Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between Membrane Damage and Cell Death in Pressure-Treated Escherichia coli Cells: Differences between Exponential- and Stationary-Phase Cells and Variation among Strains

ABSTRACT The relationship between membrane damage and loss of viability following pressure treatment was examined in Escherichia coli strains C9490, H1071, and NCTC 8003. These strains showed high, medium, and low resistance to pressure, respectively, in stationary phase but similar resistance to pressure in exponential phase. Loss of membrane integrity was measured as loss of osmotic responsiveness or as increased uptake of the fluorescent dye propidium iodide. In exponential-phase cells, loss of viability was correlated with a permanent loss of membrane integrity in all strains, whereas in stationary-phase cells, a more complicated picture emerged in which cell membranes became leaky during pressure treatment but resealed to a greater or lesser extent following decompression. Strain H1071 displayed a very unusual pressure response in stationary phase in which survival decreased to a minimum at 300 MPa but then increased at 400 to 500 MPa before decreasing again. Membranes were unable to reseal after treatment at 300 MPa but could do so after treatment at higher pressures. Membrane damage in this strain was thus typical of exponential-phase cells under low-pressure conditions but of stationary-phase cells under higher-pressure conditions. Heat shock treatment of strain H1071 cells increased pressure resistance under low-pressure conditions and also allowed membrane damage to reseal. Growth in the presence of IPTG (isopropyl-β-d-thiogalactopyranoside) increased resistance under high-pressure conditions. The mechanisms of inactivation may thus differ at high and low pressures. These studies support the view that membrane damage is an important event in the inactivation of bacteria by high pressure, but the nature of membrane damage and its relation to cell death may differ between species and phases of growth.
A Critical Theory Perspective and Corporate Sosial Responsibility: The Concept

Frynas and Stephens (Political corporate social responsibility: reviewing theories and setting new agendas. They described existing trends and suggested an agenda for future research. They make efforts to develop ‘a more inclusive pluralist research agenda in political CSR, which can integrate different perspectives on political CSR in order to account for different phenomena, including global governance changes at macro level, instrumental concerns at organizational level or cognitive dimensions at individual level, in both descriptive and normative terms’. This was an ambitious endeavour, given the rapid growth of the literature and the extensive heterogeneity of the field. There is much to like in Frynas and Stephens’ paper, as it spans a broad range of perspectives and links together discrete research topics. In the present review, however, the author focuses on a number of critical aspects in their argument. Frynas and Stephens failed to define core concepts, to reveal their normative stance on CSR and their paradigmatic position, or to address the inherent conflict of values in political CSR. And they were too optimistic about the possibilities and benefits of ‘integration’. The author suspects that their approach, when adopted in practice, will impede rather than promote social welfare. This paper starts with a brief summary of the field and continues by emphasizing critical issues in Frynas and Stephens’ analysis. It concludes with an alternative agenda for research in political CSR.
Coupling of C3bi to IgG inhibits the tyrosine phosphorylation signaling cascade downstream Syk and reduces cytokine induction in monocytes

The effect of coupling C3bi to immunoglobulin G (IgG) immune complexes (IC) on their ability to produce protein tyrosine phosphorylation and activation of the mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) and the Akt/protein kinase B (PKB) routes was assessedin human monocytes. Cross‐linking Fc receptors for IgG activated the protein tyrosine kinase Syk, phospholipases Cγ1 and Cγ2, the MAPK cascade, and the Akt/PKB route. Linkage of C3bi to the γ‐chain of IgG produced a decrease of the protein bands displaying tyrosine phosphorylation, whereas the MAPK cascades and the Akt/PKB route remained almost unaffected. Zymosan particles, which because of their β‐glucan content mimic the effect of fungi, produced a limited increase of tyrosine‐phosphorylated protein bands, whereas treatment of zymosan under conditions adequate for C3bi coating increased its ability to induce protein tyrosine phosphorylation. Noteworthy, this was also observed under conditions where other components of serum might be bound by zymosan particles, for instance, serum IgG, thereby suggesting their potential involvement in Syk activation. The induction of cytokines showed a changing pattern consistent with the changes observed in the signaling pathways. IC induced monocyte chemoattractant protein‐1 (MCP‐1)/CC chemokine ligand 2 (CCL2), interleukin (IL)‐1β, and eotaxin‐2/CCL24, which were not observed with C3bi‐coated IC. Zymosan induced the expression of tumor necrosis factor α (TNF‐α), TNF‐β, IL‐10, IL‐6, and MCP‐2/CCL8, whereas the cytokine signature of C3bi‐coated zymosan also included interferon‐inducible protein 10/CXC chemokine ligand 10, platelet‐derived growth factor‐BB, and I‐309/CCL1. Taken together, these findings indicate that C3bi targets the phagocytic cargo, and engagement or diversion of the Syk route determines the phagocyte response.
The ACACB gene rs2268388 polymorphism is associated with nephropathy in Caucasian patients with diabetes: a meta-analysis

