Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Thermostability of Thylakoid Membranes in Isoprene-Emitting Leaves Probed with Three Biophysical Techniques1[W][OA]

Three biophysical approaches were used to get insight into increased thermostability of thylakoid membranes in isoprene-emittingplants.Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants genetically modified to make isoprene and Platanus orientalis leaves, in which isoprene emission was chemically inhibited, were used. First, in the circular dichroism spectrum the transition temperature of the main band at 694 nm was higher in the presence of isoprene, indicating that the heat stability of chiral macrodomains of chloroplast membranes, and specifically the stability of ordered arrays of light-harvesting complex II-photosystem II in the stacked region of the thylakoid grana, was improved in the presence of isoprene. Second, the decay of electrochromic absorbance changes resulting from the electric field component of the proton motive force (ΔA515) was evaluated following single-turnover saturating flashes. The decay of ΔA515 was faster in the absence of isoprene when leaves of Arabidopsis and Platanus were exposed to high temperature, indicating that isoprene protects the thylakoid membranes against leakiness at elevated temperature. Finally, thermoluminescence measurements revealed that S2QB− charge recombination was shifted to higher temperature in Arabidopsis and Platanus plants in the presence of isoprene, indicating higher activation energy for S2QB− redox pair, which enables isoprene-emitting plants to perform efficient primary photochemistry of photosystem II even at higher temperatures. The data provide biophysical evidence that isoprene improves the integrity and functionality of the thylakoid membranes at high temperature. These results contribute to our understanding of isoprene mechanism of action in plant protection against environmental stresses.
Multiuser Detection via Compressive Sensing

In this paper, we consider a multiuser detection technique when the signal sparsity is changing over time. The key ingredient of our method is a clever switching between the CS reconstruction algorithm and classical detection depending on the sparsity level of the signals being detected. Since none of these approaches is uniformly better in a situation where the sparsity level is varying, proposed switching algorithm can effectively combine the merits of both. We show that the proposed switching algorithm provides substantial performance gain over individual algorithms in the multiuser detection of CDMA downlink.
Staff attitudes to dealing with plagiarism issues: Perspectives from one Australian university.

This paper reports on the results of an online staff survey at one Australian university on attitudes to plagiarism issues, the use and efficacy of the institutional plagiarism policy and Turnitin system and staff perceptions of institutional resources that were available to assist both staff and students reduce the incidence of plagiarism. The survey was designed to capture staff perceptions, rather than verifiable activity or plagiarism detection outcomes. The survey responses highlighted the need for a common understanding of plagiarism and approaches to the detection and dealing with suspected plagiarism incidents. The responses also signalled a requirement for improved assessment practices that reduce the opportunity for plagiarism. Staff responses indicated that there was a need to publicise more effectively existing University resources for avoiding plagiarism; only a minority of survey respondents were aware of these resources. The majority of staff perceived that the institutional policies and practices were adequate for dealing with suspected plagiarism incidents.
Ontology patterns-based transformation of clinical information

The semantic interoperability of clinical information requires methods able to transform heterogeneous data sources from both technological and structural perspectives, into representations that facilitate the sharing of meaning. The SemanticHealthNet (SHN) project proposes using semantic content patterns for representing clinical information based on a model of meaning, preventing users from a deep knowledge on ontology and description logics formalism. In this work we propose a flexible transformation method that uses semantic content patterns to guide the mapping between the source data and a target domain ontology. As use case we show how one of the semantic content patterns proposed in SHN can be used to transform heterogeneous data about medication administration.
Introducing surprising events can stimulate deep learning in a serious game

Serious games show great potential, but many fail to live up to that potential. One way to improve serious game design could be to introduce surprising events linked to the instructional material. We modified our serious game for triage training, called Code Red Triage, to include three surprising events pertaining to decision-making moments in the triage procedure. Forty-one participants were divided into two groups: one group played a version of the game with the surprising events, and the other group played a control version of the game. A pre-posttest design showed no significant difference in engagement and surface learning, but did show the participants in the surprising events condition obtained significantly superior knowledge structures, indicating that surprising events in a serious game foster deeper learning. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic (Very little.), That serious games often fail to reach their potential. , That a surprising event can lead to a better comprehension of text. , But that a narrative background in a virtual learning environment led to worse learning. , What this paper adds A thorough, single-blind, controlled empirical experiment on the effects of serious game design on different factors of learning and engagement. , That introducing small surprising events in a serious game leads to improved deep comprehension of the instructional material. , That this intervention has no ostensible effect on engagement. , Implications for practice and/or policy Surprising events should be introduced in a serious game to improve learning. , Serious game designers should therefore carefully consider how to embed instruction in the game narrative. , Research in serious game design is worthwhile (and highly needed) because it can lead to better serious games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Effects of Interest, Thematic Congruence, and Typicality on Memory for Television, Radio, and Press Advertisements of New Products

