Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
α-Syntrophin Modulates Myogenin Expression in Differentiating Myoblasts

Background α-Syntrophin is a scaffolding protein linking signaling proteins to the sarcolemmal dystrophin complex in mature muscle. However, α-syntrophin is also expressed in differentiating myoblasts during the early stages of muscle differentiation. In this study, we examined the relationship between the expression of α-syntrophin and myogenin, a key muscle regulatory factor. Methods and Findings The absence of α-syntrophin leads to reduced and delayed myogenin expression. This conclusion is based on experiments using muscle cells isolated from α-syntrophin null mice, muscle regeneration studies in α-syntrophin null mice, experiments in Sol8 cells (a cell line that expresses only low levels of α-syntrophin) and siRNA studies in differentiating C2 cells. In primary cultured myocytes isolated from α-syntrophin null mice, the level of myogenin was less than 50% that from wild type myocytes (p<0.005) 40 h after differentiation induction. In regenerating muscle, the expression of myogenin in the α-syntrophin null muscle was reduced to approximately 25% that of wild type muscle (p<0.005). Conversely, myogenin expression is enhanced in primary cultures of myoblasts isolated from a transgenic mouse over-expressing α-syntrophin and in Sol8 cells transfected with a vector to over-express α-syntrophin. Moreover, we find that myogenin mRNA is reduced in the absence of α-syntrophin and increased by α-syntrophin over-expression. Immunofluorescence microscopy shows that α-syntrophin is localized to the nuclei of differentiating myoblasts. Finally, immunoprecipitation experiments demonstrate that α-syntrophin associates with Mixed-Lineage Leukemia 5, a regulator of myogenin expression. Conclusions We conclude that α-syntrophin plays an important role in regulating myogenesis by modulating myogenin expression.
Mechanical properties of individual southern pine fibers. Part I. Determination and variability of stress-strain curves with respect to tree height and juvenility

This paper is the first in a three-part series investigating the mechanical properties of loblolly pine fibers. This paper outlines the experimental method and subsequent variation of latewood fiber mechanical properties in relation to tree position. Subsequent papers will deal with differences between earlywood and latewood fibers and effect of juvenility and tree height on global fiber properties. In this paper, the mechanical properties were determined on individual wood fiber with a user-built tensile testing apparatus. Cross-sectional areas of post-tested fibers were determined with a confocal scanning laser microscope and used to convert acquired load-elongation curves into stress-strain curves. The modulus of elasticity and ultimate tensile stress of loblolly pine latewood fibers tested in this study ranged from 6.55 to 27.5 GPa and 410 to 1,422 MPa, respectively. Fibers from the juvenile core of the main stem were on the low end of the mechanical property scale, whereas fibers beyond the twentieth growth ring were near the high end of the scale. Coefficient of variation for fiber stiffness and strength averaged around 20 to 25%. The shape of the fiber stress-strain curves is dependent on their growth ring origins: Mature fibers were linear from initial loading until failure, whereas juvenile fibers demonstrated curvilinearity until about 60% of maximum load followed by linear behavior to failure.
Pose invariant robust facial expression analysis

This paper describes two novel facial expression recognition methods which are robust for head rotation within a certain angle range between -30 degrees and +30 degrees. We had proposed Eigenspace Method based on Class features of object (EMC) and Multiple Discriminant Analysis (MDA) for facial expression recognition. Our new methods, pEMC (parametric Eigenspace Method based on Class Features) and pMDA (parametric Multiple Discriminant Analysis), are extensions of EMC and MDA by using the parametric eigenspace technique. The parametric technique finds the manifold vector for recognition of rotated objects. Since EMC and MDA have the higher class separation, our new methods have both characteristics of parametric eigenspace and high classification of facial expression. pEMC and pMDA provide more 20 degree correct recognition than EMC regardless of the head pose.
Carbon Cycle Uncertainty in REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP)

Abstract. Characterisation of estimates of regional carbon budgets and processes is inherently a statistical task. In full form this means that almost all quantities used or produced are realizations or instances of probability distributions. We usually compress the description of these distributions by using some kind of location parameter (e.g. the mean) and some measure of spread or uncertainty (e.g. the standard deviation). Characterising and calculating these uncertainties, and their structure in space and time, is as important as the location parameter, but uncertainties are both hard to calculate and hard to interpret. In this paper we describe the various classes of uncertainty that arise in a process like RECCAP and describe how they interact in formal estimation procedures. We also point out the impact these uncertainties will have on the various RECCAP synthesis activities.
In Vivo Ectopic Bone Formation by Devitalized Mineralized Stem Cell Carriers Produced Under Mineralizing Culture Condition

