Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bacterial inactivation using silver-coated magnetic nanoparticles as functional antimicrobial agents.

The ability for silver nanoparticles to function as an antibacterial agent while being separable from the target fluids is important for bacterial inactivation in biological fluids. This report describes the analysis of the antimicrobial activities of silver-coated magnetic nanoparticles synthesized by wet chemical methods. The bacterial inactivation of several types of bacteria was analyzed, including Gram-positive bacteria ( Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus ) and Gram-negative bacteria ( Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Enterobacter cloacae , and Escherichia coli ). The results have demonstrated the viability of the silver-coated magnetic nanoparticles for achieving effective bacterial inactivation efficiency comparable to and better than that of silver nanoparticles conventionally used. The bacteria inactivation efficiency of our silver-coated MnZn ferrite (MZF@Ag) nanoparticles was also determined for blood platelets samples, demonstrating the potential of utilization in inactivating bacterial growth in platelets prior to transfusion to ensure blood product safety, which also has important implications for enabling the capability of effective separation, delivery, and targeting of the antibacterial agents.
A new assay for soluble transferrin receptors in serum: time for standardisation.

Sir, In a previous issue of this Journal we described the clinical and analytical implications of two recently introduced assays for soluble transferrin receptors in serum (1). Recently we were able to perform a short study on the Orion transferrin receptor assay (Orion Espoo, Finland) which is being introduced to the market now. Apart from an analysis of the analytical performances of the assay we also carried out a limited clinical study on patient samples to compare the clinical usefullness of the Orion assay with the Ramco assay (Ramco, Houston, TX, USA). To determine the intra-assay imprecision 10 replicate measurements with 8 samples were performed. The mean soluble transferrin receptors concentration ranged from 0.6—9.0 mg/1. The intraassay imprecision ranged from 3.9% to 6.1%. Duplicate measurements of 2 samples were performed in order to determine the interassay imprecision. Each sample was analysed in two different assays at the same day. Additionally, the end-of-run drift was determined by analysing the same 2 samples in the first wells as well as in the last wells of the microplate in two runs. The inter-assay imprecision was 4.0% and 6.2% and no end-of-run drift was found. The analytical performance of the Orion test kit is acceptable to be introduced to a clinical laboratory. Compared to the other commercial test kits, this assay is easy to use. The serum samples do not have to be prediluted, which prevents imprecision as result of pi
Age Moderates the Short-Term Effects of Transdermal 17β-Estradiol on Endothelium-Dependent Vascular Function in Postmenopausal Women

Objective—We evaluated age and coronary heart disease (CHD) as potential moderators of the effects of 17β-estradiol on vascular endothelial function in postmenopausal women. Methods and Results—In a double-blind crossover design, 100 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 80 years were randomized to each of 3 transdermal patches, releasing 17β-estradiol (0.05 mg/d), 17β-estradiol (0.05 mg/d)+ norethindrone acetate (NETA, 0.14 mg/d), and placebo. Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) and response to 400 μg sublingual glyceryl trinitrate (GTN-D) were assessed approximately 18 hours after patch placement. Age, but not CHD, moderated the FMD response to treatment (P=0.01). For women in their fifties, the estradiol patch was associated with improved FMD (7.69±4.79%) compared with placebo (4.81±5.97%, P<0.05), but the estradiol+norethindrone patch response (5.81±4.85%) was not significantly different from placebo. Women in their sixties and seventies showed no alterations in FMD response to either active patch. GTN-D response declined with advancing age (P<0.01), with women in their seventies exhibiting blunted GTN-D response compared with younger women. Conclusions—The cardiovascular benefits of natural estrogen supplementation on vascular endothelial function may be dependent on postmenopausal age, with improved vascular function evident only in the early postmenopausal years. Short-term FMD response to estradiol might help stratify individual differences in risks versus benefits of HRT.
STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF FACE-TO-FACE AND ONLINE DISCUSSIONS: THE ADVANTAGE GOES TO . . .

Thirteen students in a graduate-level course on Historical and Policy Perspectives in Higher Education held face-to-face and online discussions on five controversial topics: Diversity, Academic Freedom, Political Tolerance, Affirmative Action, and Gender. Students read materials on each topic and generated questions for discussion that were categorized by Bloom’s taxonomy so that the level of questions in the two discussion settings would be closely parallel. Upon completion of each discussion, they answered questions that addressed depth and length of the discussion, ability to remember, and a self-assessment of how the student learned. Students’ assessments show a consistent preference for the face-to-face discussion but a small number of students preferred the online setting. However, what is perhaps more interesting is a minority of approximately one-third of the students who perceived no difference betweenthe settings, or that the two settings were perhaps complementary.
Evaluation of Mobile Systems - An Integrative Framework

