Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification and Antimicrobial Susceptibility ofAlcaligenes xylosoxidans Isolated from Patients with Cystic Fibrosis

ABSTRACT In the past decade, potential pathogens, includingAlcaligenes species, have been increasingly recovered from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Accurate identification of multiply antibiotic-resistant gram-negative bacilli is critical to understanding the epidemiology and clinical implications of emerging pathogens in CF. We examined the frequency of correct identification ofAlcaligenes spp. by microbiology laboratories affiliated with American CF patient care centers. Selective media, anexotoxin A probe for Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and a commercial identification assay, API 20 NE, were used for identification. The activity of antimicrobial agents against these clinical isolates was determined. A total of 106 strains from 78 patients from 49 CF centers in 22 states were studied. Most (89%) were correctly identified by the referring laboratories as Alcaligenes xylosoxidans. However, 12 (11%) strains were misidentified; these were found to be P. aeruginosa(n = 10), Stenotrophomonas maltophilia(n = 1), and Burkholderia cepacia(n = 1). Minocycline, imipenem, meropenem, piperacillin, and piperacillin-tazobactam were the most active since 51, 59, 51, 50, and 55% of strains, respectively, were inhibited. High concentrations of colistin (100 and 200 μg/ml) inhibited 92% of strains. Chloramphenicol paired with minocycline and ciprofloxacin paired with either imipenem or meropenem were the most active combinations and inhibited 40 and 32%, respectively, of strains. Selective media and biochemical identification proved to be useful strategies for distinguishing A. xylosoxidans from other CF pathogens. Standards for processing CF specimens should be developed, and the optimal method for antimicrobial susceptibility testing ofA. xylosoxidans should be determined.
Mammalian Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels Are Potently Blocked by the Pyrethroid Insecticide Allethrin

Pyrethroids are commonly used insecticides for both household and agricultural applications. It is generally reported that voltage-gated sodium channels are the primary target for toxicity of these chemicals to humans. The phylogenetic and structural relatedness between sodium channels and voltagegated calcium (Ca) channels prompted us to examine the effects of the type 1 pyrethroid allethrin on the three major classes of mammalian calcium channels exogenously expressed in human embryonic kidney 293 cells. We report that all classes of mammalian calcium channels are targets for allethrin at concentrations very similar to those reported for interaction with sodium channels. Allethrin caused blockade with IC50 values of 7.0 μM for T-type α1G (Cav3.1), 6.8 μM for L-type α1C (Cav1.2), and 6.7 μM for P/Q-type α1A (Cav2.1) channels. Mechanistically, the blockade of calcium channels was found to be significantly different than the prolonged opening of mammalian sodium channels caused by pyrethroids. In all calcium channel subtypes tested, allethrin caused a significant acceleration of the inactivation kinetics and a hyperpolarizing shift in the voltage dependence of inactivation. The high-voltage-activated P/Q- and L-type channels showed a frequency of stimulation-dependent increase in block by allethrin, whereas the low-voltage-activated α1G subtype did not. Allethrin did not significantly modify the deactivation kinetics or current-voltage relationships of any of the calcium channel types. Our study indicates that calcium channels are another primary target for allethrin and suggests that blockade of different types of calcium channels may underlie some of the chronic effects of low-level pyrethroid poisoning.
RepFrame: An Efficient and Transparent Framework for Dynamic Program Analysis

Dynamic program analysis frameworks greatly improve software quality as they enable a wide range of powerful analysis tools (e.g., reliability, profiling, and logging) at runtime. However, because existing frameworks run only one actual execution for each software application, the execution is fully or partially coupled with an analysis tool in order to transfer execution states (e.g., accessed memory and thread interleavings) to the analysis tool, easily causing a prohibitive slowdown for the execution. To reduce the portions of execution states that require transfer, many frameworks require significantly carving analysis tools as well as the frameworks themselves. Thus, these frameworks significantly trade off transparency with analysis tools and allow only one type of tools to run within one execution. This paper presents RepFrame, an efficient and transparent framework that fully decouples execution and analysis by constructing multiple equivalent executions. To do so, RepFrame leverages a recent fault-tolerant technique: transparent state machine replication, which runs the same software application on a set of machines (or replicas), and ensures that all replicas see the same sequence of inputs and process these inputs with the same efficient thread interleavings automatically. In addition, this paper discusses potential directions in which REPFRAME can further strengthen existing analyses. Evaluation shows that REPFRAME is easy to run two asynchronous analysis tools together and has reasonable overhead.
Bridging Women Rights Networks: Analyzing Interconnected Online Collective Actions

