Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of the gene Dynactin subunit 2 (Dctn2) in regulating the frequency of asymmetric cell divisions during mouse preimplantation embryonic development MASTER ́S THESIS

Preimplantation mouse embryonic development is defined as a developmental time-window started by oocyte fertilisation and concluding with uterine implantation, comprising a series of cleavage divisions that produce an increasing number of progressively smaller cells called blastomeres. Within this developmental time period three cell lineages are segregated. These are the trophectoderm, giving rise to the placenta, primitive endoderm later forming the yolk sac and epiblast building the embryo itself. Factors playing crucial roles during this process include the establishment of intra-cellular polarity and relative spatial cellular position that each contributes to the differential expression of key cell-fate influencing transcription factors. The segregation of the already mentioned cell lineages is accomplished in two successive waves of cell/blastomere internalisation occurring at the 8to 16-cell and 16to 32-cell transitions. During the 8to 16-cell division, individual cells either divide to produce one polarised daughter cell on the outside and a second apolar cell encapsulated inside the embryo (an asymmetric division), or in an orientation that yields two outer polarised daughters (a symmetric division). The orientation of 8-cell stage divisions is known to be affected by the mitotic spindle angle and nuclear positioning, relative to, and along, the apical-basolateral axis but the exact mechanism regulating these processes remain largely unknown. mTOR signalling is known to regulate the translation of a subset of mRNAs containing a so-called TOP motif (5’UTR) and is also known to influence chromosomal segregation and meiotic spindle positioning in oocytes. Chemical inhibition of the mTOR pathway negatively influences inner-cell formation in 16-cell stage embryos, potentially via the translational regulation of mRNAs related to spindle orientation/ nuclear position. Interestingly, based on a published lists of TOP-containing RNAs, candidate genes have been identified and include the dynactin subunit 2 mRNA which is known to affect both spindle orientation and nuclear positioning. Experiments investigating the clonal knock-down of this candidate gene during the 8to 16-cell stage transition are shown here to affect the generation of inner cells leading to reduced number of inner cells. This result implies to a requirement of Dctn2 in the mechanism enabling the appropriate division of blastomeres and generation of inner cells required to support further embryo development.
Exogenous hormones influenced the cuticular wax depositions on [i]Brassica[i] [i] napus[i] leaf and the cuticle functions

Background. Cuticular wax covers plant surface and plays important roles in protecting plants from abiotic and biotic stresses. The variations of wax deposition and chemical compositions under changing environments have been shown to be related to plant adaptations. However, it is still not clear whether the wax depositions could be adjusted to increase plant adaptations to stressed conditions. Methods. In this study, exogenous methyl jasmonate (MeJA), the ethylene precursor 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) and SA were applied to test their effects on cuticular wax deposition in two Brassica napus cultivars, Zhongshuang 9 (ZS9, low wax coverage ) and Yuyou 19 (YY19, high wax coverage). Next, we measured the water loss rate and the transcription expression of genes involved in wax biosynthesis as well as genes related to disease defense. Results. Seven wax compounds classes, including fatty acids, aldehydes, alkanes, secondary alcohols, ketones, and unbranched as well as branched primary alcohols, were identified in B. napus leaf wax mixtures. MeJA, SA and ACC treatments had no significant effect on total wax amounts of YY19, whereas reduced total wax amount in ACC-treated ZS9. Overall, hormone treatments led to an increase in the amounts of aldehydes and ketones, and a decrease of secondary alcohol in ZS9, whereas led to a decrease of alkane amounts and an increase of secondary alcohol amounts in YY19. Concomitantly, both cultivars also exhibited different changes in cuticle permeability, with leaf water loss rate per 15 min increased from 15 min to 30 min for ZS9 (except for ACC treated plant) and decreased for YY19. MeJA-treated plants of both cultivars relatively had higher water loss rate per 15 min when compared to other treatments. Conclusion. Our findings that B. napus leaf wax composition and cuticle permeability are altered by exogenous SA, MeJA and ACC suggest that the hormone treatments affected wax composition, and that the changes in wax profiles would cause changes in cuticle permeability.
Multidisciplinary research: should effort be the measure of success?

