Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression Characteristics of LSH Genes in Brassica Suggest their Applicability for Modification of Leaf Morphology and the Use of their Promoter for Transgenesis

The functions of DUF640/ALOG (Arabidopsis LSH1 and Oryza G1) domain proteins, which are found in most land plants, have not been well characterized, but some of these proteins regulate inflorescence architecture in rice and specify organ boundaries in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis DUF640-domain genes are initially identified as LIGHT-SENSITIVE HYPOCOTYLS (LSH) genes. Chinese cabbage leaves have large, white midribs and photosynthetic leaf blades (or lamina). A DUF640 domain gene of Brassica rapa, BrLSH2, is specifically expressed in the midrib of Chinese cabbage. Arabidopsis and rice possess ten LSH family genes, but B. rapa has 24 LSH genes, which can be categorized into two or four groups based on sequence identity. Here, we examined the expression patterns of the LSHs in various Brassica species and analyzed the promoter sequence of the BrLHS2 gene. The transcript levels of most LSH genes were very high in the midrib but low in the leaf blade. These genes were evenly expressed throughout the petiole region of Korean cabbage and highly expressed in the leaf base region near the stem and in the border area in B. oleracea. In addition, BrLSHs were expressed in both bundle and mesophyll cells of the midrib. These expression patterns suggest the possible use of these genes to generate leafy vegetables with altered leaf morphology. The BrLSH2 promoter, which contains auxin- and cytokinin-responsive elements as well as leaf development-related elements, may confer midrib-specific expression, suggesting that this promoter may be useful for the production of midrib-targeted transgenic Chinese cabbage.
Valuing a Statistical Life Year in Relation to Clean Air

Environmental cost–benefit analysis is increasingly used to support the formulation of European air quality policies. In these analyses, typically around three-quarters of the societal benefits of cleaner air are related to monetised increases in statistical life expectancy. However, the literature presents widely diverging estimates for the value of a statistical life year (a ‘VOLY’). This paper presents a review of studies aimed at establishing a VOLY as used in European air quality policies and it examines the factors that cause the variations in VOLY estimates. We discuss the implications of our findings for European air quality policies and also present a novel approach to analyse the VOLY. We have labelled our approach the ‘maximum societal revenue VOLY’ (MSR-VOLY), and postulate that this approach may be particularly useful in the context of natural capital accounting.
IMPROVING SPHERICAL PHOTOGRAMMETRY USING 360° OMNI-CAMERAS: USE CASES AND NEW APPLICATIONS

Abstract. During the last few years, there has been a growing exploitation of consumer-grade cameras allowing one to capture 360° images. Each device has different features and the choice should be entrusted on the use and the expected final output. The interest on such technology within the research community is related to its use versatility, enabling the user to capture the world with an omnidirectional view with just one shot. The potential is huge and the literature presents many use cases in several research domains, spanning from retail to construction, from tourism to immersive virtual reality solutions. However, the domain that could the most benefit is Cultural Heritage (CH), since these sensors are particularly suitable for documenting a real scene with architectural detail. Following the previous researches conducted by Fangi, which introduced its own methodology called Spherical Photogrammetry (SP), the aim of this paper is to present some tests conducted with the omni-camera Panono 360° which reach a final resolution comparable with a traditional camera and to validate, after almost ten years from the first experiment, its reliability for architectural surveying purposes. Tests have been conducted choosing as study cases Santa Maria della Piazza and San Francesco alle scale Churches in Ancona, Italy, since they were previously surveyed and documented with SP methodology. In this way, it has been possible to validate the accuracy of the new survey, performed by means an omni-camera, compared with the previous one for both outdoor and indoor scenario. The core idea behind this work is to validate if this new sensor can replace the standard image collection phase, speeding up the process, assuring at the same time the final accuracy of the survey. The experiment conducted demonstrate that, w.r. t. the SP methodology developed so far, the main advantage in using 360° omni-directional cameras lies on increasing the rapidity of acquisition and panorama creation phases. Moreover, in order to foresee the implications that a wide adoption of fast and agile tools of acquisition could bring within the CH domain, points cloud have been generated with the same panoramas and visualized in a WEB application, to allow a result dissemination between the users.
Title Assessment of JERS-1 SAR for monitoring secondary vegetation in Amazonia : II . Spatial , temporal , and radiometric considerations for operational monitoring Permalink

