Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A house with many rooms: how the heart got its chambers with foxn4.

The vertebrate heart is initially formed from two lateral domains of cardiogenic mesoderm that fuse at the ventral midline to form a simple heart tube that is similar to the hearts or dorsal vessels of invertebrates. As development proceeds, this initial heart tube undergoes a series of morphogenetic rearrangements that subdivides the heart into the distinct chambers found in adult vertebrates. In this issue of Genes & Development, Chi et al. (2008) describe a novel transcriptional pathway required for separation of the outflow (ventricular) portion from the inflow (atrial) portion of the two-chambered zebrafish heart. This separation takes place at the atrioventricular (AV) canal, which forms the valves separating the ventricular and atrial compartments required for unidirectional blood flow, as well as the electrical conduction system required for proper cardiac rhythm. Chi et al. (2008) identify a member of the forkhead box (fox) family of transcription factors, foxn4, which works in concert with tbx5 to direct the development of the AV boundary by regulating the expression of tbx2b. This study sheds new light on how the AV canal myocardium became specialized during vertebrate evolution to perform its function as both the gatekeeper of blood flow and regulator of cardiac rhythm.
Regulation of protein tyrosine phosphorylation in boar sperm through a cAMP‐dependent pathway

Changes of protein tyrosine phosphorylation in ejaculated boar sperm incubated in vitro were examined with the use of antiphosphotyrosine antibodies and immunoblotting. The intracellular levels of cAMP were modulated by treatment with various combinations of caffeine, 3‐isobutyl‐1‐methylxanthine (IBMX), and dibutyryl cyclic AMP (dbcAMP), and acrosome reactions (ARs) were induced via treatment with divalent cation ionophore A23187. Proteins of Mr 34, 38, 40, and 44 (p34 . . . p44) were strongly phosphorylated on tyrosine residues in freshly prepared sperm samples and at the same level during all subsequent treatments. Incubation of sperm in vitro for various periods of time induced an increase of tyrosine phosphorylation of p20, p93, and p175. The tyrosine phosphorylation of p93, p175, and several other sperm proteins was up‐regulated in a concentration‐dependent manner following treatment of the sperm with dbcAMP, caffeine, or IBMX alone, or with combinations of caffeine and IBMX, respectively, with dbcAMP; the tyrosine phosphorylation of p20 was not correlated with treatment of sperm with cAMP‐elevating reagents. The percentage of sperm cells undergoing spontaneous ARs was not affected by the manipulation of cAMP levels and was not correlated with protein tyrosine phosphorylation. In contrast, the addition of calcium to the incubation media decreased protein tyrosine phosphorylation and elevated percentage of spontaneous ARs. The induction of ARs with A23187 caused a significant decrease of tyrosine phosphorylation of p93, p175, and p220/230, indicating that dephosphorylation on protein tyrosine residues might be associated with calcium influx during physiological ARs as well. Proteins p93 and p175 were effectively solubilized in greater than 9M urea/1% triton and in SDS sample buffer, but to only a small extent in triton, while p20 was virtually completely extractable with triton. In conjunction with the previously reported isolation of active tyrosine kinase sp42 from triton extracts of noncapacitated boar sperm cells (Berruti and Porzio, 1992: Biochim Biophys Acta 1118:149–154), our results suggest that a cAMP‐dependent event is required for tyrosine phosphorylation of triton‐insoluble proteins such as p93 and p175. On the other hand, the tyrosine phosphorylation of p20 (and potentially other triton‐soluble substrates) might not strictly require such cAMP up‐regulation. We discuss the differences in the regulation of cAMP‐dependent tyrosine phosphorylation in mouse, human, and boar sperm, and suggest that sensitivity to calcium and distinct basal levels of cyclic nucleotide PDE might correspond to species‐specific reproduction strategies in mammals. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 51:304–314, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Can corporate social responsibility bias lending decisions?

ABSTRACT Recent research suggests that the effect of Corporate Social Responsibility performance (CSRp) on firm value is conditional on its ability to influence stakeholders through customer awareness. This study extends previous research using an experiment to investigate whether the impact of CSRp ratings on lending decisions is moderated by the level of customer awareness. Results using experienced loan officers from an international commercial bank indicate that lending decisions are likely to be biased since CSRp ratings are interpreted as a signal for superior financial performance regardless of the level of customer awareness. Our findings suggest that loan officers are susceptible to further training in the correct interpretation of CSRp.
Beyond skill-based rating systems: analyzing and evaluating player performance

