Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Targeted gene disruption in Candida albicans wild‐type strains: the role of the MDR1 gene in fluconazole resistance of clinical Candida albicans isolates

Resistance of the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans to the antifungal agent fluconazole is often caused by active drug efflux out of the cells. In clinical C. albicans strains, fluconazole resistance frequently correlates with constitutive activation of the MDR1 gene, encoding a membrane transport protein of the major facilitator superfamily that is not expressed detectably in fluconazole‐susceptible isolates. However, the molecular changes causing MDR1 activation have not yet been elucidated, and direct proof for MDR1 expression being the cause of drug resistance in clinical C. albicans strains is lacking as a result of difficulties in the genetic manipulation of C. albicans wild‐type strains. We have developed a new strategy for sequential gene disruption in C. albicans wild‐type strains that is based on the repeated use of a dominant selection marker conferring resistance against mycophenolic acid upon transformants and its subsequent excision from the genome by FLP‐mediated, site‐specific recombination (MPAR‐flipping). This mutagenesis strategy was used to generate homozygous mdr1/mdr1 mutants from two fluconazole‐resistant clinical C. albicans isolates in which drug resistance correlated with stable, constitutive MDR1 activation. In both cases, disruption of the MDR1 gene resulted in enhanced susceptibility of the mutants against fluconazole, providing the first direct genetic proof that MDR1 mediates fluconazole resistance in clinical C. albicans strains. The new gene disruption strategy allows the generation of specific knock‐out mutations in any C. albicans wild‐type strain and therefore opens completely novel approaches for studying this most important human pathogenic fungus at the molecular level.
Real-time slip-based estimation of maximum tire-road friction coefficient

This paper presents a real-time maximum tire-road friction coefficient estimation method and field test results. The estimator is based on the relationship between the wheel slip ratio and the friction coefficient. An effective tire radius observer and a tire normal force observer have been designed for the computation of the slip ratio from wheel speed and vehicle speed measurements. The effective tire radius observer has been used so that the proposed method works for all driving situations. A tractive force estimator, a brake gain estimator, and a normal force observer have been used for the estimation of the friction coefficient. The proposed estimation method for the maximum tire-road friction coefficient has been implemented using a fifth wheel and typical vehicle sensors such as engine speed, carrier speed, throttle position, and brake pressure sensors.
Deep long short-term memory networks for speech recognition

Speech recognition has been significantly improved by applying acoustic models based on deep neural network which could be realized as the feedforward NN (FNN) or the recurrent NN (RNN). In general, FNN is feasible to project the observations onto a deep invariant feature space while RNN is beneficial to capture the temporal information in a sequential data for speech recognition. RNN based on long short-term memory (LSTM) is capable of storing inputs over a long time period and thus exploiting a self-learned mechanism for long-range temporal context. Considering the complimentary FNN and RNN in their modeling capabilities, this paper presents a deep model which is constructed by stacking LSTM and FNN. Through the cascade of LSTM cells and fully-connected feedforward units, we explore the temporal patterns and summarize the long history of previous inputs in a deep learning machine. The experiments on 3rd CHiME challenge and Aurora-4 show that the stacks of hybrid model with FNN post-processor outperform stand-alone FNN and LSTM and the other hybrid models for robust speech recognition.
Creating Community Resilience Through Elder-Led Physical and Social Infrastructure

Abstract Objective Natural disasters and rapidly aging populations are chronic problems for societies worldwide. We investigated the effects of an intervention in Japan known as Ibasho, which embeds elderly residents in vulnerable areas within larger social networks and encourages them to participate in leadership activities. This project sought to deepen the connections of these elderly residents to society and to build elderly leadership and community capacity for future crises. Methods We carried out surveys of participants and nonparticipant residents across the city of Ofunato in Tohoku, Japan, 1 year after the intervention began. Our surveys included questions assessing participation levels in Ibasho, demographic characteristics, efficacy, social networks, and a sense of belonging. Results Regression analysis and propensity score matching of more than 1100 respondents showed that regular participation in the Ibasho project had a statistically significant and positive connection with various measures of social capital. Conclusions Given its relatively low cost and focus on deepening cohesion, we suggest that this community-based project could be replicated and scaled up in other countries to deepen resilience, elder health, and social capital. Moving away from an emphasis on investing in physical infrastructure, we believe that disaster risk reduction strategies should center on social infrastructure. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:120–126)
TS Tools: Using Texcavator to Map Public Discourse

