Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Isolation and characterization of the lantibiotic salivaricin A and its structural gene salA from Streptococcus salivarius 20P3

A bacteriocin-like inhibitory substance, salivaricin A, was purified from cultures of Streptococcus salivarius 20P3 and was shown by ion spray mass spectrometry to have a molecular mass of 2,315 +/- 1.1 Da. Amino acid composition analysis demonstrated the presence of lanthionine, indicating that salivaricin A may be a member of the lantibiotic class of antibiotic substances. The sequence of eight amino acids at the N terminus of the molecule was determined by Edman degradation, and mixed oligonucleotide probes based on part of this sequence (GSGWIA) were used to detect the salivaricin A structural gene. A 6.2-kb EcoRI fragment of chromosomal DNA from strain 20P3 that hybridized with the probes was cloned, and the hybridizing region was further localized to a 379-bp DraI-AluI fragment. Analysis of the nucleotide sequence of this fragment indicated that salivaricin A is synthesized as a 51-amino-acid prepeptide that is posttranslationally modified and cleaved to give a biologically active 22-residue peptide containing one lanthionine and two beta-methyllanthionine residues. The secondary structure of presalivaricin A was predicted to be similar to that of type A lantibiotics, with a hydrophilic alpha-helical leader sequence and a propeptide region with potential for beta-turn formation and a lack of alpha-helicity. The sequence around the cleavage site of presalivaricin A differed from that of other type A lantibiotics but was similar to that of several bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances produced by lactic acid bacteria.
Human activities cause distinct dissolved organic matter composition across freshwater ecosystems

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) composition in freshwater ecosystems is influenced by the interactions among physical, chemical, and biological processes that are controlled, at one level, by watershed landscape, hydrology, and their connections. Against this environmental template, humans may strongly influence DOM composition. Yet, we lack a comprehensive understanding of DOM composition variation across freshwater ecosystems differentially affected by human activity. Using optical properties, we described DOM variation across five ecosystem groups of the Laurentian Great Lakes region: large lakes, Kawartha Lakes, Experimental Lakes Area, urban stormwater ponds, and rivers (n = 184 sites). We determined how between ecosystem variation in DOM composition related to watershed size, land use and cover, water quality measures (conductivity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nutrient concentration, chlorophyll a), and human population density. The five freshwater ecosystem groups had distinctive DOM composition from each other. These significant differences were not explained completely through differences in watershed size nor spatial autocorrelation. Instead, multivariate partial least squares regression showed that DOM composition was related to differences in human impact across freshwater ecosystems. In particular, urban/developed watersheds with higher human population densities had a unique DOM composition with a clear anthropogenic influence that was distinct from DOM composition in natural land cover and/or agricultural watersheds. This nonagricultural, human developed impact on aquatic DOM was most evident through increased levels of a microbial, humic‐like parallel factor analysis component (C6). Lotic and lentic ecosystems with low human population densities had DOM compositions more typical of clear water to humic‐rich freshwater ecosystems but C6 was only present at trace to background levels. Consequently, humans are strongly altering the quality of DOM in waters nearby or flowing through highly populated areas, which may alter carbon cycles in anthropogenically disturbed ecosystems at broad scales.
A Comparison of Day Treatment and Outpatient Treatment for Children with Disruptive Behaviour Problems *

The authors explored the relative merits of outpatient and day treatment for 30 children with severe behaviour problems. The effectiveness of treatment on behaviour, self-perception, and social and family functioning was assessed. Day treatment was found to be more effective in reducing behaviour problems, alleviating depressive symptoms, increasing social skills and improving family functioning.
Models for Estimating Genetic Parameters of Milk Production Traits Using Random Regression Models in Korean Holstein Cattle

