Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanistic and Chiroptical Studies on the Desulfurization of Epidithiodioxopiperazines Reveal Universal Retention of Configuration at the Bridgehead Carbon Atoms

The stereochemistry of the desulfurization products of chiral natural and synthetic 3,6-epidithiodiketopiperazines (ETPs) is specified inconsistently in the literature. Qualitative mechanisms have been put forward to explain apparently divergent stereochemical pathways, but the quantitative feasibility of such mechanistic pathways has not been assessed. We report a computational study revealing that desulfurization of ETPs should occur universally with retention of configuration. While the majority of stereochemically assigned and reassigned cases fit this model, until now desulfurization of the synthetic gliotoxin analogue shown has remained assigned as proceeding via inversion of configuration. Through detailed chiroptical studies comparing experimentally obtained optical rotation values, electronic circular dichroism spectra, and vibrational circular dichroism spectra to their computationally simulated counterparts as well as chemical derivatization studies, we have unambiguously demonstrated that contrary to its current assignment in the literature, the desulfurization of this synthetic ETP also proceeds with retention of configuration.
HomeRun Vector Assembly System: A Flexible and Standardized Cloning System for Assembly of Multi-Modular DNA Constructs

Advances in molecular and synthetic biology call for efficient assembly of multi-modular DNA constructs. We hereby present a novel modular cloning method that obviates the need for restriction endonucleases and significantly improves the efficiency in the design and construction of complex DNA molecules by standardizing all DNA elements and cloning reactions. Our system, named HomeRun Vector Assembly System (HVAS), employs a three-tiered vector series that utilizes both multisite gateway cloning and homing endonucleases, with the former building individual functional modules and the latter linking modules into the final construct. As a proof-of-principle, we first built a two-module construct that supported doxycycline-induced expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP). Further, with a three-module construct we showed quantitatively that there was minimal promoter leakage between neighbouring modules. Finally, we developed a method, in vitro Cre recombinase-mediated cassette exchange (RMCE) cloning, to regenerate a gateway destination vector from a previous multisite gateway cloning reaction, allowing access to existing DNA element libraries in conventional gateway entry clones, and simple creation of constructs ready for in vivo RMCE. We believe these methods constitute a useful addition to the standard molecular cloning techniques that could potentially support industrial scale synthesis of DNA constructs.
Design and Implementation of Three-Dimensional Logic Structures

In this thesis, a computer-aided-design (CAD) system is developed that assists in the design of novel three-dimensional integrated circuits. The software tools allow for the specification of a multilayer transistor circuit by means that are readily accessible to those familiar with two-dimensional CMOS VLSI design. This software system provides desirable features such as SPICE circuit extraction and the ability to produce the design formats necessary for automated fabrication (e.g. mask specifications for lithography or Gerber data for inkjet printing). Finally, in this thesis, the software tools are used to design a ring oscillator, a 3-D static RAM, and a 3-D cellular automata machine. Thesis Supervisor: Joseph Jacobson Title: Associate Professor, Media Arts and Sciences
Formalizing the informal, precisiating the imprecise: How fuzzy logic can help mathematicians and physicists by formalizing their intuitive ideas

Summary form only given. Fuzzy methodology transforms expert ideas - formulated in terms of words from natural language - into precise rules and formulas. In this talk, we show that by applying this methodology to intuitive physical and mathematical ideas, we can get known fundamental physical equations and known mathematical techniques for solving these equations. This fact makes us confident that in the future, fuzzy techniques will help physicists and mathematicians to transform their imprecise ideas into new physical equations and new techniques for solving these equations.
PARAMETER SENSITIVITY STUDY OF BOILING AND TWO-PHASE FLOW MODELS IN COMPUTATIONAL THERMAL HYDRAULICS

This work presents a sensitivity study of boiling and two phase flow models for thermal hydraulics simulations in nuclear reactors. The study quantifies sources of uncertainty and error in these simulations by computing global sensitivities of figures of merit, or outputs, to model parameters, inputs, and mesh resolution. Results are obtained for the DEBORA benchmark problem of boiling in a channel driven by a heated wall section. Scalar outputs of interest are average wall temperature, integrated cross-sectional void fraction, and pressure drop in the channel. Sensitivities are computed with respect to both individual heat fluxes and to the parameters in the models for these heat fluxes.
Multi-Ar gum ent Classification for Semantic Role Labeling

This paper describes a Multi-Argument Classification (MAC) approach to Semantic Role Labeling. The goal is to exploit dependencies between semantic roles by simultaneously classifying all arguments as a pattern. Argument identification, as a pre-processing stage, is carried at using the improved Predicate-Argument Recognition Algorithm (PARA) developed by Lin and Smith (2006). Results using standard evaluation metrics show that multiargument classification, achieving 76.60 in F1 measurement on WSJ 23, outperforms existing systems that use a single parse tree for the CoNLL 2005 shared task data. This paper also describes ways to significantly increase the speed of multi-argument classification, making it suitable for real-time language processing tasks that require semantic role labeling.
Do CFOs Have Styles of Their Own? An Empirical Investigation of the Effect of Individual CFOs on Financial Reporting Practices

