Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Affinity and Avidity of the LFA-1 Integrin is Regulated by Phosphorylation

Academic Dissertation To be present for public criticism, with the permission of 1. LEUKOCYTE FUNCTION-ASSOCIATED ANTIGEN-1 1.1 Introduction 9 1.2 LFA-1 binds to ICAMs 10 1.3 Biology of LFA-1 11 LFA-1 is involved in several fundamental biological processes 11 Leukocyte adhesion deficiency and LFA-1-deficient mice 13 1.4 LFA-1 as a signalling receptor 14 Two-way signalling through LFA-1 14 Intracellular signalling controlling LFA-1 activation 15 2. INTEGRIN STRUCTURE AND AFFINITY CHANGES 2.1 Structure of the integrin ectodomain 17 The α-subunit 17 The β-subunit 18 2.2 Structure of the cytoplasmic tails 19 2.3. Models for LFA-1 ligand binding and activation 21 Structural basis of LFA-1 ligand-binding 21 Global conformational changes in the integrin ectodomain 23 3. CYTOPLASMIC DOMAINS AND REGULATION OF AVIDITY 3.1. Important motifs in the integrin cytoplasmic tails 24 3.2. LFA-1 interacts with a variety of intracellular proteins 26 Actin-binding proteins 26 Cell signalling proteins 28 3.3. Regulation of avidity 29 4. PHOSPHORYLATION OF THE INTEGRIN CYTOPLASMIC TAILS 4.1 Integrin β-chain phosphorylation 30 Serine/threonine phosphorylation 30 Tyrosine phosphorylation 32 4.2. Integrin α-chain phosphorylation 33 SUMMARY OF THE STUDY 5. AIMS OF THE STUDY 35 6. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES 36 7. RESULTS 7.1. The role of the tyrosine kinase Lck in the regulation of the LFA-1 activation in human T lymphocyte 37 7.2. Characteristics of LFA-1 β chain phosphorylation 37 7.3. Identification of the phosphorylation site and stoichiometry in the αL chain 38 7.4. LFA-1 phosphorylation in the regulation of integrin activation 39 8. DISCUSSION 8.1. Lck is important for activation of LFA-1 41 8.2. Threonine phosphorylation of the β2 chain regulates LFA-1 activation through affinity-independent mechanisms 42 8.3. Serine phosphorylation of αL regulates LFA-1 activation through affinity-dependent mechanisms 44 CONCLUDING REMARKS 46 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 47
Parameter Extraction Procedure for an Electrothermal Transistor Model

A simple method for transistor DC parameter extraction is presented, where the self-heating of the transistor is taken into account. The thermal behaviour of the tran- sistor is modelled using a single thermal resis- tance, whose value is extracted simultaneously with the electrical parameters. When pulsed measurements are performed the usage of the thermal resistance, as an eective thermal re- sistance, is still justied. The method is ap- plied to MESFET parameter extraction.
Low-level dynamic system formation with high-level automation: extending UML in support of UPnP

One way of defining system evolvability is in terms of the lowlevel discrete-systems composition and dynamic bindings. Evidently, direct low-level implementation has its drawbacks and might be expensive for the performance of system formation process and system integrity. Engaging high-level design capabilities based on a standard method in support of low-level system formation can find a crucial role in this setting. Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a well-known standard facilitating dynamic integration of devices into networks. Operating as a low-level programming method, UPnP might be composed with high-level design facilities. This paper presents a conceptual framework to provide UPnP with native UML support through UML extensions. An implemented UML to UPnP conversion model offers the contribution of this research as an automated solution for the high-level support.
Why Don't People Insure Late Life Consumption: A Framing Explanation of the Under-Annuitization Puzzle

Rational models of risk-averse consumers have difficulty explaining limited annuity demand. We posit that consumers evaluate annuity products using a narrow "investment frame" that focuses on risk and return, rather than a "consumption frame" that considers the consequences for lifelong consumption. Under an investment frame, annuities are quite unattractive, exhibiting high risk without high returns. Survey evidence supports this hypothesis: whereas 72 percent of respondents prefer a life annuity over a savings account when the choice is framed in terms of consumption, only 21 percent of respondents prefer it when the choice is framed in terms of investment features.
Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World

The tools nonprofits need to measure the impact of their social media Having a social media measurement plan and approach can no longer be an after-thought. It is a requirement of success. As nonprofits refine their social media practice, their boards are expecting reports showing results. As funders provide dollars to support programs that include social media, they too want to see results. This book offers the tools and strategies needed for nonprofits that need reliable and measurable data from their social media efforts. Using these tools will not only improve a nonprofit? s decision making process but will produce results-driven metrics for staff and stakeholders. A hands-on resource for nonprofit professionals who must be able to accurately measure the results of their social media ventures Written by popular nonprofit blogger Beth Kanter and measurement expert Katie Delahaye Paine Filled with tools, strategies, and illustrative examples that are highly accessible for nonprofit professionalsThis important resource will give savvy nonprofit professionals the information needed to produce measurable results for their social media.
An examination of the costs and benefits of the quality assurance mechanisms of Authorised Validating Agencies applicable to three key stakeholder groups - higher education institutions, Access Course providing institutions and students

