Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Salmonellosis in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1997 to 1999

Salmonella spp. was the major cause of reported foodborne diseases in the last years in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, South of Brazil. Epidemiological data on salmonellosis, occurred in the period of 1997 to 1999 and supplied by the Division of Sanitary Surveillance (DVS/RS), were analysed according to the following factors: total number of confirmed outbreaks, number of people involved, outbreaks incidence according to the period of the year, age and sex of involved people, food vehicle, food storage conditions, local where the disease occurred, and possible causes of the outbreaks. The results indicated that 8217 people were involved, and 1557 had to be hospitalized. The highest number of outbreaks occurred during springtime and the principal age group affected was between 16 and 50 years. The most common food vehicle was salad prepared with homemade mayonnaise (42.45%). The principal causes of salmonellosis were raw-materials not submitted to regulatory inspection (22.92%), mainly eggs, and foods maintained at room temperature for more than 2 hours (20.55%). The majority of the outbreaks occurred in private homes (43.70%) and commercial food establishments (25.21%).
Characterization of abnormalities in the visual system of the mutant mouse pearl

Mice of the mutant strain pearl (pe/pe) differ from the wild strain by a single gene mutation, which leads to a lightening of the coat color. We tested this strain to see if this mutant gene also expressed itself in one or more visual abnormalities. Pearl mice were found to lack totally the optokinetic nystagmus reflex that was present in every normal mouse that we examined. This lack of optokinetic nystagmus was not due to oculomotor defects, since postrotatory nystagmus was normal. As described for other pigmentation mutants, we found that pearl mutants had a reduced ipsilateral projection to the lateral geniculate nucleus, superior colliculus, and visual cortex. We recorded from single cells in the superior colliculus and found response properties and light sensitivities to be normal over the luminance range at which optokinetic nystagmus was tested. However, at very dim backgrounds (scotopic levels), the incremental sensitivities of these cells in pearl mice were about 100 times lower than those of normal mice. This reduction in sensitivity was restricted to scotopic backgrounds and was not due to abnormalities in either the time course of dark adaptation or the receptive field sizes of single cells. In recordings of the electroretinographic response, both the waveforms and the normalized magnitudes of the A and B waves of pearl were indistinguishable from those of normal mice, which seems to indicate that the cause of pearl's sensitivity defect is located central to the main electrical events in the photoreceptors. The normality of many aspects of the visual system of pearl mice contrasts sharply with the complete absence of optokinetic nystagmus, with the reduced ipsilateral projection, and with the reduced dark sensitivity of the cells in the superior colliculus.
GDNF‐enhanced axonal regeneration and myelination following spinal cord injury is mediated by primary effects on neurons

We previously demonstrated that coadministration of glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) with grafts of Schwann cells (SCs) enhanced axonal regeneration and remyelination following spinal cord injury (SCI). However, the cellular target through which GDNF mediates such actions was unclear. Here, we report that GDNF enhanced both the number and caliber of regenerated axons in vivo and increased neurite outgrowth of dorsal root ganglion neurons (DRGN) in vitro, suggesting that GDNF has a direct effect on neurons. In SC‐DRGN coculture, GDNF significantly increased the number of myelin sheaths produced by SCs. GDNF treatment had no effect on the proliferation of isolated SCs but enhanced the proliferation of SCs already in contact with axons. GDNF increased the expression of the 140 kDa neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) in isolated SCs but not their expression of the adhesion molecule L1 or the secretion of the neurotrophins NGF, NT3, or BDNF. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that GDNF‐enhanced axonal regeneration and SC myelination is mediated mainly through a direct effect of GDNF on neurons. They also suggest that the combination of GDNF administration and SC transplantation may represent an effective strategy to promote axonal regeneration and myelin formation after injury in the spinal cord. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The contribution of forage oats to annual feed production when grown after maize in a double cropping system

