Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of heterogeneity on coverage, energy consumption and connectivity of wireless sensor networks

Coverage, connectivity and energy consumption are three important metrics used to evaluate the quality of service of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, we consider a heterogeneous WSN (HWSNs) with different types of sensors distributed randomly in a rectangular field of interest (FoI) and study the effect of heterogeneity on network's coverage and energy consumption. Mathematical models for coverage and energy consumption of HWSNs are obtained and their behavior with varying the number sensors of different types is examined. In addition, probability of connectivity in a rectangular FoI is calculated using a probabilistic approach. Finally, coverage maximizing and energy consumption minimizing numbers of sensors of different types are obtained via simulations.
Evaluation of a commercially available complement fixation test for diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection and for follow-up after antimicrobial therapy

Commercially available complement fixation test reagents (Institute Virion Ltd., Rüschlikon, Zurich, Switzerland) available in package format were evaluated for the serodiagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection. The assay was compared with bacterial culture and histological Giemsa stain of gastric biopsy specimens obtained from 930 patients of different ages and from different ethnic groups, with a variety of upper gastrointestinal tract symptoms. The prevalence, sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values, respectively, were 35, 71, 90, 80, and 85% for Belgian patients aged 40 years or younger, 50, 81, 93, 92, and 83% for Belgian patients older than 40 years, and 83, 83, 79, 95, and 48% for Mediterranean patients. Using 645 serum specimens from 226 patients, we also evaluated the complement fixation test for its ability to monitor the eradication of H. pylori following antimicrobial therapy. Overall, H. pylori was eradicated from 122 patients while 104 patients remained infected with the organism. A significant decrease in antibody levels was observed 3 to 6 months after the end of therapy in the group of patients from whom H. pylori was eradicated.
Community Health Psychology: Promoting Analysis and Action for Social Change

Community health psychology is concerned with the theory and method of working with communities to combat disease and to promote health. This introductory article outlines key assumptions and debates underlying this area of research and practice—in the interests of framing the papers in this special edition of the Journal of Health Psychology. Attention is given to the value of emphasizing the community level of analysis and action; the role of collective action in improving health; psycho-social mediatiors between community participation and health; and the potential role of partnerships in creating ‘healthy communities’. A distinction is made between ‘accommodationist’ and ‘critical’ perspectives, and the authors consider whether or not significant social change can come from community-level action.
Involvement of the superoxide anion radical in the autoxidation of pyrogallol and a convenient assay for superoxide dismutase.

The autoxidation of pyrogallol was investigated in the presence of EDTA in the pH range 7.9–10.6. The rate of autoxidation increases with increasing pH. At pH 7.9 the reaction is inhibited to 99% by superoxide dismutase, indicating an almost total dependence on the participation of the superoxide anion radical, O2·−, in the reaction. Up to pH 9.1 the reaction is still inhibited to over 90% by superoxide dismutase, but at higher alkalinity, O2·− -independent mechanisms rapidly become dominant. Catalase has no effect on the autoxidation but decreases the oxygen consumption by half, showing that H2O2 is the stable product of oxygen and that H2O2 is not involved in the autoxidation mechanism. A simple and rapid method for the assay of superoxide dismutase is described, based on the ability of the enzyme to inhibit the autoxidation of pyrogallol. A plausible explanation is given for the non-competitive part of the inhibition of catechol O-methyltransferase brought about by pyrogallol.
MNK2 Inhibits eIF4G Activation Through a Pathway Involving Serine-Arginine–Rich Protein Kinase in Skeletal Muscle

