Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Action of lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase on low-density lipoproteins in native pig plasma.

The action of lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT, EC 2.3.1.43) on the different pig lipoprotein classes was investigated with emphasis on low-density lipoproteins (LDL). It was demonstrated previously that LDL can serve as substrate for LCAT, probably because they contain sufficient amounts of apoA-I and other non-apoB proteins, known as LCAT activators. Upon a 24-h incubation of pig plasma in vitro in the presence of active LCAT, both pig LDL subclasses, LDL-1 and LDL-2, fused together, forming one fraction, as revealed by analytical ultracentrifugation. This fusion was time dependent, becoming visible after 3 h and complete after 18 h of incubation. Concomitantly, free cholesterol and phospholipids decreased and cholesteryl esters increased. When isolated LDL-1 and LDL-2 were incubated with purified pig LCAT for 24 h, LDL-1 floated toward higher densities and LDL-2 toward lower densities, although this effect was not as pronounced as in incubations of whole serum. In further experiments, pig serum was incubated for various periods of time in the presence and absence of the LCAT inhibitor sodium iodoacetate. The individual lipoproteins then were separated by density gradient ultracentrifugation or by specific immunoprecipitation and chemically analyzed. Both methods revealed that in the absence of active LCAT there was a transfer of free cholesterol from LDL to high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and a small transfer of cholesteryl esters in the opposite direction. In the presence of LCAT the loss of free cholesterol started immediately in all three lipoprotein classes, was most prominent in LDL, and was proportional to the newly synthesized cholesteryl esters incorporated in each fraction. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A polynomial texture extraction with application in dynamic texture classification

Geometry and texture image decomposition is an important paradigm in image processing. Following to Yves Meyer works based on Total Variation (VT), the decomposition model has known a renewed interest. In this paper, we propose an algorithm which decomposes color image into geometry and texture component by projecting the image in a bivariate polynomial basis and considering the geometry component as the partial reconstruction and the texture component as the remaining part. The experimental results show the adequacy of using our method as a texture extraction tool. Furthermore, we integrate it into a dynamic texture classification process.
Parental smoking during pregnancy, early growth, and risk of obesity in preschool children: the Generation R Study.

BACKGROUND Maternal smoking during pregnancy seems to be associated with obesity in offspring. Not much is known about the specific critical exposure periods or underlying mechanisms for this association. OBJECTIVE We assessed the associations of active maternal and paternal smoking during pregnancy with early growth characteristics and risks of overweight and obesity in preschool children. DESIGN This study was a population-based, prospective cohort study from early fetal life until the age of 4 y in 5342 mothers and fathers and their children. Growth characteristics [head circumference, length, weight, and body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2))] and overweight and obesity were repeatedly measured at the ages of 1, 2, 3, and 4 y. RESULTS In comparison with children from nonsmoking mothers, children from mothers who continued smoking during pregnancy had persistently smaller head circumferences and heights until the age of 4 y, whereas their weights were lower only until the age of 3 mo. This smaller length and normal to higher weight led to an increased BMI [SD score difference: 0.11; 95% CI: 0.02, 0.20; P < 0.05)] and an increased risk of obesity (odds ratio: 1.61; 95% CI: 1.03, 2.53; P < 0.05) at the age of 4 y. In nonsmoking mothers, paternal smoking was not associated with postnatal growth characteristics or risk of obesity in offspring. Maternal smoking during pregnancy was associated with a higher BMI at the age of 4 y in children with a normal birth weight and in those who were small for gestational age at birth. CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that direct intrauterine exposure to smoke until late pregnancy leads to different height and weight growth adaptations and increased risks of overweight and obesity in preschool children.
Acoustic-phonetic decoding of different types of spontaneous speech in Spanish

This paper presents preliminary acoustic-phonetic decoding results for Spanish on the spontaneous speech corpus CORAL-ROM. These results are compared with results on the read speech corpus ALBAYZIN. We also compare the decoding results obtained with the different types of spontaneous speech in C-ORAL-ROM. As the most important conclusions, the experiments show that the type of spontaneous speech has a deep impact on spontaneous speech recognition results. Best speech recognition results are those obtained on speech captured from the media.
O conceito de cogestão em saúde: reflexões sobre a produção de democracia institucional

