Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The F-ATPase Operon Promoter of Streptococcus mutans Is Transcriptionally Regulated in Response to External pH

ABSTRACT Streptococcus mutans F-ATPase, the major component of the acid-adaptive response of the organism, is transcriptionally upregulated at low pH. Fusions of the F-ATPase promoter to chloramphenicol acetyltransferase indicated that pH-dependent expression is still observed with a short promoter that contains a domain conserved between streptococcal ATPase operons.
High-risk human papillomavirus , tumor suppressor protein p 53 and mitomycin-C in invasive squamous cell carcinoma cervix

BACKGROUND: Clinical data relating to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and p53 status in cervical cancer has been sparse and confusing. AIM: To evaluate high-risk HPV and expression of tumor suppressor protein p53 in squamous cell carcinoma of cervix and to assess response to mitomycin-C in neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. SETTING AND DESIGN: Teaching College Hospital; Gynecologic Oncology Unit and Department of Pathology. Prospective, randomized. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Expression of p53 protein was assessed, using immunohistochemistry with mouse monoclonal antibody in 30 consecutive patients undergoing radical hysterectomy or admitted for neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. Human papillomavirus DNA (HPV DNA) was assessed using hybrid capture II technology. Patients eligible for chemotherapy were randomized into vincristine, bleomycin and cisplatin (VBP) group and VBP with mitomycin C group. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Chi-square test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation; Mann-Whitney, McNemar and Fischer’s exact tests were used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: All patients with cancer cervix were positive for high-risk HPV DNA having relative light units/cut off values ranging from 3.4-2389.21 (P value = 0.006). High viral load of high risk HPV DNA was seen in advanced stages (P= 0.05) and an association of viral load with tumor volume was also seen (r=0.361, P=0.05). Analysis of p53 protein in cervical carcinoma patient showed expression in 50% of cancer specimens (P value < 0.001). McNemar’s and Fischer’s exact test showed no change in p53 status post-chemotherapy; however 66% of stage II B patients in VBP-M group became operable. CONCLUSION: High-risk HPV was universally present in all cases of cancer cervix and viral load was associated with stage and tumor volume while p53 protein was expressed in 50% of cases suggesting deregulation. More studies using mitomycin-C in cervical cancer treatment protocols are needed.
Trust and duration of buyer-seller relationship in emerging markets

Purpose This study aims to examine how various components of interpersonal trust (affective and cognitive) influence the duration of buyer-seller relationships in the emerging market (EM) context of a heterogeneous market structure dominated by small, fragmented sellers/suppliers. Design/methodology/approach The study proposes a hazard model for analyzing duration effects of interpersonal trust in the EM context. The model was validated using data on buying agents provided by 340 cocoa sellers/producers in Ghana, gathered from extensive field interviews. Findings Results of the survival analysis reveal a limited but significant positive duration effect of cognitive (ability) trust only. Further analysis of sellers’ duration intentions (intention to remain with a buyer) also reveals a positive impact of affective trust but no impact of cognitive (ability and integrity) trust. Cocoa bean sellers’ evaluation of buying firms’ purchasing agents suggests that buying firms underperform on emotional/affective components of interpersonal trust, and that private firms outperform state buying agents on ability trust as well. Research limitations/implications While this study focused on the fragmented nature of sellers in the EM context, and the scope was limited to the sellers’ interpersonal trust perception of the buyer-seller, future research should examine both buyer and seller perceptions to obtain complete insight into the buyer-seller dyad in the EM context. In addition, the results of the duration effects identified in this study may not be generalizable to other EM export commodities, where channels have long been fully privatized. Ghana’s cocoa export marketing system was only recently privatized, and potentially has more sellers at the risk of adopting/switching relationships with their buyers than would be expected in more privatized expert commodity marketing systems. Practical implications Managers of export commodity buying firms in EMs can take advantage of the positive duration effects of cognitive trust by constantly improving the capabilities of their purchasing agents throughout the lifetime of their suppliers to sustain their relationship. However, sellers’ intention to switch can be mitigated by formalizing policies that encourage emotional bonds with sellers, especially small-scale producers in highly vulnerable bargaining positions. The aggregate output of small-scale producers could be of strategic importance in the future. Originality/value Managers need systematic empirical evidence of the nature of duration effects of interpersonal trust given anecdotal evidence suggesting that managers have a tendency to emphasize cognitive trust over affective/emotional trust. Further, the applicability of such evidence in the EM context is critical given unique conditions such as highly fragmented sellers dealing with relatively large corporations.
Determinants of Online Buying Behaviour

