Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AlphaB crystallin translocation and phosphorylation: signal transduction pathways and preconditioning in the isolated rat heart.

In this program of studies we have characterized in detail the translocation (assessed by Triton-insolubility) and phosphorylation (using serine-45 or -59 phosphospecific antibodies) of alphaB crystallin during myocardial ischemia [both with or without ischemic preconditioning (IPC)]. Pharmacological activators and inhibitors allowed us to characterize the signaling pathways involved in alphaB crystallin phosphorylation during ischemia. Ischemic preconditioning alone caused 30% of the heart's alphaB crystallin pool to translocate, providing a significant translocation 'head-start' in protected tissue. This enhanced translocation is coupled with increased (3-fold) alphaB crystallin phosphorylation at both serine residues. The possible role of alphaB crystallin in the protection afforded by ischemic preconditioning is supported by the signal transduction data; which showed preconditioning-induced alphaB crystallin phosphorylation can be blocked by tyrosine kinase inhibition (using genistein) and by p38 MAP kinase or PKC inhibition (using SB203580 or bisindolylmaleimide, respectively). The activation of both p38 MAP kinase and PKC are recognized requirements for the induction of preconditioning and their inhibition is known to block protection. Western immunoblotting analysis after isoelectric focusing electrophoresis, confirmed the observations made with the phosphospecific antibodies; but also showed that 27+/-4% of total cardiac crystallin was phosphorylated after 30 min of ischemia. AlphaB crystallin exists as large polymeric aggregates in cardiac tissue under basal conditions (approximately 1 MDa as determined by gel filtration chromatography). We induced phosphorylation of alphaB crystallin during aerobic perfusion by the administration of phenylephrine. However this treatment did not alter the molecular aggregate size of alphaB crystallin. It appears that alphaB crystallin molecular aggregate size is not simply regulated by phosphorylation. AlphaB crystallin may have a role to play in the myocardial protection induced by ischemic preconditioning, as both translocation and phosphorylation are both accelerated and enhanced by ischemic preconditioning.
Banknote Counterfeit Detection through Background Texture Printing Analysis

This paper is focused on the detection of counterfeit photocopy banknotes. The main difficulty is to work on a real industrial scenario without any constraint about the acquisition device and with a single image. The main contributions of this paper are twofold: first the adaptation and performance evaluation of existing approaches to classify the genuine and photocopy banknotes using background texture printing analysis, which have not been applied into this context before. Second, a new dataset of Euro banknotes images acquired with several cameras under different luminance conditions to evaluate these methods. Experiments on the proposed algorithms show that mixing SIFT features and sparse coding dictionaries achieves quasi perfect classification using a linear SVM with the created dataset. Approaches using dictionaries to cover all possible texture variations have demonstrated to be robust and outperform the state-of-the-art methods using the proposed benchmark.
Thermally Switchable Aligned Nanopores by Magnetic‐Field Directed Self‐Assembly of Block Copolymers

A scalable approach for developing large area polymer films, with stimuli responsive vertically aligned nanopores is reported. Magnetic fields are used to create highly aligned hexagonally packed block copolymer cylindrical microdomains with order parameters exceeding 0.95. Selective etch removal of material yields nanoporous films which demonstrate reversible pore closure on heating.
Transovarial Transmission of a Plant Virus Is Mediated by Vitellogenin of Its Insect Vector

