Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CDC42 and CDC43, two additional genes involved in budding and the establishment of cell polarity in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Budding in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae involves a polarized deposition of new cell surface material that is associated with a highly asymmetric disposition of the actin cytoskeleton. Mutants defective in gene CDC24, which are unable to bud or establish cell polarity, have been of great interest with regard to both the mechanisms of cellular morphogenesis and the mechanisms that coordinate cell-cycle events. To gain further insights into these problems, we sought additional mutants with defects in budding. We report here that temperature-sensitive mutants defective in genes CDC42 and CDC43, like cdc24 mutants, fail to bud but continue growth at restrictive temperature, and thus arrest as large unbudded cells. Nearly all of the arrested cells appear to begin nuclear cycles (as judged by the occurrence of DNA replication and the formation and elongation of mitotic spindles), and many go on to complete nuclear division, supporting the hypothesis that the events associated with budding and those of the nuclear cycle represent two independent pathways within the cell cycle. The arrested mutant cells display delocalized cell- surface deposition associated with a loss of asymmetry of the actin cytoskeleton. CDC42 maps distal to the rDNA on chromosome XII and CDC43 maps near lys5 on chromosome VII.
Thermodynamic parameters for loop formation in RNA and DNA hairpin tetraloops.

We determined the melting temperatures (Tm) and thermodynamic parameters of 15 RNA and 19 DNA hairpins at 1 M NaCl, 0.01 M sodium phosphate, 0.1 mM EDTA, at pH 7. All these hairpins have loops of four bases, the most common loop size in 16S and 23S ribosomal RNAs. The RNA hairpins varied in loop sequence, loop-closing base pair (A.U, C.G, or G.C), base sequence of the stem, and stem size (four or five base pairs). The DNA hairpins varied in loop sequence, loop-closing base pair (C.G, or G.C), and base sequence of the four base-pair stem. Thermodynamic properties of a hairpin may be represented by nearest-neighbor interactions of the stem plus contributions from the loop. Thus, we obtained thermodynamic parameters for the formation of RNA and DNA tetraloops. For the tetraloops we studied, a free energy of loop formation (at 37 degrees C) of about +3 kcal/mol is most common for either RNA or DNA. There are extra stable loops with delta G degrees 37 near +1 kcal/mol, but the sequences are not necessarily the same for RNA and DNA. The closing base pair is also important; changing from C.G to G.C lowered the stability of several tetraloops in both RNA and DNA. These values will be useful in predicting RNA and DNA secondary structures.
Seagull: Intelligent Cloud Bursting for Enterprise Applications

Enterprises with existing IT infrastructure are beginning to employ a hybrid cloud model where the enterprise uses its own private resources for the majority of its computing, but then "bursts" into the cloud when local resources are insufficient. However, current approaches to cloud bursting cannot be effectively automated because they heavily rely on system administrator knowledge to make decisions. In this paper we describe Seagull, a system designed to facilitate cloud bursting by determining which applications can be transitioned into the cloud most economically, and automating the movement process at the proper time. We further optimize the deployment of applications into the cloud using an intelligent precopying mechanism that proactively replicates virtualized applications, lowering the bursting time from hours to minutes. Our evaluation illustrates how our prototype can reduce cloud costs by more than 45% when bursting to the cloud, and the incremental cost added by precopying applications is offset by a burst time reduction of nearly 95%.
THE EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE ON THE COMPRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR OF EPOXY COMPOUND EPY®

