Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Monoterpene Carvacrol Generates Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in the Pathogenic Fungus Candida albicans

ABSTRACT The monoterpene carvacrol, the major component of oregano and thyme oils, is known to exert potent antifungal activity against the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans. This monoterpene has been the subject of a considerable number of investigations that uncovered extensive pharmacological properties, including antifungal and antibacterial effects. However, its mechanism of action remains elusive. Here, we used integrative chemogenomic approaches, including genome-scale chemical-genetic and transcriptional profiling, to uncover the mechanism of action of carvacrol associated with its antifungal property. Our results clearly demonstrated that fungal cells require the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway to resist carvacrol. The mutants most sensitive to carvacrol in our genome-wide competitive fitness assay in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae expressed mutations of the transcription factor Hac1 and the endonuclease Ire1, which is required for Hac1 activation by removing a nonconventional intron from the 3′ region of HAC1 mRNA. Confocal fluorescence live-cell imaging revealed that carvacrol affects the morphology and the integrity of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Transcriptional profiling of pathogenic yeast C. albicans cells treated with carvacrol demonstrated a bona fide UPR transcriptional signature. Ire1 activity detected by the splicing of HAC1 mRNA in C. albicans was activated by carvacrol. Furthermore, carvacrol was found to potentiate antifungal activity of the echinocandin antifungal caspofungin and UPR inducers dithiothreitol and tunicamycin against C. albicans. This comprehensive chemogenomic investigation demonstrated that carvacrol exerts its antifungal activity by altering ER integrity, leading to ER stress and the activation of the UPR to restore protein-folding homeostasis.
Improvement of hemispatial neglect with cold-water calorics: An electrophysiological test of the arousal hypothesis of neglect

Introducing ice-water into the left ear of right-brain-damaged patients attenuates unilateral neglect symptoms. By examining EEG changes over each hemisphere during this procedure, we were able to test a hypothesis concerning the mechanism of cold-water calorics and the attention–arousal hypothesis of hemispatial neglect. We present a case study of an 83-year-old woman with a massive right-hemisphere CVA exhibiting severe hemispatial neglect. Caloric stimulation produced a leftward eye deviation to central position, and a temporary partial remission of neglect symptoms. Significant changes in EEG activation indicated a central mechanism associated with the regularization of eye gaze. Caloric stimulation also produced a significant interaction between EEG frequency band and hemisphere, indicating that while both hemispheres increased in cortical activation, the right hemisphere increase was significantly greater. This supports the activation–arousal hypothesis of neglect over the mutual inhibition model. (JINS, 1997, 3, 394–402.)
The Attentional Blink Impairs Detection and Delays Encoding of Visual Information: Evidence from Human Electrophysiology

This article explores the time course of the functional interplay between detection and encoding stages of information processing in the brain and the role they play in conscious visual perception. We employed a multitarget rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) approach and examined the electrophysiological P3 component elicited by a target terminating an RSVP sequence. Target-locked P3 activity was detected both at frontal and parietal recording sites and an independent component analysis confirmed the presence of two distinct P3 components. The posterior P3b varied with intertarget lag, with diminished amplitude and postponed latency at short relative to long lags—an electroencephalographic signature of the attentional blink (AB). Under analogous conditions, the anterior P3a was also reduced in amplitude but did not vary in latency. Collectively, the results provide an electrophysiological record of the interaction between frontal and posterior components linked to detection (P3a) and encoding (P3b) of visual information. Our findings suggest that, although the AB delays target encoding into working memory, it does not slow down detection of a target but instead reduces the efficacy of this process. A functional characterization of P3a in attentive tasks is discussed with reference to current models of the AB phenomenon.
Non-dominated Sorting on Two Objectives

The fast and elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) contains a mechanism to sort individuals in a multi-objective optimization problem into non-dominated fronts, based on their performance in each optimization variable. When dealing with a bi-objective problem it is possible to carry-out the non-dominated sorting more efficiently, using the new sorting method presented in this paper. Results comparing the efficiency of the two sorting mechanisms on sets of data with two objectives are presented and discussed. DRDC CORA TN 2009-027 i
Staff Nurse Confidence in Their Skills and Knowledge and Barriers to Caring for Patients With Ostomies

