Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sputtered SiO2 as low acoustic impedance material for Bragg mirror fabrication in BAW resonators

In this paper we describe the procedure to sputter low acoustic impedance SiO2 films to be used as a low acoustic impedance layer in Bragg mirrors for BAW resonators. The composition and structure of the material are assessed through infrared absorption spectroscopy. The acoustic properties of the films (mass density and sound velocity) are assessed through X-ray reflectometry and picosecond acoustic spectroscopy. A second measurement of the sound velocity is achieved through the analysis of the longitudinal ¿/2 resonance that appears in these silicon oxide films when used as uppermost layer of an acoustic reflector placed under an AlN-based resonator.
Recode 2003

The RECODE database is a compilation of translational recoding events (programmed ribosomal frameshifting, codon redefinition and translational bypass). The database provides information about the genes utilizing these events for their expression, recoding sites, stimulatory sequences and other relevant information. The Database is freely available at http://recode.genetics. utah.edu/.
Human Detection Using Illumination Invariant Feature Extraction for Natural Scenes in Big Data Video Frames

This research proposes a reliable machine learning based computational solution for human detection. The proposed model is specifically applicable for illumination-variant natural scenes in big data video frames. In order to solve the illumination variation problem, a new feature set is formed by extracting features using histogram of gradients (HoG) and linear phase quantization (LPQ) techniques, which are combined to form a single feature-set to describe features in illumination variant natural scenes. Pre-processing is applied to reduce the search space and improve results, and as the humans are in constant motion in the frames, a search space pruning algorithm is applied to reduce the search space and improve detection accuracy. Non-maximal suppression is also applied for improved performance. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) based classifier is used for fast and accurate detection. Most of the current state-of-the-art detectors face numerous problems including false, missed, and inaccurate detections. The proposed detector model shows good performance, which was validated using relevant UCF and CDW test data-sets. In order to compare the performance of the proposed methodology with the state-of-the-art detectors, some selected detected frames were chosen considering their Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. These curves are plotted to compare and evaluate the results based on miss rates and true positives rates. The results show the proposed model achieves best results.
Virulence of Shigella flexneri Hybrids Expressing Escherichia coli Somatic Antigens

The genes controlling either Escherichia coli somatic antigen 8 or 25 were conjugally transferred to virulent Shigella flexneri 2a recipients to determine whether the aquisition of these antigens would affect the virulence of the resulting hybrid. A high proportion of such hybrids were found to be rough and hence were avirulent. Some smooth S. flexneri hybrids which replaced their native group antigens with E. coli factor 25 were still virulent in the animal models employed. All S. flexneri O-8 hybrids were uniformly avirulent. Our finding, that S. flexneri hybrids with the chemically divergent E. coli O-8 repeat unit are avirulent whereas some hybrids with the chemically related O-25 repeat unit retain virulence, suggests that the chemical composition and structure of the O side chain of somatic antigens may represent one determining factor for bacterial penetration of mucosal epithelial cells, the primary step in the pathogenesis of bacillary dysentery.
Retinoid X Receptor α Regulates the Expression of Glutathione S-transferase Genes and Modulates Acetaminophen-Glutathione Conjugation in Mouse Liver

Nuclear receptors, including constitutive androstane receptor, pregnane X receptor, and retinoid X receptor (RXR), modulate acetaminophen (APAP)-induced hepatotoxicity by regulating the expression of phase I cytochrome P450 (P450) genes. It has not been fully resolved, however, whether they regulate APAP detoxification at the phase II level. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the role of RXRα in phase II enzyme-mediated detoxification of APAP. Wild-type and hepatocyte-specific RXRα knockout mice were treated with a toxic dose of APAP (500 mg/kg i.p.). Mutant mice were protected from APAP-induced hepatotoxicity, even though basal liver glutathione (GSH) levels were significantly lower in mutant mice compared with those of wild-type mice. High-performance liquid chromatography analysis of APAP metabolites revealed significantly greater levels of APAP-GSH conjugates in livers and bile of mutant mice compared with those of wild-type mice. Furthermore, hepatocyte RXRα deficiency altered the gene expression profile of the glutathione S-transferase (Gst) family. Basal expression of 13 of 15 Gst genes studied was altered in hepatocyte-specific RXRα-deficient mice. This probably led to enhanced APAP-GSH conjugation and reduced accumulation of N-acetyl-p-benzoquinone imine, a toxic electrophile that is produced by biotransformation of APAP by phase I P450 enzymes. In conclusion, the data presented in this study define an RXRα-Gst regulatory network that controls APAP-GSH conjugation. This report reveals a potential novel strategy to enhance the detoxification of APAP or other xenobiotics by manipulating Gst activity through RXRα-mediated pathways.
A Framework for Automated Marmoset Vocalization Detection and Classification

