Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of cholesteryl ester transfer protein overexpression and inhibition on reverse cholesterol transport.

AIMS Cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) has a well-established role in lipoprotein metabolism, but the effect of its overexpression or inhibition on the efficiency of reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) is unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS Neither overexpression of CETP nor treatment with CETP inhibitor Torcetrapib of RAW 264.7 macrophages or HepG2 hepatocytes affected cholesterol efflux in vitro. Overexpression of CETP or treatment with Torcetrapib, respectively, stimulated or inhibited HDL cholesteryl ester uptake by HepG2 but not by RAW 264.7 cells. When RAW 264.7 cells transfected with CETP or ATP binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1) were injected intraperitoneally into mice, cholesterol egress from macrophages was elevated for ABCA1- but not for CETP-transfected macrophages. Systemic expression of CETP in mice by adenoviral infection stimulated egress of cholesterol to plasma and liver without affecting HDL levels. Treatment with Torcetrapib did not affect appearance of macrophage cholesterol in plasma and liver, but inhibited its excretion into feces. Treatment of hamsters with Torcetrapib led to elevation of HDL cholesterol, an increase in the capacity of plasma to support cholesterol efflux, and increased egress of cholesterol from macrophages to plasma and feces in vivo. CONCLUSION Both increased (mice study) and decreased (hamster study) CETP activity could result in enhanced RCT.
Multicasting in network mobility using multicast anchor agent

This paper discusses the cost functions of the three multicast schemes Bi-directional Tunneling, Remote Subscription and Agent Based. To developed from a probability model of engagement between any mobile network nodes in multicast group to a home agent. So the performance parameters required taken under continuous session duration constraints, taken in account the effects of nesting topology of Network mobility system and movement of it NEMO cluster. The cost functions of providing multicast among BT, RS and AB are compared. Then we used the probabilities of multicast anchor agent forwarding data to their destinations, to formulate the multicast path function as a 0-1 knapsack problem_1 to show the selected items (multicast paths) according to the mentioned optimization selection conditions. It was shown that the performance of AB multicast schemes is better than BT and RS.
Rate-Distortion and Rate-Energy-Distortion Evaluations of Compressive-Sensing Video Coding

Compressive-Sensing Video Coding (CSVC) is a new video coding framework based on compressive-sensing (CS) theory. This paper presents the evaluations on rate-distortion performance and rate-energy-distortion performance of CSVC by comparing it with the popular hybrid video coding standard H.264 and distributed video coding (DVC) system DISCOVER. Experimental results show that CSVC achieves a poor rate-distortion performance when compared with H.264 and DISCOVER, but its rate-energy-distortion performance has a distinct advantage; moreover, its energy consumption of coding is approximately invariant regardless of reconstruction quality. It can be concluded that, with a limited energy budget, CSVC outperforms H.264 and DISCOVER, but its rate-distortion performance still needs improvement.
Social Networks and Entrepreneurship

We study network activities of entrepreneurs through three phases of establishing a firm in four countries. Entrepreneurs access people in their networks to discuss aspects of establishing and running a business. We find that entrepreneurs build networks that systematically vary by the phase of entrepreneurship, analyzing number of their discussion partners, and the time spent networking. Entrepreneurs talk with more people during the planning than other phases. Family members are present in their networks in all phases, particularly among those who took over an existing firm. However, women use their kin to a larger extent than men, and even more than men when they take over an existing firm. Experienced entrepreneurs have the same networking patterns as novices. Moreover, these networking patterns are the same in all countries. However, there are country differences in size of discussion networks and time spent networking.
Student Satisfaction : An Examination of Preference , Asynchronous Course Elements and Collaboration among Online Students

Online courses provide students the opportunity and flexibility to attend college courses on their own schedule and within the comforts of their own home. While most enjoy the flexibility offered by this type of course delivery method and the quality between distance (online) and face-to-face courses being relatively equal, the question has been raised about the student satisfaction in online or hybrid courses (online courses containing synchronous elements). This paper seeks to explore student satisfaction toward online courses through the lens of preference to delivery method, the impact of asynchronous instruction on satisfaction and the role of rapport/ collaboration between students in an online environment. To fully understand the impact that these aspects have on student satisfaction, a survey was constructed and distributed to the entire student population of the Learning Technologies department at a public institution of higher learning in Texas. As an added dimension to the results obtained by the survey, interviews were held with a subsection of the survey participants to further explore the elements that impact their satisfaction towards online courses.
Toward Simulating the Human Way of Comparing Concepts

