Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The use of flow cytometry to detect expression of subunits encoded by 11 Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium fimbrial operons

The Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) genome contains 13 putative fimbrial operons termed agf (csg), fim, pef, lpf, bcf, saf, stb, stc, std, stf, sth, sti and stj. Evidence for in vitro expression of fimbrial proteins encoded by these operons is currently only available for agf, fim and pef. We raised antisera against putative major fimbrial subunits of S. Typhimurium, including AgfA, FimA, PefA, LpfA, BcfA, StbA, StcA, StdA, StfA, SthA and StiA. Elaboration of StcA on the bacterial surface could be detected by flow cytometry and immunoelectron microscopy after expression of the cloned stcABCD operon from a heterologous T7 promoter in Escherichia coli. To study the expression of fimbrial antigens in S. Typhimurium by flow cytometry, we constructed strains carrying deletions of agfAB, pefBACDI, lpfABCDE, bcfABCDEFG, stbABCD, stcABC, stdAB, stfACDEFG, sthABCDE or stiABCDE. Using these deletion mutants for gating, expression of fimbrial antigens was measured by flow cytometry in cultures grown in vitro or in samples recovered 8 h after infection of bovine ligated ileal loops with S. Typhimurium. FimA was the only fimbrial antigen expressed by S. Typhimurium after static growth in Luria–Bertani (LB) broth. Injection of static LB broth cultures of S. Typhimurium into bovine ligated ileal loops resulted in the expression of BcfA, FimA, LpfA, PefA, StbA, StcA, StdA, StfA and StiA. These data show that in vivo growth conditions drastically alter the repertoire of fimbrial antigens expressed in S. Typhimurium.
Gender wage differentials in the Malaysian services sector

The Malaysian economy has undergone dramatic changes moving from a heavy dependence on agriculture to an increasing reliance on the manufacturing and services sectors. These days, the services sector has become the most important source of Malaysian economic growth. Most sub-sectors in the service industries have been transforming toward more capital-intensive and knowledge-based activities that require additional skilled-labor. An increase in demand for this type of labor will subsequently raise wages. However, it is observed that because women are perceived as being less productive compared to men they are always less preferred by employers despite being equally educated. This perception of employers may not be true and, as such, bears the element of discrimination against women. This paper attempts to examine this issue using 887 executives in three selected services sectors – education, health, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) – from a survey conducted in 2007/2008. They comprise 315 males and 571 females. The results show that almost all incorporated human capital variables have a significant positive effect on wages for male and female workers. These variables also play an important role in reducing gender wage differentials. However, discrimination prevails, as shown by a high percentage contribution of unexplained variables to gender wage inequality. Key words: Gender wage differentials, discrimination, services sector.
Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Italian SMEs: towards a 'territorial' model based on small 'champions' of CSR?

Does a positive relationship between the adhesion to a culture of social responsibility and evolved systems of governance exist? And is such correlation more or less significant for small- and medium-sized firms with respect to large-sized firms? This paper winds itself around these questions and describes the principle findings that have emerged from the qualitative investigation focused on a selected group of 'cohesive' Italian small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), in which the nexus between the evolution of corporate governance and socially responsible management practices were examined. The concluding reflections trace the features of a territorial model of socially responsible orientation centred on the best practices of SMEs, 'convivial enterprises' who are excellent examples of 'spirited businesses'.
Differential delay/Doppler ML estimation with unknown signals

Previously published analyses on the maximum-likelihood estimation of joint frequency and time offsets between two noisy versions of a common signal have assumed a Gaussian random signal with a known power spectrum. In many applications, the common signal is not Gaussian and there may be no prior knowledge of its detailed structure. Instead, estimation of a hypothesized common signal can be construed as another element in the estimation process. The analysis is straightforward and shows that the complex ambiguity function (CAF) still represents the ML approach when the noise is Gaussian and spectrally flat. Additional interpretation shows that use of interference-rejection filtering followed by a CAF is an attractive suboptimum approach in an environment of narrowband interferers. >
Information Systems to facilitate Health and Clinical Management

The papers in this section fall into three categories: Effler et al [1] and Dini et al [2] consider information systemsupported mechanisms for improving the delivery of services in the context of a state health department and a county health department respectively. Jones et al [3] and Gustafson et al [4] report on studies of consumer information systems. They examine the effects of providing personalized computer-based information on their problems for specific groups of patients. Ruland [5] and Mönnich and Wetter [6] examine aspects of information system use from the perspective of healthcare personnel by the effects on nursing care and patient outcome of informing nursing staff of patient preferences [5], and by defining criteria for choosing speech recognition software [6] respectively. A common thread between these papers is that they are all linked to the availability, or planned availability, of computerized records, although some of the principles examined could certainly be applied to manual information systems. Two of the studies [3, 5] follow the sensible approach of creating interim computerized records in order to test planned components of electronic patient records prior to software development.
Efficient Route Tracing from a Single Source

