Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frogs species Classification using LPC and Classification Algorithms on Wireless Sensor Network Platform

This paper presents the evaluation of Linear Prediction Coding (LPC) implemented on a Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) platform, with particular interest in the application of these techniques on frog’s phonemes classification. LPC gives the sound, as a discrete signal, an important role on species phonemes characterization and subsequent classification processes . Therefore, we studied the possibility of species classification and recognition, according to the structure of the phoneme, sound characteristic statistical variance and signal probability densities. To evaluate this option we should consider the WSN limitations and contrast them against the LPC’s high temporal and spatial complexity. Autocorrelation and PCA are complementary techniques of LPC whose features will also be studied in this article. Besides these techniques, we propose Modified K-Means (MKM) as classifier which is a postprocessing stage outside of WSN platforms
Personal authentication based on iris texture analysis

We present an iris identification approach based on wavelet-packet binary coding. This latter is carried out by coding the 64 wavelet-packet energies to generate a compact signature (iris code), quantizing these energies into one bit according to an adapted threshold. Experimental results, using CASIA database, are presented demonstrating significant improvements in iris verification accuracy.
Cooperative control of energy storage systems and biogas generator for multiple renewable energy power plants

The Ministry of the Environment of Japan is promoting a demonstration project named "wide-area operation systems for multiple renewable energy (RE) power plants" in which the authors have been devoted. In this project, the generation outputs from five RE power plants are monitored online and the fluctuation in total output is absorbed by a combination of three different energy storage systems (ESSs) and a biogas engine generator (BG). In this paper, a cooperative control of three ESSs and BG is developed considering the difference of characteristics such as the ratio of energy capacity [kWh] to power capacity [kW] (energy/power ratio) and the dynamic response. The purposes of this system are 30-minute balancing between the actual and scheduled output and absorption of the short-term (less than 30 minutes) output fluctuation. Additionally, this paper also describes capacity and control parameters design procedure based on the cross entropy method, which is one of the optimization techniques. Simulation results show that the wide-area operation system can effectively reduce the required ESSs capacity to stabilize RE output.
The use of process mining in a business process simulation context: Overview and challenges

This paper focuses on the potential of process mining to support the construction of business process simulation (BPS) models. To date, research efforts are scarce and have a rather conceptual nature. Moreover, publications fail to explicit the complex internal structure of a simulation model. The current paper outlines the general structure of a BPS model. Building on these foundations, modeling tasks for the main components of a BPS model are identified. Moreover, the potential value of process mining and the state of the art in literature are discussed. Consequently, a multitude of promising research challenges are identified. In this sense, the current paper can guide future research on the use of process mining in a BPS context.
The Salmonella effector SteA binds phosphatidylinositol 4‐phosphate for subcellular targeting within host cells

Many bacterial pathogens use specialized secretion systems to deliver virulence effector proteins into eukaryotic host cells. The function of these effectors depends on their localization within infected cells, but the mechanisms determining subcellular targeting of each effector are mostly elusive. Here, we show that the Salmonella type III secretion effector SteA binds specifically to phosphatidylinositol 4‐phosphate [PI(4)P]. Ectopically expressed SteA localized at the plasma membrane (PM) of eukaryotic cells. However, SteA was displaced from the PM of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in mutants unable to synthesize the local pool of PI(4)P and from the PM of HeLa cells after localized depletion of PI(4)P. Moreover, in infected cells, bacterially translocated or ectopically expressed SteA localized at the membrane of the Salmonella‐containing vacuole (SCV) and to Salmonella‐induced tubules; using the PI(4)P‐binding domain of the Legionella type IV secretion effector SidC as probe, we found PI(4)P at the SCV membrane and associated tubules throughout Salmonella infection of HeLa cells. Both binding of SteA to PI(4)P and the subcellular localization of ectopically expressed or bacterially translocated SteA were dependent on a lysine residue near the N‐terminus of the protein. Overall, this indicates that binding of SteA to PI(4)P is necessary for its localization within host cells.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net Association between Thrombospondin-1, Angiogenesis Related Markers, and Extracellular Matrix Components with Colorectal Cancer Outcome

