Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Formation and toxicity of brominated disinfection byproducts during chlorination and chloramination of water: A review

Disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in drinking water exhibit considerable adverse health effects; recent focus is on the brominated disinfection byproducts (Br-DBPs). The chlorination and chloramination of bromide ion containing water produce reactive bromo species, which subsequently react with natural organic matter (NOM) to yield Br-DBPs. The possible reactions involved in generating DBPs are presented. Identified Br-DBPs include bromomethanes, bromoacetic acid, bromoacetamides, bromoacetonitriles, and bromophenols. Mixed chloro- and bromo-species have also been identified. Pathways of the formation of Br-DBPs have been described. The concentration of Br− ion, pH, reaction time, and the presence of Cu(II) influence the yield of DBPs. The effects of water conditions on the production of Br-DBPs are presented. The epidemiological studies to understand the potential toxic effects of DBPs including Br-DBPs are summarized. Brominated DBPs may have higher health risks than their corresponding chlorinated DBPs. A potential role of an emerging alternate disinfectant, ferrate (FeVIO2− 4), in minimizing DBPs is briefly discussed.
On the Throughput Capacity of Hybrid Wireless Networks Using an L-Maximum-Hop Routing Strategy

The capacity of ad hoc network is constrained by the multi-hop relay traffic. We investigate a hybrid wireless network with base stations distributed in an ad hoc network in order to localize the ad hoc traffic. We propose to organize the ad hoc traffic based on the adjacency of each node itself instead of the base station, and propose an L-maximum-hop routing strategy in order to obtain improved spectrum efficiency. The throughput capacity of the resulting hybrid wireless network is studied. The paper also demonstrates that this type of hybrid wireless network is scalable.
Operator models for delivering municipal solid waste management services in developing countries. Part A: The evidence base

This article presents the evidence base for ‘operator models’ – that is, how to deliver a sustainable service through the interaction of the ‘client’, ‘revenue collector’ and ‘operator’ functions – for municipal solid waste management in emerging and developing countries. The companion article addresses a selection of locally appropriate operator models. The evidence shows that no ‘standard’ operator model is effective in all developing countries and circumstances. Each city uses a mix of different operator models; 134 cases showed on average 2.5 models per city, each applying to different elements of municipal solid waste management – that is, street sweeping, primary collection, secondary collection, transfer, recycling, resource recovery and disposal or a combination. Operator models were analysed in detail for 28 case studies; the article summarises evidence across all elements and in more detail for waste collection. Operators fall into three main groups: The public sector, formal private sector, and micro-service providers including micro-, community-based and informal enterprises. Micro-service providers emerge as a common group; they are effective in expanding primary collection service coverage into poor- or peri-urban neighbourhoods and in delivering recycling. Both public and private sector operators can deliver effective services in the appropriate situation; what matters more is a strong client organisation responsible for municipal solid waste management within the municipality, with stable political and financial backing and capacity to manage service delivery. Revenue collection is also integral to operator models: Generally the municipality pays the operator from direct charges and/or indirect taxes, rather than the operator collecting fees directly from the service user.
Simultaneous chromium reduction and phenol degradation in a coculture of Escherichia coli ATCC 33456 and Pseudomonas putida DMP-1

In a defined coculture of a Cr(VI) reducer, Escherichia coli ATCC 33456, and a phenol degrader, Pseudomonas putida DMP-1, simultaneous reduction of Cr(VI) and degradation of phenol was observed. When Cr(VI) was present in the coculture, quantitative transformation of Cr(VI) into Cr(III) proceeded with simultaneous degradation of phenol. Cr(VI) reduction was correlated to phenol degradation in the coculture as demonstrated by a regression analysis of the cumulative Cr(VI) reduction and the cumulative phenol degradation. Both the rate and extent of Cr(VI) reduction and phenol degradation were significantly influenced by the population composition of the coculture. Although Cr(VI) reduction occurred as a result of E. coli metabolism, the rate of phenol degradation by P. putida may become a rate-limiting factor for Cr(VI) reduction at a low population ratio of P. putida to E. coli. Phenol degradation by P. putida was very susceptible to the presence of Cr(VI), whereas Cr(VI) reduction by E. coli was significantly influenced by phenol only when phenol was present at high concentrations (> 9 mM).
Conflicting guidelines on same topics cause doctors confusion, say MPs

