Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IRES mediated translational regulation of p53 isoforms

p53 is a well known tumor suppressor protein that plays a critical role in cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. It has several isoforms which are produced by transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulatory mechanisms. p53 mRNA has been demonstrated to be translated into two isoforms, full‐length p53 (FL‐p53) and a truncated isoform ΔN‐p53 by the use of alternative translation initiation sites. The mechanism of translation regulation of these two isoforms was further elucidated by the discovery of IRES elements in the p53 mRNA. These two IRESs were shown to regulate the translation of p53 and ΔN‐p53 in a distinct cell‐cycle phase‐dependent manner. This review focuses on the current understanding of the regulation of p53 IRES mediated translation and the role of cis and trans acting factors that influence expression of p53 isoforms. WIREs RNA 2014, 5:131–139. doi: 10.1002/wrna.1202
Effects of Sequential Campylobacter jejuni 81-176 Lipooligosaccharide Core Truncations on Biofilm Formation, Stress Survival, and Pathogenesis

ABSTRACT Campylobacter jejuni is a highly prevalent human pathogen for which pathogenic and stress survival strategies remain relatively poorly understood. We previously found that a C. jejuni strain 81-176 mutant defective for key virulence and stress survival attributes was also hyper-biofilm and hyperreactive to the UV fluorescent dye calcofluor white (CFW). We hypothesized that screening for CFW hyperreactive mutants would identify additional genes required for C. jejuni pathogenesis properties. Surprisingly, two such mutants harbored lesions in lipooligosaccharide (LOS) genes (waaF and lgtF), indicating a complete loss of the LOS outer core region. We utilized this as an opportunity to explore the role of each LOS core-specific moiety in the pathogenesis and stress survival of this strain and thus also constructed ΔgalT and ΔcstII mutants with more minor LOS truncations. Interestingly, we found that mutants lacking the LOS outer core (ΔwaaF and ΔlgtF but not ΔgalT or ΔcstII mutants) exhibited enhanced biofilm formation. The presence of the complete outer core was also necessary for resistance to complement-mediated killing. In contrast, any LOS truncation, even that of the terminal sialic acid (ΔcstII), resulted in diminished resistance to polymyxin B. The cathelicidin LL-37 was found to be active against C. jejuni, with the LOS mutants exhibiting modest but tiled alterations in LL-37 sensitivity. The ΔwaaF mutant but not the other LOS mutant strains also exhibited a defect in intraepithelial cell survival, an aspect of C. jejuni pathogenesis that has only recently begun to be clarified. Finally, using a mouse competition model, we now provide the first direct evidence for the importance of the C. jejuni LOS in host colonization. Collectively, this study has uncovered novel roles for the C. jejuni LOS, highlights the dynamic nature of the C. jejuni cell envelope, and provides insight into the contribution of specific LOS core moieties to stress survival and pathogenesis.
Service expectations: the consumer versus the provider

Boundary‐spanning personnel such as tax preparers, travel agents and hairdressers interface directly with customers. In their unique position, between the organization and customer, these service providers market the service to consumers while they simultaneously carry out operational functions. Both the customer and the provider bring certain expectations to the service encounter. These expectations then shape the perceptions of the service encounter. The research reported uses script methodology to compare the expectations between boundary‐spanning service providers and consumers of the same service. Draws its theoretical foundation from the expectations and scripts literatures. In Phase One, scripts of the service were elicited in order to test hypotheses based on the discovery and comparison of consumers′ and service providers′ subgoals for a typical service encounter (H1). A hypothesis also tested the point at which providers and consumers enter their respective scripts of a typical service encounter.
Measurement of volumetric flow with no angle correction using multiplanar pulsed Doppler ultrasound

The authors show that by scanning at points on the surface of a sphere that the normal angle correction used in pulsed Doppler flow measurements is no longer necessary. Thus, it is possible to measure three-dimensional (3-D) flow using multiplanar ultrasound even though one only gets one-dimensional (1-D) velocity information from pulsed Doppler ultrasound. The technique handles the three basic problems in flow measurements using ultrasound Doppler: the variations of the cross-sectional area; the time-dependent changes in the velocity field; and the dependency of the angle of insonation. The technique is tested in a flow phantom using different angles of insonation to validate the angle independence of this new technique. Using six different angles of insonation in the range 0/spl deg/ to 69/spl deg/ with flow rates in the range of 0-170 ml/s a linear dependence was found to be: measured (color Doppler)=0.98 real flow (reference) +1.36 ml/s, with a 95% confidence interval of /spl plusmn/13.9 ml/s.
Prospect analysis of cross-regional power resource disposition

