Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mass Spectrometry-Based Comparative Sequence Analysis for the Genetic Monitoring of Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 Virus

The pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 virus (pH1N1) contains novel gene segments of zoonotic origin that lack virulence and antiviral resistance markers. We aimed to evaluate the applicability and accuracy of mass spectrometry-based comparative sequence analysis (MSCSA) to detect genetic mutations associated with increased virulence or antiviral resistance in pH1N1. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, routine surveillance specimens and clinical antiviral resistance monitoring specimens were analyzed. Routine surveillance specimens obtained from 70 patients with pH1N1 infection were evaluated for mutations associated with increased virulence (PB1-F2, PB2 and NS1 genes) or antiviral resistance (neuraminidase gene, NA) using MSCSA and Sanger sequencing. MSCSA and Sanger sequencing results revealed a high concordance (nucleotides >99%, SNPs ∼94%). Virulence or resistance markers were not detected in routine surveillance specimens: all identified SNPs encoded for silent mutations or non-relevant amino acid substitutions. In a second study population, the presence of H275Y oseltamivir resistant virus was identified by real-time PCR in 19 of 35 clinical antiviral resistance monitoring specimens obtained from 4 immunocompromised patients with ≥14 days prolonged pH1N1 excretion. MSCSA detected H275Y in 24% (4/19) of positive specimens and Sanger sequencing in 89% (17/19). MSCSA only detected H275Y when the mutation was dominant in the analyzed specimens. In conclusion, MSCSA may be used as a rapid screening tool during molecular surveillance of pH1N1. The low sensitivity for the detection of H275Y mutation in mixed viral populations suggests that MSCSA is not suitable for antiviral resistance monitoring in the clinical setting.
Motility and Chemotaxis of Filamentous Cells ofEscherichia coli

ABSTRACT Filamentous cells of Escherichia coli can be produced by treatment with the antibiotic cephalexin, which blocks cell division but allows cell growth. To explore the effect of cell size on chemotactic activity, we studied the motility and chemotaxis of filamentous cells. The filaments, up to 50 times the length of normalE. coli organisms, were motile and had flagella along their entire lengths. Despite their increased size, the motility and chemotaxis of filaments were very similar to those properties of normal-sized cells. Unstimulated filaments of chemotactically normal bacteria ran and stopped repeatedly (while normal-sized bacteria run and tumble repeatedly). Filaments responded to attractants by prolonged running (like normal-sized bacteria) and to repellents by prolonged stopping (unlike normal-sized bacteria, which tumble), until adaptation restored unstimulated behavior (as occurs with normal-sized cells). Chemotaxis mutants that always ran when they were normal sized always ran when they were filament sized, and those mutants that always tumbled when they were normal sized always stopped when they were filament sized. Chemoreceptors in filaments were localized to regions both at the poles and at intervals along the filament. We suggest that the location of the chemoreceptors enables the chemotactic responses observed in filaments. The implications of this work with regard to the cytoplasmic diffusion of chemotaxis components in normal-sized and filamentous E. coli are discussed.
The Role of Popular Culture in Preschool Children’s Emergent Writing/Composing: An Exploration of the Writing Process and Tensions Surrounding One Preschool Writing Center

Over the last several decades research has been conducted surrounding popular culture and children’s writing/composing. Much of this research focused on children in early elementary school classrooms. I discovered, when preparing for this project, that there was very little published research (written in English) surrounding preschool-aged children’s compositions (with or without the emphasis on popular culture), and what happens in the writing center. This study helps fill the gap in the research by documenting how preschool children in a mixed-age (ages three to five years) classroom, who attend a public school in an urban, Midwestern area, write/compose when given the chance to use materials that feature their favorite popular culture icons. It also provides increased understandings of the tensions and joys surrounding children’s writing and composing surrounding popular culture in the preschool classroom for both the teacher and the children. This basic qualitative study uses the tenets of action research and thematic analysis to analyze the data collected in the writing center (via observations and work samples) over the span of twelve thirty-minute sessions and the teacher-researcher’s reflexive journal. Five teacher interviews were conducted to help the teacher-researcher understand the teachers’ perceptions of their preschool writing centers. Additionally, preand post-test journaling samples were collected from two classrooms (one was the teacher-researcher’s classroom comprised of 18 children and the other, a control group in the same building comprised of 8 children). These provided evidence that the children in the intervention group demonstrated more growth than those in the control group. POPULAR CULTURE AND TENSIONS IN PRESCHOOL iii
Implementation of a spatial domain salient region based digital image watermarking scheme

