Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
he role of serum proteins in Staphylococcus aureus adhesion to thylene glycol coated surfaces

Bacterial adhesion on implants is a first step in the development of chronic foreign body associated infections. Finding strategies to minimize bacterial adhesion may contribute to minimize such infections. It is known that surfaces with oligo-ethylene-glycol (EG3OMe) or poly-ethylene-glycol (PEG2k) terminations decrease unspecific protein adsorption and bacterial adhesion. However, little is known about the influence of serum and its components on bacterial adhesion. We therefore prepared two coatings on gold surface with HS-(CH2)11EG3OMe (EG3OMe) and PEG2k-thiol and studied the role of bovine serum albumin (BSA), -globulins, and serum on Staphylococcus aureus adhesion. While BSA and lysozyme showed no adherence even when applied at very high concentrations (100 mg/ml), -globulins adsorbed already from 10 mg/ml on. The adsorption of -globulins was, however, significantly decreased when it was mixed with BSA in a ratio of 3:1, as it is in the serum. Pretreatment of EG3OMe and PEG2k coatings with -globulins or serum strongly promoted adherence of S. aureus when resuspended in buffer, suggesting that -globulins play a pivotal role in promoting S. aureus adhesion by its IgG binding proteins; the finding that a spa-deletion mutant, lacking the IgG binding protein A, showed decreased adherence corroborated this. Similarly, when S. aureus was pretreated with serum or -globulins its adherence was also significantly decreased. Our findings show that particularly -globulins bind to the coated surfaces thus mediating adherence of S. aureus via its protein A. As pretreatment of S. aureus with serum or -globulins significantly decreased adherence, treatment of patients with -globulins before implant surgery might lower the risk of implant-associated infections. © 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
An Empirical Investigation on the Simulation of Priority and Shortest-Job-First Scheduling for Cloud-Based Software Systems

Background: Given the dynamics in resource allocation schemes offered by cloud computing, effective scheduling algorithms are important to utilize these benefits. Aim: In this paper, we propose a scheduling algorithm integrated with task grouping, priority-aware and SJF (shortest-job-first) to reduce the waiting time and make span, as well as to maximize resource utilization. Method: Scheduling is responsible for allocating the tasks to the best suitable resources with consideration of some dynamic parameters, restrictions and demands, such as network restriction and resource processing capability as well as waiting time. The proposed scheduling algorithm is integrated with task grouping, prioritization of bandwidth awareness and SJF algorithm, which aims at reducing processing time, waiting time and overhead. In the experiment, tasks are generated using Gaussian distribution and resources are created using Random distribution as well as CloudSim framework is used to simulate the proposed algorithm under various conditions. Results are then compared with existing algorithms for evaluation. Results: In comparison with existing task grouping algorithms, results show that the proposed algorithm waiting time and processing time decreased significantly (over 30%). Conclusion: The proposed method effectively minimizes waiting time and processing time and reduces processing cost to achieve optimum resources utilization and minimum overhead, as well as to reduce influence of bandwidth bottleneck in communication.
Freight transport system for urban shipment and delivery

Many problems with present conventional delivery scenarios in urban areas are caused by use of conventional vehicles. These problems are amongst others limited efficiency, ecological damages, disturbance of moving traffic and pedestrians and difficulties to comply with environmental and traffic regulations, affecting local communities, business people and their customers as well as the logistic companies. Courier, Express & Parcel (CEP) providers are obliged to use conventional cars and vans due to the lack of specialized solutions. Therefore our approach is improvement of urban shipment and delivery based on existing infrastructure by means of an innovative vehicle concept. Core of the developed transport system is a uniaxial transport unit, designed for application both as part of a multiple trailer vehicle and for use as separate hand-guided transportation unit. The concept was developed based on a catalog of requirements for a vehicle for urban shipment and delivery, a result from the EU research project FIDEUS. The developed concept satisfies all formulated demands. A test vehicle of the transport system was built. Current research focuses on controller synthesis and implementation. The next step intended is execution of field tests involving logistic companies to prove the vehicle system's suitability for daily use and to discover potential for improvement.
An Improved Offline Stable Point Filtering Method for Mobile Search Application