The emerging digital economy has opened up new paradigms for retailing, and consumers across the world face new opportunities and challenges. However, the online firms face various problems today. The shopping cart abandonment in online shopping context is one such serious concern at present. On average, 71% of shopping carts are abandoned without a purchase. As a result, the researcher intends to probe the causes of online shopping cart abandonment in this study. According to the theory of planned behaviour, if there is a positive behavioural intention supported by favourable perceived behavioural controls online customers should end up with buying the product. However, abandonment of shopping cart is a situation that goes against this theory. The data was collected from online buyers across the world (n = 521) who were selected based on convenience in accessing them. This study while supporting the demographic factors of Age, Status and Gender to determine the abandonment behaviour shows there is no such relationship between geographical divide and abandonment behaviour. Moreover, this study suggests the executives and scholars to consider Age, Status and Gender when segmenting the markets in online context to minimize the abandonment behaviour and not to focus more on the geographical divide in such instances.
A study examining the bias of albumin and albumin/creatinine ratio measurements in urine

Abstract Background: The objective of the study was to examine the bias of albumin and albumin/creatinine (ACR) measurements in urine. Methods: Pools of normal human urine were augmented with purified human serum albumin to generate a series of 12 samples covering the clinical range of interest for the measurement of ACR. Albumin and creatinine concentrations in these samples were analyzed three times on each of 3 days by 24 accredited laboratories in Canada and the USA. Reference values (RV) for albumin measurements were assigned by a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) comparative method and gravimetrically. Ten random urine samples (check samples) were analyzed as singlets and albumin and ACR values reported according to the routine practices of each laboratory. Results: Augmented urine pools were shown to be commutable. Gravimetrically assigned target values were corrected for the presence of endogenous albumin using the LC-MS/MS comparative method. There was excellent agreement between the RVs as assigned by these two methods. All laboratory medians demonstrated a negative bias for the measurement of albumin in urine over the concentration range examined. The magnitude of this bias tended to decrease with increasing albumin concentrations. At baseline, only 10% of the patient ACR values met a performance limit of RV ±15%. This increased to 84% and 86% following post-analytical correction for albumin and creatinine calibration bias, respectively. Conclusions: International organizations should take a leading role in the standardization of albumin measurements in urine. In the interim, accuracy based urine quality control samples may be used by clinical laboratories for monitoring the accuracy of their urinary albumin measurements.
Kulczynski similarity index for objective evaluation of mesh segmentation algorithms

Recently, the 3D mesh segmentation is considered as an important stage in many applications in 3D shape analysis. In fact, extensive research has been performed to offer multiple approaches and algorithms for 3D mesh segmentation. Nevertheless, it is relatively hard to assess which algorithm produces more accurate segmentation quality than the other. Various methods have been proposed to evaluate the quality of segmentation algorithms. However, the evaluation of these qualities is far from being a solved problem, since most of the existing metrics don't take into account the regularity of the meshes and base their comparison on only one ground truth segmentation which presents a serious problematic since almost all the 3D objects have in general multiple reference segmentations. Hence, in this paper, we propose a new objective evaluation measure, based on the Kulczynski similarity index. The proposed method support comparison with multiple ground truth segmentations and takes into account the irregularity of meshes. Several experiments have been produced to show the discriminative power of our proposed measure.
A Method to Measure the Thermal Conductivity of Thermoelectric Nanowires

