Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Very short peptides with stable folds: Building on the interrelationship of Trp/Trp, Trp/cation, and Trp/backbone–amide interaction geometries

By combining a favorable turn sequence with a turn flanking Trp/Trp interaction and a C‐terminal H‐bonding interaction between a backbone amide and an i‐2 Trp ring, a particularly stable (ΔGU > 7 kJ/mol) truncated hairpin, Ac‐WI‐(D‐Pro‐D‐Asn)‐KWTG‐NH2, results. In this construct and others with a W‐(4‐residue turn)‐W motif in severely truncated hairpins, the C‐terminal Trp is the edge residue in a well‐defined face‐to‐edge (FtE) aryl/aryl interaction. Longer hairpins and those with six‐residue turns retain the reversed “edge‐to‐face” (EtF) Trp/Trp geometry first observed for the trpzip peptides. Mutational studies suggest that the W‐(4‐residue turn)‐W interaction provides at least 3 kJ/mol of stabilization in excess of that due to the greater β‐propensity of Trp. The π–cation, and Trp/Gly‐HN interactions have been defined. The latter can give rise to >3 ppm upfield shifts for the Gly‐HN in ‐WXnG‐ units both in turns (n = 2) and at the C‐termini (n = 1) of hairpins. Terminal YTG units result in somewhat smaller shifts (extrapolated to 2 ppm for 100% folding). In peptides with both the EtF and FtE W/W interaction geometries, Trp to Tyr mutations indicate that Trp is the preferred “face” residue in aryl/aryl pairings, presumably because of its greater π basicity. Proteins 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Predicting Software Reliability

Critical business applications require reliable software, but developing reliable software is one of the most difficult problems facing the software industry. After the software is shipped, software vendors receive customer feedback about software reliability. However, by then it is too late; software vendors need to know whether their products are reliable before they are delivered to customers. Software reliability growth models help provide that information. Unfortunately, very little real data and models from commercial applications have been published, possibly because of the proprietary nature of the data. Over the past few years, the author and his colleagues at Tandem have experimented with software reliability growth models. At Tandem, a major software release consists of substantial modifications to many products and may contain several million lines of code. Major software releases follow a well defined development process and involve a coordinated quality assurance effort. We applied software reliability modeling to a subset of products for four major releases. The article reports on what was learned.
Interactions between the archaeal transcription repressor FL11 and its coregulators lysine and arginine

Interactions between the archaeal transcription repressor FL11 and its coregulators lysine and arginine Mitsugu Yamada, Sanae A. Ishijima, and Masashi Suzuki* 1 Japan Science and Technology Agency, Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, Sanbancho 5, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0075, Japan 2 National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba Center 6-10, Higashi 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8566, Japan
Reflections on 40 Years of Ethnographic Drug Abuse Research: Implications for the Future

This paper focuses on past, present, and potential future contributions of ethnographic research to describing and understanding “street cultures” of drug use and the implications these have for informing various interventions. The first section provides an overview of ethnography and drug abuse research. This is followed by a historical perspective on the ethnography of street cultures. Next, the significance of ethnographic drug abuse research is highlighted, with a focus on its methodology. Ethnographic contributions to the development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions are discussed, including ethical issues. Subsequently, the interdisciplinary nature of ethnographic drug abuse research is described. Methodological challenges emerged over time as the definition of street cultures and drug trends shifted. These are illustrated with examples, including the use of prescription drugs, new heroin users, and rural drug and methamphetamine use. The final sections focus on career opportunities for ethnographers and opportunities and barriers for the future. We address training needs for interdisciplinary inquiry, the potential role of ethnographers in prevention and treatment research, and the link to studies on the brain and genetics. The future of ethnographic research on drug use will be influenced by the funding structure. We conclude with a summary of reflections on the past and aspirations for the future.
Impact of a Computerized Template on Antibiotic Prescribing for Acute Respiratory Infections in Children and Adolescents

