Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
“Soldier's Heart”: A Genetic Basis for Elevated Cardiovascular Disease Risk Associated with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

“Soldier's Heart,” is an American Civil War term linking post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with increased propensity for cardiovascular disease (CVD). We have hypothesized that there might be a quantifiable genetic basis for this linkage. To test this hypothesis we identified a comprehensive set of candidate risk genes for PTSD, and tested whether any were also independent risk genes for CVD. A functional analysis algorithm was used to identify associated signaling networks. We identified 106 PTSD studies that report one or more polymorphic variants in 87 candidate genes in 83,463 subjects and controls. The top upstream drivers for these PTSD risk genes are predicted to be the glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) and Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNFA). We find that 37 of the PTSD candidate risk genes are also candidate independent risk genes for CVD. The association between PTSD and CVD is significant by Fisher's Exact Test (P = 3 × 10−54). We also find 15 PTSD risk genes that are independently associated with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM; also significant by Fisher's Exact Test (P = 1.8 × 10−16). Our findings offer quantitative evidence for a genetic link between post-traumatic stress and cardiovascular disease, Computationally, the common mechanism for this linkage between PTSD and CVD is innate immunity and NFκB-mediated inflammation.
Distributed Shared Memory and Compiler-Induced Scalable Locality for Scalable Cluster Performance

Distributed shared memory software allows a cluster to function as a single collection of many processing cores with a large physical memory, but highly unusual performance parameters: communication latency and bandwidth between nodes may be several orders of magnitude worse than on-chip. Thus, effective use of such systems requires computation/communication ratios many times higher. The loop optimization known as "time skewing" or "time tiling" can, for some codes, produce arbitrarily high compute balance. It should thus allow scalable high performance regardless of memory and network bandwidth limitations. We have been exploring the scalability of time tiling on homogeneous dedicated clusters, considering the effects of scaling both the number of nodes in the cluster and the ratio of computation speed to network bandwidth. Even with simple 1- and 2-d Jacobi stencil computations, there are challenges to practical realization of the prediction of scalability.
New ventures based on open innovation - an empirical analysis of start-up firms in embedded Linux

An important and intriguing aspect of e-entrepreneurship is the formation of new ventures in the domain of open source software (OSS). Previous research on these ventures has primarily looked at the design of business models. The purpose of this paper is to explore how three key challenges of venture management – the liabilities of newness and smallness of start-ups and market entry barriers – affect new ventures in OSS. Based on empirical data from personal interviews and a large scale survey, we find that several liabilities that are typically discussed in the entrepreneurship literature are much less of a challenge for new ventures in OSS. Our findings have implications for the emerging theory on e-entrepreneurship and for entrepreneurs considering to exploit business opportunities based on OSS and on open innovation in general.
Removing ECG artifacts from the EMG: A comparison between combining empirical-mode decomposition and independent component analysis and other filtering methods

Surface electromyography (EMG) is used for rehabilitation and clinical treatment for muscle disease. However, these recordings are often critically contaminated by cardiac artifact and many methods are applied to EMG in order to remove the artifacts from the EMG signals. We applied to both simulation and real EMG data a recently developed method of a combination of ensemble empirical mode decomposition and independent component analysis (EEMD+ICA), and compared its performance with that of other previously developed filtering methods. Relative root-mean-square errors (RRMSE) and correlations between the cleaned EMG and ECG contaminated EMG were calculated to evaluate the performance. The EMD based single channel technique showed better performance compared to the cubic smoothing spline and high-pass-filter (HPF) method for varied amplitude without a reference signal. Therefore, if the reference signal is not present, the combined EEMD and ICA procedure prove to be a reliable and efficient tool for removing ECG artifact from surface EMG.
Concatenated non-binary LDPC and HD-FEC codes for 100Gb/s optical transport systems

In this paper, we propose a soft-decision-based FEC scheme which is the concatenation of a non-binary LDPC (NB-LDPC) code and hard-decision FEC code having a compatibility with existing OTU-4 frame structure. The proposed concatenated NB-LDPC + RS frame structure is also provided and the entire frame size is 18,368 bytes. The proposed NB-LDPC(2304,2048) code over GF(24) provides a superior performance at the higher BER region and can be concatenated with HD-FEC code. The simulation result shows that the proposed concatenated NB-LDPC(2304,2048) and RS(255,239) FEC can provide a superior NCG performance over 10.3 dB at a post-FEC BER 10−15 and over 10.8 dB with enhanced HD-FEC in the outer code. As a result, the proposed NB-LDPC codes are expected to be strong FEC candidates of soft-decision FEC for 100Gb/s optical transmission system.
Clinical and Endoscopic Features of Metastatic Tumors in the Stomach

