Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Site-Directed Spin Labeling Reveals Pentameric Ligand-Gated Ion Channel Gating Motions

Pentameric ligand-gated ion channels (pLGICs) are neurotransmitter-activated receptors that mediate fast synaptic transmission. In pLGICs, binding of agonist to the extracellular domain triggers a structural rearrangement that leads to the opening of an ion-conducting pore in the transmembrane domain and, in the continued presence of neurotransmitter, the channels desensitize (close). The flexible loops in each subunit that connect the extracellular binding domain (loops 2, 7, and 9) to the transmembrane channel domain (M2–M3 loop) are essential for coupling ligand binding to channel gating. Comparing the crystal structures of two bacterial pLGIC homologues, ELIC and the proton-activated GLIC, suggests channel gating is associated with rearrangements in these loops, but whether these motions accurately predict the motions in functional lipid-embedded pLGICs is unknown. Here, using site-directed spin labeling (SDSL) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and functional GLIC channels reconstituted into liposomes, we examined if, and how far, the loops at the ECD/TMD gating interface move during proton-dependent gating transitions from the resting to desensitized state. Loop 9 moves ∼9 Å inward toward the channel lumen in response to proton-induced desensitization. Loop 9 motions were not observed when GLIC was in detergent micelles, suggesting detergent solubilization traps the protein in a nonactivatable state and lipids are required for functional gating transitions. Proton-induced desensitization immobilizes loop 2 with little change in position. Proton-induced motion of the M2–M3 loop was not observed, suggesting its conformation is nearly identical in closed and desensitized states. Our experimentally derived distance measurements of spin-labeled GLIC suggest ELIC is not a good model for the functional resting state of GLIC, and that the crystal structure of GLIC does not correspond to a desensitized state. These findings advance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying pLGIC gating.
A comparison of distributed and network speech recognition for mobile communication systems

In this paper, we compare the conventional Network Speech Recognition (NSR) and the newly established Distributed Speech Recognition (DSR) concepts for mobile communications. These implementation approaches to Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) are analyzed from three aspects. First, the effect on the speech recognition accuracy of ASR systems with various complexity. Second, usability in different operating environments (environmental noises). Finally, the resilience to erroneous transmission (radio channel). Our experimental results show that DSR reduces the error rate of ASR systems by 17-25% on average compared to NSR, depending on the recognition task. The error resilience of DSR provides up to 37% error rate reduction over NSR under severe channel error conditions. In non-stationary environmental noise, DSR may outperform NSR by as much as 41% in terms of error-rate reduction. Based on these results and considering the low complexity implementation of DSR in the mobile terminals, it is concluded that DSR provides a viable, robust and economical alternative to the traditional NSR approach, especially in real-life mobile operating environments.
Smart Classroom: Real-time feedback on lecture quality

We live in an era where billions of computers are interconnected. In the very near future, not only computers but also many different digital devices and other physical objects will be seamlessly connected to each other and be able to communicate with little or no human intervention. These interconnected objects are called smart devices, and this concept is called Internet of Things. In this paper, the focus is on the application of IoT in the Smart Classrooms. The aim of the paper is to discuss how intelligent ambient can be used to provide realtime, automatic feedback on the quality of the lecture based on the number of parameters. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to specify the problem and analyze the requirements. The parameters of interest that should be collected and analyzed are discussed. Finally, the main requirements that such a system should comply with are presented and proposed as the experimental design.
Asymptotic convex optimization for packing random malleable demands in smart grid

