Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Conditions for Antimicrobial Metabolites Production from a New Streptomyces sp. RUPA-08PR Isolated from Bangladeshi Soil

Abstract An actinomycete strain was isolated from northern part of Bangladesh and identified as a new Streptomyces species on the basis of its morphological, biochemical, cultural characteristics and 16S rRNA data. Attempts were made to optimize the culture conditions for the production of antimicrobial metabolites by this strain. Antimicrobial metabolites production was started after 7 days of incubation of culture broth and reached its maximum levels after 10 days and thereafter gradually decreased. The maximum production of antimicrobial metabolites was obtained when the culture medium pH was adjusted to 8. The optimum temperature for antimicrobial metabolites production was 39°C, indicated the new strain as mesophilic organism. Basel medium supplemented with glucose and yeast extract as carbon and nitrogen sources, respectively, was proved to be the best for the production of bioactive metabolites. Maximum production of bioactive metabolites was when NaCl concentration was 1% and among different minerals tested, K2HPO4 and NaCl showed positive influence on antibiotic production by the strain.
Methods of Capital Gains Taxation and the Impact on Asset Prices and Welfare

Taxation of capital gains upon realization instead of accrual provides incentives to hold winners as long as possible and sell losers immediately. This so-called lock-in effect possibly distorts the liquidation and investment decision and, hence, is usually regarded as harmful. This paper analyzes the impact the method of taxation has on asset prices and welfare within a simple general equilibrium model of an exchange economy with heterogeneous agents. It is shown that asset prices are higher under a realization-based tax system than under an accrual one. However, due to distributional effects, total welfare is not necessarily lower.
Characterization of genetically modified human retinal pigment epithelial cells developed for in vitro and transplantation studies.

PURPOSE To develop, by specific genetic modification, a differentiated human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell line with an extended life span that can be used for investigating their function in vitro and for in vivo transplantation studies. METHODS Primary human RPE cells were genetically modified by transfecting with a plasmid encoding the simian virus (SV)40 large T antigen. After characterization, two cell lines, designated h1RPE-7 and h1RPE-116, were chosen for further investigation, along with the spontaneously derived RPE cell line ARPE-19. Factors reported to be important in RPE and photoreceptor cell function and survival in vivo were examined. RESULTS Both h1RPE-7 and h1RPE-116 cells exhibited epithelial morphology, expressed cytokeratins, and displayed junctional distribution of ZO-1, p100-p120 and beta-catenin. The cells expressed mRNA for RPE65 and cellular retinaldehyde-binding protein (CRALBP) and the trophic and growth factors brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), nerve growth factor (NGF), platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-alpha, insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Secreted BDNF, bFGF, and VEGF, but not CNTF, were identified in cell supernatants. The cell lines constitutively expressed HLA-ABC, CD54, CD58, and CD59. After activation with IFN-gamma both HLA-ABC and CD54 were upregulated, and the expression of HLA-DR was induced. Both cell lines failed to express CD80, CD86, CD40, or CD48 in vitro and in a mixed lymphocyte reaction were unable to induce T-cell proliferation. Fas ligand (CD95L) was not detected in vitro by RT-PCR. Similar results were obtained with the ARPE-19 cell line. CONCLUSIONS RPE lines h1RPE-7 and h1RPE-116 retain many of the morphologic and biochemical characteristics of RPE cells in vivo and may serve as a source of cells for in vitro analysis of RPE cell function, as well as for orthotopic transplantation studies.
Trend assessment in a long memory dependence model using the discrete wavelet transform

In this article we consider trend to be smooth deterministic changes over long scales, and tackle the problem of trend estimation in the presence of long memory errors (slowly decaying autocorrelations). Using the fractionally differenced (FD) process as a motivating example of such a long memory process, we demonstrate how the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is a natural choice at extracting a polynomial trend from such an error process. We investigate the statistical properties of the trend estimate obtained from the DWT, and provide pointwise and simultaneous confidence intervals for the estimate. Based on evaluating the power in the trend estimate relative to the estimated errors, we provide a test of nonzero trend. We finish by applying the methods to a climatological example. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Use of Serious Games in Museum Visits and Exhibitions: A Systematic Mapping Study

Serious Games (SGs) have been widely adopted in cultural settings and museums, especially the last five years. It is expected that SG can link directly the museum content with target user groups and can fulfill their educational needs. This paper aims to present a systematic mapping study on modern museum gaming technologies and applications. More specifically, focus is given on the use of Serious Games (SGs) by the visitors during exhibition navigation and exploration of museum's cultural and educational content. Major analysis criteria and review findings include game goals, purpose of use, scope, user acceptance and educational effectiveness. A pool of 48 quality literature publications were set under examination. It was found that most solutions were game-based than play-based and that both genres had educational benefits on offer. Also, the frequency of relevant publications per year was increasing from year 2009 up to 2015. Regarding scope, studied applications were split almost equally among education, culture and arts, while the overwhelming majority were targeted to the general public and not teachers, students or parents specifically. Those findings are of particular importance for museum curators, digital cultural content creators, pedagogical engineers and museum interface designers.
Prospective assessment of quality of life of female cancer patients.

