Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyses of the modifications in the π circuits for inclusion of frequency influence in transmission line representation

In this article, it is represented by state variables phase a transmission line which parameters are considered frequency independently and frequency dependent. It is analyzed what is the reasonable number of π circuits and the number of blocks composed by parallel resistor and inductor in parallel for reduction of numerical oscillations. It is simulated the numerical routine with and without the effect of frequency in the longitudinal parameters. Initially, it is used state variables and π circuits representing the transmission line composing a linear system which is solved by numerical routines based on the trapezoidal rule. The effect of frequency on the line is synthesized by resistors and inductors in parallel and this representation is analyzed in details. It is described transmission lines and the frequency influence in these lines through the state variables.
Training parents to help their children read: a randomized control trial.

BACKGROUND Low levels of literacy and high levels of behaviour problems in middle childhood often co-occur. These persistent difficulties pose a risk to academic and social development, leading to social exclusion in adulthood. Although parent-training programmes have been shown to be effective in enabling parents to support their children's development, very few parent interventions offer a combination of behavioural and literacy training. AIMS This paper (1) reports on a prevention programme which aimed to tackle behaviour and literacy problems in children at the beginning of school, and (2) presents the effects of the intervention on children's literacy. SAMPLE One hundred and four 5- and 6-year-old children selected from eight schools in an inner city disadvantaged community in London participated in the intervention. METHODS This is a randomized control trial with pre- and post-measurements designed to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention. The behavioural intervention consisted of the 'Incredible Years' group parenting programme combined with a new programme designed to train parents to support their children's reading at home. RESULTS Analyses demonstrated a significant effect of the intervention on children's word reading and writing skills, as well as parents' use of reading strategies with their children. CONCLUSION A structured multicomponent preventive package delivered with attention to fidelity can enable parents to support their children's reading at home and increase their literacy skills. Together with the improvement in child behaviour, these changes could improve the life chances of children in disadvantaged communities.
High speed merged-datapath design for run-time reconfigurable systems

Datapath merging is an efficient high level synthesis method to merge Data Flow Graphs (DFGs), corresponding to two or more computational intensive loops. This process creates a general purpose datapaths (merged datapaths) instead of multiple datapaths that results in shorter bit-stream length and therefore reduces the configuration time in reconfigurable systems. The merged datapath, however has worse loop execution time. This paper represents two datapath merging algorithms to address this problem. These algorithms consider the impact of adding multiplexer's latency to the critical path delay of the merged datapath. The former algorithm merges DFGs from the biggest DFG to the smallest one to make high speed merged datapath. The latter merges DFGs in steps, and in the final step, it combines the resources inside the merged datapath to achieve additional reduction in configuration time. The proposed techniques are evaluated using several Mediabench applications. The experimental results show a significant reduction, up to 35% in loops execution time for the first algorithm and up to 27% reduction for the second algorithm in comparison to previous datapath merging algorithm.
Polyubiquitylation of PARP‐1 through ubiquitin K48 is modulated by activated DNA, NAD+, and dipeptides

Poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase‐1 (PARP‐1) is the most abundant and the best‐studied isoform of a family of enzymes that catalyze the polymerization of ADP‐ribose from NAD+ onto target proteins. PARP‐1 is well known to involve in DNA repair, genomic stability maintenance, transcription regulation, apoptosis, and necrosis. Polyubiquitylation targets proteins towards degradation and regulates cell cycle progression, transcription, and apoptosis. Here we report polyubiquitylation of PARP‐1 in mouse fibroblasts in the presence of proteasome inhibitor and in full‐length recombinant PARP‐1 in vitro under standard ubiquitylation assay conditions by immunoprecipitation and immunoblotting. Mutation of ubiquitin K48R but not ubiquitin K63R abolishes polyubiquitylation of PARP‐1, indicating that K48 of ubiquitin was used in the formation of polyubiquitin chain and that ubiquitylated PARP‐1 is likely destined for degradation. Full‐length PARP‐1 was ubiquitylated most likely at the N‐terminal 24 kDa domain of PARP‐1 as suggested by the inhibition of ubiquitylation by activated DNA and the absence of polyubiquitin in the C‐terminal 89 kDa PARP‐1 derived from caspase‐catalyzed cleavage. NAD+ inhibited ubiquitylation of PARP‐1, while dipeptides ArgAla and LeuAla enhanced ubiquitylation of PARP‐1. ATP inhibited the synthesis of poly(ADP‐ribose) by PARP‐1 and affinity purified polyubiquitylated PARP‐1 was active in PAR synthesis. The results suggest polyubiquitylation of PARP‐1 could regulate poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation of nuclear proteins by PARP‐1 and consequently apoptosis and PARP‐1 regulated cellular processes through ubiquitin‐dependent degradation pathways. J. Cell. Biochem. 104: 318–328, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Complete Genome Sequence of Macrococcus caseolyticus Strain JSCS5402, Reflecting the Ancestral Genome of the Human-Pathogenic Staphylococci