Przedmiotem badań, opisanych w tej pracy, było specjalne tworzywo epoksydowe o nazwie handlowej EPY, stosowane na podkładki fundamentowe maszyn i urządzeń okrętowych, a ostatnio także wielu innych ciężkich maszyn i urządzeń lądowych. Odlewanie z tego tworzywa podkładek fundamentowych na gotowo, bezpośrednio pod odpowiednio ustawionym obiektem (np. silnikiem napędu głównego statku), znacznie upraszcza montaż ciężkich maszyn i urządzeń, dając w efekcie wiele korzyści techniczno-ekonomicznych i eksploatacyjnych. Należy jednakże przy tym brać pod uwagę fakt, że właściwości mechaniczne powstałych w ten sposób podkładek fundamentowych zależą nie tylko od składu tworzywa polimerowego, ale także w dużym stopniu od technologii ich wytwarzania i warunków eksploatacji, głównie temperatury i szybkości odkształcania. Celem prac, przedstawionych w tym artykule, było zbadanie procesu dotwardzania tworzywa EPY oraz określenie wpływu temperatury i szybkości odkształcania na właściwości mechaniczne tego tworzywa jako materiału konstrukcyjnego w zastosowaniu na podkładki fundamentowe maszyn i urządzeń. Badania procesu dotwardzania tworzywa przeprowadzono metodą różnicowej kalorymetrii skaningowej (DSC). Wyniki badań obrazują termogramy przedstawione na rysunku 1. Charakterystyki mechaniczne tworzywa przy obciążeniu ściskającym, w różnych temperaturach (od 22 do 160°C) i przy różnych szybkościach odkształcania (od 0,0208 do 20,8 min), oraz wartości wybranych wskaźników wytrzymałościowych wyznaczono za pomocą skomputeryzowanej maszyny wytrzymałościowej INSTRON. Wyniki tych badań przedstawiono na rysunkach 2-5. Analiza uzyskanych wyników badań eksperymentalnych wykazała dobrą ich zgodność z równaniem Eyringa (2). Wynika z tego, że wytrzymałość na ściskanie dotwardzonego tworzywa rośnie liniowo wraz z logarytmem szybkości jego odkształcania (rys. 6). Natomiast wzrost temperatury pomiaru (w zakresie od 22 do 100°C) badanego tworzywa powoduje, że jego wrażliwość na zmianę szybkości odkształcania maleje (rys. 6). Uzyskano także dobrą zgodność wyników badań doświadczalnych z empirycznym równaniem Lessera (4), co umożliwia prognozowanie wytrzymałości na ściskanie dotwardzonego tworzywa EPY w zależności od temperatury pomiarowej (rys. 7). Przeprowadzone badania umożliwiają pełniejszą ocenę zasadniczych właściwości mechanicznych badanego tworzywa EPY jako materiału konstrukcyjnego, stosowanego w montażu ciężkich maszyn i urządzeń, eksploatowanych w różnych warunkach termicznych, przy różnych obciążeniach statycznych i dynamicznych.
The AT&t-DARPA communicator mixed-initiative spoken dialog system

The design and implementation of the AT&T Communicator mixed-initiative spoken dialog system is described. The Communicator project, sponsored by DARPA and launched in 1999, is a multi-year multi-site project on advanced spoken dialog systems research. The main focus of this paper is on issues related to the design of mixed-initiative systems. In addition to describing our architecture and implementation of the complex travel task, the paper reports on some preliminary evaluation results.
Antibacterial Activities of Nanoparticles of Titanium dioxide, Intrinsic and Doped With Indium and Iron

The need for new antimicrobial compounds has been attention on developing new and emerging materials based on nanoparticles with antimicrobial activity. The aim of this research was to evaluate the antibacterial activities of nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, intrinsic and doped with Indium and Iron in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. The bacteriostatic effect of TiO2 nanoparticles (two samples), TiO2:Fe and TiO2:In with concentrations of 50, 250 500 μg/ml. It was observed by optical density measurements. The bactericidal effect was determined by plate count agar Muller-Hinton, where they were incubated for 12 hours: 50 μl of bacterial suspension (concentration 1.5 x 106 bacteria/ml), concentration 50 μl of nanoparticles suspended at concentrations between 39 and 2500 μg/ ml. Then, to 10 6 dilutions were made and plated on agar for colony counts. There were significant decreases P < 0.05 in the bacterial optical densities with respect to control, using TiO2 nanoparticles prepared with different contents of acetic acid at concentrations of 250 and 500 μg/ml versus E. coli and S. aureus. In the plate counts, there was a significant reduction, P < 0.05 in the number of CFU of E. coli using TiO2 nanoparticles (50% AcAc) in concentrations 39 to 2500 μg/ml; in the case of S. aureus decrease seen in concentrations 78 to 2500 μg/ml. In both bacteria, we observed decreased bacterial growth with TiO2 nanoparticles at concentrations of 156 2500 μg/ml. The two variants of preparing TiO2 nanoparticles have higher intrinsic activity against E. coli and S. aureus, while nanoparticles doped with Indium and Iron, not power the antibacterial effect.
Stories of Transformation: A Cross-Country Focus Group Study on Sustainable Development and Societal Change

