Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serological Expression Cloning and Immunological Evaluation of MTB48, a Novel Mycobacterium tuberculosis Antigen

ABSTRACT Improved diagnostics are needed for the detection ofMycobacterium tuberculosis, especially for patients with smear-negative disease. To address this problem, we have screenedM. tuberculosis (H37Rv and Erdman strains) genomic expression libraries with pooled sera from patients with extrapulmonary disease and with sera from patients with elevated reactivity withM. tuberculosis lysate. Both serum pools were reactive with clones expressing a recombinant protein referred to here as MTB48. The genomic sequence of the resulting clones was identical to that of the M. tuberculosis H37Rv isolate and showed 99% identity to the Mycobacterium bovis and M. bovis BCG isolate sequences. The genomic location of this sequence is 826 bp upstream of a region containing theesat-6 gene that is deleted in the M. bovis BCG isolate. The mtb48 1,380-bp open reading frame encodes a predicted 47.6-kDa polypeptide with no known function. Southern and Western blot analyses indicate that this sequence is present in a single copy and is conserved in the M. tuberculosis and M. bovis isolates tested but not in other mycobacterial species tested, includingMycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium avium. In addition, the native protein was detected in the cytoplasm, as was a processed form that was also shed into the medium during culture. Serological analysis of recombinant MTB48 and theM. tuberculosis 38-kDa antigen with a panel of patient and control sera indicates that the inclusion of recombinant MTB48 in a prototype serodiagnostic test increases assay sensitivity for M. tuberculosis infection when it is combined with other known immunodominant antigens, such as the 38-kDa antigen.
Perinatal air pollution exposure and development of asthma from birth to age 10 years

Within-city variation in air pollution has been associated with childhood asthma development, but findings have been inconsistent. We examined whether perinatal air pollution exposure affected asthma onset during “pre-school and “school age” periods in a population-based birth cohort. 65 254 children born between 1999 and 2002 in the greater Vancouver metropolitan region were followed until age 10 years using linked administrative health databases. Asthma cases were sex- and age-matched to five randomly chosen controls. Associations between exposure to air pollutants estimated with different methods (interpolation (inverse-distance weighted (IDW)), land use regression, proximity) and incident asthma during the pre-school (0–5 years) and school age (6–10 years) periods were estimated with conditional logistic regression. 6948 and 1711 cases were identified during the pre-school and school age periods, respectively. Following adjustment for birthweight, gestational period, household income, parity, breastfeeding at discharge, maternal age and education, asthma risk during the pre-school years was increased by traffic pollution (adjusted odds ratio using IDW method per interquartile increase (95% CI): nitric oxide 1.06 (1.01–1.11), nitrogen dioxide 1.09 (1.04–1.13) and carbon monoxide 1.05 (1.01–1.1)). Enhanced impacts were observed amongst low-term-birthweight cases. Associations were independent of surrounding residential greenness. Within-city air pollution variation was associated with new asthma onset during the pre-school years. Air pollution increases the odds of incident asthma from 0 to 5 years, especially in low-term-birthweight children http://ow.ly/WNEln
The unfinished revolution : coming of age in a new era of gender, work, and family

1. The Shaping of a New Generation Part One: Growing Up in Changing Families 2. Families beyond the Stereotypes 3. The Rising Fortunes of Flexible Families 4. Domestic Deadlocks and Declining Fortunes Part Two: Facing the Future 5. High Hope, Lurking Fears 6. Women's Search for Self-Reliance 7. Men's Resistance to Equal Sharing 8. Reaching across the Gender Divide 9. Finishing the Gender Revolution Appendix 1: List of Respondents and Sample Demographics Appendix 2: Studying Social and Individual Change Notes References Index
Smad-interacting protein-1 (Zfhx1b) acts upstream of Wnt signaling in the mouse hippocampus and controls its formation

