Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genes Essential for Amber Disease in Grass Grubs Are Located on the Large Plasmid Found in Serratia entomophila and Serratia proteamaculans

The bacteria Serratia entomophila and S. proteamaculans cause amber disease in the grass grub, Costelytra zealandica (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), an important pasture pest in New Zealand. Disease symptoms include rapid cessation of feeding and amber coloration of larvae. A 105-kb plasmid (designated pADAP) has consistently been found only in pathogenic isolates of both species. Investigations into the involvement of pADAP in amber disease have been hindered by the lack of both a selectable marker on the plasmid and a reliable transposon delivery system. Kanamycin-resistant transposon insertions into three cloned HindIII fragments (9.5, 9.6, and 10.6 kb) were isolated and introduced into pADAP by shuttle mutagenesis. Inserts into the 9.5-and 9.6-kb HindIII fragments on pADAP did not alter disease-causing ability. When plasmids with inserts into the 9.6-kb region were conjugated into plasmid-minus, nonpathogenic isolates of S. entomophila and S. proteamaculans, all of them became pathogenic. Transposon insertions into two regions of the 10.6-kb HindIII fragment continued to cause cessation of feeding but failed to produce amber coloration. Further analysis of a mutant from each amber-minus region (pADK-10 and pADK-13) demonstrated that the antifeeding effect was produced only at dosages higher than that of the wild-type strain. Complementation with the wild-type HindIII fragment restored full-blown disease properties for pADK-13, but not for pADK-10.
A Fully Regulated Dual-Output DC–DC Converter With Special-Connected Two Transformers (SCTTs) Cell and Complementary Pulsewidth Modulation–PFM (CPWM-PFM)

A dual-output dc-dc converter based on the complementary pulsewidth modulation is proposed to overcome the cross-regulation problem between the outputs. Using a special-connected two transformers cell, one operational period is divided into two complementary parts. One output branch gets the pulsewidth and is regulated by the duty cycle; the other output branch gets the complementary pulsewidth and is regulated by the PFM. Only one full bridge and several passive components are needed, but both the two outputs have the fully regulated abilities even in the no-load situation. Moreover, a full zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) range is achieved in all the switches without auxiliary circuits. Therefore, the proposed topology has compact structure, high switching frequency, high-power density, and high efficiency. The operation principle, ZVS conditions, and design considerations are presented in the paper. The analysis is verified by a 300 V input, and 24 V/10 A and 48 V/5 A outputs prototype.
Carbohydrate Recognition Site of Interleukin-2 in Relation to Cell Proliferation*

Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is a cytokine with important roles in the immune system. IL-2 initially binds a high mannose-type glycan and a specific peptide sequence of the IL-2 receptor α-subunit and sequentially forms a high affinity complex of IL-2·IL-2 receptor α-, β-, and γ-subunits. This formation induces cellular signaling and cell proliferation (Fukushima, K., and Yamashita, K. (2001) J. Biol. Chem. 276, 7351–7356). To determine the carbohydrate-binding site of IL-2, we prepared wild-type and point-mutated 35S-IL-2 by an in vitrotranscription and translation method. We found that wild-type35S-IL-2 tends to form a dimer spontaneously, and the dimeric form has both carbohydrate recognition activity and cell proliferation activity. Moreover, substitution of Asn-26 in IL-2 with Gln or Asp conserved the dimeric form and affected the carbohydrate recognition activities in correspondence with the cell proliferation activities, suggesting that Asn-26 in IL-2 is involved in the carbohydrate recognition site. These results suggest that the carbohydrate recognition of IL-2 dimer triggers formation of high affinity complex (IL-2·IL-2Rα, -β, -γ)2, and the hetero-octamer stimulates IL-2-dependent T-cell proliferation by intensifying cellular signaling.
Ephrins stimulate neurite outgrowth during early cortical neurogenesis

