Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Di-aromatic Pentapeptide Repeats of the Human Peroxisome Import Receptor PEX5 Are Separate High Affinity Binding Sites for the Peroxisomal Membrane Protein PEX14*

PEX5 functions as a mobile import receptor for peroxisomal matrix proteins with a peroxisomal targeting signal 1 (PTS1). A critical step within the PTS1-import pathway is the interaction between PEX5 and the peroxisome membrane-associated protein PEX14. Based on two-hybrid analyses in mammalian cells and complementary in vitro binding assays, we demonstrate that the evolutionarily conserved pentapeptide repeat motifs, WX(E/D/Q/A/S)(E/D/Q)(F/Y), in PEX5 bind to PEX14 with high affinity. The results obtained indicate that each of the seven di-aromatic pentapeptides of human PEX5 interacts separately at the same binding site in the N terminus of PEX14 with equilibrium dissociation constants in the low nanomolar range. Mutational analysis of the PEX14-binding motifs reveals that the conserved aromatic amino acids at position 1 or 5 are essential for high affinity binding. We propose that the side chains of the aromatic amino acids are in close proximity as part of an amphipathic α-helix and together form hydrophobic anchors for binding PEX5 to individual PEX14 molecules.
Multi user interference characterization of multiband OFDM UWB system in the presence of log-normal fading channels

This article describes the modelling of multi user interference (MUI) for multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) ultra wideband (UWB) devices operating in log-normal fading channels. Based on this the outage probability and average bit error rate (BER) expressions are derived for target multiband OFDM UWB device with different diversity techniques, maximal ratio combining (MRC) and equal gain combining (EGC), along with MUI caused by other multiband OFDM UWB devices operating in the same network. For this, a probability density function (PDF) approximation of sum of squared (for MRC) and squared sum (for EGC) of log-normal random variables are used to get it in simplified form. Moreover, derived expressions show that the effect of MUI on the target multiband OFDM UWB device.
Leaf canopy as a dynamic system: ecophysiology and optimality in leaf turnover.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS In a leaf canopy, there is a turnover of leaves; i.e. they are produced, senesce and fall. These processes determine the amount of leaf area in the canopy, which in turn determines canopy photosynthesis. The turnover rate of leaves is affected by environmental factors and is different among species. This mini-review discusses factors responsible for leaf dynamics in plant canopies, focusing on the role of nitrogen. SCOPE Leaf production is supported by canopy photosynthesis that is determined by distribution of light and leaf nitrogen. Leaf nitrogen determines photosynthetic capacity. Nitrogen taken up from roots is allocated to new leaves. When leaves age or their light availability is lowered, part of the leaf nitrogen is resorbed. Resorbed nitrogen is re-utilized in new organs and the rest is lost with dead leaves. The sink-source balance is important in the regulation of leaf senescence. Several models have been proposed to predict response to environmental changes. A mathematical model that incorporated nitrogen use for photosynthesis explained well the variations in leaf lifespan within and between species. CONCLUSION When leaf turnover is at a steady state, the ratio of biomass production to nitrogen uptake is equal to the ratio of litter fall to nitrogen loss, which is an inverse of the nitrogen concentration in dead leaves. Thus nitrogen concentration in dead leaves (nitrogen resorption proficiency) and nitrogen availability in the soil determine the rate of photosynthesis in the canopy. Dynamics of leaves are regulated so as to maximize carbon gain and resource-use efficiency of the plant.
The phenomenal unity of perceptual experience

Abstract: This thesis is concerned with phenomenal unity, a salient and important feature of our conscious lives, albeit one which has gone somewhat under-explained. My focus will on the phenomenal unity of perceptual experiences at a time, which is best illustrated by the following kind of example: whilst walking through the park, you notice a particular tree, whose foliage and bark have a particularly intense hue and strange texture. At the same time, there is a strong scent in the air, and you can feel the heat of the sun on your arms. Alongside this, birds are calling loudly… whilst undergoing all these different perceptual experiences, it strikes you that although these experiences correspond to different senses, they seem to be tied together in some important way: there is a unity to your overall perceptual experience at this time. Even in this mundane case, there are various ways in which my experiences are unified: the various properties of the objects that I represent via vision and touch are unified in the sense that they seem to inhere in the same object (and so are object unified), the various objects that I am seeing and touching all seem to me to be located in the same space (and so are spatially unified), and further, I can jointly attend to several of these experiences together at will (and so these experiences are introspectively unified). Over and above this however, we might think there is a distinct other kind of unity. This is a unity of phenomenology, the subjective character of perceptual experience. There is something it is like for me to hear the birds calling, and there is something it is like for me to see the leaves on the tree. But there is also currently something it is like for me to hear the birds and see the foliage, together. Further, this togetherness is such that it is an integral part of my current experience. This final kind of unity is phenomenal unity, and providing a full description and explanation of this phenomenon will be my task in this thesis. In doing this I will address the following two questions: ‘what is phenomenal unity? ’ and ‘how should we explain phenomenal unity? ’. I will show that phenomenal unity is best thought of as a relation that holds between token perceptual experiences, answering the first question, and in answering the second question, will consider various reductive and non-reductive explanations of phenomenal unity, before arguing that we should explain phenomenal unity in terms of the unified states being the potential parts of the same overall phenomenal state.
How Computer Simulations Can Assist Model Generation In Students: Providing an Adaptable Structure to Guide Student Learning

