Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fitness effects of new mutations and adaptive evolution in house mice

of thesis Knowledge of the distribution of fitness effects of new mutations (DFE) can enable us to quantify the amount of genetic change between species that is driven by natural selection and contributes to adaptive evolution. The primary focus of this thesis is the study of methods to infer the DFE and the study of adaptive evolution in the house mouse subspecies Mus musculus castaneus. Firstly, I extended previous methodology to model the DFE based on polymorphism data. Methods that have previously been used to infer the DFE from polymorphism data have relied on the assumption of a unimodal distribution. I developed new models that can be used to fit DFEs of arbitrary complexity, and found that multimodality can be detected by these models given enough data. I used these new models to analyse polymorphism data from Drosophila melanogaster and M. m. castaneus, and found evidence for a unimodal DFE for D. melanogaster and a bimodal DFE for M. m. castaneus. Secondly, I investigated the contribution of change in coding and non-coding DNA to evolutionary adaptation. I used a polymorphism dataset of ~80 loci from M. m. castaneus sequenced in 15 individuals to investigate selection in protein-coding genes and putatively regulatory DNA close to these genes. I found that, although protein-coding genes are much more selectively constrained than non-coding DNA, they experience similar rates of adaptive substitution. These results suggest that change in functional non-coding DNA sequences might be as important as
Synthesis and evaluation of receptors for phosphatidylinositol phosphates

10 Abbreviations . 11 List of Figures . 14 Figures in Chapter 1 . 14 Figures in Chapter 2 . 15 Figures in Chapter 3 . 15 Figures in Chapter 4 . 16 Figures in Chapter 5 . 17 Figures in Chapter 6 . 17 Figures in Chapter 9 . 17 List of Schemes . 18 Schemes in Chapter 2 . 18 List of Tables . 19 Tables in Chapter 1 . 19 Tables in Chapter 2 . 19 Tables in Chapter 3 . 19 Tables in Chapter 4 . 19 List of compounds . 20 Chapter 1: Introduction . 24 1.1 Phosphatidylinositolphosphates . 24 1.1.1 PI(4,5)P2 and PI(3,4,5)P3 . 25 1.1.2 PI(4,5)P2and PI(3,4,5)P3-interacting proteins . 27 1.1.3 Phosphoinositides and disease . 29 1.2 Control of PIP-protein interactions . 32 1.3 Artificial and Biological receptors . 33 1.4 Phosphate and polyhydroxy recognition by artificial receptors. 35 1.4. 1 Neutral anion receptors . 35 1.4. 2 Charged anion receptors . 36 1.4. 3 Metal-based anion receptors . 38 1.4. 4 Boronic acid-based artificial receptors . 42 1.5 Binding to Phosphoinositides and Inositol Phosphates using artificial receptors . 47 1.5. 1 Binding to IP3 . 47
Performance of Frequent Pattern-Growth hierarchy for bulky and forceful Data Set and advance effectiveness

: FP-growth method is a efficient algorithm to mine frequent patterns, in spite of long or short frequent patterns. By using compact tree structure and partitioning-based, divide-and-conquer searching method, it reduces the search costs substantially. But just as the analysis in Algorithm , in the process of FP-tree construction, it is a strict serial computing process. algorithm performance is related to the database size, the sum of frequent patterns in the database: ω. this is a serious bottleneck. People may think using distributed parallel computation technique or multi-CPU to solve this problem. But these methods apparently increase the costs for exchanging and combining control information, and the algorithm complexity is also greatly increased, cannot solve this problem efficiently. Even if adopting multi-CPU technique, raising the requirement of hardware, the performance improvement is still limited .
A Critical Approach to Geography Curriculum in Terms of Global Awareness Attainments

The world has experienced in recent years, a number of factors such as the intensification of international relations, the acceleration of technological developments and the presence of transboundary problems have led to increased scientific interest in global issues. In this context, the aim of the study is to evaluate the geography course curriculum in Turkey in terms of global awareness education. In the study, a document review was conducted, one of the qualitative research designed. The obtained results were analyzed using descriptive analysis and content analysis. Within the scope of the study, overarching themes frequently highlighted and highlighted by researchers were identified from the topics derived from global awareness field literature. Geography course curriculum is evaluated within the scope of these themes. In general, it is seen that the issues related to global awareness are significantly involved in all aspects of the program, including its basic philosophy, general goals and achievements. When we look at the size of the attainments that are the application area of the program in detail, it is seen that there is no balanced distribution between the global themes highlighted in the attainments and that these are not designed to give individuals full global awareness. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a systematic global awareness learning area by using the relevant field writing while designing the geography course curriculum program. In addition, in order for students to understand the world from a holistic perspective, the program should include more themes for developing a global perspective.
Vibration-Based SHM With Upscalable and Low-Cost Sensor Networks

