Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
C509T and T869C polymorphisms of transforming growth factor &bgr;1 and the risk of IgA nephropathy: a meta‐analysis

Background IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is the most common primary glomerular disease. Transforming growth factor &bgr;1 (TGF&bgr;1) plays an important role in pathogenesis of IgAN. Associations between the polymorphisms of TGF&bgr;1 gene and the risk of IgAN remained inconsistent. A meta‐analysis was conducted to investigate the association between polymorphisms in the TGF&bgr;1 gene and IgAN susceptibility. Methods Databases including Pubmed, EMBASE, ISI, et al. were searched to find relevant studies. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to evaluate the strength of associations. Results Ten studies involving 1770 cases and 1953 controls were included. Significant association between C509T polymorphism and IgAN risk was observed (OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.12–1.81, P=0.0004; I2=0%) in Caucasians by the overdominant model (CT vs. CC + TT), but no significant association was found (P=0.200) in Asians by the dominant model (CC + CT vs. TT). Significant association between T869C polymorphism and IgAN susceptibility was found (OR 1.21, 95% CI 1.02–1.44, P=0.030) in overall populations by the dominant model (TT + TC vs. CC). Subgroup analysis found T allele of T869C polymorphism was associated with IgAN susceptibility in Caucasians (P=0.030), but not in Asians (P=0.290). Conclusion Both heterozygotes of C509T polymorphism and T allele of T869C polymorphism in TGF&bgr;1 were associated with the risk of IgAN in Caucasians, but not in Asians.
Beyond Adoption of Travel Technology: Its Application to Unplanned Travel Behaviors

ABSTRACT The ultimate goal of information distribution for a destination marketer is to stimulate travelers to make a purchase decision. Today, travel information can be obtained by travel technology, which enables travelers to exploit on-the-move information. Navigation services for travel technology are being more broadly used across the globe by providing a wide range of en route information. This study evaluates the effects of travel information disseminated by navigation services on unplanned behaviors during trips. The results of the study illustrate that travelers who use navigation during trips are more likely to be involved in unplanned activities and, hence, will have an increase in unplanned travel expenditures. Destination marketers can partner with travel technology providers to encourage better travel experiences for tourists and generate more travel revenues for the tourism industry.
Steindl's Contribution to the Theory of Industry Concentration

Over a period of some fifty years from the early 1940s until his death in 1993, Josef Steindl developed and expounded a theory of industry concentration. His analysis deals explicitly with differences in costs and demand among firms producing similar products. These differences lead to differences in firm growth, so that his analysis is dynamic. Thus, it provides a constructive alternative to the emphasis in the neoclassical mainstream on static equilibrium with identical firms. In the present paper, Steindl's analysis is subjected to a critical appraisal. Shortcomings of the analysis are noted, its links with other approaches to the theory of industry concentration are identified and directions for further development are indicated.
A Novel Memory-Based FFT Architecture for Real-Valued Signals Based on a Radix-2 Decimation-In-Frequency Algorithm

This brief presents a novel architecture for memory-based fast Fourier transform (FFT) computation for real-valued signals based on radix-2 decimation-in-frequency algorithm. A superior strategy of stage partition for the real FFT (RFFT) is proposed to minimize the computation clock cycles and maximize the utilization of the processing element (PE). The PE employed in our RFFT architecture can process four inputs in parallel by using two radix-2 butterflies and only two multiplexers. The proposed memory-addressing scheme and control of the multiplexers can be expressed in terms of a counter according to the RFFT computation stage. Furthermore, the proposed RFFT architecture can support more PEs in two dimensions as well. Compared with prior works, the proposed RFFT processors have the advantages of fewer computation cycles and lower hardware usage. The experiment shows that the proposed processor reduces the computation cycles by a factor of 17.5% for a 32-point RFFT computation compared with a recently presented work while maintaining lower hardware usage and complexity in the PE design.
Distribution of flower morphs, ploidy level and sexual reproduction of the invasive weed Oxalis pes-caprae in the western area of the Mediterranean region.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Oxalis pes-caprae is a widespread invasive weed in regions with a Mediterranean climate. In its native habitat (southern Africa) this species has been reported as heterostylous with trimorphic flowers and a self- and morph-incompatible reproductive system. In most of the areas invaded, only a pentaploid short-styled morphotype that reproduces mainly asexually by bulbils is reported, but this has only been confirmed empirically. This study aims to analyse the floral morph proportions in a wide distribution area, test the sexual female success, and explain the causes of low sexual reproduction of this species in the western area of the Mediterranean Basin. METHODS Fifty-five populations of O. pes-caprae were sampled in the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco to evaluate the floral morph ratio and individual fruit set. In plants from a dimorphic population, hand-pollination experiments were performed to evaluate the effect of the pollen source on pollen tube growth through the style. The ploidy level and genome size of individuals of each floral morph were analysed using flow cytometry. KEY RESULTS From the populations studied 89.1 % were monomorphic, with most of them containing the short-styled (SS) floral morph, and 10.9 % were dimorphic containing long-styled (LS) and SS morphs. In some of these, isoplethy was verified but no fruit production was observed in any population. A sterile form was also recorded in several populations. Hand-pollination experiments revealed that pollen grains germinated over recipient stigmas. In intermorph crossings, pollen tubes were able to develop and fruit initiation was observed in some cases, while in intramorph pollinations, pollen tube development was sporadic and no fruit initiation was observed. All individuals within each floral form presented the same DNA ploidy level: SS plants were pentaploid and LS and the sterile form were tetraploid. CONCLUSIONS The low or null sexual reproduction success of this species in the area of invasion studied seems related with the high frequency of monomorphic populations, the unequal proportion of floral morphs in dimorphic populations and the presence of different ploidy levels between SS and LS morphs. The discovery of the occurrence of an LS floral morph and a sterile form, whose invading capacity in these areas is as yet unknown, will be valuable information for management programmes.
Reforming the police in Britain: new public management, policy networks and a tough 'old bill'

