Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rhizobia utilize pathogen‐like effector proteins during symbiosis

A type III protein secretion system (T3SS) is an important host range determinant for the infection of legumes by Rhizobium sp. NGR234. Although a functional T3SS can have either beneficial or detrimental effects on nodule formation, only the rhizobial‐specific positively acting effector proteins, NopL and NopP, have been characterized. NGR234 possesses three open reading frames potentially encoding homologues of effector proteins from pathogenic bacteria. NopJ, NopM and NopT are secreted by the T3SS of NGR234. All three can have negative effects on the interaction with legumes, but NopM and NopT also stimulate nodulation on certain plants. NopT belongs to a family of pathogenic effector proteases, typified by the avirulence protein, AvrPphB. The protease domain of NopT is required for its recognition and a subsequent strong inhibition in infection of Crotalaria juncea. In contrast, the negative effects of NopJ are relatively minor when compared with those induced by its Avr homologues. Thus NGR234 uses a mixture of rhizobial‐specific and pathogen‐derived effector proteins. Whereas some legumes recognize an effector as potentially pathogen‐derived, leading to a block in the infection process, others perceive both the negative‐ and positive‐acting effectors concomitantly. It is this equilibrium of effector action that leads to modulation of symbiotic development.
Intraregional Trade in Emerging Asia

The share of emerging Asia in world trade has increased sharply over the past 25 years. A large part of this increase is the result of booming intraregional trade. This paper investigates the key factors behind the rapid increase in intraregional trade among economies in emerging Asia and its implications for the dependency of economies in the region on the business cycles in the EU, Japan, and the United States. The rise in intraregional trade is largely driven by rapidly growing intra-industry trade, which is a reflection of greater vertical specialization and the dispersion of production processes across borders. This has led to a sharp rise in trade in intermediate goods among economies in emerging Asia, but the EU, Japan, and the United States remain the main export markets for final goods.
New predistortion method using phase modulation with envelope signal

A new predistortion method using phase modulation technique is proposed. The phase modulator is adopted for generating predistortion signal. The phase of input signal is modulated with the envelope signal from the envelope detector then the IMD components are generated. Each coefficient of the 3/sup rd/ and 5/sup th/ order intermodulation distortion (IMD) is optimized to improve the linearity of the power amplifier. The amplitude and phase of IMD components are controlled in RF carrier band. This makes it possible to overcome several drawbacks of the envelope control methods such as difficulties in controlling the phase of baseband signal, narrow bandwidth, and delay variation at the low frequency circuits. The experimental results show the sufficient improvements in two-tone and multi-carrier CDMA test over the broad dynamic range.
EFFECTS OF NANOMATERIALS ON POLYMER COMPOSITES - AN EXPATIATE VIEW

This paper portrays the various combinations of nanomaterials and matrix materials which were used to fabricate the nanocomposite laminates with and without fiber. An in-depth analysis was made on the various ways of preparing the nano influenced matrix and composite panels. In addition to this, an effort has been made to afford an outline of the impact of nanofillers within the matrix from the results of numerous tests made with the laminated composites. Conjointly, a distinctive estimation has been made to elaborate the material details, processing steps and also the impact of the inclusion of nanofillers.
Revertant analysis of J-K mutations in the encephalomyocarditis virus internal ribosomal entry site detects an altered leader protein

The internal ribosomal entry site (IRES) of picornaviruses consists of various sequence and structural elements that collectively impart translational function to the genome. By engineering substitution and deletion mutations into the J-K elements of the encephalomyocarditis virus IRES, translationally defective viruses with small-plaque phenotypes were generated. From these, 60 larger-plaque revertant viruses were isolated and characterized, and their sequences were compared with a structural model of the IRES. The data provide confirming evidence for the existence of helix J3 within stem J but suggest that helix J1 is 3 bp longer than previously estimated. They also suggest that previously modeled stems L and M should be replaced by an alternative structure. One reversion mutation was mapped to the leader protein coding region. This change of leader amino acid 20 from Pro to Ser increased the viral plaque size dramatically but did not alter the cell-free translational activity of the mutated, parental IRES.
Factors influencing interdepartmental information sharing practice in electronic government agencies

Electronic information sharing is a key to effective government.This study is conducted to investigate the factors influencing interdepartmental information sharing (IS) practice in electronic government (EG) agencies.Based on previous study and observation, the issues on electronic government and information sharing are highlighted and the influencing factors are identified. Three domains of factors that are considered in this study are individual, organizational and technological factors. This paper proposes the conceptual framework of interdepartmental information sharing for electronic government agencies in Malaysia.
Attitudinal Correlates of Brand Commitment