Summary: Little is known about how the content of advertisements is remembered. We studied how product interest, thematic congruence between advertisement and programme, and the typicality of the elements of an advertisement affect memory for new product ads in television, radio, and printed media. Participants were exposed to a single type of media with two embedded ads. After a filler task, they completed a true/false recognition task. In television and radio, accuracy was higher for the interesting product ads. In three experiments, we found no effect of thematic congruence, and the standard effect of typicality. In printed media, where participants are free to read the ads or not, the differences in hits and false alarms in typicality were due to a change in the response criterion and not to an effect on memory. We conclude that different results can be obtained depending on the exposure to different media. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Inhibition of protein glycation and advanced glycation end products by ascorbic acid

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) formation is increased in diabetes mellitus, leading to microvascular and macrovascular complications. Recently, much attention has been focused on natural and synthetic inhibitors to delay the onset or progression of diabetes and its comorbidities. Ascorbic acid (AA) can react with proteins, including hemoglobin and possibly interfere with protein glycation process. An in vitro glycation model containing plasma from type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic healthy volunteers together with glucose as glycating agent was used to study antiglycation activity of AA. Samples with different concentrations of glucose and AA were incubated for five weeks at 37°C. Nonenzymatic glycation (NEG) was quantitated by thiobarbituric acid calorimetry and AGEs were measured by enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA). The NEG and AGEs levels were reduced by AA. Increasing the AA concentrations greatly diminished protein glycations, indicating dose-dependent effects of AA. Plasma NEG and AGEs were decreased with an average of 20 to 26% (p < 0.05) and 26 to 28% (p < 0.05). A significant correlation was found between the glycation inhibition and the inhibition of AGE formation (p < 0.05). The antiglycation role of AA is evident in the present study and it also indicates the possibility of inexpensive, relatively non-toxic vitamin therapy for the prevention and treatment of diabetic complications. It is plausible that AGEs inhibition by AA may also form the basis for future intervention strategies in both diabetic and non-diabetic individuals. Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, glycation, advanced glycation end products, hyperglycemia, ascorbic acid
Lack of Association Between Two Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms in the Genes for the Light and Heavy Neurofilament Proteins and Alzheimer's Disease

ABSTRACT: The etiology of Alzheimer disease (AD) remains unknown. The hypothesis of genetic factors playing a role in the causation of the disease, at least in its familial form, has been borne out by results showing linkage in several early-onset AD families to a locus on the proximal part of the long arm of chromosome 21. Linkage was not detected in several other families using the same markers. The metabolism of neurofilaments is perturbed in AD, as indicated by the presence of neurofilament epitopes in neurofibrillary tangles, as well as by the severe reduction of the expression of the gene for the light neurofilament subunit in AD brain. To detect a possible anomaly that might relate to the disease, we have searched for an association between the genes for the light subunit and the heavy subunit of the neurofilament triplet, and AD. Genotypes for restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLP) at each of the two loci were determined for an AD group and a control group. Allelic frequencies at a Taql-defined RFLP for the gene for the light neurofilament subunit were 0.70 for the 3.7 kb allele and 0.30 for the 2.9 kb allele. Hindi detected an RFLP for the heavy neurofilament subunit gene with frequencies of 0.31 for the 18.0 kb allele and 0.69 for the 6.8 kb allele. Frequencies were found to be similar in the two groups for both light and heavy neurofilament subunit loci. Although it cannot be excluded that mutations at other sites of the neurofilament genes are relevant to AD, the data reported here do not support an association between these genes and the disease.
Congestion games with load-dependent failures: identical resources

We define a new class of games, congestion games with load-dependent failures (CGLFs), which generalizes the well-known class of congestion games, by incorporating the issue of resource failures into congestion games. In a CGLF, agents share a common set of resources, where each resource has a cost and a probability of failure. Each agent chooses a subset of the resources for the execution of his task, in order to maximize his own utility. The utility of an agent is the difference between his benefit from successful task completion and the sum of the costs over the resources he uses. CGLFs possess two novel features. It is the first model to incorporate failures into congestion settings, which results in a strict generalization of congestion games. In addition, it is the first model to consider load-dependent failures in such framework, where the failure probability of each resource depends on the number of agents selecting this resource. Although, as we show, CGLFs do not admit a potential function, and in general do not have a pure strategy Nash equilibrium, our main theorem proves the existence of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium in every CGLF with identical resources and nondecreasing cost functions.
The role of inflammation and interleukin-1 in acute cerebrovascular disease

