Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kinetics of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Memphis Strain 37 (M37) Infection in the Respiratory Tract of Newborn Lambs as an RSV Infection Model for Human Infants

Rationale Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection in preterm and newborn infants can result in severe bronchiolitis and hospitalization. The lamb lung has several key features conducive to modeling RSV infection in human infants, including susceptibility to human strains of RSV such as the A2, Long, and Memphis Strain 37 (M37). In this study, the kinetics of M37 infection was investigated in newborn lambs in order to better define clinical, viral, physiological, and immunological parameters as well as the pathology and lesions. Methods Newborn lambs were nebulized with M37 hRSV (6 mL of 1.27 x 107 FFU/mL), monitored daily for clinical responses, and respiratory tissues were collected from groups of lambs at days 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 post-inoculation for the assessment of viral replication parameters, lesions and also cellular, immunologic and inflammatory responses. Results Lambs had increased expiratory effort (forced expiration) at days 4, 6, and 8 post-inoculation. Nasal wash lacked RSV titers at day 1, but titers were present at low levels at days 3 (peak), 4, and 8. Viral titers in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) reached a plateau at day 3 (4.6 Log10 FFU/mL), which was maintained until day 6 (4.83 Log10 FFU/mL), and were markedly reduced or absent at day 8. Viral RNA levels (detected by RT-qPCR) in BALF were indistinguishable at days 3 (6.22 ± 0.08 Log10 M37 RNA copies/mL; mean ± se) and 4 (6.20 ± 0.16 Log10 M37 RNA copies/mL; mean ± se) and increased slightly on day 6 (7.15 ± 0.2 Log10 M37 RNA copies/mL; mean ± se). Viral antigen in lung tissue as detected by immunohistochemistry was not seen at day 1, was present at days 3 and 4 before reaching a peak by day 6, and was markedly reduced by day 8. Viral antigen was mainly present in airways (bronchi, bronchioles) at day 3 and was increasingly present in alveolar cells at days 4 and 6, with reduction at day 8. Histopathologic lesions such as bronchitis/bronchiolitis, epithelial necrosis and hyperplasia, peribronchial lymphocyte infiltration, and syncytial cells, were consistent with those described previously for lambs and infants. Conclusion This work demonstrates that M37 hRSV replication in the lower airways of newborn lambs is robust with peak replication on day 3 and sustained until day 6. These findings, along with the similarities of lamb lung to those of infants in terms of alveolar development, airway branching and epithelium, susceptibility to human RSV strains, lesion characteristics (bronchiolitis), lung size, clinical parameters, and immunity, further establish the neonatal lamb as a model with key features that mimic RSV infection in infants.
The three-point function of general planar maps

We compute the distance-dependent three-point function of general planar maps and of bipartite planar maps, i.e. the generating function of these maps with three marked vertices at prescribed pairwise distances. Explicit expressions are given for maps counted by their number of edges only, or by both their numbers of edges and faces. A few limiting cases and applications are discussed.
Altruistic and Joy‐of‐Giving Motivations in Charitable Behavior

This study theoretically and empirically examines altruistic and joy‐of‐giving motivations underlying contributions to charitable activities. The theoretical analysis shows that in an economy with an infinitely large number of donors, impurely altruistic preferences lead to either asymptotically zero or complete crowd‐out. The paper then establishes conditions on preferences that are sufficient to yield zero crowd‐out in the limit. These conditions are fairly weak and quite plausible. An empirical representation of the model is estimated using a new 1986–92 panel of donations and government funding from the United States to 125 international relief and development organizations. Besides directly linking sources of public and private support, the econometric analysis controls for unobserved institution‐specific factors, institution‐specific changes in leadership, year‐to‐year changes in need, and expenditures by related organizations. The estimates show little evidence of crowd‐out from either direct public or related private sources. Thus, at the margin, donations to these organizations appear to be motivated solely by joy‐of‐giving preferences. In addition to addressing the basic question of motives behind charitable giving, the results help explain the existing disparity between econometric and experimental crowd‐out estimates.
Tegument Assembly and Secondary Envelopment of Alphaherpesviruses

