Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stage-dependent Functions of GATA-3 in Lymphocyte Lineage Determination and Type 2 Immunity

textabstractAll eukaryotic cells of the body carry the same DNA. By using specific sets of genes, cells are able to develop into a wide variety of cell types with specific functions (e.g. muscle, neuronal or immune cells) using the same genetic information. Transcription factors regulate which genes are turned ‘on’, and which genes are ‘off ’, allowing the controlled expression of specific genes at specific times and in a specific cell type. A transcription factor (TF) is a protein that binds to a specific DNA-sequence to control the transcription of DNA to mRNA. TFs typically function in a complex with other TFs and accessory proteins that may not have DNA-binding capacity. Some TFs mainly act as activators (e.g. by recruiting RNA polymerase), while others block gene transcription. One TF can carry out both functions, depending on the context: it may be a repressor at one locus and have activating functions at another. The function of a TF can also depend on the cell type in which it acts and on the developmental stage of a cell; e.g. one TF can have a different function in a stem cell than in a fully differentiated cell.
LONG-TERM MONITORING AND SAFETY EVALUATION OF A METRO STATION DURING DEEP EXCAVATION

The subway systems play a vital role in alleviating the urban traffic congestion problem. Recently, lots of underground railway transportation networks have been opened to operation or are being constructed in major cities of China. Due to the complexity and uncertainty inherent in excavation activities, metro station excavations brings a challenge to civil engineering communities and poses threat to the public safety in metropolitan regions. The stability of deep excavation and adjacent buildings has gained highlighted concerns during metro station construction. A viable and practical way to ensure the construction safety is by executing real-time monitoring strategy with the aid of advanced sensing and signal processing technologies. In this paper, the design and implementation of a long-term monitoring and safety evaluation system for the deep excavation of a metro station has been addressed. A software platform has been developed for analyzing and processing monitoring data based on the concept of dynamic construction inverse analysis, which includes the database system, the dynamic construction feedback system, and the deformation forecasting system. Field monitoring results in various categories during deep excavation are presented. After examining the field measurement results, the following conclusions are drawn: (i) the deformation of the diaphragm wall and ground surface settlements increased with the excavation depth; (ii) the location of the maximum horizontal displacement moved downward to the excavation face during excavation; (iii) the axial forces of struts transferred from the first row to the others during excavation; and (iv) the monitoring results indicate that the braced excavation remained overall stable at the construction stage. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. † Presenter: Email: rl@hzmetro.com Corresponding author: Email: cexwye@polyu.edu. hk 1877–7058 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.proeng. 2011.07. 099 Procedia Engineering 14 (2011) 785–792 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. 786 L. RAN et al. / Procedia Engineering 14 (2011) 785–792
Bioremediation of V5+ and Ni2+ by indigenous Marinobacter Goseongensis isolated from South African Vanadium Mine Waste

Study assessed the bioremediation of V5+ and Ni2+ in wastewater by an indigenous bacterial species. Bacterial species was isolated from mine water and characterized by sequencing. The isolate appeared to tolerate V5+ and Ni2+ separately at concentrations ranging between 650 to 700 mg/L and 250 and 300 mg/L (24h-LC5), respectively. Removal of V5+ and Ni2+ in the media was inversely proportional to the test metal concentrations. Marinobacter goseongensis could remove more than 99.99 % of both metals at 50 mg/L at below the maximum permissible limit of 0.1 mg/L. This indigenous bacterial isolate can be used in V5+ and Ni2+ bioremediation.
AGGREGATION STATISTICS AND THE METHODS OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH FOR WEIGHTING CRITERIA IN MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION MAKING

The problem of determining weights of criteria appears in many contexts in multiple criteria decision making. For solving this task it is necessary to determine individual influence of each considered criterion. Each criterion can be either quantitative when each of attributes can take different values or qualitative in which case only ranking of weights of criterias is possible. The weights for each criterion could be provided by experiments, tests or as experts opinions. This paper presents methodology for obtaining an aggregated measure, in the form of arithmetic means, for quantitative decision making. The measure is obtained experimentally by combining statistical methodology based on regression and factor analysis on one hand and operational research approaches data envelopment analysis as an objective and analytical hierarchical process as subjective method. For practical demonstration of proposed method authors used data on the students’ marks, from the official database at the Faculty of organizational sciences, University of Belgrade, to determine the weights of the first-year subjects in order to predict future students’ success on each of the study programs, separately.
THE ROLE OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE IN OPTIMISING SOIL NUTRIENT STATUS AND GRASSLAND PRODUCTIVITY IN NORTHERN IRELAND, WHILE REDUCING NUTRIENT LOSSES TO AIR OR WATER

