Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cloning and transposon insertion mutagenesis of virulence genes of the 100-kilobase plasmid of Salmonella typhimurium

We have cloned regions of the 100-kilobase (kb) plasmid, pStSR100, of Salmonella typhimurium SR-11 that confer virulence to plasmid-cured S. typhimurium. Cells carrying recombinant plasmids that conferred virulence were selected by inoculating mice orally with recombinant libraries in virulence plasmid-cured S. typhimurium and harvesting isolates that infected spleens. Three plasmids, pYA401, pYA402, and pYA403, constructed with the cosmid vector pCVD305 conferred wild-type levels of virulence to plasmid-cured S. typhimurium and had a common 14-kb DNA insert sequence. Another recombinant plasmid, pYA422, constructed with the vector pACYC184, conferred to plasmid-cured S. typhimurium a wild-type 50% lethal dose (LD50) level, but mice died more slowly than when infected with wild-type S. typhimurium. Furthermore, pYA422 conferred the ability to cause a higher, but not a wild-type, level of splenic infection on plasmid-cured S. typhimurium. pYA422 had a 3.2-kb insert sequence which mapped to the center of the 14-kb common sequence of the cosmid clones. Transposon Tn5 insertion mutations in pYA403 inhibited virulence to various degrees, and when transduced into the native virulence plasmid of S. typhimurium, these Tn5 insertions decreased virulence to degrees similar to those observed when the Tn5 insertions were present in pYA403. vir-22::Tn5 in pStSR100 greatly lowered infection of spleens relative to unmutagenized virulence plasmid, while vir-26::Tn5 and vir-27::Tn5 lowered splenic infection to lesser degrees. At least three proteins were encoded by pYA403 containing 23 kb of insert sequence and subclone pYA420, containing the 14-kb common insert sequence present in all of the cosmid clones. One of these proteins, with an apparent molecular weight of 28,000, was also encoded by pYA422. The Tn5 insertion that most attenuated virulence, vir-22::Tn5, inhibited synthesis of the 28,000-molecular-weight protein. The vir-22::Tn5 insertion was complemented by recombinant plasmids encoding only the 28,000-molecular-weight protein, suggesting a role of this protein in virulence. However, recombinant plasmids, exemplified by pYA422, that encoded only the 28,000-molecular-weight protein did not confer full virulence.
Detection of Foodborne Pathogens and Mycotoxins in Eggs and Chicken Feeds from Farms to Retail Markets

Contamination by foodborne pathogens and mycotoxins was examined in 475 eggs and 20 feed samples collected from three egg layer farms, three egg-processing units, and five retail markets in Korea. Microbial contamination with Salmonella species, Escherichia coli, and Arcobacter species was examined by bacterial culture and multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The contamination levels of aflatoxins, ochratoxins, and zearalenone in eggs and chicken feeds were simultaneously analyzed with high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with fluorescence detection after the post-derivatization. While E. coli was isolated from 9.1% of eggs, Salmonella species were not isolated. Arcobacter species were detected in 0.8% of eggs collected from egg layers by PCR only. While aflatoxins, ochratoxins, and zearalenone were found in 100%, 100%, and 85% of chicken feeds, their contamination levels were below the maximum acceptable levels (1.86, 2.24, and 147.53 μg/kg, respectively). However, no eggs were contaminated with aflatoxins, ochratoxins, or zearalenone. Therefore, the risk of contamination by mycotoxins and microbes in eggs and chicken feeds is considered negligible and unlikely to pose a threat to human health.
Cultural Diversity, Motivation, and Differentiation

The cultural experiences of students significantly impact how they respond to classroom experiences. Classrooms are likely to be more effective in developing the capacity of students from a broad range of backgrounds if teachers understand how culture can shape learning and how teachers can develop classrooms that tap into the intrinsic motivation of culturally diverse learners. This article proposes key principles and provides examples for developing classrooms that are motivating for diverse learners.
Succession Planning: A Doctoral Program Partnership for Emerging Community College Leaders

This article describes a doctoral program partnership between a university and a community college district that addresses the need of employment-planning strategies for building leadership capacity in the community college system. Succession planning information is provided as a foundational framework to plan for the next generation of community college leaders. University faculty members and administrators worked with community college leaders in a large community college district to reimagine the doctorate in educational leadership. The doctoral degree partnership program represents a joint effort to “grow-your-own” higher education leaders—leadership development within and internal to the community college arena—while providing a doctoral program of study, internship, and residency customized to a cohort of students. The attrition and retention of doctoral students in American graduate programs are noted, with completion indicators identified from the literature. The voices of doctoral students in the partnership program are shared, and recommendations regarding the model program and partnership are provided to inform future decisions. Implications for practice and the future conclude the article.
Integrated information as a metric for group interaction

