Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protective Antiviral Immunity Conferred by a Nonintegrative Lentiviral Vector-Based Vaccine

Lentiviral vectors are under intense scrutiny as unique candidate viral vector vaccines against tumor and aggressive pathogens because of their ability to initiate potent and durable specific immune responses. Strategies that alleviate safety concerns will facilitate the clinical developments involving lentiviral vectors. In this respect, the development of integration deficient lentiviral vectors circumvents the safety concerns relative to insertional mutagenesis and might pave the way for clinical applications in which gene transfer is targeted to non-dividing cells. We thus evaluated the potential use of nonintegrative lentiviral vectors as vaccination tools since the main targeted cell in vaccination procedures is the non-dividing dendritic cell (DC). In this study, we demonstrated that a single administration of nonintegrative vectors encoding a secreted form of the envelope of a virulent strain of West Nile Virus (WNV) induces a robust B cell response. Remarkably, nonintegrative lentiviral vectors fully protected mice from a challenge with a lethal dose of WNV and a single immunization was sufficient to induce early and long-lasting protective immunity. Thus, nonintegrative lentiviral vectors might represent a safe and efficacious vaccination platform for the development of prophylactic vaccines against infectious agents.
Place, Stories, and Consequences

Faced with a visible and controversial instance of erosion on vineyards, the Lake County, California, Board of Supervisors founded an unusual organization—the Erosion Protection Education Commission (EPEC)—to offer nonbinding advice to grape growers concerning relevant agro-management practices. This study uses in-depth interviews, fieldwork, and secondary sources to contextualize EPEC within the county’s stories about place—within its heritage narratives. The dominant heritage narrative (depicting Lake County’s character as agriculturalist, cooperative and harmonious, and antiregulatory) is shown to be a major factor shaping and justifying the creation and operation of EPEC. Despite the existence of counternarratives, the dominant heritage narrative prefigured the emergence of EPEC and helped reinforce EPEC as the county’s way of handling the growth of grape growing in the region and the resulting erosion problem. This article argues for greater attention to the role of community narratives about place in understanding how decisions are made on environmental and land-use issues.
Managing the 'Underclass': Interpreting the Moral Discourse of Housing Management

This paper examines contemporary housing management practice by attention to a changing discourse within social policy, emphasising duties over rights. Current policy initiatives are based upon concerns about the collapse of foundational assumptions and a perceived decline in moral responsibility. This concern is most commonly articulated in debates about the existence of an urban underclass, linked to anti-social behaviour on housing estates. The paper argues that a communitarian outlook has exerted a significant impact on contemporary initiatives incorporating a strongly judgmental bias. As a consequence, housing practice discriminates between behaviour in social housing and privately owned property. Drawing upon post-liberal perspectives, the conclusion suggests that the predominance of a deontological discourse has resulted in policies of social control of residents.
Personality Metatraits and Music Preferences in Adolescence: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT Exploring relations between the personality metatraits of the Five-Factor Model of personality (Stability and Plasticity) and music preferences in adolescence represents a new research path. The objective of this pilot study was to explore the potential of considering these two personality metatraits in research on adolescent music preferences (Metal, Soul, Electronic, Pop, Classical, and Eclecticism). The sample was composed of 30 regular high school students (age: M = 16.45, SD = 0.81 years). The results confirmed that personality metatraits seem to be linked to music preferences in adolescence. As hypothesized, Plasticity (Extraversion and Openness) was associated with music preferences, while Stability (Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism inverted) was not. Some implications for future developmental research on adolescent music preferences (e.g., Plasticity and the dopaminergic system) are highlighted.
Optimismo disposicional y calidad de vida en mujeres con cáncer de mama

