Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
West Nile Virus (WNV) Replication Is Independent of Autophagy in Mammalian Cells

Autophagy is a homeostatic process responsible for recycling cytosolic proteins and organelles. Moreover, this pathway contributes to the cell’s intrinsic innate defenses. While many viruses have evolved mechanisms to antagonize the antiviral effects of the autophagy pathway, others subvert autophagy to facilitate replication. Here, we have investigated the role of autophagy in West Nile virus (WNV) replication. Experiments in cell lines derived from a variety of sources, including the kidney, liver, skin, and brain, indicated that WNV replication does not upregulate the autophagy pathway. Furthermore, WNV infection did not inhibit rapamycin-induced autophagy, suggesting that WNV does not disrupt the authophagy signaling cascade. Perturbation of the autophagy pathway by depletion of the major autophagy factors Atg5 or Atg7 had no effect on WNV infectious particle production, indicating that WNV does not require a functional autophagy pathway for replication. Taken together, the results of our study provide evidence that WNV, unlike several other viruses of the family Flaviviridae, does not significantly interact with the conventional autophagy pathway in mammalian cells.
The Composition of Metropolitan Employment and the Correlation of Housing Prices Across Metropolitan Areas

"The variation in default rates by region is quite substantial. Default rates in theNorthcentral states were about ve times as large as default rates in the Southeasternstates. These di erences rei¬‚ect the credit rate risk associated with the real estatemarkets in each of the regions, the fortunes of the regional economies, and the loan-to-value ratios and ages of the mortgages. "- Quigley and Van Order (1991), p. 358, italics added"The pattern of covariances in these returns suggests that portfolio risk can be reducedby geographical diversi cation . "- Quigley and Van Order (1991), p. 361Implicit in this argument is an assumption that the fundamentals that generate returnsto housing are not perfectly correlated across space. However, if metropolitan areas areviewed as small open economies, they will share shocks to the prices of common inportsand exports|shocks that may spill over to housing markets. This paper demonstratesthat the correlation of returns to residential housing between two metropolitan areasis a function not only of their physical proximitiy but also the similarity of their indus-trial composition. This implies that as local economies evolve so will the covarianceof housing returns|suggesting that the bene ts derived from diversi cation are maxi-mized by considering the industry risk inherent in the current metropolitan areas, notjust the correlation of past returns.
Rapidly Measured Indicators of Recreational Water Quality Are Predictive of Swimming-Associated Gastrointestinal Illness

Standard methods to measure recreational water quality require at least 24 hr to obtain results, making it impossible to assess the quality of water within a single day. Methods to measure recreational water quality in ≤ 2 hr have been developed. Application of rapid methods could give considerably more accurate and timely assessments of recreational water quality. We conducted a prospective study of beachgoers at two Great Lakes beaches to examine the association between recreational water quality, obtained using rapid methods, and gastrointestinal (GI) illness after swimming. Beachgoers were asked about swimming and other beach activities and 10–12 days later were asked about the occurrence of GI symptoms. We tested water samples for Enterococcus and Bacteroides species using the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. We observed significant trends between increased GI illness and Enterococcus at the Lake Michigan beach and a positive trend for Enterococcus at the Lake Erie beach. The association remained significant for Enterococcus when the two beaches were combined. We observed a positive trend for Bacteroides at the Lake Erie beach, but no trend was observed at the Lake Michigan beach. Enterococcus samples collected at 0800 hr were predictive of GI illness that day. The association between Enterococcus and illness strengthened as time spent swimming in the water increased. This is the first study to show that water quality measured by rapid methods can predict swimming-associated health effects.
Valuation of the Premium Options for Flexible Premium Equity-Indexed Annuities

In this paper, we extend the single benefit premium evaluation of equity-indexed annuities (EIAs) to periodic annual premiums. Together with various mortality as well as surrender and financial options, these products can be embedded with annual premium options and are then known, in the U.S. market, as flexible premium variable annuities (FPVAs). That is, policyholders are entitled to reinvest every year in the same contract at their convenience. Since the annual investment remains an option, identification of the premium payment schedule that is optimal for the policyholder is a stochastic control problem. Within a discrete model, we solved this stochastic control problem through dynamic programming. Then, we precisely define the distinction between a global and an individual protection of premiums, through some proposed formula for the death and accumulation guarantees. Pursuing the pioneer work of Chi and Lin (2012), we show that the hedging strategy for FPVAs is path dependent, while the hedging strategy for SPVAs is path independent. In the numerical analysis, we detected that the fair participation rate of an FPVA can differ from that of an SPVA by 10% for a global protection of premiums, and by 15% for an individual protection of premiums. The observation of a larger difference for an individual protection, than for a global protection, is a counter-intuitive result and calls for caution when approximating an FPVA by a combination of SPVAs. Flexible Premium Variable Annuities; Single Premium Variable Annuities; Surrender Value; Rationality; Stochastic Control Problem; Dynamic Programming Copyright c © 2013 Nicolas Essis-Breton. Released under a . ∗http://nicolasessisbreton.com †Concordia University
Task-Dependent Visual-Codebook Compression

