Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functional dissection of an intrinsically disordered protein: Understanding the roles of different domains of Knr4 protein in protein–protein interactions

Knr4, recently characterized as an intrinsically disordered Saccharomyces cerevisiae protein, participates in cell wall formation and cell cycle regulation. It is constituted of a functional central globular core flanked by a poorly structured N‐terminal and large natively unfolded C‐terminal domains. Up to now, about 30 different proteins have been reported to physically interact with Knr4. Here, we used an in vivo two‐hybrid system approach and an in vitro surface plasmon resonance (BIAcore) technique to compare the interaction level of different Knr4 deletion variants with given protein partners. We demonstrate the indispensability of the N‐terminal domain of Knr4 for the interactions. On the other hand, presence of the unstructured C‐terminal domain has a negative effect on the interaction strength. In protein interactions networks, the most highly connected proteins or “hubs” are significantly enriched in unstructured regions, and among them the transient hub proteins contain the largest and most highly flexible regions. The results presented here of our analysis of Knr4 protein suggest that these large disordered regions are not always involved in promoting the protein–protein interactions of hub proteins, but in some cases, might rather inhibit them. We propose that this type of regions could prevent unspecific protein interactions, or ensure the correct timing of occurrence of transient interactions, which may be of crucial importance for different signaling and regulation processes.
Environmental Contamination and Industrial Real Estate Prices

This article is the winner of the Industrial Real Estate manuscript prize (sponsored by Society of Industrial and Office REALTORS) presented at the American Real Estate Society Annual Meeting. This article examines the effects of environmental contamination on the sales prices of industrial properties. Two general questions are addressed. The first is the extent to which sales prices may be impacted by contamination. The second is whether sales price effects due to contamination persist subsequent to the remediation of previously contaminated industrial properties. Using data on industrial property sales in Southern California, this study estimates sales price models that address these two questions. The results show that there are statistically significant impacts on property values in the period before and during remediation, but that these effects dissipate subsequent to cleanup.
Stable isotope analyses—A method to distinguish intensively farmed from wild frogs

Abstract Consumption of frog legs is increasing worldwide, with potentially dramatic effects for ecosystems. More and more functioning frog farms are reported to exist. However, due to the lack of reliable methods to distinguish farmed from wild‐caught individuals, the origin of frogs in the international trade is often uncertain. Here, we present a new methodological approach to this problem. We investigated the isotopic composition of legally traded frog legs from suppliers in Vietnam and Indonesia. Muscle and bone tissue samples were examined for δ15N, δ13C, and δ18O stable isotope compositions, to elucidate the conditions under which the frogs grew up. We used DNA barcoding (16S rRNA) to verify species identities. We identified three traded species (Hoplobatrachus rugulosus, Fejervarya cancrivora and Limnonectes macrodon); species identities were partly deviating from package labeling. Isotopic values of δ15N and δ18O showed significant differences between species and country of origin. Based on low δ15N composition and generally little variation in stable isotope values, our results imply that frogs from Vietnam were indeed farmed. In contrast, the frogs from the Indonesian supplier likely grew up under natural conditions, indicated by higher δ15N values and stronger variability in the stable isotope composition. Our results indicate that stable isotope analyses seem to be a useful tool to distinguish between naturally growing and intensively farmed frogs. We believe that this method can be used to improve the control in the international trade of frog legs, as well as for other biological products, thus supporting farming activities and decreasing pressure on wild populations. However, we examined different species from different countries and had no access to samples of individuals with confirmed origin and living conditions. Therefore, we suggest improving this method further with individuals of known origin and history, preferably including samples of the respective nutritive bases.
Stationary systems of Gaussian processes

We describe all countable particle systems on $\mathbb{R}$ which have the following three properties: independence, Gaussianity and stationarity. More precisely, we consider particles on the real line starting at the points of a Poisson point process with intensity measure $\mathfrak{m}$ and moving independently of each other according to the law of some Gaussian process $\xi$. We classify all pairs $(\mathfrak{m},\xi)$ generating a stationary particle system, obtaining three families of examples. In the first, trivial family, the measure $\mathfrak{m}$ is arbitrary, whereas the process $\xi$ is stationary. In the second family, the measure $\mathfrak{m}$ is a multiple of the Lebesgue measure, and $\xi$ is essentially a Gaussian stationary increment process with linear drift. In the third, most interesting family, the measure $\mathfrak{m}$ has a density of the form $\alpha e^{-\lambda x}$, where $\alpha >0$, $\lambda\in\mathbb{R}$, whereas the process $\xi$ is of the form $\xi(t)=W(t)-\lambda\sigma ^2(t)/2+c$, where $W$ is a zero-mean Gaussian process with stationary increments, $\sigma ^2(t)=\operatorname {Var}W(t)$, and $c\in\mathbb{R}$.
Factors Controlling Soil Microbial Biomass and Bacterial Diversity and Community Composition in a Cold Desert Ecosystem: Role of Geographic Scale

