Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HIGH FREQUENCY WAFER PROBING AND POWER SUPPLY RESONANCE EFFECTS

The majority of wafer-level testing of digital devices is condiicted at frequencies below about 10 MHz. This is often ifhe case even when the IC is expected to operate at many times that rate in a system environment. To some extent, low frequency wafer probing can be supplemented by high frequency testing of the packaged device. However, the increased use of multi-chip packaging techniques makes at-speed wafer or die testing mandatory for many applications. Power supply decoupling is critical at fre<quencies above about SoMHz and proper techniques are typically frequency dependant. In this paper we retiew the oplions available for such tests at frequencies in the range of several hundred MegaHertz for high pincount devices (40 to 100 or more pins) and multiple GigaHertz for low-tomoderate pincounts[l-I0]. A circuit model is described whlich predicts the noise effects in high frequency wafer probing.
The Cysteine 2 / Histidine 2-Type Transcription Factor ZINC FINGER OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA 6 Modulates Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses by Activating Salicylic Acid-Related Genes and C-REPEAT-BINDING FACTOR Genes in Arabidopsis 1 [ C ] [ W ]

The cysteine2/histidine2-type zinc finger proteins are a large family of transcription regulators, and some of them play essential roles in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stress. In this study, we found that expression of C2H2-type ZINC FINGER OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA6 (AtZAT6) was transcriptionally induced by salt, dehydration, cold stress treatments, and pathogen infection, and AtZAT6 was predominantly located in the nucleus. AtZAT6-overexpressing plants exhibited improved resistance to pathogen infection, salt, drought, and freezing stresses, while AtZAT6 knockdown plants showed decreased stress resistance. AtZAT6 positively modulates expression levels of stress-related genes by directly binding to the TACAAT motifs in the promoter region of pathogen-related genes (ENHANCED DISEASE SUSCEPTIBILITY1, PHYTOALEXIN DEFICIENT4, PATHOGENESIS-RELATED GENE1 [PR1], PR2, and PR5) and abiotic stress-responsive genes (C-REPEAT-BINDING FACTOR1 [CBF1], CBF2, and CBF3). Moreover, overexpression of AtZAT6 exhibited pleiotrophic phenotypes with curly leaves and smallsized plant at vegetative stage and reduced size of floral organs and siliques at the reproductive stage. Modulation of AtZAT6 also positively regulates the accumulation of salicylic acid and reactive oxygen species (hydrogen peroxide and superoxide radical). Taken together, our findings indicated that AtZAT6 plays important roles in plant development and positively modulates biotic and abiotic stress resistance by activating the expression levels of salicylic acid-related genes and CBF genes.
Efficient Extraction of Viral DNA and Viral RNA by the Chemagic Viral DNA/RNA Kit Allows Sensitive Detection of Cytomegalovirus, Hepatitis B Virus, and Hepatitis G Virus by PCR

ABSTRACT The Chemagic Viral DNA/RNA kit was evaluated for extraction of cytomegalovirus (CMV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis G virus (HGV) by using the QIAamp DNA Blood Mini kit and the QIAamp Viral RNA Mini kit as reference protocols. The extraction efficiencies of the different kits for CMV DNA and HBV DNA were not distinguishable, but the extraction efficiency for HGV RNA was better with the Chemagen protocol. All clinical specimens tested HBV DNA- or HGV RNA-positive after QIAGEN protocols for extraction were confirmed by using the Chemagen protocol. The Chemagen kit failed to confirm one of 75 CMV DNA-positive specimens. Thus, a new competitive extraction method using a technology with a high potential for automation is available.
Antagonistic Interactions Between Wingless and Decapentaplegic Responsible for Dorsal-Ventral Pattern in the Drosophila Leg

Subdivision of the limb primordia of Drosophila into anterior and posterior compartments triggers cell interactions that pattern the legs and wings. A comparable compartment-based mechanism is used to pattern the dorsal-ventral axis of the wing. Evidence is presented here for a mechanism based on cell interaction, rather than on compartment formation, that distinguishes dorsal from ventral in the leg. Mutual repression by Wingless and Decapentaplegic signaling systems generates a stable regulatory circuit by which each gene maintains its own expression in a spatially restricted domain. Compartment-independent patterning mechanisms may be used by other organisms during development.
Personal Data, Privacy and the Internet of Things: The Shifting Locus of Agency and Control

This paper examines the shifting the locus of agency and control in the processing of personal data, occasioned by the emerging digital ecosystem and the Internet of Things in particular. It reviews legal, policy, and industry initiatives that seek to respond to broad societal concerns over privacy, and initiatives within design that can be seen to respond to the core problem of empowering users and giving them active control over the processing of personal data. It is, in many respects, a clarion call for HCI to respond to a grand challenge in contemporary life. It suggests that current efforts to address the problem have been piecemeal and that a coherent interdisciplinary approach is required to affect the shift. It proposes that the nascent field of Human Data Interaction provides the necessary design framework needed to drive the research community forwards and put users in control in practice.
FACTORS AFFECTING THE FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN RUSSIA

