Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
tPA-associated reperfusion after acute stroke demonstrated by SPECT.

PURPOSE The aim of our study was twofold: to determine the frequency and magnitude of perfusion defect in stroke patients who qualify for rtPA therapy within 3 hours of stroke onset and to determine the ability of rtPA to improve perfusion by 24 hours. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Patients with suspected hemispheric stroke who fulfilled entry criteria into the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) rt-PA Stroke Study and also had pretreatment injection of (99m)Tc-HMPAO, with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) performed using a triple-head camera at baseline and 24 hours, were included. RESULTS All 12 patients who qualified for rtPA therapy had perfusion defects on baseline SPECT (SPECT graded scale [SGS] score range, 16 to 79). Mean+/-SD perfusion defect was comparable in rtPA (n=4)versus placebo (n=5) groups (SGS score, 36+/-18 versus 39+/-12; NS) despite earlier injection time in the rtPA group (98+/-24 versus 141+/-21 minutes; P=.02). Total SPECT scanning time was 20 to 25 minutes. At 24 hours, reperfusion was greater in rtPA patients compared with the placebo group (SGS score, 7+/-9 versus 29+/-17; P=.05), with relative improvement in the region-of-interest scores of 87+/-16% after rtPA compared with 28+/-30% with placebo (P=.01). CONCLUSIONS A substantial perfusion defect exists in stroke patients with larger hemispheric infarcts who meet NINDS criteria for rtPA therapy, and rtPA is better able than placebo to rectify this defect. SPECT is feasible for clinical trials and should be evaluated as a substituted end point in stroke therapeutic trials.
Antimicrobial Efficacy of Gatifloxacin and Moxifloxacin with and without Benzalkonium Chloride Compared with Ciprofloxacin and Levofloxacin Against Methicillin- Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Abstract We compared the antimicrobial activity of gatifloxacin and moxifloxacin with and without benzalkonium chloride (BAK) against clinical isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) against clinical isolates of MRSA were evaluated. Approximately 105 CFU/ml of methicillinresistant S. aureus was added to Mueller-Hinton broth containing two-fold concentration increments of drug. For the evaluation of gatifloxacin with BAK, 50 μg/ml of BAK were added to the first well of the plate with gatifloxacin or moxifloxacin and then serially diluted. The combination of gatifloxacin or moxifloxacin with BAK was more active than either fluoroquinolone without BAK. The MICs ranged from ≤0.008 μg/ml to 0.125 μg/ml for gatifloxacin plus BAK, from 0.063 μg/ml to ≥8 μg/ml with unpreserved gatifloxacin from <0.004 to 0.25 for moxifloxacin plus BAK, and from ≤0.016 μg/ml to 16.0 μg/ml with unpreserved moxifloxacin. The combinations of gatifloxacin or moxifloxacin and BAK were highly active against MRSA in vitro, providing MICs that were approximately 2- to 500-fold lower than the MICs provided by either gatifloxacin or moxifloxacin without BAK.
On Accuracy of Marching Isosurfacing Methods

Representational accuracy of the isosurface meshes produced by well-known marching isosurfacing methods is considered. Accuracy is determined versus the isosurface given by trilinear interpolation and quantified using a new measure of volumetric divergence. The new measure is an accurate estimate of spatial discrepancy between a produced mesh and the isosurface of trilinear interpolation. Through experimental testing using the measure, suitability of the considered methods to well-model the isosurface of trilinear interpolation's behavior on grid cell interiors is also established.
Serum periostin levels correlate with airway hyper‐responsiveness to methacholine and mannitol in children with asthma

Periostin is a matricellular protein, and its synthesis in airway epithelial cells and lung fibroblasts is induced by interleukin (IL)‐4 and IL‐13. The significance of periostin as a biomarker of TH2‐induced airway inflammation, and (importantly) as a measure of the response to TH2‐targeted therapy, has recently been emphasized. We explored the relationship between periostin and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) in asthmatic children.
A Contemporary Examination of First and Second Permanent Molar Emergence

