Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of xylanase and cellulase supplementation on growth performance, volatile fatty acids and caecal bacteria of broiler chickens fed with palm kernel meal-based diet

In this study, the effect of xylanase and cellulase supplementation in palm kernel meal (PKM) based diet on growth performance, volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and the caecal bacterial populations of broiler chickens were investigated. Seventy five day old male Cobb broiler chicks were randomly allocated to three dietary treatment groups receiving T1 (20% PKM-based diet without enzyme), T2 (20% PKM-based diet with xylanase) and T3 (20% PKM-based diet with cellulase). Each enzyme was supplemented at an amount of 200U/kg of feed. Weekly body weight gain and feed intake were recorded. All chickens were slaughtered on day 35 and the caecum content was aseptically collected for VFAs quantification and bacterial enumeration. Supplementation of xylanase and cellulase in PKM diets had different effect on the growth performance, the number of caecal bacterial population and VFAs produced. A significant reduction in the cumulative feed intake of birds fed cellulase-supplemented PKM compared to xylanse-supplemented and unsupplemented PKM diet was observed. However, the final body weights gain and cumulative feed conversion ratio (FCR) were not significantly different between the treatment groups. Determination of VFAs production of the caecal contents demonstrated a significant difference in the production of iso-butyric and n-valeric acid among treatment groups. The number of total viable bacteria, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and coliform in caecal samples were also enumerated. Significant difference was observed in the number of caecal bacteria population between the treatment groups. The effect of xylanase and cellulase on weight gain of broiler chickens was strongly related to the feed intake rather than due to the decrease in the number of pathogenic bacteria in the caeca. Xylanase supplementation was beneficial in enhancing cumulative feed intake, weight gain and FCR of the broiler chickens, but did not entirely reduce the number of pathogenic caecal bacteria. However, cellulase supplementation reduced all parameters observed for growth performance and the number of caecal bacteria.
Near-Infrared-Based Nighttime Pedestrian Detection Using Grouped Part Models

Pedestrian detection is an important issue in the field of intelligent transportation systems. As a pedestrian is not an apparent object at nighttime, it brings about critical difficulties in effectively detecting a pedestrian for a driving assistant vision system. While using an infrared projector to enhance the illumination contrast, objects in a nighttime environment might reflect the infrared projected by the emitted spotlight. In some cases, however, the clothes on a pedestrian might absorb most of the infrared, thus causing the pedestrian to be partially invisible. To deal with this problem, a nighttime part-based pedestrian detection method is proposed. It divides a pedestrian into parts for a moving vehicle with a camera and a near-infrared lighting projector. Due to a high computation load, selecting effective parts becomes imperative. By analyzing the spatial relationship between every pair of parts, the confidence of the detected parts can be enhanced even when some parts are occluded. At the last stage of this system, the pedestrian detection result is refined by a block-based segmentation method. The system is verified by experiments, and the appealing results are demonstrated.
An Explorative Study to Identify the Critical Success Factors for ERP Implementation in Indian Small and Medium Scale Enterprises

Over the last few years many firms of any significant size are in some stage of implementing enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems or other similar multifunctional enterprise systems or are planning to implementing ERP systems in their organization to reap the benefits of integration. Some are in the early stages of the process, giving consideration to the very substantial implementation costs. Given the nature and magnitude of the problems in encountered in implementing an ERP project, this study would attempt to identify the critical success factors (CSF¿s) for a successful implementation of an ERP project since it calls for substantial effort on the part of all the stake holders involved to make the implementation a success. This paper explores the existing literature on ERP implementation issues in context to small and medium scale enterprises and attempts a compilation of the factors that assume great significance while implementing ERP in SMEs.
Potential cognitive enhancing and disease modification effects of SSRIs for Alzheimer’s disease

