Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TAF25p, a Non-histone-like Subunit of TFIID and SAGA Complexes, Is Essential for Total mRNA Gene Transcription in Vivo *

We demonstrate, utilizing a temperature conditional mutant allele of the gene encoding TAF25p, that this non-histone-like TBP-associated factor, which is shared between the TFIID and SAGA complexes, is required for bulk mRNA gene transcription by RNA polymerase II in vivo. Immunoblotting experiments indicate that at the restrictive temperature, inactivation of TAF25p function results in a reduction of the levels of numerous TFIID and SAGA subunits, indicating its loss of function, like the histone-like TAFs, causes degradation of the constituents of these two multisubunit complexes. These data suggest that TAF25p plays a key structural role in maintaining TFIID and SAGA complex integrity. This is the first demonstration that a non-histone-like TAF is required for continuous, high level RNA polymerase II-mediated mRNA gene transcription in living yeast cells.
The effect of smoking on the male excess of bladder cancer: A meta‐analysis and geographical analyses

Smoking is considered the primary risk factor for bladder cancer. Although smoking prevalence and bladder cancer incidence vary around the world, bladder cancer is on average 4 times more common in males than in females. This article describes the observed male–female incidence ratio of bladder cancer for 21 world regions in 2002 and 11 geographical areas during the time period 1970–1997. A meta‐analysis, including 34 studies, was performed to ascertain the increased risk for bladder cancer in males and females when smoking. The summary odds ratios (SORs) calculated in the meta‐analysis were used to estimate the male–female incidence ratio of bladder cancer that would be expected for hypothetical smoking prevalence scenarios. These expected male–female incidence ratios were compared with the observed ratios to evaluate the role of smoking on the male excess of bladder cancer. The male–female incidence ratio of bladder cancer was higher than expected worldwide and over time, based on a smoking prevalence of 75% in males, 10% in females and an increased risk (SOR) of bladder cancer associated with smoking of 4.23 for males and 1.35 for females, respectively. This implied that, at least in the Western world, smoking can only partially explain the difference in bladder cancer incidence. Consequently, other factors are responsible for the difference in bladder cancer incidence. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
YopJ targets TRAF proteins to inhibit TLR‐mediated NF‐κB, MAPK and IRF3 signal transduction

The Yersinia pestis virulence factor YopJ is a potent inhibitor of the NF‐κB and MAPK signalling pathways, however, its molecular mechanism and relevance to pathogenesis are the subject of much debate. In this report, we characterize the effects of this type III effector protein on bone fide signalling events downstream of Toll‐like receptors (TLRs), critical sensors in innate immunity. YopJ inhibited TLR‐mediated NF‐κB and MAP kinase activation, as suggested by previous studies. In addition, induction of the TLR‐mediated interferon response was blocked by YopJ, indicating that YopJ also inhibits IRF3 signalling. Examination of the NF‐κB signalling pathway in detail suggested that YopJ acts at the level of TAK1 (MAP3K7) activation. Further studies revealed a YopJ‐dependent decrease in the ubiquitination of TRAF3 and TRAF6. These data support the hypothesis that YopJ is a deubiquitinating protease that acts on TRAF proteins to prevent or remove the K63‐polymerized ubiquitin conjugates required for signal transduction. Our data do not directly address the alternative hypothesis that YopJ is an acetyltransferase that acts on the activation loop of IKK and MKK proteins, but support the conclusion that the critical function of YopJ is to deubiquinate TRAF proteins.
On interviewing.

