Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of a self-selected nap opportunity on the psychophysiological, performance and subjective measures during a simulated industrial night shift regimen

This study compared the effects of a 1 h self-selected recovery period to those of a standard night shift arrangement (with a total break time of 1-h) over a simulated three-day night shift schedule in a laboratory setting. Results showed that the inclusion of the flexible nap scheme resulted in higher performance output, improvements in physiological strain responses and reduced sleepiness during each night shift and generally over the three-night cycle. Certain variables also revealed the impact of napping compared with the standard rest break condition on the circadian rhythm. The sleep diary records show that the inclusion of the current intervention did not significantly reduce daytime recovery sleep. The results suggest that the potential benefits of flexible napping may outweigh the logistical effort it requires in a workplace environment. Practitioner summary: Consensus on appropriate napping strategies for shift work remains a challenge. This simulated night shift laboratory study sought to determine the effects of a 1-h self-selected nap opportunity relative to a normal shift set-up. The nap improved performance and decreased sleepiness, without affecting daytime sleep.
Characteristics of ZnO/Al/ZnO multilayers on glass with different ZnO film thicknesses prepared by cathodic vacuum arc deposition

In this paper, the characteristics of the transparent ZnO/Al(10 nm)/ZnO multilayered films on glass substrate with different ZnO film thickness (50, 100, 150 and 200 nm) were investigated. The ZnO films were deposited using cathodic arc plasma technique at a low temperature (<;75°C). Microstructure, optical and electrical properties were investigated and discussed. The multilayered films showed a high orientation of (002) peak. An average transmittance around 70 % in the visible region and the lowest resistivity around 4.02×10-4 Ω-cm could be achieved for the ZnO(50 nm)/Al(10 nm)/ZnO (50 nm) multilayered film.
Tumour control probability: a formulation applicable to any temporal protocol of dose delivery.

An analytic expression for the tumour control probability (TCP), valid for any temporal distribution of dose, is discussed. The TCP model, derived using the theory of birth-and-death stochastic processes, generalizes several results previously obtained. The TCP equation is [equation: see text] where S(t) is the survival probability at time t of the n clonogenic tumour cells initially present (at t = 0), and b and d are, respectively, the birth and death rates of these cells. Equivalently, b = 0.693/Tpot and d/b is the cell loss factor of the tumour. In this expression t refers to any time during or after the treatment; typically, one would take for t the end of the treatment period or the expected remaining life span of the patient. This model, which provides a comprehensive framework for predicting TCP, can be used predictively, or--when clinical data are available for one particular treatment modality (e.g. fractionated radiotherapy)--to obtain TCP-equivalent regimens for other modalities (e.g. low dose-rate treatments).
The Rise and Fall of Third-Party High-Speed Access

While Internet usage blossomed during the entire 1995-2001 time period, there was a large change in the nature of the high-speed Internet access business. Initially, connection, routing and content were three separate parts of high-speed Internet service. Cable companies initially teamed with affiliated third-party providers to create their high-speed access combination of connection and routing whereas telephone companies resisted working with third-party providers for their high-speed access product. In the end, both cable and telephone providers moved toward a more integrated approach to the provision of high-speed access. However, content has remained, for the most part, separate from connection and routing. This paper finds that changes in the cost of caching, bandwidth and more standardized technical knowledge led cable companies toward the integrated approach favored by telephone companies, and changes in regulation facilitated integrated provision by telephone companies. At the same time, integration of access with content did not provide similar efficiencies and, for the most part, content remains provided for by independent companies.
Normalization Using Structured Full Transforms for Robust Speech Recognition

