Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variations in Adipokine Genes AdipoQ, Lep, and LepR are Associated with Risk for Obesity-Related Metabolic Disease: The Modulatory Role of Gene-Nutrient Interactions

Obesity rates are rapidly increasing worldwide and facilitate the development of many related disease states, such as cardiovascular disease, the metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and various types of cancer. Variation in metabolically important genes can have a great impact on a population's susceptibility to becoming obese and/or developing related complications. The adipokines adiponectin and leptin, as well as the leptin receptor, are major players in the regulation of body energy homeostasis and fat storage. This paper summarizes the findings of single nucleotide polymorphisms in these three genes and their effect on obesity and metabolic disease risk. Additionally, studies of gene-nutrient interactions involving adiponectin, leptin, and the leptin receptor are highlighted to emphasize the critical role of diet in susceptible populations.
Education in Indonesia

This book explores the current state of lndonesian education. There appear to be few distinctive images of education in Indonesia that are widely known internationally. But this is not because nothing is happening. The past decade has seen major trends in the structure of the Indonesian education system and in schooling trajectories of lndonesia's children and adolescents. It has also seen major policy discussions and initiatives. Over the same period, the country saw the administration of primary and secondary levels decentralised to the regional government, introduction of the new paradigm of school-based management, and public spending on education required to reach one-fifth of total government spending. But while enrolment rates at all levels continue to increase, quality remains low and has not improved, and the tertiary education sector continues to experience issues with autonomy and unsatisfactory performance. In Indonesia, as elsewhere in Asia, education will inevitably play a key role in the trajectory of national development as the 21"" century unfolds. Aside from World Bank reports, three does not appear to be any volume that provides a wide-ranging comprehensive coverage of the Indonesian educational situation and the issues it faces. Therefore, this book fills an important gap and, as such, potentially has a wide readership.
Enhancing the stationary state prediction in Model Predictive Control systems to avoid Dross defect in heavy-section foundries

A Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a system designed to control a production plant. These systems are composed by several phases, being one of the most important ones the phase for the prediction of the plant situation in a given time. In a previous work, we presented a machine-learning approach for this prediction phase that replaced the need of developing a single mathematical function with a more generic classification approach. However, standalone classifiers had some drawbacks like to select the most adequate classification models for the learning data and task. In this paper we extend our previous work with a general method to foresee Dross defects building a meta-classification system through the combination of different methods and removing the need of selecting the best algorithm for each objective or dataset.
32kHz MEMS-based oscillator for implantable medical devices

A MEMS based high stability 32kHz oscillator for real time clock (RTC) for medical device application using 0. 13μm CMOS technology is designed and simulated. This oscillator achieves a power consumption of less than 1μA with 10pF load capacitor, and a functional temperature drift of ± 80ppm with temperature range from −20°C to 60°C
Impact of Inflammatory Cytokines on Effector and Memory CD8+ T Cells

Inflammatory cytokines have long been recognized to produce potent APCs to elicit robust T cell responses for protective immunity. The impact of inflammatory cytokine signaling directly on T cells, however, has only recently been appreciated. Although much remains to be learned, the CD8 T cell field has made considerable strides in understanding the effects of inflammatory cytokines throughout the CD8 T cell response. Key findings first identified IL-12 and type I interferons as “signal 3” cytokines, emphasizing their importance in generating optimal CD8 T cell responses. Separate investigations revealed another inflammatory cytokine, IL-15, to play a critical role in memory CD8 T cell maintenance. These early studies highlighted potential regulators of CD8 T cells, but were unable to provide mechanistic insight into how these inflammatory cytokines enhanced CD8 T cell-mediated immunity. Here, we describe the mechanistic advances that have been made in our lab regarding the role of “signal 3” cytokines and IL-15 in optimizing effector and memory CD8 T cell number and function. Furthermore, we assess initial progress on the role of cytokines, such as TGF-β, in generation of recently described resident memory CD8 T cell populations.
Flexible Exchange Rates for a Stable World Economy

Volatile exchange rates and how to manage them are a contentious topic whenever economic policymakers gather in international meetings. This book examines the broad parameters of exchange rate policy in light of both high-powered theory and real-world experience. What are the costs and benefits of flexible versus fixed exchange rates? How much of a role should the exchange rate play in monetary policy? Why don't volatile exchange rates destabilize inflation and output? The principal finding of this book is that using monetary policy to fight exchange rate volatility, including through the adoption of a fixed exchange rate regime, leads to greater volatility of employment, output, and inflation. In other words, the "cure" for exchange rate volatility is worse than the disease. This finding is demonstrated in economic models, in historical case studies, and in statistical analysis of the data. The book devotes considerable attention to understanding the reasons why volatile exchange rates do not destabilize inflation and output. The book concludes that many countries would benefit from allowing greater flexibility of their exchange rates in order to target monetary policy at stabilization of their domestic economies. Few, if any, countries would benefit from a move in the opposite direction.
Core Articles: ABC: The Pathway to Comparison of the Costs of Integrated Care

