Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
R EVIEW Computational methodology for ChIP-seq analysis

Chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with massive parallel sequencing (ChIP-seq) is a powerful technology to identify the genome-wide locations of DNA binding proteins such as transcription factors or modi ﬁ ed histones. As more and more experimental laboratories are adopting ChIP-seq to unravel the transcriptional and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms, computational analyses of ChIP-seq also become increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated. In this article, we review current computational methodology for ChIP-seq analysis, recommend useful algorithms and work ﬂ ows, and introduce quality control measures at different analytical steps. We also discuss how ChIP-seq could be integrated with other types of genomic assays, such as gene expression pro ﬁ ling and genome-wide association studies, to provide a more comprehensive view of gene regulatory mechanisms in important physiological and pathological processes.
A Method of Comparing the Costs of Platform and Unique Product Design

To help increase its competitiveness in the market for imaging products, Polaroid Corporation must speed up the process by which it designs and manufactures cameras, while simultaneously reducing costs. To this end, it is considering undertaking a platform design approach to its cameras, in which components and entire subassemblies are used across multiple, different camera products. The primary theorized benefits of such an approach are: reduced manufacturing costs, due to greater economies of scale and faster learning from using fewer unique parts for the same number of end products; and faster time to market for successive releases within a platform, due to design re-use. The latter can be equivalently expressed as fewer design resources needed to meet the same schedule. A camera design team at Polaroid identified a portfolio of six new camera designs and which subassemblies could be shared. Through the creation and use of several sub-models, I quantified the total cost, from design through production, of two scenarios: the platform design approach, in which the subassemblies are shared across the six cameras as proposed by the design team, and the unique design approach, in which no components at all are shared. In order to keep the analysis focused on the cost difference between the two approaches, I assumed that in both scenarios the cameras would be priced the same and would sell in the same quantities. The analysis shows that, for this particular portfolio, the platform design approach would cost 13.5% less than the unique design approach, a savings of $223 million over ten years. In addition to the data generated for this specific portfolio, I created the following: * An assemblage of historical design and manufacturing data which may be useful to Polaroid and similar companies e A process by which the analysis can be repeated for other product portfolios * A set of spreadsheet tools which can be reused for other product portfolios 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to thank several people who were critical to the success of this project. First and foremost at Polaroid are Elliott Strizhak and Ellen Cargill. They initiated the project, supported me throughout, and guided me towards their objectives while giving me the freedom to pursue my own ideas. Without Grant and Jackie, my trip to Polaroid's plant in Scotland would not have been half as valuable. At MIT, my advisors Steve Graves and Kevin Otto were extraordinarily helpful. Their …
Analysis of public risk perception on earthquake

In this paper we characterize the perception of public in the north part of Jiangsu Province, China, towards one kind of natural disaster—earthquake based on the psychometric paradigm method. An organized questionnaire which contains the elements from this approach was administered to 300 respondents of Sihong, Xuyi and Hongze County in May 2008, shortly after the Wenchuan Earthquake and a total of 156 questionnaires were returned. Then in a second survey of July 2008, 500 respondents from the same research area were randomly chosen, with 318 questionnaires were collected. This research was designed to examine the attitudes and perceptions of people who did not directly experience the Wenchuan Earthquake. We have interested in how the attitudes and perceptions differ depending on gender, age, education and residential type as well as socioeconomic status, characteristics of seismic hazard such as social effect, benefit, controllability etc. The data collected was used to calibrate a multiple liner regression in which the demographic and risk characteristics were set as independent variables. The results indicated 28.2% of variance in the respondents willingness to accept (WTA) risk of earthquake. The results has also revealed that four variables—knowledge of risk, rarity of risk, fear of risk and trust in government have influenced the public s WTA on earthquake. At the same time, F-test was used to examine the equality of the four variables from the two surveys and the statistical processing has indicated a significant difference in knowledge of risk and fear of risk, which implied that these factors would change with time. The findings are helpful for the government to comprehend and predict the behaviors of people according to their demographic characteristics and preferences for seismic. The results revealed that the government should make the information of earthquake more available for individuals so that they could understand the direct and indirect severity of earthquake. Furthermore , a well designed communication of risks with public and effective mitigation policies are also necessary to improve public's rational risk judgment towards earthquake
Exploring polymeric biomaterials in developing neural prostheses

