Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exponentially correlated Gaussian functions in variational calculations. Momentum space properties of the ground state helium dimer

Microhartree accuracy wave functions composed of exponentially correlated Gaussians were transformed in closed form to momentum space representation and applied to compute various isotropic momentum space properties of helium dimer in the ground state. The set of properties includes electron momentum density distribution, expectation values of powers of the electronic momentum operator, and the Compton profile. Calculations were performed at many internuclear separations R including the united atom (beryllium) and the separated atoms (helium) limits.
Head Up Games : on the design, creation and evaluation of interactive outdoor games for children

This thesis proposes a new genre of outdoor games for children, namely Head Up Games. The concept was inspired by the observation that existing pervasive outdoor games for children were mostly played head down, as the predominantly screen-based interaction of existing games required constant attention of the children. First, the vision of Head Up Games is described and illustrated with several design cases (Chapter 2). In contrast to the head down games, Head Up Games aim to encourage and support rich social interaction and physical activity, play behaviors that are similar to play behaviors seen in traditional outdoor games (such as tag and hide-and-seek). The design process of Head Up Games poses several challenges. In User Centered Design it is commonly accepted to start the development of a new product using low-fi mock-ups, e.g., paper prototypes, and evaluate these with end-users. In the case of Head Up Games this proved to be difficult, as the emerging game experience is significantly altered when using paper prototypes. Therefore, a study was carried out that used high-fi prototypes, i.e. working, interactive, prototypes, from a very early stage in the design process (Chapter 3). This way, the effect of interactions on the game experience can be addressed earlier and better in the design process. Furthemore, having access to technology early in the design process, allows designers to better explore the design space. However, designers often do not possess adequate skills to quickly prototype interactive products, particularly products that need to be evaluated in an outdoor context. Such a development is often costly and time-consuming. Therefore, the RaPIDO platform was developed (Chapter 4). The platform not only includes the appropriate hardware for creating outdoor games, but is also bundled with software libraries, to allow designers not specifically trained in software engineering to adopt the platform easily. RaPIDO was evaluated using a case study methodology with two Industrial Design master students. The evaluation not only focused on the usability of the platform, but, more importantly, how the use of the platform affected the design process. The main conclusion of the study was that the designers indeed were able to rapidly create mobile games, and that the hardware offered was suitable for creating outdoor games. Furthermore, issues were identified with regard to writing the game software, e.g., managing the complexity of the software. Finally, for evaluating Head Up Games with children two methods were applied: the Outdoor Play Observation Scheme (OPOS) was used to quantify the intended play behavior. Furthermore, GroupSorter was developed to provide a framework to interview a group of children simultaneously, resulting in qualitative comments. Both OPOS and GroupSorter were applied for evaluating three Head Up Games, which are described in Chapter 5.
Metagenomics insights into food fermentations

This review describes the recent advances in the study of food microbial ecology, with a focus on food fermentations. High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies have been widely applied to the study of food microbial consortia and the different applications of HTS technologies were exploited in order to monitor microbial dynamics in food fermentative processes. Phylobiomics was the most explored application in the past decade. Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, although still underexploited, promise to uncover the functionality of complex microbial consortia. The new knowledge acquired will help to understand how to make a profitable use of microbial genetic resources and modulate key activities of beneficial microbes in order to ensure process efficiency, product quality and safety.
Development of a Human Breast-Cancer Derived Cell Line Stably Expressing a Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET)-Based Phosphatidyl Inositol-3 Phosphate (PIP3) Biosensor

Stimulation of tyrosine kinase receptors initiates a signaling cascade that activates PI3K. Activated PI3K uses PIP2 to generate PIP3, which recruit Akt to the plasma membrane through its pleckstrin homology (PH) domain, permitting its activation by PDKs. Activated Akt controls important biological functions, including cell metabolism, proliferation and survival. The PI3K pathway is therefore an attractive target for drug discovery. However, current assays for measurement of PIP3 production are technically demanding and not amenable to high-throughput screening. We have established a MCF-7-derived breast cancer cell line, that stably co-expresses the PH domain of Akt fused to Renilla luciferase and YFP fused to a membrane localization signal. This BRET biosensor pair permits to monitor, in real time, in living cells, PIP3 production at the plasma membrane upon stimulation by different ligands, including insulin, the insulin analogue glargine, IGF1, IGF2 and EGF. Moreover, several known inhibitors that target different steps of the PI3K/Akt pathway caused inhibition of ligand-induced BRET. Cetuximab, a humanized anti-EGF receptor monoclonal antibody used for the treatment of cancer, completely inhibited EGF-induced BRET, and the tyrosine kinase inhibitor tyrphostine AG1024 inhibited insulin effect on PIP3 production. Moreover, the effects of insulin and IGF1 were inhibited by molecules that inhibit PI3K catalytic activity or the interaction between PIP3 and the PH domain of Akt. Finally, we showed that human serum induced a dose-dependent increase in BRET signal, suggesting that this stable clone may be used as a prognostic tool to evaluate the PI3K stimulatory activity present in serum of human patients. We have thus established a cell line, suitable for the screening and/or the study of molecules with stimulatory or inhibitory activities on the PI3K/Akt pathway that will constitute a new tool for translational research in diabetes and cancer.
Nucleosides Present on Phlebotomine Saliva Induce Immunossuppression and Promote the Infection Establishment

