Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes of the Membrane Lipid Organization Characterized by Means of a New Cholesterol-Pyrene Probe

We synthesized 3β-hydroxy-pregn-5-ene-21-(1-methylpyrenyl)-20-methylidene (Py-met-chol), consisting of cholesterol steroid rings connected to a pyrene group via a linker without polar atoms. This compound has interesting spectroscopic properties when probing membranes: 1), The pyrene has hypochromic properties resulting from probe self-association processes in membranes. Using liposomes of various lipid compositions, we determined the association constants of the probe (K): KDOPC ≫ KPOPC ≫ KDMPC > KDMPC/15 mol % Chol > KDMPC/30 mol % Chol. This indicates a better probe solvation in saturated than in unsaturated lipids, and this effect is enhanced as the cholesterol concentration increases. 2), The pyrene fluorophore is characterized by monomer (I1–I5) and excimer (IE) emission bands. In model membranes, I1/I3 and IE/I3 ratios revealed a correlation between the polarity of the lipid core of the membrane and the amount of cholesterol. 3), Using this probe, we monitored the first steps of the signaling pathway of the mouse δ-opioid receptor, a G-protein-coupled receptor. The thickness of the membrane around this receptor is known to change after agonist binding. Fluorescence spectra of living Chinese hamster ovary cells overexpressing mouse δ-opioid receptor specifically revealed the agonist binding. These results indicate that Py-met-chol may be useful for screening ligands of this family of receptors.
Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Economic Fluctuations

This paper considers a possible explanation for asymmetric adjustment of nominal prices. We present a menu-cost model in which positive trend inflation causes firms' relative prices to decline automatically between price adjustments. In this environment, shocks that raise firms' desired prices trigger larger price responses than shocks that lower desired prices. We use this model of asymmetric adjustment to address three issues in macroeconomics: the effects of aggregate demand, the effects of sectoral shocks, and the optimal rate of inflation.
Quality of life in multiple sclerosis: should clinicians trust proxy ratings?

Purpose Measures of quality of life (QoL) are increasingly used to monitor psychological and social well being of clients with chronic illnesses. They are particularly useful in cases where an illness results in multiple disabilities. Where clients have difficulty completing the measure, others who know them may act as proxies. It is important, therefore to assess the accuracy of proxy scores. This study compared the QoL scores given by people with multiple sclerosis (PWMS) with proxy scores given by close relatives. Method The Functional Assessment of Multiple Sclerosis (FAMS) quality of life instrument (Cella et al.) [1] was used. Forty PWMS completed the measure in face-to-face interviews with a speech and language therapist. Close relatives were asked to independently complete the measure on behalf of these clients. Results The overall correlation between client and proxy scores was 0.62, which Sneeuw et al. [2] suggest indicates good agreement. As in previous studies with other groups of clients, proxies underestimated the scores of PWMS. Despite these findings, the results showed substantial disagreements for individual clients and their proxies and a relationship was found which suggests that proxies underestimate the scores of clients with better QoL and overestimate those with poorer QoL scores. Conclusion The level of agreement found between client and proxy scores and the tendency for proxies to underestimate clients' scores are consistent with research with other client groups. The overestimation by proxies of clients who rate their QoL as poor needs further investigation. If confirmed it may complicate the estimation of client scores from those of proxies. We conclude that while proxy scores may be useful as a means of estimating the QoL of groups of clients in research studies they should be used cautiously in the prediction of the QoL of individual clients at the clinical level. Multiple Sclerosis 2007; 13: 1190—1194. http://msj.sagepub. com
How Companies are Reinventing Their Idea-to-Launch Methodologies

OVERVIEW: The Stage-Gate® system introduced in the mid-1980s has helped many firms drive new products to market. But leaders have adjusted and modified the original model considerably and built in many new best practices. They have made the system more flexible, adaptive and scalable; they have built in better governance; integrated it with portfolio management; incorporated accountability and continuous improvement; automated the system; bolted on a proactive front-end or discovery stage; and finally, adapted the system to include “open innovation. ” All of these improvements have rendered the system faster, more focused, more agile and leaner, and far better suited to today's rapid pace of product innovation.
'What if they ask how I got it?' Dilemmas of disclosing parental HIV status and testing children for HIV in Uganda.