Perhaps most surprising, these historical problems are not just historical. Traditional, unstructured interviews continue to be conducted with alarming regularity (Judge et al., 2000). Moreover, interviewers don’t seem to recognize how ineffective they really are. A recent DDI study found that among interviewers who have never been trained, only 7 percent lack confidence in their interviewing ability (Howard, Erker, & Bruce, 2007). Job seekers in the same study reported that interviewers asked questions such as: > “What would you do if I gave you an elephant? ” > How do you make a peanut butter sandwich? ” > “Do you like knives? ” > “Do you have a girlfriend for me? ” > “If you were a tree (or Disney character, fruit, etc.), what kind would you be? ”
Developments in contraception

Introduction: Although the contraceptive options for women have expanded considerably in the last decade, these methods are often not being offered to women as choices because clinicians are not well informed, limiting the ability of women to control their fertility. Areas covered: Areas covered include the use of oestradiol instead of ethinyl oestradiol and improved progestogens utilised in hormonal contraceptives, and new delivery systems have enabled the development of long-acting methods, which require less action on the part of the user, and thereby, reduce failure rates. Effective emergency contraceptive methods have become more readily available over the counter. However, male contraception, despite much research, still remains elusive. Expert opinion: This manuscript will provide an assessment of recent advances and controversies in contraception and make suggestions about improved availability.
The dual approach for measuring. Multidimesional deprivation and poverty

This paper is concerned with the problem of ranking and quantifying the extent of deprivation exhibited by multidimensional distributions, where the multiple attributes in which an individual can be deprived are represented by dichotomized variables. To this end we first aggregate deprivation for each individual into a distribution of deprivation count, representing the number of dimensions for which the population suffer from deprivation. Next, by drawing on the dual social evaluation framework that originates from Yaari (1987, 1988) social evaluation functions are used to construct summary measures of deprivation. Moreover, the measures of deprivation are proven to admit decomposition into the mean and the dispersion of the distribution of multiple deprivations. Two alternative criteria of second-degree count distribution dominance are shown to divide the family of dual measures of deprivation into two separate subfamilies, which differ with regard to whether concern is turned towards those people suffering from deprivation on all dimensions or those suffering from at least one dimension. To provide a normative justification of the dominance criteria we introduce alternative principles of association rearrangements, where the mean deprivation is assumed to be kept fixed. An empirical application based on data for 26 European countries illustrates the usefulness of the proposed framework and shows how different ethical views lead to different results.
Specific detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex strains by polymerase chain reaction

During the screening of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis lambda gt-11 gene library with monoclonal antibodies, we detected a recombinant clone, lambda PH7311, which contained a mycobacterial DNA insert that hybridized specifically with DNA of M. tuberculosis complex strains. Part of this insert was sequenced and used for the development of an M. tuberculosis complex-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Only strains belonging to species of the M. tuberculosis complex group contained an amplifiable fragment of 158 base pairs (bp). This fragment was absent in all strains tested belonging to 15 other mycobacterial species. After amplification by PCR and dot blot hybridization with a digoxigenin-labeled oligonucleotide, the limit of detection of purified genomic M. tuberculosis DNA amounted to a quantity corresponding to 20 bacterial cells. By this technique about 10(3) M. tuberculosis bacteria were detectable in sputum. Using PCR, we were also able to detect M. tuberculosis cells in clinical material such as pleural fluid, bronchial washings, and biopsies, and these results were comparable with those obtained by classical bacterial culture. Of 34 M. tuberculosis strains, 5 did not carry the amplifiable 158-bp fragment, which occurs usually as a single copy in the chromosome. Evidence is presented that the 158-bp fragment is located near a repeated sequence in the chromosome. We presume that strains which did not carry the 158-bp fragment have lost a chromosomal segment by a genetic rearrangement induced by the repetitive DNA element.
A formal proof in Coq of a control function for the inverted pendulum

Control theory provides techniques to design controllers, or control functions, for dynamical systems with inputs, so as to grant a particular behaviour of such a system. The inverted pendulum is a classic system in control theory: it is used as a benchmark for nonlinear control techniques and is a model for several other systems with various applications. We formalized in the Coq proof assistant the proof of soundness of a control function for the inverted pendulum. This is a first step towards the formal verification of more complex systems for which safety may be critical.
Interspecies contamination of the KM3 cell line: Implications for CD63 function in melanoma metastasis

