Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Poly-β-hydroxybutyrate Metabolism Is Unrelated to the Sporulation and Parasporal Crystal Protein Formation in Bacillus thuringiensis

Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) is a natural polymer synthesized by many bacteria as a carbon-energy storage material. It was accumulated maximally prior to the spore formation but was degraded during the process of sporulation in Bacillus thuringiensis. Intriguingly, B. thuringiensis also accumulates large amounts of insecticidal crystal proteins (ICPs) during sporulation, which requires considerable input of carbon and energy sources. How PHB accumulation affects sporulation and ICP formation remains unclear to date. Intuitively, one would imagine that accumulated PHB provides the energy required for ICP formation. Yet our current data indicate that this is not the case. First, growth curves of the deletion mutants of phaC (encoding the PHB synthase) and phaZ (encoding the PHB depolymerase) were found to be similar to the parent strain BMB171; no difference in growth rate could be observed. In addition we further constructed the cry1Ac10 ICP gene overexpression strains of BMB171 (BMB171-cry), as well as its phaC and phaZ deletion mutants ΔphaC-cry and ΔphaZ-cry to compare their spore and ICP production rates. Again, not much change of ICP production was observed among these strains either. In fact, PHB was still degraded in most ΔphaZ-cry cells as observed by transmission electron microscopy. Together these results indicated that there is no direct association between the PHB accumulation and the sporulation and ICP formation in B. thuringiensis. Some other enzymes for PHB degradation or other energy source may be responsible for the sporulation and/or ICP formation in B. thuringiensis.
The Spatial Mobility of the ‘Creative Class’: A European Perspective

This article tests Richard Florida's hypothesis about the spatial mobility of the ‘creative class' and the role of soft factors in the decisions of creative workers concerning their places of residence. Empirical data from 11 European cities suggest that the European ‘creative class' is not as mobile as Florida says. Cultural and institutional constraints contribute to lower mobility rates in Europe. In this article the role of ‘personal trajectories', completely disregarded until now, is highlighted. On the basis of empirical research data, the role of soft location factors in the decisions of creative workers does not seem to be as relevant as has been implied by Florida and others. These factors play only a marginal role in attracting members of the creative class to a city. On the other hand, they play an important role in retaining them once they have relocated. This provides some support for policies aimed at bringing about a characteristical environment of creative cities.
The Role of Personal Learning Orientations and Goals in Students’ Application of Information Skills in Malaysia

Information skills assist students to develop and apply new understanding in their field of study, and thus hold a key to knowledge building process in higher learning. A qualitative study was conducted to explore the role of personal factors in the application of information skills among university students in Malaysia. The study was conducted in a Malaysian public university and the participants were 31 lecturers, librarians and students who were involved in student information skills programs run by the university library. The study observed the programs and examined the programs’ learning and teaching materials and interviewed the lecturers, librarians and students. The study found that personal learning orientations and goals influenced students’ application of information skills across their university leaning. The study suggested that in order to assist students to use information skills throughout their university learning, universities must help students to align their personal learning orientations toward university learning, as well as to help student to develop long term personal learning goals.
The Effect of HHIM Program on Health Related Physical Fitness and Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor in Elementary Students

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of 12 week-HHIM program on health related physical fitness (HRPF) and brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in elementary students. To achieve this purpose, 20 girls were selected and assigned 10 girls for exercise group (EG) and control group (CG) respectively. The HHIM program was done three times a week, 50 minutes per one try for 12 weeks. The data analysis was conducted by using ttest which examine differences within and between groups. With regard to the changes on HRPF and BDNF, EG revealed statistically significant changes on all variables. Cardiopulmonary endurance, % body fat and BDNF in the blood were revealed statistically significant differences between two groups after experiment. In conclusion, HHIM program can be a positive and effective program that contribute for improvement on the HRPF and BDNF in elementary school girls.
The experience of motherhood and the development of depression in the postnatal period

Summary • This paper reports on an investigation of women's experience of motherhood as a possible factor in the development of postpartum depression. • Several aspects of the experience of motherhood were found to be associated with depression in a sample of 60 first-time mothers. These included: — the social impact of motherhood, — the extent to which expectations of motherhood were met, — the adequacy of support received from partners or from the mothers' wider social networks. • It is argued that these findings, while tentative, are consistent with a social model of depression. • Implications for health professionals and other care providers are discussed.
Systems technologies for silicon auditory models

Presents a low-power analog integrated circuit which implements a biologically inspired algorithm for the spectral analysis of sound. The chip features an efficient interface to digital systems; preserving analog processing's low-power, high-density advantages requires careful attention to interface issues. To send the spectral representation off chip, it generates a sparse coding of the output spectrum, and communicates the code as an asynchronous stream of events. We store parameters for the spectral analysis algorithm as charge on floating nodes, and support the modification of these parameters via Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, under the control of a digital interface. A prototype system uses this chip as a preprocessor. <<ETX>>
Estimating the Time to Reach a Target Frequency in Singing

