Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toys and technology.

This paper is a description of an integrated unit of study where Grade 7 and 8 students designed, manufactured, and produced marketing materials for toys of their own creation, culminating in a ÒToy FairÓ where the toys were displayed and described to other members of the school and neighbourhood community. The toys were designed and created using a wide range of technology, including tools for carpentry and sewing, as well as computers. The role of the computers was of interest for two principal reasons: (1) students were not required to use the computer except for one aspect of their marketing materials and as a result, a wide range of ways of using computer tools was evident, and (2) the toy production time was the only time during the course of the school year when the computers were not being used during “ free” time. The range of computer use and students’ view of this integrated study unit are explored through the detailed description of four children’s experiences. Implications for designing project-based units with a technology focus are described.
Adaptive skin segmentation in color images

A new skin segmentation technique for color images is proposed. The proposed technique uses a human skin color model that is based on the Bayesian decision theory and developed using a large training set of skin colors and nonskin colors. The proposed technique is novel and unique in that texture characteristics of the human skin are used to select appropriate skin color thresholds for skin segmentation. Two homogeneity measures for skin regions that take into account both global and local image features are also proposed. Experimental results showed that the proposed technique can achieve good skin segmentation performance (false detection rate of 4.5% and false rejection rate of 4.0%).
Caregiver burden and unmet patient needs

Four‐hundred eighty‐three patients with cancer and their informal caregivers were studied. Patients reported on met and unmet needs in personal care activities (bathing and dressing), instrumental activities (heavy and light housekeeping, cooking, shopping), transportation (medical and general), and home health care (health/treatment assistance). A minority (18.9%) experienced an unmet need. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to identify significant predictors of any unmet need. Patients were more likely to report any unmet needs when their illness/treatment resulted in restricted activity days, when their financial resources were reduced enough for them to apply for Medicaid or Public Assistance, or when their caregivers were not their spouses. Although in general, the likelihood of an unmet need decreased as the number of domains of assistance provided by the caregiver increased, if that care was associated with a high level of burden, the odds of a patient reporting an unmet need actually increased.
Glutamate 170 of Human l-3-Hydroxyacyl-CoA Dehydrogenase Is Required for Proper Orientation of the Catalytic Histidine and Structural Integrity of the Enzyme*

l-3-Hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase (HAD), the penultimate enzyme in the β-oxidation spiral, reversibly catalyzes the conversion ofl-3-hydroxyacyl-CoA to the corresponding 3-ketoacyl-CoA. Similar to other dehydrogenases, HAD contains a general acid/base, His158, which is within hydrogen bond distance of a carboxylate, Glu170. To investigate its function in this catalytic dyad, Glu170 was replaced with glutamine (E170Q), and the mutant enzyme was characterized. Whereas substrate and cofactor binding were unaffected by the mutation, E170Q exhibited diminished catalytic activity. Protonation of the catalytic histidine did not restore wild-type activity, indicating that modulation of the pK a of His158 is not the sole function of Glu170. The pH profile of charge transfer complex formation, an independent indicator of active site integrity, was unaltered by the amino acid substitution, but the intensity of the charge transfer band was diminished. This observation, coupled with significantly reduced enzymatic stability of the E170Q mutant, implicates Glu170 in maintenance of active site architecture. Examination of the crystal structure of E170Q in complex with NAD+ and acetoacetyl-CoA (R = 21.9%, Rfree = 27.6%, 2.2 Å) reveals that Gln170 no longer hydrogen bonds to the side chain of His158. Instead, the imidazole ring is nearly perpendicular to its placement in the comparable native complex and no longer positioned for efficient catalysis.
Development and use of monoclonal antibodies to chicken fibronectin to show that the chicken hepatocellular carcinoma cell line, LMH, constitutively expresses fibronectin.

