Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterisation of homologous sphingosine 1-phosphate lyase ( S 1 PL ) isoforms in the bacterial pathogen Burkholderia pseudomallei

1 EastChem School of Chemistry, David Brewster Road, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FJ, UK. 2 Institute of Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Max Born Crescent, Edinburgh, EH9 3BF, UK. 3 Geoffrey Pope Building, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4QD, UK. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email Dominic.Campopiano@ed.ac. uk
A Small Forward-Looking Macroeconomic Model for Emu

In this paper we estimate a small forward-looking macroeconomic model for EMU which allows us to analyze the transmission mechanism of the monetary policy implemented by the European Central Bank through an interest rate rule that stabilizes inflation and output. The estimation of this model, which comprises forwardlooking versions of the IS and the Phillips curves as well as the interest rate rule, is conducted by GMM using quarterly data from 1986 to 2000. We find that this simple model matches the dynamic properties of the output gap, inflation and the interest rate in EMU quite accurately. We also perform several exercises that show the response of output, inflation and interest rates to different kinds of shocks affecting the economy, under the assumption that the ECB implements the monetary policy described by the estimated interest rate rule. Comparisons with backward-looking models for the United States show that our forward-looking model produces less persistence of the endogenous variables in response to shocks of the same magnitude.
To assess whether Resting Anterior EEG Alpha Asymmetry can be considered as a Trait Marker for Depression

DOI: 10.21276/sjams.2018. 6.4. 70 Abstract: Our finding of anterior EEG alpha power in patients may be unstable. Several reasons may contribute to this instability. First, there is preliminary evidence on an association of state affect and EEG alpha power asymmetry in depression. For this reason, we have not explored the relation of the subjects’ self-reported mood and anterior EEG asymmetry, but neither in healthy controls nor in depressed patients did we find a significant relation between positive affect, negative affect or a combined measure of mood and anterior EEG asymmetry for methodology. Thus, we did not find evidence that state mood is linked to variations in frontal EEG asymmetry, but, of course, we cannot exclude this possibility. To sum up, the findings reported in this study add to the growing body of evidence to show alterations of anterior brain activation in depression. Since anterior EEG asymmetry lacked temporal stability in depressed patients in this study, it appears too premature to consider anterior EEG alpha power asymmetry a trait marker for depression. Further research is needed to uncover the temporal characteristics of anterior EEG asymmetry to clinical features of depression. It is in this spirit that the present remarks are offered.
A Simulated Annealing Approach to Electrical Resistivity Tomography

In this study, a new approach to Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) data inversion was investigated. ERT is a geophysical method for imaging the subsurface. An electrical current is injected into the surface, and the electrical properties of the subsurface is determined from measurements of the voltage difference. The objective of these measurements are to estimate the unknown resistivity distribution of the subsurface from information gathered on the surface. The most common way to approach this problem is by the local optimization method, least squares. Due to the ill-posedness of inverse problems, least squares method require a prior information of the subsurface. This may not be readily available. A prior information is needed to form an approximated initial model, and employ appropriate regularizations. In this study, we use Simulated Annealing, to estimate the resistivity distribution of a resistor network. Simulated Annealing is a stochastic optimization method for approximating global optimum. This method does not require a prior information or regularizations, and can approximate solutions in a large search spaces. An algorithm was developed and implemented from scratch for this study. We showed that the resistivity distribution of a network, can be approximated using Simulated Annealing. However, problem of local indeterminable resistivity is observed for challenging resistor distributions. Time consumption is one of the main obstacle for Simulated Annealing to be a competitive optimization method. Practice, limitations and improvements of the method is also discussed in this thesis.
The Illocutionary Act Produced by Kate Reddy to Jack Abelhamer and Clark in “ I Don't Know How She Does IT”

