Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epidemiology of rotavirus electropherotypes determined by a simplified diagnostic technique with RNA analysis

The incidence and RNA electropherotypes of rotavirus in stools or rectal swabs of children with diarrhea were studied for three rotavirus seasons (1981 through 1984) in Philadelphia, Pa. We used a simplified RNA analysis method involving polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis followed by silver staining. Phosphate-buffered saline suspensions of the stools and swab eluates were examined directly by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis-silver staining analysis and enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay (Rotazyme; Abbott Laboratories); electron microscopy was performed on solid stool specimens. The RNA analysis results were compared with electron microscopy and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay results and exhibited a sensitivity and specificity greater than or equal to that of electron microscopy or the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Ten different electropherotypes were detected among the 68 rotavirus RNA-positive specimens examined over the 3-year study. The predominant electropherotype was different in each season. Our results indicate that the polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis-silver nitrate strain RNA analysis of simple unextracted stool suspensions is a uniquely useful diagnostic technique; it rapidly provides both a definitive positive result and immediate determination of the RNA electropherotype, which is of value for epidemiological study.
VEGF-induced retinal angiogenic signaling is critically dependent on Ca²⁺ signaling by Ca²⁺/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II.

PURPOSE The authors conducted an in vitro investigation of the role of Ca(2+)-dependent signaling in vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-induced angiogenesis in the retina. METHODS Bovine retinal endothelial cells (BRECs) were stimulated with VEGF in the presence or absence of 1,2-bis(2-aminophenoxy)ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid-acetoxymethyl ester (BAPTA-AM; intracellular Ca(2+) chelator), U73122 (phospholipase C (PLC) inhibitor), xestospongin C (Xe-C), and 2-aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2APB) (inhibitors of inositol-1,4,5 triphosphate (IP(3)) signaling). Intracellular Ca(2+) concentration ([Ca(2+)](i)) was estimated using fura-2 Ca(2+) microfluorometry, Akt phosphorylation quantified by Western blot analysis, and angiogenic responses assessed using cell migration, proliferation, tubulogenesis, and sprout formation assays. The effects of the Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) inhibitor KN93 were also evaluated on VEGF-induced Akt signaling and angiogenic activity. RESULTS Stimulation of BRECs with 25 ng/mL VEGF induced a biphasic increase in [Ca(2+)](i), with an initial transient peak followed by a sustained plateau phase. VEGF-induced [Ca(2+)](i) increases were almost completely abolished by pretreating the cells with BAPTA-AM, U73122, Xe-C, or 2APB. These agents also inhibited VEGF-induced phosphorylation of Akt, cell migration, proliferation, tubulogenesis, and sprouting angiogenesis. KN93 was similarly effective at blocking the VEGF-induced activation of Akt and angiogenic responses. CONCLUSIONS VEGF increases [Ca(2+)](i) in BRECs through activation of the PLC-IP(3) signal transduction pathway. VEGF-induced phosphorylation of the proangiogenic protein Akt is critically dependent on this increase in [Ca(2+)](i) and the subsequent activation of CaMKII. Pharmacologic inhibition of Ca(2+)-mediated signaling in retinal endothelial cells blocks VEGF-induced angiogenic responses. These results suggest that the PLC/IP(3)/Ca(2+)/CaMKII signaling pathway may be a rational target for the treatment of angiogenesis-related disorders of the eye.
Decoherence, Mode Hopping, and Mode Coupling in Spin Torque Oscillators

Spin torque oscillators (STOs) often exhibit multiple modes, leading to complex behavior. One example is mode hopping between different eigenmodes of a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) STO. This mode hopping is a strong function of current and angle between the magnetization in the free and fixed layers, and away from anti-parallel configuration, mode hopping can be the dominant decoherence process. Another example is the linewidth of a nanocontact STO that can be a complex non-monotonic function of temperature in regions where two or more modes are excited by the oscillators. These phenomena require a generalization of the single-mode nonlinear STO theory to include mode coupling. We derive equations describing the slow time evolution of the coupled system and show they describe a dynamically driven system, similar to other systems that exhibit mode hopping in the presence of thermal fluctuations. In our description, mode coupling also leads to additional coupling between power and phase fluctuations, which can in certain limited cases lead to longer relaxation times for power fluctuations, and consequently to larger linewidths through the nonlinear frequency shift.
Understanding ICT Intention to Use by Healthcare Professionals in a Developing Country: Can Perceived Risk Theory help the Pharmacists?

