Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhanced esterase activity and resistance to azinphosmethyl in target and nontarget organisms

The organophosphorous compound azinphosmethyl (AzMe) is applied extensively in northern Patagonia (southern Argentina) to manage codling moths (Cydia pomonella). This area is irrigated by fast‐flowing channels that provide a favorable habitat for many species, including amphipods (Hyalella curvispina) and a field‐mixed population of black flies (Simulium bonaerense, Simulium wolffhuegeli, and Simulium nigristrigatum). In the present study, AzMe susceptibility and carboxylesterase (CarbE) activity from both insecticide‐exposed and nonexposed field populations were studied. The median lethal dose determined in codling moths from an insecticide‐treated orchard was significantly higher (3.48 μg/insect) than that observed in those from an untreated orchard (0.69 μg/insect). Similarly, the median lethal concentration (LC50) determined in black flies collected from the treated area (0.021 mg/L) was significantly higher than that recorded in those from the untreated site (0.011 mg/L). For amphipods, both a subpopulation susceptible to AzMe (LC50, 1.83 μg/L) and a resistant one (LC50, 390 μg/L) were found in the treated area. Both subpopulations were more resistant to AzMe than the population from the untreated site (LC50, 0.43 μg/L). Significant differences (p < 0.001) in CarbE activities were observed between populations from pesticide‐treated and untreated areas. Mean activities ± standard deviation from treated and untreated sites were 0.21 ± 0.16 and 0.016 ± 0.008 μmol/min/mg protein, respectively, for codling moths; 2.17 ± 1.71 and 0.81 ± 0.35 μmol/min/mg protein, respectively, for black flies; and 0.27 ± 0.10 and 0.14 ± 0.07 μmol/min/mg protein, respectively, for amphipods. The results suggest that enhanced CarbE activity is one of the mechanisms that provide AzMe resistance in H. curvispina, Simulium spp. , and C. pomonella populations from the insecticide‐treated areas.
The Spanish version of the Alberta Infant Motor Scale: Validity and reliability analysis

Abstract Objectives: Validity and reliability of the cross-cultural adaptive translation of the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS), to monitor gross motor development in infants from 0 to 18 months of age, were evaluated. Methods: A cross-cultural translation was used to generate a Spanish version of the AIMS. Fifty infants at risk or with diagnosis of motor delay, 0–18 months of age, participated in this study. Two independent physical therapists scored infants on the AIMS. Concurrent validity was tested using the AIMS and the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development – III (Bayley – III). Results: Reliability and the internal consistency were high (ICCs ranged from 0.94 to 1.00 and KR-20 ranged from 0.90 to 0.98, respectively). AIMS and Bayley – III scores correlated strongly (r = 0.97). Conclusion: The Spanish version of the AIMS presented excellent validity and reliability. Further studies are suggested in order to assess the AIMS in preterm babies.
Life cycle cost analysis as a decision support tool for managing municipal infrastructure

Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a process for evaluating the total economic cost of an asset by analyzing initial costs and discounted future expenditures, such as maintenance, repair and renewal (MR&R) costs, and user and social costs over the service life of the asset. The Institute for Research in Construction (IRC) has initiated a three-year project on Municipal Infrastructure Investment Planning (MIIP) to provide managers of municipal infrastructure with decision support tools to optimize their investments and to maximize the value of their assets over their life cycles. A survey of Canadian infrastructure managers and owners, conducted in the MIIP project, found that: 91% of respondents want decision support tools to help manage their assets; 24% identify LCCA as a potential decision support tool; and 70% think that the LCCA process could decrease high levels of deferred maintenance. This paper provides an overview of the fundamentals of LCC calculations and analysis and identifies many of the costs that must be taken into consideration. This preliminary investigation on LCCA for municipal infrastructure discusses the life cycle cost parameters such as life cycle phases, discount rate, agency and user costs, and factors attributed to political and social costs. It describes both deterministic and probabilistic approaches and proposes a nine stage LCCA process with an example for the renewal of a trunk sewer. The state of practice of LCCA and its implementation to help management of municipal infrastructure is presented and discussed in this paper. The paper also reviews various LCCA software applications and discusses their suitability as decision support tools for municipal infrastructure.
Working capital management practices of manufacturing sector companies in Sri Lanka: Survey Evidence

This study focuses on working capital management (WCM) practices of manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka. The data for the study were gathered through a questionnaire and interviews with chief financial officers of a sample of listed and unlisted manufacturing companies. It is observed that most of the manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka have an informal policy related to working capital management. The finance manager takes the main responsibility to manage working capital components and the managing director plays a major role in formulating ad-hoc working capital policies. Lagging of credit payment and ageing schedule are the major techniques in disbursement float and controlling trade debtors, respectively. Perpetual Inventory Control System and Material Requirements Planning are primary tools of inventory management. Most of the sample companies use cash budget and current assets ratio as techniques to plan and control their working capital components. Finally, the sales growth and profitability are found to be the major determinants of WCM in Sri Lanka.
QoS Management for All-IP Core Networks

