Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accuracy of bronchoalveolar lavage enzyme-linked immunospot assay to diagnose smear-negative tuberculosis: a meta-analysis.

PURPOSE While the bronchoalveolar lavage enzyme-linked immunospot assay (BAL-ELISPOT) shows promise for diagnosing smear-negative tuberculosis, its accuracy remains controversial. We meta-analyzed the available evidence to obtain a clearer understanding of the diagnostic accuracy. METHODS Studies of the diagnostic performance of ELI-SPOT on smear-negative tuberculosis were identified through systematic searches of the PubMed and EMBASE databases. Pooled data on sensitivity, specificity and other measures of accuracy were meta-analyzed using a random-effects model. Summary receiver operating characteristic curves were used to assess overall test performance. RESULTS A total of 7 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Diagnostic performance was as follows: sensitivity, 0.89 (95% CI 0.84 to 0.93); specificity, 0.78 (95% CI 0.74 to 0.81); positive likelihood ratio, 4.2 (95% CI 2.42 to 7.28); negative likelihood ratio, 0.14 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.33); diagnostic odds ratio, 36.16 (95% CI 9.70 to 134.73); and area under the curve, 0.9605 (SEM 0.0247). CONCLUSIONS Available evidence suggests that BAL-ELISPOT may perform better than blood-ELISPOT for both screening and confirming a diagnosis of smear-negative tuberculosis. Nevertheless, BAL-ELISPOT should be not used alone but rather in parallel with clinical manifestations and conventional tests to ensure reliable diagnosis.
Signatures for Library Functions in Executable Files

A method for efficiently generating signatures for detecting library functions in executable files is described. The signatures are used to automatically detect such functions in dcc, the reverse compiler at the Queensland University of Technology. Difficulties arise from the variability of the signatures, the multiplicity of library code vendors, and of memory models, and indistinguishable functions. An efficient hashing technique involving perfect optimal hashing functions is used. Performance is good - the signature files are created in a few seconds, and the name of a library function can be found in about the time of two standard hashes. One signature file is required for each vendor, version, and memory model combination. and they are generated from die appropriate library file (e.g. slibce.lib). Some issues are yet to be addressed, such as variation due to floating point math options (e.g. emulator, fast alternate, or coprocessor calls).
[POSTER] Geometric Mapping for Color Compensation Using Scene Adaptive Patches

The SAR technique using a projector-camera system allows us to make various effect on a real scene without physical reconstitution. In order to project contents on a textured scene without color imperfections, geometric and radiometric compensation of a projection image should be conducted as preprocessing. In this paper, we present a new geometric mapping method for color compensation in the projector-camera system. We capture the scene and segment it into adaptive patch according to the scene structure using the SLIC segmentation. The piece-wise polynomial function is evaluated for each patch to find pixel-to-pixel correspondences between the measured and projection images. Finally, color compensation is performed by using a color mixing matrix. Experimental results show that our geometric mapping method establishes accurate correspondences and color compensation alleviates the color imperfections which is caused by texture of a general scene.
Can DNS-Based Blacklists Keep Up with Bots?

Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs), anti-virus companies, and enterprise email vendors use Domain Name System-based Blackhole Lists (DNSBLs) to keep track of IP addresses that originate spam, so that future emails sent from these IP addresses can be rejected out-of-hand. DNSBL operators populate blocking lists based on complaints from recipients of spam, who report the IP address of the relay from which the unwanted email was sent. To be effective in blocking spam, information in the blacklist must have the following properties: 1. Completeness. The blacklist must contain a reasonable
Mitochondrial Nucleases ENDOG and EXOG Participate in Mitochondrial DNA Depletion Initiated by Herpes Simplex Virus 1 UL12.5

ABSTRACT Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) rapidly eliminates mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from infected cells, an effect that is mediated by UL12.5, a mitochondrial isoform of the viral alkaline nuclease UL12. Our initial hypothesis was that UL12.5 directly degrades mtDNA via its nuclease activity. However, we show here that the nuclease activities of UL12.5 are not required for mtDNA loss. This observation led us to examine whether cellular nucleases mediate the mtDNA loss provoked by UL12.5. We provide evidence that the mitochondrial nucleases endonuclease G (ENDOG) and endonuclease G-like 1 (EXOG) play key redundant roles in UL12.5-mediated mtDNA depletion. Overall, our data indicate that UL12.5 deploys cellular proteins, including ENDOG and EXOG, to destroy mtDNA and contribute to a growing body of literature highlighting roles for ENDOG and EXOG in mtDNA maintenance.
Understanding Fathering: The Early Head Start Study of Fathers of Newborns. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research

