Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Elusiveness of Clusters

Rooted phylogenetic networks are often used to represent conflicting phylogenetic signals. Given a set of clusters, a network is said to represent these clusters in the softwiredsense if, for each cluster in the input set, at least one tree embedded in the network contains that cluster. Motivated by parsimony we might wish to construct such a network using as few reticulations as possible, or minimizing the level of the network, i.e., the maximum number of reticulations used in any "tangled" region of the network. Although these are NP-hard problems, here we prove that, for every fixed k ≥ 0, it is polynomial-time solvable to construct a phylogenetic network with level equal to k representing a cluster set, or to determine that no such network exists. However, this algorithm does not lend itself to a practical implementation. We also prove that the comparatively efficient CASS algorithm correctly solves this problem (and also minimizes the reticulation number) when input clusters are obtained from two not necessarily binary gene trees on the same set of taxa but does not always minimize level for general cluster sets. Finally, we describe a new algorithm which generates in polynomial-time all binary phylogenetic networks with exactly r reticulations representing a set of input clusters (for every fixed r ≥ 0).
A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Blood‐Pressure Determinations

In this study a comparison between direct and indirect methods of obtaining blood pressure has been made. A statistical analysis of the data supports the view that the muffling of sounds, or the fourth phase of Korotkow, bears a closer and more constant relationship to diastolic pressure measured directly. This report, therefore, recommends the acceptance of muffling of the sounds of Korotkow as the measure of diastolic pressure.
Predicting complex events for pro-active IoT applications

The widespread use of IoT devices has opened the possibilities for many innovative applications. Almost all of these applications involve analyzing complex data streams with low latency requirements. In this regard, pattern recognition methods based on CEP have the potential to provide solutions for analyzing and correlating these complex data streams in order to detect complex events. Most of these solutions are reactive in nature as CEP acts on real-time data and does not exploit historical data. In our work, we have explored a proactive approach by exploiting historical data using machine learning methods for prediction with CEP. We propose an adaptive prediction algorithm called Adaptive Moving Window Regression (AMWR) for dynamic IoT data and evaluated it using a real-world use case. Our proposed architecture is generic and can be used across different fields for predicting complex events.
The Early Transcriptional Response of Human Granulocytes to Infection with Candida albicans Is Not Essential for Killing but Reflects Cellular Communications

ABSTRACT Candida albicans is a polymorphic opportunistic fungus that can cause life-threatening systemic infections following hematogenous dissemination in patients susceptible to nosocomial infection. Neutrophils form part of the innate immune response, which is the first line of defense against microbes and is particularly important in C. albicans infections. To compare the transcriptional response of leukocytes exposed to C. albicans, we investigated the expression of key cytokine genes in polymorphonuclear and mononuclear leukocytes after incubation with C. albicans for 1 h. Isolated mononuclear cells expressed high levels of genes encoding proinflammatory signaling molecules, whereas neutrophils exhibited much lower levels, similar to those observed in whole blood. The global transcriptional profile of neutrophils was examined by using an immunology-biased human microarray to determine whether different morphological forms or the viability of C. albicans altered the transcriptome. Hyphal cells appeared to have the broadest effect, although the most strongly induced genes were regulated independently of morphology or viability. These genes were involved in proinflammatory cell-cell signaling, cell signal transduction, and cell growth. Generally, genes encoding known components of neutrophil granules showed no upregulation at this time point; however, lactoferrin, a well-known candidacidal peptide, was secreted by neutrophils. Addition to inhibitors of RNA or protein de novo synthesis did not influence the killing activity within 30 min. These results support the general notion that neutrophils do not require gene transcription to mount an immediate and direct attack against microbes. However, neutrophils exposed to C. albicans express genes involved in communication with other immune cells.
The Use of Digital Watermarking for Intelligence Multimedia Document Distribution

Digital watermarking is a promising technology to embed information as unperceivable signals in digital contents. Various watermarking techniques have been proposed to protect copyrights of multimedia digital contents over Internet trading so that ownership of the contents can be determined in subsequent copyrights disputes. However, their applications in preventing unauthorized distribution of intelligence document have not been studied. In this paper, we propose a watermark-based document distribution protocol, which complements conventional cryptography-based access control schemes, to address the problem of tracing unauthorized distribution of sensitive intelligence documents. The reinforcement of document distribution policies requires a concrete support of non-repudiation in the distribution process. The distribution protocol is adapted from our previous work on the watermarking infrastructure for enterprise document management. It makes use of intelligence user certificates to embed the identity of the users into the intelligence documents to whom are distributed. In particular, keeping the identity secrecy between document providers and users (but yet traceable upon disputes) is a key contribution of this protocol in order to support for intelligence applications. We also outline an implementation of the distribution protocol and watermarking scheme employed.
The Ordinal Effects of Ostracism: A Meta-Analysis of 120 Cyberball Studies

