Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lipoprotein from the osmoregulated ABC transport system OpuA of Bacillus subtilis: purification of the glycine betaine binding protein and characterization of a functional lipidless mutant

The OpuA transport system of Bacillus subtilis functions as a high-affinity uptake system for the osmoprotectant glycine betaine. It is a member of the ABC transporter superfamily and consists of an ATPase (OpuAA), an integral membrane protein (OpuAB), and a hydrophilic polypeptide (OpuAC) that shows the signature sequence of lipoproteins (B. Kempf and E. Bremer, J. Biol. Chem. 270:16701-16713, 1995). The OpuAC protein might thus serve as an extracellular substrate binding protein anchored in the cytoplasmic membrane via a lipid modification at an amino-terminal cysteine residue. A malE-opuAC hybrid gene was constructed and used to purify a lipidless OpuAC protein. The purified protein bound radiolabeled glycine betaine avidly and exhibited a KD of 6 microM for this ligand, demonstrating that OpuAC indeed functions as the substrate binding protein for the B. subtilis OpuA system. We have selectively expressed the opuAC gene under T7 phi10 control in Escherichia coli and have demonstrated through its metabolic labeling with [3H]palmitic acid that OpuAC is a lipoprotein. A mutant expressing an OpuAC protein in which the amino-terminal cysteine residue was changed to an alanine (OpuAC-3) was constructed by oligonucleotide site-directed mutagenesis. The OpuAC-3 protein was not acylated by [3H]palmitic acid, and part of it was secreted into the periplasmic space of E. coli, where it could be released from the cells by cold osmotic shock. The opuAC-3 mutation was recombined into an otherwise wild-type opuA operon in the chromosome of B. subtilis. Unexpectedly, this mutant OpuAC system still functioned efficiently for glycine betaine acquisition in vivo under high-osmolarity growth conditions. In addition, the mutant OpuA transporter exhibited kinetic parameters similar to that of the wild-type system. Our data suggest that the lipidless OpuAC-3 protein is held in the cytoplasmic membrane of B. subtilis via its uncleaved hydrophobic signal peptide.
A novel fuzzy recommendation system integrated the experts' opinion

Collaborative Filtering (CF) has been applied to many commercial systems successfully, such as IMDB, Netflix and son on. The basic idea of a CF system is to generate recommendations based on the experiences of past similar users. The users' option can be categorized into objective and subject information. The former was furnished by the common users and the later represents solicit opinions provided by experts (such as film critics). Both information types are valuable and important for the CF system. This study attempts to propose a novel collaborative filtering framework based on fuzzy set theory which integrates the subjective and objective information. The new methodology not only provides a comprehensive result but also solve the problems of traditional CF system, new user and new item. Finally, an experiment is performed, and the result indicates that the proposed methodology produces high-quality recommendations.
State feedback synthesis for homogenous platoons under the leader and predecessor following scheme

Synthesis of state-feedback controllers is considered for a homogenous platoon operating under the leader and predecessor following scheme. The problem is formulated as a multi-objective ℋ∞-type synthesis. The performance specifications are shaped by the string stability objective and prevention of extensive control effort, as well as by the concerns about the communication problems with the leader. Sufficient LMI conditions are then provided for the synthesis of common state-feedback gains. Some aspects of the developed approach are illustrated in the longitudinal control of a vehicle platoon.
Macroeconomic determinants of corporate performance and failure: evidence from an emerging market the case of Jordan

This study investigates the impact of aggregate economic risk on a company’s performance and failure in a panel estimation using 167 Jordanian companies during 1989-2003. Our finding shows that unanticipated changes in interest rate negatively and significantly affect firms’ performance measured by ROA, which suggests that an interest rate rise increases the cost of borrowing and then further negatively affects a firm’s profit. We also found that both the production manufacturing index and Islamic credit facilities positively and significantly affect a firm’s performance. The positive and significant impact of Islamic credit facilities reflects the importance and the significance of the role of Islamic credit facilities in increasing a firm’s performance measured by ROA.
Richard Morton's Phthisiologia

