Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mice null g Diabetic-SCID/IL-2rStem Cell-Engrafted Nonobese Xenogeneic Thymopoiesis in Hematopoietic Dynamics of Human Prothymocytes and

To model the developmental pattern of human prothymocytes and thymopoiesis, we used NOD-scid/ g c 2 / 2 mice grafted with human umbilical cord blood CD34 + hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs). Human prothymocytes developed in the murine bone marrow (BM) from multipotent CD34 ++ CD38 lo lineage 2 HPCs to CD34 ++ CD7 + CD2 - pro-T1 cells that progressed in a Notch-dependent manner to CD34 + CD7 ++ CD2 + pro-T2 cells, which migrated to the thymus. BM prothymocyte numbers peaked 1 mo after graft, dropped at mo 2, and persisted at low levels thereafter, with only a few CD34 + CD7 lo prothymocytes with limited T potential being detected by mo 5. As a consequence, thymopoiesis in this xenogeneic setting began by weeks 4–6, peaked at mo 3, and decreased thenceforth. Analyzing mice grafted at 2, 4 or 8, mo of age showed that in an “older” BM, prothymocyte differentiation was perturbed and resulted in CD34 + CD7 lo prothymocytes with limited T potential. Whereas the early drop in BM thymopoietic activity was related to a Notch-independent loss of T potential by CD34 ++ CD38 lo lineage 2 HPCs, the later age-dependent production decline of prothymocytes was linked to a more complex mix of cell-intrinsic and microenvironmental defects. Accordingly, and contrasting with what was observed with umbilical cord blood HPCs, CD34 + HPCs from human adult BM displayed only marginal thymopoietic activity when grafted into young 2-mo-old NOD-scid/ g c 2 / 2 mice. These data demonstrate that the developmental pattern of BM prothymocytes during human late fetal and early postnatal life can be reproduced in humanized mice, and they suggest that onset of human thymus involution relates to decreased colonization by prothymocytes. The Journal of Immunology , 2012, 189: 000–000.
C ONSISTENCY AND C ONCERN ON IS J OURNAL R ANKINGS

This study investigates the relationship between the journal rankings reported in five previous studies and the journal rankings based on citation-based indices for journal quality. The comparison results suggest that journal rankings derived based on citation analysis and from IS researchers’ perceptions of journal quality are only moderately consistent. Additionally, this consistency for IS research journals is significantly higher than that for allied discipline research journals. Thus, ranking both IS research journals and allied discipline research journals together as one long journal list may lead to incorrect evaluation of quality of
ESTIMATION OF HETEROSIS AND INBREEDING DEPRESSION IN 4 BARLEY UNDER NORMAL AND WATER STRESS CONDITIONS.

: The objective of the present investigation was to estimate heterosis and inbreeding depression controlling the agronomic traits and yield and its components of 4 barley crosses, by means of the six populations (P 1 , P 2 , F 1 , F 2 , BC 1 and BC 2 ) of the four barley crosses. Results revealed that, positive heterotic effects relative to the mid parent and better parent were found for most of the studied traits under both conditions. Generally, the most promising crosses were the two crosses 2 and 4, were found to be higher in magnitude, which will be interest in breeding programs for improving the most studied traits in barley.
High culturability of epiphytic bacteria and frequency of biosurfactant 1 producers on leaves 2

23 To better characterize the bacterial community members capable of biosurfactant production on 24 leaves, we distinguished culturable biosurfactant-producing bacteria from non-producers and 25 used community sequencing to compare the composition of these distinct cultured populations 26 with that from DNA directly recovered from leaves. Communities on spinach, romaine, and head 27 lettuce leaves were compared with adjacent samples of soil and irrigation source water. Soil 28 communities were poorly described by culturing, with recovery of cultured representatives from 29 only 21% of the prevalent OTUs (>0.2% reads) identified. The dominant biosurfactant producers 30 cultured from soil included Bacilli and Pseudomonads. In contrast, the cultured communities 31 from leaves are highly representative of the culture-independent communities with over 85% of 32 the prevalent OTUs recovered. The dominant taxa of surfactant producers from leaves were 33 Pseudomonads as well as the infrequently-studied genus Chryseobacterium . The proportion of 34 bacteria cultured from head lettuce and romaine leaves that produce biosurfactants was directly 35 correlated with the culture-independent proportion of Pseudomonads in a given sample, whereas 36 spinach harbored a wider diversity of biosurfactant producers. A subset of the culturable bacteria 37 in irrigation water also became enriched on romaine leaves that were overhead irrigated. 38 Although our study was designed to identify surfactant producers on plants, we also provide 39 evidence that most bacteria in some habitats such as agronomic plant surfaces are culturable, and 40 these communities can be readily investigated and described by more classical culturing 41 methods. 42 43
Telomere movement is constrained by interactions with an inner nuclear lamin structure

