Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vaginal Microbiota and the Use of Probiotics

The human vagina is inhabited by a range of microbes from a pool of over 50 species. Lactobacilli are the most common, particularly in healthy women. The microbiota can change composition rapidly, for reasons that are not fully clear. This can lead to infection or to a state in which organisms with pathogenic potential coexist with other commensals. The most common urogenital infection in premenopausal women is bacterial vaginosis (BV), a condition characterized by a depletion of lactobacilli population and the presence of Gram-negative anaerobes, or in some cases Gram-positive cocci, and aerobic pathogens. Treatment of BV traditionally involves the antibiotics metronidazole or clindamycin, however, the recurrence rate remains high, and this treatment is not designed to restore the lactobacilli. In vitro studies have shown that Lactobacillus strains can disrupt BV and yeast biofilms and inhibit the growth of urogenital pathogens. The use of probiotics to populate the vagina and prevent or treat infection has been considered for some time, but only quite recently have data emerged to show efficacy, including supplementation of antimicrobial treatment to improve cure rates and prevent recurrences.
RECOMMENDER SYSTEM FOR ANIMATED VIDEO

Finding entertainment in the domain of animation is a challenging process that often forces many customers to ask others for assistance in forums or chat rooms. The manual process of recommending shows to one another based on often flimsy examples prevents many users from efficiently identifying media that suites their taste. Recommender systems, software tools and techniques for providing suggestions of items to a user [12] , present an exceptional use case for resolving this problem. In this paper we compare the various implementations and benefits of using the collaborative filtering (user based approach). Improving the identification of animation customers are interested in is a problem domain recommender systems are well suited for, benefiting both customers and vendors of such media. The aim of this study is to provide a proof of concept system capable of providing valuable recommendations based on show rankings.
The Environment of M85 Optical Transient 2006-1: Constraints on the Progenitor Age and Mass

M85 Optical Transient 2006-1 (M85 OT 2006-1) is the most luminous member of the small family of V838 Mon-like objects, whose nature is still a mystery. This event took place in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies and peaked at an absolute magnitude of MI ≈ − 13. Here we present Hubble Space Telescope images of M85 OT 2006-1 and its environment, taken before and after the eruption, along with a spectrum of the host galaxy at the transient location. We find that the progenitor of M85 OT 2006-1 was not associated with any star-forming region. The g- and z-band absolute magnitudes of the progenitor were fainter than about –4 and –6 mag, respectively. Therefore, we can set a lower limit of ~50 Myr on the age of the youngest stars at the location of the progenitor that corresponds to a mass of <7 M☉. Previously published line indices suggest that M85 has a mean stellar age of 1.6 ± 0.3 Gyr. If this mean age is representative of the progenitor of M85 OT 2006-1, then we can further constrain its mass to be less than 2 M☉. We compare the energetics and mass limit derived for the M85 OT 2006-1 progenitor with those expected from a simple model of violent stellar mergers. Combined with further modeling, these new clues may ultimately reveal the true nature of these puzzling events.
Support Tools for Visual Information Management

Visual applications need to represent, manipulate, store, and retrieve both raw and processed visual data. Existing relational and object-oriented database systems fail to offer satisfactory visual data management support because they lack the kinds of representations, storage structures, indices, access methods, and query mechanisms needed for visual data. We argue that extensible visual object stores offer feasible and effective means to address the data management needs of visual applications. ISR4 is such a visual object store under development at the University of Massachusetts for the management of persistent visual information. ISR4 is designed to offer extensive storage and retrieval support for complex and large visual data, customizable buffering and clustering, and spatial and temporal indexing, along with a variety of multi-dimensional access methods and query languages.
THE NEUROECONOMICS OF DEPTH OF STRATEGIC REASONING *

Bounded rational behaviour is commonly observed in experimental games and in real life situations. Neuroeconomics can help to understand the mental processing underlying bounded rationality and out-of-equilibrium behaviour. Here we report results from a recent study on the neural basis of limited steps of reasoning in a competitive setting – the beauty contest game. We describe how a cognitive hierarchy model fits both behavioural and brain data.
Nup180, a novel nuclear pore complex protein localizing to the cytoplasmic ring and associated fibrils

