Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of sport-related expenditure of golf players and differences between light and heavy spenders

Purpose – Although participation in golf has increased in several countries and is associated with an evolving golf industry, research on golf and golf players is rather limited. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the sport-related expenditure of golfers and diferences of heavy and light spenders. Design/methodology/approach – Primary data of golf players were collected in Germany using a written survey which resulted in a convenience sample of n=197 golfers. Findings – The regression results indicate that the social motive, time for playing and training, handicap, age, and income have a significant impact on sport-related expenditure. There are several significant difference between heavy and light spenders based on psychological, behavioural, demographic, and resources variables. Research limitations/implications – A convenience sample was drawn and the sample size with n=197 respondents could be improved. Nonetheless, the descriptive results revealed that the sample structure was simila.
Draft Genome Sequence of Pseudoalteromonas sp. Strain PLSV, an Ulvan-Degrading Bacterium

ABSTRACT We present the draft genome sequence of Pseudoalteromonas sp. strain PLSV, isolated from the feces of an Aplysia sea slug. The addition of the PLSV genome to the existing genomes of three other ulvan-degrading bacterial species will enhance our understanding of ulvan utilization.
Competitive positioning and the resource-based view of the firm

Two apparently contradictory paradigms have come to dominate the strategic management literature over the last decade. The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm seeks to explain sustainable competitive advantage through the rent earning capability of internal scarce resources while the marketing paradigm stresses the need for external market orientation to achieve competitive success. This paper reconciles the two through the concepts of competitive positioning. It develops a hierarchy of marketing resources, assets and capabilities and discusses how these can be deployed to achieve alternative competitive positions. A research agenda is proposed.
Recent advances towards development and commercialization of plant cell culture processes for the synthesis of biomolecules.

Plant cell culture systems were initially explored for use in commercial synthesis of several high-value secondary metabolites, allowing for sustainable production that was not limited by the low yields associated with natural harvest or the high cost associated with complex chemical synthesis. Although there have been some commercial successes, most notably paclitaxel production from Taxus sp. , process limitations exist with regards to low product yields and inherent production variability. A variety of strategies are being developed to overcome these limitations including elicitation, in situ product removal and metabolic engineering with single genes and transcription factors. Recently, the plant cell culture production platform has been extended to pharmaceutically active heterologous proteins. Plant systems are beneficial because they are able to produce complex proteins that are properly glycosylated, folded and assembled without the risk of contamination by toxins that are associated with mammalian or microbial production systems. Additionally, plant cell culture isolates transgenic material from the environment, allows for more controllable conditions over field-grown crops and promotes secretion of proteins to the medium, reducing downstream purification costs. Despite these benefits, the increase in cost of heterologous protein synthesis in plant cell culture as opposed to field-grown crops is significant and therefore processes must be optimized with regard to maximizing secretion and enhancing protein stability in the cell culture media. This review discusses recent advancements in plant cell culture processing technology, focusing on progress towards overcoming the problems associated with commercialization of these production systems and highlighting recent commercial successes.
D2.1.1 Service Provisioning Platform Design

Activity N: Activity 1 – Fundamental and Integration Activities Work Package: WP2 – SOAAll Studio Due Date: M6 Submission Date: 29/08/2008 Resubmission: 12/03/2009 Start Date of Project: 01/03/2008 Duration of Project: 36 Months Organisation Responsible of Deliverable: The Open University Revision: 2.0 Author(s): Carlos Pedrinaci OU Maria Maleshkova OU Guillermo Álvaro Rey ISOCO Carlos Ruiz Moreno ISOCO Stefan Dietze OU Alessio Gugliotta OU Reviewers: Juergen Vogel SAP Jacek Kopecky UIBK
Coordinate genetic control of yeast fatty acid synthase genes FAS1 and FAS2 by an upstream activation site common to genes involved in membrane lipid biosynthesis.

