Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lasting N-Terminal Phosphorylation of c-Jun and Activation of c-Jun N-Terminal Kinases after Neuronal Injury

Transcription factor c-Jun is proposed to control neuronal cell death and survival, but its activation by N-terminal phosphorylation and the underlying activity of the c-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNKs) remain to be elucidated in the adult mammalian brain. We generated a polyclonal antiserum that specifically recognizes c-Jun phosphorylated at its serine 73 (S73) residue after UV irradiation of 3T3 cells. Disruption of the c-jun locus in 3T3 cells abolished this reaction, and retransfection of the human c-jun at the c-jun−/− background restored it. The phospho-c-Jun antiserum was used to visualize N-terminally phosphorylated c-Jun in the adult rat brain with cellular resolution. Prolonged c-Jun S73 phosphorylation was detected in affected neurons up to 5 d after transient occlusion of medial cerebral artery or up to 50 d after transection of central nerve fiber tracts. After cerebral ischemia–reperfusion, phosphorylation of c-Jun was linked with induced expression of Fas-ligand (APO-1, CD95-ligand), whose gene is a putative c-Jun/AP-1 target, and with terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated biotinylated UTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) reactivity, a marker for apoptosis. After nerve fiber transection, however, lasting c-Jun phosphorylation occurred in axotomized neurons negative for Fas-ligand or TUNEL and regardless of degeneration or survival. In contrast to these lasting phosphorylation patterns, transient seizure activity by pentylenetetrazole provoked only a brief c-Jun phosphorylation and JNK activation. In extracts from ischemic or axotomized brain compartments, c-Jun phosphorylation correlated with enhanced long-term JNK activity, and in-gel kinase assays visualized proteins with sizes corresponding to JNK isoforms as the only c-Jun N-terminally phosphorylating enzymes. These results demonstrate that lasting c-Jun S73 phosphorylation and JNK activity are part of neuronal stress response after neurodegenerative disorders in the adult mammalian brain with Fas-ligand as a putative apoptotic effector.
Green joint user scheduling and power control in downlink multi-cell OFDMA networks

Energy-efficient resource allocation in the downlink of a multi-cell OFDMA-based cellular system with base station coordination is considered in this paper. Using the tools of fractional programming and alternating maximization, user scheduling on subcarriers and transmit power allocation is carried out in order to maximize a system-wide energy-efficient performance function. In keeping with a recent trend in related literature, the definition of the energy efficiency also considers the circuit power that is dissipated in order to enable transmission. The proposed algorithms only require the solution of concave problems and are guaranteed to converge. Moreover, numerical results indicate that they exhibit satisfactory performance.
Effects of Limiting Homology at the Site of Intermolecular Recombinogenic Template Switching during Moloney Murine Leukemia Virus Replication

ABSTRACT A Moloney murine leukemia virus-based single-replication-cycle assay was developed to study the effects of limiting the extent of template and primer strand complementarity on recombinogenic template switching. This system mimicked forced copy choice recombination in which nascent DNA transfers from the end of a donor template to an acceptor position on the other copackaged RNA. When acceptor target regions with different extents of complementarity to the transferring DNA were tested, efficient recombination occurred with as few as 14 complementary nucleotides. The frequencies of correct targeting, transfer-associated errors, mismatch extension, and transfer before reaching the end of the donor template were determined. All four molecular events occurred, with their proportions varying depending on the nature of acceptor/transferring DNA complementarity. When complementarity was severely limited, recombination was inefficient and most products resulted from aberrant second-strand transfer rather than from forced template switching between RNAs. Other classes of reverse transcription products, including some that resulted from template switching between virus and host sequences, were also observed when homology between the acceptor and donor was limited.
Comparative Lateralizing Ability of Multimodality MRI in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Purpose. The objective is to compare lateralizing ability of three quantitative MR (qMRI) modalities to depict changes of hippocampal architecture with clinical entities in temporal lobe epilepsy. Methods. We evaluated 14 patients with clinical and EEG proven diagnosis of unilateral TLE and 15 healthy volunteers. T1-weighted 3D dataset for volumetry, single-voxel 1H MR spectroscopy (MRS), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) were performed for bilateral hippocampi of all subjects. Results. Individual volumetric measurements provided accurate lateralization in 85% of the patients, spectroscopy in 57%, and DTI in 57%. Higher lateralization ratios were acquired combining volumetry-spectroscopy (85%), spectroscopy-DTI (85%), and volumetry-DTI (100%). Significantly decreased NAA/(Cho+Cr) ratios (p = 0.002) and increased FA (p = 0.001) values were obtained in ipsilateral to epileptogenic hippocampus. Duration of epilepsy and FA values showed a significant negative correlation (p = 0.016, r = −0.847). The history of febrile convulsion associated with ipsilateral increased ADC values (p = 0.015, r = 0.851) and reduced NAA/(Cho+Cr) ratios (p = 0.047, r = −761). Conclusion. Volumetry, MRS, and DTI studies provide complementary information of hippocampal pathology. For lateralization of epileptogenic focus and preoperative examination, volumetry-DTI combination may be indicative of diagnostic accuracy.
A Spitzer Census of the IC 348 Nebula