Most plant viruses are transmitted by hemipteroid insects. Some viruses can be transmitted from female parent to offspring usually through eggs, but the mechanism of this transovarial transmission remains unclear. Rice stripe virus (RSV), a Tenuivirus, transmitted mainly by the small brown planthopper (Laodelphax striatellus), is also spread to the offspring through the eggs. Here, we used the RSV–planthopper system as a model to investigate the mechanism of transovarial transmission and demonstrated the central role of vitellogenin (Vg) of L. striatellus in the process of virus transmission into the eggs. Our data showed Vg can bind to pc3 in vivo and in vitro and colocalize in the germarium. RSV filamentous ribonucleoprotein particles (RNPs) only accumulated in the terminal filaments and pedicel areas prior to Vg expression and was not present in the germarium until Vg was expressed, where RSV RNPs and Vg had colocalized. Observations by immunoelectron microscopy (IEM) also indicated that these two proteins colocalized in nurse cells. Knockdown of Vg expression due to RNA interference resulted in inhibition of the invasion of ovarioles by RSV. Together, the data obtained indicated that RSV RNPs may enter the nurse cell of the germarium via endocytosis through binding with Vg. Finally, the virus enters the oocytes through nutritive cords, using the same route as for Vg transport. Our results show that the Vg of L. striatellus played a critical role in transovarial transmission of RSV and shows how viruses can use existing transovarial transportation systems in insect vectors for their own purposes.
Multiple-View Active Learning for Environmental Sound Classification

Multi-view learning with multiple distinct feature sets is a rapid growing direction in machine learning with boosting the performance of supervised learning classification under the case of few labeled data. The paper proposes Multi-view Simple Disagreement Sampling (MV-SDS) and Multi-view Entropy Priority Sampling (MV-EPS) methods as the selecting samples strategies in active learning with multiple-view. For the given environmental sound data, the CELP features in 10 dimensions and the MFCC features in 13 dimensions are two views respectively. The experiments with a single view single classifier, SVML, MV-SDS and MV-EPS on the environmental sound extracted two of views, CELP & MFCC are carried out to illustrate the results of the proposed methods and their performances are compared under different percent training examples. The experimental results show that multi-view active learning can effectively improve the performance of classification for environmental sound data, and MV-EPS method outperforms the MV-SDS.
Unconstrained invoice processing in the health insurance domain

We present an overview of an information extraction application in the health insurance invoice processing domain. The system is novel in that it is not constrained by the document type - it has no explicit document model or document type classification phase. The system relies on constraints derived from a domain model, constraints derived from world state, and simple models of layout, including the use of labeled fields and the proximity of related information.
Draft Genome Sequence of Bacillus tequilensis Strain FJAT-14262 a

The genus Bacillus is the most diverse and prominent genus of aerobic endospore-forming bacteria (1), consisting of ~299 species and 7 subspecies until 2015 (List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature. http://www.bacterio.net/bacillus .html). Some Bacillus components have important roles in industrial processes, such as the transglutaminase of Bacillus subtilis and biofilm formation of butyric acid (2, 3). Bacillus strains are widely distributed in the environment. Strain FJAT-14262a was isolated from rhizosphere soil of Anoectochilus roxburghii in China and identified as Bacillus tequilensis, which is a phylogenetically close neighbor of B. subtilis according to their 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. The best growth of B. tequilensis FJAT-14262a was achieved at 35°C and pH 8. Here, we present the high-quality draft genome sequence of B. tequilensis FJAT-14262a. The genome sequencing of B. tequilensis FJAT-14262a was performed via the Illumina HiSeq 2500 system. Two DNA libraries with insert sizes of 500 and 5,000 bp were constructed and sequenced. The genome coverage was approximately 150-fold coverage. The reads were assembled via the SOAPdenovo software version 2.10 (4), using a key parameter K setting at 77. Through the data assembly, 7 scaffolds with a total length of 3,853,296 bp were obtained, and the contig N50 was 185,225 bp. The average length of the scaffolds was 550,470 bp, and the longest and shortest scaffolds were 1,047,314 bp and 711 bp, respectively. A total 79.77% clean reads were aligned back to the genome, which covered 99.57% of the sequence. Annotation of the genome was performed using the NCBI Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline (PGAP) (http://www.ncbi .nlm.nih.gov/genomes/static/Pipeline.html) utilizing the GeneMark, Glimmer, and tRNAscan-SE tools (5). A total of 4,029 genes were predicted, including 3,919 coding sequences (CDSs), 41 pseudogenes, 66 tRNAs, 6 rRNAs, and 1 noncoding RNA (ncRNA) gene. There were 3,090 genes assigned to the COG database. The average DNA G C content was 43.71%. Nucleotide sequence accession numbers. This whole-genome shotgun project has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the accession no. LGRW00000000. The version described in this paper is version LGRW00000000.1.
Universal Mobility-Field Curves for Electrons and Holes in MOS Inversion Layers

