Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functional domains of the transcription factor USF2: atypical nuclear localization signals and context-dependent transcriptional activation domains

USF is a family of basic helix-loop transcriptional factors that recognizes DNA-binding sites similar to those of the Myc oncoproteins. Here, various functional domains in the mouse USF2 protein were identified and characterized. Indirect immunofluorescence studies with transiently transfected cells revealed that both the basic region and the highly conserved USF-specific region (USR) are involved in the nuclear localization of USF2. Cotransfection assays with deletion mutants containing the DNA-binding domain of either USF2 or GAL4 identified two distinct transcriptional activation domains in USF2, the USR and the exon 5-encoded region. Activity of the exon 5 activation domain was detectable in both assay systems. Within USF2, however, its potency varied with the conformation induced by the surrounding regions, especially that encoded by alternatively spliced exon 4. In contrast, the USR activated transcription only in its natural context upstream of the USF2 basic region and only with reporter constructs containing the adenovirus major late minimal promoter but not the E1b minimal promoter. However, insertion of an initiator element downstream of the TATA box rescued the activity of the USR on the E1b-driven reporters. The USR therefore represents a new type of activation domain whose function depends very strongly on the core promoter context.
Evaluation of Aggregate Characteristics Affecting HMA Concrete Performance

This report documents the outcomes of the ICAR study on the Evaluation of Aggregate Characteristics Affecting HMA Concrete Performance. This study was conducted with support from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) program on Simulation, Imaging, and Mechanics of Asphalt Pavements at Texas A&M University. The first outcome includes assessment of HMA sensitivity to aggregate shape characteristics. Aggregate shape is characterized through detailed measurements of angularity, form, and texture using the Aggregate Imaging System (AIMS). The shape characteristics are presented in terms of the distribution of the property in an aggregate sample rather than an average index of this property. The second outcome of this study is the development of a viscoplastic model for permanent deformation. The model accounts for the aggregate structure in the mix, which is related to the shape properties measured using AIMS. The model capabilities are demonstrated through matching the results of testing various mixes from the Accelerated Loading Facility (ALF) of the FHWA using the triaxial creep and strength tests. In addition, the model is used to predict the response of mixes that include aggregates with different shape characteristics in order to develop relationships between the model parameters and aggregate shape characteristics. As part of the model development, an experiment was conducted to capture and characterize damage evolution in HMA due to permanent deformation. HMA specimens were loaded using a triaxial compression setup to four predefined strain levels at three confining pressures. Consequently, image analysis techniques were used to analyze damage distribution. The results of the damage experiment supported the damage evolution function proposed in the viscoplastic model.
Bayesian Inference Underlies the Contraction Bias in Delayed Comparison Tasks

Delayed comparison tasks are widely used in the study of working memory and perception in psychology and neuroscience. It has long been known, however, that decisions in these tasks are biased. When the two stimuli in a delayed comparison trial are small in magnitude, subjects tend to report that the first stimulus is larger than the second stimulus. In contrast, subjects tend to report that the second stimulus is larger than the first when the stimuli are relatively large. Here we study the computational principles underlying this bias, also known as the contraction bias. We propose that the contraction bias results from a Bayesian computation in which a noisy representation of a magnitude is combined with a-priori information about the distribution of magnitudes to optimize performance. We test our hypothesis on choice behavior in a visual delayed comparison experiment by studying the effect of (i) changing the prior distribution and (ii) changing the uncertainty in the memorized stimulus. We show that choice behavior in both manipulations is consistent with the performance of an observer who uses a Bayesian inference in order to improve performance. Moreover, our results suggest that the contraction bias arises during memory retrieval/decision making and not during memory encoding. These results support the notion that the contraction bias illusion can be understood as resulting from optimality considerations.
Semantic Query Extension through Probabilistic Description Logics

