Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mosaic Evolution of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus

ABSTRACT Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a deadly form of pneumonia caused by a novel coronavirus, a viral family responsible for mild respiratory tract infections in a wide variety of animals including humans, pigs, cows, mice, cats, and birds. Analyses to date have been unable to identify the precise origin of the SARS coronavirus. We used Bayesian, neighbor-joining, and split decomposition phylogenetic techniques on the SARS virus replicase, surface spike, matrix, and nucleocapsid proteins to reveal the evolutionary origin of this recently emerging infectious agent. The analyses support a mammalian-like origin for the replicase protein, an avian-like origin for the matrix and nucleocapsid proteins, and a mammalian-avian mosaic origin for the host-determining spike protein. A bootscan recombination analysis of the spike gene revealed high nucleotide identity between the SARS virus and a feline infectious peritonitis virus throughout the gene, except for a 200- base-pair region of high identity to an avian sequence. These data support the phylogenetic analyses and suggest a possible past recombination event between mammalian-like and avian-like parent viruses. This event occurred near a region that has been implicated to be the human receptor binding site and may have been directly responsible for the switch of host of the SARS coronavirus from animals to humans.
Social Network Extraction and Analysis Based on Multimodal Dyadic Interaction

Social interactions are a very important component in people’s lives. Social network analysis has become a common technique used to model and quantify the properties of social interactions. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework to explore the characteristics of a social network extracted from multimodal dyadic interactions. For our study, we used a set of videos belonging to New York Times’ Blogging Heads opinion blog. The Social Network is represented as an oriented graph, whose directed links are determined by the Influence Model. The links’ weights are a measure of the “influence” a person has over the other. The states of the Influence Model encode automatically extracted audio/visual features from our videos using state-of-the art algorithms. Our results are reported in terms of accuracy of audio/visual data fusion for speaker segmentation and centrality measures used to characterize the extracted social network.
Phylogenetic and Functional Metagenomic Profiling for Assessing Microbial Biodiversity in Environmental Monitoring

Decisions guiding environmental management need to be based on a broad and comprehensive understanding of the biodiversity and functional capability within ecosystems. Microbes are of particular importance since they drive biogeochemical cycles, being both producers and decomposers. Their quick and direct responses to changes in environmental conditions modulate the ecosystem accordingly, thus providing a sensitive readout. Here we have used direct sequencing of total DNA from water samples to compare the microbial communities of two distinct coastal regions exposed to different anthropogenic pressures: the highly polluted Port of Genoa and the protected area of Montecristo Island in the Mediterranean Sea. Analysis of the metagenomes revealed significant differences in both microbial diversity and abundance between the two areas, reflecting their distinct ecological habitats and anthropogenic stress conditions. Our results indicate that the combination of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and bioinformatics tools presents a new approach to monitor the diversity and the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems. Integration of metagenomics into environmental monitoring campaigns should enable the impact of the anthropogenic pressure on microbial biodiversity in various ecosystems to be better assessed and also predicted.
Altered expression of the Smad signalling pathway: implications for COPD pathogenesis

Pulmonary emphysema, as a feature of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is characterised by destruction of alveolar tissue. The present authors previously demonstrated reduced decorin expression in the peribronchial area of COPD patients, reflecting an altered extracellular matrix (ECM) modulation. Decorin transcription is regulated by the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β–Smad pathway, the key intracellular signal route for initiation of ECM component gene transcription. Whether this pathway is aberrantly expressed in COPD is not known. An immunohistochemical study was performed to compare protein expression of TGF-β1 and TGF-β receptors, Smad 2, 3, 4 and 7, and decorin in lung tissue of Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) stages II and IV COPD patients and controls. Epithelial expression of the inhibitory Smad 7 was significantly lower in patients with GOLD stages II and IV than in controls, with other Smad protein expressions being similar in the groups. The expression of TGF-β1 and TGF-β receptor type I was significantly lower in stage II patients. Decorin staining of the adventitia and alveolar walls was significantly reduced in COPD stage IV. In conclusion, the transforming growth factor-β–Smad pathway is aberrantly expressed in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients, implying an abnormal tissue repair ultimately resulting in reduced decorin production. The results of the present study contribute to better understanding of the pathogenesis of emphysema and the airway fibrosis observed in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients.
How do people edit light fields?

