Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deletion mutants of Moloney murine leukemia virus which lack glycosylated gag protein are replication competent

A series of deletion mutations localized near the 5' end of the Moloney murine leukemia virus genome was generated by site-specific mutagenesis of cloned viral DNA. The mutants recovered from such deleted DNAs failed to synthesize the normal glycosylated gag protein gPr80gag. Two of the mutants made no detectable protein, and a third mutant, containing a 66-base pair deletion, synthesized an altered gag protein which was not glycosylated. All the mutants made normal amounts of the internal Pr65gag protein. The viruses were XC positive and replicated normally in NIH/3T3 cells as well as in lymphoid cell lines. These results indicate that the additional peptides of the glycosylated gag protein are encoded near the 5' end, that the glycosylated and internal gag proteins are synthesized independently, and that the glycosylated gag protein is not required during the normal replication cycle. In addition, the region deleted in these mutants apparently encodes no cis-acting function needed for replication. Thus, all essential sequences, including those for packaging viral RNA, must lie outside this area.
Informal Learning of Social Workers: A Method of Narrative Inquiry.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate social workers' processes of informal learning, through their narration of their professional experience, in order to understand how social workers learn. Informal learning is any individual practice or activity that is able to produce continuous learning; it is often non‐intentional and non‐structured learning.Design/methodology/approach – The study employed qualitative research methods, according to specific epistemologies such as Grounded Theory, and Inquiry into Narrative. The tool used for data collection has been the narrative interview. The scientific software ATLAS.ti has facilitated the analysis of the contents and the narrative structure.Findings – The data classified throughout the analysis allow for observing and explaining possible interpretations of informal learning of the social workers. The informal learning process, depending on the level of intentionality, can be random and often appears as a learning process leading to change and im.
Solving Delay Differential Equations by Using Implicit 2-Point Block Backward Differentiation Formula

In this paper, an implicit 2-point Block Backward Differentiation formula (BBDF) method was considered for solving Delay Differential Equations (DDEs). The method was implemented by using a constant stepsize via Newton Iteration. This implicit block method was expected to produce two points simultaneously. The efficiency of the method was compared with the existing classical 1-point Backward Differentiation Formula (BDF) in terms of execution time and accuracy
Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells of Diverse Origins Support Persistent Infection with Kaposi’s Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus and Manifest Distinct Angiogenic, Invasive, and Transforming Phenotypes

ABSTRACT Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), a highly angiogenic and invasive tumor often involving different organ sites, including the oral cavity, is caused by infection with Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV). Diverse cell markers have been identified on KS tumor cells, but their origin remains an enigma. We previously showed that KSHV could efficiently infect, transform, and reprogram rat primary mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into KS-like tumor cells. In this study, we showed that human primary MSCs derived from diverse organs, including bone marrow (MSCbm), adipose tissue (MSCa), dental pulp, gingiva tissue (GMSC), and exfoliated deciduous teeth, were permissive to KSHV infection. We successfully established long-term cultures of KSHV-infected MSCa, MSCbm, and GMSC (LTC-KMSCs). While LTC-KMSCs had lower proliferation rates than the uninfected cells, they expressed mixtures of KS markers and displayed differential angiogenic, invasive, and transforming phenotypes. Genetic analysis identified KSHV-derived microRNAs that mediated KSHV-induced angiogenic activity by activating the AKT pathway. These results indicated that human MSCs could be the KSHV target cells in vivo and established valid models for delineating the mechanism of KSHV infection, replication, and malignant transformation in biologically relevant cell types. IMPORTANCE Kaposi’s sarcoma is the most common cancer in AIDS patients. While KSHV infection is required for the development of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the origin of KSHV target cells remains unclear. We show that KSHV can efficiently infect human primary mesenchymal stem cells of diverse origins and reprogram them to acquire various degrees of Kaposi’s sarcoma-like cell makers and angiogenic, invasive, and transforming phenotypes. These results indicate that human mesenchymal stem cells might be the KSHV target cells and establish models for delineating the mechanism of KSHV-induced malignant transformation. Kaposi’s sarcoma is the most common cancer in AIDS patients. While KSHV infection is required for the development of Kaposi’s sarcoma, the origin of KSHV target cells remains unclear. We show that KSHV can efficiently infect human primary mesenchymal stem cells of diverse origins and reprogram them to acquire various degrees of Kaposi’s sarcoma-like cell makers and angiogenic, invasive, and transforming phenotypes. These results indicate that human mesenchymal stem cells might be the KSHV target cells and establish models for delineating the mechanism of KSHV-induced malignant transformation.
Genetic analysis of Drosophila melanogaster susceptibility to intestinal Vibrio cholerae infection