Alphaherpesviruses like herpes simplex virus are large DNA viruses characterized by their ability to establish lifelong latent infection in neurons. As for all herpesviruses, alphaherpesvirus virions contain a protein-rich layer called “tegument” that links the DNA-containing capsid to the glycoprotein-studded membrane envelope. Tegument proteins mediate a diverse range of functions during the virus lifecycle, including modulation of the host-cell environment immediately after entry, transport of virus capsids to the nucleus during infection, and wrapping of cytoplasmic capsids with membranes (secondary envelopment) during virion assembly. Eleven tegument proteins that are conserved across alphaherpesviruses have been implicated in the formation of the tegument layer or in secondary envelopment. Tegument is assembled via a dense network of interactions between tegument proteins, with the redundancy of these interactions making it challenging to determine the precise function of any specific tegument protein. However, recent studies have made great headway in defining the interactions between tegument proteins, conserved across alphaherpesviruses, which facilitate tegument assembly and secondary envelopment. We summarize these recent advances and review what remains to be learned about the molecular interactions required to assemble mature alphaherpesvirus virions following the release of capsids from infected cell nuclei.
Randomised trial of educational visits to enhance use of systematic reviews in 25 obstetric units

Abstract Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of an educational visit to help obstetricians and midwives select and use evidence from a Cochrane database containing 600 systematic reviews. Design Randomised single blind controlled trial with obstetric units allocated to an educational visit or control group. Setting 25 of the 26 district general obstetric units in two former NHS regions. Subjects The senior obstetrician and midwife from each intervention unit participated in educational visits. Clinical practices of all staff were assessed in 4508 pregnancies. Intervention Single informal educational visit by a respected obstetrician including discussion of evidence based obstetrics, guidance on implementation, and donation of Cochrane database and other materials. Main outcome measures Rates of perineal suturing with polyglycolic acid, ventouse delivery, prophylactic antibiotics in caesarean section, and steroids in preterm delivery, before and 9 months after visits, and concordance of guidelines with review evidence for same marker practices before and after visits. Results Rates varied greatly, but the overall baseline mean of 43% (986/2312) increased to 54% (1189/2196) 9 months later. Rates of ventouse delivery increased significantly in intervention units but not in control units; there was no difference between the two types of units in uptake of other practices. Pooling rates from all 25 units, use of antibiotics in caesarean section and use of polyglycolic acid sutures increased significantly over the period, but use of steroids in preterm delivery was unchanged. Labour ward guidelines seldom agreed with evidence at baseline; this hardly improved after visits. Educational visits cost 860$ each (at 1995 prices). Conclusions There was considerable uptake of evidence into practice in both control and intervention units between 1994 and 1995. Our educational visits added little to this, despite the informal setting, targeting of senior staff from two disciplines, and donation of educational materials. Further work is needed to define cost effective methods to enhance the uptake of evidence from systematic reviews and to clarify leadership and roles of senior obstetric staff in implementing the evidence.
Why are customers coming back to buy their airline tickets online? theoretical explanations and empirical evidence

