Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Network Context and Selection in the Evolution to Enzyme Specificity

Good Enough Can Be Good Enough To begin to understand why some enzymes are promiscuous and have many substrates, whereas others are highly specific, and why some have high activity, whereas others appear not to be optimized, Nam et al. (p. 1101) analyzed metabolic networks in bacteria. Specialist enzymes are essential for life, catalyze a high flux of enzymatic activity, and are more highly regulated. However, not all enzymes appear to be on a track of gradual improvement of specificity and efficiency. Generalist enzymes seem to well serve their own purposes, and their optimization may not justify the evolutionary cost. Are less promiscuous enzymes more highly evolved? Enzymes are thought to have evolved highly specific catalytic activities from promiscuous ancestral proteins. By analyzing a genome-scale model of Escherichia coli metabolism, we found that 37% of its enzymes act on a variety of substrates and catalyze 65% of the known metabolic reactions. However, it is not apparent why these generalist enzymes remain. Here, we show that there are marked differences between generalist enzymes and specialist enzymes, known to catalyze a single chemical reaction on one particular substrate in vivo. Specialist enzymes (i) are frequently essential, (ii) maintain higher metabolic flux, and (iii) require more regulation of enzyme activity to control metabolic flux in dynamic environments than do generalist enzymes. Furthermore, these properties are conserved in Archaea and Eukarya. Thus, the metabolic network context and environmental conditions influence enzyme evolution toward high specificity.
One-pot synthesized Cu/Au/Pt trimetallic nanoparticles as a novel enzyme mimic for biosensing applications

Multimetallic nanomaterials have aroused special attention owing to the unique characteristics of chemical, optical and enhanced enzyme mimetic capabilities resulting from the synergistic effect of different metal elements. In this work, we present a facile, gentle, fast and one-pot method for preparing Cu/Au/Pt trimetallic nanoparticles (TNPs), which possess intrinsic and enhanced peroxidase-like activity as well as excellent stability, sustainable catalytic activity, and robustness to harsh environments. Kinetic analysis indicated that Cu/Au/Pt TNPs exhibited strong affinities with H2O2 and 3,3,5,5-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) as the substrates. To investigate the feasibility of Cu/Au/Pt TNPs-based strategy in biological analysis, H2O2 was chosen as a model analyte and a sensitive and specific detection for H2O2 was acquired with a detection limit of 17 nM. By coupling with glucose oxidase (GOD), this assay could also achieve a sensitive and selective detection of glucose with a detection limit of 33 μM, indicating the versatility of the method. In view of the potential combination with diverse enzyme-related reactions, the Cu/Au/Pt TNPs-based strategy is promising as a universal platform for biosensors.
EFFECT OF L-GLYCINE AND L-CARNITINE ON POST-THAW SEMEN PARAMETERS AND FERTILITY IN CHICKEN

The effect of supplementing L-glycine and L-carnitine in cryopreservation mixture on post-thaw semen and fertility parameters was studied. Semen from adult PD6 line roosters was collected, pooled and used. The samples after equilibration at 5°C for 30 minutes were mixed with the diluent with the final concentration of supplements L-glycine of 5 or 15mM and L-carnitine of 1mM along with a cryoprotectant (4% dimethylsulfoxide; DMSO), and the semen was cryopreserved in 0.5ml French straws. Different in vitro semen quality parameters, fertility and hatchability were assessed in post-thaw samples. Post-thaw sperm motility, live sperm, MTT dye reduction test and eminal plasma lipid peroxidation were significantly lower (P<0.05) in the cryoprotectant only (4% DMSO) as well as in the L-glycine- and L-carnitine- supplemented treatments. Fertility was significantly (P<0.05) lower the L-glycine- and L-carnitine- supplemented treatments compared to fresh semen, however, hatchability on fertile egg set was similar in all the treatments. The post-thaw semen parameters, fertility and hatchability in L-glycine- and L-carnitine- supplemented treatments were similar to that of the cryoprotectant only treatment. In conclusion, L-glycine and L-carnitine supplementation did not improve post-thaw semen parameters or fertility and hatchability. Thus, inclusion of these compounds in the chicken semen cryopreservation mixture may not provide advantage during the cryopreservation process.
Robust Spatial Reuse Scheduling in Underwater Acoustic Communication Networks

