Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Animal Welfare in Studies on Murine Tuberculosis: Assessing Progress over a 12-Year Period and the Need for Further Improvement

There is growing concern over the welfare of animals used in research, in particular when these animals develop pathology. The present study aims to identify the main sources of animal distress and to assess the possible implementation of refinement measures in experimental infection research, using mouse models of tuberculosis (TB) as a case study. This choice is based on the historical relevance of mouse studies in understanding the disease and the present and long-standing impact of TB on a global scale. Literature published between 1997 and 2009 was analysed, focusing on the welfare impact on the animals used and the implementation of refinement measures to reduce this impact. In this 12-year period, we observed a rise in reports of ethical approval of experiments. The proportion of studies classified into the most severe category did however not change significantly over the studied period. Information on important research parameters, such as method for euthanasia or sex of the animals, were absent in a substantial number of papers. Overall, this study shows that progress has been made in the application of humane endpoints in TB research, but that a considerable potential for improvement remains.
The information systems identity crisis

This paper presents an alternative view of the Information Systems identity crisis described recently by Benbasat and Zmud (2003). We agree with many of their observations, but we are concerned with their prescription for IS research. We critique their discussion of errors of inclusion and exclusion in IS research and highlight the potential misinterpretations that are possible from a literal
THE ARECIBO LEGACY FAST ALFA SURVEY. IX. THE LEO REGION H i CATALOG, GROUP MEMBERSHIP, AND THE H i MASS FUNCTION FOR THE LEO I GROUP

We present the catalog of H i sources extracted from the ongoing Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) extragalactic H i line survey, found within the sky region bounded by 9h36m < α < 11h36m and +08° < δ < +12°. The H i catalog presented here for this 118 deg2 region is combined with the ones derived from surrounding regions also covered by the ALFALFA survey to examine the large-scale structure in the complex Leo region. Because of the combination of wide sky coverage and superior sensitivity, spatial and spectral resolution, the ALFALFA H i catalog of the Leo region improves significantly on the numbers of low H i mass sources as compared with those found in previous H i surveys. The H i mass function of the Leo I group presented here is dominated by low-mass objects: 45 of the 65 Leo I members have , yielding tight constraints on the low-mass slope of the Leo I H i mass function. The best-fit slope is α ≃ −1.41 + 0.2 − 0.1. A direct comparison between the ALFALFA H i line detections and an optical search of the Leo I region proves the advantage of the ALFALFA strategy in finding low-mass, gas-rich dwarfs. These results suggest the existence of a significant population of low surface brightness, gas-rich, yet still very low H i mass galaxies, and may reflect the same type of morphological segregation as is seen in the Local Group. While the low-mass end slope of the Leo I H i mass function is steeper than that determined for luminosity functions of the group, the slope still falls short of the values predicted by simulations of structure formation in the lambda cold dark matter paradigm.
Tissue effects in vessel sealing and transection from an ultrasonic device with more intelligent control of energy delivery

Background Ultrasonic surgical devices have been demonstrated to provide excellent hemostasis, efficient transection, minimal lateral thermal damage, low smoke generation, and no risk of electrical current passage to the patient. These benefits originate from the inherent characteristics of the ultrasonic mechanism, but further improvements were thought possible through optimization of the energy delivery during application. The study reported here compared a new ultrasonic device, Harmonic ACE®+ Shears with Adaptive Tissue Technology, with a commercial predicate device, Harmonic ACE® Shears (both Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., Cincinnati, OH, USA). Methods Devices were evaluated in an in vivo porcine model intraoperatively and after a 30-day survival period. Both devices were used to seal a variety of vessels 1–5 mm in diameter, and compared for hemostasis, histological thermal damage, and adhesion formation. Sealed vessels were evaluated ex vivo for burst pressure, and visual obstruction caused by plumage from device application was assessed quantitatively. Results ACE+ produced significantly less thermal damage, had fewer adhesions, offered faster transection, involved less visual obstruction, and had higher burst pressures than the predicate device. All vessel seals, evaluated over the course of a 30-day survival period in pigs, remained intact. Conclusion The new Adaptive Tissue Technology algorithm assists the surgeon in achieving better control of energy delivery to the tissue, sealing vessels with supra-physiological burst pressures, and low thermal damage. These preclinical results with Harmonic ACE+ may translate into meaningful clinical benefits, providing greater precision along with more efficient and effective cutting and coagulation in open or laparoscopic procedures.
An analysis of a modified M/G/1 queue using a martingale technique

We consider a variation of the M/G/1 queue in which, when the system contains more than k customers, it switches from its initial general service distribution to a different general service distribution until the server is cleared, whereupon it switches back to the original service distribution. Using a technique due to Baccelli and Makowski we define a martingale with respect to an embedded process and from this arrive at a relationship between the process and a modified Markov renewal process. Using this an analysis of the stationary behaviour of the queue is possible.
High concentrations of excised oxidative DNA lesions in human cerebrospinal fluid.

