Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How a Statewide Stream Survey Can Aid in Understanding Freshwater Mussel (Bivalvia: Unionidae) Ecology: Examples of Utility and Limitations from Maryland

ABSTRACT Gaps in our knowledge of freshwater mussel life history, distribution, and ecology remain even though their study has increased considerably over the past few decades. These studies have traditionally taken place within a population, river, or larger drainage unit, but rarely across a broad landscape, such as a state. Given the imperiled status of a majority of unionid species alternative opportunities to collect valuable data cannot be overlooked. We present results from a statewide biological monitoring program (Maryland Biological Stream Survey) that has incorporated a visual survey for mussels, several example analyses using mussel-bioassessment data, and discuss the utility and limitations of incorporating freshwater mussels into stream assessments. Since 2007, we encountered 11 of the 16 mussel species extant in Maryland during assessments of wadeable streams by using an informal visual survey and recording incidental observations. On several occasions, we have discovered new populations of imperiled mussels or extended a species distribution. The biological and physiochemical data collected at sites coincident with freshwater mussels have allowed us to hypothesize factors potentially limiting species distribution, such as fish-host dynamics, habitat quality, nutrient concentration, and catchment land use. We feel that the addition of a survey effort into a biological monitoring program, invaluable data can be collected that can assist resource managers, malacologists, and researchers answer a variety of questions. Further investigation into the cost-benefits of an appropriate level of sampling effort is needed as this could vary markedly among molluscan faunal regions and by objectives.
Diffraction grating structures in solar cells

Sub-wavelength periodic texturing (gratings) of crystalline-silicon (c-Si) surfaces for solar cell applications can be designed for maximizing optical absorption in thin c-Si films. The authors have investigated c-Si grating structures using rigorous modeling, hemispherical reflectance and internal quantum efficiency measurements. Model calculations predict almost /spl sim/100% energy coupling into obliquely propagating diffraction orders. By fabrication and optical characterization of a wide range of 1D and 2D c-Si grating structures, they have achieved broadband, low (/spl sim/5%) reflectance without an antireflection film. By integrating grating structures into conventional solar cell designs, they have demonstrated short-circuit current density enhancements of 3.4 and 4.1 mA/cm/sup 2/ for rectangular and triangular 1D grating structures compared to planar controls. The effective path length enhancements due to these gratings were 2.2 and 1.7, respectively. Optimized 2D gratings are expected to have even better performance.
Phase 1 Usability Evaluation Finding and Consolidating Problems Phase 2 Redesign , Implementation & Measuring Changes Phase 3 Impact Analysis Tracing

Analyzing usability improvement processes as they take place in real-life organizations is necessary to understand the practice of usability work. This paper describes a case study where the usability of an information system is improved and a relationship between the improvements and the evaluation efforts is established. Results show that evaluation techniques complemented each other by suggesting different kinds of usability improvement. Among the techniques applied, a combination of questionnaires and Metaphors of Human Thinking (MOT) showed the largest mean impact and MOT produced the largest number of impacts. Logging of real-life use of the system over 6 months indicated six aspects of improved usability, where significant differences among evaluation techniques were found. Concerning five of the six aspects Think Aloud evaluations and the above-mentioned combination of questionnaire and MOT performed equally well, and better than MOT. Based on the evaluations 40 redesign proposals were developed and 30 of these were implemented. Four of the implemented redesigns where considered especially important. These evolved with inspiration from multiple evaluations and were informed by stakeholders with different kinds of expertise. Our results suggest that practitioners should not rely on isolated evaluations. Instead complementing techniques should be combined, and people with different expertise should be involved. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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a Department of Radiation Medicine, Faculty of Naval Medicine, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China b Department of Radiation Oncology, The Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China, 130021 c Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX75390, USA d Department and Surgical Oncology and Institute of Clinical Medicine, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
FUNDAÇÃO GETULIO VARGAS ESCOLA DE ECONOMIA DE SÃO PAULO CARLOS EDUARDO LADEIRA FISCAL ADJUSTMENT, CONDITIONALITY AND POLITICS IN IMF PROGRAMS

