Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Context Aware Sales Prediction : experimental evaluation

Sales prediction is a complex task because of large number of factors affecting the demand. We present a context aware sales prediction approach, which selects the base predictor depending on the structural properties of the historical sales. First, we learn how to categorize the sales time series offline into “predictable” and “non-predictable” based on the structural features of the series. Next, for the products identified as “predictable” we apply an intelligent base predictor, while for “non-predictable” we use a moving average. In the experimental part we show that prediction accuracy can be improved using this strategy, as compared to the base line predictor as well as an ensemble of predictors.
The Influence of Ethnic Identity Status and Gender-Role Identity on Social Anxiety and Avoidance in Latina Adolescents.

The objective of this study was to investigate social avoidance in Latina adolescents as a function of their ethnic identity status and gender role identity. Seventy-two Latina college freshmen completed measures of social anxiety and avoidance, gender role identity, and ethnic identity. Main effects of gender role identity and ethnic identity status emerged. Participants with androgynous gender role identities scored lower on both social anxiety and social avoidance than participants with undifferentiated, feminine, or masculine gender role identities. Also, achieved ethnic identity status and exploration ethnic identity status individuals scored lower on social anxiety and avoidance than their unexamined status counterparts. Findings are explained in terms of gender role identity and ethnic identity development as probable protective factors during adolescence. (Contains 24 references.) (Author/SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. The Influence of Ethnic Identity Status and Gender-Role Identity on Social Anxiety and Avoidance in Latina Adolescents Brenda Britsch Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory William D. Wakefield California State University, Northridge Paper presented at the American Educational April San Diego,
Risk factors for mortality in diabetic peritoneal dialysis patients.

BACKGROUND It is well established that the survival rate of diabetic end-stage renal disease patients remains the lowest among all primary diagnoses probably because of higher prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) associated with diabetes. This study was designed to evaluate the impact of CVD and other risk factors individually or in combination on mortality in diabetic peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. METHODS In a retrospective study, 213 incident PD patients [118 had diabetes mellitus (DM), 94 were female, mean age 55 ± 13 years] underwent initial assessment of nutritional status, comorbid disease (CMD) survey, residual renal function (RRF), dialysis adequacy and peritoneal transport characteristics at a mean of 9 days (range, 3-24 days) after start of PD and were then followed for 30 ± 24 months (range, 3-115 months). Of 213 patients, 154 patients were reassessed after a mean of 11 months (range, 6-19 months). Nutritional status was assessed by subjective global assessment and other methods. CMD was graded by Davies index and included DM, CVD, liver disease and respiratory disease. RESULTS On Kaplan-Meier analysis, patient survival was significantly lower in female DM patients compared to other groups. The 3-year patient survival rate was 46, 70, 82 and 83% for female DM, male DM, male non-DM and female non-DM, respectively (P = 0.003). On Cox proportional hazards multivariate analysis including all patients, old age, presence of CVD or protein-energy wasting (PEW), low serum albumin concentration and low RRF were independent predictors of mortality but not DM per se or female gender. In DM patients, old age, female gender, presence of CVD or PEW and low RRF were independent predictors of mortality while old age was the only risk factor in non-DM patients. After adjustment for age, gender and RRF, DM patients with both CVD and PEW had a risk of mortality that was 3.3 times that of DM patients without CVD and PEW. In DM patients without CVD and PEW, patient survival was not different from that of non-DM patients without CVD and PEW. CONCLUSIONS DM per se was not a risk factor for mortality in this group of PD patients. Instead, the higher mortality rate in diabetic PD patients, in particular among female patients, was mainly attributable to concurrent morbidity such as CVD and PEW, together with low RRF.
Expanding the Chemical Cross-Linking Toolbox by the Use of Multiple Proteases and Enrichment by Size Exclusion Chromatography

Chemical cross-linking in combination with mass spectrometric analysis offers the potential to obtain low-resolution structural information from proteins and protein complexes. Identification of peptides connected by a cross-link provides direct evidence for the physical interaction of amino acid side chains, information that can be used for computational modeling purposes. Despite impressive advances that were made in recent years, the number of experimentally observed cross-links still falls below the number of possible contacts of cross-linkable side chains within the span of the cross-linker. Here, we propose two complementary experimental strategies to expand cross-linking data sets. First, enrichment of cross-linked peptides by size exclusion chromatography selects cross-linked peptides based on their higher molecular mass, thereby depleting the majority of unmodified peptides present in proteolytic digests of cross-linked samples. Second, we demonstrate that the use of proteases in addition to trypsin, such as Asp-N, can additionally boost the number of observable cross-linking sites. The benefits of both SEC enrichment and multiprotease digests are demonstrated on a set of model proteins and the improved workflow is applied to the characterization of the 20S proteasome from rabbit and Schizosaccharomyces pombe.
Improving Writing and Problem Solving Skills of Middle School Students.

