Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrated microfluidic biochip with nanocoating self-assembled fiber-optic sensor

A microfluidic biochip integrated with highly sensitive fiber-optic glucose biosensor is presented. With the layer-by-layer self-assembly technology, poly (ethylenimine) (PEI), poly (acrylic acid) (PAA) and glucose oxidase (GOx) multilayers were deposited on the surface of a long-period fiber grating for sensing of glucose. Experimental results reveal that the biochip can achieve ultra-low detection limit (1 nM) and is very promising for diabetes mellitus detection.
A taxonomy and discussion of software attack technologies

Software is a complex thing. It is not an engineering artifact that springs forth from a design by simply following software coding rules; creativity and the human element are at the heart of the process. Software development is part science, part art, and part craft. Design, architecture, and coding are equally important activities and in each of these activities, errors may be introduced that lead to security vulnerabilities. Therefore, inevitably, errors enter into the code. Some of these errors are discovered during testing; however, some are not. The best way to find security errors, whether they are introduced as part of the architecture development effort or coding effort, is to automate the security testing process to the maximum extent possible and add this class of tools to the tools available, which aids in the compilation process, testing, test analysis, and software distribution. Recent technological advances, improvements in computer-generated forces (CGFs), and results in research in information assurance and software protection indicate that we can build a semi-intelligent software security testing tool. However, before we can undertake the security testing automation effort, we must understand the scope of the required testing, the security failures that need to be uncovered during testing, and the characteristics of the failures. Therefore, we undertook the research reported in the paper, which is the development of a taxonomy and a discussion of software attacks generated from the point of view of the security tester with the goal of using the taxonomy to guide the development of the knowledge base for the automated security testing tool. The representation for attacks and threat cases yielded by this research captures the strategies, tactics, and other considerations that come into play during the planning and execution of attacks upon application software. The paper is organized as follows. Section one contains an introduction to our research and a discussion of the motivation for our work. Section two contains a presents our taxonomy of software attacks and a discussion of the strategies employed and general weaknesses exploited for each attack. Section three contains a summary and suggestions for further research.
Towards Privacy Definition for Hybrid Sensitivity Data

Author(s): STYLIANOS, DOUDALIS | Advisor(s): Mehrotra, Sharad | Abstract: Social media, web search logs and online purchases are only some of the sources used my private and public organizations to collect information about individuals. While, the aggregated data are valuable for research and commercial use, they can pose a direct threat to a user's privacy. The field of privacy preserving data sharing has emerged, in order to create tools, that can enable institutions and companies to shares their clients' information, while protecting their privacy. Differential privacy (DP) has been recognized as the de-facto privacy framework for interacting with private information. In this thesis, we continue the work on release histograms with formal privacy guarantees. Particularly, we investigate the effect of sorting as a technique for improving the accuracy of the final approximation. We identify the right settings to use it, and when to avoid it. DP aims to protect users' records from every possible type of inference attack. As a result, the DP is a very pessimistic privacy framework that considers every piece of information as sensitive. In the context of this thesis, we will relax the previous requirement. We propose one-sided privacy (OSP) a novel privacy framework that is able to handle data that can be classified as sensitive or non-sensitive. Our empirical results show that OSP can support new types of application, and offers meaningful utility, in cases that DP is known to perform poorly.
EA Modulator-Based Optical Multiplexing/Demultiplexing Techniques for 160 Gbit/s OTDM Signal Transmission

160 Gbit/s optical-time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) transmitter/receiver employing electroabsorption (EA) modulators are described. In the 160 Gbit/s OTDM transmitter, the optical multiplexer, which implemented four EA modulators, is used and the generation of authentic 160 Gbit/s OTDM signal is realized. The optical multiplexer also enables to generate the phase-coded OTDM signal such as carrier-suppressed return-to-zero (CS-RZ) signal at 160 Gbit/s by changing driving temperatures of the EA modulators. In the 160 Gbit/s receiver, the EA modulator is also used in an optical demultiplexer and a phase-locked-loop (PLL) for clock extraction. As both optical demultiplexer and PLL are insensitive to polarization state of incoming signal, highly stable operation is achieved. We also show some results of transmission experiment using the developed OTDM transmitter/receiver and discuss the advantage of a switching capability of modulation format in the 160 Gbit/s signal transmission.
Consumer Decision‐making at an Internet Shopbot: Brand Still Matters

