Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY

Limit the abstract to 250 words or fewer and concisely summarize the basic content of the paper without presenting extensive experimental details. Avoid abbreviations and references, and do not include diagrams. When it is essential to include a reference, use the same format as shown for the References section but omit the article title. Because the abstract will be published separately by abstracting services, it must be complete and understandable without reference to the text. Introduction. The introduction should supply sufficient background information to allow the reader to understand and evaluate the results of the present study without referring to previous publications on the topic. The introduction should also provide the hypothesis that was addressed or the rationale for the present study. Use only those references required to provide the most salient background rather than an exhaustive review of the topic. Materials and Methods. The Materials and Methods section should include sufficient technical information to allow the experiments to be repeated. When centrifugation conditions are critical, give enough information to enable another investigator to repeat the procedure: make of centrifuge, model of rotor, temperature, time at maximum speed, and centrifugal force ( g rather than revolutions per minute). For commonly used materials and methods (e.g., media and protein concentration determinations), a simple reference is sufficient. If several alternative methods are commonly used, it is helpful to identify the method briefly as well as to cite the reference. For example, it is preferable to state “cells were broken by ultrasonic treatment as previously described (9)” rather than to state “cells were broken as previously described (9). ” This allows the reader to assess the method without constant reference to previous publications. Describe new methods completely, and give sources of unusual chemicals, equipment, or microbial strains. When large numbers of microbial strains or mutants are used in a study, include tables identifying the immediate sources (i.e., sources from whom the strains were obtained) and properties of the strains, mutants, bacteriophages, plasmids, etc. A method, strain, etc., used in only one of several experiments reported in the paper may be described in the Results section or very briefly (one or two sentences) in a table footnote or figure legend. It is expected that the sources from whom the strains were obtained will be identified. Results. In the Results section, include only the results of the experiments; reserve extensive interpretation of the results for the Discussion section. Present the results as concisely as possible in one of the following: VOL. 73, 2007 2007 AEM INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS 9
NLRP3 and CARD8 Polymorphisms Influence Higher Disease Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Summary Background: The activation of NLRP3-inflammasome may contribute to inflammatory processes in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Functional polymorphisms in the genes coding for its components NLRP3 and CARD8 were associated with a proinflammatory phenotype. Our aim was to investigate the influence of these polymorphisms on RA susceptibility and disease activity at the time of diagnosis and after six months of treatment. Methods: A group of 128 RA patients treated with methotrexate and 122 healthy controls were genotyped for NLRP3 rs35829419 (p. Q705K) and CARD8 rs2043211 (p. C10X) polymorphisms. Results: RA susceptibility was not influenced by the investigated polymorphisms or their interaction. The investigated polymorphisms explained 8% of variability in DAS28 at the time of diagnosis. Carriers of NLRP3 rs35829419 or CARD8 rs2043211 polymorphisms had significantly higher DAS28 at the time of diagnosis (p=0.003; p=0.022; respectively). Polymorphic CARD8 rs2043211 TT genotype was also associated with higher DAS28 after six months of treatment (p=0.033). Conclusions: Genetic variability of inflammasome components may contribute to higher disease activity at the time of diagnosis and after 6 months of methotrexate treatment in RA patients. Better understanding of the immunological mechanisms behind a more active course of RA may suggest novel treatment approaches in a subset of patients with a proinflammatory phenotype.
Power estimation methodology for VLIW Digital Signal Processors

In this contribution the modeling of power consumption for the VLIW processor TMS320C6416T is presented taking into account typical software algorithms in signal and image processing. The modeling is performed at the functional level making this approach distinctly different from other modeling approaches in low level technique. This means that the power consumption can be identified at an early stage in the design process, enabling the designer to explore different hardware architectures and software algorithms. Some typical signal and image processing algorithms are used for the purpose of validating the proposed model. The estimated power consumption is compared to the physically measured power consumption, achieving a very low resulting average estimation error of 1.05% and a maximum estimation error of only 3.3%.
Interstitial IGF-I in exercising skeletal muscle in women.

