Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of protein kinase C results in decreased expression of bovine leukemia virus

The in vitro expression of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) in short-term cultured bovine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) is associated with increased spontaneous lymphocyte blastogenesis. The purpose of this study was to determine whether intracellular pathways responsible for antigen- or mitogen-induced lymphocyte blastogenesis were also responsible for induction of BLV expression. The protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor 1-(5-isoquinolinylsulfonyl)-3-methylpiperazine dihydrochloride (3-methyl H7) decreased blastogenesis in a dose-dependent manner, as measured by [3H]thymidine incorporation, in unstimulated, lipopolysaccharide-stimulated and phorbol ester (PMA)-stimulated BLV-infected PBMC. Similarly, 3-methyl H7 decreased BLV expression, as measured by production of gp51 envelope antigen or p24gag antigen, in BLV-infected PBMC under the same conditions. Using an RNase protection assay, the inhibition of BLV expression by 3-methyl H7 was shown to be due to decreased transcriptional activity. The cyclic GMP-dependent protein kinase and cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase inhibitor N-(2-guanidinoethyl)-5-isoquinolinesulfonamide (HA1004) did not inhibit either BLV expression or blastogenesis of BLV-infected bovine PBMC. Additional evidence for the PKC-dependent expression of BLV was obtained by using a persistently BLV-infected B-lymphocyte cell line, NBC-13. Activation of PKC by PMA in NBC-13 cells increased BLV expression. 3-methyl H7 decreased the PMA-induced expression of BLV in NBC-13 cells in a dose-dependent manner, whereas HA1004 did not inhibit this expression. These results identify a mechanism for the induction of BLV expression through PKC activation and therefore indicate that latency and replication of BLV is controlled by normal B-lymphocyte intracellular signaling pathways.
Impact of high mobility on constant envelope precoded multi-user massive MIMO systems

In this paper, the impact of high mobility on the constant envelope (CE) precoded multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is analyzed. We derive a closed-form expression for the achievable ergodic information rate taking into account the impact of channel estimation error due to high mobility. The system performance is evaluated in terms of both achievable ergodic per-user information rate and bit-error-rate (BER) by numerical simulations. The performance of systems with various configurations is presented, which shows that channel estimation error caused by high mobility degrades the performance and increasing ratio of base station (BS) antennas to users reduces the degradation of performance.
Hypertrophy of nerve fibers to functionally overloaded muscles

Although numerous acute experiments have demonstrated a relation between functional activity and the size of nerve cells (literature reviewed by HydBn, '43), little attention has been given to the effects of enhanced function over long periods of time. Agduhr ('20) reported an increase in the number and size of fibers in silver-impregnated dorsal and ventral roots of mice which had been subjected chronically to periods of exercise in a rotating cage. Since his evidence for axon hypertrophy was based on only two animals, and because Duncan ('34a) failed to confirm his claim of a steady increase in nerve fiber number during normal postnatal life, Agduhr 's results have not been generally accepted. A reinvestigation of the problem has become desirable, however, in view of the recent finding that function influences the rate of protoplasmic reproduction in the nerve cell body ( HydBn, '43, '47), and the demonstration that the growth and maintenance of a nerve fiber is dependent on a continuous supply of axoplasm from its cyton (Weiss and Hiscoe, '48). Thus, when a muscle hypertrophies under an excessive functional load, the fibers in its nerve should also hypertrophy, as Agduhr contended. It seems less likely that the fibers would increase in number, although the use of methods which reveal myelin sheaths might suggest such tin increase
Determinants of the Use of Technological Innovation in Distance Learning: A Study with Business School Instructors

This study’s overall purpose is to identify the factors determining the use of technological innovation in Distance Learning (DL), as perceived by instructors of Business Education programs. The theoretical basis for the study is the Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT). The study’s sample is made up of 436 instructors; we used a quantitative approach and applied Confirmatory Factor Analysis and multiple regression. We found that not all of the attributes selected for analysis as proposed by IDT showed a direct effect for the use of innovation for the instructors investigated. The identified attributes were: compatibility, which shows how consistent innovation is with their values, practices and needs; relative advantage, indicating an innovation’s perceived improvement from its predecessor; and demonstrated results, according to which instructors understand the tangible results obtained from the use of innovation.
A Ground Truth Inference Model for Ordinal Crowd-Sourced Labels Using Hard Assignment Expectation Maximization

We propose an iterative approach for inferring a ground truth value of an item from judgments collected form on-line workers. The method is specifically designed for cases in which the collected labels are ordinal. Our algorithm works by iteratively solving a hard-assignment EM model and later calculating one final expected value after the convergence of the EM procedure. This algorithm does not require any parameter tuning and can serve as turnkey algorithm for aggregating categorical and ordinal judgments.
Studying the Evolution of Codon Context in Conserved Gene Sequences

Several studies demonstrate that the codon context is an important characteristic in gene primary structure that modulates the translation of mRNA. To better understand these features we developed a software package that uses sequences of open reading frames (ORFs) available in public databases and applies several statistic and visualization methodologies to unveil codon-context patterns, codon usage and others features. In this paper we describe a new method to study the evolution of codon contexts in conserved sequences between species. For this, we associate the codon-context statistic significance with BLASTP and ClustalW metrics. With these results it is possible to reveal important rules in the evolution of codon-pair context.
Thermometers and rectal perforations in the neonate.

