Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Yersinia pestis pFra Shows Biovar-Specific Differences and Recent Common Ancestry with aSalmonella enterica Serovar Typhi Plasmid

ABSTRACT Population genetic studies suggest that Yersinia pestis, the cause of plague, is a clonal pathogen that has recently emerged from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. Plasmid acquisition is likely to have been a key element in this evolutionary leap from an enteric to a flea-transmitted systemic pathogen. However, the origin of Y. pestis-specific plasmids remains obscure. We demonstrate specific plasmid rearrangements in different Y. pestis strains which distinguish Y. pestis bv. Orientalis strains from other biovars. We also present evidence for plasmid-associated DNA exchange between Y. pestis and the exclusively human pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi.
Antineutrophil and pancreatic autoantibodies in first-degree relatives of patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

BACKGROUND Perinuclear antineutrophil antibodies (P-ANCA) are found in ulcerative colitis, and autoantibodies against exocrine pancreas (PAB) in Crohn's disease. Their potential role as genetic or pathophysiologic factors is unclear. METHODS In 61 patients with ulcerative colitis, 76 patients with Crohn's disease, 101 first-degree relatives of patients with ulcerative colitis, 105 first-degree relatives of Crohn's disease patients, and 56 healthy unrelated controls autoantibodies were detected by indirect immunofluorescence. RESULTS Forty-six per cent of patients with ulcerative colitis (28 of 61) and 38% of patients with Crohn's disease (29 of 76) were P-ANCA- and PAB-positive, respectively. In relatives of patients with ulcerative colitis P-ANCA were found in 3% (3 of 101), and in relatives of Crohn's disease patients PAB were detected in 4% (4 of 105), which is not significantly different from the occurrence in the healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS The frequency of P-ANCA and PAB does not suggest a role as genetic markers for inflammatory bowel disease.
Comparison of Reduced Volume versus Four-Liter Electrolyte Lavage Solutions for Colon Cleansing

In an attempt to improve patient tolerance for colon cleaning, a reduced-volume regimen with a 2-liter electrolyte lavage solution plus 20 mg of oral bisacodyl was compared with the standard 4-liter lavage for efficacy and safety. Three hundred patients were prospectively randomized into two study groups. One group of 150 patients was given four tablets of 5 mg bisacodyl at 12:00 PM the day before their colonoscopy, followed by 2 liters of electrolyte lavage by mouth at 6:00 PM the evening before their colonoscopy. Another group of 150 patients were given 4 liters of electrolyte lavage at 6:00 PM the evening before their colonoscopy. All patients were on a clear liquid diet the day before their colonoscopy. No enema was given in either groups. The bowel cleanliness was accessed by one colonoscopist. One registered nurse accessed the comfort of patient. In the 2-liter group, only one (0.6%) patient could not finish the laxative. Colon cleanliness was 80 per cent to 100 per cent, with an average of 95.9 per cent. In the 4-liter group, 11 (7.3%) patients could not finish the laxative preparation. Colon cleanliness was 78 per cent to 100 per cent, with an average of 95.3 per cent. The study that found the 2-liter electrolyte lavage solution with four tablets of bisacodyl can achieve equally good results in bowel preparation and favorable acceptance by patients compared with the 4-liter lavage.
Do Entry Regulations Deter Entrepreneurship and Job Creation? Evidence from Recent Reforms in Portugal

Recent research has suggested that the reduction of entry regulation can promote firm entry and job creation, but little is known about the quality of firms and jobs created through these reforms. To shed light on this question, we employ data from Portugal, a country which implemented one of the most dramatic and thorough policies of entry deregulation in the industrialized world. The impact of these major changes can be traced with a matched employer-employee database that provides unusually rich information on the quality of founders and employees associated with the new firms. Our assessment indicates that the short term consequences of the reform were just as one would predict with a standard economic model of entrepreneurship: The reform resulted in increased firm formation and employment, but mostly among "marginal firms" that would have been most readily deterred by existing heavy entry regulations. These marginal firms were typically small, owned by relatively poorly-educated entrepreneurs, operating in the low-tech sector (agriculture, construction, and retail trade). These firms were also less likely to survive their first two years than comparable firms that entered prior to the reform. The social impact of entry deregulation may be limited by the quality of the firms it creates.
Who Wins the Olympic Games: Economic Development and Medal Totals

