Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protein Inhibitor of Neuronal Nitric-oxide Synthase, PIN, Binds to a 17-Amino Acid Residue Fragment of the Enzyme*

Neuronal nitric-oxide synthase (nNOS) is the primary nitric oxide (NO) regulator in neurons. The activity of the enzyme is inhibited by a protein inhibitor called PIN. We were able to purify large quantities of PIN overexpressed in bacterial cells. Analytical ultracentrifugation and chemical cross-linking studies showed that PIN exists as a monomer at low concentrations. The protein forms a high order aggregate at elevated concentrations. We have shown, using NMR spectroscopy, that the previously identified PIN-binding domain (PINB) of nNOS (residues 161–245) adopts a random coil structure in solution. By titrating 15N-labeled PINB with unlabeled PIN, the PIN-binding region of nNOS was precisely mapped to a 17-residue peptide fragment from Met-228 to His-244 of nNOS. NMR titration experiments also showed that PIN binds to nNOS with a 1:2 stoichiometry. A synthetic peptide corresponding to the identified PIN-binding region of nNOS was used to study the interaction between PIN and nNOS in detail. The functional implications of the results obtained from this study are discussed.
Barista: A Technique for Recording, Encoding, and Running Platform Independent Android Tests

Because mobile apps are extremely popular and often mission critical nowadays, companies invest a great deal of resources in testing the apps they provide to their customers. Testing is particularly important for Android apps, which must run on a multitude of devices and operating system versions. Unfortunately, as we confirmed in many interviews with quality assurance professionals, app testing is today a very human intensive, and therefore tedious and error prone, activity. To address this problem, and better support testing of Android apps, we propose a new technique that allows testers to easily create platform independent test scripts for an app and automatically run the generated test scripts on multiple devices and operating system versions. The technique does so without modifying the app under test or the runtime system, by (1) intercepting the interactions of the tester with the app and (2) providing the tester with an intuitive way to specify expected results that it then encode as test oracles. We implemented our technique in a tool named Barista and used the tool to evaluate the practical usefulness and applicability of our approach. Our results show that Barista (1) can faithfully encode user defined test cases as test scripts with built-in oracles that can run on multiple platforms and (2) outperforms two popular tools with similar functionality. Barista and our experimental infrastructure are publicly available.
SciQL: array data processing inside an RDBMS

Scientific discoveries increasingly rely on the ability to efficiently grind massive amounts of experimental data using database technologies. To bridge the gap between the needs of the Data-Intensive Research fields and the current DBMS technologies, we have introduced SciQL (pronounced as 'cycle'). SciQL is the first SQL-based declarative query language for scientific applications with both tables and arrays as first class citizens. It provides a seamless symbiosis of array-, set- and sequence- interpretations. A key innovation is the extension of value-based grouping of SQL:2003 with structural grouping, i.e., group array elements based on their positions. This leads to a generalisation of window-based query processing with wide applicability in science domains. In this demo, we showcase a proof of concept implementation of SciQL in the relational database system MonetDB. First, with the Conway's Game of Life application implemented purely in SciQL queries, we demonstrate the storage of arrays in the MonetDB as first class citizens, and the execution of a comprehensive set of basic operations on arrays. Then, to show the usefulness of SciQL for real-world array data processing use cases, we demonstrate how various common image processing and remote sensing operations are executed as SciQL queries. The audience is invited to challenge SciQL with their use cases.
A Complementary Circularly Polarized Antenna for 60-GHz Applications

A circularly polarized (CP) antenna based on the complementary source technique is designed for 60-GHz applications. The proposed antenna is composed of a strip dipole, a slot, and a cavity, and it is realized by plated-through-hole and printed-circuit technologies. Experimental results show that the proposed antenna can present an overlapping bandwidth of 21.9% from 53.6 to 66.8 GHz, within which the right-handed CP gain varies from 5.3 to 8.6 dBic and all radiation patterns are relatively symmetric and stable.
Quantifying Poverty as a Driver of Ebola Transmission

