Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The TatA component of the twin-arginine translocation system locally weakens the cytoplasmic membrane of Escherichia coli upon protein substrate binding

The twin-arginine translocation (Tat) system that comprises the TatA, TatB, and TatC components transports folded proteins across energized membranes of prokaryotes and plant plastids. It is not known, however, how the transport of this protein cargo is achieved. Favored models suggest that the TatA component supports transport by weakening the membrane upon full translocon assembly. Using Escherichia coli as a model organism, we now demonstrate in vivo that the N terminus of TatA can indeed destabilize the membrane, resulting in a lowered membrane energization in growing cells. We found that in full-length TatA, this effect is counterbalanced by its amphipathic helix. Consistent with these observations, the TatA N terminus induced proton leakage in vitro, indicating membrane destabilization. Fluorescence quenching data revealed that substrate binding causes the TatA hinge region and the N-terminal part of the TatA amphipathic helix to move toward the membrane surface. In the presence of TatBC, substrate binding also reduced the exposure of a specific region in the amphipathic helix, indicating a participation of TatBC. Of note, the substrate-induced reorientation of the TatA amphipathic helix correlated with detectable membrane weakening. We therefore propose a two-state model in which membrane-destabilizing effects of the short TatA membrane anchor are compensated by the membrane-immersed N-terminal part of the amphipathic helix in a resting state. We conclude that substrate binding to TatABC complexes switches the position of the amphipathic helix, which locally weakens the membrane on demand to allow substrate translocation across the membrane.
All-terrain vehicle-related injuries and deaths in Newfoundland and Labrador between 2003 and 2013: a retrospective trauma registry review.

BACKGROUND Injury and death involving all-terrain vehicles (ATV) has been reported in a number of Canadian provinces. The objective of this study is to describe the frequency, nature, severity, population affected, immediate health costs, efficacy of related legislation, and helmet use in ATV related injuries and deaths in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). METHODS A retrospective review of injured or deceased ATV riders of all ages entered in the Newfoundland and Labrador Trauma Registry from 2003 to 2013 was conducted. Variables studied included demographics, injury type and severity, use of helmets, admission/discharge dates, and referring/receiving institution. Data was also obtained from the Newfoundland and Labrador Center for Health Information (NLCHI) and included all in-hospital deaths and hospitalizations due to ATVs between 1995 and 2013. RESULTS There were a total of 298 patients registered in the trauma registry, resulting in 2759 admission days, nine deaths, and a total estimated immediate healthcare system cost in excess of $1.6 million. More males (N=253, 84.9%) than females (N=45, 15.1%) were injured in ATV related incidents, t(20)=7.12, p<. 0001. Head and thorax injuries were the most serious. 38.6% of patients were confirmed to be wearing helmets. Mean injury severity scores are as follows: head injury (M=11, SD=9.51), thorax (M=10, SD=8.3), abdominal/pelvis (M=9, SD=7.62), upper extremity (M=9, SD=8.53), other injuries (M=9, SD=10.56) lower extremity (M=8, SD=8.34), and spine (M=8, SD=6.52). CONCLUSIONS This study describes ATV related injuries and deaths in NL. Information from this study may guide physician practice, public education, and future legislation.
Transgene Optimization, Immunogenicity and In Vitro Efficacy of Viral Vectored Vaccines Expressing Two Alleles of Plasmodium falciparum AMA1