Objective Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have increased cognitive performance in some clinical studies of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but it is has been difficult to dissociate whether this is due to direct effects on cognition (neurochemical or disease-modifying) or a secondary effect of mood stabilization. We performed a systematic review for preclinical and human clinical trial evidence to support the use of SSRIs specifically for the management of cognitive decline in AD. Data sources (1) PUBMED without language restrictions from 1950s until 2004 and updated August 2006, terms: “serotonin uptake inhibitors”[MeSH] AND (“Alzheimer disease”[MeSH] OR “Cognition Disorders”[MeSH]) NOT “Parkinson disease”[MeSH] AND (Clinical Trial[ptyp] OR Letter[ptyp] OR Meta-Analysis[ptyp] OR Randomized Controlled Trial[ptyp]) AND “alzheimer disease” [MESH] OR “Alzheimer*” combined with AND to “ssri*” OR “serotonin reuptake inhibitors” [MESH] NOT Review[ptyp]. (2) Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, keywords “SSRI” and “Alzheimer’s”. Study selection The PubMed search yielded 57 hits. Of these, 23 were included in this review for their specificity to SSRI use in AD or indications on efficacy beyond depressive symptoms. The other 34 citations were excluded because: (1) depression or other mood or behavioral disturbance severity was the reported outcome measure, (2) effects of SSRIs on cognition were confounded by concomitant use of other drugs, (3) subjects described were young adults, and/or (4) subjects had traumatic brain injury. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 3rd Quarter 2006, yielded six citations related to SSRIs. Data extraction Data extracted from clinical trials included name of SSRI tested, cognitive outcome measures, and adverse events reported, which could include cognitive worsening. Data synthesis Preclinical evidence for use of SSRIs to enhance cognition in AD includes an effect at the hippocampus through carbonic anhydrase activation or stimulation of hippocampal neurogenesis. The chemical structure of paroxetine, and not intrinsic SSRI activity, may also affect APP ectodomain expression to reduce amyloid plaque formation. Clinical trials in AD generally have not assessed cognitive outcomes independently from mood or behavior stabilization. Currently, clinical studies in AD only indirectly support the use of SSRIs for disease modification by confirming a serotonergic deficit during the course of illness. Conclusions Lack of supportive evidence for SSRIs as cognition enhancers or disease modifiers in AD is the result of omissions in clinical trial design, as opposed to reporting of negative outcomes. The preclinical evidence warrants the study of SSRIs in AD using mood, behavior, cognition, neurochemistry, and possibly neuroimaging as outcome variables.
Hand gesture tracking system using Adaptive Kalman Filter

This paper introduces a hand tracking system in unconstrained environment. The system consists of two main stages which are initialization and tracking. In initialization, hand region is first detected by combining motion and skin color pixels. A region of interest (ROI) is then created around the detected hand region. In tracking stage, skin and motion pixels are scanned around top, left and right corners of the ROI to detect the moving hand in consecutive video frames. These pixels are used to actually measure the ROI position and fed into measurement update of Adaptive Kalman Filter (AKF) operation. The process noise covariance and measurement noise covariance of AKF are adjusted adaptively by applying weighting factor based on acceleration threshold value. The experimental result shows the proposed method has the robust ability to track the moving hand under real life scenarios at speed 45fps with average 97.83% tracking rate.
Intracellular organelles mediate cytoplasmic pulling force for centrosome centration in the Caenorhabditis elegans early embryo

The centrosome is generally maintained at the center of the cell. In animal cells, centrosome centration is powered by the pulling force of microtubules, which is dependent on cytoplasmic dynein. However, it is unclear how dynein brings the centrosome to the cell center, i.e., which structure inside the cell functions as a substrate to anchor dynein. Here, we provide evidence that a population of dynein, which is located on intracellular organelles and is responsible for organelle transport toward the centrosome, generates the force required for centrosome centration in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. By using the database of full-genome RNAi in C. elegans, we identified dyrb-1, a dynein light chain subunit, as a potential subunit involved in dynein anchoring for centrosome centration. DYRB-1 is required for organelle movement toward the minus end of the microtubules. The temporal correlation between centrosome centration and the net movement of organelle transport was found to be significant. Centrosome centration was impaired when Rab7 and RILP, which mediate the association between organelles and dynein in mammalian cells, were knocked down. These results indicate that minus end-directed transport of intracellular organelles along the microtubules is required for centrosome centration in C. elegans embryos. On the basis of this finding, we propose a model in which the reaction forces of organelle transport generated along microtubules act as a driving force that pulls the centrosomes toward the cell center. This is the first model, to our knowledge, providing a mechanical basis for cytoplasmic pulling force for centrosome centration.
Information Disclosure in Identity Management all of us

User Controlled Identity Management Systems have the goal to hinder the linkability between the different digital identities of a user. We perform a theoretical and an experimental study of the following information leakage problem: given a consistent view on the actions of a strong identity management system (e.g. Idemix ) where k users pseudonymously issue and show some credentials, do these observations disclose sufficient information about the linkability of the digital identities? We show that in theory, linking the different pseudonyms of a user is a NP-complete problem, by using first order logic. In addition, we evaluate practical instances of the problem, and show that there are non-negligible probabilities that despite full anonymization and use of an identity management system, pseudonyms are unambiguous linkable.
Asymmetric Heteroskedasticity Models: A New Justification

Most existing econometric models such as ARCH (q) and GARCH (p, q) take into account neteroskedasticity (non-stationarity) of time series. However, the original ARCH (q) and GARCH (p, q) models do not take into account the asymmetry of the market's response to posit lye and to negative changes. Several heuristic modifications of ARCH (q) and GARCH (p, q) models have been proposed that take this asymmetry into account. These modifications turned out to be very adequate and efficient in describing the econometric time series. In this paper, we propose a justification of these heuristic modifications and thus, an explanation of their empirical efficiency.
Perceptual evaluation of different image fusion schemes

