Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ionic Polypeptides with Unusual Helical Stability

Water-soluble peptides that adopt stable helical conformations are attractive motifs because of their importance in basic science and their broad utility in medicine and biotechnology. Incorporating charged amino-acid residues to improve peptide solubility, however, usually leads to reduced helical stability because of increased side-chain charge repulsion, reduced side-chain hydrophobicity and the disruption of intramolecular hydrogen bonding. Here, we show that water-soluble, ultra-stable α-helical polypeptides can be produced by elongating charge-containing amino-acid side chains to position the charges distally from the polypeptide backbone. The strategy has been successfully applied to the design and synthesis of water-soluble polypeptides bearing long, charged side chains and various functional moieties that possess unusual helical stability against changing environmental conditions, including changes in the pH and temperature and the presence of denaturing reagents.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation rescue for cardiopulmonary resuscitation in pediatric patients*

Objective:To describe survival and neurologic outcome and identify the factors associated with survival among pediatric patients following extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) for in-hospital cardiac arrest. Design:Retrospective study. Setting:A university-affiliated tertiary care hospital. Patients:Eligible patients were ≤18 yrs of age and received extracorporeal membrane oxygenation during active cardiopulmonary resuscitation for in-hospital cardiac arrest. Interventions:Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) during active cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Measurements and Main Results:The primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. The secondary outcome was neurologic status after ECPR at hospital discharge and late follow-up. Good neurologic outcome was defined as Pediatric Cerebral Performance Categories 1, 2, and 3. Continuous variables were expressed as medians (interquartile range). We prospectively defined the early cohort (January 1999 to December 2001) and late cohort (January 2002 to January 2006) and compared the survival rates. We identified 27 ECPR events. The survival rate to hospital discharge was 41% (11 of 27). The nonsurvivors had higher pre-cardiopulmonary resuscitation serum lactate levels (14 [10.2–19.6] mmol/L vs. 8.5 [4.4–12.6] mmol/L, p < .01), longer durations of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (60 [37–81] mins vs. 45 [25–50] mins, p < .05) with longer activating time for ECMO (12.5 [7.5–33.8] mins vs. 5 [0–10] mins, p < .01), and more renal failure after ECPR (68% [11 of 16] vs. 9% [1 of 11], p < .01). The survival rate of the late cohort was better than that of the early cohort (58% [11 of 19] vs. 0% [0 of 8], p < .05). By exact multiple logistic regression analysis, the early cohort and renal failure after ECPR were two independent risk factors for mortality. Among the 11 survivors, ten had good neurologic outcomes. Conclusions:ECPR successfully rescued some pediatric patients who failed rescue with conventional in-hospital CPR. Good neurologic outcomes were achieved in the majority of the survivors. Early cohort and post-ECPR renal failure were associated with mortality.
Effects of Glycyrrhizic Acid on Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Gamma (PPARγ), Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL), Serum Lipid and HOMA-IR in Rats

Studies on ligand binding potential of glycyrrhizic acid, a potential agonist to PPARγ, displayed encouraging results in amelioration of metabolic syndrome. The regulation of gene cassettes by PPARγ affects glucose homeostasis, lipid, lipoprotein metabolism and adipogenesis. This study was performed to determine the effects of GA on total PPARγ and LPL expression levels, lipid parameters and HOMA-IR. Oral administration of 100 mg/kg GA for 24 hours resulted in an increase in insulin sensitivity with decreases in blood glucose, serum insulin and HOMA-IR. Improvement in serum lipid parameters was also observed with a decrease in triacylglycerol, total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol and an elevation in HDL-cholesterol. GA administration also resulted in up-regulation of total PPARγ and LPL expression levels in the visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissues, abdominal and quadriceps femoris muscles, as well as liver and kidney, with a significant up-regulation only in the visceral adipose tissue, abdominal and quadriceps femoris muscles. Thus, oral administration of 100 mg/kg GA for 24 hours improved insulin sensitivity and lipid profiles and induced upregulation of total PPARγ and LPL expression levels in all studied tissues.
Diseño y validación de un cuestionario para la evaluación de la autoestima en la infancia

The aim of this study was to design and analyse the validity of content and comprehension of an instrument to assess childhood self-esteem in boys and girls with an age range of three to seven. First, the content was validated through the agreement and consensus of nine experts using the Delphi method, while comprehension was validated by testing a sample on 241 school children between the ages of three and seven. The initial data collected by means of the Delphi method contributed to some modifications made by expert judges. The questionnaire was refined to 18 items which exhibited appropriate adjustments with regard to both comprehension and content validity. The confirmatory factor analysis accomplished, confirmed four dimensions to childhood self-esteem: physical, academic, socio-emotional and family.
Evaluating two methods for Treebank grammar compaction

