Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of Li+, Na+, Mg2+, Ca2+, and Zn2+ ions on the hydrogen bonds of the Watson–Crick base pairs

The interaction of mono‐ and divalent metal ions with the nucleic acid base pairs A:T and G:C has been studied using ab initio self‐consistent field Hartree–Fock computations with minimal basis sets. Energy‐optimized structures of the two base pairs with a final base–base distance of L = 10.35 Å have been determined and were further used in calculations on ternary complexes Mn+ – A:B together with previously computed coordination geometries of the cations at adenine (Ade), thymine (Thy), and guanine (Gua). Besides the binding energy of the various metal ions to the base pairs, changes in the stability of the H bonds between Ade and Thy or Gua and Cyt have been determined. Polarization effects of the metal ion on the ligand turned out to increase the binding between complementary bases. Regardless of the metal species, cation binding to Gua N(3) and Thy O(2) leads to a special increase in H‐bond stability, whereas binding to Ade N(3) changes the H‐bond stability least. Situated in between are the stabilizing effects caused by Gua and Ade N(7) coordination. A remarkable relation between the stability of the H bond and the distance from metal binding site to H bonds was found. This relationship has been rationalized in terms of partial charges of the atoms participating in H bonding, which can reveal the trend in the electrostatic part of total H bond energy. It can be shown that a short distance between coordination site and acceptor hydrogen increases the H‐bond strength substantially, while a long distance shows minor effects as supposed. On the other hand, the opposite effect is observed for the influence of the distance between binding site and donor atom. A comparison of our findings with a new model of transition metal ion facilitated rewinding of denatured DNA proposed by S. Miller, D. VanDerveer, and L. Marzilli is given [(1985) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 107, 1048–1055].
Evolutionary undersampling for extremely imbalanced big data classification under apache spark

The classification of datasets with a skewed class distribution is an important problem in data mining. Evolutionary undersampling of the majority class has proved to be a successful approach to tackle this issue. Such a challenging task may become even more difficult when the number of the majority class examples is very big. In this scenario, the use of the evolutionary model becomes unpractical due to the memory and time constrictions. Divide-and-conquer approaches based on the MapReduce paradigm have already been proposed to handle this type of problems by dividing data into multiple subsets. However, in extremely imbalanced cases, these models may suffer from a lack of density from the minority class in the subsets considered. Aiming at addressing this problem, in this contribution we provide a new big data scheme based on the new emerging technology Apache Spark to tackle highly imbalanced datasets. We take advantage of its in-memory operations to diminish the effect of the small sample size. The key point of this proposal lies in the independent management of majority and minority class examples, allowing us to keep a higher number of minority class examples in each subset. In our experiments, we analyze the proposed model with several data sets with up to 17 million instances. The results show the goodness of this evolutionary undersampling model for extremely imbalanced big data classification.
Flamingo: a framework for smartphone security context management

The availability of powerful smartphones and the necessity of security in mobile devices have made researchers propose multiple security modes (e.g., home, office, outdoor, and financial) for such devices. In each mode, a user can install a different set of apps. However, in most of the cases, the user has to select the mode manually. If we can sense the smartphone's security context accurately, then it is possible to switch between different security modes automatically. Also, smartphone operating systems are becoming ubiquitous. As a result, mobile apps need to behave differently based on the security context (e.g., not sending the data if the network is insecure). There exist other research work that may detect the physical context of a smartphone. However, we focus on sensing different security parameters (e.g., location, is-network-encrypted) and calculating the security context from the parameters. In this paper, we propose Flamingo, a security context management framework that maintains a cache of security contexts and parameters to be used by the operating system and third-party applications. As detecting contexts requires the use of power-hungry smartphone sensors, a comprehensive framework for sharing security parameters among various applications can be beneficial in terms of energy and other resource expenses. The implementation of Flamingo as a part of the Android operating system shows that it is effective in managing security contexts and parameters.
Fibrin(ogen) in cardiovascular disease: an update

