Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A simple protocol for combinatorial cyclic depsipeptide libraries sequencing by matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionisation mass spectrometry

Short cyclic peptides have a great interest in therapeutic, diagnostic and affinity chromatography applications. The screening of ‘one‐bead‐one‐peptide’ combinatorial libraries combined with mass spectrometry (MS) is an excellent tool to find peptides with affinity for any target protein. The fragmentation patterns of cyclic peptides are quite more complex than those of their linear counterparts, and the elucidation of the resulting tandem mass spectra is rather more difficult. Here, we propose a simple protocol for combinatorial cyclic libraries synthesis and ring opening before MS analysis. In this strategy, 4‐hydroxymethylbenzoic acid, which forms a benzyl ester with the first amino acid, was used as the linker. A glycolamidic ester group was incorporated after the combinatorial positions by adding glycolic acid. The library synthesis protocol consisted in the following: (i) incorporation of Fmoc‐Asp[2‐phenylisopropyl (OPp)]‐OH to Ala‐Gly‐oxymethylbenzamide‐ChemMatrix, (ii) synthesis of the combinatorial library, (iii) assembly of a glycolic acid, (iv) couple of an Ala residue in the N‐terminal, (v) removal of OPp, (vi) peptide cyclisation through side chain Asp and N‐Ala amino terminus and (vii) removal of side chain protecting groups. In order to simultaneously open the ring and release each peptide, benzyl and glycolamidic esters were cleaved with ammonia. Peptide sequences could be deduced from the tandem mass spectra of each single bead evaluated. The strategy herein proposed is suitable for the preparation of one‐bead‐one‐cyclic depsipeptide libraries that can be easily open for its sequencing by matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionisation MS. It employs techniques and reagents frequently used in a broad range of laboratories without special expertise in organic synthesis. Copyright © 2014 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Functional synapses are formed between human NTera2 (NT2N, hNT) neurons grown on astrocytes

The formation of functional synapses is a late milestone of neuronal differentiation. The establishment of functional synapses can be used to assess neuronal characteristics of different cell lines. In the present study, we examined the in vitro conditions that influence the ability of human neurons derived from the NT2 cell line (NT2N neurons) to establish synapses. The morphologic, immunologic, and electrophysiologic characteristics of these synapses was examined. In the absence of astrocytes, NT2N neurons rarely formed synapses and their action potentials were weak and uncommon. In contrast, when plated on primary astrocytes, NT2N neurons were able to form both glutamatergic excitatory (71%) and GABAergic inhibitory (29%) functional synapses whose properties (kinetics, ion selectivity, pharmacology, and ultrastructure) were similar to those of synapses of neurons in primary cultures. In addition, coculture of NT2N neurons with astrocytes modified the morphology of the neurons and extended their in vitro viability to more than 1 year. Because astrocyte‐conditioned medium did not produce these effects, we infer that direct contact between NT2N neurons and astrocytes is required. These results suggest that NT2N neurons are similar to primary neurons in their synaptogenesis and their requirement for glial support for optimal survival and maturation. This system provides a model for further investigations into the neurobiology of synapses formed by human neurons. J. Comp. Neurol. 407:1–10, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Market Segmentation of Wyoming Snowmobilers

Given the increasing popularity of snowmobiling, information on snowmobilers’ characteristics and preferences is needed to better manage and market snowmobiling programs. This study examines the characteristics, preferences, and motivations of Wyoming snowmobilers. Unique groups of snowmobilers are identified, and differences in their snowmobiling behavior and sociodemographic characteristics are investigated.
Knowledge Spillovers and Productivity Differences

A large part of cross-country variation in per capita income is left unexplained by differences in physical and human capital, so that the hypothesis of a common world technology should be rejected and a theory of productivity differences is needed. We study two possible structures of cross-country knowledge spillovers that have the potential to account for observed productivity differences: appropriate technology knowledge spillovers and backward knowledge spillovers, in which countries face a barrier in extracting technical knowledge due to their factor intensity relative to the technological leader. We find that both spillovers structures can explain over an half of observed cross-country productivity differences, but the backward spillovers one is more consistent with the observed world income distribution. 1I ntroduction Observed per capita income differences across countries are enormous: in 1996 average per capita income of the richest country in the world (USA) was about 50 times that of the poorest country (Ethiopia), while observed income dispersion across the 90-10 percentiles was given by a factor of 17. A successful theory of growth and development should at least be able to account for cross-country income differences, i.e. to explain the actual shape of the world income distribution (WID): the conclusion of a decade of theoretical and empirical research is that, either through development accounting or using calibration techniques, the standard neoclassical framework is unable to explain observed income differences. In the development accounting approach, summarized in Caselli(2005), one introduce a particular functional form for the production function and uses cross-country data on per capita income and on factors of production to assess the relative contribution of observables input and unobservable efficiency backed out as a residual: the general consensus is that observed differences in physical and human capital stocks are not big enough to match observed differences in income, and differences in efficiency account for about an half of
Geometric phase effects in H3 predissociation