Traceroute is a networking tool that allows one to discover the path that packets take from a source machine, through the network, to a destination machine. It is widely used as an engineering tool, and also as a scientific tool, such as for discovery of the network topology at the IP level. In prior work, authors on this technical report have shown how to improve the efficiency of route tracing from multiple cooperating monitors. However , it is not unusual for a route tracing monitor to operate in isolation. Somewhat different strategies are required for this case, and this report is the first systematic study of those requirements. Standard traceroute is inefficient when used repeatedly towards multiple destinations , as it repeatedly probes the same interfaces close to the source. Others have recognized this inefficiency and have proposed tracing backwards from the destinations and stopping probing upon encounter with a previously-seen interface. One of this technical report's contributions is to quantify for the first time the efficiency of this approach. Another contribution is to describe the effect of non-responding destinations on this efficiency. Since a large portion of destination machines do not reply to probe packets, backwards probing from the destination is often infeasible. We propose an algorithm to tackle non-responding destinations, and we find that our algorithm can strongly decrease probing redundancy at the cost of a small reduction in node and link discovery.
Human Resource Development and Older Workers: Stereotypes in New Zealand

This article compares two New Zealand surveys conducted in 2000: one of workers aged 55 years and over, and one of employers. The issue of older workers captured respondents’ attention, with both studies receiving response rates of around 50%. The congruence of attitudes among older workers and employers regarding the efficacy of negative HRD stereotypes is a feature of the study. Older workers were in some agreement with employers that they were difficult to train, less willing to learn and afraid of new technology. Older workers saw provision of training as a concern, with 11.6% reporting discrimination with regard to training. Significantly, skilled older workers saw the provision of training as a signal by employers that they were to be taken as serious contributors.
Estimating the discount rate policy reaction function of the monetary authority

This paper estimates a policy rule that explains the sign and the magnitude of the Federal Reserve's (Fed's) discount rate changes. It sets out a two-sided Type II Tobit model and develops a procedure for its estimation, considering the discrete and censored nature of the changes. The results suggest that the Fed has conducted discount rate policy counter-cyclically to influence output and to curb inflation, and that the Fed's response to policy indicators varies over monetary regimes. Furthermore, consistency is found between the model prediction of the discount rate change and a classification based on whether the change is technical or non-technical.
EE8231 Optimization Theory Course Project

Logistic regression and matrix factorization specifically SVD are both very popular in application areas of computational advertising and recommender system. This project basically can be divided into two parts. The first part is to test different optimization methods to solve sparse 2-class logistic regression. This is a convex non-smooth problem. Particularly, I’ll try to answer the question of ”how to handle the non-smooth part of the L1-regularizer in the objective function”. The second part is to try to solve the convex approximation of the matrix completion problem specifically SVD and extend this approximation from the L2-norm loss function to hinge/logistic loss function which would combine these two parts together. Beyond traditional SVD, SVDFeature[1] or other similar model is proposed to handle auxiliary information. This project also tries to give a convex approximation to the auxiliary information augmented family of SVD models.
Potentiality of healthcare big data: Improving search by automatic query reformulation

Clinical Decision Systems utilize patient profiles to search for relevant medical support. Existing work on medical search has a primary topic on query expansion, which enriches queries by adding more useful terms. However, it performs well when queries are concise. In this paper, we aim to tackle verbose queries and propose a new automatic query reformulation method, which not only considers query expansion, but also includes query reduction. This improves the searching performance by refining the query to effectively avoid irrelevant results. The method is achieved by classifying each sentence into expansion and reduction categories with a weighted score model, which depends on the occurrence of medical and negative terms. The refined queries show promising results on experiments with TREC CDS datasets. In particular, the final performance makes improvements in terms of NDCG as 8.2% compared to the prevailing query expansion method, and 22.07% compared to the baseline of original query.
European Foreign Policy: the End of French Europe?

