Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ShuttleKicker+: Designing Gamified Sonification to Augment the Physical Leisure Activity

This paper presents a design study of ShuttleKicker+, an interactive prototype that gives the sonic feedback in a specific physical leisure activity named shuttlecock- kick. This design is intended for a novel experience of collective shuttlecock-play by offering diverse gamified sound effects according to the progress of the activity. We conducted an experiment (n=12) to evaluate if our design leverages user experience in the activity. By comparing the obtained data, we find ShuttleKicker+ improved the user experience significantly in terms of the attractiveness and the novelty. Moreover, the study also suggested design implications for the future work.
Comparative plasticity of brain synapses in inbred mouse strains

SUMMARY One niche of experimental biology that has experienced considerable progress is the neurobiology of learning and memory. A key contributor to such progress has been the widespread use of transgenic and `knockout' mice to elucidate the mechanisms of identifiable phenotypes of learning and memory. Inbred mouse strains are needed to generate genetically modified mice. However, genetic variations between inbred strains can confound the interpretation of cellular neurophysiological phenotypes of mutant mice. It is known that altered physiological strength of synaptic transmission (`synaptic plasticity') can modify and regulate learning and memory. Characterization of the synaptic phenotypes of inbred mouse strains is needed to identify the most appropriate strains to use for generating mutant mouse models of memory function. More importantly, comparative electrophysiological analyses of inbred mice per se can also shed light on which forms of synaptic plasticity underlie particular types of learning and memory. Many such analyses have focused on synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus because of the critical roles of this brain structure in the formation and consolidation of long-term memories. Comparative electrophysiological data obtained from several inbred mouse strains are reviewed here to highlight the following key notions: (1) synaptic plasticity is influenced by the genetic backgrounds of inbred mice; (2) the plasticity of hippocampal synapses in inbred mice is `tuned' to particular temporal patterns of activity; (3) long-term potentiation, but not long-term depression, is a cellular correlate of behavioural memory performance in some strains; (4) synaptic phenotyping of inbred mouse strains can identify cellular models of memory impairment that can be used to elucidate mechanisms that may cause specific memory deficits.
How to obtain and use X-Ray projection microscopy in the SEM†

The primary electron beam of an SEM is used to generate a point source of x-rays, permitting x-ray microscopy within the SEM. The practical device described fits into the sample chamber of an SEM. Exact and reproducible adjustabilities of the sample support and the film holder allow two x-ray micrographs, e.g. stereo-micrographs, to be taken in one run without repressurization of the specimen chamber. By comparing x-ray and SEM micrographs of the same sample in the identical position it is possible to get additional information concerning surface morphology and inner structure of a specimen.
Phrase-based text representation for managing the Web documents

The World Wide Web has provided the facility of bringing information to the fingertips of its users. Since most of the documents available on the web are machine-readable but not machine-understandable, ensuring the retrieval of relevant information continues to be a difficult task. In the traditional text representation approach, high frequency keywords are used as term representatives of text. However, the main drawbacks in this approach are lack of direct relationship between word frequency and its importance, and the effect of the word ambiguities. Considering these shortcomings of the keyword-based method, this paper presents a phrase-based text representation approach that uses rule-based natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Extraction of key-phrases from text documents is based on a process of partial parsing. By making the indexing terms more meaningful through reduction of the ambiguity in words considered in isolation, improvement in retrieval effectiveness is sought to be achieved.
Data-Centric Multiobjective QoS-Aware Routing Protocol for Body Sensor Networks

In this paper, we address Quality-of-Service (QoS)-aware routing issue for Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) in delay and reliability domains. We propose a data-centric multiobjective QoS-Aware routing protocol, called DMQoS, which facilitates the system to achieve customized QoS services for each traffic category differentiated according to the generated data types. It uses modular design architecture wherein different units operate in coordination to provide multiple QoS services. Their operation exploits geographic locations and QoS performance of the neighbor nodes and implements a localized hop-by-hop routing. Moreover, the protocol ensures (almost) a homogeneous energy dissipation rate for all routing nodes in the network through a multiobjective Lexicographic Optimization-based geographic forwarding. We have performed extensive simulations of the proposed protocol, and the results show that DMQoS has significant performance improvements over several state-of-the-art approaches.
Double-row planar routing and permutation layout

