Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Universally conserved positions in protein folds: reading evolutionary signals about stability, folding kinetics and function.

Here, we provide an analysis of molecular evolution of five of the most populated protein folds: immunoglobulin fold, oligonucleotide-binding fold, Rossman fold, alpha/beta plait, and TIM barrels. In order to distinguish between "historic", functional and structural reasons for amino acid conservations, we consider proteins that acquire the same fold and have no evident sequence homology. For each fold we identify positions that are conserved within each individual family and coincide when non-homologous proteins are structurally superimposed. As a baseline for statistical assessment we use the conservatism expected based on the solvent accessibility. The analysis is based on a new concept of "conservatism-of-conservatism". This approach allows us to identify the structural features that are stabilized in all proteins having a given fold, despite the fact that actual interactions that provide such stabilization may vary from protein to protein. Comparison with experimental data on thermodynamics, folding kinetics and function of the proteins reveals that such universally conserved clusters correspond to either: (i) super-sites (common location of active site in proteins having common tertiary structures but not function) or (ii) folding nuclei whose stability is an important determinant of folding rate, or both (in the case of Rossman fold). The analysis also helps to clarify the relation between folding and function that is apparent for some folds.
Effectively Introducing Mobile Solutions in Hospitals: The Importance of Process Perspective and KPIs

ICT enables improvement of healthcare processes, by increasing quality while simultaneously reducing costs. Among the different ICT-based solutions, mobile health is achieving an increasing importance: despite all potential benefits of mobile technologies, little attention has been put so far in their application within hospitals. As a result, any mobile solution introduction tends to not take into account organizational implications, with the result of limited or ineffective adoptions. Drawing on the experience of four successful implementations of mobile solutions in three Italian hospitals, this paper emphasizes the importance of two design factors: (i) the adoption of a process perspective, (ii) the continuous monitoring of a pre-determined sets of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Theoretical and managerial implications are proposed and discussed.
STUDY ON X-RAY SPECTRA OF OBSCURED ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI BASED ON MONTE CARLO SIMULATION—AN INTERPRETATION OF OBSERVED WIDE-BAND SPECTRA

Monte Carlo simulation is one of the best tools to study the complex spectra of Compton-thick active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and to figure out the relation between their nuclear structures and X-ray spectra. We have simulated X-ray spectra of Compton-thick AGNs obscured by an accretion torus whose structure is characterized by a half-opening angle, an inclination angle of the torus relative to the observer, and a column density along the equatorial plane. We divided the simulated spectra into three components: one direct component, an absorbed reflection component, and an unabsorbed reflection component. We then deduced the dependences of these components on the parameters describing the structure of the torus. Our simulation results were applied to fit the wide-band spectrum of the Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk 3 obtained by Suzaku. The spectral analysis indicates that we observe the nucleus along a line of sight intercepting the torus near its edge, and the column density along the equatorial plane was estimated to be ∼1024 cm−2. Using this model, we can estimate the luminosities of both the direct emission and the emission irradiating the surrounding matter. This is useful to find the time variability and time lag between the direct and reflected light.
Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Cohort Studies of Suicide Risk Assessment among Psychiatric Patients: Heterogeneity in Results and Lack of Improvement over Time

Objective It is widely assumed that the clinical care of psychiatric patients can be guided by estimates of suicide risk and by using patient characteristics to define a group of high-risk patients. However, the statistical strength and reliability of suicide risk categorization is unknown. Our objective was to investigate the odds of suicide in high-risk compared to lower-risk categories and the suicide rates in high-risk and lower-risk groups. Method We located longitudinal cohort studies where psychiatric patients or people who had made suicide attempts were stratified into high-risk and lower-risk groups for suicide with suicide mortality as the outcome by searching for peer reviewed publications indexed in PubMed or PsychINFO. Electronic searches were supplemented by hand searching of included studies and relevant review articles. Two authors independently extracted data regarding effect size, study population and study design from 53 samples of risk-assessed patients reported in 37 studies. Results The pooled odds of suicide among high-risk patients compared to lower-risk patients calculated by random effects meta-analysis was of 4.84 (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 3.79–6.20). Between-study heterogeneity was very high (I2 = 93.3). There was no evidence that more recent studies had greater statistical strength than older studies. Over an average follow up period of 63 months the proportion of suicides among the high-risk patients was 5.5% and was 0.9% among lower-risk patients. The meta-analytically derived sensitivity and specificity of a high-risk categorization were 56% and 79% respectively. There was evidence of publication bias in favour of studies that inflated the pooled odds of suicide in high-risk patients. Conclusions The strength of suicide risk categorizations based on the presence of multiple risk factors does not greatly exceed the association between individual suicide risk factors and suicide. A statistically strong and reliable method to usefully distinguish patients with a high-risk of suicide remains elusive.
Isoflurane impairs odour discrimination learning in rats: differential effects on short- and long-term memory.

