Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On dichotomizing phenotypes in family‐based association tests: quantitative phenotypes are not always the optimal choice

In family‐based association studies, quantitative traits are thought to provide higher statistical power than dichotomous traits. Consequently, it is standard practice to collect quantitative traits and to analyze them as such. However, in many situations, continuous measurements are more difficult to obtain and/or need to be adjusted for other factors/confounding variables which also have to be measured. In such scenarios, it can be advantageous to record and analyze a “simplified/dichotomized” version of the original trait. Under fairly general circumstances, we derive here rules for the dichotomization of quantitative traits that maintain power levels that are comparable to the analysis of the original quantitative trait. Using simulation studies, we show that the proposed rules are robust against phenotypic misclassification, making them an ideal tool for inexpensive phenotyping in large‐scale studies. The guidelines are illustrated by an application to an asthma study. Genet. Epidemiol. 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Determinants of Interregional Migration Flows in Korea by Age Groups, 1995-2014

Despite the growing importance of interregional migration at the local level in rapidly aging society, past literature overlooked the relationship between these two demographic phenomena. To better understand the determinants of interregional migration and its implications for population aging, this study estimated fixed-effects models derived from the gravity model of migration using population registration data. Contrary to theoretical expectation, economic determinants of migration showed similar patterns across three age groups. Other than the effect of crude marriage rate for young age group, life course variables showed inconsistent effects on migration. Trends in migration flows by geographical regions indicated that some provinces are in double jeopardy because their elderly population is increasing while the young population decreases. Visual inspection of migration systems drawn from social network analysis suggested that migration streams between Seoul and Gyeonggi overwhelms all other regions and that Ulsan and Jeju are isolated throughout the periods.
A configurable service-based framework for composition, delivery and evaluation of composite web services in distributed QoS-aware ICT environment

We present the architecture of novel framework for the composition and execution of web services, called platform for telecommunications (PlaTel). In this framework we consider ontology-based service description, service composition, communication link modelling as well as the application of ontology in the service discovery. We provide a unified approach to the ontological description of services and propose the use of upper level ontologies which have partially predefined structure covering all concepts used for functional description of services, QoS and communication modelling and domain-specific description of the services. Additionally, the PlaTel framework has several unique features which stem from the idea of addressing problems of service execution and composition by means of dedicated and configurable composite web services (the components of our framework).
A Decentralised Symbolic Diagnosis Approach

This paper considers the diagnosis of large discrete-event systems consisting of many components. The problem is to determine, online, all failures and states that explain a given sequence of observations. Several model-based diagnosis approaches deal with this problem but they usually have either poor time performance or result in space explosion. Recent work has shown that both problems can be tackled when encoding diagnosis approaches symbolically by means of binary decision diagrams. This paper further improves upon these results and presents a decentralised symbolic diagnosis method that computes the diagnosis information for each component off-line and then combines them on-line. Experimental results show that our method provides significant improvements over existing approaches.
Carbohydrate ingestion during prolonged exercise: effects on metabolism and performance.

It is well recognized that energy from CHO oxidation is required to perform prolonged strenuous (greater than 60% VO2 max) exercise. During the past 25 years, the concept has developed that muscle glycogen is the predominant source of CHO energy for strenuous exercise; as a result, the potential energy contribution of blood glucose has been somewhat overlooked. Although during the first hour of exercise at 70-75% VO2max, most of the CHO energy is derived from muscle glycogen, it is clear that the contribution of muscle glycogen decreases over time as muscle glycogen stores become depleted, and that blood glucose uptake and oxidation increase progressively to maintain CHO oxidation (Fig. 1.7). We theorize that over the course of several hours of strenuous exercise (i.e., 3-4 h), blood glucose and muscle glycogen contribute equal amounts of CHO energy, making blood glucose at least as important as muscle glycogen as a CHO source. During the latter stages of exercise, blood glucose can potentially provide all of the CHO energy needed to support exercise at 70-75% VO2max if blood glucose availability is maintained. During prolonged exercise in the fasted state, however, blood glucose concentration often decreases owing to depletion of liver glycogen stores. This relative hypoglycemia, although only occasionally severe enough to result in fatigue from neuroglucopenia, causes fatigue by limiting blood glucose (and therefore total CHO) oxidation. The primary purpose of CHO ingestion during continuous strenuous exercise is to maintain blood glucose concentration and thus CHO oxidation and exercise tolerance during the latter stages of prolonged exercise. CHO feeding throughout continuous exercise does not alter muscle glycogen use. It appears that blood glucose must be supplemented at a rate of approximately 1 g/min late in exercise. Feeding sufficient amounts of CHO 30 minutes before fatigue is as effective as ingesting CHO throughout exercise in maintaining blood glucose availability and CHO oxidation late in exercise. Most persons should not wait, however, until they are fatigued before ingesting CHO, because it appears that glucose entry into the blood does not occur rapidly enough at this time. It also may be advantageous to ingest CHO throughout intermittent or low-intensity exercise rather than toward the end of exercise because of the potential for glycogen synthesis in resting muscle fibers. Finally, CHO ingestion during prolonged strenuous exercise delays by approximately 45 minutes but does not prevent fatigue, suggesting that factors other than CHO availability eventually cause fatigue.
Background Paper on Global Trends in Food Production, Intake and Composition