Classical mean and variance normalization (MVN) uses a diagonal transform and a bias vector to normalize the mean and variance of noisy features to reference values. As MVN uses diagonal transform, it ignores correlation between feature dimensions. Although full transform is able to make use of feature correlation, its large amount of parameters may not be estimated reliably from a short observation, e.g. 1 utterance. We propose a novel structured full transform that has the same amount of free parameters as diagonal transform while being able to capture correlation between feature dimensions. The proposed structured transform can be estimated reliably from one utterance by maximizing the likelihood of the normalized features on a reference Gaussian mixture model. Experimental results on Aurora4 task show that the structured transform produces consistently better speech recognition results than diagonal transform and also outperforms advanced frontend (AFE) feature extractor.
Novel Genotyping and Quantitative Analysis of Neuraminidase Inhibitor Resistance-Associated Mutations in Influenza A Viruses by Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism Analysis

ABSTRACT Neuraminidase (NA) inhibitors are among the first line of defense against influenza virus infection. With the increased worldwide use of the drugs, antiviral susceptibility surveillance is increasingly important for effective clinical management and for public health epidemiology. Effective monitoring requires effective resistance detection methods. We have developed and validated a novel genotyping method for rapid detection of established NA inhibitor resistance markers in influenza viruses by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis. The multi- or monoplex SNP analysis based on single nucleotide extension assays was developed to detect NA mutations H275Y and I223R/V in pandemic H1N1 viruses, H275Y in seasonal H1N1 viruses, E119V and R292K in seasonal H3N2 viruses, and H275Y and N295S in H5N1 viruses. The SNP analysis demonstrated high sensitivity for low-content NA amplicons (0.1 to 1 ng/μl) and showed 100% accordant results against a panel of defined clinical isolates. The monoplex assays for the H275Y NA mutation allowed precise and accurate quantification of the proportions of wild-type and mutant genotypes in virus mixtures (5% to 10% discrimination), with results comparable to those of pyrosequencing. The SNP analysis revealed the lower growth fitness of an H275Y mutant compared to the wild-type pandemic H1N1 virus by quantitatively genotyping progeny viruses grown in normal human bronchial epithelial cells. This novel method offers high-throughput screening capacity, relatively low costs, and the wide availability of the necessary equipment, and thus it could provide a much-needed approach for genotypic screening of NA inhibitor resistance in influenza viruses.
Reaction 36Ar(p, gamma )37K in explosive hydrogen burning.

The reaction {sup 36}Ar({ital p},{gamma}){sup 37}K has been measured in the proton energy range of {ital E}{sub {ital p}}=0.32--0.93 MeV. A new resonance was found at {ital E}{sub {ital R}}=321 keV. We have measured the branching ratios and the resonance strength. The stellar reaction rates which are dominated by this resonance for temperatures {ital T}=0.07--0.9 GK are calculated. Network calculations have been performed to investigate the influence of the new stellar rates on the time evolution of the {sup 36}Ar abundance during explosive H burning.
Feature extraction method for micro-Doppler using LFM

This paper mainly deals with the problem of extracting the micro-Doppler feature. The micro-Doppler can be regarded as the unique signature of the micro-motion target. Based on introducing the concept of the micro-Doppler, a method is proposed to extract the micro-doppler feature, which can estimate two micro-motion parameters, i.e., initial angle and frequency simultaneously. Then the mathematical formula of this method is derived. Finally, the computer simulation confirms theoretical analysis, providing theoretical foundation for micro-Doppler feature extraction.
Endarterectomy for asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis.

To the Editor. —The authors and collaborators of the ACAS 1 are to be congratulated for rigorously conducting and analyzing a very important study. Indeed, even before its publication in JAMA , the results of this study were widely reported in the lay press and, if the three busy hospitals in which I practice are representative, widely embraced by neurologists and surgeons alike. However, several points should be emphasized. First, in calculating the primary end point, the 1.2% arteriographic stroke rate should have been applied to all 825 patients randomized to surgery, not just the 414 patients who received postrandomization arteriography or even the 724 patients who received carotid endarterectomy. This would of course decrease slightly the apparent benefit of surgery. Second, the end point of greatest interest (to the patient) is any stroke or death, because the patient who sustains this complication will care little that it was neither perioperative
A Method of Discriminative Information Preservation and In-Dimension Distance Minimization Method for Feature Selection

