Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Lactobacillus Strains Isolated from Bovine Raw Milk for Probiotic and Technological Properties

One hundred strains isolated from bovine raw milk, obtained from different farms, were subjected to different in vitro stress typical of gastrointestinal tract. Twelve strains were able to tolerate pepsin at pH 2, pancreatin and bile salts (0.3%). These bacteria were identified using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Eight isolates were Lactobacillus plantarum and four were Lactobacillus fermentum. They were not able to degrade mucin and they were γ-haemolytic. All strains had antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella thyphimirium. However, only six strains inhibited Escherchia coli. All these showed ability for autoaggregation and/or hydrophobicity properties. They were also characterized in respect to their technological properties. Important acidification and low proteolytic and lipolytic capacities were detected for all strains. In addition, they were able to produce exopolysaccharides and grow at hot and cold temperatures. These bacteria may be used further for manufacturing of functional foods and confirming their suitability as probiotic starter cultures.
Social Networks, Politics and Public Views: An Analysis of the Term “Macedonia” in Twitter

In this paper we deal with Twitter and the presence of the keyword “Macedonia” in tweets over a period of time. We searched for the same term in three different languages, i.e. “Μακeδονiα”, “Macedonia” and “Македонска - Македониjа”, since we are primarily interested in views from Greece and FYROM without excluding views from other regions. We use methods from Social Network Analysis (SNA) in order to create networks of users, calculate some main network metrics, measure user importance and investigate the presence of possible fragmentations—communities among them. We furthermore proceed to a form of content analysis, using pairs of words within tweets, in order to obtain main ideas, trends and public views that circulated over the network.
NEW LEARNING FRAMEWORKS FOR BLIND IMAGE QUALITY ASSESSMENT MODEL

The focus of this thesis is on image quality assessment, specifically for problems of assessing the quality of an image blindly or without reference information. There are significant efforts over the last decade in developing objective blind models that can assess image quality as perceived by humans. Various models have been introduced, achieving highly competitive performances and high in correlation with subjective perceptual measures. However, there are still limitations on these models before they can be viable replacements to traditional image metrics over a wide range of image processing applications. This thesis addresses several limitations. The thesis first proposes a new framework to learn a blind image quality model with minimal training requirements, operates locally and has ability to identify distortion in the assessed image. To increase the model’s performance, the thesis then modifies the framework by considering an aspect of human vision tendency, which is often ignored by previous models. Finally, the thesis presents another framework that enable a model to simultaneously learn quality prediction for images affected by different distortion types.
Analysis of Regular-Frequent Patterns in Large Transactional Databases

— Regular-frequent patterns are an important type of regularities that exist in transactional, time-series and any other types of databases. A frequent pattern can be said regular-frequent if it appears at a regular interval given by the user specified threshold in the transactional database. The regularity calculation for every candidate pattern is a computationally expensive process, especially when there exist long patterns. Currently the FP-growth algorithm is one of the most popular and fastest approaches to mining periodic frequent item sets. Therefore, in this paper we introduce a novel concept of mining regular-frequent patterns (RFP) in transactional databases. We introduce two mining techniques based on transaction number and also based on products or itemsets on the vertical data format. The efficiency is achieved by eliminating aperiodic or irregular patterns during execution based on suboptimal solutions. Our tree based structure helps to captures the database contents in highly compact manner. Our experimental results are highly efficient and scalable as well as improve the overall response time.
Atomistic study of SiN based ReRAM with high program/erase cycle endurance

: We used ab initio calculations to clarify the atomistic origin of memory state switching in SiN based ReRAMs. The results of our calculations indicate that a N vacancy with a H atom acts as the high resistance state (HRS) and a N vacancy without a H atom is low resistive state (LRS). Moreover, we ﬁ nd that HRS and LRS can be switched by charge injection and removal. These results indicate that having N vacancies in the SiN layer can enable SiN based ReRAMs with high program / erace cycle endurance.
Screening of high virulent strains of Beauveria bassiana against a dangerous forest cerambycid beetle,Aphrodisium sauteri(Coleoptera:Cerambycidae)