ABSTRACT Energy demand reduction and flexible demand from dwellings will play a critical role in achieving a low-carbon future. There remain many unanswered questions around the interaction of people with their environment and the technical systems that service them and, as a result, multidisciplinary research is a principal component of research funding internationally. However, relatively little published work considers the operational issues in undertaking epistemologically diverse, academic research projects. This paper makes a contribution by quantifying the operational effort involved in data collection on a large multidisciplinary project and connecting the operational issues encountered to knowledge production. It is found that the cost of the data gathering is £46,000/home, and participants can give upwards of 217 hours of their time per house engaging with data-gathering activities. The rate of knowledge production is found to be approximately three publication/full-time equivalents (FTE) over the lifetime of the project and the risk to generating interdisciplinary insights is shown to be dependent on largely unforeseeable operational issues that compound the characteristic differences in the collection of the data utilized by social and technical research communities.
The Effects of Epidermal Growth Factor on Membrane Potential

The effects of epidermal growth factor (EGF) on membrane potential were investigated in suspensions of the following three cell types endowed with a large complement of specific receptors: EGFR-T17 (a clone of mouse NIH-3T3 fibroblasts overexpressing EGF receptors); A431 and KB (two human carcinoma lines). In all these lines EGF induced a rapid and marked hyperpolarization constituted by an initial peak (in all three! cell lines) and a subsequent sustained plateau phase, concomitant with the well-known increase of [Cas+],. The time course and phorbol ester inhibitability of the membrane potential effects were the same as for the [Caa+]t response. Experiments with Na+-free and chloride-free media excluded a major role of the latter ions in the EGF-induced hyperpolarization. In contrast, experiments with high K+ media, with the monovalent cation ionophore gramicidin and with Cas+free media together with either a Ca2+ ionophore (ionomycin, in A431 and EGFR-T17), or an agonist (bradykinin, in A431) addressed to a receptor coupled to phosphoinositide hydrolysis, were consistent with the involvement of Ca2+-activated K+ channels. The EGFinduced hyperpolarization was completely blocked by the K+ channel blocker, quinidine, and unaffected by a variety of other drugs. Patch clamping of individual EGFR-T17 cells confirmed the initial hyperpolarization (from = -30 mV, the resting potential, to -60, -80 mV) was due to the activation of an outward current. This initial hyperpolarization was followed by fluctuations (period =l min) persisting as long as the cells could be analyzed. Thus, the changes of membrane potential appear to be not only novel members of the group of early events triggered by EGF in target cells but also long-lasting effects of the growth factor, which continue for unexpectedly long periods of time after EGF application.
Investigating the Impact of Modelling on the Teaching of Process Writing in a Primary Class

This paper reports how a teacher educator attempts to effect change in the practice of serving teachers through modelling process writing with a real class of ESL children aged at about ten. The process of teaching was observed by two in-service teachers. Three research questions were put forward: first, whether the teacher educator’s espoused theory will be modified by the theory in action gained through practice; second, the impact of modelling on the observer teachers and whether their theory in action will be modified by the modelling. Third, what impact does process writing have on the learning of the students? To answer these questions, the teacher educator employed qualitative research tools. It is found that the educator’s espoused theory on process writing is enhanced by the practice in a real class. The modelling process increases the observers’ motivation to try out the new practice through the successful demonstration of strategies in the same classroom context, which has eased the teacher’s concerns over student responses and constraints of classroom resources. Young learners have learnt metacognitive skills through process writing but they also exhibit some misunderstandings in the approach in their initial experience with this process.
Genomics of subacute ruminal acidosis

