Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EVOLUTION OF PARASITES IN RESPONSE TO TOLERANCE IN THEIR HOSTS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND APPARENT COMMENSALISM

Abstract Tolerance to parasites reduces the harm that infection causes the host (virulence). Here we investigate the evolution of parasites in response to host tolerance. We show that parasites may evolve either higher or lower within-host growth rates depending on the nature of the tolerance mechanism. If tolerance reduces virulence by a constant factor, the parasite is always selected to increase its growth rate. Alternatively, if tolerance reduces virulence in a nonlinear manner such that it is less effective at reducing the damage caused by higher growth rates, this may select for faster or slower replicating parasites. If the host is able to completely tolerate pathogen damage up to a certain replication rate, this may result in apparent commensalism, whereby infection causes no apparent virulence but the original evolution of tolerance has been costly. Tolerance tends to increase disease prevalence and may therefore lead to more, rather than less, disease-induced mortality. If the parasite is selected, even a highly efficient tolerance mechanism may result in more individuals in total dying from disease. However, the evolution of tolerance often, although not always, reduces the individual risk of dying from infection.
Impact of more than a decade of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine use on carriage and invasive potential in Native American communities.

BACKGROUND We assessed the impact of 12 years of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) use on pneumococcal nasopharyngeal carriage and serotype-specific invasive disease potential among Native Americans. METHODS Families were enrolled in a carriage study from 2006 to 2008; nasopharyngeal specimens and risk factor information were collected monthly for 7 visits. Pneumococcal carriage prevalence was compared with that before (1998-2000) and during (2001-2002) PCV7 introduction. We compared invasive disease incidence and carriage prevalence before and after PCV7 introduction to estimate changes in serotype-specific invasive potential. RESULTS We enrolled 1077 subjects from 302 households. There was an absolute reduction in carriage prevalence of 8.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.5%-11.4%) in children aged <5 years and 3.1% (95% CI, 1.1%-5.1%) in adults. In children aged <5 years, vaccine-serotype carriage prevalence decreased by 22.8% (95% CI, 20.1%-25.3%), and nonvaccine serotype (NVT) increased by 15.9% (95% CI, 12.4%-19.3%). No significant change was detected in serotype-specific invasive potential after PCV7 introduction. CONCLUSIONS Pneumococcal carriage prevalence decreased in all ages since PCV7 introduction; vaccine-serotype carriage has been nearly eliminated, whereas the prevalence of NVT carriage has increased. The increase in the NVT invasive disease rate seems to be proportional to the increase in colonization prevalence.
Tripartite Growth Trajectories of Reading and Math Achievement

This study examines trends in American students’ growth trajectories in reading and math achievement over the past three decades. Drawing upon multiple sources of national assessment data, cohort analyses provide new evidence on the stability and change of national academic growth curves. The emerging trends imply a tripartite pattern where American students are gaining ground at the pre/early primary school level, holding ground at the middle school level, and losing ground at the high school level. National progress in reading and math achievement at the pre/early primary school level appears to be offset by declines at the high school level. The study discusses the limitations and challenges of tracking academic growth trajectories across all different levels of education over the long term. It also calls for national P-16 education policy and research efforts toward sustainable academic growth and seamless educational transition.
Sizing of energy storage for microgrids

Summary form only given. This paper presents a new method based on the cost benefit analysis for optimal sizing of an energy storage system in a microgrid (MG). The unit commitment problem with spinning reserve for MG is considered in this method. Time series and feed-forward neural network techniques are used for forecasting the wind speed and solar radiations respectively and the forecasting errors are also considered in this paper. Two mathematical models have been built for both the islanded and grid-connected modes of MGs. The main problem is formulated as a mixed linear integer problem (MLIP), which is solved in AMPL (A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming). The effectiveness of the approach is validated by case studies where the optimal system energy storage ratings for the islanded and grid-connected MGs are determined. Quantitative results show that the optimal size of BESS exists and differs for both the grid-connected and islanded MGs in this paper.
Quick Tests of Organicity Among Drug-Using Delinquents

