Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECTS OF USING CAPTIONS IN SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETER VIDEOS

Deaf and hard of hearing sign language users are increasingly using sign language interpreter videos when obtaining information from television programs, films and web sites. These videos serve as a tool for interpreting spoken and/or written words. While previous studies have mainly emphasized the benefits of using captions in videos with non-signing content, our study focuses on the use of captions in the signing content itself. Our aim is to identify whether the implementation of captions in single sign language interpreter videos can positively affect viewers’ comprehension when compared with sign language interpreter videos without captions. An experiment was performed using four sign language interpreter videos with information about everyday events: hiking, shopping, culture and sports. Fifty-one deaf and hard of hearing Slovenian sign language users watched the videos alternately with and without captions. Afterwards, they answered ten questions. The results showed that the presence of captions positively affected their comprehension, which increased by 24% among deaf viewers, and 42% among hard of hearing viewers. Significant differences in comprehension between videos with and without captions were only found in the subjects of hiking and culture, where comprehension was higher when captions were used. The findings revealed that the inclusion of captions in sign language interpreter videos can improve deaf and hard of hearing viewers’ comprehension. It concludes with a call for the consistent use of captions in sign language interpreter videos across various media.
Activation of the Alphavirus Spike Protein Is Suppressed by Bound E3

ABSTRACT Alphaviruses are taken up into the endosome of the cell, where acidic conditions activate the spikes for membrane fusion. This involves dissociation of the three E2-E1 heterodimers of the spike and E1 interaction with the target membrane as a homotrimer. The biosynthesis of the heterodimer as a pH-resistant p62-E1 precursor appeared to solve the problem of premature activation in the late and acidic parts of the biosynthetic transport pathway in the cell. However, p62 cleavage into E2 and E3 by furin occurs before the spike has left the acidic compartments, accentuating the problem. In this work, we used a furin-resistant Semliki Forest virus (SFV) mutant, SFVSQL, to study the role of E3 in spike activation. The cleavage was reconstituted with proteinase K in vitro using free virus or spikes on SFVSQL-infected cells. We found that E3 association with the spikes was pH dependent, requiring acidic conditions, and that the bound E3 suppressed spike activation. This was shown in an in vitro spike activation assay monitoring E1 trimer formation with liposomes and a fusion-from-within assay with infected cells. Furthermore, the wild type, SFVwt, was found to bind significant amounts of E3, especially if produced in dense cultures, which lowered the pH of the culture medium. This E3 also suppressed spike activation. The results suggest that furin-cleaved E3 continues to protect the spike from premature activation in acidic compartments of the cell and that its release in the neutral extracellular space primes the spike for low-pH activation.
Extending the SAND Spatial Database System for the Visualization of Three‐Dimensional Scientific Data

The three-dimensional extension of the SAND (Spatial and Nonspatial Data) spatial database system is described as is its use for data found in scientific visualization applications. The focus is on surface data. Some of the principal operations supported by SAND involve locating spatial objects in the order of their distance from other spatial objects in an incremental manner so that the number of objects that are needed is not known a priori. These techniques are shown to be useful in enabling users to visualize the results of certain proximity queries without having to execute algorithms to completion as is the case when performing a nearest-neighbor query where a Voronoi diagram (i.e., Thiessen polygon) would be computed as a preprocessing step before any attempt to respond to the query could be made. This is achieved by making use of operations such as the spatial join and the distance semijoin. Examples of the utility of such operations is demonstrated in the context of posing meteorological queries to a spatial database with a visualization component.
Two new “very hot Jupiters” among the OGLE transiting candidates

As a result of a radial velocity follow-up of OGLE planetary transit candidates in Carina, we report the discovery of two new transiting planets with very short orbital periods: OGLE-TR-113 with m = 1.35 ± 0.22 MJup, r = 1.08 +0.07 −0.05 RJup, P = 1.43 days, and OGLE-TR-132 with m = 1.01 ± 0.31 MJup, r = 1.15 +0.80 −0.13 RJup, P = 1.69 days. These detections bring to three the number of known "very hot Jupiter" (Jovian exoplanets like OGLE-TR-56 with periods around 1.5 days). This indicates that the accumulation of periods around 3 days found in radial velocity surveys does not reflect an absolute limit.
Vaccines against a Major Cause of Abortion in Cattle, Neospora caninum Infection