Abstract Functionalization of tissue engineering scaffolds with in vitro–generated bone-like extracellular matrix (ECM) represents an effective biomimetic approach to promote osteogenic differentiation of stem cells in vitro. However, the bone-forming capacity of these constructs (seeded with or without cells) is so far not apparent. In this study, we aimed at developing a mineralizing culture condition to biofunctionalize three-dimensional (3D) porous scaffolds with highly mineralized ECM in order to produce devitalized, osteoinductive mineralized carriers for human periosteal-derived progenitors (hPDCs). For this, three medium formulations [i.e., growth medium only (BM1), with ascorbic acid (BM2), and with ascorbic acid and dexamethasone (BM3)] supplemented with calcium (Ca2+) and phosphate (PO43−) ions simultaneously as mineralizing source were investigated. The results showed that, besides the significant impacts on enhancing cell proliferation (the highest in BM3 condition), the formulated mineralizing media differentially regulated the osteochondro-related gene markers in a medium-dependent manner (e.g., significant upregulation of BMP2, bone sialoprotein, osteocalcin, and Wnt5a in BM2 condition). This has resulted in distinguished cell populations that were identifiable by specific gene signatures as demonstrated by the principle component analysis. Through devitalization, mineralized carriers with apatite crystal structures unique to each medium condition (by X-ray diffraction and SEM analysis) were obtained. Quantitatively, BM3 condition produced carriers with the highest mineral and collagen contents as well as human-specific VEGF proteins, followed by BM2 and BM1 conditions. Encouragingly, all mineralized carriers (after reseeded with hPDCs) induced bone formation after 8 weeks of subcutaneous implantation in nude mice models, with BM2-carriers inducing the highest bone volume, and the lowest in the BM3 condition (as quantitated by nano-computed tomography [nano-CT]). Histological analysis revealed different bone formation patterns, either bone ossicles containing bone marrow surrounding the scaffold struts (in BM2) or bone apposition directly on the struts' surface (in BM1 and BM3). In conclusion, we have presented experimental data on the feasibility to produce devitalized osteoinductive mineralized carriers by functionalizing 3D porous scaffolds with an in vitro cell-made mineralized matrix under the mineralizing culture conditions.
Nature and Nurture in Own-Race Face Processing

A standard visual preference task was used to examine 3-month-olds' looking times at own-race versus other-race faces as a function of environmental exposure to faces from the two categories. Participants were Caucasian infants living in a Caucasian environment, African infants living in an African environment, and African infants living in a predominantly Caucasian environment. The results indicate that preference for own-race faces is present as early as 3 months of age, but that this preference results from exposure to the prototypical facial environment.
Mergers, Capital Structure and Risk

We examine the terms and timing of vertical mergers when the uncertainty concerning stochastic cost of production input provides incentives to integrate. We develop a dynamic model where the acquisition is motivated by cost efficiencies and endogenously derive merger surplus. We show that during an economic downturn, merging is an alternative to bankruptcy as a solution for a downstream firm to stay in operation. The target in this model can delay the timing of a merger during economic upturn by strategically postponing its default. Our results contribute to the evidence of a U-shape pattern of merger waves. We predict industries in which proand counter-cyclical vertical mergers are more probable. We also provide asset pricing implications of a merger decision in different economic states. JEL Classification: G13, G12, G34, D23, D24
Asymmetric Volatility: Testing Firm-specific Factors as a Cause for the “Leverage Effect” Using GARCH-modeling

This thesis aims to investigate the dynamics of the so-called “leverage-effect”. This asymmetry in volatility after negative shocks, relative to positive shocks has been documented extensively before. However, except for findings that it is not due to leverage, the underlying or enhancing factors that cause it have not been investigated. This thesis aims to do so, by testing for the influence of firm-specific variables on this volatility asymmetry size. The methods that are used are both GJR- GARCH(1,1)-modeling and the use of panel-data. The results show, except for the leverage variable, that firm-specific variables do indeed have their own characteristic effect on the size of the volatility asymmetry. The combined R- squared of the firm specific variables shows a good fit; hence they do form a considerable part of the contributing factors to the size of volatility asymmetries.
Beyond our control: labour adjustment in response to the global recession by multinational auto companies in Australia

In response to the global recession, many multinational companies (MNCs) in the auto industry adjusted labour levels in their plants around the world. This paper examines the responses of Ford, GM, and Bosch in relation to plants in their home countries and in their subsidiary companies in Australia. The case studies revealed the emergence of 'hybrid' forms of employment relations practices among these MNCs, which were the product of convergence around commercial imperatives, as well as divergence due to the roles played by governments and trade unions in the respective countries.
Trace and Testing Equivalence on Asynchronous Processes

