Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of EEG Signal Classification Techniques for Brain Computer Interface

Brain-computer interface (BCI) has emerged as a popular research domain in recent years. The use of electroencephalography (EEG) signals for motor imagery (MI) based BCI has gained widespread attention. The first step in its implementation is to fetch EEG signals from scalp of human subject. The preprocessing of EEG signals is done before applying feature extraction, selection and classification techniques as main steps of signal processing. In preprocessing stage, artifacts are removed from raw brain signals before these are input to next stage of feature extraction. Subsequently classifier algorithms are used to classify selected features into intended MI tasks. The major challenge in a BCI systems is to improve classification accuracy of a BCI system. In this paper, an approach based on Support Vector Machine (SVM), is proposed for signal classification to improve accuracy of the BCI system. The parameters of kernel are varied to attain improvement in classification accuracy. Independent component analysis (ICA) technique is used for preprocessing and filter bank common spatial pattern (FBCSP) for feature extraction and selection. The proposed approach is evaluated on data set 2a of BCI Competition IV by using 5-fold crossvalidation procedure. Results show that it performs better in terms of classification accuracy, as compared to other methods reported in literature.
Absorbing DiRT: Tool Directories in the Digital Age

In the summer of 2017, Quinn Dombrowski, an IT staff member in UC Berkeley’s Research IT group, approached Geoffrey Rockwell about the possibility of merging the DiRT Directory with TAPoR, both popular tool discovery portals. Dombrowski could no longer offer the time commitment required to maintain the organizational structure of the volunteer-run tool directory (2018). This decommissioning of DiRT illustrates a set of problems in the digital humanities around tool directories and the tools within as academic contributions. Tool development, in general, is not considered sufficiently scholarly and often suffers from a lack of ongoing support (Ramsay & Rockwell, 2012). When tool discovery portals are no longer maintained due to a lack of ongoing funding, this leads to a loss of digital humanities knowledge and history. While volunteer-based directories require less outright funding, managing and motivating those volunteers to ensure that they remain actively involved in directory upkeep requires a vast amount work to ensure long-term sustainability (Dombrowski, 2018). This paper will explore the difficult history of tool discovery catalogues and portals and the steps being taken to save the DiRT Directory by integrating it into TAPoR. In particular, we will: – Provide a brief history of the attempts to catalogue tools for digital humanists starting with the first software catalogues, such as those circulated through societies, and ending with digital discovery portals, including DiRT Directory and TAPoR. – Discuss the challenges around the maintenance of discovery portals – Consider the design and metadata decisions made in the merging of DiRT Directory with TAPoR.
Optimal Spot-Checking for Improving the Evaluation Quality of Crowdsourcing: Application to Peer Grading Systems

Peer grading is a natural crowdsourcing application, where dispersed students/peers resources are collected to evaluate others’ assignments. Peer grading also offers a promising solution for scaling evaluation and learning to large-scale educational systems. A key challenge in peer grading is motivating peers to grade diligently and provide a high-quality evaluation. Spot-checking (SC) mechanisms, allowing instructors to check evaluations, can prevent peer collusion where peers grade arbitrarily and coordinate to report the uninformative grade. However, existing SC mechanisms unrealistically assume that peers have the same grading reliability and cost. This is limiting in practice, where we would expect peers to differ in reliability and cost. This article proposes the general Optimal SC (OptSC) model of determining the probability that each assignment needs to be checked to maximize assignments’ evaluation accuracy aggregated from peers and takes into consideration: 1) peers’ heterogeneous characteristics and 2) peers’ strategic grading behaviors to maximize their own utility. We prove that the bilevel OptSC is NP-hard to solve. By exploiting peers’ grading behaviors, we first formulate a single-level relaxation to approximate OptSC. By further exploiting structural properties of the relaxed problem, we propose an efficient algorithm to that relaxation, which also gives a good approximation of the original OptSC. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real data sets show significant advantages of the proposed algorithm over existing approaches.
Distinct uptake mechanisms but similar intracellular processing of two different TLR-peptide conjugates in Dendritic Cells

