Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of biosurfactants on assays of PCB congeners in transgenic arabidopsis plants carrying a recombinant guinea pig AhR-mediated GUS reporter gene expression system

The transgenic Arabidopsis plants carrying a recombinant guinea pig (g) aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR)-mediated β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene expression system were generated for assays of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners. The selected transgenic Arabidopsis plant XgD2V11-6 exhibited a correlation between uptake of PCB126 and PCB126-induced GUS activity. Also, the plants showed induced GUS activity towards the supplemental indole 3-acetic acid (IAA). Thus, the GUS assay may reflect induction by both endogenous and exogenous AhR ligands. When biosurfactants, MEL-B, produced in the culture of yeast isolated from plants were used for assays of PCB congeners in the transgenic Arabidopsis plants, they showed marked PCB126 dose-dependent and toxic equivalency factor (TEF) dependent GUS activities. The effects of biosurfactants were clearer when the plants were cultivated on soils containing PCB congeners for 7 days as compared with on soils for 3 days as well as in the medium for 3 days. Threfore, it was estimated that biosurfactants form micellae with PCB congeners, which are easily uptaken by the plants in a mode of passive diffusion, transport into the aerial parts and then induce GUS activity.
Heterogeneous Resource-Elastic Scheduling for CPU+FPGA Architectures

Heterogeneous computing is a key strategy to meet the requirements of many compute-intensive applications. However, currently, CPU+FPGA platforms are commonly underutilized as scheduling is often constrained to a run-to-completion model or acceleration of a single application at a time. To tackle this, this paper proposes heterogeneous resource-elastic scheduling for maximizing the utilization of both CPU and FPGA resources by dynamically scaling the resource allocation for tasks transparently. It achieves this for heterogeneous workloads (OpenCL) by selecting the number of compute units, accelerator type and device types using partial reconfiguration and cooperative fine-grained scheduling to maximize system performance based on runtime conditions. We demonstrate as much as 2× better performance as compared to SDSoC-like platforms and, on average, 20% improvement in performance compared to other standard scheduling algorithms while lowering task wait times. Our results indicate that: 1) workload can be executed seamlessly on both CPU and FPGA without increasing programming effort and 2) co-scheduling applications on heterogeneous systems can improve system performance.
Quantification of fly ash in hydrated, blended Portland cement pastes by backscattered electron imaging

An automated image analysis procedure for the segmentation of anhydrous fly ash from backscattered electron images of hydrated, fly ash blended Portland cement paste is presented. A total of six hundred backscattered electron images per sample are acquired at a magnification of 2000. Characteristic features of fly ash particles concerning grey level, shape and texture were used to segment anhydrous fly ash by a combination of grey level filtering, grey level segmentation and morphological filtering techniques. The thresholds for the grey level segmentation are determined for each sample by semiautomatic histogram analysis of the full image stack of each sample. The analysis of the presented dataset reveals a standard deviation of the reaction degree of fly ash of up to 4.3%. The results agree with a selective dissolution method to quantify the reaction degree of fly ash showing the potential of the presented image analysis procedure.
Two‐Dimensional Electrophoresis of Cerebrospinal Fluid and Ventricular Fluid Proteins, Identification of Enriched and Unique Proteins, and Comparison with Serum

Abstract: The proteins of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and ventricular fluid have been analyzed by two‐dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) and the patterns compared with autologous serum. Fourteen proteins were specifically identified by immunoprecipitation followed by 2DE, or by blotting 2DE gels to nitrocellulose and detection by peroxidase staining. Proteins in CSF and serum with high and low affinity for the ligands, protein A, Cibacron Blue, and concanavalin A, were also characterized by 2DE. The 2DE profiles of CSF and serum proteins were similar and indicated that a relatively nonselective filtration mechanism based on protein size is the major determinant for the overall pattern of CSF proteins. The classic CSF‐enriched or CSF‐specific proteins, β‐trace, prealbumin, transferrin, and β‐2‐microglobulin, were identified according to 2DE coordinates. Charge differences between CSF and serum for transferrin and prealbumin were identified. In addition, a large number of additional CSF‐enriched or CSF‐specific proteins of high, intermediate, and low molecular weight, all predominantly anodic in mobility, were identified. Three acidic protein complexes, heterogeneous in charge and molecular weight, were characterized as constituents of normal CSF, and two of these are increased in patients with inflammatory diseases of the CNS. All three proteins and several other proteins unique to CSF bound to Cibacron Blue‐Sepharose. The use of 2DE in conjunction with affinity chromatography and sensitive protein stains enlarged the number of proteins previously identified as unique to CSF. By a modified 2DE and silver staining procedure, most of these proteins were visible without prior concentration of CSF.
Exploring automatic theme identification: a rule-based approach