Precision Agriculture (PA) is not widely practiced in Northern European grassland systems, yet production and environmental benefits could potentially be achieved through the adoption of this technology and a more precise approach to soil and nutrient management. Excessive application of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) to agricultural land in Northern Ireland (NI) over several decades has contributed appreciably to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and the eutrophication of freshwater bodies. Agriculture is responsible for 28% of total GHG emissions in NI. Improving the efficiency of nutrient management on farms is therefore important if the UK target of an 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050 (relative to 1990), is to be achieved. The trophic status of our inland waterways and lakes are also cause for concern, with 63% of water bodies in NI not achieving the “Good or better” status required by the EU Water Framework Directive. The loss of nutrients from agricultural soils has been the single biggest cause of lake and river nutrient enrichment. With the introduction of a Nitrates Action Programme for NI (under the EU Nitrates Directive) in 2006, restrictions have been placed on fertiliser N and P use in an attempt to minimise nutrient surpluses in our soil and N and P losses to water. However, while nutrient surpluses are contributing to environmental problems, areas of nutrient deficiency also exist. Grass yield variation within individual fields can be as much as 4 t ha -1 , primarily as a result of variability in soil N mineralisation potential and N availability. Low soil sulphur (S) levels are also common and 64% of our soils have recently been reported as having sub-optimal pH. Adopting a PA approach to grassland management could potentially improve the efficiency of nutrient management decisions, and thereby enhance production while minimising detrimental environmental impacts. The pace of technology development in recent years has been rapid. Many new soil and crop sensors have come onto the market, along with navigation devices, Remote Sensing and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The uptake of new technology by grassland farmers however has been slow. Research is required to assess the feasibility, practicality, cost-benefits and environmental consequences of adopting PA management in grassland systems across Northern Europe. Introduction Permanent grassland systems cover more than 60 million hectares across the EU, accounting for 34.6% of the total utilised agricultural area (EIP-AGRI, 2016). The highest percentages are found in Ireland (80% of the utilised agricultural area), the UK (65%) and Slovenia (65%). In intensive dairy farming systems within the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, parts of Germany, France and Denmark the mild, moist temperate climatic conditions support a prolonged grass growing season. Soils tend to be fertile, temperatures are moderate and there
Simulating Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Network using Cyclostationary Technique

----------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract - The demand for wireless communication applications are increasing and the available electromagnetic spectrum band is getting crowded geometrically. Spectrum sensing helps to detect the spectrum holes (unutilized bands of the spectrum) in providing high spectral resolution capability. Therefore for efficient utilization of spectrum, we need to sniff the spectrum to determine whether it is being used by licensed owner or not. In an attempt to contribute to the possibility of adopting dynamic spectrum access as an alternative radio spectrum regulation system. The paper review different spectrum sensing techniques used in finding spectrum holes in available radio resource, model and simulate cyclostationary based spectrum sensing technique and classify primary user signals of different modulation scheme. The results of this study show that accurate and prompt modulation classification is possible beyond the lower bound of 5 dB acclaimed in literature. The performance of the detection technique is measured in terms of the ROC curve. The proposed model is simulated on a Laptop PC running on Windows 10 platform and requires MATLAB R2015a/Simulink and LibSVM.
Identification of Space-Time Flows of Moving Objects

— The goal of our work is to identify flow lines of moving objects in videos. These flows can then be used to represent the underlying movement. Unlike studies using shape-based representations, this proposal uses all the image information to build denser flows for motion representation. We begin by segmenting each video frame into a large set of non-overlapping uniform-color regions called superpixels. These superpixels are then tracked over a number of frames to generate flow lines. The ideas reported in this work can be applied to the task of creating motion patterns, which in turn are important for identifying complex movements of objects and predict behavior. Experiments are performed on a set of synthetic and real-world motion sequences.
Collaborative vendor-buyer model with stochastic demand

Abstract. This study develops a collaborative vendor-buyer model with stochastic demand. An optimal replenishing and pricing policy for each of the three scenarios is derived. The first scenario does not consider collaboration and price discount. The second scenario considers collaboration without price discount. The last scenario considers both the collaboration and price discount. Since it usually benefits the vendor more than the buyer when the buyer and the vendor collaborate, a quantity discount pricing strategy is necessary to entice the buyer to accept the collaboration. A negotiation factor is incorporated to balance the profit sharing between both players. In addition, we have proved that the collaborative advantage is usually more significant when the demand mean value decreases or the standard deviation increases. A numerical example and sensitivity analysis are provided to validate the theory.
LocNet: Global localization in 3D point clouds for mobile robots