An ability to assess similarity lies close to the core of cognition. Its understanding support the comprehension of human success in tasks like problem solving, categorization, memory retrieval, inductive reasoning, etc, and this is the main reason that it is a common research topic. In this paper, we introduce the idea of semantic differences and commonalities between words to the similarity computation process. Five new semantic similarity metrics are obtained after applying this scheme to traditional WordNet-based measures. We also combine the node based similarity measures with a corpus-independent way of computing the information content. In an experimental evaluation of our approach on two standard word pairs datasets, four of the measures outperformed their classical version, while the other performed as well as their unmodified counterparts. key words: WordNet, semantic similarity measures, information content, knowledge
Innate Immune Responses to Rhodococcus equi4

We examined innate immune responses to the intracellular bacterium Rhodococcus equi and show that infection of macrophages with intact bacteria induced the rapid translocation of NF-κB and the production of a variety of proinflammatory mediators, including TNF, IL-12, and NO. Macrophages from mice deficient in MyD88 failed to translocate NF-KB and produced virtually no cytokines in response to R. equi infection, implicating a TLR pathway. TLR4 was not involved in this response, because C3H/HeJ macrophages were fully capable of responding to R. equi infection, and because RAW-264 cells transfected with a dominant negative form of TLR4 responded normally to infection by R. equi. A central role for TLR2 was identified. A TLR2 reporter cell was activated by R. equi, and RAW-264 cells transfected with a dominant negative TLR2 exhibited markedly reduced cytokine responses to R. equi. Moreover, macrophages from TLR2−/− mice exhibited diminished cytokine responses to R. equi. The role of the surface-localized R. equi lipoprotein VapA (virulence-associated protein A), in TLR2 activation was examined. Purified rVapA activated a TLR2-specific reporter cell, and it induced the maturation of dendritic cells and the production of cytokines from macrophages. Importantly, TLR2−/−-deficient but not TLR4−/−-deficient mice were found to be compromised in their ability to clear a challenge with virulent R. equi. We conclude that the efficient activation of innate immunity by R. equi may account for the relative lack of virulence of this organism in immunocompetent adults.
A estrutura de capital, os dividendos e os juros sobre o capitalpróprio: evidências empíricas no caso brasileiro de 1995 a 2004

A estrutura de capital e os dividendos sao dois dos temas mais estudados em financas corporativas. Porem, a analise conjunta desses dois temas foi realizada de forma pioneira apenas em 2002 por Fama e French que testaram as revisoes das teorias de tradeoff estatica e pecking order para aquelas variaveis, simultaneamente, num trabalho que cobre o periodo de 1965 a 1999. A analise conjunta significa reconhecer que o dividendo afeta a estrutura de capital e vice-versa, o que gera um problema de endogeneidade. Para Cochrane (2005) um dos problemas estatisticos mais recorrentes na maioria dos trabalhos em financas e a nao correcao da correlacao dos residuos existentes na maioria das regressoes lineares cross section ou de dados em painel. A metodologia proposta por Fama e MacBeth (1973) e uma das alternativas para corrigir esse problema estatistico e foi utilizada por Fama e French (2002). No Brasil, desde 1996, alem dos dividendos, a legislacao permite que se remunere os acionistas com os juros sobre o capital proprio. Esses juros tem as vantagens de serem dedutiveis do imposto de renda da empresa, nao serem obrigatorios como os dividendos, alem de ter tributacao na fonte menor que a maioria dos demais rendimentos dos investidores. O objetivo desta dissertacao e realizar uma analise conjunta da estrutura de capital, dividendos e juros sobre o capital proprio das empresas brasileiras para o periodo de 1995 a 2004, comparando os seus resultados com as previsoes estabelecidas pelas teorias de tradeoff estatica e pecking order, seguindo o modelo proposto por Fama e French (2002). Para testar as evidencias empiricas sao formuladas quatro hipoteses tendo como variaveis dependentes os dividendos, os juros sobre o capital proprio e a alavancagem. Em linhas gerais, os resultados confirmam boa parte das previsoes das teorias, embora a distribuicao de lucros no Brasil ainda seja muito baixa, comparada com a americana. A lucratividade demonstrou ser a variavel explicativa de maior peso e influencia tanto para a distribuicao de lucros como para a alavancagem.
Turnover of Galactans and Other Cell Wall Polysaccharides during Development of Flax Plants

We investigated the synthesis and turnover of cell wall polysaccharides of the flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) plant during development of the phloem fibers. One-month-old flax plants were exposed to a 40-min pulse with 14CO2 followed by 8-h, 24-h, and 1-month periods of chase with ambient CO2, and radioactivity in cell wall sugars was determined in various plant parts. The relative radioactivity of glucose in noncellulosic polysaccharides was the highest compared with all other cell wall sugars immediately after the pulse and decreased substantially during the subsequent chase. The relative radioactivities of the other cell wall sugars changed with differing rates, indicating turnover of specific polysaccharides. Notably, after 1 month of chase there was a marked decrease in the proportional mass and total radioactivity in cell wall galactose, indicating a long-term turnover of the galactans enriched in the fiber-containing tissues. The ratio of radiolabeled xylose to arabinose also increased during the chase, indicating a turnover of arabinose-containing polymers and interconversion to xylose. The pattern of label redistribution differed between organs, indicating that the cell wall turnover processes are tissue- and cell-specific.
Combined multicolor-FISH and immunostaining

