Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
in subtropical and tropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean

[1] We employ a global three‐dimensional model to simulate diverse phytoplanktonic diazotrophs (nitrogen fixers) in the oceans. In the model, the structure of the marine phytoplankton community self‐assembles from a large number of potentially viable physiologies. Amongst them, analogs of Trichodesmium, unicellular diazotrophs and diatom‐diazotroph associations (DDA) are successful and abundant. The simulated biogeography and nitrogen fixation rates of the modeled diazotrophs compare favorably with a compilation of published observations, which includes both traditional and molecular measurements of abundance and activity of marine diazotrophs. In the model, the diazotroph analogs occupy warm subtropical and tropical waters, with higher concentrations and nitrogen fixation rates in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Arabian Sea/Northern Indian Ocean, and lower values in the tropical and subtropical South Pacific Ocean. The three main diazotroph types typically co‐exist in the model, although Trichodesmium analogs dominate the diazotroph population in much of the North and tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Arabian Sea, while unicellular‐diazotroph analogs dominate in the South Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. This pattern reflects the relative degree of nutrient limitation by iron or phosphorus. The model suggests in addition that unicellular diazotrophs could add as much new nitrogen to the global ocean as Trichodesmium.
A comparison and quantification of fetal heart rate variability using Doppler ultrasound and direct electrocardiography acquisition techniques

This paper presents a novel efficient technique for processing of the Doppler ultrasound signal which could estimate the cardiac cycle duration with accuracy comparable to direct electrocardiography. Direct electrocardiography as a reference technique up till now ensures the highest possible accuracy of heart interval measurement. The proposed method has been developed to calculate beat-to-beat basis power spectral information on the fetal heart rate (FHR) in stages of pregnancy earlier than labor from Doppler ultrasound signal. The developed real time Doppler ultrasound fetal data acquisition technique & real time direct fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) has been tested in a local hospital on a sample group of 35 pregnant women at different interval during gestation period. The results revealed that Doppler ultrasound method enables to calculate reliable parameters describing the variability of FHR compared to the direct fetal electrocardiogram. This reliable Doppler ultrasound system detects all fetal heart beats reducing the number of invalid cardiac cycle measurements considering limitation of measuring system parameters in five minutes recording of each subject. The processing of acquired signals was implemented using LABVIEW environment virtual instrumentation software system. National Instruments ELVIS II+ with USB plug-and-play capabilities was utilized for data acquisition and display of FHR signal from Doppler ultrasound system for quantification of heart rate variability.
Effect of light curing and dark reaction phases on the thermomechanical properties of a Bis-GMA based dental restorative material.

PURPOSE The effects of light curing units (LCU) and energy doses on the chemical and physical properties of a dental composite were investigated. METHODS The effects on the chemical and physical properties of a bisphenol A diglycidylether methacrylate (Bis-GMA) based dental restorative material were evaluated through photospectrometry, differential scanning calorimetry, and mechanical measurements. RESULTS The light curing conditions associated with direct and indirect restorations were replicated in vitro using optical investigation techniques. A slight attenuation resulted independently of the LCU and a strong attenuation was measured for the cement luting a thick inlay, as well as for the deepest layer of a composite filling increment. Calorimetric measurements indicated that the curing degree is very sensitive to the light energy dose rather than to the LCU. Mechanical testing showed a transient phase during which properties increased. The delay of the composite in reaching adequate properties is strongly dependent on the energy dose. CONCLUSIONS It is recommended that composites subject to unfavorable light curing conditions undergo a prolonged light curing process.
Migration Inhibitory Factor Mediates Angiogenesis via Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase and Phosphatidylinositol Kinase

Abstract— In this study, we investigated the effects of migration inhibitory factor (rhMIF) on angiogenesis-related signaling cascades and apoptosis in human endothelial cells (ECs). We show that in vitro rhMIF induces migration and tube formation in Matrigel of human dermal microvascular endothelial cells (HMVECs), with potency comparable to that of basic fibroblast growth factor. In vivo, rhMIF induces angiogenesis in Matrigel plugs and in the corneal bioassay. Using panels of relatively specific kinase inhibitors, antisense oligonucleotides, and dominant-negative mutants, we show that mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) are critical for MIF-dependent HMVEC migration, whereas Src and p38 kinases are nonessential. Moreover, we demonstrate that rhMIF induces time-dependent increases in phosphorylation levels of MEK1/2, Erk1/2, and Elk-1, as well as PI3K, and its effector kinase, Akt, in HMVECs. Studies with dominant-negative mutants and antisense oligonucleotides corroborate these effects in HMVECs. Furthermore, we demonstrate that rhMIF-induced angiogenesis in the rat cornea in vivo and in the ex vivo endothelial cell morphogenesis assay is also MAPK- and PI3K-dependent. Our findings support a role for MIF as an angiogenic factor and provide a rationale for the use of MIF as a therapeutic inducer of neovascularization in the development of collateral circulation in coronary artery disease.
Fusion of Cohort-Word and Speech Background Model Based Confidence Scores for Improved Keyword Confidence Scoring and Verification