Background Apical membrane antigen 1 (AMA1) is a leading candidate vaccine antigen against blood-stage malaria, although to date numerous clinical trials using mainly protein-in-adjuvant vaccines have shown limited success. Here we describe the pre-clinical development and optimization of recombinant human and simian adenoviral (AdHu5 and ChAd63) and orthopoxviral (MVA) vectors encoding transgene inserts for Plasmodium falciparum AMA1 (PfAMA1). Methodology/Principal Findings AdHu5-MVA prime-boost vaccination in mice and rabbits using these vectors encoding the 3D7 allele of PfAMA1 induced cellular immune responses as well as high-titer antibodies that showed growth inhibitory activity (GIA) against the homologous but not heterologous parasite strains. In an effort to overcome the issues of PfAMA1 antigenic polymorphism and pre-existing immunity to AdHu5, a simian adenoviral (ChAd63) vector and MVA encoding two alleles of PfAMA1 were developed. This antigen, composed of the 3D7 and FVO alleles of PfAMA1 fused in tandem and with expression driven by a single promoter, was optimized for antigen secretion and transmembrane expression. These bi-allelic PfAMA1 vaccines, when administered to mice and rabbits, demonstrated comparable immunogenicity to the mono-allelic vaccines and purified serum IgG now showed GIA against the two divergent strains of P. falciparum encoded in the vaccine. CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses against epitopes that were both common and unique to the two alleles of PfAMA1 were also measured in mice. Conclusions/Significance Optimized transgene inserts encoding two divergent alleles of the same antigen can be successfully inserted into adeno- and pox-viral vaccine vectors. Adenovirus-MVA immunization leads to the induction of T cell responses common to both alleles, as well as functional antibody responses that are effective against both of the encoded strains of P. falciparum in vitro. These data support the further clinical development of these vaccine candidates in Phase I/IIa clinical trials.
Hidden Blood Loss in Posterior Lumbar Fusion Surgery: An Analysis of Risk Factors

Study Design: Descriptive study. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the hidden blood loss (HBL) of patients who underwent lumbar fusion surgery for degenerative spine and to analyze its risk factors. Summary of Background Data: When planning transfusion strategies, blood loss calculation is important. However, in clinical practice, spine surgeons usually ignore the possibility that a large amount of HBL may occur after lumbar fusion surgery. Materials and Methods: We studied the patients who underwent posterior lumbar fusion (PLF) surgery for degenerative spine from 2014 to 2015 in one institution. The patient’s demographics, comorbid conditions, coagulation panel value, surgical time, number of levels fused, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification, cell saver, preoperative hematocrit level, preoperative hemoglobin level, and postoperative complications were collected retrospectively. Pearson correlation analyses were used to find an association between patient characteristics and HBL. Multivariate linear analysis was used to determine independent risk factors of HBL. Results: We reviewed 169 consecutive patients who underwent PLF surgery for degenerative spine in one institution. The mean amount of HBL was 588 mL, which was 39% of the total blood loss. On the basis of the model of multiple linear regression analysis, the multilevel fusion (P=0.001), surgical time (P=0.034), and fibrinogen level (P=0.027) were independent risk factors that contributed to HBL, but age of 60 years or above (P=0.110), postoperative complications (P=0.278), and cell saver were not (P=0.739). Conclusions: We conclude that a large amount of HBL may occur in patients who underwent PLF surgery for degenerative spine. In addition, significant hidden loss may have a correlation with postoperative mortality. Multilevel fused, surgical time, and fibrinogen level should be paid close attention when considering strategies of fluid infusion and blood transfusion.
On Absence and Existence of the Anomalous Localized Resonance without the Quasi-static Approximation

This paper considers transmission problems for the Helmholtz equation with bodies that have negative material parameters. Such material parameters are used to model metals on optical frequencies and so-called metamaterials. As the absorption of the materials in the model tends to zero, the fields may blow up. When the speed of the blow up is suitable, this is called the anomalous localized resonance (ALR). In this paper we study this phenomenon and formulate a new condition, the weak anomalous resonance (w-AR), where the speed of the blow up of fields may be slower. Using this concept, we can study the blow up of fields in the presence of negative material parameters without the commonly used quasi-static approximation. We give simple geometric conditions under which w-AR or ALR may or may not appear. In particular, we show that in a case of a curved layer of negative material with a strictly convex boundary, neither ALR nor w-AR appears with nonzero frequencies (i.e., in the dynamic range) in dimensions .
Factors Influencing Retention in Care after Starting Antiretroviral Therapy in a Rural South African Programme

