Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Method for Early Diagnosis of Celebes Type El Tor Vibrio Carriers

Recently, Takeya and Shimodori (J. Bacteriol. 85:957, 1963) reported that every known strain of Celebes type El Tor vibrio is lysogenic and produces a characteristic temperate phage which has a very narrow host range. Further studies have revealed that 136 of 138 strains of El Tor vibrio isolated in the epidemic of the West Pacific from 1959 to 1963 were lysogenic and that all the temperate phages liberated from these strains were closely related serologically (Takeya et al., unpublished data). Therefore, the temperate phage from Celebes type El Tor vibrio has been tentatively designated as K-type phage. Our experiences during quarantine work in Japan in the 1963 epidemic showed that the detection of K-type phage from specimens is a useful method for the early diagnosis of Celebes type El Tor vibrio carriers, because one patient and seven carriers were detected by this method prior to the isolation of the vibrio. Preliminary experimental results to confirm our findings are described here. Various numbers of cells of Celebes type El Tor vibrio, strain Itazuke, were inoculated in 10 ml of alkaline peptone water (1% peptone, 0.5% NaCl, pH 8.2) containing 0.5 g of human feces, and were incubated at 37 C (Table 1). At 1-hr intervals, the culture was centrifuged and the supernatant fluid was subjected to both the ''spot test" and the plaque-count method for determining the presence of K-type phage. Vibrio comma strain H218 was used as the indicator strain. After 6 hr of incubation, the presence of K-type phage could be detected when as few as
Religious coping and psychological well-being among Iranian stroke caregivers

Background: This study aims to explore the relationship between religiosity and psychological well-being of caregivers of stroke survivors in Shiraz, Iran. Materials and Methods: A purposive sample of 96 family members, which included 34 daughters-in-law and 62 daughters, who were caring for severe impaired stroke survivors were enrolled in the study. Results: The results showed a significant correlation between positive religious coping and caregivers’ psychological well-being. Positive religious coping accounted for 7.2% of the change in psychological well-being. There was no significant association between demographic factors and caregivers’ psychological well-being. Conclusions: Our results indicated that religious and spiritual belief have a role in caregiver adaptations with the situation. Therefore, in future studies, it is suggested to concentrate on the effects of other characteristics than the demographic variables on psychological well-being.
Word Prediction via a Clustered Optimal Binary Search Tree

Word prediction methodologies depend heavily on the statistical approach that uses the unigram, bigram, and the trigram of words. However, the construction of the N-gram model requires a very large size of memory, which is beyond the capability of many existing computers. Beside this, the approximation reduces the accuracy of word prediction. In this paper, we suggest to use a cluster of computers to build an Optimal Binary Search Tree (OBST) that will be used for the statistical approach in word prediction. The OBST will contain extra links so that the bigram and the trigram of the language will be presented. In addition, we suggest the incorporation of other enhancements to achieve optimal performance of word prediction. Our experimental results showed that the suggested approach improves the keystroke saving.
Weighted autocorrelation for pitch extraction of noisy speech

In this paper, we propose a modified version of the autocorrelation pitch extraction method well known to be robust against noise. Utilizing that the average magnitude difference function (AMDF) has similar characteristics with the autocorrelation function, the autocorrelation function is weighted by the reciprocal of the AMDF. By simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed pitch extraction method is useful in noisy environments.
Are there differences in gender, race, and age regarding body dissatisfaction?

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine any differences that may exist among demographic variables such as gender, age, and race in regard to internalization of society and media messages leading to body dissatisfaction that may lead to disordered eating behaviors such as preoccupation with weight, dieting, and eating restraint. A total of 324 participants completed the demographic questionnaire, the Multidimensional Body Self Relations Questionnaire, the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire for women, the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-Revised-Male-Version for men, and Rotter’s Internal-External (I-E) Locus of Control Scale. The results of this study found, as predicted, that Caucasians reported higher internalization, higher body dissatisfaction, and higher preoccupation with weight, dieting, and eating restraint than African Americans. This study showed no differences regarding men’s and women’s internalization or body dissatisfaction but did reveal that women reported higher preoccupation with weight, dieting, and eating restraint than men. Regarding age, this study found that age did not predict internalization, body dissatisfaction, or preoccupation with weight, dieting, and eating restraint.
The Semantic Desktop-a Basis for Personal Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management software is software that integrates. Existing Data sources, process flows, application features from office appliances have to be brought together. There are different standards, consisting of data formats and communication protocols, that address this issue. The WWW and Semantic Web are designed to work on a worldwide scale and define those standards. We transfer the web standards to the desktop szenario, a vision we call Semantic Desktop – a Semantic Web enhanced desktop environment. Central is the idea of taking know-how from the Semantic Web to tackle personal information management. Existing desktop applications (email client, browser, office applications) are integrated, the semantic glue between them expressed using ontologies. We also present the www.gnowsis. org open source project by the DFKI that realizes parts of this vision. It is based on a Semantic Web Server running as desktop service. It was used in experiments and research projects and allows others to experiment. Knowledge management applications can be built on top of it, reducing the implementation cost. 1
Premature ageing of the immune system relates to increased anti‐lymphocyte antibodies (ALA) after an immunization in HIV‐1‐infected and kidney‐transplanted patients