This study aims to discuss the illocutionary acts produced by Kate Reddy in “I don't Know How She Does It” movie, in the business communication with her business partner (Jack Abelhammer) and her boss (Clark). To support this study, the writer uses the theory of speech act by Austin (1962) and Paltridge (2006), illocutionary keywords by Searle (1969,1975), and the theory of context by Gee (2005). This research is a descriptive qualitative research because it is used it to form a descriptive qualitative conclusion to describe the illocutionary act occures in the conversation in this movie. From the findings, the writer finds out that in order to make a sucessful business conversation, Kate produced four types of illocutionary acts to both her partner and her boss: representatives, directives, commissives, and expressives. Based on the findings, there are three similarities that the writer found: 1) the illocutionary act which is not used by Kate to her interlocutors is declarative, 2) the stage of illocutionary act produced by Kate to her interlocutors is the same to each other, and 3) there are the illocutionary act that is rejected by her interlocutors. Besides, the differences are also related to the use of various subtypes of Illocutionary act used by Kate to her partner and to her boss. Finally, the writer concludes that Illocutionary act plays an important role in Kate's utterances since it helps Kate to state her intended meaning behind her utterances; to make a statement to convince, to give suggestions, to make request and many more, to her interlocutors in their business conversation
Biological invasion: The influence of the hidden side of the (epi)genome

Understanding the mechanisms underlying biological invasions and rapid adaptation to global change remains a fundamental challenge, particularly in small populations lacking in genetic variation. Two understudied mechanisms that could facilitate adaptive evolution and adaptive plasticity are the increased genetic variation due to transposable elements (TEs), and associated or independent modification of gene expression through epigenetic changes. Here, we focus on the potential role of these genetic and non‐genetic mechanisms for facilitating invasion success. Because novel or stressful environments are known to induce both epigenetic changes and TE activity, these mechanisms may play an underappreciated role in generating phenotypic and genetic variation for selection to act on. We review how these mechanisms operate, the evidence for how they respond to novel or stressful environments, and how these mechanisms can contribute to the success of biological invasions by facilitating adaptive evolution and phenotypic plasticity. Because genetic and phenotypic variations due to TEs and epigenetic changes are often well regulated or “hidden” in the native environment, the independent and combined contribution of these mechanisms may only become important when populations colonize novel environments. A focus on the mechanisms that generate and control the expression of this variation in new environments may provide insights into biological invasions that would otherwise not be obvious. Global changes and human activities impact on ecosystems and allow new opportunities for biological invasions. Invasive species succeed by adapting rapidly to new environments. The degree to which rapid responses to environmental change could be mediated by the epigenome—the regulatory system that integrates how environmental and genomic variation jointly shape phenotypic variation—requires greater attention if we want to understand the mechanisms by which populations successfully colonize and adapt to new environments. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
Almost Markovian processes from closed dynamics

It is common, when dealing with quantum processes involving a subsystem of a much larger composite closed system, to treat them as effectively memory-less (Markovian). While open systems theory tells us that non-Markovian processes should be the norm, the ubiquity of Markovian processes is undeniable. Here, without resorting to the Born-Markov assumption of weak coupling or making any approximations, we formally prove that processes are close to Markovian ones, when the subsystem is sufficiently small compared to the remainder of the composite, with a probability that tends to unity exponentially in the size of the latter. We also show that, for a fixed global system size, it may not be possible to neglect non-Markovian effects when the process is allowed to continue for long enough. However, detecting non-Markovianity for such processes would usually require non-trivial entangling resources. Our results have foundational importance, as they give birth to almost Markovian processes from composite closed dynamics, and to obtain them we introduce a new notion of equilibration that is far stronger than the conventional one and show that this stronger equilibration is attained.
Plastic Solar Cells

Recent developments in conjugated-polymer-based photovoltaic elements are reviewed. The photophysics of such photoactive devices is based on the photo-induced charge transfer from donor-type semiconducting conjugated polymers to acceptor-type conjugated polymers or acceptor molecules such as Buckminsterfullerene, C60. This photo-induced charge transfer is reversible, ultrafast (within 100 fs) with a quantum efficiency approaching unity, and the charge-separated state is metastable (up to milliseconds at 80 K). Being similar to the first steps in natural photosynthesis, this photo-induced electron transfer leads to a number of potentially interesting applications, which include sensitization of the photoconductivity and photovoltaic phenomena. Examples of photovoltaic architectures are presented and their potential in terrestrial solar energy conversion discussed. Recent progress in the realization of improved photovoltaic elements with 3 % power conversion efficiency is reported.
Attaining competitive advantage through energy efficiency: A cooperative strategic perspective

