Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study of the interaction mechanism between Heterodera schachtii and Rhizoctonia solani using a split-pot design on sugar beet Estudio del mecanismo de interacción entre Heterodera schachtii y Rhizoctonia solani mediante el estudio de la disociación radical en remolacha azucarera

Sugar beet plants were split into two pots to investigate in detail the interactions between Heterodera schachtii and Rhizoctonia solani and to determine if a relationship exists between the two pathogens. Additionally, hyperspectral leaf reflectance measurements were taken to detect symptoms caused by soil-borne pathogens. The results indicate a direct interaction between the nematode and the fungus. Treatments with both organisms together presented the most severe plant damage. By using leaf reflectance and calculation of the vegetation index, it was possible to establish differences between the treatments. This is a promising result for further studies, which will be useful for the detection and discrimination of symptoms caused by plant pathogens.
The alternative splicing of tau exon 10 and its regulatory proteins CLK2 and TRA2‐BETA1 changes in sporadic Alzheimer's disease

Pathological inclusions containing fibrillar aggregates of hyperphosphorylated tau protein are a characteristic feature in tauopathies, which include Alzheimer's disease (AD). Tau is a microtubule‐associated protein whose transcript undergoes alternative splicing in the brain. Exon 10 encodes one of four microtubule‐binding repeats. Exon 10 inclusion gives rise to tau protein isoforms containing four microtubule‐binding repeats (4R) whereas exclusion leads to isoforms containing only three repeats (3R). The ratio between 3R and 4R isoforms is tightly controlled via alternative splicing in the human adult nervous system and distortion of this balance results in neurodegeneration. Previous studies showed that several splicing regulators, among them hTRA2‐beta1 and CLK2, regulate exon 10 alternative splicing. Like most splicing factors, htra2‐beta and clk2 pre‐mRNAs are regulated by alternative splicing. Here, we investigated whether human postmortem brain tissue of AD patients reveal differences in alternative splicing patterns of the tau, htra2‐beta, presenilin 2 and clk2 genes when compared with age‐matched controls. We found that the splicing patterns of all four genes are altered in affected brain areas of sporadic AD patients. In these affected areas, the amount of mRNAs of tau isoforms including exon 10, the htra2‐beta1 isoform and an inactive form of clk2 are significantly increased. These findings suggest that a misregulation of alternative splicing seems to contribute to sporadic AD.
Analyse Temps-Fréquence appliquée à l'imagerie SAR polarimétrique

L'imagerie SAR considere les cibles comme un ensemble de diffuseurs ponctuels, isotropes et non-dispersifs. Ce modele devient obsolete pour les nouvelles applications radar qui utilisent une large bande et une forte excursion angulaire. Il s'agit donc d'etudier les non-stationnarites par l'outil usuel : l'analyse temps-frequence. Les transformees temps-frequence usuelles permettent de construire des hyperimages (images a 4 dimensions) decrivant l'energie en fonction de la frequence emise et de l'angle de visee. Cette source d'information est reliee a la section efficace radar (SER). Une autre source d'information en imagerie radar est la polarimetrie. Il s'agit d'utiliser conjointement ces deux sources d'information afin de caracteriser les diffuseurs. Par application des ondelettes continues et des decompositions coherentes sur la matrice de Sinclair, des hyperimages polarimetriques sont generees. Ces hyperimages permettent de decrire le comportement polarimetrique en fonction de l'angle de visee et de la frequence emise. Dans certains cas, elles decrivent globalement le mecanisme de retrodiffusion, par sa nature, son orientation relative dans le plan horizontal et son orientation absolue dans le plan vertical. De plus, elles mettent en evidence un nouveau phenomene : la non-stationnarite polarimetrique. Celle-ci serait causee par le fait que le radar ne voit pas la meme geometrie au cours de l'acquisition. De ces hyperimages polarimetriques, l'information est synthetisee et une nouvelle classification phenomenologique est proposee.
Dynamic MRI of Small Renal Cell Carcinoma

Objective To evaluate the appearance of contrast-enhanced dynamic MRI of small renal cell carcinoma (RCC) (<3 cm diameter). Materials and Methods Twenty-seven patients with 28 small RCCs were studied by both conventional spin echo and contrast-enhanced dynamic MRI for tumor detection and characterization. All tumors were detected by contrast-enhanced CT and confirmed by operation. Dynamic MRI was performed using a breath-hold fast low angle shot technique after rapid injection of gadolinium diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA). Characterization of a renal mass was done by the visual analysis of tumor vascularity as well as quantitative assessment of the contrast noise ratio (CNR) and degree of enhancement. Results With conventional spin echo MR and dynamic MR, 18 and 26 of 28 small RCCs were detected, respectively. In the dynamic study the tumor/renal medulla contrast was marked at 90–120 s after administration of Gd-DTPA (CNR: 15.1). The tumor/renal medulla contrast in the dynamic study was more marked than that of postcontrast T1-weighted imaging (CNR, −0.25); T2-weighted imaging (CNR, 3.1); and T1-weighted imaging (CNR, −0.76). Conclusion Contrast-enhanced dynamic MRI is a useful technique for the diagnosis of small RCC especially in a patient with renal insufficiency or allergy to iodinated contrast material.
An Efficient Approach to Include Full-Band Effects in Deterministic Boltzmann Equation Solver Based on High-Order Spherical Harmonics Expansion

