SIRIS-Lab/unlabelled-sti-corpus huggingface dataset:
Novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of cystic fibrosis based on small molecule transmembrane anion transporters

This project will develop an innovative therapeutic approach for the treatment of Cystic Fibrosis (CF). This condition originates from the defective function of the CFTR protein, a chloride and bicarbonate permeable transmembrane channel. This project will evaluate small molecules capable of facilitating the transmembrane transport of anions such as chloride and bicarbonate and will thus enable CF treatment by replacing the missing CFTR anion permeation activity. This represents an unexplored path in the treatment of CF and a paradigm shift with respect to current strategies searching for a cure for CF. Instead of focusing on the development of mutation-specific treatments, we plan to develop a therapy applicable to CF patients, regardless of the type of mutation they harbor. Thus, this therapeutic approach overcomes the limitation of current mutation-specific treatments and is applicable to CF patients in general.
To achieve this goal we have set up a comprehensive program to validate a research concept and complete the preclinical development of a new lead compound, making it ready for early clinical development. A  rmultidisciplinary team of qualified researchers have been assembled to bring to conclusion a truly translational project from the synthesis of new compounds to validation on animal models.
Cystic Fibrosis affects more people than any other rare disease. Therefore, it could be said, at least in quantitative terms, that CF qualifies as the main target of the topic. This project aims to complete the preclinical development of novel, innovative drugs based on a radically new concept in Cystic Fibrosis therapies. This result fully addresses the expected impact set out in the work programme of advancing the development of new therapeutic options for patients living with rare diseases as well as contributing to reach the IRDiRC objective to deliver 200 new therapies for rare diseases by 2020.
Capitalizing and exploiting energy efficiency solutions throughout cooperation in Central European cities

Nowadays the major challenge for public administrations (PA) is to reduce energy consumption in existing public buildings without significant construction works. PA need to (i) possess useful and reliable solutions for proper energy management to increase energy efficiency (EE) and RES in buildings and (ii) applicate integrated approaches that educate & train the society to become aware of the energy consumption. To address this, TARGET will capitalize and exploit EE technical and not technical solutions, throughout transnational cooperation in CE cities. This will be achieved by collecting, analyzing, adjusting and deploying past outcomes (ICT tools, financial models, action plans, training, etc.) from 8 previously funded international projects: BOOSTEE-CE, ENERGY@SCHOOL, FEEDSCHOOLS, eCENTRAL, CitiEnGov (Interreg-CE), EMPOWER (Interreg-EU), GreenSoul & PANEL2050 (H2020). The selected outcomes will be downstreamed (9) & upstreamed (10) to be further rolled-out at local and regional levels (WP2) & integrated into relevant territorial or thematic strategies (WP3), respectively. The integration and further deployment of outcomes will be the success key of TARGET as the project will become a unique EE flagship, offering EE solutions for (public) buildings within a unique web platform. Project activities will be synergically coordinated, performed & disseminated by the 8 partners using their know-out experience & lessons learn. The innovative and valuable aspects of TARGET rely in the fact that it takes the best, complementary and most interesting outcomes, in order to boost impact, reduce fragmentation and widespread results in 7 new pilot areas (WP4, 16 municipalities: IT, PL, SI, AT, HR). TARGET will gain key stakeholders (WP1) to ensure engagement & support in capitalization activities & results testing. They will be fully involved since the beginning of the project in order to better tailor outputs, exchange knowledge & ensure a wider distribution of EE solutions.
Nondestructive maturity determination in green tomatoes using a handheld visible and near infrared instrument

a b s t r a c t A nondestructive method based on visible and near infrared spectroscopy, was investigated for deter- mining the maturity of green tomatoes at harvest. The interactance spectrum of tomato fruit at the firm green stage were measured in less than 5 s with a handheld spectrometer (400-1000 nm) utilizing an optical design with a 0◦ angle between the incident illumination and the detection view. Results showed that the predominant change in the interactance spectra in green tomatoes useful for predicting chang- ing maturity levels occurred in the 600-750 nm portion of the 400-1000 nm region, typically associated with chlorophyll. Variety-specific Bayesian classification models and a joint variety 'global' classification model were developed to predict tomato maturity after 7 d of storage in a 20 ◦C ripening room using canonical discriminant analysis techniques applied to the interactance spectra from 600 nm to 750 nm. Variety specific models correctly identified 75-85% of immature tomatoes and 82-86% of mature green tomatoes in internal cross-validation, however external validation performance decreased when applied to predict maturities in a cultivar external to the training set. False positive rates of these models in identifying immature and mature green tomatoes varied from 3% to 40% and 0% to 31% respectively. A 'global' model, trained on two cultivars showed more stability and correctly predicted 71% of immature and 85% of mature green tomatoes, with false positive error rates of 13% and 22%, respectively, in internal cross-validation of both varieties. This handheld system showed good potential as a rapid, nondestructive technique to aid tomato production managers in the identification of immature green tomatoes at har- vest and could be a valuable tool in delivering more flavorful fruit to consumers by reducing the amount of immature fruit harvested by workers. © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Impact of Pay TV Market Structure and Competition on Digital Switch Over of Cable TV