Summary The notion that fibrinogen is strongly, consistently, and independently related to cardiovascular risk has been widely accepted. The evidence is based on numerous prospective epidemiological studies and clinical observations. In meta-analysis, an association between even modest increases (10%) in fibrino-gen and future coronary heart disease (CHD) endpoints has been found with an odds ratio for CHD of 1.8; 95% CI, 1.6 to 2.0, if the top tertile of the fibrinogen distribution was compared to the bottom tertile; but fibrinogen levels were also associated with unstable and stable coronary artery disease, and coronary complications after interventions. Similar results have been obtained for incident stroke, progression of peripheral arterial disease, and finally for total mortality. The reasons however, why fibrinogen is elevated in cardiovascular disease and in atherosclerosis in general, are only incompletely under-stood; but all cells involved in the atherogenetic process are able to produce cytokines which induce an acute phase reaction, and thus increase fibrinogen plasma levels. The potential pathophysiological mechanisms by which elevated fibrinogen levels mediate cardiovascular risk are manyfold: It forms the substrate for thrombin and represents the final step in the coagulation cascade; it is essential for platelet aggregation; it modulates endothelial function;it promotes smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration; it interacts with the binding of plas-min with its receptor, and finally it represents a major acute phase protein. Whether or not fibrinogen is causally involved in atherothrombogenesis still remains to be determined, and even though other unsolved issues await conclusive answers, fibrino-gen has emerged as an important additional marker of cardiovascular risk. Theme paper: Part of this paper was originally presented at the joint meetings of the 16th International Congress of the International Society of Fibrinolysis and Proteolysis (ISFP) and the 17th International Fibrinogen Workshop of the International Fibrinogen Research Society (IFRS) held in Munich, Germany, September, 2002.
A Precarious Enterprise? Multiple Antagonisms during Year One of the Modi Government

During its first year in power (2014–15), the government of Narendra Modi in India showed itself to be a precarious enterprise. The prime minister was beset by multiple antagonisms. He radically centralised power. This has enabled him to get some things done swiftly, but it has weakened him by choking off reliable information flows from below and by sowing discontent among his party and his supporters. An exercise in fiscal decentralisation to the state level in this federal system ran counter to his centralisation, but on close examination, it proved less than generous. His efforts to tackle two problems—bureaucratic paralysis and high-level corruption—contradicted one another. His efforts to transcend the ambiguities which ensnare every prime minister were unrealistic and triggered further discontent among party colleagues. Finally, his handling of religious polarisation became entangled in multiple antagonisms—between the expectations of Hindu nationalists (and his own legacy as a polariser) and his duty to maintain social cohesion; between political gains to be made from polarisation and political costs that attend it; between polarisers who sought to strengthen his hand and those who sought to polarise in order to undermine him.
The development of a novel stacked package: package in package

Stacked die chip scale packages (CSPs) or fine-pitch BGAs (FBGAs) have been readily adopted and integrated in many handheld products, most notably cellular phones. Such stacked die CSPs are especially useful to reduce the cost, weight, and size of the memory devices needed to support the increased features and applications in cellular phones today. In addition, they have been used extensively to integrate some logic and analog functions. In these cases, the die stacked in these CSP packages can be tested at the wafer level such that the final stacked die packaged electrical yield is well over 95%. This high final test yield and fairly low die cost makes such packages economical. However, combinations of devices to be integrated or stacked within a single CSP, in order to meet the needs of next generation cellular phone users, often require the die be fully functionally tested prior to packaging them together in order to assure good final test yield and cost. Known good die (KGD) are often difficult to source for such applications and are not always cost effective. In fact, a packaged and tested device can be less cost than a KGD. Therefore, it is desirable for a number of reasons to stack or integrate tested good packages within a CSP to meet the needs of such applications. This paper outlines the development of a novel stacked package CSP, called package in a package (PIP). In this PIP package, tested good packages are stacked and wire bonded much like the die in a conventional stacked die CSP. The same basic packaging infrastructure and package testing infrastructure is utilized. This paper shows the package level reliability of the PIP package is the same as the stacked die package today. Thus, there is no compromise in reliability and such PIP packages can meet lead free flow conditions. Stacked die CSPs have come to the fore for applications that require increased functionality, smaller form factors, and light weight. Stacked die CSP packages with two, three, four, and even five functional die are now available and in production. Primarily, memory die are stacked that are lower cost and can be well tested in wafer form prior to assembly to assure a cost effective final test yield. If a logic or ASIC die is stacked, it is usually paired with another device that can be tested good in wafer form, such that the final test yield is basically unaffected. However, the next generation of handheld products, most notably cellular phones, require significant amounts of high speed memory, such as SDRAM or DDR, to be paired with the microprocessor or ASIC. this type of high speed memory cannot be well tested easily in wafer form. Known good die (KGD) is needed for such devices, but KGD is costly and has limited availability and supplier base. In most cases, a tested good package is less costly and has less supply issues than a KGD. Thus, the need for a package that stacks good packages as oppose to wafer probed dice is evident.
Constitutive competence for genetic transformation in Streptococcus pneumoniae caused by mutation of a transmembrane histidine kinase

