Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Seasonality of Fecal Coliform Bacteria Pollution and its Influence on Closures of Shellfish Harvesting Areas in Mississippi Sound

Runoff from agricultural lands and farm animal feedlots is one of the major sources of fecal coliforms in surface waters, and fecal coliform (FC) bacteria concentrations tend to vary with season because of seasonal variations in climatic factors. However, El Niño -Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events may affect the extent and patterns of seasonality in FC levels in coastal waters. Water quality monitoring data for shellfish management collected during El Niño (1990, 1992, 1997), and La Niña (1999, 2000) years were analyzed to evaluate the extent to which these events influenced Pearl River stage, and bacterial levels, water temperature, and salinity in the western part of Mississippi Sound. Models to predict FC levels in relation to various environmental factors were also developed. In 1990, 1992 and 1997, FC geometric mean counts peaked in late winter (January/February) reaching 120 MPN (February 1990), 165 MPN (January 1992), and 86 MPN (January 1997), and then decreased considerably during spring and summer (1.2 – 19 MPN). Thereafter, FC abundance increased slightly in fall and early winter (1.9 – 24 MPN). Fecal coliform abundance during the 2000 La Niña year was much lower (1.0 – 10.3 MPN) than in 1992 (1.2 – 165 MPN), and showed no seasonal pattern from January to August, perhaps due to the relative scarcity of rainfall in 2000. In 1995 (ENSO neutral year), peak geometric mean FC count (46 MPN) was lower than during El Niño years and occurred in early spring (March). The seasonal and between year variations in FC levels determined the number of days during which the conditionally approved shellfish growing area was opened for harvesting shellfish. For example, from January to April 1997, the area was not opened for shellfish harvesting, whereas in 2000, the number of days during which the area was opened ranged from 6 – 27 (January to April) to 24 – 26 (October to December). ENSO events thus influenced the extent and timing of the peak levels of fecal coliforms in Mississippi Sound. Models consisting of one or more of the variables: Pearl River stage, water temperature, and salinity were developed to predict FC concentrations in the Sound. The model parameter(s) explained 56 to 91% of the variations in FC counts. Management of shellfish in Mississippi Sound can be improved by utilizing information on the forecasted three to seven years occurrence of ENSO events. In addition, since Pearl River stage was the most important variable predicting FC concentration in the Sound, a study of the levels and sources of FC bacteria in the river, especially the middle and lower sections, is needed for developing a management plan for reducing FC bacteria pollution in the Sound.
Eukaryotic-like Ser/Thr Protein Kinases SpkC/F/K Are Involved in Phosphorylation of GroES in the Cyanobacterium Synechocystis

Serine/threonine protein kinases (STPKs) are the major participants in intracellular signal transduction in eukaryotes, such as yeasts, fungi, plants, and animals. Genome sequences indicate that these kinases are also present in prokaryotes, such as cyanobacteria. However, their roles in signal transduction in prokaryotes remain poorly understood. We have attempted to identify the roles of STPKs in response to heat stress in the prokaryotic cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, which has 12 genes for STPKs. Each gene was individually inactivated to generate a gene-knockout library of STPKs. We applied in vitro Ser/Thr protein phosphorylation and phosphoproteomics and identified the methionyl-tRNA synthetase, large subunit of RuBisCO, 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase, translation elongation factor Tu, heat-shock protein GrpE, and small chaperonin GroES as the putative targets for Ser/Thr phosphorylation. The expressed and purified GroES was used as an external substrate to screen the protein extracts of the individual mutants for their Ser/Thr kinase activities. The mutants that lack one of the three protein kinases, SpkC, SpkF, and SpkK, were unable to phosphorylate GroES in vitro, suggesting possible interactions between them towards their substrate. Complementation of the mutated SpkC, SpkF, and SpkK leads to the restoration of the ability of cells to phosphorylate the GroES. This suggests that these three STPKs are organized in a sequential order or a cascade and they work one after another to finally phosphorylate the GroES.
A scalable load balancer for forwarding internet traffic

Packet scheduling in parallel forwarding systems is a hard problem. Two major goals of a scheduler that distributes incoming packets to multiple forwarding engines are to achieve high system utilization (by balancing the load evenly among the multiple engines) and to maintain packet ordering within individual flows. Additionally, from the viewpoint of the overall performance, the system should exhibit a good cache behavior by preserving temporal locality in the workload of each forwarding engine. In this paper, we show how the burstiness in Internet flows can be exploited to improve the performance of the scheduler. Specifically, TCP flows, which contribute to over 90 percent of the Internet traffic, transmit in bursts with relatively large delays in between. We propose a load balancing scheme based on this insight to achieve the scheduling goals. Our design is verified by simulations driven by real-world traces.
Current Sensing Solutions for Power Supply Designers