Background. Computerized decision support (CDS) can potentially improve patient safety and guideline adherence. The authors developed an acute respiratory illness interactive template (ARI-IT) within an electronic health record (EHR) to manage pediatric ARIs and assessed the impact on antibiotic prescribing. Methods. They randomized 12 practices either to receive the ARI-IT or to the control group. Antibiotic rates among all eligible ARI diagnoses were compared among control and intervention ARI visits, controlling for clustering by clinician. Results. There was no difference in total antibiotic prescriptions between control and intervention clinics. Use of the ARI-IT significantly reduced antibiotic prescriptions (31.7% vs 39.9%; P = .02) and use of macrolides (6.2% vs 9.5%; P = .02) among visits compared with those eligible visits where it was not used. Conclusion. Use of the CDS reduced antibiotic prescribing and macrolide prescriptions among children with an ARI. Nonetheless, the low overall use resulted in an ineffective intervention.
Journal of Enterprise Information Management A meta-analysis of e-health applications acceptance : Moderating impact of user types and e-health application types

Purpose – The increasing importance of e-health has raised the significance of exploring the factors influencing the users' acceptance of e-health applications. There has been an extensive usage of the technology acceptance model (TAM) in e-health applications acceptance research. However, not all TAM relationships are borne out in all the studies. There is a variation in predicted effects in several studies with different user type and application type. This research aims to bridge a research gap by providing a holistic view of the e-health applications acceptance research by integrating the findings of existing relevant literature. Design/methodology/approach – A statistical meta-analysis of the effect size of causal relationships between common TAM constructs was conducted on 111 peer-reviewed academic studies published in various journals. Findings – The results confirm the validity and robustness of the TAM in e-health applications acceptance research. Further, a moderator analysis based on user type and e-health application type demonstrated that the effect size of causal relationships between TAM constructs majorly depends on the user type, but not on e-health application type. Research limitations/implications – This research provides a ready reference of the existing studies on e-health applications acceptance to the researchers. Further, if researchers or practitioners want to learn more about the particular user or application type, they may find the results valuable. Practical implications – This research suggests that the general public can be used as the surrogates for patients in e-health applications acceptance research. The implementation strategy found successful for medical staff may not work for general public and patients. This research also suggests ways to enhance acceptance of e-health applications among different user groups. Originality/value – The research is original and is based on the existing literature and its interpretation. D ow nl oa de d by F ud an U ni ve rs ity A t 0 7: 03 2 5 Fe br ua ry 2 01 7 (P T )
Efficiency issues related to probability density function comparison

The CANDID project (comparison algorithm for navigating digital image databases) employs probability density functions (PDFs) of localized feature information to represent the content of an image for search and retrieval purposes. A similarity measure between PDFs is used to identify database images that are similar to a user-provided query image. Unfortunately, signature comparison involving PDFs is a very time-consuming operation. In this paper, we look into some efficiency considerations when working with PDFs. Since PDFs can take on many forms, we look into tradeoffs between accurate representation and efficiency of manipulation for several data sets. In particular, we typically represent each PDF as a Gaussian mixture (e.g. as a weighted sum of Gaussian kernels) in the feature space. We find that by constraining all Gaussian kernels to have principal axes that are aligned to the natural axes of the feature space, computations involving these PDFs are simplified. We can also constrain the Gaussian kernels to be hyperspherical rather than hyperellipsoidal, simplifying computations even further, and yielding an order of magnitude speedup in signature comparison. This paper illustrates the tradeoffs encountered when using these constraints.
Work Progresses on Gigabit Ethernet

Gigabit Ethernet starts with the well known and widely implemented CSMA/CD (carrier sense multiple access with collision detect) protocol specification and will include several enhancements: carrier extension, which will pad out short frames from 512 bits (minimum packet size) to 512 bytes (eight times the minimum data size) so that CSMA/CD can operate over a 100 meter radius network; packet bursting, which will let a station that has acquired the network after contention keep starting new packets until a timer expires-this timer is set to the length of time it takes to transmit a maximum length packet and thus some of the efficiency lost with carrier extension is reclaimed; and full duplex operation with in-band flow control, which will coordinate operations between receiver and transmitter. This was included in P802.3x, just approved by the IEEE Standards Board and added to the 802.3 family of standards. Most Gigabit Ethernets are expected to operate in full duplex mode, especially in initial implementations. In addition, Gigabit Ethernet will maintain the plug and play simplicity that Ethernet users have come to expect through the use of link configuration. This is similar in concept to auto negotiation, which was standardized along with 100BASE-T. With these tools, a broad range of products with multiple speeds and the ability to configure themselves can work at the best speed they have in common with their link partner.
Tularemia: Retrospective Review of 10 Years’ Experience in Arkansas