Spitzer mid-infrared surveys enable an accurate census of young stellar objects by sampling large spatial scales, revealing very embedded protostars, and detecting low-luminosity objects. Taking advantage of these capabilities, we present a Spitzer-based census of the IC 348 nebula and embedded star cluster, covering a 2.5 pc region and comparable in extent to the Orion Nebula. Our Spitzer census supplemented with ground-based spectra has added 42 Class II T Tauri sources to the cluster membership and identified ∼20 Class 0/I protostars. The population of IC 348 likely exceeds 400 sources after accounting statistically for unidentified diskless members. Our Spitzer census of IC 348 reveals a population of Class I protostars that is anticorrelated spatially with the Class II/III T Tauri members, which comprise the centrally condensed cluster around a B star. The protostars are instead found mostly at the cluster periphery about ∼1 pc from the B star and spread out along a filamentary ridge. We further find that the star formation rate in this protostellar ridge is consistent with that rate which built the older exposed cluster, while the presence of 15 cold, starless, millimeter cores intermingled with this protostellar population indicates that the IC 348 nebula has yet to finish forming stars. Moreover, we show that the IC 348 cluster is of order 3-5 crossing times old, and, as evidenced by its smooth radial profile and confirmed mass segregation, is likely relaxed. While it seems apparent that the current cluster configuration is the result of dynamical evolution and its primordial structure has been erased, our finding of a filamentary ridge of Class I protostars supports a model in which embedded clusters are built up from numerous smaller subclusters. Finally, the results of our Spitzer census indicate that the supposition that star formation must progress rapidly in a dark cloud should not preclude these observations that show it can be relatively long lived.
Economic integration and the diversification of regional exports: evidence from the Canadian-US free trade agreement

We investigate the impact of Canada--U.S. trade integration on the degree of export diversification of the Canadian regions. Trade integration is captured through the decrease of trade-weighted tariffs that were boosted by implementation of the Canadian--U.S. Free Trade Agreement. We found strong evidence to support integration's long-run impact on the patterns of absolute exports diversification. Significantly, this new finding remains robust to the exclusion of the primary sectors and to the potential presence of unit root in the data. Our results lead us to support a positive long-run relationship between trade integration and export diversification. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
The synaptic vesicle cycle: a single vesicle budding step involving clathrin and dynamin

Strong evidence implicates clathrin-coated vesicles and endosome-like vacuoles in the reformation of synaptic vesicles after exocytosis, and it is generally assumed that these vacuoles represent a traffic station downstream from clathrin-coated vesicles. To gain insight into the mechanisms of synaptic vesicle budding from endosome-like intermediates, lysed nerve terminals and nerve terminal membrane subfractions were examined by EM after incubations with GTP gamma S. Numerous clathrin-coated budding intermediates that were positive for AP2 and AP180 immunoreactivity and often collared by a dynamin ring were seen. These were present not only on the plasma membrane (Takei, K., P.S. McPherson, S.L.Schmid, and P. De Camilli. 1995. Nature (Lond.). 374:186-190), but also on internal vacuoles. The lumen of these vacuoles retained extracellular tracers and was therefore functionally segregated from the extracellular medium, although narrow connections between their membranes and the plasmalemma were sometimes visible by serial sectioning. Similar observations were made in intact cultured hippocampal neurons exposed to high K+ stimulation. Coated vesicle buds were generally in the same size range of synaptic vesicles and positive for the synaptic vesicle protein synaptotagmin. Based on these results, we suggest that endosome-like intermediates of nerve terminals originate by bulk uptake of the plasma membrane and that clathrin- and dynamin-mediated budding takes place in parallel from the plasmalemma and from these internal membranes. We propose a synaptic vesicle recycling model that involves a single vesicle budding step mediated by clathrin and dynamin.
Metabolic Syndrome Risk Profiles Among African American Adolescents

