Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Historical Performance of the U.S. ESCO Industry: Results from the NAESCO Project Database

This study draws upon a database of ~800 projects that have been developed by U.S. Energy Service Companies (ESCOs). These projects represent a cumulative investment of ~$1.4 billion in energy-efficiency projects and is the most comprehensive historical “snapshot” of the ESCO industry that is publicly available. We provide information on the geographic distribution of ESCO projects, analyze project development activity by ESCOs over time and in various market segments, and analyze estimated vs. actual, verified energy savings. We also summarize key project characteristics in various market sectors (e.g., project cost, floor area) and discuss the extent to which ESCOs relied on different types of utility programs in developing these projects. We also comment upon some of the major policy implications from the study: (1) markets with significant private sector energy efficiency activity, and (2) the relationship between trends in private sector activity and public purpose or ratepayer-funded programs.
Effect of Smoke-Free Legislation on Adult Smoking Behaviour in England in the 18 Months following Implementation

Background Comprehensive smoke-free legislation covering all enclosed public places and workplaces was implemented in England on 1 July 2007. This study examines the impact of this legislation on smoking prevalence, number of cigarettes smoked and location of smoking, controlling for secular trends through the end of 2008. Method and Findings Repeat cross sectional survey using nationally representative data from the Health Survey for England (HSE). In total there are 54,333 respondents from 2003–2008. Logit and linear regression models were used to examine the effect of the legislation on smoking prevalence and the number of cigarettes smoked daily among continuing smokers which took the underlying trend into account. Our finding suggest that smoking prevalence (current smoker) decreased from 25% in 2003 to 21% in 2008 (AOR = 0.96 per year, 95% CI = 0.95–0.98, P<0.01) and the mean number of cigarettes consumed daily by smokers decreased from 14.1 in 2003 to 13.1 in 2008 (coefficient for time trend = −0.28±0.06 SE cig/day per year, P<0.01). After adjusting for these trends the introduction of smoke-free legislation was not associated with additional reductions in smoking prevalence (AOR = 1.02, 95% CI = 0.94–1.11, P = 0.596) or daily cigarette use in smokers (0.42±0.28 SE; P = 0.142). The percentage of respondents reporting smoking ‘at work’ and ‘inside pubs or bars’ decreased significantly from 14% to 2% (p<0.001) and from 34% to 2% (p<0.001), respectively, after the legislation. The percentage reporting smoking ‘inside restaurants, cafes, or canteens’ decreased significantly from 9% to 1% (p<0.001) and ‘inside their home’ decreased significantly from 65% to 55% (p<0.01). Conclusion There is widespread compliance with the smoke-free legislation in England, which has led to large drops in indoor smoking in all venues, including at home. Declines in smoking prevalence and consumption continued along existing trends; they did not accelerate during the 18 months immediately following implementation.
Aerobic Interval Training Reduces the Burden of Atrial Fibrillation in the Short Term: A Randomized Trial

Background— Exercise training is an effective treatment for important atrial fibrillation (AF) comorbidities. However, a high level of endurance exercise is associated with an increased AF prevalence. We assessed the effects of aerobic interval training (AIT) on time in AF, AF symptoms, cardiovascular health, and quality of life in AF patients. Methods and Results— Fifty-one patients with nonpermanent AF were randomized to AIT (n=26) consisting of four 4-minute intervals at 85% to 95% of peak heart rate 3 times a week for 12 weeks or to a control group (n=25) continuing their regular exercise habits. An implanted loop recorder measured time in AF continuously from 4 weeks before to 4 weeks after the intervention period. Cardiac function, peak oxygen uptake ( O2peak), lipid status, quality of life, and AF symptoms were evaluated before and after the 12-week intervention period. Mean time in AF increased from 10.4% to 14.6% in the control group and was reduced from 8.1% to 4.8% in the exercise group (P=0.001 between groups). AF symptom frequency (P=0.006) and AF symptom severity (P=0.009) were reduced after AIT. AIT improved O2peak, left atrial and ventricular ejection fraction, quality-of-life measures of general health and vitality, and lipid values compared with the control group. There was a trend toward fewer cardioversions and hospital admissions after AIT. Conclusions— AIT for 12 weeks reduces the time in AF in patients with nonpermanent AF. This is followed by a significant improvement in AF symptoms, O2peak, left atrial and ventricular function, lipid levels, and QoL. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT01325675.
Subaxolemmal filamentous network in the giant nerve fiber of the squid (Loligo pealei L.) and its possible role in excitability

