Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PgaB orthologues contain a glycoside hydrolase domain that cleaves deacetylated poly-β(1,6)-N-acetylglucosamine and can disrupt bacterial biofilms

Poly-β(1,6)-N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (PNAG) is a major biofilm component of many pathogenic bacteria. The production, modification, and export of PNAG in Escherichia coli and Bordetella species require the protein products encoded by the pgaABCD operon. PgaB is a two-domain periplasmic protein that contains an N-terminal deacetylase domain and a C-terminal PNAG binding domain that is critical for export. However, the exact function of the PgaB C-terminal domain remains unclear. Herein, we show that the C-terminal domains of Bordetella bronchiseptica PgaB (PgaBBb) and E. coli PgaB (PgaBEc) function as glycoside hydrolases. These enzymes hydrolyze purified deacetylated PNAG (dPNAG) from Staphylococcus aureus, disrupt PNAG-dependent biofilms formed by Bordetella pertussis, Staphylococcus carnosus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and E. coli, and potentiate bacterial killing by gentamicin. Furthermore, we found that PgaBBb was only able to hydrolyze PNAG produced in situ by the E. coli PgaCD synthase complex when an active deacetylase domain was present. Mass spectrometry analysis of the PgaB-hydrolyzed dPNAG substrate showed a GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcNAc motif at the new reducing end of detected fragments. Our 1.76 Å structure of the C-terminal domain of PgaBBb reveals a central cavity within an elongated surface groove that appears ideally suited to recognize the GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcNAc motif. The structure, in conjunction with molecular modeling and site directed mutagenesis led to the identification of the dPNAG binding subsites and D474 as the probable catalytic acid. This work expands the role of PgaB within the PNAG biosynthesis machinery, defines a new glycoside hydrolase family GH153, and identifies PgaB as a possible therapeutic agent for treating PNAG-dependent biofilm infections.
Genomewide Analyses of Psychological Resilience in US Army Soldiers

Though a growing body of preclinical and translational research is illuminating a biological basis for resilience to stress, little is known about the genetic basis of psychological resilience in humans. We conducted genomewide association studies (GWAS) of self-assessed (by questionnaire) and outcome-based (incident mental disorders from pre- to post-deployment) resilience among European (EUR) ancestry soldiers in the Army Study To Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (STARRS). Self-assessed resilience (N=11,492) was found to have significant common-variant heritability (h2=0.162, se=0.050, p=5.37e-4), and to be significantly negatively genetically correlated with neuroticism (rg= −0.388, p=0.0092). GWAS results from the EUR soldiers revealed a genomewide significant locus (4 SNPs in LD; top SNP: rs4260523, p=5.654e-09) on an intergenic region on Chr 4 upstream from DCLK2 (Doublecortin-Like Kinase 2), a member of the doublecortin (DCX) family of kinases that promote survival and regeneration of injured neurons. A second gene, KLHL36 (Kelch Like Family Member 36) was detected at gene-wise genomewide significance (p=1.89e-06). A polygenic risk score derived from the self-assessed resilience GWAS was not significantly associated with outcome-based resilience. In very preliminary results, genomewide significant association with outcome-based resilience was found for one locus (top SNP: rs12580015) on Chr 12 downstream from SLC15A5 (solute carrier family 15 member 5) in the small group (N=581) of subjects exposed to the highest level of deployment stress. The further study of genetic determinants of resilience has the potential to illuminate the molecular bases of stress-related psychopathology and potentially point to new avenues for therapeutic intervention.
Export Potential of Environmental Goods in India: A Gravity Model Analysis

The paper of this estimates the export potential of environmental goods in India using the gravity model analysis. This model has been estimated using the ordinary least square (OLS) technique with a panel data for 58 sample countries from the period between 1991 and 2011. Dependent variable in the estimation was export of environmental goods from India. The gravity equation fits well with the data and delivers precise and plausible income and distance elasticities, which estimates for other geographical, historical and cultural characteristics. In effect, the results show that Indiai¦s export volume is determined by the economic size (GDP) of the importing country. Indiai¦s bilateral trade is also positively and significantly influenced by the common colonizer and membership in bilateral trade agreements. The estimation of this gravity model also shows that the potential for expansion of export is highest with Japan and China. It also indicates that India can potentially attain ten times or more the level of an actual export with countries like Netherlands and Pakistan
Patterns of Symbiodinium (Dinophyceae) diversity and assemblages among diverse hosts and the coral reef environment of Lizard Island, Australia

