Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship of Pit-1 polymorphisms with growth traits in Chinese Cattle

The Pit-1 gene was studied as a candidate for genetic markers of growth traits in Chinese cattle in this study. The single-strand conformation polymorphism method was used to identify polymorphism in the Pit-1 intron 5. One single nucleotide polymorphism, Pit1I5, was found in intron 5.The frequencies of alleles A/B of Nanyang cattle(NY), Qinchuan cattle(QC), Jiaxianhong cattle(JXH), Xizhen cattle(XZ), Luxi cattle(LX) and Holstein cow(H) populations were 0.444/0.556, 0.477/0.523, 0.538/0.462, 0.421/0.579, 0.523/0.477, 0.475/0.525 respectively. Associations of the polymorphisms with growth traits in Nanyang cattle were analyzed using a general linear model procedure. The following parameters were greater in individuals with an AA genotype than with an AB genotype: body weight, average day gain, body height, chest girth at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months (P allele A in other age groups. Therefore, genotype BB maybe a dominant genotype and allele B may be a dominant allele. These results imply that allele B of Pit-1 gene likely positively affects growth traits.
Analysis of selected withanolides in plant extract by capillary electrochromatography and microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography

Microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) coupled with a diode‐array detector was developed for the simultaneous analysis of natural steroidal compounds, withanolides including withaferin A, withacnistin and iochromolide. Optimal resolution was obtained with a microemulsion consisting of 70 mM octane, 800 mM 1‐butanol, 100 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), and 10 mM phosphate‐borate buffer (pH 7) using a fused‐silica capillary at 25 kV and 40°C. Since this technique is not compatible with mass spectrometry detection, a capillary electrochromatographic method was developed to separate the investigated withanolides. The effects of mobile phase composition and pH were systematically investigated. Complete separation was obtained with a capillary electrochromatography (CEC) Hypersil C18 bonded silica column (packed length, 25 cm×100 μm ID and 375 μm OD), packed with 3 μm particles. The mobile phase consisted of formic acid‐ammonia, pH 8 / acetonitrile (40/60 v/v); the voltage was set at 25 kV and the temperature at 20°C. Under these conditions, resolution of these closely related compounds, including the critical pair withacnistin and iochromolide, was achieved in less than 5 min. The separations by MEEKC and CEC were compared with that obtained by reversed‐phase liquid chromatography and showed similar retention order, indicating the analogy of the retention mechanism of these techniques. To further improve specificity and sensitivity, the developed CEC method was interfaced with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry using a Teflon connection between the CEC column and a void fused‐silica capillary. Finally, the described methods were applied to the qualitative analysis of withanolides in Iochroma gesnerioides plant extract.
Treatment of Anal Fistulas With High Intersphincteric Extension

BACKGROUND: Intersphincteric fistulas with a high upward extension, up to or above the level of the puborectal muscle, in the intersphincteric plane are rare. Most of these fistulas have no external opening and they are frequently associated with a high intersphincteric and/or supralevator abscess. Division of a large amount of internal anal sphincter by extended fistulotomy has a potential risk of diminished fecal continence. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate flap repair combined with drainage of associated abscesses in high intersphincteric fistulas. DESIGN: This study was performed as a retrospective review. SETTINGS: The study was conducted at the Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery, Erasmus MC, between March 1995 and February 2011. PATIENTS: Fourteen patients with a cryptoglandular fistula with high intersphincteric extension were included. INTERVENTIONS: Transanal advancement flap repair combined with intersphincteric and/or extrasphincteric drainage of associated abscesses was performed. Preoperatively, patients underwent endoanal MRI. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Healing was defined as complete wound healing with absence of symptoms. Patients were followed up to assess the recurrence rate and Rockwood fecal continence score. RESULTS: In 1 patient the fistula was not associated with an abscess. In 10 patients the fistula tract ended in a high intersphincteric abscess. Three patients presented with a high intersphincteric abscess and a supralevator abscess. Primary healing was observed in 79% of the patients. The 3 patients without primary healing had a supralevator abscess. In these patients, healing was obtained after a second, third, and fourth procedure. The overall healing rate was 100%. Median postoperative Rockwood score was 0 (range, 0–15). LIMITATIONS: Retrospective design and lack of baseline continence data were the limitations of this study. CONCLUSIONS: Since most high intersphincteric fistulas have no external opening and are frequently associated with abscesses, preoperative imaging is useful. Flap repair with adequate drainage of the abscesses is successful, except in fistulas with supralevator extension. However, healing may be achieved by additional procedures.
Replication profile of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VI