In this article, Jaap Verheul, Toine Pieters, and Joris van Eijatten (Utrecht University) discuss the text mining tool Texcavator that they use in the Translantis research project, in order to map the emergence of the United States as a reference culture in the Netherlands between 1895 and 1995. Texcavator enables a fine grained analysis of large-scale document collections by using innovative text mining methodologies. It integrates a range of analytical tools such as concept clustering, sentiment mining, and Named Entity Recognition, to produce world clouds, time lines and other visualizations on-the-fly.
Hybrid Robust Header Compression in Proxy Mobile IPv6 over Wireless Mesh Networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a promising technology for ubiquitous wireless access. IP mobility support is indispensable in large-scale WMNs. In this paper, we introduce a novel WMN architecture where Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) is employed as an IP mobility support protocol. Due to the tunneling procedure in PMIPv6, PMIPv6-based WMNs can lead to long packet delivery latency especially in voice over IP (VoIP) applications. Therefore, we propose a hybrid robust header compression (ROHC) scheme where either end-to-end header compression or hop-by-hop header compression is dynamically determined depending on the packet delay requirement. Simulation results demonstrate that the hybrid ROHC scheme can effectively reduce packet delivery latency in PMIPv6-based wireless networks.
Alterations of arcuate nucleus neuropeptidergic development in contactin‐deficient mice: comparison with anorexia and food‐deprived mice

A mutation in the Contactin‐1 gene results in an ataxic and anorectic phenotype that is apparent by postnatal day 10 and lethal by postnatal day 19 [ Berglund et al. (1999)Neuron 24, 739–750]. The resemblance of this phenotype with the anorexia (anx/anx) mouse mutation prompted us to investigate the hypothalamic neurochemistry of Contactin knock‐out (KO) mice. Contactin was expressed in the hypothalamic neuropil of wild‐type (WT) but not Contactin KO mice. In the KO condition, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti‐related protein (AgRP) immunoreactivity (IR) accumulated in the somata of arcuate nucleus neurons, whereas IR for these neuropeptides as well as for α‐melanocyte‐stimulating hormone (α‐MSH) decreased in the corresponding axon projections. These changes in the pattern of neuropeptide expression in the Contactin‐deficient hypothalamus were similar but more pronounced than those found in anx/anx mice. Increased levels of NPY and AgRP and decreased concentrations of pro‐opiomelanocortin mRNA in arcuate neurons accompanied these changes. In relating these alterations a 24‐h food deprivation period, we observed in 3‐week‐old WT mice an elevation of NPY‐ and AgRP‐IR in the perikarya of arcuate neurons without notable reduction of NPY‐ or AgRP‐IR in nerve fibers, suggesting that the decrease of arcuate projections can be associated with postnatal anorectic phenotype. Our data implicate Contactin in the postnatal development of the NPY/AgRP and α‐MSH arcuate neurons and suggest that similar to anx/anx mutant mice, compromised orexigenic signaling via NPY/AgRP neurons may contribute to reduced food intake by the Contactin‐mutant animals.
Social Linking and Human Resources Management in the Service Sector

Since the 1990s, the service sector has been searching for new ways to make a difference. At the same time a need for social linking has emerged from the consumer society. So, the first part of this trans-disciplinary article is devoted to the relevance of grouping together within a single concept the elements of a service which create a social link. The role of the contact staff in the functioning of this concept is a central one, so the second part will try to pinpoint the implications of this socialising process on Human Resources Management policy.
Antigenicity testing by immunohistochemistry after tissue oxidation

Aims: Archived tissue blocks preserve the antigenicity of samples for a long time under normal storage conditions, whereas tissue sections may show a diminished immunoreactivity over time. Little is known about the processes responsible for antigenicity loss and how tissue sections should be conserved for extended storage. Oxidation and drying are presumed mechanisms of antigenicity loss. To prove this, degradation of immunoreactivity was provoked by chemical oxidation, photo-oxidation and artificial drying. Methods: First, paraffin sections of an oestrogen receptor (ER) positive breast carcinoma were subjected for variable time periods to H2O2, ultraviolet A (UVA) irradiation and dry heat (56°C) prior to ER immunohistochemistry. Second, using heat and UVA irradiation several other antigens (ER, PR, HER-2neu, p53, p63, p16, PSA, CK5/6, CK7, CK20, SMA, Fli-1, c-kit, CD20 and EGFR) were tested, using internal control tissue microarray sections. Results: While H2O2 had no effect on the ER-staining intensity, extended drying showed a detectable decrease in staining after 10 days, and UVA irradiation induced a decrease after 3 days. Entire antigenicity loss was not observed. Except for HER-2neu, PSA and Fli-1, all antigens showed some diminution in antigenicity, but no entire antigenicity loss, after heating and UVA irradiation. Conclusions: This study confirms that photo-oxidation and drying have an influence on immunohistochemistry outcome, and protocols for testing the stability of specific antigens are provided.
Promoting Interactions Between Humans and Robots Using Robotic Emotional Behavior