Digital domain is today's most preferred area for data processing and transmission. In case of data augmentation or authorized replication, copyright protection has become an exigent challenge. Digital watermarking is a conventional procedure to serve this purpose. Here a spatial domain image watermarking scheme is developed through a pixel based saliency map where the inadequate nature of human visual system is utilized. The experimental results and a brief assessment with some existing frameworks confirm that this proposed scheme not only makes the information transparent into the cover object but also provides superior robustness and hiding capacity.
Développement d'un algorithme de cinématique d'interaction appliqué sur un bras robotique dans un contexte de coopération humain-robot

This paper presents an anticipative robot kinematic limitation avoidance algorithm for collaborative robots. The main objective is to improve the performance and the intuitiveness of physical human-robot interaction. Currently, in such interactions, the human user must focus on the task as well as on the robot configuration. Indeed, the user must pay a close attention to the robot in order to avoid limitations such as joint position limitations, singularities and collisions with the
Mastering Technologies in Design-Driven Innovation

OVERVIEW: Only a few companies have mastered the design-driven approach to innovation. This paper examines what it means to make design a central part of the business process, able to add value to products and create new markets. More specifically, it focuses on the interplay between the functional and semantic dimensions of a product. Case studies of two leading Italian companies in the furniture industry—Kartell and Luceplan—illustrate two principal interpretations of the role of technology in radical design-driven innovation: technology as an enabler of new product meanings for the customer, and the importance of supply networks that allow manufacturers to change product technologies quickly and experiment with new technologies.
Implicitation of Discourse Connectives in (Machine) Translation

Explicit discourse connectives in a source language text are not always translated to comparable words or phrases in the target language. The paper provides a corpus analysis and a method for semi-automatic detection of such cases. Results show that discourse connectives are not translated into comparable forms (or even any form at all), in up to 18% of human reference translations from English to French or German. In machine translation, this happens much less frequently (up to 8% only). Work in progress aims to capture this natural implicitation of discourse connectives in current statistical machine translation models.
A Shot Clustering Based Algorithm for Scene Segmentation

A scene segmentation method utilizing both visual features and motion features of video is presented in this paper. Not only the visual similarity but also the motion consistency of shots within a scene is considered in clustering shots into scenes. In addition, a method to merge the over-segmented scenes is presented also. And the experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
Binary sequences with merit factor greater than 6.34

The maximum known asymptotic merit factor for binary sequences has been stuck at a value of 6 since the 1980s. Several authors have suggested that this value cannot be improved. In this paper, we construct an infinite family of binary sequences whose asymptotic merit factor we conjecture to be greater than 6.34. We present what we believe to be compelling evidence in support of this conjecture. The numerical experimentation that led to this construction is a significant part of the story.
Enterobacteria‐mediated nitrogen fixation in natural populations of the fruit fly Ceratitis capitata

Nitrogen, although abundant in the atmosphere, is paradoxically a limited resource for multicellular organisms. In the Animalia, biological nitrogen fixation has solely been demonstrated in termites. We found that all individuals of field‐collected Mediterranean fruit flies (Ceratitis capitata) harbour large diazotrophic enterobacterial populations that express dinitrogen reductase in the gut. Moreover, nitrogen fixation was demonstrated in isolated guts and in live flies and may significantly contribute to the fly's nitrogen intake. The presence of similar bacterial consortia in additional insect orders suggests that nitrogen fixation occurs in vast pools of terrestrial insects. On such a large scale, this phenomenon may have a considerable impact on the nitrogen cycle.
How the Rdb � VMS Data Sharing System Became Fast

Recent versions of Rdb VMS have shown dramatic performance increases compared with earlier versions Performance enhancements have culminated in an improvement between Rdb VMS V and Rdb VMS V when executing on the same hardware This has vaulted Rdb VMS to an industry leadership position in TPS and to a very competitive position in peak TPS While code paths have been shortened the primary means of achieving this performance gain has been through reducing I O accesses and distributed locks This paper outlines how this was done
Dynamic Manipulation Inspired by the Handling of a Pizza Peel

This paper discusses dynamic manipulation inspired by the handling mechanism of a pizza chef. The chef handles a tool called ldquopizza peel,rdquo where a plate is attached at the tip of a bar, and he remotely manipulates a pizza on the plate. We found that he aggressively utilizes only two degrees of freedom (DOFs) from the remote handling location during manipulation: translation along the bar and rotation about the bar. From the viewpoint of a dynamic system, the inertial loads for these specific DOFs are never affected by the length of the bar. This is important for the production of quick plate motions so that the object on the plate can be dynamically and remotely manipulated. Applying this handling mechanism to a robot system, we first reveal how to make the object's motion for three DOFs by using two DOFs of plate motion. We then show that it is guaranteed to achieve an arbitrary desired set of position and orientation of the object by the proposed manipulation scheme. The proposed method has good manipulability because the translational motion of the object can be fully decoupled from the rotational motion (though not vice versa). Finally, we show a couple of experiments that confirm the basic idea.
Incremental Immune-Inspired Clustering Approach to Behavior-Based Anti-Spam Technology

A circular, surface-coating application of sprayable composition or mortar is achieved through a rotatable spray head with at least one lateral discharge opening. The composition or mortar is distributed as uniformly and over as large a surface area as possible in the vicinity of the spray head. The spray head is moved axially forwards and back in an axial direction through the same distance during conveying of the composition or mortar and is rotated automatically through the same angular distance about the axis.
Cell-kill kinetics of several S-phase-specific drugs.