The emergence of first permanent molars (FPMs) and second permanent molars (SPMs) is an important developmental milestone influencing caries risk and the timing of sealant placement. Emergence times have been shown to vary by sex and race/ethnicity, while recent reports suggest a positive association with adiposity. Amid the changing demographics of the US population and the rising rates of pediatric overweight/obesity, we sought to examine the association of body mass index (BMI) with FPM/SPM emergence in a representative sample of US children and adolescents. We used cross-sectional data from 3 consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2009 to 2014). The FPM analysis included ages 4 to 8 y (n = 3,102 representing ~20 million children), and the SPM analysis included ages 9 to 13 y (n = 2,774 representing ~19 million children/adolescents). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s growth chart data were used to calculate age- and sex-specific BMI percentiles, as measures of adiposity. Initial data analyses relied on descriptive statistics and stratified analyses. We used multivariate methods, including survey linear and ordinal logistic regression and marginal effects estimation to quantify the association between pediatric overweight/obesity and FPM/SPM emergence, adjusting for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Forty-eight percent of 6-y-olds and 98% of 8-y-olds had all FPMs emerged, whereas SPM emergence varied more. Blacks (vs. whites) and females (vs. males) experienced earlier emergence of FPMs and SPMs. Overweight/obesity was associated with earlier FPM emergence, particularly among black females. Obesity but not overweight was associated with earlier SPM emergence. Overall, overweight/obesity accounted for 6 to 12 mo of dental acceleration. This study’s results emanate from the most recent US-representative data and affirm that FPM/SPM emergence varies by race/ethnicity and sex and is positively influenced by BMI. Future research should further elucidate these associations with detailed eruption data and examine the implications of this variation for clinical care.
Cloning and sequences of primate CD4 molecules: Diversity of the cellular receptor for simian immunodeficiency virus/human immunodeficiency virus

To study the interaction between the primate lentiviruses simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the CD4 receptor we have cloned and sequenced the CD4 molecule from six non‐human primate species: African green monkeys (three subspecies: sabeus, pytherethrus, aethiops), sooty mangabeys, patas monkeys, chimpanzees, rhesus macaques, and pig‐tail macaques. Molecular cDNA clones representing CD4 mRNA were generated from total RNA from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification including reverse transcriptase in initial reactions followed by two rounds of nested amplifications. Primer sequences were selected from regions conserved among human and rodent CD4 genes. Alignments of deduced amino acid sequences revealed interesting findings. First, all of the primate CD4 molecules were about 90% identical to the human CD4 sequence except the chimpanzee (98%). Second, two macaques or two African green monkey subspecies were as distanly related as the human versus chimpanzee sequences. Third, relatedness of CD4 sequences could not be predicted on the basis of geographic origin (Asian vs. African). Finally, upon sequencing several clones from individual monkeys, a low degree of sequence variation (nucleotide substitutions, deletions, and insertions) was found within the same animal, and in case of sooty mangabeys two distict populations of CD4 molecules were present within three of four individuals. The distinguishing features involved eight amino acid changes, including a single lysine deletion relative to a primate consensus sequence in the first complementary‐determing region of V1J1. These two CD4 populations were present also at the genomic DNA level and may arrive from the two chromosomal alleles, suggesting the existence of distinct sooty mangabey subspecies. Overall, the V1J1 and to a lesser extent V2J2 were the most variable regions among the sequences examined. By construction and expression in mammalian cell lines of CD4 chimeras in which these regions of the human CD4 were replaced by those of the African green monkey and pig‐tail macaques, a higher molecular mass of the CD4 chimeras were obtained in sodium dodecyl sulfate‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis suggesting that the additional N‐linked glycosylation sites present in these monkey CD4 are also used.
Secretion in yeast: structural features influencing the post‐translational translocation of prepro‐alpha‐factor in vitro.

