Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A framework for predicting the non-visual effects of daylight – Part I: photobiology- based model

This paper investigates the formulation of a modelling framework for the non-visual effects of daylight, such as entrainment of the circadian system and maintenance of alertness. The body of empirical data from photobiology studies is now sufficient to start developing preliminary non-visual lighting evaluation methods for lighting design. Eventually, these non-visual effects have the potential to become a relevant quantity to consider when assessing the overall daylighting performance of a space. This paper describes the assumptions and general approach that were developed to propose a modeling framework for occupant exposure to non-visual effects of light, and presents a novel means of visualising the ‘circadian potential’ of a point in space. The proposed approach uses current outcomes of photobiology research to define – at this point static – threshold values for illumination in terms of spectrum, intensity and timing of light at the human eye. These values are then translated into goals for lighting simulation, based on vertical illuminance at the eye, that – ultimately – could become goals for building design. A new climate-based simulation model has been developed to apply these concepts to a residential environment. This will be described in Part 2 of this paper.
Explaining universal tendencies and language particulars in analogical change

In other verbs, singular∼plural vowel alternations were not lost, but were simply rearranged. For example, in strong verbs like helfen ‘help’, nemen ‘take’, and geben ‘give’ (classes IIIb, IV and V, respectively) the 1sg formwas rebuilt tomatch the plural, as in (2a) (ibid., §242). The result was a new alternation within the present tense paradigm, parallel to a separate pattern of alternation known as umlaut, seen in the verb graben ‘dig’ (2b):
Mesoscale fronts as foraging habitats: composite front mapping reveals oceanographic drivers of habitat use for a pelagic seabird

The oceanographic drivers of marine vertebrate habitat use are poorly understood yet fundamental to our knowledge of marine ecosystem functioning. Here, we use composite front mapping and high-resolution GPS tracking to determine the significance of mesoscale oceanographic fronts as physical drivers of foraging habitat selection in northern gannets Morus bassanus. We tracked 66 breeding gannets from a Celtic Sea colony over 2 years and used residence time to identify area-restricted search (ARS) behaviour. Composite front maps identified thermal and chlorophyll-a mesoscale fronts at two different temporal scales—(i) contemporaneous fronts and (ii) seasonally persistent frontal zones. Using generalized additive models (GAMs), with generalized estimating equations (GEE-GAMs) to account for serial autocorrelation in tracking data, we found that gannets do not adjust their behaviour in response to contemporaneous fronts. However, ARS was more likely to occur within spatially predictable, seasonally persistent frontal zones (GAMs). Our results provide proof of concept that composite front mapping is a useful tool for studying the influence of oceanographic features on animal movements. Moreover, we highlight that frontal persistence is a crucial element of the formation of pelagic foraging hotspots for mobile marine vertebrates.
Multi-wavelength study of X-ray luminous clusters at z ~ 0.3 - I. Star-formation activity of cluster galaxies

Context. The current paradigm of cosmic formation and evolution of galaxy clusters foresees growth mostly through merging. Galaxies in the infall region or in the core of a cluster undergo transformations owing to different environmental stresses. Aims. For two X-ray luminous clusters at redshift z ∼ 0.3 with opposite X-ray morphologies (i.e., dynamical states), RXCJ 0014.33022 and RXCJ 2308.3-0211, we assess differences in galaxy populations as a function of cluster topography. This is a pilot study for the joint X-ray and optical analysis of the REFLEX-DXL cluster sample. Methods. Cluster large-scale structure and substructure are determined from the combined photometry in the B, V ,a ndR bands, and from multi-object optical spectroscopy at low resolution. Photometric redshifts and broad-band optical colours are determined. A spectral index analysis is performed, based on the [O II](λλ3726, 3728 A) and Hδ(λ4102 A) features, and the D4000 break, which are available for more than 100 member galaxies per cluster. Additional far-ultraviolet (FUV) photometry is retrieved from the GALEX archive. Combination of spectral indices and FUV-optical colours provides a picture of the star-formation history in galaxies. Results. In spite of the potential presence of a small fraction of galaxies with obscured star-formation activity, the average starformation history of cluster members is found to depend on clustercentric distance and, more interestingly, on cluster substructure. The core regions of both clusters mainly host galaxies dominated by old, passively evolving stellar populations, which define the same red sequence in a (B −R) colour−R magnitude diagram. However, a sharp increase in star-formation activity is found along two clearly evident filamentary structures of the merging cluster RXCJ 0014.3-3022, out to its virial radius and beyond. It is produced
Macrophage NADPH Oxidase Flavocytochrome b Localizes to the Plasma Membrane and Rab11-Positive Recycling Endosomes1

