Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence of the presence of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV in human sperm and its involvement in motility regulation

The mechanisms involved in the regulation of mammalian sperm motility are not well understood. Calcium ions (Ca2+) have been suggested to play a key role in the maintenance of motility; nevertheless, how Ca2+ modulates this process has not yet been completely characterized. Ca2+ can bind to calmodulin and this complex regulates the activity of multiple enzymes, including Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinases (CaM kinases). Results from this study confirmed that the presence of Ca2+ in the incubation medium is essential for maintaining human sperm motility. The involvement of CaM kinases in Ca2+ regulation of human sperm motility was evaluated using specific inhibitors (KN62 and KN93) or their inactive analogues (KN04 and KN92 respectively). Sperm incubation in the presence of KN62 or KN93 led to a progressive decrease in the percentage of motile cells; in particular, incubation with KN62 also reduced sperm motility parameters. These inhibitors did not alter sperm viability, protein tyrosine phosphorylation or the follicular fluid-induced acrosome reaction; however, KN62 decreased the total amount of ATP in human sperm. Immunological studies showed that Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV (CaMKIV) is present and localizes to the human sperm flagellum. Moreover, CaMKIV activity increases during capacitation and is inhibited in the presence of KN62. This report is the first to demonstrate the presence of CaMKIV in mammalian sperm and suggests the involvement of this kinase in the regulation of human sperm motility.
Generalized Roaming and Access Selection in Multi-Operator Environments

In a multi-operator environment where several operators offer high-speed local wireless access, geographical sharing is an attractive way to increase the coverage and resource effificiency so that 'interesting' services can be offered. This paper investigates two different access selection strategies for three typical environments (hotspot, urban, and suburban) to establish when, and to what extent, the performance can be improved. In the first strategy users simply connect to the strongest access point (AP) whereas the users within the second strategy connect to the AP maximizing the instantaneous aggregated capacity according a greedy algorithm. Both strategies are compared to a reference case where users connect to the strongest AP belonging to their home operator. We investigated a two-operator scenario with APs using CSMA/CA and the results indicate that a significant improvement, both in terms of coverage and resource efficiency, can be achieved if users simply connect to the strongest AP. Moreover the results show that further improvement is possible, especially in urban and hotspot environments, with more complex strategies.
Noise Induced Anticoherence Resonance in a Delayed Circadian Rhythm System

The counterintuitive noise effect in nonlinear systems plays an important role in determining the system dynamics. Circadian rhythm is an important biological signal that regulates many behavior, physiology or cellular processes. This work find light noise can apparently influence the rhythm regularity and induce anticoherence resonance phenomenon. There is always a worst noise intensity that the rhythm regularity is the most dramatically destroyed, however, even stronger noise can counterintuitively minimize this destructive effect. It is of significance to reveal the constructive role of noise in complex living systems.
Learning effect on survey data: high leverage and estimation bias

Method of survey data collection, especially at household or personal interview, responders frequently answers extreme, because of their pre-assumption on questionnaire to get financial or food aid. This reduces data consistency and advances leverage that affects estimation procedure and estimated predictors. This study analysis the impact of learning effect on research hypothesis using mailed interview of different cluster of researcher such as expertise, mid-level research assistants and enumerators of primary (household or personal) data survey.
Human HER‐2/neu protein immunization circumvents tolerance to rat neu: a vaccine strategy for ‘self’ tumour antigens

Many newly defined tumour antigens are ‘self’ proteins. Immunizing cancer patients against these antigens may be difficult due to tolerance. The HER‐2/neu oncogenic protein is such a ‘self’ tumour antigen. Rat neu is homologous with human HER‐2/neu and provides a model system for studying vaccination strategies. Rats are tolerant to rat neu. Vaccination with this ‘self’ protein elicits no detectable immune response. The current studies evaluated whether tolerance to rat neu can be circumvented by immunizing with the highly homologous foreign human HER‐2/neu protein. Rats were immunized with human HER‐2/neu intracellular domain (hICD) protein that is 92% homologous to rat neu ICD. Animals immunized with hICD developed significant antibody and T‐cell responses that were specific for both human HER‐2/neu and rat neu. Neu‐specific antibodies were present in titres of greater than 1:200 000. Analysis of the specificity of the antibody response using synthetic peptides demonstrated substantial reactivity to an epitope with 100% homology between rat and human protein. Significant T‐cell responses (stimulation index>10) to hICD and rat neu protein (stimulation index>4) were detected. The T cells also responded to both human and rat ICD. The results imply that immunization with foreign proteins, which are highly homologous to ‘self’ tumour antigens, may be an effective vaccine strategy for ‘self’ tumour antigens.
Softening the Complexity of Entropic Motion on Curved Statistical Manifolds

