Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deletion of serpina1a, a murine α1-antitrypsin ortholog, results in embryonic lethality

ABSTRACT Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States Approximately 1% to 2% of COPD patients suffer from α1-antitrypsin (A1AT) deficiency, the major inheritable predisposition to COPD/emphysema. To further study the role of A1AT deficiency in the pathogenesis of COPD/emphysema, the authors attempted to generate null-mutant mice for Serpina1a, 1 of 2 A1AT orthologs in mice. Here the authors show that targeted deletion of Serpina1a results in embryonic lethality prior to 8.5 days post conception (dpc). The results are surprising given that A1AT-null humans exist and therefore do not require this gene product for normal development. The Serpina1 gene cluster is substantially different between mouse and man. Through gene duplication, mice have 3 to 5 (depending on the strain) highly homologous proteinase inhibiting (Pi) genes, 2 of which inhibit neutrophil elastase. Despite the abundance of Pi genes in mice, Serpina1a serves a critical, nonredundant function during early mouse development. A1AT-deficient mice have been highly sought after to study emphysema, cancer, and liver disease, and as a model to perfect gene replacement therapy. These results highlight important differences between human and murine serpins and point to the difficulty inherent to using gene-targeted mice to study this common human genetic disease.
Implicit/Explicit Incentives and Management Earnings Forecasts

PCT No. PCT/US96/19386 Sec. 371 Date Oct. 5, 1998 Sec. 102(e) Date Oct. 5, 1998 PCT Filed Dec. 5, 1996 PCT Pub. No. WO97/20581 PCT Pub. Date Jun. 12, 1999A device for the controlled release of vapour and a method of dispensing a volatile medium into the air. The device includes a carrier impregnated with a volatile medium and a wrapper of flexible material surrounding said carrier for retaining the volatile medium on the carrier. Said wrapper has a plurality of contiguous tear strips arranged in longitudinal sequence disposed over the carrier that may be successively removed to expose a portion of the carrier of increasing size without any need to provide for relative movement of the wrapper and carrier. The method of dispensing a volatile medium into the air includes providing such a device, removing a first tear strip to expose a portion of the carrier, and subsequently removing an additional tear strip to expose a fresh area of carrier to maintain the concentration of volatile medium at a desired level.
La transcendance de soi et le bonheur : une mise à l'épreuve du modèle du bonheur basé sur le soi centré-décentré

Le principal objectif de cette recherche etait de tester l’une des hypotheses centrales du modele du bonheur base sur le soi centre-decentre (Dambrun et Ricard, 2011). D’apres ce modele, le bonheur authentique-durable serait favorise par un fonctionnement de soi decentre (e.g. ajustement harmonieux, forte connexion soi-autrui). Deux types d’affects seraient responsables de cet effet : la decentration de soi augmenterait les affects de bienveillance (empathie, compassion) et diminuerait les affects afflictifs (colere, peur, jalousie, frustration). La conjugaison de ces deux effets entrainerait une augmentation du bonheur durable. Nous avons teste cette hypothese au moyen d’analyses de trajet sur un echantillon heterogene de citoyens d’une ville provinciale francaise de taille moyenne (n = 164). L’inventaire de transcendance de soi pour adulte (ITSA) etait utilise comme un marqueur du niveau de decentration des participants. Les resultats revelent tout d’abord que la transcendance de soi est reliee positivement et significativement au bonheur authentique-durable (r = .35). Conformement au modele theorique, il apparait que cette relation est mediatisee par deux variables distinctes : les affects de bienveillance et les affects afflictifs.
Pupil detection in the wild : An evaluation of the state of the art in mobile head-mounted eye tracking