This paper presents a novel approach for semantic query extension using a probabilistic description logic. Concepts that are related to a keyword-based query are used for finding other concepts and relations through the use of a relational Bayesian network built using the probabilistic description logic CRALC. Furthermore, probabilistic assessments allow us to rank the information returned by search. Examples and issues of importance in real world applications are discussed.
Isolation of an autonomously replicating DNA fragment from the region of defective bacteriophage PBSX of Bacillus subtilis

We have isolated a 5.4-kilobase fragment of Bacillus subtilis DNA that confers the ability to replicate upon a nonreplicative plasmid. The B. subtilis 168 EcoRI fragment was ligated into the chimeric plasmid pCs540, which contains a chloramphenicol resistance determinant from the Staphylococcus aureus plasmid pC194 and an HpaII fragment from the Escherichia coli plasmid, pSC101. A recE B. subtilis derivative, strain BD224, is capable of maintaining this DNA as an autonomously replicating plasmid. In rec+ recipients, chloramphenicol-resistant transformants do not contain free plasmid. The plasmid is integrated as demonstrated by alterations in the pattern of chromosomal restriction enzyme fragments to which the plasmid hybridizes. The site of plasmid integration was mapped by PBS1-mediated transduction to the metC-PBSX region. A strain was a deletion in the region of defective bacteriophage PBSX differs in the hybridization profile obtained by probing EcoRI digests with this cloned fragment. This same deletion mutant, though proficient in normal recombinational pathways, permits autonomous replication of the plasmid apparently owing to the lack of an homologous chromosomal region with which to recombine. We believe that, like E. coli. B. subtilis contains at least one DNA fragment capable of autonomous replication when liberated from its normally integrated chromosomal site and that this cloned DNA fragment comes from the region of defective bacteriophage PBSX.
Map based differential detectors for compressed UWB impulse radio signals

We propose maximum a posteriori (MAP) based noncoherent differential detector for ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) signals, received at a sub-Nyquist sampling rate. We build our detector for a Laplacian distributed multipath channel, which models sparsity. Our MAP based detector outperforms differential detectors based on other state-of-the-art approaches from a practical point of view. Our work highlights the critical role of different measurement matrices for the compressed differential detectors in general and the MAP based compressed differential detectors in particular.
Channel optimized vector quantization based on Maximum a Posteriori hard decision demodulation

We design a maximum a posteriori hard-decision demodulated channel optimized vector quantizer (COVQ) that exploits the non-uniformity of the quantized source. We consider memoryless Gaussian and Gauss-Markov sources transmitted over a binary phase-shift keying modulated additive white Gaussian noise channel. Our scheme which has less decoding complexity than soft decoded COVQ systems, is shown to provide a notable signal-to-distortion ratio gain (up to 0.4 dB for memoryless Gaussian sources and up to 0.8 dB for Gauss-Markov sources) over the conventional COVQ designed for hard-decision demodulated channels.
The expected number of runs in a word

A word is a sequence of symbols taken from a (usually finite) alphabet. Ar un of periodp in a word x is a factor x[m.n] such that n − m ≥ p and x[i ]= x[i+p] for all i satisfying m ≤ i<i +p ≤ n, and such that this does not hold if m is replaced by a smaller integer or n by a larger one. The number of runs in words has been a subject of interest in recent years, particularly because of connections with data compression. In this paper we investigate the expected number of runs per unit length in words of given alphabet size, and compare our results with DNA, amino acid and other sequences.
Participation of Prostacyclin in Endothelial Dysfunction Induced by Aldosterone in Normotensive and Hypertensive Rats

