Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Profiling Living Bacteria Informs Preparation of Fecal Microbiota Transplantations

Fecal microbiota transplantation is a compelling treatment for recurrent Clostridium difficile infections, with potential applications against other diseases associated with changes in gut microbiota. But variability in fecal bacterial communities—believed to be the therapeutic agent—can complicate or undermine treatment efficacy. To understand the effects of transplant preparation methods on living fecal microbial communities, we applied a DNA-sequencing method (PMA-seq) that uses propidium monoazide (PMA) to differentiate between living and dead fecal microbes, and we created an analysis pipeline to identify individual bacteria that change in abundance between samples. We found that oxygen exposure degraded fecal bacterial communities, whereas freeze-thaw cycles and lag time between donor defecation and transplant preparation had much smaller effects. Notably, the abundance of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii—an anti-inflammatory commensal bacterium whose absence is linked to inflammatory bowel disease—decreased with oxygen exposure. Our results indicate that some current practices for preparing microbiota transplant material adversely affect living fecal microbial content and highlight PMA-seq as a valuable tool to inform best practices and evaluate the suitability of clinical fecal material.
Convergence of 2-Body Effective Range Expansions for $nd$ Quartet Scattering

We examine the convergence properties of the 2-nucleon Effective Range Expansion as used in Effective Theories (ET-ERE's) for 3-nucleon calculations. We accomplish this by accounting for the 2-body dynamics with a simple rank-1 separable 2-body potential where the finite range effects can be incorporated systematically in both the 2- and 3-body problems. We make our initial comparisons in the simple context of the $^3S_1$ 2-nucleon channel and the $^4S_{3/2}$ 3-nucleon channel. We find that convergence problems for some of the 3-nucleon scattering amplitudes using the ET-ERE can be traced to its poor account of finite range effects that soften the momentum dependence of the deuteron propagator in the Faddeev kernel. In contrast, our simple separable potential with dipole form factors works very well in all cases considered.
Reduction of Test Time in VLIW-TTA Processors

In this paper the implementation of the test strategy in a so-called Very Long Instruction Word Transport Triggered Architecture (VLIW-TTA) is discussed. The complete test strategy is derived referring to the results of test synthesis, carried out in the early phase of the design. It takes the area/throughput parameters into account. The test strategy, exploiting the regularity and modularity of the VLIW-TTA structure, remains general for an arbitrary application and instantiation of the TTA processor and is based on the partial scan approach along with the functional test. The test-time analysis, in order to justify our approach and show the superiority over the classical full-scan, has been performed. The results of our strategy are shown in a few examples at the end of the paper.
The Formal Specification of a Kitchen Environment

Programming allows children to acquire problem-solving skills that will be useful to them throughout their life. Tools that have successfully attracted children to programming in the past are now outdated because children’s interests have evolved with the technology. It has become more important to provide real-world experience to improve children’s ability in solving real problems. As our previous studies with children suggest, cooking is appealing to both girls and boys. However, the challenge is to come up with a formal specification of cooking that is precise and complete, but still is an age-appropriate and fun activity for children. Therefore, this paper attempts to formalize an event-based cooking language using formal specification methods.
Non-invasive node detection in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

IEEE 802.11 wireless sniffers are useful tools for monitoring network traffic and for the acquisition of information at the MAC level and above. The standard approach for implementing a wireless sniffer is to setup a device in the so-called Promiscuous mode. In this mode, devices are able to acquire all traffic that passes through them, independently from its destination. On a wireless network, this means that it is possible to monitor all the activities inside the device's cover range. Unfortunately, the Promiscuous mode limits the use of the device by prohibiting the association with wireless networks, or in general, sending data. This limitation restricts uses of sniffers on specific scenarios. This paper shows how to remove such limitation by presenting our Laurin Project. Laurin is a wireless sniffer that provides sniffer's capabilities without limiting the device's use. This solution opens the doors to the development of new desktop-oriented applications that take advantage of network monitoring capabilities.
Interest Rates in the Nordic Countries: Evidence Based on Devaluation Expectations

Over the period 1979-92, investments in Danish and Norwegian kroner in the Euromarket have had an annual excess return of about 2 and 1.1 percent, compared to investments in the Euromarket in foreign currencies. Assuming risk neutrality, the subjective probability of a devaluation within the next month is derived from the excess returns on the Euromarket. These derived probabilities are found to be inconsistent with the actual number of devaluations that have taken place over this period, so that the probability of devaluation has been significantly overrated for Denmark and Norway. Copyright 1994 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
Low-Power Fall Detector Using Triaxial Accelerometry and Barometric Pressure Sensing

