Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of alveolar macrophages with cytochalasin D inhibits uptake and subsequent growth of Legionella pneumophila

Legionella pneumophila multiplied rapidly in guinea pig and rat alveolar macrophages but failed to grow when phagocytic activity was inhibited by pretreatment with 0.5 or 1.0 microgram of cytochalasin D per ml. Attachment was not inhibited by cytochalasin D. No extracellular multiplication occurred when L. pneumophila were in close proximity to viable functional macrophages or even when the bacteria were attached to plasma membranes of the macrophages. Nonopsonized L. pneumophila were avidly phagocytized by alveolar macrophages. When bacteria were centrifuged onto a cell pellet, more than 85% of the phagocytes contained one or more bacteria within 15 min. In contrast, under the same conditions only approximately 15% of the macrophages contained nonopsonized Escherichia coli or Staphylococcus aureus. Phagocytosis of L. pneumophila by untreated guinea pig macrophages occurred by extension of pseudopodia around the bacteria in a classical manner. The failure of the bacteria to actively penetrate the phagocyte suggests that their intracellular survival must not depend on avoidance of a phagosome but rather on an inhibition of or resistance to subsequent microbicidal functions of the macrophage.
Orientation of Movements and Habitat Selection in a Spatially Structured Population of Marbled Salamanders (Ambystoma opacum)

Abstract Most studies on orientation of movements of pond-breeding salamanders have considered only a single local population (or breeding pond) during ≥1 yr, or multiple populations during a single year. We quantified migratory patterns of Marbled Salamanders at nine breeding ponds during 5 yr in western Massachusetts. Based on captures at drift fences, movements were nonuniform at all breeding ponds. In addition, the direction of orientation differed among breeding ponds and changed slightly across years. Within ponds, orientation of adults and juveniles differed significantly in 52% of comparisons, and adult movements were more directionally concentrated than those of juveniles. In addition, migrating salamanders shifted slightly the orientation of their movements as they traveled into uplands, suggesting that migration routes are spatially complex and that determination of migration “corridors” based on concentrated captures at the pond periphery may be misleading. Although salamanders used migration routes with higher canopy cover, our models did not explain a large portion of the variation in orientation, and protecting areas of high canopy cover alone may not be sufficient as a protection strategy. Our results suggest that movement routes, though perhaps concentrated in the short term, are unpredictable in the long term. Thus, we can offer little evidence that distinct corridors can be identified and protected that would be used consistently over time by migrating or dispersing Marbled Salamanders. Consequently, until we better understand mechanisms governing movements in this species, a conservative conservation strategy would require protecting broad terrestrial areas around breeding sites.
HIV / AIDS and family well-being in southern Africa : towards an analysis of policies and responsiveness A brief synthesis paper

Given endemic poverty, scarcity and multiple social ills in Africa, the HIV/AIDS epidemics may be the “last straw” for the peoples of southern African countries. As elsewhere in Africa, the subregion’s countries are beset by a wide range of economic, social and political problems besides the epidemics: extreme disempowering and debilitating chronic poverty; economic recessions, foreign debt, the effects of economic structural adjustment programmes and massive unemployment; underdevelopment and poor infrastructure; weak leadership, poor governance and corruption; political instability, conflict and violence; pervasive patriarchy, with women discriminated aga inst and disadvantaged; the effects of droughts, floods and pestilence on agriculture, livelihoods and food security; and rampant disease, including malaria, tuberculosis, waterborne disease and malnutrition – and now HIV/AIDS. The HIV/AIDS epidemics constitute not only the worst scourge and onslaught with which Africa’s people must contend; they also occur in a context in which the effects of the epidemics and key issues which they engender are juxtaposed with the multiplicity of societal problems.
Why Most Swedish Fathers and Few French Fathers Use Paid Parental Leave : An Exploratory Qualitative Study of Parents

Anna-Lena Almqvist, School of Health, Care and Social Welfare, Mälardalen University. Data drawn from Welfare and Solidarity in Postindustrial Europe study managed from the Department of Sociology, Umeå University, Sweden; Department of Social Sciences, Roskilde University, Denmark and Department of Sociology, Copenhagen University, Denmark. Financial support for the study received from the Swedish Council for Work Life (RALF) now Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS) and the Danish National Social Science Council. Earlier versions of paper presented at the Swedish National Conference in Sociology, Stockholm 2006 and the International Sociological Association’s XVI World Congress of Sociology, Durban, South Africa 2006. I would like to thank Thomas P. Boje, Lars Dahlgren, Rolf Å. Gustafsson, Mikael Nordenmark, Ingrid Schild, Eva Sundström and Rune Åberg for valuable comments on earlier versions, and those who kindly volunteered to be interviewed. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anna-Lena Almqvist, School of Health, Care and Social Welfare, Mälardalen University, Box 325, SE-63105 Eskilstuna, Sweden. Electronic mail: anna-lena.almqvist@mdh.se
Recovery in Whiplash-Associated Disorders: Do You Get What You Expect?