A systematic search for upstream controlling elements necessary for efficient expression of the yeast fatty acid synthase genes FAS1 and FAS2 revealed identical activation sites, UASFAS, in front of both FAS genes. The individual element confers, in a heterologous yeast test system, an approximately 40‐fold stimulation of basal gene expression. The UASFAS motifs identified have the consensus sequence TYTTCACATGY and function in either orientation. The same sequence motif is found in the upstream regions of all so far characterized yeast genes encoding enzymes of phospholipid biosynthesis. In gel retardation assays, a protein factor, Fbf1 (FAS binding factor), was identified which interacted with UASFAS. The UASFAS motif proved to be an inositol/choline responsive element (ICRE) conferring strict repression by exogenous inositol and choline on a heterologous reporter gene. Its core sequence perfectly matches the CANNTG motif typical of basic helix‐loop‐helix DNA‐binding proteins. In contrast to the individual UASFAS element, the intact yeast FAS promoters are not significantly influenced by inositol and choline, and thus allow nearly constitutive fatty acid synthase production. Available evidence suggests that additional cis‐ and trans‐acting elements, other than UASFAS and Fbf1, are involved in this constitutive FAS gene expression.
Role of porin proteins OmpF and OmpC in the permeation of beta-lactams

Mutants of Escherichia coli K-12 lacking major outer membrane proteins were obtained by selecting for resistance to the beta-lactam cefoxitin. Three classes of resistant strains were found: mutants in ompB, a regulatory locus for proteins OmpF and OmpC; mutants in ompF; and one mutant in tpo. The OmpF and OmpC proteins facilitate penetration of beta-lactams through the outer membrane.
Warning Signs of Imminent Respiratory Failure in Neurological Patients

Critically ill neurological patients often need ventilatory assistance. After acute central nervous system insults, the inability to protect the airway and impaired central respiratory drive can only be managed with endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation. In patients with acute or worsening neuromuscular disorders, diaphragmatic failure and pronounced bulbar weakness may necessitate intubation to assist in the work of breathing or to prevent upper airway obstruction. Simple respiratory function tests performed at the bedside should be used to monitor patients with progressive neuromuscular respiratory insufficiency. Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation plays an important role in the management of respiratory failure in patients with neuromuscular respiratory failure, and its indications may be expanded in the future.
An AC conductance technique for measuring self-heating in SOI MOSFET's

In this paper, we present a new technique for isolating the electrical behavior of an SOI MOSFET's from the self-heating effect using an AC conductance method. This method reconstructs an I-V curve by integrating high frequency output conductance data. The heating effect is eliminated when the frequency is much higher than the inverse of the thermal time constant of the SOI device. We present measurement results from SOI MOSFET's that demonstrate that heating can indeed be significant in SOI devices. <<ETX>>
HPV-16 E2 Physical Status and Molecular Evolution in Vivo in Cervical Carcinomas

A key event in the development of cervical carcinoma is the deregulated expression of high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) oncogenes, most commonly due to HPV integration into host DNA. Here we explored whether HPV-16 E2 gene integrity is a biomarker of progressive disease with oncogenes expression. HPV-16 genome disruption was assessed by amplification of the entire E2 gene, while mRNA expression patterns of the E1, E2, E6, and E7 genes were evaluated by reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR). As expected, E2 disruption was significantly higher among patients with cervical cancers than subjects with benign lesions (p=0.02). The status of the E2 gene correlated with tumorogenesis, and seemed also to correlate with the stage of the carcinomas, since integrated HPV-16 DNA was frequently detected in patients with advanced cancer stages (75% of stage III vs 60% stages I and II). In bivariate analysis, the lesions’ grade was most significantly associated with HPV-16 DNA disruption (p<0.05). In cervical carcinoma the deletion pattern involved more frequently the E2 gene rather than the E1 gene (62.5% vs 45.8%). The prevalence of the E6/E7 HPV-16 transcripts in cervical carcinoma specimens and in benign cervical lesions were detected with frequencies of, respectively, 91.6% and 45.4%. The mRNA levels of the HPV-16 E6/E7 genes were expressed at approximately the same levels in each physical state. We consistently observed that E6/E7 were absent or weakly detectable in the presence of E2. However, in the absence of E2 the levels of E6/E7 markedly increased (p<0.05). This study underscores the significance of investigating alternative mechanisms of E2 expression and oncogenes E6/E7 transcripts in vivo as biomarkers for disease severity in cervical carcinomas.
Application of Multiscale Fiber Optical Sensing Network Based on Brillouin and Fiber Bragg Grating Sensing Techniques on Concrete Structures