The need for AC or DC current information . Average, peak, RMS, or total waveform of the current . Isolation requirements . Acceptable power losses in the measurement process . Accuracy, stability, and robustness . Bandwidth and transient response . Mechanical considerations . Implementation cost ABSTRACT While often considered a minor overhead function, measuring and controlling the currents in a power supply can easily become a major contributor to the success or failure of a design. To aid in achieving optimum solutions for this task, this topic will review the many strategies for current sensing, describe the options for appropriate sensing devices, and illustrate their application with practical design techniques. The distinction between current control and fault protection will be explored and applied to various power supply topologies with emphasis on performance-defining characteristics.
A public key encryption based on third order linear sequences

Based on third order linear sequences, an improvement version of the Diffie-Hellman distribution key scheme and the El Gamal public key cryptosystem scheme are proposed, together with an implementation and computational cost. The security relies on the difficulty of factoring an RSA integer and on the difficulty of computing the discrete logarithm.
Engaging and shared gesture-based interaction for museums the case study of K2R international expo in Rome

This paper presents a full life-cycle production and standardized workflow to deploy a shared and engaging gesture-based experience within a museum, connecting two different natural interaction applications. The research presented in this paper is specifically focused on Admotum and Holoint, two gesture-based applications developed for the V-Must.net in occasion of “Keys to Rome” international exhibition on Roman Culture. The workflow described here includes 3D content production, application design, development and integration within flexible museum setups, together with evaluation activities to explore more on the user's' educational benefits and the potential of such collaborative museum experience.
Decreased regional activity and network homogeneity of the fronto-limbic network at rest in drug-naive major depressive disorder

Objective: The fronto-limbic network is implicated in the neurobiology of major depressive disorder. However, no studies are designed to assess directly the abnormalities of regional activity and network homogeneity of this network in major depressive disorder. Methods: A total of 44 drug-naive major depressive disorder patients and 44 healthy controls participated in the study, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were obtained. The fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and network homogeneity methods were employed to analyze the data. Results: Compared with the controls, the patients exhibited reduced fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in the right middle frontal gyrus (orbital part) and decreased network homogeneity in the left middle frontal gyrus. There was no correlation between abnormal fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations/network homogeneity and clinical variables. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that decreased regional activity and network homogeneity in the frontal cortex may be the key impairment of the fronto-limbic network in major depressive disorder, and thus highlight the importance of the fronto-limbic network in the neurobiology of major depressive disorder.
Energy arbitrage with thermostatically controlled loads

We investigate the potential for aggregations of residential thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs), such as air conditioners, to arbitrage intraday wholesale electricity market prices via non-disruptive direct load control. Since wholesale electricity prices reflect power system conditions, arbitrage provides a service to the grid, helping to balance real-time supply and demand. While previous work on the energy arbitrage problem has used simple energy storage models, we use high fidelity TCL-specific models which allow us to understand and quantify the full capabilities and constraints of these time-varying systems. We explore two optimization/control frameworks for solving the arbitrage problem, both based on receding horizon linear programming. Since we find that the first approach requires significant computation, we develop a second approach involving decomposition of the optimal control problem into separate optimization and control problems. Simulation results show that TCLs could save on the order of 10% of wholesale energy costs via arbitrage, with savings decreasing with price forecast error.
Fermented soyabean and vitamin C-rich fruit: a possibility to circumvent the further decrease of iron status among iron-deficient pregnant women in Indonesia

Abstract Objective Increasing the consumption of Fe-rich foods and thus improving Fe bioavailability without significantly increasing diet cost is the most sustainable intervention for improving Fe intake. We assessed the effect of supplementary food consisting of fermented soyabean (tempeh) and vitamin C-rich fruit consumed during pregnancy on maternal iron deficiency (ID). Design Pregnant women were randomly allocated by village into optimized diet and control groups. Supplementary food was given 6 d/week at home. The average weekly food provided comprised 600 g of tempeh, 30 g of meat, 350 g of guava, 300 g of papaya and 100 g of orange. Hb, ferritin and transferrin receptor (TfR) concentrations were measured at 12–20 and at 32–36 weeks of gestation. Setting Thirty-nine villages in Indonesia. Subjects Pregnant women (12–20 weeks of gestation, n 252). Results At baseline, mean Hb, ferritin and TfR concentrations and body Fe concentration were within the normal range and did not differ between groups. At near term, mean Hb, ferritin and body Fe decreased, whereas mean TfR increased significantly in both groups. The mean changes in Fe status were similar in both groups. In Fe-deficient women, consumption of an optimized diet was associated with smaller decreases in Hb (1·02 (95 % CI 0·98, 1·07) g/l; P = 0·058), ferritin (1·42 (95 % CI 1·16, 1·75) μg/l; P = 0·046) and body Fe (2·57 (95 % CI 1·71, 3·43) mg/kg; P = 0·073) concentrations, compared with a state of no intervention. Fe-deficient women at baseline benefited more from supplementary food compared with Fe-replete women. Conclusions Daily supplementary food containing tempeh and vitamin C-rich fruits during pregnancy might have positive effects on maternal ID.
Revisiting an engaging experience to identify metacognitive strategies towards developing a multimedia design model

