Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Evolution of Quorum Sensing in Bacterial Biofilms

Bacteria have fascinating and diverse social lives. They display coordinated group behaviors regulated by quorum-sensing systems that detect the density of other bacteria around them. A key example of such group behavior is biofilm formation, in which communities of cells attach to a surface and envelope themselves in secreted polymers. Curiously, after reaching high cell density, some bacterial species activate polymer secretion, whereas others terminate polymer secretion. Here, we investigate this striking variation in the first evolutionary model of quorum sensing in biofilms. We use detailed individual-based simulations to investigate evolutionary competitions between strains that differ in their polymer production and quorum-sensing phenotypes. The benefit of activating polymer secretion at high cell density is relatively straightforward: secretion starts upon biofilm formation, allowing strains to push their lineages into nutrient-rich areas and suffocate neighboring cells. But why use quorum sensing to terminate polymer secretion at high cell density? We find that deactivating polymer production in biofilms can yield an advantage by redirecting resources into growth, but that this advantage occurs only in a limited time window. We predict, therefore, that down-regulation of polymer secretion at high cell density will evolve when it can coincide with dispersal events, but it will be disfavored in long-lived (chronic) biofilms with sustained competition among strains. Our model suggests that the observed variation in quorum-sensing behavior can be linked to the differing requirements of bacteria in chronic versus acute biofilm infections. This is well illustrated by the case of Vibrio cholerae, which competes within biofilms by polymer secretion, terminates polymer secretion at high cell density, and induces an acute disease course that ends with mass dispersal from the host. More generally, this work shows that the balance of competition within and among biofilms can be pivotal in the evolution of quorum sensing.
Two examples of simple switching control overcoming the performance limitation of linear feedback

The purpose of this paper is to give two concrete examples of switching control overcoming the performance limitations of linear control with respect to overshoot avoidance. It is shown by both the examples that a simple switching between two linear feedback controllers may achieve a nonovershooting step response even though neither of them can do so alone. This indicates a novel methodology to design nonovershooting controllers.
Se p 20 09 2 + 1 Quantum Gravity with Barbero-Immirzi like parameter on Toric Spatial Foliation

We consider gravity in 2+1 space-time dimensions, with negative cosmological constant and a 'Barbero-Immirzi' (B-I) like parameter, when the space-time topology is of the form T 2 × Ê. The phase space structure, both in covariant and canonical framework is analyzed. Full quantization of the theory in the 'constrain first' approach reveals a finite dimensional physical Hilbert space. An explicit construction of wave functions is presented. The dimension of the Hilbert space is found to depend on the 'Barbero-Immirzi' like parameter in an interesting fashion.
Variances of Security Price Returns Based on High

In a recent paper, Garman and Klass (1980) studied the problem of estimating capital asset price volatility parameters. Developing an idea first introduced by Parkinson (1980), they argue that improved volatility measures can be obtained by taking into account the daily high, low, and opening prices in addition to the traditionally used closing prices. This paper is concerned mainly with testing the empirical validity of different volatility estimators based on high, low, and closing prices.
Object Histories : object-oriented triumph over action-nets

ProAct is our planner for direct end-user use in project management and contingency planning. We’re building it after extensive experience with SIPE-2 (Wilkins, 1989) and discussions with Austin Tate and Brian Drabble. We rely on untrained end users to create the plan knowledge. Due to the nature of their planning needs, we’ve made several significant changes to the functionality and representation over other classical planners. These changes have rewarded us with additional benefits. Among the benefits is the advantage of using a fully object-oriented representation.
Post-renal Transplantation de novo Renal Cell Carcinoma in a Middle-aged Man

Renal cell carcinoma is usually seen in the native kidney but may be seen in the renal allograft. We report a rare case of renal cell carcinoma in a 56-year-old renal allograft recipient who was transplanted for end-stage renal disease induced by analgesic nephropathy. This complication developed after 13 years of renal transplantation. Patient was investigated for hematuria and abdominal pain with a normal renal function. Computed tomography depicted a mass sized 9.0×7.3×6.8 cm that involved the upper pole of the transplant. There was no metastasis. The patient underwent radical allograft nephrectomy for the carcinoma that had extended up to the renal hilum. Histopathological examination revealed Furhman grade-1, clear cell variant, stage pT2 N0 M0. In the last visit, the patient was on maintenance hemodialysis via arterio-venous fistula and planned for cadaveric renal transplantation. Computed tomography could facilitate early diagnosis and proper management of patients with post-renal allograft renal cell carcinoma.
DERIVING GRID WORKLOAD MODELS FROM USER SUBMISSION STRATEGIES

Production-grid users experience many system faults as well as high and variable latencies due to the scale, complexity and sharing of such infrastructures. To improve performance, they adopt different submission strategies, that are potentially aggressive for the infrastructure. This work studies the impact of three different strategies. It is based on a probabilistic modeling of these strategies which are evaluated according to their performance, measured as the reduction of the latency expectation, and the infrastructure overhead, measured as the additional number of submitted jobs. A strategy cost criterion is then derived. Experiments are performed using real workload traces collected from the EGEE production infrastructure. Under these conditions, a good balance between high performance and low overhead can be found. This research report includes the demonstration of the studied models.
Expansion and evolution of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 19A ST320 clone as compared to its ancestral clone, Taiwan19F-14 (ST236).

