Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An actin‐based cytoskeleton in archaea

In eukaryotic and bacterial cells, spatial organization is dependent upon cytoskeletal filaments. Actin is a main eukaryotic cytoskeletal element, involved in key processes such as cell shape determination, mechanical force generation and cytokinesis. We describe an archaeal cytoskeleton which forms helical structures within Pyrobaculum calidifontis cells, as shown by in situ immunostaining. The core components include an archaeal actin homologue, Crenactin, closely related to the eukaryotic counterpart. The crenactin gene belongs to a conserved gene cluster denoted Arcade (actin‐related cytoskeleton in Archaea involved in shape determination). The phylogenetic distribution of arcade genes is restricted to the crenarchaeal Thermoproteales lineage, and to Korarchaeota, and correlates with rod‐shaped and filamentous cell morphologies. Whereas Arcadin‐1, ‐3 and ‐4 form helical structures, suggesting cytoskeleton‐associated functions, Arcadin‐2 was found to be localized between segregated nucleoids in a cell subpopulation, in agreement with possible involvement in cytokinesis. The results support a crenarchaeal origin of the eukaryotic actin cytoskeleton and, as such, have implications for theories concerning the origin of the eukaryotic cell.
Observer variation for radiography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging of occult hip fractures

Background Conventional radiography is insufficient for diagnosis in a small but not unimportant number of hip fractures, and secondary imaging with computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is warranted. There are no convincing observer variation studies performed for conventional radiography or CT in occult fractures, and no large materials for MRI. Purpose To assess observer variation in radiography, CT and MRI of suspected occult, non-displaced hip fractures, and to evaluate to what extent observer experience or patient age may influence observer performance. Material and Methods A total of 375 patients after hip trauma where radiography was followed by CT or MRI to evaluate a suspected occult hip fracture were collected retrospectively from two imaging centers. After scoring by three observers with varying degrees of radiologic experience, observer variation was assessed by using linear weighted kappa statistics. Results For radiography, agreements between the three observers were moderate to substantial for intracapsular fractures, with kappa values in the ranges of 0.56–0.66. Kappa values were substantial for extracapsular fractures, in the ranges of 0.69–0.72. With increasing professional experience, fewer fractures were classified as equivocal at radiography. For CT and MRI, observer agreements were similar and almost perfect, with kappa values in the ranges of 0.85–0.97 and 0.93–0.97. Conclusion There were almost perfect observer agreements for CT and MRI in diagnosing non-displaced, occult hip fractures. Observer agreements for radiography were moderate to substantial, and observer experience influenced agreement only at radiography.
The Market for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): How Industry Structure Determines CSR

The effect of competition on firm performance and activities is at the core of strategy research; however, the question of how competition affects CSR remains largely understudied. This is partly due to endogeneity issues inherent in the question, and partly due to problems with existing data and methods. We overcome these limitations by triangulating traditional and non-traditional research methods in a specific empirical setting: addressing endogeneity issues not only with fixed effects and instrumental variables but also by calibrating market structure and strategic CSR in a simulation. Results of the more static regression analysis show that competition and CSR of competitors increase CSR at the firm level, while the more dynamic simulation analysis demonstrates that competition in fact decreases CSR at the industry level.
Transmission lines loaded with pairs of magnetically coupled stepped impedance resonators (SIRs): Modeling and application to microwave sensors

This paper is focused on the analysis and modeling of transmission lines loaded with pairs of shunt-connected stepped impedance resonators (SIRs), and their application to differential sensors for dielectric characterization, and for diagnosis and quality control of material samples by comparison to a reference. It is demonstrated that by placing the SIR junctions in the same position of the line, the SIRs are magnetically coupled. Such coupling has significant influence on the sensitivity of the sensor, determined by the split in frequency caused by an asymmetric dielectric loading of the SIRs. The circuit model of the structure, including magnetic coupling between SIRs, is proposed and validated through electromagnetic simulations and measurements. Finally, the principle of sensing is experimentally validated by a proof-of-concept demonstrator.
Cost of Equity Effects from Mandatory IFRS Adoption, Legal and Financial Institutions, and Auditor Quality Dimensions: Evidence from the E.U.

