Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Live attenuated influenza virus increases pneumococcal translocation and persistence within the middle ear.

BACKGROUND Infection with influenza A virus (IAV) increases susceptibility to respiratory bacterial infections, resulting in increased bacterial carriage and complications such acute otitis media, pneumonia, bacteremia, and meningitis. Recently, vaccination with live attenuated influenza virus (LAIV) was reported to enhance subclinical bacterial colonization within the nasopharynx, similar to IAV. Although LAIV does not predispose to bacterial pneumonia, whether it may alter bacterial transmigration toward the middle ear, where it could have clinically relevant implications, has not been investigated. METHODS BALB/c mice received LAIV or phosphate-buffered saline 1 or 7 days before or during pneumococcal colonization with either of 2 clinical isolates, 19F or 7F. Middle ear bacterial titers were monitored daily via in vivo imaging. RESULTS LAIV increased bacterial transmigration to and persistence within the middle ear. When colonization followed LAIV inoculation, a minimum LAIV incubation period of 4 days was required before bacterial transmigration commenced. CONCLUSIONS While LAIV vaccination is safe and effective at reducing IAV and coinfection with influenza virus and bacteria, LAIV may increase bacterial transmigration to the middle ear and could thus increase the risk of clinically relevant acute otitis media. These data warrant further investigations into interactions between live attenuated viruses and naturally colonizing bacterial pathogens.
Usability Laboratory Test of a Novel Mobile Homecare Application with Experienced Home Help Service Staff

Using participatory design, we developed and deployed a mobile Virtual Health Record (VHR) on a personal digital assistant (PDA) together with experienced homecare staff. To assess transferability to a second setting and usability when used by novice users with limited system education the application was tested in a usability lab. Eight participants from another homecare district performed tasks related to daily homecare work using the VHR. Test protocols were analyzed with regard to effectiveness, potential usability problems and user satisfaction. Usability problems having impact on system performance and contextual factors affecting system transferability were uncovered. Questionnaires revealed that the participants frequently used computers, but never PDAs. Surprisingly there were only minor differences in input efficiency between novice and experienced users. The participants were overall satisfied with the application. However, transfer to another district can not be performed, unless by means of careful field observations of contextual differences.
Proteomic Analysis of Pharmacological Preconditioning: Novel Protein Targets Converge to Mitochondrial Metabolism Pathways

Ischemic preconditioning is characterized by resistance to ischemia reperfusion injury in response to previous short ischemic episodes, a protective effect that can be mimicked pharmacologically. The underlying mechanism of protection remains controversial and requires greater understanding before it can be fully exploited therapeutically. To investigate the overall effect of preconditioning on the myocardial proteome, isolated rabbit ventricular myocytes were treated with drugs known to induce preconditioning, adenosine or diazoxide (each at 100 &mgr;mol/L for 60 minutes). Their protein profiles were then compared with vehicle-treated controls (n=4 animals per treatment) using a multitiered 2D gel electrophoresis approach. Of 28 significantly altered protein spots, 19 nonredundant proteins were identified (5 spots remained unidentified). The majority of these proteins are involved in mitochondrial energetics, including subunits of tricarboxylic acid cycle enzymes and oxidative phosphorylation complexes. These changes were not indiscriminate, with only a small number of enzymes or complex subunits altered, indicating a very specific and targeted affect of these 2 preconditioning mimetics. Among the changes were shifts in the extent of posttranslational modification of 4 proteins. One of these, the adenosine-induced phosphorylation of the ATP synthase β subunit, was fully characterized with the identification of 5 novel phosphorylation sites. This proteomics approach provides an overall assessment of the cellular response to pharmacological treatment with adenosine and diazoxide and identifies a distinct subset of enzymes and protein complex subunit that may underlie the preconditioned phenotype.
An Efficient and Accurate Iris Segmentation Technique

Accurate segmentation is a crucial phase in the implementation of an iris recognition system. In this paper we investigate a novel technique for iris segmentation. Morphological operations and area computation are applied together with other iris segmentation techniques in order to increase the speed and accuracy of the preprocessing phase. A rough approximation of the pupil’s location is first determined in the initial stage, followed by edge detection and circular Hough transform for accurate iris segmentation. The edge image used to localize the outer iris border is modified increasing the speed and accuracy of the process. Finally, we investigate the effect of eyelids detection using a parabolic curve fitting technique. Two data sets of eye images are used to evaluate the proposed techniques. Experimental results show that the proposed segmentation technique is efficient and performs well on both data sets of images.
Streamlining the Process of Acquiring Secure Open Architecture Software Systems