This paper analyses some links between the last crisis of the banking sector, the system of corporate governance and the level of investment (and foreign direct investment in particular) in Russia. Russian contrasting outcomes are the result of a complex set of factors depending on investment, regulation inadequacy, reforms structure and transition process consequences. We start with a short analysis of the transition process. The analysis is consistent with the hypothesis that both macroeconomic stabilization and structural reforms are necessary for growth. Afterwards we analyse the outcomes of the banking system in Russia with special emphasis to the reform strategy proposed after the crisis of 1999, as well as some of the associated controversies with the current system of corporate governance. The Russian experience of corporate governance is unique; and the lessons that Russia teaches are not trivial. Russia’s enterprise pathologies improve our basic understanding of how corporate governance works.
Metastatic osteosarcoma induced by inactivation of Rb and p53 in the osteoblast lineage

Mutation of the RB-1 and p53 tumor suppressors is associated with the development of human osteosarcoma. With the goal of generating a mouse model of this disease, we used conditional and transgenic mouse strains to inactivate Rb and/or p53 specifically in osteoblast precursors. The resulting Rb;p53 double mutant (DKO) animals are viable but develop early onset osteosarcomas with complete penetrance. These tumors display many of the characteristics of human osteosarcomas, including being highly metastatic. We established cell lines from the DKO osteosarcomas to further investigate their properties. These immortalized cell lines are highly proliferative and they retain their tumorigenic potential, as judged by their ability to form metastatic tumors in immunocompromised mice. Moreover, they can be induced to differentiate and, depending on the inductive signal, will adopt either the osteogenic or adipogenic fate. Consistent with this multipotency, a significant portion of these tumor cells express Sca-1, a marker that is typically associated with stem cells/uncommitted progenitors. By assaying sorted cells in transplant assays, we demonstrate that the tumorigenicity of the osteosarcoma cell lines correlates with the presence of the Sca-1 marker. Finally, we show that loss of Rb and p53 in Sca-1-positive mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells is sufficient to yield transformed cells that can initiate osteosarcoma formation in vivo.
Building compact language models for medical speech recognition in mobile devices with limited amount of memory

The article presents the method of building compact language model for speech recognition in devices w ith limited amount of memory. Most popularly used bigram word-based language models allow for highly accurate speech recognition but need large amount of memory to stor e, mainly due to the big number of word bigrams. The method proposed here ranks bigrams according to their impo rtance in speech recognition and replaces explicit estimation of less important bigrams probabilities by probabilities de rived from the class-based model. The class-based model is created by assigning words appearing in the corpus to class es corresponding to syntactic properties of words. The classes represent various combinations of part of speech in flectional features like number, case, tense, perso n etc. In order to maximally reduce the amount of memory necessary to store class-based model, a method that reduces the number of part-of-speech classes has been applied, that merge s the classes appearing in stochastically similar c ontexts in the corpus. The experiments carried out with selected d omains of medical speech show that the method allows for 75% reduction of model size without significant loss of speech recognition accuracy.
Centralization of intragroup equity ties and performance of business group affiliates

Research summary: Although prior research has suggested that equity ties are important for business groups, less attention has been paid to the specific mechanisms through which equity ties create value. We develop a framework that specifies how centralization of intragroup equity ties affects the performance of group affiliates. We use the exogenous shock of the 2008 financial crisis and a difference-in-differences analysis of 51,730 observations of business group affiliates in Taiwan to show that centralization of equity ties enhances affiliate performance, but such effects weaken when the environment becomes turbulent. Moreover, we find that listed affiliates obtain fewer benefits from centralization than unlisted affiliates. Overall, our study deepens scholarly understanding of not only how groups create value, but also how value is differentially appropriated among affiliates. Managerial summary: Our research speaks directly to owner-managers of business groups with respect to creating an optimal equity network structure that binds the affiliated firms of the group. Our findings suggest to managers that the overall structure of equity ties in a business group has major implications for the performance of the affiliate firms of the group, and the network structure within the group should be designed deliberately and thoughtfully on an on-going basis. In particular, control through centralized equity ties is performance-enhancing in normal periods, but such control may be counterproductive as turbulence increases in business environments, or as the number of listed group firms increases. Hence, owner-managers may consider optimizing the network structure by lowering the degree of centralized equity ties under such circumstances, or at a minimum, lowering centralized control. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Potential for Biomedical Applications of Galactomannans and Xyloglucansfrom Seeds: An Overview

