Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of Antigen-Capture Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay and RT-PCR for Detection of Turkey Astroviruses

Abstract Turkey astrovirus (TAstV) is an important agent of poult enteritis. The diagnosis of astroviruses has been dependent mainly on electron microscopy (EM) or immune EM (IEM). To develop other simple, rapid, and reliable diagnostic assays, two antigen-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (AC-ELISAs), polyclonal AC-ELISA and monoclonal AC-ELISA, were developed in this study. Monoplex and multiplex reverse transcription-polymerase chain reactions (RT-PCRs) were also developed using nondegenerate primer sets specific to the capsid region and degenerate primer pairs specific to the polymerase area of two TAstV. EM was included for comparison. Fecal or intestinal contents samples from naturally and experimentally infected poults with enteritis were examined using the developed assays. The polyclonal AC-ELISA had higher sensitivity and wider detection spectrum than the monoclonal AC-ELISA with group-specific monoclonal antibody (MAb), whereas the monoclonal AC-ELISA had very high specificity but lower sensitivity, which was estimated at 0.06 μg of viral proteins. Small round viruses (SRV) that could be astroviruses or other small viruses were detected in 34.4% of the samples examined by EM. The monoplex RT-PCR results amplified with primers SRV-1-3 and SRV-1-5 revealed that the positive rate of astroviruses was 45.3%, which was 10.9% higher than that of EM even if other SRVs were not excluded. Multiplex RT-PCR with SRV-1-3 and SRV-1-5 and AFCP-F1 and AFCP-R1 and the monoplex RT-PCR with degenerate primers verified that the positive rate of astroviruses was 59.4%, which was 25% higher than that of EM. Both RT-PCRs showed good specificity and wider detection spectrum compared with earlier published data.
Critical success factors for business intelligence in the South African financial services sector : original research

Background: Business intelligence (BI) has become an important part of the solution to providing businesses with the vital decision-making information they need to ensure sustainability and to build shareholder value. Critical success factors (CSFs) provide insight into those factors that organisations need to address to improve new BI projects’ chances of success. Objectives: This research aimed to determine which CSFs are the most important in the financial services sector of South Africa. Method: The authors used a Delphi-technique approach with key project stakeholders in three BI projects in different business units of a leading South African financial services group. Results: Authors regarded CSF categories of ‘committed management support and champion’,‘business vision’, ‘user involvement’ and ‘data quality’ as the most critical for BI success. Conclusions: Researchers in the BI field should note that the ranking of CSFs in this study only correlate partially with those a European study uncovered. However, the five factors the authors postulated in their theoretical framework ranked in the seven highest CSFs. Therefore, they provide a very strong validation of the framework. Research in other industries and other emerging economies may discover similar differences and partial similarities. Of special interest would be the degree of correlation between this study and future, and similar emerging market studies. Practitioners, especially BI project managers, would do well to check that they address the CSFs the authors uncovered before undertaking BI projects.
Transient middle cerebral artery occlusion in rats as an experimental model of brain ischemia.

PURPOSE To assess a rat model of cerebral ischemia induced by occlusion of the middle cerebral artery and its effect on the area of cerebral infarction. METHODS Brain ischemia was induced in 52 male Wistar rats by introduction of a 3-0 nylon suture into the middle cerebral artery for either 90 (n=28) or 120 (n=24) minutes. Ischemic injury volume was determined by TTC staining, digital photography and analysis with the Image J software. Statistical analysis employed Student's t test and the Mann-Whitney U test. RESULTS The groups were similar in terms of weight (p=0.59). The length of thread inserted was 14.7 mm in the 90 min group and 20.2 mm in the 120 min group (p=0.37). Ischemic injury was detected in 11 animals (39%) after 90 min and 11 (45%) after 120 min (p=0.77). In animals exhibiting injury, filament length was 16.1 ± 11 mm (90 min) vs. 21.9 ± 7.4 mm (120 min) (p=0.15). The mean infarction zone volume was greater after 120 (259.2 mm³) than after 90 min (162.9 mm³) (p=0.04). The neurological deficit score for the 90 and 120 min groups was 2.0 and 2.4, respectively (p=0.84). CONCLUSION The experimental model induced significant ischemic cerebral injury in both groups.
Robust series resistance estimation for diagnostics of photovoltaic modules

