Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Separation of factors required for cleavage and polyadenylation of yeast pre-mRNA

Cleavage and polyadenylation of yeast precursor RNA require at least four functionally distinct factors (cleavage factor I [CF I], CF II, polyadenylation factor I [PF I], and poly(A) polymerase [PAP]) obtained from yeast whole cell extract. Cleavage of precursor occurs upon combination of the CF I and CF II fractions. The cleavage reaction proceeds in the absence of PAP or PF I. The cleavage factors exhibit low but detectable activity without exogenous ATP but are stimulated when this cofactor is included in the reaction. Cleavage by CF I and CF II is dependent on the presence of a (UA)6 sequence upstream of the GAL7 poly(A) site. The factors will also efficiently cleave precursor with the CYC1 poly(A) site. This RNA does not contain a UA repeat, and processing at this site is thought to be directed by a UAG.UAUGUA-type motif. Specific polyadenylation of a precleaved GAL7 RNA requires CF I, PF I, and a crude fraction containing PAP activity. The PAP fraction can be replaced by recombinant PAP, indicating that this enzyme is the only factor in this fraction needed for the reconstituted reaction. The poly(A) addition step is also dependent on the UA repeat. Since CF I is the only factor necessary for both cleavage and poly(A) addition, it is likely that this fraction contains a component which recognizes processing signals located upstream of the poly(A) site. The initial separation of processing factors in yeast cells suggests both interesting differences from and similarities to the mammalian system.
Lipofection of Insulin-Producing RINm5F Cells: Methodological Improvements

Cationic lipid/DNA-complexes have been widely used as gene transfer vectors because they are less toxic and immunogenic than viral vectors. The aim of the present study was to improve and characterize lipofection of an insulin-producing cell line. We compared the transfection efficiency of seven commercially available lipid formulations (Lipotaxi, SuperFect, Fugene, TransFast, Dosper, GenePORTER and LipofectAMINE) by flow cytometry analysis of GFP-expression. In addition, we have determined the influences of centrifugation, serum and a nuclear localization signal peptide on the lipofection efficiency. We observed that two lipid formulations, GenePORTER and LipofectAMINE, were able to promote efficient gene transfer in RINm5F cells. However, GenePORTER exhibited the important advantage of being able to transfect cells in the presence of serum and with less cytotoxicity than LipofectAMINE. LipofectAMINE-induced RINm5F cell death could partially be counteracted by TPA, forskolin or fumonisin β1. Finally, both centrifugation and a nuclear localization signal peptide increased transfection efficiency.
Orderly Pattern of Development of the Autoantibody Response in (New Zealand White × BXSB)F1 Lupus Mice: Characterization of Target Antigens and Antigen Spreading by Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis and Mass Spectrometry1

Immunoblots of a two-dimensional PAGE-separated HL-60 cell proteomic map and mass spectrometry were combined to characterize proteins targeted by autoantibodies produced by male (New Zealand White × BXSB)F1 (WB) mice that develop lupus and anti-phospholipid syndrome. Analysis of sera sequentially obtained from seven individual mice at different ages showed that six proteins, vimentin, heat shock protein 60, UV excision-repair protein RAD23, α-enolase, heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L, and nucleophosmin, were the targets of the B cell autoimmune response, and that autoantibodies to them were synthesized sequentially in an orderly pattern that recurred in all the male WB mice analyzed: anti-vimentin first and anti-nucleophosmin last, with anti-RAD23 and anti-heat shock protein 60, then anti-α-enolase and anti-heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L Abs occuring concomitantly. Anti-vimentin reactivity always appeared before anti-cardiolipin and anti-DNA Abs, suggesting that vimentin is the immunogen initiating the autoimmune process. The pattern of HL-60 proteins recognized by female WB sera differed from that of male sera, indicating that the Y chromosome-linked autoimmune acceleration gene is not an accelerator but a strong modifier of the autoimmune response. Thus, 1) combining two-dimensional PAGE and mass spectrometry constitutes a powerful tool to identify the set of Ags bound by autoantibodies present in a single serum and the whole autoantibody pattern of an autoimmune disease; 2) the diversification of the autoimmune response in male WB mice occurs in a predetermined pattern consistent with Ag spreading, and thus provides a useful model to further our understanding of the development of the autoantibody response in lupus.
Antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of Staphylococcus aureus on clinical isolates and efficacy of laboratory tests to diagnose MRSA: a multi-centre study.

