Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MANAGING EMOTIONS IN AN ANIMAL SHELTER

 Common-sense belief: Our emotions represent our “true” self, not social rules  Sociology of emotions studies how culture shapes the way we feel  Arlie Hochschild: pioneered sociology of emotions  People do “emotion work”: attempting to make feelings correspond to feeling rules • Emotion evocation: bringing about desired feeling • Emotion suppression: stifling undesired feeling Organizations may demand emotion work from workers
FLCN and AMPK Confer Resistance to Hyperosmotic Stress via Remodeling of Glycogen Stores

Mechanisms of adaptation to environmental changes in osmolarity are fundamental for cellular and organismal survival. Here we identify a novel osmotic stress resistance pathway in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), which is dependent on the metabolic master regulator 5’-AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and its negative regulator Folliculin (FLCN). FLCN-1 is the nematode ortholog of the tumor suppressor FLCN, responsible for the Birt-Hogg-Dubé (BHD) tumor syndrome. We show that flcn-1 mutants exhibit increased resistance to hyperosmotic stress via constitutive AMPK-dependent accumulation of glycogen reserves. Upon hyperosmotic stress exposure, glycogen stores are rapidly degraded, leading to a significant accumulation of the organic osmolyte glycerol through transcriptional upregulation of glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase enzymes (gpdh-1 and gpdh-2). Importantly, the hyperosmotic stress resistance in flcn-1 mutant and wild-type animals is strongly suppressed by loss of AMPK, glycogen synthase, glycogen phosphorylase, or simultaneous loss of gpdh-1 and gpdh-2 enzymes. Our studies show for the first time that animals normally exhibit AMPK-dependent glycogen stores, which can be utilized for rapid adaptation to either energy stress or hyperosmotic stress. Importantly, we show that glycogen accumulates in kidneys from mice lacking FLCN and in renal tumors from a BHD patient. Our findings suggest a dual role for glycogen, acting as a reservoir for energy supply and osmolyte production, and both processes might be supporting tumorigenesis.
Associations between Vaginal Pathogenic Community and Bacterial Vaginosis in Chinese Reproductive-Age Women

Background Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is one of the most common urogenital infections among women of reproductive age that represents shifts in microbiota from Lactobacillus spp. to diverse anaerobes. The aim of our study was to evalute the diagnostic values of Gardnerella, Atopobium, Eggerthella, Megasphaera typeI, Leptotrichia/Sneathia and Prevotella, defined as a vaginal pathogenic community for BV and their associations with vaginal pH and Nugent scores. Methods and Findings We investigated the vaginal pathogenic bacteria and Lactobacillus spp. with species-specific real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) in 50 BV-positive and 50 BV-negative Chinese women of reproductive age. Relative to BV-negative subjects, a siginificant decline in Lactobacillus and an obvious increase in bacteria in the vaginal pathogenic community were observed in BV-postive subjects (P<0.05). With the exception of Megasphaera typeI, other vaginal pathogenic bacteria were highly predictable for BV with a better sensitivity and specificity. The vaginal pathogenic community was positively associated with vaginal pH and Nugent scores, while Lactobacillus spp. , such as L. iners and L. crispatus was negatively associated with them (P<0.05). Conclusions Our data implied that the prevalance of vaginal pathogenic bacteria as well as the depletion of Lactobacillus was highly accurate for BV diagnosis. Vaginal microbiota shifts, especially the overgrowth of the vaginal pathogenic community, showed well diagnostic values in predicting BV. Postive correlations between those vaginal pathogenic bacteria and vaginal pH, Nugent score indicated the vaginal pathogenic community rather than a single vaginal microorganism, was participated in the onset of BV directly.
Modification of Intestinal Microbiota and Its Consequences for Innate Immune Response in the Pathogenesis of Campylobacteriosis

Campylobacter jejuni is the leading cause of bacterial food-borne gastroenteritis in the world, and thus one of the most important public health concerns. The initial stage in its pathogenesis after ingestion is to overcome colonization resistance that is maintained by the human intestinal microbiota. But how it overcomes colonization resistance is unknown. Recently developed humanized gnotobiotic mouse models have provided deeper insights into this initial stage and host's immune response. These studies have found that a fat-rich diet modifies the composition of the conventional intestinal microbiota by increasing the Firmicutes and Proteobacteria loads while reducing the Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes loads creating an imbalance that exposes the intestinal epithelial cells to adherence. Upon adherence, deoxycholic acid stimulates C. jejuni to synthesize Campylobacter invasion antigens, which invade the epithelial cells. In response, NF-κB triggers the maturation of dendritic cells. Chemokines produced by the activated dendritic cells initiate the clearance of C. jejuni cells by inducing the actions of neutrophils, B-lymphocytes, and various subsets of T-cells. This immune response causes inflammation. This review focuses on the progress that has been made on understanding the relationship between intestinal microbiota shift, establishment of C. jejuni infection, and consequent immune response.
An array operation synthesis scheme to optimize Fortran 90 programs