Objective. Positive expectations predict better outcome in a number of health conditions, but the role of expectations in predicting health recovery after injury is not well understood. We investigated whether early expectations of recovery in whiplash associated disorders (WAD) predict subsequent recovery, and studied the role of “expectations” to predict recovery as determined by pain cessation and resolution of pain-related limitations in daily activities. Methods. A cohort of 6,015 adults with traffic-related whiplash injuries was assessed, using multivariable Cox proportional hazards analysis, for association between these expectations and self-perceived recovery over a 1-year period following the injury. Recovery was assessed using 3 indices: self-perceived global recovery (primary outcome); resolution of neck pain severity; and resolution of pain-related limitations in daily activities. Results. After adjusting for the effect of sociodemographic characteristics, post-crash symptoms and pain, prior health status and collision-related factors, those who expected to get better soon recovered over 3 times as quickly (hazard rate ratio = 3.62, 95% confidence interval 2.55–5.13) as those who expected that they would never get better. Findings were similar for resolution of pain-related limitations and resolution of neck pain intensity, although the effect sizes for the latter outcome were smaller. Conclusion. Patients’ early expectations for recovery are an important prognostic factor in recovery after whiplash injury, and are potentially modifiable. Clinicians should assess these expectations in order to identify those patients at risk of chronic whiplash, and future studies should focus on the effect of changing these early expectations.
PHARMACOLOGICAL AND CLINICAL ASPECTS OF EFFICACY , SAFETY AND TOLERABILITY OF ATYPICAL ANTIPSYCHOTIC MEDICATION IN CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA AND BIPOLAR DISORDERS

The treatment plan in child psychosis must be carefully managed. Despite of the increasing use of modern, second generation antipsychotics in paediatric patients, data on the efficacy, safety and tolerability of these drugs in the paediatric population are limited. The present research was performed between 2007 and 2015 and includes 90 children and adolescents with a diagnosis of psychosis schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Our primary objective was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of aripiprazole compared with risperidone. The efficacy of the pharmacotherapy was evaluated through the mean change in the PANSS (Positive and Negative Syndromes Scale) total scores and the CGI-S (Clinical Global Impression of Severity) from baseline. Our results, showing statistically significant differences, prove the efficacy of the 2 atypical antipsychotics in the paediatric population. Especially aripiprazole showed a high efficacy and safety profile, risperidone being correlated with more adverse events. The present study represents a step forward, although further research was being needed. The paediatric psychiatry therapeutic protocols need to be properly adjusted and improved, in order to correspond to the real needs.
Therapeutic Reactance in a Depressed Client Sample

The impact of client variables on psychotherapy is of both theoretical and practical importance. Reactance—the premise that individuals seek to maintain control over personal freedoms when threatened by a perceived loss thereof—has been shown to have an impact on the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Developing an effective means of quantitatively assessing this characteristic prior to treatment could facilitate treatment planning and maximize treatment outcome. The present study compared two paper-and-pencil measures of reactance: the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS) and Resistance Potential (RP). Ninety-eight men and women diagnosed with depression completed both measures. The TRS and RP failed to correlate despite their presumed ability to measure the same construct. The RP exhibited extremely poor internal consistency, calling into question results that have been based on this measure. The TRS results provided evidence of convergent, divergent, and construct validity for this instrument.
Analytical method for determining the damaged area width in magnetic materials due to punching process

The authors deal with the problem of estimating the zone width of damaged magnetic materials, which is the result of industrial processes adopted for the lamination sheet production. The authors propose two approaches: the former uses the 3D FEM model, while the latter proposes an analytical formula. Both approaches use the results of measurements performed on toroidal samples. The final result of the study is the comparison between the width of the damaged zone computed with the two proposed approaches and the comparison between the calculated and measured power losses.
Ischemic preconditioning attenuates the oxidant‐dependent mechanisms of reperfusion cell damage and death in rat liver

