Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antimicrobial Resistance and Molecular Typing of Neisseria gonorrhoeae Isolates in Kyoto and Osaka, Japan, 2010 to 2012: Intensified Surveillance after Identification of the First Strain (H041) with High-Level Ceftriaxone Resistance

ABSTRACT In 2009, the first high-level ceftriaxone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain (H041) was isolated in Kyoto, Japan. The present study describes an intensified surveillance (antimicrobial resistance and molecular typing) of Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates in Kyoto and its neighboring prefecture Osaka, Japan, in 2010 to 2012, which was initiated after the identification of H041. From April 2010 to March 2012, 193 N. gonorrhoeae isolates were collected and the MICs (μg/ml) to six antimicrobials, including ceftriaxone, were determined. All isolates showed susceptibility to ceftriaxone and cefixime (MIC values, <0.5 μg/ml), and spectinomycin. The rates of resistance (intermediate susceptibility) to azithromycin, penicillin G, and ciprofloxacin were 3.6% (19.7%), 24.4% (71.0%), and 78.2% (0.5%), respectively. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) showed that 40.9%, 19.2%, and 17.1% of isolates belonged to ST1901, ST7359, and ST7363, respectively. Furthermore, N. gonorrhoeae multiantigen sequence typing (NG-MAST) revealed that 12 (63%) of the 19 isolates with decreased susceptibility to ceftriaxone (MIC > 0.064 μg/ml) were of ST1407. NG-MAST ST1407 was also the most prevalent ST (16.1%; 31 of 193 isolates). In those NG-MAST ST1407 strains, several mosaic type penA alleles were found, including SF-A type (penicillin binding protein 2 allele XXXIV) and its derivatives. These were confirmed using transformation of the penA mosaic alleles as critical determinants for enhanced cefixime and ceftriaxone MICs. The intensified surveillance in Kyoto and Osaka, Japan, did not identify any dissemination of the high-level ceftriaxone-resistant N. gonorrhoeae strain H041, suggesting that H041 might have caused only a sporadic case and has not spread further.
Cloning and Characterization of a Candidate Gene from the Medicinal Plant Catharanthus roseus Through Transient Expression in Mesophyll Protoplasts

Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don. accumulates in the leaves the dimeric terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) vinblastine and vincristine, which were the first natural anticancer products to be clinically used, and are still among the most valuable agents used in cancer chemotherapy. The great pharmacological importance of the TIAs, associated with the low abundance of the anticancer alkaloids in the plant, stimulated intense research on the TIA pathway, and C. roseus has now become one of the most extensively studied medicinal plants. About 130 TIAs have already been isolated from C. roseus, and it has been shown that the biosynthesis of vinblastine is highly complex, involving at least 30 steps from the amino-acid tryptophan and the monoterpenoid geraniol (Loyola-Vargas et al., 2007; van der Heijden et al., 2004). All the TIAs of C. roseus derive from the common precursor strictosidine, after which the TIA pathway splits into several branches including a short one leading to ajmalicine and serpentine (used as an antihypertensive and as a sedative respectively), and two long branches leading to vindoline and catharanthine the leaf abundant monomeric precursors of vinblastine and vincristine (Loyola-Vargas et al., 2007; van der Heijden et al., 2004). In our lab, we have performed the characterization of a key biosynthetic step of the anticancer TIAs the biosynthesis of the first dimeric TIA, α-3’,4’-anhydrovinblastine (AVLB), from vindoline and catharanthine. We identified a leaf class III peroxidase (Prx) with AVLB synthase activity and we purified and characterized this enzyme, which was named Catharanthus roseus peroxidase 1, CroPrx1 (Bakalovic et al., 2006; Peroxibase, http://peroxibase.toulouse.inra.fr index.php). We have further shown the localization of CroPrx1 in the same subcellular compartment where alkaloids accumulate, the vacuole, through biochemical and molecular methodologies,
Host‐derived osteopontin maintains an acute inflammatory response to suppress early progression of extrinsic cancer cells