We study trace and may-testing equivalences in the asynchronous versions of CCS and p-calculus. We start from the operational definition of the may-testing preorder and provide finitary and fully abstract trace-based characterizations for it, along with a complete in-equational proof system. We also touch upon two variants of this theory by first considering a more demanding equivalence notion (must-testing) and then a richer version of asynchronous CCS. The results throw light on the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication and on the weaker testing power of asynchronous observations.
Designing Software Cockpits for Coordinating Distributed Software Development

Coordination of global software development is particularly difficult as it involves teams that are distributed across different locations and time zones. One of the key issues is a lack of understanding of how activities of different teams (and team members) relate to one another. To provide situational awareness for distributed teams, software cockpits, at-a-glance computer-controlled displays of data collected from multiple sources, have been proposed. In this paper, we introduce a set of design decisions that need to be considered for building software cockpits, present our approach to realizing such a cockpit based on three exploratory visualizations of distributed software development projects, and conclude with a discussion of lessons learned so far.
To Basel or Not to Basel? Banking Crises and Contagion

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to propose an object-oriented model of financial simulations which aims to test the applicability and suitability of the proposed measures of Basel III with respect to the prevention of banking crises. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors introduce an object-oriented model of financial simulations in the banking sector, namely, virtual banking (VBanking). The system is based on behavioural simulation of economic agents and allows for transactions between them, using various forms of financial assets. VBanking has been implemented as an automated stand-alone model, allowing for repetitive simulations under the same parameter sets, producing an efficient series of statistical data. Findings - – Interpretation of the resulting data suggests that some of the criticism against the proposed measures is justified, as neither economic crises nor contagion are diminished under Basel III. At the same time, the authors’ findings support that the stability goal is met, at least in part. Research limitations/implications - – The model encompasses a relatively small part of the banking sector, while the authors choose not to deal with the production part of the economy. However, these limitations do not hinder the validity and importance of the authors’ findings. Originality/value - – The originality of this article lies in the use of an object-oriented behavioural model and in the resulting model application that is based on it. This enables the authors to run a series of simulations with different parameters, the results of which the authors can then compare. The authors’ findings can contribute to the authorities’ efforts to ameliorate the policies of Basel III.
Adaptation to Climate Change and its Impacts on Food Security: Evidence from Niger

We assess farmers' incentives and the conditioning factors for adoption of agricultural technologies under climate risk and evaluate its impact on food security in Niger. Results show that while the use of modern inputs and organic fertilizers improves productivity, results are unclear for crop residues. Results also show that factors driving modern input use are different than those of crop residues and organic fertilizer which can be characterized at low capital requirements, higher labour requirements and longer time for results versus modern inputs which can be characterized as higher capital requirements, less labour requirement and shorter time for returns. Results show that greater climate variability increases use of risk-reducing inputs, but reduce the use of modern inputs. Results presented have implications for understanding and overcoming barriers to adoption, distinguishing structural aspects such as exposure and sensitivity from potential interventions at the household or system levels linked to adaptive capacity.
Combinatorial Construction of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes for Short Block Length and High Rate Applications

This paper presents a method to construct regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes of short block length and high rate based on a special type of combinatoric designs, i.e., balanced incomplete block designs (BIBDs) with lambda = 2 whose construction are based on cyclic difference families. Although the Tanner graph of the codes constructed contains some cycles of length 4, simulation results show that they perform well under belief propagation (BP) decoding. Further, these codes are quasi-cyclic (QC) codes and hence can be encoded efficiently
Tonal and temporal manifestations of successively higher emphasis in two communicative contexts

The study concerns f0 and duration in focused words when repeated with successively more emphasis in a dialogue interaction and in a reading-aloud situation. Results show greater adjustments in the dialogue context and generally greater adjustments of duration as compared to f0. The findings are seen in the light of different demands of the two communicative situations as well as different production constraints on f0 and duration.
Comparative Tolerability and Harms of Individual Statins: A Study-Level Network Meta-Analysis of 246 955 Participants From 135 Randomized, Controlled Trials

