Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Habitat use of the western toad in north-central Alberta and the influence of scale

The western toad ( Anaxyrus boreas, formerly Bufo boreas) is one of many amphibian species considered to be at risk of extin ctio (COSEWIC status is Special Concern). I examined habitat use patterns o f the western toad using several methods to gain a better understanding of i ts habitat requirements. I examined the relationship between relative abundanc e of the western toad and two sympatric amphibian species (wood frog, Lithobates sylvaticus; and boreal chorus frog, Pseudacris maculata) and habitat features at eight scales of spatial extent at 24 wetlands in the Lake Utikuma region of Alberta, Canada. I radiotracked adult western toads in three study areas in the Aspen Parkland and Boreal regions of north-central Alberta to examine 1) whet her patterns of habitat selection change with different scales of spatial e xtent, spatial resolution, habitat composition, temporal period, and between males and females during the active period, 2) habitat used for hibernation, and 3) fac tors influencing the timing and nature of movements to hibernation sites. I found that the abundance of the three amphibian s pecies was best described at different spatial extents and was rela ted to the biology of each species. Resource Selection Function (RSF) models, cr ated using radio-telemetry data, indicated that habitat selection was scale-de pendent for western toads; differences in selection were observed among study designs, study areas, time periods, and sexes. Predictive ability did not diff er significantly among study designs. However, models that were created using a fine-grained map and homerange spatial extent generally produced models with greater predictive ability than models using a coarse-grained map or population-ran ge extent. During the active season toads selected open habitat types such as we t shrub, disturbed grass, and crop/hay fields. Western toads hibernated terrestri ally in pre-existing tunnels and the majority of toads hibernated in forest stands d ominated by spruce. Toads used hibernation sites 146–1936 m from breeding ponds an 68% of hibernacula were communal. Arrival at and entry into hibernation sit e was influenced by temperature and/or day length; larger toads moved t o hibernation sites later in the year. My research results can be used to identify a nd protect habitat for western toads in Canada.
Adsorption of Membrane-Associated Proteins to Lipid Bilayers Studied with an Atomic Force Microscope: Myelin Basic Protein and Cytochrome c

Atomic force microscopy was used to study the structure of two membrane-associated proteins adsorbed to various supported phospholipid bilayers in physiological buffer. The aim was (a) to develop a preparation for the investigation of membrane-associated proteins at high resolution under native conditions and (b) to obtain information about the factors that determine the adsorption process and the structure of adsorbed proteins. Therefore, solid-supported membranes were formed on mica by spontaneous vesicle adsorption and spreading. Once a homogeneous, pinhole-free bilayer was formed, solutions containing the proteins at appropriate concentrations were applied. The two positively charged proteins chosen were myelin basic protein (MBP), which plays an essential role in the formation of functional myelin, and cytochrome c. On charged bilayers, MBP applied at concentrations of 0.5−50 μg/mL formed aggregates of defined height (1.9 ± 0.2 nm on negatively and 2.7 ± 0.2 nm on positively charged lipids), which at.
Interior shadings for office indoor visual comfort in humid climate region

As part of the fenestration system, the interior shadings have also a role to control the indoor environment to maintain indoor visual comfort. As the occupants have personal access to control these, their control behavior then, might enhance or even worsen indoor comfort performance. The controlling behavior might not only influence indoor comfort performance but can also indicate the success or failure of interior shading as a control device element. This paper is intended to report control behavior patterns, as represented by the variety of the slats’ openings of two types of interior shading i.e. Venetian and Vertical blinds and to analyze these on the concurrent impacts to indoor office building’s indoor illuminance and luminance distribution. The purpose of this research is to figure out the shading control patterns as well as to examine the effectiveness of these two types of interior shadings to control indoor visual environment. This study is a quantitative research using experimentation on the slats’ opening of two types of shadings at two identical office rooms. The research results suggested that both types of blinds seem unsuitable for gaining proper illumination values at work planes in humid tropics area. However, these shadings demonstrate good performance for luminance distribution except for that of the closed Venetian blinds.
An efficient algorithm for building a distributional thesaurus (and other Sketch Engine developments)

