Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduced Susceptibility of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) from Patients with Primary HIV Infection to Nonnucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors Is Associated with Variation at Novel Amino Acid Sites

ABSTRACT Recently, significant numbers of individuals with primary human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection have been found to harbor viral strains with reduced susceptibility to antiretroviral drugs. In one study, HIV from 16% of such antiretroviral-naive individuals was shown to have a susceptibility to nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors (NNRTIs) between 2.5- and 10-fold lower than that of a wild-type control. Mutations in the RT domain that had previously been associated with antiretroviral resistance were not shared by these strains. We have analyzed by logistic regression 46 variable amino acid sites in RT for their effect on susceptibility and have identified two novel sites influencing susceptibility to NNRTIs: amino acids 135 and 283 in RT. Eight different combinations of amino acids at these sites were observed among these patients. These combinations showed a 14-fold range in mean susceptibility to both nevirapine and delavirdine. In vitro mutagenesis of the control strain combined with a phenotypic assay confirmed the significance of amino acid variation at these sites for susceptibility to NNRTIs.
Mucosal Immunity in the Female Genital Tract, HIV/AIDS

Mucosal immunity consists of innate and adaptive immune responses which can be influenced by systemic immunity. Despite having been the subject of intensive studies, it is not fully elucidated what exactly occurs after HIV contact with the female genital tract mucosa. The sexual route is the main route of HIV transmission, with an increased risk of infection in women compared to men. Several characteristics of the female genital tract make it suitable for inoculation, establishment of infection, and systemic spread of the virus, which causes local changes that may favor the development of infections by other pathogens, often called sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The relationship of these STDs with HIV infection has been widely studied. Here we review the characteristics of mucosal immunity of the female genital tract, its alterations due to HIV/AIDS, and the characteristics of coinfections between HIV/AIDS and the most prevalent STDs.
Political Reform in China: The Effect of Local Elections

We examine the effects of introducing village elections on public goods expenditures, income distribution and land use in rural China. We construct a large panel data set of village administrative records to document the history of political reforms and economic policies for over two hundred villages. We exploit the staggered timing of the introduction of village elections to find that elections significantly increased public goods expenditure financed by villagers. In addition, we find that the introduction of elections caused a moderate decline in income inequality and likely reduced corruption. The results suggest that local officials are better controlled by local elections rather than by centrally managed bureaucratic monitoring.
Abnormal Control of Orbicularis Oculi Reflex Excitability in Multiple Sclerosis

Brain lesions in patients with multiple sclerosis may lead to abnormal excitability of brainstem reflex circuits because of impairment of descending control pathways. We hypothesized that such abnormality should show in the analysis of blink reflex responses in the form of asymmetries in response size. The study was done in 20 patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and 12 matched healthy subjects. We identified first patients with latency abnormalities (AbLat). Then, we analyzed response size by calculating the R2c/R2 ratio to stimulation of either side and the mean area of the R2 responses obtained in the same side. Patients with significantly larger response size with respect to healthy subjects in at least one side were considered to have abnormal response excitability (AbEx). We also examined the blink reflex excitability recovery (BRER) and prepulse inhibition (BRIP) of either side in search for additional indices of asymmetry in response excitability. Neurophysiological data were correlated with MRI-determined brain lesion-load and volume. Eight patients were identified as AbLat (median Expanded Disability Status Scale–EDSS = 2.75) and 7 of them had ponto-medullary lesions. Nine patients were identified as AbEx (EDSS = 1.5) and only 2 of them, who also were AbLat, had ponto-medullary lesions. In AbEx patients, the abnormalities in response size were confined to one side, with a similar tendency in most variables (significantly asymmetric R1 amplitude, BRER index and BRIP percentage). AbEx patients had asymmetric distribution of hemispheral lesions, in contrast with the symmetric pattern observed in AbLat. The brainstem lesion load was significantly lower in AbEx than in AbLat patients (p = 0.04). Asymmetric abnormalities in blink reflex response excitability in patients with multiple sclerosis are associated with lesser disability and lower tissue loss than abnormalities in response latency. Testing response excitability could provide a reliable neurophysiological index of dysfunction in early stages of multiple sclerosis.
Effect of dialysis membrane biocompatibility on polymorphonuclear granulocyte activity in dialysis patients.