Flavocytochrome b558, the catalytic core of the phagocytic NADPH oxidase, mediates the transfer of electrons from NADPH to molecular oxygen to generate superoxide for host defense. Flavocytochrome b is a membrane heterodimer consisting of a large subunit gp91phox (NOX2) and a smaller subunit, p22phox. Although in neutrophils flavocytochrome b has been shown to localize to the plasma membrane and specific granules, little is known about its distribution in macrophages. Using immunofluorescent staining and live cell imaging of fluorescently tagged gp91phox and p22phox, we demonstrate in a Chinese hamster ovary cell model system and in RAW 264.7 and primary murine bone marrow-derived macrophages that flavocytochrome b is found in the Rab11-positive recycling endocytic compartment, as well as in Rab5-positive early endosomes and plasma membrane. Additionally, we show that unassembled p22phox and gp91phox subunits localize to the endoplasmic reticulum, which redistribute to the cell surface and endosomal compartments following heterodimer formation. These studies show for the first time that flavocytochrome b localizes to intracellular compartments in macrophages that recycle to the plasma membrane, which may act as a reservoir to deliver flavocytochrome b to the cell surface and phagosome membranes.
Endocrine Disruptors: Present Issues, Future Directions

A variety of natural products and synthetic chemicals, known collectively as endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), mimic or interfere with the mechanisms that govern vertebrate reproductive development and function. At present, research has focused on (i) the morphological and functional consequences of EDCs; (ii) identifying and determining the relative potencies of synthetic and steroidal compounds that have endocrine-disrupting effects; (iii) the mechanism of action of EDCs at the molecular level; and (iv) the recognition that in "real life," contamination usually reflects mixtures of EDCs. Future research must examine (i) the interactive nature of EDCs, particularly whether the threshold concept as developed in traditional toxicological research applies to these chemicals; (ii) when and how EDCs act at the physiological level, particularly how they may organize the neural substrates of reproductive physiology and behavior; (iii) the various effects these compounds have on different species, individuals, and even tissues; and (iv) how adaptations may evolve in natural populations with continued exposure to EDCs. Several predictions are offered that reflect these new perspectives. Specifically, (i) the threshold assumption will be found not to apply to EDCs because they mimic the actions of endogenous molecules (e.g., estrogen) critical to development; hence, the threshold is automatically exceeded with exposure. (ii) Behavior can compound and magnify the effects of EDCs over successive generations; that is, bioaccumulated EDCs inherited from the mother not only influence the morphological and physiological development of the offspring but also the offsprings' reproductive behavior as adults. This adult behavior, in turn, can have further consequences on the sexual development of their own young. (iii) The sensitivity of a species or an individual to a compound is related to species (individual)-typical concentrations of circulating gonadal steroid hormones. Related to this is the recent finding that alternate forms of the putative receptors are differentially distributed, thereby contributing to the different effects that have been observed. (iv) Except in extraordinary situations, populations often continue to exist in contaminated sites. One possible explanation for this observation that needs to be considered is that animals can rapidly adapt to the nature and level of contamination in their environment. It is unlikely that successive generations coincidentally become insensitive to gonadal steroid hormones fundamentally important as biological regulators of development and reproduction. Rather, adaptive alterations in the genes that encode steroid receptors may occur with chronic exposure to EDCs, allowing the sex hormone receptor to discriminate natural steroids from EDCs.
Relative amplitude based features for emotion detection from speech