Internet shopbots compare prices and services levels at competing retailers, creating a laboratory for analysing consumer choice. We analyse 20,268 shopbot consumers who select various books from 33 retailers over 69 days. Although each retailer offers a homogeneous product, we find that brand is an important determinant of consumer choice. The three most heavily branded retailers hold a $1.72 price advantage over more generic retailers in head-to-head price comparisons. In particular, we find that consumers use brand as a proxy for retailer credibility in non-contractible aspects of the product and service bundle, such as shipping reliability. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Bactericidal effects of ticarcillin-clavulanic acid against beta-lactamase-producing bacteria in vivo

The comparative efficacies of ticarcillin and ticarcillin plus clavulanic acid have been determined in the mouse against experimental infections caused by ticarcillin-resistant bacteria. The infections studied comprised an intraperitoneal infection, local tissue infections, pyelonephritis, and pneumonia. Both ticarcillin and clavulanic acid penetrated readily to the sites of infection studied and at the doses employed were present at concentrations of the same order as those obtained in humans after the administration of ticarcillin-clavulanic acid formulations (Timentin; Beecham). At these concentrations, the ticarcillin-clavulanic acid combination caused significant bactericidal effects at the sites of infection against the ticarcillin-resistant strains of Bacteroides fragilis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Staphylococcus aureus investigated. The efficacy of ticarcillin plus clavulanic acid against the infections resistant to therapy with ticarcillin demonstrated the beta-lactamase-inhibitory activity of clavulanic acid in vivo.
Speech enhancement based on a priori signal to noise estimation

This paper addresses the problem of single microphone frequency domain speech enhancement in noisy environments. The main characteristics of available frequency domain noise reduction algorithms are presented. We have confirmed that the a priori SNR estimation leads to the best subjective results. According to these conclusions, a new approach is then developed which achieves a trade-off between effective noise reduction and low computational load for real-time operations. The obtained solutions demonstrate that the subjective and objective results are much better than existing methods.
Genetic factors in the susceptibility of juvenile Biomphalaria glabrata to Schistosoma mansoni infection.

Abstract Susceptibility to infection with Schistosoma mansoni was studied in juvenile Biomphalaria glabrata by isolated selfing and by crosses. True-breeding snail stocks were derived testing 100% or 0% juvenile susceptible. Crosses suggested that juvenile susceptibility was regulated by a complex of four or more genetic factors. Genes for insusceptibility could be transmitted by susceptible snails and genes for susceptibility by refractory snails.
Analysis of nurses' verbal communication with patients.

Nursing educators and practitioners recognize the importance of a nurse's ability to communicate effectively with patients (La Monica, 1979; Travelbee, 1971). The question is, do nurses employ the kinds of communicative behaviours believed by a number of researchers (Brammer, 1979; Carkhuff, 1969; Carkhuff & Berenson, 1977; Egan, 1975) to be therapeutic for patients? Some kind of communication, verbal and/or nonverbal, occurs during every encounter a nurse has with a patient. "No matter how one may try, one cannot not communicate. Activity or inactivity, words or silence all have message value" (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967, pp. 48-49). Maslow (1965) has pointed out that "every person is a psychotherapeutic influence or a psychopathogenic on everybody he has contact with . " (p. 77). Carkhuff and Berenson (1977) charge that the interactions between helpers and helpees have a "for better or for worse" effect upon the helpee (p. 5; p. 228). Accordingly, the communication of a nurse forms a vital component of patient care _ for good or for ill. In defining therapeutic communication Rossiter (1975) suggests communication can be therapeutic for a patient in two ways: by eliciting "accurate" information which in turn affects patient care, and secondly, in and of itself, communication has health promoting effects.
Lack of T cell proliferation without induction of nonresponsiveness after antigen presentation by endothelial cells.

BACKGROUND After priming or reactivation in lymph nodes, T cells recirculate to sites of inflammation, and enter tissues by migrating across activated endothelium. Given that activated endothelial and tissue parenchymal cells express both class I and class II MHC molecules, it is probable that transmigrating T cells encounter cognate antigen on endothelial cells, and on tissue parenchymal cells once they have entered the tissue. METHODS In this study the consequences of antigen presentation by endothelial and epithelial cells to human CD4+ T cell clones were analyzed and compared by a two-step culture system. RESULTS T cell clones that required B7-mediated costimulation to be activated were found not to be able to proliferate to antigen presented by either endothelial or epithelial cells, unless trans-costimulation was provided by the addition of B7-transfected cells in the cultures. Furthermore, antigen presentation by epithelial cells induced nonresponsiveness in the T cell clones. In contrast, after cognate recognition on endothelial cells, the ability of the T cell clones to proliferate to a subsequent rechallenge with antigen presented on a specialized APC was unaffected. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that endothelial cells have unique properties as antigen-presenting cells, in that they do not influence the subsequent reactivity of cognate T cells.
Administering Defining Issues Test Online: Do Response Modes Matter?.

