Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative phylogeography and demographic history of the wood lemming (Myopus schisticolor): implications for late Quaternary history of the taiga species in Eurasia

The association between demographic history, genealogy and geographical distribution of mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b haplotypes was studied in the wood lemming (Myopus schisticolor), a species that is closely associated with the boreal forest of the Eurasian taiga zone from Scandinavia to the Pacific coast. Except for a major phylogeographic discontinuity (0.9% nucleotide divergence) in southeastern Siberia, only shallow regional genetic structure was detected across northern Eurasia. Genetic signs of demographic expansions imply that successive range contractions and expansions on different spatial scales represented the primary historical events that shaped geographical patterns of genetic variation. Comparison of phylogeographic structure across a taxonomically diverse array of other species that are ecologically associated with the taiga forest revealed similar patterns and identified two general aspects. First, the major south–north phylogeographic discontinuity observed in five out of six species studied in southeastern Siberia and the Far East implies vicariant separation in two different refugial areas. The limited distribution range of the southeastern lineages provides no evidence of the importance of the putative southeastern refugial area for postglacial colonization of northern Eurasia by boreal forest species. Second, the lack of phylogeographic structure associated with significant reciprocal monophyly and genetic signatures of demographic expansion in all nine boreal forest animal species studied to date across most of northern Eurasia imply contraction of each species to a single refugial area during the late Pleistocene followed by range expansion on a continental scale. Similar phylogeographic patterns observed in this taxonomically diverse set of organisms with different life histories and dispersal potentials reflect the historical dynamics of their shared environment, the taiga forest in northern Eurasia.
Iterative Channel Estimation Using Superimposed Pilot for BICM-OFDM

The conventional superimposed pilot applied in OFDM system has drawback of low accuracy. An iterative channel estimation algorithm based on superimposed pilot is proposed for the combination of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) system. This algorithm makes full use of the information provided by decoding, and has two steps. Firstly, pilots are added to the transmitted signals. The initial estimation employs the first-order statistics. Secondly, using the hard-decision feedback information provided by the decoding of BICM, the information between the channel estimator and the decoder could be exchanged. The accuracy could be improved by the feedback information provided by iterative decoding of BICM. Through the wideband HF channel, the simulation results show that, compared with conventional superimposed pilot algorithm, the proposed algorithm efficiently improves the accuracy of channel estimation and BER performance after two iterations.
NEXXUS: A comprehensive ROSAT survey of coronal X-ray emission among nearby solar-like stars

We present a final summary of all ROSAT X-ray observations of nearby stars. All available ROSAT observations with the ROSAT PSPC, HRI and WFC have been matched with the CNS4 catalog of nearby stars and the results gathered in the Nearby X-ray and XUV-emitting Stars data base, available via www from the Home Page of the Hamburger Sternwarte at the URL http://www.hs. uni-hamburg.de/DE/For/Gal/Xgroup/nexxus. New volume-limited samples of F/G-stars (dlim = 14 pc), K-stars (dlim = 12 pc), and M-stars (dlim = 6 pc) are constructed within which detection rates of more than 90% are obtained; only one star (GJ 1002) remains undetected in a pointed follow-up observation. F/G-stars, K-stars and M-stars have indistinguishable surface X-ray flux distributions, and the lower envelope of the observed distribution at FX ≈ 10 4 erg/cm 2 /s is the X-ray flux level observed in solar coronal holes. Large amplitude variations in X-ray flux are uncommon for solar-like stars, but maybe more common for stars near the bottom of the main sequence; a large amplitude flare is reported for the M star LHS 288. Long term X-ray light curves are presented for α Cen A/B and Gl 86, showing variations on time scales of weeks and demonstrating that α Cen B is a flare star.
Brillouin gain spectrum characterization in single-mode optical fibers

A novel method for Brillouin gain spectrum measurements in optical fibers is presented. It is based on the pump and probe technique with the specificity to use a single laser source together with an external modulator to generate the interacting lightwaves. The high accuracy and inherent stability of the technique makes it suitable for calibration and reference measurements. Different fibers with different refractive index profiles have been tested and characterized. The problem of the evolution of the polarization of the interacting waves is addressed in the article and a polarization insensitive determination of the actual Brillouin gain coefficient is made possible through two successive measurements with different polarizations. The effects of strain and temperature on the Brillouin gain spectrum are also fully characterized.
A Novel Algorithm for Fire/Smoke Detection based on Computer- Vision