Este ensaio tem por objetivo discutir os elementos necessarios a composicao do conceito de cogestao, tendo por perspectiva a necessidade de repensar os modos de gestao do Sistema Unico de Saude, ja que o cotidiano institucional expoe as limitacoes que a tradicao gerencial enfrenta na concretizacao das politicas publicas que o estruturam, principalmente quando se apresenta como horizonte desejado a transformacao democratica de suas instituicoes. Para tanto, apresentamos o conceito de cogestao formulado por Gastao Wagner Campos e, em seguida, realizamos uma reflexao teorica sobre tres elementos especificos, a saber: a nocao de porosidade, a producao de novas logicas de pertencimento institucional e as relacoes entre cogestao e conhecimento. Por fim, propomos pensar a cogestao como socializacao e democratizacao da constituicao de artificios institucionais, destacando o reconhecimento de sua dependencia direta dos fluxos e redes sociais que promovem a socializacao dos saberes, dos dispositivos tecnologicos e organizativos. Ao remetermos o conceito de cogestao para o plano da articulacao em rede das atividades de producao de saude, procuramos refletir sobre o desafio de construcao de novas sociabilidades democraticas, capazes de concretizar materialmente o direito a saude. A cogestao das instituicoes seria, nessa perspectiva, uma dimensao fundamental da coproducao de saude.
The development of attachment behaviors in pregnant adolescents.

Evidence suggests that the quality of the relationship between mother and infant depends upon the mothers relationship with the developing fetus. The mother comes to love her unborn child through developmental tasks which include acceptance incorporation bonding and giving of herself. The author explored the development over time of maternal-fetal and maternal-infant attachment in 79 low-income females aged 12-19 years who were pregnant in their first trimester upon enrollment in the study. Rubins theoretical framework was employed. Follow-up data were collected in the second and third trimesters as well as after delivery from 64 54 and 47 of the participants respectively. Multivariate analysis using profile analysis indicated that maternal attachment in adolescents begins during pregnancy and increases over time especially after quickening. Age-related differences were noted in the development of maternal-fetal attachment behaviors related to giving of self. A positive relationship was identified between attachment in the third trimester and the demonstration of affectionate behaviors toward the infant after birth. These findings are consistent with the theoretical framework.
Effect of Corporate Structure on Autonomy of Top Editors at U.S. Dailies

This study sought to determine whether top editors at chain-owned and large newspapers would have more autonomy and freedom to improve editorial content than top editors at independent and small newspapers. The theoretical rationale is that role specialization promotes increased emphasis on news and editorials and, at the same time, removes the influence of publishers and owners from the news production process. The study found that differences between chain and independent ownership were not significant, but that top editors at larger newspapers did have more autonomy.
Sequencing the cap-snatching repertoire of H1N1 influenza provides insight into the mechanism of viral transcription initiation

The influenza polymerase cleaves host RNAs ∼10–13 nucleotides downstream of their 5′ ends and uses this capped fragment to prime viral mRNA synthesis. To better understand this process of cap snatching, we used high-throughput sequencing to determine the 5′ ends of A/WSN/33 (H1N1) influenza mRNAs. The sequences provided clear evidence for nascent-chain realignment during transcription initiation and revealed a strong influence of the viral template on the frequency of realignment. After accounting for the extra nucleotides inserted through realignment, analysis of the capped fragments indicated that the different viral mRNAs were each prepended with a common set of sequences and that the polymerase often cleaved host RNAs after a purine and often primed transcription on a single base pair to either the terminal or penultimate residue of the viral template. We also developed a bioinformatic approach to identify the targeted host transcripts despite limited information content within snatched fragments and found that small nuclear RNAs and small nucleolar RNAs contributed the most abundant capped leaders. These results provide insight into the mechanism of viral transcription initiation and reveal the diversity of the cap-snatched repertoire, showing that noncoding transcripts as well as mRNAs are used to make influenza mRNAs.
Proteomic screening and identification of differentially distributed membrane proteins in Escherichia coli

Bacteria show asymmetric subcellular distribution of many proteins involved in diverse cellular processes such as chemotaxis, motility, actin polymerization, chromosome partitioning and cell division. In many cases, the specific subcellular localization of these proteins is critical for proper regulation and function. Although cellular organization of the bacterial cell clearly plays an important role in cell physiology, systematic studies to uncover asymmetrically distributed proteins have not been reported previously. In this study, we undertook a proteomics approach to uncover polar membrane proteins in Escherichia coli. We identified membrane proteins enriched in E. coli minicells using a combination of two‐dimensional electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. Among a total of 173 membrane protein spots that were consistently detected, 36 spots were enriched in minicell membranes, whereas 15 spots were more abundant in rod cell membranes. The minicell‐enriched proteins included the inner membrane proteins MCPs, AtpA, AtpB, YiaF and AcrA, the membrane‐associated FtsZ protein and the outer membrane proteins YbhC, OmpW, Tsx, Pal, FadL, OmpT and BtuB. We immunolocalized two of the minicell‐enriched proteins, OmpW and YiaF, and showed that OmpW is a bona fide polar protein whereas YiaF displays a patchy membrane distribution with a polar and septal bias.
Feed‐forward inhibition shapes the spike output of cerebellar Purkinje cells

