Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of a novel plasmin(ogen)‐binding motif in surface displayed α‐enolase of Streptococcus pneumoniae

The interaction of Streptococcus pneumoniae with human plasmin(ogen) represents a mechanism to enhance bacterial virulence by capturing surface‐associated proteolytic activity in the infected host. Plasminogen binds to surface displayed pneumococcal α‐enolase (Eno) and is subsequently activated to the serine protease plasmin by host‐derived tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) or urokinase (uPA). The C‐terminal lysyl residues of Eno at position 433 and 434 were identified as a binding site for the kringle motifs of plasmin(ogen) which contain lysine binding sites. In this report we have identified a novel internal plamin(ogen)‐binding site of Eno by investigating the protein–protein interaction. Plasmin(ogen)‐binding activity of C‐terminal mutated Eno proteins used in binding assays as well as surface plasmon resonance studies suggested that an additional binding motif of Eno is involved in the Eno‐plasmin(ogen) complex formation. The analysis of spot synthesized synthetic peptides representing Eno sequences identified a peptide of nine amino acids located between amino acids 248–256 as the minimal second binding epitope mediating binding of plasminogen to Eno. Binding of radiolabelled plasminogen to viable pneumococci was competitively inhibited by a synthetic peptide FYDKERKVYD representing the novel internal plasmin(ogen)‐binding motif of Eno. In contrast, a synthetic peptide with amino acid substitutions at critical positions in the internal binding motif identified by systematic mutational analysis did not inhibit binding of plasminogen to pneumococci. Pneumococcal mutants expressing α‐enolase with amino acid substitutions in the internal binding motif showed a substantially reduced plasminogen‐binding activity. The virulence of these mutants was also attenuated in a mouse model of intranasal infection indicating the significance of the novel plasminogen‐binding motif in the pathogenesis of pneumococcal diseases.
Fotemustine for the treatment of melanoma

Introduction: Melanoma is a rare but very aggressive form of cancer. Survival in melanoma varies widely depending on the stage of the tumor. In metastatic melanoma, prognosis is usually poor and the treatment is based on chemotherapy. So far, dacarbazine has been the drug of reference, with an average response rate of 15 – 20% when used as a monotherapy. As single drugs go, fotemustine is considered the second-best treatment, after dacarbazine. Areas covered: This review of the scientific literature focuses on the use of fotemustine in patients with cutaneous melanoma and discusses its clinical efficacy and safety. Expert opinion: Fotemustine is a nitrosurea that has proved its efficacy in metastatic melanoma and particularly on cerebral metastases, given its high lipophilicity, facilitating its active penetration in all tissues including the central nervous system. However, overall response rates are low, with only few complete remissions and short response durations.
Agricultural Fires and Cognitive Function : Evidence from Crop Production Cycles

We find significantly negative impacts of fire points on respondents living in downwind counties but not upwind counties. We also find that the impacts of agricultural fires are smaller when the fire points are from upwind counties that are farther away. CONCLUSIONS In many countries, controlled burning continues to be a popular choice among farmers in many parts of the world to rapidly eliminate agricultural waste from the previous harvest and to clear the land for the next planting season. Because agricultural burning usually occurs across a large area, it can generate substantial greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to seasonal air pollution. Pollutants emitted from agricultural burning, such as very small particulates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can lead to severe respiratory illnesses and are carcinogenic (Chen et al. 2017). Understanding the impact of air pollution from agricultural fires on public health is vital to designing agricultural and environmental policy to enhance sustainable agricultural practices and improve public health.
High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Design Study Deliverable Report Conceptual Design of IR Collimation

Conceptual designs for upgraded IR collimation systems in IR1 and IR5 are worked out, based on the results obtained by simulated halo losses and energy deposition. The status of simulations of performance of the different layouts is also presented. Grant Agreement 284404 PUBLIC 1 / 21 CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF IR COLLIMATION Doc. Identifier: HILUMILHC-Del-D5-5-v1.0
Generalized Sensitivity Analysis and Application to Quasi-experiments ∗