Background: Angiogenesis is a multistep process that depends on the balance of proangiogenic factors and in-hibitors as well as on interactions with the extracellular matrix. Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) is an endogenous inhibitor of angiogenesis encoded by THBS1 gene, whose promoter is activated by p53. Aim: To evaluate the relevance of TSP-1 in patients with colorectal cancer. Material and Methods: We examined the immunohistochemical expression of angiogenic agents (VEGF and CD34), proliferation associated indices, extracellular matrix components (tenascin, fibronectin, laminin, and collagen type IV), and the antiangiogenic agent TPS-1 in 97 patients with colorectal carcinoma (CRC) and correlated their expression levels with clinicopathological parameters. Results: TSP-1 was detected in the tumor cells, stroma and perivascular tissue. High and moderate tumor TSP-1 expression was observed in 24.75%, weak in 19.6%, while 55.7% of the cases were negative. High stromal expression was observed in 40.2% and perivascular stain was noted in 31.95% of the cases. Stromal TSP-1 expression was correlated with tumor type and tumor grade (p=0.001, and p=0.041 respectively) and with ECM components expression: tenascin (p=0.053), fibronectin (p=0.063), collagen type IV (p=0.004) and laminin (p=0.0001). The relationship of TSP-1 expression with tumor angiogenesis, growth fraction, p53 protein expression, and overall survival was not significant. Conclusions: Our data suggest that both tumor and stromal TSP-1 expression may not be a direct antiangiogenic factor, although it seems to be implicated in the remodeling of colorectal cancer tissue through interaction with other extracellu-lar matrix components. INTRODUCTION Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer morbidity and mortality in economically advanced regions of the world. It is the third most frequently diagnosed visceral cancer and the second leading cause of cancer mortality accounting for about 10% of all cancer deaths in both genders combined [1,2]. Variables that have been found to have prognostic value include tumour stage, grade and the presence of vascular invasion. Hematogenous and nodal metasta-sis, are the major causes of death in patients with CRC [3]. Approximately 10-30% of colon tumours will recur despite the absence of lymph node metastases at the time of resec-tion [1-3]. The progressive growth of colonic cancer and the subsequent metastatic process is dependent on an angiogenic network.
Vitamin K2 and cotylenin A synergistically induce monocytic differentiation and growth arrest along with the suppression of c-MYC expression and induction of cyclin G2 expression in human leukemia HL-60 cells

Although all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) is a standard and effective drug used for differentiation therapy in acute promyelocytic leukemia, ATRA-resistant leukemia cells ultimately emerge during this treatment. Therefore, the development of new drugs or effective combination therapy is urgently needed. We demonstrate that the combined treatment of vitamin K2 and cotylenin A synergistically induced monocytic differentiation in HL-60 cells. This combined treatment also synergistically induced NBT-reducing activity and non-specific esterase-positive cells as well as morphological changes to monocyte/macrophage-like cells. Vitamin K2 and cotylenin A cooperatively inhibited the proliferation of HL-60 cells in short-term and long-term cultures. This treatment also induced growth arrest at the G1 phase. Although 5 μg/ml cotylenin A or 5 μM vitamin K2 alone reduced c-MYC gene expression in HL-60 cells to approximately 45% or 80% that of control cells, respectively, the combined treatment almost completely suppressed c-MYC gene expression. We also demonstrated that the combined treatment of vitamin K2 and cotylenin A synergistically induced the expression of cyclin G2, which had a positive effect on the promotion and maintenance of cell cycle arrest. These results suggest that the combination of vitamin K2 and cotylenin A has therapeutic value in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia.
ALOJA: A Framework for Benchmarking and Predictive Analytics in Big Data Deployments

This article presents the ALOJA project and its analytics tools, which leverages machine learning to interpret Big Data benchmark performance data and tuning. ALOJA is part of a long-term collaboration between BSC and Microsoft to automate the characterization of cost-effectiveness on Big Data deployments, currently focusing on Hadoop. Hadoop presents a complex run-time environment, where costs and performance depend on a large number of configuration choices. The ALOJA project has created an open, vendor-neutral repository, featuring over 40,000 Hadoop job executions and their performance details. The repository is accompanied by a test-bed and tools to deploy and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different hardware configurations, parameters and Cloud services. Despite early success within ALOJA, a comprehensive study requires automation of modeling procedures to allow an analysis of large and resource-constrained search spaces. The predictive analytics extension, ALOJA-ML, provides an automated system allowing knowledge discovery by modeling environments from observed executions. The resulting models can forecast execution behaviors, predicting execution times for new configurations and hardware choices. That also enables model-based anomaly detection or efficient benchmark guidance by prioritizing executions. In addition, the community can benefit from ALOJA data-sets and framework to improve the design and deployment of Big Data applications.
The New Empiricism of the Fractal Fold Rethinking Monadology in Digital Times