While the role of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in operational tropical forest monitoring has yet to be de ned, it is nevertheless a critical technology for improving our understanding of deforestation and secondary vegetation in the tropics. In order to understand the role of this technology in operational monitoring a systematic evaluation, relative to other existing technologies of its performance is required. In this paper we evaluate the spatial, temporal, and noise constraints of JERS SAR data for mapping and monitoring biomass of secondary vegetation in Rondonia, Brazil. Our results indicate that the variability in stand estimates of biomass is high and that the source of the majority of the variability is not from speckle and the intrinsic texture of the secondary vegetation but likely due to diVerences in environmental conditions resulting in diVerential background scattering properties. Multitemporal analysis signi cantly improves biomass estimates to the point where it is possible to map changes in biomass. Slight reductions in the variability in estimates of normalized radar cross-section greatly improve biomass estimation.
Demonstrations in Ultrasound Imaging and Beam Steering Using Phased Arrays

Ultrasound imaging is one of the most ubiquitous forms of sonography today. It ranks among the cheapest and safest forms of medical imaging techniques available, and it has a wide range of applications in medicine; it is gentle enough to image a developing fetus, yet can also be powerful enough to destroy a kidney stone. We have developed a series of demonstrations that examine several physical properties of ultrasound, specifically as they pertain to imaging. We intend these demonstrations to be used as a learning aid for students who are studying the physics behind medical imaging. These demonstrations utilize single-source transceivers from the maker Parsonics, and they cover the basic properties of ultrasound, the remote sensing capabilities of sound, and more advanced ultrasound theory. Many applications of ultrasound imaging require instead an array of multiple sources. Following techniques used in radar and loudspeaker implementation, we also explore analytically and computationally the steering and shaping of ultrasound waves using source arrays. Operating in the small-source, far-field limit, we vary the time delays introduced into each source element to allow for changes in directionality. Following the principle of superposition, we are able to focus the outgoing radiation at a particular point in the far field. Applications of these techniques are most notably within the medical field and include both ultrasound imaging and ultrasound therapies.
A virtual trainer concept for robot-assisted human motor learning in rowing

Keeping the attention level and observing multiple physiological and biomechanical variables at the same time at high precision is very challenging for human trainers. Concurrent augmented feedback, which is suggested to enhance motor learning in complex motor tasks, can also hardly be provided by a human trainer. Thus, in this paper, a concept for a virtual trainer is presented that may overcome the limits of a human trainer. The intended virtual trainer will be implemented in a CAVE providing auditory, visual and haptic cues. As a first application, the virtual trainer will be used in a realistic scenario for sweep rowing. To provide individual feedback to each rower, the virtual trainer quantifies errors and provides concurrent auditory, visual, and haptic feedback. The concurrent feedback will be adapted according to the actual performance, individual maximal rowing velocity, and the athlete’s individual perception.
Brain Controlled Architecture for Human-Human Interaction Mediated by a Humanoid Robot

The amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive muscular paralysis reflecting degeneration of motor neurons in the primary motor cortex, corticospinal tracts, brainstem and spinal cord. It’ incidence (average 1.89 per 100,000/year) and prevalence (average 5.2 per100,000) are relatively uniform in Western countries. At the moment there is no treatment for this disease and the only management of ALS is palliative, for this reason it is required a supportive and multidisciplinary approach [1]. In ALS, paralysis is progressive and leads to death due to respiratory failure within 2–3 years. During the latter stage of the disease, patients suffer of a locked-in condition, where their brain maintains all the cognitive functions operating, in a paralyzed body [2]. Brain Computer Interface allows people in locked-in states to communicate with the external world and to control the environment using brain waves, rather than muscles [3]. Among the paradigm presented in literature, we used the P300 oddball paradigm for our architecture. Accordingly to this paradigm, it is possible to elicit a particular wave, named P300 (P indicates a positive deflection, 300 represents the latency in milliseconds on stimulus onset) by showing an unattended stimulus during a sequence of expected stimuli [4]. Assistive robotics is a new field of Human Robotic Interaction that is a new subfield of robotics that bridges HRI, rehabilitation robotics, social robotics, and service robotics [5]. These robots can serve a variety of therapeutically relevant functions, including providing feedback [6], accomplishing tasks [7,8], extending user presence [9] and help in the management of the patient [10]. Telenoid Robot is a small-size Japanese robot developed from the idea of transferring human’s “presence”. Telenoid was developed to appear and behave as a minimal design of human features. Its name derived from “Tele” as tele operation and “noides” as twin, to reassemble, even in the name, how the robot is an extension of the user himself [11]. The architecture has been designed to provide new communication channel for people affected by ALS. The use of the telenoid robot as communication mediator enables the operator the feeling of sharing a space with the user.
A possible linear filtering model to explain White’s illusion at different grating widths

The perceived lightness of a stimulus depends on its background, a phenomenon known as lightness induction. For instance, the same gray stimulus can look light in one background and dark in another. Moreover, such induction can take place in two directions; in one case, it occurs in the direction of the background lightness known as lightness assimilation, while in the other it occurs opposite to that, known as lightness contrast. The White’s illusion is a typical one which does not completely conform to any of these two processes. In this paper, we have quantified the perceptual strength of the White’s illusion as a function of the width of the background square grating. Based on our results which also corroborate some earlier studies, we propose a linear filtering model inspired from an earlier work dealing with varying Mach band widths. Our model assumes that the for the White’s illusion, where the edges are strong and many in number, and as such the spectrum is rich in high frequency components, the inhibitory surround in the classical Difference-of-Gaussians (DoG) filter gets suppressed, so that the filter essentially reduces to a multi-scale Gaussian one. The simulation results with this model support the present as well as earlier experimental results.
Analysis of the Effectiveness of SMS Marketing by Mobile Companies: A Case Study of Telecom Sector in Southern Punjab-Pakistan

The objective of this study is to explore indirect effect of factors of SMS advertising i.e. trust, informativeness, and irritation on purchasing behavior through an intervening variable i.e. attitude of the customers. The relationship between these variables were measured through different statistical techniques such as descriptive statistics, correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), and multivariate regression analysis. Primary data was used in this study which was collected through field survey. A questionnaire was constructed through which the views of 319 students of universities belonging to three geographical regions of Pakistan i.e. Bahawalpur, D.G. Khan and Multan Divisions were recorded. Our Results shows positive relationship between trust and informativeness with attitude of the customers, while irritation is negatively related to the attitude of the customers. It may be mentioned that we have taken the attitude of the customers as a positive predictor of purchasing behavior and acts as a mediator. Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Personality Traits, Transformational Leadership, Leader’s Effectiveness
Configurable Analogue Design Conquering Variability in an Uncertain World

An increasing issue for analogue integrated circuit designers is the demand to not only provide cutting edge performance, but also to adjust to the demands of smaller process nodes, with the increased variability and other design demands as a result. While digital circuits have the basic advantage of being able to cope with some level of degradation in devices (as long as it does not fundamentally affect the logical behavior of the circuit), in contrast, analogue and mixed signal circuits are generally highly susceptible to those variations. This paper will describe some techniques that can mitigate the intrinsic variability of devices and therefore reduce the subsequent impact on the circuit designs themselves.
Forecasting Inflation through Econometrics Models: An Empirical Study on Pakistani Data

