Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rapid Detection of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus by a Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay

drome (SARS) Coronavirus by a Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay, Leo L.M. Poon, Cynthia S.W. Leung, Masato Tashiro, Kwok Hung Chan, Bonnie W.Y. Wong, Kwok Yung Yuen, Yi Guan, and Joseph S.M. Peiris ( Department of Microbiology, Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR; 2 Department of Viral Diseases and Vaccine Control, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Musashi-Murayama, Tokyo, Japan; 3 Department of Microbiology, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong SAR; * address correspondence to this author at: Department of Microbiology, University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR; fax 852-2855-1241, e-mail llmpoon@hkucc.hku.hk)
The Increasing Involvement of Concerned Groups in R&D Policies: What Lessons for Public Powers?

This book re-examines the rationale for public policy, concluding that the prevailing ‘public knowledge' model is evolving towards a networked or distributed model of knowledge production and use in which public and private institutions play complementary roles. It provides a set of tools and models to assess the impact of the new network model of funding and governance, and argues that governments need to adapt their funding and administrative priorities and procedures to support the emergence and healthy growth of research networks. The book goes on to explain that interdependencies and complementarities in the production and distribution of knowledge require a new and more contextual, flexible and complex approach to government funding, monitoring and assessment.
Seeing REDD: A Microeconomic Analysis of Carbon Sequestration in Indonesia

Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is one of the few interventions to mitigate global warming being pur- sued at a global scale. Its implementation requires knowledge of the willingness to accept land use change contracts and its effectiveness re- quires its application over large areas. In this paper we use data from Sumatra, Indonesia, to contrast two approaches to the elicitation of the supply curve for carbon sequestration: a reverse uniform auction and a budgetary analysis of opportunity costs. The analysis of the supply curves highlights that individual preferences, namely time and risk preferences, but not the opportunity costs, play a significant role in determining the price villagers are willing to accept land use con- tracts that promote high carbon sequestration systems. The results also indicate that there are significant gains from trade to be made through the implementation of this program, as the price requested by land users in the setting we study is much lower than current carbon prices. Finally, we analyse possible targeting techniques, concluding that a combination of geographic and self selection targeting would be the most efficient way to implement this policy.
Programmed cell death-ligand 1 expression predicts survival in patients with gastric carcinoma with microsatellite instability

Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) is expressed in a subgroup of gastric cancers that may benefit from immunotherapy. Microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) is a potential predictive factor for response to immunotherapy targeting the PD-1 or its ligand PD-L1. The relationship between PD-L1 expression and MSI-H status remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated PD-L1 expression in patients with MSI-H gastric cancer. We analyzed PD-L1 expression in 78 MSI-H gastric cancer tissue samples using immunohistochemistry. PD-L1 expression was classified as expression on tumor cells or on immune cells. We observed PD-L1 expression in 48 gastric cancer samples (61.5%), consisting of 7 (9.0%) cases with tumor PD-L1 expression and 47 (60.3%) cases with immune cell PD-L1 expression. Immune cell PD-L1 expression was frequently associated with intestinal type cancer by the Lauren classification (p = 0.015), with a lower risk of lymph node metastasis (p = 0.027) and lower tumor stages (p = 0.029) compared to MSI-H gastric cancers without PD-L1 expression. Moreover, immune cell PD-L1 expression was an independent favorable prognostic factor for overall survival (versus PD-L1 negative; hazard ratio, 3.451; 95% confidence interval, 1.172–12.745; p = 0.025). In MSI-H gastric cancer, PD-L1 expression was observed to be independently associated with a longer survival.
Some aspects of Levy copulas

Levy processes and infinitely divisible distributions are increasingly defined in terms of their Levy measure. In order to describe the dependence structure of a multivariate Levy measure, Tankov (2003) introduced positive Levy copulas. Together with the marginal Levy measures they completely describe multivariate Levy measures on the first quadrant. In this paper, we show that any such Levy copula defines itself a Levy measure with 1-stable margins, in a canonical way. A limit theorem is obtained, characterising convergence of Levy measures with the aid of Levy copulas. Homogeneous Levy copulas are considered in detail. They correspond to Levy processes which have a time-constant Levy copula. Furthermore, we show how the Levy copula concept can be used to construct multivariat distributions in the Bondesson class with prescribed margins in the Bondesson class. The construction depends on a mapping Upsilon, recently introduced by Barndorff-Nielsen and Thorbjornsen (2004a,b) and Barndorff-Nielsen, Maejima and Sato (2004). Similar results are obtained for self-decomposable distributions and for distributions in the Thorin class.
Animal Models to Study the Role of Long-Term Hypergastrinemia in Gastric Carcinogenesis

