Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Homophilic Binding of Junctional Adhesion Molecule-C Mediates Tumor Cell-Endothelial Cell Interactions*

The junctional adhesion molecule C (JAM-C) was recently shown to undergo a heterophilic interaction with the leukocyte β2 integrin Mac-1, thereby mediating interactions between vascular cells in inflammatory cell recruitment. Here, the homophilic interaction of JAM-C is presented and functionally characterized to mediate tumor cell-endothelial cell interactions. Recombinant soluble JAM-C in fluid phase bound to immobilized JAM-C as assessed in a purified system; moreover, JAM-C-transfected Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells adhered to immobilized JAM-C. The homophilic interaction of JAM-C was mediated by the isolated amino-terminal Ig domain (D1), but not the carboxyl-terminal Ig domain (D2), of the molecule. Dimerization of JAM-A is dependent on the sequence RVE in the amino-terminal Ig domain. This motif is conserved in JAM-C (Arg64-Ile65-Glu66), and a single amino acid mutation in this motif (E66R) abolished the homophilic interaction of JAM-C. The lung carcinoma cell line NCI-H522 was found to express JAM-C. NCI-H522 cells adhered to immobilized JAM-C, as well as to JAM-C-transfected CHO cells, but not to mock-transfected CHO cells or to CHO cells transfected with the JAM-C mutant (E66R). Adhesion of NCI-H522 cells to JAM-C protein or JAM-C-transfected CHO cells was abolished in the presence of soluble JAM-C or the isolated D1. Furthermore, the adhesion of NCI-H522 cells to endothelial cells was significantly blocked by soluble JAM-C or the isolated D1. Thus, JAM-C undergoes a homophilic interaction via the Arg64-Ile65-Glu66 motif on the membrane-distal Ig domain of the molecule. The homophilic interaction of JAM-C can mediate tumor cell-endothelial cell interactions and may thereby be involved in the process of tumor cell metastasis.
Ab initio protein folding simulations with genetic algorithms: Simulations on the complete sequence of small proteins

Ab‐initio folding simulations have been performed on three small proteins using a genetic algorithm‐ (GA‐) based search method which operates on an all atom representation. Simulations were also performed on a number of small peptides expected to be inde pendent folding units. The present genetic algorithm incorporates the results of developments made to the method first tested in CASP1. Additional operators have been introduced into the search in order to allow the simulation of longer sequences and to avoid premature free energy convergence. Secondary structure information derived from a consensus of eight methods and Monte Carlo simulations on sets of homologous sequences has been used to bias the starting populations used in the GA simulations. For the fragment simulations, the results generally have approximately correct local structure, but tend to be too compact, leading to poor RMS error values. One of the three small protein structures has the topology and most of the general organization correct, although many of the details are incorrect. Proteins, Suppl. 1:179–184, 1997. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Employee wellbeing in call centres

Call centres are often perceived to have a negative impact on employee wellbeing, mainly attributed to four factors: job design, performance monitoring, HR practices and team leader support. This article reports on a survey of 557 customer service representatives that examined the relationship of these factors to four measures of wellbeing: anxiety, depression and intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. One distinctive feature of this article is its focus on anxiety and depression, two major dimensions of wellbeing not addressed in call centre research to date. Results demonstrated that the factors most highly associated with wellbeing were high control over work methods and procedures, a low level of monitoring and a supportive team leader. Evidence also indicates that the level of wellbeing in some call centres is similar to that in other comparable forms of work.
Enhanced face recognition using Cross Local Radon Binary Patterns

In this paper we introduce a novel face representation method called Cross Local Binary Patterns(XLBP) to improve the robustness of face recognition for partially occluded and non-uniformly illuminated face images. In our method we use Radon transform to capture the coarse level shape information and XLBP to capture the texture information. Individual histograms computed on each sub-block of the face image and are concatenated in spatial pyramid fashion to get the complete face descriptor. Distance measures based on Pyramid Matching Kernel(PMK) is used to match these face descriptors. Experiments on FERET and YaleB databases show the significance of this method.
The monetary transmission in the euro area: post-1999 data assessment

This article investigates the transmission of monetary policy shocks in the euro area after 1999. To examine this we use empirical structural vector error correction models, built on the data for the period from 1999 to mid-2005. We identify a monetary shock by restricting it to have only temporary effects on output and inflation. We obtain negative responses of inflation and output to a restrictive monetary shock in the period under investigation. These results are obtained with the HICP based as well as the core inflation measure included in the model.
Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe: New Paradigms for the Territorial Project and Landscape

