Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Molecular Characterization of MaCCS, a Novel Copper Chaperone Gene Involved in Abiotic and Hormonal Stress Responses in Musa acuminata cv. Tianbaojiao

Copper/zinc superoxide dismutases (Cu/ZnSODs) play important roles in improving banana resistance to adverse conditions, but their activities depend on the copper chaperone for superoxide dismutase (CCS) delivering copper to them. However, little is known about CCS in monocots and under stress conditions. Here, a novel CCS gene (MaCCS) was obtained from a banana using reverse transcription PCR and rapid-amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) PCR. Sequence analyses showed that MaCCS has typical CCS domains and a conserved gene structure like other plant CCSs. Alternative transcription start sites (ATSSs) and alternative polyadenylation contribute to the mRNA diversity of MaCCS. ATSSs in MaCCS resulted in one open reading frame containing two in-frame start codons to form two protein versions, which is supported by the MaCCS subcellular localization of in both cytosol and chloroplasts. Furthermore, MaCCS promoter was found to contain many cis-elements associated with abiotic and hormonal responses. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that MaCCS was expressed in all tested tissues (leaves, pseudostems and roots). In addition, MaCCS expression was significantly induced by light, heat, drought, abscisic acid and indole-3-acetic acid, but inhibited by relatively high concentrations of CuSO4 and under cold treatment, which suggests that MaCCS is involved in abiotic and hormonal responses.
Predicting and cultivating public service motivation: A longitudinal study measuring the effect of participation in AmeriCorps programs

Public service motivation theory argues that people in the public sector hold d~fferent values than their private sector counterparts. However, little is understood about how public sen'ice motivation may be affected O\'er time and as the result of organizational experiences. Similar~v. the validity of the public service motivation scale using secondmy data has large~v been unexamined. This research uses longitudinal data to track the effect o_{participation in the national service program AmeriCorps on participants and compares these results to a similar comparison group. It is posited that public service motivation may be cultivated through participation in service-oriented activity in the nonpro_fit sector. Findings revealed that antecedent conditions o.l PSM, including prevalence of seeingfamily members and mentors help others as well as participation in student government weakzv (but sign~ficantly) predict whether someone joins AmeriCorps programs. Additionally. Perry's original public service motivation construct appears to hold when using secondmy data among people who are interested in national service. Longitudinal ana~vsis o.f an adapted public sen•ice motivation construct reveals that participation in AmeriCorps programs positive~v affects participants' levels o.f commitment to public interest and their knowledge of their communities. Participation also positively affects participants· ie'vels o.f attraction to public policymaking,· however a comparison group demonstrates a similar jump in these measures. Finally, members ' levels of openness to new ideas appear to be negath·e~v related to service in AmeriCorps. Additionally, it is found that nonparticipants experienced sign[/icant declines in their levels o{ commitment to public interest, openness to new ideas, and knowledge of their communities over an eight year period. This abstract accurately represents the content of the candidate's thesis. I recommend its publication. Signed ______________ _ Peter deLeon
Dopamine induces the accumulation of insoluble prion protein and affects autophagic flux

Accumulation of protein aggregates is a histopathological hallmark of several neurodegenerative diseases, but in most cases the aggregation occurs without defined mutations or clinical histories, suggesting that certain endogenous metabolites can promote aggregation of specific proteins. One example that supports this hypothesis is dopamine and its metabolites. Dopamine metabolism generates several oxidative metabolites that induce aggregation of α-synuclein, and represents the main etiology of Parkinson's diseases. Because dopamine and its metabolites are unstable and can be highly reactive, we investigated whether these molecules can also affect other proteins that are prone to aggregate, such as cellular prion protein (PrPC). In this study, we showed that dopamine treatment of neuronal cells reduced the number of viable cells and increased the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as demonstrated in previous studies. Overall PrPC expression level was not altered by dopamine treatment, but its unglycosylated form was consistently reduced at 100 μM of dopamine. At the same concentration, the level of phosphorylated mTOR and 4EBP1 was also reduced. Moreover, dopamine treatment decreased the solubility of PrPC, and increased its accumulation in autophagosomal compartments with concomitant induction of LC3-II and p62/SQSTM1 levels. In vitro oxidation of dopamine promoted formation of high-order oligomers of recombinant prion protein. These results suggest that dopamine metabolites alter the conformation of PrPC, which in turn is sorted to degradation pathway, causing autophagosome overload and attenuation of protein synthesis. Accumulation of PrPC aggregates is an important feature of prion diseases. Thus, this study brings new insight into the dopamine metabolism as a source of endogenous metabolites capable of altering PrPC solubility and its subcellular localization.
Metabolic syndrome in HIV-infected patients from an urban, midwestern US outpatient population.

