Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proteome Biomarkers in Xylem Reveal Pierce’s Disease Tolerance in Grape

Pierce’s disease (PD) is a significant threat to grape cultivation and industry. The disease caused by bacterium Xylella fastidiosa clogs xylem vessels resulting in wilting of the plant. PD-tolerant grape genotypes are believed to produce certain novel components in xylem tissue that help them to combat invading pathogens. Research has been aimed at characterizing the uniquely expressed xylem proteins by PD-tolerant genotypes. The objectives were to i) compare and characterize Vitis xylem proteins differentially expressed in PD-tolerant and PD-susceptible cultivars and, ii) identify xylem proteins uniquely expressed in PD-tolerant genotypes. A high throughput two-dimensional gel electrophoresis of xylem proteins from three Vitis species identified more than 200 proteins with pls 3.0 to 9.0 and molecular weights of 20 to 75 kDa. The differentially expressed proteins were then excised and analyzed with MALDI/TOF mass spectrometer. The mass spectra were collected and protein identification was performed against the Viridiplantae database using Matrix Science algorithm. Proteins were mapped to the universal protein resource to study gene ontology. Comparative analysis of the xylem proteome of three species indicated the highest number of proteins in muscadine grape, followed by Florida hybrid bunch and bunch grape. These proteins were all associated with disease resistance, energy metabolism, protein processing and degradation, biosynthesis, stress related functions, cell wall biogenesis, signal transduction, and ROS detoxification. Furthermore, β-1, 3-glucanase, 10-deacetyl baccatin III-10-O-acetyl transferase-like, COP9, and aspartyl protease nepenthesin precursor proteins were found to be uniquely expressed in PD-tolerant muscadine grape, while they are absent in PD-susceptible bunch grape. Data suggests that muscadine and Florida hybrid bunch grapes express novel proteins in xylem to overcome pathogen attack while bunch grape lacks this capability, making them susceptible to PD.
Throughput schemes for energy harvesting sensor networks

With the growing dependence on the wireless sensor devices, it is imperative that power supply to them and their energy usage has acquired centre stage. Energy harvesting is one possible remedy. To enhance the use of devices that are using harvested energy, many novel schemes need to be devised. In this paper we propose four throughput enhancement schemes with a wide range of applicability to energy harvesting wireless sensor networks. The schemes are designed by taking into consideration available resources in the nodes as well as the energy harvesters that are used to drive the sensor nodes. All the four schemes are implemented, evaluated and compared for their performances. We present schemes from simple naive scheme which is of low complexity, to probabilistic probing scheme which incorporates advanced methods to appropriately use the harvested energy. All the schemes require minimum system resources and sufficient harvested energy before starting communication. Moreover, when the harvested energy varies due to the changes in the environment and characteristics of wireless channel varies, we found that truncated channel inversion with power control is the appropriate scheme. This article provides a thorough step by step discussion on the implementation of maximizing communication throughput in energy harvesting sensor nodes under varying environment. We also provide some insights into energy requirements for a multi-node network.
A Paradigm Shift in Social Vulnerability to Nutritional Diseases. A Perspective

Vulnerability to nutritional diseases has been for a long time associated with social factors like poverty; gender more particularly women, and ignorance. Malnutrition was viewed to be more prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas. However, today there is a shift in vulnerability based on these social determinants. Malnutrition, which is often associated with the poor and rural population, is a malaise that has not spared even the well-to-do urban elites living in towns and cities(1).
Superconformal algebras and mock theta functions

It is known that characters of BPS representations of extended superconformal algebras do not have good modular properties due to extra singular vectors coming from the BPS condition. In order to improve their modular properties we apply the method of Zwegers which has recently been developed to analyze modular properties of mock theta functions. We consider the case of the superconformal algebra at general levels and obtain the decomposition of characters of BPS representations into a sum of simple Jacobi forms and an infinite series of non-BPS representations. We apply our method to study elliptic genera of hyper-Kähler manifolds in higher dimensions. In particular, we determine the elliptic genera in the case of complex four dimensions of the Hilbert scheme of points on K3 surfaces K[2] and complex tori A[[3]].
Rearticulating the myth of human–wildlife conflict