We model the predissociation of H3 in the electronic state corresponding to the upper sheet of the conically intersecting 1 2A[prime] and 2 2A[prime] states, and we show that product-state rovibrational distributions are strongly influenced by the geometric phase. Similarly, the differences in the product-state energy distributions in recent three-body dissociation experiments for the 2s,2A 1 [prime] and 2p,2A 2 [double-prime] states of H3 are shown to result from the presence of the geometric phase in this system, and thus provide experimental evidence of the influence of this phase in a molecular dynamical process.
Local and Regional Audit Firms and the Market for SEC Audits

The period after the demise of Enron and Andersen has been tumultuous for the accounting profession. In congressional hearings and in responses to the SEC and GAO, auditors have stated that provisions of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (SOA) and related SEC rules changes would cause many local and regional audit firms to terminate audit work for SEC registrants. In this study, we provide empirical evidence about small audit firms and recent changes in the market for SEC audits. After examining all auditor resignations during 2000–2003, we find that 47 local and regional audit firms disclosed in Form 8‐Ks filed in 2002–2003 that they were ceasing all SEC audits; only eight such firms that made this disclosure in 2000–2001. From interviews with audit partners of such firms, we find that the primary reasons for ceasing SEC audits is the perception of a more stringent oversight by the recently created Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), increased professional liability insurance costs, and incre.
SET-C versus fluoxetine in the treatment of childhood social phobia.

OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of fluoxetine, pill placebo, and Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children (SET-C) for children and adolescents with social phobia. METHOD Youths ages 7 to 17 were randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions. Outcome was evaluated using self-reports, parent ratings, independent evaluator ratings, and behavioral assessment. RESULTS Both fluoxetine and SET-C were more efficacious than placebo in reducing social distress and behavioral avoidance and increasing general functioning. SET-C was superior to fluoxetine on each of these measures and was the only treatment superior to placebo in terms of improving social skills, decreasing anxiety in specific social interactions, and enhancing ratings of social competence. Furthermore, whereas fluoxetine appears to exert maximum effect by 8 weeks, SET-C provides continued improvement through week 12. CONCLUSIONS Both fluoxetine and SET-C are efficacious for social phobia, although SET-C appears to provide added benefit by enhancing social skills.
The SURF algorithm on a FPGA-based platform

The SURF algorithm is suitable for being implemented on small computation platforms for its advantages of scale-invariant, rotation-invariant, and low computation burden. This paper focuses on the realization of the SURF algorithm upon a small FPGA-based platform for objects recognition in real-time. By following the hardware and software co-design concept the entire system is implemented and embedded in the FPGA of a SoPC. The hardware part of the system includes image processing circuits and peripheral circuits. The image processing circuits include RGB to gray transformation circuit and image integral circuit. Peripheral circuits include Laplacian of Gaussian filters circuit and NiosII process circuit. In software part, it includes SURF related operations such as: interest point descriptor, interest point matching, and the software for the system control. It has experimentally been proven that the resulting system satisfies the design goals of objects recognition, rotation-invariant, and scale-invariant. But, in the resulting system, there are only several modules realized in hardware because of the hardware resource limitation of the FPGA chip, causing the recognition speed cannot have very much improvement.
Business failure: incidence of stakeholders’ behavior

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the potential impact of stakeholders’ behavior on business failure, through its influence on the generation and distribution of value added. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 2,277 Spanish SMEs – half of which were businesses that failed during the years 2006‐2009 – the authors conducted an empirical study on a number of variables representing the participation of stakeholders in the generation and distribution of value added. This was undertaken in order to discern differential behavior between the variables and prove their usefulness in predicting business failure. For this purpose, a mean difference analysis between failed and non‐failed businesses and a multivariate logistic regression model were applied. Findings The results obtained show that the stakeholders’ behavior in relation to their participation in the generation and distribution of value added, affects the likelihood of business failure. Originality/value This paper provides empiri.
Development and Validation of the Quality Of Life Outcome Measure (Questionnaire) for Chronic Anterior Cruciate Ligament Deficiency

