Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘Is There an App for That?’ Tapping into Mobile Technology to Facilitate Urban Climate Change Resilience in Nairobi

Kenya’s rapid, unplanned urban development and rising pressure for cities to adapt to climate change and become more climate change resilient has led to the realisation that more needs to be done. In Nairobi, increasing access to mobile technology and internet access, faster internet speeds, and the growing technology sector could be possible means to facilitate urban climate change resilience (UCCR) and reduce vulnerability. This thesis considers how mobile technology can be used to facilitate urban climate change resilience in Nairobi. Guided by a framework that outlines seven entry points to UCCR – through key informant interviews and literature review – the thesis analyses how mobile tech is currently being used; what gaps can be exploited and what challenges are faced by Nairobi City County officials, developers and users in adopting mobile technology for UCCR. The findings show that residents, community based organisations, the private sector, innovators and other stakeholders are pioneering and adopting innovative ways to address the various challenges in Nairobi. This facilitates more resilient development, by lowering the vulnerability of the city, its residents, infrastructure and services. Climate change is however not often explicitly or extensively addressed by many of the innovations; further, the County has not fully prioritised UCCR. Thus, while the technology may be available to address various challenges, there isn’t a holistic vision about the County’s resilience objectives by all stakeholders. This means that while to some extent vulnerability at various levels is being addressed, it is difficult to determine if overall climate resilience is being developed. (Less)
Derepression of Mineral Phosphate Solubilization Phenotype by Insertional Inactivation of iclR in Klebsiella pneumoniae

The mode of succinate mediated repression of mineral phosphate solubilization and the role of repressor in suppressing phosphate solubilization phenotype of two free-living nitrogen fixing Klebsiella pneumoniae strains was studied. Organic acid mediated mineral phosphate solubilization phenotype of oxalic acid producing Klebsiella pneumoniae SM6 and SM11 were transcriptionally repressed by IclR in presence of succinate as carbon source. Oxalic acid production and expression of genes of the glyoxylate shunt (aceBAK) was found only in glucose but not in succinate- and glucose+succinate-grown cells. IclR, repressor of aceBAK operon, was inactivated using an allelic exchange system resulting in derepressed mineral phosphate solubilization phenotype through constitutive expression of the glyoxylate shunt. Insertional inactivation of iclR resulted in increased activity of the glyoxylate shunt enzymes even in succinate-grown cells. An augmented phosphate solubilization up to 54 and 59% soluble phosphate release was attained in glucose+succinate-grown SM6Δ and SM11Δ strains respectively, compared to glucose-grown cells, whereas phosphate solubilization was absent or negligible in wildtype cells grown in glucose+succinate. Both wildtype and iclR deletion strains showed similar indole-3-acetic acid production. Wheat seeds inoculated with wildtype SM6 and SM11 improved both root and shoot length by 1.2 fold. However, iclR deletion SM6Δ and SM11Δ strains increased root and shoot length by 1.5 and 1.4 folds, respectively, compared to uninoculated controls. The repressor inactivated phosphate solubilizers better served the purpose of constitutive phosphate solubilization in pot experiments, where presence of other carbon sources (e.g., succinate) might repress mineral phosphate solubilization phenotype of wildtype strains.
Eurographics/ Ieee-vgtc Symposium on Visualization 2010 Understanding Interactive Legends: a Comparative Evaluation with Standard Widgets

Interactive information visualization systems rely on widgets to allow users to interact with the data and modify the representation. We define interactive legends as a class of controls combining the visual representation of static legends and interaction mechanisms of widgets. As interactive legends start to appear in popular websites, we categorize their designs for common data types and evaluate their effectiveness compare to standard widgets. Results suggest that 1) interactive legends can lead to faster perception of the mapping between data values and visual encodings and 2) interaction time is affected differently depending on the data type. Additionally, our study indicates superiority both in terms of perception and interaction of ordinal controls over numerical ones. Numerical techniques are mostly used in today's systems. By providing solutions to allowing users to modify ranges interactively, we believe that interactive legends make it possible to increase the use of ordinal techniques for visual exploration.
Temporal Reasoning Involving Counterfactuals and Disjunctions

This paper describes a mechanism for nonmonotonic temporal reasoning involving counterfactuals and disjunctions. The mechanism supports a method for exploring alternatives well suited to automatic planning. The application of these techniques to robot problem solving is discussed with an emphasis on reasoning about exclusive choices and monitoring the continued warrant and effectiveness of prevention tasks.
Neurolipofuscin is a Measure of Age in the Caribbean Spiny Lobster, Panulirus argus, in Florida