Background—Our objective was to estimate the comparative harms of individual statins using both placebo-controlled and active-comparator trials. Methods and Results—We systematically reviewed randomized trials evaluating different statins in participants with and without cardiovascular disease. We performed random-effects pairwise and network meta-analyses to quantify the relative harms of individual statins. We included 55 two-armed placebo-controlled and 80 two- or multiarmed active-comparator trials including 246 955 individuals. According to pairwise meta-analyses, individual statins were not different than control in terms of myalgia, creatine kinase elevation, cancer, and discontinuations because of adverse events. Statins as a class resulted in significantly higher odds of diabetes mellitus (odds ratio, 1.09; 95% confidence interval, 1.02–1.16) and transaminase elevations (odds ratio, 1.51; 95% confidence interval, 1.24–1.84) compared with control. When individual statins were compared in network meta-analyses, there were numerous statistically detectable differences, favoring simvastatin and pravastatin. According to dose-level comparisons, individual statins resulted in higher odds of discontinuations with higher doses of atorvastatin and rosuvastatin. Similarly, higher doses of atorvasatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, and simvastatin were associated with higher odds of transaminase elevations. Simvastatin at its highest doses was associated with creatine kinase elevations (odds ratio, 4.14; 95% credible interval, 1.08–16.24). Meta-regression analyses adjusting for study-level age at baseline, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level, and publication year did not explain heterogeneity. There was no detectable inconsistency in the network. Conclusions—As a class, adverse events associated with statin therapy are not common. Statins are not associated with cancer risk but do result in a higher odds of diabetes mellitus. Among individual statins, simvastatin and pravastatin seem safer and more tolerable than other statins.
Evolving Computer Programs for Knowledge Discovery

Genetic Programming (GP) offers practical advantages to the researcher facing difficult optimization problems. These advantages are multifold, including the simplicity of the approach, its robust response to changing circumstance, its flexibility, and many other facets. GP can be applied to problems where heuristic solutions are not available or generally lead to unsatisfactory results. As a result, GP has recently received increased interest, particularly with regard to the manner in which they may be applied for practical problem solving. This paper illustrates how some GP variants could be used for knowledge discovery and function approximation.
Mean-field theory of power demand prediction in small-sized system via information on timetable and environmental data

We construct a technique of time-series prediction for power consumption in small-sized systems via the mean-field theory (MFT) which approximates Bayesian inference using the expected a posterior (EAP) estimation. Here, we estimate the power consumption as an expectation of an Ising spin averaged over the Boltzmann factor of the Ising model under random fields. Here, we forecast time evolution of power consumption using multiple time-series of power consumptions similar to the target data due to the correlation coefficients, timetable and environmental data, such as the temperature at the target system. Then, we estimate performance of the MFT for a typical small-sized system. Here, we find that controlling fluctuations around the MAP solution is essential for accurate prediction tuning the parameter corresponding to the absolute temperature in statistical physics, and also that accuracy is improved by tuning parameters which correspond to coupling constant between Ising spins and random fields. Then, we find that the accuracy is further improved by tuning random fields which control effects of the timetable and temperatures at the target system.
One-Line Redshifts and Searches for High-Redshift Lyα Emission

We report the serendipitous discovery of two objects close in projection with fairly strong emission lines at long wavelength (λ ~ 9190 Å). One (A) seems not to be hosted by any galaxy brighter than V555 = 27.5, or I814 = 26.7 (Vega-based 3 σ limits in 1.″0 diameter apertures), while the other line is associated with a faint (I814 ≃ 24.4) red galaxy (B) offset by 2. ″7 and 7 Å spectrally. Both lines are broad (FWHM ≈ 700 km s-1), are extended spatially, and have high equivalent widths [W(A) > 1225 Å, 95% confidence limit; W(B) ≈ 150 Å]. No secondary spectral features are detected for galaxy A. Blue continuum and the marginal detection of a second weak line in the spectrum of galaxy B is consistent with [O II] (the strong line) and Mg II (the weak line) at z = 1.466. By association, galaxy A is likely at z = 1.464, implying a rest-frame equivalent width of the [O II] emission line in excess of 600 Å and a projected separation of 30 h kpc for the galaxy pair. Conventional wisdom states that isolated emission lines with rest-frame equivalent widths larger than ~200 Å are almost exclusively Lyα. This moderate-redshift discovery therefore compromises recent claims of high-redshift Lyα emitters for which other criteria (i.e., line profile, associated continuum decrements) are not reported. We discuss observational tests to distinguish Lyα emitters at high redshift from foreground systems.
POSTECH Grammatical Error Correction System in the CoNLL-2014 Shared Task

This paper describes the POSTECH grammatical error correction system. Various methods are proposed to correct errors such as rule-based, probability n-gram vector approaches and router-based approach. Google N-gram count corpus is used mainly as the correction resource. Correction candidates are extracted from NUCLE training data and each candidate is evaluated with development data to extract high precision rules and n-gram frames. Out of 13 participating teams, our system is ranked 4 th on both the original and revised annotation.
Fast Approximation of Multiple Scattering in Inhomogeneous Participating Media

This paper presents a fast approximation for the solution of the radiative transfer equation in inhomogeneous participating media. This scheme traces rays from the point light creating spherical wavefronts. While we march on a particular ray, we assume that other rays find similar material properties, which allows the solution of the diffusion equation for this ray. The proposed approximation of the scattered component can be computed in parallel with obtaining the direct term at practically no additional cost. The approximation may be used for direct visualization, an initial guess for an iterative solution, or for the main part of a Monte Carlo solution.