Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anionic Phospholipids Induce Conformational Changes in Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxylase to Increase Sensitivity to Cathepsin Proteases

Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC) is a cytosolic, homotetrameric enzyme that serves a variety of functions in plants, acting as the primary form of CO2 fixation in the C4 photosynthesis pathway (C4-PEPC). In a previous work we have shown that C4-PEPC bind anionic phospholipids, resulting in PEPC inactivation. Also, we showed that PEPC can associate with membranes and to be partially proteolyzed. However, the mechanism controlling this remains unknown. Using semi purified-PEPC from sorghum leaf and a panel of PEPC-specific antibodies, we analyzed the conformational changes in PEPC induced by anionic phospholipids to cause the inactivation of the enzyme. Conformational changes observed involved the exposure of the C-terminus of PEPC from the native, active enzyme conformation. Investigation of the protease activity associated with PEPC demonstrated that cysteine proteases co-purify with the enzyme, with protease-specific substrates revealing cathepsin B and L as the major protease species present. The anionic phospholipid-induced C-terminal exposed conformation of PEPC appeared highly sensitive to the identified cathepsin protease activity and showed initial proteolysis of the enzyme beginning at the N-terminus. Taken together, these data provide the first evidence that anionic phospholipids promote not only the inactivation of the PEPC enzyme, but also its proteolysis.
Optimization opportunities in RRAM-based FPGA architectures

Static Random Access Memory (SRAM)-based routing multiplexers, whatever structure is employed, share a common limitation: their area, delay and power increase linearly with the input size. This property results in most SRAM-based FPGA architectures typically avoiding the use of large multiplexers. Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM)-based multiplexers, built with one-level structure, have a unique advantage over SRAM-based multiplexers: their ideal delay is independent from the input size. This property allows RRAM-based FPGA architectures to use larger multiplexers than their SRAM-based counterparts, without generating any delay overhead. In this paper, by carefully considering the properties of RRAM multiplexers, we assess that current state-of-art architectural parameters for SRAM-based FPGAs cannot preserve optimality in the context of RRAM-based FPGAs. As a result, we propose that in RRAM-based FPGAs, (a) the routing tracks should be interconnected to Look-Up Table (LUT) inputs via a one-level crossbar, instead of through Connection Blocks and local routing; (b) the Switch Blocks should employ larger multiplexers; (c) length-2 wires should be used instead of length-4 wires. When operated in nominal voltage, the proposed RRAM-based FPGA architecture reduces area by 26%, delay by 39% and channel width by 13%, as compared to a SRAM-based FPGA with a classical architecture. When operated in the near-Vt regime, the proposed RRAM-based FPGA architecture improves Area-Delay Product by 42% and Power-Delay Product by 5× as compared to a classical SRAM-based FPGA at nominal voltage.
Efficiency bounds for semiparametric models with singular score functions

Abstract This paper is concerned with asymptotic efficiency bounds for the estimation of the finite dimension parameter of semiparametric models that have singular score function for θ at the true value The resulting singularity of the matrix of Fisher information means that the standard bound for is not defined. We study the case of single rank deficiency of the score and focus on the case where the derivative of the root density in the direction of the last parameter component, θ2, is nil while the derivatives in the p – 1 other directions, θ1, are linearly independent. We then distinguish two cases: (i) The second derivative of the root density in the direction of θ2 and the first derivative in the direction of θ1 are linearly independent and (ii) The second derivative of the root density in the direction of θ2 is also nil but the third derivative in θ2 is linearly independent of the first derivative in the direction of θ1. We show that in both cases, efficiency bounds can be obtained for the estimation of with j = 2 and 3, respectively and argue that an estimator is efficient if reaches its bound. We provide the bounds in form of convolution and asymptotic minimax theorems. For case (i), we propose a transformation of the Gaussian variable that appears in our convolution theorem to account for the restricted set of values of This transformation effectively gives the efficiency bound for the estimation of in the model configuration (i). We apply these results to locally under-identified moment condition models and show that the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator using as weighting matrix, where is the variance of the estimating function, is optimal even in these non standard settings. Examples of models are provided that fit the two configurations explored.
Happy People Live Longer: Subjective Well-Being Contributes to Health and Longevity

Seven types of evidence are reviewed that indicate that high subjective well-being (such as life satisfaction, absence of negative emotions, optimism, and positive emotions) causes better health and longevity. For example, prospective longitudinal studies of normal populations provide evidence that various types of subjective well-being such as positive affect predict health and longevity, controlling for health and socioeconomic status at baseline. Combined with experimental human and animal research, as well as naturalistic studies of changes of subjective well-being and physiological processes over time, the case that subjective well-being influences health and longevity in healthy populations is compelling. However, the claim that subjective well-being lengthens the lives of those with certain diseases such as cancer remains controversial. Positive feelings predict longevity and health beyond negative feelings. However, intensely aroused or manic positive affect may be detrimental to health. Issues such as causality, effect size, types of subjective well-being, and statistical controls are discussed.
Older British employees’ declining attitudes over 20 years and across classes