In an in vivo rat model of liver ischemia followed by reperfusion a consistent appearance of necrosis and activation of biochemical pathways of apoptosis was reproduced and monitored after 30 minutes reperfusion. Preconditioning by application of a short cycle of ischemia‐reperfusion (10 minutes + 10 minutes) positively conditioned recovery of the organ at reperfusion, attenuating both necrotic and apoptotic events. Preconditioning at least halved cell oxidative damage occurring early at reperfusion, and as a major consequence, the increase of cytolysis and apoptosis occurring at reperfusion was about 50% less. The attenuation of both pathways of cell death by preconditioning appeared at least partly related to its modulate action on H2O2 and 4‐hydroxy‐2,3‐trans‐nonenal production. The overall data point to a marked diminished oxidant generation and oxidative reactions as one major possible mechanism through which ischemic preconditioning exerts protection against necrotic and apoptotic insult to the postischemic liver.
Hypergraph partitioning in the cloud

The thesis investigates the partitioning and load balancing problem which has many applications in High Performance Computing (HPC). The application to be partitioned is described with a graph or hypergraph. The latter is of greater interest as hypergraphs, compared to graphs, have a more general structure and can be used to model more complex relationships between groups of objects such as non-symmetric dependencies. Optimal graph and hypergraph partitioning is known to be NP-Hard but good polynomial time heuristic algorithms have been proposed. In this thesis, we propose two multi-level hypergraph partitioning algorithms. The algorithms are based on rough set clustering techniques. The first algorithm, which is a serial algorithm, obtains high quality partitionings and improves the partitioning cut by up to 71\% compared to the state-of-the-art serial hypergraph partitioning algorithms. Furthermore, the capacity of serial algorithms is limited due to the rapid growth of problem sizes of distributed applications. Consequently, we also propose a parallel hypergraph partitioning algorithm. Considering the generality of the hypergraph model, designing a parallel algorithm is difficult and the available parallel hypergraph algorithms offer less scalability compared to their graph counterparts. The issue is twofold: the parallel algorithm and the complexity of the hypergraph structure. Our parallel algorithm provides a trade-off between global and local vertex clustering decisions. By employing novel techniques and approaches, our algorithm achieves better scalability than the state-of-the-art parallel hypergraph partitioner in the Zoltan tool on a set of benchmarks, especially ones with irregular structure. Furthermore, recent advances in cloud computing and the services they provide have led to a trend in moving HPC and large scale distributed applications into the cloud. Despite its advantages, some aspects of the cloud, such as limited network resources, present a challenge to running communication-intensive applications and make them non-scalable in the cloud. While hypergraph partitioning is proposed as a solution for decreasing the communication overhead within parallel distributed applications, it can also offer advantages for running these applications in the cloud. The partitioning is usually done as a pre-processing step before running the parallel application. As parallel hypergraph partitioning itself is a communication-intensive operation, running it in the cloud is hard and suffers from poor scalability. The thesis also investigates the scalability of parallel hypergraph partitioning algorithms in the cloud, the challenges they present, and proposes solutions to improve the cost/performance ratio for running the partitioning problem in the cloud. Our algorithms are implemented as a new hypergraph partitioning package within Zoltan. It is an open source Linux-based toolkit for parallel partitioning, load balancing and data-management designed at Sandia National Labs. The algorithms are known as FEHG and PFEHG algorithms.
Taxonomic Resolution of the Nematophagous Fungal Isolate ARF18 via Genome Sequencing

ABSTRACT The taxonomically uncharacterized nematophagous fungus ARF18, which parasitizes cysts, juveniles, and adults of the soybean cyst nematode (Heterodera glycines), was proposed as a nematode biological control agent in 1991. A 46.3-Mb draft genome sequence of this fungus is presented, and a tentative taxonomic identification as a novel species of Brachyphoris is proposed.
Eliciting Accounts of Alleged Child Sexual Abuse: How Do Children Report Touch?

Investigative interviewers frequently question alleged victims of child sexual abuse about any touching or bodily contact that might have occurred. In the present study of forensic interviews with 192 alleged sexual abuse victims, between 4 and 13 years of age, we examined the frequency with which alleged victims reported bodily contact as “touch” and the types of prompts associated with “touch” reports. Even young alleged victims of sexual abuse reported bodily contact as “touch,” and they used the word “touch” more frequently in response to recall than recognition prompts. Regardless of age, children typically referred to “touch” before interviewers used this term, suggesting that even young children are able to report “touch” without being cued by interviewers.
ENDOGENOUS VIRUSES IN THE EGG

