Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification, Characterization and Immunogenicity of an O-Antigen Capsular Polysaccharide of Francisella tularensis

Capsular polysaccharides are important factors in bacterial pathogenesis and have been the target of a number of successful vaccines. Francisella tularensis has been considered to express a capsular antigen but none has been isolated or characterized. We have developed a monoclonal antibody, 11B7, which recognizes the capsular polysaccharide of F. tularensis migrating on Western blot as a diffuse band between 100 kDa and 250 kDa. The capsule stains poorly on SDS-PAGE with silver stain but can be visualized using ProQ Emerald glycoprotein stain. The capsule appears to be highly conserved among strains of F. tularensis as antibody 11B7 bound to the capsule of 14 of 14 F. tularensis type A and B strains on Western blot. The capsular material can be isolated essentially free of LPS, is phenol and proteinase K resistant, ethanol precipitable and does not dissociate in sodium dodecyl sulfate. Immunoelectron microscopy with colloidal gold demonstrates 11B7 circumferentially staining the surface of F. tularensis which is typical of a polysaccharide capsule. Mass spectrometry, compositional analysis and NMR indicate that the capsule is composed of a polymer of the tetrasaccharide repeat, 4)-α-D-GalNAcAN-(1->4)-α-D-GalNAcAN-(1->3)-β-D-QuiNAc-(1->2)-β-D-Qui4NFm-(1-, which is identical to the previously described F. tularensis O-antigen subunit. This indicates that the F. tularensis capsule can be classified as an O-antigen capsular polysaccharide. Our studies indicate that F. tularensis O-antigen glycosyltransferase mutants do not make a capsule. An F. tularensis acyltransferase and an O-antigen polymerase mutant had no evidence of an O-antigen but expressed a capsular antigen. Passive immunization of BALB/c mice with 75 µg of 11B7 protected against a 150 fold lethal challenge of F. tularensis LVS. Active immunization of BALB/c mice with 10 µg of capsule showed a similar level of protection. These studies demonstrate that F. tularensis produces an O-antigen capsule that may be the basis of a future vaccine.
Multidisciplinary Screening of Cognitive Impair- ment Following Acquired Brain Impairment. Is there Repetition?

Natasha A. Lannin, BSc(OT), GradDip, AccOT, PhD Candidate, Univeristy of Western Sydney School of Exercise and Health Sciences (Bldg 24), Campbelltown Campus, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, New South Wales 1797, Australia. Maria Scarcia, BA(Hons), MPsych(Clinical), MAPS, Lecturer, University of Tasmania, Australia. People with acquired brain impairment, such as stroke or traumatic brain injury, commonly experience cognitive impairment. There is evidence that cognitive ability significantly relates to functional performance (Carter, Oliveira, & Lynch, 1988; Knight, 2000), therefore cognitive impairment is prognostically important within brain impairment rehabilitation. Thorough assessment is an essential prerequisite to develop an appropriate rehabilitation plan for cognitive impairment (Depoy, 1992) and within a rehabilitation unit, assessment of cognition is undertaken by a number of different health professionals (Toglia, 1999). Psychologists and occupational therapists commonly administer cognitive assessments to patients following acquired brain impairment (Toglia, 1999). These assessments often place a large burden of assessment time on the patient (Sodring, Laake, Sveen, Wyller, & Bautz-Holter, 1998) and are subjectively thought to overlap one another with respect to outcomes. This, combined with the professional goal within occupational therapy towards using functional evaluation of cognition, all raises questions regarding the necessity of both professions to administer standardised, pen-and-paper screening assessments of cognition. Whilst a large body of literature exists relating to the validity and reliability of individual cognitive assessments, rarely is it acknowledged that different cognitive screening tools are routinely used in conjunction with one another within the clinical setting. Specifically, as clinicians we were interested to know the extent to which each of these screening tests yielded the same results as other screening tests, given that they purport to measure the same phenomenon (concurrent validity) and also the extent to which the occupational therapy screening adds to what is already known through screening undertaken by the neuropsychologist (incremental validity). The cost of duplicity (on both the patient and the rehabilitation facility) and the need to ascertain the unique value (diagnostic gain) of occupational therapy standardised assessments prompted this multidisciplinary project within our facility. Method
Bacterial genospecies that are not ecologically coherent: population genomics of Rhizobium leguminosarum