We previously demonstrated that Vibrio cholerae is able to colonize the intestine of the fly to produce a lethal infection. Here we present the results of a genetic screen undertaken to identify factors that alter susceptibility of the fly to intestinal V. cholerae infection. In this model of infection, the Eiger/Wengen signalling pathway protects the fly against infection. Furthermore, mutations within the IMD signalling pathway increase resistance to intestinal V. cholerae infection and increase programmed cell death within the intestinal epithelium during infection. We propose that programmed cell death protects the intestinal epithelium against V. cholerae infection and therefore that the fly may serve as a useful model in which to study modulation of intestinal epithelial cell survival by commensal and pathogenic intestinal bacteria as well as the pathological processes leading to erosion of the intestinal epithelium and intestinal malignancy.
The human DEK oncogene regulates DNA damage response signaling and repair

The human DEK gene is frequently overexpressed and sometimes amplified in human cancer. Consistent with oncogenic functions, Dek knockout mice are partially resistant to chemically induced papilloma formation. Additionally, DEK knockdown in vitro sensitizes cancer cells to DNA damaging agents and induces cell death via p53-dependent and -independent mechanisms. Here we report that DEK is important for DNA double-strand break repair. DEK depletion in human cancer cell lines and xenografts was sufficient to induce a DNA damage response as assessed by detection of γH2AX and FANCD2. Phosphorylation of H2AX was accompanied by contrasting activation and suppression, respectively, of the ATM and DNA-PK pathways. Similar DNA damage responses were observed in primary Dek knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), along with increased levels of DNA damage and exaggerated induction of senescence in response to genotoxic stress. Importantly, Dek knockout MEFs exhibited distinct defects in non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) when compared to their wild-type counterparts. Taken together, the data demonstrate new molecular links between DEK and DNA damage response signaling pathways, and suggest that DEK contributes to DNA repair.
Vocabulary decay in category romance

Writers of a best-selling category romance imprint share a common tendency to decrease their deployment of unique words over the span of their novels—a phenomenon of ‘vocabulary decay’. This tendency cannot be found in the novels of Jane Austen, suggesting this drop is not intrinsic to the romance genre itself, and is unlikely to have any true narrative purpose. A study of Charles Dickens shows that vocabulary decay extends beyond the romance genre. Closer examination reveals vocabulary decay is a result of progressive amounts of linguistic chunking—due to author fatigue or a desire to produce a more readable narrative.
Segmentation of multi-sentence questions: towards effective question retrieval in cQA services

Existing question retrieval models work relatively well in finding similar questions in community-based question answering (cQA) services. However, they are designed for single-sentence queries or bag-of-word representations, and are not sufficient to handle multi-sentence questions complemented with various contexts. Segmenting questions into parts that are topically related could assist the retrieval system to not only better understand the user's different information needs but also fetch the most appropriate fragments of questions and answers in cQA archive that are relevant to user's query. In this paper, we propose a graph based approach to segmenting multi-sentence questions. The results from user studies show that our segmentation model outperforms traditional systems in question segmentation by over 30% in user's satisfaction. We incorporate the segmentation model into existing cQA question retrieval framework for more targeted question matching, and the empirical evaluation results demonstrate that the segmentation boosts the question retrieval performance by up to 12.93% in Mean Average Precision and 11.72% in Top One Precision. Our model comes with a comprehensive question detector equipped with both lexical and syntactic features.
Antimicrobial activity of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs with respect to immunological response: Diclofenac sodium as a case study