Using an autoimmune serum from a patient with overlap connective tissue disease we have identified by biochemical and immunocytochemical approaches an evolutionarily conserved nuclear pore complex (NPC) protein with an estimated molecular mass of 180 kD and an isoelectric point of approximately 6.2 which we have designated as nup180. Extraction of isolated nuclear envelopes with 2 M urea and chromatography of the solubilized proteins on WGA-Sepharose demonstrated that nup180 is a peripheral membrane protein and does not react with WGA. Affinity-purified antibodies yielded a punctate immunofluorescent pattern of the nuclear surface of mammalian cells and stained brightly the nuclear envelope of cryosectioned Xenopus oocytes. Nuclei reconstituted in vitro in Xenopus egg extract were also stained in the characteristic punctate fashion. Immunogold EM localized nup180 exclusively to the cytoplasmic ring of NPCs and short fibers emanating therefrom into the cytoplasm. Antibodies to nup180 did not inhibit nuclear protein transport in vivo nor in vitro. Despite the apparent lack of involvement in NPC assembly or nucleocytoplasmic transport processes, the conservation of nup180 across species and its exclusive association with the NPC cytoplasmic ring suggests an important, though currently undefined function for this novel NPC protein.
The neural subjective frame: from bodily signals to perceptual consciousness

The report ‘I saw the stimulus’ operationally defines visual consciousness, but where does the ‘I’ come from? To account for the subjective dimension of perceptual experience, we introduce the concept of the neural subjective frame. The neural subjective frame would be based on the constantly updated neural maps of the internal state of the body and constitute a neural referential from which first person experience can be created. We propose to root the neural subjective frame in the neural representation of visceral information which is transmitted through multiple anatomical pathways to a number of target sites, including posterior insula, ventral anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala and somatosensory cortex. We review existing experimental evidence showing that the processing of external stimuli can interact with visceral function. The neural subjective frame is a low-level building block of subjective experience which is not explicitly experienced by itself which is necessary but not sufficient for perceptual experience. It could also underlie other types of subjective experiences such as self-consciousness and emotional feelings. Because the neural subjective frame is tightly linked to homeostatic regulations involved in vigilance, it could also make a link between state and content consciousness.
Demystifying Disciplinary Writing: A Case Study in the Writing of Chemistry.

Across the Disciplines is an open-access, peer-review scholarly journal published on the WAC Clearinghouse and supported by Colorado State University and Georgia Southern University. Articles are published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs) ISSN 15548244. Copyright © 1997-2017 The WAC Clearinghouse and/or the site's authors, developers, and contributors. Some material is used with permission. The Linguistically-Diverse Student
Agent Based Simulation of Complex Social Systems

Whilst simulation has been common in other areas for some time, it has only gained significant prominence in the social sciences during the last two decades. In 1988, Ostrom called simulation “The Third Symbol System” in the context of social psychology. By this she meant that simulation stood alongside natural language and mathematics as a way to represent theories about social cognition. Later, in 1997, Axelrod stated that simulation was a third way of doing science, in particular social science. In the last decade, a particular kind of simulation, agentbased simulation, has emerged. This type of simulation is characterized by the existence of many “agents” who interact with each other with little or no central direction (Gilbert, 2005). The results of an agent-based simulation emerge from the interactions between these agents in sometimes unpredictable and unexpected ways. For social scientists, Axtell (2000) provided some reasons to use agents and agent-based modeling. In particular, he proposed the use of agent-based computational models to study those problems for which writing down equations was not a useful activity, as the only way to explore rigorously the underlying social processes. Epstein (2007) argues that the generative approach via agent based computational modeling is essential for understanding complex social phenomena. This development parallels a growth in interest in complex social systems within “Complexity Science” and “Multi-Agent Systems”.
MEG Classification Based on Band Power and Statistical Characteristics

With the work of magnetoencephalography (MEG) classification in brain-computer interface (BCI), a feature extraction method of frequency band power and statistical characteristics was proposed. On the basis of spectrum analysis for the two subjects' experimental MEG data, frequency band powers of 0.5~6Hz for S1 and 10~25Hz for S2 were extracted as features for the two subjects, together with the statistical characteristics of mean for S1/S2 and standard deviation for S1, finally, the features were classified with linear discriminate analysis function directly and secondly, the results showed that the average classification accuracy was 54.38% which was higher than the achievement of BCI competition winner. Therefore, the frequency band power and statistical characteristics are effective features for MEG signals and the research of this paper gives MEG-based BCIs a beneficial complement.
Towards sentiment analysis for mobile devices

