Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Roles of β-Tubulin Mutations and Isotype Expression in Acquired Drug Resistance

The antitumor drug paclitaxel stabilizes microtubules and reduces their dynamicity, promoting mitotic arrest and eventually apoptosis. Upon assembly of the α/β-tubulin heterodimer, GTP becomes bound to both the α and β-tubulin monomers. During microtubule assembly, the GTP bound to β-tubulin is hydrolyzed to GDP, eventually reaching steady-state equilibrium between free tubulin dimers and those polymerized into microtubules. Tubulin-binding drugs such as paclitaxel interact with β-tubulin, resulting in the disruption of this equilibrium. In spite of several crystal structures of tubulin, there is little biochemical insight into the mechanism by which anti-tubulin drugs target microtubules and alter their normal behavior. The mechanism of drug action is further complicated, as the description of altered β-tubulin isotype expression and/or mutations in tubulin genes may lead to drug resistance as has been described in the literature. Because of the relationship between β-tubulin isotype expression and mutations within β-tubulin, both leading to resistance, we examined the properties of altered residues within the taxane, colchicine and Vinca binding sites. The amount of data now available, allows us to investigate common patterns that lead to microtubule disruption and may provide a guide to the rational design of novel compounds that can inhibit microtubule dynamics for specific tubulin isotypes or, indeed resistant cell lines. Because of the vast amount of data published to date, we will only provide a broad overview of the mutational results and how these correlate with differences between tubulin isotypes. We also note that clinical studies describe a number of predictive factors for the response to anti-tubulin drugs and attempt to develop an understanding of the features within tubulin that may help explain how they may affect both microtubule assembly and stability.
identity development, intelligence structure, and interests: a cross-sectional study in a group of italian adolescents during the decision-making process

Background: Forming one’s identity is thought to be the key developmental task of adolescence, but profound changes in personality traits also occur in this period. The negotiation of complex social settings, the creation of an integrated identity, and career choice are major tasks of adolescence. The adolescent, having to make choices for his or her future, has not only to consider his or her own aspirations and interests but also to possess a capacity for exploration and commitment; in fact, career commitments can be considered as a fit between the study or career that is chosen and personal values, skills, and preferences. Methods: The objective of the study reported here was to investigate the role of identity on profile of interests; the relation between identity and decisional style; the correlation between identity, aptitudes, interests, and school performance; and the predictive variables to school success. The research involved 417 Italian students who live in Enna, a small city located in Sicily, Italy, aged 16–19 years (197 males and 220 females) in the fourth year (mean = 17.2, standard deviation = 0.52) and the fifth year (mean = 18.2, standard deviation = 0.64) of senior secondary school. The research lasted for one school year; the general group of participants consisted of 470 students, and although all participants agreed to be part of the research, there was a dropout rate of 11.28%. They completed the Ego Identity Process Questionnaire to measure their identity development, the Intelligence Structure Test to investigate aptitudes, the Self-Directed Search to value interests, and General Decision Making Style questionnaire to describe their individual decisional style. Results: The data showed that high-school performance was positively associated with rational decision-making style and identity diffusion predicted the use of avoidant style. Interests were related to identity exploration; the differentiation of preferences was related to identity commitment; investigative personality correlated with the rational style and negatively with the spontaneous style and high levels of school performance; and social personality correlated with the use of the spontaneous style and the intuitive style, a high-profile identity, and identity exploration. Conclusion: Intervention in the development of the identity process proves to be fundamental for increasing aptitudes and improving school performance, and, above all, for broadening the diversification and coherence of interests and improving the decisional process.
Fiduciary Duties and Equity‐Debtholder Conflicts

Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Abstract. We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine the effect of management fiduciary duties on equity‐debt conflicts. A 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling changed the nature of corporate directors' fiduciary duties in firms incorporated in that state. This change limited managers' incentives to take actions favoring equity over debt for firms in the vicinity of financial distress. We show that this ruling increased the likelihood of equity issues, increased investment, and reduced firm risk, consistent with a decrease in debt‐ equity conflicts of interest. The changes are isolated to firms relatively closer to default. The ruling was also followed by an increase in average leverage and a reduction in covenant use. Finally, we estimate the welfare implications of this change and find that firm values increased when the rules were introduced. We conclude that managerial fiduciary duties affect equity‐bond holder conflicts in a way that is economically important, has impact on ex ante capital structure choices, and affects welfare. comments and suggestions. 2 One of the cornerstones of U.S. corporate governance is that directors and officers should run the firm to maximize shareholder value. It is well understood, however, that shareholder maximization does not necessarily lead to welfare maximization. Decisions that increase shareholder value may impose costs on other stakeholders, e.g. creditors, employees, or the environment, which are not internalized by shareholders. One important instance is the conflict between equity‐ and debt holders in financial distress. 1 Shareholders of distressed firms may prefer low investment, may want to limit new equity finance, and may like high risks, since it benefits the value of equity at the expense of debt. 2 Despite these problems, the prevailing view among economists is that shareholder maximization is the second‐ best solution to the corporate governance problem. 3 One mechanism, which ensures that firms are run in shareholders' interest, is assigning directors and officers fiduciary duties to shareholders. These duties require that officers take actions that are in the interest of owners. If officers fail to do so, shareholders can sue them. This mechanism provides management with an incentive to act in shareholders' interest. Some observers have argued that the shareholders' ability to …
Portfolio Optimization: Part 2—An Application of Oil Projects with Inter- and Intra-dependencies

Abstract The first part of the portfolio optimization was intended to present the concepts and the modeling approach of how both inter- and intra-dependencies can be integrated. In this article we use the concepts and modeling approaches introduced before and show how these models could be applied for a mix of five hypothetical offshore oil field development projects. This article applied the concepts introduced in the first part by comparing the integration of the sequential approach with portfolio and the integration of the systems approach with portfolio. The results show that the two approaches yield substantially different efficient frontiers. As expected the difference between the systems and sequential approach increases with increasing standard deviation of the portfolio net present value (NPV) with the expected value of portfolio being greater in the systems approach. In our example, the difference in the computed expected NPV ranged from 8% at lower level of risk to 15% at higher level. In conclusion, the system approach is superior in capturing intra-project dependence and its impact on the portfolio level is significant compared to the sequential approach. Both the systems approach and the portfolio methodology complement each other in capturing both intra-project and inter-project dependence at the portfolio level.
The Moderating Role of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness on the Relationships Between Burnout and Withdrawal Behaviors

THE MODERATING ROLE OF AGREEABLENESS AND CONSCIENTIOUSNESS ON THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BURNOUT AND WITHDRAWAL BEHAVIORS by Nikoo Samee It has been shown that employees who experience burnout are more likely to engage in withdrawal behaviors, which are behaviors that harm the morale of employees and the bottom line of an organization. There has been some research on the moderating effect of situational variables (e.g., leadership style) on the relationship between burnout and withdrawal behaviors, but there is a lack of research on how personal characteristics may play a role in such relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating role of agreeableness and conscientiousness on the relationship between burnout and three withdrawal behaviors: lateness, absenteeism, and turnover intentions. A total of 159 individuals participated in an online survey. Results showed that the two personality traits did not play a moderating role in these relationships. However, conscientiousness was negatively related to burnout, lateness, and absenteeism, and burnout was positively related to lateness and turnover intentions. Based on these results, it is suggested that organizations should hire conscientious individuals and/or develop conscientiousness in employees because they may be more resistant to burnout, lateness, and absenteeism. Additionally, organizations may find it beneficial to invest in multi-pronged wellness initiatives that address underlying cultural issues paired with education and incentives to help employees cope with burnout and thus help reduce the rates of withdrawal behaviors due to burnout.
Sediment classification from backscatter analysis of multibeam data from Lake Vättern

In 2008, 2012, 2013 and 2014 areas of southern Vättern were mapped with a multibeam echosounder. Some of these data were used in this thesis where a selected area north of Visingsö was analyzed for the superficial sediments. A depth map was created by data processing, and analysis of backscatter and Angular Range Analysis (ARA) was conducted to characterize the seabed. The results show several small-scale submarine ridges, with different shapes, sizes and orientation. These can be attributed to processes that took place since the last ice sheet retreated from the area. To know for sure when the ridges were created, and how they are related to ice breakup and withdrawal, more research must be done, and samples of the bottom sediments must be taken.
Portfolio Optimization: Scenario Generation, Models and Algorithms

Finally, we study the index tracking and the enhanced index tracking problems. We present two mixed-integer linear programming formulations. We introduce a heuristic framework, called Enhanced Kernel Search, to solve the index tracking problem. We show its effectiveness comparing the performances of several heuristics with those of a general-purpose solver using benchmark instances.
Using GIS to Explore Environmental Justice Issues: The Case of U.S. Petroleum Refineries

