Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification and Characterization of a Novel aac ( 6 9 )-Iag Associated with the blaIMP-1 – Integron in a Multidrug-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

In a continuing study from Dec 2006 to Apr 2008, we characterized nine multi-drug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from four patients in a ward at the Hiroshima University Hospital, Japan. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of SpeI-digested genomic DNAs from the isolates suggested the clonal expansion of a single strain; however, only one strain, NK0009, was found to produce metallo-b-lactamase. PCR and subsequent sequencing analysis indicated NK0009 possessed a novel class 1 integron, designated as In124, that carries an array of four gene cassettes: a novel aminoglycoside (AG) resistance gene, aac(69)-Iag, blaIMP-1, a truncated form of blaIMP-1, and a truncated form of aac(69)-Iag. The aac(69)-Iag encoded a 167-amino-acid protein that shows 40% identity with AAC(69)-Iz. Recombinant AAC(69)-Iag protein showed aminoglycoside 69-N-acetyltransferase activity using thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and MS spectrometric analysis. Escherichia coli carrying aac(69)-Iag showed resistance to amikacin, arbekacin, dibekacin, isepamicin, kanamycin, sisomicin, and tobramycin; but not to gentamicin. A conjugation experiment and subsequent Southern hybridization with the gene probes for blaIMP-1 and aac(69)-Ig strongly suggested In124 is on a conjugal plasmid. Transconjugants acquired resistance to gentamicin and were resistant to virtually all AGs, suggesting that the In124 conjugal plasmid also possesses a gene conferring resistance to gentamicin. Citation: Kobayashi K, Hayashi I, Kouda S, Kato F, Fujiwara T, et al. (2013) Identification and Characterization of a Novel aac(69)-Iag Associated with the blaIMP-1– Integron in a Multidrug-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa. PLoS ONE 8(8): e70557. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0070557 Editor: Ulrike Gertrud Munderloh, University of Minnesota, United States of America Received July 6, 2011; Accepted June 24, 2013; Published August 12, 2013 Copyright: 2013 Kobayashi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas ‘Applied Genomics’ (No. 17019048 to MS) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: sugai@hiroshima-u.ac. jp
EVALUATION OF FIBRE LENGTH DISTRIBUTION IN A SHORT GLASS FIBRE REINFORCED PA-6

The aim of this work is to evaluate the fibre length distribution in a polyamide reinforced by short glass fibre. The fibre length and the fibre orientation distributions strongly influence the mechanical properties of short fibre reinforced composites. The sample investigated is a 30GFPA6 (polyamide-6 reinforced by 30 % by weight glass fibre), extracted from an injection-moulded plate. The digital reconstruction of the three-dimensional structure of the sample was obtained by synchrotron radiation micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), a high spatial resolution non-destructive technique. One global and one local method have been tested for the automatic evaluation of the fibre length distribution in our sample. The global method is based on the mean fibre length distribution computed from the Star Length Distribution (SLD), a morphological parameter. The local method is based on a 3D skeletonize function. The results are discussed in the light of the experimental data available in literature.
Axial dependence of optical weak measurements in the critical region

The interference between optical beams of different polarizations plays a fundamental role in reproducing the optical analog of the electron spin weak measurement. The extraordinary point in optical weak measurements is represented by the possibility of estimating with great accuracy the Goos–Hänchen (GH) shift by measuring the distance between the peaks of the outgoing beams for two opposite rotation angles of the polarizers located before and after the dielectric block. Starting from the numerical calculation of the GH shift, which clearly shows a frequency crossover for incidence near the critical angle, we present a detailed study of the interference between s and p polarized waves in the critical region. This makes it possible to determine in which conditions axial deformations can be avoided and the GH curves reproduced. In view of a possible experimental implementation, we give the expected weak measurement curves for Gaussian lasers of different beam waist sizes propagating through borosilicate (BK7) and fused silica dielectric blocks.
A study on Biosynthesis of Iron nanoparticles by Pleurotus sp.

Productions of nanoparticles by using microbes are a new area of interest. Pleurotus sp was allowed for biosynthesis of iron nanoparticles in a culture media. The fungus was allowed to grow in 2x10-4 M FeSO4 solutions for 72 hours. U.V-Vis spectra analysis helps us to know about formations of nanoparticles at 226 nm and 276 nm wavelength. Involvement of proteins in culture was determined by spectral analysis of broth culture at different interval of times at 265 nm. FTIR analysis detects the presence of functional groups in binding of particles with biomass. There was a shift in case of treated cells indicating participations of proteins in more quantity. TEM images reflect depositions of particles in both inside as well as outside indicating the biosynthesis process. However such depositions are absent in case of control sample. XRF of control samples donot shows any iron elements but was present in treated mycelium. Some others elements were also detected, it may be due to present in culture media. The transport of iron particles may be due to presence of Siderophores. Iron transport molecules like hydroxamates are mainly present in fungi. They bind the complex molecules and transport them inside of cells. Keywords: Nanoparticles, Biosynthesis, Fourier Transform Infra Red spectrophotometer (FTIR), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF).
L[subscript 2]-gain optimization for robust bipedal walking on unknown terrain

