Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transthyretin mouse transgenes direct RFP expression or Cre‐mediated recombination throughout the visceral endoderm

Transthyretin (Ttr) is a thyroid hormone transport protein secreted by cells of the visceral yolk sac and fetal liver in developing embryos, and by hepatocytes and the choroid plexus epithelium of the brain in adult mice. Spatiotemporal localization of Ttr mRNA during embryogenesis suggested that Ttr regulatory elements might drive transgene expression throughout the visceral endoderm of early mouse embryos. We use Ttr cis‐regulatory elements to generate Ttr::RFP and Ttr::Cre strains of mice, driving red fluorescent protein (RFP) and a nuclear‐localized Cre recombinase, respectively. Visualization of RFP fluorescence in Ttr::RFP transgenics confirms reporter localization throughout the visceral endoderm in early embryos and in the visceral yolk sac and fetal liver of later stage embryos. Using both GFP‐based and LacZ‐based Cre reporter strains, we demonstrate that in Ttr::Cre transgenics, Cre‐mediated recombination occurs throughout the visceral endoderm. The Ttr::Cre strain can therefore be used as a tool for genetic modifications within the visceral endoderm lineage. genesis 47:447–455, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Determinants of Tax Compliance Under the Self-assessment System in Private Secondary Schools: Evidence from Delta North Senatorial Zone

This study examines the determinants of tax compliance under the self assessment scheme in private secondary schools in Delta North Senatorial zone. Therefore three (3) research questions were raised and two (2) null hypotheses postulated. The questionnaire is the main instrument of data collection and which has a modified four point Likert scale of 24 items generated to answers the research questions. Both descriptive and inferential statistics namely mean, standard deviation, t test and One-way analysis of variance were utilized in analysing data obtained. Result of the investigation shows that tax compliance is mostly determined by tax clearance certification and least determined by social acceptance. Among the causes of non-compliance the complexity of filing process ranked the highest. In addition, there is low tax-related government assistance with respect to compliance under the self-assessment scheme. Consequently, the study recommends that tax filing process should be made more user friendly, less complicated and technical. Revenue authorities should provide tax payer education in respect of self assessment to reduce tax evasion and total non-compliance. It is also necessary for government to use tax revenue judiciously and with transparency as this will encourage tax payer to be more complaint since they will see tax payment as part of their contribution to the general good and welfare of the state.
Towards Efficient 3D Pose Retrieval and Reconstruction from 2D Landmarks

In this paper, we deal with the most challenging task of recovering the 3D human pose from just a single monocular image, that may be a synthetic image or a real internet image. The retrieval and reconstruction of the articulated 3D pose, both are prerequisites for the analysis of the people in images/videos. We address both tasks together and propose an efficient framework for search & retrieval of the 3D poses from the motion capture dataset and then a novel data-driven approach to estimate the final 3D human pose from a still image. For 3D pose retrieval, we design and devise multiple feature sets based on the subsets of 2D joint locations for the global similarity search into the MoCap dataset. We resolve the 2D-3D cross model retrieval issue efficiently by projecting both, the 3D feature sets derived from the motion capture data, and the 2D feature sets from the image pose, to a normalized 2D pose space. As a result, we retrieve 3D similar poses conveniently from the MoCap dataset. For 3D pose reconstruction, we exploit retrieved nearest neighbours to learn 3D local pose model in low dimensional principle component analysis (PCA) space, which is further constrained by prior and control energies. We also capitalize retrieved nearest neighbours in order to estimate the camera parameters. At the end, we evaluate our approach on a wide variety of 2D synthetic images generated from the benchmark motion capture datasets like CMU and HDM05 by random camera parameters as well as on the real internet images.
Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology

The Research Council of Norway has established a number of Centres for Research-based Innovation (CRIs). The main objective of these centres is to enhance the capability of the business sector to innovate by focusing on long-term research based on forging close alliances between research-intensive enterprises and prominent research groups. The CRI SAMCoT (Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology) is hosted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). SAMCoT started in 2011 and is now entering a phase of harvesting on the research continuously being done. This paper presents some findings of the research at SAMCoT and shows how the clustering of research efforts can lead to innovations in the Arctic offshore industry and a better understanding of the Arctic physical environment.
Discovering Adverse Drug Reactions via Natural Language Processing of Twitter Posts

Several studies show that user-posted data on social media sites can be used to detect adverse drug reactions (ADRs) faster than typical methods (e.g., via reporting to the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System), and throughout a drug’s market lifetime. Previous studies have sourced data from search queries and social media posts and have tested several NLP and machine learning methods to yield increasingly accurate results. This study aims to emulate published results by optimizing for effective input vectors and using more advanced deep learning models to classify ADRs present in Twitter posts. Our baseline model (logistic regression) was able to achieve an F1 score of 0.43 (versus the state-of-the-art ADR Class F1 of approximately 0.57 on a comparable data set) using word-presence vectors created using the GloVe Twitter vocabulary and a 3-layer Feed Forward Neural Network.
REAL: A Risk-Enabled reputation model for electronic commerce

Recently, a trend to use reputation model for selecting service providers becomes evident in the area of electronic commerce. Most of the effort have been made on providing a reliability value associated with the predicted reputation to interpret how reliable is the reputation. However, the predicted reputation will become ineffective with a low reliability value. Rather than providing a reliability of a reputation, in this paper, we propose a reputation model, called risk-enabled reputation model (REAL), by introducing the notion of risks to better interpret the recent performance of a service provider in e-commerce. The proposed approach has been validated as a better model to reflect a service provider's recent performance than given by the extant on-line auctions sites or the models using the technique of adopting mean values.
Theoretical model on the interaction of a vibrating beam and the surrounding viscous fluid with applications to density and viscosity sensors

A new theoretical model on the frequency response of a vibrating beam immersed in a viscous fluid is developed. An integral equation is derived from the Navier-Stokes equation for an incompressible fluid, where the advection term has been neglected This equation is valid for any planar shape and characterizes the pressure distribution on the surface. The equation of a vibrating cantilever beam under the effect of a given driving force and the newly obtained fluid reaction is then solved. This method provides a means of calculating the frequency response for the Schlumberger DV-MEMS sensor.
Horizontally aligned carbon nanotube bundles for interconnect application: diameter-dependent contact resistance and mean free path

We have demonstrated the fabrication of horizontally aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) bundles on Si substrate for interconnect line application. By controlling the catalyst thickness, we fabricated multi-walled CNT and few-walled CNT bundles with different diameters. We measured the resistances of the CNTs as a function of the length and the diameter. The dependence of the contact resistance between the CNT and the metal on the CNT diameter was extracted from the resistance plots. We investigated and experimentally validated the relationship between the diameter and the mean free path of the CNT.
The Antecedents of Green Car Purchase Intention among Malaysian Consumers

This study aims to empirically examine the relationships among social influence, green labeling, economic incentives, environmental attitude, environmental knowledge, past green purchase behavior and green car purchase intention among the Malaysian consumers. A multi-stage sampling process with proportionate stratified sampling in the first stage and systematic mall intercept method in the second stage was applied in this study. Thereafter, a questionnaire survey was done among consumers aged 18 and above that visiting car dealers, namely Honda, Toyota and Nissan from the two representative states of Malaysia namely Penang and Kuala Lumpur. 417 out of 500 questionnaires distributed were returned back for data analysis using SmartPLS v.3 software. The results show that green labeling, economic incentives, environmental attitude are direct antecedents of green car purchase intention in Malaysia. However, social influence, environmental knowledge and past green purchase behavior do not have any influence on green car purchase intention in Malaysia. Lastly, implications of this study and limitations found in this study are discussed.
Asset Dissemination Through Dealer Markets

