Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Ribosomal Database Project (RDP-II): previewing a new autoaligner that allows regular updates and the new prokaryotic taxonomy

The Ribosomal Database Project-II (RDP-II) pro-vides data, tools and services related to ribosomal RNA sequences to the research community. Through its website (http://rdp.cme.msu.edu), RDP-II offers aligned and annotated rRNA sequence data, analysis services, and phylogenetic inferences (trees) derived from these data. RDP-II release 8.1 contains 16 277 prokaryotic, 5201 eukaryotic, and 1503 mitochondrial small subunit rRNA sequences in aligned and annotated format. The current public beta release of 9.0 debuts a new regularly updated alignment of over 50 000 annotated (eu)bacterial sequences. New analysis services include a sequence search and selection tool (Hierarchy Browser) and a phylogenetic tree building and visualization tool (Phylip Interface). A new interactive tutorial guides users through the basics of rRNA sequence analysis. Other services include probe checking, phylogenetic placement of user sequences, screening of users' sequences for chimeric rRNA sequences, automated alignment, production of similarity matrices, and services to plan and analyze terminal restriction fragment polymorphism (T-RFLP) experiments. The RDP-II email address for questions or comments is rdpstaff@msu.edu.
Comments on "A New Algorithm for Border Description of Polarized Light Surface Microscopic Images of Pigmented Skin Lesions"

In this paper, discrepancies and reference inaccuracies in the paper (Grana et al., 2003) are pointed out. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the definitions of "lesion gradient" and "skin lesion gradient," widely used in a number of medical papers on computer analysis of pigmented skin lesions, are unambiguous, and that the "new algorithm for border description" described in the subject paper substantially relies on well-established concepts dating back over one decade ago.
Filtering Non-Linear TransferFunctions on Surfaces

Applying non-linear transfer functions and look-up tables to procedural functions (such as noise), surface attributes, or even surface geometry are common strategies used to enhance visual detail. Their simplicity and ability to mimic a wide range of realistic appearances have led to their adoption in many rendering problems. As with any textured or geometric detail, proper filtering is needed to reduce aliasing when viewed across a range of distances, but accurate and efficient transfer function filtering remains an open problem for several reasons: transfer functions are complex and non-linear, especially when mapped through procedural noise and/or geometry-dependent functions, and the effects of perspective and masking further complicate the filtering over a pixel's footprint. We accurately solve this problem by computing and sampling from specialized filtering distributions on the fly, yielding very fast performance. We investigate the case where the transfer function to filter is a color map applied to (macroscale) surface textures (like noise), as well as color maps applied according to (microscale) geometric details. We introduce a novel representation of a (potentially modulated) color map's distribution over pixel footprints using Gaussian statistics and, in the more complex case of high-resolution color mapped microsurface details, our filtering is view- and light-dependent, and capable of correctly handling masking and occlusion effects. Our approach can be generalized to filter other physical-based rendering quantities. We propose an application to shading with irradiance environment maps over large terrains. Our framework is also compatible with the case of transfer functions used to warp surface geometry, as long as the transformations can be represented with Gaussian statistics, leading to proper view- and light-dependent filtering results. Our results match ground truth and our solution is well suited to real-time applications, requires only a few lines of shader code (provided in supplemental material, which can be found on the Computer Society Digital Library at http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TVCG.2013.102), is high performance, and has a negligible memory footprint.
Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment: A Look at Racial Differences

As a people, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that hard work alone can push even the most disadvantaged of us beyond our upbringing. The link between parental and child labor outcomes in the form of educational attainment, income, or social class is known as intergenerational correlation. Due to vast differences in black and white American educational attainment, this paper conducted a study to measure just exactly how parental education will impact a child’s future. As literature and theory suggest, parental education, family income, race, gender, and several other factors all have a tangible benefit on determining how much schooling a person seeks out. This study focuses on the impact that, specifically, parental levels of educational attainment have on child’s future education. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the University of Michigan data was collected on these variables listed above. Ordinary Least Square regression and a TOBIT model were run to conclude how intergenerational transmission of education differs by race. This study concludes that overall, black American heads of household are not as influenced by parental levels of education as white American heads of household. In one example, white female heads of household can expect to gain almost twice the benefit from a parent finishing high school rather than not completing high school when compared to black females. This paper suggests that in order to close the gap between black and white educational attainments differences, increasing the emphasis placed on achieving more education may not be an effective solution for diminishing the gap.
Phosphorylation of Nonmuscle Myosin Heavy Chain IIA on Ser1917 Is Mediated by Protein Kinase CβII and Coincides with the Onset of Stimulated Degranulation of RBL-2H3 Mast Cells1

