Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Halomonas sp. OKOH—A Marine Bacterium Isolated from the Bottom Sediment of Algoa Bay—Produces a Polysaccharide Bioflocculant: Partial Characterization and Biochemical Analysis of Its Properties

A bioflocculant-producing bacterium isolated from seawater was identified based on 16S rRNA gene nucleotide sequence to have 99% similarity to that of Halomonas sp. Au160H and the nucleotide sequence was deposited as Halomonas sp. OKOH (Genbank accession number is HQ875722). Influences of carbon source, nitrogen source, salt ions and pH on flocculating activity were investigated. The bioflocculant was optimally produced when glucose (87% flocculating activity) and urea (88% flocculating activity) were used as sources of carbon and nitrogen, respectively. Also, initial pH of 7.0 and Ca2+ supported optimal production of the bioflocculant with flocculating activities of 87% respectively. Chemical analyses revealed the bioflocculant to be a polysaccharide.
Reactive oxygen species regulate neutrophil recruitment and survival in pneumococcal pneumonia.

RATIONALE The role of NADPH oxidase activation in pneumonia is complex because reactive oxygen species contribute to both microbial killing and regulation of the acute pulmonary infiltrate. The relative importance of each role remains poorly defined in community-acquired pneumonia. OBJECTIVES We evaluated the contribution of NADPH oxidase-derived reactive oxygen species to the pathogenesis of pneumococcal pneumonia, addressing both the contribution to microbial killing and regulation of the inflammatory response. METHODS Mice deficient in the gp91(phox) component of the phagocyte NADPH oxidase were studied after pneumococcal challenge. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS gp91(phox)(-/-) mice demonstrated no defect in microbial clearance as compared with wild-type C57BL/6 mice. A significant increase in bacterial clearance from the lungs of gp91(phox)(-/-) mice was associated with increased numbers of neutrophils in the lung, lower rates of neutrophil apoptosis, and enhanced activation. Marked alterations in pulmonary cytokine/chemokine expression were also noted in the lungs of gp91(phox)(-/-) mice, characterized by elevated levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha, KC, macrophage inflammatory protein-2, monocyte chemotactic protein-1, and IL-6. The greater numbers of neutrophils in gp91(phox)(-/-) mice were not associated with increased lung injury. Levels of neutrophil elastase in bronchoalveolar lavage were not decreased in gp91(phox)(-/-) mice. CONCLUSIONS During pneumococcal pneumonia, NADPH oxidase-derived reactive oxygen species are redundant for host defense but limit neutrophil recruitment and survival. Decreased NADPH oxidase-dependent reactive oxygen species production is well tolerated and improves disease outcome during pneumococcal pneumonia by removing neutrophils from the tight constraints of reactive oxygen species-mediated regulation.
Body composition in older community-dwelling adults with hip fracture: portable field methods validated by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry

Ageing is associated with weight loss and subsequently poor health outcomes. The present study assessed agreement between two field methods, bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS) and corrected arm muscle area (CAMA) for assessment of body composition against dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), the reference technique. Agreement between two predictive equations estimating skeletal muscle mass (SMM) from BIS against SMM from DXA was also determined. Assessments occurred at baseline < 14 d post-surgery (n 79), and at 6 months (6M; n 75) and 12 months (12M; n 63) in community-living older adults after surgical treatment for hip fracture. The 95 % limits of agreement (LOA) between BIS and DXA, CAMA and DXA and the equations and DXA were assessed using Bland–Altman analyses. Mean bias and LOA for fat-free mass (FFM) between BIS and DXA were: baseline, 0·7 ( − 10·9, 12·4) kg; 6M, − 0·5 ( − 20·7, 19·8) kg; 12M, 0·1 ( − 8·7, 8·9) kg and for SMM between CAMA and DXA were: baseline, 0·3 ( − 11·7, 12·3) kg; 6M, 1·3 ( − 4·5, 7·1) kg; 12M, 0·9 ( − 5·4, 7·2) kg. Equivalent data for predictive equations against DXA were: equation 1: baseline, 15·1 ( − 9·5, 20·6) kg; 6M, 17·1 ( − 12·0, 22·2) kg; 12M, 17·5 ( − 13·0, 22·0) kg; equation 2: baseline, 12·6 ( − 7·3, 19·9) kg; 6M, 14·4 ( − 9·7, 19·1) kg; 12M, 14·8 ( − 10·7, 18·9) kg. Proportional bias (BIS: β = − 0·337, P< 0·001; CAMA: β = − 0·294, P< 0·001) was present at baseline but not at 6M or 12M. Clinicians should be cautious in using these field methods to predict FFM and SMM, particularly in the acute care setting. New predictive equations would be beneficial.
Behavior Gaps and Relations between Operating System and Applications on Accessing DRAM

