Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient plasmid transformation of the beta-lactam producer Streptomyces clavuligerus

The conditions for optimal formation and regeneration of protoplasts of Streptomyces clavuligerus were established. The optimal temperature for regeneration of protoplasts and for transformation was 26 degrees C in three different regeneration media. The best efficiency of transformation was obtained with 40% polyethylene glycol 1000. The efficiencies of regeneration and transformation increased greatly when protoplasts were obtained from cultures in the early stationary phase of growth. The number of transformants per assay increased linearly with rising concentrations of protoplasts. However, the number of transformants per protoplast decreased at concentrations of protoplasts above 1.5 X 10(9). The total number of transformants rose linearly at increasing plasmid DNA concentrations, but the number of the transformants per microgram of DNA became constant at concentrations above 1 microgram of DNA. Transformation frequencies as high as 5 X 10(5) transformants per microgram of DNA were obtained when plasmid pIJ702 was isolated from S. clavuligerus but not when isolated from Streptomyces lividans.
Fibrin-bearing microparticles: marker of thrombo-embolic events in pancreatic and colorectal cancers

Background Microparticles (MPs) are plasma membrane-derived extracellular vesicles present in the bloodstream. We have described a specific signature of MPs, called microparticulosome, in colorectal (CRC) and pancreatic (PC) cancers. We observed that levels of fibrin-bearing MPs were significantly increased in patients suffering from PC and CRC in comparison with control groups. Here, we hypothesised that fibrin-MPs may constitute a relevant biomarker of thrombosis associated with cancer. The objective was to compare the microparticulosome signature between patients presenting with thrombo-embolic event and those without. Methods Patients with CRC and PC were prospectively included and divided in those with thrombo-embolic events (Group A) and those without (Group B). MPs were analyzed by flow cytometer, combining the analysis of Annexin V-positive with characterization of their origin and determination of their procoagulant activities. D-dimer levels were measured in the same samples. Results We included 118 patients, divided in 19 patients with thrombo embolic event and 99 patients without. Fibrin-bearing MPs levels were significantly higher in presence of thrombo-embolic events, contrary to D-dimers levels. Fibrin-bearing MPs were more frequently produced by erythrocytes, endothelial cells or Ep-CAM+cells than platelets or leukocytes. Overall survival was shorter in case of thrombo-embolic events than without. The most frequent genes expressed by MPs derived from PC or CRC were implicated in metastatic diffusion of tumor cells, drug resistance, coagulation and inflammation. Conclusion Circulating MPs, particularly fibrin-bearing MPs, could be used as a new biomarker to predict cancer-associated thrombo-embolic events and poor survival.
The association between advertising and sales volume : a case study of Nigerian Bottling Company Plc

Advertising is a form of communication that attempts to interpret the qualities of products, services and ideas in terms of consumer needs and wants. Some companies or organizations embrace advertising to achieve goodwill, high market share and sales. This research work is on the impact of advertising on sales volume with particular reference to Nigerian Bottling Company. The objective of the study is to examine the impact of advertising as a tool for growth in the companyâ? s sales, market share and profitability. It also seeks to study the nature of advertising as well as the relationship between advertising and sales. The statistical analytical techniques used for this study include student 't' test and ordinary least square regression method. The secondary data were collected from the company's annual financial records and account for eleven years covering 1999-2009. The major result showed that there is a significant relationship between advertising and the sales of the company. The study also showed that there is a significant improvement in the sales of the company as a result of advertising. It was recommended that organizations should educate the general public through advertising on the uses, functions and benefits of their products.
Kobe University Repository : Kernel タイトル Tit le cAMP-responsive element binding protein mediates a cGMP / protein kinase G-dependent ant i-apoptot ic signal induced by nit ric oxide in ret inal neuro-glial progenitor cells 著者

Nitric oxide (NO) is cytoprotective to certain types of neuronal cells. The neuroprotective ability of NO in the retina was reportedly mediated by the cyclic GMP (cGMP) to protein kinase G (PKG) pathway. Cyclic AMP-responsive element binding protein (CREB) plays an essential role in the NO/cGMP/PKG-mediated survival of rat cerebellar granule cells. We tested whether CREB transduces the NO/cGMP/PKG anti-apoptotic cascade in R28 neuro-glial progenitor cells. Apoptosis was induced in R28 cells by serum deprivation for 24h. Varying concentrations of two NO donors, sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and nipradilol, were added to medium with or without an NO scavenger, a soluble guanylyl cyclase inhibitor, or a PKG inhibitor. The cells were immunostained against activated caspase-3 and counterstained with Hoechst 33258. Apoptosis was quantified by counting activated caspase-3 positive or pyknotic cells. SNP and nipradilol rescued R28 cells from apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner, at an optimal concentration of 1.0 μM and 10 μM, respectively. Higher concentrations were cytotoxic. The NO scavenger and the inhibitors decreased the anti-apoptotic effect of the NO donors. Intracellular cGMP levels were increased after exposure to SNP and nipradilol. Western blotting showed that both NO donors increased CREB phosphorylation, which was blocked when pre-exposed to the inhibitors. Transfection with the dominant negative CREB construct defective of phosphorylation at Ser-133 interfered with the anti-apoptotic activity of SNP. These results indicate that CREB at least in part mediates the cGMP/PKG-dependent anti-apoptotic signal induced by NO in R28 cells.
A template based approach to specifying the information needs of military missions