The objectives of the study were to estimate genetic parameters for milk production traits of Holstein cattle using random regression models (RRMs), and to compare the goodness of fit of various RRMs with homogeneous and heterogeneous residual variances. A total of 126,980 test-day milk production records of the first parity Holstein cows between 2007 and 2014 from the Dairy Cattle Improvement Center of National Agricultural Cooperative Federation in South Korea were used. These records included milk yield (MILK), fat yield (FAT), protein yield (PROT), and solids-not-fat yield (SNF). The statistical models included random effects of genetic and permanent environments using Legendre polynomials (LP) of the third to fifth order (L3–L5), fixed effects of herd-test day, year-season at calving, and a fixed regression for the test-day record (third to fifth order). The residual variances in the models were either homogeneous (HOM) or heterogeneous (15 classes, HET15; 60 classes, HET60). A total of nine models (3 orders of polynomials×3 types of residual variance) including L3-HOM, L3-HET15, L3-HET60, L4-HOM, L4-HET15, L4-HET60, L5-HOM, L5-HET15, and L5-HET60 were compared using Akaike information criteria (AIC) and/or Schwarz Bayesian information criteria (BIC) statistics to identify the model(s) of best fit for their respective traits. The lowest BIC value was observed for the models L5-HET15 (MILK; PROT; SNF) and L4-HET15 (FAT), which fit the best. In general, the BIC values of HET15 models for a particular polynomial order was lower than that of the HET60 model in most cases. This implies that the orders of LP and types of residual variances affect the goodness of models. Also, the heterogeneity of residual variances should be considered for the test-day analysis. The heritability estimates of from the best fitted models ranged from 0.08 to 0.15 for MILK, 0.06 to 0.14 for FAT, 0.08 to 0.12 for PROT, and 0.07 to 0.13 for SNF according to days in milk of first lactation. Genetic variances for studied traits tended to decrease during the earlier stages of lactation, which were followed by increases in the middle and decreases further at the end of lactation. With regards to the fitness of the models and the differential genetic parameters across the lactation stages, we could estimate genetic parameters more accurately from RRMs than from lactation models. Therefore, we suggest using RRMs in place of lactation models to make national dairy cattle genetic evaluations for milk production traits in Korea.
Histone Deacetylases RPD3 and HOS2 Regulate the Transcriptional Activation of DNA Damage-Inducible Genes

ABSTRACT DNA microarray and genetic studies of Saccharomyces cerevisiae have demonstrated that histone deacetylases (HDACs) are required for transcriptional activation and repression, but the mechanism by which they activate transcription remains poorly understood. We show that two HDACs, RPD3 and HOS2, are required for the activation of DNA damage-inducible genes RNR3 and HUG1. Using mutants specific for the Rpd3L complex, we show that the complex is responsible for regulating RNR3. Furthermore, unlike what was described for the GAL genes, Rpd3L regulates the activation of RNR3 by deacetylating nucleosomes at the promoter, not at the open reading frame. Rpd3 is recruited to the upstream repression sequence of RNR3, which surprisingly does not require Tup1 or Crt1. Chromatin remodeling and TFIID recruitment are largely unaffected in the Δrpd3/Δhos2 mutant, but the recruitment of RNA polymerase II is strongly reduced, arguing that Rpd3 and Hos2 regulate later stages in the assembly of the preinitiation complex or facilitate multiple rounds of polymerase recruitment. Furthermore, the histone H4 acetyltransferase Esa1 is required for the activation of RNR3 and HUG1. Thus, reduced or unregulated constitutive histone H4 acetylation is detrimental to promoter activity, suggesting that HDAC-dependent mechanisms are in place to reset promoters to allow high levels of transcription.
Access to human, animal, and environmental journals is still limited for the One Health community.

