Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genomic Stability over 9 Years of an Isoniazid Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Outbreak Strain in Sweden

In molecular epidemiological studies of drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) in Sweden a large outbreak of an isoniazid resistant strain was identified, involving 115 patients, mainly from the Horn of Africa. During the outbreak period, the genomic pattern of the outbreak strain has stayed virtually unchanged with regard to drug resistance, IS6110 restriction fragment length polymorphism and spoligotyping patterns. Here we present the complete genome sequence analyses of the index isolate and two isolates sampled nine years after the index case as well as experimental data on the virulence of this outbreak strain. Even though the strain has been present in the community for nine years and passaged between patients at least five times in-between the isolates, we only found four single nucleotide polymorphisms in one of the later isolates and a small (4 amino acids) deletion in the other compared to the index isolate. In contrast to many other evolutionarily successful outbreak lineages (e.g. the Beijing lineage) this outbreak strain appears to be genetically very stable yet evolutionarily successful in a low endemic country such as Sweden. These findings further illustrate that the rate of genomic variation in TB can be highly strain dependent, something that can have important implications for epidemiological studies as well as development of resistance.
The impact of fodder trees on milk production and income among smallholder dairy farmers in East Africa and the role of research

The objective of this study is twofold, to demonstrate (1) the effects of fodder shrubs on milk production and their value at the household and regional level and (2) the contribution of research by the World Agroforestry Centre toward strengthening the impact of fodder shrubs. The study is a synthesis of previous studies related to dissemination, adoption and impact combined with two new analyses, one quantitatively measuring the impact of the shrubs through econometric analysis and the other a qualitative analysis to better understand constraints on adoption and gender issues related to participation and control of benefits from fodder shrubs. Among the study findings are that fodder shrubs have been widely adopted in East Africa, by an estimated 205,000 smallholder dairy farmers by 2005. Women were active in planting shrubs, as monitoring found almost half of planters to be women. Several studies have confirmed that shrubs do have an impact on milk production. While feeding trials have found that 1 kilogram of calliandra increases milk production by 0.6–0.8 kilograms, a new survey of farmers’ perceptions in Kenya found the effect to be about half as large after controlling for the effects of breeds, season and other feeds. Whether the effect is the lower or higher estimate, the overall impact of the shrubs in terms of additional net income from milk is high, at US$19.7 million to $29.6 million in Kenya alone over the past 15 years.
Impact of estrogen replacement on letrozole-induced embryopathic effects.

BACKGROUND The aromatase inhibitor, letrozole, exerts embryo toxic effects in rats, causing increased embryo lethality and anomalies of the axial skeleton at pharmacologically relevant doses. Letrozole acts by inhibiting estrogen biosynthesis. It may thus be feasible that estrogen deprivation is a crucial determinant of the elicited developmental toxic effects. In order to gain insight on this hypothesis, the present study tested the capacity of estrogen replacement in preventing letrozole-mediated embryopathy. METHODS Pregnant Sprague Dawley rats were exposed to letrozole alone (0.04 mg/kg), or in combination with estradiol cyclopentylpropionate (ECP) at 0.5, 1 or 2 microg/rat. A control group receiving only the vehicles was also included. Animals were exposed during gestation Days 6-16 (corresponding approximately to 3-10 weeks of gestation in the human). Developmental end-points, including intrauterine mortality, fetal growth, placental weight and incidence of structural abnormalities, were evaluated near term gestation. RESULTS Exposure to letrozole alone was lethal for 41% of conceptuses, and caused minor axial skeletal anomalies in 51% of live fetuses. ECP co-administration effectively prevented letrozole-induced embryolethality, but failed to reduce the incidence of axial skeletal alterations. CONCLUSION The obtained results support the concept that inhibition of estrogen biosynthesis represents a critical determinant of letrozole-induced embryonic mortality. A mechanism other than estrogen deprivation appears to underlie the initiation of skeletal anomalies.
Integration into liminality: women’s lives in an open centre for migrants at Europe’s Southern Antechamber

ABSTRACT This article examines the ‘integration discourse’ that characterises migrants’ governance in the Centre for the Temporary Stay of Immigrants (CETI) in the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Beyond observing the incongruous character of the integration discourse, the article unpacks the ways in which this framing fulfils a specific function within the broader setup of migration control and the gendered modalities of migrant governance on a daily basis. The article argues that life in the CETI presents the fundamental characteristics of an existence inscribed within a total institution, implying the use of discipline as a technology of power and a structure of relations based on deference, in the specific guise of residents’ condition as ‘subjects to be integrated’. Furthermore, the article identifies three forms of dispossession – material, role and time-related – carried out against the background of a fictional integration, each bringing its share of gendered implications. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Melilla over three months, with regular visits to the CETI that entailed participant observation inside the Centre as well as semi-structured interviews with migrant women on the one hand, and social, healthcare, and administrative workers on the other.
An efficient sub-Nyquist receiver architecture for spectrum blind reconstruction and direction of arrival estimation

