Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using a Control to Better Understand Phyllosphere Microbiota

An important data gap in our understanding of the phyllosphere surrounds the origin of the many microbes described as phyllosphere communities. Most sampling in phyllosphere research has focused on the collection of microbiota without the use of a control, so the opportunity to determine which taxa are actually driven by the biology and physiology of plants as opposed to introduced by environmental forces has yet to be fully realized. To address this data gap, we used plastic plants as inanimate controls adjacent to live tomato plants (phyllosphere) in the field with the hope of distinguishing between bacterial microbiota that may be endemic to plants as opposed to introduced by environmental forces. Using 16S rRNA gene amplicons to study bacterial membership at four time points, we found that the vast majority of all species-level operational taxonomic units were shared at all time-points. Very few taxa were unique to phyllosphere samples. A higher taxonomic diversity was consistently observed in the control samples. The high level of shared taxonomy suggests that environmental forces likely play a very important role in the introduction of microbes to plant surfaces. The observation that very few taxa were unique to the plants compared to the number that were unique to controls was surprising and further suggests that a subset of environmentally introduced taxa thrive on plants. This finding has important implications for improving our approach to the description of core phytobiomes as well as potentially helping us better understand how foodborne pathogens may become associated with plant surfaces.
Secreted CXCL1 Is a Potential Mediator and Marker of the Tumor Invasion of Bladder Cancer

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify proteins that are potentially involved in the tumor invasion of bladder cancer. Experimental Design: We searched for the candidate proteins by comparing the profiles of secreted proteins among the poorly invasive human bladder carcinoma cell line RT112 and the highly invasive cell line T24. The proteins isolated from cell culture supernatants were identified by shotgun proteomics. We found that CXCL1 is related to the tumor invasion of bladder cancer cells. We also evaluated whether the amount of the chemokine CXCL1 in the urine would be a potential marker for predicting the existence of invasive bladder tumors. Results: Higher amount of CXCL1 was secreted from highly invasive bladder carcinoma cell lines and this chemokine modulated the invasive ability of those cells in vitro. It was revealed that CXCL1 regulated the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-13 in vitro and higher expression of CXCL1 was associated with higher pathologic stages in bladder cancer in vivo. We also showed that urinary CXCL1 levels were significantly higher in patients with invasive bladder cancer (pT1-4) than those with noninvasive pTa tumors (P = 0.0028) and normal control (P < 0.0001). Finally, it was shown that CXCL1 was an independent factor for predicting the bladder cancer with invasive phenotype. Conclusions: Our results suggest that CXCL1 modulates the invasive abilities of bladder cancer cells and this chemokine may be a potential candidate of urinary biomarker for invasive bladder cancer and a possible therapeutic target for preventing tumor invasion.
Postvelar harmony : an examination of its bases and crosslinguistic variation

This dissertation examines postvelar harmony in two unrelated languages: Palestinian Arabic and St'at'imcets Salish. In contrast to previous studies, it identifies two such harmonies for each language: pharyngealisation (tongue root retraction) harmony and uvularisation (tongue back retraction) harmony. The properties of the two harmonies in each language are detailed. Acoustic data are provided as support for the proposed analyses and for the grounded phonological accounts which are subsequently developed. The harmonic feature of pharyngealisation harmony in both Palestinian and St'a'timcets is identified as [RTR] (unspecified for primary or secondary status). The anchor for [RTR] in both languages is the NUC. Co-occurring secondary-[DOR] and secondary-[RTR] are identified as the harmonic features of uvularisation harmony. In both languages, the anchor for these co-occurring features is the root node. An Optimality Theory account of the two harmonies in each language is developed, in which Correspondence, Alignment, and Grounded Constraints have central roles. Constraint reranking is shown to yield the observed crosslinguistic variation in the harmonies. In the course of this examination, issues regarding the consonantal and vocalic inventories of Palestinian and St'at'imcets are adressed. It is argued that each has a more elaborate vocalic system than previously recognised, and that St'at'imcets, like Palestinian, has a set of underlying emphatic consonants.
Odd Leaf Out: Improving Visual Recognition with Games

A growing number of projects are solving complex computational and scientific tasks by soliciting human feedback through games. Many games with a purpose focus on generating textual tags for images. In contrast, we introduce a new game, Odd Leaf Out, which provides players with an enjoyable and educational game that serves the purpose of identifying misclassification errors in a large database of labeled leaf images. The game uses a novel mechanism to solicit useful information from players' incorrect answers. A study of 165 players showed that game data can be used to identify mislabeled leaves much more quickly than would have been possible using a computer vision algorithm alone. Domain novices and experts were equally good at identifying mislabeled images, although domain experts enjoyed the game more. We discuss the successes and challenges of this new game, which can be applied to other domains with labeled image datasets.
Physical characteristics of ejaculates produced by insemination boars depending on the interval between successive ejaculate collections