The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) as the name implies are compounds of nonsteroidal origin, with the capability of inhibiting/reducing inflammatory response associated with tissue injury which could be as a result of physical trauma, noxious chemicals or microorganisms. There is however reason to believe that these drugs, which confound disease progression by suppressing fever, pain and attenuating some of the cardinal manifestations of inflammation in a patient actually lessen the immunologic response to bacterial infection. This seemingly paradoxical property is the birth of this mini review. This review aims at invalidating the claims that NSAIDs in general lessen the immunological response to microbial infections by examining the antimicrobial properties of diclofenac sodium, an NSAID.
Nutritional needs of elite endurance athletes. Part I: Carbohydrate and fluid requirements

Abstract Both carbohydrate depletion and dehydration have been shown to decrease performance whilst severe dehydration can also cause adverse health effects. Therefore carbohydrate and fluid requirements are increased with exercise. Ingestion of 200–300 g of CHO 3–4 h prior to exercise is an effective strategy in order to meet daily CHO demands and increase CHO availability during the subsequent exercise period. There is little evidence that CHO during the hour immediately prior to exercise has adverse effects such as rebound hypoglycaemia. CHO ingestion during exercise has been shown to improve performance as measured by enhanced work output or decreased exercise time to complete a fixed amount of work. Recent studies have demonstrated that exogenous CHO oxidation rates can be increased by ingesting combinations of CHO that use different intestinal CHO transporters. After exercise maximal muscle glycogen re-synthesis rates can be achieved by ingesting CHO at a rate of ∼1.2 g/kg/h, in relatively frequent (e.g., 15–30 min) intervals for up to 5 h following exercise. Protein amino acid mixtures may increase glycogen synthesis further but only if relatively small amounts of CHO are ingested. Hypohydration and hyperthermia alone have negative effects on performance but their combination is particularly serious, both in terms of performance and health. Dehydration can be prevented by fluid ingestion pre exercise and during exercise. Because of large individual differences it is difficult to individualise the advice. Perhaps the best guidance for athletes is to weigh themselves to assess fluid losses during training and racing and limit weight losses to 1% during exercise lasting longer than 1.5 h. Excessive fluid intake has been associated with hyponatremia. Post exercise the volume of fluid ingested and sodium intake are important determinants of rehydration.
Organizational Fundraising: Further Evidence on the Effect of Legitimizing Small Donations

Prior research has shown that by legitimizing paltry donations in face-to-face contact with prospective donors, fundraisers may increase the amount of money allocated to highly visible charitable organizations. The present study suggests that this “legitimization effect” also occurs when donors are requested to allocate funds to a relatively less well-known organization, through telephone as well as face-to-face contact.
Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership ‐ by Martha C. Nussbaum

© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. rather “as a nexus of distinctive sensibilities, cares, and concerns that are expressed in distinctive patterns of emotional and practical response” (p. 236). Drawing on Philippa Foot and Simone Weil, Wiggins draws out the moral significance of solidarity and recognition. “In recognizing another person, we recognize not merely a subject of consciousness but a being who will seek to interpret us even as we seek to interpret him or her” (p. 243). The priority of primitive aversions, with which Wiggins began, is then linked to acts that violate solidarity and deny recognition. What if we must violate basic deontological rules to prevent catastrophe? Wiggins responds with a fifth moral category “subsuming the ordinary passably virtuous agent’s concern to preserve the very conditions under which human civilization will survive and/or ordinary morality can make its characteristic demands on normal human life” (p. 259). It is a mistake, as consequentialists do, to model the whole of morality on these emergency cases. Wiggins resolutely defends a “piecemeal” approach to morality. “[T]hose who despise the piecemeal . cut themselves off from all sorts of truths that bear closely on the questions they ask. In so far as the case for morality can be stated briefly, all that can be said is that, in a way already illustrated, it is the most enterprising and durable expression that a human being will find for the benevolent dispositions he or she can discover within himself or herself ” (p. 265). This intriguing book is not aimed at teenage undergraduates, who will find Wiggins a very difficult and frustrating read. Ethics would certainly not be a suitable text for introductory ethics classes. Its target audience is rather those who, while beginners in philosophy, are not beginners in life. Such readers will still find Wiggins challenging (and, at times, opaque and old-fashioned), but they may also find him an intriguing and provocative guide as they seek to apply moral philosophy to moral life.       
Tangeo: geometric drawing with tangibles on an interactive table-top

