Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IsoWeb: A Bayesian Isotope Mixing Model for Diet Analysis of the Whole Food Web

Quantitative description of food webs provides fundamental information for the understanding of population, community, and ecosystem dynamics. Recently, stable isotope mixing models have been widely used to quantify dietary proportions of different food resources to a focal consumer. Here we propose a novel mixing model (IsoWeb) that estimates diet proportions of all consumers in a food web based on stable isotope information. IsoWeb requires a topological description of a food web, and stable isotope signatures of all consumers and resources in the web. A merit of IsoWeb is that it takes into account variation in trophic enrichment factors among different consumer-resource links. Sensitivity analysis using realistic hypothetical food webs suggests that IsoWeb is applicable to a wide variety of food webs differing in the number of species, connectance, sample size, and data variability. Sensitivity analysis based on real topological webs showed that IsoWeb can allow for a certain level of topological uncertainty in target food webs, including erroneously assuming false links, omission of existent links and species, and trophic aggregation into trophospecies. Moreover, using an illustrative application to a real food web, we demonstrated that IsoWeb can compare the plausibility of different candidate topologies for a focal web. These results suggest that IsoWeb provides a powerful tool to analyze food-web structure from stable isotope data. We provide R and BUGS codes to aid efficient applications of IsoWeb.
Memory Errors In Operating Systems – Problem and Solutions

Reliability of is of growing concern in computational systems [6]. Studies have shown [7, 3, 5] that memory errors are a major source of hardware errors, comparable to CPU and HDD errors [5], and therefore a major source of system reliability problems. In this paper I present a short introduction to the causes and prevalence of main memory errors and showcase a selection of common approaches to counteract such memory errors. Furthermore I describe three recent approaches, namely Online Memory Assessment with Linux RAMpage, Dynamically Replicated Memory for PCM, as well as an analysis of the inherent error–resilience of the HPC–OS ”Kitten” and Cray Linux Environment.
Linked data approach for selection process automation in systematic reviews

Background: a systematic review identifies, evaluates and synthesizes the available literature on a given topic using scientific and repeatable methodologies. The significant workload required and the subjectivity bias could affect results. Aim: semi-automate the selection process to reduce the amount of manual work needed and the consequent subjectivity bias. Method: extend and enrich the selection of primary studies using the existing technologies in the field of Linked Data and text mining. We define formally the selection process and we also develop a prototype that implements it. Finally, we conduct a case study that simulates the selection process of a systematic literature published in literature. Results: the process presented in this paper could reduce the work load of 20% with respect to the work load needed in the fully manually selection, with a recall of 100%. Conclusions: the extraction of knowledge from scientific studies through Linked Data and text mining techniques could be used in the selection phase of the systematic review process to reduce the work load and subjectivity bias.
Empirical Assessment of Nigerian Construction IndustryConsultancy Services Innovation Practices

Debates on how to improve construction industry productivity have been on and a number of studies blamed the construction industry inefficiency on the lackadaisical / indolent disposition of the industry key players to innovative changes. This study is therefore carried out to investigate the level of innovation adoption of the construction industry Consultants that played pivotal roles in the conceptualization, planning and development of construction projects. A cross-sectional study was adopted using 5-point Likert structured questionnaire administered to stratified and randomly selected 500 construction consultants which includes Architectural, Quantity Surveying, Building, engineering and Consortium of services firms’ consultants operating in Nigeria. A total of 285 properly completed responses were returned and analysed for the study. The collected data were subjected to Descriptive statistical tool of the SPSS for MS Windows and the results obtained were interpreted with the Rogers’ Innovation Diffusion Theory to determine the level of innovation practices among the studied consultants. It was found that the construction industry consultants operating in Nigeria (Abuja and Environs) are adopters of process, product/technological and business system innovations. This result implies that the studied consultants adopt process, product/technological and business system innovations in their consultancy services operations. The major contributions of the paper include the extension of Rogers’ Innovation Diffusion Theory to explain the levels of adoption of the process, product/technological and business system innovations among the Nigerian construction industry consultants operating in Abuja and environs thereby establishing an empirical evidence of the existence of innovation practices among the studied consultants.
The Effects of Phonetic Reduction on Actual and Perceived Comprehension by News Audiences

