Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Staphylococcus aureus N-terminus formylated δ-toxin tends to form amyloid fibrils, while the deformylated δ-toxin tends to form functional oligomer complexes

ABSTRACT The community-associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strain (CA-MRSA) is highly virulent and has become a major focus of public health professionals. Phenol-soluble modulins (PSM) are key factors in its increased virulence. δ-Toxin belongs to PSM family and has copious secretion in many S. aureus strains. In addition, δ-toxin exists in the S. aureus culture supernatant as both N-terminus formylated δ-toxin (fδ-toxin) and deformylated δ-toxin (dfδ-toxin) groups. Although δ-toxin has been studied for more than 70 years, its functions remain unclear. We isolated and purified PSMs from the supernatant of S. aureus MW2, and found fibrils and oligomers aggregates by Size Exclusion Chromatography. After analyzing PSM aggregates and using peptide simulations, we found that the difference in the monomer structure of fδ-toxin and dfδ-toxin might ultimately lead to differences in the aggregation ability: fδ-toxin and dfδ-toxin tend to form fibrils and oligomers respectively. Of note, we found that fδ-toxin fibrils enhanced the stability of biofilms, while dfδ-toxin oligomers promoted their dispersal. Additionally, oligomeric dfδ-toxin combined with PSMα to form a complex with enhanced functionality. Due to the different aggregation capabilities and functions of fδ-toxin and dfδ-toxin, we speculate that they may be involved in the regulation of physiological activities of S. aureus. Moreover, the dfδ-toxin oligomer not only provides a new form of complex in the study of PSMα, but also has significance as a reference in oligomer research pertaining to some human amyloid diseases.
Emulsion, hydrogel and emulgel systems and novel applications in cannabinoid delivery: a review

Abstract Emulsions, hydrogels and emulgels have attracted a high interest as tools for the delivery of poorly soluble hydrophobic nutraceuticals by enhancing their stability and bioavailability. This review provides an overview of these delivery systems, their unique qualities and their interactions with the human gastrointestinal system. The modulation of the various delivery systems to enhance the bioavailability and modify the release profile of bioactive encapsulates is highlighted. The application of the delivery systems in the delivery of cannabinoids is also discussed. With the recent increase of cannabis legalization across North America, there is much interest in developing cannabis edibles which can provide a consistent dose of cannabinoids per portion with a rapid time of onset. Indeed, the long time of onset of psychoactive effects and varied metabolic responses to these products result in a high risk of severe intoxication due to overconsumption. Sophisticated emulsion or hydrogel-based delivery systems are one potential tool to achieve this goal. To date, there is a lack of evidence linking specific classes of delivery systems with their pharmacokinetic profiles in humans. More research is needed to directly compare different classes of delivery systems for the gastrointestinal delivery of cannabinoids.
Predictive validity of psychosis risk models when applied to adolescent psychiatric patients

Abstract Background Several multivariate algorithms have been developed for predicting psychosis, as attempts to obtain better prognosis prediction than with current clinical high-risk (CHR) criteria. The models have typically been based on samples from specialized clinics. We evaluated the generalizability of 19 prediction models to clinical practice in an unselected adolescent psychiatric sample. Methods In total, 153 adolescent psychiatric patients in the Helsinki Prodromal Study underwent an extensive baseline assessment including the SIPS interview and a neurocognitive battery, with 50 participants (33%) fulfilling CHR criteria. The adolescents were followed up for 7 years using comprehensive national registers. Assessed outcomes were (1) any psychotic disorder diagnosis (n = 18, 12%) and (2) first psychiatric hospitalization (n = 25, 16%) as an index of overall deterioration of functioning. Results Most models improved the overall prediction accuracy over standard CHR criteria (area under the curve estimates ranging between 0.51 and 0.82), although the accuracy was worse than that in the samples used to develop the models, also when applied only to the CHR subsample. The best models for transition to psychosis included the severity of positive symptoms, especially delusions, and negative symptoms. Exploratory models revealed baseline negative symptoms, low functioning, delusions, and sleep problems in combination to be the best predictor of psychiatric hospitalization in the upcoming years. Conclusions Including the severity levels of both positive and negative symptomatology proved beneficial in predicting psychosis. Despite these advances, the applicability of extended psychosis-risk models to general psychiatric practice appears limited.
Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering from Copper Nanoparticles Obtained by Laser Ablation