This research examines factors affecting fathers' continuing support of and engagement in relationships with their very young children. It addresses who the fathers are, what level of involvement they have with their children and families, and how this involvement changes over time. Using a sample of men whose children were involved in Early Head Start or other comprehensive community-based programs, the researchers conclude that fathers were present in their children's lives, involved with them in multiple ways, and had nurturing and supportive interactions. Although fathers faced many stressors, including depression, they also had many supports.
mirTools: microRNA profiling and discovery based on high-throughput sequencing

miRNAs are small, non-coding RNA that negatively regulate gene expression at post-transcriptional level, which play crucial roles in various physiological and pathological processes, such as development and tumorigenesis. Although deep sequencing technologies have been applied to investigate various small RNA transcriptomes, their computational methods are far away from maturation as compared to microarray-based approaches. In this study, a comprehensive web server mirTools was developed to allow researchers to comprehensively characterize small RNA transcriptome. With the aid of mirTools, users can: (i) filter low-quality reads and 3/5′ adapters from raw sequenced data; (ii) align large-scale short reads to the reference genome and explore their length distribution; (iii) classify small RNA candidates into known categories, such as known miRNAs, non-coding RNA, genomic repeats and coding sequences; (iv) provide detailed annotation information for known miRNAs, such as miRNA/miRNA*, absolute/relative reads count and the most abundant tag; (v) predict novel miRNAs that have not been characterized before; and (vi) identify differentially expressed miRNAs between samples based on two different counting strategies: total read tag counts and the most abundant tag counts. We believe that the integration of multiple computational approaches in mirTools will greatly facilitate current microRNA researches in multiple ways. mirTools can be accessed at http://centre.bioinformatics. zj.cn/mirtools/ and http://59.79. 168.90/mirtools.
Does centrifugation cause the ex vivo release of DNA from blood cells?

Using a sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation model, we have previously demonstrated that hematopoietic cells represent the predominant origin of cell-free plasma DNA (1). In that study, plasma samples were obtained by high-speed centrifugation followed by high-speed microcentrifugation. The comparison of the total DNA concentrations in plasma obtained by centrifugation and microcentrifugation for different numbers of times revealed no significant difference. We therefore concluded that centrifugation is not associated with damage to blood cells and artificial increases in cell-free plasma DNA concentrations. However, there remains a possibility that the first spin might have already destroyed blood cells, leading to the ex vivo release of DNA. This theoretical possibility might produce an aberrantly high proportion of cell-free plasma DNA originating from hematopoietic cells. In fact, to prevent cell lysis, the use of low-speed centrifugation, at 500 g or even lower, has been a usual practice in harvesting blood cells (2)(3). We therefore investigated the …
Book Review

Emotional Literacy: The Heart of Classroom Management is the latest book by Dr Patricia Sherwood, one of the founders of the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, which is currently cohosted by Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. Dr Sherwood is a researcher at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, where she teaches and supervises postgraduate students. Trish, as she is affectionately known, is also Director of Sophia College, managing busy clinical practices and supervising free community counselling services run by Sophia College graduates in various Australian states and regions, as well as forging collaborative international academic, professional and social justice linkages between Australia, South Africa and other countries. This book on emotional literacy is a successor to her recent, highly acclaimed books on Holistic Counselling and The Healing Art of Clay Therapy.
In Silico Screening, Structure-Activity Relationship, and Biologic Evaluation of Selective Pteridine Reductase Inhibitors Targeting Visceral Leishmaniasis

ABSTRACT In this study we utilized the concept of rational drug design to identify novel compounds with optimal selectivity, efficacy and safety, which would bind to the target enzyme pteridine reductase 1 (PTR1) in Leishmania parasites. Twelve compounds afforded from Baylis-Hillman chemistry were docked by using the QUANTUM program into the active site of Leishmania donovani PTR1 homology model. The biological activity for these compounds was estimated in green fluorescent protein-transfected L. donovani promastigotes, and the most potential analogue was further investigated in intracellular amastigotes. Structure-activity relationship based on homology model drawn on our recombinant enzyme was substantiated by recombinant enzyme inhibition assay and growth of the cell culture. Flow cytometry results indicated that 7-(4-chlorobenzyl)-3-methyl-4-(4-trifluoromethyl-phenyl)-3,4,6,7,8,9-hexahydro-pyrimido[1,2-a]pyrimidin-2-one (compound 7) was 10 times more active on L. donovani amastigotes (50% inhibitory concentration [IC50] = 3 μM) than on promastigotes (IC50 = 29 μM). Compound 7 exhibited a Ki value of 0.72 μM in a recombinant enzyme inhibition assay. We discovered that novel pyrimido[1,2-a]pyrimidin-2-one systems generated from the allyl amines afforded from the Baylis-Hillman acetates could have potential as a valuable pharmacological tool against the neglected disease visceral leishmaniasis.
Surface Energy Balance and Buoyancy Response to Shallow Cumulus Shading