A visual codebook serves as a fundamental component in many state-of-the-art computer vision systems. Most existing codebooks are built based on quantizing local feature descriptors extracted from training images. Subsequently, each image is represented as a high-dimensional bag-of-words histogram. Such highly redundant image description lacks efficiency in both storage and retrieval, in which only a few bins are nonzero and distributed sparsely. Furthermore, most existing codebooks are built based solely on the visual statistics of local descriptors, without considering the supervise labels coming from the subsequent recognition or classification tasks. In this paper, we propose a task-dependent codebook compression framework to handle the above two problems. First, we propose to learn a compression function to map an originally high-dimensional codebook into a compact codebook while maintaining its visual discriminability. This is achieved by a codeword sparse coding scheme with Lasso regression, which minimizes the descriptor distortions of training images after codebook compression. Second, we propose to adapt our codebook compression to the subsequent recognition or classification tasks. This is achieved by introducing a label constraint kernel (LCK) into our compression loss function. In particular, our LCK can model heterogeneous kinds of supervision, i.e., (partial) category labels, correlative semantic annotations, and image query logs. We validated our codebook compression in three computer vision tasks: 1) object recognition in PASCAL Visual Object Class 07; 2) near-duplicate image retrieval in UKBench; and 3) web image search in a collection of 0.5 million Flickr photographs. Our compressed codebook has shown superior performances over several state-of-the-art supervised and unsupervised codebooks.
Kinase Signaling in Apoptosis Induced by Saturated Fatty Acids in Pancreatic β-Cells

Pancreatic β-cell failure and death is considered to be one of the main factors responsible for type 2 diabetes. It is caused by, in addition to hyperglycemia, chronic exposure to increased concentrations of fatty acids, mainly saturated fatty acids. Molecular mechanisms of apoptosis induction by saturated fatty acids in β-cells are not completely clear. It has been proposed that kinase signaling could be involved, particularly, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), protein kinase C (PKC), p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK), extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), and Akt kinases and their pathways. In this review, we discuss these kinases and their signaling pathways with respect to their possible role in apoptosis induction by saturated fatty acids in pancreatic β-cells.
The Impact of Improved Auditor Independence on Audit Market Concentration in China

In an attempt to increase credibility in its capital markets, China recently adopted new auditing standards. Consistent with increased auditor independence, we "nd that the frequency of modi"ed opinions increases nine-fold subsequent to the adoption of the new standards. However, the increase in modi"ed reports is followed by a decline in audit market share among large auditors } those with the greatest propensity to issue modi"ed reports. We conjecture that this &#ight from audit quality’ results from lack of incentives to demand independent auditors. Our "ndings suggest that government regulation alone is insu$cient to create "nancial markets that foster auditor independence. ( 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classixcation: G38; L15; L84; M4; O16; O53; P23
Antihyperglycemic Effect of Asafoetida (Ferula assafoetida Oleo-Gum-Resin) in Streptozotocin-induced Diabetic Rats

Asafoetida, an oleo-gum-resin obtained from the roots of Ferula assafoetida, is used in traditional medicine to treat various diseases including, asthma, epilepsy, gastrointestinal disorders and influenza. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the hypoglycemic activity of the asafoetida extract in streptozotocin- induced diabetic rats. Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 5 groups, including: control, diabetic and diabetics treated with the asafoetida extract at doses of 50, 100 and 300 mg/kg. The animals were rendered diabetic by a single intraperitoneal injection of 60 mg/kg streptozotocin. Diabetic rats received the asafoetida extract daily in drinking water for 4 weeks. The blood glucose and lipids were spectrophotometrically measured in all groups at weeks 0 (before diabetes induction), 2 and 4. Diabetic rats showed an elevated serum glucose level over those of control rats at weeks 2 and 4 (P<0.05) and treatment of diabetic rats with the asafoetida extract at dose of 50 mg/kg significantly lowered the serum glucose concentration in comparison to diabetic rats. Regarding serum lipids, diabetes induction for 4 weeks did not change the triglyceride, total cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol concentrations in diabetic rats compared to controls. In conclusion, the asafoetida extract administration at dose of 50 mg/kg for 4 weeks shown the hypoglycemic activity in streptozotocin-diabetic rats during 2 week and at the end of 4 week of treatment period. This effect can be explained at least in part by nd th the presence of the phenolic acids (ferulic acid) and tannins in the extract.
The impact of observed non-verbal cues on message-based persuasion