Abstract : The goal of this research is to continue investigating new approaches to acquiring secure open architecture (OA) software systems for the Department of Defense (DoD). Program managers, acquisition officers, and contract managers will increasingly be called on to review and approve security measures employed during the design, implementation, and deployment of OA systems. Our efforts seek to make this a simpler, more transparent, and more tractable process. Such a process must be easy to reuse, adapt, and streamline for different system application domains to realize cost reductions and improve acquisition workforce capabilities. The research described in this report focuses on two problems in acquisition research: (1) how to best acquire secure OA software systems that include reusable software product line components, and (2) how to articulate and streamline a process for identifying and reviewing the security of OA software systems. The results show that the best ways to streamline the process for acquiring secure OA systems that are in line with DoD's Better Buying Power 2.0 (2013) guidelines are as follows: (1) encourage the adoption of open source business models; (2) provide open source models of acquisition processes; and (3) employ techniques for streamlining acquisition processes for secure OA systems through direct measurement and assessment of acquisition processes, redesign and evolution of acquisition processes, design of new acquisition processes specific to secure OA systems, and employment of cost management as an element in the design of future OA system acquisition processes. In the 2nd and 4th sections of this report, we present case studies centering on military C2 systems, such as the future C2RPC models being considered by naval commands, in line with the multi-party engineering agile adaptive ecosystem (MPE/AAE) envisioned for DISA and other government agencies.
The psychological profile of Yugoslav boxers

Our intention is to examine a corpus of Yugoslav senior (N=104) and junior (N=57) boxers by using the Cattell questionnaires 16 PF and HSPQ, Eysenck MPI questionnaire, the Spielberg questionnaire of the traits of the general anxiety STAI, Test of the Motive of the sports achievement MSP by Havelka and Lazarevic, as well as Martens' test of the traits of the sports competitive anxiety SCAT, in order to try to find out if they possess compared to the athletes of the other branches of sport, the specific profile of the personal dispositions. Our intention also tends to establish if it is formed under the influence of the specific demands of this sport or whether a certain specificity of boxers could be identified already at the junior age. The data analysis confirms that adult boxers, compared to all other athletes, statistically significantly differ on 7 out of 16 factors of the personality, on one out of two Eysenck dimensions or typological characteristics of personality, on 2 factors of motivation and in the degree of the demonstration of the traits of the sports competition anxiety. The psychological profile of the traits of the personality of young boxers shows far less specificity compared to all other young athletes, and the recorded differences result from the specificity of their socio-economic status, educational and other socialization influences.
Managing Without Moms: Gay Fathers, Incidental Activism, and the Politics of Parental Gender

Cultural norms surrounding gender and family have failed to keep pace with demographic trends of family change, resulting in a wide range of family forms that are excluded from family normativity. Yet the contexts in which diverse families confront normative expectations, and the strategies they use to navigate such situations, have received limited attention. Using participant observation with gay father groups and interviews with 41 gay fathers in California and Texas, this study examines how structures of gender and family affect gay fathers’ everyday lives, as well as the management strategies that contribute to gay fathers’ resilience within exclusively paternal families. Results show that community support and norms of outness and visibility among gay fathers aid in their ability to navigate heteronormative ideologies. The concept of incidental activism is introduced to theorize the relationship between gay fathers’ resistance strategies and discourses of respectability within LGBTQ collective action.
Impact of Clustering on the Performance of Network De-anonymization

Recently, graph matching algorithms have been successfully applied to the problem of network de-anonymization, in which nodes (users) participating in more than one social network are identified only by means of the structure of their links to other members. This procedure exploits an initial set of seed nodes large enough to trigger a percolation process which correctly matches almost all other nodes across the different social networks. Our main contribution is to show the crucial role played by clustering, which is a ubiquitous feature of realistic social network graphs (and many other systems). Clustering has both the effect of making matching algorithms more vulnerable to errors, and the potential to dramatically reduce the number of seeds needed to trigger percolation, thanks to a wave-like propagation effect. We demonstrate these facts by considering a fairly general class of random geometric graphs with variable clustering level, and showing how clever algorithms can achieve surprisingly good performance while containing matching errors.
The Danish Twin Registry: 127 Birth Cohorts of Twins

