Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social, Economic, and Regulatory Drivers of the Shark Fin Trade

The demand for shark fins is arguably the most important determinant of the fate of shark populations around the world. This paper examines the role that social and economic factors in China play in driving the trade both historically and under current trends of economic growth. The use of shark fin as a traditional and socially important luxury food item, along with rapidly expanding consumer purchasing power is expected to place increasing pressure on available resources. At the same time, the migration of the trade from its former center in Hong Kong to Mainland China has resulted in a severe curtailment of the ability to monitor and assess impacts on shark populations. Although recent international policy responses to this issue have resulted in the implementation of shark finning bans in some areas, these measures are likely to encourage full use of dead sharks; i.e. discourage carcass discards, as called for under the FAO International Plan of Action-Sharks, but not reduce shark mortality.
Metabolomic Profiling of Arginine Metabolome Links Altered Methylation to Chronic Kidney Disease Accelerated Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the mechanisms underlying vascular disease has not been fully understood. As the nitrogen donor in nitric oxide (NO·) synthesis, arginine and its metabolic products are integrally linked to vascular health and information. We hypothesized that derangements in this pathway could explain, in part, increased atherosclerotic risk in CKD. We developed a targeted metabolomic platform to profile quantitatively arginine metabolites in plasma by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS). Male low-density lipoprotein receptor defcient (LDLr−/−) mice at age 6 weeks were subjected to sham or 5/6 nephrectomy surgery to induce CKD. Subsequently, the animals were maintained on high fat diet for 24 weeks. Targeted metabolomic analysis of arginine metabolites in plasma was performed by isotope dilution LC/MS including asymmetric dimethyl arginine (ADMA), symmetric dimethyl arginine (SDMA), N-mono-methylarginine (NMMA), arginine and citrulline. Although elevated plasma levels of ADMA and SDMA were found in the CKD mice, only higher ADMA level correlated with degree of atherosclerosis. No significant differences were noted in levels of NMMA between the groups. CKD mice had high levels of citrulline and arginine, but ADMA levels had no correlation with either of these metabolites. These fndings strongly implicate altered arginine methylation and accumulation of ADMA, may in part contribute to CKD accelerated atherosclerosis. It raises the possibility that interrupting pathways that generate ADMA or enhance its metabolism may have therapeutic potential in mitigating atherosclerosis.
On the existence of optimal LEDBAT parameters

The Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) protocol is a recently standardized protocol that aims to offer a scavenger service (i.e. the goal is to exploit the remaining and unused capacity of a link). LEDBAT is a delay-based protocol mainly defined by two parameters: a target queuing delay and a gain. The RFC 6817 provides guidelines to configure both parameters that strongly impact on the LEDBAT behavior in terms of fairness with other protocols. However, these guidelines are questioned by several studies as they might lead to the generation of a non-LBE (Less-than-Best-Effort) traffic. This paper explores the set of optimal parameters allowing LEDBAT protocol to effectively perform as an LBE traffic. We conclude that the optimal couple of target and decrease gain is (5 ms; 10). However, we observe that the aggregated use of optimized LEDBAT sources still disturb the overall traffic performance and that the exponential backoff is not an answer to this issue. As a result, we believe that additional strategies to limit the number of LEDBAT flows are required for integrating this protocol at a large scale.
Pharmacological modulation of aversive responsiveness in honey bees

Within a honey bee colony, individuals performing different tasks exhibit different sensitivities to noxious stimuli. Noxious-stimulus sensitivity can be quantified in harnessed bees by measuring the sting extension response (SER) to a series of increasing voltages. Biogenic amines play a crucial role in the control of insect responsiveness. Whether or not these neurotransmitters affect the central control of aversive responsiveness, and more specifically of electric-shock responsiveness, remains unknown. Here we studied the involvement of the biogenic amines octopamine, dopamine and serotonin, and of the ecdysteroid 20-hydroxyecdisone in the central control of sting responsiveness to electric shocks. We injected pharmacological antagonists of these signaling pathways into the brain of harnessed bees and determined the effect of blocking these different forms of neurotransmission on shock responsiveness. We found that both octopamine and 20-hydroxyecdisone are dispensable for shock responsiveness while dopamine and serotonin act as down-regulators of sting responsiveness. As a consequence, antagonists of these two biogenic amines induce an increase in shock responsiveness to shocks of intermediate voltage; serotonin, can also increase non-specific responsiveness. We suggest that different classes of dopaminergic neurons exist in the bee brain and we define at least two categories: an instructive class mediating aversive labeling of conditioned stimuli in associative learning, and a global gain-control class which down-regulates responsiveness upon perception of noxious stimuli. Serotonergic signaling together with down-regulating dopaminergic signaling may play an essential role in attentional processes by suppressing responses to irrelevant, non-predictive stimuli, thereby allowing efficient behavioral performances.
A Multi-Objective Approach to Real-Time In-Situ Processing of Mobile-Application Workflows