Emotion detection from speech has been realized to provide benefits for more natural human-machine interaction. To detect the emotion from speech signal, an abundantly long continuous speech segment is needed. This paper proposed a navel approach for emotion detection based on relative amplitude of speech signal. Relative amplitude reduces bias of glottis mutation of speech wave amplitude and obtains a normalized measure without concern of information from being distinct in feature. RBFC approach is used for segmentation of speech signal and the results are compared with other voiced segmentation approaches. Berlin emotional speech database is used for experimental purpose. The results show that accurate emotion recognition is obtained with optimum length of emotional speech. The RBFC features generate more accurate results than the other methods.
Serodiagnostic contributions of antibody titers against mycobacterial lipid antigens in Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease.

BACKGROUND Although the incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis is decreasing, the number of immunocompetent patients with Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) pulmonary disease is steadily increasing. Therefore, albeit not contagious, MAC pulmonary disease needs to be diagnosed rapidly and accurately. We examined the serodiagnostic contributions of serum immunoglobulin G antibody titers against the species-specific and -common mycobacterial lipid antigens in the diagnosis of MAC pulmonary disease. METHODS Serum samples were obtained from 65 patients with MAC pulmonary disease, 15 patients with suspected MAC disease, 25 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis, 10 patients with Mycobacterium kansasii disease, and 100 healthy volunteers (control subjects). We measured the serum immunoglobulin G antibody titers against trehalose monomycolate (TMM-M) and apolar-glycopeptidolipid (GPL), lipid antigens extracted from MAC. RESULTS In patients with MAC pulmonary disease, the antibody titers against TMM-M and apolar-GPL were significantly higher than those in the other patient groups or in the control subjects. By receiver operator characteristic curve analysis, an optical density of 0.27, corresponding to the optimal cutoff antibody titer against TMM-M, was associated with a sensitivity of 89.2% and a specificity of 97.0%, and an optical density of 0.33, corresponding to the optimal cutoff antibody titer against apolar-GPL, was associated with a sensitivity of 89.2% and a specificity of 94.0%. CONCLUSIONS Measurements of antibody titers against TMM-M and apolar-GPL would be useful in the diagnosis of MAC pulmonary disease and in the differential diagnosis of mycobacterial pulmonary disease.
Higher Dosage of the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Mutant Allele in Lung Adenocarcinoma Correlates with Younger Age, Stage IV at Presentation, and Poorer Survival

Introduction: The clinical significance of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutant allele specific imbalance (MASI) in lung adenocarcinomas is unknown. Methods: EGFR MASI was characterized by sequencing electropherograms (SEs) and EGFR fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in 96 prospectively tested lung adenocarcinoma patients with a median follow-up of 20 months (all cases were EGFR mutation-positive). Results: In 25 cases, the mutant allele (MA) peak was higher than the wild-type allele (WA) peak, indicating the presence of EGFR MASI (25/96, 26%). The adenocarcinomas with EGFR MASI had a 4.4-fold higher average EGFR/Chromosome Enumeration Probe 7 ratio than carcinomas without MASI (7.9 ± 3.8 versus 1.8 ± 0.6, p = 0.01). A high degree of correlation between the MA/WA ratio (SE) and the EGFR/CEP7 ratio (FISH) (&rgr; = 0.757, p = 0.003) validated the quantitative nature of SE. Amplification was the most common mechanism of EGFR MASI (13/21, 62%). EGFR MASI was more commonly associated with exon 19 mutations than with exon 21 mutations (19/53, 36%, versus 6/43, 14%, p = 0.015, odds ratio [OR] = 3.4) and in patients younger than 65 years (17/46, 37%, versus 8/50, 16%, p = 0.019, OR = 3.1). Patients with EGFR MASI presented with stage IV disease more frequently (p = 0.01, OR = 3.5) and had a poorer disease-specific survival rate (p = 0.021, 54% versus 83% at 31 months). Conclusions: EGFR MASI in lung adenocarcinomas can be assessed based on SE and can be used to identify younger patients with more aggressive disease.
Contextual and psychosocial influences on antiretroviral therapy adherence in rural Zimbabwe: towards a systematic framework for programme planners

