Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic and Biochemical Characterization of the F-ATPase Operon from S treptococcus sanguis 10904

Oral streptococci utilize an F-ATPase to regulate cytoplasmic pH. Previous studies have shown that this enzyme is a principal determinant of aciduricity in the oral streptococcal species Streptococcus sanguis and Streptococcus mutans. Differences in the pH optima of the respective ATPases appears to be the main reason that S. mutans is more tolerant of low pH values than S. sanguis and hence pathogenic. We have recently reported the genetic arrangement for the S. mutans operon. For purposes of comparative structural biology we have also investigated the F-ATPase from S. sanguis. Here, we report the genetic characterization and expression in Escherichia coli of the S. sanguis ATPase operon. Sequence analysis showed a gene order of atpEBFHAGDC and that a large intergenic space existed upstream of the structural genes. Activity data demonstrate that ATPase activity is induced under acidic conditions in both S. sanguis and S. mutans; however, it is not induced to the same extent in the nonpathogenic S. sanguis. Expression studies with an atpD deletion strain of E. coli showed that S. sanguis-E. coli hybrid enzymes were able to degrade ATP but were not sufficiently functional to permit growth on succinate minimal media. Hybrid enzymes were found to be relatively insensitive to inhibition by dicyclohexylcarbodiimide, indicating loss of productive coupling between the membrane and catalytic subunits.
Impact of wind penetration and HVDC upgrades on stability of the GB transmission system

Several case studies are presented in this paper to better understand the impact of planned network changes on the dynamic stability of the future Great Britain transmission system. These studies have been conducted on a small network that is reasonably representative of the small signal stability problems present in the UK power system. The effect of wind penetration and HVDC links on the existing low frequency inter-area oscillations is analysed and interpreted for different possible future scenarios by observing the change of damping and frequency of this mode in response to these changes.
A New Single-Ended I/O With Reduced Electromagnetic Emissions

This paper shows a new method to establish a binary data link between integrated circuits through single-ended wiring interconnects. It is based on the transmission of small (a few hundred millivolts) and short (a few hundred picoseconds) double exponential pulses from output buffers (pulse generators) to electric charge receivers. Because the power of signals handled by the new output driver and receiver is significantly lower than that of conventional input/output circuits, this new binary channel performs very well in terms of power dissipation and signal integrity, as well as electromagnetic emissions.
An Approximation Algorithm for the Maximum-Lifetime Data Aggregation Tree Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper studies the problem of constructing maximum-lifetime data aggregation trees in wireless sensor networks for collecting sensor readings. This problem is known to be NP-hard. Wireless sensor networks in which transmission power levels of sensors are adjustable and heterogeneous are considered. An approximation algorithm is developed to construct a data aggregation tree whose inverse lifetime is guaranteed to be within a bound from the optimal one. Adjustable transmission power levels of the sensors introduce an additional term in the bound compared with the bound for networks in which transmission power levels of all sensors are fixed. The additional term is proportional to the difference between the maximum and minimum amounts of energy for a sensor to transmit a message using respectively its maximum and minimum transmission power levels. The proposed algorithm is further enhanced to obtain an improved version. Simulation results show that properly adjusting transmission power levels of the sensors yields higher lifetime of the network than keeping their transmission power levels at the maximum level.
The Cochrane review of physiotherapy interventions for ankylosing spondylitis.

OBJECTIVE To update the Cochrane review on the effectiveness of physiotherapy interventions in the management of ankylosing spondylitis (AS). METHODS All randomized studies available in systematic searches (electronic databases, contact with authors, reference lists) up to February 2004 were included. Two reviewers independently selected trials for inclusion, assessed the validity of included trials, and extracted data. Investigators were contacted to obtain missing information. RESULTS Six trials with a total of 561 participants were included. Two trials compared individualized home exercise programs with no intervention. Low quality evidence for effects in favor of the home exercise program was found in physical function and spinal mobility [absolute benefit 10.3 cm on fingertip to floor distance; relative percentage difference (RPD) 37%)]. Further, the trials showed low quality evidence for no group differences in pain. Three trials compared supervised group physiotherapy with an individualized home exercise program. Moderate quality evidence for effectiveness was found in patient global assessment and spinal mobility in favor of the supervised group. The trials showed moderate quality evidence for no differences in pain intensity between the groups. One trial compared a 3-week inpatient spa-exercise therapy followed by weekly outpatient group physiotherapy with weekly outpatient group physiotherapy alone. Moderate quality evidence was found for effects in pain (absolute benefit 0.9 cm on visual analog scale; RPD 19%), physical function (absolute benefit 1 cm; RPD 24%), and patient global assessment (absolute benefit 1.3 cm; RPD 27%), in favor of the combined spa-exercise therapy. CONCLUSION The current best available evidence suggests that physiotherapy is beneficial for people with AS. However, it is still not clear which treatment protocol should be recommended in the management of AS.
APL@Voro: A Voronoi-Based Membrane Analysis Tool for GROMACS Trajectories