Background Poverty has been implicated as a challenge in the control of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Although disparities between affected countries have been appreciated, disparities within West African countries have not been investigated as drivers of Ebola transmission. To quantify the role that poverty plays in the transmission of Ebola, we analyzed heterogeneity of Ebola incidence and transmission factors among over 300 communities, categorized by socioeconomic status (SES), within Montserrado County, Liberia. Methodology/Principal Findings We evaluated 4,437 Ebola cases reported between February 28, 2014 and December 1, 2014 for Montserrado County to determine SES-stratified temporal trends and drivers of Ebola transmission. A dataset including dates of symptom onset, hospitalization, and death, and specified community of residence was used to stratify cases into high, middle and low SES. Additionally, information about 9,129 contacts was provided for a subset of 1,585 traced individuals. To evaluate transmission within and across socioeconomic subpopulations, as well as over the trajectory of the outbreak, we analyzed these data with a time-dependent stochastic model. Cases in the most impoverished communities reported three more contacts on average than cases in high SES communities (p<0.001). Our transmission model shows that infected individuals from middle and low SES communities were associated with 1.5 (95% CI: 1.4–1.6) and 3.5 (95% CI: 3.1–3.9) times as many secondary cases as those from high SES communities, respectively. Furthermore, most of the spread of Ebola across Montserrado County originated from areas of lower SES. Conclusions/Significance Individuals from areas of poverty were associated with high rates of transmission and spread of Ebola to other regions. Thus, Ebola could most effectively be prevented or contained if disease interventions were targeted to areas of extreme poverty and funding was dedicated to development projects that meet basic needs.
Motion in deformable templates

The use of motion information in deformable templates for the analysis of image sequences is investigated. Two primary means of utilizing this information are identified. The first is to extend the topological structure of the template into the time dimension. This is accomplished by parameterizing the motion of each point of the template with a set of discrete cosine transform coefficients. The second is to utilize motion information (in this case, simply the pixel-by-pixel frame difference) as a primitive feature. Both methods are demonstrated experimentally, along with a method which combines the two. The first is less susceptible to short-duration anomalous solutions, while the second is able to capture certain features missed by the static analysis. The combined method appears to possess the advantages of both. <<ETX>>
Personalised Hip Therapy: development of a non-operative protocol to treat femoroacetabular impingement syndrome in the FASHIoN randomised controlled trial

Introduction Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) syndrome is increasingly recognised as a cause of hip pain. As part of the design of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of arthroscopic surgery for FAI syndrome, we developed a protocol for non-operative care and evaluated its feasibility. Methods In phase one, we developed a protocol for non-operative care for FAI in the UK National Health Service (NHS), through a process of systematic review and consensus gathering. In phase two, the protocol was tested in an internal pilot RCT for protocol adherence and adverse events. Results The final protocol, called Personalised Hip Therapy (PHT), consists of four core components led by physiotherapists: detailed patient assessment, education and advice, help with pain relief and an exercise-based programme that is individualised, supervised and progressed over time. PHT is delivered over 12–26 weeks in 6–10 physiotherapist-patient contacts, supplemented by a home exercise programme. In the pilot RCT, 42 patients were recruited and 21 randomised to PHT. Review of treatment case report forms, completed by physiotherapists, showed that 13 patients (62%) received treatment that had closely followed the PHT protocol. 13 patients reported some muscle soreness at 6 weeks, but there were no serious adverse events. Conclusion PHT provides a structure for the non-operative care of FAI and offers guidance to clinicians and researchers in an evolving area with limited evidence. PHT was deliverable within the National Health Service, is safe, and now forms the comparator to arthroscopic surgery in the UK FASHIoN trial (ISRCTN64081839). Trial registration number ISRCTN 09754699.
PCE-based inter-domain lightpath provisioning

Despite the research advances in intra-domain light-path provisioning in WDM networks, efficient and practical schemes for path computation and resource advertisement in multi-domain mesh networks still need to be developed. Most of the proposed solutions in the literature lacks the ability to convey optical network-specific Traffic Engineering information and are based on periodic message flooding technique. The proposed solution provides a novel and economical way to disseminate information while performing the domain chain computation. It also provides a policy-based wavelength selection scheme that allows a load balanced provisioning of end-to-end lightpaths.
The Moderating Role of Coping Strategies in Understanding the Effects of Intragroup Race-Related Stressors on Academic Performance and Overall Levels of Perceived Stress for African American Students

The purpose of the current study was to test coping strategies as moderators of the effects of intragroup race-related stressors on academic performance and overall perceived stress for 201 African American students at a predominantly White college institution. Few investigations have documented effects of intragroup race-related difficulties for African American college students. Even fewer investigations have pinpointed types of coping efforts that are used to address intragroup race-related difficulty. It was hypothesized that coping strategies would moderate the effects of intragroup race-related stressors on academic performance and perceived stress, such that adaptive strategies would be associated with low levels of perceived stress and positive academic performance, whereas maladaptive strategies were expected to be associated with high levels of perceived stress and poor academic performance in relation to exposure to intragroup race-related stressors. Moderated regression analyses revealed no significant interactions in predicting academic performance. Results further revealed that greater use of disengagement strategies were associated with increased levels of perceived stress in relation to increased exposure to intragroup race-related stressors. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Neural-Network-Assisted UE Localization Using Radio-Channel Fingerprints in LTE Networks