Human–wildlife conflict has emerged as the central vocabulary for cases requiring balance between resource demands of humans and wildlife. This phrase is problematic because, given traditional definitions of conflict, it positions wildlife as conscious human antagonists. We used content analysis of wildlife conservation publications and professional meeting presentations to explore the use of the phrase, human–wildlife conflict, and compared competing models explaining its usage. Of the 422 publications and presentations using human–wildlife conflict, only 1 reflected a traditional definition of conflict, >95% referred to reports of animal damage to entities human care about, and <4% referred to human–human conflict. Usage of human–wildlife conflict was related to species type (herbivores with human food, carnivores with human safety, meso‐mammals with property), development level of the nation where the study occurred (less developed nations with human food and more developed nations with human safety and property damage), and whether the study occurred on private lands or protected areas (protected areas with human–human conflict and other areas with property damage). We argue that the phrase, human–wildlife conflict, is detrimental to coexistence between humans and wildlife, and suggest comic reframing to facilitate a more productive interpretation of human–wildlife relationships.
Subsurface Transport and Attenuation of Chemicals

The presence of substances in groundwater may be affected by naturally occurring processes as well as by actions directly associated with human activities. Naturally occurring processes such as decomposition of organic material in soils or leaching of mineral deposits can result in increased concentrations of several substances. Those of health concern include arsenic, fluoride, selenium, uranium, nitrate, metals, and radionuclides such as radon. Problems of aesthetic quality and acceptance may be caused by iron, manganese, sulphate, chloride and organic matter. Sources of groundwater contamination associated with human activities are widespread and include diffuse as well as point source pollution like land application of animal wastes and agrochemicals in agriculture, disposal practices of human excreta and wastes such as leaking sewers or sanitation systems, leakage of waste disposal sites, landfills, underground storage tanks, pipelines and pollution due to both poor practices and accidental spills in mining, industry, traffic, health care facilities and military sites. The ready availability of carbon through the exploitation of hydrocarbon oil reserves over the past century has lead to a vast amount of organic compounds being introduced into the environment either through the use of oil in fuels or the development and production of other chemical products by industry. Literally tens of thousands of synthetic organic chemicals have been and continue to be developed. Many organic chemicals are known to have potential human health impacts and drinking-water quality standard listings developed. These listings have been continually added to and revised as new toxicological data and chemical products are developed. Organic chemicals commonly used by industry with known or suspected human health impacts that are often encountered in groundwaters include, for example, aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (collectively known as " BTEX ") as well as volatile chlorinated hydrocarbons such as tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene. A diverse range of pesticides is also found in groundwaters that is primarily, but not exclusively, ascribed to agricultural activities. Typically pesticide concentrations encountered are low, but have in some cases exceeded regulatory limits for drinking water supplies or ecoystem protection. This chapter concentrates on the groups of chemical substances that are toxic to humans and have reasonable potential to contaminate drinking-water abstracted from groundwater. It provides foundational knowledge of natural groundwater constituents and anthropogenic groundwater contaminants and discusses their relevance to human health, origin, and transport and attenuation in groundwater systems. The chapter is subdivided as follows: Chapter 4.1 …
Understanding unintentional injury-risk in young children I. The nature and scope of caregiver supervision of children at home.

OBJECTIVE To examine the supervision that young children routinely receive when awake and at home with a parent. METHODS Mothers were trained to complete continuous recordings about supervision of their young child (2-5 years) when at home on each of 10 randomly selected days within a 3-week period. RESULTS Children were supervised more often than unsupervised but were completely out of view of supervisors about 20% of their awake time, and supervision was poorer when out of view of supervisors. Older children (4-5 years) were unsupervised (8% of awake time) more often than younger children (2-3 years; 1%), were more often out of view of supervisors than younger children, and received poorer supervision than younger children when out of view of supervisors. Few sex differences were found. CONCLUSIONS These data provide insights into the nature and scope of supervision that young children routinely experience when at home. Implications of these findings for identifying patterns of supervision that elevate children's risk of injury are discussed.
Primary Schools and ICT