Background Sand fly saliva plays a crucial role in establishing Leishmania infection. We identified adenosine (ADO) and adenosine monophosphate (AMP) as active pharmacologic compounds present in Phlebotomus papatasi saliva that inhibit dendritic cell (DC) functions through a PGE2/IL 10-dependent mechanism. Methodology/Principal Findings Herein, we prepared a mixture of ADO and AMP in equimolar amounts similar to those present in the salivary-gland extract (SGE) form one pair of salivary glands of P. papatasi and co-injected it with Leishmania amazonensis or L. major into mouse ears. ADO+AMP mimicked exacerbative effects of P. papatasi saliva in leishmaniasis, increasing parasite burden and cutaneous lesions. Enzymatic catabolism of salivary nucleosides reversed the SGE-induced immunosuppressive effect associated with IL-10 enhancement. Immunosuppressive factors COX2 and IL-10 were upregulated and failed to enhance ear lesion and parasite burden in IL 10-/- infected mice. Furthermore, nucleosides increased regulatory T cell (Treg) marker expression on CD4+CD25- cells, suggesting induction of Tregs on effector T cells (T eff). Treg induction (iTreg) was associated with nucleoside-induced tolerogenic dendritic cells (tDCs) expressing higher levels of COX2 and IL-10. In vitro generation of Tregs was more efficient in DCs treated with nucleosides. Suppressive effects of nucleosides during cutaneous leishmaniasis were mediated through an A2AR-dependent mechanism. Using BALB/c mice deficient in A2A ADO receptor (A2AR–/–), we showed that co-inoculated mice controlled infection, displaying lower parasite numbers at infection sites and reduced iTreg generation. Conclusion/Significance We have demonstrated that ADO and AMP in P. papatasi saliva mediate exacerbative effects of Leishmania infection by acting preferentially on DCs promoting a tolerogenic profile in DCs and by generating iTregs in inflammatory foci through an A2AR mechanism.
Morton-order Matrices Deserve Compilers ’ Support Technical Report 533

A proof of concept is offered for the uniform representation of matrices serially in Morton-order (or Z-order) representation, as well as their divide-and-conquer processing as quaternary trees. Generally, d dimensional arrays are accessed as 2-ary trees. This data structure is important because, at once, it relaxes serious problems of locality and latency, while the tree helps schedule multi-processing. It enables algorithms that avoid cache misses and page faults at all levels in hierarchical memory, independently of a specific runtime environment. This paper gathers the properties of Morton order and its mappings to other indexings, and outlines for compiler support of it. Statistics on matrix multiplication, a critical example, show how the new ordering and block algorithms achieve high flop rates and, indirectly, parallelism without low-level tuning. Perhaps because of the early success of column-major representation with strength reduction, quadtree representation has been reinvented and redeveloped in areas far from the center that is Programming Languages. As target architectures move to multiprocessing, super-scalar pipes, and hierarchical memories, compilers must support quadtrees better, so that more programmers invent algorithms that use them to exploit the hardware. CCS Categories and subject descriptors:E.1 [Data Structures]: Arrays; D.3. 2 [Programming Languages]: Language Classifications—concurrent, distributed and parallel languages; applicative (functional) languages; D.4. 2 [Operating Systems]: Storage management—storage hierarchies; E.2 [Data Storage Representations]: contiguous representations; F.2. 1 [Analysis of Algorithms and Problem Complexity]: Numerical algorithms and problems— computations on matrices. General Terms: Design, Performance. Additional
Noncontingent Escape Access to Self-Reinforcement to Increase Task Engagement for Students with Moderate to Severe Disabilities

Georgia State University Abstract: This study determined the effectiveness of noncontingent escape access to self-reinforcement, as a student-directed intervention. Three students successfully used a break card to systematically decrease inappro- priate behavior maintained by negative reinforcement while increasing task engagement. In addition, teachers completed an Intervention Rating Profile-15 that assessed the social acceptability of this interventions. All teachers indicated that self-reinforcement was socially acceptable for classroom settings and they would recommend it to other teachers.
Dynamic Binary Translation and Hypervisors