Societal transformation is one of the most topical concepts in sustainability research and policy-making. Used in many ways, it indicates that nonlinear systematic changes are needed in order to fully address global environmental and human development challenges. This paper explores what sustainability transformations mean for lay focus group participants in Cabo Verde, China, Fiji, Sweden, and the USA. Key findings include: (a) Tightly linked to interpersonal relationships, sustainability was seen as going beyond the Sustainable Development Goals to include a sense of belonging; (b) transformations were framed as fundamental changes from today’s society, but most participants stated that transformation pathways need to splice new structures into the old; (c) new technologies are key engines of change. Yet, the most common drivers were awareness, education, and knowledge sharing; and (d) regardless of whether state-centric or decentralized governance was preferred, personal action was seen as essential. The focus groups displayed a shared understanding across the geographical settings; a common realization of profound sustainability predicaments facing societies across the world; and a desire for fundamental change towards a more sustainable way of life.
Ammonia first? The transition from cutaneous to branchial ammonia excretion in developing rainbow trout is not altered by exposure to chronically high NaCl

ABSTRACT Larval rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were reared from hatch under control ([Na+]=0.60 mmol l−1) or high NaCl ([Na+]=60 mmol l−1) conditions to elucidate the driving force for the ontogeny of branchial Na+/NH4+ exchange, one of the earliest gill functions. We hypothesized that if Na+ uptake is the driving force, then in high NaCl there would be a delay in the skin-to-gill shift in ammonia excretion (Jamm) and/or an elevation in whole-body total ammonia (Tamm). In both groups, however, the skin-to-gill shift for Jamm, determined using divided chambers, occurred at the same time (13 days post-hatch; dph) and whole-body Tamm was unchanged. Moreover, high NaCl larvae displayed elevated whole-body [Na+] relative to controls by 18 dph, suggesting that maintaining branchial Jamm occurs at the expense of Na+ balance. Overall, these results support the ‘ammonia hypothesis’, which posits that ammonia excretion, probably as Na+/NH4+ exchange, is the primary function of the early fish gill. Summary: Rearing larval rainbow trout in high NaCl reveals support for the ‘ammonia hypothesis’, which posits that ammonia excretion is the earliest gill function over development and may drive gill ontogeny.
Penicillin and cephalosporin production: A historical perspective

Antibiosis history began with the observations made by Sanderson and Roberts on the inhibition of bacterial growth by other organisms, at the end of the XIX Century. Biomedical re- search in this field advanced importantly during World War II, af- ter the discovery of penicillin by Fleming. Brotzus finding of cephalosporin and the massive production of these two compounds started a new era, not only for important breakthroughs in treating diseases, but also for the exploitation of living organisms to pro- duce substances of great benefit for mankind (known today as bio- technology). In this review, we summarize the historic evolution of the knowledge about penicillin and cephalosporin, from the first observations on producer microorganisms and the chemistry of these antibiotics up to the modern ways of genetic engineering fo- cused on developing superproducer strains at an industrial level.
Building Extraction from UAV Images Jointly Using 6D-SLIC and Multiscale Siamese Convolutional Networks