Treebanks, such as the Penn Treebank, provide a basis for the automatic creation of broad coverage grammars. In the simplest case, rules can simply be ‘read off’ the parse-annotations of the corpus, producing either a simple or probabilistic context-free grammar. Such grammars, however, can be very large, presenting problems for the subsequent computational costs of parsing under the grammar. In this paper, we explore ways by which a treebank grammar can be reduced in size or ‘compacted’, which involve the use of two kinds of technique: (i) thresholding of rules by their number of occurrences; and (ii) a method of rule-parsing, which has both probabilistic and non-probabilistic variants. Our results show that by a combined use of these two techniques, a probabilistic context-free grammar can be reduced in size by 62% without any loss in parsing performance, and by 71% to give a gain in recall, but some loss in precision.
Control of a Pipe-Cutting Machine

A brand-new equipment used to cut kinds of pipe had been brought out and took the place of existent cutter machine, which was of low degree in automation and behindhand. So structure analysis and pneumatic control technology of the device had been introduced based on simulation technique. First, three-dimensional software PRO/E was used for avoiding the overlap and penetration phenomenon before the model was imported to MSC. Adams, where the working process of pipe-cutting machine was simulated, to optimize the structure and mode of motion. Its hydraulic circuit and electric loop had been designed in the software of FluidSIM-H to improve working efficiency and automation. Now, pipe-cutting machine had been manufactured which was effectively controlled and used.
Double Dissociation of Dopamine Genes and Timing in Humans

A number of lines of evidence implicate dopamine in timing [Rammsayer, T. H. Neuropharmacological approaches to human timing. In S. Grondin (Ed.), Psychology of time (pp. 295–320). Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2008; Meck, W. H. Neuropharmacology of timing and time perception. Brain Research, Cognitive Brain Research, 3, 227–242, 1996]. Two human genetic polymorphisms are known to modulate dopaminergic activity. DRD2/ANKK1-Taq1a is a D2 receptor polymorphism associated with decreased D2 density in the striatum [Jönsson, E. G. , Nothen, M. M. , Grunhage, F. , Farde, L. , Nakashima, Y. , Propping, P., et al. Polymorphisms in the dopamine D2 receptor gene and their relationships to striatal dopamine receptor density of healthy volunteers. Molecular Psychiatry, 4, 290–296, 1999]; COMT Val158Met is a functional polymorphism associated with increased activity of the COMT enzyme such that catabolism of synaptic dopamine is greater in pFC [Meyer-Lindenberg, A. , Kohn, P. D. , Kolachana, B. , Kippenhan, S. , McInerney-Leo, A. , Nussbaum, R. , et al. Midbrain dopamine and prefrontal function in humans: Interaction and modulation by COMT genotype. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 594–596, 2005]. To investigate the role of dopamine in timing, we genotyped 65 individuals for DRD2/ANKK1-Taq1a, COMT Val158Met, and a third polymorphism, BDNF Val66Met, a functional polymorphism affecting the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor [Egan, M. F. , Kojima, M. , Callicott, J. H. , Goldberg, T. E. , Kolachana, B. S. , Bertolino, A. , et al. The BDNF val66met polymorphism affects activity-dependent secretion of BDNF and human memory and hippocampal function. Cell, 112, 257–269, 2003]. Subjects were tested on a temporal discrimination task with sub- and supra-second intervals (500- and 2000-msec standards) as well as a spontaneous motor tempo task. We found a double dissociation for temporal discrimination: the DRD2/ANKK1-Taq1a polymorphism (A1+ allele) was associated with significantly greater variability for the 500-msec duration only, whereas the COMT Val158Met polymorphism (Val/Val homozygotes) was associated with significantly greater variability for the 2000-msec duration only. No differences were detected for the BDNF Vall66Met variant. Additionally, the DRD2/ANKK1-Taq1a polymorphism was associated with a significantly slower preferred motor tempo. These data provide a potential biological basis for the distinctions between sub- and supra-second timing and suggest that BG are integral for the former whereas pFC is implicated in the latter.
, Pakistan Aeronautical Complex Husni Fahmi , Indonesia Agency for the Assessment of Technology

