Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anti-Bovine Rhodopsin Monoclonal Antibody Recognizing Light-Dependent Structural Change

Abstract The antigenic structure of the bovine rhodopsin molecule was investigated by using a bovine rhodopsin-specific monoclonal antibody designated Rh29. Competition assay with sealed intact disks and broken disks indicated that the antibody-binding region was localized in the intradiscal surface. An antigenic peptide obtained by a cyanogene bromide cleavage of rhodopsin was purified and determined as residues 2–39 in the amino acid sequence. Further analysis suggested that the antigenic determinant included at least residues 21–25. These results were consistent with the structural model for membrane topology of rhodopsin. The antigenicity of the rhodopsin was compared among several states. The antibody bound to both ammonyx LO-solubilized unbleached and bleached rhodopsin. In contrast, upon membrane-embedded rhodopsin, unbleached one was 100-times less antigenic than bleached one. The results suggested that the segment around the determinant of membrane-embedded rhodopsin should undergo a structural change upon absorption of light. Rh29 detected a band corresponding to bovine, porcine and octopus opsins in immunoblotting. Protein blot of crayfish rhabdome did not show any reactive band. These bands except for crayfish reacted with concanavalin A as well. The N-terminal structure may, therefore, conserved between mammal and erthropoda and diverge between them and cepharopoda.
A Native Threonine Coordinates Ordered Water to Tune Light-Oxygen-Voltage (LOV) Domain Photocycle Kinetics and Osmotic Stress Signaling in Trichoderma reesei ENVOY*

Light-oxygen-voltage (LOV) domain-containing proteins function as small light-activated modules capable of imparting blue light control of biological processes. Their small modular nature has made them model proteins for allosteric signal transduction and optogenetic devices. Despite intense research, key aspects of their signal transduction mechanisms and photochemistry remain poorly understood. In particular, ordered water has been identified as a possible key mediator of photocycle kinetics, despite the lack of ordered water in the LOV active site. Herein, we use recent crystal structures of a fungal LOV protein ENVOY to interrogate the role of Thr101 in recruiting water to the flavin active site where it can function as an intrinsic base to accelerate photocycle kinetics. Kinetic and molecular dynamic simulations confirm a role in solvent recruitment to the active site and identify structural changes that correlate with solvent recruitment. In vivo analysis of T101I indicates a direct role of the Thr101 position in mediating adaptation to osmotic stress, thereby verifying biological relevance of ordered water in LOV signaling. The combined studies identify position 101 as a mediator of both allostery and photocycle catalysis that can impact organism physiology.
CELLULAR EXPRESSION OF RENAL, CARDIAC AND PULMONARY INDUCIBLE NITRIC OXIDE SYNTHASE IN DOUBLE‐TRANSGENIC MICE EXPRESSING HUMAN RENIN AND ANGIOTENSINOGEN GENES

1 Hypertensive mice expressing the human renin (REN) and angiotensinogen (AGT) genes are used as a model for human hypertension. 2 The aim of the present study was to investigate the cellular expression and distribution of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) using immunohistochemistry in lung, heart and kidney tissues from a model of human hypertension using male and female double‐transgenic (h‐Ang 204/1h‐Ren6) mice and wild‐type C57/BI6J mice as controls. 3 In the kidney, the pattern of iNOS expression in various renal microanatomical regions during hypertension was similar to that of age‐matched controls, except in the medullary ascending limb (MAL). In hypertension, iNOS expression was downregulated in the MAL. No significant differences in iNOS expression were seen between control or hypertensive mice in various cardiac microanatomical locations. In the lungs of hypertensive mice, iNOS expression was upregulated in bronchial airway epithelium and bronchial and vascular smooth muscle cells, but downregulated in alveolar macrophages, alveolar septa and pulmonary vascular endothelial cells. Expression of iNOS was similar between male and female mice in the kidney, heart and lungs. 4 In conclusion, iNOS regulation in hypertension is complex and depends on the cell type in which it is expressed and the localization of the cell type in the cardiorenal and pulmonary systems.
MICE: Multi-Layer Multi-Model Images Classifier Ensemble

