Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Taxonomic classification DNA fragment of metagenome with a novel model

Currently metagenomics has been rapid developed, but some problems in the study are still far from being solved. One of these problems is how to group the DNA fragments from a sequenced metagenome, because most of metagenomes are complex mixtures of DNA fragments from multiple unknown organisms. Some classifiers have been developed to class the unknown DNA fragments of metagenomes. However, these classifiers usually suffer from the lower classification accuracy at higher taxonomic levels (family, genus). One of the reasons is the classifiers cannot discriminate the data from different organism accurately, especially the training data contains some outliers such as lateral gene transfer. Here, we presented a novel model, which consists of training and classification phases. In training phase, each taxonomic class can be divided into three cases: accept, uncertain and reject by two approximation concentric hyperspheres based on support vector data description (SVDD) model. By doing so, the discriminating ability of the classifier is enhanced. In classification phase, we designed a score strategy to deduce their optimal taxonomic group for the unknown DNA fragments at correspond taxonomic level. Experiments were performanced on four simulated metagenomes with sequence lengths ranging from 500 bp to 3,000 bp, our classifier has classification accuracy from 63.17 % to 85.6 %, the result is better than most of existing classifiers.
Intratypic variants of human papillomavirus type 16 and risk of cervical Neoplasia in Taiwan

The associations between variants of human papillomavirus (HPV) 16 and risk of cervical neoplasia have been reported, but nucleotide variations of HPV 16 in Asian populations and their association with cervical neoplasia have not been evaluated extensively. During 1991–1992, 11,923 women from seven townships in Taiwan were enrolled. The HPV DNA in cervical cells was detected and genotyped using EasyChip HPV blot. Nucleotide variations in the long control region (LCR), E6, and E7 genes were determined using DNA sequencing for 170 HPV 16‐positive cervical samples. The Asian variant was the most prevalent variant (81.8%) of HPV 16 in Taiwan, and was also associated with increased prevalence of histologically confirmed cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 or worse, showing an age‐adjusted odds ratio (exact confidence limits) of 10.70 (1.62–451.05; P = 0.0049) compared to the HPV 16 European variant. Similar significant associations with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 or worse were also observed for distinct nucleotide substitutions, including T178A/G, A647G, A7730C/G, T7781C, G7842A, and C24T/G. These results demonstrate that non‐European variants (non‐E) of HPV 16, predominantly Asian variants, are associated with increased risk for severe cervical neoplasia, compared with European variants. Molecular mechanisms accounting for varied cervical neoplasia risk among different HPV 16 variants warrant further investigation. J. Med. Virol. 85:1567–1576, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Factors Influencing the Integration of Alternative Farm Enterprises Into the Agro-Food System*

Abstract Financial stress and general crisis in European agriculture recently have generated a widespread interest in alternative paths of farm business development and structural adjustment. One of the options suggested by policy makers and adopted by farmers was the development of alternative farm enterprises (AFEs), in which farmers recombine resources on the farm and produce a new mix of products and services in order to supplement their incomes. In the present paper we examine the factors influencing the development of AFEs. According to empirical evidence from Etolia-Akarnania, a prefecture in western Greece that merits “less favored area” status, AFE adoption is influenced by the amount of family labor, the ratio of hired to family labor, the presence of tobacco as a main enterprise, the proximity of the farm to grade A roads, and the farmers' age. Education, management experience demonstrated by the farm manager, physical size of the farm, enterprise specialization, the use of grants, and farm location are the main factors responsible for the farmers' integration into the agro-food system.
Internationalization and the Social Democratic Model

This article examines the crisis of the social democratic model in the four countries (Austria, Norway, Finland, and Sweden) in which social democracy was most successful in maintaining and even extending its two central achievements—full employment and the institutional welfare state—through the end of the 1980s. Four major conclusions emerge from the analysis. First, supply side measures, more so than demand management, were central to the employment and growth models pursued by social democracy prior to the early 1970s. Second, the increasing trade openness contributed little to the recent problems of social democracy. By contrast, financial internationalization and deregulation and the multinationalization of capital undermined important features of the supply and demand sides of the models. Third, changes in the international and domestic economies have weakened centralized bargaining. Fourth, governments in the three Nordic countries made serious mistakes in economic policy, which greatly aggravated their difficulties.
Career plateauing: reactions and moderators among managerial and professional employees

Questionnaire data obtained from managerial and professional employees in Singapore (N = 141) were used to examine reactions to and moderators of career plateauing. Zero-order correlation coefficients revealed that the perceptual measure of career plateauing was more significantly negatively related to the work attitudes and behaviours than was job tenure. Moderated regression analyses results also revealed that, in general, the perceptual measure of career plateau explained more of the variance in the work attitudes and behaviours than did job tenure. Further, the moderated regression analyses revealed that of the three moderators (job tenure, supervisor support and job characteristics) and the six work attitudes and behaviours examined, supervisor support and job challenge significantly positively moderated only the effects of career plateauing on in-role behaviours. Limitations of the study, directions for future research and implications of the findings are discussed.
Effect of Low Glutamine/Glucose on Hypoxia-Induced Elevation of Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1α in Human Pancreatic Cancer MiaPaCa-2 and Human Prostatic Cancer DU-145 Cells