Low‐affinity immunoglobulin (Ig)G with potential autoreactivity to lymphocytes and hypergammaglobulinaemia have been described previously in HIV‐1‐infected patients. Whether such antibodies increase after challenging the immune system, for example with an immunization, is not known. In the present study, the modulation of antibodies with low affinity and potential autoreactivity was evaluated after 2012–13 seasonal flu vaccination with a simple empirical laboratory test measuring the titres of anti‐lymphocyte antibodies (ALA) in two different models of secondary immunodeficiency: HIV‐1 vertically infected patients (HIV) and patients treated with immunosuppressive therapies after kidney transplantation (KT) compared to healthy individuals (HC). In parallel, the activation status of B cells and their degree of immune senescence was evaluated by measuring the B cell interleukin (IL)‐21R expression/plasma IL‐21 levels and the frequencies of mature‐activated (MA) and double‐negative (DN) B cells. A significant increase of ALA titres was observed after vaccination in HIV and KT but not in HC, and this correlated directly with the frequencies of both MA and DN and inversely with the B cell IL‐21R expression. This suggests that the quality of an immune response triggered by flu vaccination in HIV and KT may depend upon the activation status of B cells and on their degree of immune senescence. Further investigations are needed to verify whether high frequencies of MA and DN may also relate to increase autoimmunity after immunization in high‐risk populations.
Please Scroll down for Article International Journal of Human-computer Interaction Developing a Usability Evaluation Method for E-learning Applications: beyond Functional Usability Developing a Usability Evaluation Method for E-learning Applications: beyond Functional Usability Usability Evaluation 

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. In this article, the development of a questionnaire-based usability evaluation method for e-learning applications is described. The method extends the current practice by focusing not only on cognitive but also affective considerations that may influence e-learning usability. The method was developed according to an established methodology in HCI research and relied upon a conceptual framework that combines Web and instructional design parameters and associates them with the most prominent affective learning dimension, which is intrinsic motivation to learn. The latter is proposed as a new usability measure that is considered more appropriate to evaluate e-learning designs. Two large empirical studies were conducted in order to evaluate usability of e-learning courses offered in corporate environments. The results provide valuable evidence for reliability and validity of the method, thus providing evidence that usability practitioners can use it with confidence when evaluating the design of e-learning applications. Organizations and educational institutions have been investing in information technologies to improve education and training at an increasing rate during the last two decades. Particularly in corporate settings, continuous education and training for the human resource is critical to an organization's success. Electronic learning (e-learning) has been identified as an enabler for people and organizations The author wishes to thank all the trainees–participants in the empirical studies, as well as all the partners in the international project during pilot trial 1 and the Greek private bank (pilot trial 2) for their collaboration. 76 Zaharias and Poylymenakou to keep up with changes in the global economy. Within the context of corporate training , e-learning refers to training delivered on a computer that is designed to support individual learning or organizational performance goals (Clark & Mayer, 2003). Although e-learning is emerging as one …
Precore-mediated inhibition of hepatitis B virus progeny DNA synthesis

The capacities to induce the synthesis of hepatitis B virus (HBV) unit-length DNA were compared for two HBV DNAs with an overall sequence diversity of about 10%. They had been cloned from serum (DNA2) and from a hepatocellular carcinoma (DNA4), respectively. As a major difference, DNA4 carries a translational stop signal preventing the synthesis of precore protein. Progeny DNA yields obtained after transfection with respective pregenome transcription units allocated DNA2 to a low-replicator and DNA4 to a high-replicator phenotype. Cotransfection of DNA2 interfered with progeny DNA synthesis induced by DNA4. By mutual exchange of restriction fragments, the region on the viral genome responsible for the differing replicator phenotypes was confined to a sequence comprising the 3'-terminal part of the X gene, core promoter, encapsidation signal epsilon, precore/core gene, and 5'-terminal part of the pol gene. Point mutations in DNA2 abolishing proper expression of the precore gene strongly enhanced the yield of progeny DNA, whereas cotransfection of a precore expression plasmid with DNA4 or with the mutated DNA2 substantially lowered the amount of progeny DNA. Hence, precore expression acts as an inhibitory principle for HBV replication. The same stop mutation as in DNA4 has been found to arise frequently in virus carriers. Loss of precore expression and concomitant conversion to a more severe hepatitis, as observed in the course of a chronic infection, thus can be explained by a relaxation of replication-level control.
Natural trajectory generation for Robot-Human cooperation for sit-to-stand assistance

