Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Jagged1 gene mutation for abdominal coarctation of the aorta in Alagille syndrome.

Congenital cardiac defects such as peripheral pulmonary stenosis are well described in Alagille syndrome (AGS), which is transmitted in an autosomal dominant inheritance. Haploinsufficiency of the Jagged1 (JAG1) gene has been shown to cause AGS. Abdominal coarctation is an uncommon vascular congenital anomaly which has been described only three times in AGS. Recently, expression of the Jagged1 gene has been found in the developing heart and in multiple associated vascular structures, including the descending aorta. Mutation analysis of the Jagged1 gene in this fourth reported patient with coarctation of the abdominal aorta in AGS and right subclavian stenosis identified a mutation deletion (1485 Del CT). This agrees with the Jagged1 expression studies and suggests that coarctation of aorta may be a component of AGS.
Correlation of the suicide phenomenon in Aeromonas species with virulence and enteropathogenicity

Certain strains of mesophilic aeromonads (Aeromonas hydrophila, A. sorbria, and A. caviae), when grown in broth containing 0.5% glucose, undergo growth inhibition concomitant with acetate accumulation. Because these strains are nonviable after 24 h, this phenomenon is termed suicide. We investigated suicidal strains of Aeromonas species as a means of understanding animal virulence and enteropathogenicity. To assess virulence, batches of five white mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with 10(7) cells (washed) of suicidal and nonsuicidal strains of A. hydrophila and A. sobria and suicidal strains of A. caviae. The three nonsuicidal strains of A. sobria tested showed lethality as early as 12 h and were uniformly fatal within 36 h postinoculation. After 36 h, the three suicidal strains killed only 1 of 15 mice inoculated. Four A. hydrophila strains tested which showed the suicide phenomenon at 37 degrees C were variably lethal (40 to 100%). None of three suicidal strains of A. caviae were lethal. Enteropathogenicity was studied by orally inoculating three white mice each with the same Aeromonas strains (10(8) cells, in skim milk) and assessing diarrhea and intestinal fluid accumulation. Diarrhea and fluid accumulation were present in all mice inoculated with two nonsuicidal strains of A. sobria and in 4 of 12 mice given four suicidal strains of A. hydrophila. Two suicidal strains each of A. sorbria and A. caviae failed to elicit any gastrointestinal disturbances. These data suggest that the suicide phenomenon may explain strain-specific (A. sobria and A. hydrophila) and species-specific (A. caviae) virulence and enteropathogenicity.
Bilingual Lexicon Extraction at the Morpheme Level Using Distributional Analysis

Bilingual lexicon extraction from comparable corpora is usually based on distributional methods when dealing with single word terms (SWT). These methods often treat SWT as single tokens without considering their compositional property. However, many SWT are compositional (composed of roots and affixes) and this information, if taken into account can be very useful to match translational pairs, especially for infrequent terms where distributional methods often fail. For instance, the English compound xenograft which is composed of the root xeno and the lexeme graft can be translated into French compositionally by aligning each of its elements (xeno with xéno and graft with greffe) resulting in the translation: xénogreffe. In this paper, we experiment several distributional modellings at the morpheme level that we apply to perform compositional translation to a subset of French and English compounds. We show promising results using distributional analysis at the root and affix levels. We also show that the adapted approach significantly improve bilingual lexicon extraction from comparable corpora compared to the approach at the word level.
Flow-mediated vasodilation in end-stage renal disease.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES An intact endothelium is essential for adaptations between arterial vasomotor tone and shear stress (SS), i.e., flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD). Endothelial dysfunction occurs in hypertension, cardiac insufficiency, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients, whose renal failure is associated with many of those cardiovascular diseases (CVD). DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS Using a progressive hand-warming protocol and repeated measures ANOVA, we analyzed SS-mediated increase of brachial artery diameter (ΔBA) in 22 healthy controls, 18 CVD-negative ESRD patients (ESRD-CVD(-)), and 17 CVD-positive ESRD patients (ESRD-CVD(+)) to analyze the role of uremia versus CVD on FMD. RESULTS Hand-warming increased SS (P < 0.001) and ΔBA (P < 0.001). Negative interactions were observed between ΔBA and ESRD (P < 0.001), and between ΔBA and CVD(+) (P < 0.02), but there was no interaction between ESRD and CVD(+) (P = 0.69). For low and mild SS increases, ESRD-CVD(-) patients were characterized by similar ΔBA as controls, but it was lower than controls at higher SS (P < 0.01). In ESRD-CVD(+) patients, brachial artery diameter did not respond to mild and moderate SS increases, and showed "paradoxical" vasoconstriction at higher SS (P < 0.05). In ESRD, a positive and independent interaction was observed between ΔBA and 25(OH) vitamin D(3) insufficiency (≤15 μg/L; P < 0.02). CONCLUSIONS These observations indicate that, independently of each other, ESRD and CVD(+) history are associated with endothelial dysfunction. They also suggest the importance of considering the relationships between SS and endothelial function in different clinical conditions.
Software defined transceivers for high-speed flexible optical networks

