Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of Residues Critical for the Interferon Antagonist Function of Langat Virus NS5 Reveals a Role for the RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase Domain

ABSTRACT All pathogenic flaviviruses examined thus far inhibit host interferon (IFN) responses by suppressing the Janus kinase-signal transducer and activator of transcription (JAK-STAT) pathway. Both Langat virus (LGTV; a member of the tick-borne encephalitis virus serogroup) and Japanese encephalitis virus use the nonstructural protein NS5 to suppress JAK-STAT signaling. However, NS5 is also critical to virus replication, contributing methyltransferase and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) activities. The specific amino acid residues of NS5 involved in IFN antagonism are not known. Here, we demonstrate that the LGTV NS5 JAK-STAT inhibitory domain is contained between amino acids 355 and 735 (of 903), a range which lies within the RdRP domain. Furthermore, we identified two noncontiguous stretches of specific amino acids within the RdRP, 374 to 380 and 624 to 647, as critical for inhibition of JAK-STAT signaling. Despite considerable separation on the linear NS5 sequence, these residues localized adjacent to each other when modeled on the West Nile virus RdRP crystal structure. Due to the general conservation of RdRP structures, these results suggest that the specific residues identified act cooperatively to form a unique functional site on the RdRP responsible for JAK-STAT inhibition. This insight into the mechanism underlying flavivirus IFN evasion strategies will facilitate the design of antiviral therapeutics that potentiate the action of IFN during infection.
The Moral Universe of Aggrieved Chinese Workers: Workers' Appeals to Arbitration Committees and Letters and Visits Offices

Societies governed by different political regimes develop different ways of expressing a sense of injustice. Traditionally, and then quite differently under Mao, particular norms prevailed regarding what is fair, just or correct, and these are now coexisting with and being challenged by the new economic order that has arisen over the past two decades. Analysing the sense of injustice expressed today by ordinary Chinese citizens emerging from such a complex heritage can help us understand the normative repertoire used by Chinese people today to interpret the reality they face and how they respond to it. In examining this, it must be noted that the nature of the norms and values that get articulated depends upon the specific arenas available to people. Different types of "spaces" confer legitimacy upon different avenues of approach to grievances. Arbitration committees (zhongcai weiyuanhui), which are formally tasked with resolving labour disputes in China, and Letters and Visits Offices (xinfangke), which are used in China as the equivalent of ombudsmen, are two institutions that apply different "tests of justice"'-the first based largely on points of legality and the second more on generalized appeals about injustice.
Disease-associated mutations in CNGB3 promote cytotoxicity in photoreceptor-derived cells

Purpose To determine if achromatopsia associated F525N and T383fsX mutations in the CNGB3 subunit of cone photoreceptor cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels increases susceptibility to cell death in photoreceptor-derived cells. Methods Photoreceptor-derived 661W cells were transfected with cDNA encoding wild-type (WT) CNGA3 subunits plus WT or mutant CNGB3 subunits, and incubated with the membrane-permeable CNG channel activators 8-(4-chlorophenylthio) guanosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate (CPT-cGMP) or CPT-adenosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate (CPT-cAMP). Cell viability under these conditions was determined by measuring lactate dehydrogenase release. Channel ligand sensitivity was calibrated by patch-clamp recording after expression of WT or mutant channels in Xenopus oocytes. Results Coexpression of CNGA3 with CNGB3 subunits containing F525N or T383fsX mutations produced channels exhibiting increased apparent affinity for CPT-cGMP compared to WT channels. Consistent with these effects, cytotoxicity in the presence of 0.1 μM CPT-cGMP was enhanced relative to WT channels, and the increase in cell death was more pronounced for the mutation with the largest gain-of-function effect on channel gating, F525N. Increased susceptibility to cell death was prevented by application of the CNG channel blocker L-cis-diltiazem. Increased cytotoxicity was also found to be dependent on the presence of extracellular calcium. Conclusions These results indicate a connection between disease-associated mutations in cone CNG channel subunits, altered CNG channel-activation properties, and photoreceptor cytotoxicity. The rescue of cell viability via CNG channel block or removal of extracellular calcium suggests that cytotoxicity in this model depends on calcium entry through hyperactive CNG channels.
Being ‘Good at Sport’: Talent, Ability and Young Women’s Sporting Participation