Abstract Although brand commitment has been a recurrent theme in loyalty research, the construct is not well understood with regard to its formation and its links to other key attitudinal variables. Integrating consumer research and relationship marketing theory, this paper suggests two routes to the development of affective commitment and proposes a model of brand commitment with satisfaction, trust, and brand-person fit as antecedents and exclusive purchase intention as an outcome. The model was tested across three product categories and received substantial empirical support. Implications, limitations and future research directions are discussed.
Determinants and impact of private sector investment in Malawi: evidence from the 2006 investment climate survey

Over much of the last two decades, the economy of Malawi has been characterized by economic turbulence and uncertainty that has done serious damage to the private sector. Rapid liberalization exposed an unprepared private sector to potentially damaging forces. This paper draws upon the most comprehensive enterprise survey carried out in Malawi in recent years to assess the current state of private sector investment. We find the following key results: (1) low labor productivity is explained primarily by lack inputs per worker, rather than insufficient capital employed; (2) foreign competition in either domestic or export markets encourages reinvestment of current earnings; (3) firms with monopoly power are less likely to invest in increased capacity; and (4) high interest rates encourage Malawian firms to invest incrementally and using retained profits.
Small-Molecule Screens: A Gateway to Cancer Therapeutic Agents with Case Studies of Food and Drug Administration–Approved Drugs

High-throughput screening (HTS) of small-molecule libraries accelerates the discovery of chemical leads to serve as starting points for probe or therapeutic development. With this approach, thousands of unique small molecules, representing a diverse chemical space, can be rapidly evaluated by biologically and physiologically relevant assays. The origins of numerous United States Food and Drug Administration–approved cancer drugs are linked to HTS, which emphasizes the value in this methodology. The National Institutes of Health Molecular Libraries Program made HTS accessible to the public sector, enabling the development of chemical probes and drug-repurposing initiatives. In this work, the impact of HTS in the field of oncology is considered among both private and public sectors. Examples are given for the discovery and development of approved cancer drugs. The importance of target validation is discussed, and common assay approaches for screening are reviewed. A rigorous examination of the PubChem database demonstrates that public screening centers are contributing to early-stage drug discovery in oncology by focusing on new targets and developing chemical probes. Several case studies highlight the value of different screening strategies and the potential for drug repurposing.
Computer-aided diagnosis of acute abdominal pain.

Most international authorities who organize sporting events lay down rules as to what is meant by a drug. Thus the International Olympics Committee on Doping has issued lists of groups of drugs and has defined dopirng as foliows: "Doping is the administration to, or the use by, a competing athlete of any substance foreign to the body or of any physiological substance taken in abnormal quantity or taken by an abnormal route of entry into the body, with the sole intention of increasing in an artificial and unfair manner his performance in competition. When necessity demands medical treatment with any substance which, because of its nature, dosage, or application is able to boost the athlete's performance in competition in an artificial and unfair manner, this too is to be regarded as doping. "2 It appears that for various reasons the International Olympics Committee has shifted responsibility to the competency of the various international sports associations. This has meant that different interpretations of the doping problem have resulted. Thus the International Cycling Union is reputed to allow the use of ephedrine. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a drug as "an original simple medicinal substance, organic or inorganic, used alone or as an ingredient. " Any substance naturally present in a foodstuff and taken in normal physiological amounts cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a medicinal substance. However, when many times the normal amount is proposed, and if it is given with the express purpose of improving, or attempting to improve, performance the question may reasonably be asked whether this constitutes "doping"-that is, the administration of a drug. The Medicines Act has defined a "medicinal product. " Under Section (e) the definition in general of a medicinal product, other than in treating disease is: "otherwise preventing or interfering with the normal operation of a physiological functon, whether premanently or temporarily, and whether by way of terminating, reducing or postponing or increasing or accelerating the operation of that function, or in any other way. " The use of vitamins in excessive quantity as medication would therefore constitute a medicinal product and by this d&finition be a drug. However, it may be difficult to say what is an excessive quantity. Moreover a competitor who gives himself an unphysiological quantity of a substance like glucose, say 100 g, believing it will improve his performance cannot reasonably be said to be doping himself. It appears therefore, Sir, d:fficult to say where nutrition ends and doping begins-if indeed it does when normal nutrients are concerned. -I am, etc., IVAN M. SHARMAN
Efficiency of short LDPC codes combined with long Reed-Solomon codes for magnetic recording channels

This paper proposes the use of low-density parity check (LDPC) codes with short block lengths such as 1-K bits for magnetic recording. In general, there is a degradation in bit error rate as the block length of the LDPC codes decreases. Yet, we show that short LDPC codes do not suffer from degraded sector-error-rate performance if the sector size is 32 K bits and if long Reed-Solomon codes over GF(2/sup 12/) are used. This is due to the unique error distribution of iterative decoding. Shorter codes significantly reduce the amount of buffer memory in the iterative decoder and make hardware implementation more feasible.
Design of multi-dimensional filter banks

The problem of the design of multi-dimensional filter banks with prescribed properties is considered. The most important requirements are perfect reconstruction property, linear phase property, optimization for a given class of signals, maximum number of vanishing moments and others. A survey of different approaches to the problem of filter banks’ design is presented. The most promising ones are polynomial approaches that allow to find the result directly in analytical form.
Inhibition of cellular glycoprotein incorporation into human immunodeficiency virus-like particles by coexpression of additional cellular interaction partner.