Introduction The prognosis of patients with HIV in Africa has improved with the widespread use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) but these successes are threatened by low rates of long-term retention in care. There are limited data on predictors of retention in care, particularly from rural sites. Methods Prospective cohort analysis of outcome measures in adults from a rural HIV care programme in Madwaleni, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The ART programme operates from Madwaleni hospital and seven primary care feeder clinics with full integration between inpatient and outpatient services. Outreach workers conducted home visits for defaulters. Results 1803 adults initiated ART from June 2005 to May 2009. At the end of the study period 82.4% were in active care or had transferred elsewhere, 11.1% had died and 6.5% were lost to follow-up (LTFU). Independent predictors associated with an increased risk of LTFU were CD4 nadir >200, initiating ART as an inpatient or while pregnant, and younger age, while being in care for >6 months before initiating ART was associated with a reduced risk. Independent factors associated with an increased risk of mortality were baseline CD4 count <50 and initiating ART as an inpatient, while being in care for >6 months before initiating ART and initiating ART while pregnant were associated with a reduced risk. Conclusions Serving a socioeconomically deprived rural population is not a barrier to successful ART delivery. Patients initiating ART while pregnant and inpatients may require additional counselling and support to reduce LTFU. Providing HIV care for patients not yet eligible for ART may be protective against being LTFU and dying after ART initiation.
Incidence of Peri-implant Diseases on Implants With and Without Laser-Microgrooved Collar: A 5-Year Retrospective Study Carried Out in Private Practice Patients.

PURPOSE To retrospectively evaluate the incidence of peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis around dental implants with the same body design and surface but different collar surface (laser-microgrooved vs not laser-microgrooved) after 5 years of loading in private practice patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study was carried out on patients at a private dental clinic enrolled in a periodontal maintenance program, who received at least one implant with a laser-microgrooved collar surface and one implant without a laser-microgrooved collar surface. Clinical variables such as plaque, pocket depth, bleeding on probing, suppuration, and radiographic marginal bone loss at > 5 years around implants were investigated. The correlation between the prevalence of peri-implant mucositis/peri-implantitis and biotype, keratinized tissue width, prosthetic connection type, and prosthetic design type was also analyzed. RESULTS A total of 166 implants in 74 patients were investigated. At the end of the 5-year follow-up period, 38 implants presented peri-implant mucositis, accounting for 22.8% of the total, affecting a total of 24 patients (32.4%), while 13 implants (7.8%) in 10 patients (13.5%) were diagnosed with peri-implantitis. Sixteen of 82 laser-microgrooved implants (19.5%) and 24 of 84 implants (28.5%) without a laser-microgrooved collar presented peri-implant mucositis, while 3 of 82 (3.6%) of laser-microgrooved implants and 10 of 84 (11.9%) implants without a laser-microgrooved collar demonstrated peri-implantitis. Differences in implant-based incidence of peri-implant diseases between implants with and without a laser-microgrooved collar were statistically significant (P < .05). CONCLUSION In private practice patients enrolled in a professional, controlled oral hygiene regimen, implants with a laser-microgrooved collar, compared with implants without a laser-microgrooved collar, presented a statistically significantly lower incidence of peri-implant diseases.
TSLP signaling in CD4+ T cells programs a pathogenic T helper 2 cell state