Falls are the number one cause of injuries in the elderly. A wearable fall detector can automatically detect the occurrence of a fall and alert a caregiver or a medical rescue group for immediate assistance, mitigating fall-related injuries. However, most studies on fall detection to date have focused on the accuracy of detection while neglecting power efficiency and battery life, and hence the developed fall detectors usually cannot operate for a long period (a year or more) without recharging or replacing their batteries. This paper presents a low-power fall detector that utilizes triaxial accelerometry and barometric pressure sensing. This fall detector reduces its power consumption through both hardware- and firmware-based approaches. This study also incorporates several human trials to develop and evaluate the device, including simulated falls and activities of daily living. A benchtop power measurement test is also conducted to estimate the battery life with data from a one-week free-living trial. These experiments show that the fall detector achieves high sensitivity (97.5% and 93.0%) and specificity (93.2% and 87.3%) on training and testing datasets, while providing an estimated battery life of 664.9 days.
Online Estimation of Peak Power Capability of Li-Ion Batteries in Electric Vehicles by a Hardware-in-Loop Approach

Battery peak power capability estimations play an important theoretical role for the proper use of the battery in electric vehicles. To address the failures in relaxation effects and real-time ability performance, neglecting the battery’s design limits and other issues of the traditional peak power capability calculation methods, a new approach based on the dynamic electrochemical-polarization (EP) battery model, taking into consideration constraints of current, voltage, state of charge (SoC) and power is proposed. A hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system is built for validating the online model-based peak power capability estimation approach of batteries used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and a HIL test based on the Federal Urban Driving Schedules (FUDS) is used to verify and evaluate its real-time computation performance, reliability and robustness. The results show the proposed approach gives a more accurate estimate compared with the hybrid pulse power characterization (HPPC) method, avoiding over-charging or over-discharging and providing a powerful guarantee for the optimization of HEVs power systems. Furthermore, the HIL test provides valuable data and critical guidance to evaluate the accuracy of the developed battery algorithms.
The Dnmt1 Intrinsically Disordered Domain Regulates Genomic Methylation During Development

The DNMT1 cytosine methyltransferase enzyme contains a large ∼300-aa intrinsically disordered domain (IDD) that we previously showed regulated DNA methylation patterns in mouse ES cells. Here we generated seven mouse lines with different mutations in the IDD. Homozygous mutant mice of five lines developed normally, with normal levels of methylation on both imprinted and nonimprinted DNA sequences. The other two lines, however, had alterations in imprinted and/or nonimprinted (global) DNA methylation appearing during embryonic development. Embryos of one line expressing a DNMT1 variant containing a 6-aa rat orthologous sequence in the IDD maintained imprinted methylation, showed very reduced levels of global methylation and occasionally completed fetal development. These in vivo studies demonstrate that at least two DNMT1-dependent methylation processes can be distinguished during fetal development. One process maintains the bulk of genomic methylation on nonimprinted sequences. The other process maintains methylation on a much smaller class of sequences including but not limited to gametic differentially methylated domains (gDMDs) that transmit essential imprinted parent-specific methylation for embryonic development.
The Impact of Local Government Investment on Corporate Decisions

This work aims to provide evidence on the impact of public investment on local business decisions. In particular we want to see the effect of public investment on the development of local area - measured by GDP and employment - and therefore the effect that the development of the area determines the location decisions of businesses.In other words, we therefore wish to demonstrate how the infrastructure is one of the determinants of competitiveness and development potential of an area of active firms. A good level of infrastructure produces significant advantages (so-called positive externalities) for the local economy because, not only allows to increase the productivity of factors of production, reducing costs, but also influences the degree of attraction of the area (residents, tourists, businesses, funders), the location decisions of new businesses, the strengthening of existing ones.The conceptual framework draws on the contributions made by many national and international literature on the role that public investment play in economic growth in the territories and the attractiveness of the territory.The paper is organized in two parts. Part 1 discusses the concept of local public investment, which is under a legal entity, examines the issue of investment planning and illustrates how the literature has suggested and tested empirically with reference to the role of public investment in the dynamics of growth and competitiveness of the territories. In the Part 2, is empirically tested the research hypothesis, through an econometric analysis, describing the models and variables used in the application of panel techniques, and presents the results of the estimates, while last section concludes with summary of some considerations.
Scatter-difference discriminant locality preserving projections for palmprint recognition

We develop an improved LPP method called scatter-difference discriminant locality preserving projections (SDLPP) for palmprint recognition. SDLPP has better classification capability which benefits from discriminant information obtained by maximizing the difference of between-class separability and within-class similarity. SDLPP avoids the singularity problem for the high-dimensional data matrix and can be directly applied to the small sample size problem while preserving more important discriminant information. Comparative recognition performance results obtained on public PolyU palmprint database also confirm the effectiveness of the proposed SDLPP approach.
Nonvenous origin of dermal lymphatic vasculature.