With the progress in nanoscale thermoelectric materials and devices the need for accurate characterization of these structures has become more apparent. Among the main three thermoelectric material properties of electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and thermal conductivity accurate measurement of thermal conductivity seems to be the most challenging due to its strong sensitivity to parasitic heat transfer paths. In this report we present a method for accurate measurement of the thermal conductivity of a thermoelectric nanowire structure. The method takes into account the heat loss to the substrate and the supporting materials which are the main parasitic heat conduction paths. The method can be extended to measure the thermal conductivity of other thermoelectric structures such as superlattice thin films and nanoparticles.
Thermal-Aware File and Resource Allocation in Data Centers

After addressing the issue of reducing power consumption by computing nodes in data centers, in recent years, computer scientists are focusing on reducing cooling cost of the data centers, thereby making the data centers thermal-aware. Due to the dramatic increase in power-density of data centers, thermal-management strategies are gaining more and more significance in the area of high performance computing data centers. Most of the previous studies towards achieving this goal focus on the nodes performing computation-intensive tasks, in which, the processors are the major consumer of the node’s power. However, there is a lack of study on the ways of thermal-aware data placement in storage clusters housing thousands of storage nodes, where the disk subsystems are the major power consumer. In this dissertation, we propose thermal-aware file and resource allocation policies to reduce the cooling cost of data centers. We first propose a thermal-aware file assignment policy -TIGERto make file assignments in distributed storage clusters, followed by out resource allocation policyTASH, which addresses the issue of thermal management in specific framework (Hadoop). Our proposed thermal-aware policies utilize nodes’ contributions towards heat re-circulation in data centers while making file and resource allocation decisions. The proposed policies make use of cross-interference matrix to calculate node’s contribution in heat re-circulation. Our experimental results show that the proposed policies significantly reduce the cooling cost of data centers as compared to existing thermal-aware policies, and at the same time, maintains performance penalties within acceptable margin.
A Cytomegalovirus Inhibitor of Gamma Interferon Signaling Controls Immunoproteasome Induction

ABSTRACT Both human and mouse cytomegaloviruses (HCMV and MCMV) avoid peptide presentation through the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I pathway to CD8+ T cells. Within the MHC class I pathway, the vast majority of antigenic peptides are generated by the proteasome system, a multicatalytic protease complex consisting of constitutive subunits, three of which can be replaced by enzymatically active gamma interferon (IFN-γ)-inducible subunits, i.e., LMP2, LMP7, and MECL1, to form the so-called immunoproteasomes. Here, we show that steady-state levels of immunoproteasomes are readily formed in response to MCMV infection in the liver. In contrast, the incorporation of immunoproteasome subunits was prevented in MCMV-infected, as well as HCMV-infected, fibroblasts in vitro. Likewise, the expression of the IFN-γ-inducible proteasome regulator PA28αβ was also impaired in MCMV-infected cells. Both MCMV and HCMV did not alter the constitutive-subunit composition of proteasomes in infected cells. Quantitative assessment of LMP2, MECL1, and LMP7 transcripts revealed that the inhibition of immunoproteasome formation occurred at a pretranscriptional level. Remarkably, a targeted deletion of the MCMV gene M27, encoding an inhibitor of STAT2 that disrupts IFN-γ receptor signaling, largely restored transcription and protein expression of immunoproteasome subunits in infected cells. While CMV block peptide transport and MHC class I assembly by posttranslational strategies, immunoproteasome assembly, and thus the repertoire of proteasomal peptides, is controlled by pretranscriptional mechanisms. We hypothesize that the blockade of immunoproteasome formation has considerable consequences for shaping the CD8+-T-cell repertoire during the effector phase of the immune response.
Do Loyalty Cards Enhance Loyalty in the Pharmaceutical Sector?

