Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
13th FINA World Championships: Analysis of swimsuits used by elite male swimmers

The purpose of this study was to describe the distribution of different swimsuits models used by male swimmers during all the finals at the 13th FINA World Championships, being held at Rome in 2009. Simultaneously, it was intended to verify the distribution of the different swimsuits used along the distances of the freestyle finals, and thus to understand the preferences of the top-level swimmers. It were used the results databases from the 13th FINA World Championships, in Rome 2009. Only the male swimmers participating at the finals were analyzed, for a total number of 17 individual swimming events. The wear swimsuit by each swimmer in a given event was observed from video recorded of the television broadcast. Male swimmers participating in the finals limited their choice to seven types of commercial swimsuits, of four different sports brands. Jaked01 Full ® was the most used (47.07%), followed by the Powerskin X-Glide Full ® (34.56%), the Powerskin X-Glide Pants ® (7.35%) and the LZR Racer Full ® (5.15%). In freestyle swimming events most of the male swimmers choose to wear full body swimsuits. Jaked01 Full ® was predominant in the 50 m event, with 62.50% of swimmers choices. This value decreases to 25.00% when analyzing 100 m event, and remained similar over the longer distances swum. The Powerskin X-Glide Full ® was used for 37.50% of the swimmers in 50 m swimming event, and it increases to 62.50% for the 100 m freestyle. These results seem to demonstrate that swimmers have preferences for full swimsuits, and for these two swimsuits, the Powerskin X-Glide Full ® and the Jaked01 Full ® .
Rethinking Diffusion Theory in an Applied Context: Role of Environmental Values in Adoption of Home Energy Conservation

Diffusion theory, developed and popularized within communication research by Everett Rogers, is a venerable approach with much to recommend it as a theoretical foundation for applied communication research. In developing an applied project for a home energy conservation (energy efficiency retrofit) program in the state of Nevada, we utilized key concepts from diffusion theory but also confronted its limitations. Ultimately, in this project, the diffusion of home energy conservation to individual households depended primarily not on general adoption propensity, a personality characteristic postulated by diffusion theory, or even on financial (cost-benefit) considerations, but on an environmental orientation. This result suggests revision to the diffusion of innovations idea may be needed.
Unique Residues Crucial for Optimal Editing in Yeast Cytoplasmic Leucyl-tRNA Synthetase Are Revealed by Using a Novel Knockout Yeast Strain*

Leucyl-tRNA synthetase (LeuRS) contains an editing domain that discriminates leucine from noncognate amino acids to ensure translational fidelity. In this study, a knock-out strain for Saccharomyces cerevisiae LeuRS was constructed to analyze in vivo the tRNA aminoacylation properties of S. cerevisiae and human cytoplasmic LeuRSs. The activities of several editing-defective mutants of ycLeuRS were determined in vitro and compared with those obtained in vivo in a complementation assay performed in the knock-out strain. The editing activities of these mutants were analyzed in the presence of either norvaline, a leucine analogue, or AN2690, a specific inhibitor that targets the editing active site. In general, the in vivo data are consistent with those obtained in vitro. Our results show that ycLeuRS post-transfer editing plays a crucial role in the establishment of the aminoacylation fidelity. When impaired, the viability of cells bearing editing-defective mutants is drastically decreased in the presence of noncognate amino acid. This study also emphasizes the crucial function of some semi-conserved residues around the editing site in modulating the editing efficiency. The assay system can be used to test the effect of compounds that potentially target the aminoacylation or editing active site of fungal LeuRS.
ESTIMATION OF FAST VARIED WIND SPEED BASED ON NARX NEURAL NETWORK BY USING CURVE FITTING

