Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variation of Host Cell Tropism of Porcine Endogenous Retroviruses Expressed in Chinese Banna Minipig Inbred

A serious donor-organ shortage urges the use of animal donors to treat a wide appropriate variety of major health problems including organ failure and diabetes. However, the promise of clinical xenotransplantation is offset at the present time by the potential of a public health risk due to the cross-species transmission of pathogens from animal donors to human patients. In particular, the transmission of porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV) is a major concern. In this study, cell tropism of PERV was tested by in vitro infection of human primary cells and cell lines. Coculture of PERV supernatant derived from PK15 with human primary cells and cell lines resulted in the transfer and expression of PERV-specific sequences and the establishment of a productive infection. In the detection of tropism variation of PERV in pigs, 293 cells were cocultured with mitogenic-activated and lethally irradiated PBMC from 12 Banna minipig inbred (BMI). The results were that six coculture groups were PERV-positive. However, infectious virus was not detected when activated PBMC from the other 7 pigs were cocultivated with human cells known to be permissive for PERV, which indicated a tropism variation among the tested individuals. All these findings demonstrate that the presence of endogenous viruses in source animals needs to be carefully considered when the infectious disease potential of xenotransplantation is being assessed.
Effects of CO2 and H+ on laryngeal receptor activity in the perfused larynx in anaesthetized cats

1 Intralaryngeal CO2 reflexly decreases ventilation and increases upper airway muscle activity. Topical anaesthesia of the laryngeal mucosa or cutting the superior laryngeal nerves (SLNs) abolishes these reflexes, indicating that the receptors responsible are superficially located and that their afferent fibres are in the SLN. Intralaryngeal CO2 affects the activity of receptors recorded from the SLN. 2 An isolated, luminally perfused laryngeal preparation was developed in anaesthetized, paralysed cats in order to compare the effects of solutions with varying levels of pH and PCO2 on pressure‐sensitive laryngeal receptor activity. Since the pH of tracheal surface fluid is reported to be approximately 7.0, two neutral (pH 7.4 and 7.0) and two acidic (pH 6.8 and 6.3) solutions were used. 3 Compared with neutral acapnic control solutions, neutral hypercapnic (PCO2 64 mmHg) solutions either excited or inhibited the discharge of 113 out of 211 pressure‐sensitive SLN afferents. In 24 receptors, the effects of hypercapnic solutions with either neutral or acidic pH were similar in both direction and magnitude. In 50 receptors affected by neutral hypercapnic solutions, acidic acapnic solutions had no effect on 66 % of units and significantly smaller effects in the remaining units. In 17 receptors, the effects of neutral solutions with a PCO2 of 35 mmHg were significantly less than for neutral solution with a PCO2 of 64 mmHg. 4 These results show that the effects of CO2 on laryngeal pressure‐sensitive receptors are independent of the pH of the perfusing media, and suggest that acidification of the receptor cell or its microenvironment is the main mechanism of CO2 chemoreception.
Neural Translation of Musical Style

Music is an expressive form of communication often used to convey emotion in scenarios where "words are not enough". Part of this information lies in the musical composition where well-defined language exists. However, a significant amount of information is added during a performance as the musician interprets the composition. The performer injects expressiveness into the written score through variations of different musical properties such as dynamics and tempo. In this paper, we describe a model that can learn to perform sheet music. Our research concludes that the generated performances are indistinguishable from a human performance, thereby passing a test in the spirit of a "musical Turing test".
On Using the Lottery in Crowdfunding Platforms: ‘Crowding in’ the Masses But ‘Crowding out’ Success

Crowdfunding aims to collect small investments from a large number of backers to support a project by fundraisers. Although uncertainty has been an important issue in the reward-based crowdfunding literature, there is limited research on how backers respond to probabilistic uncertain rewards. This study examines how backers respond to the lottery—a type of uncertain rewards—and how their motivations may shape their responses to probabilistic uncertain rewards. We hypothesize (1) how backers respond to probabilistic uncertain rewards, (2) how these effects vary over time, and (3) how backer motivations moderate their response to probabilistic uncertain rewards. We empirically test our set of hypotheses using data collected from a reward-based crowdfunding platform in China. First, the results from project-level analysis show that, although the lottery does help to attract a higher number of backers on a crowdfunding project, the lottery also reduces the total money raised by the project, and thus the probability of reaching its funding goal. Specifically, while the lottery incentivizes individuals who would otherwise not fund the project to become (small) lottery backers, it also cannibalizes regular prospective rewardees and donors by encouraging them to opt for the (cheaper) lottery option. Second, both the incentivizing and the cannibalizing effects of the lottery are stronger in the earlier stages of a project’s fundraising cycle. Third, our individual backer-level analysis shows that the lottery has larger effects on backers with higher prior tendencies to be donors than rewardees. Our study theoretically contributes to three streams of literature—crowdfunding, decision-making under uncertainty, and the lottery. From a practical standpoint, our study informs (a) fundraisers on how to design strategies to attract the right type of backers and (b) crowdfunding platform owners on how to leverage the lottery as a type of uncertain rewards in crowdfunding platforms.
Constitutive expression of Bc1-3 in thymocytes increases the DNA binding of NF-kappaB1 (p50) homodimers in vivo

