Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Brucella melitensis Invades Murine Erythrocytes during Infection

ABSTRACT Brucella spp. are facultative intracellular Gram-negative coccobacilli responsible for brucellosis, a worldwide zoonosis. We observed that Brucella melitensis is able to persist for several weeks in the blood of intraperitoneally infected mice and that transferred blood at any time point tested is able to induce infection in naive recipient mice. Bacterial persistence in the blood is dramatically impaired by specific antibodies induced following Brucella vaccination. In contrast to Bartonella, the type IV secretion system and flagellar expression are not critically required for the persistence of Brucella in blood. ImageStream analysis of blood cells showed that following a brief extracellular phase, Brucella is associated mainly with the erythrocytes. Examination by confocal microscopy and transmission electron microscopy formally demonstrated that B. melitensis is able to invade erythrocytes in vivo. The bacteria do not seem to multiply in erythrocytes and are found free in the cytoplasm. Our results open up new areas for investigation and should serve in the development of novel strategies for the treatment or prophylaxis of brucellosis. Invasion of erythrocytes could potentially protect the bacterial cells from the host's immune response and hamper antibiotic treatment and suggests possible Brucella transmission by bloodsucking insects in nature.
A New Color Image Segmentation Algorithm Combining Mean Shift and Hierarchical Clustering ?

A new color image segmentation method combining mean shift and hierarchical clustering algorithm is presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm preprocesses an input image by mean shift algorithm to form segmented regions that preserve the desirable discontinuity characteristics of image. The number of segmented regions, instead of the number of image pixels, is considered as the input data scale of hierarchical clustering algorithm. On the stage of hierarchical clustering, the average of the color vectors in each region is considered as a cluster. The proximity between each cluster is calculated to form the proximity matrix, and then ward algorithm is employed to obtain the final segmentation results. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm has superior performance and less computational costs compared to the traditional clustering algorithm.
Optimal routing in gossip networks

In this paper, we introduce the Gossip Network model where travelers can obtain information about the state of dynamic networks by gossiping with peer travelers using ad hoc communication. Travelers then use the gossip information to recourse their path and find the shortest path to their destination. We study optimal routing in stochastic, time-independent gossip networks, and demonstrate that an optimal routing policy may direct travelers to make detours to gather information. A dynamic programming equation that produces the optimal policy for routing in gossip networks is presented. In general, the dynamic programming algorithm is intractable; however, for two special cases a polynomial optimal solution is presented. We show that ordinarily gossiping helps travelers decrease their expected path cost. However, in some scenarios, depending on the network parameters, gossiping could increase the expected path cost. The parameters that determine the effect of gossiping on the path costs are identified and their influence is analyzed. This dependency is fairly complex and was confirmed numerically on grid networks.
Nitrogen Nutrition of Nodules in Relation to ;N-Hunger' in Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp).

Early growth, nodule development, and nitrogen fixation by two cultivars of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp), one large-seeded (Vita 3; 146.0 +/- 0.9 milligrams seed dry weight, 4.1 +/- 0.2 milligrams seed N), the other small-seeded (Caloona; 57.5 +/- 2.5 milligrams seed dry weight, 1.8 +/- 0.1 milligrams seed N), were compared under conditions of sand culture with nutrient solution free of combined N. The seed stocks used had been obtained from plants uniformly labeled with (15)N, thus enabling changes with time in distribution of cotyledon and fixed N among plant parts to be measured by isotope dilution. Caloona, but not Vita 3, showed physiological symptoms of ;N hunger,' i.e. transient loss of chlorophyll (visible yellowing) and N from the first-formed unifoliolate leaves at or around the onset of symbiotic functioning and N(2) fixation. The smaller-seeded Caloona showed higher early nitrogenase activity than the larger-seeded Vita 3 and by 28 days had fixed 6.6 milligrams of N per milligram of seed N [mg N . (mg seed N)(-1)] versus only 3.5 mg N . (mg seed N)(-1) in Vita 3. Both cultivars lost around 30% of their initial seed N at germination, mostly as fallen cotyledons. Abscised cotyledons of Caloona contained 1.21 +/- 0.17% N; those of Vita 3 contained 2.61 +/- 0.37% N. When compared on the basis of cotyledon N available for seedling growth, Caloona was shown to have fixed 10.6 mg N . (mg seed N)(-1) and Vita 3 only 5.3 mg N . (mg seed N)(-1). Most of the cotyledon N withdrawn from the unifoliolate leaf pair of Caloona during ;N-hunger' was committed to early nodule growth and, in total, 20 to 25% of the cotyledon N resource of this cultivar was ultimately invested in establishment of symbiosis compared with only 7% in Vita 3.
Disfluency Detection Using Multi-step Stacked Learning