Abstract After 9/11, the Iraq war and the French and Dutch rebuttal of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005, some have observed that EU member states have tended to de‐Europeanize or renationalize foreign policies. In such a context, does France see its foreign policy future within the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) or outside it? Despite the inherent contradictions of the traditional French model of European foreign policy (intergovernmentalism, Europe puissance, EU as a power multiplier), France’s commitment to a strong European foreign policy remains powerful. But the French allegiance to CFSP is less based on a political project for Europe and for its role in the world than motivated by necessity, as France is less and less able to act alone in the world. Thus, French policy vis‐à‐vis the EU in general and CFSP–European security and defence policy (ESDP) in particular has become increasingly pragmatic and flexible. This trend will most likely continue under President Sarkozy’s leadership.
Properties of Carnitine Incorporation in Working Swine Hearts: Effects of Coronary Flow, Ischemia, and Excess Fatty Acids

Sarcolemmal transport of L-carnitine was determined in three groups of intact working swine hearts under varying conditions of oxygen delivery and fatty acid (FA) availability. Hearts were regionally perfused with controlled flows to the right, left circumflex (LCF), and left anterior descending (LAD) coronary circulations. All hearts were treated with 50 /iCi [14C]-L-carnitine. Ischemia was induced in the LAD bed by restricting flow by 59% over 30 minutes. Metabolic data were collected both from the LCF (nonischemic) and LAD (ischemic) perfusion beds and compared from three groups of animals: eight untreated control animals (group 1); eight animals perfused similarly to group 1 hearts but additionally treated with excess FA (>1 fimol/ml, group 2); and 10 animals augmented with excess FA as in group 2 but in which oxygen delivery to the LCF and LAD circulations was increased by 56 and 64%, respectively, over levels in group 2. As compared with control data, excess FA further depressed mechanical function in group 2 hearts but not in those receiving high oxygen delivery. Oxygen consumption was higher in FA-treated groups and was regionally decreased in the LAD bed by 49% (range 45–55%) during flow restriction. Significantly greater stores (P < 0.01) of high energy phosphates remained in the LAD bed of hearts with increased oxygen delivery. Ischemia and excess FA treatments separately and together increased tissue stores of long-chain acyl-CoA and carnitine. Labeled L-carnitine was taken up by and distributed into acid soluble and long-chain acyl esters in all groups; the long-chain fraction contained less absolute counts but higher specific activity. Transport rates of L-carnitine decreased modestly with ischemia in all groups. High FA per se effected only slightly greater suppression of uptake. Conversely, hyperperfusion in conjunction with FA treatments (group 3) increased transport significantly (P < 0.01) in both LCf (+70A%) and LAD (+104A%) beds. Thus, carnitine transport at physiological concentrations is in part dependent on rates of coronary flow, even at nonischemic levels.
The Structure of Program Evaluation: An Approach for Evaluating a Course, Clerkship, or Components of a Residency or Fellowship Training Program

Background: Directors of courses, clerkships, residencies, and fellowships are responsible not only for determining whether individual trainees have met educational goals but also for ensuring the quality of the training program itself. The purpose of this article is to discuss a framework for program evaluation that has sufficient rigor to satisfy accreditation requirements yet is flexible and responsive to the uniqueness of individual educational programs. Summary: We discuss key aspects of program evaluation to include cardinal definitions, measurements, needed resources, and analyses of qualitative and quantitative data. We propose a three-phase framework for data collection (Before, During, and After) that can be used across undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education. Conclusions: This Before, During, and After model is a feasible and practical approach that is sufficiently rigorous to allow for conclusions that can lead to action. It can be readily implemented for new and existing medical education programs.
3D point cloud map based vehicle localization using stereo camera

Nowadays, the driverless automobiles have become a near reality and are going to become widely available. For autonomous navigation, the vehicles need to precise localize itself within a pre-defined map. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for the problem of three-dimensional (3D) point cloud map (PCL) based localization using a stereo camera. This 3D point cloud map consists of dense 3D geometric information and intensity measures of surface reflectivity value generated by the 3D light detection and ranging (LIDAR) scanner based mapping system. Although some LIDAR based localization algorithms have been proposed, in this paper we present a comparable centimeter-level accuracy localization algorithm using much cheaper and commodity stereo camera. Specifically, at each candidate position we transform the 3D data points from the real-world coordinate system to the camera coordinate system and synthetic the virtual depth and intensity images from the 3D PCL map. We localize the ego vehicle by estimating the transformation between the real-world and vehicle coordinates in each frame by matching these virtual images with the stereo depth and intensity images. In the experiment part, we show that although the 3D map was generated 3 years ago, the proposed algorithm still can produce reliable localization results even in many difficult cases, such as shadow, dynamic objects, new lane marker and night.
EFFICIENCY OF FOREST COMMODITY FUTURES MARKETS

Market efficiency and unbiasedness tests are performed for the first time for three forest commodity futures markets: softwood lumber, oriented strand board (OSB), and northern bleached softwood kraft pulp (NBSK). The Johansen cointegration procedure is applied to test long-term market efficiency, while the standard error correction models (ECM) and ECM with GQARCH-in-mean process are also used to examine short-term market efficiency and unbiasedness. Results show that these markets are inefficient and biased in both the long-term and short-term. Results also indicate that no short-term time-varying risk premiums are found in these commodity futures markets.
Haemophilus influenzae Rd Lacks a Stringently Conserved Fatty Acid Biosynthetic Enzyme and Thermal Control of Membrane Lipid Composition

