Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rhodanine derivatives as novel peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ agonists

AbstractAim:To characterize the in vitro bioactivities of rhodanine derivatives as novel peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) γ modulators, based on a hit (SH00012671) identified during high-throughput screening (HTS) of a diverse synthetic compound library, and to preliminarily elucidate the structure-activity relationship of this class of PPARγ agonists.Methods:Full-length PPARγ and retinoid X receptor α (RXRα), biotinylated PPAR response element (PPRE), [3H]BRL49653 (rosiglitazone), and streptavidin-coated FlashPlate or microbeads were used to measure the receptor-binding properties of various compounds based on the scintillation proximity assay (SPA) technology. A recombinant PPRE vector was transiently cotransfected with PPARγ and RXRα plasmids into the African green monkey kidney (CV-1) cells, and the effects of BRL49653 and test compounds on transcription mediated by PPARγ were determined by examining luciferase (reporter) responses. 3T3-L1 cells were employed to determine whether the compounds facilitated adipogenesis upon PPARγ activation.Results:Of the 16 000 samples screened with the SPA method, only 1 compound (SH00012671) displayed a similar binding affinity (Ki=186.7 nmol/L) to PPARγ as BRL49653, but it was inactive in the cell-based assays. A series of rhodanine derivatives were synthesized based on the core structure of SH00012671 and 8 of them showed agonist activities in both cotransfection and pre-adipocyte differentiation assays. To reduce intrinsic cytotoxicities, the sulphur on the rhodanine was changed to oxygen. This alteration led to a decrease in receptor-binding affinities while modified analogues generally maintained agonist efficacies in the cell-based assays. Of the analogues studied, compound 31 exhibited about 70% the efficacy exerted by BRL49653 in both cotransfection and pre-adipocyte differentiation assays.Conclusion:Through minor chemical modifications on the core structure of the initial HTS hit, SH00012671 was transformed to possess both molecular (PPARγ binding) and cellular (adipogenesis) activities. The rhodanine derivatives reported here may represent a new scaffold in further understanding the molecular mechanism of agonism at PPARγ.
Green products and corporate strategy: an empirical investigation

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of multiple factors on the green purchase intention of customers in Australia.Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual model is proposed and was subjected to empirical verification with the use of a survey of metropolitan and regional households in Victoria, Australia. The data were analyzed using both descriptive measures and exploratory factor analysis to identify and validate the items contributing to each component in the model. AMOS structural modeling was used to estimate the measure of respondents' overall perception of green products and their intention to purchase.Findings – The results indicate that customers' corporate perception with respect to companies placing higher priority on profitability than on reducing pollution and regulatory protection were the significant predictors of customers' negative overall perception toward green products. The only positive contribution to customers' perception was their past experience with th.
A Study in Urdu Corpus Construction

We are interested in contributing a small, publicly available Urdu corpus of written text to the natural language processing community. The Urdu text is stored in the Unicode character set, in its native Arabic script, and marked up according to the Corpus Encoding Standard (CES) XML Document Type Definition (DTD). All the tags and metadata are in English. To date, the corpus is made entirely of data from British Broadcasting Company's (BBC) Urdu Web site, although we plan to add data from other Urdu newspapers. Upon completion, the corpus will consist mostly of raw Urdu text marked up only to the paragraph level so it can be used as input for natural language processing (NLP) tasks. In addition, it will be hand-tagged for parts of speech so the data can be used to train and test NLP tools.
A Context Conflict Resolution with Optimized Mediation

A number of schemes e. g. , mediated resolution allow users to resolve conflicts in context-aware applications. However, these resolutions require a heavy dependence on users' intervention which may disturb users in a dynamic environment. In this paper we propose a mediated conflict resolution with a balance module. The module evaluates all the participants' feeling as a group and controls the mediation. A predicted choice is also advance to shorten the mediation time. We prove the effectiveness of our resolution through the prototype evaluation, in which our approach can resolve conflicts and reduce disturbance with appropriate parameters.
What Do We Know About Gangs and Gang Members and Where Do We Go From Here?

