Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The GABAA receptor channel mediated chloride ion translocation through the plasma membrane: New insights from 36Cl− ion flux measurements

GABAA receptors in plasma membranes of neurons are integral oligomers which form chloride channels. The binding of GABA molecules at recognition sites for channel opening triggers a transient increase in transmembrane chloride ion flux. The multiplicity and drug specificity of GABAA receptor, kinetics of channel opening, and desensitization of GABAA receptor and its short‐ and long‐term regulation have been investigated by the use of tracer amounts of the radioactive chloride isotope, 36Cl− ion. Results and new insights from 36Cl− ion flux measurements have been reviewed. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The impact of R&D intensity on firm performance in an emerging market: Evidence from China’s electronics manufacturing firms

The impact pattern of R&D intensity on firm performance is an interesting but not explicitly untangled topic in the emerging market. This study explores the topic in the context of China using a unique unbalanced panel data set for the China’s electronics manufacturing firms. In order to strengthen the robustness of the statistical results, this study employs two coherent models: pooled-OLS regression and pooled-quantile regression techniques. The pooled-OLS regressions focusing on mean effects present the robust evidence of a positive relationship between R&D intensity on firm performance, and the further pooled-quantile regressions portraying the relative importance of explanatory variables at different points of the performance distribution show that the R&D intensity exhibits a stronger impact on the better-performance firms. Our study presents some new evidence for the impact of R&D intensity on firm performance in the emerging market.
Identification of Amino Acid Residues in Bone Morphogenetic Protein-1 Important for Procollagen C-proteinase Activity*

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-1, which belongs to the tolloid subgroup of astacin-like zinc metalloproteinases, cleaves the C-propeptides of procollagen at the physiologic site and is, therefore, a procollagen C-proteinase (PCP). Cleavage occurs between a specific alanine or glycine residue (depending on the procollagen chain) and an invariant aspartic acid residue in each of the three chains of procollagen. To learn more about how BMP-1 exhibits PCP activity we mapped the primary structure of BMP-1 onto the x-ray crystal structure of astacin and identified residues in the metalloproteinase domain of BMP-1 for subsequent site-directed mutagenesis studies. Recombinant wild-type and mutant BMP-1 were expressed in COS-7 cells and assayed for PCP activity using type I procollagen as the substrate. We showed that substitution of alanine for Glu94, which occurs in the HEXXH zinc-binding motif of BMP-1, abolishes PCP activity. Furthermore, mutation of residues Lys87 and Lys176, which are located in the S1′ pocket of the enzyme and are therefore adjacent to the P1′ residue in the substrate, reduced the proteolytic activity of BMP-1 by ∼50%. A surprising observation was that mutation of Cys66 reduced the activity to 20%, suggesting that this residue is crucial for activity. Further experiments showed that Cys66 and Cys63, which are located in the tolloid-specific sequence Cys63-Gly64-Cys65-Cys66in the active site, most likely form a disulfide bridge.
Study on mechanism of thermal curing in ultra-thin gate dielectrics

In order to realize the sustainable devices, thermal curing technologies by self-heating are attracting attention recently. In order to understand the progression of the recovery by heating, in this paper, the thermal curing of the deteriorations at gate oxide interfaces under TDDB-like high-voltage stressing was investigated in PFETs and NFETs. As results, the damage in PFETs can be recovered even by low temperature annealing (∼300°C), but in the case of NFETs, the damage at SiO2/Si interface generated under high-voltage stressing is hard to be recovered, suggesting the existence of the other mechanism compared to the case of PFETs.
Ischemia- and agonist-induced changes in alpha- and beta-adrenergic receptor traffic in guinea pig hearts.

