Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of four indigenous sheep breeds ofBalochistan, Pakistan by random amplified polymorphic DNAs

Genetic diversity among four indigenous breeds of sheep namely Mengali, Balochi, Beverigh and Harnai of Balochistan was detected by random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. Nineteen RAPD primers were initially applied and seventeen were chosen for further analysis, based on band pattern quality, reproducibility and presence of bands. An average of 92 RAPD fragments were obtained by using 17 primers and out of the 36 fragments (39.13%) illustrated monomorphism while, 56 bands (60.87%) were polymorphic in all the four sheep breeds. The number of bands amplified in all the sheep breeds ranged from 2 to 10. The highest number of polymorphic loci 40 was observed in the Mengali breed, while the lowest 28 was in Balochi. Further, 33 and 31 polymorphic loci were seen in Beverigh and Harnai breeds, respectively. The overall gene diversity was highest in the Mengali (0.1474) while the lowest in Balochi breed (0.0998). Results of genetic similarities showed closer proximity between Balochi and Beverigh (0.992), Balochi and Harnai (0.992), and between Beverigh and Harnai (0.996). The resemblance was observed between Mengali and Balochi (0.918), between Mengali and Beverigh breeds (0.931) and between Mengali and Harnai breeds (0.925). The high level of genetic similarity between Balochi, Beverigh and Harnai sheep indicated the close relationship that might be due to common habitat. Further the present study highlighted the presence of diversity among and within breeds that can be used in the selection or crossbreeding programs of sheep. The present study suggests that RAPD-PCR can effectively be used to determine the genetic distances among the sheep breeds. Key words: Genetic distance, polymorphism, random amplified Polymorphic DNA.
Lexicography as Feature Engineering : automatic discovery of distinguishing semantic factors for synonyms

Lexicography as Feature Engineering: automatic discovery of distinguishing semantic factors for synonyms A thesis presented to the Graduate Program in Computational Linguistics Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Orion Montoya Many different techniques can group synonymous words together, but it is much harder to untangle the nuance and emphasis borne by individual members of a synonym set. The distributional hypothesis holds that you may understand a word by the contexts in which it appears. This thesis applies a sort of transposition of the distributional hypothesis to groups of synonyms. I postulate that, by aggregating the differences among the contexts of similar words, one may discover the range of semantic factors borne by a synonym group as a whole, as well as the implications of choosing an individual member of a synset. By applying an analytical framework along these lines to extract semantic factors for set of synonyms, I initially find factors that are of a different sort than the factors used in most decompositional analyses, and see promise in developing the approach further with varying methods of feature extraction.
A K‐band low‐noise amplifier in 0.18‐μm CMOS technology for SUB‐1‐V operation

A K‐band low‐noise amplifier (LNA) was realized in a standard 0.18‐μm CMOS technology. The cascaded common‐source configuration of four stages was adopted for low voltage operation and high gain performance. In addition, the gate‐source transformer feedback technique was employed to achieve a low noise figure (NF), which also enabled a single power supply operation and without using any resistive components. Under a supply voltage of only 0.8 V and a DC power consumption PDC of 12.6 mW, the measured gain and NF are 14.5 and 5.3 dB at 21 GHz, respectively. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 2202–2204, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24530
A Hybrid Acoustic-Articulatory Model of the Speech Spectrum

The object of the presentation is spectrum-toarea mapping in the framework of a speech analysis model. The proposal is to represent speech spectra via a hybrid model that comprises the morphological parameters of a quasi-lossless model of the main vocal tract cavity, which fixes the formant frequencies, and spectral parameters that specify the formant bandwidths and the formants and anti-formants owing to side-cavities as well as the glottal formant and spectral slope owing to the speech sound source. A study of feasibility shows that hybrid models are flexible enough to combine the ability of simulating any spectral contour with the possibility to infer plausible tract shapes for a subset of phonetic segments.
- 59-2 The DGP and Finite Lag Order VAR Expression

This paper discusses asymptotic properties of hypothesis tests to determine the cointegration ranks for vector time series that are allowable to be represented as infinite lag order vector autoregressive processes. First, it is shown that the test proposed by Saikkonen and Luukkonen (1997) (the SL test) based on long but finite lag order vector autoregression approximation as a simple extension of the well-known Johansen's likelihood ratio (LR) approach, is not on the same level of asymptotic validity as that for the Johansen's LR test in the conventional sense. Second, we propose a new test as some correction of the previous one, constructed by manipulatively altering first-step regression in the SL test, and it is established that this test tends to be more powerful performances than the SL test and possesses essentially the same asymptotic properties as the SL test under the nulls. Through some Monte Carlo experiments, we finds some examples that finite sample performances of the two tests do not sufficiently reflect their asymptotics. 小瀧先生 13.7. 25 8:12 AM ページ 57
Design of observer-based 2-d control systems with delays satisfying asymptotic stablitiy condition