Problems on layout for ICs (integrated circuits) and PCBs (printed circuit boards) are usually solved by heuristic approaches because they are complex. This article considers a special problem of double-row planar routing. The problem represents a generalization of the permutation layout problem to which estimation of bounds and some algorithms have been proposed recently. Our approach is based on the interval graphical representation introduced in the single-row single-layer PCB problem. The objective function for minimization is the breadth of the realization, i.e., the total number of vertical tracks required to realize a given net list specified in terms of terminals on two parallel rows. The problem is shown to be intractable in the sense of NPcompleteness; however, a polynomial-time heuristic algorithm is proposed. An upper bound for the breadth for an initial solution is given. Iterative improvement is next used. The algorithm has been programmed in FORTRAN and ran on the VAX 11/780 computer.
An on-demand weighted clustering algorithm (WCA) for ad hoc networks

We consider a multi-cluster, multi-hop packet radio network architecture for wireless systems which can dynamically adapt itself with the changing network configurations. Due to the dynamic nature of the mobile nodes, their association and dissociation to and from clusters perturb the stability of the system, and hence a reconfiguration of the system is unavoidable. At the same time it is vital to keep the topology stable as long as possible. The clusterheads, which form a dominant set in the network, decide the topology and are responsible for its stability. In this paper, we propose a weighted clustering algorithm (WCA) which takes into consideration the ideal degree, transmission power, mobility and battery power of a mobile node. We try to keep the number of nodes in a cluster around a pre-defined threshold to facilitate the optimal operation of the medium access control (MAC) protocol, Our clusterhead election procedure is not periodic as in earlier research, but adapts based on the dynamism of the nodes. This on-demand execution of WCA aims to maintain the stability of the network, thus lowering the computation and communication costs associated with it. Simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of WCA in terms of the number of clusterheads, reaffiliation frequency and dominant set updates, Results show that the WCA performs better than the existing algorithms and is also tunable to different types of ad hoc networks.
Mining Association Rules under Imprecision and Vagueness: towards a Possibilistic Approach

Fuzzy sets have already been used for association rules mining problem especially when data is quantitative and precise. Indeed, mining quantitative association rules among relational databases needs to partition the finite domain of quantitative attributes. However crisp partitions generate dilemma between support and confidence measures and produce undesirable threshold effects. Considering fuzzy partitions instead of crisp partitions have usually been proposed as a means to deal with these mentioned problems. Authors using fuzzy partitions have highlighted their interest and proposed the corresponding measures of support and confidence. However these approaches consider only precise and certain attribute values. Also, we propose in this paper to enlarge this framework and consider imprecise and uncertain quantitative data. The state of knowledge about such data is usually represented using a possibility distribution. For this purpose, a generalized possibilistic relational model is first proposed in this paper. Considering possibility distributions upon fuzzy intervals will leads us to introduce "gradual uncertainty rules". Measures of such rules are obtained by mapping fuzzy sets to crisp sets through alpha-cuts decomposition.
Human Memory Search as Initial-Visit Emitting Random Walk

Imagine a random walk that outputs a state only when visiting it for the first time. The observed output is therefore a repeat-censored version of the underlying walk, and consists of a permutation of the states or a prefix of it. We call this model initial-visit emitting random walk (INVITE). Prior work has shown that the random walks with such a repeat-censoring mechanism explain well human behavior in memory search tasks, which is of great interest in both the study of human cognition and various clinical applications. However, parameter estimation in INVITE is challenging, because naive likelihood computation by marginalizing over infinitely many hidden random walk trajectories is intractable. In this paper, we propose the first efficient maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) for INVITE by decomposing the censored output into a series of absorbing random walks. We also prove theoretical properties of the MLE including identifiability and consistency. We show that INVITE outperforms several existing methods on real-world human response data from memory search tasks.
Representation Independent Proximity and Similarity Search

Finding similar or strongly related entities in a graph database is a fundamental problem in data management and analytics with applications in similarity query processing, entity resolution, and pattern matching. Similarity search algorithms usually leverage the structural properties of the data graph to quantify the degree of similarity or relevance between entities. Nevertheless, the same information can be represented in many different structures and the structural properties observed over particular representations do not necessarily hold for alternative structures. Thus, these algorithms are effective on some representations and ineffective on others. We postulate that a similarity search algorithm should return essentially the same answers over different databases that represent the same information. We formally define the property of representation independence for similarity search algorithms as their robustness against transformations that modify the structure of databases and preserve their information content. We formalize two widespread groups of such transformations called {\it relationship reorganizing} and {\it entity rearranging} transformations. We show that current similarity search algorithms are not representation independent under these transformations and propose an algorithm called {\bf R-PathSim}, which is provably robust under these transformations. We perform an extensive empirical study on the representation independence of current similarity search algorithms under relationship reorganizing and entity rearranging transformations. Our empirical results suggest that current similarity search algorithms except for R-PathSim are highly sensitive to the data representation. These results also indicate that R-PathSim is as effective or more effective than other similarity search algorithms.
CYP5122A1, a Novel Cytochrome P450 Is Essential for Survival of Leishmania donovani