This paper describes a novel framework for automated marmoset vocalization detection and classification from within long audio streams recorded in a noisy animal room, where multiple marmosets are housed. To overcome the challenge of limited manually annotated data, we implemented a data augmentation method using only a small number of labeled vocalizations. The feature sets chosen have the desirable property of capturing characteristics of the signals that are useful in both identifying and distinguishing marmoset vocalizations. Unlike many previous methods, feature extraction, call detection, and call classification in our system are completely automated. The system maintains a good performance of 20% equal error detection rate using data with high number of noise events and 15% of classification error. Performance can be further improved with additional labeled training data. Because this extensible system is capable of identifying both positive and negative welfare indicators, it provides a powerful framework for non-human primate welfare monitoring as well as behavior assessment.
Effect of Localized Muscle Fatigue Induced at Different Joints on Postural Control

Localized muscle fatigue has been demonstrated to compromise postural control, yet potential differential effects of the site of fatigue have not been determined. In this study, the effects of short-term induced fatigue in four muscle groups (shoulder, torso, knee, and ankle) on standing sway were determined. Sixteen young participants were required to perform fatiguing sub-maximal isotonic exercises. Postural sway was recorded using a force plate before and after the exercises. Fatigue induced at the ankle and torso was found to have largest adverse effects on postural control. These results have implications for the control of fatigue-related falls and the design of future experiments.
High-frequency membrane hydrophone

A membrane hydrophone with a 37-/spl mu/m diameter spot poled electrode has been fabricated on a 4-/spl mu/m-thick film of the piezoelectric copolymer, polyvinylidene fluoride trifluoroethylene (PVDF-TrFE), and initially characterized. The hydrophone has an effective spot size of less than 100 /spl mu/m, an on-membrane +7-dB gain buffer amplifier, and a -3-dB bandwidth of 150 MHz. The acoustic properties of the hydrophone were investigated with a transducer equivalent circuit model, the electric fringe fields due to poling were characterized with a finite difference electrostatic field model, and the effective spot diameters 2a/sub 3/ and 2a/sub 6/ were estimated. Measurements on the bandwidth, effective spot size, and sensitivity are presented. This hydrophone appears suitable for the characterization of both the frequency and spatial parameters of high-frequency transducers such as intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) catheter transducers operating in the 10-40 MHz range.
Atomic Force Microscopic Detection Enabling Multiplexed Low-Cycle-Number Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction for Biomarker Assays

Quantitative polymerase chain reaction is the current “golden standard” for quantification of nucleic acids; however, its utility is constrained by an inability to easily and reliably detect multiple targets in a single reaction. We have successfully overcome this problem with a novel combination of two widely used approaches: target-specific multiplex amplification with 15 cycles of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), followed by single-molecule detection of amplicons with atomic force microscopy (AFM). In test experiments comparing the relative expression of ten transcripts in two different human total RNA samples, we find good agreement between our single reaction, multiplexed PCR/AFM data, and data from 20 individual singleplex quantitative PCR reactions. This technique can be applied to virtually any analytical problem requiring sensitive measurement concentrations of multiple nucleic acid targets.
BFS Traversal on Multi-GPU Cluster

The High Performance Computing field is striving for the next computational step: exascale (1018 floating point operations per second). The first machine at this scale is expected at horizon 2020 and some French companies such as Atos/Bull are already working on it. Their supercomputer, Sequana, will deliver the expected computational power using either Xeon Phi or GPU accelerators. However these machines are built to produce an exaFLOPS, they are exclusively based on computation. The question is how they will behave when confronted with highly irregular problems such as graph theory ones. Graph algorithms are considered to be highly irregular with intensive communication and require high memory resources (but also I/O). In this study our goal is to provide an optimized implementation of the Graph500 benchmark to rank the Kepler GPU based supercomputers (a specific class of HPC architectures) in the Graph500 list.
Collaborative Learning and Recommender Systems

Recommender systems use ratings from users on items such as movies and music for the purpose of predicting the user preferences on items that have not been rated. Predictions are normally done by using the ratings of other users of the system, by learning the user preference as a function of the features of the items or by a combination of both these methods. In this paper, we pose the problem as one of collaboratively learning of preference functions by multiple users of the recommender system. We study several mixture models for this task. We show, via theoretical analyses and experiments on a movie rating database, how the models can be designed to overcome common problems in recommender systems including the new user problem, the recurring startup problem, the sparse rating problem and the scaling problem.
A conserved coronavirus epitope, critical in virus neutralization, mimicked by internal-image monoclonal anti-idiotypic antibodies

