Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A taxonomic study on erysipelothrix by DNA‐DNA hybridization experiments with numerous strains isolated from extensive origins

The purpose of this study was to clarify the taxonomic relationship between all the serovars and species of the genus Erysipelothrix by performing DNA‐DNA hybridization experiments, the customary criterion for separation of bacterial genospecies. A total of 93 strains were isolated from a wide variety of sources, including pigs affected with acute or chronic erysipelas, other diseased animals, healthy animals, fish, retail meats, and environmental materials from throughout the world during the period 1958 to 1996. The present data on phenotypic characterization and DNA relatedness values demonstrate that 24 strains (96%) of E. tonsillarum are avirulent for swine, whereas 39 strains (66%) of genomic E. rhusiopathiae induced generalized or local urticarial lesion in swine after intradermal inoculation. This observation suggests that genomic E. tonsillarum has little etiological significance. Three minor groups contained several strains which exhibited minimal association with each type strain of E. rhusiopathiae and E. tonsillarum. In conclusion, it was confirmed that members of the E. rhusiopathiae and E. tonsillarum groups resemble each other in regard to many phenotypic characteristics, but differ in their ability to produce acid from saccharose and in their pathogenicity for swine. The genus Erysipelothrix certainly contains two main species: E. rhusiopathiae and E. tonsillarum.
Detection and Genotyping of Arcobacter and Campylobacter Isolates from Retail Chicken Samples by Use of DNA Oligonucleotide Arrays

ABSTRACT To explore the use of DNA microarrays for pathogen detection in food, we produced DNA oligonucleotide arrays to simultaneously determine the presence of Arcobacter and the presence of Campylobacter in retail chicken samples. Probes were selected that target housekeeping and virulence-associated genes in both Arcobacter butzleri and thermotolerant Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli. These microarrays showed a high level of probe specificity; the signal intensities detected for A. butzleri, C. coli, or C. jejuni probes were at least 10-fold higher than the background levels. Specific identification of A. butzleri, C. coli, and C. jejuni was achieved without the need for a PCR amplification step. By adapting an isolation method that employed membrane filtration and selective media, C. jejuni isolates were recovered from package liquid from whole chicken carcasses prior to enrichment. Increasing the time of enrichment resulted in the isolation of A. butzleri and increased the recovery of C. jejuni. C. jejuni isolates were further classified by using an additional subset of probes targeting the lipooligosaccharide (LOS) biosynthesis locus. Our results demonstrated that most of the C. jejuni isolates likely possess class B, C, or H LOS. Validation experiments demonstrated that the DNA microarray had a detection sensitivity threshold of approximately 10,000 C. jejuni cells. Interestingly, the use of C. jejuni sequence-specific primers to label genomic DNA improved the sensitivity of this DNA microarray for detection of C. jejuni in whole chicken carcass samples. C. jejuni was efficiently detected directly both in package liquid from whole chicken carcasses and in enrichment broths.
Geotemporal Search : A Literature Survey

Traditional information retrieval (IR) systems retrieve a set of documents as search results according to the relevance score of each document to the user query. Main limitation of these systems is that they do not take into account the implicit geotemporal context associated with the query and depend only on the keywords in the query to satisfy the user’s information needs. Geotemporal searches are getting very popular now a days, e.g., Google inside search 1. Now queries that request geotemporally relevant information is very common. So goal of this kind of search system is to satisfy information need of an user in a better way than the traditional information retrieval systems when, either explicitly or implicitly a geotemporal context is associated with the user. An user may search for information related to restaurants opened at her place at the time when she is querying. With such system an user can find an ATM in a given neighborhood. She can search for movies going in theaters of her area with timings matching with her current timing. Also an user can search this system to get weather related information or information related to events that are geotemporally relevant to her geotemporal context at the time of querying. We can give a simple example to clarify the utility of geotemporal search. For example, consider the query, "Indian Premier League", here the user might be interested to know specific information about the teams and players of either the most recent Indian Premier League or all that have occurred. For such a query, a traditional information retrieval system returns a list of documents as results based on querydocument similarity by ignoring the implicit user intent behind the query. Moreover, as most of the times geographic and temporal information are available in unstructured text in a web document, the information retrieval task becomes a process that is not so straight-forward. So ideally a geotemporal search process has to accurately infer the implicit geotemporal context 1http://www.google. com/insidesearch/landing/startsearchingindia.html
Comparing Public and Private Organizations

