Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Manipulation of Lactococcus lactis by Using Targeted Group II Introns: Generation of Stable Insertions without Selection

ABSTRACT Despite their commercial importance, there are relatively few facile methods for genomic manipulation of the lactic acid bacteria. Here, the lactococcal group II intron, Ll.ltrB, was targeted to insert efficiently into genes encoding malate decarboxylase (mleS) and tetracycline resistance (tetM) within the Lactococcus lactis genome. Integrants were readily identified and maintained in the absence of a selectable marker. Since splicing of the Ll.ltrB intron depends on the intron-encoded protein, targeted invasion with an intron lacking the intron open reading frame disrupted TetM and MleS function, and MleS activity could be partially restored by expressing the intron-encoded protein in trans. Restoration of splicing from intron variants lacking the intron-encoded protein illustrates how targeted group II introns could be used for conditional expression of any gene. Furthermore, the modified Ll.ltrB intron was used to separately deliver a phage resistance gene (abiD) and a tetracycline resistance marker (tetM) into mleS, without the need for selection to drive the integration or to maintain the integrant. Our findings demonstrate the utility of targeted group II introns as a potential food-grade mechanism for delivery of industrially important traits into the genomes of lactococci.
Components of oviduct physiology in eutherian mammals

Recalling the evolutionary sequence of development first of gonad and subsequently of oviducts, ovarian endocrine regulation of all known components of oviduct physiology is reviewed. Ovaries not only influence oviducts via the systemic blood circulation, but also locally by counter‐current transfer of relatively high concentrations of steroid hormones and prostaglandins between the ovarian vein and oviduct branch of the ovarian artery. The efficiency and impact of such counter‐current transfer is greatest around the time of ovulation, the transfer process receiving further inputs from hormones present in peritoneal fluid. Classical oviduct physiology is summarised, and the potential molecular consequences of temperature gradients within the duct lumen examined.
Internationalising the Content of Higher Education

Internationalisation of higher education is a current theme in research and politics of higher education. The theme in this paper is related to present developments and concerns of the growing border-crossing activities that take place between nations and their systems of Higher Education. Higher education is expected to be grounded in research, research to be an international activity, and the universities to have an international orientation also in their education of students. The dominant discourse on internationalisation of higher education in research and research based discussions have up till now mainly been from political, economic and organisational perspectives. There is also a tendency to place internationalisation within the frame of globalisation and the increasing trade in educational services worldwide. We do not dispute that this research is helpful to clarify some main political and economic conditions for and ways of organising higher education. However, the research does not give much basis for internationalising the teaching and learning and development of scholarship. There is lack of development of internationalisation in higher education when it comes to teaching and learning intercultural knowledge and competencies, and development of scholarship. There is a need of addressing questions about the internationalising of the content of education. Both at national and institutional levels, in many countries, internationalisation is stated to be an educational goal, sometimes discussed as a homogenization process, sometimes emphasizing a pluralistic process, multiculturalism and multiligualism. In some previous studies we have found that the didactical realisation of internationalisation as an educational goal is very elusive. The concrete content considered to represent internationalisation seems to be rather haphazardly included in teaching and learning. There is also a tendency to look at what is considered to be general knowledge and general human qualities as what represents internationalisation without considering cultural differences. In higher education there is no institutionalised educational and didactic thinking as a basis for developing internationalisation of the education. The concrete thinking is very much restricted to organisational and administrative aspects of the education. The thinking about educational content and learning outcomes is much idealised and general and not developed into clarifying and useful specifications. In this paper we present and discuss some conditions for an educational didactic framework and approach to internationalisation of higher education. (Less)
Transcoelomic spread and metastasis of a squamous cell carcinoma of presumed pancreatic duct origin in a cat

Abstract CASE HISTORY: A 13-year-old female spayed domestic shorthaired cat was examined because of lethargy, inappetance and weight loss. CLINICAL FINDINGS: No clinically significant haematological or biochemical abnormalities were detected, but an abdominal mass was palpated. Abdominal examination using ultrasonography revealed soft tissue masses in the cranial abdomen, involving the spleen, as well as the liver and abdominal wall; the pancreas was not identified. Despite supportive therapy the condition of the cat rapidly deteriorated and euthanasia was performed. PATHOLOGICAL FINDINGS: Cytological preparations from the cranial abdominal mass revealed a population of pleomorphic epithelial cells consistent with a squamous cell carcinoma. On post-mortem examination, firm creamy white to yellow nodular masses were present in the region of the pancreatic left limb, spleen, liver, diaphragm, right abdominal wall and in the left lung. Sections of all masses were examined histopathologically and demonstrated infiltration by neoplastic epithelial cells indicative of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). DIAGNOSIS: Squamous cell carcinoma of presumed pancreatic duct origin. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: There are few reports of haematogenous or lymphatic metastasis of SCC in cats, and none reporting transcoelomic spread. This report describes the clinical and pathological features of a case of presumed primary pancreatic ductal SCC, and should alert veterinarians to the potential for metastasis and carcinomatosis.
The Role of Monitored Natural Recovery in Sediment Remediation

