Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low prevalence of Mycoplasma genitalium in patients examined for Chlamydia trachomatis.

BACKGROUND There is increasing interest in Mycoplasma genitalium as a sexually transmissible pathogen. The clinical picture resembles that of Chlamydia trachomatis infection, but the natural course has not yet been well defined. There are no guidelines regarding who should be examined for M. genitalium. Most of the prevalence studies have been carried out in patients attending clinics for sexually transmissible diseases. We have examined the prevalence in samples sent from general practice requesting analysis for C. trachomatis. MATERIAL AND METHOD During the period October 1 to December 31 2010, all samples sent to Molde Hospital, Norway, that queried C. trachomatis were examined also for M. genitalum. Both agents were examined using real time PCR. The PCR for C. trachomatis was performed using a CE labelled and IVD approved method from Roche. The PCR for M. genitalium was performed using an in-house method where the target gene is GAP. RESULT A total of 950 patients were examined (Men n=225, women n=725). The prevalences of M. genitalium and C. trachomatis were 2.0 % and 10.0 % respectively (men 4.0 % and 15.1 %, women 1.4 % and 8.4 %). CONCLUSION Because of the low prevalence, we recommend selection of patients for examination for M. genitalium. The difference in prevalence between the sexes can reflect different indications for sample taking.
Amelioration of type II collagen induced arthritis in rats by treatment with sodium diethyldithiocarbamate.

OBJECTIVE Sodium diethyldithiocarbamate (Ditiocarb, DDTC), which is used in the treatment of heavy metal poisoning, effectively inhibits NF-kappaB activation and cytokine secretion in vitro. To investigate the antiinflammatory and immunosuppressive potency of DDTC, we examined its influence on the course of collagen induced arthritis in rats. METHODS Arthritis was induced in female DA rats by injection of rat collagen type II emulsified in incomplete Freund's adjuvant into the tail base. After onset of arthritis, the animals received DDTC or vehicle by intraperitoneal injections or subcutaneous infusion using osmotic pumps. Disulfiram, which is cleaved into DDTC within the gastrointestinal tract, was administered orally via gastric gavage. The course of arthritis was followed by clinical scoring and measurement of joint swelling. RESULTS Collagen induced arthritis was significantly ameliorated by intraperitoneal injection (2 x 300 mg/kg/day) and subcutaneous infusion (120 mg/kg/day) of DDTC and by enteral administration of disulfiram (200 and 300 mg/kg/day). CONCLUSION Dithiocarbamates may provide an effective new approach for the treatment of arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.
The effect of various absorption enhancers on tight junction in the human intestinal Caco-2 cell line

Present work investigates the potential of absorption enhancers (glucose, EDTA, sodium cholate, SDS, ethanol and menthol) to open the cellular tight junctions and in doing so improve the paracellular permeability of macromolecules. Initial work assessed cytotoxicity (through MTT assays) of absorption enhancers on Caco-2 cells to confirm the suitable concentration and action time. Subsequently, macromolecular permeability across filter-cultured Caco-2 monolayers was detected. The six enhancers were also tested for the effect on the distribution of the tight junction proteins, ZO-1, claudin-1, occludin, and E-cadherin. The results showed that the six enhancers at certain concentration and action time caused little cytotoxicity to Caco-2 cells and increased the permeability of fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and FITC-dextrans, as well as producing changes in ZO-1, claudin-1, occludin, and E-cadherin distribution, indicating a tight junction effect.
Self-disclosure on social networking sites

Our aim was to contribute to the understanding of self-disclosure behavior on social networking sites (SNS). Participants ( N = 1,294) completed online surveys comprising measures of willingness to disclose personal information on SNS, self-esteem, SNS affinity, self- disclosure, honesty of self-disclosure, subjective norm, self-monitoring skills, and public self-consciousness. Our findings suggest that self-disclosure mediates the impact of communication-based personality characteristics on the use of SNS, and that subjective norm and SNS affinity also have significant independent effects.
A PCA approach for fast retrieval of structural patterns in attributed graphs

