Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bile‐induced ‘pili’ in Campylobacter jejuni are bacteria‐independent artifacts of the culture medium

In 1996, it was reported that the enteric pathogen Campylobacter jejuni produces pilus‐like appendages in response to bile salts such as deoxycholate (DOC), and that the formation of these appendages requires the putative peptidase PspA. Pili were known to be important virulence determinants in other pathogenic bacteria but had never before been observed for C. jejuni. We report here that these appendages are not pili, but are instead a bacteria‐independent morphological artifact of the growth medium. Furthermore, the pspA gene is not required for their formation. Broth cultures containing a threshold concentration of DOC inoculated with no bacteria produced identical abundant, fibrous, pilus‐like structures as those cultures that had been inoculated with C. jejuni. These fibres were also found in growth media from DOC‐containing pspA::CmR mutant cultures. These results are consistent with the absence of candidate pilin monomers in protein gel analyses as well as the dearth of pilin‐like genes and pilus formation gene clusters in the C. jejuni genome.
Indexes of structural reform in Latin America

Abstract This paper is an attempt to quantify the process of structural reform in Latin America in five areas: trade reform, financial liberalization, tax reform, liberalization of external capital transactions and privatization. It presents indexes for these five areas for 17 countries for the period 1970-1995. The resulting indexes permit one to make comparisons of the degree of reform across countries over time and to examine in a quantitative way the impact of these reforms. The indexes show that the reform process has not been uniform across time, country, or area of reform. The reforms started in the 1970s in the Southern Cone stopped or even reversed after the debt crisis of 1982-1985, but spread to the rest of the region after 1985. Trade reform and domestic financial liberalization were the first components to be widely adopted with eleven countries reaching a level of 85% of the most liberalized by 1990, and all but one of the rest reaching that level by 1995. The period after 1990 witnessed a very significant opening of the capital account. By 1995 there was widespread agreement and policy convergence in these three areas of reform. However, there is much less convergence and more variance in the indexes of privatization and tax reform. With respect to privatization, there have been significant sales of government enterprises in a number of countries, but the overall change in the regional index is still quite small. Partly that is because the government enterprise sector is small in quite a large number of countries, and partly it is because of the continuation or even the expansion of big state-owned enterprise in mining and petroleum in a few countries. With respect to tax reform, only seven of our countries reached the reform threshold that we set. Mainly we suspect that this is due to the conflicting goals of tax neutrality and equity, but it may also reflect differences in the size of the government sector as well.
On Approximation of Orientation Distributions by Means of Spherical Ridgelets

Visualization and analysis of the micro-architecture of brain parenchyma by means of magnetic resonance imaging is nowadays believed to be one of the most powerful tools used for the assessment of various cerebral conditions as well as for understanding the intracerebral connectivity. Unfortunately, the conventional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) used for estimating the local orientations of neural fibers is incapable of performing reliably in the situations when a voxel of interest accommodates multiple fiber tracts. In this case, a much more accurate analysis is possible using the high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) that represents local diffusion by its apparent coefficients measured as a discrete function of spatial orientations. In this note, a novel approach to enhancing and modeling the HARDI signals using multiresolution bases of spherical ridgelets is presented. In addition to its desirable properties of being adaptive, sparsifying, and efficiently computable, the proposed modeling leads to analytical computation of the orientation distribution functions associated with the measured diffusion, thereby providing a fast and robust analytical solution for q-ball imaging.
Cannabinoid structure-activity relationships: correlation of receptor binding and in vivo activities.

Although a receptor exists for cannabinoid drugs, it is uncertain which pharmacological actions this receptor mediates. This structure-activity relationship investigation was initiated to determine which effects might correspond to binding affinity for the cannabinoid receptor, as well as to explore the binding requirements of this site. The ability of nearly 60 cannabinoids to displace [3H]CP-55,940 [(-)-3-[2-hydroxy-4-(1,1-dimethylheptyl) phenyl]-4-[3-hydroxy propyl] cyclohexan-1-ol] was determined before establishing correlations between receptor affinity and in vivo pharmacological potency. Analysis of [3H]CP-55,940 binding indicated a Hill coefficient of 0.97, a Bmax of 499 pM (3.3 pmol/mg of protein) and an apparent Kd of 924 pM. Closer inspection indicated the binding assay exhibited "zone B" characteristics, and use of correction equations indicated a true Kd for CP-55,940 of 675 pM. The structure-activity relationship indicated the importance of side chain structure to high-affinity binding, with the most potent analogs (K1 < 10 nM) possessing either a dimethylheptyl side-chain, a similarly complex branched side chain or a halogen substituent at the 5' position. Comparative analysis of K1 values to in vivo potency in a mouse model indicated a high degree of correlation between parameters for the depression of spontaneous locomotor activity (r = 0.91) and for the production of antinociception (r = 0.90), hypothermia (r = 0.89) and catalepsy (r = 0.85). Similarly high correlations were demonstrated between binding affinity and in vivo potency in both the rat drug discrimination model (r = 0.81) and for psychotomimetic activity in humans (r = 0.88). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A descriptive atmospheric transport climatology for the Mauna Loa Observatory, using clustered trajectories