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is becoming increasingly attractive for its potentialities in many application contexts, such as civil and aeronautical engineering. In these scenarios, modern SHM systems are typically constituted by a multitude of sensor nodes. Such devices should be based on low-cost and low-power solutions both to ease the deployment of progressively denser sensor networks and to be compatible with a permanent installation; this allows real-time monitoring while reducing the global maintenance costs. Among the developed inspection methodologies, operational modal analysis (OMA) is an efficient tool to assess the integrity of vibrating structures. This article describes a sensor network that is based on either microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers or cost-effective piezoelectric devices to extract strictly synchronized modal parameters. The performances of the two sensing technologies are evaluated in two different setups, to assess the reliability in the estimation of modal features even in the presence of potential damages. Particular attention was given to the mode shape reconstruction issue from piezoelectric signals, primarily encompassing a purposely developed modal coordinate tuning procedure. Moreover, the consistency of the obtained results paves the way to a more compact and affordable monitoring system exploiting piezoelectric-driven modal analysis.
Fast and Secure Distributed Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has been successfully applied in several data mining tasks. Recently, there is an increasing interest in the acceleration of NMF, due to its high cost on large matrices. On the other hand, the privacy issue of NMF over federated data is worthy of attention, since NMF is prevalently applied in image and text analysis which may involve leveraging privacy data (e.g, medical image and record) across several parties (e.g., hospitals). In this paper, we study the acceleration and security problems of distributed NMF. First, we propose a distributed sketched alternating nonnegative least squares(DSANLS) framework for NMF, which utilizes a matrix sketching technique to reduce the size of nonnegative least squares subproblems with a convergence guarantee. For the second problem, we show that DSANLS with modification can be adapted to the security setting, but only for one or limited iterations. Consequently, we propose four efficient distributed NMF methods in both synchronous and asynchronous settings with a security guarantee. We conduct extensive experiments on several real datasets to show the superiority of our proposed methods. The implementation of our methods is available at https://github.com/qianyuqiu79/DSANLS.
Ideology and Value Determinants of Public Support for Energy Policies in the U.S.: A Focus on Western States

Energy policy is often a contentious issue in the U.S. in the areas of infrastructure, conservation, and price discrimination. From the siting of new pipelines, conservation regulations, and variable pricing based on times and usage, many policies have been met by intense opposition as well as support from a variety of sources. In this context, this study examines individual-level attributes (e.g., political ideology, environmental values, and demographic characteristics) that lead to support for or opposition to infrastructure, conservation, and price discrimination policies. The identification of demographic and value correlates of energy policy preferences is important for the successful development of energy policies. Data from 2019 random household surveys in the U.S. western states of California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington are used to examine the variation in views on a variety of energy policies. Multivariate analyses reveal that those with more liberal political ideology and people holding stronger pro-environmental values (as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm) were more likely to support conservation campaigns, energy efficiency, funding for renewable energy technology and price discrimination policies than those who held more conservative views. Several demographic variables also have a significant impact on support for or opposition to policies concerning infrastructure, conservation, and price discrimination. Younger people and people with higher levels of formal education are more likely to support voluntary energy conservation campaigns and increased funding for research into renewable energy technologies, and people with higher incomes are more supportive of requiring high-energy efficiency standards in new construction. Finally, state residency independently affected policy preferences with Idahoans’ views more consistent with political conservatives and those lower on the NEP than residents of the other three western states. These findings should be useful to policy makers as they work toward the development of energy policies.
Lumbar Facet Cyst as a Rare Cause of L5 Radiculopathy: A Case Report

Lumbar facet cysts arise from zygapophyseal joints and are commonly associated with spondylosis. They are a rare cause of symptomatic nerve root compression. We are presenting a rare case of L4/5 lumbar facet cyst compressing the nerve root in a patient presenting with L5 radiculopathy. The clinical picture of a facet cyst in this case is similar to intervertebral disc disease.
Upgrading CRFS to JRFS and its Benefits to Sequence Modeling and Labeling

Two important sequence tasks are sequence modeling and labeling. Sequence modeling involves determining the probabilities of sequences, e.g. language modeling. It is still difficult to improve language modeling with additional relevant tags, e.g. part-of-speech (POS) tags. For sequence labeling, it is worthwhile to explore task-dependent semi-supervised learning to leverage a mix of labeled and unlabeled data, besides pre-training. In this paper, we propose to upgrade condtional random fields (CRFs) and obtain a joint generative model of observation and label sequences, called joint random fields (JRFs). Specifically, we propose to use the potential function in the original CRF as the potential function that defines the joint distribution. This development from CRFs to JRFs benefits both modeling and labeling of sequence data, as shown in our experiments. For example, the JRF model (using POS tags) outperforms traditional language models and avoids the need to produce hypothesized labels by a standalone POS tagger. For sequence labeling, task-dependent semi-supervised learning by JRFs consistently outperform the CRF baseline and self-training, on POS tagging, chunking and NER.
Molecular identification and physiological characterization of halophilic and alkaliphilic bacteria belonging to the genus Halomonas

