Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The structure of human SFPQ reveals a coiled-coil mediated polymer essential for functional aggregation in gene regulation

SFPQ, (a.k.a. PSF), is a human tumor suppressor protein that regulates many important functions in the cell nucleus including coordination of long non-coding RNA molecules into nuclear bodies. Here we describe the first crystal structures of Splicing Factor Proline and Glutamine Rich (SFPQ), revealing structural similarity to the related PSPC1/NONO heterodimer and a strikingly extended structure (over 265 Å long) formed by an unusual anti-parallel coiled-coil that results in an infinite linear polymer of SFPQ dimers within the crystals. Small-angle X-ray scattering and transmission electron microscopy experiments show that polymerization is reversible in solution and can be templated by DNA. We demonstrate that the ability to polymerize is essential for the cellular functions of SFPQ: disruptive mutation of the coiled-coil interaction motif results in SFPQ mislocalization, reduced formation of nuclear bodies, abrogated molecular interactions and deficient transcriptional regulation. The coiled-coil interaction motif thus provides a molecular explanation for the functional aggregation of SFPQ that directs its role in regulating many aspects of cellular nucleic acid metabolism.
A multimodal perceptual user interface for video-surveillance environments

In this paper a perceptual user interface (PUI) for video-surveillance environments is introduced. This system provides a tool for a video-surveillance control-room, and exploits a novel multimodal user interaction paradigm based on hand gesture and perceptual user interfaces. The proposed system, being simple and intuitive, is expected to be useful in the control of large and dynamic environments. To illustrate our work, we introduce a proof-of concept multimodal, bare-hand gesture-based application and discuss its implementation and the obtained experimental results.
Phoneme-to-viseme Mapping for Visual Speech Recognition

Phonemes are the standard modelling unit in HMM-based continuous speech recognition systems. Visemes are the equivalent unit in the visual domain, but there is less agreement on precisely what visemes are, or how many to model on the visual side in audio-visual speech recognition systems. This paper compares the use of 5 viseme maps in a continuous speech recognition task. The focus of the study is visual-only recognition to examine the choice of viseme map. All the maps are based on the phoneme-to-viseme approach, created either using a linguistic method or a data driven method. DCT, PCA and optical flow are used as the visual features. The best visual-only recognition on the VidTIMIT database is achieved using a linguistically motivated viseme set. These initial experiments demonstrate that the choice of visual unit requires more careful attention in audio-visual speech recognition system development.
Acne vulgaris in women: prevalence across the life span.

BACKGROUND Acne vulgaris is a common skin disease with a large quality of life impact, characterized by comedones, inflammatory lesions, secondary dyspigmentation, and scarring. Although traditionally considered a disease of adolescence, reports suggest it is also a disease of adults, especially adult women. Our objectives were to determine acne prevalence in a large, diverse group of women and to examine acne by subtype and in relation to other skin findings, measurements, and lifestyle factors. METHODS We recruited 2895 women aged 10-70 from the general population. Photographs were graded for acne lesions, scars, and dyspigmentation. Measurements were taken of sebum excretion and pore size, and survey data were collected. RESULTS Of the women studied, 55% had some form of acne: 28% had mild acne, and 27% had clinical acne, 14% of which was primarily inflammatory and 13% of which was primarily comedonal. Acne peaked in the teenage years, but 45% of women aged 21-30, 26% aged 31-40, and 12% aged 41-50 had clinical acne. Women with inflammatory acne were younger than those with comedonal acne (p≤0.001), and postmenopausal women had less acne than age-matched peers (p<0.0001). Acne was associated with facial hirsutism (p=0.001), large pores (p=0.001), and sebum excretion (p=0.002). Smokers had more, primarily comedonal, acne than nonsmokers. CONCLUSIONS The cross-sectional design precludes conclusions about progression of acne with age. Participation was restricted to women. The photographic nature of the study imposes general limitations. Techniques used in this study were not sufficiently sensitive to identify cases of subclinical acne. More than a quarter of women studied had acne, which peaked in the teens but continued to be prevalent through the fifth decade.
Assessing Key Predictors of Career Success