Smad-interacting protein-1 (Sip1) [Zinc finger homeobox (Zfhx1b)] is a transcription factor implicated in the genesis of Mowat–Wilson syndrome in humans. Sip1 expression in the dorsal telencephalon of mouse embryos was documented from E12.5. We inactivated the gene specifically in cortical precursors. This resulted in the lack of the entire hippocampal formation. Sip1 mutant mice exhibited death of differentiating cells and decreased proliferation in the region of the prospective hippocampus and dentate gyrus. The expression of the Wnt antagonist Sfrp1 was ectopically activated, whereas the activity of the noncanonical Wnt effector, JNK, was down-regulated in the embryonic hippocampus of mutant mice. In cortical cells, Sip1 protein was detected on the promoter of Sfrp1 gene and both genes showed a mutually exclusive pattern of expression suggesting that Sfrp1 expression is negatively regulated by Sip1. Sip1 is therefore essential to the development of the hippocampus and dentate gyrus, and is able to modulate Wnt signaling in these regions.
Electrophysiological and Neuropsychological Predictors of Conversion to Schizophrenia in At-Risk Subjects

Patients with schizophrenia show neurophysiological and psychological disturbances before the onset of the illness. Mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related potential, has been shown to be associated with cognitive function. Specifically, duration MMN (dMMN) amplitudes have been indicated to predict progression to overt schizophrenia in subjects with at-risk mental state. The aim of this article is to provide a hypothesis that a combined assessment of dMMN and neuropsychological performance would enhance accuracy for predicting conversion to schizophrenia in at-risk subjects. Data from these neurocognitive modalities in subjects with first-episode schizophrenia (FES) are also presented. There is accumulated evidence that converters to schizophrenia among at-risk subjects show significantly smaller dMMN amplitudes than those in healthy control (HC) subjects at the frontal lead before the onset. In fact, the amplitudes in these converters have been reported to be similar to those in FES to begin with. dMMN current source density, by means of low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography, was significantly lower in FES than HC subjects, especially in some medial temporal regions which are implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Importantly, dMMN current density in the frontal lobe was positively correlated with working memory performance in FES subjects. These findings indicate the utility of the combination of electrophysiological/neuropsychological assessments for early intervention into patients with schizophrenia and high-risk people.
Alterations in the morphology of lamina cribrosa pores in glaucomatous eyes

Aims: To determine alterations which occur in the size and shape of lamina cribrosa (LC) pores in glaucomatous eyes over a period of time. Methods: Baseline and follow up optic disc photographs were retrospectively studied in 39 eyes of 39 patients with glaucoma. Only eyes with a vertical cup to disc ratio equal to or greater than 0.6 were included in the study. In addition, all selected eyes had to have serial optic disc photographs obtained at least 3 years apart allowing clear visualisation of LC surface. The association of the alterations in LC surface morphology with patient specific and eye specific characteristics was statistically analysed. Results: During a mean study period of 3.90 (SD 0.7) years, individual pore size (mean pore area to disc area ratio) exhibited a significant decrease between baseline and follow up measurements of each eye (p<0.0001). However, during the study period, total pore area to disc area ratio did not change (p>0.05), and the change in pore shape in some eyes (from circular to more oval and elongated) was statistically insignificant (p = 0.12). Although a relation was detectable between the optic disc and lamina cribrosa parameters at a given time, which reflects cumulative effects, during the study period, there was no significant association between the changes of the LC parameters and neural tissue damage. The rate and the magnitude of the changes in individual pore size during the study period were not significantly different among the eyes exhibiting progressive neural rim damage and those staying stable (p>0.05). Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that the LC surface morphology exhibits changes along with the glaucomatous optic disc damage. However, the clinical appearance of LC surface in glaucomatous eyes may continue to change, even when the neural rim damage is clinically stable. These findings are probably associated with the chronic cellular events of tissue remodelling that occur in the glaucomatous optic nerve head.
Attentional dynamics during free picture viewing: Evidence from oculomotor behavior and electrocortical activity

