Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Calcium–Calmodulin-Dependent Kinase II Modulates Kv4.2 Channel Expression and Upregulates Neuronal A-Type Potassium Currents

Calcium–calmodulin-dependent kinase II (CaMKII) has a long history of involvement in synaptic plasticity, yet little focus has been given to potassium channels as CaMKII targets despite their importance in repolarizing EPSPs and action potentials and regulating neuronal membrane excitability. We now show that Kv4.2 acts as a substrate for CaMKII in vitro and have identified CaMKII phosphorylation sites as Ser438 and Ser459. To test whether CaMKII phosphorylation of Kv4.2 affects channel biophysics, we expressed wild-type or mutant Kv4.2 and the K+ channel interacting protein, KChIP3, with or without a constitutively active form of CaMKII in Xenopus oocytes and measured the voltage dependence of activation and inactivation in each of these conditions. CaMKII phosphorylation had no effect on channel biophysical properties. However, we found that levels of Kv4.2 protein are increased with CaMKII phosphorylation in transfected COS cells, an effect attributable to direct channel phosphorylation based on site-directed mutagenesis studies. We also obtained corroborating physiological data showing increased surface A-type channel expression as revealed by increases in peak K+ current amplitudes with CaMKII phosphorylation. Furthermore, endogenous A-currents in hippocampal pyramidal neurons were increased in amplitude after introduction of constitutively active CaMKII, which results in a decrease in neuronal excitability in response to current injections. Thus CaMKII can directly modulate neuronal excitability by increasing cell-surface expression of A-type K+ channels.
The Ties That Bind: Building Civic Capacity for the Tennessee Achievement School District

The Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) is among several state-run districts established to turn around underperforming schools. Like other such districts, the ASD removes schools from local control and is not accountable to local political institutions. Despite its authority, the ASD has encountered opposition within Memphis where its schools reside. For those inclined to its market orientation and suspicious of traditional districts, the ASD is an innovative effort to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students. For those that see educational failure in Memphis as the result of social and economic isolation, the ASD appears motivated by profit, paternalism, and racism. A third narrative, largely hidden from view, encompasses people who reject state takeover but seek to confront structural causes of poor performance.
A “pile” metaphor for supporting casual organization of information

A user study was conducted to investigate how people deal with the flow of information in their workspaces. Subjects reported that, in an attempt to quickly and informally manage their information, they created piles of documents. Piles were seen as complementary to the folder filing system, which was used for more formal archiving. A new desktop interface element–the pile– was developed and prototyped through an iterative process. The design includes direct manipulation techniques and support for browsing, and goes beyond physical world functionality by providing system assistance for automatic pile construction and reorganization. Preliminary user tests indicate the design is promising and raise issues that will be addressed in future work.
SOME INTERESTING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN VERBS AND NOUNS

Verbs are different from;nouns in ways that go beyond chair syntactic privileges . Verbs are harder to remember, more broadly defined, more prone to be altered in meaning when conflict of meaning occurs, less stable in translation between languages, and slower to be acquired by children than nouns . In this paper I argue that the differences stem in part from a basic cognitive distinction that, in perceptual domains, is correlated with the noun-verb distinctioq :. the distinction between object-reference concepts and relational concepts . ' Object-reference concepts are typically lexicalized as concrete or proper nouns such as dog, collie, or Lassie . Relational concepts from the same concrete level a' ' typically lexicalized as predicates, usually verbs (e.g ., push, float, or move) or prepositions
A statistical approach to 3d object detection applied to faces and cars

In this thesis, we describe a statistical method for 3D object detection. In this method, we decompose the 3D geometry of each object into a small number of viewpoints. For each viewpoint, we construct a decision rule that determines if the object is present at that specific orientation. Each decision rule uses the statistics of both object appearance and “non-object” visual appearance. We represent each set of statistics using a product of histograms. Each histogram represents the joint statistics of a subset of wavelet coefficients and their position on the object. Our approach is to use many such histograms representing a wide variety of visual attributes. Using this method, we have developed the first algorithm that can reliably detect faces that vary from frontal view to full profile view and the first algorithm that can reliably detect cars over a wide range of viewpoints.
Grateful Beneficiaries and Proud Benefactors: A Moderated Mediation Model Relating Supervisors' Gratitude Expression to Employees' Organizational Citizenship Behavior