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the influence of the “Portuguese Pharmacies card” (PP card) on the pharmacies' customers' behavior. It also intends to examine whether marketing stimuli influence consumers' buying behavior with regard to non-prescription medicines/health and wellness products/pharmaceutical services (NP/HW/PS) and to understand if the consumer social-demographic characteristics influence purchase decisions and customers' loyalty. The investigation is based on the results obtained through an online survey. Exploratory descriptive analysis, based on a sample of 385 customers, is used to empirically verify the hypothesis under study. The marketing stimuli considered in this research include four communication tools: advertising, sales promotions, word of mouth, and the sales force. We conclude that all marketing stimuli can influence impulse buying behavior referred to NP/HW/PS. However, the older the respondents, the lower the influence of these stimuli, except for the relationship with the pharmacist, which will only tend to diminish its importance with increasing income or academic qualifications. Also, men appear to be more permeable to the influence of advertising and sales promotions. The influence of satisfaction on purchases volume of NP/HW/PS stands out, while trust shows no relevant relationship with impulse buying. We conclude that the Portuguese Pharmacies card indeed contributes to customer loyalty in the establishments where it is present. In order to meet customer expectations, a loyalty program should be adjusted over time, seeking to stimulate satisfaction with and reliance on this program.
Status and Future of Security Techniques in the Internet Banking Service

As Internet banking service became popular, many users can exchange goods by online. Even though this advantage, there are incident cases in the Internet banking service due to security threats. In order to counteract this problem, various security techniques have been applied over whole area in the Internet banking service. Therefore, we described that analyzed results of security techniques applied in the financial institutions area and network communication area in this paper. We consider that this paper will be useful as a reference to protect security threats occurred by insiders and vulnerabilities in implementation
Semantics of French Discourse Particles quoi and ben

Discourse particles are strewn throughout natural spoken discourse, revealing the speakers' attitude towards what they are saying and guiding the interlocutors' interpretation of that utterance. The majority of works in the area of the French discourse particles quoi and ben provide detailed analyses and place their primary focus on usage. Problems arise, however, when word usage is discussed without a systematic approach to semantics. The present study applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) method of description to these particles, proposing definitive explications that can be substituted into naturally occurring examples of quoi and ben without causing any semantic loss. Explications, framed in the culture7neutral terms of the NSM, capture the subtleties of meaning conveyed by each discourse particle. They are presented in parallel English and French versions and are tested against a corpus of spoken French. KeywordsFrench discourse particles; Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM); semantics
Advanced MEMS Process for Wafer Level Hermetic Encapsulation of MEMS Devices Using SOI Cap Wafers With Vertical Feedthroughs

This paper reports a novel and inherently simple fabrication process, so-called advanced MEMS (aMEMS) process, that is developed for high-yield and reliable manufacturing of wafer-level hermetic encapsulated MEMS devices. The process enables lead transfer using vertical feedthroughs formed on an Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) wafer without requiring any complex via-refill or trench-refill processes. It requires only seven masks to fabricate the hermetically capped sensors with an experimentally verified process yield of above 80%. Hermetic encapsulation is achieved by Au-Si eutectic bonding at 400 °C, and the pressure inside the encapsulated cavity has been characterized to be as low as 1 mTorr with successfully activated thin-film getters. The pressure inside the encapsulated cavity can also be adjusted in the range of 1 mTorr-5 Torr by various combinations of outgassing and gettering options in order to satisfy the requirements of different applications. The package pressure is being monitored for the selected chips and is observed to be stable below 10 mTorr since their fabrication about 10 months ago. The shear strengths of several packages are measured to be as high as 30 MPa with average shear strength of 22 MPa, indicating a mechanically strong bonding. The robustness of the packages is tested by thermal cycling between 100 °C and 25 °C, and absolutely no degradation is observed in the hermeticity and the package pressure. The package pressure is also verified to remain unchanged after storing the packages at a high storage temperature of 150 °C for 24 h. Furthermore, the packaged chips are observed to withstand a high temperature shock test performed at 300 °C for 5 min, at the end of which the characteristics of the encapsulated sensor indicates that the package still remains hermetic (no detectable leaks) and also the package pressure remains constant at ~20 mTorr.
Threat of bankruptcy and the integrity of financial statement

