Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Oil Price Shocks and Economic Fluctuations of Trading Partners on Iran's Ports Throughput

This study aims to estimate the effects of oil price shocks on seaborne trade in Iran; in particular, port throughput of three leading ports through economic fluctuations of three major trading partners of Iran, based on quarterly data for the period of 1999Q2 to 2018Q1. We apply a standard vector autoregressive (VAR) approach using Cholesky decomposition. The results indicate that with increasing oil revenues in short-run, seaborne trade be further directed towards Shahid Rajaei port while rising oil revenues changes the combination of goods handled in Emam Khomeini and Bushehr ports. In the long run, the share of oil price fluctuations in explaining the variations of Shahid Rajaei port throughput is higher than the other two. In fact, increases in oil revenues cause an increase in the volume of industrial and containerized seaborne cargo trade.
Eavesdropping on Happiness

Is the happy life characterized by shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk, or by reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions—the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker—exist, but little is known about which interaction style is actually associated with greater happiness (King & Napa, 1998). In this article, we report findings from a naturalistic observation study that investigated whether happy and unhappy people differ in the amount of small talk and substantive conversations they have. Although the macrolevel and long-term implications of happiness have been studied extensively (Eid & Larsen, 2008; Howell & Howell, 2008), little is known about the daily social behavior of happy people, primarily because of the difficulty of objectively measuring everyday behavior. Many behavioral measures (e.g., experience sampling, day-reconstruction method) rely on self-reports and thus cannot be used to disentangle true associations between happiness and behavior from biases or idealized self-views. This is especially true for evaluatively loaded behaviors, such as the substance (or lack thereof) of one’s conversations. To address this difficulty, we used the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl, Pennebaker, Crow, Dabbs, & Price, 2001), a digital audio recorder that unobtrusively tracks real-world behavior by periodically recording snippets of ambient sounds while participants go about their daily lives.
Evaluation of Humoral Immune Response of Cats to the Experimental Infection with the different Clonal Types of Toxoplasma gondii by Measurement of IgG Antibodies

Toxopl asma gondii is one of the most prevalent parasitic infections in world. Rh, NED and Me49 are of the most prevalent clonal types of the parasite isolated till now. Differences in pathogenicity and virulence of different types have been investigated in different studies. No controlled study was performed to compare the ability of different types to initiate humoral immune response. We investigated IgG antibody responses of kittens infected with each of these three clonal types. For this, experimental infection was performed using ME49 clonal type of T. gondii and humoral immune response (by measurement of IgG) was detected and compared with the other two clonal types of the parasite. No antibodies were detectable at least until 7 days post infection for types Rh and NED while this period of no response was 19 days for ME49. Serum ELISA indices were significantly higher in kittens infected with Rh and NED tpes in comparison with ME49. The results of this study showed that humoral immune response of cats to ME49 starts with delay and are weaker than two other clonal types.
Dual Circularly Polarized Spherical Phased-Array Antenna for Spacecraft Application

Design aspects of an active spherical phased-array antenna (SPAA) operating in dual circularly polarized (CP) mode are discussed here. Dual CP configuration with good cross-polarized isolation enables frequency reuse using polarization diversity. This design also implements sharing of the resources like amplifiers and phase shifters in an optimal way to reduce mass, power requirement, and cost of the antenna. The antenna is hemispherical in shape and maintains required effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) over a hemispherical coverage area. Detailed analysis including the effect of failure of a few of the elements of the array and the measured results of the antenna at X-band are discussed here. This antenna has been used for transmission of payload data from a low Earth orbit satellite of ISRO.
Infrared spectral features of exfoliated cervical cells, cervical adenocarcinoma tissue, and an adenocarcinoma cell line (SiSo).