The scarcity of automatic fire detection systems continues to be a problem that needs a serious attention in order to save human lives by preventing injuries and/or deaths. The newest innovations are continuing to use cameras and computer algorithms to analyze the visible effects of fire and its motion in their applications. As their approaches present some drawbacks when working in spatial domain, the main difficulty is still to identify objects if they do not occur at the expected position. In this paper, we present an improved fast and robust algorithm for detecting fire/smoke in a cluttered scene from a pair of cameras. The input images are first segmented according to a pre-determined disparity threshold map and the real-time disparities of fire. Binary image processing techniques are used to reject noise introduced into the segmented images through low-resolution disparity calculations which consequently can lead to the gain of clearer results. In order to reduce the false alarms, a new segmentation method used in this approach shows that segmented images using stereovision are more accurate than those segmented using color approach for the overall detection. The segmented images are then used for image feature extraction for a Fuzzyneural network classifier to help the system to generate a warning in case fire/smoke is detected.
Chromatic polynomials of some families of graphs I: theorems and conjectures

The chromatic polynomials of ‘bracelets’ can be studied by means of a theory based on representations of the symmetric group. This paper contains a detailed study of the theory as it relates to one type of bracelet. The underlying theory is presented rather more clearly than hitherto, and some surprising features are exhibited. The methods involve an extension of the standard theory of distance-regular graphs, and they lead to several plausible conjectures.
A deadline-constrained scheduling for dynamic multi-instances parameter sweep workflow

Parameter sweep workflows have been adopted in scientific domains to orchestrate and automate parametric experiments studying the effects of different input values. Because of its independent parallel loop characteristic, a parameter sweep workflow can be accelerated by being dynamically executed as multiple parallel instances. When leveraging computing power provided on-demand by cloud computing, workflow scheduling is usually employed to manage the allocation of cloud resources in order to control usage cost and workflow execution time. However, most of the existing cloud workflow scheduling techniques are mainly designed for single workflow instance. Whereas, dynamic multi-instances execution negates the traversal of workflow graph to estimate cost and time used in most of the existing techniques. This paper proposes a new scheduling technique that is able to schedule parameter sweep workflow which is dynamically executed in multiple instances employing a new method to estimate the execution progress together with a workflow instantiation control and a cloud resource adjustment mechanism. The proposed technique, with the objective to minimize cost within a deadline, is evaluated using three existing task mapping heuristics. The simulation results show that the proposed technique is able to lower cloud usage cost when the time constraint is more relaxed. It also relies on the accuracy of the workflow progress estimation to achieve lower cost.
The biological importance of apurinic/apyrimidinic endonucleases in the maintenance of genetic stability

Living organisms are constantly exposed to reactive oxygen species which are known to cause a variety of DNA lesions, such as apurinic/apyrirnidinic (AP) sites. The repair of oxidative DNA damage is primarily mediated by the base excision repair (BER) pathway. AP endonucleases are key enzymes in this process. Celis deficient in AP endonucleases are hypersensitive to aikylating (e.g. MMS) and oxidizing (e.g. 11202) agents. We are interested in studying eukaryotic AP endonucleases at the molecular level to gain insights into their mechanisms of DNA binding and cleavage at AP sites. n our first study, we carried out the first structure/fttnction analysis of Apnl, the major AP endonuclease in yeast Saccharornyces cerevisiae. Our data indicate that two conserved amino acids residues of Apnl, G1u15$ and Asp192, are critical for its biological function, since glycine substitutions at these positions abolished its DNA repair activities. In our second study, where we evaluated the role of yeast Oggi DNA glycosylase in the maintenance of a mitochondrial poly(GT) tract reporter system. we discovered that overproduction of Apnl causes instability of the poly(GT) tracts. Interestingly, this effect was counteracted by overexpression of Oggi. Our results clearly suggest that uncontrolled DNA cleavage by Apnl is prevented by Oggi which most likely competes with Apnl for binding to AP sites. In our final study, we set out to identify the endo IV homolog in human ceils, but we unexpectedly re-isolated GAPDH, a classical glycolytic enzyme. We demonstrated that GAPDH interacts with APE1 to stimulate the AP endonuclease activity by converting the oxidized forms of APE 1 to the reduced forms. Futhermore, we also showed that Cys 152 and Cysi 56 of GAPDH are important for APE1 reactivation. Consistent with this notion, we demonstrated that GAPDH plays an important role in the cellular resistance against genotoxic agents such as MMS and H202 by cell survival assays. Taken together, our studies reinforce the biological significance of eukaryotic AP endonucleases in the repair of AP sites, but more irnportantly, they provide valuable insights into the rnechanisms by which AP endonucleases maintain genomic stability in the cell.
La place de l’action dans la recherche en entrepreneuriat : pour le développement d’un agir entrepreneurial