In recent mass protests such as the Arab Spring and Occupy movements, protesters used social media to spread awareness, coordinate, and mobilize support. Social media-assisted collective action has attracted much attention from journalists, political observers, and researchers of various disciplines. In this article, the authors study transnational online collective action through the lens of inter-network cooperation. The authors analyze interaction and support between the women's rights networks of two online collective actions: 'Women to Drive' primarily Saudi Arabia and 'Sexual Harassment' global. Methodologies used include: extracting each collective action's social network from blogs authored by female Muslim bloggers 23 countries, mapping interactions among network actors, and conducting sentiment analysis on observed interactions to provide a better understanding of inter-network support. The authors examine these two distinct but overlapped networks of collective actions and discover that brokering and bridging processes can facilitate the diffusion of information, coalition formation, and the expansion of the networks. The broader goal of the study is to examine the dynamics between interconnected collective actions. This research contributes to understanding the mobilization of social movements in digital activism and the role of cooperative networks in online collective action.
DNA methylation profiles in ovarian cancer: Implication in diagnosis and therapy (Review)

Genetic alterations alone cannot account for the complexity of ovarian cancer. The potential reversibility of epigenetic mechanisms makes them attractive candidates for the prevention and/or treatment of ovarian carcinoma. Detection of the epigenetic signature of each cancer cell may be useful in the identification of candidate biomarkers for disease detection, classification and monitoring and may also facilitate personalized cancer treatment. In ovarian cancer, in addition to other non-gynaecological cancers, two opposite epigenetic phenomena occur. The first involves an overall global decrease in DNA methylation of heterochromatin leading to demethylation of several oncogenes, while the second involves specific CpG island hypermethylation associated with the promoters of tumor suppressor genes. Early studies focused on the methylation patterns of single genes associated with tumorigenesis. However, newer genome-wide methods have identified a group of genes whose regulation is altered by DNA methylation during ovarian cancer progression.
Inhibitors of Apoptosis Protein Antagonists (Smac Mimetic Compounds) Control Polarization of Macrophages during Microbial Challenge and Sterile Inflammatory Responses

Apoptosis is a physiological cell death process essential for development, tissue homeostasis, and for immune defense of multicellular animals. Inhibitors of apoptosis proteins (IAPs) regulate apoptosis in response to various cellular assaults. Using both genetic and pharmacological approaches we demonstrate here that the IAPs not only support opportunistic survival of intracellular human pathogens like Chlamydia pneumoniae but also control plasticity of iNOS+ M1 macrophage during the course of infection and render them refractory for immune stimulation. Treatment of Th1 primed macrophages with birinapant (IAP-specific antagonist) inhibited NO generation and relevant proteins involved in innate immune signaling. Accordingly, birinapant promoted hypoxia, angiogenesis, and tumor-induced M2 polarization of iNOS+ M1 macrophages. Interestingly, birinapant-driven changes in immune signaling were accompanied with changes in the expression of various proteins involved in the metabolism, and thus revealing the new role of IAPs in immune metabolic reprogramming in committed macrophages. Taken together, our study reveals the significance of IAP targeting approaches (Smac mimetic compounds) for the management of infectious and inflammatory diseases relying on macrophage plasticity.
The influence of ship movements on the energy expenditure of fishermen. A study during a North Sea voyage in calm weather.

BACKGROUND Former studies of professional fishing activities have indicated that movements of a ship, in itself, may increase the energy expenditure in addition to the traditional work carried out by fishermen. We have studied the effects of exposure to the ships movement during calm weather by examining the crude relation between the ship movement and the energy expenditure of the fishermen, thus ignoringthe various tasks undertaken on board. MATERIALS AND METHODS We have recruited 4 fishermen on 2 contemporary steel trawlers who participatedduring the whole study period. Each of 4 participants recorded his activities and health conditions oncean hour in a registration scheme for 4 days. Estimations of energy expenditure were done with a bodymonitoring system (SenseWear Pro 3) carried as an armband, placed at the surface on the right upper arm. Measurements of sea movements were obtained by a gyroscope placed in the vessels wheelhouse during fishing expeditions in the North Sea off the coast of Bergen. Data were analysed by linear regression. RESULTS The exposure monitored in calm weather conditions was small for all measurements of heelingand pitch being less than 10o for both vessels. However, the fishermen's energy expenditure was influenced by these minor sea motions. Trends were seen in the individual graphs with increasing energy expenditureat higher exposures. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that even the heel and pitch in calm weather have an impact on the fishermen by increasing their energy consumption, but without any observation of discomfort or negative health outcomes. This study has demonstrated the feasibility of the applied methods, which should be repeated with larger samples and in rough weather.
Singular Value Decomposition of Protein Conformational Motions: Application to HIV-1 Protease