INTRODUCTION The existing wireless network infrastructure and communication protocols provide mobile users limited Internet-based services including Web browsing, short message service (SMS), and emails [1]. This is mainly because of the low bandwidth capacity and high error rates associated with wireless networks. However, with rapid advances in wireless technologies and the emergence of third-generation (3G) systems that can support data rates up to 2 Mb/s [1], the service spectrum for mobile users is being widened to include novel multimedia applications such as e-commerce, distance learning, videoconferencing, digital libraries, online TV/radio, and many others. The future network system can be envisioned as a global network with a high degree of het-erogeneity, providing advanced Internet services to users irrespective of their points of connectivi-ty to the network. To accommodate mobile users, a wireless network must provide continuous and mobility-independent connectivity. Mobility is a generic term and does not fully characterize users' roaming behavior. For instance, a stock broker can have high indoor mobility in a stock exchange building. On the other hand, commuters driving on interstate highways have long-range mobility, and passengers on a plane have global mobility. The future network system is expected to integrate all these levels of mobility and will provide ubiquitous access to users as depicted in Fig. 1. The support of multimedia applications over a heterogeneous network requires communication protocols and networking infrastructure capable of providing high-quality services. Prior to connection establishment, such services need to specify connection requirements in terms of network resources, and the duration for which these resources are needed. Multimedia applications in general are not monolithic in nature, and can consist of several objects integrated together such as video clips, images, text, and audio segments. A multimedia application consisting of multiple objects can be represented as a multimedia document [2]. An example of a multimedia document is an MPEG-4-based application. MPEG-4 encompasses all types of media, and uses scene and object descriptors (SDs and ODs) to define the spatiotemporal features of the component media objects [3]. Figure 2 shows a collection of multimedia documents organized for a Web-based browsing environment. Typically, such an environment consists of a collection of documents or SDs for MPEG4-4-based applications, integrated to allow random browsing by viewers. In this article we consider resource management issues in supporting Web-based multime-dia document services in a heterogeneous mobile networking environment shown in Fig. 1. In particular , we formulate the wireless …
RASSF8 downregulation promotes lymphangiogenesis and metastasis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Lymphatic vessels are the major routes of human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) metastasis. Tumor cells secrete pro-lymphangiogenic factors to induce new lymphatic vessels, promoting lymph node metastasis. In this study, we show that RAS association domain family 8 (RASSF8) expression in ESCC clinical samples was inversely correlated with lymph node metastasis and patients survival. Tumor cells with low RASSF8 expression had higher apparent migratory ability, and promoted and lymphangiogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. RASSF8 downregulation enhanced VEGF-C expression and caused subcellular redistribution of p65 in ESCC. Our results show that RASSF8 acts as a tumor suppressor in ESCC and is a potential therapeutic target for preventing lymph node metastasis.
On Commutation Modeling in Bond Graphs

This paper revisits the Switched Power Junction or SPJ-formalism and shows that a SPJ can be represented by a suitable combination of standard BG-junctions and boolean modulated transformers (bMTF). This allows for an easy implementation of SPJs in BG-oriented simulation software, as it is shown via its programming in 20sim®. Modeling and simulation of the following applications are presented: a threephase inverter with an RL-load; a series DC-motor with its field inductance varying causality due to a switch provided for field-weakening; and a 1⁄4-car model with a dissipator changing causality due to the car jumping and leaving the ground. These examples illustrate that the combination of SPJs and bMTFs (hence, of standard BG-junctions and bMTFs, in essence) is able to overcome the insufficiency of other methods associated to varying causality in switches and/or regular, “continuous” BG-components.
Convolutional Patch Networks with Spatial Prior for Road Detection and Urban Scene Understanding

Classifying single image patches is important in many different applications, such as road detection or scene understanding. In this paper, we present convolutional patch networks, which are convolutional networks learned to distinguish different image patches and which can be used for pixel-wise labeling. We also show how to incorporate spatial information of the patch as an input to the network, which allows for learning spatial priors for certain categories jointly with an appearance model. In particular, we focus on road detection and urban scene understanding, two application areas where we are able to achieve state-of-the-art results on the KITTI as well as on the LabelMeFacade dataset. Furthermore, our paper offers a guideline for people working in the area and desperately wandering through all the painstaking details that render training CNs on image patches extremely difficult.
Network Evolution by Relevance and Importance Preferential Attachment

Abstract : Relevance and importance are the two main factors when people find or build network connections. We propose an improved preferential attachment (PA) algorithm to take in consideration the relevance between vertices of the network measured by a given metric. We analyze the universal properties of the network class generalized by this algorithm and investigate two typical cases: scientific citation and between-city transportation. This is a brief report of our research progress.
Baicalein Suppresses the SOS Response System of Staphylococcus Aureus Induced by Ciprofloxacin

Numerous antibiotics can induce an SOS repair system in bacteria that leads to antibiotic-resistant mutation of the bacterium. Therefore, searching for drugs that can prevent the SOS response and thus improve the long-term viability of some antibiotics is important. In this study, we aimed to detect the suppressive effects of baicalein on the SOS system and rifampin-resistant mutation in Staphylococcus aureus. We determined the reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation and intracellular ATP level in S. aureus with baicalein treatment to investigate the mechanisms involved in its effects on the SOS system. The results showed that baicalein was a potent inhibitor of the expression of the SOS genes RecA, LexA and SACOL1400. The rifampin-resistant mutation rate of S. aureus induced by ciprofloxacin was significantly reduced after treatment with baicalein. Treatment with baicalein led to a significant decrease in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation and ATP level. Our findings indicate that baicalein may be an SOS-response inhibitor in S. aureus through inhibiting ROS formation and ATP production and may be used to prevent excessive mutation induced by antibiotics.
Cluster Analysis of Gene Expression Data