Mobile visual search business has been prospering since research break-through on content based image retrieval (CBIR) and continuous improving mobile technology. In such search application, user takes photo and uploads photo to server. Retrieval is done at the server side and user gets result from the server. Currently search applications have difficulties. 1) Mobile photos have relatively low qualities, and photos contain various affine transforms. The two drawbacks will influence the retrieval accuracy. 2) Retrieval speed and accuracy could not meet a balance for large scale database. Current index mechanism for high dimensional local feature such as SIFT is not fast enough while lots of low dimensional feature cannot ensure high accuracy. This paper proposes a fully-automated offline stable point filtering method for mobile visual search application. We use various transforms to simulate effects caused by mobile photo images. They are processed in our offline method to reduce the index size of the retrieval application. Experiments show that with proper offline processing, 13.83% memory or disk space could be saved when retrieval application loads SIFT features into memory for LSH at the online stage while application still maintains a high query accuracy.
Studying the role of cognitive control in reasoning: evidence for the congruency sequence effect in the ratio-bias task

ABSTRACT In this study, we investigated whether control of the conflict between incongruent heuristic and analytical answer options in a reasoning task is modulated by the presence of conflict on previous trials. In two experiments, we found that the incongruency of the previous trial has a significant effect on the control exhibited on the current trial. Our data also showed that this adaptation effect is modulated by the incongruency of the previous series of trials. These results demonstrate the same control adaptation effects for a reasoning task as observed for standard response interference tasks. Coinciding control effects in the two research areas suggest that cognitive control might be an important mechanism underlying performance on reasoning tasks. Based on these results we argue that the study of cognitive control in reasoning could potentially facilitate the refinement of empirical predictions and provide a new tool to explore the exertion of top-down control in human thinking.
Dietary Segregation of Pelagic and Littoral Fish Assemblages in a Highly Modified Tidal Freshwater Estuary

Abstract Estuarine food webs are highly variable and complex, making identification of their trophic pathways difficult. Energy for the food web of the San Francisco Estuary is thought to be based largely on in situ phytoplankton production, but little attention has been paid to littoral habitats, where other energy sources may be important. We analyzed the stomach contents of over 960 juvenile fishes and the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of these fishes and their potential food resources in pelagic and littoral habitats from the tidal freshwater area of the estuary. The mixing model IsoSource was used to examine energy sources important to consumers. Our results show evidence of two predominant food web pathways. Pelagic fishes and some littoral fishes showed strong dependence on a zooplankton–phytoplankton trophic pathway. However, the majority of fishes in littoral habitats had diets and carbon isotope ratios consistent with energy arising from submerged aquatic vegetation and epiphytic macroalgae. IsoSource revealed that the overall majority of nutrition of littoral fishes originated from consumption of grazer amphipods. Examining both stable isotopes and stomach contents allowed us to identify a food web with contributions to resident fishes that had been previously underestimated in the estuary. This study provides insight to how estuarine food webs have changed over the last few decades and highlights why the functions of habitats must be understood for effective restoration planning.
Contribution of 32 GWAS-Identified Common Variants to Severe Obesity in European Adults Referred for Bariatric Surgery

The prevalence of severe obesity, defined as body mass index (BMI) ≥35.0 kg/m2, is rising rapidly. Given the disproportionately high health burden and healthcare costs associated with this condition, understanding the underlying aetiology, including predisposing genetic factors, is a biomedical research priority. Previous studies have suggested that severe obesity represents an extreme tail of the population BMI variation, reflecting shared genetic factors operating across the spectrum. Here, we sought to determine whether a panel of 32 known common obesity-susceptibility variants contribute to severe obesity in patients (n = 1,003, mean BMI 48.4±8.1 kg/m2) attending bariatric surgery clinics in two European centres. We examined the effects of these 32 common variants on obesity risk and BMI, both as individual markers and in combination as a genetic risk score, in a comparison with normal-weight controls (n = 1,809, BMI 18.0–24.9 kg/m2); an approach which, to our knowledge, has not been previously undertaken in the setting of a bariatric clinic. We found strong associations with severe obesity for SNP rs9939609 within the FTO gene (P = 9.3×10−8) and SNP rs2815752 near the NEGR1 gene (P = 3.6×10−4), and directionally consistent nominal associations (P<0.05) for 12 other SNPs. The genetic risk score associated with severe obesity (P = 8.3×10−11) but, within the bariatric cohort, this score did not associate with BMI itself (P = 0.264). Our results show significant effects of individual BMI-associated common variants within a relatively small sample size of bariatric patients. Furthermore, the burden of such low-penetrant risk alleles contributes to severe obesity in this population. Our findings support that severe obesity observed in bariatric patients represents an extreme tail of the population BMI variation. Moreover, future genetic studies focused on bariatric patients may provide valuable insights into the pathogenesis of obesity at a population level.
The relationship between obsessive-compulsive personality and obsessive-compulsive disorder: data obtained by the Personality Disorder Examination