Simple Summary We review the efforts to develop a vaccine against neosporosis, caused by the apicomplexan parasite Neospora caninum. Vertical transmission is the main mode of infection, and can lead to stillbirth, abortion, or birth of weak calves. We provide information on the biology of Neospora caninum and on the disease caused by this parasite, and summarize the current understanding on how the host deals with infection. We review studies on live- and subunit-vaccines, and demonstrate advantages and setbacks in the use of small laboratory animal models in investigations on a disease with high relevance in cattle. Abstract Neosporosis, caused by the apicomplexan parasite Neospora caninum, represents one of the economically most important causes of abortion in cattle. During pregnancy, the parasite infects the placental tissue and the fetus, which can lead to stillbirth, abortion, or birth of weak calves. Alternatively, calves are born without clinical symptoms, but they can carry over the parasite to the next generation. In addition, N. caninum causes neuromuscular disease in dogs. The economic importance of neosporosis has prompted researchers to invest in the development of measures to prevent infection of cattle by vaccination. A good vaccine must stimulate protective cellular immune responses as well as antibody responses at mucosal sites and, systemically, must activate T-helper cells to produce relevant cytokines, and must elicit specific antibodies that aid in limiting parasite proliferation, e.g., by interference with host cell invasion, activation of complement, and/or opsonization of parasites to have them killed by macrophages. Different types of vaccines have been investigated, either in bovines or in the mouse model. These include live vaccines such as naturally less virulent isolates of N. caninum, attenuated strains generated by irradiation or chemical means, or genetically modified transgenic strains. Live vaccines were shown to be very effective; however, there are serious disadvantages in terms of safety, costs of production, and stability of the final product. Subunit vaccines have been intensively studied, as they would have clear advantages such as reduced costs in production, processing and storage, increased stability and shelf life. The parasite antigens involved in adhesion and invasion of host cells, such as surface constituents, microneme-, rhoptry- and dense granule-components represent interesting targets. Subunit vaccines have been applied as bacterially expressed recombinant antigens or as DNA vaccines. Besides monovalent vaccines also polyvalent combinations of different antigens have been used, providing increased protection. Vaccines have been combined with immunostimulating carriers and, more recently, chimeric vaccines, incorporating immuno-relevant domains of several antigens into a single protein, have been developed.
Transformational leadership style and academic staffs’ commitment to service quality at Malaysian universities

This paper discussed the relationship between leadership style of transformational and the state of commitment to service quality among academic staffs in selected six public and private Malaysian Universities. It has been argued that excellent service quality performance is one of the key factors in building niche and having competitive edge that separates one from its competitors nationally and globally. Total useable questionnaires were 387 with a response rate of 36 percent from both private and public universities. The result revealed that there is a significant relationship between transformational leadership style and commitment to service quality among academic staff at the Malaysian universities. This study implies to the policy makers and academic leaders at the universities that they can focus in developing their academic staff, by tapping their potentials, inspiring them, promoting collaboration, motivating and reinforcing positive attitudes towards commitment to service quality. Future study should consider alternative modes of enquires such as employing the longitudinal method of data collection design and a nationwide survey covering samples from the whole population of the higher institutions of learning in Malaysia that would be more significant in making generalizations .
Altered Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase Signaling and Glycogen Metabolism in Skeletal Muscle from p90 Ribosomal S6 Kinase 2 Knockout Mice

ABSTRACT The p90 ribosomal S6 kinase (RSK), a cytosolic substrate for the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), is involved in transcriptional regulation, and one isoform (RSK2) has been implicated in the activation of glycogen synthase by insulin. To determine RSK2 function in vivo, mice lacking a functional rsk2 gene were generated and studied in response to insulin and exercise, two potent stimulators of the ERK cascade in skeletal muscle. RSK2 knockout (KO) mice weigh 10% less and are 14% shorter than wild-type (WT) mice. They also have impaired learning and coordination. Hindlimb skeletal muscles were obtained from mice 10, 15, or 30 min after insulin injection or immediately after strenuous treadmill exercise for 60 min. While insulin and exercise significantly increased ERK phosphorylation in skeletal muscle from both WT and KO mice, the increases were twofold greater in the KO animals. This occurred despite 27% lower ERK2 protein expression in skeletal muscle of KO mice. KO mice had 18% less muscle glycogen in the fasted basal state, and insulin increased glycogen synthase activity more in KO than WT mice. The enhanced insulin-stimulated increases in ERK and glycogen synthase activities in KO mice were not associated with higher insulin receptor or with IRS1 tyrosine phosphorylation or with IRS1 binding to phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. However, insulin-stimulated serine phosphorylation of Akt was significantly higher in the KO animals. c-fos mRNA was increased similarly in muscle from WT and KO mice in response to insulin (2.5-fold) and exercise (15-fold). In conclusion, RSK2 likely plays a major role in feedback inhibition of the ERK pathway in skeletal muscle. Furthermore, RSK2 is not required for activation of muscle glycogen synthase by insulin but may indirectly modulate muscle glycogen synthase activity and/or glycogen content by other mechanisms, possibly through regulation of Akt. RSK2 knockout mice may be a good animal model for the study of Coffin-Lowry syndrome.
Fas and Fas ligand in embryos and adult mice: ligand expression in several immune-privileged tissues and coexpression in adult tissues characterized by apoptotic cell turnover

