Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drought Tolerance in Modern and Wild Wheat

The genus Triticum includes bread (Triticum aestivum) and durum wheat (Triticum durum) and constitutes a major source for human food consumption. Drought is currently the leading threat on world's food supply, limiting crop yield, and is complicated since drought tolerance is a quantitative trait with a complex phenotype affected by the plant's developmental stage. Drought tolerance is crucial to stabilize and increase food production since domestication has limited the genetic diversity of crops including wild wheat, leading to cultivated species, adapted to artificial environments, and lost tolerance to drought stress. Improvement for drought tolerance can be achieved by the introduction of drought-grelated genes and QTLs to modern wheat cultivars. Therefore, identification of candidate molecules or loci involved in drought tolerance is necessary, which is undertaken by “omics” studies and QTL mapping. In this sense, wild counterparts of modern varieties, specifically wild emmer wheat (T. dicoccoides), which are highly tolerant to drought, hold a great potential. Prior to their introgression to modern wheat cultivars, drought related candidate genes are first characterized at the molecular level, and their function is confirmed via transgenic studies. After integration of the tolerance loci, specific environment targeted field trials are performed coupled with extensive analysis of morphological and physiological characteristics of developed cultivars, to assess their performance under drought conditions and their possible contributions to yield in certain regions. This paper focuses on recent advances on drought related gene/QTL identification, studies on drought related molecular pathways, and current efforts on improvement of wheat cultivars for drought tolerance.
Removal of Cd(II) from Aqueous Solution by Electrospun Nylon 6 Nanofibrous Nonwoven Containing Attapulgite

The attapulgite powders modified by silicane coupling agent are loaded onto the surface of nylon 6 nanofibers by immersing the nylon 6 electrospun fiber nonwoven in a bath containing modified attapulgite dispersion under ultrasonicating. The nylon6 nanofibrous nonwoven containing attapulgite nano particles was explored as “nano adsorbent” to remove Cd (II) ions from Cd (II) aqueous solution. The effects of various parameters on adsorption properties, such as contact time, pH values of Cd (II) solution and initial Cd (II) concentration were investigated.
Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty 340 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER LOYALTY IN EUROPEAN RETAILING

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is becoming an increasingly important factor in modern retailing a market characterized by slow growth and intense competition. Big non-European chains such as Walmart are already present in some countries and consider to buy some of the retail chains in other countries e.g. the Scandinavian countries. This development will demand even more focus on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in order to stay in business and may also demand that existing actors on the market place form new coalitions. Promising new partners may be identified partly based upon measures identifying how potential partners are perceived by the customers. Based on results from the European Customer Satisfaction study a comparative analysis of customer satisfaction in Europe is conducted. Some specific Danish results are shown and the relationship between customer loyalty, supermarket type and ownership structure is studied.
A Note on Unawareness and Zero Probability

I study how choice behavior given unawareness of an event differs from choice behavior given subjective belief of zero probability on that event. Depending on different types of unawareness the decision-maker suffers, behavior under unawareness is either incomparable with that under zero probability (in the case of pure unawareness), or drastically different (in the case of partial unawareness). The key differences are (1) partial unawareness permits dynamically inconsistent choice, while zero probability beliefs do not; and (2) there are unforeseen options in an unawareness environment that are necessarily modeled as dominated options in zero probability models.
W-types in sheaves

In this small note we give a concrete description of W-types in categories of sheaves. It can be shown that any topos with a natural numbers object has all Wtypes. Although there is this general result, it can be useful to have a concrete description of W-types in various toposes. For example, a concrete description of W-types in the effective topos can be found in [2, 3], and a concrete description of W-types in categories of presheaves was given in [5]. It was claimed in [5] that W-types in categories of sheaves are computed as in presheaves (Proposition 5.7 in loc.cit.) and can therefore be described in the same way. Unfortunately, this claim is incorrect, as the following (easy) counterexample shows. Let f : 1 → 1 be the identity map on the terminal object. The W-type associated to f is the initial object, which, in general, is different in categories of presheaves and sheaves. This means that we still lack a concrete description of W-types in categories of sheaves. This note aims to fill this gap. We would like to warn readers who are sensitive to such issues that our metatheory is ZFC. In particular, we freely use the axiom of choice. We leave the issue of how to describe W-types in categories of sheaves when the metatheory is more demanding (i.e. weaker) to another occasion. Categories of sheaves are described using (Grothendieck) sites. There are different formulations of the notion of a site, all essentially equivalent ([4] provides an excellent discussion of this point), but for our purposes we find the following (“sifted”) formulation the most useful. Definition 0.1 Let C be a category. A sieve S on an object a ∈ C consists of a set of arrows in C all having codomain a and closed under precomposition (i.e., if f : b → a and g: c → b are arrows in C and f belongs to S, then so does fg). We call the set Ma of all arrows into a the maximal sieve on a. If S is a sieve on a and f : b → a is any map in C, we write f∗S for the sieve {g: c → b : fg ∈ S} on b. In case f belongs to S, we have f∗S = Mb. A (Grothendieck) topology Cov on C is given by assigning to every object a ∈ C a collection of sieves Cov(a) such that the following axioms are satisfied:
Optimal cell design for enhancing reliability characteristics for sub 30 nm NAND Flash memory