The ejaculate characteristics of Polish Landrace boars showed a significant correlation with the intervals between the successive ejaculate collections. The effect of insemination use intensity was however varied. Rising frequency of ejaculate collection led to a systematic and fairly even fall in ejaculate volume. Ejaculate sperm concentration remained at a relatively high level when ejaculates were collected with a frequency of 7 to 3 days but further shortening of the interval between the successive collections led to a drastic decrease in sperm concentration. An increase in ejaculate collection frequency to every four and fewer days resulted in a significant decrease in the number of spermatozoa present in the produced ejaculates and a concomitant decrease in the number of insemination doses prepared from these ejaculates, with an escalation of such changes.
Use of time‐lapse microscopy to visualize rapid movement of the replication origin region of the chromosome during the cell cycle in Bacillus subtilis

We describe the use of time‐lapse fluorescence microscopy to visualize the movement of the DNA replication origin and terminus regions on the Bacillus subtilis chromosome during the course of the cell cycle. The origin and terminus regions were tagged with a cassette of tandem lac operator repeats and visualized through the use of a fusion of the green fluorescent protein to the LacI repressor. We have discovered that origin regions abruptly move apart towards the cell poles during a brief interval of the cell cycle. This movement was also seen in the absence of cell wall growth and in the absence of the product of the parB homologue spo0J. The origin regions moved apart an average distance of 1.4 μm in an 11 min period of abrupt movement, representing an average velocity of 0.17 μm min−1. and reaching a maximum velocity of greater than 0.27 μm min−1. The terminus region also exhibited a striking pattern of movement but not as far or a rapid as the origin region. These results provide evidence for a mitotic‐like motor that is responsible for segregation of the origin regions of the chromosomes.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Findings of Early Spondylodiscitis: Interpretive Challenges and Atypical Findings

MR findings of early infectious spondylodiscitis are non-specific and may be confused with those of other conditions. Therefore, it is important to recognize early MR signs of conditions, such as inappreciable cortical changes in endplates, confusing marrow signal intensities of vertebral bodies, and inflammatory changes in paraspinal soft tissues, and subligamentous and epidural spaces. In addition, appreciation of direct inoculation, such as in iatrogenic spondylodiscitis may be important, because the proportion of patients who have undergone recent spine surgery or a spinal procedure is increasing. In this review, the authors focus on the MR findings of early spondylodiscitis, atypical findings of iatrogenic infection, and the differentiation between spondylodiscitis and other disease entities mimicking infection.
Measures used to assess burden among caregivers of stroke patients: a review

Objective: To describe measures used to evaluate the burden of caregiving experienced by caregivers of stroke patients and their clinimetric properties. Design: A review of the literature was conducted to examine burden scales with regard to concept, feasibility, internal consistency, validity, reliability and responsiveness. Results: The literature search resulted in 45 measures of caregiver outcomes, including 16 different measures of caregiver burden. About half of the scales were used only once and were not further described. Nearly all instruments measure the various dimensions of burden (competency, negative feelings, social relations, participation problems, physical and mental health and economic aspects), but not in the same proportions. Most measures showed good internal consistency, and validity was demonstrated for all measures except one. However, not much is known about the reliability and responsiveness of these measures. Conclusions: No measure has proven superiority above others. Future research should focus on comparisons between existing instruments and on their reliability and responsiveness.
Cognitive Modelling for Predicting Examinee Performance

Cognitive modelling can discover the latent characteristics of examinees for predicting their performance (i.e. scores) on each problem. As cognitive modelling is important for numerous applications, e.g. personalized remedy recommendation, some solutions have been designed in the literature. However, the problem of extracting information from both objective and subjective problems to get more precise and interpretable cognitive analysis is still underexplored. To this end, we propose a fuzzy cognitive diagnosis framework (Fuzzy CDF) for examinees' cognitive modelling with both objective and subjective problems. Specifically, to handle the partially correct responses on subjective problems, we first fuzzify the skill proficiency of examinees. Then, we combine fuzzy set theory and educational hypotheses to model the examinees' mastery on the problems. Further, we simulate the generation of examination scores by considering both slip and guess factors. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets prove that FuzzyCDF can predict examinee performance more effectively, and the output of FuzzyCDF is also interpretative.
A method of achieving the maximum write endurance for storage systems through wear-leveling supported by spare regions