Detailed analyses of the behaviors of operating system and applications are significant for taking full advantage of the precious hardware resources and improving performance. This paper focus on their DRAM access behaviors based on access proportion and row-buffer miss ratio (RBM). The access proportions of Kernel and User vary greatly in different stages throughout the lifetime of a process. Most of the row-buffer misses are caused by the one having higher access proportion. By analyzing the RBM series through ARMA model, we found that User's DRAM accesses only have short-term influences on its behavior, while the Kernel's influences are relatively deeper. The ARMA model for the RBM series is able to predict the future RBMs, which are profound basis to schedule the DRAM access commands. The results of Gaussian Fitting show that Kernel and User are tightly correlated on accessing DRAM, especially in the steady stage and the end stage of a process's life cycle. Based on this close relation, it is possible to estimate the DRAM access behaviors of the other one according to the one whose behaviors have been known. System-calls that obviously affect the access proportions and RBMs are also revealed in this paper.
Video stabilization using Speeded Up Robust Features

Video stabilization is one of the most important enhancement techniques used to remove undesired motion in a video. Combination of global camera motion estimation along with motion separation determines the undesired motion, which is to be compensated to produce a stable video sequence. In this paper a novel method for robust video stabilization is proposed which uses Speeded Up Robust Features(SURF) as stable feature points to be tracked between frames for global motion estimation. Different measures are taken to select the most appropriate feature point trajectories. A discrete kalman filter is used to smoothen so estimated motion vectors and the resultant stabilized video is obtained by compensating the unstable motion.
Making a Difference: Women Headteachers' Contribution to Schools As Learning Institutions.

This paper presents findings of a study that examined how six women headteachers in Great Britain worked as school leaders. Data were obtained through observation, joint inquiry, structured conversations, and life-history interviews. The study drew on Wallace and Hall's (1994) power-culture metaphor, which stated that individuals make different use of resources to achieve desired goals through interaction according to their beliefs and values. The study looked at how the women heads attempted to influence and direct the organizational cultures for which they were responsible. Findings indicate that each of the heads "grew into" the headship. They held clear values, preferred influence over power, and utilized effective interpersonal and communication skills. They viewed their own empowerment as enabling them to empower others. Constraints to creating a supportive learning environment included gender, staff resistance, and changing external demands. The findings do not assert that women are better leaders than men, but show how the women headteachers' visions and more conducive to the development of schools as learning organizations. Contains 21 references. (LMI) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************
Homogeneous structures

Our purpose is to survey what is known about homogeneous structures over a finite relational language. We will sketch the main results obtained so far, and, by making some conjectures, will identify the most serious gaps in our knowledge. The situation can be summarized as follows: Finite homogeneous structures are well understood. Stable homogeneous structures turn out to be just the unions of chains of finite ones. Thus, understanding stable homogeneous structures goes hand in hand with understanding finite ones. Beyond this, some special cases have been investigated successfully, but almost no general results have been obtained. The results of the work on special cases consisting of exhaustive lists of the homogeneous structures of various particular kinds, e.g., graphs, are described in §2. In §3 we survey the theory of stable homogeneous structures, and in §4 we speculate on what might be true in general.
Dual-Polarimetric TerraSAR-X SAR Data for Target at Sea Observation

A physical dual-polarimetric model to observe man-made metallic targets at sea in dual-polarimetric coherent X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is proposed. The model exploits the intrinsic different symmetry properties of man-made targets and sea surface and is tested over actual StripMap TerraSAR-X HH-HV and VV-VH dual-polarimetric SAR data and colocated ground truth measurements. Then, an operational physically based filter to observe targets at sea is proposed. The filter is very attractive in terms of both detection performances and processing time. A typical SAR scene is processed in seconds by a conventional PC processor.
Delayed conifer tree mortality following fire in California