The Eph receptor ligands, the ephrins, are membrane‐bound molecules that play important roles in establishing intercellular communication after neurogenesis by regulating cell migration, axon pathfinding, and topographic mapping. In diverse systems, such as embryonic day 17.5 (E17.5) hippocampal and cortical neurons, repulsive/inhibitory mechanisms underlie these cellular effects. However, although ligand/receptor expression occurs far earlier, during brain neurogenesis, little is known about potential ephrin functions in initial process outgrowth. We have examined ligand/receptor expression in E13.5 cortex in vivo and in culture, using alkaline phosphatase (AP)‐conjugated reagents and RNase protection assay. B ephrins are highly expressed, including B1, B2, and B3, whereas A ephrins exhibit low expression levels. In contrast, the Eph receptors demonstrate an opposite pattern, exhibiting high levels of Eph A3, A4, and A5 mRNA transcripts and low levels of the B‐class receptors. To examine effects on neurite outgrowth, soluble ephrins were incubated with antihuman IgG antibody, producing oligomeric agonist complexes, and dried onto culture dishes. Unexpectedly, both ephrin A and B complexes increased process outgrowth: Seventy to eighty percent of neuronal precursors exhibited long neurites on ephrins, whereas only 5–10% of cells had neurites on IgG control substrates, indicating that ephrins stimulated neuritogenesis by early cortical neurons. These observations suggest that ephrin ligand/receptor systems play ontogenetic roles not previously considered, activating mechanisms other than cellular repulsion. Ephrin systems may induce initial process elaboration by early cortical neurons that is restricted at later stages by well‐characterized repulsive signaling mechanisms. J Neurosci. Res. 66:1054–1063, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
SEADE: Countering the Futility of Network Security

Abstract : Today s media is flooded with stories of cyber attacks prompting a loss of public confidence, resignations by senior officials, and a significant near- and long-term impact on our nation. Most of these breaches stem from known vulnerabilities in existing network security architecture, presenting a distinct danger to our vital national interests. These vulnerabilities, which vary in sophistication, could be as simple as using weak passwords (e.g., default value, simple number strings, or the word password itself). Slightly more sophisticated attacks leverage phishing attempts through e-mail or social engineering, designed to elicit unsafe action or information that would allow adversaries unauthorized access.
An RF-Powered Transceiver Exploiting Sample and Hold Operation on the Received Carrier

This paper presents an RF-powered transceiver for wireless sensor network applications. The circuit is composed of an RF energy harvesting system, implemented by means of a threshold-compensated multistage rectifier, power management unit, and phase-locked loop (PLL)-based RF front end. Initially, the PLL in closed-loop condition locks the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to a multiple of the RF input frequency and allows frequency-shift keying (FSK) data recovery. Then, the PLL feedback loop is opened and the VCO signal is used to generate the uplink carrier, thus enabling active transmission without requiring external quartz for frequency reference. This approach overcomes the reader self-jamming drawback that greatly limits the operating range of backscattering-based RF-powered devices. Moreover, uplink and downlink operations are performed by exploiting a single carrier frequency according to a half-duplex communication scheme, which results in a low-complexity and low-cost wireless solution. The circuit was fabricated in a 130-nm CMOS technology and operates with a minimum input power as low as −18.8 dBm. It supports the FSK and ASK demodulation and OOK data transmission in the industrial scientific and medical band at 915 MHz.
Heterogeneous Agent Models of Simple Exchange Economies: on the Role of Investment Horizons and Wealth Dynamics

