Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discovery and Characterization of a Novel Lachrymatory Factor Synthase in Petiveria alliacea and Its Influence on Alliinase-Mediated Formation of Biologically Active Organosulfur Compounds1[W][OA]

A novel lachrymatory factor synthase (LFS) was isolated and purified from the roots of the Amazonian medicinal plant Petiveria alliacea. The enzyme is a heterotetrameric glycoprotein comprised of two α-subunits (68.8 kD each), one γ-subunit (22.5 kD), and one δ-subunit (11.9 kD). The two α-subunits are glycosylated and connected by a disulfide bridge. The LFS has an isoelectric point of 5.2. It catalyzes the formation of a sulfine lachrymator, (Z)-phenylmethanethial S-oxide, only in the presence of P. alliacea alliinase and its natural substrate, S-benzyl-l-cysteine sulfoxide (petiveriin). Depending on its concentration relative to that of P. alliacea alliinase, the LFS sequesters, to varying degrees, the sulfenic acid intermediate formed by alliinase-mediated breakdown of petiveriin. At LFS:alliinase of 5:1, LFS sequesters all of the sulfenic acid formed by alliinase action on petiveriin, and converts it entirely to (Z)-phenylmethanethial S-oxide. However, starting at LFS:alliinase of 5:2, the LFS is unable to sequester all of the sulfenic acid produced by the alliinase, with the result that sulfenic acid that escapes the action of the LFS condenses with loss of water to form S-benzyl phenylmethanethiosulfinate (petivericin). The results show that the LFS and alliinase function in tandem, with the alliinase furnishing the sulfenic acid substrate on which the LFS acts. The results also show that the LFS modulates the formation of biologically active thiosulfinates that are downstream of the alliinase in a manner dependent upon the relative concentrations of the LFS and the alliinase. These observations suggest that manipulation of LFS-to-alliinase ratios in plants displaying this system may provide a means by which to rationally modify organosulfur small molecule profiles to obtain desired flavor and/or odor signatures, or increase the presence of desirable biologically active small molecules.
A robust multi-phase pitch-mark detection algorithm

This paper describes a robust multi-phase algorithm for marking of pitch pulses in speech using both glottal and speech signals. In the (cid:2)rst phase, the glottal signal is used for the estimation of the fundamental frequency ( f 0 ) contour of the given sentence. Next, pitch mark candidates are generated on the basis of both glottal and speech signals. In the third phase, the best sequence of pitch marks is found in the set of the candidates. Finally, this pitch mark sequence is post-processed. One of the features of the new method is that every pitch mark detected is given con(cid:2)dence, so that problematic pitch mark subsequences can be located. The algorithm was tested and compared with other pitch-mark detection methods.
A nonparametric cointegration analysis of the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis

The nonparametric cointegration method of Breitung (2002) is applied to test for the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis (FRUH) using monthly data of the US dollar vis-à-vis two major currencies viz. the British pound and the Canadian dollar over the period spanned from 1973 to 2002. The results of the nonparametric test are compared with the parametric test suggested by Johansen (1988 and 1992) and Johansen and Juselius (1990). Robust cointegration is found between the spot and the forward rates but the FRUH is rejected. The result is robust whether the trend is included in the model or not.
Memorandum on a new financial architecture and new regulations

The financial crisis is global and is deeply rooted in a decade-long misuse of the financial market for rent-seeking. The financial industry has largely abandoned its role as a service industry, supposedly charging reasonable fees for the services of spreading risk and allocating capital and credit. Instead it provides a market for corporate control –mergers and acquisitions– and a casino for betting on or hedging practically any kind of risk –the derivatives market–.
Studies on the regulation of certain essential biosynthetic systems in normal and crown-gall tumor cells.

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Grimelius stain for cytodiagnosis of carcinoid tumor

The Grimelius stain is a valuable histochemical method for detecting the specific intracytoplasmic secretory granules of carcinoid tumors. The usefulness of this argyrophilic technique for aspiration biopsy cytology (ABC) specimens was studied by the histologic staining procedure. Aspirates from a metastatic intra‐abdominal neoplasm, morphologically suggestive of carcinoid tumor and from a control specimen were restained according to the Grimelius method. Diffuse cytoplasmic argyrophilia was observed in both. The application of Grimelius silver stain to cytology specimens enhances diagnostic accuracy in the evaluation of a suspected carcinoid tumor. Diagn Cytopathol 1986;2:157‐159.
SmartHS: An AI Platform for Improving Government Service Provision