Acute cerebrovascular disease can affect people at all stages of life, from neonates to the elderly, with devastating consequences. It is responsible for up to 10% of deaths worldwide, is a major cause of disability, and represents an area of real unmet clinical need. Acute cerebrovascular disease is multifactorial with many mechanisms contributing to a complex pathophysiology. One of the major processes worsening disease severity and outcome is inflammation. Pro-inflammatory cytokines of the interleukin (IL)-1 family are now known to drive damaging inflammatory processes in the brain. The aim of this review is to discuss the recent literature describing the role of IL-1 in acute cerebrovascular disease and to provide an update on our current understanding of the mechanisms of IL-1 production. We also discuss the recent literature where the effects of IL-1 have been targeted in animal models, thus reviewing potential future strategies that may limit the devastating effects of acute cerebrovascular disease.
Qualitative fault diagnosis in systems with nonintermittent concurrent faults: a subjective approach

Major approaches to automatic fault diagnosis of industrial plants are either subjective or objective. Subjective approaches imitate and synthesize the way that human experts diagnose faults. Objective approaches automate a portion of a diagnostic task which, due to cognitive limitation, humans do not handle efficiently. Currently available subjective fault diagnosis techniques suffer from certain drawbacks, such as: lack of knowledge for modeling and reasoning with the required levels of detail; inefficiency in utilization of sensory data; and inadequacy in learning experienced schemas. A subjective approach to fault diagnosis, using qualitative modeling and reasoning within the multiple view of the system, is introduced. The focus is on automation of the cognitive skills of human experts, which include utilizing conceptual models to detect inherent redundancy in system behavior qualitative reasoning to predict future states, and information selection to avoid computation overload. >
The Design and Artificiality of Tracking Synchronization Controller in Chaotic Systems with Diverse Structures

The tracking synchronization controller is designed to synchronize chaotic systems with diverse structures. The state variables of the Genesio system track an arbitrary reference signal of the Liu system at an exponential rate by choosing appropriate Lyapunov function. The designed controller is of unique structure, and synchronization between any chaotic systems can be achieved. The Liu system and the Genesio system are taken for examples to demonstrate the method to be effective and feasible, and the influence on the synchronization rate by the control intensity is discussed.
Construction of Random Input-Output Codes With Moderate Block Lengths

Random I/O (RIO) codes, recently introduced by Sharon and Alrod, is a coding scheme to improve the random input/output performance of flash memories. Multilevel flash memories require, on the average, more than a single read threshold in order to read a single logicalpage. This number is important to be optimized since it sets the read latency of flash memories. An (n, M, t) RIO code assumes that t pages are stored in n cells with t + 1 levels. The first page is read by applying a read threshold between levels t and t + 1. Similarly, the second page is read by applying a read threshold between levels t - 1 and t, and so on. As a consequence, if a cell reads as bit 1 for a page (say page m), the cell also reads as bit 1 for all the successive pages (m + 1, m + 2⋯). Therefore, Sharon and Alrod showed that the design of RIO codes is equivalent to the design of WOM codes. The latter family of codes attracted substantial attention in recent years in order to improve the lifetime of flash memories by allowing writing multiple messages to the memory without the need for an erase operation. In this paper, we notice two important distinctions between RIO codes and WOM codes. While in WOM codes, the messages are received one after the other and thus are not known all in advance, in RIO codes the information of all logical pages can be known in advance when programming the cells. Even though this knowledge does not improve the maximum sumrate of RIO codes, it allows the design of efficient high-rate codes with a moderate block length, which do not exist for WOM codes. We also study another family of RIO codes, called here partial RIO codes, that allow to find even more efficient codes while allowing to sense more than a single threshold to read some pages.
Iterativewater filling based on SLNR with 1-shot 1-bit feedback

The paper proposes a subcarrier power allocation method for downlink OFDMA systems. The proposed method utilizes an iterative water-filling (IWF) algorithm with signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (SLNR) rather than conventional signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), which enables us to considerably reduce the overhead. Computer simulation results show that the proposed IWF based on SLNR with 1-shot 1-bit feedback per subcarrier can achieve very close sum-rate performance to the conventional IWF based on SINR, while only replacing SINR to SLNR in the IWF algorithm results in poor performance.
A real time study of the human equilibrium using an instrumented insole with 3 pressure sensors

The present work deals with the study of the human equilibrium using an ambulatory e-health system. One of the point on which we focus is the fall risk, when losing equilibrium control. A specific postural learning model is presented, and an ambulatory instrumented insole is developed using 3 pressures sensors per foot, in order to determine the real-time displacement and the velocity of the centre of pressure (CoP). The increase of these parameters signals a loss of physiological sensation, usually of vision or of the inner ear. The results are compared to those obtained from classical more complex systems.
Nutrition and hydration concerns of the female football player