Accurate age estimates for the commerciallyimportant Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, would greatly enhance analyses of life history and population dynamics. Previous estimates of their age based on size and growth may be inaccurate because of variable growth in the wild. An established technique for aging crustaceans – histologically-determined lipofuscin content in the nervous system – was used on lobsters reared in the laboratory for up to five years. We verified the presence of lipofuscin in eyestalk neural tissue and described its distribution in cell cluster A of the hemiellipsoid body. Neurolipofuscin content of both sexes increased linearly over the five-year age range, with seasonal oscillations. Growth of these animals, on the other hand, showed sex differences and began to asymptote after three years. Neurolipofuscin concentrations in the two eyestalks from the same animal were similar. These results suggest that the neurolipofuscin technique will be valuable for estimating age of wildcaught P.argus. INDEX WORDS: Panulirus argus, Neurolipofuscin, Spiny Lobster, Florida Keys, Growth NEUROLIPOFUSCIN IS A MEASURE OF AGE IN THE CARIBBEAN SPINY LOBSTER, PANULIRUS ARGUS, IN FLORIDA.
Toll-Like Receptor 2 Agonist Pam3CSK4 Alleviates the Pathology of Leptospirosis in Hamster

ABSTRACT Leptospirosis, caused by pathogenic spirochetes, is a zoonotic disease of global importance. The detailed pathogenesis of leptospirosis is still unclear, which limits the ideal treatment of leptospirosis. In this study, we analyzed the expression of Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and TLR4 in target organs of both resistant mice and susceptible hamsters after Leptospira interrogans serovar Autumnalis infection. TLR2 but not TLR4 transcripts in mouse organs contrasted with delayed induction and overexpression in hamster organs. Coinjection of leptospires and the TLR2 agonist Pam3CSK4 into hamsters improved their survival rate, alleviated tissue injury, and decreased the abundance of leptospires in target organs. The production of interleukin-10 (IL-10) from tissues was enhanced in hamsters of the group coinjected with leptospires and Pam3CSK4 compared with the leptospira-injected group. Similarly, IL-10 levels in TLR2-deficient mice were lower than those in wild-type mice. A high ratio of IL-10/tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) levels was found in both infected wild-type mice and hamsters coinjected with leptospires and Pam3CSK4. Moreover, TLR2-dependent IL-10 expression was detected in peritoneal macrophages after leptospira infection. Our data demonstrate that coinjection of leptospires and Pam3CSK4 alleviates the pathology of leptospirosis in hamsters; this effect may result from the enhanced expression of TLR2-dependent IL-10.
The association between psoriasis and dyslipidaemia: a systematic review

Psoriasis may be associated with dyslipidaemia, a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. This systematic review aims to synthesize evidence for the association between psoriasis and dyslipidaemia. Through a systematic search using MEDLINE, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register, from 1 January 1980 to 1 January 2012, we identified 25 observational studies that met the inclusion criteria. These 25 studies included over 2·4 million participants, among whom 265 512 were patients with psoriasis. Twenty studies (80%) reported that psoriasis was significantly associated with dyslipidaemia, with odds ratios (ORs) for dyslipidaemia ranging from 1·04 to 5·55 in 238 385 patients with psoriasis, from a population of 2 340 605 participants. Specifically, four studies defining dyslipidaemia as triglyceride levels ≥ 150 mg dL−1 reported significantly increased ORs of 1·20–4·98 for hypertriglyceridaemia in psoriasis. Three studies found that patients with psoriasis presented with significantly increased ORs (1·36–1·77) for high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol levels < 40 mg dL−1, and two studies found hyperlipoproteinaemia to be significantly elevated in patients with psoriasis (ORs 1·55 and 2·09). One cohort study found a significantly higher incidence of hyperlipidaemia among patients with psoriasis (hazard ratio 1·17; 95% confidence interval 1·11–1·23). Among studies that assessed the severity of psoriasis, in 2662 patients with mild psoriasis and 810 patients with severe psoriasis, higher odds of dyslipidaemia were seen in patients with severe psoriasis. Five of the 25 studies (20%) in our review did not show any significant relationship between psoriasis and dyslipidaemia. This systematic review found that psoriasis was significantly associated with greater odds and incidence of dyslipidaemia. Greater psoriasis severity appeared to be associated with higher prevalence of dyslipidaemia.
Dimensionality reduction based on binary encoding for hyperspectral data