This work presents an integrative framework for the evaluation of mobile systems. In comparison to stationary systems, mobile systems have a bundle of specific singularities that should be considered for evaluation. Further analysis of existing approaches clarifies that an integrative approach for mobile systems is needed considering, besides 1) monetary and 2) qualitative effects, also 3) interdependencies as well as 4) singularities of mobile systems and 5) critical success factors in order to predict the potential system performance. In the construction of the integrative framework we take 1) business/IT-alignment theory, 2) systems theory and 3) identified singularities as starting points, while taking a behavioral science research approach. The resulting framework consists of three main principles (detailed organization-internal evaluation, detailed economic evaluation, integrative evaluation) for a mobile system at hand. We validate the framework by successfully applying it in practical cases. The paper ends with conclusions and implications for further research.
Adenosine Promotes IL-6 Release in Airway Epithelia1

In the airway epithelia, extracellular adenosine modulates a number of biological processes. However, little is known about adenosine’s role in the inflammatory responses of airway epithelial cells. Recent studies suggest that the chronic elevation of extracellular adenosine in mice leads to pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis. Yet, the underlying molecular mechanism has not been well understood and little attention has been paid to the role of airway epithelia in adenosine-triggered inflammation. In the present work, we examined the role of adenosine in releasing IL-6 from airway epithelia. In Calu-3 human airway epithelial cells, apical but not basolateral adenosine elicited robust, apically polarized release of IL-6, along with proinflammatory IL-8. Both protein kinase A and protein kinase C mediated the adenosine-induced IL-6 release, at least partly via phosphorylation of CREB. Protein kinase C appeared to phosphorylate CREB through activating ERK. In addition, A2A but not A2B adenosine receptors were specifically required for the adenosine-induced IL-6 release. Furthermore, in rat bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, adenosine triggered the release of IL-6 as well as proinflammatory IL-1β. Adenosine also mediated the release of a considerable portion of the LPS-induced IL-6 in rat bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Our findings provide a possible molecular link between extracellular adenosine elevation and lung inflammation and fibrosis.
The Mediating Role of Social Skills in the Relationship between Motor Ability and Internalizing Symptoms in Pre‐primary Children

Impaired motor development can deprive a child of constructive engagement in early motor activities and thus diminish opportunities for the acquisition of key cognitive, social and emotional abilities. The aim of the current study was to test a model where social skills mediate the relationship between motor ability and internalizing symptoms in pre-primary children. A cross-sectional research design was employed to assess the mediation model using data from 234 boys and 241 girls aged 4 to 6 years. Structural equation modelling provided support for the mediating role of social skills as assessed by the child's teacher. Replication of these findings in longitudinal studies, elucidating how social skills relate to motor impairment, could have implications for the prevention of psychopathology in young children with motor impairment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Depression and Four Types of Aggression in Japanese Undergraduates

The present study examined depression among Japanese college students and its relationship to four types of aggression: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. We used Japanese version of Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992; Ando et al., 1999). Analysis of correlation coefficients of the data from 140 undergraduates showed that depression had a positive correlation with anger and hostility, while it showed a negative correlation with verbal aggression. The result suggested that college students with high depression tended to feel anger and hostility easily. However, they were less likely to show verbally aggressive behavior.
Mapping of T cell epitopes using recombinant antigens and synthetic peptides.

Two complementary approaches were used to determine the epitope specificity of clonal and polyclonal human T lymphocytes reactive with the 65‐kd antigen of Mycobacterium leprae. A recombinant DNA sublibrary constructed from portions of the 65‐kd gene was used to map T cell determinants within amino acid sequences 101‐146 and 409‐526. Independently, potential T cell epitopes within the protein were predicted based on an empirical analysis of specific patterns in the amino acid sequence. Of six peptides that were predicted and subsequently synthesised, two (112‐132 and 437‐459) were shown to contain human T cell epitopes. This corroborated and refined the results obtained using the recombinant DNA sublibrary. Both of these regions are identical in M. leprae and M. tuberculosis and are distinct from the known B cell epitopes of the 65‐kd protein. This combination of recombinant DNA technology and peptide chemistry may prove valuable in analysis of the cellular immune response to infectious agents.
Self-Esteem Trajectories among Ethnic Minority Adolescents: A Growth Curve Analysis of the Patterns and Predictors of Change.