Abstract The cool season forage production of Florida oats (FO) was measured in a series of replicated small plot trials at the Ruakura Agriculture Centre over five successive seasons. The oats were grown as part of a double cropping system using maize as the complementary warm season crop. Combined annual forage maize/oats yields averaged 26 t dry matter (DM)/ha. Experiments in 1978 and 1979 showed that forage production of the earlier maturing FO was higher than that of New Zealand-bred oat and wheat cultivars (11–13 t DM/ha v. 9–11 t DM/ha) when sown in April and cut in early October (‘ensiling’ yield). Subsequent experiments from 1980 to 1982 measured the yield response of FO to three rates of nitrogen (N) fertiliser (O, 35 and 70 kg N/ha) applied during tillering, following direct drilling into maize stubble. ‘Ensiling’ yields were high (9–13 t DM/ha) but yield responses to N fertiliser were small except in 1981 when June and July were warmer than average. FO was capable of consistently high yields w.
The Anticonvulsant and Antioxidant Effects of Berberine in Kainate-induced Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Rats

Introduction Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is a long lasting neurological disorder in which patients suffer from spontaneous seizures. New treatments with novel mechanisms of action are needed to help those patients whose seizures are resistant to available drugs. In this study, we investigated the possible neuroprotective effect of berberine in an intrahippocampal kainate model of TLE in rat. Methods In the present study, the anticonvulsant and antioxidant effects of intraperitoneal administration of berberine (25, 50 and 100 mg/kg), was evaluated in intrahippocampal kainate (4µg)-induced TLE in rats. Results The results showed that the kainate rats exhibit acute and spontaneous seizures in 24 hours and two weeks after intrahippocampal kainic acid injection. Administration of berberine, significantly decreased the Racine score and rate of incidence of seizure in kainate rats (P<0.05). On the other hand, berberine ameliorated the lipid peroxidation (P<0.001) and nitrite (P<0.001) level, but had no effect on SOD activity. Discussion These data suggest that berberine pretreatment could attenuate spontaneous recurrent seizures. Since, administration of berberine decreased lipid peroxidation in kainate rats, it seems that berberine favorable effect is due to its effectiveness in lessening of oxidative stress in rat.
End-to-End Learning for Structured Prediction Energy Networks

Structured Prediction Energy Networks (SPENs) are a simple, yet expressive family of structured prediction models (Belanger and McCallum, 2016). An energy function over candidate structured outputs is given by a deep network, and predictions are formed by gradient-based optimization. This paper presents end-to-end learning for SPENs, where the energy function is discriminatively trained by back-propagating through gradient-based prediction. In our experience, the approach is substantially more accurate than the structured SVM method of Belanger and McCallum (2016), as it allows us to use more sophisticated non-convex energies. We provide a collection of techniques for improving the speed, accuracy, and memory requirements of end-to-end SPENs, and demonstrate the power of our method on 7-Scenes image denoising and CoNLL-2005 semantic role labeling tasks. In both, inexact minimization of non-convex SPEN energies is superior to baseline methods that use simplistic energy functions that can be minimized exactly.
Elucidating the Genotype–Phenotype Relationships and Network Perturbations of Human Shared and Specific Disease Genes from an Evolutionary Perspective