This study examines if cost of equity can be negatively affected by mandatory IFRS adoption. Also, this paper explores how cost of equity effects differ depending on different national level of governance mechanisms because financial reporting incentives are influenced by both accounting regulation and institutional factors. While I document that mandatory IFRS adoption negatively influences cost of equity beyond the transition period, however, such observed results may also be attributed to the concurrent evolving effects from legal quality and enforcement, stock market development and auditor quality. Given that most cross-country national governance studies only apply a set of dated and static indices; I argue that using, time-varying and cross-sectional institutional indices can provide better measurement of both individual and interactive effects on firm-level cost of equity. While average legal mechanisms are an important factor, the results show that increase (decrease) in regulatory quality (legal enforcement) interacts with post-IFRS period significantly (insignificantly) and associate with lower (higher) ex-ante cost of equity. Moreover, I find that countries with different legal origins systematically associate with different dimensions of stock market development to reduce the cost of equity. Also, auditor quality is effective to reduce information asymmetry, but it highly depends on national legal quality and enforcement. Finally, I document that when cost of equity is lowered, it benefits firms with higher value.
Stratospheric CH 4 and CO 2 profiles derived from SCIAMACHY solar occultation measurements

Abstract. Stratospheric profiles of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) have been derived from solar occultation measurements of the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY). The retrieval is performed using a method called onion peeling DOAS (ONPD), which combines an onion peeling approach with a weighting function DOAS (differential optical absorption spectroscopy) fit in the spectral region between 1559 and 1671 nm. By use of updated pointing information and optimisation of the data selection as well as of the retrieval approach, the altitude range for reasonable CH4 could be broadened from 20 to 40 km to about 17 to 45 km. Furthermore, the quality of the derived CO2 has been assessed such that now the first stratospheric profiles (17–45 km) of CO2 from SCIAMACHY are available. Comparisons with independent data sets yield an estimated accuracy of the new SCIAMACHY stratospheric profiles of about 5–10 % for CH4 and 2–3 % for CO2. The accuracy of the products is currently mainly restricted by the appearance of unexpected vertical oscillations in the derived profiles which need further investigation. Using the improved ONPD retrieval, CH4 and CO2 stratospheric data sets covering the whole SCIAMACHY time series (August 2002–April 2012) and the latitudinal range between about 50 and 70° N have been derived. Based on these time series, CH4 and CO2 trends have been estimated. CH4 trends above about 20 km are not significantly different from zero and the trend at 17 km is about 3 ppbv year−1. The derived CO2 trends show a general decrease with altitude with values of about 1.9 ppmv year−1 at 21 km and about 1.3 ppmv year−1 at 39 km. These results are in reasonable agreement with total column trends for these gases. This shows that the new SCIAMACHY data sets can provide valuable information about the stratosphere.
A new differential space time coded OFDM system

This paper provides a new differential space-time block code (DSTBC) coded OFDM system. The new DSTBC scheme provides a differential coding gain due to redundancy introduced in the differential encoding. Simulation results show that the new DSTBC-OFDM system can provide a better performance than traditional DSTBC coded OFDM system in frequency selective fading channels, and can improve about 1 dB in high SNR.
A Review of Users Adoption of Open Source Software in Africa

In the current world, software is increasingly becoming important in the human activity. It is widely recognised that Open Source software (OSS) is freely available to anyone who needs it. However, loyalty of computer users to proprietary operating systems and general office applications seems to be still high especially in developing countries. OSS has a great potential of saving costs for developing economies in Africa and reducing the cost of doing business and automating operations. The software would be very useful especially in the current period of economic hardships being faced by many developing countries. African governments have also not taken the lead in adopting the OSS software and many do not have policies in place regarding it. A review of literature on studies conducted in Africa on OSS in order to establish the level of user adoption, possible barriers to OSS adoption in developing countries in Africa is done in this paper. The findings are of great value to all stakeholders, namely the software developers, policy makers and computer experts in their endeavour to achieve high user adoption of OSS.
Novel view image synthesis based on photo-consistent 3D model deformation

In this paper, a system is designed for improving the quality of novel view synthesis. To make the virtual view synthesis look better, the basic idea is to perform model refinement with important camera information of the novel view. In this system, we first use the reconstructed visual hull from shape from silhouette and then refine this 3D model based on the view dependency. The 3D points of the model are classified into the outline points and the non-outline points according to the virtual viewpoint. To refine the model, both of the outline points and the non-outline points are used to move the 3D points iteratively by minimising energy function until convergence. The key energy is the photo-consistency energy with additional smoothness energy and contour/visual hull energy. The latter two energy terms can avoid the local minimum when calculating the photo-consistency energy. Finally, we render the novel view image using view-dependent image synthesis by blending the pixel values from reference cameras near the virtual camera.
A genetic study of natural flor strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolated during biological ageing from Sardinian wines

In this study, three flor strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were genetically characterized. They were isolated from biofilms on Sardinian sherry‐like wines produced at family‐run wineries where pure cultures of yeasts were not used. The study aimed to investigate the life cycle of these naturally‐occurring flor strains, using a genetic procedure supplemented by analysis of subsequent meiotic generations. A semi‐homothallic life cycle was found in three strains that could be helpful in a genetic improvement programme.
Enzymatic conversion of flavonoids using bacterial chalcone isomerase and enoate reductase.