Competence for DNA uptake and genetic transformation in Streptococcus pneumoniae is regulated by a quorum‐sensing system. A competence‐stimulating polypeptide (CSP) is secreted by the bacteria and acts back on the cells via a transmembrane histidine kinase. This enzyme phosphorylates a response regulator that activates synthesis of a SigH‐like protein. The new sigma factor enables expression of a set of proteins transcribed from a novel promoter. A mutation called trt had been found that circumvented this regulation. The mutant cells are constitutively competent; that is, they can be transformed at low cell densities, in the presence of proteases that attack CSP, or during growth at low pH. In this work, cells containing trt were shown to be competent even in the presence of a comAB mutation that blocks secretion of CSP. The trt mutation was localized to comD, the gene encoding the transmembrane histidine kinase. A DNA segment of the trt mutant corresponding to comCDE was cloned, and it was shown to contain the trt mutation by its ability to confer constitutive competence. A two‐step assay, which was based on transfer of trt to a wild strain and screening for transformability in the presence of trypsin, served to locate the trt mutation precisely. It corresponds to a GC→AT transition, which changes Asp299 in the histidine kinase to Asn. This alteration in the carboxyl terminal half of the protein, which is cytoplasmically located and contains the phosphorylase activity, presumably alters the enzyme conformation so that it is permanently activated, independent of signals from the transmembrane domain. These results may help illuminate the mechanism by which external signals affect kinase action in two‐component regulatory systems, and they may be of practical value in facilitating genetic studies by rendering pneumococcal strains permanently competent.
Socio-Environmentally Responsible Hotel Business: Do Tourists to Penang Island, Malaysia Care?

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, there has been a growing awareness within the global hotel industry of the relevance for environmental protection issues. Hotel corporations are seen to be changing their image by engaging in environmental initiatives. Some hotels even go further to include social responsibility issues in their agenda. Greater awareness on the potential economic and other less direct benefits of environmentally-friendly measures, coupled with the establishment of many “watch dog” and support organizations such as the International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IHRA) and Green Hotel Association (GHA) has fueled the rise of “green” and/or responsible hotels in many established tourism destinations. Nevertheless, environmental and social measures are not the traditional core competency of a hotel. Thus, “green” and responsible measures may require additional investment and organizational change. From a business perspective, additional investments are futile if they do not result in higher market share. Simply put, a hotel's “green” and responsible measures are meaningless if met only with consumer apathy. Therefore, to justify the need for hotels to engage in responsibility measures, one of the questions that must be answered is-do the tourists care about hotels' social and environmental responsibility? Unfortunately, there is still little empirical knowledge of tourists' demand for responsible hotels, particularly within the context of a developing country such as Malaysia. This paper attempts to narrow the gap of information by providing a preliminary outlook on the “demand” of tourists for green and socially responsible hotels in Penang Island, Malaysia. Specifically, it looked at the main criteria tourists use when choosing a hotel, their preferences as well as their attitude, interest and opinion relating to a hotel's green and socially responsible measures.
The Psychological Implications of Stakeholder Involvement in Social Enterprise Governance

Social enterprises are a unique form of organisation, located where the public, private and voluntary sectors intersect, typically founded by dynamic individuals who deal with social injustice by finding resources in the community. As these organisations develop, isomorphic pressures from stakeholders such as funders and regulatory bodies lead to a formalisation of previously informal relations with vulnerable beneficiaries. This could cause harm or distress to the beneficiaries, which can then impact on front-line workers who are providing day-to-day services to them. In healthcare organisations, it has been shown that workers can form psychological defences to deal with the stress of working with people in pain or distress, which can account for otherwise inexplicable behaviour in teams and organisations. Since social enterprises also deal with people who are vulnerable and needy, they too could evolve similar defences, complicated by the involvement of these individuals in the roles of both client and as stakeholder that can influence the organisation's governance. This exploratory paper first considers social enterprise as a unique form of organisation, then how stakeholder involvement in governance contributes to legitimacy. After outlining how individual and group psychological defences can affect healthcare organisations, the paper then considers the implications for social enterprise governance, concluding with recommendations for further research.
Characterization of a Single Photon Counting Imaging System by Transfer Function Analysis