Protein conformational motions play a critical role in biochemical catalysis. Through anharmonic conformational deformations during the course of its function a protein can change the chemical environment of its reactive site in order to bind substrates and catalyze reactions. An illustrative example of these changes is the opening and closing of the binding site of HIV-1 protease (HIV Pr) that results from conformational changes in the flaps region covering the reactive site. HIV Pr is a protease which plays a vital role in the maturation of the HIV-1 virus by targeting amino acid sequences in the gag and gag-pol polyproteins. Cleavage of these polyproteins produces proteins that contribute to the structure of the virion, RNA packaging, and condensation of the nucleoprotein core. Due to its large medical importance this protein has been studied extensively by experimental as well as computational methods and has been a successful target for rational drug design. In this work we analyzed a molecular dynamics trajectory (1.4 ns) of a fully hydrated HIV Pr homodimer using the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method. Given the large number of degrees of freedom in a protein, the best way to analyze conformational motions is to obtain a representation for the dynamics trajectory in a lower dimensional basis. One method to achieve this simplification is to use the SVD method to perform a change of basis from individual cartesian degrees of freedom for each atom in the protein to a basis formed by an equal number of collective modes of motion. Using this formulation the conformational space accessible to a protein is separated into two subspaces: (1) an essential subspace containing only a few degrees of freedom which correspond to major modes of anharmonic motion and describe most of the positional fluctuations; and (2) a nonessential subspace consisting of constrained harmonic motions [1]. By using only the major degrees of freedom in the essential subspace of the protein, we were able to clearly identify stable protein conformational substates. The method presented here can be generalized to other biomolecular systems and used not only as a novel method in identifying new target conformations for drug design but also to simplify the analysis and understanding of important structural motions.
CAMDEX : the Cambridge examination for mental disorders of the elderly

Boxed set includes the schedule manual, the CAMCOG pictorial material, CDROM containing PDFs of the scoresheets. Schedule manual content: 1. Introduction 2. Description of the schedule 3. The CAMDEX schedule 4. CAMDEX operational diagnostic criteria 5. Guidelines for classifying dementia according to clinical severity 6. Items from CAMDEX for arriving at various measures of severity of cognitive impairment 7. Items from CAMDEX relevant to various diagnostic criteria and diagnostic scales 8. CAMCOG detailed description and socio-demographic data 9. Abridged version of CAMDEX 1986 paper.
The Social construction of emotions

Part I Social Constructionsm: Theory and Method 1. An Outline of the Social Constructionist Viewpoint Rom Harre 2. Emotions and Statements about Them Errol Bedford 3. The Thesis of Constructionism Claire Armon-Jones 4. The Social Functions of Emotion Claire Armon-Jones 5. Emotion and Act: Roles and Rhetoric Theodore R. Sarbin 6. The Acquisition of Emotions during the Adulthood James R. Averill Part II Case Studies in Contemporary Emotions 7. Affect and Social Context: Emotion Definition as a Social Task J. Coulter 8. Anger and Similar Delusions C. Terry Warner 9. Envy J. Sabini and M. Silver 10. Loneliness Linda A. Wood 11. A Regional Variation: Emotions in Spain Eduardo Crespo Part III The Diversity of Emotions 12. Emotion Talk Across Times Rom Harre and Robert Finlay-Jones 13. Emotion Talk Across Cultures Paul Heelas 14. The Domain of Emotion Words on Ifaluk Catherine Lutz 15. A Japanese Emotion: Amae H. Morsbach and W.J.Tyler.
Hemodynamic response of an isokinetic testing and training~session

Background: Isokinetic evaluation and training are commonly used. Hemodynamic response during this type of exercise is unknown and therefore usually not recommended in some patients (elderly, patients with risk factors or with cardio-vascular disease). The aim of this study was to evaluate the hemodynamic response during a classical testing and training isokinetic session. Method: 20 healthy young male participated to this study. The hemodynamic response wa continuously and non invasively (Task Force Monitor) measured on a Cybex Norm (knee extension and flexion). The hemodynamic parameters were systolic blood pressure (SBP), heart rate (HR) and cardiac output (Q). Results: A low speed (60°/s) test was more exhausting than one at higher speed (180°/s) which is probably related to its duration. Whereas rest periods seemed sufficient for muscle recovery allowing during training, maintenance of performance over the different sets, changes in hemodynamic parameters (HR, SBP & Q) were observed over successive sets and did not recover totally during rest. Systolic ejection volume did neither change nor contribute to the increase of cardiac output (+ 70 to 84% compared to rest). Values measured during test and training were high but not excessive (HR max=135 ± 20 bpm or 70% of HRmax predicted; SBP max =185 ± 26 mmHg; Q=11.2 ± 2.2 l/min). Conclusions: Values measured during test and training are high but not excessive. Isokinetic training in cardio-vascular risk patients should be composed of shorter set duration and longer rest periods as generally applied, without loosing maximal muscle contraction over the entire rage of motion. © 2009 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.
The rectangle enclosure and point-dominance problems revisited