This paper presents a method to determine trajectory for robot that involves a close interaction between robotic systems and human beings.The proposed method considers robot trajectory as path in operational space and time rhythm distinct problems verifying the natural smoothness of voluntary human movement. Operational space path is determined experimentally as individual movement pattern. The human voluntary movement smoothness is quantified by a function: the jerk. Than, minimizing the time derivation curvilinear abscissa acceleration, we found the function of the time that defines the time rhythm along the trajectory. This method is applied on a robotic device like ”walking aid” developed in LRP to provide support during the walk and sit to stand transfer. During the verticalisation, the robot handles have to help the user to sit-to-stand more naturally as possible. Keywords—Assistive device, sit-to-stand transfer, minimum jerk, trajectory generation
Raw and rendered animal by-products as ingredients in dog diets.

Approximately 25 to 40% of the DM in premium dog diets is animal by-product. However, limited information is available regarding the composition and digestibility of these by-products, especially small intestinal digestibility. The effects of raw and rendered animal by-products incorporated into dog diets on nutrient digestion at the ileum and in the total tract were studied in this experiment. Diets fed contained various animal by-products including a rendered beef meat and bone meal (RMBM); fresh beef (FB); poultry by-product meal (PBPM); fresh poultry (FP); a plant-based control protein source, defatted soy flour (DS); and an animal-based control protein source, dehydrated whole egg (WE). The diets were extruded and kibbled. By-products varied widely in concentrations of OM, CP, amino acids, and fat. Nutrient intakes were numerically higher for FB than for all other treatments. All nutrient intakes were higher (P < .03) for the FB treatment than for the RMBM treatment. Digestibilities of DM, OM, CP, fat, and GE at the ileum were higher (P < .06) when dogs were fed diets containing FP than when fed diets containing PBPM. Amino acids were highly digestible at the ileum; however, digestibilities of all amino acids except cystine were higher (P < .04) for the diets incorporating FP vs PBPM. Total tract digestion was different among treatments for DM (P < .02), OM (P < .01), and GE (P < .02), and diets containing animal by-products were similar in total tract digestibility, greater than the DS control, and lower than the WE control. Rendering of poultry, but not beef, seemed to have a slight negative influence on small intestinal, but not total tract, digestibility by dogs.
Spatial-multiplexing phase-sweep transmit diversity (SM-PSTD) for multiantenna base stations with mobile-assisted scheduling and incremental rate feedback

Phase-sweep transmit diversity (PSTD) has been widely studied in 3G1X and Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) for its performance gain and simplicity. However, conventional PSTD systems are designed based on asingle-sweeping beam, and only one user is selected for transmission at any time. Therefore, it fails to fully exploit the available spatial degree of freedom. In this study, a novel spatial-multiplexing phase-sweep transmit diversity (SM-PSTD) scheme with partial feedback mobile-assisted scheduling is being proposed. The downlink performance (system capacity and proportional fairness) of a multiantenna base station has been its focus. The spatial-channel sweeping facilitates the multiuser selection diversity between users, while the spatial multiplexing significantly enhances the system capacity. As the number of transmit antennas n/sub T/ is increased, the SM-PSTD system performance is gradually limited by the multiuser interference because it is more and more difficult to find a set of users perfectly orthogonal within the n/sub T/ spatial channels. Yet, the multiuser interference could be reduced by increasing the number of active users K in the system. Asymptotically, at large n/sub T/ and K, it shows that the system capacity scales linearly instead of logarithmically with respect to the transmitted power.
Correlates of Trade Union Participation: A Summary of the Literature