APL@Voro is a new program developed to aid in the analysis of GROMACS trajectories of lipid bilayer simulations. It can read a GROMACS trajectory file, a PDB coordinate file, and a GROMACS index file to create a two-dimensional geometric representation of a bilayer. Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations--generated for different selection models of lipids--support the analysis of the bilayer. The values calculated on the geometric structures can be visualized in a user-friendly interactive environment and, then, plotted and exported to different file types. APL@Voro supports complex bilayers with a mix of various lipids and proteins. For the calculation of the projected area per lipid, a modification of the well-known Voronoi approach is presented as well as the presentation of a new approach for including atoms into an existing triangulation. The application of the developed software is discussed for three example systems simulated with GROMACS. The program is written in C++, is open source, and is available free of charge.
Design of highly efficient charge pump for energy harvesting RFID applications

This paper proposes an improved charge pump circuit for low voltage RFID applications. The architecture of charge transfer switch based dynamic charge pump has been modified to provide higher output voltage than existing one. This has been achieved by replacing the diode with a charge transfer block at the last stage of the dynamic CTS charge pump. The modified charge pump eliminates the threshold voltage loss and the effects of leakage currents. A 10-stage charge pump circuit with each pumping capacitance of 1pF is designed and simulated with an input voltage of 1V and clock frequency of 500MHz. The proposed charge-pump circuit is designed and simulated by Cadence virtuoso with UMC 0.18-μm CMOS technology parameters.
Estimation of process-induced variations in double-gate junctionless transistor

In this paper, the impact of process induced variations on the electrical characteristics of a junctionless symmetric double-gate transistor (DGJLT) is reported for the first time. The process parameters considered here are gate length (L), thickness of silicon film (Tsi) and gate oxide thickness (Tox). The impact of these process parameters on the electrical parameters viz., ON current, threshold voltage (VT) and subthreshold slope (SS) are systematically investigated with the help of extensive device simulations and compared with conventional symmetric doublegate transistor (DGMOS). It is seen that ON current variation with silicon thickness is higher for DGJLT compared to DGMOS. Threshold voltage of DGJLT is more sensitive to silicon thickness and gate oxide thickness as compared to DGMOS. The overall SS variation is negligible in DGJLT compared to DGMOS.
Employment Effects of the New German Minimum Wage: Evidence from Establishment-Level Microdata

The authors present the first evidence on the consequences of the new statutory minimum wage in Germany, which was implemented on January 1, 2015. Using the IAB Establishment Panel, they identify employment effects from variation in the extent that establishments are affected by the minimum wage. A difference-in-differences estimation reveals an increase in average wages between 3.8% and 6.3% and an employment loss by approximately 1.7% in establishments affected by the minimum wage. These estimates imply a labor demand elasticity with respect to wages ranging between −0.2 and −0.4. The authors also observe a transitory reduction of the working hours in the first year after the introduction and that the employment effect seems mostly driven by a reduction in hires rather than by an increase in layoffs.
Borna Disease Virus Infection in Two Family Clusters of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

A high rate of Borna disease virus (BDV) infection has been demonstrated in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Herein, we focused on BDV infection in two family clusters of patients with CFS: a father, mother, two sons and one daughter (family #1); and a father, mother, two daughters and one son (family #2). All members, except for the elder son in family #1 and the father and son in family #2, were diagnosed with CFS. The results supported that all the family members with CFS were infected with BDV, as evidenced by the presence of antibodies to viral p40, p24 and/or gp18 and BDV p24 RNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The healthy members, except for the father of family #2 who was positive for antibody to p24, were all negative by both assays. Follow‐up studies in family #1 continued to reveal BDV antibodies and BDV RNA, except in the mother, who lost the RNA upon slight recovery from the disease.
Spatial modelling of contribution of individual level risk factors for mortality from Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in the Arabian Peninsula