RATIONALE The formation of the blood vasculature is achieved via 2 fundamentally different mechanisms, de novo formation of vessels from endothelial progenitors (vasculogenesis) and sprouting of vessels from pre-existing ones (angiogenesis). In contrast, mammalian lymphatic vasculature is thought to form exclusively by sprouting from embryonic veins (lymphangiogenesis). Alternative nonvenous sources of lymphatic endothelial cells have been suggested in chicken and Xenopus, but it is unclear whether they exist in mammals. OBJECTIVE We aimed to clarify the origin of the murine dermal lymphatic vasculature. METHODS AND RESULTS We performed lineage tracing experiments and analyzed mutants lacking the Prox1 transcription factor, a master regulator of lymphatic endothelial cell identity, in Tie2 lineage venous-derived lymphatic endothelial cells. We show that, contrary to current dogma, a significant part of the dermal lymphatic vasculature forms independently of sprouting from veins. Although lymphatic vessels of cervical and thoracic skin develop via sprouting from venous-derived lymph sacs, vessels of lumbar and dorsal midline skin form via assembly of non-Tie2-lineage cells into clusters and vessels through a process defined as lymphvasculogenesis. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrate a significant contribution of nonvenous-derived cells to the dermal lymphatic vasculature. Demonstration of a previously unknown lymphatic endothelial cell progenitor population will now allow further characterization of their origin, identity, and functions during normal lymphatic development and in pathology, as well as their potential therapeutic use for lymphatic regeneration.
MICHAEL BEESLEY AND COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Michael Beesley made many important contributions to the development of Cost Benefit Analysis. The M1 was the first CBA in the UK which can claim to be economically satisfactory. The Victoria Line study was a further step to comprehensiveness and its second stage showed how practically important fares policy could be. In subsequent work he and others attempted to develop more satisfactory methods of using CBA, especially in an urban environment. His work on the valuation of time was pioneering, as was his work in establishing the economic and competitive significance of taxis. The unravelling of the related economic problems associated with subsidies, traffic restraint and road pricing was thorough and illuminating. By the end of his career Michael Beesley may not have fully reconciled his earlier adherence to CBA and the improvement of the public sector with his later Austrian beliefs; but the length of his experience, his creativity and imagination give him a phenomenal influence on the development of privatisation, regulation, and other aspects of economic liberalisation under the Thatcher government, so that he was not only one of the best but also one of the most influential applied economists of the second half of the 20th century in Britain, and among the greatest who applied himself to transport. © The London School of Economics and the University of Bath 2001
Termination analysis of business process workflows

For safety and deadlock analysis of workflows, Petri-Nets are frequently used. They provide a natural abstraction of workflows since they are able to describe parallel behavior. With a variety of model checking tools, it is possible to verify these workflows. The usual approach that abstracts business processes to Petri-Nets requires that each loop (whether purely internal or with external interactions) is terminating. In this paper, we show that without this termination assumption, there are real behaviors of business processes that are not represented by the Petri-Net abstractions and we provide a first approach towards termination analysis of loops in business processes thereby ensuring the preconditions required by many Petri-Net based approaches for analyzing business processes.
Reading Performance in Children with Visual Function Anomalies

Aims: To compare reading performance in children with and without visual function anomalies and identify the influence of abnormal visual function and other variables in reading ability. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried in 110 children of school age (6-11 years) with Abnormal Visual Function (AVF) and 562 children with Normal Visual Function (NVF). An orthoptic assessment (visual acuity, ocular alignment, near point of convergence and accommodation, stereopsis and vergences) and autorefraction was carried out. Oral reading was analyzed (list of 34 words). Number of errors, accuracy (percentage of success) and reading speed (words per minute - wpm) were used as reading indicators. Sociodemographic information from parents (n=670) and teachers (n=34) was obtained. Results: Children with AVF had a higher number of errors (AVF=3.00 errors; NVF=1.00 errors; p<0.001), a lower accuracy (AVF=91.18%; NVF=97.06%; p<0.001) and reading speed (AVF=24.71 wpm; NVF=27.39 wpm; p=0.007). Reading speed in the 3 rd school grade was not statistically different between the two groups (AVF=31.41 wpm; NVF=32.54 wpm; p=0.113). Children with uncorrected hyperopia (p=0.003) and astigmatism (p=0.019) had worst reading performance. Children in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grades presented a lower risk of having reading impairment when compared with the 1 st grade. Conclusion: Children with AVF had reading impairment in the first school grade. It seems that reading abilities have a wide variation and this disparity lessens in older children. The slow reading characteristics of the children with AVF are similar to dyslexic children, which suggest the need for an eye evaluation before classifying the children as dyslexic.
Effects of routing granularity on communication performance in OpenFlow networks