OBJECTIVE To study interstitial IGF-I concentrations in resting and exercising skeletal muscle in relation to the circulating components of the IGF-IGF binding protein (IGFBP) system. DESIGN AND METHODS Seven women performed endurance exercise with 1 leg (Ex-leg) for 1 h. The resting leg (Rest-leg) served as a control. IGF-I was determined in microdialysate (MD) and was compared with veno-arterial (v-a) concentrations of circulating IGF-IGFBP components. RESULTS Median (range) basal MD-IGF-I was 0.87 (0.4-1.5) microg/l or 0.4 (0.2)% of total-IGF-I (t-IGF-I) determined in arterial serum and in the same concentration range as free dissociable IGF-I (f-IGF-I). Rest-leg MD-IGF-I decreased, reaching significance after exercise. Ex-leg MD-IGF-I was unchanged during exercise and declined after exercise at the level of significance (P = 0.05). There was a release of f-IGF-I from the Ex-leg into the circulation at the end of and shortly after exercise. A small but significant increase in circulating IGFBP-1 was detected at the end of exercise and IGFBP-1 increased further after exercise. Although interleukin-6 (IL-6) has been associated with IGFBP-3 proteolysis, the circulating molecular forms of IGFBP-3 remained unchanged in spite of an IL-6 release from the muscle compartment. CONCLUSIONS Circulating IGFBP-1 is related to interstitial IGF-I in resting muscle although the temporal relationship may not be simple. Further studies should explore the role of local release of IGF-I and its impact on IGF-I activity during contraction.
Applications of Three Dimensional Extremal Length, I: Tiling of a Topological Cube

Given a triangulation of a closed topological cube, we show that (under some technical condition) there is an essentially unique tiling of a rectangular parallelepiped by cubes, indexed by the vertices of the triangulation. Moreover, i - the combinatorics is preserved, and ii- the boundary is preserved: vertices corresponding to the cubes at the corners of the rectangular parallelepiped are at the corners of the topological cube. Also, the sizes of the cubes are obtained as a solution of a variational problem which is a discrete version of the notion of extremal length in three dimensional Euclidean space.
The sharp form of the strong Szego theorem

Let $f$ be a function on the unit circle and $D_n(f)$ be the determinant of the $(n+1)\times (n+1)$ matrix with elements $\{c_{j-i}\}_{0\leq i,j\leq n}$ where $c_m =\hat f_m\equiv \int e^{-im\theta} f(\theta) \f{d\theta}{2\pi}$. The sharp form of the strong Szeg\H{o} theorem says that for any real-valued $L$ on the unit circle with $L,e^L$ in $L^1 (\f{d\theta}{2\pi})$, we have \[ \lim_{n\to\infty} D_n(e^L) e^{-(n+1)\hat L_0} = \exp \biggl(\sum_{k=1}^\infty k\abs{\hat L_k}^2\biggr) \] where the right side may be finite or infinite. We focus on two issues here: a new proof when $e^{i\theta}\to L(\theta)$ is analytic and known simple arguments that go from the analytic case to the general case. We add background material to make this article self-contained.
Phenotypes of a Naturally Defective recB Allele in Neisseria meningitidis Clinical Isolates

ABSTRACT Neisseria meningitidis strains belonging to the hypervirulent lineage ET-37 and several unrelated strains are extremely UV sensitive. The phenotype is consequent to the presence of a nonfunctional recBET-37 allele carrying multiple missense mutations. Phenotypic analysis has been performed with congenic meningococcal strains harboring either the wild-type recB allele or the recBET-37 allele. Congenic recBET-37 meningococci, in addition to being sensitive to UV, were defective both in repair of DNA lesions induced by UV treatment and, partially, in recombination-mediated transformation. Consistently, the wild-type, but not the recBET-37, allele was able to complement the Escherichia coli recB21 mutation to UV resistance and proficiency in recombination. recBET-37 meningococci did not exhibit higher frequencies of spontaneous mutation to rifampin resistance than recB-proficient strains. However, mutation rates were enhanced following UV treatment, a phenomenon not observed in the recB-proficient counterpart. Interestingly, the results of PCR-based assays demonstrated that the presence of the recBET-37 allele considerably increased the frequency of recombination at the pilin loci. The main conclusion that can be drawn is that the presence of the defective recBET-37 allele in N. meningitidis isolates causes an increase in genetic diversity, due to an ineffective RecBCD-dependent DNA repair and recombination pathway, and an increase in pilin antigenic variation.
Anatomy of an Experimental Political Stock Market

Results from the Iowa Political Stock Market are analyzed to ascertain how well markets work as aggregators of information. The authors find that the market worked extremely well, dominating opinion polls in forecasting the outcome of the 1988 presidential election, even though traders in the market exhibited substantial amounts of judgment biases. Their explanation is that judgment bias refers to average behavior, while in markets it is marginal traders who influence price. They present evidence that in this market a sufficient number of traders were free of judgment bias so that the market was able to work well. Copyright 1992 by American Economic Association.
Facial Micro-Expression Recognition Using Spatiotemporal Local Binary Pattern with Integral Projection