BACKGROUND Among patients with defects of the phagocytic component of the immune system, chronic haemodialysis patients are highly susceptible to microbial infections characterized by high morbidity/mortality, related to an impairment of the phagocytic response. Therefore the potential influence of dialysis membrane biocompatibility on the activity of polymorphonuclear (PMN) granulocytes from dialysis patients was investigated in this study. METHODS Nineteen patients in haemodialysis were included in the protocol and divided into two groups: a control group (7 patients) and a study group (12 patients). The study group patients were treated for subsequent periods of 1 month with different dialysis membranes: low flux excebrane E membrane (CL-E), low flux polysulfone (PS). The control group patients were treated with a low flux modified cellulose membrane (SMC) for the entire observation period. The aetiology of end-stage renal disease included glomerulonephritis, nephroangiosclerosis and interstitial nephropathy. Following each period of treatment, clinical and haematological parameters were evaluated; phagocytosis and microbicidal activity of PMNs from uraemic patients against Klebsiella pneumoniae, the pathogen which can pose severe problems in immune depressed patients, were investigated in parallel. RESULTS The data evidence that both clinical and haematological parameters remained unchanged during the study period and no differences were found among treatments. On the contrary, the PMN activity varied according to the type of the membrane. In fact, the use of both PS and CL-E, in contrast to SMC, resulted in a PMN functionality similar to that observed in healthy subjects. CONCLUSIONS These results provide evidence that the depressed PMN activities in dialysis patients may be influenced by membrane biocompatibility in such a way to be totally restored.
Efficacy of five commercial disinfectants and one anionic surfactant against equine herpesvirus type 1

We investigated the influences of various reaction conditions on equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) disinfection by 5 commercial disinfectants (3 quaternary ammonium compounds [QACs] and 2 chlorine-based disinfectants) and 1 anionic surfactant. QACs at their highest recommended concentrations had no virucidal effect on EHV-1 with a 10-min reaction time at 0°C or a 1-min reaction time at room temperature. Chlorine-based disinfectants achieved EHV-1 disinfection with a 10-min reaction time at −10°C or a 30-sec reaction time at room temperature. In the presence of 5% fetal bovine serum, QACs (except for benzalkonium chloride) showed more stable virucidal effects than did chlorine-based disinfectants. The virucidal effect of the anionic surfactant was almost equivalent to that of the QACs.
The development of international business theory: implications for international business teaching and research in Colombia

The article provides an overview about the development of international business theory beginning with Hymers seminal contribution in 1960 and ending with a contribution by Engwall from 2006 that links institutionalization theory to the multinational firm. Building on these theoretical developments, the article gives new directions for research regarding the internationalization phenomenon of Colombian firms. Furthermore, it is suggested that universities in Colombia that offer international business programs include international business theory in their curriculum to strengthen its epistemological basis and to provide motives for students, especially at the postgraduate level, to research the internationalization behavior of Colombian firms - a phenomenon clearly under-researched in the country and internationally in the context of Latin-America.
Susceptibility of Pancreatic Beta Cells to Fatty Acids Is Regulated by LXR/PPARα-Dependent Stearoyl-Coenzyme A Desaturase

Chronically elevated levels of fatty acids-FA can cause beta cell death in vitro. Beta cells vary in their individual susceptibility to FA-toxicity. Rat beta cells were previously shown to better resist FA-toxicity in conditions that increased triglyceride formation or mitochondrial and peroxisomal FA-oxidation, possibly reducing cytoplasmic levels of toxic FA-moieties. We now show that stearoyl-CoA desaturase-SCD is involved in this cytoprotective mechanism through its ability to transfer saturated FA into monounsaturated FA that are incorporated in lipids. In purified beta cells, SCD expression was induced by LXR- and PPARα-agonists, which were found to protect rat, mouse and human beta cells against palmitate toxicity. When their SCD was inhibited or silenced, the agonist-induced protection was also suppressed. A correlation between beta cell-SCD expression and susceptibility to palmitate was also found in beta cell preparations isolated from different rodent models. In mice with LXR-deletion (LXRβ-/- and LXRαβ-/-), beta cells presented a reduced SCD-expression as well as an increased susceptibility to palmitate-toxicity, which could not be counteracted by LXR or PPARα agonists. In Zucker fatty rats and in rats treated with the LXR-agonist TO1317, beta cells show an increased SCD-expression and lower palmitate-toxicity. In the normal rat beta cell population, the subpopulation with lower metabolic responsiveness to glucose exhibits a lower SCD1 expression and a higher susceptibility to palmitate toxicity. These data demonstrate that the beta cell susceptibility to saturated fatty acids can be reduced by stearoyl-coA desaturase, which upon stimulation by LXR and PPARα agonists favors their desaturation and subsequent incorporation in neutral lipids.
Convergence of Moment Methods for Linear Kinetic Equations