We consider a problem of scheduling electric power demands in a smart-grid framework. Our model consists of n energy requirements {Ai, ℓi, ri}ni=1, needed to be scheduled in time interval [0,1]. Here Ai is the amount of energy, while ℓi and n are respectively, the left and right constraints on the length of the time period, during which Ai has to be supplied without interruption. The triples are assumed to be i.i. d. random vectors, with A distributed according to some general distribution G, and pair (ℓ, r) distributed uniformly in the region {0 ≤ ℓi ≤ r ≤ 1}. Our goal is to find a scheduling policy minimizing the power peak - maximal power over [0,1] - and/or the operational convex cost of the system while satisfying all the demands. The problem becomes very complicated as the number n of demands increases. To address this issue, we consider an asymptotic approach, in which the average amount of energy in each demand is inversely proportional to n, thus keeping the total scheduled amount stable. In this paper we first introduce lower bounds for both types of costs and then introduce a scheduling algorithm, asymptotically optimal in the sense that its cost converges to a corresponding lower bound almost surely, as n increases to infinity. Moreover, the algorithm is on-line (each demand is scheduled at the time its parameters become known) and has fully linear running time.
Análisis de los determinantes próximos e impacto de la ocupación en la fertilidad de mujeres peruanas

RESUMEN Objetivo. Estimar la capacidad predictiva de los determinantes próximos y el trabajo en la disminución de la fertilidad en mujeres peruanas en edad fértil. Métodos. Análisis secundario de la Encuesta Demográfica y de Salud Familiar (ENDES) de 2014 de Perú. La muestra fue de 20 396 mujeres entre 15 y 49 años de edad con actividad sexual en las cuatro semanas previas a la entrevista realizada. La variable dependiente fue el número total de hijos nacidos vivos y las variables independientes principales incluidas, trabajo, número ideal de hijos, máximo nivel educativo alcanzado y quintiles de riqueza. Se calcularon odds ratios (OR) para estimar la fuerza de las asociaciones entre los determinantes próximos y la ocupación y la fertilidad mediante modelos de regresión logística. Se estimó la bondad de ajuste de los modelos con la prueba de Hosmer-Lemeshow y su capacidad discriminante, con curvas ROC. Resultados. La fertilidad deseada (2,5 hijos por mujer) fue más alta que la real (2,1). Los principales factores asociados con la reducción de la fertilidad fueron el nivel educativo superior (OR = 0,03; IC95%: 0,02–0,04), el número ideal de hijos entre 0 y 2 (OR = 0,13; IC95%: 0,11–0,15), y el trabajo dependiente (OR = 0,31; IC95%: 0,28–0,34). El área bajo la curva de los modelos fue 0,908 (IC95%: 0,898–0,917) y 0,91 (IC95%:0,891–0,928), respectivamente. Conclusión. La acción de los determinantes directos (edad de inicio de las relaciones sexuales y del matrimonio) retrasa el comienzo de la maternidad, mientras que los determinantes indirectos (mayor nivel educativo y pertenencia al quintil superior de riqueza) suponen una mayor autonomía económica, que, a su vez, se asocia con niveles bajos de fertilidad. Asimismo, cuanto mayor es la dependencia en el trabajo, menor es la fertilidad de las mujeres encuestadas.
Eyes with basic dorsal and specific ventral regions in the glacial Apollo, Parnassius glacialis (Papilionidae)

SUMMARY Recent studies on butterflies have indicated that their colour vision system is almost species specific. To address the question of how this remarkable diversity evolved, we investigated the eyes of the glacial Apollo, Parnassius glacialis, a living fossil species belonging to the family Papilionidae. We identified four opsins in the Parnassius eyes – an ultraviolet- (PgUV), a blue- (PgB), and two long wavelength (PgL2, PgL3)-absorbing types – and localized their mRNAs within the retina. We thus found ommatidial heterogeneity and a clear dorso-ventral regionalization of the eye. The dorsal region consists of three basic types of ommatidia that are similar to those found in other insects, indicating that this dorsal region retains the ancestral state. In the ventral region, we identified two novel phenomena: co-expression of the opsins of the UV- and B-absorbing type in a subset of photoreceptors, and subfunctionalization of long-wavelength receptors in the distal tier as a result of differential expression of the PgL2 and PgL3 mRNAs. Interestingly, butterflies from the closely related genus Papilio (Papilionidae) have at least three long-wavelength opsins, L1–L3. The present study indicates that the duplication of L2 and L3 occurred before the Papilio lineage diverged from the rest, whereas L1 was produced from L3 in the Papilio lineage.
“I’m Just Not Good at Math!” Rethinking What You Know About Mathematics