The cell surface receptor Fas (FasR, Apo-1, CD95) and its ligand (FasL) are mediators of apoptosis that have been shown to be implicated in the peripheral deletion of autoimmune cells, activation-induced T cell death, and one of the two major cytolytic pathways mediated by CD8+ cytolytic T cells. To gain further understanding of the Fas system. , we have analyzed Fas and FasL expression during mouse development and in adult tissues. In developing mouse embryos, from 16.5 d onwards, Fas mRNA is detectable in distinct cell types of the developing sinus, thymus, lung, and liver, whereas FasL expression is restricted to submaxillary gland epithelial cells and the developing nervous system. Significant Fas and FasL expression were observed in several nonlymphoid cell types during embryogenesis, and generally Fas and FasL expression were not localized to characteristic sites of programmed cell death. In the adult mouse, RNase protection analysis revealed very wide expression of both Fas and FasL. Several tissues, including the thymus, lung, spleen, small intestine, large intestine, seminal vesicle, prostate, and uterus, clearly coexpress the two genes. Most tissues constitutively coexpressing Fas and FasL in the adult mouse are characterized by apoptotic cell turnover, and many of those expressing FasL are known to be immune privileged. It may be, therefore, that the Fas system is implicated in both the regulation of physiological cell turnover and the protection of particular tissues against potential lymphocyte-mediated damage.
The Roots of Legislator Popularity in Great Britain and the United States

In both the United States and Great Britain, legislators are surprisingly popular despite the inefficacy of government policies and the worsening of economic conditions. The answer to this small puzzle lies in the determinants of legislative popularity. In this paper, we show that legislative popularity in both countries is significantly related to constituency oriented activities such as handling constituents' problems, maintaining a high visibility in the constituency, defending the special interests of the district, and the like. We propose a three equation structural model which explains the formation of (1) name recognition, (2) the general expectation that the legislator is a dependable constituency man, and (3) the final assessment of the legislator's performance itself. The data we employ come from the 1978 CPS/NES Congressional Elections Study and from a 1979 British Election survey conducted by Gallup for our purposes.
The CAPM Applicability Study on Chinese Stock Markets

The Capital Asset Pricing Theory is hotly discussed with the development of China's capital market. For the study range in 2007, 65 stocks were chosen with certain rules to do an empirical research of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) applicability in Chinese stock markets. The study found that, from the perspectives of constant and beta coefficient significant as well as the explanatory power regression equation, CAPM is applied to the Chinese stock markets with China's high stock market in 2007.
Granularity in Multi-Method

Multi-method planning is an approach to using a set of different planning methods to simultaneously achieve planner completeness, planning time efficiency, and plan length reduction. Although it has been shown that coordinating a set of methods in a coarse-grained, problem-by-problem manner has the potential for approaching this ideal, such an approach can waste a significant amount of time in trying methods that ultimately prove inadequate. This paper investigates an approach to reducing this wasted effort by refining the granularity at which methods are switched. The experimental results show that the fine-grained approach can improve the planning time significantly compared with coarse-grained and single-method approaches.
Perceptions of the Benefits From the Introduction of CASE: An Empirical Study

This article describes one UK company's commitment to a computer-aided software (CASE) approach. Three conclusions are drawn. First, there were considerable productivity and quality gains associated with the introduction of CASE: 85% improvement in productivity was recorded, system delivery times were reduced by 70%, and quality improved significantly. Second, these improvements were not fully recognized by the customers and developers. Third, the developers thought that the introduction of CASE had made their jobs more interesting and made them more effective. Conclusions are also drawn regarding the human resource, technical, and managerial infrastructural factors of importance to the successful introduction of CASE methodologies.
Weak Information Structure for Human Information Sharing

This paper demonstrates the e(cid:11)ectiveness of the weak information structure for human information sharing. The weak information structure is an information representation which connects various information media without de(cid:12)ning the semantics rigorously. By leaving the interpretation of the semantics to tacit human background knowledge, it becomes compact and robust. To investigate how e(cid:11)ec-tive the weak information structure is in real world problems, we test two cases and report our results. (1) We have developed a system called CM-2 which gathers and reorganizes information on the Internet. Concerning precision and recall rate, the results are between 68{ 90%. (2) We have developed a system called In-foCommon which supports information sharing in community. More than 50% of users answer that the system is useful for getting information they need.
A cached WORM file system

This paper describes a general‐purpose file system that uses a write‐once‐read‐many (WORM) optical disk accessed via a magnetic disk cache. The cache enables blocks to be modified a number of times before they are written to the WORM and increases performance. Snapshots of the file system can be made at any time without limiting the users' access to files. These snapshots reside entirely on the WORM, are accessible to the user via a second read‐only file system, do not contain multiple copies of unchanged data, and can be used to rebuild the file system in the event that the disk cache is destroyed. The file system has been implemented as part of Plan 9, an experimental operating system under development at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
Stereoscopic Depth Cues Can Segment Motion Information