OBJECTIVE "One Health" is an interdisciplinary approach to evaluating and managing the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environments they share that relies on knowledge from the domains of human health, animal health, and the environmental sciences. The authors' objective was to evaluate the extent of open access (OA) to journal articles in a sample of literature from these domains. We hypothesized that OA to articles in human health or environmental journals was greater than access to animal health literature. METHODS A One Health seminar series provided fifteen topics. One librarian translated each topic into a search strategy and searched four databases for articles from 2011 to 2012. Two independent investigators assigned each article to human health, the environment, animal health, all, other, or combined categories. Article and journal-level OA were determined. Each journal was also assigned a subject category and its indexing evaluated. RESULTS Searches retrieved 2,651 unique articles from 1,138 journals; 1,919 (72%) articles came from 406 journals that contributed more than 1 article. Seventy-seven (7%) journals dealt with all 3 One Health domains; the remaining journals represented human health 487 (43%), environment 172 (15%), animal health 141 (12%), and other/combined categories 261 (23%). The proportion of OA journals in animal health (40%) differed significantly from journals categorized as human (28%), environment (28%), and more than 1 category (29%). The proportion of OA for articles by subject categories ranged from 25%-34%; only the difference between human (34%) and environment (25%) was significant. CONCLUSIONS OA to human health literature is more comparable to animal health than hypothesized. Environmental journals had less OA than anticipated.
An improved Direct Torque Control method of PMSM based on backstepping control

Direct Torque Control (DTC) of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) has quick response and simple structure, but it has the disadvantages of large torque ripples and inconstant switching frequency. An improved DTC method of PMSM based on backstepping control is proposed in this paper. For direct torque control, speed, torque and flux linkage are selected as virtual state variables and then a backstepping controller is designed to produce reference stator voltage components. Then according to those voltage components, space vector modulation (SVM) is used to produce switching states of inverters. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed DTC system has been dramatically improved. Compared to the traditional DTC, the proposed DTC based on backstepping control could effectively decrease flux and torque ripples, make inverters have constant switching frequency. Compared to the DTC based on PI control, the backstepping DTC has fewer adjusted parameters and has good dynamic performance and good robustness.
Closantel Suppresses Angiogenesis and Cancer Growth in Zebrafish Models.

Angiogenesis has emerged as an important therapeutic target in several major diseases, including cancer and age-related macular degeneration. The zebrafish offer the potential for high-throughput drug discovery in a whole vertebrate system. In this study, we have taken advantage of the transgenic Tg (fli1a:EGFP) zebrafish line to screen the U.S. Drug Collection Library and identified 11 old drugs with antiangiogenic activity, including Closantel, an FDA-approved broad-spectrum salicylanilide antiparasitic drug for a variety of types of animals. Closantel was confirmed to have antiangiogenic activity in zebrafish with a half-inhibitory concentration (IC50) at 1.69 μM on the intersegmental vessels and 1.45 μM on the subintestinal vessels. Closantel also markedly suppressed cancer growth in zebrafish xenotransplanted with human lymphoma, cervical cancer, pancreatic cancer, and liver cancer cells, generally in a dose-dependent manner. These data reveal that Closantel has antiangiogenesis and anticancer effects and could be a potential drug candidate for animal and human cancer treatments. Further study is needed to clarify the mechanisms involved in the antiangiogenesis and anticancer effects of Closantel.
Clinical Experience with Transfusion of Cryopreserved Platelets

