Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Block to Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Assembly in Murine Cells

ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) does not replicate in murine cells. We investigated the basis of this block by infecting a murine NIH 3T3 reporter cell line that stably expressed human CD4, CCR5, and cyclin T1 and contained a transactivatable HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR)-green fluorescent protein (GFP) cassette. Although the virus entered efficiently, formed provirus, and was expressed at a level close to that in a highly permissive human cell line, the murine cells did not support M-tropic HIV-1 replication. To determine why the virus failed to replicate, the efficiency of each postentry step in the virus replication cycle was analyzed using vesicular stomatitis virus G pseudotypes. The murine cells supported reverse transcription and integration at levels comparable to those in the human osteosarcoma-derived cell line GHOST.R5, and human cyclin T1 restored provirus expression, consistent with earlier findings of others. The infected murine cells contained nearly as much virion protein as did the human cells but released less than 1/500 the amount of p24 gag into the culture medium. A small amount of p24 gag was released and was in the form of fully infectious virus. Electron microscopy suggested that aberrantly assembled virion protein had accumulated in cytoplasmic vesicular structures. Virions assembling at the cell membrane were observed but were rare. The entry of M-tropic JR.FL-pseudotyped reporter virus was moderately reduced in the murine cells, suggesting a minor reduction in coreceptor function. A small reduction in the abundance of full-length viral mRNA transcripts was also noted; however, the major block was at virion assembly. This could have been due to a failure of Gag to target to the cell membrane. This block must be overcome before a murine model for HIV-1 replication can be developed.
A NEW MEASURE FOR COSMIC SHEAR

Cosmic shear, i.e. the distortion of images of high-redshift galaxies through the tidal gravitational field of the large-scale matter distribution in the Universe, offers the opportunity to measure the power spectrum of the cosmic density fluctuations without any reference to the relation of dark matter to luminous tracers. We consider here a new statistical measure for cosmic shear, the aperture mass Map(θ), which is defined as a spatially filtered projected density field and which can be measured directly from the image distortions of high-redshift galaxies. By selecting an appropriate spatial filter function, the dispersion of the aperture mass is a convolution of the power spectrum of the projected density field with a narrow kernel, so that 〈M2ap(θ)〉 provides a well-localized estimate of the power spectrum at wavenumbers s ∼ 5/θ. We calculate 〈M2ap〉 for various cosmological models, using the fully non-linear power spectrum of the cosmic density fluctuations. The non-linear evolution yields a significant increase of 〈M2ap〉 relative to the linear growth on scales below ∼ 0°. 5. The third-order moment of Map can be used to define a skewness, which is a measure of the non-Gaussianity of the density field. We present the first calculation of the skewness of cosmic shear in the framework of the quasi-linear theory of structure growth. We show that it yields a sensitive measure of the cosmological model; in particular, it is independent of the normalization of the power spectrum. Several practical estimates for 〈M2ap〉 are constructed and their dispersions calculated. On scales below a few arcminutes, the intrinsic ellipticity distribution of galaxies is the dominant source of noise, whereas on larger scales the cosmic variance becomes the most important contribution. We show that measurements of Map in two adjacent apertures are virtually uncorrelated, which implies that an image with side-length L can yield [L/(2θ)]2 mutually independent estimates for Map. We show that one square degree of a high-quality image is sufficient to detect the cosmic shear with the Map-statistic on scales below ∼ 10 arcmin, and to estimate its amplitude with an accuracy of ∼ 30 per cent on scales below ∼ 5 arcmin.
Sarymsakov Matrices and Asynchronous Implementation of Distributed Coordination Algorithms

We provide new insight into the somewhat obscure definition of the Sarymsakov class of stochastic matrices and use it to construct a new necessary and sufficient condition for the convergence of products of stochastic matrices. Such convergence result is critical in establishing the effectiveness of distributed coordination algorithms for multi-agent systems and enables us to investigate a specific coordination task with asynchronous update events. The set of scrambling stochastic matrices, a subclass of the Sarymsakov class, is utilized to establish the convergence of the agents' states even when there is no common clock for the agents to synchronize their update actions.
Robust Iris Segmentation Method Based on a New Active Contour Force With a Noncircular Normalization

Traditional iris segmentation methods give good results when the iris images are taken under ideal imaging conditions. However, the segmentation accuracy of an iris recognition system significantly influences its performance especially in nonideal iris images. This paper proposes a novel segmentation method for nonideal iris images. Two algorithms are proposed for pupil segmentation in iris images which are captured under visible and near infrared light. Then, a fusion of an expanding and a shrinking active contour is developed for iris segmentation by integrating a new pressure force to the active contour model. Thereafter, a noncircular iris normalization scheme is adopted to effectively unwrap the segmented iris. In addition, a novel method for closed eye detection is proposed. The proposed scheme is robust in finding the exact iris boundary and isolating the eyelids of the iris images. Experimental results on CASIA V4.0, MMU2, UBIRIS V1, and UBIRIS V2 iris databases indicate a high level of accuracy using the proposed technique. Moreover, the comparison results with the state-of-the-art iris segmentation algorithms revealed considerable improvement in segmentation accuracy and recognition performance while being computationally more efficient.
Research Teenagers' part-time employment and their Note work-related attitudes and aspirations