Abstract The long-term goal of monitored natural recovery (MNR) is to achieve ecological recovery of biological endpoints in order to protect human and ecological health. Insofar as ecological recovery is affected by surface-sediment–contaminant concentrations, the primary recovery processes for MNR are natural sediment burial and contaminant transformation and weathering to less toxic forms. This paper discusses the overall approach for effective implementation of MNR for contaminated sediment sites. Several lines of evidence that may be used to demonstrate natural recovery processes are summarized, including documentation of source control; evidence of contaminant burial; measurement of surface sediment mixing depths and the active sediment benthic layer; measurement of sediment stability; contaminant transformation and weathering; modeling sediment transport, contaminant transport, and ecological recovery; measuring ecological recovery and long-term risk reduction; knowledge of future plans for use and development of the site; and watershed and institutional controls. In general, some form of natural recovery is expected and should be included as part of a remedy at virtually all contaminated sediment sites. Further, MNR investigations and an understanding of natural recovery processes provide cost-effective information and support the evaluation of more aggressive remedies such as capping, dredging, and the use of novel amendments. The risk of dredging or capping may be greater than the risk of leaving sediments in place at sites where capping or dredging offer little long-term environmental gain but pose significant short-term risks for workers, local communities, and the environment.
Evaluation of Multipath, Unipath and Hybrid Routing Protocols for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) is a well known communication which includes communication between moving vehicles on the roads. VANET can be formed either using using existing infractructure or without preexisting infrastructure. With the VANET we can provide various kind of information to the vehicles for their safety and need. Routing protocols in VANET plays a very important role since many challenges like high speed, mobility, etc occurs within it. In this paper, an attempt is made to create realistic environment for the performance analysis of multipath, Unipath and hybrid routing protocol in city scenarios. The protocols evaluated are Ad hoc On demand Distance Vector (AODV), Ad-hoc On-demand Multipath Distance Vector Routing (AOMDV) and Destination Sequence Distance Vector (DSDV). All the three protocols are having their own specifications. In simulation, maps are used to model topology using traffic simulator and then vehicles with different parameter like length, maximum speed and acceleration etc. run on these topologies. The performance parameters evaluated in this paper are packet delivery ratio and end to end delay for the above said prototcols.
A more tolerant design of 3-dB adiabatic couplers

A more tolerant design of 3-dB adiabatic couplers is proposed. In this design a central region is added to the structure of the conventional cross-coupler. The waveguides of the central region are linearly tapered in both width and separation. Numerical computations of the proposed design show the possibility of five-fold increase in the fabrication tolerance compared to the conventional design.
Physiology after pediatric splenic injury.

BACKGROUND The splenic injury computed tomographic (CT) grade is used to guide nonoperative management. A study was conducted to determine whether this grade correlates with patient physiology. METHODS Records of consecutive children with isolated spleen injuries were reviewed. Vital signs, fluids administered, urine output, and hematocrit values from the scene through 120 hours after admission were retrieved. A blinded radiologist reviewed CT scans. Statistical analyses were conducted to test for a linear relationship between injury grade and physiologic parameters. RESULTS Eighty-two patients with isolated splenic injuries and available CT scans were located. CT injury grade correlated directly with pulse, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure and inversely with hematocrit. No correlation was found with pulse pressure, urine output, or maximum temperature. CONCLUSION The CT grade of splenic injury correlates directly with pulse, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure and inversely with hematocrit. CT injury grade correlates with physiologic impact and may guide management decisions.
Stochastic optimal control of state constrained systems

In this article we consider the problem of stochastic optimal control in continuous-time and state-action space of systems with state constraints. These systems typically appear in the area of robotics, where hard obstacles constrain the state space of the robot. A common approach is to solve the problem locally using a linear-quadratic Gaussian (LQG) method. We take a different approach and apply path integral control as introduced by Kappen (Kappen, H.J. (2005a), ‘Path Integrals and Symmetry Breaking for Optimal Control Theory’, Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2005, P11011; Kappen, H.J. (2005b), ‘Linear Theory for Control of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems’, Physical Review Letters, 95, 200201). We use hybrid Monte Carlo sampling to infer the control. We introduce an adaptive time discretisation scheme for the simulation of the controlled dynamics. We demonstrate our approach on two examples, a simple particle in a halfspace and a more complex two-joint manipulator, and we show that in a high noise regime our approach outperforms the iterative LQG method.
GROWTH INDICES AND PRODUCTIVITY IN SUGARCANE