We have used radioligand binding techniques and subcellular fractionation to assess whether changes in expression of myocardial alpha 1- and beta-adrenergic receptors are mediated by a redistribution of receptors between various membrane fractions. Three fractions were prepared from the left ventricles of guinea pigs that underwent either 1 h of ischemia or injection of epinephrine (0.25 mg/kg ip): a crude membrane, a purified sarcolemma, and a light vesicle fraction. In control animals alpha 1-adrenergic receptors ([3H]prazosin binding) in light vesicles was only 25% of the total alpha 1-receptor density found in sarcolemmal and light vesicle fractions as compared with 50% for beta-adrenergic receptors ([125I]iodocyanopindolol binding sites). Although ischemia was associated with a 53% decrease in the number of light vesicle beta-adrenergic receptors and a 42% increase in the number of sarcolemma beta-receptors (P less than 0.05), there was no change in the number of light vesicle alpha 1-receptors, even though the number of sarcolemmal alpha 1-receptors increased 34%. Epinephrine treatment promoted internalization of beta-adrenergic receptors; sarcolemma beta-receptors decreased 37% and light vesicle beta-receptors increased 28% (P less than 0.025). For alpha 1-receptors, epinephrine treatment decreased the number of sarcolemmal receptors 41% (P less than 0.025) but failed to increase the number of receptors in the light vesicle fraction. The changes in receptor binding to beta-adrenergic receptors in sarcolemmal fractions were mirrored by parallel changes in isoproterenol-stimulated adenylate cyclase activity. These results indicate that alpha 1- and beta-adrenergic receptors may undergo a different cellular itinerary in guinea pig myocardium. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Screening for dysfunction in the children of outpatients at a psychopharmacology clinic.

OBJECTIVE The goals of this study were 1) to determine whether the use of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist in an adult-oriented psychiatric practice was feasible, 2) to determine if scores indicative of dysfunction on the Pediatric Symptom Checklist were associated with parental or background factors, 3) to determine whether children flagged by their scores on the Pediatric Symptom Checklist were receiving psychiatric services, and 4) to compare the psychosocial dysfunction in this group of children with that found in children screened as part of routine pediatric visits. METHOD Adult outpatients in a hospital's clinical psychopharmacology unit were asked to complete the Pediatric Symptom Checklist regarding their children. These patients were the parents of 100 school-aged children. Factors such as the parents' diagnoses and demographic variables were also examined. RESULTS The Pediatric Symptom Checklist was readily accepted by parents and fit easily into the routine of general psychiatric practice. Significantly more of the children of these outpatients than of children in comparable pediatric offices had scores indicative of psychiatric dysfunction (scores above the cutoff). Children of parents who were single, of low socioeconomic status, or with a diagnosis of personality (especially borderline) or mood disorder were more likely to have scores above the cutoff. More than a third of the children who had scores above the cutoff on the Pediatric Symptom Checklist were not currently receiving psychiatric services. CONCLUSIONS The Pediatric Symptom Checklist provided a rapid and simple method for general psychiatrists to identify psychosocial dysfunction in their patients' children.
Women Living With a History of Physical and/or Sexual Abuse, Substance Use, and Mental Health Problems

Most researchers have studied physical and/or sexual abuse, substance use, and mental health problems separately or as a dual diagnosis, and from a theory-driven, empirical perspective. In this study, the authors examined these three phenomena together and from a phenomenological perspective. Thirty women each participated in an individual interview about living with a history of physical and/or sexual abuse, substance use, and mental health problems. Using a hermeneutic approach, a team of researchers analyzed the transcribed interview texts. They identified three themes: (a) being thrown: the cycle of abuse; (b) living life fearfully: a restricted world; and (c) helping: hearing my story. The results are significant, in that they challenge current assumptions underlying health care for women with histories of physical and/or sexual abuse, substance use, and mental health problems.
The p85 Regulatory Subunit Controls Sequential Activation of Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase by Tyr Kinases and Ras*