Situational awareness supports mission assurance and requires access to archived and real-time information that is most relevant to the mission being performed, the roles of warfighters, and evolving operational scenarios. Information Management (IM) services support the discovery, brokering, and dissemination of past and future information in support of military missions. They decouple information providers from information consumers as they discover and disseminate information based on information attributes and consumer interests, no matter where, when, or how that information has become available. However, setting up the requests (i.e., subscriptions and queries) to provide situation awareness can be a complex task that requires significant time, expertise, and patience. This paper describes Adaptive Mission Templates (AMT), a prototype graphical environment for defining the information needs of operational missions; generating requests for information, including requests based on dynamic mission context; and specifying the prioritization of information based on mission needs and context. The AMT software has been demonstrated on US Air Force mission scenarios to generate requests and policies enforced by an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) information broker.
Joint CO2 and CH4 accountability for global warming

Significance We develop a transparent climate debt index, termed international natural debt, which combines historical emissions of CO2 from fossil sources and land use/forestry as well as CH4. It covers 205 countries and is a function of emissions, lifetimes, and radiative forcings. This index can be used to assess the implications of choosing between CO2 and CH4 control measures and facilitates more accurate international comparisons of a range of climate-change-related phenomena, as illustrated by imposed versus experienced health impacts. Including the two most important greenhouse gases in one index shifts the basic international narrative about differential accountability for climate change. We propose a transparent climate debt index incorporating both methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We develop national historic emissions databases for both greenhouse gases to 2005, justifying 1950 as the starting point for global perspectives. We include CO2 emissions from fossil sources [CO2(f)], as well as, in a separate analysis, land use change and forestry. We calculate the CO2(f) and CH4 remaining in the atmosphere in 2005 from 205 countries using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report impulse response functions. We use these calculations to estimate the fraction of remaining global emissions due to each country, which is applied to total radiative forcing in 2005 to determine the combined climate debt from both greenhouse gases in units of milliwatts per square meter per country or microwatts per square meter per person, a metric we term international natural debt (IND). Australia becomes the most indebted large country per capita because of high CH4 emissions, overtaking the United States, which is highest for CO2(f). The differences between the INDs of developing and developed countries decline but remain large. We use IND to assess the relative reduction in IND from choosing between CO2(f) and CH4`control measures and to contrast the imposed versus experienced health impacts from climate change. Based on 2005 emissions, the same hypothetical impact on world 2050 IND could be achieved by decreasing CH4 emissions by 46% as stopping CO2 emissions entirely, but with substantial differences among countries, implying differential optimal strategies. Adding CH4 shifts the basic narrative about differential international accountability for climate change.
Hormone replacement therapy and prognosis in ovarian cancer patients

Estrogen exposure has at least a moderate effect on the risk for ovarian cancer, and antiestrogen therapy may be helpful in treating the disease. It is known from breast cancer that previous hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may influence the molecular profile and prognostic behavior of these tumors. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the influence of previous HRT on the prognosis in a cohort of patients with invasive epithelial ovarian cancer. Among 547 patients who were treated for ovarian malignancies at a single institution from 1995 to 2008, a total of 244 postmenopausal patients with epithelial cancer and under the age of 75 were identified for whom information about HRT before the onset of the disease was available. HRT was correlated with tumor and patient characteristics. Analyses of overall survival and progression-free survival were carried out using Cox proportional hazards models. Age, tumor stage, and resection status correlated significantly with HRT in the univariate analysis. Patients with previous HRT were more likely to have a lower stage, to be younger, and to have optimal debulking. With regard to survival, HRT had a positive effect on overall survival, specifically in the subgroup of patients with optimal debulking. No correlation was seen in relation to progression-free survival. Sex hormone exposure through HRT may influence the behavior of ovarian cancers after the onset of the disease. This study supports the hypothesis that ovarian cancer is a hormonally influenced tumor.
Civilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King