ABSTRACT Binary encoding is an approach that aims at summarizing the information contained in various spectral bands into a single image that stores the meaningful information of the bands. In this paper, it is introduced a feature extraction approach to reduce the dimensionality of hyperspectral data with binary encoding for classification purposes. Different options to reduce the radiometric information of the pixels are introduced, such as using a single threshold or multiple thresholds. After the dimensionality reduction, the separation of the spectral classes was analysed and the thematic classification of the reduced data was performed. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, experiments on AVIRIS (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer) image, ROSIS (Reflection Optics System Imaging Spectrometer) hyperspectral image and HYDICE (Hyperspectral Digital Imagery Collection Experiment) hyperspectral image are presented. In the experiments, neighbouring spectral bands are grouped and coded and the results of the classification are compared. The results show that the use of binary encoding based on three thresholds by spectral region is more efficient than with the use of one threshold. The thematic mapping of the hyperspectral data with reduced dimension confirms the competitiveness of the binary encoding method compared with other dimension reduction methods, such as the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), the Principal Component Analysis – Fisher’s Linear Discriminant Analysis (PCA-LDA), the Discriminant Analysis Feature Extraction (DAFE) and the Non-parametric Weighted Feature Extraction (NWFE). In this context, the present methodology shows to be promising, because it reduces the computational complexity and improves performance.
A Generalized Single Linkage Method for Estimating the Cluster Tree of a Density

The goal of clustering is to detect the presence of distinct groups in a dataset and assign group labels to the observations. Nonparametric clustering is based on the premise that the observations may be regarded as a sample from some underlying density in feature space and that groups correspond to modes of this density. The goal then is to find the modes and assign each observation to the domain of attraction of a mode. The modal structure of a density is summarized by its cluster tree; modes of the density correspond to leaves of the cluster tree. Estimating the cluster tree is the primary goal of nonparametric cluster analysis. We adopt a plug-in approach to cluster tree estimation: estimate the cluster tree of the feature density by the cluster tree of a density estimate. For some density estimates the cluster tree can be computed exactly; for others we have to be content with an approximation. We present a graph-based method that can approximate the cluster tree of any density estimate. Density estimates tend to have spurious modes caused by sampling variability, leading to spurious branches in the graph cluster tree. We propose excess mass as a measure for the size of a branch, reflecting the height of the corresponding peak of the density above the surrounding valley floor as well as its spatial extent. Excess mass can be used as a guide for pruning the graph cluster tree. We point out mathematical and algorithmic connections to single linkage clustering and illustrate our approach on several examples. Supplemental materials for the article, including an R package implementing generalized single linkage clustering, all datasets used in the examples, and R code producing the figures and numerical results, are available online.
A Semiotic Approach for Flexible E-Government Service Oriented Systems

A method and a device for cutting out pieces of material webs, the cutting taking place between a spherical surface and a sharp edge. The spherical surface consists of a freely movable, non-driven ball. The ball can be made of hard material such as steel and the cutting edge of softer material, or vice versa. The device consists of a roller over which the web is led and a member acting against it. The roller has a groove corresponding to the desired contours of the formed piece. A ball, guided by the groove made in the roller, presses against the edge of the groove for cutting through the web.
Phospholipases A1

Phospholipase A1 (PLA1) is an enzyme that hydrolyzes phospholipids and produces 2-acyl-lysophospholipids and fatty acids. This lipolytic activity is conserved in a wide range of organisms but is carried out by a diverse set of PLA1 enzymes. Where their function is known, PLA1s have been shown to act as digestive enzymes, possess central roles in membrane maintenance and remodeling, or regulate important cellular mechanisms by the production of various lysophospholipid mediators, such as lysophosphatidylserine and lysophosphatidic acid, which in turn have multiple biological functions.
Supervised topic model for automatic image annotation

This paper presents a new probabilistic model for the task of image annotation. Our model, which we call sLDA-bin, extends supervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation (sLDA) model to handle a multi-variate binary response variable of the annotation data. Unlike correspondence LDA (cLDA), the association model in sLDA allows each caption word to be associated with more than 1 image region and is thus more appropriate for annotation words that globally describe the scene. By modeling the response variable as a multi-variate Bernoulli, we introduce a tight convex variational bound for the logistic function and derive an efficient variational inference algorithm based on mean-field approximation. Our model compares favorably with cLDA on an image annotation task, as demonstrated by a superior caption prediction probability.
What is the prevalence of MRI-detected inflammation and erosions in small joints in the general population? A collation and analysis of published data