A knowledge about the temporal development of agronomic variables in sugarcane is a very important aspect for the development of crop yield prediction models using remote sensing, and further studies are still needed. This paper describes the temporal evolution of sugarcane biophysical parameters, such as total biomass, leaf area index, number of plants per meter, and productivity. During two seasons, a commercial field in Araras/SP, planted with variety SP80-1842, on the 4 and 5 cuts, was monitored on eight different dates, and data were obtained for 2 m of sugarcane in three crop rows at 18 sampling points. Linear and multiple regression analyses were used to study growth analysis and to correlate agronomic variables (leaf area index and number of plants per meter) with biomass and productivity. Gompertz model, a sigmoidal curve, was the best adjustment curve for total biomass and yield in relation to days after cutting (r = 0.8987 and r = 0.9682, respectively); number of plants and leaf area index showed best fit with a cubic exponential model and a quadratic exponential model, respectively. Total biomass and cane productivity were well correlated with LAI in the first two stages of the sugarcane cycle using linear regression. At the end of the cycle, total biomass and cane productivity were more related to number of plants, and lower r values than in other stages were obtained by the models.
Production , Manufacturing and Logistics A real-time methodology for minimizing mean flowtime in FMSs with routing flexibility : Threshold-based alternate routing

This paper presents an efficient continuous real-time routing strategy, namely threshold-based alternate routing (TAR), to minimize mean flowtime of parts in a FMS with routing flexibility. TAR routes parts to alternate machines instead of their primary machines when the benefit in terms of waiting time obtained from routing to an alternate machine exceeds a pre-determined threshold value. This study proposes that the threshold value for each manufacturing system is unique and presents a methodology for determining its unique value. The threshold concept and the performance of TAR in minimizing mean flowtime are tested with extensive experimentation, involving intricate experimental design. TAR provides very significant improvements in system performance measures compared to other real-time rerouting methods and shows that the threshold value is unique and dependent on system parameters for each manufacturing system. The relationship between the threshold value and system parameters has also been determined. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Task replication and control for highly parallel in-memory stores

The computing world has made significant investments and developments around the von Neumann architecture. This means that applications have been highly tuned to the CPU-based server, which may not be the best platform for some applications. In this paper, we examine a class of large-scale, data-intensive applications by first abstracting away the architectural details to the essential operations. By doing this, we can study the intrinsic behavior and requirements of these applications and then find the hardware architecture that can implement the required operations most efficiently. Data-intensive applications require the execution of several tasks to complete specific functions. Even though, in many cases, there is a certain degree of parallelization that is achieved through multi-threading processes on one or more cores, memory contention and architectural constraints limit the amount of work that can be done in a concurrent fashion. Using an alternative consumer-producer paradigm, this work presents the analysis of the performance of a particular type of data-intensive applications (key-value stores) under different traffic patterns. We replicate diverse stages and components of the process, and the control of the system is altered to eliminate idle times. Results show that very simple hardware modules can perform more efficiently than current solutions. Specific combinations of features and replication of tasks are as much as one order of magnitude faster than the baseline (traditional commodity servers).
Gas dynamics of the pulsed emission of a perfect gas with applications to laser sputtering and to nozzle expansion.

Particles released from a target surface by laser-pulse bombardment normally collide with each other and, as a result, exhibit three limiting categories of gas-dynamic behavior. One possibility, (a), is that the particles pass directly into unsteady adiabatic expansion (UAE), a problem for which an analytical solution already exists. Alternatively, (b), the particles first form a Knudsen layer (KL), then pass into UAE, and are not subject to recondensing at the target surface if the release pulse terminates, or else, (c), the particles go through the same sequence of KL formation and UAE but are subject to recondensing
Simple and rapid method for disruption of bacteria for protein studies

A simple and rapid method was developed for the extraction of proteins from both pathogenic and nonpathogenic bacteria. The method involves the treatment of cells with acetone followed by sodium dodecyl sulfate extraction of cellular proteins. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis revealed that the protein composition of extracts made by this method was comparable to that of extracts made by established methods, namely, sonication and agitation with beads. This technique has been successfully applied to the extraction of proteins from a wide variety of bacteria, including pathogens.
Fluctuation and transport reduction in a reversed field pinch by inductive poloidal current drive.

