Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Temperature effects on a whole metabolic reaction cannot be inferred from its components

Changes in temperature affect the kinetic energy of the constituents of a system at the molecular level and have pervasive effects on the physiology of the whole organism. A mechanistic link between these levels of organization has been assumed and made explicit through the use of values of organismal Q10 to infer control of metabolic rate. To be valid this postulate requires linearity and independence of the isolated reaction steps, assumptions not accepted by all. We address this controversy by applying dynamic systems theory and metabolic control analysis to a metabolic pathway model. It is shown that temperature effects on isolated steps cannot rigorously be extrapolated to higher levels of organization.
Environmental Factors Affecting Human Resources Management Activities of Turkish Large Firms

The basic aim of this study is to present and examine environmental factors affecting human resource activities,which based upon a research conducted on Turkish large firms. Factors that affect human resource management(HRM) activities were divided into two, as internal and external elements. The data for the research weregathered with a survey, and analyzed with various statistical methods. Accordingly, it was achieved that,companies take these internal and external elements into consideration in a high or at least moderate level ingeneral. Moreover, it was found that, “priorities of top management”, “legislations/regulations”, “changes innational economy”, and “qualities of employees” are the top factors affecting HRM activities. It was also seenthat, there is no statistically significant relation between industries, the year of foundation, city of headquarters,ownership type, size and the means of internal or external environmental factors affecting HRM activities. Theresults demonstrate the fit for internal factors and fit for external factors. Also, it was found that, internal andexternal environmental factors are significantly associated. Thus, HRM activities are closely integrated withenvironmental elements, which, should always be considered.
Completion task to uncover consumer's perception: a case study using distinct types of hen's eggs

ABSTRACT The choice and consumption of eggs are made considering a consumers' multidimensional perception, and their understanding becomes essential to the production targeting and the products' success in the market. In this context, this work aimed to verify the consumers' perception about the distinct types of hens' eggs, using a projective technique of completion task combined with presentation of images. A hundred consumers (n = 100) evaluated the main factors, both positive and negative, involved at the purchase time of eggs besides estimating their price. Between the positive factors that guide the eggs' consumption and purchase, the category with highest mention of terms was “Health,” whereas negatively it was highlighted the category “Price. ” Concerning the perception of price, the results showed that the factory farm white eggs' value was the one that least differed from the average market price, possibly due to the nearness and familiarity with this variety. The methodology of completion task combined with presentation of images proved as being a practical and efficient tool to capture the consumers' perception of eggs, capable of providing valuable information to the ones involved in the production chain and commercialization of these products.
Purpose-Feature Relationship Mining from Online Reviews towards Purpose-Oriented Recommendation

SUMMARY To help with decision making, online shoppers tend to go through both a list of a product’s features and functionality provided by the vendor, as well as a list of reviews written by other users. Unfortunately, this process is ine ﬀ ective when the buyer is confronted with large amounts of information, particularly when the buyer has limited experience with and knowledge of the product. In order to avoid this problem, we propose a framework of purpose-oriented recommendation that presents a ranked list of products suitable for a designated user purpose by identifying important product features to fulﬁll the purpose from online reviews. As technical foundation for realizing the framework, we propose several methods to mine relation between user purposes and product features from the consumer reviews. Using digital camera reviews on Amazon.com, the experimental results show that our proposed method is both e ﬀ ective and stable, with an acceptable rate of precision and recall.
Compressibility behaviour of conducting ceramic TiB2

To address the large spread in the bulk modulus value of TiB2 reported in literature, high pressure compressibility study of a phase pure polycrystalline sample has been carried out using in situ high pressure x-ray diffraction technique (HPXRD) in angle dispersive mode. The study has been done up to 23 GPa at ambient temperature with methanol-ethanol-water (MEW) as pressure transmitting medium. The hexagonal lattice has been found to be stable in the pressure range studied. The isothermal bulk modulus is estimated to be 333(6) GPa by employing 3rd order Birch–Murnaghan equation of state. The obtained high value of bulk modulus is understood in terms of band filling effect, and the nature of bonding between B–B and Ti–B in TiB2. Compressibility along ‘a’ and ‘c’ axis is found to be anisotropic with compressibility values of 0.93(2) TPa−1 and 1.14(2) TPa−1 respectively. From the estimated bond lengths for Ti–B and B–B it is found that B–B bonds are less compressible compared to Ti–B bonds which is in accordance with the respective nature of Ti–B and B–B bonds. A change in the rate of bond contraction was seen around 12 GPa which is due to the bond hardening for both Ti–B and B–B bonds with pressure.
Neurocognitive Testing in Concussion Management

