Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
L‐Arginine‐Dependent Production of a Reactive Nitrogen Intermediate by Macrophages of a Uricotelic Species

L‐arginine‐dependent production of reactive nitrogen intermediates (RNIs: nitric oxide, nitrite, and nitrate) by mammalian macrophages has been proposed to occur via an L‐arginine oxidative deimination pathway and is known to be responsible for certain antineoplastic and antimicrobial effector functions. The present study represents the first examination of this pathway in a non‐mammalian vertebrate. Because chickens, unlike mammals, lack a urea cycle and are incapable of de novo synthesis of L‐arginine, the possible existence of an avian macrophage pathway for production of RNIs is questionable. We have defined conditions under which chicken macrophages are able to produce nitrite. Sephadex‐elicited chicken peritoneal macrophages required a bacterial Ii‐popolysaccharide (LPS from Escherichia coli) signal to produce nitrite during 24 hour cultures in the presence of L‐arginine. As little as 5 ng/ml LPS resulted in significant nitrite production in culture. The relationship of nitrite production to both LPS and L‐arginine levels was dose‐dependent. D‐arginine was unable to substitute for L‐arginine but also produced no inhibitory effect In contrast, L‐NG‐monomethyl arginine showed a significant inhibitory effect on nitrite production. A virus‐transformed chicken macrophage cell line, HD11, also produced nitrite in a dose‐dependent manner relative to both LPS and L‐arginine concentration. Concentrations as low as 5 ng/ml LPS and 0.1 mM L‐arginine resulted in significant nitrite production, while maximum levels of nitrite production were obtained using ≥0.5 μg/ml LPS and ≥0.4 mM L‐arginine. These results indicate that chicken macrophages can produce RNIs. This production is dependent upon activation and is influenced by local L‐arginine concentration. Moreover, because the chicken does not possess the ability to synthesize arginine and has an absolute nutritional requirement for this amino acid, the chicken represents a highly controllable system to examine the in vivo effects of L‐arginine on macrophage‐related immune functions.
Spatial variability of the leaching characteristics of a field soil

Solute distributions within a soil profile during the leaching of water-soluble salts applied to the soil surface were measured at six depths to 182.4 cm within 20 subplots of a 150-ha field. Estimates of the pore water velocity based upon measures of solute displacement within each subplot and the entire field were found to be logarithmically normally distributed and in agreement with volumetric measures of water infiltration rates. Such agreement was only possible because it was recognized that the observed values were not normally distributed, and their mean values were calculated accordingly. The number of observations required to yield an estimate of the mean pore water velocity within a prescribed accuracy is shown to depend upon the nature and extent of the spatial variability of the field soil. For the field examined, 100 observations would allow the mean pore water velocity to be estimated within ±50% of its true value. The functional relation between field-measured values of the apparent diffusion coefficient, also found to be logarithmically normally distributed, and pore water velocity is examined and interpreted in terms of solute distributions likely to be measured at specific sampling sites.
Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of the Intense Katabatic Winds at Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica

Two years of automatic weather station observations describing the linkage between the inland confluence zone and the intense coastal katabatic wind regime at Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica, are analyzed. A highly stable wind regime is described by the data with the air over the plateau converging into the head of Reeves Glacier, descending dry adiabatically to the Nansen Ice Sheet, and apparently accelerating horizontally down the local pressure gradient to Inexpressible Island, which is situated along the western shore of Terra Nova Bay. This low-level jet of cold air is laterally confined and is only slightly responsive to synoptic forcing. The internal dynamics of the airstream is the dominant factor determining its behavior. Lateral fluctuations in the katabatic wind are primarily controlled by buoyancy variations.
Flexible tailored sensors for large deformation monitoring

During the last few decades a growing interest in monitoring and preserving strategic heritage and civil structures, has pushed the research towards the development of new devices and strategies for measuring the quantities of interest. The measuring strategies, based on innovative transducers, are required to avoid any significant influence on the monitored structure either in terms of functionality or aesthetics. The availability and the characterization of the materials is a key point in the development of new strategies able to achieve this goal. In the paper conductive elastomers are proposed for this class of applications and some results of their characterization as sensors for large deformation are reported.
KS-SIFT : a keyframe extraction method based on local features

In this work we propose a new keyframe extraction method based on SIFT local features. We extracted feature vectors from a carefully selected group of frames from a video shot, analyzing those vectors to eliminate near duplicate keyframes, helping to keep a compact set. Moreover, as the keyframe extraction is based on local features, it keeps frames latent semantics and, therefore, helps to keep shot representativeness. We evaluated our method in the scene segmentation context, with videos from movies domain, developing a comparative study with three state of the art approaches based on local features. The results show that our method overcomes those approaches. Keywords— Keyframe Extraction, Scene Segmentation, Visual Features
A Comparison of rpoB and 16S rRNA as Markers in Pyrosequencing Studies of Bacterial Diversity