CD63 is a member of the tetraspanin superfamily of membrane glycoproteins that has been hypothesised to provide a structural network in the organisation of large multimolecular microdomains at cell membranes. Detailed analyses of the role of CD63 in these complexes through mutagenic studies have been limited, however, by the ubiquitous cellular expression of CD63 in vivo and in vitro. In an attempt to define CD63‐null cell lines, we have analysed the expression of CD63 and other tetraspanins on a panel of human cancer cell lines. Similar expression patterns were seen between cell lines from melanomas, breast cancers and prostate cancers. The melanoma cell line KM3, however, described previously as a CD63‐null human cell line, was found to express none of the 7 human tetraspanins tested. KM3 was identified definitively as a rat cell line by analysis of karyotype and antigen expression. Notably, KM3 was found to express the rat homologue of CD63. Conclusions concerning the function of human CD63 drawn from studies using KM3 cells therefore require re‐evaluation as does the frequently cited hypothesis that CD63 expression is linked to melanoma progression. As KM3 is the only cell line thus far identified as CD63 negative, these results highlight the necessity for the production of a CD63 null system. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Interplay Between Media Use and Interpersonal Communication in the Context of Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors: Reinforcing or Substituting?

This study aims to explore how media use for health information and interpersonal health communication interact in the context of healthy lifestyle behaviors. This study hypothesizes that media use for health information and interpersonal health communication will serve as substitutes for one another. To test this hypothesis, this study uses a nationally representative survey of 2,107 civilian, noninstitutionalized adults in the United States. The results show that the associations between television use and Internet use and healthy lifestyle behaviors are enhanced among those who talk about health issues with their family and friends less frequently, which supports the substitution model. The implications that these findings have for future research are discussed.
Inhibition of endotoxin‐induced nitric oxide synthase production in microglial cells by the presence of astroglial cells: A role for transforming growth factor β

In mixed glial cell cultures from cerebral cortices of newborn rats, endotoxin induces inducible nitric oxide (iNOS), nitric oxide (NO), and interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β) production in microglial cells. Earlier we demonstrated that endotoxin induced iNOS but not IL‐1β expression in microglial cells is inhibited by the presence of astroglial cells. In the present paper we describe studies on the mechanism by which astroglial cells exert selective suppressive action on iNOS expression by microglial cells. Expression of iNOS and IL‐1β was studied by single or double label immunocytochemical techniques and cell identification was performed with GSA‐I‐B4‐isolectin and an antibody against GFAP. Production of IL‐1β and NO was determined by measurement of IL‐1β and nitrite concentrations in cell lysates and the culture medium, respectively. TGFβ, a cytokine known to inhibit NO production by endotoxin challenged macrophages, was measured in culture medium of mixed glial cell cultures using a bioassay. Microglial, astroglial, and mixed glial cell cultures produced similar concentrations of TGFβ. The potential effect of TGFβ was studied by using immunoneutralizing antibodies against TGFβ1 and TGFβ2 on the induction of iNOS in microglial cells in the presence of astroglial cells. Incubation of the mixed glial cell culture with these TGFβ antibodies (3 μg/ml) markedly increased endotoxin‐induced NO production and iNOS expression in microglial cells, whereas the production of IL‐1β was not affected. The antibodies against TGFβ1 and TGFβ2 marginally increased NO production in pure microglial cell cultures, nonetheless in cultures of purified microglial cells recombinant TGFβ1 and TGFβ2 together with endotoxin inhibited NO production. We conclude that the presence of astroglial cells is essential for the inhibitory effect of TGFβ on NO production by microglial cells (possibly) by activation of TGFβ or by increasing the sensitivity of microglial cells for TGFβ. GLIA 19:190–198, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Phenotypic heterogeneity in lymphoblastic cell lines