A new configuration of social science is emerging in these digital times, as we tap into new kinds of data that trouble conventions regarding what constitutes the unit of analysis, and question the extent to which these data are owned or even correlated to a definitive organic and individuated subject customarily referred to as "human. " These methodological shifts demand a more careful consideration of the historical lineage of empiricism and its relation to the history of science more generally. In this article, I track the historical mutations of monadology, an ontology well suited to empiricism in these digital times. Both Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour ascribe to variants of monadology in their proposals for a new empiricism, drawing extensively on the work of Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), a French sociologist, judge, and author of the audacious post-humanist 1895 text Sociology and Monadology. In this article, I discuss how monadology helps us rethink research methods in these digital times. I argue that a fractal monadology re-assembles the fold with the digital, the continuous with the discrete, and ultimately offers a philosophical foundation for contemporary social science research.
Canine renovascular responses to sumatriptan and 5‐carboxamidotryptamine: modulation through endothelial 5‐HT1‐like receptors by endogenous nitric oxide

1 In anaesthetized dogs, intra‐left atrial (i.l.a.) administration of the 5‐HT1‐like receptor agonists, sumatriptan (1 – 10 μg kg−1) and 5‐carboxamidotryptamine (0.03 – 0.3 μg kg−1) produced dose‐related reductions in renal blood flow and vascular conductance, which were characterized by their rapid onset and recovery. 2 In these animals, i.v. administration of the inhibitor of nitric oxide (NO) synthase, NG‐nitro‐l‐arginine methyl ester (l‐NAME; 10 mg kg−1) significantly augmented the renal vasoconstrictor responses to i.l. a. sumatriptan and 5‐carboxamidotryptamine. 3 The effects of l‐NAME upon these responses to sumatriptan and 5‐carboxamidotryptamine were significantly reversed by subsequent i.v. administration of l‐arginine (1000 mg kg−1). 4 l‐NAME significantly attenuated the systemic hypotensive responses to i.v. acetylcholine (0.3 – 3 μg kg−1) and this effect was also reversed by l‐arginine. 5 l‐NAME had no effect upon the renal vasoconstrictor response to i.l. a. administration of angiotensin II, nor did it affect the renal vascular conductance recovery response to brief mechanical occlusion of the renal artery. 6 These data suggest that sumatriptan and 5‐carboxamidotryptamine stimulate the release of NO through the activation of a 5‐HT1‐like receptor located on the endothelial cells. 7 It is concluded that in canine renal vasculature, 5‐HT1‐like agonists (and presumably endogenous 5‐hydroxytryptamine) can cause simultaneous activation of a 5‐HT1‐like receptor on both vascular smooth muscle and endothelial cells. The net renal vascular response to these agonists is therefore a function of both the vascular smooth muscle vasoconstriction and the concurrent vasodilator influence of NO released from the endothelium.
Beyond One-Third Faulty Replicas in Byzantine Fault Tolerant Systems

Byzantine fault tolerant systems behave correctly when no more than f out of 3f + 1 replicas fail. When there are more than f failures, traditional BFT protocols make no guarantees whatsoever. Malicious replicas can make clients accept arbitrary results, and the system behavior is totally unspecified. However, there is a large spectrum between complete correctness and arbitrary failure that traditional BFT systems ignore. This paper argues that we can and should bound the system behavior beyond f failures. We present BFT2F, an extension to the well-known Castro-Liskov PBFT algorithm [6], to explore the design space beyond f failures. Specifically, BFT2F has the same liveness and consistency guarantees as PBFT when no more than f replicas fail; with more than f but no more than 2f failures, BFT2F prohibits malicious servers from making up operations that clients have never issued and restricts malicious servers to only certain kinds of consistency violations. Evaluations of a prototype implementation show that the additional guarantees of BFT2F come at the cost of only a slight performance degradation compared to PBFT.
The relationship between gender identity and the effects of stereotype threat on women's math performance

Research in the area of stereotype threat and women’s math performance documents that women underperform under conditions of stereotype threat. Futher, those who identify more with the group under threat are more likely to be impacted by the negative effects of stereotype threat. Given this relationship, previous research has explored and documented the impact of gender identity on the relationship between stereotype threat and women’s math performance. However, the conceptualization of gender identity in the research literature is that of a static entity. This study sought to add to the literature on stereotype threat and women’s math performance by exploring the impact of gender identity on this relationship using a contextual model of gender identity. Based on the theory of “doing” gender, gender identity is seen as a dynamic interaction between person and environment, using a measure of conformity to feminine norms. This study predicted that women who are more conforming to gender norms in society would experience greater performance decrements under conditions of stereotype threat. Instead, this study found that women who are more conforming to gender norms are more likely to have lower Grade Point Averages than their non-conforming counterparts. Results and implications are further discussed.
Optimizing the Face Paradigm of BCI System by Modified Mismatch Negative Paradigm

