Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connexin32 Mutations Associated with X-Linked Charcot–Marie–Tooth Disease Show Two Distinct Behaviors: Loss of Function and Altered Gating Properties

The X-linked form of Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMTX) is associated with mutations in the gene encoding connexin32 (Cx32), which is expressed in Schwann cells. We have compared the functional properties of 11 Cx32 mutations with those of the wild-type protein by testing their ability to form intercellular channels in the paired oocyte expression system. Although seven mutations were functionally incompetent, four others were able to generate intercellular currents of the same order of magnitude as those induced by wild-type Cx32 (Cx32wt). In homotypic oocyte pairs, CMTX mutations retaining functional activity induced the development of junctional currents that exhibited changes in the sensitivity and kinetics of voltage dependence with respect to that of Cx32wt. The four mutations were also capable of interacting in heterotypic configuration with the wild-type protein, and in one case the result was a marked rectification of junctional currents in response to voltage steps of opposite polarity. In addition, the functional CMTX mutations displayed the same selective pattern of compatibility as Cx32wt, interacting with Cx26, Cx46, and Cx50 but failing to do so with Cx40. Although the functional mutations exhibited sensitivity to cytoplasmic acidification, which induced a ≥80% decrease in junctional currents, both the rate and extent of channel closure were enhanced markedly for two of them. Together, these results indicate that the functional consequences of CMTX mutations of Cx32 are of two drastically distinct kinds. The presence of a functional group of mutations suggests that a selective deficit of Cx32 channels may be sufficient to impair the homeostasis of Schwann cells and lead to the development of CMTX.
The Ouroboros of Psychological Methodology: The Case of Effect Sizes (Mechanical Objectivity vs. Expertise)

The reporting and interpretation of effect sizes is often promoted as a panacea for the ramifications of institutionalized statistical rituals associated with the null-hypothesis significance test. Mechanical objectivity—conflating the use of a method with the obtainment of truth—is a useful theoretical tool for understanding the possible failure of effect size reporting (Porter, 1995). This article helps elucidate the ouroboros of psychological methodology. This is the cycle of improved tools to produce trustworthy knowledge, leading to their institutionalization and adoption as forms of thinking, leading to methodologists eventually admonishing researchers for relying too heavily on rituals, finally leading to the production of more new improved quantitative tools that may follow along this circular path. Despite many critiques and warnings, research psychologists’ superficial adoption of effect sizes might preclude expert interpretation much like in the null-hypothesis significance test as widely received. One solution to this situation is bottom-up: promoting a balance of mechanical objectivity and expertise in the teaching of methods and research. This would require the acceptance and encouragement of expert interpretation within psychological science.
Amino Acid Substitutions of MagA in Klebsiella pneumoniae Affect the Biosynthesis of the Capsular Polysaccharide

Mucoviscosity-associated gene A (magA) of Klebsiella pneumoniae contributes to K1 capsular polysaccharide (CPS) biosynthesis. Based on sequence homology and gene alignment, the magA gene has been predicted to encode a Wzy-type CPS polymerase. Sequence alignment with the Wzy_C and RfaL protein families (which catalyze CPS or lipopolysaccharide (LPS) biosynthesis) and topological analysis has suggested that eight highly conserved residues, including G308, G310, G334, G337, R290, P305, H323, and N324, were located in a hypothetical loop region. Therefore, we used site-directed mutagenesis to study the role of these residues in CPS production, and to observe the consequent phenotypes such as mucoviscosity, serum and phagocytosis resistance, and virulence (as assessed in mice) in pyogenic liver abscess strain NTUH-K2044. Alanine substitutions at R290 or H323 abolished all of these properties. The G308A mutant was severely impaired for these functions. The G334A mutant remained mucoid with decreased CPS production, but its virulence was significantly reduced in vivo. No phenotypic change was observed for strains harboring magA G310A, G337A, P305A, or N324A mutations. Therefore, R290, G308, H323, and G334 are functionally important residues of the MagA (Wzy) protein of K. pneumoniae NTUH-K2044, capsular type K1. These amino acids are also likely to be important for the function of Wzy in other capsular types in K. pneumoniae and other species bearing Wzy_C family proteins.
The many forms of thirst : investigating forest constraints in the Cape Floristic Region

Ab Un ive rsi ty of Ca pe To wn The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or noncommercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. Un ive rsi ty f C ap e T ow n
Improved neural network equalization by the use of maximum covariance weight initialization

