Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibody Response of Patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Targets the Viral Nucleocapsid

Abstract The recent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) provided an opportunity to study the antibody response of infected individuals to the causative virus, SARS coronavirus. We examined serum samples obtained from 46 patients with SARS, 40 patients with non-SARS pneumonia, and 38 healthy individuals, by use of Western blotting (WB), enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA), and immunofluorescence assay, using both native and bacterially produced antigens of the virus. We found a highly restricted, immunoglobulin G-dominated antibody response in patients with SARS, directed most frequently (89% by ELISA) and predominantly at the nucleocapsid. Almost all of the subjects without SARS had no antinucleocapsid antibodies. The spike protein was the next most frequently targeted, but only 63% of the patients (by ELISA) responded. Other targets of the response identified by use of WB included antigens of 80 and 60 kDa. Several nonstructural proteins cloned were not antigenic, and the culture-derived nucleocapsid appeared to be specifically degraded.
International Field Hockey Players Perform More High-Speed Running Than National-Level Counterparts

Abstract Jennings, DH, Cormack, SJ, Coutts, AJ, and Aughey, RJ. International field hockey players perform more high-speed running than national-level counterparts. J Strength Cond Res 26(4): 947–952, 2012—This study compared the activity profile of national and international male field hockey athletes. Sixteen players (mean (±SD) age, stature, and body mass: 22 ± 4 y, 178 ± 8 cm, and 78 ± 9 kg, respectively) competing in the national-level Australian Hockey League (AHL) and 16 players [mean (±SD) age, stature, and body mass: 27 ± 4 y, 179 ± 5 cm, and 77 ± 5 kg, respectively] competing in the international Champions Trophy (CT) tournament participated in this study. Global positioning systems assessed total distance (TD), meters per minute (m·min−1), and high-speed running distance (HSR; >4.17 m·s−1). Differences in multistage fitness test performance, movement between competition, positions, and halves were assessed using effect size and percent difference ±90% confidence intervals. The CT players had a 10.1% greater multistage fitness test, 13.9% and 42.0% more TD and HSR, respectively, than AHL. During CT, strikers performed 10.1 ± 7.4% less HSR than midfielders and 26.6 ± 8.2% more HSR than defenders. The AHL defenders covered less TD and HSR distance compared with strikers and midfielders (8.1 ± 3.6% and 8.4 ± 2.6%; 36.1 ± 11.1% and 51.5 ± 12.1%, respectively). The AHL strikers, midfielders, and defenders (19.9 ± 8.8%, 32.1 ± 7.9%, and 30.3 ± 10.7%, respectively), all performed less HSR distance than their CT counterparts. Finally, TD decreased from the first to second halves across all positions (6.1−7.5%) in both competitions. International competition increases the running profile of hockey players, with greater HSR at the elite level and positional differences including decreased running during the second half in both competitions.
Citations and Readership are Poor Indicators of Research Excellence: Introducing TrueImpactDataset, a New Dataset for Validating Research Evaluation Metrics

In this paper we show that citation counts and Mendeley readership are poor indicators of research excellence. Our experimental design builds on the assumption that a good evaluation metric should be able to distinguish publications that have changed a research field from those that have not. The experiment has been conducted on a new dataset for bibliometric research which we call TrueImpactDataset. TrueImpactDataset is a collection of research publications of two types -- research papers which are considered seminal work in their area and papers which provide a survey (a literature review) of a research area. The dataset also contains related metadata, which include DOIs, titles, authors and abstracts. We describe how the dataset was built and provide overview statistics of the dataset. We propose to use the dataset for validating research evaluation metrics. By using this data, we show that widely used research metrics only poorly distinguish excellent research.
Identification of Cdk targets that control cytokinesis

The final event of the eukaryotic cell cycle is cytokinesis, when two new daughter cells are born. How the timing and execution of cytokinesis is controlled is poorly understood. Here, we show that downregulation of cyclin‐dependent kinase (Cdk) activity, together with upregulation of its counteracting phosphatase Cdc14, controls each of the sequential steps of cytokinesis, including furrow ingression, membrane resolution and cell separation in budding yeast. We use phosphoproteome analysis of mitotic exit to identify Cdk targets that are dephosphorylated at the time of cytokinesis. We then apply a new and widely applicable tool to generate conditionally phosphorylated proteins to identify those whose dephosphorylation is required for cytokinesis. This approach identifies Aip1, Ede1 and Inn1 as cytokinetic regulators. Our results suggest that cytokinesis is coordinately controlled by the master cell cycle regulator Cdk together with its counteracting phosphatase and that it is executed by concerted dephosphorylation of Cdk targets involved in several cell biological processes.
Relationships between adiponectin, sex hormone binding globulin and insulin resistance in hyperthyroid Graves' disease women.