BACKGROUND The global problem of increasing trend in antimicrobial resistance is particularly pressing in the developing countries, where the Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is often the severe casual agent in hospital-acquired infections. METHODS This multi-centre surveillance prospective study was planned to define the magnitude of problem of MRSA among clinical isolates from four teaching hospitals of Lahore Pakistan; Mayo, Services, Jinnah and Shaikh Zayed Hospitals during April 2006-March 2008. Identification of organisms was done by the standard Microbiology methods. MRSA isolates identified on Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion were further evaluated by minimum inhibitory concentration on BD Phoenix system and detection of mecA gene by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) PCR. RESULTS Of the total 1,102 S. aureus isolates, oxacillin resistance was found in 462 on disc diffusion and 420 on MIC while mecA gene was detected from 307 strains. The prevalence of MRSA among S. aureus isolates was 41.9%, 38.1% and 27.9% on disc diffusion, MIC, and mecA gene detection respectively. Hospital acquired-MRSA strains were multi drug resistant while community acquired-MRSA showed susceptibility to clindamycin (63%), ciprofloxacin (24.2%) and SMZ/TMP (3.9%). In diagnosing MRSA, the sensitivity and specificity rates of disc diffusion test were 100% and 83.7% while MIC 96.2% and 93.3% respectively. CONCLUSION There is an increasing trend in emergence MRSA and the conventional method of antimicrobial susceptibility testing showed false positive tests. This is the reason of misuse of vancomycin by physicians which may further increase MRSA in Pakistan. Therefore, molecular diagnostic facilities are recommended to avoid false-susceptible results.
Use of the dopamine agonist cabergoline in the treatment of movement disorders

Cabergoline is an ergot-derived dopamine agonist used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Both ergot and non-ergot-derived dopamine agonists directly stimulate dopamine receptors, unlike levodopa, which must undergo presynaptic breakdown to dopamine beforehand. Cabergoline has the longest half-life of the dopamine agonists currently available and is effective when given once-daily. It has been proposed that therapy with cabergoline may mimic physiological dopaminergic stimulation in PD by providing striatal intrasynaptic dopamine replacement. Its long half-life is likely to result in sustained rather than pulsatile dopaminergic stimulation, the preferred manner of treating PD. Placebo-controlled trials using cabergoline as an adjunctive therapy in PD have shown that it significantly reduces ‘off’ time, improves motor function and reduces levodopa requirements. Cabergoline has been shown to be as effective as other dopamine agonists in improving motor function as monotherapy in early PD, and a 5-year levodopa-controlled study indicates the superiority of cabergoline over levodopa in reducing dyskinesias. The efficacy of cabergoline in PD patients with nocturnal disabilities, restless leg syndrome and augmentation has also been demonstrated. Audits of the clinical efficacy of cabergoline indicate that it is well-tolerated and has an acceptable side effect profile.
Economic Evaluation of Tandem Mass Spectrometry Newborn Screening in Australia

OBJECTIVE. The goal was to investigate the cost-effectiveness of tandem mass spectrometry screening for the detection of inborn metabolic errors in an Australian setting. METHODS. Cost-effectiveness analysis from the health service perspective was undertaken on the basis of registry data for affected individuals. The intervention group was contrasted with both a contemporaneous group in nonscreening states and a historical cohort. The registry covers all individuals identified in Australia between 1994 and 2002. Main outcome measures were the total net cost of screening, the cost of treatment, life-years saved, and deaths averted. RESULTS. The total net cost of testing was estimated to be A$218 000 per 100 000 infants. Medical costs incurred by the intervention group exceeded those for the control group by A$131 000 per 100 000 infants. The number of life-years saved per 100 000 infants screened was 32.378 life-years per 100 000 infants through an expected mortality rate reduction of 0.738 deaths per 100 000 infants. The cost per death averted was estimated to be A$472 913 and the cost per life-year saved was estimated to be A$10 779, which compare favorably with existing cost-effectiveness standards. This conclusion is particularly robust because conservative assumptions were made throughout, because of data limitations. Sensitivity analyses suggested that this result was relatively robust to adjustment of model parameters. CONCLUSIONS. Tandem mass spectrometry screening for conditions caused by rare errors of metabolism is likely to be a cost-effective intervention in Australia.
Identification of Saturn's magnetospheric regions and associated plasma processes: Synopsis of Cassini observations during orbit insertion