In this paper we focus on adaptive equalization of binary telecommunication signals in a baseband digital communication system. We have studied the use of multilayer perceptron (MLP) networks for equalizing binary data bursts in a channel that introduces both intersymbol interference and noise to the transmitted signal. Conventionally the weights of the MLP network are initialized randomly. Here we have studied the use of maximum covariance (MC) initialization scheme in the weight initialization. By applying MC initialization we have been able to speed up the convergence and decrease the total computational load of the system. This is very important in telecommunications, where it is often not possible to use systems that require a lot of computation.
Lean healthcare implementation in Southern Africa : a SWOT analysis

paper, we present an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the application of the lean philosophy in healthcare. We collate expert views from a number of leading consultants, practitioners and academics from the Southern African region. The leading expert participants were selected based on their good knowledge and expertise in the field of lean. The study provides a useful resource for many researchers and practitioners concerned with research and application of improvement methodologies in healthcare to transform their healthcare organizations into high-performing healthcare delivery systems.
Continuous data cleaning

In declarative data cleaning, data semantics are encoded as constraints and errors arise when the data violates the constraints. Various forms of statistical and logical inference can be used to reason about and repair inconsistencies (errors) in data. Recently, unified approaches that repair both errors in data and errors in semantics (the constraints) have been proposed. However, both data-only approaches and unified approaches are by and large static in that they apply cleaning to a single snapshot of the data and constraints. We introduce a continuous data cleaning framework that can be applied to dynamic data and constraint environments. Our approach permits both the data and its semantics to evolve and suggests repairs based on the accumulated evidence to date. Importantly, our approach uses not only the data and constraints as evidence, but also considers the past repairs chosen and applied by a user (user repair preferences). We introduce a repair classifier that predicts the type of repair needed to resolve an inconsistency, and that learns from past user repair preferences to recommend more accurate repairs in the future. Our evaluation shows that our techniques achieve high prediction accuracy and generate high quality repairs. Of independent interest, our work makes use of a set of data statistics that are shown to be sensitive to predicting particular repair types.
“Where All the Ladders Start”: A Clinical Account of Object Relations Legacies, Self-States and Analytic Process

This paper evolved from an earlier panel presentation on conceptual tributaries to relational thinking at the 2015 International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Conference in Toronto. Representing the place of Object Relations theory in the DNA from which Relational Psychoanalysis emerged, I emphasized—and provide here an abbreviated review of—the contributions of Fairbairn, Klein, and Winnicott. Then, as now, believing in the communicative power of clinical examples, I offer an extended clinical narrative in which the medium is the message and clinical phenomena such as multiple self-states, enactments, negotiation, play, and the residue of internal object relations (in both patient and analyst) are brought to life. Also, as the Toronto Plenary overview paper by Jody Davies has developed into its current substantial elaboration of distinctly relational issues (multiple self-states, co-creation, and the interplay of process and insight) and serves as the capstone paper for this published version of our panel, I respond to Jody’s conceptual contributions and her perspective on Relational thinking.
Demethylation of the TSDR Is a Marker of Squamous Cell Carcinoma in Transplant Recipients

Malignancy is an important cause of death in transplant recipients. Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) causes significant morbidity and mortality as 30% of transplant recipients will develop cSCC within 10 years of transplantation. Previously we have shown that high numbers of regulatory T cells (Tregs) are associated with the development of cSCC in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). Demethylation analysis of the Treg‐specific demethylated region (TSDR) provides a more accurate association with cSCC risk after transplantation. Age, gender and duration of immunosuppression matched KTRs with (n = 32) and without (n = 27) cSCC, were re‐analyzed for putative clinical and immunological markers of cancer risk. The proportion of FOXP3+ CD4+ cells was higher in the population with a previous SCC. Major T cell subsets remained stable over time; although B cell, CD8 and CD4 subpopulations demonstrated age‐related changes. TSDR methylation analysis allowed clarification of Treg numbers, enhancing the association of high Treg levels in KTRs with cSCC compared to the cSCC‐free cohort. These data validate and expand on previous findings in long‐term KTRs, and show that immune markers remain stable over time. TSDR demethylation analysis provides a more accurate biomarker of cancer posttransplantation.
Associations between Skeletal Growth in Childhood and Cognitive Function in Mid-Life in a 53-Year Prospective Birth Cohort Study

BACKGROUND Several studies have found that shorter stature (height and limb length) in late life is associated with dementia and cognitive impairment. The extent to which childhood environment and early life cognitive function accounts for these associations is not clear. METHODS We investigated associations of adult trunk height and leg length with cognitive function in middle age, analysing data from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development: a cohort followed from birth to age 53, 1677 of whom had data on all covariates. The four cognitive tests measured verbal ability, word list memory, verbal fluency and speed/concentration. Early life environmental measures included parental education, poverty, parental divorce, physical health, cognitive ability at age 15, own education and own adult social class. RESULTS After adjusting for gender, shorter trunk length was associated with lower cognitive function on all four tests and shorter leg length with lower verbal intelligence and word list memory. These associations were only partially attenuated following adjustment for childhood adversity/health but were substantially accounted for by cognitive ability at age 15. CONCLUSIONS Shorter stature was associated with lower cognitive function at age 53, the majority of this association being accounted for by cognitive function at age 15. Reduced cognitive reserve may well account for later associations between anthropometric measures and dementia.
Privacy-preserving smart metering without a trusted-third-party