Background Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus is a contagious respiratory pathogen that is contracted via close contact with an infected subject. Transmission of the pathogen has occurred through animal-to-human contact at first followed by human-to-human contact within families and health care facilities. Data and methods This study is based on a retrospective analysis of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between June 2012 and July 2015. A Geoadditive variable model for binary outcomes was applied to account for both individual level risk factors as well spatial variation via a fully Bayesian approach. Results Out of 959 confirmed cases, 642 (67%) were males and 317 (33%) had died. Three hundred and sixty four (38%) cases occurred in Ar Riyad province, while 325 (34%) cases occurred in Makkah. Individuals with some comorbidity had a significantly higher likelihood of dying from MERS-CoV compared with those who did not suffer comorbidity [Odds ratio (OR) = 2.071; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.307, 3.263]. Health-care workers were significantly less likely to die from the disease compared with non-health workers [OR = 0.372, 95% CI: 0.151, 0.827]. Patients who had fatal clinical experience and those with clinical and subclinical experiences were equally less likely to die from the disease compared with patients who did not have fatal clinical experience and those without clinical and subclinical experiences respectively. The odds of dying from the disease was found to increase as age increased beyond 25 years and was much higher for individuals with any underlying comorbidities. Conclusion Interventions to minimize mortality from the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus should particularly focus individuals with comorbidity, non-health-care workers, patients with no clinical fatal experience, and patients without any clinical and subclinical experiences.
Regional effects and mechanism of positive end-expiratory pressure in early adult respiratory distress syndrome.

OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) prevents the collapse of a given lung region when it is equal to or greater than the hydrostatic pressure superimposed (SPL) to that region. DESIGN Intervention study with sequential levels of PEEP applied in random order to a cohort of patients with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). SETTING Referral center for ARDS in a university hospital. PATIENTS Ten ARDS patients (with Murray scores > 2.5). INTERVENTION Basal computed tomographic (CT) section taken at 0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 20 cm H2O PEEP. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Basal lung CT sections were divided into 10 equal levels from the ventral to dorsal surfaces. In each level SPL was measured from density and height. The inflation of the level was measured as the gas/tissue ratio (g/t); g/t changes with PEEP were defined as the g/t-P curve. The slope of the g/t-P curve was defined as level compliance (ie, the ratio of change in the g/t of the level to the change in pressure). A linear g/t-P curve was the criterion to detect inflation without recruitment (ie, new pulmonary units opening at a given pressure). A biphasic g/t-P curve (change of compliance after an inflection point) was the criterion to detect recruitment. Pflex was defined as the pressure at which the inflection point occurred. RESULTS The SPL increased from level 1 (ventral) to level 10 (dorsal) (r = .91; P < .01). The number of linear g/t-P curves decreased from level 1 to level 10 (r = .98; P < .01), while the number of biphasic g/t-P curves increased (r = .95; P < .01). The Pflex increased from level 1 to 10 (r = .97; P < .01) and Pflex was similar to SPL (Pflex = 1.05 + 0.9 SPL; r = .75; P < .01). CONCLUSIONS The increased SPL causes compression atelectasis; this is prevented when PEEP to a given lung region is equal to or greater than the SPL.
Participation in Clinical Research Registries: A Focus Group Study Examining Views From Patients With Arthritis and Other Chronic Illnesses

Patient registries have contributed substantially to progress in clinical research in rheumatic diseases. However, not much is known about how to optimize the patient experience in such registries. We assessed patient views, motivations, and potential barriers towards participation in registry research to better understand how registries can be improved to maximize patient engagement.
Prior chronic clopidogrel therapy is associated with increased adverse events and early stent thrombosis

Summary Despite the growing use of clopidogrel, limited data exist regarding the prognostic significance of chronic clopidogrel therapy in patients sustaining acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Our aim was to determine whether patients sustaining ACS while on chronic clopidogrel therapy have a worse prognosis than clopidogrel-naïve patients. A total of 5,386 consecutive ACS patients were prospectively characterised and followed-up for 30 days. Of them, 680 (13 %) were treated with clopidogrel prior to the index ACS. Major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were defined as death, recurrent ACS, stroke and/or stent thrombosis. Compared with clopidogrel-naïve, chronic clopidogrel-treated patients were older (66 ± 12 vs 63 ± 13, respectively; p< 0.01), suffered more from diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, prior cardiovascular history, including prior myocardial infarction, revascularisation, coronary artery bypass graft and stroke (p< 0.01 for all), and were less likely to present with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (21 % vs 45 %; respectively; p < 0.001). Prior clopidogrel therapy was associated with a two-fold increase in in-hospital (1.6 °% vs 0.6, respectively; p =0.006) as well as 30-day stent thrombosis (2.2 % vs 1.0 %, respectively; p=0.007). MACE at 30 days was also higher among chronic clopidogrel-treated compared with clopidogrel-naïve patients [12.3 % vs 9.4 %, respectively; p< 0.01]. In multivariate log regression analysis chronic clopidogrel treatment was an independent predictor of stent thrombosis [OR=2.6 (95 %CI 1.2–5.6), p=0.001]. Patients sustaining ACS while on chronic clopidogrel treatment are at higher risk for in-hospital and 30-day adverse outcomes, including stent thrombosis.
Contributions of the brome mosaic virus RNA-3 3'-nontranslated region to replication and translation