A central issue in environmental policy that is emerging both in the U.S. and internationally is whether the deleterious impacts of development, including the siting of transportation infrastructure, disproportionately impacts poor and minority populations. This paper demonstrates how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to gather data and characterize potential environmental justice issues in the context of areas surrounding U.S. petroleum refineries. Specifically, the paper develops a national database of U.S. refineries and then integrate GIS with specially-crafted Census data in order to examine current demographic characteristics (e.g., population, percentage white, black, and Hispanic, average income, vacant housing) of neighborhoods surrounding U.S. petroleum refineries, and how those demographics have changed in the period 1980 to 2000. The approach facilitates two types of analysis. The first is to use GIS maps to explore demographic profiles for individual cases. The second is to use the GIS tool to gather and aggregate data to generate descriptive statistics and facilitate statistical analyses. These aggregation is possible in a number of ways, such as based on the refinery size (i.e., production capacity) or location (i.e., urban/rural). The paper finds that there are unquestionably environmental justice issues in certain areas surrounding refineries, but that drawing conclusions at a national level is much murkier.
A distributed optimization algorithm with convergence rate O ( 1 k 2 ) for distributed model predictive control ∗

We propose a distributed optimization algorithm for mixed L 1 / L 2 -norm optimization based on accelerated gradient methods using dual decomposition. The algo-rithm achieves convergence rate O ( 1 k 2 ) , where k is the iteration number, which signiﬁcantly improves the convergence rates of existing duality-based distributed optimization algorithms that achieve O ( 1 k ) . The performance of the developed algorithm is evaluated on randomly generated optimization problems arising in distributed Model Predictive Control (MPC). The evaluation shows that, when the problem data is sparse and large-scale, our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art optimization software CPLEX and MOSEK.
EEG EPILEPTIC SPIKE DETECTION USING DEEP BELIEF NETWORKS Major: Electronics and Communications

In the clinical diagnosis of epilepsy using electroencephalogram (EEG) data, accurate automatic detection (also called classification) of epileptic spikes is useful and highly meaningful. In this thesis, we apply Deep Belief Network (DBN), that is one of deep learning models, to replace Artificial Neural Network (ANN) stage in a recently proposed multi-stage system for epileptic spike detection. The proposed method is original as, to the best of our knowledge, deep learning has not been used for spike detection. It is also useful in practice because the promising quality evaluation of the spike detection system will be higher than 90%. More specifically, to construct the accurate detection model for non-spikes and spikes, a new set of features (wavelet scales from 3 to 9) was proposed that gives a good description of spikes. These features were then used as inputs to the DBN. A performance comparison between using the DBN and ANN was provided via numerical study by simulation. Accordingly, the sensitivity obtained by using the DBN and the ANN is 93.42% and 84.57%, respectively. These results indicate that it is possible to use deep learning models for epileptic spike detection with high accuracy.
Tourist Flows and Its Determinants in Ethiopia

Ethiopia has immense tourism potential owing to its natural, historical and cultural endowments. The reasons behind the sector’s poor performance have not been studied in a comprehensive way, however. This paper, using an array of methodologies including simple historical explanation of tourist flow time series data, panel data analysis of tourist flow determinants and destination competitiveness analysis, attempts to fill this gap. The review of history illuminates the detrimental effects of civil wars, famine and nationalization of private companies on the performance of the Ethiopian tourism sector. The panel data analysis takes into account the positive and significant impact of previous year’s tourist arrivals, the Ethiopia’s infrastructural development as well as the per capita GDP and the total population of the sending countries. The analysis shows that the price differential between Ethiopia and Kenya and distance negatively affect tourist flows in Ethiopia. In addition, the dummy for Africa is significant and positive. Finally, the destination competitiveness analysis shows that Ethiopia is better rated in inherited endowments than in created and supporting resources (like tourism infrastructure). Yet almost every rating exhibits considerable improvement after tourists visited the country, suggesting that the famine-related bad image of the country still hinders Ethiopia’s tourism sector.
Mortality equations for individual trees in the mixed-conifer zone of southwest Oregon

Models of stand growth and yield must include an estimate of mortality. For individual-tree/distance-independent growth-and-yield models. it is necessary (1) to predict the probability of death of individual trees and (2) to keep stand projections within reasonable biological limits (e.g., the maximum basal area that the stand can achieve). In this study, the probability of death of an individual tree is predicted by a logistic equation with coefficients estimated for tree species growing in the mixed-conifer zone of southwest Oregon. Overall stand projections are controlled by use of sizedensity trajectories that govern the approach of the stand to the maximum size-density line.
The balloon-borne large-aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry-BLASTPol: performance and results from the 2010 Antarctic flight

