Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carrots, Sticks, and Promises: A Conceptual Framework for the Management of Public Health and Social Issue Behaviors

The author presents a framework that considers public health and social issue behaviors and is based on self-interest, exchange, competition, free choice, and externalities. Targets that are prone, resistant, or unable to respond to the manager's goal behave on the basis of their motivation, opportunity, and ability and on a manager's use of the strategies and tactics inherent in education, marketing, and law.
Viral fusion protein transmembrane domain adopts β-strand structure to facilitate membrane topological changes for virus–cell fusion

Significance Enveloped viruses enter cells by fusing their lipid envelope with the cell membrane. The transmembrane domain (TMD) of viral fusion proteins is traditionally envisioned as a passive α-helical membrane anchor during the protein-mediated membrane fusion. Using solid-state NMR, we show that a parainfluenza virus fusion protein TMD exhibits lipid-dependent conformations. α-Helical structure dominates in phosphocholine and phosphoglycerol membranes, whereas β-strand conformation dominates in phosphoethanolamine membranes. Importantly, the β-strand–rich conformation quantitatively transforms the 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine (DOPE) membrane to a bicontinuous cubic phase, which is rich in the saddle-splay curvature in hemifusion intermediates and fusion pores. Thus, viral fusion protein TMDs play an active role in virus entry by mediating the necessary membrane topological changes. The C-terminal transmembrane domain (TMD) of viral fusion proteins such as HIV gp41 and influenza hemagglutinin (HA) is traditionally viewed as a passive α-helical anchor of the protein to the virus envelope during its merger with the cell membrane. The conformation, dynamics, and lipid interaction of these fusion protein TMDs have so far eluded high-resolution structure characterization because of their highly hydrophobic nature. Using magic-angle-spinning solid-state NMR spectroscopy, we show that the TMD of the parainfluenza virus 5 (PIV5) fusion protein adopts lipid-dependent conformations and interactions with the membrane and water. In phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylglycerol (PG) membranes, the TMD is predominantly α-helical, but in phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) membranes, the TMD changes significantly to the β-strand conformation. Measured order parameters indicate that the strand segments are immobilized and thus oligomerized. 31P NMR spectra and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) data show that this β-strand–rich conformation converts the PE membrane to a bicontinuous cubic phase, which is rich in negative Gaussian curvature that is characteristic of hemifusion intermediates and fusion pores. 1H-31P 2D correlation spectra and 2H spectra show that the PE membrane with or without the TMD is much less hydrated than PC and PG membranes, suggesting that the TMD works with the natural dehydration tendency of PE to facilitate membrane merger. These results suggest a new viral-fusion model in which the TMD actively promotes membrane topological changes during fusion using the β-strand as the fusogenic conformation.
Uncovering Success in Manipulation

Experiments were performed with the NASA Robonaut to determine if manifold learning could discern successful and unsuccessful teleoperation trials in an unsupervised manner. Repeated teleoperation of drill-mating and chisel-pickup tasks were performed by a skilled teleoperator. Spatio-temporal Isomap (STI) was used to embed data from the robot’s sensory-motor state-space (SMSS) to uncover underlying structure and separability between successful and unsuccessful trials. We present results from embedding SMSS data from repeated teleoperation performances, visualized in 3 dimensions, where success and unsuccessful trials are discerned. Our results are further evaluated by out-of-sample projection and comparison with Support Vector Machines for classifying the success of new teleoperation trials.
Current-source a-Si:H thin-film transistor circuit for active-matrix organic light-emitting displays

In this letter, we describe a four thin-film-transistor (TFT) circuit based on hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) technology. This circuit can provide a constant output current level and can be automatically adjusted for TFT threshold voltage variations. The experimental results indicated that, for TFT threshold voltage shift as large as /spl sim/3 V, the output current variations can be less than 1 and 5% for high (/spl ges/0.5 /spl mu/A) and low (/spl les/0.1 /spl mu/A) current levels, respectively. This circuit can potentially be used for the active-matrix organic light-emitting displays (AM-OLEDs).
Cultural variation in elite athletes: does elite cognitive-perceptual skill always converge?