A common feature in programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the use of conditionalities, macroeconomic and structural measures that a requesting country should adopt to obtain an assistance package. The objective of this work is to conduct an empirical analysis of the economic and political determinants of such conditionalities. In particular, our main contribution consists in the development of a new measure of conditionality, fiscal adjustment, and its comparison with the most used in the literature, the number of conditions. We choose fiscal adjustment because it is an adequate proxy for program austerity, since its implementation carries economic and political costs. In the empirical exercise, we use data from 184 programs in the period of 1999 and 2012, and estimate how our two measures of conditionalities respond to the economic and political factors. Our results suggest that they are quite different. The main determinant of the number of conditions is the political proximity of the borrowing country to the Fund’s major shareholders, the members of G5. On the other hand, the main determinant of fiscal adjustment is the size of the government fiscal deficit. Finally, we did not find correlation between the size of fiscal adjustment and the number of conditions. These results suggest that the analysis of the content of IMF programs should take into account the different measures of agreed conditionality.
Measurement Range of Motion to Position Straight Leg Raise Based Camera RGB-Depth

The camera device based color camera (RGB) and camera depth (Depth) that can detect and track the movement of the human skeleton called Kinect. Kinect can process depth data that can function both in a state of both light and dark lighting. In general, Kinect recognize and detect the user and track user joints in a standing or sitting pose. In this study, Kinect is able to track foot skeleton in a lying position with Straight Leg Raise (SLR) in real time and measurement of Range Of Motion. Methods of image aquisition, calibration pose, depth image to feature extraction legs form an angle ROM. Results of this ROM can be used for various purposes, one of them among others to help patients in the physiotherapy and detect the state of spinal pain.
Generating Internal Collisions in the Alternating-Input Structure

The sponge function KECCAK is the versatile successor of SHA-1 and the SHA-2 series of hash functions. Its structure and components are quite different from its predecessors, and at first sight it seems like a complete break with the past. In this article, researchers show that KECCAK is the endpoint of a long learning process involving many intermediate designs, mostly gradual changes, but also some drastic changes of direction. Researchers take off from their attempts at fixing PANAMA [26], resulting in RADIOGATÚN [4], and their insights on trail backtracking applied to generalizations of PANAMA and RADIOGATÚN, known as alternating-input and belt-and-mill structures. They explain how they originally proposed the sponge construction to compactly express security claims for their designs and how they finally decided to use it in an actual design which would become KECCAK. Then, they explain the design choices made in KECCAK and how some of its building blocks can be traced back to its predecessor, RADIOGATÚN, and even earlier.
Status of research toward the ITER disruption mitigation system

An overview of the present status of research toward the final design of the ITER disruption mitigation system (DMS) is given. The ITER DMS is based on massive injection of impurities, in order to radiate the plasma stored energy and mitigate the potentially damaging effects of disruptions. The design of this system will be extremely challenging due to many physics and engineering constraints such as limitations on port access and the amount and species of injected impurities. Additionally, many physics questions relevant to the design of the ITER disruption mitigation system remain unsolved such as the mechanisms for mixing and assimilation of injected impurities during the rapid shutdown and the mechanisms for the subsequent formation and dissipation of runaway electron current.
Magnetoconductivity of type-II Weyl semimetals

