Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modulation of nucleosome-binding activity of FACT by poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation

Chromatin-modifying factors play key roles in transcription, DNA replication and DNA repair. Post-translational modification of these proteins is largely responsible for regulating their activity. The FACT (facilitates chromatin transcription) complex, a heterodimer of hSpt16 and SSRP1, is a chromatin structure modulator whose involvement in transcription and DNA replication has been reported. Here we show that nucleosome binding activity of FACT complex is regulated by poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation. hSpt16, the large subunit of FACT, is poly(ADP-ribosyl)ated by poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) resulting from physical interaction between these two proteins. The level of hSpt16 poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation is elevated after genotoxic treatment and coincides with the activation of PARP-1. The enhanced hSpt16 poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation level correlates with the dissociation of FACT from chromatin in response to DNA damage. Our findings suggest that poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation of hSpt16 by PARP-1 play regulatory roles for FACT-mediated chromatin remodeling.
Serializable Snapshot Isolation in PostgreSQL

This paper describes our experience implementing PostgreSQL's new serializable isolation level. It is based on the recently-developed Serializable Snapshot Isolation (SSI) technique. This is the first implementation of SSI in a production database release as well as the first in a database that did not previously have a lock-based serializable isolation level. We reflect on our experience and describe how we overcame some of the resulting challenges, including the implementation of a new lock manager, a technique for ensuring memory usage is bounded, and integration with other PostgreSQL features. We also introduce an extension to SSI that improves performance for read-only transactions. We evaluate PostgreSQL's serializable isolation level using several benchmarks and show that it achieves performance only slightly below that of snapshot isolation, and significantly outperforms the traditional two-phase locking approach on read-intensive workloads.
On the Inference of Resource Usage Upper and Lower Bounds

Cost analysis aims at determining the amount of resources required to run a program in terms of its input data sizes. The most challenging step is to infer the cost of executing the loops in the program. This requires bounding the number of iterations of each loop and finding tight bounds for the cost of each of its iterations. This article presents a novel approach to infer upper and lower bounds from cost relations. These relations are an extended form of standard recurrence equations that can be nondeterministic, contain inexact size constraints and have multiple arguments that increase and/or decrease. We propose novel techniques to automatically transform cost relations into worst-case and best-case deterministic one-argument recurrence relations. The solution of each recursive relation provides a precise upper-bound and lower-bound for executing a corresponding loop in the program. Importantly, since the approach is developed at the level of the cost equations, our techniques are programming language independent.
Genetic Distinctiveness of Rye In situ Accessions from Portugal Unveils a New Hotspot of Unexplored Genetic Resources

Rye (Secale cereale L.) is a cereal crop of major importance in many parts of Europe and rye breeders are presently very concerned with the restrict pool of rye genetic resources available. Such narrowing of rye genetic diversity results from the presence of “Petkus” pool in most modern rye varieties as well as “Petkus” × “Carsten” heterotic pool in hybrid rye breeding programs. Previous studies on rye's genetic diversity revealed moreover a common genetic background on landraces (ex situ) and cultivars, regardless of breeding level or geographical origin. Thus evaluation of in situ populations is of utmost importance to unveil “on farm” diversity, which is largely undervalued. Here, we perform the first comprehensive assessment of rye's genetic diversity and population structuring using cultivars, ex situ landraces along a comprehensive sampling of in situ accessions from Portugal, through a molecular-directed analysis using SSRs markers. Rye genetic diversity and population structure analysis does not present any geographical trend but disclosed marked differences between genetic backgrounds of in situ accessions and those of cultivars/ex situ collections. Such genetic distinctiveness of in situ accessions highlights their unexplored potential as new genetic resources, which can be used to boost rye breeding strategies and the production of new varieties. Overall, our study successfully demonstrates the high prospective impact of comparing genetic diversity and structure of cultivars, ex situ, and in situ samples in ascertaining the status of plant genetic resources (PGR).
Reusing base product features to develop product line architecture

This paper deals with three things - extract features from a base product (legacy or new), extend the features, and organize them into a product line. As a result, an object oriented feature-based conceptual frame has been developed. The framework organizes base product architectural assets in such a way as to lend them to substantial reuse. Mechanisms are provided for instantiating multiple products from a single architecture. The building blocks for the conceptual framework are the USP (unified software development process) and the feature model of FODA (feature-oriented domain analysis).
The suggestibility of children's memory.