BACKGROUND Limited research has been conducted outside Western settings on how HIV-positive parents decide to test and disclose their own HIV status to children. We conducted a qualitative study in 2001 and 2005 to assess parent attitudes and current counselling policy and practice regarding child testing and parental disclosure in Uganda prior to the roll-out of antiretroviral therapy. METHODS Parent perspectives were obtained through extended in-depth interviews with 10 HIV-positive parents recruited from The AIDS Support Organization (TASO), Entebbe branch. Counselling policy and practice were explored through key informant interviews with directors and two counsellors from each of five Ugandan counselling institutions with national or regional coverage. RESULTS Respondents had 51 children ranging from 4 to 36 years with a median age of 13. Five of 10 parents had disclosed their status to their children, usually to all, and four of these had tested one child for HIV. All those who tested any child had also disclosed their status to some or all of their children. Parents regularly worried that their children may be infected, but all preferred to wait for emergence of symptoms before considering HIV tests, citing fear of children's emotional reaction and lack of perceived benefits from knowing status. Counselling policy directors confirmed the absence of policy and training guidelines on the subject of parent-child disclosure. Counsellors reported improvising and giving inconsistent advice on this common concern of clients. CONCLUSIONS Concerns over disclosure to children of parent's HIV status and testing children for HIV represent a major psychological burden for HIV-positive parents. Further research is needed, but current counselling practice could be improved now by adapting lessons learned from existing research.
Ontological approach for semantic modeling and querying the Qur’an

The Qur’an is considered as the first source of knowledge and guidance for Muslims throughout the world. It’s a difficult book to understand and to interpret without consulting domain experts and Qur’anic commentaries (Tafsir books). Therefore it’s very sensitive to analyze and to model his content for fear to make bad assumptions and axioms. In recent years a number of researches has been done to facilitate the retrieval of knowledge from the Qur’an, but most of the available researches are using human readable data resources and therefore cannot be reused and linked using semantic web technologies. This is why in this project we will adopt an approach that enables humans and computers to understand the Qur’an knowledge throughout the creation of a Qur’anic ontology. The goal of the ontology is to build a computational model capable of representing as much as possible of the concepts mentioned on the Qur’an and the relationships between them using Protege-OWL. The ontology can be queried using SPARQL queries. For non-technical users we will build a tool that enables them to browse the content of the ontology.
Jobs and Exposure to International Trade within the Service Sector in Sweden

The service sector is very heterogeneous with respect to internationalization; in some industries there is international trade (or it may potentially exist), whereas other industries are non-tradable. Data on international trade in services is, however, typically very limited, making it difficult to identify in which industries there are international trade. In this paper, we partially surmount the problems with insufficient service trade statistics by calculating locational Ginis for different industries in the private business sector as well as in the public sector. The basic idea is that from the regional concentration of different activities within a country one can identify industries where there appears to be regional trade, and hence also a potential for international trade. Based on our method we find that the number of employed in tradable service appears to be at least as large as in the manufacturing sector. Remarkably, a larger share of the skilled labor exposed to international trade is working in the service sector than in manufacturing, while a majority of the less skilled labor working in tradable industries is employed in manufacturing. When it comes to employment growth, we observe that the employment has increased in tradable service, while it has fallen in the manufacturing sector (the whole sector is regarded as tradable).
Performance analysis for web service composition based on Queueing Petri Net

As a process description language of Web service composition, WS-BPEL only describes the orchestration process of the Web service composition. And we need to optimize the system performance by proposing a formal model of the process to analyze performance of the composition. This paper presents to make use of Queueing Petri Nets [1-2] to formal modeling of BPEL processes, use simulation tool QPME[3-4] to imitate simulation service composition, finally analyze and verify one of the performance indicators: mean service response time, service utilization and mean token population by the quantitative analysis method.
The UK Parliament and performance

Many governments across OECD countries now produce substantial amounts of performance information. This movement has increasingly become known variously as output- or outcome-based budgeting or governance. This article focuses on the important question of how legislatures are responding to this development. Using the case of the UK's public performance measurement systems — especially since 1997 and the introduction of Public Service Agreements — it examines the UK Parliament's response to this change. It poses the question: to what extent has Parliament used this new resource to challenge the executive arm of government or has been challenged itself to adapt its own role and activities to this new regime? From a detailed analysis of the conduct of parliamentary Select Committees and a survey of Select Committee members we find that Parliament itself has been more challenged by performance reporting than challenging of the executive, despite attempts by Parliament itself to institutionalize performance scrutiny. The article concludes with a discussion of how far legislative scrutiny, and even perhaps co-steering, of performance is feasible or desirable.
Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli var. fuscans Is Aggregated in Stable Biofilm Population Sizes in the Phyllosphere of Field-Grown Beans