Class IA phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) is a heterodimer composed of a p85 regulatory and a p110 catalytic subunit that regulates a variety of cell responses, including cell division and survival. PI3K is activated following Tyr kinase stimulation and by Ras. We found that the C-terminal region of p85, including the C-Src homology 2 (C-SH2) domain and part of the inter-SH2 region, protects the p110 catalytic subunit from Ras-induced activation. Although the p110 activity associated with a C-terminal p85 deletion mutant increased significantly in the presence of an active form of Ras, purified wild type p85-p110 was only slightly stimulated by active Ras. Nonetheless, incubation of purified p85-p110 with Tyr-phosphorylated peptides, which mimic the activated platelet-derived growth factor receptor, restored Ras-induced p85-p110 activation. In conclusion, p85 inhibits p110 activation by Ras; this blockage is released by Tyr kinase stimulation, showing that the classical mechanism of class IA PI3K stimulation mediated by Tyr kinases also regulates Ras-induced PI3K activation.
Stem Cell Therapy for Ischemic Heart Disease: Beginning or End of the Road?

Despite improvements in emergency treatment, myocardial infarction is often the beginning of a downward spiral leading to congestive heart failure. Other than heart transplantation, current therapeutic means aim at enabling the organism to survive with a heart that is working at a fraction of its original capacity. It is therefore no surprise that cardiac stem cell therapy has raised many hopes. However, neither the ideal source and type of stem cell nor the critical cell number and mode of application have been defined so far. Early reports on myocardial repair by adult bone marrow stem cells from rodent models promoted an unparalleled boost of clinical and experimental cell therapy studies. The phenomenon of stem/progenitor cell-induced angiogenesis in ischemic myocardium has ever since been reproduced by numerous groups in a variety of small and large animal models. Myogenesis, however, is an altogether different matter. Many of the initial clinical studies were fueled by the suggestion that early hematopoietic stem cells have a plasticity high enough to enable cross-lineage differentiation into cells of cardiomyocyte phenotype, but the initial enthusiasm has largely faded. The myogenic potential of stroma cell-derived mesenchymal stem cells is much better documented in animal models, but transfer to the clinical setting faces a variety of obstacles. In clinical pilot trials, we and others have demonstrated the feasibility and safety of administering progenitor cells derived from autologous bone marrow to the myocardium of patients with ischemic heart disease. Clinical efficacy data are still rare, but the few controlled trials that have been completed uniformly show a tendency towards better heart function in cell-treated patients. This review is an attempt to describe the scientific basis for cardiac cell therapy from the point of view of the clinician, focusing on problems that arise with beginning translation into the clinical setting.
New market transaction mechanisms and productivity growth enhance aquaculture production

ABSTRACT This special issue of Aquaculture Economics & Management features five articles based on contributions to the International Association of Aquaculture Economics & Management (IAAEM) sponsored section on economics and marketing at the World Aquaculture Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 19–22, 2015. The IAAEM session was conducted over 2 days with 36 presentations in the program. The presentations highlight the increased importance of aquaculture, as production and trade are expected to continue to increase. That implies that there are economic decisions to be made at all stages in the supply chain from input providers, in production, in the supply chain, and in addressing consumer preferences. This is largely reflected by the variety of topics addressed in this special issue. Although five articles in this special issue can never represent the full extent of topics and species that were covered in all presentations, they provide a fair indication of the variation when it comes to topics, but less so when it comes to species. It is worthwhile noting that, although there is an increasing focus on markets and demand, the special issue does not quite do justice to the many interesting contributions on the production side. It is also interesting to note how a number of the topics build on what was presented at Aquaculture Americas 2013 and 2014.
Acute and Chronic Toxic Effects of Chloramphenicol on Scenedesmus Obliquus and Chlorella Pyrenoidosa

