Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sle1ab Mediates the Aberrant Activation of STAT3 and Ras-ERK Signaling Pathways in B Lymphocytes1

The Sle1ab genomic interval on murine chromosome 1 mediates the loss of immune tolerance to chromatin resulting in antinuclear Abs (ANA) production in the lupus-prone NZM2410 mouse. Global gene expression analysis was used to identify the molecular pathways that are dysregulated at the initiation of B lymphocyte autoimmunity in B6.Sle1ab mice. This analysis identified that STAT3 and ras-ERK signaling pathways are aberrantly activated in Sle1ab B lymphocytes, consistent with increased production of IL-6 by splenic B lymphocytes and monocytes in B6.Sle1ab mice. In vitro treatment of splenic mononuclear cells isolated from ANA-positive Sle1ab mice with anti-IL-6 Ab or AG490, an inhibitor of STAT3 signaling pathway, suppressed ANA production in short-term culture, indicating that this pathway was essential to the production of autoantibodies. In vivo treatment of ANA-positive B6.Sle1ab mice with the ras pathway inhibitor, perillyl alcohol, suppressed the increase of ANA. These findings identify IL-6 as a early key cytokine in Sle1ab-mediated disease development and indicate that the STAT3 and ras-ERK signaling pathways are potential therapeutic targets for treating systemic lupus erythematosus.
Voluntary Disclosure and Informational Content of Share Price: Evidence from Tehran Stock Exchange

The aim of this research was to determine the impact of voluntary information disclosure on informational content of share price. In this regard, future earnings response coefficient was used to determine the informational content of the share price about the future income information. Furthermore, share price synchronicity was used to evaluate the informational content of the share price about firm-specific information. To this end, it was attempted to select 98 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (from 2005 to 2016). The analyses indicated that the voluntary information disclosure improved the informational content of share prices in terms of the future earnings. However, it was indicated that the voluntary information disclosure did not affect the informational content of share price in terms of firm-specific information. So, voluntary information disclosure increases the capability of the investors to predict the future income and, consequently, future income information will be reflected in the share price.
A Ground Truth Vision System for Robotic Soccer

Robotic soccer represents an innovative and appealing test bed for the most recent advances in multi-agent systems, artificial intelligence, perception and navigation and biped walking. The main sensorial element of a soccer robot must be its perception system, most of the times based on a digital camera, through which the robot analyses the surrounding world and performs accordingly. Up to this date, the validation of the vision system of a soccer robots can only be related to the way the robot and its team mates interpret the surroundings, relative to their owns. In this paper we propose an external monitoring vision system that can act as a ground truth system for the validations of the objects of interest of a robotic soccer game, mainly robots and ball. The system we present is made of two to four digital cameras, strategically positioned above the soccer field. We present preliminary results regarding the accuracy of the detection of a soccer ball, which proves that such a system can indeed be used as a provider for ground truth ball positions on the field during a robotic soccer game.
The effect of credit portfolio diversification and ownership on banks’ risk exposure : a case study of the Norwegian banking market

In this thesis, we attempt to provide evidence on the effect of credit portfolio diversification in two dimensions, industrial and geographical diversification. Further, we analyze whether differences in banks' risk exposure are related to different ownership structures. We use an empirical approach and comprehensive data from the Norwegian banking market, containing annual information on 142 banks over the period 2005-2013. We measure the impact on two different variables reflecting risk in different ways; risk of insolvency by using the Z-score and banks' credit portfolio risk using the loan loss ratio. Our findings suggest that banks' choice of diversification strategy has a significant impact on banks' risk exposure. We find that increased industrial diversification reduces Norwegian banks' risk. Moreover, our findings indicate that increased geographical diversification increases banks’ risk of insolvency. We do however not find conclusive evidence suggesting that bank ownership is relevant when explaining banks’ risk exposure in the Norwegian banking market. ________________________________________________________________________ 4
High performance and resource efficient biological sequence alignment

In this paper, we present a novel method based on hardware partitioning to reduce the execution time and improve the resource utilization of biological sequence align- ment, resulting in a higher performance as compared to conventional approaches. The paper shows that the method reduces the execution time and improves the resource utilization up to 33.3%. Further, equations are derived, showing the general trend of execution time reduction, resource utilization improvement and hence performance enhancement.
Security Vulnerabilities - From Data Analysis to Protection Mechanisms

