Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First report of infection by Debaryomyces spp. in Myotis velifer (cave myotis) in Mexico

Interest in the study of mycotic diseases in bats has increased after the identification of bats affected by white-nose syndrome in the northern United States. In a temperate forest of the community of San Pedro Yolox, Ixtlán in the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca, Mexico, we collected bats of various species, including 13 specimens of Myotis velifer that showed lesions in the plagio- and uro-patagium. Clinical exploration, histopathological studies and molecular analysis were carried out to determine the causal agent of the lesions present in these individuals. It was determined that the cause was the pathogenic fungus Debaryomyces spp. The present study represents the first report of fungal infection in bats in southern Mexico.
Investigation in Low Drive Level Sensitivity of Quartz Resonator Affecting its Motional Parameters

Usually, starting of oscillation in a quartz crystal oscillator requires a resonator's input power in the range of – 20 dBm, but under storage a phenomenon known as Drive Level Dependency (DLD) or Drive Level Sensitivity (DLS) may appear that prevents the starting of oscillation. Several studies performed in the past have shown that at low drive level some quartz resonators may exhibit a large increase of their series resistance preventing the starting of oscillation. This work reviews the studies and results obtained for nearly fifty years on very low drive level sensitivity of quartz. The various mechanisms and models based on the hypothesis of moving particles and surface defects in the resonator inducing resistance increase and its relation with noise mechanism are reviewed as well. Also, the paper describes several experimental set-ups, and measurement procedures used to obtain very low drive level motional parameters. This work is a contribution to understand the problem of starting quartz after a long storage period. Some preliminary results of the series resistance measured at very low drive level are also presented.
An Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase Pathway Signature is associated with Cell De-differentiation, Neoadjuvant Response and Recurrence Risk in Breast Cancer

The role of ALK signaling in the pathogenesis of breast cancer (BC) is not clear. Previously we generated a gene signature for ALK pathway based on the difference of gene expression profiles between tumor cells with activated and inactive ALK pathway. Here, this signature was used to compute ALK pathway activity in BC samples from 42 microarray datasets, and the associations between ALK pathway score and the clinical outcome were examined by logistic regression and survival analysis. Our results indicated that high ALK pathway activity was a significant risk factor for the presence of higher-grade breast cancer with loss of ER and PR expression in the 42 datasets (n= 6381). ALK pathway activity was also positively associated with pathological complete response (pCR) in 15 datasets annotated with patient’s neoadjuvant response information (n= 2093, overall OR 1.67, p=2.00E-12), and with recurrence risk in 30 datasets annotated with patient’s survival information (n= 4678, overall HR 1.21, p=3.31E-08). The associations of ALK pathway activity with pCR and recurrence were more significant in HER2 negative and grade 1&2 tumors than in HER2 positive and grade 3 tumors. Notably, the association between ALK and tumor recurrence was statistically significant in patient with age>50 but not ≤50 years old, in patient with positive but not negative lymph node and in patients with residual disease but not pCR following neoadjuvant chemotherapy. These data indicate that ALK may be involved in BC tumorigenesis and ALK pathway signature represents a novel biomarker for BC clinical management.
An analysis of security incidents on the Internet 1989-1995

This research analyzed trends in Internet security through an investigation of 4,299 security-related incidents on the Internet reported to the CERT$\sp\circler$ Coordination Center (CERT$\sp\circler$/CC) from 1989 to 1995. Prior to this research, our knowledge of security problems on the Internet was limited and primarily anecdotal. This information could not be effectively used to determine what government policies and programs should be, or to determine the effectiveness of current policies and programs. This research accomplished the following: (1) development of a taxonomy for the classification of Internet attacks and incidents, (2) organization, classification, and analysis of incident records available at the CERT$\sp\circler$/CC, and (3) development of recommendations to improve Internet security, and to gather and distribute information about Internet security. With the exception of denial-of-service attacks, security incidents were generally found to be decreasing relative to the size of the Internet. The probability of any severe incident not being reported to the CERT$\sp\circler$/CC was estimated to be between 0% and 4%. The probability that an incident would be reported if it was above average in terms of duration and number of sites, was around 1 out of 2.6. Estimates based on this research indicated that a typical Internet domain was involved in no more than around one incident per year, and a typical Internet host in around one incident every 45 years. The taxonomy of computer and network attacks developed for this research was used to present a summary of the relative frequency of various methods of operation and corrective actions. This was followed by an analysis of three subgroups: (1) a case study of one site that reported all incidents, (2) 22 incidents that were identified, by various measures as being the most severe in the records, and (3) denial-of-service incidents. Data from all incidents and these three subgroups were used to estimate the total Internet incident activity during the period of the research. This was followed by a critical evaluation of the utility of the taxonomy developed for this research. The analysis concludes with recommendations for Internet users, Internet suppliers, response teams, and the U.S. government.
A Study on Controlled Node Sized Network Clustering for Unweighted Network Data