This paper is concerned with the asymptotic stability of 2-d linear discrete systems with delays by means of observer-based controllers. The key point to accomplish it is the introduction of a Lyapunov function, which evaluates the energy of these 2-d systems and allows us to adopt the linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. Finally, we emphasize that work on the asymptotic stability of these kinds of systems via 2-d observers with delays is still a novelty, to the best of author's knowledge.
Study of the influence of commitment in social marketing: the case of “Coordinadora de lucha contra la droga, barrio vivo”

In this paper a theoretical model of sustainable behavior is developed. Through this theoretical model, that we have called Commitment Model Applied to Social Marketing, we propose to establish a relation between the use of social marketing strategies from an integrative perspective and the consumer engagement or commitment. The methodology used has been a literature review about some of the most important social marketing and engagement theories. To explain how to apply the model we have used the case method, through the study of the non profit organization: “Coordinadora de Lucha contra la Droga, Barrio Vivo” (“Coordinator for Combating Drugs, Living Neighborhood”), in Algeciras, a city in the of South-East of the province of Cádiz, in the area denominated Campo de Gibraltar. This area has experienced a dramatic amount of drug consumption by a significant part of its youth population, facilitated by its geographical proximity to North Africa.
Iterative-Learning Strategy for the Development of Application-Specific Atomistic Force Fields

Emerging data-driven approaches in materials science have triggered the development of numerous machine-learning force fields. In practice, they are constructed by training a statistical model on a reference database to predict potential energy and/or atomic forces. Although most of the force fields can accurately recover the properties of the training set, some of them are becoming useful for actual molecular dynamics simulations. In this work, we employ a simple iterative-learning strategy for the development of machine-learning force fields targeted at specific simulations (applications). The strategy involves (1) preparing and fingerprinting a diverse reference database of atomic configurations and forces, (2) generating a pool of machine-learning force fields by learning the reference data, (3) validating the force fields against a series of targeted applications, and (4) selectively and recursively improving the force fields that are unsuitable for a given application while keeping their performance.
The Relationship Between Iron Deficiency Anemia and Reflux-Related Renal Injury in Infant and Children

Received: Jan-2015 Revised: Feb-2015 Accepted: Feb -2015 Introduction: Anemia may be defined either quantitatively or physiologically. A diagnosis of anemia is determined by comparison of the patient's hemoglobin level with age-specific and sex-specific normal values. The easiest quantitative definition of anemia is any hemoglobin or hematocrit value that is 2 standard deviations (SDs) (95% confidence limits) below the mean for age and gender. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between anemia and reflux nephropathy in patients with vesicoureteral reflux. Material and Methods: This case-control study included 260 children aged from 6 months to 2 years. They were divided into two groups of 130 children: the case group suffered from VUR with reflux nephropathy and the control group had VUR without reflux nephropathy. Results: The results of our study showed that the prevalence of anemia in the reflux nephropathy group was not considerably different than that of the control group. Conclusions: We conclude that there is no direct correlation between anemia and reflux nephropathy in patients with vesicoureteral reflux.
Comparision of Intubating Conditions at 60 Seconds with Different Doses of Rocuronium Using the Timing Principle

Objective: To evaluate the intubating conditions with rocuronium at 0.6 mg/kg (2*ED 95) and 0.9 mg/kg (3*ED 95) at 60 s using the timing principle. Methods: 60 patients were divided into 2 groups of 30 each. Group A received 0.9 mg/kg and group B received 0.6 mg/kg of rocuronium. Intubation was done at 60 s. The Train of four monitoring was done at the adductor pollicis muscle. The TOF count at intubation and time to loss of TOF were noted and compared. Results: Intubating conditions were excellent 13 (65%) in group A compared to 9 (45%) in group B. The TOF count at intubation was not statistically significant (p=0.677) between the groups whereas time to loss of TOF (p=0.03) were significant between the groups. Conclusion: Clinically acceptable intubating conditions were found in both groups but the conditions were better with group A in comparision with group B.
The Association between Quality of Life and Religious Coping in Lung Cancer Patients: A Qualitative Case Study