We present a thorough study to evaluate different light field editing interfaces, tools and workflows from a user perspective. This is of special relevance given the multidimensional nature of light fields, which may make common image editing tasks become complex in light field space. We additionally investigate the potential benefits of using depth information when editing, and the limitations imposed by imperfect depth reconstruction using current techniques. We perform two different experiments, collecting both objective and subjective data from a varied number of editing tasks of increasing complexity based on local point-and-click tools. In the first experiment, we rely on perfect depth from synthetic light fields, and focus on simple edits. This allows us to gain basic insight on light field editing, and to design a more advanced editing interface. This is then used in the second experiment, employing real light fields with imperfect reconstructed depth, and covering more advanced editing tasks. Our study shows that users can edit light fields with our tested interface and tools, even in the presence of imperfect depth. They follow different workflows depending on the task at hand, mostly relying on a combination of different depth cues. Last, we confirm our findings by asking a set of artists to freely edit both real and synthetic light fields.
A Primer on Foreign Aid

Controversies about aid effectiveness go back decades. Some experts charge that aid has enlarged government bureaucracies, perpetuated bad governments, enriched the elite in poor countries, or just been wasted. Others argue that although aid has sometimes failed, it has supported poverty reduction and growth in some countries and prevented worse performance in others. This new working paper by CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet explores trends in aid, the motivations for aid, its impacts, and debates about reforming aid. It begins by examining aid magnitudes and who gives and receives aid. It discusses the multiple motivations and objectives of aid, some of which conflict with each other. It then explores the empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and growth, which is divided between research that finds no relationship and research that finds a positive relationship (at least under certain circumstances). It also examines some of the key challenges in making aid more effective, including the principal-agent problem and the related issue of conditionality, and concludes by examining some of the main proposals for improving aid effectiveness.
Organization of Multisynaptic Inputs from Prefrontal Cortex to Primary Motor Cortex as Revealed by Retrograde Transneuronal Transport of Rabies Virus

The organization of multisynaptic projections from the prefrontal cortex to the primary motor cortex (MI) was examined in macaque monkeys by retrograde transneuronal transport of rabies virus. In the first series of experiments, the virus was injected into the MI forelimb region, and the time-dependent distribution patterns of transsynaptic labeling were analyzed in the frontal lobe with various survivals (2-4 d). Two days after the viral injection, neuronal labeling emerged in the caudal aspects of the nonprimary motor-related areas that are known to project to the MI directly. At the same time, the motor thalamus contained labeled neurons. On the third day, cortical labeling extended into the rostral motor-related areas and, also, prearcuate area 8. Moreover, a number of labeled neurons were located in the internal pallidum and the cerebellar nuclei. At the 4 d postinjection period, neuronal labeling occurred widely in prefrontal areas as well as in the putamen and the cerebellar cortex. In the second series of experiments, the viral injection was made into the MI hindlimb region, and the distribution pattern of prefrontal labeling on the fourth day was compared with that in the forelimb-injection case. The labeled neurons in each prefrontal area were much fewer in the hindlimb-injection case than in the forelimb-injection case. Whereas ventral area 46 was most densely labeled from the forelimb region, only sparse labeling from the hindlimb region was observed in this prefrontal area. The present results suggest the importance of ventral area 46 in the cognitive control of forelimb movements.
HIV/AIDS in China - The Economic and Social Determinants

