Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beneficial Bacteria Isolated from Grapevine Inner Tissues Shape Arabidopsis thaliana Roots

We investigated the potential plant growth-promoting traits of 377 culturable endophytic bacteria, isolated from Vitis vinifera cv. Glera, as good biofertilizer candidates in vineyard management. Endophyte ability in promoting plant growth was assessed in vitro by testing ammonia production, phosphate solubilization, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and IAA-like molecule biosynthesis, siderophore and lytic enzyme secretion. Many of the isolates were able to mobilize phosphate (33%), release ammonium (39%), secrete siderophores (38%) and a limited part of them synthetized IAA and IAA-like molecules (5%). Effects of each of the 377 grapevine beneficial bacteria on Arabidopsis thaliana root development were also analyzed to discern plant growth-promoting abilities (PGP) of the different strains, that often exhibit more than one PGP trait. A supervised model-based clustering analysis highlighted six different classes of PGP effects on root architecture. A. thaliana DR5::GUS plantlets, inoculated with IAA-producing endophytes, resulted in altered root growth and enhanced auxin response. Overall, the results indicate that the Glera PGP endospheric culturable microbiome could contribute, by structural root changes, to obtain water and nutrients increasing plant adaptation and survival. From the complete cultivable collection, twelve promising endophytes mainly belonging to the Bacillus but also to Micrococcus and Pantoea genera, were selected for further investigations in the grapevine host plants towards future application in sustainable management of vineyards.
Holography, Quantum Geometry, and Quantum Information Theory

We interpret the Holographic Conjecture in terms of quantum bits (qubits). N-qubit states are associated with surfaces that are punctured in N points by spin networks' edges labelled by the spin-½ representation of SU(2), which are in a superposed quantum state of spin "up" and spin "down". The formalism is applied in particular to de Sitter horizons, and leads to a picture of the early inflationary universe in terms of quantum computation. A discrete micro-causality emerges, where the time parameter is being defined by the discrete increase of entropy. Then, the model is analysed in the framework of the theory of presheaves (varying sets on a causal set) and we get a quantum history. A (bosonic) Fock space of the whole history is considered. The Fock space wavefunction, which resembles a Bose-Einstein condensate, undergoes decoherence at the end of inflation. This fact seems to be responsible for the rather low entropy of our universe.
Mobile Virtual Reality to Enhance Subjective Well-Being

Focusing on healthcare, in the last few decades advanced technologies have become crucial keys in supporting subjective wellbeing. Among them, virtual reality has been proven to be effective for mental health promotion in several research studies. Although the dramatic development in the field of virtual reality system, there are still important problems related to the use of this technology. Within this perspective, the growing availability, low-cost and easy-to-use mobile virtual reality (i.e., the integration of virtual reality system on mobile devices such as smartphone and tablet) represents a meaningful opportunity to support mental health interventions. The chapter will first briefly describe mobile virtual reality. Then, a mobile virtual reality design practice will be presented. Finally, the current application of mobile virtual reality to enhance subjective wellbeing will be discussed with the support of concrete examples and research study analysis.
Flexible task allocation and the organization of work in ants

Flexibility in task performance is essential for a robust system of division of labour. We investigated what factors determine which social insect workers respond to colony-level changes in task demand. We used radio-frequency identification technology to compare the roles of corpulence, age, spatial location and previous activity (intra-nest/extra-nest) in determining whether worker ants (Temnothorax albipennis) respond to an increase in demand for foraging or brood care. The less corpulent ants took on the extra foraging, irrespective of their age, previous activity or location in the nest, supporting a physiological threshold model. We found no relationship between ants that tended the extra brood and corpulence, age, spatial location or previous activity, but ants that transported the extra brood to the main brood pile were less corpulent and had high previous intra-nest activity. This supports spatial task-encounter and physiological threshold models for brood transport. Our data suggest a flexible task-allocation system allowing the colony to respond rapidly to changing needs, using a simple task-encounter system for generalized tasks, combined with physiologically based response thresholds for more specialized tasks. This could provide a social insect colony with a robust division of labour, flexibly allocating the workforce in response to current needs.
Design of Robust Higher Order Sliding Mode Control for Microgrids