Sequences upstream of the 3'-terminal tRNA-like structure of brome mosaic virus RNAs have been predicted to fold into several stem-loop and pseudoknot structures. To elucidate the functional role of this upstream region, a series of deletions was made in cDNA clones of RNA-3, a genomic component not required for replication. These deletion mutants were transcribed in vitro and cotransfected with RNA-1 and RNA-2 into barley protoplasts. Deletion of single stem-loop structures gave progeny retaining near-wild-type accumulation levels. Constructions representing deletion of two or three stem-loops substantially lowered the accumulation of progeny RNA-3 relative to wild-type levels. RNA-3 mutants bearing deletions of longer sequences or of the entire region (delta PsKs RNA-3) replicated poorly, yielding no detectable RNA-3 or RNA-4 progeny. Levels of RNA-1 and RNA-2, in the presence of a mutant RNA-3, were found to increase relative to the accumulation observed in a complete wild-type transfection. The stability of delta PsKs RNA-3 in protoplasts was somewhat lower than that of wild-type RNA during the first 3 h postinoculation. Little difference in translatability in vitro of wild-type and RNA-3 constructs bearing deletions within the stem-loop region was observed, and Western immunoblot analysis of viral coat protein produced in transfected protoplasts showed that protein accumulation paralleled the amount of RNA-4 message produced from the various sequences evaluated. These results indicate that the RNA-3 pseudoknot region plays a minor role in translational control but contributes substantially to the overall replication of the brome mosaic virus genome.
Design and FPGA Implementation of Reconfigurable Linear-Phase Digital Filter With Wide Cutoff Frequency Range and Narrow Transition Bandwidth

Reconfigurable filters based on the spectral parameter approximation (SPA) technique and its combination with other techniques provide a continuous control over the cutoff frequency (fc). However, when very wide fc range and narrow transition bandwidth is desired, these filters either fail to satisfy some of the specifications or have extremely high complexity. In this brief, we propose an interpolated SPA (ISPA) filter that overcomes all the limitations of all the existing SPA technique based filters, and achieves very wide fc range (equal to approximately the entire Nyquist band) and narrow transition bandwidth along with small passband ripple and high stopband attenuation. Comparison with the state-of-the-art reconfigurable filters is provided via a design example, which shows that the ISPA filter achieves more than 50% savings in the number of multipliers compared to the filter based on the combination of SPA and modified coefficient decimation techniques. The field-programmable gate array implementation results show that the ISPA filter has much lesser group delay and much higher operating speed, but incurs moderate penalty in terms of area compared to the filter based on the combination of frequency transformation and interpolation techniques.
TensorFlow-Serving: Flexible, High-Performance ML Serving

We describe TensorFlow-Serving, a system to serve machine learning models inside Google which is also available in the cloud and via open-source. It is extremely flexible in terms of the types of ML platforms it supports, and ways to integrate with systems that convey new models and updated versions from training to serving. At the same time, the core code paths around model lookup and inference have been carefully optimized to avoid performance pitfalls observed in naive implementations. Google uses it in many production deployments, including a multi-tenant model hosting service called TFS^2.
Programmed instruction revisited: a solution to infection control inservice education.

Recent standards established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regarding protection against occupational exposure to hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) presents a challenge to staff development and inservice educators to provide the necessary education and training in light of the 24-hour operation of a hospital, the nursing shortage, and the use of part-time personnel. In order to provide initial and periodic infection control programs for nursing personnel, a self-managed module in the form of a programmed unit of instruction (PUI) was developed and tested to determine its effectiveness and efficiency for teaching the basic principles of infection control to inservice nurses. Results of the study indicated that nurses who took a PUI in the basic principles of infection control scored higher on posttests than those who attended a lecture, regardless of their pretest scores, educational level, and experience (p less than .0001).
THE PREPARATION OF I-131-LABELLED HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE OF HIGH SPECIFIC RADIOACTIVITY.

A simple and rapid method is presented for the preparation of I/sup 131/- labeled human growth hormone of high specific radioactivity (240-300 mu C/ mu g). Low amounts of carrierfree I/sup 131/ iodide (2 mC) are allowed to react, without prior treatment, with small quantities of protein (5 mu g) in a highyield reaction (approx. 70% transfer of I/sup 131/ to protein). The degree of chemical substitution is minimized (0.5- 1.0 atom of iodine/molecule of protein) by the use of carrier-free I/sup 131/ iodide. The I/sup 131/-labeled hormone (up to 300 mu C/ mu g) contains no detectable degradation products and is immunologically identical with the unlabeled hormone. The loss of immunological reactivity at high specific radioactivities or at high levels of chemical substitution with STAI/sup 127/! iodine is demonstrated. (auth)