In over-the-counter markets for assets, such as bonds and securitizations, large volumes can be split into smaller pieces and gradually sold to several final investors with the intermediation of multiple dealers. This paper proposes a model to study this process, called asset dissemination. A dealer buys several units of an asset from a customer and then sells some units to the dealer’s customers and to a second dealer, who sells to the second dealer’s customers and to a third dealer, and so on. The extent of dissemination is measured by the number of dealers involved and the total customer demand served. We show that asymmetric information on customer demand hinders both dimensions of dissemination. We also study how the quantity to disseminate and the dealers’ funding costs impact dissemination and the prices and quantities in interdealer transactions. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.
Thyroid analogue therapy in primary hypercholesteremia with xanthomatosis.

SINCE THE ADVENT of thyroid analogues, clinical studies have shown a definite cholesterol-lowering effect with dosages that do not cause an appreciable calorigenic effect. However, to date, only an occasional reference has been made to therapeutic success in patients with xanthomatosis given thyroid analogues. The dietary approach to hypercholesteremic xanthomatosis has been reviewed and detailed elsewhere. It is not my intent to enter the controversy on the value of maintaining a normal level of serum cholesterol in relation to development of atherosclerosis. Rather, this study reports the use of 3,5,3' triiodothyropropionic acid (Triopron) over a 2†-year period in a patient with primary hypercholesteremia with tuberous and disseminated xanthomatosis. During the past 10 years many diverse scientific disciplines have collaborated to produce alterations of the thyroxin molecule, resulting in various analogues, and to study their physiological effects on animals and man. Definite dissociation of function by changes in the structure of
Software system for the automatic and computer assisted diagnosis of some severe abdominal affections , based on ultrasound images

In this article we describe specific methods for the characterization and computer assisted diagnosis of some severe abdominal diseases, based on ultrasound images and the corresponding software system. The objective of our research is to build an instrument for the non-invasive diagnosis, based on virtual biopsy, of some severe abdominal diseases such as the cirrhosis, the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the colorectal tumors. The gold standard for the diagnosis of these affections is the classical biopsy, but this is invasive, dangerous. Ultrasonography is a medical-imaging based investigation method that is noninvasive, inexpensive, safe and thus repeatable. Texture is an important property of the human body tissues, able to reveal subtle characteristics upon the pathology. We defined the imagistic textural model of these affections, using the information obtained from ultrasound images. Based on the imagistic textural model, we assessed the possibility of performing automatic recognition of the considered affections both in supervised and unsupervised manner, the purpose of the latter approach being that of discovering the severity grades of the diseases. The resulted accuracy was above 90% in most of the cases.
Coordination of competitive advertising via investing in transportation lead time reduction

In this study, a contract for vertical and horizontal coordination is developed in which transportation mode and carbon emissions tax play a key role in determining the values of the contract parameters. The contract is designed for simultaneous coordination of cooperative advertising and periodic review replenishment decisions of a supplier and two competitive retailers. To obtain the optimal decisions, firstly, the traditional decision-making structure is modeled. After that, the centralized structure is modeled to obtain decisions that are profitable for the whole supply chain. Finally, for convincing the competitive retailers to accept the centralized decisions, the supplier applies a lead time crashing contract in which two transportation modes, i.e. fast and slow, can be used. Considering the carbon emissions tax imposed by the government, the coordination contract is designed in such a way that the supplier considers the trade-off between reducing lead time and paying tax on carbon emissions while providing enough incentives for the competitive retailers. Results of the sensitivity analyses showed that the proposed model is profitable from economic and environmental viewpoints. From environmental viewpoint, considering the carbon tax leads to a decrease in the carbon emissions that will be released by the transportation modes. From economic viewpoint, coordinating coop (cooperative) advertising and replenishment decisions of the SC members, enhances demand and provides a higher service level, which increases the SC profit. The contract is conditionally applicable under situations where the carbon emissions tax or lead time reduction costs become high.
Une Approche Orientée Modèles pour la Spécification, la Vérification et l’Implantation des Systèmes Logiciels Critiques