Understanding controls over the distribution of soil bacteria is a fundamental step toward describing soil ecosystems, understanding their functional capabilities, and predicting their responses to environmental change. This study investigated the controls on the biomass, species richness, and community structure and composition of soil bacterial communities in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, at local and regional scales. The goals of the study were to describe the relationships between abiotic characteristics and soil bacteria in this unique, microbially dominated environment, and to test the scale dependence of these relationships in a low complexity ecosystem. Samples were collected from dry mineral soils associated with snow patches, which are a significant source of water in this desert environment, at six sites located in the major basins of the Taylor and Wright Valleys. Samples were analyzed for a suite of characteristics including soil moisture, pH, electrical conductivity, soil organic matter, major nutrients and ions, microbial biomass, 16 S rRNA gene richness, and bacterial community structure and composition. Snow patches created local biogeochemical gradients while inter-basin comparisons encompassed landscape scale gradients enabling comparisons of microbial controls at two distinct spatial scales. At the organic carbon rich, mesic, low elevation sites Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria were prevalent, while Firmicutes and Proteobacteria were dominant at the high elevation, low moisture and biomass sites. Microbial parameters were significantly related with soil water content and edaphic characteristics including soil pH, organic matter, and sulfate. However, the magnitude and even the direction of these relationships varied across basins and the application of mixed effects models revealed evidence of significant contextual effects at local and regional scales. The results highlight the importance of the geographic scale of sampling when determining the controls on soil microbial community characteristics.
Occupying the illegal city : urban social movements and transgressive citizenship in Sao Paulo

This thesis is based on a case study of a Brazilian urban social movement that campaigns for state provision of low-income housing and that posits its demands in the language of citizenship and social rights. It makes a contribution to the study of state-society relations by detailing how understandings of citizenship shape the movement's interaction with different levels of the Brazilian state. The empirical data on which the thesis is based was gathered over the course of a year's fieldwork with the movement, involving participant observation and approximately seventy semi-structured interviews with movement leaders and members, politicians and professionals associated with the movement. It examines the activities of the movement in the context of Sao Paulo, a city characterized by high levels of income inequality, spatial segregation and illegally occupied land. Analysis of the movement's discourse highlights the link made by members and leaders between adequate housing and citizenship and their continued highly antagonistic stance towards the Brazilian state. Through the use of a 'politics of rights' the movement stresses the disjuncture between the constitutional right to housing and the state's wilful neglect of the housing needs of its poorer populations, developing the idea of limited citizenship. The movement's interactions with the state are then discussed in light of this disjuncture: these involve engagement in participatory policy councils, pursuit of legal cases against the state and acts of civil disobedience through occupations of empty buildings. The study concludes that in a context of illegality and exclusion it is through acts of 'transgressive citizenship' that the movement establishes its identity vis-a-vis the state and most successfully highlights the state's failure to provide housing.
Extraction of fetal electrocardiogram using recursive least squares and normalized least mean squares algorithms

This paper addresses the problem of fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) extracion using recursive least squares (RLS) and normalized least mean squares (NLMS) adaptive algorithms based adaptive noise canceling (ANC) approach. The simulation results are compared with the classical adaptive filters, such as RLS, NLMS and LMS algorithms, for eliminating the maternal electrocardiogram (MECG) and hence to extract the FECG. The comparative study has been carried out to show that the performance and accuracy of the recursive least squares adaptive noise cancelling(RLS-ANC) approach is more effective than the normalized least mean squares (NLMS) algorithm in an adaptive manner, and it is found to converge faster than NLMS algorithm in ANC.
Inadvertent Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Commercial Paint Pigments†

A polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) that was not produced as part of the Aroclor mixtures banned in the 1980s was recently reported in air samples collected in Chicago, Philadelphia, the Arctic, and several sites around the Great Lakes. In Chicago, the congener 3,3′-dichlorobiphenyl or PCB11 was found to be the fifth most concentrated congener and ubiquitous throughout the city. The congener exhibited strong seasonal concentration trends that suggest volatilization of this compound from common outdoor surfaces. Due to these findings and also the compound’s presence in waters that received waste from paint manufacturing facilities, we hypothesized that PCB11 may be present in current commercial paint. In this study we measured PCBs in paint sold on the current retail market. We tested 33 commercial paint pigments purchased from three local paint stores. The pigment samples were analyzed for all 209 PCB congeners using gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). More than 50 PCB congeners including several dioxin-like PCBs were detected, and the PCB profiles varied due to different types of pigments and different manufacturing processes. PCB congeners were detected in azo and phthalocyanine pigments which are commonly used in paint but also in inks, textiles, paper, cosmetics, leather, plastics, food and other materials. Our findings suggest several possible mechanisms for the inadvertent production of specific PCB congeners during the manufacturing of paint pigments.
Great Britain VOLTAGE CLAMP EXPERIMENTS IN STRIATED MUSCLE FIBRES