The present review will present the most recent development in sub-acute ruminal acidosis (SARA) regarding high concentrate diet and its interaction on gene expression. The SARA is a common disorder in high producing ruminants. In addition SARA is a big challenge for ruminant nutritionists, therefore, the subject has been extensively studied in recent decades. In current decade nutrigenomic has been used to understand the cellular response influenced by high concentrate diet in ruminants. For sustaina-bility of higher growth and production, animals are forced to feed on high concentrate and low fiber in diet. High concentrate diet leads to accumulation of higher concentration of VFA consequently ruminal pH decreases. Depression in pH for longer du-ration impairs ruminal epithelium tight junctions and hyperkeratosis. SARA is characterized by fewer tight junctions between cells, thinner cell layers, and an increased sloughing of the stratum corneum leading to a weakened permeability barrier. Ruminal epithelium serves as barrier for microbes, damages to ruminal epithelium leads to translocation of lipopolysaccharides (LPS) from compromised ruminal epithelium to blood circulation and different organs of the body. The LPS induce immunogenic response in ruminal papillae, epithelium, liver, and other organs. LPS induce a cascade mechanism of gene expression by binding with Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) a receptor for LPS, binding of LPS with TLR4 activate nuclear factor kappa B (NF- κ B) consequently genes for interleukin 6 (IL), IL-8, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)- α and many more genes were up regulated or down regulated in rumen epithelium and other organs. In conclusion feeding high concentrate diets to ruminants’ triggered local and systemic inflammation response at molecular level. By exploring the mechanism of SARA and its effects on gene up regulation or down regulation can be a value able tools for understanding the SARA and its adverse effects on animal health and production performance.
SELECTED THE EFFECT OF REMITTANCES ON HOUSEHOLD'S EXPENDITURE PATTERNS AND LABOR

This study measures the extent to which Nepal’s households change their expenditure patterns and labor supply in response to remittances, using the Nepal Household Risk and Vulnerability Survey – 2016 and employing a propensity score matching method. The results show that remittances have supported greater consumption of productive goods (such as durable goods, education and health), without discouraging labor supply of remittance-receiving family members. 4. This study provides stylized facts on migrant workers and remittance-recipient households, and then analyzes the effect of remittances on HHs' expenditure patterns and labor supply. This study uses the Nepal Household Risk and Vulnerability Survey – 2016 (NRVS-2016), compiled by the World Bank, and employs a propensity score matching (PSM) method to solve methodological problems such as selectivity and reverse causality. It used more updated data compared to previous studies (Thapa and Sanjaya, 2017) that relied on the Nepal Living Standard Survey 2010/11 (NLSS-2010/11), capturing changes since the 2015 earthquakes and trade disruptions.
CoRelatE: Modeling the Correlation in Multi-fold Relations for Knowledge Graph Embedding

Representation learning of knowledge bases aims to embed both entities and relations into a continuous vector space. Most existing models such as TransE, TransH and TransR consider only binary relations involved in knowledge bases, while multi-fold relations are converted to triplets and treated as instances of binary relations, resulting in a loss of structural information. M-TransH is a recently proposed direct modeling framework for multi-fold relations but ignores the relation-level information that certain facts belong to the same relation. This paper proposes a Group-constrained Embedding method which embeds entity nodes and fact nodes from entity space into relation space, restricting the embedded fact nodes related to the same relation to groups with Zero Constraint, Radius Constraint or Cosine Constraint. Using this method, a new model is provided, i.e. Gm-TransH. We evaluate our model on link prediction and instance classiﬁcation tasks, experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms related methods by a signiﬁcant margin.
Simulation Frameworks to Assess QoS Provisioning Solutions for Cloud-based Services