Fossard, C. , and Thompson, R. A. (1977). Mucocutaneous lymph-node syndrome (Kawasaki disease): probable soluble-complex disorder. British Medical Journal, 1, 883. Kawasaki, T. , Kosaki, F. , Okawa, S. , Shigematsu, I. , and Yanagawa, H. (1974). A new infantile acute febrile mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome (MLNS) prevailing in Japan. Pediatrics, 54,271-276. Levinsky, R. J., and Soothill, J. F. (1977). A test for antigenantibody complexes in human sera using IgM of rabbit antisera to human immunoglobulins. Clinical and Experimental Immunology, 29, 428-435.
Temporal Alignment of 3D Video Sequences Using Shape and Appearance

In this paper we present a method to automatically introduce temporal consistency into a sequence of meshes reconstructed from multi-view video. We combine a number of advantages of previous work to produce a robust algorithm. Our approach uses SIFT features in each camera view combined with geometric information to produce accurate frame to frame correspondence. Coupling this with both volumetric and surface laplacian deformation techniques we are able to deform a well reconstructed frame across the 3D video sequence. Although the approach is sequential the combination of appearance and shape matching allows recovery from errors in previous frames or surface reconstruction.
Using Aspection Graphs to Control The Recovery Tracking of Deformable Models

Active or deformable models have emerged as a popular modeling paradigm in computer vision. These models have the flexibility to adapt themselves to the image data, offering the potential for both generic object recognition and non-rigid object tracking. Because these active models are underconstrained, however, deformable shape recovery often requires manual segmentation or good model initialization, while active contour trackers have been able to track only an object's translation in the image. In this paper, we report our current progress in using a part-based aspect graph representation of an object14 to provide the missing constraints on data-driven deformable model recovery and tracking processes.
The Emotional GAN: Priming Adversarial Generation of Art with Emotion

We propose a neural network method for turning emotion into art. Our approach relies on a class-conditioned generative adversarial network trained on a dataset of modern artworks labeled with emotions. We generate this dataset through a large-scale user study of art perception with human subjects. Preliminary results show our framework generates images which, apart from aesthetically appealing, exhibit various features associated with the emotions they are conditioned on.
Role of Maternal Antibody in Natural Infection ofPeromyscus maniculatus with Sin Nombre Virus

ABSTRACT Data from naturally infected deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) were used to investigate vertical transmission of Sin Nombre virus (SNV) and SNV-specific antibody. The antibody prevalence in juvenile mice (14 g or less) was inversely proportional to the mass of the animal, with juvenile deer mice weighing less than 11 g most likely to be antibody positive (26.9%) and juvenile mice weighing between 13 and 14 g least likely to be antibody positive (12.9%). Although a significant sex bias in seropositivity was detected in adult deer mice, no significant sex bias in seropositivity was detected in juvenile animals. Ten juvenile deer mice were identified that had initially tested positive for SNV-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) but had subsequently tested negative when recaptured as adults. SNV RNA was detected by reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) in the blood of ELISA-positive adult deer mice but not in the blood of ELISA-positive juveniles. One of the juvenile mice initially tested negative for SNV RNA but later tested positive when recaptured as an ELISA-positive adult. The RT-PCR results for that individual correlated with the disappearance and then reappearance of SNV-specific IgG, indicating that the presence of SNV RNA at later time points was due to infection with SNV via horizontal transmission. SNV-specific antibody present in both ELISA-positive juvenile and adult mice was capable of neutralizing SNV. Additionally, our data indicate that SNV is not transmitted vertically.
C11. A Radon transform based technique for identification of palmprint images

Palmprint based identification has gradually attracted the attention of researchers due to its richness in amount of features. Palmprint contains geometry features, line features, point features, texture features and statistical features. In this paper, a simple and effective methodology for palmprint-based identification system is proposed. The palmprint image is segmented and processed in spatial domain, then, the proposed technique extracts palmprint features using Radon transform. Radon transform enables the extraction of directional characteristics from the palm of the hand. In order to compare the uniqueness as well as the stability of the palmprint signature, backpropagation neural network was used for the identification stage. Experimental results verify the validity of the proposed approaches in personal authentication.
Strategies to Smooth Wind Power Fluctuations of Wind Turbine Generator

This paper shows that the capability of voltage-source converters (VSCs) to control the real power output of wind turbine generators (WTGs) can be applied to smooth power fluctuations due to wind turbulence. The paper calls attention to instability that can arise from: 1) the wind turbine itself and 2) the doubly fed induction generator (DFIG). The paper presents GP/V(s) to characterize the dynamic behavior of WTGs.
Reasons for noncompletion of advance directives in a cardiac intensive care unit.