The climatology of long-range atmospheric transport to the Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) is examined through an analysis of 10-day isobaric back trajectories for the period 1981–1988, computed using the National Meteorological Center's analyzed gridded winds. The trajectories are classified into distinct transport patterns through the use of cluster analysis, a procedure that avoids the somewhat arbitrary classification by compass sector and instead searches for meaningful groupings within the data themselves. The clustering procedure is performed separately for yearly and monthly sets of 500- and 700-hPa trajectories to examine both year-to-year and month-to-month variability in flow characteristics. The dominant transport features are quite similar from year to year, and include frequent summertime easterly flow associated with the trade winds and strong, wintertime westerly flow close to the mean axis of the subtropical jet stream. Veering westerly patterns that approach MLO from the north and northeast dominate during winter/summer transition periods. Other noteworthy features include recurring air mass transport from Saharan and Asian desert regions, infrequent interhemispheric flow from as far as 10°S, and occasional flow from high northern latitudes. Ten-day back trajectories that pass over anthropogenic pollution source regions in western North America are rare.
Perturbation to the lithosphere along the hotspot track of La Réunion from an offshore-onshore seismic transect

A 250 km long NE-SW lithospheric transect spanning the 40 km wide island of La Reunion and its submarine edifice is derived from lines of air gun shots at sea on either side, along the assumed hotspot trace. Seismic records were obtained from an array spanning the whole transect and including sea bottom and land receivers, providing a system of reversed and overlapping observations. Low seismic velocity, and hence density, is found on average for the whole edifice above the oceanic plate. We attribute high- velocity anomalies within the edifice to an intrusive core confined under the central northern quarter of the island-crossing segment. Unexpectedly, the main seismic interfaces, top and bottom of the prevolcanic crust, do not show significant flexural downwarping under the island. In addition, clear multipathing in the recorded wave field requires the presence of a body with a seismic velocity intermediate between the prevolcanic crustal material and the normal mantle. This lithospheric structure provides the first example where underplating occur's beneath an active volcanic island, suggesting a genetic relationship. The underplated body could represent residues of the evolution of primary picritic melts that yield erupted basalts. Evidence for reflectors deeper in the lithosphere may indicate further related heterogeneity. In the plate/hotspot model commonly assumed, the structural variation along the transect could be interpreted as a variation with time of the amount and physical state of underplated material.
Improving the conservation value of invertebrates through ecotourism : component A.

Invertebrates are suffering the greatest species loss in the current biodiversity crisis. These animals perform essential ecosystem functions upon which humanity depends yet they are largely ignored m conservation efforts. The malO challenges facing invertebrate conservationists, in terms of raising public awareness, are to change common negative perceptions regarding invertebrates and to apply some form of value to them. Conservation efforts can be improved by raising public awareness of, and appreciation for, invertebrates in the context of ecotourism. Current levels of inclusion of invertebrates in ecotourism activities were gauged, usmg qualitative research methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The response of tourists to the concept of the inclusion of both western/scientific and indigenous knowledge regarding invertebrates into current and planned ecotourism activities was determined using the quantitative research method of a structured questionnaire. Canvassing of tourists was done at a popular ecotourism destination (Hluhluwe-Urnfolozi Nature Reserve) and 121 questionnaires were completed. In addition to tourists the opinions and attitudes of a range of people working in ecotourism and conservation were examined via semi-structured interviews. The respondents were specifically selected according to the positions they held in the ecotourism and conservation field and a total of eight people in management, ten ecotourism guides and seven ecotourism trainers were interviewed. The findings revealed that there is currently negligible information regarding invertebrates in ecotourism activities. There was an overwhelmingly positive response from tourists, with 95% indicating that they would like to see information regarding invertebrates included in ecotourism activities. Ecotourism service providers, such as tour guides and those in conservation management also indicated a positive attitude toward the concept. There is thus potential to increase levels of information regarding invertebrates in ecotourism and it is recommended that ecotourism include a focus on invertebrates. Recommendations on how to address the lack of invertebrate information in ecotourism are provided and examples of the types of invertebrates to include in specific ecotourism activities are given. Including a focus on invertebrates in ecotourism will serve the multiple purposes of placing value on invertebrates; raising public awareness and hence the conservation status of invertebrates, and finally will increase the scope of ecotourism.
Adaptive Query Processing on RAW Data