This paper examines the effect of Chief Financial Officers’ (CFOs’) individual philosophy or “style” on corporate accounting choices. We track 359 CFOs across different firms over time and investigate whether CFO-specific factors explain a firm’s accounting choices. We find that, across a wide range of accounting choices, individual CFOs are an important determinant of accounting practices. Moreover, the effect of CFO styles appears to be stronger under conditions of high CFO discretion and high CFO job demands. We also trace the CFO style to observable CFO characteristics by examining whether CFOs’ gender, age, and educational background affect their styles. We find limited evidence of the impact of these CFO characteristics on accounting choices, suggesting that these common and observable characteristics capture only a small portion of CFO styles.
Reborn a virgin: adolescents' retracting of virginity pledges and sexual histories.

OBJECTIVES We examined retractions of virginity pledges and of sexual histories among adolescents taking part in waves 1 and 2 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. METHODS Logistic regression analyses were used to compare respondents' reports of virginity pledges and sexual histories at waves 1 and 2.Results. Among wave 1 virginity pledgers, 53% denied having made a pledge at wave 2; after control for confounders, pledgers who subsequently initiated sexual activity were 3 times as likely to deny having made a pledge as those who did not initiate sexual activity (odds ratio [OR] = 3.21; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.04, 5.04). Among wave 1 nonvirgins who subsequently took virginity pledges, 28% retracted their sexual histories at wave 2; respondents who took virginity pledges were almost 4 times as likely as those who did not to retract reports of sexual experience (OR=3.88; 95% CI=1.87, 8.07). CONCLUSIONS Adolescents who initiate sexual activity are likely to recant virginity pledges, whereas those who take pledges are likely to recant their sexual histories. Thus, evaluations of sexual abstinence programs are vulnerable to unreliable data. In addition, virginity pledgers may incorrectly assess the sexually transmitted disease risks associated with their prepledge sexual behavior.
Hierarchical gaze estimation based on adaptive feature learning

Existing appearance-based gaze estimation methods suffer from tedious calibration and appearance variation caused by head movement. In this paper, to handle this problem, we propose a novel appearance-based gaze estimation method by introducing supervised adaptive feature extraction and hierarchical mapping model. Firstly, an adaptive feature learning method is proposed to extract topology-preserving (TOP) feature individually. Then hierarchical mapping method is proposed to localize gaze position based on coarse-to-fine strategy. Appearance synthesis approach is used to increase the refer sample density. Experiments show that under the condition of sparse calibration, proposed method has better performance in accuracy than existing methods under fixed head pose without chinrest. Moreover, our method can be easily extended for head pose-varying gaze estimation.
Women migrants and refugees in the EU.

The paper seeks to identify issues specific to migrant women and refugees or which tend to affect them in different ways or on a different scale from male migrants due to gender, racial or other forms of discrimination. Discrimination can be defined “as the use of both different and unequal treatment of a group on the basis of a (real or imaginary) feature or groups of features that are socially construed as negative marks or stigmas compared with dominant players” (ISERES 2000). Migrant women confront legal, direct and indirect discriminations according to their class position, nationality, sexualisation and racialisation. Over time immigration legislation has discriminated less explicitly on gender grounds but it continues to have profound gender outcomes in terms of the preferential categories of immigration and the conditions under which entry, residence and employment are permitted.
An SMO Approach to Fast SVM for Classification of Large Scale Data

In this paper, a novel approach is proposed as a new fast Support Vector Machines (SVM) basing on sequential minimal optimization(SMO), minimum enclosing ball(MEB) approach and active set strategy. The combination with these 3 techniques largely accelerates the training process of SVM, attains fewer support vectors(SVs) as well as obtains a acceptable accuracy comparing to original SVM. From simulation results, it is stated that the proposed method will be a good alternative for classification of large scale data.
Spatial Patterns of Heat-Related Cardiovascular Mortality in the Czech Republic