Summary The interphase nucleus is thought to contain a three-dimensional filamentous protein network that provides structural support to chromosomes and facilitates transcription, RNA processing, DNA replication and DNA repair. The molecular composition of this network is, however, not clear. In this work we investigate whether telomeres, which are distributed throughout the nuclear interior, are attached to a nuclear matrix structure composed of lamin proteins. We used RNA interference to knockdown components of the nuclear matrix and latrunculin to depolymerize the nuclear actin network. Fluorescence time-lapse imaging revealed that telomeres become more dynamic in lamin A/C depleted cells but not in lamin B2 depleted cells. In addition, telomeres are more dynamic in emerin depleted cells and in cells that have been treated with latrunculin. These results suggest that telomeres are associated to a complex con-sisting of lamin A/C, emerin and actin and that the movement of telomeres is constrained by this association.
Effects of 12-0-Tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate on Carcinogen-induced Mouse Mammary Lesions in Organ Culture1

Mammary glands of young female BALB/c mice develop hyperplastic nodule-like alveolar lesions (NLAL) in response to a 24-h exposure to 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DM BA; 2 Mg/ml) on Day 3 during a 24-day organ culture. Experiments were conducted to determine if 12-0-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA), a known tumor promoter, can influence the development of DMBA-induced NLAL in mammary gland organ culture. Mammary glands were incubated with TPA (25 ng/ml) for various periods of time in the presence of appropriate hormone combi nations. Results indicated that the presence of TPA in the medium between Days 9 to 14 of the culture period enhanced both the incidence and multiplicity of DMBA-induced NLAL; however, it was ineffective when included in the medium between Days 4 to 9 or 19 to 24 of the organ culture. Toxicity of TPA was evident when it was present during the entire culture period subsequent to DMBA treatment. Computer-assisted image analysis of NLAL in the glands determined the area covered by these lesions within the gland. It was observed that 7.8% of the area was covered by NLAL in DMBA plus TPA-treated glands as compared to 2.5% by DMBA treatment alone. These results provide a model for initiation-promotion studies of mammary carcinogenesis in vitro, as well as a modified approach for quantitative analysis of structural alterations.
Synthesis and NO 2 Sensing Properties of SnS 2 Nanoplates

: Two-dimensional (2D) metal sulfide materials are ideal for use in gas sensing applications due to their low electronic noise and a large specific surface area, and the research on highly efficient and morphologically controllable methods for preparing two-dimensional metal sulfide materials is necessary. Highly crystalline 2D hexagonal SnS 2 nanoplates (NPs) with different morphologies were prepared by high temperature chemical bath method. SnS 2 NPs were characterized by XRD, SEM and TEM techniques, and their gas sensing properties were further investigated. The results show that when the molar ratio of oleic acid (OAc) and oleylamine (OAm) are 1:1, the shape of typical SnS 2 NPs is a uniform hexagon, with a diameter of about 150 nm and a thickness of about 4 - 6 nm. The gas sensing test shows typical SnS 2 NPs are responsive to NO 2 gas, and the sensing process is reversible and selective. The optimal operating temperature is 130 ℃ , and the response and recovery time are 98 s and 680 s, respectively.
Accelerating Reliability Simulation of NAND-Flash Based Solid State Drives

Reliability is an important factor to consider when designing and deploying SSDs in storage systems. Both the endurance and the retention time of ﬂash memory are impacted by the history of low-level stress and recovery patterns to Flash cells, which are determined by the workload characteristics, the time period over which the workload utilizes the SSD, and the FTL algorithms. Accurately assessing SSD reliability requires simulating the workload behavior over timescales that span several years, which is very time-consuming. This thesis presents a methodology that uses snapshot-based sampling and clustering techniques to reduce the simulation time while maintaining high accuracy. The methodology leverages the key insight that most of the large changes in retention time occur early in the lifetime of the SSD, whereas most of the simulation time is spent in the latter stages. This allows for simulation acceleration to be focused on the latter stages without signiﬁcant loss of accuracy. We show that our approach provides an average speedup of 12X over detailed simulation with an error of 3.21% in the estimated mean and 6.42% in the estimated standard deviation of the retention times of the blocks in the SSD.
Hierarchical Kendall Copulas and the Modeling of Systemic and Operational Risk

We propose and study a hierarchical dependence model. Its properties are analyzed and techniques for estimation and model selection are developed. For sampling, different methods are derived and evaluated. Furthermore, we consider two important types of financial risk: systemic and operational risk. Systemic risk is assessed based on the interconnectedness of financial institutions and using a hierarchical model. For operational risk management, we develop a flexible dependence model.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Recent Work Title Symplectic multi-particle tracking on GPUs Permalink