Automatic building extraction using a single data type, either 2D remotely-sensed images or light detection and ranging 3D point clouds, remains insufficient to accurately delineate building outlines for automatic mapping, despite active research in this area and the significant progress which has been achieved in the past decade. This paper presents an effective approach to extracting buildings from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) images through the incorporation of superpixel segmentation and semantic recognition. A framework for building extraction is constructed by jointly using an improved Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC) algorithm and Multiscale Siamese Convolutional Networks (MSCNs). The SLIC algorithm, improved by additionally imposing a digital surface model for superpixel segmentation, namely 6D-SLIC, is suited for building boundary detection under building and image backgrounds with similar radiometric signatures. The proposed MSCNs, including a feature learning network and a binary decision network, are used to automatically learn a multiscale hierarchical feature representation and detect building objects under various complex backgrounds. In addition, a gamma-transform green leaf index is proposed to truncate vegetation superpixels for further processing to improve the robustness and efficiency of building detection, the Douglas–Peucker algorithm and iterative optimization are used to eliminate jagged details generated from small structures as a result of superpixel segmentation. In the experiments, the UAV datasets, including many buildings in urban and rural areas with irregular shapes and different heights and that are obscured by trees, are collected to evaluate the proposed method. The experimental results based on the qualitative and quantitative measures confirm the effectiveness and high accuracy of the proposed framework relative to the digitized results. The proposed framework performs better than state-of-the-art building extraction methods, given its higher values of recall, precision, and intersection over Union (IoU).
CARS: The CFHTLS-Archive-Research Survey. III. First detection of cosmic magnification in samples of

Context. Weak gravitational lensing (WL) has been established as one of the most promising probes of cosmology. So far, most studies have exploited the shear effect of WL leading to coherent distortions of galaxy shapes. WL also introduces coherent magnifications. Aims. We want to detect this cosmic magnification effect (coherent magnification by the large-scale structure of the Universe) in large samples of high-redshift galaxies selected from the Deep part of the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). Methods. Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) selected by their colours to be at z = 2.5–5, are used as a background sample and are cross-correlated to foreground lens galaxies, which are selected by accurate photometric redshifts (photo-z’s). The signals of LBGs in different magnitude bins are compared to predictions from WL theory. An optimally weighted correlation function is estimated by taking into account the slope of external LBG luminosity functions. Results. For the first time, we detect cosmic magnification in a sample of normal galaxies. These background sources are also the ones with the highest redshifts so far used for WL measurements. The amplitude and angular dependence of the cross-correlation functions agree well with theoretical expectations and the lensing signal is detected with high significance. Avoiding low-redshift ranges in the foreground samples which might contaminate the LBG samples we can make a measurement that is virtually free of systematics. In particular, we detect an anti-correlation between faint LBGs and foreground galaxies which cannot be caused by redshift overlap. Conclusions. Cross-correlating LBGs (and in future also photo-z selected galaxies) as background sources to well understood foreground samples based on accurate photo-z’s will become a powerful cosmological probe in future large imaging surveys.
IoTEE-An integrated framework for rapid trusted IOT application development

In this paper, needs of trusted IOT application are identified and a methodology is proposed to create a framework "IoTEE" for rapid prototyping of secure, trusted and commercial IOT applications in absence of hardware. This has been done by analysis of requirements of a sample trusted IOT application heartbeat sensor (hbs), classification of bhs services and their decomposition into trusted and non-trusted components. Furthermore, the methodology includes algorithm design for services like registration, authentication, authorization and secure communication in the proposed framework. Detailed operation sequence of the algorithms is also depicted to understand the overall switching scenario between trusted and non-trusted components of application. Finally, a dynamic deployment structure is created to enable and disable the trusted components in the framework.
Decrements in cognitive performance in metal inert gas welders exposed to aluminium.