Since the late 1970s the public sector in Britain has been subject to major reforms, which have been consistent with the prominent international trend of bringing new public management into government. The police service has escaped significant reform, particularly when compared with other policy areas. But in 1993 the Conservative government put forward a series of police reform measures, corresponding largely to the tenets of new public management. However, despite political commitment to reform, the implementation of many of the reform proposals has been successfully resisted by the police. Provides an explanation of the attempt to reform the police service by using a policy networks approach.
Benchmark Data Set for in Silico Prediction of Ames Mutagenicity

Up to now, publicly available data sets to build and evaluate Ames mutagenicity prediction tools have been very limited in terms of size and chemical space covered. In this report we describe a new unique public Ames mutagenicity data set comprising about 6500 nonconfidential compounds (available as SMILES strings and SDF) together with their biological activity. Three commercial tools (DEREK, MultiCASE, and an off-the-shelf Bayesian machine learner in Pipeline Pilot) are compared with four noncommercial machine learning implementations (Support Vector Machines, Random Forests, k-Nearest Neighbors, and Gaussian Processes) on the new benchmark data set.
No news is good news? evaluating new pay systems

The evaluation of the impact of changes in reward systems is a common recommendation in the personnel practitioner literature, but little has been written about how and to what extent practitioners themselves evaluate. This article therefore focuses on the activities of HR managers who have introduced new pay systems, not on academic studies of reward system change. Face-to-face interviews were conducted in 15 large, unionised organisations in England between 2000 and 2002. The study found that little formal evaluation of changes in pay and grading systems had been carried out and that managers expressed considerable scepticism about the evaluation process. They relied heavily on informal or anecdotal feedback, and appeared to have little psychological incentive to evaluate. The article suggests explanations for this lack of formal evaluation, drawing on the management decision-making literature, and recommends how changes in reward systems should be evaluated.
Analysis and Purification of Synthetic Nucleic Acids Using HPLC

HPLC is a powerful and popular method for analyzing and purifying biomolecules. Reversed‐phase HPLC allows a high‐capacity method for purification, and uses volatile buffer systems that simplify product recovery. Anion‐exchange HPLC provides better resolution and a more predictable elution pattern. This unit presents protocols that are optimized for HPLC of oligonucleotides. Because of the resolution limits of both reversed‐phase and anion‐exchange HPLC, it can be used for oligonucleotides of up to ˜50 nt in length.
A Tiered Framework for Risk‐Relevant Characterization and Ranking of Chemical Exposures: Applications to the National Children's Study (NCS)

A challenge for large‐scale environmental health investigations such as the National Children's Study (NCS), is characterizing exposures to multiple, co‐occurring chemical agents with varying spatiotemporal concentrations and consequences modulated by biochemical, physiological, behavioral, socioeconomic, and environmental factors. Such investigations can benefit from systematic retrieval, analysis, and integration of diverse extant information on both contaminant patterns and exposure‐relevant factors. This requires development, evaluation, and deployment of informatics methods that support flexible access and analysis of multiattribute data across multiple spatiotemporal scales. A new “Tiered Exposure Ranking” (TiER) framework, developed to support various aspects of risk‐relevant exposure characterization, is described here, with examples demonstrating its application to the NCS. TiER utilizes advances in informatics computational methods, extant database content and availability, and integrative environmental/exposure/biological modeling to support both “discovery‐driven” and “hypothesis‐driven” analyses. “Tier 1” applications focus on “exposomic” pattern recognition for extracting information from multidimensional data sets, whereas second and higher tier applications utilize mechanistic models to develop risk‐relevant exposure metrics for populations and individuals. In this article, “tier 1” applications of TiER explore identification of potentially causative associations among risk factors, for prioritizing further studies, by considering publicly available demographic/socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental data in relation to two health endpoints (preterm birth and low birth weight). A “tier 2” application develops estimates of pollutant mixture inhalation exposure indices for NCS counties, formulated to support risk characterization for these endpoints. Applications of TiER demonstrate the feasibility of developing risk‐relevant exposure characterizations for pollutants using extant environmental and demographic/socioeconomic data.
The Marginal Efficiency of Capital, the Internal Rate of Return, and Net Present Value: An Analysis of Investment Criteria