BACKGROUND The Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 19A sequence type (ST) 320 clone, derived from an international Taiwan(19F)-14 (ST236) clone, has become prevalent in many countries. METHODS The dynamics of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) were determined using the database of the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System in Taiwan. The virulence of 19A ST320 and Taiwan(19F)-14 (ST236) were assessed in mice. By constructing an isogenic serotype 19F variant of the 19A ST320 strain (19F ST320), we analyzed the role of capsular type and genetic background on the difference in virulence between 19A ST320 and Taiwan(19F)-14 (ST236). RESULTS Between 2008 and 2011, IPD due to serotype 19A increased from 2.1 to 10.2 cases per 100 000 population (P < .001); IPD due to any serotype also significantly increased (P = .01). Most serotype 19A isolates belonged to ST320. Using competition experiments in a murine model of colonization, we demonstrated that 19A ST320 outcompeted Taiwan(19F)-14 (ST236; competitive index, 20.3; P = .001). 19F ST320 was 2-fold less competitive than the 19A ST320 parent (competitive index, 0.47; P = .04) but remained 14-fold more competitive than Taiwan(19F)-14 (ST236; competitive index, 14.7; P < .001). CONCLUSIONS Genetic evolution of pneumococcal clones from Taiwan(19F)-14 (ST236) to 19A ST320 has made this pneumococcus better able to colonize of the nasopharynx. This evolution reflects not only a switch in capsular serotype but also changes in other loci.
A PSO-based virtual SDN customization for multi-tenant cloud services

With the development of cloud computing, the current Software Defined Networking (SDN) data center which is based on the Open Source Cloud platform OpenStack cannot satisfy multiple users' service requirements. OpenStack cannot achieve centralized control of the physical network in cloud data center. In order to satisfy the user's flexible control of the data center network, a multi-tenant virtual network customization in cloud data center is proposed in this paper. SDN with the advantages of centralized control and programming is integrated to OpenStack cloud data center. Isolated tenant virtual SDN networks (vSDN) are created in the cloud data center via the virtual network mapping model based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The vSDN network is controlled by tenant's own controller. Virtual network mapping performance, link customization and data transmission performance are tested in this paper. Results show that the virtual network mapping model based on PSO algorithm compared to shortest path (SP) algorithm, greatly improve the utilization rate of the underlying network bandwidth. At the same time, the SDN mode does not reduce the performance of data transmission on OpenStack cloud platform. The virtual network link customization improves the efficiency of data transmission for tenant.
Assessment of Utility in Web Mining for the Domain of Public Health

This paper presents ongoing work on application of Information Extraction (IE) technology to domain of Public Health, in a real-world scenario. A central issue in IE is the quality of the results. We present two novel points. First, we distinguish the criteria for quality: the objective criteria that measure correctness of the system's analysis in traditional terms (F-measure, recall and precision), and, on the other hand, subjective criteria that measure the utility of the results to the end-user. Second, to obtain measures of utility, we build an environment that allows users to interact with the system by rating the analyzed content. We then build and compare several classifiers that learn from the user's responses to predict the relevance scores for new events. We conduct experiments with learning to predict relevance, and discuss the results and their implications for text mining in the domain of Public Health.
Automatic Keyword Extraction From Any Text Document Using N-gram Rigid Collocation

— An unsupervised method for extracting keywords from a single document is proposed in this paper. A fuzzy set theoretic approach, fuzzy n-gram indexing, is used to extract n-gram keywords. It is noticed that n-gram keyword renders a better result as compared to mono-gram keyword, but for some documents the most relevant keyword is mono-gram. This paper focuses on a keyword extraction approach which neither requires a dictionary or thesaurus nor does it depend on the size of text document. The algorithm is efficient enough to dynamically determine the mono-gram, bi-gram as well as n-grams keywords for different documents.
The CAP and the Regions: The Territorial Impact of the Common Agricultural Policy