The generalized sensitivity analysis (GSA) is a sensitivity analysis for unobserved confounders characterized by a computational approach with dual sensitivity parameters. Specifically, GSA generates an unobserved confounder from the residuals in the outcome and treatment models, and random noise to estimate the confounding effects. GSA can deal with various link functions and identify necessary confounding effects with respect to test-statistics while minimizing the changes to researchers’ original estimation models. This paper first provides a brief introduction of GSA comparing its relative strength and weakness. Then, its versatility and simplicity of use are demonstrated through its applications to the studies that use quasi-experimental methods, namely fixed effects, propensity score matching, and instrumental variable. These applications provide new insights as to whether and how our statistical inference gains robustness to unobserved confounding by using quasi-experimental methods. ∗I thank Christopher Berry, Jennifer Hill, Luke Keele, Robert LaLonde, Andrew Martin, Marc Scott, Teppei Yamamoto for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Development and application of a bioeconomic efficiency index for beef cattle production in Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil 1

An index was developed to estimate the bioeconomic efficiency of production systems, identifying alternative scenarios that could improve their efficiency, and building isoefficiency relations in beef cattle production systems in Rio Grande do Sul. The concept of return on investment was used to develop the indicator. Scenarios regarded as efficient showed values higher than 3. The bioeconomic efficiency index for beef cattle production in the theoretical reference scenario was considered inefficient. At least four modifications in the variables method made it a bioeconomically efficient activity. These circumstances were studied using sensitivity analyses, with theoretical changes in the scenarios by changing variables two by two, while the others were kept constant. In Rio Grande do Sul, alternatives that make the activity efficient were identified by changing productivity, production cost, land price and product price. Isoefficiency relationships were identified in other scenarios. The application of this indicator in other agricultural activities, as well as the design of bioefficiency studies including both environmental and social welfare characteristics are recommended.
TWO-BEAM LINEAR COLLIDERS - SPECIAL ISSUES

The path towards a multi-TeV e+elinear collider proposed by the CLIC study is based on the Two-Beam Acceleration (TBA) scheme. Such a scheme is promising in term of efficiency, reliability and cost. The rationale behind the two-beam scheme is discussed in the paper, together with the special issues related to this technology and the R&D needed to demonstrate its feasibility.
The physics of Aeolian sand transport Alexandre Valance

We give a synthetic overview of the state of art of the physics of sand aeolian transport. We first present the main ideas developed by Bagnold in the middle of the last century. We then review the recent experimental and theoretical advances made in the field and emphasize that the particle flow rate does not exhibit a cubic dependence with the air friction speed, as predicted by Bagnold, but a quadratic one. Finally, we list important open issues that remain.
PERCEIVED EMOTIONAL AND SITUATIONAL HEARING HANDICAP IN THE ELDERLY AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS

Aim: The study aimed to identify perceived emotional and situational hearing handicap in the elderly and their family members. Design: A cross-sectional study. Methods: The sample comprised 256 respondents (128 hearing-impaired elderly patients and 128 family members). Data were collected in an audiology office over a period of four months. To measure their quality of life, the full version of the standardized HHIE questionnaire was used in elderly patients with hearing loss and the modified HHIE-SP instrument in their family members. Results: The study results suggest that elderly patients’ hearing loss affects the quality of life of not only the patients themselves but also of their family members. When comparing the two subgroups, the impact of hearing loss on their quality of life was identical. The elderly noticed major problems when communicating in a noisy environment while in family members, hearing loss had the greatest impact when listening to TV or radio. Both subgroups had the least problems when attending religious services. Elderly patients’ quality of life was considerably correlated with the severity of their hearing loss. Conclusion: In old age, hearing loss is one of the most common sensory impairments, thus becoming an important social and health problem. In the elderly, hearing loss may impair the exchange of information and therefore significantly affect their everyday life, causing loneliness, isolation, dependency, frustration as well as communication disorders. Keywords: elderly, family member, hearing handicap.
Acute myocardial infarction in women: contribution of treatment variables to adverse outcome.

