Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High Protective Efficacy of Probiotics and Rice Bran against Human Norovirus Infection and Diarrhea in Gnotobiotic Pigs

Probiotics have been recognized as vaccine adjuvants and therapeutic agents to treat acute gastroenteritis in children. We previously showed that rice bran (RB) reduced human rotavirus diarrhea in gnotobiotic pigs. Human noroviruses (HuNoVs) are the major pathogens causing non-bacterial acute gastroenteritis worldwide. In this study, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG) and Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) were first screened for their ability to bind HuNoV P particles and virions derived from clinical samples containing HuNoV genotype GII.3 and GII.4, then the effects of LGG+EcN and RB on HuNoV infection and diarrhea were investigated using the gnotobiotic pig model. While LGG+EcN colonization inhibited HuNoV shedding, probiotic cocktail regimens in which RB feeding started 7 days prior to or 1 day after viral inoculation in the LGG+EcN colonized gnotobiotic pigs exhibited high protection against HuNoV diarrhea and shedding, characterized by significantly reduced incidence (89 versus 20%) and shorter mean duration of diarrhea (2.2 versus 0.2 days), as well as shorter mean duration of virus shedding (3.2 versus 1.0 days). In both probiotic cocktail groups, the diarrhea reduction rates were 78% compared with the control group, and diarrhea severity was reduced as demonstrated by the significantly lower cumulative fecal scores. The high protective efficacy of the probiotic cocktail regimens was attributed to stimulation of IFN-γ+ T cell responses, increased production of intestinal IgA and IgG, and maintenance of healthy intestinal morphology (manifested as longer villi compared with the control group). Therefore, probiotic cocktail regimens containing LGG+EcN and RB may represent highly efficacious strategies to prevent and treat HuNoV gastroenteritis, and potentially other human enteric pathogens.
Exploiting Geographical and Temporal Locality to Boost Search Efficiency in Peer-to-Peer Systems

As a hot research topic, many search algorithms have been presented and studied for unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) systems during the past few years. Unfortunately, current approaches either cannot yield good lookup performance, or incur high search cost and system maintenance overhead. The poor search efficiency of these approaches may seriously limit the scalability of current unstructured P2P systems. In this paper, we propose to exploit two-dimensional locality to improve P2P system search efficiency. We present a locality-aware P2P system architecture called Foreseer, which explicitly exploits geographical locality and temporal locality by constructing a neighbor overlay and a friend overlay, respectively. Each peer in Foreseer maintains a small number of neighbors and friends along with their content filters used as distributed indices. By combining the advantages of distributed indices and the utilization of two-dimensional locality, our scheme significantly boosts P2P search efficiency while introducing only modest overhead. In addition, several alternative forwarding policies of Foreseer search algorithm are studied in depth on how to fully exploit the two-dimensional locality
Passive stability of a single actuator micro aerial vehicle

In this work, we present a low-cost, flying research MAV, comparable to common quadcopter platforms. We propose a flyer with only two moving parts (a rotor and a stator) and a single actuator that is capable of hovering flight without active attitude control. The passive stability is analyzed and reduced to two mechanisms that are a function of the relative offset of the center of pressure and center of mass, the angular momentum of rotor and stator and the differential lift of the spinning elements. The design space over these parameters is explored with a dozen models that are unstable and one that is stable. Interestingly, the two stability mechanisms are not compatible requiring opposing design emphasis. Passive stability of this model is verified by Routh Hurwitz criterion, in simulation and a physical prototype. The vehicle has the added benefits of low complexity and favorable size scaling compared to other MAVs. The vehicle design guidelines derived from both theory and experimentation are presented.
miR-203 Inhibits Cell Proliferation and Migration of Lung Cancer Cells by Targeting PKCα

PKCα (protein kinase C alpha, PRKCA) is an important protein involved in several steps of signaling pathways in lung cancer, and microRNAs (miRNAs) have also been shown to participate in lung carcinogenesis. However, it is not clear how PKCα and miRNAs are correlated in the disease. In this report, we aimed to identify novel miRNAs that target PKCα and to study their biological function. Using bioinformatics analysis, we predicted one novel candidate, miR-203, and found differential expression patterns of miR-203 and PKCα in human lung cancer tissues. Moreover, we experimentally validated miR-203 as a direct regulator of PKCα. Finally, we demonstrated that the targeting of PKCα by miR-203 played a critical role in regulating cell proliferation, apoptosis and migration in lung cancer cells. In summary, this study identifies a novel miRNA that targets PKCα and illustrates that the downregulation of PKCα by miR-203 modulates biological processes in lung cancer cells.
Intergenerational Mobility and Schooling Decisions in Germany and Italy: The Impact of Secondary School Tracks