This work outlines the history of Access Courses and explains the National quality assurance framework established to co-ordinate standards within such provision. The National Framework consists of a number of Authorised Validating Agencies (AVAs) who have been empowered to validate Access provision subject to various quality assurance mechanisms. The quality assurance requirements of AVAs are generalised and the effects they have, in terms of costs and benefits, to a number of stakeholders are detailed. Key stakeholders identified are the providing institution, students, and higher education institutions. The general principles of cost-benefit analysis are outlined along with case study examples. A computer-based model is produced with the capability of manipulating the generalisable costbenefit factors to accommodate local conditions and could therefore be used as a decision support aid by the three key stakeholder groups. The application of the model beyond the case studies is also discussed. The problematic nature of applying cost-benefit analysis to the quality assurance mechanisms of Access Courses is also considered. Areas where further research is required are outlined.
A Case of Acute Osteomyelitis: An Update on Diagnosis and Treatment

Osteomyelitis in children is a serious disease in children requiring early diagnosis and treatment to minimize the risk of sequelae. Therefore, it is of primary importance to recognize the signs and symptoms at the onset and to properly use the available diagnostic tools. It is important to maintain a high index of suspicion and be aware of the evolving epidemiology and of the emergence of antibiotic resistant and aggressive strains requiring careful monitoring and targeted therapy. Hereby we present an instructive case and review the literature data on diagnosis and treatment.
Three Steps to Breaking Immune Tolerance to Lymphoma: A Microparticle Approach

Makkouk and colleagues show that intratumoral delivery of doxorubicin in polylactide-co-glycolide micro-particles combined with antibodies against OX40 and CTLA-4 induced T cell–dependent systemic responses that enhanced T-cell infiltration into and eradication of distant tumors and improved survival in mouse models of lymphoma. In situ immunization aims at generating antitumor immune responses through manipulating the tumor microenvironment. On the basis of recent advances in the understanding of antitumor immunity, we designed a three-step approach to in situ immunization to lymphoma: (i) inducing immunogenic tumor cell death with the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin. Doxorubicin enhances the expression of “eat-me” signals by dying tumor cells, facilitating their phagocytosis by dendritic cells (DC). Because of the vesicant activity of doxorubicin, microparticles made of biodegradable polymer poly(lactide-co-glycolide) or PLGA can safely deliver doxorubicin intratumorally and are effective vaccine adjuvants, (ii) enhancing T-cell activation using anti-OX40 and (iii) sustaining T-cell responses by checkpoint blockade using anti–CTLA-4. In vitro, doxorubicin microparticles were less cytotoxic to DCs than to B lymphoma cells, did not require internalization by tumor cells, and significantly enhanced phagocytosis of tumor cells by DCs as compared with soluble doxorubicin. In mice, this three-step therapy induced CD4- and CD8-dependent systemic immune responses that enhanced T-cell infiltration into distant tumors, leading to their eradication and significantly improving survival. Our findings demonstrate that systemic antitumor immune responses can be generated locally by three-step therapy and merit further investigation as an immunotherapy for patients with lymphoma. Cancer Immunol Res; 3(4); 389–98. ©2015 AACR.
Information-Centric Systems for Supporting Decision-Making in Watershed Resource Development

In recent years, worldwide water policy and management have come to address the fundamentally interconnected nature of watershed resources using a holistic, integrated approach to water management, whereby the whole watershed system is taken into account. The main goal of this paper is to provide an illustration of the development of an information-centric system (ICS) for the management of watershed resources applied to two Romanian Watersheds: Arges and Dambovita. In the present context, ICS is defined as an integrated information and communication system relying on contemporary CI components such as scientific workflows (automated coupling of data with models), automated web publishing mechanisms, mash-ups of web technologies and semantic content repositories.
Some International Aspects of Business Cycles: Neisser, Haberler and Modern Open Economy Macroeconomics