Researchers in many disciplines have previously used a variety of mathematical techniques for analyzing group interactions. Here we use a new metric for this purpose, called “integrated information” or “phi. ” Phi was originally developed by neuroscientists as a measure of consciousness in brains, but it captures, in a single mathematical quantity, two properties that are important in many other kinds of groups as well: differentiated information and integration. Here we apply this metric to the activity of three types of groups that involve people and computers. First, we find that 4-person work groups with higher measured phi perform a wide range of tasks more effectively, as measured by their collective intelligence. Next, we find that groups of Wikipedia editors with higher measured phi create higher quality articles. Last, we find that the measured phi of the collection of people and computers communicating on the Internet increased over a recent six-year period. Together, these results suggest that integrated information can be a useful way of characterizing a certain kind of interactional complexity that, at least sometimes, predicts group performance. In this sense, phi can be viewed as a potential metric of effective group collaboration.
Neural network adaptive robust control of nonlinear systems in semi-strict feedback form

In this paper, the recently proposed neural network adaptive robust control (NNARC) design axe generalized to synthesize performance oriented control laws for a class of nonlinear systems transformable to the semi-strict feedback forms through the incorporation of backstepping design techniques. All unknown but repeatable nonlinearities in system are approximated by outputs of multi-layer neural networks to achieve a better model compensation and an improved performance. Through the use of discontinuous projections with fictitious bounds, a controlled on-line training of all NN weights is achieved. Robust control terms can then be constructed to attenuate various model uncertainties effectively for a guaranteed output tracking transient performance and a guaranteed final tracking accuracy.
Aerobic Exercise Affects Myostatin Expression in Aged Rat Skeletal Muscles: A Possibility of Antiaging Effects of Aerobic Exercise Related With Pelvic Floor Muscle and Urethral Rhabdosphincter

Purpose Aging-induced loss of muscle mass and subsequent reduction of strength is a fundamental cause of frailty, functional decline, and disability. And this may lead to muscular dysfunction, voiding dysfunction, or urinary incontinence due to pelvic muscle weakness induced by aging. Physical exercise has been recommended for the prevention and the treatment of these age-related frail states. We investigated the effects of treadmill exercise on muscle strength, myostatin mRNA and protein expression, and gastrocnemius myocytes proliferation in aged rats to investigate the possible antiaging effects of aerobic exercise on skeletal muscles such as pelvic floor muscles and urethral rhabdosphincter muscle. Methods In this study, 5-month-old male Sprague-Dawley rats were used as the young-age group (n=20) and 24-month-old rats were used as the old-age group (n=20). Each group was randomly divided into two groups (n=10 in each group): the sedentary and the treadmill exercise group. The rats in the exercise groups were forced to run on a motorized treadmill for 30 minutes, once a day, for 6 weeks. For this study, a weight load test, hematoxylin and eosin staining, real-time and reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction for myostatin mRNA, myostatin western blot, and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine immunohistochemistry were performed in the gastrocnemius muscle. Results The age-induced reduction of muscle mass and strength was associated with a decrease in myocyte proliferation and an increase in myostatin mRNA and protein expression in the gastrocnemius. However, treadmill exercise improved muscle mass and strength through suppression of myostatin mRNA and protein expression, and myocyte proliferation increase in the gastrocnemius against the aging process. Conclusions Aerobic exercise is a useful strategy for enhancing muscle function against aging-induced loss of skeletal muscle mass and functions.
Measurement and Modeling of the Origins of Starvation in Congestion Controlled Mesh Networks

Significant progress has been made in understanding the behavior of TCP and congestion-controlled traffic over multi- hop wireless networks. Despite these advances, however, no prior work identified severe throughput imbalances in the basic scenario of mesh networks, in which one-hop flows contend with two-hop flows for gateway access. In this paper, we demonstrate via real network measurements, test-bed experiments, and an analytical model that starvation exists in such a scenario, i.e., the one-hop flow receives most of the bandwidth while the two- hop flow starves. Our analytical model yields a solution consisting of a simple contention window policy that can be implemented via mechanisms in IEEE 802.11e. Despite its simplicity, we demonstrate through analysis, experiments, and simulations, that the policy has a powerful effect on network-wide behavior, shifting the network's queuing points, mitigating problematic MAC behavior, and ensuring that TCP flows obtain a fair share of the gateway bandwidth, irrespective of their spatial locations.
The impact of dark matter decays and annihilations on the formation of the first structures