Four T‐cell and two B‐cell lines from patients with lymphoblastic leukemia were examined with a panel of monoclonal antibodies for a variety of lineage and differentiation stage‐associated antigens during growth in liquid suspension. In five of the lines, markers normally associated with the granulopoietic lineage were found and the level of expression of these markers varied during culture. The sixth line, MOLT‐3, was examined in more detail. Using clonal selection it was found that phenotypic heterogeneity could readily be obtained and that subclones could be acquired that expressed a wide range of markers, typically in reproducible kinetic patterns, that were not detected on the parent clone. Previous results were confirmed showing that treatment with the drug 5‐azacytidine (5‐aza) prior to selection promoted the expression of the granulopoietic lineage associated antigen 80H.5 on MOLT‐3 subclones; however, treatment with 5‐aza appeared to inhibit substantially the expression of other novel markers by subclones following a second selection compared to untreated controls. It appears that the expression of markers normally associated with other lineages on leukemic lymphoblasts (lineage infidelity) may be characteristic of such lines and that phenotypically variant subclones expressing lineage infidelity can readily be obtained by clonal selection.
Lightning Protection ( ICLP ) , Shanghai , China Probability of surge protective device systems to reduce the risk of failure of apparatus due direct flashes to overhead low voltage lines

Aim of the paper is to investigate on the probability of a coordinated surge protective device (SPD) system to reduce the risk of failure of electrical and electronic equipment within a structure against lightning surges due to direct lightning stroke to the connected low voltage overhead lines (source of damage S3 according to IEC standard 62305). Two SPD systems are considered, namely SPD system type SL, consisting of a SPD1 switching type and a SPD2 limiting type, and an SPD system type LL, consisting of a SPD1 and a SPD2 limiting type. The approach here presented and discussed takes into account the type of SPD system and the characteristics of the upstream power line and of the downstream protected circuit. The analysis has been performed by several simulations obtained by means of the transient software EMTP-RV. The results are compared with those obtained with only one SPD (switching or limiting type) installed for the protection of apparatus within the structure. Keywords—Appraratus safety; Overvoltage protection; Surge Protective Device
Trial of Trachoma Rapid Assessment in a subdistrict of northern Nigeria

PURPOSE. To assess the usefulness of Trachoma Rapid Assessment (RA) in priority ranking of trachoma areas. METHODS. RA was conducted concurrently with a cross-sectional trachoma prevalence survey in some villages selected from the communities at risk for trachoma in the Kaita Local Government Area of northern Nigeria. The RA team consisted of two ophthalmic nurses. Pen torches and loupes were used for the examination. Data were collected on the seven components of the RA ‘information pyramid’ for all the selected villages. The data were analyzed using the RA methodology guidelines to determine the priority villages for trachoma intervention. This was compared with the ranking from the cross-sectional trachoma prevalence survey. RESULTS. The results of RA were found to be in agreement with the cross-sectional survey in 53.3% of the villages in the priority ranking of trichiasis, while in the priority ranking of active trachoma the agreement between the two methods was found to be 60%. The risk factors for trachoma were shown to be of high magnitude in all the villages using both the RA method and the prevalence survey. CONCLUSION. RA may be a more useful tool when applied to a vast area where the risk of trachoma is likely to differ greatly between different parts of the area. In the determination of the trichiasis pattern of a community by RA, it may be more useful to use the actual number of trichiasis cases in the area rather than the prevalence of trichiasis. The operational definition of some risk factor indicators seems very subjective and vague. The RA method needs more validation to sharpen the indicators used.
Concurrent bimanual stylus interaction: a study of non-preferred hand mode manipulation