Monoclonal antibody (MAb) 6A.C3 neutralizes transmissible gastroenteritis coronavirus (TGEV) and is specific for a conserved epitope within subsite Ac of the spike (S) glycoprotein of TGEV. Six hybridomas secreting anti-idiotypic (Ab2) MAbs specific for MAb 6A.C3 (Ab1) have been selected. All six MAbs inhibited the binding of Ab1 to TGEV and specifically cross-linked MAb1-6A.C3. Four of these hybridomas secreted gamma-type anti-idiotypic MAbs. The other two Ab2s (MAbs 9A.G3 and 9C.E11) were recognized by TGEV-specific antiserum induced in two species. This binding was inhibited by viruses of the TGEV group but not by serologically unrelated coronaviruses. These results indicate that MAb2-9A.G3 and MAb2-9C.E11 mimic an antigenic determinant present on the TGEV surface, and they were classified as beta-type ("internal-image") MAbs. TGEV-binding Ab3 antiserum was induced in 100% of mice immunized with the two beta-type MAb2s and in 25 to 50% of mice immunized with gamma-type MAb2. Both beta- and gamma-type Ab2s induced neutralizing Ab3 antibodies in mice that were mainly directed to antigenic subsite Ac of the S protein.
Chromolaena odorata: A neglected weed with a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities (Review).

The study of wound‑healing plants has acquired an interdisciplinary nature with a systematic investigational approach. Several biochemicals are involved in the healing process of the body, including antioxidants and cytokines. Although several pharmaceutical preparations and formulations are available for wound care and management, it remains necessary to search for efficacious treatments, as certain current formulations cause adverse effects or lack efficacy. Phytochemicals or biomarkers from numerous plants suggest they have positive effects on different stages of the wound healing process via various mechanisms. Several herbal medicines have displayed marked activity in the management of wounds and various natural compounds have verified in vivo wound healing potential, and can, therefore, be considered as potential drugs of natural origin. Chromolaena odorata (L.) R.M. King and H. Robinson is considered a tropical weed. However, it exhibits anti‑inflammatory, antipyretic, analgesic, antimicrobial, cytotoxic and numerous other relevant medicinal properties on an appreciable scale, and is known in some parts of the world as a traditional medicine used to treat various ailments. To understand its specific role as nature's gift for healing wounds and its contribution to affordable healthcare, this plant must be scientifically assessed based on the available literature. This review aims to summarize the role of C. odorata and its biomarkers in the wound healing activities of biological systems, which are crucial to its potential future drug design, development and application for the treatment of wounds.
Hierarchical speaker clustering methods for the NIST i-vector Challenge

The process of manually labeling data is very expensive and sometimes infeasible due to privacy and security issues. This paper investigates the use of two algorithms for clustering unlabeled training i-vectors. This aims at improving speaker recognition performance by using state-of-the-art supervised techniques in the context of the NIST i-vector Machine Learning Challenge 2014. The first algorithm is the well-known Ward clustering that aims at optimizing an objective function across all clusters. The second one is a cascade clustering, which benefits from the latest advances in speaker modeling and session compensation techniques, and relies on both the cosine similarity and probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA). Furthermore, this paper investigates the multi-clustering fusion that opens the door for further improvements. The experimental results show that the use of the automatically labeled i-vectors to train supervised methods such as LDA, PLDA or linear logistic regression-based fusion, decreases the minimum decision cost function by up to 22%.
Sport and the Social Significance of Pleasure

This innovative text's critical examination foregrounds the prime reason why so many people participate in or watch sport – pleasure. Although there has been a "turn" to emotions and affect within academia over the last two decades, it has been somewhat remiss that pleasure, as an integral aspect of human life, has not received greater attention from sociologists of sport, exercise and physical education. This book addresses this issue via an unabashed examination of sport and the moving body via a "pleasure lens. " It provides new insights about the production of various identities, power relations and social issues, and the dialectical links between the socio-cultural and the body. Taking a wide-sweeping view of pleasure - dignified and debauched, distinguished and mundane – it examines topics as diverse as aging, health, fandom, running, extreme sports, biopolitics, consumerism, feminism, sex and sexuality. In drawing from diverse theoretical approaches and original empirical research, the text reveals the social and political significance of pleasure and provides a more rounded, dynamic and sensual account of sport.
Enhanced graph based approach for multi document summarization

Summarizing documents catering the needs of an user is tricky and challenging. Though there are varieties of approaches, graphical methods have been quite popularly investigated for summarizing document contents. This paper focus its attention on two graphical methods namely(LexRank (threshold) and LexRank (Continuous) proposed by Erkan and Radev. This paper proposes two enhancements to the above work investigated earlier by adding two more features to the existing one. Firstly, discounting approach was introduced to form a summary which ensures less redundancy among sentences. Secondly, position weight mechanism has been adopted to preserve importance based on the position they occupy. Intrinsic evaluation has been done with two data sets. Data set 1 has been created manually from the news paper documents collected by us for experiments. Data set 2 is from DUC 2002 data which is commercially available and distributed or accessed through National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST). We have shown that the based upon precision and recall parameters were comprehensively better as compared to the earlier algorithms.
Quantum Chemical Analysis of MHC-Peptide Interactions for Vaccine Design