So-called “sloppy speech” is a frequent subject of criticism in broadcast and electronic news media. In particular, phonetic reductions are accused of compromising comprehension. This paper presents the results of an experimental self-sampling study (9015 participants) that examines the effects of reductions in scripted news speak. Overall, the results show that reductions have limited effects on comprehension. However, abstract, complex and ambiguous linguistic conditions seem to involve an efficient word recognition that is slightly hindered by reduced pronunciation. There are no correlations with sex, geographic region or length of education, whereas age seems to play a partial, though inconclusive, role.
Mitochondrial Genome Sequences of Nematocera (Lower Diptera): Evidence of Rearrangement following a Complete Genome Duplication in a Winter Crane Fly

The complete mitochondrial DNA sequences of eight representatives of lower Diptera, suborder Nematocera, along with nearly complete sequences from two other species, are presented. These taxa represent eight families not previously represented by complete mitochondrial DNA sequences. Most of the sequences retain the ancestral dipteran mitochondrial gene arrangement, while one sequence, that of the midge Arachnocampa flava (family Keroplatidae), has an inversion of the trnE gene. The most unusual result is the extensive rearrangement of the mitochondrial genome of a winter crane fly, Paracladura trichoptera (family Trichocera). The pattern of rearrangement indicates that the mechanism of rearrangement involved a tandem duplication of the entire mitochondrial genome, followed by random and nonrandom loss of one copy of each gene. Another winter crane fly retains the ancestral diperan gene arrangement. A preliminary mitochondrial phylogeny of the Diptera is also presented.
Skin Conductance and Subjective Arousal in Anxiety, Depression, and Comorbidity: Implications for Affective Reactivity

Skin conductance (SC), an autonomic arousal measure of the sympathetic nervous system, is a sensitive and useful index of physiological arousal. However, SC data does not always align with self-reports of arousal. SC, self-reported arousal, and their association, known as emotion coherence, may be altered with the presence of major psychiatric illness. This study investigated group differences on SC reactivity and self-reported arousal while viewing positive, negative, neutral, and threat images between participants diagnosed with major depression with and without anxiety disorders relative to a healthy comparison group. Additionally, the strength and direction of association between SC reactivity and arousal ratings (emotion coherence) was examined within groups. Unmedicated participants were recruited via online and paper advertisements around Chicago and categorized into one of four groups (Depressed: n = 35, Anxious: n = 44, Comorbid: n = 38, Healthy: n = 29). SC and affect ratings were collected during and after a standardized emotional picture viewing task. SC reactivity was significantly higher during threat images, regardless of group. During threat image presentation, increased SC reactivity occurred during the last few seconds before picture offset; for all other stimulus types, SC reactivity decreased significantly after picture offset. Anxious and comorbid participants rated emotional images as more arousing than healthy participants; there were no observed differences in arousal ratings between depressed and healthy participants. Heightened reactivity in anxiety may manifest in arousal ratings without corresponding increased SC reactivity to emotional images. Results do not suggest underlying altered psychophysiology in this sample of depressed or anxious participants.
Carbonic Anhydrase: A New Therapeutic Target for Managing Diabetes