This article aims at modeling and forecasting inflation in Pakistan. For this purpose a number of econometric approaches are implemented and their results are compared. In ARIMA models, adding additional lags for p and/or q necessarily reduced the sum of squares of the estimated residuals. When a model is estimated using lagged variables, some observations are lost. Results further indicate that the VAR models do not perform better than the ARIMA (2, 1, 2) models and, the two factor model with ARIMA (2, 1, 2,) slightly performs better than the ARIMA (2, 1, 2). Although the study focuses on the problem of macroeconomic forecasting, the empirical results have more general implications for small scale macroeconometric models. Key words: Modeling and Forecasting Inflation, ARIMA, VAR The Information Technologist Vol.2(1) 2005: 15-21
Energy and Emission Reduction Potential for Bank ATM Units in India

With the growing economy of India, banking sector growth has led to installation of thousands of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) throughout the country. ATMs provide 24 × 7 services as well as operate at low-temperature ranges of cooling, hence have high operating energy costs. Insulating an ATM’s envelope is not a prevalent technique in India. In the present study, an effort has been made to determine the optimum insulation thickness for three different insulation materials for the typical ATM envelope in four different climatic zones of India. Life cycle savings and payback periods for various insulation materials are also evaluated. Further, these optimally insulated ATM envelopes can be integrated with grid connected rooftop solar PV systems. The energy saving and emissions reduction potential due to these two interventions have been estimated on the national basis. Altogether in the four selected climate zones, energy saving of 17% - 30% provides the annual economic benefit of Indian National Rupees (Rs.) 3570 million with annual carbon reduction potential of about 0.60 million tCO2. From this study, it is observed that properly insulated ATMs integrated with rooftop solar PV systems, can significantly reduce the energy costs as well as carbon emissions in India’s context.
Atmospheric mercury speciation dynamics at the high-altitude Pic du Midi Observatory, southern France

Abstract. Continuous measurements of atmospheric gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), particulate bound mercury (PBM) and gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM) at the high-altitude Pic du Midi Observatory (PDM Observatory, 2877 m a.s.l.) in southern France were made from November 2011 to November 2012. The mean GEM, PBM and GOM concentrations were 1.86 ng m−3, 14 pg m−3 and 27 pg m−3, respectively and we observed 44 high PBM (peak PBM values of 33–98 pg m−3) and 61 high GOM (peak GOM values of 91–295 pg m−3) events. The high PBM events occurred mainly in cold seasons (winter and spring) whereas high GOM events were mainly observed in the warm seasons (summer and autumn). In cold seasons the maximum air mass residence times (ARTs) associated with high PBM events were observed in the upper troposphere over North America. The ratios of high PBM ARTs to total ARTs over North America, Europe, the Arctic region and Atlantic Ocean were all elevated in the cold season compared to the warm season, indicating that the middle and upper free troposphere of the Northern Hemisphere may be more enriched in PBM in cold seasons. PBM concentrations and PBM ∕ GOM ratios during the high PBM events were significantly anti-correlated with atmospheric aerosol concentrations, air temperature and solar radiation, suggesting in situ formation of PBM in the middle and upper troposphere. We identified two distinct types of high GOM events with the GOM concentrations positively and negatively correlated with atmospheric ozone concentrations, respectively. High GOM events positively correlated with ozone were mainly related to air masses from the upper troposphere over the Arctic region and middle troposphere over the temperate North Atlantic Ocean, whereas high GOM events anti-correlated with ozone were mainly related to air masses from the lower free troposphere over the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. The ARTs analysis demonstrates that the lower and middle free troposphere over the North Atlantic Ocean was the largest source region of atmospheric GOM at the PDM Observatory. The ratios of high GOM ARTs to total ARTs over the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean in summer were significantly higher than those over the temperate and sub-arctic North Atlantic Ocean as well as that over the North Atlantic Ocean in other seasons, indicating abundant in situ oxidation of GEM to GOM in the lower free troposphere over the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean in summer.
Prognostic role and limits of ATS/ERS classification (2011): diagnosis and follow-up