In this review, we describe a shift that has taken place in the area of developmental suggestibility. Formerly, studies in this area indicated that there were pronounced age-related differences in suggestibility, with preschool children being particularly susceptible to misleading suggestions. The studies on which this conclusion was based were criticized on several grounds (e.g. unrealistic scenarios, truncated age range). Newer studies that have addressed these criticisms, however, have largely confirmed the earlier conclusions. These studies indicate that preschool children are disproportionately vulnerable to a variety of suggestive influences. There do not appear to any strict boundary conditions to this conclusion, and preschool children will sometimes succumb to suggestions about bodily touching, emotional events, and participatory events. The evidence for this assertion is presented in this review.
Nonspecific transcription factor binding reduces variability in transcription factor and target protein expression

Transcription factors (TFs) interact with a multitude of binding sites on DNA and partner proteins inside cells. We investigate how nonspecific binding/unbinding to such decoy binding sites affects the magnitude and time-scale of random fluctuations in TF copy numbers arising from stochastic gene expression. A stochastic model of TF gene expression, together with decoy site interactions is formulated. Distributions for the total (bound and unbound) and free (unbound) TF levels are derived by analytically solving the chemical master equation under physiologically relevant assumptions. Our results show that increasing the number of decoy binding sides considerably reduces stochasticity in free TF copy numbers. The TF autocorrelation function reveals that decoy sites can either enhance or shorten the time-scale of TF fluctuations depending on model parameters. To understand how noise in TF abundances propagates downstream, a TF target gene is included in the model. Intriguingly, we find that noise in the expression of the target gene decreases with increasing decoy sites for linear TF-target protein dose-responses, even in regimes where decoy sites enhance TF autocorrelation times. Moreover, counterintuitive noise transmissions arise for nonlinear dose-responses. In summary, our study highlights the critical role of molecular sequestration by decoy binding sites in regulating the stochastic dynamics of TFs and target proteins at the single-cell level.
A lightweight security protocol for ultra-low power ASIC implementation for wireless Implantable Medical Devices

The newest generation of Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) employs wireless communication with a nearby base station in order to provide better treatment and monitoring of the patients. However, a wireless connection opens a host of potential security threats to the privacy and safety of patients. This paper proposes a lightweight security protocol providing authentication and confidentiality to wireless energy-limited IMDs that operate on small energy sources such as a battery for many years. Adding security features to these devices can impose an unacceptable overhead. The protocol presented here employs lightweight encryption and is suitable for implementation on ultra-low power ASIC chips.
Hispanic teachers’ experiences with occupational stressors while working in Title I elementary schools

ABSTRACT The purpose of this exploratory phenomenology investigation was to understand Hispanic teachers’ (N = 19) experiences relating to occupational stressors while working in Title I elementary schools. Five themes emerged from the data analyses: emotional stressors, general stressors, cultural stressors, coping skills, and teachers’ recommendations to school administrators. The five themes aligned with previous research findings, offering implications for future research, teacher educators, and school personnel.
Locations of L2/Ln Sign Language Pedagogy

There has been tremendous growth in the teaching of sign language as a foreign sign language in elementary/secondary schools, colleges/universities, private businesses, and agencies. While this surge has allowed students to obtain foreign language credit for personal or professional reasons, the acceptance of teaching sign languages has had its challenges. Traditionally, sign language courses have been provided face-to-face using a variety of curricula in diverse departments, academic programs, and degree programs in different countries. This paper acts as a reference guide that provides locations of where sign languages are formally taught around the world, as well as learning about Deaf culture. Historical and current pedagogical practices are also discussed. Looking ahead to the future, one growing trend is providing sign language courses online in a distance-learning format to meet the high demands of interested students and reach a wider population. Moreover, examining the importance of utilizing well-trained and certified instructors, and implementing current pedagogical practices and materials that include appropriate cultural opportunities are needed to effectively teach sign language classes.
How and Why Affective and Reactive Virtual Agents Will Bring New Insights on Social Cognitive Disorders in Schizophrenia? An Illustration with a Virtual Card Game Paradigm

In recent decades, many studies have shown that schizophrenia is associated with severe social cognitive impairments affecting key components, such as the recognition of emotions, theory of mind, attributional style, and metacognition. Most studies investigated each construct separately, precluding analysis of the interactive and immersive nature of real-life situation. Specialized batteries of tests are under investigation to assess social cognition, which is thought now as a link between neurocognitive disorders and impaired functioning. However, this link accounts for a limited part of the variance of real-life functioning. To fill this gap, advances in virtual reality and affective computing have made it possible to carry out experimental investigations of naturalistic social cognition, in controlled conditions, with good reproducibility. This approach is illustrated with the description of a new paradigm based on an original virtual card game in which subjects interpret emotional displays from a female virtual agent, and decipher her helping intentions. Independent variables concerning emotional expression in terms of valence and intensity were manipulated. We show how several useful dependant variables, ranging from classic experimental psychology data to metacognition or subjective experiences records, may be extracted from a single experiment. Methodological issues about the immersion into a simulated intersubjective situation are considered. The example of this new flexible experimental setting, with regards to the many constructs recognized in social neurosciences, constitutes a rationale for focusing on this potential intermediate link between standardized tests and real-life functioning, and also for using it as an innovative media for cognitive remediation.
Digital Screening Algorithm Based on Improved Delaunay Triangulation