Objective: To assess the relationship between dispositional optimism and quality of life in a sample of women with breast cancer. Our purpose is to know which aspects of quality of life are influenced by dispositional optimism and which are not, to improve the understanding of optimism and improve it when it’s necessary for the adaptation to the medical situation. Method: 50 women with breast cancer answered individually quality of life and dispositional optimism measures. Results: Dispositional optimism is significantly related to many aspects of quality of life. Women with breast cancer with high dispositional optimistic feel less anger, less pain, have less difficulties in their movements, feel less tiredness, sleep better, go on with theirs home tasks, feel more illusion and less fear. But in some aspects, like social function or fatigue, it seems more important not being pessimist than being optimistic. Conclusion: In congruence with previous reports, dispositional optimism is a predictor of quality of life preservation in women with breast cancer.
Microclimate Impacts Survival and Prevalence of Phytophthora ramorum in Umbellularia californica, a Key Reservoir Host of Sudden Oak Death in Northern California Forests

Phytophthora ramorum, an invasive pathogen and the causal agent of Sudden Oak Death, has become established in mixed-evergreen and redwood forests in coastal northern California. While oak and tanoak mortality is the most visible indication of P. ramorum’s presence, epidemics are largely driven by the presence of bay laurel (Umbellularia californica), a reservoir host that supports both prolific sporulation in the winter wet season and survival during the summer dry season. In order to better understand how over-summer survival of the pathogen contributes to variability in the severity of annual epidemics, we monitored the viability of P. ramorum leaf infections over three years along with coincident microclimate. The proportion of symptomatic bay laurel leaves that contained viable infections decreased during the first summer dry season and remained low for the following two years, likely due to the absence of conducive wet season weather during the study period. Over-summer survival of P. ramorum was positively correlated with high percent canopy cover, less negative bay leaf water potential and few days exceeding 30°C but was not significantly different between mixed-evergreen and redwood forest ecosystems. Decreased summer survival of P. ramorum in exposed locations and during unusually hot summers likely contributes to the observed spatiotemporal heterogeneity of P. ramorum epidemics.
Improved Image Annotation and Labelling through Multi-Label Boosting

The majority of machine learning systems for object recognition is limited by their requirement of single labelled images for training, which are difficult to create or obtain in quantity. It is therefore impractical to use methods or techniques which require such data to build object recognizers for more than a relatively small subset of object classes. Instead, far more abundant multilabel data provides a ready means to create object recognition systems which are able to deal with large numbers of classes. In this paper we present a new object recognition system named MLBoost which learns from multi-label data through boosting and improves on state-of-the-art multi-label annotation and labelling systems. The system is trained on images with accompanying text and at no time is told which parts of each image correspond to which words, and as such the process is unsupervised. Having once been trained it is able to give segment labels and a list of descriptive words (an annotation) for any novel image.
Strategies for Facilitating Learning Support Processes. What can Teachers do Support Learners with Specific Learning Difficulties

Inclusion of learners with diverse learning difficulties in the mainstream schools is a global phenomenon. The stance to accommodate learners with diverse learning needs demand teachers to be competent in implementing learning support processes to ensure that learners learn optimally. Although several countries like South Africa are in favor of inclusion, teachers seem to battle in providing learning support for learners presenting with specific learning difficulties. A qualitative interpretive research was conducted to explore and describe the experiences of senior phase teachers in selected mainstream schools. Purposive sampling included senior phase teachers who are members of the School Based Support Teams. Data was collected through individual and focus group interviews; document analysis; and field notes which were reflected in a journal. This article discusses the findings extracted from interviews on learning support strategies used by teachers. According to the teachers learning support strategies include: Giving learners extra work and re-teaching; differentiation; assessment; peer support and referring learners. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n2p455
Conditional U1 Gene Silencing in Toxoplasma gondii