This paper discusses the core network design under the Budget-Based management infrastructure, BBQ, which is designed for All-IP networks to offer endto-end QoS assurance to their services. Under BBQ scheme, the quality bound of each component network is controlled based on a calculated budget plan. End-to-end QoS is assured by a global QoS management agent. The management issues include software architectures in different layers, class based admission and resource reservation policies, as well as resource management infrastructure, policies, and mechanisms. The objective of this infrastructure is to facilitate network operators to tune their networks with a great flexibility and scalability to achieve their own operational objectives. One of the major components in an All-IP network is the backbone network which consists of some core network. In this paper, the design philosophy of core networks under BBQ will be discussed in details.
Angiotensin II mediates drinking elicited by eating in the rat.

Captopril (CA) was used to block synthesis of endogenous angiotensin II (ANG II) in periphery and/or brain of adult male Sprague-Dawley rats in tests for drinking elicited by eating pelleted chow. Blockade of ANG II-converting enzyme (ACE) in periphery alone (using 0.5 mg/kg CA) increased drinking elicited by eating, whereas simultaneous blockade of ACE in periphery and brain (using subcutaneous 100 mg/kg CA or subcutaneous 0.5 mg/kg plus third ventricular 25 micrograms CA) decreased such drinking. The inhibitory effect of 100 mg/kg CA on water-to-food ratio was prevented by a dipsogenically subthreshold subcutaneous dose (5 micrograms/kg) of ANG II. Blockade of ACE in brain alone (third ventricular 25 micrograms CA) had no effect on food-related drinking. Pharmacological antagonism of ANG II (100 mg/kg CA) together with antagonism of histamine H1 and H2 receptors (using intraperitoneal dexbrompheniramine and cimetidine) were not additive in their inhibitory effects on drinking elicited by eating. Blockade of ACE (100 mg/kg CA) inhibited drinking elicited by subcutaneous histamine, but blockade of histamine receptors failed to inhibit drinking elicited by subcutaneous ANG II. These results support a role for endogenous ANG II under what appear to be physiological conditions for drinking behavior, i.e., when drinking is elicited by eating, and they suggest the working hypothesis of ANG II mediation of a histaminergic mechanism for food-related drinking in the rat.
Source memory errors in schizophrenia, hallucinations and negative symptoms: a synthesis of research findings

Background Previous research has shown associations between source memory errors and hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia. We bring together here findings from a broad memory investigation to specify better the type of source memory failure that is associated with auditory and visual hallucinations. Method Forty-one patients with schizophrenia and 43 healthy participants underwent a memory task involving recall and recognition of lists of words, recognition of pictures, memory for temporal and spatial context of presentation of the stimuli, and remembering whether target items were presented as words or pictures. Results False recognition of words and pictures was associated with hallucination scores. The extra-list intrusions in free recall were associated with verbal hallucinations whereas the intra-list intrusions were associated with a global hallucination score. Errors in discriminating the temporal context of word presentation and the spatial context of picture presentation were associated with auditory hallucinations. The tendency to remember verbal labels of items as pictures of these items was associated with visual hallucinations. Several memory errors were also inversely associated with affective flattening and anhedonia. Conclusions Verbal and visual hallucinations are associated with confusion between internal verbal thoughts or internal visual images and perception. In addition, auditory hallucinations are associated with failure to process or remember the context of presentation of the events. Certain negative symptoms have an opposite effect on memory errors.
Knowledge and practice regarding menstrual hygiene in rural adolescent girls of Nepal.

OBJECTIVE This study was done in the adolescent girls to evaluate the knowledge and practice on different aspects of menstrual hygiene. METHODS One hundred and fifty adolescent girls of age 13-15 years from 3 schools of Shivanagar and Patihani village development committees of Chitwan district were involved in this study. Altogether 27 questions were asked to each of them. RESULTS During our study, we found that they were not properly maintaining the menstrual hygiene. Only 6.0% of girls knew that menstruation is a physiologic process, 36.7% knew that it is caused by hormones. Ninety-four percentages of them use the pads during the period but only 11.3% dispose it. Overall knowledge and practice were 40.6% and 12.9% respectively. CONCLUSION Although knowledge was better than practice, both were not satisfactory. So, the girls should be educated about the process and significance of menstruation, use of proper pads or absorbents and its proper disposal. This can be achieved by giving them proper training and health education (by teachers, family members, health educators, and media) so that there won't be any misconception to the adolescent girls regarding menstrual hygiene.
A Modernized Approach to Managing the Risks in Cross-Border Capital Movements