Aphrodisium sauteri is one of the most dangerous forest pests in China and has caused extensive mortality of oak trees in Huangshan mountains.In this study we surveyed the possibility of using the entomopathogenic fungus,Beauveria bassiana as a biological control agent against the notorious longhorn beetle.Here eight strains of B.bassiana,isolated from different longhorn beetles,were employed as the candidate strains against the pest insect.As the preliminary screening,the biological characteristics of these eight strains,including colony morphology,growth rate,sporulation,germination rate,drought tolerance,and extracellular protease production,were examined.Based on the comparison of the biological characteristics,three strains Bb202,Bb646 and Bb1898 among the tested strains were adopted for further bioassay against A.sauteri larvae.The bioassay results showed that Bb202 showed the highest virulence on the target beetle with a mortality of 93.3%,and the median lethal time(LT_50)was 5.86 d at a concentration of 1×107 conidia /mL.Thus Bb202 exhibits the great potential as one of the biological control agents for the sustainable control of A.sauteri in the future.
Análise de dados e superfície de resposta: um estudo de caso para melhorar o desempenho de um serviço

In the present work, clustering, factorial design of experiments and response surface methodologies are applied in the process improvement of a company that provides data file processing service. The current situation of the services requested is analyzed and, using hierarchical clustering, clusters of files and corresponding representative files are defined. Using the response surface methodology, factorial design of experiments is done, seeking to obtain for each cluster the least amount of RAM and cores of the server CPU so that the total processing time of the representative file of the cluster is less than a time set as acceptable.
Genetic segregation of AFLP markers and genetic diversity in three F_1 families of pearl oyster Pinctada fucata

Genetic segregation of AFLP markers in three Pinctada fucata families,i.e.Indian family(Indian♀× Indian♂,PII),hybrid family(Sanya♀×Indian♂,PSI)and Sanya family(Sanya♀×Sanya♂,PSS)as well as their genetic variation was investigated.Three pairs of primers generated 57 loci,among which 57.4%~87.7% were segregated in F1.The proportion of loci segregated in Mendelian ratio over segregated loci ranged from 70.0% to 71.0%,of which 24.0%~45.2% segregated in 1:1 ratio.Hybrid family had the highest ratio of 1:1 segregating markers.The proportion of polymorphic loci was 93.0%~100.0% for the three families using 0.95 criterion.An overall genetic diversity(HT)was 0.460 and within-family genetic diversities(hS)were 0.434,0.331,0.366 for families PII,PSI,PSS,respectively,with an average of 0.377±0.030(HS). Genetic differentiation among the three families was significant(GST=0.180). Analysis of genetic distances showed that Sanya family PSS was most distant from hybrid family PSI(0.157)while nearest to the Indian family PII(0.121). The UPGMA tree indicated that the two pure families PII and PSS were closely related and grouped together.These observations indicated that genetic variation in F1 family is high while genetic differentiation among families is great and significant.These findings shall be useful in management of genetic resources during breeding of pearl oysters.
Context Semantics for Small Target Detection in Large-Field Images with Two Cascaded Faster R-CNNs

Computer vision and image processing techniques have been widely applied to power transmission line inspection. However, the successful detection of small targets in large scenes is still challenging due to their low resolution and poor feature representation. Existing methods, such as multi-scale image pyramid, multi-scale feature pyramid and multiple heterogeneous feature fusion, etc. can extract more representative features of small objects, but they usually require high computation cost. In this paper, we propose an effective two cascaded Faster R-CNN strategy, which is based on multi-scale features and semantic information between the objects and the background, to address the small target detection in large scenes. Specially, we detect large object candidate proposals that may contain small objects at first and then map them to the original images to detect the small-sized targets on the high resolution regions. Experiments show that our strategy could lead to higher (83.0%) accuracy of small target detection and recognition than the one-stage Faster R-CNN (78.3%) on the dataset of aerial images.
A NEW SPECIES OF ODOR FROG FROM CHINA (ANURA:RANIDAE)