Galactomannans and xyloglucans can be isolated from seeds with relatively high purity and yield; they are water soluble, non-toxic, and biocompatible. These polymers have broad spectra of potential use in medicine, from drug delivery systems to biological response modifiers. The biological activity of polysaccharides is intrinsically linked to their structural aspects. In general the chemical modification of galactomannans and xyloglucans, e.g., sulfation and complexation with oxovanadium, potentiate effects such as cytotoxicity against tumor cells, leishmanicidal activity, and activation of macrophages to release proinflammatory mediators. The wide range of seeds and structural variety favor the isolation of galactomannans and xyloglucans. This allows derivatives to be obtained with targeted properties and activity enabling their use in new applications in the biomedical area.
Comment on ‘Non-invasive monitoring of chewing and swallowing for objective quantification of ingestive behavior’

The paper of Sazonov et al (2008 Physiol. Meas. 29 525–41) addresses the topic of on-body sensor-based measurement and analysis of food intake and eating behaviour. The authors rightly pinpoint a lack of solutions to estimate eating behaviour and energy intake in contrast to the active development of energy expenditure prediction tools. Unfortunately, Sazonov and colleagues have missed reviewing a considerable amount of published research in the field of ubiquitous and wearable computing. Moreover, it should be noted that objective measurement techniques exist for laboratory studies of chewing and swallowing that could have served for the validation of their work. This letter summarizes relevant related works and identifies refinements of the study methodology suggested by Sazonov et al. Food intake behaviour is very variable and hard to capture. Nevertheless, the approaches towards automatic dietary monitoring (ADM) cited in this letter confirm the broad potential for sensing and pattern recognition techniques. ADM could eventually supplement or replace intake diaries.
A six-stage framework for evolutionary IS research using path models: Conceptual development and a social networking illustration

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in evolutionary theorizing in the field of information systems. Evolutionary theorizing has recently been added as a useful tool to the research repertoire of information systems investigators. However, the literature on evolutionary theorizing and related empirical research lacks a clear framework that explicitly shows how information systems researchers can go, step-by-step, from a generic model of the evolution of traits in our ancestral past to a more specific model depicting the effects of technology facilitation of those traits among modern humans. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap through a framework composed of six stages. Design/methodology/approach – To discuss and illustrate the framework, the authors develop an easy-to-understand generic path model explicitly depicting relationships among variables related to events that occurred in our evolutionary past. We then incrementally adapt this generic path model, eventually arriving at.
The impact of glucotoxicity on pancreatic β-cell function

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is connected with elevated plasma glucose levels which negatively influence β-cells and cause impaired glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS). The aim of present thesis was to investigate the impact of long-term hyperglycemia on the pancreatic islet β-cell function. The data showed abnormally increased expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) protein in the islets from diabetic donors as well as in the islets exposed to chronic hyperglycemia. cAMP analogue or PDE inhibitors counteract these abnormalities and restore β-cell function at least in part, by activating cyclic AMP/PKA system. Using two different diabetic animal models i.e. mild hyperlipidemic ZDF (fa/fa) and hyperglycemic GK rat, we found that chronic hyperglycemia in the absence of hyperlipidemia almost abolish GPR40 expression in the islet cells and abrogate the FFA-induced secretory effects. We suggest that this might be an important contributing factor for dysfunction of β-cells seen in human type 2 diabetes (T2D). Furthermore we also observed that prolonged exposure of INS-1E and INS-1 832/13 cells or isolated human islets to high glucose concentration are associated with increased level of VDAC1 and reduced level of VDAC2 accompanied with marked reduction of GSIS. Similar to glucose, 2-deoxy-glucose also increased the expression of VDAC1. Addition of glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK-3β) inhibitor reversed the alteration in VDAC1/VADC2 expression and improved GSIS. Islets of type 2 diabetic donors showed increased expression of VDAC1 and a marked reduction of VDAC2. Diabetic islets also displayed increased expression of ChREBP and TXNIP. Down-regulation of ChREBP and TXNIP in INS-1 832/13 cells cultured at high glucose suppressed high glucose-induced increase in VDAC1 expression. The cultured INS-1 832/13 cells also exhibited a reduced expression of VADC1 when resveratrol (a polyphenolic compound) was present. The data suggest that an increased expression of iNOS, increased expression of VDAC1 and reduced expression of VDAC2 are the main causative factors in the pathogenesis of glucotoxicity. The GPR40 protein is interactively modulated by both hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia. Taken together, these contributing signaling factors are promising targets for pharmacotherapy in different variants of type 2 diabetes.
Local food and municipal food services: case Kiuruvesi, Finland