A new technique utilizing the squid giant nerve fiber has been developed which permits direct examination of the inner face of the axolemma by scanning electron microscopy. The axoplasm was removed sequentially in a 15-mm long segment of the fiber by intracellular perfusion with a solution of KF, KCl, Ca++-containing seawater, or with pronase. The action potential of the fibers was monitored during these treatments. After brief prefixation in 1% paraformaldehyde and 1% glutaraldehyde, the perfused segment was opened by a lne could be related to information on the detailed morphology of the cytoplasmic face of the axolemma and the ectoplasm. The results obtained by scanning electron microscopy were further substantiated by transmission electron microscopy of thin sections. In addition, living axons were studied with polarized light during axoplasm removal, and the identification of actin by heavy meromyosin labeling and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was accomplished. These observations demonstrate that a three-dimensional network of interwoven filaments, consisting partly of an actinlike protein, is firmly attached to the axolemma. The axoplasmic face of fibers in which the filaments have been removed partially after perfusion with pronase displays smooth membranous blebs and large profiles which sppose the axolemma. In fibers where the excitability has been suppressed by pronase perfusion, approximately one-third of the inner face of the axolemma in the perfusion zone is free of filaments. It is hypothesized that the attachment of axoplasm filaments to the axolemma may have a role in the maintenance of the normal morphology of the axolemma, and, thus, in some aspect of excitability.
Role of Prolactin in the Regulation of Cytosolic NADP Isocitrate Dehydrogenase in the Liver of the Male Rat

The activity of cytosolic NADP‐linked isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH) in rat liver was determined. The administration of 2‐bromo‐α‐ergocryptine (CB‐154) to male rats produced a significant increase of the enzyme activity and a decrease of serum prolactin (PRL) levels in relation to control animals. Male rats 21 days after castration had lower levels of serum prolactin and higher activity of the enzyme than controls. Injection of PRL to castrated male rats lowered the enzymatic activity to control values. In intact rats injected with prolactin, the activity of the enzyme also decreased. Female rats were separated into the following groups: (a) virgins; (b) rats on day 15 of lactation; (c) ovariectomized rats. The enzymatic activity was similar in the different groups, but significantly higher than in male rats. However, serum PRL was significantly increased in 15 days lactating rats and decreased in ovariectomized ones in relation to virgins. We conclude that PRL regulates hepatic ICDH activity in male, but not in female rats. Incubation of isolated hepatocytes from intact or castrated male rats maintained the difference in ICDH activity observed in vivo, while there were no differences in ICDH activity in non‐parenchymal cells. Addition of PRL, CB‐154, androgens or antiandrogens to isolated hepatocytes from intact and castrated rat, had no effect on the ICDH activity, suggesting that the effect of PRL is exerted at the transcriptional level.
Compounding Local Invariant Features and Global Deformable Geometry for Medical Image Registration

Using deformable models to register medical images can result in problems of initialization of deformable models and robustness and accuracy of matching of inter-subject anatomical variability. To tackle these problems, a novel model is proposed in this paper by compounding local invariant features and global deformable geometry. This model has four steps. First, a set of highly-repeatable and highly-robust local invariant features, called Key Features Model (KFM), are extracted by an effective matching strategy. Second, local features can be matched more accurately through the KFM for the purpose of initializing a global deformable model. Third, the positional relationship between the KFM and the global deformable model can be used to precisely pinpoint all landmarks after initialization. And fourth, the final pose of the global deformable model is determined by an iterative process with a lower time cost. Through the practical experiments, the paper finds three important conclusions. First, it proves that the KFM can detect the matching feature points well. Second, the precision of landmark locations adjusted by the modeled relationship between KFM and global deformable model is greatly improved. Third, regarding the fitting accuracy and efficiency, by observation from the practical experiments, it is found that the proposed method can improve % of the fitting accuracy and reduce around 50% of the computational time compared with state-of-the-art methods.
Anatomy of the Chase

A lot of research activity has recently taken place around the chase procedure, due to its usefulness in data integration, data exchange, query optimization, peer data exchange and data correspondence, to mention a few. As the chase has been investigated and further developed by a number of research groups and authors, many variants of the chase have emerged and associated results obtained. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the area it is frequently difficult to verify the scope of each result. In this paper we take closer look at recent developments, and provide additional results. Our analysis allows us create a taxonomy of the chase variations and the properties they satisfy. Two of the most central problems regarding the chase is termination, and discovery of restricted classes of sets of dependencies that guarantee termination of the chase. The search for the restricted classes has been motivated by a fairly recent result that shows that it is undecidable to determine whether the chase with a given dependency set will terminate on a given instance. There is a small dissonance here, since the quest has been for classes of sets of dependencies guaranteeing termination of the chase on all instances, even though the latter problem was not known to be undecidable. We resolve the dissonance in this paper by showing that determining whether the chase with a given set of dependencies terminates on all instances is coRE-complete. Our reduction also gives us the aforementioned instance-dependent RE-completeness result as a byproduct. For one of the restricted classes, the stratified sets dependencies, we provide new complexity results for the problem of testing whether a given set of dependencies belongs to it. These results rectify some previous claims that have occurred in the literature.
Asymmetrical nature of the Trollius–Chiastocheta interaction: insights into the evolution of nursery pollination systems

