Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ABSORPTION OF NYSTATIN BY MICROORGANISMS

Nystatin, a polyene antibiotic produced by Streptomyces noursei (Brown and Hazen, 1957), is highly active in inhibiting the growth of a wide variety of fungi, but has little or no effect on other types of microorganisms or on animal cells. It inhibits both endogenous metabolic activity and the utilization of various substrates by fungi, especially yeast (Lampen et al., 1956, 1957; Harmon and Masterson, 1957; MeyerRohm et al., 1957; Peynaud et al., 1957; Bradley, 1957, 1958). This derangement of metabolism appears to bear a direct relation to the fungicidal process, since it was observed (Lampen et al., 1957) that carbohydrate utilization by microorganisms was blocked by nystatin only if their growth was sensitive to the antifungal agent. The inhibition of metabolic activity by nystatin could be prevented if a boiled extract of yeast was present, but reversal of an existing inhibition was not achieved. It was previously reported that materials present in baker's yeast removed nystatin from aqueous solution (Lampen et al., 1957). The subject of the present investigation is the nature of this absorption of nystatin by microorganisms and its importance as a factor in the agent's unique specificity for fungi.
Prevalence of Radiologically Isolated Syndrome and White Matter Signal Abnormalities in Healthy Relatives of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Healthy individuals who either had no relatives with multiple sclerosis or had a family history of it were studied and evaluated according the Okuda and Swanton criteria for radiologically isolated syndrome. These investigators found that the frequency of white matter signal abnormalities and radiologically isolated syndrome were higher in the healthy relatives of patients with multiple sclerosis compared with nonfamilial healthy control subjects. In healthy relatives of patients with MS, smoking and obesity also contributed to the presence of white matter lesions. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The exact prevalence of WM signal abnormalities in healthy relatives of MS patients and their impact on disease development has not been fully elucidated. The purpose of this study was to compare WM signal abnormality characteristics and the prevalence of radiologically isolated syndrome in healthy control subjects selected randomly from the population with the healthy relatives of patients with MS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Healthy control subjects (n = 150) underwent physical and 3T MR imaging examinations. Healthy control subjects were classified as non-familial healthy control subjects (n = 82) if they had no family history of MS or as healthy relatives of patients with MS (n = 68) if they had ≥1 relative affected with MS. The presence of radiologically isolated syndrome was evaluated according to the Okuda criteria; dissemination in space on MR imaging and fulfillment of radiologically isolated syndrome criteria were also evaluated according to Swanton criteria. RESULTS: There was a significantly higher total volume of WM signal abnormality in the healthy relatives of patients with MS compared with the non-familial healthy control subjects (P = .024 for signal abnormality ≥3 mm in size and P = .025 for all sizes). Periventricular localization and the number of lesions in all groups (P = .034 and P = .043) were significantly higher in the healthy relatives of patients with MS; 8.8% of the healthy relatives of patients with MS and 4.9% of non-familial healthy control subjects showed ≥9 WM signal abnormalities; 2.9% of subjects in the healthy relatives of patients with MS group and 2.4% of non-familial healthy control subjects fulfilled radiologically isolated syndrome according to the Okuda criteria, whereas 10.3% and 3.7% of subjects fulfilled radiologically isolated syndrome according to the Swanton criteria. In the healthy relatives of patients with MS, smoking was associated with the presence of WM signal abnormalities, whereas obesity was related to the presence of ≥9 WM signal abnormalities and to fulfillment of radiologically isolated syndrome according to the Swanton criteria. CONCLUSIONS: The frequency of WM signal abnormalities and radiologically isolated syndrome is higher in the healthy relatives of patients with multiple sclerosis patients compared with non-familial healthy control subjects.
A glimpse into the black box of cost-effectiveness analyses

See related research article by Polyzos and colleagues at [www.cmaj. ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.101506][1]. Cost-effectiveness analyses have become a key component of health policy. The detailed evaluations can incorporate multiple, complex elements for decision-making. However, some have noted the
The relationship between motivation and achievement in foreign language learning in a sixth form college in Hong Kong