The ability to match pitches quickly and accurately is essential for proficient singing. We describe a new technique for estimating the time to reach a target frequency that uses adaptive optimal‐kernel (AOK) time‐frequency representations, designed to optimize the time‐frequency tradeoff at each time point. We show in two experiments that this measure is more sensitive to tonal priming effects than an onset latency measurement. This analysis is applied to the vocal productions of untrained singers to reveal effects of tonality and pitch height.
UrbanFACET: Visually Profiling Cities from Mobile Device Recorded Movement Data of Millions of City Residents

Cities are living systems where urban infrastructures and their functions are defined and evolved due to population behaviors. Profiling the cities and functional regions has been an important topic in urban design and planning. This paper studies a unique big data set which includes daily movement data of tens of millions of city residents, and develop a visual analytics system, namely UrbanFACET, to discover and visualize the dynamical profiles of multiple cities and their residents. This big user movement data set, acquired from mobile users' agnostic check-ins at thousands of phone APPs, is well utilized in an integrative study and visualization together with urban structure (e.g., road network) and POI (Point of Interest) distributions. In particular, we novelly develop a set of information-theory based metrics to characterize the mobility patterns of city areas and groups of residents. These multifaceted metrics including Fluidity, vibrAncy, Commutation, divErsity, and densiTy (FACET) which categorize and manifest hidden urban functions and behaviors. UrbanFACET system further allows users to visually analyze and compare the metrics over different areas and cities in metropolitan scales. The system is evaluated through both case studies on several big and heavily populated cities, and user studies involving real-world users.
Subcellular Localizations of RIG-I, TRIM25, and MAVS Complexes

ABSTRACT The retinoic acid-inducible gene 1 (RIG-I) signaling pathway is essential for the recognition of viruses and the initiation of host interferon (IFN)-mediated antiviral responses. Once activated, RIG-I interacts with polyubiquitin chains generated by TRIM25 and binds mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein (MAVS), leading to the production of type I IFN. We now show specific interactions among these key partners in the RLR pathway through the use of bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) and super-resolution microscopy. Dimers of RIG-I, TRIM25, and MAVS localize into different compartments. Upon activation, we show that TRIM25 is redistributed into cytoplasmic dots associated with stress granules, while RIG-I associates with TRIM25/stress granules and with mitochondrial MAVS. In addition, MAVS competes with TRIM25 for RIG-I binding, and this suggests that upon TRIM25-mediated activation of RIG-I, RIG-I moves away from TRIM25 to interact with MAVS at the mitochondria. For the first time, the distribution of these three proteins was analyzed at the same time in virus-infected cells. We also investigated how specific viral proteins modify some of the protein complexes in the pathway. The protease NS3/4A from hepatitis C virus redistributes the complexes RIG-I/MAVS and MAVS/MAVS but not RIG-I/TRIM25. In contrast, the influenza A virus NS1 protein interacts with RIG-I and TRIM25 in specific areas in the cell cytoplasm and inhibits the formation of TRIM25 homocomplexes but not the formation of RIG-I/TRIM25 heterocomplexes, preventing the formation of RIG-I/MAVS complexes. Thus, we have localized spatially in the cell different complexes formed between RIG-I, TRIM25, and MAVS, in the presence or absence of two viral IFN antagonistic proteins. IMPORTANCE The first line of defense against viral infections is the innate immune response. Viruses are recognized by pathogen recognition receptors, such as the RIG-I like receptor family, that activate a signaling cascade that induces IFN production. In the present study, we visualized, for the first time in cells, both in overexpression and endogenous levels, complexes formed among key proteins involved in this innate immune signaling pathway. Through different techniques we were able to analyze how these proteins are distributed and reorganized spatially within the cell in order to transmit the signal, leading to an efficient antiviral state. In addition, this work presents a new means by how, when, and where viral proteins can target these pathways and act against the host immune system in order to counteract the activation of the immune response.
Evaluating the performance of software distributed shared memory as a target for parallelizing compilers