This paper proposes an improved Delaunay triangulation algorithm for digital screening. The algorithm can give a real-time result for its high efficiency. It can give a good solution for Moire patterns phenomenon when printing in traditional pattern. Output image is accurate and soft since gray value distributes uniformly. It has a low request for equipment and subsequent handling, and entirely meet the needs of traditional printing technology.
Stability Analysis of a Hierarchical Architecture for Discrete-Time Sensor-Based Control of Robotic Systems

The stability of discrete time kinematic sensor-based control of robots is investigated in this paper. A hierarchical inner-loop/outer-loop control architecture common for a generic robotic system is considered. The inner loop is composed of a servo-level joint controller and higher level kinematic feedback is performed in the outer loop. Stability results derived in this paper are of interest in several applications including visual servoing problems, redundancy control, and coordination/synchronization problems. The stability of the overall system is investigated taking into account input/output delays and the inner loop dynamics. A necessary and sufficient condition that the gain of the outer feedback loop has to satisfy to ensure local stability is derived. Experiments on a Kuka K-R16 manipulator have been performed in order to validate the theoretical findings on a real robotic system and show their practical relevance.
Automated segmentation of the pulmonary arteries in low-dose CT by vessel tracking

We present a fully automated method for top-down segmentation of the pulmonary arterial tree in low-dose thoracic CT images. The main basal pulmonary arteries are identified near the lung hilum by searching for candidate vessels adjacent to known airways, identified by our previously reported airway segmentation method. Model cylinders are iteratively fit to the vessels to track them into the lungs. Vessel bifurcations are detected by measuring the rate of change of vessel radii, and child vessels are segmented by initiating new trackers at bifurcation points. Validation is accomplished using our novel sparse surface (SS) evaluation metric. The SS metric was designed to quantify the magnitude of the segmentation error per vessel while significantly decreasing the manual marking burden for the human user. A total of 210 arteries and 205 veins were manually marked across seven test cases. 134/210 arteries were correctly segmented, with a specificity for arteries of 90%, and average segmentation error of 0.15 mm. This fully-automated segmentation is a promising method for improving lung nodule detection in low-dose CT screening scans, by separating vessels from surrounding iso-intensity objects.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRESERVICE PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHERS' ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY AND PROACTIVE PERSONALITY

Teachers today can influence their environment and events through their behavior, therefore, each teacher’s teaching style has an impact on students’ academic achievement. The effective design of learning environments and systematic guidance of students depend on teachers’ efficacy and personality traits. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between preservice physical education teachers’ self-efficacy and proactive personality traits. Study group consists of 386 physical education students (122 women and 264 men) of four universities in the spring semester of 2015/2016. Data were collected using a Personal Information Form developed by the researcher, an Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES) and a short version of the Proactive Personality Scale (SPPS). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods, t-test, OneWay ANOVA and Tukey multiple comparison test. Participants reported moderate levels of self-efficacy and low levels of proactive personality. Male participants had significantly lower social status scale scores than female participants. An interesting result was that self-efficacy decreased with age. Fourth-grade students’ academic self-efficacy and sub-scale scores were statistically lower than those of first-, secondand thirdgrade students. Sports engagement were found to have no effect on participants’ academic self-efficacy and proactive personality. Another interesting result was that participants’ academic self-efficacy decreased along with an increase in grade point average (GPA) scores. Participants’ proactive personality scores decreased with an increase in their academic self-efficacy scores. Future studies are warranted to assess the correlation of academic self-efficacy and proactive personality with different variables.
On the Representation of Speaker Information in Human Voices: An Adaptation Approach