BACKGROUND Anaesthetics suppress the formation of lasting memories at concentrations that do not suppress perception, but it is unclear which elements of the complex cascade leading from a conscious experience to a lasting memory trace are disrupted. Experiments in conscious humans suggest that subhypnotic concentrations of anaesthetics impair consolidation or maintenance rather than acquisition of a representation (long-term more than short-term memory). We sought to test whether these agents similarly impair learning in rats. METHODS We used operant conditioning in rats to examine the effect of isoflurane on acquisition compared with long-term (24 h) memory of non-aversive olfactory memories using two different odour discrimination tasks. Rats learned the 'valences' of odour pairs presented either separately (task A) or simultaneously (task B), under control conditions and under isoflurane inhalation. In a separate set of experiments, we tested the ability of the animals to recall a learning set that had been acquired 24 h previously. RESULTS Under 0.4% isoflurane inhalation, the average number of trials required to reach criterion performance (18 correct responses in 20 successive trials) increased from 21.9 to 43.5 (P<0.05) and 24.2 to 54.4 (P<0.05) for tasks A and B, respectively. Under 0.3% isoflurane inhalation, only task B was impaired (from 24.2 to 31.5 trials, P<0.05). Recall at 24 h was dose-dependently impaired or prevented by isoflurane for both tasks. CONCLUSIONS Isoflurane interfered with long-term memory of odour valence without preventing its acquisition. This paradigm may serve as a non-aversive animal model of conscious amnesia.
Development of a voice control interface for navigating robots and evaluation in outdoor environments

In this paper the development of a prototypic mobile voice control for navigating autonomous robots within a multi robot system is described. As basis for the voice control a hidden markov model based speech recognizer with a very low vocabulary of 30 words is utilized. It is investigated how many training samples for a markov model are required for a normal operation of speaker-dependent speech recognition. Therefore, hidden markov models were developed successively in parallel with an own training data corpus containing finally 2290 utterances from 12 speakers. Within the successive development of acoustical models and training corpus, the work revealed details about how many speakers are necessary to achieve an acceptable degree of speaker independence. We focused on an evaluation of the speech recognizer in adverse outdoor environments. The evaluation ranges from almost calm conditions of about 39 dB up to very adverse noise conditions of 120 dB. It is investigated whether a small vocabulary attenuates the noise vulnerability and in how far an increase of speaking volume can compensate noises of different intensity. The voice control was tested in outdoor environments and aspects of its usage are described.
Adjoint error estimation for EHL‐like models

The calculation of friction when solving elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) problems is of considerable practical engineering importance. Adjoint techniques allow the error in this integral quantity to be estimated and controlled as part of an adaptive solution strategy. This paper considers two simplified EHL models and demonstrates the successful application of the adjoint approach to error estimation of friction‐like quantities for this challenging class of problem. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A 2.1 M☉ Pulsar Measured by Relativistic Orbital Decay

PSR J0751+1807 is a millisecond pulsar in a circular 6 hr binary system with a helium white dwarf secondary. Through high-precision pulse timing measurements with the Arecibo and Effelsberg radio telescopes, we have detected the decay of its orbit due to emission of gravitational radiation. This is the first detection of the relativistic orbital decay of a low-mass, circular binary pulsar system. The measured rate of change in orbital period, corrected for acceleration biases, is = (-6.4 ± 0.9) × 10-14. Interpreted in the context of general relativity, and combined with measurement of Shapiro delay, it implies a pulsar mass of 2.1 ± 0.2 M☉, the most massive pulsar measured. This adds to the emerging trend toward relatively high neutron star masses in neutron star-white dwarf binaries. In addition, there is some evidence for an inverse correlation between pulsar mass and orbital period in these systems. We consider alternatives to the general relativistic analysis of the data, and we use the pulsar timing data to place limits on violations of the strong equivalence principle.
WEBLOG RECOMMENDATION USING ASSOCIATION RULES

Weblogs are web sites where one or several authors publish their opinions about current events. Even in Spain, there are several thousands, and it is often difficult to find a weblog that meets one's interest. Recommendation services thus become, if not a need, at least a convenience. In this paper we propose automatic extraction of association rules from the results of a survey as a means to recommend to weblog readers other weblogs about related topics, based on the results of a survey. We examine different support/confidence thresholds, and study resulting rules; as a result, we find novel relationships between weblogs, that would not have been found through other means.
Roles, Responsibilities, Celebrations, and Post-Presidency Aspirations of Female College Presidents.