The aim of the present study was to analyze the possible involvement of vasoconstrictors prostanoids on the reduced endothelium-dependent relaxations produced by chronic administration of aldosterone in Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). For this purpose, acetylcholine (ACh) relaxations in aortic segments from both strains were analyzed in absence and presence of the cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) and COX-2 inhibitor indomethacin, the specific COX-2 inhibitor NS-398, the TP receptor antagonist (SQ 29 548), the thromboxane A2 (TXA2) synthase inhibitor furegrelate, and the prostacyclin (PGI2) synthesis inhibitor tranylcypromine (TCP). In addition, COX-2 protein expression was studied by Western blot analysis. Release of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and the metabolites of PGF2α, TXA2, and PGI2, 13,14-dihydro-15-keto PGF2a, TXB2, and 6-keto-PGF1α, respectively, were measured. Treatment with aldosterone did not modify blood pressure levels in any strain. However, aldosterone markedly reduced (P<0.05) ACh-induced relaxations in segments from both strains in a similar extent. Indomethacin, NS-398, SQ 29 548, and TCP enhanced (P<0.05) ACh relaxations in both strains treated with aldosterone. Aortic COX-2 protein expression was higher in both strains of rats treated with aldosterone. In normotensive animals, aldosterone increases the ACh-stimulated aortic production of 13,14-dihydro-15-keto PGF2a, PGE2, and 6-keto-PGF1α (P<0.05). In SHR, ACh only increased the 6-keto-PGF1α production (P<0.05). It could be concluded that chronic treatment with aldosterone was able to produce endothelial dysfunction through COX-2 activation in normotensive and hypertensive conditions. PGI2 seems to be the main factor accounting for endothelial dysfunction in hypertensive rats, whereas other prostanoids besides PGI2 appear to be involved in endothelial dysfunction under normotensive conditions.
SmileNet: Registration-Free Smiling Face Detection In The Wild

We present a novel smiling face detection framework called SmileNet for detecting faces and recognising smiles in the wild. SmileNet uses a Fully Convolutional Neural Network (FCNN) to detect multiple smiling faces in a given image of varying resolution. Our contributions are threefold: 1) SmileNet is the first smiling face detection network that does not require pre-processing such as face detection and registration in advance to generate a normalised (cropped and aligned) input image; 2) the proposed SmileNet is a simple and single FCNN architecture simultaneously performing face detection and smile recognition, which are conventionally treated as separate consecutive pipelines; and 3) SmileNet ensures real-time processing speed (21:15 FPS) even when detecting multiple smiling faces in a given image (300X300). Experimental results show that SmileNet can deliver state-of-the-art performance (95:76%), even under occlusions, and variances of pose, scale, and illumination.
Short-term predictors of abdominal obesity in children.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to examine the short-term tracking of abdominal adiposity in children. METHODS A total of 918 children (477 boys) aged 6-12 years at baseline were followed-up for 2 years. Central obesity was assessed by waist circumference (WaistC), whereas body fat distribution by waist-to-hip ratio. Maturity was assessed by the Khamis-Roche method. Parental fatness and children's cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) were also evaluated. Multiple and logistic regressions were employed to identify the predictors of BMI and WaistC. RESULTS Tracking of body fatness and body fat distribution was high (r = 0.69-0.86, P < 0.01). More boys remained obese than girls (P < 0.05), whereas a greater percentage of boys moved to a higher quartile of WaistC after the 2-year follow-up (22.0 vs 14.1%, P < 0.01). Sex, child's maturity and WaistC at baseline, CRF, and maternal BMI explained 76% of the variability in BMI and WaistC at the follow-up (n = 290). Children with high WaistC at baseline and low CRF presented 1.9- and 4.3-fold increased risk of remaining in the upper quartile of WaistC at the follow-up (P < 0.01; n = 552). CONCLUSION Youth with increased WaistC at baseline and low CRF presented an increased chance of maintaining central obesity at the follow-up. More boys than girls moved into a higher quartile of abdominal obesity during the 2-year follow-up period and this should be taken into account in designing programmes for childhood obesity.
On Providing One-to-One Marketing with Customers' Privacy in Stationary Retail