The increasing use of smartphones to access social media platforms opens a new wave of applications that explore sentiment analysis in the mobile environment. However, there are various existing sentiment analysis methods and it is unclear which of them are deployable in the mobile environment. This paper provides the first of a kind study in which we compare the performance of 17 sentence-level sentiment analysis methods in the mobile environment. To do that, we adapted these sentence-level methods to run on Android OS and then we measure their performance in terms of memory usage, CPU usage, and battery consumption. Our findings unveil sentence-level methods that require almost no adaptations and run relatively fast as well as methods that could not be deployed due to excessive use of memory. We hope our effort provides a guide to developers and researchers interested in exploring sentiment analysis as part of a mobile application and can help new applications to be executed without the dependency of a server-side API.
Small-scale turbulent dynamo - a numerical investigation

We present the results of a numerical investigation of the turbulent kinematic dynamo problem in a high Prandtl number regime. The scales of the magnetic turbulence we consider are far smaller than the Kolmogorov dissipative scale, so that the magnetic wavepackets evolve in a nearly smooth velocity field. Firstly, we consider the Kraichnan-Kazantsev model (KKM) in which the strain matrix is taken to be independent of coordinate and Gaussian white in time. To simulate the KKM we use a stochastic Euler-Maruyama method. We test the theoretical predictions for the growth of rates of the magnetic energy and higher order moments (Kazantsev, 1968; Kulsrud & Anderson, 1992; Chertkov et al., 1999), the shape of the energy spectrum (Kazantsev, 1968; Kulsrud & Anderson, 1992; Schekochihin et al., 2000a; Nazarenko et al., 2003) and the behaviour of the polarisation and spectral flatness Nazarenko et al., 2003). In general, the results appear to be in good agreement with the theory, with the exception that the predicted decay of the polarisation in time is not reproduced well in the stochastic numerics. Secondly, in order to study the sensitivity of the KKM predictions to the choice of strain statistics, we perform additional simulations for the case of a Gaussian strain with a finite correlation time and also for a strain taken from a DNS data set. These experiments are based on non-stochastic schemes, using a timestep that is much smaller than the correlation time of the strain. We find that the KKM is generally insensitive to the choice of strain statistics and most KKM results, including the decay of the polarisation, are reproduced well. The only exception appears to be the flatness whose spectrum is not reproduced in accordance with the KKM predictions in these simulations.
Evolutionary identification of macro-mechanical models

This chapter illustrates the potential of genetic programming (GP) in the field of macro­ mechanical modeling, addressing the problem of identification of a mechanical model for a material. Two kinds of models are considered. One-dimensional dynamic models are rep­resented via symbolic formulations termed rheological models, which are directly evolved by GP. Three-dimensional static models of hyperelastic materials are expressed in terms of strain energy functions. A model is rated based on the distance between the behavior predicted by the model, and the actual behavior of the material given by a set of me­ chanical experiments. The choice of GP is motivated by strong arguments, relying on the tree-structure of rheological models in the first case, and on the need for first and second order derivatives in the second case. Key issues are the exploration of viable individuals only, and the use of Gaussian mutations to optimize numerical constants.
Mapping and Tracking

This article presents the implementation of decentralized data fusion (DDF) and cooperative control algorithms on an unmanned aerial system (UAS). We conduct a number of demonstrations with a pair of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) performing an information-gathering mission, and we show that significant benefits can be achieved by enabling cooperation through the sharing of information between members of the team. The objective is to utilize the UAV team to estimate the position and velocity of a number of ground-based features. The UAVs are given some prior knowledge of the feature states and are required to gather further information above a predefined threshold. This situation models a scenario where initial information is made available from an external source (e.g., a high-flying UAV or satellite imagery), which then prompts the start of the feature-localization mission.
A Min-Max Relation on Packing Feedback Vertex Sets

Let G be a graph with a nonnegative integral function w defined on V(G). A family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of V(G) (repetition is allowed) is called a feedback vertex set packing in G if the removal of any member of $\mathcal{F}$ from G leaves a forest, and every vertex v∈ V(G) is contained in at most w(v) members of $\mathcal{F}$. The weight of a cycle C in G is the sum of w(v), over all vertices v of C. In this paper we characterize all graphs with the property that, for any nonnegative integral function w, the maximum cardinality of a feedback vertex set packing is equal to the minimum weight of a cycle.
CloudFog: Leveraging Fog to Extend Cloud Gaming for Thin-Client MMOG with High Quality of Service