In recent years, health care demand has become increasingly complicated and care has had to be integrated. The main reasons for this are a rising number of chronically ill patients and ageing of populations. Integrated health care is processual so there are continuous changes in care delivery; it incorporates many co–ordinating and co–operative activities which can produce uncertain outcomes; and activities are directed at delivering tailor–made care so there are no standardized or generalized outcomes. These characteristics mean that it is difficult to determine and compare the costs of different integrated care structures. This article argues that using Activity Based Costing (ABC) and integrated care pathways provides the best information possible for decision–making by health care managers, insurers, care suppliers and governments.
INTRODUCTIONS TO SYMMETRIC POLYNOMIALS AND SYMMETRIC FUNCTIONS

Symmetric polynomials and symmetric functions are ubiquitous in mathematics and mathematical physics. For example, they appear in elementary algebra (e.g. Viete’s Theorem), representation theories of symmetric groups and general linear groups over C or finite fields. They are also important objects to study in algebraic combinatorics. Via their close relations with representation theory, the theory of symmetric functions has found many applications to mathematical physics. For example, they appear in the Boson-Fermion correspondence which is very important in both superstring theory and the theory of integrable system [2]. They also appear in Chern-Simons theory and the related link invariants and 3-manifold invariants [8]. By the duality between Chern-Simons theory and string theory [9] they emerge again in string theory [1], and in the study of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces [6]. The following is a revised and expanded version of the informal lecture notes for a undergraduate topic course given in Tsinghua University in the spring semester of 2003. Part of the materials have also been used in a minicourse at the Center of Mathematical Sciences at Zhejiang University as part of the summer program on mathematical physics in 2003. I thank both the audiences for their participation. The purpose of this course is to present an introduction to this fascinating field with minimum prerequisite. I have kept the informal style of the original notes.
The feature extraction of ERD/ERS signals based on the wavelet package and ICA

For the feature extraction of motor imaginary EEG (electroencephalography) in the study of brain-computer interface(BCI), a method of extracting EEG features based on wavelet package combined with ICA (Independent component analysis) was adopted to extract the signals produced by imaginary movement, event related desynchronization or event related synchronization (ERD/ERS). First, in order to eliminate the statistical correlation between different EEG rhythms, the EEG signal was decomposed into five levels by wavelet packet. At the same time some sub-band with the characteristics of notable ERD/ERS phenomenon were extracted. Then ICA was separately applied on the feature sub-band components to obtain the μ rhythms and β rhythms corresponding to the ERD/ERS phenomenon. Finally, ERD/ERS coefficient was introduced as a quantity index for the recognition of imaginary movements. The classification results show that the adopted method can significantly enhance the feature information of ERD/ERS produced by imaginary movement. Compared with applying one of two methods separately, the method combined wavelet package and ICA is more efficient to extract feature wave.
Biofilms: Survival Mechanisms of Clinically Relevant Microorganisms

SUMMARY Though biofilms were first described by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the theory describing the biofilm process was not developed until 1978. We now understand that biofilms are universal, occurring in aquatic and industrial water systems as well as a large number of environments and medical devices relevant for public health. Using tools such as the scanning electron microscope and, more recently, the confocal laser scanning microscope, biofilm researchers now understand that biofilms are not unstructured, homogeneous deposits of cells and accumulated slime, but complex communities of surface-associated cells enclosed in a polymer matrix containing open water channels. Further studies have shown that the biofilm phenotype can be described in terms of the genes expressed by biofilm-associated cells. Microorganisms growing in a biofilm are highly resistant to antimicrobial agents by one or more mechanisms. Biofilm-associated microorganisms have been shown to be associated with several human diseases, such as native valve endocarditis and cystic fibrosis, and to colonize a wide variety of medical devices. Though epidemiologic evidence points to biofilms as a source of several infectious diseases, the exact mechanisms by which biofilm-associated microorganisms elicit disease are poorly understood. Detachment of cells or cell aggregates, production of endotoxin, increased resistance to the host immune system, and provision of a niche for the generation of resistant organisms are all biofilm processes which could initiate the disease process. Effective strategies to prevent or control biofilms on medical devices must take into consideration the unique and tenacious nature of biofilms. Current intervention strategies are designed to prevent initial device colonization, minimize microbial cell attachment to the device, penetrate the biofilm matrix and kill the associated cells, or remove the device from the patient. In the future, treatments may be based on inhibition of genes involved in cell attachment and biofilm formation.
Robust tracking via weighted spatio-temporal context learning