Numerical methods for linear kinetic equations based on moment expansions for a discretization in the velocity direction are examined. The moment equations are hyperbolic systems which can be shown to converge to the kinetic equation as the order of the expansion tends to infinity and to a drift-diffusion model as the Knudsen number tends to zero. A discretization of the moment equations with respect to time and space is presented, a stability result is proven, and some aspects of an implementation are discussed. In particular, an adaptive procedure is described where the order of the expansion is determined locally. Results of numerical experiments are presented.
Word-Pair Extraction for Lexicography

We describe an application of sentence alignment techniques and approximate string matching to the problem of extracting lexicographically interesting word-word pairs from multilingual corpora. Since our interest is in support systems for lexicographers rather than in fully automatic construction of lexicons, we would like to provide access to parameters allowing a tunable trade-oo between precision and recall. We evaluate two techniques for doing this. Since sentence alignment tends to associate semantically similar words, approximate string matching draws attention to orthographic similarities, they can be used to serve diierent lexicographic purposes, as can the combination of the two techniques, which amounts, inter alia, to a tool for uncovering faux amis. We conclude by sketching a simple and exible means for allowing lexicographers to provide information which has the potential to improve system performance.
Spectrum Exploration and Exploitation for Cognitive Radio: Recent Advances

The lack of availability of radio spectrum for wireless communication purposes is becoming a serious problem as more wireless systems and services are being developed and operate in crowded spectral bands. The scarcity of useful radio spectrum is mainly due to the static allocation and rigid regulation of the spectrum use rather than the spectrum being actually fully in use. Flexible spectrum use and cognitive radio technologies provide an approach to alleviating this problem by allowing for secondary spectrum use while the spectrum is underutilized by its primary licensed users. Idle spectrum is a time-frequency-location varying resource. It is a resource that also depends on the relative locations of the primary and secondary receivers and transmitters as well as the instantaneous propagation conditions. By acquiring awareness about the current radio environment and the other spectrum users, cognitive radios can more efficiently exploit idle spectrum and manage interference. Doing so requires a means to explore the spectrum to identify high-quality and persistent local spectral resources and access and share them among a number of users while strictly controlling the interference caused to others, in particular, licensed primary users (PUs). Situational awareness about the state of the spectrum allows for optimal exploitation of underutilized spectrum. For example, idle subbands may be allocated, and waveform parameters may be chosen to maximize the sum-rate for the cognitive users while making sure no harmful interference is caused to the other users of the spectrum.
Open innovation process to inbound knowledge: Collaboration with universities in four leading firms

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the organizational aspects of an open innovation approach by focusing on the relationship between universities and firms as a vehicle for acquiring technological knowledge. It discusses in detail the characteristics of firm organizational units that are devoted to managing relationships with universities and the processes that firms put in place to select research fields and partners.Design/methodology/approach – Considering the complex system of variables that characterize this phenomenon, an interview‐based case study method is adopted. In order to compare behaviors and organizational approaches, a retrospective, multiple case study method with theoretical replication was employed to focus on four companies that operate in three different industries: telecoms, construction, and aviation. The goal was to better explain the studied phenomenon. After the data‐gathering phase, the cases were compared by identifying similarities and differences in terms o.
Learning to detect salient region of image under weak supervision

Salient region of an image usually contains the crucial information for image analysis and understanding. Most conventional approaches learn the saliency by utilizing the low-level features, which ignore the participation of human. In this paper, we propose an effective and robust approach to detect the salient region of an image by combining the bottom-up and top-down cues. The proposed method not only consider the low-level attention features, but also take human into the loop for better understanding of human attention. Furthermore, we build an asymmetrical graph model to integrate these bottom-up and top-down cues into an energy function of saliency. A compact but exact saliency region can be obtained by minimizing posterior energy function. The compact constraint and global minimization manner of the asymmetrical graph cuts guarantee the good performance of saliency extraction. Extensive experiments demonstrate the proposed method is promising.
The mean angular diameter of δ Cephei measured by optical long-baseline interferometry.