An understanding of the replication programme at the genome level will require the identification and characterization of origins of replication through large, contiguous regions of DNA. As a step toward this goal, origin efficiencies and replication times were determined for 10 ARSs spanning most of the 270 kilobase (kb) chromosome VI of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
The effects of cleanliness and disgust on moral judgment

Recent experimental studies in cognitive science report the influence of “disgust” and “cleanliness” manipulations on moral judgment, yet little attention has been given to interpreting these studies together or developing models of the causal influence of cleanliness and disgust manipulations on moral judgment. I propose considerations for the causal modeling of these effects. The conclusions are not decisive in favor of one theory of disgust and cleanliness, but suggest several distinct causal roles of disgust- and cleanliness-type manipulations. The incorrect views, I argue, are those that posit causal effects from a single common cognitive mechanism for both disgust and cleanliness.
Planning Ability After Frontal and Temporal Lobe Lesions in Humans: The Effects of Selection Equivocation and Working Memory Load

Twenty-one patients with unilateral frontal neurosurgical lesions (11 left and 10 right) and 38 patients with unilateral temporal lobectomies (19 left and 19 right) were compared to 44 normal control subjects in their performance on a computerised version of the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) test. In order to explore the effect of selection equivocation on performance, two types of problems were administered, determined by whetherthe two mainroutes to achieve the goal weresimilar or dissimilar in length. To explore the effectof working memory load, a task was administered that required the subject to repeat a sequence of Tower of Hanoi moves shown by the computer. For the frontal patients, those with right (RF), but not left (LF) lesions were impaired on TOH, but response equivocation had no effecton performance. The LF group, however, were impaired on the working memory task. Forthetemporal patients, only therightlesion group wereimpaired on TOH, but specifically on the dissimilar problems. This group were also i.
Detection of Intratumoral Calcification in Oligodendrogliomas by Susceptibility-Weighted MR Imaging

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: SWI is a unique pulse sequence sensitive to both hemorrhage and calcification. Our aim was to retrospectively assess the ability of SWI to detect intratumoral calcification in ODs compared with conventional MR imaging. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using CT as criterion standard, the MR imaging findings from 71 patients (33 males, 38 females; mean age, 42.5 years) with pathologically proved OD were retrospectively evaluated. We classified the MR imaging data into SWI data (MRSWI) and traditional pulse sequences (MRnoSWI). The sensitivity and specificity of the MRnoSWI (n = 71) were compared with that of the MRSWI (n = 13) independently and also for matched-paired data (n = 13). The Fisher exact test was applied to the matched-pair data for statistical evaluation. RESULTS: For paired data of MRSWI and MRnoSWI (n = 13), there was significantly increased sensitivity of MRSWI (86%) for the detection of intratumoral calcification in OD compared with the MRnoSWI (14.3%) (P = .015, Fisher exact test) by using CT as the criterion standard. The overall accuracy of MRSWI for the paired data was also significantly greater (P = .048). The specificities were not significantly different (P = .773). The sensitivity of MRSWI (n = 13) was 86%, and for MRnoSWI (n = 71), it was 33.3%. Specificity of MRSWI was 83%, and for MRnoSWI, it was 95%. CONCLUSIONS: SWI is better able to detect calcification in ODs than conventional MR imaging pulse sequences.
Linking Brainwaves to the Brain: An ERP Primer

This article reviews literature on the characteristics and possible interpretations of the event-related potential (ERP) peaks commonly identified in research. The description of each peak includes typical latencies, cortical distributions, and possible brain sources of observed activity as well as the evoking paradigms and underlying psychological processes. The review is intended to serve as a tutorial for general readers interested in neuropsychological research and as a reference source for researchers using ERP techniques.
Bacterial growth in an in vitro system simulating conditions in the urinary bladder.