The objective of this study is to clarify the theoretical and practical problem of continuance intention (CI) of purchasing airline tickets online. Based on an in-depth literature study factors were identified that could explain the level of continuance intention. The first set of factors relate to the expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) in the consumer behavior literature. Based on ECT, continuance intention can be theoretically explained by satisfaction, confirmation, web site quality, and loyalty incentives. The second set of factors relate to the technology acceptance model (TAM) which states that the actual system use - such as using online web sites to purchase airline tickets - is determined by the behavioral intention and the attitude towards usage, which in turn can be explained by perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. The third factor is the price sensitivity of the consumer. The research model combines the different factors to explain continuance intention. Empirical research was carried out via an online survey among customers of a web-based airline ticket agency in the Netherlands in 2004. The online survey was pretested and refined and sent to 1770 customers at the time they purchased an online ticket. In total 715 customers answered the questionnaire and 492 of these were returning customers. The results of the empirical research support the following conclusions. Customer are coming back to purchase online tickets primarily because of the satisfaction of the online booking process and a positive attitude towards using the online booking system. Loyalty incentives and price sensitivity only play a marginal role. This by and large confirms the ECT model. The satisfaction with the service is explained by the confirmation of pre-purchase expectations as well as the quality of the website. The attitude toward usage was explained by the perceived usefulness and ease of use, in accordance with the TAM model. Somewhat surprisingly, trust and perceived risk played no significant role. Conclusions are formulated and implications for practice and research are presented.
Analytic Combinatorics of the Mabinogion Urn

The Mabinogion urn is a simple model of the spread of influences amongst versatile populations. It corresponds to a non-standard urn with balls of two colours: each time a ball is drawn, it causes a ball of the other kind to switch its colour. The process stops once unanimity has been reached. This note provides analytic expressions describing the evolution of the Mabinogion urn, based on a time-reversal transformation applied to the classical Ehrenfest urn. Consequences include a precise asymptotic analysis of the stopping-time distribution—it is asymptotically normal in the “unfair” case and akin to an extreme-value (double exponential) distribution in the “fair” case—as well as a characterization of the exponentially small probability of reversing a majority.
Global Inference to Chinese Temporal Relation Extraction

Previous studies on temporal relation extraction focus on mining sentence-level information or enforcing coherence on different temporal relation types among various event mentions in the same sentence or neighboring sentences, largely ignoring those discourse-level temporal relations in nonadjacent sentences. In this paper, we propose a discourse-level global inference model to mine those temporal relations between event mentions in document-level, especially in nonadjacent sentences. Moreover, we provide various kinds of discourse-level constraints, which derived from event semantics, to further improve our global inference model. Evaluation on a Chinese corpus justifies the effectiveness of our discourse-level global inference model over two strong baselines.
Study of the Effect of Grafting Method on Surface Polarity of Tempo-Oxidized Nanocellulose Using Polycaprolactone as the Modifying Compound: Esterification versus Click-Chemistry

Esterification and click-chemistry were evaluated as surface modification treatments for TEMPO-oxidized nanocelluloses (TONC) using Polycaprolactone-diol (PCL) as modifying compound in order to improve the dispersion of nanofibers in organic media. These two grafting strategies were analyzed and compared. The first consists of grafting directly the PCL onto TONC, and was carried out by esterification between hydroxyl groups of PCL and carboxyl groups of TONC. The second strategy known as click-chemistry is based on the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction between azides and alkyne terminated moieties to form the triazole ring between PCL and TONC. The grafted samples were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Thermogravimetry analysis (TGA). Further, the effects of the two treatments on the surface hydrophobization of TONC were investigated by contact angle measurements. The results show that both methods confirm the success of such a modification and the click reaction was significantly more effective than esterification.
Evaluation of Microleakage of RMGIC and Flowable Composite Immersed in Soft Drink and Fresh Fruit Juice: An in vitro Study

ABSTRACT Aim : The objective of the study was to evaluate and compare the effect of a soft drink and a fresh fruit juice on the microleakage of flowable composite and resin modified glass lonomer cement (RMGIC). Methods and materials : 70 non-carious human premolars were collected and stored in saline until further use. Class-V cavities were prepared and restored with RMGIC on the buccal surface and flowable composite on the lingual surface for evaluating microleakage. The experimental groups (Group I and II ) comprised of 60 teeth, while the remaining 10 formed the control group (Group III―Water). The experimental groups were further divided into 2 groups (Group I―Cola drink and Group II―Fresh orange fruit juice) of 30 teeth each. Each group was then further divided into 3 subgroups (Short, Medium and Long-immersion) containing 10 teeth as shown in flow chart. Immersion regime was followed according to Maupome G et al and microleakage was evaluated by using Rhodamine B dye and examined under stereomicroscope. Results : Microleakage data obtained was statistically analyzed by Chi-square test. The teeth showed statistically significant microleakage as the immersion regime increased. Interpretation and Conclusion : Low pH soft drink caused highly significant microleakage at the tooth and restorative material interface in medium and high immersion regimes signifying that the leakage pattern was directly proportional to the number of immersions. Thus, the study conclusively proves that the ‘sipping habit’ associated with commonly available low pH beverages is detrimental to the longevity of restorations.
Human scaphoid non‐unions exhibit increased osteoclast activity compared to adjacent cancellous bone