An increasing number of programming languages, such as Fortran 90 and APL, are providing a rich set of intrinsic array functions and array expressions. These constructs which constitute an important part of data parallel languages provide excellent opportunities for compiler optimizations. In this paper, we present a new approach to combine consecutive data access patterns of array constructs into a composite access function to the source arrays. Our scheme is based on the composition of access functions, which is similar to a composition of mathematic functions. Our new scheme can handle not only data movements of arrays of different numbers of dimensions and segmented array operations but also masked array expressions and multiple sources array operations. As a result, our proposed scheme is the first synthesis scheme which can synthesize Fortran 90 RESHAPE, EOSHIFT, MERGE, and WHERE constructs together. Experimental results show speedups from 1.21 to 2.95 for code fragments from real applications on a Sequent multiprocessor machine by incorporating the proposed optimizations.
Antimicrobial Susceptibilities and Phylogenetic Analyses of Enterococcus hirae Isolated from Broilers with Valvular Endocarditis

SUMMARY. Enterococcus hirae is a zoonotic Enterococcus species that causes opportunistic infections in both humans and animals and can be transmitted by contact with animals or through contaminated food. The aim of this study was to investigate the importance of E. hirae in broilers with endocarditis, as well as the antimicrobial resistance patterns and genetic relatedness of the isolates. A total of 477 three- to five-week-old broilers were studied during five fattening periods on a farm with mortality due to endocarditis. Endocarditis was observed in 27 chickens (5.66%), and samples were taken for pathological, microbiological, and molecular studies. Lesions were mainly found in the right atrioventricular valve and corresponded with a fibrinous endocarditis. Enterococcus hirae was identified in all cases. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis results showed clonality among some isolates, with one pulsotype harboring 11 isolates that were found throughout the study. Most of the isolates showed multi-drug-resistant phenotypes. These results confirm that E. hirae is a significant cause of endocarditis in broilers, and suggest that broilers may be important carriers of antimicrobial-resistant E. hirae that might enter into the food chain.
Genetic Variability of Spodoptera frugiperda Smith (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Populations from Latin America Is Associated with Variations in Susceptibility to Bacillus thuringiensis Cry Toxins

ABSTRACT Bacillus thuringiensis strains isolated from Latin American soil samples that showed toxicity against three Spodoptera frugiperda populations from different geographical areas (Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil) were characterized on the basis of their insecticidal activity, crystal morphology, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of parasporal crystals, plasmid profiles, and cry gene content. We found that the different S. frugiperda populations display different susceptibilities to the selected B. thuringiensis strains and also to pure preparations of Cry1B, Cry1C, and Cry1D toxins. Binding assays performed with pure toxin demonstrated that the differences in the toxin binding capacities of these insect populations correlated with the observed differences in susceptibility to the three Cry toxins analyzed. Finally, the genetic variability of the three insect populations was analyzed by random amplification of polymorphic DNA-PCR, which showed significant genetic diversity among the three S. frugiperda populations analyzed. The data presented here show that the genetic variability of S. frugiperda populations should be carefully considered in the development of insect pest control strategies, including the deployment of genetically modified maize in different geographical regions.
Transparency regulation in the electricity industry: A governmental affair?!

The Electronic Market Hypothesis (EMH) (Malone, Yates & Benjamin 1987) holds that electronic markets will eventually evolve towards unbiased markets under the pressure of both competitive and legal forces and that this process is inevitable in case of markets for commodities. Based on an initial literature review, we criticise the EMH for its definitional impreciseness, its disregard for strategic and technological counter forces and the absence of market characteristics as contingent factors in the prediction. These critiques drive our research interest in the nature and effectiveness of the competitive and legal forces that are held to be crucial in the evolution towards unbiased markets, in particular in the light of the regulatory authorities that are often installed to institutionalize these forces. In this paper we present our ongoing research that intends to nuance the, in our opinion, overly optimistic and naive view of the EMH by examining the Dutch electricity industry as an example of a commodity market that has recently been liberalised. Specifically, we examine the nature and effectiveness of the regulatory transparency increasing measures of the DTe (Office of Energy Regulation) from the perspective of the DTe and the comparison websites that these measures are aimed at. Preliminary results indicate that even in markets for commodities, competitive measures have to be complemented with a proactive ‘information authority’ to enforce the ‘inevitable’ evolution towards unbiased, transparent electronic markets.
Shuffling across rounds: A lightweight strategy to counter side-channel attacks