The purpose of this study was to determine roles and responsibilities of female presidents of higher educational institutions, how they celebrate their professional and personal accomplishments, and their post-presidency aspirations. Females in their first presidency positions in either a private or public four-year institution were interviewed for the study. The collective case study tradition was used to capture thick, rich descriptions of eight cases. Within-case analyses were conducted for each participant, followed by a cross-case analysis, with major themes emerging. Nine themes emerged based on the research findings. These themes included (1) becoming the institution; (2)complex financial responsibilities,; (3) involvement in community, state, regional, national associations; (4) family and personal responsibilities; (5) personal sacrifices; (6) family and personal sacrifices; (7) celebrations of accomplishments; (8) post-presidency aspirations; (9) strategies for post-presidency plans. Recommendations for females who aspire to become a college president are detailed. Suggestions for future research are
DATA MINING USING VQ CODE BOOK GENERATION

Huge Volumes of detailed personal data is regularly collected and analyzed by applications using data mining, sharing of these data is beneficial to the application users. On one hand it is an important asset to business organizations and governments for decision making at the same time analysing such data opens treats to privacy if not done properly. This paper aims to reveal the information by protecting sensitive data. We are using Vector quantization technique for preserving privacy. Quantization will be performed on training data samples it will produce transformed data set. This transformed data set does not reveal the original data. Hence privacy is preserved.
On the Utilization of Smart Gadgets for Energy Aware Sensitive Behavior

The conscious, efficient, and economical consump- tion of energy is being identified recently as crucial topic for industry, politics, and research. Limited earth resources that are still used for the majority of energy production head towards increasing energy prices and stress world climate and the budget of people. We present the PowerIT System that utilizes smart gadgets to achieve a more efficient and economical use of the available energy. By providing instant feedback of the current energy consumption in households by leveraging power metering technology and therefore raising awareness about the economics of the own energy usage, this work aims at reducing the energy consumption of people in their homes. The real-time energy consumption is captured, whereas the power signatures of electrical devices measured by power metering systems are the input modality for the system. This data is provided in real time as visual feedback to the residents using today's available smart gadgets (e.g., smart phones, tablets, and smart watches) in order to raise awareness about the current power demands. Beside the pure monitoring and control of power consumers, the system additionally collects data about the activities of people by using smart watches. This data can be used to generate activity models resulting in activity aware power saving schemes. We argue that the awareness of people about their energy consumption can induce a behavioral change resulting in a more efficient use of energy without affecting their level of living.
Stiffness Gradients Mimicking In Vivo Tissue Variation Regulate Mesenchymal Stem Cell Fate

Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) differentiation is regulated in part by tissue stiffness, yet MSCs can often encounter stiffness gradients within tissues caused by pathological, e.g., myocardial infarction ∼8.7±1.5 kPa/mm, or normal tissue variation, e.g., myocardium ∼0.6±0.9 kPa/mm; since migration predominantly occurs through physiological rather than pathological gradients, it is not clear whether MSC differentiate or migrate first. MSCs cultured up to 21 days on a hydrogel containing a physiological gradient of 1.0±0.1 kPa/mm undergo directed migration, or durotaxis, up stiffness gradients rather than remain stationary. Temporal assessment of morphology and differentiation markers indicates that MSCs migrate to stiffer matrix and then differentiate into a more contractile myogenic phenotype. In those cells migrating from soft to stiff regions however, phenotype is not completely determined by the stiff hydrogel as some cells retain expression of a neural marker. These data may indicate that stiffness variation, not just stiffness alone, can be an important regulator of MSC behavior.
Estates on the edge: the social consequences of mass housing in Northern Europe.

Estates on the Edge recounts the decline and rescue of low income government-sponsored housing estates across Northern Europe giving a vivid account of the intense physical, social and organisational problems facing social landlords in five countries. These countries have 5,500,000 social housing units in around 5,000 large, dense, modern flatted estates, about one in three of their social rented stock. These estates house increasingly poor people in declining, mainly outer areas, cut off from urban centres. Many have experienced chaotic decline and sometimes serious disorder. Some have also undergone dramatic transformation and upgrading. The book traces this process of decline and rescue.
An architecture for constructing fault-tolerant transputer systems

