Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibiotic treatment enhances the genome-wide mutation rate of target cells

Significance The evolution of antibiotic resistance by pathogenic bacteria poses a major challenge for human health. Whereas it is clear that natural selection promotes resistance-conferring mutations, our understanding of the response of the mutation rate to antibiotics is limited. With hundreds of Escherichia coli cell lines evolving in a near-neutral scenario under exposure to the fluoroquinolone norfloxacin, this study reveals a significant linear relationship between the mutation rate and antibiotic concentration, while also demonstrating that antibiotic treatment compromises the efficiency of DNA oxidative-damage repair and postreplicative mismatch repair. Thus, antibiotics not only impose a selective challenge to target and off-target bacteria but also accelerate the rate of adaptation by magnifying the rate at which advantageous mutations arise. Although it is well known that microbial populations can respond adaptively to challenges from antibiotics, empirical difficulties in distinguishing the roles of de novo mutation and natural selection have left several issues unresolved. Here, we explore the mutational properties of Escherichia coli exposed to long-term sublethal levels of the antibiotic norfloxacin, using a mutation accumulation design combined with whole-genome sequencing of replicate lines. The genome-wide mutation rate significantly increases with norfloxacin concentration. This response is associated with enhanced expression of error-prone DNA polymerases and may also involve indirect effects of norfloxacin on DNA mismatch and oxidative-damage repair. Moreover, we find that acquisition of antibiotic resistance can be enhanced solely by accelerated mutagenesis, i.e., without direct involvement of selection. Our results suggest that antibiotics may generally enhance the mutation rates of target cells, thereby accelerating the rate of adaptation not only to the antibiotic itself but to additional challenges faced by invasive pathogens.
Using Random Forest to Learn Imbalanced Data

In this paper we propose two ways to deal with the imbalanced data classiﬁcation problem using random forest. One is based on cost sensitive learning, and the other is based on a sampling technique. Performance metrics such as precision and recall, false positive rate and false negative rate, F -measure and weighted accuracy are computed. Both methods are shown to improve the prediction accuracy of the minority class, and have favorable performance compared to the existing algorithms
Ototoxicity of tobramycin in guinea pigs.

It has been demonstrated that tobramycin (nebramycin [factor 6]) can be toxic to the guinea pig cochlea. The damage was evident in both the sensitivity and intensity functions of the alternating current cochlear potential. Histological verification of the electrophysiological evaluation was obtained. The damage to the cochlea was seen in the hair cells of Corti's organ. This ototoxic effect was not uniform in all animals. Some guinea pigs were severely affected while in others no abnormality was detected.
Stochastic Sequential Neural Networks with Structured Inference

Unsupervised structure learning in high-dimensional time series data has attracted a lot of research interests. For example, segmenting and labelling high dimensional time series can be helpful in behavior understanding and medical diagnosis. Recent advances in generative sequential modeling have suggested to combine recurrent neural networks with state space models (e.g., Hidden Markov Models). This combination can model not only the long term dependency in sequential data, but also the uncertainty included in the hidden states. Inheriting these advantages of stochastic neural sequential models, we propose a structured and stochastic sequential neural network, which models both the long-term dependencies via recurrent neural networks and the uncertainty in the segmentation and labels via discrete random variables. For accurate and efficient inference, we present a bi-directional inference network by reparamterizing the categorical segmentation and labels with the recent proposed Gumbel-Softmax approximation and resort to the Stochastic Gradient Variational Bayes. We evaluate the proposed model in a number of tasks, including speech modeling, automatic segmentation and labeling in behavior understanding, and sequential multi-objects recognition. Experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed model can achieve significant improvement over the state-of-the-art methods.
Determinants of AQP6 trafficking to intracellular sites versus the plasma membrane in transfected mammalian cells

Background information. Most AQPs (aquaporins) function at the plasma membrane, however AQP6 is exclusively localized to membranes of intracellular vesicles in acid‐secreting type‐A intercalated cells of renal collecting ducts. The intracellular distribution indicates that AQP6 has a function distinct from trans‐epithelial water movement.
Acute Cytotoxic and Vasogenic Edema after Subarachnoid Hemorrhage: A Quantitative MRI Study