BACKGROUND The association between the use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) and an increased risk of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease remains unclear. METHODS We conducted a prospective, cross-sectional study of the risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease among patients from an urban outpatient human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) clinic. Evaluation included laboratory data that were obtained after an overnight fast and a health survey that assessed traditional risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, HIV-related factors, and comorbidities. Data collected were compared with data files from a cohort from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES; 2001-2002) of persons who were seronegative for HIV infection who were matched for age, sex, race, and tobacco use. RESULTS Four hundred seventy-one HIV-infected subjects provided complete data. The overall prevalence of metabolic syndrome was similar between the group HIV-infected patients and the group of persons who were seronegative for HIV infection (25.5% vs. 26.5%, respectively), although the HIV-infected patients had a significantly smaller waist circumference, lower body mass index, lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, higher triglyceride levels, and lower glucose levels, compared with the subjects from the NHANES cohort. Framingham 10-year risk scores were also similar between the 2 groups. HIV-infected patients with metabolic syndrome were more likely to be diabetic, older, and white and have a high CD4 cell count and body mass index, compared with patients without metabolic syndrome (P<.05 for all). The type or duration of antiretroviral therapy was not an independent risk factor for metabolic syndrome. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of metabolic syndrome is high among HIV-infected persons, but not higher than the prevalence among HIV-uninfected persons. Traditional risk factors play a more significant role in the development of metabolic syndrome than do HIV treatment-associated factors.
Ionic mechanisms underlying tonic and phasic firing behaviors in retinal ganglion cells

In the retina, the firing behaviors that ganglion cells exhibit when exposed to light stimuli are very important due to the significant roles they play in encoding the visual information. However, the detailed mechanisms, especially the intrinsic properties that generate and modulate these firing behaviors is not completely clear yet. In this study, 2 typical firing behaviors—i.e., tonic and phasic activities, which are widely observed in retinal ganglion cells (RGCs)—are investigated. A modified computational model was developed to explore the possible ionic mechanisms that underlie the generation of these 2 firing patterns. Computational results indicate that the generation of tonic and phasic activities may be attributed to the collective actions of 2 kinds of adaptation currents, i.e., an inactivating sodium current and a delayed-rectifier potassium current. The concentration of magnesium ions has crucial but differential effects in the modulation of tonic and phasic firings, when the model neuron is driven by N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) -type synaptic input instead of constant current injections. The proposed model has robust features that account for the ionic mechanisms underlying the tonic and phasic firing behaviors, and it may also be used as a good candidate for modeling some other firing patterns in RGCs.
VECTOR AUTOREGRESSIONS WITH UNKNOWN MIXTURES OF I(0), I(1), AND I(2) COMPONENTS

This paper develops a new estimation method for nonstationary vector autoregressions (VAR's) with unknown mixtures of I(0), I(1), and I(2) components. The method does not require prior knowledge on the exact number and location of unit roots in the system. It is, therefore, applicable for VAR's with any mixture of I(0), I(1), and I(2) variables, which may be cointegrated in any form. The limit theory for the stationary component of our estimator is still normal, thereby preserving the usual VAR limit theory. Yet, the leading term of the nonstationary component of the estimator has mixed normal limit distribution and does not involve unit root distribution. Our method is an extension of the FM-VAR procedure by Phillips (1995, Econometrica 63, 1023–1078) and yields an estimator that is optimal in the sense of Phillips (1991, Econometrica 59, 283–306). Moreover, we show for a certain class of linear restrictions that the Wald tests based on the estimator are asymptotically distributed as a weighted sum of independent chi-square variates with weights between zero and one. For such restrictions, the limit distribution of the standard Wald test is nonstandard and nuisance parameter dependent. This has a direct application for Granger-causality testing in nonstationary VAR's.
A Reference Architecture Based on Web Components for Ubiquitous Information Systems

Companies scattered worldwide, the proliferation of network-enabled devices, and advances in telecommunications have fueled a wide range of emerging behaviors that new and legacy systems must attempt to support. An important new usage behavior is ubiquitous computing, defined here as anytime/anyplace access to system functionality and data. Designing and deploying ubiquitous information systems requires a framework or architecture for conceptualizing how to structure and integrate existing and emerging technologies and end systems. The purpose of this research is to propose and describe a reference architecture called the Ubiquitous Information System Architecture. This architecture is a Web-centric synthesis of layered and service-oriented architectural styles with object-oriented patterns designed to provide a blueprint for constructing information systems that must support ubiquitous computing.
Emotional Arousal Effects in Participatory Budgeting Decisions