The acute and chronic toxicological effects of Chloramphenicol (CAP) on Scenedesmus obliquus and Chlorella pyrenoidosa are not well understood. The indoor experiments were carried to observe and analyze the CAP induced changes. Results of the observations have showed that CAP exposure could significantly inhibit the growth of Scenedesmus obliquus in almost all the treated groups, while Chlorella pyrenoidosa exhibited less sensitivity. Chlorophyll‐a syntheses of Scenedesmus obliquus were all inhibited by CAP exposure, while Chlorella pyrenoidosa displayed obvious stimulation effect. Catalase (CAT) and Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities of both algae were promoted in all the treatments. The experimental results indicated that the growth and Chlorophyll‐a syntheses of Scenedesmus obliquus were more sensitive in response to CAP exposure than that of Chlorella pyrenoidosa. While for CAT and SOD activities, Chlorella pyrenoidosa showed more susceptible. This research provides a basic understanding of CAP toxicity to aquatic organisms.
Functional link based architectures for nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation

This paper introduces a collaborative architecture for nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation. This system is achieved linearly combining a standard linear filter and a functional link (FL) nonlinear filter. The FL filter is composed of merely nonlinear elements thus acting like a pure nonlinear kernel and modeling at best a nonlinear path. A more robust architecture is further introduced in which the FL filter is adaptively combined with an all-zero kernel (AZK) avoiding any gradient noise when nonlinearities are negligible. Experimental results show that proposed architectures present improved performance compared with other nonlinear echo cancellers notwithstanding the nonlinearity level in the echo path.
Performance comparison of classifiers on reduced phishing website dataset

The Internet is becoming a necessary and important tool in everyday life. However, Internet users might have poor security for different kinds of web threats, which may lead to financial loss or clients lacking trust in online trading and banking. Phishing is described as a skill of impersonating a trusted website aiming to obtain private and secret information such as a username and password or social security and credit card number. In this paper, phising website dataset taken from UCI was investigated. Its dimension was reduced and the performance comparison of classification algorithms is studied on reduced phishing website dataset. Phishing website dataset was taken from UCI machine learning repository. This dataset consists of 11055 records and 31 features. Feature selection algorithms were applied to reduce the dimension of phishing website dataset and to obtain higher classification performance. Then, the performance of classification algorithms is compared to other data mining classification algorithms. Finally, a comparative classification performance on the reduced dataset by using the common classification algorithms is given.
Exploiting Botulinum Neurotoxins for the Study of Brain Physiology and Pathology

Botulinum neurotoxins are metalloproteases that specifically cleave N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) proteins in synaptic terminals, resulting in a potent inhibition of vesicle fusion and transmitter release. The family comprises different serotypes (BoNT/A to BoNT/G). The natural target of these toxins is represented by the neuromuscular junction, where BoNTs block acetylcholine release. In this review, we describe the actions of botulinum toxins after direct delivery to the central nervous system (CNS), where BoNTs block exocytosis of several transmitters, with near-complete silencing of neural networks. The use of clostridial neurotoxins in the CNS has allowed us to investigate specifically the role of synaptic activity in different physiological and pathological processes. The silencing properties of BoNTs can be exploited for therapeutic purposes, for example to counteract pathological hyperactivity and seizures in epileptogenic brain foci, or to investigate the role of activity in degenerative diseases like prion disease. Altogether, clostridial neurotoxins and their derivatives hold promise as powerful tools for both the basic understanding of brain function and the dissection and treatment of activity-dependent pathogenic pathways.
The Americleft Project: Comparison of Ratings Using Two-Dimensional Versus Three-Dimensional Images for Evaluation of Nasolabial Appearance in Patients With Unilateral Cleft Lip and Palate