This paper combines an analysis of data on security vulnerabilities (published in the Bugtraq database) and a focused source-code examination to (i) develop a finite state machine (FSM) model to depict and reason about security vulnerabilities and (ii) to extract characteristics shared by a large class of commonly seen vulnerabilities (e.g., integer overflow, heap overflow, format string, and stack buffer overflow). This information is used to devise Transparent Runtime Randomization (TRR), a generic, randomization-based technique for protecting against a wide range of security attacks. TRR dynamically and randomly relocates a program’s stack, heap, shared libraries, and parts of its runtime control data structures inside the application memory address space. Making a program’s memory layout different each time it runs foils the attacker’s assumptions about the memory layout of the vulnerable program and defeats potential attacks. TRR is implemented by changing the Linux dynamic program loader; hence, it is transparent to applications. TRR incurs less than 9% program startup overhead and no runtime overhead.
Stakeholder Perception in the Organizational Environment Focusing on Behavior

Behavior has meaning for the organizational climate, leading to studies such as this related to stakeholder perception in the institutional environment. This task is based on the Behavioral Management Theory and the additional concepts required. It was sought to know the relation of the intervening factors, from the method of case study of qualitative-quantitative nature, in order to establish comparisons and to produce the results. The general objective is to study the stakeholder perception process in the organizational environment focused on the behavioral effect and it has as specific objectives to treat and identify the relationship of the intervening factors with the organizational climate in the face of data collected among the consulted, to perform the SWOT on the positioning of individuals in the organizational environment and how this perception is characterized in the face of the organizational climate present in the consulted organ. The research indicates that the majority of respondents stated that the organizational climate present in the organ consulted satisfactory, propitiates the good organizational environment in the organ. Confrontation between the theoretical indicatives and the reality identified in the institutional environment allows to affirm that in fact there is internal influence, such as the motivation and external organization, as the possibility of losing the employee attracted by other opportunities outside the institution. Analysis allows to identify the need for physical improvement of the professional space, and in the interaction between stakeholders; redistribution of work that avoids overload; but the motivation and good internal relation between the individuals surpass the expectation. This work interests the managers in public organs and other interested in the subject here treated.
CONSEQUENCES OF VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURES IN THE AUDIT COMMITTEE REPORT

In recent years a variety of stakeholders request more disclosures of audit committees’activities. As a response, audit committees in many large companies have voluntarily enhanced the depth and scope of their disclosures in the proxy statements. However, controversy arises surrounding whether more disclosures of audit committees’ activities are beneficial to investors. In 2015 the SEC started to seek comments on this issue. In this study I find that larger companies with diligent, longer-tenure, younger and more diversified audit committee members in companies with longer auditor tenure and higher total auditor fees are likely to provide more voluntary disclosures of audit committees’ activities. I also find that audit committee voluntary disclosures are useful to shareholders when they vote on audit committee director elections. However, the significance and directions of the usefulness vary with the content of the disclosures. Moreover, I provide moderate evidence that shareholders are less likely to vote against auditor ratification when the audit committee provides an explanation for a change in fees paid to the independent auditor. Overall, this study provides implications for policy makers such as the SEC as they are deliberating on the revisions of audit committee reporting requirements.
An alternative solder interconnect reliability test to evaluate drop impact performance

With the increased use of mobile phones, navigation systems, PDA's, laptop's and portable gaming devices the drop reliability of microelectronics has become an important parameter. Assessing the solder interconnect quality by means of drop impact testing, as standardized by e.g. JEDEC, during normal production requires considerable amounts of time and effort. Besides this, the repeatability of the drop impact test is low and introduces elaborate and time-consuming analysis of the results after testing. Already many researchers have investigated new test techniques capable of replacing the drop impact test, e.g. high-speed shear, pull and bending. Among those tests is the High Speed Cold Bump Pull test (HSCBP or CBP). In the CBP test the solder bump is pulled in vertical direction from the die using a small pair of jaws. In this test, by varying the pull speed several different strain-rates can be applied to the solder bump. In our research a correlation between the drop impact test and cold bump pull test is investigated. This can be divided into three parts. First by investigating the cold bump pull test apparatus for uncontrolled parameters that might introduce a bias or spread in the results. Secondly by means of modeling the cold bump pull test to investigate solder bump deformation and solder bump loading during pull off. Finally the differences and similarities between the drop impact test and the cold bump pull test are briefly discussed and some observations concerning the solder joint performance are presented.
Investigating the impact of advertising during economic shocks on firm performance in the hospitality industry

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of advertising to determine whether advertising expenditure after economic shocks is associated with hospitality firm performance. Using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models for the earnings response coefficient study, we found that firm performance was positively related to hospitality firms that spent more on advertising immediately after a global financial crisis. Furthermore, this research revealed that long-term performance among hospitality firms was associated with increased advertising expenses after a global financial crisis. These findings have practical implications, providing hospitality industry managers with advertising guidelines to develop resilience during financial setbacks caused by economic shocks.
Synthesis of Long-Chain Acyl-CoA in Chloroplast Envelope Membranes.

