Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epstein-Barr Virus-Encoded Bcl-2 Homologue Functions as a Survival Factor in Wp-Restricted Burkitt Lymphoma Cell Line P3HR-1 (cid:1)

Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is etiologically associated with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). EBV-positive BL tumors display two latent forms of infection. One is referred to as latency I infection, in which EBV expresses the virus genome maintenance protein EBNA1 as the only viral protein. The other is referred to as Wp-restricted latency and was recently identiﬁed in a subset of BL tumors. In these tumors, EBV expresses EBNA1, EBNA3A, EBNA3B, EBNA3C, a truncated form of EBNA-LP, and the viral Bcl-2 homologue BHRF1, all of which are driven by the BamHI W promoter (Wp). To investigate the role of EBV in Wp-restricted BL, we conditionally expressed a dominant-negative EBNA1 (dnEBNA1) mutant which interrupts the virus genome maintenance function of EBNA1 in the P3HR-1 BL cell line. Induction of dnEBNA1 expression caused loss of the EBV genome and resulted in apoptosis of P3HR-1 cells in the absence of exogenous apoptosis inducers, indicating that P3HR-1 cells cannot survive without EBV. Stable transfection of the BHRF1 gene into P3HR-1 cells rescued the cells from the apoptosis induced by dnEBNA1 expression, whereas stable transfection of truncated EBNA-LP, EBNA3A, or EBNA3C did not. Moreover, knockdown of BHRF1 expression in P3HR-1 cells resulted in increased cell death. These results indicate that EBV is essential for the survival of P3HR-1 cells and that BHRF1 functions as a survival factor. Our ﬁnding implies a critical contribution of BHRF1 to the pathogenesis of Wp-restricted BLs.
Preparation of Biological Specimens for Electron Microscopy Comparison of Chemical Fixation and High-Pressure Freezing

Electron microscopy (EM) is indispensable when it comes to the analysis of ultrastructural elements of biological material. However, the right preparation is necessary so that biological samples withstand vacuum and radiation inside an electron microscope without changes in ultrastructure. Chemical xation can be considered the most classical approach. Fixatives are used to crosslink proteins as well as lipids to retain the original structure and stains are added for increased contrast. It is a relatively easy and cost e ective procedure. On the other hand, high-pressure freezing o ers a more physical approach to structural preservation. Exertion of a very high pressure during rapid freezing in liquid nitrogen hinders the expansion of ice crystals and thus the damage to cellular material. The sample subsequently undergoes a process called freeze substitution in which frozen water is replaced by liquid solvents and xatives while slowly warming up to 0◦C. The optimal method of preparation varies by sample and structure of interest. To establish a comparison, tissue and cell cultures from various organisms were prepared and the quality of the ultrastructure compared. High-pressure frozen samples typically showed smoother membranes and better preservation of mitochondria. Chemically xed samples demonstrated better xation of neuronal components but a higher likelihood of faulty resin in ltration.
Analytical method to compute bridge stresses in V-shape IPMs

V-shape interior permanent-magnet machines (IPMs) have been widely utilised in the industry due to their high-power density, high efficiency, and low manufacturing cost. There has been growing interest in applying multi-objective optimisation to the design of electric machines. In the context of V-shape IPM designs, it is important to include stress analysis in the optimisation design analysis as the steel bridges in the IPM rotor are structural weak points, where high stresses develop. However, traditional finite element analysis (FEA) that is normally used to compute bridge stresses becomes cumbersome due to its high computational cost. In this study, a computationally efficient analytical method is proposed to compute the mechanical stresses developed within the steel bridges in a V-shape IPM. The proposed method is shown to yield accurate predictions compared with FEA while reducing computational cost. A design study is conducted that demonstrates that the machine performance can be improved by incorporating the proposed structural analysis in a multi-objective optimisation-based-design environment.
Bond strength and interfacial morphology evaluation of self-adhering flowaBle composites