Over the years, government service provision in China has been plagued by inefficiencies. Previous attempts to address this challenge following a toolbox e-government system model in China were not effective. In this paper, we report on a successful experience in improving government service provision in the domain of social insurance in Shandong Province, China. Through standardization of service workflows following the Complete Contract Theory (CCT) and the infusion of an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to maximize the expected quality of service while reducing waiting time, the Smart Human-resource Services (SmartHS) platform transcends organizational boundaries and improves system efficiency. Deployments in 3 cities involving 2,000 participating civil servants and close to 3 million social insurance service cases over a 1 year period demonstrated that SmartHS significantly improves user experience with roughly a third of the original front desk staff. This new AI-enhanced mode of operation is useful for informing current policy discussions in many domains of government service provision.
Novel degree function over finite field for LT codes

Luby Transform (LT) is a kind of practical Digital Fountain Code. The research on utilizing LT codes over finite field has become more popular. In order to improve the system performance of LT codes over finite field, a novel degree distribution function is proposed in this paper. The main target of this work is trying to improve the decoding success rate with the same overhead (decoding cost) by using a proper degree distribution function, while still keeping the sparse property for the encoding matrix. Numerical simulations are used to show the general performance of our new developed degree distribution function. Various simulation results show that in the environment of LT codes over finite field, using our new degree distribution function, it performs much better than that using the classic degree distribution functions which being used in LT codes and Raptor Code, as the field size increases. This indicates our designed new degree distribution function is suitable to be used in LT codes over finite field in the future.
Excessive Risk-Taking, Banking Sector Fragility, and Banking Crises

In the financial crisis literature, it is usually argued that, contrary to the case of currency crises, construction of a time series index to identify banking crisis episodes is highly difficult, particularly because of the lack of reliable data on banking sector variables such as the level of non-performing loans. Accordingly, existing methods used to pinpoint banking crisis years are generally event-based, such as that used by Caprio and Klingebiel (1996 and 1999) and Lindgren et al. (1996). This paper, however, proposes a weighted banking sector fragility index to measure the changes in banks' vulnerability to crisis. Using monthly sectoral data for selected 22 countries, it is argued that this type of a fragility index seems to be highly useful in measurement and monitoring of banking sector fragility.
Purpose and Design of the Rural Income Maintenance Experiment

The Rural Income Maintenance Experiment (RIME) was the second of four major experiments to test the behavioral consequences of a universal income-conditioned cash transfer program. It followed closely its predecessor, the New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment, in objectives and design. Of the four experiments, it is the only one focusing on the rural sector (farmers and those in towns with population less than 2,500). This paper describes the setting that spawned experimentation with a universal income-conditioned transfer program (commonly referred to as the negative income tax), gives the rationale for the RIME, and sets forth its objectives and basic design.
Assessing multilingual multimodal image description: Studies of native speaker preferences and translator choices

Abstract Two studies on multilingual multimodal image description provide empirical evidence towards two questions at the core of the task: (i) whether target language speakers prefer descriptions generated directly in their native language, as compared to descriptions translated from a different language; (ii) whether images improve human translation of descriptions. These results provide guidance for future work in multimodal natural language processing by first showing that on the whole, translations are not distinguished from native language descriptions, and second delineating and quantifying the information gained from the image during the human translation task.
Towards Conditional Adversarial Training for Predicting Emotions from Speech

Motivated by the encouraging results recently obtained by generative adversarial networks in various image processing tasks, we propose a conditional adversarial training framework to predict dimensional representations of emotion, i. e. , arousal and valence, from speech signals. The framework consists of two networks, trained in an adversarial manner: The first network tries to predict emotion from acoustic features, while the second network aims at distinguishing between the predictions provided by the first network and the emotion labels from the database using the acoustic features as conditional information. We evaluate the performance of the proposed conditional adversarial training framework on the widely used emotion database RECOLA. Experimental results show that the proposed training strategy outperforms the conventional training method, and is comparable with, or even superior to other recently reported approaches, including deep and end-to-end learning.
Business demography dynamics in Portugal: a non-parametric survival analysis