Type-II Weyl semimetals are characterized by the tilted linear dispersion in the low-energy excitations, mimicking Weyl fermions but with manifest violation of the Lorentz invariance, which has intriguing quantum transport properties. The magnetoconductivity of type-II Weyl semimetals is investigated numerically based on lattice models in parallel electric and magnetic field. We show that in the high-field regime, the sign of the magnetoconductivity of an inversion-symmetry-breaking type-II Weyl semimetals depends on the direction of the magnetic field, whereas in the weak field regime, positive magnetoconductivity is always obtained regardless of magnetic field direction. We find that the weak localization is sensitive to the spatial extent of impurity potential. In time-reversal symmetry breaking type-II Weyl semimetals, the system displays either positive or negative magnetoconductivity along the direction of band tilting, owing to the associated effect of group velocity, Berry curvature and the magnetic field.
Foreign Ownership Restrictions , Depositary Receipt Supply , and Investor Sentiment on Taiwanese Depositary Receipt Premiums

This paper focuses on the price difference between depositary receipts (DRs) and the underlying securities issued by Taiwanese firms under foreign ownership restrictions. We examine two issues: (1) the price relationships between DRs and their underlying securities, and (2) the determinants of the price differences between DRs and their underlying securities. The empirical results show that large daily price differences are observed between DRs and their underlying Taiwanese securities. However, these price differences do not exist for DRs traded in different free-entry countries. We examine the determinants of the price differences between DRs and their underlying securities, and find that the time-series qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) surplus, defined as the QFII ownership limit ratio minus the actual QFII ownership ratio, is inversely associated with the DR premium. As the foreign ownership restrictions become tighter, the QFII surplus decreases and the DR premium increases. The results also indicate that a structural change in the relationships between DR premiums and investor sentiment variables occurred in 1997. The DR premiums are sensitive to non-QFII holdings, defined as the total foreign holdings minus the QFII holdings, before 1997. However, post 1997 the DR premiums become more sensitive to firm size, but less sensitive to non-QFII holdings post 1997. The change in demand caused by regulation and investor sentiment is reflected in DR prices, which leads to the variations in DR premiums. Furthermore, this study finds a supplyside effect on DR premiums. As firms increase DRs issues, the DR premiums become smaller. This study concludes that regulation, investor
sliding-mode control of a boost converter operating in continuous conduction mode that minimizes the inrush current and provides output voltage regulation in front of input voltage perturbations

This paper presents the analysis and design of a sliding-mode control of a boost converter operating in continuous conduction mode that minimizes the inrush current and provides output voltage regulation in front of input voltage perturbations and load changes. The analytical expression of the inrush current is obtained and the conditions to minimize the current peak are derived. The resulting controller is implemented analogically and employs two switching surfaces. Namely, one surface is combined with the conventional auxiliary diode branch for the start-up, while another one is used for the voltage regulation in steadystate. Experimental results are in perfect agreement with the theoretical predictions.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF PELLET MORPHOLOGY TO POLYGALACTURONASE PRODUCTION OF Rhizopus oryzae IN VARIOUS MEDIA COMPOSITIONS

Various media parameters affecting the polygalacturonase (PG) production of Rhizopus oryzae, were stud ied and their relation to pellet morphology was investigated. The basal medium in the absence of Mg +2 and in the presence of 4 mg/kg of Zn +2 at pH 3, resulted into maximum PG activity (11.53 U/ml). A composition of 14.78 g/l of glucose, 10 g/l of galactose, 5 g/l mannose, 0.5 g/l of arabinose and 19.73 g/l of xylose resulted into maximum PG activity (27.94 U/ml) when used as combined carbon sources. Corn meal as the nitrogen source, promoted PG synthesis where it resulted into 33 % more activity than corn steep liquor (CSL) and (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 which were the next highest promoter. The highest number of pellets with an aver age mean diameter of 1.25±0.25 mm was obtained with the formulation containing (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 and 25 g/l of glucose. Yeast extract on the other hand resulted into pellet formation with an average mean diameter of 1.75±0.25 mm at higher glucose concentration (50 g/l). The interactive effect of suitable carbon source (glucose) with suitable nitrogen source (corn meal) enhanced the PG activity 4 times more than the basal medium with pellets of 1.44±0.35mm in average diameter.
A exhibits high selective protein ligation activity in the cytoplasm of E . coli Hidehiko Hirakawa

