Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pneumocystis carinii is not universally transmissible between mammalian species

In a series of five experiments, we attempted to transmit Pneumocystis carinii from ferrets to SCID mice by intratracheal inoculation. Using highly specific and sensitive assay techniques, we could not document infection of SCID mice by P. carinii isolated from ferrets. In contrast, under identical inoculation conditions, P. carinii was easily transmissible from one SCID mouse to another. These results indicate that P. carinii organisms, at least those isolated from ferrets, have a restricted host range. The finding of restricted transmission of P. carinii is consistent with the increasing evidence for host species-specific antigenic variation among isolates of P. carinii. If restricted host range is a consistent biological feature of animal-derived P. carinii, it would suggest that P. carinii pneumonitis in humans may not be a zoonosis as previously speculated.
Mitochondrial DNA analysis in Parkinson's disease

The reduced form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide coenzyme Q reductase (complex I) activity has recently been shown to be deficient in the substantia nigra of patients dying with Parkinson's disease. This biochemical defect is identical to that produced by the neurotoxin 1‐methyl‐4‐phenyl‐1,2,3,6‐tetrahydropyridine (MPTP), which also produces parkinsonism in humans. Complex I comprises 25 polypeptides, seven of which are encoded by mitochondrial DNA. Restriction fragment analysis of substantia nigra DNA from six patients with Parkinson's disease did not show any major deletion. In two cases, there were different novel polymorphisms that were not observed in control brain (n = 6) or blood (n = 34) samples.
Dependence of the R-mottled aleurone phenotype in maize on mode of sexual transmission.

YPICAL R-mottling, the irregular distribution of anthocyanin in the aleurone Tlayer of maize endosperm, occurs upon crossing appropriate R R plants with r r (colorless) only when R R is the pollen parent (EMERSON 1918; KEMPTON 1919). When R R is used in the mating as female, the aleurone is solidly colored. From a conventional point of view the mottled and solidly colored phenotypes suggest the dosage effects associated with the unequal numbers of chromosome sets contributed to the triploid endosperm, two from the female and one from the male parent. This explapation assumes equal pigmenting action of R from the two origins. Furthermore, if parental source were to affect R expression, such an influence ordinarily would be confounded with the effect of dosage. ROMAN’S (1947) discovery that a given chromosome segment translocated to the centromeric portion of an accessory B chromosome in maize is transmitted by the male in duplicate provides an opportunity to vary the dosage of genes in such a segment independently of parental origin. Accordingly, his translocation B-loa, with the point of interchange in chromosome-10 between R and the centromere, permits introduction of two R factors into the endosperm via pollen. Unexpectedly on the R dosage interpretation, R R from the male when combined with rr from the female gave mottled, rather than solidly colored, kernels (ROMAN, cited by SCHWARTZ 1965; KERMICLE 1963). This observation called into question sufficiency of the dosage explanation and prompted further investigation. The evidence presented here shows the basis of the disparity in aleurone phenotype following reciprocal crosses between R R and r r plants is a pronounced difference in level of action at which R is transmitted to the endosperm through male and female gametophytes. MATERIALS AND METHODS The various alleles of R involved affect anthocyanin pigmentation of the aleurone and vegetative parts of the plant as follows: RV-Pigmented aleurone, red seedling and anthers; representative of those alleles which give darkly mottled aleurone in crosses to rgrg as female but solidly colored aleurone when rgrg is male. The particular Rr employed in experiments involving translocation B-loa was that present in the TB-loa stock obtained from the Maize Genetics Stock Center, University of Illinois, Urbana. A second source of Rr, that designated standard Rr in the Wisconsin collection, was 1Paper No. 1357 from the Laboratory of Genetics. Supported by AEC contract AT(ll-1)-1300 and NIH grant GM 15422-01.
Testicular Apoptosis Is Down-Regulated during Spontaneous Recrudescence in White-Footed Mice (Peromyscus leucopus)

