Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of the deprivation of a single amino acid on cellular proliferation and survival in rat 3Y1 fibroblasts and their derivatives transformed by a wide variety of agents

We compared proliferation and survival of various syngeneic transformed cell lines under conditions of depletion of 15 amino acids in Dulbecco‐Eagle's medium. We used a normal fibroblast line 3Y1 and 22 transformed sublines of 3Y1 which had been induced by one of seven transforming agents‐simian virus 40, mouse polyomavirus, adenovirus type 12, E1A gene of adenovirus type 12, cDNA of Harvey murine sarcoma virus, Rous sarcoma virus, or N‐methyl‐N′‐nitro‐N‐nitrosoguanidine. Unlike other untransformed cells examined (mouse BALB/c‐3T3 line, mouse NlH‐3T3 line, and primary Fischer rat embryo fibroblasts), 3Y1 ceased to proliferate and accumulated in a viable state with a G1‐phase DNA content under 14 singular deprivations of amino acid. None of the transformed 3Y1 lines completely arrested in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and each showed different levels of survival, depending on each transforming agent. As for transformed 3Y1 cells induced by a given virus or a given transforming gene, any one of the three sublines shared the same trend with respect to proliferation and survival. Transformed derivatives induced by N‐methyl‐N′‐nitro‐N‐nitrosoguanidine showed almost the same trend in proliferation, but the patterns of survival were not uniform. Our observations suggest that the unique responses of 3Y1 to amino acid depletion are differently modified by different transforming agents.
Spatial Differentiation in Retail Markets for Gasoline

This paper studies an empirical model of spatial competition. The main feature of my approach is to formally specify commuting paths as the ``locations'' of consumers in a Hotelling-type model of spatial competition. This modeling choice is motivated by the fact that consumers are moving across the market when consuming the product. Although this feature is perhaps more relevant for gasoline markets, this also applies to most retail markets since consumers are not immobile. The consequence of this behavior is that competition is not fully localized as in the standard address-model. In particular, the substitution patterns between stations depend in an intuitive way on the structure of the road network and the direction of traffic flows. Another feature of the model is that consumers' available options are directly linked with their commuting behavior. Consumers who commute more encounter more stations, observe more prices, and therefore may pay less on average; a result observed empirically (Yatchew and No [2001]). The demand-side of the model is estimated by combining a model of traffic allocation with econometric techniques used to estimate models of demand for differentiated products (Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes [1995]). The empirical distribution of commuters is computed with a shortest-path (or Dijkstra) algorithm, combining detailed data on the Qu\'ebec City road network with aggregate Origin-Destination commuting probabilities. The model's parameters are then estimated using a unique panel data-set on the Qu\'ebec City gasoline market from $1991$ to $2001$. The empirical analysis of the model clearly shows that adding commuting behavior is important for explaining the distribution of sales across the city. In particular, gasoline sales are poorly correlated with the population distribution (address-model) but more closely related to the distribution of commuting. The results of the structural model also reveal important differences between the home-location and the commuting models. Contrary to the commuting model, the estimated transportation cost is unrealistically low under the home-location model. The evaluations of market power under the two models are also different. The home-location model leads to markup estimates that are close to $50\%$ higher than the commuting model. The estimates of the structural model are also used to assess the relative market power of major retail chains over independents. The results indicate that the role of independents in this market is marginal, since on average they are operating low-value and high-cost stations.
Bridging "The Gap"--Linking Workplace-Based and University-Based Learning in Preschool Teacher Education in Sweden.

Professional experience in preschool settings comprises an important part of the education of preschool teachers. During their placements, students are expected to link theory to practice, to integrate university-based knowledge with workplace-based knowledge and skills essential for their future profession. They often refer to a perceived gap between the two contexts, university and workplace, which could be described as a ‘reality gap’, and sometimes find it hard to apply theory to practice. In the two most recent teacher education reforms in Sweden, this gap between so-called ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ is also brought to the fore and the importance of minimising the gap through collaborative strategies is emphasised. Taking these reforms as the point of departure, this article discusses workplace-based learning and its link to university-based learning in two distinctive preschool teacher education programmes in Sweden. Data sources include policy and management documents, evaluation reports and interview.
ANTIGEN-BINDING CELLS IN MICE IMMUNE OR TOLERANT TO ESCHERICHIA COLI POLYSACCHARIDE

