Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photolabelling of mutant forms of the S1 subunit of pertussis toxin with NAD+.

The S1 subunit of pertussis toxin catalyses the hydrolysis of NAD+ (NAD+ glycohydrolysis) and the NAD(+)-dependent ADP-ribosylation of guanine-nucleotide-binding proteins. Recently, the S1 subunit of pertussis toxin was shown to be photolabelled by using radiolabelled NAD+ and u.v. ; the primary labelled residue was Glu-129, thereby implicating this residue in the binding of NAD+. Studies from various laboratories have shown that the N-terminal portion of the S1 subunit, which shows sequence similarity to cholera toxin and Escherichia coli heat-labile toxin, is important to the maintenance of both glycohydrolase and transferase activity. In the present study the photolabelling technique was applied to the analysis of a series of recombinant-derived S1 molecules that possessed deletions or substitutions near the N-terminus of the S1 molecule. The results revealed a positive correlation between the extent of photolabelling with NAD+ and the magnitude of specific NAD+ glycohydrolase activity exhibited by the mutants. Enzyme kinetic analyses of the N-terminal mutants also identified a mutant with substantially reduced activity, a depressed photolabelling efficiency and a markedly increased Km for NAD+. The results support a direct role for the N-terminal region of the S1 subunit in the binding of NAD+, thereby providing a rationale for the effect of mutations in this region on enzymic activity.
Inquiry, logic, and international politics

Through the use of logic, simulation, and empirical data, Most and Starr develop and demonstrate a new and more appropriate conceptualization of explanation in international relations and foreign policy. They demonstrate that a concern with the logical underpinnings of research raises a series of theoretical, conceptual and epistemological issues that must be addressed if theory and research are to meet the challenges of cumulation in the study of international relations. The authors argue for understanding the critical, yet subtle, interplay of the elements within a research triad composed of theory, logic and method.
A Calorie-Restricted Diet Decreases Brain Iron Accumulation and Preserves Motor Performance in Old Rhesus Monkeys

Caloric restriction (CR) reduces the pathological effects of aging and extends the lifespan in many species, including nonhuman primates, although the effect on the brain is less well characterized. We used two common indicators of aging, motor performance speed and brain iron deposition measured in vivo using MRI, to determine the potential effect of CR on elderly rhesus macaques eating restricted (n = 24; 13 males, 11 females) and standard diets (n = 17; 8 males, 9 females). Both the CR and control monkeys showed age-related increases in iron concentrations in globus pallidus (GP) and substantia nigra (SN), although the CR group had significantly less iron deposition in the GP, SN, red nucleus, and temporal cortex. A diet × age interaction revealed that CR modified age-related brain changes, evidenced as attenuation in the rate of iron accumulation in basal ganglia and parietal, temporal, and perirhinal cortex. Additionally, control monkeys had significantly slower fine motor performance on the Movement Assessment Panel, which was negatively correlated with iron accumulation in left SN and parietal lobe, although CR animals did not show this relationship. Our observations suggest that the CR-induced benefit of reduced iron deposition and preserved motor function may indicate neural protection similar to effects described previously in aging rodent and primate species.
Lipid lowering in aortic stenosis: still some light at the end of the tunnel?

Aortic valve stenosis (AS) is the end stage of an active fibrocalcific process with local inflammation, lipid deposition, fibrosis, and calcification as its key features.1 Adverse remodeling of a stenotic valve includes collagen deposition and elastin degradation, resulting from myofibroblast proliferation and activation, recruitment of inflammatory cells, and expression of proinflammatory cytokines.2 Activation of local calcific mediators results in massive calcification and even bone formation in the affected leaflets.1 In addition, oxidative stress is increased and neovascularization occurs in the normally avascular valve tissue.3,4 Lipid accumulation and oxidation may further contribute a proinflammatory impetus toward calcification and ossification.5 Moreover, valvular myofibroblasts undergo phenotypic transdifferentiation into osteoblastic cells, which spontaneously form calcific nodules, a process accelerated by inflammatory cytokines and oxidized cholesterol.2,5 Furthermore, in experimental animal models, hypercholesterolemia increases aortic valve cholesterol content and results in osteoblastic differentiation and bone formation; these adverse changes can be prevented by atorvastatin.5 Indeed, several experimental and retrospective clinical studies have suggested that statins may retard AS development.1,5 Article see p 2693 Inspired by these observations and epidemiological studies revealing an association between AS and hypercholesterolemia,1 several prospective trials of statins in patients with AS have been conducted. The prospective but not randomized Rosuvastatin Affecting Aortic Valve Endothelium (RAAVE) trial (n=121) showed a smaller decline in valve area in AS patients receiving rosuvastatin. However, only patients with elevated serum low-density lipoprotein received the investigated drug.6 In contrast, 2 prospective randomized lipid-lowering trials both failed to show a decrease in hemodynamic progression of AS or a delay in aortic valve replacements: the Scottish Aortic Stenosis and Lipid Lowering Trial, Impact on Regression (SALTIRE) compared atorvastatin to placebo in 155 patients,7 and the Simvastatin and Ezetimibe in Aortic Stenosis (SEAS) trial compared simvastatin-ezetimibe therapy to placebo …
Analysis of Hierarchical B Pictures and MCTF