This book draws on a study of over 600 primary school pupils and explores how ICT provision could improve from a 'grass roots' perspective. There have been relatively few empirical studies of primary school ICT use and very few studies of pupils’ perceptions of using technologies in primary schools. The book takes a ‘learner voice’ approach to capture the children's views and provides interesting insights into their perspectives and experiences. The book also makes a number of practical suggestions for changes to ICT organisation and provision in schools to further align with the needs of children. Whilst the research was carried out rigorously, the book is written up in a straightforward manner to be accessible to both researchers and teachers.
Sparsity-embracing multiuser detection for CDMA systems with low activity factory

The number of active users in code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems is often much lower than the spreading gain. The present paper exploits fruitfully this a priori information to improve performance of multiuser detectors. A lowactivity factor manifests itself in a sparse symbol vector with entries drawn from a finite alphabet that is augmented by the zero symbol to capture user inactivity. The non-equiprobable symbols of the augmented alphabet motivate a sparsity-exploiting maximum a posteriori probability (S-MAP) criterion, which is shown to yield a cost comprising the ℓ2 least-squares error penalized by the p-th norm of the wanted symbol vector (p = 0; 1; 2). Related optimization problems appear in variable selection (shrinkage) schemes developed for linear regression, as well as in the emerging field of compressive sampling (CS). The contribution of this work to CDMA systems is a gamut of sparsity-embracing multiuser detectors trading off performance for complexity requirements. From the vantage point of CS and the least-absolute shrinkage selection operator (Lasso) spectrum of applications, the contribution amounts to sparsity-exploiting algorithms when the entries of the wanted signal vector adhere to finite-alphabet constraints.
The hiphop virtual machine

The HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) is a JIT compiler and runtime for PHP. While PHP values are dynamically typed, real programs often have latent types that are useful for optimization once discovered. Some types can be proven through static analysis, but limitations in the ahead-of-time approach leave some types to be discovered at run time. And even though many values have latent types, PHP programs can also contain polymorphic variables and expressions, which must be handled without catastrophic slowdown. HHVM discovers latent types by structuring its JIT around the concept of a tracelet. A tracelet is approximately a basic block specialized for a particular set of run-time types for its input values. Tracelets allow HHVM to exactly and efficiently learn the types observed by the program, while using a simple compiler. This paper shows that this approach enables HHVM to achieve high levels of performance, without sacrificing compatibility or interactivity.
Evidence of Contextual Fear after Lesions of the Hippocampus: A Disruption of Freezing But Not Fear-Potentiated Startle

The roles of the dorsal hippocampus and the central nucleus of the amygdala in the expression of contextual fear were assessed using two measures of conditioned fear: freezing and fear-potentiated startle. A discriminable context conditioning paradigm was developed that demonstrated both conditioned freezing and fear-potentiated startle in a context paired previously with foot shock, relative to a context in which foot shock had never been presented. Post-training lesions of the central nucleus of the amygdala completely blocked both contextual freezing and fear-potentiated startle. Post-training lesions of the dorsal hippocampus attenuated contextual freezing, consistent with previous reports in the literature; however, these same lesions had no effect on fear-potentiated startle, suggesting preserved contextual fear. These results suggest that lesions of the hippocampus disrupt the freezing response but not contextual fear itself.
CHL dyons and statistical entropy function from D1-D5 system

We give a proof of the recently proposed formula for the dyon spectrum in CHL string theories by mapping it to a configuration of D1 and D5-branes and Kaluza-Klein monopole. We also give a prescription for computing the degeneracy as a systematic expansion in inverse powers of charges. The computation can be formulated as a problem of extremizing a duality invariant statistical entropy function whose value at the extremum gives the logarithm of the degeneracy. During this analysis we also determine the locations of the zeroes and poles of the Siegel modular forms whose inverse give the dyon partition function in the CHL models.
Traffic engineering for real-time communication groups using network-calculus based schedulability analysis

In this paper, the problem of supporting a set of real time communication groups in a meshed core network is studied. Such kind of network is typically the backbone of an industrial control network, in which static routing for all communication groups is calculated off line and end-to-end delay bounds required by applications must be guaranteed. In this paper, we will analyze the performance of the popular WFQ scheduler based on the theory of network calculus. Combined with genetic algorithm as our routing selection algorithm, an optimized traffic engineering methodology is presented and its performance is evaluated in this paper.
Statistical methods for assessing the influence of study characteristics on treatment effects in ‘meta‐epidemiological’ research

