Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sequential Stream Segregation Affects Localisation of Diotic Tones among Tones with Time-Varying Interaural Time Difference

In this study, I examined how sequential stream segregation contributes to the detection of diotic tones among tones with time-varying interaural time differences (ITDs). Target (T) and distractor (D) tones, and a silent duration (–) formed a sequence (DTD–) and this sequence was presented repeatedly. A frequency difference was introduced between target and distractor tones. The distractor tones were also given time-varying ITDs to produce a percept of smooth auditory motion along the interaural axis. In half of the trials, the target tones were not given time-varying ITDs, and thus were diotically presented. The task of the listeners was to determine whether the repeated sequences of DTD–had target tones without motion. The sensitivity d′ for the detection of diotic target tones was higher with larger frequency differences. On the other hand, the criterion c was lower with larger frequency differences. In another session, I confirmed that proportions of reports “two streams” was positively and negatively correlated with d′ and c, respectively. The results indicate that the localisation of a sound image could be influenced by sequential stream segregation in complex sound environments.
The unrecognized future dimension of corporate sustainability assessment

Companies play a central role on the way towards sustainable development. Over the last years, many approaches have emerged that attempt to measure companies’ contribution to sustainable development, i.e. corporate sustainability. Our analysis of existing approaches reveals two major shortcomings. First, value creation as a core condition for sustainability as well as for further contributions to economic sustainability is often ignored in these assessments. Second, existing approaches fail to differentiate between the actual contribution of a firm to sustainability on one hand and the structural and managerial measures aimed at attaining this contribution on the other hand. We argue that the implementation of sustainability oriented organizational structures and managerial instruments alone does not necessarily guarantee sustainability performance. In response to these shortcomings we put forward a generic framework for corporate sustainability assessment. Besides the dimension of current sustainability performance we introduce the notion of future-orientation of management as the second – and so far unrecognized – dimension of corporate sustainability assessment.
Quantitative BOLD response of the renal medulla to hyperoxic challenge at 1.5 T and 3.0 T

The aim of this study was to gage the magnitude of changes of the apparent renal medullary transverse relaxation time (ΔT2*) induced by inhalation of pure oxygen (O2) or carbogen (95% O2, 5% CO2) versus baseline breathing of room air. Eight healthy volunteers underwent 2D multi‐gradient echo MR imaging at 1.5 T and 3.0 T. Parametrical T2* relaxation time maps were computed and average T2* was measured in regions of interest placed in the renal medulla and cortex. The largest T2* changes were measured in the renal medulla, with a relative ∆T2* of 33.8 ± 22.0% (right medulla) and 34.7 ± 17.6% (left medulla) as compared to room air for oxygen breathing (p > 0.01), and 53.8 ± 23.9% and 53.5 ± 33.9% (p < 0.01) for carbogen breathing, respectively at 3 T. At 1.5 T, the corresponding values were 13.7 ± 18.5% and 24.1 ± 17.1% (p < 0.01) for oxygen breathing and 23.9 ± 17.2% and 38.9 ± 37.6% (p < 0.01) for carbogen breathing. As a result, we showed that renal medullary T2* times responded strongly to inhalation of hyperoxic gases, which may be attributed to the hypoxic condition of the medulla and subsequent reduction in deoxyhemoglobin. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Electromagnetic design of central motor and in-wheel hub motor according to their voltage range

Electrical machine for traction drive has to fulfil a lot of requirements to improve the initiation of e-mobility. Especially high efficiency and long service life are the main requirements for battery electric vehicles. Moreover, the suitable voltage range for battery electric vehicles has been more often discussed in the last time. The voltage range determine several specification and design configuration e.g. safety requirement, electromagnetic emissions, power density and insulation of the electrical machine. This paper deals with the influence of the voltage range on the electrical machine performance. Both outer rotor and inner rotor permanent magnet synchronous motor are investigated in this work.
Analysis of the Disintegration of Charged Droplets Employing Boundary Element Method and Particle Method