Large‐scale environmental disturbances may impact both partners in coral host–Symbiodinium systems. Elucidation of the assembly patterns in such complex and interdependent communities may enable better prediction of environmental impacts across coral reef ecosystems. In this study, we investigated how the community composition and diversity of dinoflagellate symbionts in the genus Symbiodinium were distributed among 12 host species from six taxonomic orders (Actinaria, Alcyonacea, Miliolida, Porifera, Rhizostoma, Scleractinia) and in the reef water and sediments at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef before the 3rd Global Coral Bleaching Event. 454 pyrosequencing of the ITS2 region of Symbiodinium yielded 83 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) at a 97% similarity cut‐off. Approximately half of the Symbiodinium OTUs from reef water or sediments were also present in symbio. OTUs belonged to six clades (A‐D, F‐G), but community structure was uneven. The two most abundant OTUs (100% matches to types C1 and A3) comprised 91% of reads and OTU C1 was shared by all species. However, sequence‐based analysis of these dominant OTUs revealed host species specificity, suggesting that genetic similarity cut‐offs of Symbiodinium ITS2 data sets need careful evaluation. Of the less abundant OTUs, roughly half occurred at only one site or in one species and the background Symbiodinium communities were distinct between individual samples. We conclude that sampling multiple host taxa with differing life history traits will be critical to fully understand the symbiont diversity of a given system and to predict coral ecosystem responses to environmental change and disturbance considering the differential stress response of the taxa within.
The Experiences of Indian Nurses in America

Background: Nurses educated in India make up one of the largest groups of internationally educated nurses in America. Few studies have examined their experiences in the American workplace. An understanding of their experiences will be beneficial to those who work with them. Objectives: The aim of this study is to understand what it means to be a nurse in America from the perspective of those who have practiced nursing in India. The question being asked is "What are the experiences of nurses from India as they adapt to the practice of nursing in America? " Method: A phenomenological approach was used to gain insight into the lived experience of being an Indian nurse in the United States. Interviews were conducted with six nurses, from two different states in southern India. Interviews were audio­ taped, transcribed and analyzed using traditional qualitative techniques. Patterns were identified and presented through the use of story telling and narratives. Findings: Nurses who migrate from India to the US undergo both socio-cultural and workplace adjustments. They deal with loss, change and sacrifice. Workplace adjustments include communication issues, dealing with a new healthcare system and adapting to an expanded role of nurses. Implications: Practice implications include recommendations for administrators, preceptors and staff working with Indian nurses as well as for those Indian nurses who may seek to migrate to the US. Research implications are also presented.
Community Health Centers and Access to Care Among Underserved Populations: A Synthesis Review

Community health centers (CHCs) deliver affordable health services to underserved populations, especially uninsured and Medicaid enrollees. Since the early 2000s, CHCs have grown because of federal investments in CHC capacity and expansions of Medicaid eligibility. We review 24 relevant studies from 2000 to 2017 to evaluate the relationship between CHCs, policies that invest in services for low-income individuals, and access to care. Most included studies use quasi-experimental designs. Greater spending on CHCs improves access to care, especially for low-income and minority individuals. Medicaid expansions also increase CHC use. Some studies indicate that CHC investments complement Medicaid expansions to increase access cost-effectively. Further research should explore patient preferences and patterns of CHC utilization versus other sites of care and population subgroups for which expanding CHC capacity improves access to care most. Researchers should endeavor to use measures and sample definitions that facilitate comparisons with other estimates in the literature.
International Mutual Fund Flow and Local Markets: The Case of U.K. Units and Oeics

This paper investigates the relation between international mutual fund flow and local/home market returns following Warther (1995) and Froot, O'Connell and Seasholes (2001). Like the U.S. domestic results, the concurrent local market return is found to be very important to explain the international mutual fund flow rather than the home market return. The concurrent relation between the local return and the international mutual fund flow could be explained by information hypothesis rather than price pressure effect in the context of international mutual funds. Furthermore, the lagged local market returns do not have any significant effect on the flow, implying that no positive-feedback trading exists. Interestingly, the coefficients of lagged exchange rates for Japan-related funds are negative and statistically significant. That could be called positive-feedback trading from the viewpoint of exchange rate. Last, the U.S. market factor is not statistically significant for explaining the international mutual fund flow, but for the local return after controlling for the effects of expected and unexpected fund flows.
Action Recognition with Coarse-to-Fine Deep Feature Integration and Asynchronous Fusion

Action recognition is an important yet challenging task in computer vision. In this paper, we propose a novel deep-based framework for action recognition, which improves the recognition accuracy by: 1) deriving more precise features for representing actions, and 2) reducing the asynchrony between different information streams. We first introduce a coarse-to-fine network which extracts shared deep features at different action class granularities and progressively integrates them to obtain a more accurate feature representation for input actions. We further introduce an asynchronous fusion network. It fuses information from different streams by asynchronously integrating stream-wise features at different time points, hence better leveraging the complementary information in different streams. Experimental results on action recognition benchmarks demonstrate that our approach achieves the state-of-the-art performance.
Anthropometric within-country Inequality and the Estimation of Skill Premia with Anthropometric Indicators