Previous studies have indicated that Bcl-3 interacts through its ankyrin repeats with the transcriptional factors NF-kappaB1 (p50) and NF-kappaB2 (p52), affecting their biological activities. To further investigate the role of Bcl-3 in vivo and its association with the NF-kappaB proteins, we have generated transgenic mice constitutively expressing Bcl-3 in thymocytes. The results indicate that Bcl-3 is associated with endogenous p50 and p52 in nuclear extracts from transgenic animals. Remarkably, constitutive expression of Bcl-3 in these cells augments the DNA binding activity of p52 homodimers. This effect could be reproduced in vitro and is blocked by anti-Bcl-3 antibodies. We have also shown that Bcl-3 is phosphorylated in thymocytes and that its dephosphorylation greatly decreases the effect on p50 homodimers.
Towards a 3-dimensional model of Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park, Hong Kong

Hong Kong has a unique marine environment. The intermixing of low salinity water, from the nearby Pearl River estuary outflows, with sea water from three different marine currents producing a variety of varying marine environmental conditions at different times of the year. Hoi Ha Wan is a shallow, small, enclosed bay in the north-east corner of Hong Kong. It has been designated a Marine Park primarily because it contains significant examples of the incipient reefal coral systems that are scattered throughout the local waters. A key interesting feature of this marine community is its ability to tolerate a large variation of temperature and salinity during each year. It is therefore of interest to measure the changes and the rates of changes in key environmental parameters and try to relate these to the actual condition of the marine life in the key areas. The authors have previously reported the development of the Databuoy I system. This paper discusses the upgrades to the original systems, (to DataBuoy II) and reports preliminary results from the current project, which is to develop a 3-dimensional model of the bay, using real-time data from an array of sensors attached to the Databuoys.
The enterprising communities and startup ecosystem in Iran

Purpose - Startups play a significant role in improving societies. This paper concentrates on the concept of “startups” and attempts to present a more comprehensive view of this phenomenon. Also, the focus of this paper is on investigating enterprising communities and startup ecosystem in Iran.Design/methodology/approach - The existing literature is carefully reviewed, definition and views are explored, and the story of this phenomenon is told from the formation to the exit stage. The author elaborates the existing stages and challenges of startups in Iran. To do so, 65 tech startup founders are interviewed. Semi-structured interviews (SI) were based on previous studies mentioning the lifecycle of the startups, and were fully recorded. Moreover, secondary sources of data (SS) were used to support the findings.Findings - The paper classifies the extant theories of startups in two levels, i.e. macro level, and micro and meso level. Also, it defines some steps for the formation of startups, and studies the Iranian startup ecosystem. Last but not least, the paper contributes to the startup ecosystem of Iran which is changing disruptively, especially in the last couple of years.Research limitations/implications - Findings of this research shed light on the existing ecosystem of startups in Iran, which is rarely studied in previous research. Lack of enough evidence in the existing literature of startup ecosystem in Iran was the most significant limitation of the research which increased the need for more investigation and elaboration.Originality/value - The paper contributes to understanding of startup ecosystem in Iran, and the challenges.
Energy-efficient production strategies and technologies for electric drives

Due to the scarcity of resources the sustainable production of electric drives has become more and more important. In the context of a potentially huge increase in the demand for electric traction drives by the market of e-mobility, this topic is even more challenging. For this, new topologies with lower requirements for the needed valuable resources, new energy efficient drive concepts, optimized production, and logistic processes in terms of their resource requirements and integrated recycling strategies are presented in this paper.
Characterization of selected nutrients and bacteria from anaerobic swine manure lagoons on sow, nursery, and finisher farms in the Mid-South USA.