There are many misconceptions regarding mathematics that produce negative student dispositions in a classroom. Such misconceptions are not fact based but are due to an ineffective, fixed mindset where a student limits their abilities based upon low self-efficacy and self-concept. Fixed mindsets fuel negative attitudes toward mathematics and can contribute to math anxiety. Studies have shown that the brain can grow and develop throughout a person’s life is partially dependent upon one’s mindset and experiences. Mathematics teachers can utilize a growth mindset where students have high self-efficacy and self-concept to promote positive dispositions toward mathematics. In doing this, teachers must model high teacher efficacy themselves and believe in student ability by disregarding false limitations set by prior experiences.
A Configural Dominant Account of Contextual Cueing: Configural Cues are Stronger than Colour Cues

Previous work has shown that reaction times to find a target in displays that have been repeated are faster than those for displays that have never been seen before. This learning effect, termed “contextual cueing” (CC), has been shown using contexts such as the configuration of the distractors in the display and the background colour. However, it is not clear how these two contexts interact to facilitate search. We investigated this here by comparing the strengths of these two cues when they appeared together. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a target that was cued by both colour and distractor configural cues, compared with when the target was only predicted by configural information. The results showed that the addition of a colour cue did not increase contextual cueing. In Experiment 2, participants searched for a target that was cued by both colour and distractor configuration compared with when the target was only cued by colour. The results showed that adding a predictive configural cue led to a stronger CC benefit. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the disruptive effects of removing either a learned colour cue or a learned configural cue and whether there was cue competition when colour and configural cues were presented together. Removing the configural cue was more disruptive to CC than removing colour, and configural learning was shown to overshadow the learning of colour cues. The data support a configural dominant account of CC, where configural cues act as the stronger cue in comparison to colour when they are presented together.
Properties of WNh stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud: evidence for homogeneous evolution

Aims. We aim to assess the nature of three WNh stars in the SMC, to constrain stellar evolution beyond the main sequence at low metallicity, and to investigate the metallicity dependence of the clumping properties of massive stars. Methods. We compute atmosphere models to derive the stellar and wind properties of the three WNh targets. A FUV/UV/optical/nearinfrared analysis gives access to temperatures, luminosities, mass loss rates, terminal velocities and stellar abundances. Results. We find that all stars still have a large hydrogen mass fraction in their atmosphere, and show clear signs of CNO processing in their surface abundances. One of the targets can be accounted for by normal stellar evolution. It is a star with an initial mass
Control code obfuscation by abstract interpretation

Control code obfuscation is intended to prevent malicious reverse engineering of software by masking the program control flow. These obfuscating transformations often rely on the existence of opaque predicates, that support the design of transformations that break up the program control flow. We prove that an algorithm for control obfuscation by opaque predicate insertion can be systematically derived as an abstraction of a suitable semantic transformation. In this framework, deobfuscation is interpreted as an attacker which can observe the computational behaviour of programs up to a given precision degree. Both obfuscation and deobfuscation can therefore be interpreted as approximations of program semantics, where approximation is formalized using abstract interpretation theory. In particular we prove that abstract interpretation provides the adequate setting to measure the potency of an obfuscation algorithm by comparing the degree of abstraction of the most abstract domains which are able to disclose opaque predicates.
Overview of the TREC 2010 Blog Track

• Top stories identification: A task that addresses news-related issues on the blogosphere, namely investigating whether the blogosphere can be leveraged to identify the top news stories of a given day in a real-time fashion. The task has also a search diversity flavour, where for a given story, a representative set of blog posts discussing the story from various perspectives [7] is shown to the user.
The explicit/implicit knowledge distinction and working memory: Implications for second-language reading comprehension