Background: Carbonic Anhydrase (CA) is a zinc metallo-enzyme that is critical to regulation of systemic acid-base homeostasis by facilitating urinary acidification. Inhibition of carbonic anhydrase results in metabolic acidosis which leads to decrease in pH. Aim and objectives: The study aims to highlight the potential utility of erythrocyte carbonic anhydrase as therapeutic target for managing diabetes, by investigating changes of erythrocyte carbonic anhydrase activity in STZ induced diabetic rats. Methods: Carbonic anhydrase activity was determined by the absorbance of p-nitrophenol at 345nm released from p-nitrophenyl acetate. HbA1c was determined by ion exchange method (Spectrum diagnostics). Biochemical parameters were determined by Accutrend GCT meters with cobias® test strips. Results: The result revealed that inhibition of erythrocyte carbonic anhydrase results in significant increase in both blood lactate concentration and HbA1c level with significant reduction in blood glucose concentration. Metformin was found to reduce carbonic anhydrase activity and HbA1c level significantly and increased blood lactate concentration. The extract of Cadaba farinosa was found to reduce blood glucose concentration. Conclusions: Inhibition of carbonic anhydrase can be associated with reduced circulating blood glucose level. Metformin may therefore reduce circulating blood glucose by inhibiting carbonic anhydrase. Increased level of HbA1c may probably be due to inhibition of erythrocyte carbonic anhydrase. Therefore Carbonic anhydrase can potentially serve as a therapeutic target for managing diabetes in combination as serving as valuable marker for lactic acidosis.
Shearlet-Based Ultrasound Texture Features for Classification of Breast Tumor

Texture features are commonly used in the breast ultrasound computer-aided diagnosis (CAD). Shear let transform provides the spare representation of high dimensional data, and can be used to describe image texture. In this study, shear let-based texture features were extracted as the characterization of breast tumor in ultrasound images. Texture features were also extracted from wavelet and gray-level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) for comparison. The AdaBoost algorithm was then used to classify breast tumor with the extracted texture features. The experiment result shown that the classification accuracy of shear let-based method was 88.0%, which was much better than those of wavelet- and GLCM-based methods. The results indicated that the texture features extracted by the proposed method could well characterize the properties of breast tumor in ultrasound image. It suggests that the proposed method has the potential to be used in breast CAD.
New Role for hPar-1 Kinases EMK and C-TAK1 in Regulating Localization and Activity of Class IIa Histone Deacetylases

ABSTRACT Class IIa histone deacetylases (HDACs) are found both in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus where they repress genes involved in several major developmental programs. In response to specific signals, the repressive activity of class IIa HDACs is neutralized through their phosphorylation on multiple N-terminal serine residues and 14-3-3-mediated nuclear exclusion. Here, we demonstrate that class IIa HDACs are subjected to signal-independent nuclear export that relies on their constitutive phosphorylation. We identify EMK and C-TAK1, two members of the microtubule affinity-regulating kinase (MARK)/Par-1 family, as regulators of this process. We further show that EMK and C-TAK1 phosphorylate class IIa HDACs on one of their multiple 14-3-3 binding sites and alter their subcellular localization and repressive function. Using HDAC7 as a paradigm, we extend these findings by demonstrating that signal-independent phosphorylation of the most N-terminal serine residue by the MARK/Par-1 kinases, i.e., Ser155, is a prerequisite for the phosphorylation of the nearby 14-3-3 site, Ser181. We propose that this multisite hierarchical phosphorylation by a variety of kinases allows for sophisticated regulation of class IIa HDACs function.
The Cloud is Not Enough: Saving IoT from the Cloud

The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a new class of applications that can benefit from cloud infrastructure. However, the current approach of directly connecting smart devices to the cloud has a number of disadvantages and is unlikely to keep up with either the growing speed of the IoT or the diverse needs of IoT applications. In this paper we explore these disadvantages and argue that fundamental properties of the IoT prevent the current approach from scaling. What is missing is a well-architected system that extends the functionality of the cloud and provides seamless interplay among the heterogeneous components in the IoT space. We argue that raising the level of abstraction to a data-centric design-- focused around the distribution, preservation and protection of information--provides a much better match to the IoT. We present early work on such a distributed platform, called the Global Data Plane (GDP), and discuss how it addresses the problems with the cloud-centric architecture.
Seeing the Unseen