OBJECTIVE The aims of this study were to compare the quality of life (QOL) of women with different cancer sites; to identify predictors of QOL; and to examine the agreement between patient self-reported QOL and QOL ratings provided by clinicians and significant others. METHODS A prospective study was conducted including 248 patients with gynecologic and breast cancer. QOL data were collected at six time points before, during, and after treatment, using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the Spitzer QL index (QL-I). RESULTS Baseline assessments showed comparable QOL scores among patients with different gynecologic malignancies and breast cancer. During active treatment breast cancer patients had significantly higher mean scores in physical functioning compared to women with gynecologic cancers and higher scores in role functioning compared to patients with cervical cancer. After completion of treatment there were no statistically significant differences in QOL among the groups. For all women, global QOL and emotional functioning were mostly affected during and after treatment. Regression analysis showed that patients' global QOL was significantly predicted by severity of surgery (t = 3.903, P < 0.01) and pretreatment performance status (t = 3.116, P = <0.01). Comorbidity, family support, number of treatments, age, and stage of disease were not predictive. The comparison of patient self-rated QOL and observer-rated QOL showed that the QL-I mean scores of health providers and relatives were generally in close agreement with those of patients. Intraclass correlations were moderate to high during active treatment and excellent after completion of treatment. CONCLUSION In female cancer patients, global QOL and emotional functioning are mostly affected during the course of disease, independent of their diagnosis. Significant others and health professionals are able to provide useful information on QOL of patients recovering from cancer.
Missing from the Map: Chinese Exceptionalism, Sovereignty Regimes and the Belt Road Initiative

ABSTRACT Historical and conventional international relations (IR) frameworks describe the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) as representing a newly ambitious Chinese drive into global politics that positions China as moving away from its long-time reticence towards foreign entanglements. This raises a contradiction of China being at one and the same time both a defender of its own territorial sovereignty while also being engaged in various projects, particularly the BRI and the associated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), that point in completely different directions. This paper seeks to build upon and move beyond conventional framings to understand how the BRI represents a conflict over the workings of state sovereignty that such frameworks have trouble addressing. We argue that the absence of an official Chinese government BRI map promotes a ‘useful fuzziness’ with regards to China being open to crafting a new as of yet undefined geopolitical identity. In light of the absence of such a map, this work considers key ideas relating to China’s geopolitical expansion via the BRI in terms of so-called sovereignty regimes – the idea that various practices of authority and control emanating originally from states take different geographical shapes. Conflicts arise when a state, such as China, finds itself caught between the operational imperatives of multiple regimes. By identifying the current sovereignty dynamics raised by the BRI in light of the relevant, yet distinctive historical experience of the Marshall Plan, this work can be used as a model for understanding how China’s current leadership is managing the debate of simultaneously protecting ‘strong borders’ yet also promoting a policy of ‘going out’.
A Graph-based Markov Decision Process approach for managing forests under risk of wind damage

When selecting a long-term silvicultural management policy for a forest, a number of stochastic events can be taken into account in order to improve the management of the forest and thereby increase its value. A stochastic event that has recently been given a lot of attention to is the damage to forests due to windstorms. This is an important event to take into consideration as recent studies show that damage due to storms may seriously influence the economic value of the forest and that the risk of wind damage is influenced by the silvicultural treatments.
Valuing Information Using Utility Functions: How Much Should We Pay for Forecasts of Returns?

This study investigates what is an appropriate level of investment management fees. Using the CRRA utility function with the range of the coefficient of the CRRA suggested by Mehra and Prescott (1985), we find that the value of information added by linear factor models of Fama and French (1992) exceeds observed management fees and only equals them for hitherto unmeasured magnitudes of risk aversion.
Answer Set Programming via Mixed Integer Programming

Answer set programming is a programming paradigm where a given problem is formalized as a logic program whose answer sets correspond to the solutions to the problem. In this paper, we link answer set programming with another widely applied paradigm, viz. mixed integer programming. As a theoretical result, we establish translations from non-disjunctive logic programs to linear constraints used in mixed integer programming so that the solutions to the constraints correspond to the answer sets of the programs. These translations create the basis for an extended answer set programming language that includes linear constraints as a primitive and enables more compact encodings of problems. On a practical level, we have implemented a prototype system that computes answer sets using a state-of-the-art mixed integer programming solver. The reported experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach applied to a number of optimization problems and problems with variables ranging over large domains.
CDR analysis using Big Data technology