This review provides an opportunity to assess the current state of gang research and suggest directions for its future. There has been a dramatic increase in research on gangs, gang members, and gang behavior since the early 1990s, making this review especially timely. We use Short’s three-level framework of explanation to organize the findings of prior research, focusing on individual-, micro-, and macro-level research. Attention is focused on the findings of such research, but we also examine theoretical and methodological developments as well. Drawing from Short and life-course research, we introduce a cross-level temporal framework to guide future directions in gang research.
Cytochemical Localization of Urease in a Rumen Staphylococcus sp. by Electron Microscopy

We describe a technique whereby intracellular urease activity can be localized by transmission electron microscopy. The ammonia produced from the enzymatic hydrolysis of urea is first precipitated with sodium tetraphenylboron and then replaced with silver to produce electron-dense silver tetraphenylboron. This direct reaction product deposition procedure was used to demonstrate the presence of membrane-bound urease of Staphylococcus sp. H3-22, a gram-positive ruminal bacterium.
High Speed Synchronous Serial Port and Research on Glitch Based on the DSP and FPGA

The DSP (SMJ320C6701) of TI Company coming with multi-channel buffered serial port McBSP and its work timing is introduced. Using the state machine design ideas of VHDL, high-speed synchronous serial communication interface circuit has been completed between McBSP and FPGA. In a synchronous design, the generation mechanism and solutions is given for the glitch signal, which is generated in the simulation of space borne equipment being in adverse environmental conditions.
The Prospects for Progressive Culture-Led Urban Regeneration in Latin America: Cases from Mexico City and Buenos Aires

This article addresses the issue of culture-led urban regeneration from a Latin American perspective. It argues that, despite limited government intervention, the democratization processes that many cities have undergone have enhanced the potential of urban cultural policy as an instrument to address economic, social and physical decay. Grounded on the cases of Mexico City and Buenos Aires, the article shows how highly contingent and contradictory processes of economic globalization, political democratization and institutional neoliberalization have led to much variation in urban policy. In this context, we argue that urban cultural policy is highly dependent on the intricacies of local configurations of power and the negotiation of policy agendas. As a third level of analysis, the article looks at one paradigmatic project in each city. These experiences reveal that cultural initiatives offer the potential to generate socially inclusive forms of economic and territorial development at both the city and neighborhood scales. Yet we also point out that existing fiscal and political constraints limit the extent to which they can be replicated and articulated into a wider policy agenda. The article ends with a discussion of the comparative findings and a research agenda to examine governmental and non-governmental culture-led urban regeneration initiatives. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Sociabilité, 'société', 'culture' carcérales : la prison féminine de Tires (Portugal)

Traduit du portugais par Jean-Yves Durand. « C'est un autre monde, c'est un monde a part. » « C'est une autre societe, en miniature. » Ces declarations de prisonnieres et de gardiennes ne causent certainement pas de surprise, tant leur teneur est banale. En effet, les notions de « societe » et de « culture » carcerales sont depuis longtemps devenues courantes aussi bien pour le sens commun que dans le discours des sciences sociales. Erving Goffman a defini les « institutions totales », dont .
High-Quality Draft Genome Sequence of Bacillus subtilis Strain WAUSV36

ABSTRACT Bacillus subtilis strain WAUSV36 inhibits the growth of and decreases disease symptoms caused by the potato pathogen Phytophthora infestans. We determined the sequence of the 4.7-Mbp genome of this strain. WAUSV36 shared very high nucleotide sequence identity with previously sequenced strains of B. subtilis.
From Infinite to Finite Programs: Explicit Error Bounds with Applications to Approximate Dynamic Programming

We consider linear programming (LP) problems in infinite dimensional spaces that are in general computationally intractable. Under suitable assumptions, we develop an approximation bridge from the infinite dimensional LP to tractable finite convex programs in which the performance of the approximation is quantified explicitly. To this end, we adopt the recent developments in two areas of randomized optimization and first-order methods, leading to a priori as well as a posteriori performance guarantees. We illustrate the generality and implications of our theoretical results in the special case of the long-run average cost and discounted cost optimal control problems in the context of Markov decision processes on Borel spaces. The applicability of the theoretical results is demonstrated through a fisheries management problem.
MicroRNA-34c targets TGFB-induced factor homeobox 2, represses cell proliferation and induces apoptosis in hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma.

MicroRNAs (miRs) are short, non-coding RNAs with post-transcriptional regulatory functions. Previous studies have demonstrated that miR-34c is involved in diverse biological processes, including carcinogenesis. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of miR-34c and its target genes in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Expression levels of miR-34c and its predicted target genes were measured. The target genes were validated by a luciferase assay. The effects of miR-34c restoration were evaluated by the detection of HBV antigens, cell proliferation and apoptosis in vitro, in addition to the tumor growth in vivo. The data demonstrated that miR-34c was downregulated in HBV-associated HCC clinical tissues and HCC cell lines compared with their corresponding controls. transforming growth factor-β-induced factor homeobox 2 (TGIF2), a transcription factor repressing transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signaling, was observed to be upregulated and was identified as a target gene of miR-34c. The restoration of miR-34c in HepG2.2. 15 cells suppressed TGIF2 expression, HBV replication and viral antigen synthesis; inhibited cell proliferation; and induced apoptosis. miR-34c also inhibited tumor growth in a mouse model. The present study indicates that miR-34c may act as a tumor suppressor by targeting TGIF2 during HBV-associated hepatocellular carcinogenesis. miR-34c and TGIF2 may represent key regulatory factors, diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of HBV-associated HCC.
Cloning and characterization of fxp, the flexible pilin gene of Aeromonas hydrophila