The Kenyan economy in the recent past has witnessed a considerable exit of multinational companies due to high-energy costs. Similarly, a comparative analysis among the East African community partners places the country among the list of those nations with high-energy charges levied on consumers. This phenomenon disadvantages the competitiveness of local industries while discouraging potential players. This is detrimental to the government efforts of ensuring economic growth and development. Such exits reduce investor confidence, and drives away potential investors. In addition, it adds more pressure on the government’s efforts to create more jobs, creation of more goods and services, increased household and national income. The objective of the study was to assess the effect of energy costs on attaining competitive advantage among manufacturing firms in Kenya. A quantitative research approach using survey research design was adopted by the study. Purposive sampling of 14 firms was done representing a total of 14 company representatives who filled the self-administered questionnaire. Data analysis was done using both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The hypothesis test showed that energy costs on electricity and petroleum had a significant effect on manufacturing firm’s efforts in attaining competitive advantage and was a significant predictor of competitive advantage in Kenya at 37.2% explanatory power. The results also showed that manufacturing companies in Kenya spend an average of 10.5% of their total income on electricity and petroleum products, thus reducing their competitiveness both nationally and internationally. The study posits that, since energy management practices yields significant benefits not just to the firms, but the society, environment and the government, there is a need to foster a cooperative approach in efficient energy use investment. Key words: Energy cost, cooperative strategy, energy efficiency, competitive advantage, Kenya.
Mechanisms of Egg Activation and Polyspermy Block in Amphibians and Comparative Aspects with Fertilization in Other Vertebrates

Abstract For precise temporal activation of the egg during amphibian fertilization, the sperm must provide a signal for egg activation at the time of membrane binding or fusion between sperm and eggs. A fertilizing sperm causes a Ca2+ wave which is both necessary and sufficient for egg activation at amphibian fertilization. The Ca2+ wave seems to be mediated by IP3-receptors on the endoplasmic reticulum and by IP3 produced by hydrolysis of PLC activated by a Src-related protein tyrosine kinase (Xyk) in Xenopus eggs. We have proposed three different hypotheses for initiation of egg activation in amphibian eggs: the Ca2+-influx model, the membrane receptor model, and the soluble factor model. The membrane receptor model and the soluble factor model seems to be applied to the monospermic Xenopus fertilization and the physiologically polyspermic Cynops fertilization, respectively. The Ca2+ wave at egg activation induces a positive fertilization potential which prevents entry of a second sperm in fertilization of monospermic species. In physiologically polyspermic urodele eggs, several sperm enter the egg at normal fertilization, but only one sperm nucleus with a centrosome participates in the embryonic development. The degeneration of accessory sperm nuclei is closely involved in differential distributions of both γ-tubulin and cyclin B in the egg cytoplasm, which causes developing a larger sperm aster and earlier entry into M phase in a zygote nucleus, respectively. We have discussed the molecular mechanisms of egg activation and polyspermy blocks in amphibians and make some comparisons with other vertebrates, such as fishes and mammals.
Are Social Skill and Empathy Separable Constructs? A Psychometric Evaluation of a New Role-play Assessment of Empathy for Individuals with Schizophrenia

The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of a role-play measure of empathy, the Performance of Empathic Expression Rating Scale (PEERS), in a sample of 60 individuals with schizophrenia and 51 healthy controls. The role-play ratings assess a person's ability to interact empathically with a confederate in an emotionally charged situation. The PEERS demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Construct validity was assessed through analyses of variance to examine differences between patients and controls. Patients performed significantly worse than controls, but most of these differences were explained by social skill ability. Convergent validity analyses indicated that the PEERS is related to some aspects of a self-report measure of empathy and a theory of mind task. The PEERS also demonstrated acceptable discriminant validity. Implications for the future use of this measure will be discussed.
Lemotif: Abstract Visual Depictions of your Emotional States in Life