Despite the transnational character of the Great Depression of the years 1929-33, there are few works in the inter-war literature that deal in depth with the propagation of business cycles across national borders and systemic risks of depression in the world economy. Two notable exceptions are Hans Neisser’s monograph on Some International Aspects of the Business Cycle (1936) and chapter 12 in Gottfried Haberler’s Prosperity and Depression (1937), which carries the heading “International Aspects of Business Cycles”. Both works differ substantially from each other and from the modern way of thinking about international business cycles in Open Economy Macroeconomics. This paper argues that Neisser’s and Haberler’s approaches provide more straightforward routes to capturing some of the transnational aspects of the recent Great Recession (of 2008/09) than the modern standard approach. At the first stage, the two older approaches are presented and compared with each other. At the second stage, they are contrasted with the current state of open-economy macroeconomics, as represented by Uribe & Schmitt-Grohe (2014), a textbook in the making that puts international macro in a business cycle framework. Since Haberler’s account accentuates the role of transport costs, imperfections of capital markets and monetary policies, it can be used as a catalogue of criteria for checking what modern attempts to connect international trade, international finance and economic growth have got (back) in sight. More importantly, both Haberler’s and Neisser’s approach also serve to identify what has been lost out of sight.
The spatial contribution to income inequality in rural China.

An income function analysis is conducted of the 2,400 (rural) counties of China, using cross-section data. Income inequality among counties is considerable and accounts for the major part of inequality among rural households in China. County income per capita is well explained by province, terrain, agricultural type, location, and the relative importance of non-agriculture. Non-agricultural activity, in turn, is strongly assisted by agricultural success. An analysis of time-series data suggests that a process of cumulative causation operated in the decade after the rural reforms of 1978, increasing spatial inequality in rural investment, industrialization, and income. Fiscal redistribution from richer to poorer areas weakened the process but failed to stem it. Copyright 1993 by Oxford University Press.
Performance comparison of ICA algorithms for Isometric Hand gesture identification using Surface EMG

There is an urgent need for developing a robust technique that can identify small and subtle hand and other body movements with applications in health, rehabilitation and defence. Surface electromyogram (sEMG) is a measure of the electrical activity of the muscles and a measure of the strength of muscle contraction. While this may be a good measure of the actions and gestures, this is unable to identify small variations in the muscle activity, especially when there are number of simultaneously active muscles. Independent component analysis (ICA) is a statistical based source separation technique that has been shown to be suitable for the decomposition of signals such as sEMG and been shown to improve the ability of sEMG to identify small variations in muscle activity. ICA algorithms using multivariate statistical data analysis technique have been successfully used for signal extraction and source separation in the field of biomedical and statistical signal processing. Recent research has resulted in the development of number of different ICA technique. While there are some researchers who have compared their techniques with the existing methods for audio examples, there is no comparison of performance between ICA algorithms for biosignal applications such as surface electromyography (sEMG) applications. With ICA being the feasible method for source separation and decomposition of biosignals, it is important to compare the different techniques and determine the most suitable method for the applications. This paper has studied the performance of four ICA algorithms (FastICA, JADE, Infomax and TDSEP) for decomposition of sEMG to identify subtle hand gestures. Comparing several ICA algorithms, it is observed that an algorithm based on temporal decorrelation method (TDSEP) which is based on the second order statistics gives the best performance.
Immigrants in Norway and Their Choice of Names: Continuation or Adaption?

The article focuses on names chosen for children born into families in which one or both parents are immigrants to Norway, and it discusses whether the infants get names that show a continuation of traditions from the country of the immigrant parent(s), or names that point to an adaption to Norwegian standards. The data referred to in the article is mainly based on research conducted with bilingual families and individuals in Tromso in Northern Norway, and it reveals that many of the children are given names that convey their bilingual background and emphasize naming traditions from the immigrant country. There are however also a frequency of names indicating that the parents have had in mind the children's growing up in Norway and their integration into Norwegian society. All along there are numerous cases showing the parents' perception of the close link between name and identity, and their wish to express identity through naming. In addition this article focuses on the names of adult immigrants. It reveals that when individuals change one or more of their names once they have settled in Norway, there are specific reasons for altering something that is so closely related to their identity. Frequently the name change a􏰄ects their sense of self and has an impact both practically and mentally.
RFID-based localization in heterogeneous mesh networks

This paper will describe current and ongoing developments of wireless-connected RFID reader systems for evaluation of a passive user localization system. A two-tier architecture of different wireless-connected RFID readers will be introduced. On the lower level, i.e. the first tier, several wireless technologies can co-exist using different kinds of communication technologies to connect different RFID readers. These technologies are connected through a fully meshed WiFi/WLAN network to bring them into the IP world. This IP infrastructure is the second tier, built up on IEEE 802.11.
Regulation, Allocation, and Leakage in Cap-and-Trade Markets for CO2

