Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gene Turnover Contributes to the Evolutionary Adaptation of Acidithiobacillus caldus: Insights from Comparative Genomics

Acidithiobacillus caldus is an extremely acidophilic sulfur-oxidizer with specialized characteristics, such as tolerance to low pH and heavy metal resistance. To gain novel insights into its genetic complexity, we chosen six A. caldus strains for comparative survey. All strains analyzed in this study differ in geographic origins as well as in ecological preferences. Based on phylogenomic analysis, we clustered the six A. caldus strains isolated from various ecological niches into two groups: group 1 strains with smaller genomes and group 2 strains with larger genomes. We found no obvious intraspecific divergence with respect to predicted genes that are related to central metabolism and stress management strategies between these two groups. Although numerous highly homogeneous genes were observed, high genetic diversity was also detected. Preliminary inspection provided a first glimpse of the potential correlation between intraspecific diversity at the genome level and environmental variation, especially geochemical conditions. Evolutionary genetic analyses further showed evidence that the difference in environmental conditions might be a crucial factor to drive the divergent evolution of A. caldus species. We identified a diverse pool of mobile genetic elements including insertion sequences and genomic islands, which suggests a high frequency of genetic exchange in these harsh habitats. Comprehensive analysis revealed that gene gains and losses were both dominant evolutionary forces that directed the genomic diversification of A. caldus species. For instance, horizontal gene transfer and gene duplication events in group 2 strains might contribute to an increase in microbial DNA content and novel functions. Moreover, genomes undergo extensive changes in group 1 strains such as removal of potential non-functional DNA, which results in the formation of compact and streamlined genomes. Taken together, the findings presented herein show highly frequent gene turnover of A. caldus species that inhabit extremely acidic environments, and shed new light on the contribution of gene turnover to the evolutionary adaptation of acidophiles.
A Large Stellar Evolution Database for Population Synthesis Studies. III. Inclusion of the Full Asymptotic Giant Branch Phase and Web Tools for Stellar Population Analyses

Stellar evolution tracks and isochrones are key inputs for a wide range of astrophysical studies; in particular, they are essential to the interpretation of photometric and spectroscopic observations of resolved and unresolved stellar populations. We have made available to the astrophysical community a large, homogenous database of up-to-date stellar tracks and isochrones and a set of programs useful in population synthesis studies. In this paper we first summarize the main properties of our stellar model database (BaSTI ) already introduced by Pietrinferni and coworkers. We then discuss an important update of the database, i.e., the extension of all stellar models and isochrones until the end of the thermal pulses along the asymptotic giant branch. This extension of the library is particularly relevant for stellar population analyses in the near-infrared or longer wavelengths, where the contribution to the integrated photometric properties by cool and bright asymptotic giant branch stars is significant. A few comparisons with empirical data are also presented and briefly discussed. We then present three Web tools that allow an interactive access to the database and make it possible to compute user-specified evolutionary tracks, isochrones, stellar luminosity functions, and synthetic color-magnitude diagrams and integrated magnitudes for arbitrary star formation histories. All these Web tools are available at the BaSTI database official Web site.
Best practice in police social media adaptation

textabstractSummary: Best Practice in Police Social Media Adaptation. This document describes best practice of European police forces in adapting social media. The description of these practices stems from a workshop series and other events where police ICT experts met with academics and industry experts; and from a study of the Twitter usage of British police forces during the 2011 riots. Grouped in nine categories, we describe different uses and implementation strategies of social media by police forces. Based on these examples, we show that there have been numerous ways in which police forces benefitted from adopting social media, ranging from improved information for investigations and an improved relationship with the public to a more efficient use of resources.
COM: a generative model for group recommendation

With the rapid development of online social networks, a growing number of people are willing to share their group activities, e.g. having dinners with colleagues, and watching movies with spouses. This motivates the studies on group recommendation, which aims to recommend items for a group of users. Group recommendation is a challenging problem because different group members have different preferences, and how to make a trade-off among their preferences for recommendation is still an open problem. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic model named COM (COnsensus Model) to model the generative process of group activities, and make group recommendations. Intuitively, users in a group may have different influences, and those who are expert in topics relevant to the group are usually more influential. In addition, users in a group may behave differently as group members from as individuals. COM is designed based on these intuitions, and is able to incorporate both users' selection history and personal considerations of content factors. When making recommendations, COM estimates the preference of a group to an item by aggregating the preferences of the group members with different weights. We conduct extensive experiments on four datasets, and the results show that the proposed model is effective in making group recommendations, and outperforms baseline methods significantly.
A Comparative Analysis of the Distribution of Earnings Relative to Targets in the European Union