With the increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) and fast growth of mobile gaming, cloud gaming exhibits great promises over the conventional MMOG gaming model as it frees players from the requirement of hardware and game installation on their local computers. However, as the graphics rendering is offloaded to the cloud, the data transmission between the end-users and the cloud significantly increases the response latency and limits the user coverage, thus preventing cloud gaming to achieve high user Quality of Service (QoS). To solve this problem, previous research suggested deploying more datacenters, but it comes at a prohibitive cost. We propose a lightweight system called CloudFog, which incorporates “fog” consisting of supernodes that are responsible for rendering game videos and streaming them to their nearby players. Fog enables the cloud to be only responsible for the intensive game state computation and sending update information to supernodes, which significantly reduce the traffic hence the latency and bandwidth consumption. To further enhance QoS, we propose the reputation based supernode selection strategy to assign each player with a suitable supernode that can provide satisfactory game video streaming service, the receiver-driven encoding rate adaptation strategy to increase the playback continuity, the social network based server assignment strategy to avoid the communication interaction between servers in a datacenter to reduce latency, and the dynamic supernode provisioning strategy to deal with user churns. Experimental results from PeerSim and PlanetLab show the effectiveness and efficiency of CloudFog and our individual strategies in increasing user coverage, reducing response latency and bandwidth consumption.
Family vacation decision making process: evidence from Croatia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate tourists’ habits and preferences when making decisions regarding family vacations, their motives for going on vacation with their family, how decisions about a family vacation are made within the family and which roles do individuals have in the decision making process. Methodology – Empirical research about the family vacation decision making process was conducted on a convenience sample of families with children and married couples without children in the Republic of Croatia. Data processing and analysis applied methods of descriptive statistics. Findings – The findings clearly indicate that a family vacation is an action which has been planned in advance. The primary motive for going on a family vacation is to spend quality time with the family, which stresses the importance of family vacations. The research indicates that all family members participate in the decision making process. Contribution – This paper sheds light on a poorly researched field within the Croatian context. In practice, the research results can serve all providers of tourism services, especially those who design their offer based on the demands of families as their target market segment.
Dopamine Transport by the Serotonin Transporter: A Mechanistically Distinct Mode of Substrate Translocation

The serotonin transporter (SERT) is the principal mechanism for terminating serotonin (5-HT) signals in the nervous system and is a site of action for a variety of psychoactive drugs including antidepressants, amphetamines, and cocaine. Here we show that human SERTs (hSERTs) and rat SERTs are capable of robust dopamine (DA) uptake through a process that differs mechanistically from 5-HT transport in several unanticipated ways. DA transport by hSERT has a higher maximum velocity than 5-HT transport, requires significantly higher Na+ and Cl− concentrations to sustain transport, is inhibited noncompetitively by 5-HT, and is more sensitive to SERT inhibitors, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. We use a thiol-reactive methane thiosulfonate (MTS) reagent to modify a conformationally sensitive cysteine residue to demonstrate that hSERT spends more time in an outward facing conformation when transporting DA than when transporting 5-HT. Cotransfection of an inactive or an MTS-sensitive SERT with wild-type SERT subunits reveals an absence of cooperative interactions between subunits during DA but not 5-HT transport. To establish the physiological relevance of this mechanism for DA clearance, we show using in vivo high-speed chronoamperometry that SERT has the capacity to clear extracellularly applied DA in the hippocampal CA3 region of anesthetized rats. Together, these observations suggest the possibility that SERT serves as a DA transporter in vivo and highlight the idea that there can be distinct modes of transport of alternative physiological substrates by SERT.
Semantic Visualization and Navigation in Textual Corpus

This paper gives a survey of related work on the information visualization domain and study the real integration of the cartography paradigms in actual information search systems. Based on this study, we propose a semantic visualization and navigation approach which offer to users three search modes: precise search, connotative search and thematic search. The objective is to propose to the users of an information search system, new interaction paradigms which support the semantic aspect of the considered information space and guide users in their searches by assisting them to locate their interest center and to improve serendipity.
Use Case Evaluation of a Cloud Robotics Teleoperation System (Short Paper)

The paper describes a generic Cloud Robotics teleoperation system which allows to control in real-time a robot (connected with a 4G network) having its video stream as feedback. The proposed system relies on the Azure Cloud Platform and on recent web technologies. Particularly, we present an use case experiment in which an operator in Slovakia controls a robot situated in Italy in order to evaluate its realtime feasibility. We test the system to assess its performances providing the throughput value of the communication and the average delay between consecutive received packets on both robot and teleoperation side. Additionally, regarding the video streaming, we test several packet sizes to establish a suitable image quality. The results show how the chosen technology allows to have real-time performances in terms of video and velocity commands streaming.