In muscle, the kinase-dependent and -independent functions of MNK2 inhibit the protein translation protein eIF4G under conditions that promote atrophy. Limiting Muscle Mass Skeletal muscle mass changes in response to activity, the availability of nutrients, and pathologic loss of muscle mass are associated with long-term bed rest, cachexia-inducing diseases, and starvation. Hu et al. used overexpression, knockout, and knockdown studies to show that the kinase MNK2 had a negative regulatory role on proteins involved in protein synthesis under atrophy-promoting conditions. This was unexpected because MNK2 is also part of a eukaryotic translation initiation complex and is one of the two isoforms capable of phosphorylating a component of that complex on a site associated with promotion of protein synthesis. The negative regulatory effects on protein synthesis machinery appeared to involve a kinase-independent interaction with mTOR, a master regulator of protein synthesis, and a kinase-dependent regulation of another kinase, SRPK, which had not been previously implicated in regulation of protein synthesis. Skeletal muscle mass is regulated by activity, metabolism, and the availability of nutrients. During muscle atrophy, MNK2 expression increases. We found that MNK2 (mitogen-activated protein kinase–interacting kinase 2), but not MNK1, inhibited proteins involved in promoting protein synthesis, including eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4G (eIF4G) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). Phosphorylation at serine 1108 (Ser1108) of eIF4G, which is associated with enhanced protein translation, is promoted by insulin-like growth factor 1 and inhibited by rapamycin or starvation, suggesting that phosphorylation of this residue is regulated by mTOR. In cultured myotubes, small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown of MNK2 increased eIF4G Ser1108 phosphorylation and overcame rapamycin’s inhibitory effect on this phosphorylation event. Phosphorylation of Ser1108 in eIF4G, in gastrocnemius muscle, was increased in mice lacking MNK2, but not those lacking MNK1, and this increased phosphorylation was maintained in MNK2-null animals under atrophy conditions and upon starvation. Conversely, overexpression of MNK2 decreased eIF4G Ser1108 phosphorylation. An siRNA screen revealed that serine-arginine–rich protein kinases linked increased MNK2 activity to decreased eIF4G phosphorylation. In addition, we found that MNK2 interacted with mTOR and inhibited phosphorylation of the mTOR target, the ribosomal kinase p70S6K (70-kD ribosomal protein S6 kinase), through a mechanism independent of the kinase activity of MNK2. These data indicate that MNK2 plays a unique role, not shared by its closest paralog MNK1, in limiting protein translation through its negative effect on eIF4G Ser1108 phosphorylation and p70S6K activation.
Rabies Virus Is Recognized by the NLRP3 Inflammasome and Activates Interleukin-1β Release in Murine Dendritic Cells

ABSTRACT Inflammasome activation is important for the development of an effective host defense against many pathogens, including RNA viruses. However, the mechanism by which the inflammasome recognizes RNA viruses and its role in rabies virus (RABV) pathogenicity and immunogenicity remain poorly defined. To determine the function of the inflammasome in response to RABV infection, we infected murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) with RABV. Our results indicate that the infection of BMDCs with RABV induces both the production of pro-interleukin-1β (pro-IL-1β) and its processing, resulting in the secretion of active IL-1β through activation of the NLRP3-, ASC-, and caspase-1-dependent inflammasome. As previously shown for the induction of type I interferon by RABV, the induction of pro-IL-1β also depends upon IPS-1. We demonstrate that both the production of pro-IL-1β and activation of the inflammasome require viral replication. We also demonstrate that increased viral replication in BMDCs derived from IFNAR-deficient mice resulted in significantly more IL-1β release. Additionally, IL-1 receptor-deficient mice show an increase in RABV pathogenicity. Taken together, these results indicate an important role of the inflammasome in innate immune recognition of RABV.
Diagnosing Parkinson’s Disease: The Patient Perspective

In Parkinson’s disease (PD), quality of life research has focused on medical therapeutics and management of physical symptoms. Physical mobility, sleep, energy, difficulty with activities of daily living and pain are important contributors to quality of life.1 Emotional reactions and disease related social isolation also contribute to the patient experience of PD.1 Little is known, however, about how patients deal with a new diagnosis of PD. Haines et al explored the time at which patients with PD reveal their diagnosis to others.2 Ninety percent of patients disclosed their diagnosis to family within one month. However, 25% of patients waited longer than one year before disclosing the diagnosis of PD to coworkers or employers. A decreased likelihood of disclosure within the first year was associated with being male, younger and employed.2 The life context of the patient at the time of diagnosis is also likely to influence disclosure. Understanding how patients cope with their disease from the outset is fundamental to fostering a supportive patient-physician relationship. We sought to determine whether there is a common initial response amongst patients at the time of diagnosis of PD. A descriptive cross-sectional study of patients with a diagnosis of PD was undertaken in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Seventy-nine patients with PD voluntarily participated in this study (ethics approval obtained). A short questionnaire was distributed to all participants asking:
Combining Speaker Turn Embedding and Incremental Structure Prediction for Low-Latency Speaker Diarization

Real-time speaker diarization has many potential applications, including public security, biometrics or forensics. It can also significantly speed up the indexing of increasingly large multimedia archives. In this paper, we address the issue of lowlatency speaker diarization that consists in continuously detecting new or reoccurring speakers within an audio stream, and determining when each speaker is active with a low latency (e.g. every second). This is in contrast with most existing approaches in speaker diarization that rely on multiple passes over the complete audio recording. The proposed approach combines speaker turn neural embeddings with an incremental structure prediction approach inspired by state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing models for Part-of-Speech tagging and dependency parsing. It can therefore leverage both information describing the utterance and the inherent temporal structure of interactions between speakers to learn, in supervised framework, to identify speakers. Experiments on the Etape broadcast news benchmark validate the approach.
Author ' s personal copy Syntax in a native language still continues to develop in adults : Honorification judgment in Japanese q