Phthisis (from decay, shrivelling) was the name given in Hippocratic writings to wasting diseases, the most dangerous of which, according to De Re Medicina of Celsus (AD 40), was that of pulmonary origin. 'Glandulous tubercles', prone to increase with age and proceed to visible suppuration, were first recognized in the lungs of phthisical patients2 by Franciscus Sylvius (de la Boe) (16141672) who introduced ward teaching and thus established the reputation of Leiden's medical school. Of phthisis he wrote in Opera Medica:
Personalized Recommendation Based on Similarity of Cloud Model

Analyzing the present situation of personalized recommendation system. Point out the limitation of similarity based on voting, and the disadvantage of the strict matching in calculating similarity. Put forward a new personalized recommendation method based on the statistics of item. Adopt the cloud model to calculate the similarity instead of traditional strict matching of cosine method. The experiments show that the system has better performance.
β‐carotene treatment alters the cellular death process in oxidative stress‐induced K562 cells

Oxidizing agents (e.g., H2O2) cause structural and functional disruptions of molecules by affecting lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. As a result, cellular mechanisms related to disrupted macro molecules are affected and cell death is induced. Oxidative damage can be prevented at a certain point by antioxidants or the damage can be reversed. In this work, we studied the cellular response against oxidative stress induced by H2O2 and antioxidant–oxidant (β‐carotene–H2O2) interactions in terms of time, concentration, and treatment method (pre‐, co‐, and post) in K562 cells. We showed that co‐ or post‐treatment with β‐carotene did not protect cells from the damage of oxidative stress furthermore co‐ and post‐β‐carotene‐treated oxidative stress induced cells showed similar results with only H2O2 treated cells. However, β‐carotene pre‐treatment prevented oxidative damage induced by H2O2 at concentrations lower than 1,000 μM compared with only H2O2‐treated and co‐ and post‐β‐carotene‐treated oxidative stress‐induced cells in terms of studied cellular parameters (mitochondrial membrane potential [Δψm], cell cycle and apoptosis). Prevention effect of β‐carotene pre‐treatment was lost at concentrations higher than 1,000 μM H2O2 (2–10 mM). These findings suggest that β‐carotene pre‐treatment alters the effects of oxidative damage induced by H2O2 and cell death processes in K562 cells.
Minor Distortions with Major Consequences: Correcting Distortions in Imaging Spectrographs

Projective transformation is a mathematical correction (implemented in software) used in the remote imaging field to produce distortion-free images. We present the application of projective transformation to correct minor alignment and astigmatism distortions that are inherent in dispersive spectrographs. Patterned white-light images and neon emission spectra were used to produce registration points for the transformation. Raman transects collected on microscopy and fiber-optic systems were corrected using established methods and compared with the same transects corrected using the projective transformation. Even minor distortions have a significant effect on reproducibility and apparent fluorescence background complexity. Simulated Raman spectra were used to optimize the projective transformation algorithm. We demonstrate that the projective transformation reduced the apparent fluorescent background complexity and improved reproducibility of measured parameters of Raman spectra. Distortion correction using a projective transformation provides a major advantage in reducing the background fluorescence complexity even in instrumentation where slit-image distortions and camera rotation were minimized using manual or mechanical means. We expect these advantages should be readily applicable to other spectroscopic modalities using dispersive imaging spectrographs.
Sox11 modulates brain‐derived neurotrophic factor expression in an exon promoter‐specific manner