Patients with chronic hypergastrinemia due to chronic atrophic gastritis or gastrinomas have an increased risk of developing gastric malignancy, and it has been questioned whether also patients with hypergastrinemia caused by long-term use of acid inhibiting drugs are at risk. Gastric carcinogenesis in humans is affected by numerous factors and progresses slowly over years. When using animal models with the possibility of intervention, a complex process can be dissected by studying the role of hypergastrinemia in carcinogenesis within a relatively short period of time. We have reviewed findings from relevant models where gastric changes in animal models of long-term hypergastrinemia have been investigated. In all species where long-term hypergastrinemia has been induced, there is an increased risk of gastric malignancy. There is evidence that hypergastrinemia is a common causative factor in carcinogenesis in the oxyntic mucosa, while other cofactors may vary in the different models.
Outburst of the 2 s Anomalous X-Ray Pulsar 1E 1547.0–5408

Following our discovery of radio pulsations from the newly recognized anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 1E 1547.0–5408, we initiated X-ray monitoring with the Swift X-ray telescope and obtained a single target-of-opportunity observation with the Newton X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton). In comparison with its historic minimum flux of 3 × 10−13 ergs cm−2 s−1, the source was found to be in a record high state, fX(1–8 keV) = 5 × 10−12 ergs cm−2 s−1, or LX = 1.7 × 1035(d/9 kpc)2 ergs s−1, and declining by 25% in 1 month. Extrapolating the decay, we bound the total energy in this outburst to 1042 ergs < E < 1043 ergs. The spectra (fitted with a Comptonized blackbody) show that an increase in the temperature and area of a hot region, to 0.5 keV and ~16% of the surface area of the neutron star, respectively, are primarily responsible for its increase in luminosity. The energy, spectrum, and timescale of decay are consistent with a deep crustal heating event, similar to an interpretation of the X-ray turn-on of the transient AXP XTE J1810–197. Simultaneous with the 4.6 hr XMM-Newton observation, we observed at 6.4 GHz with the Parkes telescope, measuring the phase relationship of the radio and X-ray pulse. The X-ray pulsed fraction of 1E 1547.0–5408 is only ~7%, while its radio pulse is relatively broad for such a slow pulsar, which may indicate a nearly aligned rotator. As also inferred from the transient behavior of XTE J1810–197, the only other AXP known to emit in the radio, the magnetic field rearrangement responsible for this X-ray outburst of 1E 1547.0–5408 is probably the cause of its radio turn-on.
Direct transcriptional repression of the genes encoding the zinc-finger proteins Gfi1b and Gfi1 by Gfi1b

Gfi1b is a 37 kDa transcriptional repressor with six zinc-finger domains that is differentially expressed during hemato- and lymphopoiesis. We show here that transcription from the Gfi1b gene locus is silenced in the spleen but not in the bone marrow of transgenic mice that constitutively express Gfi1b under the control of the pan-hematopoietic vav promoter. Sequence analysis of the Gfi1b promoter showed the presence of potential Gfi1/Gfi1b-binding sites close to the mRNA start site. The expression of reporter gene constructs containing the Gfi1b core promoter appended to the luciferase gene were strongly repressed in the presence of exogenous Gfi1b. Moreover, analysis of combinatorial mutant mice that carry the vav-Gfi1b transgene and a green fluorescent protein-tagged Gfi1 gene locus demonstrated that the Gfi1 gene can be repressed by Gfi1b. Direct binding of Gfi1b and Gfi1 to the potential binding sites in the Gfi1b promoter could be demonstrated by gel-shift analyses in vitro. Chromatin-immunoprecipitation experiments showed that both the Gfi1b and the Gfi1 promoter are indeed occupied by Gfi1b in vivo. Hence, we conclude from our data that Gfi1b can auto-repress its own expression, but, in addition, is also able to cross-repress expression of the Gfi1 gene most likely in a cell type specific manner.
Dopamine D1 and D2 Receptor Family Contributions to Modafinil-Induced Wakefulness

Modafinil (2-[(diphenylmethyl) sulfinyl] acetamide; United States brand name Provigil) is a wake-promoting agent first prescribed in France to treat narcolepsy-associated somnolence in the 1990s. Modafinil is currently prescribed in the United States for narcolepsy-associated somnolence, shift-work
Forced Singular Perturbations as Theoretical Background to a Split-Coordinate Frame Multirate Strapdown Terrestrial Navigation Algorithm

Forced singular perturbations (FSP) are proposed as a theoretical background to Bar-Itzhack's body−local-level split-coordinate frame multirate scheme intuitively derived for terrestrial strapdown navigation with reduced computations. Forcing the dynamics into distinct time scales caused a degradation of the continuous-time solution, though the loss of accuracy was not significant in comparison with the covered distance. Simulation of ideal sensors undergoing actual operating conditions showed that discretization and use of inertial data in incremental form, however, had a significant impact on navigation acuracy. The interaction between sensor quantization and sensor sampling frequency was investigated. The evaluation of performance in a variety of conditions indicated that the multirate algorithm proposed by Bar-Itzhack, in spite of its elegance and simplicity with reduced computational workload, showed acceptable accuracy in comparison with Savage's more complex multirate correction terms to coning, sculling, and scrolling errors.
Internet Child Pornography