BACKGROUND The Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990 mandates that hospitals reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid inform each patient about the patient's right to a natural death. OBJECTIVE To describe and explore implementation of the Patient Self-Determination Act in a critical care setting. The goal was to assess patients' understanding of advance directives. METHODS In a semistructured cross-sectional study, all eligible patients 18 years or older admitted to the cardiac intensive care unit at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, were assessed. Each patient was asked the standard question required by the Patient Self-Determination Act-Do you have an advance directive? -and 3 open-ended questions to ascertain the patient's understanding of advance directives. RESULTS The sample consisted of 505 patients with a mean age of 61.9 years (SD, 14.8), 37.8% (n = 191) were women, and 68.5% (n = 346) were white. Most patients (64.4%; n = 325) did not have an advance directive before admission to the unit. Of the patients who initially declined the opportunity to complete an advance directive (n = 213), 33.8% (n = 72) said they did not understand the question when initially asked and therefore just said no. CONCLUSIONS Current practice meets the requirement of the Patient Self-Determination Act for documentation of patients' right to a natural death. However, simply asking Do you have an advance directive? does not elicit an accurate reflection of a patient's understanding of advance directives.
Adolescents conceived by IVF: parenting and psychosocial adjustment.

BACKGROUND A follow-up study was conducted in mid-adolescence on parenting and the child's psychosocial development after in vitro fertilization (IVF). The first phase of the study had compared 31 IVF families and 31 families with a naturally conceived child when the children were 2 years old (Colpin et al., 1995). Of these, 24 IVF families and 21 control families participated again when the children were 15-16 years old. METHODS Fathers, mothers and adolescents completed questionnaires assessing parenting style and stress, and adolescent psychosocial adjustment. RESULTS No significant differences were found in self- or adolescent-reported parenting style, or in parenting stress between IVF mothers and mothers in the control group, nor between IVF fathers and fathers in the control group. Neither did we find significant differences in self- or parent-reported behavioural problems between adolescents conceived by IVF and those conceived naturally. Comparison of behavioural problems between IVF adolescents informed or not informed about the IVF conception did not reveal significant differences. CONCLUSIONS Parenting and 15-16-year-old adolescents' psychosocial adjustment did not differ significantly between IVF families and control families. This study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first psychosocial follow-up in mid-adolescence, and adds to the evidence that IVF children and their parents are well-adjusted. Large-scale studies in adolescence are needed to support these findings.
%lrasch_mml: A SAS Macro for Marginal Maximum Likelihood Estimation in Longitudinal Polytomous Rasch Models

Item response theory models are often applied when a number items are used to measure a unidimensional latent variable. Originally proposed and used within educational research, they are also used when focus is on physical functioning or psychological wellbeing. Modern applications often need more general models, typically models for multidimensional latent variables or longitudinal models for repeated measurements. This paper describes a SAS macro that fits two-dimensional polytomous Rasch models using a specification of the model that is sufficiently flexible to accommodate longitudinal Rasch models. The macro estimates item parameters using marginal maximum likelihood estimation. A graphical presentation of item characteristic curves is included.
Isolation of Listeria monocytogenes mutants with high‐level in vitro expression of host cytosol‐induced gene products

The facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes dramatically increases the expression of several key virulence factors upon entry into the host cell cytosol. actA, the protein product of which is required for cell‐to‐cell spread of the bacterium, is expressed at low to undetectable levels in vitro and increases in expression more than 200‐fold after L. monocytogenes escape from the phagosome. To identify bacterial factors that participate in the intracellular induction of actA expression, L. monocytogenes mutants expressing high levels of actA during in vitro growth were selected after chemical mutagenesis. The resulting mutant isolates displayed a wide range of actA expression levels, and many were less sensitive to environmental signals that normally mediate repression of virulence gene expression. Several isolates contained mutations affecting actA gene expression that mapped at least 40 kb outside the PrfA regulon, supporting the existence of additional regulatory factors that contribute to virulence gene expression. Two actA in vitro expression mutants contained novel mutations within PrfA, a key regulator of L. monocytogenes virulence gene expression. PrfA E77K and PrfA G155S mutations resulted in high‐level expression of PrfA‐dependent genes, increased bacterial invasion of epithelial cells and increased virulence in mice. Both prfA mutant strains were significantly less motile than wild‐type L. monocytogenes. These results suggest that, although constitutive activation of PrfA and PrfA‐dependent gene expression may enhance L. monocytogenes virulence, it may conversely hamper the bacterium's ability to compete in environments outside host cells.
Detection and quantification of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus to predict AIDS-associated Kaposi's sarcoma