In this paper we evaluate the use of software distributed shared memory (DSM) on a message passing machine as the target for a parallelizing compiler. We compare this approach to compiler-generated message passing, hand-coded software DSM and hand-coded message passing. For this comparison, we use six applications: four that are regular and two that are irregular: Our results are gathered on an 8-node IBM SP/2 using the TreadMarks software DSM system. We use the APR shared-memory (SPF) compiler to generate the shared memory-programs and the APR XHPF compiler to generate message passing programs. The hand-coded message passing programs run with the IBM PVMe optimized message passing library. On the regular programs, both the compiler-generated and the hand-coded message passing outperform the SPF/TreadMarks combination: the compiler-generated message passing by 5.5% to 40%, and the hand-coded message passing by 7.5% to 49%. On the irregular programs, the SPF/TreadMarks combination outperforms the compiler-generated message passing by 38% and 89%, and only slightly underperforms the hand-coded message passing, differing by 4.4% and 16%. We also identify the factors that account for the performance differences, estimate their relative importance, and describe methods to improve the performance.
Secondary Star Formation in a Population III Object

We explore the possibility of subsequent star formation after a first star forms in a Population III object, by focusing on the radiation-hydrodynamic (RHD) feedback caused by ionizing photons, as well as H2-dissociating photons. For this purpose, we perform three-dimensional RHD simulations in which the radiative transfer of ionizing photons and H2-dissociating photons from a first star is self-consistently coupled with hydrodynamics based on a smoothed particle hydrodynamics method. It is shown that density peaks above a threshold density can keep collapsing, owing to the shielding of H2-dissociating radiation by an H2 shell formed ahead of a D-type ionization front. But, below the threshold density an M-type ionization front with a shock propagates, and density peaks are radiation-hydrodynamically evaporated by the shock. The threshold density depends on the distance from the source star and is ≈102 cm-3 for a source distance of 30 pc. Taking into consideration that the extent of a Population III object is ≈100 pc and the density peaks within it have densities of 102-104 cm-3, it is concluded that secondary star formation is possible in the broad regions of a Population III object.
A Multi-Agent Potential Field-based Bot for a Full RTS Game Scenario

Computer games in general, and real time strategy games in particular is a challenging task for both AI research and game AI programmers. The player, or AI bot, must use its work- ers to gather resources. They must be spent wisely on struc- tures such as barracks or factories, mobile units such as sol- diers, workers and tanks. The constructed units can be used to explore the game world, hunt down the enemy forces and destroy the opponent buildings. We propose a multi-agent architecture based on artiﬁcial potential ﬁelds for a full real time strategy scenario. We validate the solution by participat- ing in a yearly open real time strategy game tournament and show that the bot, even though not using any form of path planning for navigation, is able to perform well and win the tournament.
Design and Implementation of Equiripple FIR Lowpass Filter on FPGA: A Case Study

This paper demonstrates the design and implementation of Equiripple linear-phase FIR lowpass filter. The filter is modeled using Simulink in Xilinx System Generator. The filter Coefficients are generated with the help of FDA tools, and the System Generator tool is used for RTL code generation. Further the model is used as a filter block to interface with ADC-DAC block in VHDL. The design has been prototyped on Spartan-3 DSP prototype board XC3S500fg320 using Integrated Synthesis Environment (ISE) 13.1 tools all in one design suit from Xilinx. Finally the filters are tested by using an audio signal as input and the output is observed in CRO & speaker both.
Explaining the Great American Crime Decline: A Review of Blumstein and Wallman, Goldberger and Rosenfeld, and Zimring

This essay reviews three books as they document and explain the 1990s crime decline: Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman, eds., (2006) The Crime Drop in America; Arthur S. Goldberger and Richard Rosenfeld, eds., (2008) Understanding Crime Patterns: Workshop Report; and Franklin E. Zimring (2007), The Great American Crime Decline. It presents the empirical detail of the crime decline and examines the most commonly cited explanatory factors: imprisonment, policing, demography, and economic growth. It then suggests alternative lines of research in urban sociology—urban development, youth culture, and immigration—that may better explain the decline as the result of changes in the cultural and social fabric of American society, particularly in cities where the steepest declines occurred.
The incremental prognostic value of pharmacological stress echo over exercise electrocardiography in women with chest pain of unknown origin.