The high rate of oxygen consumption per unit mass of tissue renders the brain especially vulnerable to the deleterious effects of oxidative stress, which can arise from the overproduction of reactive oxygen species or from a deficiency of the antioxidant defense systems. Reactive oxygen species have the potential to modify all four DNA bases. Production of 8-hydroxyguanine (8-OH-Gua) reflects one of the most critical lesions of this type (1)(2)(3). Products of DNA damage repair are excreted into the urine or other extracellular fluids without further metabolism (4)(5)(6). The rates of excretion of 8-OH-Gua and 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-OH-dGuo; modified base and nucleoside, respectively) in urine may be useful indicators of oxidative DNA damage and reflective of overall oxidative stress (6). It is also likely that the concentrations of modified base and nucleoside in urine reflect the activities of different repair pathways responsible for the removal of 8-OH-Gua from DNA, i.e., base excision repair and nucleotide excision repair (NER) (7)(8), which produce, respectively, 8-OH-Gua and 8-OH-dGuo. The analysis of 8-OH-Gua in body fluids presents particular difficulties (7)(9), but we have used HPLC followed by isotope-dilution gas chromatography–mass spectrometry to successfully measure 8-OH-dGuo and 8-OH-Gua in human urine (10)(11). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) filters and disposes of degraded cellular biomolecules from the brain. The concentrations of these modified base/nucleosides in CSF should therefore reflect the involvement of the repair processes in the central nervous system, whereas their excretion in urine should represent the same phenomenon in tissues/organs throughout the organism (7)(12). On the basis of experiments with cell culture, the hypothesis was put forward that, as opposed to other cell types, NER plays a major role in defending neurons from oxidative DNA damage (13). No in …
Earth's Global Energy Budget

An update is provided on the Earth's global annual mean energy budget in the light of new observations and analyses. In 1997, Kiehl and Trenberth provided a review of past estimates and performed a number of radiative computations to better establish the role of clouds and various greenhouse gases in the overall radiative energy flows, with top-of-atmosphere (TOA) values constrained by Earth Radiation Budget Experiment values from 1985 to 1989, when the TOA values were approximately in balance. The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) measurements from March 2000 to May 2004 are used at TOA but adjusted to an estimated imbalance from the enhanced greenhouse effect of 0.9 W m−2. Revised estimates of surface turbulent fluxes are made based on various sources. The partitioning of solar radiation in the atmosphere is based in part on the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) FD computations that utilize the global ISCCP cloud data every 3 h, and also accounts for increased .
Brief-ANT as a tool for measuring the influence of roadside advertisements content on the drivers’ attentional processes

The question of roadside advertisement’s influence on road safety is complex and multi-faceted. The list of advertisements characteristics which may play significant role for road safety includes: the size, colours, shape, luminance, contrast, localization, and many more. One of the aspects is advertisement’s content. Advertising industry uses emotional and cognitive mechanisms which are likely to engage the addressees’ attention and therefore make the brand/product more salient for their minds. As far as such a strategy might be effective for advertisers, it may be dangerous for road safety, when used in roadside advertisement. Cognitive, especially attentional, resources play key role in vehicle driving, which requires constant maintenance of situational awareness. Attention distraction, both visual and cognitive, is a proven safety-decreasing factor in vehicle driving. A method for measuring the influence of different advertisement content on attentional resources management - a short, version of the ANT, Brief-ANT, was developed. The results of a nationwide study conducted, revealed that reaction time in Brief-ANT differed significantly depending on the type of content used as the fixation cue, which leads us to a conclusion that Brief-ANT might be a good measure of the content’s influence on attentional resources management.
On Scaling Perturbation Based Privacy-Preserving Schemes in Smart Metering Systems

The smart grid poses great concern about the exposure of consumers' privacy as the fine-grained measurements in the smart metering system can expose consumer's privacy through the disclosure of accurate load profiles of home energy usage. To address this issue, in this paper we propose novel scaling perturbation based privacy-preserving schemes that can achieve great utility for fine-grained measurements in a privacy-friendly and cost-effective manner. Our schemes adopt the measurement-based scaling perturbation to hide original measurements with low cost. Through a combination of both extensive theoretical analysis and experiments, our results show that the proposed schemes can preserve consumers' privacy through fine-grained measurements and achieve a better utility-privacy tradeoff in comparison with the existing schemes.
THE RED-SEQUENCE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION IN MASSIVE INTERMEDIATE-REDSHIFT GALAXY CLUSTERS