Fire injury was characterized and survival monitored for 5,246 trees from five wildfires in California that occurred between 1999 and 2002. Logistic regression models for predicting the probability of mortality were developed for incense-cedar, Jeffrey pine, ponderosa pine, red fir and white fir. Two-year post-fire preliminary models were developed for incensecedar, Jeffrey pine, ponderosa pine and white fir. Three- and four-year post-fire models are presented for white fir and red fir, respectively. Mortality was predicted using percent crown length kill and cambium kill in all optimal models. Diameter at breast height was also a significant variable in all models except for red fir. A pre-bud break model for pine using crown length scorch was also developed. Additional models are provided for each species without the cambium injury variable to show the predictive capability lost when this variable is not assessed. A comparison between bark char classification and cambium condition status was also performed to determine the validity of using bark char classifications as a surrogate for cambium sampling. Light and deep bark char codes are relatively accurate in predicting live and dead cambium, respectively. However, the moderate bark char rating is not a good predictor of cambium status.
Deconstructing Hardware Architectures for Security

Researchers have recently proposed novel hardware architectures for enhancing system security. The proposed architectures address security threats such as buffer overflows, format string bugs, and information disclosure. The main advantage of hardware support is increased visibility into system state, low overheads for security checks, and, in some cases, compatibility with legacy binaries. Nevertheless, hardware support is not a panacea for system security. We review two architectures for preventing memory corruption and two for preventing information leaks. We identify significant vulnerabilities and shortcomings in these designs. We also discuss solutions and mitigation strategies.
Comparing USA and EU Legislatures: Party Cohesion in the House of Representatives and the European Parliament

Given its recent development of becoming a fully fledged legislature in EU politics, the European Parliament is increasingly compared to the USA House of Representatives. At the same time, a lot of scholars that have analyzed the evolution of party cohesion within the European Parliament (see, for instance, Hix et al. 2007) do not refer to the American example. This is surprising since there is a long tradition on research looking at party cohesion – so-called party votes – within the House of Representatives (see, for instance, Roberts and Smith 2003). This paper wants to bridge this gap by comparing and explaining figures of party cohesion between the USA House of Representatives and the EU European Parliament. The analysis of party or roll-call votes is part of a broader research agenda that deals with the question whether the European Parliament is developing towards a legislature such as the House of Representatives or, in other words, whether the European Parliament can be better understood by comparing it to the USA House of Representatives.Some comparative research on these two legislatures has already been done. Kreppel (2006), for instance, compared the European Parliament with the House of Representatives by looking at three emblematic features of the House: its legislative power, the role of committees and bipartisan voting. Despite the notion of ‘American exceptionalism’ that is often referred to when analyzing national legislatures of EU member states, her analysis demonstrated that the European Parliament shares these characteristics to a large degree. This paper will examine whether this also applies to party cohesion.
Tree Adapt: Web Content Adaptation for Mobile Devices

Mobile web browsing usually becomes time- consuming since currently it requires horizontal and vertical scrolling in addition to this, users interested in only a section of a web page are often burdened with cumbersome whole web pages that not only do not properly fit their mobile screens but also require a lot of delivery time. This problem can be addressed and resolved with the help of a mobile web content adaptation system. Existing web content adaptation systems focus on resizing contents to fit a mobile device and removing unnecessary contents from the adapted web page. This paper's aim is to address the gap by proposing the TreeAdapt which provides a condensed view of an adapted web page. This condensed view consists of only block headers which users can then expand for complete content. In order to achieve this, the proposed algorithm will first categorize an HTML object as menu, block title or the main content. A depth-first traversal algorithm is then used to select the sequence of blocks to be displayed on a mobile device. Usability studies were performed to evaluate the usability of the adapted contents against other deployed systems. Results from the usability studies indicate that the adapted contents produced by the proposed techniques enabled users to locate targeted information within a web page in a shorter span of time.
Impact Analysis of Economic Linkages of South Korea with North Korea Using a CGE Model

The purpose of this paper is to estimate impacts of core infrastructure investments in North Korea on South and North Koreas. The investment expenditures of core infrastructure projects in North Korea are calibrated as 9.35 billion US$ including highway, railroad and industrial complex. Since South and North Koreas are based on market and planned economies respectively, the Computable General Equilibrium model is applied to the economic analysis of South Korea and an Input-Output Model for that of North Korea. The base year for the analysis is year of 2007 due to the data availability of North Korea. The CGE model for Korean economy accounts for the economic behavior of producers and consumers on the real side economy, following the neoclassical elasticity approach such as market-clearing prices, the maximization of a firm's profit, and a household's utility. This paper finds that the annual total output of North Korea would increase by 20.30 billion US$ with investments on infrastructure projects. This could result in increases of GDP of Korea by 2.16 billion US$ as a construction effect and by 0.08 billion US$ as an operation effect on the annual average.
Quantum particle in a parabolic lattice in the presence of a gauge field