This article presents a number of propositions about differences in public and private organizations, which have implications for their management.1 The propositions extend and refine consideration of the question which was recently addressed by Michael A. Murray in this Review (36). Murray suggests that public and private organizations are converging and facing similar constraints and challenges, and that management in all types of organizations should be viewed as a generic process. Yet our inquiry into this comparative question points to the conclusion that it is premature to discount the significance of publicprivate differences and their implications for management training and practice. Numerous scholars and observers, of considerable reputation and experience, have addressed themselves to the comparative issue, and it is important that their observations be compiled and considered. Yet no systematic effort at integration has covered relatively recent contributions.2 In making such a review, we found consensus on a number of important distinctions, which are relevant to research, training, and practice. Moreover, in addition to these specific points of agreement, there are general reasons to approach the subject of public-private comparisons carefully, and to avoid premature dismissal of its significance: 1. Normative, Prescriptive Implications. There are widely discussed concerns over whether various aspects of the convergence of the two sectors are good or bad. Solutions are proposed and arguments made concerning the appropriate roles and functions of the organizations in the two sectors. A ready example is the concern over "capture" of the regulatory agencies, and the proposal that some activities be deregulated. Generally, then, which techniques and attributes of public and private organizations should be preserved or abolished, exchanged or kept separate? 2. Implications for Knowledge and Understanding. Prescriptions will be no better than our understanding of the phenomena. Deregulation proposals, for instance, will provide successful solutions only if their underlying assumptions about the effects of market competition are accurate. To the extent, then, that there is still a divergence between public and private organizations and their management, the divergence should be isolated and studied as a source of information
HMGB1 Mediates Anemia of Inflammation in Murine Sepsis Survivors

Patients surviving sepsis develop anemia, but the molecular mechanism is unknown. Here we observed that mice surviving polymicrobial gram-negative sepsis develop hypochromic, microcytic anemia with reticulocytosis. The bone marrow of sepsis survivors accumulates polychromatophilic and orthochromatic erythroblasts. Compensatory extramedullary erythropoiesis in the spleen is defective during terminal differentiation. Circulating tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and interleukin (IL)-6 are elevated for 5 d after the onset of sepsis, and serum high-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) levels are increased from d 7 until at least d 28. Administration of recombinant HMGB1 to healthy mice mediates anemia with extramedullary erythropoiesis and significantly elevated reticulocyte counts. Moreover, administration of anti-HMGB1 monoclonal antibodies after sepsis significantly ameliorates the development of anemia (hematocrit 48.5 ± 9.0% versus 37.4 ± 6.1%, p < 0.01; hemoglobin 14.0 ± 1.7 versus 11.7 ± 1.2 g/dL, p < 0.01). Together, these results indicate that HMGB1 mediates anemia by interfering with erythropoiesis, suggesting a potential therapeutic strategy for anemia in sepsis.
Hope Springs Eternal

By their extreme nature, repudiations rarely occur. History is therefore crucial to analyze their impact on bond prices. This paper provides an empirical study based on an original database: prices of a Tsarist bond traded in Paris before and after its repudiation by the Soviets. A structural vector autoregression is used to identify shocks to this bond that are orthogonal to shocks hitting a proxy for the Paris bond market, the French 3% rente. French market shocks are thus disentangled from repudiation specific shocks hitting the Russian bond. Consistent with expectations no major Russian shocks appears before the 1917 revolution. For 1918, shocks are mainly related with bailouts or hopes of partial bailouts. In 1919, however, the nature of shocks changes as they can be explained either by the negotiations with the Soviets or by the fate of the White Armies. In view of these elements, we argue that the bonds’ value were subject to a “Peso problem”. Their prices essentially reflected expected extreme events that never took place.
Understanding International Portfolio Diversification and Turnover Rates

This paper argues that fixed trading costs in international asset markets help explain equity home bias. This contrasts with explanations prevalent in international macroeconomics, which tend to be based on trading frictions instead in international goods markets, such as nontraded goods or transportation costs. While the stylized fact of high trading turnover in foreign holdings has been interpreted as evidence against international asset trading costs, we show that this argument only applies to costs that are proportional to trade, and not to fixed costs of entering the foreign market. After documenting that the home bias and turnover stylized facts remain valid in recent data, the paper constructs a very simple portfolio allocation model with various configurations of trading costs and with heterogeneous types of traders. A configuration with per unit costs heterogeneous among agents and a homogeneous fixed cost is found to replicate the pair of stylized facts. Intuitively, the lower trading costs that characterize larger and more efficient traders have two implications: firstly, these traders find it more profitable to enter foreign markets; secondly, their lower trading costs encourage a higher rate of trading turnover. Since holdings of international equities are disproportionately dominated by this class of larger and more efficient traders, average trading turnover is higher among international holdings.
One-Pass Parallel Thinning: Analysis, Properties, and Quantitative Evaluation