In absence of powerful siRNA approaches, the functional characterisation of essential genes in apicomplexan parasites, such as Toxoplasma gondii or Plasmodium falciparum, relies on conditional mutagenesis systems. Here we present a novel strategy based on U1 snRNP-mediated gene silencing. U1 snRNP is critical in pre-mRNA splicing by defining the exonintron boundaries. When a U1 recognition site is placed into the 3’-terminal exon or adjacent to the termination codon, pre-mRNA is cleaved at the 3’-end and degraded, leading to an efficient knockdown of the gene of interest (GOI). Here we describe a simple one-step approach that combines endogenous tagging with DiCre-mediated positioning of U1 recognition sites adjacent to the termination codon of the GOI which leads to a conditional knockdown of the GOI in Ku80 knockout and RH T. gondii tachyzoites. Specific knockdown mutants of the reporter gene GFP and several endogenous genes of T. gondii including the clathrin heavy chain gene 1 (chc1), the vacuolar protein sorting gene 26 (vps26), and the dynamin-related protein C gene (drpC) were silenced using this new approach. This new gene silencing tool kit allows protein tracking and functional studies simultaneously.
MORPH: a reference architecture for configuration and behaviour self-adaptation

An architectural approach to self-adaptive systems involves runtime change of system configuration (i.e., the system's components, their bindings and operational parameters) and behaviour update (i.e., component orchestration). Thus, dynamic reconfiguration and discrete event control theory are at the heart of architectural adaptation. Although controlling configuration and behaviour at runtime has been discussed and applied to architectural adaptation, architectures for self-adaptive systems often compound these two aspects reducing the potential for adaptability. In this paper we propose a reference architecture that allows for coordinated yet transparent and independent adaptation of system configuration and behaviour.
Does Procedural Fairness Crowd Out Other-Regarding Concerns? A Bidding Experiment

Bidding rules that guarantee procedural fairness may induce more equilibrium bidding and moderate other-regarding concerns. Here, we investigate procedural fairness as in Guth (2011). In our experiment, we assume commonly known true values and only two bidders to implement a best-case scenario for other-regarding concerns. The two-by-two factorial design varies ownership of the single indivisible commodity and the price rule. We find more equilibrium behavior under the procedurally fairer price rule, although this does not completely crowd out other-regarding concerns. In addition, the limits of procedural fairness are much more important than expected.
SPLM: Security Protection of Live Virtual Machine Migration in Cloud Computing

Virtual machine live migration technology, as an important support for cloud computing, has become a central issue in recent years. The virtual machines' runtime environment is migrated from the original physical server to another physical server, maintaining the virtual machines running at the same time. Therefore, it can make load balancing among servers and ensure the quality of service. However, virtual machine migration security issue cannot be ignored due to the immature development of it. This paper we analyze the security threats of the virtual machine migration, and compare the current proposed protection measures. While, these methods either rely on hardware, or lack adequate security and expansibility. In the end, we propose a security model of live virtual machine migration based on security policy transfer and encryption, named as SPLM (Security Protection of Live Migration) and analyze its security and reliability, which proves that SPLM is better than others. This paper can be useful for the researchers to work on this field. The security study of live virtual machine migration in this paper provides a certain reference for the research of virtualization security, and is of great significance.
Relationship between functional disability and costs one and two years post stroke

Background and purpose Stroke affects mortality, functional ability, quality of life and incurs costs. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the costs of stroke care in Sweden by level of disability and stroke type (ischemic (IS) or hemorrhagic stroke (ICH)). Method Resource use during first and second year following a stroke was estimated based on a research database containing linked data from several registries. Costs were estimated for the acute and post-acute management of stroke, including direct (health care consumption and municipal services) and indirect (productivity losses) costs. Resources and costs were estimated per stroke type and functional disability categorised by Modified Rankin Scale (mRS). Results The results indicated that the average costs per patient following a stroke were 350,000SEK/€37,000–480,000SEK/€50,000, dependent on stroke type and whether it was the first or second year post stroke. Large variations were identified between different subgroups of functional disability and stroke type, ranging from annual costs of 100,000SEK/€10,000–1,100,000SEK/€120,000 per patient, with higher costs for patients with ICH compared to IS and increasing costs with more severe functional disability. Conclusion Functional outcome is a major determinant on costs of stroke care. The stroke type associated with worse outcome (ICH) was also consistently associated to higher costs. Measures to improve function are not only important to individual patients and their family but may also decrease the societal burden of stroke.
Just How Mad Are You? Finding Strong and Weak Opinion Clauses