Designing a robust visual tracker is a challenging problem due to many disturbed factors such as illumination changes, appearance changes, rotation, partial or full occlusions, etc. Among numerous existed trackers, correlation filter based tracker is a fast and robust method with resistance to the above-mentioned factors. Motivated by that, spatio-temporal context (STC) learning algorithm is proposed, which considers the information of the context around the target and achieved better performance. However, STC treats the whole region of the context equally, which weakens the effectiveness of the context information. In this paper, we propose a novel weighted spatio-temporal context (WSTC) learning algorithm. Our algorithm considers the surrounding context discriminatively and integrates a weighted map by evaluating the importance of different regions. Extensive experimental results on various benchmark databases show that our algorithm outperforms the STC algorithm and the other state-of-the-art algorithms.
A Critical Study and Consolidated Framework for Enterprise Information Systems Implementation: IMPLEMENT Framework

Enterprise Information systems implementation is one of the most challenging parts of IT strategy for an organization, since implementation brings in efficiency in the system and justifies the investments made. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to study the perspectives of implementation to understand the current dynamics. The purpose of this paper is twofold, first is to explore the type of literature that exists in information system implementation and secondly to determine the research methodologies incorporated therein for the information system field's implementation in specific. The basic content analysis is done to review the articles on information system implementation. A total of 47 articles were selected from peer reviewed journals and conferences. The study was conducted to assess the methodology used, the strategies followed along with the issues and challenges faced in the implementation. It presents an arena of the studies done in information system implementation in the past 20 years (typically 1993 to 2013). The IMPLEMENT framework has been proposed to synthesize the literature finding for smooth functioning of IS implementation process. This study would encourage the practitioners in the information systems domain to improve upon their organizational capability and incorporate other best practices.
Feature reconstruction for freeform surface design

In the conceptual design phase, designers not only require an easy way to construct a freeform surface, but also need to modify it intuitively. In this paper, a feature based freeform surface design method is proposed in order to fit the requirement. First, a freeform feature library is introduced as the basis of the system. Freeform features in the library can either be extracted from existing designs or be constructed by designers. With freeform features in the library and basis surfaces, new freeform designs are constructed by Boolean-like operations, such as feature based deformation or union with transition surfaces. In the designed surface, designer can easily modify features with changing highlevel parameters. Finally, several simple examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the feature based freeform surface design system.
Document Resume Ed 377 230 Tm 022 406 Author Tirre, William C. Title Knowledge and Ability Factors Underlying Simple Learning by Accretion. Pub Date

In this study, the relationships between simple learning by accretion and various cognitive ability variables were explored. Computerized tests of five sources of individual differences were administered to a sample of 714 Air Force recruits, along with a trigram-English word paired-associate task, which was presented as a foreign language Jocabulary learning task. Subjects were assigned at random to one of three groups: control, semantic elaboration, or interactive imagery. Subjects in the semantic elaboration group were instructed to generate sentences to link the trigram and the word in a memorable way. Subjects in the interactive imagery group were given the additional instruction of visualizing the generated sentence. Trigrams (CVCs) varied in meaningfulness across the two lists of eights pairs in the task. Results showed that meaningfulness and strategy had the expected main effects on learning and that strategy interacted with verbal knowledge in initial learning so that learners with more knowledge benefitted more than learners with less knowledge. Regression analyses showed that a representative measure from each proposed source made a significant unique contribution to the explained variance in paired-associate learning. Contains four figures and one table. (Contains 61 references.) (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. Abstract 93
Do partnerships between large corporations and Amazonian indigenous groups help or hinder communities and forests

Brazilian Amazonia is rich in multi-scale company-community partnerships, particularly those related to the commercialisation of non-timber forest products (NTFP). But who gains most and who loses from such partnerships? Empirical evaluations of changes in livelihoods and forest conservation are still scarce. This chapter presents results of the research on the effects of integration of the indigenous A'Ukre-Kayapo community into fair trade markets through the production of Brazil nut oil. Partnerships are broadly defined as the informal or formal relations established between medium to large companies and forest communities, whose stated minimum aim is to benefit both partners. The chapter explores the least studied segment of corporate-communities agreements relating to NTFP trade and evaluates the likely benefits and problems that can be derived from them.Keywords: A'Ukre-Kayapo community; Brazil nut oil; Brazilian Amazonia; corporate-community agreements; data gathering methodology; forest conservation; non-timber forest products (NTFP) trade
Financial Incentives and Maternal Health: Where Do We Go from Here?