BACKGROUND Women have excessive mortality rates after acute myocardial infarction compared with men. The extent to which this increased risk can be attributed to differences in treatment is not well-understood. METHODS This was an observational follow-up study of 1737 patients admitted with acute myocardial infarction for coronary care between January 1, 1988, and December 31, 1997. RESULTS Compared with men, women took longer to arrive at the hospital (132.5 minutes [range 76 to 291 minutes] vs 120 minutes [range 60 to 240 minutes]; P =.006), were less likely to receive aspirin acutely (87.8% vs 91.3%; P =.03), had longer door-to-needle times (90 minutes [range 60 to 143.5 minutes] vs 78 minutes [range 50 to 131 minutes]; P =.004), and were less likely to be given beta-blockers at hospital discharge (31.6% vs 44.9%; P <.0001). Estimated survival (95% confidence interval [CI]) at 30 days was only 78.4% (range 74.4% to 81.9%) for women compared with 88.0% (range 86.1% to 89.7%) for men. Women were older and more often white, but their excess risk (hazard ratio 2.09; 95% CI, 1.59-2.75) persisted after adjustment for age, racial group, and diabetes (hazard ratio 1.52; 95% CI, 1.15-2.01). Additional adjustment for emergency thrombolytic and aspirin therapy caused a further small reduction in the excess risk for women (hazard ratio 1.46; 95% CI, 1. 09-1.98), but with adjustment for aspirin and beta-blockers prescribed at discharge, the excess risk attributable to being female disappeared as the hazard ratio fell to 0.75 (95% CI, 0.31-1. 84). Estimated 30-day survival free of reinfarction and unstable angina was also lower for women than for men (75% [range 71% to 79%] vs 86% [range 84% to 88%]); again, the excess risk for women persisted despite adjustment for age and racial group before disappearing as treatment variables were introduced into the model. The influence of treatment variables on the differential risks for women and men disappeared at 12 months. CONCLUSIONS This study has shown that women with acute myocardial infarction arrived later at the hospital, were less likely to be given aspirin therapy acutely, had longer door-to-needle times, and, on discharge from the hospital, were less likely to be prescribed beta-blockers for secondary prevention. The data suggest that the failure to treat women as vigorously as men made a significant contribution to their worse outcome.
Karyology of eight species of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) from Hainan Island, China

Karyotypes and chromosomal data are presented for eight bat species representing two families (Rhinolophidae and Vespertilionidae) from Hainan Island, China. The species investigated were Rhinolophus lepidus (2n = 62, FN = 60), R. pusillus (2n = 62, FN = 60), R. affinis (2n = 62, FN = 60), R. sinicus (2n = 36, FN = 60), Myotis horsfieldi (2n = 44, FN = 52), Pipistrellus abramus (2n = 26, FN = 44), Miniopterus australis (2n = 46, FN = 50) and M. schreibersii (2n = 46, FN = 50). The karyotype of Rhinolophus lepidus is reported for the first time.
The Effect of Density‐Independent Mortality on the Coexistence of Exploitative Competitors for Renewing Resources

Many ecologists believe that higher mortality imposed on competing species increases the probability that they will coexist. This belief has persisted in spite of many theoretical counterarguments. However, few of those counterarguments have been based on models having explicit representation of the resources for which competition is occurring. This article analyzes a series of consumer‐resource models of competition for nutritionally substitutable renewable resources and determines the range of relative resource requirements that allow coexistence. In most cases, if consumers are initially efficient at reducing resource densities, increasing density‐independent mortality widens the range of resource requirements of the consumers that allow coexistence, provided the increase in mortality is not too great. The coexistence‐promoting effects of mortality occur because a very efficient consumer species usually reduces the diversity of the set of resources it consumes. This lessens the extent to which resource utilization differences between consumer species can be expressed. Mortality, in this case, increases the diversity of resource types, widening the conditions for coexistence. However, sufficiently high mortality will usually reduce the range of parameters allowing coexistence, in agreement with much previous theory. The results presented here also predict maximal diversity at intermediate levels of productivity. Previous empirical studies and theory are reviewed in light of the theory developed here.
The Sogou speech synthesis system for Blizzard Challenge 2018