This paper deals with the design of advanced control strategies of sliding mode type for microgrids. Each distributed generation unit (DGu), constituting the considered microgrid, can work in both grid-connected operation mode (GCOM) and islanded operation mode (IOM). The DGu is affected by load variations, nonlinearities and unavoidable modelling uncertainties. This makes sliding mode control particularly suitable as a solution methodology for the considered problem. In particular, a second order sliding mode (SOSM) control algorithm, belonging to the class of Suboptimal SOSM control, is proposed for both GCOM and IOM, while a third-order sliding mode (3-SM) algorithm is designed only for IOM, in order to achieve, also in this case, satisfactory chattering alleviation. The microgrid system controlled via the proposed sliding mode control laws exhibits appreciable stability properties, which are formally analyzed in the paper. Simulation results also confirm that the obtained closed-loop performances comply with the IEEE recommendations for power systems.
Cortically Evoked Long-Lasting Inhibition of Pallidal Neurons in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Dystonia

Dystonia is a neurological disorder characterized by sustained or repetitive involuntary muscle contractions and abnormal postures. To understand the pathophysiology of dystonia, neurophysiological analyses were performed on hyperkinetic transgenic mice generated as a model of DYT1 dystonia. Abnormal muscle activity, such as coactivation of agonist and antagonist muscles and sustained muscle activation, was frequently observed in these mice. Recording of neuronal activity in the awake state revealed reduced spontaneous activity with bursts and pauses in both the external and internal segments of the globus pallidus. Motor cortical stimulation evoked responses composed of excitation and subsequent long-lasting inhibition in both pallidal segments, which were never observed in the normal mice. In addition, the somatotopic arrangements in both pallidal segments were disorganized. Long-lasting inhibition induced by cortical inputs in the internal pallidal segment may disinhibit thalamic and cortical activity, resulting in the motor hyperactivity observed in the transgenic mice.
Training Language Models Using Target-Propagation

While Truncated Back-Propagation through Time (BPTT) is the most popular approach to training Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), it suffers from being inherently sequential (making parallelization difficult) and from truncating gradient flow between distant time-steps. We investigate whether Target Propagation (TPROP) style approaches can address these shortcomings. Unfortunately, extensive experiments suggest that TPROP generally underperforms BPTT, and we end with an analysis of this phenomenon, and suggestions for future work.
Detection of Quantum Noise from an Electrically Driven Two-Level System

The electrical noise of mesoscopic devices can be strongly influenced by the quantum motion of electrons. To probe this effect, we have measured the current fluctuations at high frequency (5 to 90 gigahertz) using a superconductor-insulator-superconductor tunnel junction as an on-chip spectrum analyzer. By coupling this frequency-resolved noise detector to a quantum device, we can measure the high-frequency, nonsymmetrized noise as demonstrated for a Josephson junction. The same scheme is used to detect the current fluctuations arising from coherent charge oscillations in a two-level system, a superconducting charge qubit. A narrow band peak is observed in the spectral noise density at the frequency of the coherent charge oscillations.
Abnormal Object Recognition: A Comprehensive Study

When describing images, humans tend not to talk about the obvious, but rather mention what they find interesting. We argue that abnormalities and deviations from typicalities are among the most important components that form what is worth mentioning. In this paper we introduce the abnormality detection as a recognition problem and show how to model typicalities and, consequently, meaningful deviations from prototypical properties of categories. Our model can recognize abnormalities and report the main reasons of any recognized abnormality. We introduce the abnormality detection dataset and show interesting results on how to reason about abnormalities.
DC-Balance Low-Jitter Transmission Code for 4-PAM Signaling

This investigation proposes a novel dc-balanced low-jitter transmission code, a 4-PAM symmetric code, for a 4-PAM signaling system. The 4-PAM symmetric code preserves all of the useful characteristics of the 8B/10B code such as dc-balanced serial data and guaranteed transitions in the symbol stream for clock recovery. Moreover, the proposed method decreases the jitter of the timing transition of the data in the receiver and consumes half of the data bandwidth, because it transmits in 4-PAM. The design results using the UMC 0.18-mum process demonstrate that the new transmission code can decrease the jitter of the transition point by plusmn25%; of the transition region. The operation speed of the encoder/decoder for the 4-PAM symmetric code is 819 MHz with 16-b inputs (13.1 Gb/s) and 704 MHz with 16-b outputs (11.3 Gb/s)
A new analytic approach to evaluation of packet error rate in wireless networks