We present an efficient method to include full-band-structure effects for the case of a silicon conduction band in a deterministic Boltzmann equation solver based on the high-order spherical harmonics expansion method. This method employs the exact density of states and the group velocity obtained from band structure calculations, and it eliminates the modulus of the wave vector in the formulation such that an explicit invertible dispersion relation is not required. While the present method does not require additional central-processing-unit time and memory, compared with the analytic band model, the simulation results are significantly improved and in excellent agreement with those from the full-band Monte Carlo simulations and from an approach based on an invertible anisotropic band that matches several moments of the group velocity of the full band structure.
Active Flow Control on Laminar flow over a Backward facing step

In the present study, two dimensional flow over a backward-facing step in laminar flow regime with application of active flow control (AFC) technique is analysed. The aim of the present work is to gauge the effectiveness of implementing AFC to reduce drag and study its effects on flow characteristics. In order to analyse the influence of AFC on the boundary layer and the downstream vortex shedding, two different kinds of AFC techniques have been used in this study namely zero net mass flow actuators and fluidic actuators. A parametric non dimensional analysis has been carried out by varying the frequency from 0.025 to 0.1 and jet amplitude from 0.05 and 1. Four different positions of the groove were simulated; groove was respectively located at 0.024a, 0.047a, 0.072a and 0.097a, measured upstream from the right side upper edge. Three different non dimensional groove widths 0.023a, 0.048a and 0.073a were also evaluated, where a is the step height. The idea behind this study was to determine an optimal configuration to reduce the drag on the step and to suppress the vortex dissipation in the wake of the step. It was observed that when using an AFC frequency ± 10% of the vortex shedding one, was causing the maximum drag reduction. When comparing the effects of zero net mass flow actuators with the fluidic actuators, it was observed that zero net mass flow actuators were more effective.
Route to Chaos in a Ring of Three Unidirectionally-Coupled Semiconductor Lasers

Complex dynamics of a ring of three unidirectionally-coupled semiconductor lasers are studied with respect to the coupling strength. While uncoupled, the lasers stay in a continuous-wave regime; they begin to oscillate as the coupling strength reaches a certain threshold value. When the coupling further increases, the dynamics exhibit a route to chaos via a sequence of Hopf bifurcations resulting in periodic, quasiperiodic, and chaotic oscillations. In the chaotic range, different synchronization states, ranging from asynchronous behavior to phase and near synchronization, are observed. The analytical solution yields a large number of fixed points.
Microsporidian Mitochondrial Proteins: Expression in Antonospora locustae Spores and Identification of Genes Coding for Two Further Proteins

Abstract. Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites, phylogenetically allied to the fungi. Once considered amitochondriate, now a number of mitochondrion‐derived genes have been described from various species, and the relict organelle was recently identified in Trachipleistophora hominis. We have investigated the expression of potential mitochondrial targeted proteins in the spore stage to determine whether the organelle is likely to have a role in the spore or early infection stage. To investigate whether the Antonospora locustae genome codes for a different complement of mitochondrial proteins than Encephalitozoon cuniculi an EST library was searched for putative mitochondrial genes that have not been identified in the E. cuniculi genome project. The spore is the infectious stage of microsporidia, but is generally considered to be metabolically dormant. Fourteen genes for putatively mitochondrion‐targeted proteins were shown to be present in purified spore mRNA by 3′‐rapid amplification of cDNA ends and EST sequencing. Pyruvate dehydrogenase E1α and mitochondrial glycerol‐3‐phosphate dehydrogenase proteins were also shown to be present in A. locustae and E. cuniculi spores, respectively, suggesting a role for these proteins in the early stages of infection, or within the spore itself. EST sequencing also revealed two mitochondrial protein‐encoding genes in A. locustae that are not found in the genome of E. cuniculi. One encodes a possible pyruvate transporter, the other a subunit of the mitochondrial inner membrane peptidase. In yeast mitochondria, this protein is part of a trimeric complex that processes proteins targeted to the inner membrane and the intermembrane space, and its substrate in A. locustae is presently unknown.
A modified definition of Sov, a segment‐based measure for protein secondary structure prediction assessment