The Louvain method is one of the typical network clusterings. It is well-known that the Louvain method obtains better cluster partition in a short time. However, there are several network data which are not obtained better cluster partition by the Louvain method. One of the reasons for the above is that the Louvain method focuses on an only edge connection. We proposed the method which focuses on node size. The proposed method optimizes the objective function of k-medoids by solving the linear programming problem under the constraints on node size. We verified the usefulness of the proposed method in the viewpoint of calculation time and accuracy with an artificial and benchmark unweighted network datasets. The numerical examples show that the proposed method is faster and obtains better cluster partition than the Louvain method. The Euclidean distance in adjacency matrix does not obtain better cluster partition for the datasets, which consist of terminal nodes or high degree nodes.
Online Machine Learning for Fast Coding Unit Decisions in HEVC

The High Efficiency Video Coding standard introduced a flexible frame partitioning process that increased significantly compression rates in comparison to previous standards at the cost of a high computational cost. To accelerate frame partitioning decisions, this paper proposes a method that replaces the usual Rate-Distortion Optimization employed in Coding Unit size decision by a set of simpler decision tree models, which are built during encoding time by the C5 machine learning algorithm. The algorithm and the set of attributes employed in the model training process were chosen based on an extensive analysis that compared several options in terms of decision accuracy and training complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed method is capable of building accurate models for each video sequence, decreasing the HEVC encoding complexity in 34.4% on average with a compression efficiency loss of only 0.2% in comparison to the original HEVC reference encoder.
Modelling Airport Efficiency With Distributions Of The Inefficient Error Term: An Application Of Time Series Data For Aircraft Departure Delay

The study employs determinants of the aircraft departure delay to estimate airport efficiency. Two main parameters were applied to fit the stochastic frontier model using transcendental logarithmic function where both frontier and inefficiency models were generated. The estimated airport efficiencies over a period of 1827 days applying the halfnormal and exponential distributions for the inefficiency error terms were (0.7498; δ=0.1417, n=1827) and (0.8181; δ=0.1224, n=1827) respectively. The correlation coefficient for the efficiency estimates (ρ=0.9791, n=1827, p<0.05) between the half-normal and exponential distributions showed no significant statistical difference. Further analysis showed that airport inefficiency was significantly associated with higher number of persons on board, lower visibility level, lower air pressure tendency, higher wind speed and a higher proportion of arrival aircraft delays. The study offers a contribution towards assessing the dynamics for the distribution of inefficient error term to estimate airport efficiency by employing both meteorological and aviation parameters. The study recommends that although either half-normal or exponential distributions could be used; the exponential distribution for the error term was found more suitable when estimating the efficiency score for the airport.
Identification of the harmonic transfer functions of a helicopter rotor

Identification of the time periodic dynamics of a helicopter rotor system is necessary for effective controller design and analysis. The transfer properties of a linear time periodic (LTP) system can be described by harmonic transfer functions (HTF) that give the input-output relationship between the Fourier coefficients of the input signal and those of the output signal. A method for identifying harmonic transfer functions of linear time periodic systems is developed in this thesis. The system identification scheme employs a least square estimation technique to obtain HTF estimates. This least square estimation problem is underdetermined; therefore, an additional assumption, that the transfer function is smooth, is made in the ID scheme to achieve a well-posed problem. The estimates are calculated by applying a quadratic penalty to the curvature of the transfer functions. The identification scheme has been implemented in MATLAB, and partly coded in C programming language for maximum computational efficiency. This system ID method has been validated with analytical results for a few well-known LTP systems. The validation results show excellent agreement between the identified and analytical transfer functions. Thesis Supervisor: Steven R. Hall Title: Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
3.1Å structure of yeast RNA polymerase II elongation complex stalled at a cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer lesion solved using streptavidin affinity grids