Anthropologists have not participated extensively in the cognitive science synthesis for a host of reasons, including internal conflicts in the discipline and profound reservations about the ways that cultural differences have been modeled in psychology, neuroscience, and other contributors to cognitive science. This paper proposes a skills-based model for culture that overcomes some of the problems inherent in the treatment of culture as shared information. Athletes offer excellent cases studies for how skill acquisition, like enculturation, affects the human nervous system. In addition, cultural differences in playing styles of the same sport, such as distinctive ways of playing rugby, demonstrate how varying solution strategies to similar athletic problems produce distinctive skill profiles.
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF INDUSTRIAL ETHERNET NETWORKS BY MEANS OF TIMED MODEL-CHECKING

Ethernet networks are promising for the harmonization of the communication technologies in manufacturing automation but they have not been specifically intended for industrial control applications. Investigations have thus become necessary to evaluate their performance. Most analysis approaches use probabilistic models to validate the system's behavior. However, if the deterministic behavior of a system needs to be ensured exhaustively, formal verification techniques, like model-checking are more appropriate. Unfortunately the state-space explosion problem constitutes a serious obstacle. Considering a real-time Ethernet network as a case-study, this paper describes sophisticated modeling-techniques, which help to alleviate the state-space explosion, for the timed model-checker Uppaal.
A Low Cost Antialiased Space Filled Voxelization Of Polygonal Objects

In a virtual sculpting environment, we manipulate objects as a set of volume elements (voxels). In order to start the sculpture process from a polygonal object, we have to discretize this object as a set of voxels. This step is called voxelization. Several voxelization methods have already been proposed, but none matches all of our criteria. In this paper, we propose a practical approach that handles these criteria, based on an optimized ray casting. The method provides a voxelization of the inner space of a polygonal object, and not only of its surface. It is designed to work with closed objects which may contain holes or tunnels. Even if our goal is not real time conversion, it is fast enough to provide voxelization of objects made of several thousands of triangles within few seconds. As voxelization is a 3D sampling process, it entails aliasing problems. Our method allows a reduction of aliasing by using a low cost oversampling in order to compute grey scale values for the voxels. Moreover our method has a very low cost in memory and allows unlimited voxelization size (but by disk size), even for low memory computers. Furthermore, the method can be used on a personal computer without specific graphics hardware.
3D Mesh Compression

3D meshes are commonly used to represent virtual surface and volumes. However, their raw data representations take a large amount of space. Hence, 3D mesh compression has been an active research topic since the mid 1990s. In 2005, two very good review articles describing the pioneering works were published. Yet, new technologies have emerged since then. In this article, we summarize the early works and put the focus on these novel approaches. We classify and describe the algorithms, evaluate their performance, and provide synthetic comparisons. We also outline the emerging trends for future research.
Text Independent Speaker Verification Based on Mixing ICA Overcomplete Basis Functions

Overcomplete representation of the ICA basis functions is an efficient way to extract the statistical features of signals. By pre-assigned the probability density of the basis coefficients to ensure some statistical characteristic, such as sparseness, we can flexible extract the inner structure of signals. From the point of signal, different ICA basis functions can efficiently represent the local feature information of the signal in different time duration. From the point of the physical feature of speaker, the formants and the changing of formants information represents the physical features and articulation habits of the speaker. In this paper, the ICA overcomplete representation is used to capture the basis functions of the speech signal and the acoustical basis functions of formants, and to build the mixing overcomplete basis functions as the feature information of the speaker. Simulation results based on the proposed approach shows well.
Finding dependencies between frequencies with the kernel cross-spectral density

Cross-spectral density (CSD), is widely used to find linear dependency between two real or complex valued time series. We define a non-linear extension of this measure by mapping the time series into two Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces. The dependency is quantified by the Hilbert Schmidt norm of a cross-spectral density operator between these two spaces. We prove that, by choosing a characteristic kernel for the mapping, this quantity detects any pairwise dependency between the time series. Then we provide a fast estimator for the Hilbert-Schmidt norm based on the Fast Fourier Transform. We demonstrate the interest of this approach to quantify non-linear dependencies between frequency bands of simulated signals and intra-cortical neural recordings.
Using Coplink to Analyze Criminal-Justice Data

The paper discusses the Coplink system. The system applies a concept space-a statistics-based, algorithmic technique that identifies relationships between suspects, victims, and other pertinent data-to accelerate criminal investigations and enhance law enforcement efforts. The Coplink concept space application, which began as a research project, has evolved into a real-time system being used in everyday police work. Coplink CS has been successfully deployed at the Tucson Police Department, where crime analysts, officers, detectives, and sergeants from 16 departmental units use the technology voluntarily as part of their daily investigative routine.
A framework for automated SLAs management in service-oriented environments

To meet their business goals, organizations are increasingly demanding services that can meet their functional and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we propose a framework for service provisioning, which relies on brokered Service Level agreements (SLAs) between service consumers and service providers. The framework aims at providing support for automated SLA negotiation and management. The Service Broker of the framework carries out SLA negotiation, on behalf of service consumers, with selected service providers in multi-rounds of negotiations until an agreement or a timeout is reached. In each round, multiple SLA parameters are negotiated and both parties try to maximize their global utility functions. SLA compliance monitoring relies on the monitoring infrastructure, which provides support for independent monitoring of services by third party measurement services.
Multi-authority attribute-based encryption with honest-but-curious central authority