Among individuals of many nontropical species, seasonal breeding is timed by tracking changes in the daily photoperiod. Transfer of rodents to short (< 12 h of light/day) day lengths for 6 to 14 weeks can induce regression of the testes mediated by apoptosis. After 16 to 20 weeks of short day exposure, reproductive function is “spontaneously” initiated, and testicular recrudescence is observed. The gonadal mechanisms that underlie testicular recrudescence are not fully understood. If the onset of testicular regrowth that occursduring spontaneous recrudescence reflects a down-regulation of apoptotic signals, then a decline in apoptosis should be noted concurrent with increased testis mass. This experiment sought toassess the role of apoptosis in the restoration of reproductive capacity to photoperiod-inhibited white-footed mice. Males were assigned to long (16:8 LD) or short (8:16 LD) photoperiods for0, 14, 18, 22, 26, or 30 weeks. At each of these time points, testis mass and testosterone concentrations were assessed. In addition, apoptotic activity was measured using both in situ terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dNTP end labeling (TUNEL) and DNAladdering. Short photoperiod exposure induced maximal decreases in testicular parameters after 14 weeks (p <0.05). After 26 weeks of short days, testis mass was no longer different between males housed in long days and those housed in short days. In contrast, the high incidence of apoptotic TUNEL labeling and DNAladdering observed at 14 weeks was reduced to long day values after 22 weeks ofshort day exposure. Together, our results establish that a decrease in testicular apoptosis coincides with testicular recrudescence in white-footed mice. The current study demonstrates a decline in the incidence of testicular cell death concomitant with changes in testis mass or length, elucidating a timeline of changes at the cellular level related to the onset of recrudescence.
The impact of social vulnerability on the survival of the fittest older adults.

BACKGROUND even older adults who are fit experience adverse health outcomes; understanding their risks for adverse outcomes may offer insight into ambient population health. Here, we evaluated mortality risk in relation to social vulnerability among the fittest older adults in a representative community-dwelling sample of older Canadians. METHODS in this secondary analysis of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, participants (n = 5,703) were aged 70+ years at baseline. A frailty index was used to grade relative levels of fitness/frailty, using 31 self-reported health deficits. The analysis was limited to the fittest people (those reporting 0-1 health deficit). Social vulnerability was trichotomised from a social vulnerability scale, which consisted of 40 self-reported social deficits. RESULTS five hundred and eighty-four individuals had 0-1 health deficit. Among them, absolute mortality risk rose with increasing social vulnerability. In those with the lowest level of social vulnerability, 5-year mortality was 10.8%, compared with 32.5% for those with the highest social vulnerability (adjusted hazard ratio 2.5, 95% CI: 1.5-4.3, P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS a 22% absolute mortality difference in the fittest older adults is of considerable clinical and public health importance. Routine assessment of social vulnerability by clinicians could have value in predicting the risk of adverse health outcomes in older adults.
An Entropy-based Pruning Method for CNN Compression

This paper aims to simultaneously accelerate and compress off-the-shelf CNN models via filter pruning strategy. The importance of each filter is evaluated by the proposed entropy-based method first. Then several unimportant filters are discarded to get a smaller CNN model. Finally, fine-tuning is adopted to recover its generalization ability which is damaged during filter pruning. Our method can reduce the size of intermediate activations, which would dominate most memory footprint during model training stage but is less concerned in previous compression methods. Experiments on the ILSVRC-12 benchmark demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. Compared with previous filter importance evaluation criteria, our entropy-based method obtains better performance. We achieve 3.3x speed-up and 16.64x compression on VGG-16, 1.54x acceleration and 1.47x compression on ResNet-50, both with about 1% top-5 accuracy decrease.
Probabilistic question recommendation for question answering communities

User-Interactive Question Answering (QA) communities such as Yahoo! Answers are growing in popularity. However, as these QA sites always have thousands of new questions posted daily, it is difficult for users to find the questions that are of interest to them. Consequently, this may delay the answering of the new questions. This gives rise to question recommendation techniques that help users locate interesting questions. In this paper, we adopt the Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) model for question recommendation and propose a novel metric to evaluate the performance of our approach. The experimental results show our recommendation approach is effective.
Quantitative Proteomics Reveals New Insights into Erythrocyte Invasion by Plasmodium falciparum*