IN bacterial cystitis, in which infection is confined to the bladder, the infected urine is diluted by fresh urine entering from the ureters. If the volume of urine remaining after micturition is sufficiently small, this dilution will cause the concentration of organisms to fall despite their continued multiplication. As the bladder fills, however, the dilution effect of ureteric urine, added at a constant rate, progressively declines, so that the concentration of organisms falls less and less rapidly and ultimately increases again. This suggests that if the bladder is emptied very frequently-that is, at shorter intervals than required for the fall in concentration to be reversed-progressive reduction of bacterial concentration in the bladder urine should be obtained. The magnitude of this progressive dilution effect can be calculated for idealised conditions of bacterial multiplication and mixing (O'Grady and Cattell, 1966) and results corresponding with these predictions have been obtained in some patients. There are several important factors-notably change in growth rate as the bacterial population approaches its maximum (or climax), and imperfect mixingwhich have not so far been successfully incorporated in calculations. To assess the possible importance of these and other factors in causing the deviations from prediction encountered in some patients, we have measured bacterial growth in an in vitro system simulating various possible conditions in the urinary bladder.
Predictable Performance for Unpredictable Workloads

This paper introduces Crescando: a scalable, distributed relational table implementation designed to perform large numbers of queries and updates with guaranteed access latency and data freshness. To this end, Crescando leverages a number of modern query processing techniques and hardware trends. Specifically, Crescando is based on parallel, collaborative scans in main memory and so-called "query-data" joins known from data-stream processing. While the proposed approach is not always optimal for a given workload, it provides latency and freshness guarantees for all workloads. Thus, Crescando is particularly attractive if the workload is unknown, changing, or involves many different queries. This paper describes the design, algorithms, and implementation of a Crescando storage node, and assesses its performance on modern multi-core hardware.
Distinct Effects of Monophosphoryl Lipid A, Oligodeoxynucleotide CpG, and Combination Adjuvants on Modulating Innate and Adaptive Immune Responses to Influenza Vaccination

Monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL) and oligodeoxynucleotide CpG are toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 and 9 agonist, respectively. Here, we investigated the effects of MPL, CpG, and combination adjuvants on stimulating in vitro dendritic cells (DCs), in vivo innate and adaptive immune responses, and protective efficacy of influenza vaccination. Combination of MPL and CpG was found to exhibit distinct effects on stimulating DCs in vitro to secrete IL-12p70 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and proliferate allogeneic CD8 T cells. Prime immunization of mice with inactivated split influenza vaccine in the presence of low dose MPL+CpG adjuvants increased the induction of virus-specific IgG and IgG2a isotype antibodies. MPL and CpG adjuvants contribute to improving the efficacy of prime influenza vaccination against lethal influenza challenge as determined by body weight monitoring, lung function, viral titers, and histology. A combination of MPL and CpG adjuvants was effective in improving vaccine efficacy as well as in reducing inflammatory immune responses locally and in inducing cellular immune responses upon lethal influenza virus challenge. This study demonstrates unique adjuvant effects of MPL, CpG, and combination adjuvants on modulating innate and adaptive immune responses to influenza prime vaccination.
A vision of social justice in intergroup dialogue

Intergroup dialogues (IGD) – face-to-face, structured interactions between people of different social identities – is one educational intervention used to foster engagement across differences and to promote social justice. Using an 18-month case study methodology, we examined the experiences of IGD students and facilitators at one campus to gain a deeper understanding of what happens in IGD, specifically how social justice is understood and cultivated. Findings suggest that the primacy and limitations of individual experience, the tension facilitators experience about stepping in to dialogue, and the confounding nature of comfort in IGD contribute to a dialogue experience that better addresses some aspects of social justice than others.
The Political Economy of Technoscience: An Emerging Research Agenda