The mobility of carriers in a silicon surface inversion layer is one of the most important parameters required to accurately model and predict MOSFET device and circuit performance. It has been found that electron mobility follows a universal curve when plotted as a function of an effective normal field regardless of substrate bias, substrate doping (≤ 1017 cm-3) and nominal process variations [1]. Although accurate modeling of p-channel MOS devices has become important due to the prevalence of CMOS technology, the existence of a universal hole mobility-field relationship has not been demonstrated. Furthermore, the effect on mobility of low-temperature and rapid high-temperature processing, which are commonly used in modern VLSI technology to control impurity diffusion, is unknown.
Novel PCR-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism Method for Determining Serotypes or Serogroups of Streptococcus pneumoniae Isolates

ABSTRACT Serotyping Streptococcus pneumoniae is a technique generally confined to reference laboratories, as purchasing pneumococcal antisera is a huge investment. Many attempts have been made to modify serological agglutination techniques to make them more accessible, and more recently developments in serotyping have focused on molecular techniques. This paper describes a PCR assay which amplifies the entire capsulation locus between dexB and aliA. Amplicons are digested to produce serotype-specific patterns. We have shown, using 81 epidemiologically unrelated strains representing 46 different serotypes, that the patterns correlate with a 90 to 100% similarity range for the same serotype or serogroup. Prospective testing of 73 isolates of unknown serotype confirmed reliable serotype attribution, and serotype profiles are reproducible on repeated testing. Once our database contains all 90 serotypes, this technique should be fully portable, cost-effective, and useful in any laboratory with sufficient molecular experience.
The secreted brain‐derived neurotrophic factor precursor pro‐BDNF binds to TrkB and p75NTR but not to TrkA or TrkC

The neurotrophin brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) binds to two cell surface receptors: TrkB receptors that promote neuronal survival and differentiation and p75NTR that induces apoptosis or survival. BDNF, as well as the other members of the neurotrophin family, is synthesized as a larger precursor, pro‐BDNF, which undergoes posttranslational modifications and proteolytic processing by furin or related proteases. Both mature neurotrophins and uncleaved proneurotrophins are secreted from cells. The bioactivities of proneurotrophins could differ from those of mature, cleaved neurotrophins; therefore, we wanted to test whether pro‐BDNF would differ from mature BDNF in its neurotrophin receptor binding and activation. A furin‐resistant pro‐BDNF, secreted from COS‐7 cells, bound to TrkB‐Fc and p75NTR‐Fc, but not to TrkA‐Fc or TrkC‐Fc. Likewise, pro‐BDNF elicited prototypical TrkB responses in biological assays, such as TrkB tyrosine phosphorylation, activation of ERK1/2, and neurite outgrowth. Moreover, mutation of the R103 residue of pro‐BDNF abrogated its binding to TrkB‐Fc but not to p75NTR‐Fc. Taken together, these data indicate that pro‐BDNF binds to and activates TrkB and could be involved in TrkB‐mediated neurotrophic activity in vivo. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Level of Information Security Awareness among Academic Staff in IHL

IS security awareness plays a significant role in the process of the overall information security of any organisation. Based on an empirical study of 368 academic staff in three institutions of higher learning (IHL), we found that the level of information security awareness can be considered good, but it can certainly be improved further. Employees need further training in this area mainly at institutions which only recently received the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification. Our sample seems to suggest that demographics such as the age of the respondents contributed to their information security risk tolerance and adherence behaviour.
Cooperation and the Pricing Strategy in Dual Channel Based on the Earnings Management