Neuroprosthetics, with a range of applications such as cognitive, auditory, pain relief, recording, motor, and visual prosthetics have emerged as a promising field in recent years. However, poor electrical conductivity, a high disparity between tissue and interfaces and the onset of reactive gliosis post-implantation remains major challenges in the development of neuroprostheses. The choice of biomaterials in designing the neural interfaces’ in neuroprosthetic applications is of high importance, as the overall sustained performance of neuroprosthetic devices is based on the features of materials used for the neural interfaces. Numerous biomaterials, such as metals and carbon-based materials, have been used in neuroprosthetics thus far. Nonetheless, neuroprosthetics made from polymeric biomaterials are in high demand due to their high biocompatibility, conductivity, and biostability. Furthermore, polymeric biomaterials can be used as a hybrid design to overcome the limitations of other co-biomaterials. This article makes an attempt to review the polymeric biomaterials involved in this cutting-edge technology utilized for different purposes such as substrates, coatings, and miniaturization of electrodes, that might help in enriching our understanding on neuroprosthetics.
Yellow Plugs: An Additional Dermoscopic Criterion in the Diagnosis of Primary Cutaneous B-Cell Lymphoma

Primary cutaneous B-cell lymphoma (PCBCL) is a lymphoproliferative B-cell disorder involving only the skin at the time of diagnosis. PCBCLs comprise a group of rare disease that account for 20%-25% of all cutaneous lymphomas, and they are classified into 3 main types: (i) follicle center lymphoma (the most common and usually indolent), (ii) marginal zone lymphoma, and (iii) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (the most aggressive) [1].
Inertial navigation algorithm aided by motion constraints of vehicle

In order to improve the independent navigation accuracy of vehicular SINS and enhance the mobility of the car,the integrated navigation method aided by the motion constraints of the vehicle was adopted.By making use of the condition that the cross-track and vertical velocity of the normal running vehicle were zero,and taking the installation errors of SINS into consideration,the Kalman filter algorithm was deduced,the vehicular navigation experiment for about 80 km was implemented.The results show that the level positioning precision was 16.6 m(CEP) and the altitude precision was 14.9 m(PE). This method can be used as a backup navigation strategy to be used when the odometer was invalidated,and can also be used to extend the interval time of stopping car in ZUPT(zero-velocity update) mode.
Security mechanisms for mobile ad hoc and wireless sensor networks

Wireless Ad Hoc Networks have emerged as an advanced networking paradigm based on collaborative efforts among multiple self-organized wireless communication devices. Without the requirement of a fixed infrastructure support, wireless ad hoc networks can be quickly deployed anywhere at any time when needed. The decentralized nature, minimal configuration and quick deployment of wireless ad hoc networks make them suitable for various applications, from disaster rescue, target tracking to military conflicts. Wireless ad hoc networks can be further categorized into mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and wireless mesh networks (WMNs) depending on their applications. Security is a big challenge in wireless ad hoc networks due to the lack of any infrastructure support, dynamic network topology, shared radio medium, and resource-constrained wireless users. Most existing security mechanisms applied for the Internet or traditional wireless networks are neither applicable nor suitable for wireless ad hoc network environments. In MANETs, routing security is an extremely important issue, as the majority of the standard routing protocols assume non-hostile environments. Once deployed in a hostile environment and working in an unattended mode, existing routing protocols are vulnerable to various attacks. To address these concerns, we propose an anonymous secure routing protocol for MANETs in this dissertation, which can be incorporated with existing routing protocols and achieve enhanced routing security with minimum additional overheads. In WSNs, key distribution and management is the core issue of any security approaches. Due to extremely resource-constrained sensor nodes and lack of any infrastructure support, traditional public-key based key distribution and management mechanisms are commonly considered as too expensive to be employed in WSNs. In this dissertation, we propose two efficient pairwise key pre-distribution and management mechanisms for both distributed and hierarchical large-scale WSNs, which enable establishing secure links between any two sensor nodes located within their communication range. As we know, sensing and communication are two fundamental characteristics of WSNs, and they cannot be addressed separately. Existing work on sensing coverage mainly focus on how to use the minimum number of sensors to achieve a required coverage, while security constraints are not sufficiently addressed. We propose an effective key distribution approach for randomly deployed WSNs, based on random graph theory and a realistic random key pre-distribution mechanism, in order to achieve both robust sensing coverage and secure connectivity simultaneously in a hostile deployment environment.
Executive Information Systems Development Lifecycle

The main objective of EIS (Executive Information Systems) is to provide in real time representative informations to the high-level management. EIS is a subset of a class of technology solutions that also are referred to in the industry as Business Intelligence (BI) software. EIS provide solutions to support strategic activities such as goal setting, planning and forecasting and tracking performance. This paper presents the concept and the arhitecture of EIS and also the criteria for evaluating Executive Information Systems.
Morphological study of modern phytolith assemblages in guinea Sahara region of Nigeria

