Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mineralization of mono- and dichlorobenzenes and simultaneous degradation of chloro- and methyl-substituted benzenes by the white rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium

Phanerochaete chrysosporium extensively degraded and mineralized chlorobenzene and o-, m-, and p-dichlorobenzenes. The rate of degradation was in the following order: monochlorobenzene > m-dichlorobenzene > o-dichlorobenzene > p-dichlorobenzene. Net level of degradation was generally higher than mineralization. Maximal degradation and mineralization of chlorobenzenes were observed in malt extract cultures in which the lignin peroxidases and manganese peroxidases are not known to be produced. The fungus degraded both chlorobenzene and toluene when presented as a mixture, indicating its ability to simultaneously degrade chloro-substituted and methyl-substituted benzenes.
Simultaneous fixation using glutaraldehyde and osmium tetroxide or potassium ferricyanide‐reduced osmium for the preservation of monogenean flatworms: An assessment for Merizocotyle icopae

Simultaneous fixation was investigated for a marine organism: the monogenean flatworm ectoparasite Merizocotyle icopae. Four protocols for primary fixation were compared: 3% glutaraldehyde alone in 0.1M cacodylate buffer for a minimum of 2 hours; 1% glutaraldehyde in combination with 1% osmium tetroxide, both in 0.1M cacodylate buffer, until tissues darkened (5–20 minutes); 1% glutaraldehyde in 0.1M cacodylate buffer in combination with 0.5% potassium ferricyanide‐reduced osmium until tissues darkened (5–20 minutes); 1% glutaraldehyde in combination with 1% osmium tetroxide, both in 0.1M cacodylate buffer, for 30 minutes. The study confirms that the standard method for transmission electron microscopic fixation (first listed protocol) routinely applied to platyhelminths is optimal for ultrastructural preservation, but some simultaneous fixation methods (second and third listed protocols) are acceptable when rapid immobilization is needed. Scanning electron microscopic preparations may be improved using simultaneous primary fixation. Microsc. Res. Tech. 63:102–110, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Mechanism for Inducing Cooperation in Non-Cooperative Environments: Theory and Applications

We construct a market based mechanism that induces players in a non-cooperative game to make the same choices as characterize cooperation. We then argue that this mechanism is applicable to a wide range of economic questions and illustrate this claim using the problems of "The Tragedy of the Commons" and "R&D Spillovers in Duopoly".
Mesenchymal Stem Cells Support Survival and Proliferation of Primary Human Acute Myeloid Leukemia Cells through Heterogeneous Molecular Mechanisms

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a bone marrow malignancy, and various bone marrow stromal cells seem to support leukemogenesis, including osteoblasts and endothelial cells. We have investigated how normal bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) support the in vitro proliferation of primary human AML cells. Both MSCs and primary AML cells show constitutive release of several soluble mediators, and the mediator repertoires of the two cell types are partly overlapping. The two cell populations were cocultured on transwell plates, and MSC effects on AML cells mediated through the local cytokine/soluble mediator network could thus be evaluated. The presence of normal MSCs had an antiapoptotic and growth-enhancing effect on primary human AML cells when investigating a group of 51 unselected AML patients; this was associated with increased phosphorylation of mTOR and its downstream targets, and the effect was independent of cytogenetic or molecular-genetic abnormalities. The MSCs also supported the long-term proliferation of the AML cells. A subset of the patients also showed an altered cytokine network with supra-additive levels for several cytokines. The presence of cytokine-neutralizing antibodies or receptor inhibitors demonstrated that AML cells derived from different patients were heterogeneous with regard to effects of various cytokines on AML cell proliferation or regulation of apoptosis. We conclude that even though the effects of single cytokines derived from bone marrow MSCs on human AML cells differ among patients, the final cytokine-mediated effects of the MSCs during coculture is growth enhancement and inhibition of apoptosis.
Effect of Blood Pressure During the Acute Period of Ischemic Stroke on Stroke Outcome: A Tertiary Analysis of the GAIN International Trial