Covalent conjugation of Toll-like receptor ligands (TLR-L) to synthetic antigenic peptides strongly improves antigen presentation in vitro and T lymphocyte priming in vivo . These molecularly well defined TLR-L-peptide conjugates, constitute an attractive vaccination modality, sharing the peptide antigen and a defined adjuvant in one single molecule. We have analyzed the intracellular trafficking and processing of two TLR-L-conjugates in dendritic cells (DCs). Long synthetic peptides containing an Ovalbumin cytotoxic T-cell epitope were chemically conjugated to two different TLR-Ls the TLR2 ligand, Pam(3)CysSK(4) (Pam) or the TLR9 ligand CpG. Rapid and enhanced uptake of both types of TLR-L-conjugated peptide occurred in DCs. Moreover, TLR-L conjugation greatly enhanced antigen presentation, a process that was dependent on endosomal acidification, proteasomal cleavage, and TAP translocation. The uptake of the CpG approximately conjugate was independent of endosomally-expressed TLR9 as reported previously. Unexpectedly, we found that Pam approximately conjugated peptides were likewise internalized independently of the expression of cell surface-expressed TLR2. Further characterization of the uptake mechanisms revealed that TLR2-L employed a different uptake route than TLR9-L. Inhibition of clathrin-or caveolin-dependent endocytosis greatly reduced uptake and antigen presentation of the Pam-conjugate. In contrast, internalization and antigen presentation of CpG approximately conjugates was independent of clathrin-coated pits but partly dependent on caveolae formation. Importantly, in contrast to the TLR-independent uptake of the conjugates, TLR expression and downstream TLR signaling was required for dendritic cell maturation and for priming of naïve CD8(+) T-cells. Together, our data show that targeting to two distinct TLRs requires distinct uptake mechanism but follows similar trafficking and intracellular To explore the mode of action of TLR-L antigen conjugates, we have designed well-defined synthetic vaccines, composed of peptides containing the model antigen Ovalbumin CD8 + cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitope (SIINFEKL) chemically linked to either the TLR2-ligand, Pam 3 CysSK 4 , or the TLR9 ligand, CpG. These conjugates were used to study the uptake, intracellular routing and processing. We show that not only TLR9-L conjugates but also the TLR2-L conjugates are taken up independently of TLR expression, albeit through two distinct internalization mechanisms. Down-stream processing route for MHC class I antigen presentation, however, were similar and requires endosomal acidification, TAP translocation, and proteasomal processing. Importantly, whereas the uptake of both types of TLR-L conjugates was independent of TLR expression, priming of specific CD8 + T-cell response required TLR signaling in dendritic cells.
Heat, health and hatchlings: associations of in situ nest temperatures with morphological and physiological characteristics of loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings from Florida

Abstract Incubation temperatures, in addition to an embryo’s genetic makeup, are critical in many aspects of adequate sea turtle embryonic development. The effects of high and low incubation temperatures on hatchling quality have been previously examined; however, many of these studies were conducted on relocated or laboratory-reared nests, which do not accurately reflect natural nest temperature fluctuations. To observe the impacts of varying in situ incubation temperatures on loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) hatchling morphology, various health variables and locomotor performance, temperature data loggers were deployed in 15 loggerhead nests on Juno Beach, Florida, between May and July 2018. Over the course of the study period, 10 morphological traits were measured, blood analytes and heart rate were assessed for the establishment of reference intervals and the self-righting response in seawater was evaluated. Warmer months were associated with smaller body size and higher body condition index, larger umbilical scar size, slower righting time, lower heart rates and higher packed cell volume, hemoglobin, total solids, total white blood cell count, absolute heterophils and absolute basophils. These findings provide evidence that higher in situ incubation temperatures have the potential to adversely affect hatchlings from warmer nests due to increased risk of predation from smaller body sizes, decreased physical responses and overall fitness, altered hemodynamic balance (e.g. dehydration) and potential inflammation and/or stress. With rising temperatures, we predict sea turtle hatchlings may have increasing risks of developing suboptimal physiological features affecting overall fitness and ultimately survival. These results demonstrate that rising environmental temperatures can negatively impact sea turtle hatchlings, thus representing additional stress on sea turtle populations and contributing to our understanding of potential pathophysiological effects of climate change on the delicate life-stage class of the sea turtle hatchling. This information will be useful for formulating effective future sea turtle management plans.
Structure of avian assemblages in grasslands associated with cattle ranching and soybean agriculture in the Uruguayan savanna ecoregion of Brazil and Uruguay

ABSTRACT Conversion of grasslands into crops is a major factor leading to the decline of grassland birds. Cattle ranching represents another disturbance to natural grasslands, but may be less detrimental to grassland birds. We studied the diversity, density, and composition of bird species in Brazilian and Uruguayan grasslands under two different land use types: cattle ranching on seminatural grasslands, and soybean fields with interspersed patches of grassland. Cattle sites had higher species richness (n = 75 species) than soybean sites (n = 57 species). Most birds showed higher densities in cattle sites, but some common and habitat-generalist species were more abundant in soybean sites. Species composition did not differ significantly with land use. The generalist Eared Dove (Zenaida auriculata), however, was strongly associated with soybean sites. Among species of conservation interest, either regionally or globally, all had higher densities in cattle sites, highlighting the importance of maintaining these ranching areas. The persistence of grassland birds in soybean fields may be related to the presence of seminatural grassland patches within soybean crops.
The 13th WORKSHOP DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF MATERIALS AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES Venue: University of Cyprus

