Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plant-derived human butyrylcholinesterase, but not an organophosphorous-compound hydrolyzing variant thereof, protects rodents against nerve agents

The concept of using cholinesterase bioscavengers for prophylaxis against organophosphorous nerve agents and pesticides has progressed from the bench to clinical trial. However, the supply of the native human proteins is either limited (e.g., plasma-derived butyrylcholinesterase and erythrocytic acetylcholinesterase) or nonexisting (synaptic acetylcholinesterase). Here we identify a unique form of recombinant human butyrylcholinesterase that mimics the native enzyme assembly into tetramers; this form provides extended effective pharmacokinetics that is significantly enhanced by polyethylene glycol conjugation. We further demonstrate that this enzyme (but not a G117H/E197Q organophosphorus acid anhydride hydrolase catalytic variant) can prevent morbidity and mortality associated with organophosphorous nerve agent and pesticide exposure of animal subjects of two model species.
Role of CD4 in thymocyte selection and maturation

We examined the possible role of CD4 molecules during in vivo and in vitro fetal thymic development. Our results show that fetal thymi treated with intact anti-CD4 mAbs fail to generate CD4 single-positive T cells, while the generation of the other phenotypes remains unchanged. Most importantly, the use of F(ab')2 and Fab anti-CD4 mAb gave identical results, i.e., failure to generate CD4+/CD8- T cells, with no effect on the generation of CD4+/CD8+ T cells. Since F(ab')2 and Fab anti-CD4 fail to deplete CD4+/CD8- in adult mice, these results strongly argue that the absence of CD4+/CD8- T cells is not due to depletion, but rather, is caused by a lack of positive selection, attributable to an obstructed CD4-MHC class II interaction. Furthermore, we also observed an increase in TCR/CD3 expression after anti-CD4 (divalent or monovalent) mAb treatment. The TCR/CD3 upregulation occurs in the double-positive population, and may result from CD4 signaling after mAb engagement, or may be a consequence of the blocked CD4-class II interactions. One proposed model argues that the CD3 upregulation occurs in an effort to compensate for the reduction in avidity or signaling that is normally provided by the interaction of the CD4 accessory molecule and its ligand. As a whole, our findings advocate that CD4 molecules play a decisive role in the differentiation of thymocytes.
Automatic Image Synthesis from Keywords Using Scene Context

Text is one of the simplest way to express one's idea, and an image is one of the most impactive way to do so. Therefore, if a system can synthesize an image from text without direct user manipulation, novel image synthesis applications will be opened to users without artistic skills. In such a system, which objects to synthesize will be declared in texts. However, information about positional relations and scale of objects is not much provided and must be estimated using common sense. As described in this paper, we develop a system that can automatically synthesize objects to an image, given the background image and class name of the target synthesizing object. With the inputs as the background image and keywords, images for synthesizing objects are searched automatically. Although some previously developed systems that can synthesize an image from sketches and paintings, this is the first system that can estimate the position, scale, and appearance of objects and automatically synthesize them to images without direct user input. We propose a scene context, which indicates the position, scale, and appearance of synthesizing objects. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) the scene context extraction method for automatic image synthesis and (2) application of automatic image synthesis using the scene context.
Comparative analysis of master-slave latches and flip-flops for high-performance and low-power systems

In this paper, we propose a set of rules for consistent estimation of the real performance and power features of the flip-flop and master-slave latch structures. A new simulation and optimization approach is presented, targeting both high-performance and power budget issues. The analysis approach reveals the sources of performance and power-consumption bottlenecks in different design styles. Certain misleading parameters have been properly modified and weighted to reflect the real properties of the compared structures. Furthermore, the results of the comparison of representative master-slave latches and flip-flops illustrate the advantages of our approach and the suitability of different design styles for high-performance and low-power applications.
Credential Proactive Protection Guard : A Proactive Password Checking Tool

Over the internet, user profiling is one of the key activity in which user is asked to provide personal as well as professional information. The user is not aware about the misuse of profiling. It has been observed that user choose password from his/her profile unintentionally which create serious problem. The password has been taken from small domain which enables hackers to crack credentials by trying different fields of the user profile. To overcome this problem, proactive password checker is required which enforces password policies and prevents users from choosing easily guessable passwords. In this paper, we have introduced proactive password checking tool (Credential Proactive Protection Guard) based on user profiling which automatically check whether the given credential is safe or not and find the relationship between user profile and credentials. The focus of the current study is to check the level of association between different fields of user profile with credentials. The detailed technique, mechanism and tool of the proposed proactive password checker is also discussed in detail.
A closer look at using quasar near-zones as a probe of neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium

We examine a large set of synthetic quasar spectra to realistically assess the potential of using the relative sizes of highly ionized near-zones in the Lyα and Lyβ forest as a probe of the neutral hydrogen content of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z > 6. The scatter in the relative near-zone size distribution, induced by underlying fluctuations in the baryonic density field and the filtering of ionizing radiation, is considerable even for fixed assumptions about the IGM neutral fraction. As a consequence, the current observational data cannot distinguish between an IGM which is significantly neutral or one which is highly ionized just above z= 6. Under standard assumptions for quasar ages and ionizing luminosities, a future sample of several tens of high-resolution Lyα and Lyβ near-zone spectra should be capable of distinguishing between a volume-weighted neutral hydrogen fraction in the IGM which is greater or less than 10 per cent.
Exploration of the validity and reliability of the "backache disability index" (BADIX) in patients with non-specific low back pain.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In clinical examinations of a patient with non-specific low back pain (LBP), there is a need to dispose over a valid and quick to perform rating system. The "Backache Disability Index" for LBP or BADIX includes rating of 5 trunk movements in erect position and a "Morning Back Stiffness" score, whereof the sum gives the BADIX (max. 20 points). The objective of this study was to explore the reliability, responsiveness and concurrent validity of the BADIX. Patients with LBP (n=100) were randomly assigned into a "control" group (n=40) in function of validity studies, and a "treatment" group (n=60) in function of responsiveness studies. The treatment group underwent two weekly sessions of in total 30 minutes of deep cross-friction on the thoraco-lumbar Erector spinae and gluteals. All patients completed the Oswestry Disability Questionnaire validated Dutch version (ODQ), the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ). The impairment examination consists, besides current orthopaedic and neurologic examinations, of the new BADIX scoring system. RESULTS In our study the retest reliability after 3 days of the BADIX was perfect (n=039, r=0.95). A good correlation (p < 0.001) was found between BADIX at baseline, and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) (n=93, r=0.76), and McGill-Quality of Life Index (r=0.74). Similar discriminative ability and effect size of measures was found for BADIX and ODI (n=54). It is proposed that the minimal detectable change should be equal or more than 2 points. CONCLUSIONS The "Backache Disability Index" appears to be a reliable and a valid assessment tool of morning stiffness and restricted spinal movements, and discriminates between successful and unsuccessful treatment outcome. The BADIX will allow patients to take snapshots of their daily treatment evolution, save them on their computer or tablets (apps) and share the results with their doctors and/or therapists.
Pursuing Costly Reform: The Case of Ecuadorian Natural Resource Management

Why do politicians pursue policy reforms to improve government performance when these are perceived to be costly, both materially and politically? Theories based on advanced democracies stress electoral accountability mechanisms rooted in programmatic parties with strong ties to society. Empirically, these are largely absent in less developed democracies, and this often leads to poor public goods provision. To better understand the incentives for local policy reform in developing democracies, we constructed a comprehensive data set of local natural resource management reforms in Ecuador’s cantons during 1997–2008. We find that the presence of “organic” political parties, legitimate participatory decision-making institutions, and high levels of civic engagement increased the incidence of reform. Our findings suggest that even in environments marked by clientelist politics and weak, elite-based party systems, institutions linking politicians with a mobilized civil society (e.g., organic parties and participatory decision-making institutions) can incentivize elected officials to pursue performance-enhancing reforms.RESUMEN:¿Por qué los políticos reforman políticas para mejorar el desempeño del gobierno cuando las mismas reformas se perciben a ser costosas, tanto en lo material como políticamente? Las teorías derivadas de las democracias avanzadas enfatizan los mecanismos de rendición de cuentas, basados en elecciones y partidos programáticos con fuertes vínculos a la sociedad. Empíricamente, estas características frecuentemente están ausentes en las democracias menos desarrolladas, lo cual resulta en la falta de provisión de bienes públicos. Para mejor entender los incentivos para reformar políticas públicas a nivel local en democracias menos desarrolladas, construimos una base de datos de reformas de la gestión de los recursos naturales locales en los cantones del Ecuador durante el periodo 1997–2008. La presencia de partidos políticos “orgánicos”, la presencia de instituciones de participación ciudadana y un alto nivel de participación ciudadana aumentaron la incidencia de reformas. Los resultados sugieren que incluso en condiciones marcadas por clientelismo y sistemas débiles de los partidos políticos, instituciones que hacen vínculos entre los políticos y la sociedad civil movilizada—como partidos “orgánicas” e instituciones de participación ciudadana—pueden incentivar a los funcionarios que lleven a cabo reformas.
Impact of Host Age and Parity on Susceptibility to Severe Urinary Tract Infection in a Murine Model