This short essay presents the case for a renewed research agenda in STS focused on the political economy of technoscience. This research agenda is based on the claim that STS needs to take account of contemporary economic and financial processes and how they shape and are shaped by technoscience. This necessitates understanding how these processes might impact on science, technology and innovation, rather than turning an STS gaze on the economy.
Uncovering Task Based Behavioral Heterogeneities in Online Search Behavior

While a major share of prior work have considered search sessions as the focal unit of analysis for seeking behavioral insights, search tasks are emerging as a competing perspective in this space. In the current work, we quantify user search task behavior for both single- as well as multi-task search sessions and relate it to tasks and topics. Specifically, we analyze user-disposition, topic and user-interest level heterogeneities that are prevalent in search task behavior. Our results show that while search multi-tasking is a common phenomenon among the search engine users, the extent and choice of multi-tasking topics vary significantly across users. We find that not only do users have varying propensities to multi-task, they also search for distinct topics across single-task and multi-task sessions. To our knowledge, this is among the first studies to fully characterize online search tasks with a focus on user- and topic-level differences that are observable from search sessions.
The ACTIVE cognitive training trial and health-related quality of life: protection that lasts for 5 years.

OBJECTIVE We evaluated the ability of the three cognitive training interventions (memory, reasoning, or speed of processing) fielded in the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) multisite randomized controlled trial to protect against two thresholds of extensive decline in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) at 2 and 5 years post-training. METHOD Adults aged 65 years or older (2802) were enrolled and randomized to three cognitive interventions or a no-contact control group. Data on 1804 participants were available at both the 2- and 5-year follow-ups. HRQoL was measured by the eight MOS 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36) scales. Clinically relevant decline on each scale was defined as a drop of > or = 0.5 standard deviations from baseline. Extensive HRQoL decline was defined as clinically relevant drops on (i) > or = 4 SF-36 scales, and (ii) > or = 3 SF-36 scales, and was assessed using multiple logistic regressions, weighted to adjust for potential attrition bias. Results. At 2 years post-training, 23.7% and 36.6% had clinically relevant drops on > or = 4 and > or = 3 SF-36 scales, respectively. At 5 years post-training, 32.9% and 47.3% had clinically relevant drops on > or = 4 and > or = 3 SF-36 scales, respectively. Participants in the speed of processing intervention arm were significantly less likely to have extensive HRQoL decline compared to participants in the control group regardless of the threshold or time period, whereas participants in the memory and reasoning intervention arms were significantly less like to have extensive HRQoL decline only at 5 years post-training and only at the lower threshold. Conclusion. The effect of the speed of processing intervention was stronger and evident earlier than those for the memory and reasoning interventions. This result stems from the speed of processing intervention being the most procedural intervention, operating through sensory-motor elaboration and repetition, bringing about a broader pattern of regional brain activation. At 5 years post-training, however, all three interventions were successful in protecting against a lower threshold of age-related extensive declines in HRQoL.
Resource allocation using a reverse iterative combinatorial auction for device-to-device underlay cellular networks

An innovative auction-based allocation scheme is proposed to improve the performance of device-to-device (D2D) communications as an underlay in the downlink (DL) cellular networks. To optimize the system sum rate over the resource sharing of both D2D and cellular modes, we introduce a reverse iterative combinatorial auction as the allocation mechanism. In the auction, all the spectrum resources are considered as a set of resource units, which compete to obtain business as bidders while packages of D2D pairs are auctioned off as goods in each auction round. We first formulate the valuation of each resource unit for packages of D2D links. And then a detailed non-monotonic descending price auction algorithm is explained. Further, we prove that the proposed scheme is cheat-proof, converges in a finite number of iteration rounds, and has lower complexity compared to a traditional combinatorial allocation. The simulation results demonstrate that the algorithm efficiently leads to a good performance on the system sum rate.
New tools for teaching and learning: Connecting literacy and technology in a second‐grade classroom