The combination of multicolor-FISH and immunostaining produces a powerful visual method to analyze in situ DNA-protein interactions and dynamics. Representing one of the major technical improvements of FISH technology, this method has been used extensively in the field of chromosome and genome research, as well as in clinical studies, and serves as an important tool to bridge molecular analysis and cytological description. In this short review, the development and significance of this method will be briefly summarized using a limited number of examples to illustrate the large body of literature. In addition to descriptions of technical considerations, future applications and perspectives have also been discussed focusing specifically on the areas of genome organization, gene expression and medical research. We anticipate that this versatile method will play an important role in the study of the structure and function of the dynamic genome and for the development of potential applications for medical research.
Improved preservation of bacterial capsule for electron microscopy.

Conventional fixation for thin-section electron microscopy is insufficient to preserve bacterial capsular material, a highly hydrated structure which collapses during dehydration and embedding. Boyles et al. (1984, 1985) have recently introduced a modified aldehyde fixation process in which the addition of a primary amine was found to improve the preservation of actin filaments, the basement membrane material and cell surface glycocalyx of mouse tissues. To the best of our knowledge, the application of diamines to the analysis of bacterial ultrastructure has not been reported in the literature. In the present study, excellent preservation of bacterial capsular material was seen when a diamine (lysine) was used together with glutaraldehyde in conventional embedding procedures.
Distributed Object Detection With Linear SVMs

In vision and learning, low computational complexity and high generalization are two important goals for video object detection. Low computational complexity here means not only fast speed but also less energy consumption. The sliding window object detection method with linear support vector machines (SVMs) is a general object detection framework. The computational cost is herein mainly paid in complex feature extraction and innerproduct-based classification. This paper first develops a distributed object detection framework (DOD) by making the best use of spatial-temporal correlation, where the process of feature extraction and classification is distributed in the current frame and several previous frames. In each framework, only subfeature vectors are extracted and the response of partial linear classifier (i.e., subdecision value) is computed. To reduce the dimension of traditional block-based histograms of oriented gradients (BHOG) feature vector, this paper proposes a cell-based HOG (CHOG) algorithm, where the features in one cell are not shared with overlapping blocks. Using CHOG as feature descriptor, we develop CHOG-DOD as an instance of DOD framework. Experimental results on detection of hand, face, and pedestrian in video show the superiority of the proposed method.
Multi-level Intrusion Detection System and log management in Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a new type of service which provides large scale computing resource to each customer. Cloud Computing systems can be easily threatened by various cyber attacks, because most of Cloud Computing systems provide services to so many people who are not proven to be trustworthy. Therefore, a Cloud Computing system needs to contain some Intrusion Detection Systems(IDSs) for protecting each Virtual Machine(VM) against threats. In this case, there exists a tradeoff between the security level of the IDS and the system performance. If the IDS provide stronger security service using more rules or patterns, then it needs much more computing resources in proportion to the strength of security. So the amount of resources allocating for customers decreases. Another problem in Cloud Computing is that, huge amount of logs makes system administrators hard to analyse them. In this paper, we propose a method that enables Cloud Computing system to achieve both effectiveness of using the system resource and strength of the security service without trade-off between them.
Multimodal imaging Gd-nanoparticles functionalized with Pittsburgh compound B or a nanobody for amyloid plaques targeting.

AIM Gadolinium-based nanoparticles were functionalized with either the Pittsburgh compound B or a nanobody (B10AP) in order to create multimodal tools for an early diagnosis of amyloidoses. MATERIALS & METHODS The ability of the functionalized nanoparticles to target amyloid fibrils made of β-amyloid peptide, amylin or Val30Met-mutated transthyretin formed in vitro or from pathological tissues was investigated by a range of spectroscopic and biophysics techniques including fluorescence microscopy. RESULTS Nanoparticles functionalized by both probes efficiently interacted with the three types of amyloid fibrils, with KD values in 10 micromolar and 10 nanomolar range for, respectively, Pittsburgh compound B and B10AP nanoparticles. Moreover, they allowed the detection of amyloid deposits on pathological tissues. CONCLUSION Such functionalized nanoparticles could represent promising flexible and multimodal imaging tools for the early diagnostic of amyloid diseases, in other words, Alzheimer's disease, Type 2 diabetes mellitus and the familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy.
New feature vector extraction method for speaker recognition