The CAP and the Regions: The Territorial Impact of the Common Agricultural Policy, M. Shucksmith, K. J. Thomson and D. Roberts (eds), Wallingford, CABI Publishing, 2005, 240 pp., £45.00 (h/b) The CAP and the Regions makes a significant contribution to the empirical literature on intersectoral policy coordination, lauded as one of the key challenges to sustainability in the EU multi-level policy system. The value of the contribution is increased by the choice of regional scalar perspective, which receives much attention in EU policy rhetoric but has remained scarcely examined and documented. The critical exploration of the application and impacts of the CAP and the Rural Development Policy (RDP) at regional level compares policy outcomes with the objectives of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), ranging from economic cohesion and environmental sustainability to economic and morphological polycentrism. The CAP and the Regions is the outcome of a research project, 'The Territorial Impact of the CAP and RDP', conducted in the framework of the ESPON programme and partly financed through the EU INTERREG programme. The empirical material consists of statistical information on farm economics and distribution of funding, and case studies from seven EU member states and Norway. These focus on the application and impacts of CAP subsidies and support channelled through RDP measures such as payments for Less Favoured Areas, the LEADER and Agrienvironmental Programmes, Early Retirement Schemes and Pre-Accession Measures (SAPARD), as well as a number of national programmes aimed at rural development. The range of case study countries is representative of the EU, including northern and southern as well as new member states. While the distribution and impacts of rural and agricultural policies up to 2003 are discussed in the light of new and available economic data, the potential impact of the CAP mid-term review of 2003 is explored on the basis of the Commission proposal and some insight is drawn from results from the CAPRI model (EU-wide economic modelling system for CAP impacts). The early chapters provide a succinct and helpful explanation of the complex EU policy frameworks in the field and a critical and well contextualised discussion of what the role of the ESDP might or perhaps should be in the EU agricultural sector. The approach of the book falls predominantly into the field of economic analysis, although, in line with an institutional economics approach, attention is also paid to technological, political and socioeconomic forces in the case studies. Typically for a large EU project, the case studies do not follow a uniform format and display a variety of methodologies. …
Pupils’ prosociality and its relations to their meaning of life and teacher’s interaction style

The study deals with pupils´ self-perceived prosocial behaviour and its correlations to pupils´ meaning of life and teacher’s interaction style. The pupils (14-and-15-years old) from lower secondary school were respondents of this research. The objective was to find out what relation exists between self-perceived prosocial behaviour and teacher ‘s interaction style. At the same time, we analysed the relation between pupils´ self-perceived behaviour and pupils´ meaning of life. It was shown that a teacher may improve self-perceived prosocial behaviour of pupils if he/she is evaluated with a higher score in the areas such as leadership, understanding and responsibility. On the contrary, if a teacher’s interaction style is strict, uncertain, dissatisfied and admonishing, it correlates negatively with self-perceived prosocial behaviour of pupils.
StreSS modelS: A review And SuggeSted new direction

This chapter gives an overview of how changes in the nature of many work environments have led to increases in stressful job characteristics, and how these characteristics may be implicated in many stress-related physical and psychological problems. The economic and human consequences of these issues are outlined, and the nature of ‘work stress’ is defined. Many of the major theoretical models that depict the stress process are described, with particular attention paid to the most influential. It is proposed that while current stress models present fruitful frameworks for stress research, many existing models suffer from being either too narrow in scope and lacking a role for individual differences, or too broad and complex, and lacking in predictive validity. A new approach that combines many of the features of existing models is proposed, which includes strong roles for psychosocial stressors, individual differences, and subjective perceptions. Some research based on this new approach is briefly described, and it is suggested that the proposed model could be a useful new direction for stress research.
Specifying Security for Computer Supported Collaborative Working

CSCW systems provide computer support to facilitate cooperation between users. This paper proposes an approach to the formal specification of security requirements for CSCW applications, where a CSCW application is viewed as a collection of activities that users may participate in. The specification approach is straightforward, and can be used to capture a wide variety of security requirements, including integrity and confidentiality. It is illustrated with a case study of a secure electronic examinations system.
In-Vivo Evaluation of an In Situ Polymer Precipitation Delivery System for a Novel Natriuretic Peptide

This study reports on the release of a novel natriuretic peptide, CD-NP, from an in situ polymer precipitation delivery system. Following extensive screening of in-vitro release profiles, an in-vivo evaluation of the efficacy of the delivery system was carried out in Wistar rats. Gel injection was performed subcutaneously on the back of the rats. A secondary messenger, cyclic Guanosine 3′5′ Monophosphate (cGMP), was tested for verification of CD-NP bioactivity, in addition to direct measurements of CD-NP levels in plasma and urine using a radio-immuno assay. Plasma evaluation showed an elevated level of CD-NP over 3 weeks' duration. Unexpectedly, plasma cGMP level followed a decreasing trend over the same duration despite high CD-NP level. Loss of drug bioactivity was ruled out as a high level of CD-NP and cGMP excretion was observed in the treatment group as compared to baseline readings. This unexpected low-plasma cGMP levels and high-urinary cGMP excretion suggest that there might be other compensatory responses to regulation of the CDNP bioactivity as a result of the high drug dosing. The results stress the importance of assessing the overall bioactivity of released drug (in-vivo) concurrently in addition to measuring its concentrations, to determine the correct release profile.
Attentional Templates in Visual Working Memory