One of the critical scaling barriers in sub 30 nm NAND Flash technology node is an abrupt threshold voltage drop of cell transistors by short channel effect. It increases program voltage which leads, in turn, to fatal reliability issues. A simple way to relieve the short channel effect is increasing the channel boron concentration. However it degrades endurance characteristics by deteriorating boosting efficiency on inhibit operation. In this paper, we present an optimal cell design for the improved reliability characteristics in the level of mass production for the future NAND Flash with floating gate cells.
Multicenter Comparison of the Sensititre YeastOne Colorimetric Antifungal Panel with the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards M27-A Reference Method for Testing Clinical Isolates of Common and Emerging Candidaspp., Cryptococcus spp., and Other Yeasts and Yeast-Like Organisms

ABSTRACT National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) standard guidelines are available for the antifungal susceptibility testing of common Candida spp. and Cryptococcus neoformans, but NCCLS methods may not be the most efficient and convenient procedures for use in the clinical laboratory. MICs of amphotericin B, fluconazole, flucytosine, itraconazole, and ketoconazole were determined by the commercially prepared Sensititre YeastOne Colorimetric Antifungal Panel and by the NCCLS M27-A broth microdilution method for 1,176 clinical isolates of yeasts and yeast-like organisms, including Blastoschizomyces capitatus, Cryptococcus spp. , 14 common and emerging species of Candida, Hansenula anomala,Rhodotorula spp. , Saccharomyces cerevisiae,Sporobolomyces salmonicolor, and Trichosporon beigelii. Colorimetric MICs of amphotericin B corresponded to the first blue well (no growth), and MICs of the other agents corresponded to the first purple or blue well. Three comparisons of MIC pairs by the two methods were evaluated to obtain percentages of agreement: 24- and 48-h MICs and 24-h colorimetric versus 48-h reference MICs. The best performance of the YeastOne panel was with 24-h MICs (92 to 100%) with the azoles and flucytosine for all the species tested, with the exception of C. albicans (87 to 90%). For amphotericin B, the best agreement between the methods was with 48-h MIC pairs (92 to 99%) for most of the species tested. The exception was for isolates ofC. neoformans (76%). These data suggest the potential value of the YeastOne panel for use in the clinical laboratory.
Finding Moving Shapes by Continuous-Model Evidence Gathering

Two recent approaches are combined in a new technique to find moving arbitrary shapes. We combine the Velocity Hough Transform, which extracts moving conic sections, with a continuous formulation for arbitrary shape extraction, which avoids discretisation errors associated with GHT methods. The new approach has been evaluated on synthetic and real imagery and is demonstrated to provide motion analysis that is resilient to noise and to be able to detect its target shapes, which are both moving and arbitrary. Further, it is shown to have performance advantages over contemporaneous single-image extraction techniques. Finally, it appears to offer improved immunity to noise and occlusion, consistent with evidence gathering techniques, as shown by results on real images.
Resource allocation policy to avoid interference between cellular and D2D Links/ and D2D links in mobile networks

To cope with data communication explosion, the alternative, “D2D communication” which enables mobile devices to communicate each other without base station is studied. D2D providing service at a lower cost than cellular network is advantageous for user and also helpful when infra system is out of order by natural disaster. Even if D2D communication has a lot of benefits, that the D2D communication interferes cellular links as well as D2D link each other should be managed. This paper proposes a radio resource allocation policy for D2D link. Firstly, in frequency domain, by introducing D2D belt concept (the area where users cannot user frequency available only for D2D link) orthogonality between cellular links and D2D links is guaranteed in frequency domain. Secondly, by allocating un-overlapping subframe to D2D links, the interferences between D2D links can be eliminated.
On Constructing Dynamic and Forward Secure Authenticated Group Key Agreement Scheme from Multikey Encapsulation Mechanism

The approach of instantiating authenticated group key exchange (GAKE) protocol from the multikey encapsulation mechanism (mKEM) has an important advantage of achieving classical requirement of GAKE security in one communication round. In spite of the limitations of this approach, for example, lack of forward secrecy, it is very useful in group environments when maximum communication efficiency is desirable. To enrich this mKEM-based GAKE construction, we suggest an efficient solution to convert this static GAKE framework into a partially dynamic scheme. Furthermore, to address the associated lack of forward-secrecy, we propose two variants of this generic construction which can also provide a means of forward secrecy at the cost of extra communication round. In addition, concerning associated implementation cost of deploying this generic GAKE construction in elliptic curve cryptosystem, we compare the possible instantiations of this model from existing mKEM algorithms in terms of the number of elliptic curve scalar multiplications.
Clinical features of frontotemporal dementia due to the intronic tau 10+16 mutation

