Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Restoring pistil-side self-incompatibility factors recapitulates an interspecific reproductive barrier between tomato species.

Interspecific reproductive barriers are poorly understood, but are central to the biological species concept. The pre-zygotic barriers between red- and green-fruited species in the tomato clade of the genus Solanum provide a model to better understand these barriers in plants. Compatibility usually follows the SI x SC rule: pollen from self-compatible (SC) red-fruited species is rejected on pistils of the predominantly self-incompatible (SI) green-fruited species, but the reciprocal crosses are compatible. This suggests that the interspecific reproductive barrier may be linked to the intraspecific SI mechanism. However, pollen from the SC red-fruited species is also rejected by SC accessions of green-fruited species that lack S-RNase, a key protein expressed in pistils of SI Solanum species. Thus, multiple mechanisms may contribute to the barrier between red- and green-fruited species. We tested whether an S-RNase-dependent barrier is sufficient for rejection of pollen from red-fruited species by introducing functional S-RNase, HT-A and HT-B genes from SI species into Solanum lycopersicum (cultivated tomato). We found that expressing S-RNase in combination with either HT-A or HT-B in the pistil is sufficient to cause rejection of pollen from all four red-fruited species. Thus, redundant mechanisms must operate side by side to prevent crosses between red- and green-fruited species in the clade, underlining the complexity of interspecific pollination barriers. Our results also have implications for mating system transitions. We suggest that these transitions must occur in a specific sequence, and that the transition from SI to SC also affects interspecific compatibility.
Neuroligin-1 Deletion Results in Impaired Spatial Memory and Increased Repetitive Behavior

Neuroligins (NLs) are a family of neural cell-adhesion molecules that are involved in excitatory/inhibitory synapse specification. Multiple members of the NL family (including NL1) and their binding partners have been linked to cases of human autism and mental retardation. We have now characterized NL1-deficient mice in autism- and mental retardation-relevant behavioral tasks. NL1 knock-out (KO) mice display deficits in spatial learning and memory that correlate with impaired hippocampal long-term potentiation. In addition, NL1 KO mice exhibit a dramatic increase in repetitive, stereotyped grooming behavior, a potential autism-relevant abnormality. This repetitive grooming abnormality in NL1 KO mice is associated with a reduced NMDA/AMPA ratio at corticostriatal synapses. Interestingly, we further demonstrate that the increased repetitive grooming phenotype can be rescued in adult mice by administration of the NMDA receptor partial coagonist d-cycloserine. Broadly, these data are consistent with a role of synaptic cell-adhesion molecules in general, and NL1 in particular, in autism and implicate reduced excitatory synaptic transmission as a potential mechanism and treatment target for repetitive behavioral abnormalities.
Classification of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images from SIR-C and ALOS PALSAR

SIR-C quad-pol MLC data and ALOS PALSAR quad-pol and dual pol SLC data over Indian sites have been processed using PolSARpro software for classification of various land features. The land features include ocean, clear water, settlements, agriculture fields, arid lands, grown and young forest, hilly terrain, mangrove forest, etc. The test sites used are SIR-C L-band and C-band Kolkata city and its surroundings, ALOS PALSAR data over West Bengal, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Mumbai. For Kolkata city we observed that classification results for L- and C-bands are slightly different. For Mumbai dual pol data classification accuracy is poor due to overlap of backscattering values for bare ground and mangrove vegetation with ocean backscattering values.
JSDC: A Hybrid Approach for JavaScript Malware Detection and Classification

Malicious JavaScript is one of the biggest threats in cyber security. Existing research and anti-virus products mainly focus on detection of JavaScript malware rather than classification. Usually, the detection will simply report the malware family name without elaborating details about attacks conducted by the malware. Worse yet, the reported family name may differ from one tool to another due to the different naming conventions. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach to perform JavaScript malware detection and classification in an accurate and efficient way, which could not only explain the attack model but also potentially discover new malware variants and new vulnerabilities. Our approach starts with machine learning techniques to detect JavaScript malware using predicative features of textual information, program structures and risky function calls. For the detected malware, we classify them into eight known attack types according to their attack feature vector or dynamic execution traces by using machine learning and dynamic program analysis respectively. We implement our approach in a tool named JSDC, and conduct large-scale evaluations to show its effectiveness. The controlled experiments (with 942 malware) show that JSDC gives low false positive rate (0.2123%) and low false negative rate (0.8492%), compared with other tools. We further apply JSDC on 1,400,000 real-world JavaScript with over 1,500 malware reported, for which many anti-virus tools failed. Lastly, JSDC can effectively and accurately classify these detected malwares into either attack types.
Restorative wildscapes at work: an investigation of the wellbeing benefits of greenspace at urban fringe business sites using ‘go-along’ interviews