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the problem of Internet child pornography that spotlights the connection between technology and behavior, presenting practical suggestions for reducing this pervasive problem. The role of the Internet in fueling the problem of child pornography is enormous. Prior to the Internet, child pornography was typically locally produced, of poor quality, expensive, and difficult to obtain. United States' law enforcement officials were able to boast in the late 1970s that the traffic in child pornography had virtually been eliminated. The advent of the Internet in the 1980s made vast quantities of child pornography instantly available in the privacy of the viewer's home. Today, child pornography largely exists because of the opportunities provided by the Internet. Internet Child Pornography provides a comprehensive overview of the issue by describing the problem of child pornography, examining the impact of the Internet, and presenting a profile of users. With this foundation in place, the authors then address responses to child pornography and shed light on the complexities of dealing with criminal activities that are perpetrated largely online—for example, the fact that people behave differently in online environments than they do in other areas of their lives. The book examines prevention efforts designed to reduce access to child pornography, law enforcement responses designed to catch known offenders, and treatment responses designed to reduce reoffending.
Personal Electronic Device Use in Face-to-Face Organizational Meetings: How it is Perceived and the Factors Influencing Perceptions

The use of personal electronic devices by professionals can both increase efficiency and create distractions. Because of this dichotomy, perceptions of the use of personal electronic devices in meetings may be divided. The purpose of this study is to determine how personal electronic device use in face-to-face organizational meetings is perceived, how perceptions are changing over time, which factor has the greatest influence on perceptions, and how this influential factor shapes and guides perceptions. In order to make these determinations, a two-phase study is conducted. In phase one, a content analysis of comments left in response to articles and blogs published online is performed. In phase two, semi-structured, in-person interviews are conducted and analyzed. The results of these two phases indicate 1) general perceptions of device use in face-to-face organizational meetings are more negative than positive; 2) perceptions of device use appear to be becoming more negative over time; 3) perceptions of device use may be becoming more polarized; 4) device use in meetings may be becoming a more popular topic of discussion; 5) rank or status may be the most influential factor; 6) higher-ranked professionals may tend to have more positive perceptions of device use in meetings, while lower-ranked professionals may have more negative perceptions; 7) device use in meetings by higher-ranked individuals may be considered more acceptable than use by lower-ranked individuals; and, 8) higher-ranked employees may be more likely to accept device use by all levels of employees, while lower-ranked employees may feel device use is more acceptable for those of higher ranks than those of lower ranks.
Modular Security : Design and Analysis

Software systems made of software components are becoming more and more common. This paper surveys theories and techniques for designing and analyzing security of such systems. The paper gives an overview of security models, introduces formal foundations for system composition and security engineering, and investigates available techniques for security design and analysis, focusing on each technique’s adoption of composition mechanisms and support for security property.
A Consumption-Based Approach to Exchange Rate Predictability

This paper provides evidence of short-run predictability for the real exchange rate by performing out-of-sample tests of a forecasting equation which is derived from a consumption-based asset pricing model. In this model, the real exchange rate is predictable as a result of the implications of preferences with habit persistence on the pricing of international assets. The implied predictors are: domestic, US and world consumption growth. Empirical exercises show evidence of short-term predictability on the bilateral rates of 15 out of 17 countries vis-a-vis the US over the post Bretton-Woods float. A GMM estimation of the parameters of the model also finds evidence of the presence of habits in consumers’ preferences.
Low-Frequency Vibrational Modes Anomalies and Rigidity: A Key to Understanding the Glass and the Electronic Properties of Flexible Materials from a Topological Perspective

Using rigidity (constraint) theory of glasses, the effects of low frequency vibrational modes anomalies in the glass transition are studied. It is discussed how the possibility of tailoring by chemical doping the number of low frequency modes gives clues about how to determine the glass transition temperature and glass formation ability. In particular, we present the effects of floppy modes in the specific heat, entropy , internal energy below glass transition, as well as a discussion of the thermodynamical effects above the glass transition. All the previous results can be extended to include the Boson peak, since it can also be understood from a rigidity point of view as a dilution of bonds in an over-constrained network. Finally, we discuss how a new subject is emerging: floppy modes effects in the electronic properties of flexible systems. Such relationship provides a natural connection with topological insulators and two dimensional materials like graphene.
Management of Maternal Cardiac Arrest in the Third Trimester of Pregnancy: A Simulation-Based Pilot Study