OBJECTIVE The objective of the present study is to evaluate and compare the infrared spectral features of normal and malignant exfoliated cervical cells, cells from malignant tissue, and the SiSo cell line. METHODS Infrared spectra of cervical adenocarcinoma (CA) tissue, normal and malignant exfoliated cervical cells, and a uterine cervical adenocarcinoma cell line (SiSo) were obtained. Spectral qualities in terms of band intensity ratio and band position, which reflect configurational changes in the functional groups of the above samples, were measured. RESULTS Spectral bands of CA tissue, exfoliated cells from CA, and the cell line were similar but markedly different from that of exfoliated normal cervical cells. Significant changes in bands at 1025 cm(-1) (glycogen), 1080 cm(-1) (glycogen and nucleic acids), 1155 cm(-1) (C-OH groups of serine, threonine, and tyrosine of cell proteins, and C-O groups of carbohydrates), 1240 cm(-1) (PO(2) groups of nucleic acids), 1400 cm(-1) (methyl group of lipids and proteins), and 1450 cm(-1) (methylene group of lipids and proteins) were noted in the CA tissue, exfoliated CA cells, and adenocarcinoma cell line compared with exfoliated normal cells. Marked shifts in band positions from 1080 to 1086 cm(-1), 1153 to 1160 cm(-1), and 935 to 970 cm(-1) in CA tissue, exfoliated CA cells, and the adenocarcinoma cell line were noted. CONCLUSION Spectral bands of the adenocarcinoma cell line matched very well with those of cervical CA tissue and exfoliated CA cells in terms of position. In contrast, spectral bands of the SiSo cell line differed greatly from those of normal exfoliated cells.
Circuit partitioning techniques for power estimation using the full set of input correlations

Exact power estimation, at logic level, is only possible if all the input correlations are taken into account. Recently, a probabilistic approach that uses a simple but powerful formalism for power estimation taking into account all the input correlations has been proposed. With this probabilistic approach it is possible to compute exactly the power dissipation of combinational modules using input statistics that would require extremely large traces if simulation based methods were to be used. However, the applicability of the method is limited to very small circuits. This paper describes a circuit partitioning technique that speeds up that method. By using partitioning techniques we avoid the computation of global BDD representations for node functions, thereby extending considerably the range of applicability of the algorithm. Moreover, the partitioning maintains the full set of correlations and, therefore, does not induce any loss of accuracy.
Bibliographic Attribute Extraction

Enormous amount of information is generated by the Proceedings. Online archives are repositories for technical reports. Here we review different bibliographic attribute extraction methods of PDF document to extract Title, Authors, Publication, Date, Pages, etc. Work done in the past can be classified into three major approaches: regular expression based heuristics, learning based algorithm and knowledge based systems.
Characterisation of the swimming muscles of two Subantarctic notothenioids

The histochemical characteristics and distribution of muscle fibre types have been investigated in the swimming muscles of the robalo, Eleginops maclovinus and the lorcho, Patagonotothen tessellata , Subantarctic notothenioids that inhabit the Beagle Channel. The fibre types were differentiated on the basis of glycogen and lipid contents and succinate dehydrogenase and myofibrillar ATPase (mATPase) activities. White, red, intermediate and tonic fibres were present in the axial muscle of both species. The same fibre types were identified in the pectoral fin adductor muscles, although the intermediate type was absent. The mATPase technique performed at room temperature (21oC) allowed a good differentiation of fibre types, overcoming the problems found by previous researchers when applying this technique to Antarctic notothenioids. Four different zones (peripheral, mosaic, main and adjacent to the bone) were found in the adductor profundis muscle. The proportion of the zones varied along the length of the adductor muscle. For both species, the percentage of red fibres found in the axial muscles was less than 5%, indicating that sustained swimming ability is not dependent on these muscles. The pectoral muscle mass/carcase mass ratio was significantly greater in E. maclovinus than in P. tessellata , reflecting a greater capacity for sustained swimming using pectoral fins.
Acetylcholine mechanism of action to enhance tolerance to salt stress in Nicotiana benthamiana