Electronic commerce has provided retailers with effective instruments to deploy one-to-one marketing over the internet. While the increasing use of sensors, RFID tags and other technologies enables the deployment of one-to-one marketing also in stationary retail stores, ini-tial experiments in realizing personalization in this setting have shown that customers' acceptance is low, as services require personal data to be collected, thereby raising imminent privacy concerns.In this paper, we argue that one-to-one marketing in stationary retail and privacy do not constitute a dichotomy, but can be brought together by focusing on individualized services solely built upon context information and techniques to allow customers to control the collection and usage of such context information.
Right Brain/Left Brain President

This intriguing analysis examines an aspect of President Obama that falls outside of his ethnic background, his political career, or policies: how his unique leadership style comes from his extraordinary ability to use both halves of his brain to maximum potential. Right Brain/Left Brain President: Barack Obama's Uncommon Leadership Ability and How We Can Each Develop It is an inspirational guide to leadership as it should be practiced, conveyed through an up-close look at the man who sets the new leadership bar. Author Mary Lou Décosterd uses her Right Brain/Left Brain Leadership Model to frame Barack Obama's leadership skill sets. Her book shows that Obama's unique brand of leadership is the result of his extraordinary ability to leverage full-brain potential in the ways he thinks, decides, and acts. Right Brain/Left Brain President examines Obama's life and the Obama phenomenon, analyzing how he rose to prominence so quickly and what that teaches us. The president is used as an example of the ten full-spectrum behaviors—the must-have leadership skills—that make one an extraordinary leader. To help readers emulate the Obama model and become the most consummate leaders possible, Décosterd discusses how each of us can learn to lead from both right and left brain abilities.
Neural markers of errors as endophenotypes in neuropsychiatric disorders

Learning from errors is fundamental to adaptive human behavior. It requires detecting errors, evaluating what went wrong, and adjusting behavior accordingly. These dynamic adjustments are at the heart of behavioral flexibility and accumulating evidence suggests that deficient error processing contributes to maladaptively rigid and repetitive behavior in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies reveal highly reliable neural markers of error processing. In this review, we evaluate the evidence that abnormalities in these neural markers can serve as sensitive endophenotypes of neuropsychiatric disorders. We describe the behavioral and neural hallmarks of error processing, their mediation by common genetic polymorphisms, and impairments in schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and autism spectrum disorders. We conclude that neural markers of errors meet several important criteria as endophenotypes including heritability, established neuroanatomical and neurochemical substrates, association with neuropsychiatric disorders, presence in syndromally-unaffected family members, and evidence of genetic mediation. Understanding the mechanisms of error processing deficits in neuropsychiatric disorders may provide novel neural and behavioral targets for treatment and sensitive surrogate markers of treatment response. Treating error processing deficits may improve functional outcome since error signals provide crucial information for flexible adaptation to changing environments. Given the dearth of effective interventions for cognitive deficits in neuropsychiatric disorders, this represents a potentially promising approach.
Sleep Dysfunction and its Association to Chronic Rhinosinusitis: Updated Review

Poor sleep has significant effects on health contributing to increased morbidity and mortality. The direct and indirect costs of sleep dysfunction total well in to the billions of dollars annually in the United States. Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) affects up to 16% of the US population and has been linked to poor sleep quality with up to three quarters of patients with CRS reporting poor sleep quality. There is a growing body of literature evaluating the relationship between sleep and CRS. In this review, we organize and present the current knowledge on the associations between sleep and CRS as well as identify areas for further investigation.
Trajectory of post-traumatic stress following traumatic injury: 6-year follow-up