It is well-known that the slope of the I — V curve of a photovoltaic panel at open-circuit conditions is proportional to the panel's internal series resistance. However, the slope of the I — V characteristic is greatly affected by environmental conditions, showing an approximately linear relationship with the reciprocal of the irradiation. In this work, a simple series resistance estimation method based on the slope of of the I — V curve at open-circuit translated to Standard Test Conditions (STC1), is presented. Experimental test results for crystalline silicone panels show good estimation performance in a wide range of irradiation (> 200W/m2) intensities, with a worst case accuracy of ≈ 0. 15Ω.
Resisted Sprints Do Not Acutely Enhance Sprinting Performance

Abstract Whelan, N, O'Regan, C, and Harrison, AJ. Resisted sprints do not acutely enhance sprinting performance. J Strength Cond Res 28(7): 1858–1866, 2014—Sprinting speed is a vital component of successful performance in many sports. Long-term resisted sprint training has been shown to improve early acceleration performance, but the acute post-activation potentiation (PAP) effects of resisted sprinting on subsequent performance remain unclear. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of resisted sprinting on sprinting and factors related to sprint performance. Twelve active males participated in a pretest involving ten 10-m sprints through dual-beam timing gates and 10-m Optojump Next System with full recovery. This provided baseline data on step rate, step length, ground contact time, and running speed over the first 6 steps of a maximum effort sprint. One week later, the participants performed three 10-m resisted sprints using a sled loaded to 25–30% body mass followed by a 10-m sprint at 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 minutes after the final resisted sprint. The data were analyzed using an adapted typical error analysis and repeated measures analysis of variance. The results using analysis of variance provided evidence of significant initial fatigue followed by the enhancement of mean step rate, contact time, reactive strength index, and running speed in 10-m sprints performed after the resisted sprinting (p > 0.05). By contrast, the typical error analysis showed that this enhancement was limited and unsystematic in nature with little clear evidence of fatigue followed by potentiation. The results using typical error data do not provide strong evidence of PAP in 10-m sprint performance after resisted sprinting.
Serotonin, impulsivity, and alcohol use disorders in the older adolescent: a psychobiological study.

BACKGROUND Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) among adolescents are associated with a high prevalence of conduct disorder (CD), much as type II alcoholism in adults is associated with impulsive-aggressive behavior and antisocial personality traits. Adults with impulsive personality disorders and AUD demonstrate diminished central serotonergic responsiveness to serotonergic agonists. Dysregulation of central serotonergic function may contribute to a vulnerability to impulsive-aggressive behavior, CD, and AUD. We studied older adolescents, both male and female, to examine the relationships between sex, dispositional impulsivity, aggressivity, CD, and responsiveness to serotonergic challenge with d,l fenfluramine (FEN) early in the development of AUD. METHODS Thirty-six adolescents between the ages of 16 and 21 years were assessed for DSM-IV AUD and other Axis I disorders by using the Psychoactive Substance Use Disorders section of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM III-R, the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version, and CD interviews. Impulsivity and aggressivity were assessed by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Lifetime History of Aggression, Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory, Eysenck Impulsiveness Questionnaire, Youth Self Report, and Multidimensional Personality Questionnaires. FEN was administered as 0.8 mg/kg to a maximum of 60 mg, and blood was sampled at fixed intervals for prolactin, cortisol, fenfluramine, and norfenfluramine levels. RESULTS Eighteen adolescents (12 male, 6 female) with AUD scored significantly higher on all measures of impulsivity and aggressivity compared with 18 healthy controls (12 male, 6 female). There were no significant differences between groups in peak prolactin or cortisol responses (minus baseline), or area-under-the-curve determinations (AUC); however, 9 subjects with AUD and comorbid CD had significantly elevated cortisol AUC levels compared with subjects with AUD and no CD or with normal controls. In the total sample, cortisol AUC was associated positively with measures of aggression. CONCLUSIONS Adolescents with early-onset AUD are characterized by impulsivity and aggressivity compared with healthy peers but do not demonstrate the diminished prolactin or cortisol responses to FEN characteristic of adult alcoholics with impulsive-aggression.
Swimming against the Tide: How Disaster Agencies Build Political Resilience

