Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis of γ-Aminobutyric Acid by Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from a Variety of Italian Cheeses

ABSTRACT The concentrations of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in 22 Italian cheese varieties that differ in several technological traits markedly varied from 0.26 to 391 mg kg−1. Presumptive lactic acid bacteria were isolated from each cheese variety (total of 440 isolates) and screened for the capacity to synthesize GABA. Only 61 isolates showed this activity and were identified by partial sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Twelve species were found. Lactobacillus paracasei PF6, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus PR1, Lactococcus lactis PU1, Lactobacillus plantarum C48, and Lactobacillus brevis PM17 were the best GABA-producing strains during fermentation of reconstituted skimmed milk. Except for L. plantarum C48, all these strains were isolated from cheeses with the highest concentrations of GABA. A core fragment of glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) DNA was isolated from L. paracasei PF6, L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus PR1, L. lactis PU1, and L. plantarum C48 by using primers based on two highly conserved regions of GAD. A PCR product of ca. 540 bp was found for all the strains. The amino acid sequences deduced from nucleotide sequence analysis showed 98, 99, 90, and 85% identity to GadB of L. plantarum WCFS1 for L. paracasei PF6, L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus PR1, L. lactis PU1, and L. plantarum C48, respectively. Except for L. lactis PU1, the three lactobacillus strains survived and synthesized GABA under simulated gastrointestinal conditions. The findings of this study provide a potential basis for exploiting selected cheese-related lactobacilli to develop health-promoting dairy products enriched in GABA.
Copyright Protection for E-Learning Videos Using Digital Watermarking

E-Learning system provides a new platform for learning and is becoming more and more popular nowadays. As part of E-Learning, digital multimedia contents like video lectures, seminar talks are made available to the learners through the internet. The teachers or the authority upload videos in the file repositories of E-learning systems. It is not so difficult to copy such files without quality loss. Any user can obtain the copies of these videos and upload and claim it as their own. So the security plays an important role in ELearning. Digital watermarking is a strong solution for this problem. In this paper we propose a method for digital watermarking in which frequency domain transforms (Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)) are used for the data insertion. The decoding is based on the side information which produced at the time of watermarking. We have compared the Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and Bit Error Rate (BER) of the results. The testing includes applying of spatial attacks and compression attacks on the watermarked video. The result shows that the method using wavelet transform is more efficient.
Endothelin receptor antagonists in pulmonary arterial hypertension

The endothelin (ET) system, especially ET-1 and the ETA and ETB receptors, has been implicated in the pathogenesis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Together with prostanoids and phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors, ET receptor antagonists have become mainstays in the current treatment of PAH. Three substances are currently available for the treatment of PAH. One of these substances, bosentan, blocks both ETA and ETB receptors, whereas the two other compounds, sitaxsentan and ambrisentan, are more selective blockers of the ETA receptor. There is ongoing debate as to whether selective or nonselective ET receptor blockade is advantageous in the setting of PAH, although there is no clear evidence that receptor selectivity is relevant with regard to the clinical effects of these drugs. For the time being, other features, such as safety profiles and the potential for pharmacokinetic interactions with other drugs used in the treatment of PAH, may be more important than selectivity or nonselectivity when selecting treatments for individual patients.
Incipient Bearing Fault Detection via Motor Stator Current Noise Cancellation Using Wiener Filter

Current-based monitoring can offer significant economic savings and implementation advantages over traditional vibration monitoring for bearing fault detection. The key issue in current-based bearing fault detection is to extract bearing fault signatures from the motor stator current. Since the bearing fault signature in the stator current is typically very subtle, particularly when the fault is at an incipient stage, it is difficult to detect the fault signature directly. Therefore, in this paper, the bearing fault signature is detected alternatively by estimating and removing nonbearing fault components via a noise cancellation method. In this method, all the components of the stator current that are not related to bearing faults are regarded as noise and are estimated by a Wiener filter. Then, all these noise components are cancelled out by their estimates in a real-time fashion, and a fault indicator is established based on the remaining components which are mainly caused by bearing faults. Machine parameters, bearing dimensions, nameplate values, and the stator current spectrum distribution are not required in the method. The results of online experiments with a 20-hp induction motor under multiple load levels have confirmed the effectiveness of this method.
HMGB1 mediates hyperglycaemia-induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis via ERK/Ets-1 signalling pathway