A novel high-capacity, energy-efficient and bit-rate flexible optical transceiver (Tx/Rx), capable of supporting rates from 10Gb/s to beyond 1Tb/s, has been designed and its performance in long-haul transmission has been carefully investigated. The device can realize both orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and Nyquist wavelength division multiplexing (NWDM), for flexible super-channel generation; the inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) and the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) are implemented directly in the optical domain, using a specially designed arrayed waveguide grating (AWG). Therefore, the transceiver can provide ultra-high capacity with significant improvements on the energy efficiency per transmitted bit. In addition, different modulation formats are possible, and different bit rates. In the present paper, we provide complete design guidelines of the AWG-based device that performs the IDFT/DFT, evaluating the influence of the slab diffraction effect on the orthogonality of the subchannels. The complete functionality of the transceiver is numerically simulated and the influence of the noise from the inline amplifiers, chromatic dispersion, non-linear effects have been evaluated. In addition, to simplify the receiver architecture, a pulsed local oscillator is used for coherent balanced photodetection, and the impairments due to the phase noise have been investigated. The system performance is evaluated considering both bit error rate (BER) and the error vector magnitude (EVM) parameters.
Multiphase flow velocity measurement of chemical processes using electrical tomography: A review

Measuring the velocity of materials that flow through pipelines or vessels in a process plant is a critical need as it can help to control the process as well as to assure an optimum flow condition. There is a wide variety of measurement systems and each design depends greatly on the properties and behaviour of the materials of the investigated flow. The rapid growth of the chemical manufacturing industry over recent years has widened the already large spectrum of different multiphase flow types and has simultaneously led to insistent demands for accurate and efficient multiphase flow measurement systems. A literature study with the objective of finding the most suitable method for a palm oil monitoring system case study is presented in this paper, which it reviews briefly the existing multiphase flow velocity measurement techniques and will focus on electrical tomography systems for process flow velocity measurement. An analysis of different principles for determining the velocity of multiphase flow will be made in order to select a possible improvement that can be applied to a developed Electrical Capacitance Tomography system in palm oil quality control units.
Inference and Sample Size Calculation in the Fit Assessment of Filtering Facepiece Respirators

Filtering facepiece respirators have recently been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use by the general public in public health medical emergencies such as pandemic influenza. In the fit assessment of these devices it is important to distinguish between the two sources of variability: population heterogeneity and random fluctuations over repeated donnings. The FDA Special Controls Guidance Document (SCGD) which describes these devices and their evaluation, recommends that the fit performance of a filtering facepiece respirator be evaluated in terms of the proportion of users who will receive a specified level of protection 95% of the time. A point estimator of this proportion is easily obtained under an analysis of variance model, and the SCGD suggests bootstrap as one possible approach to interval estimation. This paper describes a closed-form procedure to obtain confidence intervals and provides sample size formulas. Simulation results suggest that the proposed procedure performs well in realistic settings and compares favorably to two simple bootstrap procedures.
A Coalition Formation Game for Remote Radio Head Cooperation in Cloud Radio Access Network

With the increasing demand of spectrum and emergence of mobile devices, a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is a promising technology to improve network capacity and coverage. The key concept of the C-RAN is to separate the radio function unit in remote radio heads (RRHs) from the digital function unit in baseband units (BBUs). This separation facilitates efficient spectrum and infrastructure sharing in the C-RAN. This paper considers the cooperative interference management among RRHs in the C-RAN. The RRHs can form coalitions to mitigate intra-interference and jointly serve their subscribers. To characterize RRH performance under the coalition, this paper develops two signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR)-based downlink throughput models of RRH, where one adopts tools from stochastic geometry to capture the interference from vehicular users (VUs) belonging to noncooperative RRHs, and another ignores the VU interference. In this paper, a coalition formation game is formulated to model the situation in which RRHs of C-RAN can make an individual decision to cooperatively serve their VUs if the throughput of the RRH can be improved. To obtain the solution of the proposed game, we develop a distributed coalition formation algorithm and analyze the stability of the coalition structure using a Markov chain model. Simulation results show that, as compared with the noncoalition and grand coalition, our distributed coalition formation can improve the C-RAN throughput by at least 20% and 80%, respectively. Furthermore, according to extensive simulation, we can define the conditions needed for RRHs to form a coalition and obtain higher throughput.
A cross‐cultural study of group process and development in online conferences