Summary We assessed the relationship between the quality (i.e., job characteristics, role stressors, and interpersonal relationships) and quantity of part-time employment, and workrelated attitudes and aspirations among 349 students. Neither the linear nor the quadratic components of employment quantity predicted any of the outcome variables. Motivation to do good work was predicted both by role stressors and by family achievement orientation. Career maturity was predicted by role stressors at work, and cynicism by role stressors and satisfaction with interpersonal relationships. In contrast, job involvement was significantly related to family achievement orientation but not to any perceived job factors. These findings question the assumption that only intensive work during high school exerts negative eAects for teenagers, and support the importance of employment quality for teenagers as well as adults. #1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Performance of Eucalyptus and OpenStack Clouds on FutureGrid

expanding demand for Cloud computing, numerous Cloud providers are offering services. Benchmarking is extremely important to compare their performance. In this paper, we study the performance of two IaaS clouds Eucalyptus 3 and OpenStack (version Essex) implemented on FutureGrid (1, 2), a test bed that allows researchers to conduct experiments to understand the behavior and utility of cloud computing services. Phoronix Test Suite (3) is utilised as a benchmark program to conduct diverse performance measurements on both the clouds. Besides the programs in Phoronix Test suite, time to launch instances, time to register images using scripts were also matched. The results are discussed in this paper.
Marco conceptual en el proceso de investigación

ResumenSe señala la importancia del marco conceptual que sustenta a la investigación, partiendo de la postura del investigador, por lo que se describen algunas características que favorecen el desarrollo de un buen estudio. Se sugiere realizar un análisis de la literatura existente sobre el tema que se investigará, tomando en cuenta diversas perspectivas: lo señalado por la(s) teoría(s) que pretenden explicar el problema, referidas a la educación, la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del tema, habilidad o competencia en cuestión; el diseño más adecuado para poner a prueba el modelo de enseñanza que se propone; la estrategia de evaluación del aprendizaje más adecuada al contenido y objetivos; y el análisis de los datos recabados que permitan aceptar o rechazar la(s) hipótesis establecidas en el estudio, que se pretende llevar a cabo. Se da una visión muy general del tipo de documentos que se deben revisar y el orden en que se debe hacer, para asegurar que se cuenta con la información suficiente y necesaria para desarrollar un buen proyecto de investigación. Se recomienda iniciar la búsqueda de lo más reciente a lo más antiguo, siempre y cuando sea necesario. Asimismo, ayuda al investigador a aclarar sus intenciones, a refinar su hipótesis, a establecer el tipo de relación que busca entre las variables de interés y ponerla a prueba de la mejor manera, asegurando tanto la calidad teórico-metodológica planteada, como la necesidad de responder a la pregunta de investigación que se plantea, en virtud de su importancia social y educativa, señalando que las fuentes pertinentes existen desde hace ya mucho tiempo.
Religious reasons in the public sphere: an empirical study of religious actors’ argumentative patterns in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

The ‘going public’ of religious actors is taking central stage both in religious studies and political philosophy. But this ‘going public’ of religious actors is controversial. The debate revolves around the question of whether religious actors must frame their religious convictions in terms of secular reasons or whether they should be allowed to introduce religiously grounded beliefs into public political argument without constraints. Despite vigorous and ongoing debate, there is little systematic and empirical research on this question. This article focuses on the public statements of religious actors in the context of Swiss direct democratic votes on abortion and immigration. Our empirical findings reveal an interesting gap: while many political philosophers and religious thinkers have moved to a position where religious actors can – and even should – openly employ religious arguments, the practice of religious actors in Switzerland is different. The larger denominations of Catholics and Protestants especially have a tendency to use a great amount of secular vocabulary. In addition, our findings also reveal that the use of religious or secular reasons varies considerably according to different issues, different media types (religious vs. secular press), different religious traditions, different alliance structures, and different media genres, while there is no clear time trend.
IglG and IglI of the Francisella pathogenicity island are important 1 virulence determinants of Francisella tularensis LVS 2 3 4