ABSTRACT We isolated the methicillin-resistant Macrococcus caseolyticus strain JCSC5402 from animal meat in a supermarket and determined its whole-genome nucleotide sequence. This is the first report on the genome analysis of a macrococcal species that is evolutionarily closely related to the human pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus anthracis. The essential biological pathways of M. caseolyticus are similar to those of staphylococci. However, the species has a small chromosome (2.1 MB) and lacks many sugar and amino acid metabolism pathways and a plethora of virulence genes that are present in S. aureus. On the other hand, M. caseolyticus possesses a series of oxidative phosphorylation machineries that are closely related to those in the family Bacillaceae. We also discovered a probable primordial form of a Macrococcus methicillin resistance gene complex, mecIRAm , on one of the eight plasmids harbored by the M. caseolyticus strain. This is the first finding of a plasmid-encoding methicillin resistance gene. Macrococcus is considered to reflect the genome of ancestral bacteria before the speciation of staphylococcal species and may be closely associated with the origin of the methicillin resistance gene complex of the notorious human pathogen methicillin-resistant S. aureus.
Neurogenic aspects of stress urinary incontinence

Purpose of review Vaginal childbirth is a significant risk factor for stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Women with SUI demonstrate dysfunction of the pelvic floor and pudendal nerve. Animal models of SUI have been developed to investigate its pathophysiology and for preclinical testing of potential treatments. Recent findings Vaginal distension, a method of simulating childbirth injury in animals, produces a reliable decrease in leak point pressure (LPP), a measure of urethral resistance to leakage and quantification of SUI severity in animals. In addition to ischemia and direct tissue damage, vaginal distension causes denervation of the external urethral sphincter (EUS). Pudendal nerve crush produces a similar decrease in LPP, whereas combined PNC and vaginal distension injury delays recovery of LPP compared with either single injury alone. Neurophysiologic studies have elucidated the results of each injury and their combination on pudendal nerve and EUS function. Urethrolysis, electrocautery, and pudendal nerve transection produce more durable functional impairment via both structural damage and denervation. Pubourethral ligament injury eliminates the structural support of the urethra, but its neurologic effects are unknown. Summary Animal models demonstrate a complex interplay between tissue damage and pudendal nerve dysfunction, and provide insight into the importance of neuroregeneration in the recovery of continence.
A proteomics study of colostrum and milk from the two major small ruminant dairy breeds from the Canary Islands: a bovine milk comparison perspective

Colostrum and milk feeding are key factors for the newborn ruminant survival, affecting the future performance of the animal. Nowadays, there is an increasing interest in the potential of feeding newborn ruminants (mainly goat kids and lambs) with colostrum and milk from other more productive ruminant species (mainly cows). Although some studies regarding differences between colostrum and milk from these three species have been performed, herein we conduct for the first time a comparison using a proteomics 2-Dimensional Electrophoresis gel-based approach between these three ruminant species. In this study colostrum and milk samples from six Holstein cows, six Canarian sheep and six Majorera goats were used to determine the chemical composition, immunoglobulin G (IgG) and M (IgM) concentrations and proteomics profiles. Results showed that in general sheep colostrum and milk contained higher fat, protein and lactose percentages compared to bovine and goat samples. Additionally, no differences in the IgG or IgM concentrations were found among any of the three studied species, with the exception of sheep colostrum that showed the highest IgM concentration. With reference to the proteomics-based approach, some high abundant proteins such as serum albumin precursor, beta-caseins or different immunoglobulins components were found in colostrum, milk or even both. Nevertheless, differences in other proteins with immune function such as serotransferrin or lactoperoxidase were detected. This study shows that despite the similar immunoglobulin concentrations in colostrum and milk from the three studied species, differences in several immune components can be detected when these samples are studied using a proteomics approach. Finally, this study also provides a base for future investigation in colostrum and milk proteomics and metabolomics.
New results using the audio watermarking based on wavelet transform

