Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diversity of the Neglected and Underutilized Crop Species of Importance in Benin

Many of the plant species that are cultivated for food across the world are neglected and underutilized. To assess their diversity in Benin and identify the priority species and establish their research needs, a survey was conducted in 50 villages distributed throughout the country. The study revealed 41 neglected and underutilized crop species (NUCS) among which 19 were identified as of priority base on 10 criteria among which included their extent and degree of consumption. Reasons for neglect vary with the producers and the agricultural technicians. Market surveys revealed that NUCS are important source of household incomes and substantially contribute to poverty reduction. Review of the literature available revealed that most of the species are rich in nutrients and have some proven medicinal values and the promotion of their use would help in combating malnutrition and improving the health status of the local populations. The knowledge gaps and research needs are immense on most of the species identified as no concrete scientific data is nationally available. In terms of research, almost all has to be done starting from basic ethnobotanical investigation. The results will help the scientists and students willing to conduct research on NUCS in Benin to better orient their research programs.
Skills and processes in science education : a critical analysis

Introduction: The Book and Its Contents Jerry Wellington 1. Skills and Processes in Science Education: An Introduction Jerry Wellington 2. Processes in Science Education: An Historical Perspective E.W. Jenkins, University of Leeds, School of Education 3. What Is 'Scientific Method' and Can It Be Taught? Robin Millar, University of York, School of Education 4. Learning Processes in Science: A Classroom Perspective Angela Brook, Rosalind Driver, and Kate Johnson, CLIS Project, University of Leeds 5. Philosophies of Science and their Relation to Scientific Processes and the Science Curriculum Nicholas J. Selley, Kingston Polytechnic 6. Problems in the Assessment of Scientific Skills Bob Fairbrother, University of London, King's College 7. Towards a Holistic View of Processes in Science Education Brian E. Woolnough, University of Oxford 8. Balanced Science: Equilibrium Between Context, Process, and Content Jeff Kirkham, Secondary Science Curriculum Review.
The Enhanced Effectiveness of Parent Education with an Emotion Socialization Component

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Accumulating NH radicals in a magnetic trap

We propose a scheme to accumulate fermionic or bosonic NH radicals ((NH)-N-14 or (NH)-N-15, respectively) in a magnetic trap in order to increase phase-space density. NH molecules prepared in a long-lived metastable state that exhibits a large Stark effect can be brought to a standstill using Stark deceleration. By applying an intense laser field, the NH radicals can then be forced to spontaneously decay to the electronic ground state. In the ground state the NH molecules are no longer sensitive to electric fields but show a significant Zeeman effect instead, enabling confinement and reloading of ground-state molecules in a magnetic trap.
Periodic homogenization of the inviscid G-equation for incompressible flows

G-equations are popular front propagation models in combustion literature and describe the front motion law of normal velocity equal to a constant plus the normal projection of fluid velocity. G-equations are Hamilton-Jacobi equations with convex but non-coercive Hamiltonians. We prove homogenization of inviscid G-equation for space periodic incompressible flows. This extends a two space dimensional result in [26]. We construct approximate correctors to bypass the lack of compactness due to the non-coercive Hamiltonian. The existence of approximate correctors rely on a local reachability property of the controlled flow trajectory as well as incompressibility of the flow. Homogenization then follows from comparison principle and the perturbed test function method. The effective Hamiltonian is convex and homogeneous of degree one. It is also coercive if we further assume that the flow is mean zero.
Trajectory Optimization of a Quadrotor with Cable Suspended Load

In this paper trajectory optimization is applied toward producing aggressive, precise trajectories for a quadrotor with suspended load. Using differential flatness, the system dynamics can be derived from a smooth, continuous load trajectory. This allows for simple construction of an optimization problem to generate a thrust-optimal load trajectory for waypoint navigation. We present such a method for determining trajectories in set of various situations. After successfully solving the waypoint navigation problem, we will test trajectory generation in the midst of obstacles. Additionally, we test a controller to ensure that the system is robust against initial condition error and pose estimation noise.
A Hybrid User Interface for Manipulation of Volumetric Medical Data