Knowledge about Theme-Rheme serves the interpretation of a text in terms of its thematic progression and provides a window into the topicality of a text as well as text type (genre). This is potentially relevant for NLP tasks such as information extraction and text clas- sification. To explore this potential, large corpora annotated for Theme-Rheme organization are needed. We report on a rule-based system for the automatic identification of Theme to be employed for corpus annotation. The rules are manually derived from a set of sentences parsed syntactically with the Stanford parser and analyzed in terms of Theme on the basis of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). We describe the development of the rule set and the automatic procedure of Theme identification and assess the validity of the approach by application to some authentic text data.
Automated analysis method for forensic investigation of cloud applications on Android

In this paper, we propose an analysis method for investigation of cloud client applications in order to automatically detect all possible data remnants and data leakage on Android devices. In this analysis method, a set of predefined keywords to conduct the manual examination of acquired forensically sound images of Android's internal memory (RAM) and internal storage was used. This allows the investigators to detect the data remnants and identify users' activities patterns. The identified patterns are then used to design an algorithm for detecting cloud client applications data remnants automatically. The outcome of this paper resulted in detection of varieties of artifacts from different user activities, such as installation, login, uploading, downloading, deletion, and the sharing of files on the Android internal memory and internal storages. These findings and method may assist digital forensic examiners and investigators in real world examination of cloud client applications on Android platforms.
Knowledge, Attitudes, and Environment: What Primary Care Providers Say About Pre-School Vision Screening

Purpose. To evaluate knowledge, attitudes, and environment of primary care providers, and to develop a conceptual framework showing their impact on self-reported pre-school vision screening (PVS) behaviors. Methods. Eligible primary care providers were individuals who filed claims with Medicaid agencies in Alabama, South Carolina, or Illinois, for at least eight well child checks for children aged 3 or 4 years during 1 year. Responses were obtained on-line from providers who enrolled in the intervention arm of a randomized trial to improve PVS. We calculated a summary score per provider per facet: (1) for behavior and knowledge, each correct answer was assigned a value of +1; and (2) for attitudes and environment, responses indicating support for PVS were assigned a value of +1, and other responses were assigned −1. Results. Responses were available from 53 participants (43 of 49 enrolled pediatricians, 8 of 14 enrolled family physicians, one general physician, and one nurse practitioner). Recognizing that amblyopia often presents without outward signs was positively related to good PVS: [odds ratio (OR) = 3.9; p = 0.06]. Reporting that “preschool VS interrupts patient flow” posed a significant barrier (OR = 0.2; p = 0.05). Providers with high summed scores on attitudes (OR = 6.0; p = 0.03), or knowledge and attitudes (OR = 11.4; p < 0.001) were significantly more likely to report good PVS behavior. There was a significant trend between the number of “good” scores on knowledge, attitudes or environment, and “good” PVS behavior (p = 0.04). Conclusions. PVS is influenced by positive attitudes, especially when combined with knowledge about amblyopia. Interventions to improve PVS should target multiple facets, emphasizing (1) asymptomatic children are at risk for amblyopia, (2) specific evidence-based tests have high testability and sensitivity for amblyopia in pre-school children, and (3) new tests minimize interruptions to patient flow.
Stable and Topology-Preserving Extraction of Medial Axes

The paper presents a simple method for extracting global medial axes in a stable manner. A new index, called the normalized boundary distance, is introduced in order to measure the degree of importance of a point on the conventional medial axis. This index has a remarkable property that the set of points whose index values are greater than an arbitrarily chosen threshold is topologically equivalent to the original figure. In the proposed method, first the boundary of a given figure is replaced with a dense set of points, next the Voronoi diagram for these points is constructed, then the approximation of the medial axis is extracted from the Voronoi diagram, and finally the global medial axis is constructed by pruning the branches according to the new index. The performance of the proposed method is also shown by examples.
OFDM in 4G networks: a comparison with MC-CDMA

Escalating demand of higher data rate in progressive generations for wireless environment involve work towards modification of modulation schemes over air interface. Beginning from TDMA/FDMA/CDMA based 2nd generation to highly complicated Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA), Single Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA), Interleaved FDMA (IFDMA) and Multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) which are gaining attention for 4G networks. OFDMA based WiMax standard and MC-CDMA based proposed IEEE 802.20 standards are evaluated for next generation. The paper presents analysis of performance of proposed modulation schemes for the next generation wireless communication i. e. OFDM and MC-CDMA. The paper is acquainted with comparison of OFDM and MC-CDMA for indoor to outdoor and vehicular channels. The simulation parameters considered are: guard time interval, symbol duration, sampling rate and number of data subcarriers. Performance based on various digital modulation schemes can also be associated with time varying channels.
WHY DO IMMINENT VICTIMS OF A CARDIAC EVENT FEEL SO TIRED?