In this paper, we propose a multi-step stacked learning model for disfluency detection. Our method incorporates refined n-gram features step by step from different word sequences. First, we detect filler words. Second, edited words are detected using n-gram features extracted from both the original text and filler filtered text. In the third step, additional n-gram features are extracted from edit removed texts together with our newly induced in-between features to improve edited word detection. We use Max-Margin Markov Networks (M 3 Ns) as the classifier with the weighted hamming loss to balance precision and recall. Experiments on the Switchboard corpus show that the refined n-gram features from multiple steps and M 3 Ns with weighted hamming loss can significantly improve the performance. Our method for disfluency detection achieves the best reported F-score 0.841 without the use of additional resources. 1
Anti-Inflammatory Properties of Exenatide in Human Pancreatic Islets

Exenatide is an analog of the incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) that is used for the treatment of T2D for their metabolic effects. In addition to its insulinotropic effects, exenatide increases functional islet mass and improves their survival. Improved outcomes have been reported in recent clinical islet transplantation trials for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether exenatide has anti-inflammatory properties in human islets. Exenatide treatment improved islet function, significantly reduced content of inflammation-related molecules (tissue factor, IFN-γ, IL-17, IL-1β, and IL-2) and caspase 3 activation, whereas increased phosphorylation of ERK1/2, STAT3, and Akt in vitro. Immunostaining showed expression of GLP-1R in β-cells but not in α-cells. IL-1β colocalized with GLP-1R in β-cells. Induction of serine proteinase inhibitor 9 (PI-9) was detected after exposure of human islets to exenatide in vitro and after transplantation into immunodeficient mice. GLP-1 induced PI-9 expression in vitro but to a lower extent than exenatide. This effect was partially blocked by the antagonist exendin-9 in vitro. As assessed by immunostaining PI-9 is mostly expressed in β-cells but not in α-cells. In conclusion, we describe anti-inflammatory and cytoprotective properties of exenatide in human islets. Exenatide-mediated PI-9 expression, the only known granzyme B inhibitor, unveils potential immunoregulatory properties.
Enriching a lexical semantic net with selectional preferences by means of statistical corpus analysis

Broad-coverage ontologies which represent lexical semantic knowledge are being built for more and more natural languages. Such resources provide very useful information for word sense disambiguation, which is crucial for a variety of NLP tasks (e.g. semantic annotation of corpora, information retrieval, or semantic inferencing). Since the manual encoding of such ontologies is very labour-intensive, the development of (semi-)automatic methods for acquiring lexical semantic information is an important task. This paper addresses the automatic acquisition of selectional preferences of verbs by means of statistical corpus analysis. Knowledge about such preferences is essential for inducing thematic relations, which link verbal concepts to nominal concepts that are selectionally preferred as their complements. Several approaches for learning selectional preferences from corpora have been proposed in the last years. However, their usefulness for ontology building is limited. This paper introduces a modification of one of these methods (i.e. the approach of Li & Abe [1]) and evaluates it by employing a gold standard. The results show that the modified approach is much more appropriate for the given task.
Space Telescope and Optical Reverberation Mapping Project. V. Optical Spectroscopic Campaign and Emission-line Analysis for NGC 5548