Lung cancer is a type of cancer that is difficult to cure, yet the number of lung cancer patients continues to increase every year. Due the difficulty of fully recovering from lung cancer, patients need an effective coping strategy to help them maintain their quality of life. The present research is a qualitative case study aimed to determine the linkage between religious coping and quality of life among lung cancer patients. The subjects consisted of 5 lung cancer patients who were undergoing lung cancer treatment at a Bandung regional hospital specializing in lung and respiratory diseases. Data was obtained through questionnaires and interview. The questionnaires consisted of the WHOQOL-BREF to measure the degree of quality of life and the BRIEF RCOPE to assess the type of religious coping used. The results showed a link between quality of life and religious coping in several participants. The relationship between the two variables depended on an individual’s value toward God and their comprehension of religion as an aid that helps them manage their pain, their commitment to God and religion, as well as the style of religious coping used to solve their problem. The results of this research can potentially be used by hospitals, families, and caregivers to help patients improve their quality of life while dealing with cancer and its effects.
Exploring ways to increase public investments in agricultural water management and irrigation for improved agricultural productivity in Southern Africa

This paper explores ways to increase public investments in agricultural water management and irrigation for improved agricultural productivity in Southern Africa, with a specific focus on Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. The analysis was based on a critical review of literature and assessment of the national agricultural investment plans and agricultural/water policies in the study countries. Despite the potential to improve agricultural productivity, irrigation does not currently play a significant role in Southern African agriculture. There have been efforts and formal commitments at the continental, regional and countrylevels to promote investments in agricultural water management and irrigation to improve and sustain agricultural productivity. However, despite these commitments, actual implementation has been a challenge and the first 5 years of national agricultural investment plans have passed or are now coming to an end without much progress having been made regarding actual investments. Lack of adequate resources and institutional capacity have been some of the challenges affecting implementation of the investment plans to meet commitments in sustainable land and water management. Overall, as countries plan for the second phase of the CAADP programme, there are opportunities to ensure that investments in agricultural water management and irrigation and complementary technologies are prioritised and allocated adequate resources for implementation.
Does technique change affect muscular support at the knee in sidestep cutting

Technique modification can reduce knee loads during sidestepping but its effect on muscular support has yet to be identified. Electromyography data was collected from ten muscles during sidestepping under planned and unplanned conditions, prior to and following training. Flexion/Extension and Medial/Lateral co-contraction ratios and total activation were calculated for pre-contact and weight acceptance phases. The only observed change due to training was unplanned tasks becoming more laterally dominated and planned tasks more medially. While significant these changes are nonfunctional as the ratios still represent high levels of co-contraction. Technique modification training should lower anterior cruciate ligament loads as it results in reduced knee moments but similar levels of muscular support, thus lowering the risk of injury.
Preventing the anti-angiogenic escape through the endothelial adhesome

αVβ3 integrin is a promising target for therapy due to its upregulation in angiogenic vasculature. However, Cilengitide, an αVβ3 integrin inhibitor (RGD mimetic), has failed late stage clinical trials due to lack of overall survival benefit. We have previously shown that depleting β3-integrin acutely in the mouse endothelium leads to smaller tumours in vivo, whereas constitutive depletion of endothelial expression of this molecule causes an increase in tumour angiogenesis. In the context of cancer therapy, long-term depletion or inhibition of β3-integrin is subject to treatment escape via unknown mechanisms of resistance. At the molecular level, much of the regulation of endothelial cell migration and adhesion, and therefore angiogenesis, occurs via the ‘adhesome’ – the sub-proteome present in focal adhesion complexes. We isolated and compared WT, β3-HET, β3-KO and αVβ3-inhibitor-treated adhesomes by mass spectrometry. Among approximately 300 proteins whose abundance significantly changed, three intermediate filament proteins were upregulated in the β3-integrin depleted adhesome, namely: nestin, plectin and vimentin. All three molecules are known to regulate integrins and play a role in angiogenesis. Given this upregulation of intermediate filaments in the adhesome, I set out to determine whether they are playing a differential role in angiogenesis depending on β3-integrin depletion. At first, I took an siRNA approach to determine the functional consequence of knocking down each target, but, overall, results from this approach were inconclusive. However, I observed that Withaferin A, an inhibitor of vimentin, impaired proliferation and migration of β3-HET, but not WT, endothelial cells. I then decided to look at the effects of Withaferin A on subcutaneous tumour growth in vivo, in combination with long-term endothelial-specific depletion of β3-integrin (via the β3-floxed Tie1.Cre model). The drug did not significantly inhibit tumour growth, but tumour angiogenesis was significantly reduced in the Cre +ve, and not in the Cre -ve background. Similarly, Withaferin A inhibited microvascular sprouting of β3-floxed Tie1.Cre +ve aortic rings, but not of Cre -ve rings. I also utilised pSico technology as an shRNA delivery system and observed impaired microvascular sprouting when depleting nestin. Additionally, I generated tdTomato-labelled nestin constructs which could be utilised to visualise nestin in vitro. Overall, the findings described in this thesis suggest co-targeting β3-integrin and intermediate filaments, such as those made up of vimentin, as an improved anti-angiogenic strategy.
An Efficient Hardware Architecture of Coordinate Transformation for Panorama Unrolling of Catadioptric Omnidirectional Images