Background/Aims Metastasis to the stomach is rare. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the clinical outcomes of cancers that metastasized to the stomach. Methods We reviewed the clinicopathological aspects of patients with gastric metastases from solid organ tumors. Thirty-seven cases were identified, and we evaluated the histology, initial presentation, imaging findings, lesion locations, treatment courses, and overall patient survival. Results Endoscopic findings indicated that solitary lesions presented more frequently than multiple lesions and submucosal tumor-like tumors were the most common appearance. Malignant melanoma was the tumor that most frequently metastasized to the stomach. Twelve patients received treatments after the diagnosis of gastric metastasis. The median survival period from the diagnosis of gastric metastasis was 3.0 months (interquartile range, 1.0 to 11.0 months). Patients with solitary lesions and patients who received any treatments survived longer after the diagnosis of metastatic cancer than patients with multiple lesions and patients who did not any receive any treatments. Conclusions Proper treatment with careful consideration of the primary tumor characteristics can increase the survival period in patients with tumors that metastasize to the stomach, especially in cases with solitary metastatic lesions in endoscopic findings.
Profits and the Internet: Seven Misconceptions

The Internet has created new markets, customers, products and modes of conducting business. But it also has given currency to some dangerous half-truths. Admonishing Internet businesses to "stop grabbing the land and start cultivating it," Subramanian Rangan and Ron Adner, professors of management and strategy at INSEAD in France, explain why seven popular strategies are not the path to profitable growth. First-mover advantage, for example, gets too much credit for e-business success. Companies believe that they can lock in customers and trigger a winner-take-all dynamic, but there is no guarantee that those benefits will go to first movers. The allure of reach ? increasing the number of customer segments ? causes many companies to ignore fit, the coherence with which their activities reinforce one another. Digital Equipment Corp. paid the price when it sacrificed fit to reach, attempting to make PCs, workstations, minicomputers and mainframes under one roof. Another tempting growth strategy is to provide customer solutions, offering products or services that complement a company's core offering. But offering solutions can dilute a company's focus. Targeting the right Internet sector is one way to maintain focus. When companies view the Internet as undifferentiated landscape, they are less able to distinguish the drivers of customer value and performance ? or the metrics to measure them. Some companies see best-of-breed-partner leverage as the secret of profitable growth. But although the Internet makes it easier and cheaper to align activities across company boundaries, it does not do much to align interests ? a requirement for the creation of joint value. Another misconception is the belief that an Internet business will automatically be successful abroad. As MTV, Wal-Mart and Honda discovered, companies first must be successful at home and then move outward in a way that accommodates local differences. The last, and perhaps most dangerous, misconception is managers' belief that technology can substitute for strategy. Technology and strategy are strong complements. Companies that understand their technology better than they understand their customers and competition won't succeed in any economy, old or new. The authors provide thoughtful guidelines for avoiding misconceptions and taking a sensible approach to business on the Internet.
Barriers to Global Electronic Commerce: A Cross-Country Study of Hong Kong and Finland

Babson College So far electronic commerce has primarily been limited to electronic business-to-business transactions and small, but quickly growing, consumer-oriented activities on the Internet, such as electronic advertisements mated with the traditional mail-order operations. What lies ahead in the future is a concept of true global electronic commerce (GEC), in which firms will exploit a virtual value chain to migrate much of their value-adding activities from the physical marketplace to the virtual marketplace. The capability for business concerns to be able to reach out to a global business community at a relatively small cost is very attractive and promises to transform international business. Despite this realization, it has become increasingly evident that the proliferation of GEC is dependent on resolution of a myriad of technical, organizational, economic, cultural, political, and legal issues. In this study, field studies of 10 companies in Hong Kong and Finland were conducted with an eye toward identifying the major barriers that have hindered or slowed down the wide acceptance of electronic commerce across borders. In addition to several country-specific barriers to GEC, resistance to change, lack of education about the potentials of GEC, and lack of flexible software were found to be the key inhibitors to the orderly acceptance and deployment of computer-mediated commerce at the global level.
Online Purchase Intentions in E-Commerce