Much that has been said seems to imply the demise or radical alteration of voluntary associations. It is therefore of first importance to realize that the problems of power are not eliminated by noble purpose. In any social system power is shared by those who are able and willing to mobilize the political, economic, psychological, and ideological resources of the community. In modern social experience this has been accomplished most effectively by the highest administrative leaders. But over-centralization can become dysfunctional. It appears that a balance can be established only if the members of the local units gather their forces and create a viable rationale for their existence. The freedom of the individual and the autonomy of the local group can never be sustained in absolute terms. According to the ideology of voluntary associations, only in a local community of individuals gathered for a common cause can the voice of the people be spoken. But it is only in wider associations of these local groups which have been gathered to mobilize the opinion of all the company, that the voice of the people will be heard. in the seventeenth century were sectarian and highly diverse in their doctrinal views the current plea of many spokesmen is for general agreement concerning "the normative phase of our history. " Cf. ibid., pp. 26, 36.
Using Creative Dramatics to Foster Conceptual Learning in a Science Enrichment Program

ii Acknowledgments . iv List of Tables . x Chapter One. Introduction . 1 Teaching Science Every Day to Every Student in Every Grade . 2 The Quest to Define Science Literacy: Landmarks in Science Education . 4 Science Literacy First Coined in Science Education . 6 Conceptual Change Models of Teaching . 6 Creative Drama as a Potential Tool for Promoting Learning in Science . 10 Purpose and Research Questions . 12 Significance of the Study . 13 Definition of Terms. 14 Chapter Two. Literature Review . 15 Introduction . 15 The Psychological Foundation of Social Constructivism . 16 Social Constructivism Applied to Education . 17 Cognition is a Product of Socialization and Social Behavior . 19 Vygotsky’s Major Themes of Social Constructivism . 20 Vygotsky’s Themes of Scaffolding, Self-Regulation and Private Speech . 22
Sliding mode control for Turbocharged Diesel Engine

For modern Diesel engines, accurate fuel-air ratio AFR and Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) rates control is important for manufacturers to face a more restrictive legislation levels. To fulfill the requirements, hardware devices such (EGR) and Variable Geometry Turbochargers (VGT) valves have been introduced, and sophisticated control algorithms were designed. The main objective of the air path controller is to regulate in the intake manifold the AFR ratio and the EGR fraction rates to their desired values. Earlier EGR PID controllers needed a fastidious and time consuming calibration step for each engine operating point. Nonlinear control algorithms has quickly appeared as a promising way to provide an efficient air path controllers, since they don't need a calibration step. The main drawback of such controllers is coming from the fact that they are based upon a diesel engine model which handles parameters uncertainties and signal measurements errors, that affects the control performance. In this paper we propose a novel control scheme for controlling the diesel engine air path. Control design is carried out under the sliding mode framework. The proposed controller has been tested on the Jankovic Tubocharged Diesel Engine (TDE) model. To demonstrate the robustness of the proposed controller, simulation results showing the tracking of the compressor flow Wc and the exhaust manifold pressure p2 variables are presented.
Successful conservative treatment of a cervical ectopic pregnancy at 13 weeks.

BACKGROUND Cervical ectopic pregnancy is a potentially life-threatening condition due to the unexpected occurrence of uncontrollable bleeding from the cervix. CASE REPORT A 39-year-old secundigravida was admitted with amenorrhea of 12 weeks and four days due to suspected cervical pregnancy, without bleeding. The ultrasonography revealed a gestational sac at the anterior wall of the isthmic-cervical part with a single viable fetus, with crown-rump length (CRL) of 59 mm and regular heart rate. The serum β-human chorionic gonadotropin (β-hCG) level on admission was 143.416 mIU/l. Two possible therapeutic options were considered, (1) systemic methotrexate treatment and (2) uterine artery embolization with gelatine sponge. The first was rejected due to gestational age, viable fetus, high β-hCG level, and CRL, and the later was rejected by the vascular surgeons due to lack of experience. The curettage was performed. After the evacuation, prostin was administered into cervix accompanied with tamponade. On the next day β-hCG level was 44.342 mIU/l and the following day ultrasonography revealed the oval non-homogenous formation in the cervical cavity (blood clots or residual trophoblastic tissue); β-hCG level was 36.501 mIU/l. The reintervention was performed on the fifth day after the curettage and 200 ml of coagulated blood was aspirated; β-hCG level was 16.432 mlU/l. Since the isthmic-cervical part was slightly dilated (23 mm) seven days after the curettage, systemic methotrexate treatment (100 mg intramuscular) was initiated. Serum β-hCG level on the second and fourth day after methotrexate were 12.553 mIU/l and 8.900 mIU/l, respectively. The second dose of 100 mg of methotrexate was administered intramuscular seven days after the first dose. Three days after, β-hCG level was 2.329 U/l and ultrasound scan revealed normal isthmic-cervical finding. CONCLUSION The present case report showed efficient fertility sparing conservative treatment, dilatation and curettage, of 13 week cervical pregnancy followed by systemic methotrexate.