Flavonoids are a large group of plant secondary metabolites with a variety of biological properties and are therefore of interest to many scientists, as they can lead to industrially interesting intermediates. The anaerobic gut bacterium Eubacterium ramulus can catabolize flavonoids, but until now, the pathway has not been experimentally confirmed. In the present work, a chalcone isomerase (CHI) and an enoate reductase (ERED) could be identified through whole genome sequencing and gene motif search. These two enzymes were successfully cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli in their active form, even under aerobic conditions. The catabolic pathway of E. ramulus was confirmed by biotransformations of flavanones into dihydrochalcones. The engineered E. coli strain that expresses both enzymes was used for the conversion of several flavanones, underlining the applicability of this biocatalytic cascade reaction.
Combined use of impella device and intra‐aortic balloon pump to improve survival in a patient in profound cardiogenic shock post cardiac arrest

Patients who suffer cardiogenic shock after cardiac arrest have a very poor prognosis. Left ventricular assist devices have proven to be useful in these patients to improve survival. Recently introduced percutaneous assist devices are easier to use and can be inserted quickly in the catheterization laboratory. We describe a case where intra‐aortic balloon pump by itself was not enough to provide hemodynamic support in a patient with cardiogenic shock after cardiac arrest. The Impella Recover® LP 2.5 system (ABIOMED, Inc., Danvers, MA) was successfully used along with the balloon pump for hemodynamic support and resulted in dramatic improvement of the patient's condition. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Sphingomyelinases in the venom of the spider Loxosceles intermedia are responsible for both dermonecrosis and complement-dependent hemolysis.

The bite of spiders of the genus Loxosceles can induce a variety of biological effects, including dermonecrosis and complement (C) dependent haemolysis. The aim of this study was to characterise the toxins in the venom responsible for the different biological effects. We have previously shown that a 35 kDa protein, named F35, purified from Loxosceles intermedia venom, incorporates into the membranes of human erythrocytes and renders them susceptible to the alternative pathway of autologous C. Here we have further purified the F35 protein which was resolved by reversed phase chromatography into three tightly contiguous peaks termed P1, P2, and P3. P1 and P2 were shown to be homogeneous by SDS-PAGE and N-terminal aminoacid analysis, while P3 consisted of two highly homologous proteins. N-terminal sequencing of all four proteins showed a high degree of homology, which was confirmed by cross-reactivity of antisera raised against the individual purified proteins. Functional characterisation of P1 and P2 indicated the presence of sphingomyelinase activity and either protein in isolation was capable of inducing all the in vivo effects seen with whole spider venom, including C-dependent haemolysis and dermonecrosis. In all assays, P2 was more active than P1, while P3 was completely inactive. These data show that different biological effects of L. intermedia venom can be assigned to the sphingomyelinase activity of two highly homologous proteins, P1 and P2. Identification of these proteins as inducers of the principal pathological effects induced by whole venom will aid studies of the mechanism of action of the venom and the development of a effective therapy.
Bionic Intelligent Optimization Algorithm Based on MMAS and Fish-Swarm Algorithm

With large number of ants, the ant colony algorithm would always take a long time or is rather difficult to find the optimal path from complex chapter path, further more, there exists a contradiction between stagnation, accelerated convergence and precocity. In this paper, we propose a new bionic optimization algorithm. The main idea of the algorithm is to introduce the horizons concept in the MMAS fish swarm algorithm, so it would take shorter time to find the optimal path with numerous ants, and the introduction of the concept of fish swarm algorithm congestion level would enable the ant colony find the path of global optimization with a strong crowding limit which avoids the emergence of local extreme and improves the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i9. 2952
Protein–protein interactions as a proxy to monitor conformational changes and activation states of the tomato resistance protein I-2