The flexible pilus of Aeromonas hydrophila is a morphologically and biochemically unique organelle which binds eukaryotic cell surfaces and whose expression is induced by specific physiochemical conditions, fxp, the structural gene coding for the flexible pilus subunit, was localized on a 7.6 kb plasmid of A. hydrophila strain AH26. A putative Shine‐Dalgarno sequence and ‐10 and ‐35 regions were identified, a signal peptide sequence delineated, and the coding sequence compared with other bacterial sequences and found to be unique. Plasmid and chromosomal DNA was prepared from 66 other Aeromonas strains and 12 strains from other bacterial genera and examined by Southern blot hybridization using a labelled fxp oligonucleotide and the 7.6 kb plasmid as probes. No hybridizing sequences were identified except in the original strain, AH26. It is proposed that fxp codes for a highly evolved organelle, possibly widely distributed in nature, but that it is carried on a genetic element that is rapidly lost from most strains upon in vitro cultivation and storage.
DIFFERING IN READING COMPREHENSION AND SPEED

The present study examined information-processing differences among four types of readers, specifically high comprehension-high speed, high comprehensionlow speed, low comprehension-high speed, and low comprehension-low speed college-age readers. Performance was compared on a variety of information-processing tasks, including letter reordering, word reordering, reading span, verification of real words and nonwords, and verification of real sentences and nonsense sentences. Tasks were categorized as lower order tasks involving reaction time and/or elementary-word tasks, or higher order tasks requiring access of word meanings or semantic decision-making. Results indicated that good comprehenders tended to outperform poor comprehenders on all types of tasks. Although highand low-speed readers performed differentially on some tasks, the pattern of results is less clear. Performance on tasks was discussed in light of speed and comprehension variables and type of information-processing task. Differences in working memory were proposed as a source of individual differences in reading performance. An approach to the study of individual differences in reading has been to create models focusing on the cognitive processes likely to underlie the act of reading. These models (e.g., Gough, 1972; Just & Carpenter, 1980, 1987, 1992; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; Mackworth, 1972; Rubenstein, Garfield, & Millikan, 1970; Rubenstein, Lewis, & Rubenstein, 1971a, 1971b) have sought to interpret the act of reading and explain observed differences in readers from an information processing perspective, describing the internal flow of information throughout the reading process. Information-processing research related to individual differences in reading often has considered one or more of the following cognitive processes:
Pollution Prevention in Accounting Pollution Prevention and Accounting

The accounting compendium in pollution prevention provides resources to those who wish to introduce environmental topics into their accounting curricula. It consists of several types of resources: case studies, problem sets, course syllabi, selected readings, and an annotated bibliography. The collection of materials will always be incomplete and we encourage you to send in articles, cases, problems, and other material you may have or to let us know about other sources available so that this information can be included.
Managing chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension: pharmacological treatment options

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a life-threatening condition in which organised thrombi obstruct the pulmonary vessels, causing increased pulmonary vascular resistance, progressive pulmonary hypertension (PH) and right heart failure. The treatment of choice is pulmonary endarterectomy, which restores pulmonary haemodynamics with acceptable periprocedural mortality rates in the majority of suitable patients. However, CTEPH may be inoperable owing to surgically inaccessible thrombi or comorbid diseases that confer an unacceptably high risk. Pharmacotherapies, although not yet approved, may be useful in this situation or for treating residual or recurrent PH following surgery. Vasodilator drugs for PH are attracting growing interest as potential treatments for CTEPH because this disease has recently been labelled as a “dual” pulmonary vascular disorder: major vessel obstruction and remodelling is combined with a small vessel arteriopathy that is histologically indistinguishable from the classical pulmonary arteriopathy observed in pulmonary arterial hypertension. Of three completed randomised controlled trials in patients with CTEPH, only one was powered to detect a treatment effect. The BENEFIT trial employed the dual endothelin-receptor antagonist bosentan. Although haemodynamics improved significantly, the second component of the primary end-point, exercise capacity, was not met. More evidence is required to resolve whether vasodilator treatments are beneficial for inoperable chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.
The Means of Management Control