An attributed graph (AG) is a useful data structure for representing complex patterns in a wide range of applications such as computer vision, image database retrieval, and other knowledge representation tasks where similar or exact corresponding structural patterns must be found. Existing methods for attributed graph matching (AGM) often suffer from the combinatorial problem whereby the execution cost for finding an exact or similar match is exponentially related to the number of nodes the AG contains. The square matching error of two AGs subject to permutations is approximately relaxed to a square matching error of two AGs subject to orthogonal transformations. Hence, the principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm can be used for the fast computation of the approximate matching error, with a considerably reduced execution complexity. Experiments demonstrate that this method works well and is robust against noise and other simple types of transformations.
Forced expression of dystrophin deletion constructs reveals structure- function correlations

Dystrophin plays an important role in skeletal muscle by linking the cytoskeleton and the extracellular matrix. The amino terminus of dystrophin binds to actin and possibly other components of the subsarcolemmal cytoskeleton, while the carboxy terminus associates with a group of integral and peripheral membrane proteins and glycoproteins that are collectively known as the dystrophin-associated protein (DAP) complex. We have generated transgenic/mdx mice expressing "full-length" dystrophin constructs, but with consecutive deletions within the COOH- terminal domains. These mice have enabled analysis of the interaction between dystrophin and members of the DAP complex and the effects that perturbing these associations have on the dystrophic process. Deletions within the cysteine-rich region disrupt the interaction between dystrophin and the DAP complex, leading to a severe dystrophic pathology. These deletions remove the beta-dystroglycan-binding site, which leads to a parallel loss of both beta-dystroglycan and the sarcoglycan complex from the sarcolemma. In contrast, deletion of the alternatively spliced domain and the extreme COOH terminus has no apparent effect on the function of dystrophin when expressed at normal levels. The proteins resulting from these latter two deletions supported formation of a completely normal DAP complex, and their expression was associated with normal muscle morphology in mdx mice. These data indicate that the cysteine-rich domain is critical for functional activity, presumably by mediating a direct interaction with beta-dystroglycan. However, the remainder of the COOH terminus is not required for assembly of the DAP complex.
TRADE LIBERALISA TION WITH COSTLY ADJUSTMENT A

The paper analyses the ef ficiency and the distributional ef f cts of eliminating a tarif f in a protected sector , in a Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade with costs of adjustment. The tarif f can be eliminated at the onset or after a while. In case of postponing it the government may pre-announce the policy change or may not do it and surprise the private sector . It is shown that while lar ge adjustment costs reduce the ef ficiency gains from trade liberalisation, small to moderate adjustment costs may raise the eficiency gains from a pre-announced liberalisation. The adjustment costs reduce the ef f cts on factor returns from a sudden unanticipated liberalisation. The distributional ef fects of trade liberalisations are more complex when the policy is pre-announced. For small and moderate levels, the adjustment costs may increase the ef fects of the policy on factor returns. Also, the “value of the announcement” rises with the adjustment costs.
Empathy and Theory of Mind and body in evolution.

Three mutually exclusive theoretical explanations have been proposed to describe how Theory of Mind processes work, namely by imitation, by simulation or by representation. This paper claims that all three theories are correct and that the realization of empathy in discourse is a good source of evidence for that. Instead of being three exclusive theories these are three compatible mechanisms, which reflect different stages of cognitive evolution. Furthermore, the somatic and emotive bias of cognition, the complexity of Theory of Mind processes and the fundamental role empathy plays in interaction altogether point to a new metaphor of communication, namely communication as a caress.
Alcohol modulation of neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors is alpha subunit dependent.