AIMS The value of exercise electrocardiography in evaluating women with suspected coronary artery disease is limited. Conversely, stress echocardiography is effective for both diagnostic and prognostic purposes in females. The purpose of the study was to determine the relative prognostic value of exercise electrocardiography and pharmacological stress echocardiography in a cohort of women with chest pain of unknown origin, in order to verify whether criteria could be established for the daily non-invasive evaluation of such a low-risk profile population. METHODS AND RESULTS Exercise electrocardiography and pharmacological stress echocardiography (171 dipyridamole, 73 dobutamine) were performed in 244 women (age 60+/-10 years) with chest pain and known coronary artery disease. A positive result of exercise electrocardiography (ST-segment shift > or =1 mm at 80 ms after the J point) was detected in 95 patients; a positive result of stress echocardiography (new regional wall motion abnormalities) was observed in 33 patients. During follow-up (36+/-18 months), two deaths, five infarctions, seven unstable anginas, and 11 coronary revascularizations occurred. Using Cox analysis, the positive result of stress echocardiography (odds ratio=40.1) alone, was independently related to hard cardiac events (death, infarction). With spontaneous cardiac events (death, infarction, and unstable angina) as end-points, the multivariate prognostic predictors were a positive result of stress echocardiography (odds ratio=37.0), a family history of coronary artery disease (odds ratio=4.1), typical chest pain (odds ratio=3.7), and a positive exercise electrocardiography result with a rate-pressure product < or =20 000 (odds ratio=3.5). By adopting an interactive stepwise procedure, the prognostic value of stress echocardiography was incremental to that of clinical and exercise electrocardiography data. Nevertheless, the negative result of exercise electrocardiography and pharmacological stress predicted a very high and comparable (P=ns) 24-month survival rate when both hard and spontaneous cardiac events were taken as end-points. CONCLUSIONS In women with chest pain, stress echocardiography is a strong and independent prognostic indicator, incremental to that shown by exercise electrocardiography. However, the two tests have a similar high negative predictive value in this population. Therefore, exercise electrocardiography has to be considered the initial approach and the only test when the result is negative, whereas stress echocardiography is warranted in selected conditions, including those in women with uninterpretable electrocardiograms, those unable to exercise maximally, and those with an ambiguous or ischaemic response to exercise electrocardiography.
Protein oligomerization modulates raft partitioning and apical sorting of GPI-anchored proteins

An essential but insufficient step for apical sorting of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins (GPI-APs) in epithelial cells is their association with detergent-resistant microdomains (DRMs) or rafts. In this paper, we show that in MDCK cells both apical and basolateral GPI-APs associate with DRMs during their biosynthesis. However, only apical and not basolateral GPI-APs are able to oligomerize into high molecular weight complexes. Protein oligomerization begins in the medial Golgi, concomitantly with DRM association, and is dependent on protein–protein interactions. Impairment of oligomerization leads to protein missorting. We propose that oligomerization stabilizes GPI-APs into rafts and that this additional step is required for apical sorting of GPI-APs. Two alternative apical sorting models are presented.
Text-Mining, Structured Queries, and Knowledge Management on Web Document Corpora

Wikipedia's InfoBoxes play a crucial role in advanced applications and provide the main knowledge source for DBpedia and the powerful structured queries it supports. However, InfoBoxes, which were created by crowdsourcing for human rather than computer consumption, suffer from incompleteness, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies. To overcome these problems, we have developed (i) the IBminer system that extracts InfoBox information by text-mining Wikipedia pages, (ii) the IKBStore system that integrates the information derived by IBminer with that of DBpedia, YAGO2,WikiData,WordNet, and other sources, and (iii) SWiPE and InfoBox Editor (IBE) that provide a user-friendly interfaces for querying and revising the knowledge base. Thus, IBminer uses a deep NLP-based approach to extract from text a semantic representation structure called TextGraph from which the system detects patterns and derives subject-attribute-value relations, as well as domain-specific synonyms for the knowledge base. IKBStore and IBE complement the powerful, user-friendly, by-example structured queries of SWiPE by supporting the validation and provenance history for the information contained in the knowledge base, along with the ability of upgrading its knowledge when this is found incomplete, incorrect, or outdated.
Emotional-instabile Persönlichkeitsstörung vom Borderline-Typ: Update wissenschaftlicher Perspektiven

Zusammenfassung Die Borderline-Persönlichkeitsstörung (BPS) tritt mehr und mehr in den Fokus aktueller wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse aus Genetik, Bildgebung und Neuroendokrinologie haben zu einem umfassenderen Verständnis der sehr komplexen Störung beigetragen. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, einen Gesamtüberblick über die Ergebnisse der letzten Jahre zur Ätiologie der Störung aufzuzeigen und diese miteinander zu integrieren. Insbesondere die Verknüpfung von psychodynamisch begründeten Ansätzen wie Objektbeziehungstheorie und Bindungstheorie mit den aktuellen neurobiologischen Befunden stellt einen bedeutenden Ansatzpunkt dieses Artikels dar.
A multidimensional flocking algorithm for clustering spatial data

In this paper, we describe the efficient implementation of M-Sparrow, an adaptive flocking algorithm based on the biology-inspired paradigm of a flock of birds. We extended the classical flock model of Reynolds with two new characteristics: the movement in a multi-dimensional space and different kinds of birds. The birds, in this context, are used to discovery point having some desired characteristics in a multidimensional space. A critical point of the algorithm is the efficient search of the k-neighbors in a multidimensional space. This search was efficiently implemented using the ANN libraries.