In this paper, a new type of fast deep learning (DL) network for handwriting recognition is proposed. In contrast to the existing DL networks, the proposed approach has a clearly interpretable structure that is entirely data- driven and free from user- or problem-specific assumptions. Firstly, the fundamental image transformation techniques (rotation and scaling) used by other existing DL methods are used to improve the generalization. The commonly used descriptors are then used to extract the global features from the training set and based on them a bank/ensemble of zero order AnYa type fuzzy rule-based (FRB) models is built in parallel through the recently introduced Autonomous Learning Multiple Model (ALMMo) method. The final decision about the winning class label is made by a committee on the basis of the fuzzy mixture of the trained zero order ALMMo models. The training of the proposed MICE system is very efficient and highly parallelizable. It significantly outperforms the best-known methods in terms of time and is on par in terms of precision/accuracy. Critically, it offers a high level of interpretability, transparency of the classification model, full repeatability (unlike the methods that use probabilistic elements) of the results. Moreover, it allows an evolving scenario whereby the data is provided in an incremental, online manner and the system structure evolves in parallel with the classification which opens opportunities for online and real-time applications (on a sample by sample basis). Numerical examples from the well-known handwritten digits recognition problem (MNIST) were used and the results demonstrated the very high repeatable performance after a very short training process exhibiting high level of interpretability, transparency.
Gender and age differences in pain, coping and health status among children with chronic arthritis.

OBJECTIVE To investigate pain, coping and health status in children with chronic arthritis. Additional aims were to explore gender variations in pain, coping and health status, and the same factors in children under 16 years versus children 16 years or older. METHODS For 125 children (43 boys) with a median age of 14.1 years (range 10.3-17.8) disability and discomfort were assessed (Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire, CHAQ). Pain, coping, fatigue, sleeping and satisfaction with life were evaluated (Visual Analogue Scales). The Pain Intensity Scale was used to assess the variation in pain intensity during one week. RESULTS The CHAQ disability index (DI) was 0.63. In the total sample, girls had larger numbers of affected joints in upper extremities (p = 0.028) and more days with morning pain (p = 0.025) than boys. Boys reported greater perceived ability to reduce pain than girls (p = 0.020). Compliance with treatment was more frequent in girls than in boys (p = 0.029). In children 16 years of age and older, boys reported greater perceived ability to control pain (p = 0.032) and to reduce pain than girls (p = 0.001) and fewer days with worst pain in the mornings (p = 0.013), as well as less pain variations over the period of a day (p = 0.014) and over a period of a week (p = 0.035). CONCLUSIONS As a group, the children were clearly affected by their arthritis. Pain was related to the severity of disease. Some significant gender and age differences were highlighted, which should be considered in clinical pain management.
Direct imaging of extra-solar planets in star forming regions - Lessons learned from a false positive around IM Lupi

Context. Most exoplanet imagers consist of ground-based adaptive optics coronagraphic cameras which are currently limited in contrast, sensitivity and astrometric precision, but advantageously observe in the near-infrared window (1–5 μm). Because of these practical limitations, our current observational aim at detecting and characterizing planets puts heavy constraints on target selection, observing strategies, data reduction, and follow-up. Most surveys so far have thus targeted young systems (1–100 Myr) to catch the putative remnant thermal radiation of giant planets, which peaks in the near-infrared. They also favor systems in the solar neighborhood (d < 80 pc), which eases angular resolution requirements but also ensures a good knowledge of the distance and proper motion, which are critical to secure the planet status, and enable subsequent characterization. Aims. Because of their youth, it is very tempting to target the nearby star forming regions, which are typically twice as far as the bulk of objects usually combed for planets by direct imaging. Probing these interesting reservoirs sets additional constraints that we review in this paper by presenting the planet search that we initiated in 2008 around the disk-bearing T Tauri star IM Lup, which is part of the Lupus star forming region (140–190 pc). Methods. We show and discuss why age determination, the choice of evolutionary model for both the central star and the planet, precise knowledge of the host star proper motion, relative or absolute (between different instruments) astrometric accuracy (including plate scale calibration), and patience are the key ingredients for exoplanet searches around more distant young stars. Results. Unfortunately, most of the time, precision and perseverance are not paying off: we discovered a candidate companion around IM Lup in 2008, which we report here to be an unbound background object. We nevertheless review in details the lessons learned from our endeavor, and additionally present the best detection limits ever calculated for IM Lup. We also accessorily report on the successful use of innovative data reduction techniques, such as the damped-LOCI and iterative roll subtraction.
Capacitor Voltage Balance for the Neutral-Point- Clamped Converter using the Virtual Space Vector Concept With Optimized Spectral Performance