Poster: "ECR 2015 / C-0310 / Prognostic role and limits of ATS/ERS classification (2011): diagnosis and follow-up" by: "D. Capannelli1, C. Saltini2, G. Sergiacomi2, F. Rambelli1, M. L. Bacchi Reggiani1, M. Zompatori1; 1Bologna/IT, 2Rome/IT"
Hidden problems of thin-flux-tube approximation

This paper scrutinizes the validity of the thin-flux-tube approximation for magnetic flux tubes embedded in a surrounding magnetic plasma. It is shown that the thin-flux-tube approximation gives an accurate description of surface waves for C T > C 2 Ae, body waves for C 2 Te > C 2 T and surface leaky waves for C 2 Te < C 2 T < C 2 Ae. The Leibovich-Roberts equation for nonlinear surface waves in a flux tube embedded in a field free plasma is generalized to a flux tube immersed in a magnetic plasma. The generalized Leibovich-Roberts (GLR) equation describes the propagation of nonlinear slow surface, body and surface leaky waves in tubes. The shortcomings of the GLR equation are discussed. The Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV) is generalized for surface waves. The advantage of the second order thin-flux-tube approximation is shown. Two scenarios for the heating of coronal loops are discussed. It is emphasized, that the application of the thin-flux-tube approximation to thin tubes of non-zero diameter has to take into account possible wave emission by the tube and shock front formation for amplitudes in excess of some critical value.
Radioactive dispersion analysis for hypothetical nuclear power plant (NPP) candidate site in Perak state, Malaysia

Malaysia is planning to build a nuclear power plant (NPP) by 2030 to diversify the national electricity supply and resources. Selection of an NPP site must consider various factors, especially nuclear safety consideration to fulfil the nuclear safety objectives. Environmental Risk Assessment Analysis is a part of safety requirements by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prior to the NPP commissioning process. Risk Assessments Analysis (RIA) is compulsory for the NPP site evaluation. One of RIA methods are Radioactive Dispersion Analysis using probabilistic risk analysis software. It is also important to perform studies to estimate the impact to the neighbouring population in the case of a nuclear accident at the power plant. In the present work, aimed to study the impact of a hypothetical nuclear accident by simulating the dispersion pattern of radionuclides originated from a candidate site at Manjung, Perak. The work has been performed using the HotSpot Health Physics codes. Two types of radionuclides have been considered namely 137 Cs and 131 I. In calculations, the initial concentration of radioactive materials of Fukushima Daiichi accident data are used which are 2.06 x 10 16 Bq and 1.68 x 10 17 Bq respectively for the two radionuclides. The result shows that the dispersion distance obtained from both software are not the same. It shows that 137 Cs and 131 I can be dispersed as far as 16 km and 80 km away from the site during radiological accident respectively, reaching major towns in Perak. Using HOTSPOT, the estimated total effective dose equivalent (TEDE) for 137 Cs and 131 I at major towns in Perak such as Lumut and Sitiawan are 1.2 mSv and 9.9 mSv. As for Taiping, Ipoh, Kampar, and Teluk Intan the estimated TEDE is around 0.2 mSv and 1.6 mSv respectively. In conclusion, the dispersion can reach as far as 80 km from the site. However, estimated annual effective dose is not more than 1 mSv limit, which is considered acceptable in the point of view of radiological health risk for human and the environment.
Building Data Flows Using Distributed Key-Value Stores

Social communication features on most of today’s largest websites require propagating the data inside the database/key-value store leading to massive data flows. In this paper we study alternative architectures to build data flows using distributed key-value stores. We compare programming model, execution model, failure model, and scalability highlighting a problem of the state-of-the-art architecture based on an external queue: non-optimal resource utilization. As part of this study, we propose an optimization of this approach by integrating queues into the key-value store. It results in better resource utilization and, thus, more cost-effective scalability; as well as easier programmability and lower maintenance cost. Our experimental study confirms these findings.