This paper provides evidence on the distribution of reported earnings relative to targets across and within 14 countries of the European Union (EU). We find for a large sample of over 60,000 firm-years between 1986 and 2001 that more than expected firms (1) report small positive earnings, (2) report small positive earnings changes and (3) have zero or small positive forecast errors. These discontinuities are much more pronounced in our EU sample as compared to the (former) U.S. or pure U.K. evidence. In addition, the functional distributions of reported earnings and earnings changes are less spread and more clustered around zero in Europe, indicating a high(er) extend of income smoothing.
Multidimensional Perfectionism and the Big Five Personality Traits: A Meta–Analysis

Multidimensional perfectionism includes the dimensions perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings. Many studies have investigated the nomological network of multidimensional perfectionism by relating perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings to the Big Five personality traits. Results from these studies were largely inconsistent. In the present study, we meta–analytically integrated 672 effect sizes from 72 samples (N = 21 573) describing relations between multidimensional perfectionism and the Big Five personality traits. Perfectionistic concerns correlated positively with Neuroticism (r = 0.383) and negatively with Extraversion (r = −0.198), Agreeableness (r = −0.198), Conscientiousness (r = −0.111), and Openness (r = −0.087). Perfectionistic strivings correlated positively with Conscientiousness (r = 0.368), Openness (r = 0.121), Neuroticism (r = 0.090), and Extraversion (r = 0.067) and were unrelated to Agreeableness (r = 0.002). The measures of perfectionistic concerns and perfectionistic strivings moderated most of these relations. Meta–analytic structural equation modelling allowed controlling each perfectionism dimension for the respective other. This partialling increased all correlations with the exception of the previously positive correlation between perfectionistic strivings and Neuroticism, which ceased to be significant. The findings support the distinction between perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns and demonstrate how multidimensional perfectionism is situated in the context of broader personality traits. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology
Economic Impacts and Environmental Effectiveness of the Present Climate Regime

This chapter analyses the main features of the present climate regime. To achieve this goal, we first assess the economic and environmental consequences of the US decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol and of the subsequent Marrakech agreement. The work will be done by overviewing the many recent empirical contributions on this topic and by providing original results using our own modelling framework. In particular, we would like to focus both on long term (technological innovation) and short term (the price of emission permits and abatement costs) impacts. The role of different countries in the present climate regime, their bargaining power, their ability to influence future negotiations will also be analysed
Structure and Dynamics of the Brazilian Stock Market: A Correlation Analysis

The impacts of the Subprime Financial crisis resulted in generally similar decline and volatility in both developed and emerging stock markets. However, in the aftermath of the crisis, the performance of emerging economies was stronger. To investigate this phenomena, this paper seeks to gauge the structure of one of the BRICS economies, the Brazilian stock market, for the period 2003 -- 2013, to determine possible determinants of this behavior.Using a Pearson and partial correlation analysis we find that the IBOVESPA index has little affect on the magnitude of the correlations of its components. This finding differs from results obtained recently for developed markets. Finally, we introduce a novel method to investigate the cohesion and dynamics of financial markets that provide new insights into the structure and dynamics of the stock market and its relation to the real economy.
Contextual Visual Similarity

Measuring visual similarity is critical for image understanding. But what makes two images similar? Most existing work on visual similarity assumes that images are similar because they contain the same object instance or category. However, the reason why images are similar is much more complex. For example, from the perspective of category, a black dog image is similar to a white dog image. However, in terms of color, a black dog image is more similar to a black horse image than the white dog image. This example serves to illustrate that visual similarity is ambiguous but can be made precise when given an explicit contextual perspective. Based on this observation, we propose the concept of contextual visual similarity. To be concrete, we examine the concept of contextual visual similarity in the application domain of image search. Instead of providing only a single image for image similarity search (\eg, Google image search), we require three images. Given a query image, a second positive image and a third negative image, dissimilar to the first two images, we define a contextualized similarity search criteria. In particular, we learn feature weights over all the feature dimensions of each image such that the distance between the query image and the positive image is small and their distances to the negative image are large after reweighting their features. The learned feature weights encode the contextualized visual similarity specified by the user and can be used for attribute specific image search. We also show the usefulness of our contextualized similarity weighting scheme for different tasks, such as answering visual analogy questions and unsupervised attribute discovery.
Emotions in Information Systems Research - A Five Component View