Financial statement fraud involves the manipulation of financial accounts by overstating assets, sales and profit, understating liabilities and expenses.One of the causes of financial statement fraud is due to threat of bankruptcy. This study explores the effectiveness of Altman Z-Score in predicting the occurrence of financial statement fraud.This study makes a comparison between non-fraudulent companies and fraudulent companies.The sample of non-fraudulent companies is selected from small market capitalization companies in Malaysia.Meanwhile, the sample for fraudulent companies is selected from companies which were charged by the Securities Commission for falsifying financial statements.The result shows that fraudulent companies display sign of bankruptcy before it is charged with falsification of financial statement fraud.
EFFECTS OF GENETIC POLYMORPHISMS OF CYP3A4, CYP3A5 AND MDR1 ON CYCLOSPORINE PHARMACOKINETICS AFTER RENAL TRANSPLANTATION

1 The calcineurin inhibitor cyclosporine is widely used to prevent allograft rejection after solid organ transplantation. It has a narrow therapeutic index and shows considerable interindividual differences in its pharmacokinetics. Interindividual differences in the activity and expression of the metabolising enzymes cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4 and 3A5 and the multidrug efflux pump P‐glycoprotein (P‐gp) contribute considerably to cyclosporine pharmacokinetics. Variability in the activity of CYP3A4, CYP3A5 and P‐gp could be considered to result from genetic polymorphisms encoding their genes. 2 The aim of the present study was to evaluate retrospectively the effects of genetic polymorphisms of CYP3A4, CYP3A5 and MDR1 on cyclosporine dose adjusted trough blood concentration during the early period after renal transplantation in Chinese patients. 3 One hundred and six renal transplant recipients in China were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism for CYP3A4*18A, CYP3A5*3 and MDR1 C3435T. Cyclosporine whole blood levels were measured by fluorescence polarization immunoassay. Dose‐adjusted trough blood concentrations (C0) were determined and compared among the different genotype groups. 4 The frequency of the CYP3A4*18A, CYP3A5*3 and MDR1 C3435T variant alleles were 0.005 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.048, 0.0049), 0.783 (95% CI 0.781, 0.785) and 0.528 (95% CI 0.526, 0.531), respectively, and these alleles exhibited incomplete linkage disequilibrium. The median cyclosporine dose‐adjusted C0 in CYP3A5*1/*1 genotype subjects (n = 6) was 14.8 ng/mL per mg per kg (range 11.1–26.8 ng/mL per mg per kg), in CYP3A5*1/*3 patients (n = 34) it was 23.7 ng/mL per mg per kg (range 9.0–61.0 ng/mL per mg per kg) and for CYP3A5*3/*3 patients (n = 66) it was 26.4 ng/mL per mg per kg (range 9.8–85.8 ng/mL per mg per kg; P = 0.012, Kruskal–Wallis test). Accordingly, cyclosporine dose‐adjusted C0 was larger in CYP3A5 non‐expressors than expressors in the first week after renal transplantation. In addition, wild‐type homozygotes (n = 21) for MDR1 C3435T had a slight but significantly lower dose‐adjusted C0 compared with heterozygotes (n = 58): 17.7 (10.3–60.8) versus 26.4 (9.0–67.3) ng/mL per mg per kg, respectively (P = 0.014, Mann–Whitney U‐test). 5 In conclusion, the present study shows that genetic polymorphisms in CYP3A5 may be responsible, in part, for the large interindividual variability of cyclosporine pharmacokinetics during the early phase after renal transplantation in Chinese patients. Patients with the CYP3A5*3 variant genotype require a low dose of cyclosporine to reach target levels compared with those with the CYP3A5*1 allele.