Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genome Analysis of Environmental and Clinical P. aeruginosa Isolates from Sequence Type-1146

The genomes of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates of the new sequence type ST-1146, three environmental (P37, P47 and P49) and one clinical (SD9) isolates, with differences in their antibiotic susceptibility profiles have been sequenced and analysed. The genomes were mapped against P. aeruginosa PAO1-UW and UCBPP-PA14. The allelic profiles showed that the highest number of differences were in “Related to phage, transposon or plasmid” and “Secreted factors” categories. The clinical isolate showed a number of exclusive alleles greater than that for the environmental isolates. The phage Pf1 region in isolate SD9 accumulated the highest number of nucleotide substitutions. The ORF analysis of the four genomes assembled de novo indicated that the number of isolate-specific genes was higher in isolate SD9 (132 genes) than in isolates P37 (24 genes), P47 (16 genes) and P49 (21 genes). CRISPR elements were found in all isolates and SD9 showed differences in the spacer region. Genes related to bacteriophages F116 and H66 were found only in isolate SD9. Genome comparisons indicated that the isolates of ST-1146 are close related, and most genes implicated in pathogenicity are highly conserved, suggesting a genetic potential for infectivity in the environmental isolates similar to the clinical one. Phage-related genes are responsible of the main differences among the genomes of ST-1146 isolates. The role of bacteriophages has to be considered in the adaptation processes of isolates to the host and in microevolution studies.
How should we deal with misattributed paternity? A survey of lay public attitudes

ABSTRACT Background: Increasing use of genetic technologies in clinical and research settings increases the potential for misattributed paternity to be identified. Yet existing guidance from the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the Institute of Medicine (among others) offers contradictory advice. Genetic health professionals are thus likely to vary in their practice when misattributed paternity is identified, and empirical investigation into the disclosure of misattributed paternity is scarce. Given the relevance of this ethical dilemma and its significance to users of genetic services, this study aimed to investigate the attitudes of lay people with regard to the disclosure of misattributed paternity. Methods: An online questionnaire was hosted and advertised through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to 200 United States residents aged 18 years or older. Respondents were asked to rate (via a Likert scale) the ethical permissibility of possible actions a clinician may carry out when misattributed paternity is identified. Data analysis consisted of preliminary descriptive analysis, chi-squared analysis, and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: There was no clear majority support for many of the options surveyed across different contexts, with only six out of ten scenarios displaying some general consensus. Men were more likely to support scenarios where the father is informed of paternity. Importantly, participants' views varied according to whether the desires of the father were previously expressed, suggesting that perceptions of the permissibility of a clinician's action will depend on the interests of all parties affected. Conclusions: This sample of the general public showed attitudes that were, at least to some degree, at variance with some professional guidelines. We give arguments for why at least some of these attitudes might be justified. We argue that case-specific judgments should be made and outline some of the relevant ethical considerations. While general guidelines ought to be considered, context-specific moral judgments cannot be avoided.
Ferroelectric Properties of Bismuth Titanate Ceramics by Tb3+,4+/V5+ Substitution

The Ferroelectric properties and Microstructures of Bi3.3Tb0. 6Ti3O12 (BTT) and Bi3.3Tb0. 6Ti2.97V0. 03O12 (BTTV) ceramics prepared at 1100°C by a conventional ceramic technique were investigated. These ceramics possess random-oriented polycrystalline structure. The remanent polarization (Pr) and coercive field (Ec) of the BTT ceramics are 23µC/cm2 and 80kV/cm, respectively. Furthermore, V substitution improves the Pr value of the BTTV ceramics up to 35μC/cm2, which is larger than that of the BTT ceramics. Therefore, co-sustitution of Tb and V in Bi4Ti3O12 (BIT) ceramic is effective for the improvement of its ferroelectricity.
An Ontology-Based Hybrid Approach to Activity Modeling for Smart Homes

Activity models play a critical role for activity recognition and assistance in ambient assisted living. Existing approaches to activity modeling suffer from a number of problems, e.g., cold-start, model reusability, and incompleteness. In an effort to address these problems, we introduce an ontology-based hybrid approach to activity modeling that combines domain knowledge based model specification and data-driven model learning. Central to the approach is an iterative process that begins with “seed” activity models created by ontological engineering. The “seed” models are deployed, and subsequently evolved through incremental activity discovery and model update. While our previous work has detailed ontological activity modeling and activity recognition, this paper focuses on the systematic hybrid approach and associated methods and inference rules for learning new activities and user activity profiles. The approach has been implemented in a feature-rich assistive living system. Analysis of the experiments conducted has been undertaken in an effort to test and evaluate the activity learning algorithms and associated mechanisms.
Progression of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke multimorbidity in middle-aged women: A 20-year cohort study