To the Editor: We read with great interest the article by Janssen et al.1 regarding clinical features seen in nine apparently separately ascertained kindreds with frontotemporal dementia and parkinsonism (FTDP-17) harboring the same intronic 10+16 tau mutation. They attempted to correlate variations in phenotype observed in their families with APOE e4 allele status. …
Model Selection Approach for Distributed Fault Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor networks aim at monitoring their surroundings for event detection and object tracking. But, due to failure or death of sensors, false signal can be transmitted. In this paper, we consider the problems of distributed fault detection in wireless sensor network (WSN). In particular, we consider how to take decision regarding fault detection in a noisy environment as a result of false detection or false response of event by some sensors, where the sensors are placed at the center of regular hexagons and the event can occur at only one hexagon. We propose fault detection schemes that explicitly introduce the error probabilities into the optimal event detection process. We introduce two types of detection probabilities, one for the center node, where the event occurs, and the other one for the adjacent nodes. This second type of detection probability is new in sensor network literature. We develop schemes under the model selection procedure and multiple model selection procedure and use the concept of Bayesian model averaging to identify a set of likely fault sensors and obtain an average predictive error.
On the Minute Anatomy of the Neuromuscular Spindles of the Cat, and on their Physiological Significance

I WAS led to renew enquiry into the structure of the muscle-spindle by a discussion between myself and Prof. Kerschner, of Briinn, which arose when I returned to the subject after publishing a preliminary Note describing the endings of the nerve-fibres in the spinidle'. I had, however, no wish to pursue further a polemical controversy after the appearance of the paper by Sherrington2, who in treating of the subject accorded me priority of demonstration and exact description of the nerve-endings in the spindles. The description of the nerve-ending in my first work, although correct so far as it went, was not entirely complete. I am glad now to furnish a complete account of the nerve-endings, adding various details to those previously given'. It is unnecessary to recount here in full the history of the study of the neuromuscular spindles. This has been done by others, and down to the year 1889 is easy of access to all in the last edition of KUlliker's Gewebelehre. Yet I must mention a few points that impart clearness to my description.
Y Fuse? Sex Chromosome Fusions in Fishes and Reptiles

Chromosomal fusion plays a recurring role in the evolution of adaptations and reproductive isolation among species, yet little is known of the evolutionary drivers of chromosomal fusions. Because sex chromosomes (X and Y in male heterogametic systems, Z and W in female heterogametic systems) differ in their selective, mutational, and demographic environments, those differences provide a unique opportunity to dissect the evolutionary forces that drive chromosomal fusions. We estimate the rate at which fusions between sex chromosomes and autosomes become established across the phylogenies of both fishes and squamate reptiles. Both the incidence among extant species and the establishment rate of Y-autosome fusions is much higher than for X-autosome, Z-autosome, or W-autosome fusions. Using population genetic models, we show that this pattern cannot be reconciled with many standard explanations for the spread of fusions. In particular, direct selection acting on fusions or sexually antagonistic selection cannot, on their own, account for the predominance of Y-autosome fusions. The most plausible explanation for the observed data seems to be (a) that fusions are slightly deleterious, and (b) that the mutation rate is male-biased or the reproductive sex ratio is female-biased. We identify other combinations of evolutionary forces that might in principle account for the data although they appear less likely. Our results shed light on the processes that drive structural changes throughout the genome.
Convergence rates for uniform confidence intervals based on local polynomial regression estimators

We investigate the convergence rates of uniform bias-corrected confidence intervals for a smooth curve using local polynomial regression for both the interior and boundary region. We discuss the cases when the degree of the polynomial is odd and even. The uniform confidence intervals are based on the volume-of-tube formula modified for biased estimators. We empirically show that the proposed uniform confidence intervals attain, at least approximately, nominal coverage. Finally, we investigate the performance of the volume-of-tube based confidence intervals for independent non-Gaussian errors.
Target Matching Auditory Displays To Support Improved Driver Skills And Vehicle Coordination

Auditory displays have been implemented with some success in a variety of in-vehicle technologies. Most of these applications have used discrete alerts and warnings, which present complications with false alarms and annoyance. Some research has suggested that on-going, continuous information displays may mitigate some of the problems with discrete alerts and warnings. We argue that well-designed naturalistic soundscapes offer a potentially useful means of continuous auditory display for in-vehicle technologies. We present examples of use scenarios and demonstrations of candidate sound manipulations for conveying information with soundscapes. We argue that soundscapes could be used in a variety of in-vehicle technologies, including displays of vehicle and driver conditions, collision and hazard warnings, infotainment systems, and automated systems.
An Object-Oriented Simulator for the Apiary