Abstract To date, case–control studies on the association between a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs2268388, in the acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase beta (ACACB) gene and diabetic nephropathy have provided controversial results. To clarify the effect of rs2268388 on the risk of diabetic nephropathy, a meta-analysis of all case–control studies was performed. The fixed effects and random effects models showed that the C allele was associated with a decreased susceptibility risk of diabetic nephropathy compared with the T allele among Caucasian patients with diabetes. The contrast of the recessive model produced the same pattern of results as the allele contrast. Our pooled data suggest a significant association exists between rs2268388 and diabetic nephropathy among Caucasian patients with diabetes.
Fabrication of YBCO step-edge Josephson junctions by inverted cylindrical magnetron sputtering technique

The Inverted Cylindrical Magnetron Sputtering (ICMS) technique been used to fabricate YBCO step-edge dc SQUIDs. Steps are obtained by standard ion milling procedure on LaAlO/sub 3/ (100) substrates using Nb-masks patterned by reactive ion etching. Thin films are then deposited under different conditions (both step and deposition angles) and patterned by standard lithography and wet chemical etching. An analysis of junction properties in terms of step height and film thickness has been carried out. Measurements on current vs magnetic field and SQUID voltage response measurements have been performed. Their temperature dependences have been also considered. Operating temperature as high as 77 K has been achieved. At 4.2 K the SQUIDs show a maximum voltage to flux transfer function (/spl part/V//spl part//spl phi/)/sub max/=870 /spl mu/V//spl Phi//sub 0/ and a good periodicity of the V-/spl phi/ modulation up to 20 /spl Phi//sub 0/ without any sign of hysteresis. <<ETX>>
Three years of experience with routine use of telepathology in assessment of excisional and aspirate biopsies of breast lesions.

AIM To examine the applicability of routine telepathology to accurately diagnose breast lesions. METHODS During a 36 month period, a dynamic telepathology system was used to assess 315 excisional biopsies and 209 fine needle aspirates of breast lesions submitted by surgeons located 20 km from the hospital. The results of the gross and microscopic telepathology diagnoses were compared with final microscopic diagnoses. RESULTS No frozen sections were obtained in 120 of 315 cases submitted for frozen section due to lack of gross lesion (73/120), a papillary lesion or a lesion smaller than 1 cm (22/120), or a gross-only diagnosis of a benign process was given (23/120). For frozen sections, the microscopic telepathology diagnoses had a sensitivity of 81.6%, specificity of 100.0%, and diagnostic accuracy of 95.3%. For malignant tumors, the positive predictive value was 100.0% and the negative predictive value was 94.0%. For the fine needle aspirates, microscopic telepathology diagnoses agreed with conventional cytology in 163 of 209 cases. Tissue pathology was available for 109 of the fine needle aspirate specimens. For these 109 cases, telepathology diagnosis of malignancy was shown to have a sensitivity of 91.2% and specificity of 100.0%. Malignancy was identified in 8 of 16 cases with an atypia microscopic telepathology diagnosis and in 18 of 21 suspicious microscopic telepathology diagnoses. CONCLUSION This long term study demonstrates that the routine use of telepathology compares well with conventional microscopy in the assessment of both frozen sections and fine needle aspirates of breast lesions.
Vertical organic transistors

Organic switching devices such as field effect transistors (OFETs) are a key element of future flexible electronic devices. So far, however, a commercial breakthrough has not been achieved because these devices usually lack in switching speed (e.g. for logic applications) and current density (e.g. for display pixel driving). The limited performance is caused by a combination of comparatively low charge carrier mobilities and the large channel length caused by the need for low-cost structuring. Vertical Organic Transistors are a novel technology that has the potential to overcome these limitations of OFETs. Vertical Organic Transistors allow to scale the channel length of organic transistors into the 100 nm regime without cost intensive structuring techniques. Several different approaches have been proposed in literature, which show high output currents, low operation voltages, and comparatively high speed even without sub-μm structuring technologies. In this review, these different approaches are compared and recent progress is highlighted.
The effect of arginine deprivation on the replication of vaccinia virus.