Participatory budgeting is applied by an increasing number of municipalities and organizations. Citizens can decide over an institutional budget. The allocation mechanism can affect emotional arousal, which influences the choice evaluation in the decicion-making process. Building on the endowment effect, we conduct an experiment testing a novel participatory budgeting approach that includes an element of crowdfunding. We measure participants’ heart rate to determine emotional arousal. This is one of the first studies to investigate the arousal of participants in participatory budgeting procedures. Our findings suggest that institutions can engage their citizens in such a process without having to expect an endowment effect.
Claims – Based Asset Pricing : Theory and Application

This paper outlines a claims-based theory of asset pricing and estimates claim values from options data. It also interprets the estimates with new asset pricing measures based on using the state price density as a reference portfolio. In contrast to the literature's claim that distributions of claim values are much the same irrespective of estimation techniques, our measures of the market price of risk and the risks of individual claims help to distinguish sharply among different distributions. The measures suggest that in anticipation of a market downturn, the market price of risk declines while claims' measured risks increase.
A first-order low distortion sigma-delta modulator using split DWA technique and SAR quantizer

This paper presents a comparator-based OTA first-order discrete-time low-distortion sigma-delta modulator. A split data weighted averaging (DWA) algorithm logic is proposed to release the heavy burden of digital circuit while a 6 bit DAC is implemented in this work. In addition, a comparator-based OTA is used to reduce the power consumption. On the top of that, to achieve lower power consumption, a power efficient SAR quantizer with embedded analog passive adder is proposed to eliminate additional operational amplifier for summation. The modulator core occupies an active area of 0.0275 mm2 in TSMC 90-nm 1P9M CMOS process. Experimental results show that the proposed modulator achieves 59.90 dB SNDR with 0.58 mW power consumption under 1.0 V supply voltage, an OSR of 16 at 65 MHz sampling frequency and 500kHz input frequency.
Analysis and enhancement of QoS in cognitive radio network for efficient VoIP performance

VoIP service demands strong QoS support for enhanced call quality and increased user satisfaction. Deploying VoIP in opportunistic communication models like cognitive radio requires thorough analysis of the factors involved in design and implementation. The objective of this paper is to implement VoIP successfully over a cognitive radio network and maintain the call quality at an acceptable limit. Initially, a model of VoIP is built over cognitive radio network using OPNET Modeler 16.0. A. The QoS parameters of delay, jitter and packet loss are analyzed over a basic cognitive radio cycle in the developed model. Modifications are proposed in the cognitive radio cycle for improvement in call quality and gain in throughput. Extensive simulation studies reflect overall QoS enhancement after application of the modified cycle. Finally, the proposed approach is further enhanced by modifying the VoIP parameters that result in high quality VoIP calls as witnessed from the simulation results.
Estudo Longitudinal sobre Eficácia Educacional no Brasil: Comparação entre Resultados Contextualizados e Valor Acrescentado

RESUMO O artigo apresenta e debate as análises de valor acrescentado, eficácia diferencial e equidade social realizadas através da aplicação de modelo multinível (UF, município, escola, aluno) aos dados longitudinais de estudantes que fizeram a Prova Brasil 2011, no 5 o ano, e a Prova Brasil 2015, no 9 o ano do ensino fundamental. Estimou-se a contribuição da escola brasileira em três dimensões: promoção da aprendizagem em Língua Portuguesa e Matemática, no período de 2011 a 2015 (valor acrescentado); influência diferenciada nas aprendizagens ocorridas durante o período em análise, tendo como referência o nível de conhecimento dos alunos à entrada, no 5º ano (eficácia diferencial); e influência diferenciada nas aprendizagens ocorridas durante esse período, tendo como referência o nível socioeconômico dos alunos (equidade social). Foram testadas ainda variáveis sociodemográficas do aluno, tais como sexo, cor/raça, situação face ao trabalho e se a mãe é ou não alfabetizada. O artigo apresenta resultados inovadores de eficácia educacional no Brasil, mostrando que, ao contrário do que consta na literatura internacional, a magnitude do indicador de valor acrescentado é similar à encontrada em estudos em países desenvolvidos. Os resultados confirmam o conhecimento acumulado sobre o desempenho escolar dos alunos por nível socioeconômico, sexo e cor/raça.
Agricultural Production and Conflict Refugee Status: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Policy Intervention Programme in Rwanda ∗