4 Jeanette E. Bröms, Moa Lavander, Lena Meyer, and Anders Sjöstedt 5 6 7 Department of Clinical Microbiology, Clinical Bacteriology, and Laboratory for Molecular 8 Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS), Umeå University, SE-901 85 Umeå, Sweden 9 10 Running title. IglG and IglI impacts F. tularensis virulence. 11 12
An Adapted Measure of Teacher Self-Efficacy for Preservice Teachers: Exploring its Validity Across two Countries

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is an important construct in the prediction of positive student and teacher outcomes. However, problems with its measurement have persisted, often through confounding TSE with other constructs. This research introduces an adapted TSE instrument for preservice teachers, which is closely aligned with self-efficacy experts' recommendations for measuring self-efficacy, and based on a widely used measure of TSE. We provide first evidence of construct validity for this instrument. Participants were 851 preservice teachers in three samples from Germany and New Zealand. Results of the multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses showed a uniform 3-factor solution for all samples, metric measurement invariance, and a consistent and moderate correlation between TSE and a measure of general self-efficacy across all samples. Despite limitations to this study, there is some first evidence that this measure allows for a valid 3-dimensional assessment of TSE in preservice teachers.
Corner block list representation and its application to floorplan optimization

We propose to use a corner block list (CBL) representation for mosaic floorplans. In a mosaic floorplan, each room has only one block assigned to it. Thus, there is a unique corner room on the top right corner of the chip. Corner block deletion and corner block insertion keep the floorplan mosaic. Through a recursive deletion process, a mosaic floorplan can be converted to a representation that is named as CBL. Given a CBL, it takes only linear time to construct the floorplan. The CBL is used for the application to very large-scale integration floorplan and building block placement. We adopt a simulated annealing process for the optimization. Soft blocks and the aspect ratio of the chip are taken into account in the optimization process. The experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm is quite promising.
Relaciones empíricas entre los estadísticos de la teoría clásica de los tests y los de la teoría de respuesta a los ítems

Empirical relationhips between classical test theory and item response theory statistics. The purpose of this paper was examine empirically: (1) the relationships between the item and person statistics from Item Response Theory (IRT) and Classical Test Theory (CTT) and, (2) the invariance of parameters in both measurement frameworks. In order to achieve these objectives, a simulation study was carry out where 30 samples with 500 subjects and 50 items were generated from the 3-PL model; 10 of these samples with low level of ability, 10 with medium and 10 with high level of ability. The items were calibrated by the 1-, 2-, and 3-PL models. Likewise, the person and item statistics in CTT was calculated in each sample. The findings indicate that the relationships between the statistics from both, IRT and CTT, were very strongs, with very high correlation indices, except in the discrimination parameters. The degree of invariance of parameters across the samples wasn't very high in both measurement frameworks.
Governance-specific Factors and Cultural Clusters: The Case of the Museum Clusters in Florence

Abstract Drawing on the cultural cluster approach, and the local system governance perspective, we test a ‘multi-level governance’ model (intra-cluster, inter-cluster and cluster to cluster) for ‘high cultural local system’ (like cities of art). The model can be adopted to develop cultural clustering strategies based on cluster-specific factors (critical mass of actors, organizing capacity, territorial proximity) and governance-specific factors (governance structure and distribution of strategic decision-making powers across cluster actors, mental proximity). From this perspective, this article studies intra-cluster networking dynamics in the Florence museum cluster for exhibition activities, and implications in terms of cluster governance.
Artificial Neural Networks Applied to Survival Prediction in Breast Cancer

In this study, we evaluated the accuracy of a neural network in predicting 5-, 10- and 15-year breast-cancer-specific survival. A series of 951 breast cancer patients was divided into a training set of 651 and a validation set of 300 patients. Eight variables were entered as input to the network: tumor size, axillary nodal status, histological type, mitotic count, nuclear pleomorphism, tubule formation, tumor necrosis and age. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was used as a measure of accuracy of the prediction models in generating survival estimates for the patients in the independent validation set. The AUC values of the neural network models for 5-, 10- and 15-year breast-cancer-specific survival were 0.909, 0.886 and 0.883, respectively.The corresponding AUC values for logistic regression were 0.897, 0.862 and 0.858. Axillary lymph node status (N0 vs. N+) predicted 5-year survival with a specificity of 71% and a sensitivity of 77%. The sensitivity of the neural network model was 91% at this specificity level. The rate of false predictions at 5 years was 82/300 for nodal status and 40/300 for the neural network. When nodal status was excluded from the neural network model, the rate of false predictions increased only to 49/300 (AUC 0.877). An artificial neural network is very accurate in the 5-, 10- and 15-year breast-cancer-specific survival prediction. The consistently high accuracy over time and the good predictive performance of a network trained without information on nodal status demonstrate that neural networks can be important tools for cancer survival prediction.
Efficacy of antiepileptic drugs in adults predicts efficacy in children