Le Châtelier’s principle and chemical equilibrium are considered two of the most difficult topics for students in high school chemistry, and despite the development of numerous simulations, software solutions have met with limited success. We present two case studies of expert teachers teaching Le Châtelier’s Principle and show how the findings of the case studies have informed the design of a novel simulation. We have identified several key tactics used by these teachers that are not currently supported or enhanced by available simulations. Based on these studies, we have designed a novel simulation that 1) affords opportunities for model construction with analogies, 2) facilitates model evaluation by providing multiple reaction representations, and 3) guides learning by explicitly requesting predictions from students. This paper reveals strategies to promote model-based learning in chemistry and a design for an educational simulation that has been closely informed by model-based teaching practices.
Perceptually uniform color spaces for color texture analysis: an empirical evaluation

RGB, a nonuniform color space, is almost universally accepted by the image processing community as the means for representing color. On the other hand, perceptually uniform spaces, such as L*a*b*, as well as approximately-uniform color spaces, such as HSV, exist, in which measured color differences are proportional to the human perception of such differences. This paper compares RGB with L*a*b* and HSV in terms of their effectiveness in color texture analysis. There has been a limited but increasing amount of work on the color aspects of textured images. The results have shown that incorporating color into a texture analysis and recognition scheme can be very important and beneficial. The presented methodology uses a family of Gabor filters specially tuned to measure specific orientations and sizes within each color texture. Effectiveness is measured by the classification performance of each color space, as well as by classifier-independent measures. Experimental results are obtained with a variety of color texture Images. Perceptually uniform spaces are shown to outperform RGB in many cases.
Plant Defense against Insect Herbivores

Plants have been interacting with insects for several hundred million years, leading to complex defense approaches against various insect feeding strategies. Some defenses are constitutive while others are induced, although the insecticidal defense compound or protein classes are often similar. Insect herbivory induce several internal signals from the wounded tissues, including calcium ion fluxes, phosphorylation cascades and systemic- and jasmonate signaling. These are perceived in undamaged tissues, which thereafter reinforce their defense by producing different, mostly low molecular weight, defense compounds. These bioactive specialized plant defense compounds may repel or intoxicate insects, while defense proteins often interfere with their digestion. Volatiles are released upon herbivory to repel herbivores, attract predators or for communication between leaves or plants, and to induce defense responses. Plants also apply morphological features like waxes, trichomes and latices to make the feeding more difficult for the insects. Extrafloral nectar, food bodies and nesting or refuge sites are produced to accommodate and feed the predators of the herbivores. Meanwhile, herbivorous insects have adapted to resist plant defenses, and in some cases even sequester the compounds and reuse them in their own defense. Both plant defense and insect adaptation involve metabolic costs, so most plant-insect interactions reach a stand-off, where both host and herbivore survive although their development is suboptimal.
Performance analysis of distributed cooperation under uncoordinated network interference

Managing interference is a major technical challenge in large wireless networks. Distributed cooperation techniques, such as Interference Alignment (IA), exploit the available spatial degrees of freedom of the interference channel holding promise of enhanced spectral efficiency. Most prior results, however, consider isolated network settings, neglecting the interference from nodes that are not participating in the cooperation scheme. This paper analyzes the performance of IA in the presence of uncoordinated interference from a heterogeneous network. Specifically, we analyze perfect downlink IA in a fixed-size cell, where the interfering nodes are distributed according to a spatial point process, and compare it with a non-cooperative MIMO scheme. Furthermore, the performance gains by using a guard zone between the IA cluster and the interference field are evaluated and design guidelines for the necessary isolation distance from out-of-cluster interferers are provided.
A Survey of Solutions for Game Engines in the Development of Immersive Applications for Multi-projection Systems as Base for a Generic Solution Design

Game engines are used in the development of virtual reality applications. They enable developers to focus the virtual environment and spend less time on its creation. The relationship between interactivity and graphics performance offered by game engines has led researchers to explore these engines in multi-projection systems based on the CAVE, which aims to provide an immersive experience through a wide field of view from multiple-screens, stereo images, and perspective correction based on the user's viewpoint. This paper surveys game engine solutions for the development of immersive applications for multi-projection systems in order to point out trends in the usage of these game creation tools for immersive systems and to identify a possible generic solution design.
A method of fault simulation based on stem regions