Doctors from the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and workers in child health from Gaza and the West Bank recently attended a ceremony for seven doctors and two nurses who received Palestinian certificates in child health. The presentation, given by the college's president, Patricia Hamilton, in a ceremony in the West Bank, marks the culmination of seven years' work to offer a course in child health to Palestinian doctors and nurses. The training was put together by the college and offered partly by distance learning. The paediatrician Tony Waterston, of Newcastle University, …
Equity Style Returns and Institutional Investor Flows

This paper explores institutional investor trades in stocks grouped by style and the relationship of these trades with equity market returns. It aggregates transactions drawn from a large universe of approximately $6 trillion of institutional funds. To analyze style behavior, we assign equities to deciles in each of five style dimensions: size, value/growth, cyclical/defensive, sector, and country. We find, first, strong evidence that investors organize and trade stocks across style-driven lines. This appears true for groupings both strongly and weakly related to fundamentals (e.g., industry or country groupings versus size or value/growth deciles). Second, the positive linkage between flows and returns emerges at daily frequencies, yet becomes even more important at lower frequencies. We show that quarterly decile flows and returns are even more strongly positively correlated than are daily flows and returns. However, as the horizon increases beyond a year, we find that the flow/return correlation declines. Third, style flows and returns are important components of individual stock expected returns. We find that nearby style inflows and returns positively forecast future returns while distant style inflows and returns forecast negatively. Fourth, we find strong correlations between style flows and temporary components of return. This suggests that behavioral theories may play a role in explaining the popularity and price impact of flow-related trading.
Clinical Potential of Allopurinol in the Treatment of Bipolar Disorder

It is with great interest that I read the letter to the editor titled “should publications be the only means for assessment? ”[1] The letter seemed to voice the general sentiments among the members of the multitasking clinician-academician researcher community like us. Infact, the title of the letter would be the main culprit behind a number of issues plaguing the research world like the rise in plagiarism, unethical research reporting practices, authorship controversies and burn out of researchers. Infact, the issue of burn out in researchers has been aptly termed “publish and perish” in place of the usual adage of “publish or perish” by an author. [2] The solution lies in a comprehensive assessment in terms of assessment of teaching abilities (teaching awards, peer evaluation, learner evaluation etc.); clinical skills and patient care abilities (objective patient feedback, prescription auditing, peer evaluation etc.) mentoring ability (student feedback) assessment of administrative abilities (involvement in institutional committees, organizing workshops etc.) personal qualities (ethical standards, leadership quality, community work etc.) and research acumen (publications and projects). [3] Assessment in all these domains, though cumbersome, is essential for accurate judgment for recruitment or promotion purposes. Efforts should be taken by regulatory or guiding authorities to objectify such a multipronged rating system that should eventually replace the undue emphasis of the number of publications. It would also be a partial solution to many of the controversies surrounding bio-medical research today.
Roles of mRNA Fate Modulators Dhh1 and Pat1 in TNRC6-dependent Gene Silencing Recapitulated in Yeast*