This paper presents the Sogou speech synthesis system for Blizzard Challenge 2018. The corpus released to the participants this year is a 6.5-hour children’s audio book in British English, which is the same as for the 2017 data release. We build a parametric system for this task. Firstly, a multi-speaker DNN-BLSTM model is applied for mel spectrograms modeling. Then, a modiﬁed WaveNet model conditioned on the predicted mel features is used to generate 16-bit speech waveforms at 32 kHz, instead of the conventional vocoder. This is the ﬁrst time for Sogou to join the Blizzard Challenge, we have developed speech synthesis for years. The i-dentiﬁer for our system is J, the results show that our submitted system performed good on all the criterion.
Free for All! Assessing User Data Exposure to Advertising Libraries on Android

In this work, we systematically explore the potential reach of advertising libraries through these channels. We design a framework called Pluto that can be leveraged to analyze an app and discover whether it exposes targeted user data—such as contact information, interests, demographics, medical conditions and so on—-to an opportunistic ad library. We present a prototype implementation of Pluto, that embodies novel strategies for using natural language processing to illustrate what targeted data can potentially be learned from an ad network using files and user inputs. Pluto also leverages machine learning and data mining models to reveal what advertising networks can learn from the list of installed apps. We validate Pluto with a collection of apps for which we have determined ground truth about targeted data they may reveal, together with a data set derived from a survey we conducted that gives ground truth for targeted data and corresponding lists of installed apps for about 300 users. We use these to show that Pluto, and hence also opportunistic ad networks, can achieve 75% recall and 80% precision for selected targeted data coming from app files and inputs, and even better results for certain targeted data based on the list of installed apps. Pluto is the first tool that estimates the risk associated with integrating advertising in apps based on the four available channels and arbitrary sets of targeted data.
Impact of Biomarkers of Inflammation and Extracellular Matrix Turnover on the Outcome of Atrial Fibrillation Ablation: Importance of Matrix Metalloproteinase‐2 as a Predictor of Atrial Fibrillation Recurrence

MMP‐2 Predicts the Outcome of AF Ablation. Introduction: Although catheter ablation can effectively eliminate atrial fibrillation (AF), the progression of atrial remodeling increases the risk of recurrence. AF is associated with inflammation and subsequent myocardial fibrosis. We therefore examined the possibility of determining the postablation prognosis of patients with AF using biomarkers of inflammation and collagen turnover.
Organohalogen and Metabolite Contaminants in Human Serum Samples from Indian E-Waste Recycling Workers

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) share many physicochemical properties and toxic effects, including immunological, reproductive and endocrine/cytotoxic effects in various species. Despite their ban in many countries (PCBs in the 1970s, most PBDE technical mixtures in 2004), both types of contaminants are still found in the global environment and biota. PCBs and PBDEs may undergo metabolic transformation resulting in hydroxylated PCBs (OH-PCBs) and hydroxylated PBDEs (OH-PBDEs). The structural similarity to thyroid hormone of OHPCBs and OH-PBDEs allows strong affinity to transthyretin (TTR) and disrupts thyroid hormone homeostasis. In the present study, PCBs, PBDEs and their hydoroxylated metabolites were determined in the serum of workers in an Indian e-waste recycling factory and compared with residents from a rural area (control group). PCBs and OH-PCBs concentrations were not significantly different between the e-waste recycling workers and the control group. PBDE concentrations were also not significantly different between the e-waste recycling workers and the control group, but OH-PBDEs in the control group were significantly higher than in e-waste recycling workers. This result suggests that exposure source of PBDEs and OH-PBDEs may be different and also the e-waste workers in the present study area are not highly exposed to these chemicals than the control group. Concentrations of PCBs, PBDEs, OH-PCBs, and OH-PBDEs were lower than those reported in the United States, Nicaragua, Canada, the Netherlands and Slovakia.
Zinc and Cancer: Implications for LIV-1 in Breast Cancer