Abstract The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest national twin register in the world, initiated in 1954 by ascertainment of twins born from 1870 to 1910. During a number of studies birth cohorts have been added to the register, and by the recent addition of birth cohorts from 1931 to 1952 the Registry now comprizes 127 birth cohorts of twins from 1870 to 1996, with a total of more than 65,000 twin pairs included. In all cohorts the ascertainment has been population-based and independent of the traits studied, although different procedures of ascertainment have been employed. In the oldest cohorts only twin pairs with both twins surviving to age 6 have been included while from 1931 all ascertained twins are included. The completeness of the ascertainment after adjustment for infant mortality is high, with approximately 90% ascertained up to 1968, and complete ascertainment of all liveborn twin pairs since 1968. The Danish Twin Registry is used as a source for large studies on genetic influence on aging and age-related health problems, normal variation in clinical parameters associated with the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases, and clinical studies of specific diseases. The combination of survey data with data obtained by linkage to national health related registers enables follow-up studies both of the general twin population and of twins from clinical studies.
Simple online and realtime tracking

This paper explores a pragmatic approach to multiple object tracking where the main focus is to associate objects efficiently for online and realtime applications. To this end, detection quality is identified as a key factor influencing tracking performance, where changing the detector can improve tracking by up to 18.9%. Despite only using a rudimentary combination of familiar techniques such as the Kalman Filter and Hungarian algorithm for the tracking components, this approach achieves an accuracy comparable to state-of-the-art online trackers. Furthermore, due to the simplicity of our tracking method, the tracker updates at a rate of 260 Hz which is over 20x faster than other state-of-the-art trackers.
Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire

We document substantial increases in agricultural productivity, industrial output, and peasants' nutrition in Imperial Russia as a result of the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Before the emancipation, provinces where serfs constituted the majority of agricultural laborers lagged behind provinces that primarily relied on free labor. The emancipation led to a significant but partial catch up. Better incentives of peasants resulting from the cessation of ratchet effect were a likely mechanism behind a relatively fast positive effect of reform on agricultural productivity. The land reform, which instituted communal land tenure after the emancipation, diminished growth in productivity in repartition communes.
Challenges in Internet Addiction Disorder: Is a Diagnosis Feasible or Not?

An important international discussion began because of some pioneer studies carried out by Young (a) on the internet addiction disorder (IAD). In the fifth and most recent version of the Diagnostic, and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) there is no mention of this disorder and among researchers there are basically two opposite positions. Those who are in favor of a specific diagnosis and those who are claiming the importance of specific criteria characterizing this behavior and the precise role it has in the patient’s life. The aim of the present paper is to answer the question whether it is possible or not to formulate diagnoses of internet-related disorders. We revised literature on the history of diagnostic criteria, on neurocognitive evidence, on the topic debate and on IAD instrumental measures. We found that the disorder was not univocally defined and that the construct was somehow too broad and generic to be explicative for a diagnosis. Indeed, the models are borrowed from other addiction pathologies and they are often formulated before the development of internet as intended in current society. In conclusion, we think we need a more innovative, integrated and comprehensive model for an IAD diagnosis.
Effects of Indirect Experience of Forest Healing Factors on Stress Reduction, Self-Esteem and Social Connectedness Improvements in the Elderly Participating in Horticultural Activities Program

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of indirect experience of forest healing factors on stress reduction and increased self-esteem and social connectedness in group-based horticultural activities. The subjects of this study were 24 elderly people aged from 60 to 77 years old. The group of 12 subjects acted as a control and participated in only gardening activities, while the other group of 12 subjects was the experimental group and participated in both forest healing session and gardening activities. In forest healing session, subjects in the experimental group watched 15-minute videos consisting of forest landscapes and sounds of water and birds in an indoor lecture hall. The program was conducted once a week for a total of 14 sessions from April to July 2017. As the result of this study, the cortisol levels, which was significantly reduced (p=.001) from 3.24ng/ml to 2.19ng/ml in the experimental group, proved that stress levels were decreased after the program. The self-esteem of the experimental group and control groups were both significantly increased (p=.001 and p=.036). Also the social connectedness of the experimental group and control groups were both significantly increased after the program (p=.001 and p=.018). However, verification of differences between two groups showed that the differences in social connectedness in the experimental group before and after the program was significant at the p-value . 05 level. Group-based gardening activities are effective in building better mental health, such as increased self-esteem and social connectedness in the elderly but applying forest healing programs with auditory and visual factors to conventional horticultural activities programs could enhance the effect of mental and physical health promotion in the elderly.
Jika iMfundo: a South African study of ‘turning education around’ through improved curriculum coverage

