Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acquisition of Five High-MrPenicillin-Binding Protein Variants during Transfer of High-Level β-Lactam Resistance from Streptococcus mitis toStreptococcus pneumoniae

ABSTRACT Penicillin-resistant isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae generally contain mosaic genes encoding the low-affinity penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) PBP2x, PBP2b, and PBP1a. We now present evidence that PBP2a and PBP1b also appear to be low-affinity variants and are encoded by distinct alleles in β-lactam-resistant transformants of S. pneumoniae obtained with chromosomal donor DNA from aStreptococcus mitis isolate. Different lineages of β-lactam-resistant pneumococcal transformants were analyzed, and transformants with low-affinity variants of all high-molecular-mass PBPs, PBP2x, -2a, -2b, -1a, and -1b, were isolated. The MICs of benzylpenicillin, oxacillin, and cefotaxime for these transformants were up to 40, 100, and 50 μg/ml, respectively, close to the MICs for the S. mitis donor strain. Recruitment of low-affinity PBPs was accompanied by a decrease in cross-linked muropeptides as revealed by high-performance liquid chromatography of muramidase-digested cell walls, but no qualitative changes in muropeptide chemistry were detected. The growth rates of all transformants were identical to that of the parental S. pneumoniae strain. The results stress the potential for the acquisition by S. pneumoniae of high-level β-lactam resistance by interspecies gene transfer.
HALAL TOURISM: ANALYSIS OF RELIGIOSITY, MTES AND REVISIT INTENTION

This study focus on halal tourism which examines religiosity, memorable tourism experiences (MTEs) and intention as indicators to develop halal tourism in Aceh. The aim of this study is to find out relationship between religiosity, MTEs, and intention with halal tourism.This study will be executed using quantitative method which employs structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques to analyze the data. Data collected using Likert scale questionnaire of 500 respondents. Respondents are international tourists who visit Aceh for halal tourism experiences who come from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam. The result of this study will convince
Pulse-compression radar signal sorting using the blind source separation algrithms

With the increase of pulse density, signal sorting becomes extremely difficult for modern electronic reconnaissance, especially for pulse-compression radar signals. Blind source separation (BSS) is a new developed technology for separating signals from mixed observed data. In this paper, we propose various instantaneous mixing models of pulse-compression radar signals, including linear frequency modulation, polyphase code, phase-shift keying and frequency-hopping signals. The combinations of fast independent component analysis (FastICA) and joint diagonalization BSS algorithms are presented for radar signals. The performance index (PI) and signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) are adopted to analyze the separation performance at different signal-to-noise ratios. The experiment results demonstrate the validity and correctness of the proposed method.
7-Methoxytacrine-p-Anisidine Hybrids as Novel Dual Binding Site Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors for Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating progressive neurodegenerative disorder that ultimately leads to the patient’s death. Despite the fact that novel pharmacological approaches endeavoring to block the neurodegenerative process are still emerging, none of them have reached use in clinical practice yet. Thus, palliative treatment represented by acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) and memantine are still the only therapeutics used. Following the multi-target directed ligands (MTDLs) strategy, herein we describe the synthesis, biological evaluation and docking studies for novel 7-methoxytacrine-p-anisidine hybrids designed to purposely target both cholinesterases and the amyloid cascade. Indeed, the novel derivatives proved to be effective non-specific cholinesterase inhibitors showing non-competitive AChE inhibition patterns. This compounds’ behavior was confirmed in the subsequent molecular modeling studies.
The Fitzpatrick function - a bridge between convex analysis and multivalued stochastic differential equations

Using the Fitzpatrick function, we characterize the solutions for different classes of deterministic and stochastic differential equations driven by maximal monotone operators (or in particular subdifferential operators) as the minimum point of a suitably chosen convex lower semicontinuous function. Such technique provides a new approach for the existence of the solutions for the considered equations.
Effectively solving NP-SPEC encodings by translation to ASP

NP-SPEC is a language for specifying problems in NP in a declarative way. Despite the fact that the semantics of the language was given by referring to Datalog with circumscription, which is very close to answer set programming (ASP), so far the only existing implementations are by means of Prolog and via Boolean satisfiability solvers. In this paper, we present translations from NP-SPEC to ASP, and provide an experimental evaluation of existing implementations and the proposed translations into ASP using various ASP solvers. The results show that translating into ASP clearly has an edge over the existing translation into SAT, which involves an intrinsic grounding process. We also argue that it might be useful to incorporate certain language constructs of NP-SPEC into mainstream ASP.
Controlling three dimensional swarms of robots