OBJECTIVE Although African American adolescents have the highest prevalence of obesity, they have the lowest prevalence of metabolic syndrome across all definitions used in previous research. To address this paradox, we sought to develop a model of the metabolic syndrome specific to African American adolescents. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2003–2010) of 822 nonpregnant, nondiabetic, African American adolescents (45% girls; aged 12 to 17 years) who underwent physical examinations and fasted at least 8 h were analyzed. We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to model metabolic syndrome and then used latent profile analysis to identify metabolic syndrome risk groups among African American adolescents. We compared the risk groups on probability of prediabetes. RESULTS The best-fitting metabolic syndrome model consisted of waist circumference, fasting insulin, HDL, and systolic blood pressure. We identified three metabolic syndrome risk groups: low, moderate, and high risk (19% boys; 16% girls). Thirty-five percent of both boys and girls in the high-risk groups had prediabetes, a significantly higher prevalence compared with boys and girls in the low-risk groups. Among adolescents with BMI higher than the 85th percentile, 48 and 36% of boys and girls, respectively, were in the high-risk group. CONCLUSIONS Our findings provide a plausible model of the metabolic syndrome specific to African American adolescents. Based on this model, approximately 19 and 16% of African American boys and girls, respectively, are at high risk for having the metabolic syndrome.
The relative effects of knowledge, interest and confidence in assessing relevance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how different aspects of an assessor's context, in particular their knowledge of a search topic, their interest in the search topic and their confidence in assessing relevance for a topic, affect the relevance judgements made and the assessor's ability to predict which documents they will assess as being relevant.Design/methodology/approach – The study was conducted as part of the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) HARD track. Using a specially constructed questionnaire information was sought on TREC assessors' personal context and, using the TREC assessments gathered, the responses were correlated to the questionnaire questions and the final relevance decisions.Findings – This study found that each of the three factors (interest, knowledge and confidence) had an affect on how many documents were assessed as relevant and the balance between how many documents were marked as marginally or highly relevant. Also these factors are shown to affect an assessors' a.
Retinal vessel segmentation using system fuzzy and DBSCAN algorithm

Retinal vessel segmentation used for the early diagnosis of retinal diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and glaucoma. There exist several methods for segmenting blood vessels from retinal images. The aim of this paper is to analyze the retinal vessel segmentation based on the clustering algorithm DBSCAN relying on a density-based notion of clusters which is designed to discover clusters of arbitrary shape. DBSCAN requires only one input parameter and a value for this parameter is suggested to the user. The performance of algorithm is compared and analyzed using a number of measures which include sensitivity and specificity. The specificity and sensitivity of this method is 5.36 and 3.82 respectively.
SWOT Analysis of Steel Re Rolling Mills ( A comparative study of international brand with a local brand )

For the development of any modern economy, steel is crucial and is considered to be the backbone of human civilisation. The domestic steel industries are facing new challenges. Some of these relate to the trade barriers in the developed markets and certain structural problems due to the high cost of commissioning new projects. Thermo Mechanically Treated (TMT) steel bars are presently used for reinforcement, which are produced in Steel Re Rolling Mills (SRRMs). Presently, in India there are more than 1200 rolling mills are there since 1929. Modernisation of such mills is going on. Since the cost of production of the steel bars is increasing day by day, it is necessary that a good quality monitoring system has to introduce to reduce the waste without affecting its cost. Hence a quality awareness with good maintenance is very much essential. The producer must have a clear awareness about their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT)
The Application of Support Vector Machine in Pattern Recognition

To nonstationary characteristics of surface electromyography (sEMG) signals, a novel sEMG pattern recognition method, which is based on wavelet packet transformation and support vector machine (SVM), is proposed. Raw four channels sEMG signals from four corresponding muscles are first analyzed with wavelet packet transformation. And then the energy of different frequency bands in the wavelet packet decomposition coefficients is extracted as the signal character to construct eigenvector. A new multi-class SVM classifier is designed with "one versus one" classification strategy and binary tree. Experiment results show that eight upper-limb movement patterns can be well identified after training by the SVM and average identification ratio is 99.375%, and that the SVM can sort out sEMG eight movement patterns more accurately than traditional BP neural network, Elman neural network and RBF neural network. And the SVM recognition result is robust. It offers a new method for sEMG pattern recognition, which can be directly applied to the other nonstationary bioelectric signals pattern recognition study.
Survey of Network Traffic Visualization Techniques

Network security in today's days becoming a complex problem. Before some year network administrators works with only text-based tools. These tools often provide no overview that would help users grasp the big-picture. Network traffic visualization tools have successfully enabled security analysts to understand the nature of traffic present in a network. However these tools rely mainly on human expertise to discover anomalies in traffic and attack patterns. The visualization capability provided by Visualization system allows an operator to assess the state of a large and complex network gives an overall view of the entire network and filter/drill-down features with a friendly user interface that allows users to request more detailed information of interest such as specific protocol traffic flows. Visualization tool allows operators to detect and investigate anomalous internal and external network traffic. Visualization tool shows network events graphically. We model the network as a graph with hosts being nodes and traffic being flows on edges. This survey gives a description of Visualization techniques such as parallel coordinate, Bundle View, 3D view etc. and tool which are useful in order to monitor, discover, and investigate security-relevant events.
A 4.7-Gb/s imaging receiver with adaptive spectrum re-balancing equalizer for wireless optical communications