Background Cytochrome P450s (CYP450s) are hemoproteins catalysing diverse biochemical reactions important for metabolism of xenobiotics and synthesis of physiologically important compounds such as sterols. Therefore, they are functionally important for survival of invading pathogens. One such opportunistic pathogen Leishmania donovani causes visceral leishmaniasis worldwide, which is an important public health problem due to significant disease burden. The parasite genome database, Gene DB, annotates 3 CYP450s in Leishmania, however, the functional role of cytochrome P450 enzymes in Leishmania spp. remains elusive. Methodology/Principal Findings A CYP450-like gene cloned from Leishmania donovani was identified as a novel CYP450, the CYP5122A1. Upon co-localization with organelle specific markers, CYP5122A1 distribution was shown to be localized in the promastigote ER, mitochondria and the glycosomes. Replacement of one allele of CYP5122A1 with either neomycin or hygromycin gene by homologous recombination in Leishmania promastigotes induced substantial reduction of CYP5122A1 expression. These parasites showed impaired growth, lower mitochondrial Ca2+ and membrane potential resulting in low ATP generation. Also, these parasites were less infective in vitro and in vivo than their wild-type counterparts as assessed by incubation of Leishmania promastigotes with macrophages in vitro as well as through administration of parasites into hamsters. The HKOs were more susceptible to drugs like miltefosine and antimony, but showed reduced sensitivity to amphotericin B. Removal of two alleles of CYP5122A1 did not allow the parasites to survive. The mutant parasites showed 3.5 times lower ergosterol level as compared to the wild-type parasites when estimated by Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Complementation of CYP5122A1 through episomal expression of protein by using pXG-GFP+2 vector partially rescued CYP5122A1 expression and restored ergosterol levels by 1.8 times. Phenotype reversal included restored growth pattern and lesser drug susceptibility. Conclusions/Significance In summary, this study establishes CYP5122A1 as an important molecule linked to processes like cell growth, infection and ergosterol biosynthesis in Leishmania donovani.
Equation-based congestion control for unicast applications

This paper proposes a mechanism for equation-based congestion control for unicast traffic. Most best-effort traffic in the current Internet is well-served by the dominant transport protocol, TCP. However, traffic such as best-effort unicast streaming multimedia could find use for a TCP-friendly congestion control mechanism that refrains from reducing the sending rate in half in response to a single packet drop. With our mechanism, the sender explicitly adjusts its sending rate as a function of the measured rate of loss events, where a loss event consists of one or more packets dropped within a single round-trip time. We use both simulations and experiments over the Internet to explore performance.
Visual attention and novelty detection: experiments with automatic scale selection

We present experiments with an autonomous inspection robot, whose task was to highlight novel features in its environment using camera images. Experiments were conducted with two dierent attention mechanisms — saliency map and multiscale Harris detector — and two dierent novelty detection mechanisms — the Grow-WhenRequired neural network and incremental PCA. For both mechanisms we compared fixed-scale image encoding with automatically scaled image patches. Results show that using automatic scale selection provides a more ecient representation of the visual input space, but that performance is generally better using a fixed-scale image encoding.
Conserved DegP Protease in Gram-Positive Bacteria Is Essential for Thermal and Oxidative Tolerance and Full Virulence inStreptococcus pyogenes

ABSTRACT The DegP protease, a multifunctional chaperone and protease, has been shown to be essential for virulence in gram-negative pathogens such as Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium,Brucella abortus, Yersinia enterocolitica, andPseudomonas aeruginosa. The function of DegP in pathogenesis appears to be the degradation of damaged proteins that accumulate as a result of the initial host response to infection, which includes the release of reactive oxygen intermediates. Additionally, the DegP protease plays a major role in monitoring and maintaining theEscherichia coli periplasm and influences E. coli pilus biogenesis. We report here the identification of highly homologous enzymes in Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus gordonii, Streptococcus mutans, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterococcus faecalis. Moreover, the phenotype of an insertionally inactivated degP allele inS. pyogenes is similar to that reported for E. coli, with temperature sensitivity for growth and enhanced sensitivity to reactive oxygen intermediates. Virulence studies in a mouse model of streptococcal infection indicate that a functional DegP protease is required for full virulence. These results suggest DegP as an attractive broad-spectrum target for future anti-infective drug development.
Segmentation and dimensionality reduction