Most empirical evidence on attentional control is based on brief presentations of rather abstract stimuli. Results revealed indications for a dynamic interplay between bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms. Here we used a more naturalistic task to examine temporal signatures of attentional mechanisms on fine and coarse time scales. Subjects had to inspect digitized copies of 60 paintings, each shown for 40 s. We simultaneously measured oculomotor behavior and electrophysiological correlates of brain activity to compare early and late intervals (1) of inspection time of each picture (picture viewing) and (2) of the full experiment (time on task). For picture viewing, we found an increase in fixation duration and a decrease of saccadic amplitude while these parameters did not change with time on task. Furthermore, early in picture viewing we observed higher spatial and temporal similarity of gaze behavior. Analyzing electrical brain activity revealed changes in three components (C1, N1 and P2) of the eye fixation-related potential (EFRP); during picture viewing; no variation was obtained for the power in the frontal beta- and in the theta activity. Time on task analyses demonstrated no effects on the EFRP amplitudes but an increase of power in the frontal theta and beta band activity. Thus, behavioral and electrophysiological measures similarly show characteristic changes during picture viewing, indicating a shifting balance of its underlying (bottom-up and top-down) attentional mechanisms. Time on task also modulated top-down attention but probably represents a different attentional mechanism.
Impact of Sex and Gonadal Steroids on Prolongation of Ventricular Repolarization and Arrhythmias Induced by IK-Blocking Drugs

BackgroundMechanisms for longer rate-corrected QT intervals and higher incidences of drug-induced torsade de pointes in women than in men are incompletely defined, although gonadal steroids are assumed to be important determinants of these differences. Methods and ResultsWe used microelectrode techniques to study isolated rabbit right ventricular endocardium from control male and female and castrated male (ORCH) and female (OVX) rabbits. Action potential duration to 30% repolarization (APD30) was significantly shorter in male than female and in ORCH than OVX at a cycle length of 500 ms. The IKs blocker chromanol 293B had no effect on APD in males or females. The IKr blocker dofetilide prolonged APD in female and ORCH more than in male and OVX. At 10−6 mol/L dofetilide (cycle length=1 second), the incidence of early afterdepolarizations was: female, 67%; ORCH, 56%; male, 40%; and OVX, 28%. Serum 17&bgr;-estradiol levels were unrelated to the effects of dofetilide, but as testosterone levels increased, the dofetilide effect to increase APD diminished, as did early afterdepolarization incidence. ConclusionsSex-related differences in basal right ventricular endocardial AP configuration persist in castrated rabbits, suggesting that extragonadal factors contribute to the differences in ventricular repolarization. In this model, drugs that block IKr but not IKs prolong repolarization in a way that suggests that protection from excess prolongation in males is attributable to testosterone, whereas the risk of excess prolongation of repolarization in females is related to sex-determined factors in addition to estrogen.
Neural Eld Model of Receptive Eld Restructuring in Primary Visual Cortex

Receptive elds in the visual cortex can change their size depending on the state of the individual. This re ect a changing visual resolution according to di erent demands in information processing during drowsiness as opposed to alertness. So far, however, the possible mechanism which underly these size changes have not been tested rigorously. Only qualitatively it has been suggested that state-dependent LGNring patterns (burst vs. tonic ring) are mainly responsible for the observed cortical receptive eld restructuring. Here, we employ a neural eld approach to describe the changes of cortical RF-properties analytically. Expressions to describe the spatio-temporal receptive elds are given for pure feedforward networks. The model predicts that visual latencies increase non-linearly with the distance of the stimulus location from the receptive eld center. Receptive eld restructuring e ects are faithfully reproduced. Despite of the changing receptive eld sizes, the model demonstrates that the width of the spatial membrane potential pro le (as measured by the variance of a Gaussian) remains constant in cortex. In contrast, it is shown for recurrent networks, that both, the RF-width and the width of the membrane potential pro le generically depend on time and can even increase, if lateral cortical excitatory connections extend farther than bers from LGN to cortex. In order to di erentiate between a feedforward and a recurrent mechanism causing the experimental RF changes we tted 1 the data to the analytically derived point-spread functions. Results of the ts provide estimates for model parameters consistent with literature data and support the hypothesis that the observed RF-sharpening is indeed mainly driven by input from LGN and not by recurrent intracortical connections.
The formation of massive, compact galaxies at z = 2 in the Illustris simulation