objectives: To evaluate the micro-shear bond strength (µSBS) and interfacial morphology to dentin of self-adhering flowable composites (SAFCs) in comparison to a combination of all-in-one adhesive and conventional flowable composite (CFC). materials and methods: Forty prepared adult tooth dentin surfaces were randomly divided into 4 groups (n=10) according to adhesive and/or flowable composite material applied: group I: Dyad Flow (SAFC; Kerr, USA); group II: Fusio Liquid Dentin (SAFC; Pentron Clinical, USA); group III: Vertise Flow (SAFC; Kerr, USA); group IV: OptiBond All-In-One (Kerr) + Premise Flowable (CFC, Kerr, USA). Composite micro-specimens of each group were prepared on dentin surfaces according to manufacturer’s instructions, then stored in distelled water (37 o C, 24 h.) before µSBS testing. For interfacial morphology evaluation, mesial and distal class II slots were prepared in each of 16 teeth, then each group (n=4) were restored with its respective composite. Each specimen was sectioned mesio-distally and prepared for interface evaluation by SEM. µSBS data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA, followed by Tukey test. results: Each of the Self-adhering flowable composites (group I, II, and III) recorded µSBS value that was statistically comparable to that measured by a combination of all-in-one adhesive and conventional flowable composite (group IV). Also, there were no significant differences (p>0.05) in µSBS among Self-adhering flowable composite materials. SEM images showed that all materials exhibited a continuous interface and appeared well-adapted to dentin. conclusions: All Self-adhering flowable composites tested achieved satisfactory µSBS and marginal adaptation to dentin substrate.
Interface Interaction Model

: This paper develops a theoretical model which describes means for increasing the number of interactions and for enhancing social presence in an online learning environment. This model considers Anderson’s model of online learning and the variables indicated in the literature that might enhance social presence. These variables are: presence of others and response times. They were selected prioritising those that could affect the categories of indicators of social presence described by Garrison, Anderson and Archer. The model identifies three interface features that enhance social facilities: images, animation and text. Images, animation and text are used to portray social information while animation is used to present system feedback. In addition, this paper highlights the affective-motivational role of images, which might be crucial to students’ satisfaction with the interface in an online course. Four experiments were designed to test and validate the corresponding concepts. The results show that the use of images, animation and text to portray information about the others fosters web mail and instant mail interaction among students. In addition, the use of animation providing system feedback to incoming messages contributes to an increase in the number of interactions.
A test of the decision-time predictions of the the Best' model the

The “take the best” model of decision making proposes that people make decisions by sequentially searching amongst cues for one that best discriminates between the options being as- sessed. The search process starts with the best cue and pro-ceeds in descending order of cue validity until one is found that differentiates between the options. It follows, therefore, that the more cues a person is required to use, the longer it will take to make a decision. This study explored the relationship between response time and the number of cues needed to answer a binary choice question correctly. Participants were asked a series of questions about mammals and their response times were recorded. Results support the hypothesis that re-sponsetime increases as the number of cues required increases. Thisgives furtherevidence that a sequential search is occurring during binary-choice decision-making.
Green Supply Chain Practices on Corporate Sustainability Performance: An Empirical Study

The purpose of this paper is to validate the direct and intervening effects of internal and external Green Supply Chain Practices on Corporate Sustainability Performance. Further, the study tests for the moderating effect of Institutional pressures. The study uses multivariate casual modeling approach named Structural Equation Modeling, in order to validate the linkages among the latent constructs. Top and Middle level managerial workforce of the select Indian pharmaceutical companies are considered as the respondents for this empirical investigation, using simple random sampling method. The study uses adapted scales from the past researchers and with a response rate of 72.61 %, the author’s tested the formulated hypotheses and validate the proposed research framework. The study reveals that both the internal and external Green Supply Chain Practices significantly influences the Corporate Sustainability Performance with respect to the Pharmaceutical companies in India. Furthermore, Institutional Pressures such as coercive, normative and mimetic positively moderates the direct relationship between the two central latent constructs. The study offers implications for both practitioners and academicians. Given the complex regulatory and competitive norms, which are enveloping the firm’s business environment, Green Supply Chain Practices evolved as a significant predictor of Corporate Sustainability. Cross sectional research design, simple random sampling and select Indian Pharmaceutical companies are few of the limitations of the current study. Very few studies have focused on the importance of Green Supply Chain Practices with respect to the Indian Pharmaceutical companies and its managerial workforce and also the moderating variable considered as part of the study has significantly contributed to the academic literature of Environmental Management and Supply Chain Management.
Symbolic Methods for Exploring Infinite State Spaces