We present the results of an optical spectroscopic monitoring program targeting NGC 5548 as part of a larger multiwavelength reverberation mapping campaign. The campaign spanned 6 months and achieved an almost daily cadence with observations from five ground-based telescopes. The Hβ and He ii λ4686 broad emission-line light curves lag that of the 5100 Å optical continuum by and , respectively. The Hβ lag relative to the 1158 Å ultraviolet continuum light curve measured by the Hubble Space Telescope is ∼50% longer than that measured against the optical continuum, and the lag difference is consistent with the observed lag between the optical and ultraviolet continua. This suggests that the characteristic radius of the broad-line region is ∼50% larger than the value inferred from optical data alone. We also measured velocity-resolved emission-line lags for Hβ and found a complex velocity-lag structure with shorter lags in the line wings, indicative of a broad-line region dominated by Keplerian motion. The responses of both the Hβ and He ii emission lines to the driving continuum changed significantly halfway through the campaign, a phenomenon also observed for C iv, Lyα, He ii(+O iii]), and Si iv(+O iv]) during the same monitoring period. Finally, given the optical luminosity of NGC 5548 during our campaign, the measured Hβ lag is a factor of five shorter than the expected value implied by the RBLR–LAGN relation based on the past behavior of NGC 5548.
The Pseudomonas aeruginosa Type III Translocon Is Required for Biofilm Formation at the Epithelial Barrier

Clinical infections by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a deadly Gram-negative, opportunistic pathogen of immunocompromised hosts, often involve the formation of antibiotic-resistant biofilms. Although biofilm formation has been extensively studied in vitro on glass or plastic surfaces, much less is known about biofilm formation at the epithelial barrier. We have previously shown that when added to the apical surface of polarized epithelial cells, P. aeruginosa rapidly forms cell-associated aggregates within 60 minutes of infection. By confocal microscopy we now show that cell-associated aggregates exhibit key characteristics of biofilms, including the presence of extracellular matrix and increased resistance to antibiotics compared to planktonic bacteria. Using isogenic mutants in the type III secretion system, we found that the translocon, but not the effectors themselves, were required for cell-associated aggregation on the surface of polarized epithelial cells and at early time points in a murine model of acute pneumonia. In contrast, the translocon was not required for aggregation on abiotic surfaces, suggesting a novel function for the type III secretion system during cell-associated aggregation. Supernatants from epithelial cells infected with wild-type bacteria or from cells treated with the pore-forming toxin streptolysin O could rescue aggregate formation in a type III secretion mutant, indicating that cell-associated aggregation requires one or more host cell factors. Our results suggest a previously unappreciated function for the type III translocon in the formation of P. aeruginosa biofilms at the epithelial barrier and demonstrate that biofilms may form at early time points of infection.
Effects of Preretirement Work Complexity and Postretirement Leisure Activity on Cognitive Aging.

OBJECTIVES We examined the influence of postretirement leisure activity on longitudinal associations between work complexity in main lifetime occupation and trajectories of cognitive change before and after retirement. METHODS Information on complexity of work with data, people, and things, leisure activity participation in older adulthood, and four cognitive factors (verbal, spatial, memory, and speed) was available from 421 individuals in the longitudinal Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging. Participants were followed for an average of 14.2 years (SD = 7.1 years) and up to 23 years across eight cognitive assessments. Most of the sample (88.6%) completed at least three cognitive assessments. RESULTS Results of growth curve analyses indicated that higher complexity of work with people significantly attenuated cognitive aging in verbal skills, memory, and speed of processing controlling for age, sex, and education. When leisure activity was added, greater cognitive and physical leisure activity was associated with reduced cognitive aging in verbal skills, speed of processing, and memory (for cognitive activity only). DISCUSSION Engagement in cognitive or physical leisure activities in older adulthood may compensate for cognitive disadvantage potentially imposed by working in occupations that offer fewer cognitive challenges. These results may provide a platform to encourage leisure activity participation in those retiring from less complex occupations.
SUMOylation and PARylation cooperate to recruit and stabilize SLX4 at DNA damage sites