A program was implemented for increasing writing and problem solving skills to increase educational achievement. The targeted populations consisted of sixth and seventh grade students from two growing middle class suburban communities located in the Midwest. The problems of inadequate writing and problem solving skills were documented through data which included parent surveys, teacher observations, and assessments which indicate academic performance. Analysis of probable cause data revealed that teachers reported a lack of emphasis on various learning styles in instruction and assessment methods. Writing and problem solving skills appeared to be affected by insufficient motivation, relevance, and the teaching of basic content in isolation. A review of solution strategies suggested by others, combined with an analysis of the problem setting, resulted in the selection of an intervention consisting of four components: developing materials that foster student interest, learning activities that address various learning styles, curriculum units reflecting these decisions, and creating and implementing relevant assessments. The content focus was on problem solving and writing skills. Following the intervention, students' problem solving and writing skills increased as well as their self-confidence and motivation. These resulted from a combination of material, curricular, and assessment modifications. (Contains 2 figures, 7 tables of data, and 34 references; appendixes contain student surveys about writing and problem solving, teacher interviews about student writing and problem solving, a language arts pretest, the language arts rubric, a mathematics pretest, a language arts posttest, and a mathematics posttest.) (Author/CR) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** N 00 0 eT A 14 IMPROVING WRITING AND PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS OF MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS Margaret Mills Patricia Stevens An Action Research Project Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Teaching and Leadership U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement iiEDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Saint Xavier University & IRUSkylight Held-Based Masters Program Chicago, Illinois May, 1998 C) PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 1(.{. k Lfar TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This project was approved by Faci tator dir acilitator an, School of Editrtion
Developing collaborative peer-to-peer applications on mobile devices

Mobile computing has experienced a rapid growth and there are nowadays many applications being developed. According to the literature, many of these applications are designed for collaborative work or learning and share the same requirements: they implement a peer-to-peer communication architecture, there are subgroups inside the group of participants which have to work together and coordinate with the rest of the groups and they need to implement a proper human-computer interaction paradigm since they have a reduced area to interact with the application's interface. It is then quite natural to think about the development of a framework supporting this kind of applications. In this paper we present such a framework and an example of its application.
Grape skin improves antioxidant capacity in rats fed a high fat diet

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary grape skin on lipid peroxidation and antioxidant defense system in rats fed high fat diet. The Sprague-Dawley rats were fed either control (5% fat) diet or high fat (25% fat) diet which was based on AIN-93 diet for 2 weeks, and then they were grouped as control group (C), control + 5% grape skin group (CS), high-fat group (HF), high fat + 5% grape skin group (HFS) with 10 rats each and fed corresponding diets for 4 weeks. The hepatic thiobarbituric acid reacting substances (TBARS) were increased in high fat group as compared with control group, but reduced by grape skin. The serum total antioxidant status, and activities of hepatic catalase and superoxide dismutase, xanthine oxidase and glucose-6-phosphatase were increased by supplementation of grape skin. Glutathione peroxidase activity was significantly higher in CS group than in C group. Grape skin feeding tended to increase the concentration of total glutathione, especially in control group. The ratio of reduced glutathione to oxidized glutathione was lower in high fat groups than in control groups. The ratio was increased by dietary supplementation of grape skin in control group. These results suggest that dietary supplementation of grape skin would be effective on protection of oxidative damage by lipid peroxidation through improvement of antioxidant defense system in rats fed high fat diet as well as rats with low fat diet.
Automated Image Analysis of Fluorescence Microscopic Images to Identify Protein-protein Interactions

The identification of protein-protein interactions along with their spatial and temporal localization is vital data for assigning functional information to proteins. Historically, these data sets obtained from fluorescence microscopy, have been analyzed manually, a process that is both time consuming and tedious. The development of an automated system that can measure the location dynamics of the interaction between two proteins inside a live cell is a high priority. This paper describes an automated image analysis system used to identify the interactions between two proteins of interest fused to either GFP or DIV IVA, a bacterial cell division protein that localizes to the cell poles. Upon the induction of DIV IVA fusion protein expression, the GFP-fusion protein will be recruited to the cell poles if a positive interaction occurs. Advanced image processing and feature extraction algorithms are discussed in detail and a statistical feature set used to quantify the image-based information is developed
An enolate-mediated organocatalytic azide-ketone [3+2]-cycloaddition reaction: regioselective high-yielding synthesis of fully decorated 1,2,3-triazoles.