ABSTRACT The organization of the fatty acid synthetic genes of Haemophilus influenzae Rd is remarkably similar to that of the paradigm organism, Escherichia coli K-12, except that no homologue of the E. coli fabF gene is present. This finding is unexpected, since fabF is very widely distributed among bacteria and is thought to be the generic 3-ketoacyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) synthase active on long-chain-length substrates. However, H. influenzae Rd contains a homologue of the E. coli fabB gene, which encodes a 3-ketoacyl-ACP synthase required for unsaturated fatty acid synthesis, and it seemed possible that the H. influenzae FabB homologue might have acquired the functions of FabF. E. coli mutants lacking fabF function are unable to regulate the compositions of membrane phospholipids in response to growth temperature. We report in vivo evidence that the enzyme encoded by the H. influenzae fabB gene has properties essentially identical to those of E. coli FabB and lacks FabF activity. Therefore, H. influenzae grows without FabF function. Moreover, as predicted from studies of the E. coli fabF mutants, H. influenzae is unable to change the fatty acid compositions of its membrane phospholipids with growth temperature. We also demonstrate that the fabB gene of Vibrio cholerae El Tor N16961 does not contain a frameshift mutation as was previously reported.
Efficacy of antimicrobial therapy in experimental rat pneumonia: antibiotic treatment schedules in rats with impaired phagocytosis

Pneumococcal pneumonia in rats with intact host defense mechanisms could be successfully cured by penicillin. The efficacy of this antibiotic therapy was lost in cobra venom factor-treated rats which had selectively impaired phagocytic functions. In these animals the effect of penicillin therapy was improved by increasing the daily dose and the frequency of injections and by earlier initiation of the therapy. The efficacy of penicillin in the cobra venom facttor-treated rats was restored either by markedly increasing the daily dose of penicillin or by increasing the daily dose in combination with a reduced interval of the penicillin injections.
Energy-efficient adaptive power allocation in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based amplify-and-forward relay link

Recently, improving energy efficiency has been a new tendency in wireless relay communication. However, the introduction of relay technology may increase the system capacity, but is often followed by a more severe energy-efficiency problem when compared with traditional single-hop system. In this study, based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based frequency-selective channel of amplify-and-forward relay link, a suboptimal two-step power allocation algorithm of subcarriers is proposed to maximise the energy efficiency. The proposal includes two steps. First, a suboptimal subcarrier matching is achieved for introducing a virtual direct link, which may reduce the dimensionality of the power allocation. Second, the allocation problem of relay network is simplified as that in traditional cellular network. Thus, the optimal power allocation of virtual direct link can be obtained by one-dimensional search method. Furthermore, the effects of rate and power constraints on the energy-efficiency problem are analysed. Simulation shows that the suboptimal solution of the proposed algorithm is very close to the optimal solution, and the proposed energy efficient power allocation method can achieve the highest energy efficiency, compared with the rate adaptive and margin adaptive optimisations.
Multiple diagnostic task performance in CT examination of the chest.

OBJECTIVES In three experiments, we studied the detection of multiple abnormality types using the satisfaction of search (SOS) paradigm, the provision of a computer-aided detection (CAD) of pulmonary nodules and a focused nodule detection task. METHODS 51 chest CT examinations (24 that demonstrated subtle pulmonary nodules and 27 that demonstrated no pulmonary nodules) were read by 15 radiology residents and fellows under two experimental conditions: (1) when there were no other abnormalities present except test abnormalities in the exams (non-SOS condition), and (2) when other abnormalities were present in the exams (SOS condition). Trials from the two conditions were intermixed. Readers were invited to return for two sessions: one in which the SOS condition was repeated with a simulated CAD; another in which only the non-SOS condition was presented. Detection accuracy was measured using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. RESULTS An SOS effect (reduced detection accuracy for the test nodules in the presence of the diverse added abnormalities) was not found. Average accuracy was much higher when the CAD prompt was provided, without cost in the detection of the added abnormalities. Accuracy for detecting nodules appearing without intermixed SOS trials was also substantially improved. CONCLUSIONS CT interpretation was highly task dependent. Nodule detection was poor in the general search task. Therefore, CAD may offer a greater performance improvement than demonstrated in experiments assessing CAD using focused search. The absence of SOS may be due to limited nodule detection even without other abnormalities. Advances in knowledge CAD prompts of nodules increase the detection accuracy of nodules and decrease the time to detection-without impairing the detection accuracy-of non-nodule abnormalities.