Background The prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke multimorbidity (co-occurrence of two or three of these conditions) has increased rapidly. Little is known about how the three conditions progress from one to another sequentially through the life course. We aimed to delineate this progression in middle-aged women and to determine the roles of common risk factors in the accumulation of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke multimorbidity. Methods and findings We used data from 13,714 women aged 45–50 years without a history of any of the three conditions. They were participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), enrolled in 1996, and surveyed approximately every 3 years to 2016. We characterized the longitudinal progression of the three conditions and multimorbidity. We estimated the accumulation of multimorbidity over 20 years of follow-up and investigated their association with both baseline and time-varying predictors (sociodemographic factors, lifestyle factors, and other chronic conditions). Over 20 years, 2,511 (18.3%) of the women progressed to at least one condition, of whom 1,420 (56.6%) had diabetes, 1,277 (50.9%) had heart disease, and 308 (12.3%) had stroke; 423 (16.8%) had two or three of these conditions. Over a 3-year period, the age-adjusted odds of two or more conditions was approximately twice that of developing one new condition compared to women who did not develop any new conditions. For example, the odds for developing one new condition between Surveys 7 and 8 were 2.29 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.93–2.72), whereas the odds for developing two or more conditions was 6.51 (95% CI, 3.95–10.75). The onset of stroke was more strongly associated with the progression to the other conditions (i.e., 23.4% [95% CI, 16.3%–32.2%] of women after first onset of stroke progressed to other conditions, whereas the percentages for diabetes and heart disease were 9.9% [95% CI, 7.9%–12.4%] and 11.4% [95% CI, 9.1%–14.4%], respectively). Being separated, divorced, or widowed; being born outside Australia; having difficulty managing on their available income; being overweight or obese; having hypertension; being physically inactive; being a current smoker; and having prior chronic conditions (i.e., mental disorders, asthma, cancer, osteoporosis, and arthritis) were significantly associated with increased odds of accumulation of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke multimorbidity. The main limitations of this study were the use of self-reported data and the low number of events. Conclusions Stroke was associated with increased risk of progression to diabetes or heart disease. Social inequality, obesity, hypertension, physical inactivity, smoking, or having other chronic conditions were also significantly associated with increased odds of accumulating multimorbidity. Our findings highlight the importance of awareness of the role of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke multimorbidity among middle-aged women for clinicians and health-promotion agencies.
ROBOT NAVIGATION IN VERY COMPLEX, DENSE, AND CLUTTERED INDOOR/OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTS

This paper addresses the reactive collision-free motion generation for in- door/outdoor robots which have geometric, kinematic, and dynamic constraints. Most of the current mobile robots are designed exhibiting some of these constraints: (1) typically they are circular, square or rectangular robots and (2) they are differential-driven robots, car-like robots, tri-cycle robots, etc. On the other hand, many navigation methods do not take into account the specific shape or robot's kinematics and dynamics. In this case, these methods relax some constraints or they rely on approximations. It is clear that this is a gap in research that needs to be closed, by devising mechanisms to generalize navigation methods to be applied over a wide range of mobile platforms. This paper focuses on the generalization of a reactive method - Nearness Diagram Navigation - to work over a fleet of geometric, kinematic, and dynamic constrained indoor/outdoor mobile robots. This framework has been extensively tested using four indoor and one outdoor robots equipped with different sensors. To validate the method, we report experiments in unknown, non- predictable, unstructured, cluttered, dense and complex environments.
Different modes of APC/C activation control growth and neuron-glia interaction in the developing Drosophila eye

The development of the nervous system requires tight control of cell division, fate specification and migration. The anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that affects different steps of cell cycle progression, as well as having postmitotic functions in nervous system development. It can therefore link different developmental stages in one tissue. The two adaptor proteins, Fizzy/Cdc20 and Fizzy-related/Cdh1, confer APC/C substrate specificity. Here, we show that two distinct modes of APC/C function act during Drosophila eye development. Fizzy/Cdc20 controls the early growth of the eye disc anlage and the concomitant entry of glial cells onto the disc. In contrast, fzr/cdh1 acts during neuronal patterning and photoreceptor axon growth, and subsequently affects neuron-glia interaction. To further address the postmitotic role of Fzr/Cdh1 in controlling neuron-glia interaction, we identified a series of novel APC/C candidate substrates. Four of our candidate genes are required for fzr/cdh1-dependent neuron-glia interaction, including the dynein light chain Dlc90F. Taken together, our data show how different modes of APC/C activation can couple early growth and neuron-glia interaction during eye disc development. Summary: APC/C has distinct roles during Drosophila eye development, linking cell division to axon-glia interaction; several genes act downstream of Fzr/Cdh1 to fulfill its manifold functions during neural development.
The effect of electronic word of mouth communication and brand image on purchase intention: A case of consumer electronics in Haripur, Pakistan