Smartmeters report the current electricity consumption over the internet back to their energy providers. Finely-sampled power consumption enables the energy provider to learn the habits of the customer's household in which the smart meter is installed. This paper presents a protocol which preserves customer privacy but also allows the detection of unregistered smart meters and prevents spamming and replay attacks. A trusted-third-party is not needed. This protocol, whose security proof relies on the strong RSA assumption and the random oracle model, is based on zero-knowledge techniques. The protocol has been implemented on different hardware platforms and benchmark results are given.
Associations between deprivation, attitudes towards eating breakfast and breakfast eating behaviours in 9–11-year-olds

Abstract Objectives To examine school-level relationships between deprivation and breakfast eating behaviours (breakfast skipping and the healthfulness of foods consumed) in 9–11-year-old schoolchildren and to examine whether attitudes towards eating breakfast mediated these relationships. Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting One hundred and eleven primary schools in Wales. Subjects Year 5 and 6 pupils within the 111 primary schools. Measures were completed by 4314 children. Analysis was conducted at the group (school) level, with each school representing one group. Results Deprivation was positively associated with breakfast skipping and consumption of ‘unhealthy’ items (i.e. sweet snacks, crisps) for breakfast. A significant negative association was found between deprivation and consumption of ‘healthy’ items (i.e. fruit, bread, cereal, milk). Deprivation was significantly inversely associated with attitudes towards eating breakfast. The relationships between deprivation and (1) breakfast skipping and (2) consumption of ‘healthy’ items for breakfast were mediated by attitudes towards eating breakfast. The hypothesis that attitudes mediated the relationship between deprivation and consumption of ‘unhealthy’ breakfast items was unsupported. Conclusions Deprivation is associated with adverse breakfast eating behaviours amongst children aged 9–11 years, in terms of breakfast skipping and the quality of breakfasts consumed. Socio-economic differences in attitudes towards eating breakfast are apparent amongst this age group, and appear to relate to social gradients in breakfast eating behaviours. Research is needed to examine the causal nature of these trends and to elucidate factors underlying the development of socio-economic differences in eating-related cognitions.
Necessity to Measure PCBs and Organochlorine Pesticide Concentrations in Human Umbilical Cords for Fetal Exposure Assessment

Three types of tissue samples—umbilical cord (UC), umbilical cord serum (CS), and maternal serum (MS)—have often been used to assess fetal exposure to chemicals. In order to know the relationship of contamination between mothers and fetuses, we measured persistent chemicals in comparable sets of the three tissue samples. Also, we analyzed the association between the chemicals in maternal and fetal tissues to know which tissue is the best sample for fetal exposure assessment. On a wet basis, the chemical concentrations were of the order MS > CS > UC, except for some chemicals such as cis-chlordane and endosulfan. On a lipid basis, the concentrations in UC were nearly equal or often higher than in MS, but the concentrations in CS were usually lower than in others. Hexachlorocyclohexanes and penta-, hexa-, and heptachlorinated biphenyls showed an association between the concentrations in UC versus MS, and UC versus CS. These chemicals also showed high correlation coefficients between the chemical concentrations in UC of first babies and maternal age. These chemicals were closely related to each other when grouped on the basis of their concentrations using cluster analysis. In conclusion, we insist that UC is the best sample to assess fetal contamination status of persistent chemicals. There is a possibility that the assessment based on the contamination levels in CS result in an underestimation.
SER Analysis of OFDM System over Rayleigh Fading Channel

this paper, we present an efficient technique for the SER of OFDM system over Rayleigh fading channels, using well known characteristics function (CHF) based analysis approach. The exact probability density function of a sum of Rayleigh random vectors are used to derive the expression for the error rates of OFDM system. The average SER expressed in terms of the exponential and Bessel functions. Further to improve the system performance error-rate analysis is extended to a system using multichannel reception with maximal ratio combining. KeywordsDigital Communication, Rayleigh Fading channel, MRC diversity.
Performance analysis of Cellular-WLAN Heterogeneous Network based on Continuous Time Markov Chain