Biases in systematic reviews and meta‐analyses may be examined in ‘meta‐epidemiological’ studies, in which the influence of trial characteristics such as measures of study quality on treatment effect estimates is explored. Published studies to date have analysed data from collections of meta‐analyses with binary outcomes, using logistic regression models that assume that there is no between‐ or within‐meta‐analysis heterogeneity. Using data from a study of publication bias (39 meta‐analyses, 394 published and 88 unpublished trials) and language bias (29 meta‐analyses, 297 English language trials and 52 non‐English language trials), we compare results from logistic regression models, with and without robust standard errors to allow for clustering on meta‐analysis, with results using a ‘meta‐meta‐analytic’ approach that can allow for between‐ and within‐meta‐analysis heterogeneity. We also consider how to allow for the confounding effects of different trial characteristics. We show that both within‐ and between meta‐analysis heterogeneity may be of importance in the analysis of meta‐epidemiological studies, and that confounding exists between the effects of publication status and trial quality. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
WTO Negotiations on Market Access: What We Know, What We Don't and What We Should

Market access is a major bone of contention in the ongoing multilateral trade negotiations on agriculture. Countries with a comparative advantage in agriculture, namely the Cairns group and some developing countries, find it unacceptable that trade in manufacturing goods has been liberalized while many developed countries have maintained considerable restrictions on imports of agricultural and food products. The outcome of the 2003 Cancun Ministerial Conference shows that they will resist further trade liberalization in industrial sectors and services unless some major improvement on market access in agriculture is part of the deal. Negotiations on agriculture require measuring the degree of openness of agricultural markets. One objective is to make comparisons across sectors and countries during the negotiations, and to assess the effect of scenarios of possible agreements. Trade policies have impacts in several dimensions and need different measures in order to be quantified. One issue of particular interest for policy makers is how trade flows will change (or have changed) because of an agreement. These are perhaps the most quoted results in the political debate, because of the mercantilistic vision of most decision makers that participate to the negotiations. Another purpose of market access measurement (favored by economists) is to provide aggregate measures of changes in welfare resulting from changes in tariff structures. There is not a single indicator of market access; the different measures will depend on the objective and each of them will capture different aspects. In spite of a 36 per cent cut in agricultural and food tariffs decided during the Uruguay Round, it is widely accepted that little improvement in market access actually took place (IATRC 1997). Many technical aspects enabled countries to get around the spirit of the Uruguay Round agricultural Agreement (URAA) discipline. This is why technicalities, such as the very practical issues of statistical classification and data availability, are perhaps as important as conceptual issues when measuring market access. In the following sections, we highlight the problems that remain for a satisfactory assessment of market access, from both a conceptual and a practical viewpoint. After a brief survey of these different issues at stake regarding market access, we turn to the ongoing multilateral negotiations. The goal is to provide a "guided tour" through the large body of (formal and informal) proposals, notes and discussion papers covering 3 years of negotiations. Finally, we focus on a major negotiating issue – tariff reduction commitments – and we simulate some alternative hypotheses regarding possible outcomes of a final agreement. For Canada, the European Union (EU), Japan, and the United States (US), we compare the results of different tariff cutting formulas both in terms of welfare and in terms of trade flows.
Optimization techniques for Routing in Wireless Sensor Network

Recent developments in wireless communications led to the development of low-cost, low-power wireless sensor networks (WSN) which is widely used these days. Minimizing energy consumption and hence maximizing the lifetime of the network are key requirements in the design of sensor networking protocols. Several routing protocols with different objectives have already been proposed for WSN. Several optimization techniques are present, which are used to improve the performance of the network.In this paper we briefly discussed about WSN, various routing challenges in WSN, various optimization techniques like GA, PSO, ACO and ABC. Advantages and the application areas of various techniques are also discussed. KeywordsWSN, Routing, optimization, GA, PSO, ACO, ABC.