We address the problem of modeling and controlling a swarm of fully actuated point-like robots in three dimensions by generalizing the planar framework from (C. Belta and V. Kumar, 2004). We define a nine-dimensional abstraction of the swarm that has a product structure of the six-dimensional Euclidean group and a three-dimensional shape, and is independent of the number of robots. The group captures the pose of an ellipsoid spanning the swarm with semiaxes given by the shape variables. The overall abstract description is invariant to robot permutations. In addition, the shape is also invariant to left actions of the group. This description allows one to define and control the behavior of the swarm at a high level, with automatic generation of individual robot control laws. We present simulation results for controlling swarms of rotorcrafts
Impact of climate change on Antarctic krill

Antarctic krill Euphausia superba (hereafter `krill') occur in regions undergoing rapid environmental change, particularly loss of winter sea ice. During recent years, harvesting of krill has in creased, possibly enhancing stress on krill and Antarctic ecosystems. Here we review the overall impact of climate change on krill and Antarctic ecosystems, discuss implications for an ecosystem-based fisheries management approach and identify critical knowledge gaps. Sea ice decline, ocean warming and other environmental stressors act in concert to modify the abundance, distribution and life cycle of krill. Although some of these changes can have positive effects on krill, their cumulative impact is most likely negative. Recruitment, driven largely by the winter survival of larval krill, is probably the population parameter most susceptible to climate change. Predicting changes to krill populations is urgent, because they will seriously impact Antarctic ecosystems. Such predictions, however, are complicated by an intense inter-annual variability in recruitment success and krill abundance. To improve the responsiveness of the ecosystem-based management approach adopted by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), critical knowledge gaps need to be filled. In addition to a better understanding of the factors influencing recruitment, management will require a better understanding of the resilience and the genetic plasticity of krill life stages, and a quantitative understanding of under-ice and benthic habitat use. Current precautionary management measures of CCAMLR should be maintained until a better understanding of these processes has been achieved. [GRAPHICS] .
On-line Boosting for Car Detection from Aerial Images

In this paper, we present a new approach for automatic car detection from aerial images. The system exploits a robust machine learning method known as boosting for efficient car detection from high resolution aerial images. We propose to use on-line boosting with interactive training framework to efficiently train and improve the detector. We use integral images for fast computation of features. This also allows to perform exhaustive search for detection of cars after training. For post processing, we employ a mean shift clustering method, which improves the detection rate significantly. In contrast to related work, our framework does not rely on any priori knowledge of the image like a site-model or contextual information, but if necessary this information can be incorporated. An extensive set of experiments on high resolution aerial images using the new UltraCamD shows the superiority of our approach.
Adapting M. Davis’s Multifactor Empathy Questionnaire

This article describes the procedure and results of an adaptation of the empathy questionnaire of the American social psychologist M. Davis, which is widely used in foreign psychology and is recognized by researchers as the most valid and reliable one. Based on an analysis of the psychodiagnostic tools for studying empathy that are available in foreign and Russian psychology, the conclusion is drawn that the Multifactor approach to measuring empathy formulated by David is the one most consistent with current concepts of the structure of empathy. The article describes in detail the procedure of the adaptation and verification of the reliability and construct validity of the test, and presents the results of the studies that were conducted by using it.
Video based analysis of standing balance in a community center

Postural sway is a well known measure of postural stability in the elderly. Sway measurements, however, are typically made using expensive equipment in a laboratory. We report on efforts to make clinically significant and quantitative measurements of postural sway in a community center with a single un-calibrated video camera. Results indicate that simple tracking technologies can capture some aspects of sway in a community center in a way that is perceptually accurate and capable of distinguishing expert-assigned levels of balance performance in an elderly, balance impaired cohort.
Accuracy of Non-Enhanced CT in Detecting Early Ischemic Edema Using Frequency Selective Non-Linear Blending

Purpose Ischemic brain edema is subtle and hard to detect by computed tomography within the first hours of stroke onset. We hypothesize that non-enhanced CT (NECT) post-processing with frequency-selective non-linear blending (“best contrast”/BC) increases its accuracy in detecting edema and irreversible tissue damage (infarction). Methods We retrospectively analyzed the NECT scans of 76 consecutive patients with ischemic stroke (exclusively middle cerebral artery territory—MCA) before and after post-processing with BC both at baseline before reperfusion therapy and at follow-up (5.73±12.74 days after stroke onset) using the Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS). We assessed the differences in ASPECTS between unprocessed and post-processed images and calculated sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values of baseline NECT using follow-up CT serving as reference standard for brain infarction. Results NECT detected brain tissue hypoattenuation in 35 of 76 patients (46.1%). This number increased to 71 patients (93.4%) after post-processing with BC. Follow-up NECT confirmed brain infarctions in 65 patients (85.5%; p = 0.012). Post-processing increased the sensitivity of NECT for brain infarction from 35/65 (54%) to 65/65 (100%), decreased its specificity from 11/11 (100%) to 7/11 (64%), its positive predictive value (PPV) from 35/35 (100%) to 65/69 (94%) and increased its accuracy 46/76 (61%) to 72/76 (95%). Conclusions This post-hoc analysis suggests that post-processing of NECT with BC may increase its sensitivity for ischemic brain damage significantly.
The case for simple, visible cache coherency