Robust and accurate detection of the pupil position is a key building block for head-mounted eye tracking and prerequisite for applications on top, such as gaze-based humancomputer interaction or attention analysis. Despite a large body of work, detecting the pupil in images recorded under real-world conditions is challenging given significant variability in the eye appearance (e.g., illumination, reflections, occlusions, etc.), individual differences in eye physiology, as well as other sources of noise, such as contact lenses or make-up. In this paper we review six state-of-the-art pupil detection methods, namely ElSe [6], ExCuSe [5], Pupil Labs [16], SET [8], Starburst [18], and W. Fuhl Perception Engineering Group, University of Tübingen, Germany E-mail: wolfgang.fuhl@uni-tuebingen.de M. Tonsen Perceptual User Interfaces Group, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Germany E-mail: tonsen@mpi-inf.mpg. de A. Bulling Perceptual User Interfaces Group, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Germany E-mail: bulling@mpi-inf.mpg. de E. Kasneci Perception Engineering Group, University of Tübingen, Germany E-mail: Enkelejda.Kasneci@uni-tuebingen.de Świrski [30]. We compare their performance on a large-scale dataset consisting of 225,569 annotated eye images taken from four publicly available datasets. Our experimental results show that the algorithm ElSe [6] outperforms other pupil detection methods by a large margin, offering thus robust and accurate pupil positions on challenging everyday eye images.
The Rationality Paradox of Nudge: Rational Tools of Government in a World of Bounded Rationality

Nudge and the wider behavioral economics approach has become increasingly dominant in contemporary political and policy discourse. While much attention has been paid to the attractions and criticisms of nudge (such as liberal paternalism), this article argues that nudge is based on a rationality paradox in that it represents an approach that despite its emphasis on bounded rationality, does not reflect on its own limits to rationality. The article considers the implications of this paradox by considering mechanisms that influence government decision making and mechanisms that lead to unintended consequences in the context of policy interventions.
Purification, Fractionation and Assay of Antibody‐Dependent Lymphocytic Effector Cells (K Cells) in Human Blood

Abstract. In this article we present methods for the purification and fractionation of human blood lymphocytes, which have been used in our laboratory to characterize antibody‐dependent cytotoxic effector cells (K cells). The assay system consists of highly purified lymphocytes, 51Cr‐labelled chicken erythrocytes (Ec) and IgG rabbit anti‐Ec in high dilutions. Various ways of comparing K‐cell potentials of different lymphocyte preparations in this system are discussed. When purified lymphocytes are partially depleted (60‐85% depletion) of cells forming rosettes with sheep erythrocytes (E+ cells), the K‐cell activity of the depleted fraction is increased, indicating that the majority of the E+ cells are inactive in this assay. Depletion of EAC‐rosette‐forming cells shows that most or all K cells have complement receptors. For depletion of B cells, the lymphocytes may be passed through glass bead columns, charged with F(ab')2 fragments of human IgG and F(ab')2 fragments of rabbit antibodies to the F(ab')2 part of human IgG. These columns give high yields of B‐cell depleted fractions. These preparations are rich in E+ cells and contain ˜80% of the Fc‐receptor lymphocytes which form rosettes with bovine erythrocytes, coated with IgG antibodies. Their K‐cell activity is unchanged or slightly elevated, indicating that mature B cells, i.e. SIg+ cells, have little or no K‐cell activity. In contrast, passage of the lymphocytes through immune complex columns (ovalbumin/anti‐ovalbumin) leads to ˜ 70% depletion of Fc receptor‐bearing cells, while most of the B cells (SIg+ cells) pass through the columns. The relative frequency of E+ cells in the passed fraction frequently shows a slight reduction. These preparations have a very low K‐cell activity, indicating that K cells are lymphocytes with Fc receptors of relatively strong avidity.
Mesoscopic two-phase model for describing apparent slip in micro-channel flows

The phenomenon of apparent slip in micro-channel flows is analyzed by means of a two-phase mesoscopic lattice Boltzmann model including non-ideal fluid-fluid and fluid-wall interactions. The weakly inhomogeneous limit of this model is solved analytically. The present mesoscopic approach permits to access much larger scales than molecular dynamics, and comparable with those attained by continuum methods. However, at variance with the continuum approach, the existence of a gas layer near the wall does not need to be postulated a priori, but emerges naturally from the underlying non-ideal mesoscopic dynamics. It is therefore argued that a mesoscopic lattice Boltzmann approach with non-ideal fluid-fluid and fluid-wall interactions might achieve an optimal compromise between physical realism and computational efficiency for the study of channel micro-flows.
Micromechanical Modeling of Discontinuous Shear Thickening in Granular Media-Fluid 1 Suspension 2 3