A new cryptic species of genus Odorrana,which was previously recognized as O.schmacker(Boettger,1892) from Zhejiang province,has been identified as Odorrana tianmuii sp.nov.based on morphological and DNA sequence data.This new species can be distinguished by a combination of the following characteristics: 1) adult females 1.75 times longer than that of adult males in SVL;2) head longer than wide,snout obtusely pointed;3) tibio-tarsal articulation reaching between eye and nostril with leg stretched forward;4) toes fully webbed,toe Ⅳ webbed to distal subarticular tubercle with narrow extension to base of disc,dermal fringes on preaxial toes Ⅱ and Ⅲ from distal subarticular tubercle to base of discs;5) dorsum green scattered nonuniform brown spots;6) upper side shank scattered 4-5 light brown bands;7) paired subgular vocal sacs located at corners of throat,pinkish lineae musculinae on dorsal side in male;8) mature eggs pigmented(2.17 mm in diameter),brown on animal pole,vegetable pole creamy yellow.
Application of DNA Sequences in Plant Phylogenetic Study

DNA sequences,because of their disparity in the rate of evolution,are suitable for phylogenetic study at different taxonomic levels.It is,therefore,the most significant process to select an appropriate DNA region to address a certain phylogenetic issues.Based on previous data and our own study,the suitable range of some DNA sequences that are commonly used in current molecular phylogenetic study is mainly focused in this review.These sequences contain 18S gene and non coding regions (such as ITS) of nrDNA,coding regions ( rbc L, mat K, ndh F and atp B etc.) and non coding regions ( rpL 16, rpo C1, rps 16, trn L F and trn T L etc.) of cpDNA,and mtDNA,which is seldom used.It is inferred that,in general,the coding genes such as 18S, rbc L and mtDNA are likely informative to resolve phylogenetic issues ranging from higher taxonomic ranks to the relationships among seed plant lineages.The non coding DNA regions (such as ITS,introns and intergenic spacers of cpDNA) are presumed to be more useful at lower taxonomic levels because of their faster evolutionary rates.
Reading Further Between The Lines – Recent Developments in the UK MOD Acquisition Requirements & Acceptance Tube Map

How do you visualise a very large complicated problem? With a very large complicated diagram obviously! But what if the diagram used a familiar notation that needed little or no explanation? What if the subject matter could be carved up into distinct interwoven threads that would be easily recognised by the reader? Welcome to the MOD Acquisition Requirements & Acceptance Tube Map. The authors have been engaged in a task to rewrite the UK Ministry Of Defence (MOD) Acquisition System Guidance intranet site for Requirements, Test, Evaluation and Acceptance. Whilst the task has resulted in a major overhaul of the guidance, it has been underpinned by a novel depiction of parallel threads of Requirements; Test, Evaluation & Acceptance; Portfolio, Programme and Project Management (P3M); and Solution Development ‐ running through the parallel interrelated lifecycles of Programme Management (based on the Generic Capability Model) and Project Management (based upon the CADMID lifecycle – Concept, Assessment, Demonstration, Manufacture, In‐Service, Disposal). This has taken the form of an underground “tube map” with lines representing stakeholder communities, minor stations representing technical activities, callout boxes for work products, and interchange stations representing review points.
Calcium Distribution in Developing Anther Cells of No-pollen Type CMS and Maintainer Lines of Rice(Oryza sativa L.)

