative Biological Effectiveness and cancer risk

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii ABSTRACT Ghassan Badri Hamra: Bayesian methods for the evaluation of Tritium: Relative Biological Effectiveness and cancer risk. Tritium is a radioisotope of hydrogen that releases -energy, which is a form of ionizing radiation. Tritium is understudied due to a lack of epidemiological data on human exposure, despite the fact that exposure to low energy ionizing radiation is ubiquitous in the environment. In occupational studies of nuclear workers, tritium is usually aggregated with gamma radiation and examined under the assumption that the cancer risk per unit exposure of each is equivalent. However, a recent systematic review of the literature suggests that beta radiation is more biologically effective than gamma radiation. We utilize Bayesian methods to inform estimation of cancer risk for tritium as well as the RBE of tritium compared to gamma radiation using information compiled at the Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear fuel facility in Aiken, SC. SRS staff maintained detailed records of personnel dosimetry that have been utilized in previous epidemiological studies. Included is information on employment history, radiation exposure, including separate gamma and tritium radiation dosimetry records, as well as vital status information. We calculate the excess relative rate of leukemia and leukemia excluding chronic iv lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) associated with tritium and gamma radiation. The ERR/10mGy (90% HPD) of leukemia associated with tritium and gamma radiation are relative biological effectiveness of tritium relative to gamma radiation (RBE) of 6.24 the range of plausible values suggested by others. Our results utilize evidence from in vitro and in vivo research to inform estimation of the risk of cancer associated with tritium by incorporating knowledge of the direction and magnitude of tritium " s relationship to cancer compared to gamma radiation. This illustrates a simple approach for using Bayesian methods to integrate external knowledge into epidemiological studies without the need to specify estimates of the risk based on research that cannot be easily translated from experimental animal and cellular models into human risk models. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for a number of people without whom this dissertation would not have been possible. First and foremost, my wife, Leah Hope Schinasi, for explaining epidemiologic concepts to me before I even knew I would grow up to be an epidemiologist, and for providing mental support through this process that was much needed. Next, I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. David Richardson, who has been …
Synaptic Connections between Layer 5B Pyramidal Neurons in Mouse Somatosensory Cortex Are Independent of Apical Dendrite Bundling

Rodent somatosensory barrel cortex is organized both physiologically and anatomically in columns with a cross-sectional diameter of 100–400 μm. The underlying anatomical correlate of physiologically defined, much narrower minicolumns (20–60 μm in diameter) remains unclear. The minicolumn has been proposed to be a fundamental functional unit in the cortex, and one anatomical component of a minicolumn is thought to be a cluster of pyramidal cells in layer 5B (L5B) that contribute their apical dendrite to distinct bundles. In transgenic mice with fluorescently labeled L5B pyramidal cells, which project to the pons and thalamus, we investigated whether the pyramidal cells of a cluster also share functional properties. We found that apical dendrite bundles in the transgenic mice were anatomically similar to apical dendrite bundles previously proposed to be part of minicolumns. We made targeted whole-cell recordings in acute brain slices from pairs of fluorescently labeled L5B pyramidal cells that were located either in the same cluster or in adjacent clusters and subsequently reconstructed their dendritic arbors. Pyramids within the same cluster had larger common dendritic domains compared with pyramids in adjacent clusters but did not receive more correlated synaptic inputs. L5B pyramids within and between clusters have similar connection probabilities and unitary EPSP amplitudes. Furthermore, intrinsically bursting and regular spiking pyramidal cells were both present within the same cluster. In conclusion, intrinsic electrical excitability and the properties of synaptic connections between this subtype of L5B pyramidal cells are independent of the cell clusters defined by bundling of their apical dendrites.
Robust Control An Entry for the New

1. OVERVIEW Robust control considers the design of decision or control rules that fare well across a range of alternative models. Thus robust control is inherently about model uncertainty, particularly focusing on the implications of model uncertainty for decisions. Robust control originated in the 1980s in the control theory branch of the engineering and applied mathematics literature, and it is now perhaps the dominant approach in control theory. Robust control gained a foothold in economics in the late 1990s and has seen increasing numbers of economic applications in the past few years.1 The basic issues in robust control arise from adding more detail to the opening sentence above – that a decision rule performs well across alternative models. To begin, define a model as a specification of a probability distribution over outcomes of interest to the decision maker, which is influenced by a decision or control variable. Then model uncertainty simply means that the decision maker faces subjective uncertainty about the specification of this probability distribution. A first key issue in robust control then is to specify the class of alternative models which the decision maker entertains. As we discuss below, there are many approaches to doing so, with the most common cases taking a benchmark nominal model as a starting point and considering perturbations of this model. How to specify and measure the magnitude of the perturbations are key practical considerations. With the model set specified, the next issue is how to choose a decision rule and thus what it means for a rule to “perform well” across models. In Bayesian analysis, the deci-
Analysis of Discrete & Integrated Circuits for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting

This paper discusses two circuits for piezoelectric energy harvesting; one is integrated circuit which consists of LTC®3588-1; a complete piezoelectric energy harvesting power supply, other one is a discrete circuit. Former one is simulated with the LTSPICE; later one is simulated in Proteus, and both the circuits are practically built and tested in laboratory. Based on the comparative study of these circuits, we suggest the use of integrated circuit in harvesting the mechanical energy (pressure) produced in shock absorbers of bike which could serve as an ancillary source of energy for charging mobile phone battery.
TORC2 and the AGC kinase Gad8 regulate phosphorylation of the ribosomal protein S6 in fission yeast

Summary TOR (Target Of Rapamycin) signalling coordinates cell growth and division in response to changes in the nutritional environment of the cell. TOR kinases form two distinct complexes: TORC1 and TORC2. In mammals, the TORC1 controlled S6K1 kinase phosphorylates the ribosomal protein S6 thereby co-ordinating cell size and nutritional status. We show that the Schizosaccharomyces pombe AGC kinase Gad8 co-immunoprecipitates with the ribosomal protein S6 (Rps6) and regulates its phosphorylation status. It has previously been shown that Gad8 is phosphorylated by TORC2. Consistent with this, we find that TORC2 as well as TORC1 modulates Rps6 phosphorylation. Therefore, S6 phosphorylation in fission yeast actually represents a read-out of the combined activities of TORC1 and TORC2. In contrast, we find that the in vivo phosphorylation status of Maf1 (a repressor of RNA polymerase III) specifically correlates with TORC1 activity.
A multichip aVLSI system emulating orientation selectivity of primary visual cortical cells

In this paper, we designed and fabricated a multichip neuromorphic analog very large scale integrated (aVLSI) system, which emulates the orientation selective response of the simple cell in the primary visual cortex. The system consists of a silicon retina and an orientation chip. An image, which is filtered by a concentric center-surround (CS) antagonistic receptive field of the silicon retina, is transferred to the orientation chip. The image transfer from the silicon retina to the orientation chip is carried out with analog signals. The orientation chip selectively aggregates multiple pixels of the silicon retina, mimicking the feedforward model proposed by Hubel and Wiesel. The chip provides the orientation-selective (OS) outputs which are tuned to 0/spl deg/, 60/spl deg/, and 120/spl deg/. The feedforward aggregation reduces the fixed pattern noise that is due to the mismatch of the transistors in the orientation chip. The spatial properties of the orientation selective response were examined in terms of the adjustable parameters of the chip, i.e., the number of aggregated pixels and size of the receptive field of the silicon retina. The multichip aVLSI architecture used in the present study can be applied to implement higher order cells such as the complex cell of the primary visual cortex.
Comparison between Needle Biopsy under Guide of Conventional Computerized Tomography (CCT) and Fluoroscopic Computerized Tomography (FCT) in Abdominal, Mediastinal, Lung, Pelvic, Bone, and Liver Masses

Background and Objective: Computerized tomography and fluoroscopic computerized tomography are amongst the methods used for guiding needle biopsy processes; however, fluoroscopic computerized tomography demonstrates the images during the process of biopsy. This study aims to compare and contrast the success of biopsy under guide of computerized tomography and fluoroscopic computerized tomography, independently and based on the location of the mass. Materials and Methods: This research was a descriptive study of case series type. For this purpose, 206 patients were evaluated who came to hospital in a one-year period because of a mass in an anatomic location and underwent biopsy of the mass under guide of computerized tomography and fluoroscopic computerized tomography and their pathological records were analyzed. The required data were extracted and were analyzed by SPSS software. Results: In this study, among 206 subjects, 122 were examined under guide of fluoroscopic tomography and 84 under guide of conventional computerized tomography. In all anatomical locations of the mass except for mediastinum, negative cases of biopsy in conventional computerized tomography were more than fluoroscopic computerized tomography the total rate of success in fluoroscopic computerized tomography group was 86.1% and in conventional computerized tomography it was 76.2%. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the fluoroscopic computerized tomography in biopsy is more successful than conventional computerized tomography in pelvis, abdomens, bone and liver and this might be the result of the feasibility of watching the biopsy needle during the procedure.
Cohort study investigating the effects of first stage of the English tobacco point-of-sale display ban on awareness, susceptibility and smoking uptake among adolescents