Being competitive is a core element of human nature and rating systems are a great tool for satisfying the need of ranking players for the skills they demonstrate. But the games of today have left rating systems behind in their evolution, making it more and more unlikely that individual players are evaluated fairly for their performances. The goal of this study is to gain a deep understanding of different variations of rating systems and the environments they are used in, and to use that information to build and test a new feature for rating players. Using a skill-based rating system known as TrueSkill as a reference point, a dataset is gathered with the help of volunteers. The resulting implementation is based on idea of rewarding those individuals who performed well in a game but were on the losing side of the match. With this change to the rating system, we believe that it makes it worth for performing well even in situations that seem unwinnable, resulting less quitting from online team matches, and overall better player enjoyment. Based on the findings, we introduce an experimental performance analyzation system that tracks individual performances within a team setting.
Human resource management impact on knowledge management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explain and empirically test the dependence of organizational processes related to knowledge on the nature of assumptions operating in processes of human resource management (HRM) in organizations. It concentrates on practices related to training, career development and retention. Design/methodology/approach – This empirical study as a quantitative nature and the sample is made up of 5,306 collaborators in 634 organizations belonging to an economic group in the banking sub-sector. Data were collected through two questionnaires: human resource management practices questionnaire and knowledge management questionnaire – short form. The model was tested by applying univariate and multivariate multiple regression analyses. Findings – Findings provide support for the proposed model and show the predictive capacity of the HRM practices regarding knowledge management (KM) processes, revealing a strong direct relationship between the two constructs. It stands out that the .
Reaginic antibody production in different mouse strains.

Mice of several strains were immunized with DNP-haemocyanin either with Al(OH)3 or with Freund's complete adjuvant. Antibodies of immunoglobulin type γ2 and γM were detected by passive haemolysis, γ2a antibodies by PCA in guinea-pigs, γ1 antibodies by PCA in mice using 2 hours of SP, and reaginic antibodies by PCA in mice using 72 hours of SP. Three of the six strains tested produced reaginic antibodies, i.e. SWR/J, C57BL/6J and A/HeJ, but only when Al(OH)3 was used as adjuvant. All six strains produced γ1 antibodies. Reaginic antibodies were separated by chromatography on DEAE-cellulose column.
Matching Mixtures of Trajectories for Human Action Recognition

A learning-based framework for action representation and recognition relying on the description of an action by time series of optical flow motion features is presented. In the learning step, the motion curves representing each action are clustered using Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM). In the recognition step, the optical flow curves of a probe sequence are also clustered using a GMM, then each probe sequence is projected onto the training space and the probe curves are matched to the learned curves using a non-metric similarity function based on the longest common subsequence, which is robust to noise and provides an intuitive notion of similarity between trajectories. Also, canonical time warping is utilized to find an alignment between the mean trajectories. Finally, the probe sequence is categorized to the learned action with the maximum similarity using a nearest neighbor classification scheme. We also present a variant of the method where the lengths of the time series are reduced by dimensionality reduction in both training and test phases, in order to smooth out the outliers, which are common in these type of sequences. Experimental results on Weizmann, KTH, UCF Sports and UCF YouTube action databases demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Using Multivariate Methods to Incorporate Environmental Variables for Local and Global Efficiency Performance Analysis

Abstract Enterprises typically referred to as decision making units (DMUs) seldom operate in similar environments. Within a relative performance point of view, if DMUs operating in different environments are compared, the units that operate in less desirable environments are at a disadvantage. In order to ensure that the performance comparison is reasonable within an efficiency measurement approach, a two-stage framework is presented in this research. The first stage uses multivariate methods (robust PCA, fuzzy clustering, and discriminant analysis) to group the DMUs based on the values of the environmental (non-discretionary) variables. The second stage incorporates one of the several efficiency measurement models to carry out relative performance analysis. The concept of local and global frontiers is explored and its significance towards making strategic resource allocation decisions is addressed. The approach proposed in this research is used to evaluate the efficiency performance of Greek municipalities that has been previously analyzed in the literature.
Real-time translation of discrete Sinhala speech to Unicode text

This paper presents a methodology to translate discrete Sinhala speech to Sinhala Unicode text in real time. Initially, the Hidden Markov Model and the associated Hidden Markov Toolkit (HTK) is used as the speech recognizer. While real time decoding is obtained by the Julius decoder a three-states Bakis HMM topology is used to build the acoustic model. The normalized Mel frequency cepstral coefficients with zeroth coefficient as the feature vector is used to recognize speech. Although a single person is used during the training session, an average accuracy of 85% is obtained for both speaker dependent and speaker independent speech recognition. Performance evaluation shows the capabilities of the proposed system to convert discrete Sinhala speech to Sinhala Unicode in both quiet and noisy environments.
DPSK Signal Regeneration With a Dual-Pump Nondegenerate Phase-Sensitive Amplifier

We demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, regeneration of a 42.66-Gb/s differential phase-shift keyed signal using a dual-pump nondegenerate four-wave-mixing-based fiber-optic parametric amplifier. The regenerative performance of the subsystem is characterized in terms of bit-error rate against narrowband and wideband introduced noise. While a strong receiver sensitivity improvement, up to 20 dB, is noticed against narrowband noise, against quasi-random (wideband) noise we observe a regeneration of 2.7 dB.
Decentralized learning in pursuit-evasion differential games with multi-pursuer and single-superior evader

In this paper, we consider a multi-pursuer single-superior-evader pursuit-evasion differential game where the speed of the evader is similar to the speed of each pursuer. A new fuzzy reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed in this work for this game. Each pursuer of the game uses the proposed algorithm to learn its control strategy. The proposed algorithm of each pursuer uses the residual gradient fuzzy actor critic learning (RGFACL) algorithm to tune the parameters of the fuzzy logic controller (FLC) of the pursuer. The proposed algorithm uses a formation control approach in the tuning mechanism of the FLC of the learning pursuer so that the learning pursuer or the other learning pursuers can capture the superior evader. The formation control mechanism used by the proposed algorithm guarantees that the pursuers are distributed around the superior evader in order to avoid collision between pursuers. The formation control mechanism also guarantees that the capture regions of each two adjacent pursuers overlap or at least border each other so that the capture of the superior evader will be guaranteed. The proposed algorithm is a decentralized algorithm as no communication among pursuers is required. The only information that the proposed algorithm of each learning pursuer requires is the position and the speed of the superior evader. The proposed algorithm is used to learn a multi-pursuer single-superior-evader pursuitevasion differential game. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm as the superior evader is always captured by one or some of the pursuers learning their strategies by the proposed algorithm.
Seizure prediction with bipolar spectral power features using Adaboost and SVM classifiers

This paper presents the results of our study on finding a lower complexity and yet a robust seizure prediction method using intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) recordings. We compare two classifiers: a low-complexity Adaboost and the more complex support vector machine (SVM). Adaboost is a linear classier using decision stumps, and SVM uses a nonlinear Gaussian kernel. Bipolar and/or time-differential spectral power features of different sub-bands are extracted from the iEEG signal. Adaboost is used to simultaneously classify as well as rank the features. Eliminating the low discriminating features reduces computational complexity and power consumption. The top features selected by Adaboost were also used as a feature set for SVM classification. The outputs of classifiers are regularized by applying a moving-average window and a threshold is used to generate alarms. The proposed methods were applied on 8 invasive recordings selected from the EPILEPSIAE database, the European database of EEG seizure recordings. Doublecross validation is used by separating data sets for training and optimization from testing. The key conclusion is that Adaboost performs slightly better than SVM using a reduced feature set on average with significantly less complexity resulting in a sensitivity of 77.1% (27 of 35 seizures in 873h recordings) and a false alarm rate of 0.18 per hour.
Cost-Effectiveness of Using High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein to Identify Intermediate- and Low-Cardiovascular-Risk Individuals for Statin Therapy

Background— Many myocardial infarctions and strokes occur in individuals with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels below recommended treatment thresholds. High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) testing has been advocated to identify low- and intermediate-risk individuals who may benefit from statin therapy. Methods and Results— A decision analytic Markov model was used to follow hypothetical cohorts of individuals with normal lipid levels but without coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, or diabetes mellitus. The model compared current Adult Treatment Panel III practice guidelines, a strategy of hs-CRP screening in those without an indication for statin treatment by current practice guidelines followed by treatment only in those with elevated hs-CRP levels, and a strategy of statin therapy at specified predicted risk thresholds without hs-CRP testing. Risk-based treatment without hs-CRP testing was the most cost-effective strategy, assuming that statins were equally effective regardless of hs-CRP status. However, if normal hs-CRP levels identified a subgroup with little or no benefit from statin therapy (<20% relative risk reduction), then hs-CRP screening would be the optimal strategy. If harms from statin use were greater than generally recognized, then use of current clinical guidelines would be the optimal strategy. Conclusion— Risk-based statin treatment without hs-CRP testing is more cost-effective than hs-CRP screening, assuming that statins have good long-term safety and provide benefits among low-risk people with normal hs-CRP.
Achieving Efficiency in Gas Pipeline Connection: Evidence from Ghana

The demand for the use of natural gas is on the increase as an energy source. Natural gas transportation requires a continuous pipeline network from the source of gas across long distance to the various destinations. The main objective involves extending gas pipelines from Takoradi to all the regional capital towns in Ghana to meet the growing demands of its citizenry in order to provide economy and efficiency with regards to cost and environmental sustainability by developing a straight forward method of locating pipeline facilities and designing pipeline networks. The problem is formulated as a network of distances and the solution is presented based on Primâ€™s Algorithm for minimum connections. Data on distances are obtained from the Ghana Highways Authority. The total distance covered by the pipe line network if the existing road networks were used from Takoradi to all the regional capitals towns in Ghana is 5,094km. After Primâ€™s Algorithm was used, the total distance covered decreased to 1,590km which is about 68.8% reduction in the distance covered with regards to cost and the environmental damage caused by construction of pipelines (soil, forest, rivers, wetlands, noise from compressor stations during pipeline discharge and risk of pipeline leakage).
Efficacy of intralesional recombinant human epidermal growth factor in chronic diabetic foot ulcers

