Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two-membered mixed cultures of methanogenic and aerobic bacteria in O2-limited chemostats

SUMMARY: Three different co-cultures composed of a methanogenic and a strictly aerobic bacterium were grown under O2-limitation in continuous cultures. The combinations used were (1) Methanobacterium formicicum with the aerobic heterotroph Comamonas testosteroni; (2) M. formicicum with a methanotrophic Methylocystis species; and (3) Methanosavcina barkeri with C. testosteroni. Although true steady-states were not obtained, growth and metabolic activity of the methanogenic and aerobic organisms occurred during O2-limited growth of these mixed cultures over extended periods of time. Co-cultures with C. testosteroni were considerably more stable than those with Methylocystis. Co-cultures with M. barkeri were less O2-sensitive than those with M. formicicum. C. testosteroni exhibited a higher O2-affinity than Methylocystis, resulting in a lower dissolved oxygen tension and a superior protection of the methanogenic bacteria against O2-poisoning than in mixed cultures with Methylocystis. The dissolved O2-concentrations in the mixed cultures were below the detection limit of the O2-probes used (0.2 μM). Calculations based on growth properties of pure cultures of C. testosteroni, M. barkeri and M. formicicum suggested that the dissolved O2-concentrations in the mixed cultures, as well as the O2-inhibition constants (apparent K 1 o2) of the methanogens were in the nanomolar range.
Towards precision medicine: The application of omics technologies in asthma management

Asthma is a chronic obstructive respiratory disease characterised by bronchial inflammation. Its biological and clinical features have been widely explored and a number of pharmacological treatments are currently available. Currently several aspects of asthma pathophysiological background remain unclear, and this is represent a limitation for the traditional asthma phenotype approach. In this scenario, the identification of new molecular and clinical biomarkers may be helpful in order to better understand the disease, define specific diagnostic tools and highlight relevant novel targets for pharmacological treatments. Omics technologies offer innovative research tools for addressing the above mentioned goals. However, there is still a lot to do both in the fields of basic research and in the clinical application. Recently, genome-wide association studies, microRNAs and proteomics are contributing to enrich the available data for the identification of new asthma biomarkers. A precise approach to the patient with asthma, particularly with severe uncontrolled asthma, requires new and specific therapeutic targets, but also proper tools able to drive the clinician in tailoring the treatment. On the other hand, there is a need of predictors to treatment’s response, particularly in the field of biological drugs, whose sustainability implies a correct and precise selection of the patients. Translating acquired omics knowledge in clinical practice may address the unmet needs described above, but large-scale studies are required in order to confirm their relevance and effectiveness in daily practice. Thus in our opinion the application of omics is still lagging in the real-life setting.
Implementing Wavelets in Continuous-Time Analog Circuits With Dynamic Range Optimization

Signal processing by means of analog circuits offers advantages from a power consumption viewpoint. A method is described to implement wavelets in analog circuits by fitting the impulse response of a linear system to the time-reversed wavelet function. The fitting is performed using local search involving an L2 criterion, starting from a deterministic starting point. This approach offers a large performance increase over previous Padé-based approaches and allows for the circuit implementation of a larger range of wavelet functions. Subsequently, using state-space optimization the dynamic range of the circuit is optimized. Finally, to illustrate the design procedure, a sixth-order L2-approximated orthonormal Gaussian wavelet filter using Gm-C integrators is presented.
Utilization of Chromite Waste as Colorant in Single Fired Wall Tile Glaze Compositions

The present study focuses on the utilization of chromite waste after neutralization process as coloring agent for transparent and opaque wall tile glaze compositions. The neutralized processed chromite ore waste obtained from the Soda-Chrome Industries Inc. in Kazanlı (Mersin), a branch of Şişe-Cam Chemicals Group, was used in increasing amounts in ceramic wall tile glazes. 3-6% of chromite waste was used in opaque and transparent wall tile glaze recipes. The glaze compositions were applied as thin layers (0.5 mm) on engobed wall tile bodies and fired at 1200°C. After firing, no surface defects were observed on glazed surface. Glazes were charaterized by electron microscopy (SEM-EDX). The color obtained after glazing and firing was defined as CIE-L * a * b * parameters by using UV-Visible Spectrophotometer. Glazed samples were subjected to thermal shock test at 200°C and no evidence of crack and peeling were found between body and glaze coating. It has been observed that waste material has positive effects as a colorant in ceramic glazes at 1200°C.
A high quality Arabidopsis transcriptome for accurate transcript-level analysis of alternative splicing