This paper proposes an analytical model for performance evaluation of Cellular-WLAN Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) based on Continuous Time Markov Chain (CTMC) for variable-bit-rate (VBR) data services. This model considers system specific overheads and limitations such as limited number of supported modulation and coding scheme (MCS) of each network. Moreover, this model includes the traffic density variation between hot-spot (where the WLAN access point are usually deployed) and non-hot-spot areas. The proposed analytical model is used to evaluate the system performance of two mainstream network association schemes; namely, WLAN-first and Load Balancing, in terms of total system throughput. In addition, the proposed analytical model is thoroughly validated against extensive system level simulation results obtained from the Network Simulator 3 (NS3) platform.
Simulation and basic experiment of picoliter droplet micro-dispensing based on piezoelectric drive

Microdroplet dispensing has numerous applications in biotechnology, microelectronic packaging and microassembly. The rapid developments of these fields tend to demand smaller and smaller microdroplets. In order to achieve single picoliter-volume droplets, a piezoelectric micro-dispensing system is developed in this paper. The factors affecting the droplet volume is first investigated theoretically. Then the coupled multi-physics micro-dispensing model has been established. Based on this model, various parameters such as driving voltage, the nozzle diameter and glue viscosity that influence the microdispensing performance are analyzed. The process of microdroplet formation is also simulated accordingly. The simulation results show the minimum volume that of a nozzle with a 20μm inner diameter can distribute is about 20pL. Basic microdispensing experiments are executed, verification of micro-dispensing is ultimately performed in the built system.
Using Student Achievement Test Scores as Evidence of External Validity for Indicators of Teacher Quality : Connecticut ’ s Beginning Educator Support and Training Program

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the administrators and staff of the Connecticut State Education Departments and the two school districts who went to great lengths to help us obtain the data that were used in our analyses. We would also like to thank Hiro Yamada and Ronli Diakow for performing the analyses we report below. We would like to thank Linda Darling-Hammond for useful comments. The editor and reviewers have made many helpful suggestions, from which the paper has greatly benefited. Any errors or omissions are, of course, the responsibility of the authors. This research has been supported by a grant from the Institute for Education Sciences.
Improvement of face detection algorithms for news videos

People are the most important subjects in news videos and for proper retrieval of person images, face detection is a very crucial step. However, face detection and recognition in news videos is a very challenging task due to the huge irregularities and high noise level in the data. This study presents a method that combines skin detection and Schneiderman-Kanade face detection, for improving the face detection performance in news videos for a better retrieval. This method has been tested on TRECVID 2003 dataset and the results are very promising.
Circadian Rhythm of Nitrogenase Gene Expression in the Diazotrophic Filamentous Nonheterocystous CyanobacteriumTrichodesmium sp. Strain IMS 101

ABSTRACT Recent studies suggested that the daily cycle of nitrogen fixation activity in the marine filamentous nonheterocystous cyanobacteriumTrichodesmium sp. is controlled by a circadian rhythm. In this study, we evaluated the rhythm of nitrogen fixation inTrichodesmium sp. strain IMS 101 by using the three criteria for an endogenous rhythm. Nitrogenase transcript abundance oscillated with a period of approximately 24 h, and the cycle was maintained even under constant light conditions. The cyclic pattern of transcript abundance was maintained when the culture was grown at 24 and 28.5°C, although the period was slightly longer (26 h) at the higher temperature. The cycle of gene expression could be entrained with light-dark cues. Results of inhibitor experiments indicated that transcript abundance was regulated primarily by transcription initiation, rather than by degradation. The circadian rhythm, the first conclusively demonstrated endogenous rhythm in a filamentous cyanobacterium, was also reflected in nitrogenase MoFe protein abundance and patterns of Fe protein posttranslational modification-demodification.
Intraoperative optical imaging of human face cortical topography: a case study

We used intrinsic signal optical imaging to obtain maps of human somatosensory cortex during electrocutaneous stimulation of the face during a neurosurgical procedure for epilepsy. We found that human face somatotopy is organized like the macaque or cebus monkey, with peri-orbital skin located medial to peri-buccal skin, and that cortical magnification in the human is comparable to that in non-human primates. This study demonstrates that intrinsic signal imaging can be performed on humans during operative procedures with sufficient spatial resolution to reveal high-resolution topographic maps.
Improved Transcription of Czech Parliament Speeches by Acoustic and Language Model Adaptation

The aim of this work is to improve the accuracy of our spoken broadcast transcription system in the task of Czech parliament speeches recognition. To achieve this goal, we propose several approaches for adaptation of both acoustic and language models of our system: a new two step unsupervised speaker adaptation strategy is presented to improve the former model while the latter one is created from a text corpus mixed properly from both general (2.6 GB of Czech newspaper texts) and domain specific data (181 MB of parliament speeches). Our experimental results show that the combination of both adaptation approaches leads to near 30% relative reduction of WER in comparison with the baseline speaker independent (SI) system operating with a general language model.