Cable TV with largest subscription base in pay TV market has difficulty in managing the task of digital switch over. This study analyzed the factors in delay of cable TV switch over and examined the impact of pay TV market structure and competition. The delaying factors turned out to be the lack of incentives and resources of cable TV operators, insufficient policy measures and acceptance tolerance issues of subscribers. Since cable TV operators with monopolistic status in pay TV market had continuous profit from analog service, they were not responsive to digital switch over which requires additional investment. Policy measures including support for the low income household and mandatory cut-off point for stopping analog broadcasting. Subscriber`s willingness to accept digital broadcasting in terms of price sensitivity and preference for convenient operation also played a role. Introduction of IPTV in pay TV market influenced the speed of digital switch over of cable TV operators. MSOs with economies of scale showed higher digital switch over rate than independent SO.
Heterologous expression and characterization of human cellular glutathione peroxidase mutants

Cellular glutathione peroxidase (GPx1; EC1.11.1.9) is a major intracellular antioxidant selenoenzyme in mammals. However, the complicated expression mechanism of selenocysteine (Sec)-containing protein increases the difficulty of expressing human GPx1 (hGPx1) in Escherichia coli (E. coli). In this study, hGPx1 gene was cloned from a cDNA library of the human hepatoma cell line HepG2. The codon UGA encoding Sec49 of hGPx1 was first mutated to UGC encoding cysteine (Cys) and then biosynthetically converted to Sec during expression in an E. coli BL21(DE3)cys auxotrophic system. Seleno-GPx1Sec displayed a low GPx activity of 522 U/μmol. To improve the activity, the other five Cys residues (C2, C78, C115, C156, C202) were mutated to serine (Ser) in one hGPx1 molecule. The mutant seleno-hGPx1Ser showed a high activity of 5278 U/μmol, which was more than 10-fold enhanced as compared with seleno-GPx1Sec . The activity was the highest among all of those seleno-proteins obtained by this method so far. Kinetic analysis of seleno-hGPx1Ser showed a typical ping-pong mechanism, which was similar to those of natural GPxs. This research will be of value in overcoming the problem of limited sources of natural GPx and substantially promotes the research of the characterization of GPx. © 2014 IUBMB Life, 66(3):212-219, 2014.
Product data traceability from cradle to cradle by blockchains interoperability and sustainability service marketplace

In EU a garment is worn an average of 3 times in its life, with €400 Bln lost a year discarding clothes which can still be worn and 92 Mln tons of waste, 87% of clothes ending up in landfills. But due to growing awareness on ethical and environmental impacts, 66% of consumers are ready to pay more for sustainable products . TRICK will provide a complete, SME affordable and standardised platform to support the adoption of sustainable and circular approaches: it will enable enterprises to collect product data and to access to the necessary services on a dedicated marketplace, open to third party solutions. TRICK demo will be run in 2 highly complex and polluting domains: textile-clothing as main pilot and perishable food for replication. EC estimates that up to 10% of the 88 million tons of food waste generated annually in the EU are linked to date marking, with associated costs estimated at €143 billion. Secured traceability will rely on the data needed for the preferential certification of origin (PCO), used for duty calculation. It will be certified by Customs as member of the consortium, representing anti fraud public forces. The data extracted by the fiscal documents for the PCO will be integrated with the bill of materials, saved in the Blockchains (BC) per each lot of production to grant traceability continuity, and with the additional ones to enable the six services provided by TRICK: traceability, circular assessment, PEF, health and social assessment, A.I. for anti counterfeting. BC will secure information through the whole process, ending to consumers for informed purchasing. Data confidentiality and privacy will be granted by the exploitation of Blockchains smart contracts while the adoption of different technologies will be solved by the development of Blockchain interoperability connectors between the two BC providers. End users will cover the whole TC value chain, from raw materials to recycling.
Comparing spectrum estimators in speaker verification under additive noise degradation