The study examines spatial patterns of effects of high temperature extremes on cardiovascular mortality in the Czech Republic at a district level during 1994–2009. Daily baseline mortality for each district was determined using a single location-stratified generalized additive model. Mean relative deviations of mortality from the baseline were calculated on days exceeding the 90th percentile of mean daily temperature in summer, and they were correlated with selected demographic, socioeconomic, and physical-environmental variables for the districts. Groups of districts with similar characteristics were identified according to socioeconomic status and urbanization level in order to provide a more general picture than possible on the district level. We evaluated lagged patterns of excess mortality after hot spell occurrences in: (i) urban areas vs. predominantly rural areas; and (ii) regions with different overall socioeconomic level. Our findings suggest that climatic conditions, altitude, and urbanization generally affect the spatial distribution of districts with the highest excess cardiovascular mortality, while socioeconomic status did not show a significant effect in the analysis across the Czech Republic as a whole. Only within deprived populations, socioeconomic status played a relevant role as well. After taking into account lagged effects of temperature on excess mortality, we found that the effect of hot spells was significant in highly urbanized regions, while most excess deaths in rural districts may be attributed to harvesting effects.
A hybrid method for improving the SQD-PageRank algorithm

The PageRank algorithm is used in the Google search engine to calculate a single list of popularity scores for each page in the Web. These popularity scores are used to rank query results when presented to the user. PageRank assigns to a page a score proportional to the number of times a random surfer would visit that page, if it surfed indefinitely from page to page, following all outlinks from a page with equal probability. Thereupon, several algorithms are introduced to improve the last one. In this paper, we introduce a more intelligent surfer model based on combining ontology, web contents and PageRank. Firstly, we propose a relevance measure of a web page relative to a multiple-term query. Then, we develop our performed intelligent surfer model. Efficient execution of our algorithm in a local database is performed. Results show that our algorithm significantly outperforms the existing algorithms in the quality of the pages returned, while remaining efficient enough to be used in today's large search engines.
CFT exercises for the needs of AGT

An explicit check of the AGT relation between the W_N-symmetry controlled conformal blocks and U(N) Nekrasov functions requires knowledge of the Shapovalov matrix and various triple correlators for W-algebra descendants. We collect simplest expressions of this type for N=3 and for the two lowest descendant levels, together with the detailed derivations, which can be now computerized and used in more general studies of conformal blocks and AGT relations at higher levels.
A STUDY TO DETERMINE THE ELECTROMYOGRAPHIC ACTIVITY OF VASTUS MEDIALIS OBLIQUE MUSCLE DURING SQUATS ON DIFFERENT SURFACES

Results: The activity of the vastus medialis oblique and was found to be statistically significantly higher (p<0.05) on rubber discs than when the squats were performed on concrete floor or foam. Conclusion: The activation of vastus medialis obilique is more on unstable surfaces. Hence they are more suitable strengthening of VMO.
Real-time and proactive navigation via spatio-temporal prediction

We present a novel approach for real-time and proactive navigation in crowded environments such as event spaces and urban areas where many people are moving to their destinations simultaneously. Our challenge is to develop a real-time navigation system that enables movements of entire groups to be efficiently guided without causing congestion by making near-future predictions of people flow. Our approach tries to detect future congestion by using a spatio-temporal statistical method that predicts people flow. When future congestion is detected, our approach creates an optimal navigation plan based on "what-if" simulations, which accounts for the effect of total people flow change caused by navigation. We experimentally compare the spatio-temporal statistical method with the conventional matrix factorization based approach using a real data set. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of our navigation approach by computer simulation using artificial people-flow data.
Psychosocial Assessment of Self-Harm Patients and Risk of Repeat Presentation: An Instrumental Variable Analysis Using Time of Hospital Presentation

Background Clinical guidelines have recommended psychosocial assessment of self-harm patients for years, yet estimates of its impact on the risk of repeat self-harm vary. Assessing the association of psychosocial assessment with risk of repeat self-harm is challenging due to the effects of confounding by indication. Methods We analysed data from a cohort study of 15,113 patients presenting to the emergency departments of three UK hospitals to investigate the association of psychosocial assessment with risk of repeat hospital presentation for self-harm. Time of day of hospital presentation was used as an instrument for psychosocial assessment, attempting to control for confounding by indication. Results Conventional regression analysis suggested psychosocial assessment was not associated with risk of repeat self-harm within 12 months (Risk Difference (RD) 0.00 95% confidence interval (95%CI) -0.01 to 0.02). In contrast, IV analysis suggested risk of repeat self-harm was reduced by 18% (RD -0.18, 95%CI -0.32 to -0.03) in those patients receiving a psychosocial assessment. However, the instrument of time of day did not remove all potential effects of confounding by indication, suggesting the IV effect estimate may be biased. Conclusions We found that psychosocial assessments reduce risk of repeat self-harm. This is in-line with other non-randomised studies based on populations in which allocation to assessment was less subject to confounding by indication. However, as our instrument did not fully balance important confounders across time of day, the IV effect estimate should be interpreted with caution.
Unpack It! Organizational Ambidexterity between Structure, Knowledge and Performance. An Empirical Analysis