It is well known that an initially charged droplet disintegrates repeatedly into several tiny sibling droplets and one parent droplet if the charge exceeds a certain value defined by the Rayleigh Limit. Many researchers have experimentally verified this phenomenon in their works. However, it is difficult to estimate the number, charge and mass of the sibling droplets because the sizes of the droplets are generally very small. In this paper, a new coupled analysis method for the disintegration of dielectric charged droplets employing boundary element method (BEM) and particle method is proposed. The behavior of the droplet during disintegration is analyzed by means of this method.
Pleiotrophin inhibits HIV infection by binding the cell surface‐expressed nucleolin

The growth factor pleiotrophin (PTN) has been reported to bind heparan sulfate and nucleolin, two components of the cell surface implicated in the attachment of HIV‐1 particles to cells. Here we show that PTN inhibits HIV‐1 infection by its capacity to inhibit HIV‐1 particle attachment to the surface of permissive cells. The β‐sheet domains of PTN appear to be implicated in this inhibitory effect on the HIV infection, in particular the domain containing amino acids 60–110. PTN binding to the cell surface is mediated by high and low affinity binding sites. Other inhibitors of HIV attachment known to bind specifically surface expressed nucleolin, such as the pseudopeptide HB‐19 and the cytokine midkine prevent the binding of PTN to its low affinity‐binding site. Confocal immunofluorescence laser microscopy revealed that the cross‐linking of surface‐bound PTN with a specific antibody results in the clustering of cell surface‐expressed nucleolin and the colocalization of both PTN and nucleolin signals. Following its binding to surface‐nucleolin, PTN is internalized by a temperature sensitive mechanism, a process which is inhibited by HB‐19 and is independent of heparan and chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans. Nevertheless, proteoglycans might play a role in the concentration of PTN on the cell surface for a more efficient interaction with nucleolin. Our results demonstrate for the first time that PTN inhibits HIV infection and suggest that the cell surface‐expressed nucleolin is a low affinity receptor for PTN binding to cells and it is also implicated in PTN entry into cells by an active process.
Cochannel interference suppression with successive cancellation in narrow-band systems

Successive cancellation of cochannel signals is described in the context of TDMA mobile radio systems employing coherent receivers. Both symbol aligned and mis-aligned cochannel signals are studied. Signal separability, a major problem in successive cancellation of cochannel signals, is obtained using the relative timing delay between cochannel signals. Both hard and soft subtractions are examined. Soft subtraction, along with initial signal separation, leads to significant C/I gains.
Interactive Reconfiguration Techniques of Reference Frame Hierarchy in the Multi-viewport Interface

This paper proposes interaction techniques for interactive reconfiguration of the transformation hierarchy among coordinate systems in the multi-viewport interface, which we have proposed for versatile three-dimensional (3-D) operations. The multi-viewport interface provides an arbitrary number of secondary views in window frames placed in a virtual environment, each showing the same or different virtual scenes from different perspectives. Using the multi-viewport interface, the user can seamlessly perform a variety of object manipulation and user navigation operations between multiple virtual scenes. The relationships among the reference frames of a window frame, the primary view outside the frame, the secondary view inside the frame, and the user define the characteristics and usability of a virtual environment; however, our former framework supports limited types of relationships and does not support interactive reconfiguration of the hierarchy. This paper extends our former framework with deeper analysis of combinations of the transformation hierarchy and a set of new interaction techniques for interactive reconfiguration of the hierarchy.
Results from the Australasian Vascular Surgical Audit: the inaugural year