The cytokine TSLP promotes the generation of a pathogenic T cell subset that exacerbates allergic responses. TSLP as a therapeutic target Although T helper 2 (TH2) cells mediate immunity against extracellular parasites, they also promote allergic inflammation. The cytokine interleukin-4 (IL-4), which is produced by TH2 cells, is also required for their differentiation. Noting that the cytokine TSLP is implicated in the pathogenesis of TH2 cell–associated allergic disorders, Rochman et al. investigated its role in TH2 cell differentiation. They found that TH2 cells that differentiated in the presence of TSLP and IL-4 produced increased amounts of cytokines and were more pathogenic compared to TH2 cells differentiated in the presence of IL-4 alone. Mice that received CD4+ T cells deficient in the TSLP receptor had reduced allergic responses compared to those that received wild-type cells. Given that pediatric asthma patients had enhanced TH2 cytokine production compared to that of healthy controls, these data suggest that TSLP may be a therapeutic target in allergic diseases. Pathogenic T helper 2 (TH2) cells, which produce increased amounts of the cytokines interleukin-5 (IL-5) and IL-13, promote allergic disorders, including asthma. Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), a cytokine secreted by epithelial and innate immune cells, stimulates such pathogenic TH2 cell responses. We found that TSLP signaling in mouse CD4+ T cells initiated transcriptional changes associated with TH2 cell programming. IL-4 signaling amplified and stabilized the genomic response of T cells to TSLP, which increased the frequency of T cells producing IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13. Furthermore, the TSLP- and IL-4–programmed TH2 cells had a pathogenic phenotype, producing greater amounts of IL-5 and IL-13 and other proinflammatory cytokines than did TH2 cells stimulated with IL-4 alone. TSLP-mediated TH2 cell induction involved distinct molecular pathways, including activation of the transcription factor STAT5 through the kinase JAK2 and repression of the transcription factor BCL6. Mice that received wild-type CD4+ T cells had exacerbated pathogenic TH2 cell responses upon exposure to house dust mites compared to mice that received TSLP receptor–deficient CD4+ T cells. Transient TSLP signaling stably programmed pathogenic potential in memory TH2 cells. In human CD4+ T cells, TSLP and IL-4 promoted the generation of TH2 cells that produced greater amounts of IL-5 and IL-13. Compared to healthy controls, asthmatic children showed enhancement of such T cell responses in peripheral blood. Our data support a sequential cytokine model for pathogenic TH2 cell differentiation and provide a mechanistic basis for the therapeutic targeting of TSLP signaling in human allergic diseases.
Model-Agnostic Private Learning via Stability

We design differentially private learning algorithms that are agnostic to the learning model. Our algorithms are interactive in nature, i.e., instead of outputting a model based on the training data, they provide predictions for a set of $m$ feature vectors that arrive online. We show that, for the feature vectors on which an ensemble of models (trained on random disjoint subsets of a dataset) makes consistent predictions, there is almost no-cost of privacy in generating accurate predictions for those feature vectors. To that end, we provide a novel coupling of the distance to instability framework with the sparse vector technique. We provide algorithms with formal privacy and utility guarantees for both binary/multi-class classification, and soft-label classification. For binary classification in the standard (agnostic) PAC model, we show how to bootstrap from our privately generated predictions to construct a computationally efficient private learner that outputs a final accurate hypothesis. Our construction - to the best of our knowledge - is the first computationally efficient construction for a label-private learner. We prove sample complexity upper bounds for this setting. As in non-private sample complexity bounds, the only relevant property of the given concept class is its VC dimension. For soft-label classification, our techniques are based on exploiting the stability properties of traditional learning algorithms, like stochastic gradient descent (SGD). We provide a new technique to boost the average-case stability properties of learning algorithms to strong (worst-case) stability properties, and then exploit them to obtain private classification algorithms. In the process, we also show that a large class of SGD methods satisfy average-case stability properties, in contrast to a smaller class of SGD methods that are uniformly stable as shown in prior work.
Evidence for Female-Biased Dispersal in the Protandrous Hermaphroditic Asian Seabass, Lates calcarifer