Global localization in 3D point clouds is a challenging problem of estimating the pose of robots without priori knowledge. In this paper, a solution to this problem is presented by achieving place recognition and metric pose estimation in the global priori map. Specifically, we present a semi-handcrafted representation learning method for LIDAR point cloud using siamese LocNets, which states the place recognition problem to a similarity modeling problem. With the final learned representations by LocNet, a global localization framework with range-only observations is proposed. To demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of our global localization system, KITTI dataset is employed for comparison with other algorithms, and also on our own multi-session datasets collected by long-time running robot to see the performance under semistatic dynamics. The result shows that our system can achieve both high accuracy and efficiency.
Efficient Handling of Certificates within Public-Key Infrastructures

: - The paper addresses the problem of efficiently handling certificates within public-key infrastructures, from both the communication traffic and computational load points of view. The main state-of-the-art schemes, recently proposed from both the academic and the industrial world, are discussed and the most relevant security, timeliness and efficiency features outlined. A thorough analytical investigation on the attainable performances is then carried out. Particular emphasis is placed on the computational load deriving from application of each scheme, because this matter has not yet received the attention it deserves.
Efficient Color Edge Detection Using Saturated Color Space

—Saturating color spaces aims to approach the image pixels belonging to the same regions chromatically which hereby causes a better segmentation. However a simple saturation may produce spurious edges and disappear some real edges. In this paper, we propose an improved algorithm which preserves much efficiently the real edges and prevent creating spurious ones. Comparing the results obtained by our algorithm with those by the recently proposed method of Chung et al. [7] demonstrates the superiority of our algorithm.
The Effectiveness of Kahoot! as a Pre-lesson Assessment Tool

Background on EV203 EV203 Physical Geography is a core course at the United States Military Academy. Every student at West Point must complete this course in order to obtain a degree from this institution. The Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering (GEnE) at the United States Military Academy (USMA) offers teaches and directs EV203. The audience for this course recently changed from yearlings (sophomores) to plebes (freshmen) during the first semester of the 2016 academic year. The teaching pool for EV203 consists of a mix of first year and more experienced instructors, but all first year GEnE instructors in their first semester of instructing teach EV203, which is affectionately known by the cadets as “Dirt. ”
Microorganisms from deep, high temperature sandstones: constraints on microbial colonization

Cores were collected from Late Cretaceous and Early Tertiary rocks in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado, USA, to investigate the origins of subsurface microorganisms under geological conditions likely to constrain microbial transport and survival. The sampled strata from 856–862, 1996–1997 and 2091–2096 m recorded peak paleotemperatures of 120–145°C from 40–5 million years ago, while present temperatures range from 43 to 85°C. Cores were analyzed for culturable anaerobic bacteria (Fe(III)- and Mn(IV)-reducing bacteria, fermenters, sulfate reducers, nitrate reducers and methanogens), ester-linked phospholipid fatty acid and selected enzyme and physiological activities. Measurable but low biomass (total phospholipid fatty acid) and anaerobic bacteria, primarily Fe(III) reducers and fermenters, were present in samples from the 856–862 m core. Cores from greater depths yielded only a single positive enrichment and lower biomass values. Methanogens and sulfate reducers were not detected in any of the samples nor were bacteria that could grow with methane and any added electron acceptors. 16S rRNA genes cloned from products of PCR amplification of DNA extracted from an 858 m, 65°C, Fe(III)-reducing enrichment were most closely related to bacteria in the genus Desulfotomaculum, Gram-positive, spore-forming sulfate-reducing bacteria. Assuming the maximum temperatures would have eliminated any entrained bacteria, these anaerobic microorganisms likely migrated into the shallower Wasatch formation within the last 5 million years. However, the deepest stratum sampled was hydrologically isolated and lacked any indication of microbial colonization by all biological measures. Hydrologic connection to the surface, high maximum temperatures and the presence of fractures are probably the primary factors that control distribution of microorganisms in these deep rock environments.
A size-structured model for renewable resource management, with application to resources of rock lobster in the South-East Atlantic

It is currently not possible to determine the age of individuals of the South-East Atlantic spiny lobsters Jasus lalandii and J. tristani. Use of classical age-structured techniques for investigating population dynamics and resource exploitation potential cannot therefore be considered. Elsewhere, this problem has been dealt with by resorting to population models based on population size structure. A particular formulation of the size-structured approach is presented here. A novel feature of this formulation is the use of a beta probability distribution function as the basic equation for calculating the annual proportions of individuals moving into larger size-classes. Two applications of the model are presented as examples of the usefulness of the approach. The first is an analysis of catch size frequency data for J. tristani to estimate adult natural survivorship. The second is an investigation of the impact of interannual fluctuations in moult increment on the J. lalandii fishery. Neither analysis woul.
The Earliest Land Plants

