Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The genetics of obsessive compulsive disorder: A review of the evidence

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common psychiatric disorder that can have disabling effects on both adults and children. Twin, family, segregation, and linkage studies have demonstrated that OCD is familial, that the familiality is due in part to genetic factors and there are regions of the genome which very likely harbor susceptibility loci for OCD. Over 60 candidate gene studies have been conducted. Most studies have focused on genes in the serotonergic and dopaminergic pathways. Unfortunately, none have achieved genome‐wide significance and with the exception of the glutamate transporter gene, none have been reliably replicated. Future research will requite much larger samples and the collaboration of researchers to be able to identify susceptibility loci for OCD. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Spectral properties of surface EMG and muscle conduction velocity: A study based on sEMG model

It is well known that there is a change in the spectrum of surface electromyogram (sEMG) with the onset of muscle fatigue. This change has largely been attributed to the change in muscle conduction velocity. In this paper, this theory has been investigated by studying a sEMG model developed earlier. The change of spectrum of the experimental results has been compared with simulated sEMG in response to the change in muscle conduction velocity using similar conditions. The model of sEMG of biceps brachii muscle during various levels of isometric voluntary contraction was considered and included details of muscle type, measurable average and individual conduction velocities and the natural variations between motor unit recruitment and firing rates as observed experimentally. The model used the change in the muscle conduction velocity (Δv) as a parameter to simulate the sEMG. The shift in spectrum was identified by computation of the median frequency (MDF) of the sEMG before and after the implementation of the RS parameter in the model. The model was also simulated to generate sEMG at various levels of voluntary isometric contractions. The results based on the simulation of the model show that the rate of change in MDF was consistent in all levels of contractions and it is not same with experimental conditions. The results also suggest there is large change in MDF with Δv in the simulated sEMG than in experimental conditions.
Crystallographic and Glycan Microarray Analysis of Human Polyomavirus 9 VP1 Identifies N-Glycolyl Neuraminic Acid as a Receptor Candidate

ABSTRACT Human polyomavirus 9 (HPyV9) is a closely related homologue of simian B-lymphotropic polyomavirus (LPyV). In order to define the architecture and receptor binding properties of HPyV9, we solved high-resolution crystal structures of its major capsid protein, VP1, in complex with three putative oligosaccharide receptors identified by glycan microarray screening. Comparison of the properties of HPyV9 VP1 with the known structure and glycan-binding properties of LPyV VP1 revealed that both viruses engage short sialylated oligosaccharides, but small yet important differences in specificity were detected. Surprisingly, HPyV9 VP1 preferentially binds sialyllactosamine compounds terminating in 5-N-glycolyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Gc) over those terminating in 5-N-acetyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac), whereas LPyV does not exhibit such a preference. The structural analysis demonstrated that HPyV9 makes specific contacts, via hydrogen bonds, with the extra hydroxyl group present in Neu5Gc. An equivalent hydrogen bond cannot be formed by LPyV VP1. IMPORTANCE The most common sialic acid in humans is 5-N-acetyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac), but various modifications give rise to more than 50 different sialic acid variants that decorate the cell surface. Unlike most mammals, humans cannot synthesize the sialic acid variant 5-N-glycolyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Gc) due to a gene defect. Humans can, however, still acquire this compound from dietary sources. The role of Neu5Gc in receptor engagement and in defining viral tropism is only beginning to emerge, and structural analyses defining the differences in specificity for Neu5Ac and Neu5Gc are still rare. Using glycan microarray screening and high-resolution protein crystallography, we have examined the receptor specificity of a recently discovered human polyomavirus, HPyV9, and compared it to that of the closely related simian polyomavirus LPyV. Our study highlights critical differences in the specificities of both viruses, contributing to an enhanced understanding of the principles that underlie pathogen selectivity for modified sialic acids.
Determinants of Environmental Degradation and Empirical Investigation of Kuznets Curve: A Comparative Study of India and Bangladesh

This paper investigates the factors responsible for Environmental degradation in terms of higher Carbon dioxide and Nitrous oxide emission over the period 1981 – 2011 for Bangladesh and India from data of World development indicator. Industrialization and greenhouse gas are major contributing factors identified for deteriorating the air quality in Bangladesh and India respectively. Concentration of population in urban areas increases carbon emission and economic globalization reduces Nitrous oxide emission in both economies. Estimation results of reduced from equation for CO2 emission provides support in favour of inverted U and N shaped Kuznets curve for India which is robust to using dynamic specification. For Bangladesh the shape is Inverted U but this is not robust to using dynamic model. In quadratic approach to Kuznets curve energy consumption does play an important role for increased carbon emission in India but not in Bangladesh.
Geometry Optimization of PMSMs Comparing Full and Fractional Pitch Winding Configurations for Aerospace Actuation Applications