This investigation studied online customer services (e-commerce) from perceived technology attributes including: sensing control (PC), perceived enjoyment (PE), perceived reliability (PR), perceptual speed (PS), perceived ease of use (PEOU) on consumer chat satisfaction (SAT) for consumer purchase intention (BI) and found significantly correlated. Internet is the vehicle for e-commerce. The findings of this study also have implications to understanding the pattern of technology that technology obsession distorts the true intentions of technology users. The revelation of the differences is critical to further understand the impact of culture on technology. When consumers discover customer service chat, customer's service need to make consumers feel contented during the chat so they can control the customer's feelings about the product or the services. Secondly, during the online chatting, customer's services make consumers feel pleasant and interesting experience during the whole passageway. Finally, there is need to provide the best service to the consumers in terms of speed in the shortest possible time. In this way, sellers can generate the satisfaction to complete the purchase in the online store in a more effective manner. In addition, study shows that online stores need to manage technical aspects of the problem to foster a satisfying experience for customers. Conclusions show that live chat is very important communication tool that allows consumers and sellers to face and solve problems faster and helps customers to swiftly complete their buying process with effective service.
Functional analysis of Agaricus bisporus serine proteinase 1 reveals roles in utilization of humic rich substrates and adaptation to the leaf‐litter ecological niche

Summary Agaricus bisporus is a secondary decomposer fungus and an excellent model for the adaptation, persistence and growth of fungi in humic‐rich environments such as soils of temperate woodland and pastures. The A. bisporus serine proteinase SPR1 is induced by humic acids and is highly expressed during growth on compost. Three Spr1 gene silencing cassettes were constructed around sense, antisense and non‐translatable‐stop strategies (pGRsensehph, pGRantihph and pGRstophph). Transformation of A. bisporus with these cassettes generated cultures showing a reduction in extracellular proteinase activity as demonstrated by the reduction, or abolition, of a clearing zone on plate‐based bioassays. These lines were then assessed by detailed enzyme assay, RT‐qPCR and fruiting. Serine proteinase activity in liquid cultures was reduced in 83% of transformants. RT‐qPCR showed reduced Spr1 mRNA levels in all transformants analysed, and these correlated with reduced enzyme activity. When fruiting was induced, highly‐silenced transformant AS5 failed to colonize the compost, whilst for those that did colonize the compost, 60% gave a reduction in mushroom yield. Transcriptional, biochemical and developmental observations, demonstrate that SPR1 has an important role in nutrient acquisition in compost and that SPR1 is a key enzyme in the adaptation of Agaricus to the humic‐rich ecological niche formed during biomass degradation.
Mechanical Effects on KATP Channel Gating in Rat Ventricular Myocytes

Cardiac KATP channels link metabolism with electrical activity. They are implicated in arrhythmias, secretion of atrial natriuretic peptide and protection of the heart from hypertrophy and failure. These processes may involve mechanosensitivity. KATP channels can be activated by mechanical stimulation and disrupting the cortical actin increases the activity. We propose that KATP channels are modulated by local bilayer tension and this tension is affected by cortical F-actin. Here we measured KATP background activity and stretch sensitivity with inside-out patches of rat ventricular myocytes before and after disrupting F-actin. Disrupting F-actin potentiated background activity but did not influence the slope sensitivity in the semilog relationship of NPo vs. suction that is a measure of the change in dimensions between closed and open states. Thus actin alters prestress on the channel probably by parallel elastic sharing of mean cortical tension with the bilayer.
The Role of Stn1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Telomere Capping Can Be Separated From Its Interaction With Cdc13p

The function of telomeres is twofold: to facilitate complete chromosome replication and to protect chromosome ends against fusions and illegitimate recombination. In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, interactions among Cdc13p, Stn1p, and Ten1p are thought to be critical for promoting these processes. We have identified distinct Stn1p domains that mediate interaction with either Ten1p or Cdc13p, allowing analysis of whether the interaction between Cdc13p and Stn1p is indeed essential for telomere capping or length regulation. Consistent with the model that the Stn1p essential function is to promote telomere end protection through Cdc13p, stn1 alleles that truncate the C-terminal 123 residues fail to interact with Cdc13p and do not support viability when expressed at endogenous levels. Remarkably, more extensive deletions that remove an additional 185 C-terminal residues from Stn1p now allow cell growth at endogenous expression levels. The viability of these stn1-t alleles improves with increasing expression level, indicating that increased stn1-t dosage can compensate for the loss of Cdc13p–Stn1p interaction. However, telomere length is misregulated at all expression levels. Thus, an amino-terminal region of Stn1p is sufficient for its essential function, while a central region of Stn1p either negatively regulates the STN1 essential function or destabilizes the mutant Stn1 protein.
Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics Model Error in Weather Forecasting