Side-channel attacks are a potent threat to the security of devices implementing cryptographic algorithms. Designing lightweight countermeasures against side-channel analysis that can run on resource constrained devices is a major challenge. One such lightweight countermeasure is shuffling, in which the designer randomly permutes the order of execution of potentially vulnerable operations. State of the art shuffling countermeasures advocate shuffling a set of independent operations in a single round of a cryptographic algorithm, but are often found to be insufficient as standalone countermeasures. In this paper, we propose a two-round version of the shuffling countermeasure, and test its security when applied to a serialized implementation of AES-128 using Test Vector Leakage Assessment (TVLA). Our results show that the required number of traces to break AES-128 implemented using our proposed countermeasure is significantly larger than the implementations using simple one-round shuffling. Furthermore, the new shuffling method has significantly lower overhead of around 1.3 times, as compared to other side-channel countermeasures such as masking that have an overhead of approximately two times.
Expression of interleukine-8 as an independent prognostic factor for sporadic colon cancer dissemination

Abstract Aim: The aim of our study was to investigate the gene and serum protein expression profiles of IL-8 in colon cancer and associated hepatic metastasis and to correlate these results with clinicopathologic variables of the patients. Materials and methods: IL-8 was evaluated by qPCR and ELISA in a total number of 62 colon cancer patients (n=42 by qPCR and n=20 by ELISA) in normal and tumoral tissue specimens and serum samples respectively. Additionally synchronous metastasis from 5 of these patients were also collected at the time of surgery and analyzed by qPCR. Results: IL-8 was up regulated in all analyzed tumoral samples compared with normal tissue (P-value = 0.01) and higher expressed in metastatic tissues compared with tumoral tissues (P -value= 0.03). The median expression of IL-8 in patients over 60 years old was found to be higher compared with the median expression of IL8 in patients less than 60 years old (3.89 compared with 14.69, P -value= 0.005). According to tumor grading, we found that IL-8 in tumors with well differentiated adenocarcinoma have a median mRNA expression of 9.78 compared with a median mRNA IL8 expression of 26.63 in moderate or poor differentiated adenocarcinoma. Levels of IL-8 determined in serum were statistically significant correlated with preoperative carcinoembryonic antigen level (P -value= 0.003, R=0.57) and with distant metastasis (P-value =0.008). Serum level of IL-8 increased proportionally along with TNM tumor stage and was found to be statistically significant correlated with C-reactive protein (P -value, R=0.64). Colon cancer patients had higher IL-8 levels as determined by ELISA (median value= 29.64 pg/ml) compared with healthy controls (median value= 4.86 pg/ml). Discussions: Our results provide additional support for the role of inflammation in colon cancer and indicate that IL-8 could be further validated in association with other already used markers for prognostic and diagnostic of evolutional disease in colon cancer patients. Brief abstract By investigating the gene and serum protein expression profiles of IL-8 in colon cancer and associated hepatic metastasis, we found correlations between these results and clinicopathological variables of the patients. IL-8 is involved in colon cancer progression and could be monitored in a panel with other biomarkers as an early indicator of the tumor’s evolution.
High phosphate reduces host ability to develop arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis without affecting root calcium spiking responses to the fungus

The arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis associates soil fungi with the roots of the majority of plants species and represents a major source of soil phosphorus acquisition. Mycorrhizal interactions begin with an exchange of molecular signals between the two partners. A root signaling pathway is recruited, for which the perception of fungal signals triggers oscillations of intracellular calcium concentration. High phosphate availability is known to inhibit the establishment and/or persistence of this symbiosis, thereby favoring the direct, non-symbiotic uptake of phosphorus by the root system. In this study, Medicago truncatula plants were used to investigate the effects of phosphate supply on the early stages of the interaction. When plants were supplied with high phosphate fungal attachment to the roots was drastically reduced. An experimental system was designed to individually study the effects of phosphate supply on the fungus, on the roots, and on root exudates. These experiments revealed that the most important effects of high phosphate supply were on the roots themselves, which became unable to host mycorrhizal fungi even when these had been appropriately stimulated. The ability of the roots to perceive their fungal partner was then investigated by monitoring nuclear calcium spiking in response to fungal signals. This response did not appear to be affected by high phosphate supply. In conclusion, high levels of phosphate predominantly impact the plant host, but apparently not in its ability to perceive the fungal partner.
Socio-economic differences in retirement timing and participation in post-retirement employment in a context of a flexible pension age