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The mechanism of early brain injury following subarachnoid hemorrhage is not well understood. We aimed to evaluate if cytotoxic and vasogenic edema are contributing factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective analysis was conducted in patients with SAH undergoing diffusion-weighted MR imaging within 72 hours of onset. Apparent diffusion coefficient values derived from DWI were evaluated by using whole-brain histograms and 19 prespecified ROIs in patients with SAH and controls with normal findings on MRI. Cytotoxic edema observed outside the ROIs was assessed in patients with SAH. The average median ADC values were compared between patients with SAH and controls and patients with SAH with mild (Hunt and Hess 1–3) versus severe early brain injury (Hunt and Hess 4–5). RESULTS: We enrolled 33 patients with SAH and 66 controls. The overall average median whole-brain ADC was greater for patients with SAH (808 × 10−6 mm2/s) compared with controls (788 × 10−6 mm2/s, P < .001) and was higher in patients with SAH across ROIs after adjusting for age: cerebral gray matter (826 versus 803 × 10−6 mm2/s, P = .059), cerebral white matter (793 versus 758 × 10−6 mm2/s, P = .023), white matter tracts (797 versus 739 × 10−6 mm2/s, P < .001), and deep gray matter (754 versus 713 × 10−6 mm2/s, P = .016). ADC values trended higher in patients with Hunt and Hess 4–5 versus those with Hunt and Hess 1–3. Early cytotoxic edema was observed in 13 (39%) patients with SAH and was more prevalent in those with severe early brain injury (87.5% of patients with Hunt and Hess 4–5 versus 24.0% of those with Hunt and Hess 1–3, P = .001). CONCLUSIONS: Age-adjusted ADC values were globally increased in patients with SAH compared with controls, even in normal-appearing brain regions, suggesting diffuse vasogenic edema. Cytotoxic edema was also present in patients with SAH and correlated with more severe early brain injury.
Quantitative image analysis as a diagnostic tool for monitoring structural changes of anaerobic granular sludge during detergent shock loads

Two shock loads of a commercial detergent (I—150 mg chemical oxygen demand (COD)/L, fed for 56 h; II—300 mg COD/L fed for 222 h) were applied in a lab‐scale Expanded Granular Sludge Blanket (EGSB) reactor, fed with 1,500 mg COD/L of ethanol. The impact of the surfactant was assessed in terms of granular sludge morphology, specific methanogenic activity (SMA) in the presence of individual substrates, and reactor performance. COD removal efficiency remained unaffected in the shock I, but 80 h after starting exposure to the shock II, the COD removal efficiency decreased drastically from 75 to 17%. In the first 8 h of operation of shock I, the SMA was stimulated and decreased afterwards, being recovered 5 days after the end of exposure time. Concerning to shock II, the SMA was immediately and persistently reduced during the exposure time, although, the inhibition of SMA in presence of H2/CO2 showed a trend to increase after the exposure time. Acetoclastic bacteria were observed as the most sensitive to the toxic effects of surfactant whereas the hydrogenotrophic bacteria were less affected. The inhibitory effects were dependent on surfactant concentration and exposure time. The ratio filaments length per total aggregates area (LfA) was an early‐warning indicator of biomass washout, since it increased 3 and 5 days before effluent volatile suspended solids (VSS) rise, respectively, in shocks I and II. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2007; 98: 60–68. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland

"Neither German nor Pole" examines how the inhabitants of one of Europe's most densely populated industrial districts managed to defy clear-cut national categorization, even in the heyday of nationalizing pressures at the turn of the twentieth century. As James Bjork argues, the 'civic national' project of turning inhabitants of Upper Silesia into Germans and the 'ethnic national' project of awakening them as Poles both enjoyed successes, but these often canceled one another out, exacerbating rather than eliminating doubts about people's national allegiances.In this deadlock, it was a different kind of identification - religion - that provided both the ideological framework and the social space for Upper Silesians to navigate between German and Polish orientations. A fine-grained, microhistorical study of how confessional politics and the daily rhythms of bilingual Roman Catholic religious practice subverted national identification, "Neither German nor Pole" moves beyond local history to address broad questions about the relationship between nationalism, religion, and modernity. This is a unique study of the importance of religious identification in a multinational region.
A Digital Liquid State Machine With Biologically Inspired Learning and Its Application to Speech Recognition

This paper presents a bioinspired digital liquid-state machine (LSM) for low-power very-large-scale-integration (VLSI)-based machine learning applications. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first work that employs a bioinspired spike-based learning algorithm for the LSM. With the proposed online learning, the LSM extracts information from input patterns on the fly without needing intermediate data storage as required in offline learning methods such as ridge regression. The proposed learning rule is local such that each synaptic weight update is based only upon the firing activities of the corresponding presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons without incurring global communications across the neural network. Compared with the backpropagation-based learning, the locality of computation in the proposed approach lends itself to efficient parallel VLSI implementation. We use subsets of the TI46 speech corpus to benchmark the bioinspired digital LSM. To reduce the complexity of the spiking neural network model without performance degradation for speech recognition, we study the impacts of synaptic models on the fading memory of the reservoir and hence the network performance. Moreover, we examine the tradeoffs between synaptic weight resolution, reservoir size, and recognition performance and present techniques to further reduce the overhead of hardware implementation. Our simulation results show that in terms of isolated word recognition evaluated using the TI46 speech corpus, the proposed digital LSM rivals the state-of-the-art hidden Markov-model-based recognizer Sphinx-4 and outperforms all other reported recognizers including the ones that are based upon the LSM or neural networks.
Human platelet‐specific antigens frequencies in the Argentinean population