We examined 120 Cyberball studies (N = 11,869) to determine the effect size of ostracism and conditions under which the effect may be reversed, eliminated, or small. Our analyses showed that (1) the average ostracism effect is large (d > |1.4|) and (2) generalizes across structural aspects (number of players, ostracism duration, number of tosses, type of needs scale), sampling aspects (gender, age, country), and types of dependent measure (interpersonal, intrapersonal, fundamental needs). Further, we test Williams’s (2009) proposition that the immediate impact of ostracism is resistant to moderation, but that moderation is more likely to be observed in delayed measures. Our findings suggest that (3) both first and last measures are susceptible to moderation and (4) time passed since being ostracized does not predict effect sizes of the last measure. Thus, support for this proposition is tenuous and we suggest modifications to the temporal need-threat model of ostracism.
Using a Probabilistic Topic Model to Link Observers' Perception Tendency to Personality

Targeting multiparty conversations, the present study aims to elucidate how an observer will tend to perceive others' emotional states, develops a computational model that realizes the automatic inferencing of the observer's perception tendency. This paper proposes a probabilistic model that automatically discovers the correlation between perception tendency, gender, and personality traits of a target observer. Perception tendency, a probability distribution, explains how likely the observer is to perceive a certain state/level of a target emotion. Personality traits are measured by a variety of questionnaires. The proposed model links these three factors via a latent variable and explains observer's characteristics as a mixture of prototypical characters. An experiment is conducted with fifty observers. They watch 97 short conversation videos and give their impressions about the empathy between each interacting pair. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can find a reasonable framework that underlies the factors: e.g. 1) people who have high scores in Davis's empathy measures show empathy-biased response tendency, and 2) people who have strong sense of consideration for others tend to show an extreme response tendency, and such people are likely to be females. The proposed method shows promise in estimating an observer's perception tendency from his/her gender and personality traits, even when the target perception tendency is quite different from the average perception tendency among observers.
Spatiotemporal Regulation of Nuclear Transport Machinery and Microtubule Organization

Spindle microtubules capture and segregate chromosomes and, therefore, their assembly is an essential event in mitosis. To carry out their mission, many key players for microtubule formation need to be strictly orchestrated. Particularly, proteins that assemble the spindle need to be translocated at appropriate sites during mitosis. A small GTPase (hydrolase enzyme of guanosine triphosphate), Ran, controls this translocation. Ran plays many roles in many cellular events: nucleocytoplasmic shuttling through the nuclear envelope, assembly of the mitotic spindle, and reorganization of the nuclear envelope at the mitotic exit. Although these events are seemingly distinct, recent studies demonstrate that the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are substantially the same as explained by molecular interplay of the master regulator Ran, the transport factor importin, and its cargo proteins. Our review focuses on how the transport machinery regulates mitotic progression of cells. We summarize translocation mechanisms governed by Ran and its regulatory proteins, and particularly focus on Ran-GTP targets in fission yeast that promote spindle formation. We also discuss the coordination of the spatial and temporal regulation of proteins from the viewpoint of transport machinery. We propose that the transport machinery is an essential key that couples the spatial and temporal events in cells.
Transmitter release modulation in nerve terminals of rat neocortical pyramidal cells by intracellular calcium buffers

1 Dual whole‐cell voltage recordings were made from synaptically connected layer 5 (L5) pyramidal neurones in slices of the young (P14‐P16) rat neocortex. The Ca2+ buffers BAPTA or EGTA were loaded into the presynaptic neurone via the pipette recording from the presynaptic neurone to examine their effect on the mean and the coefficient of variation (c.v.) of single fibre EPSP amplitudes, referred to as unitary EPSPs. 2 The fast Ca2+ buffer BAPTA reduced unitary EPSP amplitudes in a concentration dependent way. With 0.1 mm BAPTA in the pipette, the mean EPSP amplitude was reduced by 14 ± 2.8 % (mean ±s.e.m., n= 7) compared with control pipette solution, whereas with 1.5 mm BAPTA, the mean EPSP amplitude was reduced by 72 ± 1.5 % (n= 5). The concentration of BAPTA that reduced mean EPSP amplitudes to one‐half of control was close to 0.7 mm. 3 Saturation of BAPTA during evoked release was tested by comparing the effect of loading the presynaptic neurone with 0.1 mm BAPTA at 2 and 1 mm[Ca2+]o. Reducing [Ca2+]o from 2 to 1 mm, thereby reducing Ca2+ influx into the terminals, decreased the mean EPSP amplitude by 60 ± 2.2 % with control pipette solution and by 62 ± 1.9 % after loading with 0.1 mm BAPTA (n= 7). 4 The slow Ca2+ buffer EGTA at 1 mm reduced mean EPSP amplitudes by 15 ± 2.5 % (n= 5). With 10 mm EGTA mean EPSP amplitudes were reduced by 56 ± 2.3 % (n= 4). 5 With both Ca2+ buffers, the reduction in mean EPSP amplitudes was associated with an increase in the c.v. of peak EPSP amplitudes, consistent with a reduction of the transmitter release probability as the major mechanism underlying the reduction of the EPSP amplitude. 6 The results suggest that in nerve terminals of thick tufted L5 pyramidal cells the endogenous mobile Ca2+ buffer is equivalent to less than 0.1 mm BAPTA and that at many release sites of pyramidal cell terminals the Ca2+ channel domains overlap, a situation comparable with that at large calyx‐type terminals in the brainstem.
Ultra-low power mixed-signal design platform using subthreshold source-coupled circuits