Resource assignment in underwater acoustic communication (UWAC) networks has recently drawn much attention in the research community. Although in most applications the number of nodes in the UWAC network is relatively small, the long propagation delay of acoustic signals underwater motivates the application of spatial reuse in channel access protocols for throughput enhancement. In this paper, we address the problem of spatial-reuse scheduling in UWAC networks that support frequent transmission of broadcast packets and require robustness to inaccurate topology information. Taking the possibility of outdated network topology information into account is of great importance for UWAC applications due to time-varying topologies in the underwater environment. Our main contribution is the derivation of a broadcast scheduling algorithm that combines topology-transparent and topology-dependent spatial-reuse scheduling methodologies to achieve high throughput in static and dynamic topology scenarios. Simulation results demonstrate that our protocol provides a favorable tradeoff between network throughput and robustness to outdated topology information due to topology changes, and that it also achieves fairness in terms of per-node throughput.
Modeling of integrated EMI filter with flexible multi-layer (FML) foils

A model of Distributed Electromagnetic Component (DEMC) for integrated passive based on FML foil is proposed in this paper. The model is used for estimating the insertion loss of integrated EMI filter with FML foils. In this model, distributed parameters such as parasitic capacitance, magnetic coupling between conductors and non-linear characteristics of the magnetic core are all considered step by step. The model is verified by the experiment.
Space shuttling in the cell: Nucleocytoplasmic transport and microtubule organization during the cell cycle

Microtubules form a multifunctional filamentous structure essential for the cell. In interphase, microtubules form networks in the cytoplasm and play pivotal roles in cell polarity and intracellular transport of various biomolecules. In mitosis, microtubules dramatically change their morphology to assemble the mitotic spindle, thereby pulling the chromosomes toward the spindle poles. One long-standing question is how microtubules are reorganized upon mitotic entry. Yeast cells undergo closed mitosis, in which the nuclear envelope persists, whereas higher eukaryotes undergo open mitosis, in which the nuclear envelope breaks down. Microtubule reorganization must be controlled by selective localization of microtubule-assembly factors. Recent findings in fission yeast indicate that several microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) shuttle between the cytoplasm and the nucleus through regulation by Ran GTPase, the universal organizer of nucleocytoplasmic transport. Furthermore, the synergistic interplay of Ran and cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) induces the critical spatiotemporal shift of modes in microtubule assembly from cytoplasmic arrays to nuclear spindles. A MAP complex Alp7/TACC-Alp14/TOG undergoes nucleocytoplasmic shuttling in interphase, whereas it is retained in the mitotic nucleus through a decrease of its nuclear export by CDK. Our understanding of how microtubules are reorganized during the cell cycle is beginning to emerge.
Integrating Signals from Sperm Methylome Analysis and Genome-Wide Association Study for a Better Understanding of Male Fertility in Cattle

Decreased male fertility is a big concern in both human society and the livestock industry. Sperm DNA methylation is commonly believed to be associated with male fertility. However, due to the lack of accurate male fertility records (i.e., limited mating times), few studies have investigated the comprehensive impacts of sperm DNA methylation on male fertility in mammals. In this study, we generated 10 sperm DNA methylomes and performed a preliminary correlation analysis between signals from sperm DNA methylation and signals from large-scale (n = 27,214) genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of 35 complex traits (including 12 male fertility-related traits). We detected genomic regions, which experienced DNA methylation alterations in sperm and were associated with aging and extreme fertility phenotypes (e.g., sire-conception rate or SCR). In dynamic hypomethylated regions (HMRs) and partially methylated domains (PMDs), we found genes (e.g., HOX gene clusters and microRNAs) that were involved in the embryonic development. We demonstrated that genomic regions, which gained rather than lost methylations during aging, and in animals with low SCR were significantly and selectively enriched for GWAS signals of male fertility traits. Our study discovered 16 genes as the potential candidate markers for male fertility, including SAMD5 and PDE5A. Collectively, this initial effort supported a hypothesis that sperm DNA methylation may contribute to male fertility in cattle and revealed the usefulness of functional annotations in enhancing biological interpretation and genomic prediction for complex traits and diseases.
Is It Top-Down, Trickle-Up, or Reciprocal?: Testing Longitudinal Relationships between Youth News Use and Parent and Peer Political Discussion