An attribute-based encryption scheme capable of handling multiple authorities was recently proposed by Chase. The scheme is built upon a single-authority attribute-based encryption scheme presented earlier by Sahai and Waters. Chase's construction uses a trusted central authority that is inherently capable of decrypting arbitrary ciphertexts created within the system. We present a multi-authority attribute-based encryption scheme in which only the set of recipients defined by the encrypting party can decrypt a corresponding ciphertext. The central authority is viewed as ‘honest-but-curious’: on the one hand, it honestly follows the protocol, and on the other hand, it is curious to decrypt arbitrary ciphertexts thus violating the intent of the encrypting party. The proposed scheme, which like its predecessors relies on the Bilinear Diffie–Hellman assumption, has a complexity comparable to that of Chase's scheme. We prove that our scheme is secure in the selective ID model and can tolerate an honest-but-curious central authority.
The effect of Echinacea purpurea and Sambucus nigra L. on H9N2 avian influenza virus in infected chicken embryo.

________________________________________________________________________________________ KARIMI, S. , A. MOHAMMADI, H. DADRAS: The effect of Echinacea purpurea and Sambucus nigra L. on H9N2 avian infl uenza virus in infected chicken embryo. Vet. arhiv 84, 153-165, 2014. ABSTRACT Early studies have revealed some Echinacea and elderberry preparations possess signifi cant antiviral effect against human infl uenza viruses subtypes H1, H2, H3, highly pathogenic H5 and H7, and human infl uenza B in cell culture assay. We investigated the anti-viral effect of ethanol extract of Echinacea purpurea (Echinaforce®) and aqueous extract of Sambucus nigra L. (black elderberry; Sambucol®) in comparison to amantadine on a titer of H9N2 avian infl uenza virus in the allantoic fl uid of infected chicken embryo using hemagglutination (HA) and quantitative Real Time/Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT/PCR) tests. The study was performed in two steps. First, the neutralization index (NI) based on a standard embryo infective dose 50 (EID50) method was used to evaluate the effi cacy of the extracts/amantadine. Serial dilution of the virus was treated with a steady amount of the diluted extracts prior to inoculation of the embryonated eggs. The inoculated eggs then were incubated for 48 hours at 37 ̊C. In the next step, an equivalent of 500 EID50 of the virus was treated with a serial dilution of the extracts before inoculation. The titer of the virus in the allantoic fl uid was evaluated and quantifi ed using HA and qRT/PCR tests. The results confi rmed the signifi cant virucidal effects of both extracts against the virus. There was also a direct correlation between the results of the HA and qRT/PCR tests in the second step. In conclusion, the results confi rm the considerable virucidal effect of both extracts against the H9N2 avian infl uenza virus.
Low-power CMOS transceivers with on-chip antennas for short-range radio-frequency communication

The benefit of an on-chip antenna is the possibility for smaller size and fewer external components. If an on-chip antenna is combined with power scavenging circuits to eliminate the external battery, it is possible to achieve true fully integrated transceivers. However, there are many challenges to overcome and compromises to be made. The use of an on-chip antenna will typically result in lower communication range, and the impedance of such antenna may not be as convenient for interfacing. Similarly, the choice of operating frequency involves a tradeoff between antenna efficiency and power consumption in the active circuitry. In order to operate with minimum power to allow for the possibility of using scavenged power, it is possible for circuitry to be shut down when it is inactive; however, this requires more careful consideration of synchronization circuits. These are some of the issues that will be discussed in the context of several examples including an RF transceiver designed for 5.2 GHz operation and intended for short range communication with biomedical sensors.
Financial integration and its implication for economic union in Asia

This paper focuses on the savings-investment criterion as a way of measuring international capital mobility. The study uses data from 11 countries having different stages of financial and economic development. The results suggest that savings and investment are cointegrated. The saving retention coefficient is low suggesting that Asian countries have already satisfied one of the criteria of the optimum currency area.
The Cultivable Surface Microbiota of the Brown Alga Ascophyllum nodosum is Enriched in Macroalgal-Polysaccharide-Degrading Bacteria