Motivation is crucial in learning a foreign language as it probably determines one’s success in mastering the target language. This study attempts to unveil the relationship between motivation and achievement in learning English in a sixth form college in Hong Kong. The methodological dimensions of the investigation were twofold. First, by means of questionnaires distributed to 33 Advanced-level students, their motivation intensity and orientations in learning English were explored. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was computed to examine the students’ motivation components and their English grades both in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination and the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination. Second, four high, four average and four low achievers of learning English, altogether 12 students aged 17 to 20, were invited to attend semi-structured interviews. Through the account of their English learning experience, the relationship between motivational factors and academic achievement in foreign language learning was investigated. The findings indicated that there was a positive relationship between motivation and achievement among this sample of Hong Kong Advanced-level students in this sixth form college. The results also indicated that all the high, average and low achievers had strong extrinsic motivation, but this did not have any significant correlation with students’ English attainment. Instead, it was intrinsic motivation that had a positive correlation with students’ English grades. The results further suggested that, in this sample, intrinsic and extrinsic motives did not inhibit each other as they had no significant correlation. Students pursuing both intrinsic and extrinsic orientations achieved better grades in English than those whose main motivation was extrinsic. Thus it might be necessary to create a learning environment where intrinsic and extrinsic values of learning English were equally emphasized. Finally, some suggestions on how to enhance Advanced-level students’ motivation in learning English were also offered.
The effects of two anxiety reducing interventions on Algebra I test scores for a sample of rural high school students

The Effects of Two Anxiety Reducing Interventions on Algebra I Test Scores for a Sample of Rural High School Students Sharon Wisinger Old Dominion University, 2010 Director: Dr. Nina W. Brown As the nation strives to reach the goal of 100% proficiency in reading and math in under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requirements, students may experience increased pressure to perform better on examinations. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a short term expressive writing intervention and a psycho educational intervention on general, test, and math anxieties, physical and attendance, and test scores of ninth through eleventh grade adolescents attending two rural public high schools. Participants (N= 58) consisted of adolescents in three intact Algebra I classes which were assigned to write about neutral topics during three classroom sessions (first experimental group) (n = 24), participate in a psychoeducational presentation during one classroom session (second experimental group) (n = 18), or receive regular classroom instruction (control group) (n = 16). At baseline and six weeks after writing, physical symptoms, levels of anxiety, attendance, and test scores were assessed. No statistically significant relationship was found between the experimental and control groups over time. However, when all of the participants were viewed as one population, some significant differences occurred which may have reduced levels of math anxiety and improved math exam scores for the Algebra I population as a whole.
Exercise and Physical Activity in Mental Disorders: Clinical and Experimental Evidence

Several epidemiological studies have shown that exercise (EX) and physical activity (PA) can prevent or delay the onset of different mental disorders, and have therapeutic benefits when used as sole or adjunct treatment in mental disorders. This review summarizes studies that used EX interventions in patients with anxiety, affective, eating, and substance use disorders, as well as schizophrenia and dementia/mild cognitive impairment. Despite several decades of clinical evidence with EX interventions, controlled studies are sparse in most disorder groups. Preliminary evidence suggests that PA/EX can induce improvements in physical, subjective and disorder-specific clinical outcomes. Potential mechanisms of action are discussed, as well as implications for psychiatric research and practice.
Evidence for a persistent microbial seed bank throughout the global ocean

Do bacterial taxa demonstrate clear endemism, like macroorganisms, or can one site’s bacterial community recapture the total phylogenetic diversity of the world’s oceans? Here we compare a deep bacterial community characterization from one site in the English Channel (L4-DeepSeq) with 356 datasets from the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM) taken from around the globe (ranging from marine pelagic and sediment samples to sponge-associated environments). At the L4-DeepSeq site, increasing sequencing depth uncovers greater phylogenetic overlap with the global ICoMM data. This site contained 31.7–66.2% of operational taxonomic units identified in a given ICoMM biome. Extrapolation of this overlap suggests that 1.93 × 1011 sequences from the L4 site would capture all ICoMM bacterial phylogenetic diversity. Current technology trends suggest this limit may be attainable within 3 y. These results strongly suggest the marine biosphere maintains a previously undetected, persistent microbial seed bank.
The hierarchical structure of emotional expressivity: scale development and nomological implications

Integrating existing models of emotional expressivity, the 3-level hierarchical model contains a general factor of emotional expressivity vs. inexpressivity at the highest level; relatively independent factors of positive and negative expressivity at the secondorder level; and discrete expressivity factors of sadness, hostility, guilt/shame, fear, joviality, confidence and amusement at the lowest level. The bottom-up analytic strategy consisted of identifying first the structure of the discrete affects; subsequent second-order factor analyses supported the existence of the higher order factors. The Iowa Scales of Emotional Expressivity (ISEE)—a hierarchical set of scales—systematically incorporate the level of abstraction of the items to assess each level of the hierarchy. Structural analyses replicated across college student (N = 387) and young adult (N = 344) samples with strong comparability coefficients. Striking differences existed in comparisons of the nomological relations of the general factor level vs. second-order level—Positive and Negative Expressivity demonstrated differential relations with Extraversion and Neuroticism and incremental predictive validity beyond Positive and Negative Affect, respectively. The ISEE demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity with existing scales and through multi-trait multi-method analyses of self-other agreement and testretest data. Although test-retest correlations were less than optimal, the ISEE improve upon existing measures of emotional expressivity by extending the assessment to the discrete affect level and by creating Positive and Negative Expressivity scales with improved discriminant validity and clearer differential relations. Abstract Approved: ______________________________________________________ Thesis SupervisorApproved: ______________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ______________________________________________________ Title and Department ______________________________________________________ Date THE HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVITY: SCALE DEVELOPMENT AND NOMOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS by John Jeffrey Humrichouse A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychology in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa
Sex and hibernaculum temperature predict survivorship in white-nose syndrome affected little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus)

