Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
All low-density lipoprotein particles are not created equal.

In pioneering studies more than 60 years ago, using the new technique of analytical ultracentrifugation, Gofman and colleagues1 identified and characterized the major classes of plasma lipoproteins as a function of their flotation rate in a salt solution, a property that is a function of both size and hydrated density of lipoprotein particles. They, and subsequently others,2,3 showed that low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), like the other lipoprotein fractions, comprise a spectrum of particles with differing flotation characteristics. However, despite compelling evidence presented by Gofman and colleagues for the relationship of plasma concentrations of LDLs, as well as lipoproteins of lower density, to coronary heart disease (CHD),4 analytical ultracentrifugation was not amenable to widespread implementation and replication in other laboratories. Interest in physicochemical heterogeneity within the LDL particle spectrum resurfaced when it was shown using density gradient ultracentrifugation that multiple discrete subclasses of LDLs could be identified in the plasma of healthy individuals, and that they could also be discriminated on the basis of particle diameter using nondenaturing gradient gel electrophoresis.5 Moreover, using gradient gel electrophoresis, it was found that a distinct phenotype characterized by smaller LDL peak particle diameter (designated LDL subclass pattern B) was associated with increased CHD risk.6 At the same time it was shown that smaller sized LDLs are significantly positively correlated with plasma triglyceride and inversely with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which together constitute a cluster originally designated atherogenic lipoprotein phenotype,7 and now referred to as atherogenic dyslipidemia, a key feature of metabolic syndrome.8 See accompanying article on page 1069 More recently, other procedures have been developed to analyze the spectrum of LDLs and other lipoprotein particles, including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy,9 vertical rotor ultracentrifugation,10 and ion mobility.11 Several classification schemes for LDL subclasses have been …
The X-ray spectra of Compton-thick Seyfert 2 galaxies as seen by BeppoSAX

Results from BeppoSAX observations of Compton-thick Seyfert 2 galaxies are summarized and reviewed, and their general properties derived and discussed. In five out of the seven observed sources, the nucleus is directly visible at high X-ray energies, where the photons penetrate absorbers with column densities in the range 1.1–4.3×1024 cm−2 (in the other two sources, NGC 1068 and NGC 7674, the nucleus is instead totally obscured at all energies, implying even larger column densities). In most sources there is unambiguous evidence of a reflection component from optically thick, cold matter, while in two (or maybe four) cases there is also evidence of reflection from ionized matter. For the sources with a measured X-ray luminosity, a comparison with the infrared luminosity is made; while in two cases (the Circinus galaxy and NGC 4945) the IR emission appears to be dominated by starburst activity, in the other three sources (NGC 6240, Mrk 3 and TOL 0109-383) it is likely to be dominated by reprocessing of the UV and X-ray photons emitted by an active galactic nucleus.
Signal transduction by the lipopolysaccharide receptor, Toll‐like receptor‐4

An understanding of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) signal transduction is a key goal in the effort to provide a molecular basis for the lethal effect of LPS during septic shock and point the way to novel therapies. Rapid progress in this field during the last 6 years has resulted in the discovery of not only the receptor for LPS – Toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR4) – but also in a better appreciation of the complexity of the signalling pathways activated by LPS. Soon after the discovery of TLR4, the formation of a receptor complex in response to LPS, consisting of dimerized TLR4 and MD‐2, was described. Intracellular events following the formation of this receptor complex depend on different sets of adapters. An early response, which is dependent on MyD88 and MyD88‐like adapter (Mal), leads to the activation of nuclear factor‐κB (NF‐κB). A later response to LPS makes use of TIR‐domain‐containing adapter‐inducing interferon‐β (TRIF) and TRIF‐related adapter molecule (TRAM), and leads to the late activation of NF‐κB and IRF3, and to the induction of cytokines, chemokines, and other transcription factors. As LPS signal transduction is an area of intense research and rapid progress, this review is intended to sum up our present understanding of the events following LPS binding to TLR4, and we also attempt to create a model of the signalling pathways activated by LPS.
Twenty Years of Digital Media Effects on Civic and Political Participation

More than 300 studies have been published on the relationship between digital media and engagement in civic and political life. With such a vast body of research, it is difficult to see the big picture of how this relationship has evolved across time and across the globe. This article offers unique insights into how this relationship manifests across time and space, using a meta-analysis of existing research. This approach enables an analysis of a 20-year period, covering 50 countries and including survey data from more than 300,000 respondents. While the relationship may vary cross-nationally, the major story is the trend data. The trend data show a pattern of small, positive average coefficients turning into substantial, positive coefficients. These larger coefficients may be explained by the diffusion of this technology across the masses and changes in the types of use, particularly the rise of social networking sites and tools for online political participation.
Design of a simple and compact monopole UWB antenna with controllable band-notched function

