Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resistance Mutation R292K Is Induced in Influenza A(H6N2) Virus by Exposure of Infected Mallards to Low Levels of Oseltamivir

Resistance to neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs) is problematic as these drugs constitute the major treatment option for severe influenza. Extensive use of the NAI oseltamivir (Tamiflu®) results in up to 865 ng/L of its active metabolite oseltamivir carboxylate (OC) in river water. There one of the natural reservoirs of influenza A, dabbling ducks, can be exposed. We previously demonstrated that an influenza A(H1N1) virus in mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) exposed to 1 µg/L of OC developed oseltamivir resistance through the mutation H274Y (N2-numbering). In this study, we assessed the resistance development in an A(H6N2) virus, which belongs to the phylogenetic N2 group of neuraminidases with distinct functional and resistance characteristics. Mallards were infected with A(H6N2) while exposed to 120 ng/L, 1.2 µg/L or 12 µg/L of OC in their sole water source. After 4 days with 12 µg/L of OC exposure, the resistance mutation R292K emerged and then persisted. Drug sensitivity was decreased ≈13,000-fold for OC and ≈7.8-fold for zanamivir. Viral shedding was similar when comparing R292K and wild-type virus indicating sustained replication and transmission. Reduced neuraminidase activity and decrease in recovered virus after propagation in embryonated hen eggs was observed in R292K viruses. The initial, but not the later R292K isolates reverted to wild-type during egg-propagation, suggesting a stabilization of the mutation, possibly through additional mutations in the neuraminidase (D113N or D141N) or hemagglutinin (E216K). Our results indicate a risk for OC resistance development also in a N2 group influenza virus and that exposure to one NAI can result in a decreased sensitivity to other NAIs as well. If established in influenza viruses circulating among wild birds, the resistance could spread to humans via re-assortment or direct transmission. This could potentially cause an oseltamivir-resistant pandemic; a serious health concern as preparedness plans rely heavily on oseltamivir before vaccines can be mass-produced.
Real Business Cycles in a Small Open Economy with Non-Traded Goods

The Israeli economy business cycle properties are different from those of most OECD countries in four main dimensions. Aggregate consumption is twenty percent more volatile than output, the trade balance is much more volatile than output and is procyclical, investment is almost five times more volatile than output, and the auto-correlation in output is low. The puzzle that these observations imply is explained in this paper by the result that with three parameters of a CES utility function and the share of non-traded goods in government expenditures, one can get almost any volatility in consumption, holding constant the production side parameters. Alternative values of the CES utility parameters drastically affects the consumer decision on shifting the traded goods consumption in response to shock in both sectors. The main result is that the model fits all the main business cycle properties of the Israeli economy, described above.
Screening the key microRNAs and transcription factors in prostate cancer based on microRNA functional synergistic relationships

Abstract Prostate cancer (PC) is a common neoplasm, and metastatic PC remains incurable. The study aims to screen key microRNAs (miRNAs) and transcription factors (TFs) involved in PC. The miRNA expression profile dataset (GSE45604) was downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database, including 50 PC and 10 normal specimens. Differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRNAs) were identified through limma package in R, and DEmiRNA–DEmiRNA co-regulation network was constructed based on the number of co-regulated target genes. Functional enrichment analysis of co-regulated target genes was performed using clusterProfiler package in R, and miRNA interactions sharing at least 1 functional term were used to construct a DEmiRNA–DEmiRNA functional synergistic network (MFSN). Based on Transcriptional Regulatory Element Database, cancer-related TFs which were co-regulated by DEmiRNAs were utilized to construct a DEmiRNA–TF regulation network. A total of 66 DEmiRNAs were identified, including 7 up-regulated miRNAs with 18,642 target genes and 59 down-regulated miRNAs with 130,694 target genes. Then, the DEmiRNA–DEmiRNA co-regulation network was constructed, including 66 DEmiRNAs and 2024 co-regulation relationships. In MFSN, hsa-miR-1184, hsa-miR-1207-5p, and hsa-miR-24 had significant functional synergistic relationships. The DEmiRNA–TF network contained 6 up-regulated DEmiRNAs and 4 of them were highlighted, as hsa-miR-1184, hsa-miR-1207-5p, hsa-miR-182, and hsa-miR-183. In subnetwork of the 4 miRNAs, peroxisome proliferative activated receptor, alpha (PPARA) and cyclic AMP-responsive element modulator (CREM) were the critical regulated TFs. Four up-regulated miRNAs (hsa-miR-1207-5p, hsa-miR-1184, hsa-miR-182, and hsa-miR-183) and 2 TFs (PPARA and CREM) were identified as key regulators in PC progression. The above 4 miRNAs might participate in PC progression by targeting PPARA and CREM.
Energy-aware probabilistic multiplier: design and analysis