Recently, there are increasing interests in inferring mirco-expression from facial image sequences. For micro-expression recognition, feature extraction is an important critical issue. In this paper, we proposes a novel framework based on a new spatiotemporal facial representation to analyze micro-expressions with subtle facial movement. Firstly, an integral projection method based on difference images is utilized for obtaining horizontal and vertical projection, which can preserve the shape attributes of facial images and increase the discrimination for micro-expressions. Furthermore, we employ the local binary pattern operators to extract the appearance and motion features on horizontal and vertical projections. Intensive experiments are conducted on three available published micro-expression databases for evaluating the performance of the method. Experimental results demonstrate that the new spatiotemporal descriptor can achieve promising performance in micro-expression recognition.
Induction of Nitric Oxide Synthase in Anopheles stephensi by Plasmodium falciparum: Mechanism of Signaling and the Role of Parasite Glycosylphosphatidylinositols

ABSTRACT Malaria parasite (Plasmodium spp.) infection in the mosquito Anopheles stephensi induces significant expression of A. stephensi nitric oxide synthase (AsNOS) in the midgut epithelium as early as 6 h postinfection and intermittently thereafter. This induction results in the synthesis of inflammatory levels of nitric oxide (NO) in the blood-filled midgut that adversely impact parasite development. In mammals, P. falciparum glycosylphosphatidylinositols (PfGPIs) can induce NOS expression in immune and endothelial cells and are sufficient to reproduce the major effects of parasite infection. These effects are mediated in part by mimicry of insulin signaling by PfGPIs. In this study, we demonstrate that PfGPIs can induce AsNOS expression in A. stephensi cells in vitro and in the midgut epithelium in vivo. Signaling by P. falciparum merozoites and PfGPIs is mediated through A. stephensi Akt/protein kinase B and a pathway involving DSOR1, a mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase, and an extracellular signal-regulated kinase. However, despite the involvement of kinases that are also associated with insulin signaling in A. stephensi cells, signaling by P. falciparum and by PfGPIs is distinctively different from signaling by insulin. Therefore, although mimicry of insulin by PfGPIs appears to be restricted to mammalian hosts of P. falciparum, the conservation of PfGPIs as a prominent parasite-derived signal of innate immunity can now be extended to include Anopheles mosquitoes, indicating that parasite signaling of innate immunity is conserved in mosquito and mammalian cells.
Poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma: a retrospective clinicopathological study

Poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma (PDTC) is an independent thyroid cancer histotype. In spite of its scarcity, it represents the main cause of death from non-anaplastic follicular cell-derived thyroid cancer. However, given the newness of this entity, few data are available on its clinical behaviour and no explicit consensus sets its treatment. To report the experience of a tertiary medical centre in morocco with PDTC over a period of 7 years. Retrospective study selecting all patients treated for thyroid carcinoma in Nuclear Medicine Department of a tertiary medical centre in Casablanca over seven years period. Patient's files were reviewed for background data, clinico-pathological characteristics, treatment and outcome. Seven patients were included in the study. Patient's average age was 60 years old (30-81) including six women and one man. All patients underwent a total thyroidectomy completed by cervical lymph node dissection in 57% of cases. Mean primary tumour size was 4cm (1-9cm). Patients were classified pT3 in 70% of cases, pT1 and pT2 in 15% each. Vascular invasion was found in 85% of cases. Pathological subtypes found were “insular carcinoma” in 85% of cases. Radioiodine therapy (RIT) was indicated in all cases. Follow-up period ranged between 10 months and 6 years. It showed a complete remission in 57% of cases, persistent disease in 28% of cases and a progressive disease in 15% of cases with a local recurrence. To date, the survival rate is 85%. PDTC is an aggressive thyroid cancer histotype. Treatment remains surgical followed by RIT if the tumour is radioavid. Multimodality therapy is indicated depending on the case and close monitoring is always indicated given the high risk of relapse.
Uniqueness of Positive Fixed Points for Increasing Concave Functions on Rn: An Elementary Result

The square root function has a unique positive fixed point. This function has the following properties: it is strictly increasing and strictly concave, with f(0)=0, and there are points a>0 and b>0 such that f(b)>a and b>f(b). It is shown that any function from Rn to Rn satisfying these properties has a unique positive fixed point. (Copyright: Elsevier)
Regulatory Pressure and Fire Sales in the Corporate Bond Market

This paper investigates fire sales of downgraded corporate bonds induced by regulatory constraints imposed on insurance companies. As insurance companies hold over one-third of investment-grade corporate bonds, the collective need to divest downgraded issues may be limited by a scarcity of counterparties. Using insurance company transaction data, we find that insurance companies that are relatively more constrained by regulation are more likely to sell downgraded bonds. Bonds subject to a high probability of regulatory-induced selling exhibit price declines and subsequent reversals. These price effects appear larger during periods when the insurance industry is relatively distressed and other potential buyers' carpital is scarce.
Dynamic Programming Algorithms for the Ask and Bid Prices of American Options Under Small Proportional Transaction Costs