A state of vital exhaustion, characterised by unusual tiredness and lack of energy, increased irritability and feelings of demoralisation, has been found to be one of the precursors of myocardial infarction and other cardiac events. These feelings probably reflect decreased activity of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal axis. Treatment of the conditions leading to this state of vital exhaustion might decrease the risk of a cardiac event.
The cerebrospinal fluid level of 5-methylterahydrofolate in a Japanese boy with hypomyelination with atrophy of the basal ganglia and cerebellum.

To the Editor Mercimek-Mahmutoglu and Stockler-Ipsiroglu (2007) reported the decreased level of 5-methylterahydrofolate (5-MTHF) in the cerebrospinal fl uid (CSF) of a patient with hypomyelination with atrophy of the basal ganglia and cerebellum (H-ABC). They suggested the relationship between H-ABC and cerebral folate defi ciency (CFD), and showed the effi cacy of the treatment with folic acid on their patient. We have also considered the possibility if our patient with H-ABC (Wakusawa et al. 2006; van der Knaap et al. 2007) had CFD. Since 5-MTHF could not be measured in any laboratory in Japan, we measured 5-MTHF in the CSF of our patient in Zurich, Switzerland. It was revealed that the level of 5-MTHF of our patient was not decreased; the level of 5-MTHF of our patient was 86.2 nmol/l (age matched normal value: 41-117 nmol/l). We have therefore concluded that there is a low possibility of having CFD in our patient. H-ABC is a syndrome defi ned by the fi ndings of magnetic resonance imaging: hypomyelination of cerebral cortex, atrophy of the basal ganglia, and atrophy of cerebellum (van der Knaap et al. 2002). However, the pathophysiology of H-ABC is still unknown. Our fi nding suggests that H-ABC is a symptomatic representation of several diseases including CFD. More patients are needed for understanding the pathophysiology of H-ABC.
Distributed Stochastic Optimization in Networks With Low Informational Exchange

We consider a distributed stochastic optimization problem in networks with finite number of nodes. Each node adjusts its action to optimize the global utility of the network, which is defined as the sum of local utilities of all nodes. While Gradient descent method is a common technique to solve such optimization problem, the computation of the gradient may require much information exchange. In this paper, we consider that each node can only have a noisy numerical observation of its local utility, of which the closed-form expression is not available. This assumption is quite realistic, especially when the system is either too complex or constantly changing. Nodes may exchange partially the observation of their local utilities to estimate the global utility at each timeslot. We propose a distributed algorithm based on stochastic perturbation, under the assumption that each node has only part of the local utilities of the other nodes. We use stochastic approximation tools to prove that our algorithm converges almost surely to the optimum, given that the objective function is smooth and strictly concave. The convergence rate is also derived, under the additional assumption of strongly concave objective function. It is shown that the convergence rate scales as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O\left ({K^{-0.5}}\right )$ </tex-math></inline-formula> after a sufficient number of iterations <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K>K_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, which is the optimal rate order in terms of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> for our problem. Although the proposed algorithm can be applied to general optimization problems, we perform simulations for a typical power control problem in wireless networks and present numerical results to corroborate our claims.
LORA: Loss Differentiation Rate Adaptation Scheme for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Safety Communications

The existing study shows that safety applications supported by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications have the potential to address 80% of all road crash issues. IEEE 802.11p is a key enabling technology to support V2V safety applications. To meet the stringent delay and reliability requirements of these applications, rate adaptation (RA) approaches have been proposed to determine the optimal data transmission rate, according to the channel conditions such as packet losses. However, existing RA solutions cannot be directly applied to V2V safety communications in highway scenarios, which exhibit lots of dynamics and severe packet losses. Moreover, physical (PHY)-layer channel fading and medium-access-control (MAC)-layer interference contribute differently to the packet losses and, thus, should be treated separately. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose a LOss differentiation RA (LORA) scheme. LORA can estimate the average packet loss rate (PLR) for each sender and differentiate the fading losses from the interference losses. Extensive evaluation results demonstrate that LORA can provide reliability guarantees for V2V safety applications, as well as a response to environment changes in a real-time manner.
Assignment of the major histocompatibility complex to a region of the short arm of human chromosome 6.