Summary The drugs [1-β-d-arabinofuranosylcytosine (ara-C), hydroxyurea (HU), 5-hydroxy-2-formylpyridine thiosemicarbazone (5-HP), and camptothecin sodium salt (camptothecin)] considered in this paper markedly inhibit DNA synthesis and are maximally cytotoxic to cells in S phase. In these studies, high-specific-activity thymidine- 3 H (HSA-TdR- 3 H) was used as a control compound which killed cells in S but which did not affect the progression of cells into S. The cell-kill kinetics indicated that ara-C, HU, and 5-HP, unlike camptothecin, blocked the L1210 cells from progressing into S in the presence of the drug. We found that L1210 cells that were blocked in G 1 by HU started moving into S immediately after the drug was removed. Therefore, the time interval between two doses of HU that gave maximal cell kill was the same as that for HSA-TdR- 3 H. However, L1210 cells exposed to ara-C and 5-HP took about 2 hr to recover from the effect of the drug and then progress into S. Therefore, the time interval (between two doses of either ara-C or 5-HP) that gave maximal cell kill was longer than that needed for HSA-TdR- 3 H. Camptothecin did not block L1210 cells from moving into S and, therefore, the cell-kill kinetics with camptothecin were the same as those with HSA-TdR- 3 H. The time for maximal recovery of DNA synthesis by L1210 cells after a single exposure to the drugs was determined. The time for maximal recovery of DNA synthesis correlated well with the interval required for maximal cell kill.
Temporal Patterns of Diversification across Global Cichlid Biodiversity (Acanthomorpha: Cichlidae)

The contrasting distribution of species diversity across the major lineages of cichlids makes them an ideal group for investigating macroevolutionary processes. In this study, we investigate whether different rates of diversification may explain the disparity in species richness across cichlid lineages globally. We present the most taxonomically robust time-calibrated hypothesis of cichlid evolutionary relationships to date. We then utilize this temporal framework to investigate whether both species-rich and depauperate lineages are associated with rapid shifts in diversification rates and if exceptional species richness can be explained by clade age alone. A single significant rapid rate shift increase is detected within the evolutionary history of the African subfamily Pseudocrenilabrinae, which includes the haplochromins of the East African Great Lakes. Several lineages from the subfamilies Pseudocrenilabrinae (Australotilapiini, Oreochromini) and Cichlinae (Heroini) exhibit exceptional species richness given their clade age, a net rate of diversification, and relative rates of extinction, indicating that clade age alone is not a sufficient explanation for their increased diversity. Our results indicate that the Neotropical Cichlinae includes lineages that have not experienced a significant rapid burst in diversification when compared to certain African lineages (rift lake). Neotropical cichlids have remained comparatively understudied with regard to macroevolutionary patterns relative to African lineages, and our results indicate that of Neotropical lineages, the tribe Heroini may have an elevated rate of diversification in contrast to other Neotropical cichlids. These findings provide insight into our understanding of the diversification patterns across taxonomically disparate lineages in this diverse clade of freshwater fishes and one of the most species-rich families of vertebrates.
Preface Traditional Auctions

My first introduction to the online reverse auction was at an organization's professional development event. The two speakers were from a very large firm engaged in a private auction site. The speakers related the procurement of safety glasses—originally $300,000 in purchased safety glasses. The buying firm invited 24 suppliers—eight suppliers did not respond at all; eight suppliers signed in to the online auction at the designated time, but only submitted one bid; and the remaining eight signed in and bid multiple times until there was a " winner " of the auction. The speakers related that the firm saved 15% from the prior price. My mind went into overdrive. If this savings was 15%, what about the next set of bids on safety glasses? Who was the winner? Who was losing the profit on the transaction? How low could they go? Would this work on other products? Would small firms go out of business? Auctions have long been a staple of business practices. Selling and buying goods has intrigued participants for many years. Auctions have been studied from many perspectives, particularly by economists in light of such traditional principles as game theory and auction theory. The original idea of an auction is that one can procure goods and services through the use of a bidding mechanism. Traditional auctions are based on long-standing theoretical foundations and tested empirical work. Engelbrecht-Wiggans (1980) presented classifications for various types of auctions and bidding models based on the assumptions used in the models. Others studying traditional auctions have attempted to link auction theory to everyday transactions. Rothkopf and Harstad (1994) presented an essay in Management Science that attempts to model the competitive bidding process. Since this work was done on a traditional auction, a fundamental issue of the advancement of knowledge in auctions is revealed: the lack of a large sample size. Gathering information on competitive bidding is difficult in the traditional auction arena. Other issues have also been studied in traditional auction research. These include proposing a methodology for profit-maximized bidding (Swider & Weber, 2007), identifying the winner's curse (Nee-Traditional auctions, as stated previously, have some limitations. They are constrained by time, place, number of bidders, number of bids, and the bidding experience. The advent of the Internet has, frankly, given researchers an opportunity to study auction theory with much larger data sets. The Internet, as a
Study of Electrohydrodynamic Micropumping through Conduction Phenomenon