We address the post-entry performance of new Portuguese firms by investigating the structural characteristics of the hazard and survival functions, using non-parametric survival analysis. In order to approach prevalence of some stylized facts and determinants of new firm survival, we produced a new entrepreneurship database, using the administrative data of Quadros de Pessoal, following the Eurostat/OECD´s internationally comparable business demography methodology. This allowed the computation of a comprehensive array of entrepreneurship indicators on employer enterprise and survival dynamics in Portugal, over a period of 18 years, disaggregated in dimensions such as sectors, regions and size classes
Controlled biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles using nitrate reductase enzyme induction of filamentous fungus and their antibacterial evaluation

Abstract The controlled synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) using cell-free filtrate of Fusarium oxysporum fungus was investigated. The effect of fungal incubation period on nanoparticle formation and nitrate reductase enzyme activity was studied using UV–visible spectroscopy and Harley assay, respectively. The highest AgNP formation was observed in the cell-free filtrate of biomass harvested at the early stationary phase where the NR enzyme activity is the maximum. Mixing of the cell-free filtrates of fungal cultures obtained at 23, 28, and 33 °C with silver nitrate solution confirms the higher productivity of AgNP biosynthesis using the cell-free filtrate of fungus incubated at 28 °C. The effect of some factors such as carbon and nitrate sources and light in fungal incubation period on nitrate reductase induction and AgNP formation was also evaluated. In conclusion, increasing nitrate and carbon sources and presence of light induced NR enzyme and produced AgNPs with smaller size, higher monodispersity, and productivity. Results revealed that the presence of ammonium prevents the NR enzyme secretion and causes to the lower productivity of AgNPs.
Formulation, Characterization, and Optimization of Captopril Fast-Dissolving Oral Films

This work aimed to using optimization study to formulate a patient-friendly captopril fast-dissolving oral film with satisfactory disintegration time. Films were made with pullulan and hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) by using the solvent-casting method. Cellulose nanofiber (CNF) was used as a compatibilizer and glycerine was used as a plasticizer. In order to find an optimum formulation, a response surface methodology and a central composite design were employed. The concentration percentages of pullulan and glycerine were considered to be the design factors. Disintegration time, tensile strength, percent elongation at break, and folding endurance were considered to be the responses. The results showed that CNF improved the compatibility and tensile strength of the pullulan and HPMC blend. Also, the rigid nature of CNF reduced the film elongation but the addition of glycerine improved its flexibility. All formulations showed an acceptable uniformity content and dissolution rate. Complete dissolution for all formulations occurred within 2 min. Films with 26% pullulan, 74% HPMC, 1% CNF, and 5% glycerine were reported to be optimum formulations for captopril fast-dissolving oral films, with 95% confidence levels. The in vivo comparison of optimized formulation with a conventional captopril sublingual tablet exhibited significant increase in AUC (~ 62%) and Cmax (~ 52%) and a major decrease in Tmax (~ 33%). The overall results showed that the captopril FDF is a promising candidate for enhanced in vivo orotransmucosal absorption.
Australian Retail Fund Performance Persistence

The present study extends the Australian fund performance persistence literature through the use of five performance metrics: raw returns, the Sharpe ratio, the single-factor model and two multifactor models, the Carhart (1997) model and the Gruber (1996) model, in analysis of Australian retail fund performance over the period 1991-2000. Analysis suggests that performance persistence is sensitive to fund objective and appears to be driven by inadequate adjustment for risk.
Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequence of Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.)

ABSTRACT This is the first complete mitochondrial genome sequence for sunflower and the first complete mitochondrial genome for any member of Asteraceae, the largest plant family, which includes over 23,000 named species. The master circle is 300,945-bp long and includes 27 protein-coding sequences, 18 tRNAs, and the 26S, 5S, and 18S rRNAs.
Defining the Growth Conditions and Promoter-Proximal DNA Sequences Required for Activation of Gene Expression by CreBC in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT CreBC is a two-component system that controls the expression of a number of genes in Escherichia coli (called the cre regulon) that encode diverse functions, including intermediary metabolic enzymes. Using a reporter construct, we have shown that cre regulon gene expression is activated during growth in minimal media when glycolytic carbon sources are being fermented. It also is activated during aerobic growth when fermentation products are being used as carbon sources. CreB and CreC are essential for the activation of cre regulon gene expression, but CreA and CreD, encoded as part of the creABCD gene cluster, are not. CreB binds to a TTCACnnnnnnTTCAC direct repeat (the cre tag) in vitro, and this sequence, which is associated with cre regulon gene promoters, is required for the control of gene expression in vivo. These observations support the hypothesis that CreBC is a functional two-component system involved in the metabolic control of transcription in E. coli and confirm that CreB is a DNA binding transcriptional regulator.
Flow-based packet-mode load-balancing for parallel packet switches