La conception des applications logicielles est une tâche delicate qui requiert la prise en compte d'un ensemble d’aspects (concurrence, communication, comportement hybride,…) et l’integration d’un ensemble d’activites particulieres. Le travail presente dans ce manuscrit, tire partie de l'Ingenierie Dirigee par les Modeles (IDM), d'UML, des methodes formelles, des systemes multi-agents et des frameworks afin de proposer un processus de conception integrant des aspects de specification, de verification et d'implantation. Il se fonde sur la realisation de trois modeles adaptes a chacune de ces activites : le modele de specification, le modele de verification et le modele d'implantation (Figure 1). Dans ce contexte, l’Ingenierie Dirigee par les Modeles offre les concepts (metamodelisation et transformations de modeles) necessaires a l’integration et a la manipulation de ces trois modeles au sein de l'approche proposee. En outre, les transformations de modeles permettent de realiser la projection d'un modele source vers differents domaines afin de profiter de leurs avantages respectifs; a partir du modele de specification, il est alors possible d'obtenir les modeles de verification et d'implantation. Le modele de specification permet de representer une abstraction des systemes logiciels reactifs concurrents ; il est decrit a l’aide d’un Langage Specifique de Domaine (ou DSL) inspire des ADL et des diagrammes de composants d’UML 2. 0. Il repose sur l'utilisation d'agents concurrents, qui communiquent a l'aide d'actions partagees et d'objets partages ; leur comportement est conforme a une semantique d’execution hybride (evenementiel asynchrone et continu synchrone). Le modele de verification permet au concepteur d’utiliser des methodes et des techniques de verification qui garantissent que le modele obtenu durant la phase de specification est conforme au comportement souhaite. En effet, dans le cas de systemes critiques, les aspects de vivacite et de surete de fonctionnement sont primordiaux. Pour garantir ces aspects, nous proposons de recourir a des specifications formelles et a des techniques formelles de verification en modelisant le modele de verification a l’aide d’une algebre de processus nommee Finite State Processes (ou FSP) pouvant etre exploitee par l'outil de model-checking LTSA. Le modele d’implantation est exprime a l'aide de classes et de configurations d’objets; il repose sur l’utilisation d’un framework Java qui fournit un ensemble de concepts et une semantique d’execution proches de ceux utilises dans le modele de specification. Ce faisant il permet de reduire l’ecart semantique entre la realisation et la conception precedemment verifiee.
Automated Photogrammetric Image Matching with Sift Algorithm and Delaunay Triangulation

Abstract. An algorithm for image matching of multi-sensor and multi-temporal satellite images is developed. The method is based on the SIFT feature detector proposed by Lowe in (Lowe, 1999). First, SIFT feature points are detected independently in two images (reference and sensed image). The features detected are invariant to image rotations, translations, scaling and also to changes in illumination, brightness and 3-dimensional viewpoint. Afterwards, each feature of the reference image is matched with one in the sensed image if, and only if, the distance between them multiplied by a threshold is shorter than the distances between the point and all the other points in the sensed image. Then, the matched features are used to compute the parameters of the homography that transforms the coordinate system of the sensed image to the coordinate system of the reference image. The Delaunay triangulations of each feature set for each image are computed. The isomorphism of the Delaunay triangulations is determined to guarantee the quality of the image matching. The algorithm is implemented in Matlab and tested on World-View 2, SPOT6 and TerraSAR-X image patches.
Synergistic cellulose hydrolysis can be described in terms of fractal‐like kinetics