There has been a recent swell of interest in the automatic identification and extraction of opinions and emotions in text. In this paper, we present the first experimental results classifying the strength of opinions and other types of subjectivity and classifying the subjectivity of deeply nested clauses. We use a wide range of features, including new syntactic features developed for opinion recognition. In 10-fold cross-validation experiments using support vector regression, we achieve improvements in mean-squared error over baseline ranging from 57% to 64%.
Neurodevelopmental Status and Adaptive Behaviors in Preschool Children with Chronic Kidney Disease

This study examines the early neurodevelopmental function of infants and preschool children who have chronic kidney disease (CKD). Fifteen patients with CKD are compared to a healthy control group using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS). Multivariate analysis reveals significant differences between the CKD and control groups on both MSEL (p < .01) and VABS (p < .001) composite scales, with the group with CKD obtaining lower scores on both composites. A higher proportion of children with CKD meet federal eligibility criteria for early cognitive delay, but similar proportions are found across adaptive behaviors. Disease severity is positively correlated to cognitive and adaptive functioning such that lower scores are associated with less renal function (MSEL r = .62, p < .001; VABS r = .70, p < .001). Suggestions are made in regard to special education assessment and service provision.
Novel stimulatory actions of the phytoestrogen genistein: effects on the gain of cardiac excitation‐contraction coupling

Genistein, a phytoestrogen found abundantly in soy products, is thought to be cardioprotective, partly through its ability to act as a natural Ca2+ channel antagonist. However, the precise nature and significance of such direct cardiac actions remain obscure. We investigated the hypothesis that genistein exerts important additional actions on cardiac excitation‐contraction coupling (ECC). Genistein acutely increased cell shortening and the Ca2+ transient in field stimulated guinea‐pig ventricular myocytes despite potently inhibiting the L‐type Ca2+ current, ICa,L. The specific phosphotyrosine phosphatase inhibitor, bpV(phen), diminished the stimulatory effects of genistein on myocyte contractility, suggesting that the mechanism partly involved tyrosine kinase inhibition. Genistein increased sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+ load as measured with a caffeine pulse in Na+‐free/ Ca2+‐free solution. Furthermore, in the continued presence of caffeine, genistein increased the time constant of decline of the caffeine‐induced Ca2+ transient, implying impaired sarcolemmal Na+/Ca2+ exchanger function. Tetanization studies in intact myocytes revealed that 43% of cells exhibited increased myofilament Ca2+ sensitivity in the presence of genistein. These findings demonstrate novel cardiac actions of genistein on the SR Ca2+ load, Na+/Ca2+ exchanger, and myofilament Ca2+ sensitivity, which result in an overall increase in myocyte contractility and consequently the gain of ECC.
Learning to solve PP-attachment ambiguities in natural language processing through neural networks

A technique is proposed, based on neural networks for dealing with a particular problem of syntactical ambiguity in the process of building the syntactical tree of an Italian sentence, namely the PP-attachment problem. The neural network was used as a daemon for a top-down parser, when it faced multiple entries in the parsing table. The network was trained to solve PP-attachment ambiguities by the well known algorithm for error back-propagation. What is new is the knowledge representation technique in the network, which has been designed to represent the relevant pieces of information about the constituents of the sentence. Performance results are reported and discussed, together with future perspectives. <<ETX>>
Dual Motion Estimation for Frame Rate Up-Conversion