Preserving sample's pair wise similarity is essential for feature selection. In supervised learning, labels can be used as a direct measure to check whether two samples are similar with each other. In unsupervised learning, however, such similarity information is usually unavailable. In this paper, we propose a new feature selection method through spectral clustering based on discriminative information as an underlying data structure. Laplacian matrix is used to obtain more partitioning information than other previously proposed structures such as the Eigen space of original data. The high dimension of sample data is projected into a low dimensional space. The in-dimension distance is also considered to get a better compact clustering result. The proposed method can be solved efficiently by updating the projection matrix and its inverse normalized diagonal matrix. A comprehensive experimental study has demonstrated that the proposed method outperforms many state-of-the-art feature selection algorithms with different criterion including the accuracy of clustering/classification and Jaccard score.
Fuzzy rewriting: soft program semantics for children

Rewriting systems are popular in end-user programming because complex behavior can be described with few or no abstractions or variables. However, rewriting systems have been limited to manipulating non-rotatable objects on a grid, such as in Agentsheets or Stagecast Creator. Systems that allow free-form movement of objects must use other techniques, such as the sequential programming by demonstration in Squeak. Viscuit is a new rewriting system that introduces fuzzy rewriting, which allows freely positioned and rotated objects to interact using only rewriting rules. The result is a system that allows users to specify animations in a highly interactive way, without textual language or menu selections.
Survey on Kernel-Based Relation Extraction

Relation extraction refers to the method of efficient detection and identification of prede‐ fined semantic relationships within a set of entities in text documents (Zelenco, Aone, & Ri‐ chardella, 2003; Zhang, Zhou, and Aiti, 2008). The importance of this method was recognized first at the Message Understanding Conference (MUC, 2001) that had been held from 1987 to 1997 under the supervision of DARPA1. After that, the Automatic Content Ex‐ traction (ACE, 2009) Workshop facilitated numerous researches that from 1999 to 2008 had been promoted by NIST2 as a new project. Currently, the workshop is held every year being the greatest world forum for comparison and evaluation of new technology in the field of information extraction such as named entity recognition, relation extraction, event extrac‐ tion, and temporal information extraction. This workshop is conducted as a sub-field of Text Analytics Conference (TAC, 2012) which is currently under the supervision of NIST.
Active and Cooperative Learning in a VLSI Design Course : Lessons from the Trenches

Active and cooperative learning techniques have been researched extensively and shown to be effective teaching tools. This paper describes how a senior/introductory graduate course in very large scale integration (VLSI) design was adapted to make extensive use of active and cooperative learning techniques. Heterogeneous student teams are formed by the instructor early in the semester. These teams work cooperatively on nearly every aspect of the course, including homework, lab assignments, a semester project, and active exercises in lecture. Students are guided through exercises to improve teaming, communication, and leadership skills. Positive interdependence and thoughtful reflection on student teaming and communication abilities are encouraged throughout the semester. This paper gives examples of practical active and cooperative learning exercises that have been used with success for eight consecutive semesters in Mississippi State University’s VLSI design course.
Diffusion-an analytic procedure applied to macro cell placement

A description is presented of a novel optimization procedure called diffusion which can be used in global circuit placement for suppressing inter-module and module-to-chip boundary overlaps. A salient feature of the proposed diffusion procedure is that multiple decisions on the moves of all variables (module positions) are simultaneously made such that a global, analytic objective function is minimized. Various strategies are discussed to speed up the convergence, and to prevent the solution from being stuck at local minima. A net force model is used with the diffusion procedure to minimize the inter-module wire length besides reducing the inter-module and module-to-chip overlaps. Various experimental results are given. Further potential applications of the proposed procedure include multilayer placement, and placement in an arbitrarily-shaped region. <<ETX>>
Membrane-Associated Replication Complex in Arbovirus Infection