A Staphylococcus aureus transpeptidase, sortase A (SrtA), which catalyzes a peptide ligation with high substrate specificity, is a useful tool to site‐specifically attach proteinaceous/peptidic functional molecules to target proteins. However, its strong Ca2+ dependency makes SrtA difficult for use under low Ca2+ concentrations and in the presence of Ca2+‐binding substances. To overcome this problem, we designed a SrtA mutant that Ca2+‐independently demonstrates a high catalytic activity. The heptamutant (P94R/E105K/E108A/D160N/D165A/K190E/K196T), which resulted from a combination of known mutations at the Ca2+‐binding site and around the substrate‐ binding site, successfully catalyzed a selective protein‐protein ligation in the cytoplasm of Escherichia coli. Selective protein modification in living cells is a promising approach for investigating cellular events and regulating cell functions. This SrtA mutant may prove to be a versatile tool for adding new functionalities to proteins of interest by incorporating functional proteins and chemically modified peptides in living cells, which usually retain low Ca2+ concentrations. A cc ep te d A rti cl e www.biotechnology-journal.com Page 4 Biotechnology Journal
Multi-Component Dark Matter

We explore multi-component dark matter models where the dark sector consists of multiple stable states with different mass scales, and dark forces coupling these states further enrich the dynamics. The multi-component nature of the dark matter naturally arises in supersymmetric models, where both R parity and an additional symmetry, such as a Z{sub 2}, is preserved. We focus on a particular model where the heavier component of dark matter carries lepton number and annihilates mostly to leptons. The heavier component, which is essentially a sterile neutrino, naturally explains the PAMELA, ATIC and synchrotron signals, without an excess in antiprotons which typically mars other models of weak scale dark matter. The lighter component, which may have a mass from a GeV to a TeV, may explain the DAMA signal, and may be visible in low threshold runs of CDMS and XENON, which search for light dark matter.
LOCALIZATION OF OPTIC DISC IN RETINAL IMAGES BY USING AN EFFICIENT K-MEANS CLUSTERING ALGORITHM

In this paper, we proposed algorithm for localization of optic disc as it aids to detect different phases of diabetic retinopathy. The proposed algorithm gives accurate results for localization of optic disc. There are three stages defined in this paper for localization of optic disc. First stage is pre-processing in which the retinal image is enhanced. Second stage is clustering in which K-means algorithm is applied. Third stage is post-processing where morphological operations are performed. The proposed algorithm is applied on the DRIVE dataset. The results obtain when the number of clusters chosen are 16 and 20. Keywords—Optic Disc, Adaptive Histogram Equalization, K-means algorithm, Mathematical Morphology
The identifying extended Kalman filter: Parametric system identification of a vehicle handling model

Abstract This article considers a novel method for estimating parameters in a vehicle-handling dynamic model using a recursive filter. The well-known extended Kalman filter - which is widely used for real-time state estimation of vehicle dynamics - is used here in an unorthodox fashion; a model is prescribed for the sensors alone, and the state vector is replaced by a set of unknown model parameters. With the aid of two simple tuning parameters, the system self-regulates its estimates of parameter and sensor errors, and hence smoothly identifies optimal parameter choices. The method makes one contentious assumption that vehicle lateral velocity (or body sideslip angle) is available as a measurement, along with the more conventionally available yaw velocity state. However, the article demonstrates that by using the new generation of combined GPS/inertial body motion measurement systems, a suitable lateral velocity signal is indeed measurable. The system identification is thus demonstrated in simulation, and also proved by successful parametrization of a model, using test vehicle data. The identifying extended Kalman filter has applications in model validation - for example, acting as a reference between vehicle behaviour and higher-order multi-body models - and it could also be operated in a real-time capacity to adapt parameters in model-based vehicle control applications.
Anaerobiosis : molecular biology , genetics and other aspects Isolation and characterization of Pseudomonas stutzeri QZ 1 from an anoxic sulfide-oxidizing bioreactor