The Australian and New Zealand Society for Vascular Surgery has incorporated a constitutional change to administer a self‐funded compulsory vascular surgery audit since January 2010. This is a bi‐national quality assurance activity that captures all procedures performed in both countries. Data is collected at two points in the clinical admission; at operation and at discharge and data entry is via the Internet. Security is stringent and confidentiality is guaranteed by Commonwealth privilege. Data privacy is maximized by encryption. The application is flexible and administered by a dedicated administrator with a help‐desk facility. Reports are available to provide real‐time feedback of user performance compared with the peer group data in key categories of arterial surgery. A structured hierarchy for data management has been established to assess four main categories of performance: mortality after aortic surgery, stroke and death after carotid surgery, patency and limb salvage after infrainguinal bypass and patency after arteriovenous access for haemodialysis. Data is analysed using risk‐adjustment techniques and an algorithm for management of underperformance has been followed. Data validation has been performed. The outcomes in all categories have been of a high standard and correction of erroneous data in a single statistical outlier has negated underperformance. The audit has captured only 65% of the estimated procedures in Australia in the first year, but data quality is good. The feasibility of a complete compulsory bi‐national audit has now been established and will be the benchmark for other craft groups in the current environment of accountability.
A Game Analysis on Quality Failure of Supply Chain

In the bi-level supply chain of supplier and buyer, because of the product's quality failure, to optimize the supply chain, the proper quality level of the supplier and the proper appraised level and quality level of the buyer were studied. It explored the proper quality level under the symmetric and other three asymmetric circum stances respectively, the global optimization of supply chain and the local optimization of each member can be obtained concurrently
Detecting evoked potentials with SVD- and ICA-based statistical models

In the functional diagnostics of human sensor systems, the analysis of stimulus responses embedded in an electroencephalogram (EEG), e.g. evoked potentials (EPs), is of high relevance for an objective electrophysiological assessment. The aim of this work is to detect weak EPs from highly contaminated signal traces. In principle this can be done using methods of spatiotemporal signal processing, which simultaneously increase the weak SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). However, methods based on any a priori knowledge of spatial or temporal properties as well as the propagation speed and direction are not applicable. Models with adjustable signal properties similar to real cortical activity are necessary for the development and evaluation of new methods of spatiotemporal signal processing. A model is needed which can be used in forward- and inverse-projection calculations. This study aims to develop a signal generator of the background EEG activity with embedded EPs of fully adjustable signal parameters. The study also compares the results of modeled signal analysis by known methods for signal decomposition, SVD (singular value decomposition) and ICA (independent component analysis).
Antibacterial peptides from thermophilic bacteria

It is becoming interestingly apparent that innovations of the classical antibiotics are not effective, that induces need for novel drugs. Peptide antibiotics exhibit a group of secondary metabolites with hydrophobic and cyclic structures containing d-amino acidc like compounds with more resistant to proteolytic degradation. Bacterial peptides can possess bactericidal, fungicidal, metal chelating and immunomodulation activities. Several bacteriocins are active as food preservation, resulting in foods with more naturally preserved and rich in nutritional properties. Antimicrobial peptides used against infections are isolated mainly from mesophilic bacterial species. Novel antibacterial peptides from thermophilic species are more stable at higher temperatures and pH, and can be improved by variation of cultivation conditions. These cells can growth either autotrophically or heterotrophically. Under mixotrophic conditions can utilize pyruvate or hydrogen with thiosulfate. The present review provides a general overview on primary structure of selected antibiotic peptides and their potential for industrial purposes as well as environmental and biotechnological applications.
RUPERT: a Device for Robotic Upper Extremity Repetitive Therapy

We report the development and initial evaluation of a device for robotic assisted upper extremity repetitive therapy (RUPERTtrade). Intense repetitive physical therapies provided by individualized interaction between the patient and a rehabilitation specialist to overcome upper extremity impairment after stroke are beneficial, however, they are expensive and difficult to evaluate quantitatively and objectively. The need is urgent and growing for a low cost, safe and easy to use robotic device to assist the patient and the therapist to fully achieve the potential benefit of task-based repetitive physical therapies. We designed a pneumatic muscle (PM) driven therapeutic device, the RUPERTtrade, that is wearable and provides assistive forces required to move the arm during performance of several critical tasks of daily living. The robot has four degrees of freedom at shoulder, elbow and wrist. The sensors feedback position and force information for quantitative evaluation of task performance. It has the potential of providing a take-home method of supplementing therapy. The device can also provide real-time, objective assessment of functional improvement of therapy
Optimal Fiscal Policy Rule for Achieving Fiscal Sustainability: A Japanese Case Study