Many scientific viewpoints and research streams occurred over the last decades with the objective to create structure and common understanding on a more abstract level how emotions affect human behavior (e.g. constructivist or appraisal theories). As a consequence, Information Systems (IS) researchers have adopted diverse mixed up theoretical foundations about emotions. This brings the need for a more structured way to study emotions in the IS field. Thus, within this research a five component view on emotions is developed, based on appraisal theories of emotions and the 3-emotions nomological network by Gregor et al. (2014). The new view provides better guidance for IS researchers studying the occurrence or effect of human emotions in terms of a better understanding of the emotion concept and an easier transfer of theoretical considerations from psychology to the IS field, especially the adaptation of emotional constructs and their subjective and objective measurement.
of Multiple Tumor Types Tyrosine Kinase Catalysis , Tumor Vascularization , and Growth Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor ( Flk-1 / KDR ) That Inhibits SU 5416 Is a Potent and Selective Inhibitor of the Vascular

SU5416, a novel synthetic compound, is a potent and selective inhibitor of the Flk-1/KDR receptor tyrosine kinase that is presently under evaluation in Phase I clinical studies for the treatment of human cancers. SU5416 was shown to inhibit vascular endothelial growth factor-dependent mitogenesis of human endothelial cells without inhibiting the growth of a variety of tumor cells in vitro. In contrast, systemic administration of SU5416 at nontoxic doses in mice resulted in inhibition of subcutaneous tumor growth of cells derived from various tissue origins. The antitumor effect of SU5416 was accompanied by the appearance of pale white tumors that were resected from drug-treated animals, supporting the antiangiogenic property of this agent. These findings support that pharmacological inhibition of the enzymatic activity of the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor represents a novel strategy for limiting the growth of a wide variety of tumor types.
miRNAs As Emerging Regulators of Oligodendrocyte Development and Differentiation

Chronic demyelination is a hallmark of neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and several leukodystrophies. In the central nervous system (CNS), remyelination is a regenerative process that is often inadequate during these pathological states. In the MS context, in situ evidence suggests that remyelination is mediated by populations of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) that proliferate, migrate, and differentiate into mature, myelin-producing oligodendrocytes at sites of demyelinated lesions. The molecular programming of OPCs into mature oligodendrocytes is governed by a myriad of complex intracellular signaling pathways that modulate this process. Recent research has demonstrated the importance of specific and short non-coding RNAs, known as microRNAs (miRNAs), in regulating OPC differentiation and remyelination. Fortunately, it may be possible to take advantage of numerous developmental studies (both human and rodent) that have previously characterized miRNA expression profiles from the early neural progenitor cell to the late myelin-producing oligodendrocyte. Here we review much of the work to date and discuss the impact of miRNAs on OPC and oligodendrocyte biology. Additionally, we consider the potential for miRNA-mediated therapy in the context of remyelination and brain repair.
Transformation of Nonfunctioning Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Carcinoma Cells into Insulin Producing Cells after Treatment with Sunitinib

We report a rare case of severe hypoglycemia after sunitinib treatment for pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma. We describe the initial clinical presentation, laboratory results, pathologic findings, and managment in a patient with a nonfunctioning pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma with liver metastases who developed life threatening hypoglycemia after 2 months of sunitinib therapy. A 46-year-old woman presented to the emergency department with loss of consciousness from hypoglycemia. Serum C-peptide and insulin levels at fasting state revealed that the hypoglycemia resulted from endogenous hyperinsulinemia. She had been diagnosed with nonfunctioning pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma based on a biopsy of metastatic cervical lymph node and was being treated with sunitinib, a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor. Immunohistochemical stain of the metastatic liver mass demonstrated that the initially nonfunctioning neuroendocrine carcinoma cells had changed into insulin-producing cells after sunitinib therapy. Transarterial chemoembolization of the liver masses and systemic chemotherapy with streptozotocin/adriamycin relieved the hypoglycemia. A nonfunctioning pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoma was transformed into an insulin-producing tumor after treatment with sunitinib, causing endogenous hyperinsulinemia and severe hypoglycemia.
NONPARAMETRIC TESTS FOR THE MULTIVARIATE MULTI-SAMPLE LOCATION PROBLEM