In this paper, an investigation of H.264/MPEG4-AVC conforming coding with hierarchical B pictures is presented. We analyze the coding delay and memory requirements, describe details of an improved encoder control, and compare the coding efficiency for different coding delays. Additionally, the coding efficiency of hierarchical B picture coding is compared to that of MCTF-based coding by using identical coding structures and a similar degree of encoder optimization. Our simulation results turned out that in comparison to the widely used IBBP.structure coding gains of more than 1 dB can be achieved at the expense of an increased coding delay. Further experiments have shown that the coding efficiency gains obtained by using the additional update steps in MCTF coding are generally smaller than the losses resulting from the required open-loop encoder control
Non‐native salmonids affect amphibian occupancy at multiple spatial scales

Aim The introduction of non‐native species into aquatic environments has been linked with local extinctions and altered distributions of native species. We investigated the effect of non‐native salmonids on the occupancy of two native amphibians, the long‐toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum) and Columbia spotted frog (Rana luteiventris), across three spatial scales: water bodies, small catchments and large catchments.
Retrospective Evaluation of Pharmacy Student and or Resident Counselingand 30-Day Readmission in Heart Failure at a Northeastern Hospital

Background: The retrospective study evaluated the association of pharmacy resident and or student discharge counseling service with 30- day all cause readmissions in heart failure. Methods: Data were collected from electronic medical records of patients’ (with a discharge diagnosis of heart failure) on age, gender, race, number of comorbidities, hospital length of stay in days, received intervention of “pharmacy resident and or student” counseling (yes/no) and number of readmissions. Multivariate logistic regression analyses studied the association of counseling intervention and “at least one 30- day readmission” after adjusting for patient characteristics. A P value of less than . 05 was considered significant. Results: The intervention (130/362) versus the control group (232/362) was more likely to be male, Caucasian race, speak English, and have a longer length of stay. After adjusting for age, gender, race, primary language (English, yes vs. no), and length of stay; the counseled versus the not counseled patients were less likely to be readmitted (adjusted OR = 0.54, 95% CL = 0.32-0.91, p = 0.0207). Conclusions: Heart Failure patients who received discharge counseling were significantly less likely to be readmitted than those who did not. Providers and payers implementing discharge counseling service need to reach female, non-english speaking, other race patients, and those with short length of stay.
Pronounced Intraspecific Haplotype Divergence at the RPP5 Complex Disease Resistance Locus of Arabidopsis

In Arabidopsis ecotype Landsberg erecta (Ler), RPP5 confers resistance to the pathogen Peronospora parasitica. RPP5 is part of a clustered multigene family encoding nucleotide binding–leucine-rich repeat (LRR) proteins. We compared 95 kb of DNA sequence carrying the Ler RPP5 haplotype with the corresponding 90 kb of Arabidopsis ecotype Columbia (Col-0). Relative to the remainder of the genome, the Ler and Col-0 RPP5 haplotypes exhibit remarkable intraspecific polymorphism. The RPP5 gene family probably evolved by extensive recombination between LRRs from an RPP5-like progenitor that carried only eight LRRs. Most members have variable LRR configurations and encode different numbers of LRRs. Although many members carry retroelement insertions or frameshift mutations, codon usage analysis suggests that regions of the genes have been subject to purifying or diversifying selection, indicating that these genes were, or are, functional. The RPP5 haplotypes thus carry dynamic gene clusters with the potential to adapt rapidly to novel pathogen variants by gene duplication and modification of recognition capacity. We propose that the extremely high level of polymorphism at this complex resistance locus is maintained by frequency-dependent selection.
A Meta-Analysis of Studies on Protection Motivation Theory and Information Security Behaviour

Individuals' willingness to take security precautions is imperative to their own information security and the information security of the organizations they work within. This paper presents a meta-analysis of the protection motivation theory PMT to assess how its efficacy is influenced by the information security behavior it is applied to. It investigates if the PMT explains information security behavior better if: 1 The behavior is voluntary? 2 The threat and coping method is concrete or specific? 3 The information security threat is directed to the person itself? Synthesized data from 28 surveys suggests that the answers to all three questions are yes. Weighted mean correlation coefficients are on average 0.03 higher for voluntary behavior than mandatory behavior, 0.05 higher for specific behaviors than studies of general behaviors, 0.08 higher to threat appraisal when the threat targets the individual person instead of the person's organization or someone else.
Hookups: characteristics and correlates of college students spontaneous and anonymous sexual experiences -- statistical data included.