In this paper, a novel fingerprint-based localization technique is proposed, which is applicable for positioning user equipments (UEs) in cellular communication networks such as the long-term-evolution (LTE) system. This technique utilizes a unique mapping between the characteristics of a radio channel formulated as a fingerprint vector and a geographical location. A feature-extraction algorithm is applied to selecting channel parameters with non-redundant information that are calculated from the LTE down-link signals. A feedforward neural network with the input of fingerprint vectors and the output of UEs’ known locations is trained and used by UEs to estimate their positions. The results of experiments conducted in an in-service LTE system demonstrate that by using only one LTE eNodeB, the proposed technique yields a median error distance of 6 and 75 meters in indoor and outdoor environments, respectively. This localization technique is applicable in the cases where the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is unavailable, e.g., in indoor environments or in dense-urban scenarios with closely spaced skyscrapers heavily blocking the line-of-sight paths between a UE and GNSS satellites.
A New Fault Detection Method Using End-to-End Data and Sequential Testing for Computer Networks

Fault localization, a central part of network fault management, is a process of deducing the exact source of a failure from a set of observed failure indications. in the network, end systems and hosts communicate through routers and links connecting them. When a link or a router faces with a fault, the information sent through these components will be damaged. Hence, faulty components in a network need to be detected and repaired to sustain the health of the network. In this paper we introduce an end to end method that detect and repair the faulty components in the network. The proposed method is a heuristic algorithm that uses the embedded information retrieved from disseminated data over the network to detect and repair faulty components. Simulation results show that our heuristic scheme only requires testing a very small set of network components to detect and repair all faults in the network.
One Lesson Learned: Frame Language Processing—Literal and Figurative—as a Human Brain Function

What research is conducted on language processing and how that research is conducted are largely determined by researchers' assumptions about the functional organization of mental processes. These have changed significantly since the 1970s when the brain's role in language processing—although acknowledged—was practically inconsequential to psycholinguistic research or theory; this change is due in large part to considerable growth in knowledge of brain structure and function. I argue that when language is properly appreciated as one brain function among many, psycholinguistics will benefit from heeding certain factors that have received proportionately little attention within mainstream psycholinguistic research: (a) the hemispheres; (b) time and timing; (c) context liberally construed to include, for example, personality traits and mood; and (d) individual differences as a proxy for experience. I conclude with why it has not been so easy to answer such fundamental questions as where in the brain language is localized, and how activation of these language areas leads to understanding. The main message is that researchers of nonliteral language processing can benefit from the significant progress in the neurosciences in the past few decades more by thinking of language as brain function and as an experience than by viewing it merely as the (localizable) seat of nonliteral language. I recommend actively and seriously incorporating brain principles into thinking about all language processes and how best to investigate them.
The Interacting Neuroendocrine Network in Stress-Inducing Mood Disorders

Extensive research studies showed the existing interaction between different systems of the body that maintain the stability of homeostatic processes and which allow species to adapt to its environment in response to stressors. Adaptive responses to stressors activates adaptive-mechanisms, that result in the synthesis and release of several brain neurotransmitters, peptide hormones, proinflammatory cytokines and adrenal steroids from neural, neuroendocrine and immune cells which prepared the organism to alert its systems to adopt the proper behavioral responses against stressful events. Neurotransmitters, peptide hormones and cytokines act through the HPA axis forming a regulatory loop that maintains homeostasis in response to different stressors. One route to understand the interactions between brain transmitters, neurosecretory peptide-hormones, adrenal steroids and immune-borne cytokines, including neurotrophic factors is when bodys systems and chemical communication between cells appear to be disrupted during stressful events as occurs in mood-related disorders and depression. Thus, this review will described the functional interactions between HPA axis activity and the projecting neural pathways (DRN-5HT neurons; LC-NA neurons) and brain neurotransmitters (NE, 5-HT, DA, GLU) that impinge on forebrain-limbic structures (hypothalamus, hippocampus, mPFCx) that drive the release of the CRH and CRH-dependent secretion of ACTH from anterior hypophysis and cortisol from adrenal glands, under stressful conditions. Moreover, interactions between immune-borne cytokines and HPA axis activity, and glucocorticoid receptors have been shown to be extremely important to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms that operate in mood-related disorders and MDD, including the stress-inducing altered changes in brain morphology, neuronal atrophy and neurogenesis in brain areas involved in learning processing and memory functions.
A regionalized content-based image retrieval framework