Sequence segmentation and dimensionality reduction have been used as methods for studying high-dimensional sequences — they both reduce the complexity of the representation of the original data. In this paper we study the interplay of these two techniques. We formulate the problem of segmenting a sequence while modeling it with a basis of small size, thus essentially reducing the dimension of the input sequence. We give three different algorithms for this problem: all combine existing methods for sequence segmentation and dimensionality reduction. For two of the proposed algorithms we prove guarantees for the quality of the solutions obtained. We describe experimental results on synthetic and real datasets, including data on exchange rates and genomic sequences. Our experiments show that the algorithms indeed discover underlying structure in the data, including both segmental structure and interdependencies between the dimensions.
On a Novel Way of Processing Data that Uses Fuzzy Sets for Later Use in Rule-Based Regression and Pattern Classification

This paper presents a novel method for simultaneously and automatically choosing the nonlinear structures of regressors or discriminant functions, as well as the number of terms to include in a rule-based regression model or pattern classifier. Variables are first partitioned into subsets each of which has a linguistic term (called a causal condition) associated with it; fuzzy sets are used to model the terms. Candidate interconnections (causal combinations) of either a term or its complement are formed, where the connecting word is AND which is modeled using the minimum operation. The data establishes which of the candidate causal combinations survive. A novel theoretical result leads to an exponential speedup in establishing this.
Trait compensation and cospecialization in a freshwater snail: size, shape and antipredator behaviour

We examined relationships between individual differences in antipredator behaviour and prey morphological characters (size, shape) that influence prey vulnerability. Behavioural responses of Physa gyrina to chemical cues associated with predation by crayfish Orconectes rusticus, were assayed in the laboratory for 6 days over a 13-day period. Snails displayed consistent, individually repeatable responses to the predation cues, including hiding (refuge use) and substratum avoidance (crawling to the water surface or out of the water). We assessed shell morphology using morphometric techniques that isolate geometrically independent components of size and shape variation corresponding to aperture width and apertural obstruction. Previous studies indicate that large size, narrow apertures and obstructed apertures reduce morphological vulnerability to the shell-entry predation tactics used by crayfish. In the present study, small, and thus more vulnerable, prey tended to show stronger antipredator behaviour than large prey (i.e. behavioural compensation for morphological vulnerability). In contrast, behavioural and shape-based defences were positively correlated; snails with narrow apertures showed strong antipredator responses. We refer to this 'double defence' against predators as cospecialization. With either compensation or cospecialization, suites of correlated behavioural or morphological traits must be studied in tandem to understand the adaptive value of prey responses to predators. Copyright 1999 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Subversion of the Immune Response by Rabies Virus

Rabies has affected mankind for several centuries and is one of the oldest known zoonoses. It is peculiar how little is known regarding the means by which rabies virus (RABV) evades the immune response and kills its host. This review investigates the complex interplay between RABV and the immune system, including the various means by which RABV evades, or advantageously utilizes, the host immune response in order to ensure successful replication and spread to another host. Different factors that influence immune responses—including age, sex, cerebral lateralization and temperature—are discussed, with specific reference to RABV and the effects on host morbidity and mortality. We also investigate the role of apoptosis and discuss whether it is a detrimental or beneficial mechanism of the host’s response to infection. The various RABV proteins and their roles in immune evasion are examined in depth with reference to important domains and the downstream effects of these interactions. Lastly, an overview of the means by which RABV evades important immune responses is provided. The research discussed in this review will be important in determining the roles of the immune response during RABV infections as well as to highlight important therapeutic target regions and potential strategies for rabies treatment.
Regional variation of lamb blood vessel responsiveness to vasoactive agents during fetal development.

SUMMARY Eight types of blood vessels were isolated from the fetal lamb and compared for their responsiveness to norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5HT), and acetylcholine (ACh). Fetuses ranged from 53 days to term in gestational age, and from 0.05 to 4 kg in weight. The maximal contractile responses to the three agents were unequal among the vessels in the immature, premature, or mature periods of gestation. The vessels in the mature period were of three classes, in increasing order of maximal response to NE per unit cross-sectional area of vascular wall: (1) thoracic aorta, ductus arteriosus, and pulmonary artery; (2) common carotid, ulnar, and mesenteric arteries; and (3) renal artery and saphenous vein. 5HT and ACh were less consistent than NE in the magnitude of their effect and often elicited dilation or failed to cause a response in the immature and premature vessels. The vessels also were categorized according to gestation-related changes in their maximal responses. The responses to NE and 5HT of all vessels, corrected for the cross-sectional area, either remained unchanged or increased at different rates. The ductal contractile response to ACh decreased toward term. The aorta, pulmonary artery, and ductus arteriosus were different from one another in their affinity to NE, although no change in the affinity occurred with progress in fetal maturation. It is concluded that quantitative and qualitative diversity in the response to NE, 5HT, and ACh exists among blood vessels from early prenatal life.