Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of women leadership in enterprise social networks

This paper describes a Social Network Analysis toolkit to monitor an Enterprise Social Network and help analyzing informal leadership as a function of social ties and topic discussions. The toolkit has been developed in the context of a regional project, Fiordaliso, funded by Regione Lazio (a region of central Italy) and leaded by Reply, an international network of specialized companies in the field of digital services.
Crystal structures of S6K1 provide insights into the regulation mechanism of S6K1 by the hydrophobic motif

The p70 kDa ribosome protein subunit 6 kinase 1 (S6K1) belonging to the AGC family of kinases is an important downstream effector of the mTOR signaling pathway, and dysfunction of S6K1 has been related to tumorigenesis, metabolic diseases and developmental defects. The kinase activity of S6K1 is stimulated by multiple phosphorylation events, including phosphorylation of T229 in the activation loop and phosphorylation of T389 in the hydrophobic motif. Here we report six crystal structures of S6K1 with or without the hydrophobic motif in various forms, in complexes with a highly specific inhibitor, namely PF‐4708671. The structural and biochemical data reveal in vivo phosphorylation of T389 in the absence of phosphorylation of T229 and demonstrate the functional importance of two conserved residues of the N‐lobe, Q140 on strand β4 and R121 on helix αC, in the establishment of a hydrogen‐bonding network between the N‐lobe and the hydrophobic motif. Phosphorylation of T389 or introduction of a negatively charged group at the corresponding position leads to reinforcement of the network and stabilization of helix αC, particularly via interactions between the negatively charged group and Q140. Furthermore, sequence and structural comparisons of S6K1 with other AGC family kinases suggest that the divergences in both the hydrophobic motif and helix αC confer specificity on the kinase signaling cascades regarding their dependence on PDK1. Together, these results indicate that phosphorylation of the hydrophobic motif in S6K1 is independent of and probably, precedes and promotes phosphorylation of the activation loop by providing a docking site for PDK1.
Assessment of autozygosity in Nellore cows (Bos indicus) through high-density SNP genotypes

The use of relatively low numbers of sires in cattle breeding programs, particularly on those for carcass and weight traits in Nellore beef cattle (Bos indicus) in Brazil, has always raised concerns about inbreeding, which affects conservation of genetic resources and sustainability of this breed. Here, we investigated the distribution of autozygosity levels based on runs of homozygosity (ROH) in a sample of 1,278 Nellore cows, genotyped for over 777,000 SNPs. We found ROH segments larger than 10 Mb in over 70% of the samples, representing signatures most likely related to the recent massive use of few sires. However, the average genome coverage by ROH (>1 Mb) was lower than previously reported for other cattle breeds (4.58%). In spite of 99.98% of the SNPs being included within a ROH in at least one individual, only 19.37% of the markers were encompassed by common ROH, suggesting that the ongoing selection for weight, carcass and reproductive traits in this population is too recent to have produced selection signatures in the form of ROH. Three short-range highly prevalent ROH autosomal hotspots (occurring in over 50% of the samples) were observed, indicating candidate regions most likely under selection since before the foundation of Brazilian Nellore cattle. The putative signatures of selection on chromosomes 4, 7, and 12 may be involved in resistance to infectious diseases and fertility, and should be subject of future investigation.
BFR: A bloom filter-based routing approach for information-centric networks

Locating the demanded content is one of the major challenges in Information-Centric Networking (ICN). This process is known as content discovery. To facilitate content discovery, in this paper we focus on Named Data Networking (NDN) and propose a novel routing scheme for content discovery, called Bloom Filter-based Routing (BFR), which is fully distributed, content oriented, and topology agnostic at the intra-domain level. In BFR, origin servers advertise their content objects using Bloom filters. We compare the performance of BFR with flooding and shortest path content discovery approaches. BFR outperforms its counterparts in terms of the average round-trip delay, while it is shown to be very robust to false positive reports from Bloom filters. Also, BFR is much more robust than shortest path routing to topology changes. BFR strongly outperforms flooding and performs almost equal with shortest path routing with respect to the normalized communication costs for data retrieval and total communication overhead for forwarding Interests. All the three approaches achieve similar mean hit distance. The signalling overhead for content advertisement in BFR is much lower than the signalling overhead for calculating shortest paths in the shortest path approach. Finally, BFR requires small storage overhead for maintaining content advertisements.
Preparation and characterization of mixed matrix membranes based on poly(vinylidene fluoride) and zeolite 4A for gas separation