Summary. Multiple units of platelet concentrate obtained by plateletpheresis of normal, ‘random’or HL‐A matched donors were pooled and frozen in polyolefin bags using 5% dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO) as a cryoprotective agent and a controlled freezing rate of 1°/min. The platelets were stored at approximately — 120° C for as long as 201 days, thawed rapidly at 37°, washed once and resuspended in ACD plasma prior to transfusion. Two different final concentrations of platelets (˜ 2.7 and 9.0 × 1012/1.) were studied. Twenty‐three thrombocytopenic patients have received a total of 40 frozen platelet transfusions. The mean freeze‐thaw loss was 21% and was similar for both platelet concentrations. All transfusions were well tolerated and there were no side effects attributable to the small amounts of DMSO infused. Increments in platelet counts I h after transfusion ranged from 0 to 102 × 109/1. with an overall mean corrected increase in evaluable patients of 12 800 (increase × surface area (m2)/number of platelets transfused × 1011). Corrected increases tended to be greater with the low concentration of platelets. Overall, the increase in count for the frozen platelet transfusions was 65% of the increments obtained with fresh platelet transfusions administered within I week of the frozen platelets. Bleeding times were partially corrected after four out of six transfusions with post‐transfusion counts greater than 50 × 109/1. , and active haemorrhage was controlled in some patients by frozen platelet transfusions. These results indicate that pooled platelets can be frozen, thawed and transfused with reasonable efficiency. The frozen platelets can circulate and function haemostatically and may eventually play an important role in supportive care.
wCloud: Automatic generation of WebLab-Deusto deployments in the Cloud

Educational remote laboratories are software and hardware tools that allow students to remotely access real equipment located in universities as if they were in a hands-on-lab session. Since most remote labs share certain management tasks (authentication, Learning Analytics, scheduling, etc.), software systems implementing them on top of which remote labs could be implemented were developed and called Remote Lab Management Systems (RLMS). A key feature provided by certain RLMSs is sharing a remote laboratory between two systems deployed in two institutions. This way, it becomes possible to have multiple RLMS instances (which are pure software) in a Cloud environment, customized for different schools or universities. Each school would have its own RLMS, with all the management features (e.g., managing its own students), and in the end, the RLMS would connect to the RLMS which has the physical equipment. The focus of this contribution is to detail how this “RLMS as a Service” is being implemented in the case of WebLab-Deusto as part of the mCloud project, from a technical point of view.
Fetuin and Fetuin Messenger RNA in Granulosa Cells of the Rat Ovary1

Abstract The hardening reaction that occurs in the zona pellucida to block polyspermy can be overcome in oocyte cultures in the presence of fetal serum or the serum component fetuin. Fetuin may also prevent precocious zona hardening by inhibiting a ZP2 proteinase released spontaneously by cortical granules during maturation of the oocyte. We demonstrated fetuin mRNA in the rat ovary by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and localized it by in situ hybridization. Fetuin mRNA was present in all granulosa cells of growing and large follicles. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that the fetuin protein was only present in some of the small, growing follicles. In large, healthy follicles, fetuin protein was confined to cumulus cells and granulosa cells bordering the antrum. Fetuin was present in atretic follicles, but the staining pattern differed from that of healthy follicles. The follicular antrum contained a substantial amount of fetuin, but whether granulosa cells secreted it or it originated in the ovarian blood supply could not be confirmed. We concluded that at least a portion of the fetuin is produced by granulosa cells of growing and large follicles, suggesting that fetuin may function in a paracrine manner to maintain the zona pellucida in a penetrable state for fertilization.
Coercion and Conversion: Violence and the Mass Baptism of the Volga Peoples, 1740-55

This article concerns what may be regarded as the final step in the Christianization of Europe. In a short 15-year period in the mid-18th century the vast majority of the animist peoples of the Volga region, as well as a portion of its Muslims, were converted to Orthodox Christianity. Most historians of these conversions would agree that force and intimidation were crucial elements in the striking numerical success of this missionary campaign. Thus the Tatar historian Faizulkhak Gabdulkhakovich Islaev claims that, from 1741, “violence became state policy in the organization of missionary work. ” In a slightly more modest formulation, Michael Khodarkovsky contends that under Empress Elizabeth (1741–62) the imperial government “put new emphasis on using force and legislative decrees, rather than teaching Christian doctrine. ” Complaints filed by new converts confirm that some non-Christians indeed became victims of violence. A Chuvash petition of 1745, for example, describes how a certain archpriest, “together with other priests and peasants of the Dudin monastery, coming at night to Chuvash homes, and catching them, Chuvash, with their wives and children, mercilessly beat them and baptize them against their will, and likewise on the roads they catch Chuvash and subject those Chuvash to violent conversion. ” The very fact that official prohibitions against the use of force
StRoM: smart remote memory