To date, numerous studies have been attempted to determine the extent of variation in evolutionary rates between human disease and nondisease (ND) genes. In our present study, we have considered human autosomal monogenic (Mendelian) disease genes, which were classified into two groups according to the number of phenotypic defects, that is, specific disease (SPD) gene (one gene: one defect) and shared disease (SHD) gene (one gene: multiple defects). Here, we have compared the evolutionary rates of these two groups of genes, that is, SPD genes and SHD genes with respect to ND genes. We observed that the average evolutionary rates are slow in SHD group, intermediate in SPD group, and fast in ND group. Group-to-group evolutionary rate differences remain statistically significant regardless of their gene expression levels and number of defects. We demonstrated that disease genes are under strong selective constraint if they emerge through edgetic perturbation or drug-induced perturbation of the interactome network, show tissue-restricted expression, and are involved in transmembrane transport. Among all the factors, our regression analyses interestingly suggest the independent effects of 1) drug-induced perturbation and 2) the interaction term of expression breadth and transmembrane transport on protein evolutionary rates. We reasoned that the drug-induced network disruption is a combination of several edgetic perturbations and, thus, has more severe effect on gene phenotypes.
A case-control study of childhood pedestrian injuries in Perth, Western Australia.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To identify the determinants of childhood pedestrian injuries, taking the child's exposure to the road environment into account. DESIGN: This was a case-control study. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: The study was conducted in Perth, Western Australia between 1991 and 1993. Altogether 100 injured and 400 uninjured child pedestrians aged 1 to 14 years were studied. Aspects of the child's social and physical environments, measures of his or her behaviour, cognitive skills, and "habitual" exposure to the road environment, as well as his or her knowledge of road safety, were recorded. MAIN RESULTS: The likelihood of injury increased by 12% with each 10,000 vehicles per day increase in the volume of traffic (odds ratio (OR) 1.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.05, 1.19) on roads most frequently crossed. In addition, the presence of visual obstacles on the verge of the child's street of residence increased the likelihood of injury by more than 2.6 times (OR 2.68, 95% CI = 1.42, 5.02). In contrast, the absence of footpaths was associated with a 52% reduction in the likelihood of injury compared with the presence of footpaths on the child's street of residence (OR 0.48, 95% CI = 0.27, 0.87). CONCLUSION: The amount of exposure to the road environment and the nature of the road environment to which the child pedestrian was exposed partly influenced the likelihood of injury in children from low socioeconomic areas, male children, and children aged 13 to 14 years. Until now, the excess incidence of childhood pedestrian injuries in these subgroups of the population had not been explained because the child's exposure per se had not been examined.
Observations of pore‐scale growth patterns of carbon dioxide hydrate using X‐ray computed microtomography

Natural and artificial gas hydrates with internal pores of nano to centimeters and weak grain‐cementation have been widely reported, while the detailed formation process of grain‐cementing hydrates remains poorly identified. Pore‐scale morphology of carbon dioxide (CO2) hydrate formed in a partially brine‐saturated porous medium was investigated via X‐ray computed microtomography (X‐ray CMT). Emphasis is placed on the pore‐scale growth patterns of gas hydrate, including the growth of dendritic hydrate crystals on preformed hydrate and water‐wetted grains, porous nature of the hydrate phase, volume expansion of more than 200% during the water‐to‐hydrate phase transformation, preference of unfrozen water wetting hydrophilic minerals, and the relevance to a weak cementation effect on macroscale physical properties. The presented pore‐scale morphology and growth patterns of gas hydrate are expected in natural sediment settings where free gas is available for hydrate formation, such as active gas vents, gas seeps, mud volcanoes, permafrost gas hydrate provinces, and CO2 injected formation for the sake of geologic carbon storage; and in laboratory hydrate samples synthesized from partially brine‐saturated sediments or formed from water‐gas interfaces.
A INFLUÊNCIA DA IMAGEM DO BRASIL NAS ATITUDES COM RELAÇÃO A PRODUTOS BRASILEIROS: UMA INVESTIGAÇÃO EMPÍRICA DO EFEITO PAÍS DE ORIGEM