Probabilistic CMOS is considered to be a promising technology for substantial energy savings for computing devices, such as DSPs and graphics chips. The basic principle is to relax the energy requirement by allowing possibly incorrect computation results. For devices with probabilistic components, energy should be assigned to each component wisely, in order to achieve a good trade-off between energy consumption and correctness of the outputs. Recently, a few schemes have been proposed for energy assignment of ripple-carry adders, which are often based on intuitive arguments. In the present paper, we extend the idea of energy assignment to probabilistic multipliers. We focus on a fundamental type of multipliers, known as array multipliers. We derive some analytical results. Guided by these results, we devise an energy assignment scheme. We also find that energy assignment for array multipliers and ripple-carry adders can be quite different, due to differences in their structures. To our best knowledge, our work here is the first attempt in the literature to consider energy assignment for multipliers. Some examples, including digital image enhancement, are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Association between chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency and multiple sclerosis: a meta-analysis

Background: It has been proposed by Zamboni and colleagues that multiple sclerosis is caused by chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, a term used to describe ultrasound-detectable abnormalities in the anatomy and flow of intra- and extracerebral veins. We conducted a meta-analysis of studies that reported the frequency of chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency among patients with and those without multiple sclerosis. Methods: We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE as well as bibliographies of relevant articles for eligible studies. We included studies if they used ultrasound to diagnose chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency and compared the frequency of the venous abnormalities among patients with and those without multiple sclerosis. Results: We identified eight eligible studies: all included healthy controls, and four of them also included a control group of patients with neurologic diseases other than multiple sclerosis. Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency was more frequent among patients with multiple sclerosis than among the healthy controls (odds ratio [OR] 13.5, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.6–71.4), but there was extensive unexplained heterogeneity among the studies. The association remained significant in the most conservative sensitivity analysis (OR 3.7, 95% CI 1.2–11.0), in which we removed the initial study by Zamboni and colleagues and added a study that did not find chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency in any patient. Although chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency was also more frequent among patients with multiple sclerosis than among controls with other neurologic diseases (OR 32.5, 95% CI 0.6–1775.7), the association was not statistically significant, the 95% CI was wide, and the OR was less extreme after removal of the study by Zamboni and colleagues (OR 3.5, 95% 0.8–15.8). Interpretation: Our findings showed a positive association between chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency and multiple sclerosis. However, poor reporting of the success of blinding and marked heterogeneity among the studies included in our review precluded definitive conclusions.
Pancreatic islet beta cells drive T cell-immune responses in the nonobese diabetic mouse model