This paper examines determinants of Olympic success at the country level. Does the U.S. win its fair share of Olympic medals? Why does China win 6% of the medals even though it has 1/5 of the world's population? We consider the role of population and economic development in determining medal totals from 1960-1996. We also provide out of sample predictions for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
The comparison of serum vascular endothelial growth factor levels between patients with metastatic and non-metastatic thyroid cancer, and patients with nontoxic multinodular goiter.

BACKGROUND One of the important proangiogenic factors involved in the growth of normal and neoplastic tissues is vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). AIM We hypothesized that serum VEGF concentration would differ between patients with metastatic and non-metastatic thyroid cancer, multinodular goiter, and healthy subjects. We also hypothesized that endogenous TSH stimulation would affect serum VEGF level. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The study group consisted of 71 patients (62 females and 9 males), aged 44.9 +/- 12.3 years, with differentiated thyroid cancer (50 papillary, 17 follicular, and 4 oxyphilic), treated in our department during the years 2003-2006. All patients had undergone total or near-total thyroidectomy and radioactive iodine treatment, that had resulted in remission in 59 patients and persistent/recurrent disease in 12 patients. The study included two control groups: 30 patients with nontoxic multinodular goiter and 30 healthy subjects. RESULTS Serum VEGF concentrations were significantly higher in patients with distant metastases than those in remission or healthy patients. (423.4 vs 217.6 vs 235.55 pg/ml respectively, P < 0.05). This was not observed in patients with locoregional metastases. During endogenous TSH stimulation, VEGF decreased significantly (215.3 vs 169.6 pg/ml, P < 0.05). Patients with multinodular goiter showed significantly lower VEGF concentrations than the remaining study groups. CONCLUSIONS Serum VEGF concentration might be used as an additional marker of thyroid cancer with distant metastases, but its interpretation should be undertaken very cautiously. Endogenous TSH stimulation decreases VEGF levels in patients either with or without thyroid tissue, suggesting that its regulatory effects are through receptors located outside the thyrocytes.
The Influence of Negative Beta Assets on the Empirical SML in the Polish Capital Market

The Influence of Negative Beta Assets on the Empirical SML in the Polish Capital Market The classical approach to the SML assumes that it is a straight line, which means that an investor is willing to accept lower return on the negative beta assets than on the risk-free assets. However, Cloninger, Waller, Bendeck and Revere (2004) challenged this commonly accepted approach. The author of the paper decided to verify the approach using empirical data for years 1999-2006 obtained from the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Finance theoreticians believe that the SML is linear, which means that an investor buying negative beta assets is willing to accept lower return than in the case of a risk-free asset. Cloninger et al. (2004) formulated a hypothesis stating that the SML is V-shaped and that it is not a straight line. It was concluded that an investor had no reason to accept lower return of the negative beta assets; quite the contrary, the investor would expect the same return as on the positive beta ones. The author of this article performed an investigation for the Polish market, taking advantage of companies quoted at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The investigation demonstrated that between 1999 and 2006, the SML had a V-like shape and thus the research hypothesis formulated in the article was positively verified.
Comment on “An Efficient Homomorphic MAC with Small Key Size for Authentication in Network Coding”

Quite recently, Cheng and Jiang [1] designed an efficient homomorphic message authentication code (MAC) scheme for authentication in network coding, and claimed that the newly proposed scheme can achieve much higher security level with a formal security proof. However, in this comment, we will point out there exists a design flaw in their proposed scheme, leading to an inherent vulnerability, and also show an inaccuracy in their formal security proof. We hope that by identifying the design flaw, similar mistakes can be avoided in future design of homomorphic MAC authentication for network coding.
Application of Hamamatsu S8550 APD array to the common PET/CT detector