In vitro, efficient translocation and glycosylation of the precursor of yeast alpha‐factor can take place post‐translationally. This property of prepro‐alpha‐factor appears to be unique as it could not be extended to other yeast protein precursors such as preinvertase or preprocarboxypeptidase Y. In order to determine if specific domains of prepro‐alpha‐factor were involved in post‐translational translocation, we carried out a series of experiments in which major domains were either deleted or fused onto reporter proteins. Fusion of various domains of prepro‐alpha‐factor onto the reporter protein alpha‐globin did not allow post‐translational translocation to occur in the yeast in vitro system. Prepro‐alpha‐factor retained its ability to be post‐translationally translocated when parts or all of the pro region were deleted. Removal of the C‐terminal repeats containing mature alpha‐factor had the most profound influence as post‐translational translocation decreased in proportion to the number of repeats deleted. Taken together, these results suggest that efficient post‐translational translocation requires a signal sequence and the four C‐terminal repeats. There does not however, appear to be specific information contained within the C‐terminus, as their presence in fusion did not enable the post‐translational translocation of reporter proteins. Lastly, the ability to post‐translationally translocate radiochemically pure prepro‐alpha‐factor that had been isolated by immuno‐affinity chromatography required the addition of a yeast lysate fraction. Moreover, post‐translational translocation is a function of the microsomal membrane of yeast microsomes and not of a factor peculiar to the yeast lysate, as reticulocyte lysate supported this as well.
Age and gender classification using fusion of acoustic and prosodic features

This paper presents a description of the INESC-ID Spoken Language Systems Laboratory (L2F) Age and Gender classification system submitted to the INTERSPEECH 2010 Paralinguistic Challenge. The L2F Age classification system and the Gender classification system are composed respectively by the fusion of four and six individual sub-systems trained with short and long term acoustic and prosodic features, different classification strategies (GMM-UBM, MLP and SVM) and using four different speech corpora. The best results obtained by the calibration and linear logistic regression fusion back-end show an absolute improvement of 4.1% on the unweighted accuracy value for the Age and 5.8% for the Gender when compared to the competition baseline systems in the development set.
Determinants Encoding Resistance to Several Heavy Metals in Newly Isolated Copper-Resistant Bacteria

Three copper-resistant, gram-negative bacteria were isolated and characterized. Of the three strains, Alcaligenes denitrificans AH tolerated the highest copper concentration (MIC = 4 mM CuSO4). All three strains showed various levels of resistance to other metal ions. A. denitrificans AH contains sequences which cross-hybridized with the mer (mercury resistance) determinant of Tn21 and the czc (cobalt, zinc, and cadmium resistance), cnr (cobalt and nickel resistance), and chr (chromate resistance) determinants of A. eutrophus CH34. DNA-DNA hybridization with probes prepared from A. eutrophus CH34 and Tn21 revealed the presence of chr-, cnr-, and mer-like sequences on the 200-kb plasmid pHG27 and of czc, cnr, and mer homologs located on the chromosome. The second strain, classified as Alcaligenes sp. strain PW, carries czc, cnr, and mer homologs on the 240-kb plasmid pHG29-c and a chr determinant on the 290-kb plasmid pHG29-a; a third plasmid, the 260-kb large plasmid pHG29-b, is cryptic. In contrast to the Alcaligenes strains, which were isolated from metal-contaminated water, Pseudomonas paucimobilis CD was isolated from the air. This strain harbors two cryptic plasmids: the 210-kb large plasmid pHG28-a and the 40-kb plasmid pHG28-b. Southern analysis revealed no homology between the metal ion resistance determinants of A. eutrophus CH34 and P. paucimobilis CD.
The effects of calcium supplementation of dairy cattle after calving on milk, milk fat and protein production, and fertility.