Assessment of impact techniques is given in [1]. A basic model of a two-phase material is presented in [2]. Two-phase composites are of vital applications in modern technology, for example cutting tools, implants, jet engines. Examples of such materials are WC/Co and Al2O3/ZrO2. Highly innovative technologies need applications of modern polycrystalline materials. The manufactured polycrystalline materials are planned to have controlled internal structure. However, even though the process is controlled the internal structure can be still complex due to engineering requirements. The novel multiphase materials possess different internal geometries, for example (i) with regular of disordered internal structures with introduced fibers, particles or nanoparticles (ii) with a functional gradation of mechanical or physical properties (iii) fabricated as regular of irregular layered materials structures. The analyses of modern composites require efficient computational methods and codes. The new method that has been developed mostly in the last ten years is peridynamics [3,4]. The developments resulted in a highly parallelised code [5] that we use in our analysis. Fig. 1. A scheme of the analysis. We further investigate the model of cermet that has been developed with the finite element method [6, 7, 8]. The primary goal of the paper is to investigate the previously formulated models of the twophase composite under impacts. We have taken into account the spatial distribution of cermet phases, grain/binder interfaces modelled by interface elements and movement of brittle grains. We analyse a sample of the material that can be considered as Representative Volume Element RVE and do verification of the material properties of the RVE by multiplication of the elementary sample with complex geometry [9]. In Fig. 1, we illustrate an outline of the analysis. It is an Al2O3/ZrO2 polycrystal that hits a rigid obstacle with a velocity V. In this case, the velocity of the impactor is 100 m/s. We observe the damage development in the interfaces calculated with finite element and PD methods at time 10 ns. Further on, we consider damage models [10], elastic-plastic [11] and elastic-viscous-plastic models [12].
DRIVER DROWSINESS DETECTION SYSTEM

-Drowsy Detection systems have helped in the implementation on multiple driving safety applications. In this paper, a system has been proposed, which can notify the driver or the specified person in any case of any emergency. This system helps in avoidance of accidents and act as an aid for the driver of the mobile vehicle. The System identifies the drivers face and judges whether he is drowsy or not and act accordingly with an alert or an alarm in the car. The sensor measures for detection are believed to give more accurate data compared with face recognition of the driver or steering measures, because the sensor measures minimize the number of fake alarms and maintain accuracy rate for detection, which makes the system more accurate.
Characterization of the genetic diversity in orange, and comparison of polymorphism in randomly-amplified microsatellites (RAMs), using polyacrylamide and agarose electrophoresis Caracterización de la diversidad genética en naranja y comparación del polimorfismo de microsatélites amplificados al

We compared the efficiency of three methods of agarose and polyacrylamide electrophoresis (using the small tank of the DNA Sequencing System and the large OWL Sequi-Gen Sequencing Cell), for the detection of polymorphism in 21 accessions of orange (Citrus sinensis), using the primer CGA. The polyacrylamide gel gave better resolution of the PCR-amplified RAM products. This method allowed better detection of polymorphic DNA bands, facilitating the identification of genetic variability. The agarose electrophoresis may be more convenient in other applications, due to its low cost and easy implementation. The study of genetic diversity in orange using RAMs separated 51 accessions into seven groups with 0.75 similarity, and 0.25 heterozygosity, revealing low genetic polymorphism. The RAMs technique grouped the accessions into “Common or White”, “Navel” and “Pigmented or “Sanguine”.
Re-examination of Zymolyase Purification

Zymolyase was purified from Zymolyase-60,000 by ion-exchange chromatography with sugar and gel filtration. Zymolyase was separated into the two protein fractions A and B. Neither alone could lyse yeast cells, but together showed high lytic activity. Zymolyase A and B were β-1,3-glucanase and alkaline protease, respectively. On stepwise treatment of yeast cells with the enzymes, yeast cells were lysed only by treatment with Zymolyase A after pretreatment with Zymolyase B. Zymolyase A lysed yeast cells in the presence of 2-mercaptoethanol, but B could not even at high concentration. Zymolyase B decreased the turbidity of a yeast cell suspension by about 13%.
Liposomal Encapsulation and Stability of Dideoxyinosine Triphosphate

