Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-disulfide-Bridge Peptide 5.5 from the Scorpion Hadrurus gertschi Inhibits the Growth of Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. massiliense

Multi-drug resistant microorganisms have been a growing concern during the last decades due to their contribution in mortality rates worldwide. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are broad spectrum antimicrobial agents that display potent microbicidal activity against a wide range of microorganisms. AMPs generally have a rapid mode of action that reduces the risk of resistance developing among pathogens. In this study, an AMP derived from scorpion venom, NDBP-5.5, was evaluated against Mycobacterium abscessus subsp. massiliense, a rapidly growing and emerging pathogen associated with healthcare infections. The minimal bactericidal concentration of NDBP-5.5, AMP quantity necessary to stop bacteria visible growth, against M. abscessus subsp. massiliense was 200 μM, a concentration that did not induce hemolysis of human red blood cells. The therapeutic index was 3.05 indicating a drug with low toxicity and therefore good clinical potential. Treatment of infected macrophages with NDBP-5.5 or clarithromycin presented similar results, reducing the bacterial load. M. abscessus subsp. massiliense-infected animals showed a decrease in the bacterial load of up to 70% when treated with NDBP-5.5. These results revealed the effective microbicidal activity of NDBP-5.5 against Mycobacterium, indicating its potential as an antimycobacterial agent.
The organisation of Luo conceptions of intelligence: A study of implicit theories in a Kenyan village

This article examines the organisation of concepts of intelligence among the Luo people in rural Kenya. In particular, it discusses what the components of these concepts are; how these components are expressed in the DhoLuo language, how they are interrelated, how they are used in judgements of other people, and how these components of Luo conceptions of intelligence are related to Western conceptions of intelligence. Peer, teacher, and adult in the community ratings of children on Luo components of intelligence are correlated with performance on conventional ability tests and with school achievement. The Luo concept of intelligence is primarily expressed in the DhoLuo vocabulary by four concepts (rieko, luoro, paro, and winjo), which appear to form two latent structures, social-emotional competence and cognitive competence. Indicators of only one of these concepts (rieko) and only one latent structure (cognitive competence) correlate with scores on conventional Western cognitive ability tests and with school achievement in English and mathematics. The article also presents a novel method for analysing data from people’s ratings of each other’s intelligence that is useful when not every one who is providing the ratings knows everyone who is to be rated, and when Likert rating scales are inapplicable.
MT-MMPS as Regulators of Vessel Stability Associated with Angiogenesis

The development of vascular system depends on the coordinated activity of a number of distinct families of molecules including growth factors and their receptors, cell adhesion molecules, extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules, and proteolytic enzymes. Matrix metalloproteases (MMPs) are a family of ECM degrading enzymes required for both physiological and pathological angiogenesis. Increasing evidence, point to a direct role of membrane type-MMPs (MT-MMPs) in vascular system stabilization, maturation, and leakage. Our understanding of the nature of MT-MMP interaction with extracellular and cell surface molecules and their multiple roles in vessel walls and perivascular stroma may provide new insights into mechanisms underlying vascular cell–ECM interactions and cell fate decisions in pathological conditions. Regulation of vascular leakage by MT-MMP interactions with the ECM could also lead to novel targeting opportunities for drug delivery in tumor. This review will shed lights on the emerging roles of MT1-MMP and MT4-MMP in vascular system alterations associated with cancer progression.
Effect of polypharmacy, potentially inappropriate medications and anticholinergic burden on clinical outcomes: a retrospective cohort study