The number of PFC and of RFC was studied in mice which were unimmunized, immunized, or tolerant against lipopolysaccharide of E. coli 055:B5 origin. The number of PFC/106 spleen cells increased from 0.5 in normal to 209 in immunized mice. The corresponding figures for RFC were 93 and 513 RFC/106 spleen cells. In tolerant animals, which contained few or no PFC, the number of RFC was increased as compared to that found in unimmunized mice. The formation of rosettes was specific, since their formation was inhibited by soluble coli polysaccharide and by rabbit antisera against mouse immunoglobulins. The antigen-binding cells were not derived from thymus, neither in immune or tolerant mice, because they did not carry the theta antigen. It is suggested that the majority of antigen-binding cells present in tolerant animals are cells having receptors for the antigen of rather low affinity. The relevance of these findings for the induction of high and low zone tolerance is discussed.
Evaluative Images and Tourism: The Use of Personal Constructs to Describe the Structure of Destination Images

Prior research at the regional scale suggests that two components underlie people's evaluations of tourist destina tions: arousing-sleepy and pleasant-unpleasant. A study was undertaken to see if these dimensions also apply at the international and local levels. Although their relevance at the local level appeared to be masked by individuals' personal experiences and knowledge, their applicability at the international scale supports the existence of an underlying general schema in environmental evaluation.
‘In the Court of Public Opinion’

This article analyses the HIV/AIDS medicine access campaign from 1998 to 2001. The campaign began when 39 of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies initiated a court case against South Africa for violating the companies’ patent rights. The campaign played an important role in making the issue resonate in the public spheres of many countries around the world and thereby contributed to the pharmaceutical companies’ eventual decision to withdraw the case. The main objective of the article is to provide insight into the way campaign activists sought to make the issue of HIV/AIDS medicine access of concern and intelligible to audiences not directly affected by it. Paying attention to such questions is crucial in order to reach a better understanding of current processes of globalization. The article shows how campaign discourses combined emotional and strategic elements and sought to bridge distance by connecting the universal and the particular. At the same time, it is argued that resonance was not only an outcome of the campaign's discursive activities. It was significantly aided by the fact that key campaign organizations possessed considerable economic and skill resources, and by the presence of allies such as states and international institutions.
Volumetric navigators for real‐time motion correction in diffusion tensor imaging

Prospective motion correction methods using an optical system, diffusion‐weighted prospective acquisition correction, or a free induction decay navigator have recently been applied to correct for motion in diffusion tensor imaging. These methods have some limitations and drawbacks. This article describes a novel technique using a three‐dimensional‐echo planar imaging navigator, of which the contrast is independent of the b‐value, to perform prospective motion correction in diffusion weighted images, without having to reacquire volumes during which motion occurred, unless motion exceeded some preset thresholds. Water phantom and human brain data were acquired using the standard and navigated diffusion sequences, and the mean and whole brain histogram of the fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity were analyzed. Our results show that adding the navigator does not influence the diffusion sequence. With head motion, the whole brain histogram‐fractional anisotropy shows a shift toward lower anisotropy with a significant decrease in both the mean fractional anisotropy and the fractional anisotropy histogram peak location (P < 0.01), whereas the whole brain histogram‐mean diffusivity shows a shift toward higher diffusivity with a significant increase in the mean diffusivity (P < 0.01), even after retrospective motion correction. These changes in the mean and the shape of the histograms are recovered substantially in the prospective motion corrected data acquired using the navigated sequence. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Model-based collaborative filtering to handle data reliability and ordinal data scale

Accompanying with the Internet growth explosion, recommender systems arise to facilitate the searching and comprehending ability of the users who suffer from the information overload problem in acquiring useful information online. Collaborative filtering (CF) that makes recommendations by comparing novel information with common interests shared by a group of people becomes popular among such systems. Particularly, model-based CF receives much attention recently due to its computational efficiency and superior performance. Two issues on model-based CF, however, should be addressed in applications. First, data quality of the rating matrix input can affect the prediction performance. Second, most current models treat the measurement scale of data classes as a nominal one instead of ordinal in ratings. The objective of this research is therefore to propose a model-based CF algorithm that considers both issues. Two experiments are conducted accordingly, and the results show our proposed method outperforms its counterparts especially under data of mild sparsity degree and of a large scale. The feasibility of our proposed approach is thus justified.
Towards multimodal interaction with an intelligent room

There is a great potential for combining speech and gestures to improve human computer interaction because this kind of communication resembles more and more the natural communication humans use every day with each other. Therefore, this paper is about the multimodal interaction consisting of speech and gestures in an intelligent room. The advantages of using multimodal systems are explained and we present the gesture recognizer and the dialogue system we use. We explain how the information from the different modalities is parsed and integrated in one semantic representation
Quality Assurance of Government Databases