This article discusses system-level techniques to optimize the power-performance trade-off in subthreshold circuits and presents a uniform platform for implementing ultra-low power power-scalable analog and digital integrated circuits. The proposed technique is based on using subthreshold source-coupled or current-mode approach for both analog and digital circuits. In addition to possibility of operating with ultra-low power dissipation, because of similar basis for constructing analog and digital parts, a common power management unit could be used for optimizing the power-performance of the entire mixed-signal system. Some circuit examples have been provided to show the performance of the proposed circuits in practice.
Root hair formation: F-actin-dependent tip growth is initiated by local assembly of profilin-supported F-actin meshworks accumulated within expansin-enriched bulges.

Plant root hair formation is initiated when specialized elongating root epidermis cells (trichoblasts) assemble distinct domains at the plasma membrane/cell wall cell periphery complexes facing the root surface. These localities show accumulation of expansin and progressively transform into tip-growing root hair apices. Experimentation showed that trichoblasts made devoid of microtubules (MTs) were unaffected in root hair formation, whereas those depleted of F-actin by the G-actin sequestering agent latrunculin B had their root hair formation blocked after the bulge formation stage. In accordance with this, MTs are naturally depleted from early outgrowing bulges in which dense F-actin meshworks accumulate. These F-actin caps remain associated with tips of emerging and growing root hairs. Constitutive expression of the GFP-mouse talin fusion protein in transgenic Arabidopsis, which visualizes all classes of F-actin in a noninvasive mode, allowed in vivo confirmation of the presence of distinct F-actin meshworks within outgrowing bulges and at tips of young root hairs. Profilin accumulates, at both the protein and the mRNA levels, within F-actin-enriched bulges and at tips of emerging hairs. ER-based calreticulin and HDEL proteins also accumulate within outgrowing bulges and remain enriched at tips of emerging hairs. All this suggests that installation of the actin-based tip growth machinery takes place only after expansin-associated bulge formation and requires assembly of profilin-supported dynamic F-actin meshworks.
Robust object tracking based on timed motion history image with multi-feature adaptive fusion

Object tracking under complex circumstances remains to be a challenging problem because the appearance of an object can be drastically changed by illumination variations, pose variations and occlusion. This paper proposes an adaptive multiCfeature fusion strategy, in which the target appearance is modeled based on timed motion history image with HSV color histogram feature and edge orientation histogram feature. According to the discrimination measure to the current scene of each feature, the weight of corresponding feature is adaptively adjusted. Experimental results based on challenging video sequences show the robustness and accuracy of our method comparing with several state-of-the-art algorithms.
The calculus of services for the aged.

"TkURING the two decades following the end ¦*^ of World War II the technologically ad¬ vanced nations have undergone amazingly rapid changes.the population explosion, automation, increased leisure time, rapid communication through the mass media, shrinking distances, in¬ tense cross-cultural influence, a polarization of political and economic ideologies and the ageing of populations born in the nineteenth cen¬ tury. With amazing speed, technical achievements which previously would have taken centuries or decades to attain can now be plan¬ ned for and accomplished in years and months. This same dynamic urge for advancement, modernization and attainment permeates all of life in Western society. It is true in science and technology and in a host of professional fields. education, engineering, the basic sciences and the health professions. The impulse to move forward, signifying the health and vigour of a society, has, however, brought with it a counterforce of unparalleled momentum. There has been a marked erosion of family life during the second half of this cen¬ tury. The three-generation household is obsolete and is fast disappearing. The philosophical and experiential gap between the generations is widening and youth, once only misunderstood, is now becoming alienated from the values of their parents and to some extent from the rest of society. The elderly, once looked upon as quaint and remarkable despite their years (when indeed there were fewer of them), are now a major problem facing governments and taxpayers of every Western country. We are now no longer surprised to learn that about 10% of our population is past the age of 65. In the United States they are 18 million strong, with more than one-half million reaching this milestone age each year. Years of retirement are lengthening, the average duration of widowhood is increas-
Balancing accountable assessment with holistic professional practice