Copper colloidal nanoparticles are obtained by laser ablation in aqueous solutions of ligands by nanosecond laser pulses at 532 and 1064 nm and examined by localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy, along with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and zeta potential measurements. This fabrication method, besides providing SERS-active substrates without spectral interferences of reagents, as it generally occurs for the chemical reduction of metal ions, allows obtaining colloidal suspensions which are stable in time because the copper particles are capped by ligand molecules as long as they are formed by laser ablation. This prevents aggregation among metal nanoparticles and probably reduces overall oxidation of the copper surface.
Surface modification of fabric by sol-gel method

β-cyclodextrin was anchored on fabric by sol-gel method in order to modify surface property and impart fabric new function.The effects of coupling agent and cyclodextrin on stability of sol-gel solution were discussed.The relations between temperature,dilution ratio and gel forming were presented, and the relations between the addtion method,the quantity and fastness of β-cydodextrin to be anchored on fabric were analyzed.As a result,when the dosage of coupling agent was no more than 0^05 mol/L and the adaptive temperature was between 80～120 ℃, cyclodextrin anchored on fabric may impart fabric fragrance-depositing property.
Rediscovery of the Rare Bee Epeoloides pilosulus in Manitoba (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

ABSTRACT: Epeoloides pilosulus (Cresson) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) is an exceptionally rare bee of conservation concern. Epeoloides are cleptoparasites of the oil-collecting bees Macropis (Hymenoptera: Melittidae), which specialize on oil-producing species in the genus Lysimachia (Ericales: Primulaceae). We report on the first records of E. pilosulus in Manitoba in 95-years, and only the fifth through eighth specimens for Canada since 1960. Manitoban records of Macropis are also provided.
Hospital admission and mortality rates for non-covid diseases in Denmark during covid-19 pandemic: nationwide population based cohort study

Abstract Objective To determine the incidence of hospital admissions and associated mortality rates for non-covid medical conditions during the covid-19 pandemic. Design Nationwide, population based cohort study. Setting Denmark from 13 March 2019 to 27 January 2021. Participants All Danish residents >1 year of age. Main outcomes measures Population based healthcare registries that encompass the entire Danish population were used to compare hospital admission and mortality rates during the covid-19 pandemic (from 11 March 2020 to 27 January 2021) with the prepandemic baseline data (from 13 March 2019 to 10 March 2020). Hospital admissions were categorised as covid-19 when patients were assigned a diagnosis code for covid-19 within five days of admission. All patients were followed until migration, death, or end of follow-up, whichever came first. Rate ratios for hospital admissions were computed using Poisson regression and were directly standardised using the Danish population on 1 January 2019 as reference. 30 day mortality rate ratios were examined by Cox regression, adjusted for age and sex, and covid-19 diagnosis was used as a competing risk. Results 5 753 179 residents were identified during 567.8 million person weeks of observation, with 1 113 705 hospital admissions among 675 447 people. Compared with the prepandemic baseline period (mean hospital admission rate 204.1 per 100 000/week), the overall hospital admission rate for non-covid-19 conditions decreased to 142.8 per 100 000/week (rate ratio 0.70, 95% confidence interval 0.66 to 0.74) after the first national lockdown, followed by a gradual return to baseline levels until the second national lockdown when it decreased to 158.3 per 100 000/week (0.78, 0.73 to 0.82). This pattern was mirrored for most major diagnosis groups except for non-covid-19 respiratory diseases, nervous system diseases, cancer, heart failure, sepsis, and non-covid-19 respiratory infections, which remained lower throughout the study period. Overall 30 day mortality rates were higher during the first national lockdown (mortality rate ratio 1.28, 95% confidence interval 1.23 to 1.32) and the second national lockdown (1.20, 1.16 to 1.24), and these results were similar across most major diagnosis groups. For non-covid-19 respiratory diseases, cancer, pneumonia, and sepsis, the 30 day mortality rate ratios were also higher between lockdown periods. Conclusions Hospital admissions for all major non-covid-19 disease groups decreased during national lockdowns compared with the prepandemic baseline period. Additionally, mortality rates were higher overall and for patients admitted to hospital with conditions such as respiratory diseases, cancer, pneumonia, and sepsis. Increased attention towards management of serious non-covid-19 medical conditions is warranted.
Comment