Bacteria degrading algal polysaccharides are key players in the global carbon cycle and in algal biomass recycling. Yet the water column, which has been studied largely by metagenomic approaches, is poor in such bacteria and their algal-polysaccharide-degrading enzymes. Even more surprisingly, the few published studies on seaweed-associated microbiomes have revealed low abundances of such bacteria and their specific enzymes. However, as macroalgal cell-wall polysaccharides do not accumulate in nature, these bacteria and their unique polysaccharidases must not be that uncommon. We, therefore, looked at the polysaccharide-degrading activity of the cultivable bacterial subpopulation associated with Ascophyllum nodosum. From A. nodosum triplicates, 324 bacteria were isolated and taxonomically identified. Out of these isolates, 78 (~25%) were found to act on at least one tested algal polysaccharide (agar, ι- or κ-carrageenan, or alginate). The isolates “active” on algal-polysaccharides belong to 11 genera: Cellulophaga, Maribacter, Algibacter, and Zobellia in the class Flavobacteriia (41) and Pseudoalteromonas, Vibrio, Cobetia, Shewanella, Colwellia, Marinomonas, and Paraglaceciola in the class Gammaproteobacteria (37). A major part represents likely novel species. Different proportions of bacterial phyla and classes were observed between the isolated cultivable subpopulation and the total microbial community previously identified on other brown algae. Here, Bacteroidetes and Gammaproteobacteria were found to be the most abundant and some phyla (as Planctomycetes and Cyanobacteria) frequently encountered on brown algae weren't identified. At a lower taxonomic level, twelve genera, well-known to be associated with algae (with the exception for Colwellia), were consistently found on all three A. nosodum samples. Even more interesting, 9 of the 11 above mentioned genera containing polysaccharolytic isolates were predominant in this common core. The cultivable fraction of the bacterial community associated with A. nodosum is, thus, significantly enriched in macroalgal-polysaccharide-degrading bacteria and these bacteria seem important for the seaweed holobiont even though they are under-represented in alga-associated microbiome studies.
Benefits and requirements of flexible-grid ROADMs and networks [invited]

Due to claims of enhanced spectral efficiency and the ability to accommodate future modulation formats, flexible-grid networks in which the center wavelength and passband width of the optical channels can be set on the fly have attracted wide attention. A flexible-grid reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) requires more than a flexible-grid wavelength-selective switch, and a flexible-grid network requires far more than flexible-grid ROADMs. We discuss the technologies required to enable flexible-grid networks. We examine the potential benefits of using flexible-grid ROADMs and compare this approach with alternative strategies.
Peer-to-peer fault tolerance framework for a grid computing system

A grid computing system provides high performance computing power, large storage space, or high communication bandwidth, to suit user requirements. The major concern in a grid computing system is the reliability, as a single node failure fails all running applications on the node. We proposed a fault-tolerance framework to improve the reliablity of a grid system. The proposed framework is novel in the sense that it uses the peer-to-peer replication model instead of a traditional client-server replication model, which reduces the replication time overhead and provides better degree of resiliency. Essentially, the checkpoint data file is split into chunks and distributed among a number of backup peers in parallel such that each chunk is replicated at two backup nodes. Moreover, the survival of the backup with the backup data redundancy in case of any one of the backup nodes in the group fails is also maintained. Detailed algorithms of modules of the complete framework are provided including group-forming, fault detection, replication, and fault recovery. Comparative performance evaluation of the replication time between the proposed peer-to-peer model and the client-server model has been conducted by using simulation over a wide range of chunk sizes and checkpoint data size. Our results show that, for a large enough chunk size, the replication time of the peer-to-peer replication model is reduced by half compared to that of the client-server model.
A Study of the Level of Integration of Common Core State Standards in West Virginia Teacher Preparation Programs

xi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Problem Statement 3 Research Questions 4 Operational Definitions 5 Significance of the Study 7 Delimitations of the Study 8 Organization of the Study 8 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature 9 English Language Arts Common Core State Standards 11 Mathematics Common Core State Standards 13 P-­12 Integration 15 Higher Education Integration 19 Teacher Preparation Program Admission Standards 20 Teacher Preparation Program Coursework Requirements 20 Teacher Preparation Program Teacher Candidate Assessments 24 Teacher Preparation Program Field Experiences 26 Teacher Preparation Program Technology Needs 27
Bacterial diversity in saline-alkali ponds rearing common carp (Cyprinus carpio) as revealed by 16S rRNA gene sequences

The bacterial diversity in saline-alkali ponds rearing common carp was investigated using the 16S rRNA gene clone library technique. Phylogenetic analysis of the most common and dominant sequences recovered indicated that these sequences fell into the following major lineages, including Proteobacteria (α-, β-, γ-), Actinobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Planctomycetes, Fibrobacteres, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, and unclassified bacteria. Sequence analysis showed that the bacterial diversity was abundant, and the sequences belonging to β-Proteobacteria, α-Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were predominant. The most sequences in the saline-alkali rearing ponds exhibited low similarity with known bacterial 16S rRNA genes, suggesting that these sequences may represent novel bacteria. In addition, the majority of our sequences were most closely affiliated with sequences retrieved from inland waters of China. These results suggest that the saline-alkali ponds rearing common carp are specific ecologic niches and the distribution of the bacteria may be influenced by geographical factors. This study reports the bacterial diversity in saline-alkali ponds rearing common carp by the culture-independent technique for the first time; therefore, it provides important information for understanding the microbial ecology in saline-alkali rearing ponds and managing the microbial community composition to promote and maintain the health of aquaculture environments.