OBJECTIVES: Often little has been discovered of the cognitive functions affected by occupational toxins because many functions cooperate to produce the single performance scores typically reported from neuropsychological tests. To facilitate the interpretation of neuropsychological scores, the issue of occupational exposure to aluminium was examined with an approach intended to increase understanding of those cognitive processes that may be affected. METHODS: The investigation was a cross sectional study of asymptomatic aluminium welders and a reference group of mild steel welders. Based on urinary aluminium concentrations, welders were classified into a reference (n = 28), low (n = 27), and high (n = 24) exposure group. The mean urinary aluminium concentrations were 0.46, 2.25, and 9.98 mumol/l, respectively. A comprehensive neuropsychological examination was undertaken to assess psychomotor function, simple visual reaction time, attention related tasks, verbal and visual or visuospatial abilities as well as verbal and visual learning and memory. RESULTS: Aluminium welders showed no impairment on the finger tapping, Santa Ana dexterity, simple visual reaction times, any of the verbal memory tasks, the similarities subtest of Wechsler adult intelligence scale, or the Stroop task. However, the low exposed group performed poorer on the memory for designs and on more difficult block design items demanding preliminary visuospatial analysis. The time limited synonym task, embedded figures, digit symbol speed, and the backward counting component of the divided attention task showed exposure-response relations. CONCLUSIONS: The impairments found were circumscribed. When the neuropsychological tasks were scored to show some of the underlying theoretical cognitive structures, the results indicated that performance difficulties were mainly detected in tasks requiring working memory, particularly that relating to processing of visuospatial information. There was also evidence that such impairments are more readily found in time limited tasks involving visually presented material, in which effective visual scanning combined with control of working memory is demanded.
Nonintrusive speech quality estimation based on Perceptual Linear Prediction

Objective measures of speech quality are attractive because they facilitate performance assessment of hearing aids (HAs) without the need for human listeners. Objective speech quality predictions are usually performed intrusively, wherein the “closeness” between the reference and HA output speech recordings is quantified. In this paper, we focus on nonintrusive estimation of HA speech quality based on Perceptual Linear Prediction (PLP) modeling approach. In PLP, perceptual phenomena such as non-uniform filter bank analysis and nonlinear mapping between sound intensity and its perceived loudness are incorporated into the linear prediction feature extraction process. In this work, PLP and PLP-based cepstral coefficients were computed from HA speech recordings and their statistical properties were utilized as features for speech quality estimation. A custom database of HA speech recordings obtained in different noisy and reverberant environments was used to investigate the predictive performance of these individual features. In addition, regression functions that linearly combined the features and mapped to the predicted quality scores, were derived and validated. Experimental results show that the proposed nonintrusive speech quality estimates correlate well with subjective ratings of speech quality by hearing impaired listeners.
Competition Among Spatially Differentiated Firms: An Estimator with an Application to Cement

We develop an estimator for models of competition among spatially differentiated firms. In contrast to existing methods (e.g., Houde (2009)), the estimator has flexible data requirements and is implementable with data that are observed at any level of aggregation. Further, the estimator is the first to be applicable to models in which firms price discriminate among consumers based on location. We apply the estimator to the portland cement industry in the U.S. Southwest over 1983-2003. We estimate transportation costs to be $0.30 per tonne-mile and show that, given the topology of the U.S. Southwest, these transportation costs permit more geographically isolated plants to discriminate among consumers. We conduct a counterfactual experiment and determine that disallowing this spatial price discrimination would increase consumer surplus by $12 million annually, relative to a volume of commerce of $1.3 billion. Heretofore it has not been possible examine the surplus implications of spatial price discrimination in specific, real-world settings; these implications have been known to be ambiguous theoretically since at least Gronberg and Meyer (1982) and Katz (1984). Additionally, our methodology can be used to construct transportation margins, which are an important component of input-output tables.
Channel-switching and power control mechanisms for improving network connectivity in wireless mesh networks

A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) consists of fixed wireless routers, each of which provides service for mobile clients within its coverage area and inter-connects mesh routers to form a connected mesh backbone. Wireless mesh routers are assigned with a channel or a code to prevent collisions in transmission. With a power control mechanism, each router could be assigned with a power level to control connectivity, interference, spectrum spatial reuse, and topology. Assigning high transmitting power level to a router can enhance the network connectivity but may increase the number of neighbors and worsen the collision problem. How to assign an appropriate power level to each router to improve the network connectivity with a constraint of limited channels is one of the most important issues in WMNs. Given a network topology and a set of channels that has been assigned to mesh routers, the proposed channel-switching mechanism further reassigns each router with a power level and switches channels of routers to optimize both power efficiency and connectivity. A matrix-based presentation and operations are proposed to respectively identify and resolve the channel switching problems. Simulation study reveals that the proposed mechanisms increase network throughput and provides a variety of route selection, and thus improves the performance of a given WMN. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.