Axonal transport is the lifeline of axons and synapses. After synthesis in neuronal cell bodies, proteins are conveyed into axons in two distinct rate classes—fast and slow axonal transport. Whereas fast transport delivers vesicular cargoes, slow transport carries cytoskeletal and cytosolic (or soluble) proteins that have critical roles in neuronal structure and function. Although significant progress has been made in dissecting the molecular mechanisms of fast vesicle transport, mechanisms of slow axonal transport are less clear. Why is this so? Historically, conceptual advances in the axonal transport field have paralleled innovations in imaging the movement, and slow-transport cargoes are not as readily seen as motile vesicles. However, new ways of visualizing slow transport have reenergized the field, leading to fundamental insights that have changed our views on axonal transport, motor regulation, and intracellular trafficking in general. This review first summarizes classic studies that characterized axonal transport, and then discusses recent technical and conceptual advances in slow axonal transport that have provided insights into some long-standing mysteries.
TEASING: a fast and accurate approximation for the low multipole likelihood of the cosmic microwave background temperature

We propose a novel approximation to the low-l joint likelihood of the angular spectrum C l of masked cosmic microwave background temperature maps which is both very accurate and very fast to evaluate. We show that, for a flat prior, the posterior distribution of each C l closely follows an inverse gamma distribution even with partial sky coverage and that the posterior correlation is weak enough that a copula approximation to the joint likelihood is quite accurate. In this paper, the quantities needed to build such a copula approximation (inverse gamma parameters at each angular frequency and a correlation matrix) are computed from an exploration of the posterior using adaptive importance sampling. The accuracy of the proposed approximation is assessed using statistical criteria as well as a mock cosmological parameter fit. When applied to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5 data set, the copula approximation yields cosmological parameter estimates at the same level of accuracy as the best current techniques.
Overviewing the RDF(S) Semantic Web

The RDF(S) semantic web consists of many billions statements about resources (RDF data and RDFS metadata). We propose an original and effective approach to improve performance of retrieving information in RDF(S) statements sets, by quickly discarding irrelevant RDF data sets and moreover using classic search ways (like SPARQL and Jena). To that end, we define and associate at each RDF data set a kind of overview, small and search-oriented, which has to be queried first before querying whole data.
NO-LEAK AUTHENTICATION BY THE SHERLOCK HOLMES METHOD

We propose a class of authentication schemes that are literally zeroknowledge, as compared to what is formally defined as “zero-knowledge” in cryptographic literature. We call this “no-leak” authentication to distinguish from an established “zero-knowledge” concept. The “no-leak” condition implies “zero-knowledge” (even “perfect zero-knowledge”), but it is actually stronger, as we illustrate by examples. The principal idea behind our schemes is: the verifier challenges the prover with questions that he (the verifier) already knows answers to; therefore, even a computationally unbounded verifier who follows the protocol cannot possibly learn anything new during any number of authentication sessions. This is therefore also true for a computationally unbounded passive adversary.
Deletion of voltage‐gated channel affects glomerular refinement and odorant receptor expression in the mouse olfactory system

Olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) expressing a specific odorant receptor (OR) gene send axonal projections to specific glomeruli, creating a stereotypic olfactory sensory map. Odorant receptor sequence, G‐protein cAMP signaling, and axon guidance molecules have been shown to direct axons of OSNs toward central targets in the olfactory bulb (OB). Although the OR sequence may act as one determinant, our objective was to elucidate the extent by which voltage‐dependent activity of postsynaptic projection neurons in the OB centrally influences peripheral development and target destination of OSNs. We bred OR‐tagged transgenic mice to homozygosity with mice that had a gene‐targeted deletion of the Shaker potassium ion channel (Kv1.3) to elucidate how activity modulates synaptic connections that formulate the sensory map. Here we report that the Kv1.3 ion channel, which is predominantly expressed in mitral cells and whose gene‐targeted deletion causes a “super‐smeller” phenotype, alters synaptic refinement of axonal projections from OSNs expressing P2, M72, and MOR28 ORs. Absence of Kv1.3 voltage‐gated activity caused the formation of small, heterogeneous, and supernumerary glomeruli that failed to undergo neural pruning over development. These changes were accompanied by a significant decrease in the number of P2‐, M72‐, and MOR28‐expressing OSNs, which contained an overexpression of OR protein and G‐protein Golf in the cilia of the olfactory epithelium. These findings suggest that voltage‐gated activity of projection neurons is essential to refine primary olfactory projections and that it regulates proper expression of the transduction machinery at the periphery. J. Comp. Neurol. 506:161–179, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Neuro-Fuzzy Approaches to Natural Language Data Processing