The role of neurocognitive testing in the clinical management of concussion remains under debate. Although professional sports teams frequently use automated computerized testing, there is strikingly little evidence of the benefit of testing in clinical decision-making at this time. In addition, one study has shown normalization of computerized tests while formal neuropsychological testing continues to detect deficits in performance. We will review current evidence for the use of such testing.
Carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus storage in subtropical seagrass meadows: examples from Florida Bay and Shark Bay

Seagrass meadows in Florida Bay and Shark Bay contain substantial stores of both organic carbon and nutrients. Soils from both systems are predominantly calcium carbonate, with an average of 82.1% CaCO3 in Florida Bay compared with 71.3% in Shark Bay. Soils from Shark Bay had, on average, 21% higher organic carbon content and 35% higher phosphorus content than Florida Bay. Further, soils from Shark Bay had lower mean dry bulk density (0.78 ± 0.01 g mL–1) than those from Florida Bay (0.84 ± 0.02 mg mL–1). The most hypersaline regions of both bays had higher organic carbon content in surficial soils. Profiles of organic carbon and phosphorus from Florida Bay indicate that this system has experienced an increase in P delivery and primary productivity over the last century; in contrast, decreasing organic carbon and phosphorus with depth in the soil profiles in Shark Bay point to a decrease in phosphorus delivery and primary productivity over the last 1000 y. The total ecosystem stocks of stored organic C in Florida Bay averages 163.5 MgCorg ha–1, lower than the average of 243.0 MgCorg ha–1 for Shark Bay; but these values place Shark and Florida Bays among the global hotspots for organic C storage in coastal ecosystems.
Sampling Transgenic Corn Producing Bt Toxins for Corn Earworm Injury

Abstract Transgenic corn, Zea mays L. , hybrids expressing insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and non-Bt near isolines were sampled for injury from Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) in North and South Carolina from 2012 to 2017. A total of 7,260 ears were sampled, with an average kernel injury from H. zea feeding of 1.22 ± 0.02 (SEM) cm2. The χ2 statistics for observed and Poisson predicted distributions of the area of kernel injury indicated nonrandom distributions for all hybrids (P < 0.0001), which were confirmed by all variance to mean ratios (ID) being significantly greater than one. Slopes b ofTaylor's power law and β of Iwao's patchiness regressions for the area of kernel injury were all either not significantly (P > 0.05) different from a value of one or significantly (P < 0.05) less than a value of one. Within each family of hybrids, relationships between proportions of ear samples with injury and area of kernel injury were similar among Bt and non-Bt hybrids. For the same level of injury, to reach a population estimate within 10% of the mean (Dx = 0.1), the number of sample units required was large (>100), particularly at low levels of injury. Sample sizes for estimates within 30% of the mean (Dx = 0.3) were considerable smaller. Sample size for Bt hybrids relative to non-Bt hybrids varied with the levels of injury and with family. Our study has provided the first sampling recommendations for population estimates of H. zea injury to corn ears.
The essential and multifunctional TFIIH complex

TFIIH is a 10‐subunit complex that regulates RNA polymerase II (pol II) transcription but also serves other important biological roles. Although much remains unknown about TFIIH function in eukaryotic cells, much progress has been made even in just the past few years, due in part to technological advances (e.g. cryoEM and single molecule methods) and the development of chemical inhibitors of TFIIH enzymes. This review focuses on the major cellular roles for TFIIH, with an emphasis on TFIIH function as a regulator of pol II transcription. We describe the structure of TFIIH and its roles in pol II initiation, promoter‐proximal pausing, elongation, and termination. We also discuss cellular roles for TFIIH beyond transcription (e.g. DNA repair, cell cycle regulation) and summarize small molecule inhibitors of TFIIH and diseases associated with defects in TFIIH structure and function.
Optimal multiresolution 3D level-set method for liver segmentation incorporating local curvature constraints

Advanced liver surgery requires a precise pre-operative planning, where liver segmentation and remnant liver volume are key elements to avoid post-operative liver failure. In that context, level-set algorithms have achieved better results than others, especially with altered liver parenchyma or in cases with previous surgery. In order to improve functional liver parenchyma volume measurements, in this work we propose two strategies to enhance previous level-set algorithms: an optimal multi-resolution strategy with fine details correction and adaptive curvature, as well as an additional semiautomatic step imposing local curvature constraints. Results show more accurate segmentations, especially in elongated structures, detecting internal lesions and avoiding leakages to close structures.
Development of support system to handle ultrasound probe by coordinated motion with medical robot

We have developed a support system using our ultrasound diagnosis robot, which is able to support manual handling of ultrasound probe in echography to alleviate fatigue of examiner. This system realizes a coordinated motion according to the motion of the probe, which is hold by the robot and is moved by an examiner. We have established four kinds of situations, which are initial fixation, coordinate motions with/without contact on the body surface, and automatic chase motion of an internal organ. The system recognizes when the examiner grasps the ultrasound probe by 6-axis force sensor and touches it on body surface by processing echograms. Not only unskilled examiners but also a professional sonographer have evaluated the performance of the system after elucidating multiple parameters for compliance control and self-weight and moment compensation of the probe. As the results, this system has the potential to be able to support advanced diagnosis for conventional echography.
Towards Targeting the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor in Cystic Fibrosis