Native languages (L1s) are tacitly assumed to be complete and stable in adults. Here we report an unexpected individual variation in judgment of L1 regarding Japanese sentences including honorification, and further clarify its neural basis with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). By contrasting an honorification judgment task with a spelling judgment task, the lower performance group showed more extensive activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus than did the higher performance group. Moreover, activation in the left dorsal and ventral triangular parts negatively correlated with the performance of the honorification judgment task. This modulation pattern demonstrates that cortical activations recruited for sentence processing depend on individual performances even in L1. 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Adaptive Object Tracking and Video Compression

, Nous presentons dans cet article un nouveau systeme pour la compression d'un canal video, aboutissant a une tres faible vitesse de transmission, en utilisant une methode de compression dynamique orientee objet, Cette methode separe les objets importants de ceux moins importants comme le fond de l'ecran et les details, afin de garder une bonne qualite de l'image des objets interessants. La vitesse de transmission peut ainsi etre reduite de maniere significative en sacrifiant' les informations secondaires ou de moindre importance pour les utilisateurs. Cette methode fait appel a un algorithme dynamique base sur la selection des objets, leur utilisation et la reproduction fidele de leur contour. Apres l'avoir detaillee, nous presentons les performances de cette methode, ainsi que les resultats experimentaux obtenus, en termes de taille et de qualite d'image, avec une comparaison avec le standard H.263.
Distinct classes of red/far-red photochemistry within the phytochrome superfamily

Phytochromes are a widespread family of photosensory proteins first discovered in plants, which measure the ratio of red to far-red light to control many aspects of growth and development. Phytochromes interconvert between red-absorbing Pr and far-red-absorbing Pfr states via photoisomerization of a covalently-bound linear tetrapyrrole (bilin) chromophore located in a conserved photosensory core. From recent crystal structures of this core region, it has been inferred that the chromophore structures of Pr and Pfr are conserved in most phytochromes. Using circular dichroism spectroscopy and ab initio calculations, we establish that the Pfr states of the biliverdin-containing bacteriophytochromes DrBphP and PaBphP are structurally dissimilar from those of the phytobilin-containing cyanobacterial phytochrome Cph1. This conclusion is further supported by chromophore substitution experiments using semisynthetic bilin monoamides, which indicate that the propionate side chains perform different functional roles in the 2 classes of phytochromes. We propose that different directions of bilin D-ring rotation account for these distinct classes of red/far-red photochemistry.
Immigrant labour market outcomes in Canada : The benefits of addressing wage and employment gaps Summary

It is well recognized that immigrants to Canada have higher unemployment rates and lower wages than Canadian-born workers. This report provides an estimate of the size of the aggregate immigrant earnings gap, accounting for immigrants’ stronger profile of observable characteristics, and discusses possible reasons for immigrants’ poorer labour market outcomes. The research to this point suggests that gaps may be due to both genuine skill differences between immigrants and Canadian-born workers, and labour market inefficiencies that prevent immigrants from making full use of their skills. In either case, there could be room to improve on immigrant outcomes through more extensive language training, faster credential recognition, or other integration initiatives. More rigorous evaluation of existing programs would also be helpful in understanding why gaps persist and how we can best address them.
A reachability-guaranteed approach for reducing broadcast storms in mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, a reachability-guaranteed approach for reducing broadcast storms in MANET is proposed. The approach is based on location awareness, which means each node in the network needs to equip the positioning device like GPS and exchange location information in the HELLO message with its neighbors. Three mechanisms are included in the proposed approach: Relay set (RS), neighbor coverage (NC), and transmission order (TO). Simulation results have shown that the proposed approach RS+NC+TO has a better performance than the threshold-based schemes and angle-based scheme in terms of 100% reachability, more saved rebroadcast, and shorter average latency to accomplish the broadcast process over the whole network.
Rapid and sensitive separation of trace level protein digests using microfabricated devices coupled to a quadrupole ‐ time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer

The application of microfabricated devices coupled to a quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer (Qq‐TOF‐MS) is presented for the analysis of trace level digests of gel‐isolated proteins. In order to enhance the sample loading for proteomics analyses, two different on‐chip sample preconcentration techniques were evaluated. First, a sample stacking procedure that used polarity switching to remove the sample buffer prior to zone electrophoresis was easily integrated on the microfabricated devices. With the present chip design, this preconcentration technique provided up to 70 nL sample injection with sub‐nM detection limits for most peptide standards. For applications requiring larger sample loading, a disposable adsorption preconcentrator using a C18 membrane is incorporated outside the chip. This preconcentration method yielded lower peptide recoveries than that obtainable with sample stacking, and provided a convenient means of injecting several μL of sample with detection limits of typically 2.5 nM for hydrophobic peptides. The analytical merits of both sample enrichment approaches are described for the identification of bands isolated from two‐dimensional (2‐D) gel separation of protein extracts from Haemophilus influenzae. Accurate molecular mass measurements (< 5 ppm) in peptide mapping experiments is obtained by introducing an internal standard via a post‐separation channel. Rapid identification of trace level peptides is also demonstrated using on‐line tandem mass spectrometry and database searching with peptide sequence tags.
Large Area Vapor Phase Growth and Characterization of MoS2 Atomic Layers on SiO2 Substrate