PURPOSE: Patients with ostomies often state that staff nurses display a lack of confidence in knowledge and skills related to ostomy care. This study examined the confidence and perceptions of barriers among hospital staff nurses when caring for ostomy patients. DESIGN: Descriptive, cross-sectional study. SUBJECTS AND SETTING: A convenience sample of 576 staff nurses, including 510 registered, 61 licensed practical, and 5 unspecified nurses, participated in the study. The study sample practiced at 3 sites: an academic medical center, a Veteran's Administration Center, and a not-for-profit hospital in the state of New York. METHODS: Links to a 17-question electronic survey were distributed by e-mail. The survey included items that queried demographics, availability of an ostomy nurse, ostomy training in school, and frequency of care of ostomy patients. Participants also responded to 22 statements using a 6-point Likert Scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 6 = Strongly Agree). These statements queried confidence in providing ostomy care and perceived barriers. RESULTS: Higher confidence in ostomy care knowledge (k) and skills (s) was associated with being an LPN (P < .0001 [k], P = .003 [s]), years of nursing experience (P = .009 [k], P = .01 [s]), having ostomy training (P = .002 [k], P = .02 [s]), frequency of providing ostomy care (P < .0001 for each), and knowing how to obtain and use ostomy supplies (P < .0001 for each). The highest reported confidence was associated with emptying a pouch (mean ± SD, 5.32 ± 0.91), and the lowest was knowledge of nutrition for persons with ostomies (3.96 ± 1.21). Almost 1 in 5 respondents (18.6%) was unaware that a certified ostomy nurse practiced at their institution. CONCLUSION: Confidence of staff nurses in delivering ostomy care was higher with training and experience. Opportunities for continuing education may increase staff nurse confidence in providing ostomy care. The greatest barrier was lack of knowledge about the presence of an ostomy nurse as a resource in caring for patients.
Decay of Passively Acquired Maternal Antibodies against Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Viruses

ABSTRACT The decay of maternally derived antibodies to measles, mumps, and rubella viruses in Swiss infants was studied in order to determine the optimal time for vaccination. A total of 500 serum or plasma samples from infants up to 2 years of age were tested by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and fluorescent-antibody testing. The decline of antibody prevalence was slowest against the measles virus. By 9 to 12 months of age, only 5 of 58 (8.6%; 95% CI, 2.9 to 19.0) infants were antibody positive for the measles virus, and only 2 had levels above 200 mIU/ml. Mumps and rubella virus antibody seropositivity was lowest at 9 to 12 months of age with 3 of 58 (5.2%; 95% CI, 1.1 to 14.4) infants and at 12 to 15 months with 1 of 48 (2.1%; 95% CI, 0.1 to 11.1) infants, respectively. Concentrations of passively acquired antibodies decreased rapidly within the first 6 months of life. We observed no significant differences in antibody prevalence or concentration according to gender in any age group. In conclusion, MMR vaccination at 12 instead of 15 months of age could reduce the pool of susceptible subjects in infancy and support the efforts to eliminate these infections, particularly in combination with a second vaccine dose before school entry.
A Service Design Problem for a Railway Network

We study the problem of designing a set of highly-profitable freight routes in a railway network, taking into account the capacity of the network and the level of service requested by different goods; in particular the profit achieved by transporting a good is a nonlinear function of the associated transit time. We propose an ILP model which is solved heuristically by column generation and fixing techniques. Computational results on a real network crossing eleven European countries are reported, showing that we can find solutions that are provably close to optimal. Given the large size of our instances, a key issue of our approach is to avoid finding an optimal solution of the continuous relaxation of our model, stopping as soon as near-optimal primal and dual solutions are available.
Blood-Brain Barrier and Effectiveness of Therapy Against Brain Tumors