Health financing strategies that incorporate financial incentives are being applied in many low- and middle-income countries, and improving maternal and neonatal health is often a central goal. As yet, there have been few reviews of such programmes and their impact on maternal health. The US Government Evidence Summit on Enhancing Provision and use of Maternal Health Services through Financial Incentives was convened on 24-25 April 2012 to address this gap. This article, the final in a series assessing the effects of financial incentives—performance-based incentives (PBIs), insurance, user fee exemption programmes, conditional cash transfers, and vouchers—summarizes the evidence and discusses issues of context, programme design and implementation, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability. We suggest key areas to consider when designing and implementing financial incentive programmes for enhancing maternal health and highlight gaps in evidence that could benefit from additional research. Although the methodological rigor of studies varies, the evidence, overall, suggests that financial incentives can enhance demand for and improve the supply of maternal health services. Definitive evidence demonstrating a link between incentives and improved health outcomes is lacking; however, the evidence suggests that financial incentives can increase the quantity and quality of maternal health services and address health systems and financial barriers that prevent women from accessing and providers from delivering quality, lifesaving maternal healthcare.
Recent Advance in Applications of Proteomics Technologies on Traditional Chinese Medicine Research

Proteomics technology, a major component of system biology, has gained comprehensive attention in the area of medical diagnosis, drug development, and mechanism research. On the holistic and systemic theory, proteomics has a convergence with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). In this review, we discussed the applications of proteomic technologies in diseases-TCM syndrome combination researches. We also introduced the proteomic studies on the in vivo and in vitro effects and underlying mechanisms of TCM treatments using Chinese herbal medicine (CHM), Chinese herbal formula (CHF), and acupuncture. Furthermore, the combined studies of proteomics with other “-omics” technologies in TCM were also discussed. In summary, this report presents an overview of the recent advances in the application of proteomic technologies in TCM studies and sheds a light on the future global and further research on TCM.
Endogenous Xylose Pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT The baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is generally classified as a non-xylose-utilizing organism. We found that S. cerevisiae can grow on d-xylose when only the endogenous genes GRE3 (YHR104w), coding for a nonspecific aldose reductase, and XYL2 (YLR070c, ScXYL2), coding for a xylitol dehydrogenase (XDH), are overexpressed under endogenous promoters. In nontransformed S. cerevisiae strains, XDH activity was significantly higher in the presence of xylose, but xylose reductase (XR) activity was not affected by the choice of carbon source. The expression of SOR1, encoding a sorbitol dehydrogenase, was elevated in the presence of xylose as were the genes encoding transketolase and transaldolase. An S. cerevisiae strain carrying the XR and XDH enzymes from the xylose-utilizing yeast Pichia stipitis grew more quickly and accumulated less xylitol than did the strain overexpressing the endogenous enzymes. Overexpression of the GRE3 and ScXYL2 genes in the S. cerevisiae CEN.PK2 strain resulted in a growth rate of 0.01 g of cell dry mass liter−1 h−1 and a xylitol yield of 55% when xylose was the main carbon source.
Self-tuning saturation sliding controller for a two-link robot arm

In this study, a self-tuning sliding controller is employed to solve the control problem for a class of SISO nonlinear control system. Such a controller is called the self- tuning saturation sliding controller (SSC) in this paper. The SSC can be viewed as an improved sliding controller which possesses both the equivalent controller characteristics and the hitting controller characteristics. Besides, in order to overcome the parameter selection problem, a self-tuning machine is proposed to reduce the difficulty of the parameter selection. Finally, we attempt to employ the proposed controller to control a two-link robot arm which is a class of MIMO control system. The results are promising.
Optimal Momentum Compensation with Waist Joint for Online Biped Gait Generating of Humanoid Robot

In this paper we introduce a method to generate whole body's linear and angular momentum, and use upper body to compensate for the momentum caused by lower-body prescribed trajectory for fast dynamic walk of humanoid robot. In this method, the system dynamic model is built with its performance indices, and the optimal momentum compensation (OPMC) is solved by preview control method. Experiments conducted both in simulation and on real robot "Kong" with a walking motion at the speed of 0.5km/h, proved the effectiveness of our method.