This paper presents a novel system for interactive visualization and manipulation of medical datasets for surgery planning based on a hybrid VR / Tablet PC user interface. The goal of the system is to facilitate efficient visual inspection and correction of surface models generated by automated segmentation algorithms based on x-ray computed tomography scans, needed for planning surgical interventions. Factors like the quality of the visualization, nature of the dataset and interaction efficiency strongly influence system design decisions, in particular the design of the user interface, input devices and interaction techniques, leading to a hybrid setup. Finally, a user study is presented, which characterizes the system in terms of method efficiency and usability.
Novel System for Degeneration of Blood Vessels by UV Irradiation and Subsequent Regeneration Using Chick Bone Marrow Cells

Recently, many results have been reported regarding the pluripotency of bone marrow cells (BMCs) with the aim of benefiting regenerative medicine for humans. Particularly, vessel formation by hematopoietic stem cells or vascular endothelial stem cells which were derived from bone marrow has received considerable interest, since the mechanism of vessel formation has been found to be involved in neoangiogenesis of serious diseases such as cancer. Most work on neoangiogenesis and regeneration has involved mammalian experimental systems, however the avian model is useful since the process of neoangiogenesis and regeneration of vessels can be observed with the whole embryo culture system. We have established a novel system using early chick embryos, where a portion of blood vessels are degenerated by UV irradiation, and vessel regeneration is then studied. Incubated embryos were partially covered with aluminum foil, from the embryonic body to the dorsal marginal vein, and irradiated with UV for 1 min. Donor BMCs were obtained from the femurs and tibias of chicks aged 10 days, fluorescently labeled with PKH26 and injected into the anterior vitelline vein of the recipients. In BMC-treated embryos the donor BMCs were observed around the UV-degenerated vessels, and regeneration of blood vessels occurred, in contrast to the untreated embryos. These results indicate that avian BMCs have the ability to participate in vessel regeneration, and the avian model used here may be a useful tool for studies of vessel neoangiogenesis and repair.
The nucleotide sequence of the first externally suppressible–1 frameshift mutant, and of some nearby leaky frameshift mutants.

Nine mutants within a 23 nucleotide sequence of the trpE gene of Salmonella typhimurium have been characterized. trpE91, a mutant which is externally suppressible has a single base deletion. Eight (or nine) nucleotides upstream of this deletion, two independently isolated mutations have the same transversion. In combination with trpE91 these mutations lead to partial restoration of synthesis of anthranilate synthetase in the absence of external suppressors. In the transversion the sequence A CA is changed to A AA and this new sequence may be the site where frameshifting occurs to allow leakiness. Leakiness is displayed by two further mutants of the same sign as trpE91, and one of the opposite sign, in the absence of any base substitution or external suppressors. Specific sequences, e.g., UUUC, may be especially prone to frameshifting and this sequence is created at the site of the +1 frameshift mutant which displays leakiness. In the new reading frame generated by the two ‐1 frame leaky mutants, a tryptophan codon is encountered. Leakiness is necessarily detected in the absence of tryptophan and under these conditions there will be a shortage of charged tryptophan tRNA. The possibility of such functional imbalance leading to frameshifting in these mutants is discussed.
N-Ethylmaleimide-modified subfragment-1 and heavy meromyosin inhibit reactivated contraction in motile models of retinal cones