INTRODUCTION Adiponectin and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) play a role in glucose metabolism. Hyperthyroidism has an impact on carbohydrate metabolism and could affect insulin resistance. The aim of this study was to assess the associations between insulin resistance, adiponectin and SHBG among hyperthyroid Graves` disease (GD) women. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study was undertaken in 60 women with hyperthyroidism in the course of GD; 32 healthy women matched by BMI and age formed the control group. The concentrations of: free thyroxine (fT4), free triiodothyronine (fT3), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), SHBG, insulin, adiponectin and glucose were measured, and the homeostasis model assessment (HOMA-I) was calculated. RESULTS Compared to euthyroid subjects, hyperthyroid GD women had elevated glucose, fT4, fT3, adiponectin and SHBG concentrations, but there were no differences in HOMA-I. When we explored the relations between adiponectin as well as SHBG with glucose and HOMA-I, we observed that HOMA-I was associated with adiponectin and SHBG only in the control group, and in hyperthyroidism there were no such connections. We found positive associations between adiponectin, SHBG, fT4 and fT3 in the GD group. CONCLUSIONS Elevated concentrations of adiponectin and SHBG were observed in hyperthyroidism but they were not related to insulin resistance.
An Improved One-Dimensional Model for Liquid Slugs Traveling in Pipelines

An improved one-dimensional (1D) model—compared to previous work by the authors—is proposed, which is able to predict the acceleration and shortening of a single liquid slug propagating in a straight pipe with a downstream bend. The model includes holdup at the slug's tail and flow separation at the bend. The obtained analytical and numerical results are validated against experimental data. The effects of holdup, driving pressure and slug length are examined in a parameter variation study.
Could a multimodal dictionary serve as a learning tool? An examination of the impact of technologically enhanced visual glosses on L2 text comprehension

This study examines the efficacy of a multimodal online bilingual dictionary based on cognitive linguistics in order to explore the advantages and limitations of explicit multimodal L2 vocabulary learning. Previous studies have examined the efficacy of the verbal and visual representation of words while reading L2 texts, concluding that it facilitates incidental word retention. This study explores other potentials of multimodal L2 vocabulary learning: explicit learning with a multimodal dictionary could enhance not only word retention, but also text comprehension; the dictionary could serve not only as a reference tool, but also as a learning tool; and technology-enhanced visual glosses could facilitate deeper text comprehension. To verify these claims, this study investigates the multimodal representations’ effects on Japanese students learning L2 locative prepositions by developing two online dictionaries, one with static pictures and one with animations. The findings show the advantage of such dictionaries in explicit learning; however, no significant differences are found between the two types of visual glosses, either in the vocabulary or in the listening tests. This study confirms the effectiveness of multimodal L2 materials, but also emphasizes the need for further research into making the technologically enhanced materials more effective.
Clinical study in genital herpes: natural Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin versus acyclovir, valacyclovir, and famciclovir

Background This paper reports the results of a clinical study that tested the effect of suppressive treatment with the botanical product Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin on the number of genital herpes outbreaks. The results in this study were compared to those published in clinical studies of acyclovir, valacyclovir, and famciclovir. Methods The framework was a retrospective chart review. The population included 139 participants. The treatment was one to four capsules of Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin per day. The duration of treatment was 2–48 months. The study included three controls recommended by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA): baseline, no treatment, and dose response. Results The treatment decreased the number of outbreaks per year in 90.8% of the participants. The treatment also decreased the mean number of outbreaks per year from 7.27 and 5.5 in the control groups to 2.39 (P<0.0001 and P<0.001, respectively). The treated participants reported no adverse experiences. Out of the 15 tests that compared Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin to the three drugs, Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin had superior efficacy in eight tests, inferior efficacy in three tests, and comparable efficacy in four tests. Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin also had superior safety. Conclusion The clinical study showed that the natural Gene-Eden-VIR/Novirin decreases the number of genital herpes outbreaks without any side effects. The study also showed that the clinical effects reported in this study are mostly better than those reported in the reviewed studies of acyclovir, valacyclovir, and famciclovir.
Impact upon clinical outcomes of translation of PNA FISH-generated laboratory data from the clinical microbiology bench to bedside in real time

Fluorescence in situ hybridization using peptide nucleic acid probes (PNA-FISH) differentiates Staphylococcus aureus from other Gram-positive-cocci in clusters (GPCC). 101/202 patients with GPCC+ blood cultures were randomly assigned to clinician-notification of PNA FISH results. Notification was associated with reduced mortality (8% vs.17%, p = 0.05), further antibiotic use (median −2.5 days, p = 0.01), and trended toward reduced hospital stay and charges.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection among cystic fibrosis and ICU patients in the referral Children Medical Hospital in Tehran, Iran