Nonparametric tests for the multi-sample multivariate location problem are proposed which extend the two-sample multivariate rank tests by Randles and Peters (1990) to the multi-sample setting. The asymptotic distributions of the proposed statistics under the null hypothesis and under certain contiguous alternatives are obtained for a class of elliptically symmetric distributions. Comparisons are made between the proposed statistics and several competitors via Pitman asymptotic relative efficiencies and Monte Carlo results. The tests proposed perform better than the Lawley-Hotelling generalized T 2 for heavy-tailed distributions. For normal to light-tailed distributions, the proposed statistics also perform better than other nonparametric competitors and the proposed analog of the signed-rank test performs better than the Lawley-Hotelling generalized T 2 for light-tailed distributions.
Symmetric Reverse-Coupling Waveguide Orthomode Transducer for the 3-mm Band

We describe the design, construction, and performance of a waveguide orthomode transducer (OMT) for the 3-mm band (84-116 GHz). The OMT is based on a symmetric backward coupling structure and has a square waveguide input port (2.54 mm times 2.54 mm) and two single-mode waveguide outputs: a standard WR10 rectangular waveguide (2.54 mm times 1.27 mm), and an oval waveguide with full-radius corners. The reverse coupling structure is located in the common square waveguide arm and splits one polarization signal in two opposite rectangular waveguide sidearms using broadband -3-dB . E-plane branch-line hybrid couplers. The device was optimized using a commercial 3-D electromagnetic simulator. The OMT consists of two mechanical blocks fabricated in split- block configuration using conventional CNC milling machine. From 84 to 116 GHz, the measured input reflection coefficient was less than -17 dB, the cross polarization was less than -30 dB, the isolation between the outputs was greater than 50 dB, and the insertion loss was less than 0.35 dB at room temperature for both polarization channels. The device is suitable for scaling to higher frequency.
Leukemia Inhibitory Factor Promotes Neural Stem Cell Self-Renewal in the Adult Brain

Although neural stem cells (NSCs) persist in various areas of the adult brain, their contribution to brain repair after injury is very limited. Treatment with exogenous growth factors can mitigate this limitation, suggesting that the brain environment is normally deficient in permissive cues and that it may be possible to stimulate the latent regenerative potential of endogenous progenitors with appropriate signals. We analyzed the effects of overexpressing the cytokine leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) on adult neurogenesis in the normal brain. We found that LIF reduces neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb and subventricular zone by acting directly on NSCs. LIF appears to promote NSC self-renewal, preventing the emergence of more differentiated cell types. This ultimately leads to an expansion of the NSC pool. Our results have implications for the development of therapeutic strategies for brain repair and suggest that LIF may be useful, in combination with other factors, in promoting regeneration in the adult brain.
An analysis of online match-based games

Online match-based games, such as the online versions of the board game of chess, have already captured a global audience of tens of millions of players. Through a unique combination of characteristics, a relatively short duration-often “coffee-break” minutes instead of hours of continuous gameplay-, weak correlation between matches, and clear emphasis on winning, match-based games may serve a unique segment of the global player population. Although this segment of the gaming population may later become consumers of more sophisticated Massively Multiuser Virtual Environment (MMVE) systems, few previous studies have focused on the characteristics of online match-based games. Complementing them, in this work we collect and analyze information corresponding to 5 online match-based game datasets, totaling over 170 million matches played by a population of 1.3 million unique gamers over 14 years. Our analysis focuses on workload characteristics, win ratio, and player evolution. Studies such as ours may guide the multi-disciplinary field of MMVE design by providing new understanding of player lifetime and behavior. For example, we find a correlation between the interactivity of match-based games and the retention of players over both long and short term, that friendship does not always help to perform better in games, and that in match-based games each player explores tens of different play strategies over time.
Personality Matters: Balancing for Personality Types Leads to Better Outcomes for Crowd Teams

When personalities clash, teams operate less effectively. Personality differences affect face-to-face collaboration and may lower trust in virtual teams. For relatively short-lived assignments, like those of online crowdsourcing, personality matching could provide a simple, scalable strategy for effective team formation. However, it is not clear how (or if) personality differences affect teamwork in this novel context where the workforce is more transient and diverse. This study examines how personality compatibility in crowd teams affects performance and individual perceptions. Using the DISC personality test, we composed 14 five-person teams (N=70) with either a harmonious coverage of personalities (balanced) or a surplus of leader-type personalities (imbalanced). Results show that balancing for personality leads to significantly better performance on a collaborative task. Balanced teams exhibited less conflict and their members reported higher levels of satisfaction and acceptance. This work demonstrates a simple personality matching strategy for forming more effective teams in crowdsourcing contexts.