Trends in the management of education and demands from students for clarity in assessment resulted in the grading of course work being extensively articulated and described. Students rightly expect to know what they will be marked on and what constitutes work of an appropriate level. This can lead to the disarticulation of a topic into tiny graded fragments that no longer equate to a ‘whole’ professional experience. This paper looks at changes to the assessment of practical conservation in Cardiff University that attempt to offer an assessment of conservation as a complete professional activity whilst respecting the student and administrative demands for clarity and accountability.
A short review on rubber/clay nanocomposites with emphasis on mechanical properties

The invention of Nylon-6/clay nanocomposites by the Toyota Research Group of Japan heralded a new chapter in the field of polymer composites. This article highlights the work done in the field of rubber/clay nanocomposites. The preparations of rubber/clay nanocomposites by solution blending, latex compounding, and melt intercalation are covered and a thorough discussion of the mechanical properties of the various rubber/clay nanocomposite systems is presented. Other properties such as barrier, dynamic mechanical behavior, and thermal properties are also discussed. Finally, the future trends in the rubber/clay nanocomposites are mentioned. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 47:1956–1974, 2007. © 2007 Society of Plastics Engineers
An approach to classify software maintenance requests

When a software system critical for an organization exhibits a problem during its operation, it is relevant to fix it in a short period of time, to avoid serious economical losses. The problem is therefore noticed by the organization in charge of the maintenance, and it should be correctly and quickly dispatched to the right maintenance team. We propose to automatically classify incoming maintenance requests (also said tickets), routing them to specialized maintenance teams. The final goal is to develop a router working around the clock, that, without human intervention, dispatches incoming tickets with the lowest misclassification error, measured with respect to a given routing policy. 6000 maintenance tickets from a large, multi-site, software system, spanning about two years of system in-field operation, were used to compare and assess the accuracy of different classification approaches (i.e., Vector Space model, Bayesian model, support vectors, classification trees and k-nearest neighbor classification). The application and the tickets were divided into eight areas and pre-classified by human experts. Preliminary results were encouraging, up to 84% of the incoming tickets were correctly classified.
Development and Application of a New Method for Specific and Sensitive Enumeration of Spores of Nonproteolytic Clostridium botulinum Types B, E, and F in Foods and Food Materials

ABSTRACT The highly potent botulinum neurotoxins are responsible for botulism, a severe neuroparalytic disease. Strains of nonproteolytic Clostridium botulinum form neurotoxins of types B, E, and F and are the main hazard associated with minimally heated refrigerated foods. Recent developments in quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) and food safety objectives (FSO) have made food safety more quantitative and include, as inputs, probability distributions for the contamination of food materials and foods. A new method that combines a selective enrichment culture with multiplex PCR has been developed and validated to enumerate specifically the spores of nonproteolytic C. botulinum. Key features of this new method include the following: (i) it is specific for nonproteolytic C. botulinum (and does not detect proteolytic C. botulinum), (ii) the detection limit has been determined for each food tested (using carefully structured control samples), and (iii) a low detection limit has been achieved by the use of selective enrichment and large test samples. The method has been used to enumerate spores of nonproteolytic C. botulinum in 637 samples of 19 food materials included in pasta-based minimally heated refrigerated foods and in 7 complete foods. A total of 32 samples (5 egg pastas and 27 scallops) contained spores of nonproteolytic C. botulinum type B or F. The majority of samples contained <100 spores/kg, but one sample of scallops contained 444 spores/kg. Nonproteolytic C. botulinum type E was not detected. Importantly, for QMRA and FSO, the construction of probability distributions will enable the frequency of packs containing particular levels of contamination to be determined.
Derivation of Invariant Assertions During Program Development by Transformation

Two approaches to the development of efficient and correct iterative programs are contrasted: the construction of an iterative program and a proof of its correctness using invariant assertions of loops, and the construction and proof of a recursive program with a subsequent transformation into an iterative version by schematically applying suitable recursion removal rules. The connection between the approaches is demonstrated by augmenting such transformation rules by inductive assertions. It is argued that the latter approach to program development is superior since the correctness proof of a recursive program is easier in most cases. Considerable verification overhead can be avoided this way, in particular, some difficulties with the interaction of successive loops and their associated invariants.
Independent Set in P5-Free Graphs in Polynomial Time

The Independent Set problem is NP-hard in general, however polynomial time algorithms exist for the problem on various specific graph classes. Over the last couple of decades there has been a long sequence of papers exploring the boundary between the NP-hard and polynomial time solvable cases. In particular the complexity of Independent Set on P5-free graphs has received significant attention, and there has been a long list of results showing that the problem becomes polynomial time solvable on sub-classes of P5-free graphs. In this paper we give the first polynomial time algorithm for Independent Set on P5-free graphs. Our algorithm also works for the Weighted Independent Set problem.