Fibronectin (Fn) is a high molecular weight glycoprotein and acute phase reactant that contributes to a variety of cellular activities including proliferation and wound healing. Production of Fn is influenced by cytokines such as IL-1alpha, IL-6 and TNF -alpha, and in serum Fn levels can function as an indicator of sepsis and reticulo-endothelial function. Here we describe the production of a panel of mAb to chicken Fn and give evidence that a chicken hepatocellular carcinoma cell line, LMH, constitutively expresses Fn. A capture ELISA to measure chicken Fn was developed using an IgG1 mAb (AV62) as the capture Ab, and biotinylated AV63 (IgG2b) as the detecting Ab. This study identified a single commercially available mAb directed against human Fn that also recognised chicken Fn. By contrast, the anti-chicken Fn mAbs did not cross-react with either human or bovine Fn.
Effects of repetitive stimulation on membrane potentials and twitch in human and rat intercostal muscle fibres.

Membrane potentials of human and rat external intercostal muscles have been studied in vitro at body temperature, and contraction curves at both body and room temperature. Histochemical staining of the entire preparation used in the experiment was performed. The resting membrane potential was on the average somewhat higher in human than in rat intercostal muscle fibres. The mean duration of the spike was 1.50 ms for the human fibres and 0.89 ms for the rat fibres. The mean contraction times were 79 and 11 ms, respectively. In the randomly taken human muscle fibre bundles the contraction times and the half-relaxation times tended to be longer in preparations with many type I fibres (low ATPase activity) than in those with the same amount of type I and type II (high ATPase activity) fibres. Repetitive stimulation of human muscle fibres had very small effects. In rat muscles stimulation at 10 Hz for 30 s caused a marked increase in the twitch amplitude, an increase in the spike duration and in the amplitude of the early negative after-potential. In both preparations the contraction speed was slower at room temperature than at body temperature. In rat intercostal muscles the twitch amplitude was higher at room temperature than at body temperature; in the human muscles it was the same. The twitch: tetanus ratio at body temperature was higher in human than in rat intercostal muscles.
Biomedical text mining for concept identification from traditional medicine literature

In recent years, vast amount of biomedical literature is produced and published. Recent developments in biomedical text mining shows potential for supporting scientists in understanding new information from the existing biomedical literature because volume of electronically available biomedical literature are increasing massively. Automated literature mining offers one opportunity to discover different entities from literature. Web Technologies allow these entities to be stores and publish in the form to the further reuse by the researchers. The approach presented here includes text mining methodologies to automatically extract different entities from biomedical text. For this purpose biomedical articles based on Traditional Chinese medicine are extracted from Bio Med Central and Pub Med Central and used as corpus. Using text mining techniques of tokenization, splitting, stemming, lemmatization, parsing, named entity recognition are used for preprocessing of corpus. Candidate terms are identified by applying C-Value algorithm. These candidate terms and existing Seed/Ontological Terms are tagged in corpus. Using lexical and contextual profiles comparison between candidate terms and already existed Seed/Ontological Terms, we have identified new concepts. Identified concepts are evaluated.
Is lymph node count an ideal quality indicator for cancer care?

Although lymph node count has substantial appeal as a quality indicator because of the ease of measurement, the presence of variation in the population, the association with survival for many cancers, and the previous success of quality intervention programs, improvements in patient outcome by increasing lymph node counts have not yet been demonstrated. This article discusses potential pitfalls in the use of lymph node count as a quality indicator. J. Surg. Oncol. 2009;99:265–268. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Link life based routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks

Due to the highly dynamic topology and absence of any fixed infrastructure, stability of selected path is of prime importance in ad hoc networks. The frequent route failure and high control overhead in routing protocols lead to degraded system performance. This paper proposes a stability based distributed adaptive routing protocol for ad hoc networks, which uses the worst case lifetime of wireless links, which is obtained by linear regression of the variation of distance between nodes as the routing metric. An efficient beaconing mechanism, load balancing, pro-active and reactive route reconfiguration mechanisms are also studied with the protocol. The protocol is supported with simulation using GloMoSim.
PHARMACOKINETICS OF MYCOPHENOLATE SODIUM AND COMPARISON WITH THE MOFETIL FORMULATION IN KIDNEY TRANSPLANT RECIPIENTS.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The introduction of mycophenolate mofetil has improved graft survival after organ transplantation; however, its use may be limited by important adverse effects. For overcoming these problems, an enteric-coated formulation of mycophenolate sodium has been developed, but pharmacokinetic data of mycophenolic acid release from this formulation are scanty. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS Pharmacokinetic studies in 32 kidney transplant recipients who were given the enteric-coated formulation of mycophenolate sodium (n = 12) or mycophenolate mofetil (n = 20) were performed. The profiles of mycophenolic acid from the two formulations at months 6, 12, 18, and 24 after transplantation were compared. Subsequently, all patients who were receiving the enteric-coated formulation were shifted to mycophenolate mofetil, and the pharmacokinetic evaluations were repeated. RESULTS At month 6 after surgery, aberrant and variable pharmacokinetic curves were found in patients who were given the enteric-coated formulation, whereas those who were taking mycophenolate mofetil had regular mycophenolic acid kinetic profiles. Patients who were taking the enteric-coated formulation had mycophenolic acid time of occurrence for maximum drug concentration that ranged from 0 to 480 min and higher dosage-adjusted mycophenolic acid trough levels compared with patients who were given mycophenolate mofetil. Conversion from the enteric-coated formulation of mycophenolate sodium to mycophenolate mofetil resulted in an improvement of the mycophenolic acid kinetics profiles. CONCLUSIONS Given the emerging clinical benefit of mycophenolic acid monitoring in the transplant setting, therapeutic drug monitoring problems with the enteric-coated formulation of mycophenolate sodium should be taken into account.
Proteome-Wide Overexpression of Host Proteins for Identification of Factors Affecting Tombusvirus RNA Replication: an Inhibitory Role of Protein Kinase C

ABSTRACT To identify host genes affecting replication of Tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV), a small model positive-stranded RNA virus, we overexpressed 5,500 yeast proteins individually in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which supports TBSV replication. In total, we identified 141 host proteins, and overexpression of 40 of those increased and the remainder decreased the accumulation of a TBSV replicon RNA. Interestingly, 36 yeast proteins were identified previously by various screens, greatly strengthening the relevance of these host proteins in TBSV replication. To validate the results from the screen, we studied the effect of protein kinase C1 (Pkc1), a conserved host kinase involved in many cellular processes, which inhibited TBSV replication when overexpressed. Using a temperature-sensitive mutant of Pkc1p revealed a high level of TBSV replication at a semipermissive temperature, further supporting the idea that Pkc1p is an inhibitor of TBSV RNA replication. A direct inhibitory effect of Pkc1p was shown in a cell-free yeast extract-based TBSV replication assay, in which Pkc1p likely phosphorylates viral replication proteins, decreasing their abilities to bind to the viral RNA. We also show that cercosporamide, a specific inhibitor of Pkc-like kinases, leads to increased TBSV replication in yeast, in plant single cells, and in whole plants, suggesting that Pkc-related pathways are potent inhibitors of TBSV in several hosts.
Globally optimal vector quantizer design by stochastic relaxation

The authors present a unified formulation and study of vector quantizer design methods that couple stochastic relaxation (SR) techniques with the generalized Lloyd algorithm. Two new SR techniques are investigated and compared: simulated annealing (SA) and a reduced-complexity approach that modifies the traditional acceptance criterion for simulated annealing to an unconditional acceptance of perturbations. It is shown that four existing techniques all fit into a general methodology for vector quantizer design aimed at finding a globally optimal solution. Comparisons of the algorithms' performances when quantizing Gauss-Markov processes, speech, and image sources are given. The SA method is guaranteed to perform in a globally optimal manner, and the SR technique gives empirical results equivalent to those of SA. Both techniques result in significantly better performance than that obtained with the generalized Lloyd algorithm. >
The temporal sequence of evoked and induced cortical responses to implied‐motion processing in human motion area V5/MT+

Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated that the human visual motion area V5/MT+ is differentially activated by stimuli in which the presence of motion is implied by the content of static photographs, compared with similar static scenes in which no motion is implied. Here, using a group magnetoencephalography study, we confirm the role of V5/MT+ in the perception of implied motion (IM) by the measurement and localization of task‐related evoked and induced oscillatory responses, and demonstrate the temporal sequence of these responses. Within the lateral occipital complex, including V5/MT+, statistically significant differential oscillatory responses to IM and implied‐static (IS) stimuli were only found in the beta band (15–20 Hz). An early, evoked, beta power increase (IM > IS) occurred at about 150 ms, whilst a power decrease (IM < IS) occurred at approximately 700 ms. We additionally show that the difference between the early evoked beta responses for the IM and IS conditions only occurs when participants are able to ascertain whether an IM or IS photograph is expected. We therefore hypothesize that the enhanced early response represents covert priming of V5/MT+ for the arrival of a motion stimuli, whilst the late‐induced beta power increase for IS stimuli indicates suppression of activity within V5/MT+.
The Impact of Monetary Policy on Bond Returns: A Segmented Markets Approach

This paper assesses the contribution of monetary policy to the dynamics of bond real returns. We assume that the monetary authority controls the short-term nominal interest rate. We then model exogenously the joint dynamics of the aggregate endowment and the monetary policy variable, and determine bond real returns endogenously. Market segmentation is introduced by permanently excluding a fraction of households from financial markets. When markets are segmented, monetary policy has a liquidity effect on the participants' consumption and marginal utility, on the stochastic discount factor, and on real returns. Data on bond returns strongly favor the segmented markets model over the full participation model. For maturities up to 2 years, the segmented markets model is able to replicate the sign and the size of the impulse response of bond returns to monetary policy shocks, it correctly predicts the sign of their autocorrelation, and it closely matches their volatility as a function of maturity.
Modeling Joint Representation with Tri-Modal Deep Belief Networks for Query and Question Matching

One of the main research tasks in community question answering (cQA) is finding the most relevant questions for a given new query, thereby providing useful knowledge for users. The straightforward approach is to capitalize on textual features, or a bag-of-words (BoW) representation, to conduct the matching process between queries and questions. However, these approaches have a lexical gap issue which means that, if lexicon matching fails, they cannot model the semantic meaning. In addition, latent semantic models, like latent semantic analysis (LSA), attempt to map queries to its corresponding semantically similar questions through a lower dimension representation. But alas, LSA is a shallow and linear model that cannot model highly non-linear correlations in cQA. Moreover, both BoW and semantic oriented solutions utilize a single dictionary to represent the query, question, and answer in the same feature space. However, the correlations between them, as we observe from data, imply that they lie in entirely different feature spaces. In light of these observations, this paper proposes a tri-modal deep belief network (tri-DBN) to extract a unified representation for the query, question, and answer, with the hypothesis that they locate in three different feature spaces. Besides, we compare the unified representation extracted by our model with other representations using the Yahoo! Answers queries on the dataset. Finally, Experimental results reveal that the proposed model captures semantic meaning both within and between queries, questions, and answers. In addition, the results also suggest that the joint representation extracted via the proposed method can improve the performance of cQA archives searching. key words: cQA, deep belief networks, joint representation, tri-modal deep belief network
Functional dissection of p56lck, a protein tyrosine kinase which mediates interleukin-2-induced activation of the c-fos gene