Abbreviations. List of Tables and Figures. Preface 1. Understanding Hiv/Aids Epidemics 2. Economic and Social Determinants of Hiv/Aids 3. Inequality and Hiv/Aids Epidemics 4. Commercial Sex Work 5. Migration 6. Healthcare 7. The Role of Civil Society Organizations. Conclusion. Endnotes. Bibliography
Adaptive rank-one receiver for GSM/DCS systems

In mobile communication systems the space-time (S-T) channel matrix at the base station (BS) can be parameterized by a reduced set of unknowns with negligible distortion. In this correspondence, it is proposed to estimate the S-T channel under the constraint that the channel matrix is low-rank (the rank of the matrix accounts for the degrees of space and/or time diversity in the S-T channel). Low-rank properties of the S-T channel for a GSM/DCS system (rank is /spl les/2), prompted us to adapt the reduced-rank method for linear regression to estimate a rank-one channel. The proposed estimates coincide (or converge) with the maximum-likelihood (ML) approach when the training sequence is uncorrelated (or when the transmitted symbols are independent, i.e., in stochastic optimization). The beamforming weights and temporal channel are estimated jointly to reduce both cochannel interference (CCI) and intersymbol interference (ISI). The proposed receiver is easily adapted to the front-end architecture of the existing BS with minor modifications. The adaptive version of the algorithm is based on direct matrix inversion, guaranteeing convergence within a GSM burst and tracking time-varying channel and/or asynchronous interference.
Gender Setting: New Agendas for Media Monitoring and Advocacy

* Part I: Context ** 1. The Case for Monitoring and Advocacy ** 2. Catalysts for Monitoring and Action * Part II: Experiences ** 3. Policy Development ** 4. Fact and Fiction in Media Content ** 5. The Advertising World ** 6. Gender, Politics and the Media ** 7. Media, Violence and Women ** 8. Diversity in Media Content * Part III: Tools ** 9. Studying Gender in the Media ** 10. Giving Women a Voice ** 11. Building Media Literacy * Part IV: Achievements ** 12. The Final Analysis
Student Perceptions of Career Choices: The Impact of Academic Major

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of academic majors on students’ career development. This study collected data from 150 upperdivision students enrolled in classes related to the three majors, Hospitality Management, Human Development and Family Studies, and Nutrition and Dietetics, in the School of Family and Consumer Studies at a university in northeastern Ohio. Results of this study revealed significant differences among these three majors on the variables, including career decision self-efficacy, career outcome expectations, and commitment to career choices. Results also reinforced the role of faculty advisors in students’ career planning and choice behaviors. Recommendations for FCS educators in students’ career assistance were provided in this study.
Convex Regularization for High-Dimensional Tensor Regression

In this paper we present a general convex optimization approach for solving high-dimensional tensor regression problems under low-dimensional structural assumptions. We consider using convex and \emph{weakly decomposable} regularizers assuming that the underlying tensor lies in an unknown low-dimensional subspace. Within our framework, we derive general risk bounds of the resulting estimate under fairly general dependence structure among covariates. Our framework leads to upper bounds in terms of two very simple quantities, the Gaussian width of a convex set in tensor space and the intrinsic dimension of the low-dimensional tensor subspace. These general bounds provide useful upper bounds on rates of convergence for a number of fundamental statistical models of interest including multi-response regression, vector auto-regressive models, low-rank tensor models and pairwise interaction models. Moreover, in many of these settings we prove that the resulting estimates are minimax optimal.
Spectrum of Disorders Associated with Elevated Serum IgG4 Levels Encountered in Clinical Practice

IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) is a recently described systemic fibroinflammatory disease associated with elevated circulating levels of IgG4 and manifests a wide spectrum of clinical presentations. Although serum IgG4 level has been described to be the most sensitive and specific laboratory test for the diagnosis of IgG4-RD, it is recognized that an elevated serum IgG4 level can be encountered in other diseases. In this study, we sought to identify the frequency of IgG4-RD and other disease associations in patients with elevated serum IgG4 levels seen in clinical practice. Among 3,300 patients who underwent IgG subclass testing over a 2-year period from January 2009 to December 2010, 158 (4.8%) had an elevated serum IgG4 level (>140 mg/dL). IgG4 subclass testing was performed for evaluation of suspected IgG4-RD or immunodeficiency. Twenty-nine patients (18.4%) had definite or possible IgG4-RD. Among those patients without IgG4-RD, a broad spectrum of biliary tract, pancreatic, liver, and lung diseases, as well as systemic vasculitis, was diagnosed. We conclude that patients with elevated serum IgG4 levels encountered in clinical practice manifest a wide array of disorders, and only a small minority of them has IgG4-RD.
Broadband Permittivity Characterization of Polyvinyl-Alcohol Film for Humidity Sensing Applications

This paper presents broadband complex permittivity characterization of polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) film at different relative humidities (RHs) from 13.7% to 94.3% for sensing applications. Interdigital capacitor is employed as a basic component to characterize the permittivity in a microwave range between 1.5 and 15 GHz. The investigated PVA film shows low hysteresis and stable long interval performance, making it a good candidate for humidity sensing applications. The extracted complex permittivities at different RHs show properties of dielectric relaxation, which is described by the Cole-Cole equation. The coefficients in the Cole-Cole equation are calculated at different RHs. The functions of the coefficients over RH are found, by which the complex permittivity can be obtained at an arbitrary RH. This comprehensive model of the PVA film provides for the first time an accurate mathematical model for RH sensing applications.
Diverse Molecular Genotypes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex Isolates Circulating in the Free State, South Africa

Tuberculosis is a serious public health concern especially in Africa and Asia. Studies describing strain diversity are lacking in the Free State region of South Africa. The aim of the study was to describe the diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) strain families in the Free State province of South Africa. A total of 86 M. tuberculosis isolates were genotyped using spoligotyping. A 12-locus mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable-number tandem repeats (MIRU-VNTRs) typing was used to further characterize the resulting spoligotyping clusters. SITVITWEB identified 49 different patterns with allocation to six lineages including Latin-American-Mediterranean (LAM) (18 isolates), T (14 isolates), Beijing (five isolates), S (six isolates), Haarlem (one isolate), and X (five isolates), while 37 (43.0%) orphans were identified. Eight clusters included 37 isolates with identical spoligotypes (2 to 13/cluster). MIRU-VNTR typing further differentiated three spoligotyping clusters: SIT1/Beijing/MIT17, SIT33/LAM3/MIT213, and confirmed one SIT34/S/MIT311. In addition, SpolDB3/RIM assignment of the orphan strains resulted in a further 10 LAM and 13 T families. In total, LAM (28 isolates) and T (27 isolates) cause 63% of the individual cases of MTB in our study. The Free State has a highly diverse TB population with LAM being predominant. Further studies with inclusion of multidrug-resistant strains with larger sample size are warranted.
ZSWSL Text Entailment Recognizing System at NTCIR-9 RITE Task

paper describes our system on simplified Chinese textual entailment recognizing RITE task at NTCIR-9. Both lexical and semantic features are extracted using NLP methods. Three classification models are used and compared for the classification task, Rule-based algorithms, SVM and C4.5. C4.5 gives the best result on testing data set. Evaluation at NTCIR-9 RITE shows 72% accuracy on BC subtask and 61.9% accuracy on MC subtask.
Demystifying the Park Chung-Hee Myth: The Critical Role of Land Reform in the Evolution of Korea’s Developmental State