A fractal‐like kinetics model was used to describe the synergistic hydrolysis of bacterial cellulose by Trichoderma reesei cellulases. The synergistic action of intact cellobiohydrolase Cel7A and endoglucanase Cel5A at low enzyme‐to‐substrate ratios showed an apparent substrate inhibition consistent with a case where two‐dimensional (2‐D) surface diffusion of the cellobiohydrolase is rate‐limiting. The action of Cel7A core and Cel5A was instead consistent with a three‐dimensional (3‐D) diffusion‐based mode of action. The synergistic action of intact Cel7A was far superior to that of the core at a high enzyme‐to‐substrate ratio, but this effect was gradually reduced at lower enzyme‐to‐substrate ratios. The apparent fractal kinetics exponent h obtained by nonlinear fit of hydrolysis data to the fractal‐like kinetics analogue of a first‐order reaction was a useful empirical parameter for assessing the rate retardation and its dependence on the reaction conditions. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biotechnol Bioeng 84: 254–257, 2003.
Curcumin-loaded PLGA nanoparticles conjugated with anti- P-glycoprotein antibody to overcome multidrug resistance.

BACKGROUND The encapsulation of curcumin (Cur) in polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) nanoparticles (Cur- NPs) was designed to improve its solubility and stability. Conjugation of the Cur-NPs with anti-P-glycoprotein (P-gp) antibody (Cur-NPs-APgp) may increase their targeting to P-gp, which is highly expressed in multidrug- resistance (MDR) cancer cells. This study determined whether Cur-NPs-APgp could overcome MDR in a human cervical cancer model (KB-V1 cells) in vitro and in vivo. MATERIALS AND METHODS First, we determined the MDR- reversing property of Cur in P-gp-overexpressing KB-V1 cells in vitro and in vivo. Cur-NPs and Cur-NPs-APgp, in the range 150-180 nm, were constructed and subjected to an in vivo pharmacokinetic study compared with Cur. The in vitro and in vivo MDR-reversing properties of Cur-NPs and Cur-NPs-APgp were then investigated. Moreover, the stability of the NPs was determined in various solutions. RESULTS The combined treatment of paclitaxel (PTX) with Cur dramatically decreased cell viability and tumor growth compared to PTX treatment alone. After intravenous injection, Cur-NPs-APgp and Cur-NPs could be detected in the serum up to 60 and 120 min later, respectively, whereas Cur was not detected after 30 min. Pretreatment with Cur-NPs-APgp, but not with NPs or Cur-NPs, could enhance PTX sensitivity both in vitro and in vivo. The constructed NPs remained a consistent size, proving their stability in various solutions. CONCLUSIONS Our functional Cur-NPs-APgp may be a suitable candidate for application in a drug delivery system for overcoming drug resistance. The further development of Cur-NPs-APgp may be beneficial to cancer patients by leading to its use as either as a MDR modulator or as an anticancer drug.
Cathelicidin (LL‐37) level in the scalp hair of patients with tinea capitis

Abstract Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are considered an important first line of defense against pathogens. Cathelicidin LL‐37 was upregulated in response to fungal infection. In this work we aimed to evaluate cathelicidin LL‐37 in the hair of tinea capitis and compare it to normal controls. Hair samples were collected from 30 children and 30 controls aged from 2 to10 years old, and the level of cathelicidin LL‐37 in the hair was detected by quantitative real‐time PCR. The 30 patients were further subdivided into three subgroups according to their clinical type. Ten patients were scaly type, 10 patients were black dots type, and 10 patients were kerion type. Cathelicidin level in patients ranged from 6.0 to 17.5 with mean ± SD (11.3 ± 2.3) and in control ranged from 1.02 to 6.2, with mean ± SD (2.8 ± 1.5). There was a significant difference between the patients and controls regarding the cathelicidin level; P value was 0. The mean cathelicidin level was lowest in the kerion type10.73 ± 2.6 and highest in the black dot type 12.05 ± 2.76. However, there was no significant difference between the cathelicidin level of the different clinical types of tinea capitis; P value was 0.58. In conclusion, the level of cathelicidin LL‐37 in hair specimens of human tinea capitis was significantly higher than controls.