Spectrum blind reconstruction and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of multiple narrow-band signals spread over wide spectrum sampled at sub-Nyquist sampling rates are considered in this paper. A new sub-Nyquist sampling receiver architecture which requires minimal hardware along with an efficient algorithm for estimation of the parameters and spectrum reconstruction is presented. We further show with the proposed approach, that a minimum average sampling rate of 2(N + 1)B would be sufficient in order to reconstruct the spectrum as well as estimate their corresponding DOA of N narrow-band signals of maximum bandwidth B. Simulation results are also provided which shows the performance very close to the Cramer Rao bound.
Scientific Reasoning in Elementary School Children: Assessment of the Inquiry Cycle

Scientific reasoning abilities are already developing in elementary-school-aged children and enable them to understand the world around them. The goal of the current study was to develop a new instrument for 8- to 10-year-old children in Grades 3 and 4 to measure their understanding of the steps of the scientific inquiry cycle (SIC). Such an understanding is essential for scientific reasoning as well as for inquiry-based learning approaches and, above all, for scientific practice. We developed and applied 15 items in a sample of 878 third- and fourth-grade students (n = 434, Grade 3; n = 435, Grade 4). As confirmed by item response theory (IRT) modeling, the items produced reliable scale scores. Furthermore, we explored the relations between children’s SIC performances, cognitive abilities, and epistemic beliefs. As expected, intelligence, text comprehension, experimentation strategies, and sophisticated epistemic beliefs were positively associated with children’s SIC performance, a finding that helps to establish initial evidence for the construct validity of the SIC test scores.
Stealth Compensation: Do CEOs Increase Their Pay by Influencing Dividend Policy?

Companies can increase executive compensation by allowing dividends to be paid on unvested restricted stocks grants, also known as stealth compensation. Examining all S&P 500 firms over the period 2003–2007, we find that more than half of the dividend paying firms allow this practice. We look at whether this form of compensation reduces agency costs or decreases value for shareholders. We find that CEOs' stealth compensation amounts to an average of $180,000 in additional income, which increases the CEOs' cash compensation and total compensation by 9% and 2% respectively. Firms engaging in stealth compensation have higher dividend payout ratios than those not allowing stealth compensation. For all firms using stealth compensation, there is a reduction in average ROA and Tobin's Q over the long run. However, stealth compensation companies with potential agency issues see a meaningful improvement in their long run performance. For weakly governed companies, stealth compensation may act as a bonding mechanism which may serve to reduce agency costs and therefore increase shareholder value.
Modeling sentiment terminologies: Target based polarity phenomena

In recent few years, social networking site and information technology has become ubiquitous. This technology improvement is affecting the social and economic life of human beings more than anything. The social effects of the faster internet are directly linked to the dependence of today's generation on devices such as high speed internet mobile devices and social networking sites. Lately these social internet sites — such as Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter — have become a great aid for data mining and sentiment analysis. Various individuals and several companies are exploiting data from these sites to carry out their day to day business in an efficient manner. This efficiency can further be enhanced by determining sentiment on the basis of subject-centered targeted sentiment exploration with the help of uni-gram technique instead of utilizing non-subjective uni-gram or bi-gram methods. Experimental evaluation of our research work illustrates that the proposed method of subject based polarity phenomena of determining sentiment outperforms the previously proposed techniques.
Lattice study of the two-dimensional Wess-Zumino model

We present results from a numerical simulation of the two-dimensional Euclidean Wess-Zumino model. In the continuum the theory possesses N=1 supersymmetry. The lattice model we employ was analyzed by Golterman and Petcher in \cite{susy} where a perturbative proof was given that the continuum supersymmetric Ward identities are recovered without finite tuning in the limit of vanishing lattice spacing. Our simulations demonstrate the existence of important non-perturbative effects in finite volumes which modify these conclusions. It appears that in certain regions of parameter space the vacuum state can contain solitons corresponding to field configurations which interpolate between different classical vacua. In the background of these solitons supersymmetry is partially broken and a light fermion mode is observed. At fixed coupling the critical mass separating phases of broken and unbroken supersymmetry appears to be volume dependent. We discuss the implications of our results for continuum supersymmetry breaking.
Exploiting Caching for Realtime Multimedia SystemsKyungOh