Dynamic programming algorithms are developed for computing the ask and bid prices of American contingent claims in a binary tree setting in the presence of small proportional transaction costs, extending the recursive construction of the Snell envelope. Associated with the pricing algorithms are iterative procedures for computing optimal hedging strategies for the writer as well as for the buyer of an American option. The bid and ask prices of an American option are represented in terms of the expectation of the option payoff evaluated at an optimal stopping time with respect to an optimal martingale probability measure. As a by-product a similar dynamic programming algorithm is obtained for pricing and hedging European contingent claims in the same setting.
Executive Functions, Time Organization and Quality of Life among Adults with Learning Disabilities

Purpose This study compared the executive functions, organization in time and perceived quality of life (QoL) of 55 adults with learning disabilities (LD) with those of 55 matched controls (mean age 30 years). Furthermore, relationships and predictive relationships between these variables among the group with LD were examined. Methods All participants completed the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Functions (BRIEF-A), the Time Organization and Participation (TOPS, A-C) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) questionnaires. Chi-square tests, independent t-tests and MANOVA were used to examine group differences in each of the subscales scores and ratings of each instrument. Pearson correlations and regression predictive models were used to examine the relationships between the variables in the group with LD. Results Adults with LD had significantly poorer executive functions (BRIEF-A), deficient organization in time abilities (TOPS A-B), accompanied with negative emotional response (TOPS- C), and lower perceived QoL (physical, psychological, social and environmental) in comparison to adults without LD. Regression analysis revealed that Initiation (BRIEF-A) significantly predicted approximately 15% of the participants' organization in time abilities (TOPS A, B scores) beyond group membership. Furthermore, initiation, emotional control (BRIEF-A subscales) and emotional responses following unsuccessful organization of time (TOPS-C) together accounted for 39% of the variance of psychological QoL beyond the contribution of group membership. Conclusions Deficits in initiation and emotional executive functions as well as organization in time abilities and emotional responses to impairments in organizing time affect the QoL of adults with LD and thus should be considered in further research as well as in clinical applications.
Instability of large solitary water waves

We consider the linearized instability of 2D irrotational solitary water waves. The maxima of energy and the travel speed of solitary waves are not obtained at the highest wave, which has a 120 degree angle at the crest. Under the assumption of non-existence of secondary bifurcation which is confirmed numerically, we prove linear instability of solitary waves which are higher than the wave of maximal energy and lower than the wave of maximal travel speed. It is also shown that there exist unstable solitary waves approaching the highest wave. The unstable waves are of large amplitude and therefore this type of instability can not be captured by the approximate models derived under small amplitude assumptions. For the proof, we introduce a family of nonlocal dispersion operators to relate the linear instability problem with the elliptic nature of solitary waves. A continuity argument with a moving kernel formula is used to study these dispersion operators to yield the instability criterion.
The Transition from Development to Motor Control Function in the Corticospinal System

During early postnatal development, corticospinal (CS) system stimulation, electrical or transcranial magnetic, is minimally effective in producing muscle contraction, despite having axon terminals that excite spinal neurons. Later, after stimulation becomes more effective, the cortical motor representation develops, and movements the system controls in maturity are expressed. We determined whether development of temporal facilitation (response enhancement produced by the second of a pair of pyramidal tract stimuli, or a higher stimulus multiple of a train of stimuli) correlated with these changes. Facilitation of the monosynaptic CS response was larger in older kittens and adults than younger kittens. When facilitation was strong, strong motor responses were evoked by pyramidal stimulation with small currents and few pulses. With strong facilitation in older kittens, corticospinal axon varicosities colocalize synaptophysin like adults, suggesting a presynaptic mechanism. With effective facilitation, control signals from the cortex can be sufficiently effective to provoke muscle contraction for guiding movements.
Why Do People Like to Play Social Network Games with Their Friends? A Focus on Sociability and Playability

Abstract Social platform services have transformed the lifestyles of individuals and the entire information and communication technology (ICT) ecosystem. The growth of the social networking market and the evolution of social networking sites (SNSs) have promoted a new wave of social network applications such as social network games (SNGs). SNGs are online or mobile games played through social networking sites or applications in which people interact with friends. SNGs are a new service that merges the playfulness of the game contents and the mutual relationships between people, emphasizing sociability between players. This study investigates the primary effects of usefulness, ease of use, playfulness, social image, and maintaining interpersonal interconnectivity, factors that affect user intention to use SNGs and positive word-of-mouth (WOM). An extended SNG user acceptance model is proposed that applies the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Motivation Theory, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and socio-technical perspectives. The impacts of playability and sociability are investigated in this study. Also, the relationship between sociability and user intentions in SNGs is verified through the results of this study. Keywords: Social Network game, playfulness, social image, maintaining interpersonal interconnectivity.