15 Shear thickening in a fluid occurs when the viscosity of the fluid increases with 16 increasing applied strain rate. When the rise in viscosity occurs by orders of magnitude, the fluid 17 undergoes discontinuous shear thickening, which can be devastating in industrial applications. 18 We present a particle-scale numerical technique that can simulate these phenomena. By coupling 19 the discrete element method (DEM) and lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), we developed a 20 micromechanical model that can simulate the inter-particle stresses for particles that are 21 immersed in a fluid. A comparison of the simulation results against experimental results reported 22 in the literature demonstrates the potential of the method as a research tool. The comparison 23 included parametric studies to investigate the effects of solid fraction, particle-particle, and 24 particle-wall contact stiffness. With a systematic variation of the wall stiffness, the DEM-LBM 25 model demonstrates that increasing boundary stiffness directly increases the maximum shear 26 2 stress of the shear thickening regime. For the case of particles settling at low stresses, the DEM27 LBM model has the advantage of providing insight into particle-scale interactions in a detail not 28 possible using a continuum method based on phenomenological constitutive equations.We also 29 show that the central mechanism creating the shear thickening is the dilation of the particulate 30 media per traditional soil mechanics principles. 31 32
The tolerance and response of the frontal bone to blunt impact

The current understanding of the response of the frontal bone to blunt impact is limited. Previous studies have utilized vastly different methods which prevents statistical analyses to determine the tolerance of the frontal bone. The purpose of this study is to determine the tolerance of the frontal bone to blunt impact and to define corridors describing its forcedisplacement response. The response corridors were used to evaluate the biofidelity of the Facial and Ocular CountermeasUre Safety (FOCUS) headform, a sophisticated headform capable of measuring forces imposed on eight separate facial regions. Risk functions for fracture were developed using parametric and non-parametric techniques suggesting that 2,500 N represents a 50% risk of fracture. The use of acoustic emission is essential due to the increase in impactor force after fracture onset. The force-displacement response of the frontal bone was found to vary by the type of fracture sustained by the subject. Subjects that were found to have a frontal sinus present within the impacted region had a statistically higher risk of sustaining a fracture. The response of the FOCUS headform was within the force-displacement corridors defined for the cadaveric response. 1 This paper has not been peerreviewed and should not be referenced in open literature.
Second order statistics for maximal-ratio combining in unbalanced Nakagami channels

Previous studies on the second statistics, that is, level crossing rates (LCR) and average fade durations (AFD), of maximum ratio combining for uncorrelated Nakagami channels assume identical diversity branches. This assumption rarely holds in the real systems. In this paper, we derive closed-form expressions of the LCR and AFD for a general case of independent diversity branches with unequal average signal powers. Our analysis reveals that unbalance in the diversity branches acts as if there were correlations among them. Simulation results demonstrate that larger LCR and AFD are resulted when the unbalance exists among the diversity branches. Furthermore, the effects of the decay rate, the fading severity, and the total number of unbalanced diversity branches on the LCR and AFD are discussed.
Trabalho de campo para análise linguística em Semântica Formal

O objetivo deste artigo e descrever e justificar a metodologia utilizada nos trabalhos de campo para coleta de dados linguisticos para analise em Semântica Formal. O trabalho procura esclarecer algumas questoes teoricas, praticas e eticas envolvidas num trabalho como esse. Sua tese principal e a de que o paradigma teorico determina a metodologia e o tipo de corpus coletado. Em Semântica Formal, especificamente, a metodologia defendida e a elicitacao controlada.
Mechanisms Involved in the Acidosis Enhancement of the Isoproterenol-induced Phosphorylation of Phospholamban in the Intact Heart*