In this study, a Nonlinear AutoRegressive eXogenous (NARX) neural network is used to estimate the wind speed on three monthly data sets taken from the wind central in Zonguldak province in Turkey. In the estimation study, the first and second order curve fitting coefficients of the measured temperature, pressure, humidity and solar radiation parameters together with the wind speed are used. In the estimation process, before these coefficients are applied directly to the NARX network structure, the most suitable features are selected with ReliefF method to minimize the MSE value. The number of delay steps in the NARX network structure is varied from 3 to 15 and the number of hidden neurons is varied from 3 to 15 to obtain model parameters that give the least estimation error. In order to determine the performance of the obtained model, the model is evaluated in terms of statistical error criteria such as MAE, MSE and RMSE. The model parameters and features matrix giving the least estimation error for the wind speed estimation of the NARX network structure are determined. It has been observed that this approach provides a high performance for estimating the wind speed with related to other measured parameters.
Why do pirates buy music online? An empirical analysis on a sample of college students

Despite a considerable amount of theoretical and empirical research in industrial organisation literature on the relationship between piracy, music sales and their antecedents, a significant gap exists for what concerns the linkage between digital music piracy and the recent success of online music stores (OMS). Our aim is to investigate the motivations behind digital music purchases on a population of college students who are music pirates. In doing so, we rely upon an original dataset from a survey carried out in 2010 on a population of university students, who are pirates. The results show that the likelihood that pirates buy digital music from an OMS is positively related to the level of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) skills of the respondents, including the experience in online purchases, and to the individual interest in music.
The use of non-financial performance indicators and organisational performance: an empirical analysis of Italian firms

This study investigates the relationships between the use of non-financial performance indicators (NFPIs) and firms' reported financial performance. We question whether using NFPIs has an impact on firms' future financial performance. This study uses a panel of three years of data (t, t + 1, t + 2) collected from different sources. Cross-sectional data were collected from 106 medium-sized to large Italian manufacturing firms. The results indicate that Italian companies are found to distinguish between 'hard' and 'soft' NFPIs of employee morale, where hard measures are those more directly related to the production process, while soft measures are those more focused on the intangible aspects of employees. Our findings, interestingly, report significant positive associations between the use of only one category of NFPIs in year t, namely soft employee morale NFPIs, and firms' reported financial performance measured by return on assets in year t + 2. Practical implications, in particular, for Italian economy are discussed.
School-to-work transitions in Europe: speed of convergence to permanent employment

In a context of economic globalization and increased competition, European countries are increasingly concerned about the consequences of non-enrolment, temporarily or permanently, in the labour market of a growing number of young people, and about the difficulties that university graduates face in finding suitable jobs. In many countries, the transition from school to work represents a central point in the lives of individuals and a key policy topic. In Romania, as in most of Europe, increasing the education period has become a long-term phenomenon. In recent decades, rising unemployment and increasing global competition have emphasized the need to improve the general level of education of the labour force. This paper presents, using the speed of transition of youth from school to work, a brief analysis of the youth labour market in the EU-27, and of the dynamics of the European labour market mobility. Also, a comparative analysis in the European context of the employment rate of young people in the full-time or part-time system, the distribution by sex and age groups of youth partial employment, and youth employment rate by activities of the national economy is presented for Romania.
Research on public opinion warning based on analytic hierarchy process integrated back propagation neural network

Food safety is one of the hot issues in all over the world. It is related to national economy and people's livelihood. In recent years, food safety accidents occur in China frequently, so an effective food safety network public opinion early warning model is necessary and imperative. Therefore, the model of Back Propagation neural network based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP-BP) is proposed. The AHP method is used to fuse the indicators of microblogging and news to get the four types of warning levels. The fusion data are set as the expected output of the BP neural network. And then the indicators of microblogging and news are set as the input of the BP neural network. Finally, this proposed model is applied in food safety field. Several food safety incidents show that the AHP-BP model can effectively control the diffusion and dissemination of sensitive information, which means the practicability and effectiveness of the proposed model.
Confocal microscopy with an increased detection aperture: type-B 4Pi confocal microscopy.