Differential expression of ligands in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum enables it to recognize different receptors on the erythrocyte surface, thereby providing alternative invasion pathways. Switching of invasion from using sialated to nonsialated erythrocyte receptors has been linked to the transcriptional activation of a single parasite ligand. We have used quantitative proteomics to show that in addition to this single known change, there are a significant number of changes in the expression of merozoite proteins that are regulated independent of transcription during invasion pathway switching. These results demonstrate a so far unrecognized mechanism by which the malaria parasite is able to adapt to variations in the host cell environment by post-transcriptional regulation.
Progression of Ossification of the Posterior Longitudinal Ligament Following en Bloc Cervical Laminoplasty

Background: Ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament often causes compressive myelopathy. Ossification is a progressive disease, and it has been reported that the area of ossification increases after decompressive surgery. However, it is uncertain how the progression of ossification affects the long‐term outcome after cervical laminoplasty. This study was performed to clarify the relationship between the progression of ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament and the clinical results following en bloc cervical laminoplasty. Methods: Forty‐five patients who were followed for more than ten years after laminoplasty participated in this study. Radiographs and tomograms of the cervical spine of each patient were made before and after the operation and at the time of the latest follow‐up. The extent of ossification in the longitudinal and sagittal axes was evaluated. Neurological function was graded with use of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association scoring system. The relationship between the progression of ossification and the score‐based rate of recovery was analyzed. Results: Thirty-three (73%) of the patients had progression of ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament after laminoplasty. Progression was frequent in patients with the mixed type of ossification and in those with the continuous type, whereas it was rare in patients with the segmental type. The patients with progression of the ossification were significantly younger than those without progression (p = 0.018). The Japanese Orthopaedic Association score improved rapidly within one year and continued to improve up to five years after surgery. The score tended to decrease thereafter. For thirteen patients, the score had worsened at the time of the latest follow-up. Three patients had neurological deterioration following an increase in the thickness of the ossification. Conclusions: Progression of ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament was often observed during the long-term follow-up period after laminoplasty. Young patients with mixed and continuous types of ossification had the greatest risk for progression. Preventive measures, such as the use of a wider laminar opening during the laminoplasty, should be considered for patients who are at risk for progression of ossification.
High Performance OTA-R-C Continuous-Time Filters with Full CMOS Low Distortion Floating Resistors

Several techniques for the design of high performance fully-differential Continuous-Time Filters are introduced. The filter is based on OTA-Resistor-Capacitor (OTA-R-C) building blocks. A novel Common Mode FeedBack (CMFB) system for fully-differential amplifiers is proposed. The CMFB uses only 5 transistors and consumes in the order of 21% of the OTA power consumption. Alsof a low distortion floating resistor with low sensitivity to transistor mismatches is presented. This technique allows to control the ripple of the filter without sacrificing the filter dynamic range. Evenmore, both power consumption and silicon area are lower than OTA based resistors. The techniques are validated by the experimental results of a fourth order 100 kHz Low-Pass filter. The dynamic range of the filter is in the order of 66 dB for Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) ≪ -60 dB. The power consumption is only 1.9 mWattsf with supply voltages of ± 2.5 Volts. The chip has been fabricated in a 1.2 ¿m single poly N-well process. The experimental and expected results are in very good agreement.
Smoking and height as risk factors for prevalence and 5-year incidence of hearing loss. A questionnaire-based follow-up study of employees in Denmark aged 18–59 years exposed and unexposed to noise

This paper investigated whether smoking and short stature in adulthood were independent risk factors for hearing loss. We reanalyzed data from the Danish Work Environment Cohort Study (an existing cohort study), on prevalence of self-reported hearing loss among 7,221 employees and on five-year incidence among 4,610 employees. We found that smoking predicted hearing loss incidence and prevalence. Smoking did not predict incidence at noise exposure during half or more of a worker's hours. Very short stature predicted prevalence in the total adult population only weakly, but strongly among employees born before 1951. These prospective findings indicate that smoking is an independent risk factor for incidence of hearing loss. Very short stature predicted prevalence of hearing loss only in a sub-population.
CLINICAL RISK FACTORS FOR PROLIFERATIVE VITREORETINOPATHY AFTER RETINAL DETACHMENT SURGERY