This article looks at the construction of active young femininities within the context of girls’ participation in sport. It draws on findings from longitudinal, qualitative research carried out in the UK. The research revealed the importance of ‘ability’ discourses as particularly salient for girls’ ongoing sports participation at secondary school. This was exemplified in the idea of ‘being good at sport’. Throughout the article I consider some of the difficulties for girls in holding onto notions of themselves as ‘good at sport’ and look at the ways in which this identity was both shifting and relational in the context of their peer and schooling interactions. The findings suggest that processes of team selection, emphases on performance outputs and ongoing expectations of fixed athletic development were all particularly relevant to girls’ sporting identities and participation both in and out of school.
State of the Arts: Using Literary Works to Explore and Learn about Theories and Models of Leadership

Skills and knowledge in leadership are frequently cited as being key to delivering a vision of quality services and this supposes a relationship between ‘effective leadership’ and transforming services. How students engage with learning about their own leadership potential, however, is a challenge to educators. Leaders are constantly presented with moral and ethical choices within a rapidly changing and challenging environment and are expected to promote distributory and participatory leadership models. This paper shares our experiences of arts-based leadership pedagogy where students were encouraged to confront fundamental moral challenges in their everyday work and to develop leadership skills in moral analysis and judgement through the examination of case studies embodied within well-known literary works. A structured evaluation demonstrated that this method facilitated deeper learning in relation to the students' interrogation of key leadership concepts, and promoted a safe learning environment for engaging in the experience of taking up a leadership and respective followership roles.
In vivo 31P MR spectral patterns and reproducibility in cancer patients studied in a multi‐institutional trial

The standardization and reproducibility of techniques required to acquire anatomically localized 31P MR spectra non‐invasively while studying tumors in cancer patients in a multi‐institutional group at 1.5 T are reported. This initial group of patients was studied from 1995 to 2000 to test the feasibility of acquiring in vivo localized 31P MRS in clinical MR spectrometers. The cancers tested were non‐Hodgkin's lymphomas, sarcomas of soft tissue and bone, breast carcinomas and head and neck carcinomas. The best accrual and spectral quality were achieved with the non‐Hodgkin's lymphomas. The initial analysis of the spectral values of the sum of phosphoethanolamine plus phosphocholine normalized by the content of nucleotide triphosphates in a homogeneous sample of 32 NHL patients studied by in vivo 31P MRS showed good reproducibility among different institutions. No statistical differences were found between the institution with the largest number of cases accrued and the rest of the multi‐institutional NHL data (2.28 ± 0.64, mean ± standard error; n = 17, vs 2.08 ± 0.14, n = 15). The preliminary data reported demonstrate that the institutions involved in this trial are obtaining reproducible 31P MR spectroscopic data non‐invasively from human tumors. This is a fundamental prerequisite for the international cooperative group to be able to demonstrate the clinical value of the normalized determination of phosphoethanolamine plus phosphocholine by 31P MRS as predictor for treatment response in cancer patients. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Comparison of Hypermedia Learning and Traditional Instruction on Knowledge Acquisition and Retention

Abstract A comparison was made of hypermedia learning environments and traditional instruction in terms of contribution to declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge acquisition and retention in a specific subject area through a pretest-posttest control-group design. Thirty-nine 9th-grade biology students were assigned to experimental (hypermedia learning environment) and control (traditional instruction) groups through a matched-pair technique. Both groups were given pre-, post-, and retention tests. Posttest results indicated no significant difference between control and experimental groups in acquisition of declarative, conditional, and procedural knowledge. However, retention test results showed that the experimental group retained all three types of knowledge significantly better than did the control group.
Flight into Security: A New Approach and Measure of the Authoritarian Personality

A basic pattern of human response to stressful and uncertain situations which provoke anxiety and insecurity is to seek security and shelter. Those who provide support become by a process of psychological attribution authorities. Therefore the mechanism of seeking support and shelter under strained conditions might be called an "authoritarian reaction. " Socialization involves a negotiation with this basic reaction of flight in situations of uncertainty. As individuals develop, they learn to overcome the authoritarian reaction by formulating their own strategies to cope with reality. The authoritarian personality emerges out of an inability to generate such individual coping strategies. Authoritarian personalities defer to the dictates and control of others who offer them the certainty and comfort they cannot provide for themselves. Extensions of this basic authoritarian response are the rejection of the new and the unfamiliar, rigid adherence to norms and value systems, an anxious and inflexible response to new situations, suppressed hostility, and passive aggression. A new measure based on items on one's own behavior, feelings, motivation, and the individual's concept of the self was developed and tested in several empirical studies. It obtained a good reliability and proved to be valid by correlating to measures of right-wing extremism, negative attitudes toward immigrants and women. Language: en
A hardware evaluation of cache partitioning to improve utilization and energy-efficiency while preserving responsiveness