In this letter, we present a new motion estimation algorithm for frame rate up-conversion. The proposed dual motion estimation algorithm enhances the estimation accuracy of motion vectors by using the unidirectional and bidirectional matching ratios of blocks in the previous and current frames. In addition, the proposed motion estimation approach uses motion vector validity to evaluate the accuracy of motion vectors thereby avoiding false motion vectors. In experiments using benchmark image sequences, the proposed motion estimation algorithm improved the average peak signal-to-noise ratio of interpolated frames by up to 2.272 dB, when compared to conventional motion estimation algorithms. For the comparison of the perceptual image quality using the structural similarity, the average value of the proposed dual motion estimation was by up to 0.062 higher than those of the conventional algorithms.
Propiedades psicométricas de la Escala de Satisfacción con la Vida (SWLS) de Diener en población de Michoacán (México)

En la presente investigacion se estudiaron las propiedades psicometricas de la Escala de Satisfaccion con la Vida de Diener en poblacion de Michoacan (Mexico). Se aplico la escala a dos grupos de participantes sanos (N = 477 en poblacion estudiantil y 301 en poblacion general). Los resultados sugieren que la escala se ajusta de forma excelente a un modelo unifactorial como en la version original; ademas, se observo una elevada consistencia interna y una alta confiabilidad test-retest. Tambien se evaluaron las posibles relaciones entre la escala de satisfaccion con la vida y escalas de bienestar psicologico, depresion clinica y niveles de afecto positivo y negativo. Los datos empiricos indican que la escala de satisfaccion con la vida presenta una validez y confiabilidad satisfactorias. Asi mismo, se ofrecen de datos sobre la media y la desviacion estandar en poblacion de Michoacan (Mexico).
Practice Experience and Theory Boundaries: An Argument for Theory Diversity in Family Therapy

This paper addresses the relationship of family therapy to its own knowledge, and the relationship between theory and practice experience. An argument is made that family therapy has related oppositionally not only to outside knowledges, but also to its own knowledge in its successive and frequent knowledge shifts. This oppositionality had led to a dominant story which downplays themes of continuity in our own development of theory. It has also fuelled a momentum toward purity and anti-eclecticism. Postmodernist thinking within family therapy has both allowed and disallowed the space for theory diversity, and there has been a similar paradox with respect to attention to lived experience. The paper begins and ends with a discussion of three pieces of practice experience and leads to a plea for theory diversity in family therapy in the interests of meeting the complex demands of practice. (author abstract)
Management and treatment of contact lens-related Pseudomonas keratitis

Pubmed and Medline were searched for articles referring to Pseudomonas keratitis between the years 2007 and 2012 to obtain an overview of the current state of this disease. Keyword searches used the terms “Pseudomonas” + “Keratitis” limit to “2007–2012”, and [“Ulcerative” or “Microbial”] + “Keratitis” + “Contact lenses” limit to “2007–2012”. These articles were then reviewed for information on the percentage of microbial keratitis cases associated with contact lens wear, the frequency of Pseudomonas sp. as a causative agent of microbial keratitis around the world, the most common therapies to treat Pseudomonas keratitis, and the sensitivity of isolates of Pseudomonas to commonly prescribed antibiotics. The percentage of microbial keratitis associated with contact lens wear ranged from 0% in a study from Nepal to 54.5% from Japan. These differences may be due in part to different frequencies of contact lens wear. The frequency of Pseudomonas sp. as a causative agent of keratitis ranged from 1% in Japan to over 50% in studies from India, Malaysia, and Thailand. The most commonly reported agents used to treat Pseudomonas keratitis were either aminoglycoside (usually gentamicin) fortified with a cephalosporin, or monotherapy with a fluoroquinolone (usually ciprofloxacin). In most geographical areas, most strains of Pseudomonas sp. (≥95%) were sensitive to ciprofloxacin, but reports from India, Nigeria, and Thailand reported sensitivity to this antibiotic and similar fluoroquinolones of between 76% and 90%.