Purpose To identify the clinical risk factors for the development of severe proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) after retinal detachment surgery. Methods A retrospective study of 1020 patients with either no PVR or with PVR of grade C1 or less at initial examination was conducted. After surgery, severe PVR was defined as grade C2 or worse. The data relating to 94 variables were evaluated by univariate analysis and stepwise logistic regression. Results Severe PVR developed after surgery in 107 patients (10.5%). Ten significant predictive variables were identified: minor intra- or postoperative hemorrhage, grade A preoperative PVR, preoperative choroidal detachment, giant tears, air tamponade, detachment involving more than 2 quadrants, cumulative break area larger than 3 optic disks, postoperative choroidal detachment, signs of uveitis at initial examination, and grade B preoperative PVR. Conclusion The results indicate that in addition to the size of breaks, extent of detachment, and presence of preoperative inflammation or low-grade PVR, iatrogenic problems also are important factors in the pathogenesis of severe PVR after surgery for retinal detachment.
Ultimate limit to human longevity

Are there limits to human longevity? We suggest a new demographic model to describe human demographic trajectories. Specifically, the model mathematically defines the limits of longevity. Through the demographic analysis of trends for Sweden (between 1751 and 2002), Switzerland (between 1876 and 2002) and Japan (between 1950 and 1999), which are the longest-lived countries, we would like to demonstrate whether or not there is the ultimate limit to longevity. We analyse the trends of new demographic indicators, the characteristic life and the shape parameter, and calculate the mathematical limits of longevity. We find out the surprising phenomenon that the mathematical limits of longevity decrease as the longevity tendency increases in recent decades. These paradoxical trends will be explained by the complementarity of longevity, which is attributable to the nature of biological systems for longevity. According to the regression analysis, the ultimate limit for humans is estimated to be approximately 124 years, which may be considered to be the biological limit for humans.
Regulation of intracellular trafficking of the EGF receptor by Rab5 in the absence of phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase activity

Rab5 and phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase (PI3K) have been proposed to co‐regulate receptor endocytosis by controlling early endosome fusion. However, in this report we demonstrate that inhibition of epidermal growth factor (EGF)‐stimulated PI3K activity by expression of the kinase‐deficient PI3K p110 subunit (p110Δkin) does not block the lysosomal targeting and degradation of the EGF receptor (EGFR). Moreover, inhibition of total PI3K activity by wortmannin or LY294002 significantly enlarges EGFR‐containing endosomes and dissociates the early‐endosomal autoantigen EEA1 from membrane fractions. However, this does not block the lysosomal targeting and degradation of EGFR. In contrast, transfection of cells with mutant Rab5 S34N or microinjection of anti‐Rabaptin5 antibodies inhibits EGFR endocytosis. Our results, therefore, demonstrate that PI3K is not universally required for the regulation of receptor intracellular trafficking. The present work suggests that the intracellular trafficking of EGFR is controlled by a novel endosome fusion pathway that is regulated by Rab5 in the absence of PI3K, rather than by the previously defined endosome fusion pathway that is co‐regulated by Rab5 and PI3K.
Tobacco Smoke Exposure Impairs Brain Insulin/IGF Signaling: Potential Co-Factor Role in Neurodegeneration.