Gorman and Curran (2006) argue that thesaurus generation for billion+-word corpora is problematic as the full computation takes many days. We present an algorithm with which the computation takes under two hours. We have created, and made publicly available, thesauruses based on large corpora for (at time of writing) seven major world languages. The development is implemented in the Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2004). Another innovative development in the same tool is the presentation of the grammatical behaviour of a word against the background of how all other words of the same word class behave. Thus, the English noun constraint occurs 75% in the plural. Is this a salient lexical fact? To form a judgement, we need to know the distribution for all nouns. We use histograms to present the distribution in a way that is easy to grasp.
Bestrophin gene mutations cause canine multifocal retinopathy: a novel animal model for best disease.

PURPOSE Canine multifocal retinopathy (cmr) is an autosomal recessive disorder of multiple dog breeds. The disease shares a number of clinical and pathologic similarities with Best macular dystrophy (BMD), and cmr is proposed as a new large animal model for Best disease. METHODS cmr was characterized by ophthalmoscopy and histopathology and compared with BMD-affected patients. BEST1 (alias VMD2), the bestrophin gene causally associated with BMD, was evaluated in the dog. Canine ortholog cDNA sequence was cloned and verified using RPE/choroid 5'- and 3'-RACE. Expression of the canine gene transcripts and protein was analyzed by Northern and Western blotting and immunocytochemistry. All exons and the flanking splice junctions were screened by direct sequencing. RESULTS The clinical phenotype and pathology of cmr closely resemble lesions of BMD. Canine VMD2 spans 13.7 kb of genomic DNA on CFA18 and shows a high level of conservation among eukaryotes. The transcript is predominantly expressed in RPE/choroid and encodes bestrophin, a 580-amino acid protein of 66 kDa. Immunocytochemistry of normal canine retina demonstrated specific localization of protein to the RPE basolateral plasma membranes. Two disease-specific sequence alterations were identified in the canine VMD2 gene: a C(73)T stop mutation in cmr1 and a G(482)A missense mutation in cmr2. CONCLUSIONS The authors propose these two spontaneous mutations in the canine VMD2 gene, which cause cmr, as the first naturally occurring animal model of BMD. Further development of the cmr models will permit elucidation of the complex molecular mechanism of these retinopathies and the development of potential therapies.
Impact of Source/drain Implants on Threshold Voltage Matching in Deep Sub-micron CMOS Technologies

A new mechanism causing deterioration of the threshold voltage matching performance of MOSFETs is described. We demonstrate that this effect depends on several fundamental CMOS device architecture aspects such as the source/drain implant energies, the gate layer thickness, a gate top oxide layer thickness and the poly-silicon gate morphology. It is concluded that penetration of a small (fluctuating) fraction of the LDD and HDD source drain implants through the gate can be responsible for severe degeneration of the matching performance of deep sub-micron CMOS technologies.
The Vpx Lentiviral Accessory Protein Targets SAMHD1 for Degradation in the Nucleus

ABSTRACT Sterile alpha motif domain- and HD domain-containing protein 1 (SAMHD1) is a deoxynucleoside triphosphohydrolase that restricts the replication of lentiviruses in myeloid cells by hydrolyzing the cellular deoxynucleotide triphosphates to a level below that which is required for reverse transcription. Human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) and some simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) encode the accessory protein viral protein X (Vpx) that counteracts SAMHD1. Vpx recruits SAMHD1 to a cullin4A-RING E3 ubiquitin ligase (CRL4), which targets the enzyme for proteasomal degradation. Vpx and SAMHD1 both localize to the nucleus of the cell. We identified the nuclear localization sequence (NLS) of SAMHD1 as a conserved KRPR sequence at amino acid residues 11 to 14. SAMHD1 lacking a functional NLS localized to the cytoplasm but retained its triphosphohydrolase and antiviral activities. However, cytoplasmic SAMHD1 was resistant to Vpx-induced degradation, and its antiviral activity was not counteracted by Vpx. Cytoplasmic SAMHD1 interacted with Vpx and retained it in the cytoplasm. The inhibition of nuclear export with leptomycin B did not impair the ability of Vpx to degrade SAMHD1. These findings suggest that SAMHD1 is targeted by Vpx for ubiquitination and degradation in the nucleus.
A symbolic approach for text classification based on dissimilarity measure