Summary Introduction. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the important causes of hospital-acquired infections in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and considered as a major determinant of morbidity and mortality in patients affected by cystic fibrosis (CF). The aim of this study was to investigate clonal diversity among randomly picked P. aeruginosa isolates of CF and the other hospitalized patients in ICU. Methods. Cultivation, identification, and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of P. aeruginosa isolates were performed using standard techniques. The genetic similarity of the strains was investigated by amplification of the Enterobacterial Repetitive Intergenic Consensus-polymerase chain reaction (ERIC-PCR) sequence. Results and discussion. Among 49 isolates, sixteen were isolated from 11 patients affected by CF and 33 came from an epidemiological investigation of 25 P. aeruginosa infected patients of ICU. Five clusters were generated for all isolates analyzed through ERIC-PCR genotyping. Two major clusters (B and C) were discovered in P. aeruginosa isolates of ICU and CF patients during the whole period of this study. Fifteen unique antibiogram patterns obtained from all isolates and multi-resistant P. aeruginosa (MRPA) were identified in 23 isolates (47%). MRPA isolates were detected in all clusters (except A) while pan-resistant isolates were recovered only in cluster C. The high prevalence of related or identical isolates in CF and non-CF patients can be due to transmission of particular dominant clones in ICU ward. Therefore, enhanced infection-control may become necessary to prevent further spread of clonal strains.
Reducing Bias in Production Speech Models

Replacing hand-engineered pipelines with end-to-end deep learning systems has enabled strong results in applications like speech and object recognition. However, the causality and latency constraints of production systems put end-to-end speech models back into the underfitting regime and expose biases in the model that we show cannot be overcome by "scaling up", i.e., training bigger models on more data. In this work we systematically identify and address sources of bias, reducing error rates by up to 20% while remaining practical for deployment. We achieve this by utilizing improved neural architectures for streaming inference, solving optimization issues, and employing strategies that increase audio and label modelling versatility.
Characterization of ring modulators and broadband photodetectors in silicon photonics for 25 Gb/s interconnection

This paper presents the characterization of silicon photonics active devices and a framework for the analysis of their application in high bit rates transceiver used for optical interconnection. System simulation of eye-diagrams that include measured S-parameters are shown for an optical link up to 25 Gb/s, including a SiGe transimpedance amplifier IC (TIA) developed at CTI. Considerations about the integration of devices in the development of optical interconnections are presented along device results.
Replication of Staphylococcal Multiresistance Plasmids

ABSTRACT Based on structural and functional properties, three groups of large staphylococcal multiresistance plasmids have been recognized, viz., the pSK1 family, pSK41-like conjugative plasmids, and β-lactamase–heavy-metal resistance plasmids. Here we describe an analysis of the replication functions of a representative of each of these plasmid groups. The replication initiation genes from theStaphylococcus aureus plasmids pSK1, pSK41, and pI9789::Tn552 were found to be related to each other and to the Staphylococcus xylosus plasmid pSX267 and are also related to rep genes of several plasmids from other gram-positive genera. Nucleotide sequence similarity between pSK1 and pI9789::Tn552 extended beyond theirrep genes, encompassing upstream divergently transcribed genes, orf245 and orf256, respectively. Our analyses revealed that genes encoding proteins related to the deducedorf245 product are variously represented, in several types of organization, on plasmids possessing six seemingly evolutionarily distinct types of replication initiation genes and including both theta-mode and rolling-circle replicons. Construction of minireplicons and subsequent functional analysis demonstrated that orf245is required for the segregational stability of the pSK1 replicon. In contrast, no gene equivalent to orf245 is evident on the conjugative plasmid pSK41, and a minireplicon encoding only the pSK41 rep gene was found to exhibit a segregational stability approaching that of the parent plasmid. Significantly, the results described establish that many of the large multiresistance plasmids that have been identified in clinical staphylococci, which were formerly presumed to be unrelated, actually utilize an evolutionarily related theta-mode replication system.
Genetic diversity of North American captive-born gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)

Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) are designated as critically endangered and wild populations are dramatically declining as a result of habitat destruction, fragmentation, diseases (e.g., Ebola) and the illegal bushmeat trade. As wild populations continue to decline, the genetic management of the North American captive western lowland gorilla population will be an important component of the long-term conservation of the species. We genotyped 26 individuals from the North American captive gorilla collection at 11 autosomal microsatellite loci in order to compare levels of genetic diversity to wild populations, investigate genetic signatures of a population bottleneck and identify the genetic structure of the captive-born population. Captive gorillas had significantly higher levels of allelic diversity (t7 = 4.49, P = 0.002) and heterozygosity (t7 = 4.15, P = 0.004) than comparative wild populations, yet the population has lost significant allelic diversity while in captivity when compared to founders (t7 = 2.44, P = 0.04). Analyses suggested no genetic evidence for a population bottleneck of the captive population. Genetic structure results supported the management of North American captive gorillas as a single population. Our results highlight the utility of genetic management approaches for endangered nonhuman primate species.
Reassessment of the prognostic significance of hypodiploidy in pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the cytogenetic features of the hypodiploid leukemic cells of pediatric patients with this rare subgroup of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). In addition, the authors determined whether subdivision of the hypodiploid category served a prognostic purpose for these patients.
Thinking about race.