Computing workloads often contain a mix of interactive, latency-sensitive foreground applications and recurring background computations. To guarantee responsiveness, interactive and batch applications are often run on disjoint sets of resources, but this incurs additional energy, power, and capital costs. In this paper, we evaluate the potential of hardware cache partitioning mechanisms and policies to improve efficiency by allowing background applications to run simultaneously with interactive foreground applications, while avoiding degradation in interactive responsiveness. We evaluate these tradeoffs using commercial x86 multicore hardware that supports cache partitioning, and find that real hardware measurements with full applications provide different observations than past simulation-based evaluations. Co-scheduling applications without LLC partitioning leads to a 10% energy improvement and average throughput improvement of 54% compared to running tasks separately, but can result in foreground performance degradation of up to 34% with an average of 6%. With optimal static LLC partitioning, the average energy improvement increases to 12% and the average throughput improvement to 60%, while the worst case slowdown is reduced noticeably to 7% with an average slowdown of only 2%. We also evaluate a practical low-overhead dynamic algorithm to control partition sizes, and are able to realize the potential performance guarantees of the optimal static approach, while increasing background throughput by an additional 19%.
A Comparative Study on the Mechanical, Thermal and Morphological Characterization of Poly(lactic acid)/Epoxidized Palm Oil Blend

In this work, poly(lactic acid) (PLA) a fully biodegradable thermoplastic polymer matrix was melt blended with three different epoxidized palm oil (EPO). The aim of this research was to enhance the flexibility, mechanical and thermal properties of PLA. The blends were prepared at various EPO contents of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 wt% and characterized. The SEM analysis evidenced successful modification on the neat PLA brittle morphology. Tensile tests indicate that the addition of 1 wt% EPO is sufficient to improve the strength and flexibility compared to neat PLA. Additionally, the flexural and impact properties were also enhanced. Further, DSC analysis showed that the addition of EPO results in a decrease in Tg, which implies an increase in the PLA chain mobility. In the presence of 1 wt% EPO, TGA results revealed significant increase in the thermal stability by 27%. Among the three EPOs used, EPO(3) showed the best mechanical and thermal properties compared to the other EPO’s, with an optimum loading of 1 wt%. Conclusively, EPO showed a promising outcome to overcome the brittleness and improve the overall properties of neat PLA, thus can be considered as a potential plasticizer.
The Effects of Market Structure on Industry Growth

We analyze imperfect competition in dynamic environments where firms use rivalrous but nonexcludable industry-specific capital that is provided exogenously. Capital depreciation depends on utilization, so firms influence the evolution of the capital equipment through more or less intensive supply in the final-goods market. Strategic incentives stem from, (i) a dynamic externality, arising due to the non-excludability of the capital stock, leading firms to compete for its use (rivalry), and, (ii) a market externality, leading to the classic Cournot-type supply competition. Comparing alternative market structures, we isolate the effect of these externalities on strategies and industry growth.
A STUDY OF THE CONSERVATION OF WEIGHT IN THE JUNIOR SCHOOL CHILD

Summary. A large number of children in a junior school were tested, individually, along the lines initiated by Piaget, in an attempt to trace the development of the conservation of weight. While results very similar to those of Piaget are obtained using his criteria for invariance of weight, it is shown that children who are conservers of weight in his type of test, are often non-conservers in other tests of conservation of weight. Overall, our results lead us to suggest that while logical thought may be a necessary condition for conservation of weight, it is not a sufficient condition. Sheer experience of the physical world seems to play a more important role than Piaget reckons.
Cross-Reactivity of Antibodies Specific for Flagellar Tektin and Intermediate Filament Subunits

Monoclonal antibodies specific for each of the flagellar tektins were prepared and used to determine whether structures similar to tektin filaments are present in cells lacking cilia or flagella. This analysis was performed by double-label immunofluorescence microscopy of several cell lines and by immunoblots of protein fractions. Two of the four anti-tektin antibodies, the antibodies 3-7-1 and 3-10-1, which bind different epitopes of the C-tektin, label 3T3, HeLa, PtK2, and BHK-21 cells as well as myotubes. The antibody 3-7-1 stains intermediate filament structures in the cells and binds vimentin or desmin in preparations of cytoskeletal proteins; whereas the antibody 3-10-1 stains nuclear envelopes in the cells and binds lamin A and C in preparations of cytoskeletal proteins or nuclear lamina. Structural similarities between the C-tektin and intermediate filament proteins probably are extended to more than two epitopes because polyclonal antibodies anti-vimentin and anti-desmin bind to C-tektin. These polyclonal antibodies also bind to A-tektin. The cross-reaction of monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies binding to epitopes in tektin and intermediate filament components and the existence of a high content of ~t-helical structure in the tektin subunits (Linck, R. W., and G. L. Langevin, 1982, J. Cell Sci., 58:1-22) indicate that tektin and intermediate filaments are homologous in several parts of their
American Joint Committee on Cancer Staging and clinicopathological high-risk predictors of ocular surface squamous neoplasia: a study from a tertiary eye center in India.