Dynamic remodeling of the actinomyosin cytoskeleton is integral to many biological processes. It is regulated, in part, by myosin phosphorylation. Nonmuscle myosin H chain IIA is phosphorylated by protein kinase C (PKC) on Ser1917. Our aim was to determine the PKC isoform specificity of this phosphorylation event and to evaluate its potential role in regulated secretion. Using an Ab against the phosphorylated form of Ser1917, we show that this site is not phosphorylated in unstimulated RBL-2H3 mast cells. The physiological stimulus, Ag, or the pharmacological activators, PMA plus A23187, induced Ser1917 phosphorylation with a time course coincident with the onset of granule mediator secretion. Dephosphorylation at this site occurred as Ag-stimulated secretion declined from its peak, but dephosphorylation was delayed in cells activated with PMA plus A23187. Phosphate incorporation was also enhanced by PMA alone and by inhibition of protein phosphatase 2A. Gö6976, an inhibitor of conventional PKC isoforms, abolished secretion and Ser1917 phosphorylation with similar dose dependencies consistent with involvement of either PKCα or PKCβ. Phorbol ester-stimulated Ser1917 phosphorylation was reconstituted in HEK-293 cells (which lack endogenous PKCβ) by overexpression of both wild-type and constitutively active PKCβII but not the corresponding PKCβI or PKCα constructs. A similar selectivity for PKCβII overexpression was also observed in MIN6 insulinoma cells infected with recombinant PKC wild-type adenoviruses. Our results implicate PKC-dependent phosphorylation of myosin H chain IIA in the regulation of secretion in mast cells and suggest that Ser1917 phosphorylation might be a marker of PKCβII activation in diverse cell types.
Design of a grasping robot control system using kinematics model

Aiming at the problem of mechanized and repeated parts grasping, and aiming to reduce the development cost, this study added an end-effector and designed a ROS-based grasping robot control system on the basis of fully analyzing the structure and workflow of the robot. The grasping robot can be controlled and monitored in real time by operating on the RVIZ interface. According to the needs and process of grasping work, the control system process design and control system programming of the robot are completed. Subsequent simulation experiments and real object control experiments show that the control system has high robustness and real-time performance. The control system can meet the task of mechanization and repeated parts grasping, and can effectively improve the production efficiency, enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, and reduce the cost of enterprises.
Behavioural New Keynesian Models

This paper provides a bird’s eye view of the behavioural New Keynesian literature. We discuss three key empirical regularities in macroeconomic data which are not accounted for by the standard New Keynesian model, namely, excess kurtosis, stochastic volatility, and departures from rational expectations. We then present a simple behavioural New Keynesian model that accounts for these empirical regularities in a straightforward manner. We discuss elaborations and extensions of the basic model, and suggest areas for future research.
Cigarette smoking and risk of borderline and invasive epithelial ovarian cancer

Studies regarding the association between smoking and risk of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) are inconsistent. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between smoking and EOC, overall and according to invasiveness and histological subtype in a cohort of women with a high proportion of smokers at enrolment. We followed 103,081 women, aged 30–50 years in 1991/1992, from the Norwegian‐Swedish Women's Lifestyle and Health cohort. The women completed a questionnaire on personal characteristics and exposures at enrolment and were subsequently followed with linkages to national registers through December 31, 2004. We used Cox proportional hazard regression models to estimate hazard ratio (RR) of EOC with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) associated with different measures of smoking exposures adjusting for confounding variables. Altogether 343 [241 (70%) invasive and 102(30%) borderline] incident EOC cases were identified. Former [HR = 2.2(95% CI 1.0–4.7)] and current [HR = 2.7(95% CI 1.2–5.7)] smokers had a more than doubling in risk for borderline tumors compared to never smokers. Women who had smoked for more than 20 years had 3 times [HR = 3.1(95% CI 1.5–6.7)] the risk of borderline tumors compared to never smokers. A test for trend according to smoking status was almost significant for mucinous tumors (p‐trend = 0.05). A significant dose response relationship was found according to smoking intensity [pack‐years; (0–9, 0–14, ≥ 15)] and duration [number of years; (0–10, 11–20, ≥ 20)] for borderline and serous tumors (p‐trends < 0.05). In conclusion, smoking may increase the risk of borderline EOC. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Enhancer trap infidelity in Drosophila optomotor-blind

Reporter gene activity in enhancer trap lines is often implicitly assumed to mirror quite faithfully the endogenous expression of the “trapped” gene, even though there are numerous examples of enhancer trap infidelity. optomotor-blind (omb) is a 160 kb gene in which 16 independent P-element enhancer trap insertions of three different types have been mapped in a range of more than 60 kb. We have determined the expression pattern of these elements in wing, eye-antennal and leg imaginal discs as well as in the pupal tergites. We noted that one pGawB insertion (ombP4) selectively failed to report parts of the omb pattern even though the missing pattern elements were apparent in all other 15 lines. We ruled out that ombP4 was defective in the Gal4 promoter region or had inactivated genomic enhancers in the integration process. We propose that the Gal4 reporter gene in pGawB may be sensitive to orientation or promoter proximity effects.
Sharing corporate tax knowledge with external advisers