We present Lemotif. Lemotif generates a motif for your emotional life. You tell Lemotif a little bit about your day -- what were salient events or aspects and how they made you feel. Lemotif will generate a lemotif -- a creative abstract visual depiction of your emotions and their sources. Over time, Lemotif can create visual motifs to capture a summary of your emotional states over arbitrary periods of time -- making patterns in your emotions and their sources apparent, presenting opportunities to take actions, and measure their effectiveness. The underlying principles in Lemotif are that the lemotif should (1) separate out the sources of the emotions, (2) depict these sources visually, (3) depict the emotions visually, and (4) have a creative aspect to them. We verify via human studies that each of these factors contributes to the proposed lemotifs being favored over corresponding baselines.
Independent Range Sampling, Revisited Again

We revisit the range sampling problem: the input is a set of points where each point is associated with a real-valued weight. The goal is to store them in a structure such that given a query range and an integer $k$, we can extract $k$ independent random samples from the points inside the query range, where the probability of sampling a point is proportional to its weight. This line of work was initiated in 2014 by Hu, Qiao, and Tao and it was later followed up by Afshani and Wei. The first line of work mostly studied unweighted but dynamic version of the problem in one dimension whereas the second result considered the static weighted problem in one dimension as well as the unweighted problem in 3D for halfspace queries. We offer three main results and some interesting insights that were missed by the previous work: We show that it is possible to build efficient data structures for range sampling queries if we allow the query time to hold in expectation (the first result), or obtain efficient worst-case query bounds by allowing the sampling probability to be approximately proportional to the weight (the second result). The third result is a conditional lower bound that shows essentially one of the previous two concessions is needed. For instance, for the 3D range sampling queries, the first two results give efficient data structures with near-linear space and polylogarithmic query time whereas the lower bound shows with near-linear space the worst-case query time must be close to $n^{2/3}$, ignoring polylogarithmic factors. Up to our knowledge, this is the first such major gap between the expected and worst-case query time of a range searching problem.
Deep Fundamental Factor Models

Deep fundamental factor models are developed to automatically capture non-linearity and interaction effects in factor modeling. Uncertainty quantification provides interpretability with interval estimation, ranking of factor importances and estimation of interaction effects. With no hidden layers we recover a linear factor model and for one or more hidden layers, uncertainty bands for the sensitivity to each input naturally arise from the network weights. Using 3290 assets in the Russell 1000 index over a period of December 1989 to January 2018, we assess a 49 factor model and generate information ratios that are approximately 1.5x greater than the OLS factor model. Furthermore, we compare our deep fundamental factor model with a quadratic LASSO model and demonstrate the superior performance and robustness to outliers. The Python source code and the data used for this study are provided.
Design Interactions between Robot Surfaces and Human Designers

This paper presents the rationale and current progress of my Ph.D. dissertation: "design interactions between robot surfaces and human designers. " This specific topic serves as a case study trying to explore the question of how to design an interactive and partially intelligent space. We proposed the concept of "space agent" defined as "interactive and intelligent environments perceived by users as human agents" based on communication theories. Built upon this concept, we proposed a design framework for interactive environments. Then we further explored literatures about what space agent could contribute to human users specifically for the case of interior designers' work space. Research questions and research designs are introduced in this paper, followed by the discussions of experiments design.
Skweezee for Processing: A Software Library to Make Squeeze Interactions

Squeeze interaction, defined as squeezing a soft object that affects computed feedback, is a promising interaction technique due to its expressive character. Skweezee for Processing is a Processing library that allows makers to implement squeeze interactions in a lightweight manner. The library offers a set of features based on data extraction algorithms and aims to preserve the dynamics of squeezes in the mapping from user action to system output. Distributing Skweezee for Processing as an open source library, we invite the community to further investigate the potential of squeeze interactions and to contribute to the extension and improvement of the library. We emphasize the potential for rich squeeze interaction by demonstrating a game that implements squeeze interaction as core mechanic. Additionally, we demonstrate the ease of implementing squeeze interactions in a variety of settings using the Skweezee for Processing library.
Using Biometrics as a Social Intervention in Gaming

My doctoral research examines the use of biometrics as a design intervention in games to increase social closeness. I have built an overlay for Twitch that reveals streamer biometrics to spectators (All the Feels [16]). Using this tool, along with additional design interventions, I plan to explore and expand communication possibilities between players, streamers and spectators in order to facilitate social connection. In this abstract I briefly describe the three projects I am currently working on through my doctoral work: In the Same Boat, Twitch Plays 'All the Feels', and Turnin' the Beat Around.