Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bacterial Transport Experiments in Fractured Crystalline Bedrock

The efficiency of contaminant biodegradation in ground water depends, in part, on the transport properties of the degrading bacteria. Few data exist concerning the transport of bacteria in saturated bedrock, particularly at the field scale. Bacteria and microsphere tracer experiments were conducted in a fractured crystalline bedrock under forced‐gradient conditions over a distance of 36 m. Bacteria isolated from the local ground water were chosen on the basis of physicochemical and physiological differences (shape, cell‐wall type, motility), and were differentially stained so that their transport behavior could be compared. No two bacterial strains transported in an identical manner, and microspheres produced distinctly different breakthrough curves than bacteria. Although there was insufficient control in this field experiment to completely separate the effects of bacteria shape, reaction to Gram staining, cell size, and motility on transport efficiency, it was observed that (1) the nonmotile, mutant strain exhibited better fractional recovery than the motile parent strain; (2) Gram‐negative rod‐shaped bacteria exhibited higher fractional recovery relative to the Gram‐positive rod‐shaped strain of similar size; and (3) coccoidal (spherical‐shaped) bacteria transported better than all but one strain of the rod‐shaped bacteria. The field experiment must be interpreted in the context of the specific bacterial strains and ground water environment in which they were conducted, but experimental results suggest that minor differences in the physical properties of bacteria can lead to major differences in transport behavior at the field scale.
A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition.

Positive affect systematically influences performance on many cognitive tasks. A new neuropsychological theory is proposed that accounts for many of these effects by assuming that positive affect is associated with increased brain dopamine levels. The theory predicts or accounts for influences of positive affect on olfaction, the consolidation of long-term (i.e., episodic) memories, working memory, and creative problem solving. For example, the theory assumes that creative problem solving is improved, in part, because increased dopamine release in the anterior cingulate improves cognitive flexibility and facilitates the selection of cognitive perspective.
Examination of Interaction Variables as Predictors of Students' Satisfaction and Willingness to Enroll in Future Web-Based Courses While Controlling for Student Characteristics

i ABSTRACT The impetus for this study was the need to gain a better understanding of what interaction activities in the virtual classroom affect student outcomes. The purpose was to determine which perceptions of interactions contributed to predicting student outcomes of satisfaction and future enrollment in Web-based courses – while controlling for student characteristics. The problem is that the interaction that occurs in the Web-based classroom is markedly different than what occurs in the traditional classroom setting. conceptual framework, influences of student characteristics [inputs] and virtual classroom interactions [environment] on student outcomes were examined. Student input predictors were perceptions of computer skills; knowledge of electronic communications; number of Web-based courses taken; distance living from campus; and age. Environmental predictors included interactions with the instructor, students, technology, and perceptions of presence. Hierarchical, multiple regression analyses were performed to answer two research questions: 1. Do students' self-reported ratings of interaction help predict their satisfaction in a Web-based course, while controlling for student characteristics? ii 2. Do students' self-reported ratings of interaction help explain their willingness to take another Web-based course, while controlling for student characteristics? The most significant predictor of both student outcomes was students' perceptions regarding their interaction with their instructors. Second, satisfaction and enrollment were affected by students' perception of the technology as contributing to wasted time. Third, students who did not miss the face-to-face interactions as much tended to be more satisfied and were willing to take other online courses. Finally, information on distance living from campus helped in predicting satisfaction and likelihood of enrolling in other similar courses. These four variables contributed 72% of the variance in predicting satisfaction and 60% in likelihood of enrolling in future online courses. The overall regression findings supported the need to examine student characteristics and the educational environment when assessing student outcomes. Findings provided support for the idea that the interaction activities that occur in a Web-based environment – not student characteristics – have a greater impact on students' satisfaction and likelihood of enrolling in other online courses. iii DEDICATION This study is dedicated to my best friend, Timothy J. Thurmond. I have been fortunate to have shared this journey with such a wonderful and caring man. Thank you for cooking the meals and keeping the home fires burning and allowing me to focus on my educational endeavors. Tim – your love, support, and guidance has made this journey one that I …
THE ROLE OF GEOMETRY FOR AGE ESTIMATION