Background: Polypharmacy, potentially inappropriate medications and anticholinergic burden (as assessed by the anticholinergic risk scale) are commonly used as quality indicators of pharmacotherapy in older adults. However, their role in clinical practice is undefined. We sought to investigate longitudinal changes in these indicators and their effects on clinical outcomes. Methods: We used Taiwan’s Longitudinal Health Insurance Database to retrieve quarterly information about drug use for people aged 65 years and older over a 10-year period. We analyzed the association between indicators and all-cause admission to hospital, fracture-specific admission to hospital and death using generalized estimating equations. Results: The study cohort comprised 59 042 older adults (65–74 yr: 39 358 [66.7%], 75–84 yr: 16 903 [28.6%], and ≥ 85 yr: 2781 [4.7%]). The mean changes in polypharmacy over the course of the study were greatest among patients aged 65–74 years (absolute difference +2.14, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.10–2.19), then among those aged 75–84 yr (+1.79, 95% CI 1.70–1.88), and finally those aged 85 years and older (+0.71, 95% CI 0.36–1.05). The number of potentially inappropriate medications increased among patients aged 65–74 years (+0.16 [0.15–0.18]) and 75–84 years (+0.09 [0.06–0.08]), but decreased in those aged 85 years and older (−0.15 [−0.26 to −0.04]). Polypharmacy, potentially inappropriate medications and anticholinergic risk scale were each associated with an increased risk of admission to hospital, but not with death. In addition, both polypharmacy (5–9 drugs: odds ratio [OR] 1.18, 95% CI 1.12–1.24; ≥ 10 drugs: OR 1.54, 95% CI 1.42–1.66) and anticholinergic burden (score 1–2: 1.39, 95% CI 1.31–1.48; ≥ 3: 1.53, 95% CI 1.41–1.66) showed dose–response relations with fracture-specific admission to hospital. Interpretation: The total number of drugs taken (polypharmacy), number of potentially inappropriate medications and anticholinergic risk changed during follow-up and varied across age groups in this cohort of older adult patients. These indicators showed dose–response relations with admission to hospital, but not with death.
Semi-supervised Clustering Using Bayesian Regularization

Text clustering is most commonly treated as a fully automated task without user supervision. However, we can improve clustering performance using supervision in the form of pairwise (must-link and cannot-link) constraints. This paper introduces a rigorous Bayesian framework for semi-supervised clustering which incorporates human supervision in the form of pairwise constraints both in the expectation step and maximization step of the EM algorithm. During the expectation step, we model the pairwise constraints as random variables, which enable us to capture the uncertainly in constraints in a principled manner. During the maximization step, we treat the constraint documents as prior information, and adjust the probability mass of model distribution to emphasize words occurring in constraint documents by using Bayesian regularization. Bayesian conjugate prior modeling makes the maximization step more efficient than gradient search methods in the traditional distance learning. Experimental results on several text datasets demonstrate significant advantages over existing algorithms.
Social cognition and bullying: Social inadequacy or skilled manipulation?

In contrast to the popular stereotype and research tradition of the 'oafish' bully lacking in social skills and understanding, the bully may be a cold, manipulative expert in social situations, organizing gangs and using subtle, indirect methods. Performance on a set of stories designed to assess understanding of cognitions and emotions was investigated in 193 7-10-year-olds in relation to role in bullying. Ringleader bullies scored higher than 'follower' bullies (those who helped or supported the bully), victims and defenders of the victim. Results are discussed in terms of the need for further research into cognitive skills and emotion understanding in children who bully, the possible developmental pathway of social cognition in bullying and important implications for intervention strategies.
A Sentence Processing Study of Relative Clauses in Korean with Two Attachment Sites

In the literature of relative clause (RC) attachment preferences with two antecedents, cross-linguistic differences have been reported. While abundant empirical studies have confirmed that English shows low attachment preference (LA), research on Korean, theoretically predicted to prefer high attachment preference (HA) has been scarce. Empirical support of the theory is in need for this language. Regarding the methodology, it has been shown that online and offline experiments produce consistent attachment preference for head-initial languages (e.g. English, Spanish). However, Japanese, a head final-language has shown an asymmetry between online and offline experiments. The purpose of the present study is twofold: First, to determine whether Korean is indeed an HA preference language, as is predicted by general psycholinguistic processing principles. Second, whether different kinds of methodology provide different attachment preferences in Korean, as in Japanese, but not in English. In the current study, a written survey test (offline) and a self-pace reading task (online) provided consistent results: HA preference for Korean. Therefore, we suggest that Korean indeed prefers HA and does not show the asymmetry to attachment preference, observed in Japanese. Cross-linguistic differences based on word order and test methodology are discussed.
Clustering by weighted cuts in directed graphs

In this paper we formulate spectral clustering in directed graphs as an optimization problem, the objective being a weighted cut in the directed graph. This objective extends several popular criteria like the normalized cut and the averaged cut to asymmetric affinity data. We show that this problem can be relaxed to a Rayleigh quotient problem for a symmetric matrix obtained from the original affinities and therefore a large body of the results and algorithms developed for spectral clustering of symmetric data immediately extends to asymmetric cuts.
Voice messaging for mobile delay-tolerant networks