Objective: To identify immunologic and virologic predictors of AIDS-associated Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Design: Nested case–control analysis of KS risk in a cohort of 132 HIV-infected homosexual men in New York and Washington, DC, USA. Methods: For each KS case, we selected two HIV-infected controls, matched for CD4 cell count and Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (human herpesvirus 8; KSHV) serostatus (enzyme immunoassay for antibody to KSHV protein K8.1). Cell-associated KSHV and Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) viral loads were measured with quantitative real-time PCR assays on samples collected 1 year (median) before KS diagnosis. Results: Thirty-one men developed AIDS-associated KS (incidence 3.1 per 100 person years). Among HIV-infected men, KS incidence was higher among those with K8.1 seropositivity (5.0 versus 1.4 per 100 person years; P = 0.004), low CD4 cell count [hazard ratio (HR), 1.49; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.24–1.79 per 100 × 106 cells/l decline), or high HIV RNA level (HR, 3.96; 95% CI, 2.19–7.16 per log10). In the case–control analysis, nine of 70 evaluated subjects had KSHV viremia, generally low level (median viral load 180 copies per 1 × 106 cells). KSHV viremia was associated with increased KS risk (unadjusted odds ratio, 9.1; 95% CI, 1.7–48; odds ratio, 11.7; 95% CI, 1.8–76 after adjustment for K8.1 serostatus, CD4 cell count, and HIV RNA). Among K8.1-seropositive subjects, KS incidence was tenfold higher in those with KSHV viremia (30.3 per 100 person years versus 3.4 per 100 person years in those without viremia). Also, EBV viral loads were higher in cases than in controls (P = 0.07). Conclusions: Among individuals with HIV–KSHV coinfection, KSHV viremia identifies a subgroup with extremely high risk for developing KS.
Thin Film Interfacial Strength Characterization Using Mixed Mode Bending

Nowadays, one of the trends of microelectronic packaging is to integrate multiple functional systems into one package, resulting in more applications of multimaterials in the form of laminated thin films or stacks. As a consequence, the number of interfaces increases. This causes tremendous mechanical problems, for instance interfacial delamination. Prediction of interface delamination is typically done using the critical energy release rate. However, interface strength is highly dependent on mode mixity. A new test setup is designed for mixed mode bending testing. It allows for measuring the stable crack growth as the function of mode mixity. The crack length, necessary for calculation of the energy release rate is measured by optical microscope and evaluated by pattern recognition software. Comparing finite element result with critical energy release rate, it could be predicted whether and when the crack at the interface will propagate. The mode mixity is determined through combining experimental data with FEM simulation data
Development of a thermofluid model for Axial field permanent-magnet Machines

A thermofluid model combining a lumped parameter heat transfer model and an air-flow model of a typical axial-field permanent-magnet (AFPM) machine is developed. The accuracy and consistency of the derived model are assessed by comparing the calculated flow rate and temperature values of a prototype machine with the measured ones. The developed thermofluid model is shown to perform thermal calculations with reasonable accuracy.
Novel Virulence Gene and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) Multilocus Sequence Typing Scheme for Subtyping of the Major Serovars of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica is the leading cause of bacterial food-borne disease in the United States. Molecular subtyping methods are powerful tools for tracking the farm-to-fork spread of food-borne pathogens during outbreaks. In order to develop a novel multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for subtyping the major serovars of S. enterica subsp. enterica, the virulence genes sseL and fimH and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) loci were sequenced from 171 clinical isolates from nine Salmonella serovars, Salmonella serovars Typhimurium, Enteritidis, Newport, Heidelberg, Javiana, I 4,[5],12:i:−, Montevideo, Muenchen, and Saintpaul. The MLST scheme using only virulence genes was congruent with serotyping and identified epidemic clones but could not differentiate outbreaks. The addition of CRISPR sequences dramatically improved discriminatory power by differentiating individual outbreak strains/clones. Of particular note, the present MLST scheme provided better discrimination of Salmonella serovar Enteritidis strains than pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). This method showed high epidemiologic concordance for all serovars screened except for Salmonella serovar Muenchen. In conclusion, the novel MLST scheme described in the present study accurately differentiated outbreak strains/clones of the major serovars of Salmonella, and therefore, it shows promise for subtyping this important food-borne pathogen during investigations of outbreaks.