Background: Animal microRNAs silence their target mRNAs by promoting mRNA degradation and inhibiting translation via GW182/TNRC6. Results: TNRC6 induces silencing effects in S. cerevisiae via CCR4-NOT complex and Dhh1-Pat1 when tethered to reporter mRNAs. Conclusion: TNRC6 utilizes the conserved mRNA fate modulators for gene silencing in yeast. Significance: Yeast genetic tools are now available to study intricate actions of TNRC6. The CCR4-NOT complex, the major deadenylase in eukaryotes, plays crucial roles in gene expression at the levels of transcription, mRNA decay, and protein degradation. GW182/TNRC6 proteins, which are core components of the microRNA-induced silencing complex in animals, stimulate deadenylation and repress translation via recruitment of the CCR4-NOT complex. Here we report a heterologous experimental system that recapitulates the recruitment of CCR4-NOT complex by TNRC6 in S. cerevisiae. Using this system, we characterize conserved functions of the CCR4-NOT complex. The complex stimulates degradation of mRNA from the 5′ end by Xrn1, in a manner independent of both translation and deadenylation. This degradation pathway is probably conserved in miRNA-mediated gene silencing in zebrafish. Furthermore, the mRNA fate modulators Dhh1 and Pat1 redundantly stimulate mRNA decay, but both factors are required for poly(A) tail-independent translation repression by tethered TNRC6A. Our tethering-based reconstitution system reveals that the conserved architecture of Not1/CNOT1 provides a binding surface for TNRC6, thereby connecting microRNA-induced silencing complex to the decapping machinery as well as the translation apparatus.
Type III Secretion Genes in Aeromonas salmonicida subsp. salmonicida Are Located on a Large Thermolabile Virulence Plasmid

ABSTRACT Type III secretion genes in Aeromonas salmonicida subsp. salmonicida are located on a large plasmid of approximately 140 kb. Cultivation of this organism at elevated temperatures such as 25°C can, however, result in loss of this plasmid. This is accompanied by a loss of virulence for cultured fish cells.
A Framework for Design of Partially Replicated Distributed Database Systems with Migration Based Genetic Algorithms

For partially replicated distributed database systems to function efficiently, the data (relations) and operations (subquery) of the database need to be located, judiciously at various sites across the relevant communications network.The problem of allocating relations and operations to the most appropriate sites is a difficult one to solve so that genetic algorithms based on migration are proposed in this research. In partially replicated distributed database systems, the minimization of total time usually attempts to minimize resource consumption and therefore to maximize the system throughput. On the other hand, the minimization of response time may be obtained by having a large number of parallel executions to different sites, requiring a higher resource consumption, which means that the system throughput is reduced. Workload balancing implies the reduction of the average time that queries spend waiting for CPU and I/O service at a network site, but its effect on the performance of partially replicated distributed database systems cannot be isolated from other distributed database design factors. In this research, the total cost refers to the combination of total time and response time. This paper presents a framework for total cost minimization and workload balancing for partially replicated distributed database systems considering important database design objectives together. The framework incorporates both local processing, including CPU and I/O, and communication costs. To illustrate its suitability, experiments are conducted, and results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides effective partially replicated distributed database design.
Axonal dysfunction, dysmyelination, and conduction failure in hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies

Introduction: Patients with hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies (HNPP) manifest with episodes of focal paresis when exposed to mechanical stress, although the basis for vulnerability to conduction block remains relatively unexplained. Methods: Axonal excitability techniques were utilized to provide insights into pathophysiological mechanisms in 13 HNPP patients, stimulating median motor and sensory axons at the wrist. Results: In HNPP, distal latencies were prolonged, and motor and sensory amplitudes were reduced. Threshold was increased. Depolarizing and hyperpolarizing electrotonus was greater, and resting current–threshold slope was reduced. There were greater threshold changes in superexcitability, and refractoriness was decreased. Conclusions: Taken together, excitability testing in patients with HNPP established axonal hyperpolarization in both motor and sensory axons that may be attributable to changes in nerve architecture. In turn, the hyperpolarized resting membrane potential in HNPP may be a major predisposing factor for development of conduction block with mechanical stresses. Muscle Nerve 49: 858–865, 2014
Sublogarithmic Distributed Algorithms for Lovász Local lemma, and the Complexity Hierarchy