Call Detail Records (CDR) is a valuable source of information; it opens new opportunities for telecom industry and maximize its revenues as well as it helps the community to raise its standard of living in many different ways. However, we need to analyze CDRs in order to extract its big value. But CDRs has a huge volume, variety of data and high data rate, while current telecom systems are designed without these issues in mind. CDRs can be seen as Big Data source, and hence, it is applicable to use Big Data technologies (storage, processing and analysis) in CDR analytics. There are considerable research efforts to address the CDR analysis challenges. This paper presents the use of Big Data technology in CDR analysis by giving some CDR analytics based application examples, highlighting their architecture, the utilized Big Data tools and techniques, and the CDR use case scenarios.
Non-Abelian quantum Hall states and their quasiparticles: From the pattern of zeros to vertex algebra

In the pattern-of-zeros approach to quantum Hall states, a set of data (n;m;S{sub a}|a=1,.,n;n,m,S{sub a} is n element of N) (called the pattern of zeros) is introduced to characterize a quantum Hall wave function. In this paper we find sufficient conditions on the pattern of zeros so that the data correspond to a valid wave function. Some times, a set of data (n;m;S{sub a}) corresponds to a unique quantum Hall state, while other times, a set of data corresponds to several different quantum Hall states. So in the latter cases, the pattern of zeros alone does not completely characterize the quantum Hall states. In this paper, we find that the following expanded set of data (n;m;S{sub a};c|a=1,.,n;n,m,S{sub a} is an element of N;c is an element of R) provides a more complete characterization of quantum Hall states. Each expanded set of data completely characterizes a unique quantum Hall state, at least for the examples discussed in this paper. The result is obtained by combining the pattern of zeros and Z{sub n} simple-current vertex algebra which describes a large class of Abelian and non-Abelian quantum Hall states PHI{sub Z{sub n}{sup sc}}. The more complete characterization in terms of (n;m;S{sub a};c) allowsmore » us to obtain more topological properties of those states, which include the central charge c of edge states, the scaling dimensions and the statistics of quasiparticle excitations. « less
On the role of load motion compensation in high-performance force control

Robots are frequently modeled as rigid body systems, having torques as input to their dynamics. A high-performance low-level torque source allows us to control the robot/environment interaction and to straightforwardly take advantage of many model-based control techniques. In this paper, we define a general 1-DOF framework, using basic physical principles, to show that there exists an intrinsic velocity feedback in the generalized force dynamics, independently of the actuation technology. We illustrate this phenomena using three different systems: a generic spring-mass system, a hydraulic actuator, and an electric motor. This analogy helps to clarify important common aspects regarding torque/force control that can be useful when designing and controlling a robot. We demonstrate, using simulations and experimental data, that it is possible to compensate for the load motion influence and to increase the torque tracking capabilities.
Toward A New Evaluation Model of E-Government Satisfaction: Results of Structural Equation Modeling

A major domain of e-government research considers effective delivery of information to citizens (i.e. government-to-citizens services). These services involve all sets of communication and transaction between government, at various levels, and citizens. Research indicates that due to the expectations that people hold while utilizing public services available through digital means, there needs to be a citizen-centric or customer-centric delivery of information related to such services. The study extends this premise by evaluating citizens’ satisfaction with online governmental information services and formulating a model for satisfaction –EGOVSAT. This model includes various performance and emotional measures. To demonstrate the applicability and its generalization, the model is being applied to online Advanced Transportation Information Services (ATIS), a form of government-to-citizen online service delivery. This paper presents results of statistical analysis of online survey conducted in evaluating ATIS initiatives in Los Angeles (n = 155) and Minneapolis/St. Paul (n = 246). It presents an evaluated set of 15 questions based on the formulated model that can be extended for evaluating citizen interaction with egovernment initiatives.
Influence patterns in topic communities of social media