Abstract The mutualistic versus antagonistic nature of an interaction is defined by costs and benefits of each partner, which may vary depending on the environment. Contrasting with this dynamic view, several pollination interactions are considered as strictly obligate and mutualistic. Here, we focus on the interaction between Trollius europaeus and Chiastocheta flies, considered as a specialized and obligate nursery pollination system – the flies are thought to be exclusive pollinators of the plant and their larvae develop only in T. europaeus fruits. In this system, features such as the globelike flower shape are claimed to have evolved in a coevolutionary context. We examine the specificity of this pollination system and measure traits related to offspring fitness in isolated T. europaeus populations, in some of which Chiastocheta flies have gone extinct. We hypothesize that if this interaction is specific and obligate, the plant should experience dramatic drop in its relative fitness in the absence of Chiastocheta. Contrasting with this hypothesis, T. europaeus populations without flies demonstrate a similar relative fitness to those with the flies present, contradicting the putative obligatory nature of this pollination system. It also agrees with our observation that many other insects also visit and carry pollen among T. europaeus flowers. We propose that the interaction could have evolved through maximization of by‐product benefits of the Chiastocheta visits, through the male flower function, and selection on floral traits by the most effective pollinator. We argue this mechanism is also central in the evolution of other nursery pollination systems.
CSCC: Simple, Efficient, Context Sensitive Code Completion

Code Completion helps developers learn APIs and frees them from remembering every detail. In this paper, we describe a novel technique called CSCC (Context Sensitive Code Completion) for improving the performance of API method call completion. CSCC is context sensitive in that it uses new sources of information as the context of a target method call. CSCC indexes method calls in code examples by their contexts. To recommend completion proposals, CSCC ranks candidate methods by the similarities between their contexts and the context of the target call. Evaluation using a set of subject systems and five popular state of-the-art techniques suggests that CSCC performs better than existing type or example-based code completion systems. We also investigate how the different contextual elements of the target call benefit CSCC.
Oxidation of LDL by rabbit and human 15-lipoxygenase: prevalence of nonenzymatic reactions.

15-Lipoxygenase (15-LO)-induced oxidation of lipids in human LDL may be pro-atherogenic. However, the extent to which 15-LO promotes enzymatic oxidation of esterified (i.e., major) lipids in LDL may depend on various factors. Here, we show that overall, LDL lipid oxidation was favored with high activity of human 15-LO, that phospholipids were the preferred esterified substrate, and that low temperature maintained a higher proportion of enzymatic product. However, under all conditions, 15-LO induced alpha-tocopherol consumption and the accumulation of nonenzymatic products that predominated with increasing time of incubation and inactivation of the enzyme. Lysates prepared from cells overexpressing human 15-LO oxidized linoleic acid readily and in an almost exclusive enzymatic manner. In sharp contrast, such lysates failed to oxidize LDL lipids unless linoleic acid was added, in which case nonenzymatic oxidation of LDL lipids occurred. We conclude that although purified 15-LO can oxidize isolated LDL lipids in vitro, such oxygenation always includes nonenzymatic reactions that likely play a major role in the more extensive oxidation of LDL by cell-derived 15-LO.
Immunomodulatory effects of damnacanthal isolated from roots of Morinda elliptica

Morinda elliptica Ridley (Rubiaceae) has been used traditionally as a medicine to treat various diseases in Malaysia and southeast Asia. In the present study we investigated the immunomodulatory effects of damnacanthal isolated from the roots of Morinda elliptica. The immunomodulatory effect of this compound was evaluated by using the lymphocyte proliferation assay with mouse thymocytes and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). In addition, the effect of the compound on PBMC cell cycle progression was studied by using flow cytometry. The production of human interleukin-2 and human inteleukin-12 cytokines was also assessed using the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique. The lymphocyte proliferation assay showed that damnacanthal was able to activate mouse thymocytes and PBMC at a low concentration (0.468 μg/mL). Moreover, the production of human interleukin-2 and human interleukin-12 cytokines in the culture supernatant from damnacanthal activated lymphocytes was markedly up-regulated at 24 h and sustained until 72 h with a slight decrease with time. A positive correlation was found between the level of these two cytokines and the MTT-based proliferation assay. Based on the above results, damnacanthal can act as an immunomodulatory agent which may be very useful for maintaining a healthy immune system.
The Right Brain Implicit Self Lies at the Core of Psychoanalysis