A method to quantitatively evaluate the performances of a radiographic detection system consists in measuring the contrast, noise and modulation transfer functions. These functions have been evaluated for a digital radiographic system based on a single photon counting pixel detector. The X-ray detector is a Silicon sensor with one side segmented in a matrix of 256 by 256 square contacts with a pitch of 55 mum. The active area is about 2 cm2. The sensor is connected to the Medipix2 read-out chip by bump-bonding. As X-ray source we have used a tube for general radiography. To reproduce the conditions of a radiographic examination, a 4 cm thick lucite block positioned above the detector has been used to simulate a tissue sample. To study the Contrast Transfer Function we have measured the contrast of an 1 mm thick lead slab with respect to the background. To evaluate the scattering contribution from the lucite, the measurements have been performed with and without a collimator placed at the beam exit. To assess the efficiency and noise transfer properties, we have measured the Detective Quantum Efficiency (DQE) of the detector as a function of the tube voltage. The Modulation Transfer Function has been measured applying the slit method for different conditions of tube voltage and energy threshold
On the Vulnerabilities of Landmark-Based Data Location Approaches: Threats, Solutions, and Challenges

Nowadays, many companies, administrations, and individuals are outsourcing the storage of their data to largescale Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). Unfortunately, the modern cloud infrastructure virtualization results in the difficulty or the impossibility for data owners to know the location where their data are stored. Data location verification is required due to legal, privacy, and performance constraints. Recently "Where are my data located in the Cloud? " has become a challenge and solutions have been proposed to verify data location. Even in case of the establishment of a strong Service-Level Agreement, which includes an initial guarantee regarding data location, the CSP may then move the data in another location, like another country, in order to cut the costs or for any other reasons. This paper considers landmark-based verification approaches, which are flexible and low cost compared to other location verification approaches. The objective is the identification of vulnerabilities relating to the main proposed landmark-based location verification approaches when malicious CSPs are involved and the proposal of some countermeasures against CSP's attacks. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the most comprehensive literature survey on vulnerabilities of landmark-based data location approaches.
Life Expectancies of Ni-doped SAC Solder Alloy Subjected to Drop Test Loading

In this research, the mechanical behavior of novel Ni-doped Sn-1.2Ag-0.5Cu (SAC 1205) solder alloy, characterized by a high strain rate, was investigated in order to improve the drop test simulation model accuracy. Most researches focused on the elastic behavior of solder joint in simulation modeling. However, the sensitive strain rate of solder joint was important to take it into consideration since the solder joint was suffered the impact pulse during the drop test. In line with the drop test standard (JEDEC condition B), the test vehicle was subjected to impact loading with the peak acceleration of 1500 G for a period of 0.5 ms. This scenario ensured that the solder joint connecting the package and the test board was subjected to the impact loading for a very short time. In this study, the focus was on Thin Fine-pitch Ball Grid Array (TFBGA) package and the 11 mm × 10.6 mm, 9.4 mm × 9.4 mm, 12.6 mm × 12.6 mm, and 13.1 mm × 13.1 mm package sizes were investigated. The aim was to calculate the solder joint fatigue life by combining the results of finite element modeling with those obtained by experimental testing. The finite element model was used to analyze the stress and strain of the solder joint during the drop test. The model was developed using ANSYS/LS-DYNA and yielded a dynamic explicit solution. In order to investigate the performance of Ni-doped SAC 1205 solder alloy under the drop test conditions, the prediction model of solder alloy fatigue life was developed based on the Physics of Failure (PoF). The purpose of this research is to establish the fatigue life of SAC 1205N solder alloy with considering the sensitivity of strain rate for solder material.
Multi-task Learning with Augmentation Strategy for Acoustic-to-word Attention-based Encoder-decoder Speech Recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel training strategy for attention-based encoder-decoder acoustic-to-word end-to-end systems. Accuracy of end-to-end systems has greatly improved thanks to careful tuning of model structure and the introduction of novel training strategies to stabilize training. For example, multi-task learning using a shared-encoder is often used to escape from bad local optima. However, multi-task learning usually relies on a linear interpolation of the losses for each sub-task and consequently, the shared-encoder is not optimized for each task. To solve the above problem, we propose a multi-task learning with augmentation strategy. We augment the training data by creating multiple copies of the original training data to suit different output targets associated with each sub-task. We use each target loss sequentially to update the parameters of the shared-encoder so as to enhance the versatility of capturing acoustic features. This strategy enables better learning of the shared-encoder as each task is trained with a dedicated loss. The parameters of the word-decoder are jointly updated via the shared-encoder when optimizing the word prediction task loss. We evaluate our proposal on various speech data sets, and show that our models achieve lower word error rates than both single-task and conventional multi-task approaches.