Acetylcholine (ACh) is one of the important neurotransmitters, involved in signal transduction function in human and animal brain. However, the influence of ACh treatment on salt-stress tolerance in plants is yet unknown. Salt stress caused a reduction in gas-exchange parameters, chlorophyll content, antioxidant enzyme activities, and leaf relative water content of Nicotiana benthamiana plants. However, the above inhibitions could be significantly alleviated by application of leaf spray or root application of ACh. Exogenous ACh reduced the accumulation of malondialdehyde by enhancing activities of antioxidant enzymes such as peroxidase and superoxide dismutase. In addition, enhanced accumulation of organic osmolytes including soluble sugars and proline possibly regulated the signal mechanisms related to stress. Application of ACh could also improve gas-exchange parameters and photosynthetic pigment accumulation in leaves of salt-stressed plants. These effects of ACh were beneficial for maintaining better water status in plants, the concentration of 10 µM ACh applied both in the form of leaf spray or root application was the most effective. Therefore, our findings provided a stronger evidence for a physiological role of ACh and its potential use at optimal concentration by leaf or root application to alleviate damage caused by salt-stress in plants.
A formal graph transformation based language for model-to-model transformations

starting from machine code to languages for component-oriented systems. The next step is towards developing Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) for particular domains. Frameworks can be used to facilitate the development of such DSLs. However, current frameworks often lack a formal methodology for specifying the dynamic semantics. Dynamic semantics can be specified as a mapping from the DSL to a known model-of-computation. In this dissertation it is argued that graph grammar and transformation theory can be used to develop a language for the specification and automated implementation of model-to-model transformations. Model-to-model transformations introduce new challenges: (1) multiple graph domains may be involved in the transformation, (2) tight control over the execution of transformations is required, and (3) efficiency of the transformations is a major concern. Graph Rewriting and Transformations (GReAT) is a language developed to prove the research hypothesis and to address these challenges. Key features of the research are the development of methodologies for transformations across domains, language design, and the creation of efficient transformation algorithms. These algorithms were used to develop a virtual machine for GReAT called the Graph Rewriting Engine (GRE). A case study is presented that demonstrates the usefulness of GReAT in solving real world problems. Another case study presents a proof of correctness of a transformation as an example of the formal verification of GReAT transformations.
Changes in salicylic acid content and pathogenesis - related (PR2) gene expression during barley - Pyrenophora teres interaction

Abstract Net blotch (NB), caused by the necrotrophic fungal pathogen Pyrenophora teres f. teres, substantially reduces barley grain yield and quality worldwide. The role of salicylic acid (SA) signaling in NB resistance has been poorly documented. In this study, SA levels as well as the expression of the SA-responsive gene PR2 were monitored in infected leaves of two barley genotypes, Banteng (resistant) and WI2291 (susceptible), at different time points of infection. SA signaling was activated in bothgenotypes 24 hours post infection (hpi) as compared with non-inoculated plants. However, with or without pathogen pretreatment, SA signifi cantly increased (P=0.001) in Banteng comparing with WI2291. RT-PCR analysis revealed that PR2 expression increases in the resistant and susceptible genotypes over the inoculation time points, with maximum expression (6.4 and 1.99-fold, respectively) observed 6 dpi. PR2 expression was paralleled by an increase in leaf SA content as shown by the test coincidence (F3, 32 = 4.74, P = 0.001). Based on barley genotype resistance levels, our data strengthen the idea that SA signaling and PR2 play a role in barley NB reduction
Smart Ocean Sensing Using the Telesupervised Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet

This paper describes field test results to date using a multi-robot science exploration software architecture and system called the Telesupervised Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet (TAOSF). TAOSF supervises and coordinates a group of robotic boats, the Ocean-Atmosphere Sensor Integration System (OASIS) platforms, to enable in situ study of phenomena in the oceanatmosphere interface. TAOSF allows a human operator to effectively supervise and coordinate multiple robotic assets using a multi-level autonomy control architecture, where the operating mode of the vehicles ranges from autonomous control to teleoperated human control. TAOSF increases data-gathering effectiveness and science return while reducing demands on scientists for robotic asset tasking, control, and monitoring. The first field application chosen for TAOSF is the characterization of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). We describe recent field tests conducted under controlled conditions using rhodamine dye as a HAB simulant, present initial results from these tests, and outline the next steps in the development of TAOSF. Index Terms – harmful algal blooms, sensor web, ocean sensing, adaptive sampling, telesupervision, multirobot systems.
MODEL-BASED CONTROL OF CARDIAC ALTERNANS IN A MODEL OF PURKINJE FIBERS