Summary Arginine has been shown to be essential for the replication of vaccinia virus in HeLa cell cultures. The yield of infective virus was dependent upon the concentration of arginine in the medium, maximum yield being obtained with 0.09 mm-arginine. There were marked reductions in the synthesis of DNA, RNA and protein in infected and control cultures deprived of arginine. The yield of infective virus from cell cultures infected in the presence of sub-optimal concentrations of arginine was increased following further addition of arginine at a time after the completion of virus DNA synthesis. Arginine has been shown to be incorporated into the virus particle. It is concluded that there are requirements for arginine demonstrable at both early and late stages in the replication of vaccinia virus in this system. While the early requirement was satisfied by 0.015 mm-arginine, later events showed a greater requirement up to a maximum of 0.09 mm-arginine.
Un analyseur de francais avec apprentissage inductif de la syntaxe

La these traite de l'analyse du langage naturel par un programme. Afin de piloter l'analyse, la creation, mais surtout la maintenance de vastes bases de connaissances est necessaire: l'objectif etait de montrer qu'il etait possible d'elaborer un atelier de genie logiciel fonde sur l'apprentissage inductif des regles de traitement
Content-based Image Retrieval by Exploring Bandletized Regions through Support Vector Machines

One of the major requirements of the Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems is to ensure the meaningful image retrieval against query images. CBIR systems provide potential solutions of retrieving semantically similar images from large image repositories against any query image. The performances of these systems severely degrade by the inclusion of image contents which do not comprise the objects of interest in an image during the image representation phase. Segmentation of the images is considered as a solution but there isn’t any technique which can guarantee the object extraction in a robust way. Another limitation of the segmentation is that, most of the image segmentation techniques are very slow and still their results are not reliable. To overcome these problems a Bandelets transform based image representation technique is presented in this paper, which reliably returns the information about the major objects found in an image. For image retrieval purposes Support Vector Machine are applied and the performance of the system is evaluated on three standard data sets used in the domain of content based image retrieval.
Performance analysis of spatial multiplexing MIMO-OFDM systems under frequency-selective I/Q imbalances

This paper studies the impact of one important radio transceiver impairment, namely the I/Q imbalance, on the link performance of spatial multiplexing MIMO-OFDM systems. A closed-form solution for the effective signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) at the input of the receiver detection stage due to frequency-selective transmitter and receiver I/Q imbalances is derived, taking also the effects of fading multipath radio channel and additive noise into account. As will be shown, the derived SINR can be directly mapped to the achievable detection error rate at high SNR regime, yielding a valuable analytical tool for radio transceiver designers to analyze the imbalance effects at link-level without any actual data simulations. The analytical outcomes are also verified using extensive computer simulations backing up the theoretical studies. In general, the obtained results indicate that I/Q imbalance can easily become a limiting factor to the achievable link performance in future spatial multiplexing MIMO-OFDM systems, and thus should be carefully mitigated using proper digital and/or analog signal processing.
Developing an Historical Tradition in MIS Research

MIS as a discipline has not yet developed a tradition of historical research. Historical analyses broaden our understanding of the processes by which information technology is introduced into organizations and of the forces that shape its use. Paramount among these processes are those Schumpeter called "creative destruction. " These are events that change entire organizations and industries. The end product of a Schumpeterian process is called a "dominant design," a new configuration of an organization's technology, strategy, and structure. A dominant design is manifested in several ways: a new organizational infrastructure, new functionality, new products, new services, new production functions, or new cost structures. By changing the basis of competition in the industry, a firm that institutes a dominant design secures an initial competitive edge. Although the understanding of these processes is central to the concerns of many researchers and practitioners in the field, the information systems research literature contains very few examples of historical analyses of this type. A contingency framework is developed for conducting a class of information technology-based historical studies that focuses on innovation and competition within an industry.
Optimization of Catalysts Using Specific, Description-Based Genetic Algorithms

This paper deals with the key optimization task that has to be solved when improving the performance of many chemical processes--optimization of the catalysts used in the reaction via the optimization of its composition and preparation. A novel approach is presented that allows for the preservation of the advantages of genetic algorithms developed specifically for the optimization of catalytic materials but avoids the disadvantageous necessity to reimplement the algorithm when the scope of the optimized materials changes. Its main idea is to automatically generate problem-tailored implementations from requirements concerning the materials with a program generator. For the specification of such requirements, a formal description language, called catalyst description language, has been developed.
Childhood Music Training Induces Change in Micro and Macroscopic Brain Structure: Results from a Longitudinal Study