The paper describes the structure of an experimental fault-tolerant transputer architecture (EFTA) based on industry standard transputer modules. The architecture represents one possible implementation of a reliable processing element defined by the Reconfiguration and Fault-Tolerance (RaFT) project. The paper presents an overview of fault protection mechanisms specified within the RaFT project, together with a description of the hardware and software components of the EFTA node. In particular the status interface unit is described. This is used to pass the status information generated by the hardware voting units to a control or application process. Finally, a number of possible network topologies that may be constructed using the EFTA node are given.
Users' Perceptions of Searching in FlickLing

This study aims to explore users’ image seeking behaviour when searching for known, non-annotated images across languages in FlickLing. In particular, the investigation reported in this paper aims to demonstrate the value in focusing on user’s trust and confidence in the exploration of seeking behaviour to reveal users’ perceptions of the tasks involved when searching across languages. The task assigned to our 24 users was to search for three specific images described in Dutch, German and Spanish consecutively. In this context, four different methods, both qualitative and quantitative (questionnaires, observation, retrospective thinking aloud and interviews) were employed. Preliminary finding regarding users’ switching between the two modes, users’ thinking of languages and their answers to the two questionnaires on trust and confidence are only reported here. It appears from our preliminary findings that there is variation in our users perceptions of searching for images across languages and their approach to using translations and that this occurs regardless of the amount or type of help or guidance given.
A GRAPH BASED APPROACH TO COMPARING SEARCH ENGINES

In the investigation of paragraph-linked hypertext repositories, the algorithms generating link networks have in-depth impacts on the phenomena of centrality or dispersion that are identified as important issues to be dealt with in the process of information foraging. Furthermore different repositories, generated through different search engines, even produced by the same algorithms, still shown significant variations with different degrees of centrality or dispersion. We have studied this using the MultiBrowser system as a testbed, and applying some algorithms to repositories consisting of documents downloaded based on five different search engine return lists. We study the hyperlinks added automatically to these repositories, which make these documents navigable from other documents within the repositories. The property of centrality and dispersions of linked repository can be further investigated.
Fermentation of Fructooligosaccharides by Lactic Acid Bacteria and Bifidobacteria

ABSTRACT Lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria were screened of their ability to ferment fructooligosaccharides (FOS) on MRS agar. Of 28 strains of lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria examined, 12 of 16Lactobacillus strains and 7 of 8Bifidobacterium strains fermented FOS. Only strains that gave a positive reaction by the agar method reached high cell densities in broth containing FOS.
Recovering 3-D Shape and Reflectance From a Small Number of Photographs

There are computer graphics applications for which the shape and reflectance of complex objects, such as faces, cannot be obtained using specialized equipment due to cost and practical considerations. We present an image based technique that uses only a small number of example images, and assumes a parametric model of reflectance, to simultaneously and reliably recover the Bidirectional Reflectance Distributions Function (BRDF) and the 3-D shape of non-Lambertian objects. No information about the position and intensity of the light-sources or the position of the camera is required. We successfully apply this approach to human faces, accurately recovering their 3-D shape and BRDF. We use the recovered information to efficiently and accurately render photorealistic images of the faces under novel illumination conditions in which the rendered image intensity closely matches the intensity in real images. The accuracy of our technique is further demonstrated by the close resemblance of the skin BRDF recovered using our method, to the one measured with a method presented in the literature and in which a 3-D scanner was used.
Towards neural art-based face de-identification in video data

We propose a computer vision-based pipeline that enables altering the appearance of faces in videos. Assuming a surveillance scenario, we combine GMM-based background subtraction with an improved version of the GrabCut algorithm to find and segment pedestrians. Independently, we detect faces using a standard face detector. We apply the neural art algorithm, utilizing the responses of a deep neural network to obfuscate the detected faces through style mixing with reference images. The altered faces are combined with the original frames using the extracted pedestrian silhouettes as a guideline. Experimental evaluation indicates that our method has potential in producing de-identified versions of the input frames while preserving the utility of the de-identified data.
Robustness Evaluation of Digital Watermarking Based on Discrete Wavelet Transform

In this paper, we evaluate watermarking methods using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). In order to clarify the difference of robustness of watermarks and the difference of image quality when decomposition level 1 and 2 of DWT are used, we perform experiments. In the experiments, we embed the digital watermarks in the frequency domain of still images. Then, we evaluate the degradation in image quality caused by the insertion of a watermark. We also evaluate the robustness of the watermark against several attacks (scale, index color, gradation conversion, and frequency conversion) with the evaluation support system JEWELS. Experimental results are summarized in regard to the PSNR value of each watermarked image and the bit error of the watermark extracted from attacked images.