This paper outlines a “modern” approach to managing risks in cross-border capital movements that is consistent with an environment of increased and liberalized capital flows. Key elements of this approach include: a consistent monetary and exchange rate policy mix to avoid incentives for volatile capital flows; prudential management of the specific risks in capital flows; supporting financial sector reforms; and appropriate sequencing of liberalization. The approach can reduce the potential size of the shocks associated with capital movements and increase the resilience of the financial system to such shocks when they occur; overtime, it is expected to reduce the need for recourse to capital controls.
Coastal patrol and surveillance networks using AUVs and delay-tolerant networking

In this paper, we consider a coastal surveillance scenario, where Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) patrol an area of interest and inspect surface ships or underwater assets passing through the area. A shore-based control center monitors the AUVs by means of delay-tolerant networking techniques. In particular, as the AUVs carry out their patrolling task, they may get in contact with one another and have a chance to exchange data about the inspected assets (identity, route followed, movement speed, etc.). Given that the area to be patrolled is usually quite large, these contacts are erratic and time-limited: this makes the AUVs and the sink a Delay-Tolerant Network (DTN). To make the communication between AUVs more effective during a contact, we propose a DTN protocol which splits the estimated contact duration between the nodes involve and enhance this protocol using an Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) technique based on selective repeat for error control. Moreover, the structure of the signaling packets exchanged prior to data transmission is designed to help estimate the contact duration and thereby optimize the subsequent data packet exchange. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol outperforms other ARQ-based DTN routing protocols.
A Methodology of Steganalysis for Images

This paper provides a comparison of some of the steganalysis methods proposed in the literature, and using these comparison results, a global steganalysis methodology is proposed. The secret message detection capacities of these steganalysis methods are evaluated using stegoimages generated by typical data hiding algorithms. The evaluation of steganalysis methods is realized in terms of false negative and false positive error rates using 100 images. There isn’t any steganalysis that can detect presence of secret message in all type of stegoimages. Therefore, to realize a reliable analysis about a suspicious image, several steganalysis methods must be efficiently combined. In this paper, some considerations about steganalysis are provided using the results obtained of the comparison of steganalysis methods.
Design of fluorogenic peptide substrates for human cytomegalovirus protease based on structure-activity relationship studies.

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) protease is a slow-processing enzyme in vitro and its characterization would be facilitated if more efficiently cleaved substrates were available. Here we describe the development of improved fluorogenic peptide substrates for this protease and demonstrate that its indolent nature can be overcome by appropriate modifications within existing substrates. Prior structure-activity studies have indicated that replacement of the Val-Val-Asn sequence corresponding to the P4-P2 residues of the maturation site of the enzyme by the optimized Tbg-Tbg-Asn(NMe2) sequence conferred significant binding to inhibitors (Tbg, t-butylglycine). Incorporation of this improved sequence in a variety of substrates invariably led to improved kinetic parameters compared to homologues containing the natural sequence only. For example, the substrate o-aminobenzoyl-Tbg-Tbg-Asn (NMe2)-Ala decreases Ser-Ser-Arg-Leu-Tyr(3-NO2)Arg-OH (2) displayed a kcat/K(m) value of 15,940 M-1 s-1 i.e., more than 60-fold greater than that of the equivalent, nonoptimized substrate 1 under identical conditions. This improved sequence also permitted the development of a sensitive 7-amino-4-methylcoumarin fluorogenic substrate 3 which represents the shortest HCMV protease substrate to date. The kinetic and photometric advantages of these various substrates are discussed along with specific applications.
MARKET REACTION TO THE ADOPTION OF INTERNATIONALFINANCIAL ACCOUNTING STANDARDS (IFRS) IN INDONESIA(Empirical Study of Companies Listed in LQ45 Index from 2010 until 2013)