The effects related to the country of origin refer to the influence of the information about the country of origin on the attitudes and behaviors with regards to a product or a brand. The vast majority of the studies about the country of origin effect on consumers’ process of purchase alternatives evaluation refers to non-Brazilian products. Conversely, this research proposes to study such effects for Brazilian products that are marketed abroad, by means of a quantitative research with Dutch undergraduate students. The analyzed Brazilian products were cow meat, fresh fruits, shoes and furniture. In conclusion, it was verified that the country of origin effect does not exist for the Brazilian cow meat, which means that the image respondents have about Brazil does not affect their attitudes towards this product. On the other hand, for the other products investigated in this research, it was observed the existence of the country of origin effect. These results can help Brazilian firms that deal with questions related to the country of origin in their international marketing activities, since it is verified whether Brazil’s image favors or harms the Brazilian products investigated in this study.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a relatively new website that contains the major elements required to conduct research: an integrated participant compensation system; a large participant pool; and a streamlined process of study design, participant recruitment, and data collection. In this article, we describe and evaluate the potential contributions of MTurk to psychology and other social sciences. Findings indicate that (a) MTurk participants are slightly more demographically diverse than are standard Internet samples and are significantly more diverse than typical American college samples; (b) participation is affected by compensation rate and task length, but participants can still be recruited rapidly and inexpensively; (c) realistic compensation rates do not affect data quality; and (d) the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. Overall, MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly.
Compilation of Historical Local Lymph Node Data for Evaluation of Skin Sensitization Alternative Methods

Background: Within the toxicology community, considerable effort is directed toward the development of alternative methods for skin sensitization testing. The availability of high‐quality, relevant, and reliable in vivo data regarding skin sensitization is essential for the effective evaluation of alternative methodologies. Ideally, data derived from humans would be the most appropriate source because the test methods are attempting to predict a toxicologic effect in humans. Unfortunately, insufficient human data of the necessary quality are available, so it is necessary to rely on the best available animal data. In recent years, the local lymph node assay (LLNA) has emerged as a practical option for assessing the skin sensitization potential of chemicals. In addition to accurately identifying skin sensitizers, the LLNA can also provide a reliable measure of relative sensitization potency, information that is pivotal to the successful management of human health risks. Objective: To provide a database of robust in vivo data to calibrate, evaluate, and eventually validate new approaches for skin sensitization testing. Methods: LLNA data derived from previously conducted studies were compiled from the published literature and unpublished sources. Results: We provide a database that comprises LLNA data on 211 individual chemicals. This extensive chemical data set encompasses both the chemical and biologic diversity of known chemical allergens. To cover the range of relative allergenic potencies, the data set includes data on 13 extreme, 21 strong, 69 moderate, and 66 weak contact allergens, classified according to each allergen's mathematically estimated concentration of chemical required to induce a threefold stimulation index. In addition, there are also 42 chemicals that are considered to be nonsensitizers. In terms of chemical diversity, the database contains data pertaining to the chemical classes represented by aldehydes, ketones, aromatic amines, quinones, and acrylates, as well as compounds that have different reactivity mechanisms. In addition to two‐dimensional chemical structures, the physicochemical parameters included are log Kp, log KO/W, and molecular weight. Conclusions: The list of chemicals contained in the data set represents both the chemical and biologic diversity that is known to exist for chemical allergens and non‐allergens. It is anticipated that this database will help accelerate the development, evaluation, and eventual validation of new approaches to skin sensitization assessment.
In vitro activity of lomefloxacin (SC-47111; NY-198), a difluoroquinolone 3-carboxylic acid, compared with those of other quinolones

Lomefloxacin (SC-47111; NY-198) is a new difluoroquinolone agent. It inhibited 90% of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. , Enterobacter spp. , Citrobacter spp. , Proteus mirabilis, Morganella morganii, Proteus vulgaris, Serratia marcescens, Salmonella spp. , Shigella spp. , Aeromonas spp. , Yersinia spp. , Haemophilus influenzae, and Neisseria gonorrhoeae at less than or equal to 2 micrograms/ml. Lomefloxacin inhibited 90% of Pseudomonas aeruginosa at 4 micrograms/ml. Lomefloxacin was equal in activity to norfloxacin against Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. , Enterobacter spp. , Haemophilus influenzae, and Neisseria gonorrhoeae but was twofold less active against Proteus spp. , Providencia spp. , Serratia marcescens, Salmonella spp. , and Shigella spp. Ofloxacin was generally 2- to 4-fold more active, and ciprofloxacin was 4- to 16-fold more active. Lomefloxacin inhibited Staphylococcus aureus, including methicillin-resistant isolates, but MICs for 90% of streptococcal species tested were 8 micrograms/ml. In the presence of 9 mM Mg2+, MICs for Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Serratia marcescens, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were increased, as they were when they were tested in urine. A single-step increase in resistance to eightfold above the MIC occurred at a frequency of less than 10(-10), but serial transfer of bacteria in the presence of the agent produced MIC increases. Lomefloxacin had activity and properties comparable to those of many of the new quinolones.
Lactase polymorphism in adult British natives: estimating allele frequencies by enzyme assays in autopsy samples.