We examined the concepts of whether cellular surface glycoprotein overexpressed in heterologous cells can be efficiently incorporated into lentiviral particles and whether incorporation is blocked when a natural interaction partner is coexpressed. Human CD4 and a truncated version lacking the cytoplasmic C terminus, expressed in 293T cells, were efficiently incorporated into Env-defective human immunodeficiency virus type 1 virus-like particles. However, on coexpression of p56(lck), the natural binding partner of the CD4 C-terminal domain in T lymphocytes, incorporation of the wild-type CD4 was completely abolished, whereas incorporation of the C-terminally truncated mutant remained unaffected. Confocal microscopy and detergent solubility assays did not reveal any significant difference in the distribution of wild-type CD4 at the plasma membrane in the presence or absence of p56(lck). These results give some insight into the processes governing protein incorporation into the lipid bilayer of lentiviruses.
Construction of the matched multiple knot B-spline wavelets on a bounded interval

In order to solve a boundary value problem using Galerkin's method, the selection of basis functions plays a crucial rule. When the solution of a boundary value problem is not enough smooth or the domain is irregular, multiple knot B-spline wavelets (MKBSWs) with locally compact support are appropriate basis functions. However, to have globally continuous basis functions, a matching across the subdomain interfaces is required. In other words, MKBSWs that are non-zero in the interelement boundaries should be matched. In this paper, we present the primal and dual matched multiple knot B-spline scaling and wavelet functions whose main properties of smoothness and biorthogonality are kept.
Earnings Manipulation, Manager's Compensation and Reputation Concerns

This paper analyzes the effects of managerial compensation and reputation concerns on earnings manipulation. I develop a model of earnings reporting in which a privately informed manager trades-off incentives to manipulate earnings which increases his compensation against incentives to be honest which improves his reputation. In equilibrium the manager manipulates earnings, but not enough to make reports uninformative. He lies with positive probability when underlying earnings are low, and he reports the truth when underlying earnings are high. Earnings manipulation is stronger when the manager is closer to retirement. Manipulation is independent of the sensitivity of the manager's compensation to reported earnings. Finally, earnings manipulation and accounting discretion have a bell-shaped relation: increasing discretion when it is low, leads to more earnings manipulation, and vice-versa. These results are robust to different compensation schemes and the inclusion of an accruals' constraint.
Earnings Management, Underpricing and Underperformance of Chinese IPOs

Issuers can use income-increasing, discretionary accruals to overstate earnings prior to initial public offerings (IPOs). Thus uninformed sentiment investors may end up paying too much for new issues on the first trading days. This paper provides evidence that issuers in China with unusually higher accruals in the IPO year tend to experience greater short-term underpricing and inferior long-term stock performance. This evidence is consistent with issuers window-dressing IPO firm earnings, investors naively extrapolating the growth trend, and with the overreaction of stock prices. This relation is statistically and economically significant and robust to a variety of benchmark model and variable specifications. JEL: G14 EFMA: 350, 180, 200
Tapered EBG superstrates for low-permittivity resonator antennas

High-gain antennas can be implemented applying an EBG structure as superstrate to planar low-gain radiators. A cavity is formed between the ground plane backing the primary source and the EBG superstrate, that is realized with a low-permittivity dielectric, in order to be fabricated with a 3D printer. Due to the finite size of the EBG layers, diffracted fields occur at the edges of the cavity. Furthermore, notwithstanding the considerable gain enhancement, most times side-lobe level is not optimized. EBG layouts with tapered periodicity are proposed to control the reflectivity of the EBG superstrates from the center of the structure towards the edges, in order to reduce diffraction effects and lower the side-lobe level.
Named Series : Biology of Microglia Astrocytes initiate inflammation in the injured mouse spinal cord by promoting the entry of neutrophils and inflammatory monocytes in an IL-1 receptor / MyD 88-dependent fashion