The paper reports the application of the distributed optical fiber sensing technology and the FBG sensing technology in bridge strain monitoring; the overall changeable characteristics of the whole structure can be obtained through the distributed optical fiber sensing technology (BOTDA), meanwhile the accurate information of local important parts of the structure can be obtained through the optical fiber Bragg grating sensor (FBG), which can improve the accuracy of the monitoring. FBG sensor has a high sensitivity, but it can only realize the measurement of local discrete points for the quasidistributed sensing. BOTDA can realize the long distance and distributed measurement, but its spatial resolution is not high. FBG and BOTDA were applied together in bridge monitoring in this test, taking full advantage of the distributed BOTDA on the overall strain measurements of the structure, as well as monitoring the key parts by the arrangement of FBG. The combined application of BOTDA and FBG can achieve the overall monitoring from point to line and then to the surface and, therefore, obtain more comprehensive information on the strain of the test structure.
Performance and Risk Among Types of Exchange-Traded Funds During the Financial Crisis

ETFs have become very popular investment instruments for mirroring specific portfolios of securities. They offer many of the advantages of open-end index mutual funds, but are unique in that they can be purchased or sold continuously while the stock exchange is open. Furthermore, ETFs can be shorted and therefore allow ETFs to temporarily hedge other investment portfolios or capitalize on expected share price declines in particular sectors or country markets. While closed-end funds can be shorted, their market values tend to differ substantially from their corresponding net asset values because of the lack of liquidity of the underlying securities within the portfolio. ETFs can accommodate a wide variety of investor risk profiles. Since ETFs commonly reflect portfolios of stocks, they are also subject to behavioral finance tendencies, including potential momentum, overreaction, and pricing corrections. In general, ETFs that focus on a narrow sector should have higher potential return and higher risk than ETFs that represent an entire market, because they are less diversified. Thus, narrow-sector ETFs should be more sensitive to general stock market conditions. However, not all sectors or countries are alike, so the performance and risk of ETFs are conditioned on the sectors or countries that they represent.
A Chinese word segmentation algorithm based on maximum entropy

Automatic word segmentation technology is an important component part of modern Chinese information processing. It is the key technology of the Chinese full-text retrieval. This paper presents a Chinese word segmentation algorithm based on maximum entropy. It uses of part-of-speech tagging and word frequency tagging of corpus to establish maximum entropy model based on mutual information as a word segmentation language model to make word segmentation. At last, the binary model was used to test whether the expansion of the training corpus may impact the word segmentation accuracy, and the relationship curves between the expansion of training corpus and the word segmentation accuracy was obtained.
Effects of crus cerebri lesions and repeated amphetamine treatment on the activity of nigral dopaminergic neurons