SUMOylation plays important roles in the DNA damage response. However, whether it is important for interstrand crosslink repair remains unknown. We report that the SLX4 nuclease scaffold protein is regulated by SUMOylation. We have identified three SUMO interaction motifs (SIMs) in SLX4, mutating all of which abrogated the binding of SLX4 to SUMO‐2 and covalent SLX4 SUMOylation. An SLX4 mutant lacking functional SIMs is not recruited to PML nuclear bodies nor stabilized at laser‐induced DNA damage sites. Additionally, we elucidated a novel role for PARylation in the recruitment of SLX4 to sites of DNA damage. Combined, our results uncover how SLX4 is regulated by post‐translational modifications.
Regulation of human neutrophil Fcγ receptor IIa by C5a receptor promotes inflammatory arthritis in mice.

OBJECTIVE Rheumatoid arthritis culminates in joint destruction that, in mouse models of disease, is supported by innate immune molecules, including Fcγ receptors (FcγR) and complement. However, these findings may not be predictive of the outcome in humans, given the structural differences between murine and human activating FcγR on neutrophils, a prominent component of joint exudates. The aim of this study was to examine the role of human neutrophil FcγRIIa in the development of arthritis and probe the underlying mechanism by which FcγRIIa initiates disease. METHODS K/BxN mouse serum transfer-induced arthritis was examined in mice expressing human FcγRIIa on neutrophils but lacking their own activating FcγR (γ-chain-deficient mice). The role of mast cells, complement (C3 and C5a), and CD18 integrins in FcγRIIa-initiated disease was examined using cell reconstitution approaches, inhibitors, and functional blocking antibodies, respectively. Crosstalk between the complement receptor C5aR and FcγRIIa on neutrophils was evaluated in vitro. RESULTS The expression of human FcγRIIa on neutrophils was sufficient to restore susceptibility to K/BxN serum-induced neutrophil recruitment, synovitis, and bone destruction in γ-chain-deficient mice. Joint inflammation was robust and proceeded even in the absence of mast cells and vascular permeability, features shown to contribute to disease in wild-type mice. Neutrophil recruitment was dependent on the presence of a CD18 integrin, lymphocyte function-associated antigen 1, and C5aR. In addition, C5aR significantly enhanced FcγRIIa-mediated phagocytosis and oxidative burst in vitro. CONCLUSION Human and murine activating FcγR on neutrophils are not functionally equivalent, and in humans, they may play a primary role in arthritis. Crosstalk between neutrophil C5aR and FcγRIIa is essential for disease progression, thus highlighting a new aspect of complement during the effector phase of inflammatory arthritis.
Determination of the Spatial Adjacent Image Fragment for Reassembly of Fragmented Images

An integrated method for automatic reassembly of fragmented images is developed in this paper. The problem of reassembling image fragments arises in many fields, such as archaeology and forensics. Here the spatial chromatic histogram of each fragment, histogram intersection and spatial chromatic distance are calculated. The automation of such a work is important and can lead to faster, more efficient fragment reassembly method.
The Pancreas Is Altered by In Utero Androgen Exposure: Implications for Clinical Conditions Such as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

Using an ovine model of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), (pregnant ewes injected with testosterone propionate (TP) (100 mg twice weekly) from day (d)62 to d102 of d147 gestation (maternal injection – MI-TP)), we previously reported female offspring with normal glucose tolerance but hyperinsulinemia. We therefore examined insulin signalling and pancreatic morphology in these offspring using quantitative (Q) RT-PCR and western blotting. In addition the fetal pancreatic responses to MI-TP, and androgenic and estrogenic contributions to such responses (direct fetal injection (FI) of TP (20 mg) or diethylstilbestrol (DES) (20 mg) at d62 and d82 gestation) were assessed at d90 gestation. Fetal plasma was assayed for insulin, testosterone and estradiol, pancreatic tissue was cultured, and expression of key β-cell developmental genes was assessed by QRT-PCR. In female d62MI-TP offspring insulin signalling was unaltered but there was a pancreatic phenotype with increased numbers of β-cells (P<0.05). The fetal pancreas expressed androgen receptors in islets and genes involved in β-cell development and function (PDX1, IGF1R, INSR and INS) were up-regulated in female fetuses after d62MI-TP treatment (P<0.05–0.01). In addition the d62MI-TP pancreas showed increased insulin secretion under euglycaemic conditions (P<0.05) in vitro. The same effects were not seen in the male fetal pancreas or when MI-TP was started at d30, before the male programming window. As d62MI-TP increased both fetal plasma testosterone (P<0.05) and estradiol concentrations (P<0.05) we assessed the relative contribution of androgens and estrogens. FI-TP (commencing d62) (not FI-DES treatment) caused elevated basal insulin secretion in vitro and the genes altered by d62MI-TP treatment were similarly altered by FI-TP but not FI-DES. In conclusion, androgen over-exposure alters fetal pancreatic development and β-cell numbers in offspring. These data suggest that that there may be a primary pancreatic phenotype in models of PCOS, and that there may be a distinct male and female pancreas.
The relative incidence of fracture non-union in the Scottish population (5.17 million): a 5-year epidemiological study