Several cashing schemes for realtime multimedia systems have been proposed but they only concentrate on the hit ratio as the performance metric without providing any means to utilize the disk bandwidth gained through cache hits. A high cache hit ratio alone does not capture the eeectiveness of a caching scheme for such systems unless hiccup-free service is guaranteed. We evaluate three caching schemes which make it possible to provide service to additional streams with the saved disk bandwidth. We rst start with NIC in which no cached intervals are preempted or replaced unless they have nished their playback. Next, we propose PSIC, which preempts the cached intervals for more valuable intervals but still guarantees hiccup-free playback. Finally, we present SPT-L scheme which has a signiicantly greater overhead and the best hit ratio. However, STP-L suuers from frequent starvation, which veriies our claim that the high cache hit ratio does not necessary result in better performance.
Patterns of Expression in the Matrix Proteins Responsible for Nucleation and Growth of Aragonite Crystals in Flat Pearls of Pinctada fucata

The initial growth of the nacreous layer is crucial for comprehending the formation of nacreous aragonite. A flat pearl method in the presence of the inner-shell film was conducted to evaluate the role of matrix proteins in the initial stages of nacre biomineralization in vivo. We examined the crystals deposited on a substrate and the expression patterns of the matrix proteins in the mantle facing the substrate. In this study, the aragonite crystals nucleated on the surface at 5 days in the inner-shell film system. In the film-free system, the calcite crystals nucleated at 5 days, a new organic film covered the calcite, and the aragonite nucleated at 10 days. This meant that the nacre lamellae appeared in the inner-shell film system 5 days earlier than that in the film-free system, timing that was consistent with the maximum level of matrix proteins during the first 20 days. In addition, matrix proteins (Nacrein, MSI60, N19, N16 and Pif80) had similar expression patterns in controlling the sequential morphologies of the nacre growth in the inner-film system, while these proteins in the film-free system also had similar patterns of expression. These results suggest that matrix proteins regulate aragonite nucleation and growth with the inner-shell film in vivo.
The knowledge based-view of the firm: from theoretical origins to future implications

The Knowledge-based view of the firm is a recent extension of the Resourcebased view of the firm very adequate to the present economic context. Knowledge is considered to be a very special strategic resource that does not depreciate in the way traditional economic productive factors do, and can generate increasing returns. The nature of most knowledge-based resources is mainly intangible and dynamic, allowing for idiosyncratic development through path dependency and causal ambiguity, which are the basis of the mechanism for economic rent creation in the Knowledge-based view of the firm. Future implications that emerge from these characteristics are presented at the end of the paper.
Seasonal patterns of growth, expenditure and assimilation in juvenile Atlantic salmon

1. We report a modelling study of a data-set describing the growth of individual Atlantic salmon (Salmo salarL.) parr in the Girnock Burn (Scotland). A development of the compensatory growth model due to Broekhusien et al. (1994) was fitted to these data by numerical optimization. 2.The model uses carbon mass as a surrogate for an energy currency. This mass is divided into structure and reserve components, so as to describe decoupled changes in length and wet-weight. 3. Using the same parameters for all fish, our model explained 83% of the variability in length and weight at age. Adding a single additional parameter for each individual enabled the model to explain over 96% of length and weight variability. 4. Weak negative correlation between size at first capture and within-study growth argues against genetic causality of observed growth variability. 5. The energetic basis of our model enables us to infer time-series of net assimilation and basal maintenance rates for the observed individuals. Maximal growth occurs early in the season when high assimilation is accompanied by low temperatures and maintenance rates. In late season, continuing high assimilation is balanced by high maintenance rates consequent on summer temperatures.
Edge-directed interpolation

We present a new method for digitally interpolating images to higher resolution. It consists of two phases: rendering and correction. The rendering phase is edge-directed. From the low resolution image data, we generate a high resolution edge map by first filtering with a rectangular center-on-surround-off filter and then performing piecewise linear interpolation between the zero crossings in the filter output. The rendering phase is based on bilinear interpolation modified to prevent interpolation across edges, as determined from the estimated high resolution edge map. During the correction phase, we modify the mesh values on which the rendering is based to account for the disparity between the true low resolution data, and that predicted by a sensor model operating on the high resolution output of the rendering phase. The overall process is repeated iteratively. We show experimental results which demonstrate the efficacy of our interpolation method.
Complete lifts of connections and stochastic Jacobi eldsMarc

|Diierentiable families of r-martingales on manifolds are investigated: their innnitesimal variation provides a notion of stochastic Jacobi elds. Such objects are known 2] to be martingales taking values in the tangent bundle when the latter is equipped with the complete lift of the connection r. We discuss various characterizations of TM-valued martingales. When applied to speciic families of r-martingales which appear in connection with the heat ow for maps between Riemannian manifolds, our results allow to establish formulas giving a stochastic representation for the diieren-tial of solutions to the nonlinear heat equation. As an application, we prove local and global gradient estimates for harmonic maps of bounded dilatation.
Causal Link between Oil Price and Uncertainty in India