Cytoplasmic extracts of chicken embryo fibroblast cells infected with Semliki Forest virus were subjected to isopycnic centrifugation in discontinuous sucrose gradients. Seven distinct bands were usually formed. The four upper bands contained predominantly smooth membranes and the lowest band was enriched in rough endoplasmic reticulum. One fraction (fraction 5), banding at a density of 1.16 g/cm3, was found to be heavily enriched in pulse-labeled ribonucleic acid (RNA), viral RNA polymerase, and viral RNA forms associated with RNA replication. Thus, fraction 5 evidently contained a membrane-associated viral replication complex of a type previously defined in picornavirus infections. Fraction 5 was also consistently enriched with unique membranous structures previously observed in intact cells as type 1 cytopathic vacuoles (CPV-1). When the CPV-1 in fraction 5 were isolated from cells briefly incubated with 3H-uridine and 3H-adenosine prior to cell disruption, a large proportion was found to be labeled by high-resolution autoradiography. Thus, ultrastructural, biochemical, and biological evidence were all consistent with the interpretation that the CPV-1 membranes represent a significant element of the viral replication complex.
Educating reflective Enterprise Systems practitioners: a design research study of the iterative building of a teaching framework

This research paper reports on the iterative design of a teaching framework developed for teaching Enterprise Systems (ES) classes for Information Systems (IS) graduates. These systems embed technical complexity and create organizational challenges when implemented in organizations. Therefore, teaching good ES classes is pedagogically challenging for faculty, and ES curricula are difficult for students. We have gradually designed and rebuilt curricula and teaching frameworks over 8 years. This has also resulted in a set of eight design principles. We report from our design and evaluation process and present our final artefact, the teaching framework. The aim is to educate reflective practitioners with multiple ES skills, enabling them to tackle the complexities of ES implementation contexts. The framework has implications for IS educational research and practice and has some generic values that are transferable to other academic institutions and adaptable to other IS learning environments. Further, the study contributes to IS design research by extending its application area. The ES teaching framework is a specific contribution to IS teaching frameworks as a class of problems.
Different Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus Phenotypes Selected from the Same ST100-hVISA Parental Strain

The aim of this study is to characterize the factors related to peptidoglycan metabolism in isogenic hVISA/VISA ST100 strains. Recently, we reported the increase in IS256 transposition in invasive hVISA ST100 clinical strains isolated from the same patient (D1 and D2) before and after vancomycin treatment and two laboratory VISA mutants (D23C9 and D2P11) selected from D2 in independent experiments. High performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) analysis of peptidoglycan muropeptides showed increased proportion of monomeric muropeptides and a concomitant decrease in the proportion of tetrameric muropeptide in D2 and derived mutants when compared to the original strain D1. In addition, strain D2 and its derived mutants showed an increase in cell wall thickness with increased pbp2 gene expression. The VISA phenotype was not stable in D2P11 and showed a reduced autolysis profile. On the other hand, the mutant D23C9 differentiates from D2 and D2P11 in the autolysis profile, and pbp4 transcription profile. D2-derived mutants exhibited differences in the susceptibility to other antimicrobials. Our results highlight the possibility of selection of different VISA phenotypes from a single hVISA-ST100 genetic background.
Analysis of reduced-set construction using image reconstruction from a HOG feature vector

Recently, several methods have been published that demonstrate how to reconstruct an image from a discriminative feature vector. This study explains that previous approaches minimising the histogram-of-oriented-gradient (HOG) feature error in the principal component analysis (PCA) domain of the learning database have a disadvantage in that they cannot reflect the different dynamic range of each PCA dimension, and proposes an improved method to exploit the eigenvalue as the weighting factor of each PCA dimension. Experimental results using pedestrian and vehicle image databases quantitatively show that the proposed method improves the quality of reconstructed images. Additionally, the proposed method is applied to the image reconstruction of the resultant support vectors (SVs) of reduced-set construction which showed the best performance among SV number reduction methods. As the resultant SVs of reduced-set construction are not corresponding to any image of the learning database, it is hard to analyse the problem and performance of the method. By observing the images of the resultant SVs, one potential problem regarding the database used is newly considered and the direction of further study can be established in order to address the problem.
SPO11 is required for sex-body formation, and Spo11 heterozygosity rescues the prophase arrest of Atm-/- spermatocytes