AIM To determine the effect of calcium supplementation of dairy cattle after calving on serum concentrations of calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous after calving, and on reproductive and productive performance in the following lactation. METHODS This was a double-blind randomised clinical trial using 356 dairy cows of parity 3 or greater from six seasonally calving commercial dairy herds. Cows were randomly assigned to a treatment and control group. The treatment group received two doses of 380 ml of calcium chloride in oil (49 g of elemental calcium); the first dose was given as soon as practical after calving and the second 12 hours later. Control cows received 380 ml of a placebo using the same treatment regime. Treatment and control cows had blood samples taken during the first 7 days after calving to determine serum calcium, magnesium and phosphorous levels. Treatment and control cows were monitored throughout the lactation to measure production and reproductive performance. RESULTS Treatment had no effect on PSM to first service intervals. Treatment significantly reduced PSM to conception intervals in only one of the four herds with data available for analysis (p = 0.09). There was no difference between treatment groups for adjusted corrected milk yield calculated from the first herd test milk yield (p = 0.93) or 305-day milk solids production (p = 0.19). CONCLUSION Further studies are required to identify reasons for the between-herd effectiveness of calcium chloride treatment in improving fertility.
The Concept of Risk Capital and Its Application in Non-Financial Companies: A Sustainable Dimension

The prime purpose of this paper is to explain the concept of risk capital and advocate for its implementation in the management of non-financial companies. The paper is kept in the discursive tone, as the problem is new, and it first requires to establish the conceptual framework for further empirical considerations. With reference to the origins of the concept of risk capital (related to its understanding in financial institutions), the paper discusses the utility of risk capital for the management of risk in non-financial companies, with the recognition of the sustainable dimension of risk capital. The discussion is framed within the corporate finance approach. In the applicative dimension, the paper identifies the universe of the sources of risk capital and proposes a taxonomy of these sources. It considers both the well-established traditional sources, as well as the state-of-the-art solutions that are in the early stages of their adoption for the needs of corporate end-users. The conclusions address the possible areas of tensions and of the inclusion of risk capital in the decision-making process, as well as the areas of further empirical research within.
Annotated crowd video face database

Research in face recognition under constrained environment has achieved an acceptable level of performance. However, there is a significant scope for improving face recognition capabilities in unconstrained environment including surveillance videos. Such videos are likely to record multiple people within the field of view. Face recognition in such a setting poses a set of challenges including unreliable face detection, multiple subjects performing different actions, low resolution, and sensor interoperability. In general, existing video face databases contain one subject in a video sequence. However, real world video sequences are more challenging and generally contain more than one person in a video. Therefore, in this paper, we provide an annotated crowd video face (ACVF-2014) database, along with face landmark information to encourage research in this important problem. The ACVF-2014 dataset contains 201 videos of 133 subjects where each video contains multiple subjects. We provide two distinct use-case scenarios, define their experimental protocols, and report baseline verification results using OpenBR and FaceVACS. The results show that both the baseline results do not yield more than 0.16 genuine accept rate @ 0.01 false accept rate. A software package is also developed to help researchers evaluate their systems using the defined protocols.
Low-Profile Broadband Circularly Polarized Patch Antenna Using Metasurface

A low-profile single-feed circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna using metasurface is proposed for broadband operation. The antenna is comprised of a truncated corner square patch sandwiched between a lattice of 4 × 4 periodic metal plates and the ground plane. Surface waves propagating on the metasurface are excited in the proposed structure. This phenomenon generates additional resonances and minimum axial ratio (AR) points for the radiating structure, consequently broadening the impedance-matching and AR bandwidths of the antenna. The final prototype, with an overall size of 32 mm × 32 mm × 3 mm (0.58λo × 0.58λo × 0.056λo at 5.5 GHz), was fabricated and tested. The measurements resulted in a IS11I<;-10 dB bandwidth of 4.70-7.48 GHz (45.6%) and a 3-dB AR bandwidth of 4.9-6.2 GHz (23.4%). In addition, the antenna yielded a good broadside left-hand CP radiation with a small gain variation (7.0-7.6 dBic) and a high radiation efficiency (>90%) within the operational bandwidth.
Optimal placement of phasor measurement units for state estimation in smart grid