One of the recent major debates in macroeconomics concerns the role of technology shocks that play a major role in the standard real business cycle (RBC) model. One aspect of this debate concerns the response of hours to technology shocks. Galí’s (1999) empirical evidence concluded that the technology shock was not a key driver of the business cycle and cast doubt on the RBC modeling paradigm. Galí identified the effects of technology shocks using an estimated vector autoregression (VAR) that relied on the identification mechanism that only technology shocks have a permanent effect on labor productivity; this assumption is justified by the main RBC andNewKeynesian models. He finds that hours worked fall in response to a positive technology shock; the negative correlation between labor input and output contradicts the prediction of both the RBC model and the empirical data of a positive correlation. Since it was first published in 1999 (having been earlier released as a working paper in 1996), this “TFP ↑ ⇒ hours ↓” finding has created a great deal of discussion. Other authors such as Francis and Ramey (2005) and Basu, Fernald, and Kimball (2006) endorse the finding of Galí. The former paper carries out a number of robustness checks on the identified technology shocks, whereas the latter uses an entirely different methodology to identify the technology shocks. Both corroborate the TFP ↑ ⇒ hours ↓ finding of Galí. There have been twomain angles of attack on this finding: one concerns the low-frequency properties of the hours data series, and the other considers the identification assumption in the Galí work. This latter approach suggests that other factorsmay affect productivity in the long run. One example of the approach that questions the identification strategy is the article by Fisher (2006). Fisher allows for both traditional technological
External Balance in Low‐Income Countries

This paper investigates empirically the external balance of low‐income countries by offering a coherent analysis of determinants of medium‐ to long‐term real exchange rates, current accounts, and net foreign assets and highlighting factors that are more likely to be specific to these countries. The rise and persistence of large external imbalances in recent years have renewed interest in this area from an empirical and theoretical perspective and have also highlighted the need for a multipronged approach to the analysis of external balances on the basis of multiple indicators. In this paper, the simultaneous analysis of the three aforementioned indicators of external balance allows us to check the consistency of the results across indicators, an effort generally absent in the literature. The focus on low‐income countries aims at filling another gap. Although the literature on the determinants of the real exchange rate and of the current account is very vast, very few contributions focus specifically on low‐income countries or account for features that are quite specific to—or more important for—this set of countries. Our analysis emphasizes factors such as structural policy and institutional distortions, access to special external financing, and a larger macroeconomic sensitivity to exogenous shocks. For the purpose of the empirical analysis, extensive efforts were required to create a wide database, which is unique in terms of the set of indicators and countries covered. A large literature has based the analysis of medium‐term determinants of current accounts on the standard intertemporal approach to the current account emphasizing saving and investment decisions (see, e.g., Chinn and Prasad 2003; Lee et al. 2008). A more recent empirical literature has aimed at explaining the patterns of global imbalances that have
Dagger: Optimistic Byzantine Fault-Tolerance without Rollback

The main issue that hinders the widespread deployment of blockchains is their low throughput and high latency. This has revitalized the search for efficient Byzantine fault-tolerance (BFT) protocols. However, existing BFT protocols either require two-phase voting or speculative execution (which may require replicas to rollback some executions). In this paper, we propose Dagger, which only requires a single voting phase in the optimistic case where all replicas are correct; and it does not require any rollback in the worst-case.
In vivo direct imaging of neuronal activity at high temporo-spatial resolution

There has been a longstanding demand for noninvasive neuroimaging methods capable of detecting neuronal activity at both high temporal and spatial resolution. Here, we propose a novel method that enables Direct Imaging of Neuronal Activity for functional MRI (termed DIANA-fMRI) that can dynamically image spiking activity in milliseconds precision, while retaining the original benefit of high spatial resolution of MRI. DIANA-fMRI was demonstrated through in vivo mice brain imaging at 9.4 T applying electrical whisker-pad stimulation, directly imaging the spiking activity as well as capturing its sequential propagation along the thalamocortical pathway, as further confirmed through in vivo spike recording and optogenetics. DIANA-fMRI will open up new avenues in brain science by providing a deeper understanding of the brain’s functional organization including neural networks.
Multi-modal adaptor-clathrin contacts drive coated vesicle assembly

Clathrin-coated pits are formed by the recognition of membrane and cargo by the heterotetrameric AP2 complex and the subsequent recruitment of clathrin triskelia. A potential role for AP2 in coated-pit assembly beyond initial clathrin recruitment has not been explored. Clathrin binds the β2 subunit of AP2, and several binding sites on β2 and on the clathrin heavy chain have been identified, but our structural knowledge of these interactions is incomplete and their functional importance during endocytosis is unclear. Here, we analysed the cryo-EM structure of clathrin cages assembled in the presence of β2 hinge and appendage (β2HA) domains. We find that the β2-appendage binds in at least two positions in the cage, demonstrating that multi-modal binding is a fundamental property of clathrin-AP2 interactions. In one position, β2-appendage cross-links two adjacent terminal domains from different triskelia below the vertex. Functional analysis of β2HA-clathrin interactions reveals that endocytosis requires two clathrin interaction sites: a clathrin-box motif on the hinge and the “sandwich site” on the appendage, with the appendage “platform site” having less importance. From these studies and the work of others, we propose that β2-appendage binding to more than one clathrin triskelion is a key feature of the system and likely explains why clathrin assembly is driven by AP2.
On the taxonomic validity of Indian ground spiders: IV. Genera Apodrassodes Vellard, 1924, Herpyllus Hentz, 1832 and Sergiolus Simon, 1892 (Araneae: Gnaphosidae)