Apoptosis is a key event involved in diabetic cardiomyopathy. The expression of high mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) is up‐regulated in diabetic mice. However, the molecular mechanism of high glucose (HG)‐induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis remains obscure. We aimed to determine the role of HMGB1 in HG‐induced apoptosis of cardiomyocytes. Treating neonatal primary cardiomyocytes with HG increased cell apoptosis, which was accompanied by elevated levels of HMGB1. Inhibition of HMGB1 by short‐hairpin RNA significantly decreased HG‐induced cell apoptosis by reducing caspase‐3 activation and ratio of Bcl2‐associated X protein to B‐cell lymphoma/leukemia‐2 (bax/bcl‐2). Furthermore, HG activated E26 transformation‐specific sequence‐1 (Ets‐1), and HMGB1 inhibition attenuated HG‐induced activation of Ets‐1 via extracellular signal‐regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) signalling. In addition, inhibition of Ets‐1 significantly decreased HG‐induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis. Similar results were observed in streptozotocin‐treated diabetic mice. Inhibition of HMGB1 by short‐hairpin RNA markedly decreased myocardial cell apoptosis and activation of ERK and Ets‐1 in diabetic mice. In conclusion, inhibition of HMGB1 may protect against hyperglycaemia‐induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis by down‐regulating ERK‐dependent activation of Ets‐1.
Clock-Tree Aware Multibit Flip-Flop Generation During Placement for Power Optimization

Utilizing multibit flip-flops (MBFFs) is one of the most effective power optimization techniques in modern nanometer integrated circuit design. Most of the previous works apply MBFFs without doing placement refinement of combinational logic cells. Such problem formulation may result in less power reduction due to tight timing constraints with fixed combinational logic cells. This paper introduces a novel placement flow with clock-tree aware flip-flop (FF) merging and MBFF generation, and proposes the corresponding algorithms to simultaneously minimize FF power and clock latency when applying MBFFs during placement. Experimental results based on the IWLS-2005 benchmark show that our approach is very effective in not only FF power but also clock latency minimization without degrading circuit performance. To our best knowledge, this is also the first work in the literature which considers clock trees when generating MBFFs during placement.
Evaluating Pair-Programming for Non-Computer Science Major Students

The ubiquitous nature of software has resulted in many non-computer-science (NCS) major students taking courses in computer programming. The appeal of learning computer programming for this cohort may be diminished, given that they do not usually have an initial desire to become expert programmers. This, coupled with the difficulty of learning computer programming, means that efforts to heighten their engagement with/learning of, programming skills are required. Paired programming is an approach that has been hypothesized as increasing computer science students' attendance and performance. The study presented here reports on a controlled study investigating the impact of a pair-programming approach to teaching computer programming to NCS majors. The results indicate that pair programming has a positive impact on student attendance, particularly for weaker students. While a comparison of the paired programming cohort and a traditional lab cohort is not statistically significant with respect to performance, there are definite trends which suggest that pair programming may increase the number of weaker students that succeed in the programming module. These trends are re-enforced by qualitative feedback from the participants.
Automatic Emotion Recognition by the Speech Signal

This paper dis cusses approaches to recognize the emotional user state by analyzing spoken utterances on both, the semantic and the signal level. We classify seven emotions: joy, anger, irritation, fear, disgust, sadness and neutral inner state. The introduced methods analyze the wording, the degree of verbosity, the temporal intention rate as well as the history of user utterances. As prosodic features duration, pitch and energy contribute to a robust recognition. Further more the problem of spotting for emotional phrases in the human-computer-interaction is alluded. User profiling supports the adaptation of different cultural comprehensions of verbally expressed emotions. To legitimate the applied features results of usability studies are introduced. Finally fields of application are shown and results are discussed.
Introduction to health economics

Resources are inevitably scarce and hard choices have to be made. Health economics, as you will see in this book, is about helping to make those choices in a way that improves people's health and the way services are delivered. The book provides insight into the economic methods that are used to promote public health policies, analyse health care delivery and shape health sector reforms. Unlike other books in this area, "Introduction to Health Economics" takes an international perspective, considering public and private health systems across countries with different income levels. The book examines: supply and demand; markets; health system financing; and, economic evaluation.
The Effect of Perioperative E-Health Interventions on the Postoperative Course: A Systematic Review of Randomised and Non-Randomised Controlled Trials