This paper describes a simulator for the proposed Apiary, an object-oriented, message passing parallel machine for artificial intelligence applications, using the actor model of computation. The simulator implements an interpreter for the lowest level "virtual machine language" of the Apiary, specifying computations in terms of creating objects and sending messages rather than loading and storing registers. The simulator is itself programmed in the object-oriented style advocated by the actor philosophy, allowing experimentation with alternative implementation mechanisms without disturbing the behavior of the simulation. Technical details in the paper assume some familiarity with object-oriented programming and the actor formalism.
Demonstration, characterization, and mutational analysis of NahR protein binding to nah and sal promoters

The nahR gene of plasmid NAH7 of Pseudomonas putida encodes a 36-kilodalton polypeptide which activates transcription of the nah and sal operons in response to the inducer salicylate. A gel mobility shift assay was used to identify a DNA-binding activity which was present only in extracts from either P. putida or Escherichia coli containing a functional nahR gene. The binding activity was highly specific for DNA containing the nah or sal promoters, but the apparent affinity for the promoters was not altered by the presence of salicylate. DNase I protection experiments with a partially purified NahR protein preparation showed that NahR protects both nah and sal promoter sequences between -82 and -47. The location and amount of protection were not dramatically altered by the presence of salicylate. In vitro mutagenesis was used to make mutations in the protected region of the sal promoter. Analysis of the mutants showed that binding of NahR is required for transcription activation and identified two nucleotides in the protected region that are essential for binding and activation by NahR.
A Cost-Effective Antenna Design for Printed UHF RFID

In this paper, the printed UHF RFID tag dipole antenna design is optimized to reduce the consumption of conductive material. The optimized design is achieved by narrowing the width of the low current density areas. The proposed optimized dipole antenna design requires less amount of conductive ink to achieve the equivalent radiation efficiency level as the ideal copper-trace dipole antenna. The simulation results indicate the saving amount of approximately 43% when comparing with the silver ink printed flat dipole antenna design.
Multibit $\Sigma$–$\Delta$ PWM Digital Controller IC for DC–DC Converters Operating at Switching Frequencies Beyond 10 MHz

An integrated digital controller for dc-dc switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) used in portable applications is introduced. The controller has very low power consumption, fast dynamic response, and can operate at programmable constant switching frequencies exceeding 10 MHz. To achieve these characteristics, three novel functional blocks, a digital pulse-width modulator based on second-order sigma-delta concept (Sigma-Delta DPWM), dual-clocking mode compensator, and nonlinear analog-to-digital converter are combined. In steady state, to minimize power consumption, the controller is clocked at a frequency lower than SMPS switching frequency. During transients the clock rate is increased to the switching frequency improving transient response. The controller integrated circuit (IC) is fabricated in a standard 0.18-mum process and tested with a 750-mW buck converter prototype. Experimental results show the controller current consumption of 55 muA/MHz and verify closed-loop operation at programmable switching frequencies up to 12.3 MHz. Simulation results indicating that this architecture can potentially support operation at switching frequencies beyond 100 MHz are also presented.
outputs WATSON : a gateway for the semantic web Conference Item

As the Semantic Web is gaining momentum, more and more semantic data is available online. The second generation of Semantic Web applications already exploit this phenomenon by relying on this huge amount of semantic content. Looking at the requirements of these applications, we show that there is a need for an efficient access point to the Semantic Web, designed to take into account the semantic nature of the knowledge available online. However, because they rely on “classical Web” techniques, existing solutions fail to fulfill this need. In this paper, we describe the design of Watson, a gateway for the Semantic Web, which has been guided by the requirements of Semantic Web applications and by lessons learnt from previous systems. We show how Watson exploits the strengths of semantic technologies to provide fundamental functionalities for a more suitable access to online knowledge. We also report on using these functionalities to analyze some of the characteristics of the content of the Semantic Web.
An analysis tool for coupling-based integration testing

This research is part of a project to develop practical, effective, formalizable, automatable techniques for integration testing. Integration testing is an important part of the testing process, but few integration testing techniques have been systematically studied or defined. This paper discusses the design and implementation of an analysis tool for measuring the amount of coverage achieved by a set of test data according to a set of previously defined coupling criteria. This tool can be used to support integration testing of software components. The coupling-based testing technique, which has been described elsewhere, is summarized, and coverage algorithms are discussed. The focus of this paper is on the instrumentation techniques and an analysis tool built for Java programs. It was built in Java using the general Java parser JavaCC and the Java Tree Builder (JTB). We are currently using this tool to gather experimental data on the efficacy and the usefulness of the technique.