The objective of a socially assistive robot is to create a close and effective interaction with a human user for the purpose of giving assistance. In particular, the social interaction, guidance, and support that a socially assistive robot can provide a person can be very beneficial to patient-centered care. However, there are a number of research issues that need to be addressed in order to design such robots. This paper focuses on developing effective emotion-based assistive behavior for a socially assistive robot intended for natural human-robot interaction (HRI) scenarios with explicit social and assistive task functionalities. In particular, in this paper, a unique emotional behavior module is presented and implemented in a learning-based control architecture for assistive HRI. The module is utilized to determine the appropriate emotions of the robot to display, as motivated by the well-being of the person, during assistive task-driven interactions in order to elicit suitable actions from users to accomplish a given person-centered assistive task. A novel online updating technique is used in order to allow the emotional model to adapt to new people and scenarios. Experiments presented show the effectiveness of utilizing robotic emotional assistive behavior during HRI scenarios.
Automatic tag extraction from social media for visual labeling

Visual labeling or automated visual annotation is of great importance to the efficient access and management of multimedia content. Many methods and techniques have been proposed for image annotation in the last decade and they have shown reasonable performance on standard datasets. Great progress has been made especially in recent couple of years with the development of deep learning models for image content analysis and extraction of content-based concept labels. However, concept objects labels are much more friendly to machine than to users. We consider that more relevant and user-friendly visual labels need to include “context” descriptors. In this study we explore the possibilities to leverage social media content as a resource for visual labeling. We developed a tag extraction system that applies heuristic rules and term weighting method to extract image tags from associated Tweet. The system retrieves tweet-image pairs from public Twitter accounts, analyzes the Tweet, and generates labels for the images. We elaborate on different visual labeling methods, tag analysis and tag refinement methods.
Identification and Modification of the Uridine-binding Site of the UDP-GalNAc (GlcNAc) Pyrophosphorylase*

UDP-GalNAc pyrophosphorylase (UDP-GalNAcPP; AGX1) catalyzes the synthesis of UDP-GalNAc from UTP and GalNAc-1-P. The 475-amino acid protein (57 kDa protein) also synthesizes UDP-GlcNAc at about 25% the rate of UDP-GalNAc. The cDNA for this enzyme, termed AGX1, was cloned in Escherichia coli, and expressed as an active enzyme that cross-reacted with antiserum against the original pig liver UDP-HexNAcPP. In the present study, we incubated recombinant AGX1 with N3-UDP-[32P]GlcNAc and N3-UDP-[32P]GalNAc probes to label the nucleotide-binding site. Proteolytic digestions of the labeled enzyme and analysis of the resulting peptides indicated that both photoprobes cross-linked to one 24-amino acid peptide located between residues Val216 and Glu240. Four amino acids in this peptide were found to be highly conserved among closely related enzymes, and each of these was individually modified to alanine. Mutation of Gly222 to Ala in the peptide almost completely eliminated UDP-GlcNAc and UDP-GalNAc synthesis, while mutation of Gly224 to Ala, almost completely eliminated UDP-GalNAc synthesis, but UDP-GlcNAc was only diminished by 50%. Both of these mutations also resulted in almost complete loss of the ability of the mutated proteins to cross-link N3-UDP-[32P]GlcNAc or N3-UDP-[32P]GalNAc. On the other hand, mutations of either Pro220 or Tyr227 to Ala did not greatly affect enzymatic activity, although there was some reduction in the ability of these proteins to cross-link the photoaffinity probes. We also mutated Gly111 to Ala since this amino acid was reported to be necessary for catalysis (Mio, T., Yabe, T., Arisawa, M., and Yamada-Okabe, H. (1998) J. Biol. Chem. 273, 14392–14397). The Gly111 to Ala mutant lost all enzymatic activity, but interestingly enough, this mutant protein still cross-linked the radioactive N3-UDP-GlcNAc although not nearly as well as the wild type. On the other hand, mutation of Arg115 to Ala had no affect on enzymatic activity although it also reduced the amount of cross-linking of N3-UDP-[32P]GlcNAc. These studies help to define essential amino acids at or near the nucleotide-binding site and the catalytic site, as well as peptides involved in binding and catalysis.
Determinants of the Wage Share: A Panel Analysis of Advanced and Developing Economies

Wage shares have declined substantially in all OECD countries and most developing economies since 1980. This study uses a new ILO/IILS dataset on adjusted wage shares for a panel of up to 43 developing and 28 advanced economies (1970–2007) to explain changes in wage shares and assess the relative contributions of technological change, financialization, globalization and welfare state retrenchment. We find strong negative effects of financialization as well as negative effects of welfare state retrenchment. Globalization has (in production) robust negative effects in advanced as well as in developing economies, which is at odds with the Stolper–Samuelson theorem. We find small, and for developing countries positive effects of technological change. Our results support a Political Economy approach to explaining income distribution.
Low‐volume resistance exercise attenuates the decline in strength and muscle mass associated with immobilization