Members of the newly identified receptor family for cytokines characteristically lack the intrinsic protein tyrosine kinase domain that is a hallmark of other growth factor receptors. Instead, accumulating evidence suggests that these receptors utilize nonreceptor-type protein tyrosine kinases for downstream signal transduction by cytokines. We have shown previously that the interleukin-2 receptor beta-chain interacts both physically and functionally with a Src family member, p56lck, and that p56lck activation leads to induction of the c-fos gene. However, the mechanism linking p56lck activation with c-fos induction remains unelucidated. In the present study, we systematically examined the extent of c-fos promoter activation by expression of a series of p56lck mutants, using a transient cotransfection assay. The results define a set of the essential amino acid residues that regulate p56lck induction of the c-fos promoter. We also provide evidence that the serum-responsive element and sis-inducible element are both targets through which p56lck controls c-fos gene activation.
High removal of chemical and biochemical oxygen demand from tequila vinasses by using physicochemical and biological methods

The goal of this research is to find a more effective treatment for tequila vinasses (TVs) with potential industrial application in order to comply with the Mexican environmental regulations. TVs are characterized by their high content of solids, high values of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD 5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), low pH and intense colour; thus, disposal of untreated TVs severely impacts the environment. Physicochemical and biological treatments, and a combination of both, were probed on the remediation of TVs. The use of alginate for the physicochemical treatment of TVs reduced BOD 5 and COD values by 70.6% and 14.2%, respectively. Twenty white-rot fungi (WRF) strains were tested in TV-based solid media. Pleurotus ostreatus 7992 and Trametes trogii 8154 were selected due to their ability to grow on TV-based solid media. Ligninolytic enzymes’ production was observed in liquid cultures of both fungi. Using the selected WRF for TVs’ bioremediation, both COD and BOD 5 were reduced by 88.7% and 89.7%, respectively. Applying sequential physicochemical and biological treatments, BOD 5 and COD were reduced by 91.6% and 93.1%, respectively. Results showed that alginate and selected WRF have potential for the industrial treatment of TVs.
A “practical” observer for nonlinear systems

In this paper, a “practical” observer for nonlinear systems is given. Namely, it is shown that if the output and its time derivatives up to a sufficiently high finite order are bounded and the initial estimation error is sufficiently small, then the proposed observer is such that the estimation error can be made arbitrarily small for all sufficiently large times. Differently from other observers presented in the literature, the proposed observer does not require either global injectivity of the observability map or the knowledge of its local inverse.
Mining Pairs-Trading Patterns: A Framework

Pairs trading is an investment strategy that depends on the price divergence between a pair of stocks. Essentially, this strategy involves choosing a pair of stocks that historically move together, then taking a long-short position if the pair’s prices diverge, and finally reversing the previous position when prices converge. The rationale of the pairs trading is to make a profit and avoid market risk. This review focuses on presenting researchers with the state-of-the-art techniques used in finding pairs trading. In addition, it shows the most important key issues that researchers need to consider while investigating or studying the financial data in finding pairs.
Segmentation by nonlinear diffusion. II

An algorithm that systematically uses nonuniform smoothing to find boundary components in the form of connected, regularized curves is presented. The boundary, represented by a variable continuously defined over the image domain, as well as the smoothing of the image are determined by a nonlinear system of diffusion equations. Nonlinear diffusion is used again to threshold the boundary variable to produce the actual object boundaries. Laplacians of smoothed gradients are the main tool used. Nonuniform smoothing permits the use of multiple smoothings and the use of derivatives of up to order six. <<ETX>>
Wideband dual-polarized base station antenna with high isolation and low cross polarization for LTE communication system

A wideband dual-polarized antenna for LTE (Long Term Evolution) communication system is presented. The antenna is excited by inverted L-shaped strip feed line. A wide impedance bandwidth operating from the frequency 1.71GHz to 2.69 GHz with Voltage Standing Wave Ratio(VSWR) less than 1.5 is achieved. The isolation of the antenna between the two input ports is over 40dB. Stable radiation patterns with low cross-polarized, low backlobe radiation and gain of 9dBi have been obtained across the entire operating frequency bands.