Utilizing regionalized features in Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) has been a dynamic research area over the past years. Several systems have been developed using their specific segmentation and feature extraction methods. In this paper, a strategy to model a regionalized CBIR framework is presented. Here, segmentation and local feature extraction are not specified and considered as “blackboxes”, which allows application of any segmentation method and visual descriptors. The proposed framework further adopts a grouping approach in order to “correct” possible over segmentation faults and a spatial feature called region proximity to describe regions topology in a visual scenery by a block-based approach. Using the MUVIS framework the proposed approach is developed and tested as feature extraction module, and its retrieval performance is compared against two frame-based color-texture descriptors. Experiments are carried out on synthetic and natural image databases and results indicate that a promising retrieval performance can be obtained if the segmentation quality is reasonable; however texture descriptors in general are degraded whenever applied on arbitrary-shape regions.
Police recruit attitudes toward the use of unnecessary force

This study examined the attitudes of police recruits toward the use of unnecessary force. Police recruits from a single regional police academy served as the population for this study. They were provided a survey on the first day of academy training; a vignettes research design was used to measure their view of the use of unnecessary force by another officer and their likelihood of reporting such behavior. The type of unnecessary force plays a role in how the recruits view its use. The use of unnecessary physical force was unacceptable, but verbal force was acceptable. If the suspect flees from the officer, or if the suspect is an auto thief, unnecessary force is acceptable. Similarly, the type of unnecessary force that is used, and the circumstances of its use, influences if the respondents are likely to report the unnecessary force to a supervisor. Older recruits and those with higher levels of education were negatively related to slapping a suspect. Conversely, recruits seem to carry into the academy a ‘code of secrecy’ that developed naturally prior to any policing experiences. Methods for strengthening the recruit’s disinclination to accept the use of force are discussed, as are the difficulties in changing a code of secrecy that already exists.
A small‐scale study on student teachers' perceptions of classroom management and methods for dealing with misbehaviour

The purpose of this study is to identify student teachers' perceptions of classroom management and methods for dealing with misbehaviour. In‐depth interviews with nine student teachers at Çukurova University (ÇÜ) in Turkey have been conducted twice, prior to and at the end of their teaching practice. Instructional management, behaviour management, communication, and physical organization of classrooms are the main components of classroom management for student teachers. Student teachers usually tend to use preventive, positive and less intrusive methods, such as non‐verbal messages, warnings, and positive reinforcement involving students' instructional activities, to manage student behaviour. The results of the study reveal that although student teachers feel confident about starting a teaching career, they need improvement in understanding child psychology, in experiencing different teaching situations, and in becoming competent in contemporary teaching methods. Nonetheless, student teachers reported that their sense of efficacy increased from the beginning to the end of the course.
Context-Aware Voice-Based Mobile Community

Mobile commerce has increasingly been recognized as one of the most significantly prosperous areas for deploying information technology. This paper aims to advance the value of the information by providing a novel voice-information sharing mechanism. The proposed mechanism is a combination of a location-based information service known as a Killer App and a virtual community that consequently becomes a WCP (Wireless Content Provider). This community embodies context aware intelligence by analyzing the context-sensitive behavior of the community members and; furthermore, enabling proactive and precise context sensitive voiceinformation sharing. This voice-information sharing mechanism is comprised of an IVR system, a location service, EPN (Euclidean distance with Positive and Negative Strength) Clustering, Naïve Bayesian Prediction, and a set of metrics for monitoring the progress of the community. The primitive results show that our mechanism satisfactorily reaches the goal of proactive, precise sharing of voice information between community members.
Observation of keratin particles showing fast bidirectional movement colocalized with microtubules

Keratin intermediate filament networks were observed in living cultured epithelial cells using the incorporation of fluorescently tagged keratin from a transfected enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) construct. In steady-state conditions EGFP-keratin exists not only as readily detectable intermediate filaments, but also as small particles, of which there are two types: a less mobile population (slow or static S particles) and a highly dynamic one (fast or F particles). The dynamic F particles move around the cell very fast and in a non-random way. Their movement is composed of a series of steps, giving an overall characteristic zig-zag trajectory. The keratin particles are found all over the cell and their movement is aligned with microtubules; treatment of cells with nocodazole has an inhibitory effect on keratin particle movement, suggesting the involvement of microtubule motor proteins. Double-transfection experiments to visualize tubulin and keratin together suggest that the movement of keratin particles can be bidirectional, as particles are seen moving both towards and away from the centrosome area. Using field emission scanning and transmission electron microscopy combined with immunogold labelling, we also detected particulate keratin structures in untransfected epithelial cells, suggesting that keratin particles may be a natural component of keratin filament dynamics in living cells.