Morphological study of phytolith was carried out from 11 plant species in 10 different plant families in Nigeria.Fresh plant leaves were randomly collected each from family which consists of leaves from 11 species for phytolith analysis. Schulze’s solution was the standard method used to extract phytolith from the sample. The extracted samples were examined with Olympus Bx41 microscope. Phytolith results revealed a wide range of phytolith morphotypes with considerable degree of variability. However, 9 species were reported to have cuneiform bulliform phytolith shape, 1 bilobate phytolith shape and 1 reported globular echinate phytolith shape. Psilate and verrucate surface texture was observed from the study. These results of phytolith analysis could serves as baseline data that represent the modern vegetation assemblage of the study area for future paleoenvironmental study and environmental reconstruction.
Immune Checkpoints are Important Therapeutic Targets in Cancer Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has become one of the greatest advances in medical oncology over the last century; however, the optimal application for the treatment of different types of cancer remains an active area of investigation. Modern immunotherapy strategies augment the immune system and ideally, permit durable tumor-specific immune memory to target and kill cancer cells. This era began when first immune checkpoint inhibitor, ipilimumab, was approved. In fact, several monoclonal antibodies that mediate the immune checkpoint receptors have provided the most clinically meaningful improvement for cancer patients to date. Checkpoint blockade as monotherapy has demonstrated some encouraging results, although some combination strategies appear to augment those responses and may be particularly effective when administered earlier in the course of disease. Additionally, we have also discussed previous and ongoing clinical studies testing individual or combination immunotherapy in cancer patients. Overall, the goal of this review is to provide a summary and current status of immune checkpoints and their inhibitors as therapeutic approaches of cancer immunotherapy and highlight promising future directions. Clinical Trials Registration Numbers: NCT00094653, NCT00257205, NCT01866319, NCT02142738, NCT02302807, NCT01903993, NCT02125461, NCT00732082, NCT01968109, NCT02061761, NCT02817633, NCT03489343, NCT04570839, NCT00298181, NCT00298168, NCT00876902, NCT03812328, NCT02812875, NCT04475523, NCT02768558, NCT02617589, NCT02039674, NCT02030834, NCT03545815, NCT03289962.
The Influence of eWOM and Customer Satisfaction on Purchasing Decisions

The current development of technology makes it easier for humans to search for information. Electronic words of mouth (eWOM) or information media through the internet becomes the most widely used media by the public to search for needs, dig information, evaluate alternatives, and make purchasing decisions. After recognizing the needs, the public starts looking for information about the products they need to purchase. The better the review provided by someone, the higher the purchasing interest. This study aims to analyze the effect of eWOM and customer satisfaction on purchasing decisions. This study uses quantitative methods. It involved 132 customers aged 18-60 years old who have purchased Argotelo products as samples. The sample was determined using a purposive sampling technique. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. The results of the analysis showed that eWOM affects purchasing decisions. Then, customer satisfaction affects purchasing decisions. Besides, eWOM and customer satisfaction affect purchasing decisions.
Toward a reference architecture based science gateway framework with embedded e‐learning support

Science gateways have been widely utilized by a large number of user communities to simplify access to complex distributed computing infrastructures. While science gateways are still becoming increasingly popular and the number of user communities is growing, the fast and efficient creation of new science gateways and the flexibility to deploy these gateways on‐demand on heterogeneous computational resources, remain a challenge. Additionally, the increase in the number of users, especially with very different backgrounds, requires intuitive embedded e‐learning tools that support all stakeholders to find related learning material and to guide the learning process. This paper introduces a novel science gateway framework that addresses these challenges. The framework supports the creation, publication, selection, and deployment of cloud‐based reference architectures that can be automatically instantiated and executed even by nontechnical users. The framework also incorporates a knowledge repository exchange and learning module that provides embedded e‐learning support. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution, two scientific case studies are presented based on the requirements of the plasmasphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere research communities.
Modeling and optimization of wireless local area networks mac protocols