Human perceptual performance was tested with images of nighttime outdoor scenes. The scenes were registered both with a dual band (visual and near infrared) image intensified low-light CCD camera (DII) and with a thermal middle wavelength band (3-5 micrometers ) infrared (IR) camera. Fused imagery was produced through a pyramid image merging scheme, in combination with different color mappings. For all (individual and fused) image modalities, small patches of the scenes, displaying a range of different objects and materials, were briefly presented to human observers. The sensitivity of human observers was tested for different recognition tasks. The results show that grayscale image fusion yields improved performance levels for most perceptual tasks investigated here. When an appropriate color mapping scheme is applied, the addition of color to grayscale fused imagery significantly increases observer sensitivity for a given condition and a certain task. However, inappropriate use of color significantly decreases observer performance compared to straightforward grayscale image fusion. This suggests that color mapping should adapt to the visual task and the conditions (scene content) at hand.
Real-Time Understanding of Complex Discriminative Scene Descriptions

Real-world scenes typically have complex structure, and utterances about them consequently do as well. We devise and evaluate a model that processes descriptions of complex conﬁgurations of geometric shapes and can identify the described scenes among a set of candidates, including similar distractors. The model works with raw images of scenes, and by design can work word-by-word incrementally. Hence, it can be used in highly-responsive interactive and situated settings. Using a corpus of descriptions from game-play between human subjects (who found this to be a challenging task), we show that reconstruction of description structure in our system contributes to task success and supports the performance of the word-based model of grounded semantics that we use.
Auditory-visual virtual environments to treat dog phobia

In this paper we present the design, development, and usability testing of an auditory-visual based interactive environment for investigating virtual reality exposure-based treatment for cynophobia. The application is developed upon a framework that integrates different algorithms of the CROSSMOD project (www.crossmod.org). We discuss the on-going work and preliminary observations, so as to further the development of auditory-visual environment for virtual reality. Traditionally, virtual reality concentrates primarily on the presentation of high fidelity visual experience. We aim at demonstrating that combining adequately the visual and the auditory experience provides a powerful tool to enhance sensory processing and modulate attention.
Allosteric Modulation of Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptors

Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) are prototypical Family A G protein coupled-receptors. The five mAChR subtypes are widespread throughout the periphery and the central nervous system and, accordingly, are widely involved in a variety of both physiological and pathophysiological processes. There currently remains an unmet need for better therapeutic agents that can selectively target a given mAChR subtype to the relative exclusion of others. The main reason for the lack of such selective mAChR ligands is the high sequence homology within the acetylcholine-binding site (orthosteric site) across all mAChRs. However, the mAChRs possess at least one, and likely two, extracellular allosteric binding sites that can recognize small molecule allosteric modulators to regulate the binding and function of orthosteric ligands. Extensive studies of prototypical mAChR modulators, such as gallamine and alcuronium, have provided strong pharmacological evidence, and associated structure-activity relationships (SAR), for a “common” allosteric site on all five mAChRs. These studies are also supported by mutagenesis experiments implicating the second extracellular loop and the interface between the third extracellular loop and the top of transmembrane domain 7 as contributing to the common allosteric site. Other studies are also delineating the pharmacology of a second allosteric site, recognized by compounds such as staurosporine. In addition, allosteric agonists, such as McN-A-343, AC-42 and N-desmethylclozapine, have also been identified. Current challenges to the field include the ability to effectively detect and validate allosteric mechanisms, and to quantify allosteric effects on binding affinity and signaling efficacy to inform allosteric modulator SAR.
Hybridization in closely related Rhododendron species: half of all species-differentiating markers experience serious transmission ratio distortion

An increasing number of studies of hybridization in recent years have revealed that complete reproductive isolation between species is frequently not finalized in more or less closely related organisms. Most of these species do, however, seem to retain their phenotypical characteristics despite the implication of gene flow, highlighting the remaining gap in our knowledge of how much of an organism’s genome is permeable to gene flow, and which factors promote or prevent hybridization. We used AFLP markers to investigate the genetic composition of three populations involving two interfertile Rhododendron species: two sympatric populations, of which only one contained hybrids, and a further hybrid-dominated population. No fixed differences between the species were found, and only 5.8% of the markers showed some degree of species differentiation. Additionally, 45.5% of highly species-differentiating markers experienced significant transmission distortion in the hybrids, which was most pronounced in F1 hybrids, suggesting that factors conveying incompatibilities are still segregating within the species. Furthermore, the two hybrid populations showed stark contrasting composition of hybrids; one was an asymmetrically backcrossing hybrid swarm, while in the other, backcrosses were absent, thus preventing gene flow.
Restoration of wavelet coefficients by minimizing a specially designed objective function