Most theories of attention propose that we maintain attentional templates in visual working memory to control what information is selected. In the present study, we directly tested this proposal by measuring the contralateral-delay activity (CDA) of human event-related potentials during visual search tasks in which the target is cued on each trial. Here we show that the CDA can be used to measure the maintenance of attentional templates in visual working memory while processing complex visual scenes. In addition, this method allowed us to directly observe the shift from working memory to long-term memory representations controlling attention as learning occurred and experience accrued searching for the same target object. Our findings provide definitive support for several critical proposals made in theories of attention, learning, and automaticity.
Music business models and piracy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to estimate the scale of illegal file‐sharing activity across ten countries and to correlate this activity with country revenues. The work aims to elucidate an under‐explored business model challenge which exists in parallel with a music piracy challenge.Design/methodology/approach – The study data are drawn from a number of sources, including a data set of a survey of more than 44,000 consumers in ten different countries undertaken in 2010. Following analysis, all findings are validated by a panel of industry experts.Findings – Results show that non‐legitimate file‐sharing activity is a heterogeneous issue across countries. The scale of activity varies from 14 per cent in Germany to 44 per cent in Spain, with an average of 28 per cent. File‐sharing activity negatively correlates to music industry revenue per capita. This research finds many consumers are not engaging with online business models. Almost one fourth of the population claim that they do not consume digi.
A point-based tele-immersion system: from acquisition to stereoscopic display

We present a point based reconstruction and transmission pipeline for a collaborative tele-immersion system. Two or more users in different locations collaborate with each other in a shared, simulated environment as if they were in the same physical room. Each user perceives point-based models of distant users along with collaborative data like molecule models. Disparity maps, computed by a commercial stereo solution, are filtered and transformed into clouds of 3D points. The clouds are compressed and transmitted over the network to distant users. At the other side the clouds are decompressed and incorporated into the 3D scene. The viewpoint used to display the 3D scene is dependent on the position of the head of the user. Collaborative data is manipulated through natural hand gestures. We analyse the performance of the system in terms of computation time, latency and photo realistic quality of the reconstructed models.
Generalized Theory of the Thru-Reflect-Match Calibration Technique

The thru-reflect-match (TRM) calibration technique uses as standards a through connection of ports 1 and 2 of the vector network analyzer, two symmetrical highly reflecting loads, and two broadband loads (match) of impedance close to the measuring system impedance (Zo). The classical theory of the TRM calibration refers the calibration to the impedance of the load used as the match standard (ZM), which is assumed as symmetrical. In practice, ZM may be frequency dependent. Moreover, as the frequency increases, the symmetry condition of the load used as match standard may become difficult to preserve, thus affecting the reference impedance definition and reducing the accuracy of the calibration. In this paper, the ABCD-parameters matrix formalism is used to introduce for the first time a generalized TRM calibration theory, allowing the use of either symmetrical or nonsymmetrical loads of arbitrary impedance as the match standard.
Cell phone banking adoption in South Africa

Despite the exponential growth in cell phone usage in South Africa, from 13 million subscribers in 2002 to at least 49 million subscribers today, uptake of cell phone banking in the same period lags. Utilising Rogers’ innovation adoption framework, this research examines banking consumers’ perceptions of cell phone banking attributes, and how these may affect adoption. A survey of 124 cell phone users from Gauteng, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo Provinces participated in the study. Results indicate an improvement in cell phone banking uptake compared to past years. Perceptions of risk and security concerns appear to slow the adoption rate. While banking institutions have done a lot in launching cell phone banking, focussing attention on in-house promotion and customer demonstrations of cell phone banking may further improve adoption rate.
Switch-mode power amplifier linearization

A continuous time band-pass delta sigma modulator was designed and fabricated in a 0.18 mum SiGe BiCMOS process. This IC was designed to accept an analog intermediate frequency input up to 100 MHz. A synchronous clocking scheme was incorporated to perform frequency translation, in addition to quantization, inside the modulator loop. The modulator was inserted into a closed loop system that also contained multiple stages of broadband switching amplifiers in cascade, to demonstrate linearization viability. Greater than 20 dB of linearization was achieved on multi-carrier CDMA 2000 and WCDMA patterns, both at 874 MHz and 2.14 GHz.