ABSTRACT Following an extensive overview of the subject, this study explores the relationships between second-language (L2) explicit/implicit knowledge sources, embedded in the declarative/procedural memory systems, and L2 working memory (WM) capacity. It further examines the relationships between L2 reading comprehension and L2 WM capacity as well as those between L2 reading comprehension and L2 explicit/implicit knowledge sources. Participants were late adult learners of English as an L2, with a relatively advanced level of English proficiency. They completed tests measuring their WM capacity, explicit knowledge, implicit knowledge, and L2 reading comprehension. Correlation analysis revealed significant relationships between L2 WM capacity and both explicit and implicit L2 knowledge. Exploratory factor analysis showed that explicit knowledge, WM capacity, and L2 reading comprehension loaded on a single factor whereas implicit L2 knowledge formed an independent factor with no relationship to L2 reading. The results suggest that L2 WM is able to manipulate and store both explicit and implicit L2 input through controlled and automatic processes. They also suggest that L2 explicit knowledge, connected with the control processes of the declarative system's lexical/semantic features, and L2 WM, reflecting attentional resource capacity/allocation associated with control processes, play an important role in L2 reading comprehension.
Matching models of HIV-1 viral dynamics to clinical data

Creating individualized within-host multiple phase disease models of HIV-1 infection has long been a goal of mathematicians and biologists. The challenge is in trying to build models that are representative of the disease, include realistic parameter estimates, and are able to incorporate a changing model structure. In this paper, we propose a fitting procedure, motivated by the biology of the disease, for matching parameters of differential equation and stochastic models of HIV-1 infection to data, which leverages high performance computing resources. The search uses knowledge of the biological set points to restrict the search domain, and parallel simulated annealing to match the model to acute and early chronic phase patient data. We highlight this method by finding parameters for two interconnected models of HIV-1 infection which we have developed. The high quality of our data allows us to model not only viral data, but also CD4 count data through the acute and chronic phases of the disease. The time span of our model exceeds that of previous models. The algorithm is able to find parameter values for four patients consistent with literature ranges and display individual set point equilibration and disease progression for both clinical markers.
Testing Android Apps via Guided Gesture Event Generation

Mobile applications (apps) are mostly driven by touch gestures whose interactions are natural to human beings. However, generating gesture events for effective and efficient testing of such apps remains to be a challenge. Existing event generation techniques either feed the apps under test with random gestures or exhaustively enumerate all possible gestures. While the former strategy leads to incomplete test coverage, the latter suffers from efficiency issues. In this paper, we study the particular problem of gesture event generation for Android apps. We present a static analysis technique to obtain the gesture information: each UI component's potentially relevant gestures, so as to reduce the amount of gesture events to be delivered in the automated testing. We implemented our technique as a prototype tool GAT and evaluated it with real-world Android apps. The experimental results show that GAT is both effective and efficient in covering more code as well as detecting gesturerelated bugs.
Prendre en compte les comportements cognitifs des apprenants dans la conception de systèmes d'assistance à l'apprentissage

La conception de systemes adaptes a l'homme est un domaine largement etudie actuellement. Adapter, c'est ajuster, mettre en harmonie, faire preuve de souplesse. Un systeme reellement adaptatif devra posseder ces qualites pour avoir un comportement qui corresponde au mieux au besoin de l'utilisateur. L'etude des fonctionnements cognitifs humains devient alors necessaire. Une demarche experimentale doit valider les differentes etapes effectuees. Nous illustrons cette approche de la conception de tels systemes par une application aux assistants a la rememoration dans le cadre de l'apprentissage assiste par ordinateur. Ce travail tire ses sources des disciplines complementaires que sont l'Informatique et les Sciences Cognitives.
I!mposter: Understanding, Discussing, and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is the feeling that a woman or man does not deserve the success s/he has achieved, that s/he has so far been lucky, and that s/he will be uncovered as someone who does not rightfully belong. This feeling is common among people in all stages of life: high school, undergraduate, and graduate students; postdocs, researchers, and faculty; and professionals. Women more often experience imposter syndrome; the original term “imposter phenomenon” was used in an article about chronic self-doubt in high-achieving women [1]. Institutions focusing on increasing participation in STEM by underrepresented minorities have identified imposter syndrome as a relevant issue [2, 3]. Symptoms of imposter syndrome include stress, low self-esteem, and under-performance. The latter manifests itself as sufferers not applying for scholarships or jobs because they do not think they could possibly get them. Suffers may also “self-sabotage” by not asking for help or speaking poorly about themselves, which leads to problems that “prove” they are imposters.
Morphologic characterization of organized extracellular matrix deposition by ascorbic acid-stimulated human corneal fibroblasts.