Identifying predictors of career success is one of the most considered topics in career research and practice. However, the existing literature suggests a vast array of potential predictors that cannot be economically measured. This significantly limits research and practice. To address this issue, we have integrated theoretical and meta-analytic research to propose an integrative framework of career resources, including human capital, environmental, motivational, and career management behavior resources represented by 13 distinct factors. In a multistep process, we have developed the career resources questionnaire to assess these factors in workers and college students. In two studies encompassing 873 workers and 691 students, we have confirmed reliability and factor structure, convergent validity with existing scales, and criterion validity with indicators of subjective and objective career success. The developed measure can provide researchers and practitioners with a reliable, concise, and comprehensive measure to assess the key predictors of career success.
Change and continuity in Japanese corporate reform

Abstract Confronted with critical business situations in the late 1990s, Japanese firms began to tackle reforms in both corporate governance and human-resource management. These reforms advocated that Japanese firms shift from being organization-based to market-based corporations, similar to their US counterparts. However, the actual reform did not produce such an overall change but occurred with incremental and cumulative changes within the existing institutional framework. This article examines continuing changes in Japanese firms, and demonstrates that they are diversified into different directions as a result of gradual institutional change.
Spatial Variations of Prokaryotic Communities in Surface Water from India Ocean to Chinese Marginal Seas and their Underlining Environmental Determinants

To illustrate the biogeographic patterns of prokaryotic communities in surface sea water, 24 samples were systematically collected across a large distance from Indian Ocean to Chinese marginal seas, with an average distance of 453 km between two adjacent stations. A total of 841,364 quality reads was produced by the high throughput DNA sequencing of the 16S rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Proteobacteria were predominant in all samples, with Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria being the two most abundant components. Cyanobacteria represented the second largest fraction of the total quality reads, and mainly included Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. The semi-closed marginal seas, including South China Sea (SCS) and nearby regions, exhibited a transition in community composition between oceanic and coastal seas, based on the distribution patterns of Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus as well as a non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis. Distinct clusters of prokaryotes from coastal and open seas, and from different water masses in Indian Ocean were obtained by Bray-Curtis dissimilarity analysis at the OTU level, revealing a clear spatial heterogeneity. The major environmental factors correlated with the community variation in this broad scale were identified as salinity, temperature and geographic distance. Community comparison among regions shows that anthropogenic contamination is another dominant factor in shaping the biogeographic patterns of the microorganisms. These results suggest that environmental factors involved in complex interactions between land and sea act synergistically in driving spatial variations in coastal areas.
"We walk that boundary. It's a tightrope." : A Grounded Theory Approach to the Experiences of Direct Support Professionals Who Work With People With Intellectual Disability and Possibly Sexualized Challenging Behavior

Matters of sexuality and concepts of risk have played a central role in the development of systems of supports for people with intellectual disability (ID) in the United States during the past 150+ years. As community based programs have risen in prominence since the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1970s men and women working as Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) have been tasked with a myriad of responsibilities which may at times include enacting supports or limitations on the sexual or possibly sexual actions of people with ID. How DSPs experience their jobs, understand, and make decisions regarding sexuality is an area of investigation that has received little attention to date. When possibly sexual actions by people with ID are classified as challenging (i.e., possibly sexualized challenging behavior; pSCB), our understanding of the roles, duties, and experiences of DSPs working in community-based systems has been unaddressed in the literature. This study sought to examine the perspectives of DSPs working at a single provider agency, which has a history of supporting individuals with ID and a wide array of pSCB. A grounded
SEeSAW - Similarity Exploiting Storage for Accelerating Analytics Workflows