ABSTRACT The occurrence of “Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli var. fuscans” (proposed name) populations as biofilms on bean leaves was investigated during three field experiments on plots established with naturally contaminated bean seeds. Behavior of aggregated versus solitary populations was determined by quantification of culturable cells in different fractions of the epiphytic population separated by particle size. X. axonopodis pv. phaseoli var. fuscans population dynamic studies confirmed an asymptomatic and epiphytic colonization of the bean phyllosphere. For all years of experiment and cultivars tested, biofilms and solitary components of the populations were always detected. Biofilm population sizes remained stable throughout the growing season (around 105 CFU/g of fresh weight) while solitary population sizes were more abundant and varied with climate. According to enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus fingerprinting, aggregated bacterial isolates were not different from solitary isolates. In controlled conditions, application of a hydric stress resulted in a decrease of the solitary populations on the leaf surface while the biofilm fraction remained stable. Suppression of the hydric stress allowed solitary bacterial populations to increase again. Aggregation in biofilms on leaf surfaces provides protection to the bacterial cells against hydric stress.
WOMEN, PARTICIPATION AND EMPOWERMENT IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: BANGLADESH UNION PARISHAD PERSPECTIVE

Mainstreaming women through gender specific policies is an acknowledged precondition for achieving meaningful development in any developing country like Bangladesh. Yet it is only recently that this issue has been recognized as such in the context of policy reforms in both administrative and local government arenas. Recent local government reform in Bangladesh has led to creation of quota for women in grassroots democratic institutions. In the context of local government, women's concerns had surfaced intermittently and were highlighted in the government reform agenda as evident in the last Local Government Reform of 1997. As a consequential effect Local Government (Union Parishad) Amendment Act 1997 was promulgated. It provides 3 directly elected women members in the Union Parishad from 3 reserved seats. However, there are serious lacunas in gender balancing both in terms of governance policy and reform agenda. Union Parishad is the most popular democratic institution at the grassroots level. Therefore, the state of women's participation at this level is crucial and deserves special attention to empower them as participation and empowerment are closely related.
Optimal sampling policies in a centralised supply chain with demands affected by product quality

We address a quality control problem frequently encountered in multi-stage pharmaceutical supply chains transporting drugs from a producer to a wholesaler and eventually to retailers (pharmacies). Depending on the transportation modes and storage methods used, the stages may expose the drugs to hostile environments, such as extreme temperatures, which may impact the quality. To study the performance of such a supply chain, we incorporate the effect of quality on demand with the Neymanâ€“Pearson statistical framework. We show that in a centralised supply chain the optimal inspection strategies for the parties depend on parameters, which signify the relative importance of price and the impact of quality on demand. In particular, we find that the ratio between the customer demand under perfect product quality and the customer sensitivity to quality plays a critical role in selecting optimal inspection policies.
Unusual septum formation in Streptococcus pneumoniae mutants with an alteration in the D,D-carboxypeptidase penicillin-binding protein 3

An internal 630-bp DNA fragment of the gene encoding penicillin-binding protein 3 (PBP 3) (dacA) of Streptococcus pneumoniae was identified in a lambda gt11 gene bank screened with anti-PBP 3 antiserum. The deduced 210-amino-acid sequence showed a high degree of homology to the low-molecular-weight PBPs 5 and 6 of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis PBP 5. Viable mutants lacking a C-terminal part of PBP 3 were obtained after a plasmid containing the dacA fragment was integrated into the PBP 3 gene by homologous recombination. The truncated PBP 3* was still active in terms of beta-lactam binding. Most PBP 3 was found in the growth medium, indicating that membrane anchoring of PBP 3 is provided by the C terminus, as has been shown for other D,D-carboxypeptidases. The mutant cells grew with a slower generation time than the wild type in the shape of irregular enlarged spheres. In addition, as revealed by electron microscopy, cell separation was severely affected, septa were found unevenly distributed at multiple sites within the cells, and the murein layer appeared variable in thickness.
Photoaffinity Cross-linking Identifies Differences in the Interactions of an Agonist and an Antagonist with the Parathyroid Hormone/Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein Receptor*

Analogs of parathyroid hormone (PTH)-related protein (PTHrP), singularly substituted with a photoreactivel-p-benzoylphenylalanine (Bpa) at each of the first 6 N-terminal positions, were pharmacologically evaluated in human embryonic kidney cells stably expressing the recombinant human PTH/PTHrP receptor. Two of these analogs, in which the photoreactive residue is either in position 1 or 2 (Bpa1- and Bpa2-PTHrP, respectively) displayed high affinity binding. Bpa1-PTHrP also displayed high efficacy for the stimulation of increased cAMP levels. Surprisingly, Bpa2-PTHrP was found to be a potent antagonist, despite the presence of the principal activation domain (sequence 1–6). Analysis of the digestion profiles of the ligand-receptor photoconjugates revealed that both the agonist and the antagonist cross-link to the S-CH3 group of Met425 in transmembrane domain 6 of the human PTH/PTHrP receptor. However, the antagonist Bpa2-PTHrP also cross-links to a proximal site within the receptor domain Pro415–Met425. Unlike the antagonist Bpa2-PTHrP, the potent agonist Bpa2-PTH, also bearing the Bpa residue in position 2, cross-links only to the S-CH3 group of Met425 (similar to Bpa1-PTHrP and Bpa1-PTH). Taken together, these results suggest that the antagonist Bpa2-PTHrP is able to distinguish between two distinct conformations of the receptor. The comparison between PTHrP analogs substituted by Bpa at two consecutive positions and across PTH and PTHrP reveals insights into the PTH/PTHrP ligand-receptor bimolecular interaction at the level of a single amino acid.
Do Harmonised Accounting Standards Lead to Harmonised Accounting Practices? An Empirical Study of IAS 39 Measurement Requirements in Some European Union Countries