Tax knowledge is critical for companies to comply with tax laws and engage in tax planning and avoidance. Firms rely on external advisers in handling tax issues, however, sharing corporate tax knowledge with external advisers entails both opportunities and risks. We identify four relational factors that are associated with the decision of corporate taxpayers to share knowledge with external tax advisers. Survey data from 221 corporate taxpayers reveals a novel distinction between operational and strategic knowledge sharing. The operational dimension has a functional nature, whereas the strategic dimension has a more intentional character. Accessibility to, and a positive experience with, external advisers enables operational knowledge sharing. When firms perceive specific tax benefits in relation to sharing knowledge, they are more inclined to engage in operational knowledge sharing with external advisers but less prone to strategic knowledge sharing. Instead, strategic knowledge sharing is enhanced when firms have access to, and value the knowledge of their advisers, although this latter factor plays no significant role in explaining operational knowledge sharing. A positive experience with advisers also associates with strategic knowledge sharing. We link our results to other research and discuss implications for regulators considering, or requiring, firm disclosures of corporate tax strategy.
Reduced IL‐10 secretion by CD4+ T lymphocytes expressing mutant cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR)

Expression of the CFTR protein is thought to be physiologically important only in exocrine epithelial cells. However, chronic respiratory inflammation and infection remain unexplained phenomena in disease pathogenesis. Non‐transformed, antigen‐responsive CD4+ T cells cloned from healthy controls and CF patients homozygous or heterozygous for the δF508 mutation transcribed CFTR mRNA and expressed immunoreactive cytoplasmic CFTR protein. T cell clones (TCC) from controls and CF patients displayed equivalent Ca2+‐mediated Cl− current; however, TCC from patients with CF but not controls displayed defective cAMP‐mediated Cl− current. Although CF‐derived TCC preserved mitogen and antigen proliferative responses and specificity to tetanus toxoid epitopes, they selectively secreted ≈ 45% less IL‐10 compared with control TCC after activation with concanavalin A (Con A) (624 ± 101 versus 1564 ± 401 pg/ml per 106 cells, respectively; P = 0.04) or anti‐CD3/phorbol ester (5148 ± 1634 versus 11 788 ± 2390 pg/ml; P = 0.05). This difference was independent of atopy. Secretion of interferon‐gamma, IL‐2, and IL‐4 was comparable in CF and control TCC after both forms of activation, while IL‐5 was reduced in CF TCC following anti‐CD3/phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) but not after Con A. We conclude that expression of mutant CFTR in human TCC is accompanied by ion channel dysfunction characteristic of the CF phenotype, and is accompanied by a reduction in IL‐10 secretion after polyclonal activation. It is possible that disruption of IL‐10‐mediated anti‐inflammatory homeostasis may contribute to early onset sustained inflammation in CF airways.
Managing Information Risks and Protecting Information Assets in a Web 2.0 Era

The growth in volume of digital information arising from business activities presents organisations with the increasingly difficult challenge of protecting their information assets. Failure to protect such information opens up a range of new business risks. The increase in externally hosted services and social networking tools also adds a new layer of complication to achieving information protection. Prior research has recognised the need for a socio-organisational view of information protection, shifting the emphasis from a narrowly defined technical concern to an enterprise-wide, business-led responsibility encompassing strategic and governance issues. We argue that this shift is important but not enough and that greater attention should be given to understanding the nature and complexities of digital business information. In this paper we examine the extent to which existing frameworks for information protection are structured to account for changes in the information environment. Our findings indicate that whilst these frameworks address the need to adopt a broader social and organisational perspective there remain a number of significant limitations in terms of the way the information is treated. To address these limitations we propose a more co-ordinated and information-centric approach to information protection.
Dog Bite Injuries in Children: A Preliminary Survey