Optimization of electromechanical aerospace actuators requires a multi-objective and comparative analysis in order to account for performance and manufacturing cost terms. This paper introduces a particular optimization methodology presenting stable convergence characteristics which has been applied to optimize the geometry of both Fractional Slot Concentrated Winding (FSCW) and Full Pitch Concentrated Winding (FPCW) permanent magnet motor configurations. The proposed algorithm combines technical and physical advantages of the FSCWs and FPCWs into an optimally shaped stator-winding configuration. The resultant motor design has been validated through a prototype and experimental results illustrated its suitability for aerospace actuation applications.
Leading by example

“You understand that you probably shouldn’t drink as much as you do at the moment Mr Smith. The maximum amount is 21 units a week. ” On a recent placement I was faced with this situation—one many medical students may have encountered. Possibly not the finest example of motivational speaking, however, I was going to follow with the usual blurb about liver damage and units and blah blah blah. No wonder patients don’t act on this advice; they probably barely listen to it all anyway. …
Vid30 is required for the association of Vid vesicles and actin patches in the vacuole import and degradation pathway

When Saccharomyces cerevisiae is starved of glucose, the gluconeogenic enzymes fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase (FBPase), malate dehydrogenase (MDH2), isocitrate lyase (Icl1) and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (Pck1) are induced. However, when glucose is added to prolonged starved cells, these enzymes are degraded in the vacuole via the vacuole import and degradation (Vid) pathway. Recent evidence suggests that the Vid pathway merges with the endocytic pathway at actin patches where endocytic vesicles are formed. The convergence of the Vid pathway with the endocytic pathway allows cells to remove intracellular and extracellular proteins simultaneously. However, the genes that regulate this step of the convergence have not been identified previously. Here we show that VID30 plays a critical role for the association of Vid vesicles and actin patches. Vid30 is constitutively expressed and interacts with Vid vesicle proteins Vid24 and Sec28 but not with the cargo protein FBPase. In the absence of SEC28 or VID24, Vid30 association with actin patches was prolonged. In cells lacking the VID30 gene, FBPase and Vid24 were not localized to actin patches, suggesting that Vid30 has a role in the association of Vid vesicles and actin patches. Vid30 contains a LisH and a CTLH domain, both of which are required for FBPase degradation. When these domains were deleted, FBPase trafficking to the vacuole was impaired. We suggest that Vid30 also has a role in the Vid pathway at a later step in a process that is mediated by the LisH and CTLH domains.
On the Efficient Evaluation of Self and Mutual Admittances of CPW-Fed Slot Elements in Linear Arrays on Electrically Thin Substrates

The evaluation of self and mutual admittances of CPW-fed slots on electrically thin dielectric substrates is addressed with reference to iterative array design procedures. A characterization of isolated slot self-properties indicated certain linear dependencies on slot dimensions, suggesting that less data may be required from computationally intensive a priori moment-method analyses of isolated slots. An approximate method for the fast, accurate calculation of mutual admittance between CPW-fed slots on electrically thin substrates is described. Its accuracy is shown to be comparable to moment-method-based calculations in IE3D. The method can be easily incorporated into iterative array design algorithms.
Hedging the World : Assessing the Performance of Dynamically Hedged Long-Short Equity Investments 1

The extraordinary conditions in the financial world of late 2008 caused severe market dislocations and consequently many asset managers experienced significant portfolio losses, partly due to ineffective hedging techniques. In order to examine the effect of the credit crisis on investment strategies, we create a diverse set of long-short equity portfolios with domestic equity sectors and an array of MSCI indices by extending Engle (2008). Each domestic sector is hedged against the others and the S&P 500, while the MSCI indices are hedged against the MSCI World index and S&P 500 over 1/1/02 – 2/27/09. Hedge ratios determined via GARCH-DCC and TGARCH-DCC are used for daily portfolio reallocation. We find that hedging in this method generally results in a significant volatility reduction and thus a benefit to the investor. Further inspection reveals that DCC may underestimate correlation during times of high volatility, a condition that is exacerbated for the international indices due to a non-synchronicity in information. 1 The author would like to thank the Stern School of Business at New York University for its support in this research endeavor. In particular, I would like to thank Marti Subrahmanyam, coordinator of the Honors Program, Robert Engle, my thesis advisor, and Christian Brownlees of the Finance Department at the NYU Stern School of Business for their invaluable contributions. The author’s e-mail address is cshah1016@gmail.com. Any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the author.
Terminal Structure Mediates 5 S rRNA Stability and Integration during Ribosome Biogenesis*