Non-verbal communication is a pervasive form of information sharing which has been shown to influence human behavior from infancy. To date, few empirical investigations have explored the mechanism or mechanisms by which the observed nonverbal reactions of an audience can influence message-based persuasion. Within the current dissertation, pilot data suggest that observing different types of non-verbal reactions to a persuasive message can affect attitudes. Four studies then explore two possible mechanisms by which audience non-verbal reactions could influence attitudes in a message-based persuasion paradigm. Results suggest that audience non-verbal reactions can influence attitudes by serving as a cue or heuristic or by biasing how message arguments are interpreted. Results are relevant to parties interested in affecting people’s attitudes and behavior; especially as subtle non-verbal cues become more frequently communicated through technology such as network television and videoconferencing.
Increasing engagement of students with learning disabilities in mathematical problem‐solving and discussion

Engagement in problem-solving and mathematical discussion is critical for learning mathematics. This research review describes a gap in the literature surrounding engagement of students with Learning Disabilities in standards-based mathematical classrooms. Taking a sociocultural view of engagement as participation in mathematical practices, this review found that students with LD were supported towards equal engagement in standards-based mathematics through multi-modal curriculum, consistent routines for problem-solving, and teachers trained in Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching. Using this small set of studies (7), we identify the need to deepen the engagement of students with LD in mathematical problem-solving and discussion. This review concludes with implications for teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Modeling Linkage Disequilibrium in Natural Populations: The Example of the Soay Sheep Population of St. Kilda, Scotland

The use of linkage disequilibrium to localize the genes underlying quantitative traits has received considerable attention in the livestock genetics community over the past few years. This has resulted in the investigation of linkage disequilibrium structures of several domestic livestock populations to assess their potential use in fine-mapping efforts. However, the linkage disequilibrium structure of free-living populations has been less well investigated. As the direct evaluation of linkage disequilibrium can be both time consuming and expensive the use of simulations that include as many aspects of population history as possible is advocated as an alternative. A simulation of the linkage disequilibrium structure of the Soay sheep population of St. Kilda, Scotland, is provided as an example. The simulated population showed significant decline of linkage disequilibrium with genetic distance and low levels of background linkage disequilibrium, indicating that the Soay sheep population is a viable resource for linkage disequilibrium fine mapping of quantitative trait loci.
Reflect, ‘refract’ or reveal: sociocultural explorations of the place of teacher subjectivity in infant care

ABSTRACT Research indicates that adult sensitivity to psychological states (both the adult’s and the infant’s) will affect the security of attachment yet the teacher’s internal state has received little attention in infant care. ‘Perezhivanie’ is a sociocultural concept that presents affect and intellect as a unit rather than separate elements. ‘Refraction’, a related concept, positions teacher subjectivity as the reference point for understanding caregiving behaviour as all thinking and behaviour is ‘refracted’ through the emotional prism of the person’s feeling state. This article discusses an emerging finding from a qualitative case study investigating early childhood teachers’ subjective and affective experiences of infant care. Early findings suggest teachers have difficulty expressing the personal and emotional nature of their work which appears at odds with studies confirming the significance of adult affect in adult–infant relationships. Theoretical and methodological explanations for the teachers’ silence are explored and implications discussed. ‘Refraction’ is presented as a supplementary theoretical tool to increase understanding of the personal and emotional nature of infant care.
An In-depth and Black-box Characterization of the Effects of Clock Glitches on 8-bit MCUs

The literature about fault analysis typically describes fault injection mechanisms, e.g. glitches and lasers, and cryptanalytic techniques to exploit faults based on some assumed fault model. Our work narrows the gap between both topics. We thoroughly analyse how clock glitches affect a commercial low-cost processor by performing a large number of experiments on five devices. We observe that the effects of fault injection on two-stage pipeline devices are more complex than commonly reported in the literature. While injecting a fault is relatively easy, injecting an exploitable fault is hard. We further observe that the easiest to inject and reliable fault is to replace instructions, and that random faults do not occur. Finally we explain how typical fault attacks can be mounted on this device, and describe a new attack for which the fault injection is easy and the cryptanalysis trivial.
On the Optimal Synthesis of Ring Symmetric Shaped Patterns by Means of Uniformly Spaced Planar Arrays