Using data from a three-wave, parent–child panel survey and Slater’s Reinforcing Spirals Model (RSM) as an analytical framework, three rival communication pathways to political socialization are tested: “top-down” from parents to kids, “trickle-up” from kids to parents, and “reciprocal. ” I ultimately document a trickle-up process whereby baseline levels of youth news use, and political discussion with peers predict future political discussion with parents. Implications for theorizing about communication processes that facilitate socialization and suggestions for modeling communication variables using parent–child dyadic data are discussed.
A 2.6-GHz/5.2-GHz frequency synthesizer in 0.4-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

This paper describes the design of a CMOS frequency synthesizer targeting wireless local area network applications in the 5 GHz range. Based on an integer-N architecture, the synthesizer produces a 5.2 GHz output as well as the quadrature phases of a 2.6 GHz carrier. Fabricated in a 0.4 /spl mu/m digital CMOS technology, the circuit provides a channel spacing of 23 MHz at 5.2 GHz while exhibiting a phase noise of -115 dBc/Hz at 2.6 GHz and -100 dBc/Hz at 5.2 GHz at 10 MHz offset. The reference sidebands are at -50 dBc at 2.6 GHz and the power dissipation from a 2.6 V supply is 47 mW.
City-regional policies in the planning systems of Finland and Austria: National initiatives and European opportunities

The potential of city regions to frame spatial development is widely acknowledged, and lately increasingly supported by top-down policy interventions. This article investigates and compares national city-regional policies in Finland and Austria. Owing to differences in their administrative systems, planning traditions and political agendas, the two countries rely on a distinct set of policy interventions. Moreover, the article addresses city-regional policies originating from the European Union and discusses their overlap and complementarity with national initiatives. The three cases provide examples of regulatory, discursive and remunerative policy interventions, which either explicitly or implicitly support city-regional cooperation. The plurality of interventions confirms the understanding of city regions as soft spaces, in which there is no single ideal approach to governance and planning. Instead, city-regional cooperation can be understood as diverse and multi-layered processes, which might require a plurality of policy responses.
Innovating for People Like Me: Evidence from Female-Founded Consumer Packaged Goods Startups

Women are under-represented among startup founders, patent inventors, and venture capitalists. This paper investigates how different consumers may be affected by women's under-representation among innovation leaders. Using scanner data for consumer-packaged goods linked to databases on startups, patents, and venture capitalists, we find that female consumers are significantly more likely to purchase products from startups that were founded by female entrepreneurs, hire female inventors and/or are backed by a female venture capitalist. Within narrow product categories, the share of sales to female consumers is about 20% larger for a company founded by a female entrepreneur, relative to a male-founded startup. These findings suggest that an entrepreneur's gender matter for the direction of entrepreneurship/innovation, in contrast with standard models of entrepreneurship. We suggest various channels that can account for the observed patterns. Our findings suggest that unequal access to entrepreneurship may have substantial distributional effects. In a simple calibration based on love-of-variety in a CES framework, we find that, compared with a male-led startup, a female-led startup generates welfare gains for female consumers that are 27% larger than for male consumers. Beyond gender, we document that consumer characteristics are systematically related to other socio-demographic characteristics of founders, including parent income and age.
Walking with wider steps changes foot placement control, increases kinematic variability and does not improve linear stability