The progress of nuclear medicine and computer imaging encourage the researchers to develop new dual modality positron emission / X-rays tomography (PET/CT) systems, to acquire both the anatomical and the functional information during the same measurement, relying on the same detection system and electronics at the same time. The aim of this work was to study a detector consisting of four LSO pixel crystals coupled to a Hamamatsu S8550 avalanche photodiode (APD) array. The measurements covered tests of the detectors in the PET and in the CT modes using counting and current modes, respectively. The measurements included a determination of the light output, energy resolution, non- proportionality of the light yield and time resolution for 511 keV annihilation quanta, characterizing the PET detector, and the dependence of a counting rate versus a mean current of APD in the X-ray detection.
WS2 transistors on 300 mm wafers with BEOL compatibility

For the first time, WS2-based transistors have been successfully integrated in a 300 mm pilot line using production tools. The 2D material was deposited using either area selective chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or atomic layer deposition (ALD). No material transfer was required. The major integration challenges are the limited adhesion and the fragility of the few-monolayer 2D material. These issues are avoided by using a sacrificial Al2O3 capping layer and by encapsulating the edges of the 2D material during wet processing. The WS2 channel is contacted with Ti/TiN side contacts and an industry-standard back end of line (BEOL) flow. This novel low-temperature flow is promising for integration of back-gated 2D transistors in the BEOL.
Tensile strength of human dentin as a function of tubule orientation and density.

PURPOSE This study investigated the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of human dentin as a function of tubule orientation and density. MATERIALS AND METHODS Slabs of dentin (ca 0.7 mm thick) were obtained from human third molars by either transversally or longitudinally sectioning the crowns with an Isomet saw. The slabs were gently trimmed to reduce the central area of the coronal dentin to a cross-sectional area of approximately 0.5 mm2. The longitudinally sectioned slabs were either trimmed from the mesial and distal sides or from the occlusal and pulpal aspects to permit the tensile load to be applied either parallel or perpendicular to the tubule orientation. The transversally sectioned specimens were obtained at several distances from the pulp and were used to evaluate the effects of tubule density. The trimmed specimens were tested in tension on a Kratos testing machine at 0.5 mm/min. After failure, the UTS of each was calculated and expressed in MPa. The fractured ends of the transversally sectioned specimens were viewed under SEM to calculate the number of tubules per mm2 at the site of fracture, and its relation with the UTS was investigated by regression analysis. RESULTS The UTS of dentin is higher when the load is applied perpendicular to the tubule orientation (80 +/- 13 MPa) than when applied parallel to tubule orientation (58 +/- 11 MPa, p < 0.05). There was a tendency for dentin to be weaker as the number of tubules at the site of fracture increased, although this relationship was not statistically significant (R2 = 0.051, p > 0.05). CONCLUSION The UTS of dentin is dependent on the tubule direction. Dentin tends to be weaker as the number of tubules per area increases.
A bioinformatical approach suggests the function of the autoimmune hepatitis target antigen soluble liver antigen/liver pancreas

Antibodies to a soluble liver antigen/liver pancreas (SLA/LP) appear to be highly specific for the diagnosis of autoimmune hepatitis. The SLA/LP target antigen was recently identified as a hitherto unknown gene encoding 474 amino acid residues. The function of this antigen remains unclear, because it does not share sequence homology with proteins of known function stored in any of the publicly accessible databases. Therefore we used a new theoretical method called fold recognition and could show that the SLA/LP sequence is compatible with the architecture of the superfamily of pyridoxal phosphate (PLP; vitamin B6)‐dependent transferases. Its function is likely to be that of a serine hydroxymethyltransferase and may be an important enzyme in the thus far poorly understood selenocysteine pathway.
Regulatory T cells and skeletal muscle regeneration