Day by day, electrical energy demand increases in developing countries Due to that increment, complexity of the transmission and distribution grids gets scaled up. Alternating the components of conventional grid with smart grid devices is required owing to the fact that monitoring more complex grids by conventional methods is hard. The purpose of this study is to monitor datas synchronously. Phasor measurement units (PMU) and GPS enable to measure current, voltage and phasor angle simultaneously. Since PMUs are expensive, PMUs should be reasonably located to keep number of them low. In this study, optimum number of PMUs place at 9 and 14-bus IEEE test system. In frame of the mathematical model offered in this study, it is achived that all system is observed with the lowest cost by minimum number of PMU.
Effects of exchange rate volatility on bilateral import performance of Vietnam: A dynamic Generalised method of Moments panel approach

ABSTRACT The paper examines to what extent exchange rate volatility affects Vietnam’s bilateral import value. The two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) was employed on panel data over a 10-year period. Exchange rate volatility was generated by two measures, including generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) and moving standard deviation (MOVSD). A variety of diagnostic tests which ensure the consistency of GMM estimates were discussed. The main findings confirm that all explanatory variables demonstrated the expected signs, and exchange rate volatility has positive impacts on Vietnam's import flows. However, there is a large overall difference between the results produced with those two volatility measures.
Molecular and conventional analyses of microbial diversity in mesophilic and thermophilic upflow anaerobic sludge blanket granular sludges.

The microbial community structure of mesophilic (35 degrees C) and thermophilic (55 degrees C) methanogenic granular sludges was surveyed by using both cultivation-independent molecular approach and conventional cultivation technique in order to address the fundamental questions on the microbial populations, i.e. who are present, where they are located, and what they are doing there. To elucidate the microbial constituents within both sludges, we first constructed 16S ribosomal DNA clone libraries, and partial sequencing of the clones was conducted for phylogenetic analysis. In this experiment, we found a number of unidentifiable clones within the domain Bacteria as well as clones that were closely related with 16S rDNAs of cultured microbes. The unidentifiable clones accounted for approximately 60-70% of the total clones in both mesophilic and thermophilic libraries. 16S rRNA-targeted in situ hybridization combined with confocal laser scanning microscopy was subsequently employed to examine where the uncultured populations were located within sludge granules. Spatial organization of uncultured microbes was visualized in thin-sections of both types of granules using fluorescent oligonucleotide probes, which were designed based on the clone sequences of certain novel clusters. This resulted in the detection of two types of uncultured cells in specific locations inside the granules. Finally, the goal-directed conventional cultivation technique was employed to recover such uncultured anaerobes and uncover their physiology and functions. In this approach, a total of five new species of thermophilic microorganisms were isolated, including several types of syntrophs and a novel sugar-fermenting bacterium. In the previous molecular approaches, all of these isolates were suggested to be significant populations within thermophilic granular sludge, hence obtaining these isolates in pure culture decreased the fraction of unknown clones in the previous thermophilic clone library from 70% to 40%. In conclusion, these approaches successfully revealed biodiversity and spatial organization of microbes of interest in sludge granules, and enlarged the fundamental knowledge of microbial constituents functioning as significant populations in the UASB processes.
More insecure and less paid? The effect of perceived job insecurity on wage distribution

ABSTRACT This article employs a Counterfactual Decomposition Analysis (CDA) using both a semi-parametric and a non-parametric method to examine the pay gap due to perceived job insecurity over the entire wage distribution of dependent workforce in Italy. Using the 2015 INAPP Survey on Quality of Work, our results exhibit a mirror J-shaped pattern in the pay gap between secure and insecure workers, with a significant sticky floor effect, i.e. a greater effect of job insecurity at the lowest quantiles. This pattern is mainly due to the characteristics effect, while the relative incidence of the coefficient component accounts roughly for 22% up to 36% of the total difference, being more relevant at the bottom of the wage distribution.