Long baseline interferometric observations of Cep at the "Grand Interferometre a deux Telescopes" give the rst measurement of its mean angular diameter. Combined with the mean linear radius deduced from spectroscopic data, the mean angular diameter gives an improved distance determination for Cep.Sizepulsationsaremarginallydetectedandthemeasured amplitude is consistent with the theoretical predictions.
Management of hepatitis C genotype 4 in the directly acting antivirals era

Genotype 4 chronic hepatitis C (G4 HCV) accounts for 13% of worldwide HCV infections; with 10 million people infected with the virus across the world. Up to the end of 2013, the only treatment option for G4 HCV was treatment with pegylated interferon and ribavirin for 24–48 weeks. Since late 2013, treatment of G4 HCV has been transformed by the licensing of many directly acting antiviral agents (DAA). It is an exciting time to be involved in the management of HCV generally and G4 particularly. Interferon-free DAA regimens are now a reality for G4 HCV. This review will highlight these developments and discuss the data behind the use of these drugs. It will also highlight future regimens that are likely to be available over the coming years.
REVERSIBLE ADHESION : FROM DISCRETE TO CONTINUUM

We study a simple mechanical model whose aim is to reproduce basic physical mechanisms behind reversible surface attachment-detachment under quasi-static loading. At the micro level the adhesive layer is modeled as an elastic chain of particles interacting with a rigid foundation through breakable springs. This model can be viewed as prototypical for the description of a wide range of phenomena from peeling of polymeric tapes to rolling of cells, working of Gecko’s fibrillar structures and denaturation of DNA. We show that the model reproduces qualitatively the following experimentally observed effect: hysteretic transition from an incremental evolution of the adhesion front to a sudden decohesion of a macroscopic segment of the adhesion layer. We construct the rigorous continuum limit of our discrete model which captures both stable and metastable configurations. As the microscopic properties of the breakable elements change, the macroscopic behavior varies from quasi-ductile to quasi-brittle, with corresponding decrease in the size of the adhesion hysteresis. At the micro-scale this corresponds to a transition from a ‘localized’ to a ‘diffuse’ structure of the decohesion front. The achieved parametric control of the microscopic mechanism can be used in the design of new biological inspired materials and reversible adhesion devices.
Deoxycytidine kinase regulates the G2/M checkpoint through interaction with cyclin-dependent kinase 1 in response to DNA damage

Deoxycytidine kinase (dCK) is a rate limiting enzyme critical for phosphorylation of endogenous deoxynucleosides for DNA synthesis and exogenous nucleoside analogues for anticancer and antiviral drug actions. dCK is activated in response to DNA damage; however, how it functions in the DNA damage response is largely unknown. Here, we report that dCK is required for the G2/M checkpoint in response to DNA damage induced by ionizing radiation (IR). We demonstrate that the ataxia–telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) kinase phosphorylates dCK on Serine 74 to activate it in response to DNA damage. We further demonstrate that Serine 74 phosphorylation is required for initiation of the G2/M checkpoint. Using mass spectrometry, we identified a protein complex associated with dCK in response to DNA damage. We demonstrate that dCK interacts with cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1) after IR and that the interaction inhibits Cdk1 activity both in vitro and in vivo. Together, our results highlight the novel function of dCK and provide molecular insights into the G2/M checkpoint regulation in response to DNA damage.
Flux Balance Analysis of Plant Metabolism: The Effect of Biomass Composition and Model Structure on Model Predictions

The biomass composition represented in constraint-based metabolic models is a key component for predicting cellular metabolism using flux balance analysis (FBA). Despite major advances in analytical technologies, it is often challenging to obtain a detailed composition of all major biomass components experimentally. Studies examining the influence of the biomass composition on the predictions of metabolic models have so far mostly been done on models of microorganisms. Little is known about the impact of varying biomass composition on flux prediction in FBA models of plants, whose metabolism is very versatile and complex because of the presence of multiple subcellular compartments. Also, the published metabolic models of plants differ in size and complexity. In this study, we examined the sensitivity of the predicted fluxes of plant metabolic models to biomass composition and model structure. These questions were addressed by evaluating the sensitivity of predictions of growth rates and central carbon metabolic fluxes to varying biomass compositions in three different genome-/large-scale metabolic models of Arabidopsis thaliana. Our results showed that fluxes through the central carbon metabolism were robust to changes in biomass composition. Nevertheless, comparisons between the predictions from three models using identical modeling constraints and objective function showed that model predictions were sensitive to the structure of the models, highlighting large discrepancies between the published models.