Summary We administered the Personality Disorder Examination (PDE) to 31 patients meeting DSM III criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and to an age-and sex-matched healthy control group. Seventeen patients (54.8%) and four controls (12.9%) met criteria for one or more DSM III Axis II diagnoses. The most frequent Axis II diagnoses in patients were avoidant, passive-aggressive and compulsive personality disorder. Compulsive personality disorder was diagnosed in 6 OCD patients (19.3%). The prevalence of this disorder did not change according to sex, age of onset or duration of OCD, and severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms.
The Realization and Discussion of Word Sense Disambiguation Based on Ontology

In natural language, it is very common that one word has several different meanings. The well solution of Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) problem is the basis of Natural Language Processing. In this paper, based on the certainty of word sense in certain language context, a new method is put forward based on Ontology to solve the problem of WSD. And also, a prototype is developed to solve the WSD of "打" in Chinese. Ontology is used to describe the knowledge of word and sense, and Jena reasoning rules are used to reason the mean of one ambiguous word. This method can be of great help to solve WSD. Keywords-Natural Language Processing; Word Sense Disambiguation; Ontology; reasoning rules
Max-Flow in Spark

We describe a distributed algorithm to solve the max-flow problem based on the Edmonds-Karp algorithm. Using k machines, with a graph on n nodes and m edges and a max flow of c, the implementation improves the single machine runtime from O(cm) to O(cm/k). Furthermore, for an appropriate choice of k, the algorithm runs in O(cn log(m/n)). The communication costs incurred are on the order of O(cm), although this bound is much lower for most applications. The algorithm has been implemented in Spark as a maxFlow function which takes as argument a graph, source node and target node and returns an RDD with the maximum flow. The implementation can be found at github.com/benoitdancoisne/SparkMaxFlow
Experimental Analysis of Wireless Sensor Nodes Current Consumption

Wireless sensor node (WSN) lifetime is correlated with the battery current usage profile. State of the art in wireless sensor nodes current consumption shows that available models have not been extensively tested and experimentally validated. This work aims to seek answers to the following questions: is it accurate the node lifetime prediction obtained with available models? Moreover, is the radio transceiver always responsible for depleting the battery? In order to perform experimental evaluations, we implemented a prototype board that enables to visualize charge extracted from batteries and battery current consumption waveforms of wireless sensor nodes. We selected benchmarks that represent usual tasks in WSN applications and we made experimental evaluations of battery current consumption. Finally, a battery full-depletion time measurement has been performed. Overall results are presented and discussed.
An Origin of Supersonic Motions in Interstellar Clouds

The propagation of a shock wave into an interstellar medium is investigated by two-dimensional numerical hydrodynamic calculation with cooling, heating, and thermal conduction. We present results of the high-resolution, two-dimensional calculations to follow the fragmentation that results from thermal instability in a shock-compressed layer. We find that the geometrically thin cooling layer behind the shock front fragments into small cloudlets. The cloudlets have supersonic velocity dispersion in the warm neutral medium, in which the fragments are embedded as cold condensations. The fragments tend to coalesce and become larger clouds.
Peer Lecturing as Project-Based Learning: Blending Socio-Affective Influences with Self-Regulated Learning

As a contribution to the efforts to understand the influence of peer presence on self-regulated learning, this paper studies students’ reaction to a project-based activity, the final product of which was a scientific communication to peers. In this activity, peer lecturing , the students formulate a question on a topic linked to the course, search scientific information in order to answer the question, and teach the result of their investigations to their class in the form of a whole-class communication. The paper draws on the qualitative analysis of 23 interviews of first-year student teachers involved in peer lecturing in the framework of an introductory zoology course. In this study, the expressed gains in self-regulated learning described by the students are compared to the gains reported in the literature in other project-based methods and in peer teaching. Original gains in motivation ( social goals ), cognitive processes and self-regulation, are highlighted, while stressing differences between student types. Further development of the method is suggested.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions Interactive comment on “ Trends and variability in stratospheric mixing : 1979 – 2005 ”

Anonymous Referee #1 Received and published: 14 June 2007 This paper analyzes the mixing properties of the stratosphere for 1979-2005 using the finite-time Lyapunov exponents computed from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis winds. The length of the dataset allows the authors to perform a meaningful multiple regression analysis, which includes the climatology, linear trend, QBO, solar cycle, and ENSO. The climatology and the QBO signals agree reasonably well with the previous studies based on shorter datasets. The trends in the Lyapunov exponents and in the zonal mean winds are new, which reveal interesting features such as increased mixing in summertime southern surf zone in the lower stratosphere. Although the paper does not contain substantive results on the solar cycle and ENSO signals, the overall treatment is thorough and the paper is publishable with minor revisions. I do have a few comments/questions con-
Inhomogeneous plane-wave spectrum based Physical Optics

