Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Infection of Salmonella typhimurium with coliphage Mu d1 (Apr lac): construction of pyr::lac gene fusions

A procedure was developed for introducing the coliphage Mu d1 (Apr lac) into Salmonella typhimurium in order to construct gene fusions that place the structural genes of the lac operon under the control of the promoter-regulatory region of other genes. To introduce Mu d1 from Escherichia coli K-12 into S. typhimurium, which is normally not a host for Mu, we first constructed an E. coli double lysogen carrying the defective Mu d1 phage and a Mu-P1 hybrid helper phage (MuhP1) that confers the P1 host range. A lysate prepared from this strain was used to infect a P1-sensitive (i.e., galE), restriction-deficient, modification-proficient strain of S. typhimurium, and a double lysogen carrying Mu d1 and MuhP1 was isolated. Induction of the latter strain produced lysates capable of infecting and generating gene fusions in P1-sensitive strains of S. typhimurium. In this paper we describe the construction of pyr::lac fusions by this technique.
Ageing of Standard PV Module when Integrated in a V-trough Concentration System

Concentration photovoltaic (CPV) systems are seen as a shortcut to achieve lower photovoltaic (PV) electricity costs/kWh. Within the available CPV configurations, V-trough systems are likely to succeed in the short term since they are less demanding in terms of tracking accuracy and due to their ability to make use of standard PV modules, a well-known and developed technology. However, silicon standard modules were initially designed to operate under 1 sun conditions, facing some challenges when integrated in CPV systems. The present work aims to demonstrate that such application is efficient up to a few suns and also to analyze possible accelerated modules degradation rates. For such analysis we have used a prototype based on the DoubleSun technology: a 1.9x concentration V-trough system, integrating 2-axis tracking system and making use of conventional silicon modules.
Physician knowledge of catch-up regimens and contraindications for childhood immunizations.

OBJECTIVES To determine physician success at designing catch-up regimens for children delayed in immunizations and physician knowledge regarding contraindications to immunization. METHODS A self-administered survey was completed by pediatricians, general practitioners, and family practitioners in Cook County, Illinois. Surveys included 6 open-ended vignettes describing hypothetical children delayed in immunization for whom participants were asked to design catch-up regimens. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression were used to determine predictors of correct response. The surveys also inquired about management of scenarios that might be perceived as contraindications to immunize with the Haemophilus influenzae type b or measles-mumps-rubella vaccines. RESULTS The mean score of correct responses was 1.83 of a possible 6.0. Almost one third of respondents answered all 6 vignettes incorrectly. The proportion of incorrect responses was high for all 6 vignettes (39%-86%), but higher for questions that addressed the immunization of children older than 12 months. Errors in vaccine administration were most commonly attributed to omitted vaccines, with varicella-zoster vaccine and pneumococcal conjugate vaccine omitted most frequently. Pediatricians were >4 times more likely to answer correctly than were family practitioners. Participants in the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program were more than twice as likely to answer correctly than were non-VFC providers. Knowledge of contraindications was inconsistent, particularly for measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. CONCLUSIONS Childhood vaccine providers have substantial knowledge deficits of recommended immunization schedules and vaccine contraindications that may contribute to missed opportunities to immunize. Pediatricians and participants in the VFC program were more successful at designing catch-up regimens for children with immunization delay.
The Naturalistic Experiment

In this paper, we discuss ways in which quasi-naturalistic experiments can contribute to the analysis of social interaction in organizations and our understanding of practice, materiality, and technology. We focus on the contributions of two different types of naturalistic experiments that draw on audiovisual recordings. We discuss how these forms of experiment increasingly form part of a program of qualitative research and the ways in which they contribute both to organization analysis as well as more applied concerns such as the assessment of communicative practice and the design of advanced technologies.
Medical tourism in emerging markets: The role of trust, networks, and word-of-mouth

ABTRACT Despite the growing popularity of medical tourism (MT) in emerging markets (EMs), little is known about how healthcare providers operationalize. This article analyzes how healthcare providers meet different challenges to market MT in an EM setting. A qualitative method was used for data collection and conducting case studies on healthcare services in the Philippines. The results show that trust and network building are necessary for mitigating the unfavorable characteristics, instability and lack of legitimacy caused by institutional constraints in EM. Word-of-mouth is found to be important to attract new customers and disseminate information about MT services.
Using Statistical Machine Translation to Grade Training Data