An auxiliary poloidal inductive electric field applied to a reserved field pinch plasma reduces the current density gradient, slows the growth of [ital m]=1 tearing fluctuations, suppresses their associated sawteeth, and doubles the energy confinement time. Small sawteeth occur in the improved state but with [ital m]=0 precursors. By requiring a change of toroidal flux embedding the plasma, inductive poloidal current profile drive is transient, but the improvement encourges the program of reversed field pinch transport suppression using current profile control.
Exposure to Solute Stress Affects Genome-Wide Expression but Not the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon-Degrading Activity of Sphingomonas sp. Strain LH128 in Biofilms

ABSTRACT Members of the genus Sphingomonas are important catalysts for removal of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil, but their activity can be affected by various stress factors. This study examines the physiological and genome-wide transcription response of the phenanthrene-degrading Sphingomonas sp. strain LH128 in biofilms to solute stress (invoked by 450 mM NaCl solution), either as an acute (4-h) or a chronic (3-day) exposure. The degree of membrane fatty acid saturation was increased as a response to chronic stress. Oxygen consumption in the biofilms and phenanthrene mineralization activities of biofilm cells were, however, not significantly affected after imposing either acute or chronic stress. This finding was in agreement with the transcriptomic data, since genes involved in PAH degradation were not differentially expressed in stressed conditions compared to nonstressed conditions. The transcriptomic data suggest that LH128 adapts to NaCl stress by (i) increasing the expression of genes coping with osmolytic and ionic stress such as biosynthesis of compatible solutes and regulation of ion homeostasis, (ii) increasing the expression of genes involved in general stress response, (iii) changing the expression of general and specific regulatory functions, and (iv) decreasing the expression of protein synthesis such as proteins involved in motility. Differences in gene expression between cells under acute and chronic stress suggest that LH128 goes through changes in genome-wide expression to fully adapt to NaCl stress, without significantly changing phenanthrene degrading activity.
Framing Contests and Cumulation in Institutional Emergence: The Case of the Diesel Particulate Filter in Germany

Based on an in-depth case study, this paper examines how framing contests between proponents and opponents of the Diesel particulate filter (DPF) in Germany evolve over time to affect institution creation. Our results suggest that the emergence of institution passes through three cumulative phases: necessary opening, organizing-mobilizing, instrumentalization of channels. This development is characterized by specific framing contests where the precedent phase is a necessary condition for the next to occur, a process which we conceptualize as cumulation. Our data indicate that framing contests were resolved when collective action frames which have a motivational task were crafted by the social movement with the effect of mobilizing customers, thereby creating a de facto standard i.e. the Diesel particulate filter. We argue that the motivational frame resonated because it features negative individualized evidence-based consequences and because it built on the framing contests of previous phases. Finally, we observed that framing contests tend to polarize over time, thereby reflecting the intensity of the conflict.
Immigration, public opinion and the recession in Europe

It is widely believed that the recent recession has soured public attitudes towards immigration. But most existing studies are cross-sectional and can shed little light on the economy-wide forces that shift public opinion on immigration. In this paper I use the six rounds of the European Social Survey (2002-2012) to test the effects of macro-level shocks on immigration opinion for 20 countries. For Europe as a whole the shifts in opinion have been remarkably mild but with differences between countries that reflect the severity of the recession. Pro-immigration opinion is negatively related to the share of immigrants in the population and to the share of social benefits in GDP, but only weakly to unemployment. These effects are common across different socioeconomic groups and there is little evidence of divergence in opinion. The continuing rise in support for right wing populist parties during the recession owes more to growing Euro-scepticism than to a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment.
Do restrictive asylum and visa policies increase irregular migration into Europe?

This article investigates the extent to which restrictive asylum and visa policies trigger an unintended behavioural response of potential and rejected asylum seekers. Based on our analysis of bilateral asylum and visa policies on migrant flows to 29 European states in the 2000s, we find evidence of a significant deflection into irregularity at work. Our estimates suggest that a 10% increase in asylum rejections raises the number of irregular migrants by on average 2% to 4%, and similarly, a 10% increase in short-stay visa rejections leads to a 4% to 7% increase in irregular border entries. We identify significant nuances in the impact of restrictive asylum and visa policies on the number of apprehensions ‘at the border’ versus ‘on territory’.
Productivity-Enhancing Demand Shocks: Evidence from the U.S. Ethanol Boom

This paper examines the effect of demand on productivity. We exploit the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as a natural experiment which generated plausibly exogenous variation in the capacity of ethanol plants to establish the causal effect of demand on productivity within the corn sector. Using physical output productivity measures we show that the demand shock caused firms to increase productivity by 35% and provide evidence that this was driven by demand altering final goods’ prices which spurred technology adoption. This finding cannot be explained by reallocation effects and is robust to a barrage of robustness, falsification, and placebo tests.