The audio watermarking based on wavelet transform algorithm depends on embedding and extracting bits in the watermark. The original algorithm depends on the idea of determining the signal spectrum computed by detailed and approximated wavelet coefficients and by inserting the watermark in the spectrum (Vieru et al., 2003). The wavelet coefficients for the first level are determined at the beginning. Then the watermark is constructed in a binary form, having 8, 16 bytes. The watermark is added to the first detailed coefficient of high-pass filter. This paper shows new results with a modified version of the original algorithm which uses a larger set of watermark bits (8, 16, 32, 64 bytes) at higher sampling rate and a larger set of the sampled audio signals. Also the results of robustness tests for this algorithm is presented.
Evaluation of a device scoring classes of hemorrhagic shock

In order to evaluate the feasibility of a device scoring classes of hemorrhagic shock, a multivariate analysis of physiological data collected on swine enduring continuous blood loss was conducted. Raw data sampled at up to 500 Hz were first preprocessed and used for features extraction over period of 1 mm. An expert scored all these physiological features, into one of the four classes of hemorrhagic shock: none, compensated, uncompensated and irreversible. A supervised learning of various classifiers was then evaluated over these data. The percentage of misclassification obtained when using a realistic way of estimating error (a leave one -animal- out validation) is about 20% when mean arterial pressure is used, and about 40% when only non invasive features are used. The results are about the same whatever the classifiers used. This evaluation is discussed and a visualization is proposed in order to assess the temporal supervision given by the classifiers.
Analyzing Twitter Sentiment for Presidential Elections 2016

Analyzing the mood of the public regarding the presidential nominees is the prime objective here. The microblogging website twitter is common arena where cyber masses and the politicians express their views. We have used R programming language, and have programmed the analyzer using R Studio. We have pitted superimposed valence plots of the two candidates: Trump and Hillary, to assess to the sentiment comparison as per as the twitter data collected and analyzed by 21st of October,2016.
Climate Policy and Optimal Public Debt

Employing a two-period model with an environmental externality, this paper investigates the relation between emission taxation and the optimal level of public debt. The central insight is that the effect of emission taxation on optimal borrowing is ambiguous and may lead to lower or higher optimal debt. In the context of climate change, we even show that the counterintuitive result of a higher optimal debt level is likely in the short-run and possibly also in the long-run, a result that provides a novel rationale for public borrowing. Our basic arguments turn out to be robust against several generalization.
Absence of metallothionein 3 expression in breast cancer is a rare but favorable marker that is under epigenetic control

Cadmium (Cd2+), a known carcinogen, mimics the effects of estrogen in the uterus and mammary gland suggesting its possible involvement in the development and progression of breast cancer. This lab showed through analysis of a small set of archival human diagnostic specimens that the third isoform of the classic Cd2+ binding protein metallothionein (MT-3) is not expressed in normal breast tissue, but is expressed in some breast cancers and that expression tends to correlate with a poor disease outcome. The goals of this study were to verify that overexpression of MT-3 in a large set of archival human diagnostic specimens tends to correlate with poor disease outcome and define the mechanism of MT-3 gene regulation in the normal breast epithelial cell. The results showed that MT-3 was expressed in approximately 90% of all breast cancers and was absent in normal breast epithelium. The lack of MT-3 staining in some cancers correlated with a favorable patient outcome. High frequency of MT-3 staining was also found for in situ breast cancer suggesting that MT-3 might be an early biomarker for breast cancer. The study also demonstrated that the MCF-10A cell line, an immortalized, non-tumorigenic model of human breast epithelial cells, displayed no basal expression of MT-3, nor was it induced by Cd2+. Treatment of the MCF-10A cells with the demethylation agent, 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine, or the histone deacetylase inhibitor, MS-275, restored MT-3 mRNA expression. It was also shown that the MT-3 metal regulatory elements are potentially active binders of protein factors following treatment with these inhibitors suggesting that MT-3 expression may be subject to epigenetic regulation.
Addressing the Unemployment-Mortality Conundrum: Non-Linearity is the Answer

The effect of unemployment on mortality is the object of a lively literature. However, this literature is characterized by sharply conflicting results. We revisit this issue and suggest that the relationship might be non-linear. We use data for 265 territorial units (regions) within 23 European countries over the period 2000-2012 to estimate a multivariate regression of mortality. The estimating equation allows for a quadratic relationship between unemployment and mortality. We control for various other determinants of mortality at regional and national level and we include region-specific and time-specific fixed effects. The model is also extended to account for the dynamic adjustment of mortality and possible lagged effects of unemployment. We find that the relationship between mortality and unemployment is U shaped. In the benchmark regression, when the unemployment rate is low, at 3%, an increase by one percentage point decreases average mortality by 0.7%. As unemployment increases, the effect decays: when the unemployment rate is 8% (sample average) a further increase by one percentage point decreases average mortality by 0.4%. The effect changes sign, turning from negative to positive, when unemployment is around 17%. When the unemployment rate is 25%, a further increase by one percentage point raises average mortality by 0.4%. Results hold for different causes of death and across different specifications of the estimating equation. We argue that the non-linearity arises because the level of unemployment affects the psychological and behavioural response of individuals to worsening economic conditions.
The Healthy Young Men's Study: Sampling Methods to Recruit a Random Cohort of Young Men Who Have Sex With Men