The thesis is devoted to the analytical modeling of simple exchange economies in the presence of heterogeneous, boundedly rational traders. We present a range of simple models where the consequence of Walrasian equilibrium can be described by dynamical systems. In the model presented in the first part of the thesis we explore the effects of the differences in the investment horizons on the price dynamics in market with two types of investors: fundamentalists and chartists. Considering the model without chartists, we find that the sole heterogeneity with respect to the time horizons is not enough to bring instability to the system and generate a non-trivial price dynamics. However, if agents of both types are present in the market, the heterogeneity of investment horizons can enlarge the parametric region of instability. One of the reasons behind this phenomenon is that the stability of the system is, ultimately, related to the relative demand of different traders’ types. The model in the second part of the thesis deals with the market where the dynamics is driven by an interweaving between evolutions of return and wealth. The underlying idea of such approach is that more wealthy agents have greater impact on the price determination than less wealthy ones. Consequently, traders demand for the risky asset is expressed as a fraction of their individual wealth and is based on future price forecast obtained on the basis of past market history. In the most general version of the model an arbitrary large number of heterogeneous traders operate in the market and any smooth function which maps the infinite information set to the present investment choice is allowed as agent’s trading behavior. The set of equilibria of the corresponding dynamical system(s) are studied and their stability conditions are derived. It is shown that abstracting from precise specification of the agents’ investment decisions, all possible long-run equilibria belong to a one dimensional Equilibrium Market Line (EML). The relative performances of different strategies are discussed and selection principle with which market endogenously selects the dominant behaviors is formulated. The results point to the simple explanation of some findings in the recent analytical and simulation contributions.
A new ankle foot orthosis: Modeling and control

This paper studies the derivation of kinematic and dynamic models of a newly developed active ankle foot orthosis (AFO) that was designated for testing gait-assistive compliance control algorithms. The AFO is characterized with a closed-loop chain structure and powered by a linear ServoTube motor making it very fast and responsive. The paper first derives kinematic and dynamic models for the AFO. Then, a torque controller is developed based on the dynamic model of the AFO and it is shown that the AFO is able to track the position and velocity of the desired trajectory with a satisfactory accuracy.
Overcoming drug resistance in HIV‐1 chemotherapy: The binding thermodynamics of Amprenavir and TMC‐126 to wild‐type and drug‐resistant mutants of the HIV‐1 protease

Amprenavir is one of six protease inhibitors presently approved for clinical use in the therapeutic treatment of AIDS. Biochemical and clinical studies have shown that, unlike other inhibitors, Amprenavir is severely affected by the protease mutation I50V, located in the flap region of the enzyme. TMC‐126 is a second‐generation inhibitor, chemically related to Amprenavir, with a reported extremely low susceptibility to existing resistant mutations including I50V. In this paper, we have studied the thermodynamic and molecular origin of the response of these two inhibitors to the I50V mutation and the double active‐site mutation V82F/I84V that affects all existing clinical inhibitors. Amprenavir binds to the wild‐type HIV‐1 protease with high affinity (5.0 × 109 M−1 or 200 pM) in a process equally favored by enthalpic and entropic contributions. The mutations I50V and V82F/I84V lower the binding affinity of Amprenavir by a factor of 147 and 104, respectively. TMC‐126, on the other hand, binds to the wild‐type protease with extremely high binding affinity (2.6 × 1011 M−1 or 3.9 pM) in a process in which enthalpic contributions overpower entropic contributions by almost a factor of 4. The mutations I50V and V82F/I84V lower the binding affinity of TMC‐126 by only a factor of 16 and 11, respectively, indicating that the binding affinity of TMC‐126 to the drug‐resistant mutants is still higher than the affinity of Amprenavir to the wild‐type protease. Analysis of the data for TMC‐126 and KNI‐764, another second‐generation inhibitor, indicates that their low susceptibility to mutations is caused by their ability to compensate for the loss of interactions with the mutated target by a more favorable entropy of binding.
Investigations on the variability of breath gas sampling using PTR-MS