￻ Abstract— Looking at metacognitive strategies on the way children think when playing an engaging computer game could help designers design educational game courseware that engages children to learn. This paper will analyze the strategies children use in their thinking to overcome problems whilst still remains engaged when interacting with an engaging multimedia application, The Sims. The Sims is an Edutainment Multimedia CD chosen as a vehicle to discover more about engagement under varying interactive conditions and experiments. The CD was found to have features of what children want in a multimedia design for them. A theoretical model "An Engaging Multimedia Design Model" (1) renamed, after an extended research, The NEMD Model (Norma™ Engagement Multimedia Design Model) (2) was developed from this study using this application. This paper is a result of revisiting the recorded engaging experience the children encountered whilst doing the experiments to design, test, redesign, and retest the final form of the engagement model. A number of metacognitive strategies were detected during the interaction. Analysis of the metacognitive strategies used will help designers design multimedia game courseware that is engaging as well as educational for children.
A dynamic, zero-message broadcast encryption scheme based on secure multiparty computation

In this paper we present a new broadcast encryption scheme based on threshold secret-sharing and secure multiparty computation which has three main features: It is zero-message, this means that it does not require any special message to be sent from center to users in order to setup communication. Just one step of user registration is required and no further messages are required to be sent. It is dynamic, so center can broadcast a message to any dynamic subset of users in the system. And it is traitor resistant. Because of using secure multiparty computation, a traitor needs k cooperators in order to send out keys to other illegible users. This makes the work of traitor hard. Broadcaster can choose value of k as he decides to make a tradeoff between communication complexity and traitor resistance. Comparison with other Broadcast Encryption schemes indicates good performance and complexity of proposed scheme (in terms of computation and storage requirements) relative to other schemes.
A case study of regional risk assessment of river restoration projects: Nakdong River Basin, South Korea

An integrated approach to risk assessment that can pose significant challenges to mitigation and adaptation at the local or regional levels in the context of climate change was developed. First, a conceptual framework for flood risk analysis was developed based on the hydrologic hazard and the socioeconomic vulnerability of a region. Second, weighting factors for each indicator were estimated using the modified Delphi approach based on the results of a survey of an expert group. Third, geographic information system analysis described the hydrologic risk at the regional level before and after completion of the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project at the Nakdong River Basin, South Korea. Finally, sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the extent of the resilience of the Nakdong River Basin based on climate change scenarios to extend the existing research. It was found that the effect of the river restoration project in the future would be insignificant in terms of risk control over regions where floods are likely to increase upon climate change. We believe that this study provides useful information for the development of scientific, effective risk management tools for consistent application in a time of changing climate.
A MAP Kinase-Signaling Pathway Mediates Neurite Outgrowth on L1 and Requires Src-Dependent Endocytosis

The neural cell adhesion molecule L1 mediates the axon outgrowth, adhesion, and fasciculation necessary for proper development of synaptic connections. Mutations of human L1 cause an X-linked mental retardation syndrome termed CRASH (corpus callosum hypoplasia, retardation, aphasia, spastic paraplegia, and hydrocephalus), and L1 knock-out mice display defects in neuronal process extension resembling the CRASH phenotype. Little is known about the biochemical or cellular mechanism by which L1 performs neuronal functions. Here it is demonstrated that clustering of L1 with antibodies or L1 protein in rodent B35 neuroblastoma and cerebellar neuron cultures induced the phosphorylation/activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2. MAPK activation was essential for L1-dependent neurite outgrowth, because chemical inhibitors [2-(2′-amino-3′-methoxyphenyl)-oxanaphthalen-4-one and 1,4-diamino-2,3-dicyano-1,4-bis(2-aminophenylthio)butadiene] of the MAPK kinase MEK strongly suppressed neurite outgrowth by cerebellar neurons on L1. The nonreceptor tyrosine kinase pp60c-src was required for L1-triggered MAPK phosphorylation, as shown in src-minus cerebellar neurons and by expression of the kinase-inactive mutant Src(K295M) in B35 neuroblastoma cells. Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-kinase) and the small GTPase p21rac were identified as signaling intermediates to MAPK by phosphoinositide and Rac–GTP assays and expression of inhibitory mutants. Antibody-induced endocytosis of L1, visualized by immunofluorescence staining and confocal microscopy of B35 cells, was blocked by expression of kinase-inactive Src(K295M) and dominant-negative dynamin(K44A) but not by inhibitors of MEK or PI3-kinase. Dynamin(K44A) also inhibited L1 antibody-triggered MAPK phosphorylation. This study supports a model in which pp60c-srcregulates dynamin-mediated endocytosis of L1 as an essential step in MAPK-dependent neurite outgrowth on an L1 substrate.
Vascular dysfunction as a target for adjuvant therapy in cerebral malaria