A one-pass parallel thinning algorithm based on a number of criteria, including connectivity, unit-width convergence, medial axis approximation, noise immunity, and efficiency, is proposed. A pipeline processing model is assumed for the development. Precise analysis of the thinning process is presented to show its properties, and proofs of skeletal connectivity and convergence are provided. The proposed algorithm is further extended to the derived-grid to attain an isotropic medial axis representation. A set of measures based on the desired properties of thinning is used for quantitative evaluation of various algorithms. Image reconstruction from connected skeletons is also discussed. Evaluation shows that the procedures compare favorably to others. >
SOLVENCY II TECHNICAL PROVISIONS FOR GENERAL INSURERS

Abstract This paper brings together the work of the GI Solvency II Technical Provisions working party. The working party was formed in 2009 for the primary purpose of raising awareness of Solvency II and the impact it would have on the work that reserving actuaries do. Over the years, the working party’s focus has shifted to exploring and promoting discussion of the many practical issues raised by the requirements and to promoting best practice. To this end, we have developed, presented and discussed many of the ideas contained in this paper at events and forums. However, the size of the subject means that at no one event have we managed to cover all of the areas that the reserving actuary needs to be aware of. This paper brings together our thinking in one place for the first time. We hope experienced practitioners will find it thought provoking, and a useful reference tool. For new practitioners, we hope it helps to get you up-to-speed quickly. Good luck!
What Creates Abnormal Profits?

In this paper, we re-examine the debate regarding the determinants of persistent abnormal profits. Abnormal profits are estimated using data on tangible and intangible capital for 2689 Australian firms over a 17-year period. The determinants of abnormal profits are then estimated using variables collated from accounting and survey data on innovation and management practices. We find that market share, use of lead-time strategies, and industry concentration all affect abnormal profits.
A Novel Multi-view Object Class Detection Framework for Document Image Content Analysis

Recognition of objects from arbitrary viewpoints embedded document images is a new challenge in content-oriented document image analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for detecting generic objects from arbitrary viewpoints described by varied object appearances. We first model the annotated objects from different viewpoints, and then build an explicit correspondence across multi-view detectors. As a result, multi-view objects from untrained viewpoints can be detected by combining the outputs of the adjacent view detectors. Our experiments on several public datasets give promising results for the experimental object classes.
Evaluation of machine learning algorithms for intrusion detection system

Intrusion detection system (IDS) is one of the implemented solutions against harmful attacks. Furthermore, attackers always keep changing their tools and techniques. However, implementing an accepted IDS system is also a challenging task. In this paper, several experiments have been performed and evaluated to assess various machine learning classifiers based on KDD intrusion dataset. It succeeded to compute several performance metrics in order to evaluate the selected classifiers. The focus was on false negative and false positive performance metrics in order to enhance the detection rate of the intrusion detection system. The implemented experiments demonstrated that the decision table classifier achieved the lowest value of false negative while the random forest classifier has achieved the highest average accuracy rate.
Cloning and Sequences of β-actin Genes from Rhodeus notatus and the Silver Carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix (Cyprinidae) and the Phylogeny of Cyprinid Fishes Inferred from β-actin Genes

Complete g -actin genes from Rhodeus notatus and Hypophthalmichthys molitrix (silver carp) were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and cloned into pCRII vector for further characterization. The g -actin genes of these two fishes were 1718 and 1755 bp in sequence length, respectively, and both of them contained 5 exons and 4 introns. The exon and intron boundaries were identified with the GT/AG rule. The phylogenetic implications of g -actin gene in the family Cyprinidae were shortly discussed.
Association of a functional polymorphism in the promoter region of TLR‐3 with osteoarthritis: A two‐stage case–control study