Article history: Received January 5, 2016 Received in revised format April 15, 2016 Accepted May 15, 2016 Available online May 16, 2016 This study aims to focus on the purchase intention of the consumer specifically the millennial age group with respect to the effect of Electronic word of mouth communication and brand image. The study is performed among the students of the University of Haripur. Study reveals that the effect of Electronic word of mouth and brand image for the purchase of consumer electronics products have positively correlated and the effect is significant, which means that the Word of mouth communication can positively respond to the purchase of the said products in case when the products are branded and have certain image in the mind of consumer. © 2016 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
An efficient concordant integrative analysis of multiple large-scale two-sample expression data sets

Motivation We have proposed a mixture model based approach to the concordant integrative analysis of multiple large-scale two-sample expression datasets. Since the mixture model is based on the transformed differential expression test P-values (z-scores), it is generally applicable to the expression data generated by either microarray or RNA-seq platforms. The mixture model is simple with three normal distribution components for each dataset to represent down-regulation, up-regulation and no differential expression. However, when the number of datasets increases, the model parameter space increases exponentially due to the component combination from different datasets. Results In this study, motivated by the well-known generalized estimating equations (GEEs) for longitudinal data analysis, we focus on the concordant components and assume that the proportions of non-concordant components follow a special structure. We discuss the exchangeable, multiset coefficient and autoregressive structures for model reduction, and their related expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms. Then, the parameter space is linear with the number of datasets. In our previous study, we have applied the general mixture model to three microarray datasets for lung cancer studies. We show that more gene sets (or pathways) can be detected by the reduced mixture model with the exchangeable structure. Furthermore, we show that more genes can also be detected by the reduced model. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data have been increasingly collected. The advantage of incorporating the concordance feature has also been clearly demonstrated based on TCGA RNA sequencing data for studying two closely related types of cancer. Availability and Implementation Additional results are included in a supplemental file. Computer program R-functions are freely available at http://home.gwu.edu/∼ylai/research/Concordance. Contact ylai@gwu.edu. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Relationship between Insulin Levels and Nonpsychotic Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives To explore the relationship between insulin levels and nonpsychotic dementia. Methods Six electronic databases (PubMed, Cochrane, SCI, CNKI, VIP, and Wanfang) were searched from January 1, 2007, to March 1, 2017. Experimental or observational studies that enrolled people with nonpsychotic dementia or abnormal insulin levels in which insulin levels or MMSE scores (events in nonpsychotic dementia) were the outcome measures. Random-effects models were chosen for this meta-analysis. Sample size, mean, s.d. , and events were primarily used to generate effect sizes (with the PRIMA registration number CRD42017069860). Results 50 articles met the final inclusion criteria. Insulin levels in cerebrospinal fluid were lower (Hedges' g = 1.196, 95% CI = 0.238 to 2.514, and P = 0.014), while the levels in peripheral blood were higher in nonpsychotic dementia patients (Hedges' g = 0.853 and 95% CI = 0.579 to 1.127), and MMSE scores were significantly lower in the high insulin group than in the healthy control group (Hedges' g = 0.334, 95% CI = 0.249 to 0.419, and P = 0.000). Conclusions Our comprehensive results indicate that blood insulin levels may increase in patients with nonpsychotic dementia.
Single-Stage Vernier Time-to-Digital Converter with Sub-Gate Delay Time Resolution

This paperpresents a single-stage Vernier Time-to-Digital Converter (VTDC) that utilizes the dynamic-logic phase detector. The zero dead-zone characteristic of this phase detector allows for the single-stage VTDC to deliver sub-gate delay time resolution. The single-stage VTDC has been designed in 0. 13μm CMOS technology. The simulation results demonstrate a linear input-output characteristic for input dynamic range from 0 to 1.6ns with a time resolution of 25ps.
Preparation and Evaluation of Certain Hydrophilic Drug- Loaded Microspheres