Ca2+ is a well-known "second messenger" in higher plants and is related to their sexual reproduction.To test the effects of calcium localization on pollen abortion in developing rice anthers,calcium distribution during anther development in no-pollen type cytoplasmic male sterile(CMS) rice G37A and its maintainer line G37B at different stages was examined by potassium antimonate precipitation method.Our study showed that many differences existed in Ca2+ distribution in developing anthers between the two studied rice lines.In the fertile anthers of G37B,few Ca2+ precipitates were detected at the pollen mother cell stage and the dyad stage.However,Ca2+ precipitates dramatically increased in the tapetal cells,on the exine of pollen grains and the surface of Ubisch Bodies at the uninucleate pollen stage.After this,Ca2+ precipitates decreased on the anther wall,although many Ca2+ precipitates still existed on the exine of pollen grains.In the sterile anthers of G37A,abundant Ca2+ precipitates accumulated in the microsporocyte,on the anther wall and especially in the middle layer,the tapetum and the ubisch bodies located at the pollen mother cell stage and the dyad stage.After the tetrad stage,Ca2+ precipitates in sterile anthers of G37A decreased generally,and could not be detected at the inner longitudinal plasma membrane of the tapetum.The results proposed that redundant calcium precipitates in sterile anthers may be related with pollen abortion.
Research on the Improved Droop Control Strategy for Improving the Dynamic Characteristics of DC Microgrid

In this paper,the influence of the power turbulence on the output voltage is theoretically analyzed.An improved droop control strategy based on the resistive virtual impedance and compensative virtual impedance is presented.The resistive virtual impedance achieves the power sharing and the compensative virtual impedance improves the dynamic characteristics of the DC microgrid.A small signal model of a simple DC microgrid is used to analyze the design process of the compensative virtual impedance parameters.Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed compensative virtual impedance can improve the dynamic characteristics of the DC microgrid and enhance the damping property.
Multi core processor for QR decomposition based on FPGA

Hardware design of multicore 32-bits processor is implemented to achieve low latency and high throughput QR decomposition (QRD) based on two algorithms which they are Gram Schmidt (GS) and Givens Rotation (GR). The orthogonal matrices are computed using the first core processor by Gram Schmidt algorithm, and the upper triangular matrices are computed using the second core processor by Givens Rotation algorithm. This design of multicore processor can achieve 50M QRD/s throughput for (4 × 4) matrices at running frequency 200 MHz.
KDD 1999 generation faults: a review and analysis

ABSTRACT DARPA 1998 was one of the first Intrusion Detection datasets that was made publicly available. The KDD 1999 dataset was derived from DARPA 1998 to be used by researchers in developing machine learning (ML), classification and clustering algorithms with a security focus. DARPA 1998 has been criticised in literature due to raised concerns of problems in the dataset. Many researchers have accused KDD 1999 of having similar concerns but insufficient published evidence has been found. In this paper, we review the KDD 1999 generation process and present new proofs of existing inconsistencies in KDD 1999. We then present the process used to link some of the KDD 1999 (TELNET) records back to their origins in DARPA 1998 and discuss the interesting results and findings of this experiment.
CLASSIFICATION OF LOW QUALITY IMAGES USING CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK AND DEEP BELIEF NETWORK

Low quality images become more challenge and core problem in recent decade because of the ambiguity of contents of them. Convolutional deep neural networks are used for solving this problem. In this work, we used a combination of convolutional neural network and deep belief network to construct an efficient model able to classify low quality images. This model has the capability in extracting effective features from low quality images. Data augmentation is used through this model to increase the accuracy of the system. Scikit-Learn python library is used in implementation the system on STL-10 dataset. The results showed that the proposed model increase the accuracy of the system by 0.20%.
Path Planning Based on Parametric Curves