Objectives In the UK there are approximately 850 000 new fractures seen each year. Rates of non-union of 5–10% of fractures have been suggested, the cost to the National Health Service of treating non-union has been reported to range between £7000 and £79 000 per person yet there are little actual data available. The objective of this epidemiological study therefore is for the first time to report the rates of fracture non-union. Design A cross-sectional epidemiological study. Setting The population of Scotland. Participants All patient admissions to hospital in Scotland are coded according to diagnosis. These data are collected by (and were obtained from) Information Services Department Scotland. Those who have been coded for a bone non-union between 2005 and 2010 were included in the study. No patients were excluded. Population data were obtained from the Registrar General for Scotland. Outcome measure The number of fracture non-unions per 100 000 population of Scotland according to age, sex and anatomical distribution of non-union. Results 4895 non-unions were treated as inpatients in Scotland between 2005 and 2010, averaging 979 per year, with an overall incidence of 18.94 per 100 000 population per annum. The distribution according to gender was 57% male and 43% female. The overall peak incidence according to age was between 30 and 40 years. The mean population of Scotland between 2005 and 2010 was 5 169 140 people. Conclusion Fracture non-union in the population as a whole remains low at less than 20 per 100 000 population and peaks in the fourth decade of life. Further research is required to determine the risk of non-union per fracture according to age/sex/anatomical distribution.
Multichannel InSAR phase unwrapping using nonlinear Kalman smoother

Phase unwrapping (PU) is one of the key processing steps in reconstructing the digital elevation model (DEM) of a scene from interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data. The PU problem entails the estimation of an absolute phase from the observation of its noisy principal (wrapped) values. Recently PU approaches based on Kalman filtering have proved their efficacy in tackling the PU problem even when strong height profile discontinuities and noisy data are involved. This paper presents a novel multichannel InSAR phase unwrapping algorithm based on the extended Kalman filter. The proposed technique exploits the capability of the Kalman algorithm to simultaneously perform noise filtering, phase unwrapping and multi-sensor data fusion. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested on simulated interferometric images proving the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Energy efficiency of large scale graph processing platforms

A number of graph processing platforms have emerged recently as a result of the growing demand on graph data analytics with complex and large-scale graph structured datasets. These platforms have been tailored for iterative graph computations and can offer an order of magnitude performance gain over generic data-flow frameworks like Apache Hadoop and Spark. Nevertheless, the increasing availability of such platforms and their functionality overlap necessitates a comparative study on various aspects of the platforms, including applications, performance and energy efficiency. In this work, we focus on the energy efficiency aspect of some large scale graph processing platforms. Specifically, we select two representatives, e.g., Apache Giraph and Spark GraphX, for the comparative study. We compare and analyze the energy consumption of these two platforms with PageRank, Strongly Connected Component and Single Source Shortest Path algorithms over five different realistic graphs. Our experimental results demonstrate that GraphX outperforms Giraph in terms of energy consumption. Specifically, Giraph consumes 1.71 times more energy than GraphX on average for the mentioned algorithms.