CNS injury stimulates the expression of several proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, some of which including MCP-1 (also known as CCL2), KC (CXCL1), and MIP-2 (CXCL2) act to recruit Gr-1 leukocytes at lesion sites. While earlier studies have reported that neutrophils and monocytes/macrophages contribute to secondary tissue loss after spinal cord injury (SCI), recent work has shown that depletion of Gr-1 leukocytes compromised tissue healing and worsened functional recovery. Here, we demonstrate that astrocytes distributed throughout the spinal cord initially contribute to early neuroinflammation by rapidly synthesizing MCP-1, KC, and MIP-2, from 3 up to 12 h post-SCI. Chemokine expression by astrocytes was followed by the infiltration of blood-derived immune cells, such as type I ‘‘inflammatory” monocytes and neutrophils, into the lesion site and nearby damaged areas. Interestingly, astrocytes from mice deficient in MyD88 signaling produced significantly less MCP-1 and MIP-2 and were unable to synthesize KC. Analysis of the contribution of MyD88-dependent receptors revealed that the astrocytic expression of MCP-1, KC, and MIP-2 was mediated by the IL-1 receptor (IL-1R1), and not by TLR2 or TLR4. Flow cytometry analysis of cells recovered from the spinal cord of MyD88and IL-1R1-knockout mice confirmed the presence of significantly fewer type I ‘‘inflammatory” monocytes and the almost complete absence of neutrophils at 12 h and 4 days post-SCI. Together, these results indicate that MyD88/IL-1R1 signals regulate the entry of neutrophils and, to a lesser extent, type I ‘‘inflammatory” monocytes at sites of SCI. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Distance-based directed formation control in three-dimensional space

This paper concentrates on the distance-based formation control problem in three-dimensional space. The objective is to achieve and maintain the formation of overall group of a multi-agent system, whose interaction graph is acyclic minimally persistent. The gradient-based control law derived from a class of potential functions is considered to address this problem. The trajectories of agents converge to a set of equilibria under the proposed control law. Every desired equilibrium, where all inter-agent distance constraints are satisfied, is locally exponentially stable and the undesired equilibrium set is repulsive.
Stock Price Integration in the Malaysian Stock Market

Abstract There are not many studies in the literature that attempt to analyse market interaction among different sectors within a single stock market. Earlier studies by Grubel and Fadner (1971) highlighted that the interdependence of share price movements is much less pronounced among countries than within a country. Hence, the objective of this paper is to examine the integration relationship within the five major sectors’ price indices listed in the main board of the Malaysian stock market. The results of the study show that there exists a short-run causality relationship between the sectors in the Malaysian stock market for the whole period under study. The daily price movement in the construction sector is found to lead the daily price movement from other sectors for the period before and after financial crisis. This indicates the importance of the construction sector in times of economic boom. However, the trend of causal relationship shifts during the financial crisis in which the finance sector plays a major role in influencing the price movement of other sectors. This may be due to the fact that the financial sector was greatly affected during the financial crisis. The results also show that the causal relationship for both short-run and long run seems to be more obvious in the daily price indices as compared to the weekly price indices. This clearly indicates that the price disturbances in all the sector’s price
Evaluating Spread Decomposition Models with a Basket Security

In this paper we evaluate the most widely used spread decomposition models. We argue that Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) should have lower adverse selection costs than appropriate control securities. We make this assertion because ETFs have the characteristics of a basket security described by Subrahmanyam (1991). As such, an ETF will diversify away the private information held by informed traders. Diversification of this information causes ETFs to have lower adverse selection costs than individual securities providing a criterion for evaluating spread decomposition models. Comparisons of adverse selection costs for ETF's and control securities obtained from spread decomposition models show that only the Glosten-Harris (1988) and the Madhavan-Richardson-Roomans (1997) models provide estimates of the spread that are consistent with the diversification of private information in a basket security. Our results are robust even after controlling for the stock exchange.
Testing the inefficient management hypothesis: Are United Kingdom mergers and acquisitions disciplinary?

A large body of research has examined the impact of takeovers on corporate performance. Although there has been a considerable volume of research on the wealth effects of takeovers to date, there has been very little evidence on the disciplinary role. The aim of this study is to contribute to the takeover debate by examining whether UK takeovers are disciplinary. This study replicates previous findings on whether the market for corporate control benefits firm managers or whether it is an avenue to maximise shareholder wealth. This study examines 153 UK takeover bids in the period 1990 to 1997. This period was chosen because it coincides with the publication of the Cadbury Report in 1992 when issues of corporate governance were raised and prescriptive recommendations were made to safeguard shareholder investment. In this study, results based on the evaluation of the share price suggest that targets of a takeover bid under-perform in the period prior to the bid. Accounting results also suggest that targets under-perform in the same period and this is consistent with the view that takeovers perform a disciplinary function when assets are reallocated to their most productive use. However, post bid share price performance shows modest improvement while accounting results suggest that managers of bidding firms fail to improve the operating performance of the combined firm. The findings of this study therefore dispel the notion that takeover bids are made in shareholders’ interests. The results suggest that UK takeovers are not disciplinary, but are undertaken to generate short-term economic benefits to managers at the expense of shareholders.