Bacterial strain QZ1 was isolated from sludge of anoxic sulfide-oxidizing (ASO) reactor. Based on 16S rDNA sequence analysis and morphological characteristics, the isolate was identified as Pseudomonas stutzeri. The isolate was found to be a facultative chemolithotroph, using sulfide as electron donor and nitrite as electron acceptor. The strain QZ1 produced sulfate as the major product of sulfide oxidation, depending on the initial sulfide and nitrite concentrations. The isolate was capable of growth under strictly autotrophic conditions. The growth and substrate removal of Pseudomonas stutzeri QZ1 were optimal at an initial pH of 7.5–8.0 at 30 C. The specific growth rate (m) was found as 0.035 h 1 with a doubling time of 21.5 h. For isolate QZ1, the EC50 values both for sulfide and nitrite were found to be 335.95 mg S L 1 and 512.38 mg N L 1, respectively, showing that the sulfide oxidation into sulfate by Pseudomonas stutzeri QZ1 was badly affected beyond these substrate concentrations. 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Preliminary assessment of Rosmarinus officinalis toxicity on male Wistar rats' organs and reproductive system

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L. - Lamiaceae) is a shrub used in the treatment of hepatic, intestinal, renal and respiratory affections. Its toxicity was assessed in female rats and an anti-implantation effect was reported after treatment with this plant. This work analyzes the effect of the short-term administration of R. officinalis extract on vital organs, on the organs of the reproductive system and sperm production of mature male Wistar rats. Adult Wistar rats were treated with 1 mL of R. officinalis aqueous extract at a dose level of 291.2 mg and 582.4 mg/kg of body weight for five days. Body and organs weights, sperm production and food consumption were evaluated. The results showed that the lower dose administration of R. officinalis extract did not significantly alter body and organs weight nor did it interfere with gamete production. However, animals treated with the higher dose showed significant weight increase of the seminal vesicle but no significant alteration of the other variables. Food intake was not affected by the treatments.
GENETIC POLYMORPHISM-DISEASE ASSOCIATION Association between SIRT 2 gene polymorphism and height in healthy , elderly Japanese subjects

T he silent information regulator factor 2 (SIR2; a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide–dependent histone deacetylase) protein is related to life span extension in a diverse range of species. In mammals there are 7 sirtuins, all possessing a highly conserved central nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide–binding site and common catalytic domain. Sirtuin 2 (SIRT2) is the mammalian ortholog of the yeast HST2, one of the four SIR2 paralogs. Similar to SIR2, HST2 is upregulated by caloric restriction and oxidative stress and extends life span. SITR2 acts as an important regulator of cell differentiation through modulation of forkhead transcription factor 1 acetylation/phosphorylation. Forkhead transcription factor 1 is a homolog of daf-16, a key regulator of the insulin-like growth factor 1 signaling pathway, and is necessary for increasing life span. An association between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and SIRT2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has been reported, but an association of the SIRT2 gene with longevity and other phenotypes has not been reported. We focused on the biological pleiotropic roles of SIRT2 and investigated their association with various laboratory and anthropometric data in elderly Japanese subjects.
Marker-Assisted Selection of Japonica Restorers used for Yinshui CMS System

In this paper, we employed the rice variety Wanlun 422 with wide compatibility, WA-type restorer line Shuhui 527, Miyang 46, and Miyang 42 as the parent materials, and selected the Japonica rice restorer line for Yinshui type cytoplasmic male sterility (YS-CMS) from the hybrid combinations F 2 and F 4 using molecular marker-assisted selection combined with the conventional breeding method. The results showed that the plants containing two restorer genes identified by molecular markers were selected to make hybrid combinations with YS-CMS lines. We found that the seed-setting rate and heterosis of the hybrids were significantly improved. The results of this paper indicate that it is feasible for development of restorers for Japonica YS-CMS line based on molecular marker-assisted.