Skeletal muscle regeneration results from the activation and differentiation of myogenic stem cells, called satellite cells, located beneath the basal lamina of the muscle fibers. Inflammatory and immune cells have a crucial role in the regeneration process. Acute muscle injury causes an immediate transient wave of neutrophils followed by a more persistent infiltration of M1 (proinflammatory) and M2 (anti‐inflammatory/proregenerative) macrophages. New studies show that injured muscle is also infiltrated by a specialized population of regulatory T (Treg) cells, which control both the inflammatory response, by promoting the M1‐to‐M2 switch, and the activation of satellite cells. Treg cells accumulate in injured muscle in response to specific cytokines, such as IL‐33, and promote muscle growth by releasing growth factors, such as amphiregulin. Muscle repair during aging is impaired due to reduced number of Treg cells and can be enhanced by IL‐33 supplementation. Migration of Treg cells could also contribute to explain the effect of heterochronic parabiosis, whereby muscle regeneration of aged mice can be improved by a parabiotically linked young partners. In mdx dystrophin‐deficient mice, a model of human Duchenne muscular dystrophy, muscle injury, and inflammation is mitigated by expansion of the Treg‐cell population but exacerbated by Treg‐cell depletion. These findings support the notion that immunological mechanisms are not only essential in the response to pathogenic microbes and tumor cells but also have a wider homeostatic role in tissue repair, and open new perspectives for boosting muscle growth in chronic muscle disease and during aging.
Belle's Body Just Caught the Fit Gnat: The Perception of Northern Cities Shifted Vowels by Local Speakers

1) Do locals have an advantage in understanding words that contain advanced tokens of change-in-progress vowels? Labov and Ash (1997) say yes, but Rakerd and Plichta (2003) say no, particularly for isolated words. Both show an advantage for locals when the words are placed in carrier phrases (which contain no clues to the target word's identity). 2) Can the notion 'local' also reflect demographic details (e.g., sex, age, status, urbanity, ethnicity) in such studies of comprehension? Labov and Ash (1997) suggest an advantage for more locally oriented speakers. 3) When vowels are misunderstood, are they misunderstood in the direction of the position of vowels in the pre-shifted system (Labov and Ash 1997) or in the direction of vowel positions in the newer one? 4) What historical, phonetic, and other characteristics of the vowels involved in a dramatic shift influence their different comprehension rates?
Análisis de la relación entre los resultados sociales y económicos de las cajas de ahorros españolas: un caso de responsabilidad social corporativa

espanolLa obra social constituye uno de los ambitos de aplicacion de la responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) en el contexto de las cajas de ahorros. Por ello, a partir del marco teorico que explica la naturaleza de la relacion entre la realizacion de actividades de indole social y los resultados financieros, el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el efecto de la inversion en obra social sobre la performance de las cajas espanolas. Tras aplicar un modelo dinamico de datos de panel (GMM) los hallazgos encontrados sugieren, una vez controlado el problema de endogeneidad, una influencia negativa y significativa sobre el nivel de rentabilidad, tanto economica como financiera. Por tanto, nuestros resultados avalan la hipotesis del trade off en el sub-sector financiero de las cajas de ahorros espanolas. EnglishSocial work constitutes one of the fields for the application of Corporate Social Responsibility in the realm of savings banks. Therefore, based on the theoretical framework that explains the nature of the relationship between carrying out activities of a social nature and financial results, the objective of this work is to analyze the effect of investment in social work on the performance of Spanish savings banks. After applying a dynamic model of panel data (GMM), and after controlling for the problem of endogeneity, the findings suggest a negative and significant influence on the level of profitability, both economic and financial. Therefore, our results validate the hypothesis of the trade-off in the financial sub-sector of Spanish savings banks.
Harnessing the Power of Reputation: Strengths and Limits for Promoting Cooperative Behaviors