The chloroplast envelope is the site of a very active long-chain acylcoenzyme A (CoA) synthetase. Furthermore, we have recently shown that an acyl CoA thioesterase is also associated with envelope membrane (Joyard J, PK Stumpf 1980 Plant Physiol 65: 1039-1043). To clarify the interacting roles of both the acyl-CoA thioesterase and the acyl-CoA synthetase, the formation of acyl-CoA in envelope membranes was examined with different techniques which permitted the measurement of the actual rates of acyl-CoA formation. Using [(14)C]ATP or [(14)C]oleic acid as labeled substrates, it can be shown that the envelope acyl-CoA synthetase required both Mg(2+) and dithiothreitol. Triton X-100 slightly stimulated the activity. The specificity of the acyl-CoA synthetase was determined either with [(14)C]ATP or with [(3)H]CoA as substrates. The results obtained in both cases were similar, that is, as substrates, the unsaturated fatty acids were more effective than saturated fatty acids, the velocity of the reaction increased from lauric acid to palmitic acid, and the maximum velocity was obtained with unsaturated C(18) fatty acids.The results obtained suggest that the acyl-CoA thioesterase associated with envelope membranes could be an ultimate control to prevent the transport (outside of the chloroplast) or the insertion (into chloroplast lipids) of fatty acids with chains shorter than C(16).
Factors Affecting Seniors’ Perceptions of Voice User Interfaces

This paper explores how seniors perceive Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) and the factors that shape those perceptions. An experiment was administered to 15 seniors (over age of 65), in which the participants searched for information using a traditional keyboard/mouse interface and an experimental voice/touch interface. Throughout the experiment, the participants were observed and interviewed by an investigator. An analysis of the data collected showed that seniors perceive meaningful differences between the two interfaces in terms of learnability, usability, ease of understanding and helpfulness. The data also shows that seniors’ perceptions of the interfaces were most strongly influenced by familiarity, usability, habit, aversion to typing, and efficiency of voice input. These findings have implications for improving the design of VUIs for seniors and accommodating universal accessibility. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Greg Walsh, for his support and encouragement to complete this research, as well as the rest of the UB faculty who helped me prepare for this work. I would like to thank my family for their endless support and encouragement to pursue my master’s degree. I would especially like to thank my Grandparents, Ann and Geoff Ziman who helped immensely by putting me in contact with many of this study’s participants. Above all else, I would like to thank my partner Janelle Steffen. She has been by my side for every step of this journey and I could not imagine reaching this point without her. Factors Affecting Seniors’ Perceptions of Voice User Interfaces i Table of
Escaping With VLBW Neonates: Caring for and Transporting Very Low Birth Weight Infants During a Disaster

August 29: Hurricane Katrina Landfall: I am a neonatologist in private practice and had been at the hospital for >24 hours along with 40 other physicians. I had volunteered to take care of the patients at Memorial Medical Center (MMC) during Hurricane Katrina. There were 16 infants in the NICU, ∼260 patients in total at the hospital, 500 essential employees, and >1200 family members of the patients and employees with their pets taking refuge from the storm. An additional 50 patients were in an acute care ward for adults with chronic conditions run by LifeCare within the hospital premises. Like most people, I thought Katrina would be just like other hurricanes that had threatened the city in the last few years. We would be at the hospital for a few days, and then we would return home. I had no idea what we were about to encounter. As Katrina approached New Orleans, Louisiana, the NICU staff moved the infants to an inside room because of the many windows that could endanger their safety. When Katrina made landfall in the early morning, the strong 125-mph winds did blow in several of the hospital's windows, including some in the NICU. As soon as the electrical power was lost, the backup generators started and restored the emergency electrical services. After enduring several hours of severe winds and rain, there was a general feeling of relief because the storm was over. Many windows were shattered, there was glass and water in many places, but apparently there was little structural damage to the main hospital building. In the ensuing hours we heard that the storm surge had breached the levee system, and the waters from Lake Pontchartrain were flooding the city. Still, we had no awareness of the impending severity of the situation. It soon … Address correspondence to Juan J. Gershanik, MD, FAAP, Medical Director, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, West Jefferson Medical Center, 1101 Medical Center Blvd, Marrero, LA 70072. E-mail: jgershanik{at}aol.com
Scoring docked conformations generated by rigid‐body protein‐protein docking