Interestingly, thinking about race that you really wait for now is coming. It's significant to wait for the representative and beneficial books to read. Every book that is provided in better way and utterance will be expected by many peoples. Even you are a good reader or not, feeling to read this book will always appear when you find it. But, when you feel hard to find it as yours, what to do? Borrow to your friends and don't know when to give back it to her or him.
Divide and conquer technique in online handwritten Kannada character recognition

The peculiar nature in which one or more consonants combine with vowels to produce a compound character in Kannada language results in a huge number of character combinations, running to tens of thousands or more. The aim of the work is therefore, to reduce the number of character combinations by employing a divide and conquer technique. In the first level of the technique, the structural and the dynamic features of online handwritten Kannada characters are exploited to segment the compound Kannada characters into 282 distinct symbols. This reduction in the number of classes overcomes the huge data collection problem and also reduces the computational complexity. In the second level, these 282 symbols are further divided into three distinct sets of stroke groups, thus further reducing the search space for the recognition engine. One or more of these stroke groups can combine to form any of the thousands of Kannada compound characters. Since the focus of this paper is the above strategy, a simple classifier has been used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in handling the difficult task of recognizing all possible character combinations of Kannada. The features extracted from the segmented stroke groups are mapped to lower dimensional space using PCA. The subspace features of distinct stroke groups are fed to the respective classifiers in an order and the output of these classifiers are combined to output the Unicode of the recognized akshara. The proposed work is an attempt made for the first time in Kannada language which considers all possible combinations of symbols, including Kannada numerals.
Do They Understand? (Part II): Assent of Children Participating in Clinical Anesthesia and Surgery Research

Background Participation of children in clinical research requires not only parental permission but also the assent of the child. Although there is no fixed age at which assent should be sought, investigators should obtain assent from children considered able to provide it. This study was designed to determine children's understanding of the elements of disclosure for studies in which they had assented to participate. Methods The study population included 102 children aged 7–18 yr who had given their assent to participate in a clinical anesthesia or surgical study. Children were interviewed using a semistructured format to determine their understanding of eight core elements of disclosure for the study to which they had agreed to participate. Two independent assessors scored the children's levels of understanding of these elements. Results The children's perceived level of understanding of the elements of disclosure was significantly greater than their measured understanding (7.0 ± 2.4 vs. 5.3 ± 2.7, 0–10 scale;P < 0.0001). Complete understanding of the elements of disclosure for all children ranged from 30.4 to 89.4%. Children aged more than 11 yr had significantly greater understanding compared with younger children, particularly with respect to understanding of the study protocol, the benefits, and the freedom to withdraw. Conclusions Children approached for their assent to participate in a clinical anesthesia or surgery study have limited understanding of the elements of disclosure and their role as a research participant, particularly if they are aged less than 11 yr.
On dynamic Voronoi diagrams and the minimum Hausdorff distance for point sets under Euclidean motion in the plane

We show that the dynamic Voronoi diagram of <italic>k</italic> sets of points in the plane, where each set consists of <italic>m</italic> points moving rigidly, has complexity <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt><italic>k</italic><supscrpt>2</supscrpt>λ<italic><subscrpt>s</subscrpt></italic>(<italic>k</italic>)) for some fixed <italic>s</italic>, where λ<italic><supscrpt>s</supscrpt></italic>(<italic>n</italic>) is the maximum length of a (<italic>n</italic>, <italic>s</italic>) Davenport-Schinzel sequence. This improves the result of Aonuma et al., who show an upper bound of <italic>O</italic>(<italic>n</italic><supscrpt>3</supscrpt><italic>k</italic><supscrpt>4</supscrpt> log* <italic>k</italic>) for the complexity of such Voronoi diagrams. We then apply this result to the problem of finding the minimum Hausdorff distance between two point sets in the plane under Euclidean motion. We show that this distance can be computed in time <italic>O</italic>((<italic>m</italic> + <italic>n</italic>)<supscrpt>6</supscrpt> log (<italic>mn</italic>)), where the two sets contain <italic>m</italic> and <italic>n</italic> points respectively.