This paper describes a systematic approach to suppressing cardiac alternans in Purkinje fibers using localized current injections. We investigate the controllability and observability of the periodically paced Noble model for different locations of the recording and control electrodes. In particular, we show that the loss of controllability causes the failure of the control approach introduced by Echebarria and Karma [Chaos 12, 923 (2002)] for longer fiber lengths. Furthermore, we explain how the optimal locations for the recording and control electrodes and the timing of the feedback current can be selected, accounting for both linear and nonlinear effects, effectively doubling the length of fibers that can be controlled.
Proteopedia: Rossmann fold: A beta‐alpha‐beta fold at dinucleotide binding sites

The Rossmann fold is one of the most common and widely distributed super‐secondary structures. It is composed of a series of alternating beta strand (β) and alpha helical (α) segments wherein the β‐strands are hydrogen bonded forming a β‐sheet. The initial beta‐alpha‐beta (βαβ) fold is the most conserved segment of Rossmann folds. As this segment is in contact with the ADP portion of dinucleotides such as FAD, NAD, and NADP it is also called as an "ADP‐binding βαβ fold". The Proteopedia entry on the Rossmann fold (Available at: http://proteopedia.org/w/Rossmann_fold) was generated to illustrate several structural aspects of super families of FAD and NAD(P) binding proteins: (1) The coenzymes FAD and NAD(P) share the basic adenosine diphosphate (ADP) structure. (2) The βαβ fold motif that is common to both FAD and NAD(P) binding enzymes accommodates the common ADP component of these two coenzymes. (3) In both FAD and NAD(P) binding sites, the tight turn between the first β‐strand and the α‐helix is in contact with the two phosphate groups of ADP. (4) This hairpin curve includes the first two conserved glycines (Gly‐x‐Gly) that allow the sharp turn of the polypeptide backbone. (5) The two β‐strands of the βαβ fold may constitute the core of a larger β‐sheet that may include up to seven β‐strands generally in parallel orientation. (6) The structures of segments between additional strands vary greatly and may be composed of a variety of structures such as multiple short helices or coils. © 2015 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 43(3):206–209, 2015.
Combined pituitary hormone deficiency and pituitary hypoplasia due to a mutation of the Pit‐1 gene

Several mutations of the pituitary‐specific transcription factor Pit‐1 have been identified. We describe a girl with a mutation of the Pit‐1 gene leading to a complete lack of GH, TSH and prolactin and a marked hypoplasia of the anterior pituitary gland. The patient had a homozygous nonsense‐mutation at position 172 (CGA to TGA), converting arginine into a stop codon, leading to an early termination of protein translation. During the infancy period the girl had very conspicuous symptoms of hypothyroidism and the diagnosis of thyroid insufficiency preceded the diagnosis of GH‐deficiency by 1.5 years. Treatment with thyroxine and GH resulted in excellent catch‐up growth.
Building Regionally Spatial Appearance Model by Topological Color Histogram

Color histogram is widely used in the appearance modeling. However the lack of spatial information makes the features less distinctive. In this paper, we propose to detect local region relationship based on segmentation in the color space. After efficiently computing the region's spatial information, a novel topological color histograms is used to represent the spatial context. Through the experimental observation, we find the region based spatial appearance model make the object's feature more discriminative.
A Single Residue Substitution in the Receptor-Binding Domain of H5N1 Hemagglutinin Is Critical for Packaging into Pseudotyped Lentiviral Particles