Biological species may remain distinct because of genetic isolation or ecological adaptation, but these two aspects do not always coincide. To establish the nature of the species boundary within a local bacterial population, we characterized a sympatric population of the bacterium Rhizobium leguminosarum by genomic sequencing of 72 isolates. Although all strains have 16S rRNA typical of R. leguminosarum, they fall into five genospecies by the criterion of average nucleotide identity (ANI). Many genes, on plasmids as well as the chromosome, support this division: recombination of core genes has been largely within genospecies. Nevertheless, variation in ecological properties, including symbiotic host range and carbon-source utilization, cuts across these genospecies, so that none of these phenotypes is diagnostic of genospecies. This phenotypic variation is conferred by mobile genes. The genospecies meet the Mayr criteria for biological species in respect of their core genes, but do not correspond to coherent ecological groups, so periodic selection may not be effective in purging variation within them. The population structure is incompatible with traditional ‘polyphasic taxonomy′ that requires bacterial species to have both phylogenetic coherence and distinctive phenotypes. More generally, genomics has revealed that many bacterial species share adaptive modules by horizontal gene transfer, and we envisage a more consistent taxonomic framework that explicitly recognizes this. Significant phenotypes should be recognized as ‘biovars' within species that are defined by core gene phylogeny.
Increased Risk of Co-morbid Eye Disease in Patients with Chronic Renal Failure: A Population-based Study

Purpose: A large-scale population-based study on ophthalmic disorders among patients suffering from chronic renal failure (CRF) is lacking in the literature. This study examined the prevalence and risk of selected ocular co-morbidities (including retinal disorders, uveitis, glaucoma, cataract, and dry eye) in patients with CRF. Methods: Data were sourced from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database. 9,149 patients with CRF were included in the study group, and 27,447 matched patients in the comparison group (age 40-98 years). We calculated the prevalence of retinal disorders, uveitis, glaucoma, cataract, and dry eye for patients with and without CRF. Conditional logistic regression analyses were also performed to compare the risk of ophthalmic disorders for patients with and without CRF, after taking into consideration sex, age group, diabetes, hypertension, monthly income, geographic region, and level of urbanization of the patient’s community. Results: In this study, patients with CRF had significantly higher prevalence of retinal disorders (16.62% vs. 9.70%), uveitis (1.38% vs. 0.95%), glaucoma (7.56% vs. 5.70%), and cataract (33.08% vs. 28.90%) than patients without CRF (all p < 0.001). However, no significant difference was observed in the prevalence of dry eye between these two groups. After adjusting for potential confounders, patients with CRF had higher odds of retinal disorder (odds ratio, OR, 1.84, 95% confidence interval, CI, 1.72–1.98), uveitis (OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.07–1.66), glaucoma (OR 1.35, 95% CI 1.23–1.48), and cataract (OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.18–1.31) than patients without CRF. Conclusion: We conclude that patients with CRF had a significantly higher prevalence of retinal disorders, uveitis, glaucoma, and cataract compared with patients without CRF.
Antecedents and consequences of relational ambivalence : a longitudinal and daily diary study investigation

Employee-manager relationships have received significant attention in the literature in attempting to understand the development and consequences of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ relationships. Whilst much is known about these relationships independently, relatively little is known about those relationships that are both ‘good’ and ‘bad’. This thesis uses ‘relational ambivalence’ to describe such relationships and addresses a fundamental question in employee-manager research; can employees simultaneously like and dislike their managers? Two separate research methodologies address this question. The first study, employing a longitudinal survey over a six-month period, explored how historical, individual and social-cognitive perspectives contributed to employee relationship valuations (positive, negative, and ambivalent). This study also tested the impact that each relationship valuation had on interpersonal and organisational outcomes. The second study employed a daily diary method to explore how employee relationship valuations impacted responses to manager-induced psychological contract violations over a two-week period. Findings indicated that relational ambivalence is a distinct relationship valuation both in terms of its antecedents and consequences. The first study revealed that relational ambivalence had a curvilinear relationship with both leader-member exchange and relational schema similarity. Additionally, preoccupied attachment was positively related to relational ambivalence, whilst oneness perceptions were negatively related to relational ambivalence. The study examined two outcome categories: interpersonal and organisational. The interpersonal outcomes revealed a negative relationship with affectbased and cognition-based trust, as well as relational identification; whilst the organisational outcomes revealed that relational ambivalence was the strongest relationship valuation linked to turnover intent. Relational ambivalence was negatively related to OCBs directed toward the organisation, and job control negatively moderated OCBs directed toward the manager. Finally, study two revealed that relational ambivalence changes in intensity over time and leads to increased OCBs, decreased forgiveness, and increased intrusive thoughts after a manager-induced psychological contract violation. Employees offering positive valuations lowered their OCBs, increased forgiveness, and did not experience intrusive thoughts; whilst those offering negative valuations only lowered their OCBs. Contributions and implications of this thesis are discussed.
Object oriented face detection using range and color information