Objective A prospective evaluation of the effect of 2012 point-of-sale (PoS) display ban in supermarkets in England on perceived exposure to PoS displays, and on changes in susceptibility and smoking uptake among young people. Design Cohort study. Settings Seven schools in Nottinghamshire, England. Participants 1035 11–16-year-old school children. Primary and secondary outcome measures Changes in reported exposure to PoS displays before and after prohibition, and the association between exposure to and awareness of PoS displays and change in susceptibility to smoking and smoking status between 2011 and 2012 (before the ban) and 2012 and 2013 (after the ban). Results The proportion of children noticing tobacco PoS displays in supermarkets most or every time they visited a shop changed little between 2011 and 2012 (59.6% (95% CI 56.6% to 62.6%) and 58.8% (95% CI 55.8% to 61.8%), respectively); but decreased by about 13 percentage points to 45.7% (95% CI 42.7% to 48.7%) in 2013, after the ban. However, after adjusting for confounders, implementation of the first stage of the PoS ban in 2012 did not result in significant changes in the relation between susceptibility to smoking and smoking status and exposure to and awareness of PoS displays. Conclusions Prohibition of PoS in large supermarkets resulted in a decline in the proportion of young people noticing PoS displays in large shops, but little or no change in smoking uptake or susceptibility. It remains to be seen whether extension of the PoS ban to all shops in 2015 has a more marked effect.
Chiral Type II Orientifold Constructions as M Theory on G_2 holonomy spaces

We summarize some recent progress in constructing four-dimensional supersymmetric chiral models from Type II orientifolds. We present the construction a supersymmetric Standard-like Model and a supersymmetric GUT model to illustrate the new features of this approach and its connection to M theory on compact, singular G_2 holonomy spaces. The Standard-like model presented is the first example of a three-family supersymmetic orientifold model with the Standard Model as part of the gauge structure. We also discuss the connection of how chiral fermions arise in this class of models with recent results of M theory compactified on G_2 holonomy spaces.
Coordinated path following control of multiple wheeled robots using linearization techniques

The paper addresses the problem of steering a fleet of wheeled robots along a set of given spatial paths, while keeping a desired inter-vehicle formation pattern. This problem arises for example when multiple vehicles are required to scan a given area in cooperation. In a possible mission scenario, one of the vehicles acts a leader and follows a path accurately, while the other vehicles follow paths that are naturally determined by the formation pattern imposed. The paper solves this and other related problems using a simple algorithm that builds on linearization techniques and gain scheduling control theory. Using this set-up, path following (in space) and inter-vehicle coordination (in time) are almost decoupled. Path following for each vehicle amounts to reducing a conveniently defined generalized error vector to zero. Vehicle coordination is achieved by adjusting the speed of each of the vehicles along its path, according to information on the position of all or some of the other vehicles. No other information is exchanged among the robots. The set-up adopted allows for a simple analysis of the resulting coordinated path following control system. The paper describes the structure of the coordination system proposed and addresses challenging problems of robustness with respect to certain types of vehicle failures.
Genetic Algorithm - High Dynamic Range Image Enhancement

In this Modern era, image Transmission and processing plays a major role. It would not be possible to retrieve information from satellite and medical images without the help of Image processing techniques. Image Enhancement is the art of examining images for identifying objects and judging their significance. The proposed work uses the concept of GA to find the image with best Signal to noise Ratio (SNR). The basic GA does not require extensive knowledge of the search space, such as likely solution bounds or functional derivatives. The present work presents a new method on rendering high dynamic range images on conventional displays. This algorithm is conceptually simple, computationally efficient, robust and easy to use. The gradient field of the image is obtained by attenuating the magnitudes of large gradients. A new, high dynamic range images is then obtained by solving a Poisson equation on the modified gradient field. High dynamic range (HDR) radiance maps are becoming increasingly common and important in computer graphics.
Tag-Untag: Two Critical Readings of Race, Ethnicity, and Class in Digital Social Media

This article utilizes post-qualitative inquiry, providing two critical readings – one from a critical-cultural poststructural perspective (rooted in intersectionality theory) and one from a critical posthumanist perspective – of one student’s relationship to race, class, and ethnicity across distributed social media spaces. The act of tagging-untagging as described by Miranda is central to unpacking the two critical readings offered in this article. How students understand, articulate, and potentially unpack race, ethnicity, and class in the digital age requires college student educators to move beyond traditional developmental theories, exploring and engaging the ambiguity of these socially constructed concepts in a technologically mediated world. This article advocates that discussions of race, ethnicity, and class in the 21st century must account for digital social media spaces as well as new forms of inquiry reading and plugging data into multiple theoretical perspectives.