Previous research suggests that the firing rate of dopamine (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNC) may be altered by repeated DA agonist treatment. Because changes in the frequency of DA activity could reflect the firing patterns (e.g., bursting) of the neurons sampled, this study examined both the firing rate and pattern of SNC DA neurons after long‐term amphetamine (AMPH) treatment (5 mg/kg d‐AMPH s.c. twice daily for 6 days). To assess the contribution of postsynaptic feedback from the forebrain, unilateral electrolytic lesions were made to the crus cerebri (CC), containing the striatonigral pathway, prior to AMPH treatment. Single‐unit activity of presumed SNC DA neurons was recorded in adult male rats under urethane anesthesia. Spontaneous firing rate was reduced by AMPH treatment, relative to saline vehicle, but was unaffected by CC or sham lesions. Neurons categorized as bursting had faster rates of activity than nonbursting cells. AMPH treatment reduced the number of bursts seen in intact rats but increased bursting in lesioned rats. These results suggest that changes in DA firing rate previously found after chronic AMPH may reflect altered patterns of activity. In addition, the effects of long‐term AMPH on the firing patterns of DA neurons appear to be mediated by fibers in the CC. Synapse 38:80–86, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A study on the fundamental factors determining the efficacy of siRNAs with high C/G contents

Although there are many reports about the efficacy of siRNAs, it is not clear whether those siRNAs with high C/G contents can be used to silence their target mRNAs efficiently. In this study, we investigated the structure and function of a group of siRNAs with high C/G contents. The results showed that single siRNAs against the Calpain, Otoferlin and Her2 mRNAs could induce different silencing effects on their targets, suggesting that the accessibility to target sequences influences the efficacy of siRNA. Unexpectedly, a single siRNA could target its cognate sequence in the 3’UTR of EEF1D or the 5’UTR of hTRF2 or CDC6. Their interaction induced different modes of gene silencing. Furthermore, the introduction of mutations into the 3’ end of the passenger strand showed that the position and number of mutated nucleotides could exert some influence on the efficacy of siRNA. However, these mutations did not completely block the passenger strand from exerting its RNAi effect. Interestingly, our findings also indicated that the target mRNA might play essential roles in maintaining or discarding the guide strand in RISCs. Thus, the conclusion could be drawn that favorable siRNA sequences, accessible target structures and the fast cleavage mode are necessary and sufficient prerequisites for efficient RNAi.
Nilvadipine prevents cognitive decline of patients with mild cognitive impairment

There is growing evidence that antihypertensive treatment is associated with reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and prevention of cognitive decline. Several studies suggest that calcium channel blockers may have neuroprotective effects. In a previous study, we found that nilvadipine, but not amlodipine, improved memory test and cerebral blood flow deficits in hypertensive patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) after 12–16 weeks treatment (Hanyu et al., 2007). Although both are dihidropyridine calcium channel blockers, nilvadipine, with its high lipophilicity, passes easily across the blood–brain barrier, whereas amlodipine, with low lipophilicity, does not. Therefore, the short-term effects of nilvadipine might be partly associated with penetration to the central nervous system through the blood-brain barrier. We investigated the long-term effects of therapy with nilvadipine on the cognitive function in patients with MCI to determine whether nilvadipine may delay clinical progression to AD.
Cloud-side Execution of Database Queries for Mobile Applications

We demonstrate a practical way to reduce latency for mobile . NET applications that interact with cloud database services. We provide a programming abstraction for location-independent code, which has the potential to execute either locally or at a satellite execution environment in the cloud, in close proximity to the database service. This preserves a programmatic style of database access, and maintains a simple deployment model, but allows applications to offload latency-sensitive code to the cloud. Our evaluation shows that this approach can significantly improve the response time for applications that execute dependent queries, and that the required cloud-side resources are modest.
Cystic fibrosis mutation frequencies in an Irish population

The incidence of cystic fibrosis (CF) at birth in Ireland is 1/1461. Neonate CF genetic testing is not routinely performed in Ireland. Currently, screening is only carried out where there is clinical evidence or a family history to suggest disease. Here we report the frequencies of common CF mutations occurring in an Irish population composed of samples collected from western, mid‐western and southern regions of Ireland. Rarer CF mutations were also identified in a selected number of CF patients. In addition, a number of polymorphisms were identified, some of which are reported to be functionally and phenotypically important.
Retinex-based signal enhancement for image dark regions