The objective of this paper is to investigate the level of harmonisation for IAS 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement and to identify if different levels of harmonisation are associated with company-specific factors. Based on Rahman et al. (2002), we used the Jaccard (JACC) index to determine the level of harmonisation between IAS 39 and the financial reporting practice of a broad-based sample of European-listed companies in 2005. We applied regression analysis to identify companies' specific characteristics that affect the level of convergence of the reporting practice of financial instruments. The results of this study show a high level of harmonisation between accounting practices of European companies included in our sample and IAS 39.
Discussing the consistency of the Euro area: ten years after, is there a real integration?

The present work is an attempt to examine the consistency and integration process in Euro area, following a different approach. More than a decade after the establishment of the common currency (euro), we examine several important indicators of the first country-members (Euro-12). We determine different groups of countries developing similar characteristics through the years and their comparison to the overall Euro-12 economic data, as diversion from others contradicts the main concept of the Union, which is the progressive convergence of the economies of all country-members. Using simple exploratory data analysis tests and multivariate methods that evaluate the combined image of each nation's economic results, we confirm the heterogeneity inside the Eurozone. Findings we hope that will add to the ongoing, debate concerning the overall conception of Euro area.
Single-phase grid-tie photovoltaic inverter using maximum power point tracking with flyback converter

This paper introduces a topology for single-phase grid-tie inverter with a combination of switching strategy of sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) and square wave signals under grid synchronization condition, used for residential photovoltaic power integration. To match the impedance between photovoltaic panel and load and to boost the panel voltage a dc-dc flyback topology is employed. Moreover, maximum power point tracking algorithm (perturb & observe) is implemented, in order to extract maximum power available from photovoltaic panel. The strategy of grid synchronization and sending power into the grid are described in detail. Therefore, the control strategy and simulation results for the proposed system are discussed and analyzed.
Impact of vertical RRAM device characteristics on 3D cross-point array design

Resistive switching random access memory (RRAM) is one of the most promising candidates for the next-generation non-volatile memory. To enable large capacity RRAM array, the 3D architecture is needed. In this work, the analyses of different device characteristics, including the RRAM ON/OFF-state resistance (Ron/Roff), I-V nonlinearity ratio and the interconnect material, are performed to find the optimal design point of the 3D RRAM array. The results show that insufficient current drivability of the vertical transistor causes a significant amount of voltage drop on the transistor. The write and read margin conflicts with each other. A high Ron is preferred over a high nonlinearity to improve the write/read margin. A RRAM cell with Ron=500kΩ and nonlinearity=5x can satisfy the specified programming and read sense criterion for a 128×128×16 array, Moreover, the energy consumption (<;nJ/bit) of the write operation outperforms that in NAND FLASH. Finally, a feature size (F) of 30nm and 60nm with equal array densities are compared, which suggests that the downscaling of feature size might not be as crucial as believed and the design constraint can be relaxed as a result.
Failure of de-activation in the medial frontal cortex in mania: evidence for default mode network dysfunction in the disorder

Abstract Objectives. Manic patients have been found to show reduced activation in the prefrontal cortex and other regions during performance of cognitive tasks. However, little is known about de-activations associated with the disorder. This study aimed to examine, at the whole-brain level, abnormal patterns of task-related activation and de-activation during performance of a working memory task. Methods. Twenty-nine DSM-IV bipolar patients and 46 healthy controls underwent fMRI during performance of the n-back task. The patients were scanned while they were in a manic episode. Linear models were used to obtain maps of within-group activations and areas of differential activation between the groups. Results. The manic patients showed reduced activation compared to the controls in the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right parietal cortex. They also showed failure of de-activation in the medial frontal cortex, extending to the temporal poles and parts of the limbic system bilaterally. The failure of activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex disappeared when differences in task performance were controlled for in the analysis. However, the medial frontal failure of de-activation survived controlling for this. Conclusions. This study suggests that, in addition to reduced prefrontal activation, failure of de-activation is an important functional imaging abnormality in mania. This, together with its location in the medial prefrontal cortex, implies default mode network dysfunction in the disorder.