Introduction MRI sensitively depicts erosions, bone marrow edema (BME) and synovitis in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Recently developed European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations stated that MRI is valuable to improve the certainty of a considered diagnosis and to detect structural damage at an early time point. However, these recommendations were mainly based on the data of patients with RA; prevalences of MRI features in the general population were not extensively explored. We reviewed the literature on MRI studies including symptom-free persons to assess the occurrence of MRI features. Methods Medical literature databases up to September 2013 were systematically reviewed for symptom-free persons with MRI data on metacarpophalangeal, wrist and metatarsophalangeal joints. Data were extracted and summarised. When allowed because of comparable scanning and scoring protocols, a mean frequency of features was calculated. Results Of the 338 articles screened, 31 studies evaluated MRI findings in symptom-free persons (n=516 in total). Both the imaging techniques (<1/≥1 T, with/without contrast enhancement) and the scoring methods (non-validated or RA MRI score (RAMRIS)) varied widely, prohibiting direct comparisons of the results of many studies. 15 studies scored data according to RAMRIS; combining data of similar joint regions showed that erosions (RAMRIS ≥1) were present in 33–52% of symptom-free persons. Similarly, synovitis was present in 27% and BME in 0–16% of symptom-free persons. The prevalence of MRI-detected erosions increased with age. Conclusions MRI features, erosions in particular, occur frequently in symptom-free persons. Before MRI can be implemented in the diagnostic process, larger studies should be conducted determining the degree and combination of MRI features that are disease specific.
Human papillomavirus in saliva of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) in saliva rinses of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma and to analyze the possibility of using saliva as a diagnostic method for screening high-risk patients. STUDY DESIGN The saliva sample of 22 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma and 20 age-sex matched healthy controls were obtained. The presence of HPV 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, and 33 was evaluated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). RESULTS In 40.9% of the patients and in 25% of the controls, the saliva was shown to be positive for HPV. In 27.3% of the patients and in 20% of the controls, the saliva was shown to be positive for HPV16; and none of the controls, except one patient was shown to be positive for HPV 18. Neither patients nor controls were positive for HPV 31 and 33. These differences were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study were unable to support the detection of HPV in saliva rinses as a diagnostic method for OSCC.
Reactile: Programming Swarm User Interfaces through Direct Physical Manipulation

We explore a new approach to programming swarm user interfaces (Swarm UI) by leveraging direct physical manipulation. Existing Swarm UI applications are written using a robot programming framework: users work on a computer screen and think in terms of low-level controls. In contrast, our approach allows programmers to work in physical space by directly manipulating objects and think in terms of high-level interface design. Inspired by current UI programming practices, we introduce a four-step workflow-create elements, abstract attributes, specify behaviors, and propagate changes-for Swarm UI programming. We propose a set of direct physical manipulation techniques to support each step in this workflow. To demonstrate these concepts, we developed Reactile, a Swarm UI programming environment that actuates a swarm of small magnets and displays spatial information of program states using a DLP projector. Two user studies-an in-class survey with 148 students and a lab interview with eight participants-confirm that our approach is intuitive and understandable for programming Swarm UIs.
Preventive Effects of a Kampo Medicine, Kakkonto, on Inflammatory Responses via the Suppression of Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase Phosphorylation in Lipopolysaccharide-Treated Human Gingival Fibroblasts

Periodontal disease is accompanied by inflammation of the gingiva and destruction of periodontal tissues, leading to alveolar bone loss in severe clinical cases. The chemical mediator prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and cytokines such as interleukin- (IL-)6 and IL-8 have been known to play important roles in inflammatory responses and tissue degradation. In the present study, we investigated the effects of a kampo medicine, kakkonto (TJ-1), on the production of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), IL-6, and IL-8 by human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from Porphyromonas gingivalis. Kakkonto concentration dependently suppressed LPS-induced PGE2 production but did not alter basal PGE2 levels. In contrast, kakkonto significantly increased LPS-induced IL-6 and IL-8 production. Kakkonto decreased cyclooxygenase- (COX-)1 activity to approximately 70% at 1 mg/mL but did not affect COX-2 activity. Kakkonto did not affect cytoplasmic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2), annexin1, or LPS-induced COX-2 expression. Kakkonto suppressed LPS-induced extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) phosphorylation, which is known to lead to ERK activation and cPLA2 phosphorylation. These results suggest that kakkonto decreased PGE2 production by inhibition of ERK phosphorylation which leads to inhibition of cPLA2 phosphorylation and its activation. Therefore, kakkonto may be useful to improve gingival inflammation in periodontal disease.
Application of information technology through the knowledge management process, an empirical study of Serbian enterprises

The focus of this paper is to identify which social characteristics of human resources in Serbia, influence the process of application of information technology as dimensions of knowledge management. Research goals are directed to establish correlations between the independent variables (the characteristics of respondents) and information technology dimensions defined as the dependent variable. Statistically significant correlations are realized with the independent variables: age (Sig. 0.025) and family status of respondents (Sig. 0.048). For other independent variables: years of service at the company, professional qualification and gender of the respondents, correlation is above the level of Sig. ≤ 0.05. The sample consisted of 336 employees from 83 enterprises in Serbia.
Risks from maritime traffic to biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea: Identification of issues and possible responses

This report is based on discussions among maritime experts and draws on the conclusions of a workshop that was held in Istanbul in 2007. It focuses on identifying threats to biodiversity resulting from international shipping activities and the transportation of hazardous cargoes in the Mediterranean Sea; on proposing appropriate responses to eliminate or mitigate these threats; and on examining these threats in the context of the existing Mediterranean governance framework and international agreements on marine environmental protection and biodiversity conservation.