Sox11 is a high‐mobility group (HMG)‐containing transcription factor that is significantly elevated in peripheral neurons in response to nerve injury. In vitro and in vivo studies support a central role for Sox11 in adult neuron growth and survival following injury. Brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a pleiotropic growth factor that has effects on neuronal survival, differentiation, synaptic plasticity, and regeneration. BDNF transcription is elevated in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG) following nerve injury in parallel with Sox11, allowing for the possible regulation by Sox11. To begin to assess the possible influence of Sox11, we used reverse transcriptase PCR assays to determine the relative expression of the nine (I–IXa) noncoding exons and one coding exon (exon IX) of the BDNF gene after sciatic nerve axotomy in the mouse. Exons with upstream promoter regions containing the Sox binding motif 5′‐AACAAAG‐3′ (I, IV, VII, and VIII) were increased at 1 or 3 days following axotomy. Exons 1 and IV showed the greatest increase, and only exon 1 remained elevated at 3 days. Luciferase assays showed that Sox11 could activate the most highly regulated exons, I and IV, and that this activation was reduced by mutation of putative Sox binding sites. Exon expression in injured DRG neurons had some overlap with Neuro2a cells that overexpress Sox11, showing elevation in exon IV and VII transcripts. These findings indicate cell type and contextual specificity of Sox11 in modulation of BDNF transcription. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Perspektywa postkolonialna na gruncie polskim – pytania sceptyka

Grazyna BORKOWSKA The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warszawa) A Post-colonial Perspective on the Polish Soil: Some Questions of a Sceptic The author disputes with the statements whereby Polish culture can, or should, be examined using post-colonial criticism tools. The underlying assumption is that the foundation of post-colonialism is not violence as such but violence when combined with inability to selfrepresent (as per Said’s classical definition). Neither during the territorial partition nor under the communist rule did Poland lose the potential of expressing itself, although these possibilities were restricted then. Another question is whether Poland has ever acted as a coloniser; the answer is yes. Over the ages, Poland colonised its eastern borderland areas, applying violence and substitute representation. The author draws our attention to the works by Polish sociologist and ethnographer Jozef Obrebski (1930s), pioneering as they were in the matter concerned, and to a weak awareness of these works in today’s scholarship (this recognition clearly does not refer to his oeuvre’s editors).
Are You Really Hidden? Estimating current City Exposure Risk in Online Social Networks

Nowadays, Online Social Networks (OSNs) become more and more concerned about users’ privacy issues, and put more e ﬀ orts to protect users from being violated by privacy breaches (e.g., spamming, deceptive advertising). Although OSNs encourage users to hide their private information, the users may not be really protected as the hidden information could still be predicted from other public information. This paper, taking a particular privacy-sensitive attribute ‘current city’ in Facebook as a representative, aims to notify individual users of the quantiﬁed exposure risk that their hidden attributes can be correctly predicted, and also provide them with countermeasures. Speciﬁcally, we ﬁrst design a current city prediction approach that infers users’ hidden current city from their self-exposed information. Based on 371 , 913 Facebook users’ data, we verify that our proposed prediction approach can outperform state-of-the-art approaches. Furthermore, we inspect the prediction results and model the current city exposure probability via some measurable features of the self-exposed information. Finally, we construct an exposure estimator to assess the current city exposure probability / risk for individual users, given their self-exposed information. Several case studies are presented to illustrate how to use our proposed estimator for privacy protection; while the extension to a general attribute exposure estimator is also discussed to facilitate OSNs to maintain a healthy social and business environment.
Flavanols and Cardiovascular Health: Effects on the circulating NO Pool in Humans

Atherosclerosis is the major cause for chronic vascular diseases. The key event in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis is believed to be dysfunction of the endothelium and disruption of endothelial homeostasis, leading to vasoconstriction, inflammation, leukocyte adhesion, thrombosis, and proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells. Endothelium-derived nitric oxide (NO) plays a major role in vascular homeostasis and a decrease in NO-bioavailability accelerates the development of atherosclerosis. Given that endothelial dysfunction is at least in part reversible, the characterization of endothelial function and therapeutical approaches have gained much attention over the past years. Recent studies demonstrated that especially the consumption of plant-derived foods rich in certain flavonoids can improve endothelial function in both compromised and healthy humans. Furthermore, various physiologic and biochemical measures have been used previously as biomarkers for the assessment of the proposed beneficial effects of flavonoids in this context. More recently, the analysis of plasma nitros(yl)ated species (RXNOs), referred to as the circulating NO pool, has gained recognition, especially as a marker for endothelial function. This review is aimed at evaluating the suitability of quantifying this NO pool as a biomarker for cardiovascular function in humans, in particular during dietary interventions with flavonoid-rich foods.
Novel low cost hole transporting materials for efficient organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells

Organic-inorganic halide perovskite solar cells have recently emerged as high performance photovoltaic devices with low cost, promising for affordable large-scale energy production. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) from solar energy to electricity in solid state photovoltaic devices has risen from 10% to over 20% within two years of development. To date, a relatively expensive organic hole-conducting molecule with low conductivity, namely Spiro-OMeTAD (2,2',7,7'-tetrakis (N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine) 9,9'- Spirobifluorene), is employed widely to achieve highly efficient perovskite solar cells. Here, we report two low cost candidates to replace spiro-OMeTAD for perovskite solar cells, Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) and copper thiocyanate (CuSCN). Stabilized power conversion efficiency of 6.6% and 9.1% can be obtained when the new materials are used as the hole-conductor respectively, comparing to 9.6% for device using Spiro-OMeTAD.
Ventilatory and hemodynamic management of potential organ donors: An observational survey*

Objective:To determine the current standard ventilatory and cardiovascular management in potential organ donors. Design:Prospective, multiple-center, observational survey. Setting:A total of 15 intensive care units in 13 hospitals in Piedmont, Italy. Patients:A total of 34 brain-dead patients enrolled in 6 months. Measurements and Main Results:Demographics and reasons for lung transplant exclusion were recorded. Ventilatory and hemodynamic variables were compared before and after confirmation of brain death. A total of 23 potential donors were ineligible for lung donation based on pulmonary status and age. Of the 11 eligible lung donors, only two donated the lungs because five had Pao2/Fio2 ratios of <300 and four were ineligible for logistic problems. Tidal volume was 10 ± 2 mL/kg, positive end-expiratory pressure was 3.3 ± 2.7 cm H2O, Fio2 was 50% ± 18% before brain death diagnosis, and no changes were made after brain death confirmation. In potential lung donors, apnea tests were performed with apneic oxygenation after disconnection from the ventilator in all cases; tracheal suction was performed with an open circuit in eight cases, and no recruitment maneuvers were performed. Crystalloid infusion was increased after diagnosis of brain death from 187 ± 151 to 275 ± 158 mL/hr (p < .05), and central venous pressure increased from 6 ± 3 to 7 ± 3 mm Hg (p < .05). Inotropic support was used in 24 donors (70%). Conclusions:Five of 11 potential lung donors (45%) had a Pao2/Fio2 ratio of <300, making them ineligible for lung donation. After the diagnosis of brain death, ventilatory management remained the same, no maneuvers for prevention of derecruitment of the lung were performed, and cardiovascular management was modified to optimize peripheral organ perfusion. These data represent the current standard of care for ventilatory management of potential organ donors and may be suboptimal in preserving lung function. LEARNING OBJECTIVES On completion of this article, the reader should be able to: Explain the issues related to harvesting lungs for transplantation. Describe the management of potential lung donors. Use this information in a clinical setting. All of the authors have disclosed that they have no financial relationships with or interests in any commercial companies pertaining to this educational activity. Wolters Kluwer Health has identified and resolved all faculty conflicts of interest regarding this educational activity. Visit the Critical Care Medicine Web site (www.ccmjournal.org) for information on obtaining continuing medical education credit.
Diskless Checkpointing