We show the point-spread function of a confocal microscope with an increased detection aperture. The increase in aperture is accomplished by coherent collection of the light from the specimen with two opposing objective lenses, i.e., type-B 4Pi confocal microscopy. We demonstrate experimentally its feasibility for detecting scattered or fluorescently emitted light. The 4Pi confocal point-spread functions are shown for constructive and destructive interference of the collected wave fronts and are compared with the point-spread functions of comparable confocal microscopes.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT Mitotic Control of Cancer Stem Cells

Authors’ Affi liations: 1 Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation; and 2Departments of Pathology and 3Molecular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio Corresponding Author: Jeremy N. Rich, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue/NE30, Cleveland, OH 44195. Phone: 216636-0790; Fax: 216-636-5454; E-mail: drjeremyrich@gmail.com doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-12-0588 ©2013 American Association for Cancer Research. Summary: Cancer stem cells are self-renewing, tumorigenic cells at the apex of tumor hierarchies, and postulated to be quiescent in many tumor types. This issue of Cancer Discovery highlights a study that links the presentation of kinetochores within mitosis to an essential requirement for BUB1B/BubR1, broadening our understanding of the cell-cycle machinery in cancer stem cells. Cancer Discov; 3(2); 141–4. ©2013 AACR.
The Tailless Nuclear Receptor Acts as a Dedicated Repressor in the Early Drosophila Embryo

ABSTRACT Tailless is an orphan nuclear receptor that controls terminal body patterning in Drosophila. Genetic analyses have revealed both positive and negative regulatory interactions of Tailless with various target genes, leading to the idea that, like many other nuclear receptors, Tailless mediates both activation and repression of transcription. In this paper, we have examined the consequences of converting Tailless into an obligate repressor and compared the activities of the resulting protein with those of wild-type Tailless. We find that this repressor form of Tailless behaves like the intact protein in gain- and loss-of-function experiments, being sufficient to support normal embryonic development and establish accurate patterns of gene expression even for positive Tailless targets such as hunchback and brachyenteron. This suggests that Tailless functions exclusively as a transcriptional repressor in the embryo and that the observed positive interactions of Tailless with specific targets are secondary effects involving repression of repressors. We provide evidence that knirps is one such repressor gene acting between Tailless and its indirect positive targets. Finally, our results indicate that Tailless exerts an active mechanism of repression via its ligand-binding domain and that this activity is largely independent of the activation function 2 (AF2) motif characteristic of most nuclear receptors.
Bacteriophages as therapeutic agents

The emergence of antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria is one of the most critical problems of modern medicine, and novel, effective approaches for treating infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria are urgently required. In this context, one intriguing approach is to use bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) to eliminate specific bacterial pathogens. Bacteriophage therapy was widely used around the world in the 1930s and 1940s and it is still used in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. However, phage therapy was all but abandoned in the West after antibiotics became widely available. Promising results from recent animal studies using phages to treat bacterial infections, together with the urgent need for novel and effective antimicrobials, should prompt additional rigorous studies to determine the value of this therapeutic approach.
Invariant Codes for Similar Transformation and its Application to Shape Matching

In this paper, we propose a new method for the measurement of shape similarity. Our proposed method encodes the contour of an object by using the curvature of the object. If one objects are similar (under translation, rotation, and scaling) in shape to the other, these codes themselves or their cyclic shift have the same values. We compare our method with other methods such as CSS (curvature scale space), and shape context. We show that the recognition rate of our method is 100 % and 90.40 % for the rotation and scaling robustness test using MPEG7-CE-Shape1 and 81.82 % and 95.14 % for the similarity-based retrieval test and the occlusion test using Kimia's silhouette. In particular, the value of the occlusion test is approximately 25 % higher than those of CSS, SC. Moreover, we show that the computational cost of our method is not so large by comparison our method with above methods.
Epaxial muscle fiber architecture favors enhanced excursion and power in the leaper Galago senegalensis