The role of autoantigens and that of target organs in which tissue lesions develop remains elusive in most spontaneous models of autoimmune diseases. Whether the presence of target autoantigens is required for the recruitment of autoreactive lymphocytes is unknown in most cases. To evaluate the importance of islet cells in the development of autoimmunity in the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse, we generated beta cell-deprived mice by injecting a high dose of alloxan, a toxic agent specific for beta cells. In contrast with spleen cells from 6-mo-old naive NOD mice which transfer diabetes in irradiated 8-mo- old male recipients, spleen cells from age-matched NOD mice which received a single injection of alloxan at 3 wk of age did not transfer diabetes. With the exception of the ability to transfer diabetes, beta cell-deprived NOD mice showed maintained immune competence. Furthermore, sialitis developed with the expected intensity and prevalence in beta cell-deprived mice. Already committed "diabetogenic" spleen cells collected from spontaneously diabetic mice also showed a reduced capacity to transfer diabetes after their removal from the diabetic mice and transient "parking" in beta cell-deprived mice. Taken together, our data bring evidence that involvement of autoreactive T cells detected by the capacity to transfer diabetes requires the presence of target beta cells.
A New Variant of 3GPP-MAC With Provable Security and Higher Efficiency

3GPP-MAC, also called f 9, is an integrity scheme adopted by Universal Mobile Telecommunication System as a standard for the 3rd generation wireless communications. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of improving its efficiency, with the precondition that its security would not be compromised. As we show, the newly proposed f 9-enjoys provable security under the solo PRP assumption; more importantly, f 9- removes the last block-cipher invocation of f 9, which means it needs less time and resources to compute MACs than f 9, offering higher efficiency in practice. Furthermore, f 9-keeps the main structure of f 9 almost unchanged, making it easy to update f 9 to f 9-in reality.
Scalable Learning for Structure in Markov Logic Networks

Markov Logic Networks (MLNs) provide a unifying framework that incorporates first-order logic and probability. However, learning the structure of MLNs is a computationally hard task due to the large search space and the intractable clause evaluation. In this paper, we propose a random walk-based approach to learn MLN structure in a scalable manner. It uses the interactions existing among the objects to constrain the search space of candidate clauses. Specifically, we obtain representative subset of simple paths by sampling from all sequences of distinct objects. We then transform each sampled path into possible ground atoms, and use them to form clauses. Based on the resulting ground network, we finally attach a set of weights to the clauses by optimizing `1-constrained conditional likelihood. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach performs favorably compared to previous approaches.
Reducing of soft error effects on a MIPS-based dual-core processor

In this paper, a simulation-based fault injection analysis of a MIPS-based dual-core processor is presented, an approach is proposed to improve the reliability of most vulnerable parts of the processor components and then the improvement is evaluated. In the first series of experiments, a total of 9100 transient faults were injected in 114 different fault sites of the processor. These experiments demonstrate that the Message Passing Interface, the Arbiter and the Program Counters are the most vulnerable parts of the processor. Thus, these parts were selected as targets for the improvement. The fault tolerance method used for improving the Arbiter is based on using the Triple Modular Redundancy. As for the Message Passing Interface and the Program Counters the single bit error correction Hamming code is used. The experimental results show 11.8% improvement in error recovery and 15.1% reduction of failure rate at the cost of 1.01% area overhead.
An L'-band survey for circumstellar discs around low-mass stars in the young σ Orionis cluster

We present new K- and L'-band imaging of a representative sample of members of the young 3-5 Myr old a Orionis cluster. We identified objects with (K - L') excess by analysing colour-colour diagrams and comparing the observations with empirical main-sequence colours. The derived disc frequency depends on the method used: (54 ± 15) per cent if measured directly from the JHKL' colour-colour diagram, or (46 ± 14) per cent if excesses are computed with respect to predicted photospheric colours (according to the object spectral types, 2a excess detections). We compare the (K - L') excess with other indicators and show that this is a robust and reliable disc indicator. We also compare the derived disc frequency with similarly aged clusters and discuss possible implications for did lifetimes. The computed age of the a Ori cluster is very important; a cluster age of 3 Myr would support the overall disc lifetime of 6 Myr proposed in the literature, while an age >4 Myr would point to a slower disc destruction rate.
I want to be my own person: the meaning-making and psychosocial processes of legacy students at Bucknell University