CONTEXT Ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN) is the most common tumor of conjunctival epithelium associated with risk of permanent visual impairment. It includes conjunctival intraepithelial neoplasia and squamous cell carcinoma. Although American Joint Committee on Cancer-TNM (AJCC-TNM) staging is commonly used in various tumors, it has only recently been described for OSSN. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the prognostic relevance of AJCC-TNM staging and the clinicopathological features in OSSN. DESIGN Sixty-four histopathologically proven cases of OSSN (20 conjunctival intraepithelial neoplasia and 44 squamous cell carcinoma) were included in the study. The AJCC-TNM staging and clinicopathological features of OSSN cases were recorded. Patients were followed up for 17 to 40 months (median, 32 months). Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine the prognostic value of various clinicopathological features. RESULTS Longer sunlight exposure (P = .01), diffuse growth pattern (P = .02), larger tumor size (≥2 cm) (P = .03), histopathological diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma (P = .02), and orbital invasion or invasion of adjacent structures (T3 or T4) (P < .001) emerged as significant predictors of reduced recurrence-free survival. Using multivariate analysis, a higher T category (T3 or T4) was the most important prognostic indicator of a poor outcome. CONCLUSIONS A higher T category (T3 or T4) is an important predictor of clinical outcome, and the use of the AJCC-TNM staging system is recommended in the management of all patients with OSSN. Longer sunlight exposure, larger tumor size (≥2 cm), orbital invasion or invasion of adjacent structures (T3 or T4), and a histopathological diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma are other clinicopathological features of prognostic relevance in patients with OSSN.
An Enhanced Buffer Management Scheme for Multimedia Traffic in HSDPA

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) enables higher data rate packet switch services over UMTS, creating opportunity to provide a variety of broadband multimedia applications. In HSDPA, buffering of downlink data in the base station (Node B) is required to fulfill the Medium Access Control (MAC) Packet Scheduling functionality. Additionally, flow control over the Iub interface that connects the Node B to the Radio Network Controller (RNC) is standardized in the 3GPP HSDPA technical specifications. Thus, buffer queue management schemes can be conveniently applied to improve downlink traffic QoS performance in HSDPA. Our previous work focused on a novel priority queuing scheme shown to be effective for QoS management of multimedia traffic with concurrent diverse flows towards a HSDPA end user. This paper presents an enhanced scheme that incorporates Iub flow control. A dynamic HSDPA simulator is developed to study the extended scheme, demonstrating the performance improvement achievable.
The additive and interactive effects of parenting and children's personality on externalizing behaviour

Parenting practices have been previously linked to childhood externalizing behaviour. However, little attention has been given to the potential effect of individual personality differences among children on this relation. The current study assesses the additive effects of children's personality characteristics and explores the moderating effects of children's personality on relations between parenting practices and childhood externalizing behaviour using a proportional stratified sample of 599 nonclinical elementary‐school‐aged children. Multiple regression analyses reveal that in the mother data as well as in the father data, dysfunctional parenting and the children's personality characteristics Benevolence, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion were directly related to outcomes consistent with an additive model of their effects. Significant interactions indicate that children with low scores on Benevolence who were exposed to overreactive discipline practices exhibited higher levels of externalizing behaviour. Children characterized by low scores on Conscientiousness who were exposed to coercive parenting behaviour showed elevated levels of externalizing behaviour. These results suggest that integrating children's personality characteristics within parenting models can improve the understanding of the aetiology of childhood externalizing problem behaviour. The implications of such integrations for intervention are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Motivational factors for exercise in cardiac patients? A literature review

Objective: To review factors related to regular exercise in patients diagnosed with myocardial ischemia, heart failure, and other heart diseases. Review methods: Literature review of studies published from 1969 to January 2013. Results: Of the studies included (n=27), 18 describe factors related to the performance of exercise. The other 9 articles describe barriers to exercise and/or propose options for overcoming the barriers posed by social and economic factors, the health care system, the patient’s condition, the therapy and the patient related factors. The literature specifically describes different barriers and motives for men and women. Conclusions: To increase exercise among cardiac patients, the factors that influence participation need to be examined. Alternative formats for exercise programs are needed. Programs need to be better tailored to patients’ needs so as to enhance participation among those who are not attracted by the choice of programs currently offered.