Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Controlling Microcystis aeruginosa blooms in a freshwater system: a comparative assessment across three chemical algaecides

Freshwater systems are facing mounting challenges as a result of excessive nutrient loading with 20 to 40% of global lakes and reservoirs considered eutrophic and unable to support their historical designated uses because of water quality impairments. While long-term basin-wide management measures that aim at reducing point and non-point pollution sources are invariably well known, they are often hard to implement in many watersheds due to socio-economic and political constraints. In this context, the use of algaecides can provide a temporary solution towards controlling excessive algal blooms, especially in the event of a toxic algal bloom. This study examined under laboratory conditions the efficacy of three algaecides (Copper Sulphate, Potassium Permanganate, and Diquat) on the hepatotoxin producing freshwater cyanobacteria Microcystis aeruginosa. Algaecide efficacy was measured over 96 hrs. The results showed that Diquat and Copper Sulphate were significantly more effective than Potassium Permanganate for controlling Microcystis aeruginosa. Reduction rates were temporarily variable, with the largest rates reported between 48 and 72 hrs of treatment. Optimal dosages for the three algaecides were developed, while ensuring that application rates were environmentally safe.
Multilevel converter for direct grid integration of renewable energy system

Electrical energy generation from renewable energy sources such as the sun, wind etc., are widely adopted due to increase in electricity consumption. Development of renewable energy usage in towns and villages areas is an important factor and also its integration with the grid. The integration of renewable energy sources to grid with high efficiency is possible and also difficulty in transmission and distribution of power in towns & villages can be resolved with this paper. This paper discusses the multilevel converter practice for renewable power supply usage in towns & villages areas especially for hilly areas or where electrical supply is not available for domestic and industry use. With this paper, it is also possible to integrate with grid supply. Day to day, industrial electrical supply usage increases rapidly so the development of town energy source to meet an increase in demand of power is necessary. The aim of this paper is to group and review these recent contributions, in order to establish the current state of the art and trends of the technology, recently as a very important alternative in the area of control technology. Applications powered by multilevel converters and how multilevel converters are becoming an enabling technology in many industrial sectors and towns & villages areas.
Feasibility of a home-based computerized cognitive training for pediatric patients with congenital or acquired brain damage: An explorative study

Objectives Pediatric brain damage is associated with various cognitive deficits. Cognitive rehabilitation may prevent and reduce cognitive impairment. In recent years, home-based computerized cognitive training (CCT) has been introduced in clinical practice to increase treatment opportunities for patients (telerehabilitation). However, limited research has been conducted thus far on investigating the effects of remote CCT for the juvenile population in contexts other than English-speaking countries. The aim of the present study was to investigate the feasibility of a home-based CCT in a group of Italian adolescents with brain damage. A commercially available CCT (Lumosity) developed in the English language was used due to the lack of telerehabilitation programs in the Italian language that allow stimulation of multiple cognitive domains and, at the same time, remote automatic collection of data. Thus, this investigation provides information on the possibility of introducing CCT programs available in foreign languages in countries with limited investment in the telerehabilitation field. Methods 32 adolescents aged 11–16 with a diagnosis of congenital or acquired (either traumatic or non-traumatic) brain damage participated in the study. They received 40 training sessions (5 days/week for 8 weeks). Before starting the training program, they received face-to-face demonstration of training exercises and written instructions in their mother tongue. The feasibility of both training and study design and procedures was assessed through 9 criteria taken from extant literature. Results All 9 feasibility criteria were met. 31 out of the 32 participants demonstrated adherence to the training program. 94.2% of training sessions were completed in the recommended timeframe. No significant technical issue was found. Conclusions Telerehabilitation seems to be a feasible practice for adolescents with brain damage. A training program developed in a foreign language can be used to counter the unavailability of programs in patients’ mother tongue. Trial registration The trial is registered with the ISRCTN registry with study ID ISRCTN59250807
Timing Analysis of AVB Traffic in TSN Networks Using Network Calculus

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a collection of standards that extend Ethernet to support safety-critical and real-time applications. TSN integrates multiple traffic types, i.e., Time-Triggered (TT) traffic scheduled based on Gate-Control-Lists (GCLs), Audio-Video-Bridging (AVB) traffic that requires bounded latencies, and Best-Effort (BE) traffic, for which no guarantees are provided. This paper proposes a Network Calculus-based approach to determine the worst-case end-to-end delays of AVB traffic in a TSN network with both non-preemption and preemption modes. We consider the effects of TT traffic due to GCLs, "guard bands", i.e., time windows that block other traffic from transmitting, and preemption overhead on the service for AVB traffic. We provide a proof of non-overflow condition for AVB credit, which is used to control the AVB traffic transmission. The analysis method is evaluated on realistic test cases, and compared to related work.
An approach to differentially flat modeling and control of surface water vehicle with vectored thrust