Galago senegalensis is a habitual arboreal leaper that engages in rapid spinal extension during push‐off. Large muscle excursions and high contraction velocities are important components of leaping, and experimental studies indicate that during leaping by G. senegalensis, peak power is facilitated by elastic storage of energy. To date, however, little is known about the functional relationship between epaxial muscle fiber architecture and locomotion in leaping primates. Here, fiber architecture of select epaxial muscles is compared between G. senegalensis (n = 4) and the slow arboreal quadruped, Nycticebus coucang (n = 4). The hypothesis is tested that G. senegalensis exhibits architectural features of the epaxial muscles that facilitate rapid and powerful spinal extension during the take‐off phase of leaping. As predicted, G. senegalensis epaxial muscles have relatively longer, less pinnate fibers and higher ratios of tendon length‐to‐fiber length, indicating the capacity for generating relatively larger muscle excursions, higher whole‐muscle contraction velocities, and a greater capacity for elastic energy storage. Thus, the relatively longer fibers and higher tendon length‐to‐fiber length ratios can be functionally linked to leaping performance in G. senegalensis. It is further predicted that G. senegalensis epaxial muscles have relatively smaller physiological cross‐sectional areas (PCSAs) as a consequence of an architectural trade‐off between fiber length (excursion) and PCSA (force). Contrary to this prediction, there are no species differences in relative PCSAs, but the smaller‐bodied G. senegalensis trends towards relatively larger epaxial muscle mass. These findings suggest that relative increase in muscle mass in G. senegalensis is largely attributable to longer fibers. The relative increase in erector spinae muscle mass may facilitate sagittal flexibility during leaping. The similarity between species in relative PCSAs provides empirical support for previous work linking osteological features of the vertebral column in lorisids with axial stability and reduced muscular effort associated with slow, deliberate movements during anti‐pronograde locomotion.
Procalcitonin as a diagnostic test for sepsis in critically ill adults and after surgery or trauma: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective:To quantify the accuracy of serum procalcitonin as a diagnostic test for sepsis, severe sepsis, or septic shock in adults in intensive care units or after surgery or trauma, alone and compared with C-reactive protein. To draw and compare the summary receiver operating characteristics curves for procalcitonin and C-reactive protein from the literature. Data Source:MEDLINE (keywords: procalcitonin, intensive care, sepsis, postoperative sepsis, trauma); screening of the literature. Study Selection:Meta-analysis of all 49 published studies in medical, surgical, or polyvalent intensive care units or postoperative wards. Children, medical patients, and immunocompromised patients were excluded. Data Extraction:Thirty-three studies fulfilled inclusion criteria (3,943 patients, 1,828 males, 922 females; mean age: 56.1 yrs; 1,825 patients with sepsis, severe sepsis, or septic shock; 1,545 with only systemic inflammatory response syndrome); eight studies could not be analyzed statistically. Global mortality rate was 29.3%. Data Synthesis:Global odds ratios for diagnosis of infection complicated by systemic inflammation were 15.7 for the 25 studies (2,966 patients) using procalcitonin (95% confidence interval, 9.1–27.1) and 5.4 for the 15 studies (1,322 patients) using C-reactive protein (95% confidence interval, 3.2–9.2). The summary receiver operating characteristics curve for procalcitonin was better than for C-reactive protein. In the 15 studies using both markers, the Q* value (intersection of summary receiver operating characteristics curve with the diagonal line where sensitivity equals specificity) was significantly higher for procalcitonin than for C-reactive protein (0.78 vs. 0.71, p = .02), the former test showing better accuracy. Conclusions:Procalcitonin represents a good biological diagnostic marker for sepsis, severe sepsis, or septic shock, difficult diagnoses in critically ill patients. Procalcitonin is superior to C-reactive protein. Procalcitonin should be included in diagnostic guidelines for sepsis and in clinical practice in intensive care units.
Structure of Human Phytanoyl-CoA 2-Hydroxylase Identifies Molecular Mechanisms of Refsum Disease*

