Streptococcus pyogenes is an important human pathogen and surface structures allow it to adhere to, colonize and invade the human host. Proteins containing leucine rich repeats (LRR) have been identified in mammals, viruses, archaea and several bacterial species. The LRRs are often involved in protein-protein interaction, are typically 20-30 amino acids long and the defining feature of the LRR ...

In recent years, deep learning has been arisen as a new paradigm within machine learning field. In particular, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are an important part of this new paradigm. This set of architectures has properties that make them suitable for difficult tasks among which it can be highlighted automatic language recognition (or Spoken Language Recognition, SLR). Their capability to model...

ZigBee is defined to support low-rate wireless personal area networks (WPANs). It supports tree and mesh routing. Observing that both routing mechanisms have their pros and cons, this paper proposes a Self-Learning Routing (SLR) protocol, which inherits the low overhead of tree routing and the path efficiency of mesh routing. SLR contains an overhearing and a caching mechanism. It does not rely...

The pseudolite system is a good alternative for indoor positioning systems due to its large coverage area and accurate positioning solution. However, for common Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, the pseudolite system requires some modifications of the user terminals. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a new pseudolite-based indoor positioning system architecture. The main idea i...

OBJECTIVE To investigate changes in leptin and soluble leptin receptor (SLR) concentrations, and in the free leptin index (FLI) during weight loss and subsequent weight regain; and to ascertain whether these indices remain stable in the rank of the distribution in repeated measures (tracking) during perturbations of weight in obese children. DESIGN AND MEASUREMENTS In a longitudinal study, 11...

Climate change and associated sea level rise (SLR) are already impacting low-lying coastal areas, including islands, throughout the world. Many of these areas are inhabited, many will need to be abandoned in coming decades as SLR continues. We examine the evolution (1850-2013) of the last inhabited offshore island in Virginia waters of Chesapeake Bay USA, the Tangier Islands. Three SLR scenario...

[1] We construct a high-resolution relative sea-level record for the past 700 years by dating basal salt-marsh peat samples above a glacial erratic in an eastern Connecticut salt marsh, to test whether or not the apparent recent acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise (SLR) is coeval with climate warming. The data reveal an average SLR rate of 1.0 ± 0.2 mm/year from about 1300 to 1850 A.D. C...

[Background]: Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has become an important software engineering research method but costs tremendous efforts. [Aim]: This paper proposes an approach to leverage on empirically evolved ontology to support automating key SLR activities. [Method]: First, we propose an ontology, SLRONT, built on SLR experiences and best practices as a groundwork to capture common termi...

This article studies ultra-high-precision positioning with piezoactuators and illustrates the results with an example Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) application. Loss of positioning precision in piezoactuators occurs (1) due to hysteresis during long range applications, (2) due to creep effects when positioning is needed over extended periods of time, and (3) due to induced vibrations during h...

This dissertation describes new techniques that can be used in a sign language recognition (SLR) system, and more generally in human gesture systems. Any SLR system consists of three main components: Skin detector, Tracker, and Recognizer. The skin detector is responsible for segmenting skin objects like the face and hands from video frames. The tracker keeps track of the hand location (more sp...