The explosive growth of its usage means that the Internet has to become more flexible in order to handle a huge traffic volume efficiently and a variety of users requirement adaptively. OpenFlow architecture is a promising technology for flexible switching and routing to achieve this. In OpenFlow networks, OpenFlow switches can change their action on the basis of header information of an incoming packet. This allows to control traffic flows on the basis of various routing granularities such as destination IP address, TCP connection, etc. While a fine-grained control can increase routing optimality, its control overhead may decrease the communication performance. In this paper, therefore, the impact of routing granularity on communication performance is investigated through simulation evaluations. The results suggest dynamic changes in the routing granularity be considered for efficient traffic control.
Performance Evaluation of WMN-GA System for Node Placement in WMNs Considering Normal Distribution of Mesh Clients and Different Selection and Mutation Operators

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are currently attracting a lot of attention from wireless research and technology community due to their importance for providing cost-efficient broadband wireless connectivity. Issues for achieving the network connectivity and user coverage are related with the node placement problem. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of WMN-GA system for node placement problem in WMNs. For evaluation, we consider Normal Distribution of mesh clients and different selection and mutation operators. The population size is considered 64 and the number of generation 200. For evaluation, we consider the giant component and the number of covered users metrics. The simulation results shows that the WMN-GA system performs better for Single Mutation and Linear Ranking.
On Mitigating Malicious Behavior Against Routing in Wireless Network

Network routing is a cooperative process. The network performance will be seriously degraded if one or more network components are compromised to network attackers and they behave maliciously. There have been a few literatures to address the robustness of network routing but few of them have holistic countermeasure against them (especially combined misbehavior). In this paper, we propose a novel network protocol to address these imperative issues that have been ignored in existing literature. We present the scalability evaluation of our network protocol through the simulation in NS2. We derive the complete analytical model behind our design. The respective simulation result from NS2 also proves the correctness of the analytical model. The simulation results on the network performance improvement compared to other solutions are also presented.
Time-Sharing Based Rate Adaptation for Multicast Over Wireless Fading Channels in Mobile Wireless Networks

We propose a time-sharing based rate adaptation scheme for reliable multicasting over the fading channels in mobile wireless networks. Specifically, the proposed scheme aims at achieving high system throughput/spectral-efficiency by dynamically adjusting the transmission rate according to the variations of channel state information (CSI) of all multicast mobile receivers. First, we formulate the time-sharing based spectral-efficiency optimization problem to obtain the adaptive rate policies. Also, we apply a concatenated error-correction model for reliable mobile multicast. Then, we derive the solution for the optimization problem when the fading channels of multicast receivers are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.). Also conducted is a set of simulation evaluations which show the performance superiority of our proposed adaptive rate policy over the worst-case SNR-dominating policy and the best-case SNR-dominating policy.
Human defensin 5 is stored in precursor form in normal Paneth cells and is expressed by some villous epithelial cells and by metaplastic Paneth cells in the colon in inflammatory bowel disease

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Intestinal epithelial cell derived antimicrobial peptides of the defensin family may play a major role in host defence against microorganisms. Our aims were to (i) isolate, characterise, and investigate the processing of human defensin 5 (HD-5) in normal Paneth cells and (ii) investigate expression of HD-5 in active inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). METHODS Antiserum raised against chemically synthesised putative mature HD-5 was used for immunohistochemistry and purification of HD-5 from extracts of normal terminal ileal crypts. RESULTS In normal and Crohn's disease terminal ileum, HD-5 immunoreactivity was seen in Paneth cells and in some villous epithelial cells. Normal colonic mucosa did not express HD-5 but HD-5 immunoreactivity was seen in cells in the colonic crypt region of many IBD samples.N-terminal amino acid sequence analysis of HD-5 purified from normal terminal ileal Paneth cells consistently showed the predicted sequence of the precursor form of the peptide. Following stimulation of isolated intact normal terminal ileal crypts, a truncated form of HD-5, with theN-terminal sequence GEDNQLAIS, was detected in the supernatant. CONCLUSIONS (i) HD-5 is present only in the precursor form in normal terminal ileal Paneth cells and is processed to the mature form during and/or after secretion, (ii) some villous epithelial cells express HD-5, and (iii) HD-5 is expressed by metaplastic Paneth cells in the colon in IBD.