Data cleaning is a vital process that ensures the quality of data stored in real-world databases. The process of identifying the record pairs that represent the same entity (duplicate records), commonly known as record linkage, is one of the essential elements of data cleaning. Digital government serves as an emerging area for database research, such as database management, data integration, data cleaning, etc. In this demo, we present a record linkage tool as part of a digital government web service. This demo serves as a framework for incorporating data quality tools with digital government web services.
A New Mechanism of Dynamic Spectrum Allocation in the Cognitive Network

Cognitive radio is thought to be a flexible way to improve the spectrum efficiency. The major challenge is that the communications in the cognitive radio network would be affected by the behaviors of licensed incumbents. The cognitive system must vacate the channel within moving time whenever the licensed incumbents re-occupy that channel, in order to reduce the interference to the licensed system. Besides, in the licensed system, the channels are used by licensed incumbents independently, therefore, the licensed channels have different occupancy ratio. In this study, we propose an improved mechanism considering the channels characteristics in spectrum allocation. The new method can make use of the spectrum characteristics to maximum the spectrum availability and reduce the probability of drop rate in the cognitive system. Besides, our proposed scheme can guarantee the fairness among multi-cells. Through simulation results, it is shown that the proposed scheme can enhance performance of the cognitive network.
3D Modeling from Uncalibrated Color Images for a Complete Wound Assessment Tool

This paper is concerned with the 3D modeling of skin wound using uncalibrated vision techniques for the volumetric assessment of the healing process. We have developed an original approach for matching two color images captured with a free-handled digital camera and generate a semi-dense 3D model. We evaluate the precision of the inferred 3D model by registration to a ground truth on artificial wounds. The method is then applied to volumetric measurements. The clinician requirements of a global 5% precision are overshot as 3% is obtained locally. The best configuration for taking photos lies between 1.2 and 1.5 for distance ratios and between 15deg and 30deg for vergence of the stereo pair. This work is part of the ESCALE project dedicated to the design of a complete 3D and color wound assessment tool using a simple free handled digital camera: a smart solution for massive diffusion in care centers as such very low cost system should be operated directly by nurses.
Informal Institutions and Cross-Country Income Differences

There is a growing literature which analyses, using cross-country data, whether institutions or geography is the most important deep determinant of income per capita. The empirical proxies used for institutions in this literature, however, focus only on formal institutions, rather than informal institutions, despite the fact that North (1990) emphasised the importance of informal institutions. We include a measure of informal institutions, a concept we argue is closely related to social capital and cultural norms, in a representative deep-determinants framework and find informal institutions to be just as important a deep determinant of income levels as are formal institutions.
When Using Facebook to Avoid Isolation Reduces Perceived Social Support

A survey (N = 316) examined how other-directed Facebook use driven by fear of social isolation affects users' perception of social support they possess. As predicted, those higher on fear of isolation were more likely to (a) closely monitor others' activities for self-evaluation (i.e., social comparison) and (b) regulate their self-presentation to garner social approval (i.e., other-directed self-presentation), but less likely to (c) express their true inner feelings and thoughts (i.e., inner-directed self-presentation) on Facebook. Social comparison, in turn, lowered perceived social support among heavy Facebook users, whereas inner-directed self-presentation heightened it. Other-directed self-presentation had no significant effect on perceived social support. Results indicate that the desire to avoid social isolation may paradoxically diminish perceived social support by promoting social comparison, while suppressing the expression of true self on Facebook.
Transfer forest based on covariate shift

Random Forest, a multi-class classifier based on statistical learning, is widely used in applications because of its high generalization performance due to randomness. However, in applications such as object detection, disparities in the distributions of the training and test samples from the target scene are often inevitable, resulting in degraded performance. In this case, the training samples need to be reacquired for the target scene, typically at a very high human acquisition cost. To solve this problem, transfer learning has been proposed. In this paper, we present data-level transfer learning for a Random Forest using covariate shift. Experimental results show that the proposed method, called Transfer Forest, can adapt to the target domain by transferring training samples from an auxiliary domain.
Theoretical Analysis of Musical Noise and Speech Distortion in Structure-Generalized Parametric Blind Spatial Subtraction Array