For the last two decades, the challenge of enhanced competition in the healthcare industry has been tackled through the ICT adoption due to the constant pressure and awareness to cut off expenses and reduce costs. However, unless the healthcare professionals in developing countries incorporate the use of ICT in their system, the benefits will not emerge. This research proposes a model to investigate the relationship and effects of users’ perceived risk, resistance to ICT usage and the enabling perceptions. The structural equation modeling technique was adopted to analyze the data gathered from healthcare professionals and therefore, to validate the proposed model. The results had identified relevant issues to successfully implement ICT in this industry shedding the light on many areas that could necessitate further research. Perceived risk strongly influences the intention to use the online system while the perceived usefulness represents an important role as a mediator.
Performance modelling and the representation of large scale distributed system functions

This thesis presents a resource based approach to model generation for performance characterization and correctness checking of large scale telecommunications networks. A notion called the timed automaton is proposed and then developed to encapsulate behaviours of networking equipment, system control policies and non-deterministic user behaviours. The states of pooled network resources and the behaviours of resource consumers are represented as continually varying geometric patterns; these patterns form part of the data operated upon by the timed automata. Such a representation technique allows for great flexibility regarding the level of abstraction that can be chosen in the modelling of telecommunications systems. None the less, the notion of system functions is proposed to serve as a constraining framework for specifying bounded behaviours and features of telecommunications systems. Operational concepts are developed for the timed automata; these concepts are based on limit preserving relations. Relations over system states represent the evolution of system properties observable at various locations within the network under study. The declarative nature of such permutative state relations provides a direct framework for generating highly expressive models suitable for carrying out optimization experiments. The usefulness of the developed procedure is demonstrated by tackling a large scale case study, in particular the problem of congestion avoidance in networks; it is shown that there can be global coupling among local behaviours within a telecommunications network. The uncovering of such a phenomenon through a function oriented simulation is a contribution to the area of network modelling. The direct and faithful way of deriving performance metrics for loss in networks from resource utilization patterns is also a new contribution to the work area.
Distribution of cholinesterase within the sinus node and AV node of the human heart

Distribution of cholinesterase within the sinus node, AV node and His bundle of the human heart was studied utilizing acetylthiocholine as the substrate. Cholinesterase is present in large amounts in the conduction system tissue, much smaller amounts in right atrial myocardium and was not observed in ventricular myocardium. The sinus node artery was devoid of cholinesterase, as was the sarcolemma and nucleus of cells in the conduction system. Cholinergic nerve endings stained the most heavily of all tissue studied and were more numerous in the sinus node than the AV node. Stellate‐shaped cells previously suggested to be the pace‐making site in the sinus node were found to contain abundant cholinesterase. Fibers in the AV nodal bypass tract, which lies between the AV node and right atrial endocardium, also contain cholinesterase. Within individual cells of the sinus node cholinesterase could be identified within myofibrils, with periodic absence in the linear staining most likely corresponding to the Z bands. Other organelles within the cells also contained cholinesterase, but their precise definition was impossible with the present technics. Possible functional significance of these histochemical observations were discussed.
EVALUATION OF CACNA 1 H IN EUROPEAN PATIENTS WITH CHILDHOOD ABSENCE EPILEPSY

CACNA1H was evaluated in a resource of Caucasian European patients with childhood absence epilepsy by linkage analysis and typing of sequence variants previously identified in Chinese patients. Linkage analysis of 44 pedigrees provided no evidence for a locus in the CACNA1H region and none of the Chinese variants were found in 220 unrelated patients.
Nevirapine Inhibits the Anti-HIV Activity of CD8+ Cells