We study the information geometry and the entropic dynamics of a three-dimensional Gaussian statistical model. We then compare our analysis to that of a two-dimensional Gaussian statistical model obtained from the higher-dimensional model via introduction of an additional information constraint that resembles the quantum mechanical canonical minimum uncertainty relation. We show that the chaoticity (temporal complexity) of the two-dimensional Gaussian statistical model, quantified by means of the information geometric entropy (IGE) and the Jacobi vector field intensity, is softened with respect to the chaoticity of the three-dimensional Gaussian statistical model.
Internet traffic data categorization using particle of swarm optimization algorithm

The clustering technique plays an important role in data mining process. For the mining of internet traffic data faced a lot of problem of noise and internet traffic number of iteration. The process of pattern generation used two type of technique such as supervised learning and unsupervised learning. In unsupervised learning clustering process are used. The varieties of clustering technique are used such as k-means, FCM and constraints clustering technique. The constraints clustering technique gives the two solution approach one is seed selection and another is mapping of seed in terms of constraint of center. In this paper modified the seed selection process using genetic algorithm technique. The genetic algorithm process select variable value one is seed value and another is constraint of center value. In constraints cluster technique used some value of center and generates new center value of new cluster for the better generation of cluster. For more improvement of constraints clustering technique used two level constraints clustering technique for better improvement of cluster technique. In this dissertation modified the constraints clustering technique for improvement. In the process of improvement used genetic algorithm technique. Genetic algorithm technique gives the better selection of seed for internet traffic database. For the performance evaluation of proposed algorithm used three real time dataset from UCI machine learning center. The proposed algorithm implemented in MATLAB software and measures some standard parameter for the validation of proposed methodology.
Job Security, Work Incentives and Unemployment

This paper analyzes how firms can use job security as an incentive mechanism. The author examines how "macroeconomic job security" (measured by the reemployment probability) may affect productivity differently from "microeconomic job security" (measured by the probability of being retained). The authors describe the circumstances under which job security stimulates work effort. Then incumbent workers ("insiders") may have an opportunity to raise their wages above the market-clearing level without being replaced by unemployed workers ("outsiders"). In this context, involuntary unemployment can arise. Copyright 1988 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
Some Properties of Generalized Tensor Bezoutian with Respect to a General Polynomial Basis

In this note, the authors carry over the tensor Bezoutian for polynomial matrices to the case of a general olynomial basis. Some of important properties, such as the Barnett-type factorization, the expressions in terms of controllability- and observability-type matrices, and some intertwining relations with companion matrices and resultant matrices, are characterized.
Oncostatin M and TLR-4 Ligand Synergize to Induce MCP-1, IL-6, and VEGF in Human Aortic Adventitial Fibroblasts and Smooth Muscle Cells

Accumulating evidence suggests that adventitial fibroblasts play a significant role in contributing to inflammation of the arterial wall and pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. The effects of gp130 cytokines on these cells (including oncostatin M-[OSM] and IL-6), some of which have been implicated in atherosclerosis, are currently unknown. Experiments were performed to determine whether gp130 cytokines regulate human aortic adventitial fibroblasts (HAoAFs) or smooth muscle cells (HAoSMCs) alone or in context of TLR-4 ligands (also implicated in atherosclerosis). HAoAFs and HAoSMCs were stimulated with LPS and/or one of OSM, IL-6, IL-11, IL-31, or LIF. ELISAs performed on cell supernatants showed that stimulation with OSM alone caused increased MCP-1, IL-6, and VEGF levels. When combined, LPS and OSM synergized to increase MCP-1, IL-6, VEGF protein, and mRNA expression as assessed by qRT-PCR, in both HAoAFs and HAoSMCs, while LPS-induced IL-8 levels were reduced. Such effects were not observed with other gp130 cytokines. Signalling pathways including STATs, MAPKinases, and NFκB were activated, and LPS induced steady state mRNA levels of the OSM receptor chains OSMRβ and gp130. The results suggest that OSM is able to synergize with TLR-4 ligands to induce proinflammatory responses by HAoAFs and HAoSMCs, supporting the notion that OSM regulation of these cells contributes to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis.
Multi-scale Method for Adaptive Mesh Editing Based on Rigidity Estimation