Breath gas analysis is a promising technology in the frame of medical diagnostics. By identifying disease-specific biomarkers in the breath of patients, a non-invasive and easy method for early diagnosis or therapy monitoring might be developed. However, to verify this potential and develop diagnostic tools based on breath gas analysis one essential prerequisite is a low variability in measurement of exhaled volatile organic compounds. Therefore, a study has been undertaken in order to identify possible artefacts within the application of a breath gas test in practice, for which the breath gas is analysed by proton transfer reaction-mass spectrometry (PTR-MS). After validating the low instrumental variability by repeatedly measuring standard gas, the variability of breath gas sampling has been evaluated. The latter has been carried out by measuring single breath gas samples (mixed expiratory breath) collected over different periods of time such as 1 min (10 volunteers, 4 breath gas samples each), 1 h (10 volunteers, 11 breath gas samples each) and several days (11 volunteers, 10 breath gas samples each). The breath gas samples were collected in Teflon bags and consecutively measured with PTR-MS. It was found that those samples collected within 1 min and 1 h show a low variability. This was, however, not the case for samples being collected over longer periods of time (15–70 days). Under these circumstances, many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) showed significant day-to-day variation in concentration, although the breath collection had been performed under the same conditions (similar sampling time, sampling technique, sample storage time, measurement conditions, etc). This large variation might be assigned to the influence of room air VOCs, which have been investigated in this work, or with other parameters which will be discussed. It was also found that the variability in the measurement of exhaled concentrations of methanol, acetone and isoprene within different individuals (inter individual variability) is much higher than differences in the same volunteer (intra individual variability) measured over a longer time interval.
Model predictive control of a hybrid energy storage system using load prediction

Hybrid Energy Storage Systems (HESS) enable the use of the advantages from different energy storages. In this work, the HESS comprises a battery with high energy density and a supercapacitor with high power density. To fully exploit the advantages of both modules within the HESS, a control strategy is needed. In this contribution, a computationally efficient model predictive control (MPC) strategy is presented for this task. Special focus is directed to the prediction of the power demand in a range of several seconds. This information is useful to follow a given power profile within the given limits of the energy storage system. Therefore, an energy transfer between battery and supercapacitor occurs depending on the expected power demand. Furthermore, the MPC manages nonlinear model equations, whereby the system behavior is accurately represented, while the presented control algorithm for a HESS is still real-time capable.
Exposure to nitrogen dioxide is not associated with vascular dysfunction in man

Background: Exposure to air pollution is associated with increased cardiorespiratory morbidity and mortality. It is unclear whether these effects are mediated through combustion-derived particulate matter or gaseous components, such as nitrogen dioxide. Objectives: To investigate the effect of nitrogen dioxide exposure on vascular vasomotor and six fibrinolytic functions. Methods: Ten healthy male volunteers were exposed to nitrogen dioxide at 4 ppm or filtered air for 1 h during intermittent exercise in a randomized double-blind crossover study. Bilateral forearm blood flow and fibrinolytic markers were measured before and during unilateral intrabrachial infusion of bradykinin (100–1000 pmol/min), acetylcholine (5–20 μg/min), sodium nitroprusside (2–8 μg/min), and verapamil (10–100 μg/min) 4 h after the exposure. Lung function was determined before and after the exposure, and exhaled nitric oxide at baseline and 1 and 4 h after the exposure. Results: There were no differences in resting forearm blood flow after either exposure. There was a dose-dependent increase in forearm blood flow with all vasodilators but this was similar after either exposure for all vasodilators (p > .05 for all). Bradykinin caused a dose-dependent increase in plasma tissue-plasminogen activator, but again there was no difference between the exposures. There were no changes in lung function or exhaled nitric oxide following either exposure. Conclusion: Inhalation of nitrogen dioxide does not impair vascular vasomotor or fibrinolytic function. Nitrogen dioxide does not appear to be a major arbiter of the adverse cardiovascular effects of air pollution.
The effect of peers' alcohol consumption on parental influence: a cognitive mediational model.