Parametric curves are extensively used in engineering. The most commonly used parametric curves are, Bézier, B-splines, (NURBSs), and rational Bézier. Each and every one of them has special features, being the main difference between them the complexity of their mathematical definition. While Bézier curves are the simplest ones, B-splines or NURBSs are more complex. In mobile robotics, two main problems have been addressed with parametric curves. The first one is the definition of an initial trajectory for a mobile robot from a start location to a goal. The path has to be a continuous curve, smooth and easy to manipulate, and the properties of the parametric curves meet these requirements. The second one is the modification of the initial trajectory in real time attending to the dynamic properties of the environment. Parametric curves are capable of enhancing the trajectories produced by path planning algorithms adapting them to the kinematic properties of the robot. In order to avoid obstacles, the shape modification of parametric curves is required. In this chapter, an algorithm is proposed for computing an initial Bézier trajectory of a mobile robot and subsequently modifies it in real time in order to avoid obstacles in a dynamic environment.
An analysis of the climatic parameters needed for Tuber melanosporum cultivation incorporating data from six continents

Climatic parameters associated with sites producing Tuber melanosporum fruiting bodies within countries that have a natural population of Tuber melanosporum and those without such records were compared. Represented continents include Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America with only Antarctica remaining outside the scope of this study. The compiled data presents a broader than expected range of climatic parameters that are suitable for truffle cultivation. Development of fruiting orchards in countries that do not have a history of natural populations has expanded our understanding of the suitable climatic ranges of this species. Truffle cultivation is successful in areas that have a lower temperature and higher rainfall levels than expected. The data compiled here is of use to truffle scientists as well as cultivators in choosing suitable locations for a plantation.
CORRECTION: Lateral Segregation of Photosystem I in Cyanobacterial Thylakoids

Photosystem I (PSI) is the dominant photosystem in cyanobacteria and it plays a pivotal role in cyanobacterial metabolism. Despite its biological importance, the native organisation of PSI in cyanobacterial thylakoid membranes is poorly understood. Here, we use atomic force microscopy (AFM) to show that ordered, extensive macromolecular arrays of PSI complexes are present in thylakoids from Thermosynechococcus (T.) elongatus, Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 and Synechocystis sp PCC 6803. Hyperspectral confocal fluorescence microscopy (HCFM) and three-dimensional structured illumination microscopy (3D-SIM) of Synechocystis sp PCC 6803 cells visualise PSI domains within the context of the complete thylakoid system. Crystallographic and AFM data were used to build a structural model of a membrane landscape comprising 96 PSI trimers and 27,648 chlorophyll a molecules. Rather than facilitating intertrimer energy transfer the close associations between PSI primarily maximise packing efficiency; short-range interactions with Complex I and cytochrome b6f are excluded from these regions of the membrane, so PSI turnover is sustained by long-distance diffusion of the electron donors at the membrane surface. Elsewhere, PSI-photosystem II (PSII) contact zones provide sites for docking phycobilisomes and the formation of megacomplexes. PSI-enriched domains in cyanobacteria might foreshadow the partitioning of PSI into stromal lamellae in plants, similarly sustained by long-distance diffusion of electron carriers. Plant Cell Advance Publication. Published on March 31, 2017, doi:10.1105/tpc.17. 00071
An end-to-end cells detection approach for colon cancer histology images

The qualitative and quantitative analysis of different types of histopathology images of cancerous tissue can not only help us in better understanding of tumor but also explore various options for cancer treatment. However, it is still a challenging task due to cellular heterogeneity. Deep learning approaches have been shown to produce encouraging results on image detection in various tasks. In this paper, we investigate issues involving Faster R-CNN for construction of end-to-end colorectal adenocarcinoma images analysis system. We experimented with different types of network for extract features, and analyzed the impact of time and accuracy. In addition, we optimize the various stages of the network training process. We have evaluated them on a large dataset of colorectal adenocarcinoma images, consisting of more than 20,000 annotated cells belonging to four different classes. Our results presenting competitive accuracy and acceptable running time. Prospectively, the proposed methods could offer benefit to pathology practice in terms of quantitative analysis of tissue constituents in whole-slide images. Code and dataset will be made publicly available.