The matricellular protein osteopontin (OPN), expressed in various cancer types and elevated in the blood of cancer patients, is thought to have different functions when derived from host versus cancer cells. To assess the effect of host‐derived OPN on growth of cancers of epithelial origin, we established a line of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cells, named ONSC, which lacks the OPN gene and develops SCC in syngeneic wild‐type (WT) and OPN‐null mice. At 8 and/or 10 week after subcutaneous injection of ONSC cells in mice, however, there was a lower tumor incidence in WT mice, suggesting that host‐derived OPN is associated with suppression of early growth of extrinsic cancer cells. Histological, immunohistochemical, biochemical and hematological analyses were performed on the tumor microenvironment and blood from tumor‐bearing mice during the first week after implantation. Host‐derived OPN suppression of extrinsic ONSC cell progression is likely mediated through elicitation of an early innate inflammatory response, through its function as a chemoattractant and/or by enhancing survival of inflammatory cells. Further, consistent with a previous report, the serum levels of host‐derived OPN, which are elevated during the early phase of tumor growth in mice implanted with ONSC, appear to reflect an anti‐tumor progression effect.
PRMT5 regulates IRES-dependent translation via methylation of hnRNP A1

Abstract The type II arginine methyltransferase PRMT5 is responsible for the symmetric dimethylation of histone to generate the H3R8me2s and H4R3me2s marks, which correlate with the repression of transcription. However, the protein level of a number of genes (MEP50, CCND1, MYC, HIF1a, MTIF and CDKN1B) are reported to be downregulated by the loss of PRMT5, while their mRNA levels remain unchanged, which is counterintuitive for PRMT5's proposed role as a transcription repressor. We noticed that the majority of the genes regulated by PRMT5, at the posttranscriptional level, express mRNA containing an internal ribosome entry site (IRES). Using an IRES-dependent reporter system, we established that PRMT5 facilitates the translation of a subset of IRES-containing genes. The heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein, hnRNP A1, is an IRES transacting factor (ITAF) that regulates the IRES-dependent translation of Cyclin D1 and c-Myc. We showed that hnRNP A1 is methylated by PRMT5 on two residues, R218 and R225, and that this methylation facilitates the interaction of hnRNP A1 with IRES RNA to promote IRES-dependent translation. This study defines a new role for PRMT5 regulation of cellular protein levels, which goes beyond the known functions of PRMT5 as a transcription and splicing regulator.
Fractional-N DPLL based low power clocking architecture for 1–14 Gb/s multi-standard transmitter

This paper presents a low power clocking solution for multi-standard SerDes applications based on frac-N digital LC PLL for central clock generation and fractional-N ring PLL for local clock generation. The fractional-N LC PLL operates at 7–10 GHz consuming only 8 mW power and occupying 0.15 mm2 of silicon area with integrated jitter of 264 fs. Ring PLL covers from 800 MHz to 4 GHz to support the data rates between 1 to 14 Gb/s. The ring PLL supports dither-less fractional resolution of 250 MHz, corrects I/Q error with split tuning and achieves less than 400 fs integrated jitter. Transmitter works at 14 Gb/s with power efficiency of 0.80 pJ/bit.
MEASURING THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON AFRICAN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

This study measured the economic impacts of climate change on crop and livestock farming in Africa based on a cross-sectional survey of over 8000 farming households from 11 countries in east, west, north and southern Africa. The response of net revenue from crop and livestock agriculture across various farm types and systems in Africa to changes in climate normals (i.e. mean rainfall and temperature) is analysed. The analyses controlled for effects of key socioeconomic, technology, soil and hydrological factors influencing agricultural production. Results show that net farm revenues are in general negatively affected by warmer and drier climates. The small-scale mixed crop and livestock system predominantly typical in Africa is the most tolerant whereas specialized crop production is the most vulnerable to warming and lower rainfall. These results have important policy implications, especially for the suitability of the increasing tendency toward large-scale mono-cropping strategies for agricultural development in Africa and other parts of the developing world in light of expected climate changes. Mixed crop and livestock farming and irrigation offered better adaptation options for farmers against further warming and drying predicted under various future climate scenarios.
On the uncertain nature of human capital investments