Zinc is a trace mineral which is vital for the functioning of numerous cellular processes, is critical for growth, and may play an important role in cancer etiology and outcome. The intracellular levels of this mineral are regulated through the coordinated expression of zinc transporters, which modulate both zinc influx as well as efflux. LIV-1 (ZIP6) was first described in 1988 as an estrogen regulated gene with later work suggesting a role for this transporter in cancer growth and metastasis. Despite evidence of its potential utility as a target gene for cancer prognosis and treatment, LIV-1 has received relatively little attention, with only three prior reviews being published on this topic. Herein, the physiological effects of zinc are reviewed in light of this mineral’s role in cancer growth with specific attention being given to LIV-1 and the potential importance of this transporter to breast cancer etiology.
Emotion in Speech Synthesis

This paper is intended to give a general overview of efforts to simulate emotion in synthetic speech in order to produce results closer to actual human speech. An introduction to the field is presented prior to a literature review covering a number of papers on the use of both voice quality and prosody in synthesizing affect. A short discussion is then presented in which the discussed papers are aggregated and conclusions on their results drawn. Of note is the indication that more positive emotions, such as happiness or joy, are not synthesized as successfully as negative emotions. Also, doubt is thrown on the usefulness and accuracy of some of the results obtained.
Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction Volume 10 Issue 2 6-2018 From Design Principles to Impacts : A Theoretical Framework and Research Agenda

In this paper, we integrate three streams of research in information systems (i.e., IS success, technology adoption, and human-centered design principles) to extend our understanding of technology use. We present a theoretical framework that incorporates the core ideas from these three streams of research. We leverage the proposed framework to present propositions that could guide future work. Specifically, the propositions we develop relate system-design principles to use and net benefits (i.e., job performance and job satisfaction) and rich use to job performance. We further suggest several broad potential future research directions.
Third molar as a diagnostic tool for age estimation in forensic odontology : An exploratory study

Age estimation is an essential part of forensic expertise. Identifying individuals in cases of natural disasters, wars, criminal cases and in terms of employment also, age estimation is an important tool. Apart from the bones, secondary sexual characters and the body proportions, teeth are a useful tool in age estimation process. Teeth have been since long a valuable tool in the hands of forensics for establishing personal identity. The various stages of the third molar development were correlated to the radiographical findings on Orthopantamogram similar to Demirjian et al.; (original criteria).
Age-related changes in brain–behaviour relationships: Evidence from event-related functional MRI studies

A fundamental aim of studies in neurocognitive ageing is to understand age-related changes in brain–behaviour relationships. Neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be used for observation of these age-related changes only if the assumption of age-equivalent relations between neural activity and haemodynamic activity is valid. In one study, we characterised age-related differences in the coupling of the haemodynamic response to neural activity and found greater voxel-wise noise in older than in younger adults, but age-equivalent signal magnitude. These results suggested that alternative techniques may be necessary for analysing age-related differences in neuroimaging data. In a second study, we utilised one alternative method for comparing fMRI activation between younger and older adults performing a working memory (WM) task. Across three experiments, the results suggested that age-related functional changes in fMRI activation can be isolated to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) during memory retrieval. These results suggest a plausible model for WM decline with normal ageing. In a third study we propose and test a model of age-related PFC dysfunction that may account for these and other age-related differences in cognitive performance.