Locally Checkable Labeling (LCL) problems include essentially all the classic problems of $\mathsf{LOCAL}$ distributed algorithms. In a recent enlightening revelation, Chang and Pettie [arXiv 1704.06297] showed that any LCL (on bounded degree graphs) that has an $o(\log n)$-round randomized algorithm can be solved in $T_{LLL}(n)$ rounds, which is the randomized complexity of solving (a relaxed variant of) the Lovasz Local Lemma (LLL) on bounded degree $n$-node graphs. Currently, the best known upper bound on $T_{LLL}(n)$ is $O(\log n)$, by Chung, Pettie, and Su [PODC'14], while the best known lower bound is $\Omega(\log\log n)$, by Brandt et al. [STOC'16]. Chang and Pettie conjectured that there should be an $O(\log\log n)$-round algorithm. Making the first step of progress towards this conjecture, and providing a significant improvement on the algorithm of Chung et al. [PODC'14], we prove that $T_{LLL}(n)= 2^{O(\sqrt{\log\log n})}$. Thus, any $o(\log n)$-round randomized distributed algorithm for any LCL problem on bounded degree graphs can be automatically sped up to run in $2^{O(\sqrt{\log\log n})}$ rounds. Using this improvement and a number of other ideas, we also improve the complexity of a number of graph coloring problems (in arbitrary degree graphs) from the $O(\log n)$-round results of Chung, Pettie and Su [PODC'14] to $2^{O(\sqrt{\log\log n})}$. These problems include defective coloring, frugal coloring, and list vertex-coloring.
A descriptive study on constructional impairment in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

Background and purpose: Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a degenerative disorder characterized, in its frontal variant, by psychiatric onset, deficits in executive functions and sparing of memory and visuo‐spatial abilities. Studies on visuo‐spatial abilities in FTD and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have mainly focused on constructional abilities (CA) and have yielded contrasting data, often depending either on the task used or biases in the clinical selection of patients. The aim of our study was to evaluate the frequency of the CA impairment in FTD‐fv and AD patients at the early stage of the disease, and to verify if some distinctive features of this impairment can characterize each pathology.
Effects of Unoprostone and Endothelin 1 on L-Type Channel Currents in Human Trabecular Meshwork Cells

Background: The trabecular meshwork (TM) is a smooth muscle-like tissue with contractile properties and by this mechanisms involved in the regulation of aqueous humor outflow. Isopropyl unoprostone (Rescula®, Novartis Ophthalmics), a synthetic docosanoid, reduces intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients and normal subjects. In isolated TM strips, unoprostone reduces TM contractility in the presence of endothelin 1 (ET-1). However, the signal transduction pathway of unoprostone still remains unclear. Since L-type channel currents are known to influence the contractility of TM, we examined the effects of unoprostone and ET-1 on L-type channel currents of TM cells. Methods: The effects of unoprostone, ET-1 and the tyrosine kinase inhibitor herbimycin A on L-type channel currents of cultured human TM cells were investigated using the perforated patch configuration of the patch-clamp technique. Results: Application of ET-1 had no effect on L-type channel currents. Unoprostone led to a dose-dependent reduction of control currents. The effect of unoprostone is independent of ET-1. After preincubation of cells with herbimycin A, unoprostone had no effect on the L-type channel current amplitude. Human TM cells preincubated with herbimycin A showed a reduced current density compared with control cells. Both substances, unoprostone and herbimycin A, increased the inactivation time constant of L-type channel currents. Conclusion: We conclude that unoprostone reduces the activity of L-type Ca2+ channels. This effect seems to be independent of ET-1. The signal transduction pathway seems to be mediated by tyrosine kinases.
Forager lithics and Early Moloko homesteads at Madikwe

Two lithic scatters are reported that appear to be associated with Early Moloko homesteads. On the basis of the spatial location of the lithic scatters within the homesteads, some ideas are presented as to the nature of forager visits and their work in the homesteads. The location of one scatter within the back courtyard of a household indicates that foragers were constrained to the outer margins of the homestead. It is suggested that this was an appropriate spatial metaphor for foragers, in which their lives within and close to 'nature' was emphasised. To cite this article: Hall, S. 2000. Forager lithics and Early Moloko homesteads at Madikwe . Natal Museum Journal of Humanities 12 : 33-50.
Surface contamination in the dental operatory: a comparison over two decades.