The four studies presented here pertain to an often neglected characteristic of educational investments in human capital literature: its unpredictability and how individuals account for and respond to it. The first study elicits, from a sample of Dutch high school students, the level of information about existing labor market conditions in general and future wage variability in particular, that individuals possess when deciding upon investing in university education. The third chapter assesses how, for various samples of individuals coming from different countries and different educational systems, different levels of education contribute to the increase of decrease of risk. In chapter 4 the importance of concerns about future payoffs uncertainty on choices of type of college education is gauged. To conclude, chapter 5 resumes the theme already discussed in chapter 3, but proposes a different, and possibly more robust, methodology for estimation.
National referendum. Existing regulatory framework and future perspectives

Highlighting a number of shortcomings in the legislation on referendum, the present study proposes some solutions for their correction, using in this respect the experience and guidelines governing the matter in democratic states. Likewise, it underlines the advantages of putting together into an election code both the electoral law and the law on the organization and holding of a referendum.
The Elasticity of Poverty with Respect to Sectoral Growth in Africa

The African continent has grown by more than 4 per cent yearly on average during the past decade. However, the link between this remarkable growth rate and poverty reduction is neither obvious nor simple. This paper focuses on the elasticity of poverty with respect to GDP growth at the sectoral level and takes into account the fact that economic growth may affect poverty directly as well as indirectly through sectoral labor share intensity. It develops a methodology that sheds light on the contribution of sectoral growth to poverty reduction country-by-country in Africa, guiding policy recommendations. As the composition of growth matters at least as much as its overall intensity, it is key to identify the sectors that have the strongest impact on poverty reduction and unleash their potential; if growth happens to concentrate in sectors with scarce pro-poor potential, like commodity-driven growth, redistributive strategies are necessary to compensate the weak effect on poverty.
Searching Personal Photos on the Phone with Instant Visual Query Suggestion and Joint Text-Image Hashing

The ubiquitous mobile devices have led to the unprecedented growing of personal photo collections on the phone. One significant pain point of today's mobile users is instantly finding specific photos of what they want. Existing applications (e.g., Google Photo and OneDrive) have predominantly focused on cloud-based solutions, while leaving the client-side challenges (e.g., query formulation, photo tagging and search, etc.) unsolved. This considerably hinders user experience on the phone. In this paper, we present an innovative personal photo search system on the phone, which enables instant and accurate photo search by visual query suggestion and joint text-image hashing. Specifically, the system is characterized by several distinctive properties: 1) visual query suggestion (VQS) to facilitate the formulation of queries in a joint text-image form, 2) light-weight convolutional and sequential deep neural networks to extract representations for both photos and queries, and 3) joint text-image hashing (with compact binary codes) to facilitate binary image search and VQS. It is worth noting that all the components run on the phone with client optimization by deep learning techniques. We have collected 270 photo albums taken by 30 mobile users (corresponding to 37,000 personal photos) and conducted a series of field studies. We show that our system significantly outperforms the existing client-based solutions by 10 x in terms of search efficiency, and 92.3% precision in terms of search accuracy, leading to a remarkably better user experience of photo discovery on the phone.
Effectiveness of community based organization (CBO) microcredit programme of concern worldwide: A case study of Bangladesh