Users of Social Media typically gather into communities on the basis of some common interest. Their interactions inside these on-line communities follow several, interesting patterns. For example, they differ in the level of influence they exert to the rest of the group: some community members are actively involved, affecting a large part of the community with their actions, while the majority comprises plain participants (e.g., information consumers). Identifying users of the former category lies on the focus of interest of many recent works, as they can be employed in a variety of applications, like targeted marketing. In this paper, we build on previous research that examined influencers in the context of a popular Social Media web site, namely Twitter. Unlike existing works that consider its user base as a whole, we focus on communities that are created on-the-fly by people that post messages about a particular topic (i.e., topic communities). We examine a large and representative sample of real-world communities and evaluate to which extent their influential users determine the aggregate behavior of the entire community. To this end, we consider a practical use case: we check whether the community's overall sentiment stems from the aggregate sentiment of this core group. We also examine the dynamics of groups of influencers by assessing the strength of the ties between them. In addition, we identify patterns in the content produced by influencers and the relation between influencers of different communities. Our experiments lead to interesting conclusions that highlight many aspects of influencers' activity inside topic communities; thus, they form the basis for intelligent, data mining techniques that can automatically discover influencers in the context of a community.
Antioxidant Potential in Different Parts and Callus of Gynura procumbens and Different Parts of Gynura bicolor

Plants from Gynura family was used in this study, namely, Gynura procumbens and Gynura bicolor. Gynura procumbens is well known for its various medicinal properties such as antihyperglycaemic, antihyperlipidaemic, and antiulcerogenic; meanwhile, G. bicolor remains unexploited. Several nonenzymatic antioxidants methods were utilized to study the antioxidant capacity, which include ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay, total flavonoid content, total phenolic content, and ascorbic acid content determination. DPPH assay reveals G. procumbens shoot as the lowest (66.885%) and G. procumbens root as the highest (93.499%) DPPH radical inhibitor. In FRAP assay, reducing power was not detected in G. procumbens leaf callus (0.000 TEAC mg/g FW) whereby G. procumbens root exhibits the highest (1.103 TEAC mg/g FW) ferric reducing power. Total phenolic content and total flavonoid content exhibited similar trend for both the intact plants analysed. In all antioxidant assays, G. procumbens callus culture exhibits very low antioxidant activity. However, G. procumbens root exhibited highest phenolic content, flavonoid content, and ascorbic acid content with 4.957 TEAC mg/g FW, 543.529 QE µg/g FW, and 54.723 µg/g FW, respectively. This study reveals that G. procumbens root extract is a good source of natural antioxidant.
Mining the Rings: Strategies for Ring-to-Mesh Evolution

We assess the scope for serving ongoing growth in transport demand while deferring or eliminating expenditure for additional capacity by reclaiming the protection capacity and inefficiently used working capacity in existing rings. Reclamation is through re-design of the routing and restoration in the network using mesh principles within the pre-existing ring capacities. The installed working and protection capacity of existing rings is viewed as a sunk investment, an existing resource, to be “mined” and incorporated into a mesh-operated network that serves both existing and ongoing growth. Three ways of approaching the idea are given. The last is a detailed planning model for minimum cost evolution out to a given total growth multiplier that considers the costs of new mesh capacity additions, nodal costs for mesh access to existing ring capacity and selective ADM conversions and re-use decisions. Depending on the type of initial ring network design results show that in some cases a complete doubling or even tripling of demand could be supported with little or no additional capacity investment through the period of ring-to-mesh conversion by ring-mining. The strategy may mean that an operator that could handle the administrative process of conversion could access the opportunity to grow their business for a year or more without capital additions for transport capacity. This re-capture of existing installed protection capacity for conversion to service-bearing use would be a one time business strategy opportunity made possible by a ring mining conversion from ring to mesh.
Association of regional muscle strength with mortality and hospitalisation in older people.

BACKGROUND the association between muscular strength, mortality and hospitalisation with ageing can change depending on sex and the body region analysed (e.g. upper and lower limb muscles). OBJECTIVE to determine the effect of measuring lower and upper extremities muscular strength on the relationship between strength, mortality and hospitalisation risk in elder men and women. DESIGN a population-based cohort study using data from the Toledo Study for Healthy Aging (TSHA). METHODS a Spanish population sample of 1,755 elders aged ≥65 years participated in this study. Upper (handgrip and shoulder) and lower limbs (knee and hip) maximal voluntary isometric strength was obtained using standardised techniques and equipment. Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine mortality and hospitalisation over 5.5 and 3 years of follow-up, respectively. RESULTS after adjustment for potential confounding factors, including co-morbidities and BMI, hazard ratio of death and hospitalisation was significantly lower in the stronger women and men, but showing regional- and sex-specific differences. That is shoulder, knee and hip muscle regions in women and handgrip and shoulder in men (all P < 0.05). There was a cumulative effect of measuring several muscle strengths over the risk of health events (P < 0.05), so that mortality hazard ratio increased by 45% in women and 25% in men per muscular strength (shoulder, grip, knee and hip) in the weaker strength quartile increase (P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS regional muscle strength is a predictor of medium-term mortality and hospitalisation in elder men and women. Multiple strength measures including lower and upper body limb muscles are better predictors than a single strength measurement.