Walking humans respond to pulls or pushes on their upper body by changing where they place their foot on the next step. Usually, they place their foot further along the direction of the upper body perturbation. Here, we examine how this foot placement response is affected by the average step width during walking. We performed experiments with humans walking on a treadmill, both normally and at five different prescribed step widths. We prescribed step widths by requiring subjects to step on lines drawn on the treadmill belt. We inferred a linear model between the torso marker state at mid-stance and the next foot position. The coefficients in this linear model (which are analogous to feedback gains for foot placement) changed with increasing step width as follows. The sideways foot placement response to a given sideways torso deviation decreased. The fore–aft foot placement response to a given fore–aft torso deviation also decreased. Coupling between fore–aft foot placement and sideways torso deviations increased. These changes in foot placement feedback gains did not significantly affect walking stability as quantified by Floquet multipliers (which estimate how quickly the system corrects a small perturbation), despite increasing foot placement variance and upper body motion variance (kinematic variability).
Open Government in Authoritarian Regimes

Open government has long been regarded as a pareto-efficient policy – after all, who could be against such compelling policy objectives as transparency, accountability, citizen engagement and integrity. This paper addresses why an authoritarian state would want to adopt a policy of open government, which may first seem counter-intuitive, and tracks its outworking by examining several facets of the policy in practice. The research uncovers evidence of insidious bureaucratic obstruction and an implementation deficit counter-posed with an outward-facing political agenda to gain international respectability. The result is ‘half-open’ government in which the more benign elements have been adopted but the vested interests of government and business elites remain largely unaffected.
Multiport converter for fast charging of electrical vehicle battery: Focus on DC/AC converter

The availability of new electrical vehicle batteries with high current rating and capacity permits the realization of rapid charging. However, when using conventional methods, the charging process requires an expensive high-current grid interface. Therefore, a multiport converter with a stationary storage port to reduce the current required from the grid is proposed. The goal of this paper is to explore the fundamentals of the DC/AC converter used in one of the ports. Experimental results for a low-power prototype are shown to validate the theoretical study.
The Influence of Short‑Term Hipocaloric Nutrition on Bodyweight Reduction in Lithuanian Olympic Team Wrestlers

Research background and hypothesis. These days many athletes of combat sports prior contest practice unsafe hipocaloric diets. Hypothetically the content of macronutrient and micronutrient composition of wrestlers’ food rations must be corrected individually during the time of bodyweight loss and after weigh control.Research aim of the present study was to examine the effects of bodyweight reduction on athletes’ body weight (BW), lean body mass (LBM), body fat (BF), body fluid (BFL), body protein (BP) and minerals. Research methods. Wrestlers (n = 10) were measured before, at the end (before weight control) rapid bodyweight reduction and 2 days after contest. Food records were analyzed and macronutrient and micronutrient contributions from meals were assessed. The measures of body mass components were taken using BIA tetra-polar electrodes.Research results. Analysis of wrestlers 4-day food records revealed average values at 18.2 ± 10.6 kcal·kg -1 ·day -1 , 0.8 ± 0.4 g·kg -1 ·day -1 of proteins, 2.0 ± 1.5 g·kg -1 ·day -1 of carbohydrates and 0.8 ± 0.4 g·kg -1 ·day -1 of fat throughout the period of rapid bodyweight reduction. Low total energy intake contributed to the insufficient on take of vitamins A, B 1 , B 2 , PP, D, E, B 6 , folic acid and minerals as potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc intakes during the rapid bodyweight loss season. Additionally wrestlers followed low-carbohydrate and high-fat diet and did not consume adequate energy or carbohydrate diet after the contest.Discussion and conclusions. During rapid bodyweight loss period athletes showed a significant decrease in BM (–3.7 ± 1.9 kg, p < 0.05), LBM (–1.5 ± 1.3 kg, p < 0.05), BF (–2.1 ± 0.6 kg, p < 0.001), BFL (–1.1 ± 0.9 kg, p < 0.05), minerals (–0.2 ± 0.1 kg, p < 0.05), but not BP (–0.2 ± 0.1 kg, p ≤ 0.05). After contest wrestlers had significant increases in BM (+3.1 ± 1.9 kg, p < 0.05), BF (+2.6 ± 0.5 kg, p < 0.001) and minerals (+0.2 ± 0.1 kg, p < 0.05), but non-significant increase in LBM (+1.0 ± 1.8 kg, p > 0.05) and BFL (+0.7 ± 1.3 kg, p < 0.05). Wrestlers’ food rations must be corrected individually during the time of bodyweight loss, after weigh control and follow-up recovery, during the period of contest.Keywords: nutrition, wrestlers’ food rations, weight reduction.
Specification Platform for Library IP Development