The rapid growth of Cloud Computing as an IT service across diverse organizational structures has brought forward the dire challenge of their performance evaluation. One of the key issues which affects both the cloud providers and the end users is the ability to assess the QoS/QoE of the cloud services under varied service offering scenarios. This provides an opportunity to the cloud computing researchers to propose and implement evaluation frameworks for understanding cloud services QoS/QoE issues. As a matter of fact, many such evaluation frameworks have been proposed which can simulate and test the cloud services before these services are commissioned to the customers, in order to eventually minimize service disruptions and performance degradation issues during the real-time operational phase. Hence the work in this paper attempts to critically evaluate and compare them in an organized and methodological way. The major contribution of the paper is to compare fifteen (15) most popular cloud simulation tools based on six (6) evaluation criteria and make informed recommendations on the choosing the tool based on the user requirements. Another contribution is, a detailed comparative study of the most popular QoS/QoE techniques for Cloud Computing system and their novel taxonomy and classification. As such, the paper aptly provides a rich study of QoS/QoE approaches and cloud computing simulation tools which can be a great resource for cloud service providers who can immensely benefit by adopting a solution based on the proposed guidelines and recommendations provided.
Wood Pellet-Fired Biomass Boiler Project at the Ketchikan Federal Building

Biomass boiler systems have existed for many years, but the technology has advanced in recent decades and can now provide automated and efficient operation for a relatively modest investment. Key advances in system monitoring and control allow for lower operating costs, since the control systems run all aspects of the boiler, including feed, load reduction and even tube cleaning. These advances have made such systems economical on a small scale in situations where inexpensive fuels like natural gas are not available. This creates an opportunity for building operators in remote, cold-climate locations to reduce the use of expensive fuels for heating buildings. GSA Region 10 installed the system at the federal building in Ketchikan, Alaska and submitted the project to the Green Proving Ground (GPG) program. GSA's GPG program contracted with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to assess the installation and the technology. The system serves as a demonstration to assess actual system efficiencies, as well as operating characteristics and financial benefits. In addition to installation and operational issues, the project team/researchers examined other issues, including fuel transportation costs, building energy savings, and overall economics.
Effect of pit latrine leaks on shallow well water

Ground water Pollution can arise from percolation and infiltration of contaminants through the soil under waste disposal sites. This Study is aimed at accessing the microbiological quality of well water, its suitability for human consumption, as well as its closeness to pit latrine in densely populated settlements of Dala Local Government Area of Kano state, Nigeria. The depth from the ground surface to the static water level, vertical depth of pit latrines and soil infiltration layer were determined for all sampling points. Twenty four samples of well water were collected and transported to the laboratory for physico-chemical analysis and microbiological quality determination. Temperature of water samples at the time of collection ranged from 23 0 c to 31 0 c, with sample from Dala having the highest value (31 0 c); that of Yalwa had the lowest temperature (23 0 c). Water collected from the 12 sampling sites were contaminated with general and/or fecal Coliforms and E. coli at different levels; with exception of five (5) sample sites that had zero E. coli. Furthermore, it was generally observed that water samples which were in close proximity to the pit latrines had relatively higher microbial load. Therefore, well and pit latrine should be sited far away from one another and each should be well constructed to avoid any fecal contamination from the pit to the well water.
The Ca 2 (cid:1) -sensing receptor couples to G (cid:2) 12/13 to activate phospholipase D in Madin-Darby canine kidney cells