In an attempt to estimate allele frequencies of lactase persistence in adult British natives, sucrase was assayed simultaneously with lactase under conditions that gave optimal activities for both enzymes. A trimodal distribution in the ratios of enzyme activities was demonstrated. Circumstantial evidence and statistical analyses suggest that the trimodal distribution is due to the different levels of lactase activity in the three genotypes--homozygous persistent, heterozygous, and homozygous nonpersistent, and that it is possible to correct for "nongenetic" variation by using sucrase as an internal standard. The allele frequency for lactase persistence was estimated to be . 747. The implications of our findings on the genetic mechanisms involved in lactase persistence are discussed.
Suppression of tumor formation in lymph nodes by L-selectin–mediated natural killer cell recruitment

Natural killer (NK) cells are known to reject certain tumors in vivo; however, the ability of NK cells to prevent metastasis of tumors into secondary lymphoid organs has not been addressed. Here, we report that in tumor-bearing hosts, NK cells are recruited to regional lymph nodes in wild-type mice, but not in mice deficient for L-selectin or L-selectin ligands. By adoptive transfer and complete Freund's adjuvant stimulation experiments, we demonstrated that L-selectin on NK cells and L-selectin ligands on endothelial cells are essential for NK cell recruitment to lymph nodes. Furthermore, freshly isolated resident lymph node NK cells lysed tumors efficiently, and metastasis of B16 melanoma cells to draining lymph nodes was suppressed in wild-type or Rag-1–deficient mice, but not when NK cells were depleted. Although L-selectin–deficient NK cells efficiently lysed tumor cells in vitro, NK cell–dependent suppression of tumor metastasis was diminished in mice deficient for L-selectin or L-selectin ligands because of insufficient NK cell recruitment to lymph nodes. Moreover, tumor metastasis was substantially inhibited in L-selectin–deficient mice reconstituted with wild-type NK cells. These findings indicate that L-selectin–mediated NK cell recruitment plays a crucial role in the control of tumor metastasis into secondary lymphoid organs.
Self-Calibration of a 1D Projective Camera and Its Application to the Self-Calibration of a 2D Projective Camera

We introduce the concept of self-calibration of a 1D projective camera from point correspondences, and describe a method for uniquely determining the two internal parameters of a 1D camera, based on the trifocal tensor of three 1D images. The method requires the estimation of the trifocal tensor which can be achieved linearly with no approximation unlike the trifocal tensor of 2D images and solving for the roots of a cubic polynomial in one variable. Interestingly enough, we prove that a 2D camera undergoing planar motion reduces to a 1D camera. From this observation, we deduce a new method for self-calibrating a 2D camera using planar motions. Both the self-calibration method for a 1D camera and its applications for 2D camera calibration are demonstrated on real image sequences.
Is Life Nasty, Brutish, and Short? Philosophies of Life and Well-Being

Three studies examine the extent to which laypeople endorse Hobbes's (1651/1960) view of life as “nasty, brutish, and short” and explore the relationships between this philosophy and well-being. Participants answered two binary choice questions: Is life short or long? And, is life easy or hard? Across a series of studies, the majority of participants indicated that they believed that life is short and hard, while the opposite philosophy, that life is long and easy, was least popular. In addition, these philosophies were correlated with participants' views of their lives: the short-hard philosophy was associated with lower levels of well-being (Studies 1 through 3), civic engagement (Study 2), and optimism about the future (Study 3), compared to the long-easy philosophy.