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to review all cases of tularemia, a tick-borne illness, among inpatients at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) from 1996-2006 to discuss clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment. Records of the Infectious Disease Section were reviewed to identify cases of suspected or proven tularemia. Results: Seventeen patients presented with ulceroglandular tularemia and thirteen with glandular disease. Most patients had been ill for 10-14 days prior to admission and were evaluated at least once by another physician. Serology was positive in 77% of patients, including several positive on convalescent testing alone. Most patients responded well to treatment with gentamicin. Conclusions: This series emphasizes the importance of tularemia as an early consideration among children with fever and lymphadenopathy in Arkansas. Convalescent serology is an important tool, as many patients will remain seronegative early in illness. Gentamicin remains effective treatment and should be considered first-line therapy for suspected tularemia.
Thoracic epidural anaesthesia for treatment of refractory angina pectoris

Abstract Unstable angina is a dangerous condition with a high risk of developing myocardial infarction. The atherosclerotic plaque is exceedingly inflammatory and the unstable condition is due to a plaque rupture changing the anatomic configuration and associated with activation of the sympathetic nervous system and stenotic vasoconstriction and thrombosis. In spite of nitrates, β-blockers, calcium blockers and anti-platelet and anti-thrombotic drugs, there is refractory angina in about 10% of cases. These patients may successfully be treated with high thoracic epidural anaesthesia (HTEA), which is anti-anginal and anti-ischemic; if they are inoperable they can be discharged for long-term home self-treatment with tunnelled or inplantable HTEA devices. These have a low cost and are simple to insert and easy to handle, with a low risk for complications. There is also a decreasing need for injections with time, which may be explained by less tissue damage or intimal hyperplasia due to the sympathetic blockade.
Calculating the outage probability in a CDMA network with spatial Poisson traffic

In this paper, we provide a spatial Poisson point pattern model of traffic in a code division multiple access (CDMA) wireless network. We show how the theory of Poisson processes can be applied to provide statistical information about interference levels in the network. In particular, we calculate approximations and a bound on the outage probability at a designated cell site in the network, utilizing high-order cumulants, which have very simple analytical forms and can easily be computed once the mean measure of the spatial Poisson point pattern is known. We consider a Poisson-Gaussian approximation and an Edgeworth approximation in which the Gaussian distribution is twisted to satisfy the required cumulants, and we provide a Chernoff bound on performance that also utilizes the cumulant information. We show that the theory can be applied to nonstationary, time nonhomogeneous systems. We provide a particular example of a M/M//spl infin/, spatial queueing model of a CDMA wireless network.
Morphological scale-space preserving transforms in many dimensions

The theory of an image decomposition that we refer to as a sieve is developed for images defined in any finite number of dimensions. The decomposition has many desirable properties in- cluding the preservation of scale-space causality and the localiza- tion of sharp-edged objects in the transformation domain. The de- composition has the additional properties of manipulability, which means that it is easy to construct pattern recognition systems, and scale-calibration, which means that it may be used for accurate measurement. © 1996 SPIE and IS&T.
Autonomous navigation in a dynamic environment

Navigation of a mobile robot in the presence of dynamic obstacles requires fast data collection routemonitoring and route replanning. A method for route replanning in the presence of dynamic obstacles and an extendible autonomous vehicle navigation architecture based on this method is presented. At the center of our architecture is the Dynamic World Modeling subsystem which maintains an internal representation of the environment. It continuously assimilates time-varying stereo-based range data to build an accurate model of the world. The primary user of this information the Navigator subsystem plans a path for the vehicle to follow and insures that this path remains valid by computing detours when environmental changes block the planned path. A preliminary version of our autonomous navigation system utilizing a near real-time stereo range detection module is operational in our laboratory. It is used to navigate a Denning MIRV-2 mobile platform and executes in a distributed fashion on a network of Sun workstations. © (1991) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Structural domain–domain interactions: Assessment and comparison with protein–protein interaction data to improve the interactome