A symplectic multi-particle tracking model is implemented on the Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) language. The symplectic tracking model can preserve phase space structure and reduce non-physical effects in long term simulation, which is important for beam property evaluation in particle accelerators. Though this model is computationally expensive, it is very suitable for parallelization and can be accelerated significantly by using GPUs. In this paper, we optimized the implementation of the symplectic tracking model on both single GPU and multiple GPUs. Using a single GPU processor, the code achieves a factor of 2-10 speedup for a range of problem sizes compared with the time on a single state-of-the-art Central Processing Unit (CPU) node with similar power consumption and semiconductor technology. It also shows good scalability on a multi-GPU cluster at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. In an application to beam dynamics simulation, the GPU implementation helps save more than a factor of two total computing time in comparison to the CPU implementation.
University of Birmingham Capillary-scale solid rebounds

A millimetre-size superhydrophobic sphere impacting on the free surface of a quiescent bath can be propelled back into the air by capillary effects and dynamic ﬂuid forces, whilst transferring part of its energy to the ﬂuid. We report the ﬁndings of a thorough investigation of this phenomenon, involving different approaches. Over the range from minimum impact velocities required to produce rebounds to impact velocities that cause the sinking of the solid sphere, we focus on the dependence of the coefﬁcient of restitution, contact time and maximum surface deﬂection on the different physical parameters of the problem. Experiments, simulations and asymptotic analysis reveal trends in the rebound metrics, uncover new phenomena at both ends of the Weber number spectrum, and collapse the data. Direct numerical simulations using a pseudo-solid sphere successfully reproduce experimental data whilst also providing insight into ﬂow quantities that are challenging to determine from experiments. A model based on matching the motion of a perfectly hydrophobic impactor to a linearised ﬂuid free surface is validated against direct numerical simulations and used in the low-Weber-number regime. The hierarchical and cross-validated models in this study allow us to explore the entirety of our target parameter space within a challenging multi-scale system.
Current situation in France regarding Xylella fastidiosa : recent developments and validation of detection method on plants and vector Philaenus spumarius .

: The validated method (MA039) used in France to detect Xylella fastidiosa in plant samples in the framework of regulated surveillance is based on a Real-Time PCR (Harper et al., 2010) applied on plant DNA extracted with the QuickPick SML kit (Bio-Nobile). The MLST (Multi Locus Sequence Typing) (Yuan et al ., 2010, EPPO PM7/24) scheme is applied to identify the sequence types and the subspecies. Until now the bacterium X. fastidiosa subspecies multiplex was mostly detected on about forty plant species, mainly ornamental of the Mediterranean area. These methods were optimized to improve their sensitivity on plant matrices such as olive tree, oak and on the insect vector Philaenus spumarius . They should contribute to the revision of the EPPO protocol.
An improved model for seismic risk assessment in Portugal

Purpose Portugal experienced very destructive earthquakes in the past, such as the well-known "Lisbon Earthquake" in 1755. With such in mind, accurate estimates of human and economic losses can play a significant role in providing various societal key players with objective information for response strategies. The present paper aims to present the contribution of the most recent study in Portugal (PRISE) concerning comprehensive seismic risk assessment, which can be used as good practice and reproduced in different contexts. Design/methodology/approach PRISE (Earthquake loss assessment of the Portuguese building stock) covered three main lines of research, corresponding to the three components typically considered in any seismic risk assessment study: i) the characterization of the seismic hazard; ii) the identification of the exposure to earthquakes and loss potential; and iii) the vulnerability of the exposed assets. Each of those components was fully characterized through the collection of census and l.
when confronted by scarcely opsonized and/or highly mobile targets. Dynamic macrophage “probing”

The Rockefeller University Press $30.00 J. Cell Biol. Vol. 191 No. 6 1205–1218 www.jcb. org/cgi/doi/10.1083/jcb.201007056 JCB 1205 Correspondence to Sergio Grinstein: sergio.grinstein@sickkids.ca Abbreviations used in this paper: FcR, Fc receptor; PI(3,4,5)P3, phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-trisphosphate; PI(4,5)P2, phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate; PM-GFP, palmitoylated/myristoylated-tagged GFP; SPT, single-particle tracking; sRBC, sheep red blood cell; TIR-FM, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy. Introduction
Effect of Different Sheep Globulin Preparations on Infection of Mice with EMC Virus