This paper researches the inventory problem and sales conflict in dual channel. The two basic problems are the basic problems of manufacturers or retailers have to face to establish network channel. We discuss that the network sales channels should establish their own inventory, or share the inventory with the physical store for inventory problem; we use dynamic pricing strategy to analyze and solve the problems of channel conflict for the conflict problem of Internet channel and physical channel. We studied the problem of inventory on the basis whether the network sales channels should establish their own inventory in dual channel. And then we analyzed the dynamic pricing model. The first part of this paper is the introduction of related problems and study of issues progress now. The second part is related assumptions and description the model analysis. In this part we describe the inventory strategy and dynamic pricing problem respectively. The third part is the numerical test. At the last of paper is the conclusion.
Economic Experiments for Policy Analysis and Program Design: A Guide for Agricultural Decisionmakers

Economic experiments can help inform the design and implementation of government policies, especially newly conceived or novel policies. This report reviews experimental methods, with a focus on when and how they can be effectively used to inform agricultural program decisions. To illustrate the capabilities of experimental methods, five case studies are presented. First, a laboratory study examines whether it is possible to improve the cost-effectiveness of auctions similar to those used in voluntary land retirement programs. A second laboratory study, with both students and farmers, illustrates how a combination of targeting and bonuses may be able to improve environmental outcomes by encouraging coordination among conservation program enrollees. The third study, conducted in the field to more closely mimic real-world conditions, measures how farmers trade off current income against future income and finds farmers will accept less money if paid today rather than in the future. The fourth and fifth studies are randomized controlled trials testing the marketing of USDA programs; these show how outreach letters can increase participation in the Conservation Reserve Program and in county committee elections.
Surgical considerations for papillary thyroid microcarcinomas

We reevaluate current treatment recommendations of papillary thyroid microcarcinomas taking into account the indolent behavior of these tumors, and the potential morbidity that may result from an unnecessary surgery. The goals of this communication are to: 1) provide surgeons and endocrinologists with the most up‐to‐date evidence on management of microcarcinomas, 2) outline appropriate instances for active surveillance, and 3) describe the role of surgical interventions for microcarcinomas including lobectomy, total thyroidectomy, and central neck dissection.
Analysing the competitive performance of the South African subtropical fruit industry

ENGLISH SUMMARY : The main purpose of this study was to investigate the competitive performance of the South African subtropical fruit industry in the global markets in view of recent general findings that the industry showed a declining trend of competitiveness (refer to the Agric-Competitiveness Matrix by Van Rooyen; Boonzaaier, 2017; BFAP, 2018). To determine the competitive performance of the industry and to arrive at the conclusions of the study, a five-step analytical and a systematic framework , applied in agri-business competitiveness studies by Esterhuizen (2006), Van Rooyen, Esterhuizen and Stroebel (2011), Jafta (2014), Boonzaaier (2015), Angala (2015), Boonzaaier and Van Rooyen (2017), Abei (2017) and Dlikilili (2018) was used. This framework was adapted and extended to accommodate the nature of the industry and to introduce Delphi-based consultative processes and statistical methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and Cronbach’s alpha analysis. In this study, competitiveness is defined as the: “ability of the South African subtropical fruit industry to trade products in both domestic and international markets on a sustainable basis; and to attract resource investment such as land, labour, technology, management skills and talent, and capital from other competing economic activities while earning at least the opportunity cost of returns on such resources employed” (adapted from Freebairn,1987). This definition, together with the Porter Competitive Diamond of enquiry, shifts the analysis away from a comparative advantage to a competitive advantage focus. Competitive performance of the South African subtropical industry was measured over time, based on its global trade orientation, and compared to the performance of the industry relative to that of its direct major international rivals. To achieve this, the Relative Trade Advantage (RTA) formula, developed by Vollrath (1991), was considered as appropriate to quantitatively measure competitive performance. Trade data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), available for the period 1961 to 2013, and from the International Trade Centre (ITC) for the period 2001 to 2016, was used. The results of the FAO RTA analysis show that the industry consistently recorded RTA values below one throughout the studied years (1961 to 2013), i.e. only marginally competitive performance. However, when using the ITC datasets, it showed a stronger marginally competitive trend, with RTA values around 1 in most of the years, and with that in 2010 (RTA of 1.55) being comparatively greater than in the other periods, followed by a decreasing trend over recent years to a RTA of -0.08 in 2016. The reason for differences in FAO and ITC RTA trends is found in the details of the respective databases used– with the FAO excluding mangos and macadamias. These are two of the most important competitive subtropical product groups for South Africa. The ITC based results, which included these products (i.e. mangos and macadamias), were thus used in the analysis, as…
δ‐Globin Gene Structure and Expression in the K562 Cell Line