Understanding and modeling of aging in human faces is an important problem in many real-world applications such as biometrics, authentication and synthesis. In this paper, we consider the role of geometric attributes of faces, as described by a set of landmark points on the face, in the perception of age. Towards this end, we show that the space of landmarks can be interpreted as a Grassmann manifold. Then the problem of age estimation is posed as a problem of function estimation on the manifold. The warping of an average face to a given face is quantiﬁed as a velocity vector that transforms the average to a given face along a smooth geodesic in unit-time. This deformation is then shown to contain important information about the age of the face. We show in experiments that exploiting geometric cues in a principled manner provides comparable performance to several systems that utilize both geometric and textural cues. We show results on age estimation using the standard FG-Net dataset and a passport dataset which illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.
Series ALCOMFT-TR-03-102 Speeding Up Neighbour-Joining Tree Construction

A widely used method for constructing phylogenetic trees is the neighbour-joining method of Saitou and Nei. We develope heuristics for speeding up the neighbour-joining method which generate the same phylogenetic trees as the original method. All heuristics are based on using a quad-tree to guide the search for the next pair of nodes to join, but differ in the information stored in quad-tree nodes, the way the search is performed, and in the way the quad-tree is updated after a join. We empirically evaluate the performance of the heuristics on distance matrices obtained from the Pfam collection of alignments, and compare the running time with that of the QuickTree tool, a well-known and widely used implementation of the standard neighbour-joining method. The results show that the presented heuristics can give a significant speed-up over the standard neighbour-joining method, already for medium sized instances.
The Fallacy of the Level Playing Field

Abstract The assertion that the web is a level playing field is examined employing cue utilization theory. This study examines the influence of the extrinsic cues of brand familiarity and web site vividness on consumer response (perceived retailer quality, believability and emotional response). The assertion that the web is a level playing field is founded on the belief that the extrinsic cue of web site vividness allows unfamiliar brands to compete against familiar brands. Results from this study indicate that although both extrinsic cues elicit a consumer response, the effects differ, thus challenging the level playing field argument. As such, this study provides for greater theoretical understanding of the recent collapse of many online retailers. Future directions for researchers and practitioners are discussed.
A novel versatile architecture for Internet of Things

This paper presents an overview of contemporary architectures for Internet of Things and then introduces a simple novel architecture. The main goal of proposed architecture is to remain simple but still applicable to any Internet of Things environment. Specific applications of IoT should be implemented in application layer, using proposed architecture as backbone. Proposed architecture isn't yet fully defined, but ideas on which is based are well defined and should provide straightforward design and implementation.
A quasi-Newton proximal splitting method

A new result in convex analysis on the calculation of proximity operators in certain scaled norms is derived. We describe efficient implementations of the proximity calculation for a useful class of functions; the implementations exploit the piece-wise linear nature of the dual problem. The second part of the paper applies the previous result to acceleration of convex minimization problems, and leads to an elegant quasi-Newton method. The optimization method compares favorably against state-of-the-art alternatives. The algorithm has extensive applications including signal processing, sparse recovery and machine learning and classification.
Training practices and organisational learning capability: Relationship and implications

This paper provides an in‐depth study of the relationship between the company's training strategy and its learning capability. On a sample of 111 Spanish companies from the chemical industry, tests a set of hypotheses which link four different training strategies with the learning capability dimensions. The results obtained from the regression analyses clearly show that ongoing training, team‐based training and job rotation programmes have a positive influence on company learning capability. The present study presents evidence of how a specific human resources strategy (training strategy) influences the development of a strategic capability (organisational learning). Future studies should analyse the influence of training on performance, using organisational learning capability as a moderating variable. Additionally, the relationship between human resource management and learning should also be studied using a configurational approach. This would enable to take into account the synergic effect deriving from the joint use of complementary human resources strategies.
A Case Study: Task Scheduling Methodologies for High Speed Computing Systems