This paper presents a new pulsewidth modulation (PWM) for the complete control of the neutral-point voltage in the three-level three-phase neutral-point-clamped (NPC) direct current-alternating current (dc-ac) converter. The balancing of the neutral-point voltage is achieved over the full range of converter output voltages and for all load power factors with the minimum output voltage distortion at around the switching frequency. The simple phase duty-ratio expressions in d-q-0 coordinates that define this modulation are presented. The performance of this modulation approach and its benefits over other previously proposed solutions are verified through simulation and experiments.
Resource Misallocation and Regional Policy in China

The research presents a monopolistic competition model withheterogeneous firms to measure resource misallocation across regions andsectors in China. This paper investigates the role of a reduction of the corporateincome tax rate and value-added tax reform on productivity and resourcemisallocation. Micro-data from Chinese manufacturing enterprises in 1998-2007are used. The results show that overall resource misallocation increased after2000. Resource misallocation increased faster in the Northeast and Southwestregions, where preferential policies were applied. Moreover, physical andrevenue productivity were promoted by the reduction of corporate income taxand value-added tax reform. The results show that the reduction of the corporateincome tax intensifies resource misallocation. However, the value-added taxreform has no effect on resource misallocation
Exploring the Effect of Search Engine Personalization on Politically Biased Search Results

The internet has become a widespread tool for people to find political information. As a result of this, the neutrality of the results shown by search engines has been of increasing concern for the democratic ways of many countries. With the introduction of personalized search results, the so-called ‘’filter bubble effect’’ could result in users potentially getting results which only portrays one political side. We have used the results from 89 students who filled out our survey. We have found out that on Google’s search engine, more than 25% the participants had search results which were to some extent politically biased. However, no clear connection was found between personalization and politically biased results. Moreover, we discovered that DuckDuckGo isn’t as reliable as previously thought. DuckDuckGo states that if multiple users type in the same query, they should get the same results. Furthermore, DuckDuckGo should be clear of any political biases due to the fact that is provides results based on the semantics of a query and it doesn’t collect any data of the user. Nonetheless, over 67% of the results, for one of our queries used in the survey, turned out be politically biased. One should be well aware of the potential biases it may encounter in search engines, as the biases are not only existent in personalized search engines, they may also well be found in search engines which don’t personalize their results.
Comparing Asset Pricing Models with Traded and Macro Risk Factors

I compare the explanatory power of equity multifactor models (where all the factors are excess returns) against ICAPM/macro models. I use a large cross-section of stocks and introduce a new cross-sectional R^2, based on the restriction that the risk price estimates are equal to the corresponding factor means. The equity factor models do not outperform significantly the ICAPM (and in some cases, the CAPM) in terms of explaining the broad cross-section of stock returns. This is especially true when the anomalies are not trivially related to the factors. This suggests that the performance of several multifactor models is probably overstated.
Cross-sex hormone use, functional health and mental well-being among transgender men (Toms) and Transgender Women (Kathoeys) in Thailand