Scaphoid bones have a high prevalence for non‐union. Even with adequate treatment, bone regeneration may not occur in certain instances. Although this condition is well described, the molecular pathology of scaphoid non‐unions is still poorly defined. In this study, gene expression of osteogenic and angiogenic growth and transcription factors as well as inflammatory mediators were analysed in human scaphoid non‐unions and intraindividually compared to adjacent autologous cancellous bone from the distal radius. In addition, histology and immunohistochemical stainings were performed to verify qRT‐PCR data. Gene expression analysis revealed a significant up‐regulation of RANKL, ALP, CYCLIN D1, MMP‐13, OPG, NFATc1, TGF‐β and WNT5A in scaphoid non‐unions. Interestingly, RANKL and NFATc1, both markers for osteoclastogenesis, were significantly induced in non‐unions. Moreover, WNT5A was highly up‐regulated in all non‐union samples. TRAP staining confirmed the observation of induced osteoclastogenesis in non‐unions. With respect to genes related to osteogenesis, alkaline phosphatase was significantly up‐regulated in scaphoid non‐unions. No differences were detectable for other osteogenic genes such as RUNX‐2 or BMP‐2. Importantly, we did not detect differences in angiogenesis between scaphoid non‐unions and controls in both gene expression and immunohistochemistry. Summarized, our data indicate increased osteoclast activity in scaphoid non‐unions possibly as a result of the alterations in RANKL, TGF‐β and WNT5A expression levels. These data increase our understanding for the reduced bone regeneration capacity present in scaphoid non‐unions and may translate into the identification of new therapeutic targets to avoid secondary damages and prevent occurrence of non‐unions to scaphoid bones.
Analyzing multiple internal rates of return

In this paper we present a new method for determining project acceptability when multiple internal rates of return are present. An internal rate of return is an interest rate which causes the present worth of a cash flow stream to equal zero. Many internal rates of return can occur when there are both cash inflows and outflows in a single cash flow stream. Unfortunately, this makes the project selection problem difficult. Lorie and Savage initially present this problem in their seminal paper in 1955. Since its publication, several authors have produced solutions to this issue. In this paper, we present a new method for determining suitability when multiple rates are calculated. This method is unique because it considers the minimum attractive rate of return when determining which internal rate of return should be used to determine project acceptability. We illustrate that this method can be used whenever there exists at least one real internal rate of return and show that it is consistent with present worth.
Conserved Noncoding Sequences Regulate lhx5 Expression in the Zebrafish Forebrain

The LIM homeobox family protein Lhx5 plays important roles in forebrain development in the vertebrates. The lhx5 gene exhibits complex temporal and spatial expression patterns during early development but its transcriptional regulation mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we have used transgenesis in zebrafish in order to define regulatory elements that drive lhx5 expression in the forebrain. Through comparative genomic analysis we identified 10 non-coding sequences conserved in five teleost species. We next examined the enhancer activities of these conserved non-coding sequences with Tol2 transposon mediated transgenesis. We found a proximately located enhancer gave rise to robust reporter EGFP expression in the forebrain regions. In addition, we identified an enhancer located at approximately 50 kb upstream of lhx5 coding region that is responsible for reporter gene expression in the hypothalamus. We also identify an enhancer located approximately 40 kb upstream of the lhx5 coding region that is required for expression in the prethalamus (ventral thalamus). Together our results suggest discrete enhancer elements control lhx5 expression in different regions of the forebrain.
Spherical designs and zeta functions of lattices