This paper analyzes the relation of the medium-long term power balancing tendency and ex-in power for 6 large grids in China,which are Northeast, North China, East China, Central China, Northwest and Southern China. It is pointed out the major factor that decidesthe interconnection mode and strength between regional power networks. The scale of cross-regional power exchange in the future is pre-dicted. The prospect of nation--wide power grid interconnection is looked ahead.
Design for Sustainability: Overview and Trends

This paper presents recent trends in Design for Sustainability (DfS) with foresight and strategy as the point of view. We first provide a definition of design for sustainability based on the notion of sustainability. Then, we show the scope of various Design for X concepts in relation to the stages of product lifecycle and the triple bottom lines of sustainability; economy, environment and society. A survey of the recent studies for designing sustainable products is presented followed by the detail summary of various metrics that are used in relation to sustainability and designing environmentally friendly products.
Minimisation of DC current component in transformerless Grid-connected PV inverter application

Single-phase current controlled, voltage source inverters are commonly used to feed unity power factor sinusoidal current into the distribution network from PV sources. A large 50Hz transformer is often used at the inverter output for galvanic isolation and to prevent dc current injection into the distribution network. This transformer increases cost, size and overall power losses of the system. For this reason, transformerless inverters are of increasing interest. When an output transformer is not present it is important that the output current is controlled accurately in order to minimise the DC component. The accuracy of the DC current sensor then becomes important to achieving this. A scheme is proposed in which DC link current sensing and current control are used to minimise the output DC current component. Current controllers are affected by errors associated with nonlinearity and offset in the current sensors. This paper applies an auto-calibrating DC link current sensing technique to minimise the errors produced by current sensors in the single-phase, 3-level half-bridge inverter. Characteristics of the proposed method are illustrated using simulation and experimental results with a resistive load.
Towards an Organisational Readiness Framework for Emerging Technologies: An Investigation of Antecedents for South African Organisations’ Readiness for Server Virtualisation

The lack of unifying frameworks to investigate emerging technologies and changing practices in organisations remains a major challenge to the Information Systems body of knowledge. This study developed and validated a new conceptual readiness framework NOIIE (an acronym for National e‐readiness, Organisational preparedness, Industrial relationships, Internal resistance and External influence), for investigating organisational readiness for emerging technologies and applications. Server virtualisation was used as a pilot technology to investigate the antecedents for the readiness of 83 South African organisations for emerging technologies through a quantitative approach and an online survey. The readiness of South African organisations for server virtualisation was impressive, as 73% of organisations surveyed had implemented server virtualisation to one extent or another. The NOIIE framework was validated, as national e‐readiness, organisational preparedness and industrial relationships were found to be highly significant and positive contributors to organisational readiness for adopting server virtualisation in South African organisations. The NOIIE framework could be further developed and used to investigate other emerging technologies in organisations in developing countries.
Investment and Financing Constraints Around the Korean Financial Crisis

This paper examines investment behavior and the effects of financing constraints among Korean manufacturing companies before and after the 1997 financial crisis using a firm-level panel data. I estimate the Q and sales accelerator models considering the possibility of cash constraint of investment by categorizing firms based on their age, size and affiliations to the Korean industrial conglomerates (i.e., chaebols). The results indicate that Q becomes a key determinant of investment decision while the sales variable becomes less important after the crisis began. Q remains to be important for bigger and more mature firms even after the 1997 crisis and becomes significant to smaller and relatively younger ones. It suggests that there could have been a shift from the quantity (sales) to the quality (Q) as the key component of firm’s investment. The effect of cash balance becomes statistically and economically significant in the post-crisis period reflecting increase in financial stress among corporations. Moreover, firms’ financing constraints, as measured by their cash balances, turn out to be more binding among financially “weaker” groups such as younger or smaller firms. While these results are consistent with the predictions of the “pecking order” theory of corporate financing, I also find, somewhat surprisingly, that the effects of cash on investment demand are stronger for chaebol-affiliated firms than for non-affiliates. This suggests that government regulation of chaebol companies may need to be reconsidered because they also face binding finance constraints and no longer have a large advantage in financing their business projects.
The Recent Trade Performance Of Sub-Saharan African Countries : Cause for Hope or More of the Same?