BACKGROUND We have previously shown that n-alcohols exert a dual action on the alpha4beta2-type neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine (ACh) receptors (AChRs), with shorter-chain alcohols potentiating and longer-chain alcohols inhibiting ACh-induced currents. Ethanol potentiates the current in alpha4beta2 receptors, yet it has little or no effect on the alpha3beta2 receptors. Because the alpha4 AChRs are present predominantly in the brain, whereas the alpha3 AChRs are present predominantly in the peripheral ganglia, the differential action of ethanol on the alpha4beta2 and alpha3beta2 AChRs may contribute to its differential effects on the brain and the peripheral nervous system. The purpose of this study was to characterize the actions of alcohols on an alpha3-containing nicotinic receptor and to further understand the mechanism underlying the differential action of ethanol on the two receptor subtypes. METHODS ACh-induced currents were recorded from human alpha3beta2 AChRs recombinantly expressed in human embryonic kidney tsA201 cells by using the whole-cell patch clamp technique. RESULTS The ACh-induced currents in the alpha3beta2 receptors were potentiated by methanol and inhibited by longer-chain alcohols. The transition point from potentiation to inhibition and the cutoff point were both shifted to shorter alcohols in the alpha3beta2 AChR compared with the alpha4beta2 AChR. This explains why ethanol, which was at the transition point, has little or no effect on the alpha3beta2 AChR. CONCLUSIONS The alpha3beta2 AChRs are insensitive to ethanol because ethanol is at the transition point from potentiation to inhibition among n-alcohols with different carbon-chain lengths. The differential action on the alpha4beta2 and alpha3beta2 AChRs may explain the differential action of ethanol on the central nervous system.
Organizational Adoption Of Social Media In The Usa: A Mixed Method Approach

Current literature about organizational adoption of social media mainly focuses on how organizations are using these technologies to interact with customers and other stakeholders. In this paper, we expand this line of research by exploring the internal processes that organizations put in place to support their social media initiatives. Using a mixed methods approach that combines data mining and content analysis techniques, we examine the adoption of social media across multiple industries. To avoid limiting our sample to a specific social media technology, we analysed 20,285 web-based job postings related to social media job, and identified around 9000 companies from those job postings representing all 20 main industries in the USA. Results provide a broader view of social media diffusion across industries, highlight new organizational uses of social media (e.g., social media listening, using social media to engage with industry and media influencers) and provide deeper insight into the internal processes employed by organizations to support their social media initiatives (e.g., develop social media strategies, managing social media platform, developing social media metrics).
Enhancing Automatic ICD-9-CM Code Assignment for Medical Texts with PubMed

Assigning a standard ICD-9-CM code to disease symptoms in medical texts is an important task in the medical domain. Automating this process could greatly reduce the costs. However, the effectiveness of an automatic ICD-9-CM code classifier faces a serious problem, which can be triggered by unbalanced training data. Frequent diseases often have more training data, which helps its classification to perform better than that of an infrequent disease. However, a disease’s frequency does not necessarily reflect its importance. To resolve this training data shortage problem, we propose to strategically draw data from PubMed to enrich the training data when there is such need. We validate our method on the CMC dataset, and the evaluation results indicate that our method can significantly improve the code assignment classifiers’ performance at the macro-averaging level.
A Selective Activity-Dependent Requirement for Dynamin 1 in Synaptic Vesicle Endocytosis

Dynamin 1 is a neuron-specific guanosine triphosphatase thought to be critically required for the fission reaction of synaptic vesicle endocytosis. Unexpectedly, mice lacking dynamin 1 were able to form functional synapses, even though their postnatal viability was limited. However, during spontaneous network activity, branched, tubular plasma membrane invaginations accumulated, capped by clathrin-coated pits, in synapses of dynamin 1–knockout mice. Synaptic vesicle endocytosis was severely impaired during strong exogenous stimulation but resumed efficiently when the stimulus was terminated. Thus, dynamin 1–independent mechanisms can support limited synaptic vesicle endocytosis, but dynamin 1 is needed during high levels of neuronal activity.
Compensation for inter-frame correlations in speaker diarization and recognition