In this thesis, we introduce a general method for computing the set of reachable states of an infinite-state system. The basic idea, inspired by well-known statespace exploration methods for finite-state systems, is to propagate reachability from the initial state of the system in order to determine exactly which are the reachable states. Of course, the problem being in general undecidable, our goal is not to obtain an algorithm which is guaranteed to produce results, but one that often produces results on practically relevant cases. Our approach is based on the concept ofmeta-transition, which is a mathematical object that can be associated to the model, and whose purpose is to make it possible to compute in a finite amount of time an infinite set of reachable states. Different methods for creating meta-transitions are studied. We also study the properties that can be verified by state-space exploration, in particular linear-time temporal properties. The state-space exploration technique that we introduce relies on a symbolic representation system for the sets of data values manipulated during exploration. This representation system has to satisfy a number of conditions. We give a generic way of obtaining a suitable representation system, which consists of encoding each data value as a string of symbols over some finite alphabet, and to represent a set of values by a finite-state automaton accepting the language of the encodings of the values in the set. Finally, we particularize the general representation technique to two important domains: unbounded FIFO buffers, and unbounded integer variables. For each of those domains, we give detailed algorithms for performing the required operations on represented sets of values.
Theory and simulation of electrostatic wave turbulence in the space shuttle-induced plasma environment

Abstract : One of the important observations of the Plasma Diagnostic Package (PDP) experiments that were designed to probe the environment around the shuttle was the high degree of electrostatic turbulence in the ambient plasma compared to what has been observed from similar instruments flown on unmanned spacecraft. It is shown that the turbulence is caused by a process which involves the outgassing of water vapor from the shuttle orbiter, the subsequent collisional charge exchange of these water neutral molecules with ionospheric oxygen ions for form pick-up water ions, and the excitation of the beam-arc plasma instability. This is a new instability which is driven by the interaction of the beam-arc (i.e., asymmetric ring) velocity distribution function of the contaminating water ions with the background ionospheric plasma. (AN)
Water-repellent soil and its relationship to granularity , surface roughness and hydrophobicity : a materials science view

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A NOVEL IRIS BASED SECURITY POLICY USING LDP AND ENSEMBLE CLASSIFICATION

: Iris is one of important biometrics, which remains static and cannot be altered all-through the life of mankind. Iris is the most powerful biometric among all the other biological measures such as voice, fingerprint, palm print, signature and so on. Understanding the merit of iris, this paper presents an iris based security policy that grants access to the users by matching the iris of the individual with the trained iris sample. The main objective of this article is to attain maximum recognition accuracy. The objective is attained by segmenting the iris region and the extracted iris region is normalized. The Local Directional Pattern (LDP) features of the normalized iris images are extracted and the decision about user access grant or denial is made by the ensemble classifier. This work utilizes k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) as ensemble classifier. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated by varying the segmentation, feature extraction and classification techniques. On analysis, it is found that the performance of the proposed morphological operation based segmentation algorithm works better than the comparative segmentation algorithms. The idea of ensemble classification maximizes the recognition accuracy, as the final decision is made by considering the decisions of three efficient classifiers. The performance of the proposed approach is tested in terms of recognition accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. The proposed approach outperforms the existing approaches with better results.
Enhancing Transport of Hydrogenophaga ﬂava ENV735 for Bioaugmentation of Aquifers Contaminated with Methyl tert -Butyl Ether

The gasoline oxygenate methyl tert -butyl ether (MTBE) has become a widespread contaminant in groundwater throughout the United States. Bioaugmentation of aquifers with MTBE-degrading cultures may be necessary to enhance degradation of the oxygenate in some locations. However, poor cell transport has sometimes limited bioaugmentation efforts in the past. The objective of this study was to evaluate the transport characteristics of Hydrogenophaga ﬂava ENV735, a pure culture capable of growth on MTBE, and to improve movement of the strain through aquifer solids. The wild-type culture moved only a few centimeters in columns of aquifer sediment. An adhesion-deﬁcient variant ( H. ﬂava ENV735:24) of the wild-type strain that moved more readily through sediments was obtained by sequential passage of cells through columns of sterile sediment. Hydrophobic and electrostatic interaction chromatography revealed that the wild-type strain is much more hydrophobic than the adhesion-deﬁcient variant. Electrophoretic mobility assays and transmission electron microscopy showed that the wild-type bacterium contains two distinct subpopulations, whereas the adhesion-deﬁcient strain has only a single, homogeneous population. Both the wild-type strain and adhesion- deﬁcient variant degraded MTBE, and both were identiﬁed by 16S rRNA analysis as pure cultures of H. ﬂava . The effectiveness of surfactants for enhancing transport of the wild-type strain was also evaluated. Many of the surfactants tested were toxic to ENV735; however, one nonionic surfactant, Tween 20, enhanced cell transport in sand columns. Improving microbial transport may lead to a more effective bioaugmentation strategy for MTBE-contaminated sites where indigenous oxygenate degraders are absent.
Clinical Characteristics and Survival Outcomes of Infiltrating Lobular Carcinoma: A Retrospective Study of 365 Cases in China