In this contribution I expand my continuing work on the centrality of right brain structures and unconscious processes from the neuropsychoanalytic perspective of regulation theory, an overarching model of the development, psychopathogenesis, and treatment of the implicit self. In an introduction I highlight the essential role of not only implicit cognition but implicit affect, communication, and regulation in current relational psychoanalytic models. I then briefly discuss recent developmental and neurobiological studies of implicit processes in early development and psychopathogenesis. In the bulk of this work I explore the essential role of implicit affective processes in psychotherapeutic change processes. I focus particularly on the expression of right brain unconscious mechanisms in affect-laden enactments, and on the therapist's moment-to-moment navigation through these heightened affective moments by not left brain explicit secondary process cognition but right brain implicit primary process affectively driven clinical intuition. Direct access to these right brain implicit processes by both patient and therapist is central to effective treatment.
Whoops... did I use the wrong concept to predict e-commerce trust? Modeling the risk-related effects of trust versus distrust concepts

Significant work has been initiated on trust in e-commerce settings, but little research has addressed distrust. Because of its connection to the insecurities that are found in risky situations, disposition to distrust is particularly suited to addressing issues of high risk, while disposition to trust is better suited for low risk issues. High risk issues include: a) perceptions that the Web is risky; and b) a willingness to depend on a specific unknown Web vendor in light of that risk. This theoretical position serves as the basis of a model of what causes consumers to initially decide to trust/distrust the Web and to explore and trust a Web site. The model includes three dispositions to trust constructs and one disposition to distrust construct. As proposed, the study found that disposition to trust predicted the low risk Web constructs, while disposition to distrust predicted the high risk Web constructs. This suggests that disposition to distrust has greater potential for predicting high-risk outcome constructs in e-commerce. This article contributes by showing how various aspects of disposition to trust/distrust affect consumer Web perceptions in different ways, depending on their level of risk. For e-commerce research, the findings of this article suggest that perhaps scholars have been studying a less effective factor for addressing risk - disposition to trust - instead of what may be a more effective factor - disposition to distrust.
Early Childhood Special Educators' Perceived Effectiveness and Use of Behavioral Strategies Used with Challenging Behavior

The increased number of young children with disabilities exhibiting challenging behavior and the negative effects that these challenging behaviors can have on early childhood special educators and the children indicate the need for a careful examination of strategies currently implemented by early childhood special educators. This study surveyed the perceptions of 154 early childhood special educators in the State of Illinois specific to their perceived use and effectiveness of six strategies. The strategies included; positive reinforcement, communication training, time-out, adjustments to the classroom environment, response cost, and medication. Results suggested that early childhood special educators are currently implementing best practice. The strategy participants deemed to be most effective and used most often was positive reinforcement. Participants perceived their use of medication to be the lowest in comparison to other strategies and response cost to be the least effective. Additionally, a relationship seemed to exist between early childhood special educators perceived use and effectiveness of each of the six strategies. In the future, it may be beneficial to conduct this study on a national level to promote generalizabili ty of the results. Examination of a wider vaiiety of studies using observation as a method for obtaining data may also be beneficial.
Biosynthesis of Sibiromycin, a Potent Antitumor Antibiotic

ABSTRACT Pyrrolobenzodiazepines, a class of natural products produced by actinomycetes, are sequence selective DNA alkylating compounds with significant antitumor properties. Among the pyrrolo[1,4]benzodiazepines (PBDs) sibiromycin, one of two identified glycosylated PBDs, displays the highest affinity for DNA and the most potent antitumor properties. Despite the promising antitumor properties clinical trials of sibiromycin were precluded by the cardiotoxicity effect in animals attributed to the presence of the C-9 hydroxyl group. As a first step toward the development of sibiromycin analogs, we have cloned and localized the sibiromycin gene cluster to a 32.7-kb contiguous DNA region. Cluster boundaries tentatively assigned by comparative genomics were verified by gene replacement experiments. The sibiromycin gene cluster consisting of 26 open reading frames reveals a “modular” strategy in which the synthesis of the anthranilic and dihydropyrrole moieties is completed before assembly by the nonribosomal peptide synthetase enzymes. In addition, the gene cluster identified includes open reading frames encoding enzymes involved in sibirosamine biosynthesis, as well as regulatory and resistance proteins. Gene replacement and chemical complementation studies are reported to support the proposed biosynthetic pathway.