Diskless Checkpointing is a technique for checkpointing the state of a long-running computation on a distributed system without relying on stable storage. As such, it eliminates the performance bottleneck of traditional checkpointing on distributed systems. In this paper, we motivate diskless checkpointing and present the basic diskless checkpointing scheme along with several variants for improved performance. The performance of the basic scheme and its variants is evaluated on a high-performance network of workstations and compared to traditional disk-based checkpointing. We conclude that diskless checkpointing is a desirable alternative to disk-based checkpointing that can improve the performance of distributed applications in the face of failures.
Recent Advances in Fault Localization in Computer Networks

Fault localization, a core element in network fault management, is the process of inferring the exact failure in a network from the set of observed symptoms. Since faults in network systems can be unavoidable, their quick and accurate detection and diagnosis is important for the stability, consistency, and performance of a communication system. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of fault localization in complex communication systems and present an overview of recent techniques proposed in the literature along with their advantages and limitations. We start by briefly surveying passive monitoring techniques which were previously reviewed in a survey by Steinder. We then describe more recent fault localization research in five categories: 1) active monitoring techniques; 2) techniques for overlay and virtual networks; 3) decentralized probabilistic management techniques; 4) temporal correlation techniques; and 5) learning techniques.
Sensitivity analysis in conjugate heat transfer for electronics cooling

This study presents sensitivity analysis in a conjugate heat transfer problem for electronics cooling. An algorithmic differentiation technique shown by Jemkov and Mathur was utilized to obtain the directional derivatives accurately in the sensitivity analysis. For a pin fin heat sink geometry, results of thermophysical property and flow parameter sensitivity analyses were shown and comparisons were made with the single-point simulations. The computed values indicate that the algorithmic differentiation technique used in this study lead to accurate results while accelerating design optimization applications significantly.
Vascular proteomic mapping in vivo

Summary. Molecular targeting of drugs and imaging agents remain important yet elusive goals in modern medicine. Technological advancements in genomics and proteomics methods have detected differentially expressed genes and proteins, uncovering many new candidate targets in a wide array of diseases and tissues. However, methods to validate potential targets in vivo tend to be quite laborious so that the validation and testing phase has become rate‐limiting in bringing treatments to the clinic. There is a critical need for integrated approaches combining state‐of‐the‐art methodologies in proteomics and in vivo imaging to accelerate validation of newly discovered vascular targets for nanomedicines, drugs, imaging agents, and gene vectors. This paper is a review of vascular targeting and proteomics, and will present recent developments in proteomic imaging. A new in vivo organellar proteomic imaging platform will be discussed, which combines subcellular fractionation, mass spectrometry, bioinformatic database interrogation, monoclonal antibody technology and a battery of imaging modalities to rapidly discover and validate tissue‐specific endothelial protein targets in vivo. Technological advancements are permitting large‐scale proteomic mapping to be performed. New targets have been discovered that permit organ‐specific targeting in vivo. Improvements in imaging are creating standards for validation of targets in vivo. Tumor imaging and radioimmunotherapy have also been improved through these efforts. Although we are moving towards a comprehensive mapping of the protein expression by the endothelium, much more needs to be done.
Perfusion‐weighted imaging of interictal hypoperfusion in temporal lobe epilepsy using FAIR‐HASTE: Comparison with H215O PET measurements

To detect perfusion abnormalities in areas of high magnetic susceptibility in the brain, an arterial spin‐labeling MRI technique utilizing flow‐sensitive alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) and half‐Fourier single shot turbo spin‐echo (HASTE) for spin preparation and image acquisition, respectively, was developed. It was initially tested in a functional study involving visual stimulation, and was able to detect significant activation with an increase (approximately 70%) in relative cerebral blood flow. Subsequently, it was applied in a clinical situation in eight patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The perfusion‐weighted images obtained showed no susceptibility artifacts even in the region of the inferior temporal lobe and were able to detect interictal hypoperfusion in TLE. The results were compared with those derived from H215O PET perfusion imaging in each patient. A statistically significant correlation (r = 0.75, P < 0.05) was found between results acquired from these two modalities. Magn Reson Med 45:431–435, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.