Database systems deliver impressive performance for large classes of workloads as the result of decades of research into optimizing database engines. High performance, however, is achieved at the cost of versatility. In particular, database systems only operate efficiently over loaded data, i.e., data converted from its original raw format into the system's internal data format. At the same time, data volume continues to increase exponentially and data varies increasingly, with an escalating number of new formats. The consequence is a growing impedance mismatch between the original structures holding the data in the raw files and the structures used by query engines for efficient processing. In an ideal scenario, the query engine would seamlessly adapt itself to the data and ensure efficient query processing regardless of the input data formats, optimizing itself to each instance of a file and of a query by leveraging information available at query time. Today's systems, however, force data to adapt to the query engine during data loading. This paper proposes adapting the query engine to the formats of raw data. It presents RAW, a prototype query engine which enables querying heterogeneous data sources transparently. RAW employs Just-In-Time access paths, which efficiently couple heterogeneous raw files to the query engine and reduce the overheads of traditional general-purpose scan operators. There are, however, inherent overheads with accessing raw data directly that cannot be eliminated, such as converting the raw values. Therefore, RAW also uses column shreds, ensuring that we pay these costs only for the subsets of raw data strictly needed by a query. We use RAW in a real-world scenario and achieve a two-order of magnitude speedup against the existing hand-written solution.
The Authoritarian Reign in American Health Care

The aim of this article is to increase understanding of the mechanisms of the continuation of elite hegemonic control of a highly valued social system—American health care. White, male physicians and administrators achieved control of the health care industry and its workers, including nurses, at the start of the 20th century. Using critical theorists’ work on authoritarianism and incorporating gender analysis, the authors describe the health care system from a critical social— psychological perspective. The authors discuss the meaning and presence of authoritarian hierarchy and gender effects in today’s health system through a critical analysis of the profession of medicine, the profession of nursing, corporate and bureaucratic health care, and patients or consumers. It is concluded that the social—psychological behavior of the American health care system has profound implications that must be taken into account in any recommendations for change.
Biogenic coastal aerosol production and its influence on aerosol radiative properties

Coastal zones have been shown to provide a massive source of new, tidal-related, aerosol particles in the atmospheric boundary layer with concentrations exceeding 1,000,000 cm−3 during nucleation bursts sustained over many hours [O Dowd, 200O]. While coastal regions are very strong sources of natural aerosol particles, hithertofore, it has not been demonstrated that these particles contribute to aerosol-related radiative flux. In this brief report, evidence is presented for growth of these new particles, following tidal-related particle formation, into radiatively active particle sizes (i.e. radius>50 nm) where an increase in concentration of more than 300% can be seen. This increase of radiatively active particles concomitantly results in more than a threefold enhancement in both aerosol scattering ability (thereby influencing direct radiative flux) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) availability (thereby influencing indirect radiative flux). These results provide direct evidence for coastal biogenic emissions significantly enhancing the radiative flux potential of atmospheric aerosols.
A convex relaxation for weakly supervised classifiers

This paper introduces a general multi-class approach to weakly supervised classification. Inferring the labels and learning the parameters of the model is usually done jointly through a block-coordinate descent algorithm such as expectation-maximization (EM), which may lead to local minima. To avoid this problem, we propose a cost function based on a convex relaxation of the soft-max loss. We then propose an algorithm specifically designed to efficiently solve the corresponding semidefinite program (SDP). Empirically, our method compares favorably to standard ones on different datasets for multiple instance learning and semi-supervised learning, as well as on clustering tasks.
Privacy preserving data mining on published data in healthcare: A survey

Healthcare data is considered very significant to researchers in this field. Such information must be published with methods that keep the identity of patients hidden especially when dealing with sensitive information. Publishing such information makes it more vulnerable to attackers. As such, many techniques were proposed to preserve the privacy of healthcare data. In this paper, we illustrated a survey for the models and techniques that are used for publishing data about patients.
Obstacles in Moving to Agile Software Development methods; at a Glance