An exact fault simulation can be achieved by simulating only the faults on reconvergent fan-out stems, while determining the detectability of faults on other lines by critical path tracing within fan-out-free regions. The authors have delimited, for every reconvergent fan-out stem, a region of the circuit outside of which the stem fault does not have to be simulated. Lines on the boundary of such a stem region, called exit lines, have the following property: if the stem fault is detected on the line and the line is critical with respect to a primary output, then the stem fault is detected at that primary output. Any fault simulation technique can be used to simulate the stem fault within its stem region. The fault simulation complexity of a circuit is shown to be directly related to the number and size of stem regions in the circuit. The concept of stem regions has been used as a framework for an efficient fault simulator for combinational circuits. The concept allows a static reduction of the circuit area of explicit analysis for single- as well as multiple-output circuits. A dynamic reduction of processing steps is also achieved as the fault simulation progresses and fault coverage increases. The simulation algorithm is described, and experimental results are shown for the well-known benchmark circuits. >
How much information about adverse effects of medication do patients want from physicians?

BACKGROUND Little information exists concerning the amount of information patients expect from physicians as to the risk for an adverse medication reaction. The present study was designed to determine such opinions in a population sample; to correlate results with sex, age, educational level, and previous experience with adverse effects; and to determine whether patients believe physicians should use discretion in the amount of such information given. METHODS Two thousand five hundred sequential adults visiting outpatient clinics filled out a 12-item questionnaire. Percentages of subjects desiring information about varying degrees of risk and those believing physicians should and should not use discretion in the amount of such information provided were recorded. Results were correlated with demographic variables and previous experience of adverse effects. RESULTS Among the respondents, 76.2% desired to be told of all possible adverse effects; 13.3% only if an adverse effect occurred 1 in 100 000 times; and 10.2% only if such occurrence was 1 in 100 times; 0.4% were not interested in any information. (Percentages have been rounded and do not total 100.) Percentages were closely similar to those for the same question that restricted opinion to serious adverse effects. Desire for maximum information was significantly correlated with lower educational level (P<.00l) and previous frequent experience with adverse effects (P<.001) and in older women (P<.001). The opinion that the physician should give the same information to all patients was given by 67.6% of the sample, and 73.4% opined that physicians were never justified in withholding any information. CONCLUSION Most individuals desire from physicians all information concerning possible adverse effects of prescribed medication and do not favor physician discretion in these decisions.
Thermal Conductivity and Viscosity Measurements of Water-Based Silica Nanofluids

Nanofluids are a new class of thermal vectors potentially able to drastically increase the heat transfer properties of base fluids such as water, glycol and oil. Nanoparticles of various materials, size (<100 nm), shapes and concentrations can be added to the base fluid to enhance the transport properties. In particular, the knowledge of thermal conductivity and viscosity is essential to study the effect of nanoparticles on the heat transfer coefficient of the fluid. Here, thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids based on water and SiO2 are measured at nanoparticles concentrations ranging from 1% to 54% by weight and temperatures between 10°C and 70°C. After a discussion of the results obtained, the experimental data are used to evaluate the thermal heat transfer capability of water-SiO2 nanofluids in comparison with the base fluid, i.e. water, through the Mouromtseff figure numbers for laminar and turbulent flow.
Bisphosphonates vs infliximab in ankylosing spondylitis treatment.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to evaluate if the anti-inflammatory properties of bisphosphonates and their effect on bone turnover could be useful in the treatment of AS. METHODS Sixty patients were consecutively assigned in a 1:1 ratio in a 6-month open-label, single-centre study on active AS to receive monthly i.v. neridronate (100 mg) or standard infliximab (5 mg/kg) therapy. RESULTS A significant reduction in the mean BASDAI was observed over 6 months of either neridronate (-1.72) or infliximab (-1.62) administration. The BASFI decreased significantly at 3 and 6 months in the neridronate arm, while in the infliximab group a significant reduction at 3 months but not 6 months was observed. The 10-cm visual analogue scale for axial pain decreased significantly and comparably at 3 and 6 months in both groups. No significant differences between treatment arms for all these changes were observed at both 3 months and the final assessment. The BASMI was not significantly modified in the neridronate or infliximab group. No significant variations of BMD were observed in the infliximab group, while in patients treated with neridronate a significant increase was observed at the lumbar spine. CONCLUSION High i.v. doses of the amino-bisphosphonate neridronate are as effective as infliximab therapy in reducing disease activity in AS patients, with additional benefits on BMD changes. Further studies to confirm these results over a longer time frame are warranted together with the possibility to explore the long-term efficacy of a combination of lower anti-TNF doses with bisphosphonates.
A target recognition method for maritime surveillance radars based on hybrid ensemble selection