Monolayer Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a two-dimensional crystal with a direct bandgap, is a promising candidate for 2D nanoelectronic devices complementing graphene. There have been recent attempts to produce MoS2 layers via chemical and mechanical exfoliation of bulk material. Here we demonstrate the large area growth of MoS2 atomic layers on SiO2 substrates by a scalable chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The as-prepared samples can either be readily utilized for further device fabrication or be easily released from SiO2 and transferred to arbitrary substrates. High resolution transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy on the as grown films of MoS2 indicate that the number of layers range from single layer to a few layers. Our results on the direct growth of MoS2 layers on dielectric leading to facile device fabrication possibilities show the expanding set of useful 2D atomic layers, on the heels of graphene, which can be controllably synthesized and manipulated for many applications.
Effects of denervating brown adipose tissue on the responses to cold, hyperphagia and noradrenaline treatment in the rat.

Surgical denervation of the five sympathetic nerves supplying one lobe of the interscapular brown fat of control rats caused small reductions in mass, protein content and the activity of the thermogenic mitochondrial proton conductance pathway (assessed from guanosine‐5'‐diphosphate (GDP) binding) when compared to the intact lobe. Denervation did not affect the acute 100% increase in mitochondrial GDP binding capacity seen after a single injection of noradrenaline. Cold‐adaptation (4 degrees C for 7 days) or over‐feeding (cafeteria diet for 10 days) caused marked increases in the mass, protein content and specific mitochondrial GDP binding in intact brown adipose tissue, but these changes were totally prevented by surgical denervation. These data indicate that the hypertrophy and the increased thermogenic capacity of brown fat induced by cold‐adaptation or hyperphagia depend entirely upon the sympathetic innervation of the tissue.
A vision-based walking motion parameters capturing system

The markerless vision-based human motion parameters capturing has been widely applied for human-machine interface. However, it faces two problems: the high-dimensional parameter estimation and the self-occlusion. Here, we propose a 3-D human model with structural, kinematic, and temporal constraints to track a walking human object in any viewing direction. Our method modifies the Annealed Particle Filter (APF) by applying the pre-trained spatial correlation map and the temporal constraint to estimate the motion parameters of a walking human object. In the experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed method requires less computation time and generates more accurate results.
Recovery of PieceWise Planar and PieceWise Rigid Models from Non-Rigid Motion

We present a framework for estimating 3D relative structure (shape) and motion given objects undergoing non-rigid deformation as observed from a fixed camera, under perspective projection. Deforming surfaces are approximated as piece-wise planar, and piece-wise rigid. Robust registration methods allow tracking of corresponding image patches from view to view and recovery of 3D shape despite occlusions, discontinuities, and varying illumination conditions. Many relatively small planar/rigid image patch trackers are scattered throughout the image; resulting estimates of structure and motion at each patch are combined over local neighborhoods via an oriented particle systems formulation. Preliminary experiments have been conducted on real image sequences of deforming objects and on synthetic sequences where ground truth is known.
The Influence of Trans-resveratrol and Quercetin on the Activity of CYP1A2 in Rat

Polyphenolic compounds are widely distributed among plants and are present also in wine grapes and wine. We determined the influence of polyphenols (trans-resveratrol, quercetin) and sex on the activity of cytochrome P450 in rats. Cytochrome P450 (CYP450) is one of the most important enzymatic systems of biotransformation. Its activity is influenced by many endo- as well as exogenous factors. In our experiment we studied on the model of perfused rat liver the activity of 1A2 isoenzyme, which is being linked with the activation of promutagenes and procarcinogenes. Our results confirmed different metabolic acivity between males and females. Female rats metabolized faster through CYP1A2. Trans-resveratrol didn't influence the activity of CYP1A2, but it enhanced intersexual differences. Based on our results we suggest, that quercetin is an inhibitor of CYP1A2 isoenzyme.
Lessons Learned from the Trenches of Multitriangulation Research

In this paper we describe our application of a relatively untried research approach called metatriangulation. Metatriangulation is a three-phased, qualitative meta-analysis process that may be used to explore variations in the assumptions of alternative paradigms, gain insights into these multiple paradigms, and address emerging themes and the resulting theories. In applying this method we encountered difficulties in selecting a sample, in reaching agreement among coders, and in our attempts to build theory from our results. From our experiences we developed a modified version of the metatriangulation method. We did find metatriangulation to be an excellent tool in understanding theoretical perspectives in MIS research and believe the use of our modified method will aid future researchers in this pursuit.