Plant resistance proteins (R) are involved in pathogen recognition and subsequent initiation of defence responses. Their activity is regulated by inter- and intramolecular interactions. In a yeast two-hybrid screen two clones (I2I-1 and I2I-2) specifically interacting with I-2, a Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici resistance protein of the CC-NB-LRR family, were identified. Sequence analysis revealed that I2I-1 belongs to the Formin gene family (SlFormin) whereas I2I-2 has homology to translin-associated protein X (SlTrax). SlFormin required only the N-terminal CC I-2 domain for binding, whereas SlTrax required both I-2 CC and part of the NB-ARC domain. Tomato plants stably silenced for these interactors were not compromised in I-2-mediated disease resistance. When extended or mutated forms of I-2 were used as baits, distinct and often opposite, interaction patterns with the two interactors were observed. These interaction patterns correlated with the proposed activation state of I-2 implying that active and inactive R proteins adopt distinct conformations. It is concluded that the yeast two hybrid system can be used as a proxy to monitor these different conformational states.
Understanding market mobility: perceptions of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is largely an agricultural country with a total area of 147,960 sq. km. With a population of 118.7 million (official estimate, 1994) it is also one of the world’s most densely populated countries, with more than 806 people per sq. km. GNP per capita stood at just US$230 in 1994, making it, by this crude measure, one of the world's poorest nations. In rural areas the poor experience scarce and diminishing resources, insufficient and inadequate physical infrastructure, lack of basic education and health services and, most importantly, a situation of dependency on those who control production assets.
Weak form efficiency and factors leading to market efficiency in the Kuwait stock market

A small stock market may be less efficient in the weak sense than a large one, because it is often less elaborately organised technically. Hence, information about stock price formation may spread only gradually through the financial community. Consequontly, stock prices may display e greeter degree of nonrandomness because traders are unable to eliminate this. The objective of the study is to test the weak form efficiency in Kuwait Stock Exchange, a segment of the Kuwait Long Term capital market. In addition, the study explores the impact of several. factors on market efficiency. In Chapter One the role of the stock market and its relationship to the economy will be discussed. The efficient market hypothesis is explored in Chapter Two. Chapter Three is devoted to surveying the empirical findings of other researchers in UK, USA and some other international markets. A number of authors have applied the efficient market hypothesis to actual stock market data, especially in the last twenty years. Some critical analyses are discussed in Chapter Four. The empirical question of the relations between market efficiency and stock valuation is explored in Chapter Five. An efficient market should price the security, so as to fully reflect the firms earning power. The uncertainty surrounding the stream of future income clouds this issue and has prompted debate among economists and financial analysts as to how the market values a given stock at any time. The characteristic of Kuwait Stock Exchange are the subject of Chapter Six. Chapter Seven presents empirical findings on the behaviour of Kuwait Stock Exchange in the context of efficient market theory. These findings will be compared with those related studies based on data from the United States and Europe. Chapter Eight will discuss the Kuwait Gulf Stock Exchange (over-the- counter market) or Al-Manakh. The 1982 crash of Al-Manakh is explored in depth in Chapter Nine and some of the important solutions will be discussed. In Chapter Ten the discussion Focusses on the three hypothesised Factors leading to market efficiency (market information, governmental rules and regulations, and market support facilities). Finally, in Chapter Eleven, general conclusions are drawn and recommendations presented with suggestions for further research.
Servicification of European manufacturing : evidence from Swedish micro level data

European manufacturing seems to servicify - use and sell more services - but knowledge is poor. We illuminate the phenomenon using detailed and comprehensive micro level data at both the firm and enterprise group level for Sweden (1997-2006). We find that manufacturing is servicifying substantially. On the input side, services and qualified services are increasingly characterising in-house activity in manufacturing. On the output side, manufacturing's share of services sales in total sales is up as well as services exports. Moreover, we show that services sales are much greater (almost 60 percent higher) when all activities in manufacturing's enterprise groups are considered. This has not been shown for a European country before. It means that when we consider enterprise groups, the large discrepancy in manufacturing's services diversification between Canada and the EUcountries vanishes, at the least for Sweden. The results imply that treating services and manufacturing separately - e.g. in EU’s trade negotiations - may be out of date. Finally, the findings illustrate the value of enterprise group level data when studying structural economic changes.
Towards Reconstructing a 3D Face Model from an Uncontrolled Video Sequence

An pipeline for reconstructing the 3D face model from an uncontrolled video sequence is presented which involves three major steps. Firstly, a generic deformable 3D face model is built from the 3D scans of one hundred individuals. Secondly, the 3D face shape from a video sequence is constructed by estimating poses of images using structure-from-motion technique and dense correspondences between those images by employing Huber-L1 optical flow algorithm. Finally, the generated generic deformable 3D face model can be fitted to the reconstructed 3D face-shape from a video sequence provided that the deviation from the real 3D face is less than certain thresholds. The application is developed to reconstruct the 3D face-shape in nearly uncontrolled environment so the results cannot be expected to be very accurate. We discuss the steps taken to perform the first and second steps. The factors affecting the depth estimation in face region cause major accuracy problems. They are analyzed and possible improvements to enhance the 3D face-shape reconstruction are presented.