We introduce Tangeo, a drawing system that combines tangible drawing tools, such as rulers, protractors and set squares with a table-top environment. Geometric drawing on computers is often constrained to abstract widget tools and metaphoric, indirect input methods such as mouse and keyboard. Tangeo allows users to construct geometric drawings in a more direct manner by manipulating virtual data with familiar physical objects and drawing with a finger. User evaluations on Tangeo yielded a high rate of user satisfaction and indicated that the system is effective at enhancing geometric drawing.
Detailed Expression Pattern of Foxp1 and Its Possible Roles in Neurons of the Spinal Cord during Embryogenesis

A member of winged-helix/forkhead transcription factors, Foxp1, is expressed in the developing spinal cord during mouse embryogenesis. To shed light on the potential role of Foxp1 in neurons of the developing spinal cord, we investigated the detailed expression pattern of Foxp1 between embryonic day (E) 9.5 and E17.5. At E10.25, some postmitotic neurons with strong expression of Foxp1 (Foxp1high) were first detected in the ventral half of the brachial spinal cord. By E11.5, Foxp1high neurons increased in the ventral spinal cord at the limb levels. All of Foxp1high neurons at the limb levels were Islet2+/Lhx3– motor neurons (MNs) of the lateral motor column and some neurons that expressed Foxp1 weakly (Foxp1low) at the thoracic level were MNs of the preganglionic motor column. Between E12.5 and E17.5, Foxp1low neurons were also observed in the intermediate zone throughout the ventral spinal cord, all of which were Pax2+, En1+, Evx1–, Chx10–, Gata3–, and Lhx3– V1 interneurons. Interestingly, no colocalization of Foxp1 with Lhx3 was observed in the developing spinal cord. In addition, overexpression of Foxp1 markedly attenuated the endogenous expression of Lhx3 in a neuroendocrine cell line. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays in a neuronal cell line and E13.5 spinal cords revealed an interaction between Foxp1 and the consensus motif in the Lhx3 promoter. These results suggest that Foxp1 may play some important roles in the determination of neuronal fates of the ventral spinal cord, possibly through the suppression of Lhx3 expression.
Green Heron Swarm Optimization Algorithm - State-of-the-Art of a New Nature Inspired Discrete Meta-Heuristics

Many real world problems are NP-Hard problems are a very large part of them can be represented as graph based problems. This makes graph theory a very important and prevalent field of study. In this work a new bio-inspired meta-heuristics called Green Heron Swarm Optimization (GHOSA) Algorithm is being introduced which is inspired by the fishing skills of the bird. The algorithm basically suited for graph based problems like combinatorial optimization etc. However introduction of an adaptive mathematical variation operator called Location Based Neighbour Influenced Variation (LBNIV) makes it suitable for high dimensional continuous domain problems. The new algorithm is being operated on the traditional benchmark equations and the results are compared with Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization. The algorithm is also operated on Travelling Salesman Problem, Quadratic Assignment Problem, Knapsack Problem dataset. The procedure to operate the algorithm on the Resource Constraint Shortest Path and road network optimization is also discussed. The results clearly demarcates the GHOSA algorithm as an efficient algorithm specially considering that the number of algorithms for the discrete optimization is very low and robust and more explorative algorithm is required in this age of social networking and mostly graph based problem scenarios.
Non-participative Observation in Political Research: The ‘Poor’ Relation?