British employers, under increasing competitive pressures, and applying new technology and work organization, have sought to reduce labour costs, resulting in work intensification and precarity. Older employees as a result are exposed to work demands that conflict with expectations of favourable treatment in late career. National survey data for Britain in the years 1992, 2001, 2006 and 2012 demonstrate a decline in overall job attitude among older employees following the changed conditions of the 1990s and across the major recession that began in 2008. To assess whether this decline is unequally distributed, decomposition by socio-economic class is carried out. This shows that older employees in the ‘service class’ of managerial and professional employees are affected at least as much as older employees in intermediate and less-skilled classes, thus underlining the age effect and showing that ‘service-class’ employees are not invulnerable to a changing economic environment.
Impacts of herbaceous bioenergy crops on atmospheric volatile organic composition and potential consequences for global climate change

The introduction of new crops to agroecosystems can change the chemical composition of the atmosphere by altering the amount and type of plant‐derived biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). BVOCs are produced by plants to aid in defense, pollination, and communication. Once released into the atmosphere, they have the ability to influence its chemical and physical properties. In this study, we compared BVOC emissions from three potential bioenergy crops and estimated their theoretical impacts on bioenergy agroecosystems. The crops chosen were miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), and an assemblage of prairie species (mix of ~28 species). The concentration of BVOCs was different within and above plant canopies. All crops produced higher levels of emissions at the upper canopy level. Miscanthus produced lower amounts of volatiles compared with other grasses. The chemical composition of volatiles differed significantly among plant communities. BVOCs from miscanthus were depleted in terpenoids relative to the other vegetation types. The carbon flux via BVOC emissions, calculated using the flux‐gradient method, was significantly higher in the prairie assemblage compared with miscanthus and switchgrass. The BVOC carbon flux was approximately three orders of magnitude lower than the net fluxes of carbon measured over the same fields using eddy covariance systems. Extrapolation of our findings to the landscape scale leads us to suggest that the widespread adoption of bioenergy crops could potentially alter the composition of BVOCs in the atmosphere, thereby influencing its warming potential, the formation of atmospheric particulates, and interactions between plants and arthropods. Our data and projections indicate that, among at least these three potential options for bioenergy production, miscanthus is likely to have lower impacts on atmospheric chemistry and biotic interactions mediated by these volatiles when miscanthus is planted on the landscape scale.
Two Functional but Noncomplementing Drosophila Tyrosine Decarboxylase Genes

The trace biogenic amine tyramine is present in the nervous systems of animals ranging in complexity from nematodes to mammals. Tyramine is synthesized from tyrosine by the enzyme tyrosine decarboxylase (TDC), a member of the aromatic amino acid family, but this enzyme has not been identified in Drosophila or in higher animals. To further clarify the roles of tyramine and its metabolite octopamine, we have cloned two TDC genes from Drosophila melanogaster, dTdc1 and dTdc2. Although both gene products have TDC activity in vivo, dTdc1 is expressed nonneurally, whereas dTdc2 is expressed neurally. Flies with a mutation in dTdc2 lack neural tyramine and octopamine and are female sterile due to egg retention. Although other Drosophila mutants that lack octopamine retain eggs completely within the ovaries, dTdc2 mutants release eggs into the oviducts but are unable to deposit them. This specific sterility phenotype can be partially rescued by driving the expression of dTdc2 in a dTdc2-specific pattern, whereas driving the expression of dTdc1 in the same pattern results in a complete rescue. The disparity in rescue efficiencies between the ectopically expressed Tdc genes may reflect the differential activities of these gene products. The egg retention phenotype of the dTdc2 mutant and the phenotypes associated with ectopic dTdc expression contribute to a model in which octopamine and tyramine have distinct and separable neural activities.
Führen selbstgesteuerte Arbeitszeiten zu einer Ausweitung der Arbeitsstunden? / Do Self-Managed Work Schedules Lead to an Increase in the Number of Hours Worked?