In this paper, we introduce the concept of the effective sample size to speaker diarization and recognition. We show why the use of the nominal sample size is inadequate to feature streams that exhibit inter-frame correlations and how it adversely affects inference. We then discuss the effective sample size, that is the sample size of a set of independent observations that carry the equivalent amount of statistical information about the model parameters and how the scaling factor can be estimated. Our experiments on speaker diarization show that once the effective sample size is adopted, state-of-the-art results can be attained even with single Gaussians and Hierarchical Clustering, and even when the scaling factor is set to be common for all utterances. On speaker recognition, encouraging results are reported on NIST-2010 using iVectors and PLDA.
Hermeneutics in Information Systems

Information systems often face unstructured environments where it is necessary to gain understanding of nebulously expressed content. This is the case not only theoretically, but also reflects the process of how managers have to cope with most decision environments. The philosophical underpinnings of hermeneutics in this context are examined. Hermeneutics in many forms has been used to interpret obscure contexts. There have been a number of such applications in information systems, which are reviewed. A fourth approach based upon the work of Gadamer is developed. Expected results of these four methods as tools to support requirements analysis in information systems projects are provided.
Off-line Chinese signature verification

In this paper, a set of shape features which was based on the special characteristics of Chinese signatures was proposed for off-line Chinese signature verification. Another set of high-pressure features was also developed to extract timing and dynamic information indirectly from the signature image. A database of 100 genuine signatures and 50 simple forgeries was used to investigate the effectiveness of these two sets. Though shape features and high-pressure features had an error rate of 6.5% and 20.0% respectively, the collective use of these two sets reduced the error rate of simple forgery verification to 2.5%. It was concluded that combined use of static and dynamic information is an effective way for off-line Chinese signature verification.
From ‘I’ to ‘We’: The Role of Putdown Humor and Identity in the Development of a Temporary Group

Participant observation of a 6-week Executive Development Course suggests that humor provides a key mechanism for enacting a sense of community for group members. Specifically, the study examines the process through which putdown humor helps foster group identity and cohesion in a temporary group. Putdowns followed a pattern of development that signaled increasing trust and inclusion, and was regulated by implicit rules that incubated the emergent solidarity. The meaning of certain humorous episodes was equivocal, but the act of laughing together glossed over the equivocality so that the sense of community was reaffirmed. Further, social identity dynamics appeared to strongly affect perceptions of the appropriateness of humor. The authors conclude that shared putdown humor and the implicit set of rules regarding its use may facilitate solidarity, and they attempt to reconcile why ‘inclusionary putdowns’ were found here when ‘exclusionary putdowns’ are usually reported in the literature.
Quantifying biological carbon export for the northwest North Atlantic continental shelves

It has been suggested that continental shelf systems contribute disproportionately to the oceanic uptake of atmospheric CO2, but the magnitude of this flux and the relative contributions of different underlying mechanisms are poorly quantified. A biological continental shelf pump mechanism has been implied; however, the magnitude of this export depends on advective transport of carbon‐rich water off the shelf, a process that is difficult to observe directly. Here we use a physical‐biogeochemical model for the northeastern North American continental margin to estimate the uptake of atmospheric CO2, the fraction of this uptake that results from biological processes, and the transport of organic carbon off the shelf. Our results suggest that there is no systematic difference in the area‐normalized CO2 uptake between the shelf regions and the adjacent deep ocean. The advective transport of carbon‐rich water off the shelf is insufficient to drive a Continental Shelf Pump in this region.
Altered autophagy in human adipose tissues in obesity.