Innovative mobile applications that rely on real-time in-situ processing of data collected in the field <italic>need </italic> to tap into the heterogeneous sensing and computing capabilities of sensor nodes, mobile handhelds as well as computing and storage servers in remote datacenters. There is, however, <italic>uncertainty</italic> associated with the <italic>quality</italic> and <italic>quantity</italic> of data from mobile sensors as well as with the <italic> availability</italic> and <italic>capabilities</italic> of mobile computing resources on the field. Data and computing-resource uncertainty, if unchecked, may propagate up the “raw data<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\rightarrow$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="pompili-ieq1-2532864.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>information<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\rightarrow$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="pompili-ieq2-2532864.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>knowledge” chain and have an adverse effect on the relevance of the generated results. A generalized workflow representation scheme that can represent a wide variety of data- and task-parallel ubiquitous mobile applications is presented. A unified uncertainty-aware framework for data and computing-resource management to enable real-time, in-situ processing of applications is proposed and evaluated. The framework employs a two-phase solution that captures the propagation of data uncertainty up the data-processing chain using interval arithmetic in the first phase and that employs multi-objective optimization for task allocation in the second phase. The results of a case study to assess effectiveness the proposed framework are discussed in detail. Results reaffirm that i) data-uncertainty awareness helps control the uncertainty in the final result and ii) multi-objective combinatorial approach for task allocation significantly outperforms the single-objective approaches in terms of makespan (15 percent improvement), fairness in battery drain (56 percent improvement), and network load (54 percent improvement).
Evaluating Universities' Preferences for Teaching and Research.

popular perception amongst British academics is that the relative importance attached by their employers to teaching and research has changed over the last decade in response both to the drive for increased productivity and to the related policy reforms. It has, however, proved difficult to quantify the weight attached to these key functions, precisely because the preferences of a university are not directly observable. In this brief note, I develop a method that represents a first attempt to overcome this problem. The technique is based upon some simple economic theory. This involves using a set of standard and well understood assumptions. Ideally, of course, it would be desirable to measure the parameters of interest directly so that no assumptions were needed. But since this cannot be done, the modeling approach adopted here represents an inexpensive means of acquiring information about the weights attached respectively to teaching and research. The paper is organized as follows. First the theoretical model is developed. Data for the academic years 1985-86 and 1991-92 are then applied to the model in order to estimate (inter alia) the relative weights attached by the universities to teaching and to research. Finally, the results are discussed and some speculative comments are made concerning the change that is observed between the two academic years studied.
A gateway from HTML to XML

XML is gaining popularity as an industrial standard for presenting and exchanging structured information on the Web. Meanwhile, the majority of documents on-line are still marked up with HTML, which are designed specifically for display purposes rather than for applications to automatically access. In order to make Web information accessible to applications so as to afford automation, inter-operation and intelligent services, some information extraction programs, called "wrappers", have been developed to extract the structured data from HTML pages. In this paper, we present a layout-based approach to separate the data layer from its aspect of presentation in HTML and extract the pure data as well as its hierarchical structure into XML. This approach aims to offer a general purpose methodology that can automatically convert HTML to XML without any tuning for a particular domain.
Characterization of the Archaeal Thermophile Sulfolobus Turreted Icosahedral Virus Validates an Evolutionary Link among Double-Stranded DNA Viruses from All Domains of Life

ABSTRACT Icosahedral nontailed double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses are present in all three domains of life, leading to speculation about a common viral ancestor that predates the divergence of Eukarya, Bacteria, and Archaea. This suggestion is supported by the shared general architecture of this group of viruses and the common fold of their major capsid protein. However, limited information on the diversity and replication of archaeal viruses, in general, has hampered further analysis. Sulfolobus turreted icosahedral virus (STIV), isolated from a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park, was the first icosahedral virus with an archaeal host to be described. Here we present a detailed characterization of the components forming this unusual virus. Using a proteomics-based approach, we identified nine viral and two host proteins from purified STIV particles. Interestingly, one of the viral proteins originates from a reading frame lacking a consensus start site. The major capsid protein (B345) was found to be glycosylated, implying a strong similarity to proteins from other dsDNA viruses. Sequence analysis and structural predication of virion-associated viral proteins suggest that they may have roles in DNA packaging, penton formation, and protein-protein interaction. The presence of an internal lipid layer containing acidic tetraether lipids has also been confirmed. The previously presented structural models in conjunction with the protein, lipid, and carbohydrate information reported here reveal that STIV is strikingly similar to viruses associated with the Bacteria and Eukarya domains of life, further strengthening the hypothesis for a common ancestor of this group of dsDNA viruses from all domains of life.
Interactions Between Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Recently, researches toward the social and psychological structure of organizations have proliferated observably. As the quality and quantity of these studies improve, the value of such issues gets more manifest. In this context, efforts toward making employees’ knowledge, which is an indispensable value for organizations, accessible and efforts to make it available for work processes and social relations extend new behavioral patterns. Organizational citizenship behavior is an example of such patterns. This paper attempts to explain and discuss interactions between organizational citizenship behavior and knowledge sharing, which is reasoned to have a defining role over it, and to draw attention on the issue. Organizational knowledge sharing, the factors influential on it, and the relationships between the antecedents of organizational citizenship behavior and knowledge sharing are being dwelled upon conceptually.
The Typology of Wellness Tourism in Bali