During the period of the late fifties and early sixties there was a considerable amount of discussion in the literature on the usefulness of the concept of the marginal efficiency of capital in the evaluation of alternative investment projects; see, for example, Masse (1962) and Merrett and Sykes (1962). There are basically two problems: multiplicity of roots for the solution of the marginal efficiency of capital, given in income stream and capital cost, and the different results obtained in ranking projects according to marginal efficiencies of capital and according to net present values. With respect to the former problem, some thought has been given to the economic meaning of the multiple roots and to the choice of root for ranking projects. The objectives of this paper are to show that the marginal efficiency of capital is not appropriate for ranking investment projects, as it is essentially an equilibrium concept; that the "internal rate of return" and the marginal efficiency of capital must be distinguished; and that, when the internal rate of return is appropriately defined, the ranking of projects by the internal rate of return and by net present value for projects with equal time spans is identical. Further, it is shown that the internal rate of return can always be calculated and has a unique value relative to the market interest rate. Finally, an economic interpretation is given to the multiple roots for the solution of the marginal efficiency of capital and to the case where there are no real roots.
Speculative Lookahead for Energy-Efficient Microprocessors

In addition to being the in situ performance monitor for adaptive voltage scaling (AVS), timing speculation mechanisms (e.g., razor) featuring dynamic timing fault detection and correction help to relax timing constraints for simple logic structures and low-power cells. Conventional timing fault detection mechanisms require substantial buffers to prevent race conditions on short paths for double sampling, which can overwhelm energy savings from timing relaxation and voltage scaling. This paper proposes a novel timing speculation scheme, speculative lookahead (SL), comprising duplicate timing-relaxed datapaths, the short paths of which do not introduce race conditions and thus require no additional buffer insertion. In experiments using a 40-nm CMOS technology, SL consumed a 54.89% area of a razor-based 32-bit multiplier, and conserved 59.77% energy per operation at nominal 1.1 V and 53.49% when AVS was applied. An ARM Cortex M0-like microprocessor unit (MPU) was designed using an SL-based datapath, the timing fault detection and correction mechanism of which can be dynamically deactivated for latency-tolerant instructions [i.e., on-demand timing speculation (ODTS)] to further conserve up to 31.08% energy in the execution unit. In addition, an field-programmable gate array prototype of the SL/ODTS MPU was constructed to demonstrate the effectiveness of delay variation tolerance and implementation flexibility.
Analyzing supplier development program enablers using fuzzy DEMATEL

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify, quantify and establish relationship (i.e. cause and effect) among various supplier development program enablers (SDPEs) in a specific manufacturing environment. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed methodology runs into four phases, i.e. defining supplier development program (SDP) environment, identifying relevant SDPEs, collecting experts’ qualitative opinions regarding SDPEs and analyzing the SDPEs using Fuzzy DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory). The fourth phase is programmed using Matlab 7.10. 0 (R2010a). The proposed methodology is implemented in an Indian manufacturing company and the results are analyzed to provide directions for the company while implementing SDPs. Findings – The proposed methodology leads to the ranking of SDPEs, classification of SDPEs into cause and effect groups and establishment of interactions for each SDPE using impact relationship map. Of the 20 SDPEs considered in the analysis, “top management .
Generalized Dual Decomposition for Bounding Maximum Expected Utility of Influence Diagrams with Perfect Recall

We introduce a generalized dual decomposition bound for computing the maximum expected utility of inﬂuence diagrams based on the dual decomposition method generalized to L p space. The main goal is to devise an approximation scheme free from translations required by existing variational approaches while exploiting the local structure of sum of utility functions as well as the conditional independence of probability functions. In this work, the generalized dual decomposition method is applied to the algebraic framework called valuation algebra for inﬂuence diagrams which handles probability and expected utility as a pair. The proposed approach allows a sequential decision problem to be decomposed as a collection of sub-decision problems of bounded complexity and the upper bound of maximum expected utility to be computed by combining the local expected utilities. Thus, it has a ﬂexible control of space and time complexity for computing the bound. In addition, the upper bounds can be further minimized by reparameterizing the utility functions. Since the global objective function for the minimization is nonconvex, we present a gradient based local search algorithm in which the outer loop controls the randomization of the initial conﬁgurations and the inner loop tightens the upper-bound based on block coordinate descent with gradients perturbed by a random noise. The experimental evaluation demonstrates highlights of the proposed approach on ﬁnite horizon MDP/POMDP instances.
Optimal distributed consensus algorithm for fair V2G power dispatch in a microgrid