Tryptophan (trp) metabolism is an important regulatory component of gut mucosal homeostasis and the microbiome. Metabolic pathways targeting the trp can lead to a myriad of metabolites, of both host and microbial origins, some of which act as endogenous low-affinity ligands for the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a cytosolic, ligand-operated transcription factor that is involved in many biological processes, including development, cellular differentiation and proliferation, xenobiotic metabolism, and the immune response. Low-level activation of AhR by endogenous ligands is beneficial in the maintenance of immune health and intestinal homeostasis. We have defined a functional node whereby certain bacteria species contribute to host/microbial symbiosis and mucosal homeostasis. A microbial trp metabolic pathway leading to the production of indole-3-aldehyde (3-IAld) by lactobacilli provided epithelial protection while inducing antifungal resistance via the AhR/IL-22 axis. In this review, we highlight the role of AhR in inflammatory lung diseases and discuss the possible therapeutic use of AhR ligands in cystic fibrosis.
Geometry-Aware Deep Network for Single-Image Novel View Synthesis

This paper tackles the problem of novel view synthesis from a single image. In particular, we target real-world scenes with rich geometric structure, a challenging task due to the large appearance variations of such scenes and the lack of simple 3D models to represent them. Modern, learning-based approaches mostly focus on appearance to synthesize novel views and thus tend to generate predictions that are inconsistent with the underlying scene structure. By contrast, in this paper, we propose to exploit the 3D geometry of the scene to synthesize a novel view. Specifically, we approximate a real-world scene by a fixed number of planes, and learn to predict a set of homographies and their corresponding region masks to transform the input image into a novel view. To this end, we develop a new region-aware geometric transform network that performs these multiple tasks in a common framework. Our results on the outdoor KITTI and the indoor ScanNet datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our network in generating high-quality synthetic views that respect the scene geometry, thus outperforming the state-of-the-art methods.
An Exponential Speedup in Parallel Running Time for Submodular Maximization without Loss in Approximation

In this paper we study the adaptivity of submodular maximization. Adaptivity quantifies the number of sequential rounds that an algorithm makes when function evaluations can be executed in parallel. Adaptivity is a fundamental concept that is heavily studied across a variety of areas in computer science, largely due to the need for parallelizing computation. For the canonical problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function under a cardinality constraint, it is well known that a simple greedy algorithm achieves a $1-1/e$ approximation and that this approximation is optimal for polynomial-time algorithms. Somewhat surprisingly, despite extensive efforts on submodular optimization for large-scale datasets, until very recently there was no known algorithm that achieves a constant factor approximation for this problem whose adaptivity is sublinear in the size of the ground set $n$. Recent work by Balkanski and Singer describes an algorithm that obtains an approximation arbitrarily close to $1/3$ in $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$ adaptive rounds and shows that no algorithm can obtain a constant factor approximation in $\tilde{o}(\log n)$ adaptive rounds. This approach achieves an exponential speedup in adaptivity (and parallel running time) at the expense of approximation quality. In this paper we describe a novel approach that yields an algorithm whose approximation is arbitrarily close to the optimal $1-1/e$ guarantee in $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$ adaptive rounds. This algorithm therefore achieves an exponential speedup in parallel running time for submodular maximization at the expense of an arbitrarily small loss in approximation quality. This guarantee is optimal in both approximation and adaptivity, up to lower order terms.
Co-circulation of Flanders Virus and West Nile Virus in Culex Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) from Chicago, Illinois

Abstract West Nile virus (WNV) and Flanders virus (FLAV) co-occur in regions of North America. Because both viruses are maintained in a transmission cycle involving Culex mosquitoes and birds, screening mosquitoes for FLAV has been suggested as an enhancement to WNV surveillance and epidemic prediction. Using samples collected in 2010 and 2012 in Chicago, IL, USA, we demonstrate the presence of FLAV in four out of 287 (1.4%) Culex pools. We estimated minimum infection rates for WNV and FLAV to be 5.66 and 1.22 in 2010 and 8.74 and 0.61 in 2012, respectively. FLAV occurred 1 and 3 wk prior to the peak of WNV transmission in 2010 and 2012, respectively. FLAV sequences from Chicago were genetically diverse and phylogenetically representative of lineage A viruses from across the United States.
Discovery of recombinases enables genome mining of cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters in Burkholderiales species