GRATEFUL BENEFICIARIES AND PROUD BENEFACTORS: A MODERATED MEDIATION MODEL RELATING SUPERVISORS’ GRATITUDE EXPRESSION TO EMPLOYEES’ ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR William Peter Jimenez Old Dominion University, 2018 Director: Dr. Xiaoxiao Hu Few organizational researchers have considered examining gratitude or pride—much less both simultaneously. In the present study, two complementary emotion theories (i.e., affective events theory and broaden-and-build theory) are integrated in an examination of the prosocial consequences of supervisors’ gratitude expression, employees’ authentic and hubristic pride experiences, and employees’ narcissism in a large construction company in China. Results from the analyses of the moderated mediation model indicated that most of the proposed relationships were nonsignificant. Supervisors’ gratitude expression predicted employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) but did not predict employees’ authentic or hubristic pride. Employees’ hubristic pride—but not authentic pride—predicted employees’ OCB, but neither authentic nor hubristic pride mediated the relationship between supervisors’ gratitude expression and employees’ OCB. Additionally, employees’ narcissism did not function as a moderator variable in the moderated mediation model. Theoretical and practical implications and future directions are discussed.
Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth: The Case of Mexico

 Abstract — The causality between energy consumption and economic growth has been an important issue in the economic literature. This paper studies the causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in Mexico for the period of 1971-2011. In so doing, unit root and causality tests are applied. The results show that energy consumption and economic growth series are stationary and there is also a causality relationship running from economic growth to electricity consumption. Therefore, any energy conservation policy would have little or no impact at all on economic growth in México .
Internal capabilities and SMEs performance: A case of textile industry in Pakistan

Article history: Received: October 18, 2018 Received in revised format: November 11, 2018 Accepted: January 3, 2019 Available online: January 3, 2019 The small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role on the growth of the economies of developing countries. In Pakistan, SMEs hold about 90 percent of the total businesses including the textile industry. The performance of SMEs in the textile industry is influenced by several factors including the internal capabilities of the firms. Hence the primary objective of the study is to examine the relationship between the internal capabilities namely Innovation Capability, Absorptive Capacity and SMEs Performance among textile firms in Pakistan. The study is conducted using quantitative research. There are 377 questionnaires distributed among textiles SMEs of Pakistan and they were analyzed using some statistical tests. The results reveal that innovation capability and absorptive capacity influenced the performance of SMEs, positively. © 2019 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada
Investigation of Iron Metabolism in Mice Expressing a Mutant Menke’s Copper Transporting ATPase (Atp7a) Protein with Diminished Activity (Brindled; MoBr /y)

During iron deficiency, perturbations in copper homeostasis have frequently been documented. Previous studies in iron-deprived rats demonstrated that enterocyte and hepatic copper levels increase and a copper transporter (the Menkes Copper ATPase; Atp7a) is induced in the duodenal epithelium in parallel to iron transport-related genes (e.g. Dmt1, Dcytb, Fpn1). Moreover, two ferroxidase proteins involved in iron homeostasis, hephaestin expressed in enterocytes and ceruloplasmin, produced and secreted into blood by the liver, are copper-dependent enzymes. We thus aimed to test the hypothesis that Atp7a function is important for the copper-related compensatory response of the intestinal epithelium to iron deficiency. Accordingly, iron homeostasis was studied for the first time in mice expressing a mutant Atp7a protein with minimal activity (Brindled [MoBr /y]). Mutant mice were rescued by perinatal copper injections, and, after a 7–8 week recovery period, were deprived of dietary iron for 3 weeks (along with WT littermates). Adult MoBr /y mice displayed copper-deficiency anemia but had normal iron status; in contrast, iron-deprived MoBr /y mice were iron deficient and more severely anemic with partial amelioration of the copper-deficient phenotype. Intestinal iron absorption in both genotypes (WT and MoBr /y) increased ∼3-fold when mice consumed a low-iron diet and ∼6-fold when mice were concurrently bled. WT mice exhibited no alterations in copper homeostasis in response to iron deprivation or phlebotomy. Conversely, upregulation of iron absorption was associated with increased enterocyte and liver copper levels and serum ferroxidase (ceruloplasmin) activity in MoBr /y mice, typifying the response to iron deprivation in many mammalian species. We thus speculate that a copper threshold exists that is necessary to allow appropriate regulate of iron absorption. In summary, MoBr /y mice were able to adequately regulate iron absorption, but unlike in WT mice, concurrent increases in enterocyte and liver copper levels and serum ferroxidase activity may have contributed to maintenance of iron homeostasis.
Proline-Rich Tyrosine Kinase 2 Regulates Hippocampal Long-Term Depression

Proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2 (PYK2), also known as cell adhesion kinase β or protein tyrosine kinase 2b, is a calcium-dependent signaling protein involved in cell migration. Phosphorylation of residue Y402 is associated with activation of PYK2 and leads to the recruitment of downstream signaling molecules. PYK2 was previously implicated in long-term potentiation (LTP); however, the role of PYK2 in long-term depression (LTD) is unknown. Here, we report that PYK2 is activated by NMDA receptor stimulation (chemical LTD) in cultured neurons. Small hairpin RNA-mediated knockdown of PYK2 blocks LTD, but not LTP, in hippocampal slice cultures. We find that the Y402 residue and, to a lesser extent, PYK2 kinase activity contribute to PYK2's role in LTD. Knockdown experiments indicate that PYK2 is required to suppress NMDA-induced extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) phosphorylation. Overexpression of PYK2 depresses NMDA-induced ERK phosphorylation and inhibits LTP, but not LTD. Our data indicate that PYK2 is critical for the induction of LTD, possibly in part by antagonizing ERK signaling in hippocampal neurons.
Night time vehicle detection for driving assistance lightbeam controller