Background The 16S rRNA gene is the gold standard in molecular surveys of bacterial and archaeal diversity, but it has the disadvantages that it is often multiple-copy, has little resolution below the species level and cannot be readily interpreted in an evolutionary framework. We compared the 16S rRNA marker with the single-copy, protein-coding rpoB marker by amplifying and sequencing both from a single soil sample. Because the higher genetic resolution of the rpoB gene prohibits its use as a universal marker, we employed consensus-degenerate primers targeting the Proteobacteria. Methodology/Principal Findings Pyrosequencing can be problematic because of the poor resolution of homopolymer runs. As these erroneous runs disrupt the reading frame of protein-coding sequences, removal of sequences containing nonsense mutations was found to be a valuable filter in addition to flowgram-based denoising. Although both markers gave similar estimates of total diversity, the rpoB marker revealed more species, requiring an order of magnitude fewer reads to obtain 90% of the true diversity. The application of population genetic methods was demonstrated on a particularly abundant sequence cluster. Conclusions/Significance The rpoB marker can be a complement to the 16S rRNA marker for high throughput microbial diversity studies focusing on specific taxonomic groups. Additional error filtering is possible and tests for recombination or selection can be employed.
INCAP Studies of Kwashiorkor and Marasmus

This article summarizes thirty years of intensive clinical metabolic and therapeutic studies of the consequences of severe protein deficiency relative to calories, which results in kwashiorkor, and of a balanced deficiency of protein and calories that results in marasmus. Evidence is provided that these are two different metabolic diseases, but kwashiorkor is usually superimposed on some degree of chronic marasmus and hence most cases studied were marasmic kwashiorkor. The value of the creatinine/height index to indicate the degree of lean body cell mass with any disease is demonstrated.
Controlling Adenoviral Replication to Induce Oncolytic Efficacy

Over the last decade, cancer therapy has found itself challenged by the growing field of oncolytic virotherapy. Many different viruses are currently under study, investigating their potential to induce antitumor effects through repeated cycles of viral infection and cell lysis. It was, however, genetically-engineered replication-selective adenoviruses that were the first to enter clinical trials with cancer patients. The difficulties involved in combining selectivity and elevated potency in a single oncolytic adenovirus have led investigators to design and test many different approaches. Different strategies, based on the control of viral replication, are presented in the current review. We discuss how the growing knowledge of cell and tumour biology, with the advances made in adenoviral virology, has inspired the fine-tuning of genetically-engineered adenoviruses. Special emphasis is placed on the fundamentals behind the use of certain specific genetic elements, introduced into the viral genome to control viral gene expression and on describing the most important viral gene mutations.
European Financial Markets after Emu: A Review of Recent Literature and Evidence

As financial transactions become more integrated, many governments and policy makers have been exploring how they can increase the breath of capital markets. Increasing emphasis has been placed in recent years to the approach that the financial system is an important mechanism directly linked to the performance of the real economy. This paper adopts a methodology, which combines the systemic approach to financial institutions and recent developments in the study of capital structure, investment decisions and technological change. The view that there are important interactions between financial systems and corporate performance leads to a systemic approach to corporate performance. The performance of manufacturing industries must be considered in the context of the overall structure of economies. Differences across countries in the structure of capital markets, industrial organisation aspects of manufacturing sectors and product markets are all closely interlinked. It is therefore impossible to consider significant changes in one independent of the others. In particular, policies which promote the adoption of specific forms of financial intermediation have to take account of the product and industrial organisation context within which they are being contemplated.
Fitness correlates of crop transgene flow into weedy populations: a case study of weedy rice in China and other examples

Whether transgene flow from crops to cross‐compatible weedy relatives will result in negative environmental consequences has been the topic of discussion for decades. An important component of environmental risk assessment depends on whether an introgressed transgene is associated with a fitness change in weedy populations. Several crop‐weed pairs have received experimental attention. Perhaps, the most worrisome example is transgene flow from genetically engineered cultivated rice, a staple for billions globally, to its conspecific weed, weedy rice. China's cultivated/weedy rice system is one of the best experimentally studied systems under field conditions for assessing how the presence of transgenes alters the weed's fitness and the likely impacts of that fitness change. Here, we present the cultivated/weedy rice system as a case study on the consequences of introgressed transgenes in unmanaged populations. The experimental work on this system reveals considerable variation in fitness outcomes ‐ increased, decreased, and none ‐ based on the transgenic trait, its introgressed genomic background, and the environment. A review of similar research from a sample of other crop‐wild pairs suggests such variation is the rule. We conclude such variation in fitness correlates supports the case‐by‐case method of biosafety regulation is sound.
Gene expression and differentiation characteristics in mice E13.5 and E17.5 neural retinal progenitors