Despite significant advances in all aspects of single particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), specimen preparation still remains a challenge. During sample preparation, macromolecules interact with the air-water interface, which often leads to detrimental effects such as denaturation or adoption of preferred orientations, ultimately hindering structure determination. Randomly biotinylating the protein of interest and then tethering it to a cryo-EM grid coated with two-dimensional crystals of streptavidin (acting as an affinity surface) can prevent the protein from interacting with the air-water interface. Recently, this approach was successfully used to solve a high-resolution structure of a test sample, a bacterial ribosome. However, the general applicability of this method to samples where interaction with the air-water interface is problematic remains to be determined. Here we report a 3. 1Å structure of a RNA polymerase II elongation complex stalled at a cyclobutane pyrimidine dimer lesion (Pol II EC(CPD)) solved using streptavidin grids. Our previous attempt to solve this structure using conventional sample preparation methods resulted in a poor quality cryo-EM map due to Pol II EC(CPD)’s adopting a strong preferred orientation. Imaging the same sample on streptavidin grids led to a high-resolution structure with little anisotropy, showing that streptavidin affinity grids could be used as a general strategy to address challenges posed by interaction with the air-water interface.
CD247 Functions as a Prognostic Biomarker for Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma Based on the Analysis of Tumor-immune Microenvironment

Background: Cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) is among the most lethal cancers. The tumour microenvironment (TME) is closely linked with tumorigenesis, metastasis, and prognosis.Methods: We employed the ESTIMATE algorithm to calculate immune and stromal scores of malignant melanoma tissues from the Cancer Genome Atlas dataset, respectively, and determine core prognosis gene signature examined by COX proportional hazards model. Functional enrichment annotation, the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways, the Protein-Protein Interaction network, Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis and overall survival analysis were used to formulate potential function of these genes that involved in immune-linked biological processes. CIBERSORT algorithm was used to estimate the abundances of immune cell types in CMM samples. Finally, the OncoLnc platform, the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis resources, and the Human Protein Atlas database were applied to validate our results. Results：908 differential expressed genes and ten hub genes were screened, and GO annotation indicated that immune response and inflammatory response were firmly involved in CMM tumorigenesis and progression. CD247, identified as the most significant prognostic biomarker, highly expressed in tumor samples and possessed a better prognosis than low expressed samples. The correlation analysis of immune cells infiltration unveiled that CD8+ T cell and Macrophages were intense significant to CMM patients' prognosis. Survival analysis suggested that ten hub genes and infiltrated immune cells are linked to the prognosis of CMM. ConnectiveMap analysis strongly indicated that L-securinine may be a promising candidate medicine for CMM patients.Conclusions: we deeply analyzed the immune-linked genes with the tumour microenvironment, and labeled CD247 as the most intriguing prognostic biomarker for CMM, which may bring better clinical outcomes for CMM patients.
Evaluation of F-Transform Based Measures of Image Sharpness

During our research, we have presented a novel approach for multi-focus image fusion based on new image sharpness measures built on F-Transform. We have already presented that F-Transform based sharpness measure subjectively give good results in edge detection and sharpness evaluation. In order to continue with our research, we need to prove that such F-Transform based measures are generally usable as sharpness measures in image processing. So we aimed at our measures trying to evaluate their stability and robustness against noise. In the contribution, we present theoretical background and properties requested to be satisfied by sound sharpness measures. Then, we presented one previously introduced and one novel F-Transform based sharpness measure, and according to the presented properties, we verified that the proposed measures are fulfilling stated properties. The verification is done over experimental and real-life images and is evaluated referring to the standard simple sharpness measures. The result is that the both F-Transform based proposed measures supports presented properties and can be generally used as image sharpness measures.
A low-Reynolds-number, high-angle-of-attack investigation of wind turbine aerofoils