ABSTRACT This article is empirically embedded in data collected from a professional development programme titled Jika iMfundo, aimed at changing teacher’s classroom practice. Jika iMfundo means ‘to turn education around’ in isiZulu, a South African language that is widely spoken in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The programme was implemented in selected teaching districts and focused on increased curriculum coverage as a lever for improving learning outcomes. Conceptually, the article draws on writing about the centrality of the instructional core for sustainable education change and is supported by the view that practical classroom activities with visible effects on learning, is likely to change teachers’ classroom practices. The conclusion verifies the importance of learner activity as a measure of learning, especially in the absence of formal assessments. Additionally the study showed that teachers welcomed the level of structure of the programme and liked knowing exactly what was to be done, how and when to do it. This may be of particular significance in developing contexts with limited resources and where schools are frequently subjected to political and economic vicissitudes.
A new, simple and exact result for calculating the probability of error for two-dimensional signal constellations

The author presents a simple integral expression for calculating the exact probability of a symbol error for an arbitrary array of signal points. The integrand contains only elementary functions and the range of integration is finite. The approach is introduced by applying it to M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK). The special case of M=2 gives novel and possibly useful expressions for calculating the Gaussian tail probability function and the related complementary error function. The approach is outlined for polygonal decision regions, and results are given for 16-point signal constellations. A method of obtaining, not exact, but even simpler and highly accurate expressions for symbol error probability when the latter is less than a few hundredths is presented. <<ETX>>
A miR-1207-5p Binding Site Polymorphism Abolishes Regulation of HBEGF and Is Associated with Disease Severity in CFHR5 Nephropathy

Heparin binding epidermal growth factor (HBEGF) is expressed in podocytes and was shown to play a role in glomerular physiology. MicroRNA binding sites on the 3′UTR of HBEGF were predicted using miRWalk algorithm and followed by DNA sequencing in 103 patients diagnosed with mild or severe glomerulopathy. A single nucleotide polymorphism, miRSNP C1936T (rs13385), was identified at the 3′UTR of HBEGF that corresponds to the second base of the hsa-miR-1207-5p seed region. When AB8/13 undifferentiated podocytes were transfected with miRNA mimics of hsa-miR-1207-5p, the HBEGF protein levels were reduced by about 50%. A DNA fragment containing the miRSNP allele-1936C was cloned into the pMIR-Report Luciferase vector and co-transfected with miRNA mimics of hsa-miR-1207-5p into AB8/13 podocytes. In agreement with western blot data, this resulted in reduced luciferase expression demonstrating the ability of hsa-miR-1207-5p to directly regulate HBEGF expression. On the contrary, in the presence of the miRSNP 1936T allele, this regulation was abolished. Collectively, these results demonstrate that variant 1936T of this miRSNP prevents hsa-miR-1207-5p from down-regulating HBEGF in podocytes. We hypothesized that this variant has a functional role as a genetic modifier. To this end, we showed that in a cohort of 78 patients diagnosed with CFHR5 nephropathy (also known as C3-glomerulopathy), inheritance of miRSNP 1936T allele was significantly increased in the group demonstrating progression to chronic renal failure on long follow-up. No similar association was detected in a cohort of patients with thin basement membrane nephropathy. This is the first report associating a miRSNP as genetic modifier to a monogenic renal disorder.
Performance Analysis of Underwater Swarm Sensor Networks

Fundamental key aspects of underwater acoustic communications have been taken into account to define an underwater swarm network for monitoring and exploration applications. We discuss the communication architecture of underwater sensor networks as well as the factors that influence underwater network design. Specifically, the main requirements needed to design a suitable sensors underwater system has been provided by considering a Cross-Layer solution among the lower layers of the node to maintain the power consumption as low as possible without complexity addition in the architecture design. Results show that the average power can be preserved thanks to power control implementation used to optimize the overall across the physical, Medium Access Control (MAC) and Network (NWK) layers. This study wants to provide the performance analysis of a swarm network model to provide guideline for hardware developing of swarm nodes for a real underwater application.
Local dynamics of a randomly pinned crack front: a numerical study

We investigate numerically the dynamics of crack propagation along a weak plane using a model consisting of fibers connecting a soft and a hard clamp. This bottom-up model has previously been shown to contain the competition of two crack propagation mechanisms: coalescence of damage with the front on small scales and pinned elastic line motion on large scales. We investigate the dynamical scaling properties of the model, both on small and large scale. The model results compare favorable with experimental results.