We set up a connection between the theory of spherical designs and the question of minima of Epstein's zeta function. More precisely, we prove that a Euclidean lattice, all layers of which hold a 4-design, achieves a local minimum of the Epstein's zeta function, at least at any real s>n/2. We deduce from this a new proof of Sarnak and Strombergsson's theorem asserting that the root lattices D4 and E8, as well as the Leech lattice, achieve a strict local minimum of the Epstein's zeta function at any s>0. Furthermore, our criterion enables us to extend their theorem to all the so-called extremal modular lattices(up to certain restrictions) using a theorem of Bachoc and Venkov, and to other classical families of lattices (e.g. the Barnes-Wall lattices).
The Effective Implementation of Professional Learning Communities.

During recent decades, professional learning communities (PLCs) have enhanced education from lower grade levels through college years, with many resulting benefits. PLCs provide an environment that encourages professional development, collaboration and innovation among teachers. Research suggests positive school reform occurs when teachers participate in authentic PLCs, with improved student achievement as a by-product (Wilson, 2016). The authors’ review will explore the role of the school leader in creating successful professional learning communities and will explain how PLCs have improved K-12 education for both teachers and students.
Turbulent mixing and phytoplankton spring bloom development in a deep lake

A one‐dimensional (1‐D) mechanistic phytoplankton model combined with a 1‐D hydrodynamic model was applied to simulate phytoplankton growth during winter and spring in deep monomictic Upper Lake Constance. Modeled chlorophyll a concentrations agree well with data from the 8‐y time period considered. In particular, the interannual variation in the timing of phytoplankton growth is adequately simulated by the model. The onset of phytoplankton blooms in Upper Lake Constance is not sensitive to variations in the photosynthetically active radiation, the sinking velocity of the algae, or the effect of water temperature on biological process rates, but is primarily determined by turbulent diffusion (i.e., by the transition from strong mixing in winter and early spring to weak mixing). The transition in mixing conditions and thus also the beginning of phytoplankton population growth correlates with the build up of the first slight temperature stratification. Simulations performed without consideration of phytoplankton loss due to grazing overestimate algal biomass soon after the onset of algal growth. Including grazing by zooplankton substantially improves the agreement between model and data and suggests that ciliate grazing in particular leads to a significant reduction of phytoplankton abundance in spring after the start of the algal bloom.
Parsing Universal Dependencies without training

We present UDP, the first training-free parser for Universal Dependencies (UD). Our algorithm is based on PageRank and a small set of specific dependency head rules. UDP features two-step decoding to guarantee that function words are attached as leaf nodes. The parser requires no training, and it is competitive with a delexicalized transfer system. UDP offers a linguistically sound unsupervised alternative to cross-lingual parsing for UD. The parser has very few parameters and distinctly robust to domain change across languages.
Deep kernel-SVM network

Deep learning techniques have claimed state-of-the-art results in a wide range of tasks, including classification. Despite the promising results, there are limitations for these large networks. In fact, deep neural networks have a poor generalisation performance on small data sets, such as biologic data. This paper describes a new machine learning algorithm for classification tasks. We introduce a Multi-Layer Multiple Kernel Learning (ML-MKL) framework. The input data are first transformed through a set of weighted non-linear kernel functions in a multilayer structure. Then, an SVM classifier is used to make the final decision. The proposed network is trained to minimize the error function. Indeed, we propose to optimize the network over an adaptive backpropagation algorithm. The generalization performance of the proposed method is compared over various state-of-the-art multiple kernel algorithms on several benchmark and two real world applications, including object recognition and spoken language recognition. Experimental results show that the ML-MKL generally outperforms existing kernel methods.