Dubbed the 'age of permissiveness' by traditional mathematicians, philosophers and linguists, the period since the late 1960ies has marked a fundamental change in the estimation of logical exactness of the type 'A or not-A'. Since then, the realm of Aristotle, the cultural exclusiveness of binary logic, has been seriously challenged by Fuzzy Logic. Fuzzy sets, vagueness, multivalence and multivalued categories of the type 'A and not-A', have caused paradigm shifts in those technical sciences focussing on the simulation of the human neural network, e. g. cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, informatics, mechatronics, automation and language processing. However, they do not seem to be equivalently considered in product oriented linguistics, despite some theoretical efforts in cognitive linguistics. Regardless of typological differences such as print-based or electronic, even recently released dictionaries, maps/atlases exploring data on language diversity, language learning programmes or language processing are caught in the 'memetic' trap of bivalence. This essay reveals the interdisciplinary methodological interdependence between the three levels of 1) programming and language processing, 2) the linguistic data set as a continuum and 3) the design/presentation of fully fuzzified electronic language data sets based on the combined principle of Neuro-Fuzzy systems.
Cloud dilemma

Cloud is changing the way IT thinks and works, it's changing the way administrators do their job, the way businesses offer their services, how consultants create new offerings and solutions, and how management divide capital and operational expenses. Most of the administrators are reluctant to use cloud services because of the fear that the Cloud will make them obsolete. The rest of them, including the management have a dilemma whether to use it or not, and most important whether they are allowed to do it, based on local and global laws and regulatory compliances. This paper will deal with dilemmas administrators, consultants and management may encounter during the transition to the cloud solution, from the technical, through business, to the regulatory and legal perspective. It will give an overview on Croatian laws and rules created by Croatian regulatory bodies, which will help to solve this dilemma and make the transition to the cloud solution easier and smoother for most of the businesses that are having abovementioned dilemma.
Air Pollution and Mortality in Chile: Susceptibility among the Elderly

Objective The estimated mortality rate associated with ambient air pollution based on general population studies may not be representative of the effects on certain subgroups. The objective of the present study was to determine the influence of relatively high concentrations of air pollution on mortality in a general population sample and in the very elderly. Study design Daily time-series analyses tested the association between daily air pollution and daily mortality in seven Chilean urban centers during 1997–2003. Results were adjusted for day of the week and humidex. Results Daily averaged particulate matter with aerodynamic matter < 10 μm (PM10) was 84.88 μg/m3, sulfur dioxide was 14.08ppb, and carbon monoxide was 1.29 ppb. The 1-hr maximum ozone was 100.13 ppb. The percentage increases in nonaccidental mortality associated with an increase in PM10 equivalent to its mean were 4.53 (t-ratio 1.52) for those < 65 years and 14.03 (3.87) for those > 85 years. Respective values were 4.96 (1.17) and 8.56 (2.02) for O3; 4.77 (2.50) and 7.92 (3.23) for SO2; and 4.10 (2.52) and 8.58 (4.45) for CO. Conclusion Our results suggest that the very elderly are particularly susceptible to dying from air pollution. Concentrations deemed acceptable for the general population may not adequately protect the very elderly.