ABSTRACT In order to improve the generalisation ability of the maritime surveillance radar, a novel ensemble selection technique, termed Optimisation and Dynamic Selection (ODS), is proposed. During the optimisation phase, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II for multi-objective optimisation is used to find the Pareto front, i.e. a set of ensembles of classifiers representing different tradeoffs between the classification error and diversity. During the dynamic selection phase, the meta-learning method is used to predict whether a candidate ensemble is competent enough to classify a query instance based on three different aspects, namely, feature space, decision space and the extent of consensus. The classification performance and time complexity of ODS are compared against nine other ensemble methods using a self-built full polarimetric high resolution range profile data-set. The experimental results clearly show the effectiveness of ODS. In addition, the influence of the selection of diversity measures is studied concurrently.
To the Editor.

1. Mao JJ, Bowman MA, Xie SX, Bruner D, DeMichele A, Farrar JT. Electroacupuncture versus gabapentin for hot flashes among breast cancer survivors: a randomized placebo-controlled trial. J Clin Oncol 2015;33: 3615-3620. 2. Garland SN, Xie SX, Li Q, Seluzicki C, Basal C, Mao JJ. Comparative effectiveness of electro-acupuncture versus gabapentin for sleep disturbances in breast cancer survivors with hot flashes: a randomized trial. Menopause 2017;24:517-523.
Estimating Inefficiencies in Banking: A Survey

This paper presents a review of the extensive literature concerned with estimating production and cost inefficiencies in banks. The meaning of inefficiency in this context is outlined, alternative estimation techniques are summarised and the problems of modelling the activities of banks and measuring their inputs and outputs are discussed. By including more non-US studies than previous surveys, the paper produces a more comprehensive summary and comparison of inefficiency results than has previously been attempted. The paper ends with a set of recommendations for future researchers in the area.
Exploring Mindset Agency Theory

This paper develops a socio-cognitive theory of the normative personality of a plural agency like for instance an organisation or a political system. The personality is represented through formative cognitive traits that arise from the Sagiv-Schwartz cultural values study. To establish the traits the principles of Maruyama’s meta-theory of mindscapes are examined and related to Mindset Agency Theory. A Maruyama “mindscape” can be understood as a construct from which coherent sets of behavioural mind-sets can emerge. A specific set of goals, demands and behaviours would be typical for a social-cognitive system that is ruled by a single mindscape. However, pure mindscapes are extremes, and will likely be rarely observed to rule a single agency. In any self-referential, self-regulating, self-organising and pro-active social system different modes of thought (or paradigms) are prevalent and can be related to different mindscapes. As highlighted by Bandura, such interaction between prevalent forces can be modelled with cybernetic approaches, which can explain the internal dynamics of a system. This research creates a generic model that has the potential to distinguish between different types of personalities within the same framework and can illustrate the sources of the internal cultural dynamics of a system.
FoxK1 splice variants show developmental stage-specific plasticity of expression with temperature in the tiger pufferfish

SUMMARY FoxK1 is a member of the highly conserved forkhead/winged helix (Fox) family of transcription factors and it is known to play a key role in mammalian muscle development and myogenic stem cell function. The tiger pufferfish (Takifugu rubripes) orthologue of mammalian FoxK1 (TFoxK1) has seven exons and is located in a region of conserved synteny between pufferfish and mouse. TFoxK1 is expressed as three alternative transcripts: TFoxK1-α, TFoxK1-γ and TFoxK1-δ. TFoxK1-α is the orthologue of mouse FoxK1-α, coding for a putative protein of 558 residues that contains the forkhead and forkhead-associated domains typical of Fox proteins and shares 53% global identity with its mammalian homologue. TFoxK1-γ and TFoxK1-δ arise from intron retention events and these transcripts translate into the same 344-amino acid protein with a truncated forkhead domain. Neither are orthologues of mouse FoxK1-β. In adult fish, the TFoxK1 splice variants were differentially expressed between fast and slow myotomal muscle, as well as other tissues, and the FoxK1-α protein was expressed in myogenic progenitor cells of fast myotomal muscle. During embryonic development, TFoxK1 was transiently expressed in the developing somites, heart, brain and eye. The relative expression of TFoxK1-α and the other two alternative transcripts varied with the incubation temperature regime for equivalent embryonic stages and the differences were particularly marked at later developmental stages. The developmental expression pattern of TFoxK1 and its localisation to mononuclear myogenic progenitor cells in adult fast muscle indicate that it may play an essential role in myogenesis in T. rubripes.