Formation of the eukaryotic ribosomal 5 S RNA-protein complex has been shown to be critical to ribosome biogenesis and has been speculated to contribute to a quality control mechanism that helps ensure that only normal precursors are processed and assembled into active ribosomes. To study the structural basis of these observations, the RNA-protein interface in the 5 S RNA-protein complex of the yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) ribosome was examined based on a systematic introduction of targeted base substitutions in the RNA sequence. Most base substitutions had little or no effect on the efficiency of complex formation, but large effects were observed when changes disrupted helix I, the secondary structure formed between the interacting termini. Again, only modest effects were evident when the extended 3′ end of the mature RNA molecule was altered, but essentially no complex was formed when the 5′ end of the mature 5 S RNA sequence was artificially extended by one nucleotide.In vitro analyses demonstrated that this extension also dramatically altered the maturation of 5 S rRNA precursor molecules as well as the stability of the mature 5 S rRNA. Taken together, the results indicate that in the course of RNA maturation, the 5 S RNA-binding protein binds precisely over or “caps” the termini in a critical manner that protects the RNA from further degradation.
Toward a Better Understanding of Deep Neural Network Based Acoustic Modelling: An Empirical Investigation

Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) have outperformed traditional acoustic models on a variety of speech recognition benchmarks.However, due to system differences across research groups, although a tremendous breadth and depth of related work has been established, it is still not easy to assess the performance improvements of a particular architectural variant from examining the literature when building DNN acoustic models. Our work aims to uncover which variations among baseline systems are most relevant for automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance via a series of systematic tests on the limits of the major architectural choices.By holding all the other components fixed, we are able to explore the design and training decisions without being confounded by the other influencing factors. Our experiment results suggest that a relatively simple DNN architecture and optimization technique produces strong results.These findings, along with previous work, not only help build a better understanding towards why DNN acoustic models perform well or how they might be improved, but also help establish a set of best practices for new speech corpora and language understanding task variants.
Buffer management for self-similar network traffic

Traffic self-similar has been discovered to be a ubiquitous phenomenon in communication networks and multimedia systems and it is well known that self-similar traffic can lead to larger queuing delays and higher packet loss rates. Buffer management of queuing systems plays a crucial role in addressing the tradeoff within efficiency measured in terms of overall packet loss and fairness measured in terms of individual source packet loss. Ease of implementation is the key issue while determining the practicality of a dynamic buffer management technique. In this paper, we propose a new Queue Management based on self-similarity of network traffic. We use ns2 to simulate network configurations and we generated traffics with Pareto distribution on ns2 simulator, the numerical results demonstrate performance of proposed algorithm in compared to the other currently implemented buffer management algorithms in ns2.
Small proteoglycans of normal adult human kidney: distinct expression patterns of decorin, biglycan, fibromodulin, and lumican.

BACKGROUND Among the members of the small leucine-rich proteoglycan family, decorin, biglycan, and fibromodulin have been proposed to be potent modulators of transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) activity, thereby playing an important role in the pathogenesis of fibrotic kidney diseases. Furthermore, decorin expression influences the expression of p21WAF1/CIP1, which has been related to kidney hypertrophy and hyperplasia. However, none of the members of this proteoglycan family have been investigated in normal adult human kidney cortex, thus making it impossible to correlate disease-mediated alterations of their expression with the normal situation in vivo. METHODS The chondroitin/dermatan sulfate proteoglycans, decorin and biglycan, and the keratan sulfate proteoglycans, fibromodulin and lumican, were investigated in normal human adult renal cortex by immunohistochemistry on the light and electron microscopic level and by in situ hybridization. Northern blot and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) methods were used to get an estimate of their expression in isolated glomeruli. Decorin excretion with the urine was measured by Western blotting. RESULTS Two bands of decorin and a single band of biglycan mRNA were identified in Northern blots of isolated glomeruli. Amplification by RT-PCR was required to detect the signals for fibromodulin and lumican. All four proteoglycans were preferentially expressed in the renal interstitium with accumulations around tubules. Weak expression was found in the mesangial matrix. Biglycan was expressed by glomerular endothelial cells and, together with fibromodulin, was synthesized and deposited in distal tubular cells and collecting ducts. Immunogold labeling indicated the presence of the proteoglycans in the glomerular basement membrane, which was interpreted as a result of glomerular filtration. Indirect evidence suggested tubular reuptake of decorin after glomerular filtration. CONCLUSION The data indicate that the different cells of the adult human kidney are characterized by a distinct expression pattern of the four small proteoglycans. It is suggested that these proteoglycans may have distinct pathophysiological roles depending upon whether they are expressed by mesangial cells, endothelial cells, epithelial cells, or cells of the tubulointerstitium.
Minimum Mean Square Error Vector Precoding