We present a measure for the evaluation of secondary structure prediction methods that is based on secondary structure segments rather than individual residues. The algorithm is an extension of the segment overlap measure Sov, originally defined by Rost et al. (J Mol Biol 1994;235:13–26). The new definition of Sov corrects the normalization procedure and improves Sov's ability to discriminate between similar and dissimilar segment distributions. The method has been comprehensively tested during the second Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP2). Here, we describe the underlying concepts, modifications to the original definition, and their significance. Proteins 1999;34:220–223. Published 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
REALFLOW: Reliable Real-Time Flooding-Based Routing Protocol for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless technologies have been increasingly applied in industrial automation systems due to flexible installation, mobility, and cost reduction. Unlike traditional wireless sensor networks (WSNs), industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs), when expanding from wireless monitoring to wireless control, have more stringent requirements on reliability, real-time performance, and robustness in a number of industrial applications. Successive transmission failures or deadline misses in these applications may severely degrade the control quality and result in serious economic losses and safety problems. Therefore, when deploying IWSNs in harsh industrial environments, to achieve reliable and deterministic end-to-end transmissions is critically important. In this paper, we explain the primary challenges of designing appropriate routing protocols and present a reliable real-time flooding-based routing protocol for IWSNs (REALFLOW). Instead of traditional routing tables, related node lists are generated in a simple distributed manner, serving for packet forwarding. A controlled flooding mechanism is applied to improve both reliability and real-time performance. A seamless transition in the event of topology change can be achieved by REALFLOW. Performance evaluations via simulations verify that significant improvements of reliability, real-time performance, and network recovery time can be achieved by REALFLOW, compared with traditional routing protocols.
Total variation based hyperspectral feature extraction

In this paper, a hyperspectral feature extraction method is proposed. A low-rank linear model using the right eigenvector of the observed data is given for hyperspectral images. A total variation (TV) based regularization called Low-Rank TV regularization (LRTV) is used for hyperspectral feature extraction. The feature extraction is used for hyperspectral image classification. The classification accuracies obtained are significantly better than the ones obtained using features extracted by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Maximum Noise Fraction (MNF).
The prognostic significance of the BRAFV600E mutation in papillary thyroid carcinoma detected by mutation-specific immunohistochemistry

Aims: BRAFV600E mutation has been shown in a large meta-analysis to be an independent prognostic marker for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) with poorer survival and higher recurrence rates. Methods: We studied prevalence of BRAFV600E mutation in 77 patients with PTC from an Australian cohort using competitive polymerase chain reaction (C-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) with BRAFV600E-specific antibody, VE1. Clinicopathological parameters, recurrence and mortality were analysed according to BRAFV600E mutation status. Results: Median follow-up was 84.5 months. BRAFV600E mutation was demonstrated in 65% of cases combining both C-PCR and IHC; in 71% (37/77) of tumours >1 cm and 52% (13/25) of microcarcinomas (<1 cm). IHC was positive in 69% (49/71) and C-PCR in 53% (41/77); 87% (67/77) of our patients were treated with total thyroidectomy and 65% (50/77) also had radioactive ablation. BRAFV600E positive tumours had a significantly higher rate of subsequent lymph node metastases (p = 0.035). Significant association was found between BRAFV600E mutation and male sex (p = 0.034), but not between age >45 years at diagnosis, size of primary tumour, extrathyroidal extension, lymph node or distant metastases or clinical stage at diagnosis. Conclusions: BRAFV600E mutation in PTC determined by IHC is associated with significantly increased risk of lymph node recurrence.
Segregation of torque components in fractional-slot concentrated-winding interior PM machines using frozen permeability

Torque is produced in interior permanent magnet (IPM) machines as a result of stator current interactions with the rotor permanent magnets and rotor electromagnetic reluctance. Separation of the torque into its permanent magnet (PM) and reluctance components is helpful to machine designers but is complicated by the nonlinearity of magnetic saturation. This paper proposes a magnetic circuit model (MCM) to predict machine characteristics under frozen permeance conditions to help segregate machine torque components into PM and reluctance torques. Strengths and limitations of previously proposed techniques for performing this torque segregation are compared, including techniques based on finite element (FE) analysis. An alternative technique is proposed for delivering torque segregation results for fractional-slot concentratedwinding (FSCW) IPM machines that compares very well with the FE frozen permeability results but with significantly faster computation time. FE analysis is used to compare the characteristics of four alternative torque segregation techniques.
Totally blind channel identi#cation by exploiting guard intervals (cid:1)

Blind identi#cation techniques estimate the impulse response of a channel by exploiting known #nite alphabet or statistical properties of the transmitted symbols. Alternatively, oversampling the output is known to introduce dependencies also exploitable for channel identi#cation. This paper proves the feasibility of estimating the channel by relying instead on the short sequences of zeros, known as guard intervals or zero padding, introduced between transmitted blocks by a number of communication protocols. Since no property of the transmitted information symbols is assumed, the method is called totally blind channel identi#cation. It is proved that totally blind channel identi#cation requires only two received blocks to estimate the channel.
Predictive Pointing Movements and Saccades Toward a Moving Target