Abstract The potential well-being benefits associated with the use of privately owned greenspaces in working environments have received little research attention. Given the growing evidence on the restorative benefits of urban greenspace, and the fact that many people spend most of their daily hours at the workplace, the question of whether physical access to green environments from workplaces can promote well-being is a pertinent one. Person–environment relationships in peri-urban business sites were investigated in a series of semi-structured ‘go-along’ interviews with employees at Scottish science parks. Workers described a range of well-being benefits from outdoor breaks and associated these with qualities of the environment. Semi-natural and informally landscaped areas were most strongly associated with restoration during the working day. The implications of the findings for the planning and design of business sites at the urban fringe are explored.
Behavioral intention to accept and use ICT in public university: integrating quantitative and qualitative data

Information and communication technology (ICT) acceptance in tertiary institutions has been the focus of recent Information systems researches. Acceptance has its models, the most current and notable being UTAUT. This model has been successfully applied to verify levels of ICT acceptability in recent researches. This paper considers integrating quantitative and qualitative data of the research using sequential mixed methods. The study shows that, quantitative phase presents the constructs that have significant influence on behavioral intention of the academic staff to accept and use ICT. However the qualitative phase interprets the in-depth meaning of the statistical results and the environmental challenges that must be tackled to realize the actual behavioral intention of the academic staff. Integrating qualitative and quantitative data of the research has given the true impression of the behavioral intention of the academic staff to accept and use ICT in public university.
POSTER: Scanning-free Personalized Malware Warning System by Learning Implicit Feedback from Detection Logs

Nowadays, World Wide Web connects people to each other in many ways ubiquitously. Followed along with the convenience and usability, millions of malware infect various devices of numerous users through the web every day. In contrast, traditional anti-malware systems detect such malware by scanning file systems and provide secure environments for users. However, some malware might not be detected by traditional scanning-based detection systems due to hackers' obfuscation techniques. Also, scanning-based approaches cannot caution users for uninfected malware with high risks. In this paper, we aim to build a personalized malware warning system. Different from traditional scanning-based approaches, we focus on discovering the potential malware which has not been detected for each user. If users and the system know the potentially infected malware in advance, they can be alert against the corresponding risks. We propose a novel approach to learn the implicit feedback from detection logs and give a personalized risk ranking of malware for each user. Finally, the experiments on real-world detection datasets demonstrate the proposed algorithm outperforms traditional popularity-based algorithms.
Rab11 Function in Trypanosoma brucei: Identification of Conserved and Novel Interaction Partners

ABSTRACT The Ras-like GTPase Rab11 is implicated in multiple aspects of intracellular transport, including maintenance of plasma membrane composition and cytokinesis. In metazoans, these functions are mediated in part via coiled-coil Rab11-interacting proteins (FIPs) acting as Rab11 effectors. Additional interaction between Rab11 and the exocyst subunit Sec15 connects Rab11 with exocytosis. We find that FIPs are metazoan specific, suggesting that other factors mediate Rab11 functions in nonmetazoans. We examined Rab11 interactions in Trypanosoma brucei, where endocytosis is well studied and the role of Rab11 in recycling well documented. TbSec15 and TbRab11 interact, demonstrating evolutionary conservation. By yeast two-hybrid screening, we identified additional Rab11 interaction partners. Tb927.5. 1640 (designated RBP74) interacted with both Rab11 and Rab5. RBP74 shares a coiled-coil architecture with metazoan FIPs but is unrelated by sequence and appears to play a role in coordinating endocytosis and recycling. A second coiled-coil protein, Tb09.211. 4830 (TbAZI1), orthologous to AZI1 in Homo sapiens, interacts exclusively with Rab11. AZI1 is restricted to taxa with motile cilia/flagella. These data suggest that Rab11 functions are mediated by evolutionarily conserved (i.e., AZI1 and Sec15) and potentially lineage-specific (RBP74) interactions essential for the integration of the endomembrane system.
The Suitable Fitness Test-bed for Competing Candidates in GA

Evolving strategies is one of the fields where GA has gained much acceptance. Fitness of a candidate chromosome is calculated relative to other candidates by allowing it to compete against a certain fitness test-bed selected from an infinitely large search space. Two questions arise: How to select the test-bed and how can we tell that an optimum candidate relative to a certain test-bed is "the optimum"? In this paper the results of a solid test performed to study the optimality of evolved strategies using three different test-beds are given. The amount of dynamics of the test-beds varies from totally static to semi-static composed of coevolving members of the generation, and totally dynamic, generated at random for each new generation. Optimality of a test-bed is estimated in terms of efficiency as well as processing effort needed. First results showed that as long as diversity is maintained all three types gave quite similar results w.r. t. fitness scores as well as cross-validation tournaments. However, when performance analysis was conducted the test-bed using changing competitors proved by far better needing remarkably less processing although additional overhead for randomly creating competitors at each generation has been accounted for
Colour based human skin segmentation using graph-cuts