Background and Purpose— The effects of blood pressure (BP) and its fluctuations during the acute phase on the clinical course of ischemic stroke are incompletely understood. We tested the hypotheses that baseline mean arterial BP [MAP=(2×diastolic BP+systolic BP)/3], weighted average MAP, and an increase or decrease of >30% from baseline MAP are independently associated with stroke outcome. Methods— We studied the 1455 patients with ischemic stroke in the Glycine Antagonist (Gavestinel) in Neuroprotection (GAIN) International Trial. BP management was at the discretion of investigators and was measured at 0, 0.5, 4, 12, 12.25, 60, and 60.25 hours. Outcome was assessed by mortality, Barthel Index (dead or 0 to 55 versus 60 to 90 versus ≥95), National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score (dead or ≥2), and Rankin Scale (dead or ≥2). Cox proportional-hazards and stepwise logistic regression modeling corrected for demography, medical history, stroke severity, and clinical subtype. Results— Elevated weighted average MAP was associated with poor outcome assessed by mortality at 3 months (hazard ratio, 1.16; 1.06 to 1.27 per 10 mm Hg), NIHSS score (odds ratio [OR] 1.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01 to 1.28), and Barthel Index at 1 month (OR, 1.12; 95% CI, 1.03 to 1.23). A 30% increase from baseline MAP was associated with poor outcome assessed by NIHSS score and Barthel Index at 1 and 3 months and by Rankin score at 1 month (OR, 2.01; 95% CI, 1.16 to 3.49 to OR, 3.03; 95% CI, 1.30 to 7.02). Conclusions— Baseline MAP was not associated with poor ischemic stroke outcome. However, variables describing the course of BP over the first 2.5 days have a marked and independent relationship with 1- and 3-month outcome.
Bit Commitment From Nonsignaling Correlations

Central cryptographic functionalities such as encryption, authentication, or secure two-party computation cannot be realized in an information-theoretically secure way from scratch. This serves as a motivation to study what (possibly weak) primitives they can be based on. We consider as such starting points general two-party input-output systems that do not allow for message transmission and show that they can be used for realizing unconditionally secure bit commitment as soon as they are nontrivial, i.e., cannot be securely realized from distributed randomness only.
A new UHF anti-metal RFID tag antenna design with open-circuited stub feed

A new UHF RFID tag antenna used on the surface of a metallic object is proposed in this paper. In practical RFID applications, metals appear in many occasions. However, the UHF band is very sensitive to metal. When the tag antenna is near a metal, its impedance matching, radiation efficiency and directivity change and the reading distance is reduced so quickly that it cannot work. Therefore, it's necessary to employ some special handling or use a special tag so that it can be applied on the metal surface. After several rounds of design optimization and experimental validation, the designed tag antenna can work in the 920 MHz frequency band and is able to maintain a good performance on the metal surface. What's more, it has some advantages such as planar structure, small size and low cost. The proposed tag antenna provides an effective solution for metal identification applications in the UHF frequency band, which is validated by simulation results and practical test.
Mathematical modeling of thin piezoelectric plates with electric field gradient

Piezoelectric materials are widely used in the design of smart structures. It is thus of major technological interest to provide efficient modelings of such structures. In the case of thin piezoelectric plates, classical studies generally lead to two different models. These two models can be linked to the distinction between sensors and actuators. Here, we extend these results to the second order piezoelectricity, that is to say piezoelectricity with electric field gradient. We recently showed in [1] that three different models have to be taken into account, which broadens the scope of the sensors and actuators field. Second order piezoelectricity being compatible with isotropy (see the introduction below), we also propose a systematic study of the impact of crystalline symmetries on our models and show that a striking effect named 'structural switch-off' appears for some specific crystal classes. This paper aims at presenting these results in a simplified but accurate way.
Retention and intentions of professional accountants

This paper enhances understanding of factors underlying professional accountants' high turnover rates. Various researchers, institutions and government bodies have identified accountants' retention is of concern. However, traditional explanations, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, do not sufficiently account for the turnover rates observed in the accounting profession. A New Zealand (NZ) sample of professional accountants enabled us to identify a range of factor. Intentions to stay were very low, 50% of accountants expected to leave their current employer within 3 years of the survey date. Satisfaction with two core job characteristics, feedback and skill variety, in addition to work life balance (WLB) accounted for 65% of the variance of overall job satisfaction. WLB, or at least a lack of access to flexible work arrangements was strongly indicated as the primary consideration when choosing to remain with the present employer.
Detecting Unusual and Deceptive Communication in Email

Deception theory suggests that deceptive writing is characterized by reduced frequency of first-person pronouns and exclusive words, and elevated frequency of negative emotion words and action verbs. We apply this model of deception to the Enron email dataset, and then apply singular value decomposition to elicit the correlation structure between emails. This allows us to rank emails by how well they fit the profile of detection. Those emails that are highly ranked using this approach include deceptive emails; other emails that are ranked highly using these frequency counts also indicate organizational dysfunctions such as improper communication of information. Hence this approach can be used as a tool for both external investigation of an organization, and internal management and regulatory compliance.
Temperature-responsive in vitro RNA structurome of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis

Significance The RNA structure is critical for RNA function in all domains of life. We determined the transcriptome-wide RNA structurome of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, a food-borne pathogen, at three physiologically relevant temperatures. Our analysis shows that mRNAs tend to have a poorly structured ribosome binding site. Transcripts that deviate from this general principle are very good candidates as translational repressor elements, and we identified 16 RNA thermometers able to control gene expression in a temperature-dependent manner. Our analysis demonstrates the power of high-throughput RNA structure probing approaches to identify new sensory and regulatory RNA structures. RNA structures are fundamentally important for RNA function. Dynamic, condition-dependent structural changes are able to modulate gene expression as shown for riboswitches and RNA thermometers. By parallel analysis of RNA structures, we mapped the RNA structurome of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis at three different temperatures. This human pathogen is exquisitely responsive to host body temperature (37 °C), which induces a major metabolic transition. Our analysis profiles the structure of more than 1,750 RNAs at 25 °C, 37 °C, and 42 °C. Average mRNAs tend to be unstructured around the ribosome binding site. We searched for 5′-UTRs that are folded at low temperature and identified novel thermoresponsive RNA structures from diverse gene categories. The regulatory potential of 16 candidates was validated. In summary, we present a dynamic bacterial RNA structurome and find that the expression of virulence-relevant functions in Y. pseudotuberculosis and reprogramming of its metabolism in response to temperature is associated with a restructuring of numerous mRNAs.
Genotypic Antiretroviral Resistance Testing for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Integrase Inhibitors by Use of the TruGene Sequencing System

ABSTRACT A sequencing assay for detection of mutations conferring resistance to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) integrase inhibitors raltegravir and elvitegravir was developed using the automated TruGene sequencing system. The assay returned clear sequencing results for samples with ≥500 RNA copies/ml for mutation detection and HIV-1 subtyping across a spectrum of HIV-1 subtypes.
Heat Shock Proteins: Intestinal Gatekeepers that Are Influenced by Dietary Components and the Gut Microbiota

Trillions of microorganisms that inhabit the intestinal tract form a diverse and intricate ecosystem with a deeply embedded symbiotic relationship with their hosts. As more detailed information on gut microbiota complexity and functional diversity accumulates, we are learning more about how diet-microbiota interactions can influence the immune system within and outside the gut and host health in general. Heat shock proteins are a set of highly conserved proteins that are present in all types of cells, from microbes to mammals. These proteins carry out crucial intracellular housekeeping functions and unexpected extracellular immuno-regulatory features in order to maintain the mucosal barrier integrity and gut homeostasis. It is becoming evident that the enteric microbiota is one of the major determinants of heat shock protein production in intestinal epithelial cells. This review will focus on the interactions between diet, gut microbiota and their role for regulating heat shock protein production and, furthermore, how these interactions influence the immune system and the integrity of the mucosal barrier.
Monitoring of Microwave Properties of Early-Age Concrete and Mortar Specimens

Microwave noninvasive and evaluation techniques have shown to be promising for characterization of cement-based materials (CBMs). In the construction industry, the determination of initial water-to-cement (w/c) ratio and cure-state monitoring of early-age CBMs are still challenging tasks. In this paper, measurement results of monitoring of reflection coefficients, electrical conductance and susceptance of early-age concrete, and mortar specimens with different w/c ratios and constituent ratios are presented. The comparative measurements are conducted using a microwave near-field noninvasive testing technique at two frequency bands, namely, R-band (1.7 - 2.6 GHz) and X-band (8.2 - 12.4 GHz). Statistical analysis and exponential curve fitting have been performed on the temporal measurements of early-age (a few first days) CBMs. The results demonstrated that the dynamic ranges, the initial values, and the initial slopes of measurement curves can be used for cure-state monitoring, hydration rates prediction, and initial w/c ratio determination.
Distributed Power Control for Enhanced Spatial Reuse in CSMA/CA Based Wireless Networks

Exposed terminals are critical performance degrading factors in wireless networks adopting carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). The objective of this paper is to minimize the exposed terminals and enhance spatial reuse. Therefore, an analytical model is provided to show how much gain can be obtained by resolving the exposed sender (EXS) and exposed receiver (EXR) problems in terms of capacity and delay. It is shown that resolving EXS and EXR both outperform the conventional CSMA/CA significantly. In addition, a transmission power control scheme that can jointly address the hidden and exposed terminal problem is introduced. Results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the other schemes in terms of spatial reuse, power consumption, and thus, the overall throughput and energy efficiency improves.
Semantic–geometric visual place recognition: a new perspective for reconciling opposing views