Intergenerational mobility in income and education is affected by the influence of parents on children's school choices. Our focus is on the role played by different school systems in reducing or magnifying the impact of parents on children's school choices and therefore on intergenerational mobility in general. We compare two apparently similar educational systems, Italy and Germany, to see how the common feature of separate tracks at Secondary School level may produce different impacts on children choices. Using data from a cross-country survey (PISA 2003), we study the impact of parental education on track choice, showing that the greater flexibility of the Italian system (where parents are free to choose the type of track) translates into greater dependence from parental background. These effects are reinforced when moving to post-secondary education, where the aspiration to go to college is affected not only by the school type but also (in the case of Italy only) by parental education. We then move to country-specific data sets (ISTAT 2001 for Italy and GSOEP 2001 and 2002 for Germany) to study the impact of family background on post-secondary school choices: we find this impact is greatly reduced when we control for secondary school tracks. Overall, we estimate large asymmetries by gender, with women's behavior more independent from family backgrounds than men's behavior.
Capacity and Delay Tradeoff of Secondary Cellular Networks With Spectrum Aggregation

Cellular communication networks are plagued with redundant capacity, which results in low utilization and cost-effectiveness of network capital investments. The redundant capacity can be exploited to deliver secondary traffic that is ultra-elastic and delay-tolerant. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework to study the capacity-delay tradeoff of elastic/secondary traffic in large scale cellular networks with spectrum aggregation. Our framework integrates stochastic geometry and queueing theory models and gives analytical insights into the capacity-delay performance in the interference limited regime. Closed-form results are obtained to characterize the mean delay and delay distribution as functions of per user throughput capacity. The impacts of spectrum aggregation, user and base station densities, traffic session payload, and primary traffic dynamics on the capacity-delay tradeoff relationship are investigated. The fundamental capacity limit is derived and its scaling behavior is revealed. Our analysis shows the feasibility of providing secondary communication services over cellular networks and highlights some critical design issues.
Expression of connexins during differentiation and regeneration of skeletal muscle: functional relevance of connexin43

The molecular mechanisms regulating skeletal muscle regeneration and differentiation are not well understood. We analyzed the expression of connexins (Cxs) 40, 43 and 45 in normal and regenerating tibialis anterior muscle and in primary cultures of differentiating myoblasts in adult and newborn mice, respectively. Cxs 45 and 43, but not 40, were strongly expressed in normal muscle and their expression was upregulated during regeneration. Furthermore, the functional role of Cx43 during differentiation and regeneration was examined after induced deletion of Cx43 in transgenic mice. In vivo, the inducible deletion of Cx43 delayed the formation of myofibers and prolonged the expression of myogenin during regeneration. In primary cultures of satellite cell-derived myoblasts, induced deletion of Cx43 led to decreased expression of myogenin and MyoD, dye coupling, creatine kinase activity and myoblast fusion. Thus, the expression of Cx45 and Cx43 is upregulated during skeletal muscle regeneration and Cx43 is required for normal myogenesis in vitro and adult muscle regeneration in vivo.
Hospital workers’ psychological resilience after the 2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak

We assessed the psychological well-being and workplace functioning of hospital workers in South Korea after an infectious disease outbreak by focusing on the effects of risk appraisal, emotional experience, and coping ability. Participants were 280 hospital workers who experienced the 2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak. We found that high risk appraisal decreased psychological resilience, whereas coping ability increased psychological resilience. Additionally, emotional disruption was associated with low resilience and also mediated the effect of perceived risk on psychological resilience. Results varied across occupational type (health-care workers vs. non-health-care workers), which implies that different considerations are needed for resilience-building among hospital workers responding to an outbreak. In particular, lowering perceived risk was most beneficial to health-care workers, whereas strengthening coping ability and relieving the intensity of negative emotions experienced were the most effective strategies for non-health-care workers. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Criminalization in Context: Involuntariness, Obscenity, and the First Amendment