AbstractThe interactions surrounding the coupling between surface energy balance and a boundary layer with shallow cumuli are investigated using the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s large-eddy simulation code coupled to the Noah land surface model. The simulated cloudy boundary layer is based on the already well-documented and previously simulated 21 June 1997 case at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Southern Great Plains central facility. The surface energy balance response to cloud shading is highly nonlinear, leading to different partitioning between sensible and latent heat flux compared to the surface not impacted by cloud. The evaporative fraction increases by about 2%–3% in the presence of shallow cumuli at the regional scale but can increase by up to 30% at any individual location. As expected, the cloud’s reduction of solar irradiance largely controls the surface’s response. However, the turbulence and secondary circulations associated with the cloud dynamics increases the surface .
Multifrequency Pierce Oscillators Based on Piezoelectric AlN Contour-Mode MEMS Technology

This paper reports on the first demonstration of multifrequency (176-, 222-, 307-, and 482-MHz) oscillators based on the piezoelectric AlN contour-mode microelectromechanical systems technology. All the oscillators show phase noise values between -88 and -68 dBc/Hz at 1-kHz offset frequency from the carriers and phase noise floor values as low as -160 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The same Pierce circuit design is employed to sustain oscillations at the four different frequencies; on the other hand, the oscillator core consumes 10 mW. The AlN resonators are currently wire bonded to the integrated circuit realized in the AMIS 0.5-¿m 5-V complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor process. Limits on phase noise and power consumption are discussed and compared with other competing technologies. This paper constitutes a substantial step forward toward the demonstration of a single-chip multifrequency reconfigurable timing solution that can be used in wireless communications and sensing applications.
The significance of living-theory action research in a culture of inquiry transforms learning in elementary, high school and post-graduate settings

This issue of EJOLTS intends to demonstrate the capacities of teachers and students in a variety of settings to create cultures of inquiry that transform social formations within their classrooms, their schools and their school systems. These transformative changes are accredited and validated over considerable time, from 1995 to 2013. This final paper follows the works of the authors from the creation of their livingeducational-theories with their original living-theorymethodologies, to their integration and evolution in cultures of inquiry by masters and doctoral students and to the improvement of learning in primary, secondary and tertiary classrooms and other professional contexts across the globe. Our organization of this article follows the pattern in our individual contributions as we distinguish the values that constitute our unique contributions to cultures of inquiry in terms of: being loved into learning; praxis; students as coresearchers; building trust and respect; unveiling embodied knowledge; the living curriculum; influencing self, others and social formations; obstacles and challenges; scholarly significance; interim conclusion.
A Revised Algorithm for Latent Semantic Analysis

The intelligent tutoring system AutoTutor uses latent semantic analysis to evaluate student answers to the tutor's questions. By comparing a student's answer to a set of expected answers, the system determines how much information is covered and how to continue the tutorial. Despite the success of LSA in tutoring conversations, the system sometimes has difficulties determining at an early stage whether or not an expectation is covered. A new LSA algorithm significantly improves the precision of AutoTutor's natural language understanding and can be applied to other natural language understanding applications.
Bayesian criteria based on universal measures

In the minimum description length (MDL) and Bayesian criteria, we construct description length of data z<sup>n</sup> = z<sub>1</sub>⋯z<sub>n</sub> of length n such that the length divided by n almost converges to its entropy rate as n → ∞, assuming z<sub>i</sub> is in a finite set A. In model selection, if we knew the true probability P of z<sup>n</sup> ϵ A<sup>n</sup>, we would choose a model F such that the posterior probability of F given z<sup>n</sup> is maximized. But, in many situations, we use Q : A<sup>n</sup> → [0,1] such that Σ(z<sup>n</sup>) <sub>ϵ</sub> (A<sup>n</sup>) Q(z<sup>n</sup>) ≤ 1 rather than P because only data z<sup>n</sup> are available. In this paper, we consider an extension such that each of the attributes in data can be either discrete or continuous. The main issue is what Q is qualified to be an alternative to P in the generalized situations. We propose the condition in terms of the Radon-Nikodym derivative of P with respect to Q, and give the procedure of constructing Q in the general setting. As a result, we obtain the MDL/Bayesian criteria in a general sense.
From data to speech: a general approach