In this paper, a simple and efficient symbolic text classification is presented. A text document is represented by the use of interval valued symbolic features. Subsequently, a new feature selection method based on a new dissimilarity measure is also presented. The new feature selection method reduces the features in the representation phase for effective text classification. It keeps the best features for effective text representation and simultaneously reduces the time taken to classify a given document. To corroborate the efficacy of the proposed method, experimentation has been conducted on four different datasets to evaluate the performance. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method gives better results when compare to state of the art techniques. In addition, as it is based on simple matching scheme it achieves classification within negligible time and thus it appear to be more effective in classification.
Electrochemistry of conducting polymers--persistent models and new concepts.

2.2. Cathodic Electropolymerization 4732 2.2. 1. Electropolymerization of PPXs and PPVs 4732 3. Charging-Discharging of Conducting Polymers 4733 3.1. Redox Properties of Oligomers and Polymers 4733 3.2. Specific Phenomena of n-Doping 4739 3.3. Conductivity in Charged Systems 4740 4. Controlling the Electropolymerization Process 4742 4.1. Influence of the Polymerization Technique 4742 4.2. Influence of Experimental Conditions 4743 4.3. Electropolymerization in Novel Electrolytic Media 4745
Blood Flow and Thrombosis

Summary Platelet thrombi have been observed at bifurcations, constrictions and stenoses in the arterial tree where flow separation with accompanying vortex formation can occur. Hence, studies of the flow behavior of human blood cells in models of à vessel obstruction and a sudden expansion of a vessel lumen were carried out. These showed that the particles were subjected to first high, and then much lower shear stresses as they entered the vortices where the environment appeared favorable for the formation of aggregates. The effects of high and variable shear stress on the release reaction and aggregation of platelets were therefore studied using cells labeled with C14-Serotonin suspended in Tyrodes-albumin undergoing oscillatory tube flow for 20 min at 37° C. There was no significant release of serotonin due to flow alone, but the thrombin-induced release of C14-activity was appreciably greater in suspensions subjected to shear rates > 2000 sec-1 than in control suspensions which had been incubated at rest. The synergistic effects of the shear flow were also noted in the presence of adrenaline, which increased the release reaction, and when [Ca++] was raised above the physiological level or acetyl salicylic acid added, which inhibited the release of serotonin.
Correlating geologic and seismic data with unconventional resource production curves using machine learning

Predicting well production in unconventional oil and gas settings is challenging due to the combined influence of engineering, geologic, and geophysical inputs on well productivity. We have developed a machine-learning workflow that incorporates geophysical and geologic data, as well as engineering completion parameters, into a model for predicting well production. The study area is in southwest Texas in the lower Eagle Ford Group. We make use of a time-series method known as functional principal component analysis to summarize the well-production time series. Next, we use random forests, a machine-learning regression technique, in combination with our summarized well data to predict the full time series of well production. The inputs to this model are geologic, geophysical, and engineering data. We are then able to predict the well-production time series, with 65%–76% accuracy. This method incorporates disparate data types into a robust, predictive model that predicts well production in unconventional resources.
High performance deartifacting filters in video compression