In this paper we present an effective system for detecting vehicles in front of a camera-assisted vehicle (preceding vehicles traveling in the same direction and oncoming vehicles traveling in the opposite direction) during night time driving conditions in order to automatically change vehicle head lights between low beams and high beams avoiding glares for the drivers. Accordingly, high beams output will be selected when no other traffic is present and will be turned on low beams when other vehicles are detected. Our systemuses a B&W micro-camera mounted in the windshield area and looking at forward of the vehicle. Digital image processing techniques are applied to analyze light sources and to detect vehicles in the images. The algorithm is efficient and able to run in real-time. Some experimental results and conclusions are presented.
Energy and Delay Improvement via Decimal Floating Point Units

Interest in decimal arithmetic increased considerably in recent years. This paper presents new designs for decimal floating point (DFP) addition, multiplication, fused multiply-add, division, and square root. It stresses the importance of energy savings achieved by hardware implementations of the IEEE standard for decimal floating point. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first work to discuss energy savings in DFP and the first to present a hardware implementation of a fused multiply-add. Our Newton-Raphson based divider is over three times faster than the similar design previously reported.
Complexity of Illness and Adjunctive Benzodiazepine Use in Outpatients With Bipolar I or II Disorder: Results From the Bipolar CHOICE Study

Abstract Benzodiazepines are widely prescribed for patients with bipolar disorders in clinical practice, but very little is known about the subtypes of patients with bipolar disorder or aspects of bipolar illness that contribute most to benzodiazepine use. We examined the prevalence of and factors associated with benzodiazepine use among 482 patients with bipolar I or II disorder enrolled in the Bipolar CHOICE study. Eighty-one subjects were prescribed benzodiazepines at study entry and were considered benzodiazepine users. Stepwise logistic regression was used to model baseline benzodiazepine use versus nonuse, using entry and exit criteria of P < 0.1. In bivariate analyses, benzodiazepine users were prescribed a significantly higher number of other psychotropic medications and were more likely to be prescribed lamotrigine or antidepressants as compared with benzodiazepine nonusers. Benzodiazepine users were more likely to have a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder and comorbid anxiety disorder, but not comorbid alcohol or substance use disorders. Benzodiazepine users also had experienced more anxiety and depressive symptoms and suicidality, but not irritability or manic symptoms, than did benzodiazepine nonusers. In the multivariate model, anxiety symptom level (regardless of diagnosis), lamotrigine use, number of concomitant psychotropic medications, college education, and high household income predicted benzodiazepine use. Benzodiazepine use in patients with bipolar disorders is associated with greater illness complexity as indicated by a higher number of concomitant psychotropic medications and higher anxiety symptom burden, regardless of a comorbid anxiety disorder diagnosis. Demographic factors were also important determinants of benzodiazepine use, which may be related to access to care and insurance coverage for benzodiazepines.
Tree Growth, Litter Fall and Leaf Litter Decomposition of Eucalyptus tereticornis Base Agri-silviculture System

Eucalyptus tereticornisis renowned globally for its fast growth, high levels of drought tolerance and adaptability to diverse climatic conditions and soils, which makes it popular among eucalypt tree growers Bindumadhava et al., (2011). Colonel propagation is an extensively used strategy to gain economic potential of eucalypt species/hybrids by multiplying desirable types. With moderate degree of sophistication in most forest nurseries, it is performed to strategically improve the productivity Zobel et al., (1995). To protect natural resources and the environment for the sustainable development, plantation has become the major source of timber supply for timber industry such as solid wood, plywood pulping and paper.
On the utilization of MIMO-OFDM channel sparsity for accurate positioning

Recent results have revealed that MIMO channels at high carrier frequencies exhibit sparsity structure, i.e., a few dominant propagation paths. Also channel parameters, namely angular information and propagation delay can be modelled with the physical location of the transmitter, receiver and scatters. In this paper, we leverage these features into the development of a single base-station localization algorithm, and show that the location of an unknown device can be estimated with an accuracy below a meter based on pilot signalling with a OFDM transmission. The method relies on the utilization of the “Adaptive-LASSO” optimization method, in which an ℓ1-based minimization problem is solved by adapting the sparsifying matrix (dictionary) and the sparse vector jointly. Then the location of the device is estimated from the parameters of the sparsifying matrix. Finally, the positioning method is evaluated in different channel setting utilizing a ray-tracing channel model at 28GHz.
Exploring symptom expressions according to different age groups in fibromyalgia: a cross-sectional study

background Fibromyalgia syndrome is a chronic musculoskeletal disorder which mostly affects women. This study investigates whether the prediction of self-report based fatigue, stress, everyday memory and impact (the most affected components of health status, i.e., physical impairment, feeling good, doing work, pain, anxiety, etc.) differ between younger patients and older patients with fibromyalgia.
Practically Tunable Static Analysis Framework for Large-Scale JavaScript Applications (T)