The challenge to comprehend the physiology as well as cell biology of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) began with Ehrlich and Goldman’s experimental observations that the central nervous system (CNS) is not stained by intravascular vital dyes. These studies provided the first evidence of the presence of an obstructing barrier between blood and brain. Later on, researchers like Friedemann (1942) used basic highly lipid soluble dyes to cross the BBB in order to show the brain penetration of the dyes by direct transport across the cerebral microvasculature. In 1941, Broman presented his observations upon the existence of two different barrier systems within the brain: the BBB at the cerebral microvasculature, and the blood-CSF barrier at the choroid plexus. It is now clear that in fact three main barrier layers at the interface between blood and tissue protect the CNS: the endothelium of brain capillaries, and the epithelia of the choroid plexus (CP) and the arachnoid (Abbott, 2005; Engelhardt, 2006).
Neuropathological Associates of Multiple Cognitive Functions in Two Community-Based Cohorts of Older Adults

Abstract Studies of neuropathology-cognition associations are not common and have been limited by small sample sizes, long intervals between autopsy and cognitive testing, and lack of breadth of neuropathology and cognition variables. This study examined domain-specific effects of common neuropathologies on cognition using data (N = 652) from two large cohort studies of older adults. We first identified dimensions of a battery of 17 neuropsychological tests, and regional measures of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) neuropathology. We then evaluated how cognitive factors were related to dimensions of AD and additional measures of cerebrovascular and Lewy Body disease, and also examined independent effects of brain weight. All cognitive domains had multiple neuropathology determinants that differed by domain. Neocortical neurofibrillary tangles were the strongest predictors of most domains, while medial temporal tangles showed a weaker relationship with episodic memory. Neuritic plaques had relatively strong effects on multiple domains. Lewy bodies and macroscopic infarcts were associated with all domains, while microscopic infarcts had more limited associations. Brain weight was related to all domains independent of specific neuropathologies. Results show that cognition is complexly determined by multiple disease substrates. Neuropathological variables and brain weight contributed approximately a third to half of the explained variance in different cognitive domains. (JINS, 2011, 17, 602–614).
Desarrollo de competencias en el uso de las TIC en profesores de ciencias de secundaria

Este proyecto surge como respuesta a la ausencia de informacion acerca del estado actual de las competencias tecnologicas de los profesores de educacion basica, elemento considerado de gran importancia para el Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (2013-2018) y la Estrategia Digital Nacional (2013) del Gobierno de la Republica de Mexico. La propuesta incluye la incorporacion de un programa formativo para profesores de matematicas y ciencias, basado en el uso de la tecnologia, ya que de acuerdo con la literatura especializada (UNESCO; 1998; Perrenoud, 2004, Cano, 2005; Zabalza, 2007; Imbernon, 2006) hoy en dia los docentes en ejercicio, necesitan ser competentes para ofrecer a sus estudiantes oportunidades de aprendizaje apoyadas en las TIC; para utilizarlas y para saber como estas pueden contribuir a su aprendizaje. Aunado a que los informes y proyectos realizados: Horizon (2012); OCDE (2010); Banco Mundial (2010); E-learning Nordic, (2006); The big pICTure (2003) han demostrado que tiene el potencial para mejorar el aprendizaje de los estudiantes dentro y fuera del aula, incrementar su motivacion y mejorar sus habilidades de orden superior. La investigacion es de tipo aplicada de corte mixto. El diseno se llevo a cabo bajo el enfoque de la metodologia de la investigacion accion y participaron 30 profesores de ciencias y matematicas pertenecientes a 19 escuelas secundarias de Merida. La tecnica de recoleccion de datos se realizo por medio de una encuesta orientada a conocer las competencias para el uso de la tecnologia de los profesores de este nivel y se complemento con entrevistas personales, grupos focales, analisis de foros y anecdotarios de los participantes. Entre los hallazgos mas importantes se encuentra, el conocimiento del nivel actual de competencia de los profesores de ciencias para el uso de la tecnologia, las diferencias observadas con respecto a sexo, edad, grado de estudios, tipo de escuela y antiguedad; asi como el proceso de adquisicion de competencias y las razones que impiden el desarrollo de estas. Finalmente se analizan y discuten los resultados y se recomiendan y proponen lineas de investigacion futuras.
Experimental characterization of rate-adaptive transmission and angle diversity reception techniques