Employing survey and focus group data, this study examined if there are differences in perception of online group process and development between participants in Mexico and the United States of America (USA). Survey data indicated significant differences in perception for the Norming and Performing stages of group development. The groups also differed in their perception of collectivism, low power distance, femininity, and high context communication. Country differences rather than age and gender differences, accounted for the differences observed. Focus group participants identified several factors that influence online group process and development: (1) language; (2) power distance; (3) gender differences; (4) collectivist vs. individualist tendencies; (5) conflict; (6) social presence; (7) time frame; and (8) technical skills.
Social-Sensed Image Search

Although Web search techniques have greatly facilitate users’ information seeking, there are still quite a lot of search sessions that cannot provide satisfactory results, which are more serious in Web image search scenarios. How to understand user intent from observed data is a fundamental issue and of paramount significance in improving image search performance. Previous research efforts mostly focus on discovering user intent either from clickthrough behavior in user search logs (e.g., Google), or from social data to facilitate vertical image search in a few limited social media platforms (e.g., Flickr). This article aims to combine the virtues of these two information sources to complement each other, that is, sensing and understanding users’ interests from social media platforms and transferring this knowledge to rerank the image search results in general image search engines. Toward this goal, we first propose a novel social-sensed image search framework, where both social media and search engine are jointly considered. To effectively and efficiently leverage these two kinds of platforms, we propose an example-based user interest representation and modeling method, where we construct a hybrid graph from social media and propose a hybrid random-walk algorithm to derive the user-image interest graph. Moreover, we propose a social-sensed image reranking method to integrate the user-image interest graph from social media and search results from general image search engines to rerank the images by fusing their social relevance and visual relevance. We conducted extensive experiments on real-world data from Flickr and Google image search, and the results demonstrated that the proposed methods can significantly improve the social relevance of image search results while maintaining visual relevance well.
Comparing the Context of Immigrant Homicides in Miami: Haitians, Jamaicans and Mariels 1

We contribute to the field of immigration and crime research by conducting one of the first contemporary examinations of Afro-Caribbean homicides. Despite the growth of immigration across urban America, social scientists lack an understanding of both the extent and severity of immigrant violent crime. Several important findings emerge from our unique data set on Haitian, Jamaican and Mariel Cuban homicides in the city of Miami. Most notably, Miami's homicide rate led the country at various points throughout the 1980s, but immigrant group-specific rates rarely exceeded the city total. By 1990, immigrant Caribbean victim and violator rates had declined to a level and rate far below the city average. Compared to other cities, Miami has a more diverse population and a greater potential for intergroup contact, yet most killings were between ethnic group members. In addition, while the “criminal alien problem” is a prominent image fueling contemporary attempts to restrict immigration, our findings undermine this conventional wisdom. We conclude with suggestions for future elaboration on the causes and consequences of immigration and homicide.
Double-Face Meets the Bacterial World: The Opportunistic Pathogen Stenotrophomonas maltophilia

Most studies on bacterial virulence focus on the pathogen itself. However, it is important to recall that the in-host behavior and the virulence of bacterial pathogens constitute a complex situation that depends on both the microorganisms and the infected host. While healthy people (the community) is infected by classical pathogenic microorganisms, able to cope with the anti-infection defenses of the host, in the case of people with basal diseases, debilitated or immunodepressed, the range of pathogens able to cause infection is wider and includes the so-named opportunistic pathogens, which lack the inherent ability to cause disease in healthy hosts and rarely produce infections in the community. Some of the most relevant opportunistic pathogens, as Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, have an environmental origin and, in occasions, present interesting biotechnological properties. Consequently, it is important knowing whether S. maltophilia isolates recovered from infections constitute a specific phylogenetic branch that has evolved toward acquiring a virulent phenotype as it happens in the case of classical pathogens or rather, any member of this bacterial species is capable of producing infection and its pathogenic behavior is mainly a consequence of the host situation. To address this question, we analyzed a set of environmental and clinical S. maltophilia strains. Our results indicate that this opportunistic pathogen presents a large core genome and that the distribution of genes in general, and of known virulence determinants in particular, is similar among environmental and clinical isolates. The majority of genes not belonging to the S. maltophilia core genome are present in just one or two of the analyzed strains. This indicates that, more than speciation into different lineages (virulent and environmental), the evolution of S. maltophilia is based in the strain-specific acquisition of genes, likely involved in the adaptation of this bacterial species to different microniches. In addition, both environmental and clinical isolates present low susceptibility to several antimicrobials. Altogether our results support that S. maltophilia does not present a specific evolutionary branch toward virulence and most likely infection is mainly the consequence of the impaired anti-infective response of the infected patients.
The Incidence of Potentially Gifted Students Within a Special Education Population