In this paper, we propose a structure-generalized parametric blind spatial subtraction array (BSSA), and the theoretical analysis of the amounts of musical noise and speech distortion is conducted via higher-order statistics. We theoretically prove a tradeoff between the amounts of musical noise and speech distortion in various BSSA structures. From the analysis and experimental evaluations, we reveal that the structure should be carefully selected according to the application, i.e., a channelwise BSSA structure is recommended for listening but a normal BSSA is more suitable for speech recognition.
Primary visual cortical metabolism and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder in dementia with Lewy bodies

Significant glucose hypometabolism in the primary visual cortex (PVC) is considered to support a diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), but its relationship to the clinical features remains unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the association between the metabolic pattern and clinical variables in DLB.
Senior citizens' interaction with smart ambient environment

In society where the numbers of elderly people is growing rapidly, there is an urgent need to have smart ambient environments. It is important to design novel user interfaces for senior citizens to ease their daily lives. This paper presents a projection based display system for elderly people with memory problem. The proposed user interface for the system is also described as well as the required infrastructure of sensor networks and user's process detection. Elderly people wearing the system can interact by tapping physical surfaces surrounding them (such as walls, tables or doors) as an input surface.
Backbone FragilityCauses the Local Search Cost

The local search algorithm Wsat is one of the most successful algorithms for solving the satis ability (SAT) problem. It is notably e ective at solving hard Random 3-SAT instances near the so-called `satis ability threshold', but still shows a peak in search cost near the threshold and large variations in cost over di erent instances. We make a number of signi cant contributions to the analysis ofWsat on high-cost random instances, using the recent concept of the backbone of a SAT instance. The backbone is the set of literals which are entailed by an instance. We nd that the number of solutions predicts the cost well for small-backbone instances but is much less relevant for the large-backbone instances which appear near the threshold and dominate in the overconstrained region. We show a very strong correlation between search cost and the Hamming distance to the nearest solution early in Wsat's search. This pattern leads us to introduce a measure of the backbone fragility of an instance, which indicates how persistent the backbone is as clauses are removed. We propose that high-cost random instances for local search are those with very large backbones which are also backbone-fragile. This explains the decay in cost beyond the satis ability threshold as being due to increasing backbone robustness. Our hypothesis makes three correct predictions. First, that the backbone robustness of an instance is negatively correlated with the local search cost when other factors are controlled for. Second, that backbone-minimal instances (which are 3-SAT instances altered so as to be more backbone-fragile) are unusually hard forWsat. Third, that the clauses most often unsatis ed during search are those whose deletion has the most e ect on the backbone. In understanding the pathologies of local search methods, we hope to contribute to the development of new and better techniques.
Thioredoxin Reductase Is Essential for Viability in the Fungal Pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans

ABSTRACT Thioredoxin reductase (TRR1) is an important component of the thioredoxin oxidative stress resistance pathway. Here we show that it is induced during oxidative and nitrosative stress and is preferentially localized to the mitochondria in Cryptococcus neoformans. The C. neoformans TRR1 gene encodes the low-molecular-weight isoform of the thioredoxin reductase enzyme, which shares little homology with that of its mammalian host. By replacing the endogenous TRR1 promoter with an inducible copper transporter promoter, we showed that Trr1 appears to be essential for viability of this pathogenic fungus, making it a potential antifungal target.
Effects of adding medium-chain triglycerides to sow diets during late gestation and early lactation on litter performance.

This experiment was conducted to determine whether feeding medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) to sows during late gestation and early lactation would improve neonatal pig survival. Beginning on d 91 of gestation and continuing through d 7 of lactation, sows were fed isoenergetic (7,000 kcal of ME/d) and isonitrogenous (278 g of CP/d) amounts of either control (19% starch, 2% soybean oil), long-chain triglycerides (LCT, soybean oil, 12%), or MCT (10% MCT, 2% soybean oil) diets. Sows (n = 18, 19, and 17, respectively) were induced to farrow on d 112 of gestation. Litters were weighed at birth, before suckling, and on d 1, 3, 7, and 21 of lactation. There was no effect of treatment on average pig weight at any time and no difference in the number of live pigs at birth. Beginning on d 3 (P < .05) and continuing through weaning (d 21, P < .02) survival was improved in litters from sows fed MCT relative to litters from sows fed the control diet. Overall survival rates were 80, 81, and 90% in control, LCT, and MCT groups, respectively. The greatest improvement in survival was observed in pigs weighing < 900 g at birth. Survival of pigs in this weight range was 32, 53, and 68% in control, LCT, and MCT treatments, respectively. Although feeding MCT resulted in an increase in content of medium-chain fatty acids in milk, these accounted for < 5% of the fatty acids in milk and likely cannot account for the improved survival rate. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)