An enolate-mediated organocatalytic azide-ketone [3+2]-cycloaddition (OrgAKC) reaction of a variety of enolizable arylacetones and deoxybenzoins with aryl azides was developed for the synthesis of fully decorated 1,4-diaryl-5-methyl(alkyl)-1,2,3-triazoles in excellent yields with high regioselectivity at 25 °C for 0.5-6 h. This reaction has an excellent outcome with reference to reaction rate, yield, regioselectivity, operation simplicity, and availability of substrates and catalyst. This reaction has advantages over the previously known metal-mediated reactions.
Comparative analysis of musical expression based on statistical modeling that associates expressive features and performance directions

Performance expression of Western music is characterized by complex phenomena. Performers themselves find it difficult to objectively describe the causality of score directions and instrument operation. Thus, in this study, we propose a method that can help identify the factors contributing to the expression of performances. Specifically, we use a modeling method to describe the relationship between an expression and the factors causing it by associating the feature quantities of an expression with a combination of simple directions retrieved from the score. We then systematically structure contributory factors by classifying the expressive tendencies of these models using criteria related to score directions. The method also defines the degrees to which these directions contribute to performance expressions. In addition, it allows for the application of standard multivariate analysis techniques to comparative analyses of the relationship between expressions and directions in performances. The findings contribute to the objective understanding of factors emphasized by performers to control expressions in their performances and can be extended to future research with diverse conditions.
Analysis of Genome Sequences from Plant Pathogenic Rhodococcus Reveals Genetic Novelties in Virulence Loci

Members of Gram-positive Actinobacteria cause economically important diseases to plants. Within the Rhodococcus genus, some members can cause growth deformities and persist as pathogens on a wide range of host plants. The current model predicts that phytopathogenic isolates require a cluster of three loci present on a linear plasmid, with the fas operon central to virulence. The Fas proteins synthesize, modify, and activate a mixture of growth regulating cytokinins, which cause a hormonal imbalance in plants, resulting in abnormal growth. We sequenced and compared the genomes of 20 isolates of Rhodococcus to gain insights into the mechanisms and evolution of virulence in these bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer was identified as critical but limited in the scale of virulence evolution, as few loci are conserved and exclusive to phytopathogenic isolates. Although the fas operon is present in most phytopathogenic isolates, it is absent from phytopathogenic isolate A21d2. Instead, this isolate has a horizontally acquired gene chimera that encodes a novel fusion protein with isopentyltransferase and phosphoribohydrolase domains, predicted to be capable of catalyzing and activating cytokinins, respectively. Cytokinin profiling of the archetypal D188 isolate revealed only one activate cytokinin type that was specifically synthesized in a fas-dependent manner. These results suggest that only the isopentenyladenine cytokinin type is synthesized and necessary for Rhodococcus phytopathogenicity, which is not consistent with the extant model stating that a mixture of cytokinins is necessary for Rhodococcus to cause leafy gall symptoms. In all, data indicate that only four horizontally acquired functions are sufficient to confer the trait of phytopathogenicity to members of the genetically diverse clade of Rhodococcus.
Inserting G1 Discontinuities into Free-form Features for Aesthetic Design

Free form shapes are often used to fulfil both aesthetic and design constraints applied to parametric models currently adopted in CAD environments. Up to now, designers and engineers have mainly access either to indirect manipulations of free form surfaces using their control network or to low-level deformation functions at prescribed points and along a line on a surface. Based on a study of designers’ activity, a free form deformation feature approach is proposed to create CAD tools that better fit their way of working. The proposed category of features aims at enforcing the visual effect of the so-called character lines, extensively used by designers to specify the shape of an object. For this reason, in the proposed approach 3D lines are used to drive surface deformation over specified areas. One type of these features is based on G0 or G1 discontinuities along the character lines. Traditionally, a designer using a CAD system creates these features by generating several patches. Our approach proposes a method to create discontinuities on a single patch, using the trimming properties of the surface. Examples are provided and analysed using curvature maps to address the quality issue of the resulting shape as well as its capability to generate a wide variety of shapes.
Floating-Point Scaling for BSS Gain Control