We present a multi-scale approach for direct manipulation of mesh models based on pre-estimated rigidity. Our method enhances space deformation by constructing a novel deformable structure with several layers of deformation graphs which have different densities of control nodes. An appropriate deformation graph is dynamically chosen according to the handle configuration. Such handle-aware strategy, together with special treatment for graph nodes, brings great improvement on both editing effect and performance. We demonstrate how to obtain a reduced deformable model by generating lattice structure and how to estimate the rigidity of mesh surface. Based on the rigidity analysis, we adjust the granularity of the computation which helps to speed the solving process. The experimental results show that our method preserves detailed features well and provides fast design of pleasing poses as the complexity of computing is confined within a limited range.
Western Equine Encephalomyelitis Virus Infection Affects the Life Table Characteristics of Culex tarsalis (Diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract The life table attributes of Culex tarsalis Coquillett females infected experimentally by feeding on 4 and 6 log10 plaque-forming units (PFU) of western equine encephalomyelitis virus (WEEV) per milliliter of heparinized chicken blood were compared with an uninfected control group. Females continually were offered 10% sucrose and an oviposition substrate and daily a blood meal through a biomembrane feeder. Mortality (dead females) and fecundity (female eggs per female) were monitored daily until all females died. Overall, 94% of 198 females in the two virus-infected groups were positive for WEEV at death when tested by plaque assay; the average body virus titer at death did not differ between groups. WEEV infection significantly altered the life table characteristics of Cx. tarsalis. Life expectancy at infection in days (ex), reproductive effort in female eggs per female per generation (Ro), and generation time (T) in days for the infected cohorts were significantly lower than for the uninfected controls, whereas the reproductive rate (rc) in female eggs per female per day was higher for infected than uninfected cohorts. In agreement with the WEEV infection data that showed similar body titers, there were few differences between the life table parameters for the 4 and 6 log10 PFU treatment groups. Greatest differences were observed for survivorship between days 17–40 when virus titers in infected dying females were greatest. Our data extend recent studies that indicate mosquito infection with encephalitis viruses has a cost of reduced life expectancy and fitness.
Linearised differential transconductors in subthreshold CMOS

Three schemes for linearising the transconductance of the basic differential pair in subthreshold CMOS are examined: (i) multiple asymmetric differential pairs, (ii) source degeneration via symmetric diffusers, and (iii) source degeneration via a single diffuser. Using a maximally flat optimising criterion, the linear range of the basic differential pair can be increased by 4-8 times. < >
Extending the GTAP Database and Model to Cover Domestic Support Issues using the EU as example 1

The EU Single Farm Payment (SFP) is currently distributed in proportion to primary factor shares in version 8 of the GTAP database. In this paper, we investigate whether this way of modeling the EU SFP makes a difference in analyzing agricultural policy reforms. To do so, we create alternative versions of the GTAP database to compare the effects with the default setting in GTAP. Employing OECD data, along with the GTAP framework, we vary the assumptions about the allocation of the SFP. In the process, we demonstrate how to alter and update the GTAP database to implement domestic support of OECD PSE tables. We provide a detailed overview supplemented with assumptions of payment allocation, shock calculations and in particular, the Altertax procedure to update value flows and price equations extended in the GTAP model. Subsequently, we illustrate the impact of those assumptions by simulating a 100% removal of the SFP using the deviating versions of GTAP database. This sensitivity analysis reveals strong differences in results, but particularly in production responses of food and agricultural sectors that decrease with an increasing degree of decoupling. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the effect on welfare and the trade balance decrease with an increasing degree of decoupling. This experiment shows that the allocation of the SFP can have strong impact on simulation results.
EXTRACTION OF LEADER-PAGES IN WWW An Improved Approach based on Artificial Link Based Similarity and Higher-Order Link Based Cyclic Relationships

WWW is the most popular and interactive medium to disseminate information. It creates many new challenges. Several initiatives have been taken to extract different kinds of knowledge from web. In our paper Leader-page Resources in the World Wide Web we defined a new method to rank the web pages entirely using the hyperlink information. The notion of Leader-Page is extended from the concept of leader from the leadership theory and the social networks. In a community, a leader is a person who interacts the most with other members of the community and whose characteristics are most similar to the characteristics of other members of the community. We have extended these properties of leader to identify leader-pages in WWW. In this paper we propose an improved approach to measure the "leadership score" of a web page based on artificial link based similarity and higher-order link based cyclic relationships it establishes with other web pages of the cyber community.
Wavelet-Based Texture Retrieval Modeling the Magnitudes of Wavelet Detail Coefficients with a Generalized Gamma Distribution

This paper presents a texture descriptor based on the fine detail coefficients at three resolution levels of a traslation invariant undecimated wavelet transform. First, we consider vertical and horizontal wavelet detail coefficients at the same position as the components of a bivariate random vector, and the magnitude and angle of these vectors are computed. The magnitudes are modeled by a Generalized Gamma distribution. Their parameters, together with the circular histograms of angles, are used to characterize each texture image of the database. The Kullback-Leibler divergence is used as the similarity measurement. Retrieval experiments, in which we compare two wavelet transforms, are carried out on the Brodatz texture collection. Results reveal the good performance of this wavelet-based texture descriptor obtained via the Generalized Gamma distribution.
Robust Virtual Machine Consolidation for Efficient Energy and Performance in Virtualized Data Centers