Bit error rate (BER) and packet error rate (PER) are important quality of service parameters for wireless network. Most of researches in QoS have been devoted to the analysis of BER which gives insight to the mean behavior of the wireless network. However the mean behavior is not sufficient for PER evaluation and more precise characterization of the error process is needed. Residual errors at the output of physical layer are not uniformly distributed. This is due to error correcting mechanism used at physical layer as well as the correlation induced by the memory existing in fading channels. Not taking into account the correlation in the error process and assuming for example that errors are uniformly distributed, as done in most of the published paper in wireless networking, lead to gross overestimation of PER. This over-estimation can go to tenfold factors as will be shown in this paper. In a previous paper we presented a new analytic formula for predicting packet error rate in wireless networks where convolutional codes are used jointly with Viterbi decoder over an AWGN channel. The approach was based on a precise analysis of the error process at the output of the Viterbi decoder. This formula was shown to precisely predict the PER as a function of convolutional code parameter and SNR over the AWGN channel. In this paper we extend the result obtained for the AWGN channel to the case of fading channel under block fading hypothesis. A closed form formulas approximation for derivation of PER in fading channel is proposed and it is shown that it give very tight prediction for the PER.
Confronting Political—Economic Theories of Voting with Evidence

This paper illustrates one strategy for testing a theory of economic influences on voting. We use a competitive equilibrium model of the economy to determine the impact of an individual's economic position on his or her economic interests and, ultimately, political interests. We then test whether this impact is observed in voting behavior, addressing the resulting specification and estimation problems in the context of U.S. presidential election data. Our empirical results suggest that, despite these formidable problems, we can usefully connect political-economic models and discrete-choice (probit) models of voting.
Gender differences in the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire: A meta-analysis

Comments on S. J. McKelvie's review of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), taking issue with McKelvie's conclusion that there are no gender differences in VVIQ scores. Methodological problems with McKelvie's argument are reviewed, and a meta-analysis of gender differences in ratings on the VVIQ using both confidence intervals at 95% and 1-tailed tests of statistical significance is presented. Results of 16 comparisons of men and women in terms of VVIQ scores show a slight but reliable tendency for women to report more vivid images than men. However, randomizing the order of the items abolishes the effects of gender, leading to the suggestion that the gender differences themselves are determined by psychosocial factors rather than by biological ones
Improved Candidate Drug Mining for Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia for older people. Although several antidementia drugs such as donepezil, rivastigmine, galantamine, and memantine have been developed, the effectiveness of AD drug therapy is still far from satisfactory. Recently, the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been chosen as one of the personalized medicine markers. Many pharmacogenomics databases have been developed to provide comprehensive information by associating SNPs with drug responses, disease incidence, and genes that are critical in choosing personalized therapy. However, we found that some information from different sets of pharmacogenomics databases is not sufficient and this may limit the potential functions for pharmacogenomics. To address this problem, we used approximate string matching method and data mining approach to improve the searching of pharmacogenomics database. After computation, we can successfully identify more genes linked to AD and AD-related drugs than previous online searching. These improvements may help to improve the pharmacogenomics of AD for personalized medicine.
A Dynamic Model of Entrepreneurial Uncertainty and Business Opportunity Identification: Exploration as a Mediator and Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy as a Moderator

This study focuses on the identification of business opportunities when entrepreneurs’ perceived level of environmental uncertainty changes. We suggest that within persons, exploration mediates this relationship and entrepreneurial self-efficacy moderates whether entrepreneurs explore more or less with increasing uncertainty. To test our moderated mediation model we conducted a monthly field study with 121 early-stage entrepreneurs. Multilevel regression analyses reveal that an increase in the level of perceived uncertainty within entrepreneurs predicted the identification of opportunities through exploration for entrepreneurs high in self-efficacy, but not for those low in self-efficacy. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy acts as a personal resource that helps entrepreneurs to transform increasing perceptions of uncertainty into exploration and opportunity identification.
Search Results Clustering Using Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF)

There are many search engines in the web and when asked, they return a long list of search results, ranked by their relevancies to the given query. Web users have to go through the list and examine the titles and (short) snippets sequentially to identify their required results. In this paper we present how usage of Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) can be good solution for the search results clustering.
Trajectory optimisation for increased stability of mobile robots operating in uneven terrains