A compact planar monopole antenna with standard band-notched characteristic suitable for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications is presented. This microstrip-fed antenna, consisting of a bevelled and slotted rectangular planar monopole with a vertical tuning stub, only occupies a small size of 30(W)×35(L) ×1.6(H) mm3 included the ground plane. The length and width of the stub primarily determine the notched frequency of the antenna and thus a controllable band-notched function is achieved. To improve the impedance bandwidth for UWB applications, a bevelled ground plane is used too. Compared to other designs, the antenna has a quite simple structure to achieve the band-notched characteristic to reduce the effect caused by the frequency interference. Measured results show good agreement with the simulated results and the proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 2.8–13.90 GHz for a voltage standing-wave ratio less than 2, except frequency notched band of 4.8–5.6 GHz. Furthermore, good Omni directional radiation patterns indicate that the proposed antenna is well suited to be integrated within various portable devices for UWB application.
Investigating mid-air pointing interaction for projector phones

Projector phones, mobile phones with built-in projectors, might significantly change the way we are going to use and interact with mobile phones. The potential of combining the mobile and the projected display and further the potential of the mid-air space between them have yet to be explored. In this paper we assess these potentials by reporting two user studies: First, an experimental comparison of four techniques for target selection on the projection, including interaction on the touchscreen of the projector phone as well as performing pointing gestures in mid-air around the phone. Our results indicate that interacting behind the phone yields the highest performance, albeit showing a twice as high error rate. Second, a follow-up experiment where we analyzed the performance of the two best tech-niques of the first study within realistic mobile application scenarios such as browsing and gaming. The results show that mobile applications benefit from the projection, e.g., by overcoming the fat-finger problem on touchscreens and increasing the visibility of small objects. Our findings speak for the integration of a tracking camera at the bottom of the projector phone to enable mid-air pointing interaction.
Kinetics and mechanism of dissociation of cooperatively bound T4 gene 32 protein-single-stranded nucleic acid complexes. 1. Irreversible dissociation induced by sodium chloride concentration jumps.

The dissociation kinetics of cooperatively bound bacteriophage T4 gene 32 protein from a variety of single-stranded homopolynucleotides has been investigated by stopped-flow techniques. Irreversible dissociation of the complexes was induced by rapidly increasing the salt concentration and monitoring the increase in tryptophan fluorescence upon dissociation of the gene 32 protein. The dependence of the apparent dissociation rate constant on initial fractional saturation of the nucleic acid lattice as well as the observation of zero-order kinetics when the lattice is initially fully saturated with protein indicates that dissociation occurs only from the ends of protein clusters and not from doubly contiguous molecules. The data for the entire time course are quantitatively fit by a kinetics model specifying irreversible dissociation of only singly contiguously bound protein [Lohman, T.M. (1983) Biopolymers 22, 1697-1713]. This model is used to extract molecular rate constants for the dissociation of isolated, singly contiguously and doubly contiguously bound protein. It is also shown that the polynucleotide specificity observed for the cooperative binding constant, K omega, and the cooperativity itself are intrinsic properties of the dissociation rate of the various complexes.
Latent variable models for neural data analysis

The brain is perhaps the most complex system to have ever been subjected to rigorous scientific investigation. The scale is staggering: over 10^11 neurons, each making an average of 10^3 synapses, with computation occurring on scales ranging from a single dendritic spine, to an entire cortical area. Slowly, we are beginning to acquire experimental tools that can gather the massive amounts of data needed to characterize this system. However, to understand and interpret these data will also require substantial strides in inferential and statistical techniques. This dissertation attempts to meet this need, extending and applying the modern tools of latent variable modeling to problems in neural data analysis. It is divided into two parts. The first begins with an exposition of the general techniques of latent variable modeling. A new, extremely general, optimization algorithm is proposed - called Relaxation Expectation Maximization (REM) - that may be used to learn the optimal parameter values of arbitrary latent variable models. This algorithm appears to alleviate the common problem of convergence to local, sub-optimal, likelihood maxima. REM leads to a natural framework for model size selection; in combination with standard model selection techniques the quality of fits may be further improved, while the appropriate model size is automatically and efficiently determined. Next, a new latent variable model, the mixture of sparse hidden Markov models, is introduced, and approximate inference and learning algorithms are derived for it. This model is applied in the second part of the thesis. The second part brings the technology of part I to bear on two important problems in experimental neuroscience. The first is known as spike sorting; this is the problem of separating the spikes from different neurons embedded within an extracellular recording. The dissertation offers the first thorough statistical analysis of this problem, which then yields the first powerful probabilistic solution. The second problem addressed is that of characterizing the distribution of spike trains recorded from the same neuron under identical experimental conditions. A latent variable model is proposed. Inference and learning in this model leads to new principled algorithms for smoothing and clustering of spike data.
Home Away From Home: Geography of Information and Local Investors