Evolutionary approaches have done much to identify the pressures that select for cooperative sentiment. This helps us understand when and why cooperation will arise, and applied research shows how these pressures can be harnessed to promote various types of cooperation. In particular, recent evidence shows how opportunities to acquire a good reputation can promote cooperation in laboratory and applied settings. Cooperation can be promoted by tapping into forces like indirect reciprocity, costly signaling, and competitive altruism. When individuals help others, they receive reputational benefits (or avoid reputational costs), and this gives people an incentive to help. Such findings can be applied to promote many kinds of helping and cooperation, including charitable donations, tax compliance, sustainable and pro-environmental behaviors, risky heroism, and more. Despite the potential advantages of using reputation to promote positive behaviors, there are several risks and limits. Under some circumstances, opportunities for reputation will be ineffective or promote harmful behaviors. By better understanding the dynamics of reputation and the circumstances under which cooperation can evolve, we can better design social systems to increase the rate of cooperation and reduce conflict.
Constrained Nonnegative Matrix Factorization for Hyperspectral Unmixing

Hyperspectral unmixing is a process to identify the constituent materials and estimate the corresponding fractions from the mixture. During the last few years, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF), as a suitable candidate for the linear spectral mixture model, has been applied to unmix hyperspectral data. Unfortunately, the local minima caused by the nonconvexity of the objective function makes the solution nonunique, thus only the nonnegativity constraint is not sufficient enough to lead to a well-defined problem. Therefore, in this paper, two inherent characteristics of hyperspectral data, piecewise smoothness (both temporal and spatial) of spectral data and sparseness of abundance fraction of every material, are introduced to NMF. The adaptive potential function from discontinuity adaptive Markov random field model is used to describe the smoothness constraint while preserving discontinuities in spectral data. At the same time, two NMF algorithms, nonsmooth NMF and NMF with sparseness constraint, are used to quantify the degree of sparseness of material abundances. A gradient-based optimization algorithm is presented, and the monotonic convergence of the algorithm is proved. Three important facts are exploited in our method: First, both the spectra and abundances are nonnegative; second, the variation of the material spectra and abundance images is piecewise smooth in wavelength and spatial spaces, respectively; third, the abundance distribution of each material is almost sparse in the scene. Experiments using synthetic and real data demonstrate that the proposed algorithm provides an effective unsupervised technique for hyperspectral unmixing.
Effects of the Great Recession on the U.S. Agricultural Labor Market

We empirically test four hypotheses regarding differences between agricultural worker earnings (wages and bonuses) during recession and non-recessionary times, between agricultural worker time use during recession and non-recession times, between outcomes for undocumented and documented workers, and between outcomes for agricultural workers versus those working in other sectors of interest. Regression analyses show that the wages of documented (legal) seasonal agricultural workers increased more during the last three recessions than did the wages of undocumented agricultural workers and low-skilled nonagricultural workers. Bonus pay and weekly hours also increased for some workers, suggesting general increases in the financial wellbeing of employed agricultural workers during recessions.
Data breach trends in the United States

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the trends of various types of data breaches and their compromised records in the USA using a new model recently developed by the authors. Design/methodology/approach – The 2,280 data breaches and over 512 million related compromised records tracked by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse from 2005 through 2010 were analyzed and classified into four external, five internal and one non-traceable data breach categories, after which trends were determined for each. Findings – The findings indicate that although the trends for the annual number of data breaches and each of the internal and external categories and their related compromised records have increased over the six-year period, the changes have not been consistent from year to year. Practical implications – By classifying data breaches into internal and external categories with the use of this new data breach model provides an excellent methodological framework for organizations to use to develop more workable strategies for safeguarding personal information of consumers, clients, employees and other entities. Originality/value – The topic of data breaches remains salient to profit and nonprofit organizations, researchers, legislators, as well as criminal justice practitioners and consumer advocate groups.