Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Susceptibility Testing Conditions for Detection of Azole Resistance in Aspergillus spp.: NCCLS Collaborative Evaluation

ABSTRACT The most important role of susceptibility testing is to identify potentially resistant isolates for the agent being evaluated. Standard testing guidelines recently have been proposed for antifungal susceptibility testing of filamentous fungi (molds). This collaborative (eight centers) study evaluated further newly proposed guidelines (NCCLS, proposed standard M38-P, 1998) and other testing conditions for antifungal susceptibility testing of Aspergillus spp. to itraconazole and three new triazoles, posaconazole (SCH56592), ravuconazole (BMS-207147), and voriconazole. MICs of itraconazole, posaconazole, ravuconazole, and voriconazole for 15 selected isolates of three species of Aspergillus (A. fumigatus, A. flavus, and A. terreus) with well documented in vitro, clinical, or animal data were determined in each center by using four medium formulations (standard RPMI-1640 [RPMI], RPMI with 2% dextrose, antibiotic medium 3 [M3], and M3 with 2% dextrose) and two criteria of MIC determination (complete [MIC-0s] and prominent [MIC-2s] growth inhibition) at 24, 48, and 72 h. The highest reproducibility (92 to 99%) was seen with the standard RPMI and M3 media. Moreover, the distinction between itraconazole-resistant (MICs of >8 μg/ml for clinically resistant strains) and -susceptible (MICs of 0.03 to 1 μg/ml) isolates, as well as between a voriconazole-resistant laboratory mutant and other isolates (voriconazole MICs of 2 to >8 versus 0.12 to 2 μg/ml), was more consistently evident with the standard RPMI medium and when MIC-0s were determined at 48 h. These results provide further refinement of the testing guidelines for susceptibility testing ofAspergillus spp. and warrant consideration for inclusion in the future NCCLS document M38-A.
Self-efficacy, Academic Engagement, and Student-teacher Relationships for Ninth-grade African American Male Students’ Algebra I Achievement: a Structural Equation Model

The purpose of the current study was to discern the effects of three latent constructs – self-efficacy, academic engagement, and student-teacher relationships on Algebra I achievement among ninth-grade African American male students. A nationally representative sample from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS09) was used in the study. Study participants were 697 African American males enrolled in ninth grade in the fall of 2009 across the United States. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analytical procedures were performed to test the hypothesized relationships of Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) theoretical assumptions. The results indicate that the three latent variables directly or indirectly were related to Algebra I achievement among ninth grade African American male students. Moreover, the results revealed that self-efficacy and student-teacher relationships constructs had direct significant impact on Algebra I academic performance; nonetheless, the relationships were not strong. These two latent variables had small effect sizes of 5% and 1%, respectively. Combined, self-efficacy, academic engagement, and student-teacher relationships explained only 8% of the variance in the Algebra I achievement among African American males across the United States (R2=.08). The magnitude effect of these factors on Algebra I achievement was minimal. Overall, these findings suggest that the self-efficacy and student-teacher relationships latent variables had a negligible effect as predictors of Algebra I academic success among ninth grade African American male students. A summary of the results are presented and future research is recommended.
Adenosine deaminase in the diagnosis of pleural effusions.

The activity of adenosine deaminase (ADA) was determined in serum and pleural fluid of 90 patients with pleural effusions of various aetiology. Tuberculous pleural effusions, empyemas and rheumatoid pleural effusions demonstrated significantly higher activities of ADA than parapneumonic , nonspecific and malignant pleural effusions and effusions in systemic lupus erythematosus and congestive heart failure. In tuberculosis, empyema and rheumatoid arthritis ADA activity was significantly higher in pleural fluid than in serum, indicating a local synthesis of ADA by cells within the pleural cavity in these diseases.
Multi-resolution stacking for speech separation based on boosted DNN

Recent progress in speech separation shows that deep neural networks (DNN) based supervised methods can improve the performance in difficult noise conditions and exhibit good generalization to unseen noise scenarios. However, existing approaches do not explore contextual information sufficiently. In this paper, we focus on exploring contextual information using DNN. The proposed method has two parts—a multi-resolution stacking (MRS) framework and a boosted DNN (bDNN) classifier. The MRS framework trains a stack of classifier ensembles, where each classifier in an ensemble concatenates the raw acoustic feature and the outputs of its bottom ensemble as a new feature, and different classifiers in an ensemble work with different window lengths. The bDNN classifier first generates multiple base predictions for a frame from a given window that is centered on the frame and contains multiple neighboring frames, and then aggregates the base predictions for the final prediction. Our experimental comparison with DNN based speech separation in difficult noise scenarios demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of both prediction accuracy and objective speech intelligibility.
VELDA: Relating an Image Tweet's Text and Images