Assessment and improvement of the reliability of protein–protein interaction (ppi) data is critical for the progress of the currently active research on interactomes. Some interesting questions in this respect are: How three‐dimensional (3D) protein structural data is present in known ppi data? , and How this kind of information can be used to validate and improve the interactomes? To address this problem, analysis and unification of six structural domain–domain interaction (sddi) datasets is presented; followed by a comparative study of these sddi data in three ppi reference sets produced at different levels of confidence. The results show that protein structural and interactomic data are partially complementary and that a larger proportion of structural information is observed in more confident interactomes. We also present, focused on the human interactome, an analysis of the domains that are more frequently present in: (i) an interactome based on validation by at least two experimental methods versus (ii) another interactome based on validation by 3D structural interaction data. These results allow to distinguish between domain pairs associated to protein interactions supported by 3D structures and domain pairs that at present are not supported by structural information. The domain pairs exclusive of interactions without associated 3D data reveal interacting conserved modules that are probably flexible, disordered, and difficult to crystallize; and which are often found in proteins involved in signaling pathways and DNA processing. Proteins 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prediction of Ultimate Bearing Capacity of Cohesionless Soils Using Soft Computing Techniques

This study examines the potential of two soft computing techniques, namely, support vector machines (SVMs) and genetic programming (GP), to predict ultimate bearing capacity of cohesionless soils beneath shallow foundations. The width of footing (𝐵), depth of footing (𝐷), the length-to-width ratio (𝐿/𝐵) of footings, density of soil (𝛾 or 𝛾), angle of internal friction (Φ), and so forth were used as model input parameters to predict ultimate bearing capacity (𝑞𝑢). The results of present models were compared with those obtained by three theoretical approaches, artificial neural networks (ANNs), and fuzzy inference system (FIS) reported in the literature. The statistical evaluation of results shows that the presently applied paradigms are better than the theoretical approaches and are competing well with the other soft computing techniques. The performance evaluation of GP model results based on multiple error criteria confirms that GP is very efficient in accurate prediction of ultimate bearing capacity cohesionless soils when compared with other models considered in this study.
Postcholecystectomy benign biliary stricture: Surgery is the gold standard

Abstract Post cholecystectomy bile duct strictures present a challenge to the treating physicians. Advancement in skills and technology offers alternative treatment modalities to the standard surgical repair. Contemporary series of surgical repair by experienced surgeons report excellent long-term results with <5% restricture rates. Endoscopic therapy is conceptually flawed, is not applicable to all patients, requires prolonged duration of treatment with multiple interventions. Surgical repair by an experienced surgeon is the “Gold Standard” of care in management of postcholecystectomy bile duct strictures.
Best Characteristics of Adolescent Gateway Drug Prevention Programs

&NA; This paper identifies the best characteristics of gateway drug prevention programs that have the effect of preventing or reducing the use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana by adolescents. A comprehensive literature review of the performance of school-, family-, and community-based drug prevention programs covering the last 20 years was conducted to identify the best characteristics of successful programs. Six characteristics were identified that are common to successful drug prevention programs: involving parents; teaching life and resistance skills and normative education; enacting laws and policies against adolescent drug use; encouraging peer participation; conducting a media campaign; and retaining program participants. School administrators, parents, and community leaders can use the knowledge in this paper to design drug prevention programs that can accommodate specific risk factors and types of gateway drug use by adolescents.
Stages of change for dietary fat reduction: associations with food intake, decisional balance and motives for food choice

The stages-of-change model developed by Prochaska and DiClemente was applied to readiness for dietary fat reduction in a postal survey of adults in South London (N = 366). The percentage of respondents falling into each stage was as follows: precontemplation 35.1, contemplation 12.7, prepara tion 4.1, action 5.5, and maintenance 42.5. More men than women were precontemplators, while more women were in the maintenance stage. Significant associations with dietary fat consumption were observed, but there was no relationship with fibre intake. Cognitive and motivational correlates of healthy eating were associated with stage of change. However, the stage model was of only moderate value in accounting for current dietary habits. Implications for health education are discussed.
The development of strategic clinical leaders in the National Health Service in Scotland

Purpose – The paper seeks to describe a national strategic and multi‐professional clinical leadership programme designed and developed for the National Health Service in Scotland. It addresses the policy imperatives behind the programme, the local and national processes for identifying future clinical leaders and their preparation through the programme.Design/methodology/approach – The background context and case for the programme are considered against international and local contexts. The programme's roots are explored, drawing upon the extensive consultation process used. The programme design is explained and the evaluation methodology and results are described.Findings – Key learning related to programme design and delivery issues is highlighted, as is that relating to leadership itself.Research limitations/implications – This is a one‐country case study but draws upon recent international good practice.Originality/value – The case study identifies how a small (five million population) country can dev.