Abstract Alternative splicing generates multiple transcript and protein isoforms from the same gene and thus is important in gene expression regulation. To date, RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) is the standard method for quantifying changes in alternative splicing on a genome-wide scale. Understanding the current limitations of RNA-seq is crucial for reliable analysis and the lack of high quality, comprehensive transcriptomes for most species, including model organisms such as Arabidopsis, is a major constraint in accurate quantification of transcript isoforms. To address this, we designed a novel pipeline with stringent filters and assembled a comprehensive Reference Transcript Dataset for Arabidopsis (AtRTD2) containing 82,190 non-redundant transcripts from 34 212 genes. Extensive experimental validation showed that AtRTD2 and its modified version, AtRTD2-QUASI, for use in Quantification of Alternatively Spliced Isoforms, outperform other available transcriptomes in RNA-seq analysis. This strategy can be implemented in other species to build a pipeline for transcript-level expression and alternative splicing analyses.
Distribution of Laboratory Parameters in Trauma Population

Background: Biochemical laboratory investigations help plan optimum management and communication in short- as well as long-term outcome to trauma victims. Objective: To assess the status of real-time values of biochemical laboratory investigations of different trauma patients and their association with overall mortality. Materials and Methods: Data based on prospective, observational registry of “Towards Improved Trauma Care Outcomes” (TITCO) from four Indian city hospitals. Hemoglobin, hematocrit, random blood sugar, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and serum creatinine of patients on admission were recorded. Logistic regression was applied with all biochemical investigation as independent variable and overall mortality as dependent variable. Results: Among 17047 trauma patients, 3456 with available laboratory result details were considered for this study. Overall mortality was 20% (range 14%–21%). For the higher laboratory results, value mortality was 21%–70%, with highest death (70%) for higher hemoglobin patients, followed by hematocrit (44%) and then creatinine (43%). Odds of high hemoglobin compared to normal were 15.20; odds of higher and lower of normal creatinine were 3.80 and 1.65 and for BUN were 2.17 and 1.92, respectively. Gender-wise significant difference was in overall female mortality (29%)% compared males (18%). Similar differences were replicated with results of each laboratory tests. Conclusion: The study ascertained the composite additional explanatory values of laboratory parameters in predicting outcome among injured patients in our population from Indian settings.
ClaimBuster: The First-ever End-to-end Fact-checking System

Our society is struggling with an unprecedented amount of falsehoods, hyperboles, and half-truths. Politicians and organizations repeatedly make the same false claims. Fake news floods the cyberspace and even allegedly influenced the 2016 election. In fighting false information, the number of active fact-checking organizations has grown from 44 in 2014 to 114 in early 2017. 1 Fact-checkers vet claims by investigating relevant data and documents and publish their verdicts. For instance, PolitiFact.com, one of the earliest and most popular fact-checking projects, gives factual claims truthfulness ratings such as True, Mostly True, Half true, Mostly False, False, and even "Pants on Fire". In the U.S., the election year made fact-checking a part of household terminology. For example, during the first presidential debate on September 26, 2016, NPR.org's live fact-checking website drew 7.4 million page views and delivered its biggest traffic day ever.
Strong disorder fixed points in the two-dimensional random-bond Ising model

The random-bond Ising model on the square lattice has several disordered critical points, depending on the probability distribution of the bonds. There are a finite-temperature multicritical point, called the Nishimori point, and a zero-temperature fixed point, for both a binary distribution where the coupling constants take the values ± J and a Gaussian disorder distribution. Inclusion of dilution in the ± J distribution (J = 0 for some bonds) gives rise to another zero-temperature fixed point which can be identified with percolation in the non-frustrated case (J ≥ 0). We study these fixed points using numerical (transfer matrix) methods. We determine the location, critical exponents, and central charge of the different fixed points and study the spin–spin correlation functions. Our main findings are the following. (1) We confirm that the Nishimori point is universal with respect to the type of disorder, i.e. we obtain the same central charge and critical exponents for the ± J and Gaussian distributions of disorder. (2) The Nishimori point, the zero-temperature fixed point for the ± J and Gaussian distributions of disorder, and the percolation point in the diluted case all belong to mutually distinct universality classes. (3) The paramagnetic phase is re-entrant below the Nishimori point, i.e. the zero-temperature fixed points are not located exactly below the Nishimori point, either for the ± J distribution, or for the Gaussian distribution.
Evaluation of lightning current and ground reflection factor using measured electromagnetic field