Recruiting a scientifically sound cohort of young men who have sex with men (YMSM) is an enduring research challenge. The few cohort studies that have been conducted to date on YMSM have relied on nonprobability sampling methods to construct their cohorts. While these studies have provided valuable information about HIV risk behaviors among YMSM, their generalizability to broader YMSM populations is limited. In this article, the authors describe a venue-based sampling methodology used to recruit a large and diverse cohort of YMSM from public venues in Los Angeles County, California. Venue-based sampling is a multistage probability sampling design that uses standard outreach techniques and standard survey methods to systematically enumerate, sample, and survey hard-to-reach populations. The study design allowed the authors to estimate individual, familial, and interpersonal psychosocial factors associated with HIV risk and health-seeking behaviors for a cohort of YMSM with known properties. Study participants completed an extensive baseline survey and over a 2-year period completed four follow-up surveys at 6-month intervals. The baseline survey was administered in both English and Spanish.
CRSPR: PageRank for Android Apps

With the sharp increase in mobile apps, modular design and functional reuse are commonly adopted. The inter-component communication (ICC) mechanism in Android allows apps to exchange data with other apps and components, resulting in large amounts of security issues, such as component hijacking vulnerabilities, privilege escalation and spoofing attacks. Although ICC has been extensively studied in previous work, none of the previous approaches is practically scalable to simultaneously analyze a large number of Android apps, giving the combinational explosion of possible inter-component (and inter-app) communications. In this paper, we first propose an explorative study to analyze the ICC-based interaction for a large amount of Android apps. Then we propose CRSPR, a PageRank-like topic-aware app ranking approach to highlight influential Android apps for ICC analysis. The experimental results show that CRSPR is better than the basic counting approach as well as the traditional PageRank-based approach, which further demonstrate that CRSPR is useful for highlighting influential Android apps.
Cointegration Analysis of Agricultural Growth and Financial Inclusion in Ghana

Agriculture remains the foundation of economic growth for any economy irrespective of their level of development. Being aware of the imperative role of finance in the endogenous growth model, it is admitted that access and usage of finance is critical for the growth of the agriculture sector. Access to and usage of financial services would enable the incorporation of rural farmers into the financial system. In the light of this revelation, this paper examined Cointegration Analysis of Agricultural Growth and Financial Inclusion in Ghana. Time series data from the period of 1980-2014, Johansen Cointegration approach coupled with Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square method (FMOLS) for the estimation of long-run relationship between agriculture growth and financial inclusion in Ghana using Eviews 9 was used. The study revealed that, domestic credit to private sector as proxied for usage has an inverse relationship but significant. The paper also revealed that lending interest rate proxy for accessibility of financial services to farmers portrayed significantly positive impact on the growth of agriculture. As provision of financial services alone cannot enable rural farmers attain financial inclusion, there is an urgent need for the provision of domestic credit to the private sector as they help promote economic growth implying that the better the private sector gets, the bigger role they played in the economy. Government should ensure that lending interest rate of both financial and non-financial institutions that support agriculture sector is flexible to enable farmers to easily have access to capital for expansion.
Fully Digital Feedforward Background Calibration of Clock Skews for Sub-Sampling TIADCs Using the Polyphase Decomposition

This paper presents a low-power fully digital clock skew feedforward background calibration technique in sub-sampling Time-Interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters (TIADCs). Both estimation and correction algorithms share the common derivative filter, which makes them possible to reduce the chip area. Furthermore, these algorithms use the polyphase filtering technique and do not use adaptive digital synthesis filters. Thus, the proposed calibration can be implemented on a moderate hardware cost with low power dissipation. The adopted feedforward technology eliminates the stability issues encountered with the adaptive technique. The Hardware Description Language (HDL) design of the proposed calibration is synthesized using a 28nm FD-SOI process for a 60dB SNR TIADC clocked at 2.7GHz. The calibration is designed for both baseband and sub-sampling TIADC applications. For sub-sampling TIADCs with the input at the first four Nyquist bands, the synthesized calibration system occupies <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.04\rm {mm}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of area and dissipates a total power of 33.2mW. For the baseband TIADC applications, it occupies <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.02\rm {mm}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and consumes 15.5mW.