Purpose and Experimental Design: Tumor microenvironment is characterized by regions of fluctuating and chronic hypoxia, low extracellular pH, and nutrient depletion. Although it is well known that hypoxia stimulates the accumulation of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), the role of low extracellular pH and nutrient depletion on hypoxia up-regulation of HIF-1α is not well known. In this study, human pancreatic cancer MiaPaCa-2 and human prostatic cancer DU-145 cells were exposed to hypoxia in the presence or absence of glucose, glutamine, and/or pyruvate. Results: We observed that low glucose and low glutamine, but not low pyruvate, effectively suppressed the elevation of HIF-1α level during hypoxia (0.1-1% oxygen). Deprivation of glutamine or glucose inhibited the accumulation of HIF-1α in the presence of MG-132, a protease inhibitor, regardless of oxygen tensions. Data from reverse transcription-PCR analysis revealed that the levels of HIF-1α mRNA were not significantly changed at different concentrations of glutamine or glucose under hypoxia. The amount of HIF-1α suppression was proportional to protein synthesis inhibition. Conclusions: Our data suggest that glutamine or glucose deprivation inhibits the accumulation of HIF-1α under hypoxic conditions by disrupting translational processes rather than transcriptional or proteasomal degradation processes.
Metabolism of the thyroid hormones.

This review covers the current knowledge about the various metabolic pathways involved in the conversion of thyroid hormones to the thyromimetically active and inactive iodothyronines. The concerted mechanism of systemic and local production of iodothyronines by tissue-specific iodothyronine deiodinase isozymes will ultimately determine the expression of thyroid hormone action. This is exemplified for the regulation of synthesis and release of TSH by iodothyronines at the pituitary level. Iodothyronine metabolites, e.g. Triac, rT3 and T3 amine may modulate TSH secretion, and alterations of local pituitary deiodination (e.g. iopanoate inhibition) influence diurnal TSH secretion without changing TRH-dependent episodic TSH secretion pattern. A summary of structure-activity relationships of greater than 200 naturally occurring and synthetic ligands of rat liver type I iodothyronine deiodinase isozyme propylthiouracil-sensitive) in vitro allows the design of iodothyronine analogues which either serve as specific substrates or antagonists of iodothyronine binding and metabolizing proteins. Furthermore, a complete picture of the ligand-complementary active site of the type I isozyme can be derived. A synthetic 'structurally optimized' iodothyronine-analogue flavonoid inhibitor of the type I deiodinase is able to displace T4 from binding to thyroxine-binding prealbumin and leads to unexpected organ-specific alterations of thyroid hormone metabolism and expression of thyroid hormone actions in an animal model. Therefore, for a complete understanding of thyroid hormone metabolism and action, thyroid hormone transport, cellular compartmentalization, and alternate pathways also have to be considered.
Deep contextual description of superpixels for aerial urban scenes classification

This paper proposes a new approach for contextual feature extraction from superpixels in aerial urban scenes. Our method extracts features with many levels of context from superpixels by exploiting different layers of a pre-trained convolutional neural network. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which outperforms traditional methods based on handcrafted feature extraction algorithms.
Informational efficiency of the EU ETS market – a study of price predictability and profitable trading †

We study the informational efficiency of the European Emissions Trading Scheme, EU ETS market, by simulating the trading in this emerging market. If the market is efficient, profitable trading should only exist locally in time. We adopt the Timmermann and Granger (2004) definition of efficiency and run a large set of econometric, technical analysis and combined models to forecast the emissions allowance price changes. These forecasts are then used as trading signals in the trading simulation. We find that the combined models outperform the other models in forecasting ability. Trading simulation based on models combining time series and technical analysis trading rules shows that there have been possibilities for profitable trading in the EU ETS market during the study period of 2008–2010. This suggests that the EU ETS market shows periods with no informational efficiency.
Impact of the separate pre‐slaughter stages on broiler chicken welfare