This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of community based organization (CBO) microcredit programmes of ‘Concern Worldwide’ in selected urban areas of Mymensingh district. The study is concerned with CBO microcredit use, assessing repayment performance, identifying the factors affecting repayment performance and assessing the impact of loan on livelihood improvement of the beneficiaries. Tabular and statistical analyses were applied for achieving the objectives. Overall, 84% of the total loan applied for was received by the respondents. Maximum amount of loan (89%) was received by rickshaw puller during the study period. The respondents used their maximum borrowed money productively. About 96, 94 and 98% of the total borrowed money were utilized purposively by small trading, saloon and rickshaw pulling respondents, respectively. Repayment performance of CBO microcredit programmes was highly satisfactory. Respondents’ income and loan receipt amount positively contributed to loan repayment, whereas respondents’ age, education, family size and forced saving negatively affected loan repayment. Almost all of the respondents mainly repaid their loan on time with the hope of getting loan in future. Self-consciousness and proper supervision by the CBO staff and Concern Worldwide field workers were the other important contributing factors for timely repayment of loan. Overall, the CBO microcredit programme was found to have significant positive effects on livelihood improvement of the poor beneficiaries.
An exploration of the bone health of older adults with an intellectual disability in Ireland

BACKGROUND Many risk factors have been confirmed for poor bone health among the general population including age, gender and corticosteroid use. There is a paucity of investigation among people with intellectual disability; however, research points to differing risks namely anti-epileptic medication use, Down syndrome and poor behaviour lifestyle. METHODS Data was extracted from the Intellectual Disability Supplement to the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing in Ireland. In total, 753 participants took part, and data was gathered on participants' health status, behavioural health, health screenings and activities of daily living. The prevalence of osteoporosis and related risk factors were specifically examined. RESULTS Overall, 8.1% reported a doctor's diagnosis of osteoporosis with over 20% reporting history of fracture. Risk identified included older age (P < 0.0001), female gender (P < 0.0001), difficulty walking (P < 0.0001) with older age and being female the stronger predictors for osteoporosis, odds ratio = 6.53; 95% confidence interval 2.82-15.11 and odds ratio = 4.58; 95% confidence interval 2.29-9.17, respectively. There was no gender difference regarding the level of fractures; however, epilepsy and anti-epileptic medication were strong predictors. Overall, 11.1% attended for bone screening diagnostics. CONCLUSION Despite low levels of reported doctor's diagnosis of osteoporosis risk factor prevalence was high. Considering the insidious nature of osteoporosis and the low levels of diagnostic screening, prevalence could be possibly higher.
Antimicrobial susceptibility of Pediococcus spp. and genetic basis of macrolide resistance in Pediococcus acidilactici HM3020

We determined the MICs of 28 antimicrobial agents against 36 clinical strains of Pediococcus spp. (25 P. acidilactici, 9 P. pentosaceus, and 2 P. urinaeequi strains). Penicillin G, imipenem, gentamicin, netilmicin, erythromycin, clindamycin, rifampin, chloramphenicol, daptomycin, and ramoplanin were the most active. All strains of P. acidilactici were susceptible to novobiocin, whereas all isolates of P. pentosaceus were resistant. Novobiocin could therefore be helpful for differentiation of these two closely related species. P. acidilactici HM3020 was inducibly resistant to macrolide, lincosamide, and streptogramin B-type (MLS) antibiotics. Resistance was due to a determinant homologous to ermAM and carried by a nontransferable 46-kb plasmid, pVM20. This plasmid was structurally distinct from two enterococcal MLS resistance plasmids, pIP819 and pAM beta 1. The 34 strains of P. acidilactici and P. pentosaceus were resistant to tetracycline, and total DNA of these strains did not hybridize to probes specific for tetK, tetL, tetM, and tetO.
Psychogenic seizures and frontal disconnection: EEG synchronisation study