This paper proposes an object oriented face detection method using range and color information. Objects are segmented from the background using the stereo disparity histogram that represents the range information of the objects. A matching pixel count (MPC) disparity measure is introduced to enhance the matching accuracy, and removes the effect of unexpected noise in the boundary region. For the high-performance implementation of the MPC disparity histogram, redundancy operations inherent to the area-based search operation are removed. To detect facial regions among segmented objects, a skin-color transform technique is used with the generalized face color distribution (GFCD) modeled by a 2D Gaussian function in a normalized color space. Using GFCD, the input color image can be transformed into a gray-level image enhancing only facial color components. To detect facial information only in the defined range, both results from range segmentation and color transforms are combined effectively. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm works well in various environments with multiple human objects. Moreover, the processing time for a test image is not exceeding 2 seconds in general purpose workstations. The range information of the objects can be useful in MPEG-4 where natural and synthetic images can be mixed and synthesized.
Calibrator Design for the COBE Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS)

The photometric errors of the external calibrator for the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) instrument on the COBE are smaller than the measurement errors on the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) spectrum (typically 0.02 MJy sr-1, 1 σ) and smaller than 0.01% of the peak brightness of the CMB. The calibrator is a reentrant cone, shaped like a trumpet mute, made of Eccosorb iron-loaded epoxy. It fills the entire beam of the instrument and is the source of its accuracy. Its known errors are caused by reflections, temperature gradients, and leakage through the material and around the edge. Estimates and limits are given for all known error sources. Improvements in understanding the temperature measurements of the calibrator allow an improved CMB temperature determination of 2.725±0.002 K.
Querying probabilistic information extraction

Recently, there has been increasing interest in extending relational query processing to include data obtained from unstructured sources. A common approach is to use stand-alone Information Extraction (IE) techniques to identify and label entities within blocks of text; the resulting entities are then imported into a standard database and processed using relational queries. This two-part approach, however, suffers from two main drawbacks. First, IE is inherently probabilistic, but traditional query processing does not properly handle probabilistic data, resulting in reduced answer quality. Second, performance inefficiencies arise due to the separation of IE from query processing. In this paper, we address these two problems by building on an in-database implementation of a leading IE model---Conditional Random Fields using the Viterbi inference algorithm. We develop two different query approaches on top of this implementation. The first uses deterministic queries over maximum-likelihood extractions, with optimizations to push the relational operators into the Viterbi algorithm. The second extends the Viterbi algorithm to produce a set of possible extraction "worlds", from which we compute top-k probabilistic query answers. We describe these approaches and explore the trade-offs of efficiency and effectiveness between them using two datasets.
Dispositional traits and turnover intention: Examining the mediating role of job satisfaction and affective commitment

This paper investigates the relationships between turnover intention and positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA), and the mediating roles of job satisfaction and affective commitment in those relationships. Based on a sample of 279 Chinese managers, PA predicts turnover intention, and job satisfaction mediates the relationship. However, NA is neither directly nor indirectly related to turnover intention.
Line Transversals to Disjoint Balls

Abstract We prove that the set of directions of lines intersecting three disjoint balls in ℝ3 in a given order is a strictly convex subset of $\mathbb {S}^{2}$ . We then generalize this result to n disjoint balls in ℝd. As a consequence, we can improve upon several old and new results on line transversals to disjoint balls in arbitrary dimension, such as bounds on the number of connected components and Helly-type theorems.
Tracking brain states under general anesthesia by using global coherence analysis

Time and frequency domain analyses of scalp EEG recordings are widely used to track changes in brain states under general anesthesia. Although these analyses have suggested that different spatial patterns are associated with changes in the state of general anesthesia, the extent to which these patterns are spatially coordinated has not been systematically characterized. Global coherence, the ratio of the largest eigenvalue to the sum of the eigenvalues of the cross-spectral matrix at a given frequency and time, has been used to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of multivariate time-series. Using 64-lead EEG recorded from human subjects receiving computer-controlled infusions of the anesthetic propofol, we used surface Laplacian referencing combined with spectral and global coherence analyses to track the spatiotemporal dynamics of the brain's anesthetic state. During unconsciousness the spectrograms in the frontal leads showed increasing α (8–12 Hz) and δ power (0–4 Hz) and in the occipital leads δ power greater than α power. The global coherence detected strong coordinated α activity in the occipital leads in the awake state that shifted to the frontal leads during unconsciousness. It revealed a lack of coordinated δ activity during both the awake and unconscious states. Although strong frontal power during general anesthesia-induced unconsciousness—termed anteriorization—is well known, its possible association with strong α range global coherence suggests highly coordinated spatial activity. Our findings suggest that combined spectral and global coherence analyses may offer a new approach to tracking brain states under general anesthesia.
Managing the Implementation of Business Intelligence Systems: A Critical Success Factors Framework