summary The frequencies of several human platelet antigens (HPAs) vary between different populations and are a major determinant for the prevalence of HPA alloimmunization and its clinical associated entities. The aim of this study was to characterize the allele frequencies of seven HPA systems in two different ethnic groups from the Argentinean city of Rosario, the major population and a minority Amerindian group recently arrived from the north of the country, the Tobas. A total of 192 healthy unrelated individuals from blood donors and hospital staff from the Hospital Italiano Garibaldi and 27 unrelated Toba Amerindians were genotyped for HPA‐1, ‐2, ‐3, ‐4, ‐5, ‐6 and ‐15 systems by polymerase chain reaction with sequence specific primers (PCR‐SSP). The present data showed that the distribution of the HPA alleles among Argentineans from Rosario is quite similar to that reported among Europeans. The frequencies seen in Tobas, although limited by the small number of aboriginal samples studied, are similar to those reported for other Amerindians populations. Statistically significant differences were found for the genotype distribution of HPA‐1, ‐3, ‐5 and ‐15 between both groups, indicating important differences in the potential risk of HPA alloimmunization associated to transfusion and pregnancy. The study of these polymorphisms represents the first step in the elucidation of pathological conditions that are underdiagnosed in our population. It allowed us to establish a panel of characterized blood donors necessary for the serological work out and as a source for compatible platelets transfusion.
Personality: A topical approach

Well, someone can decide by themselves what they want to do and need to do but sometimes, that kind of person will need some personality a topical approach references. People with open minded will always try to seek for the new things and information from many sources. On the contrary, people with closed mind will always think that they can do it by their principals. So, what kind of person are you?
Customer Lifetime Network Value Completed Research Paper

Today, people are increasingly connected and extensively interact with each other using technology-enabled media. Hence, customers are more frequently exposed to social influence of other customers when making purchase decisions. However, established approaches for customer valuation most widely neglect network effects based on social influence leading to a misallocation of resources. Therefore, following a design-oriented approach, this paper develops a model for customer valuation referred to as the customer lifetime network value (CLNV) incorporating an integrated network perspective. By considering the net network contribution of customers, the CLNV reallocates values between customers based on social influence without changing the overall network value, that is, a firm’s customer equity. Using a real-world dataset of a European online social network, we demonstrate and evaluate the applicability of the CLNV. We show that the CLNV enables a sound determination of both individual customers’ value and firm’s customer equity and supports thorough customer segmentation.
Nephrotoxicity of platinum complexes is related to basolateral organic cation transport.

BACKGROUND Cisplatin and its analogs oxaliplatin and carboplatin are widely used antitumor drugs. Nephrotoxicity is a common and relevant adverse effect that occurs especially in cisplatin therapy. Cellular and molecular mechanisms of cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity are not completely understood. The nephrotoxicity of platinum complexes was evaluated by a new in vitro system that utilizes the high Trans Epithelial Electrical Resistance (TEER) of the C7 clone of the MDCK (Madin-Darby canine kidney) cells. By means of this assay system we addressed the question whether the side of application of renal epithelia influences platinum complex toxicity. METHODS C7 cells were grown in membrane filter cups, and the apical or basolateral membranes were exposed to 100-micromol/L cis-, oxali-, or carboplatin. TEER and caspase-3 activity were determined. Cimetidine was used as an inhibitor of organic cation transporters (OCTs). C7 cell lysates were analyzed for OCT-1 and -2 by Western blot analysis. RESULTS TEER dropped by 89.5 +/- 9.3% (mean +/- SEM; N= 6) within 24 hours after addition of cisplatin to the basolateral side of C7 cells, while caspase activity increased up to 840.6 +/- 17.4% (mean +/- SEM; N= 6) compared to control cells. Exposure of the apical membrane to cisplatin reduced TEER by only 13.4 +/- 8.7% (mean +/- SEM; N= 6), and increased caspase-3 activity up to 213.9 +/- 7.6% (mean +/- SEM; N= 6). Oxaliplatin and carboplatin reduced TEER to a lesser extent than cisplatin. Oxaliplatin lowered TEER stronger than carboplatin. In general, basolateral application led to higher caspase activities and lower TEERs. The OCT-inhibitor cimetidine inhibited the TEER decrease induced by platinum complexes. Immunoblotting confirmed the presence of OCT-2 in C7 cells. CONCLUSION Toxic effects of platinum complexes on renal epithelia depend on the platinum complex used and the site of application. We conclude that cell polarity and basolateral transport mechanisms are essential in nephrotoxicity of platinum drugs.
Neural responses to relative speed in the primary visual cortex of rhesus monkey