One of the main causes of errors in statistical machine translation are the erroneous phrase pairs that can find their way into the phrase table. These phrases are the result of poor word-to-word alignments during the training of the translation model. These word alignment errors in turn cause errors during the phrase extraction phase, and these erroneous bilingual phrase pairs are then used during the decoding process and appear in the output of the machine translation system. Machine translation training data is never perfect, often bilingual sentence pairs are incorrectly aligned sentence-by-sentence, or these pairs are poor translations of each other due to human error. Even when sentence pairs in the corpus are good translations of each other the translations may not be literal enough to admit to the sort of phrase-by-phrase translation necessary to make good training data for a phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT) system. This is because such SMT systems operate on the assumption that source can be transformed into target simply by translating phrase-by-phrase with re-ordering. In the real world, many perfectly correct translations are not of this form, and these sentences even though correct translations, make poor training data for training the translation models of a phrase-based SMT system. This paper presents a technique in which preliminary machine translation systems are built with the sole purpose of indicating those sentence pairs in the training corpus that the systems are able to generate using their models, the hypothesis being that these sentence pairs are likely to make good training data for an SMT system of the same type. These sentences are then used to bootstrap a second SMT system, and those sentences identified as good training data are given additional weight during the training process for building the translation models. Using this technique we were able to improve the performance of a Japanese-to-English SMT system by 1.2-1.5 BLEU points on unseen evaluation data.
Tracing formation and durability of calcite in a Punic–Roman cistern mortar (Pantelleria Island, Italy)

Ancient hydraulic lime mortar preserves chemical and isotopic signatures that provide important information about historical processing and its durability. The distribution and isotopic composition of calcite in a mortar of a well-preserved Punic–Roman cistern at Pantelleria Island (Italy) was used to trace the formation conditions, durability, and individual processing periods of the cistern mortar. The analyses of stable carbon and oxygen isotopes of calcite revealed four individual horizons, D, E, B-1 and B-2, of mortar from the top to the bottom of the cistern floor. Volcanic and ceramic aggregates were used for the production of the mortar of horizons E/D and B-1/B-2, respectively. All horizons comprise hydraulic lime mortar characterized by a mean cementation index of 1.5 ± 1, and a constant binder to aggregate ratio of 0.31 ± 0.01. This suggests standardized and highly effective processing of the cistern. The high durability of calcite formed during carbonation of slaked lime within the matrix of the ancient mortar, and thus the excellent resistance of the hydraulic lime mortar against water, was documented by (i) a distinct positive correlation of δ18Ocalcite and δ13Ccalcite; typical for carbonation through a mortar horizon, (ii) a characteristic evolution of δ18Ocalcite and δ13Ccalcite through each of the four mortar horizons; lighter follow heavier isotopic values from upper to lower part of the cistern floor, and (iii) δ18Ocalcite varying from −10 to −5 ‰ Vienna Pee Dee belemnite (VPDB). The range of δ18Ocalcite values rule out recrystallization and/or neoformation of calcite through chemical attack of water stored in cistern. The combined studies of the chemical composition of the binder and the isotopic composition of the calcite in an ancient mortar provide powerful tools for elucidating the ancient techniques and processing periods. This approach helps to evaluate the durability of primary calcite and demonstrates the importance of calcite as a proxy for chemical attack and quality of the ancient inorganic binder.
Decreasing Trend in Renal Disease Mortality after Cessation from Arsenic Exposure in a Previous Arseniasis-Endemic Area in Southwestern Taiwan

Arsenic has been well documented as a major risk factor for blackfoot disease (BFD), a unique peripheral vascular disease that was endemic in the southwestern coast of Taiwan, where residents imbibed artesian well water containing excessive amounts of arsenic for more than 50 yr. Long-term arsenic exposure has also been reported to be associated with mortality attributed to renal disease. A tap-water supply system was implemented in the early 1960s in the BFD endemic areas. Artesian well water was no longer used for drinking and cooking after the mid-1970s. The objective of this study was to examine whether mortality attributed to arsenic-induced renal diseases decreased after the improvement of the drinking-water supply system through elimination of arsenic exposure from artesian well water. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) for renal diseases were calculated for the BFD endemic area for the years 1971–2000. Results show that mortality from renal disease declined gradually after improvement of the drinking-water supply system to eliminate arsenic from artesian well water. Based on the reversibility criterion, the association between arsenic exposure and mortality attributed to renal disease is likely to be positively correlated. This study was partly supported by a grant from the National Science Council, Executive Yuan, Taiwan (NSC-92-2320-B-037-046).
Hydrodynamic Simulations of the Central Molecular Zone with a Realistic Galactic Potential