We consider the denoising of a function (an image or a signal) containing smooth regions and edges. Classical ways to solve this problem are variational methods and shrinkage of a representation of the data in a basis or in a frame. We propose a method which combines the advantages of both approaches. Following the wavelets shrinkage method of Donoho and Johnstone, we set to zero all frame coefficients which are smaller than a threshold. Then the frame representation involves both large coefficients corresponding to noise (outliers) and some coefficients, erroneously set to zero, leading to Gibbs oscillations in the estimate. We design a specialized (non-smooth) objective function allowing all these coefficients to be selectively restored, without modifying the other coefficients. We also propose an approximation of this method which is accurate enough and very fast. We present numerical experiments with signals and images corrupted with white Gaussian noise, which are decomposed into an orthogonal basis of Daubechies wavelets. The obtained results demonstrate the advantages of our approach over many alternative methods.
Collaborative Multi-vehicle SLAM with moving object tracking

Although simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms are widely appreciated in mobile robot navigation, they can be further improved to suit practical applications in dynamic environmental conditions. One such important improvement is the detection and tracking of moving objects present in the sensor field of view (FOV). In this paper we propose to extend our recently introduced Collaborative Multi-vehicle SLAM (CMSLAM) solution based on the random finite set (RFS) representation of the feature map and measurements, by tracking both static and dynamic features. We represent static features observed during the SLAMprocess, along with dynamic features present in the current sensor FOV, as an augmented RFS. The corresponding probability density is propagated using a Bayes recursion, from which the static feature map and the estimates of dynamic feature locations can be obtained. Measurement update in the CMSLAM process is carried out only using the static feature map to take advantage of obvious accuracy improvements.
Microstimulation of the Monkey Superior Colliculus Induces Pupil Dilation Without Evoking Saccades

The orienting reflex is initiated by a salient stimulus and facilitates quick, appropriate action. It involves a rapid shift of the eyes, head, and attention and other physiological responses such as changes in heart rate and transient pupil dilation. The SC is a critical structure in the midbrain that selects incoming stimuli based on saliency and relevance to coordinate orienting behaviors, particularly gaze shifts, but its causal role in pupil dilation remains poorly understood in mammals. Here, we examined the role of the primate SC in the control of pupil dynamics. While requiring monkeys to keep their gaze fixed, we delivered weak electrical microstimulation to the SC, so that saccadic eye movements were not evoked. Pupil size increased transiently after microstimulation of the intermediate SC layers (SCi) and the size of evoked pupil dilation was larger on a dim versus bright background. In contrast, microstimulation of the superficial SC layers did not cause pupil dilation. Thus, the SCi is directly involved not only in shifts of gaze and attention, but also in pupil dilation as part of the orienting reflex, and the function of pupil dilation may be related to increasing visual sensitivity. The shared neural mechanisms suggest that pupil dilation may be associated with covert attention.
Conceptual change in system understanding: towards creative software design

This paper views conceptual change as an element of creative software design. It argues that the process of changing conceptualizations is socially constructed and emphasizes the social origins of knowledge. In support of this view, results from psychology and artificial intelligence are presented. The psychological studies consider conceptualizations as mental representations that describe partial knowledge of a task domain (task conceptualization) as well as knowledge about other participants (social conceptualization). The findings indicate some limitations of conceptual change in collaborative settings and how to overcome these by externalizing models of the social context. Based on these studies a computational model has been implemented that simulates the limitations as well as a method of externalizing social models. The results suggest that the constraints imposed on conceptual change are caused by the process of social concept construction and the relaxation of these constraints are facilitated by externalization of social models.
Analysis of Users' Comments on Political Portal for Extraction of Suggestions and Opinion Mining

Online political portals contain a huge volume of users' comments. These comments express whether writer's attitude is positive, negative, or neutral towards the subject. In most of the comments, we find that there are suggestions or feedback also hidden along with the opinion. These suggestions or feedbacks from the mind of different people on various topics can potentially coin new fruitful idea or provide solution to a given problem. So, it is beneficial to determine the opinion and filter out the suggestions from comments. This helps greatly in social issues' analysis and development of people centric governance. Till date, most of the researches on sentiment analysis and suggestion mining have been done for comments related to product or services. Very less work has been done for analysis of comments related to social issues. Even recent algorithms give accuracy of 60 to 65 percent for opinion mining of social issues and a maximum of 73% accuracy for suggestion extraction. This paper focuses on evaluating the polarity of sentiment and extracting actionable key suggestions in users' comments on political portal. Current work gives 88% accuracy for suggestion extraction and approx 86% accuracy for Opinion Mining.