Dynamic binary translation is the process of converting an executable binary compiled for a particular ISA (say PowePC) into an executable binary for a different ISA (say x86) at runtime of the executable. This enables transparent execution of a binary compiled for a particular architecture on a different architecture, thus breaking the binding of an executable to a particular machine. This is done by virtualizing the source ISA and in the case of system level binary translators, virtualizing the whole platform including system code, boot code and BIOS. Virtualization using hypervisors is the current technique for hardware multiplexing. A Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) / hypervisor creates virtual machines that can be used to run multiple operating systems. This report tries to explore the possibilities of integrating virtualization as offered by current hypervisors with the virtualization in binary translation so that the combined system provides not only multiple OS on single machine capabilities but also multiple architecture based OSes on the same machine/architecture. A single high performance VLIW architecture based server machine can then host multiple operating systems for multiple architectures thus allowing for true application execution transparency. The report is organized as follows: Section 2 provides background for binary translation, section 3 explains a few key projects in binary translation, section 4 explains virtualization, virtual machines, and the possibilities of hypervisors with binary translation and section 5 concludes.
Cyberbullying: Causes, Consequences, and Coping Strategies

Weber and Pelfrey examine qualitative and quantitative data collected from middle and high school students in a large urban area regarding the use of social technologies in cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. They further explore the interconnectedness between the online and face-to-face environments created by these advancements in technology which may produce risk taking behaviors and school safety issues. Students reported a carryover between environments (during school and after school via social technology) that create a constant access to peers and a reciprocal relationship between cyberbullying perpetrators and victims who become perpetrators in retaliation. The book also provides insight from school staff regarding policies, protocols, and approaches to combating cyberbullying in school.
RNA Amplification Protocol Leads to Biased Polymerase Chain Reaction Results Especially for Low-Copy Transcripts of Human Bone Marrow-Derived Stromal Cells

The amplification of RNA is becoming increasingly important, as often only limited amounts of cells are available for gene expression analysis. In this study, the gene expression profile of the 39 human homeobox (HOX) genes was analyzed in bone marrow-derived multipotent stromal cells (BM-MSCs) by reverse transcription (RT-) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). For further unlimited gene expression analysis, Whole Transcriptome Amplification (WTA) was used to amplify RNA from human BM-MSCs. However, WTA led to biased RT- and qPCR results, and even non-detectability of HOX transcripts compared to non-amplified BM-MSC samples which instead revealed transcription. It is important to note that the same RNA of the respective human BM-MSC line was used for normal cDNA synthesis by standard reverse transcription (non-amplified RT samples) and for cDNA synthesis by WTA (amplified WTA samples). On this account, the different RT- and qPCR results were unexpected applying WTA. The significantly reduced detection of HOX transcripts after WTA has been demonstrated for numerous BM-MSC lines (n = 26) by RT-PCR analysis. Furthermore, undetectable HOX transcripts meaning HOX transcripts of human BM-MSCs that were detected after normal cDNA synthesis, but were no longer detectable after WTA, were consistently observed by qPCR analysis. Finally, qPCR experiments revealed a possible explanation for the differences between amplified and non-amplified BM-MSC samples: an inverse correlation between the biased qPCR results and the low expression level of the respective HOX gene. The PCR analysis of high-copy transcripts like GAPDH or RPL13A revealed unchanged qPCR results after WTA compared to corresponding non-amplified BM-MSC samples. In contrast, WTA led to biased qPCR results for medium-copy HOX transcripts, and even non-detectability of low-copy HOX transcripts of human BM-MSCs resulting in false negative RT- and qPCR data applying WTA.
Identifying silent failures of SaaS services using finite state machine based invariant analysis

Field failure analysis is usually driven by a characterization of the different time related properties of failure. This characterization does not help the production support team in understanding the root cause. In order to pinpoint the root cause of failure, one of the most effective techniques used is checking for violations of the system invariants which are the consistent, time invariant correlations that exist in the system. Understanding when and where these violations happen helps in detecting the root cause of the failure. Silent failures, on the other hand are characterized by no evidence of failures either in the console or in the field failure logs. They are unearthed at moments of crisis, either with a customer complaint or other cascading failures. These failures often result in data loss or data corruption, creating many latent errors. Accumulation of these errors over time results in degraded system performance. This represents the problem of software aging and restoration of the system, i.e. its rejuvenation becomes a critical need. Subsequent to the restoration, a rigorous failure detection mechanism is needed to detect them early. What we describe in the paper is a novel method that could be used to detect silent failures using a combination of invariant violation checking and finite state machine based analysis of the system. We use the audit-trail logs of system to extract information about the state and transitions for FSM representation. Currently our research work was limited to proving its efficiency. We applied this approach to our SaaS platform and were able to detect 36 silent failures over a period of 9 months. As next steps, we will implement this as a part of automated failure detection in the operational SaaS platforms.
Complexity Estimation of Genetic Sequences Using Information-Theoretic and Frequency Analysis Methods