The developmental state literature emphasises the importance of state autonomy and capacity, with a particular focus on the Weberian type of meritocratic bureaucracy. Existing studies of South Korea’s economic development generally credit Park Chung-hee for establishing such a state. I question this common wisdom with careful process tracing of the development of a meritocratic bureaucracy in the country. My findings suggest that the contrast between the predatory Rhee regime (1948–60) and the developmental Park regime (1961–79) has been exaggerated. Meritocracy in South Korea’s bureaucratic recruitment and promotion systems developed gradually over several decades, including during Rhee’s regime as well as the short democratic episode (1960–61). What then explains the evolution of a developmental state in Korea? Land reform contributed to not only creating social structural conditions favorable to state autonomy but also promoting the development of a meritocratic bureaucracy by propelling the rapid expansion of education and by mitigating the extent of political clientelism.
Cardiac Rehabilitation After Acute Myocardial Infarction Resuscitated From Cardiac Arrest

Objective To examine the safety and effectiveness of cardiac rehabilitation on patients resuscitated from cardiac arrest due to acute myocardial infarction. Methods The study included 23 subjects, including 8 with history of cardiac arrest and 15 without history of cardiac arrest. Both groups underwent initial graded exercise test (GXT) and subsequent cardiac rehabilitation for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks, both groups received follow-up GXT. Results Statistically significant (p<0.05) increase of VO2peak and maximal MVO2 but significant (p<0.05) decrease of submaximal MVO2 and resting heart rate were observed in both groups after 6 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation. An increasing trend of maximal heart rates was observed in both groups. However, the increase was not statistically significant (p>0.05). There was no statistically significant change of resting heart rate, maximal heart rate, maximal MVO2, or submaximal MVO2 in both groups after cardiac rehabilitation. Fatal cardiac complications, such as abnormal ECG, cardiac arrest, death or myocardial infarction, were not observed. All subjects finished the cardiac rehabilitation program. Conclusion Improvement was observed in the exercise capacity of patients after aerobic exercise throughout the cardiac rehabilitation program. Therefore, cardiac rehabilitation can be safely administered for high-risk patients with history of cardiac arrest. Similar improvement in exercise capacity can be expected in patients without cardiac arrest experience.
Chandra observation of an unusually long and intense X-ray flare from a young solar-like star in M 78

LkHα 312 has been observed serendipitously with the ACIS-I detector on board the Chandra X-ray Observatory with a 26 h continuous exposure. This Hα emission line star belongs to M 78 (NGC 2068), one of the star-forming regions of the Orion B giant molecular cloud at a distance of 400 pc. From the optical and the near-infrared (NIR) data, we show that LkHα 312 is a pre-main sequence (PMS) low-mass star with a weak NIR excess. This genuine T Tauri star displayed an X-ray flare with an unusually long rise phase (∼8 h). The X-ray emission was nearly constant during the first 18 h of the observation, and then increased by a factor of 13 during a fast rise phase (∼2 h), and reached a factor of 16 above the quiescent X-ray level at the end of a gradual phase (∼6 h) showing a slower rise. To our knowledge this flare, with ∼0.4-0.5 cts s −1 , has the highest count rate observed so far with Chandra from a PMS low-mass star. By chance, the source position, 8.2 � off-axis, protected this observation from pile-up. We make a spectral analysis of the X-ray emission versus time, showing that the plasma temperature of the quiescent phase and the flare peak reaches 29 MK and 88 MK, respectively. The quiescent and flare luminosities in the energy range 0.5-8 keV corrected from absorption (NH ≈ 1.7 × 10 21 cm −2 )a re 6× 10 30 erg s −1 and ∼10 32 erg s −1 , respectively. The ratio of the quiescent X-ray luminosity on the LkHα 312 bolometric luminosity is very high with log(LX/Lbol) = −2.9, implying that the corona of LkHα 312 reached the "saturation" level. The X-ray luminosity of the flare peak reaches ∼2% of the stellar bolometric luminosity. The different phases of this flare are finally discussed in the framework of solar flares, which leads to the magnetic loop height from 3.1 × 10 10 to 10 11 cm (0.2-0.5 R� , i.e., 0.5-1.3 R� ).