Different short-term spectrum estimators for speaker verification under additive noise are considered. Conventionally, mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) are computed from discrete Fourier transform (DFT) spectra of windowed speech frames. Recently, linear prediction (LP) and its temporally weighted variants have been substituted as the spectrum analysis method in speech and speaker recognition. In this paper, 12 different short-term spectrum estimation methods are compared for speaker verification under additive noise contamination. Experimental results conducted on NIST 2002 SRE show that the spectrum estimation method has a large effect on recognition performance and stabilized weighted LP (SWLP) and minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) methods yield approximately 7 % and 8 % relative improvements over the standard DFT method at −10 dB SNR level of factory and babble noises, respectively in terms of equal error rate (EER).
Book review: ‘Digital Libraries: Reconciling Copyright Law and Cultural Heritage Policy’, Estelle Derclaye (ed.)

Copyright law and cultural heritage policy are an odd couple. Although they have the same aims – or, more accurately, should have the same aims – they are often in conflict. Cultural heritage policy aims to preserve and make accessible works that are deemed to be part of our shared culture – books, articles, pictures, paintings, photographs, music, recordings, films, statues, architecture, and the like. However, copyright grants an exclusive right to the rightsholder to reproduce or disseminate such works. Therefore, to achieve cultural heritage policy goals in respect of recent copyrighted material often requires the consent of the copyright owner.
Content Based Medical Image Retrieval with Texture Content Using Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix and K-Means Clustering Algorithms

Problem statement: Recently, there has been a huge progress in collection of varied image databases in the form of digital. Most of the users found it difficult to search and retrieve required images in large collections. In order to provide an effective and efficient search engine tool, the system has been implemented. In image retrieval system, there is no methodologies have been considered directly to retrieve the images from databases. Instead of that, various visual features that have been considered indirect to retrieve the images from databases. In this system, one of the visual features such as texture that has been considered indirectly into images to extract the feature of the image. That featured images only have been considered for the retrieval process in order to retrieve exact desired images from the databases. Approach: The aim of this study is to construct an efficient image retrieval tool namely, Content Based Medical Image Retrieval with Texture Content using Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and k-Means Clustering algorithms. This image retrieval tool is capable of retrieving images based on the texture feature of the image and it takes into account the Pre-processing, feature extraction, Classification and retrieval steps in order to construct an efficient retrieval tool. The main feature of this tool is used of GLCM of the extracting texture pattern of the image and k-means clustering algorithm for image classification in order to improve retrieval efficiency. The proposed image retrieval system consists of three stages i.e., segmentation, texture feature extraction and clustering process. In the segmentation process, preprocessing step to segment the image into blocks is carried out. A reduction in an image region to be processed is carried out in the texture feature extraction process and finally, the extracted image is clustered using the k-means algorithm. The proposed system is employed for domain specific based search engine for medical Images such as CT-Scan, MRI-Scan and X-Ray. Results: For retrieval efficiency calculation, conventional measures namely precision and recall were calculated using 1000 real time medical images (100 in each category) from the MATLAB Workspace database. For selected query images from the MATLAB-Image Processing tool Box-Workspace Database, the proposed tool was tested and the precision and recall results were presented. The result indicates that the tool gives better performance in terms of percentage for all the 1000 real time medical images from which the scalable performance of the system has been proved. Conclusion: This study proposed a model for the Content Based Medical Image Retrieval System by using texture feature in calculating the Gray Level Co Occurrence matrix (GLCM) from which various statistical measures were computed in order to increasing similarities between query image and database images for improving the retrieval performance along with the large scalability of the databases.
The solar cycle variation of topological structures in the global solar corona

The distribution of magnetic flux across the solar photosphere results in a complex web of coronal magnetic field structures. To understand this complexity, the magnetic skeleton of the coronal field can be calculated. The skeleton highlights the separatrix surfaces that divide the field into topologically distinct regions, allowing open-field regions on the solar surface to be located. Furthermore, separatrix surfaces and their intersections (separators) are important likely energy release sites. This paper investigates, throughout the solar cycle, the nature of coronal magnetic-field topologies that arise under the potential-field source-surface approximation. In particular, we characterise the typical global fields at solar maximum and minimum. Global magnetic fields are extrapolated from observed Kitt Peak and SOLIS synoptic magnetograms, from Carrington rotations 1645 to 2144, using the potential-field source-surface model. Hence, variations in the coronal skeleton are studied over three solar cycles. Key building blocks which make up magnetic fields are identified and classified according to the nature of their separatrix surfaces. The magnetic skeleton reveals that, at solar maximum, the global coronal field involves a multitude of topological structures at all latitudes. Many open-field regions exist originating anywhere on the photosphere. At solar minimum, the coronal topology is heavily influenced by the solar dipole. A strong dipole results in a simple large-scale structure involving just two large polar open-field regions, but, at short radial distances between plus or minus 60 deg latitude, the small-scale topology is complex. If the solar dipole if weak, as in the recent minimum, then the low-latitude quiet-sun magnetic fields may be globally significant enough to create many disconnected open-field regions at low latitudes, in addition to the two polar open-field regions.
Novel method for preparation of cyclodextrin polymers: physico-chemical characterization and cytotoxicity