By taking inspiration from (1), a synthesis strategy is proposed for the case of planar arrays and ring shaped patterns which does not require the exploitation of global optimization procedures. In particular, the approach is able to determine a priori (that is, without solving the overall design problem) whether the given power pattern design constraints can be fulfllled or not, and, in the adflrmative case, to determine the needed excitation coe-cients in a fast deterministic manner. Although the approach does not apply to generic planar arrays and generic constraints, it applies to a large number of problems of actual interest, and outperforms some recently published synthesis procedures. Moreover, it may serve both as a reference solution for more general synthesis procedures, and as an elementary brick for more cumbersome synthesis problems.
The social perception of faces

Faces are one of the most potent social stimuli conveying information about social categories (e.g., sex, age, race), mental states (e.g., puzzled), emotional states (e.g., angry), attractiveness, and identity. People also infer a host of personality characteristics from facial appearance such as trustworthiness and competence (Todorov, Said, & Verosky, 2011), although these inferences are not necessarily accurate (Olivola & Todorov, 2010a). People can rapidly extract information from faces about:
Examining the role of attitudinal, normative and control factors influencing behavioural intention to adopt broadband in Pakistan

The aim of this study was to examine the various attitudinal, normative and control factors affecting the adoption of broadband Internet in a developing country context by focusing upon Pakistan. The data on these variables was collected using a survey approach. The findings of this paper suggest that primary influence, facilitating conditions resources, cost, perceived knowledge and perceived ease of use are significant factors for explaining consumers’ behavioural intentions to adopt broadband Internet in Pakistan. The paper proceeds to outline the research limitations, theoretical contributions and implications for practice.
Lecturers’ Professional Competency and Students’ Academic Performance in Indonesia Higher Education

In an increasingly competitive environment to provide better education, higher education institution should focus on improving the students’ academic performance. This performance embodied in student grade which then support the graduated student who search for jobs. Besides improving the mental attitude, higher education institution should also improve cognitive abilities. One of the important factors which can contribute in improving cognitive abilities is lecturer professional competencies. Lecturer should have a wide and deep knowledge regarding the courses they teach. They also should possess practical experience so their lesson more attractive. This study examined the impact of lecturers’ professional competency on students’ academic performance in higher education. The findings show that the professional competency do not have a significantly relation with students’ academic performance. The detail discussion provided with new insights of various factors which might relate to the performance.
Isolation of rat hepatocyte plasma membranes. II. Identification of membrane-associated cytoskeletal proteins

Rat liver plasma membranes were isolated as presented in the preceding paper (Hubbard, A. L., D. A. Wall, and A. Ma., 1983, J. Cell Biol., 96: 217-229) and found to contain many filaments associated both with desmosomes along the lateral surface and with the cytoplasmic aspects of membranes comprising each of the three domains (lateral [LS], bile canalicular [BC] and sinusoidal [SF] ). Exposure of the plasma membranes to alkaline media (up to pH 11) resulted in loss of recognizable filaments without loss of domain morphology or membrane enzyme activities. Electrophoretic analysis of solubilized components from control and alkaline-extracted plasma membranes revealed that three major polypeptides present at 43, 52, and 56 kdaltons in the control had been released by alkaline treatment (pH 11) and could be quantitatively recovered in the supernate. The 43-kdalton component was identified as cytoplasmic actin by comparison of its tryptic 125I- peptide map to those of muscle (alpha) and brush border (beta, gamma) actins. The 52- and 56-kdalton polypeptides were identified as tonofilament components by their solubility properties and their ability to reassemble into 9.5-nm filaments from monomers present in an alkaline extract.
Developing Fire Behavior Fuel Models for the Wildland-Urban Interface in Anchorage, Alaska

Fire behavior modeling systems are playing an increasingly important role in identifying areas of the wildland– urban interface (WUI) that could support intense and fast-moving wildfires. The modeling systems also can be used to prioritize areas for fuels reduction treatments. We used forest inventory data to create custom fire behavior fuel models for the Anchorage, Alaska, WUI—an area strongly impacted by a recent spruce bark beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis) infestation. Eight custom fuel models were developed including a custom fuel model for a spruce bark beetle impacted forest type. NEXUS simulations indicate that the custom fuel models better describe forest structure and predict fire behavior than do parameterized standard fuel models previously used by local fire managers. Rate of spread and fireline ranged from 1–321 chains/hour and 1–2,549 Btu/ft per second, respectively, for the custom fuel models compared with 1–70 chains/hour and 1–7,929 Btu/ft per second, respectively, for the parameterized standard fuel models. Our study shows that it is both possible and feasible to create custom fuel models directly from fuels inventory data. This achievement has broad implications for land managers, particularly managers of the boreal forest, a region that is susceptible to wildfires but also home to a growing human population and increasing amounts of development.