Steady-state electrohydrodynamic micropumping through bipolar conduction phenomenon has been investigated experimentally and numerically. A single-stage axisymmetric conduction micropump in the vertical configuration has been proposed in this paper. This micropump consists of four components: high voltage ring electrode, grounded disk-shaped electrode, insulator spacer, and inlet/outlet ports. The packaged micropump was positioned vertically in a bath of working fluid; the generated static pressure and electric current were measured in the absence of fluid flow at different applied voltages. Three different dielectric liquids, 10-GBN Nynas and Shell Diala AX transformer oils, and N-hexane were introduced as the working fluids. The micropump was operated at the range of applied voltages between 300 and 1500 VDC. Maximum pressure generations up to 100 Pa was achieved. In order to estimate the space charge density distribution and the spatial variation of the electric field in the micropump, and to further verify the experimental results, a numerical simulation was also performed. The pressure head generation was predicted numerically and compared with experimental results at different applied voltages. The comparison between the experimental and numerical pressure generations shows good agreement.
Wearable vision systems for personal guidance and enhanced assistance

The challenge addressed in this paper involves research of computer vision and robotic techniques to be part of a personal assistance system based on visual information. Main features envisioned include not only navigation assistance in known or unknown environments, but also enhanced capabilities in safety and human perception augmentation. Current systems in the context of assistive devices do not provide enough level of performance, and their capabilities are still quite limited. These are normally based on conventional sensors and, although perception can be greatly improved by sensor fusion, long term research should also consider unconventional vision devices to expand the system’s potential. We refer as unconventional vision systems to those consisting in more than a classical or standard camera. So, the visual assistant will be wearable including conventional and unconventional camera systems. We aim for a human-centered system, which complements rather than replaces human abilities, allowing enhanced interaction and integration of the user in the environment. We present several complementary approaches based on different unconventional camera systems. Possible users of the investigated technologies will range from visually impaired people to users with normal visual capabilities performing specific tasks, passing also into humanoid robots.
Romanticising Market Exchange: Unpacking Cultural Meanings of Value in Home-sharing Markets

I TABLE OF CONTENTS . III LIST OF TABLES . VI LIST OF FIGURES . VII ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP . VIII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . IX ETHICS APPROVAL . XI : INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 BACKGROUND . 1 1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM . 6 1.3 RESEARCH AIMS, QUESTIONS AND DESIGN . 11 1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY . 14 1.5 DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS IN THE THESIS . 16 1.6 ORGANISATION OF THE THESIS . 18 : LITERATURE REVIEW . 20 2.1 BACKGROUND . 20 2.2 SHARING ECONOMY LITERATURE . 20 2.3 COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION . 25 2.4 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THIS STUDY . 28 2.4. 1 Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) . 29 2.4. 2 Object-oriented Ontologies . 35 2.5 SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVES ON VALUE . 38 2.6 A HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY OF CONSUMPTION AND MARKET EXCHANGE . 40 2.7 ROMANTICISM AND THE ROMANTIC CONSUMER ETHIC . 44 2.7. 1 Key Dimensions of Romanticism . 46 2.7. 2 Romancing the Market . 50 2.8 GIFTING ECONOMY AND DYADIC RELATIONSHIPS . 60 2.9 DIMENSIONS OF OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION PRACTICES . 66 2.10 DYNAMICS OF MARKET SYSTEMS . 73 2.10. 1 Markets as Consumption Networks . 75 2.10. 2 Creating and Perceiving Value in Networks . 77
Output-only structural identification of random vibrating systems

A new form to carry out stochastic identification of structures in operational conditions using a non recursive method, the statistic analysis and the wavelet transform, is presented. The statistic analysis contributed to select the best system order and to automation of computational procedures. In general the identification of low frequencies is a difficult task. The wavelet transform is an essential tool for compression of data making possible the complete identification including low frequencies. In addition it improves the computational efficiency. The study of four degrees of freedom simulated system is presented and the results are compared with the analytical modal parameters.