The mechanism of contraction in motile models of teleost retinal cones has been examined by using N-ethylmaleimide (NEM)-modified myosin fragments (NEM-S-1 and NEM-heavy meromyosin [HMM]) to prevent access of native myosin to actin filaments during reactivation of contraction. In the diurnal light/dark cycle, retinal cones of green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus) and bluegill (lepomis macrochirus) exhibit length changes of more than 90 mum. The motile myoid region of the cone contracts from 100 mum in the dark to 6 mum in the light. Motile models for cone contraction have been obtained by lysis of dark-adapted retinas with the non-ionic detergent, Brij-58. These cone motile models undergo Ca(++)-and ATP-dependent reactivated contraction, with morphology and rate comparable to those observed in vivo (Burnside, B.,B. Smith, M. Nagata, and K. Porrello, 1982, J. Cell Biol., 92:198-206). The cone myoids contain longitudinally oriented actin filaments which bind myosin subfragment-1 (S-1) to form characteristic “arrowhead” complexes which dissociate in the presence of MgATP (Burnside, B., 1978, J. Cell Biol., 78:227-246). Modification of S-1 or HMM with the sulfhydryl reagent, NEM, produces new species, NEM-S-1 or NEM-HMM, which still bind actin but which fail to detach in the presence of MgATP (Meeusen, R.L., and W.Z. Cande, 1979, J. Cell Biol., 82:57-65). We have used NEM-S-1 and NEM-HMM to test whether cone contraction depends on an actomyosin force- generating system. We find that reactivated contraction of cone models is inhibited by NEM-S-1 and NEM-HMM but not by the unmodified species, S-1 and HMM. Thus, reactivated cone contraction exhibits NEM-S-1 and NEM-HMM sensitivity as well as Ca(++)- and ATP- dependence. These observations are consistent with and actimyosin-mediated mechanism for force production during cone contraction.
Hadoop Performance Self-Tuning Using a Fuzzy-Prediction Approach

The Apache Hadoop framework (currently known as YARN) is a widely used open-source implementation of MapReduce (MR). Manual tuning of Hadoop performance is hard and time-consuming so several self-tuning approaches have been proposed. This paper proposes an approach that avoids problems of previous self-tuning approaches based on performance models or resource usage, namely 1) need for a time-consuming training phase, typically offline, 2) unsuitability for Hadoop environments with concurrently running MR jobs, and 3) need for modification of the Hadoop framework itself. The proposed approach uses a fuzzy-prediction controller for self-optimization of the number of concurrent MR jobs. The fuzzy-prediction controller learns from past and current resource usage of MR jobs and from the number of concurrent tasks. It both uses and constructs rules in real time to predict the resource usage and the number of concurrent tasks. It does not require offline training or any modification of either the MR jobs or the Hadoop framework. The predicted values are used to dynamically control the number of concurrent ApplicationMasters (AMs) (i.e., MR jobs in RUNNING state). Experimental evaluation of the proposed approach on a 7-node cluster (1 master node and 6 slave nodes) running 30-job sequences combining three different types of MR jobs (Terasort, Grep and Wordcount) showed up to 29% performance improvement over Hadoop default configurations. The new approach improves the aggregate performThe Apache Hadoop framework (currently known as YARN) is a widely used open-source implementation of MapReduce (MR). Manual tuning of Hadoop performance is hard and time-consuming so several self-tuning approaches have been proposed. This paper proposes an approach that avoids problems of previous self-tuning approaches based on performance models or resource usage, namely 1) need for a time-consuming training phase, typically offline, 2) unsuitability for Hadoop environments with concurrently running MR jobs, and 3) need for modification of the Hadoop framework itself. The proposed approach uses a fuzzyprediction controller for self-optimization of the number of concurrent MR jobs. The fuzzy-prediction controller learns from past and current resource usage of MR jobs and from the number of concurrent tasks. It both uses and constructs rules in real time to predict the resource usage and the number of concurrent tasks. It does not require offline training or any modification of either the MR jobs or the Hadoop framework. The predicted values are used to dynamically control the number of concurrent ApplicationMasters (AMs) (i.e., MR jobs in RUNNING state). Experimental evaluation of the proposed approach on a 7-node cluster (1 master node and 6 slave nodes) running 30-job sequences combining three different types of MR jobs (Terasort, Grep and Wordcount) showed up to 29% performance improvement over Hadoop default configurations. The new approach improves the aggregate performance of MR jobs by adjusting a single YARN parameter.ance of MR jobs by adjusting a single YARN parameter.
FinFET versus UTBB SOI — A RF perspective