Abstract:Antiretroviral therapy (ART) significantly reduced the CD8+ cell noncytotoxic anti-HIV response in 12 HIV-1–infected subjects (P < 0.0001). In separate experiments, CD8+ cells from long-term survivors were cocultured with HIV-infected CD4+ cells using varying concentrations of anti-HIV drugs. The antiviral function of CD8+ cells from 4 of the 14 LTSs was reduced with exposure to 10 &mgr;M of nevirapine (P < 0.05). The antiviral activity of CD8+ cells from 2 LTSs was inhibited by 5 &mgr;M of zidovudine. These studies indicate that nevirapine and probably zidovudine can inhibit the anti-HIV activity of CD8+ cells and thus could influence the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy.
Impacts of Public Health Insurance on Occupational Upgrading

Using data from the Current Population Survey’s Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups, the authors examine whether greater Medicaid generosity encourages people to switch toward better quality occupations. Exploiting variation in Medicaid eligibility expansions for children across states during the 1990s and early 2000s, they find that a one standard deviation increase in Medicaid infant income thresholds increased the likelihood that working parents move to a new occupation by 1.6 percentage points or 3.3%. Findings show that these effects are larger for those below 150% of the poverty line and for married parents who were not benefiting from Medicaid prior to the expansions. In addition, findings indicate that Medicaid generosity also increased mobility toward occupations with higher average wages and higher educational requirements. This article contributes to the literature on job lock by showing that access to public health insurance not only increases employment and job switches but also encourages occupational upgrading.
D DIGITAL RECONSTRUCTION OF BRAIN TUMOR FROM MRI SCANS USING DELAUNAY TRIANGULATION AND PATCHES

In this paper we present two approaches to reconstruct 3D shapes of brain tumours from MRI images. The first approach is reconstruction of 3D images from set of 2D segmented slices of MRI brain by using thresholding and morphological operations; contour plot and patches. The second approach is a better one where in we reconstruct a tumour by using same segmentation process and altering the 3D reconstruction algorithm that uses sobel operator, boundary extraction, Delaunay triangulation and alpha shapes. The volume to area ratio of the tumour and the distance between points on head and the points on tumour is estimated. Delaunay Triangulation affords distinct advantages, such as: its ability to describe the surface at different levels of resolution, efficiency in storing data, ease of storage and manipulation, easy integration with raster databases, smoother, more natural appearance of derived terrain features. However, we also encounter a few disadvantages such as: in many cases it requires visual inspection and manual control of the network, various grid sizes cannot be used to reflect areas of different complexity of relief.
Early intervention for youth at high risk for bipolar disorder: A multisite randomized trial of family‐focused treatment

Despite the considerable public health impact of bipolar disorder (BD), no psychosocial interventions have been systematically evaluated in its early prodromal stages. We describe the rationale, design and analytic methods for a 3‐site randomized trial of family‐focused treatment for youth at high risk (FFT‐HR) for BD.
Effect of milk replacer feeding program on performance of Belgian Blue double-muscled rearing calves

Abstract. One hundred and four Belgian Blue double-muscled calves were divided into four groups to examine the effects of different milk replacer (MR) programs. Calves in treatment group 1 received a MR diet reconstituted at 125 g/l, fed at 10 % of their initial live weight in two meals daily. Weaning occurred abruptly at a concentrate intake of 0.5 kg/d. Treatment 2 was similar to treatment 1, except that weaning occurred at a concentrate intake of 0.75 kg/d. Treatment 3 was similar to treatment 2, except that MR was fed once daily at 5 % of initial body weight from a concentrate intake of 0.5 kg/d onwards. Treatment 4 was similar to treatment 3, except that MR at a concentration of 200 g/l was fed once daily from the third week until a concentrate intake of 0.5 kg/d. Similar concentrates and grass hay were fed. Pre-weaning gain averaged 0.51, 0.57, 0.56 and 0.53 kg/d, respectively (P
Improvement of the quality and comparability of causes-of-death statistics inside the European Community. EUROSTAT Task Force on "causes of death statistics".