The key to successful deployment of big data solutions lies in the timely distillation of meaningful information. This is made difficult by the mismatch between volume and velocity of data at scale and challenges posed by disparate speeds of IO, CPU, memory and communication links of data storage and processing systems. Instead of viewing storage as a bottleneck in this pipeline, we believe that storage systems are best positioned to discover and exploit intrinsic data properties to enhance information density of stored data. This has the potential to reduce the amount of new information that needs to be processed by an analytics workflow. Towards exploring this possibility, we propose SEeSAW, a Similarity Exploiting Storage for Accelerating Analytics Workflows that makes similarity a fundamental storage primitive. We show that SEeSAW transparently eliminates the need for applications to process uninformative data, thereby incurring substantially lower costs on IO, memory, computation and communication while speeding up (about 97% as observed in our experiment) the rate at which actionable outcomes can be derived by analyzing data. By increasing capacity of analytics workloads to absorb more data within the same resource envelope, SEeSAW can open up rich opportunities to reap greater benefits from machine and human generated data accumulated from various sources.
The Use of Exome Genotyping to Predict Pathological Gleason Score Upgrade after Radical Prostatectomy in Low-Risk Prostate Cancer Patients

Background Active surveillance (AS) is a promising option for patients with low-risk prostate cancer (PCa), however current criteria could not select the patients correctly, many patients who fulfilled recent AS criteria experienced pathological Gleason score upgrade (PGU) after radical prostatectomy (RP). In this study, we aimed to develop an accurate model for predicting PGU among low-risk PCa patients by using exome genotyping. Methods We genotyped 242,221 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP)s on a custom HumanExome BeadChip v1.0 (Illuminam Inc.) in blood DNA from 257 low risk PCa patients (PSA <10 ng/ml, biopsy Gleason score (GS) ≤6 and clinical stage ≤T2a) who underwent radical prostatectomy. Genetic data were analyzed using an unconditional logistic regression to calculate an odds ratio as an estimate of relative risk of PGU, which defined pathologic GS above 7. Among them, we selected persistent SNPs after multiple testing using FDR method, and we compared accuracies from the multivariate logistic model incorporating clinical factors between included and excluded selected SNP information. Results After analysis of exome genotyping, 15 SNPs were significant to predict PGU in low risk PCa patients. Among them, one SNP – rs33999879 remained significant after multiple testing. When a multivariate model incorporating factors in Epstein definition – PSA density, biopsy GS, positive core number, tumor per core ratio and age was devised for the prediction of PGU, the predictive accuracy of the multivariate model was 78.4% (95%CI: 0.726–0.834). By addition the factor of rs33999879 in aforementioned multivariate model, the predictive accuracy was 82.9%, which was significantly increased (p = 0.0196). Conclusion The rs33999879 SNP is a predictor for PGU. The addition of genetic information from the exome sequencing effectively enhanced the predictive accuracy of the multivariate model to establish suitable active surveillance criteria.
Storage and query processing optimizations for hierarchically-organized data

Hierarchical data can be found anywhere multiple pieces of information are connected by a relationship. The first chapter of my thesis deals with processing relational queries in the context of a native XML storage system. We take advantage of hierarchical XML to equate the nested structure of the XML documents with the key relationship between two data items. A join query can then be rewritten as a storage scan, allowing acceleration of the query. The second chapter provides a comparison of row and column oriented storage optimizations given an assumption of read-mostly data access. We focus on two, "super tuples" and "column abstraction", to elucidate the difference between row and column storage layouts. Column abstraction allows optimization of hierarchically organized data by storing repeating values only once. We extend the read-optimized relational store in the third chapter to evaluate two predicate evaluation strategies---a scan-based solution over both standard super tuples and the PAX layout, and an index-based strategy with and without a slot array in super tuples.
Gamma-H2AX-Based Dose Estimation for Whole and Partial Body Radiation Exposure