Imaging Optical Receivers (IOR), in which a single photodiode (PD) is replaced by an array of small on chip PDs followed by a matrix of switches, can reduce the received ambient light noise, multi-path distortion, and allow electronic Line Of Sight (LOS) detection and tracking of the transmitted signal. However, such receivers experience a change in the total input capacitance introduced to the front-end circuitry depending on the number of activated PDs in LOS with the transmitter, mandating adaptive equalization in the receive side. In this work, a high speed imaging receiver is reported in IBM 130 nm CMOS technology. The receiver is formed of a 3×3 matrix of high speed Spatially Modulated Light detectors (SML) followed by a trans-impedance amplifier, an adaptive equalizer and a limiting amplifier. For one activated PD, the chip is capable of communicating at speeds up to 4.7-Gb/s with BER = 10-10 and sensitivity of -3.5 dBm using λ =850 nm modulated light. For 9 activated PDs, corresponding to an input capacitance of 11.5 pF, the chip is capable of communicating at speeds up to 2-Gb/s for BER = 10-12 and an optical sensitivity of -5 dBm. The power consumption of the imaging receiver is 97 mW from a single 1.5 V dc supply and the total die area is 1400 μm × 870μm.
A fast method of steel surface defect detection using decision trees applied to LBP based features

Surface defect detection plays a significant role in quality enhancement in steel manufacturing. Support Vector Machines and neural networks are the most popular classifiers in this application. Decision trees are also known as other classifiers for steel defect detection yielding a fast but moderate performance. In this paper, we introduce a more accurate classification method by using decision trees and applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Bootstrap Aggregating (Bagging) on features being extracted by a local binary pattern based operator. This methodology yields an enhanced accuracy and reinstates decision trees as fast and accurate classifiers for two-class classification of steel surface defects. In order to have a complete classification in a real-time automatic surface inspection, a multiclass Support Vector Machine should be cascaded to the decision tree classifier. The proposed classification system is considerably faster than the traditional schemes.
The Employment Consequences of Wrongful-Discharge Laws: Large, Small, or None at All?

Uniquely in the industrialized world, the United States has long had the presumption that employers may legally fire workers “at will,” that is, “for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all. ” During the 1970’s and 1980’s, this presumption eroded rapidly: most U.S. state courts created three classes of common-law restrictions that limited employers’ ability to fire. These exceptions garnered media headlines, created costly litigation, and perhaps as importantly, generated substantial uncertainty among employers about when they could terminate workers with impunity. We refer to these common-law exceptions as wrongful-discharge laws. Briefly summarized: the “public policy” exception prevents employee discharges that would thwart an important public policy, for example, performing jury duty, filing a worker’s compensation claim, reporting an employer’s wrongdoing, or refusing to commit perjury. The “good faith” exception prohibits employers from firing workers to deprive them of earned benefits, such as sales commissions or pension bonuses. The “implied contract” exception makes informal employer assurances of ongoing employment, such as those found in personnel manuals or promotion letters, legally enforceable. Under the implied-contract exception, an employer implicitly offering ongoing employment can only terminate a worker for good cause. Understanding the economic consequences of these doctrines is essential to an evaluation of the costs of using litigation to protect “employment rights. ” Fortunately for empirical analysis, states vary greatly in the timing and extent of adoption of wrongful-discharge laws. Most state courts have adopted at least one wrongfuldischarge law in the last three decades. Three states (Florida, Georgia, and Rhode Island) have never adopted an exception, while 10 states recognize all three exceptions. One may potentially use this cross-state, over-time variation to analyze how wrongful-discharge laws affected employment and earnings in state labor markets. We are not the first authors to recognize this opportunity. In an influential paper, James N. Dertouzos and Lynn A. Karoly (1992; DK hereafter) estimated that the adoption of wrongfuldischarge laws was economically equivalent to a 10-percent employer-side tax on wages, leading to a 3-percent reduction in aggregate employment, in states that allow workers to sue for punitive (“tort”) damages for wrongful discharge, as is typically true under the good-faith and public-policy exceptions. Moreover, DK found that states that adopted a doctrine under which plaintiffs may sue only for economic (“contract”) losses (typically the implied-contract † Discussants: Henry Farber, Princeton University; Joshua Angrist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Richard Thaler, University of Chicago.
From standard to non-standard employment: Labour force change in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

A critical labour market issue in all developed economies is the growth of non‐standard forms of labour such as temporary, part‐time, casual work, fixed term contracts, sub‐contracting, homeworking, agency labour and so on. This paper provides survey evidence of employers’ past, present and intended usage of non‐standard forms of labour in three countries: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Our results indicate that non‐standard forms of employment do represent an important feature of the contemporary workplace, to varying degrees, in these three countries. However, our findings also show that standard, full‐time, permanent employment still remains the dominant form of employment in all three countries.