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) is a suborbital mapping experiment designed to study the role played by magnetic fields in the star formation process. BLASTPol uses a total power instrument and an achromatic half-wave plate to modulate the polarization signal. During its first flight from Antarctica in December 2010, BLASTPol made degree scale maps of linearly polarized dust emission from molecular clouds in three wavebands centered at 250, 350, and 500 μm. This unprecedented dataset in terms of sky coverage, with sub-arcminute resolution, allows BLASTPol to trace magnetic fields in star-forming regions at scales ranging from cores to entire molecular cloud complexes. A second long-duration flight is scheduled for December 2012.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE TERRAIN ON HEIGHT MEASUREMENT USING THE GNSS INTERFERENCE SIGNAL

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) reflectometry is a promising technology used to estimate soil moisture, sea surface height, ice properties, etc. Interference signal technique is an important method to estimate these geophysical parameters. The effect of this method is closely related to the terrain and the receiving antenna placement. This study aims to investigate the effects of terrain and antenna placement on height measurement through simulation and field experiments. In this paper, we first simulated the interference signal in different types of terrain by parabolic equation method and analyzed the influence of terrain on the height measurement. Then we conducted three typical field experiments and processed experimental data. The simulated and experimental results indicate that the interference signal is affected by the terrain and the receiving antenna placement. Height measurement result is correct by both horizontal-looking and zenith-looking antenna when the ground is flat. However when the ground is not flat, the soil block near the receiving antenna leads to estimation errors. A more accurate estimation is obtained by using zenith-looking antenna to suppress the influence from the near terrain than horizontal-looking antenna. When a slope is near the receiving antenna, the signal with a high elevation may achieve an obvious interference effect if high elevation minus slope is equivalent to a low elevation. In this situation, the measurement height is the distance between the antenna and slope surface.
A Quantum Spatial Graph Convolutional Neural Network using Quantum Passing Information

—In this paper, we develop a new Quantum Spatial Graph Convolutional Neural Network (QSGCNN) model that can directly learn a classiﬁcation function for graphs of arbitrary sizes. Unlike state-of-the-art Graph Convolutional Neural Network (GCN) models, the proposed QSGCNN model incorporates the process of identifying transitive aligned vertices between graphs, and transforms arbitrary sized graphs into ﬁxed-sized aligned vertex grid structures. To further learn representative graph characteristics, a new quantum spatial graph convolution is proposed and employed to extract multi-scale vertex features, in terms of quantum passing information between grid vertices of each graph. Since the quantum spatial convolution preserves the property of the input grid structures, the proposed QSGCNN model allows to directly employ the traditional convolutional neural network to further learn from the global graph topology, providing an end-to-end deep learning architecture that integrates the graph representation and learning in the quantum spatial graph convolution layer and the traditional convolutional layer for graph classiﬁcations. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed QSGCNN model in terms of the theoretical connections to state-of-the-art methods. The proposed QSGCNN model addresses the shortcomings of information loss and imprecise information representation arising in existing GCN models associated with SortPooling or SumPooling layers. Experimental results on benchmark graph classiﬁcation datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed QSGCNN model.
A mixed methods study of attitudes on location of gynaecological oncology outpatient care: a patient and healthcare professional questionnaire.

Objective Gynaecological oncology place of care is often based on evolution of services, along historical professional boundaries, rather than user needs or preferences. We aimed to assess existing evidence, gather views of patients in the United Kingdom (UK) on their preferred place of outpatient care for gynaecological malignancies and evaluate alignment with preferences of healthcare professionals. Methods We performed a mixed methods study, including a scoping review, a patient survey, and a health care practitioner questionnaire. We collected quantitative and qualitative data, performing content analysis to determine current practice and impact on patients. Results We performed a mixed methods study, using a scoping review of the literature, patient survey and a healthcare practitioner (HCP) questionnaire, collecting quantitative and qualitative data. No studies were identified in our scoping review. We received responses from 159 patients and 54 gynaecological oncology HCPs. There was a strong preference for a dedicated gynaecological oncology setting (89% somewhat or very happy) (P<0.0001). 53% of patients were somewhat or very unhappy to have care co-located with general obstetrics and gynaecology services. Specifically, two key themes were identified through content analysis of qualitative data from patients: 'environment and getting this right is vital'; and 'our cancer should be the priority'. HCPs un-der-estimated the strong patient-preference to be seen in dedicated units. Of those who see patients within general obstetrics and gynaecology, only 50% said patients were seen at separate times/locations from obstetric patients. Conclusion This study demonstrates the significant impact of place of care on gynaecological oncology patients, which may be underestimated by HCPs.