This study examines the recent trade performance of 28 large and mid-sized Sub-Saharan African countries in an attempt to determine the change in trends. From the early 1980s to the early 1990s Africa's share in global exports fell sharply to about one-half its earlier level. However, from 1993 on the data suggest that decline in this share may have slowed. For the larger African countries as a group, manufactures' share of all exports rose from 19 to 28 percent. Much of the increase was due to a relatively few countries like Mauritius and South Africa, although several "unusual" products like precious stones increased the reported shares of manufactured exports for several other countries. No meaningful improvement occurred in the diversity of Sub-Saharan African exports. Indeed, the product composition of some of the African countries' exports became more concentrated. A decomposition of the 1990-1998 export performance of the Sub-Saharan African countries as a group into supply and demand components shows that their exports were approximately $6.3 billion dollars lower than they would have been if the continued erosion of regional market shares had been halted. Recent changes in Africa's exports indicate that no general increase occurred in the number of industries or product groups in which the African countries have a "revealed" comparative advantage. Furthermore, little evidence exists that the relative importance of exports of processed domestically produced primary commodities generally increased. Some recent empirical studies show that a few
Perceptual distortion measure for edgelike artifacts in image sequences

This paper presents an objective perceptual distortion measure quantifying the visibility of edge-like blocking artifacts in coded image sequences resulting from popular transform coding techniques. The prime motivation for this work is the awareness that properties of the human visual system should be central to the design and evaluation of image coding algorithms. The perceptual metric is the output of a visual model incorporating both the spatial and temporal characteristics of the visual system. Parameters of the model are based on results from a number of visual experiments in which sensitivities to simulated blocking artifacts were measured under various spatio-temporal background conditions. The visual model takes a pair of original and distorted sequences as inputs. Distortions are calculated along the vertical and horizontal directions. Visibility dependencies on spatial, temporal and motion activities of the background are incorporated using linear filtering and motion estimation. Pixel-based distortions are combined over local spatial and temporal regions to generate an overall distortion measure for each orientation. The final model output is the sum of the vertical and horizontal distortion measures. The model was applied to coded image sequences and the resulting distortion measures were compared to outcomes of subjective ranking tests. Results indicate that the perceptual distortion measure agrees well with human evaluation.
Profiting from Licensing without Royalties

This paper examines how licensing affects an innovator's profit in a model where an innovator may license its technology to a rival that sells a homogenous product on the market. We find that there exists a demand stimulation such that the innovator's profit increases with licensing even without royalties. We find similar results with differentiated products.
Optimal investment portfolio selection of some financial institutions in Ghana

The purpose of this paper is to develop optimization models based on Dynamic Programming (DP) algorithms and Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), and use them to determine the optimal returns and risk involved in an investment. For this purpose, six investment features were considered in order to test the performance of the trading strategy and returns. Secondary data from 2006–2011 was collected from six financial institutions randomly selected from Sunyani municipality and used the mas a case study. Descriptive statistics and the DP-MGT models were used to analyze the data. In the DP algorithm, 'bottom-up' approach was used while the MPT model was used to minimize variance and maintained the expected returns of the investments. There was a strong positive correlation between the optimal investments returns and risk involved in the investments. The study revealed that short term investments in these portfolios are not profitable.
A Study of Contributing Factors in Islamic Motor Insurance

This study examines the government servant‟s perception toward Islamic Motor Insurance named as takaful. The product based on syariah rules for general insurance provided by Insurance Company in Malaysia. This study emphasizes on four factors, which product knowledge, awareness, advertising and benefit of the product. The purpose of this study is to measure the level of perception of Islamic Motor insurance and to identify whether there is a relationship between the independent variables (four factors) with the dependent variable (perception). The respondents are the government servants who are using Motor insurance. This research is carried out through the finding of multiple regression and Pearson correlation analysis where the relationship between knowledge, awareness, advertising and benefit of the product toward perception of Islamic Motor Insurance among government servants. From the findings, the respondents show very good perception toward Islamic Motor Insurance. The findings showed customers‟ perception levels are very positive towards Islamic Motor insurance
Cubic Graphs and Related Triangulations on Orientable Surfaces

Let $\mathbb{S}_g$ be the orientable surface of genus $g$. We show that the number of vertex-labelled cubic multigraphs embeddable on $\mathbb{S}_g$ with $2n$ vertices is asymptotically $c_g n^{5(g-1)/2-1}\gamma^{2n}(2n)! $, where $\gamma$ is an algebraic constant and $c_g$ is a constant depending only on the genus $g$. We also derive an analogous result for simple cubic graphs and weighted cubic multigraphs. Additionally we prove that a typical cubic multigraph embeddable on $\mathbb{S}_g$, $g\ge 1$, has exactly one non-planar component.
Impact of E-business on Supply Chain Integration

