Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potent Antioxidant and Genoprotective Effects of Boeravinone G, a Rotenoid Isolated from Boerhaavia diffusa

Background and Aims Free radicals are implicated in the aetiology of some gastrointestinal disorders such as gastric ulcer, colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. In the present study we investigated the antioxidant and genoprotective activity of some rotenoids (i.e. boeravinones) isolated from the roots of Boerhaavia diffusa, a plant used in the Ayurvedic medicine for the treatment of diseases affecting the gastrointestinal tract. Methods/Principal Findings Antioxidant activity has been evaluated using both chemical (Electron Spin Resonance spectroscopy, ESR) and Caco-2 cells-based (TBARS and ROS) assays. DNA damage was evaluated by Comet assay, while pERK1/2 and phospho-NF-kB p65 levels were estimated by western blot. Boeravinones G, D and H significantly reduced the signal intensity of ESR induced by hydroxyl radicals, suggesting a scavenging activity. Among rotenoids tested, boeravinone G exerted the most potent effect. Boeravinone G inhibited both TBARS and ROS formation induced by Fenton's reagent, increased SOD activity and reduced H2O2-induced DNA damage. Finally, boeravinone G reduced the levels of pERK1 and phospho-NF-kB p65 (but not of pERK2) increased by Fenton's reagent. Conclusions It is concluded that boeravinone G exhibits an extraordinary potent antioxidant activity (significant effect in the nanomolar range). The MAP kinase and NF-kB pathways seem to be involved in the antioxidant effect of boeravinone G. Boeravinone G might be considered as lead compound for the development of drugs potentially useful against those pathologies whose aetiology is related to ROS-mediated injuries.
Factors affecting the performance of construction projects in the Gaza Strip

Abstract Construction projects located in the Gaza Strip, Palestine suffer from many problems and complex issues. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to identify the factors affecting the performance of local construction projects; and to elicit perceptions of their relative importance. A comprehensive literature review was deployed to generate a set of factors believed to affect project performance. A total of 120 questionnaires were distributed to 3 key groups of project participants; namely owners, consultants and contractors. The survey findings indicate that all 3 groups agree that the most important factors affecting project performance are: delays because of borders/roads closure leading to materials shortage; unavailability of resources; low level of project leadership skills; escalation of material prices; unavailability of highly experienced and qualified personnel; and poor quality of available equipment and raw materials. Based on these findings, the paper recommends that: 1) project .
Analysis of the Relationship Between Industry Concentration and GDPGrowth: China’s Property Insurance Industry

This paper examines the impact of the concentration of the property insurance industry on economic growth in China. We first compute the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for the Chinese property insurance industry and establish a two-step system of generalized methods of moments (Two-Step SYS-GMM) estimation to compute the economic effect using a unique data set from the years 1980 to 2014. The results show that while industry concentration appears to have decelerated in recent years, the property insurance market in China is still a comparatively oligopolistic market. Moreover, the HHI has a significantly negative impact on gross domestic product, and lowering the HHI could lead to higher eco- nomic growth.
Dynamic right-sizing in FTP (drsFTP): Enhancing Grid performance in user-space

With the advent of computational grids, networking performance over the wide-area network (WAN) has become a critical component in the grid infrastructure. Unfortunately, many high-performance grid applications only use a small fraction of the available bandwidth because operating systems and their associated protocol stacks are still tuned for yesterdays WAN speeds. As a result, network gurus undertake the tedious process of manually, tuning system buffers to allow TCP flow control to scale to today's WAN grid environments. Although recent research has shown how to set the size of these system buffers automatically at connection set-up, the buffer sizes are only appropriate at the beginning of the connection's lifetime. To address these problems, we describe an automated and scalable technique called dynamic right-sizing. We implement this technique in user space (in particular for bulk-data transfer) so that end users do not have to modify the kernel to achieve a significant increase in throughput.
Specification of content-dependent security policies

The protection of information from unauthorized disclosure is an important consideration for the designers of any large multiuser computer system. A general purpose database management system often requires the enforcement of content-dependent security policies in which a decision to allow access must be based on the value of the data itself. Several authors ([Har76], [Sto76], [Gri76], [Sum77], [Min78], [Spo83], and others) have proposed mechanisms for implementing content-dependent security policies. Few authors, however, have investigated the properties of models for the specification of such policies. This paper identifies several problems created by inadequate models for the specification of content-dependent security policies. If a specification model is too liberal in the types of policies it can express, it may provide an increased opportunity for compromise of data. If the specification model is too conservative, it cannot express many desirable policies. Thus a flexible model which will allow a compromise between these two extremes is needed for specifying content-dependent policies. Such a model is proposed here.
Perceptual quality and modeling accuracy of excitation parameters in DLSTM-based speech synthesis systems