We derive the minimum mean square error (MMSE) solution to vector precoding for frequency flat multiuser scenarios with a centralized multi-antenna transmitter. The receivers employ a modulo operation, giving the transmitter the additional degree of freedom to choose a perturbation vector. Similar to existing vector precoding techniques, the optimum perturbation vector is found with a closest point search in a lattice. The proposed MMSE vector precoder does not, however, search for the perturbation vector resulting in the lowest transmit energy, as proposed in all previous contributions on vector precoding, but finds an optimum compromise between noise enhancement and residual interference. We present simulation results showing that the proposed technique outperforms existing vector precoders, as well as the MMSE Tomlinson-Harashima precoder
Stress distribution around maxillary implants in anatomic photoelastic models of varying geometry. Part II.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM Insufficient buccal bone volume can be a significant problem when loading dental implants in the maxilla. Increased potential for buccal fenestration and dehiscence can result in an exposed implant surface, mucosal irritation, decreased support, and potential implant failure. PURPOSE The objective of this study was to model the stress distribution around maxillary implants by comparing simulated occlusal loading of maxillary implants in a 2-dimensional photoelastic anatomic model and a dry skull model. MATERIAL AND METHODS Two model systems were used. First, a 2-dimensional photoelastic anatomic frontal skull sectional model was prepared in the first molar region. Left and right maxillary metal cylinder implant analogues inclined at 0 and 25 degrees to the sagittal plane were loaded in simulated intercuspation. Second, a dry skull lined with a photoelastic coating on the buccal aspect over an embedded cylinder implant was prepared in the first molar region. Principal stress concentration was photographed on axial and nonaxial implant loading. RESULTS On simulated intercuspal loading, maximum stress concentration occurred at the buccal concavity in both the 2-dimensional anatomic photoelastic and skull models. There was no stress concentration at the apices of the maxillary implants in the 2-dimensional model. On lateral loading of the skull model, stress was distributed along the entire buccal aspect of bone adjacent to the implant, with a higher concentration at the buccal concavity. CONCLUSION Preservation of buccal supporting bone volume is desirable to obtain a physiological modeling response and to enhance the facial plate. Insufficient bone volume may result in buccal fenestration or dehiscence, which can precipitate mucosal irritation, decreased support, and potential implant failure.
Thermal Performance Evaluation of Power SSL Module in LTCC

The potential of SSL (solid-state lighting) is boundless, and SSL is the future of light. However with the heat flux increasing rapidly with high-power LEDs, thermal management is critically important for the light quality and lighting reliability in the power LED lighting system. By leveraging our low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology, we have designed and fabricated an LTCC-based power SSL engine which consists of arrays of 36 LEDs with a total power of 36 watts and a on-chip power density of 100 W/cm2. The thermal performance evaluation and experimental validation of the light engine were carried out. Based on the thermal simulation and experimentation, we can conclude that the correlation between the experimental and simulation results is very good. The junction-board thermal resistance is 0.52degC/W for the power SSL module with an array of 36 LEDs.
Bioactive proteins in breast milk

Human milk contains many proteins that have been shown to be bioactive, but it is still not known whether these activities are exerted in breast‐fed infants. These bioactivities include enzyme activities, enhancement of nutrient absorption, growth stimulation, modulation of the immune system and defence against pathogens. The antimicrobial activities are very diverse, ranging from stimulation of beneficial microorganisms (i.e. prebiotic effects), killing or inhibition of growth of pathogens, to mechanisms preventing attachment or invasion of harmful microorganisms. Among the bioactive proteins are lactoferrin, lysozyme, secretory immunoglobulin A, haptocorrin, lactoperoxidase, α‐lactalbumin, bile salt stimulated lipase, β‐ and κ‐casein, and tumour growth factor β. Human milk proteins may be largely resistant against digestion in the gastrointestinal tract, be partially digested into bioactive peptides, or be more or less completely digested and utilised as a source of amino acids. These events can be studied using an in vitro digestion model, which is useful for predicting results in human infants. Some bovine milk proteins, for example, lactoferrin and tumour growth factor β, may also resist proteolysis and be capable of exerting bioactivities similar to those of human milk proteins.
A lipophosphoprotein complex in hen plasma associated with yolk production.

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Une approche économétrique de la fréquentation touristique en Languedoc-Roussillon : Le cas des touristes britanniques et belges

Dans cet article, nous analysons la frequentation touristique des britanniques et des belges en Languedoc-Roussillon. Notre analyse se deroule en deux etapes. La premiere etape consiste a estimer le nombre de nuitees, aussi bien en camping qu'en hotel. La deuxieme etape, quant a elle, est consacree a l'analyse et l'interpretation economique de ces estimations econometriques. Pour ce faire, nous exploitons des donnees mensuelles, allant de janvier 1993 a decembre 2003, fournies par l'Observatoire Regional du Tourisme du Languedoc-Roussillon.