Most human exposures to ionising radiation are partial body exposures. However, to date only limited tools are available for rapid and accurate estimation of the dose distribution and the extent of the body spared from the exposure. These parameters are of great importance for emergency triage and clinical management of exposed individuals. Here, measurements of γ-H2AX immunofluorescence by microscopy and flow cytometry were compared as rapid biodosimetric tools for whole and partial body exposures. Ex vivo uniformly X-irradiated blood lymphocytes from one donor were used to generate a universal biexponential calibration function for γ-H2AX foci/intensity yields per unit dose for time points up to 96 hours post exposure. Foci – but not intensity – levels remained significantly above background for 96 hours for doses of 0.5 Gy or more. Foci-based dose estimates for ex vivo X-irradiated blood samples from 13 volunteers were in excellent agreement with the actual dose delivered to the targeted samples. Flow cytometric dose estimates for X-irradiated blood samples from 8 volunteers were in excellent agreement with the actual dose delivered at 1 hour post exposure but less so at 24 hours post exposure. In partial body exposures, simulated by mixing ex vivo irradiated and unirradiated lymphocytes, foci/intensity distributions were significantly over-dispersed compared to uniformly irradiated lymphocytes. For both methods and in all cases the estimated fraction of irradiated lymphocytes and dose to that fraction, calculated using the zero contaminated Poisson test and γ-H2AX calibration function, were in good agreement with the actual mixing ratios and doses delivered to the samples. In conclusion, γ-H2AX analysis of irradiated lymphocytes enables rapid and accurate assessment of whole body doses while dispersion analysis of foci or intensity distributions helps determine partial body doses and the irradiated fraction size in cases of partial body exposures.
Heterologous Expression of Mycobacterial Proteins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Reveals Two Physiologically Functional 3-Hydroxyacyl-Thioester Dehydratases, HtdX and HtdY, in Addition to HadABC and HtdZ

ABSTRACT We report on Mycobacterium tuberculosis Rv0241c and Rv3389c, representing two physiologically functional 3-hydroxyacyl-thioester dehydratases (Htd). These enzymes are potentially entrained in type 2 fatty acid synthase (FASII). Mycobacterial FASII is involved in the synthesis of mycolic acids, which are the major constituents of the protective layer around the pathogen, shielding it from noxious chemicals and the host's immune system. Mycolic acids are additionally associated with the virulence and resilience of M. tuberculosis. Here, Rv0241c and Rv3389c, which are distinct from the previously identified heterodimers Rv0635-Rv0636 (HadAB) and Rv0636-Rv0637 (HadBC) but also the homodimer Rv0130 (HtdZ), were identified by expressing the corresponding candidate open reading frames in Saccharomyces cerevisiae htd2Δ cells lacking mitochondrial 3-hydroxyacyl-acyl carrier protein dehydratase activity, followed by scoring for phenotype rescue. The htd2Δ mutant fails to produce sufficient levels of lipoic acid and does not respire or grow on nonfermentable carbon sources. Soluble protein extracts made from mutant htd2Δ cells expressing mitochondrially targeted Rv0241c or Rv3389c contained 3-hydroxyacyl-thioester hydratase activity. Moreover, mutant yeast cells expressing Rv0241c or Rv3389c were able to recover their respiratory growth on glycerol medium and efficiently reduce 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride. Additionally, expression of mitochondrial Rv0241c or Rv3389c in htd2Δ cells also restored de novo lipoic acid synthesis to 92 and 40% of the level in the wild-type strain, respectively. We propose naming Rv0241c and Rv3389c as HtdX and HtdY, respectively, and discuss the implications of our finding with reference to Rv0098, a candidate mycobacterial FabZ homologue with intrinsic thioesterase and hydratase activities that lacks the eukaryotic-like hydratase-2 motif.
Thermal stability of retained austenite in bainitic steel: an in situ study

The tempering of two-phase mixtures of bainitic ferrite and carbon-enriched retained austenite has been investigated in an effort to separate the reactions that occur at elevated temperatures from any transformation during cooling to ambient conditions. It is demonstrated using synchrotron X-radiation measurements that the residue of austenite left at the tempering temperature partly decomposes by martensitic transformation when the sample is cooled. It is well established in the published literature that films of retained austenite are better able to resist stress or strain-induced martensitic transformation than any coarser particles of austenite. In contrast, the coarser austenite is more resistant to the precipitation of cementite during tempering than the film form because of its lower carbon concentration.
Analysis on Prediction Efficiency of Overlapped Block Motion Compensation