Image tweets are becoming a prevalent form of socialmedia, but little is known about their content — textualand visual — and the relationship between the two mediums.Our analysis of image tweets shows that while visualelements certainly play a large role in image-text relationships, other factors such as emotional elements, also factor into the relationship. We develop Visual-Emotional LDA (VELDA), a novel topic model to capturethe image-text correlation from multiple perspectives (namely, visual and emotional). Experiments on real-world image tweets in both Englishand Chinese and other user generated content, show that VELDA significantly outperforms existingmethods on cross-modality image retrieval. Even in other domains where emotion does not factor in imagechoice directly, our VELDA model demonstrates good generalization ability, achieving higher fidelity modeling of such multimedia documents.
Reward-Modulated Hebbian Plasticity as Leverage for Partially Embodied Control in Compliant Robotics

In embodied computation (or morphological computation), part of the complexity of motor control is offloaded to the body dynamics. We demonstrate that a simple Hebbian-like learning rule can be used to train systems with (partial) embodiment, and can be extended outside of the scope of traditional neural networks. To this end, we apply the learning rule to optimize the connection weights of recurrent neural networks with different topologies and for various tasks. We then apply this learning rule to a simulated compliant tensegrity robot by optimizing static feedback controllers that directly exploit the dynamics of the robot body. This leads to partially embodied controllers, i.e., hybrid controllers that naturally integrate the computations that are performed by the robot body into a neural network architecture. Our results demonstrate the universal applicability of reward-modulated Hebbian learning. Furthermore, they demonstrate the robustness of systems trained with the learning rule. This study strengthens our belief that compliant robots should or can be seen as computational units, instead of dumb hardware that needs a complex controller. This link between compliant robotics and neural networks is also the main reason for our search for simple universal learning rules for both neural networks and robotics.
High blood monocyte counts and neopterin levels in children with autistic disorder.

OBJECTIVE Leukocyte counts and plasma neopterin levels were determined in autistic children and matched healthy comparison subjects. METHOD Blood from 31 autistic children and 28 age- and gender-matched healthy comparison subjects was analyzed for numbers of neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, and total leukocytes and for plasma neopterin levels. RESULTS The monocyte count and neopterin level were significantly higher in the autistic children than in the comparison subjects. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that the immune system may be activated in some children with autism.
Interaction between comorbidity and cancer.

BACKGROUND Older patients have an average of three comorbidities in addition to their cancer. Oncologic studies have usually ignored this aspect when adjusting for confounders. There is mounting evidence that comorbidity interacts with risk, survival, disease progression, and treatment of elderly patients with cancer. The strength of many of these interactions increases with age. METHODS A review of the literature was undertaken regarding two of these interactions: cancer risk and prognosis. RESULTS In older patients, the risk and behavior of cancer can be strongly affected by comorbidities and their related treatment. Rather than a blanket effect, this effect might be attached to groups of syndromes with common pathophysiologic mechanisms. This is notably true for metabolic disorders and inflammatory diseases. CONCLUSIONS In addition to focusing on the influence of cancer treatment on comorbidity or on the effect of comorbidity in delivering cancer treatment, future endeavors will need to consider the direct impact of comorbidity on the risk and the behavior of the cancer in elderly patients.
Effects of post-session administration of methylene blue on fear extinction and contextual memory in adults with claustrophobia.

OBJECTIVE Preclinical studies have shown that low-dose methylene blue increases mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase activity in the brain and improves memory retention after learning tasks, including fear extinction. The authors report on the first controlled experiment to examine the memory-enhancing effects of posttraining methylene blue administration on retention of fear extinction and contextual memory following fear extinction training. METHOD Adult participants displaying marked claustrophobic fear were randomly assigned to double-blind administration of 260 mg of methylene blue (N=23) or administration of placebo (N=19) immediately following six 5-minute extinction trials in an enclosed chamber. Retesting occurred 1 month later to assess fear renewal as indexed by peak fear during exposure to a nontraining chamber, with the prediction that the effects of methylene blue would vary as a function of fear reduction achieved during extinction training. Incidental contextual memory was assessed 1 and 30 days after training to assess the cognitive-enhancing effects of methylene blue independent of its effects on fear attenuation. RESULTS Consistent with predictions, participants displaying low end fear posttraining showed significantly less fear at the 1-month follow-up if they received methylene blue posttraining compared with placebo. In contrast, participants displaying moderate to high levels of posttraining fear tended to fare worse at the follow-up if they received methylene blue posttraining. Methylene blue's enhancement of contextual memory was unrelated to initial or posttraining claustrophobic fear. CONCLUSIONS Methylene blue enhances memory and the retention of fear extinction when administered after a successful exposure session but may have a deleterious effect on extinction when administered after an unsuccessful exposure session.
Sugar and Sports: Age Differences in Children’s Responses to a High Sugar Cereal Advertisement Portraying Physical Activities