The objective of this work was to optimize the synthesis procedure of soluble cyclodextrin polymers developed by Weltrowski et al. The use of the parameters indicated by the latter in our laboratory led to a lower result, which did not exceed 15 % (w/w). The new method resulted simultaneously in two fractions, a water soluble one and an insoluble one with a yield of 40 and 85 % (w/w), respectively. Only soluble cyclodextrin polymers were characterized along with the cytotoxicity study. The optimized soluble polymers were characterized by Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectrophotometer, Thermogravimetric Analyzer, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Powder X-Ray Diffraction Analysis and Size Exclusion Chromatography. In vitro cytotoxicity against peritoneal macrophage cells of female CD1 mice showed that soluble poly-α-CD and poly-γ-CD were less cytotoxic than soluble poly-β-CD at small dose and the opposite was true at higher dose. In conclusion, temperature and time could be used to optimize the yield of polymer cyclodextrins, which will have a broad use in the drug delivery system.
Managing MNC-Government Negotiations in Saudi Arabia: The Key Role of Elites

This article explores the relationships between multinational corporations (MNCs) and a host country, in this case Saudi Arabia (the Kingdom). The interests of Saudi businesses and the political elite, along with the evolution of their relationship are surveyed. Furthermore, the validity of traditional and two-tier models of bargaining between MNCs and developing countries are assessed in the context of the Kingdom. It is argued that while both models may be useful, the two fail to capture the nature of MNCs-Saudi Arabia bargaining process. These two models are revised and enriched to adequately reflect the Kingdom's specific advantage, the nature of its national firms, and the unique relations it has with MNCs and their home countries. The study concludes that under current global political and economic conditions, the elite and MNCs interests appear to converge around business objectives.
Phototrophic culture of Chlorella sp. using charcoal ash as an inorganic nutrient source

Abstract Although several studies have recognized the suitability of employing ashes as a component of a culture medium or fertilizer, the number of these studies remains limited. The use of biomass ash as a nutrient source for algal culture is an unexplored research topic that should be investigated to analyse the possibility of reducing the costs associated with commercial microalgae culture. In this study, biomass ash from charcoal was used as a source of nutrients for the cultivation of Chlorella sp., and two alternative processes for nutrient supply were studied. First, various culture media containing the leachate stock solution from solid ash at different concentrations were prepared. Second, different amounts of solid ash were added directly to the culture media. The results indicated that the direct use of biomass ash mixed in water enables the formation of a more suitable medium compared with Guillard's f/2 medium because it promotes faster cell growth and higher biomass productivity. The higher biomass productivities were reached over the same period compared with those achieved with the culture media based on biomass ash leachates. Moreover, the nutrients in the media containing ash leachates are sufficient to maintain cell growth rates and biomass productivities that are comparable to those achieve with Guillard's f/2 medium.
School Low Carbon Footprint in Mediterranean cities

EduFootprint intends to raise capacity of owner and managers of public buildings for better management of energy; it will be done considering not just direct energy impacts of buildings (consumption), but also indirect ones (public procurement or general awareness and behavior). Activities will be concentrated in the test and transferability of an integrated energy strategy with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach in schools, consisting in the elaboration and implementation of energy efficient practices integrated with local Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPS). _x000D_
Transnational action is vital because the project will test the EduFootprint model in different MED countries and it will disseminate the innovative solutions involving public authorities and owners, private sectors and end-users in seven MED regions. The less experienced areas would have the opportunity of acting upon well-proven basis from the pre-existing know-how of other partners, and the model would be test in countries with different ways of public buildings management._x000D_
The project will allow to cut energy costs for public buildings in MED area. The use of an approach that considers the school in its complete life cycle, assures a multiplying effect of actions, so a sustainable low-carbon citizen lifestyles and educational and cultural growth and promotion of eco-innovation solutions for various stakeholders (students, their families, teachers, public institutions, energy services providers).