Great progress has been made in achieving universal access to antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, for successful viral suppression, patients must adhere to rigid and complex treatment regimens. With three quarters of antiretroviral (ARV) users in Africa adhering successfully, African countries have achieved extraordinary levels of adherence given the levels of poverty in which many ARV users live. Nevertheless, one quarter of ARV users still struggle to adhere and run the risk of experiencing viral replication, clinical progression or even drug resistance. Much has been written about ART adherence, but little has been done to systematically categorise the spectrum of factors that influence ART. In this paper, we use a Zimbabwean case study to develop a framework for ART programme planners and implementers seeking to identify and tackle social obstacles to adherence. We draw on interviews and group discussions with 25 nurses and 53 adult ARV users, which we analysed through a three-tiered thematic approach, allowing us to categorise our findings into broader dimensions that can transcend our case study and be applied elsewhere. Our findings suggest that ART adherence is influenced by the material, symbolic, relational and institutional contexts in which ARV users live as well as the patient's motivation, participation and psychosocial responses to ART. This framework allows us to examine both the social context in which ART programmes are located and the psychosocial factors that influence patient behaviours. We offer this framework as a resource for ART programme planners and implementers seeking to improve ART compliance in resource-poor settings. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ION CHANNELS , RECEPTORS AND TRANSPORTERS G protein modulation of K 2 P potassium channel TASK-2 A role of basic residues in the C terminus domain

TASK-2 (K2P5.1) is a background K + channel opened by extraor intracellular alkalinisation that plays a role in renal bicarbonate handling, central chemoreception and cell volume regulation. Here, we present results that suggest that TASK-2 is also modulated by Gβγ subunits of heterotrimeric G protein. TASK-2 was strongly inhibited when GTP-γ-S was used as a replacement for intracellular GTP. No inhibition was present using GDP-β-S instead. Purified Gβγ introduced intracellularly also inhibited TASK-2 independently of whether GTP or GDP-β-S was present. The effects of GTP-γ-S and Gβγ subunits were abolished by neutralisation of TASK-2 C terminus double lysine residues K257–K258 or K296–K297. Use of membrane yeast two hybrid (MYTH) experiments and immunoprecipitation assays using tagged proteins gave evidence for a physical interaction between Gβ1 and Gβ2 subunits and TASK-2, in agreement with expression of these subunits in proximal tubule cells. Co-immunoprecipitation was impeded by mutating C terminus K257–K258 (but not K296–K297) to alanines. Gating by extraor intracellular pH was unaltered in GTP-γ-S-insensitive TASK-2-K257AK258A mutant. Shrinking TASK-2-expressing cells in hypertonic solution decreased the current to 36 % of its initial value. The same manoeuvre had a significantly diminished effect on TASK-2-K257A-K258Aor TASK-2-K296-K297-expressing cells, or in cells containing intracellular GDP-β-S. Our data are compatible with the concept that TASK-2 channels are modulated by Gβγ subunits of heterotrimeric G protein. We propose that this modulation is a novel way in which TASK-2 can be tuned to its physiological functions.
Energy-aware routing scheme in industrial wireless sensor networks for Internet of Things systems