Several studies comparing adult musicians and nonmusicians have shown that music training is associated with structural brain differences. It is not been established, however, whether such differences result from pre-existing biological traits, lengthy musical training, or an interaction of the two factors, or if comparable changes can be found in children undergoing music training. As part of an ongoing longitudinal study, we investigated the effects of music training on the developmental trajectory of children's brain structure, over two years, beginning at age 6. We compared these children with children of the same socio-economic background but either involved in sports training or not involved in any systematic after school training. We established at the onset that there were no pre-existing structural differences among the groups. Two years later we observed that children in the music group showed (1) a different rate of cortical thickness maturation between the right and left posterior superior temporal gyrus, and (2) higher fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum, specifically in the crossing pathways connecting superior frontal, sensory, and motor segments. We conclude that music training induces macro and microstructural brain changes in school-age children, and that those changes are not attributable to pre-existing biological traits.
Effective Measures of “Effective” Discharge

The concept of effective discharge, Qe, was introduced by Wolman and Miller (1960) as that stream discharge that transports the most sediment over time. Recently, the validity of Qe as an overall descriptor of sediment transport has been questioned because of its various interpretations and methods of calculation. A new discharge index—termed the “half-load discharge,” Q1/2—was introduced as the discharge above and below which half of the total sediment load has been transported over time. Existing methods along with long records of continuous daily suspended sediment and discharge data are used to clarify what a discharge index can accomplish. We also offer an objective and consistent empirical methodology for calculating Qe based on a kernel density function. Generalized graphical relationships are introduced for summarizing the frequency and magnitude of both stream discharge and sediment loads. We document how Qe and Q1/2 are related to standard descriptors of river discharge as well as general characteristics of the sediment load-discharge relationship.
Planning ability improves in a yogic education system compared to a modern

Background: Planning skills play a key role in higher developmental processes. The Tower of London test not only measures planning skills, but also the ability to execute plans. Yoga practices aim to bring about higher development. Can a Yoga-based education system be shown to meet this challenge? Aim: This study was aimed at comparing a Modern Education System (MES) with the ancient Yoga-based system of education, the Gurukula Education System (GES), in developing planning skills. Materials and Methods: Forty-nine boys with ages ranging from 11 to 13 years were selected from each of two residential schools, one MES and the other GES, providing similar ambience and daily routines. The boys were matched for age and socio-economic status. The GES educational program is based around integrated yoga modules while the MES provides a conventional modern education program. Planning and executive abilities were assessed using the Tower of London test at the start and the end of an academic year. Results: Within groups, the pre-post test differences were significant for both groups. However, the between-groups results showed improvement in the GES group compared to the MES group at a P < 0.001 significance level. Conclusions: The study suggests that whereas both MES and GES Yoga-based education improve planning and execution skills in school boys, GES is more effective of the two systems.
Analysis of Tradeoff Between Energy Consumption and Activation Delay in Power Management Mechanisms

Power management mechanisms (PMMs) inherently have a tradeoff between the energy consumption and delay. In this letter, we analyze an active-idle state transition mechanism for power-saving in mobile stations by considering the general traffic pattern of smartphones, which consists of uplink request packets and downlink bursty data. We derive closed-form solutions of both the energy consumption and activation delay, and characterize their tradeoff relationship. The results show that the tradeoff curve is linear and its slope is not affected by the PMM's operational parameters or the traffic arrival rate.
Prevalence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) among apparently healthy students in Afikpo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria

*Corresponding Author Email: ejikeugwu_chika@yahoo.com Tel. :+2348097684562 This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of communityacquired methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) among apparently healthy students of Akanu Ibiam Federal Polytechnic Unwana, Afikpo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. A total of 200 nasal swab samples were collected from apparently healthy students using sterile swab sticks and these were screened for the presence of S. aureus colonization using standard microbiology techniques. MRSA positive bacteria were detected phenotypically using oxacillin disk (1 μg). Antibiogram was determined by the disk diffusion method using ampicillin, cephalexin, clindamycin, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, ofloxacin, perfloxacin, sparfloxacin, cefotaxime and vancomycin as per the guidelines of CLSI. Out of the 200 nasal swab samples, 76 (38.0 %) isolates were isolated. MRSA positive bacteria were only detected in 33 (43.4 %) of the S. aureus isolates. High level of resistance was recorded amongst the MRSA positive bacteria to some commonly used antibiotics especially cefotaxime (100 %), ampicillin (100 %), clindamycin (9.0 %) and vancomycin (12 %). antibiotics. This study reported a high prevalence of MRSA bacteria amongst apparently healthy students. The irrational use of antibiotics especially in the community and without prescription spurs the development of resistance strains of bacteria. It is vital to detect antibiotic resistant bacteria (including MRSA bacteria) from both environmental and clinical samples in order to sustain the gains of antimicrobial chemotherapy.