Zusammenfassung Selbstgesteuerte Arbeitszeiten sind inzwischen weit verbreitet. Es gibt bereits empirische Evidenz für die Vermutung, dass selbstgesteuerte Arbeitszeiten, so wie sie derzeit häufig praktiziert werden, zu einer Ausweitung der Arbeitsstunden führen. Eine alternative Erklärung dieser Ausweitung wäre eine systematische Selektion in selbstgesteuerte Arbeitszeiten entlang einer persönlichen Tendenz zu Mehrarbeit. In dieser Studie werden zum ersten Mal deutsche Längsschnittdaten aus dem Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) herangezogen, die es gestatten, diese alternative Erklärung in eine empirische Untersuchung einzubeziehen. Untersucht werden drei Indikatoren der Arbeitsextensivierung: die über die vertraglich vereinbarte Arbeitszeit hinausgehenden Stunden, unentgoltene Überstunden und individuelle Überbeschäftigung. Auch bei statistischer Kontrolle der Führungsverantwortung sprechen die Ergebnisse für eine Arbeitsextensivierung bei unregulierter Selbststeuerung und (unter einigen methodischen Vorbehalten) gegen eine Arbeitsextensivierung bei regulierter Selbststeuerung. Summary Self-managed work schedules have become widespread. There is empirical evidence that they lead, at least in the way they are currently practiced, to an increase in the number of working hours. One possible alternative explanation of this expansion is systematic choice within self-managed work schedules that is brought about by a personal tendency to work extra hours. The present study is the first to use panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to include this alternative explanation in an empirical analysis. Three indicators for an increase in the number of hours worked are analyzed: working hours above the contractually agreed number, overtime hours that are not compensated, and individual overemployment. While statistically controlling for managerial responsibilities, the results indicate an increase in working hours in the case of unregulated, self-managed work schedules and - despite some methodological reservations - no such increase in the case of regulated, self-managed work schedules.
Resilience in Agriculture through Crop Diversification: Adaptive Management for Environmental Change

Recognition that climate change could have negative consequences for agricultural production has generated a desire to build resilience into agricultural systems. One rational and cost-effective method may be the implementation of increased agricultural crop diversification. Crop diversification can improve resilience in a variety of ways: by engendering a greater ability to suppress pest outbreaks and dampen pathogen transmission, which may worsen under future climate scenarios, as well as by buffering crop production from the effects of greater climate variability and extreme events. Such benefits point toward the obvious value of adopting crop diversification to improve resilience, yet adoption has been slow. Economic incentives encouraging production of a select few crops, the push for biotechnology strategies, and the belief that monocultures are more productive than diversified systems have been hindrances in promoting this strategy. However, crop diversification can be implemented in a variety of forms and at a variety of scales, allowing farmers to choose a strategy that both increases resilience and provides economic benefits.
Alcohol administration prior to sleep. The effect on EEG sleep stages.

THE DISCOVERY that alterations in electroencephalographic (EEG) sleep patterns can be quantified has provoked numerous studies of the relationship of changes in sleep-stage control, to a variety of biochemical parameters and clinical problems. Ethyl alcohol, 1,2 as well as a number of psychotropic drugs, 3,4 have been found to affect the control of sleep stages. When ethyl alcohol was administered orally immediately before retiring to three subjects for five consecutive nights, EEG stage I rapid eye movement (REM) sleep time was depressed the first night, but over the next three alcohol nights returned to control levels; on the fifth alcohol night, REM time exceeded control levels and remained at a high level for the following two recovery nights. By the fourth recovery night REM time finally returned to control levels. 1 The present study was undertaken to determine if similar effects on REM time occurred if
Graph Quality Judgement: A Large Margin Expedition

Graph as a common structure of machine learning, has played an important role in many learning tasks such as graph-based semi-supervised learning (GSSL). The quality of graph, however, seriously affects the performance of GSSL; moreover, an inappropriate graph may even cause deteriorated performance, that is, GSSL using unlabeled data may be outperformed by direct supervised learning with only labeled data. To this end, it is desired to judge the quality of graph and develop performance-safe GSSL methods. In this paper we propose a large margin separation method LEAD for safe GSSL. Our basic idea is that, if a certain graph owns a high quality, its predictive results on unlabeled data may have a large margin separation. We should exploit the large margin graphs while keeping the small margin graphs (which might be risky) to be rarely exploited. Based on this recognition, we formulate safe GSSL as Semi-Supervised SVM (S3VM) optimization and present an efficient algorithm. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method can effectively improve the safeness of GSSL, in addition achieve highly competitive accuracy with many state-of-the-art GSSL methods.
Cultural Consonance in Leisure, Leisure Satisfaction, Life Satisfaction, and Self-Rated Health in Urban Taiwan