In this paper, we present an efficient hardware architecture of unrolling image mapper of catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems. The catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems generate images of 360 degrees of view and need to be transformed into panorama images in rectangular coordinate. In most application, it has to perform the panorama unrolling in real-time and at low-cost, especially for high-resolution images. The proposed hardware architecture adopts a software/hardware cooperative structure and employs several optimization schemes using look-up-table(LUT) of coordinate conversion. To avoid the on-line division operation caused by the coordinate transformation algorithm, the proposed architecture has the LUT which has pre-computed division factors. And then, the amount of memory used by the LUT is reduced to 1/4 by using symmetrical characteristic compared with the conventional architecture. Experimental results show that the proposed hardware architecture achieves an effective real-time performance and lower implementation cost, and it can be applied to other kinds of catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems.
Performance characteristics of a passive direct formate fuel cell

A passive direct formate fuel cell using ambient air is designed, fabricated, and tested. This fuel cell does not use any auxiliary devices such as pumps, gas compressors, and gas blowers. The simple and compact structure well fits the need of portable applications. In this fuel cell, a solution having formate and alkali is anode fuel, while ambient oxygen is used as cathode oxidant, and a cation exchange membrane serves as an ionic conductor between two electrodes. Our performance tests have shown that a peak power density of 16.6 mW cm−2 as well as an open‐circuit voltage of 0.97 V are achieved by the present fuel cell at 60 °C, when running on anode fuel containing 5.0 M sodium formate and 3.0 M sodium hydroxide. This performance is even 31.7% higher than that achieved by an active direct formate fuel cell reported in the open literature (12.6 mW cm−2), which also uses a cation exchange membrane. The effects of the operating parameters are also investigated, including the concentrations of fuel and alkali as well as the operating temperature. The fuel solution at low concentrations results in an inadequate local concentration of reactants, so that the anodic kinetics becomes sluggish. Although increasing the sodium hydroxide concentration enhances the anodic formate oxidation kinetics, too high concentration of sodium hydroxide leads to too many active sites being covered by hydroxide ions and thus adsorption and reaction of formate ions being limited. Moreover, too high concentration of sodium hydroxide or sodium formate also leads to the fuel solution being highly viscous, hindering the motion of various ions, as well as thus increasing both concentration loss and the ohmic loss. The compromise between benefits and the drawbacks of using high‐concentration reactants results in an optimal composition of the fuel solution, which contains 5.0 M sodium formate and 3.0 M sodium hydroxide. Furthermore, the present fuel cell delivers a voltage around 0.6 V for 20 hours at 4.0 mA cm−2.
Estimating Mean Sea Level Change from the TOPEX and Jason Altimeter Missions

The Jason-2 satellite altimeter mission was launched in June 2008, extending the record of precision sea level measurements that was initiated with the launch of TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992 and continued with the launch of Jason-1 in December 2001. We have used the measurements from these three missions to construct a seamless record of global mean sea level change from 1993 to the present. We present the results of our calibration activities, including data comparisons during the “tandem period” of the missions, during which we solve for biases between the missions, as well as comparisons to independent tide gauge sea level measurements. When the entire record is assembled, the average rate of sea level rise from 1993–2009 is 3.4 ± 0.4 mm/year. There is considerable interannual variation due to ENSO-related processes, which include the period of lower sea level rise over the last three years of the time series during the recent La Nina event.