Rigid‐body methods, particularly Fourier correlation techniques, are very efficient for docking bound (co‐crystallized) protein conformations using measures of surface complementarity as the target function. However, when docking unbound (separately crystallized) conformations, the method generally yields hundreds of false positive structures with good scores but high root mean square deviations (RMSDs). This paper describes a two‐step scoring algorithm that can discriminate near‐native conformations (with less than 5 Å RMSD) from other structures. The first step includes two rigid‐body filters that use the desolvation free energy and the electrostatic energy to select a manageable number of conformations for further processing, but are unable to eliminate all false positives. Complete discrimination is achieved in the second step that minimizes the molecular mechanics energy of the retained structures, and re‐ranks them with a combined free‐energy function which includes electrostatic, solvation, and van der Waals energy terms. After minimization, the improved fit in near‐native complex conformations provides the free‐energy gap required for discrimination. The algorithm has been developed and tested using docking decoys, i.e., docked conformations generated by Fourier correlation techniques. The decoy sets are available on the web for testing other discrimination procedures. Proteins 2000;40:525–537. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Stock price crashes: Role of slow-moving capital

We study the role of various trader types in providing liquidity in spot and futures markets based on complete order-book and transactions data as well as cross-market trader identifiers from the National Stock Exchange of India for a single large stock. During normal times, short-term traders who carry little inventory overnight are the primary intermediaries in both spot and futures markets, and changes in futures prices Granger-cause changes in spot prices. However, during two days of fast crashes, Granger-causality ran both ways. Both crashes were due to large-scale selling by foreign institutional investors in the spot market. Buying by short-term traders and cross-market traders was insufficient to stop the crashes. Mutual funds, patient traders with better trade-execution quality who were initially slow to move in, eventually bought sufficient quantities leading to price recovery in both markets. Our findings suggest that market stability requires the presence of well-capitalized standby liquidity providers.
Characterization of the in vitro glucuronidation of flurbiprofen enantiomers.

To investigate the glucuronidation of the R- and S-enantiomers of the nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug, flurbiprofen, by liver microsomes of several mammals, including humans, a new and reliable HPLC method for the separation and quantification of the corresponding diastereoisomeric glucuronides has been developed. Interspecies comparison revealed that the glucuronidation of flurbiprofen was highly efficient with liver microsomes of humans, monkeys, rats, and guinea pigs (in decreasing ranking order). Gunn rats, which present a genetic defect in the bilirubin UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) isoforms, were still able to glucuronidate the drug. The R-enantiomer was glucuronidated faster than the S-form by liver microsomes of rats and humans. Although the KM of glucuronidation of R- and S-enantiomers by rat liver UGT were in same order of magnitude (apparent KM 0.52 and 0.57 mM, respectively), the apparent Vmax's were significantly different (9.34 and 5.48 nmol/min.mg of protein). Regardless of the enantiomer considered, the glucuronidation of flurbiprofen was strongly increased up to 5-fold by treatment of rats with phenobarbital and, at a lower extent, by 3-methylcholanthrene. In contrast, the treatment of rats with ciprofibrate markedly decreased the activity. Glucuronidation of R-flurbiprofen was more enhanced by phenobarbital than that of the S-antipode. Each flurbiprofen enantiomer could weakly inhibit the glucuronidation of its antipode in a noncompetitive way. The apparent Ki was 0.51 mM with R-flurbiprofen as a substrate, and 0.37 mM with S-enantiomer. On the other hand, the rat liver UGT2B1 isoform, stably expressed in V79 cells, could glucuronidate flurbiprofen in an appreciable amount. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A Hybrid Push/Pull Streaming Scheme Using Interval Caching in P2P VOD Systems

SUMMARY This paper presents a hybrid push / pull streaming scheme to take advantage of both the interval caching-based push method and the mesh-based pull method. When a new peer joins, a mesh-based pull method is adopted to avoid the overhead to reorganize the structure only if all of its potential preceding peers are likely to leave before the end of its playback. Otherwise, an interval caching-based push method is adopted so that the better performance of the push method can be maintained until it completes the playback. We demonstrate that our proposed scheme outperforms compared with when either the interval caching-based push method or mesh-based pull method is employed alone.