When the emperor Claudius decided, at the instigation of his freedman Pallas, to make a highly unconventional marriage with his niece, he manoeuvred the senate, through the agency of his staunch amicus Vitellius, into passing an ‘unsolicited’ request that he marry Agrippina. He declared that his hesitations would be overcome if the senate put pressure on him: who was he to resist the will of the community, being but a citizen like the rest? Some senators even rushed to the palace promising to compel him by brute force. The incident encapsulates an ambivalence in the emperor's role familiar to all readers of Tacitus. On the one hand the autocratic reality: a decision of high political moment (it was no surprise that Agrippina's son subsequently acceded to the throne) taken in the palace on the counsel of freedmen, potent and resented, involving a violation of the mos maiorum. On the other hand the elaborate and yet transparent republican façade: the senate decrees, the princeps submits to the will of the citizen body.
Total RNA was extracted using the TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) according to manufacturer’s instructions, whereas from caryopses

Total RNA was extracted using the TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen) according to manufacturer’s instructions, whereas from caryopses it was isolated by a LiCl based method. The resulting RNA was treated with RNase-free DNase I (Promega) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Following digestion, nucleotides were removed from RNA using a G50 sepharose buffer exchange column (Amersham). Absence of genomic DNA contamination in DNase I-treated samples was checked by PCR using a primer pair (5’-CTTATGCAATCCAATGATGG-3’ and 5’-TCTATGGTTCTGAAGAGGACC-3’) designed to amplify an intron sequence of a gene encoding typical PDI and located on chromosome 4A [1]. When a single DNase treatment did not completely remove interfering genomic DNA, a second DNase incubation was performed to eliminate any detectable DNA. Synthesis of cDNA from the DNase I treated RNA was only performed when the genomic control amplifications scored negative. RNA concentration and integrity were checked with a UV/VIS spectrophotometer Lambda 3B (Perkin Elmer) before and after DNase I digestion. The quality of RNA samples was also assessed by electrophoresis on 1% formaldehyde agarose gels. First-strand cDNA was synthesized from 3 μg of RNA by the Expand TM
Impulse-based dynamic simulation of rigid body systems

Dynamic simulation is a powerful application of today's computers, with uses in fields ranging from engineering to animation to virtual reality. This thesis introduces a new paradigm for dynamic simulation, called impulse-based simulation. The paradigm is designed to meet the twin goals of physical accuracy and computational efficiency. Obtaining physically accurate results is often the whole reason for performing a simulation, however, in many applications, computational efficiency is equally important. Impulse-based simulation is designed to simulate moderately complex systems at interactive speeds. To achieve this performance, certain restrictions are made on the systems to be simulated. The strongest restriction is that they comprise only rigid bodies. The hardest part of rigid body simulation is modeling the interactions that occur between bodies in contact. The most commonly used approaches are penalty methods, followed by analytic methods. Both of these approaches are constraint-based, meaning that constraint forces at the contact points are continually computed and applied to determine the accelerations of the bodies. Impulse-based simulation is a departure from these approaches, in that there are no explicit constraints to be maintained at contact points. Rather, all contact interactions between bodies are affected through collisions; rolling, sliding, resting, and colliding contact are all modeled in this way. The approach has several advantages, including simplicity, robustness, parallelizability, and an ability to efficiently simulate classes of systems that are difficult to simulate using constraint-based methods. The accuracy of impulse-based simulation has been experimentally tested and is sufficient for many applications. The processing of collisions is a critical aspect of the impulse-based approach. Efficient algorithms are needed for detecting the large number of collisions that occur, without missing any. Furthermore, the physical accuracy of the simulator rests upon the accuracy of the collision response algorithms. This thesis describes these essential algorithms, and their underlying theory. It describes how the algorithms for simple rigid body simulation may be extended to systems of articulated rigid bodies. To prove the method is truly practical, the algorithms have been implemented in the prototype simulator, Impulse. Many experiments performed with Impulse are described.
LAUGHTER DETECTION FOR ON-LINE HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION

This paper presents a study of laugh classification using a cross-corpus protocol. It aims at the automatic detection of laughs in a real-time human-machine interaction. Positive and negative laughs are tested with different classification tasks and different acoustic feature sets. F.measure results show an improvement on positive laughs classification from 59.5% to 64.5% and negative laughs recognition from 10.3% to 28.5%. In the context of the ChistEra JOKER project, positive and negative laugh detection drives the policies of the robot Nao. A measure of engagement will be provided using also the number of positive laughs detected during the interaction.
Elman Fuzzy Adaptive Control for Obstacle Avoidance of Mobile Robots Using Hybrid Force/Position Incorporation