The δ‐globin gene produces the δ chain of Hb A2 which represents less than 3% of the hemoglobin (Hb) in normal individuals. The δ‐globin gene is also expressed in the human erythroleukemia cell line K562. The expression of the δ‐globin gene in this cell line is unexpected since K562 shows an embryonic‐fetal globin gene expression pattern with no expression of the adult β‐globin gene. δ‐Globin gene activation has been proposed as a potential therapeutic tool for the cure of δ‐thalassemia (thal). In order to shed some light on the δ‐globin gene activation in K562 the present study has: (1) determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the δ‐ and β‐globin genes; (2) assessed, by reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR), the relative δ‐ and β‐globin mRNA level; and (3) analyzed the exact level of the endogenous expression δ‐globin gene by S1 mapping. No sequence variations were identified in the δ‐ and β‐globin genes when compared to the normal sequences. δ‐Globin mRNA represent more than 95% of the total δ + β‐mRNA content. The level of expression of the δ‐globin gene is 12.3% (±1.2) compared to the endogenous α‐globin gene. These results indicate that the high expression of the δ‐globin gene in K562 is most likely due to the transacting environment. Therefore, the presence and/or absence of specific transacting factors are able to specifically activate the human δ‐globin gene. The level of expression of the δ‐globin gene in this cell line suggests that it could be of relevance to identify the transacting factor(s) responsible for this selective activation in order to better understand the molecular mechanisms undergoing gene activation.
Low-Power FPGA Design Using Memoization-Based Approximate Computing

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are increasingly used as the computing platform for fast and energy-efficient execution of recognition, mining, and search applications. Approximate computing is one promising method for achieving energy efficiency. Compared with most prior works on approximate computing, which target approximate processors and arithmetic blocks, this paper presents an approximate computing methodology for FPGA-based design. It studies memoization as a method for approximation on FPGA and analyzes different architectural and design parameters that should be considered. The proposed design flow leverages on high-level synthesis to enable memoization-based microarchitecture generation, thus also facilitating a C-to-register-transfer-level synthesis. When compared with the previous approaches of bit-width truncation and approximate multipliers, memoization-based approximate computation on FPGA achieves a significant dynamic power saving (around 20%) with very small area overhead (<;5%) and better power-to-signal noise ratio values for the studied image-processing benchmarks.
Effectiveness of Community Intervention in Improving Bone Health Behaviors in Older Adults

An 8-week, bone-health community program addressed risks/lifestyle changes within the Health Belief Model and Theory of Reasoned Action frameworks in a randomized format (treatment group n = 35; control group n = 34). Median week 1 values for calcium (control, 963 mg; treatment, 1023 mg) and vitamin D (81 IU both groups) were below recommendations, increasing throughout the program for both control (1023 mg calcium, 128 IU vitamin D) and treatment (1005 mg calcium, 122 IU vitamin D) groups. There was limited response to the exercise outcome variables, with many not participating in that section of the program. Psychosocial variables were positive for both control and treatment groups at week 1, with no significant difference at postintervention. Regression analysis indicated that those with a positive attitude about calcium intake and belief that they could choose calcium-fortified foods were more likely to have higher calcium intake. Intention to exercise was modified by peer and family support. Community-based programs can translate and use clinical trial key topics and outcomes, but participation bias makes impact results difficult to interpret the effectiveness of the program.