SUMMARY We theoretically evaluate the prediction efficiency of the overlapped block motion compensation (OBMC) compared with the conventional non-overlapped approach. Based on the one-dimensional signal model characterized by the AR(1) process and first-order polynomial motion, a condition under which the performance of the OBMCis better, and an optimum window function are derived. From the results, we discuss and analyze several properties of the OBMC, some of which have been experimentally reported in the literature.
AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Interconnectivity and social relationships of customers on social platforms offered by Web 2.0 technologies drive value for business. Customers are using social technologies to share their information and gain access to others’ information and advice, which helps them to know better the products and services. In these platforms they have social connections which assist them to reduce their perceived risk and persuade them to buy online. On the other side, businesses use these social platforms to improve their marketing strategies. This research proposes a social commerce adoption model based on the relationships of customers on the internet and social platforms to investigate customer behaviour. This research gathers survey data and applies structural equation modelling to analyse the data. The result shows forums and communities and perceived usefulness positively affect users’ trust, leading to more intention to buy among consumers. The discussions, implications and conclusion are discussed at the end of the paper.
Differential contribution of angiotensinergic and cholinergic receptors in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus to osmotically induced AVP release.

We studied the involvement of periventricular and hypothalamic angiotensinergic and cholinergic pathways in osmotically induced arginine vasopressin (AVP) release into the blood. In conscious Wistar rats, i.c. v. injections of 0.2, 0.3 and 0.6 M hyperosmolar saline (5 microl) resulted in concentration-dependent increases in AVP release (5.2 +/- 1.5, 10.6 +/- 2.2 and 18.0 +/- 2.2 pg/ml, respectively, vs. 2.0 +/- 0.1 in controls). The two lower saline concentrations did not affect arterial blood pressure (non-pressure-associated AVP release), whereas 0.6 M saline induced increase in blood pressure (pressure-associated AVP release). In the first set of experiments, periventricular angiotensin AT1, muscarinic or nicotinic receptors were blocked by i.c. v. administration of losartan (10 nmol), atropine (100 nmol) or hexamethonium (100 nmol), respectively, before i.c. v. hyperosmolar saline injections. Losartan significantly reduced the 0.2 M and 0.3 M, but not the 0.6 M, saline-induced increase in AVP release. The 0. 3 M saline-induced AVP release was blocked by atropine and hexamethonium, whereas the 0.6 M saline-induced AVP release was blocked by atropine only. In the second set of experiments, losartan (4 nmol), atropine (200 nmol) or hexamethonium (200 nmol) was injected bilaterally into the paraventricular nucleus before i.c. v. hyperosmolar saline injections. Losartan reduced 0.3 M and potentiated 0.6 M saline-induced AVP release. On the other hand, atropine and hexamethonium significantly reduced both 0.3 and 0.6 M saline-induced AVP release. We conclude that afferents arising from periventricular osmosensitive neurons to the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus, which are involved in non-pressure-associated osmotically induced AVP release, are both angiotensinergic and cholinergic, whereas those mediating pressure-associated AVP release are cholinergic in nature.
Techniques for evaluating the robustness of Windows NT software

Windows NT is rapidly becoming the platform of choice for organizations engaging in commerce, engineering, and research. The Windows NT operating system and its software are being relied upon for an increasing number of critical applications in both the military and civilian arenas. It is essential that software testing techniques are created that will enable the development of software that is capable of functioning in such roles, This paper presents two approaches that can be used to aid in the robustness testing of Windows NT software. The first approach uses a test data generator to analyze the robustness of Windows NT Dynamic Link Libraries. The second approach uses binary wrapping and fault injection techniques to study the effects of operating system failures on an application. A Failure Simulation Tool has been developed to this end.