“Revenge porn,” referring to the distribution of sexually explicit images without the consent of those featured, is a growing problem in the United States. New Jersey and California were the first states to criminalize the practice, but state legislatures around the country have been passing and considering similar laws in recent months. Proponents of legislation, however, are confronting critics who protest that the First Amendment precludes criminal liability for distributing lawfully acquired true material. This Note provides the first in-depth analysis of how obscenity law can and should be used to criminalize revenge porn within the boundaries of the First Amendment. While no state legislature has characterized revenge porn as obscenity, this Note argues they should because the obscenity context provides the greatest insulation from a First Amendment challenge. If drafted to prohibit obscenity, such laws would enable states to robustly and constitutionally criminalize revenge porn, even when the photographer is the person objecting to distribution or the distributor acts without intent to cause serious emotional distress. The hope is this Note will guide legislatures to draft constitutionally responsible legislation to combat revenge porn.
The hidden connections : A science for sustainable living

that his extension of the systems approach to the social domain explicitly includes the material world because ”. the key challenges of the new century – for social scientists, natural scientists and everyone else, will be to build ecologically sustainable communities, designed in such a way that their technologies and social systems – their material and social structures – do not interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. ”
Outcomes of critically ill patients with acute kidney injury and end-stage renal disease requiring renal replacement therapy: a case-control study.

BACKGROUND This study aimed to evaluate and compare the characteristics and outcomes of patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) with those of matched controls of patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) requiring renal replacement therapy. METHODS A case-control study was performed at the intensive care units (ICU) of three tertiary-care hospitals between December 2004 and September 2007. Patients were admitted with life-threatening complications and were matched for age and for severity of illness and organ dysfunctions. Conditional logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with hospital mortality. RESULTS A total of 54 patients with ESRD and 54 patients with AKI were eligible for the study and were well matched. In general, clinical characteristics were similar. Nonetheless, comorbidities were more frequent in patients with ESRD, and patients with AKI more frequently required mechanical ventilation. ICU (43% versus 20%, P = 0.023) and hospital (50% versus 24%, P = 0.010) mortality rates were higher in patients with AKI. In addition, patients with AKI experienced longer ICU and hospitals stays. The SAPS II score had a regular ability in discriminating survivors and non-survivors, and tended to underestimate mortality in patients with AKI and overestimate in patients with ESRD. When all patients were evaluated, older age [OR = 1.05 (95% CI, 1.01-1.09)], poor chronic health status [OR = 3.90(1.19-12.82)] and number of associated organ failures [OR = 4.44(1.97-10.00)] were the main independent predictors of mortality. After adjusting for those covariates, ESRD was still associated with a lower probability of death [OR = 0.17 (0.06-0.050)]. CONCLUSIONS ESRD patients with life-threatening complications had significantly better outcome than AKI patients.
Seroepidemiology of Human Hydatidosis Using AgB-ELISA Test in Arak, Central Iran

Background On the continuation of sorting the puzzle of the situation of hydatid disease in Iran and considering that so far no survey was conducted in this context in Arak City, Markazi Province central Iran, the present study was conducted to determine the seroprevalence of human hydatidosis using AgB-ELISA test. Methods: Totally 578 serum samples randomly were collected from patients referred to hospitals and different health centers in the city and 3 nearby villages of Arak. All sera were examined by ELISA tests using AgB. Before sampling, a questionnaire was filled out for each case. Data were analyzed using Chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression for risk factors analysis. P<0.05 was considered significant. Results: Cut-off value was calculated 0.32. Twenty cases (3.46%) were seropositive for hydatidosis in the region. This rate for females was 3.99% and for males 2.26%, respectively. There was no significant difference as regards all factors studied except location (P<0.001). As for job, farmers and ranchmen had the highest rate of infection as 6.67%. The seropositivity rate infection was 4.8% in illiterate people, which showed the highest rate. As regards residency, rural life showed significant difference with urban life (1.5% vs. 7 %). Age group of 40–49 yr old (6.25%) had the highest rate of positivity. Conclusion: The rate of prevalence in this region shows more or less the same range with other cities of Iran. Obtained result might assist the policy makers to take sanitary measures to control the disease.
Macroeconomic News, Announcements, and Stock Market Jump Intensity Dynamics

This paper examines the effect of macroeconomic releases on stock market volatility through a Poisson-Gaussian-GARCH process with time varying jump intensity, which is allowed to respond to such information. It is found that the day of the announcement, per se, has little impact on jump intensities. Employment releases are an exception. However, when macroeconomic surprises are considered, inflation shocks show persistent effects while monetary policy and employment shocks show only short-lived effects. Also, the jump intensity responds asymmetrically to macroeconomic shocks. Evidence that macroeconomic variables are relevant to explain jump dynamics and improve volatility forecasts on event days is provided.
SUPPLEMENTARY TO : Seeking verisimilitude in a class : A systematic review of evidence that the criterial clinical symptoms of schizophrenia are taxonic

To whom correspondence should be addressed; tel: +64 3 479 5689, fax: +64 3 479 8335, e-mail: linscott@psy.otago. ac.nz Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P. O. Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand; Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, South Limburg Mental Health Research and Teaching Network, EURON, Maastricht University, P. O. Box 616 (DRT 10), 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands; Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK.
Connectionist and Statistical Approaches to Language Acquisition: A Distributional Perspective.