BACKGROUND Cause-of-death statistics are widely used for comparing health characteristics of European Community (EC) countries. Before attempting to interpret between-country differences, it is essential to assess the biases affecting the comparability of the data. EUROSTAT decided to address globally this problem with the objective to improve the quality and comparability of cause-of-death data within the EC. METHODS The material is based on a review of results of international comparative cause-of-death studies and on specific inquiries among EC. Both cause-of-death certification and codification practices are analysed. Certification is studied comparing the models of death certificates, the type of information captured, certifiers training and querying practices. The different coding systems are analysed (International classification of diseases (ICD) in use, interpretation of the ICD rules, implementation of automated coding systems). RESULTS International studies on comparability of certification and coding practices between countries are rare. These studies are based on certification of cases histories and recoding of samples of death certificates. Recent studies on respiratory diseases, cancers and diabetes outline differences that influenced on the reported level of mortality. The specific EUROSTAT investigation (1997) outline general discrepancies: models of death certificates, nature and amount of information entered, way to establish the diagnosis, degree of consistency of the certification process, autopsy practices, certifiers practices, implementation of ICD-10 and implementation of automated coding systems. CONCLUSION EUROSTAT studies are now focused on causes of death requiring special attention for comparability (e.g. suicide, accidental deaths, drug and alcohol related deaths, unknown and ill-defined causes), on procedures to improve the homogeneity of certifiers training and querying practices, on the effect of the transition to ICD-10. The international model of death certificate recommended by the World Health Organization should be adopted as widely as possible. Uniform complementary information (e.g. surgery, pregnancy, autopsy, place of occurrence of accidental deaths, work accident) should also be adopted. The EUROSTAT investigations must result in definitions of common recommendations and guidelines to EC.
Chinese Readers Can Perceive a Word Even When It’s Composed of Noncontiguous Characters

This study explored whether readers could recognize a word composed of noncontiguous characters (a cross-character word) in Chinese reading. All 3 experiments employed Chinese 4-character strings ABCD, where both AB and CD were 2-character words. In the cross-character word condition, AC was a word but in the control condition, AC was not a word. A character identification task was employed in Experiment 1 and sentence reading tasks were employed in Experiments 2 and 3. In all 3 experiments, an AC word produced inhibition effects. In Experiment 1, an AC word decreased the accuracy of character B identification, but increased the accuracy of character C identification. In Experiments 2 and 3, an AC word slowed reading on CD, indicating that the cross-character words were activated. These results imply that Chinese character encoding leading to word recognition does not proceed in a strictly serial way from left to right, or is strictly constrained by invisible word boundaries.
A new association analysis method for semantic differential data and its application to tone color analysis

Taking the factor analysis problem of tone color, this paper finds that a semantically inconsistent correlation may occur if conventional factor analysis is applied to the data rated by the semantic differential in order to construct the correlation matrix. This paper proposes a new association analysis between two variables not using the correlation, and constructs a new factor analysis on the new association. The validity and usefulness of the proposed method, and the differences between it and the conventional technique are presented and discussed by comparison.
ApoE: The role of conserved residues in defining function

The amino acid sequences of apolipoprotein E (apoE) from 63 different mammalian species have been downloaded from the protein database. The sequences were compared to human apoE4 to determine conserved and non‐conserved sequences of amino acids. ApoE4 is the major risk factor for the development of late onset Alzheimer's disease while apoE3, which differs from apoE4 by a single amino acid change at position 112, poses little or no risk for the development of this disease. Thus, the two proteins appear to be structurally and functionally different. Seven highly conserved regions, representing approximately 47 amino acids (of 299) have been found. These regions are distributed throughout the protein and reflect ligand binding sites as well as regions proposed to be involved in the propagation of the cysteine–arginine change at position 112 to distant regions of the protein in the N‐ and C‐terminal domains. Highly non‐conserved regions are at the N‐ and C‐terminal ends of the apoE protein.
Drosophila P element-enhanced transfection in mammalian cells