We derive the effects of dark matter (DM) decays and annihilations on structure formation. We consider moderately massive DM particles ( sterile neutrinos and light DM), as they are expected to give the maximum contribution to heating and reionization. The energy injection from DM decays and annihilations produces both an enhancement in the abundance of coolants (H-2 and HD) and an increase of gas temperature. We find that for all the considered DM models the critical halo mass for collapse, m(crit), is generally higher than in the unperturbed case. However, the variation of mcrit is small. In the most extreme cases, that is, considering light DM annihilations (decays) and haloes virializing at redshift z(vir) > 30 (z(vir) similar to 10), m(crit) increases by a factor of similar to 4 (similar to 2). In the case of annihilations the variations of mcrit are also sensitive to the assumed profile of the DM halo. Furthermore, we note that the fraction of gas which is retained inside the halo can be substantially reduced ( to approximate to 40 per cent of the cosmic value), especially in the smallest haloes, as a consequence of the energy injection by DM decays and annihilations.
“Queer Nation is Dead/Long Live Queer Nation”: The Politics and Poetics of Social Movement and Media Representation

This paper fleshes out the rhetorical structure of Queer Nation/San Francisco (QN/SF), a direct action group lauded for challenging the terms of gay and lesbian visibility politics but seen as failing to sustain that challenge. It juxtaposes representations of QN/SF—from regional mainstream and gay press accounts, QN/SF's internal organizational archives, and interviews with former QN/SF members—to parse out the competing interests that shaped QN/SF's discursive strategies and to chart what coalesced in the media spotlight as QN/SF's primary objective. Drawing on comparative analyses of these representations, this paper argues that press coverage of QN/SF's more spectacular actions, uniformly portrayed in mainstream and gay media as defiant acts of gay and lesbian visibility, undermined QN/SF's attempts to build a broader, multi-issue social justice coalition. While QN/SF's demise cannot be wholly explained by its treatment in the regional mainstream and gay press, this paper reopens the public record of QN/SF to examine the implications of its queer dilemma as an object of publicity. It suggests that QN/SF's less publicized actions, concerned with processing the meaning of identity, warrant greater attention for what they may proffer a queer politics of coalitional social justice and, more broadly, social movements’ media strategies.
Elzar: Triple Modular Redundancy using Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (technical report)

Instruction-Level Redundancy (ILR) is a well-known approach to tolerate transient CPU faults. It replicates instructions in a program and inserts periodic checks to detect and correct CPU faults using majority voting, which essentially requires three copies of each instruction and leads to high performance overheads. As SIMD technology can operate simultaneously on several copies of the data, it appears to be a good candidate for decreasing these overheads. To verify this hypothesis, we propose Elzar, a compiler framework that transforms unmodified multithreaded applications to support triple modular redundancy using Intel AVX extensions for vectorization. Our experience with several benchmark suites and real-world case-studies yields mixed results: while SIMD may be beneficial for some workloads, e.g., CPU-intensive ones with many floating-point operations, it exhibits higher overhead than ILR in many applications we tested. We study the sources of overheads and discuss possible improvements to Intel AVX that would lead to better performance.
Stressful Events in Early Childhood and Developmental Trajectories of Bedwetting at School Age

Objective To examine whether early stressful events are associated with developmental trajectories of bedwetting. Methods This is a prospective cohort study comprising 8,761 participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Stressful events were measured using a maternal questionnaire completed at 3 time points before their child was 4 years old. The association between stressful events and trajectories of bedwetting from 4 to 9 years was examined using multinomial regression. Results The association with stressful events was strongest for the frequent persistent bedwetting trajectory (wetting at least twice a week up to age 9). A 1 standard deviation increase in the stressful events score was associated with a 29% (13–47%) increase in the odds of experiencing frequent persistent bedwetting compared with normal attainment of nighttime bladder control. Conclusions Clinicians and parents should be aware that continence is a developmental outcome that is associated with high levels of stress in the family.
Fault Identification Using Wavelet Transform

This paper presents wavelet analysis technique for identification of faults in high voltage direct current power transmission systems and A.C current systems. The analysis for fast identification of fault is evaluated based on the representation of the travelling waves through wavelet modulus maxima. The present criterion can detect the instant of fault, location of fault and kind of fault
Integration and Segregation in Speech Perception

This paper reviews the various applications of the concepts of integration and segregation in speech perception research. These applications are illustrated with selected examples from the literature. After laying out some conceptual issues and basic assumptions, the review discusses auditory temporal and spectral integration, integration of phonetic information in its various forms, auditory temporal, spatial, and spectral segregation, segregation of linguistic from paralinguistic information, and segregation of intertwined linguistic information. It is concluded that the concepts of integration and segregation are necessary ingredients of a theory of speech perception.
Association of XK and Kell Blood Group Proteins*