L’objet de cette recherche est de s’interesser a la structuration de la recherche en entrepreneuriat. La grille d’analyse proposee est celle des theories de l’action. Nous montrons a travers cette recherche la place de l’action dans les recherches en entrepreneuriat depuis les travaux des economistes jusqu’a l’heure actuelle. Trois temps sont mis en evidence. Tout d’abord, le temps de la construction de la recherche en entrepreneuriat autour de ce qu’il convient d’appeler l’agir rationnel. En reaction aux limites de cet agir, les recherches en entrepreneuriat se sont developpees en tendant vers l’agir normatif, tendance correspondant au deuxieme temps, en l’occurrence celui de la dimension normative de l’entrepreneuriat. De nos jours, la recherche en entrepreneuriat evolue pour integrer, dans un troisieme temps, la dimension cognitive corollaire de l’agir entrepreneurial. La recherche se termine par une presentation des avenues de la recherche a la lumiere du concept d’agir entrepreneurial.
A Theory of Partial Sales and Underpricing in Privatizations

This paper develops a theory of gradual sales and underpricing of shares in privatizations. Gradual sales and underpricing are strategic devices used by policymakers to signal commitment when the capital markets are unsure about the government's type and attempt to infer it from observed performance. The model establishes for which firms the use of underpricing is optimal. Further, in the context of a multiple firm model, the question of when gradual sales can be abandoned is analyzed.
DATAFLASKS: Epidemic Store for Massive Scale Systems

Very large scale distributed systems provide some of the most interesting research challenges while at the same time being increasingly required by nowadays applications. The escalation in the amount of connected devices and data being produced and exchanged, demands new data management systems. Although new data stores are continuously being proposed, they are not suitable for very large scale environments. The high levels of churn and constant dynamics found in very large scale systems demand robust, proactive and unstructured approaches to data management. In this paper we propose a novel data store solely based on epidemic (or gossip-based) protocols. It leverages the capacity of these protocols to provide data persistence guarantees even in highly dynamic, massive scale systems. We provide an open source prototype of the data store and correspondent evaluation.
Optimal obstacle placement with disambiguations

We introduce the optimal obstacle placement with disambiguations problem wherein the goal is to place true obstacles in an environment cluttered with false obstacles so as to maximize the total traversal length of a navigating agent (NAVA). Prior to the traversal, the NAVA is given location information and probabilistic estimates of each disk-shaped hindrance (hereinafter referred to as disk) being a true obstacle. The NAVA can disambiguate a disk's status only when situated on its boundary. There exists an obstacle placing agent (OPA) that locates obstacles prior to the NAVA's traversal. The goal of the OPA is to place true obstacles in between the clutter in such a way that the NAVA's traversal length is maximized in a game-theoretic sense. We assume the OPA knows the clutter spatial distribution type, but not the exact locations of clutter disks. We analyze the traversal length using repeated measures analysis of variance for various obstacle number, obstacle placing scheme and clutter spatial distribution type combinations in order to identify the optimal combination. Our results indicate that as the clutter becomes more regular (clustered), the NAVA's traversal length gets longer (shorter). On the other hand, the traversal length tends to follow a concave-down trend as the number of obstacles increases. We also provide a case study on a real-world maritime minefield data set.
Model-Driven Management of Docker Containers

With the emergence of Docker, it becomes easier to encapsulate applications and their dependencies into lightweight Linux containers and make them available to the world by deploying them in the cloud. Compared to hypervisor-based virtualization approaches, the use of containers provides faster start-ups times and reduces the consumption of computer resources. However, Docker lacks of deployability verification tool for containers at design time. Currently, the only way to be sure that the designed containers will execute well is to test them in a running system. If errors occur, a correction is made but this operation can be repeated several times before the deployment becomes operational. Docker does not provide a solution to increase or decrease the size of container resources in demand. Besides the deployment of containers, Docker lacks of synchronization between the designed containers and those deployed. Moreover, container management with Docker is done at low level, and therefore requires users to focus on low level system issues. In this paper we focus on these issues related to the management of Docker containers. In particular, we propose an approach for modeling Docker containers. We provide tooling to ensure the deployability and the management of Docker containers. We illustrate our proposal using an event processing application and show how our solution provides a significantly better compromise between performance and development costs than the basic Docker container solution.
Cyclooxygenase-1 as a Potential Therapeutic Target for Seizure Suppression: Evidences from Zebrafish Pentylenetetrazole-Seizure Model