The purpose of the study was to determine comparability of an online version to the original paper-pencil version of Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). This study employed methods from both Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT). Findings from CTT analyses supported the reliability and discriminant validity of both versions. Findings from IRT analyses confirmed that both versions had comparable power of test-of-fit to the Rasch model. However, IRT analyses found that there were some variations in item difficulties and the patterns of item functions between the two versions. The study also examined students’ satisfaction of DIT2taking experience in the two survey response modes. The ANOVA results indicated that the online version of DIT2 was comparable to the paper-pencil version in terms of ease of use.
Implementation and Analysis of Convolutional Codes Using MATLAB

Maintenance of the quality of data is the most important thing in communication. There are various factors that affect the quality of data when it is transferred over a communication channel like noise, fading etc. To overcome these effects channel coding schemes are introduced. In this paper one type of channel coding is described namely Convolutional Codes. Algorithms used for encoding of data are NSC (Non- systematic Convolutional Codes) and for decoding part Viterbi algorithm is used. Their performance is analyzed in terms of BER for different parameters such as code rate, coded and un- coded data. Furthermore, performance of convolutional codes is analyzed when a binary image is transmitted over the channel. All the simulations are conducted in MATLAB over AWGN channel using BPSK modulation scheme.
Identification of a 5‐nucleotide sequence that controls expression of the ica locus in Staphylococcus aureus and characterization of the DNA‐binding properties of IcaR

Biofilm formation is an important aspect of the pathogenesis of staphylococcal infections. A β‐1,6‐linked N‐acetyl glucosamine polysaccharide is critical to biofilm elaboration and is synthesized by proteins encoded by the intercellular adhesion (ica) locus. These studies were undertaken to characterize the mechanism by which transcription of the ica locus in S. aureus is regulated using isogenic S. aureus MN8 and MN8 mucoid (MN8m) strains, the latter of which constitutively overproduces biofilm. Transformation of the ica locus from MN8m to the ica knock‐out mutants of two strains, MN8 and NCTC 10833, conferred a strong biofilm‐producing phenotype. Sequence analysis revealed a 5‐nucleotide deletion within the promoter region of the ica locus in MN8m compared with the sequence in the wild‐type locus. Deletion or substitution of these 5 nucleotides within the wild‐type ica locus augmented transcription of the ica locus and induced the strong biofilm‐producing phenotype. Gel shift analysis demonstrated that a protein(s) within cell‐free lysates from strain MN8 bind(s) specifically to oligonucleotides representative of the wild‐type ica promoter sequence and that this binding is greatly diminished by the deletion or substitution of the 5 nucleotides. DNase I footprint analysis revealed that purified IcaR, thought to be a regulator of ica transcription, also binds to the ica promoter sequence just upstream of the ica start codon, but its affinity for the ica promoter is unaffected by deletion of the 5‐nucleotide motif. These findings identify a 5‐nucleotide motif within the ica promoter region that has a functional role in transcriptional regulation of the ica locus that is independent of IcaR, and also show that IcaR binds to the promoter region of the S. aureus ica locus.
Personal-accentuation and contextual-amplification models of pubertal timing: Predicting youth depression

Abstract This research examined personal-accentuation and contextual-amplification models of pubertal timing, wherein personal and contextual risks magnify the effects of earlier pubertal maturation on youth depression. A sample of 167 youths (M age = 12.41 years, SD = 1.19) and their maternal caregivers completed semistructured interviews and questionnaires at two waves. Consistent with a personal-accentuation model, earlier pubertal maturation more strongly predicted subsequent depression in youths with prior depression, certain personality traits, and maladaptive stress responses than in youths without these personal risks. Several of these effects were specific to earlier-maturing girls. Consistent with a contextual-amplification model, earlier pubertal maturation more strongly predicted subsequent depression in youths exposed to recent maternal depression and family stress than in youths without these contextual risks. These findings identify key characteristics of youths and their family context that help to explain individual variation in depressive reactions to earlier pubertal maturation. More broadly, this research contributes to integrative models of depression that consider the interplay among personal vulnerability, contextual risk, and developmental transitions.
Amifostine protection against induced DNA damage in γ‐irradiated Escherichia coli cells depend on recN DNA repair gene product activity