Speech signal contains information not only connected to the pronounced phrase, but also data about speaker, language, environment, emotional state of the speaker. The main objective of the research is development of methods and algorithms increasing the precision of speaker recognition preserving acceptable indicators on computational complexity. Extraction of vectors of speech signal is an important stage of speaker recognition. Method based on Hilbert-Huang transform considering instability and non-linearity of human speech, as well as effective noise cancelling of the spectrum was proposed in the article.
A practical exact motion planning algorithm for polygonal objects amidst polygonal obstacles

A general and simple algorithm is presented which computes the set FP of all free configurations for a polygonal object I (with m edges) which is free to translate and/or to rotate but not to intersect another polygonal object E. The worst-case time complexity of the algorithm is O(m/sup 3/n/sup 3/ log mn), which is close to optimal. FP is a three-dimensional curved object which can be used to find free motions within the same time bounds. Two types of motion have been studied in some detail. Motion in contact, where I remains in contact with E, is performed by moving along the faces of the boundary of FP. By partitioning FP into prisms, it is possible to compute motions when I never makes contact with E. In this case, the theoretical complexity does not exceed O(m/sup 6/n/sup 6/ alpha (mn)) but it is expected to be much smaller in practice. In both cases, pseudo-optimal motions can be obtained with a complexity increased by a factor log mn. <<ETX>>
Effect of different types of litter material for rearing broilers

1. Coir dust was evaluated as broiler litter in comparison with sawdust and rice husk using 135 commercial broilers. Forty-five broiler chicks were reared to 42 d on a 50 mm layer of each of these litters. 2. Birds reared on coir dust showed no difference in food consumption, body weight gain, food conversion efficiency, production number and survivability in comparison to those reared on saw dust and rice husk. 3. It was concluded that coir dust is suitable as broiler litter when cheaply available.
ENERGY MANAGEMENT OF A HYBRID MICRO-GRID WITH POWER ELECTRONIC CONVERTERS

The widespread interconnection of distributed generators (DGs) has created possibility of microgrid, both in AC and DC forms. Combining both AC and DC systems, hybrid microgrid has been proposed by many researchers. While a B2B connection between two AC systems could bestow are liable, isolated and efficient coupling, an extra DC bus connection can facilitate use of the DC micro sources. In this paper, a hybrid microgrid structure with DC bus connection atB2B converter is proposed. The main contribution of this paper lies in enabling this new hybrid structure for grid connected microgrid through B2B converters. Control voltage between the microgrid and utility provides a new model system for hybrid microgrid. Different control modes are developed to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed microgrid structure and associated controls.
Planning in Action: Interactivity Improves Planning Performance

Planning is an everyday activity that is extended in time and space, yet is frequently studied in the absence of interactivity. Successful planning relies on an array of executive functions including self-control. We investigated the effects of interactivity and self-control on planning using a sequential-task paradigm. Half of the participants first completed a video-viewing task requiring self-control of visual attention, whereas the other half completed the same task without the selfcontrol constraint. Next, and within each of these groups, half of the participants manipulated cards to complete their plan (high-interactivity condition); for the other half, plans were made with their hands down (lowinteractivity condition). Planning performance was significantly better in the highthan in the lowinteractivity conditions; however the self-control manipulation had no impact on planning performance. An exploration of individual differences revealed that long-term planning ability and non-planning impulsiveness moderated the impact of interactivity on planning. These findings suggest that interactivity augments working memory resources and planning performance, underscoring the importance of an interactive perspective on planning research.
Genetic and physical mapping of the Lps locus: identification of the toll-4 receptor as a candidate gene in the critical region.

On the basis of 2093 meioses analyzed in two separate intraspecific backcrosses, the location of the mouse Lpsd mutation was circumscribed to a genetic interval 0.9 cM in size. A total of 19 genetic markers that lie in close proximity to the mutation were examined in mapping. Most of these were previously unpublished polymorphic microsatellites, identified by fragmentation of YAC and BAC clones spanning the region of interest. Lpsd was found to be inseparable from the microsatellite marker D4MIT178, and from three novel polymorphic microsatellites identified near D4MIT178. The mutation was confined between two novel microsatellite markers, herein designated "B" and "83.3. " B lies centromeric to the mutation, and was separated by four crossovers in a panel of 1600 mice; 83.3 lies distal to the mutation and was separated by three crossovers in a panel of 493 mice. 66 BAC clones and one YAC clone were assembled to cover > 95% of the critical region. Estimates based on pulsed field gel electrophoresis and fluorescence in situ hybridization indicate that the The B-->83.3 interval is about 3.2 Mb in length. A minimal area of zero recombinational distance from Lpsd was also assigned, and found to occupy approximately 1.2 Mb of physical size. To identify gene candidates, nearly 40,000 sequencing runs were performed across the critical region. Selective hybridization and exon trapping were also employed to identify genes throughout the "zero" region. Only a single intact gene was identified within the entire critical region. This gene encodes the Toll-4 receptor, a member of the IL-1 receptor family.