Abstract The purpose of this article is to discuss the ways in which technology has changed my literacy teaching. As a second‐grade teacher, I have found the integration of technology into my literacy curriculum, as both motivating and engaging for my students. This article begins with a discussion of the many technology projects I now use with my students. I then discuss the lessons I have learned through integrating technology, especially the Internet, into my teaching. Additionally, through my learning experiences, I offer advice to others who are considering ways in which to integrate technology. Finally, I raise a number of questions that I have pondered, as technology has become so prevalent in my classroom as well as in schools and society.
Spinal muscular atrophy: state-of-the-art and therapeutic perspectives

Proximal spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a common autosomal recessive disorder in humans caused by degeneration of alpha motor neurons in the anterior horns of the spinal cord. This affects voluntary movements, leading to muscle weakness and atrophy. SMA is caused by homozygous deletions/mutations in the survival motor neuron gene 1 (SMN1). The severity of the phenotype is modulated by the copy number of SMN2 and by other yet unknown factors. SMN2 is affected by a critical non-translational nucleotide exchange in exon 7 that disrupts an exonic splicing enhancer. In consequence SMN2 produces mainly alternatively spliced mRNA that lacks exon 7. Trans -activating factors such as Htra2- g 1, as well as various drugs like sodium butyrate or aclarubicin, are able to restore the fulllength SMN2 RNA to large amounts. Since each SMA patient carries at least one SMN2 copy, reconstitution of full-length SMN2 protein is an exciting strategy for somatic gene therapy in SMA patients.
The language of threats

Whether or not a message is a threat will usually depend upon several factors , such as the intent of the speaker, the understanding of the hearer, and the context of the utterance. This paper examines how the language and the context combine to determine the degree of threat and the degree of lawfulness or otherwise in an utterance. However, because the interaction of language and context is inherently and ultimately unpredictable, it is surprisingly - if not impossibly - difficult to construct a context-independent definition of ' threat'.
Greedy Heuristics for Integer Programming with Non-negative Data

We give a worst case analysis for two greedy heuristics for the integer programming problem minimize cz, Az > b, 0 < z < u, z integer, where the entries in A, b, and c are all non-negative. The first heuristic is for the case where the entries in A and 6 are integral, the second only assumes the rows are scaled so that the smallest nonzero entry is at least 1. In both cases we compare the ratio of the value of the greedy solution to that of the integer optimal. The error bound grows logarithmically in the maximum column sum of A for both heuristics. Accession For NTIS RA&I DTIC TAB Unannounced !
VegaBench: A Benchmark Tool for Grid System Software

This paper presents VegaBench, a benchmark tool, and its methodology of evaluation for service oriented grid system software. The aim of the VegaBench is to bring forth a set of benchmarks for both end users and the system software developers to measure grid system software. In order to do this in an organized and flexible way, we provide some interaction-intensive test cases as well as a framework which can manage the execution of test cases and support customizing test cases by users. Additionally, we present the quality-of-service (QoS) based metrics. This paper also describes some experiments on different grid system software with VegaBench. The result comparison and analysis are also provided which demonstrate the effectiveness of VegaBench
Understanding del.icio.us Tag Choice Using Simulations

Understanding how users choose tags can help researchers better understand how tagging systems can be used and how to design better tagging systems for the future. We developed a simulation of del.icio. us, a popular social bookmarking tool, that allowed us to simulate users choosing tags using one of four possible strategies for tag choice found in the literature. We then compared the resulting tag choices with empirical data retrieved from del.icio. us to determine which tag choice strategies would result in choices most similar to those seen in the real world. We were able to rule out three of the strategies as unlikely to be the primary means by which tags are chosen on del.icio. us.