Adolescents and young adults sexual attitudes and behaviors have been the focus of a flurry of research in the past decade as the threat of HIV/AIDS for these groups has increased dramatically. Of great concern are the high-risk behaviors engaged in by many adolescents and young adults (e.g. unprotected sex large numbers of sex partners judgment-inhibiting alcohol consumption). Moreover the incidence of high-risk sexual practices seems to be on the rise especially on college campuses where norms of sexual permissiveness and multiple partners are influential. Placing these behaviors in the context of adolescents and young adults normative developmental preoccupation with sexual exploration and experimentation highlights the complexity of their sexual risk-taking challenging research and the development of prevention and intervention applications. This study focuses on a specific risky practice common among contemporary college students: the hookup. Hookup is defined herein as a sexual encounter usually lasting only one night between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. Some physical sexual interaction is typical but it may or may not include sexual intercourse. Such sexual experiences are usually spontaneous (i.e. something that "just happens"); alternately the goal of hooking up is planned but the target of the hookup or the individual with whom the hookup occurs is unknown. In addition hookups are usually anonymous in that the partners are strangers or only brief acquaintances and rarely continue to build a relationship let alone see each other again. (excerpt)
Adult attachment in a nationally representative sample.

The explosion of adult attachment research in the last decade has been limited by its reliance on college student and distressed samples. Using a large nationally representative sample of American adults, the authors examined the relation of sociodemographics, childhood adversity, parental representations, adult psychopathology, and personality traits to adult attachment in an effort to replicate previous findings and extend the theory. Distribution of adult attachment styles was similar to that in prior studies: 59% secure, 25% avoidant, and 11% anxious. Adult attachment was associated with several sociodemographic variables (e.g., income, age, race) not previously studied. Childhood adversities of an interpersonal nature were strongly related to insecure adult attachment. Various types of adult psychopathologies and personality traits were also strongly related to adult attachment. Implications for adult attachment theory and future research are discussed.
Case study and theory

A common charge against case study research is that its findings are not generalizable in the way that those of social surveys are. The question often raised is: How do we know that these findings are representative? Some advocates of case study respond to this by arguing that it is directed towards a different kind of general conclusion from that offered by survey research: they suggest that case study work is designed to produce theories. Various accounts have been produced of the role of case studies in producing theoretical conclusions. Others appeal to interpretive or causal realism, arguing that case study gives access to the inner lives of people, to the emergent properties of social interaction, and/or to the underlying, causal mechanisms which generate human bhaviour. Finally, there is the notion of "analytic induction", originally outlined by Znaniecki, which he contrasts with the "enumerative induction" that underpins statistical method . These various rationales can be organized under two main headings: those which appeal to direct perception of causal relations; and those which emphasize the role of comparative method, in one form or another. We will discuss each type of rationale in turn.
UKIRT Observations of the Impact and Consequences of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter

Abstract The observation of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9's collision with Jupiter in July of 1994 by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) produced spectroscopic data of high quality. Analysis of the data for Impact C has produced the first temperature curve that covers such an event, from the first visibility of the plume above the limb through to the settling down of the ejected gas onto the upper jovian atmosphere. Temperatures derived from methane emission show that 5 min after impact, a plume some 6500 km across was heated to ∼1400 K. At its maximum spatial extent ∼12 min after impact, a region of Jupiter's atmosphere ∼45,000 km west from the impact site of the main Fragment C nucleus was heated sufficiently to show methane emission. Observations of impact sites from one jovian day onward showed that hot methane remained or was produced above the sites at least until July 27.
Therapeutic Schools, Styles, and Schoolism: a National Survey

DALE LARSON is Clinical Director of a three-year NIMH grant to develop and conduct a model training program for health professionals working in hospice settings. Since receiving his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, Dale has enjoyed a diverse career including lecturing at U.C. Berkeley and California State University, Hayward, private practice, consultation, and clinical research. Dale’s current exploration of innovative training programs for effective helping and interpersonal relating is particularly challenging and rewarding to him. He is presently editing a book in this area.
Mechanical Dyssynchrony Precedes QRS Widening in ATP‐Sensitive K+ Channel–Deficient Dilated Cardiomyopathy