The epidemiology and bacteriology of urinary tract infection (UTI) varies across the human lifespan, but the reasons for these differences are poorly understood. Using established monomicrobial and polymicrobial murine UTI models caused by uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) and/or Group B Streptococcus (GBS), we demonstrate age and parity as inter-related factors contributing to UTI susceptibility. Young nulliparous animals exhibited 10–100-fold higher bacterial titers compared to older animals. In contrast, multiparity was associated with more severe acute cystitis in older animals compared to age-matched nulliparous controls, particularly in the context of polymicrobial infection where UPEC titers were ∼1000-fold higher in the multiparous compared to the nulliparous host. Multiparity was also associated with significantly increased risk of chronic high titer UPEC cystitis and ascending pyelonephritis. Further evidence is provided that the increased UPEC load in multiparous animals required TLR4-signaling. Together, these data strongly suggest that the experience of childbearing fundamentally and permanently changes the urinary tract and its response to pathogens in a manner that increases susceptibility to severe UTI. Moreover, this murine model provides a system for dissecting these and other lifespan-associated risk factors contributing to severe UTI in at-risk groups.
The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition

PEARL HARBOR AS HISTORY: Japanese-American Relations, 1931-1941 DOROTHY BORG and SHUMPEI OKAMOTO, Editors A compilation of papers prepared by Japanese and American scholars examining the part played by both government institutions and non-governmental ones in the making of foreign policy in Japan and the United States during the crucial decade 1931-1941. Studies of the East Asian Institute $25.00
Objective assessment of listening effort in the oscillatory EEG: Comparison of different hearing aid configurations

An objective estimate of listening effort could support the hearing aid fitting procedure. Most of the digital hearing aids have already hearing aid settings which are supposed to reduce the listening effort, but the effects of these settings on the individual's listening effort remain unclear. In this study, we propose an objective estimate of listening effort using electroencephalographic data. The new method is based on the phase distribution of the ongoing oscillatory EEG activity. We hypothesize that for a non-effortful listening environment the phase is rather uniformly distributed on the unit circle than for a demanding condition. To prove if the phase is uniformly distributed around the unit circle, the Rayleigh Test was applied to the phase of the EEG. This method was tested in 14 hearing impaired subjects (moderate hearing loss, 65.64 ±7.93 yrs, 7 female). The tested hearing aid settings were a directional microphone combined with a noise reduction algorithm in a medium and a strong setting, the noise reduction setting turned off as well as a setting using omnidirectional microphones. Noise embedded sentences (Oldenburg Sentence Test, OlSa) were used as test materials. The task of the subject was to repeat each sentence. The results indicate that the objective estimate of listening effort maps the subjectively rated effort and for a listening situation like the presented one, the strong setting of the directional microphone requires the smallest effort.
A Discontinuous Neural Network for Non-Negative Sparse Approximation

This paper investigates a discontinuous neural network which is used as a model of the mammalian olfactory system and can more generally be applied to solve non-negative sparse approximation problems. By inherently limiting the systems integrators to having non-negative outputs, the system function becomes discontinuous since the integrators switch between being inactive and being active. It is shown that the presented network converges to equilibrium points which are solutions to general non-negative least squares optimization problems. We specify a Caratheodory solution and prove that the network is stable, provided that the system matrix has full column-rank. Under a mild condition on the equilibrium point, we show that the network converges to its equilibrium within a finite number of switches. Two applications of the neural network are shown. Firstly, we apply the network as a model of the olfactory system and show that in principle it may be capable of performing complex sparse signal recovery tasks. Secondly, we generalize the application to include non-negative sparse approximation problems and compare the recovery performance to a classical non-negative basis pursuit denoising algorithm. We conclude that the recovery performance differs only marginally from the classical algorithm, while the neural network has the advantage that no performance critical regularization parameter has to be chosen prior to recovery.
Characterizing network traffic behaviour using granule‐based association rule mining