The current study presents a growth curve analysis of self-esteem among Black, Latino, and Asian American high school students. A series of hierarchical linear models were used to examine patterns and predictors of change in self-esteem over time. Results revealed an average increase in self-esteem with age. Although boys and girls experienced similar trajectories of self-esteem, ethnicity was a significant moderator of developmental change. Black adolescents reported higher self-esteem, while Asian American adolescents reported lower self-esteem, compared with their Latino peers. Latino adolescents experienced a sharper increase in self-esteem over time compared with Black adolescents. The unique and conjoint effects of adolescents' experiences with peers, family, and school were examined in relation to self-esteem trajectories. Results revealed that each perceived context was significantly associated with self-esteem trajectories when examined independently, but family experiences emerged as most strongly related to changes in self-esteem. Results underscore the need to examine change at the individual level, as well as the importance of studying the unique and conjoint effects of individual and contextual-level variables on developmental processes among ethnic minority adolescents.
Transitive Inferences within Seriation Problems Assessed by Explanations, Judgments, and Strategies.

MOORE, GARY W. Transitive Inferences within Seriation Problems Assessed by Explanations, Judgments, and Strategies. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 1164-1172. Transitivity within seriation problems was assessed by explanations, judgments, and strategies. A new experimental procedure was developed which provides an alternative to the current procedures which use the judgment or explanation criteria. 8 seriation tasks were presented to 88 male kindergartners and first, second, and third graders. Each task involved 2 sets of seriated rods, 1 set that varied in color and 1 set that was red. The 1 red rod from the array of colored rods was placed within the second array of red rods, behind a screen. Each child had to find his red rod. 6 levels of strategy and explanation were obtained. Significant mean explanation differences were obtained for the kindergarten and third-grade comparison and the firstand third-grade comparison. No significant mean differences among grades were obtained for the judgment measure. Significant mean strategy differences were obtained between kindergartners and third graders. The present experimental procedure which allows explanations and strategies to be assessed seems to make available a richer data source for the comparison of performance at different grade levels as compared to experimental procedures that use only the judgment criterion.
Vibrio nigripulchritudo monitoring and strain dynamics in shrimp pond sediments

Aims: A description of bacterial pathogens in shrimp ponds is necessary to understand their pathogenesis. Vibrio nigripulchritudo was shown to contain saprophytic and pathogenic strains among New Caledonian isolates. We established a method to map the development of V. nigripulchritudo in pond sediments at three different genetic levels: the species level, then at the pathogenic cluster level and finally at the plasmid level, present only in all highly pathogenic isolates.
“Parties, air-kissing and long boozy lunches”? Public relations in the Australian fashion industry

There has been limited research into fashion public relations. This study explores public relations in the Australian fashion industry using ethnographic research and semistructured interviews with six fashion public relations practitioners. The findings suggest fashion public relations does not easily fit into mainstream understandings of public relations. Rather, fashion public relations is assigned a low status due to its close association with marketing, promotion and publicity and popular representations of the fashion sector as glamorous and superficial. Despite this, participants perceived their work to be professional, where the dominant activities of media relations, celebrity endorsement, and relationship management form part of a carefully devised strategic plan to meet organisational and client objectives. The findings offer an alternative perspective on public relations by considering practitioner experiences in a niche industry field. The study provides new understandings of public relations and calls for a reconceptualisation of the field beyond the narrow remit of mainstream public relations definitions and professional associations.
Stress and Grief of a Perinatal Loss: Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

Based on family stress theory, this study examined the question of how parents grieve the loss of a baby through miscarriage or stillbirth. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, we interviewed twenty-six couples two weeks after a perinatal loss. The couples filled out questionnaires measuring individual variables including bereavement, depression and stress, and couple variables including cohesion, adaptability, communication, satisfaction, and partner support. Then they participated in a three-hour semi-structured interview. Ethnographic content analysis revealed twelve themes closely related to the resources, the meaning of the stressful event, and the coping strategies of Hill's ABC-X stress model. The quantitative analysis of the individual and couple variables supported the qualitative findings in that most couples had excellent coping strategies derived from within the couple relationship.
Structured Kernel Based Modeling: An Exploration in Short-Term Load Forecasting

This paper considers an exploratory modeling strategy applied to a large scale reallife problem of power load forecasting. Different model structures are considered, including Autoregressive models with eXogenous inputs (ARX), Nonlinear Autoregressive models with eXogenous inputs (NARX), both of which are also extended to incorporate residuals that follow an Autoregressive (AR) process (AR-(N)ARX). These models are parameterized either as a full black-box model or as partially linear structures. Starting from the Least Squares Support Vector Machines (LSSVMs) formulation for regression, relevant properties from the problem at hand can be imposed as additional constraints which can be incorporated in a straightforward way within the primal-dual optimization formulation and be solved through convex optimization. For the case study of short-term load forecasting, it is shown that a structured model can reach results comparable to the full black-box model, with the additional benefit of having interpretable coefficients. It o btains satisfactory results when the model structure and the hyperparameter selection procedure are tailored towards the application, taking into account prior knowledge or relevant properties of the problem.
Emotion, Authority, and Death: (Raced) Negotiations in Mock Capital Jury Deliberations