Alkaline saline lakes are unusual extreme environments formed in closed drainage basins. Qabar - oun and Um - Alma lakes are alkaline saline lakes in the Libyan Sahara. There were only a few reports (Ajali et al., 1984) on their microbial diversity before the current work was undertaken. Five Gram-negative bacterial strains, belonging to the family of Halomonadaceae, were isolated from the lakes by subjecting the isolates to high salinity medium, and identified using 16S rRNA gene sequencing as Halomonas pacifica, Halomonas sp, Halomonas salifodinae, Halomonas elongata and Halomonas campisalis. Two of the Halomonas species isolated (H. pacifica and H. campisalis) were chosen for further study on the basis of novelty (H. pacifica) and on dual stress tolerance (high pH and high salinity) shown by H. campisalis. Both species showed optimum growth at 0.5 M NaCl, but H. campisalis alone was able to grow in the absence of NaCl. H. pacifica grew better than H. campisalis at high salinities in excess of 1 M NaCl and was clearly a moderately halophile. H. pacifica showed optimum growth at pH 7 to 8, but in contrast H. campisalis could grow well at pH values up to 10. 13C - NMR spectroscopy was used to determine and identify the compatible solutes accumulated by H. pacifica and H. campisalis grown in rich and minimal media at different concentrations of NaCl. H. pacifica and H. campisalis accumulated betaine in rich (LB) medium with ectoine only appearing at the highest salinity tested (2.5 M NaCl). In contrast, in M9 minimal medium, no betaine was detected and ectoine and hydroxyectoine were accumulated at high salinities. H. campisalis was able to grow well with urea or nitrate as the sole source of nitrogen and was shown to be capable of efficiently removing nitrate from the medium under aerobic assimilatory conditions, where it is incorporated into biomass.
Hemifusion and lateral lipid domain partition in lipid membranes of different complexity

Membrane fusion is ubiquitous in life and requires remodelling of two phospholipid bilayers. Fusion likely proceeds through similar sequential intermediates. A stalk between the contacting leaflets forms and radially expands into a hemifusion diaphragm (HD) wherein finally a fusion pore opens up. Direct experimental verification of this key structure is difficult due to its transient nature. Confocal microscopy was used to visualize the fusion of giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) comprising negatively charged phosphatidylserine and fluorescent transmembrane (TM) entities in the presence of divalent cations. A complete displacement of TM peptides preceded full fusion. This is consistent with HD formation. Detailed analysis provided proof that the micrometer sized structures are in fact HDs. HD size is dependent on lipid composition and peptide concentration. Lateral lipid domain formation is believed to be essential for sorting and signalling processes in the cell. Liquid ordered (Lo) domains in model systems like GUVs resemble biological rafts enriched in sphingolipids and cholesterol, but their physical properties seem distinct from biological membranes as judged by e.g. lipid order and packing. In this context the sorting of TM anchored influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA) and different lipid anchored Ras proteins is studied in GUVs and giant plasma membrane derived vesicles (GPMVs). Authentic HA or the TM domain peptides were sorted exclusively (GUVs) or predominantly (GPMVs) to the liquid disordered (Ld) domains. Whereas K-Ras was found in the bulk Ld domains, N-Ras diffuses to the Lo/Ld interface. These results are discussed with respect to differences in lipid packing in the different membrane systems and regarding the membrane anchors and their hydrophobic matching. The results suggest that the formation, size and stability as well as the physical properties of lipid domains in biological membranes are tightly regulated by protein-lipid interactions.
An Evaluation of the Impact of Training and Development on Organisational Performance: A Case Study of the Gauteng Provincial Department of Economic Development

Orientation: Organisations relies on the expertise, standard, competence and performance of its employees for it to offer effectual service delivery. However, the framework and administration of Training and Development has not advanced in parallel to the new and ever changing business needs. Research purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of Training and Development on organisational performance using a case study, literature review and statistics of the Department of Economic Development in the Gauteng Province. Motivation for the study: The motivation of this study is that the South African government department spends millions of Rand’s on Training and Development of its workforce, however, these departments continue to perform poorly. Research approach/design and method: This study used a descriptive quantitative research design. Data analysis employed descriptive statistics and inferential statistics and the sample included 131 employees. Main findings: The main findings of the study are that Training and Development has a positive impact on the performance of the employees in the department. The department provides Training and Development programmes that are not relevant to the tasks of employees. Training evaluation is the most ignored step in the training process and the department does not have a tool to measure the impact of training and development. Practical/managerial implications: The study proposed that the department should adopt Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programmes and skills and knowledge learned from training should be considered. Contribution/value-add: This study will bring new scientific knowledge of the impact of Training and Development on organisational performance within the Gauteng Provincial Department of Economic Development.
Post-Processing for CRC-Aided Successive Cancellation List Decoding of Polar Codes