We present hydrodynamic simulations of gas clouds inflowing from the disk to a few hundred parsec region of the Milky Way. A gravitational potential is generated to include realistic Galactic structures by using thousands of multipole expansions (MEs) that describe 6.4 million stellar particles of a self-consistent Galaxy simulation. We find that a hybrid ME model, with two different basis sets and a thick-disk correction, accurately reproduces the overall structures of the Milky Way. Through non-axisymmetric Galactic structures of an elongated bar and spiral arms, gas clouds in the disk inflow to the nuclear region and form a central molecular zone-like nuclear ring. We find that the size of the nuclear ring evolves into ∼ 240 pc at T ∼ 1500 Myr , regardless of the initial size. For most simulation runs, the rate of gas inflow to the nuclear region is equilibrated to ∼ 0.02 M ⊙ yr − 1 . The nuclear ring is off-centered, relative to the Galactic center, by the lopsided central mass distribution of the Galaxy model, and thus an asymmetric mass distribution of the nuclear ring arises accordingly. The vertical asymmetry of the Galaxy model also causes the nuclear ring to be tilted along the Galactic plane. During the first ∼100 Myr, the vertical frequency of the gas motion is twice that of the orbital frequency, thus the projected nuclear ring shows a twisted, ∞ -like shape.
Association of interleukin-4 receptor I75V, Q576R and S503P polymorphisms and haplotypes with risk of allergic rhinitis in a population of China

Objective: We carried out a study to investigate the association of IL-4R I75V (rs1805010), Q576R (rs1801275) and S503P (rs1805015) polymorphisms with the development of AR in a Chinese population. Methods: Between October 2012 and May 2015, 326 patients with AR and 412 healthy control participants were recruited. IL-4R I75V (rs1805010), Q576R (rs1801275) and S503P (rs1805015) were amplified and genotyped by polymerase chain reaction coupled with restriction fragment length polymorphism method. Multivariate unconditional logistic regression analysis was employed to evaluate the association between IL-4R I75V (rs1805010), Q576R (rs1801275) and S503P (rs1805015) polymorphisms and AR risk. Results: This study included 184 females and 142 males in AR patients, and 209 females and 203 males in controls. The mean ages of AR patients and controls were 35.82 ± 11.24 and 37.22 ± 12.07 y, respectively. We observed that the GG genotype of IL-4R Q576R (rs1801275) was associated with a reduced risk of AR when compared with the AA genotype of Q576R (rs1801275) (OR=0.43, 95% CI=0.26-0.71, P=0.001). A significant linkage disequilibrium was found between rs1805010 and rs1801275 (D=0.79, r2=0.02). The G-A-T (OR=0.32, 95% CI=0.24-0.42) and G-G-T (OR=0.18, 95% CI=0.12-0.27) haplotypes showed a decreased risk of AR, while the A-A-T revealed an increased risk (OR=4.07, 95% CI=3.25-5.09). Conclusion: Our study suggests that the IL-4R Q576R (rs1801275) genetic polymorphism is associated with the development of AR, and the G-A-T, G-G-T and A-A-T haplotypes contribute to the susceptibility to AR. The nurses and doctors would provide health education to these high risk individuals.
‘I sort of balance it out’. Living with facial acne in emerging adulthood

Many emerging adults live with mild-to-moderate visible facial acne, but little is known about their experiences. A qualitative interview study was conducted with 11 adults aged 18–22 years, which aimed to explore the meaning of living with visible acne. A thematic analysis revealed three superordinate themes: coping strategies, self-perceptions and interpersonal relationships. Results revealed the utility of researching visible acne in emerging adulthood, including the use of multiple coping strategies. Health psychologists need to consider individual differences for young adults who are living with a visible difference. The importance of the peer group and family is also explicated.
Scheduling Networks of Queues: Heavy Traffic Analysis of a Multistation Network with Controllable Inputs

Motivated by a factory scheduling problem, we consider the problem of input control, subject to a specified product mix, and priority sequencing in a two-station multiclass queueing network with general service time distributions and a general routing structure. The objective is to minimize the long-run expected average number of customers in the system subject to a constraint on the long-run expected average output rate. Under balanced heavy loading conditions, this scheduling problem is approximated by a control problem involving Brownian motion. A reformulation of this Brownian control problem was solved exactly in 1990 by L. M. Wein. In the present paper, this solution is interpreted in terms of the queueing network model in order to obtain an effective scheduling rule. The resulting sequencing policy dynamically prioritizes customers according to reduced costs calculated from a linear program. The input rule is a workload regulating input policy, where a customer is injected into the system whenever the expected total amount of work in the system for the two stations falls within a prescribed region. An example is presented that illustrates the procedure and demonstrates its effectiveness.
The DNA based characterization of the diet from digested samples : a reliability study in ruminants