Japan’s debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is the highest among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. This paper will firstly answer the question of whether Japanese government debt is sustainable. Next, while the Domar condition and Bohn’s condition are often used in the literature to check whether a government’s debt situation is in a dangerous zone, this paper will show that the Domar condition is obtained only from the government budget constraint (namely the supply of government bonds) and does not take into account the demand for government bonds. A simple comparison of the interest rate and the growth rate of an economy using the Domar condition is not adequate to check the stability of a government’s budget deficit. Both the interest rate and the growth rate of the economy are determined endogenously in the model. Thirdly, this paper shows that Bohn’s condition satisfies the stability of the government budget in the long run by imposing constraints on the primary balance. However, Bohn’s condition does not achieve economic stability—even if the condition is satisfied, the recovery of the economy may not be achieved. This paper will propose a new condition that satisfies both the stability of the government budget and the recovery of the economy. The paper will shed light on these issues both theoretically and empirically. The empirical findings declare that in order to achieve fiscal sustainability based on the optimal fiscal policy rule provided in this paper, both sides of the Japanese government budget (expenditure and revenue) need to be adjusted simultaneously. Moreover, the results show that the decrease in government expenditure has to be to more than the increase in tax revenue.
Sequence structures of a mouse major urinary protein gene and pseudogene compared.

Laboratory mouse strains carry approximately 35 major urinary protein (MUP) genes per haploid genome, tightly clustered together on chromosome 4. Most belong to two main groups (Groups 1 and 2). The available evidence strongly suggests that the Group 1 genes are active while the Group 2 genes are pseudogenes. Here we present the complete sequence of a Group 1 gene and a Group 2 gene and 700 bp of flanking sequence. The sequence of the Group 1 gene is consistent with its being active. The Group 2 gene contains two stop codons and a frame‐shift mutation in the reading frame defined by the Group 1 gene, and would code for a signal peptide 25 rather than 19 amino acids long. The Group 2 gene differs from the Group 1 gene in other ways: a deletion upstream of the TATA box and another in intron 3, a base change in the TATA box itself, a 2 bp duplication at the splice acceptor boundary of intron 6, an altered poly(A) addition signal and a 1‐base deletion 5′ to the initiation codon. Some of these differences may explain the 10‐ to 20‐fold higher level of Group 1 mRNA in mouse liver, and the fact that Group 1 and Group 2 transcripts are mainly spliced differently. The presence of the stop codon means that the Group 2 gene is a pseudogene in the context of the Group 1 gene. However, there is some evidence that the mature hexapeptide that it would code for may have biological activity. The 12 acceptor splice sites of the two genes all contain the identical sequence ACAG at the exon boundary. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Plexin-B1 Utilizes RhoA and Rho Kinase to Promote the Integrin-dependent Activation of Akt and ERK and Endothelial Cell Motility*