AbstractDideoxyinosine triphosphate (ddITP) was encapsulated in multilamellar liposomes prepared with various lipid composition. The stability of liposomes in terms of retention of ddITP was measured at 4°, 25° and 37°C. The encapsulation of ddITP was 7.5 times greater in liposomes prepared with dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) compared to dimyristoylphosphatidyl-choline (DMPC). When equimolar cholesterol (CHOL) was added to DM PC liposomes the encapsulation of ddITP was increased by 4.5 times. The leakage of ddITP was 60% from DMPC liposomes stored at 4° and 25° C after a month and 100% leakage after 16 days when stored at 37° C. The leakage of ddITP from DMPC:CHOL liposomes was only 20% after a month at 4° C, 50% at 25° and 90% at 37° C. These results suggest that the encapsulation of hydrophilic compound such as ddITP can be increased either by increasing the fatty acid chain length (DPPC) or by inclusion of CHOL. However, the optimum encapsulation and retention of ddITP was achieved using DMPC:CH.
Charles Darwin University Estimating landholders' probability of participating in a stewardship program, and the implications for spatial conservation priorities Adams,

The need to integrate social and economic factors into conservation planning has become a focus of academic discussions and has important practical implications for the implementation of conservation areas, both private and public. We conducted a survey in the Daly Catchment, Northern Territory, to inform the design and implementation of a stewardship payment program. We used a choice model to estimate the likely level of participation in two legal arrangements conservation covenants and management agreements based on payment level and proportion of properties required to be managed. We then spatially predicted landholders’ probability of participating at the resolution of individual properties and incorporated these predictions into conservation planning software to examine the potential for the stewardship program to meet conservation objectives. We found that the properties that were least costly, per unit area, to manage were also the least likely to participate. This highlights a tension between planning for a cost-effective program and planning for a program that targets properties with the highest probability of participation. Citation: Adams VM, Pressey RL, Stoeckl N (2014) Estimating Landholders’ Probability of Participating in a Stewardship Program, and the Implications for Spatial Conservation Priorities. PLoS ONE 9(6): e97941. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0097941 Editor: Zoe G. Davies, University of Kent, United Kingdom Received January 14, 2014; Accepted April 26, 2014; Published June 3, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Adams et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: VMA acknowledges funding for field work through The Nature Conservancy and The Thomas Foundation. RLP acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: vanessa.adams@cdu.edu. au
The Anatomy of Rotoxylon dawsonii comb. nov. (Cladoxylon dawsonii) from the Upper Devonian of New York State

Cladoxylon dawsonii (Dawson) Read was reexamined by sectioning and analysis of a portion of Dawson’s original specimen. The primary xylem consists of 18 radially oriented and elongate primary xylem ribs. Toward the center of the system, some xylem ribs are laterally continuous with adjacent ribs, forming elongate xylem segments, whereas others appear discrete. Order of xylem maturation is mesarch, with one to three protoxylem strands located near the tip of each primary xylem rib. Primary phloem immediately surrounds each primary xylem rib and consists of sieve cells. To the outside of the primary phloem, a conspicuous ground tissue is comprised of roughly isodiametric parenchyma with dark contents in their lumina as well as parenchyma cells that are longitudinally elongate with clear lumina. Beyond the vascular column, a fragmentary cortex contains numerous vascular traces embedded in parenchyma. These latter cells are surrounded by conspicuous masses of longitudinally elongate cortical thick‐walled parenchyma. Vascular traces depart from the tips of the primary xylem ribs in a whorled phyllotaxis. Most traces emerge along the midplane of the primary xylem ribs. However, some depart at an oblique angle. This reinvestigation of an Upper Devonian specimen, known since 1882, provides significant new information on stelar architecture, trace departure, tissue histology, and phyllotaxis. Our study indicates systematic placement of the plant within the Iridopteridales and the recognition of a new iridopterid genus, Rotoxylon. New anatomical evidence indicates Rotoxylon is unusual, exhibiting diagnostic traits of both Cladoxylopsida and Iridopteridales, thus challenging current phylogenetic interpretation of both groups.
Native and invasive zooplankton show differing responses to decadal‐scale increases in maximum temperatures in a large temperate river

It has been widely proposed that increasing global temperatures will promote the geographic spread of invasive species, yet few studies have examined the effects of increasing temperatures on existing populations of invaders. Here, we examine temperature trends across a 70‐year series of daily records from the lower Columbia River (Washington and Oregon), and assess the correlation between interannual water temperature variability and the abundance of several native and invasive zooplankton species using a 12‐year series of monthly zooplankton samples from a nearby station. Our results show a clear pattern of increasing temperatures in the river, with a negative correlation between elevated late summer temperatures and the abundance of all examined native taxa, but none of the examined invasive taxa. Our study supports the hypothesis that anthropogenic climate change may promote conditions more favorable to previously established populations of invasive zooplankton species.