The implementation of a BI system is a complex undertaking requiring considerable resources. Yet there is a limited authoritative set of CSFs for management reference. This article represents a first step of filling in the research gap. The authors utilized the Delphi method to conduct three rounds of studies with 15 BI system experts in the domain of engineering asset management organizations. The study develops a CSFs framework that consists of seven factors and associated contextual elements crucial for BI systems implementation. The CSFs are committed management support and sponsorship, business user-oriented change management, clear business vision and well-established case, business-driven methodology and project management, business-centric championship and balanced project team composition, strategic and extensible technical framework, and sustainable data quality and governance framework. This CSFs framework allows BI stakeholders to holistically understand the critical factors that influence implementation success of BI systems.
Annual Conference 2014 paper: Facilitating re-engagement in learning: A disengaged student perspective

Past research into student engagement has focused on behavioural engagement in students attending mainstream schools. The current research investigated the school-related factors that facilitate re-engagement in learning from the perspective of initially disengaged students. Adopting a student-centred perspective allowed us to capture affective and cognitive, as well as behavioural, engagement. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 students (aged 14 to 16 years) attending an alternative provision (AP) secondary school. These students were disengaged with learning on arrival at the school. Students answered questions about their engagement and academic progress at the AP school. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to identify, describe and interpret the themes within the data. In general, students believed that they had re-engaged with their education having joined the AP school. Themes representing factors that students believed facilitated this re-engagement were organised into four areas: classroom, relational, generic school and personal. Key facilitators of engagement were positive student-staff relationships and low studentstaff ratios. Several new factors, idiosyncratic to disengaged students, emerged. As these factors are not represented in existing models of engagement, they can be used to form a model of re-engagement into education. Moreover, the current findings need to be disseminated to mainstream schools to enable them to incorporate elements into their teaching practices to prevent disengagement/encourage re-engagement.
Lattice thermal conductivity of MgO at conditions of Earth’s interior

Thermal conductivity of the Earth’s lower mantle greatly impacts the mantle convection style and affects the heat conduction from the core to the mantle. Direct laboratory measurement of thermal conductivity of mantle minerals remains a technical challenge at the pressure-temperature (P-T) conditions relevant to the lower mantle, and previously estimated values are extrapolated from low P-T data based on simple empirical thermal transport models. By using a numerical technique that combines first-principles electronic structure theory and Peierls–Boltzmann transport theory, we predict the lattice thermal conductivity of MgO, previously used to estimate the thermal conductivity in the Earth, at conditions from ambient to the core-mantle boundary (CMB). We show that our first-principles technique provides a realistic model for the P-T dependence of lattice thermal conductivity of MgO at conditions from ambient to the CMB, and we propose thermal conductivity profiles of MgO in the lower mantle based on geotherm models. The calculated conductivity increases from 15 –20 W/K-m at the 670 km seismic discontinuity to 40 –50 W/K-m at the CMB. This large depth variation in calculated thermal conductivity should be included in models of mantle convection, which has been traditionally studied based on the assumption of constant conductivity.
Capillary driven flow of polydimethylsiloxane in open rectangular microchannels.

The flow of liquid polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, Dow Corning Sylgard 184, 10 : 1 base to cross-linker ratio) in open, rectangular silicon microchannels, with and without a coating (100 nm) of poly-tetra-fluoro-ethylene (PTFE), was studied. Photolithographic patterning and etching of silicon wafers was used to create microchannels with a range of widths (∼5-50 μm) and depths (5-20 μm). Experimental PDMS flow rates in both PTFE-coated and uncoated channels were compared to an analytical model based on the work of Lucas and Washburn. The experimental flow rates matched the predicted flow rates reasonably well when the channel aspect ratio (width to depth), p, was less than 2. For channels with p > 2, the observed flow rates progressively lagged model predictions with increasing p. The experimental data, including zero flow rates in certain high aspect ratio PTFE-coated channels, can largely be explained by changes in the front and upper meniscus morphology of the flow as the channel aspect ratio is varied. The results strongly suggest that meniscus morphology needs to be taken into account to accurately model capillary flow in microchannels, especially those with large aspect ratios.
Follow‐up of patients receiving a pharmaceutical care service in Sweden

Background: Pharmaceutical care (PC) services are increasingly provided in community pharmacies in the western world. Evaluations are often conducted as trials in highly controlled conditions measuring the efficacy of the service in terms of the economical, clinical and humanistic outcomes. Little is known about the real world provision of PC services and the factors associated with follow‐up.