This study experimentally investigated whether exposing children to a television advertisement for a high sugar cereal that depicts physical activities influences their perceptions of the promoted food and activities differently than exposure to an advertisement for the same product without the depiction of physical activities. Children aged 5 to 6 and 10 to 11 years (N = 136) were compared to reveal age differences in responses to this marketing practice. Exposure to the advertisement depicting physical activities had an immediate strengthening effect on all children’s perceptions of the food’s healthfulness as well as younger children’s attitudes toward the product. The ability to recognize juxtaposed beliefs regarding a product’s healthfulness protected children from some of the influence of this marketing strategy.
Prediction of aided and unaided audiograms using sound-field auditory steady-state evoked responses

Abstract Objective: To assess sound field auditory thresholds of hearing-impaired adults by using auditory steady-state evoked responses (ASSRs). Design: ASSRs were recorded to carrier frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz, each uniquely modulated at a single frequency of 80–100 Hz. ASSR thresholds were compared to behavioral auditory thresholds. Study sample: Twenty adults (11 male, age 35.6 years) with moderate-severe sensorineural hearing loss who had used hearing aids, and 10 normal-hearing subjects (mean age 22.4 years). Results: For most frequencies, behavioral sound-field thresholds were slightly lower than ASSR thresholds in both aided and unaided conditions, with a significant correlation between them. Differences between ASSR and behavioral thresholds ranged between 516 dB in the unaided and between 5–16 dB in the aided condition. The ASSR amplitude growth function to 2000 Hz was steeper in both the aided and unaided conditions than in the normal-hearing group. Conclusions: Sound-field ASSRs can predict behavioral auditory thresholds in both the unaided and aided condition, as well as behavioral functional gains. The ASSR growth function for 2000 Hz is suggested to reflect an underlying mechanism of intensity encoding common to abnormal loudness perception frequently reported in cases of cochlear hearing loss.
Incentives in Collective Action Organizations

The effects of members' interests in incentives offered by collective-action organizations are examined with data from a national sample of American associations. Members expressed interests in six distinct dimensions underlying organizational-incentive systems, and these different aspects are specifically related to different types of member involvement, controlling for other personal and organizational attributes. Members with higher interests in normative and social inducements offered by their organizations are more likely to contribute time, money, and psychological commitment and to engage in internal participatory actions. Lobbying incentives are strongly related to external participation. Overtly utilitarian incentives such as material benefits, occupational rewards, and informational incentives are either unrelated to involvement or actually attract members unwilling to participate. The implications of these results for Olson's "by-product" or selective-incentive explanation of collective action are discussed.
A Design Blueprint for Virtual Organizations in a Service Oriented Landscape

\United we stand, divided we fall" is a well known saying. We are living in the era of virtual collaborations. Advancement on conceptual and technological level has enhanced the way people communicate. Everythingas-a-Service once a dream, now becoming a reality. Problem nature has also been changed over the time. Today, e-Collaborations are applied to all the domains possible. Extensive data and computing resources are in need and assistance from human experts is also becoming essential. This puts a great responsibility on Information Technology (IT) researchers and developers to provide generic platforms where user can easily communicate and solve their problems. To realize this concept, distributed computing has oered many paradigms, e.g. cluster, grid, cloud computing. Virtual Organization (VO) is a logical orchestration of globally dispersed resources to achieve common goals. Existing paradigms and technology are used to form Virtual Organization, but lack of standards remained a critical issue for last two decades. Our research endeavor focuses on developing a design blueprint for Virtual Organization building process. The proposed standardization process is a two phase activity. First phase provides requirement analysis and the second phase presents a Reference Architecture for Virtual Organization (RAVO). This form of standardization is chosen to accommodate both technological and paradigm shift. We categorize our eorts in two parts. First part consists of a pattern to identify the requirements and components of a Virtual Organization. Second part details a generic framework based on the concept of Everything-as-a-Service.
Microtubule-associated Protein 1 Light Chain 3 (LC3) Interacts with Bnip3 Protein to Selectively Remove Endoplasmic Reticulum and Mitochondria via Autophagy*