Purpose Retinal progenitor cells (RPCs) are the most valuable seed cells in replacement therapy for neural retinal diseases. The competence of RPCs changes with retinal development. Gene expression plays a fundamental role in determining the competence. To improve the selection of the right-timing RPCs for replacement therapy, we compared the gene expression between embryonic day (E) 13.5 and E17.5 RPCs and further explored their gene expression and differentiation capacity in vitro. Methods Timed-pregnant E13.5 and E17.5 RPCs were freshly harvested and cultured in proliferation conditions for 4 days and then in differentiation conditions for 8 days. At different time points, the expression of key genes involved in retinal development was investigated by quantitative reverse transcription-PCR or immunofluorescence. Results The expression of 14 key genes involved in retinal development was investigated in freshly harvested E13.5 and E17.5 RPCs. The freshly harvested E13.5 RPCs showed a high expression of retinal ganglion cell (RGC)-related genes, including Math5, Brn3b, Islet1, and Nfl, while the freshly harvested E17.5 RPCs displayed a high expression for Nrl, GFAP, and Thy1, the key genes involved in rod photoreceptor development, glial cell development, and synaptogenesis, respectively. During proliferation culture in vitro, the gene expression changed dramatically in both RPCs. After the 4 days of proliferation culture, the expression levels of most genes (11 of the 14 genes) in E13.5 RPCs came close to those in the freshly harvested E17.5 RPCs. Differentiation of RPCs in vitro was verified by the significant decrease in Nestin expression and BruU incorporation efficiency. After the 8 days of differentiation in vitro, the expression level of RGC-related genes (Math5, Brn3b, and Islet1) was still significantly higher in E13.5 RPCs than in E17.5 RPCs. In contrast, the expression level of Nrl and GFAP was significantly higher in E17.5 RPCs than in E13.5 RPCs. In morphology, the differentiated E13.5 RPCs displayed more robust process outgrowth than did the differentiated E17.5 RPCs. Immunofluorescence showed that, after the 8 days of differentiation, E13.5 RPCs contained more Brn3b- and Map2-positive cells, while E17.5 RPCs contained more GFAP-, GS-, and Rhodopsin-positive cells. Conclusions The results implied that E13.5 RPCs might be a better choice for RGC replacement therapy, while E17.5 RPCs might be better for photoreceptor replacement therapy. The duration of in vitro culture should be timed, since the expression of key genes kept changing in the proliferating RPCs.
RNA-guided Nucleotide Modification of Ribosomal and Other RNAs*

One of the exciting frontiers in the field of RNA editing is the phenomenon of RNA-guided nucleotide modification. In this type of editing, a nucleotide in a precursor RNA is converted to another form by an RNA-protein complex (RNP) (1). The RNPs that mediate these reactions include a guide RNA that provides site specificity through base pairing with the substrate and a set of proteins, one of which catalyzes the modification reaction. The phenomenon was first discovered in the modification of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) in the nucleolus of eukaryotic cells (Fig. 1). Two common alterations are relevant, formation of 2 -O-methylated nucleosides (Nm; the guided mechanism was reported in 1996) and conversion of uridine to pseudouridine ( ; the guided process was reported in 1997) (2–4). These modifications are mediated by two large, heterogeneous populations of RNPs that are modification type-specific and sitespecific. The RNPs contain a small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) and several associated proteins, and the snoRNA-protein complexes are called snoRNPs (“snorps”). The snoRNA provides the guide function, and an integral snoRNP protein catalyzes the modification reaction. When discovered, this type of reaction scheme was not only novel but in sharp contrast to the rRNA modification schemes used by Eubacteria, where the synthesis of Nm and is mediated (thus far) by protein enzymes that do not include an RNA co-factor (5). Guided modification was subsequently discovered to apply to the U6 snRNA (small nuclear RNA in vertebrates and Caenorhabditis elegans) and likely to mRNA (mammals, trypanosomes) (6–9). Strikingly, from an evolutionary perspective, the new paradigm was also discovered (in 2000) to apply to Archaeal organisms where substrates include tRNA as well as rRNA (10). Recent advances have revealed guided modification to be more complex and widespread and are almost certainly a harbinger of exciting new developments to come. Key developments include: 1) identification of new guide RNAs that reside in mammalian Cajal bodies (these RNAs are specific for the four snRNAs transcribed by RNA polymerase II (pol II), which are thought to undergo maturation and possibly RNP assembly at this location (11)); 2) evidence that the trypanosome transspliced leader is a substrate for guided modification (9); and 3) successful development of the first cell-free Nm modification system, using recombinant archaeal components (12). Taken together, these findings argue that additional modifying RNPs and substrates subjected to RNA-guided modification will be discovered. In this minireview we describe the present state of knowledge about the various RNP-modifying complexes, the processes they mediate, where in the cell these reactions occur, and the range of substrates. Because of limited space the reader is also referred to other recent reviews (1, 13–18).
Ground-motion amplitude across ridges