Operational forecasting is hampered both by the rapid divergence of nearby initial conditions and by error in the underlying model. Interest in chaos has fuelled much work on the first of these two issues; this paper focuses on the second. A new approach to quantifying state-dependent model error, the local model drift, is derived and deployed both in examples and in operational numerical weather prediction models. A simple law is derived to relate model error to likely shadowing performance (how long the model can stay close to the observations). Imperfect model experiments are used to contrast the performance of truncated models relative to a high resolution run, and the operational model relative to the analysis. In both cases the component of forecast error due to state-dependent model error tends to grow as the square-root of forecast time, and provides a major source of error out to three days. These initial results suggest that model error plays a major role and calls for further research in quantifying both the local model drift and expected shadowing times.
Anionic Lipids Enriched at the ExPortal of Streptococcus pyogenes

ABSTRACT The ExPortal of Streptococcus pyogenes is a membrane microdomain dedicated to the secretion and folding of proteins. We investigated the lipid composition of the ExPortal by examining the distribution of anionic membrane phospholipids. Staining with 10-N-nonyl-acridine orange revealed a single microdomain enriched with an anionic phospholipid whose staining characteristics and behavior in a cardiolipin-deficient mutant were characteristic of phosphatidylglycerol. Furthermore, the location of the microdomain corresponded to the site of active protein secretion at the ExPortal. These results indicate that the ExPortal is an asymmetric lipid microdomain, whose enriched content of anionic phospholipids may play an important role in ExPortal organization and protein trafficking.
Low voltage LC-ladder Gm-C low-pass filters with 42-215 MHz tunable range

In this paper we report 3/sup rd/-order G/sub m/-C filters based on fully-balanced pseudo-differential continuous-time transconductors for applications in low-voltage systems over VHF range. By using a 0.35 /spl mu/m standard CMOS process, two low-pass filter approximations (Butterworth and Elliptic) have been implemented with a cut-off frequency programmability from 42 to 215 MHz, which confirm the feasibility of the proposed strategy in applications such as data storage systems and IF strips. The filters consume less than 3.8 mW from a 2 V supply. The measured dynamic range was 53 dB at THD of 1%. The estimated active area of the filter is 0.074 mm/sup 2/.
Improving the load balancing within the data network via modified AntNet algorithm

AntNet is an agent based routing algorithm that is influenced from the unsophisticated and individual ant's emergent behavior. AntNet algorithm does not consider the effect of increasing the total numbers of routing packets (ants) moving inside the network which could contribute to congestion. This could eventually have a negative impact on the overall network performance. Moreover, AntNet addresses the problem of routing not load balancing as AntNet philosophy can lead to network congestion and create bottlenecks. The main objective of this work is modifying the AntNet algorithm to address its above mentioned drawbacks. This work measures the effect of increasing the number of ants on the average packet delay and network throughput; and modifying, accordingly, the ants' generation rate. Also we introduced a modified AntNet load- aware algorithm that improves AntNet in order to support load balancing. A complete network simulator is developed in C++ in order to simulate and evaluate the AntNet algorithm and the suggested modifications. Results showed that controlling and limiting the total number of routing packets (ants) moving inside the network decreased the average delay per packet and increased the network throughput. The proposed modified load aware algorithm achieves better results in terms of throughput and average queue length and average delay experienced per packet.
Towards a strategic information architecture (SIA) and its initial application

As e-business strategies have increasingly attracted the attention of industrial managers, information architecture (IA) is considered as an important blueprint for implementing a successful e-strategy. Furthermore, numerous information architectures have been proposed in recent years by researchers. However, these architectures focus on information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) perspectives, but neglect integration with the information management (IM) strategy. As the complexity of IS/IT applications in an e-business environment grows, effective IM strategy should be considered in developing information architectures. This study proposes a strategic information architecture (SIA) that integrates IS, IT and IM strategy while the IM strategy stresses three dimensions of business conditions and capabilities to cope with IS and IT strategy, including organizational structure, managerial activities and information use. The proposed SIA was initially assessed in a large hospital in Taiwan to examine its usefulness. The implications for IS practice and directions for future research are also discussed.
The Impact of Brazil's Tax-Benefit System on Inequality and Poverty

The Brazilian government raises taxes amounting to 35% of GDP and spends more than two thirds of this on social programmes. These shares are in pair with the OECD averages and well in excess of Latin America averages. However, while tax-benefit systems in most OECD countries reduce income disparities very significantly, the Brazilian government has been much less successful in alleviating inequality and poverty. Focussing on taxes and cash transfers, this paper investigates the impact of the government budget on the income distribution in Brazil, and evaluates its efficiency and effectiveness in reducing inequality and poverty. We present BRAHMS, a new tax-benefit microsimulation model for Brazil and illustrate its use by evaluating the impact of policy on economic inequality. It is argued that microsimulation provides a valuable analytical tool for policy makers in emerging and developing countries in particular.