This paper investigates the causality between oil price and economic uncertainty in India. In order to test for this relationship, we collect data on the Brent crude oil price as well as the crude oil ETF volatility index. We also use the policy-related economic uncertainty index as well as the stock market volatility index for India. Our results suggest that the standard Granger causality test rejects the hypothesis of causality between oil price changes and economic uncertainty in India. As a result of the shortcoming of the standard Granger test in the presence of parameter instability, we perform Rossi’s (2005) test. It shows that the Brent crude oil price does not have a causal impact on India’s economic uncertainty but the crude oil ETF volatility index does. Clearly, oil and India’s economic uncertainty go hand-in hand. These findings can thus be used in the context of policy recommendation.
A Study of Cytological Changes in the Bone Marrow of Patients with Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome

Background Peripheral blood leucopenia and thrombocytopenia are the main manifestations in severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) patients. However, the underlying causes are poorly understood. Therefore, we aimed to investigate cytology of bone marrow samples collected from SFTS patients. Methods 10 SFTS patients were identified by typical clinical manifestations, detection of peripheral blood leucopenia and thrombocytopenia, and nucleic acid-based detection of the newly identified bunyavirus. SFTS patients, along with 10 participants with acute aplastic anemia and 10 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this study after written informed consent to undergo bone marrow cytological examination. Results We observed similar bone marrow properties in SFTS patients and healthy volunteers, significantly different from the characteristics observed in acute aplastic anemia patients. Conclusion Similarities between bone marrow samples collected from SFTS patients and healthy volunteers suggest that peripheral blood leucopenia and thrombocytopenia do not result from bone marrow cell plasticity.
Seasonal Climate Effects Anemotaxis in Newly Emerged Adult Anopheles gambiae Giles in Mali, West Africa

The direction and magnitude of movement by the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae Giles has been of great interest to medical entomologists for over 70 years. This direction of movement is likely to be affected by many factors, from environmental conditions and stage of life history of the mosquito to the existence of attractants in the vicinity. We report here the direction of movement of newly emerged An. gambiae in nature, around the village of Donéguébougou, Mali. We assessed the direction of movement for individual mosquitoes by placing them in a novel enclosure with exit traps oriented in the direction of the cardinal and intermediate points of the compass. We consistently found predominantly Southward directions of movement during 2009 and 2010, with an additional Eastward component during the dry season and a Westward one during the wet season. Our data indicate that wind has an important effect on the direction of movement, but that this effect varied by season: Average directions of movement were downwind during the dry season and upwind during the wet season. A switch in anemotactic response suggests that the direction of movement of An. gambiae relative to the wind immediately after emergence under varying conditions of humidity should be further investigated under controlled conditions.
Biotic stress accelerates formation of climate-relevant aerosols in boreal forests

Abstract. Boreal forests are a major source of climate-relevant biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) and will be greatly influenced by increasing temperature. Global warming is predicted to not only increase emissions of reactive biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) from vegetation directly but also induce large-scale insect outbreaks, which significantly increase emissions of reactive BVOCs. Thus, climate change factors could substantially accelerate the formation of biogenic SOAs in the troposphere. In this study, we have combined results from field and laboratory experiments, satellite observations and global-scale modelling in order to evaluate the effects of insect herbivory and large-scale outbreaks on SOA formation and the Earth's climate. Field measurements demonstrated 11-fold and 20-fold increases in monoterpene and sesquiterpene emissions respectively from damaged trees during a pine sawfly (Neodiprion sertifer) outbreak in eastern Finland. Laboratory chamber experiments showed that feeding by pine weevils (Hylobius abietis) increased VOC emissions from Scots pine and Norway spruce seedlings by 10–50 fold, resulting in 200–1000-fold increases in SOA masses formed via ozonolysis. The influence of insect damage on aerosol concentrations in boreal forests was studied with a global chemical transport model GLOMAP and MODIS satellite observations. Global-scale modelling was performed using a 10-fold increase in monoterpene emission rates and assuming 10 % of the boreal forest area was experiencing outbreak. Results showed a clear increase in total particulate mass (local max. 480 %) and cloud condensation nuclei concentrations (45 %). Satellite observations indicated a 2-fold increase in aerosol optical depth over western Canada's pine forests in August during a bark beetle outbreak. These results suggest that more frequent insect outbreaks in a warming climate could result in substantial increase in biogenic SOA formation in the boreal zone and, thus, affect both aerosol direct and indirect forcing of climate at regional scales. The effect of insect outbreaks on VOC emissions and SOA formation should be considered in future climate predictions.