On the basis of summarizing the results of the research about the impact of ebusiness on Supply Chain,it gives four crucial factors of the impact of ebusiness on Supply Chain integration. Information sharing can increase the transparence of companies and decrease the effect of bullwhip. Synchronization and work flow corresponding can motivate companies to cooperate, and get more customers by exploring new business model. In the end,it indicates the revelation of ebusiness to the reform of Chinese companies simply. 
Use it or lose it: purchase acceleration effects of time‐limited promotions

While researchers have examined the impact of retail promotions on purchase acceleration in the past, the distinction between time-limited and time-independent promotions has not been made in this context. In this paper, the authors report findings from two studies. In Study 1, it was found that promotions of short duration (time-limited), such as store coupons, accelerate purchases, whereas promotions of longer duration (time-independent), such as manufacturer's coupons, have no such impact. In Study 2, the impact of semantic cues was examined highlighting the time-limited nature of promotions (such as ‘10 Hours Only Sale’), impact on purchase willingness, intent to search further for deals and attitudes towards the deal. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.
Taking apart the endocytic machinery

The formation of clathrin-coated endocytic vesicles is driven by a complex and highly dynamic molecular machinery. In this issue, Idrissi et al. (Idrissi, F.-Z., H. Grötsch, I.M. Fernández-Golbano, C. Presciatto-Baschong, H. Riezman, and M.-I. Geli. 2008. J. Cell Biol. 180:1219–1232) reveal some of the secrets of this machinery by analyzing the localizations of nine endocytic proteins during vesicle budding in yeast using quantitative immunoelectron microscopy.
Evidence of Proactive Forefoot Control During Landings on Inclined Surfaces

The notion of proactive control of landings is generally accepted, and some underlying mechanisms have already been described. Only little is known on adjustments at the foot level, however. The authors therefore investigated the foot and ankle behavior of 24 participants as they landed on differently inclined surfaces. A 4-segment model of the foot and ankle provided 3-dimensional kinematics. They also analyzed activation patterns from several muscles and the ground reaction force. Participants anticipated the different surfaces, as shown by the forefoot kinematics and the activation patterns before touch down. Anticipation of the surface inclination led to adjustments in forefoot orientation and probably also in joint stiffness. The authors suggest that those adjustments tend to enhance the self-stabilizing potential of the mechanical system. The enhancement of that potential would ease the subsequent stabilization, reducing the demands on the neural system.
Sparse Updates are the Key !

Stochastic Gradient Method (SGM) is a popular algorithm in the area of optimization and machine learning. With the tremendous increase in the size of the problems due to the large datasets associated, there has been a surge in efforts to parallelize this scheme. Such schemes suffer from the synchronization step, which kills the speed up gained from distributing the work. In this project, we analyze a novel asynchronous algorithm for optimization of convex functions. Our scheme is inspired by the seminal work Hogwild! by Recht B. et al, where the authors propose an asynchronous, lock-free and parallel SGM algorithm. In particular, they showed convergence and speed up results for sum of convex functions, where each function depended only on a small subset of variables. We relax the assumption of such a ‘sparse relation’ between the functions and the variables by proposing a new step in SGM. Through numerical experiments, we demonstrate the speedup of our algorithm for an ordinary least squares problem compared to serial SGM and Hogwild!
Cultural-based particle swarm for dynamic optimisation problems

Many practical optimisation problems are with the existence of uncertainties, among which a significant number belong to the dynamic optimisation problem (DOP) category in which the fitness function changes through time. In this study, we propose the cultural-based particle swarm optimisation (PSO) to solve DOP problems. A cultural framework is adopted incorporating the required information from the PSO into five sections of the belief space, namely situational, temporal, domain, normative and spatial knowledge. The stored information will be adopted to detect the changes in the environment and assists response to the change through a diversity-based repulsion among particles and migration among swarms in the population space, and also helps in selecting the leading particles in three different levels, personal, swarm and global levels. Comparison of the proposed heuristics over several difficult dynamic benchmark problems demonstrates the better or equal performance with respect to most of other selected state-of-the-art dynamic PSO heuristics.
Sentiment classification of long newspaper articles based on automatically generated thesaurus with various semantic relationships

The paper describes a new approach for sentiment classification of long texts from newspapers using an automatically generated thesaurus. An important part of the proposed approach is specialized thesaurus creation and computation of term's sentiment polarities based on relationships between terms. The approach's efficiency has been proved on a corpus of articles about American immigrants. The experiments showed that the automatically created thesaurus provides better classification quality than manual ones, and generally for this task our approach outperforms existing ones.