In this paper, an inverse procedure algorithm is proposed to evaluate lightning return stroke current wave shapes at different heights along a lightning channel, as well as the ground reflection factor using measured electromagnetic fields at an observation point while the current model can be set for different models based on the general form of the engineering current models. In order to validate the proposed method, a set of measured electromagnetic fields are used as the input parameters for the proposed algorithm. Likewise, the evaluated channel base current is compared to the corresponding measured current and also the simulated fields at another observation point (based on the evaluated current) are compared to the corresponding measured fields and the results are discussed accordingly. The results show that the evaluated current and fields based on the proposed method are in good agreement with respect to the corresponding measured values.
A Modified Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Multidimensional Knapsack Problem

paper, a modified hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (MHPSO) algorithm that combines some principles of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Crossover operation of the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is presented. Our contribution has a twofold aim: first, is to propose a new hybrid PSO algorithm. Second is to prove the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in dealing with NP-hard and combinatorial optimization problems. In order to test and validate our algorithm, we have used it for solving the Multidimensional Knapsack Problem (MKP) which is a NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. The experimental results based on some benchmarks from OR-Library, show a good and promise solution quality obtained by the proposed algorithm.
Predicting inquiry and purchase intention of users on automobile websites

With the rapid development of Internet and Internet penetration into the automobile industry, more and more people search and browse automobile related information on the Internet before making a decision of purchase. This has formed a fertile ground to study automobile purchase intention by using user online activity data. In this paper, we focus on the task of predicting whether a user has the intention to purchase a particular make of automobile mainly based on the Deep Packet Inspection data from ISPs. We extracted 3-month user activity data from DPI data and collected automobile related information by the Web crawler on 5 leading automobile websites in China. The prediction problem was formulated as a typical classification problem in practice. And we paid a great deal of attention to the feature engineering. We proposed a feature engineering method by combining vector representation for user visiting sequence and statistical features related to users as well as automobiles. We trained various classification models with the combined features by traditional statistical methods and our method. The experimental results show that the features generated by our method perform better than the features only by statistical methods.
Implicit Messages Regarding Unhealthy Foodstuffs in Chinese Television Advertisements: Increasing the Risk of Obesity

Previous studies indicated that television (TV) advertising is associated with higher rates of obesity. The rate of obesity and overweight continues to rise in mainland China, bringing into question whether TV advertising to young audiences might be partly to blame. This study investigated messaging delivered through TV advertisements regarding healthy and unhealthy foodstuffs. A total of 42 major food brands and 480 advertisements were analysed for content in this study. The results showed that the majority of TV spots advertised products with poor nutritional content and had a potential to mislead audiences concerning products’ actual nutritional value. The tactics of repetition and appeals of premium offerings on food brands have a potential to influence the purchase intentions. Additional qualitative observation involving the social bond, social context and cultural factors pertaining to mood alterations were highlighted. The discussion addressed product attributes reflected by culture and the implicit messages of marketing claims may increase the risk of obesity. Thus, public health policymakers and researchers were encouraged to act urgently to evaluate the obesity risks of unhealthy food advertised in the media and to support healthy foods.
Cooperation of Multiple Chromatin Modifications Can Generate Unanticipated Stability of Epigenetic States in Arabidopsis[C][W][OA]

Make assurance double sure: Two chromatin modifications join forces to create a double lock and need to be removed simultaneously to reactivate a heritable epiallele originating from polyploid Arabidopsis. Epigenetic changes of gene expression can potentially be reversed by developmental programs, genetic manipulation, or pharmacological interference. However, a case of transcriptional gene silencing, originally observed in tetraploid Arabidopsis thaliana plants, created an epiallele resistant to many mutations or inhibitor treatments that activate many other suppressed genes. This raised the question about the molecular basis of this extreme stability. A combination of forward and reverse genetics and drug application provides evidence for an epigenetic double lock that is only alleviated upon the simultaneous removal of both DNA methylation and histone methylation. Therefore, the cooperation of multiple chromatin modifications can generate unanticipated stability of epigenetic states and contributes to heritable diversity of gene expression patterns.
Comparative study of lossless ECG signal compression techniques for wireless networks

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important physiological signal which represents electrical activity of Heart. ECG plays important role in diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. Telemedicine, telemonitoring requires huge amount of data to be stored for analysis and diagnosis purpose. Wireless sensor nodes consume lot of energy in data transmission. So Data Compression is needed for reducing storage space, transmission rate and effective utilization of bandwidth. This paper includes comparative study of various lossless compression methods for ECG signals in terms of compression ratio and execution time. It is found that minimum variance Huffman coding is best suited for ECG signal compression. Implementation is done in MATLAB software and database used is MITBIH Arrhythmia. 50% storage space can be saved with Minimum variance Huffman code with computational complexity of NLog2N. Bandwidth is effectively utilized and buffer design complexity is also reduced.
The Oncogenic Relevance of miR-17-92 Cluster and Its Paralogous miR-106b-25 and miR-106a-363 Clusters in Brain Tumors