This paper investigates how the perceptual quality of the synthesized speech is affected by reconstruction errors in excitation signals generated by a deep learning-based statistical model. In this framework, the excitation signal obtained by an LPC inverse filter is first decomposed into harmonic and noise components using an improved time-frequency trajectory excitation (ITFTE) scheme, then they are trained and generated by a deep long short-term memory (DLSTM)-based speech synthesis system. By controlling the parametric dimension of the ITFTE vocoder, we analyze the impact of the harmonic and noise components to the perceptual quality of the synthesized speech. Both objective and subjective experimental results confirm that the maximum perceptually allowable spectral distortion for the harmonic spectrum of the generated excitation is ∼0.08 dB. On the other hand, the absolute spectral distortion in the noise components is meaningless, and only the spectral envelope is relevant to the perceptual quality.
Foundations for a post‐modern curriculum

Where classical science used to emphasize permanence, we now find change and evolution; we no longer see in the skies the trajectories that filled Kant's heart with the same admiration as the moral law. We now see strange objects: quasars, pulsars, galaxies exploding and being torn apart, stars that, we are told, collapse into ‘black holes’, irreversibly devouring everything they manage to ensnare. (Prigogine and Stengers 1984: 214‐215)
Crystal structure of aquatris{μ-N-[bis(diethylamino)phosphoryl]-2,2,2-trichloroacetamidato-κ3 O,O′:O}calciumsodium

In the title compound, three ligands are coordinated to the Ca2+ ion in a bidentate-chelated manner via the O atoms of the CO and PO groups. The sodium ion is encapsulated between three chelated metallacycles {CaL}(where L − = Cl3CC(O)NP(O)[N(C2H5)2]2) due to the bridging function of the carbonyl O atoms and it is capped by the water molecule.
A Day Without Immigrants

This article considers the debates surrounding the “Day Without Immigrants” protests organized in major U.S. cities on 1 May 2006, prompted by H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, from the multiple perspectives of scholars, pundits, policy makers, and participants. Although much of these debates ostensibly centered around illegal Latino/a immigration to the United States, underneath the discussion ran a curious ideological thread, one that invoked groups’ right to be in the United States in the first place. The article argues that the rhetoric used in these discourses pitted various class-based ethnoracial groups against each other not so much to tackle the proposed immigration bill but, rather, to comment on the ramifications of an increasingly multiracial United States.
Evaluating Clustering in Subspace Projections of High Dimensional Data

Clustering high dimensional data is an emerging research field. Subspace clustering or projected clustering group similar objects in subspaces, i.e. projections, of the full space. In the past decade, several clustering paradigms have been developed in parallel, without thorough evaluation and comparison between these paradigms on a common basis. Conclusive evaluation and comparison is challenged by three major issues. First, there is no ground truth that describes the "true" clusters in real world data. Second, a large variety of evaluation measures have been used that reflect different aspects of the clustering result. Finally, in typical publications authors have limited their analysis to their favored paradigm only, while paying other paradigms little or no attention. In this paper, we take a systematic approach to evaluate the major paradigms in a common framework. We study representative clustering algorithms to characterize the different aspects of each paradigm and give a detailed comparison of their properties. We provide a benchmark set of results on a large variety of real world and synthetic data sets. Using different evaluation measures, we broaden the scope of the experimental analysis and create a common baseline for future developments and comparable evaluations in the field. For repeatability, all implementations, data sets and evaluation measures are available on our website.
Climate Policy and Growth Uncertainty : Dicing with DICE 1

Integrated assessments of climate change commonly rely on the assumption that technological progress outgrows climate change damages by an order of magnitude, even without any climate policy. Then, mitigating greenhouse gases is a redistribution from the poor present to a rich future. The optimal climate policy is highly sensitive to these growth assumptions. While the world economy experienced enormous growth over the last century, it remains uncertain whether such growth can be sustained over several more centuries. We incorporate growth uncertainty into an integrated assessment model that was recently employed to determine the US federal social cost of carbon. We derive optimal carbon taxes and mitigation rates in a stochastic dynamic programming framework, solving the non-linear, out-of-steady state problem. This approach differs largely from the Monte-Carlo simulations that are current state of the art in the integrated assessment of climate change. The standard intertemporally additive expected utility model falls short of simultaneously capturing risk premia and risk-free discount rates (equity premium puzzle, risk-free rate puzzle). The finance literature shows that fully rational Epstein-Zin-Weil preferences, which disentangle risk aversion from the propensity to smooth consumption over time, resolves these shortcomings. We derive optimal climate policy under standard preferences and under comprehensive Epstein-Zin-Weil preferences analyzing how these policies respond to long-term growth risk. Our findings suggest that growth uncertainty can change today’s optimal social cost of carbon by up to 23 %, and that risk aversion is a major determinant of optimal climate policy. Moreover, the sign of the risk effect switches with changes in the propensity to smooth consumption. We explain this effect analytically in terms of prudence and pessimism effects. JEL Codes: Q54, Q00, D90, D8, C63
Cloning and Initial Characterization of a Human Phospholipase D2 (hPLD2)