This paper presents results for Keyword Verification (KV) experiments using Cohort-Word Verification (CWV) and neural-network fusion of CWV and Speech Background Model based Verification (SBMV). Baseline experiments found that CWV excelled in short-word KV while SBMV was more robust for long-word KV. Fusion of CWV and SBMV yielded dramatic improvements in both short-to-medium length KV using the fusion of two CWV systems, and medium-to-long length KV using fusion of SBMV and CWV. Overall, through target word phone length dependent fusion of verifiers, it was possible to at least halve the false rejection rate of the baseline SBMV verifier for all evaluated keyword length classes.
Causal Responsibility and Counterfactuals

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions.
Semantic Annotation with RescoredESA: Rescoring Concept Features Generated From Explicit Semantic Analysis

Concepts have been used extensively in semantic annotating. Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA) is a concept feature generator, which represents text by a concept-level vector, such as a vector of Wikipedia concepts. It is also considered a human-friendly way to annotate text - it generates concept vector that can be easily interpreted by human. We propose an approach, RescoredESA, based on ESA, according to aspects upon which ESA can enhance: 1) sometimes the output vectors do not assign high scores to concepts relevant to the text; 2) it considers words in the text when representing the text to concept-level vector while not considering the concepts explicitly occurring in the text, which can be an important source for assigning scores to ESA vector dimensions. We evaluate it against the 20 newsgroup classification task, and the result shows a slight enhancement when combining vectors from RescoredESA and bag-of-words.
Stretching gossip with live streaming

Gossip-based information dissemination protocols are considered easy to deploy, scalable and resilient to network dynamics. They are also considered highly flexible, namely tunable at will to increase their robustness and adapt to churn. So far however, they have mainly been evaluated through simulation, very often assuming ideal settings. Instead, in this paper, we report on an extensive study of gossip protocols, deployed on a 230 Planetlab node testbed, in the context of a challenging video streaming application in environments with constrained bandwidths. More precisely, we assess the impact of varying the well known knobs of gossip, fanout and refresh rate, in various upload-bandwidth distributions and churn. Our results show that in such challenging contexts, the performance of gossip protocols may be hampered by high fanout values. We also show that the more proactive a gossip protocol, the better it copes with churn. For instance, when 20% of the nodes simultaneously crash, 70% of the remaining nodes do not suffer any loss in stream quality, while the others only experience a performance decrease for an average of 5 seconds around the churn event.
Energy efficient routing in cluster based wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is severely energy constrained. Selecting an energy efficient routing is very important for such network. In this paper, we present an approach for routing in wireless sensor network to minimize the energy consumption to increase active lifetime of the network. Our approach takes the minimum energy route for transmitting data from a node to a fixed base station through a cluster head. We calculate the distance between neighboring clusters using Hausdorff distance. We evaluate energy consumed to transmit a `k' bit message to all the neighbors from source cluster. Comparing the entire route we select the minimum energy route to transmit the data to the base station. Simulation result shows that our scheme achieves significant improvement in terms of energy efficiency when compared with some of the established routing protocols in the same category.
A statistical model for analyzing the rotational error of single isocenter for multiple targets technique