FinFET and Ultra Thin Body and BOX (UTBB) Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) MOSFETs are the most promising advanced devices to fulfill the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) requirements. Both devices have been intensively studied these last years. Most of the reported data concern their digital performance. In this paper, their analog/RF behavior is described and compared. Both show pretty similar characteristics in terms of transconductance, Early voltage, voltage gain, self-heating issue but UTBB outperforms FinFET in terms of cutoff frequencies thanks to their relatively lower fringing parasitic capacitances.
Phase I Clinical Trial of Oral Curcumin

Curcumin, a polyphenolic antioxidant derived from a dietary spice, exhibits anticancer activity in rodents and in humans. Its efficacy appears to be related to induction of glutathione S-transferase enzymes, inhibition of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) production, or suppression of oxidative DNA adduct (M1G) formation. We designed a dose-escalation study to explore the pharmacology of curcumin in humans. Fifteen patients with advanced colorectal cancer refractory to standard chemotherapies consumed capsules compatible with curcumin doses between 0.45 and 3.6 g daily for up to 4 months. Levels of curcumin and its metabolites in plasma, urine, and feces were analyzed by high-pressure liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Three biomarkers of the potential activity of curcumin were translated from preclinical models and measured in patient blood leukocytes: glutathione S-transferase activity, levels of M1G, and PGE2 production induced ex vivo. Dose-limiting toxicity was not observed. Curcumin and its glucuronide and sulfate metabolites were detected in plasma in the 10 nmol/L range and in urine. A daily dose of 3.6 g curcumin engendered 62% and 57% decreases in inducible PGE2 production in blood samples taken 1 hour after dose on days 1 and 29, respectively, of treatment compared with levels observed immediately predose (P < 0.05). A daily oral dose of 3.6 g of curcumin is advocated for Phase II evaluation in the prevention or treatment of cancers outside the gastrointestinal tract. PGE2 production in blood and target tissue may indicate biological activity. Levels of curcumin and its metabolites in the urine can be used to assess general compliance.
Kernel-based deadbeat parametric estimation of bias-affected damped sinusoidal signals

This paper deals with a novel non-asymptotic algorithm to estimate four characteristic parameters of biased damped sinusoidal signals. The proposed scheme is based on the linear integral technique introduced by [1], which relies on processing the measured signal by Volterra operators with suitably designed kernel functions. The main feature of the proposed kernels consists in the possibility to annihilate the effect of the unknown initial conditions of the hidden internal states of the system. Therefore, in the ideal case, finite-time convergence of the estimation error can be obtained. Extensive numerical simulations are presented confirming the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed methodology.
Plumage color and reproductive output of eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) nesting near a mercury-contaminated river

Despite the growing evidence of mercury's impact on ecosystems, few studies have looked at the environmental impact of mercury pollution on terrestrial songbirds and the complex ways through which mercury might influence their fitness. In 2007–2008 eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) were monitored on mercury contaminated and reference sites for blood and feather mercury, reproductive success and plumage coloration. Higher tissue mercury accumulation was associated with plumage that was overall brighter and shifted towards the UV portion of the spectrum. In females, long-term mercury exposure, as indicated by feather mercury, was associated with smaller clutches of eggs. In males, recent mercury exposure, as indicated by blood mercury, was associated with a reduction in the proportion of hatchlings that fledged, potentially through reduced male provisioning of offspring. Reproductive success and plumage color are closely linked in bluebirds through mate choice, and our findings indicate that mercury contamination is associated with reproductive success directly and possibly indirectly, through coloration of bluebirds.
Hippocampus, perirhinal cortex, and complex visual discriminations in rats and humans