This paper analyses innovation ambidexterity - as defined in terms of exploration and exploitation attainments of knowledge and innovation - its antecedents in terms of organizational context and structure and its consequences in terms of financial performance. It is the first attempt to test the mediation effect of knowledge between antecedents on innovation ambidexterity. Findings, based on a 112 response survey, provide empirical evidence of the hypothesis and confirm the positive influence of ambidexterity on financial performance
Adding Realtime Coverage to the Google Knowledge Graph

In May 2012, the Web search engine Google has introduced the so-called Knowledge Graph, a graph that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another. Entities covered by the Knowledge Graph include landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, movies, celestial objects, works of art, and more. The graph enhances Google search in three main ways: by disambiguation of search queries, by search log-based summarization of key facts, and by explorative search suggestions. With this paper, we suggest a fourth way of enhancing Web search: through the addition of realtime coverage of what people say about real-world entities on social networks. We report on a browser extension that seamlessly adds relevant microposts from the social networking sites Google+, Facebook, and Twitter in form of a panel to Knowledge Graph entities. In a true Linked Data fashion, we interlink detected concepts in microposts with Freebase entities, and evaluate our approach for both relevancy and usefulness. The extension is freely available, we invite the reader to reconstruct the examples of this paper to see how realtime opinions may have changed since time of writing.
Banking Productivity and Economic Fluctuations: Colombia 1998-2000

This paper builds a general equilibrium, financial accelerator model hat incorporates an explicit technology for the intermediary sector. Acredit multiplier emerges because of a borrowing constraint that is a function of asset prices, internal funds and lending rates. With this financial friction I show that small changes in the productivity and intermediation costs of banks generate large and persistent fluctuations in economic activity. The transmission channel relies on the role that assets and internal funds play as collateral. After a negative shock hits financial intermediation productivity, the resulting credit crunch and economic slowdown induce a fall in asset prices and internal fund accumulation. This further modifies the present and future volume of collateral, thereby amplifying and propagating the initial shock. The paper argues that changes in banking regulation in Colombia in the late 1990´s increased intermediation costs, reduced banking productivity and induced a credit multiplier story that fits the theoretical model presented here. This new regulation enhanced the credit crunch and economic slowdown that was already underway. Colombian data on loan/deposit interest rate spreads, credit volume, asset prices and economic activity support this argument.
On the advantages of GaAs dual-gate MESFET's in comparison to Single-gate MESFET's

This paper presents a bidimectiomnal DC study of a dual-gate MESFET (DGMESFET) and a single-gate MESFET (SGMESFET) GaAs with 0.5 mum gates length. We describe the physical operating of these devices and especially the physical phenomena (velocity-field) in dual and single-gate GaAs MESFET. This paper describes also the temperature effect on the electrical characteristics of a dual-gate GaAs MESFETs. We consider the deficiencies with the current approach for simulating the effects of temperature on the DC characteristics of the device. This is carried out by considering the DC characteristics over a wide temperature range. For determine the temperature between two gates of DGMESFET planar structure, we imposing the equality between the field-dependent diffusivity-to-mobility ration (non linear and linear relation). Results of simulation, carried out by the finite element method, prove that the control of the out-put characteristics of the dual-gate MESFET is effective compared to the single-gate MESFET. The dual-gate MESFET exhibits excellent saturation behaviour and a high value of transconductance gm compared to the single-gate MESFET
Exploring the chemical space of influenza neuraminidase inhibitors

The fight against the emergence of mutant influenza strains has led to the screening of an increasing number of compounds for inhibitory activity against influenza neuraminidase. This study explores the chemical space of neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs), which provides an opportunity to obtain further molecular insights regarding the underlying basis of their bioactivity. In particular, a large set of 347 and 175 NAIs against influenza A and B, respectively, was compiled from the literature. Molecular and quantum chemical descriptors were obtained from low-energy conformational structures geometrically optimized at the PM6 level. The bioactivities of NAIs were classified as active or inactive according to their half maximum inhibitory concentration (IC50) value in which IC50 < 1µM and ≥ 10µM were defined as active and inactive compounds, respectively. Interpretable decision rules were derived from a quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) model established using a set of substructure descriptors via decision tree analysis. Univariate analysis, feature importance analysis from decision tree modeling and molecular scaffold analysis were performed on both data sets for discriminating important structural features amongst active and inactive NAIs. Good predictive performance was achieved as deduced from accuracy and Matthews correlation coefficient values in excess of 81% and 0.58, respectively, for both influenza A and B NAIs. Furthermore, molecular docking was employed to investigate the binding modes and their moiety preferences of active NAIs against both influenza A and B neuraminidases. Moreover, novel NAIs with robust binding fitness towards influenza A and B neuraminidase were generated via combinatorial library enumeration and their binding fitness was on par or better than FDA-approved drugs. The results from this study are anticipated to be beneficial for guiding the rational drug design of novel NAIs for treating influenza infections.