This study uses Rwandan household survey data to evaluate the impact of conflict-induced migration on agricultural productivity, as well as to assess the effect of the Rwandan government’s housing and land redistribution policy. The hypothesis that the policy improved output by a pure resource effect is tested against a human capital spill-over effect hypothesis. Time differentials in the implementation of the policy across villages are used to assess its impact, despite the absence of repeated cross-sections. The findings suggest that the policy was successful in raising migrants’ agricultural production, mainly by increasing access to land. No evidence is found in favour of an increase in returnees’ productivity in policy areas, although returnees in these areas are found to benefi tf rom having access to agricultural extension services.
Document image skew adjusting based on the feedback information recognized by OCR

Document image skew adjusting is just a very important step in the course of image processing, for skew images can cause the characters to be deformed obviously and then the latter recognized effect could decline rapidly. This paper puts forward a new detecting method to obliquity. It can choose detecting method on the basis of feedback information which is recognized by OCR, thus to some extent it overcomes a certain algorithm's flaws that have not a good universality to all the texts.
Cluster-oriented ensemble classifiers for intelligent malware detection

With explosive growth of malware and due to its damage to computer security, malware detection is one of the cyber security topics that are of great interests. Many research efforts have been conducted on developing intelligent malware detection systems applying data mining techniques. Such techniques have successes in clustering or classifying particular sets of malware samples, but they have limitations that leave a large room for improvement. Specifically, based on the analysis of the file contents extracted from the file samples, existing researches apply only specific clustering or classification methods, but not integrate them together. Actually, the learning of class boundaries for malware detection between overlapping class patterns is a difficult problem. In this paper, resting on the analysis of Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls extracted from the file samples, we develop the intelligent malware detection system using cluster-oriented ensemble classifiers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work of applying such method for malware detection. A comprehensive experimental study on a real and large data collection from Comodo Cloud Security Center is performed to compare various malware detection approaches. Promising experimental results demonstrate that the accuracy and efficiency of our proposed method outperform other alternate data mining based detection techniques.
H I line observations of 2MASS galaxies in the zone of avoidance

Aims: A pilot survey has been made to obtain 21 cm H i emission line profiles for 197 objects in the zone of avoidance (ZoA) that were classified as galaxies in the 2MASS all-sky near-infrared Extended Source Catalog (2MASX), as well as a further 16 2MASS pre-release working database sources that did not make it into 2MASX. Methods: One hundred sixteen of the 2MASX sources and the 16 working database sources were observed using the Nancay radio telescope, usually in the 325 to 11 825 km s-1 range, and the other 81 2MASX sources were observed with the Arecibo radio telescope in the -500 to 11 000 km s-1 range, and for 9 also in the 9500 to 21 000 km s-1 range. Results: Global H i line parameters are presented for the 22 and 29 2MASX objects that were detected at Nancay and Arecibo, respectively, as well as upper limits for the undetected 2MASX objects. Another galaxy (ESO 371-27) was detected in the Nancay beam centred on an undetected target, ESO 371-26. Nancay data on 12 sources could not be used due to high rms noise levels, most likely caused by strong nearby continuum sources. None of the 16 working database sources were detected at Nancay. Whereas object 2MASX J08170147-3410277 appears to be a very massive galaxy with an H i mass of 4.6 × 1010 {M}ȯ and an inclination-corrected rotation velocity of 314 km s-1, it is clear that only radio synthesis H i imaging observations will allow a firm conclusion on this. Conclusions: Overall, the global properties of the detected galaxies match those of other ZoA H i surveys. Although the detections are as yet too sparse to give further insight into suspected or unknown large-scale structures in the ZoA, they already indicate that an extension of the present pilot survey is bound to quantify filaments, clusters, and voids behind this part of the Milky Way. It is shown that the number of candidate 2MASS-selected ZoA galaxies to be observed in H i could have been reduced by about 15% through examination of composite near-infrared images and the application of extinction-corrected near-infrared colour limits. Present results confirm that the Galactic extinction values from Schlegel et al. (1998) are valid for latitudes |b| ⪆ 5°, but increasingly less so for lower latitudes. Tables 1, 2, 4 and 5 are also available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat? J/A+A/505/29 Tables 3, 6, 7, and spectra in FITS format are only available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat? J/A+A/505/29