This paper proposes a new method to deal with the problem of automatic human skin segmentation on RGB color space model. The problem is modeled as a min-cut problem on a graph whose vertices represent the image colour characteristics and the edges represent the costs of labeling the vertices as skin or non-skin, based on an energy function defined in terms of a database of skin tones. Our method was evaluated under several circumstances, indicating when correct or incorrect results were generated. The overall experiments have shown that our automatic method is simple, efficient and is competitive with the existing methods in the literature. Keywordsskin segmentation; pixel-based classification ; colour database; colour based segmentation; energy function; graph-cuts.
Towards tracking interaction between people

During face-to-face communication people make use of both verbal and visual behaviors. In this paper we address the problem of tracking visual cues between people. We propose a hybrid approach to tracking who is looking at whom during a discussion or meeting situation. A neural network and a model based gaze tracker are combined to track gaze directions of participants in a meeting. The neural network serves as two functions. First, the neural network coarsely detects gaze direction of a person, i.e., determines if the person is looking at front, or left, or right, or down at the table. Second, the neural network initializes a model based gaze tracker to find out more precise gaze information when a person is in a near front view. The feasibility of the proposed approach has been demonstrated by experiments. The trained neural network has achieved classification accuracy between 82% and 97% for different people. The experimental results have shown significant improvement of robustness for the model based gaze tracker initialized by the neural network.
Project Gabriel: Automated Software Deployment in a Large Commercial Network

French bank to develop an automated software deployment facility, i.e., to provide centralized control of software installations and upgrades for a large network of computer systems. Independently, Digital had developed a set of models designed to guide the design of solutions to this type of complex management problem. The bank project team, which had considerable experience building distributed system management applications, was able to take advantage of these models. The result was a versatile, scalable application for distributed software deployment, validation of the models, and a clearer sense of the usefulness of such models to complex application problems.
Abatacept Inhibition of T Cell Priming in Mice by Induction of a Unique Transcriptional Profile That Reduces Their Ability to Activate Antigen‐Presenting Cells

To determine at the phenotypic, functional, and transcriptional levels whether abatacept, a CTLA‐4Ig molecule that binds with high affinity to CD80/86 on antigen‐presenting cells (APCs) and is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, induces a state of immunologic tolerance in T cells and dendritic cells in mice.
Motion patches: building blocks for virtual environments annotated with motion data

Real time animation of human figures in virtual environments is an important problem in the context of computer games and virtual environments. Recently, the use of large collections of captured motion data has increased realism in character animation. However, assuming that the virtual environment is large and complex, the effort of capturing motion data in a physical environment and adapting them to an extended virtual environment is the bottleneck for achieving interactive character animation and control. We present a new technique for allowing our animated characters to navigate through a large virtual environment, which is constructed using a set of building blocks. The building blocks, called motion patches, can be arbitrarily assembled to create novel environments. Each patch is annotated with motion data, which informs what actions are available for animated characters within the block. The versatility and flexibility of our approach are demonstrated through examples in which multiple characters are animated and controlled at interactive rates in large, complex virtual environments.
Measuring transport of water across the peritoneal membrane.

INTRODUCTION Mechanisms of water flow across the peritoneal membrane include diffusion, convection, and reabsorption. OBJECTIVES To understand these processes more clearly we have developed a method to measure transport of water across the peritoneal membrane. METHODS An artificial gradient of deuterated water (HDO) between blood and dialysate compartments was created in five subjects who took 0.3g per kg of body weight of D2O, which was allowed to equilibrate with total body water. During a test dwell (2 L, bicarbonate:lactate buffer, 1.36% glucose to minimize convection), frequent dialysate samples were drawn to determine the abundance of deuterium and other solutes and to calculate their time constants. Dialysate deuterium abundance was measured using flowing afterglow mass spectrometry (FA-MS). The method was combined with 125iodine-labeled albumin (RISA) to enable simultaneous estimates of intraperitoneal volume and thus calculation of the mass transfer area coefficient (MTAC) for small solutes using the Garred equation. RESULTS The appearance of HDO in dialysate in four subjects is described by a single exponential fit with residuals of <1%, similar to method precision. In a fifth subject, the resolution of this method demonstrated that the best fit was a double exponential. When compared to other solutes, the time constant for water was as predicted by its molecular weight, with a MTAC of 38.7 +/- 4.4 mL/min. Total body water could also be estimated from the equilibrated dialysate deuterium abundance, with repeat estimates within 0.5%. CONCLUSION Transport of water across the peritoneum can be measured with remarkable accuracy and when combined with an intraperitoneal volume estimation can be used to determine mass transfer. In conditions of low convection, the relative rate of deuterium appearance and mass transfer compared to other solutes suggests that water diffuses predominantly through the intercellular small pores.
Density Functional Study of Tetraphenylporphyrin Long-Range Exciton Coupling