PURPOSE To characterize the structure and morphology of extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesized by untransformed, cultured human corneal fibroblasts in long-term cultures. METHODS Human corneal stromal keratocytes were expanded in transwell culture in the presence of fetal bovine serum and a stable derivative of vitamin C. The cells were allowed to synthesize a fibrillar ECM for up to 5 weeks. Constructs were assessed by light (phase-contrast and differential interference-contrast) and transmission (standard and quick freeze/deep etch) microscopy. RESULTS Electron micrographs revealed stratified constructs with multiple parallel layers of cells and an extracellular matrix comprising parallel arrays of small, polydisperse fibrils (27-51 nm) that often alternate in direction. Differential interference contrast images demonstrated oriented ECM fibril arrays parallel to the plane of the construct, whereas quick-freeze, deep-etch micrographs showed the details of the matrix interaction with fibroblasts through arrays of membrane surface structures. CONCLUSIONS Human keratocytes, cultured in a stable vitamin C derivative, are capable of assembling extracellular matrix, which comprises parallel arrays of ECM fibrils. The resultant constructs, which are highly cellular, are morphologically similar to the developing mammalian stroma, where organized matrix is derived. The appearance of arrays of structures on the cell membranes suggests a role in the local organization of synthesized ECM. This model could provide critical insight into the fundamental processes that govern the genesis of organized connective tissues such as the cornea and may provide a scaffolding suitable for tissue engineering a biomimetic stroma.
Autonomy and Protection in Self-neglect Work: The Ethical Complexity of Decision-making

ABSTRACT Self-neglect, in which an individual does not attend to their hygiene, health or home surroundings, is one of the most challenging aspects of adult social care practice. In England, its inclusion within the remit of adult safeguarding, as a result of changes in adult social care law introduced under the Care Act 2014, has thrown into relief the ethical dilemmas arising from tensions between respect for autonomy on the one hand and the exercise of a protective duty of care on the other hand. This paper draws on serious case reviews and safeguarding adult reviews in self-neglect cases, along with findings from adult safeguarding research, to propose that an appropriate balance between these two moral imperatives is not always achieved in self-neglect practice. It considers why autonomy appears to be privileged over other considerations, illustrating the complex interplay between law and ethics that gives autonomy pre-eminence. It then considers how a more nuanced, situated and relational approach to autonomy can enable practitioners to move away from dichotomous interpretations of the moral imperatives present in self-neglect work, and can support more nuanced understandings of the ethics of professional decision-making. Finally, it considers the personal and organisational implications of this enhanced ethical literacy.
Profiling young massive stars

Abstract We present the results of spectral energy distribution analysis for 162 of the 405 sources reported in the SIMBA survey of Hill et al. (2005). The fits reveal source specific parameters including: the luminosity, mass, temperature, H2 number density, the surface density and the luminosity-to-mass ratio. Each of these parameters are examined with respect to the four classes of source present in the sample. Obvious luminosity and temperature distinctions exist between the mm-only cores and those cores with methanol maser and/or radio continuum emission, with the former cooler and less luminous than the latter. The evidence suggests that the mm-only cores are a precursor to the methanol maser in the formation of massive stars. The mm-only cores comprise two distinct populations distinguished by temperature. Analysis and conclusions about the nature of the cool-mm and warm-mm cores comprising the mm-only population are drawn.