A design platform (DP) is a total solution to build a System-On-Chip (SOC). DP consists of a set of libraries/IPs, CAD tools and design kits in conformity with the supported design flows and methodologies. The DP specifications provide a wide range of information from technology parameters like Process-Voltage-Temperature (PVT) corners to CAD tools’ information for library/IP development. However, the library/IP developers have difficulties in obtaining the desired data from the existing specifications due to their informality and complexity. In this thesis, we propose methodologies, flows and tools to formalize the DP specifications for their unification and to deal with it. The proposed description is targeting to be used as a reference to generate and validate libraries (standard cells, I/O, memory) as well as complex IPs (PLL, Serdes, etc.). First, we build a suitable data model to represent all required information for library/IP development and then propose a specification language named Library Development Specification based on XML (LDSpecX). Furthermore, we introduce a reference-based method to create a reliable specification in LDSpecX and task-based keywords to efficiently extract data from it. On the basis of the proposed solutions, we develop a specification platform. Experimentally, we develop a standard cell library from the specification creation to library validation by using the specification platform. We show that our approach enables to create a complete and consistent specification with a considerable reduction in time. It also bridges the gap between the specification and current automatic system for rapid library/IP development.
Uma caracterização da adoção de DevOps utilizando Grounded Theory

DevOps is a set of practices and cultural values that aims to reduce the barriers between development and operations teams during software development. Due to its increasing interest and imprecise definitions, existing research works have tried to characterize DevOps—mainly using a set of concepts and related practices. Nevertheless, little is known about the practitioners understanding about successful paths for DevOps adoption. The lack of such understanding might hinder institutions to adopt DevOps practices. Therefore, the goal here is to present a theory about DevOps adoption, highlighting how the main related concepts have contributed to its adoption in industry. This work uses a multi-method approach. Initially a Grounded Theory study was conducted using its classical variation. In this step, practitioners that contributed to the adoption of DevOps in 15 companies from different domains and across five countries were interviewed. Based on results, a model was produced to improve both the understanding and guidance of DevOps adoption. In the second step of the study, the model was introduced in the adoption of DevOps at the Brazilian Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), at which time a focus group was held to evaluate the current stage of adoption and to validate the applicability and utility of the model. The model increments the existing view of DevOps by explaining the role and motivation of each category (and their relationships) in the DevOps adoption process. This model was organized in terms of DevOps enabler categories and DevOps outcome categories. Was concluded that collaboration is the core DevOps concern, contrasting with a possible understanding that implanting specific tools to automate building, deployment, and infrastructure provisioning and management is enough to achieve DevOps. Altogether, the results contribute to (a) generating an adequate understanding of DevOps adoption, from the perspective of practitioners; and (b) assisting institutions, like TCU, in the migration path towards DevOps adoption. In addition, the experiences collected during the production of the model have been applied in adoption of DevOps at TCU.
Risky Assets in Europe and the US: Risk Vulnerability, Risk Aversion and Economic Environment

We use cross-country microdata to analyse the risk taking of households in Europe and the US. Concerning the extensive as well as the intensive margin of risky assets, European households differ substantially from US households; but also inside Europe we document substantial differences. Furthermore, average risk aversion is strongly correlated with the share of households holding risky assets across countries. We decompose the observed differences into two parts. A part explainable by household characteristics as well as differences in risk aversion and a remainder. We employ the unexplained part resulting from our microeconometric decomposition analysis together with country-level variables on the economic environment to relate observed differences in risky asset holdings to institutional ones. We find that institutional differences such as shareholder protection are strongly correlated with the unexplainable differences with regard to holdings of risky assets. JEL Classification: D12, D14, D31, G11