Background Contractile discordance exacerbates cardiac dysfunction, aggravating heart failure outcome. Dissecting the genesis of mechanical dyssynchrony would enable an early diagnosis before advanced disease. Methods and Results High‐resolution speckle‐tracking echocardiography was applied in a knockout murine surrogate of adult‐onset human cardiomyopathy caused by mutations in cardioprotective ATP‐sensitive K+ (KATP) channels. Preceding the established criteria of cardiac dyssynchrony, multiparametric speckle‐based strain resolved nascent erosion of dysfunctional regions within cardiomyopathic ventricles of the KATP channel–null mutant exposed to hemodynamic stress. Not observed in wild‐type counterparts, intraventricular disparity in wall motion, validated by the degree, direction, and delay of myocardial speckle patterns, unmasked the disease substrate from asymptomatic to overt heart failure. Mechanical dyssynchrony preceded widening of the QRS complex and exercise intolerance and progressed into global myocardial discoordination and decompensated cardiac pump function, precipitating a low output syndrome. Conclusions The present study, with the use of high‐resolution imaging, prospectively resolved the origin and extent of intraventricular motion disparity in a KATP channel–knockout model of dilated cardiomyopathy. Mechanical dyssynchrony established as an early marker of cardiomyopathic disease offers novel insight into the pathodynamics of dyssynchronous heart failure.
The Relationship between Pupil Control Ideology and Academic Optimism.

This study investigates the relationship between pupil control ideology and academic optimism. Information was generated through responses to a questionnaire emailed to teachers in two school districts in Central New Jersey. The districts were categorized GH, as determined by the State's district factor grouping. The research concludes that there is an association between pupil control ideology (PCI) and academic optimism (AO). The data revealed that a lower level of pupil control ideology, or a more humanistic control ideology, tended to correlate with a higher level of academic optimism. A similar inverse relationship with PCI existed with two sub­ categories of AO, teacher efficacy and trust. Teaching on the elementary level tended to be related to a humanistic pupil control ideology and higher self-efficacy, while teaching on the secondary level tended to be related to a more custodial PCI. Higher trust levels and higher emphasis on academic achievement tended to relate to teaching on the secondary level. As academic optimism has been found to affect student achievement, raising the level of awareness and eliciting productive behaviors in students through a better understanding of teacher behaviors may result from the use of the data that this study generated.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) A large outbreak of Legionnaires ' disease at a flower show , the Netherlands , 1999

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General frequentist properties of the posterior profile distribution

In this paper, inference for the parametric component of a semiparametric model based on sampling from the posterior profile distribution is thoroughly investigated from the frequentist viewpoint. The higher-order validity of the profile sampler obtained in Cheng and Kosorok [Ann. Statist. 36 (2008)] is extended to semiparametric models in which the infinite dimensional nuisance parameter may not have a root-n convergence rate. This is a nontrivial extension because it requires a delicate analysis of the entropy of the semiparametric models involved. We find that the accuracy of inferences based on the profile sampler improves as the convergence rate of the nuisance parameter increases. Simulation studies are used to verify this theoretical result. We also establish that an exact frequentist confidence interval obtained by inverting the profile log-likelihood ratio can be estimated with higher-order accuracy by the credible set of the same type obtained from the posterior profile distribution. Our theory is verified for several specific examples.
The Neural Correlates of Cognitive Behavioural Self-Regulation in Early Development

To examine individual differences in cognitive behavioural self-regulation early in development, neural activity during a probabilistic learning task were correlated to measures of impulsivity in 8 normally developing children (10-12 years of age). Children completed a probabilistic learning task in an fMRI scanner and a delay discounting task, used to measure impulsivity, outside the scanner. Choices on the delay discounting task were modeled using a quasi-hyperbolic function, representing participant’s subjective interpretation of a reward as a function of the delay period in which they must wait to obtain the reward. Subsequently, ventral striatum BOLD activity was correlated to individual performance during the probabilistic learning task, as well as to the quasi-hyperbolic model of the participant’s delay discounting curve. It was hypothesized that the magnitude of ventral striatal activity would positively correlate to parameters of individual delay discounting functions. More impulsive individuals, denoted by steeper delay discounting functions, were expected to have more BOLD activity in the ventral striatum during the probabilistic learning task than those with a more modest delay discounting function, or who are less impulsive. Contrary to these predictions, ventral striatal activity was found to be negatively correlated to the quasi-hyperbolic function, modeling a developmental switch of cognitive processing in regard to self-regulation. The present results with regard to ventral striatal activity, have the potential to serve as a biomarker of individual differences in cognitive behavioural self-regulation in normally developing children.