Zeolite 4A was incorporated into poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) matrix to prepare mixed matrix membranes (MMMs). The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the inorganic filler on the structural properties of the MMMs. The resulting membranes were characterized using thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, contact angle tests, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The mechanical properties of the membranes were determined using a tensile stress–strain machine. To fully study the interface properties between the inorganic fillers and polymer chains, the densities of the membranes were experimentally determined and compared with the theoretical values. The experimental densities of the composite membranes were lower than those of the theoretical values. The void volume fractions were calculated accordingly. The single gas (He, CO2, O2, and N2) permeabilities of the resulting membranes were carried out. The highest permeabilities of 14.65, 6.62, 1.01, and 0.3 Barrer for He, CO2, O2, and N2, respectively, were obtained by PVDF/4A 32% composite membrane; whereas the highest selectivities of 105.5, 31.5, and 3.3 for He/N2, CO2/N2, and O2/N2, respectively, were obtained using PVDF/4A 16% composite membrane. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2012. © 2012 Society of Plastics Engineers
The effect of heat treatment conditions using the drawing process on the properties of PET filament sewing thread

For the production of drawn poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) filament threads it is useful to determine the relationship between the drawing process conditions and the resulting product properties. Drawing at an elevated temperature over a defined time usually causes changes of the polymer structural parameters that influence the mechanical properties of the filaments. In order to elucidate the physical background of the drawing process for developing the production process of PET filament sewing thread, the thread was drawn by varying the treatment temperature and contact time. The effect of the treatment conditions on the structural and mechanical properties of the drawn threads was investigated, such as the birefringence, crystallinity, and dynamic mechanical properties of the threads’ filaments, as well as the mechanical properties and shrinkage of the treated threads. Using the drawing process, higher temperature and contact time up to the critical values (T2 = 220°C, n2 = 9 turns) change the structural parameters and, consequently, any modifications influence changes in the mechanical properties of the threads. Namely, a higher treatment temperature and contact time increases the degree of crystallinity, the birefringence, and the maxima of the loss tangent and loss modulus temperature, and a significant increase in the breaking tenacity, elastic modulus and the thread’s tension at the yield point, and a decrease of the breaking extension is achieved. The observed deterioration of the thread’s mechanical properties above the critical treatment conditions is attributed to the destructive phenomena of the supra-molecular structure, resulting in an imperfect structure of the thread’s filaments.
Analysis of Deinococcus radiodurans's Transcriptional Response to Ionizing Radiation and Desiccation Reveals Novel Proteins That Contribute to Extreme Radioresistance

During the first hour after a sublethal dose of ionizing radiation, 72 genes were upregulated threefold or higher in D. radiodurans R1. Thirty-three of these loci were also among a set of 73 genes expressed in R1 cultures recovering from desiccation. The five transcripts most highly induced in response to each stress are the same and encode proteins of unknown function. The genes (ddrA, ddrB, ddrC, ddrD, and pprA) corresponding to these transcripts were deleted, both alone and in all possible two-way combinations. Characterization of the mutant strains defines three epistasis groups that reflect different cellular responses to ionizing radiation-induced damage. The ddrA and ddrB gene products have complementary activities and inactivating both loci generates a strain that is more sensitive to ionizing radiation than strains in which either single gene has been deleted. These proteins appear to mediate efficient RecA-independent processes connected to ionizing radiation resistance. The pprA gene product is not necessary for homologous recombination during natural transformation, but nevertheless may participate in a RecA-dependent process during recovery from radiation damage. These characterizations clearly demonstrate that novel mechanisms significantly contribute to the ionizing radiation resistance in D. radiodurans.
HPTFS: High performance tape file system

Offsite storing and data mirroring are increasingly essential for disaster recovery. Tape backup/archive is still a strong candidate or even a must for some of these applications. The rapid development of Internet and the emerging of low cost high capacity storage devices have created an environment with explosive amount of data and hence have created a higher demand for tape storage systems since tape library provides long lifetime archival and low cost per storage unit [1]–[3]. However, tape storage is harder to use due to its SCSI interface and sequential access nature. The purpose of this project is to provide programmers and end users an easy to use interface while taking the full advantage of high capacity and high streaming speed from modern tape technologies. Modern tape technology can provide high capacity per cartridge (1 TB compressed storage capacity) [4] and high streaming rate (200 MB/s compressed data transfer rate) [5], [6]. We have built a software, called HPTFS (High Performance Tape File System), that mounts a tape as a file system and enables tape write sharing among multiple users by transparently interleaving user data streams to tape. This systems is simple enough that it could be directly built into a tape drive thus completely changing the paradigm on how tape is accessed for the fist time since tape iteself was introduced. As a secondary feature, the software can also support the concept of continuous data protection by simultaneously writing data to both disk and tape providing a seamless support of data mirroring for any user application. We have also evaluated the basic system performance of HPTFS and presented some ideas of further improvements.
Plug and Play Speech Understanding