As wireless local area network (WLAN) technology is gaining popularity, performance analysis and optimization of it becomes more important. However, as compared to wired LAN, wireless channels are error-prone. Most of the existing work on the performance analysis of IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) assumes saturated traffic and ideal channel condition. In this dissertation, DCF is analyzed under a general traffic load and variable channel condition. A more realistic and comprehensive model is proposed to optimize the performance of DCF in both ideal and error-prone channels. Many factors, such as the number of contending nodes, the traffic load, contention window, packet overhead and channel condition, which affect the performance of a wireless network have been incorporated. It is shown that under error-prone environment, a trade-off exists between the desire to reduce the ratio of overhead in the data packet by adopting a larger packet size, and the need to reduce the packet error rate by using a smaller packet length. Based on our analytical model, both the optimal packet size and the optimal minimum contention window are determined under various traffic loads and channel conditions. It is also observed that, in error-prone environments, optimal packet size has more significant improvement on the performance than optimal contention window. Our analytical model is validated via simulations using ns-2. We provide a novel approach to model the different channel conditions incurred by different nodes. This work has applications in performance optimization by establishing tradeoffs between transmission error rate and transmission power, modulation, coding scheme, packet size. A better approach of modeling the wireless channel is considered. A Markov chain with alternating good and bad states is adopted to model the bursty characteristics of wireless channel errors. Furthermore, we introduce an analytical model to investigate the energy efficiency of 802.11 DCF. Our future work will extend existing work to further performance enhancement for 802.11 DCF. Also we plan to apply our work in 802.11 to UWB (Ultra-wideband) since CSMA/CA is defined for UMB MAC protocol. To solve the new research challenge of UWB, we will consider a new channel model and channel estimation approach.
The Nature of Associations between Physical Stimulus Size and Left-Right Response Codes

In two-choice response tasks, participants respond faster and more accurate with the left hand to a small stimulus and with the right hand to a large stimulus as compared to the reverse assignment. This compatibility effect suggests the existence of associations between cognitive codes of physical stimulus size and cognitive codes of left/right responses. Here, we explore the nature of associations between stimulus-size codes and left/right response codes by using more levels of stimulus size than in our previous studies. For example, the strengths of the associations between stimulus-size codes and response codes might either change gradually when stimulus size changes, or the strength of associations might change in a more discrete fashion (i.e., associations switch at a particular size level). In Experiment 1, participants responded to stimulus color with a left/right keypress, and physical stimulus size had ten levels with 5 mm steps. Results showed correspondence effects for the smallest and the largest stimulus size only. In Experiment 2, physical stimulus size had six levels with 10 mm steps. Results showed (similar) correspondence effects for the smallest and some intermediate stimulus-size levels. In sum, the results point towards a discrete, or categorical, relationship between cognitive codes of stimulus size and left/right response codes. This pattern of results is consistent with an account of the correspondence effect in terms of the polarity correspondence principle.
Parasitismo de huevos de lepidópteros plagas (Insecta: Lepidoptera) por Trichogramma pretiosum (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) en tomate (Solanum lycopersicum)

Introducción. El perforador del fruto del tomate Neoleucinodes elegantalis (Guenée) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) y los minadores de la hoja Phthorimaea operculella (Zeller) y Tuta absoluta Meyrick (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), afectan la producción de tomate en diferentes áreas en Venezuela. El parasitismo de sus huevos por Trichogramma pretiosum Riley (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) es una valiosa alternativa de control de bajo costo y sustentable que combinado con otras formas de control sería un excelente componente del Manejo Integrado de Plagas. Objetivo. Evaluar el parasitismo ejercido por T. pretiosum sobre las poblaciones de plagas lepidópteras en tomate. Materiales y métodos. La evaluación se realizó en todas las siembras entre junio y agosto de 2017, desde la tercera semana después del trasplante hasta dos semanas después de la última floración, en las localidades El Pueblito, Los Ejidos del Hato y El Vigiadero, municipio Jiménez, estado Lara, Venezuela. Se liberaron los adultos del parasitoide y posteriormente, se recolectaron los foliolos para evaluar el parasitismo de los huevos de las especies minadoras. Al iniciarse la fructificación, se colectaron frutos pequeños y medianos incluyendo el cáliz y fueron cortados cuidadosamente del pedúnculo floral. En ambos casos se realizó el conteo de los huevos. Resultados. En todas las evaluaciones, se registró un parasitismo que varió en 43 y 53 % para N. elegantalis y entre 16 y 48 % para las especies minadoras de las hojas. En el laboratorio, el parasitismo para P. operculella y T. absoluta varió entre 88 y 84 % cuando los huevos estuvieron separados, al estar juntos se observó un mayor parasitismo de huevos de P. operculella (76 %) versus T. absoluta (44 %). Conclusiones. T. pretiosum ejerció un parasitismo significativo sobre los huevos de las tres especies lepidópteras estudiadas en siembras de tomate en Venezuela. Palabras claves: Neoleucinodes, Phthorimaea, Tuta, manejo integrado de plagas, hortalizas.