The shared memory research community has proposed many complex communication protocols that aim to eliminate specific performance bottlenecks, while still providing an easy-to-use communication interface. Although tailored protocols can eliminate some bottlenecks that arise in real applications, removing the cause of the bottleneck through software optimizations and bug fixes is cheaper to implement, faster to fix (once found), and requires no additional support by the hardware beyond a simple shared memory interface. In fact, in our experience, the choice of coherence protocol is much less important than providing an efficient hardware feedback that indentifies the source of the problem. Future cache-coherence research should focus efforts on illuminating memory system behavior, providing smarter tools to identify bottlenecks, and helping to eliminate them through software optimizations.
HW/SW codesign techniques for dynamically reconfigurable architectures

Hardware/software (HW/SW) codesign and reconfigurable computing are commonly used methodologies for digital-systems design. However, no previous work has been carried out in order to define a HW/SW codesign methodology with dynamic scheduling for run-time reconfigurable architectures. In addition, all previous approaches to reconfigurable computing multicontext scheduling are based on static-scheduling techniques. In this paper, we present three main contributions: 1) a novel HW/SW codesign methodology with dynamic scheduling for discrete event systems using dynamically reconfigurable architectures; 2) a new dynamic approach to reconfigurable computing multicontext scheduling; and 3) a HW/SW partitioning algorithm for dynamically reconfigurable architectures. We have developed a whole codesign framework, where we have applied our methodology and algorithms to the case study of software acceleration. An exhaustive study has been carried out, and the obtained results demonstrate the benefits of our approach.
Linguistic Profiling for Authorship Recognition and Verification

A new technique is introduced, linguistic profiling, in which large numbers of counts of linguistic features are used as a text profile, which can then be compared to average profiles for groups of texts. The technique proves to be quite effective for authorship verification and recognition. The best parameter settings yield a False Accept Rate of 8.1% at a False Reject Rate equal to zero for the verification task on a test corpus of student essays, and a 99.4% 2-way recognition accuracy on the same corpus.
Human responses to multiple sources of directional information in virtual crowd evacuations

The evacuation of crowds from buildings or vehicles is one example that highlights the importance of understanding how individual-level interactions and decision-making combine and lead to the overall behaviour of crowds. In particular, to make evacuations safer, we need to understand how individuals make movement decisions in crowds. Here, we present an evacuation experiment with over 500 participants testing individual behaviour in an interactive virtual environment. Participants had to choose between different exit routes under the influence of three different types of directional information: static information (signs), dynamic information (movement of simulated crowd) and memorized information, as well as the combined effect of these different sources of directional information. In contrast to signs, crowd movement and memorized information did not have a significant effect on human exit route choice in isolation. However, when we combined the latter two treatments with additional directly conflicting sources of directional information, for example signs, they showed a clear effect by reducing the number of participants that followed the opposing directional information. This suggests that the signals participants observe more closely in isolation do not simply overrule alternative sources of directional information. Age and gender did not consistently explain differences in behaviour in our experiments.
Interactive Control of Nonlinear Projection for Complex Animated Scenes

Amino and amido carboxylates of divalent tin, zinc, cobalt and nickel which are useful as catalysts for polyurethane formulations. Such compounds correspond to either of the formulae: wherein R1 and R2 are independently C1-C20 alkyl, C6-C20 cyclohydrocarbyl, C2-C20 hydroxyalkyl or alkoxyalkyl, or R1 and R2 together with N form a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic ring of 5 or 6 atoms; R3 is a -CH2)n group where n is an integer from 2 to 6 or a group where R4 is an alkyl, cycloalkyl or aryl group of up to 6 carbon atoms; A is wherein R5 and R6 are independently hydrogen, C1-C4 alkyl or R5 and R6 together form part of a six-member cyclohydrocarbyl ring, and M is divalent tin, zinc, cobalt or nickel.
On the Suitability of Particular Software Development Roles to Global Software Development