Swine (Sus scrofa domestica) production in the Mid-South USA comprises sow, nursery, and finisher farms. A 2007 packing plant closure started a regional shift from finisher to sow and nursery farms. Changes in manure stored in lagoons and land-applied as fertilizer were expected but were unknown because nutrient and bacterial levels had not been characterized by farm type. The objectives of this study were to quantify selected nutrients and bacteria, compare levels by farm types, and project impacts of production shifts. Nutrients and bacteria were characterized in 17 sow, 10 nursery, and 10 finisher farm lagoons. Total and thermotolerant coliforms, Escherichia coli (Migula) Castellani and Chalmers, Enterococcus spp. , Clostridium perfringens (Veillon and Zuber) Hauduroy et al., Campylobacter spp. , Listeria spp. , and Salmonella spp. were evaluated. Highest levels were from total coliforms (1.4- 5.7x10(5) cfu 100 mL(-1)), which occurred with E. coli, Campylobacter spp. , C. perfringens, and Enterococcus spp. , in every lagoon and virtually every sample. Lowest levels were from Listeria spp. and Salmonella spp. (<or=1.3x10(2) most probable number [MPN] 100 mL(-1)), detected in 81 and 89% of lagoons and 68 and 64% of samples, respectively. Sow farm levels were higher for all except Listeria spp. and Salmonella spp. , which were lower (1.4x10(1) and 2.8x10(1) MPN 100 mL(-1), respectively) and only slightly below their respective levels from nursery farms (1.1x10(2) and 3.4x10(1) MPN 100 mL(-1)). Shifting from finisher to nursery farm would not affect bacterial levels, but shifting to sows would. Either shift would reduce NPK and N:P and suggest modification of nutrient management plans.
Two information retrieval learning environments: their design and evaluation

The design and evaluation of two information retrieval (IR) learning environments took place in a basic course of IR (6 ECTS credits) at the Department of Information Studies at the University of Tampere. The course consisted of lectures, web exercises and tutored search exercises. Tutored exercises were carried out in two learning environments, in a traditional and in an experimental one. The participants in the study (n=57), were undergraduate students of information studies at the university.
Promoting youth employment through multi-organizational governance

Youth unemployment is a major challenge in Europe and the most important EU-level policy response to youth unemployment is the Youth Guarantee, which was adopted in 2013. Public employment services are the central bodies implementing the Youth Guarantee in most EU member states, but they often act in partnership with other organizations. This paper examines the importance of the national organization that takes the lead in the multi-organizational networks responsible for implementing the Youth Guarantee. The author also analyses the best governance arrangements to produce the intended policy outcomes.
Dependency-based convolutional neural network for drug-drug interaction extraction

Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are crucial for healthcare. Besides DDIs reported in medical knowledge bases such as DrugBank, a large number of latest DDI findings are also reported in unstructured biomedical literature. Extracting DDIs from unstructured biomedical literature is a worthy addition to the existing knowledge bases. Currently, convolutional neural network (CNN) is a state-of-the-art method for DDI extraction. One limitation of CNN is that it neglects long distance dependencies between words in candidate DDI instances, which may be helpful for DDI extraction. In order to incorporate the long distance dependencies between words in candidate DDI instances, in this work, we propose a dependency-based convolutional neural network (DCNN) for DDI extraction. Experiments conducted on the DDIExtraction 2013 corpus show that DCNN using a public state-of-the-art dependency parser achieves an F-score of 70.19%, outperforming CNN by 0.44%. By analyzing errors of DCNN, we find that errors from dependency parsers are propagated into DCNN and affect the performance of DCNN. To reduce error propagation, we design a simple rule to combine CNN with DCNN, that is, using DCNN to extract DDIs in short sentences and CNN to extract DDIs in long distances as most dependency parsers work well for short sentences but bad for long sentences. Finally, our system that combines CNN and DCNN achieves an F-score of 70.81%, outperforming CNN by 1.06% and DNN by 0.62% on the DDIExtraction 2013 corpus.
Autonomous navigation of hexapod robots with vision-based controller adaptation

This work introduces a novel hybrid control architecture for a hexapod platform (Weaver), making it capable of autonomously navigating in uneven terrain. The main contribution stems from the use of vision-based exteroceptive terrain perception to adapt the robot's locomotion parameters. Avoiding computationally expensive path planning for the individual foot tips, the adaptation controller enables the robot to reactively adapt to the surface structure it is moving on. The virtual stiffness, which mainly characterizes the behavior of the legs' impedance controller is adapted according to visually perceived terrain properties. To further improve locomotion, the frequency and height of the robot's stride are similarly adapted. Furthermore, novel methods for terrain characterization and a keyframe based visual-inertial odometry algorithm are combined to generate a spatial map of terrain characteristics. Localization via odometry also allows for autonomous missions on variable terrain by incorporating global navigation and terrain adaptation into one control architecture. Autonomous runs on a testbed with variable terrain types illustrate that adaptive stride and impedance behavior decreases the cost of transport by 30 % compared to a non-adaptive approach and simultaneously increases body stability (up to 88 % on even terrain and by 54 % on uneven terrain). Weaver is able to freely explore outdoor environments as it is completely free of external tethers, as shown in the experiments.
Silencing of either SR-A or CD36 reduces atherosclerosis in hyperlipidaemic mice and reveals reciprocal upregulation of these receptors.