This paper addresses a virtual force field between mobile robots and obstacles to keep them away with a desired distance. An online learning method of hybrid force/position control is proposed for obstacle avoidance in a robot environment. An Elman neural network is proposed to compensate the effect of uncertainties between the dynamic robot model and the obstacles. Moreover, this paper uses an Elman fuzzy adaptive controller to adjust the exact distance between the robot and the obstacles. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulation examples.
WhiB7, a transcriptional activator that coordinates physiology with intrinsic drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Current tuberculosis treatment regimens are notoriously limited, lengthy and becoming increasingly ineffective due to the emergence of drug-resistant mutant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The intrinsic resistance of M. tuberculosis to the majority of available drugs relies both on the impermeability of its cell envelope, and its ability to activate specific genes and physiological states. WhiB7 is a transcriptional regulatory protein underlying this adaptive process. Transcription of the whiB7 gene is upregulated in response to a variety of antibiotics having different structures and targets, as well as in response to metabolic signals. The whiB7 regulon activates various systems of intrinsic drug resistance involving antibiotic export, antibiotic inactivation (by chemical modifications of the drug or its target) and significant changes to thiol redox balance. Drugs have been identified that inactivate resistance determinants in the whiB7 regulon, thereby potentiating the activities of diverse antibiotics against M. tuberculosis.
Face Alignment Using Segmentation and a Combined AAM in a PTZ Camera

In this paper, we propose a novel framework for face alignment based on the active appearance model (AAM) in surveillance systems with pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras. The AAM converges poorly in face images which are affected by illumination factors, cluttered backgrounds and status of the camera. To search for robust face model parameters, we propose a robust AAM fitting method based on segmenting faces and combining person-specific and generic models to achieve accurate face alignment. We segment faces using histogram back-projection and a skin color histogram, which is updated using a skin mask extracted by the AAM. For robust face recognition, we combined generic and person-specific models with a slight reduction in processing time. The extracted AAM parameters are as accurate as those when using the person-specific model and can be used as features for face recognition. Empirical experiments show that our proposed method extracts very accurate face parameters and is not sensitive to initial shapes
Composition of a Suburban Pediatric Office Practice

Our practice, located in Marin County, California, draws from a suburban residential area with little industry (see Fig. 1). The patients are members of a prepaid health plan (Kaiser Foundation) and use the facilities of a medical group (Permanente). Families join the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan on a voluntary basis; they pay health insurance which covers all hospital and medical costs. The medical services are provided by doctors of The Permanente Medical Group.
Comments on the Early/Middle Iron Age Chronology of Lake Van Basin

In the Van Lake basin, or in Northeast Anatolia in general, Early Iron Age denotes pre-Urartian times. Although the beginning of this age is rather obscure, it is generally accepted that it came to an end with the establishment of the Urartian Kingdom in the middle of the ninth century BC. Following the focus on a number of large, well-planned Urartian sites over the last hundred years or so, there has been a shift in the last twenty years to small, rural settlements and necropoleis, like Dilkaya, Karagunduz and Yoncatepe in the hope offinding preUrartian Early Iron Age remains. In this paper we shall discuss 'grooved pottery' and other important finds used to date these sites and necropoleis to the Early Iron Age, and suggest a new chronology for them. Accordingly, we will determine whether these necropoleis really belonged to the ancestors of the Urartians, or to a rural village population contemporary with the Urartian Kingdom.
Monitoring spontaneous electrical activity in cultured neural networks using vertically aligned nanotube arrays

We present the electrical monitoring of cultured living neural cells using vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNT) as an extracellular electrode material in a microelectrode array (MEA). The carbon nanotubes are grown using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) resulting in 3-18 mum long nanotubes with diameters of 10-40 nm.
Perirhinal cortex and place-object conditional learning in the rat.

The present study examined whether excitotoxic lesions of the perirhinal cortex can affect acquisition of a place-object conditional task in which object and spatial information must be integrated. Testing was carried out in a double Y-maze apparatus, in which rats learned a conditional rule of the type, "In Place X, choose Object A, not Object B (A+ vs. B-); in Place Y, choose Object B, not Object A (A- vs. B+). " Perirhinal cortex lesions significantly impaired acquisition of this task while sparing performance of an allocentric spatial memory task performed in a radial arm maze. Perirhinal cortex lesions also had no apparent effect on a 1-pair object discrimination task performed in the double Y maze or on retention and acquisition of 4-pair concurrent discrimination problems performed in a computer-automated touch screen testing apparatus. The results suggest that, although the perirhinal cortex and hippocampus can be functionally dissociated, their normal mode of operation includes the integration of object and spatial information.
Research on MapReduce-Based Fuzzy Associative Classifier for Big Probabilistic Numerical Data

As we move into big data era, bigprobabilistic numerical data are prevalent because they occur in many modern applications, including sensor databases, spatial-temporal databases, biology information systems, etc. However, traditional associative classifier methods proposed to handle probabilistic numerical data are not suitable for bigprobabilistic numerical data because of the memory usage, parallelization, and computational complexity. In this article, we propose a new algorithm scheme to build associative classifier for big probabilistic numerical data based on MapReduce framework. Such an algorithm—which is a non-trivial integration of (i) associative classification, (ii) from probabilistic numerical data, and (iii) from Big data—is our key contribution of the paper.