Association rule mining is one important technique to characterize the behaviour of network traffic. However, mining association rules from network traffic data still have three obstacles such as efficiency, huge number of results and insufficiency to represent the behaviour of network traffic. Aiming to tackle these issues, this paper presents a granule‐based association rule mining approach, called association hierarchy mining. The proposed approach adopts top‐down rule mining strategy to directly generate interesting rules according to subjectively specified rule template hierarchies, which improves the efficiency of rule generation and subjectively filters user uninterested rules. The approach also proposes to prune a new type of redundant rules defined by this research to reduce the number of rules. Finally, the approach introduces the concept of diversity, aiming to select the interesting rules for better interpreting the behaviour of network traffic. The experiments performed on the MAWI network traffic traces show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
P wave detector with PP rhythm tracking: evaluation in different arrhythmia contexts

Automatic detection of atrial activity (P waves) in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is a crucial task to diagnose the presence of arrhythmias. The P wave is difficult to detect and most of the approaches in the literature have been evaluated on normal sinus rhythms and rarely considered arrhythmia contexts other than atrial flutter and fibrillation. A novel knowledge-based P wave detector algorithm is presented. It is self-adaptive to the patient and able to deal with certain arrhythmias by tracking the PP rhythm. The detector has been tested on 12 records of the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database containing several ventricular and supra-ventricular arrhythmias. On the overall records, the detector demonstrates Se = 96.60% and Pr = 95.46%; for the normal sinus rhythm, it reaches Se = 97.76% and Pr = 96.80% and, in the case of Mobitz type II, it demonstrates Se = 72.79% and Pr = 99.51%. It also shows good performance for trigeminy and bigeminy, and outperforms some more sophisticated techniques. Although the results emphasize the difficulty of P wave detection in difficult arrhythmias (supra and ventricular tachycardias), it shows that domain knowledge can efficiently support signal processing techniques.
Neural inhibition enables selection during language processing

Whether grocery shopping or choosing words to express a thought, selecting between options can be challenging, especially for people with anxiety. We investigate the neural mechanisms supporting selection during language processing and its breakdown in anxiety. Our neural network simulations demonstrate a critical role for competitive, inhibitory dynamics supported by GABAergic interneurons. As predicted by our model, we find that anxiety (associated with reduced neural inhibition) impairs selection among options and associated prefrontal cortical activity, even in a simple, nonaffective verb-generation task, and the GABA agonist midazolam (which increases neural inhibition) improves selection, whereas retrieval from semantic memory is unaffected when selection demands are low. Neural inhibition is key to choosing our words.
Synthesis of live behaviour models for fallible domains

We revisit synthesis of live controllers for event-based operational models. We remove one aspect of an idealised problem domain by allowing to integrate failures of controller actions in the environment model. Classical treatment of failures through strong fairness leads to a very high computational complexity and may be insufficient for many interesting cases. We identify a realistic stronger fairness condition on the behaviour of failures. We show how to construct controllers satisfying liveness specifications under these fairness conditions. The resulting controllers exhibit the only possible behaviour in face of the given topology of failures: they keep retrying and never give up. We then identify some well-structure conditions on the environment. These conditions ensure that the resulting controller will be eager to satisfy its goals. Furthermore, for environments that satisfy these conditions and have an underlying probabilistic behaviour, the measure of traces that satisfy our fairness condition is 1, giving a characterisation of the kind of domains in which the approach is applicable.
Can Alternative Sugar Sources Buffer Pollinators From Nectar Shortages?

ABSTRACT Honeydew is abundant in many ecosystems and may provide an alternative food source (a buffer) for pollinators during periods of food shortage, but the impact of honeydew on pollination systems has received little attention to date. In New Zealand, kānuka trees (Myrtaceae: Kunzea ericoides (A. Rich) Joy Thompson) are often heavily infested by the endemic honeydew-producing scale insect Coelostomidia wairoensis (Maskell) (Hemiptera: Coelostomidiidae) and the period of high honeydew production can overlap with kānuka flowering. In this study, we quantified the sugar resources (honeydew and nectar) available on kānuka and recorded nocturnal insect activity on infested and uninfested kānuka during the flowering period. Insects were abundant on infested trees, but flowers on infested trees received fewer insect visitors than flowers on uninfested trees. There was little evidence that insects had switched directly from nectar-feeding to honeydew-feeding, but it is possible that some omnivores (e.g., cockroaches) were distracted by the other honeydew-associated resources on infested branches (e.g., sooty molds, prey). Additional sampling was carried out after kānuka flowering had finished to determine honeydew usage in the absence of adjacent nectar resources. Moths, which had fed almost exclusively on nectar earlier, were recorded feeding extensively on honeydew after flowering had ceased; hence, honeydew may provide an additional food source for potential pollinators. Our results show that honeydew resources can impact floral visitation patterns and suggest that future pollinator studies should consider the full range of sugar resources present in the study environment.