Psychologists are often asked to determine whether a given delinquent is or is not a heavy drug user. In order to sharpen the validity of this judgment, eight neuropsychological tests were selected on the basis of ten criteria, including brevity and palatability. Neuropsychological tests were selected because previous findings had suggested that heavy drug use might be associated with organic brain pathology. The measures chosen were administered to 102 male legal offenders aged 12-17. Controls were provided for 1Q, previous head injury, and response bias. To form the criterion of drug usage level, a series of four criteria was employed to divide the boys into 68 heavy users and 34 light users. Maximally discriminating cutoffs, for each of the dependent-variable tests, for each age and ethnicity subgroup, yielded significant differentiation for seven of the eight tests involved. A composite "drug index" correctly identified 74% of the subjects, and when the most discriminating tests for each age and ethnicity group were selected, instances of false positives were reduced to 4%. Future research and clinical applications were discussed.
TR-2005-4 Pricing strategies and service differentiation in queues — A profit maximization perspective ∗

We consider the problem of pricing and scheduling the customers arriving at a service facility, with the objective of maximizing the profits of the facility, when the value of service and time-sensitivity of a customer are his private information. First we consider the ‘discrete types’ problem where each customer belongs to one of N types, type i being characterized by its value for service Ri and cost of waiting per unit time ci. For the special case when Ri ci is decreasing in ci, we characterize the structure of the optimal pricing-scheduling policy and design a polynomial-time algorithm to find it. We then analyze the same problem under the additional restriction of at most m different levels of service, characterize the optimal pricing-scheduling policy, and provide an efficient way to find it. Finally, we consider the case where the types of customers form a continuum and the customers have a generalized delay cost structure. Using the insights from the discrete types case, we characterize the conditions under which the optimal mechanism schedules the customers according to the cμ rule. This research was supported by an NSF grant DMI-0093981 Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, NY; email: ark2001@columbia.edu Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, NY; email: jay@ieor.columbia.edu
An RNN-based Music Language Model for Improving Automatic Music Transcription

In this paper, we investigate the use of Music Language Models (MLMs) for improving Automatic Music Transcription performance. The MLMs are trained on sequences of symbolic polyphonic music from the Nottingham dataset. We train Recurrent Neural Network (RNN)-based models, as they are capable of capturing complex temporal structure present in symbolic music data. Similar to the function of language models in automatic speech recognition, we use the MLMs to generate a prior probability for the occurrence of a sequence. The acoustic AMT model is based on probabilistic latent component analysis, and prior information from the MLM is incorporated into the transcription framework using Dirichlet priors. We test our hybrid models on a dataset of multiple-instrument polyphonic music and report a significant 3% improvement in terms of F-measure, when compared to using an acoustic-only model.
Onset, Offending Trajectories, and Crime Specialization in Violence

Using data from the Montreal Longitudinal Study, the current study investigates whether age of onset is informative about the dynamic aspects of violent behaviors in males over time, in terms of violent offending frequency, crime trajectory, and, most importantly, crime specialization in violence. Self-reported data at three time points were used. Group-based modeling showed much heterogeneity in the shape of violent trajectories, which were associated with various crime specialization patterns over time. Most importantly, the number and shape of these trajectories were not accounted for by overall age of onset. Study findings show that while age of onset, especially the age of onset of violence, might be informative of the likelihood of committing a violent crime in middle adolescence, it is not informative about the dynamic process of violent offending. Of importance, violent adult offenders specializing in such crimes in adulthood were not necessarily early starters.
The Moderating Effect of Changed Behavior on the Relationship between Employee Characteristics and Employee Job Performance: A Study on Malaysian Hospitality Industry

This study examines the effects of individual characteristics on frontline employees’ performance in Malaysian hospitality industry. More specifically, the study examines the effect of changed behavior as the moderator variable of the relationship between employee characteristics and employee job performance. The framework is tested using structural equation modeling and the data are from 264 frontline employees in Klang Valley, Malaysia hotels. The hypothesized relationships are tested using AMOS 17.0 through path analysis. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated relatively a reasonable fit of the five factor model to the data on the basis of a number of fit statistics (x 2 = 212.929; x 2 /df =2.662; GFI (good-fit-index) = 0.907; RMR (root mean square residual) = 0.050; RMSEA(root mean square error of approximation) = 0.079). Path analysis indicates that personality and motivation are significant predictors of frontline employees’ performance. It is also found that changed behavior variable moderates the relationship between individual employee motivation and individual performance. Discussion and implications of the findings are delineated at the end of the article.
Characterization of UDP-Glucose Dehydrogenase and UDP-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase Mutants of Proteus mirabilis: Defectiveness in Polymyxin B Resistance, Swarming, and Virulence