Trends in the production of food sources of fat have a global impact on the availability of fat for human consumption. Global data on fat supply obtained from food balance sheets (FBS) as well as individual food intake data contribute to an understanding of the relationship between fat intake patterns and health outcomes. In order to translate food intake data into fatty acids consumed, information from food composition databases is required. Information from food composition databases on the fatty acid composition of foods also helps monitor changes and trends.
v-Mapper: An Application-Aware Resource Consolidation Scheme for Cloud Data Centers

Cloud computing systems are popular in computing industry for their ease of use and wide range of applications. These systems offer services that can be used over the Internet. Due to their wide popularity and usage, cloud computing systems and their services often face issues resource management related challenges. In this paper, we present v-Mapper, a resource consolidation scheme which implements network resource management concepts through software-defined networking (SDN) control features. The paper makes three major contributions: (1) We propose a virtual machine (VM) placement scheme that can effectively mitigate the VM placement issues for data-intensive applications; (2) We propose a validation scheme that will ensure that a cloud service is entertained only if there are sufficient resources available for its execution and (3) We present a scheduling policy that aims to eliminate network load constraints. We tested our scheme with other techniques in terms of average task processing time, service delay and bandwidth usage. Our results demonstrate that v-Mapper outperforms other techniques and delivers significant improvement in system’s performance.
Implementing a flexible testbed using dynamic FFR scheme in OFDMA based cognitive radio networks

In this paper, the femtocell resource allocation in the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) integrated cognitive radio (CR) networks has been demonstrated to optimize the network performance, while reducing the outage users at cell edges. The sub-band sharing flexibility not only improves the spectral efficiency of the dynamic FFR scheme against conventional approach but also it alleviates outage probability and further noticeable amount of improvement can be found in superior performance parameters such as capacity, CDF of SINR and overall cell throughput. We yield an analytical framework to ascertain the orthogonality of the subcarriers by compensating carrier frequency offset (CFO) to ensure better OFDMA performance in the proposed network model and illustrates the influence of frequency reuse factor (FRF) at cell edges via simulation results.
Managing Capital Flows in an Economic Community: The Case of ASEAN Capital Account Liberalization

The paper uses the emerging Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community as a motivation to explore the issue of capital flow management in an economic community. Although there is an increasingly shared view that capital flow management measures should be part of the routine policy toolkit of emerging market economies, the logic of an economic community appears incompatible with extensive controls on capital flows. Substantial, if not complete, capital account liberalization must therefore take place across ASEAN.
Pengaruh Manajemen Modal Kerja pada Kinerja Perusahaan yang Terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia

The purpose of this study wa to exmanine the effect of working capital management on firms' performance for a sample of firms listed on Indonesian Stock Exchange.Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) was use to measure working capital management and accounting profitability (Gross Operating Profit/GOP)and firms' value (Tobin's Q)was used to measure firm performance. By using multiple regression, this study found that simultanously CCC and several control variable (SIZE, Sales Growth,Laverage financial and Variability of net Operating Income)had significant influence on firm performance. Besides, Laverage Financial and Variability of Net Operating Income had significant influence of firm performance. Keywords : Working Capital, Cash Conversion Cycle, Gross Operating Profit, Tobin's Q
Financing Business School Education: What Are the Economic Returns and Implications for Africa?

To be able to finance their physical assets and working capital costs, business schools mainly raise funds from any or a combination of the following: direct funding by the public sector or the government; income from providing educational services; debt (bank and bond); equity by private owners; public-private partnerships; research grants; and private sector endowment funds. This is a financing decision. But, it is the capital budgeting decision that matters! Business schools have to yield positive economic rates of return to become viable and attractive investment propositions; they must also yield positive non-pecuniary benefits. This paper provides a selective survey of the evidence on the core question of the rate of return to university education, and points out policy implications for business school education in Africa.
Bacterial oxidation of chemical carcinogens: formation of polycyclic aromatic acids from benz[a]anthracene