Objective. To evaluate confidence, knowledge, and competence after a simulation-based curriculum on maternal cardiac arrest in an Obstetrics & Gynecologic (OBGYN) residency program. Methods. Four simulations with structured debriefing focusing on high yield causes and management of maternal cardiac arrest were executed. Pre- and post-individual knowledge tests (KT) and confidence surveys (CS) were collected along with group scores of critical performance steps evaluated by content experts for the first and final simulations. Results. Significant differences were noted in individual KT scores (pre: 58.9 ± 8.9 versus post: 72.8 ± 6.1, p = 0.01) and CS total scores (pre: 22.2 ± 6.4 versus post: 29.9 ± 3.4, p = 0.007). Significant differences were noted in airway management, p = 0.008; appropriate cycles of drug/shock-CPR, p = 0.008; left uterine displacement, p = 0.008; and identifying causes of cardiac arrest, p = 0.008. Nonsignificant differences were noted for administration of appropriate drugs/doses, p = 0.074; chest compressions, p = 0.074; bag-mask ventilation before intubation, p = 0.074; and return of spontaneous circulation identification, p = 0.074. Groups remained noncompetent in team leader tasks and considering therapeutic hypothermia. Conclusion. This study demonstrated improved OBGYN resident knowledge, confidence, and competence in the management of third trimester maternal cardiac arrest. Several skills, however, will likely require more longitudinal curricular exposure and training to develop and maintain proficiency.
Self-Verification and Contextualized Self-Views

Whereas most self-verification research has focused on people's desire to verify their global self-conceptions, the present studies examined self-verification with regard to contextualized selfviews—views of the self in particular situations and relationships. It was hypothesized that individuals whose core self-conceptions include contextualized self-views should seek to verify these self-views. In Study 1, the more individuals defined the self in dialectical terms, the more their judgments were biased in favor of verifying over nonverifying feedback about a negative, situation-specific self-view. In Study 2, consistent with research on gender differences in the importance of relationships to the self-concept, women but not men showed a similar bias toward feedback about a negative, relationship-specific self-view, a pattern not seen for global self-views. Together, the results support the notion that self-verification occurs for core self-conceptions, whatever form(s) they may take. Individual differences in self-verification and the nature of selfhood and authenticity are discussed.
The prevalence and impact of overuse injuries in five Norwegian sports: Application of a new surveillance method

Little is known about the true extent and severity of overuse injuries in sport, largely because of methodological challenges involved in recording them. This study assessed the prevalence of overuse injuries among Norwegian athletes from five sports using a newly developed method designed specifically for this purpose. The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center Overuse Injury Questionnaire was distributed weekly by e‐mail to 45 cross‐country skiers, 98 cyclists, 50 floorball players, 55 handball players, and 65 volleyball players for 13 weeks. The prevalence of overuse problems at the shoulder, lower back, knee, and anterior thigh was monitored throughout the study and summary measures of an injury severity score derived from athletes' questionnaire responses were used to gauge the relative impact of overuse problems in each area. The area where overuse injuries had the greatest impact was the knee in volleyball where, on average, 36% of players had some form of complaint (95% CI 32–39%). Other prevalent areas included the shoulder in handball (22%, 95% CI 16–27%) the knee in cycling (23%, 95% CI 17–28%), and the knee and lower back in floorball (27%, 95% CI 24–31% and 29%, 95% CI 25–33%, respectively).
Non-rigid multi-modal object tracking using Gaussian mixture models

This work presents an approach to visual tracking based on dividing a target into multiple regions, or fragments. The target is represented by a Gaussian mixture model in a joint featurespatial space, with each ellipsoid corresponding to a different fragment. The fragment set and its cardinality are automatically adapted to the image data using an efficient region-growing procedure and updated according to a weighted average of the past and present image statistics. The fragment modeling is used to generate a strength map indicating the probability of each pixel belonging to the foreground. The strength map provides vital information about new fragments appearing in the scene, thereby assisting in addressing problematic cases like self-occlusion. The strength map is used by the region growing formulation, reminiscent of discrete level set implementation, to extract accurate boundaries of the target. Significant speedup is achieved using the region growing procedure over traditional level set based methods. The joint Lucas-Kanade feature tracking approach is also incorporated for handling large unpredictable motions even in untextured regions. Experimental results on a number of challenging sequences demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique.
STABILITY OF CONIC BUNDLES: WITH AN APPENDIX BY MUNDET I RIERA

Roughly speaking, a conic bundle is a surface, fibered over a curve, such that the fibers are conics (not necessarily smooth). We define stability for conic bundles and construct a moduli space. We prove that (after fixing some invariants) these moduli spaces are irreducible (under some conditions). Conic bundles can be thought of as generalizations of orthogonal bundles on curves. We show that in this particular case our definition of stability agrees with the definition of stability for orthogonal bundles. Finally, in an appendix by I. Mundet i Riera, a Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence is stated for conic bundles.