The fundamental function of ribonucleic acids is to transfer genetic information from DNA to protein during translation process, however, this is not the only way connecting active RNA sequences with essential biological processes. Up until now, many RNA subclasses of different size, structure, and biological function were identified. Among them, there are non-coding single-stranded microRNAs (miRNAs). This subclass comprises RNAs of 19–25 nucleotides in length that modulate the activity of well-defined coding RNAs and play a crucial role in many physiological and pathological processes. miRNA genes are located both in exons, introns, and also within non-translated regions. Several miRNAs that are transcribed from the adjacent miRNA genes are called cluster. One of the largest ones is miR-17-92 cluster known as OncomiR-1 due to its strong link to oncogenesis. Six miRNAs from the OncomiR-1 have been shown to play important roles in various physiological cellular processes but also through inhibition of cell death in many cancer-relevant processes. Due to the origin and similarity of the sequence, miR-17-92 cluster and paralogs, miR-106b-25 and miR-106a-363 clusters were defined. Here we discuss the oncogenic function of those miRNA subgroups found in many types of cancers, including brain tumors.
Low-voltage, low-power, low switching error, class-AB switched current memory cell

A class-AB switched current memory cell is proposed. The circuit decomposes the input signal into two components by a low-voltage class-AB current splitter and subsequently processes the individual signals by two low switching error class-A memory cells. As a consequence, the output current obtained by recombination of the separated signals can be higher than the bias current and features low error. Simulation results confirm that, for a 0.75V supply, a 5MS/s sampling frequency, and a 500 kHz sinusoidal input current having 400% modulation index, the proposed memory provides less than −45 dB THD output current with very low switching error.
On robots imitating movements through motor noise prediction

Robot ego-noise, that is the noise produced while the robot is moving around, can carry useful information about the motor system and the embodiment of the agent. We present an experiment where a mobile robot acquires knowledge about its ego-noise. In particular, we adopt a learning strategy based on self-exploration behaviours and on an inverse model for encoding the mappings between ego-noise and the motor commands that produced it. A Convolutional Autoencoder is adopted for semi-supervised learning of auditory features. The inverse model maps both auditory features and perception of the robot speed to the motor commands that produced the ego-noise. We demonstrate how the trained models can be used for imitating movements from listening to the noise they produce.
A Frequency Domain Robust Model Validation Approach to Fault Detection and Isolation with Applications to Identification of Contaminants in Lubrication and Transformer oils

This paper addresses the problem of robust fault detection and isolation in dynamical systems using frequency domain data. Our main result shows that this problem can be reduced to a convex optimization problem that can be efficiently solved. The proposed method is put to test on a non-trivial, practically relevant problem: detecting the presence and estimating the composition of contaminants in lubrication and transformer oil
Histological and histomorphometric study using an ultrasonic crestal sinus grafting procedure. A multicenter case study

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a hydrodynamic ultrasonic driven transcrestal sinus grafting procedure (Intralift ®, Acteon Company, Bordeaux, France) and the use of a bovine high temperature sintered grafting material in sinus sites with less than 5 mm remaining bone height with no additional autogenous bone in order to create a sufficient recipient site for implants. Material and Methods 12 patients (16 sinus) in this multicenter case study were included. Using a crestal approach, bone under the sinus was prepared with ultrasonic tips until the Schneiderian membrane was reached. With a trumpet shaped instrument, the Schneiderian membrane was elevated. In the new created subantral space a high temperature sintered bovine grafting material was introduced (Bego Oss, BEGO Implant Systems GmbH & Co. KG, Bremen, Germany). After 6 months biopsies were taken with a trephine bur and histologies were generated following histomorphometric analysis. Results The results showed new vital bone in average of 33.4% ± 17.05%, and 43.6% ± 16.70 of bone substitute material. No signs of abnormal inflammation were observed. Conclusions This procedure (Intralift ®) allows, using a bovine material with no additional autogenous bone, new bone formation in the sinus in order to allow place implant subantraly. Key words:Bone regeneration, sinus, intralift ®, xenogenic bone graft
Integrating Software Engineering Key Practices into an OOP Massive In-Classroom Course: An Experience Report

Programming and software engineering courses in computer science curricula typically focus on both providing theoretical knowledge of programming languages and best-practices, and developing practical development skills. In a massive course – several hundred students – the teachers are not able to adequately attend to the practical part, therefore process automation and incentives to students must be used to drive the students in the right direction. Our goals was to design an automated programming assignment infrastructure capable of supporting massive courses. The infrastructure should encourage students to apply the key software engineering (SE) practices – automated testing, con guration management, and Integrated Development Environment (IDE) – and acquire the basic skills for using the corresponding tools. We selected a few widely adopted development tools used to support the key software engineering practices and mapped them to the basic activities in our exam assignment management process. This experience report describes the results from the past academic year. The infrastructure we built has been used for a full academic year and supported four exam sessions for a total of over a thousand students. The satisfaction level reported by the students is generally high.