White-nose syndrome (WNS), an emerging infectious disease caused by the novel fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has devastated North American bat populations since its discovery in 2006. The little brown myotis, Myotis lucifugus, has been especially affected. The goal of this 2-year captive study was to determine the impact of hibernacula temperature and sex on WNS survivorship in little brown myotis that displayed visible fungal infection when collected from affected hibernacula. In study 1, we found that WNS-affected male bats had increased survival over females and that bats housed at a colder temperature survived longer than those housed at warmer temperatures. In study 2, we found that WNS-affected bats housed at a colder temperature fared worse than unaffected bats. Our results demonstrate that WNS mortality varies among individuals, and that colder hibernacula are more favourable for survival. They also suggest that female bats may be more negatively affected by WNS than male bats, which has important implications for the long-term survival of the little brown myotis in eastern North America.
Improving the responses of the Australian community land surface model (CABLE) to seasonal drought

[1] Correct representations of root functioning, such as root water uptake and hydraulic redistribution, are critically important for modeling the responses of vegetation to droughts and seasonal changes in soil moisture content. However, these processes are poorly represented in global land surface models. In this study, we incorporated two root functions: a root water uptake function which assumes root water uptake efficiency varies with rooting depth, and a hydraulic redistribution function into a global land surface model, CABLE. The water uptake function developed by Lai and Katul (2000) was also compared with the default one (see Wang et al., 2010) that assumes that efficiency of water uptake per unit root length is constant. Using eddy flux measurements of CO2 and water vapor fluxes at three sites experiencing different patterns of seasonal changes in soil water content, we showed that the two root functions significantly improved the agreement between the simulated fluxes of net ecosystem exchange and latent heat flux and soil moisture dynamics with those observed during the dry season while having little impact on the model simulation during the wet seasons at all three sites. Sensitivity analysis showed that varying several model parameters influencing soil water dynamics in CABLE did not significantly affect the model's performance. We conclude that these root functions represent a valuable improvement for land surface modeling and should be implemented into CABLE and other land surface models for studying carbon and water dynamics where rainfall varies seasonally or interannually.
DySC: software for greedy clustering of 16S rRNA reads

UNLABELLED Pyrosequencing technologies are frequently used for sequencing the 16S ribosomal RNA marker gene for profiling microbial communities. Clustering of the produced reads is an important but time-consuming task. We present Dynamic Seed-based Clustering (DySC), a new tool based on the greedy clustering approach that uses a dynamic seeding strategy. Evaluations based on the normalized mutual information (NMI) criterion show that DySC produces higher quality clusters than UCLUST and CD-HIT at a comparable runtime. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION DySC, implemented in C, is available at http://code.google. com/p/dysc/ under GNU GPL license.
Does caffeine added to carbohydrate provide additional ergogenic benefit for endurance?

CONTEXT Carbohydrate (CHO) and caffeine (CAF) both improve endurance performance. PURPOSE To determine by systematic literature review coupled with meta-analysis whether CAF ingested with CHO (CHO+CAF) improves endurance performance more than CHO alone. METHODS Databases were searched using the keywords caffeine, endurance, exercise, carbohydrate, and performance. Criteria for inclusion were studies that used human subjects performing an endurance-exercise performance task and included both a CHO and CHO+CAF condition. Effect sizes (ESs) were calculated as the standardized mean difference. RESULTS Twenty-one studies met the criteria for analysis. ESs for individual studies ranged from -0.08 (trivial effect favoring CHO) to 1.01 (large effect favoring CHO+CAF). The overall ES equaled 0.26 (95% CI 0.15-0.38, p < .001), indicating that CHO+CAF provides a small but significant performance benefit over CHO. ES was not significantly (p > .05) related to CAF dose, exercise duration, or performance-assessment method. To determine whether ES of CHO+CAF vs. CHO was different than CAF compared with water (placebo), a subgroup meta-analysis compared 36 CAF vs. placebo studies against the 21 CHO+CAF vs. CHO studies. The overall ES for the former group of studies (ES = 0.51, 95% CI 0.40-0.61) was nearly 2-fold greater than in CHO+CAF vs. CHO studies (p = .006). CONCLUSIONS CHO+CAF ingestion provides a significant but small effect to improve endurance performance compared with CHO alone. However, the magnitude of the performance benefit that CAF provides is less when added to CHO than when added to placebo.
Theory of nonlinear Landau-Zener tunneling