Previous experiments have shown that acidosis enhances isoproterenol-induced phospholamban (PHL) phosphorylation (Mundiña-Weilenmann, C., Vittone, L., Cingolani, H. E., Orchard, C. H. (1996) Am. J. Physiol.270, C107–C114). In the present experiments, performed in isolated Langendorff perfused rat hearts, phosphorylation site-specific antibodies to PHL combined with the quantitative measurement of32P incorporation into PHL were used as experimental tools to gain further insight into the mechanism involved in this effect. At all isoproterenol concentrations tested (3–300 nm), phosphorylation of Thr17 of PHL was significantly higher at pH o 6.80 than at pH o 7.40, without significant changes in Ser16 phosphorylation. This increase in Thr17 phosphorylation was associated with an enhancement of the isoproterenol-induced relaxant effect. In the absence of isoproterenol, the increase in [Ca] o at pH o 6.80 (but not at pH o 7.40) evoked an increase in PHL phosphorylation that was exclusively due to an increase in Thr17 phosphorylation and that was also associated with a significant relaxant effect. This effect and the phosphorylation of Thr17 evoked by acidosis were both offset by the Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II inhibitor KN-62. In the presence of isoproterenol, either the increase in [Ca] o or the addition of a 1 μmconcentration of the phosphatase inhibitor okadaic acid was able to mimic the increase in isoproterenol-induced Thr17phosphorylation produced by acidosis. In contrast, these two interventions have opposite effects on phosphorylation of Ser16. Whereas the increase in [Ca] o significantly decreased phosphorylation of Ser16, the addition of okadaic acid significantly increased the phosphorylation of this residue. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the increase in phospholamban phosphorylation produced by acidosis in the presence of isoproterenol is the consequence of two different mechanisms triggered by acidosis: an increase in [Ca2+] i and an inhibition of phosphatases.
Induction of Insulin Resistance In Vivo by Amylin and Calcitonin Gene–Related Peptide

During hyperinsulinemic glucose-clamp studies, intravenous infusion of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) in rats antagonized the ability of insulin to stimulate peripheral glucose disposal by 52% (196 ± 7.2 vs. 105 ± 10.5 μmol · kg−1 · min−1, P < 0.05) and to inhibit hepatic glucose output by 54% (P < 0.01). CGRP also inhibited the in vitro effects of insulin to stimulate hexose uptake in cultured BC3H1 myocytes at all insulin concentrations studied. Amylin is a peptide isolated from amyloid deposits in pancreatic islets of type II (non-insulin-dependent) diabetic subjects, is present in normal β-cells, and bears a striking homology to CGRP. When synethetic human amylin was infused during clamp studies, it inhibited the ability of insulin to stimulate glucose disposal by 56% (96.9 ± 9.4 vs. 42.4 ± 5.0 μmol · kg−1 · min−1, P < 0.05) and to suppress hepatic glucose output by 64%. Therefore, amylin and CGRP can cause insulin resistance in vivo and may be implicated in insulinresistant states such as type II diabetes mellitus.
Fairness-guaranteed per-class-type queueing and hierarchical packet scheduling for DiffServ-aware-MPLS network

In DiffServ packet processing, three fairness problems have been emphasized in recent research works: (i) fair sharing of bandwidth among flows with different round trip times (RTT) in aggregated flows of a class-type; (ii) fairness between responsive traffic (e.g., TCP) and nonresponsive traffic (e.g., UDP); and (iii) fair distribution of excess bandwidth among aggregates. In this paper we propose a fairness-guaranteed per class-type queueing and a hierarchical packet scheduler for DiffServ-aware-MPLS networks. The proposed scheme discriminates the packet flows according to the pre-configured DiffServ class-types, and applies different packet processing schemes and a hierarchical packet scheduler to per-class-type queue. We evaluate the proposed scheme with various DiffServ-aware-MPLS networking scenarios. From the simulation results, we can verify that the proposed scheme provides a good fairness to multiple class-types under DiffServ-aware-MPLS traffic engineering.
VIBRATION CONTROL OF A CLASS OF GENERALIZED GRADIENT SYSTEMS

The suppression of oscillations in a class of generalized gradient systems using nonlinear dynamic output feedback is investigated. A class of controllers is considered which, in addition to a linear dynamic component, possess several types of nondynamic nonlinearities. Frequency domain conditions on the transfer matrix of the controller's linear component are presented that ensure the convergence of all closed-loop solutions to an equilibrium point in state space, thus eliminating the occurrence of sustained oscillations. Practically important technical applications include a.o. the set point control of mechanical systems described by the Euler–Lagrange equations and their equivalent Hamiltonian formulation. The obtained results constitute a systems theoretical basis for a new method of nonlinear vibration controller design.
The Elements of Behavioral Control in Facilitating the Acceptance of Technological Innovation on Malaysia On-line Government Services