From a sample of 13,176 children with disabilities who were a part of the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study, 330 students achieved a score at the 90th percentile or higher on the Woodcock-Johnson III. These children represent some 9.1% of children who have disabilities nationally and who might be identified as gifted or academically advanced. Only 11.1% of these students were participating in programs for gifted and talented students with African Americans, Hispanics, or females significantly less likely to participate. The discussion considers the reasons behind these results and possible approaches for identifying and serving students within a current response-to-intervention approach.
NaturalMotion : Exploring Gesture Controls for Visualizing Time-Evolving Graphs

We are investigating new ways for people to explore time-evolving graph data represented as the recently-introduced Matrix Cube, through natural gestures in a 3D environment. In the cube, one axis is time, and the other two axes comprise an adjacency matrix of a graph. We want to understand how recent advances in virtual reality technologies may help the user more naturally explore the dimensionality and richness of this 3D visualization, enabling them to more effectively gain insights into relationships and anomalies in the data. We use a Leap Motion controller to capture the user’s hand gestures that manipulate the cube into its many possible projections. We prototyped this synergy of data visualization and virtual reality on a time-evolving graph of annual trading volumes among major countries from 1995 through 2010. Please see the accompanying video for a demo of our prototype.1
Dominant logics of strategy in further education colleges

Abstract Although the further education (FE) sector can be characterised in many ways, there has been little attempt to consider the presence of shared mental models or ‘dominant logics’ among those involved in strategic management of FE colleges. Developed from interview-based research with principals, governors and Senior Management Team (SMT) members in 25 FE colleges, the authors identify three dominant logics which function as filters through which top management within FE colleges create strategic intent as well as characterise and manage proactive and imposed change.
Gauss-Laguerre keypoints descriptors for color images

Keypoints descriptors construction algorithm for color images is introduced. The algorithm is based on multiscale Gauss-Laguerre circular harmonic functions expansions of each image color component. The color components are obtained from color invariance model derived from Kubelka-Munk photometric reflectance theory. The matching results of proposed algorithm confirm the importance of color information for keypoints descriptors construction.
Research and Scholarship on Natural Commons in Brazil

This paper investigates the state of research on and training in common-pool natural resource management, or simply natural commons, in Brazil. Open-ended questionnaires were used to interview scholars in order to identify the challenges, gaps and accomplishments around this theme. Additionally a literature review of documents in Portuguese that focus on common-pool natural resources was carried out, particularly those related to biodiversity. We conclude by offering some directions to overcome challenges and advance research, teaching and academic outreach work towards sustainable common-pool resource management as well as to strengthen commons theory.
Functional Improvement of Regulatory T Cells from Rheumatoid Arthritis Subjects Induced by Capsular Polysaccharide Glucuronoxylomannogalactan

Objective Regulatory T cells (Treg) play a critical role in the prevention of autoimmunity, and the suppressive activity of these cells is impaired in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of the present study was to investigate function and properties of Treg of RA patients in response to purified polysaccharide glucuronoxylomannogalactan (GXMGal). Methods Flow cytometry and western blot analysis were used to investigate the frequency, function and properties of Treg cells. Results GXMGal was able to: i) induce strong increase of FOXP3 on CD4+ T cells without affecting the number of CD4+CD25+FOXP3+ Treg cells with parallel increase in the percentage of non-conventional CD4+CD25−FOXP3+ Treg cells; ii) increase intracellular levels of TGF-β1 in CD4+CD25−FOXP3+ Treg cells and of IL-10 in both CD4+CD25+FOXP3+ and CD4+CD25−FOXP3+ Treg cells; iii) enhance the suppressive activity of CD4+CD25+FOXP3+ and CD4+CD25−FOXP3+ Treg cells in terms of inhibition of effector T cell activity and increased secretion of IL-10; iv) decrease Th1 response as demonstrated by inhibition of T-bet activation and down-regulation of IFN-γ and IL-12p70 production; v) decrease Th17 differentiation by down-regulating pSTAT3 activation and IL-17A, IL-23, IL-21, IL-22 and IL-6 production. Conclusion These data show that GXMGal improves Treg functions and increases the number and function of CD4+CD25−FOXP3+ Treg cells of RA patients. It is suggested that GXMGal may be potentially useful for restoring impaired Treg functions in autoimmune disorders and for developing Treg cell-based strategies for the treatment of these diseases.