ABSTRACT The Indian spider species of the genera Apodrassodes, Herpyllus and Sergiolus are revised, mostly based on the type material available in the National Zoological Collection, Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata. The following new combinations are recognised: Coillina yogeshi comb. nov., transferred from Apodrassodes, Scotophaeus goaensis comb. nov. and Zelotes calcuttaensis comb. nov., both transferred from Herpyllus, Hitobia lamhetaghatensis comb. nov., Hitobia meghalayensis comb. nov., Hitobia poonaensis comb. nov., Hitobia singhi comb. nov. and Poecilochroa khodiar comb. nov., all transferred from Sergiolus. The Chinese species Coillina baka syn. nov. is synonymised with C. yogeshi comb. nov. All images of the examined type material as well as supplementary descriptions are provided.
Cost-Sensitive Extremely Randomized Trees Algorithm for Online Fault Detection of Wind Turbine Generators

The number of normal samples of wind turbine generators is much larger than the number of fault samples. To solve the problem of imbalanced classification in wind turbine generator fault detection, a cost-sensitive extremely randomized trees (CS-ERT) algorithm is proposed in this paper, in which the cost-sensitive learning method is introduced into an extremely randomized trees (ERT) algorithm. Based on the classification misclassification cost and class distribution, the misclassification cost gain (MCG) is proposed as the score measure of the CS-ERT model growth process to improve the classification accuracy of minority classes. The Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion lasso (HSICLasso) feature selection method is used to select strongly correlated non-redundant features of doubly-fed wind turbine generators. The effectiveness of the method was verified by experiments on four different failure datasets of wind turbine generators. The experiment results show that average missing detection rate, average misclassification cost and gMean of the improved algorithm better than those of the ERT algorithm. In addition, compared with the CSForest, AdaCost and MetaCost methods, the proposed method has better real-time fault detection performance.
Declarative Memory Predicts Phonological Processing Abilities in Adulthood

Individual differences in phonological processing abilities have often been attributed to perceptual factors, rather than to factors relating to learning and memory. Here, we consider the contribution of individual differences in declarative and procedural memory to phonological processing performance in adulthood. We examined the phonological processing, declarative memory, and procedural memory abilities of 79 native English-speaking young adults with typical language and reading abilities. Declarative memory was assessed with a recognition memory task of real and made-up objects. Procedural memory was assessed with a serial reaction time task. For both tasks, learning was assessed shortly after encoding, and again after a 12-h, overnight delay. We regressed phonological processing ability with memory performance on both days. We found that declarative memory, but not procedural memory, was highly predictive of phonological processing abilities. Specifically, declarative memory scores obtained shortly after learning were associated with non-word repetition performance, whereas declarative memory scores obtained after the overnight delay were associated with phonological awareness. Procedural memory was not associated with either of the phonological processing measures. We discuss these findings in the context of adult participants with mature phonological systems. We examine possible implications for the relationship between declarative memory and phonological processing in adulthood.
Odor Recognition Memory in Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Review

Olfactory impairment is a central non-motor symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). Previous studies have demonstrated that olfactory dysfunction is associated with mental illness and impaired cognition. The frequently investigated olfactory functions are odor detection, discrimination, and identification. However, few studies have focused on odor recognition memory (ORM). ORM tasks involves episodic memory which therefore can facilitate the detection of dementia among patients with PD and consequently adjust their treatment. Thus, the aim of this systematic review is to summarize the existing research on ORM in PD. Databases and reference lists were used for data collection. Studies were included in the review if they met the eligibility criteria derived from the PICOS-framework. Quality evaluation of the studies was based on the STROBE-statement. Six studies with small samples were included in the analysis which demonstrated the scarce research on the subject. The studies targeting ORM were heterogenous and involved two main tasks: odor recognition and odor matching. The synthesis of the data demonstrated that PD patients performed significantly lower than controls on both tasks, especially on odor matching task. Only the odor recognition task exhibited a difference between patients with PD vs. Alzheimer's disease (AD). PD patients performed significantly better than AD patients. The findings based on the available limited data support the notion that odor recognition task can be of importance in identifying Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD). To investigate this hypothesis, future research needs to include larger samples of PD, PDD and AD patients executing the same odor recognition task.