Can the motion system selectively process elements at a particular depth? We attempted to answer this question using global coherence tasks in which signal and noise elements could be given different disparities. In experiment 1 we found that, if all the signal elements had a disparity different from that of the noise elements, performance was far better than when they had the same disparity (at least for stereo-normal observers). In a second experiment we found that adding additional noise elements to the motion task had no effect if they had a different disparity (however, they had a marked effect for stereo-blind observers). We conclude that stereo disparity can be used as a segmentation cue by the motion system.
Human Carcinoma Interleukin 4-Toxin in Mice with Interleukin 4 Receptor-bearing Increased Antitumor Activity of a Circularly Permuted Updated

We reported previously that circularly permuted interIeukin-4 (IL4), composed of amino acids 38-129 of IL4 connected by a linker peptide GGNGG to amino acids 1-37, is preferable to native II ,4 for fusing to the amino terminus of truncated Pseudomonas exotoxin (PE) to make a recombinant toxin, because the new ligand-toxin junction results in im proved IL4 receptor (IL4R)-binding (R. J. Kreitman et al, Proc. Nati. Acad. Sci. USA, 91: 6889-6893, 1994). We now report that the improved binding of circularly permuted IL4-toxin is associated with improved antitumor activity in tumor-bearing mice. For in vivo testing, we made an improved circularly permuted IL4-toxin, termed IL4(38-37)-PE38KDEL. It contains an N38D mutation at the amino terminus, allowing improved expression and large-scale production in EscherÃ¬chÃ¬a coli. It also contains the truncated toxin PE38KDEL, which is composed of amino acids 253364 and 381-608 of PE, followed by KDEL. To evaluate antitumor activity, nude mice carrying s.c. tumors composed of IL4R-bearing human A431 epidermoid carcinoma cells were injected with recombinant toxins i.v. every other day for three doses. IL4(38-37)-PE38KDEL induced com plete remissions in 80% of mice receiving 50 ug/kg x 3 and 100% of mice receiving 100 ug/kg x 3, while only 70% of mice receiving 200 ug/kg x 3 of the native IL4-toxin IL4-PE38KDEL obtained complete remission. Disease-free survival after obtaining complete remissions was higher in mice treated with IL4(38-37)-PE38KDEL 50 ug/Kg QOD x 3 than with IL4-PE38KDEL 200 ug/Kg QOD x 3 (P < 0.03). IL4(38-37)-PE38KDEL and IL4-PE38KDEL exhibited similar toxicity and pharmacokinetics in the mice, indicating that the improved antitumor activity of the circularly permuted IL4-toxin was due to its improved binding to the IL4R on the
Essays on public pension systems, with special reference to China

This thesis studies the provision of public pension system through three different approaches. Part one focuses on demographic change and pension system reforms in China. It reviews the historical reforms and the problems and suggestions associated with the current system. More importantly, by applying a calibrated overlapping generations general equilibrium simulation model, it investigates the impact of the demographic changes and the choice of pension system to the individual choices and macroeconomic variables in the future. As with all social insurance programs, the provision a public pension system involves a trade-off between protection and distortion. The second part is a theoretical study about the optimal level of public pension system. It derives the optimal pension benefit level by considering the welfare loss imposed by the saving and labour supply distortion. The third part of the thesis, is an empirical study investigating the reasons for different choices in pension systems. There are three types of public pension systems popular throughout the world: Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG), Funded and Mixed. The latter two have grown up largely since 1980s, after Chile successfully built its Funded system. By applying logistic regression tests, we examine the likely social and economic variables which have been affecting the choices.
Direct Bulk-Synchronous Parallel Algorithms

We describe a methodology for constructing parallel algorithms that are transportable among parallel computers having different numbers of processors, different bandwidths of interprocessor communication and different periodicity of global synchronisation. We do this for the bulk-synchronous parallel (BSP) model, which abstracts the characteristics of a parallel machine into three numerical parameters p, g, and L, corresponding to processors, bandwidth, and periodicity respectively. The model differentiates memory that is local to a processor from that which is not, but, for the sake of universality, does not differentiate network proximity. The advantages of this model in supporting shared memory or PRAM style programming have been treated elsewhere. Here we emphasise the viability of an alternative direct style of programming where, for the sake of efficiency the programmer retains control of memory allocation. We show that optimality to within a multiplicative factor close to one can be achieved for the problems of Gauss-Jordan elimination and sorting, by transportable algorithms that can be applied for a wide range of values of the parameters p, g, and L. We also give some simulation results for PRAMs on the BSP to identify the level of slack at which corresponding efficiencies can be approached by shared memory simulations, provided the bandwidth parameter g is good enough.