Non-participative observation, a data-gathering tool where the researcher assumes the role of observer while minimising participation, has a relatively low profile in empirical political research. This article begins with some introductory comments on the status of non-participative observation in political research. It then sets out the particular attributes of non-participative observation, focusing on the practical application and utilisation of non-participative observation in empirical political research. I show that non-participative observation can make a valuable, if particular, contribution as a data-gathering tool in empirical political research.
Neighbourhood in a High Rise, High Density City: Some Observations on Contemporary Hong Kong

Most of the contemporary literature on the neighbourhood comes from US or European sources where there are sharp contrasts with East Asian cities in terms of the physical form, residential densities and in relation to ideas of community and kinship. This paper reports on a study carried out in Hong Kong which was designed to explore the extent to which western preoccupations with neighbourhood resonate in a high rise, high density Chinese city. As a precursor to a larger scale study interviews were carried out with fifteen individuals in three contrasting locations: a New Town estate, an older, inner city area and a middle class housing estate. The interviews explored inter alia neighbourhood perceptions, ideas of community, sense of belonging and sense of place among contemporary Hong Kong residents. When Yuan Ssu became Confucius' steward he was given nine hundred measures of grain, which he declined. The Master said, ‘Can you not find a use for it in helping the people in your neighbourhood? ’ (The Analects, Book VI).
Human Cytomegalovirus Immediate-Early mRNA Detection by Nucleic Acid Sequence-Based Amplification as a New Parameter for Preemptive Therapy in Bone Marrow Transplant Recipients

ABSTRACT Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection was monitored retrospectively by qualitative determination of immediate-early (IE) mRNA by nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) in a series of 51 bone marrow transplant (BMT) recipients. The qualitative results for IE mRNA obtained by NASBA were compared with those obtained by prospective quantitation of HCMV viremia and antigenemia and retrospective quantitation of DNA in blood (DNAemia) by PCR as well as by qualitative determination of late pp67 mRNA by NASBA. On the whole, of the 39 HCMV-positive patients (all asymptomatic), HCMV was detected in 14 (35.9%) by quantitation of viremia, 15 (38.5%) by detection of pp67 mRNA by NASBA, 32 (82.1%) by quantitation of DNAemia, and 33 (84.6%) by quantitation of antigenemia, while HCMV was detected in 38 (97.4%) patients by detection of IE mRNA by NASBA. In the immunocompetent host, IE mRNA was not detected by NASBA in 100 blood donors or during reactivated infections in 30 breast-feeding mothers. Likewise, NASBA did not detect IE mRNA in 56 solid-organ transplant recipients in the first 21 days after transplantation. By using NASBA for detection of IE mRNA as the reference standard for detection of HCMV infection in blood samples, the diagnostic sensitivities were 67.7% for quantitation of DNAemia, 59.0% for quantitation of antigenemia, 18.3% for detection of pp67 mRNA by NASBA, and 16.0% for quantitation of viremia. Specificities and negative and positive predictive values were >90.0, >70.0, and >80.0%, respectively, for all four assays. The mean times to first HCMV detection after bone marrow transplantation were 37.7 ± 15.4 days for detection of IE mRNA by NASBA, 39.6 ± 15.6 days for quantitation of antigenemia, 40.9 ± 15.2 days for quantitation of DNAemia, and 43.7 ± 16.3 or 43.7 ± 17.5 days for quantitation of viremia and detection of pp67 mRNA by NASBA, respectively. On the whole, 31 BMT recipients received preemptive therapy by using confirmed antigenemia positivity as a cutoff, while 35 patients could have been treated by using NASBA positivity as a cutoff and 31 could have been treated by using quantitation of DNAemia as a cutoff. In single patients, IE mRNA was detected in every episode of active HCMV infection, mostly preceding and sometimes accompanying antigenemia and DNAemia, whereas pp67 mRNA was detected only concomitantly with the highest peaks of infection. HCMV IE mRNA detection may represent a useful parameter for initiation of preemptive therapy in BMT recipients.