ABSTRACT Proteus mirabilis is known to be highly resistant to the action of polymyxin B (PB). However, the mechanism underlying PB resistance is not clear. In this study, we used Tn5 transposon mutagenesis to identify genes that may affect PB resistance in P. mirabilis. Two genes, ugd and galU, which may encode UDP-glucose dehydrogenase (Ugd) and UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (GalU), respectively, were identified. Knockout mutants of ugd and galU were found to be extremely sensitive to PB, presumably because of alterations in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) structure and cell surface architecture in these mutants. These mutants were defective in swarming, expressed lower levels of virulence factor hemolysin, and had lower cell invasion ability. Complementation of the ugd or galU mutant with the full-length ugd or galU gene, respectively, led to the restoration of wild-type phenotypic traits. Interestingly, we found that the expression of Ugd and GalU was induced by PB through RppA, a putative response regulator of the bacterial two-component system that we identified previously. Mutation in either ugd or galU led to activation of RpoE, an extracytoplasmic function sigma factor that has been shown to be activated by protein misfolding and alterations in cell surface structure in other bacteria. Activation of RpoE or RpoE overexpression was found to cause inhibition of FlhDC and hemolysin expression. To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the roles and regulation of Ugd and GalU in P. mirabilis.
Chitosan and its antimicrobial potential – a critical literature survey

Chitosan, an aminopolysaccharide biopolymer, has a unique chemical structure as a linear polycation with a high charge density, reactive hydroxyl and amino groups as well as extensive hydrogen bonding. It displays excellent biocompatibility, physical stability and processability. The term ‘chitosan’ describes a heterogenous group of polymers combining a group of physicochemical and biological characteristics, which allow for a wide scope of applications that are both fascinating and as yet uncharted. The increased awareness of the potentials and industrial value of this biopolymer lead to its utilization in many applications of technical interest, and increasingly in the biomedical arena. Although not primarily used as an antimicrobial agent, its utility as an ingredient in both food and pharmaceutical formulations lately gained more interest, when a scientific understanding of at least some of the pharmacological activities of this versatile carbohydrate began to evolve. However, understanding the various factors that affect its antimicrobial activity has become a key issue for a better usage and a more efficient optimization of chitosan formulations. Moreover, the use of chitosan in antimicrobial systems should be based on sufficient knowledge of the complex mechanisms of its antimicrobial mode of action, which in turn would help to arrive at an appreciation of its entire antimicrobial potential.
The Effect of Three Forms of Summarization Instruction on Sixth Graders' Summary Writing and Comprehension

Three forms of summarization instruction comprised the treatment and control conditions explored in this study of sixth graders. The two treatment groups received direct instruction in either a rule-governed approach to summarization or an intuitive approach. A control group simply received advice to find main ideas with no explicit modeling. Two dependent measures were used to judge the efficacy of the three instructional approaches to summarization: (a) a paragraph summary writing task and (b) a standardized test of paragraph comprehension. On both measures, treatment groups significantly outperformed the control group. The results are discussed from the perspective of a combined textlinguistic and direct instruction model of learning.
Unipolar electrogram in identification of successful targets for radiofrequency catheter ablation of focal atrial tachycardia.

OBJECTIVE To analyze the unipolar electrogram from successful and unsuccessful ablation sites of focal atrial tachycardia (AT), and to evaluate its value in the identification of successful targets. METHODS Fifteen consecutive patients with focal AT were referred for radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA). Both unipolar (from the tip electrode of ablating catheter) and bipolar (from the distal pair of electrode of ablating catheter) electrograms were used to identify the ablation targets of focal AT. RESULTS Successful ablation was echieved in 14 patients. Radiofrequency energy was delivered at a total of 27 sites. The bipolar electrograms associated with successful ablation sites showed earlier atrial deflection relative to P wave onset (36 ms +/- 15 ms vs 30 ms +/- 11 ms, P < 0.05) than the electrograms associated with failed ablation sites. At the 14 successful ablation sites, the unipolar electrograms displayed a completely negative atrial wave ("QS" morphology) beginning with intrinsic deflection. However, at the 13 unsuccessful ablation sites, a "rS" morphology of atrial wave was shown on the unipolar electrogram. CONCLUSION The "QS" morphology of the atrial wave on unipolar electrograms appears to represent a reliable marker for identifying the successful ablation targets of focal AT, with a high sensitivity and specificity.
Ethnography goes online: towards a user-centred methodology to research interpersonal communication on the internet