There is little information on the nutritional habits of female football players at any level of the game. There is also a shortage of information on the nutrition and hydration strategies that players should adopt. In general, differences in nutritional needs between males and females are smaller than differences between individuals, so that principles developed for male players also apply to women. There is a need to address energy balance and body composition: prolonged energy deficits cannot be sustained without harm to health and performance. Published reports show mean carbohydrate intakes for female players of about 5 g/kg/day, and this seems to be too low to sustain consistent intensive training. The timing of protein intake may be as important as the amounts consumed, provided that the total intake is adequate. Dehydration adversely affects skill and stamina in women as it does in men, so an individualised hydration strategy should be developed. The prevalence of iron deficiency in women generally is high, but it seems to be alarmingly high in female players. All players should adopt dietary habits that ensure adequate iron intake. Football training seems to increase bone mass in the weight-bearing limbs, with positive implications for bone health in later life, but some players may be at risk from inadequate calcium dietary intake.
Immobilization of Escherichia coli RNA Polymerase and Location of Binding Sites by Use of Chromatin Immunoprecipitation and Microarrays

ABSTRACT The genome-wide location of RNA polymerase binding sites was determined in Escherichia coli using chromatin immunoprecipitation and microarrays (chIP-chip). Cross-linked chromatin was isolated in triplicate from rifampin-treated cells, and DNA bound to RNA polymerase was precipitated with an antibody specific for the β′ subunit. The DNA was amplified and hybridized to “tiled” oligonucleotide microarrays representing the whole genome at 25-bp resolution. A total of 1,139 binding sites were detected and evaluated by comparison to gene expression data from identical conditions and to 961 promoters previously identified by established methods. Of the detected binding sites, 418 were located within 1,000 bp of a known promoter, leaving 721 previously unknown RNA polymerase binding sites. Within 200 bp, we were able to detect 51% (189/368) of the known σ70-specific promoters occurring upstream of an expressed open reading frame and 74% (273/368) within 1,000 bp. Conversely, many known promoters were not detected by chIP-chip, leading to an estimated 26% negative-detection rate. Most of the detected binding sites could be associated with expressed transcription units, but 299 binding sites occurred near inactive transcription units. This map of RNA polymerase binding sites represents a foundation for studies of transcription factors in E. coli and an important evaluation of the chIP-chip technique.
Taming Sense Sparsity: a Common-Sense Approach

We present a novel algorithm and a linguistic resource named CLOSEST after ‘Common SEnse STrainer’. The resource contains a list of the main senses associated to a given term, and it was obtained by applying a simple set of pruning heuristics to the senses provided in the NASARI vectors for the set of 15K most frequent English terms. The preliminary experimentation provided encouraging results. Italiano. In questo lavoro presentiamo un algoritmo e una risorsa linguistica, ClOSeSt, che contiene i sensi più rilevanti per i 15K termini più frequenti del dizionario inglese. L’algoritmo implementato utilizza una risorsa esistente che codifica conoscenza di tipo enciclopedico, e poggia sulla nozione di senso comune per filtrare i possibili sensi associati a ciascun termine. La valutazione preliminare ha fornito risultati incoraggianti in merito alla qualità dei sensi estratti.
Consumer LED lamp with ODAC technology for high-speed visible light communications

Optical digital-to-analog converters (ODACs) were recently proposed to mitigate the non-linear characteristic of light emitting diodes (LEDs) and to simplify the transceiver in optical wireless communication systems. This paper describes the implementation and performance of an ODAC lamp built with commercial phosphor coated LEDs. It is shown to have sufficient performance to cope with data-rates compatible with those recommended for Ultra HD quality internet download speed (25Mbps), despite the very low bandwidth of these LEDs. Also, the structure of a low-cost and high-speed OFDM-based Visible Light Communication transceiver, based on commercial LEDs and off-the-shelf components, is presented. This solution does not require D/A conversion or complex LED driving circuitry in the transmitter, which are usually seen as limiting factors to the deployment of high-speed VLC systems in the consumer LED lighting market.
TargetDB: a database of peptides targeting proteins to subcellular locations

UNLABELLED TargetDB is a relational database designed to represent data on protein targeting sequences, mutant signals, subcellular targets and source organisms. AVAILABILITY TargetDB is accessible at http://molbio.nmsu. edu:81. The web interface supports both direct data authoring and database query functions. CONTACT moconnel@nmsu. edu, tao_wei@hms.harvard. edu