A Beijerinckia strain designated strain B1 was shown to oxidize benz[a]anthracene after induction with biphenyl, m-xylene, and salicylate. Biotransformation experiments showed that after 14 h a maximum of 56% of the benz[a]anthracene was converted to an isomeric mixture of three o-hydroxypolyaromatic acids. Nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectral analyses led to the identification of the major metabolite as 1-hydroxy-2-anthranoic acid. Two minor metabolites were also isolated and identified as 2-hydroxy-3-phenanthroic acid and 3-hydroxy-2-phenanthroic acid. Mineralization experiments with [12-14C]benz[a]anthracene led to the formation of 14CO2. These results show that the hydroxy acids can be further oxidized and that at least two rings of the benz[a]anthracene molecule can be degraded.
Serum salusin-α levels are inversely correlated with the presence and severity of coronary artery disease

Abstract We sought to measure serum salusin-α levels in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and to assess their correlation with the severity of the disease. We enrolled 172 patients with CAD and 91 controls. We assessed the angiographic severity of CAD by coronary atherosclerosis index (CAI) and detected serum salusin-α levels by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). We demonstrated that CAD patients had significantly lower serum salusin-α levels compared to controls. Moreover, serum salusin-α levels were independently and negatively correlated with the presence and severity of CAD. These findings indicated that salusin-α might serve as a potential biomarker for predicting the development and progression of CAD.
Nearly optimal linear transceiver design for amplify‐and‐forward MIMO multiple‐relay systems under MMSE criterion

In this paper, we consider amplify‐and‐forward multiple‐input multiple‐output multiple‐relay systems, where all the nodes have multiple antennas. For enhancing link reliability, we address the problem of designing optimal linear transceiver to minimize the mean squared error (MSE) of symbol estimations subject to the total relay transmit power constraint. This problem is highly complex and has not been solved in the literature. We first simplify this optimization problem to one that takes a singular value vector and a unitary matrix as optimization variables. Then based on the analyses for the simplified problem, we develop an iterative algorithm consisting of one boundary optimization and one unitary matrix constrained optimization. We show analytically that the proposed iterative algorithm always converges, and the MSE is monotonically decreasing from one iteration to the next. Finally, numerical results demonstrate the nearly optimal performance of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Phylogeny and systematics of the genus Calonectria

Species of Calonectria are important plant pathogens, several of which have a worldwide distribution. Contemporary taxonomic studies on these fungi have chiefly relied on DNA sequence comparisons of the β-tubulin gene region. Despite many new species being described, there has been no phylogenetic synthesis for the group since the last monographic study almost a decade ago. In the present study, the identity of a large collection of Calonectria isolates from various geographic regions was determined using morphological and DNA sequence comparisons. This resulted in the discovery of seven new species; Ca. densa, Ca. eucalypti, Ca. humicola, Ca. orientalis, Ca. pini, Ca. pseudoscoparia and Ca. sulawesiensis, bringing the total number of currently accepted Calonectria species to 68. A multigene phylogeny was subsequently constructed for all available Calonectria spp. , employing seven gene regions, namely actin, β-tubulin, calmodulin, histone H3, the internal transcribed spacer regions 1 and 2 and the 5.8S gene of the ribosomal RNA, 28S large subunit RNA gene and translation elongation 1-alpha. Based on these data 13 phylogenetic groups could be distinguished within the genus Calonectria that correlated with morphological features. Dichotomous and synoptic keys to all Calonectria spp. currently recognised are also provided.
Regular Abstract of Concept Lattice in Network Communication

The web page in network communication were partitioned to Hub web page and Authority web page. Simplifying the H-A web page set was more researched by making abstract method in this paper. Existing condition of the regular abstract was deeply researched and discussed, and the solution to the regular abstraction was given too. So simplifying the huge web page concept lattice about network communication was solved by a better way.
Major role for sensory feedback in soleus EMG activity in the stance phase of walking in man

1 Sensory feedback plays a major role in the regulation of the spinal neural locomotor circuitry in cats. The present study investigated whether sensory feedback also plays an important role during walking in 20 healthy human subjects, by arresting or unloading the ankle extensors 6 deg for 210 ms in the stance phase of gait. 2 During the stance phase of walking, unloading of the ankle extensors significantly (P < 0·05) reduced the soleus activity by 50 % in early and mid‐stance at an average onset latency of 64 ms. 3 The onset and amplitude of the decrease in soleus activity produced by the unloading were unchanged when the common peroneal nerve, which innervates the ankle dorsiflexors, was reversibly blocked by local injection of lidocaine (n= 3). This demonstrated that the effect could not be caused by a peripherally mediated reciprocal inhibition from afferents in the antagonist nerves. 4 The onset and amplitude of the decrease in soleus activity produced by the unloading were also unchanged when ischaemia was induced in the leg by inflating a cuff placed around the thigh. At the same time, the group Ia‐mediated short latency stretch reflex was completely abolished. This demonstrated that group Ia afferents were probably not responsible for the decrease of soleus activity produced by the unloading. 5 The findings demonstrate that afferent feedback from ankle extensors is of significant importance for the activation of these muscles in the stance phase of human walking. Group II and/or group Ib afferents are suggested to constitute an important part of this sensory feedback.
Critical signaling pathways during Wallerian degeneration of peripheral nerve