Objective: Due to the challenges inherent in performing clinical trials in children, a systematic review of published clinical trials was performed to determine whether the efficacy of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) in adults can be used to predict the efficacy of AEDs in the pediatric population. Methods: Medline/PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane library searches (1970–January 2010) were conducted for clinical trials of partial-onset seizures (POS) and primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures (PGTCS) in adults and in children <2 and 2–18 years. Independent epidemiologists used standardized search and study evaluation criteria to select eligible trials. Forest plots were used to investigate the relative strength of placebo-subtracted effect measures. Results: Among 30 adjunctive therapy POS trials in adults and children (2–18 years) that met evaluation criteria, effect measures were consistent between adults and children for gabapentin, lamotrigine, levetiracetam, oxcarbazepine, and topiramate. Placebo-subtracted median percent seizure reduction between baseline and treatment periods (ranging from 7.0% to 58.6% in adults and from 10.5% to 31.2% in children) was significant for 40/46 and 6/6 of the treatment groups studied. The ≥50% responder rate (ranging from 2.0% to 43.0% in adults and from 3.0% to 26.0% in children) was significant for 37/43 and 5/8 treatment groups. In children <2 years, an insufficient number of trials were eligible for analysis. Conclusions: This systematic review supports the extrapolation of efficacy results in adults to predict a similar adjunctive treatment response in 2- to 18-year-old children with POS.
DeepFont: A System for Font Recognition and Similarity

We develop the DeepFont system, a large-scale learning-based solution for automatic font identification, organization and selection. In this proposed technical demonstration, we will give our audience a tour to the DeepFont system, with the focus on its impacts on real consumer products, including but not limited to: 1) a cloud-based iOS App for font recognition; 2) a web-based tool for font similarity evaluation and discovery.
A Road Map for Reading Specialists Entering Schools Without Exemplary Reading Programs: Seven Quick Lessons

A reading specialist who worked in a high-poverty urban elementary school that initially did not have an exemplary reading program provides seven lessons that can serve as a guidepost for other reading specialists. Several approaches that led to improved reading achievement of upper elementary school children are described. The seven lessons, when combined with lessons from reading specialists who work in schools with exemplary programs, have implications for current and future reading specialists. There are also implications for those responsible for preparing reading specialists. The focus is on increasing reading achievement schoolwide.
Extending Airborne SAR-ATI Algorithms to the RADARSAT-2 Moving Object Detection Experiment (MODEX)

SAR-ATI algorithms, which have been developed and validated for airborne SAR data, are now being extended to the RADARSAT-2 Moving Object Detection Experiment (MODEX). Starting from a unified geometry model, specific airborne and spaceborne SAR-ATI features are discussed. Some of the very first MODEX results are presented.
Differentiation of Culicoides obsoletus and Culicoides scoticus (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) Based on Mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase Subunit I

Abstract Culicoides obsoletus (Meigen) and Culicoides scoticus Downes & Kettle (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are sibling species of the Obsoletus group. This group comprises species of biting midges that are suspect vectors of bluetongue virus (family Reoviridae, genus Orbivirus, BTV) and African horse sickness virus (family Reoviridae, genus Orbivirus, AHSV). BTV and AHSV have been isolated several times from females of this group, although it has not been possible to determine the particular species harboring the virus, because of the inability to clearly identify the females of each species based on morphology. Both sexes of C. obsoletus and C. scoticus midges from Catalonia and the Balearics (Spain) were sequenced for the mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI), and these sequences were analyzed to determine intra- and interspecific genetic variability. Species-specific primers for C. obsoletus and C. scoticus were designed and a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based diagnostic assay based on the COI gene and using a hemi-nested PCR technique was developed for reliably distinguishing the females of both species. The species-specific PCR diagnostic was compared with morphological discrimination of C. obsoletus and C. scoticus females. The morphologic characters were not fully reliable.
Social Capital as Social Relations: The Contribution of Normative Structures

This paper presents a framework for social capital that highlights the normative structures through which it is manifested. The primary focus is on the ways that norms structure the relationships in which social capital is embedded. To this end, we introduce four types of normative structures which condition social capital: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal. A field site in Japan is used to illustrate how different aspects of social capital interact. This case analysis also serves to make an important distinction between the availability and use of social capital. The central arguments are that 1) social capital is organized in different ways by the normative structures in which it is embedded; 2) there are important interactions between these different aspects of social capital that are often overlooked by simpler frameworks; 3) a useful distinction can be made between available social capital and used social capital; 4) access to social capital can be used to analyze power relations; and 5) distinguishing different aspects of social capital makes areas visible that are overlooked by other understandings of social capital. We conclude by identifying the utility of our perspective for informing public policy and guiding future research.