A patient-based, subjective outcome measure for chronic anterior cruciate ligament deficiency was developed, pretested, and validated. The development of the outcome measure was completed in four stages: 1) item generation (167 items), 2) item reduction (by surveying 79 patients), 3) questionnaire formation and pretesting (20 patients), and 4) reliability, responsiveness, and validity assessment (100 patients). This disease-specific quality of life measure is a 32-item questionnaire using a 100-mm visual analog scale response format. Face validity was derived from extensive direct patient input. Content validity was determined by consensus among 20 knee surgeons. There was no significant difference on test-retest reliability, with an overall average error of 6%. The outcome measure demonstrated responsiveness to clinical change correctly in 21 of 25 patients (84%). Construct validity was shown by the ability of the questionnaire to measure the full spectrum of disease; scores ranged from 8 to 99 out of a maximum score of 100. The questionnaire was able to distinguish patients who went on to have surgery (average score, 31) from those who would be treated nonoperatively (average score, 79). The quality of life outcome measure for chronic anterior cruciate ligament deficiency is the first subjective knee scale of its kind to be validated to measure quality of life in patients with chronic anterior cruciate ligament deficiency.
Tied Down or Room to Move? Investigating the Relationships between Housing Tenure, Employment Status and Residential Mobility in Britain

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we investigate the relationships between labour market dynamics, housing tenure and residential mobility. Panel data allow the study of the sequence of household moves and individual labour market status changes, enabling unique analysis of the relationship between job and residential mobility. Our findings suggest that the unemployed are more likely to move than employees. A desire to move motivated by employment reasons has the single largest positive impact on the probability of moving between regions.
Bridging Test Construct and Beneficial Washback Effects : Revising the GEPT High-Intermediate Reading Test

Tung-Mei Ma Shu-Fan Li The Language Training & Testing Center td@lttc.ntu. edu.tw Based on the findings of a project which related Taiwan's General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), there was recognition of a need to revise the High-intermediate Reading Test of the GEPT (GEPT-HR), whose level corresponds to the CEFR B2 level. The findings indicated that longer texts better facilitate higher levels of cognitive processing. In addition to including longer texts in the GEPT-HR, increasing the variety of text types was also deemed necessary based on the results of a comparison between the GEPT-HR reading specifications and the CEFR B2 level descriptions established by the Council of Europe. An investigation of the lengths and types of texts found in the reading textbooks used in Taiwan's universities and in several major English reading tests supported the need for revision. To investigate the appropriateness of new items, two pretest forms based on the partially revised specifications were pretested. Examinees' performances and their feedback on both the pretest and the operational GEPT test were statistically analyzed. Although the examinees claimed that the long passages were more difficult, their performances did not support that claim. Their performances were satisfactory in terms of difficulty and discrimination indexes. To triangulate the data, university teachers' opinions were collected. Whether the revised test form could exert more beneficial washback effects on the teaching of English reading in Taiwan was also considered when this project was launched.
Green organizational identity and green innovation

Purpose – The authors aim to apply an “interpretive context – organizational action – outcome” framework to explore the positive effect of green organizational identity on green innovation performance. Besides, they would like to verify that both environmental commitment and environmental organizational legitimacy mediate between green organizational identity and green innovation performance.Design/methodology/approach – The authors utilize a hybrid research method that includes both questionnaire data and public data to test the hypotheses to satisfy the triangulation in methodology. In addition, structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to perform the empirical research.Findings – The results show that green organizational identity would positively affect green innovation performance. Moreover, green organizational identity could positively influence green innovation performance indirectly via environmental commitment and environmental organizational legitimacy. Firms should increase their green organi.
Visible and Hidden Risk Factors for Banks