This article attempts to model a surface water vehicle propelled by vectored thrust utilizing the differentially flat nature of the dynamic system. Considering the vehicle moving in still water, it is assumed that the vehicle is stabilized against sideway drifts, possessing nonholonomic motion constraints. Under the assumption, the paper proposes a simple approach to model and control of the vehicle using the differentially flat structure. Based on thrust force measurement, it presents an estimation procedure for system parameters, which is then used in the controller. Simulation results are reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed method for modeling, estimation and control.1
Development of an ultrafast high throughput MALDI-triple quadrupole mass spectrometric method for the determination of 3 , 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ( MDMA ) in oral fluid

Development of an ultrafast high throughput MALDI-triple quadrupole mass spectrometric method for the determination of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in oral fluid Michael Poetzsch, Andrea E. Steuer, Cedric M. Hysek, Matthias E. Liechti, Thomas Kraemer* Department of Forensic Pharmacology and Toxicology, ZIFM Zurich Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich (Switzerland) Departement of Biomedicine, Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, University Hospital Basel, University of Basel, Basel (Switzerland)
Expression, Purification, and Characterization of a Novel Hybrid Peptide with Potent Antibacterial Activity

The hybrid peptide cecropin A (1–8)–LL37 (17–30) (C–L), derived from the sequence of cecropin A (C) and LL-37 (L), showed significantly increased antibacterial activity and minimized hemolytic activity than C and L alone. To obtain high-level production of C–L, the deoxyribonucleic acid sequence encoding C–L with preferred codons was cloned into pET-SUMO to construct a fusion expression vector, and overexpressed in Escherichia coli (E. coli) BL21 (DE3). The maximum fusion protein (92% purity) was obtained with the yield of 89.14 mg/L fermentation culture after purification with Ni-NTA Sepharose column. The hybrid C–L was cleaved from the fusion protein by SUMO-protease, and 17.54 mg/L pure active C–L was obtained. Furthermore, the purified C–L showed identical antibacterial and hemolytic activity to synthesized C–L. Stability analysis results exhibited that the activity of C–L changed little below 80 °C for 20 min, but when the temperature exceeded 80 °C, a significant decrease was observed. Varying the pH from 5.0 to 10.0 did not appear to influence the activity of C–L, however, pH below 4.0 decreased the antibacterial activity of C–L rapidly. Under the challenge of several proteases (pepsin, trypsin, and proteinase K), the functional activity of C–L was maintained over 50%. In summary, this study not only supplied an effective approach for high-level production of hybrid peptide C–L, but paved the way for its further exploration in controlling infectious diseases of farm animals or even humans.
Fe–Au Nanoparticle‐Coupling for Ultrasensitive Detections of Circulating Tumor DNA

Effectiveness of cancer therapy relies heavily on the efficient early diagnosis. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection is one of the most clinically meaningful liquid biopsy approaches for the noninvasive cancer early diagnosis, which, unfortunately, cannot be applied as a routine diagnostic tool till a number of obstacles, for example, unsatisfactory specificity and sensitivity, and extremely high costs, are overcome. Here, the first paradigm of nanomaterial's application in the extremely specific, ultrasensitive, and yet economical ctDNA detections is reported based on a facile nanoparticle‐coupling strategy without amplification, with which polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐introduced bias and other shortcomings are successfully circumvented. Aiming at seven Kirsten rat sarcoma‐2 virus (KRAS) point mutations, the present strategy exhibits high specificity and an ultrahigh sensitivity of detecting as low as 0.1 pg mL−1 of KRAS point mutation without prior PCR amplification. Discriminating KRAS gene mutations in lung adenocarcinoma patients at an extremely low detection limit equivalent to 0.12% mutation relative to wild‐type gene is successful. It is envisioned that this nanoparticle‐coupling approach could be routinely applied clinically for ultra‐early diagnosis and monitoring of diverse malignant tumors, thus facilitating the fight against cancer.
Performance analysis of various supervised algorithms on big data

Big data analytics is the practice of analysing huge data sets to discover unknown patterns, hidden correlations, preferences and other useful information. Twitter is one of the famous social networks worldwide. Unstructured data comes from information which is not classified, Twitter tweets and other social media posts are Some of the central source of unstructured data. To find meaningful information from unstructured data is very difficult, with the help of classification technique it is possible to change unstructured data into organised form. Through this work we try to study the performance of various classification algorithms on Big Data. The data needed for the research is collected from Twitter using Twitter streaming API. We applied supervised machine-learning algorithms like Decision Tree, SVM, Naive Bayes, Neural Network and k-nearest neighbour to classify the data. The Result showed that SVM classifier has the highest accuracy compared to other classifiers.
Anisotropic absorption of CdSe/ZnS quantum rods embedded in polymer film