Artifacts commonly exist in the coded image and video. Non-local Kuan's (NLK) filter has achieved the state-of-the-art performance on deartifacting the coded image, but there is no literature incorporating it into video scenarios. In the paper, we propose two loop filters, quadtree-based NLK (QNLK) filter and quadtree-based overcomplete NLK (QOCNLK) filter, for video coding. In the proposed techniques, NLK and overcomplete NLK filters are used to restore quantized residual transform coefficients, and quadtree-based signaling strategy is used for adaptive filtering control. Experimental results show that the proposed techniques achieve significant bitrate saving and visual quality improvement, compared with H.264/AVC High Profile.
Macroevolutionary algorithms: a new optimization method on fitness landscapes

Introduces an approach to optimization problems based on a previous theoretical work on extinction patterns in macroevolution. We name them macroevolutionary algorithms (MA). Unlike population-level evolution, which is employed in standard evolutionary algorithms, evolution at the level of higher taxa is used as the underlying metaphor. The model exploits the presence of links between "species" that represent candidate solutions to the optimization problem. To test its effectiveness, we compare the performance of MAs versus genetic algorithms (GA) with tournament selection. The method is shown to be a good alternative to standard GAs, showing a fast monotonous search over the solution space even for very small population sizes. A mean field theoretical approach is presented showing that the basic dynamics of MAs are close to an ecological model of multispecies competition.
HEVC video authentication using data embedding technique

A HEVC video authentication scheme by utilizing data embedding technique is proposed. The concept of authentication, layout and implementation are described under the HEVC standard. The authentication scheme includes weight generation, video feature extraction and two layers of authentication. Simulation results confirm that the overall perceptual video quality is maintained after the insertion of authentication code into commonly considered classes of video sequence. By analyzing the behavior of video tampering within and across video slices, the proposed authentication scheme is able to detect the tampered region and verify the integrity of the video in question.
Learning Regulatory Programs That Accurately Predict Differential Expression with MEDUSA

Abstract: Inferring gene regulatory networks from high‐throughput genomic data is one of the central problems in computational biology. In this paper, we describe a predictive modeling approach for studying regulatory networks, based on a machine learning algorithm called MEDUSA. MEDUSA integrates promoter sequence, mRNA expression, and transcription factor occupancy data to learn gene regulatory programs that predict the differential expression of target genes. Instead of using clustering or correlation of expression profiles to infer regulatory relationships, MEDUSA determines condition‐specific regulators and discovers regulatory motifs that mediate the regulation of target genes. In this way, MEDUSA meaningfully models biological mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. MEDUSA solves the problem of predicting the differential (up/down) expression of target genes by using boosting, a technique from statistical learning, which helps to avoid overfitting as the algorithm searches through the high‐dimensional space of potential regulators and sequence motifs. Experimental results demonstrate that MEDUSA achieves high prediction accuracy on held‐out experiments (test data), that is, data not seen in training. We also present context‐specific analysis of MEDUSA regulatory programs for DNA damage and hypoxia, demonstrating that MEDUSA identifies key regulators and motifs in these processes. A central challenge in the field is the difficulty of validating reverse‐engineered networks in the absence of a gold standard. Our approach of learning regulatory programs provides at least a partial solution for the problem: MEDUSA's prediction accuracy on held‐out data gives a concrete and statistically sound way to validate how well the algorithm performs. With MEDUSA, statistical validation becomes a prerequisite for hypothesis generation and network building rather than a secondary consideration.
(p,q)-Epidemic routing for sparsely populated mobile ad hoc networks

This paper considers (p, q )-Epidemic Routing, a class of store-carry-forward routing schemes, for sparsely populated mobile ad hoc networks. Our forwarding scheme includes Two-Hop Forwarding and the conventional Epidemic Routing as special cases. In such forwarding schemes, the original packet is copied many times and its packet copies spread over the network. Therefore those packet copies should be deleted after a packet reaches the destination. We analyze the performance of (p, q)-Epidemic Routing with VACCINE recovery scheme. Unlike most of the existing studies, we discuss the performance of (p, q)-Epidemic Routing in depth, taking account of the recovery process that deletes unnecessary packets from the network.
Temporal Variation of Ambient PM10 Concentration within an Urban-Industrial Environment