Background Serological studies for influenza infection and vaccine response often involve microneutralization and hemagglutination inhibition assays to evaluate neutralizing antibodies against human and avian influenza viruses, including H5N1. We have previously characterized lentiviral particles pseudotyped with H5-HA (H5pp) and validated an H5pp-based assay as a safe alternative for high-throughput serological studies in BSL-2 facilities. Here we show that H5-HAs from different clades do not always give rise to efficient production of H5pp and the underlying mechanisms are addressed. Methodology/Findings We have carried out mutational analysis to delineate the molecular determinants responsible for efficient packaging of HA from A/Cambodia/40808/2005 (H5Cam) and A/Anhui/1/2005 (H5Anh) into H5pp. Our results demonstrate that a single A134V mutation in the 130-loop of the receptor binding domain is sufficient to render H5Anh the ability to generate H5Anh-pp efficiently, whereas the reverse V134A mutation greatly hampers production of H5Cam-pp. Although protein expression in total cell lysates is similar for H5Anh and H5Cam, cell surface expression of H5Cam is detected at a significantly higher level than that of H5Anh. We further demonstrate by several independent lines of evidence that the behaviour of H5Anh can be explained by a stronger binding to sialic acid receptors implicating residue 134. Conclusions We have identified a single A134V mutation as the molecular determinant in H5-HA for efficient incorporation into H5pp envelope and delineated the underlying mechanism. The reduced binding to sialic acid receptors as a result of the A134V mutation not only exerts a critical influence in pseudotyping efficiency of H5-HA, but has also an impact at the whole virus level. Because A134V substitution has been reported as a naturally occurring mutation in human host, our results may have implications for the understanding of human host adaptation of avian influenza H5N1 viruses.
Novel GFP-fused protein probes for detecting phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate in the plasma membrane

ABSTRACT Phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate (PI4P) plays a crucial role in cellular functions, including protein trafficking, and is mainly located in the cytoplasmic surface of intracellular membranes, which include the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and the plasma membrane. However, many PI4P-binding domains of membrane-associated proteins are localized only to the TGN because of the requirement of a second binding protein such as ADP-ribosylation factor 1 (ARF1) in order to be stably localized to the specific membrane. In this study, we developed new probes that were capable of detecting PI4P at the plasma membrane using the known TGN-targeting PI4P-binding domains. The PI4P-specific binding pleckstrin homology (PH) domain of various proteins including CERT, OSBP, OSH1, and FAPP1 was combined with the N-terminal moderately hydrophobic domain of the short-form of Aplysia phosphodiesterase 4 (S(N30)), which aids in plasma membrane association but cannot alone facilitate this association. As a result, we found that the addition of S(N30) to the N-terminus of the GFP-fused PH domain of OSBP (S(N30)-GFP-OSBP-PH), OSH1 (S(N30)-GFP-OSH1-PH), or FAPP1 (S(N30)-GFP-FAPP1-PH) could induce plasma membrane localization, as well as retain TGN localization. The plasma membrane localization of S(N30)-GFP-FAPP1-PH is mediated by PI4P binding only, whereas those of S(N30)-GFP-OSBP-PH and S(N30)-GFP-OSH1-PH are mediated by either PI4P or PI(4,5)P2 binding. Taken together, we developed new probes that detect PI4P at the plasma membrane using a combination of a moderately hydrophobic domain with the known TGN-targeting PI4P-specific binding PH domain.
Differential Geometric Retrieval of Deep Features

Comparing images to recommend items from an image-inventory is a subject of continued interest. Added with the scalability of deep-learning architectures the once 'manual' job of hand-crafting features have been largely alleviated, and images can be compared according to features generated from a deep convolutional neural network. In this paper, we compare distance metrics (and divergences) to rank features generated from a neural network, for content-based image retrieval. Specifically, after modelling individual images using approximations of mixture models or sparse covariance estimators, we resort to their information-theoretic and Riemann geometric comparisons. We show that using approximations of mixture models enable us to compute a distance measure based on the Wasserstein metric that requires less effort than other computationally intensive optimal transport plans; finally, an affine invariant metric is used to compare the optimal transport metric to its Riemann geometric counterpart – we conclude that although expensive, retrieval metric based on Wasserstein geometry is more suitable than information theoretic comparison of images. In short, we combine GPU scalability in learning deep feature vectors with statistically efficient metrics that we foresee being utilised in a commercial setting.