Big data applications often incur large costs in I/O, data transfer and copying overhead, especially when operating in cloud environments. Since most such computations are distributed, data processing operations offloaded to the network card (NIC) could potentially reduce the data movement overhead by enabling near-data processing at several points of a distributed system. Following this idea, in this paper we present StRoM, a programmable, FPGA-based RoCE v2 NIC supporting the offloading of application level kernels. These kernels can be used to perform memory access operations directly from the NIC such as traversal of remote data structures as well as filtering or aggregation over RDMA data streams on both the sending or receiving sides. StRoM bypasses the CPU entirely and extends the semantics of RDMA to enable multi-step data access operations and in-network processing of RDMA streams. We demonstrate the versatility and potential of StRoM with four different kernels extending one-sided RDMA commands: 1) Traversal of remote data structures through pointer chasing, 2) Consistent retrieval of remote data blocks, 3) Data shuffling on the NIC by partitioning incoming data to different memory regions or CPU cores, and 4) Cardinality estimation on data streams.
Scale and Rotation Corrected CNNs (SRC-CNNs) for Scale and Rotation Invariant Character Recognition: SRC-CNN for Scale and Rotation Invariant Character Recognition

Last decade has witnessed rapid growth for the popularity of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), in detecting and classifying objects. The self trainable nature of CNNs makes them the strongest candidate as a classifier and a feature extractor. However, many of the existing CNN architectures fail recognizing texts or objects under input rotation and scaling. This paper introduces an elegant approach, 'Scale and Rotation Corrected CNN (SRC-CNN)' for scale and rotation invariant text recognition, exploiting the concept of principal component of characters. Prior to training and testing with baseline CNN, 'SRC-CNN' maps each character image to a reference orientation and scale, which is again derived from the character image itself. SRC-CNN is capable of recognizing characters in a document, even though they differ in orientation and scale greatly. The proposed method does not demand any training with samples which are scaled or rotated. The performance of proposed approach is validated on different character data sets like MNIST, MNIST_rot_12k and English alphabets and compared with state of the art rotation invariant classification networks. SRC-CNN is a generalized approach and can be extended for rotation and scale invariant classification of many other datasets as well, choosing any appropriate baseline CNN. Here we have demonstrated the generality of the proposed SRC-CNN on MNIST Fashion data set and found to perform well in rotation and scale invariant classification of objects as well. This paper demonstrates how the basic PCA based rotation and scale invariant image recognition can be integrated to CNN for achieving better rotational and scale invariances in classification.
La manipulation et la censure du discours queer dans la traduction française de deux séries télévisées: Les enjeux de la réception

La traduction d’objets televisuels est chose courante et, pourtant, cette pratique fait intervenir des enjeux discursifs complexes, surtout lorsqu’il s’agit de traduire le discours marginal d’un public domine, comme c’est le cas du discours queer. Les series Queer as Folk et The L Word, des productions canado-americaines, ont eu l’effet d’une revolution televisuelle lors de leur diffusion entre 2000 et 2009. Un discours queer revendicateur y etait donne a voir a travers l’emploi du sociolecte queer et la presentation de themes au cœur des preoccupations des personnes queers, comme la sexualite, la representation dans les medias, le brouillage des genres, l’homophobie et le sida. La presente recherche, avec son approche sociologique, vise a comparer les contextes de production et de reception des series pour ensuite expliquer la strategie generale de traduction vers le francais, une traduction qui, au demeurant, demontre des tendances generales d’evacuation et de censure de la sexualite en plus d’un relevement systematique du registre de langue. Une etude de la reception des series, a partir de commentaires glanes sur des sites web et des blogues, est completee par une analyse comparative du discours a l’aide de la linguistique queer portant sur une trentaine d’echantillons de dialogue tires des series.