&NA; Before broilers are slaughtered, several parties are involved in catching, loading, transportation and lairage. During these pre‐slaughter activities, broilers are exposed to a variety of stressors. A detailed understanding of how broiler welfare is impaired during each stage could help the responsible parties to make targeted improvements. The aim of this study was to identify welfare problems occurring during the consecutive stages of commercial broiler transportation and to identify risk factors associated with the identified welfare problems. Commercial Belgian transports (n = 81) were assessed in spring (n = 14), summer (n = 33), autumn (n = 10), and winter (n = 24), and potential risk factors were recorded by the observer. Animal‐based welfare indicators were scored before the start of the pre‐slaughter phase as well as after the catching, transport and lairage, and slaughter stages to assess the impact of each stage. The most frequently observed welfare impairments were vent and thigh lesions, panting, wing fractures, and bruising on wings and breasts. Our results show that the impact of the pre‐slaughter phase on broiler welfare is multifaceted. The overall pre‐slaughter phase resulted in a mean weight decrease of 5.3%, a prevalence of 1.4% in leg bruising, and 3.7% in breast or wing bruising. Wing fractures occurred mainly during the catching stage: Prevalence increased from 0.1% to 1.9% (P = 0.003). A welfare comparison before and after transportation and lairage revealed that plumage had become more soiled (P = 0.003), body temperature decreased by 0.7°C (P < 0.001), huddling prevalence increased by 0.5% (P = 0.008), prevalence of birds with splayed legs increased by 0.08% (P = 0.008), prevalence of supine birds decreased by 0.05% (P = 0.003), and 0.1% fewer birds with wings stuck in the crates (P = 0.010) were observed. Risk factor analyses revealed that carefully choosing the catching crew, minimizing thermal stress, reducing duration of transportation, and worker training are promising actions that may improve broiler welfare during the pre‐slaughter phase.
Identifying and ranking critical success factors for implementation of total quality management in the Indian manufacturing industry using TOPSIS

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review critical success factors (CSFs) of total quality management (TQM), and to rank these in the Indian manufacturing industry.Design/methodology/approach – To rank the CSFs, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used. The data were collected using questionnaires as the research instrument.Findings – Process management, top management leadership and customer focus are the top three factors for implementation of TQM in the manufacturing industry in India. Quality citizenship is a relatively low‐ranked factor.Practical limitations/implications – The findings will be useful in successful implementation of TQM in developing countries like India. Further research may be carried out into the CSFs in different national contexts.Originality/value – The paper is the first to make use of TOPSIS approach to rank the CSFs of TQM.
Electrochemical sensors: a powerful tool in analytical chemistry

Potentiometric, amperometric and conductometric electrochemical sensors have found a number of interesting applications in the areas of environmental, industrial, and clinical analyses. This review presents a general overview of the three main types of electrochemical sensors, describing fundamental aspects, developments and their contribution to the area of analytical chemistry, relating relevant aspects of the development of electrochemical sensors in Brazil.
Tolerance and sensitization to endotoxin in Kupffer cells caused by acute ethanol involve interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase.

Ethanol changes sensitivity of Kupffer cells to endotoxin. Here, the hypothesis that interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase (IRAK), a downstream signaling molecule of toll-like receptors, regulates the response to LPS in Kupffer cells after ethanol treatment was evaluated. C57BL/6 mice were given ethanol intragastrically, and LPS was injected 1 or 21 h later. One hour after ethanol treatment, serum transaminases after LPS were 60% of control, while ethanol increased these parameters about 3-fold 21 h after ethanol. Pretreatment with antibiotics blocked these effects of ethanol. In Kupffer cells from mice treated with ethanol 1 h earlier, LPS-induced TNFalpha production, and IRAK expression and activity and NFkappaB were decreased 50-60% of control. In contrast, in Kupffer cells from mice treated with ethanol 21 h earlier, LPS-induced TNFalpha production, expression and activity of IRAK were increased 1.5-fold over controls, while NFkappaB was elevated 3-fold. These data indicate that ethanol-induced tolerance and sensitization of Kupffer cells to endotoxin in mice involve IRAK.
The probability of a firm making a takeover bid: An empirical analysis of Australian firms

This study develops a prediction model to investigate the probability of firms making a takeover bid. This model draws upon a number of firm characteristics, which can be categorized under three types of theory: agency costs, hubris behaviour and synergy motives. By examining a sample of 316 Australian publicly listed firms over the period 1999–2010, this study finds that bidding firms are significantly different from non-bidding firms in terms of their cash level, leverage, capital expenditure (long-term productivity growth) and management overconfidence level. Bidding firms are predisposed to enter into takeover activities because their management’s investment decisions are primarily driven by agency, hubris behaviour and synergy motives. The findings show that hubris behaviour is more dominant in influencing managers’ investment decisions in a takeover bid rather than agency or synergy motives.
Management Information Systems: Impact on Dairy Farm Profitability

Seven of 196 New York dairy farms used on-farm computers for accounting in 1984, rising to twenty-three in 1987. A regression of net farm income per cow on computer use, years computer experience and other variables showed income increasing the first year of computer use, dropping and rising again by year four.
Evaluating organisation core competences and associated personal competencies using analytical hierarchy process