Characterizing the diet of ruminants at pasture in diversified grasslands is a difficult step that could be realized by using the DNA-based methods recently developed for assessing the composition of environmental samples (i.e. metabarcoding approach). In this study, we performed two experiments to assess the performance of this method. The diet was inferred from rumen and faecal samples after DNA extraction, subsequent amplification of a short fragment of chloroplast DNA with universal primers used for plant DNA identification (trnL approach), and sequencing of the PCR products using HighSeq Illumina system. The first experiment compared the results obtained from replicated extractions and PCRs performed on faecal samples from cattle with a diversified diet, and showed a high reproducibility of the method. The second experiment was designed to assess the semi-quantitative aspects of this approach. Five diets were allocated to five sheep fed ad libitum according to a 5 × 5 Latin square design. The diets were mixtures of green fodder differing by their white clover:ryegrass ratios (i.e., 0:100, 25:75, 50:50, 75:25 and 100:0). The analysis of rumen contents allowed a reliable estimation of the proportion of each species ingested, while the information was much less accurate from faecal samples. Technical and analytical solutions are currently tested in order to improve the quantitative information obtained from faecal samples.
Implementation of Kano Methods to Service Quality Improved at PT. Pos Indonesia

PT. Pos Indonesia is a state-owned company engaged in the field of receipt and delivery of goods which was first established in 1746. Frequent problems with freight forwarding services, especially PT. Pos Indonesia is a lack of competitiveness of companies with similar companies, especially private ones. This is because companies are less able to understand the desires and expectations of consumers so that they lose trust and loyalty from consumers. From these problems the purpose of this study was to find a solution using a canoe model in an effort to find improvement proposals to improve quality at PT. Indonesian post. From the research that has been done, there are 4 canoe categories on 11 variables studied. In the category of Must-be, the customer variable is comfortable and strategic location, One Dimensional, namely variable comfortable waiting place, adequate supporting facilities, timely delivery, appropriate price, fast service time and Attractive item security are only professional employee variables, and Indifferent is a lot of service and promotion in various media.
MRI-guided biopsy of the prostate: correlation between the cancer detection rate and the number of previous negative TRUS biopsies.

PURPOSE We aimed to investigate prostate cancer detection rate of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided biopsy and to elucidate possible relations to the number of prior negative transrectal ultrasonography (TRUS)-guided biopsies. MATERIALS AND METHODS Eighty-seven consecutive patients (mean age, 65.0 years; mean prostate-specific antigen, 13.3 ng/mL) with at least one prior negative TRUS-guided biopsy and persistent suspicion of prostate cancer were included in this study. All patients underwent MRI-guided biopsy after a diagnostic multiparametric MRI examination at 1.5 Tesla. Specimens were immediately fixated and subsequently evaluated by an experienced uropathologist. Prostate cancer detection rates were calculated. Prostate cancer-positive and -negative cores were compared. Correlation between number of prior biopsies and presence of prostate cancer was evaluated. RESULTS Cancer detection rates for patients with one (n=24), two (n=25), three (n=18), and four or more (n=20) negative TRUS-guided biopsies were 29.2%, 40.0%, 66.7%, and 35.0%, respectively (P = 0.087). The median number of removed cores per patient was 3 (range, 1-8) without a significant difference between patients with and without cancer (P = 0.48). Thirty of 36 cancer patients were at intermediate or high risk according to the D´Amico clinical risk score. Eleven of 15 high risk cancers were localized in the transition zone (P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates high cancer detection rates of MRI-guided biopsy independent of the number of previous TRUS-guided biopsies and the number of taken prostate cores. MRI-guided biopsy therefore represents a less invasive and effective diagnostic tool for patients with prostate cancer suspicion and previous negative TRUS-guided biopsies.
Fast and slow optical modulation of refractive index in a SiN microring

We retrieve the thermal dissipation time of τ=0. 25μs and investigate the power dependent absorption in a SiN microring resonator. We estimate n<sub>2</sub>=4.3×10<sup>-19</sup>m<sup>2</sup>/W based on clear 1 GHz optical modulation of the refractive index.
The Impact of The Government-Linked Companies Transformation Program (GLCTP) on The Performances of Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) in Malaysia

This paper examines the performance of Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) and non-Government-Linked Companies (non-GLCs) matching1 firms before and after the introduction of the Government-Linked Companies Transformation Program (GLCTP) in 2005, effectively measuring the impact of the GLCTP on the performance of GLCs as compared to non-GLCs using difference-in-differences estimation technique. The performances are measured by Returns on Asset (ROA), Returns on Equity (ROE) as measures for financial performances and Tobin’s Q ratio as a measure for firm’s performance or value. Results show that the GLCTP have a statistically significant negative effect on the GLCs’ financial performances. Difference-in-difference estimation also shows that the GLCTP having a negative effect on firms’ market value relative to firms’ assets as measured by Tobin’s Q ratio.