We present a novel approach to analyze large-scale JavaScript applications statically by tuning the analysis scalability possibly giving up its soundness. For a given sound static baseline analysis of JavaScript programs, our framework allows users to define a sound approximation of selected executions that they are interested in analyzing, and it derives a tuned static analysis that can analyze the selected executions practically. The selected executions serve as parameters of the framework by taking trade-off between the scalability and the soundness of derived analyses. We formally describe our framework in abstract interpretation, and implement two instances of the framework. We evaluate them by analyzing large-scale real-world JavaScript applications, and the evaluation results show that the framework indeed empowers users to experiment with different levels of scalability and soundness. Our implementation provides an extra level of scalability by deriving sparse versions of derived analyses, and the implementation is publicly available.
Ecology of Nitrogen Fixing, Nitrifying, and Denitrifying Microorganisms in Tropical Forest Soils

Soil microorganisms play important roles in nitrogen cycling within forest ecosystems. Current research has revealed that a wider variety of microorganisms, with unexpected diversity in their functions and phylogenies, are involved in the nitrogen cycle than previously thought, including nitrogen-fixing bacteria, ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea, heterotrophic nitrifying microorganisms, and anammox bacteria, as well as denitrifying bacteria, archaea, and fungi. However, the vast majority of this research has been focused in temperate regions, and relatively little is known regarding the ecology of nitrogen-cycling microorganisms within tropical and subtropical ecosystems. Tropical forests are characterized by relatively high precipitation, low annual temperature fluctuation, high heterogeneity in plant diversity, large amounts of plant litter, and unique soil chemistry. For these reasons, regulation of the nitrogen cycle in tropical forests may be very different from that of temperate ecosystems. This is of great importance because of growing concerns regarding the effect of land use change and chronic-elevated nitrogen deposition on nitrogen-cycling processes in tropical forests. In the context of global change, it is crucial to understand how environmental factors and land use changes in tropical ecosystems influence the composition, abundance and activity of key players in the nitrogen cycle. In this review, we synthesize the limited currently available information regarding the microbial communities involved in nitrogen fixation, nitrification and denitrification, to provide deeper insight into the mechanisms regulating nitrogen cycling in tropical forest ecosystems. We also highlight the large gaps in our understanding of microbially mediated nitrogen processes in tropical forest soils and identify important areas for future research.
MathAbs: a representational language for mathematics

MathAbs (Mathematical Abstract language) is a system independent formal language for mathematical texts that can preserve its structure including the line of reasoning, proof steps and logical structure. By system independent, we mean that its formalism is not based on any specific logic, theory or proof assistant. MathAbs is intended only for machine manipulation and it is part of a system called MathNat[6], which provides a controlled language to write mathematical texts found in textbooks and published work. Here, MathAbs is used as an intermediary between the natural language of the mathematician and the formal language of the logician. We give here a detailed account of MathAbs, its justification, formal definition and semantics.
The E3 ubiquitin ligase LNX1p80 promotes the removal of claudins from tight junctions in MDCK cells

The structural continuity of tight junctions (TJs) is consistently maintained even when epithelial cells divide and move within the cellular sheet. This process is associated with dynamic remodeling of TJs by coordinated internalization and generation of claudin-based TJ strands, but the molecular mechanism behind the regulated turnover of TJs remains largely unknown. In this study, we identified the p80 isoform of the E3 ubiquitin ligase ligand of Numb-protein X1 (LNX1p80) as a protein binding to claudin-1. Interestingly, the concentration of claudins in TJs was remarkably reduced when LNX1p80 was overexpressed in MDCK cells, and there was a reduction not only in the number of TJ strands but also in the amount of detergent-insoluble claudins. We also found that LNX1p80 promoted polyubiquitylation of claudins. This ubiquitylation is dependent on its RING-finger domain and is not mediated by Lys48 of ubiquitin, which is used for protein degradation by the proteasome. Furthermore, LNX1p80 was often colocalized with claudins in vesicular structures containing markers for late endosomes and lysosomes. These findings suggest that LNX1p80 is involved in the ubiquitylation, endocytosis and lysosomal degradation of claudins, and that the turnover of TJs is regulated by ubiquitylation.