Mobile ad-hoc networks, especially when they are sparse, are not well suited for ad-hoc voice communication when using end-to-end real-time audio streams: as paths grow in length, stability and forwarding performance suffer, and sometimes paths may not exist at all. In this paper, we suggest using asynchronous voice messaging built upon delay-tolerant networking concepts with some degree of hop-by-hop reliability to enable communication even in sparse environments and ensure intelligible speech. We evaluate the resulting walkie-talkie-style service in different synthetic and mobility-trace-driven settings and report on our experience from interoperable implementations on various mobile device platforms.
Notes on Materiality and Sociality

In this paper it is argued that materiality and sociality are produced together. In order to explore the implications of this suggestion, three metaphors are developed through a series of note-like stories. The first is that of semiotics. This suggests that materials are relational effects. The second is that of strategy. Here it is suggested that strategy is recursively and reflexively implicated in the performance of materiality. And the third is that of the patchwork. This is a way of exploring the possibility that though material and social relations might be matters of local performance, they may not ‘add up’ to form an overall pattern or structure.
Aging and biography : explorations in adult development

Personal life narratives can serve as a rich source of new insights into the experience of human aging. In this comp;rehensive volume, an international team of editors and contributors provide effective approaches to using biography to enhance our understanding of adult development. In addition to providing new theoretical aspects on aging and biography, the book also details new developments concerning the practical use of different biographical approaches in both research and clinical work. This is a landmark volume advancing the use of narrative approaches in gerontology.
Context in Video Search: Is Close-by Good Enough When Using Linking?

Information or feedback about users' information needs beyond a brief query is crucial for improving the effectiveness of video search. One paradigm that addresses this issue is search and linking, i.e., after an initial search the user selects an item and requests a set of items that share properties with the one selected. We propose an approach for the linking step using both textual and visual features. We first evaluate the proposed method on the MediaEval 2013 Search and Hyperlinking data set. The video segment from which linking starts cannot be assumed to be relevant and to have well-defined boundaries in a real-world setting, in contrast to the benchmarking data set. We thus investigate the performance of the proposed linking method on actual search results of different systems and using only a coarse estimate of a contextual segment (e.g., scene, story). The linking results starting from a related segment among the top-ranked search results are nearly as good as when using the correct segment as starting point. The results show that contextual information surrounding the segment used for generating the linking results plays a crucial role. When starting from a relevant or at least related item in the search result, the use of context information significantly improves results. For segments related to the query, the linking results are similar in terms of performance to those starting from relevant segments (without context), but contextual information does not improve the results.
The Importance of Feeling Awkward: A Dialogical Narrative Phenomenology of Socially Awkward Situations

This study employed a dialogical narrative phenomenology to gather and analyze 16 narratives of socially awkward situations. These analyses revealed a characteristic pattern for socially awkward situations. The moment of awkwardness was characterized by a sense of moral or social transgression that magnified and intensified social experience and focused perceptions on social behaviors. Those social behaviors expressed awkwardness through anxious, hesitant, disjointed, or avoidant actions. Participants felt an imperative to transform the awkward situation and did so either by avoiding it or by directly addressing it and attempting to resolve it. Avoidant responses were associated with a magnification and extension of the effects of social awkwardness while direct responses were associated with a re-established sense of social harmony. The author interprets these findings to suggest that feeling and expressing social awkwardness can be meaningful and productive elements of social relationships. Feelings of awkwardness focus attention and intention on social relationships; when these feelings are expressed, others can take them up and become invested in the social transformation they engender.
Genome-Wide Association Study on Male Genital Shape and Size in Drosophila melanogaster

Male genital morphology of animals with internal fertilization and promiscuous mating systems have been one of the most diverse and rapidly evolving morphological traits. The male genital morphology in general is known to have low phenotypic and genetic variations, but the genetic basis of the male genital variation remains unclear. Drosophila melanogaster and its closely related species are morphologically very similar, but the shapes of the posterior lobe, a cuticular projection on the male genital arch are distinct from each other, representing a model system for studying the genetic basis of male genital morphology. In this study, we used highly inbred whole genome sequenced strains of D. melanogaster to perform genome wide association analysis on posterior lobe morphology. We quantified the outline shape of posterior lobes with Fourier coefficients obtained from elliptic Fourier analysis and performed principal component analysis, and posterior lobe size. The first and second principal components (PC1 and PC2) explained approximately 88% of the total variation of the posterior lobe shape. We then examined the association between the principal component scores and posterior lobe size and 1902142 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). As a result, we obtained 15, 14 and 15 SNPs for PC1, PC2 and posterior lobe size with P-values smaller than 10-5. Based on the location of the SNPs, 13, 13 and six protein coding genes were identified as potential candidates for PC1, PC2 and posterior lobe size, respectively. In addition to the previous findings showing that the intraspecific posterior shape variation are regulated by multiple QTL with strong effects, the present study suggests that the intraspecific variation may be under polygenic regulation with a number of loci with small effects. Further studies are required for investigating whether these candidate genes are responsible for the intraspecific posterior lobe shape variation.
Incorporating Carbon Credits into Breeding Objectives for Plantation Species in Australia