In this letter, three post-processing schemes for cyclic redundancy check (CRC-)aided successive cancellation list (CA-SCL) decoding are presented for polar codes. The re-decoding based on our post-processing schemes can effectively alleviate both the channel and decision errors encountered via CA-SCL decoding. Simulation results show that our schemes perform better than conventional re-decoding schemes and can be incorporated into a polar decoder that has a small list size to achieve a performance that is expected for a large list size.
Verticillium lecanii as a control agent of Bemisia tabaci on mist propagated Euphorbia pulcherima

The fungus Verticillium lecanii was assessed for entomopathogenicity against nymphal Bemisia tabaci in an environmental chamber and in a greenhouse mist chamber on the host Euphorbia pulcherima. Proportional mortality of Bemisia nymphs due to fungal exposure were; in the environmental chamber 89-96%, and in the mist chamber 61-89%. Two fungal characteristics, hyphae growth and sporulation, were used as parameters for augmentation experiments. Response to particular honeydew constituents, glutamine, glutamic acid, serine and sucrose in concentrations ranging 500-40,000 ppm were measured. Hyphae growth, in comparison to water agar (1.26-1.52 mm/24 h), was inhibited by all substrates at all concentrations (0.82-1.47 mm/24 h). Sporulation was enhanced at higher concentrations, 17.0-117.0 (xlO4) spores produced, in comparison with water agar, 10.2-15.5 (xlO4) spores
Hypnosis Associated with 3D Immersive Virtual Reality Technology in the Management of Pain: A Review of the Literature

Abstract Hypnosis is well documented in the literature in the management of acute and chronic pain. Virtual reality (VR) is currently gaining credibility in the same fields as hypnosis for medical applications. Lately, the combination of hypnosis and VR was considered. The aim of this scoping review is to understand the current studied contexts and effects of virtual reality hypnosis (VRH) for the management of pain. We searched on PubMed, Taylor & Francis Online, and ProQuest databases with the following terms: “virtual reality,” “3D,” “hypnosis,” and “pain”. We included 8 studies that combined hypnosis and VR. All articles are in English. Two included healthy volunteers and six are clinical studies. Short-term results indicated significant decreases in pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, time spent thinking about pain, anxiety, and levels of opioids. However, results are not consistent for all patients all the days. VR alone seems to reduce pain independently of the hypnotizability level. One study claimed that VR and hypnosis could alter each other’s effects and another argued that VR did not inhibit the hypnotic process and may even facilitate it by employing visual imagery. We cannot affirm that VR added value to hypnosis when they are combined. These trials and case series gave us indications about the possible applications of VRH in different contexts. Additional randomized clinical trials on VRH in the future will have to test this technique in clinical practice and help define guidelines for VRH utilization in pain management.
The Role of Effort in Shifting Preference for Feedback Stimuli

ABSTRACT Researchers have examined preference for the format of delivery of feedback, however little research has examined strategies to increase feedback and praise desirability. The current study aimed to evaluate whether preference shifted for stimuli that signaled work and for manager-praise stimuli that were delivered after work. Moreover, we sought to understand if these preference shifts were greater when the work was higher-effort compared to lower-effort work tasks (a phenomenon described in the basic literature as within-trial contrast). The study took place in a simulated work environment. Sixteen university students clicked on a shape that produced the work task, completed a mock medical data-entry task, and received manager-praise on an FR1 and FR20 schedule. At the start of the study and following each contingency exposure trials, they completed a preference assessment for both the shapes and the manager-feedback stimuli. The primary dependent variable was the percentage of preference change for two categories of stimuli – shapes presented at the beginning of trials that signaled which condition participants were in and manager-praise stimuli presented at the end of trials. Preference for the shape stimuli for both high- and low-effort stimuli decreased indicating that stimuli that signal work may become less preferred. Preference for the manager-praise stimuli for both high- and low-effort stimuli increased suggesting that stimuli that follow work may become more preferred. Overall, these data suggest that the conditions under which managers deliver feedback and praise may influence preference for those stimuli.
Marsh Frogs, Rana ridibunda in Lake Akören -26 August National Park (Afyon): a Preliminary study of Population Size and a Taxonomical Evaluation

The population size of marsh frogs, Rana ridibunda was estimated using the mark-recapture method in Lake Akoren Lake. The triple catch method was used to calculate survival and gains in addition to population size. The population sizes were estimated to be 3016 on the second day, and 3532 on the third day. On the basis of morphological analyses, we concluded that Lake Akoren is inhabited by Rana ridibunda ridibunda.