Among the many motivations to encourage the use of Electric Vehicles (EVs) there is the attractive possibility to implement Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) functionalities. They are attractive both for EV owners, who can sell their own energy to the grid when they do not need to travel, and also for the power grid, as the stored energy can be used to back-up the fluctuating energy produced from renewable sources or to improve the grid stability at critical times. In this paper we illustrate a distributed algorithm that solves the V2G problem in a fair manner, trying to achieve an optimal trade-off between power generation costs and inconvenience to the vehicle owner. Results are shown and discussed for a case study simulated in the OpenDSS power system environment.
Vector fragmentation: Characterizing vector integrity in transfected clones by Southern blotting

The Chinese Hamster Ovary production cell line development process using methotrexate (MTX) amplification is well studied and commonly used for biopharmaceutical processes. However, successful MTX amplification varies from clone to clone and suggested reasons include vector fragmentation during the transfection process and genomic rearrangement of the Chinese Hamster Ovary chromosomes. Here, we elucidated the vector integration patterns of 40 transfected single‐cell clones by Southern blotting and showed that vector fragmentation occurs at a significant level in our experiment. This concurs with MTX amplification studies implying that single‐cell cloning is necessary to ensure a successful amplification process. Truncations at the ends of the integrated vectors were also observed, whereas gross DNA insertions were not detected in our data. This suggests that end deletions are common, whereas insertion events are rare in animal cells. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog. , 2010
Regulation of a Protein Acetyltransferase in Myxococcus xanthus by the Coenzyme NADP+

ABSTRACT NADP+ is a vital cofactor involved in a wide variety of activities, such as redox potential and cell death. Here, we show that NADP+ negatively regulates an acetyltransferase from Myxococcus xanthus, Mxan_3215 (MxKat), at physiologic concentrations. MxKat possesses an NAD(P)-binding domain fused to the Gcn5-type N-acetyltransferase (GNAT) domain. We used isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) and a coupled enzyme assay to show that NADP+ bound to MxKat and that the binding had strong effects on enzyme activity. The Gly11 residue of MxKat was confirmed to play an important role in NADP+ binding using site-directed mutagenesis and circular dichroism spectrometry. In addition, using mass spectrometry, site-directed mutagenesis, and a coupling enzymatic assay, we demonstrated that MxKat acetylates acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) synthetase (Mxan_2570) at Lys622 in response to changes in NADP+ concentration. Collectively, our results uncovered a mechanism of protein acetyltransferase regulation by the coenzyme NADP+ at physiological concentrations, suggesting a novel signaling pathway for the regulation of cellular protein acetylation. IMPORTANCE Microorganisms have developed various protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs), which enable cells to respond quickly to changes in the intracellular and extracellular milieus. This work provides the first biochemical characterization of a protein acetyltransferase (MxKat) that contains a fusion between a GNAT domain and NADP+-binding domain with Rossmann folds, and it demonstrates a novel signaling pathway for regulating cellular protein acetylation in M. xanthus. We found that NADP+ specifically binds to the Rossmann fold of MxKat and negatively regulates its acetyltransferase activity. This finding provides novel insight for connecting cellular metabolic status (NADP+ metabolism) with levels of protein acetylation, and it extends our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms underlying PTMs.
User Innovation in Techniques: A Case Study Analysis in the Field of Medical Devices

Users are the primary source of new techniques, i.e. systematic activities by which a complex task is accomplished. Even though user‐generated techniques are a pervasive phenomenon which can be observed in many different contexts, existing research on user innovation has focused on product and service innovations. We focus on this important area of user innovation by studying four cases in the field of medical devices to analyse the processes by which users generate and diffuse new techniques as well as the interdependencies between user‐generated techniques and subsequent changes to product use and product innovation. Our findings suggest that user innovation in techniques triggers product innovation by users and manufacturers. Therefore, users' contributions to total innovation output are much higher than previously considered. Additionally, the diffusion of techniques differs significantly from the diffusion of new products. It can only be achieved with the involvement of diffusion agents and their interpersonal interaction and joint performance of the technique with possible adopters. As the diffusion of a technique is often a prerequisite for the diffusion of any related product, companies are forced to re‐think their marketing strategies.