The article aims at offering a methodological contribution to the study and project of cultural routes. The cultural routes are analysed considering their nature of complex territorial systems. The potential which cultural routes may develop, if considered as cultural complex and inclusive goods, is the understanding of the interactions with the landscape at the change of socio-economic and cultural contexts crossed. In this sense, cultural routes are tools of development for a landscape project based on the endogenous resources of the territories.
Chronic dermatitis and hyperpigmentation from petrolatum

A 24-year-old black male had a dermatosis of 11 years' duration for which he had sought medical and dermatological advice on many occasions. He obtained subjective improvement by coating his face twice daily with petrolatum. Physical examination revealed a low-grade scaling dermatosis with marked hyperpigmentation. This was uniform, diffuse, and limited to the face. Since I had not previously seen a similar dermatosis, I wondered about the possibility of an unusual form of irritation due to petrolatum. With great difficulty we convinced him to temporarily discontinue the petrolatum and apply rose water instead. With this regimen, he cleared completely. Occlusive patch testing (48 h on the upper back) for delayed hypersensitivity with samples of petrolatum used by the patients was negative at 48 and 96 h. Duplicate patches were exposed to sub erythemal doses of UVB and the equivalent of 20 erythemal doses of UVA filtered through window glass (air cooled Kromayer lamp), with no evidence of dermatitis from either. Testing this patient for phototoxicity utilizing the method of Marzulli was negative (Maibach & Marzulli 1977). Battery testing with the ICDRG series was negative. As additional evidence of the relationship to petrolatum, we discontinued the rose water and restarted petrolatum. Within 3 days the dermatosis recurred, and was extensive in 1 week. The dermatosis cleared again when the petrolatum was stopped. He has been subsequently followed for 18 months without recurrence. We generally assume that petrolatum is of extremely low dermatitis-producing potential. This apparently is the case although this patient represents an exception. The most confusing aspect of the history clinically was the definite history that he subjectively felt better when petrolatum was applied. This made it even more difficult for him to accept the relationship between petrolatum and his dermatosis; a similar history occurs in topical corticoid-induced "pseudorosacea". We can not rule out the possibility of allergic or photoallergic contact dermatitis to a fraction of petrolatum present in too low a concentration to elicit a dermatitis with a single patch. If this were the case the material(s) presumably is present in white and yellow petrolatum, as the patient (on historical grounds only) had similar difficulty with both forms. The mechanics of this dermatosis (irritant or allergic) can not be stated at this time. The hyperpigmentation noted above cleared slowly but completely.
The Politics of Presence

1. From a Politics of Ideas to a Politics of Presence? 2. Political Equality and Fair Representation 3. Quotas for Women 4. Race-Conscious Districting in the USA 5. Canada and the Politics of Inclusion 6. Deliberation, Accountability, and Interest 7. Loose Ends and Larger Ambitions
Design of sliding mode and backstepping controllers for a quadcopter

The quadcopter is a great platform for control systems research as it is highly nonlinear and under-actuated system. The nonlinear dynamic model of the quadcopter is formulated using the Newton-Euler method. The motion of the quadcopter can be divided into two subsystems; a rotational subsystem (attitude and heading) and a translational subsystem (altitude, x and y motion). In this paper two Non-linear Control strategies, sliding mode control (SMC) and Backstepping control (BSC) have been proposed. A SMC is a type of Variable Structure Control. It uses a high speed switching control law to force the state trajectories to follow a specified user defined surface in the states space and to maintain the state trajectories on this surface. BSC is a recursive control algorithm that works by designing intermediate control laws for some of the state variables. These state variables are called "virtual controls" for the system. These Controllers have been implemented on the Quadcopter through simulations using MATLAB/Simulink. The results have been compared with traditional PID controller.
Water Conservation, Recycling and Reuse

The finite nature of renewable fresh water makes it a critical natural resource to examine in the context of population growth. Few other resources so essential to daily life are bounded by such fixed limits on supply. As population grows, the average amount of renewable fresh water available to each person declines, constraining efforts to improve health and living standards. When certain ratios of human numbers to renewable fresh water supplies are exceeded, water stress and outright scarcity are all but inevitable. The era of big water schemes is ending, as planned and implemented in the past. The requirements nowadays must take into consideration hard facts, such as that costs are increasing in real terms, the environmental and social consequences are considerable, and there are big questions about efficiency. What does work is the kind of careful conservation practised by an increasing number of water users. Water conservation provisions have far-reaching effects, and the recycling of water can be co.
Booms and Busts in Commodity Markets: Bubbles or Fundamentals?

This paper considers whether there were periodically collapsing rational speculative bubbles in commodity prices over a forty year period from the late 1960s. We apply a switching regression approach to a broad range of commodities using two different measures of fundamental values – estimated from convenience yields and from a set of macroeconomic factors believed to affect commodity demand. We find reliable evidence for bubbles only among crude oil and feeder cattle, showing the popular belief that the extreme price movements observed in commodity markets were caused by pure speculation to be unsustainable.
Dispersal of North Atlantic fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) into the Mediterranean Sea and exchange between populations: response to Giménez et al., Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom. 2013, 27, 1801-1806.