OBJECTIVE The current study was designed to elucidate familial and social influences on adolescent alcohol consumption by testing three hypotheses derived from the prototype/willingness model of adolescent risk behavior: (1) parents' prototypes of adolescent drinkers affect adolescent consumption through their impact on adolescents' prototypes, (2) strong parent-child relationships are associated with acceptance of parental influence regarding drinking and thus with less adolescent drinking and (3) association with peers who drink dilutes parental influence over adolescents' alcohol consumption. METHOD Two hundred sixty-six rural adolescents, ages 15 through 17 at Time 1, and their parents and siblings completed questionnaires about drinking behavior and drinking-related cognitions at 1-year intervals for 3 years. RESULTS Structural equation models provided evidence of transmission of prototypes of adolescent drinkers from parents to adolescents and evidence that these prototypes mediate adolescent alcohol consumption. They also provide evidence that although parents' prototypes and parent-adolescent relationships are important in shaping the adolescents' drinking, association with peers who drink significantly attenuates this influence. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that parents can influence their children's drinking, but that this influence has more of an impact if the adolescent is not involved in a drinking-conducive peer environment. The current analyses also suggest that the process of becoming an adolescent drinker involves an active rejection of parents' influence rather than a passive movement away from parents' attitudes and beliefs-a process that is accelerated by association with peers who drink.
Change Management in the Governance of Schooling: The Rise of Experts, Planners, and Statistics in the Early OECD

Background/Context Based on archival material, the following paper analyzes the political strategies of the early OECD stakeholders in transforming schooling from a cultural to a technological system and how they were in need of standardizing different existing patterns of thoughts or institutional behaviors in the member countries. The European standardization process observable in the early 1960s, triggered by the OECD, affected the organization of the educational policies on a ministerial level designed to influence the national school systems according to a specific ideology. Purpose The paper asks how this new managerial ideology was transported, disseminated, and implemented and finds its answer in a specific rhetoric that bypassed politically taboo themes and that covered up the clear strategies: The new iron cage of accountability was based on omitting controversial topics. Research Design A contextual reconstruction of the discourse emerging from and reinforcing the process of standardization and the dissemination of specific ways of educational planning, such as statistics, and with them specific ideologies of how society and its citizens should be shaped. Conclusions/Recommendations Revisiting today's educational bureaucracy and its logic of expertise, standards, and accountability by reconstructing its origins in the Cold War and by that challenging the ideology of uniformity and accepting plurality as the condition of life of late modern societies.
Efficient method of station selection for passive monitoring in distributed network using information gain

Network monitoring is essential for assessing performance issues, identifying and locating problems. There is increasing interest in passive monitoring of flows at multiple locations within a distributed network. In order to figure out how to place monitors under cost-effective and budget constraints within the network, a new approach is presented in this paper, which solves the problem of monitoring stations selection and the tradeoff between monitoring cost and reward. Using the method from combinatorial optimization on submodular of information gain, the approach firstly proves that joint entropy and information gain in network models satisfy submodularity under certain conditions, and then an approximate algorithm is proposed to solve optimizing problem of conditional entropies. On the basis, monitoring stations selected by our solution are much better than existing classical criterion. The simulation results validate the approach, demonstrating the solution improving monitoring quality, accuracy and computation time.
Targeting of HIF-α to the von Hippel-Lindau Ubiquitylation Complex by O2-Regulated Prolyl Hydroxylation

Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) is a transcriptional complex that plays a central role in the regulation of gene expression by oxygen. In oxygenated and iron replete cells, HIF-α subunits are rapidly destroyed by a mechanism that involves ubiquitylation by the von Hippel–Lindau tumor suppressor (pVHL) E3 ligase complex. This process is suppressed by hypoxia and iron chelation, allowing transcriptional activation. Here we show that the interaction between human pVHL and a specific domain of the HIF-1α subunit is regulated through hydroxylation of a proline residue (HIF-1α P564) by an enzyme we have termed HIF-α prolyl-hydroxylase (HIF-PH). An absolute requirement for dioxygen as a cosubstrate and iron as cofactor suggests that HIF-PH functions directly as a cellular oxygen sensor.
A morpheme-based lexical chunking system for Chinese

Chinese lexical analysis consists of word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging. Most previous studies consider them as two separate tasks. In this paper we formalize the two processes as a unique chunking task on a sequence of morphemes and present an integrated lexical analysis system for Chinese based on lexicalized hidden Markov models. In this way, both contextual lexical information and word-internal morphological features can be statistically explored and further combined for disambiguation and unknown word resolution. Experimental results show that the proposed system outperforms several baselines, illustrating the benefits of the unified lexical chunking method with morphemes as the basic units.