The Physical Optics aperture radiation is decomposed into an inhomogeneous plane-wave spectrum, for which a sub-nyquist sampling is achieved, despite a 2-digits accuracy. Validation with a Hertzian dipole and observations are made for large planar surfaces. The Spectral Physical Optics (SPO) seems particularly well-suited for multiple interactions between large facets in complex scattering environnements.
Intelligent communication network research of isolation security model based on the anomaly detection

Power distribution communication network is an important part of smart grid. Through the study of the communication network security isolation key theory and technology. This paper analyses the anomaly detection method for the network service and presents a kind of network security isolation model based on the anomaly detection. The paper describes the overall concept, network structure, operation flow and key technical modules of the model, which provides a feasible solution to the network information security.
Dataflow Analysis for Known Vulnerability Prevention System

Usually, a new exploit for a single vulnerability can readily be turned into worms which compromise hundreds of thousands of machines within only a few minutes. In order to protect the host from malicious attacks, we propose a new approach for automatic defense mechanism: dataflow analysis for known vulnerability prevention system (shortly for DA-VPS), which has properties with easy deployment, accurate detection and low overhead. In our paper, we present the principle, architecture, implement, and deployment of DA-VPS.
Reducing compilation time by a compilation server

In language systems that support separate compilation, we often observe that header files are internalized over and over again when the source files that depend on them are compiled. Making a compiler a long‐lived server eliminates such redundant processing of header files, thus reducing the compilation time. The paper first describes compilation servers for C‐family languages in general, and then a compilation server for our C‐based object‐oriented language in particular. The performance results of our server show that a compilation server can substantially shorten the compilation time.
Understanding Mobile Apps Continuance Usage Behavior and Habit: An Expectance-Confirmation Theory

With the growing development of information technology and the wireless telecommunication network nowadays, mobile devices have been expanding rapidly and have been emerging as important tools for consumers. Using m-services and applications (apps) on mobile devices becomes custom in people’s daily lives. This study proposes a theoretical model to explore the continued usage behavior for smartphone. The objective of this study is to explore how perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and confirmation influencing satisfaction and habit of consumers, and in turn influencing continued usage behavior, as well as the moderating effect of three characteristics of m-commerce. The proposed model will empirically be tested using survey method and collecting data from smartphone users in longitudinal setting. The structural equation modeling technique will be used to evaluate the causal model and confirmatory factor analysis will be performed to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement model. The findings of this study are expected to illustrate how factors influence individuals to use m-services and mobile apps and become a habit, as well as how these habits influence continued smartphone usage.
Data-driven demand response modeling and control of buildings with Gaussian Processes

This paper presents an approach to provide demand response services with buildings. Each building receives a normalized signal that tells it to increase or decrease its power demand, and the building is free to implement any suitable strategy to follow the command, most likely by changing some of its setpoints. Due to this freedom, the proposed approach lowers the barrier for any buildings equipped with a reasonably functional building management system to participate in the scheme. The response of the buildings to the control signal is modeled by a Gaussian Process, which can predict the power demand of the buildings and also provide a measure of its confidence in the prediction. A battery is included in the system to compensate for this uncertainty and improve the demand response performance of the system. A model predictive controller is developed to optimally control the buildings and the battery, while ensuring their operational constraints with high probability. Our approach is validated by realistic co-simulations between Matlab and the building energy simulator EnergyPlus.
MGF Based Analysis of Area under the ROC Curve in Energy Detection

The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), an important performance measure of the energy detector, is derived for Nakagami-m and η-μ fading channels. The analysis is based on the moment generating function (MGF) of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The derived closed-form expressions do not include special functions, thus reducing computational issues. The analytical framework can also be applied in cases with other fading channels, with diversity reception, or with cooperative spectrum sensing.
Longitudinal Assessment of Swimming Performance in the 200-m Freestyle Event

The aim of this study was to track and analyze the 200-m Freestyle performance stability throughout elite swimmer's career. 29 Portuguese male top-50 were analyzed for seven consecutive seasons between 12 and 18 years old. Best performances were collected from ranking tables. Longitudinal assessment was performed based on two approaches: (i) mean stability was analyzed by descriptive statistics and ANOVA repeated measures for each season followed by a post-hoc test (Bonferroni test), (ii) normative stability was analyzed with self-correlation (Malina, 2001) and the Cohen's Kappa tracking index (Landis and Koch, 1977). There was a 200-m Freestyle performance enhancement from children to adult age. The overall career performance prediction was moderate. The change from 13 to 14 years can be a milestone, where the ability to predict the final swimmer's performance level strongly increases.