A disulfide bond links Kell and XK red cell membrane proteins. Kell, a type II membrane glycoprotein, carries over 20 blood group antigens, and XK, which spans the membrane 10 times, is lacking in rare individuals with the McLeod syndrome. Kell is classified in the neprilysin family of zinc endopeptidases, and XK has structural features that suggest it is a transport protein. Kell has 15 extracellular cysteines, and XK has one in its fifth extracellular loop. Five of the extracellular cysteine residues in Kell are not conserved in the other members of the neprilysin family, and based on the hypothesis that one of the nonconserved cysteines is linked to XK, cysteines 72 and 319 were mutated to serine. The single extracellular cysteine 347 of XK was also mutated. Co-expression of combinations of wild-type and mutant proteins in transfected COS-1 cells showed that Kell C72S did not form a Kell-XK complex with wild-type XK, while wild-type Kell and Kell C319S did. XK C347S was also unable to form a complex with wild-type Kell, indicating that Kell cysteine 72 is linked to XK cysteine 347. Kell C72S was transported to the cell surface, indicating that linkage to XK is not required. In addition, chemical cross-linking of red cell membranes with dithiobispropionimidate indicated that glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase is a near neighbor of Kell.
Regulatory effects of trophic factors on expression and distribution of CGRP and GAP‐43 in rat motoneurons

Trophic factors play important roles for the regulation of several motoneuron characteristics. In this report, we have studied the effects of different trophic factors on the regulation of two substances that have been linked with axon sprouting and regeneration in rat spinal motoneurons, i.e., calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP) and growth‐associated protein‐43 (GAP‐43). The expression of both GAP‐43 and CGRP is regulated developmentally and after different lesions. In the adult animal a sciatic nerve transection normally leads to an increased expression of both alpha‐CGRP and GAP‐43. Local administration of insulin‐like growth factor‐1 (IGF‐1), IGF‐2, or ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) did not significantly change this response, whereas basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) attenuated the lesion‐induced upregulation of alpha‐CGRP mRNA. None of the studied factors had any influence on the upregulation of GAP‐43 after lesion. In vitro, GAP‐43 and alpha‐CGRP mRNAs could be detected in enriched motoneuron cultures prepared from E14 rat embryos. The GAP‐43 expression was upregulated by bFGF, IGF‐1, IGF‐2, and CNTF. CNTF also upregulated alpha‐CGRP mRNA in cultured motoneurons, whereas bFGF had the opposite effect. IGF‐1 and ‐2 did not significantly affect the alpha‐CGRP mRNA levels. The decrease in GAP‐43‐immunopositive neuromuscular junctions (NMJs), seen during normal postnatal development, was attenuated after intramuscular injections of bFGF, CNTF, IGF‐2, or CGRP 8–37, a CGRP antagonist. At the same time bFGF decreased and CNTF increased the number of CGRP‐immunoreactive NMJs, whereas no difference from control was seen in IGF‐2‐treated muscles.
Exploring the Impact of Work Satisfaction and Involvement on Marital Interaction When Both Partners are Employed

This study attempts to assess the relationships between job satisfaction, job involvement, and marital adjustment for married female teachers and their husbands. The two major conclusions of this study were: (1) teachers and their husbands follow different patterns concerning the job satisfaction-marital adjustment relationship, and (2) teachers and their husbands were more than moderately successful at preventing their job involvement from interfering with their marital adjustment. The results suggested the continued importance of distinguishing between attitudes (job satisfaction) and behavior (job involvement) when assessing the impact of work on family life.
Pontryagin Maximum Principle for Finite Dimensional Nonlinear Optimal Control Problems on Time Scales

In this article we derive a strong version of the Pontryagin Maximum Principle for general nonlinear optimal control problems on time scales in finite dimension. The final time can be fixed or not, and in the case of general boundary conditions we derive the corresponding transversality conditions. Our proof is based on Ekeland's variational principle. Our statement and comments clearly show the distinction between right-dense points and right-scattered points. At right-dense points a maximization condition of the Hamiltonian is derived, similarly to the continuous-time case. At right-scattered points a weaker condition is derived, in terms of so-called stable $\Omega$-dense directions. We do not make any specific restrictive assumption on the dynamics or on the set $\Omega$ of control constraints. Our statement encompasses the classical continuous-time and discrete-time versions of the Pontryagin Maximum Principle, and holds on any general time scale, that is any closed subset of $\R$.
In-Group Identification as a Function of Depersonalization, Distinctiveness, and Status

Artificial social categories were created in a laboratory context in order to test predictions regarding the relative importance of group size and status as determinants of in-group favoritism. Subjects were assigned to categories of “overestimator” or “under estimator” and were told that one category included a majority of college students while the other represented a minority. Prior to category assignment, half of the subjects had been given confidentiality instructions designed to make them feel highly depersonalized. Based on feedback about test performance, status differentials between the two estimation categories were introduced. Consistent with predictions, there was a three-way interaction between depersonalization, in-group size, and in-group status as determinants of evaluative in-group bias on social trait ratings. Under control conditions (no depersonalization), group status and majority size both contributed to positive valuations of the in-group. Under the depersonalization condition, however, subjects valued minority group membership more than majority categorization, and the effect of status was eliminated.