Purpose – This paper seeks to introduce an integrated framework to determine the relationships between organisation core competences and associated personal competencies.Design/methodology/approach – At first organisation core competences are determined by conducting internal and external benchmarking exercises, respectively, employing the “collectiveness” and “uniqueness” measures using key capabilities as a basis. Subsequently a pair‐wise comparison using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is conducted to assess related personal competencies using the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development list of competencies. The paper shows how these individual competencies are crucial to the overall organisational core competences. The framework is tested for a construction company, where five management directors are interviewed to develop an overall picture regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the company's key capabilities.Findings – Overall the results show that, despite being a construction com.
Autistic Artists Give Clues to Cognition

Certain autistic children whose linguistic ability is virtually nonexistent can draw natural scenes from memory with astonishing accuracy. In particular their drawings display convincing perspective. In contrast, normal children of the same preschool age group and even untrained adults draw primitive schematics or symbols of objects which they can verbally identify. These are usually conceptual outlines devoid of detail. It is argued that the difference between autistic child artists and normal individuals is that autistic artists make no assumptions about what is to be seen in their environment. They have not formed mental representations of what is significant and consequently perceive all details as equally important. Equivalently, they do not impose visual or linguistic schema—a process necessary for rapid conceptualisation in a dynamic existence, especially when the information presented to the eye is incomplete.
“A Paradox of Images”

Abstract This paper analyzes the image(s) of China as a tourist destination through the representational narratives of major English newspapers. Feature travel accounts—thirty-five articles from twenty sources—were used as information-rich discourse to explore the portrayal of the destination's image. Data were obtained through a focused search from LexisNexis Academic—one of the largest databases of international newspapers, and coded through Nudist Nvivo for an inductive analysis. It was found that a paradox of images has emerged from the contrasting perceptions of the changing versus the unchanged in the representational dynamics. The finding of paradoxical images provides an alternative to the interpretation of representational frames or patterns prevalent in the academic discourse with regard to the portrayal of culturally different tourist destinations. Implications, limitations of this analysis and future research issues are also discussed.
Evaluation of PET ligands (+)N‐[11C]ethyl‐3‐piperidyl benzilate and (+)N‐[11C]propyl‐3‐piperidyl benzilate for muscarinic cholinergic receptors: A PET study with microdialysis in comparison with (+)N‐[11C]methyl‐3‐piperidyl benzilate in the conscious monkey brain

We developed PET ligands (+)N‐[11C]ethyl‐3‐piperidyl benzilate ([11C](+)3‐EPB) and (+)N‐[11C]propyl‐3‐piperidyl benzilate ([11C](+)3‐PPB) for cerebral muscarinic cholinergic receptors. The distribution and kinetics of the novel ligands were evaluated for comparison with the previously reported ligand (+)N‐[11C]methyl‐3‐piperidyl benzilate ([11C](+)3‐MPB) in the monkey brain (Macaca mulatta) in the conscious state using high‐resolution positron emission tomography (PET). At 60–91 min postinjection, regional distribution patterns of these three ligands were almost identical, and were consistent with the muscarinic receptor density in the brain as previously reported in vitro. However, the time–activity curves of [11C](+)3‐EPB and [11C](+)3‐PPB showed earlier peak times of radioactivity and a faster clearance rate than [11C](+)3‐MPB in cortical regions rich in the receptors. Kinetic analysis using the three‐compartment model with time–activity curves of radioactivity in metabolite‐corrected arterial plasma as input functions revealed that labeling with longer [11C]alkyl chain length induced lower binding potential (BP = k3/k4), consistent with the rank order of affinity of these ligands obtained by an in vitro assay using rat brain slices and [3H]QNB. The cholinesterase inhibitor Aricept administered at doses of 50 and 250 μg/kg increased acetylcholine level in extracellular fluid of the frontal cortex and the binding of [11C](+)3‐PPB with the lowest affinity to the receptors was displaced by the endogenous acetylcholine induced by cholinesterase inhibition, while [11C](+)3‐MPB with the highest affinity was not significantly affected. Taken together, these observations indicate that the increase in [11C]alkyl chain length could alter the kinetic properties of conventional receptor ligands for PET by reducing the affinity to receptors, which might make it possible to assess the interaction between endogenous neurotransmitters and ligand‐receptor binding in vivo as measured by PET. Synapse 40:159–169, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Multiple Constituencies Activities and Standards: A Framework for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Public Personnel Departments

Previous research has failed to produce an appropriate framework for evaluating the effectiveness of public personnel departments. The lack of such a framework impedes the quality of decision making by personnel practitioners and of research by academicians. An appropriate framework should take into account the competing demands of the groups served by and able to influence public personnel departments. This article presents the Multiple Constituencies Activities and Standards Framework (MCAS), which has been applied in North Carolina counties. MCAS provides evaluations by various groups (constituents) of the activities of their personnel departments, and compares those evaluations to ratings achieved by other personnel departments over time.