Abstract This study was conducted to determine if nasolabial appearance is rated with comparable results and reliability on 3-dimensional stereophotogrammetric facial images versus standard clinical photographs (2-dimensional). Twenty-seven consecutively treated patients with repaired complete unilateral cleft lip and palate were selected. Six trained and calibrated raters assessed cropped 2- and 3-dimensional facial images. Nasolabial profile, nasolabial frontal, and vermillion border esthetics were rated with the 5-point scale described by Asher-McDade using the modified Q-sort method. Cropped 3-dimensional images were available for viewing by each rater, allowing for complete rotational control for viewing the images from all aspects. Two- and three-dimensional ratings were done separately and repeated the next day. Interrater reliability scores were good for 2-dimensional (&kgr; = 0.607–0.710) and fair to good for 3-dimensional imaging (&kgr; = 0.374–0.769). Intrarater reliability was good to very good for 2-dimensional (&kgr; = 0.749–0.836) and moderate to good for 3-dimensional imaging (&kgr; = 0.554–0.855). Bland–Altman analysis showed satisfactory agreement of 2- and 3-dimensional scores for nasolabial profile and nasolabial frontal, but more systematic error occurred in the assessment of vermillion border. Although 3-dimensional images may be perceived as more representative of a direct clinical facial evaluation, their use for subjective rating of nasolabial aesthetics was not more reliable than 2-dimensional images in this study. Conventional 2-dimensional images provide acceptable reliability while being readily accessible for most cleft palate centers.
Three Essays on Trend Analysis and Misspecification in Structural Econometric Models

DOORN, DAVID JOHN. Three Essays on Trend Analysis and Misspecification in Structural Econometric Models. (Under the direction of Alastair Hall) The purpose of this research has been to look into several econometric issues of concern to researchers doing applied work in macroeconomics. The first essay looks at Bureau of Economic Analysis data on inventories and sales of finished goods often used in studies of inventory behavior. Applying recently developed methods, the series are rigorously tested to determine their stationarity properties. Results indicate that neither first differencing nor linearly detrending the data is appropriate. For most series a trend function with one or more breaks offers a better fit and also generates stationarity. The results are used to determine the impact on estimation in a simple production-smoothing model of inventory behavior. The impact of different trend specifications on univariate forecasting of inventories is also considered. The second essay considers an alternative method of detrending time series data – the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter. Previous research has shown that HP filtering can have serious adverse consequences when used to analyze co-movements between data series at business cycle frequencies. Despite this, the filter has also been used to induce stationarity in a data series prior to estimation of structural econometric models. Little work has been done in analyzing the possible effects this may have on parameter estimates from such models. A simulation study is conducted to assess the impact of HP filtering on parameter estimation and a comparison is made to other detrending methods. It is shown that the HP filter induces bias in the parameter estimates and also increases the root mean squared error of the estimates from the simulations. In addition, there is some adverse impact on the size of certain test statistics. The final essay looks at the impact of misspecification on estimation results from a structural econometric model when using a Generalized Method of Moments estimator. Simulated data consistent with a particular specification of the model is used to estimate two misspecified versions. It is shown that misspecification causes the probability limit of the estimator to differ from the true value. It is further shown that a popular specification test performs poorly in detecting the misspecification. An alternative method of model selection is shown to perform far better. Finally, because the use of conventional asymptotic theory is not appropriate in misspecified models, a recently proposed alternative asymptotic theory is tested to determine whether there is improvement in the ability to perform inference on the parameters from misspecified models. THREE ESSAYS ON TREND ANALYSIS AND MISSPECIFICATION IN STRUCTURAL ECONOMETRIC MODELS
Event Schema Induction using Tensor Factorization with Back-off

The goal of Event Schema Induction(ESI) is to identify schemas of events from a corpus of documents. For example, given documents from the sports domain, we would like to infer that win(WinningPlayer, Trophy, OpponentPlayer, Location) is an important event schema for this domain. Automatic discovery of such event schemas is an important first step towards building domain-specific Knowledge Graphs (KGs). ESI has been the focus of some prior research, with generative models achieving the best performance. In this paper,we propose TFB, a tensor factorization-based method with back-off for ESI. TFB solves a novel objective to factorize Open Information Extraction (OpenIE) tuples for inducing binary schemas. Event schemas are induced out of this set of binary schemas by solving a constrained clique problem. To the best of our knowledge this is the first application of tensor factorization for the ESI problem. TFB outperforms current state-of-the-art by 52 (absolute) points gain in accuracy, while achieving 90x speedup on average. We hope to make all the code and datasets used in the paper publicly available upon publication of the paper.