We present a comprehensive analysis of the nonlinear Landau-Zener tunneling. We find characteristic scaling or power laws for the critical behavior that occurs as the nonlinear parameter equals to the gap of avoided crossing energy levels. For the nonlinear parameter larger than the energy gap, a closed-form solution is derived for the nonlinear tunneling probability, which is shown to be a good approximation to the exact solution for a wide range of the parameters. Finally, we discuss the experimental realization of the nonlinear model and possible observation of the scaling or power laws using a Bose-Einstein condensate in an accelerating optical lattice.
How to structure online discussions for meaningful discourse: a case study

This study examined the impact of structuredness of asynchronous online discussion protocols and evaluation rubrics on meaningful discourse. Transcripts of twelve online discussions involving 87 participants from four sections of a graduate course entitled Instructional Technology Foundations and Learning Theory were analysed across four semesters. Protocols and evaluation rubrics guiding online discussions in this course ranged from minimal structure or loosely defined protocols in the first section, to high sructure or well defined and comprehensive protocols and evaluation criteria in the fourth section. The analyses revealed that some elements of structure had a significant impact on meaningful discourse. Particularly, guidelines that assisted the facilitation and evaluation of online discussions increased the cognitive quality of student postings promoting a deeper and more meaningful understanding of course content.
Impact of Reproduction Size and Halftoning Method on Print Quality Perception

This paper presents a study related to image reproduction quality assessment. The experiment was designed to determine the impact of halftone image dimensions on the perception of image fidelity and grain structure, these two, being important quality attributes. Subjective quality assessment experiments were designed to complement recently published findings obtained by objective image metric methods for quality assessment. Image fidelity and grain structure are understandable to the observers that are not familiar with the methods used to determine image quality. These attributes are directly dependent on the chosen halftoning method. In this research, the samples were halftoned using two different types of screening methods: frequency modulation (FM) and amplitude modulation (AM) method. The experiment produced around 4000 data samples, which were analyzed by standard statistical methods. Results indicate a significant influence of the image size and halftoning method on the subjective quality assessment.
THE ROLE OF ORAL LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY IN PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS OF EARLY BILINGUALS

The nature of a specific spoken language as well as its orthography and the close relation between these two characteristics may influence phonemic awareness development (Durgunoglu & Oney, 1999). In this respect, oral language proficiency of bilingual and monolingual children appears to have an influence on enhancing their phonological awareness. One major aim of the present research is therefore to explore the link between the level of oral language development and that of phonological awareness of two Turkish-English bilingual children and one monolingual child with an average age of 3.5. The data for phonological awareness came from an initial phoneme identification, rhyme-detection, and phoneme detection task; for language proficiency, from a picture description or storytelling task. All tasks were performed in the children’s dominant language, which is the community language, Turkish. Results showed that oral proficiency level is not a good predictor of the development of phonological awareness.
Evaluation the Effects of Biological Fertilizer on Physiological Characteristic and Yield and its Components of Corn ( Zea mays L.) Under Drought Stress

Problem statement: This experiment was carried out for study the effects of chemical and biological fertilizers and interaction between them on some physiological characteristic and yield and its components of seed corn in two different irrigation. Approach: The experiment was conducted in a split plot factorial with completely randomized block design using four replications. Sub plots consisted of combined application levels N-fertilizer with two level (0 and 300 kg.ha-1) Urea and two level of biological fertilizer (0 and 4 L.ha-1) in four stage that was from 4th leaf appearance until milk stage. Biological fertilizer was combined of Kadostim, Phosphotern, Aminolephorte and Hyomiphorte. Main plots consisted of two period of irrigation (8 and 12 days). Results: The results showed that highest grain yield was in conditional application at integrated treatment 300 kg.ha-1 Urea fertilizer and 4 L.ha-1 biological fertilizer (12.5 ton.ha-1) that with compared to control treatment showed increase 257%. In this treatment decrease irrigation (12 days period of irrigation) from pollination stage to seed maturity, decreased 8.9% in yield. The highest kernel number per ear and highest 1000 kernel weight was in integrated fertilizer treatment but in 8 days period of irrigation was not significant difference between integrated treatment and chemical treatment for 1000 kernel weight. The integrated treatment in 8 days period of irrigation showed the highest CGR, NAR and LAI (14.2 g.m-2.day-1, 2.9 g.mLA-2.day-1 and 5.1) respectively. And decrease 12 days period of irrigation had little effect on CGR and NAR but application of chemical fertilizer after decrease irrigation CGR had much reduce trend to compared integrated treatment. Conclusion: In conclusion for reach to high yield in corn biological fertilizer can not sufficient but integrated application of fertilizers (biological and chemical fertilizers) became causes significant increase in yield.