High Speed computing meets ever increasing real-time computational demands through the leveraging of flexibility and parallelism. The flexibility is achieved when computing platform designed with heterogeneous resources to support multifarious tasks of an application where as task scheduling brings parallel processing. The efficient task scheduling is critical to obtain optimized performance in heterogeneous computing Systems (HCS). In this paper, we brought a review of various application scheduling models which provide parallelism for homogeneous and heterogeneous computing systems. In this paper, we made a review of various scheduling methodologies targeted to high speed computing systems and also prepared summary chart. The comparative study of scheduling methodologies for high speed computing systems has been carried out based on the attributes of platform & application as well. The attributes are execution time, nature of task, task handling capability, type of host & computing platform. Finally a summary chart has been prepared and it demonstrates that the need of developing scheduling methodologies for Heterogeneous Reconfigurable Computing Systems (HRCS) which is an emerging high speed computing platform for real time applications.
Ail Protein Binds Ninth Type III Fibronectin Repeat (9FNIII) within Central 120-kDa Region of Fibronectin to Facilitate Cell Binding by Yersinia pestis*

Background: Ail is a critical fibronectin (Fn)-binding protein in plague pathogenesis. Results: Ail binds 9FNIII, unique among bacterial Fn-binding proteins. Conclusion: Ail binding to 9FNIII facilitates binding to pure Fn and host cells. Significance: Upon binding 9FNIII, Ail is adjacent to the RGD in 10FNIII and may alter integrin signaling events required for delivery of Yop cytotoxins and plague virulence. The Yersinia pestis adhesin molecule Ail interacts with the extracellular matrix protein fibronectin (Fn) on host cells to facilitate efficient delivery of cytotoxic Yop proteins, a process essential for plague virulence. A number of bacterial pathogens are known to bind to the N-terminal region of Fn, comprising type I Fn (FNI) repeats. Using proteolytically generated Fn fragments and purified recombinant Fn fragments, we demonstrated that Ail binds the centrally located 120-kDa fragment containing type III Fn (FNIII) repeats. A panel of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that recognize specific epitopes within the 120-kDa fragment demonstrated that mAb binding to 9FNIII blocks Ail-mediated bacterial binding to Fn. Epitopes of three mAbs that blocked Ail binding to Fn were mapped to a similar face of 9FNIII. Antibodies directed against 9FNIII also inhibited Ail-dependent cell binding activity, thus demonstrating the biological relevance of this Ail binding region on Fn. Bacteria expressing Ail on their surface could also bind a minimal fragment of Fn containing repeats 9–10FNIII, and this binding was blocked by a mAb specific for 9FNIII. These data demonstrate that Ail binds to 9FNIII of Fn and presents Fn to host cells to facilitate cell binding and delivery of Yops (cytotoxins of Y. pestis), a novel interaction, distinct from other bacterial Fn-binding proteins.
Interneuron Transcriptional Dysregulation Causes Frequency-Dependent Alterations in the Balance of Inhibition and Excitation in Hippocampus