BACKGROUND This study compares surface bacterial contamination levels in a large teaching clinic in 1998 with that of a 1976 study in the same clinic to determine if renovation and more stringent infection control, or IC, practices have made a difference. METHODS The authors obtained samples from surfaces in clinic operatories--including the light handle covers, jacket cuffs, sinks and floors--in the morning and afternoon. They compared the bacterial counts from these samples with those from the 1976 study. Data were analyzed using the matched pairs t tests and independent t tests. RESULTS In both the 1976 and 1998 studies, mean bacterial counts were higher at the end of the day than in the morning; however, the differences were only significant in the 1976 study. Comparisons between the 1998 and 1976 counts revealed significant differences for the floor, headrest, light handle covers and clinic jacket cuffs. CONCLUSIONS Improvements in clinic design and equipment, as well as IC procedures and practices resulted in a lower level of surface bacterial contamination in 1998 than in 1976 in a large teaching clinic. Clinical Implications. Attention to clinic design and furnishings and adherence to recommended IC practices can reduce microbial surface contamination, thereby reducing the risk of causing cross-infection and making dental practice safer.
Granzyme B‐ and Fas ligand‐mediated cytotoxic function induced by mitogenic CD28 stimulation of human memory CD4+ T cells

Some human memory CD4+ T cells have cytotoxic functions best understood in the context of viral infections; however, their possible role in pathologic processes is understudied. The novel discovery that mitogenic CD28 antibodies induced proliferation and expansion of Tregs offered therapeutic promise for autoimmune disorders. However, the failed TGN1412 trial forced reassessment of this concept. As memory CD4+ T cells are known to produce toxic molecules, including granzyme B (GrzB) and FasL, we wondered whether mitogenic CD28 was able to induce these cytotoxic molecules. A commercially available mitogenic human CD28 mAb (clone ANC28.1) was used to determine whether mitogenic CD28 induces cytotoxic function from human memory CD4+ T cells. We found that stimulation of memory CD4+ T cells by ANC28.1, as well as by conventional costimulation (CD3/CD28 mAb), robustly induced enzymatically active GrzB, along with increased surface expression of FasL. These functional phenotypes were induced in association with increased expression of T cell activation markers CD69 and CD25, and elimination of target cells by ANC28.1‐activated memory CD4+ T cells involved both GrzB and FasL. Additionally, ANC28.1‐activated memory CD4+ T cells caused disruption of epithelial cell monolayer integrity, which was partially mediated by GrzB. These findings reveal functions of memory CD4+ T cells previously unknown to be induced by mitogenic CD28, and suggest that these pathogenic mechanisms may have been responsible for some of the widespread tissue destruction that occurred in the TGN1412 trial recipients.
Processing negative valence of word pairs that include a positive word

Previous research has suggested that cognitive performance is interrupted by negative relative to neutral or positive stimuli. We examined whether negative valence affects performance at the word or phrase level. Participants performed a semantic decision task on word pairs that included either a negative or a positive target word. In Experiment 1, the valence of the target word was congruent with the overall valence conveyed by the word pair (e.g., fat kid). As expected, response times were slower in the negative condition relative to the positive condition. Experiment 2 included target words that were incongruent with the overall valence of the word pair (e.g., fat salary). Response times were longer for word pairs whose overall valence was negative relative to positive, even though these word pairs included a positive word. Our findings support the Cognitive Primacy Hypothesis, according to which emotional valence is extracted after conceptual processing is complete.