In the understanding of managerial control over work, the labour process literature has been very influential. Recent critical contributions from the sociological tradition have, however, served to so fragment the underlying perspective that its coherence is now threatened. This paper seeks to demonstrate how a dialectical analysis can lay the basis for a viable amended approach. The need for a dialectical framework has often been urged - illustrations of such a perspective in operation, however, are rare. Using a series of examples, this paper argues that the dialectic of work control can be revealed by focussing on two phenomena: the `levels' and `circuits' of control.
Rehabilitating utopia: Feminist science fiction and finding the ideal

Twentieth century political philosophy takes for granted that the pursuit of utopia is dangerous for three reasons: pursuing utopia justifies the use of violence to accomplish its ends; it requires one to deny the individual in favor of the community; and it utilizes a mindset of mere problem‐solving when asking the question of how humans should live together fruitfully. But these criticisms (articulated by Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls and Michael Oakeshott, respectively) do not apply to certain writers of feminist science fiction whose utopias embrace pluralism, ambiguity, and the messiness of politics. This paper examines the work of two such utopians, Octavia Butler and Marge Piercy, in order to reinvigorate political philosophy with the visions of community imagined in these largely ignored utopias.
[Surgical aspects in the multidisciplinary treatment of soft tissue sarcomas].

Sarcomas are rare malignant tumors with a large variety of histologic subtypes. The surgical approach depends more on the histologic grade, the size and the site of the tumor. Radiologic diagnosis relies predominantly on MR-imaging. Discernible improvements have taken place in soft tissue sarcoma patient survivorship and quality of life over the past 20 years, with overall 5-year survival currently at approximately 50-80%. The place of surgery in the treatment of soft-tissue sarcoma is defined in the light of a review of the recent literature. Radical surgical resection is the mainstay of therapy. Local recurrence is the most common type of failure. Local recurrence is resectable and limb preservations possible in the majority of patients. Survival after treatment of local recurrence is determined mainly by the grade and secondarily by the size of the tumor. The essential risk factor for local recurrence is the quality of surgical resection, defined by the definitive resection margins. A lateral safety margin of 5 cm and of 2 cm to the depth should be respected. In sarcoma of the extremity the compartment is defined based on clinical, radiographic, histopathologic and operative findings. The use of muscle flaps to fill the surgical defects can improve the functional result and reduce the complication rate. Only about 5% of the patients need amputation. Evaluation of functional results must be based on objective criteria. In retroperitoneal sarcoma the significant factors for determining prognosis are grade and completeness of exzision. Multidisciplinary treatment according to common protocols is essential. Shifts in treatment have taken place over the past decade, from single-modality treatment involving radical surgery with compartment resection to sophisticated limb-salvage strategies combined with radiation therapy. In case of inadequate surgery e.g. in a large tumor with positive margins in high-grade soft tissue sarcomas the addition of radiotherapy can improve local control, but cannot ensure that obtained by adequate surgery. Patients with large (greater than 5 cm), high grade soft tissue sarcoma are at high risk for distant recurrence and disease-related mortality. Investigations of combined modality therapy with newer chemotherapy agents and dose intensification treatment strategies are warranted.
Large Margin Multi-Modal Multi-Task Feature Extraction for Image Classification

The features used in many image analysis-based applications are frequently of very high dimension. Feature extraction offers several advantages in high-dimensional cases, and many recent studies have used multi-task feature extraction approaches, which often outperform single-task feature extraction approaches. However, most of these methods are limited in that they only consider data represented by a single type of feature, even though features usually represent images from multiple modalities. We, therefore, propose a novel large margin multi-modal multi-task feature extraction (LM3FE) framework for handling multi-modal features for image classification. In particular, LM3FE simultaneously learns the feature extraction matrix for each modality and the modality combination coefficients. In this way, LM3FE not only handles correlated and noisy features, but also utilizes the complementarity of different modalities to further help reduce feature redundancy in each modality. The large margin principle employed also helps to extract strongly predictive features, so that they are more suitable for prediction (e.g., classification). An alternating algorithm is developed for problem optimization, and each subproblem can be efficiently solved. Experiments on two challenging real-world image data sets demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.
Stability Analysis and Synchronization for a Class of Fractional-Order Neural Networks

Stability of a class of fractional-order neural networks (FONNs) is analyzed in this paper. First, two sufficient conditions for convergence of the solution for such systems are obtained by utilizing Gronwall–Bellman lemma and Laplace transform technique. Then, according to the fractional-order Lyapunov second method and linear feedback control, the synchronization problem between two fractional-order chaotic neural networks is investigated. Finally, several numerical examples are presented to justify the feasibility of the proposed methods.