Although the cerebellum is thought to play a key role in timing of movements on the time scale of milliseconds, it is unclear how such temporal fidelity is ensured at the cellular level. We have investigated the timing of feed‐forward inhibition onto interneurons and Purkinje cells activated by parallel fibre stimulation in slices of cerebellar cortex from P18–25 rats. Feed‐forward inhibition was activated within ∼1 ms after the onset of excitation in both cell types. The rapid onset of feed‐forward inhibition sharply curtailed EPSPs and increased the precision of the resulting action potentials. The time window for summation of EPSPs was reduced to 1–2 ms in the presence of feed‐forward inhibition, which could inhibit the efficacy of asynchronous EPSPs for up to 30 ms. Our findings demonstrate how the inhibitory microcircuitry of the cerebellar cortex orchestrates synaptic integration and precise timing of spikes in Purkinje cells, enabling them to act as coincidence detectors of parallel fibre input.
Quantitative study of Solid State Disks for mass storage

A quantitative study of Solid State Disks (SSD) for mass storage is performed using a well established storage simulator, extended to handle SSD components. The study considers various IO profiles representing a wide range of applications. We focus on four IO parameters, split into 2 categories: hardware configuration and access operations. The first category covers the Flash chips types and how they are assembled to build the SSD. The second category deals with the variation of the generated IO operations (size, type). The obtained results give a precise idea of the capabilities of such storage devices and can be used as guidelines for efficient SSD based systems design and effective access patterns delivering a maximum throughput.
The effectiveness of early intervention: examining risk factors and pathways to enhanced development.

In this paper we examine the effectiveness of early intervention, especially vis-à-vis (a) child and family risk factors and (b) the pathways to enhanced child and family development. To address these issues we draw on findings from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) for low-birth-weight premature infants. The data we present reveal the considerable effectiveness of the IHDP intervention in enhancing several aspects of early and later child and family development. The findings also illustrate the importance of looking beyond intervention group differences to examine the extent to which early intervention effects are more pronounced for some children and families than others and to examine the processes underlying intervention effects (e.g., exactly how do early interventions change children and families? ). For example, both initial and longer-term IHDP intervention effects varied by both characteristics of the children and characteristics of their families. Our data also provide some insight into the processes by which intervention effects may have occurred. We conclude our consideration of these many complexities with suggestions for practice, social policy, and future research.
Precision at K in Multilingual Information Retrieval

Retrieval (IR) is used to store and represent the knowledge and the retrieval of information relevant for a special user query. Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) system helps the users to pose the query in one language and retrieve the documents in more than one language. One of the basic performance measures of IR systems is Precision. While this measure work well in monolingual web retrieval, not suitable for CLIR (Cross-lingual Information Retrieval) or MLIR where two or more languages are involved. This paper proposed a metric which measures Precision at K which is the proportion of relevant documents in the first K positions when more than one document languages involved in the retrieval system i.e. MLIR. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed metric is effective in systems where more than one document languages involved in the retrieval.
FORMAL AND INFORMAL MARKET INSTITUTIONS:

Market exchange involves many cognitive and non-cognitive processes — e.g., search, inference, prediction, negotiation. Much attention has been devoted to these issues both in theory and in experimental economics. I focus on the enforcement of market transactions against opportunistic behavior. I first discuss the different mechanisms that can deter opportunistic breach of contract. Some of these mechanisms rely on rational thought and self-interest; others rely on intrinsic motivation, including emotions. Implications for institutional design are summarized. I then discuss the different types of social norms that are needed to support different mechanisms for the assignment of individuals to task, either within a family and a hierarchical organization, or by the market. This framework provides insights on the normative content that is most conducive to economic effi ciency. In the last and central part of the paper, I examine how behavioral tendencies interact with norms, incentives, and assignment mechanisms to support or undermine market institutions. I start by discussing how altruism and rivalry feed into the competitive process. Next we examine the relationship between mate selection and market matching. Breach deterrence is introduced next, first from the point of view of risk attitudes and excusable default. This leads to a discussion of morality and preferences ∗This paper has been written in preparation for the June 5-6 2016 Paris Conference on Economic Development and Institutions. Financial support from the DfID-funded EDI projet is gratefully acknowledged. An early version was presented at the EDI Namur conference in January 2016. I benefitted from comments from Avner Greif, Jean-Philippe Platteau, Samuel Bowles, Dilip Mookherjee, Abigail Barr, Joan Esteban, and Jean-Marie Baland. over process. The paper ends with a brief discussion of individualism and agency. Implications are drawn regarding knowledge gaps. Investigation is needed on how different cultures view different types of incentives and deterrence mechanisms.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.org Mitochondria and Organismal Longevity