We develop a 10-K-based multidimensional measure of firm locations. Using this measure, we show that firm-level information is geographically distributed and institutional investors are able to exploit the resulting information asymmetry. Specifically, institutional investors overweigh firms whose 10-K frequently mentions the investors' state even when those firms are not headquartered locally and earn superior returns on those stocks. These ownership and performance patterns are stronger among hard-to-value firms. Local investor performance increases with the degree of local bias and with the local economic exposure of portfolio firms. Overall, geographical variation in firm-level information generates economically significant location-based information asymmetry.
The Interaction between Amyloid-β Peptides and Anionic Lipid Membranes Containing Cholesterol and Melatonin

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease is the formation of senile plaques, primarily consisting of amyloid- (A) peptides. Peptide-membrane and peptide-lipid interactions are thought to be crucial in this process. We studied the interaction of A and A peptides with anionic lipid membranes made of dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) and dimyristoylphosphoserine (DMPS) using X-ray diffraction. We compare the experimentally determined electron densities in the gel state of the membranes with density calculations from peptide structures reported in the Protein Data Bank in order to determine the position of the peptide in the bilayers. The full length peptide A was found to embed in the hydrocarbon core of the anionic lipid bilayers. Two populations were found for the A peptide: (1) membrane-bound states in the hydrophilic head group region of the bilayers, where the peptides align parallel to the membranes, and (2) an embedded state in the bilayer center. Aging plays an important role in the development of Alzheimer's, in particular with respect to changes in cholesterol and melatonin levels in the brain tissue. Immiscible cholesterol plaques were created by addition of 30 mol% cholesterol to the anionic membranes. The A peptides were found to strongly interact with the lipid bilayers, displacing further cholesterol molecules into the plaques, effectively lowering the cholesterol concentration in the membranes and increasing the total fraction of cholesterol plaques. Addition of 30 mol% melatonin molecules to the anionic membranes drastically reduced the population of the membrane-embedded A state. These results present experimental evidence for an interaction between A peptides, melatonin and cholesterol in lipid membranes.
Accuracy evaluation of a credit card fraud detection system on Hadoop MapReduce

In digitalization era, credit card fraud detection is of high significance to financial organizations. This paper discussed about credit card fraud detection by parallelizing of Negative Selection Algorithm on the Cloud computing platform. We present performance evaluation of running the algorithm on the cloud by MapReduce framework and show it's dramatically results on real world financial data. We argue that, for the fraud detection rate, False Negative rate, fraud catching rate (True Positive rate) and false alarm rate (False Positive rate), Cost and Hit rate that are the best metrics for a desirable credit card fraud detection system.
Exploration of Lipid Metabolism in Relation with Plasma Membrane Properties of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Cells: Influence of L-Carnitine

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) arises as a consequence of mutations in the dystrophin gene. Dystrophin is a membrane-spanning protein that connects the cytoskeleton and the basal lamina. The most distinctive features of DMD are a progressive muscular dystrophy, a myofiber degeneration with fibrosis and metabolic alterations such as fatty infiltration, however, little is known on lipid metabolism changes arising in Duchenne patient cells. Our goal was to identify metabolic changes occurring in Duchenne patient cells especially in terms of L-carnitine homeostasis, fatty acid metabolism both at the mitochondrial and peroxisomal level and the consequences on the membrane structure and function. In this paper, we compared the structural and functional characteristics of DMD patient and control cells. Using radiolabeled L-carnitine, we found, in patient muscle cells, a marked decrease in the uptake and the intracellular level of L-carnitine. Associated with this change, a decrease in the mitochondrial metabolism can be seen from the analysis of mRNA encoding for mitochondrial proteins. Probably, associated with these changes in fatty acid metabolism, alterations in the lipid composition of the cells were identified: with an increase in poly unsaturated fatty acids and a decrease in medium chain fatty acids, mono unsaturated fatty acids and in cholesterol contents. Functionally, the membrane of cells lacking dystrophin appeared to be less fluid, as determined at 37°C by fluorescence anisotropy. These changes may, at least in part, be responsible for changes in the phospholipids and cholesterol profile in cell membranes and ultimately may reduce the fluidity of the membrane. A supplementation with L-carnitine partly restored the fatty acid profile by increasing saturated fatty acid content and decreasing the amounts of MUFA, PUFA, VLCFA. L-carnitine supplementation also restored muscle membrane fluidity. This suggests that regulating lipid metabolism in DMD cells may improve the function of cells lacking dystrophin.
Detecting out-of-domain utterances addressed to a virtual personal assistant