Local amplification and wave diffraction on an elongated ridge near Sourpi in central Greece were studied by the analysis of seismic records of local and regional earthquakes. Data were obtained during field work especially designed for this purpose. These data were analyzed in the frequency and time domains. In the frequency domain, spectral ratios show amplifications of 1.5 to 3 at the ridge top relative to the base of the ridge. The horizontal components of motion are more amplified than the vertical component and the observed spectral ratios seem stable for different earthquake locations. Theoretical spectral ratios, calculated by the indirect boundary element method, are dependent on earthquake location but are in general agreement with the observed spectral ratios. Another dataset, from Mont St. Eynard in the French Alps, showed similar characteristics with spectral amplitudes on the top of the ridge up to four times those on the flank. These relative amplifications are within the range predicted by numerical simulations. The numerical simulations also show that the topographic effect involves the emission of diffracted waves propagating from the top toward the base of the ridge. The use of a seven-station array on the ridge at Sourpi made it possible to identify such waves. The analysis was performed with wave separation methods using singular value decomposition and spectral matrix filtering. Our results show agreement between experimental data and theoretical results supporting the use of numerical simulations for estimation of purely topography-induced amplification on ridge tops. Our results also show that such amplification is moderate for the ridges under study.
Development of a cascaded multilevel DSTATCOM for real-time load power factor correction

In this paper, a delta-connected DSTATCOM with cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter is proposed for real-time load power factor correction in power distribution systems. First, a feed forward compensation scheme is developed for the DSTATCOM for fast response requirement. Then, the DSTATCOM is built and simulated with Matlab/Simulink program. Accordingly, a hardware prototype is constructed by using DSP-based control system. Finally, experimental results verify the function of the DSTATCOM.
A review and classification of LED ballasts

This paper presents a review on existing ballasts for light-emitting diodes (LED) with considerations to their compliance to regulations, technological challenges, and on meeting various application requirements. All existing LED ballasts, including those proposed in recent literature, have been appropriately classified and systematically organized for the discussion. The dissemination of this information and its understanding is helpful for future R&D pursuits in this area.
Search-based Prediction of Fault-slip-through in Large Software Projects

A large percentage of the cost of rework can be avoided by finding more faults earlier in a software testing process. Therefore, determination of which software testing phases to focus improvements work on, has considerable industrial interest. This paper evaluates the use of five different techniques, namely particle swarm optimization based artificial neural networks (PSO-ANN), artificial immune recognition systems (AIRS), gene expression programming (GEP), genetic programming (GP) and multiple regression (MR), for predicting the number of faults slipping through unit, function, integration and system testing phases. The objective is to quantify improvement potential in different testing phases by striving towards finding the right faults in the right phase. We have conducted an empirical study of two large projects from a telecommunication company developing mobile platforms and wireless semiconductors. The results are compared using simple residuals, goodness of fit and absolute relative error measures. They indicate that the four search-based techniques (PSO-ANN, AIRS, GEP, GP) perform better than multiple regression for predicting the fault-slip-through for each of the four testing phases. At the unit and function testing phases, AIRS and PSO-ANN performed better while GP performed better at integration and system testing phases. The study concludes that a variety of search-based techniques are applicable for predicting the improvement potential in different testing phases with GP showing more consistent performance across two of the four test phases.
Adaptive Trajectory Tracking Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots with Nonholonomic Constraint

A mobile robot is one of the well-known nonholonomic systems. In this paper, a new adaptive tracking controller for the kinematic model of a nonholonomic mobile robot with unknown parameters is proposed. Stability of the rule is proved through the use of a Liapunov function. The artificial electrostatic field cooperates with error posture in steering in the controller. At last, this method is implemented on the simulations and the wheeled mobile robot. Results show the effectiveness of the controllers.
The Tumble Clock: Bringing Users in Touch with their Snooze Time

Although seemingly simple and easy to design for, the moment of waking up and deciding on how long to snooze poses interesting design challenges. While traditional alarm clock interfaces feature large buttons or dropdown menus to communicate (fixed) snooze time, embodied interaction with the entire alarm clock can help to express how much snooze time is desired in a more nuanced way. This paper presents the design of Tumble Clock, a buttonless "balance-object" that exposes its entire surface as interaction area, allowing for snoozing its alarm simply by tilting and releasing or pushing the entire artefact. The Tumble Clock's interaction possibilities and the appreciation of this tangible approach to interaction with time have been evaluated in a user study. Our study indicates that, when enriched with feedback on action, the Tumble Clock's balance behavior can successfully facilitate in tangibly communicating variable intangible information such as snooze time.