Ethnographic research is increasingly concerned with how the internet operates within our everyday life. This article attempts to offer a methodological contribution of online communication and an exploration of initial empirical data generated with this methodology. The article calls for a specification of how ethnography can be applied appropriately to the study of relationships online. It departs from the real versus virtual dichotomy, offering a user-centred methodology to study interpersonal communications on the internet. It suggests the use of three main strategies to pay tribute to the characteristics of uses online: multi-situated, online and offline, and flexible and multimedia data collection methods. This approach facilitates a holistic analysis of the way in which social information and communication technologies operate within society in everyday life. It deals with the problem of defining the setting of research online and proposes an expanded ethnography. The article specifies details of this methodology for research into interpersonal communications and emotions online. It does so by drawing on empirical data generated in a study on everyday life and emotions on the internet. Epistemic questions related to this methodological approach will also be discussed. Overall, the exemplification suggests that the methodological approach proposed here is able to capture the uses and understandings of the internet.
A Theoretical Analysis of the Single Breath Diffusing Capacity for Carbon Monoxide

We used a computerized lung model to examine methods of measuring the single breath diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCOSB). Although the single breath maneuver consists of inhalation, breath holding, and exhalation, current methods of measuring DLCOSB use one equation that is accurate only for breath holding, and they attempt to correct for the effects of inhalation and exhalation using a rigidly standardized procedure. Using a uniform lung model, we verified that variations in performing the standarized maneuver and variations in alveolar gas sampling, which frequently occur in practice, cause wide variability in the measured DLCOSB. We developed a new method of calculating DLCOSB based on three equations to describe diffusion in the lung during inhalation, breath holding, and exhalation. In computer simulations of the single breath maneuver, this method yielded accurate measurements of DLCOSB despite variations in flow rates, breath hold times, or the size and timing of the collected sample of exhaled alveolar gas. Furthermore, using a lung model in which the diffusing capacity was nonuniformly distributed, we found that this method gave an accurate estimate of the overall diffusing capacity of the lung from the collection of the entire exhaled alveolar gas sample, while previously accepted methods overestimated DLCOSB. We predict that a more precise calculation of the overall diffusing capacity using the entire alveolar gas sample can minimize errors in the test introduced by variations in the maneuver or variations in the distribution of diffusion.
El aprendizaje intercultural en entornos virtuales de colaboración

The use of new technologies as mediation tools in collaborative intercultural exchanges has been the focus of much research over the last ten years. A considerable number of authors have shown the importance that this type of projects may have in facilitating the development of intercultural competence among participants. This article describes how aspects of intercultural communicative competence can be fostered and assessed in on-line collaborative projects. In this respect, we present the findings of an on-line exchange carried out by the Department of Applied Languages at Nebrija University in Madrid and Dublin City University during one semester of the academic year 2006-2007. Students collaborated electronically by e-mail and exchanged personal, linguistic and socio-cultural information. Data was gathered from a triangulation of instruments, such as e-mail
The influence of the physical education teacher on intrinsic motivation, self-confidence, anxiety, and pre- and post-competition mood states

One of the fundamental problems facing teachers of physical education (PE) is how to increase pupils' motivation. From the point of view of goal achievement, guidelines need to be established so that information may be used to greater effect in classes. This study examined the relationship between the motivational climate created by the PE teacher and the intrinsic motivation of the preparatory sessions together with self-confidence and anxiety prior to competition and pre- and post-competition mood states. The sample was made up of school children (M age = 11.7) from a state school (N = 115), who, after an introduction to an athletics course of 12 sessions, took part in a sports competition. During this time, a teacher (trained to this effect) manipulated the motivational climate, adapting the strategies of TARGET (11, 12, 26, 28). The mastery climate was linked to enjoyment, perceived ability, and effort in the PE classes, as well as to pre-competition somatic anxiety and post-competition vigor. On the other hand, the performance climate was associated with self-confidence, pre-competition vigor, and post-competition stress. The results are discussed in relation to achievement goal theory and motivational climate manipulation.
Dual Recovery Network with Online Compensation for Image Super-Resolution

Image super-resolution (SR) methods essentially lead to a loss of some high-frequency (HF) information when predicting high-resolution (HR) images from low-resolution (LR) images without using external references. To address this issue, we additionally utilize online retrieved data to facilitate image SR in a unified deep framework. A novel dual high-frequency recovery network (DHN) is proposed to predict an HR image with three parts: an LR image, an internal inferred HF (IHF) map (HF missing part inferred solely from the LR image) and an external extracted HF (EHF) map. In particular, we infer the HF information based on both the LR image and similar HR references which are retrieved online. For the EHF map, we align the references with affine transformation and then in the aligned references, part of HF signals are extracted by the proposed DHN to compensate for the HF loss. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our DHN achieves notably better performance than state-of-the-art SR methods.