Many recent studies have focused on improving the performance of event-related potential (ERP) based brain computer interfaces (BCIs). The use of a face pattern has been shown to obtain high classification accuracies and information transfer rates (ITRs) by evoking discriminative ERPs (N200 and N400) in addition to P300 potentials. Recently, it has been proved that the performance of traditional P300-based BCIs could be improved through a modification of the mismatch pattern. In this paper, a mismatch inverted face pattern (MIF-pattern) was presented to improve the performance of the inverted face pattern (IF-pattern), one of the state of the art patterns used in visual-based BCI systems. Ten subjects attended in this experiment. The result showed that the mismatch inverted face pattern could evoke significantly larger vertex positive potentials (p < 0.05) and N400s (p < 0.05) compared to the inverted face pattern. The classification accuracy (mean accuracy is 99.58%) and ITRs (mean bit rate is 27.88 bit/min) of the mismatch inverted face pattern was significantly higher than that of the inverted face pattern (p < 0.05).
The influence of osmotic stress on the superoxide dismutase and peroxidase isozymes in roots of two maize genotypes.

The plants of two maize (Zea mays L.) inbred lines differing in drought tolerance were subjected to osmotic stress induced by polyethylene glycol (PEG) treatment. Plant growth, as well as the changes in the isoenzymes of antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POD) in roots were analysed. Root and shoot growth were restricted by PEG treatment in both inbreds, especially in B73 plants. Isoenzymes patterns obtained by isoelectric focusing (IEF) of the studied enzymes demonstrated genotypic specificity. PEG treatment induced decrease of all SOD and POD isoforms, except for one POD anionic isoform which could be involved in growth regulation.
Edge-calibrated noise for differentially private mechanisms on graphs

In this paper, we introduce new methods for releasing differentially private graphs. Our techniques are based on a new way to distribute noise among edge weights. More precisely, we rely on the addition of noise whose amplitude is edge-calibrated and optimize the distribution of the privacy budget among subsets of edges. The generic privacy framework that we propose can capture most of the privacy notions introduced so far in the literature to release graphs in a differentially private manner. Furthermore, experimental results on real datasets show that our methods outperform the standard existing techniques, in particular in terms of the preservation of utility. In addition, these experiments show that our mechanisms guarantee ϵ-differential privacy for a reasonable level of privacy ϵ, while preserving the spectral information of the input graph.
Study of the dynamic relationship between T wave morphology and heart rate during ischemia

In this work the relationship between heart rate and several repolarization indices, including the QT interval and T wave morphology descriptors, has been investigated. A time-variant model has been proposed to describe the Ir to RR relationship, with Ir generically denoting one of the repolarization indices under study, and RR the running mean RR interval. The proposed methodology is applied to the analysis of stress test recordings. Three different groups of individuals are considered: ischemic patients, low-risk patients and healthy subjects. It is shown that the slope of the line fitting the Ir to RR beat series evaluated at stress peak is significantly lower in ischemic patients as compared to low-risk patients and healthy subjects, and that result is valid for any of the Ir indices. It can be concluded that loss of the T wave adaptation capability (lower slope) to heart rate changes, measured at stress test peak, is related of the presence of ischemia.
Oligonucleotide N3′ → P5′ Thio-phosphoramidate Telomerase Template Antagonists as Potential Anticancer Agents

Abstract Human telomerase is a reverse transcriptase that is expressed in essentially all cancer cells, but not in the vast majority of normal somatic cells. Therefore, the specific inhibition of telomerase activity in tumors might have significant beneficial therapeutic effects. We have designed and evaluated oligonucleotide N3′ → P5′ thio-phosphoramidates as telomerase template antagonists. In biochemical cell-free assays 11-13-mer thio-phosphoramidate oligonucleotides demonstrated sequence specific and dose dependent inhibition of telomerase with pico-molar IC50 values. Optimization of the oligonucleotide sequence and length resulted in the identification of a 13-mer-oligonucleotide thio-phosphoramidate GRN163 as a drug development candidate. In cell cultures GRN163 was able to inhibit telomerase activity in the absence of cationic lipid with ∼1 µM IC50 values. Telomerase inhibition by GRN163 produced gradual telomere shortening, followed by cellular senescence and/or apoptosis of cancer derived cell lines.
Gender Differences In Self-Confidence in Physical Activity: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Studies

The apparent lack of self-confidence in physical activity by females compared to males has been a recent concern of some researchers in sport psychology. Lenney (1977) suggested that females would be less confident than males when the task was male oriented or when the situation was competitive. This meta-analysis was conducted to examine the magnitude of gender differences in self-confidence in physical activity according to Lenney's assertions. An overall nonhomogeneous effect size of 0.40 favoring males was found. Although masculine tasks produced a larger effect-size difference than neutral tasks, it was also not homogeneous. Only one study employed a feminine task, resulting in a large effect size favoring females. However, the results of a regression analysis, which found that sex-type of task contributed to gender differences in self-confidence, did support Lenney's contention. Whether or not the task took place in a competitive situation did not differentially affect the magnitude of the gender di.