— Bali is becoming world wellness tourism destination. To strengthen its image, it is necessary to investigate the quality and typology of wellness tourism in Bali. The objectives of this research were to identify the tourists’ preferences toward wellness tourism products, tourists’ perception towards the quality of wellness tourism services and the typology of wellness tourism in Bali. To achieve those objectives, this research made use questionnaires to collect the data from 100 respondents, foreign tourists, which were accidentally sampled. The analysis method applied for this research was descriptive analysis. The results showed that tourist’s preferences toward wellness tourism products were shifting from having generic-based treatments to authentic/local-based treatments. The second finding was that tourists were satisfied with the services rendered both by wellness entity that provided generic based treatments and authentic/local-based treatments. The third finding was there were two typologies of wellness tourism in Bali. These were generic-based wellness products and authentic/local-based wellness products. The implications of findings are wellness industry operators need to provide more authentic/local-based products/services. They need to improve the knowledge of their staff/therapists about the authentic/local-based. The government needs to identify all authentic/local-based treatments that are indigenous and compile them in the form of Bali’s Wellness Tourism directory so that Bali has a clear brand of wellness tourism.
The Role of Transaction Costs in Impeding Market Exchange in Real Estate

We examine the role transaction costs play, particularly the costs related to search and bargaining, in impeding or delaying real estate market transactions. In a theoretical model, we show that agents’ incentives are influenced by transaction costs in a way that will increase a home’s marketing duration and decrease the probability a home will sell. Exploiting a decade of transactions from Virginia, we use a variety of empirical modeling techniques to estimate the effect of transaction costs on a property’s time on market (TOM) and its probability of sale. We find that factors associated with high search and bargaining costs increase a home’s TOM and reduce the probability that it will sell.
Transaction mining for fraud detection in ERP Systems

Despite all attempts to prevent fraud, it continues to be a major threat to industry and government. Traditionally, organizations have focused on fraud prevention rather than detection, to combat fraud. In this paper we present a role mining inspired approach to represent user behaviour in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, primarily aimed at detecting opportunities to commit fraud or potentially suspicious activities. We have adapted an approach which uses set theory to create transaction profiles based on analysis of user activity records. Based on these transaction profiles, we propose a set of (1) anomaly types to detect potentially suspicious user behaviour, and (2) scenarios to identify inadequate segregation of duties in an ERP environment. In addition, we present two algorithms to construct a directed acyclic graph to represent relationships between transaction profiles. Experiments were conducted using a real dataset obtained from a teaching environment and a demonstration dataset, both using SAP R/3, presently the predominant ERP system. The results of this empirical research demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
In Vitro and In Vivo Germ Line Potential of Stem Cells Derived from Newborn Mouse Skin

We previously reported that fetal porcine skin-derived stem cells were capable of differentiation into oocyte-like cells (OLCs). Here we report that newborn mice skin-derived stem cells are also capable of differentiating into early OLCs. Using stem cells from mice that are transgenic for Oct4 germline distal enhancer-GFP, germ cells resulting from their differentiation are expected to be GFP+. After differentiation, some GFP+ OLCs reached 40–45 µM and expressed oocyte markers. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that ∼0.3% of the freshly isolated skin cells were GFP+. The GFP-positive cells increased to ∼7% after differentiation, suggesting that the GFP+ cells could be of in vivo origin, but are more likely induced upon being cultured in vitro. To study the in vivo germ cell potential of skin-derived cells, they were aggregated with newborn ovarian cells, and transplanted under the kidney capsule of ovariectomized mice. GFP+ oocytes were identified within a subpopulation of follicles in the resulting growth. Our finding that early oocytes can be differentiated from mice skin-derived cells in defined medium may offer a new in vitro model to study germ cell formation and oogenesis.
The number of oogonia and somatic cells in the human female embryo and fetus in relation to whether or not exposed to maternal cigarette smoking.