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study threefold: to determine whether a shared cultural model of the importance of a set of leisure activities to a good leisure life existed in urban Taiwan, the degree to which cultural consonance in leisure mediates the relationship between leisure constraints and leisure satisfaction, and the degree to which leisure satisfaction affects life satisfaction and self-rated health. Results indicate that a cultural model of the importance of leisure activities to a good leisure life existed among sample members. Second, higher levels of self-reported participation in leisure activities that are culturally agreed upon as more important for a good leisure life are more strongly associated with leisure satisfaction than are activities culturally agreed upon as less important. Finally, leisure satisfaction strongly predicts both life satisfaction and self-rated health.
Presymptomatic semantic impairment in a case of fronto–temporal lobar degeneration associated with the +16 mutation in MAPT

We describe a patient who came to neurological attention because of his at-risk status for the +16 exon 10 splice mutation in the tau gene (microtubule associated protein tau, MAPT), which had given rise to progressive behavioural disturbances in two of his siblings. The patient began to exhibit early signs of behavioural disturbance at around the age of symptom onset in both of his siblings. Although he did not spontaneously complain of difficulties in the domain of language, he met clinical, radiological and neuropsychological criteria for semantic dementia. On the assumption that his illness is mediated by the same pathological process as those of his siblings, we propose that this clinical picture represents the earliest changes of a semantic impairment - a phase of the illness that is often retrospectively described by patients and their relations, but has never previously been documented at first hand. Although typical of semantic dementia in many respects, the illness had several interesting and atypical features that emerged on detailed testing: first, he exhibited no insight into his difficulties; secondly, progression over a twelve-month interval was unusually slow; thirdly, he evinced a striking and consistent advantage for nonliving over living concepts; fourthly, a differential impairment of distinctive over shared knowledge did not emerge except when items that he could still name were compared with those for which he was anomic. Finally, the availability of post mortem pathological analysis from the brains of both of his affected siblings allowed us to attribute his illness to a specific pathological process which is considered unusual for patients with this clinical phenotype.
Review on Medicinal Uses, Pharmacological, Phytochemistry and Immunomodulatory Activity of Plants

Since ancient times, plants have been an exemplary source of medicine. Researchers have discovered some important compounds from plants. The present work constitutes a review of the medicinal plants whose immunomodulant activity has been proven. We performed PUBMED, EMBASE, Google scholar searches for research papers of medicinal plants having immunomodulant activity. Medicinal plants used by traditional physicians or reported as having immunomodulant activity include Acacia concocinna, Camellia sinensis, Lawsonia inermis Linn, Piper longum Linn, Gelidium amansii, Petroselinum crispum, Plantago major and Allium sativum. Immunomodulant activities of some of these medicinal plants have been investigated. The medicinal plants documented have immunomodulant activity and should be further investigated via clinical trial.
Outcomes of Extraperitoneal Robot-Assisted Radical Prostatectomy in the Morbidly Obese: A Propensity Score-Matched Study.

INTRODUCTION An increasing number of obese patients (body mass index [BMI] >30 kg/m(2)]) with localized prostate cancer are presenting as candidates for robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP), which can be carried out using the transperitoneal or the extraperitoneal (EP) approach. Morbidly obese (BMI >40 kg/m(2)) patients present as an especially challenging surgical cohort. We sought to evaluate the perioperative and pathologic outcomes associated with EP-RARP in morbidly obese men. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this institutional review board-approved study, our prospectively collected database (Cancer Information Systems [CAISIS]) was reviewed. One thousand six hundred sixty-three patients underwent EP-RARP for localized prostate cancer at our institution between July 2003 and December 2013 by a single surgeon. Forty patients were considered morbidly obese. A propensity score-matched analysis was performed using multivariate analysis incorporating 10 covariates to identify the comparable group of patients with a BMI of >40 kg/m(2) and <40 kg/m(2). RESULTS Apart from BMI, the two groups were matched (all p-values >0.05). Despite a higher total operating time and estimated blood loss (EBL) in the morbidly obese (238 vs 176 minutes, p<0.0001, and 235 vs 192 mL, p=0.003, respectively), there were no differences in the ability to perform nerve-sparing or pelvic lymphadenectomy, or the length of stay. While the morbidly obese had a higher rate of harboring more aggressive disease on final pathology (pT3 rates, 27.5 vs 7.5%, respectively), there were no differences in other postoperative pathologic parameters, such as prostate specimen weight, positive surgical margin status, and Gleason score sum. Moreover, there were no differences in intra- or postoperative complications between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS The morbidly obese cohort harbored more aggressive disease with the difference in the proportion of pathologic T3 disease statistically significant. Apart from increased total operating time and EBL in the morbid obese, EP-RARP leads to comparable perioperative and pathologic outcomes to the nonmorbidly obese. Consideration should be given to added operating room time when operating on the morbidly obese.