Recent studies have suggested that polymorphisms in toll‐like receptor 9 (TLR‐9), an endosomal TLR, are associated with knee osteoarthritis (OA). TLR‐3, ‐7, and ‐8 are also found on the surface of endosomes and to investigate whether similar associations exist with polymorphisms in these TLR genes we performed a two‐stage case–control study and genotyped 11 TLR single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 823 OA cases and 594 healthy controls by polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism assays. Real‐time PCR was performed to assess the functional expression of an identified promoter polymorphism in TLR‐3 following dexamethasone stimulation of articular chondrocytes. An association between TLR‐3 SNPs at rs3775296 and rs3775290 and OA was identified in both populations. In males the allelic frequencies of TLR‐7 rs179010 and TLR‐8 rs5744080 were significantly different between OA cases and healthy controls. The ATCA, CTCA, and CCTA haplotypes of TLR‐3 were associated with OA susceptibility. A significant difference in TLR‐3 gene expression following dexamethasone treatment was seen among the various genotypes of rs3775296 (p = 0.004). Our findings indicate that a SNP in the promoter region of TLR‐3 is associated with elevated TLR‐3 gene expression and susceptibility to knee OA in a Chinese Han population. © 2012 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 31: 680–685, 2013
Modelling intraday stock price dynamics on the Malaysian stock exchange.

The introduction of the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) model in 1982 by Engle revolutionized the econometric treatment of volatility. The Generalized ARCH (GARCH) model and its variants have proved to be useful in capturing stylised facts about financial markets, which include volatility clustering, leptokurtosis in the distribution of returns, mean reversion tendencies and leverage effects. The Periodic GARCH (PGARCH) variants proposed by Bollerslev and Ghysels (1996), in particular, made it possible to explicitly incorporate the effects of periodicity in financial time series into the parameters of the volatility models. An investigation of return volatility using high frequency Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (KLCI) returns data shows that the intraday volatility pattern follows the double U-shaped pattern, which is consistent with the findings of other studies on markets that are closed during the lunch hour. The study also investigates the best technique for modelling and forecasting the intraday periodicity on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE), using both the jointly estimated and the two-step filtration approaches with different PGARCH structures. The results indicate that the PGARCH models produce superior model fit, better forecasting performances and superior forecast quality than the standard GARCH equivalents. However, the results suggest that Value-at-Risk (VaR) models, constructed from the PGARCH forecasts, produce poor results. This study also investigates the integrated realized volatility measure introduced by Andersen and Bollerslev (1998a), which can be constructed by summing up intraday squared returns. The results suggest that the daily integrated realized volatilities constructed using different intraday return sampling frequencies, produce superior forecasting performances for the GARCH models when compared with the results of the same models using the daily squared returns. The VaR models constructed from the GARCH forecasts and the Autoregressive and Moving Average (ARMA) forecasts appear to satisfy the requirements of the framework for interval forecast evaluation.
English County Populations in the Later Eighteenth Century

When directing the first English census John Rickman was intent not only on discovering the size of the population in 1801 but also on tracing past trends both nationally and for individual counties. He returned to the latter investigation on several later occasions, notably in the 1830s. There have been many subsequent attempts to improve upon his national estimates, but his estimates of county totals have continued to be used extensively, either unchanged or slightly modified. Rickman was aware that his estimates were subject to wide margins of error. For the later eighteenth century it is possible to produce new estimates which are probably substantially more accurate, taking advantage of the fact that after Hardwicke's Act (1753) the registration of marriages in Anglican parish registers, unlike that of baptisms and burials, was virtually complete. They show that the contrast between population growth rates in 'industrial' counties and those in which agriculture continued to predominate were significantly more marked than suggested by Rickman's estimates. The same exercise that produces county estimates also yields hundredal totals, which will in future allow a more refined account of relative growth and stagnation to be made. Copyright Economic History Society 2006.
Activation of protein kinase C differentially modulates neuronal Na', Ca2+, and y-aminobutyrate type A channels

Xenopus oocytes were used to study the in-teraction of neuronal quisqualate receptors with neuronal ion channels. Total mRNA was isolated from chick forebrain and injected into Xenopus oocytes. This technique led to the expression of functional voltage-gated Na+ and Ca2+ channels, of ligand-gated y-aminobutyrate and kainate receptor channels, and of quisqualate receptors that could activate endogenous chloride channels by means of inositol trisphos-phate-mediated Ca2" release. Exposure of the oocytes to quisqualate decreased the amplitude of the Na+ current and of the r-aminobutyrate type A-gated current and increased the amplitude of the Ba24 current through Ca24 channels. This modulation of neuronal ion channels by quisqualate could be mimicked by the protein kinase C activator phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate and the diacylglycerol analogue 1,2-oleoylacetylglycerol. The kainate-gated channel was not affected by these agents. Phorbol esters that do not activate protein kinase C, a-phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate and a-phorbol, were without effect. The inhibitor of protein kinase C, tamoxifen, prevented the modulatory effects of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate. The present evidence suggests that the activity of the neuronal Na + and Ca24 channels and the ligand-gated y-aminobutyrate