AIMS Macrophage scavenger receptor A (SR-A) and class B scavenger receptor CD36 (CD36) contribute to foam cell formation and atherogenesis via uptake of modified lipoproteins. So far, the role of these scavenger receptors has been studied mainly using knockout models totally lacking these receptors. We studied the role of SR-A and CD36 in foam cell formation and atherogenesis by RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated silencing, which is a clinically feasible method to down-regulate the expression of these receptors. METHODS AND RESULTS We constructed lentivirus vectors encoding short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) against mouse SR-A and CD36. Decreased SR-A but not CD36 expression led to reduced foam cell formation caused by acetylated low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in mouse macrophages, whereas the uptake of oxidized LDL was not altered. More importantly, silencing of SR-A upregulates CD36 and vice versa. In LDL receptor-deficient apolipoprotein B100 (LDLR(-/-)ApoB(100/100)) mice kept on a western diet, silencing of either SR-A or CD36 in bone marrow cells led to a marked decrease (37.4 and 34.2%, respectively) in cross-sectional lesion area, whereas simultaneous silencing of both receptors was not effective. CONCLUSION Our results suggest that silencing of either SR-A or CD36 alone reduces atherogenesis in mice. However, due to reciprocal upregulation, silencing of both SR-A and CD36 is not effective.
Construction method of line segment based map with sonar sensor

A approach to construct a map with line segments is addressed in this paper. Generating and merging algorithms are proposed for a mobile robot with sonar sensors to represent the environment with line segments. A new definition of distance for a point to a line segment is given, with which the construction algorithms are simplified. Some remarks about the construction algorithms are presented. Experimental results show that the proposed constructing approach is effective and the line segments based map can be applied to generate a Voronoi diagram as to get a accessible path with obstacle avoiding for the AmigoBot.
Safe for Generations to Come: Considerations of Safety for Millimeter Waves in Wireless Communications

With the increasing demand for higher data rates and more reliable service capabilities for wireless devices, wireless service providers are facing an unprecedented challenge to overcome a global bandwidth shortage. Early global activities on beyond fourth-generation (B4G) and fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication systems suggest that millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies are very promising for future wireless communication networks due to the massive amount of raw bandwidth and potential multigigabit-per-second (Gb/s) data rates [1]? [3]. Both industry and academia have begun the exploration of the untapped mmWave frequency spectrum for future broadband mobile communication networks. In April 2014, the Brooklyn 5G Summit [4], sponsored by Nokia and the New York University (NYU) WIRELESS research center, drew global attention to mmWave communications and channel modeling. In July 2014, the IEEE 802.11 next-generation 60-GHz study group was formed to increase the data rates to over 20 Gb/s in the unlicensed 60-GHz frequency band while maintaining backward compatibility with the emerging IEEE 802.11ad wireless local area network (WLAN) standard [5].
Low-factor market models of interest rates

In this thesis we study three different, but interconnected low-factor market models: LIBOR market model, Markov-functional model, and two-currency Markov-functional model. The LIBOR market model (LMM) is one of the most popular term structure models. However, it suffers from a major drawback, it is high-dimensional. The problem of highdimensionality can be in part solved imposing a separability condition. We will be interested how the separability condition interacts with time-homogeneity, a desirable property of an LMM. We address this question by parametrising two- and three-factor separable and time-homogeneous LMMs and show that they are of practical interest. Markov-functional models (MFMs) are a computationally efficient alternative to the LMMs. We consider two aspects of the MFMs, implementation and specification. First we provide two new algorithms that can be used to implement the one-dimensional MFM under the terminal and the spot measure driven by a general diffusion process. Since the existing literature has been focused exclusively on the Gaussian driving processes our algorithms open the scope for new parameterisations. We then prove that the dynamics of the onedimensional MFM are only affected by the time dependence of the driving process, described by a copula, and not by its marginal distributions. We then shift our focus and show that the one-dimensional MFM under the terminal measure is closely related to the one-factor separable local-volatility LMM. Finally, we move our attention to the models of a two-currency economy. We propose a new three-factor model that we calibrate to the domestic and foreign caplet prices and the foreign exchange call options. To maintain the no-arbitrage condition while calibrating to foreign exchange market we propose a predictor-corrector type step. It is our conjecture that the predictor-corrector step converges, thus the model is well defined.
Y-12 national security complex implementation of the project controls system

This work of authorship and those incorporated herein were prepared by a contractor as accounts of work sponsored by an agency of the US government. Neither the US government nor any agency thereof, nor any contractor, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, use made, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe on privately owned rights. Reference herein to anv specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the US government or any agency or contractor thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the US government or any agency or contractor thereof. This document has been authored by a subcontractor of the US government under contract DE-AC05-000R-22800. Adicordingly, the US government retains a paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this contribution, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. This article is reprinted from the 2003 AACE International Transactions.