BACKGROUND Human studies suggest tobacco smoking is a risk factor for cognitive impairment and neurodegeneration, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, experimental data linking tobacco smoke exposures to underlying mediators of neurodegeneration, including impairments in brain insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling in AD are lacking. OBJECTIVE This study tests the hypothesis that cigarette smoke (CS) exposures can impair brain insulin/IGF signaling and alter expression of AD-associated proteins. METHODS Adult male A/J mice were exposed to air for 8 weeks (A8), CS for 4 or 8 weeks (CS4, CS8), or CS8 followed by 2 weeks recovery (CS8+R). Gene expression was measured by qRT-PCR analysis and proteins were measured by multiplex bead-based or direct binding duplex ELISAs. RESULTS CS exposure effects on insulin/IGF and insulin receptor substrate (IRS) proteins and phosphorylated proteins were striking compared with the mRNA. The main consequences of CS4 or CS8 exposures were to significantly reduce insulin R, IGF-1R, IRS-1, and tyrosine phosphorylated insulin R and IGF-1R proteins. Paradoxically, these effects were even greater in the CS8+R group. In addition, relative levels of S312-IRS-1, which inhibits downstream signaling, were increased in the CS4, CS8, and CS8+R groups. Correspondingly, CS and CS8+R exposures inhibited expression of proteins and phosphoproteins required for signaling through Akt, PRAS40, and/or p70S6K, increased AβPP-Aβ, and reduced ASPH protein, which is a target of insulin/IGF-1 signaling. CONCLUSION Secondhand CS exposures caused molecular and biochemical abnormalities in brain that overlap with the findings in AD, and many of these effects were sustained or worsened despite short-term CS withdrawal.
Financial satisfaction from intra-household perspectives

Estudiamos la satisfaccion financiera de los individuos teniendo en cuenta a la familia como grupo de referencia. Tenemos dos objetivos principales. Primero, queremos contrastar la hipotesis de la renta relativa dentro del hogar. Importa el nivel de renta de un individuo relativo a otros miembros de la misma familia en la satisfaccion financiera del propio individuo? Segundo, queremos comprobar la hipotesis de la utilidad de procedimiento. Es decir, ? Hay diferencias en el efecto de renta en la satisfaccion financiera segun la fuente de ingreso? En particular, comparamos los efectos de la renta laboral con los de la renta no-laboral. Estas dos hipotesis son relevantes para las politicas relacionadas con subsidios, sistema tributario y politicas activas del mercado de trabajo. Utilizamos datos de Espana y Dinamarca contenidos en las 8 olas del Panel de Hogares de Union Europea (ECHP). En terminos generales, para ambos paises, los resultados confirman ambas hipotesis, la hipotesis de la renta relativa y la hipotesis de la utilidad de procedimiento. La contribucion a la satisfaccion financiera de la renta laboral es mayor que la de la renta no-laboral. Sin embargo, el efecto en la satisfaccion financiera individual de la renta del propio individuo relativa a la del conyuge difiere sustancialmente por genero y pais.
Serotype Distribution, Population Structure, and Antimicrobial Resistance of Group B Streptococcus Strains Recovered from Colonized Pregnant Women

ABSTRACT Using serotyping, multilocus sequence typing, and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of selected strains, we studied the population structure of 102 group B Streptococcus (GBS) isolates prospectively sampled in 2014 from vaginal/rectal swabs of healthy pregnant women in metropolitan Toronto, Canada. We also determined the susceptibilities of each of the colonizing isolates to penicillin, erythromycin, clindamycin, tetracycline, and other antimicrobial agents. Overall, we observed a high rate of tetracycline resistance (89%) among colonizing GBS isolates. We found resistance to erythromycin in 36% of the strains, and 33% were constitutively or inducibly resistant to clindamycin. The most frequently identified serotypes were III (25%), Ia (23%), and V (19%). Serotype IV accounted for 6% of the colonizing isolates, a rate consistent with that observed among patients with invasive GBS infections in metropolitan Toronto. The majority of serotype IV isolates belonged to sequence type (ST)459, a tetracycline-, erythromycin-, and clindamycin-resistant ST first identified in Minnesota, which is considered to be the main driver of serotype IV GBS expansion in North America. WGS revealed that ST459 isolates from Canada are clonally related to colonizing and invasive ST459 organisms circulating in regions of the United States. We also used WGS to study recombination in selected colonizing strains from metropolitan Toronto, which revealed multiple episodes of capsular switching. Present and future circulating GBS organisms and their genetic diversity may influence GBS vaccine development.