Significance Natural products biosynthesized by cryptic gene clusters represent a largely untapped source for drug discovery. However, mining of these products by promoter engineering is restricted by the lack of streamlined genetic tools, especially in nonmodel biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC)-rich bacteria. Here, we describe the discovery of a pair of bacteriophage recombinases and application of recombinase-assisted promoter engineering to rapidly identify and activate several cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters in two Burkholderiales strains that currently lack effective genetic tools. Construction of an efficient genome engineering platform in a natural product producer expedites mining of cryptic BGCs in their native backgrounds, and host melioration for yield or structure optimization. This strategy enables potentially scalable discovery of novel metabolites with intriguing bioactivities from many other bacteria. Bacterial genomes encode numerous cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) that represent a largely untapped source of drugs or pesticides. Mining of the cryptic products is limited by the unavailability of streamlined genetic tools in native producers. Precise genome engineering using bacteriophage recombinases is particularly useful for genome mining. However, recombinases are usually host-specific. The genome-guided discovery of novel recombinases and their transient expression could boost cryptic BGC mining. Herein, we reported a genetic system employing Red recombinases from Burkholderiales strain DSM 7029 for efficient genome engineering in several Burkholderiales species that currently lack effective genetic tools. Using specialized recombinases-assisted in situ insertion of functional promoters, we successfully mined five cryptic nonribosomal peptide synthetase/polyketide synthase BGCs, two of which were silent. Two classes of lipopeptides, glidopeptins and rhizomides, were identified through extensive spectroscopic characterization. This recombinase expression strategy offers utility within other bacteria species, allowing bioprospecting for potentially scalable discovery of novel metabolites with attractive bioactivities.
Association of activated vitamin D treatment and mortality in chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND Treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) with activated vitamin D analogues is associated with better survival in patients receiving dialysis. It is unclear whether such a benefit is present in patients with predialysis chronic kidney disease (CKD). METHODS We examined the association of oral calcitriol treatment with mortality and the incidence of dialysis in 520 male US veterans (mean [SD] age, 69.8 [10.3] years; 23.5% black) with CKD stages 3 to 5 and not yet receiving dialysis (mean [SD] estimated glomerular filtration rate, 30.8 [11.3]). Associations were examined by the Kaplan-Meier method and in Poisson regression models with adjustment for age, race, comorbidities, smoking, blood pressure, body mass index, use of phosphate binders, estimated glomerular filtration rate, proteinuria, white blood cell count, percentage of lymphocytes, and levels of parathyroid hormone, calcium, phosphorus, albumin, bicarbonate, and hemoglobin. RESULTS Two hundred fifty-eight of 520 subjects received treatment with calcitriol, 0.25 to 0.5 microg/d, for a median duration of 2.1 years (range, 0.06-6.0 years). The incidence rate ratios for mortality and combined death and dialysis initiation were significantly lower in treated vs untreated patients (P < .001 for both in the fully adjusted models). Treatment with calcitriol was associated with a trend toward a lower incidence of dialysis. These results were consistent across different subgroups. CONCLUSIONS Treatment with the activated vitamin D analogue calcitriol appears to be associated with significantly greater survival in patients with CKD not yet receiving dialysis. Randomized clinical trials are required to verify the causality of these associations and to examine whether similar associations are seen with different activated vitamin D analogues.
Combination of Acacetin with Antibiotics against Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Isolated from Clinical Specimens

Methicillin-restitant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is very dangerous bacteria and one of the most feared nosocomial germs. In this study, acacetin was evaluated against 20 clinical isolates of MRSA, either alone or in combination with antibiotics. The acacetin exhibited a good activity against isolates MRSA with MICs/MBCs ranged between 10-80/20-160 μg/mL, for ampicillin 64-1024/128-2048 μg/mL, and for oxacillin 8-32/16-64 μg/mL. The combination of acacetin plus oxacillin or ampicillin was reduced by ≥4-fold against isolates MRSA tested, evidencing a synergistic effect as defined by a FICI of ≤0.5. Furthermore, a time-kill study evaluating the growth of the tested bacteria was completely attenuated after 2-5 h of treatment with the 1/2 MIC of acacetin, regardless of whether it was administered alone or with oxacillin (1/2 MIC) or ampicillin (1/2 MIC). In conclusion, acacetin exerted synergistic effects when administered with oxacillin or ampicillin and the antibacterial activity and resistant regulation of acacetin against clinical isolates of MRSA might be useful in controlling MRSA infections.
A contribution to acceleration of graphlet counting

Graphlets are small non-isomorphic connected subgraphs used for different kinds of analyses in social networks, bioinformatics and other areas described by large networks, where their number can provide a characterization of the network properties. Much of existing methods for counting the graphlets are based on direct enumeration. However, in case of large networks, this type of counting becomes computationally very demanding. Fortunately, for very sparse networks the computational cost is much less prohibitive than in dense networks, leading to the more efficient graphlet counting algorithms. This work is our first attempt to accelerate one of such algorithms by parallelization using graphic hardware.