Movement of individuals influences individual reproductive success, fitness, genetic diversity and relationships among individuals within populations and gene exchange among populations. Competition between males or females for mating opportunities and/or local resources predicts a female bias in taxa with monogamous mating systems and a male-biased dispersal in polygynous species. In birds and mammals, the patterns of dispersal between sexes are well explored, while dispersal patterns in protandrous hermaphroditic fish species have not been studied. We collected 549 adult individuals of Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer) from four locations in the South China Sea. To assess the difference in patterns of dispersal between sexes, we genotyped all individuals with 18 microsatellites. Significant genetic differentiation was detected among and within sampling locations. The parameters of population structure (F ST), relatedness (r) and the mean assignment index (mAIC), in combination with data on tagging-recapture, supplied strong evidences for female-biased dispersal in the Asian seabass. This result contradicts our initial hypothesis of no sex difference in dispersal. We suggest that inbreeding avoidance of females, female mate choice under the condition of low mate competition among males, and male resource competition create a female-biased dispersal. The bigger body size of females may be a cause of the female-biased movement. Studies of dispersal using data from DNA markers and tagging-recapture in hermaphroditic fish species could enhance our understanding of patterns of dispersal in fish.
How to Combine Homomorphic Encryption and Garbled Circuits - Improved Circuits and Computing the Minimum Distance Efficiently

We show how two existing paradigms for two-party secure function evaluation (SFE) in the semi-honest model can be combined securely and eciently { those based on additively homomorphic en- cryption (HE) with those based on garbled circuits (GC) and vice versa. Additionally, we propose new GC constructions for addition, subtrac- tion, multiplication, and comparison functions. Our circuits are approx- imately two times smaller (in terms of garbled tables) than previous constructions. This implies corresponding computation and communica- tion improvements in SFE of functions using the above building blocks (including the protocols for combining HE and GC). Based on these results, we present ecient constant-round protocols for secure integer comparison, and the related problems of minimum selec- tion and minimum distance, which are crucial building blocks of many cryptographic schemes such as privacy preserving biometric authentica- tion (e.g., face recognition, ngerprint matching, etc).
Pediatric Liver Transplantation: Our Experiences.

OBJECTIVE The aim of our study was to evaluate our liver transplant pediatric patients and to report our experience in the complications and the long-term follow-up results. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients between the ages of 0 and 18 years, who had liver transplantation in the organ transplantation center of our university hospital between 1997 and 2016, were included in the study. The age, sex, indications for the liver transplantation, complications after the transplantation, and long-term follow-up findings were retrospectively evaluated. The obtained results were analyzed with statistical methods. RESULTS In our organ transplantation center, 62 pediatric liver transplantations were carried out since 1997. The mean age of our patients was 7.3 years (6.5 months-17 years). The 4 most common reasons for liver transplantation were: Wilson's disease (n=10; 16.3%), biliary atresia (n=9; 14.5%), progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (n=8; 12.9%), and cryptogenic cirrhosis (n=7; 11.3%). The mortality rate after transplantation was 19.6% (12 of the total 62 patients). The observed acute and chronic rejection rates were 34% and 4.9%, respectively. Thrombosis (9.6%) was observed in the hepatic artery (4.8%) and portal vein (4.8%). Bile leakage and biliary stricture rates were 31% and 11%, respectively. 1-year and 5-year survival rates of our patients were 87% and 84%, respectively. CONCLUSION The morbidity and mortality rates in our organ transplantation center, regarding pediatric liver transplantations, are consistent with the literature.
Modeling the heat transfer in a PCM cooling vest

Cooling garments containing phase change materials (PCM) is one of practical techniques used for improving thermal comfort and worker’s performance in hot environments. The efficiency of these garments and their ability in cooling the body has been the subject of much research. In this study, it has been attempted to investigate the way in which heat is transferred from the body to the cooling garment and examine its resulting effect on one’s comfort. So, the three-part system of body–garment–environment has been simulated through the finite element method, and the problem of heat exchange between these three parts has been solved with the help of thermal analysis of ANSYS software. The results of modeling indicated that absorbing body’s excessive heat through PCMs could decrease skin’s temperature to at least 2.6°C. The average of heat absorption by phase change bags was 215.4 W/m2 at the beginning of the process and 128.7 W/m2 within one hour. The accuracy of the model was also verified with the results of subjective tests, and a good agreement between the experimental and model results was shown.