Massive, quiescent galaxies at high redshift have been found to be considerably more compact than galaxies of similar mass in the local universe. How these compact galaxies formed has yet to be determined, though several progenitor populations have been proposed. Here we investigate the formation processes and quantify the assembly histories of such galaxies in Illustris, a suite of hydrodynamical cosmological simulations encompassing a sufficiently large volume to include rare objects, while simultaneously resolving the internal structure of galaxies. We select massive ( 10 11 M ) and compact (stellar half-mass radius < 2 kpc) galaxies from the simulation at z = 2. Within the Illustris suite, we find that these quantities are not perfectly converged, but are reasonably reliable for our purposes. The resulting population is composed primarily of quiescent galaxies, but we also find several star-forming compact galaxies. The simulated compact galaxies are similar to observed galaxies in star formation activity and appearance. We follow their evolution at high redshift in the simulation and find that there are multiple pathways to form these compact galaxies, dominated by two mechanisms: (i) intense, centrally concentrated starbursts generally triggered by gas-rich major mergers between z 2 4, reducing the galaxies’ half-mass radii by a factor of a few to below 2 kpc, and (ii) assembly at very early times when the universe was much denser; the galaxies formed compact and remained so until z 2.
DEMENTIA CAREGIVING OUTCOMES: THE IMPACT OF CAREGIVING ONSET, ROLE OCCUPANCY, AND CARE-RECIPIENT DECLINE

OF DISSERTATION DEMENTIA CAREGIVING OUTCOMES: THE IMPACT OF CAREGIVING ONSET, ROLE OCCUPANCY, AND CARE-RECIPIENT DECLINE Dementia is characterized as a progressive loss of brain function that results in the deterioration of many cognitive and physical abilities. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, causing steady declines in memory, functional abilities, and mental functioning. With a projected increase of degenerative illnesses, such as AD, family caregiving for individuals with the disease is also steadily increasing. Caring for an individual with AD has been characterized as a “career,” and within this career are a number of key transitions, including the onset of caregiving. Preexisting caregiving research reveals a number of negative consequences for AD family caregivers, including depression, overload, and physical health complications. The purpose of this study was to examine how different patterns of caregiving onset (gradual and abrupt) and role occupancy (how many roles the caregiver is holding) impact mental health and physical health outcomes for AD caregivers. This study also explored how cognitive decline and behavioral problems found within the care-recipient have the potential to moderate these relationships. Cross-sectional, quantitative data from one hundred participants completing selfadministered surveys was used in this study. A series of one-way ANOVAS and multiple regression analyses were conducted to address the study’s aims. Results indicated that care-recipient cognition and behavioral problems moderated the relationship between caregiving onset and mental health outcomes, including depression, role overload, and role captivity for caregivers who experienced a more abrupt entry into the caregiving role. Results suggest the importance of considering moderating factors within the caregiving career, as well as different caregiving onset transitions. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed, as well as directions for future research, including prospective caregiving research.
Shaping security behaviour through discipline and agility

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to broaden the understanding about security behaviour by developing a security behaviour typology based on the concepts of discipline and agility.Design/methodology/approach – A case study was designed to analyze security behaviours in one public nursing centre. The inquiry was organized around the themes discipline and agility, culture, and security processes in order to get an in‐depth understanding of the complex relationship between security management, referred to as discipline, and security in use, referred to as agility.Findings – The paper shows that security behaviour can be shaped by discipline and agility and that both can exist collectively if organizations consider the constitutional and existential aspects of information security (IS) management.Practical implications – This research makes a pivotal stand for the issue how security behaviours narrate a broad picture to enhance IS management. In particular, this will improve design of IS training and awa.
Crime and social exclusion