A cost-effective and easy-to-implement method is proposed to maximize the write endurance for solid-state memories in terms of the metric called “normalized endurance” (NE). The concept of spare regions is introduced in the proposed wear-leveling algorithm to combine with the existing method proposed by IBM. A new formula has been obtained to maximize the NE value with a small cost of memory.
Two-loop self-dual Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians (I): Real part and helicity amplitudes

We show that, for both scalar and spinor QED, the two-loop Euler-Heisenberg effective lagrangian for a constant euclidean self-dual background has an extremely simple closed-form expression in terms of the digamma function. Moreover, the scalar and spinor QED effective lagrangians are very similar to one another. These results are dramatic simplifications compared to the results for other backgrounds. We apply them to a calculation of the low energy limits of the two-loop massive N-photon `all +' helicity amplitudes. The simplicity of our results can be related to the connection between self-duality, helicity and supersymmetry.
Characteristics comparison of two audio output devices for augmented audio reality

In this paper, we compared two audio output devices for augmented audio reality applications. In these applications, we plan to use speech annotations on top of the actual ambient environment. Thus, it becomes essential that these audio output devices will be able to deliver intelligible speech annotation along with transparent delivery of the environmental auditory scene. Two candidate devices were compared. The first output was the bone-conduction headphones which can deliver speech by vibrating the skull, while normal hearing is left intact for surrounding noise since these headphones leave the ear canal open. The other is the binaural microphone/earphone combo, which is in a form factor similar to a regular earphone, but integrates a small microphone at the ear canal entry. The input from these microphones can be fed back to the earphone along with the annotation speech. In this paper, we compared the speech intelligibility of speech when competing babble noise is simultaneously given from the surrounding environment. It was found that the bone-conduction headphones can deliver speech at higher intelligibility than the binaural combo. However, with the binaural combo, we found that the ear canal transfer characteristics were altered significantly by closing the ear canal with the earphones. If we employed a compensation filter to account for this transfer function deviation, the resultant speech intelligibility was found to be higher than the bone-conduction headphones. In any case, both of these are found to be acceptable as audio output devices for augmented audio reality applications since both are able to deliver speech at high intelligibility even when significant amount of competing noise is present.
Priority-Based Wavelength Assignment Algorithm for Burst Switched WDM Optical Networks

Burst switched WDM optical networks are coming up as suitable network architectures for future Optical Internet backbones. However, the lack of optical processing capabilities results in increased burst blocking probability, which in turn lead to very limited network performance. Efficient contention resolution algorithm is therefore necessary. In this paper, we propose a distributed wavelength assignment algorithm named Priority-based Wavelength Assignment (PWA) for such networks. Each node selectively assigns wavelengths based on the wavelength priority information “learned” from its wavelength utilization history in a distributed manner. As the learning process progresses, nodes in the same part of the network tend to assign different wavelengths to avoid contentions. Simulation results show that the PWA can effectively reduce the blocking probability and increase the performance of burst optical networks compared to previous algorithms such as random assignment.
Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Sensation Seeking and Internet Addiction

The method of meta-analysis was utilized to analyze the relationship between individual sensation seeking and Internet addiction.Thirty-seven cases that met the requirements of meta-analysis were selected(N=15,768). The meta-analysis revealed a small relationship between Internet addiction and the factors of individual thrill and adventure seeking degrees; and a moderate relationship between Internet addiction and the indicators of total score of sensation seeking,experience seeking,boring susceptibility,and disinhibition.Among the 4 indicators,the disinhibition was most strongly correlated with Internet addiction(mean weighted r=0.35). The test of moderating effect disclosed that measure tools,test participants,and cultural background played an adjustment role between sensation seeking and Internet addiction.The findings showed that sensation seeking was an important factor of personality-influence to Internet addiction.The total score of sensation seeking as well as other factors were predictive to Internet addiction more or less.
Crossing the Wall: Branes vs. Bundles

We test a recently proposed wall-crossing formula for the change of the Hilbert space of BPS states in d=4,N=2 theories. We study decays of D4D2D0 systems into pairs of D4D2D0 systems and we show how the wall-crossing formula reproduces results of Goettsche and Yoshioka on wall-crossing behavior of the moduli of slope-stable holomorphic bundles over holomorphic surfaces. Our comparison shows very clearly that the moduli space of the D4D2D0 system on a rigid surface in a Calabi-Yau is not the same as the moduli space of torsion free sheaves, even when worldhseet instantons are neglected. Moreover, we argue that the physical formula should make some new mathematical predictions for a future theory of the moduli of stable objects in the derived category.
Efficacy of different antifouling treatments for seawater cooling systems