ABSTRACT Despite the pressure on politicians to show leadership in times of disaster, many struggle with the extreme leadership challenges imposed by a calamity that is quickly consuming life and property. Drawing on data from elite interviews with senior personnel from disaster agencies in eight countries, we find that emergency managers want to engage with political actors well before a disaster strikes. This is critical to educate the political actor about disaster management, leadership, and communication, and to generate support for resources and funding. The challenge is to place disasters on the agenda of political actors ahead of all-consuming, day-to-day issues.
Functional Analysis of Eubacterial Diterpene Cyclases Responsible for Biosynthesis of a Diterpene Antibiotic, Terpentecin*

Eubacterial diterpene cyclase genes had previously been cloned from a diterpenoid antibiotic terpentecin producer (Dairi, T., Hamano, Y., Kuzuyama, T., Itoh, N., Furihata, K., and Seto, H. (2001) J. Bacteriol. 183, 6085–6094). Their products, open reading frame 11 (ORF11) and ORF12, were essential for the conversion of geranylgeranyl diphosphate (GGDP) into terpentetriene (TTE) that had the same basic skeleton as terpentecin. In this study, functional analyses of these two enzymes were performed by using purified recombinant enzymes. The ORF11 product converted GGDP into a cyclized intermediate, terpentedienol diphosphate (TDP), which was then transformed into TTE by the ORF12 product. Interestingly, the ORF12 product directly catalyzed the conversion of GGDP into three olefinic compounds. Moreover, the ORF12 product utilized farnesyl diphosphate as a substrate to give three olefinic compounds, which had the same structures as those formed from GGDP with the exception of the chain lengths. These results suggested that the ORF11 product with a DXDD motif converted GGDP into TDP by a protonation-initiated cyclization and that the ORF12 product with a DDXXD motif completed the transformation of TDP to the olefin, terpentetriene by an ionization-initiated reaction followed by deprotonation. The kinetics of the ORF12 product indicated that the affinity for TDP and GGDP were higher than that of farnesyl diphosphate and that the relative activity of the reaction converting TDP into TTE was highest among the reactions using TDP, GGDP, or farnesyl diphosphate as the substrate. These results suggested that an actual reaction catalyzed by the ORF12 was the conversion of TDP into TTE in vivo.
The evolution of highly variable immunity genes across a passerine bird radiation

To survive, individuals must be able to recognize and eliminate pathogens. The genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) play an essential role in this process in vertebrates as their diversity affects the repertoire of pathogens that can be recognized by the immune system. Emerging evidence suggests that birds within the parvorder Passerida possess an exceptionally high number of MHC genes. However, this has yet to be directly investigated using a consistent framework, and the question of how this MHC diversity has evolved has not been addressed. We used next‐generation sequencing to investigate how MHC class I gene copy number and sequence diversity varies across the Passerida radiation using twelve species chosen to represent the phylogenetic range of this group. Additionally, we performed phylogenetic analyses on this data to identify, for the first time, the evolutionary model that best describes how MHC class I gene diversity has evolved within Passerida. We found evidence of multiple MHC class I genes in every family tested, with an extremely broad range in gene copy number across Passerida. There was a strong phylogenetic signal in MHC gene copy number and diversity, and these traits appear to have evolved through a process of Brownian motion in the species studied, that is following the pattern of genetic drift or fluctuating selection, as opposed to towards a single optimal value or through evolutionary ‘bursts’. By characterizing MHC class I gene diversity across Passerida in a systematic framework, this study provides a first step towards understanding this huge variation.
Study on chlorophyll fluorescence spectrum in the application of the BP-ANN for diagnosing cucumber diseases and insect pests