It is only less than a decade that agile SD methods were introduced and got popular steadily. The defined values in these methods and their outcomes have motivated many software producers to use these methods. Since migration from traditional sof tware development methods to agile methods is growing highly, managers of the companies should be aware of problems, hindrances and challenges they may face with during the agile transformation process. This study focused on challenges which companies may face with and it is necessary that ma nagers think about solving them. Classifying them into four main categories; organization and management, people, process and tools are the areas that challenges have been seen in recent studies.
Kinetochore structure, duplication, and distribution in mammalian cells: analysis by human autoantibodies from scleroderma patients

The specificity of the staining of CREST scleroderma patient serum was investigated by immunofluorescence and immunoelectron microscopy. The serum was found to stain the centromere region of mitotic chromosomes in many mammalian cell types by immunofluorescence. It also localized discrete spots in interphase nuclei which we have termed "presumptive kinetochores. " The number of presumptive kinetochores per cell corresponds to the chromosome number in the cell lines observed. Use of the immunoperoxidase technique to localize the antisera on PtK2 cells at the electron microscopic level revealed the specificity of the sera for the trilaminar kinetochore disks on metaphase and anaphase chromosomes. Presumptive kinetochores in the interphase nuclei were also visible in the electron microscope as randomly arranged, darkly stained spheres averaging 0.22 micrometers in diameter. Preabsorption of the antisera was attended using microtubule protein, purified tubulin, actin, and microtubule-associated proteins. None of these proteins diminished the immunofluorescence staining of the sera, indicating that the antibody-specific antigen(s) is a previously unrecognized component of the kinetochore region. In some interphase cells observed by both immunofluorescence and immunoelectron microscopy, the presumptive kinetochores appeared as double rather than single spots. Analysis of results obtained using a microspectrophotometer to quantify DNA in individual cells double stained with scleroderma serum and the DNA fluorescent dye, propidium iodide, led to the conclusion that the presumptive kinetochores duplicate in G2 of the cell cycle.
DATA MINING OVER LARGE DATASETS USING HADOOP IN CLOUD ENVIRONMENT

There is a drastic growth of data’s in the web applications and social networking and such data’s are said be as Big Data. The Hive queries with the integration of Hadoop are used to generate the report analysis for thousands of datasets. It requires huge amount of time consumption to retrieve those datasets. It lacks in performance analysis. To overcome this problem the Market Basket Analysis a very popular Data Mining Algorithm is used in Amazon cloud environment by integrating it with Hadoop Ecosystem and Hbase. The objective is to store the data persistently along with the past history of the data set and performing the report analysis of those data set. The main aim of this system is to improve performance through parallelization of various operations such as loading the data, index building and evaluating the queries. Thus the performance analysis is done with the minimum of three nodes with in the Amazon cloud environment. Hbase is a open source, non-relational and distributed database model. It runs on the top of the Hadoop. It consists of a single key with multiple values. Looping is avoided in retrieving a particular data from huge datasets and it consumes less amount of time for executing the data. HDFS file system is used to store the data after performing the map reduce operations and the execution time is decreased when the number of nodes gets increased. The performance analysis is tuned with the parameters such as the HBase Heap Memory and Caching Parameter. KeywordsHBase, Cloud computing, Hadoop ecosystem, mining algorithm
STATISTICAL APPROACH TO CHINESE-ENGLISH SPOKEN-LANGUAGE TRANSLATION IN HOTEL RESERVATION DOMAIN 1

This paper investigates a preliminary translation system from Chinese to English based on the statistical approach and tests its performance on a limited-domain spoken-language task: hotel reservation. A bilingual corpus is available for the task, which exhibits some typical phenomena of spontaneous speech. The experiments are performed on both the text transcription and the speech recognizer output. The word error rate is about 14%. Some analyses present a great potential for improving the translation quality. From the results and analyses, a broad prospect is showed on the statistical approach to the spokenlanguage translation.
Time-delay direction finding based on canonical correlation analysis [electronic warfare applications]

Direction finding is an important component of electronic warfare (EW) systems. Direction finding precision may directly affect signal sorting, recognition, location, and jamming decisions, etc. Thus, it is an urgent task to improve direction finding precision. To solve the problems of time-delay direction finding's sensitivity to interference, this paper proposes a novel technique based on canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to improve time-delay direction finding performance and completely analyzes the algorithm. The implementation of this time-delay direction finding method is simple and the computational complexity is low. The precision of direction finding by the new method is much better than that by the conventional method. Simulations show that applying CCA to time-delay direction finding is efficient and feasible.