—In this paper we seek to quantify and explicitly optimize the robustness of a control system for a robot walking on terrain with uncertain geometry. Geometric perturbations to the terrain enter the equations of motion through a relocation of the hybrid event “guards” which trigger an impact event; these perturbations can have a large effect on the stability of the robot and do not ﬁt into the traditional robust control analysis and design methodologies without additional machinery. We attempt to provide that machinery here. In particular, we quantify the robustness of the system to terrain perturbations by deﬁning an L 2 gain from terrain perturbations to deviations from the nominal limit cycle. We show that the solution to a periodic dissipation inequality provides a sufﬁcient upper bound on this gain for a linear approximation of the dynamics around the limit cycle, and we formulate a semideﬁnite programming problem to compute the L 2 gain for the system with a ﬁxed linear controller. We then use either binary search or an iterative optimization method to construct a linear robust controller and to minimize the L 2 gain. The simulation results on canonical robots suggest that the L 2 gain is closely correlated to the actual number of steps traversed on the rough terrain, and our controller can improve the robot’s robustness to terrain disturbances.
Nutrition and immunity: an update

Immunity encompasses all mechanisms and responses used by the organism to defend itself against bacteria, viruses or parasites. Adequate supply and balance of nutrients are required for proper efficiency of the host defences. Research has identified dietary factors that affect human and animal immune responses like amino acids, fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. Some of these nutrients have been proven to have specific actions on immunity when provided at pharmacological doses. This paper will review these nutrients and their current use in aquaculture. The immune system is an efficient but complex system. Its complexity has made the assessment of the effects of diets difficult. Nevertheless, the standardization of methodology as well as the use of new techniques at the cell or the gene level should help to better understand the mechanisms of immune modulation. This paper will review the major functions of fish and shrimp immune system and the methodologies used. Cellular and humoral functions including cytokines will be discussed in relation to potential means to modulate them and the underlying mechanism. A better understanding of the mechanisms of modulation of the immune functions should help in the discovery of new dietary factors to improve the immune status of the animal, leading to better disease resistance.
Study of feature extraction method of multi-information source for continuous casting process parameters

The control of the roll gap of the segment is one of the key links to ensure the quality of cast billet. In this paper, the big data in traditional continuous casting production operations is studied through in-depth experimental comparative analysis of linear and nonlinear dimension reduction method. The method is suitable for continuous casting to obtain the data of the dimension reduction. The method of principal component analysis is improved by using standardized data increment method. A faster and more efficient method of dimension reduction is obtained when the unrelated data, training time and reconstruction error are removed. Actual data simulation results show that this method is more efficient and suitable for continuous casting than any other dimension reduction method.
The Error Covariance Matrix Inflation in Ensemble Kalman Filter

The estimation accuracy of ensemble forecast errors is crucial to the assimilation results for all ensemble-based schemes. The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is a widely used scheme in land surface data assimilation, without using the adjoint of a dynamical model. In EnKF, the forecast error covariance matrix is estimated as the sampling covariance matrix of the ensemble forecast states. However, past researches on EnKF have found that it can generally lead to an underestimate of the forecast error covariance matrix, due to the limited ensemble size, as well as the poor initial perturbations and model error. This can eventually result in filter divergence. Therefore, using inflation to further adjust the forecast error covariance matrix becomes increasingly important. In this chapter, a new structure of the forecast error covariance matrix is proposed to mitigate the problems with limited ensemble size and model error. An adaptive procedure equipped with a second-order least squares method is applied to estimate the inflation factors of forecast and observational error covariance matrices. The proposed method is tested on the well-known atmosphere-like Lorenz-96 model with spatially correlated observational systems. The experiment results show that the new structure of the forecast error covariance matrix and the adaptive estimation procedure lead to improvement of the analysis states.
The role of hydrogen in room-temperature ferromagnetism at graphite surfaces