PM10 concentration in the ambient air has been reported to be the main pollutant affecting human health, particularly in the urban areas. This research is conducted to study the variation of PM10 concentration at the three urban-industrial areas in Malaysia, namely Shah Alam, Kuala Terengganu and Melaka. In addition, the association and correlation between PM10 concentration and other air pollutants will be distinguished. Five years interval dataset (2008-2012) consisting of PM10, SOX, NOX and O3 concentrations and other weather parameters such as wind speed, humidity and temperature were obtained from Department of Environment, Malaysia. Shah Alam shows the highest average of PM10 concentration with the value of 62.76 μg/m 3 in June, whereas for Kuala Terengganu was 59.29 μg/m 3 in February and 46.61 μg/m 3 in August for Melaka. Two peaks were observed from the time series plot using the averaged monthly PM10 concentration. First peak occurs when PM10 concentration rises from January to February and the second peak is reached in June and remain high for the next two consecutive months for Shah Alam and Kuala Terengganu. Meanwhile the second peak for Melaka is only achieved in August as a result of the transboundary of smoke from forest fires in the Sumatra region during dry season from May to September. Both of the pollutants can be sourced from rapid industrial activities at Shah Alam. PM10 concentration is strongly correlated with carbon monoxide concentration in Kuala Terengganu and Melaka with value of r2 = 0.1725 and 0.2744 respectively. High carbon monoxide and PM10 concentration are associated with burning of fossil fuel from increased number of vehicles at these areas.
Phosphorylation and regulation of a G protein–coupled receptor by protein kinase CK2

We demonstrate a role for protein kinase casein kinase 2 (CK2) in the phosphorylation and regulation of the M3-muscarinic receptor in transfected cells and cerebellar granule neurons. On agonist occupation, specific subsets of receptor phosphoacceptor sites (which include the SASSDEED motif in the third intracellular loop) are phosphorylated by CK2. Receptor phosphorylation mediated by CK2 specifically regulates receptor coupling to the Jun-kinase pathway. Importantly, other phosphorylation-dependent receptor processes are regulated by kinases distinct from CK2. We conclude that G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) can be phosphorylated in an agonist-dependent fashion by protein kinases from a diverse range of kinase families, not just the GPCR kinases, and that receptor phosphorylation by a defined kinase determines a specific signalling outcome. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the M3-muscarinic receptor can be differentially phosphorylated in different cell types, indicating that phosphorylation is a flexible regulatory process where the sites that are phosphorylated, and hence the signalling outcome, are dependent on the cell type in which the receptor is expressed.
CONSTRAINING SOLAR CORE ROTATIONWITH GENETIC FORWARD

We present a technique which uses forward modelling in conjunction with a genetic algorithm to nd the internal rotation proole which best reproduces a set of input frequency splittings. The genetic algorithm provides an eecient and robust method for global optimization. We evaluate the ability of this technique to determine the rotation proole in the solar core by applying it to artiicial datasets. In addition, we apply this technique to real data from the LOWL instrument. 1. INTRODUCTION Recently, the LOWL instrument (Tomczyk et al., 1995a, 1995b) has begun providing high precision measurements of the frequency splittings of low-and intermediate-degree solar p-mode oscillations. The availability of this data has motivated the development of new techniques which allow the eecient extraction of information about internal rotation from the frequency splittings to complement existing inversion techniques. This study represents the synthesis of three elements: the LOWL frequency splittings, a forward model, and a genetic algorithm. The LOWL frequency split-tings (Tomczyk et al., 1995b; Schou et al., these proceedings) have been described elsewhere and will not be discussed in detail here. The forward model (Schou et al., 1994) is described brieey in the next section, and a description of the genetic algorithm follows in section 3.