There exists limited understanding of cross-sex hormone use and mental well-being among transgender women and, particularly, among transgender men. Moreover, most studies of transgender people have taken place in the Global North and often in the context of HIV. This exploratory study compared 60 transgender men (toms) with 60 transgender women (kathoeys) regarding their use of cross-sex hormones, mental well-being and acceptance by their family. Participants also completed a dispositional optimism scale (the Life Orientation Test Revised), the Social Functioning Questionnaire and the Short Form Health Survey 36 assessing their profile of functional health and mental well-being. Cross-sex hormones were used by 35% of toms and 73% of kathoeys and were largely unsupervised by health-related personnel. There were no differences in functional health and mental well-being among toms and kathoeys. However, toms currently using cross-sex hormones scored on average poorer on bodily pain and mental health, compared to non-users. Furthermore, compared to non-users, cross-sex hormone users were about eight times and five times more likely to be associated with poor parental acceptance among toms and kathoeys, respectively. This study was the first to compare cross-sex hormone use, functional health and mental well-being among transgender women and transgender men in Southeast Asia.
Channel gain and frame error rate for optical street lighting communication

Visible light communications (VLC) could be used for public street lighting. The paper consists of two parts. A simulation model for direct current (DC) gain analysis with suitable improvements of channel gain and a first trial experiment are elaborated to find possible link configurations for dimming VLC in street lighting. The diffused channel gain is simulated to determine the non-directed optical power loss for a given photo diode. As a result neighbouring receivers detect -72.65 dBm optical power according to the DIN EN 13201 norm and using one BPW34 photo diode. The frame error rate (FER) is measured at different distances and received dimming levels for noncoherent dimming frequency shift On-Off keying (DFSOOK) and UART interface to evaluate the high loss. The FER has a minimum at 50% duty cycle. More effort in transceiver design is required, than in the current configuration, to guarantee a certain dimming range and low FER for street lighting.
A solution to improvement of DS-UWB system in the wireless home entertainment network

Until recently, consumer electronics devices, PCs, and peripherals in home have been primarily confined to the links that allow consumers to access them with wired connections. Furthermore, there are increasing demands for wireless home entertainment network. In order to satisfy consumers' demands for wireless home entertainment network in order to support low cost, reliable and wireless connections, we propose DS-UWB system using STBC with rake receiver capable of resolving multipath components. The significant improvement is achieved in the proposed system. This paper evaluates the performance of the proposed system and examines the algorithms for improving reliability and performance of the proposed system.
Data Loss and Reconstruction for Wireless Environmental Sensor Networks

Environmental Sensor Networks (ESNs) in forests facilitate the study of fundamental processes, and the development of wireless communication makes ESNs into 'intelligent' sensor network, named as Wireless Environmental Sensor Networks (WESNs). However, data loss is prevalent in wireless transmission, which may result in incompletion of sensory datasets. Thus, if we want to achieve a satisfactory accuracy in a WESNs system, the task of recovering data from achieved sensory datasets is unavoidable. Previous works provide many approaches to solve the data missing problem. Compared with other methods, Compressing Sensing (CS) is powerful technique for estimating data, which can utilize a small fraction of data to reconstruct the entire dataset. In real forests, because of the complicated geographic conditions and deployment of sensors, sensory data will largely loss during the wireless transmission. Despite CS technique is a better choice, it cannot be directly applied for the data missing problem. In this paper, we will present a reliable WESNs system and a better approach based on CS to reconstruct sensory datasets.
Inhibition of Anti-IgM-induced Translocation of Protein Kinase C βI Inhibits ERK2 Activation and Increases Apoptosis*