A mechanism capable of enhancing the safety of paths followed by mobile robots which significantly modify their mass distribution while operating in uneven terrains is presented. This is the case, for instance, of kinematically reconfigurable platforms or robots equipped with manipulator arms. For a given path, a trajectory optimiser that finds suitably ¿safer¿ paths in terms of tip-over prevention and equal force distribution over the supporting contact points is proposed. Other kinematic considerations such as operating within given nominal joint positions or low energy motions can also be exploited to improve system stability while being deployed in specific domains such as security, rescue, etc. Simulation results of the proposed optimised motion planner for an iRobot Explorer tracked vehicle are presented. They are also compared with a non-optimised planners to show the validity of the approach.
Improving Equipment Maintainability via Alarm Threshold Optimization

The Operations Technology Center (OTC) is responsib le for the systems used to manage and maintain the AT&T lo ng distance network. In this paper we describe an eff ort within the OTC to improve the maintainability of AT&T’s 4E SS switches, by optimizing the thresholding rules within the operation support system responsible for maintainin g these switches. This optimization task required us to fi rst dentify the purpose of the thresholds, so that we could spe cify objective criteria for evaluating these thresholds. We then exhaustively searched the space of possible thresho lds in order to determine the “best” strategies. One of o ur key discoveries is that the thresholding strategies, no matter what the threshold value, are relatively ineffective.
Effect of laser frequency offset on optical minimum-shift keying transmission system

As a special case of continuous phase frequency-shift-keying (FSK), minimum-shift keying (MSK) exhibits some different properties compared with the traditional optical phase modulation formats, such as return-to-zero (RZ) differential-phase-shift-keying (DPSK) and differential-quadrature-phase-shift-keying (DQPSK). In this paper, we investigated the receiver performance degradation caused by laser frequency offset between laser frequency and delay interferometer (DI) phase, which is found to be the most critical impairment for the receiver performance in a practical optical phase modulated system. Results show that MSK system is about double times and six times more robust to frequency offsets than RZ-DPSK and RZ-DQPSK systems operating at the same 10Gb/s bit rate, respectively.
Practical Lazy Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks

Experience has shown that the power consumption of sensors and other wireless computational devices is often dominated by their communication patterns. We present a practical realization of lazy packet scheduling that attempts to minimize the total transmission energy in a broadcast network by dynamically adjusting each node’s transmission power and rate on a per-packet basis. Lazy packet scheduling leverages the fact that many channel coding schemes are more efficient at lower transmission rates; that is, the energy required to send a fixed amount of data can be reduced by transmitting the data at a lower bit rate and transmission power. The optimal per-packet transmission rate in a multi-node network is governed in practice by the available bit rates of the given transceiver(s), the nodes’ delay tolerance, and the offered load at every node contending for the shared broadcast channel. We propose an extension to the traditional CSMA/CA MAC scheme called L-CSMA/CA that allows individual nodes to continually estimate the current demand for a broadcast channel and adjust their transmission schedules accordingly. Our simulation results show that L-CSMA/CA can provide improved energy efficiency in a singlehop, broadcast network (20‐25% with more than 10 nodes, and up to 99% for four nodes with a standard power function) for both Poisson and bursty arrivals with only minor degradation the capacity of the channel.
Assessment of the household availability of oral rehydration salt in rural Botswana

Introduction Diarrhea contributed for 17.6% of under-five deaths in Botswana. Oral rehydration salt (ORS) therapy has been the cornerstone in the control of morbidity and mortality secondary to diarrheal diseases. The study was aimed at assessing the household availability of ORS following the nationwide campaign of availing ORS at household level. Methods A cross sectional community based study was conducted in August 2012. EPI random walk method was used to identify households. Data was collected using interviewers' administered structured questionnaire. SPSS software was used in data entry and analysis. Results Oral Rehydration Salt (ORS) was available in 50.8% of the households with under-five children. Information on ORS is well disseminated whereas only three-fourth of informed participants had adequate knowledge of ORS preparation. The sources of information were predominantly the Child Welfare Clinic (88.8%). Being grandmother as a care taker was a negative predictor of household availability of ORS (AOR 0.25, 95% CI 0.09-0.69) while respondents who are knowledgeable about ORS preparation were more likely to have ORS available at home (AOR 1.92, 95% CI 1.10-3.34). Conclusion The campaign has brought a significant coverage in terms of availability of ORS. The health education and community sensitization efforts need to go beyond health facilities via other means like the media and community based approaches. Approaches aimed at improving the knowledge of care takers on the importance of ORS, its preparation, correct use and restocking are of paramount importance. Availing community based outlet for ORS is an alternative to enhance accessibility.