In Finland, the Kiuruvesi municipality is the pioneer in use of local and organic food (LOF) in the statutory municipal catering services. The LOF strategy is based on territorial approach, and it was adopted as one means of enhancing the attractiveness of the remotely located municipality with unfavorable population development. The local policymakers have been fully committed to the strategy, and this has enabled the consistent development during nearly two decades. The Kiuruvesi case demonstrates the gradual shift of focus in the competitive bidding process from price-based tendering towards anticipatory dialogue and interaction between the suppliers and catering personnel. Over the years the LOF concept has brought about various kinds of food entrepreneurship to the region. The case serves, therefore, also as an example of the institutional customers’ significance for the SME:s in the competitive food market.
The financial influence of terrorist attacks on the domestic stock market

Efficient capital markets are only influenced by new information. So news about a terrorist attack should influence the domestic stock market. This study aims to examine in what way the domestic stock market is influenced by terrorist attacks. Therefore the following research question is developed: In what way are specific sectors of the domestic stock market financially influenced by Terrorism? Since it was not clear which sectors were positively or negatively influenced by a terrorist attack and how long it takes for the stock market to recuperate from a terrorist attack, I conducted a case study. I examined two terrorist attack cases: The terrorist attacks of 9.11. 2001 in New York and the terrorist attacks of 11.13. 2015 in Paris.
B-type natriuretic peptide-guided heart failure therapy: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND The use of plasma levels of B-type natriuretic peptides (BNPs) to guide treatment of patients with chronic heart failure (HF) has been investigated in a number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, the benefits of this treatment approach have been uncertain. We therefore performed a meta-analysis to examine the overall effect of BNP-guided drug therapy on cardiovascular outcomes in patients with chronic HF. METHODS We identified RCTs by systematic search of manuscripts, abstracts, and databases. Eligible RCTs were those that enrolled more than 20 patients and involved comparison of BNP-guided drug therapy vs usual clinical care of the patient with chronic HF in an outpatient setting. RESULTS Eight RCTs with a total of 1726 patients and with a mean duration of 16 months (range, 3-24 months) were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, there was a significantly lower risk of all-cause mortality (relative risk [RR], 0.76; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.63-0.91; P = .003) in the BNP-guided therapy group compared with the control group. In the subgroup of patients younger than 75 years, all-cause mortality was also significantly lower in the BNP-guided group (RR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.33-0.82; P = .005). However, there was no reduction in mortality with BNP-guided therapy in patients 75 years or older (RR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.71-1.25; P = .70). The risk of all-cause hospitalization and survival free of any hospitalization was not significantly different between groups (RR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.64-1.05; P = .12 and RR, 1.07; 95% CI, 0.85-1.34; P = .58, respectively). The additional percentage of patients achieving target doses of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and beta-blockers during the course of these trials averaged 21% and 22% in the BNP group and 11.7% and 12.5% in the control group, respectively. CONCLUSIONS B-type natriuretic peptide-guided therapy reduces all-cause mortality in patients with chronic HF compared with usual clinical care, especially in patients younger than 75 years. A component of this survival benefit may be due to increased use of agents proven to decrease mortality in chronic HF. However, there does not seem to be a reduction in all-cause hospitalization or an increase in survival free of hospitalization using this approach.
Hardware implementation of a visual-motion pixel using oriented spatiotemporal neural filters

A pixel for measuring two-dimensional (2-D) visual motion with two one-dimensional (1-D) detectors has been implemented in very large scale integration. Based on the spatiotemporal feature extraction model of Adelson and Bergen, the pixel is realized using a general-purpose analog neural computer and a silicon retina. Because the neural computer only offers sum-and-threshold neurons, the Adelson and Bergen's model is modified. The quadratic nonlinearity is replaced with a full-wave rectification, while the contrast normalization is replaced with edge detection and thresholding. Motion is extracted in two dimensions by using two 1-D detectors with spatial smoothing orthogonal to the direction of motion. Analysis shows that our pixel, although it has some limitations, has much lower hardware complexity compared to the full 2-D model. It also produces more accurate results and has a reduced aperture problem compared to the two 1-D model with no smoothing. Real-time velocity is represented as a distribution of activity of the 18 X and 18 Y velocity-tuned neural filters.
Salience and Mispricing: Homebuyers’ Housing Decisions

We show that a regulatory disclosure of hidden debt eliminated a large mispricing in housing. In a setting where homebuyers must combine several sources of debt, they are biased towards hidden loans, especially if they are young, or have no experience in financial investments or home acquisition. By reducing the mispricing of units with hidden debt, the increased salience of debt benefited homebuyers, particularly those that suffered most from it. An average homebuyer could save about $20,000 by acquiring a dwelling with a one standard deviation lower debt. We confirm that lack of salience was the major source of the bias, by showing that the regulation nearly eliminated the mispricing.