Mitochondria are essential for various biological processes including cellular energy production. The oxidative stress theory of aging proposes that mitochondria play key roles in aging by generating reactive oxygen species (ROS), which indiscriminately damage macromolecules and lead to an age-dependent decline in biological function. However, recent studies show that increased levels of ROS or inhibition of mitochondrial function can actually delay aging and increase lifespan. The aim of this review is to summarize recent findings regarding the role of mitochondria in organismal aging processes. We will discuss how mitochondria contribute to evolutionarily conserved longevity pathways, including mild inhibition of respiration, dietary restriction, and target of rapamycin (TOR) signaling.
New scalar politics: implications for education policy

This paper argues that globalisation has implications for research and theory in the social sciences, demanding that the social no longer be seen as homologous with nation, but also linked to postnational or global fields. This situation has theoretical and methodological implications for comparative education specifically focused on education policy, which traditionally has taken the nation-state as the unit of analysis, and also worked with ‘methodological nationalism’. The paper argues that globalisation has witnessed a rescaling of educational politics and policymaking and relocated some political authority to an emergent global education policy field, with implications for the functioning of national political authority and national education policy fields. This rescaling and this reworking of political authority are illustrated through two cases: the first is concerned with the impact of a globalised policy discourse of the ‘knowledge economy’ proselytised by the OECD and its impact in Australian policy developments; the second is concerned explicitly with the constitution of a global education policy field as a commensurate space of equivalence, as evidenced in the OECD’s PISA and educational indicators work and their increasing global coverage. The paper indicatively utilises Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ to understand the emergent global education policy field and suggests these are very useful for doing comparative education policy analysis.
Nanomechanics of carbon nanotubes

Some of the most important potential applications of carbon nanotubes are related to their mechanical properties. Stiff sp2 bonds result in a Young’s modulus close to that of diamond, while the relatively weak van der Waals interaction between the graphitic shells acts as a form of lubrication. Previous characterization of the mechanical properties of nanotubes includes a rich variety of experiments involving mechanical deformation of nanotubes using scanning probe microscopes. These results have led to promising prototypes of nanoelectromechanical devices such as high-performance nanomotors, switches and oscillators based on carbon nanotubes.
Supplementary Material for “Genotype, haplotype, and copy-number variation in worldwide human populations” Contents

1 Preparation of SNP data 2 1.1 Overview . 2 1.2 Genotyping . 2 1.3 Initial quality control . 2 1.4 Individuals . 3 1.5 Populations . 3 1.6 SNPs . 4 1.7 Missing data rate . 5 1.8 Genotyping error rate . 5
Coordinated multi-point transmission with non-ideal channel reciprocity

This paper studies robust transmission strategies for downlink time division duplex coordinated multi-point (CoMP) systems with non-ideal uplink-downlink channel reciprocity due to imperfect antenna calibration. By exploiting the statistics of antenna calibration errors, we first characterize the optimal parametric precoder structure that maximizes the weighted sum rate, based on which a closed-form robust signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (RSLNR) precoder with properly selected parameters is then proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed precoder together with user scheduling provides near-optimal performance and data sharing among coordinated BSs may become detrimental depending on the employed precoders and the accuracy of antenna calibration.
Activity Patterns and Synaptic Organization of Ventrally Located Interneurons in the Embryonic Chick Spinal Cord

To investigate the origin of spontaneous activity in developing spinal networks, we examined the activity patterns and synaptic organization of ventrally located lumbosacral interneurons, including those whose axons project into the ventrolateral funiculus (VLF), in embryonic day 9 (E9)–E12 chick embryos. During spontaneous episodes, rhythmic synaptic potentials were recorded from the VLF and from spinal interneurons that were synchronized, cycle by cycle, with rhythmic ventral root potentials. At the beginning of an episode, ventral root potentials started before the VLF discharge and the firing of individual interneurons. However, pharmacological blockade of recurrent motoneuron collaterals did not prevent or substantially delay interneuron recruitment during spontaneous episodes. The synaptic connections of interneurons were examined by stimulating the VLF and recording the potentials evoked in the ventral roots, in the VLF, or in individual interneurons. Low-intensity stimulation of the VLF evoked a short-latency depolarizing potential in the ventral roots, or in interneurons, that was probably mediated mono- or disynaptically. At higher intensities, long-latency responses were recruited in a highly nonlinear manner, eventually culminating in the activation of an episode. VLF-evoked potentials were reversibly blocked by extracellular Co2+, indicating that they were mediated by chemical synaptic transmission. Collectively, these findings indicate that ventral interneurons are rhythmically active, project to motoneurons, and are likely to be interconnected by recurrent excitatory synaptic connections. This pattern of organization may explain the synchronous activation of spinal neurons and the regenerative activation of spinal networks when provided with a suprathreshold stimulus.