Background E-health interventions have become increasingly popular, including in perioperative care. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of perioperative e-health interventions on the postoperative course. Methods We conducted a systematic review and searched for relevant articles in the PUBMED, EMBASE, CINAHL and COCHRANE databases. Controlled trials written in English, with participants of 18 years and older who underwent any type of surgery and which evaluated any type of e-health intervention by reporting patient-related outcome measures focusing on the period after surgery, were included. Data of all included studies were extracted and study quality was assessed by using the Downs and Black scoring system. Findings A total of 33 articles were included, reporting on 27 unique studies. Most studies were judged as having a medium risk of bias (n = 13), 11 as a low risk of bias, and three as high risk of bias studies. Most studies included patients undergoing cardiac (n = 9) or orthopedic surgery (n = 7). All studies focused on replacing (n = 11) or complementing (n = 15) perioperative usual care with some form of care via ICT; one study evaluated both type of interventions. Interventions consisted of an educational or supportive website, telemonitoring, telerehabilitation or teleconsultation. All studies measured patient-related outcomes focusing on the physical, the mental or the general component of recovery. 11 studies (40.7%) reported outcome measures related to the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of health care usage and costs. 25 studies (92.6%) reported at least an equal (n = 8) or positive (n = 17) effect of the e-health intervention compared to usual care. In two studies (7.4%) a positive effect on any outcome was found in favour of the control group. Conclusion Based on this systematic review we conclude that in the majority of the studies e-health leads to similar or improved clinical patient-related outcomes compared to only face to face perioperative care for patients who have undergone various forms of surgery. However, due to the low or moderate quality of many studies, the results should be interpreted with caution.
Appetite controlled by a cholecystokinin nucleus of the solitary tract to hypothalamus neurocircuit

The nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) is a key gateway for meal-related signals entering the brain from the periphery. However, the chemical mediators crucial to this process have not been fully elucidated. We reveal that a subset of NTS neurons containing cholecystokinin (CCKNTS) is responsive to nutritional state and that their activation reduces appetite and body weight in mice. Cell-specific anterograde tracing revealed that CCKNTS neurons provide a distinctive innervation of the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVH), with fibers and varicosities in close apposition to a subset of melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4RPVH) cells, which are also responsive to CCK. Optogenetic activation of CCKNTS axon terminals within the PVH reveal the satiating function of CCKNTS neurons to be mediated by a CCKNTS→PVH pathway that also encodes positive valence. These data identify the functional significance of CCKNTS neurons and reveal a sufficient and discrete NTS to hypothalamus circuit controlling appetite. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.12225. 001
Fast static analysis of power grids: Algorithms and implementations

Large VLSI on-chip power delivery networks (PDN) are challenging to analyze due to sheer network complexity. In this paper, three power grid solvers developed in our group: a direct solver using Cholesky decomposition, a GPU-based multigrid preconditioning solver, and a partitioning-based solver using spatial locality, are reviewed. Following the requirements of TAU 2011 Power Grid Simulation Contest, single-threaded versions of these solvers are implemented and their performances are evaluated in terms of runtime, memory, maximum error and average error. The experimental results show that for the published IBM power grid benchmarks, the direct solver has the best overall performance among the three.
A Novel Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on External Dominated Clustering

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have wide applications in practice and many advantages over traditional methods in solving nonlinear and complex optimal problems. In this paper, we propose a novel clustering technique, in which the infeasible solutions are employed to divide the feasible solutions into several clusters. There is no more one infeasible individual in each cluster. A novel evolutionary algorithm based on this technique called ED-MOEA is proposed for dealing with constrained multi-objective problems. Simulation results on five test problems indicate the proposed algorithm is effective.
Strategic Positioning and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Food Industry

Purpose – This paper examines the concepts of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) and strategic positioning (SP) and seeks to develop a framework on determinants of SP and SCA in the food industry following the case study approach. Design/methodology/approach – This paper analyzes the concepts of strategic positioning and sustainable competitive advantage and their interrelation. The qualitative study of three beverage producers is conducted. Cases are analyzed based on the theoretical models discussed in the first part of the paper. Findings-This paper provides comparison of positioning strategies and SCA of three international beverage producers. The theoretical framework on determinants of these concepts was developed and applied for case study. The concepts of SCA and SP are interchanging, but from the case study it was not possible to conclude whether one leads to another. There is no single theory found which would be universal in explaining the success of the brands. Companies are complex structures and their success depends on many different elements which should be analyzed in combination. Research limitations/implications – The findings are based solely on the case analysis of three unique beverage companies. To generalize conclusions the research of other companies in food industry on possession of SCA and their positioning strategies is needed. Not all firsthand information was possible to get from all companies. Therefore it cannot be guaranteed that factors beyond the scope of this study did not have an influence. Practical implications – The BIONADE and Supermalt brands represents an interesting cases for companies aiming to develop strong premium brands with a limited marketing budget for a wide or niche market segment. Oettinger brand represents a case of absolute leadership due to low cost strategy. Projecting the behavior of these companies can help managers to learn from their success. Originality/Value – This paper provides a case study on three successful international and unique drink producers on analysis of their SCA and positioning strategies they follow.
Chemical Compositions and Tectonic Significance of Chrome‐Rich Spinels in the Tianba Flysch, Southern Tibet