The development of an adequate immune response against pathogens is mediated by molecular interactions between different cell types. Among them, binding of antigenic peptides to the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecule expressed on the membrane of antigen presenting cells (APCs), and their subsequent recognition by the T cell receptor have been demonstrated to be crucial for developing an adequate immune response. The present review compiles computational quantum chemistry studies about the electrostatic potential variations induced on the MHC binding region by peptide’s amino acids, carried out with the aim of describing MHC–peptide binding interactions. The global idea is that the electrostatic potential can be represented in terms of a series expansion (charge, dipole, quadrupole, hexadecapole, etc.) whose three first terms provide a good local approximation to the molecular electrostatic ‘landscape’ and to the variations induced on such landscape by targeted modifications on the residues of the antigenic peptide. Studies carried out in four MHC class II human allele molecules, which are the most representative alleles of their corresponding haplotypes, showed that each of these molecules have conserved as well as specific electrostatic characteristics, which can be correlated at a good extent with the peptide binding profiles reported experimentally for these molecules. The information provided by such characteristics would help increase our knowledge about antigen binding and presentation, and could ultimately contribute to developing a logical and rational methodology for designing chemically synthesized, multi-antigenic, subunit-based vaccines, through the application of quantum chemistry methods.
Designing problem-based curricula: The role of concept mapping in scaffolding learning for the health sciences

While the utility of concept mapping has been widely reported in primary and secondary educational contexts, its application in the health sciences in higher education has been less frequently noted. Two case studies of the application of concept mapping in undergraduate and postgraduate health sciences are detailed in this paper. The case in undergraduate dental education examines the role of concept mapping in supporting problem-based learning and explores how explicit induction into the principles and practices of CM has add-on benefits to learning in an inquiry-based curriculum. The case in postgraduate medical education describes the utility of concept mapping in an online inquiry-based module design. Specific attention is given to applications of CMapTools™ software to support the implementation of Novakian concept mapping in both inquiry-based curricular contexts. https://doi.org/10.34105/j.kmel. 2015.07. 008
Accurate Mobile Urban Mapping via Digital Map-Based SLAM

This paper presents accurate urban map generation using digital map-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Throughout this work, our main objective is generating a 3D and lane map aiming for sub-meter accuracy. In conventional mapping approaches, achieving extremely high accuracy was performed by either (i) exploiting costly airborne sensors or (ii) surveying with a static mapping system in a stationary platform. Mobile scanning systems recently have gathered popularity but are mostly limited by the availability of the Global Positioning System (GPS). We focus on the fact that the availability of GPS and urban structures are both sporadic but complementary. By modeling both GPS and digital map data as measurements and integrating them with other sensor measurements, we leverage SLAM for an accurate mobile mapping system. Our proposed algorithm generates an efficient graph SLAM and achieves a framework running in real-time and targeting sub-meter accuracy with a mobile platform. Integrated with the SLAM framework, we implement a motion-adaptive model for the Inverse Perspective Mapping (IPM). Using motion estimation derived from SLAM, the experimental results show that the proposed approaches provide stable bird’s-eye view images, even with significant motion during the drive. Our real-time map generation framework is validated via a long-distance urban test and evaluated at randomly sampled points using Real-Time Kinematic (RTK)-GPS.
Time course of attention for alcohol cues in abstinent alcoholic patients: the role of initial orienting.

OBJECTIVE Addicted people are characterized by enhanced attention for drug cues leading to drug use. However, there is little research on the component processes of attention in individuals with alcoholism. Here, we examine 2 distinct components of attention in abstinent alcohol-dependent individuals and social drinkers of alcohol, that is to say, the initial orienting to alcohol-related cues, and the maintenance of attention to them. METHOD The present study used an "alcohol" version of the visual probe detection task with alcohol-related or neutral pictures being presented briefly (i.e., 50 ms), to assess initial orienting, or longer (i.e., 500 and 1,250 ms), to assess the maintenance of attention. RESULTS Only alcoholic patients were faster in detecting a probe displayed immediately after pictures related to alcohol presented for 50 ms than in detecting the same probe replacing non-alcohol-related pictures. However, when pictures were presented for 500 ms, only social alcohol drinkers were faster in detecting the probe replacing alcohol scenes. At a stimulus of 1,250 ms duration, no group showed attentional bias toward alcohol cues. In addition, the severity of alcoholism measured by the total number of prior detoxification treatments was positively correlated with the attentional bias (or "attraction") for alcohol pictures presented for 50 ms. CONCLUSIONS These results show that, subsequent to initial visual orienting to alcohol-related cues, abstinent patients' attention was disengaged from these stimuli, thus suggesting a visual approach-disengagement attentional pattern. The influence of these findings on relapse was discussed.