This article explores the role of emotion in the capital penalty‐phase jury deliberations process. It is based on the qualitative analysis of data from ninety video‐recorded four to seven person simulated jury deliberations that examined the influence of race on death sentencing outcomes. The analysis explores when and how emotions are expressed, integrated into the jury's sentencing process, and deployed in penalty‐phase decision making. The findings offer critical new insights into the role that emotion plays in influencing these legal judgments by revealing how jurors strategically and explicitly employ emotion in the course of deliberation, both to support their own positions and neutralize or rebut the opposing positions of others. The findings also shed light on the various ways that white male capital jurors utilize a panoply of powerful emotion‐based tactics to sway others to their position in a manner that often contributes to racially biased outcomes.
Managing and Documenting Legacy Scientific Workflows

Scientific legacy workflows are often developed over many years, poorly documented and implemented with scripting languages. In the context of our cross-disciplinary projects we face the problem of maintaining such scientific workflows. This paper presents the Workflow Instrumentation for Structure Extraction (WISE) method used to process several ad-hoc legacy workflows written in Python and automatically produce their workflow structural skeleton. Unlike many existing methods, WISE does not assume input workflows to be preprocessed in a known workflow formalism. It is also able to identify and analyze calls to external tools. We present the method and report its results on several scientific workflows.
Neurotractin, A Novel Neurite Outgrowth-promoting Ig-like Protein that Interacts with CEPU-1 and LAMP

The formation of axon tracts in nervous system histogenesis is the result of selective axon fasciculation and specific growth cone guidance in embryonic development. One group of proteins implicated in neurite outgrowth, fasciculation, and guidance is the neural members of the Ig superfamily (IgSF). In an attempt to identify and characterize new proteins of this superfamily in the developing nervous system, we used a PCR-based strategy with degenerated primers that represent conserved sequences around the characteristic cysteine residues of Ig-like domains. Using this approach, we identified a novel neural IgSF member, termed neurotractin. This GPI-linked cell surface glycoprotein is composed of three Ig-like domains and belongs to the IgLON subgroup of neural IgSF members. It is expressed in two isoforms with apparent molecular masses of 50 and 37 kD, termed L-form and S-form, respectively. Monoclonal antibodies were used to analyze its biochemical features and histological distribution. Neurotractin is restricted to subsets of developing commissural and longitudinal axon tracts in the chick central nervous system. Recombinant neurotractin promotes neurite outgrowth of telencephalic neurons and interacts with the IgSF members CEPU-1 (K D = 3 × 10−8 M) and LAMP. Our data suggest that neurotractin participates in the regulation of neurite outgrowth in the developing brain.
Physical description and analysis of doped carbon nanotube interconnects

Ever since the discovery of graphene, the 2D carbon structure material has been attracting a lot interest due its electrical, thermal and mechanical properties. Here, we investigate the carbon nanotubes (CNT), wrapping a 2D graphene sheet to form a 1D carbon structure. CNT has a Dirac-cone energy band, which makes it either a semiconductor or metal. With continuous aggressive scaling, the technology using copper as interconnect is reaching its limit on current density, thermal and conductivity performance, thus finding a new interconnect material is an on-going quest. CNT with its high conductivity, high electro-migration, and low temperature effect opens a door for on-chip inter connect applications. However, the uncontrollable chirality of pure CNT motivates us to explore doped CNTs. Doping alleviates the need to control chirality and enhances the metallic property of CNTs. In this work, we start first to describe the fundamental physics of doped CNTs and describe how doping changes the electrical property of CNTs. We also provide analytical models and simulation results on CNT conductance variation for N-type doped CNTs. Simulation results show that doping can reduce overall CNT resistance by 89%.
Distinguishing between cause and effect via kernel-based complexity measures for conditional distributions

We propose a method to evaluate the complexity of probabil- ity measures from data that is based on a reproducing kernel Hilbert space seminorm of the logarithm of conditional probability densities. The mo- tivation is to provide a tool for a causal inference method which assumes that conditional probabilities for effects given their causes are typically simpler and smoother than vice-versa. We present experiments with toy data where the quantitative results are consistent with our intuitive un- derstanding of complexity and smoothness. Also in some examples with real-world data the probability measure corresponding to the true causal direction turned out to be less complex than those of the reversed order.
Sure start

This paper outlines what is involved in Sure Start, one of New Labour's key social policy interventions. It is argued that there are policy continuities with older redemptive policies which focus on young children. It is also argued that Sure Start could provide a bridgehead for a more socially democratic orientation into early childhood policy.