We present an x-ray dichroism study of graphite surfaces that addresses the origin and magnitude of ferromagnetism in metal-free carbon. We find that, in addition to carbon π-states, hydrogen-mediated electronic states also exhibit a net spin polarization with significant magnetic remanence at room temperature. The observed magnetism is restricted to the top ≈10 nm of the irradiated sample where the average magnetization reaches ≃15 emu g− 1 at room temperature. We prove that the ferromagnetism found in metal-free untreated graphite is intrinsic and has a similar origin to that found in proton-bombarded graphite. Our findings also show that the magnetic properties of graphite surfaces, thin films or two-dimensional graphene samples can be reliably studied using soft x-ray dichroism. Fundamental new insights into the magnetic properties of carbon-based systems can thus be obtained.
TWO SURFACE MODIFICATION METHODS TO REDUCE PROTEIN FOULING IN MICROFILTRATION MEMBRANES

Protein fouling is a critical factor governing membrane performance in various filtration processes. In this study, we report two new surface modification techniques to modify 0.22 μm mixed cellulose esters membranes (MCE) and 0.20 μm positively charged durapore membranes to reduce protein fouling. The first step in the modification of MCE membranes involves coating of the membrane with a monolayer of allyldimethylchlorosilane (ADCS). The silanized membrane is then covalently linked to Pluronic F127, a triblock copolymer of polyethylene oxide and polypropylene oxide (PEO–PPO–PEO) by UV irradiation at wavelengths >215 nm. The presence of PEO groups on the membrane surface increased the wettability of the membrane. Contact angle measurements confirmed that the degree of Pluronic grafting on the silanized membrane was a function of the UV exposure time. The hydraulic permeability and flux decline of the modified membrane during bovine serum albumin (BSA) filtration were nearly identical to the unmodified membrane. The modified membranes exhibited better cleaning characteristics compared to unmodified membranes upon back flushing with saline solution. The positively charged durapore membranes have been dip coated with random copolymers poly (oligoethylene glycol methacrylate co methacrylic acid), (OEGMA/MA), under four different conditions. The electrostatic adsorption of OEGMA/MA onto the membrane surface has been verified by streaming potential measurements. The ability of the modified membranes to resist protein adsorption has been verified by FTIR spectra. The hydraulic permeability and the flux decline data of the modified membranes were similar to the unmodified membranes and the cleaning characteristic of modified membranes showed improved performance.
Study on wind turbine arrangement for offshore wind farms

In this paper, the separation distance between two neighboring offshore wind turbines has been carried out by using the Actuator Line/Navier-Stokes technique developed at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Under offshore atmospheric conditions, Large Eddy Simulation has been performed for two Tjæreborg 2 MW wind turbines in tandem with separation distances of 4D, 5D, 6D, 7D, 8D and 10D at the design wind speed of 10 m/s. The power performance of the wake turbine showed to be about 23% of the first turbine at a separation distance of 4D while its performance reached about 50% at 7D due to the turbulence mixing. This study hints that the optimal separation distance between neighboring turbines for offshore wind farms should be 7 rotor diameters.
The role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch

The focus of this study is the acquisition of grammatical gender in Greek and Dutch by bilingual children whose other language is English. Although grammatical gender languages share the property of noun classification in terms of grammatical gender, there are important differences between the languages under investigation here in terms of both the morphological cues for gender marking available to the child and the developmental path followed by monolingual children. Dutch offers limited input cues for grammatical gender, but Greek shows consistent and regular patterns of morphological gender marking on all members of the nominal paradigm. This difference is associated with the precocious pattern of gender acquisition in Greek and the attested delay in monolingual Dutch development. We explore the development of gender in Dutch and Greek with the aim of disentangling input from age of onset effects in bilingual children who vary in the age of first exposure to Dutch or Greek. Our findings suggest that although bilingual Greek children encounter fewer difficulties in gender acquisition compared to bilingual Dutch children, amount of input constitutes a predictive factor for the pattern attested in both cases. Age of onset effects could be partly responsible for differences between simultaneous and successive bilinguals in Greek, but this is clearly not the case for Dutch. Our findings are also addressed from the more general perspective of the status of "early" and "late" phenomena in monolingual acquisition and the advantages of investigating these from the bilingual perspective.
Simulation-based maintenance support system for multi-functional complex systems

We define a complex system with a complex structure that performs several functions as a multi-functional complex system, and represent it as a pseudo-tree structure using gates. In addition, we develop an object-oriented simulation model to estimate the reliability, availability, and maintainability of the multi-functional system with complex structures. We define attributes, methods, and events for objects and develop logics for the random number generation, breakdowns, maintenance, etc. for simulation. We obtain simulation statistics on availability, utilisation of repairmen and stock probability of spare parts. The user-friendly simulation model is implemented as simulation software using general object-oriented language. Its potentials for application are demonstrated in the case of a transfer crane, which can be considered a representative example of a multi-functional complex system.
Long-Run Tradeoff Monetary Easing Koki Oikawa