Background: Bnip3, a protein involved in initiation of cardiovascular disease and cancer, induces autophagy of damaged organelles by a poorly understood mechanism. Results: Bnip3 homodimerization and binding to LC3 induces selective autophagy of mitochondria and ER. Conclusion: Bnip3 plays a direct and selective role in autophagy. Significance: Our studies will advance future studies investigating the role of Bnip3 in human disease. Autophagy plays an important role in cellular quality control and is responsible for removing protein aggregates and dysfunctional organelles. Bnip3 is an atypical BH3-only protein that is known to cause mitochondrial dysfunction and cell death. Interestingly, Bnip3 can also protect against cell death by inducing mitochondrial autophagy. The mechanism for this process, however, remains poorly understood. Bnip3 contains a C-terminal transmembrane domain that is essential for homodimerization and proapoptotic function. In this study, we show that homodimerization of Bnip3 is also a requirement for induction of autophagy. Several Bnip3 mutants that do not interfere with its mitochondrial localization but disrupt homodimerization failed to induce autophagy in cells. In addition, we discovered that endogenous Bnip3 is localized to both mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). To investigate the effects of Bnip3 at mitochondria or the ER on autophagy, Bnip3 was targeted specifically to each organelle by substituting the Bnip3 transmembrane domain with that of Acta or cytochrome b5. We found that Bnip3 enhanced autophagy in cells from both sites. We also discovered that Bnip3 induced removal of both ER (ERphagy) and mitochondria (mitophagy) via autophagy. The clearance of these organelles was mediated in part via binding of Bnip3 to LC3 on the autophagosome. Although ablation of the Bnip3-LC3 interaction by mutating the LC3 binding site did not impair the prodeath activity of Bnip3, it significantly reduced both mitophagy and ERphagy. Our data indicate that Bnip3 regulates the apoptotic balance as an autophagy receptor that induces removal of both mitochondria and ER.
Refusing the information paradigm: informed consent, medical research, and patient participation

This article challenges the assumption that patient autonomy can best be assured by providing proper information through formalized procedures such as informed consent. We suggest that to understand and consider laypeople's ways of knowing and decision making, one has to move beyond the information paradigm and take into account a much broader context. Concretely, we investigate informed consent in connection with donating skin tissue remaining from medically indicated surgery. We use interviews with patients and observation protocols to analyse patients' perceptions and ways of making sense of informed consent beyond its bioethical ideal. Patients situate themselves in a larger system of solidarity, enrol in an overall positive image of science as a linear process of innovation oriented towards output, and simultaneously take a pragmatic stance towards hospital routines as a necessary passage point towards receiving good treatment. Because informed consent is one of the central articulations between the biomedical system and society, we conclude by reflecting on the consequences of our findings on a socio-political level.
Cooling stability test of He II cooled LHD conductor (2) - experimental results

Cooling stability tests of the Large Helical Device (LHD) conductor immersed in pressurized He I and He II were carried out. A small test coil wound and short-circuited with a LHD conductor on a stainless steel bobbin was used. The test coil was set coaxially in the center of a superconducting magnet (field magnet), which supplies a certain magnetic field to the test conductor. A large current was supplied to the test coil conductor by use of a transformer effect, that is, the test coil current was induced by increasing the current of the field magnet. Stability tests of the LHD conductor at a certain pulse heat input were performed for the magnetic flux densities from 1.2 T to 6.8 T and the bulk liquid He temperatures from 2.0 K to 4.2 K at atmospheric pressure. Experimental results can be classified into three groups. The normal zone arose only around the heater and disappeared after the heat pulse (Group I). The normal zone moved to only one side direction and disappeared (Group II). The normal zone spread on both sides and the conductor current decreased greatly (Group III). The maximum conductor current without a quench at the pulse heat input increased greatly by shifting to He II regime from He I regime. The advances of the He II cooling on the stability of the LHD conductor were confirmed.
A Sociological Perspective on the Use of Technology: The Adoption of Internet Technology in U.S. Organizations

An understanding of the meaning new technologies have for society must begin with an understanding of the types of actors that employ a given technology. While the Internet has become a rapidly expanding area of inquiry with respect to trends among individual users, there has been little systematic empirical work on the organizational characteristics related to this form of information technology. This article examines the use of Internet-based technology by U.S. organizations. An analysis of a national sample of 712 organizations in the United States surveyed in 1996 shows three significant findings: (1) financial organizations were more likely than other types of organizations to be early users of Internet-based technology; (2) CEOs with backgrounds in engineering and sales were likely to guide their organizations to make use of this type of information technology; and (3) organizations with large proportions of employees with degrees of higher education were likely to make use of Internet-based information technology. Viewed together, the results suggest that the social structure of the workplace and the specific markets in which an organization is embedded played significant roles in the spread of the Internet across U.S. organizations.