An approach to achieving of spatially homogeneous, ordered ensemble of semiconductor quantum rods in polymer film of polyvinyl butyral is reported. The CdSe/ZnS quantum rods are embedded to the polymer film. Obtained film is stretched up to four times to its initial length. A concentration of quantum rods in the samples is around 2×10 -5 M. The absorption spectra, obtained in the light with orthogonal polarization, confirm the occurrence of spatial ordering in a quantum rod ensemble. Anisotropy of the optical properties in the ordered quantum rod ensemble is examined. The presented method can be used as a low-cost solution for preparing the nanostructured materials with anisotropic properties and high concentration of nanocrystals.
Tobramycin-Linked Efflux Pump Inhibitor Conjugates Synergize Fluoroquinolones, Rifampicin and Fosfomycin against Multidrug-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

In this study, we examined the in vitro effect of tobramycin-efflux pump inhibitor (TOB-EPI) conjugates in combinations with fluoroquinolones, rifampicin and fosfomycin on the growth of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extremely-drug resistant (XDR) Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The TOB-EPI conjugates include tobramycin covalently linked to 1-(1-naphthylmethyl)-piperazine (NMP) (1), paroxetine (PAR) (2) and a dibasic peptide analogue of MC-04,124 (DBP) (3). Potent synergism was found for combinations of TOB-NMP (1), TOB-PAR (2) or TOB-DBP (3) with either fluoroquinolones (moxifloxacin, ciprofloxacin), rifampicin or fosfomycin against a panel of multidrug-resistant/extensively drug-resistant (MDR/XDR) P. aeruginosa clinical isolates. In the presence of ≤8 mg/L (6.1–7.2 µM) (≤¼ × MICadjuvant) concentration of the three conjugates, the MIC80 of moxifloxacin, ciprofloxacin, rifampicin and fosfomycin were dramatically reduced. Furthermore, the MIC80 of rifampicin (0.25–0.5 mg/L) and fosfomycin (8–16 mg/L) were reduced below their interpretative susceptibility breakpoints. Our data confirm the ability of TOB-NMP (1), TOB-PAR (2) and TOB-DBP (3) conjugates to strongly synergize with moxifloxacin, ciprofloxacin, rifampicin and fosfomycin against MDR/XDR P. aeruginosa. These synergistic combinations warrant further studies as there is an urgent need to develop new strategies to treat drug-resistant P. aeruginosa infections.
A Tool for Introducing Computer Science with Automatic Formative Assessment

In this paper we present a software platform called Chatbot designed to introduce high school students to Computer Science (CS) concepts in an innovative way: by programming chatbots. A chatbot is a bot that can be programmed to have a conversation with a human or robotic partner in some natural language such as English or Spanish. While programming their chatbots, students use fundamental CS constructs such as variables, conditionals, and finite state automata, among others. Chatbot uses pattern matching, state of the art lemmatization techniques, and finite state automata in order to provide automatic formative assessment to the students. When an error is found, the formative feedback generated is immediate and task-level. We evaluated Chatbot in two observational studies. An online nation-wide competition where more than 10,000 students participated. And, a mandatory in-class 15-lesson pilot course in three high schools. We measured indicators of student engagement (task completion, participation, self reported interest, etc.) and found that girls’ engagement with Chatbot was higher than boys’ for most indicators. Also, in the online competition, the task completion rate for the students that decided to use Chatbot was five times higher than for the students that chose to use the renowned animation and game programming tool Alice. Our results suggest that the availability of automatic formative assessment may have an impact on task completion and other engagement indicators among high school students.
Further Results on Generalized Bent Functions and Their Complete Characterization

This paper contributes to increase our knowledge on generalized bent functions (including generalized bent Boolean functions and generalized <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-ary bent functions with odd prime <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) by bringing new results on their characterization and construction in arbitrary characteristic. More specifically, we first investigate relations between generalized bent functions and bent functions by the decomposition of generalized bent functions. This enables us to completely characterize generalized bent functions and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbb Z_{p^{k}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-bent functions by some affine space associated with the generalized bent functions. We also present the relationship between generalized bent Boolean functions with an odd number of variables and generalized bent Boolean functions with an even number of variables. Based on the well-known Maiorana-McFarland class of Boolean functions, we present some infinite classes of generalized bent Boolean functions. In addition, we introduce a class of generalized hyperbent functions that can be seen as generalized Dillon’s <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$PS$ </tex-math></inline-formula> functions. Finally, we solve an open problem related to the description of the dual function of a weakly regular generalized bent Boolean function with an odd number of variables via the Walsh–Hadamard transform of their component functions, and we generalize these results to the case of odd prime.
A Stochastic Optimization Method for Planning and Real-Time Control of Integrated PV-Storage Systems: Design and Experimental Validation