Cerebral malaria (CM) is a life-threatening complication of Plasmodium falciparum malaria that continues to be a major global health problem. Brain vascular dysfunction is a main factor underlying the pathogenesis of CM and can be a target for the development of adjuvant therapies for the disease. Vascular occlusion by parasitised red blood cells and vasoconstriction/vascular dysfunction results in impaired cerebral blood flow, ischaemia, hypoxia, acidosis and death. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms of vascular dysfunction in CM and the roles of low nitric oxide bioavailability, high levels of endothelin-1 and dysfunction of the angiopoietin-Tie2 axis. We also discuss the usefulness and relevance of the murine experimental model of CM by Plasmodium berghei ANKA to identify mechanisms of disease and to screen potential therapeutic interventions.
Price to Book Ratio as a Valuation Model: An Empirical Investigation*

This paper examines the theoretical and empirical validity of the price-tobook ratio that has received considerable attention recently. Models are developed on the basis of Gordon’s constant dividend growth model. Crosssectional and longitudinal analyses are carried out on Singapore data. It is found that models fit well, and the identified factors explain a significant portion of the variability in the ratio, with dividend being the prime valuedriver. Economic regime shifts also have significant effects. Reasons for the lack of significance of other factors require further investigation.
Feature points tracking and emotion classification

The field of the facial recognition is especially animated these last year's considering the big number of research which was concerned with this subject, more particularly in the field of detection, classification and tracking. In this paper we present a method for feature points tracking and Emotion Classification based on the degree of characterization. We also tested facial emotion classification by evaluating the best distance between facial feature points using degree of characterization. After that emotions were classified using neural networks.
Accurate, scalable and informative design space exploration for large and sophisticated multi-core oriented architectures

As microprocessors become more complex, early design space exploration plays an essential role in reducing the time to market and post-silicon surprises. The trend toward multi-/many- core processors will result in sophisticated large-scale architecture substrates (e.g. non-uniformly accessed caches interconnected by network-on-chip) that exhibit increasingly complex and heterogeneous behavior. While conventional analytical modeling techniques can be used to efficiently explore the characteristics (e.g. IPC and power) of monolithic architecture design, existing methods lack the ability to accurately and informatively forecast the complex behavior of large and distributed architecture substrates across the design space. This limitation will only be exacerbated with the rapidly increased integration scale (e.g. number of cores per chip). In this paper, we propose novel, multi-scale 2D predictive models which can efficiently reason the characteristics of large and sophisticated multi-core oriented architectures during the design space exploration stage without using detailed cycle-level simulations. Our proposed techniques employ 2D wavelet multiresolution analysis and neural network regression modeling. We extensively evaluate the efficiency of our predictive models in forecasting the complex and heterogeneous characteristics of large and distributed shared cache interconnected by a network on chip in multi-core designs using both multi-programmed and multithreaded workloads. Experimental results show that the models achieve high accuracy while maintaining low complexity and computation overhead. Through case studies, we demonstrate that the proposed techniques can be used to informatively explore and accurately evaluate global, cooperative multi-core resource allocation and thermal-aware designs that cannot be achieved using conventional design exploration methods.
Adaptive Mobile Positioning in WCDMA Networks

We propose a new technique for mobile tracking in wideband code-division multiple-access (WCDMA) systems employing multiple receive antennas. To achieve a high estimation accuracy, the algorithm utilizes the time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurements in the forward link pilot channel, the angle of arrival (AOA) measurements in the reverse-link pilot channel, as well as the received signal strength. The mobility dynamic is modelled by a first-order autoregressive (AR) vector process with an additional discrete state variable as the motion offset, which evolves according to a discrete-time Markov chain. It is assumed that the parameters in this model are unknown and must be jointly estimated by the tracking algorithm. By viewing a nonlinear dynamic system such as a jump-Markov model, we develop an efficient auxiliary particle filtering algorithm to track both the discrete and continuous state variables of this system as well as the associated system parameters. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed adaptive mobile positioning algorithm in WCDMA networks.
Extended non-binary Low-Density Parity-Check codes over erasure channels

Based on the extended binary image of non-binary LDPC codes, we propose a method for generating extra redundant bits, such as to decreases the coding rate of a mother code. The proposed method allows for using the same decoder, regardless of how many extra redundant bits have been produced, which considerably increases the flexibility of the system without significantly increasing its complexity. Extended codes are also optimized for the binary erasure channel, by using density evolution methods. Nevertheless, the results presented in this paper can easily be extrapolated to more general channel models.