Summary We provide a literature review of anthropometric studies of within-country inequality. Then we discuss the relationship between skill premia and inequality indicators based on height variation. Skill premia describe the wage gap between an unskilled and a skilled building worker, while height CVs (coefficient of height variation) display the variance in net nutrition. We find that the two measures are correlated and that CV values are suitable to estimate skill premia. We supplement the existing literature by an additional tool, namely the estimation of skill premia based on the coefficient of height variation.
The Cross Section of Money Market Fund Risks and Financial Crises

This paper examines the relationship between money market fund (MMF) risks and outcomes during crises, with a focus on the ABCP crisis in 2007 and the run on money funds in 2008. I analyze three broad types of MMF risks: portfolio risks arising from a fund's assets, investor risk reflecting the likelihood that a fund's shareholders will redeem shares disruptively, and sponsor risk due to uncertainty about MMF sponsors' support for distressed funds. I find that during the run on MMFs in September and October 2008, outflows were larger for MMFs that had previously exhibited greater degrees of all three types of risk. In contrast, as the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) crisis unfolded in 2007, many MMFs suffered capital losses, but investor flows were relatively unresponsive to risks, probably because investors correctly believed that sponsors would absorb the losses. However, the consequences of MMF risks were quite costly for some sponsors: Using a unique data set of sponsor interventions, I show that sponsor financial support was more likely for MMFs that previously earned higher gross yields (a measure of portfolio risk) and funds with bank-affiliated sponsors. Funds' gross yields and bank affiliation (but not funds' ratings) also would have helped forecast holdings of distressed ABCP. This paper provides some useful lessons for investors and policymakers. The significance of MMF risks in predicting poor outcomes in past crises highlights the importance of monitoring such risks, and I offer some useful proxies for doing so. The paper also argues for greater attention to the systemic risks posed by the industry's reliance on discretionary sponsor support.
Analyzing the Time Course of Pupillometric Data

This article provides a tutorial for analyzing pupillometric data. Pupil dilation has become increasingly popular in psychological and psycholinguistic research as a measure to trace language processing. However, there is no general consensus about procedures to analyze the data, with most studies analyzing extracted features from the pupil dilation data instead of analyzing the pupil dilation trajectories directly. Recent studies have started to apply nonlinear regression and other methods to analyze the pupil dilation trajectories directly, utilizing all available information in the continuously measured signal. This article applies a nonlinear regression analysis, generalized additive mixed modeling, and illustrates how to analyze the full-time course of the pupil dilation signal. The regression analysis is particularly suited for analyzing pupil dilation in the fields of psychological and psycholinguistic research because generalized additive mixed models can include complex nonlinear interactions for investigating the effects of properties of stimuli (e.g., formant frequency) or participants (e.g., working memory score) on the pupil dilation signal. To account for the variation due to participants and items, nonlinear random effects can be included. However, one of the challenges for analyzing time series data is dealing with the autocorrelation in the residuals, which is rather extreme for the pupillary signal. On the basis of simulations, we explain potential causes of this extreme autocorrelation, and on the basis of the experimental data, we show how to reduce their adverse effects, allowing a much more coherent interpretation of pupillary data than possible with feature-based techniques.
The source and engine of coronal mass ejections

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large-scale expulsions of coronal plasma and magnetic field propagating through the heliosphere. Because CMEs are observed by white-light coronagraphs which, by design, occult the solar disc, supporting disc observations (e.g. in EUV, soft X-rays, Halpha and radio) must be employed for the study of their source regions and early development phases. We review the key properties of CME sources and highlight a certain causal sequence of effects that may occur whenever a strong (flux-massive and sheared) magnetic polarity inversion line develops in the coronal base of eruptive active regions (ARs). Storing non-potential magnetic energy and helicity in a much more efficient way than ARs lacking strong polarity inversion lines, eruptive regions engage in an irreversible course, making eruptions inevitable and triggered when certain thresholds of free energy and helicity are crossed. This evolution favours the formation of pre-eruption magnetic flux ropes. We describe the steps of this plausible path to sketch a picture of the pre-eruptive phase of CMEs that may apply to most events, particularly the ones populating the high end of the energy/helicity distribution, that also tend to have the strongest space-weather implications. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Solar eruptions and their space weather impact’.
Attitudes and barriers to exercise in adults with a recent diagnosis of type 1 diabetes: a qualitative study of participants in the Exercise for Type 1 Diabetes (EXTOD) study