We analyze the eigenstates of a two-dimensional lattice with additional harmonic confinement in the presence of an artificial magnetic field. While the softness of the confinement makes a distinction between bulk and edge states difficult, the interplay of harmonic potential and lattice leads to a different classification of states in three energy regions: In the low-energy regime, where lattice effects are small, all states are transporting topologically nontrivial states. For large energies above a certain critical value, the periodic lattice causes localization of all states through a mechanism similar to Wannier-Stark localization. In the intermediate energy regime transporting, topologically nontrivial states coexist with topologically trivial countertransporting chaotic states. The character of the eigenstates, in particular their transport properties, are studied numerically and are explained using a semiclassical analysis.
A Biomedical Implantable FES Battery-Powered Micro-Stimulator

The integrated circuit (IC) designs of an implantable functional electrical stimulation (FES) battery-powered micro-stimulator are presented in this paper. The battery is recharged by receiving power magnetically through a coil under supervision of a power management unit. To limit the heat generation on the stimulator when a large magnetic field is present, an on-chip rectifier is capable of limiting the induced voltage and reducing heat generation by providing a low impedance path. The same coil is also used for generating and receiving magnetic fields such that the distances among 16 different stimulator pairs can be estimated simultaneously. To facilitate different clinical applications, a bio-potential sensor is also included. The micro-stimulator can output mono-phasic stimulation current from an 8-bit exponential digital to analog converter (DAC) that has a range between ~2.5 ¿A and ~10 mA. The stimulator communicates with an external master control unit through a 400-MHz wireless link that can support a bit rate of 2.486 MB/s in high speed mode. The total number of stimulators that the communication system can support is 852.
WINNER II System Concept : Advanced radio technologies for future wireless systems

WINNER has been an ambitious research project aiming at identification and assessment of key technologies for Beyond 3G mobile systems. The goal of the WINNER mobile access network is a system that is highly flexible and efficient and can provide a wide range of services to a multitude of users in many different environments. This paper provides a concise overview of the WINNER system concept and presents the main technical innovation areas addressed by the project.
Distributed Multimedia Content Processing Based on Web Service

A distributed computing application often uses multiple networked computers to work together to accomplish a complex task. So, it can be used to do calculation-intensive multimedia content computing too, such as video optical character recognition, shot detection and so on. Meanwhile, the Web is catalyzing a transition from PC-based software and file systems to Internet-based applications and Web services. We aim at the combination of multimedia computing and Web Services together that supports uniform naming, protection, and access for Multimedia Content objects stored by Web services to accomplish distributed computing. At a high level, it creates an integrated file and object system from heterogeneous, multimedia content objects dispersed across the Internet. Based on this fact, we proposed a novel framework of distributed multimedia computing in this paper. In this framework, the concept of workflow which can describe business processes logically is introduced. Some experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Event-based control as an enabler for high power density processors

This paper is part of a long-term research on the application of event-based control to the thermal management of high-power, high-density microprocessors. Specifically, in this work we introduce and discuss a purpose-specific event-based realisation of a digital controller for thermal management, which integrates into a scheme that also takes care of the power/performance tradeoff, and carry out a stability and a preliminary performance analysis. We also present, extending previous research, a comprehensive Modelica library suitable to carry out control studies in the addressed domain. We finally show experimental results on a modern processor architecture, that also compare our solution to the state of the art, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposal.
A Robust Method for Biological Sequence Clustering

In this paper, we proposed a two-phase hybrid method for biological sequence clustering, which combines the strengths of the hierarchical agglomerative clustering methods and the partition clustering methods. In phase I, the hybrid method uses the hierarchical agglomerative clustering algorithm to pre-cluster the aligned sequences, while in the second phase it takes the pre-clustering result as the initial partition for the profile hidden Markov models (HMMs) based k-means partition clustering method. Such initial partitions (generated from phase I), as against random initial partitions, are usually more reasonable and thus can avoid the inconsistency problem in the partition clustering methods due to the randomness in initial partitions. In addition, the inaccuracy of the hierarchical agglomerative clustering methods can be compensated by the profile HMM based k-means partition clustering since the latter is model-based and can better describe the dynamic properties of the data in a cluster. Experiments on a molecular sequence dataset demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed hybrid clustering algorithm