The earliest suggestions of a seasonal entrance of North Atlantic fin whales into the Mediterranean basin date back to the 19th century, and further supporting studies were published throughout the twentieth century. Despite these numerous reports, most of the recent literature on the distribution of the Mediterraneanfinwhale subpopulationhas assumedawestward seasonal migration of Mediterranean whales extending to the Strait of Gibraltar to feed in the northeastern North Atlantic Ocean, ignoring the hypothesis of an eastward influx from the North Atlantic as proposed in earlier studies. Castellote et al. (2012) revisited this subject and suggested that a seasonal entrance of North Atlantic fin whales into the Mediterranean basin was the best explanation for their acoustic results. Furthermore, this explanation was more consistent with recent results from stable isotope studies, visual observations and satellite telemetry of finwhales in theMediterranean basin, while also agreeing with current genetic knowledge. In their recent paper published in this journal, Giménez et al. (2013) describe stable isotope results from baleen plate tissue from five fin whales from the northeast Atlantic and compare them with Mediterranean results from Bentaleb et al. (2011). The authors conclude that North Atlantic whales penetrate into theMediterranean basin up to the northernmost latitudes of the region and that the border between the two putative subpopulations may not be as definite as previous acoustic investigations suggested. However, the authors have ignored or misinterpreted the acoustic results presented by Castellote et al. (2012) prompting the submission of this letter. In particular, we disagree with the following points:
MEDICINAL PLANTS USED AS ANTIMICROBIAL AGENTS: A REVIEW

Infectious diseases are c aused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi. Diseases can spread, directly or indirectl y, from one person to another. Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death worldwide. About one - fourth of all the med icines we use, come from rainforest plants. However, scientific studies have been conducted only to a limited extent with few medicinal plants. The development of bacterial resistance to presently available antibiotics has necessitated the search of new an tibacterial agents. In rural and backward area of India, several plants are commonly used as herbal medicine for the treatment of infectious diseases. Four such plants commonly used by the people of the area were scree ned for potential antibacterial activi ty.
Effectiveness of Further Vocational Training in Germany Empirical Findings for Persons Receiving Means-tested Unemployment Benefits

Further vocational training for the unemployed aims at enhancing their job prospects. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of subsidized training programs for means-tested unemployment benefit recipients in Germany. The empirical findings are based on rich administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency using propensity score matching to construct a suitable comparison group. We consider the initiation of training in early 2005, just after the reform of the German means-tested benefit system, which aimed at activating hard-to-place job-seekers, and after the introduction of a voucher system as the sole assigning mechanism for vocational training. We estimated the effects of vocational training for several groups differentiated by age, gender, migration background, skills, program duration, length of time since last job and differences between East and West Germany. As a result, we show that vocational training has a considerable beneficial impact on participants as it raises the employment rate in the intermediate term by up to 13 percentage points, and – with a slightly lower impact – it reduces the number of unemployment benefit II recipients.
Three approaches to measuring natural resource scarcity : theory and application to groundwater

Efficient pricing of a resource incorporates both marginal cost of extraction and scarcity rents. Since groundwater resources exhibit natural supply constraints, scarcity rents must be imposed on current users. Given the difficulty of establishing clear groundwater ownership rights, scarcity value frequently goes unrecognized and is difficult to estimate. This results in inefficient pricing and misallocation of the resource. This thesis builds on three different methods to develop appropriate theoretical and empirical models relevant for indirect estimation of these shadow scarcity rents, which we consider as the initial and most challenging step towards efficient groundwater management. Empirical analyses are based on economic and hydrological data from t he island of Cyprus, representative of semi-arid regions. Chapter 2 critically assesses previous theoretical and empirical attempts to derive the increase in social benefits from efficient pricing of groundwater and examines the potential for groundwater management. This potential is seriously challenged by Gisser-Sanchez's Effect (GSI): i.e. net benefits from optimally managing groundwater are insignificant for all practical purposes. Chapter 3 attempts a reexamination of GSI by developing a dynamic model of adaptation to increasing groundwater scarcity, when backstop technology is available. Both groundwater scarcity rents and management benefits are derived by simulating the optimal and competitive-commonality solutions. Results point to the absence of GSI in aquifers facing complete exhaustion in the near future. Chapter 4 proposes a refinement of revealed preference methods of valuation, by combining the hedonic and travel cost methods, and applies the refined model to derive the willingness to pay for groundwater quality. It is claimed t hat hedonic valuation of quality attributes can be misleading when the exogeneity assumption, with respect to these attributes, to sample selection is violated. Hence, the simultaneity between hedonic valuation and sample selection is modelled in the context of producer behaviour and investigated empirically in the case of land demanded for use as an input either in agricultural production or touristic development. The empirical analysis suggests that failing to correct for sample selection results in a biased valuation of groundwater quality. In chapter 5 duality theory is employed to develop the distance function methodology of deriving shadow groundwater scarcity rents. The empirical application of the model involves estimating a stochastic input distance function from which the in situ shadow price of groundwater is derived. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by comparing and contrasting the magnitude of groundwater scarcity rents and willingness to pay for scarce groundwater quality, derived from the models put forward in this research.
The Predictability of FOMC Decisions: Evidence from the Volcker and Greenspan Chairmanships