Apart from being carriers of speech, human voices contain a wealth of social signals, for instance about a speaker’s gender, identity, or age, to name but a few. The present thesis is concerned with the way adaptation modifies the perception of gender and identity information from voices. Adaptation is a mechanism by which neural responses decrease after continuous or repetitive stimulation. It is revealed by transient perceptual aftereffects indicating contrastive coding of simple and complex stimulus properties. The three studies reported here investigate unimodal and crossmodal auditory voice aftereffects of adaptation to unfamiliar and personally familiar speakers. Specifically, study I (Exp. 1) shows that adaptation to unfamiliar voices of female or male speakers biases the perception of voice gender away from the adapting gender: test voices, as created by auditory morphing between male and female voices, are perceived as more male following adaptation to female voices and vice versa. The voice gender aftereffect (VGAE) survived at least a few minutes and suggests the existence of voice detectors tuned to female and male voice quality. The absence of voice aftereffects following adaptation to names (Exp. 2), faces (Exp. 3), or sinusoidal tones matched to F0 of adaptor voices (Exp. 4) further suggests that the VGAE is due to habituation of high-level auditory representations. Study II replicates behavioural findings of study I (Exp. 1) and further supports the notion of processing selectivity for female and male voices by providing electrophysiological evidence. Systematic adaptation-induced amplitude reductions in AEPs (N1, P2, and P3) were observed in response to otherwise identical test voices when test voices and adaptors had the same gender as opposed to different genders. This suggests that contrastive coding of voice gender is implemented by auditory cortex neurons and takes place within the first few hundred milliseconds from voice onset. Similar to the VGAE, auditory aftereffects of adaptation to voices or faces of personally familiar speakers caused contrastive aftereffects in listeners’ perception of voice identity (study III). Unimodal voice-to-voice aftereffects (Exp. 1) were more pronounced and more persistent than crossmodal face-to-voice aftereffects (Exp. 2) pointing to at least two perceptual mechanisms of voice identity adaptation: one related to auditory coding of voice characteristics and one related to multimodal coding of speaker identity. These results complement findings in face perception (z.B. Leopold et al., 2001; Webster et al., 2004) and suggest that adaptation is a ubiquitous mechanism that routinely influences the perception of non-linguistic social information from both faces and voices.
Identification and Analysis of the Novel pGAPDH-w Gene Differentially Expressed in Wild Ginseng

Objective: Panax ginseng is one of the most medicinally used herbal medicines in the world. Wild ginseng is widely accepted to be more active than cultivated ginseng in chemoprevention. However, little has actually been reported on the differences between wild ginseng and cultivated ginseng. Method: To identify wild ginseng-specific genes, we used suppressive subtraction hybridization. Results: We report that one of the clones isolated in this screen was the GAPDH(glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase) gene (designated pGAPDH-w). DNA BLAST sequence analysis revealed that this pGAPDH-w gene contained novel sequences of 94 bp. RT-PCR results showed that the expression of the pGAPDH-w gene was significantly up-regulated in the wild ginseng as compared with the cultivated ginseng. Conclusion: The pGAPDH-w gene may be one of the important markers of wild ginseng.
Efficient Computation of Complex Distance Metrics Using Hierarchical Filtering

By their very nature, memory based algorithms such as KNN or Parzen windows require a computationally expensive search of a large database of prototypes. In this paper we optimize the searching process for tangent distance (Simard, LeCun and Denker, 1993) to improve speed performance. The closest prototypes are found by recursively searching included subsets of the database using distances of increasing complexity. This is done by using a hierarchy of tangent distances (increasing the Humber of tangent. vectors from 0 to its maximum) and multiresolution (using wavelets). At each stage, a confidence level of the classification is computed. If the confidence is high enough, the computation of more complex distances is avoided. The resulting algorithm applied to character recognition is close to three orders of magnitude faster than computing the full tangent distance on every prototypes.
Aspirin-induced histone acetylation in endothelial cells enhances synthesis of the secreted isoform of netrin-1 thus inhibiting monocyte vascular infiltration

There are conflicting data regarding whether netrin‐1 retards or accelerates atherosclerosis progression, as it can lead either to monocyte repulsion from or retention within plaques depending on its cellular source. We investigated the effect of aspirin, which is widely used in cardiovascular prophylaxis, on the synthesis of different isoforms of netrin‐1 by endothelial cells under pro‐inflammatory conditions, and defined the net effect of aspirin‐dependent systemic modulation of netrin‐1 on atherosclerosis progression.
Using Greedy algorithm: DBSCAN revisited II

The density-based clustering algorithm presented is different from the classical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) (Esteret al., 1996), and has the following advantages: first, Greedy algorithm substitutes forR*-tree (Bechmannet al., 1990) in DBSCAN to index the clustering space so that the clustering time cost is decreased to great extent and I/O memory load is reduced as well; second, the merging condition to approach to arbitrary-shaped clusters is designed carefully so that a single threshold can distinguish correctly all clusters in a large spatial dataset though some density-skewed clusters live in it. Finally, authors investigate a robotic navigation and test two artificial datasets by the proposed algorithm to verify its effectiveness and efficiency.