We present a data-to-speech system called D2S, which can be used for the creation of data-to-speech systems in different languages and domains. The most important characteristic of a data-to-speech system is that it combines language and speech generation: language generation is used to produce a natural language text expressing the system's input data, and speech generation is used to make this text audible. In D2S, this combination is exploited by using linguistic information available in the language generation module for the computation of prosody. This allows us to achieve a better prosodic output quality than can be achieved in a plain text-to-speech system. For language generation in D2S, the use of syntactically enriched templates is guided by knowledge of the discourse context, while for speech generation pre-recorded phrases are combined in a prosodically sophisticated manner. This combination of techniques makes it possible to create linguistically sound but efficient systems with a high quality language and speech output.
How one helps: Personality, theoretical orientation, and helping skill preference

Title of Document: HOW ONE HELPS: PERSONALITY, THEORETICAL ORIENTATION, AND HELPING SKILL PREFERENCE Ms. Ann M. Hummel, Master of Science, 2009 Directed By: Professor Charles J. Gelso, Psychology In order to test the interrelationships among personality, preferred theoretical orientation to counseling, and preferences for various response modes (helping skills) in counseling, undergraduates in peer counseling and basic helping skills courses completed measures of these three constructs. Findings include four significant relationships between personality factors and theoretical orientations, and four significant relationships between theoretical orientation and helping skill preference. Three significant relationships between personality factors and helping skill preference were found, including two replications from an earlier study by the author (Hummel & Gelso, 2007). Identification with and belief in the humanistic/clientcentered theoretical orientation was found to be a mediator between emotional stability and preference for direct guidance. Overall, there were modest interrelationships between personality, theoretical orientation, and helping skill preference in beginning helping trainees; but it was suggested that these relationships may not yet be solidified at this point in their development as helpers.
Pathways towards studying human action and the proposal of the “ Human Activity Language ”

The main theme of this essay is human action, from the viewpoint of building machines that can both understand human actions and have the ability of performing similar actions. The “Human activity language” (HAL) [Guerra-Filho, Fermuller and Aloimonos 2005] serves the role of a concrete proposal anchoring this discussion. The wider framework of the problem is initially explored. Different pathways towards acquiring knowledge of action are examined. Action is first seen through the lens of verbs in natural languages, and then multiple levels of perceptual and motor representations are discussed. The position of HAL is in this wider framework is determined. Later, issues dealing with the practical application of HAL in a real-world system are examined. Finally, a plan for extending HAL in order to cover a wider range of human action is provided.
Continuous speech recognition using articulatory data

In this paper we show that there is measurable information in the articulatory system which can help to disambiguate the acoustic signal. We measure directly the movement of the lips, tongue, jaw, velum and larynx and parameterise this articulatory feature space using principal components analysis. The parameterisation is developed and evaluated using a speaker dependent phone recognition task on a specially recorded TIMIT corpus of 460 sentences. The results show that there is useful supplementary information contained in the articulatory data which yields a small but significant improvement in phone recognition accuracy of 2%. However, preliminary attempts to estimate the articulatory data from the acoustic signal and use this to supplement the acoustic input have not yielded any significant improvement in phone accuracy.
DELAY TOLERANT ROUTING IN SPARSE VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

Low density of network nodes in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) outside the rush hours and in peripheral areas limits usability of traditional ad hoc networking, which requires end-to-end connectivity between communicating parties. In this article, we survey how usability of vehicular networks could be escalated with delay-tolerant networking, in which vehicles store and carry network data while waiting opportunities to forward it. With delay-tolerant networking applications are able to get eventual data delivery even in sparse networks. We address the routing problem in delay-tolerant vehicular networks and introduce a novel geographical routing scheme, which is based on movement predictions. As our simulations show, the presented protocol attains efficient results even in sparse networks.
Notes on LR Parser Design

The design of an LR parser based on interleaving the atomic symbol processing of a context-free backbone grammar with the full constraints of the underlying unification grammar is described. The parser employs a set of reduced constraints derived from the unification grammar in the LR parsing step. Gap threading is simulated to reduce the applicability of empty productions.
VeRV: A temporal and data-concerned verification framework for the vehicle bus systems

As a part of the international standard IEC 61375, the multifunction vehicle bus (MVB) has been used in most of the modern train control systems. It is highly desirable to check the temporal properties of the data transmitted on the bus. However, we are not aware of any published work on this problem. We proposed VeRV, the first temporal and data-concerned verification framework for the vehicle bus systems. A domain-specific language, called VeSpec, is proposed to specify the packet formats and the desired properties. The language is expressive, modular and easy to use. Given a VeSpec script, the VeRV allows automatic generation of runtime analyzer. We have applied our technique to a real tube train system and succeeded in diagnosing a real failure in this system. The industry application illustrates the effectiveness and efficiency of our technique.