This study examined the meaning-making and psychosocial processes of five female legacy students at Bucknell University, each of whom having had at least one parent graduate from the institution. With a research philosophy, design, and methodology rooted in qualitative inquiry and phenomenology, inductive data analysis led to three primary categories that underscored legacy identity development. The first, Paradox of Influence and Identity, revealed through six themes nuanced experiences of separation-individuation. Second, Teaching and Learning, comprised of five themes, illuminated the impact of family — and of Bucknell parent alumni in particular — on their children’s internal working models. Lastly, Bucknell — the Environmental Context and the five themes grouped therein highlighted the contributions of University community members, and of the campus culture and climate itself, to the co-construction of psychosocial formation. A tentative outline of grounded theory was offered, which explored categorical relationships; Paradox of Influence and Identity emerged as the dominant phenomenon, informing and being reinforced by the data of Teaching and Learning and Bucknell — the Environmental Context. Provisional intervention strategies for student affairs practice, in the contexts of academics, residential life, and career development, were discussed. Further, triangulated research is needed to substantiate and evolve the findings and theoretical model of this thesis.
Identification of four small molecular mass proteins in the silk of Bombyx mori

This paper describes cDNAs of four small‐size proteins that occur in the cocoon silk of Bombyx mori. Two of them (9.9 and 10.3 kDa), which have the N‐terminal sequences and the spacing of a few amino acids at C‐termini similar to the seroin of Galleria mellonella, are called seroin 1 and seroin 2. The corresponding genes are expressed in the middle, and to a small extent also in the posterior silk gland sections. The seroin 1 and less conspicuously the seroin 2 mRNAs accumulate in the course of the last larval instar to a maximum in postspinning larvae. Two other proteins (6 kDa and 4.7 kDa) of B. mori cocoons were identified as a typical Kunitz‐type and a somewhat unusual Kazal‐type proteinase inhibitors, and named BmSPI 1 and BmSPI 2, respectively. Their genes are expressed in the middle, and the BmSPI 1 gene slightly also in the posterior silk gland sections. The expression ensues a few days after the last larval ecdysis and increases until the cocoon spinning. Post‐spinning larvae still contain high amounts of the BmSPI 1 but no BmSPI 2 transcripts. It is assumed that seroins and proteinase inhibitors are involved in cocoon protection against predators and microbes.
Palette: Enhancing E-Commerce Product Description by Leveraging Spectrophotometry to Represent Garment Color and Airiness

We present Palette, a method to objectively quantize material color and airiness to provide representative description of a product in online shopping scenarios. Photos and keywords are often used to describe color, texture, and airiness of products. However consumer photos are usually taken under uncontrolled realistic imaging conditions, whereas keywords are fuzzy and highly subjective. Palette leverages active spectrophotometry approach that involves synchronized illumination to measure the reflection and transmission properties of a material as a function of wavelength. We use a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) sensor equipped camera to capture visible light and near-infrared light intensity. We show that by analyzing the obtained light spectrum, we are able to provide a metric to represent material color and airiness. In this paper, we describe the details in principle of operation and proof-of-concept prototype implementation, as well as reporting results of our analysis using 4 types of garments. To the best of our knowledge, Palette is the first work to exploit spectrophotometry to represent garment color, texture, and airiness; as an effort to enrich user experience in online shopping.
Automatic discourse connective detection in biomedical text