In this study, we illustrate a tradeoff between the short-run positive and long-run negative effects of monetary easing by using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model embedding endogenous growth with creative destruction and sticky prices due to menu costs. While a monetary easing shock increases the level of consumption because of price stickiness, it lowers the frequency of creative destruction (i.e., product substitution) because inflation reduces the reward for innovation via menu cost payments. The model calibrated to the U.S. economy suggests that the adverse effect dominates in the long run.
Assessing interannual water balance of La Plata river basin

The Parana river is the most important component of the La Plata basin, sustaining regional economies in three countries. In the last decades, significant regional changes such as deforestation and crop substitution have been taken place in the Parana basin. This fact could have modified the basin response in terms of the Parana streamflow. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the structure of the evapotranspiration (ET(t)) time series of the upper Parana basin. We analyzed the relationship between the variables in the water balance equation, then we applied a singular spectral analysis (SSA) to learn more about the temporal structure of the ET(t) time series. The correlation study shows that ET(t) is correlated with precipitations in the northern sub-basins but it is not correlated at all in the southern basin. The time structure of ET(t)1, ET(t)3 and ET(t)4 exhibit low-frequency signals while the ENSO-range signals are statistically significant in ET(t)1 and ET(t)4 although it also appears in ET(t)2 and ET(t)3 as a weak signals. Looking at the whole basin, ET(t) would be affected either by changes in the basin physical properties or by the ENSO-range signals present in precipitation.
Influence of Quality of Life on the State and Development of Human Capital in Latvia

Currently, the essence and forms of interrelation between human capital and quality of life are still insufficiently studied. Therefore, there is a need for defining general components of these categories and areas, where human capital interacts with quality of life. Today, Latvia has been developing in difficult conditions: the population is decreasing, emigration is growing, possibilities of employment are limited, and the income of residents is decreasing. All these factors reduce quality of life for the population and lead to the loss of human resources in the country. The existence of a problem stemming from the relationship between quality of life and human capital establishes the relevance of the research and determines its aim. The main contradiction is between the external positioning of the state as a country successfully overcoming crisis and the growth of internal crisis in the state, leading to the further impoverishment of the population, leading to an increased emigration of the working population of Latvia. The main research question is as follows: how to preserve human resources in the state? Based on an analysis of post-crisis socio-economic processes taking place in the society, recommendations are made to improve the socio-economic policy in ways that improve the welfare of the population of Latvia.
Mathematical Modeling of Blood Flow in a Patientspecific Model of the Middle Cerebral Artery Taking into Account Non-Newtonian Blood Behavior

According to recent studies hemodynamic conditions play an important role in initiation and development of several disorders of the cerebral circulation, such as atherosclerosis and aneurysm. One of the common sites of the aneurysm formation is the middle cerebral artery (MCA). In the present study, the flow conditions in the individualized model of the MCA aneurysm are investigated in detail and correlated with the aneurysm genesis. A patient-specific model of the saccular aneurysm of MCA was derived from the real clinical imaging data. A realistic physiological pulse curve was scaled to ensure the normal inlet flow rate in the artery. A transient computational fluid dynamics simulation was performed employing the Local viscosity fluid model, which takes into account non-Newtonian blood behavior and increases a precision of hemodynamic parameters evaluation, especially at low shear rate zones. The complex flow pattern was observed in the aneurysm sac, producing a swirling blood flow. A flow impingement zone near the aneurysm fundus was characterized by the high velocity values, about 0.9 m/s, which could potentially affect the endothelial cells at this zone and contribute to further arterial wall degeneration. Moreover, the zone of low wall shear stresses (<2 Pa) was observed on the aneurysm dome, producing conditions for further growth of the aneurysm. The results of the study are consistent with hemodynamic theory of aneurysm genesis and correlate well with available clinical data. CFD simulation could be used as an additional tool for clinical decision support during the treatment of the cerebral aneurysms.
Comparative Evaluation of ANN- and SVM-Time Series Models for Predicting Freshwater-Saltwater Interface Fluctuations

Time series models based on an artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) were designed to predict the temporal variation of the upper and lower freshwater-saltwater interface level (FSL) at a groundwater observatory on Jeju Island, South Korea. Input variables included past measurement data of tide level (T), rainfall (R), groundwater level (G) and interface level (F). The T-R-G-F type ANN and SVM models were selected as the best performance model for the direct prediction of the upper and lower FSL, respectively. The recursive prediction ability of the T-R-G type SVM model was best for both upper and lower FSL. The average values of the performance criteria and the analysis of error ratio of recursive prediction to direct prediction (RP-DP ratio) show that the SVM-based time series model of the FSL prediction is more accurate and stable than the ANN at the study site.