Cyclooxygenases (COX)-1 and -2 are isoenzymes that catalyze the conversion of arachidonic acid into prostaglandins (PGs). COX-2 and PGs are rapidly increased following seizures and are known to play important roles in the neuroinflammatory process. COX-2 isoform has been predominantly explored as the most suitable target for pharmacological intervention in epilepsy studies, while COX-1 remains poorly investigated. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of selective COX-1 inhibitor or selective COX-2 inhibitor on seizure suppression in the zebrafish pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-seizure model. Zebrafish larvae were incubated in 5 μM of SC-236 for 24 h or 2.8 μM of SC-560 for 30 min, followed by exposure to 15 mM PTZ for 60 min. Real-time quantitative PCR analysis was carried out to investigate transcription levels of cox1 (ptgs1), as well as to determine cfos levels, used as a marker for neuronal activity. Effects of selective COX-2 or COX-1 inhibitors on locomotor activity response (velocity and distance moved) during PTZ exposure were evaluated using the Danio Vision video-tracking system. Our results showed an inducible expression of the cox1 gene after 60 min of PTZ exposure. Cox1 mRNA levels were upregulated compared with the control group. We found that COX-2 inhibition treatment had no effect on zebrafish PTZ-induced seizures. On the other hand, COX-1 inhibition significantly attenuated PTZ-induced increase of locomotor activity and reduced the c-fos mRNA expression. These findings suggest that COX-1 inhibition rather than COX-2 has positive effects on seizure suppression in the zebrafish PTZ-seizure model.
The Dynamics of Ca2+ Ions within the Solvation Shell of Calbindin D9k

The encounter of a Ca2+ ion with a protein and its subsequent binding to specific binding sites is an intricate process that cannot be fully elucidated from experimental observations. We have applied Molecular Dynamics to study this process with atomistic details, using Calbindin D9k (CaB) as a model protein. The simulations show that in most of the time the Ca2+ ion spends within the Debye radius of CaB, it is being detained at the 1st and 2nd solvation shells. While being detained near the protein, the diffusion coefficient of the ion is significantly reduced. However, due to the relatively long period of detainment, the ion can scan an appreciable surface of the protein. The enhanced propagation of the ion on the surface has a functional role: significantly increasing the ability of the ion to scan the protein's surface before being dispersed to the bulk. The contribution of this mechanism to Ca2+ binding becomes significant at low ion concentrations, where the intervals between successive encounters with the protein are getting longer. The efficiency of the surface diffusion is affected by the distribution of charges on the protein's surface. Comparison of the Ca2+ binding dynamics in CaB and its E60D mutant reveals that in the wild type (WT) protein the carboxylate of E60 function as a preferred landing-site for the Ca2+ arriving from the bulk, followed by delivering it to the final binding site. Replacement of the glutamate by aspartate significantly reduced the ability to transfer Ca2+ ions from D60 to the final binding site, explaining the observed decrement in the affinity of the mutated protein to Ca2+.
ODEL D ATA TO S EMANTICS My

The semantic-based 3D models retrieval systems have become necessary since the increase of 3D models databases. In this paper, we propose a new method for the mapping problem between 3D model data and semantic data involved in semantic based retrieval for 3D models given by polygonal meshes. First, we focused on extracting invariant descriptors from the 3D models and analyzing them to efficient semantic annotation and to improve the retrieval accuracy. Selected shape descriptors provide a set of terms commonly used to describe visually a set of objects using linguistic terms and are used as semantic concept to label 3D model. Second, spatial relationship representing directional, topological and distance relationships are used to derive other high-level semantic features and to avoid the problem of automatic 3D model annotation. Based on the resulting semantic annotation and spatial concepts, an ontology for 3D model retrieval is constructed and other concepts can be inferred. This ontology is used to find similar 3D models for a given query model. We adopted the query by semantic example approach, in which the annotation is performed mostly automatically. The proposed method is implemented in our 3D search engine (SB3DMR), tested using the Princeton Shape Benchmark Database.
Physical / Information Co-Design

Pervasive computing requires a new kind of software design, in fact a new kind of co-design. Pervasive system design must incorporate the characteristics and constraints of a dynamic physical environment. The critical constraint of the physical world are defined in terms of space and time; and the complexity of the real world often requires uncertainty modeling. The pervasive computing systems situated in this world are highly dynamic in terms of both composition and tasking. Pervasive computing software design requires the specification and implementation of a dynamic architecture in terms of physical, electronic, and software constraints – a co-design task The co-design environment we are building combines our leading-edge symbolic system design/analysis technology with links to implementation in an open agent architecture. The emphasis is on the specification and implementation of architectures in terms of dynamically changing physical constraints. INTRODUCTION Almost all current software design is highly abstracted from the computational environment that will execute it. Indeed, that is one of the great accomplishments of computer science. Drivers, operating systems, and compilers provide layers of abstraction that free the designers from the need to understand the underlying hardware architecture (see Figure 1). The hardware architecture itself in fixed; in fact, a side-effect of this paradigm is that the daunting cost of creating and maintaining the abstraction layers makes the introduction of new hardware architectures very rare.