We determined the effectiveness of low‐volume resistance exercise (EX) for the attenuation of loss of muscle mass and strength during leg immobilization. Men (N = 5) and women (N = 12, age 24 ± 5 years, body mass index 25.4 ± 3.6 kg/m2) were divided into two groups: exercise (EX; n = 12) and control (CON; n = 5). Subjects wore a knee brace on one leg that prevented weight bearing for 14 days. Resistance exercise (EX; 80% of maximal) was performed by the immobilized limb every other day. Immobilization induced a significant reduction (P < 0.05) in muscle fiber and thigh cross‐sectional area (CSA), isometric knee extensor, and plantarflexor strength in the CON (P < 0.01) but not in the EX group. There were significant losses in triceps surae CSA in the CON and EX groups (P < 0.05), but the losses were greater in CON subjects (P < 0.01). A minimal volume (140 contractions in 14 days) of resistive exercise is an effective countermeasure against immobilization‐induced atrophy of the quadriceps femoris but is only partially effective for the triceps surae. Muscle Nerve, 2010
Quality driven Web services selection

The process-driven composition of Web services is emerging as a promising approach to the integration of business applications within and across organizational boundaries. To support rapid and dynamic composition of services, Web services that meet users' functional requirements must be able to be located and bounded dynamically from a large and constantly changing number of service providers based on their quality of service (Qos). In order to enable quality-driven Web service selection, it is necessary to make a rational and effective decision among a number of similar Web services based on Qos criteria and users' preference. In this paper, we present a decision model of Qos criteria called DQos for evaluating Web services, which consists of an extensible Qos model, decision modes and constraints. On basis of systematic studying Qos criteria of Web service, service selection is formulated as multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problem which can be solved by using subjective weight mode, single weight mode, objective weight mode and subjective-objective weight mode. At last, DQos model is proved to be feasible and effective by simulation experiments
Board Independence and Product Market Competition in Swedish Firms

This study suggests that firms in highly competitive industries should have fewer outside board members, whereas companies operating in less competitive industries should have more outside directors. Specifically, we argue that board independence is less relevant or even redundant in highly competitive industries, where the firm is already "monitored" by a competitive product market. Using publicly traded Swedish firms for empirical testing, this study finds that board independence reduces firm performance in industries with highly competitive product markets. On the other hand, board independence enhances firm performance among companies facing less competitive product markets. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004.
“Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.0”: Political Pluralization in the Chinese Policy Process*

Abstract Traditional analyses of political liberalization in China focus on elections or other facets of democratization. But they cannot account for the fact that although China remains authoritarian, it is nevertheless responsive to the increasingly diverse demands of Chinese society. I argue that the rules of the policy-making process are still captured by the fragmented authoritarianism framework, but that the process has become increasingly pluralized: barriers to entry have been lowered, at least for certain actors (hitherto peripheral officials, non-governmental organizations and the media) identified here as “policy entrepreneurs. ” With policy change as the variable of interest, I compare three cases of hydropower policy outcomes. I argue that policy entrepreneurs' ability to frame the issue effectively explains variation in hydropower policy outcomes. I then extend these findings to an unlikely policy area, international trade, specifically, the 2001–06 Sino-EU trade talks over child-resistant lighter safety regulations.
M1, M2, and the U.S. Equity Exchanges

We study the relative positions of M1 and M2 in light of their relationships with four U. S. equity exchanges: S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial, Nasdaq, and Wilshire 5000 composite. It is demonstrated that a long-term equilibrium relationship does indeed exist. Short-run dynamics are also considered and are found to be temporary departures from the long-run equilibrium. Based on a model, which yields robust estimated results and is thus considered well behaved, the direction of causality is established. The model is then put further to test to check the predictive power of the M1 and M2 money aggregates. Based on a set of in- and out-of-sample forecast experiments, the results overwhelmingly indicate that M2 is a better predictive measure and hence a superior indicator than M1. The policy implications of these findings in light of the post financial crisis and the November 2010 US Fed “quantitative easing” policies are discussed.
The effect of charter status on savings and loan resolution costs

Beginning in 1933, with the establishment of the first federally chartered savings and loan, the thrift industry has functioned under a dual regulatory system. This paper addresses the question of whether this moral hazard, created by regulatory competition, increased the resolution costs of state chartered institutions relative to the federally chartered thrifts. Resolution costs are those expended by the Resolution Trust Company (RTC) to handle a defunct thrift. This study shows, using a variety of methods and statistical tests, that the charter orientation of a defunct savings and loan had a significant effect on the resolution costs associated with the handling of the thrift by the RTC. Therefore, it can be stated that this dual regulation of the savings and loan industry created a moral hazard in which there were incentives for regulators to provide broader investment powers and less strict regulation to attract thrifts. Because state regulators tended to provide less strict regulations, the resolution costs for defunct state chartered savings and loans were larger than for their federally chartered counterparts.