Saturn's magnetosphere is currently studied from the microphysical to the global scale by the Cassini‐Huygens mission. During the first half of 2004, in the approach phase, remote sensing observations of Saturn's magnetosphere gave access to its auroral, radio, UV, energetic neutral atom, and dust emissions. Then, on 1 July 2004, Cassini Saturn orbit insertion provided us with the first in situ exploration of Saturn's magnetosphere since Voyager. To date, Saturn orbit insertion is the only Cassini orbit to have been described in common by all field and particle instruments. We use the comprehensive suite of magnetospheric and plasma science instruments to give a unified description of the large‐scale structure of the magnetosphere during this particular orbit, identifying the different regions and their boundaries. These regions consist of the Saturnian ring system (region 1, within 3 Saturn radii (RS)) and the cold plasma torus (region 2, within 5–6 RS) in the inner magnetosphere, a dynamic and extended plasma sheet (region 3), and an outer high‐latitude magnetosphere (region 4, beyond 12–14 RS). We compare these observations to those made at the time of the Voyager encounters. Then, we identify some of the dominant chemical characteristics and dynamical phenomena in each of these regions. The inner magnetosphere is characterized by the presence of the dominant plasma and neutral sources of the Saturnian system, giving birth to a very special magnetosphere dominated by water products. The extended plasma sheet, where the ring current resides, is a variable region with stretched magnetic field lines and contains a mixture of cold and hot plasma populations resulting from plasma transport processes. The outer high‐latitude magnetosphere is characterized by a quiet magnetic field and an absence of plasma. Saturn orbit insertion observations enabled us to capture a snapshot of the large‐scale structure of the Saturnian magnetosphere and of some of the main plasma processes operating in this complex environment. The analysis of the broad diversity of these interaction processes will be one of the main themes of magnetospheric and plasma science during the Cassini mission.
Lactobacillus parvus n.sp isolated from beer.

SUMMARY: An organism isolated from a top-fermentation beer was found to be a new heterofermentative species of Lactobacillus. It appears as very small rods of length 1.0–1. 5μ. and width 0.8–1.0μ. and forms chains. It ferments only glucose, maltose and sucrose and has been named L. parvus.
Unleash the Power of Mobile Word-of-Mouth: An Empirical Study of System and Information Characteristics in Ubiquitous Decision Making

Purpose – This study aims to examine the effects of system and information characteristics in developing users' perceptions towards ubiquitous decision support systems (UDSS). Design/methodology/approach – The research model is empirically examined with survey data from 218 mobile users who have adopted a UDSS, i.e. mobile Dianping.com. A structural equation modelling approach is employed to assess the hypotheses.Findings – The findings demonstrate that system characteristics of wireless networks, mobile devices and mobile applications significantly predicted system quality, which in turn determined system usefulness. Localisation, immediacy and customisation of mobile word‐of‐mouth were the major predictors of information quality, which in turn determined information usefulness.Originality/value – This study contributes to our current understanding of ubiquitous commerce, especially mobile word‐of‐mouth, by presenting an integrated research framework, identifying system and information characteristics tha.
On the empirical association between poor health and low socioeconomic status at old age.

Epidemiologic studies using mortality rates as indicators of health fail to find any meaningful association between poor health and low socioeconomic status in older age-groups, whereas economic studies using self-assessed health consistently find a significant positive correlation, even after controlling for self-reporting errors. Such contradictory results have not been reported for working age individuals. A simple explanation might be that the elderly samples on which the epidemiologic and economic studies are based come from different populations. However, this paper shows that similar contradictory results are obtained even when the same samples are used, simply by switching between self-assessed health and mortality as health indicators. An alternative explanation is proposed, namely that these health indicators yield different results because they relate to different ranges of the latent health variable at old age.
Emerging employer views of people with disabilities and the future of job development

Employer views of people with disabilities and vocational rehabilitation programs have evolved along with societal views of disability and legislative initiatives to prevent employment discrimination. This article discusses relevant literature on these employer perspectives, relates these perspectives to an evolving paradigm of dual customer and demand-side job development, and discusses the implications of these perspectives for job development practice, especially as they relate to facilitating job development with job seekers who have requirements for unusual or extensive accommodation and support.
Seroprevalence and Associated Risk Factors of HBV Co-infection Among HIV Infected Children Enrolled into Care at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Tanzania

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most affected with HIV. The wide use of highly active anti-retroviral therapy has led to improvement in life expectancy among HIV infected individuals. However, hepatitis B virus related complications like liver cirrhosis and liver failure are now becoming common causes of morbidity and mortality in this group. The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence and risk factors of HBV/HIV co-infection among HIV infected children enrolled into care at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC). This cross sectional analytical study was conducted among 323 HIV infected children at KCMC between February 2013 and May 2013. Investigations included interviews, physical examination and HBsAg analysis. HIV serostatus and CD4 counts/percentages were obtained from patients records. In addition, information on hepatitis vaccine status was recorded. Among 323 HIV-infected children enrolled, 177 (54.8%) were males. The prevalence of hepatitis B virus and HIV co-infection was found to be 1.2% (n=4). Hepatitis B virus co-infection was not significantly associated with any of the sociodemographic or behaviour risk factors which were assessed. CD4 counts were significantly associated with hepatitis B virus status whereby children with CD4 counts less than 350 cells/mm3 were 14 times more likely to have hepatitis B virus co- infection as compared to those who had CD4 counts greater than 350 cells/mm3. All of the hepatitis B virus co-infected children had no records of hepatitis B virus immunization, though one was born during the period of universal infant’s hepatitis B vaccination (<4 years old). The frequency of hepatitis B virus co-infection with HIV infection was low among HIV infected children in our set up. It is important to strengthen the implementation of the universal infant’s hepatitis B virus vaccination. The screening of HIV infected children for hepatitis B virus co-infection is still important whenever possible with immunization of all HIV infected children and adolescents with negative HBsAg.
Automated Duplicate Bug Report Detection Using Multi-Factor Analysis