Conversational understanding systems, especially virtual personal assistants (VPAs), perform “targeted” natural language understanding, assuming their users stay within the walled gardens of covered domains, and back-off to generic web search otherwise. However, users usually do not know the concept of domains and sometimes simply do not distinguish the system from simple voice search. Hence it becomes an important problem to identify these rejected out-of-domain utterances which are actually intended for the VPA. This paper presents a study tackling this new task, showing that how one utters a request is more important for this task than what is uttered, resembling addressee detection or dialog act tagging. To this end, syntactic and semantic parse “structure” features are extracted in addition to lexical features to train a binary SVM classifier using a large number of random web search queries and VPA utterances from multiple domains. We present controlled experiments leaving one domain out and check the precision of the model when combined with unseen queries. Our results indicate that such structured features result in higher precision especially when the test domain bears little resemblance to the existing domains.
"I don't have time to do any things i am responsible for" - University Teachers' sense of responsibility for teaching

University teachers work in a highly complex environment, meeting the multiple and sometimes competing demands of striving for high quality teaching and research. While a growing body of research focuses on the relevance of schoolteachers’ sense of responsibility and its outcomes for teaching and student learning, teacher responsibility has been neglected in research with university teachers. This research, consisting of two consecutive qualitative and quantitative studies, sets out to explore university teachers’ sense of responsibility for teaching at different stages of their career and in different academic contexts. Participants were 199 German and 80 Australian university teachers. Results of quantitative data analysis show that all university teachers most strongly feel responsible for their teaching and relationships with students. The focus of university teachers’ sense of responsibility on teaching was also shown in the qualitative data. Differences between the samples of the two studies, however, appeared with regard to further objects of responsibility. Cluster analyses, including the frequencies of statements, revealed three types of university teachers in each study: teaching - and student - oriented university teachers in both studies, achievement - oriented teachers in the German/Swiss, and administrative - oriented university teachers in the Australian sample. Implications for university teachers’ work contexts and training are discussed.
Evaluation of the benefits of binaural hearing on the telephone for children with hearing loss.

BACKGROUND There is a paucity of published studies examining how children with hearing loss understand speech over the telephone. Previous studies on adults with hearing aids have suggested that adults with bilateral hearing aids experience significant difficulty recognizing speech on the telephone when listening with one ear, but the provision of telephone input to both ears substantially improved speech understanding. PURPOSE The objectives of this study were to measure speech recognition in quiet and in noise for a group of older children with hearing loss over the telephone and to evaluate the effects of binaural hearing (e.g., DuoPhone) on speech recognition over the telephone. RESEARCH DESIGN A cross-sectional, repeated-measures design was used in this study. STUDY SAMPLE A total of 14 children, ages 6-14 yr, participated in the study. Participants were obtained using convenience sampling from a nonprofit clinic population. INTERVENTION Speech recognition in quiet and in noise with binaural versus monaural telephone input was compared in pediatric participants. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Monosyllabic word recognition was assessed in quiet and classroom noise set at 50 dBA in conditions with monaural and binaural (DuoPhone) telephone input. RESULTS The children's speech recognition in quiet and in noise was significantly better with binaural telephone input relative to monaural telephone input. CONCLUSIONS To obtain optimal performance on the telephone, the following considerations may apply: (1) use of amplification with binaural streaming capabilities (e.g., DuoPhone), (2) counseling of family and children on how to best use the telephone, (3) provision of telecoil with microphone attenuation for improved signal-to-noise ratio, and (4) use of probe tube measures to verify the appropriateness of the telephone programs.