Ambient light is the main impairment in indoor wireless optical communication systems for data rates up to several megabits per second. Its wide dynamic range, associated with the strong directivity of wireless optical signals, produce large variations on the received signal-to-noise ratio. This article discusses experimental results obtained from a testbed developed to compare different techniques for SNR improvement. The two techniques analyzed are rate-adaptive transmission, which introduces adaptive levels of redundancy in the transmitted signal to improve connectivity, and angle diversity reception, which exploits the inherent directionality of both signal and noise to improve the SNR at the receiver. Furthermore, systems employing both techniques simultaneously were also considered. The testbed replicated a typical indoor environment with both natural and artificial light, containing incandescent and fluorescent light sources. Both the SNR and the associated coverage areas were determined for all considered techniques. Our results show that the combined use of angle diversity based on maximal ratio combining and rate adaptation through the use of repetition coding achieves very good performance with only moderate complexity, allowing connectivity at all locations with data rates close to the maximum possible. In particular, with incandescent illumination and without angle diversity, the data rate had to be decreased down to 2 and 1 Mb/s in 25.9 and 7.7 percent of the room, area, respectively, whereas with maximal ratio combining a decrease to 2 Mb/s was only needed in 0.7 percent of the room area.
A Novel Methodology for Optimal Design of Fractional Slot With Concentrated Windings

This paper develops a novel method for optimal design of fractional slot with concentrated windings. The basis of this method is a generalized analytical model of the winding magnetomotive force (MMF) combined with a multiobjective genetic algorithm, which searches the optimal winding parameters that maximize the winding factor and minimize the MMF harmonic content. This technique is applied to optimize the winding layout of the permanent magnet synchronous machine with 12 × n slots/10 × n poles combination ( n is an integer number). The electromagnetic performances of the optimized winding are investigated and compared with conventional winding topology. It is found that the proposed approach allows the emergence of new windings with higher performances.
A Parallel Hardware Architecture for Real-Time Object Detection with Support Vector Machines

Object detection applications are often associated with real-time performance constraints that stem from the embedded environment that they are often deployed in. Consequently, researchers have proposed dedicated hardware architectures, utilizing a variety of classification algorithms targeting object detection. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) is among the most popular classification algorithms used in object detection yielding high accuracy rates. However, existing SVM hardware implementations attempting to speed up SVM classification, have either targeted only simple applications, or SVM training. As such, there are limited proposed hardware architectures that are generic enough to be used in a variety of object detection applications. Hence, this paper presents a parallel array architecture for SVM-based object detection, in an attempt to show the advantages, and performance benefits that stem from a dedicated hardware solution. The proposed hardware architecture provides parallel processing, resource sharing among the processing units, and efficient memory management. Furthermore, the size of the array is scalable to the hardware demands, and can also handle a variety of applications such as multiclass classification problems. A prototype of the proposed architecture was implemented on an FPGA platform and evaluated using three popular detection applications, demonstrating real-time performance (40-122 fps for a variety of applications).
Escherichia coli versus Pseudomonas aeruginosa Deacetylase LpxC Inhibitors Selectivity: Surface and Cavity-Depth-Based Analysis