BACKGROUND Prenatal exposure to maternal cigarette smoking or compounds of cigarette smoke is associated with serious reproductive hazards such as apoptotic death of oogonia in murine offspring and decreased fecundability in human offspring. The present study addresses potential effects of in utero exposure to cigarette smoking. METHODS Twenty-nine human first-trimester ovaries from legal abortions [aged 38-64 days post-conception (p.c.)] were collected. Mothers filled out a questionnaire about their smoking habits and delivered a urine sample for cotinine analysis. The ovarian cell numbers were estimated using stereological methods. RESULTS A non-linear correlation between the numbers of oogonia and somatic cells in relation to age of the embryo/fetus was shown in 28 ovaries, including the first estimates performed in ovaries younger than 47 days p.c. Prenatal exposure to smoke showed a significant decrease in the number of somatic cells (P < or = 0.01). The number of oogonia was not significantly associated with prenatal exposure to maternal smoking (P < or = 0.09). The ratio between the two cell types decreased considerably from 1:45 to 1:23 from 38 to 46 days p.c. and was not affected by smoking. CONCLUSIONS Oogonia proliferate and/or invade the developing ovary at a much faster relative rate than somatic cells. In utero exposure to maternal smoking significantly reduces the number of somatic cells from Days 38 to 64 p.c. Since oocytes cannot survive without being enclosed by somatic cells in a follicle, reduction in the somatic cells number may have long-range consequences on the number of oocytes available in adult life and on the future fertility of female offspring exposed to smoking in utero.
Wirelength Based Clustering Technique for VLSI Physical Design

Physical design of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits is the phase where the physical shape of a circuit is decided. Layout is part of the physical design step where the locations of all circuit components and their wiring are decided. Layout typically consists of 3 stages: partitioning, placement, and routing. The main focus of this research is on the placement step. There are various efficient and effective academic placement tools. However, most of the placers ignore the global nets, long wires that span entire rows or columns of a circuit. Usually the global nets make up 10% of the total nets, but can comprise up to 50% of the total wirelength. In this work, a new clustering algorithm is designed to reduce the length of global nets. This new clustering algorithm clusters cells belonging to a global net if they have any other connections. The algorithm has been tested on ICCAD04 benchmark suite. The experimental results show that the total wirelength can be reduced for some test benchmarks by up to 8%.
Tailoring FOS-ERP Packages: Automation as an Opportunity for Small Businesses

Free/Open Source software (FOSS) has made Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems more accessible for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) including overseas subsidiaries of large companies. However, the consulting required to configure an ERP to meet the specific needs of an organization remains a major financial and organizational burden for SMEs. Automatic ERP package configuration based on knowledge engineering, machine learning and data mining could be a solution to lessen the burden of the implementation process. This chapter presents two approaches to an automation of selected configuration options of the FOS-ERP package ERP5. These approaches are based on knowledge engineering with decision trees and machine learning with classifiers. The design of the ERP5 Artificial intelligence Toolkit (EAT) aims at the integration of these approaches into ERP5. The chapter also shows how FOS-ERP can boost Information System (IS) research. The investigation of the automation approaches was only possible because the free source code and technical documentation of ERP5 was accessible for TU Dresden researchers.
Vaginal Flora in Postmenopausal Women: The Effect of Estrogen Replacement

Objective:To determine the effect of estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) on the vaginal flora of postmenopausal women. Methods: Vaginal cultures were obtained from 15 postmenopausal women whose hormonal statuses were documented by serum follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and serum estrogen levels. After 8 weeks of ERT, consisting of 0.1 mg of estradiol delivered daily by dermal patch, the vaginal cultures were repeated, as were measurements of the vaginal pH, serum FSH, and serum estrogen levels. Results: Vaginal cultures revealed no significant change in the incidence of lactobacilli or of all aerobes. However, the incidence of anaerobic species fell after treatment from 47% to 13% (P = 0.05), and the incidence of anaerobic gram-negative rods declined after treatment from 40% prior to ERT to 7% (P = 0.035). Prior to ERT, the difference in mean vaginal pH between lactobacilli-positive and lactobacilli-negative subjects was not significant, but, following the administration of exogenous estrogen, the lactobacilli-positive subjects exhibited a significantly lower mean vaginal pH (4.4 ± 0.4) relative to the lactobacilli-negative population (5.2 ± 0.3) (P = 0.02). Conclusions: We conclude that women on ERT are less likely to have vaginal colonization with anaerobic bacteria when compared with women not using replacement therapy. Estrogen replacement may potentiate the effect of lactobacilli on vaginal pH.