This paper examines whether there is a systematic relationship between FOMC decisions and publicly available data that would potentially allow the public to anticipate FOMC policy changes. We characterize each FOMC decision as a move to tighten, ease, or leave policy unchanged and use ordered probit to estimate models of the probabilities of each choice. We find a statistically significant relationship between FOMC decisions and measures of inflation and real activity, but this relationship does not accurately predict the directions of FOMC decisions. While short-term interest rate changes prior to FOMC meetings have predictive power, suggesting that the financial market can anticipate FOMC decisions somewhat, other financial variables such as stock price movements appear unrelated to FOMC policy changes. Overall, FOMC decisions are not highly predictable using publicly available data, and adding the private information contained in the FOMC's Greenbook does not significantly increase the predictive accuracy.
Internet shopping adoption by Greek consumers

This paper aims at developing profiles of consumers who have already conducted shopping through the Internet and of those who are interested to adopt Internet shopping as an innovation. Based on the theories and processes of consumer adoption decision and diffusion of innovations, the study measures demographic and behavioural characteristics, as well as perceptions and preferences of Greek consumers towards distance shopping in general and Internet retailing in particular. The survey conducted offers insightful preliminary empirical data based on which detailed profiles of Internet shoppers (“innovators”) and interested‐to‐adopt Internet shopping (“early adopters”) are developed. The empirical research findings of this study provide relevant managerial implications while setting the foundation for future research directions in this area.
Is there potential for a two-tier tanker market?

The simulations performed show that demand for quality tankers has to increase by 30% for a two-tier tanker market to emerge. The two-tier freight structure will only last for 3–5 years due to contracting induced by higher freight rates. This means that OPA does not by itself result in higher freight rates for tankers that comply with the requirements. If Western Europe also closes their trades to substandard tankers, a two-tier market emerges and quality tankers obtain a premium. The paper presents a simulation model for international tanker markets. The non-linear complementary equilibrium model solves for a sequence of static equilibria in segmented tanker freight markets, shipbuilding and scrapping markets. Freight markets are segmented according to quality requirements for tankers. The model specifies three tanker classes and one—quality tankers—can operate both market segments.
Perceived Environmental Dynamism and Managerial Risk Aversion as Antecedents of Manufacturing Outsourcing: The Moderating Effects of Firm Maturity

This study investigates how perceived environmental dynamism and managerial risk aversion influence a firm's manufacturing outsourcing activities. Based on a survey of 86 small manufacturing firms, the study found that higher levels of perceived environmental dynamism and managerial risk aversion are associated with increased outsourcing activity. These relationships are moderated by firm maturity such that newer firms engage in more manufacturing outsourcing than their mature counterparts when the environment is perceived to be more dynamic. Mature firms were found to outsource more than newer firms when their top‐management teams were relatively more risk averse.
Fuzzy Concept Lattice-based Approach for Reactive Motifs Discovery

Reactive motifs are short conserved regions discovered from binding and catalytic sites of enzymes sequences. Thus, reactive motifs provide more biological meaning than statistic-based motifs because they are directly extracted from where the chemical reaction mechanism occurs. Main problem of discovering reactive motifs is that only 4.94% enzymes sequences contain sites information. To overcome this problem, we present fuzzy concept lattice-based (FCL-based) method for discovering more general reactive motifs by incorporating biochemical knowledge. Fuzzy concept lattices are used to represent both binary and multi-value biochemical knowledge. The fuzzy concept lattice Join operator is applied to determine complete substitution groups that obtains more general reactive motifs. Experiments are conducted among di fferent methods of determining complete substitution groups: FCL-based, concecpt lattice-based (CL-based) and similarity-based method. Experimental results show that FCL-based method significantly outperforms other methods in term of coverage value and F-measure with SVM learning algorithm. Therefore, fuzzy concept lattice provides more efficient computational support for complete substitution groups operation than that of other existing methods.