The performance of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) for calculations of long-range exciton circular dichroism (CD) is investigated. Tetraphenylporphyrin (TPP) is used as a representative of a class of strongly absorbing chromophores for which exciton CD with chromophore separations of 50 Å and even beyond has been observed experimentally. A dimer model for TPP is set up to reproduce long-range exciton CD previously observed for a brevetoxin derivative. The calculated CD intensity is consistent with TPP separations of over 40 Å. It is found that a hybrid functional with fully long-range corrected range-separated exchange performs best for full TDDFT calculations of the dimer. The range-separation parameter is optimally tuned for TPP, resulting in a good quality TPP absorption spectrum and small DFT delocalization error (measured by the curvature of the energy calculated as a function of fractional electron numbers). Calculated TDDFT data for the absorption spectra of TPP are also used as input for a ‘matrix method’ (MM) model of the exciton CD. For long-range exciton CD, comparison of MM spectra with full TDDFT CD spectra for the dimer shows that the matrix method is capable of producing very accurate results. A MM spectrum obtained from TPP absorption data calculated with the nonhybrid Becke88–Perdew86 (BP) functional is shown to match the experimental brevetoxin spectrum ‘best’, but for the wrong reasons.
Do wordnets also improve human performance on NLP tasks?

FinnWordNet is a wordnet for Finnish that complies with the format of the Princeton WordNet (PWN) (Fellbaum, 1998). It was built by translating the Princeton WordNet 3.0 synsets into Finnish by human translators. It is open source and contains 117000 synsets. The Finnish translations were inserted into the PWN structure resulting in a bilingual lexical database. In natural language processing (NLP), wordnets have been used for infusing computers with semantic knowledge assuming that humans already have a sufficient amount of this knowledge. In this paper we present a case study of using wordnets as an electronic dictionary. We tested whether native Finnish speakers benefit from using a wordnet while completing English sentence completion tasks. We found that using either an English wordnet or a bilingual English-Finnish wordnet significantly improves performance in the task. This should be taken into account when setting standards and comparing human and computer performance on these tasks.
Six cadm/synCAM genes are expressed in the nervous system of developing zebrafish

The Cadm (cell adhesion molecule) family of cell adhesion molecules (also known as IGSF4, SynCAM, Necl and TSLC) has been implicated in a multitude of physiological and pathological processes, such as spermatogenesis, synapse formation and lung cancer. The precise mechanisms by which these adhesion molecules mediate these diverse functions remain unknown. To investigate mechanisms of action of these molecules during development, we have identified zebrafish orthologs of Cadm family members and have examined their expression patterns during development and in the adult. Zebrafish possess six cadm genes. Sequence comparisons and phylogenetic analysis suggest that four of the zebrafish cadm genes represent duplicates of two tetrapod Cadm genes, whereas the other two cadm genes are single orthologs of tetrapod Cadm genes. All six zebrafish cadms are expressed throughout the nervous system both during development and in the adult. The spatial and temporal patterns of expression suggest multiple roles for Cadms during nervous system development. Developmental Dynamics 237:233–246, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Conduct Problems Among Boston-Area Youth Following the 2013 Marathon Bombing: The Moderating Role of Prior Violent Crime Exposure

A large body of work documents the heavy mental health burden of youth exposure to disasters, but the majority of this research has focused on posttraumatic stress and internalizing symptoms. Less is known about associations between disaster exposure and children’s conduct problems (CPs), or variables that may moderate such relationships. Given well-documented links between CPs and children’s exposure to community violence, youth with greater prior community violence exposure through residence in high-crime areas may be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of disaster exposure on CPs. We surveyed Boston-area caregivers (N = 460) in the first 6 months following the 2013 Marathon bombing on their children’s event-related exposures, as well as CPs. To estimate prior violent crime exposure, children’s neighborhoods were assigned corresponding violent crime rates obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s uniform crime reporting statistics. Almost 1 in 6 Boston-area children assessed in this convenience sample showed clinically elevated CPs in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt. Prior violent crime exposure significantly moderated the link between children’s manhunt exposure (but not bombing exposure) and child CPs. Manhunt exposure was related to increased CPs among children living in areas with high and medium (but not low) levels of prior violent crime. Children living in neighborhoods characterized by violent crime may be at particularly increased risk for developing CPs after violent manmade disasters. As most postdisaster child intervention efforts focus on posttraumatic stress, efforts are needed to develop programs targeting child CPs, particularly for youth dwelling in violent neighborhoods.