Expression of the COOH-terminal residues 179–330 of the LSP1 protein in the LSP1+ B-cell line W10 increases anti-IgM- or ionomycin-induced apoptosis, suggesting that expression of this LSP1 truncate (B-LSP1) interferes with a Ca2+-dependent step in anti-IgM signaling. Here we show that inhibition of Ca2+-dependent conventional protein kinase C (cPKC) isoforms with Gö6976 increases anti-IgM-induced apoptosis of W10 cells and that expression of B-LSP1 inhibits translocation of PKCβI but not of PKCβII or PKCα to the plasma membrane. The increased anti-IgM-induced apoptosis is partially reversed by overexpression of PKCβI. This shows that the B-LSP1-mediated inhibition of PKCβI leads to increased anti-IgM-induced apoptosis. Expression of constitutively active PKCβI protein in W10 cells activates the mitogen-activated protein kinase ERK2, whereas expression of B-LSP1 inhibits anti-IgM-induced activation of ERK2, suggesting that anti-IgM-activated PKCβI is involved in the activation of ERK2 and that inhibition of ERK2 activation contributes to the increased anti-IgM-induced apoptosis. Pull-down assays show that LSP1 interacts with PKCβI but not with PKCβII or PKCα in W10 cell lysates, while in vitro LSP1 and B-LSP1 bind directly to PKCβI. Thus, B-LSP1 is a unique reagent that binds PKCβI and inhibits anti-IgM-induced PKCβI translocation, leading to inhibition of ERK2 activation and increased apoptosis.
Anaphase asymmetry and dynamic repositioning of the division plane during maize meiosis

ABSTRACT The success of an organism is contingent upon its ability to transmit genetic material through meiotic cell division. In plant meiosis I, the process begins in a large spherical cell without physical cues to guide the process. Yet, two microtubule-based structures, the spindle and phragmoplast, divide the chromosomes and the cell with extraordinary accuracy. Using a live-cell system and fluorescently labeled spindles and chromosomes, we found that the process self- corrects as meiosis proceeds. Metaphase spindles frequently initiate division off-center, and in these cases anaphase progression is asymmetric with the two masses of chromosomes traveling unequal distances on the spindle. The asymmetry is compensatory, such that the chromosomes on the side of the spindle that is farthest from the cell cortex travel a longer distance at a faster rate. The phragmoplast forms at an equidistant point between the telophase nuclei rather than at the original spindle mid-zone. This asymmetry in chromosome movement implies a structural difference between the two halves of a bipolar spindle and could allow meiotic cells to dynamically adapt to errors in metaphase and accurately divide the cell volume. Highlighted Article: Meiotic chromosomes are segregated asymmetrically in anaphase, and the phragmoplast dynamically adjusts its location to correct for metaphase spindle misplacement within the cell volume.
A novel space vector PWM for Z-source inverter

This paper presents a novel space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique for three phase Z-source inverter. The proposed modified SVPWM has an additional shoot-through state for boosting the dc link voltage of the inverter beside active and zero states. The shoot-through states are evenly assigned to each phase within zero state. So zero voltage period is diminished for generating a shoot-through time, and active states are unchanged. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the new features.
[Isolation and culture of mouse embryonic fibroblast].

OBJECTIVE To establish a stable culture system of mouse embryonic fibroblast(MEF). METHODS We isolated MEF from the embryos of BALB/c mouse and investigated the morphology, growth curve and cell cycle of MEF in vitro. The effects of the gestational age (days) of mouse embryos and the time of digestion on the isolation and culture of MEF were assessed. RESULTS The mouse embryo of 13.5 d is better than that of 10.5 d and 18.5 d on the isolation of MEF. MEF in vitro is a kind of adherent cell with good ability for proliferation in passage 3. In room temperature, the digestive time of 0.25% trypsin should be 3-5 min. CONCLUSION MEFs(P3) are quite suited to be a feeder layer of embryonic stem cells.
An Empirical Analysis of Individual Fishing Quota Market Trading

In the study, we investigate determinants of individual fishing quota (IFQ) lease price and transfer of permanent share in the General Category Scallop fishery of the Northeastern United States. A unique micro data set on individual IFQ transactions and related vessel-level fishing profit information for the six-year time period, fishing years 2010–2015, was used to estimate models of aggregate IFQ lease markets and individual transactions. We find that IFQ lease price is affected by the marginal profit of scallop fishing as well as macro-economic conditions. Results of the analysis also suggest that the price for IFQ asset transfers captures the capitalized profits in the fishery over time. Overall, IFQ market performance is in general agreement with economic theory.