Parallel Packet Switch (PPS) is broadly used in designing large-capacity switching fabrics, since it resolves the bottlenecks of scheduling algorithm, memory bandwidth, and serial transmission technology simultaneously. Current packet-based load-balancing algorithms for PPS cannot preserve intra-flow packet orders without costly reordering mechanisms. In this paper, we study the feasibility of flow-based packet-mode load-balancing algorithm, which thoroughly avoids packet out-of-order. Through performance analysis based on traffic model from real-trace, we show that given moderate speedups, all the three proposed flow-based algorithms can provide throughput and delay guarantees under admissible traffic input. Trace-driven simulations are carried out to verify our results.
L’intégration du testing en développement professionnel continu est-elle acceptable ?

Contexte : Le testing est utilisee dans differents contextes et aupres de differentes populations. Cependant, son effet n’a pas encore ete etudie en contexte de developpement professionnel continu (DPC). Comme le testing peut engendrer un certain stress, il est d’abord necessaire de verifier son acceptabilite aupres des professionnels vises. Buts : L’objectif principal de l’etude etait d’evaluer si le testing , comme partie inherente d’une activite de DPC, etait acceptable par des medecins et residents. Sujet/Materiel/Methodes : L’etude a ete conduite aupres d’une population de medecins de famille et residents au Quebec. L’activite consistait a identifier le diagnostic pour 20 cas cliniques en 45 min. Un feedback (bonne reponse) etait ensuite donne. Pour certains participants, l’activite a ete suivie d’une discussion de cas dirigee par un expert. L’acceptabilite de l’activite a ete mesuree a l’aide d’un questionnaire auto-administre. Resultats : Les participants (n = 90) ont apprecie l’activite de facon generale, et encore plus lorsqu’elle etait suivie d’une discussion a propos des cas. Conclusion : Les resultats de cette etude demontrent que la population cible trouve le testing acceptable comme partie inherente d’une activite de DPC. Ces resultats suggerent aux responsables de ce type d’activite que le testing peut etre utilise pour ameliorer des activites de DPC.
Dietary fiber, source foods and colorectal cancer risk: the Fukuoka Colorectal Cancer Study

Abstract Objective. Despite much evidence from laboratory work, epidemiological evidence remains elusive regarding the role of dietary fiber in colorectal carcinogenesis. We investigated associations of dietary fiber and source foods with colorectal cancer risk in the Fukuoka Colorectal Cancer Study, a community-based case–control study. Material and methods. The study subjects were 816 incident cases of colorectal cancer and 815 community controls. Nutrient and food intakes were estimated on the basis of a computer-assisted interview regarding 148 dietary items. Odds ratios of colorectal cancer according to quintile categories of energy-adjusted intakes of dietary fiber and food groups were obtained with adjustment for non-dietary factors and dietary intakes of calcium and n−3 fatty acids. Results. Total, soluble and insoluble dietary fibers were not measurably associated with overall risk or subsite-specific risk of colorectal cancer. By contrast, rice consumption was associated with a decreased risk of colorectal cancer (trend p = 0.03), particularly of distal colon and rectal cancer (trend p = 0.02), and high intake of non-rice cereals tended to be related to an increased risk of colon cancer (trend p = 0.07). There was no association between vegetable consumption and colorectal cancer, whereas individuals with the lowest intake of fruits tended to have an increased risk of colorectal cancer. Conclusions. The present study did not corroborate a protective association between dietary fiber and colorectal cancer, but suggested a decreased risk of distal colorectal cancer associated with rice consumption.
Deep Denoising for Hearing Aid Applications

Reduction of unwanted environmental noises is an important feature of today's hearing aids (HA), which is why noise reduction is nowadays included in almost every commercially available device. The majority of these algorithms, however, is restricted to the reduction of stationary noises. In this work, we propose a denoising approach based on a three hidden layer fully connected deep learning network that aims to predict a Wiener filtering gain with an asymmetric input context, enabling real-time applications with high constraints on signal delay. The approach is employing a hearing instrument-grade filter bank and complies with typical hearing aid demands, such as low latency and on-line processing. It can further be well integrated with other algorithms in an existing HA signal processing chain. We can show on a database of real world noise signals that our algorithm is able to outperform a state of the art baseline approach, both using objective metrics and subject tests.