Pen/Stylus input systems are constrained by the limited input capacity of the electronic stylus. Stylus modes, which allow multiple interpretations of the same input, lift capacity limits, but confront the user with possible cognitive and motor costs associated with switching modes. This paper examines the costs of bimanual mode switching, in which the non-preferred hand performs actions that change modes while the preferred hand executes gestures that provide input. We examine three variants to control mode of a stylus gesture: pre-gesture mediation, post-gesture mediation, and mediation that occurs concurrently with stylus gesturing. The results show that concurrent mode-switching is faster than the alternatives, and, in one trial, marginally outperforms the control condition, un-moded drawing. These results demonstrate an instance in which suitably designed mode-switching offers minimal cost to the user. The implications of this result for the design of stylus input systems are highlighted.
PIXEL-BASED LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION BY FUSING HYPERSPECTRAL AND LIDAR DATA

Abstract. Land cover classification has many applications like forest management, urban planning, land use change identification and environment change analysis. The passive sensing of hyperspectral systems can be effective in describing the phenomenology of the observed area over hundreds of (narrow) spectral bands. On the other hand, the active sensing of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) systems can be exploited for characterising topographical information of the area. As a result, the joint use of hyperspectral and LiDAR data provides a source of complementary information, which can greatly assist in the classification of complex classes. In this study, we fuse hyperspectral and LiDAR data for land cover classification. We do a pixel-wise classification on a disjoint set of training and testing samples for five different classes. We propose a new feature combination by fusing features from both hyperspectral and LiDAR, which achieves competent classification accuracy with low feature dimension, while the existing method requires high dimensional feature vector to achieve similar classification result. Also, for the reduction of the dimension of the feature vector, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used as it captures the variance of the samples with a limited number of Principal Components (PCs). We tested our classification method using PCA applied on hyperspectral bands only and combined hyperspectral and LiDAR features. Classification with support vector machine (SVM) and decision tree shows that our feature combination achieves better classification accuracy compared to the existing feature combination, while keeping the similar number of PCs. The experimental results also show that decision tree performs better than SVM and requires less execution time.
Renal inulin clearance versus total plasma clearance of 51Cr-EDTA.

Simultaneous measurements of inulin clearance by infusion and clearance from of 51Cr-EDTA after single injection were performed in 17 subjects. 51Cr-EDTA-clearance was calculated as the ratio between plasma volume and the area under the plasma curve from t = o to infinity. Urine collection is not needed. Whole-body counting showed 4.5% retention after 72 hours. The use of 51Cr-EDTA clearance for deteermination of GFR is justisfied in view of the close correspondence between inulin clearance and plasma clearance of 51Cr-EDTA.
Multiple-Instance Learning via an RBF Kernel-Based Extreme Learning Machine

Abstract As we are usually confronted with a large instance space for real-word data sets, it is significant to develop a useful and efficient multiple-instance learning (MIL) algorithm. MIL, where training data are prepared in the form of labeled bags rather than labeled instances, is a variant of supervised learning. This paper presents a novel MIL algorithm for an extreme learning machine called MI-ELM. A radial basis kernel extreme learning machine is adapted to approach the MIL problem using Hausdorff distance to measure the distance between the bags. The clusters in the hidden layer are composed of bags that are randomly generated. Because we do not need to tune the parameters for the hidden layer, MI-ELM can learn very fast. The experimental results on classifications and multiple-instance regression data sets demonstrate that the MI-ELM is useful and efficient as compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.
DbEr: A New Discretization Algorithm Based on the Entropy of Relation

We propose a new discretization method DbEr, which is founded on the entropy of relation(ER). DbEr includes a bottom-up and a top-down discretization methods at the same time. Compared with other methods of discretization, DbEr takes ER as the only measure for not only the choice criterions of attributes and cutpoints, but also the stopping criterion of discretization. Using a single measure as the criterions in the whole process of discretization will maintain the consistency of preference. This is an important merit of DbEr. Furthermore, some new concepts are put forward to discuss the advantage of taking ER as the measure for discretization. It is shown that the maximal value of ER is the compromise of unknown knowledge and inconsistent knowledge. At last, we use naive Bayesian classifier as classification tools to compare DbEr with some other discretization algorithms. The result shows that DbEr can do better than most of other discretization algorithms.