Plug and Play is an increasingly important concept in system and network architectures. We introduce and describe a spoken language dialogue system architecture which supports Plug and Playable networks of objects in its domain. Each device in the network carries the linguistic and dialogue management information which is pertinent to it and uploads it dynamically to the relevant language processing components in the spoken language interface. We describe the current state of our plug and play demonstrator and discuss theoretical issues that arise from our work. Plug and Play forms a central topic for the DHomme project.
Computation of Power Systems Minimum Voltage Stability Security Margins

This paper presents an accurate and efficient method to compute the minimum voltage stability security margin (VSSM) of electrical power systems. Many network planning and operation procedures set forth by Independent System Operators and followed by many utilities consider the computation of the VSSM for a predefined load increase direction. Usually, this direction corresponds to increasing all loads with constant power factor and the MW generated at generation buses by using one loading factor only. However, situations may occur where small variations in this direction, as for example, an unexpected load increase at any bus or set of buses, may result in smaller VSSM, thus leading the system to an insecure operating state. The goal of this paper is to propose a combination of a fast method to estimate the VSSM with an efficient method to calculate the appropriate direction of load increase for which the margin is minimum. This information, along with the usual VSSM, can provide system operators with relevant information regarding the system's security. More complete information allow operators to take decisions like preventive control actions to move the system to a securer operating point. The procedure is divided into two main stages. The first one consists of estimating the maximum loading point (MLP) and consequently the VSSM, by using nonlinear programming techniques. The second stage consists of computing new directions of load increase. These new directions are based on eigenvector handling. Also, the use of a special load flow method with step size optimization results into a more efficient computation process. Simulation results for IEEE standard and realistic power systems are shown to evaluate the method.
Restructuring exponential family mixture models

Variational KL (varKL) divergence minimization was previously applied to restructuring acoustic models (AMs) using Gaussian mixture models by reducing their size while preserving their accuracy. In this paper, we derive a related varKL for exponential family mixture models (EMMs) and test its accuracy using the weighted local maximum likelihood agglomerative clustering technique. Minimizing varKL between a reference and a restructured AM led previously to the variational expectation maximization (varEM) algorithm; which we extend to EMMs. We present results on a clustering task using AMs trained on 50 hrs of Broadcast News (BN). EMMs are trained on fMMI-PLP features combined with frame level phone posterior probabilities given by the recently introduced sparse representation phone identification process. As we reduce model size, we test the word error rate using the standard BN test set and compare with baseline models of the same size, trained directly from data. Index Terms: KL divergence, variational approximation, variational expectation-maximization, exponential family distributions, acoustic model clustering.
Process-oriented approach to competency management using ontologies

Popularization of process approach as a standard necessitates changing the ways of defining and identifying requisite competencies. They should be seen in the framework of tasks implemented within the business process. The complex nature of competencies requires expressive forms of description regarding their multidimensional character therefore codification of competencies is the area predestinated to make use of ontologies. The aim of this paper is to show how the ontology describing competencies can be linked with business process models to support process-oriented, dynamic competency management in a company. With this aim in mind a proposal of practical implementation of ontology-enhanced business process model was presented and illustrated by the example of software development.
Happy Taxpayers? Income Taxation and Well-Being

This paper offers a first empirical investigation of how labor taxation (income and payroll taxes) affects individuals' well-being. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in tax rules over time and across demographic groups using 26 years of German panel data. We find that the tax effect on subjective well-being is significant and positive when controlling for income net of taxes. This interesting result is robust to numerous specification checks. It is consistent with several possible channels through which taxes affect welfare including public goods, insurance, redistributive taste and tax morale.
Scrub typhus in patients reporting with acute febrile illness at a tertiary health care institution in Goa

Background & objectives: Scrub typhus is one of the differential diagnoses of haemorrhagic fevers especially if associated with jaundice and/or renal failure. Goa State in the western region of India has been witnessing increased incidence of such fevers, therefore, the present study was undertaken to identify whether scrub typhus is the aetiological agent. Methods: Adult patients presenting with undiagnosed febrile illness between June 2009 to October 2010, were evaluated. Testing was done using a commercial ELISA kit for specific IgM antibodies against Orientia tsutsugamushi. Results: Of the 44 patients included in the study, 15 (34%) were found to be positive for IGM antibodies against O. tsutsugamushi. The cases were seen mainly in the months between July to November. The common symptoms noted were fever, myalgias, gastrointestinal complaints, followed by breathlessness, rash and jaundice. The pathognomonic features such as eschar and lymphadenopathy were seen only in two patients. Nearly two third of the patients had leukocytosis (67%) and low serum albumin (60%). The most common complication noticed was hepatitis (80%) followed by acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) (60%), thrombocytopenia (40%) and acute renal failure (33%). Five patients died in the course of illness. Interpretation & conclusions: Our results showed that scrub typhus should be considered in the differential diagnosis of acute febrile illness associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, rash, myalgia, including those with organ dysfunctions such as hepatorenal syndrome, coagulopathy or ARDS. Empirical treatment with doxycycline or macrolides may be given in cases with strong suspicion of scrub typhus.
Sum-of-squares based observer design for polynomial systems with a known fixed time delay