Structures in the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex, are known to be essential for the formation of long-term memory. Recent animal and human studies have investigated whether perirhinal cortex might also be important for visual perception. In our study, using a simultaneous oddity discrimination task, rats with perirhinal lesions were impaired and did not exhibit the normal preference for exploring the odd object. Notably, rats with hippocampal lesions exhibited the same impairment. Thus, the deficit is unlikely to illuminate functions attributed specifically to perirhinal cortex. Both lesion groups were able to acquire visual discriminations involving the same objects used in the oddity task. Patients with hippocampal damage or larger medial temporal lobe lesions were intact in a similar oddity task that allowed participants to explore objects quickly using eye movements. We suggest that humans were able to rely on an intact working memory capacity to perform this task, whereas rats (who moved slowly among the objects) needed to rely on long-term memory.
You are what apps you use: Transfer Learning for Personalized Content and Ad Recommendation

Cold start is always a key challenge for building real-life recommendation systems. Thanks to the ever-growing multi-modal data in the mobile Internet age and the latest deep learning techniques, transfer-learning based cross-domain recommendation starts to play a crucial role in tackling the cold start problem and to provide "warm-start" recommendation for new users. At Cheetah Mobile, we apply transfer learning to build personalized recommendation systems for both advertisement and content scenarios, serving 600+ millions monthly active mobile users. In particular, we leveraged the app install & usage and many other mobile data, built a Unified User Profile (UUP) by using transfer learning and deep learning, and developed cross-domain personalized Ad and news recommendation. Our approaches enable us to solve the cold start problem with close to full coverage of our user base while yielding significant CTR increase and better user experience.
Fast and reconfigurable packet classification engine in FPGA-based firewall

In data communication via internet, security is becoming one of the most influential aspects. One way to support it is by classifying and filtering ethernet packets within network devices. Packet classification is a fundamental task for network devices such as routers, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems. In this paper we present architecture of fast and reconfigurable Packet Classification Engine (PCE). This engine is used in FPGA-based firewall. Our PCE inspects multi-dimensional field of packet header sequentially based on tree-based algorithm. This algorithm simplifies overall system to a lower scale and leads to a more secure system. The PCE works with an adaptation of single cycle processor architecture in the system. Ethernet packet is examined with PCE based on Source IP Address, Destination IP Address, Source Port, Destination Port, and Protocol fields of the packet header. These are basic fields to know whether it is a dangerous or normal packet before inspecting the content. Using implementation of tree-based algorithm in the architecture, firewall rules are rebuilt into 24-bit sub-rules which are read as processor instruction in the inspection process. The inspection process is comparing one sub-rule with input field of header every clock cycle.
Uncontrolled allergic rhinitis and chronic rhinosinusitis: where do we stand today?

State‐of‐the‐art documents like ARIA and EPOS provide clinicians with evidence‐based treatment algorithms for allergic rhinitis (AR) and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS), respectively. The currently available medications can alleviate symptoms associated with AR and RS. In real life, a significant percentage of patients with AR and CRS continue to experience bothersome symptoms despite adequate treatment. This group with so‐called severe chronic upper airway disease (SCUAD) represents a therapeutic challenge. The concept of control of disease has only recently been introduced in the field of AR and CRS. In case of poor control of symptoms despite guideline‐directed pharmacotherapy, one needs to consider the presence of SCUAD but also treatment‐related, diagnosis‐related and/or patient‐related factors. Treatment‐related issues of uncontrolled upper airway disease are linked with the correct choice of treatment and route of administration, symptom‐oriented treatment and the evaluation of the need for immunotherapy in allergic patients. The diagnosis of AR and CRS should be reconsidered in case of uncontrolled disease, excluding concomitant anatomic nasal deformities, global airway dysfunction and systemic diseases. Patient‐related issues responsible for the lack of control in chronic upper airway inflammation are often but not always linked with adherence to the prescribed medication and education. This review is an initiative taken by the ENT section of the EAACI in conjunction with ARIA and EPOS experts who felt the need to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art of control in upper airway inflammation and stressing the unmet needs in this domain.