On 2009, the Indonesian Institute of Accountants (Ikatan Akuntan Indonesia) as the standard setting body in Indonesia made a resolution that requires all publicly traded firms to apply IFRS-based PSAK as the basis for preparing financial statements. This resolution is effective started on January 1 2012. It is claimed that by adopting IFRS, the quality of financial statement is increased because IFRS requires fair value and more disclosure. If the degree of fair value and disclosure required in financial statements is higher than the previous standard, it is expected that more investors will use financial statements as their information in making investment decisions. Therefore, value relevance becomes stronger. When information has a greater value relevance, market is expected to be reacted. This study aims to prove empirically whether there are significant changes of market reaction towards earnings announcement during the year 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, especially for companies listed in LQ45 Index. There are two time periods examined in this research; two years before IFRS mandatory adoption, and two years after IFRS mandatory adoption. There are two proxies of market reaction in this research; Average Abnormal Return and Cumulative Abnormal Return. This research uses the Kolmogorov-Smirnof Test to test the data distribution normality and Paired Sample T-test to test the hypothesis. From the data analysis, it is concluded that Ho is not rejected, meaning that there is no significant differences on the abnormal return before and after IFRS adoption.
Comparative gene expression of steroidogenic factor 1 in Chrysemys picta and Apalone mutica turtles with temperature‐dependent and genotypic sex determination

SUMMARY Characterizing the molecular network underlying temperature‐dependent (TSD) and genotypic (GSD) sex determination, including patterns across closely related taxa, is crucial to elucidate the still enigmatic evolution of sex determining mechanisms in vertebrates. Here we examined the expression of an important gene for sexual differentiation common to both systems, Sf1, at male‐ and female‐producing temperatures, in TSD (Chrysemys picta) and GSD turtles (Apalone mutica). We tested the hypotheses that Sf1 expression responds to temperature consistently across TSD turtles but is unaffected in GSD turtles, and that this differential expression starts no earlier than the onset of the thermosensitive period (TSP). As expected, Sf1 expression was thermally insensitive in A. mutica (GSD). Although Sf1 exhibited a differential expression by temperature in C. picta, the expression pattern differed from other TSD turtles (Trachemys scripta), perhaps reflecting divergence of the gene regulatory networks underlying sex determination over evolutionary time. Most notably, Sf1 was differentially expressed in C. picta (significantly higher at the male‐producing temperature) before the onset of the TSP, implying that in TSD taxa significant thermal effects may occur early in development. This result may reconcile field observations where temperatures experienced prior to the TSP have an effect on sex ratios, thus challenging traditional TSP models. Importantly, the molecular factors that render TSD mechanisms thermosensitive remain unknown, and potential candidates are genes that express differentially before the onset of the TSP (genes shaping or opening the TSP‐window rather those acting once the TSP window has opened). Therefore, our findings make Sf1 one such potential candidate.
Audit Committee Practice in the Polish Listed Stock Companies. Present Situation and Development Perspectives

The audit committee is one of the parts of corporate governance mechanism, which is understood as the relationship between corporate managers, directors and the providers of equity, people and institutions who save and invest their capital to earn the return. This study presents survey research results of audit committee activity in Polish public stock companies quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE). The purpose of this paper is to present the audit committee practice in Poland after 2009. The paper shows that the audit committee practice is still the most problematic issue of transitional Polish corporate governance rules. The survey has shown that the corporate needs and its implementation, and communication with listed companies leave a lot of room for improvement. The paper is based on the documents prepared in 2010 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Polish Association of Listed Companies and the Polish Institute of Directors.
A Phase I Dose Escalation and Bioavailability Study of Oral Sodium Phenylbutyrate in Patients with Refractory Solid Tumor Malignancies 1

Purpose: Phenylbutyrate (PB) is an aromatic fatty acid with multiple mechanisms of action including histone deacetylase inhibition. Preclinically, PB demonstrates both cytotoxic and differentiating effects at a concentration of 0.5 mM. We conducted a Phase I trial of p.o. PB patients with refractory solid tumor malignancies to evaluate toxicity, pharmacokinetic parameters, and feasibility of p.o. administration. Experimental Design: Twenty-eight patients with refractory solid tumor malignancies were enrolled on this dose-escalation to maximally tolerated dose trial. Five dose levels of PB were studied: 9 g/day (n 4), 18 g/day (n 4), 27 g/day (n 4), 36 g/day (n 12), and 45 g/day (n 4). Pharmacokinetic studies were performed and included an p.o. bioavailability determination. Compliance data were also collected. Results: The recommended Phase II dose is 27 g/day. Overall the drug was well tolerated with the most common toxicities being grade 1–2 dyspepsia and fatigue. Nonoverlapping dose-limiting toxicities of nausea/vomiting and hypocalcemia were seen at 36 g/day. The p.o. bioavailability of PB was 78% for all dose levels, and the biologically active concentration of 0.5 mM was achieved at all dose levels. Compliance was excellent with 93.5% of all possible doses taken. No partial remission or complete remission was seen, but 7 patients had stable disease for more than 6 months while on the drug. Conclusions: PB (p.o.) is well tolerated and achieves the concentration in vivo that has been shown to have biological activity in vitro. PB may have a role as a cytostatic agent and should be additionally explored in combination with cytotoxics and other novel drugs.