An observer for a system with polynomial nonlinearities is designed. The system is assumed to exhibit a time delay whose value is supposed to be constant and known. The design is carried out using the sum-of-squares method. The key point is defining a suitable Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional. The resulting observer is in form of a polynomial in the observable variables. The results are illustrated by two examples.
Relative Expression of Germination Genes SleB, GerAC, and gpr in Heat Treated Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis

iv ABSTRACT Relative Expression of Germination Genes SleB, GerAC, and gpr in Heat-Treated Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis Valerie Paige Arechiga Endospore-forming bacteria of the genus Bacillus are of significant importance to the food industry. Species from this genus exhibit the ability to form metabolically dormant endospores characterized by resistance to heat, UV, and chemical treatment. Spores have undetectable metabolic activity and remain impervious to the harsh conditions of their environment, but they can detect environmental cues signaling favorable growth conditions and begin the process of germination. Once germination and outgrowth are complete, the fully viable cell is capable of reproducing and forming colonies. The resistance of these endospores has been a topic of decades of research, particularly because of their impact on food processing. Only a few species of Bacillus are actually pathogenic, but many others present quality defects, particularly in milk and other dairy products. This study involved the selection and use of primers specific for GerAC, gpr, and SleB genes to evaluate their relative expression and potential for indicators of lag phase in germination. Gene expression studies with qPCR were carried out during germination in Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis spores that were given a heat shock in a tryptic soy broth at 80°C and subsequently incubated for 0, 30, 60, and 120 minutes at their optimal growth temperatures. Expression ratios calculated relative to the samples incubated for 120min (R=1) showed increased expression as germination and outgrowth progressed (GerAC gene on B. licheniformis and B. subtilis; R 30min =0.14 and 0.14, R 60min =0.76 and 0.51). The different expression levels measured in this preliminary study suggest that the selected genes and methodology merit further optimization to verify the accuracy and significance of the assay as well as its application it to the milk powder process.
Improving Named Entity Disambiguation by Iteratively Enhancing Certainty of Extraction

Named entity extraction and disambiguation have received much attention in recent years. Typical fields addressing these topics are information retrieval, natural language processing, and semantic web. This paper addresses two problems with named entity extraction and disambiguation. First, almost no existing works examine the extraction and disambiguation interdependency. Second, existing disambiguation techniques mostly take as input extracted named entities without considering the uncertainty and imperfection of the extraction process. It is the aim of this paper to investigate both avenues and to show that explicit handling of the uncertainty of annotation has much potential for making both extraction and disambiguation more robust. We conducted experiments with a set of holiday home descriptions with the aim to extract and disambiguate toponyms as a representative example of named entities. We show that the effectiveness of extraction influences the effectiveness of disambiguation, and reciprocally, how retraining the extraction models with information automatically derived from the disambiguation results, improves the extraction models. This mutual reinforcement is shown to even have an effect after several iterations.
IPTV Multicast With Peer-Assisted Lossy Error Control

Internet protocol television (IPTV) systems employ IP multicast to deliver television programs to end-users. To provide reliable IPTV services over the error-prone digital subscriber line (DSL) access networks, a combination of multicast forward error correction and unicast retransmissions is employed to mitigate the impulse noise in DSL links. In current systems, the error control function is provided by special retransmission servers. In this paper, we propose an alternative distributed solution where the burden of packet loss repair is partially shifted to end-user set-top boxes. Using a peer-assisted repair (PAR) protocol, we demonstrate how packet repairs can be delivered in a timely, reliable, and decentralized manner using the combination of server-peer coordination and redundant repairs. We also show that this distributed protocol can be seamlessly integrated with an application-layer source-aware error protection mechanism called forward and retransmitted systematic lossy error protection (SLEP/SLEPr). Analysis and simulations show that this joint PAR-SLEP/SLEPr framework not only efficiently improves the resistance to the impulse noise but also effectively mitigates the bottleneck experienced by the retransmission servers, thus greatly enhancing system scalability.