This article discusses the elements of behavioral control in facilitating the intention of an execution of a particular action. There are two elements to be focused namely self efficacy and facilitating condition. To identify the extent to which behavioral control and the two elements influence one's actions, a survey of 232 respondents was conducted on residents in the Klang Valley. By using SEM analysis, a model of the acceptance of innovation (e-service) was formed. Focusing specially on behavioral control, the model found that this factor has a significant influence on adoption behavior (β = .67; p <.01). Elements of self-efficacy and facilitating condition have a significant influence on behavioral control, with self-efficacy having a greater influence (β = .76; p <. 01) on behavioral control compared to facilitating condition (β = .16; p <.01 ).
1 Complementarity between Audited Financial Reporting and Voluntary Disclosure : The Case of Former Andersen Clients 1

Ball and Shivakumar (2008) suggest mandatory periodic reporting disciplines disclosure and encourages timely voluntary disclosure. We examine this hypothesis using the shock to reporting quality experienced by former Arthur Andersen clients after they were forced to switch auditors. Consistent with the confirmatory role of mandatory reporting, we find that former Andersen clients increase disclosure following the switch. They increase forecasting frequency and enhance forecasting precision and specificity. They also show less return concentration around earnings announcements in bad-news quarters, consistent with timelier release of bad news (Rowchowdury and Sletton 2012). Our findings demonstrate complementarity between audit quality and voluntary disclosures. We thank Stephen Penman, Lakshmanan (Shiva) Shivakumar, Shiva Rajgopal, Paul Zarowin, and seminar participants at Washington University in St. Louis and the 2016 Burton Conference at Columbia Business School, for their helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are our own.
Automatic Detection and Classification of Skin Cancer

Cancer is a deadly disease in today’s world. Various types of cancers are spreading for which skin cancer becomes a very common cancer nowadays. Skin cancer can be of two types namely melanoma and non melanoma cancer. The objective of this paper is to detect and classify the benign and the normal image. Benign meaning the normal image, melanoma the cancerous one. And more over compare the various classification algorithms. Detection of skin cancer in earlier stages can be a life saving process. The detection of skin cancer includes four important stages namely Pre-processing, Segmentation, Feature Extraction and Classification. Detection can help in curing the cancer and hence detection plays a very vital role. In this paper, pre-processing the first and the foremost part of image processing which helps in noise removal is done by means of the median filter where the output of the median filter which is fed as an input to the histogram equalization phase of the pre-processing stage, then the input of the histogram equalized image is fed as an input to the segmentation phase where Otsu’s thresholding is done to separate the foreground and the background. The segmentation helps to identify the region of interest, Now using the area, mean, variance and standard deviation of the extracted output from the segmentation phase the calculations for feature extraction is carried and the output is fed into classifiers like Support Vector Machine (SVM), KNearest Neighbor (KNN), Decision tree(DT) and Boosted Tree(BT). Comparison of the classification is done. The algorithm shows the accuracy of the classification rate of KNN is 92.70%, SVM is 93.70%, Decision tree (DT) is 89.5% and finally the boosted tree (BT) is 84.30%.
Improved identification of nonlinear dynamic systems using Artificial Immune System

Over the recent few years the area of artificial immune system (AIS) has drawn attention of many researchers due to its broad applicability to different fields. In this paper the AIS technique has been suitably applied to develop a new model for efficient identification of nonlinear dynamic system. Simulation study of few benchmark identification problems is carried out to show superior performance of the proposed model over the standard multilayer perceptron (MLP) approach in terms of response matching, number of training samples used and convergence speed achieved. Thus it is concluded that the AIS based model used is a preferred candidate for identification of nonlinear dynamic system.
Revisión Sistemática Comparativa de Evolución de Métodos de Extracción de Conocimiento para la Web

1 Catedra de Sistemas de Soporte para Celdas de Produccion Flexible. Departamento de Computacion. Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad de Buenos Aires. 2 Laboratorio de Investigacion y Desarrollo en Sistemas de Inteligencia Artificial Grupo Investigacion en Sistemas de Informacion (LIDSIA-GISI). Depto. Desarrollo Productivo y Tecnologico. Universidad Nacional de Lanus http://sistemas.unla. edu.ar/sistemas/gisi/LIDSIA.htm jmrodriguez1982@gmail.com, hmerlino@gmail.com, rgm1960@yahoo.com