Background Traumatic injuries affect millions of patients each year, and resulting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) significantly contributes to subsequent impairment. Aims To map the distinctive long-term trajectories of PTSD responses over 6 years by using latent growth mixture modelling. Method Randomly selected injury patients (n = 1084) admitted to four hospitals around Australia were assessed in hospital, and at 3, 12, 24 and 72 months. Lifetime psychiatric history and current PTSD severity and functioning were assessed. Results Five trajectories of PTSD response were noted across the 6 years: (a) chronic (4%), (b) recovery (6%), (c) worsening/recovery (8%), (d) worsening (10%) and (e) resilient (73%). A poorer trajectory was predicted by female gender, recent life stressors, presence of mild traumatic brain injury and admission to intensive care unit. Conclusions These findings demonstrate the long-term PTSD effects that can occur following traumatic injury. The different trajectories highlight that monitoring a subset of patients over time is probably a more accurate means of identifying PTSD rather than relying on factors that can be assessed during hospital admission.
Self-Stabilization, Byzantine Containment, and Maximizable Metrics: Necessary Conditions

Self-stabilization is a versatile approach to fault-tolerance since it permits a distributed system to recover from any transient fault that arbitrarily corrupts the contents of all memories in the system. Byzantine tolerance is an attractive feature of distributed systems that permits to cope with arbitrary malicious behaviors. We consider the well known problem of constructing a maximum metric tree in this context. Combining these two properties leads to some impossibility results. In this paper, we provide two necessary conditions to construct maximum metric tree in presence of transients and (permanent) Byzantine faults.
FISCAL POLICY, INCREASING RETURNS, AND ENDOGENOUS FLUCTUATIONS

This paper examines the quantitative implications of government fiscal policy in a discrete-time one-sector growth model with a productive externality that generates social increasing returns to scale. Starting from a laissez-faire economy that exhibits local indeterminacy, we show that the introduction of a constant capital tax or subsidy can lead to various forms of endogenous fluctuations, including stable 2-, 4-, 8-, and 10-cycles, quasiperiodic orbits, and chaos. In contrast, a constant labor tax or subsidy has no effect on the qualitative nature of the model's dynamics. We show that the use of local steady-state analysis to detect the presence of multiple equilibria in this class of models can be misleading. For a plausible range of capital tax rates, the log-linearized dynamical system exhibits saddle-point stability, suggesting a unique equilibrium, whereas the true nonlinear model exhibits global indeterminacy. This result implies that stabilization policies designed to suppress sunspot fluctuations near the steady state may not prevent sunspots, cycles, or chaos in regions away from the steady state. Overall, our results highlight the importance of using a model's nonlinear equilibrium conditions to fully investigate global dynamics.
Reasoning about XACML policies using CSP

In this work we explore the use of process algebra in formalising and analysing access control policies. We do this by considering a standard access control language (XACML) and show how the core concepts in the language can be represented in CSP. We then show how properties of these policies may also be described in CSP, and how model checking may be used to verify that a policy meets the property.We further consider how we may introduce a notion of workflow into this framework, and show that a simple appreciation of the workflow context may limit the things we need to verify about a policy.
Full-Truthful Implementation in Nash Equilibria

We consider full-truthful Nash implementation, which requires that truth telling by each agent should be a Nash equilibrium of a direct revelation mechanism, and that the set of Nash equilibrium outcomes of the mechanism should coincide with the f -optimal outcome. We show that restricted monotonicity together with an auxiliary condition called boundedness is both necessary and sufficient for full-truthful Nash implementation. We also prove that full-truthful Nash implementation is equivalent to secure implementation (Saijo et al. (2005)). This gives us an alternative characterization of securely implementable social choice functions.
Transformation of E-Commerce by Business and Law Perspectives: Case Study on "October Event" of Taobao Mall

We focus on the event that Taobao Mall(Tmall) changed its charging rules on October10 in 2011 which received strongly protest of small and medium sellers, and analyze the whole event separately from business and law. From business perspective, we analyze the resistance of the E-commerce transformation, and offer a solution based on shared-value theory. From the law perspective, we discuss the legal risk and the relevant legal issues. Through the law-business dual perspectives research, it helps us to understand the business model and internet rules. Furthermore, it provides a meaningful reference of the transformation of E-commerce.