We constructed a gene transfer vector containing the herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase (TK) gene flanked by Drosophila P element terminal repeats (W. R. Engels, Annu. Rev. Genet. 17:315-344). This vector was introduced into mouse LTK- cells and enhanced the frequency of stable transformation to the TK+ phenotype by approximately 50-fold relative to a similar plasmid lacking the P element terminal repeats.
Ni interferes in the Cu‐regulated transcriptional switch petJ/petE in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

Plastocyanin (petE) plays an essential role in photosynthesis as an electron carrier between cytochrome b6f and photosystem I, and in some cyanobacteria it can be replaced by the haem‐containing protein, cytochrome c6 (petJ). In Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, transcription of petE and petJ is activated and repressed, respectively, by Cu. Here, we show that Ni can act similarly to Cu in inducing petE and repressing petJ, thus leading to a partial switch between cytochrome c6 and plastocyanin. Transcription of these genes is only altered by Ni in Cu‐depleted medium, and none of the Ni‐dependent transcription factors described in Synechocystis, NrsR and InrS seem to be involved in this regulation. Finally, we show that plastocyanin is essential for growth under conditions of excess Ni.
Method to Detect Minimal Amounts of Calcium Dissolved in Acidic Solutions

The study describes the application of the Arsenazo III method for detection of minimal amounts of calcium 12.4–49.4 µmol/l in different acidic solutions (hydrochloric acid, oxalic acid, maleic acid, phosphoric acid, tartaric acid, citric acid, lactic acid and acetic acid) adjusted to pH 2.0, 2.3 and 3.0. A mixture of the respective calcium concentrations with distilled water served as control. The experiments were run with ten repeats in series. Assessment of intra- and interassay coefficient of variation, and lower limit of quantification revealed that depending on the acid used, the Arsenazo III method is a reliable tool to quantify minimal calcium contents in acidic solutions.
Dual quaternion-based bimodal global control for robust rigid body pose kinematic stabilization

A hybrid bimodal controller for rigid body pose stabilization within the group of unit norm dual-quaternions is proposed in this paper. Using two binary logic state variables, this hysteresis-based controller represents a middle term solution between the memoryless discontinuous controller and the fixed-width hysteretic one. The proposed strategy is novel within the dual-quaternions framework and addresses three common difficulties that appears in the literature of pose and attitude stabilization: global stability, robustness against chattering and against unwinding. The efficacy and performance of the proposed controller are illustrated with numerical examples.
Caracterización entrópica de la propagación sísmica de la península ibérica y el área sismogenética de andalucía oriental. Aplicación a la obtención de mapas probabilísticos de peligrosidad sísmica

Este trabajo propone un metodo cuantitativo para caracterizar la evolucion espacio-temporal de la actividad sismica de una region para un intervalo de tiempo dado. La tecnica se basa en la determinacion y posterior maximacion de la Informacion Mutua u; este parametro, estrechamente relacionado con la entropia de un estado, puede proporcionar una caracterizacion probabilistica de la evolucion en el espacio y en el tiempo de los terremotos de una region. Para ello, es necesario establecer un modelo de propagacion (modelo Cross Template en este trabajo) y un criterio razonable para decidir cuando un area (cuyo tamano beta encontrara el metodo) se va considerar sismicamente activada en un periodo de tiempo (cuyo valor tambien es resultado de la aplicacion del metodo). Los resultados encontrados con el modelo CT son altamente satisfactorios y demuestran la robustez de la herramienta que se propone. La tecnica que aqui se describe y aplica para el caso de terremotors puede ser trasladada a cualquier campo de la fisica (y otras ciencias) caracterizado por una evolucion dinamica de su comportamiento.