Circuit dysfunction in complex brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism is caused by imbalances between inhibitory and excitatory synaptic transmission (I/E). Short-term plasticity differentially alters responses from excitatory and inhibitory synapses, causing the I/E ratio to change as a function of frequency. However, little is known about I/E ratio dynamics in complex brain disorders. Transcriptional dysregulation in interneurons, particularly parvalbumin interneurons, is a consistent pathophysiological feature of schizophrenia. Peroxisome proliferator activated receptor γ coactivator 1α (PGC-1α) is a transcriptional coactivator that in hippocampus is highly concentrated in inhibitory interneurons and regulates parvalbumin transcription. Here, we used PGC-1α−/− mice to investigate effects of interneuron transcriptional dysregulation on the dynamics of the I/E ratio at the synaptic and circuit level in hippocampus. We find that loss of PGC-1α increases the I/E ratio onto CA1 pyramidal cells in response to Schaffer collateral stimulation in slices from young adult mice. The underlying mechanism is enhanced basal inhibition, including increased inhibition from parvalbumin interneurons. This decreases the spread of activation in CA1 and dramatically limits pyramidal cell spiking, reducing hippocampal output. The I/E ratio and CA1 output are partially restored by paired-pulse stimulation at short intervals, indicating frequency-dependent effects. However, circuit dysfunction persists, indicated by alterations in kainate-induced gamma oscillations and impaired nest building. Together, these results show that transcriptional dysregulation in hippocampal interneurons causes frequency-dependent alterations in I/E ratio and circuit function, suggesting that PGC-1α deficiency in psychiatric and neurological disorders contributes to disease by causing functionally relevant alterations in I/E balance. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Alteration in the inhibitory and excitatory synaptic transmission (I/E) balance is a fundamental principle underlying the circuit dysfunction observed in many neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. The I/E ratio is dynamic, continuously changing because of synaptic short-term plasticity. We show here that transcriptional dysregulation in interneurons, particularly parvalbumin interneurons, causes frequency-dependent alterations in the I/E ratio and in circuit function in hippocampus. Peroxisome proliferator activated receptor γ coactivator 1α (PGC-1α-deficient) mice have enhanced inhibition in CA1, the opposite of what is seen in cortex. This study fills an important gap in current understanding of how changes in inhibition in complex brain disorders affect I/E dynamics, leading to region-specific circuit dysfunction and behavioral impairment. This study also provides a conceptual framework for analyzing the effects of short-term plasticity on the I/E balance in disease models.
LINE-Like Retrotransposition in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Over one-third of human genome sequence is a product of non-LTR retrotransposition. The retrotransposon that currently drives this process in humans is the highly abundant LINE-1 (L1) element. Despite the ubiquitous nature of L1's in mammals, we still lack a complete mechanistic understanding of the L1 replication cycle and how it is regulated. To generate a genetically amenable model for non-LTR retrotransposition, we have reengineered the Zorro3 retrotransposon, an L1 homolog from Candida albicans, for use in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We found that S. cerevisiae, which has no endogenous L1 homologs or remnants, can still support Zorro3 retrotransposition. Analysis of Zorro3 mutants and insertion structures suggest that this is authentic L1-like retrotransposition with remarkable resemblance to mammalian L1-mediated events. This suggests that S. cerevisiae has unexpectedly retained the basal host machinery required for L1 retrotransposition. This model will also serve as a powerful system to study the cell biology of L1 elements and for the genetic identification and characterization of cellular factors involved in L1 retrotransposition.
The Scaling Exponent Calculated by the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis , Distinguishes the Injured Sick Hearts Against Normal Healthy Hearts

program of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) to quantify the irregularity of the heartbeat. The present analysis revealed that normal healthy subjects have the scaling exponent of 1.0, and ischemic heart disease pushes the scaling exponent up to 1.2 – 1.5. We conclude that the scaling exponent, calculated by the DFA, reflects a risk for the " failing " heart. The scaling exponents could determine whether the subjects are under sick or in healthy conditions on the basis of cardiac physiology.
What CO2 well gases tell us about the origin of noble gases in the mantle and their relationship to the atmosphere