1. Editorial Introduction: Catherine Jones Finer and Mike Nellis. 2. Creating a Safer Society: David Donnison. 3. Linking Housing Changes to Crime: Alan Murie. 4. The Local Politics of Inclusion: the State and Community Safety: John Pitts and Tim Hope. 5. Dangerous Futures: Social Exclusion and Youth Work in Late Modernity: Alan France and Paul Wiles. 6. Anti--racism and the Limits of Equal Opportunities Policies in the Criminal Justice System: David Denney. 7. Probation and Social Exclusion: David Smith and John Stewart. 8. Criminal Policy and the Eliminative Ideal: Andrew Rutherford. 9. Framing the Other: Criminality, Social Exclusion and Social Engineering in Developing Singapore: John Clammer. 10. The New Social Policy in Britain: Catherine Jones Finer.
Leadership Frames of Female Presidents of American Research Universities

This study used case studies to examine the leadership frames of female presidents of four-year, public and private, coeducational research institutions both from the Intensive and Extensive Carnegie classifications within the United States. The population (N=30) surveyed was sent the Leadership Orientation Questionnaire (Self) developed from the previous research conducted by Lee Bolman and Terrance Deal. The Bolman and Deal leadership frame theory condensed existing organizational theories into a four-frame perspective consisting of a structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frame. Bolman and Deal theorized that the ability to use more than one frame is considered to be critical to the success of leaders and intensify that leader's capacity for making decisions and taking effective actions. The Leadership Orientation Questionnaire (Self) contains five sections that include rating scales for personal demographics, the four frames, eight leadership dimensions, and management and leadership effectiveness. The research questions sought to identify the demographic characteristics and academic histories of the survey participants and the associations between these variables, the leadership frames represented among the survey participants, and how many, and which, of the four frames the survey participants use collectively. This study allowed its participants to examine their perceptions of their own leadership frames in order to analyze the frame that dominates the way certain universities communicate. Thirteen of the thirty presidents (43%) completed and returned the survey. Survey participants who had 20 or more years of experience were more likely to exhibit the human resource or symbolic frame as their dominant style; presidents whose years of experience numbered less than 20 years exhibited a mulitframe perspective in their decision-making process. Overall, this research found that the survey participants exhibited most often the human resource frame, followed by the symbolic, structural, and political frames.
WAVELET CODING OF MEDICAL VOLUMETRIC DATA

This paper assesses the coding performance of several state-ofthe-art 3D wavelet coders and compares them with newly proposed compression methods exploiting quad-tree and blockbased coding concepts, layered zero-coding principles and context-based arithmetic coding. The discussed wavelet-based coding algorithms produce losslessly compressed embedded data streams, supporting the desired progressive data transmission functionality. Moreover, objective and subjective quality evaluations on various medical volumetric datasets show that the newly proposed algorithms provide competitive lossy and lossless compression results compared to the state-of-the-art.
Courtship, drinking and control: a qualitative analysis of women's and men's experiences

A qualitative study of courtship, dating and drinking was under-taken with young adults in Toronto, Canada, in the summer of 1994. Those interviewed were between the ages of 18 and 34, heterosexual, had no children, occasionally drank alcohol, and had dated someone new at least once in the past year. This paper reports on one aspect of the analysis of the data from the 40 people (19 men and 21 women) interviewed. This study suggests that aggression is one response to conflicting views of a dating situation. The men and women interviewed had expectations for appropriate behavior when meeting potential mates and on initial dates, and in most cases those expectations were the same. However, where expectations differed, the men attempted to impose their framing of the situation, and the women generally resisted, attempting to limit the risk associated with this framing of the situation. The men and women interviewed used tactics such as persuasion, manipulation or even aggression to attempt to resolve this conflict, and to impose their own situational definitions.