Abstract Socio-economic circumstances influence later-life employment participation, which may take different forms as retirement processes are complex. We aimed to explore the diverse effects of various socio-economic sub-domains on pre- and post-retirement employment. We used Finnish register data to examine socio-economic predictors of time to retirement (i.e. receiving the statutory pension) using Cox regression analysis and on time spent in post-retirement employment using repeated negative binomial regression analysis over a follow-up between the ages of 63 and 68, i.e. the flexible pension age range. An average wage earner still employed at age 62 spent 13.5 months in pre-retirement employment (this corresponds to time to retirement) and 4.8 months in post-retirement employment. Those with tertiary education retired later, but the educational differences in the total time spent in employment were small when post-retirement employment was also considered. There was little variation in the timing of retirement by household income, but those in the highest quintile spent the longest time in post-retirement employment. Upper non-manual employees, home renters and those with high household debt retired later, and those with high household debt also spent a longer time in post-retirement employment. In a national flexible pension age system, high occupational class and household income thus appear to encourage either later retirement or participation in post-retirement employment. However, economic constraints also appear to necessitate continued employment.
Strategic ignorance of health risk: its causes and policy consequences

We examine the causes and policy implications of strategic (willful) ignorance of risk as an excuse to over-engage in risky health behavior. In an experiment on Copenhagen adults, we allow subjects to choose whether to learn the calorie content of a meal before consuming it and then measure their subsequent calorie intake. Consistent with previous studies, we find strong evidence of strategic ignorance: 46% of subjects choose to ignore calorie information, and these subjects subsequently consume more calories on average than they would have had they been informed. While previous studies have focused on self-control as the motivating factor for strategic ignorance of calorie information, we find that ignorance in our study is instead motivated by optimal expectations – subjects choose ignorance so that they can downplay the probability of their preferred meal being high-calorie. We discuss how the motivation matters to policy. Further, we find that the prevalence of strategic ignorance largely negates the effects of calorie information provision: on average, subjects who have the option to ignore calorie information consume the same number of calories as subjects who are provided no information.
Students’ Gender, Anxiety, And Speaking Performance In The Indonesian EFL Context

Abstract : Students’ Gender, Anxiety, and Speaking Performance in the Indonesian EFL Context . This study aimed at revealing the relationship between gender, anxiety, and speaking performance in the Indonesian EFL context. The data for this correlational study were collected through a modified Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) questionnaire consisting of 43 six-Likert-scale items and an informal teacher-made oral test, which were administered to 40 freshmen, 20 males and 20 females, of English Department. The result indicated that students experienced a moderate level of anx- iety, which negatively correlated to their speaking performance. However, the correlation was more significant in the male group, indicating the debilitative impact of Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) to speaking performance. FLA also contributed quite significantly to the speaking performance of the male group than the female one. When included in the computation process, gender was found to not significantly correlate with students’ FLA and speaking performance; even though there was a tendency that females were more anxious, their overall speaking performance was better. Keywords : anxiety; EFL context, foreign language anxiety, gender, speaking performance Abstrak : Jenis Kelamin, Kecemasan, dan Performa Berbicara Siswa dalam Konteks Bahasa Ing- gris Sebagai Bahasa Asing di Indonesia. Penelitian ini bertujuan menjelaskan hubungan antara jender, kecemasan, dan performa berbicara pada konteks Bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing di Indonesia. Data untuk studi korelasi ini didapatkan melalui dua buah instrumen, yaitu kuesioner modifikasi dari Skala Ke- cemasan di Kelas Bahasa Asing (Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale) yang terdiri atas 43 pertan- yaan skala Likert dan tes oral informal yang diberikan kepada 40 mahasiswa (20 laki-laki dan 20 perem- puan) yang berada pada tahun pertama di Jurusan Bahasa Inggris. Hasil penelitian mengindikasikan ke- cemasan tingkat sedang yang dialami oleh mahasiswa, dan berkorelasi negatif dengan performa berbicara mereka. Korelasi ini nampak lebih jelas pada kelompok mahasiswa laki-laki dan mengindikasikan efek negatif dari kecemasan berbahasa asing terhadap performa berbicara. Kecemasan berbahasa asing juga berkontribusi cukup signifikan terhadap performa berbicara pada kelompok mahasiswa laki-laki dibanding kelompok mahasiswa perempuan. Namun ketika diikutsertakan dalam penghitungan, jender tidak berpen- garuh signifikan terhadap kecemasan berbahasa asing dan performa berbicara meskipun kelompok per- empuan cenderung merasa lebih cemas, tetapi performa berbicara mereka lebih baik. Kata kunci: kecemasan, konteks Bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa asing, kecemasan berbahasa asing, jender, performa berbicara
How to stop consensus algorithms, locally ?

This paper studies problems on locally stopping distributed consensus algorithms over networks where each node updates its state by interacting with its neighbors and decides by itself whether certain level of agreement has been achieved among nodes. Since an individual node is unable to access the states of those beyond its neighbors, this problem becomes challenging. In this work, we first define the stopping problem for generic distributed algorithms. Then, a distributed algorithm is explicitly provided for each node to stop consensus updating by exploring the relationship between the so-called local and global consensus. Finally, we show both in theory and simulation that its effectiveness depends both on the network size and the structure.