We propose that one important role for connectionist research in language acquisition is analysing what linguistic information is present in the child's input. Recent connectionist and statistical work analysing the properties of real language corpora suggest that a priori objections against the utility of distributional information for the child are misguided. We illustrate our argument with examples of connectionist and statistical corpus-based research on phonology, segmentation, morphology, word classes, phrase structure, and lexical semantics. We discuss how this research relates to other empirical and theoretical approaches to the study of language acquisition.
Power-Efficient DRAM Speculation

Power-efficient DRAM Speculation (PEDS) is a power optimization targeted at broadcast-based shared-memory multiprocessor systems that speculatively access DRAM in parallel with the broadcast snoop. Although speculatively accessing DRAM has the potential performance advantage of overlapping DRAM latency with the snoop, it wastes power for memory requests that obtain data from other processorspsila caches. PEDS takes advantage of information provided by a Region Coherence Array to identify requests that have a high likelihood of obtaining data from another processorpsilas cache, and does not access DRAM speculatively for those requests. By doing so, PEDS eliminates DRAM reads, reduces DRAM power consumption, reduces contention for DRAM resources, and increases the opportunity for DRAM power management. PEDS requires almost no additional hardware in systems that incorporate Region Coherence Arrays. Detailed simulation results show PEDS reduces average DRAM read traffic 28-32%, reduces average DRAM power dissipation 17-22%, and reduces average DRAM energy consumption 16-21%.
Foreign Equity and Technological Capabilities: A Comparison of Joint-venture and National Automotive Suppliers in India

Abstract Using the evolutionary framework, this paper examines differences in technological capabilities between joint-ventures with over 10% foreign equity and fully national owned suppliers located in the greater Delhi region. In a country where automotive manufacturing emerged from the relocation of foreign capital and with only 3 automobile assemblers supplying essentially the domestic market until 1991, India has experienced tremendous upward movement in firm-level technological capabilities to generate rapid growth in automotive exports to record a positive trade balance by 2000. Against the background of rapid expansion, this paper uses a sample of 84 tiers one and two suppliers to compare technological capabilities between joint-ventures with foreign equity and wholly national owned suppliers. The results show considerable participation of both joint-venture and national firms in cutting edge technological capabilities. The two tailed ‘t’ tests, and the knowledge intensity exercises show joint-ventures enjoying higher overall technological capabilities, training expense in payroll, process technology expenditure in sales and R&D expenditure in sales than national firms. The Tobit regressions show that once export-intensity and firm size is accounted for, joint-ventures enjoy a statistically significant higher technological capability with its superior process technology over national firms. Overall, the evidence shows that foreign equity is still important in the technological operations of automotive suppliers in India.
Pros and Cons of International Weapons Procurement Collaboration

Abstract : Over the past few years, U.S. policymakers have become increasingly interested in pursuing collaborative arrangements with our allies. Cost appears to be a major incentive: As military technologies become more complex and more expensive, even the U.S. national market is becoming too small comfortably to support the costs of developing and producing new weapons systems. By combining defense procurement with other nations, the U.S. government may be able to reduce the average cost of a given weapons system. In addition, collaborative programs offer the potential for greater operational integration of allied forces and greater political integration through shared training and doctrine. However, substantial anecdotal evidence suggests that the predicted cost savings from collaboration rarely are achieved. This failure appears to occur primarily because few collaborative programs result in a rational division of work, economic specialization, or the elimination of R&D (research and development) redundancy. Furthermore, collaborative programs have a mixed record on the achievement of operational and political objectives such as the promotion of equipment interoperability and standardization and the promotion of alliance cohesion and support for friendly nations. One problem in the past with transatlantic programs, for example, has been the difference between U.S. and European emphases on objectives for collaboration. While the Europeans have stressed national or European- wide defense industrial base issues-acquiring technology, maintaining employment, propping up a full-spectrum defense industrial base-the United States has tended to focus on military R&D and equipment rationalization. Even within the United States, different policymakers have pursued competing objectives for collaborative programs, making achievement of those objectives difficult.
HIV virological suppression influences response to the AS03-adjuvanted monovalent pandemic influenza A H1N1 vaccine in HIV-infected children

Children with HIV are especially susceptible to complications from influenza infection, and effective vaccines are central to reducing disease burden in this population. We undertook a prospective, observational study to investigate the safety and immunogenicity of the inactivated split‐virion AS03‐adjuvanted pandemic H1N1(2009) vaccine in children with HIV.