1. Membrane currents during step depolarizations were determined by a method in which three electrodes were inserted near the end of a fibre in the frog's sartorius muscle. The theoretical basis and limitations of the method are discussed. 2. Measurements of the membrane capacity (CM) and resting resistance (RM) derived from the current during a step change in membrane potential are consistent with values found by other methods. 3. In fibres made mechanically inactive with hypertonic solutions (Ringer solution plus 350 mm sucrose) step depolarizations produced ionic currents which resembled those of nerve in showing (a) an early transient inward current, abolished by tetrodotoxin, which reversed when the depolarization was carried beyond an internal potential of about + 20 mV, (b) a delayed outward current, with a linear instantaneous current-voltage relation, and a mean equilibrium potential with a normal potassium concentration (2.5 mm) of -85 mV. 4. The reversal potential for the early current appears to be consistent with the sodium equilibrium potential expected in hypertonic solutions. 5. The variation of the equilibrium potential for the delayed current (VE) with external potassium concentration suggests that the channel for delayed current has a ratio of potassium to sodium permeability of 30:1; this is less than the resting membrane where the ratio appears to be 100: 1. VE corresponds well with the membrane potential at the beginning of the negative after-potential observed under similar conditions. 6. The variation of VE with the amount of current which has passed through the delayed channel suggests that potassium ions accumulate in a space of between X and W of the fibre volume. If potassium accumulates in the transverse tubular system (T system) much greater variation in VE would be expected.
The cobordism group of homology cylinders

Abstract Garoufalidis and Levine introduced the homology cobordism group of homology cylinders over a surface. This group can be regarded as an enlargement of the mapping class group. Using torsion invariants, we show that the abelianization of this group is infinitely generated provided that the first Betti number of the surface is positive. In particular, this shows that the group is not perfect. This answers questions of Garoufalidis and Levine, and Goda and Sakasai. Furthermore, we show that the abelianization of the group has infinite rank for the case that the surface has more than one boundary component. These results also hold for the homology cylinder analogue of the Torelli group.
Trilinear forms of gl2

1.1. In this paper we study the invariant linear forms on the tensor products of three principal series representations of GL2(F ) where F is an archimedean field. When F is a p-adic field, the existence of invariant trilinear forms is known through the work of Prasad [Pa1]. He shows that the space of invariant forms is at most one dimensional and that it exists if and only if a certain epsilon factor is 1. His work was partly motivated by [Re]. He also considers the case when F = R and we will describe his result in more detail below. Let F = R or C and let G = GL2(F ) with maximal compact subgroup K. Let g be its Lie algebra. Let πi (i = 1, 2, 3) be an irreducible infinite dimensional Harish-Chandra module of G. Assume that the product of three central characters of πi is trivial. If F = R then πi is either a principal series or discrete series representation. Let H be the quaternion division algebra over R and we identify its subset of non-zero elements H∗ with U2. If πi is a discrete series, we denote π′ i to be the irreducible finite dimensional representation of H ∗ with the same infinitesimal character and central character as πi. When F = C, πi is always in the principal series. We recall that πi corresponds to a representation σi of the Weil group WF of F . For a non-trivial character ψ of F and a representation σ of WF , we associate an epsilon factor [JL]
The Influence of Board Characteristics On The Frequency of 10-K Investigations of Firms In The Financial Services Sector

This study examined the possible impact of board member composition (numberof outside directors), board tenure, board size, and the number of other boards onwhich directors serve, on the number of investigations and/or legal proceedingsbrought against the sample firms by various individuals, groups, and federal andstate agencies. A sample of 180 firms were selected for study from the financialservices sector ofthe economy for the years 1998-2002.The results suggest that, contrary to theory, neither the proportion of outsidedirectors or board size had a significant affect on the number of investigationsbrought against the sample firms. Further, as predicted the results revealed asigntficant and negative link between board tenure and the number of 10K investigations,and a significant and positive relationship between the number of otherboards served on by directors and the number of investigations. Although contraryto theory, this last finding offers some evidence that directors who serve on severalother boards may become too distracted to properly monitor their firms.
MILLIMETER FLARES AND VLBI VISIBILITIES FROM RELATIVISTIC SIMULATIONS OF MAGNETIZED ACCRETION ONTO THE GALACTIC CENTER BLACK HOLE