Dog bite injuries in children are a preventable health problem. To characterize this type of injury, we have undertaken to define demographic criteria and patterns of injury inflicted by dogs in our pediatric population. A retrospective chart review was conducted of pediatric patients with dog bite injuries admitted to a Level I pediatric trauma center from January 1986 through June 1998. Patient demographics, canine characteristics, and hospital patient data were collected and analyzed using the Excel program and appropriate statistical methodology. There were 67 patient records reviewed. Thirty-eight (57%) of the patients were male, and 29 (43%) were female. There were 43 (64%) white children, 22 (33%) African-American children, and 2 (3%) Hispanic children. The average age of the children was 6.2 ± 4.2 years, with an average weight of 23.3 ± 13.7 kg. More than half the attacks occurred in the afternoon and 55 per cent of these attacks were documented as “unprovoked” attacks. Thirty-one (46%) of these attacks involved family pets, and 30 (45%) dogs were known to the attacked child. The head and neck was involved in greater than 67 per cent of these injuries. Pit bulls caused 25 per cent of the bite injuries. Large dogs were responsible for 88 per cent of the attacks. Forty-four (66%) patients required operative intervention. Twenty-eight of these patients had multiple anatomical areas injured. There were 44 procedures involving the head and neck, 21 involving extremities, and 6 involving other areas of the body. All patients 5 years of age and under had head and neck injuries. Dog bite injuries requiring admission occur more in male children. Caucasian and African American children were the majority of children affected. The children under 5 years of age suffered the most devastating injuries. More than half of these attacks were not provoked. More than two-thirds of the injuries to these children involved the head and neck. We conclude that effective prevention strategies must stress careful supervision of young children and the family or neighbor's dog, a scenario that may easily lead to complacency and set the stage for a severe injury.
Medical community expert classification based on potential semantic feature transfer learning

Nowadays, the mobile medical community, providing a communication platform for medical, medical treatment, pharmacy, life science as well as other related domains, acts as a professional social network for doctors, medical institutions, healthcare practitioners and life science. In the medical community, users can ask questions and receive the response from a professional doctor. It is possible to push the user's question to the specific doctor via classifying medical experts in the community, Therefore, the user's question can be answered in time. In the training of classification model of medical experts, the general approach is supervised learning. However, several different domains, including respiratory and chest diseases, first aid and critical illness and neuroscience, could be found in the medical community. Classical supervised learning algorithms find good classifiers for a given learning task using labeled input-output pair and require a large number of labeled training samples, when labeled data is limited and expensive to obtain. However, the original classification model can not obtain the optimal effects n the new domain. Moreover, trace number of categories or unclassified need to be re-labelled, leading to a higher price. In order to address the problem of cross-domain expert classification model in medical community, we combine user's inherent information as the keyword together with user's potential information, thereby improving the cross-domain model of medical community expert classification. Through the data collected in the medical community, our experimental results suggest that the method can be used to achieve better classification effect in small or unlabeled new domains.
Relationship of substance P to afferent characteristics of dorsal root ganglion neurones in guinea‐pig

1 The relationship between the afferent properties and substance P‐like immunoreactivity (SP‐LI) of L6 and SI dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neuronal somata was examined in anaesthetized guinea‐pigs. Glass pipette microelectrodes filled with fluorescent dyes were used to make intracellular recordings and to label DRG somata. The dorsal root conduction velocity (CV) and the afferent receptive properties of each unit were categorized according to criteria established in other species. Categories included a variety of low threshold mechanoreceptive classes, innocuous thermoreceptive and several nociceptive classes. Nociceptive units were further subdivided on the basis of CV and the locus of the receptive field (superficial cutaneous, deep cutaneous or subcutaneous). 2 SP‐LI was determined using the avidin–biotin complex method and the relative staining intensity determined by image analysis. The possible significance of labelling intensity is discussed. Clear SP‐LI appeared in twenty‐nine of 117 dye‐labelled neurones. All SP‐LI positive units with identified receptive properties were nociceptive but not all categories of nociceptors were positive. The intensity of SP‐LI labelling varied, often systematically, in relation to afferent properties. There was a tendency for nociceptive neurones with slower CVs and/or smaller cell bodies to show SP‐LI. 3 Nineteen of fifty‐one C fibre neurones showed SP‐LI. Fewer than half the C polymodal nociceptors (CPMs) were positive. The most intensely labelled units were the deep cutaneous nociceptors and some of the CPMs in glabrous skin. C low threshold mechanoreceptors and cooling‐sensitive units did not show SP‐LI. 4 Ten of sixty‐six A fibre neurones exhibited SP‐LI, including eight of sixteen Aδ nociceptors and two of fifteen Aα/β nociceptors. A fibre neurones exhibiting SP‐LI included seven of eight deep cutaneous mechanical nociceptors and some superficial cutaneous mechano‐heat nociceptors of hairy skin. In contrast, none of twenty superficial cutaneous A high threshold mechanoreceptor units or the thirty‐five A fibre low threshold units (D‐hair and other units) showed detectable SP‐LI. 5 We conclude that SP‐LI labelling in guinea‐pig DRG neurones is related to (a) afferent receptive properties, (b) the tissue in which the peripheral receptive terminals are located, (c) the CV and (d) the soma size.