We measure the rest-frame B-band luminosity function of red-sequence galaxies of five intermediate-redshift (0.5 < z < 0.9), high-mass (σ>950 km s−1) clusters. Cluster galaxies are identified through photometric redshifts based on imaging in seven bands (five broad and two narrow) using the WIYN 3.5 m telescope. The luminosity functions (LFs) are well-fit down to M*B + 3 for all of the clusters out to a radius of R200. For comparison, the LFs for a sample of 59 low-redshift clusters selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are measured as well. There is a brightening trend (M*B increases by 0.7 mag at z = 0.75) with redshift comparable to what is seen in the field for similarly defined galaxies, although there is a hint that the cluster red-sequence brightening is more rapid in the past (z > 0.5), and relatively shallow at more recent times. Contrary to other claims, we find little evidence for evolution of the faint-end slope. Previous indications of evolution may be due to limitations in measurement technique, bias in the sample selection, and cluster-to-cluster variation. As seen in both the low- and high-redshift samples, a significant amount of variation in LF parameters α and M* exists between individual clusters.
QSO-LRG two-point cross-correlation function and redshift-space distortions

We have measured the bias of QSOs as a function of QSO luminosity at xed redshift (z < 1) by cross-correlating them with luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the same spatial volume, hence breaking the degeneracy between QSO luminosity and redshift. We use three QSO samples from 2SLAQ, 2QZ and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) covering a QSO absolute magnitude range, -24.5 <M < -21.5, and cross-correlate them with 2SLAQ (z ≈ 0.5) and AAOmega (z ≈ 0.7) photometric and spectroscopic LRGs in the same redshift ranges. The spectroscopic QSO samples, in the spectroscopic LRG areas, contain up to 700 QSOs and in photometric LRG areas up to 7000 QSOs. The 2D and 3D cross-clustering measurements are generally in good agreement. Our (2SLAQ) QSO-LRG clustering amplitude (r = 6.98 ± 0.6 h Mpc) as measured from the semiprojected cross-correlation function appears similar to the (2SLAQ) LRG-LRG autocorrelation amplitude (r = 7.45 ± 0.35 h Mpc) and both are higher than the (2QZ + 2SLAQ) QSO-QSO amplitude (r ≈ 5.0 h Mpc). Our measurements show remarkably little QSO-LRG cross-clustering dependence on QSO luminosity. This result is unexpected on the basis of simple high-peak biasing models, where more luminous QSOs are assumed to occupy rarer and so more clustered high-mass peaks. Assuming a standard ΛCDM model and values for b measured from LRG autocorrelation analyses, from the spectroscopic samples at z ≈ 0.55 we nd b = 2.3 ± 0.5 at M ≈-24 and b = 1.6 ± 0.3 at M ≈-22. Averaging over all the spectroscopic and photometric samples, we nd an average value of b = 1.8 ± 0.1 at z ≈ 0.6 and M ≈-23. The implied dark matter halo mass inhabited by QSOs is ≈ 10 h M, again approximately independent of QSO luminosity. We have also made a z-space distortion analysis of the QSO-LRG cross-clustering at z ≈ 0.55. The velocity dispersion tted to QSO-LRG cross-correlation, ξ (σ, π), at ±600 km s is close to that expected given the larger QSO redshift errors. The dynamical infall result for the combined 2SLAQ, 2QZ and SDSS QSO sample gives β = 0.23 ± 0.15 which implies b = 3.2 ± 2.1, assuming the standard cosmological model. Although noisier, this latter value is consistent with the value of b = 1.9 ± 0.2 obtained from the amplitude of the cross-correlation function in the same redshift range. © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation
Galactic accretion and the outer structure of galaxies in the CDM model

We have combined the semi-analytic galaxy formation model of Guo et al. (2011) with the particle-tagging technique of Cooper et al. (2010) to predict galaxy surface brightness profiles in a representative sample of ~1900 massive dark matter haloes (10^12--10^14 M_sol) from the Millennium II Lambda-CDM N-body simulation. Here we present our method and basic results focusing on the outer regions of galaxies, consisting of stars accreted in mergers. These simulations cover scales from the stellar haloes of Milky Way-like galaxies to the 'cD envelopes' of groups and clusters, and resolve low surface brightness substructure such as tidal streams. We find that the surface density of accreted stellar mass around the central galaxies of dark matter haloes is well described by a Sersic profile, the radial scale and amplitude of which vary systematically with halo mass (M_200). The total stellar mass surface density profile breaks at the radius where accreted stars start to dominate over stars formed in the galaxy itself. This break disappears with increasing M_200 because accreted stars contribute more of the total mass of galaxies, and is less distinct when the same galaxies are averaged in bins of stellar mass, because of scatter in the relation between M_star and M_200. To test our model we have derived average stellar mass surface density profiles for massive galaxies at z~0.08 by stacking SDSS images. Our model agrees well with these stacked profiles and with other data from the literature, and makes predictions that can be more rigorously tested by future surveys that extend the analysis of the outer structure of galaxies to fainter isophotes. We conclude that it is likely that the outer structure of the spheroidal components of galaxies is largely determined by collisionless merging during their hierarchical assembly
Cognition, social cognition and social functioning in schizophrenia