Phospholipase D (PLD) has been implicated in a variety of cellular processes including vesicular transport, the respiratory burst, and mitogenesis. PLD1, first cloned from human, is activated by small GTPases such as ADP-ribosylation factor (ARF) and RhoA. Rodent PLD2, which is approximately 50% identical to PLD1 has recently been cloned from mouse embryo (Colley, W., Sung, T., Roll, R., Jenco, J., Hammond, S., Altshuller, Y., Bar-Sagi, D., Morris, A., and Frohman, M. (1997) Curr. Biol. 7, 191–201) and rat brain (Kodaki, T., and Yamashita, S. (1997) J. Biol. Chem. 272, 11408–11413). We describe herein the cloning from a B cell library and expression of human PLD2 (hPLD2). The open reading frame is predicted to encode a 933-amino acid protein (M r of 105,995); this corresponds to the size of the protein expressed in insect cells using recombinant baculovirus. The deduced amino acid sequence shows 53 and 90% identity to hPLD1 and rodent PLD2, respectively. The mRNA for PLD2 was widely distributed in various tissues including peripheral blood leukocytes, and the distribution was distinctly different from that of hPLD1. hPLD1 and hPLD2 both showed a requirement for phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate. Both isoforms showed optimal activity at 10–20 mol % phosphatidylcholine in a mixed lipid vesicle system and showed comparable basal activities in the presence of phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate. Unexpectedly, ARF-1 stimulated the activity of hPLD2 expressed in insect cells about 2-fold, compared with a 20-fold stimulation of hPLD1 activity. Thus, not only PLD1 but also hPLD2 activity can be positively regulated by both phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate and ARF.
Sense of coherence and health – does the association depend on resistance resources? A study of 3115 adults in Finland

Abstract Studies have revealed an association between a strong sense of coherence (SOC) and good subjective health. The aim of the study referred to here was to determine whether this association persisted when adjusted for level of central resistance resources. Dam relating to 3115 individuals was based on responses to a questionnaire study in a random sample of 4517 Finns 15 to 64 years of age. The statistical method used was logistic regression modelling. A strong SOC and a good subjective state of health were associated in both women and men. The association was still present when adjusted for age and level of three central resistance resources (socio-economic status, social integration, and realized opportunities for activities during leisure time). Strong SOC could be interpreted as representing an autonomous personal resource capable of contributing directly to subjective health. This effect is probably mediated by reducing the need for other resources.
A novel compact compliant actuator design for rehabilitation robots

Rehabilitation robots have direct physical interaction with human body. Ideally, actuators for rehabilitation robots should be compliant, force controllable, and back drivable due to safety and control considerations. Various designs of Series Elastic Actuators (SEA) have been developed for these applications. However, current SEA designs face a common performance limitation due to the compromise on the spring stiffness selection. This paper presents a novel compact compliant force control actuator design for portable rehabilitation robots to overcome the performance limitations in current SEAs. Our design consists of a servomotor, a ball screw, a torsional spring between the motor and the ball screw, and a set of translational springs between the ball screw nut and the external load. The soft translational springs are used to handle the low force operation and reduce output impedance, stiction, and external shock load. The torsional spring, being in the high speed range, has high effective stiffness and improves the system bandwidth in large force operation when the translational springs are fully compressed. This design is also more compact due to the smaller size of the springs. We explain the construction and the working principle of our new design, followed by the dynamic modeling and analysis of the actuator. We also show the preliminary testing results of a prototype actuator designed for a lower limb exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation.
Challenges in implementing a mother tongue-based language- in-education policy: Policy and practice in Kenya.