CONTEXT Autophagy is a housekeeping mechanism, involved in metabolic regulation and stress response, shown recently to regulate lipid droplets biogenesis/breakdown and adipose tissue phenotype. OBJECTIVE We hypothesized that in human obesity autophagy may be altered in adipose tissue in a fat depot and distribution-dependent manner. SETTING AND PATIENTS Paired omental (Om) and subcutaneous (Sc) adipose tissue samples were used from obese and nonobese (n = 65, cohort 1); lean, Sc-obese and intraabdominally obese (n = 196, cohort 2); severely obese persons without diabetes or obesity-associated morbidity, matched for being insulin sensitive or resistant (n = 60, cohort 3). RESULTS Protein and mRNA levels of the autophagy genes Atg5, LC3A, and LC3B were increased in Om compared with Sc, more pronounced among obese persons, particularly with intraabdominal fat accumulation. Both adipocytes and stromal-vascular cells contribute to the expression of autophagy genes. An increased number of autophagosomes and elevated autophagic flux assessed in fat explants incubated with lysosomal inhibitors were observed in obesity, particularly in Om. The degree of visceral adiposity and adipocyte hypertrophy accounted for approximately 50% of the variance in omental Atg5 mRNA levels by multivariate regression analysis, whereas age, sex, measures of insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and adipose tissue stress were excluded from the model. Moreover, in cohort 3, the autophagy marker genes were increased in those who were insulin resistant compared with insulin sensitive, particularly in Om. CONCLUSIONS Autophagy is up-regulated in adipose tissue of obese persons, especially in Om, correlating with the degree of obesity, visceral fat distribution, and adipocyte hypertrophy. This may co-occur with insulin resistance but precede the occurrence of obesity-associated morbidity.
Motivating Software-Driven Current Balancing in Flexible Voltage-Stacked Multicore Processors

Computing hardware has been shifting to a multicore paradigm. One extreme of that approach is many-core computing, where a large number of simple processor cores execute in throughput mode. However, this paradigm is not ubiquitous and latency-bound application do have a place in the workloads of the future. We propose a processor organization that allows an array of homogeneous cores to explicitly trade off between throughputand latency-centric modes. By organizing the cores of a processor in a flexible voltage stack (FVS), one can achieve per-core control over voltage, changing the optimal operation point of cores, but without resorting to per-core voltage regulators, which could incur significant overheads. This work is an initial step in evaluating a flexible voltage-stacked architecture. We motivate such an architecture as an alternative to dynamic voltage and frequency scaling. We show that the high-voltage delivery of power to a voltage stack can eliminate losses in power delivery and lead to significant overall power savings. However, a practical implementation of a FVS architecture requires careful current matching across a single stack. We propose a hardware-guaranteed, software-augmented solution called current balancing that intelligently schedules threads to achieve such matching. We draw the methodology for evaluating this solution from voltage smoothing – a scheduling technique we have developed to smooth supply voltage fluctuation. Since no systems have been built to implement a FVS architecture, we describe a simulation framework with sufficient level of detail to generate current traces required for fully evaluating a FVS system. To show that this in-order x86 simulator, XIOSim, is representative of current systems, we developed a rigid simulator validation methodology. This leads us one step further to a complete end-to-end evaluation of the FVS paradigm under real workloads.
Successful aging as an oxymoron: elderly people speak about what aging well means to them

Notions of what it means to age well or successfully are central to social gerontological research and practice. As such, one would expect that there would be consensus as to what the construct of successful aging means and/or how aging well is achieved. This is not, however, the case which is why this study explores the meanings that a group of older people (i.e. some with home-help care and some without) attach to this construct. The empirical material is constituted of 16 semi-structured interviews. The findings bring to fore the different resources (such as physical, mental, psycho-social, spiritual, and financial ones) that are associated with successful aging and the kind of outlook on life that is regarded as useful if one wants to age well. Differences between home-help care recipients and those that do not receive this type of care were found. Those that are managing without the help offered by home-help care services listed more resources and offered more nuanced descriptions of what successful aging means than those that receive home- help care. This suggests that receiving home-help care and/or not being able to manage primarily on one’s own might shape the manner in which older people think about what constitutes a good old age. The in-depth analysis of the notions of successful aging that were brought to the fore suggests also the paradoxical fact that the title of this article attests to; namely that some associate aging well with not aging at all and deem, in fact, the term successful aging to be an oxymoron.