Objective Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) are paroxysmal events that, in contrast to epileptic seizures, are related to psychological causes without the presence of epileptiform EEG changes. Recent models suggest a multifactorial basis for PNES. A potentially paramount, but currently poorly understood factor is the interplay between psychiatric features and a specific vulnerability of the brain leading to a clinical picture that resembles epilepsy. Hypothesising that functional cerebral network abnormalities may predispose to the clinical phenotype, the authors undertook a characterisation of the functional connectivity in PNES patients. Methods The authors analysed the whole-head surface topography of multivariate phase synchronisation (MPS) in interictal high-density EEG of 13 PNES patients as compared with 13 age- and sex-matched controls. MPS mapping reduces the wealth of dynamic data obtained from high-density EEG to easily readable synchronisation maps, which provide an unbiased overview of any changes in functional connectivity associated with distributed cortical abnormalities. The authors computed MPS maps for both Laplacian and common-average-reference EEGs. Results In a between-group comparison, only patchy, non-uniform changes in MPS survived conservative statistical testing. However, against the background of these unimpressive group results, the authors found widespread inverse correlations between individual PNES frequency and MPS within the prefrontal and parietal cortices. Interpretation PNES appears to be associated with decreased prefrontal and parietal synchronisation, possibly reflecting dysfunction of networks within these regions.
Free primary education still excludes the poorest of the poor in urban Kenya

The Kenyan government introduced free primary education in 2003 in order to universalise access to primary education. Although the policy allows universal coverage, it ought to benefit the poor most as they are the ones who were excluded from the education sector before the policy was introduced. Using household-survey data collected in Nairobi, this contribution assesses the impact of the policy on schooling outcomes of the poor. The findings reveal that the free primary-education policy in Kenya still excludes the poorest of the poor.
An Empirical Study of the Role of Accounting Data in Performance Evaluation

Accounting systems are often the most important formal sources of information in industrial organizations. They are designed to provide all levels of management with timely and reasonably accurate information to help them make decisions which are in agreement with their organization's goals. It is therefore surprising to find reports that managers, in adapting to accounting systems, deliberately falsify the data and make decisions which may be detrimental to the long-term interests of the organization. Yet there are many such reports in the accounting literature. Many of the documented examples of falsification and dysfunctional decision making were an outgrowth of attempts to make the accounting reports a more favorable reflection of the manager's or the worker's performance. Whyte has described the ingenious attempts of a group of workers to obtain easier standards when their payments included a bonus based on these standards.1 Other investigators have noted the tendency of managers to pad their budgets either to make the reported variances more favorable or in anticipation of cuts by either superiors or accountants.2 Perhaps of even more concern to accountants are the numerous examples in the literature of managers making decisions in response to the accounting system, even though the decisions are contrary to the goals of the
Investigating Mobile Technology Resources for Integration: The Technology-Pedagogy-Language-Culture (TPLC) Model

Acquiring language and culture of the host society are essential prerequisites for integration. As many migrants have smartphones, they can be used for integration purposes. In this study, mobile applications (apps) for Swedish language training, information about host society and contacts with locals targeted at newly arrived Arabic migrants are analysed. With focus on language and cultural training we developed a model for evaluation that takes into account both Technological, Pedagogical, Linguistic and Cultural aspects. The TPLC-model for evaluation shows that language training as well as translation and vocabulary apps dominate the Swedish market, while societal information is largely absent. Most of the analysed apps are technically reliable, free of charge and available for Android or both Android and iOS. However, in regard to the pedagogical aspects, the apps demonstrate a focus on traditional pedagogical approaches with basic vocabulary training and similar, while more active learning and pronunciation and speaking activities are less common. The latter can, together with expansion of intercultural communication, be areas for further development in mobile learning for integration purposes.
Assessing the Relevance of Culture on Websites: A Study from a Middle Eastern Country

This study identifies the key elements that reflect the culture of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on websites and establishes their importance in terms of a site's usability and credibility. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, the distinguishing characteristics of UAE nationals are identified. A total of 45 UAE websites and 30 U.S. websites, representing five different industries, were compared, using an analysis that involved 109 design elements. The results indicate evolving traits among UAE web users that deviate considerably from preconceived or stereotypical notions of the Arab World. The findings of this study are important for web designers who wish to cater to this target audience.