This paper is an examination of the challenges faced in implementing Kenya’s language-ineducation policy, which advocates mother tongue-based learning. This policy has the potential to make primary education contextually located and locally accessible, particularly to ethnic minorities and marginalised groups, improving the reach and quality of education. It is however not widely practiced. Using a literature review, ethnographic studies, research findings and interviews with linguists and sociologists, this paper argues for greater resource allocation, political will and clearer policy objectives to achieve the aims of an effective mother tongue-based education system in Kenya.
Use of microsatellite loci to classify individuals by relatedness

This study investigates the use of microsatellite loci for estimating relatedness between individuals in wild, outbred, vertebrate populations. We measured allele frequencies at 20 unlinked, dinucleotide‐repeat microsatellite loci in a population of wild mice (Mus musculus), and used these observed frequencies to generate the expected distributions of pairwise relatedness among full sib, half sib, and unrelated pairs of individuals, as would be estimated from the microsatellite data. In this population one should be able to discriminate between unrelated and full‐sib dyads with at least 97% accuracy, and to discriminate half‐sib pairs from unrelated pairs or from full‐sib pairs with better than 80% accuracy. If one uses the criterion that parent‐offspring pairs must share at least one allele per locus, then only 15% of full‐sib pairs, 2% of half‐sib pairs, and 0% of unrelated pairs in this population would qualify as potential parent‐offspring pairs. We verified that the simulation results (which assume a random mating population in Hardy‐Weinberg and linkage equilibrium) accurately predict results one would obtain from this population in real life by scoring laboratory‐bred full‐ and half‐sib families whose parents were wild‐caught mice from the study population. We also investigated the effects of using different numbers of loci, or loci of different average heterozygosities (He), on misclassification frequencies. Both variables have strong effects on misclassification rate. For example, it requires almost twice as many loci of He= 0.62 to achieve the same accuracy as a given number of loci of He= 0.75. Finally, we tested the ability of UPGMA clustering to identify family groups in our population. Clustering of allele matching scores among the offspring of four sets of independent maternal half sibships (four females, each mated to two different males) perfectly recovered the true family relationships.
Another proposal for a concurrency control level in concurrent object-oriented languages

One of the most important features in Object-Oriented Programming is the concept of class. The class encompasses the behavior of any object which belongs to it. For this reason, the class is said to be at a meta-level compared to that of the objects. The creation of an object as well as the copy are some examples of what a class is able to perform.
MicroRNA Editing Facilitates Immune Elimination of HCMV Infected Cells

The human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is extremely prevalent in the human population. Infection by HCMV is life threatening in immune compromised individuals and in immune competent individuals it can cause severe birth defects, developmental retardation and is even associated with tumor development. While numerous mechanisms were developed by HCMV to interfere with immune cell activity, much less is known about cellular mechanisms that operate in response to HCMV infection. Here we demonstrate that in response to HCMV infection, the expression of the short form of the RNA editing enzyme ADAR1 (ADAR1-p110) is induced. We identified the specific promoter region responsible for this induction and we show that ADAR1-p110 can edit miR-376a. Accordingly, we demonstrate that the levels of the edited-miR-376a (miR-376a(e)) increase during HCMV infection. Importantly, we show that miR-376a(e) downregulates the immune modulating molecule HLA-E and that this consequently renders HCMV infected cells susceptible to elimination by NK cells.
Effect of different training modes on ground reaction forces during robot assisted floor walking and stair climbing

The HapticWalker is a robotic walking simulator for neurological gait rehabilitation. The device is based on the end-effector principle, i.e. the patients' feet are fixed on two footplates, his trunk is secured via a suspension harness. The footplates (end-effectors) of the robot guide the feet of the patient on freely programmable trajectories. Currently two different training modes are provided for each foot trajectory on the HapticWalker. Firstly training trajectories based on real motion capture data can be used. Secondly the vertical center of mass (CoM) motion can be incorporated into the foot trajectory. The latter method leaves the absolute position of the CoM constant, while the relative movement between CoM and feet remains the same as in free walking. Thereby the vertical CoM motion can be actively supported by using a fixed passive suspension, any type of controlled body weight support will then be accomplished via force controlled footplates. To characterize the training on the machine in position controlled mode, muscle activities as well as ground reaction force data of healthy subjects were collected. This article presents preliminary results from the investigation of ground reaction force data of healthy subjects. Therefore data of 10 healthy subjects was used to compare HapticWalker training modes vs. free walking on level ground and upstairs without any assistive devices and the aforementioned two HapticWalker training modes against each other. Amplitude and timing of force peaks during heel strike, foot flat and push off in vertical ground reaction forces were used for the assessment. In spite of a footplate, which does not provide a separate metatarsal joint for relative motion between fore and hind foot, during heel strike and push off the known characteristic peaks at the beginning and the end of the stance phase can be clearly distinguished. Though compared to free walking a slower and premature rise and slower decline of ground reaction forces can be seen due to the stiff guidance of the feet in position controlled mode. No significant differences appeared between the two described HapticWalker training modes.