SUMMARY The bug reports expressed in natural language text usually su ﬀ er from vast, ambiguous and poorly written, which causes the challenge to the duplicate bug reports detection. Current automatic duplicate bug reports detection techniques have mainly focused on textual information and ignored some useful factors. To improve the detection accuracy, in this paper, we propose a new approach calls LNG (LDA and N-gram) model which takes advantages of the topic model LDA and word-based model N-gram. The LNG considers multiple factors, including textual information, semantic correlation, word order, contextual connections, and categorial information, that potentially a ﬀ ect the detection accuracy. Besides, the N-gram adopted in our LNG model is improved by modifying the similarity algorithm. The experiment is conducted under more than 230,000 real bug reports of the Eclipse project. In the evaluation, we propose a new evaluation metric, namely exact-accuracy (EA) rate, which can be used to enhance the understanding of the performance of duplicates detection. The evaluation results show that all the recall rate, precision rate, and EA rate of the proposed method are higher than treating them separately. Also, the recall rate is improved by 2.96%-10.53% compared to the state-of-art approach DBTM.
A cost analysis of three methods of treating femoral shaft fractures in childrenA comparison of traction in hospital, traction in hospital/home and external fixation

Introduction There is no consensus as to which is best treatment of femoral fractures in children.Patients and methods We performed a cost analysis comparing three treatments of femoral shaft fractures in children aged 3–15 years at 3 hospitals during the same period (1993–2000). The analysis included total medical costs and costs for the care provider and were calculated from the time of injury up to 1 year.Results At hospital 1, treatment consisted of external fixation and early mobilization. At hospital 2, the treatment was skin or skeletal traction in hospital for 1–2 weeks, followed by home traction. At hospital 3, treatment was skin or skeletal traction in hospital until the fracture healed.Results The average total costs per patient were EUR 10,000 at hospital 1, EUR 23,000 at hospital 2, and EUR 38,000 at hospital 3.Interpretation The main factor for determining the cost of treatment was the number of days in hospital, which was lower in children treated with external fixation.
Current multipole expansion to estimate lateral extent of neuronal activity: a theoretical analysis

High-resolution magnetoencephalography (MEG) allows for a detailed description of focal neuronal current sources going far beyond the dipole approximation which merely indicates the center and magnitude of neuronal activity. Higher order multipole coefficients can be related to other bulk properties, like spatial extent or curvature. The possibility and limitations of measuring spatial extent by interpreting reconstructed multipole coefficients was tested under realistic noise conditions and for model misspecifications; for this analysis the primary cortical response ("N20") to electric median nerve stimulation was modeled by a one dimensional source distribution. The forward calculation was done analytically up to octapolar order for a spherical volume conductor. The multipole expansion is shown to estimate the lateral source extent with negligible bias; this estimate is to first-order stable against additional source features, like gyral curvature or spatial extent in a second direction (gyral depth, neuronal length). For a dipole moment of 20 nAm a lateral extent of 2 cm can be detected for a realistic noise level with large but experimentally still reasonable effort. Approximating a realistic head model by a sphere results in errors larger than the extent to be estimated; accordingly, studies on human cortical evoked responses will require multipole fitting in realistic head models.
Impact of Passivation Conditions on Characteristics of Bottom-Gate IGZO Thin-Film Transistors

The electrical characteristics of bottom-gate amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) are reported. The a-IGZO TFTs without (w/o) a passivation layer have shown unstable electrical properties in air, such as negative shift of threshold voltage. This degradation is probably due to the IGZO environmental instability, especially in rich-oxygen and/or hydrogen environments. In this paper, the electrical behavior of TFTs passivated by various materials are presented. It has been observed that the passivation condition strongly affects device performance. The effect of passivation process, such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD) on TFTs characteristics is investigated. In both passivation cases, a negative shift of threshold voltage has been observed by increasing the silane (SiH4) flow rate in the first case, or by increasing the Al2O3 thickness in the later. By analyzing these TFTs with time of flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS), hydrogen was detected. It appears that there is a significant correlation between hydrogen and TFT electrical degradation. The mechanisms leading to this degradation and the solutions to eliminate it are proposed.