Relative motion information, especially relative speed between different input patterns, is required for solving many complex tasks of the visual system, such as depth perception by motion parallax and motion-induced figure/ground segmentation. However, little is known about the neural substrate for processing relative speed information. To explore the neural mechanisms for relative speed, we recorded single-unit responses to relative motion in the primary visual cortex (area V1) of rhesus monkeys while presenting sets of random-dot arrays moving at different speeds. We found that most V1 neurons were sensitive to the existence of a discontinuity in speed, that is, they showed higher responses when relative motion was presented compared to homogenous field motion. Seventy percent of the neurons in our sample responded predominantly to relative rather than to absolute speed. Relative speed tuning curves were similar at different center–surround velocity combinations. These relative motion-sensitive neurons in macaque area V1 probably contribute to figure/ground segmentation and motion discontinuity detection.
Learning Tractable Word Alignment Models with Complex Constraints

Word-level alignment of bilingual text is a critical resource for a growing variety of tasks. Probabilistic models for word alignment present a fundamental trade-off between richness of captured constraints and correlations versus efficiency and tractability of inference. In this article, we use the Posterior Regularization framework (Graça, Ganchev, and Taskar 2007) to incorporate complex constraints into probabilistic models during learning without changing the efficiency of the underlying model. We focus on the simple and tractable hidden Markov model, and present an efficient learning algorithm for incorporating approximate bijectivity and symmetry constraints. Models estimated with these constraints produce a significant boost in performance as measured by both precision and recall of manually annotated alignments for six language pairs. We also report experiments on two different tasks where word alignments are required: phrase-based machine translation and syntax transfer, and show promising improvements over standard methods.
Animal biology and pathology / Biologie et pathologie animales Well known does not mean well studied: Morphological and molecular support for existence of sibling species in the Javanese gliding frog Rhacophorus reinwardtii(Amphibia, Anura)

Morphological, morphometrical and molecular data support the existence of two sibling species in the taxon previously known as Rhacophorus reinwardtii. The two species can be distinguished by the coloration pattern of webbing, the size of adult specimens and the relative size of various morphometric characters. This long and commonly known taxon should be separated into two species. As a consequence, the conservation status of the new species Rhacophorus kio n. sp. as well as of the redefined species Rhacophorus reinwardtiimust be re-evaluated and, considering the new distribution data and the particular ecological demands,
Influence of social norms, perceived playfulness and online shopping anxiety on customers' adoption of online retail shopping

Purpose – The previous studies examining the role of subjective norm (SN), online shopping anxiety (ANX) and perceived playfulness (PPL) in predicting the consumer's adoption of online shopping yielded fragmented and inconsistent findings. Also, a high proportion of these findings assessing the regarded behaviour of consumers in the West cannot be directly applied to a cross‐cultural context. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between these variables and the variables of technology acceptance model (TAM) associated with customer's online shopping intentions in an international environment.Design/methodology/approach – The research model reflecting the effects of SN, ANX and PPL on TAM constructs has been proposed. In total, 278 cases were gathered from online shoppers through a web‐based survey. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the proposed research model in terms of path significance, overall model fit and explanatory power.Findings – It was found that PPL had.
Relational Aggression Among Girls: Prevalence and Effects after Implementation of a Bully Prevention Program

Bullying has become a topic of concern in schools because it can have such an impact on the overall school experience for a student. The purpose of the current research study was to determine the prevalence of a particular form of bullying, relational aggression, among middle school girls at a private school and the effects of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) on the behaviors and attitudes of these students. An explanatory mixed-methods approach was taken to collect both quantitative and qualitative data by the use of two separate surveys in two phases of the study. The Phase I survey, the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire (OBQ), was administered to all Grades 3-8 students on three occasions and quantitative data was compared from year to year. The Phase II survey, the Relational Bullying Survey for Girls, was given once shortly after the third OBQ, only to Grades 6-8 girls; qualitative data was collected. Results indicated that relational aggression was prevalent at the school site among middle school girls, with higher rates of prevalence in sixth grade. Exclusion and rumor spreading were found to be primary ways to bully others. Interventions by other students were more likely to happen as perceived by their peers since the initial implementation of the program. Many girls’ attitudes and behaviors have changed about bullying despite some student criticism of the OBPP. The program seemed to have mixed effects, some negative and some positive. The qualitative data showed that some girls felt the program was not taken seriously and activities were not well suited to middle school. However, some responses stated that the program has increased the awareness of bullying and its effects on students and their school experience. It has also empowered students to stand up for themselves and others. For future reference, fidelity of implementation is essential to the success of a school-wide bullying program. RELATIONAL AGGRESSION AMONG GIRLS iii