Forest tree plantations can capture more carbon than most other land uses. For example, a radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) or blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus Labill.) plantations in the Green Triangle region in south-eastern Australia can on average produce more than 20 m3ha-1y-1 of wood, with a 19% and 25% rate of carbon sequestration, respectively (Polglase et al. 2008). As carbon trade is becoming a reality, there is a need to incorporate carbon credits into the economic models of plantation forestry for those major and some emerging species. Carbon sequestration needs to be considered as a biological trait and bio-economic models need to include its value. In this chapter we will show how carbon sequestration can be incorporated into the breeding objectives of Australian tree improvement programs for commercial plantation species.
Republication of “Acceptability of Behavioral lnterventions Used in Classrooms: The Influence of Amount of Teacher Time, Severity of Behavior Problem, and Type of Intervention”

This article explored factors related to teacher judgments that an intervention is either acceptable or unacceptable for use in typical classroom environments. The acceptability of various interventions was assessed by having 180 preservice and student teachers read case studies involving a classroom intervention and then judging the acceptability of the intervention according to five factors — whether the intervention was considered generally acceptable, whether it posed undue risk to the child, whether it required excessive teacher time, whether it had negative effects on nontarget children, and whether it required such high levels of teacher skill that the typical teacher could not implement it. The major outcomes of the study included: (a) the determination that acceptability of a classroom intervention is not a unitary concept, rather it embodies five components; (b) the construction of a reliable instrument for assessing the acceptability of classroom interventions; and(c) the finding that various interventions differ markedly in their acceptability. Results are discussed in terms of relevance to developing interventions that are effective and yet can be utilized by regular classroom teachers.
Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Deficiency in Chinese Patients with Vitiligo: A Case-Control Study

Background Low vitamin D levels have been noted in patients with a variety of autoimmune diseases. A recent study showed that low vitamin D levels may be associated with vitiligo. Objectives To assess 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) status in Chinese patients with vitiligo in comparison of normal controls and explore possible affecting factors. Methods We performed a case-control study including 171 patients, 50 controls in 25(OH)D lowest months and 30 patients, 20 controls in 25(OH)D highest months. Demographic and clinical variables of patients were analyzed to determine the correlation with 25(OH) D levels. Results 25(OH)D mean value of patients was highest in September and October, lowest in March. None of the patients and normal controls had ‘sufficient’ 25(OH)D (> = 75 nmol/L). No significant difference was found in either 25(OH)D mean values or insufficiency/deficiency ratio between patients and controls in 25(OH)D highest and lowest periods. Female patients were at a higher risk of 25(OH)D deficiency than male patients(P = 0.019). For non-segmental type, patients with 25(OH)D deficiency were more likely to have autoimmune thyroid disease than those with insufficiency (P = 0.016). Sex (P = 0.035), thyroid conditions (p = 0.034), testing month (p = 0.049) were independent factors affecting 25(OH)D level in multivariate analysis. Conclusion Chinese population lack 25(OH)D universally. 25(OH)D level shows no correlation with onset of vitiligo in Chinese. However deficient 25(OH)D level may be linked to autoimmune disorders in patients.
Impact of School-wide Positive Behavior Supports on Student Behavior in the Middle Grades

Abstract Research shows that school-wide positive behavior supports (SWPBS) can be an effective alternative to traditional reactive, punitive approaches to problem behavior. However, few studies examine the use of the approach as part of a comprehensive school improvement process involving academic as well as behavioral goals, particularly with regard to use of data-driven decision making and data teams. This article describes the efforts of a low-performing middle school in establishing preventative measures and interventions within such a framework. Results indicate a reduction in teacher discipline referrals and student suspensions, including those involving students with disabilities and statistically significant improvement on 30 of 47 items of a school climate and student resiliency survey. In addition, school scores on state mastery tests in both reading and math improved by 25% and 11%, respectively. This study suggests that the implementation of a SWPBS framework may result in improved academic and behavioral outcomes for all students.