Refsum disease (RD), a neurological syndrome characterized by adult onset retinitis pigmentosa, anosmia, sensory neuropathy, and phytanic acidaemia, is caused by elevated levels of phytanic acid. Many cases of RD are associated with mutations in phytanoyl-CoA 2-hydroxylase (PAHX), an Fe(II) and 2-oxoglutarate (2OG)-dependent oxygenase that catalyzes the initial α-oxidation step in the degradation of phytenic acid in peroxisomes. We describe the x-ray crystallographic structure of PAHX to 2.5 Å resolution complexed with Fe(II) and 2OG and predict the molecular consequences of mutations causing RD. Like other 2OG oxygenases, PAHX possesses a double-stranded β-helix core, which supports three iron binding ligands (His175, Asp177, and His264); the 2-oxoacid group of 2OG binds to the Fe(II) in a bidentate manner. The manner in which PAHX binds to Fe(II) and 2OG together with the presence of a cysteine residue (Cys191) 6.7 Å from the Fe(II) and two further histidine residues (His155 and His281) at its active site distinguishes it from that of the other human 2OG oxygenase for which structures are available, factor inhibiting hypoxia-inducible factor. Of the 15 PAHX residues observed to be mutated in RD patients, 11 cluster in two distinct groups around the Fe(II) (Pro173, His175, Gln176, Asp177, and His220) and 2OG binding sites (Trp193, Glu197, Ile199, Gly204, Asn269, and Arg275). PAHX may be the first of a new subfamily of coenzyme A-binding 2OG oxygenases.
A Potential New Human Pathogen Belonging to Helicobacter Genus, Identified in a Bloodstream Infection

We isolated from aerobic and anaerobic blood culture bottles from a febrile patient, a Helicobacter-like Gram negative, rod-shaped bacterium that MALDI-TOF MS failed to identify. Blood agar cultures incubated in a microaerobic atmosphere revealed a motile Gram negative rod, which was oxidase, catalase, nitrate reductase, esterase, and alkaline phosphatase positive. It grew at 42°C with no detectable urease activity. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed that the organism was susceptible to beta-lactams, gentamicin, erythromycin, and tetracycline but resistant to ciprofloxacin. Electronic microscopy analysis revealed a 3 × 0.5 μm curved rod bacterium harboring two sheathed amphitrichous flagella. Whole genome sequencing revealed a genome 1,708,265 base-pairs long with a GC content of 37.80% and a total of 1,697 coding sequences. The genomic analyses using the nucleotide sequences of the 16S rRNA gene, hsp60 and gyrB genes, as well as the GyrA protein sequence, and the results of Average Nucleotide Identity and in silico DNA-DNA hybridization suggest evidence for a novel Helicobacter species close to Helicobacter equorum and belonging to the group of enterohepatic Helicobacter species. As soon as the particular peptide mass fingerprint of this pathogen is added to the spectral databases, MALDI-TOF MS technology will improve its identification from clinical specimens, especially in case of “sterile infection”. We propose to associate the present strain with the Latin name of the place of isolation; Caesarodunum (Tours, France) and suggest “Helicobacter caesarodunensis” for further description of this new bacterium.
Learning Computer Network with Auxiliary Software

Computer network course is a fundamental course for the computer major college student which explains the architecture of network based on TCP/IP. But because the course is abstract in some degree, it’s hard for students to understand. We propose a learning method that utilizes the auxiliary software to simulate the network topology and configure the network protocols for the students to understand and analyze the learned network knowledge in time. After practicing for several years, we find this method is very helpful for student to study computer network course.
MIMO OFDM Channel Estimation via Block Stagewise Orthogonal Matching Pursuit

This letter presents a block stagewise orthogonal matching pursuit (StOMP)-based channel estimation scheme in frequency selective channels for multiple-input-multiple-output coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems. By exploiting the sparse common support of different channel impulse responses (CIRs), a block StOMP is developed to recover the effective channel frequency responses, which are formed by transmit precoders and CIRs. With numerical experiments, we validate the accuracy of the proposed scheme in terms of block error rate, demonstrating its advantages in performance over other existing schemes.