The genetic information in cells is stored in DNA sequences, represented by a string of four letters, each corresponding to a definite type of nucleotides. Genomic DNA sequences are very abundant in periodic patterns, which play important biological roles. The complexity of genetic sequences can be estimated using the information-theoretic methods. Low complexity regions are of particular interest to genome researchers, because they indicate to sequence repeats and patterns. In this paper, the complexity of genetic sequences is estimated using Shannon entropy, Renyi entropy and relative Kolmogorov complexity. The structural complexity based on periodicities is analyzed using the autocorrelation function and time delayed mutual information. As a case study, we analyze human 22nd chromosome and identify 3 and 49 bp periodicities.
Media Attention, Institutional Response, and Health Behavior Change

This study considers media effects on behavior that are mediated through other social institutions. Examined is the extent to which changes over time in the amount of media attention to the issue of drunk driving (DD) may have contributed to the reduction in DD behavior between 1978 and 1996. It was hypothesized that media effects on DD behavior were mediated by policy response (i.e., legislation) to the DD problem. Aggregated measures of media attention, legislation, and DD behavior for 38 consecutive 6-month periods were used in a time-series regression analysis. Results indicate that although substantial direct media effects on DD-related legislation and behavior were present, the direct effect of media on behavior was no longer significant when the effect of legislation on behavior was controlled. These results suggest that future research efforts to uncover media effects on human behavior may benefit from considering the indirect impact of mass media on the social and cultural environment that surrounds individuals.
Big Data and corporate reporting: impacts and paradoxes

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of Big Data and corporate reporting, and to determine the impact of Big Data and the current Big Data state of mind with regard to corporate reporting, what accountant and non-accountant participants’ perceptions are of the phenomenon, what the accountants’ role is and will be in this regard, and what opportunities and risks are associated with Big Data and corporate reporting. Furthermore, this study seeks to identify the inherent technological paradoxes of Big Data and corporate reporting. Design/methodology/approach - The current study is qualitative in nature and assumes an interpretive stance, investigating participants’ perceptions of the phenomenon of Big Data and corporate reporting. To this end, interview data from 25 participants, video and text material, were analysed to enhance and triangulate findings. A four-fold sampling strategy was employed to ensure that any collected data would contribute to the findings. Data were analysed on the basis of open and selective coding stages. Data collection and analysis took place in two stages, in 2014 and in 2016. Findings - Three topics, or categories, emerged from the data analysis, which have sufficient explanatory power to illustrate the phenomenon of Big Data and corporate reporting, namely the Big Data state of mind and corporate reporting, accountants’ role and future related to Big Data, and perceived opportunities and risks of Big Data. Features of a new approach to corporate reporting were identified and discussed. Furthermore, four paradoxes emerged to express inherent opposing positions of Big Data and corporate reporting, namely empowerment vs enslavement, fulfilling vs creating needs, reliability vs timeliness and simplicity vs complexity. Originality/value - The original contribution of the study lies in the empirical investigation of the phenomenon of Big Data and corporate reporting as one of the most recent and praised developments in the accounting context. The dual communication flows of corporate reporting with Big Data is an important element of the findings, which can enhance the prospective financial statements significantly. Finally, technological paradoxes of Big Data and corporate reporting are discussed for the first time, two of which are based on the literature and the remaining two are inherent in the phenomenon of Big Data and corporate reporting.
A searching algorithm for minimum bandpass sampling frequency in simultaneous down-conversion of multiple RF signals

Bandpass sampling (BPS) techniques for the direct down-conversion of RF bandpass signals have become an essential technique for software defined radio (SDR), due to their advantage of minimizing the radio frequency (RF) front-end hardware dependency. This paper proposes an algorithm for finding the minimum BPS frequency for simultaneously down-converting multiple RF signals through full permutation over all the valid sampling ranges found for the multiple RF signals. We also present a scheme for reducing the computational complexity resulting from the large scale of the purmutation calculation involved in searching for the minimum BPS frequency. In addition, we investigate the BPS frequency allowing for the guard-band between adajacent down-converted signals, which help lessen the severe requirements in practical implementations. The performance of the proposed method is compared with those of other pre-reported methods to prove its effectiveness.