Purpose To develop a statistical model that incorporates the treatment uncertainty from the rotational error of the single isocenter for multiple targets technique, and calculates the extra PTV (planning target volume) margin required to compensate for this error. Methods The random vector for modeling the setup (S) error in the three‐dimensional (3D) patient coordinate system was assumed to follow a 3D normal distribution with a zero mean, and standard deviations of σx, σy, σz. It was further assumed that the rotation of clinical target volume (CTV) about the isocenter happens randomly and follows a three‐dimensional (3D) independent normal distribution with a zero mean and a uniform standard deviation of σδ. This rotation leads to a rotational random error (R), which also has a 3D independent normal distribution with a zero mean and a uniform standard deviation of σR equal to the product of Symbol and Symbol, the distance between the isocenter and CTV. Both (S and R) random vectors were summed, normalized, and transformed to the spherical coordinates to derive the Chi distribution with three degrees of freedom for the radial coordinate of S+R. PTV margin was determined using the critical value of this distribution for a 0.05 significance level so that 95% of the time the treatment target would be covered by the prescription dose. The additional PTV margin required to compensate for the rotational error was calculated as a function of σR and Symbol. Symbol. No caption available. Symbol. No caption available. Symbol. No caption available. Results The effect of the rotational error is more pronounced for treatments that require high accuracy/precision like stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) or stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT). With a uniform 2‐mm PTV margin (or σx = σy = σz = 0.715 mm), a σR = 0.328 mm will decrease the CTV coverage probability from 95.0% to 90.9%, or an additional 0.2‐mm PTV margin is needed to prevent this loss of coverage. If we choose 0.2 mm as the threshold, any σR > 0.328 mm will lead to an extra PTV margin that cannot be ignored, and the maximal σδ that can be ignored is 0.45° (or 0.0079rad) for Symbol = 50 mm or 0.23° (or 0.004rad) for Symbol = 100 mm. Symbol. No caption available. Symbol. No caption available. Conclusions The rotational error cannot be ignored for high‐accuracy/‐precision treatments like SRS/SBRT, particularly when the distance between the isocenter and target is large.
Acute Renal Failure Associated with Percutaneous Mechanical Thrombectomy for Iliocaval Venous Thrombosis

Mechanical thrombectomy devices are increasingly being used in selected patients with acute venous thromboembolic disease to rapidly decrease thrombus burden and establish venous patency. Hemolysis and hemoglobinuria secondary to red blood cell fragmentation is known to occur after the use of these devices. In this article we describe a case in which a 16-year-old female patient developed acute renal failure after use of a mechanical thrombectomy device for treatment of symptomatic iliocaval venous thrombosis.
Teachers' Sense of Efficacy and Commitment to Teaching

Abstract The present study examined the degree to which teachers' sense of efficacy, as well as other hypothesized influences on commitment to teaching, predicted 170 teachers' responses to the question, “Suppose you had it to do all over again: In view of your present knowledge, would you become a teacher? ” General and personal efficacy emerged as the two strongest predictors of teaching commitment, along with teacher-student ratio, school climate, and sex. In short, greater teaching commitment tended to be expressed by those teachers who were higher in both general and personal efficacy; who taught in schools with fewer students per teacher; and who worked under a principal regarded positively in the areas of instructional leadership, school advocacy, decision making, and relations with students and staff. Teaching commitment also was higher for female teachers.
Degradation of human articular cartilage by neutrophils in synovial fluid.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether surface-adherent immunoglobulins are capable of mediating synovial fluid (SF) neutrophil degradation of proteoglycan and collagen in intact, normal human articular cartilage, and to define the respective roles of neutrophil serine proteases and metalloproteases in degrading these cartilage constituents. METHODS Pellet explants of normal human articular cartilage pretreated with bovine serum albumin (BSA) or IgG were incubated with polymorphonuclear cells suspended in SF (PMN-SF), or with supernatants derived from neutrophils stimulated with surface-associated IgG. Proteoglycan degradation was measured by assaying release of 35S-proteoglycan fragments from cartilage explants prelabeled with 35S-sulfate. Collagen degradation was measured by assaying hydroxyproline content in the PMN-SF preparations or neutrophil supernatants following their incubation with unlabeled explants. RESULTS Significant release of both 35S fragments and hydroxyproline was noted following incubation of PMN-SF with IgG-treated pellets, compared with pellets treated with BSA. IgG preparations derived from pooled normal serum or rheumatoid arthritis SF were equally efficacious in mediating PMN degradation of cartilage collagens. Explant release of 35S fragments during incubation with PMN supernatant was completely inhibited when serine proteases were inactivated by diisopropyl fluorophosphate (DFP); however, release of 35S fragments was enhanced when metalloprotease activity was present in the supernatant. Release of hydroxyproline during incubation of explants with PMN supernatant was comparable in the presence of DFP or EDTA, but was markedly enhanced when both serine and metalloprotease activity were present in the supernatant. CONCLUSION Neutrophils in SF are capable of degrading both proteoglycans and collagens in intact human articular cartilage. Degradation of these cartilage constituents is facilitated by immunoglobulins adherent to the cartilage surface and by the synergistic action of PMN serine and metalloproteases released during activation of neutrophils with surface-associated immunoglobulin.
Dispensable chromosomes in Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici

SUMMARY The genomes of many filamentous fungi consist of a ‘core’ part containing conserved genes essential for normal development as well as conditionally dispensable (CD) or lineage‐specific (LS) chromosomes. In the plant‐pathogenic fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici, one LS chromosome harbours effector genes that contribute to pathogenicity. We employed flow cytometry to select for events of spontaneous (partial) loss of either the two smallest LS chromosomes or two different core chromosomes. We determined the rate of spontaneous loss of the ‘effector’ LS chromosome in vitro at around 1 in 35 000 spores. In addition, a viable strain was obtained lacking chromosome 12, which is considered to be a part of the core genome. We also isolated strains carrying approximately 1‐Mb deletions in the LS chromosomes and in the dispensable core chromosome. The large core chromosome 1 was never observed to sustain deletions over 200 kb. Whole‐genome sequencing revealed that some of the sites at which the deletions occurred were the same in several independent strains obtained for the two chromosomes tested, indicating the existence of deletion hotspots. For the core chromosome, this deletion hotspot was the site of insertion of the marker used to select for loss events. Loss of the core chromosome did not affect pathogenicity, whereas loss of the effector chromosome led to a complete loss of pathogenicity.
Semantic labeling of places using information extracted from laser and vision sensor data

Indoor environments can typically be divided into places with different functionalities like corridors, kitchens, offices, or seminar rooms. The ability to learn such semantic categories from sensor data enables a mobile robot to extend the representation of the environment facilitating the interaction withhumans. As an example, natural language terms like corridor or room can be used to communicate the position of the robot in a map in a more intuitive way. In this work, we firrst propose an approach based on supervised learning to classify the pose of a mobile robot into semantic classes. Our method uses AdaBoost to boost simple features extracted from range data and vision into a strong classifier. We present two main applications of this approach. Firstly, we show how our approach can be utilized by a moving robot for an online classification of the poses traversed along its path using a hidden Markov model. Secondly, we introduce an approach to learn topological maps from geometric maps by applying our semantic classification procedure in combination with a probabilistic relaxation procedure. We finally show how to apply associative Markov networks (AMNs) together with AdaBoost for classifying complete geometric maps. Experimental results obtained in simulation and with real robots demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in various indoor environments.
Identifying FPGA IP-Cores Based on Lookup Table Content Analysis

In this paper we introduce a new method to identify IP cores in an FPGA by analyzing the content of lookup tables. This technique can be used to identify registered cores for IP protection against unlicensed usage. We show methods to extract the content of the lookup tables in a design from a binary bitfile of Xilinx Virtex-II and Virtex-II Pro FPGAs. To identify a core, we compare the number of unique functions from lookup tables of the core with the lookup tables extracted from a product with an FPGA from an accused company. Also placement information can be used for increasing the reliability of the result. With these methods, no additional sources or information must be inquired from the accused company. These techniques can be used for netlist and bitfile cores, so a wide spectrum of cores can be identified.
THE USE OF F‐SPECIFIC COLIPHAGES TO ASSESS EFFLUENT TREATMENT AND REUSE SCHEMES

Abstract This study reports on the use of naturally occurring F‐specific coliphages, as well as spiked MS‐2 phage, to evaluate a land‐based effluent treatment/reuse system and an effluent irrigation scheme. Both the natural phages and the spiked MS‐2 phage indicated that the effluent treatment/reuse system (FILTER ‐ Filtration and Irrigated cropping for Land Treatment and Effluent Reuse) achieved a reduction in phage levels over the treatment system by one to two log10. FILTER reduced natural F‐specific phage numbers from around 103 to below 102 100‐ml−1 and the spiked phage from 105 to around 104 100‐ml−1 (incoming compared with outgoing water). In the effluent irrigation scheme, phage spiked into the holding ponds dropped from 106 to 102 100‐ml−1 after 168 h (with no detectable levels of natural F‐specific phage being found prior to spiking). Only low levels of the spiked phage (102 gm−1) could be recovered from soil irrigated with phage‐spiked effluent (at 106 phage 100 ml−1) or from fruits (around 102 phage per fruit) that had direct contact with soil which had been freshly irrigated with the same phage‐spiked effluent.