The role of interferon in host resistance to viral infection has not been established. Although administration of interferon can confer a marked protection on virus-infected animals (1), the evidence that it is important in limiting virus infection has been indirect, based for the most part on temporal associations between the presence of virus and interferon in different tissues (2). Two direct means of determining the role of interferon in experimental or natural virus infections would be: (a) use of an animal incapable of producing interferon or insensitive to its action (such an animal has not been described); and (b) use of a selective inhibitor of interferon production or action. Metabolic inhibiters which inhibit both interferon production and action also affect many host functions and are therefore not selective. An anti-interferon antibody should however combine selectively with extracellular interferon produced by viralinfected tissues and prevent interferon from protecting uninfected cells. Fauconnier has in fact shown that inoculation of sheep anti-mouse interferon serum of low potency was associated with a more rapid onset of disease and an increased mortality in mice infected with very small amounts of Semliki Forest virus (3, 4). The development of techniques for the production of potent and partially purified mouse interferon (5) enabled us to obtain sheep anti-mouse interferon serum 1,000-fold more potent than that previously used. Administration of this serum to mice markedly altered the evolution of several virus diseases, clearly demonstrating the importance of interferon in the early response to some viral infections. We present in some detail in this article the results of our experiments using encephalomyocarditis virus and in the accompanying article the results of experiments using several other viruses.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) enhancement using an approximate string matching technique

Many researchers have focused on improving optical character recognition (OCR) efficiency by developing new techniques using image processing based methodologies. However, the major limitations of image processing techniques are their complexity and computational intensity. Thus, they are not applicable to some real-time application. The main highlight of this paper is that we present a new method for enhancing OCR using a simple approximate string matching technique to complement existing OCR algorithms. The experimental results revealed that the proposed methods can enhance the performance of OCR algorithms measured by precision. The accuracy of Thai word recognition was increased by up to 85.72% compared to use of traditional OCR techniques.
DNA Polymorphism and Assessments of Genetic Relationships in genus Zoysia Based on Simple Sequence Repeat Markers

The genetic variability of four species of the genus Zoysia collected from South Korea was analyzed using an inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) marker system. Polymerase chain reactions (PCR) with eight ISSR primers generated 86 amplicons, 76 (87.1%) of which were polymorphisms. The polymorphism information content (PIC) value of the ISSR marker system was 0.848. The percentage of polymorphic loci ( P p) ranged from 41.2% to 44.7%. Nei’s gene diversity ( H ) ranged from 0.149 to 0.186, with an average overall value of 0.170. The mean of Shannon’s information index ( I ) value was 0.250. Total genetic diversity values ( H T ) varied between 0.356 (ISSR-1) and 0.418 (ISSR-16), for an average overall polymorphic loci of 0.345. Interlocus variation in within-species genetic diversity ( H S ) was low (0.170). On a per-locus basis, the proportion of total genetic variation due to differences among species ( G ST ) was 0.601. This indicated that about 60.1% of the total variation was among species. Thus, about 39.9 of genetic variation was within species. The estimate of gene flow, based on G ST , was very low among species of the genus Zoysia ( N m = 0.332). The phylogenic tree showed three distinct groups: Z. macrostachya and Z. tenuifolia clades and other species were formed the separated clusters. In conclusion, the ISSR assay was useful for detecting genetic variation in the genus Zoysia, and its discriminatory power was comparable to that of other genotyping tools.
DOES THE CHOICE OF CSR PERFORMANCE RATING PROVIDER MATTER?

At present, there are three major suppliers of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance ratings: Thomson Reuters (ASSET4); MSCI (ESG Intangible Value Assessment (IVA)); and Sustainalytics (ESG Indicator). Almost all of the large-scale empirical studies dealing with CSR reporting use only one of the three providers as the source for their CSR performance measures. Given the subjective processes underlying the development of CSR performance ratings, prior research is beginning to question the construct validity of the ratings as well as their robustness across providers. The purpose of our study is to review the CSR performance constructs and proxies employed in studies published in a select set of influential journals and working paper series, and to analyze how the results of CSR studies may be influenced by the selection of CSR performance proxies. We believe that this research is critically important because the social and environmental accounting literature is building on significant results generated by different proxies for CSR performance.
Exploring Factors Influencing Older Adults' Willingness to Use Robo-Advisors

This exploratory study investigated factors that influence older adults’ (aged 50 or above) willingness to use robo-advisor, a type of financial technology (“FinTech”). In recent years, it has been receiving increasing attention from users because it is democratizing financial services. Many studies have been conducted on user adoption of robo-advisors. Only few empirical studies investigated how users’ literacy skills and behavioural traits affect their intentions to adopt robo-advisors, but none focusing on older population. In this study we collected survey data from 154 older adults living across United States. Our data analysis showed that trust and anxiety are significantly related to older adults’ willingness to use robo-advisors. Surprisingly, in contrast to many empirical findings, we found that e-literacy is negatively related to older adults’ willingness to use this technology. Based on these findings, we offered discussion regarding future direction for FinTech development and research to benefit the older demographics.