In Blind Source Separation (BSS) processing, taking advantage of scaling factor indetermination and based on the floatingpoint representation, we propose a scaling technique applied to the separation matrix, to avoid the saturation or the weakness in the recovered source signals. This technique performs an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) in an on-line BSS environment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique by using the implementation of a division free BSS algorithm with two input, two output. This technique is computationally cheaper and efficient for a hardware implementation. Keywords—Automatic Gain Control, Blind Source Separation, Floating-Point Representation, FPGA Implementation.
MafB Is Essential for Renal Development and F4/80 Expression in Macrophages

ABSTRACT MafB is a member of the large Maf family of transcription factors that share similar basic region/leucine zipper DNA binding motifs and N-terminal activation domains. Although it is well known that MafB is specifically expressed in glomerular epithelial cells (podocytes) and macrophages, characterization of the null mutant phenotype in these tissues has not been previously reported. To investigate suspected MafB functions in the kidney and in macrophages, we generated mafB/green fluorescent protein (GFP) knock-in null mutant mice. mafB homozygous mutants displayed renal dysgenesis with abnormal podocyte differentiation as well as tubular apoptosis. Interestingly, these kidney phenotypes were associated with diminished expression of several kidney disease-related genes. In hematopoietic cells, GFP fluorescence was observed in both Mac-1- and F4/80-expressing macrophages in the fetal liver. Interestingly, F4/80 expression in macrophages was suppressed in the homozygous mutant, although development of the Mac-1-positive macrophage population was unaffected. In primary cultures of fetal liver hematopoietic cells, MafB deficiency was found to dramatically suppress F4/80 expression in nonadherent macrophages, whereas the Mac-1-positive macrophage population developed normally. These results demonstrate that MafB is essential for podocyte differentiation, renal tubule survival, and F4/80 maturation in a distinct subpopulation of nonadherent mature macrophages.
Proposed visual wiki system for gathering knowledge about discrete event systems

The first phase of the conceptual modeling process is the acquisition of knowledge about the real world system. One issue in this phase is the need for clear communication, between the modeler, and experts on the system being examined. These domain experts may not be versed in modeling techniques or languages. Another issue is the potential benefit offered by the recording of the gathered knowledge, in a way that facilitates its reuse outside of the modeling project itself. Existing approaches to the construction of a system description have different strengths and weaknesses. Therefore a combination of different model types, in an integrated manner, could be most effective. Visual wiki software is proposed to facilitate this. Wikis are proven as a platform for incrementally growing shared knowledge bases. They are generally text-based; a wiki allowing editing of graphics as well as text would be preferable for system and process knowledge.
Coordinated and Multiple Views for Visualizing Text Collections

Multiple views have been put forward as an alternative to assist exploration of evolving phenomena or associations between distinct data sets or distinct presentations of a single data set. Coordinating between views is a challenge that must be met to improve visualization support for exploratory tasks. This is particularly true for high-dimensional data, such as document collections. We introduce a coordination framework for multiple views of document collections created using projections and point placement visualizations. Coordination can occur between different views of a single data set or between views of multiple data sets. Multiple coordinations are also admitted. Three new types of coordination are presented to illustrate the framework; these have been implemented in a multipurpose multi-dimensional visualization system called PEx (Projection Explorer).
Black Hole Binaries

We review the properties of 40 X-ray binaries that contain either a confirmed black hole or a black hole candidate. After discussing briefly the significance of these Galactic black holes to both astronomy and physics, we present basic data for all 40 systems, review the physics of mass accretion onto black holes, and then show seven-year light curves of 20 systems. The second half of this work is a far-reaching review of the canonical emission states of black hole binaries, which is based on X-ray, radio and gamma-ray data. For several selected black holes, we show 33 pairs of X-ray energy and power density spectra and use these spectra as a basis for introducing modified definitions of the canonical X-ray emission states of an accreting black hole. We highlight the physical structures and some of the emission mechanisms associated with each emission state. In the final pages we examine both low- and high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations. A recurring theme of the review is the importance of these black holes as potential sites for tests of general relativity. Accordingly, we stress phenomena that originate in strong gravity, such as relativistic Fe emission lines and thermal continuum emission, both of which arise in the inner accretion disk. Especially important in this regard are the high-frequency (40-450 Hz) quasi-periodic oscillations observed for seven black holes, three of which show evidence for commensurate (3:2) pairs of frequencies.