The diagnosis model of the cucumber diseases and insect pests was established by laser-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (LICF) spectroscopy technology combined with Back Propagation Artificial Neural Networks (BP-ANN) algorithm in this research. This model would be used to realize the fast and exact diagnosis of the cucumber diseases and insect pests. Four kinds of in-vivo cucumber leaves (health, downy mildew, aphid, downy mildew and aphid) were used in this experiment, and detected the physiological information and chlorophyll fluorescence spectrum by the corresponding experimental apparatus and chlorophyll fluorescence spectrum collection system. The two hundred and nineteen samples were randomly separated into the calibration set and the validation set. Principal component analysis (PCA) was a method which had been widely used in the spectroscopic analysis for reducing the dimensionality of the noise reduction spectrum, and according to the model accuracy seven principal components (PCs) were selected to replace the complex spectral data. The noise of original spectrum was reduced by five methods, which include Savitzky-Golay smoothing (SG), First-order Differential Treatment (FDT), Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Standard Normal Variate (SNV) and Wavelet Analysis (WA). According to the best diagnosis accuracy of calibration and prediction set, optimization results with every pretreatment method in different spectrum band were compared. Results showed that BP-ANN with input by the first seven principal components of full-band spectrum had the best identification capabilities and accuracy was 100% after the original spectrum noise was reduced by FDT. This research indicated that the method of BP-ANN had a good identification effect and could realize rapid diagnosis of the cucumber diseases and insect pests as a new method.
Practical understanding of hemostasis and approach to the bleeding patient in the OR.

Bleeding, thrombosis and maladaptive inflammatory responses are major causes of perioperative morbidity and mortality for trauma and “non-trauma” patients. [2-4] Thus, coagulation and inflammation warrant serious consideration by all who care for surgical patients. New information regarding care of the bleeding trauma patient have led us to revisit our core concepts of caring for other patients with massive bleeding as well.
Engineered heart tissue enables study of residual undifferentiated embryonic stem cell activity in a cardiac environment

Embryonic stem cell (ESC) derivatives are a promising cell source for cardiac cell therapy. Mechanistic studies upon cell injection in conventional animal models are limited by inefficient delivery and poor cell survival. As an alternative, we have used an engineered heart tissue (EHT) based on neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (CMs) cultivated with electrical field stimulation as an in vitro model to study cell injection. We injected (0.001, 0.01, and 0.1 million) and tracked (by qPCR and histology) undifferentiated yellow‐fluorescent protein transgenic mouse ESCs and Flk1 + /PDGFRα+ cardiac progenitor (CPs) cells, to investigate the effect of the cardiac environment on cell differentiation, as well as to test whether our in vitro model system could recapitulate the formation of teratoma‐like structures commonly observed upon in vivo ESC injection. By 8 days post‐injection, ESCs were spatially segregated from the cardiac cell population; however, ESC injection increased survival of CMs. The presence of ESCs blocked electrical conduction through the tissue, resulting in a 46% increase in the excitation threshold. Expression of mouse cardiac troponin I, was markedly increased in CP injected constructs compared to ESC injected constructs at all time points and cell doses tested. As early as 2 weeks, epithelial and ganglion‐like structures were observed in ESC injected constructs. By 4 weeks of ESC injection, teratoma‐like structures containing neural, epithelial, and connective tissue were observed in the constructs. Non‐cardiac structures were observed in the CP injected constructs only after extended culture (4 weeks) and only at high cell doses, suggesting that these cells require further enrichment or differentiation prior to transplantation. Our data indicate that the cardiac environment of host tissue and electrical field stimulation did not preferentially guide the differentiation of ESCs towards the cardiac lineage. In the same environment, injection of CP resulted in a more robust cardiac differentiation than injection of ESC. Our data demonstrate that the model‐system developed herein can be used to study the functional effects of candidate stem cells on the host myocardium, as well as to measure the residual activity of undifferentiated cells present in the mixture. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011; 108:704–719. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
On the number of multiplications necessary to compute a length-2nDFT