This paper examines the common factors that drive the returns of U.S. bank holding companies from 1997 to 2005. We compare a range of market models from a basic one-factor model to a nine-factor model that includes the standard Fama-French factors and additional factors thought to be particularly relevant for banks such as interest and credit variables. We show that the market factor clearly dominates in explaining bank returns, followed by the Fama-French factors. The bank-specific factors are not informative, particularly for the largest banks, which take advantage of protection in the form of interest rate and credit derivatives. Even in our broadest model, however, considerable residual variation remains, with the mean pairwise correlation of residuals for the largest banks near 0.25. This finding suggests that important hidden factors remain. A principal component analysis shows that this residual variance is relatively diffuse, although the largest banks do tend to load in the same direction on the first component. Relative to the returns of large firms in other sectors, bank returns are relatively well explained with standard risk factors, and both the residual correlation and degree of factor loading agreement are not particularly large. These results have clear implications both for public policymakers seeking to quantify those shared bank exposures that create systemic risk and to portfolio managers seeking to devise optimal diversification strategies.
APPLYING BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS IN THE DESIGN OF TRAVEL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Providing information about transport-related attributes such as travel time, travel costs or carbon emissions might be seen not only as a service to the public, but as also an instrument to change their travel behaviour. While rational man theory suggests that individuals base choices on the attributes of the choice set (information content), the way information is being presented (information context) has also a strong effect on travellers’ behaviour. “Choice architecture”, through the design and incorporation of small features in the environment of choice making (‘nudges’), could help individuals to overcome cognitive biases, and to highlight the better choices for them - without restricting their freedom of choice. This paper sketches a few of the more interesting among insights from behavioural economics, and suggests examples of how they might be useful for influencing travel behaviour through the design of travel information and help promoting desired travel options.
PART in Retrospect: An Examination of Legislators' Attitudes Toward Part

This research adds insight into the congressional reaction to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) by exploring the influence of individual legislators' personal experiences and ideological position on their attitude toward PART. Specifically, the factors explored include ideological position held by legislators, level of business experience, level of campaign financing received from political action committees (PACs), years spent in Congress, seniority, and congressional chamber. The results indicate that legislators with higher levels of business experience generally were more supportive of PART and that the length of time they had served in Congress and the amount of campaign contributions they had received from PACs were negatively related to PART support. The study also provides insights into legislators' overall exposure and sentiment toward PART. The data indicates that only a small proportion of legislators clearly expressed positive or negative opinions toward PART, despite widespread exposure to the tool. These findings are important in that they contribute toward a more comprehensive understanding of the congressional reaction to PART and offer further insights into the challenges of securing congressional buy‐in for executive performance budgeting initiatives.
Fixed priority timing analysis of real-time systems with limited parallelism

Conventional real-time system implementations assume a von Neumann processor-memory architecture with at most one software process executing at any time. Scheduling approaches for such systems multiplex the processor among runnable processes. Fixed priority scheduling, notably, utilises timing analysis to determine offline the run-time timing behaviour of the system. Recent alternative real-time system implementations combine processor-memory architectures with reconfigurable hardware for speedup. Such reconfigurable hardware can execute many functions in parallel. This leads to a limited parallel system where a single software process can execute on the processor at any time, in parallel with a number of functions implemented in hardware. Conventional fixed priority timing analysis is unsuitable for this model, as fundamental assumptions are compromised, e.g. the notion of a critical instant. This paper proposes new timing analysis aimed at such limited parallel systems, illustrated by an example system utilising field programmable gate arrays as the reconfigurable hardware resource.
Control of grid interactive AC microgrids

Over the last decade, distributed energy resources (DER) technology has undergone a fast development. Increased penetration of DER units and wide spread use of renewable energy sources challenge the entire architecture of traditional power system. Microgrid, characterizing higher flexibility and reliability, becomes an attractive candidate for the configuration of future electrical power system. This paper gives a brief review of grid interactive ac microgrid configurations. Control methods for power electronics interfaced DER units in grid interactive ac microgrids are discussed. In addition, microgrid controls and power management strategies are presented. Future trends of microgrid are discussed pointing out how this concept can be a key to achieve a more intelligent and flexible AC grid.
One-dimensional threshold average decomposition for two-dimensional Ostu algorithm

As the classical image segmentation algorithm, Ostu threshold algorithm has been widely used in image processing. The using of the algorithm which was developed on the basis of two-dimensional, high-dimensional threshold algorithm was restricted because of its complexity. But they consider both the gray value of a pixel and the average gray value of its neighborhood, thus is more robust to noise. By constructing look-up table recursively, its fast algorithm reduces its complexity from four-dimensional to two-dimensional. Algorithm based on the decomposition threshold selection, using threshold of two one-dimensional Ostu algorithms to replace it of two-dimensional Ostu, the method is the same as two-dimensional Ostu algorithm in segmentation threshold, and the algorithm's time complexity can be reduced to one-dimensional. In the paper, the algorithm was improved, one-dimensional threshold average decomposition for two-dimensional Ostu algorithm was proposed. It can be confirmed by a large of number experiments, The algorithm not only maintained advantages of less time and smaller space of calculating the threshold but also better segmentation results can be found from experiments.