In an industrial seawater cooling system, the effects of three different antifouling treatments, viz. sodium hypochlorite (NaClO), aliphatic amines (Mexel®432) and UV radiation, on the characteristics of the fouling formed were evaluated. For this study a portable pilot plant, as a side-stream monitoring system and seawater cooling system, was employed. The pilot plant simulated a power plant steam condenser, having four titanium tubes under different treatment patterns, where fouling progression could be monitored. The nature of the fouling obtained was chiefly inorganic, showing a clear dependence on the antifouling treatment employed. After 72 days the tubes under treatment showed a reduction in the heat transfer resistance (R) of around 70% for NaClO, 48% for aliphatic amines and 55% for UV, with respect to the untreated tube. The use of a logistic model was very useful for predicting the fouling progression and the maximum asymptotic value of the increment in the heat transfer resistance (ΔR max). The apparent thermal conductivity (λ) of the fouling layer showed a direct relationship with the percentage of organic matter in the collected fouling. The characteristics and mode of action of the different treatments used led to fouling with diverse physicochemical properties.
Covariance Propagation for Guided Matching

We present a general approach and analytical method for determining a search region for use in guided matching under projective mappings. Our approach is based on the propagation of covariance through a first-order approximation of the error model to define the boundary of the search region for a specified probability and we provide an analytical expression for the Jacobian matrix used in the covariance propagation calculation. The resulting closed-form expression is easy to implement and generalizes to n dimensions. We apply our method to point-to-point mapping under a planar homography, point-to-line mapping under a fundamental matrix, and mosaic construction from video in the case of the video looping back on itself.
The Effect of Intellectual Capital on Organizational Performance: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing

Understanding the various effects that exist among intellectual capital, knowledge sharing, and organizational performance is the main purpose of this study. Data were gathered from 356 employees working in manufacturing companies in Jordan. In order to test the hypotheses of this study, the approach suggested by [1] was undertaken. The results of the analysis revealed that intellectual capital had a positive effect on organizational performance and knowledge sharing. The results also showed that knowledge sharing had a positive effect on organizational performance. Finally, it was found that knowledge sharing had a positive mediating effect on the relationship between intellectual capital and organizational performance. The findings of this study thus provide many benefits for researchers and practitioners despite the presence of some limitations.
Simulation based evaluation of buried utility response

Finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is widely used to understand and interpret results of Ground penetrating radars (GPR). Simulation studies using FDTD on response of buried features to GPR is a standard practice. However, quantification of these simulated GPR response, which is required for application to real life problems, is not common. In the present work, several scenarios of pipe buried in a homogeneous medium is considered under various combinations of medium properties, buried pipe properties and antenna frequencies and corresponding hyperbolas are simulated using GprMax FDTD tool. Response surface method (RSM) is an established mathematical and statistical method to model the output of any experiment influenced by several independent input variables. Using Design Expert as RSM tool, values of axes ‘a’ and ‘b’, extracted from the simulated hyperbolas, are modeled as functions of influencing parameters. Knowing the axes of the hyperbola, one can estimate the size of the buried utility. The models are validated by computing a and b for experiments carried out using a special setup in air medium. Pipes are held at different heights above ground and an upward facing GPR is towed underneath, perpendicular to their lengths. The studies on pipes used 400 MHz antenna and results are presented for Galvanized iron (GI) pipe. The models are also used to compute ‘a’ and ‘b’ for a few actual buried pipes. The results show a good correlation indicating the possibility of predicting utility dimensions through simulation.
Blockade of glial‐derived neurotrophic factor in laryngeal muscles promotes appropriate reinnervation

Synkinetic reinnervation of the laryngeal muscles is one of the causes of the poor functional recovery after a recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) injury. Glial‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is elevated in rat laryngeal muscles during RLN reinnervation. The specific aim of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of anti‐GDNF on RLN reinnervation.
Deceiving suspects about the content of their alibis: consequences for truthful and untruthful suspects

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test how modifying one’s alibi statement interacts with exposure to deceptive interrogation techniques. Design/methodology/approach – In all, 90 participants walked about a university building for 15 minutes and either stole an envelope from a staff pigeonhole (guilty condition) or put the envelope there along the way (innocent condition). Subsequently, participants were asked to provide an alibi for the past 15 minutes. Guilty and half of the innocent participants were instructed to omit that they had been in the vicinity of the pigeonholes. The rest of the innocent participants were asked to tell the truth. Several days later, participants were questioned about six statements taken from their alibis, three of which contained altered information. Findings – As expected, participants were largely blind to our alterations, with detection rates ranging from 1 to 36 percent. Contrary to cognitive load predictions, detection rates did not vary as a function of truthfu.