SPO11 introduces double-strand breaks (DSBs) that trigger the phosphorylation of H2AX during meiotic prophase. In mice, SPO11 is strictly required for initiation of meiotic recombination and synapsis, yet SPO11 is still considered to be dispensable for sex-body formation in mouse spermatocytes. We provide conclusive evidence showing that functional SPO11, and consequently recombination and synapsis, are required for phosphorylation of H2AX in the X-Y chromatin and for sex-body formation in mouse spermatocytes. We investigated the role in meiosis of the three kinases [ATM (ataxia telangiectasia mutated), ATR (ataxia-telangiectasia- and Rad-3-related) and DNA-PKcs (DNA-dependent-protein-kinase catalytic subunit)] known to phosphorylate H2AX in mitotic cells. We found that DNA-PKcs can be ruled out as an essential kinase in this process, whereas ATM is strictly required for the chromatin-wide phosphorylation of H2AX occurring in leptotene spermatocytes in response to DSBs. Remarkably, we discovered that Spo11 heterozygosity can rescue the prophase-I-arrest characteristic of ATM-deficient spermatocytes. Characterization of the rescued Atm-/- Spo11+/- mutant indicates that ATM is dispensable for sex-body formation and phosphorylation of H2AX in this subnuclear domain. The co-localization of ATR, phosphorylated H2AX and the sex chromatin observed in the Atm-/- Spo11+/- mutant, along with ATR transcription kinetics during the first wave of spermatogenesis, confirm and expand recent findings indicating that ATR is the kinase involved in H2AX phosphorylation in the sex body.
Real‐Time PCR Duplex Assay for Rickettsia prowazekii and Borrelia recurrentis

Abstract: Rickettsia prowazekii, the etiologic agent for epidemic typhus, and Borrelia recurrentis, the etiologic agent of relapsing fever, both utilize the same vector, the human body louse (Pediculus humanus), to transmit human disease. We have developed an assay to detect both bacterial pathogens in a single tube utilizing real‐time PCR. Assays for both agents are specific. The R. prowazekii and B. recurrentis assays do not detect nucleic acid from R. typhi, R. canada, or any of eight spotted fever rickettsiae. In addition they did not react with Neorickettsia risticii, N. sennetsu, Franciscella persica, Bartonella quintana, Legionella pneumophila, Proteus mirabilis, Salmonella enterica, Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus. Moreover, the B. recurrentis assay did not detect B. duttonii, B. coriaceae, B. afzelii, B. garinii, B. hermsii, or B. burgdorferi nucleic acid. Both assays detected repeatedly only R. prowazekii or B. recurrentis either when tested alone or together in one test tube.
Partially ordered rough ensemble clustering for multigranular representations

Clustering groups objects based on their similarity using unsupervised learning. Clustering is an NP hard problem. A number of clustering algorithms use heuristics to create a reasonable grouping of objects. However, clustering schemes created by different heuristic algorithms do not always completely agree with each other. For example, an object may belong to different clusters for different algorithms. Therefore, researchers have proposed a number of clustering ensemble techniques to combine the clustering schemes from different algorithms. This paper proposes a Rough Set based ensemble method for preserving the inherent order in clustering. The proposal is demonstrated with the help of daily price patterns of commodities, which are grouped based on Black Scholes volatility index as well as the distribution of prices.
DNA Extraction and PCR Methods for the Detection of Listeria monocytogenes in Cold-Smoked Salmon

Protocols for the specific detection of Listeria monocytogenes in cold-smoked salmon were developed. PCR was used as the method of detection. Inhibitors of PCR present in the food samples were removed by ether extraction or column purification, or their effect was overcome by the use of Tween 20 as an enhancer. These protocols are many times more rapid than conventional detection methodologies and also have the potential for automation.