The discoveries continually being made in the study of schizophrenia have shown the complexity of this serious mental disorder. Research has enabled intervention to be redirected to focus on areas of maximum impact and efficacy. Currently, studies concur that the majority of people with schizophrenia exhibit deficits in non-social cognitive functioning, in performance in social cognition tasks and clearly in social functioning. This article aims to give a concise overview of developments made in these three areas and the importance of the subsequent relations between them.
Credit Market Imperfections in Middle Income Countries

In this paper we document three credit market imperfections prevalent in middle income countries that can help explain the boom-bust cycles as well as other macroeconomic patterns observed at higher frequencies across these countries. These imperfections are: the existence of financing constraints that affect mainly the nontradables sector, currency mismatch and systemic bailout guarantees.
Heat shock protein concentration and clarity of porcine lenses incubated at elevated temperatures

Purpose To quantify the concentration of heat shock proteins in lenses in lens organ culture at elevated temperatures, and to examine the relation between elevated temperature and lens clarity. Methods Pig lenses obtained from a local abattoir were dissected aseptically and incubated in medium M199 without serum for 4 days to stabilize, and lenses with protein leakage of less than 10 mg/l were obtained for heat shock exposure. Heat shock was performed by incubation for 1 h in M199 without serum at various temperatures ranging from 37 °C to 55 °C. After incubation for 24 h, cataract blurring of the images was assessed using Scantox™ and Scion Image analysis of the lens photographs. Lens homogenates were subsequently analyzed for Hsp70 and Hsp27 with western blotting. Results The degree of cataract blurring of the images increased with increasing temperature, but the two functional measures provided different results. Focal length inconsistency, as assessed with the back vertex distance standard error of the mean (BVD SEM; the variability in focal lengths measured at 20 equally spaced locations across the lens, Scantox™), increased nearly linearly with the heat treatment temperature. In contrast, decreased clarity, evident by a fuzzy image with lower contrast, was not markedly altered as the temperature rose until a threshold of approximately 47.5 °C. The inducible isoform of the Hsp70 family (Hsp70) of heat shock proteins was increased at all temperatures above the control except those above 50 °C. Changes in Hsp27 were less clear as the protein content increased only at the incubation temperatures of 39 °C and 48.5 °C. Conclusions The porcine lens demonstrates subtle changes in the variability of the focal length, and the variability increases as the incubation temperature rises. In contrast, lens clarity is relatively stable at temperatures up to 47.5 °C, above which dramatic changes, indicative of the formation of cataracts, occur. The lens content of Hsp70 was elevated in lenses exposed to heat shock only up to 50 °C. These data suggest that in a stressful environment, Hsp70 may be associated with protection against loss of clarity. In addition, the functional measures BVD SEM and clarity assess different qualities of the lens, with the former likely more sensitive to subtle changes in the protein structure.
Continuous Auditory Feedback in a Control Task

A tangible audio–visual interface based on the metaphor of balancing a rolling ball allows the examination of influences of continuous auditory feedback on human control actions. In measurement of control movements under different conditions of sonic feedback significant performance improvements through sound are found. Moreover, different types of auditory feedback, more “realistic” vs. more abstract, are seen to have significantly different influences on task performance and training curves.
Shared Decision Making and Motivational Interviewing: Achieving Patient-Centered Care Across the Spectrum of Health Care Problems

Patient-centered care requires different approaches depending on the clinical situation. Motivational interviewing and shared decision making provide practical and well-described methods to accomplish patient-centered care in the context of situations where medical evidence supports specific behavior changes and the most appropriate action is dependent on the patient’s preferences. Many clinical consultations may require elements of both approaches, however. This article describes these 2 approaches—one to address ambivalence to medically indicated behavior change and the other to support patients in making health care decisions in cases where there is more than one reasonable option—and discusses how clinicians can draw on these approaches alone and in combination to achieve patient-centered care across the range of health care problems.