This paper proposes a solution for the day-ahead planning and the real-time control of an integrated system composed of a photovoltaic (PV) plant and a battery energy storage system (BESS). The day-ahead algorithm provides the optimal daily energy delivery profile based on a prediction of the PV production. The objective is to maximize the economic gain, according to the request of specific profile shape. The real-time operation algorithm dynamically regulates the BESS power exchange, in order to realize the scheduled power profile. Both of the proposed algorithms exploit chance-constrained stochastic optimization, in order to take into account the uncertainties of the PV power predictions. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed solutions, while their validation is achieved by experimental tests, executed on a low-voltage microgrid controlled by a distribution management system.
Towards privacy preserving for dynamic data in cloud storage

In today's world there is demand for storage of data over the cloud. Cloud environment provides storage availability as per data storage needed on client's request. Due to great demand for data storage over cloud there is need to increase the security of data. Here in our work the main focus is on achieving confidentiality, integrity of data on dynamic data as there would be change in the data on day to day basis in cloud environment. To verify intactness of the original data without losing confidentiality concept of homomorphic property using Paillier algorithm is used. The aim of the paper is to solve the privacy and trust issues in cloud environment.
Reducing the impact of adverse summer – autumn pasture conditions on livestock performance : results from farmer experience

A group of 12 farmers managing a total of 8845 ha in the West Waikato Region of the North Island, conducted a project to understand and overcome poor livestock performance during the summer– autumn period. Pastures and livestock were monitored to measure the impact of the conditions. Metabolisable energy (ME) of pasture averaged 9.0, 9.8 and 9.3 mega joules per kg of dry matter over the 3 years of study and elevated levels of pasture toxins were consistently found from midJanuary to the end of May. To counter these conditions, farmers adopted varying strategies including pasture management and alternative feeding (silage and forage crops). A computerbased tool that enabled the user to make livestock feeding decisions based on the pasture cover, the ME of the pasture, and the quantity and ME of a feed supplement was developed. Farmers were able to reduce the proportion of damaged livers in lambs from 60 to 40% of the flock, which was against the district trend. When the right strategies were implemented, lamb and cattle liveweight gains increased from 52 to 146 g/day and 0.34 to 0.5 kg/day respectively. On average, ewe reproductive performance also improved during the period from 2.4 to 2.8% of lambs scanned/kg ewe body weight. The project emphasised to farmers that their resident pastures did not meet the needs of a high performing livestock production system and that alternative feeding strategies were required if higher performance was to be achieved.
Zyxt: A Network Planning Tool for Rural Wireless ISPs

Rural areas are home to 45% of the world's population and are neglected in the design and deployment of broadband Internet access. Beyond establishing connectivity, the planning and design of networks in these areas is often challenging because the complexity of planning such networks often exceeds the knowledge and practical expertise of individuals -- even individuals that are experts in this field. Yet, proper planning and efficient network designs are critical to the long term viability and scalability of such networks. In this paper, we highlight the challenges that lone operators who lack sufficient technical support and tools must face when designing and deploying their networks. We then present a network planning tool, Zyxt, that aims to help individuals in planning rural wireless networks. We describe the design and implementation of our prototype and evaluate it against synthetic and real-world planning problems. Our evaluation demonstrates that Zyxt is able to solve real-world network planning problems using relatively modest computing resources within a few hours.
Assessing Healthspan and Lifespan Measures in Aging Mice: Optimization of Testing Protocols, Replicability, and Rater Reliability

The relationship between chronological age (lifespan) and biological age (healthspan) varies amongst individuals. Understanding the normal trajectory and characteristic traits of aging mice throughout their lifespan is important for selecting the most reliable and reproducible measures to test hypotheses. The protocols herein describe assays used for aging studies at The Jackson Laboratory's Mouse Neurobehavioral Phenotyping Facility and include assessments of frailty, cognition, and sensory (hearing, vision, olfaction), motor, and fine motor function that can be used for assessing phenotypes in aged mice across their lifespan as well as provide guidance for setting up and validating these behavioral measures. Researchers aiming to study aging phenotypes require access to aged mice as a reference when initiating these types of studies in order to observe normal aging characteristics that cannot be observed in young adult mouse populations. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.