The avian egg, during its formation and subsequent incubation, has been provided with many defenses that help to prevent invasion by viral and bacterial agents. Despite these protective devices, contamination of eggs can and does occur. Fortunately, however, the great majority of eggs are probably free from contamination. The widespread use of embryonated eggs for research and for vaccine production lends importance to those disease agents that are occasionally found within eggs. There are two principal ways in which disease agents can gain entrance into the avian.egg. One method is invasion during the process of egg formation, which is essentially a transfer of infection from the dam (and possibly the sire) to the egg. Thus, the various components of the egg, perhaps even the germ cells, may become infected. In addition, viable somatic cells from the dam that could harbor disease agents are frequently found within eggs, such as the cells in the blood sp0ts.4~ The transfer of disease agents from the cloaca to the oviduct is another means of invasion of the egg. Even roundworms and flukes have been found within eggs.32 The second way in which eggs can become infected is invasion after they have been laid. In this case the disease organisms may gain entrance into the egg through the shell. Fecal contamination of the shell from dirty nests is probably the main cause of this type of infection. The shell may be penetrated by disease agents at any time, however, even during incubation, if proper storage and incubator hygiene is not followed. I t has been demonstrated that cultures of bacteria applied to the shell in a moist state can quickly penetrate the egg.59 Recent work has shown that the practice of washing hatching eggs when properly carried out is not as dangerous from the standpoint of contamination as has been suspected.M The possible portals of entry for egg-borne diseases are illustrated in FIGURE 1. Workers who employ embryonated eggs in their research may inadvertently encounter one of the egg-borne diseases of birds. The effect that these endogenous disease agents could have on the outcome of experiments has been suspected but never fully investigated. The endogenous bacterial diseases may be expected to produce deleterious results that would be obvious. Since the endogenous viral agents are more insidious, however, they may, for example, be carried along in serial passage with the known virus under study without the operator's knowledge, and subtle changes might result from this unwanted union. Similarly, vaccines prepared from embryonated eggs could become contaminated with these endogenous viral agents and escape detection. The work of Delbriick2* on the interference phenomenon in bacterial vi-
The Boston Brace in Thoracic Scoliosis: A Preliminary Report

The Boston Brace has been reserved mainly for treating scoliosis curves with an apex below T9 while the Milwaukee superstructure has been recommended as the choice of treatment for higher thoracic curves. This paper is an analysis of the preliminary result of treatment of 300 thoracic curves with an apex of T9 or higher treated with the Boston underarm brace from 1975 through 1979. Preliminary success of Boston Bracing for thoracic curves is dependent upon placement of the thoracic pad adjacent to the ribs at the apex of the convexity and a high axillary crutch on the concave side of the curve. Boston Bracing of thoracic curves appeared initially favorable at apices T9, T8, T7, and possibly T6. Higher thoracic curves are difficult to control, and should be treated with the standard Milwaukee type brace with uprights.
Neutron-irradiation effects on critical current densities in single-crystalline YBa2Cu3O7- delta.

Neutron-irradiation experiments were made on two high-quality YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7{minus}{delta}} single crystals in the fluence range from 2{times}10{sup 21} to 2{times}10{sup 22} m{sup {minus}2} ({ital E}{gt}0.1 MeV). Critical current densities {ital J}{sub {ital c}} and volume-pinning forces {ital P}{sub {ital V}} were obtained from magnetization measurements in the temperature range from 5 to 77 K, for magnetic fields up to 8 T, and for field orientations parallel and perpendicular to the crystallographic {ital c} direction. All evaluations were made on the basis of an extended anisotropic Bean model. The results show large enhancements of flux pinning, in particular at low neutron fluences, a strong reduction of {ital J}{sub {ital c}} anisotropy, and significant changes of the temperature dependence of {ital J}{sub {ital c}}. The complicated (nonlinear) dependence of critical current densities and pinning forces on neutron fluence is discussed in terms of an interaction between the radiation-induced defects with the preirradiation defect structure, based on electron microscopy of individual defects and the defect distribution measured in one crystal after neutron irradiation to 2{times}10{sup 22} m{sup {minus}2} ({ital E}{gt}0.1 MeV).
Application of Computational Intelligence Techniques for Cardiovascular Diagnostics

Hemodynamic instability is most commonly associated with abnormal or unstable blood pressure (BP), especially hypotension, or more broadly associated with inadequate global or regional perfusion. Inadequate perfusion may compromise important organs, such as heart and brain, due to limits on coronary and cerebral auto regulation and cause life-threatening illnesses, or even death. Therefore, it is crucial to identify patients who are likely to become hemodynamically unstable to enable early detection and treatment of these life-threatening conditions (Cao, Eshelman et al. 2008). Modern intensive care units (ICU) employ continuous hemodynamic monitoring (e.g., heart rate (HR) and invasive arterial BP measurements) to track the state of health of the patients. However, clinicians in a busy ICU would be too overwhelmed with the effort required to assimilate and interpret the tremendous volumes of data in order to arrive at working hypotheses. Consequently, it is important to seek to have automated algorithms that can accurately process and classify the large amount of data gathered and to identify patients who are on the verge of becoming unstable (Cao, Eshelman et al. 2008).