Study of commercially produced volcanic CO2 gas associated with the Colorado Plateau, USA, has revealed substantial new information about the noble gas isotopic composition and elemental abundance pattern of the mantle. Combined with published data from mid-ocean ridge basalts, it is now clear that the convecting mantle has a maximum 20Ne/22Ne isotopic composition, indistinguishable from that attributed to solar wind-implanted (SWI) neon in meteorites. This is distinct from the higher 20Ne/22Ne isotopic value expected for solar nebula gases. The non-radiogenic xenon isotopic composition of the well gases shows that 20 per cent of the mantle Xe is ‘solar-like’ in origin, but cannot resolve the small isotopic difference between the trapped meteorite ‘Q’-component and solar Xe. The mantle primordial 20Ne/132Xe is approximately 1400 and is comparable with the upper end of that observed in meteorites. Previous work using the terrestrial 129I–129Xe mass balance demands that almost 99 per cent of the Xe (and therefore other noble gases) has been lost from the accreting solids and that Pu–I closure age models have shown this to have occurred in the first ca 100 Ma of the Earth's history. The highest concentrations of Q-Xe and solar wind-implanted (SWI)-Ne measured in meteorites allow for this loss and these high-abundance samples have a Ne/Xe ratio range compatible with the ‘recycled-air-corrected’ terrestrial mantle. These observations do not support models in which the terrestrial mantle acquired its volatiles from the primary capture of solar nebula gases and, in turn, strongly suggest that the primary terrestrial atmosphere, before isotopic fractionation, is most probably derived from degassed trapped volatiles in accreting material. By contrast, the non-radiogenic argon, krypton and 80 per cent of the xenon in the convecting mantle have the same isotopic composition and elemental abundance pattern as that found in seawater with a small sedimentary Kr and Xe admix. These mantle heavy noble gases are dominated by recycling of air dissolved in seawater back into the mantle. Numerical simulations suggest that plumes sampling the core–mantle boundary would be enriched in seawater-derived noble gases compared with the convecting mantle, and therefore have substantially lower 40Ar/36Ar. This is compatible with observation. The subduction process is not a complete barrier to volatile return to the mantle.
Expression and Functional Phenotype of Mouse ERG K+ Channels in the Inner Ear: Potential Role in K+ Regulation in the Inner Ear

An outcome of the intricate K+ regulation in the cochlear duct is the endocochlear potential (EP), ∼80 mV, the “battery” that runs hair-cell transduction; however, the detailed molecular mechanisms for the generation of the EP remain unclear. We provide strong evidence indicating that the intermediate cells (ICs) of the stria vascularis (StV) express outward K+ current that rectifies inwardly at positive potentials. The channel belongs to the ether-a-go-go-related gene (erg) family of K+ channels. We cloned an ERG1a channel in the mouse inner ear (MERG1a). The cellular distribution of MERG1a in the cochlea displayed the highest levels of immunoreactivity in the ICs and modest reactivity in the marginal cells as well as in several extrastrial cells (e.g., hair cells). Functional expression of the StV-specific MERG1a channel reveals a current that activates at relatively negative potentials (approximately–50 mV) and shows rapid inactivation reflected as inward rectification at depolarized potentials. The current was sensitive to the methanesulfonanilide drug E-4031 (IC50, ∼165 nm) and the recombinant peptide rBeKm-1 (IC50, ∼16 nm), and the single-channel conductance in symmetrical K+ was ∼14 pS. The site of expression of MERG1a and its functional phenotype (e.g., modulation of the current by external K+) make it one of the most likely candidates for establishing the high throughput of K+ ions across ICs to generate EP. In addition, the property of the channel that produces marked K+ extrusion in increased external K+ may be important in shaping the dynamics of K+ cycling in the inner ear.
Terrain Guided Multi-Level Instancing of Highly Complex Plant Populations

In this paper we demonstrate how todays ray tracing techniques can be applied to photo-realistically render extremely huge landscapes covered with trees and forests, where a user can freely choose between highly detailed close-up views or flyover scenarios. This is made possible by mapping a number of square sub-scenes onto a huge polygonal terrain during run-time. The full plant population results from the combination of these tiles, which are iterated over the terrain. This is demonstrated at the example of a highly complex, plant covered ecosystem containing trillions of triangles