Cloud providers use virtualization technologies to provide an isolated execution environment and agile resource provisioning. However, virtualized data centers consume huge amounts of energy, which increases the operational costs. To optimize resource usage and reduce energy consumption of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud, it needs a continuous monitoring and consolidation of VMs using live migration and switching idle hosts to the sleep state. In this paper, we propose a robust consolidation approach to achieve equilibrium between energy and performance. The proposed approach consists of three algorithms: over-utilized host detection, VM selection, and VM placement. Additionally, we implement an adaptive historical window selection algorithm for reducing ineffective VM migration. To validate our approach, we implemented it using Cloud Sim simulator and conducted simulations for different days of a real workload trace of Planet Lab. The results show that our approach reduced the number of power change, the number of migrations, and average SLA violations by 38%, 74.8%, and 31.8%, respectively. Furthermore, it can decrease the energy consumption of network that results from VM migration.
Time Domain Adaptive Beamformer for Sonar Signal Processing

Passive sonars try to detect, locate and classify underwater acoustic sources by listening to sound waves impinging on sensor arrays and estimating the direction of arrival by beam forming methods. Strong noise sources from own platform and other interfering sources make detection and classification a difficult job to achieve in practical scenarios. Adaptive beam formers aim to minimize the interference from other sources while looking in a desired direction. Often it is necessary to have a wideband frequency response along the look direction to allow estimation of signal parameters in that beam. Wideband time domain beam formers combine desired frequency response along the look direction with interference power minimization thus offering much better estimation of the target spectral parameters along that direction. In this paper, the Frost's beam former was adapted for sonar processing with emphasis on using the beam former output for spectral processing and audio processing and the performance was evaluated under various input scenarios.
A Customizable k-Anonymity Model for Protecting Location Privacy

Continued advances in mobile networks and positioning technologies have created a strong market push for location-based services (LBSs). Examples include location-aware emergency services, location based service advertisement, and location sensitive billing. One of the big challenges in wide deployment of LBS systems is the privacy-preserving management of location-based data. Without safeguards, extensive deployment of location based services endangers location privacy of mobile users and exhibits significant vulnerabilities for abuse. In this paper, we describe a customizable kanonymity model for protecting privacy of location data. Our model has two unique features. First, we provide a customizable framework to support kanonymity with variable k, allowing a wide range of users to benefit from the location privacy protection with personalized privacy requirements. Second, we design and develop a novel spatio-temporal cloaking algorithm, called CliqueCloak, which provides location k-anonymity for mobile users of a LBS provider. The cloaking algorithm is run by the location protection broker on a trusted server, which anonymizes messages from the mobile nodes by cloaking the location information contained in the messages to reduce or avoid privacy threats before forwarding them to the LBS provider(s). Our model enables each message sent from a mobile node to specify the desired level of anonymity as well as the maximum temporal and spatial tolerances for maintaining the required anonymity. We study the effectiveness of the cloaking algorithm under various conditions using realistic location data synthetically generated using real road maps and traffic volume data. Our experiments show that the location k-anonymity model with multi-dimensional cloaking and tunable k parameter can achieve high guarantee of k anonymity and high resilience to location privacy threats without significant performance penalty.
Environmental objective analysis, ranking and clustering of Hungarian cities

The aim of the study was to rank and classify Hungarian cities and counties according to their environmental quality and level of environmental awareness. Ranking of the Hungarian cities and counties are represented on their „Green Cities Index” and „Green Counties Index” values. According to the methodology shown in Part 1, cities and counties were grouped on different classification techniques and efficacy of the classification was analysed. However, they did not give acceptable results either for the cities, or for the counties. According to the parameters of the here mentioned three algorithms, reasonable structures were not found in any clustering. Clusters received applying algorithm fanny, though having weak structure, indicate large and definite regions in Hungary, which can be circumscribed by clear geographical objects.
The Economics of Organic Farming: An International Perspective

Organic (ecological) farming, with its emphasis on sustainable agro-ecosystem management and the use of locally-derived, renewable resources, offers potential solutions to some of the key problems faced by the agricultural sectors of industrialized countries. Many European governments now provide direct financial support for organic farming in recognition of its contribution to current policy objectives, including environmental protection, conservation of non-renewable resources, controlling over-production and the reorientation of agriculture towards areas of market demand. Drawing on studies from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland, this book provides the first comprehensive international review of the economics of organic farming. The factual information and empirical data from the studies reported make this book a valuable resource for researchers, policy analysts, professional advisors and students in agricultural economics, management and agri-environmental policy.