OBJECTIVE Relation extraction in biomedical text mining systems has largely focused on identifying clause-level relations, but increasing sophistication demands the recognition of relations at discourse level. A first step in identifying discourse relations involves the detection of discourse connectives: words or phrases used in text to express discourse relations. In this study supervised machine-learning approaches were developed and evaluated for automatically identifying discourse connectives in biomedical text. MATERIALS AND METHODS Two supervised machine-learning models (support vector machines and conditional random fields) were explored for identifying discourse connectives in biomedical literature. In-domain supervised machine-learning classifiers were trained on the Biomedical Discourse Relation Bank, an annotated corpus of discourse relations over 24 full-text biomedical articles (~112,000 word tokens), a subset of the GENIA corpus. Novel domain adaptation techniques were also explored to leverage the larger open-domain Penn Discourse Treebank (~1 million word tokens). The models were evaluated using the standard evaluation metrics of precision, recall and F1 scores. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION Supervised machine-learning approaches can automatically identify discourse connectives in biomedical text, and the novel domain adaptation techniques yielded the best performance: 0.761 F1 score. A demonstration version of the fully implemented classifier BioConn is available at: http://bioconn.askhermes. org.
Pushing back: evaluating a new behaviour for the back and forward buttons in web browsers

The Back button on web browsers is one of the world's most heavily used user interface components, yet its behaviour is commonly misunderstood. This paper describes the evaluation of a "temporal" alternative to the normal "stack-based" behaviour of Back and Forward. The main difference of the temporal scheme is that it maintains a complete list of previously visited pages. The evaluation compares the efficiency of the stack and temporal schemes in an "out of the box" scenario in which participants were asked to use a "new" version of a commercial browser without any explanation of the presence or absence of new features. This scenario allows us to predict the likely usability impact if commercial browsers were released supporting the temporal scheme. The results showed that the relative efficiency of the two schemes differed across different types of navigational task. In particular, the temporal system poorly supported backtracking to parent pages, but performed better for more distant navigation tasks. The temporal scheme also caused extreme usage patterns, with the subjects either solving tasks very efficiently or very inefficiently, depending on whether they used the Back menu. This observation indicates that adaptations of the temporal system that improve the effectiveness of the Back menu may enhance web navigation.
Depth Motion Detection—A Novel RS-Trigger Temporal Logic based Method

Recently, depth data is widely used in computer vision applications such as detection and tracking, which shows great promises in complicated environments due to its complementary natures to RGB data. However, previous works mostly use depth as an auxiliary cue of RGB data and overlook its inherent advantage on motion detection. Intrinsically different from RGB data, points in depth map essentially represents 3-D positions in the world, so depth video represents the variation of these “positions,” which is motion. Motivated by this, we proposed a novel motion detection scheme based on RS-Trigger temporal logic which best fits nature of depth data on motion detection. The proposed algorithm can fast detect motion regions in the scene without statistics of background and prior knowledge of objects to detect. In following refinement modules, a depth-invariant density-constant projection is proposed which contributes to a fast spatial clustering and accurate segmentation, for it transforms dense 3-D points cloud to depth-invariant 2-D map with density-constance, not only it overcomes depth-dependent sampling of depth sensor, but also overcomes the common `scale problem' in 2-D image analysis, which makes it easy to set system parameters to de-noise and pop-out motion regions. Experimental results validate its effectiveness and efficiency.
Virtuous Leaders: Assessing Character Strengths in the Workplace

Three studies were conducted to build, test, and compare a model of character‐based leadership. The first qualitative study used the critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1949) and Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) comprehensive theoretical framework of character strengths to develop and construct a scale. The second study tested the scale’s psychometric properties. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that character‐based leadership is a three‐dimensional construct and demonstrates adequate content validity. The third study tested the new scale against organizational and personal outcome measures. The resulting structural model provided a strong fit. Relationships emerged between leader wisdom andemployee affective commitment, leaderhumanity and employee wellbeing, employee organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs), employee cognitive trust, and employee affective trust, and between leader temperance and employee trust. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Extracting Blink Rate Variability from EEG Signals

Generally, blinks are treated on equal with artifacts and noise while analyzing EEG signals. However, blinks carry important information about mental processes and thus it is important to detect blinks accurately. The aim of the presented study is to propose a blink detection method and discuss its application for extracting blink rate variability, a novel concept that might shed some light on the mental processes. In this study, 14 EEG recordings were selected for assessing the quality of the proposed blink detection algorithm.