Objectives To explore attitudes and barriers to exercise in adults with new-onset type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Design Qualitative methodology using focus group (n=1), individual face-to-face (n=4) and telephone interviews (n=8). Thematic analysis using the Framework Method. Setting Nineteen UK hospital sites. Participants Fifteen participants in the Exercise for Type 1 Diabetes study. We explored current and past levels of exercise, understanding of exercise and exercise guidelines, barriers to increasing exercise levels and preferences for monitoring of activity in a trial. Results Five main themes were identified: existing attitudes to exercise, feelings about diagnosis, perceptions about exercise consequences, barriers to increasing exercise and confidence in managing blood glucose. An important finding was that around half the participants reported a reduction in activity levels around diagnosis. Although exercise was felt to positively impact on health, some participants were not sure about the benefits or concerned about potential harms such as hypoglycaemia. Some participants reported being advised by healthcare practitioners (HCPs) not to exercise. Conclusions Exercise should be encouraged (not discouraged) from diagnosis, as patients may be more amenable to lifestyle change. Standard advice on exercise and T1DM needs to be made available to HCPs and patients with T1DM to improve patients’ confidence in managing their diabetes around exercise. Trial registration number ISRCTN91388505; Results
Association between TL1A gene polymorphisms and systemic lupus erythematosus in a Chinese Han population

Our previous studies showed elevated tumor necrosis factor‐like ligand 1 aberrance (TL1A) expression in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). However, TL1A polymorphisms with SLE susceptibility remain to be elucidated. In addition, we made meta‐analysis to evaluate the relationship of TL1A polymorphisms and autoimmune diseases owing to inconsistent results. The present research was carried out by 404 SLE, 150 primary Sjogren's syndrome (pSS) patients, and 574 healthy individuals. Three TL1A polymorphisms (rs3810936, rs6478109, rs7848647) were genotyped using TaqMan genotyping assay. Then, the meta‐analysis was performed by collecting the present case‐control study and previously published research. Results showed that genotypes of rs3810936, rs7848647 were different between SLE patients and healthy controls, whereas no significant association was observed in the three polymorphisms and pSS patients. Genotypes distribution of rs6478109, rs7848647 were strongly related to lupus nephritis within SLE (p = 0.004, p = 0.011), respectively. Moreover, combined meta‐analysis consisted of ten comparative research involving 4,305 patients and 5,600 controls. An association between autoimmune diseases and rs6478109 polymorphism was found. Our findings indicate that gene polymorphisms (rs3810936, rs7848647) of TL1A might correlate with lupus.
Relationship Economics: The Social Capital Paradigm and its Application to Business, Politics and Other Transactions

Contents: Introduction: relationships matter Relationships and social capital Different kinds of social capital Do social capital motives matter (much)? An introduction to the social capital paradigm The social capital paradigm: the role of socio-emotional goods The social capital paradigm: the role of attachment values The social capital paradigm: the role of institutions The social capital paradigm: the role of networks The social capital paradigm: the role of power The social capital exchange theory Social capital and the distribution of income The social capital paradigm and poverty reduction Social capital and ethics Social capital and globalization Social capital and the distribution of political power Social capital and culture Epilogue References Index.
The accuracy of the European Commission's forecasts re-examined

This paper analyses the Commission's forecast track record, by building on previous analyses. The extension of the observation period to 2011 allows a first analysis of forecast accuracy during the years of the economic and financial crisis. Over the full timespan, forecasts for the EU and euro area are found to be generally unbiased. The same holds true for the outlook for most Member States, largely confirming earlier results. Moreover, the Commission services track record appears generally in line with that of the OECD, IMF and Consensus Economics, and in some cases better. Finally, while the analysis points to a limited impact of the crisis on the accuracy of the Commission's current-year forecasts, a significant deterioration of the accuracy of year-ahead projections is found. This applies in particular for the forecasts of GDP, investment, inflation and the government budget balance, due mainly to larger forecast errors in the recession year 2009, which by all standards proved exceptional and unanticipated by institutional and market forecasters.
Synchronous quadriceps tendon rupture and unilateral ACL tear in a weightlifter, associated with anabolic steroid use

Synchronous quadriceps tendon rupture is rare. A 29-year-old man, an amateur weight lifter, taking androgenic-anabolic steroids (AAS), developed sudden onset bilateral pain and swelling of his anterior thighs when attempting to squat 280 kg (620 lb). Examination revealed gross swelling superior to the patella and palpable gaps in both quadriceps tendons. He underwent successful operative repair. MRI revealed a partial tear of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) of the right knee. This was not reconstructed. Only a few case reports of the association between AAS and quadriceps rupture exist in the literature, with none to the best of our knowledge in the past 10 years. ACL rupture coexisting is very rare, with only two reported cases.