Turbiditic sandstones from the mid–Late Cretaceous Tianba Flysch sequence are well exposed near Tianba in the north Nieru Valley, southern Tibet, and contain significant amounts of chrome‐rich spinels. Microprobe results show that the spinels have a well‐developed Fe‐Ti trend and have Cr/( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$\mathrm{Cr}\,+\mathrm{Al}\,$$ \end{document} ) 0.4–0.65, Mg/( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$\mathrm{Mg}\,+\mathrm{Fe}\,^{2+}$$ \end{document} ) 0.3–0.9, and TiO2 >1%. The occurrence of melt inclusions, and well above 0.2% TiO2 contents, shows that a volcanic suite of rocks was the source of these Cr‐rich spinels. Specifically, these spinels compositionally resemble spinels from intraplate basalts (e.g., Hawaii and Disko Island, western Greenland) rather than from ophiolitic ultramafic or gabbroic material expected in an intraoceanic subduction system associated with the closing of the Neo‐Tethys. On the basis of paleotectonic reconstruction, the presence of mid–Late Cretaceous fossils in the strata, and the limited range of chemical compositions, we suggest that 117‐Ma volcanics of the Rajmahal‐Kerguelen hot spot were the source for the chrome‐rich spinels in the Tianba Flysch.
Lower bounds for the absolute value of random polynomials on a neighborhood of the unit circle

Abstract. Let T (x) = ∑n−1 j=0 ±eijx where ± stands for a random choice of sign with equal probability. The first author recently showed that for any > 0 and most choices of sign, minx∈[0,2π) |T (x)| 0 and large n most choices of sign satisfy minx∈[0,2π) |T (x)| > n−1/2. Furthermore, we study the case of more general random coefficients and applications of our methods to complex zeros of random polynomials.
Ju n 20 08 Finite-size Effects for Single Spike

We use the reduction of the string dynamics on Rt × S to the Neumann-Rosochatius integrable system to map all string solutions described by this dynamical system onto solutions of the complex sine-Gordon integrable model. This mapping relates the parameters in the solutions on both sides of the correspondence. In the framework of this approach, we find finite-size string solutions, their images in the (complex) sine-Gordon system, and the leading finite-size effects of the single spike “E − ∆φ” relation for both Rt × S and Rt × S cases. ∗On leave from Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria.
A Wide-Field, Low-Frequency Radio Survey of the Field of M31. I. Construction and Statistical Analysis of the Source Catalog

We present here the results of a 325 MHz radio survey of M31, conducted with the A configuration of the Very Large Array. The survey covered an area of 7.6 deg2, and a total of 405 radio sources between ≲6'' and 170'' in extent were mapped with a resolution of 6'' and a 1 σ sensitivity of ~0.6 mJy beam-1. For each source, its morphological class, major axis θM, minor axis θm, position angle θPA, peak flux I, integrated flux density S, spectral index α, and spectral curvature parameter φ were calculated. A comparison of the flux and radial distribution—both in the plane of the sky and in the plane of M31—of these sources with those of the XMM-Newton Large-Scale Structure Survey and Westerbork Northern Sky Survey revealed that a vast majority of sources detected are background radio galaxies. As a result of this analysis, we expect that only a few sources are intrinsic to M31. These sources are identified and discussed in an accompanying paper.
Modeling recurrent distributions in streams using possible worlds

Discovering changes in the data distribution of streams and discovering recurrent data distributions are challenging problems in data mining and machine learning. Both have received a lot of attention in the context of classification. With the ever increasing growth of data, however, there is a high demand of compact and universal representations of data streams that enable the user to analyze current as well as historic data without having access to the raw data. To make a first step towards this direction, we propose a condensed representation that captures the various - possibly recurrent - data distributions of the stream by extending the notion of possible worlds. The representation enables queries concerning the whole stream and can, hence, serve as a tool for supporting decision-making processes or serve as a basis for implementing data mining and machine learning algorithms on top of it. We evaluate this condensed representation on synthetic and real-world data.