Abstract The authors investigated whether and, if so, how velocity information is used to control predictive manual pointing movements and saccades. Participants (N = 6) intercepted an occluded moving target as if it were still visible. They kept their eyes fixated while the target moved. The target traveled over a fixed distance and changed its velocity on the way. The presentation time of the final velocity was varied. Both the eye and the hand overshot the slow target and undershot the fast target, particularly when the duration of the final velocity was short. Thus, responses were biased in the direction of the target's initial velocity. The error seemed to arise because participants did not take their latency into account when aiming at the target. Instead, they strategically aimed farther ahead when the target was fast. Amplitude was also more related to the position of velocity change than to final velocity duration. Both findings suggest that target velocity is not extrapolated but that individuals add an increment to the position of velocity change.
A framework for making patient-centered care front and center.

The concept of patient-centered care has received increased attention in recent years and is now considered an essential aspiration of high-quality health care systems. Because of technologic advances as well as changes in the organization and financing of care delivery, contemporary health care has evolved tremendously since the concept of patient-centeredness was introduced in the late 1980s. Historically, those advocating patient-centered care have focused on the relationship between the patient and the physician or care team. Although that relationship is still integral, changes to the health care system suggest that a broader range of factors may affect the patient-centeredness of health care experiences. A multidimensional conceptualization of patient-centered care and examples from our health care system illustrate how clinical, structural, and interpersonal attributes can collectively influence the patient's experience. The proposed framework is designed to enable any health system to identify ways in which care could be more patient-centered and move toward a goal of making it a "systems property. "
Pantoea intestinalis sp. nov., isolated from the human gut.

A novel bacterial strain, 29Y89BT, was isolated from a faecal sample of a healthy human subject. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, motile, non-spore-forming and rod-shaped. Strain 29Y89BT formed cream-coloured colonies 2 mm in diameter on trypticase soy agar and showed optimum growth at 35 °C. Strain 29Y89BT showed highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to Pantoea gaviniae A18/07T (98.4 %) followed by Pantoea calida 1400/07T (97.2 %). Multi-locus sequence analysis using atpD (ATP synthase β subunit), gyrB (DNA gyrase), infB (initiation translation factor 2) and rpoB (RNA polymerase β subunit) genes also supported the result of 16S rRNA gene sequence based phylogeny. Strain 29Y89BT showed 62 and 40.7 % DNA-DNA relatedness with P. calida DSM 22759T and P. gaviniae DSM 22758T. Strain 29Y89BT contained C17 : 0 cyclo, C19 : 0 cyclo ω8c, C16 : 0, C14 : 0 and C12 : 0 as predominant fatty acids. In addition, strain 29Y89BT showed physiological and phenotypic differences from its closest relatives P. gaviniae DSM 22758T and P. calida DSM 22759T. The polar lipid profile mainly comprised phospholipids. The DNA G+C content was 59.1 mol%. Thus, based on the findings of the current study, strain 29Y89BT showed clear delineations from its closest relatives P. gaviniae DSM 22758T and P. calida DSM 22759T, and is thus considered to represent a novel species of the genus Pantoea, for which the name Pantoea intestinalis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 29Y89BT ( = DSM 28113T = MCC 2554T).
How senior management and workplace norms influence information security attitudes and self-efficacy

ABSTRACT Prior information security research establishes the need to investigate the informal factors that influence employee attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs about information security. Two informal workplace dynamics that are particularly important for how employees think about information security comprise senior management support and workplace norms. However, there are limitations to empirical research to date on these constructs, including conflicting evidence on the relationship between senior management support and information security attitudes and a lack of research on how norms impact self-efficacy beliefs. Also, although some studies suggest that norms might play a mediating role between information security attitudes, self-efficacy beliefs and their (informal and formal) antecedents, empirical research is yet to investigate these possibilities. Consequently, this study considers the relationships between senior management support, norms, formal controls and information security attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs. It comprises a cross-sectional survey of employees at a law enforcement organisation. Results indicate the central role that norms have on employee information security attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs including their direct and mediating role. In addition, the study highlights the important role that senior management support has on employees’ thinking about information security.
Application of intelligent agents to control the process of blended learning in an educational environment

Our study implements a model that explains the relationship between the students learning process productivity taking into account individual differences and didactic learning content resources. The process of data collection and analytics focuses on the micro-level. Individual learning trajectory prediction is observed at the micro-level. Blended learning has several advantages. However, its integration in the educational process is a complex process. Implementation requires new technologies. Process monitoring is implemented in a software environment by means of intelligent agents.