Considerable progress has been made in documenting evidence of very early plants starting in the basal Ordovician employing dispersed spore, phytodebris, and mesofossil data. Macrofossil evidence is sparse until Late Silurian, but recent new data are improving our understanding of aspects of earliest plants. The considerable information about the possible source of cryptospores and trilete spores especially from the well-preserved mesofossils of the Late Silurian and Early Devonian is summarized. Promising avenues of research are the study of spore ultrastructure, and neo-paleo comparisons between newly discovered resistant components of extant bryophytes and fragmentary fossil remains. Recent macrofossil discoveries in the Late Silurian advance our understanding of early events in plant evolution and raise new questions about the timing of evolution or relationships among earliest (mostly vascular) plants.
THE ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION OF SOIL TREATMENT OF CRUDE OIL POLLUTED TROPICAL NIGER DELTA

Several contributions on the ecological interaction between hydrocarbon and soil habitat relationship in different parts of Niger potential of plants species, this study was aimed evaluating the suitability of three species (Peltophorum retusa Delta soil habitat. Standard field and laboratory methods of data collection and analyses were adopted. Result showed varying increase in water repellency w also evaluated the trajectories of water movement in the phytoapplication restoration based on species biological performance and infiltration time rate of the species treated sandy loam soil. pterocarpum infiltration dynamics of the post the soil porosity, texture, structure, particle den matter (OM), highest hydrocarbon removal efficiency (low THC content), enhanced accumulation quotient and root formation. It can thus be proposed as part of a bioremediation integradation in environmental r
Impact of Beamforming and Interference on the Average Throughput of IEEE 802.11ac in a Typical Home Environment

Summary In this research, we carry out experiments to determine the impact of beamforming on the average throughput of IEEE 802.11ac in a residential home environment. Our results show that the beamforming provides significant gain in average throughput of IEEE 802.11ac at distances close to the router However, beamforming does not provide any significant gain in average throughput at large distances (more than 12m in our experimental test bed). Another important feature of our work is to study the co-existence of both IEEE 802.11ac and IEEE 802.11n in a typical home environment. We carry out experiments in a real home environment to quantify the impact of Co-Channel Interference (CCI) and Adjacent Channel Interfere (ACI) caused by IEEE 802.11n (at channel widths of 20MHz and 40MHz) on the average throughput of IEEE 802.11ac. We found that CCI and ACI caused with 40MHz channel width severely deteriorates the average throughput of IEEE 802.11ac compared to CCI and ACI caused with the channel width of 20MHz. Our results reveal that in a typical residential environment, IEEE 802.11ac should be deployed with IEEE 802.11n operating at channel width of 20MHz in order to get maximum benefit of high average throughput provided by IEEE 802.11ac.
Garden bird feeding predicts the structure of urban avian assemblages

Households across the developed world cumulatively spend many millions of dollars annually on feeding garden birds. While beneficial effects on avian assemblages are frequently claimed, the relationships between levels of garden bird feeding and local avian populations are unknown. Using data from a large UK city, we show that both avian species richness and abundance vary across different socioeconomic neighbourhood types. We examined whether patterns in bird feeding could explain this variation. The density of bird feeding stations across the urban environment was strongly positively related to avian abundance, after controlling for differences in habitat availability. This effect was almost exclusively driven by the abundance of those species known to utilize garden feeding stations frequently. In contrast, the density of feeding stations had no effect on avian species richness. We also examined variation in the proportion of households in different communities that provide food for birds, a factor that is not correlated with feeder density. The prevalence of bird feeding across different neighbourhoods declined as socioeconomic deprivation increased, and increased with avian species richness and abundance. Our results suggest that the provision of supplementary food for birds by multiple landowners across a city can impact the status of urban bird populations. The potential for harnessing these actions for conservation needs to be explored.
D2.5: Evaluation of second functional prototype and updated requirements

This deliverable reports on the evaluation of the second functional prototype. It provides an overview of the second functional demonstrator in Section 3, and elaborates on the evaluation design and outcomes in Section 4. In addition, this document reports on an online experiment that was performed as an additional study (using the same prototype) to gather insights for the coaching strategy and dialogue design process in WP3 (Section 5). In the last section of this deliverable, we present updated requirements resulting from the evaluation outcomes (Section 6).