Wallerian degeneration is a critical biological process that occurs in distal nerve stumps after nerve injury. To systematically investigate molecular changes underlying Wallerian degeneration, we used a rat sciatic nerve transection model to examine microarray analysis outcomes and investigate significantly involved Kyoto Enrichment of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways in injured distal nerve stumps at 0, 0.5, 1, 6, 12, and 24 hours, 4 days, 1, 2, 3, and 4 weeks after peripheral nerve injury. Bioinformatic analysis showed that only one KEGG pathway (cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction) was significantly enriched at an early time point (1 hour post-sciatic nerve transection). At later time points, the number of enriched KEGG pathways initially increased and then decreased. Three KEGG pathways were studied in further detail: cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, and axon guidance. Moreover, temporal expression patterns of representative differentially expressed genes in these KEGG pathways were validated by real time-polymerase chain reaction. Taken together, the above three signaling pathways are important after sciatic nerve injury, and may increase our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying Wallerian degeneration
Conversational Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition

Colloquial Arabic (CA) is the set of spoken variants of modern Arabic that exist in the form of regional dialects and are considered generally to be mother-tongues in those regions. CA has limited textual resource because it exists only as a spoken language and without a standardised written form. Normally the modern standard Arabic (MSA) writing convention is employed that has limitations in phonetically representing CA. Without phonetic dictionaries the pronunciation of CA words is ambiguous, and can only be obtained through word and/or sentence context. Moreover, CA inherits the MSA complex word structure where words can be created from attaching affixes to a word. In automatic speech recognition (ASR), commonly used approaches to model acoustic, pronunciation and word variability are language independent. However, one can observe significant differences in performance between English and CA, with the latter yielding up to three times higher error rates. This thesis investigates the main issues for the under-performance of CA ASR systems. The work focuses on two directions: first, the impact of limited lexical coverage, and insufficient training data for written CA on language modelling is investigated; second, obtaining better models for the acoustics and pronunciations by learning to transfer between written and spoken forms. Several original contributions result from each direction. Using data-driven classes from decomposed text are shown to reduce out-of-vocabulary rate. A novel colloquialisation system to import additional data is introduced; automatic diacritisation to restore the missing short vowels was found to yield good performance; and a new acoustic set for describing CA was defined. Using the proposed methods improved the ASR performance in terms of word error rate in a CA conversational telephone speech ASR task.
Bradykinin‐evoked changes in cytosolic calcium and membrane currents in cultured bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells.

1. Cultured bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells were voltage clamped using a single microelectrode while cytosolic free calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) was simultaneously measured using the fluorescent calcium indicator, Indo‐1. 2. The resting current‐voltage relationship was non‐linear and exhibited marked inward rectification near the resting potential. In about 60% of cells examined, superfusion of saline resulted in a hyperpolarization and decrease in inward current. This result did not depend on the presence of agonist and is consistent with the presence of extracellular potassium accumulation in restricted spaces around the cell and the known dependence of the inward rectifier. In other cells there was no effect. 3. Resting [Ca2+]i was sensitive to membrane potential, decreasing continuously with membrane depolarization over the range ‐70 to +60 mV. This result is consistent with a simple pump‐leak model and suggests that voltage‐dependent calcium channels are not present in these cells. 4. Bradykinin (10 microM) increased [Ca2+]i after a delay of approximately 3 s. [Ca2+]i reached a peak after a further 3 s and declined over several minutes. 5. During the rise in [Ca2+]i evoked by application of bradykinin, there were no changes in the current‐voltage relationship of the cell. These results question the role of a receptor‐operated non‐selective cation channel in mediating the increase in [Ca2+]i. This observation, coupled with the observed delay in the agonist‐evoked response suggests that a second messenger system is involved in mediating the increase in [Ca2+]i. 6. Changes in the current‐voltage relation started to occur about 30 s after the application of agonist. These changes could be explained by the activation of large‐conductance potassium and non‐selective cation channels with a reversal potential near 0 mV. The latter channels may mediate the plateau phase of the agonist‐evoked response. 7. The results are discussed with respect to the pathways for calcium entry into the cell and possible explanations for discrepancies between the results of this and other studies are presented.