and Miller. The Ca 2 -sensing receptor couples to G (cid:2) 12/13 to activate phospholipase D in Madin-Darby canine kidney cells. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol C22–C30, Ca 2 -sensing receptor (CaR) couples to multiple G proteins involved in distinct signaling pathways: G (cid:2) i to inhibit the activity of adenylyl cyclase and activate ERK, G (cid:2) q to stimulate phospholipase C and phospholipase A 2 , and G (cid:3)(cid:4) to stimulate phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. To determine whether the receptor also couples to G (cid:2) 12/13 , we investigated the signaling pathway by which the CaR regulates phospholipase D (PLD), a known G (cid:2) 12/13 target. We established Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cell lines that stably overexpress the wild-type CaR (CaR WT ) or the nonfunctional mutant CaR R796W as a negative control, prelabeled these cells with [ 3 H]palmitic acid, and measured CaR-stimulated PLD activity as the formation of [ 3 H]phosphatidylethanol (PEt). The formation of [ 3 H]PEt increased in a time-dependent man-ner in the cells that overexpress the CaR WT but not the CaR R796W . Treatment of the cells with C 3 exoenzyme inhibited PLD activity, which indicates that the CaR activates the Rho family of small G proteins, targets of G (cid:2) 12/13 . To determine which G protein(s) the CaR couples to in order to activate Rho and PLD, we pretreated the cells with pertussis toxin to inactivate G (cid:2) i or coexpressed regulators of G protein-signaling (RGS) proteins to attenuate G protein signaling (RGS4 for G (cid:2) i and G (cid:2) q , and a p115RhoGEF construct containing the RGS domain for G (cid:2) 12/13 ). Overexpression of p115RhoGEF-RGS in the MDCK cells that overexpress CaR WT inhibited extracellular Ca 2 (cid:1) -stimulated PLD activity, but pretreatment of cells with pertussis toxin and overexpression of RGS4 were without effect. The involvement of other signaling components such as protein kinase C, ADP-ribosylation factor, and phosphatidylinositol biphosphate was ex-cluded. These ﬁndings demonstrate that the CaR couples to G (cid:2) 12/13 to regulate PLD via a Rho-dependent mechanism and does so indepen-dently of G (cid:2) i and G (cid:2) q . This suggests that the CaR may regulate cytoskeleton via G (cid:2) 12/13 , Rho, and PLD.
Experimental Studies on Thermal Behavior of 6T Cryogen-Free Superconducting Magnet System

The main aim of this thesis is to report very comprehensive studies and analysis that I have carried out on different thermal aspects of a 6T Cryogen-free Superconducting Magnet System (CFMS) which is designed and built at IUAC. One of important parameter for any superconducting magnet is to achieve the desired field homogeneity by choosing proper dimensional parameter. The role dimensional parameters for the 6T NbTi magnet have been studied to achieve 0.07% field homogeneity at 10mm diametrical spherical volume at the magnetic center. The stability of the 6T NbTi magnet is greatly dependent by its operational margin which is determined by the current sharing temperature of the NbTi. The role of the operational load line has been discussed in determining the stability of the 6T NbTi magnet. The current sharing temperature of the 6T magnet has also been estimated. Two stage GM cryocooler is one of the critical components of the CFMS. The refrigeration load curves for both stages of SRDK-415 GM cryocooler have been generated in a cryocooler based test rig. The refrigeration load curves for the 1st stage of the cryocooler have been generated between 25K and 65K with 0-1.5W of load at the 2nd stage of the cryocooler. Similarly, the refrigeration load curves for the 2nd stage have been generated between 2.4K and 4.4K with 0-47.5W load at 1st stage of the cryocooler. The magnetic field profile for 6T solenoid magnet has been generated with the use of finite element magnetostatic simulation software (OPERA/TOSCA). Hybrid current lead is one of the crucial components of the CFMS. Thermal performance of inter-lead joint between hybrid lead and cold heads of the cryocooler plays a significant role in determining the stability of the NbTi magnet in the CFMS. A prototype lead joint has been characterized in the temperature range of 4-40K in a test rig with different interfacial material (Aluminium nitride/ Kapton) to achieve thermally conducting and electrically isolated joint. The extensive FEM analysis has also done using ANSYS for different types of conduction-cooled leads, optimized for 102A. Quenching is one of the important phenomenon for a superconducting magnet. The protection system for a superconducting magnet needs to be designed ingeniously. In this report, extensive FEM analysis has been done, using OPERA-3D/QUENCH for the 6T NbTi magnet. The analysis has shown the hot spot temperature of the 6T NbTi magnet would be 65-80K, if quenched at 102A. It has been compared with the experimental result. A detailed comparative studies have been done between different types of quench situation. Variable temperature inserts (VTI) is one of common feature integrated with each commercial CFMS to vary temperature on the sample space. The experimental studies have been performed on the gas gap heat switch (GGHS) integrated with CFMS. The feasibility of using GGHS as VTI has been studied up to 3T magnetic field.