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare the demographic characteristics, clinicopathological factors and survival outcomes between infiltrating lobular carcinoma (ILC) and infiltrating ductal carcinoma (IDC) using our single-center database. Methods: Seventeen thousand two hundred and three breast cancer patients were treated at Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center (FUSCC) from January 2000 to December 2017. We identified 365 cases with ILC and 16,838 cases with IDC. The Pearson chi-square test was used to compare tumor characteristics, and the Kaplan–Meier methods were used to perform the survival analysis. Results: ILC had some distinctive characteristics from IDC such as older age (ranged from 61 to 80: ILC 26.8% vs IDC 19.9%, P < 0.001; over 80: ILC 1.6% vs IDC 0.8%, P < 0.001), larger tumor size (ranged from 2 to 5: ILC 45.2% vs IDC 37.1%, P = 0.011), much more hormone receptor expression (ILC 92.9% vs IDC 73.0%, P < 0.001), extremely less HER-2 expression (ILC 7.1% vs IDC 25.9%, P < 0.001). The overall survival and disease-free survival of ILC were worse than IDC (5-year OS, ILC 93.6% vs IDC 94.5%, P < 0.001; 5-year DFS, ILC 88.5% vs IDC 91.6%, P = 0.008). It was worth noting that the ILC patients had a worse overall survival than IDC patients after our propensity score matching study (P = 0.037). The univariate analysis concluded that positive HR (hormone receptor), high expression of Ki67 and higher pathologic tumor stage were poor prognostic markers of ILC. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that tumor stage was a poor prognostic marker after adjustment for the effects of the above three factors. The most common primary site of metastasis was bone, but the proportion in the ILC group was much higher than that in the IDC group (56.25% vs 36.40%, P = 0.003). Conclusion: Compared with IDC, ILC survived worse and was more prone to bone metastasis. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of ILC and specific treatments are needed for further research.
Heterotopic Carcinoma?

A case of a follicular tumor in the sellar region is described without evidence of a primary tumor within the thyroid gland or at a site known to harbor ectopic thyroid tissue. Large amounts of thyroglobulin were readily demonstrated mainly within the colloid of the follicles. The possible development from heterotopic thyroid tissue at this unusual site is discussed. (
A Surveillance System to Counter Vandalism of Transmission Line Equipment

—This paper presents the development of a customized surveillance system to counter the vandalism of transmission line equipment on Uganda’s national transmission operator’s network. The system is based on the Raspberry Pi platform and incorporates a Minisense Piezo-vibration sensor, an Infrared-capable Camera board and a Huawei General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) modem. The system is able to detect vibrations arising from cutting of angle bars on steel pylons, take an evidentiary snapshot of the camera's field of view and annotates the snapshot with details such as Tower number, time and date. The system then relays this snapshot to a workstation in the monitoring centre and triggers an alert in the form of a blinking display. This surveillance system will be deployed on about 4800 steel tower pylons that are currently maintained by the transmission operator country-wide.
Uncovering Factors Associated with Malaysian Agribusiness Small Medium Enterprises (ASMEs) Business Sustainability: A Qualitative Approach

: Agribusiness Small Medium Enterprises (ASMEs) could strengthen thelocal economy by creating job opportunities besides acting as the fundamental unit for larger firms. Even though ASMEs have comparative advantages and is important for thelocal economy.It is harder for them to sustain the industry compared to their larger counterparts, especially during their preliminary 5 years.Therefore, this study is aimed to determine factors of Malaysian ASMEs sustainability through a focus group discussion (FGD) with 11 local agribusiness practitioners followed by a qualitative analysis by using ATLAS.ti 7. As a result, four (4) factors, namely entrepreneurial passion and motivation, entrepreneurship skills, business management and business relations were found to influence Malaysian ASMEs business sustainability. The findings of this study would aid both policy makers and new agricultural entrepreneurs. However, a quantitative study involving more ASMEs owners is required to rectify and demonstrate the relationship between factors of ASMEs business sustainability.
Correlation of light wavelengths on spectral cameras and vegetation indexes in barley crop scouting

: This paper presents a case study of a barley field experiment that was periodically scouted using a drone spectral camera. The camera has 4 bands so barley was scouted using 4 wavelengths of light - Green, Red, Red Edge and Nir Infra Red (NIR). Based on these wavelengths it is possible to calculate different vegetation indexes known in science and practice. In this paper, 15 such indices were used. The research work concerned the observation of correlation between individual wavelengths and corresponding vegetation indexes. This paper seeks to emphasize the importance of particular wavelengths and spectral areas in crop scouting.