Interspecific cell hybrids containing defined parts of human chromosome 6 were used for regional mapping of gene loci previously assigned to chromosome 6: the human leukocyte antigens (HLA) region, phosphoglucomutase-3 (PGM3; alpha-D-glucose-1,6-bisphosphate:alpha-D-glucose-1-phosphate phosphotransferase, EC 2.7.5.1) and malic enzyme-1 [malic dehydrogenase(decarboxylating) (NADP+), L-malate:NADP+ oxidoreductase (oxaloacetate-decarboxylating), EC 1.1. 1.40]. Human fibroblasts containing a balanced reciprocal translocation between the short arms of chromosome 1 and chromosome 6--designated t(1;6) (p3200;p2100)--were fused with an established line of Chinese hamster cells. Hybrid clones with segregating human chromosomes were studied for the presence of the translocation chromosomes 1T and 6T and their normal homologues 1 and 6. Six clones that had retained 1T, three clones with 6T, and three clones with 6 and 6T as controls, were analyzed by a microabsorption test for expression of the allelic antigens HLA-A2 and HLA-A3, both of which were present on the human parental cells. HLA-A2 segregated with the 1T translocation chromosome and HLA-A3 with the normal chromosome 6. Hybrid clones with 6T did not possess an HLA-A gene. In contrast, human PGM3 and malic enzyme-1 expression segregated with the 6T translocation chromosome. These results indicate the location of the major histocompatibility complex in region 6p2100 leads to 6pter of the short arm of chromosome 6. The genes for PGM2 and malic enzyme-1 map in region 6p2100 leads to 6qter. The HLA:PGM3 genetic map distance is 15 centimorgans in males, as established by family studies. This allows rather precise mapping of both loci because HLA is distal and PGM3 proximal to the translocation breakpoint in band 6p2100. The findings are consistent with earlier conclusions that HLA is proximal to 6p22. Quantitative correlation between the density of HLA antigens on the hybrid cell surface and the number of copies of the respective HLA gene-bearing chromosome suggests a gene dose effect for cell surface molecules, as it exists for intracellular gene products.
Optimizing bug report assignment using multi criteria decision making technique

Bug report assignment is an integral part of bug triaging process. It aims at assigning a suitable developer for the reported bug. The assigned developer edits the source code in order to resolve the bug. Existing bug assignment techniques use different bug report parameters for selection of suitable developer. In the literature, bug report parameters are always weighed equally for developer selection. However, each parameter has varying importance among themselves. Thus, it would be beneficial to assign varying weights to the bug report parameters. This paper presents a novel Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based bug assignment technique, W8Prioritizer, that prioritizes bug report parameters on the basis of their relative importance before making the developer assignment. The experimental results show an improved accuracy for the AHP based bug assignment approach. The proposed approach achieves 70.59% and 86.15% accuracy in Mozilla and Eclipse projects respectively for top-10 list size in comparison to accuracy of 50% and 47.58% for baseline term frequency approach.
A Study on the Consistency Analysis of Duration Parameter for Mandarin Speech

In this work, a consistency analysis of duration parameter for Mandarin speech is presented. Found by an inspection on the pronunciation process of human beings, the consistency can be interpreted as a high correlation of a warping curve between the spectrum and the prosody intra a syllable. Through three steps in the procedure of the consistency analysis, the HMM algorithm is used firstly to decode HMM-state sequences within a syllable at the same time as to divide them into three segments. Secondly, based on a designated syllable, the vector quantization (VQ) with the LBG algorithm is used to train the VQ codebooks of each segment. Thirdly, the duration vector of each segment is encoded as an index by VQ codebooks, and then the probability of each possible path is evaluated as a prerequisite to analyze the consistency. It is demonstrated experimentally that a consistency is definitely acquired in case the syllable is located exactly in the same word. These results offer a research direction that the time warping process intra a syllable must be considered in a TTS system to improve the speech quality.
Emergence of a Balanced Core through Dynamical Competition in Heterogeneous Neuronal Networks

The balance between excitation and inhibition is crucial for neuronal computation. It is observed that the balanced state of neuronal networks exists in many experiments, yet its underlying mechanism remains to be fully clarified. Theoretical studies of the balanced state mainly focus on the analysis of the homogeneous Erd$\ddot{\text{o}}$s-Renyi network. However, neuronal networks have been found to be inhomogeneous in many cortical areas. In particular, the connectivity of neuronal networks can be of the type of scale-free, small-world, or even with specific motifs. In this work, we examine the questions of whether the balanced state is universal with respect to network topology and what characteristics the balanced state possesses in inhomogeneous networks such as scale-free and small-world networks. We discover that, for a sparsely but strongly connected inhomogeneous network, despite that the whole network receives external inputs, there is a small active subnetwork (active core) inherently embedded within it. The neurons in this active core have relatively high firing rates while the neurons in the rest of the network are quiescent. Surprisingly, the active core possesses a balanced state and this state is independent of the model of single-neuron dynamics. The dynamics of the active core can be well predicted using the Fokker-Planck equation with the mean-field assumption. Our results suggest that, in the presence of inhomogeneous network connectivity, the balanced state may be ubiquitous in the brain, and the network connectivity in the active core is essentially close to the Erd$\ddot{\text{o}}$s-Renyi structure. The existence of the small active core embedded in a large network may provide a potential dynamical scenario underlying sparse coding in neuronal networks.