Important insights into gene function can be gained by gene expression analysis. For example, some genes are turned on (expressed) or turned off (repressed) when there is a change in external conditions or stimuli. The expression of one gene is often regulated by the expression of other genes. A detail analysis of gene expression information will provide an understanding about the inter-networking of different genes and their functional roles. DNA microarray technology allows massively parallel, high throughput genome-wide profiling of gene expression in a single hybridization experiment [Lockhart & Winzeler, 2000]. It has been widely used in numerous studies over a broad range of biological disciplines, such as cancer classification (Armstrong et al., 2002), identification of genes relevant to a certain diagnosis or therapy (Muro et al., 2003), investigation of the mechanism of drug action and cancer prognosis (Kim et al., 2000; Duggan et al., 1999). Due to the large number of genes involved in microarray experiment study and the complexity of biological networks, clustering is an important exploratory technique for gene expression data analysis. In this article, we present a succinct review of some of our work in cluster analysis of gene expression data.
A case study of intercultural communication in a multicultural classroom in the Brisbane metropolitan area

The current global and local issues of culture such as September 11, the Bali Bombings and the “Cronulla Riots” triggered a question for the researcher: “how do primary students deal with intercultural communication in multicultural Australia in times of cultural uncertainty and complexity? ” Intercultural communication studies in Australia rely heavily on those of the United States of America and the United Kingdom. For this reason, this study was planned to investigate intercultural communication in a multicultural classroom in a primary school in Australia. The research employs an ethnographical case study methodology with data collected from observation, interview and documentation. 56 Year 7 students and two classroom teachers from two classes and the school ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher were included in the study. Amongst the 56 students, 24 students were interviewed along with the classroom teachers and the ESL teacher. School documents regarding the promotion of intercultural communication were also collected during the observation period. The study found that differing language capacities of students and teachers have the greatest influence on intercultural communication. Language was observed to influence positive and negative intercultural communication in the classroom. The study also confirmed that the theory of Intercultural Communication Competence (Wiseman, 2002) supports the current ethos of this school’s curriculum. Overall, the study provides a vicarious experience of intercultural communication in an Australian multicultural classroom. Intercultural communication in this particular school did not appear to be problematic. This could be due to the teachers’ endeavours to promote intercultural communication both implicitly and explicitly. In concluding, the study suggests that this school could be a model for promoting intercultural communication with a few modifications to its programs.
Please Don’t Vote for Me: Voting in a Natural Experiment with Perverse Incentives

Whether individuals vote strategically is one of the most important questions at the intersection of economics and political science. Exploiting a flaw in the German electoral system by which a party may gain seats by receiving fewer votes, this paper documents patterns of strategic voting in a large, real world election. During the 2005 elections to the Bundestag, the sudden death of a right-wing candidate necessitated a by-election in one electoral district. Knowing the results in all other districts and aware of the paradoxical incentives in place, a substantial fraction of the electorate reacted tactically and either voted for a party other than their most preferred one, or abstained. As a result, the Christian Democratic Union won an additional mandate, extending its narrow lead over the Social Democrats.
eggNOG v3.0: orthologous groups covering 1133 organisms at 41 different taxonomic ranges

Orthologous relationships form the basis of most comparative genomic and metagenomic studies and are essential for proper phylogenetic and functional analyses. The third version of the eggNOG database (http://eggnog.embl.de) contains non-supervised orthologous groups constructed from 1133 organisms, doubling the number of genes with orthology assignment compared to eggNOG v2. The new release is the result of a number of improvements and expansions: (i) the underlying homology searches are now based on the SIMAP database; (ii) the orthologous groups have been extended to 41 levels of selected taxonomic ranges enabling much more fine-grained orthology assignments; and (iii) the newly designed web page is considerably faster with more functionality. In total, eggNOG v3 contains 721 801 orthologous groups, encompassing a total of 4 396 591 genes. Additionally, we updated 4873 and 4850 original COGs and KOGs, respectively, to include all 1133 organisms. At the universal level, covering all three domains of life, 101 208 orthologous groups are available, while the others are applicable at 40 more limited taxonomic ranges. Each group is amended by multiple sequence alignments and maximum-likelihood trees and broad functional descriptions are provided for 450 904 orthologous groups (62.5%).