Global software development surfaces various challenges and benefits that are not always present in co-located teams. The purpose of this paper is to explore a set of propositions that address the suitability of four different software development roles to Global software development (GSD). A qualitative research approach was applied to collaborations undertaken between remote counterparts playing the same development role in various GSD projects. Specific development roles were considered: business analyst, designer, developer and development-support. A framework that details the benefits and challenges of GSD was used as a basis for this research. Suitability of a role to GSD is based upon the balance of challenges and benefits discovered in that role's case. Finally, opportunities for future research are presented.
Disturbance Rejection for Time-Delay Systems via Internal Model

The disturbance rejection problem for linear systems with both state delay and control delay is considered. Using a model transformation, the time-delay system is transformed into a nondelayed system. The disturbance rejection control law is obtained by solving its optimal regulation problem. A dynamic compensator is designed, which is combined by an internal model corresponding to the disturbances and an optimal control law which consists of state and control memory terms and a disturbance compensator. Numerical simulations are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the optimal regulator.
Building XML Data Warehouse with Data Reconstruction by Knowledge Graph

The analysis and decision scenarios, which are more complex in many domains, request more unstructured data to be reorganized with the structured data for analyzing. An architecture is proposed in this paper for data reconstruction to support OLAP analysis based on the knowledge graph and XML data warehouse technologies. In this architecture, the data cubes can be built with the data of two kinds of knowledge graphs, and the data populating of the cubes is on the basis of the correlation of the entities in knowledge graphs. Under the consideration of utilizing both information of the ontology concepts and their entities, a modified module in the architecture is also proposed for good concept selection to extract the cube dimension hierarchies. The evolution results prove the effectiveness and advantages of our proposed architecture and modified module.
A lightweight intrusion-tolerant overlay network

The Internet routing layer is at times too slow at recovering from faults and makes a sub-optimal use of redundancy available at the IP layer overlay networks can overcome these deficiencies to provide communication infrastructures with greater availability and flexibility. The majority of current experiences, however, are able to tolerate only simple (crash) failures of the underlying network. In this paper we present LITON, an overlay network architecture that aims at providing highly available communication in spite of faults and intrusions in the network. We also present a graph-theoretic model that allows the degree of fault and intrusion tolerance of a given overlay to be determined, as well as simulation results that validate this model and demonstrate that LITON accomplishes its goal even in worst-case scenarios
Identification of small gains and losses in single cells after whole genome amplification on tiling oligo arrays

Clinical DNA is often available in limited quantities requiring whole-genome amplification for subsequent genome-wide assessment of copy-number variation (CNV) by array-CGH. In pre-implantation diagnosis and analysis of micrometastases, even merely single cells are available for analysis. However, procedures allowing high-resolution analyses of CNVs from single cells well below resolution limits of conventional cytogenetics are lacking. Here, we applied amplification products of single cells and of cell pools (5 or 10 cells) from patients with developmental delay, cancer cell lines and polar bodies to various oligo tiling array platforms with a median probe spacing as high as 65 bp. Our high-resolution analyses reveal that the low amounts of template DNA do not result in a completely unbiased whole genome amplification but that stochastic amplification artifacts, which become more obvious on array platforms with tiling path resolution, cause significant noise. We implemented a new evaluation algorithm specifically for the identification of small gains and losses in such very noisy ratio profiles. Our data suggest that when assessed with sufficiently sensitive methods high-resolution oligo-arrays allow a reliable identification of CNVs as small as 500 kb in cell pools (5 or 10 cells), and of 2.6–3.0 Mb in single cells.
Relativistic scaling of astronomical quantities and the system of astronomical units

Context. For relativistic modeling of high-accuracy astronomical data, several time scales are used: barycentric and geocentric coordinate times (TCB and TCG) and two additional time scales (TDB and TT), which are defined as linear functions of TCB and TCG, respectively. Aims. The paper is devoted to a concise, but still detailed, explanation of the reasons and the implications of the relativistic scalings of astronomical quantities induced by the time scales TDB and TT. Methods. We consequently distinguish between quantities and their numerical values expressed in some units. Results. It is argued that the scaled time scales, the scaled spatial coordinates, and the scaled masses should be considered as distinct quantities that can be expressed themselves in any units and not as numerical values of the same quantities expressed in some different, non-SI units (“TDB units” and “TT units”). Along the same lines, the system of astronomical units is discussed in the relativistic framework. The whole freedom in the definitions of the systems of astronomical units for TCB and TDB is demonstrated. A number of possible ways to freeze the freedom are shown and discussed. It is argued that in the future one should think about converting AU into a defined quantity by fixing its value in SI meters.