The allocation of emissions allowances is among the most contentious elements of the design of cap-and-trade systems. In this paper we develop a detailed representation of the US western electricity market to assess the potential impacts of various allocation proposals. Several proposals involve the "updating'' of permit allocation, where the allocation is tied to the ongoing output, or input use, of plants. These allocation proposals are designed with the goals of limiting the pass-through of carbon costs to product prices, mitigating leakage, and of mitigating costs to high-emissions firms. However, some forms of updating can also inflate permit prices, thereby limiting the benefits of such schemes to high emissions firms. Rather than mitigating the impact on high carbon producers, the net operating profit of such firms can actually be lower under input-based updating than under auctioning. This is due to the fact that product prices (and therefore revenues) are lower under input-based updating, but overall compliance costs are relatively comparable between auctioning and input-based updating. In this way, the anticipated benefits from allocation updating are reduced and further distortions are introduced into the trading system.
Energy-Aware Framework for Virtual Machine Consolidation in Cloud Computing

Virtual machine (VM) consolidation in Cloud computing environments provides a great opportunity for energy saving. However, the obligation of providing suitable quality of service to end users leads to the necessity in dealing with energy-performance tradeoff. In this paper, we propose a redesigned energy-aware heuristic framework for VM consolidation to achieve a better energy-performance tradeoff. The main contribution of us is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) violation decision algorithm, which is used to decide a host is overload with SLA violation or not. Finally, we have evaluated our framework through simulation on large-scale experiments driven by workload traces from more than a thousand VMs, and the results show that our framework outperforms previous work, which has 11.8%~27% decrease in energy consumption, 57.9%~78.4% decrease in SLA violation, 63.2%~84.1% decrease in energy-performance metric which is a product metric of the energy consumption and SLA violation.
Limited knee joint range of motion due to invisible gouty tophi.

OBJECTIVES Tophi deposits are a well-known cause of joint destruction, gouty nephropathy and spinal cord compression. This study reports another major complication of gout, namely tophi deposition causing limited knee joint excursion. METHODS Seven gout patients with limited knee joint excursion owing to tophi deposition were studied to reveal clinical features and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings. None of the patients were able to assume a full squatting posture. RESULTS No patients had visible subcutaneous tophi over the knee joints, except for one case in which a pea-sized subcutaneous tophus was noted. Additionally, two patients even lacked visible tophi elsewhere. All knee problems in the study group were initially regarded as being due to degenerative or other internal derangements, but MRI unexpectedly revealed multiple tophaceous depositions within and around the joint. CONCLUSIONS Intra-articular and periarticular tophi limiting knee joint range of motion are a rare but important cause of walking disability in gout patients. Although most patients do not display visible subcutaneous tophi over the knee on physical examination, the differential diagnosis should consider intra-articular tophi and MRI is valuable in this clinical setting.
Influence of Propagation Modeling on VoIP Quality Performance in Wireless Mesh Network Simulation

In this paper we evaluate the influence of radio propagation modeling on VoIP quality in wireless network simulations. How propagation modeling can influence classification of strategies concerned in improving VoIP quality? We analyze reactive AODV and proactive OLSR approaches in a simulated 802.11 mesh backbone and calculate the VoIP quality by means of a reviewed version of ITU-TE-Model. Results showed that: a) irrespective of routing strategy, different propagation model configurations can influence speech quality in such a way that it switches from "acceptable" to "unacceptable", b) the classification of such strategies can be highly influenced by propagation models as well as its configurations.
Joyful and serious intentions in the work of hospital clowns: A meta-analysis based on a 7-year research project conducted in three parts

The present meta-analysis focuses on a 7-year research project entitled “Hospital clowns—in encounters with ailing children” and funded by the Swedish Childhood Cancer Foundation. The aim of the meta-analysis, which is based on the project's three studies, was to attempt to achieve a deeper psychological and more nuanced understanding of the unique encounters taking place between the hospital clowns and ailing children in the study. The methodological procedures were qualitative and included 51 interviews with four informant groups: the clowns, staff, children, and their parents. The meta-analysis revealed the unique aspects of hospital clowns’ work with respect to: a) a quality of care that transcends boundaries, that is, a magical safe area where demands and adjustment were temporarily set aside and where the lighter side of life took precedence; b) a non-demanding quality of care, where joy could be experienced without requiring something in return, where the child's terms mattered and where the child perspective was clearly in focus; and c) a defusing quality of care, which is expressed as a positive counterweight that was otherwise lacking in medical care, where the hospital clowns used different solutions that bypassed regular hospital routines by temporarily distracting and making things easier for the children, parents, and staff in various care situations. Finally, the aim of the theoretical framework, in its synthesizing form, was to promote further psychological understanding of the area of humor that exists between fantasy and reality—an intermediate or transitional area that the hospital clowns created together with the children. In this transitional area, the hospital clowns’ unique contribution can be interpreted, in psychological terms, as being available as a vicarious therapeutic clown figure in a magical world that parallels reality.