To improve text detection and text recognition in natural scenes, it is important to improve legibility by removing the effects of illumination on the image. Therefore, in this study, we present a signal enhancement method for the dark regions in the image. In addition, we propose a procedure to reduce computational complexity of the bilateral filter that is used to estimate the illumination in our method. Since our main aim is to provide the preprocessing of text detection and recognition in natural scenes, we have proposed a simple processing in which only the signals of the dark regions in the image are enhanced. Experimental results show that our method is effective in conserving the naturalness of the image and improving the legibility of texts in natural scenes. Furthermore, by using our proposed procedure, bilateral filter computation loads can be reduced by about 30%.
Holly STATCOM - FACTS to Replace Critical Generation, Operational Experience

Austin Energy plans to decommission an old oil-and gas-fired plant near downtown Austin, Texas, USA. In addition to providing the generation capacity, an important reason the four-unit Holly plant has been kept in operation is to stabilize the voltage on the transmission system. Retirement of the power plant without a reliable dynamic reactive source would have a negative impact on the transmission system voltage stability. A special requirement in Austin Energy's case is recovery from voltage sags where a fast response is necessary at low voltages, i.e. transient voltage recovery. Furthermore, physical limitations related to aesthetics, electromagnetic field emissions, and audible noise had impact on the solution to be implemented. Transmission planning studies determined that the voltage requirements could be met using a STATCOM. This paper provides details on the background, an overview of the STATCOM technology, and shows results from the first period of operation of the Holly STATCOM, delivered by ABB
On the Tourism Development Potential of the Linear Cultural Heritage

The linear cultural heritage is related to a brand-new concept in heritage protection in recent years,and focuses on the linear area and involves a wide range of heritage elements.Because it is connected with both tangible and intangible cultures,it has great tourism value.A correct evaluation of the tourism development potential of the linear cultural heritage has great significance to the effective protection and rational exploitation of cultural heritage resources.The construction of the evaluation system of the tourism development potential of the linear cultural heritage should take such factors as supply,demand and development into consideration.It is also important to adopt AHP,the Delphi method,and the entropy technology to reduce errors and improve creditability.A case study of the Silk Road,the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and The Great Wall has testified that the construction of the evaluation system of the tourism development potential of the linear cultural heritage has its scientific feasibility.
Medium Perfusion Enhances Osteogenesis by Murine Osteosarcoma Cells in Three‐Dimensional Collagen Sponges

In this study, we examined in vitro histogenesis by murine K8 osteosarcoma cells maintained in three‐dimensional (3D) collagen sponges. We tested the hypothesis that perfusion of medium enhances cell viability and their biosynthetic activity as assessed by expression of the osteoblastic phenotype and mineral deposition. At intervals, samples were harvested and analyzed histologically, biochemically, and by Northern hybridization for type I collagen, osteopontin (OPN), osteocalcin (OC), and core binding factor alpha 1 (Cbfa1). Histologic evaluation showed greater viability, more alkaline phosphatase (ALP)‐positive cells, and more mineralized tissue in the perfused sponges after 21 days. Immunohistological assessment of proliferating cell nuclear antigen revealed 5‐fold more proliferating cells in the perfused sponges compared with the controls (p = 0.0201). There was 3‐fold more ALP activity in the perfused sponges than the controls at 6 days and 14 days (p = 0.0053). The perfused sponges contained twice the DNA and eight times more calcium than the nonperfused controls after 21 days (p < 0.0001 for both). Northern hybridization analysis revealed more mRNA for collagen type I (2‐fold) and 50% more for OC at 14 days and 21 days, whereas OPN and Cbfa1 mRNA expression remained unaffected by the medium perfusion. These results show that medium perfusion had beneficial effects on the proliferation and biosynthetic activity of this osteosarcoma cell line. This system mimics the 3D geometry of bone tissue and has the potential for revealing mechanisms of regulation of osteogenesis.