The semaphorins are a family of proteins originally identified as axon-guiding molecules in the developing nervous system that have been recently shown to regulate many cellular functions, including motility, in a variety of cell types. We have previously shown that in endothelial cells Semaphorin 4D acts through its receptor, Plexin-B1, to elicit a pro-angiogenic phenotype that involves the activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)-Akt signaling pathway. Here we show through the use of a receptor chimeric approach, Plexin-B1 mutants, and dominant negative and pharmacological inhibitors that this response is dependent upon the activation of RhoA and its downstream target, Rho kinase (ROK). Indeed, we demonstrate that in endothelial cells, Semaphorin 4D promotes the formation of focal adhesion complexes, stress fibers, and the phosphorylation of myosin light chain, a response that was abolished by the use of ROK inhibitors and absent from cells expressing Plexin-B1 mutant constructs incapable of signaling to RhoA. Stress fiber polymerization and contraction are in turn necessary for RhoA-dependent pro-angiogenic signaling through Plexin-B1. Furthermore, we observed that in endothelial cells Plexin-B1 promotes the integrin-mediated activation of Pyk2, resulting in the stimulation of PI3K, Akt, and ERK. These findings provide evidence that Plexin-B1 promotes endothelial cell motility through RhoA and ROK by regulating the integrin-dependent signaling networks that result in the activation of PI3K and Akt.
Frugality Ratios And Improved Truthful Mechanisms for

In set-system auctions, there are several overlapping teams of agents, and a task that can be completed by any of these teams. The auc- tioneer's goal is to hire a team and pay as little as possible. Exam- ples of this setting include shortest-path auctions and ver tex-cover auctions. Recently, Karlin, Kempe and Tamir introduced a new def- inition of frugality ratio for this problem. Informally, the "frugality ratio" is the ratio of the total payment of a mechanism to a desired payment bound. The ratio captures the extent to which the mecha- nism overpays, relative to perceived fair cost in a truthful auction. In this paper, we propose a new truthful polynomial-time auction for the vertex cover problem and bound its frugality ratio. We show that the solution quality is with a constant factor of optima l and the frugality ratio is within a constant factor of the best po ssible worst-case bound; this is the first auction for this problem t o have these properties. Moreover, we show how to transform any truth- ful auction into a frugal one while preserving the approximation ratio. Also, we consider two natural modifications of the defi nition of Karlin et al., and we analyse the properties of the resulti ng pay- ment bounds, such as monotonicity, computational hardness, and robustness with respect to the draw-resolution rule. We study the relationships between the different payment bounds, both for gen- eral set systems and for specific set-system auctions, such a s path auctions and vertex-cover auctions. We use these new definit ions in the proof of our main result for vertex-cover auctions via a boot- strapping technique, which may be of independent interest.
Quantification of Compartmented Metabolic Fluxes in Maize Root Tips Using Isotope Distribution from 13C- or 14C-Labeled Glucose (*)

Metabolic pathways of the intermediate metabolism of maize root tips were identified and quantified after labeling to isotopic and metabolic steady state using glucose labeled on carbon-1, −2, or −6 with 14C or 13C. The specific radioactivity of amino acids and the 13C-specific enrichment of specific carbons of free glucose, sucrose, alanine and glutamate were measured and used to calculate metabolic fluxes. The non-triose pathways, including synthesis of polysaccharides, accumulation of free hexoses, and to a lesser extent starch synthesis, were found to consume 75% of the glucose entering the root tips. The cycle of synthesis and hydrolysis of sucrose was found to consume about 70% of the ATP produced by respiration. The comparison of the specific radioactivities of amino acids and phospholipid glycerol phosphate after labeling with [1-14C] or [6-14C]glucose revealed the operation of the pentose phosphate pathway. The transfer of label from [2-14C]glucose to carbon-1 of starch glucosyl units confirmed the operation of this pathway and indicated that it is located in plastids. It was found to consume 32% of the hexose phosphates entering the triose pathways. The remaining 68% were consumed by glycolysis. The determination of the specific enrichment of carbohydrate carbons −1 and −6 after labeling with [1-13C]glucose indicated that both the conversion of triose phosphates back to hexose phosphates and the transaldolase exchange contributed to this randomization. Of the triose phosphates produced by glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway, about 60% were found to be recycled to hexose phosphates, and 28% were directed to the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Of this 28%, two-thirds were found to be directed through the pyruvate kinase branch and one-third through the phosphoenolpyruvate branch. The latter essentially has an anaplerotic function since little malate was found to be converted to pyruvate (malic enzyme reaction).