We consider the problem of reporting the pairwise enclosures among a set of n axes parallel rectangles in IR which is equivalent to reporting dominance pairs in a set of n points in IR For more than ten years it has been an open problem whether these problems can be solved faster than in O n log n k time where k denotes the number of reported pairs First we give a divide and conquer algorithm that matches the O n space and O n log n k time bounds of the algorithm of Lee and Preparata LP but is simpler Then we give another algorithm that uses O n space and runs in O n logn log logn k log logn time For the special case where the rectangles have at most di erent aspect ratios we give an algorithm that runs in O n logn k time and uses O n space
The Impact of Changes in the Work Environment on the Place-Identity of Academics: An Exploratory Study

The study examined the impact of changes in the work environment on the construction of place-identity among university academics. Data were collected from five academics at a large distance learning university in South Africa. The institution was undergoing major structural changes at the time of the study. Unstructured questions were used for the data collection. These data were analysed using content analysis and the results suggested academics construct identities towards their place of work and changes to this place may be perceived as a threat.
Multi-core Supported High Performance Security Analytics

Such information as system and application logs as well as the output from the deployed security measures, e.g., IDS alerts, firewall logs, scanning reports, etc., is important for the administrators or security operators to be aware at first time of the running state of the system and take efforts if necessary. In this context, high performance security analytics is proposed to address the challenges to rapidly gather, manage, process, and analyze the large amount of real-time information generated from the large scale of enterprise IT-Infrastructure while it is being operated. As an example of next generation Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform, Security Analytics Lab (SAL) has been designed and implemented based on the newly emerged In-Memory data management technique, which makes it possible to efficiently organize and access different types of event information through a consistent central storage and interface. To correlate the information from different sources and identify the meaningful information is another challenging task, which makes great sense for quickly judging the current situation and making the decision. In this paper, the multi-core processing technique is introduced in the SAL platform. Various correlation algorithms, e.g., k-means based algorithms, ROCK and QROCK clustering algorithms, have been implemented and integrated in the multi-core supported SAL architecture. Practical experiments are conducted and analyzed to proof that the performance of analytics can be significantly improved by applying multi-core processing technique in SAL.
End-to-end rate control for networks with random access links

Rate control for point-to-point wide area networks has been extensively studied and is well understood by now. However, rate control for random access networks, and end-to-end congestion control for both point-to-point wide area networks and random access local area networks, has received less attention. In earlier work, we proposed and analyzed a rate control scheme for random access networks. In this paper, we propose an approach to combine this rate control scheme with existing rate control mechanism for point-to-point networks to provide end-to-end rate control.
Measurement Invariance of the Short Inventory of Problems-Revised across African-American and Non-Latino White Substance Users

This study investigated measurement invariance properties of the Short Inventory of Problems- Revised (SIP-R) across racial groups. The sample included 195 African-American and 194 non-Latino White adult participants in a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of motivational enhancement therapy in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network. The SIP-R demonstrated configural invariance and weak metric invariance, suggesting conceptualizations of adverse consequences of substance use are equivalent across racial groups. The SIP-R also indicated partial strong/scalar and strict metric invariance, suggesting a need for continued research of SIP-R items to ensure valid measurement and outcomes across racial groups.
Self-Reported Depressive Symptoms following Treatment with Corticosteroids and Sedative-Hypnotics

Objective: To evaluate associations between exposure to corticosteroids or sedative-hypnotic medications and incident self-reported depressive symptoms in medical inpatients. Method: The study utilized a prospective cohort design, focusing on acute depressive symptoms developing soon after medication exposure. The incidence of self-reported depressive symptoms was evaluated using a modified version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Rating Scale (CES-D). The incidence of depressive symptoms in subjects newly exposed to corticosteroids and sedative-hypnotics was compared to that of a nonexposed comparison cohort. Results: The incidence of self-reported depressive symptoms was elevated in subjects newly exposed to corticosteroids (Risk Ratio = 3.10), although the association did not attain statistical significance (p = .07). The risk ratio for sedative-hypnotic exposure was 4.18, a statistically significant finding (p = .02). As expected, incident self-reported depressive symptoms were also associated with several psychosocial variables. However, the data did not suggest that the observed associations between drug exposures and depressive symptoms were due to confounding by psychosocial or illness-related variables. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms among medical inpatients have a biopsychosocial etiology. Corticosteroids and sedative-hypnotics are biological risk factors for depressive symptoms in this population.