Amifostine is the most effective radioprotector known and the only one accepted for clinical use in cancer radiotherapy. In this work, the antigenotoxic effect of amifostine against γ‐rays was studied in Escherichia coli cells deficient in DNA damage repair activities. Assays of irradiated cells treated with amifostine showed that the drug reduced the genotoxicity induced by radiation in E. coli wild‐type genotypes and in uvr, recF, recB, recB‐recC‐recF mutant strains, but not in recN defective cells. Thus, the mechanism of DNA protection by amifostine against γ‐radiation‐induced genotoxicity appears to involve participation of the RecN protein that facilitates repair of DNA double‐strand breaks. The results are discussed in relation to amifostine's chemopreventive potential. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol, 2010.
Prediction of protein secondary structure content using amino acid composition and evolutionary information

Knowing protein structure and inferring its function from the structure are one of the main issues of computational structural biology, and often the first step is studying protein secondary structure. There have been many attempts to predict protein secondary structure contents. Previous attempts assumed that the content of protein secondary structure can be predicted successfully using the information on the amino acid composition of a protein. Recent methods achieved remarkable prediction accuracy by using the expanded composition information. The overall average error of the most successful method is 3.4%. Here, we demonstrate that even if we only use the simple amino acid composition information alone, it is possible to improve the prediction accuracy significantly if the evolutionary information is included. The idea is motivated by the observation that evolutionarily related proteins share the similar structure. After calculating the homolog‐averaged amino acid composition of a protein, which can be easily obtained from the multiple sequence alignment by running PSI‐BLAST, those 20 numbers are learned by a multiple linear regression, an artificial neural network and a support vector regression. The overall average error of method by a support vector regression is 3.3%. It is remarkable that we obtain the comparable accuracy without utilizing the expanded composition information such as pair‐coupled amino acid composition. This work again demonstrates that the amino acid composition is a fundamental characteristic of a protein. It is anticipated that our novel idea can be applied to many areas of protein bioinformatics where the amino acid composition information is utilized, such as subcellular localization prediction, enzyme subclass prediction, domain boundary prediction, signal sequence prediction, and prediction of unfolded segment in a protein sequence, to name a few. Proteins 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Quantifying residual HIV-1 replication in patients receiving combination antiretroviral therapy.

BACKGROUND In patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), combination antiretroviral therapy can result in sustained suppression of plasma levels of the virus. However, replication-competent virus can still be recovered from latently infected resting memory CD4 lymphocytes; this finding raises serious doubts about whether antiviral treatment can eradicate HIV-1. METHODS We looked for evidence of residual HIV-1 replication in eight patients who began treatment soon after infection and in whom plasma levels of HIV-1 RNA were undetectable after two to three years of antiretroviral therapy. We examined whether there had been changes over time in HIV-1 proviral sequences in peripheral-blood mononuclear cells, which would indicate residual viral replication. We also performed in situ hybridization studies on tissues from one patient to identify cells actively expressing HIV-1 RNA. We estimated the rate of decrease of latent, replication-competent HIV-1 in resting CD4 lymphocytes on the basis of the decrease in the numbers of proviral sequences identified during primary infection and direct sequential measurements of the size of the latent reservoir. RESULTS Six of the eight patients had no significant variations in proviral sequences during treatment. However, in two patients there was sequence evolution but no evidence of drug-resistant viral genotypes. In one patient, extensive in situ studies provided additional evidence of persistent viral replication in lymphoid tissues. Using two independent approaches, we estimated that the half-life of the latent, replication-competent virus in resting CD4 lymphocytes was approximately six months. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that combination antiretroviral regimens suppress HIV-1 replication in some but not all patients. Given the half-life of latently infected CD4 lymphocytes of about six months, it may require many years of effective antiretroviral treatment to eliminate this reservoir of HIV-1.
Heterogeneous domain adaptation method for video annotation

In this study, the authors study the video annotation problem over heterogeneous domains, in which data from the image source domain and the video target domain is represented by heterogeneous features with different dimensions and physical meanings. A novel feature learning method, called heterogeneous discriminative analysis of canonical correlation (HDCC), is proposed to discover a common feature subspace in which heterogeneous features can be compared. The HDCC utilises discriminative information from the source domain as well as topology information from the target domain to learn two different projection matrices. By using these two matrices, heterogeneous data can be projected onto a common subspace and different features can be compared. They additionally design a group weighting learning framework for multi-domain adaptation to effectively leverage knowledge learned from the source domain. Under this framework, source domain images are organised in groups according to their semantic meanings, and different weights are assigned to these groups according to their relevancies to the target domain videos. Extensive experiments on the Columbia Consumer Video and Kodak datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of their HDCC and group weighting methods.