Although Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa LpxC share sequence and functional similarity, E. coli LpxC inhibitiors are ineffective against P. aeruginosa LpxC. It was earlier speculated that inactivity of the inhibitors is due to intrinsic resistance possibly mediated by efflux pumps. However, a recent study has documented that the inactivity is due to failure of inhibitor(s) to inhibit the enzyme rather then intrinsic resistance. In this study, we carried out a surface and cavity-depth-based analysis on homology models of E. coli and P. aeruginosa LpxC to get some new insights into the ligand-binding features of these enzymes. The surface analysis of the P. aeruginosa LpxC model suggested that the LpxC catalytic domain (where inhibitors are supposed to bind) has several minor but potentially important structural differences as compared to E. coli LpxC. Molecular docking studies which could distinguish between the reported receptor affinities of the inhibitors additionally helped in the identification of key binding-site residues and interactions. These differences can be exploited for designing broad-spectrum LpxC inhibitors against this target.
Modelling lead ( II ) sorption to ferrihydrite and soil organic 6 matter 7 8

Lead(II) adsorption to soil organic matter and iron (hydr)oxides is strong, and 1 may control the geochemical behavior of this metal. Here, we report the adsorption of 2 Pb (i) to 2-line ferrihydrite, and (ii) to a mor layer. The results showed that ferrihydrite 3 has heterogeneous Pb binding. Use of a surface complexation model indicated that 4 about 1 % of the surface sites adsorbed Pb more strongly than the remaining 99 %. 5 Although only one surface complexation reaction was used (a bidentate complex of the 6 composition (≡FeOH)2Pb), three classes of sites with different affinity for Pb were 7 needed to simulate Pb binding correctly over all Pb/Fe ratios analysed. For the mor 8 layer, Pb sorption was much stronger than current models for organic complexation 9 suggest. The results could be described by the Stockholm Humic Model when the binding 10 heterogeneity was increased, and when it was assumed that 0.2 % of the binding sites 11 were specific for Pb. Use of revised model parameters for nine Vietnamese soils suggest 12 that lead(II) binding was more correctly simulated than before. Thus, underestimation of 13 lead(II) sorption to both (hydr)oxide surfaces and organic matter may explain the failure 14 of previous geochemical modelling attempts for lead(II). 15 16 Introduction 17 Lead is a common soil pollutant and it often occurs in elevated levels in, for example, 18 shooting ranges and in roadside soils. The ionic form of lead, Pb, forms very stable 19 complexes with a number of oxygen-containing ligands, for example carboxylate groups 20 of organic matter and singly coordinated OH groups of (hydr)oxides. Because many soils 21 contain appreciable amounts of organic matter and (hydr)oxides the mobility and plant 22 availability of Pb is usually low. Nevertheless for environmental risk assessments of 23
User driven service innovations in telecom industry: Indian experience

Technological advancement has been the main driver for development of telecom services. Convergence of telecom and internet played a significant role in growth of user driven services in terms of variety, number and revenue. Open access platforms and technological capabilities have empowered small entrepreneurs in India to develop services collaboratively benefiting to society. A new ecosystem has emerged (shift from value chain to value web) around telecom operators with multiple stakeholders-content and application providers, technology enablers and platform providers. This new ecosystem with user participation has potential to bridge the digital divide and foster inclusive growth. The primary objective of the study is to understand nature of interplay between technology development, technological innovation and service innovation. The secondary objective to study how needs of users are imbibed into technology development. We also investigate the role of technology management and its implication on telecom operators in changing face of digital economy. Qualitative case based research method is used. Cases are selected from one of the key Indian telecom operator. The findings of the study provide interesting insights to effectively manage new technologies to create user driven services.
An SDKEY Data Protection and Sharing Scheme with Attribute-Based Encryption for Smartphone

Android system attracts many malicious applications to steal sensitive data. Not only in storing data, it is also easy to get data leaked while sharing. SDKEY device is an external compute system with Independent arithmetic processor. In this paper. First, we present and implement a method to store and share data safely with cipher policy attribute-based encryption between Android phones, and it is useful in Instant messaging and file managing. Second, we design a security file structure to manage data efficiently. Third, we design a kind of dual-authentication login scheme using both SDKEY and PIN for booting Android OS. Finally, a solution on transparent encryption storage for sensitive message like SMS is proposed. Besides, we also develop a prototype system based on all above solutions in this paper, the performance and security of system are proved and verified from several aspects.