Microencapsulation is a useful method for prolongin g drug release from dosage forms and reducing adverse effects. Recently, dosage forms that can precisely control t he release rates and target drugs to a specific bod y site have made an enormous impact in the formulation and development of novel drug delivery systems. Microspheres are de fined as spherical polymeric particles. These microspheres c onstitute an important part of these drug delivery systems, by the virtue of their small and uniform size and efficient carri er characteristics. It would, therefore, be advanta geous to have means for providing an intimate contact of the drug delivery system with the absorbing membranes. This preliminary study shows that optimum polymer concentration, crosslinker concentration and stirring speed are 3%, 7.5% and 400 rpm r espectively, the optimum conditions to prepare microspheres by ionotropic gelation with high drug entrapment efficiency are: drug concentration 1.5% w/v, curing time 15 minutes and the concentration of another poly anionic polymer ( sodium carboxymethyl cellulose) 0.3% w/v. In phosphate buffer (pH 7.4) the rapid swelling and erosion of the microspheres have greatly contributed in facilitating the drug releas e rate. Different mathematical models of drug relea se were obtained for the microspheres indicating that the drug release from the microspheres is controlled by first order kinet ics.
Fragment-based real-time object tracking: A sparse representation approach

Real-time object tracking is a critical task in many computer vision applications. Achieving rapid and robust tracking while handling changes in object pose and size, varying illumination and partial occlusion, is a challenging task given the limited amount of computational resources. In this paper we propose a real-time object tracker in l1 framework addressing these issues. In the proposed approach, dictionaries containing templates of overlapping object fragments are created. The candidate fragments are sparsely represented in the dictionary fragment space by solving the l1 regularized least squares problem. The non zero coefficients indicate the relative motion between the target and candidate fragments along with a fidelity measure. The final object motion is obtained by fusing the reliable motion information. The dictionary is updated based on the object likelihood map. The proposed tracking algorithm is tested on various challenging videos and found to outperform earlier approach.
Polyozellus multiplex (Thelephorales) is a species complex containing four new species

ABSTRACT Geographic, morphological, and internal transcribed spacer (ITS)-based molecular review of collections identified as Polyozellus multiplex revealed that it is a complex of five phylogenetic species. Average spore size—either less or more than 7 × 6 µm—splits the complex into a small-spored group of two (P. multiplex and P. atrolazulinus) and a large-spored group of three (P. mariae, P. marymargaretae, and P. purpureoniger). Basidiocarps of the small-spored species are somewhat smaller than the large-spored ones, are various shades of blue, dark all the way to black, with brownish tomentum only in early growth, have dark context, and have pilei that tend to flare out at the edge. The large-spored species produce somewhat larger sporocarps, have light or lighter context than the pileipelis, and usually retain some brown on the mature pileipellis, the edge of which tends to curl like a cabbage leaf. All will darken or blacken with age. The species of the P. multiplex complex are distributed in the northern coniferous region, with the exception of Europe. One species (P. atrolazulinus) is known from three regions, eastern Asia, western North America, and northeastern North America. Two species are known from two regions: P. purpureoniger in eastern Asia and northwestern North America and P. multiplex in eastern Asia and eastern North America. Two species have been documented in one region only: P. mariae in northeastern North America and P. marymargaretae in western North America. A combination of location, macromorphology, and spore size will usually differentiate the species of the complex.
Algae mediated synthesis of cadmium sulphide nanoparticles and their application in bioremediation

The present work is a study on the biological synthesis of cadmium sulphide (CdS) nanoparticles using blue-green algae that is popularly used as a food supplement. This synthesis is unique in the sense that no external sulphur precursor is required, the CdS nanoparticles are synthesized in situ in the algal medium. The CdS nanoparticles thus synthesized are photoluminescent and can act as highly efficient photocatalysts for degradation of the dye pollutant malachite green. Thus the CdS nanoparticles synthesized in situ in the algae conform to the desired criteria of waste water treatment i.e. biosorption of the pollutant and its subsequent degradation. The novelty of this work also lies in its potential for use in bioremediation by conversion of the toxic Cd(II) ion to less toxic CdS nanoparticles within the algal framework.
Task Assignment on Multi-Skill Oriented Spatial Crowdsourcing

With the rapid development of mobile devices and crowdsourcing platforms, the spatial crowdsourcing has attracted much attention from the database community. Specifically, the spatial crowdsourcing refers to sending location-based requests to workers, based on their current positions. In this paper, we consider a spatial crowdsourcing scenario, in which each worker has a set of qualified skills, whereas each spatial task (e.g., repairing a house, decorating a room, and performing entertainment shows for a ceremony) is time-constrained, under the budget constraint, and required a set of skills. Under this scenario, we will study an important problem, namely <italic>multi-skill spatial crowdsourcing</italic> (MS-SC), which finds an optimal worker-and-task assignment strategy, such that skills between workers and tasks match with each other, and workers’ benefits are maximized under the budget constraint. We prove that the MS-SC problem is NP-hard and intractable. Therefore, we propose three effective heuristic approaches, including greedy, <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="chen-ieq1-2550041.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>-divide-and-conquer and cost-model-based adaptive algorithms to get worker-and-task assignments. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our MS-SC processing approaches on both real and synthetic data sets.