The number of multiplications necessary and sufficient to compute a length-2nDFT is determined. The method of derivation is shown to apply to the multiplicative complexity results of Winograd for a length-pnDFT, for p an odd prime number. The multiplicative complexity of the one-dimensional DFT is summarized for many possible lengths.
Nonbinary Channel Coded Physical Layer Network Coding Over Modulo-Sum Algebraic Ring Structures

In this letter, we extend the conventional (finite-field based) channel-coded wireless physical layer network coding (WNC) into a more general setup based on the algebraic rings. The key idea is to enable a joint WNC-channel coding over an appropriate algebraic structure, which then in turn allows to employ some advanced WNC functions (e.g., modulo-sum with superior performance) jointly with nonbinary channel coding at the relaying nodes in the network. We justify the suitability of ring structures for coded WNC systems, and show that a particular solution with modulo-sum WNC function can significantly outperform the conventional (finite-field based) implementation. In addition, we compare the achieved performance of the proposed (coded WNC) processing with several practical and information-theoretical benchmarks to substantiate its performance gains.
Administrative Accountability and Bandwagoning in Policy Implementation: Regional Variations in Energy Saving Policy Implementation,2006-2009

In this paper,we investigate regional variations in annual provincial progress in achieving the energy saving goal set up in the Eleventh Five Year Plan,thereby assessing the effectiveness of the administrative accountability system in promoting local implementation.Adopting the concept of bandwagon in policy implementation,we conduct empirical analysis and demonstrate that the administrative accountability system,being an irregular political incentive mechanism,may induce bandwagoning behavior among agents of policy implementation rather than promoting overall improvement of implementation outcomes.Specifically,under political pressure from the administrative accountability system,provinces that lag behind earlier in policy implementation will significantly improve its implementation behavior later in order to catch up with other provinces;however,provinces pioneering earlier will reduce their efforts due to lessened political pressure to them.As a result,such bandwagoning behavior will reduce overall effectiveness of the administrative accountability system in achieving best policy outcomes.We suggest that,in addition to the administrative accountability system,government should disaggregate national goals in energy saving and emission reduction based upon provincial conditions,enhance other policy instruments(such as tax and fiscal rewards),and build a self-enforcing mechanism to increase local officials' willingness in energy saving and emission reduction.
Soft forwarding device cooperation strategies for 5G radio access networks

Device-to-device (D2D) connectivity is likely to represent a major enabling technology for future fifth generation (5G) radio access networks. In this paper, we introduce a new model for device cooperation in 5G radio access networks termed frequency-selective soft forwarding (FSSF). FSSF is based on soft-combining by a target user equipment (TUE) of selectively forwarded soft information data by a set of cooperating user equipments (CUEs) acting as mobile relays towards the TUE. FSSF exploits the inherent frequency selectivity and broadcast nature of the downlink radio access channel for the sake of enabling efficient device cooperation and seamless integration of D2D connectivity into cellular radio access networks. Several variants of FSSF are investigated, including centralized and distributed approaches, thus offering various tradeoffs of performance versus signaling overhead cost. Exhaustive simulation results using a state-of-the-art long-term evolution (LTE)-compliant link-level simulator show that FSSF well outperforms baseline device cooperation schemes relying on conventional decode-and-forward (DF) relaying and approaches the performance of optimal joint reception with significantly lower cost in terms of D2D resource utilization and signaling overhead.