Human drivers are capable of recognizing places from a previous journey even when viewing them from the opposite direction during the return trip under radically different environmental conditions, without needing to look back or employ a 360 ° camera or LIDAR sensor. Such navigation capabilities are attributed in large part to the robust semantic scene understanding capabilities of humans. However, for an autonomous robot or vehicle, achieving such human-like visual place recognition capability presents three major challenges: (1) dealing with a limited amount of commonly observable visual content when viewing the same place from the opposite direction; (2) dealing with significant lateral viewpoint changes caused by opposing directions of travel taking place on opposite sides of the road; and (3) dealing with a radically changed scene appearance due to environmental conditions such as time of day, season, and weather. Current state-of-the-art place recognition systems have only addressed these three challenges in isolation or in pairs, typically relying on appearance-based, deep-learnt place representations. In this paper, we present a novel, semantics-based system that for the first time solves all three challenges simultaneously. We propose a hybrid image descriptor that semantically aggregates salient visual information, complemented by appearance-based description, and augment a conventional coarse-to-fine recognition pipeline with keypoint correspondences extracted from within the convolutional feature maps of a pre-trained network. Finally, we introduce descriptor normalization and local score enhancement strategies for improving the robustness of the system. Using both existing benchmark datasets and extensive new datasets that for the first time combine the three challenges of opposing viewpoints, lateral viewpoint shifts, and extreme appearance change, we show that our system can achieve practical place recognition performance where existing state-of-the-art methods fail.
Invasive rusty crayfish (Faxonius rusticus) populations in North America are infected with the crayfish plague disease agent (Aphanomyces astaci)

The American rusty crayfish, Faxonius rusticus, is an invasive species in parts of North America where it displaces native crayfish species. In Europe, various invasive North American crayfish species are carriers of the crayfish plague disease agent Aphanomyces astaci that causes devastating population declines of European crayfish. Little is known about either the presence or the influence of A. astaci in North America where it originates. Here, we attempted to isolate A. astaci from North American F. rusticus for the first time and compare it to the strains detected in Europe. We tested the infection status of 84 F. rusticus samples from 10 different locations in the midwestern United States that are outside of the F. rusticus native distribution range. We used quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) to assess the infection status in each individual, and we determined the mitochondrial haplotypes and multilocus microsatellite genotypes when it was possible. We detected A. astaci DNA in 9 individuals from 4 out of 10 locations. Analyses of the axenic culture isolates and the crayfish tissue samples by sequence analyses, haplotyping, and genotyping confirmed the results and revealed a novel A. astaci microsatellite genotype. Our results clearly identify F. rusticus as a host of A. astaci in North America. The threat of these strains to endangered crayfish species in North America remains unknown, but the potential of A. astaci infections should be considered when developing and implementing invasive species management plans for conservation purposes.
On input state space reduction and buffer noneffective region

Considers a single-server finite-buffer system. Its stationary random input process as characterized by the power spectrum P(/spl omega/) and the input rate steady state distribution f(x). The two functions represent second-order and steady-state input statistics. The authors use the superposition of heterogeneous 2-state Markov chains (MC) for construction of P(/spl omega/) and f(x). The resulting P(/spl omega/) is a monotone function of |/spl omega/|, and f(x) is the convolution of heterogeneous binomial functions. They show how to eliminate the state space explosion in input modeling. Unlike the existing modeling technique which matches the 2-state MC with each individual source, their 2-state MC are built to statistically match with functions P(/spl omega/) and f(x) of the aggregate input. The input state space is then reduced by many orders of magnitude. They examine the maximum throughput of a finite-buffer system to support P(/spl omega/) and f(x) subject to a desired average loss rate L. The numerical study explores a fundamental limit of buffer sizing to the maximum throughput improvement. A simple heuristic formula is developed, which tells quantitatively whether a given finite-buffer system operates in a so-called buffer-noneffective region. The new insight relating link capacity to low frequency input statistics explored in the paper is a fruitful starting point for further research. <<ETX>>
A new approach to intelligent text filtering based on novelty detection

This paper presents an original approach to modelling user's information need in text filtering environment. This approach relies on a specific novelty detection model which allows both accurate learning of user's profile and evaluation of the coherency of user's behaviour during his interaction with the system. Thanks to an online learning algorithm, the novelty detection model is also able to track changes in user's interests over time.The proposed approach has been successfully tested on the Reuters-21578 benchmark. The experimental results prove that this approach signicantly outperforms the well-known Rocchio's learning algorithm.
On the Inverse Erdos-Heilbronn Problem for Restricted Set Addition in Finite Groups

We provide a survey of results concerning both the direct and inverse problems to the Cauchy-Davenport theorem and Erdos-Heilbronn problem in Additive Combinatorics. We formulate an open conjecture concerning the inverse Erdos-Heilbronn problem in nonabelian groups. We extend an inverse to the Dias da Silva-Hamidoune Theorem to Z/nZ where n is composite, and we generalize this result into nonabelian groups.