Abstract Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the clinical effects of intralesional administration of an epidermal growth factor (EGF) up to complete wound closure. Methods: Seventeen diabetic patients with full-thickness lower extremity ulcers of more than 4 weeks of evolution were enrolled in the study. Mean ulcer size was 15.5 +/− 7.5 cm2. Intralesional injections of 75 µg of Heberprot-P three times per week for 5–8 weeks were given up to complete wound healing. Results: Full granulation response was achieved in all patients in 32.4 +/− 6.6 days. Complete wound closure was obtained in 16 (94.1%) cases in 53.1 +/− 4.7 days. The most frequent adverse events were burning sensation, tremors, chills and pain at the site of administration. After 1-year follow-up, only one patient relapsed. Conclusions: Intralesional EGF administration up to complete closure can be safe, effective and suitable to improve healing of chronic diabetic foot ulcer (DFU).
Nonlinear Photonic Signal Processing Subsystems and Applications

Over the last decade, the world has seen a great transformation in telecommunication, storage, multimedia, and entertainment. This is mainly due to the advances in computers and Internet, which were made possible by the various advances in lasers and high-capacity optical communication technologies. Without the invention of lasers and fiber optic communication systems, current global telecommunication infrastructure and Internet would have been impossible. The deployment of the optical communication systems started at the 1970s. The bit rate of the early stage fiber optic communication systems in 1980 was ~100 Mb/s, increasing to 1.25 Gb/s, 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s over the past three decades. By using the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology developed in the 1990s, systems supporting > 100 wavelength channels increase the total capacities up to 1 Tb/s (Kehayas, 2009). Recently, commercial deployments of WDM and dense WDM (DWDM) systems with 40 Gb/s per wavelength channel have started. This increase in traffic capacity will generate problems. One of them is the huge power consumption required by the network equipments. The DWDM requires optical-toelectrical (O/E) and electrical-to-optical (E/O) signal conversions with the same number as that of the wavelength, resulting in an increase in power consumption. Besides, the high speed electrical signal processing of packet routing and switching at the router consumes huge amounts of power. Apart from the huge power consumption, recent advances in optical signal generations, modulation formats, detections and post-detection signal processing have made the single channel bit rate > 100 Gb/s. This creates the so-called “electronic bottle-neck” between the data transmission rate of optical systems and the limited processing speed of electronic systems. The mismatch between the processing speeds of electronics and photonics stimulates many researches and developments of the nonlinear photonic signal processing technologies in an attempt to remove the electronic bottle-neck. Ultra-fast optical switching using a nonlinear fiber-loop mirror (NOLM) has been demonstrated as early as 1988. And the research activities of the nonlinear photonic signal processing have been continued with the aims to reduce the switching energy and increase the processing speed. Although the processing speed of electronic circuit has increased a lot
Bulbar conjunctival thickness measurements with optical coherence tomography in healthy chinese subjects.

PURPOSE To conduct in vivo measurements of the bulbar conjunctiva epithelial, stromal, and total thicknesses in healthy Chinese subjects using optical coherence tomography (OCT) and to compare the conjunctival thickness differences between sex and age. METHODS From January to July 2012, healthy Chinese subjects were recruited to undergo a Cirrus HD-OCT examination using the Anterior Segment 5 Line Raster scanning protocol. Ophthalmoscopy and slit-lamp examinations were performed on all eyes, along with the determination of visual acuity. The bulbar conjunctiva epithelial thickness, stromal thickness, and full thickness were measured on cross-sectional conjunctiva images. The average values of each parameter were compared between males and females and among eight age groups (<20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, and >80 years). RESULTS A total of 711 eyes in 711 subjects (average age 46.5 years) were included. The average conjunctiva epithelial, stromal, and full thickness measurements were 42.4 ± 7.4 μm, 197.7 ± 32.5 μm, and 240.1 ± 29.8 μm, respectively. No significant difference was found for any of the three parameters between sexes. The conjunctiva epithelial thickness values decreased significantly after age 20 and were then maintained at relatively low levels, followed by a sharp increase at 60 years of age. The conjunctiva stromal thickness decreased throughout the entire lifetime, and the full thickness decreased from the teenage to the elderly periods. CONCLUSIONS None of the Chinese conjunctiva epithelial, stromal, and full thickness was sex-related, but all of them were age-related.