This paper proposes an energy-aware routing scheme to enhance the performance of industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) for Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Because of a larger scale and a more complex deployment, to achieve minimal energy consumption for IoT systems is not a simple problem. Additionally, the current works of deploying IWSNs is not compatible to be applied directly into IoT systems. Thus, a hierarchical system framework is deployed in order to promote scalability for IoT elements. Moreover, to minimize energy consumption, the proposed scheme takes transmission distances and residual energy of nodes into account for selecting a relevant cluster head. Then, the data aggregated by cluster heads can be forwarded through the lowest energy consumption path to the sink. The simulation results indicate the potential to either decrease energy consumption and end-to-end delay or prolong network lifetime in IWSNs for IoT systems.
A new interpretation of invariants exploiting layers in OO designs

Although invariants have a long history, their meaning in OO designs is still under discussion. OO designs often include functionality that is used by different objects (shared functionality). We identify a problem with current interpretations of invariants in such designs. OO designs are often layered, where a layer uses functionality of a lower layer (in particular, shared functionality) but has little or no involvement with higher layers. As a result, higher layers can rely on lower layer invariants and lower layers do not rely on higher layer invariants. This is not reflected by current interpretations of invariants. We propose to make layers explicit in specifications and introduce a new interpretation of invariants that exploits these layers.
Joint Optimization of Segmentation and Color Clustering

Binary energy optimization is a popular approach for segmenting a color image into foreground/background regions. To model the appearance of the regions, color, a relatively high dimensional feature, should be handled effectively. A full color histogram is usually too sparse to be reliable. One approach is to explicitly reduce dimensionality by clustering or quantizing the color space. Another popular approach is to fit GMMs for soft implicit clustering of the color space. These approaches work well when the foreground/background are sufficiently distinct. In cases of more subtle difference in appearance, both approaches may reduce or even eliminate foreground/background distinction. This happens because either color clustering is performed completely independently from the segmentation process, as a preprocessing step (in clustering), or independently for the foreground and independently for the background (in GMM). We propose to make clustering an integral part of segmentation, by including a new clustering term in the energy function. Our energy function with a clustering term favours clusterings that make foreground/background appearance more distinct. Thus our energy function jointly optimizes over color clustering, foreground/background models, and segmentation. Exact optimization is not feasible, therefore we develop an approximate algorithm. We show the advantage of including the color clustering term into the energy function on camouflage images, as well as standard segmentation datasets.
Computing crossing number in linear time

We show that for every fixed k, there is a linear time algorithm that decides whether or not a given graph has crossing number at most k, and if this is the case, computes a drawing of the graph in the plane with at most k crossings. This answers the question posed by Grohe (STOC'01 and JCSS 2004). Our algorithm can be viewed as a generalization of the seminal result by Hopcroft and Tarjan lin1, which determines if a given graph is planar in linear time. Our algorithm can also be compared to the algorithms by Mohar (STOC'96 and Siam J. Discrete Math 2001), for testing the embeddability of an input graph in a fixed surface. For each surface s, Mohar describes an algorithm which yields either an embedding of G in s or a minor of G which is not embeddable in s and is minimal with this property. The same approach allows us to obtain linear time algorithms for the same question for a variety of other crossing numbers. We can also determine in linear time if an input graph can be made planar by the deletion of k edges (for fixed k).
Charliecloud: Unprivileged Containers for User-Defined Software Stacks in HPC

Supercomputing centers are seeing increasing demand for userdefined software stacks (UDSS), instead of or in addition to the stack provided by the center. These UDSS support user needs such as complex dependencies or build requirements, externally required configurations, portability, and consistency. The challenge for centers is to provide these services in a usable manner while minimizing the risks: security, support burden, missing functionality, and performance. We present Charliecloud, which uses the Linux user and mount namespaces to run industry-standard Docker containers with no privileged operations or daemons on center resources. Our simple approach avoids most security risks while maintaining access to the performance and functionality already on offer, doing so in just 800 lines of code. Charliecloud promises to bring an industry-standard UDSS user workflow to existing, minimally altered HPC resources. CCS CONCEPTS • Computer systems organization → Cloud computing; • Security and privacy → Operating systems security; • Software and its engineering → Process management;