This article describes an experimental, aerodynamic investigation of four aerofoils intended for small wind turbine applications. The aerofoils of these small machines (both horizontal and vertical axes) normally experience conditions that are quite different from large-scale machines due to smaller chord length and lower wind speed, resulting in significantly lower Reynolds numbers. They also operate with an unusually wide range of incidence angles (0° to 90° for horizontal axis and 0° to 360° for vertical axis). Four appropriate aerofoils were chosen for testing at three Reynolds numbers (65 000, 90 000, and 150 000) through 360° incidence to cover almost all possible conditions that might be encountered by both types of turbines. The investigations were conducted in terms of lift, drag, and surface static pressure coefficients. The experimental results show that both geometry and Reynolds number had significant effects on aerodynamic lift, not only when unstalled but particularly in the post-stall region from 20° to 50° incidence. These effects were also seen at other incidences but to a lesser extent. By contrast, the drag characteristics were similar for all blade geometries. Static pressure measurement revealed that, at these low Reynolds numbers, separation bubbles always form near the leading edge of the suction surface at moderate incident angles and increase in size with decreasing Reynolds number. Comparisons of force and static pressure measurements showed that the aerofoil stalling behaviour is closely related to the presence of a separation bubble at the leading edge of the suction surface. Discrepancies between the experiments and predictions using the AERODAS model confirm the continued need for accurate wind tunnel testing.
Traffic Optimization by Simultaneous Control of Vehicles Speeds and Routes

As vehicle-to-vehicle communication and autonomous vehicles penetrate the market of smart cities, more techniques to solve the problem of traffic flow optimization become available. This paper addresses a new approach to tackle the problem of traffic flow optimization by simultaneously controlling the speeds and routes of vehicles. Both of these quantities can be controlled accurately in self-driving cars. The objective function is set to minimize the collective fuel consumption and traveling time of all drivers in the network. The solution eradicates the usage of traffic lights, and instead, employs constraints that disallow vehicles to meet at intersections. This solution can potentially improve the smoothness of traffic flow, because vehicles do not stop at intersections. This results in the reduction of travelling time and fuel consumption due to the process of acceleration and deceleration. Simulations were performed using MATLAB mixed-integer linear programming solver and were shown to give the optimal paths and speeds for 8 groups of cars in a 16-intersection network with a run time of less than 10 seconds.
Indoor Positioning Using Auto Sextant

This paper reports on the construction of an automated mechatronic sextant utilized in determining positions relative to multiple observed objects in open spaces. The design is based on the basic principles of the conventional mariner's hand-held sextant. The device operates indoor or outdoors where it exploits the celestial presence of the sun. Image processing algorithms are applied to detect object features from which position coordinates are determined. The device is within 0° to 4° accurate for objects of different shapes and patterns when placed at similar elevation and range. The device can be used as a backup to the more sophisticated positioning systems that require extensive infrastructure to make an accurate location determination.
Investigating the impact of project definition clarity on project performance: Structural equation modeling study

Having a clear project definition is crucial for successful construction projects. It affects design quality, project communication between stakeholders and final project performance in terms of cost, schedule and quality. This study examines the relationship between project definition and final project performance through a structural equation model comprising 4 latent constructs and 6 path hypotheses using data from a questionnaire survey of 120 general contractors in the Malaysian construction industry. The results show that in the study population, all three items impact the project performance, but the link between design quality and project performance is indirect. Instead, the clarity of project definition affects project performance indirectly through design quality and project communication and design quality affects project performance indirectly through project communication. The primary contribution is to provide quantitative confirmation of the more general statements made in the literature from around the world and therefore adds to and consolidates existing knowledge. Practical implications derived from the finding are also proposed for various project stakeholders. Furthermore, as lack of the clarity of project definition is a very common occurrence in construction projects globally, these findings have important ramifications for all construction projects in expanding and clarifying existing knowledge on what is needed for the successful delivery of construction projects.
PEDESTRIAN SENSING WITH FEATURE EXTRACTION

Automated pedestrian sensing and tracking is receiving increasing attention from researchers in a number of areas. Applications are common in security, in urban planning, and in the retail industry. A common approach is to use CCTV and visible image processing, but this involves complicated scene interpretation. This paper describes our research on monitoring the movement of pedestrians using relatively low-cost, low resolution infrared sensors. We describe our data collection system and processing techniques and introduce new data analysis software. Preliminary results show that, as well as the simple tracking of pedestrians, biometric data, such as gait measurement, becomes possible. Our work aims to provide data to improve security and to enable behavioural monitoring of pedestrians in public. This data is important to those working in pedestrian monitoring, market research and in public safety and security.
Management of serially-connected battery system using multiple switches

When charging and discharging battery cells in series connection, it is recommended that a deteriorated cell displaying unbalanced voltage should be removed without interrupting the charging and discharging processes. The authors have proposed a novel circuit whereby battery cells are serially connected, which controls multiple switches by measuring the cell voltages. This circuit makes balanced charging and discharging possible even for the cells containing a deteriorated cell. Their experiments on the proposed circuit's performance using lithium-ion cells obtained satisfactory results.