The recent very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observation of the Galactic center black hole candidate Sgr A* at 1.3 mm shows source structure on event-horizon scales. This detection enables a direct comparison of the emission region with models of the accretion flow onto the black hole. We present the first results from time-dependent radiative transfer of general relativistic MHD simulation data, and compare simulated synchrotron images at black hole spin a = 0.9 with the VLBI measurements. After tuning the accretion rate to match the millimeter flux, we find excellent agreement between predicted and observed visibilities, even when viewed face-on (i ≲ 30°). VLBI measurements on 2000–3000 km baselines should constrain the inclination. The data constrain the accretion rate to be (1.0–2.3)×10−9 M☉ yr−1 with 99% confidence, consistent with but independent of prior estimates derived from spectroscopic and polarimetric measurements. Finally, we compute light curves, which show that magnetic turbulence can directly produce flaring events with 0.5 hr rise times, 2–3.5 hr durations, and 40%–50% flux modulation, in agreement with observations of Sgr A* at millimeter wavelengths.
Can serial monitoring of serum Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF), Nitric Oxide (NO), and Angiotensin II (ANGII) levels have predictive role during Bevacizumab treatment?

Background Standard treatment of colorectal cancer includes both cytostatic chemotherapy and targeted therapies. Bevacizumab, targeting the VEGF receptor, is one of the primary targeted therapies that achieve better response rate and survival rate as compared to combination chemotherapy. To the best of our knowledge, there is no established single marker that can be used as a predictive marker in bevacizumab therapy. Material/Methods We enrolled 24 patients with the diagnosis of metastatic colorectal cancer in our study. During the study, 2 blood samples were drawn from patients before the first cycle and after the sixth cycle of bevacizumab therapy. Serum levels of VEGF, ANG II, and NO were recorded. Results While the change across VEGF levels was found to be a statistically significant decreasing trend (p=0.009), this decrease was not found to be correlated with treatment response and hypertension development. Additionally, no statistically significant difference was found in terms of NO and ANG II levels. Conclusions This study showed a significant decrease in serum VEGF, but failed to show a significant change in NO and ANG II levels during bevacizumab treatment. Although no significant correlation was found between the presence of hypertension and markers, most patients (83%) had an increase in their blood pressure. Our results suggest that dynamic monitoring of NO and ANG II, along with VEGF, may not be useful as predictive markers for bevacizumab treatment in colorectal cancer.
Prolonged Combination Therapy is More Effective than Monotherapy in Management of Chronic Hepatitis B Patients With Sustained Virological Response: An Experience From a ‘Real-World’ Clinical Setting

Background: Little is known about the duration of combination therapy for patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and suboptimal response to nucleos(t)ide analogues(NAs) monotherapy. Objectives: This study aimed to assess whether monotherapy could be used for treatment of CHB patients, who poorly responded to Adefovir Dipivoxil (ADV) but obtained good responses after at least 12-month lamivudine (LAM) or telbivudine (LdT) add-on therapy. Patients and Methods: Forty-five patients were enrolled, and the baseline time-point was determined according to enrollment data. Twenty-six patients chose to continue combination therapy (LAM+ADV or LdT+ADV, Group A) and 19 patients switched to single-drug maintenance therapy (LAM or LdT or ADV, Group B). Results: There were no signiﬁcant differences between two groups in baseline characteristics (P > 0.05). At 12th month, sustained virological response rate was greater in group A compared to group B (96.2% vs. 47.4%, P < 0.001), and the rates of NAs-associated resistance were 0% in group A and 15.8% in group B. Alanine aminotransferase normalization rate was also signiﬁcantly higher in group A compared with group B (92.3% vs. 36.8%, P < 0.001). Among hepatitis positive patients with Be antigen (HBeAg)-, 40% (4/10) in group A and 9.1% (1/11) in group B achieved HBeAg seroconversion at the 12th month. Of patients in group B with positive-HBeAg before the previous combination therapy and detectable HBV DNA at 6 months of previous combination therapy were associated with high risks of viral relapse after switching to single-drug maintenance therapy. Conclusions: Prematurely switching to single-drug maintenance therapy would be resulted in viral relapse, and prolonged combination therapy was effective to maintain sustained responses for patients with initial suboptimal response to ADV.
Overcoming the Crunch in Resources for New Product Development

OVERVIEW: Most new product development efforts suffer from serious resource deficiencies across all business functions, and many of the symptoms that beset NPD can be traced directly to this resource crunch. The underlying causes of this crunch are a preoccupation with short-term financial performance, reluctance to kill projects (and the resulting lack of focus), and a desire for excessive speed to market. Strategic solutions to this problem include matching resources to the goals of the business, recognizing that all businesses should not be measured with the same yardstick nor resourced the same way, and “ring-fencing” NPD resources. How these resources are allocated is a problem in most businesses, and thus another solution is to implement an effective portfolio management system. Portfolio management provides greater focus (fewer but higher-value projects) and also relies on strategic buckets to achieve the right balance of projects and spending. Finally, tactical solutions include tracking the deployment of existing resources via resource capacity analysis and mapping project resource requirements more precisely as part of the gate deliverables.